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Barry Goldwater, right, with Richard Nixon, left, and Ronald Reagan in Phoenix in 1965 at a testimonial dinner to honour the 1964 Republican presidential candidate. Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. and grandfather of George W and Jeb, helped doom Rockefeller. When Nelson divorced his wife and married another woman, Senator Bush asked, "Have we come to the point where the governor of a great state [New York]  one who perhaps aspires to nomination for president of the United States  can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four children to abandon her husband and four children and marry the governor?" The conservative Goldwater crusade campaigned against moderates, arguing, (much as Tea Party-influenced candidates and non-establishment Republicans have in 2016) that many elected moderate Republicans were little different from Democrats. The vehemence and bitterness of the campaign, and the desperation of moderate Republicans to find a candidate  any candidate  to beat Goldwater inflamed the differences. It made reconciliation at the Republican Convention impossible. Senator Barry Goldwater and wife Peggy, along with GOP convention delegates, are showered with balloons at San Francico's Cow Palace when the Republican presidential nominee arrived for his acceptance speech in July 1964. Goldwater did not go in with an absolute majority of votes, but could not be headed off. He won easily on the first ballot. The response of moderates, essentially, was to walk away from the campaign, essentially refusing to lift a finger for it. Millions of people who would normally have voted Republican could not be bothered to vote on election day.

In theory, holding primaries followed by a convention first divides, then unites a party around the winner. But Goldwater's personality, tactics and philosophy had completely alienated half the party. As now, some preferred that their party lost than that Goldwater became president. Even many whose opposition was not ideological thought any campaign based on Goldwater's attitudes could not win popular support. Goldwaterism had no more time for moderates than Democrats. Principles are all very well, but one gets no chance to put them into practice until one can get power. As Gough Whitlam once remarked, only the impotent can afford to be pure. But the Goldwater Republican Party was under the domination of people who couldn't see the point of fighting for, or winning power, if one had to compromise on principle. It's an approach that a fatalistic Tony Abbott, rejecting reconciliation with his critics before getting the sack from his caucus last year, summarised as "death before dishonour." The Republican mutiny of 1964 had other consequences. Popular presidential candidates have "coat tail" effects. Their popularity causes their supporters to vote for other party people standing for the Senate, House of Representatives, state governorships, and state and country elections, including for sheriff and dogcatcher.

But Goldwater produced headwinds, not tailwinds. Four Republican senators lost to Democrat challengers; so did 36 Republican congressmen. LBJ effectively had a two-thirds majority in each house. It was a Democrat high water mark, and the tide went out quickly. Johnson, who had effectively portrayed himself as the steady and anti-war candidate, was soon committing more and more American troops to war in Vietnam. He suffered the political consequences as defeat loomed, 50,000 soldiers were killed and the American population tired of the futile carnage. Within three years, he was defeated by an anti-war candidate at an early primary, and decided to retire rather than recontest the presidency. Moreover, Johnson's enthusiasm for civil rights and his war against poverty tore the Democratic Party apart, particularly in the old South. Until 1964, Democrats "owned" the old Deep South. "Yellow Dog" Democrats  those who would vote for a yellow dog rather than a Republican  had helped resist voting rights for African Americans, a century after the Civil War. The Republicans, the party of the successful northern states and Abraham Lincoln, was still deeply unpopular there. But those rebuilding the Republican Party after 1964 discovered a south that was angry and alienated by the extension of voting rights to African Americans, and the removal of the trappings of segregation, including by busing. It found words, and dog whistles, for articulating this resentment, and was able to capture this vote. That many Democrats, particularly from the north and east, responded with condescension and scorn to the screams of working class whites as they lost their privileged place, doubled up the success of the tactic. Republicans have, more or less, owned the "Yellow Dog" vote since.

Democrats tend to win if they can mobilise a high turnout. Republicans tend to win if the turnout is low. Effective Democrats, such as Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, have been able to neutralise the Yellow Dog vote by forming coalitions of African Americans, Latinos and organised labour to counter the coalition building of Republicans. Four years after Goldwater dragged the Republican Party to record lows, a Republican, Richard Nixon (in today's terms relatively moderate) became president. He was re-elected in a landslide, if not one of 1964 proportions, in 1972, four years later. Nixon's resignation in scandal brought in another Democrat, but did not greatly cramp the Republicans, who won the next three terms. Two of these involved Ronald Reagan, an unabashed conservative and hero of the old Goldwater factions. It's hard to say that the abandonment and defeat of Goldwater did the Republicans lasting harm. Donald Trump is certainly not a conservative in the Republican mould. He may not be a conservative, social or economic, at all. He may be a mere opportunist and not one at all. But his appeal during the primary season has been essentially to conservative Republicans and to those who have felt disenfranchised and betrayed by political parties. A good many have come, belatedly, to understand that many of the economic policies advocated by small-government anti-interventionist rich business types have not been in the interests of an undereducated and underpaid working class. But Trump has campaigned outrageously. He has completely dominated the airwaves, and made most of the campaigns about himself. Outrageous would be terrible if it was unsuccessful, but, so far, it has worked. To the frustration of the Republican establishment, and its old mainstream, the man is beyond shame, consistency, or even fidelity to what he said yesterday. Moreover, he mocks and derides everyone of that establishment and mainstream. A good many Republicans honestly believe that it would be better, both for America and their party, if he lost. No one believes that he has any coat tails, and an additional fear is that Republicans could lose control of the Senate if he is leading the campaign. The Republicans have a 55-45 majority in the Senate, but, this year, 24 Republican places are up for grabs and only 10 Democrat places.

Every conventional tactic, and vast sums of campaign money, have been thrown against Trump, without success. He has demolished any candidates capable of being called moderate, and his only viable opponent, Ted Cruz, looks every bit as unsuitable and unfit for office, only dumber and worse. With Trump or Cruz, support turns more on emotion; reason has been of little avail. The commentary is filled with discussion by desperate "traditional" Republicans about whether Trump can be stopped, and if so, how. Should the "party", somehow, "intervene" by, somehow, expelling Trump and choosing a candidate more acceptable to mainstream Republicans? Endless permutations of convention tactics can be rehearsed. But it seems impossible that the mainstream party take the party back, for now anyway. It has made a virtue of loose organisation and the primacy of primaries, and can hardly overrule results. The party is, for now, in the hands of crazies. The Donald has enthused millions of people, particularly of the male, white, working class. But even if every one of these mobilised to vote, their votes fall well short of a majority of the electorate, or even that part of the electorate disposed to vote. Even less so if many Republicans are not enthused about Trump. Or if Democrats can be made so frightened about what he might do in office that they would rush out, in any weather, to vote against him. The scarier a Republican crusade, the more easy to mount a counter-crusade. Many Tea Party folk and not a few Christian fundamentalist groupings  some of those whose Republican activism and enthusiasm has driven out people of more moderate persuasion  are not deeply keen on Trump.
Easter Long Weekend The Corin Forest Mountain Retreat will be open across the long weekend, including Good Friday, from 10am to 5pm. An Easter egg hunt will be held every day at 11.30am. It's on Corin Rd, Tidbinbilla Range Easter Saturday, March 26

Tuggers Egg Hunt The Tuggeranong Hyperdome is having an Easter egg hunt between 10am and 4pm on Saturday, March 26. Collect a map from the customer service desk on the ground floor near JB Hi-Fi and sold the clues to find the eggs hidden in various shops. The Easter Bunny will also be hopping around between 11am and 2pm. Marketing manager Heidi Flaherty tells us there will be a whopping 66 kilos of Easter eggs hidden around the centre. Yarralumla Play Station

The Yarralumla Play Station is holding Easter egg hunts on the hour between 10am and 3pm on Easter Saturday, March 26. Each participant gets a Cadbury goodie bag and a free ride on the miniature railway. Bookings are essential on 6282 2714. The cost is $10. The Yarralumla Play Station is in Weston Park at the site of the famous miniature railway at 9 Prescott Lane in Yarralumla. Bunny in the City

There will be an Easter egg hunt at the Canberra City Walk Markets on Saturday, March 26. The hunt starts at 11.30am - look out for the flags. There will also be a "meet and greet" with the Easter Bunny at 12.30pm. The markets are in Petrie Plaza, Canberra City, between London Circuit and the merry-go-round. Easter Sunday, March 27 The Great Easter Egg Trail at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House Christian Taylor, from Jerrabomberra, with some of the eggs for the Easter egg hunt at Old Parliament House. Credit:Museum of Australian Democracy

Solve the clues, find the chocolate - simple! Four new trails will take kids on a journey of discovery inside Old Parliament House. Find the clues, crack the code and be rewarded with some Easter eggs. It's on from 9am to noon, Easter Sunday. The Gecko Gang will also have kids' activities in the courtyard from 9.30am to 2.30pm including novelty races, face-painting and tug-o-war. A sausage sizzle will also be on offer from 9.30am if you are already suffering from chocolate overload. Head of learning and visitor experience Glenda Smith said a monster 108 kilos of chocolate would be up for grabs.

She encouraged families to do the trail together to learn more about the building and democracy in a fun way. "The building holds so many secrets and really interesting information and ideas that the trail is such a good way to find out about them," she said. The event is free and so is entry to Old Parliament House for this special outing. Old Parliament House is on King George Terrace, Parkes. Easter Egg Hunt at Rodney's PlantsPlus at Pialligo The Easter Egg Hunt at Rodney's PlantsPlus at Pialligo has become a Canberra tradition.

There will be two hunts, both starting at 10.30am on Easter Sunday, March 27. One is for children aged six and under; the other is for children aged seven to 13. The cost is $5 per child and places are limited so registration is essential by ringing Rodney's on 6248 6933. If you make a reservation in the cafe - 6257 5822 - for the special Easter breakfast, the kids can join the Easter egg hunt for free. The Easter Egg Hunt on the Roof of Australia The Golden Easter Egg Hunt at Thredbo for easter egg hunt guide Credit:Thredbo Resort

Sometimes a good Easter egg hunt can be the difference between finding a yummo Cadbury Creme Egg and finding a crummy no-name-brand, tasteless ball of nothingness. But we digress. It can also be the difference between finding a couple of eggs and walking away with $10,000. On Easter Sunday, March 27, $10,000 will be up for grabs in Australia's Highest Easter Egg Hunt at Thredbo. The Golden Egg Hunt starts at noon sharp on Easter Sunday at the top of the Kosciuszko Express chairlift at Thredbo. Hidden around the mountain will be one egg worth $5000 and another five eggs worth $1000 each. Kids and adults can participate but children need to be accompanied by an adult who can claim the prize. Entry is free but you need to buy a ticket for the chairlift. Keep a look out on Thredbo Resort social media for clues.
It is understandable that commentary seeks to compare the Future Fund to other investors. Peter Costello says mining is not given the 'hero status' it deserves. Credit:Paul Jeffers Mr Mitchell chooses comparisons with the Alaska Permanent Fund and industry superannuation funds in Australia. We know and respect the Alaska Permanent Fund and are partners with it in the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, as well as in a number of investments. Future Fund asset allocation. Credit:afr.com/data

Alaska is not Australia The Alaska Permanent Fund operates quite differently from the Future Fund. Each year at least 25 per cent of Alaska's mineral lease rentals, royalties and other proceeds are paid into the Alaskan fund. No money has been put into the Future Fund in the past eight years. Each year a portion of the Alaskan fund can be paid out to Alaskans, with the rest available to be spent or saved for the future. This has been going on since 1976.

In Australia resource royalty revenue goes to the states, not to the Commonwealth, or its Future Fund. The Future Fund only ever had one source of funding  Commonwealth government surpluses  and no government has balanced a budget since 2007-08. No money has been put into the Future Fund in the past eight years. In fact there has only ever been one government that did put money into the Future Fund. So it doesn't make much sense to compare the Alaskan fund, which has had annual inflows for decades, to the Future Fund, which has only ever had one round of funding. Future Fund's performance wins

In terms of investment returns the Alaskan fund has done well. It returned 6.7 per cent per annum over the five years to the end of December. The Future Fund has also done well over that time. It has returned 10.5 per cent per annum. As last week's article highlights, the Alaskan fund has made some good investments. So has the Future Fund, which is why it has achieved double digit returns over the last three, five and seven years. It's much the same for comparisons between Australia's industry superannuation funds and the Future Fund. They are different in what they do and how they do it.

Balanced funds not better But if comparisons are made they should be accurate. According to research house Superratings, over five years to the end of December 2015, the average balanced Australian superannuation fund returned 7.9 per cent per annum. The best balanced superannuation fund of any type returned 9.2 per cent per annum. The Future Fund returned 10.5 per cent per annum over that period. It is therefore not correct to suggest, as Mr Mitchell did, that industry super funds often do better than the Future Fund or that the Alaskan fund is superior. Different investors have different mandates, strategies and cash flows and perform differently. For the Future Fund, we think it is important to adjust the investment program to reflect the investment environment.

Mandate excludes excessive risk This is because we have an obligation to focus not just on generating good returns, but on not putting Australia's hard-earned savings at excessive risk. Over the last year or so we have been highlighting the potential risks to the investment environment  growth prospects in China and globally, the withdrawal of monetary stimulus in the USA and elsewhere, and instability in the Middle East. Accordingly we have reduced the overall level of risk in our portfolio. Our approach means that at times, like now, we will be more defensive and hold more cash. At other times we will hold less cash and invest more in the good opportunities as they present. It is this flexible and prudent approach that has seen the Future Fund perform well since it was established.
According to the scientists, we now stand on the threshold of a climate "emergency".

In February 2016 the global temperature spiked at 1.35 degrees celsius over the long-term average  we're entering the climate danger zone. Last month was the hottest on record since 1880. Scientists warn we are rapidly approaching the point where the climate confronts us with an existential threat.

Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel has wrung his hands over our response to accelerated climate change. Credit:Rohan Thomson

A dire yet difficult emergency to grasp, given the strangely subdued tone of the media response: news of the February spike tended to languish as a middle-order bulletin point, or was even left unreported. There's been precious little analysis of what this emergency means for our society, or our lives. Low publicity means low political pressure. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has not appeared in Parliament to solemnly outline the government's response to this emergency. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has not pledged that Labor will soon announce its own comprehensive climate emergency plan.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, there is little explanation of how we got ourselves into this crisis.
Many ask themselves in that moment the same question that the nation has been asking itself this week after learning of these sorrowful stats - why? And, particularly, why this increase in deaths by suicide now?

The story that emerges is that things have become worse in terms of Australians dying by suicide - which is already the leading cause of death for those between 15 and 44. And that there are thousands of families, friends and work colleagues who at some moment received that horrifying text message or Facebook status post that someone who they love has died by suicide.

That's true of last week's release of ABS statistics on suicide in 2014 , which showed a 10-year-plus high with 2864 deaths and an increase of 13.5 percent from the previous year.

We live in a time when Australia - its national political ping-pong aside - is envied around the planet for its relative peace and prosperity. While poverty and disadvantage are very real, especially for indigenous Australians, many of us eat better than the kings of less than 150 years ago. Therefore, what accounts for the contrast between our comparative wealth and our crappy well-being? How is it possible that there are now some eight deaths by suicide - one every three hours - each day?

From the perspective of Lifeline, which fields some 2600 calls per day from help-seekers, with about half of those from people in crisis, the answer is that we don't know. Nor, I would respectfully suggest, does the mental health fraternity; their discipline is necessarily focused on medical factors (e.g. what's wrong with you?) rather than social or contextual factors (what's happening for you?).

But there are things that are known and it's imperative that as a community we act on what Lifeline believes is a national emergency in order to literally save more lives. It's especially timely as the Federal Government currently authors a suicide prevention flank as part of the 5th National Mental Health Plan.

We know that isolation and loneliness are very significant risk factors in suicidality. Disconnection drives despair, particularly for those who may already be struggling under the weight of a mental illness, depression or anxiety. It's been suggested that in a digital world - where we physically spend upward of 24 hours per week on-line and countless energy in comparing our regular lives to the curated lives of others - some people become unstuck from the healing glue that binds family and friends together for mutual good.

We know that protective factors - which are defined as "skills, strengths or resources to help people deal more effectively with stressful events" - are vital to suicide prevention. It's frankly the case that as a society we're not doing enough on that front, where the ultimate aim should be keeping people from ever needing to call for help. Indeed, federal expenditure for suicide prevention is half the level of federal expenditure for road safety, even though deaths by suicide are double the road toll. That needs to change in the Budget.
He wasn't standing on an aircraft carrier with a banner saying "Mission Accomplished" behind him but Russia's President Vladimir Putin was a lot more credible than former US president George W. Bush when he declared his country's military intervention in the Middle East a success this week.

And most of the Russian forces in Syria are going home after only five months, not the eight years that American troops stayed in Iraq. "The effective work of our military created the conditions for the start of the peace process," said Putin on March 14. And it has indeed been a remarkably intelligent and successful intervention.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:AP

The Russians said right from the start that it would be a limited operation both in scope and in time, and that their goal was not to help the Assad regime reconquer Syria but to restore the military stalemate in the civil war as the necessary preliminary to a ceasefire and peace talks. And that is exactly what they did.

Western media were surprised by Putin's announcement on Monday, but only because they had come to believe their own governments' propaganda. If you have convinced yourself that the evil Russians are backing the evil Syrian regime in order to extend its evil rule, and that the preferred Russian tactic is the deliberate bombing of hospitals and schools, then you are bound to be bewildered when reality intrudes.
It was in another Senate, oceans away and more than two thousand years ago that the brutal assassination of a political leader by his Senate colleagues occurred on the Ides of March.

What happened in the Australian Senate last Tuesday, March 15, was hardly of the same order but nor was it the inconsequential circus depicted by most commentators. Some very serious decisions were taken that daythat will have lasting significances for the two main plotters  the government and the Greens  which may well in the future have them rue their failure to ''beware the Ides of March''.

Illustration by Dionne Gain.

Last Tuesday the government and the Greens, supported by independent Nick Xenophon, agreed to give absolute priority to reform of the Senate voting system. In other words, they agreed to refuse to resolve any other issue, however important to their constituents, until they had secured their own futures.

They opted to not just preserve, but to expand, their current power bases.
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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

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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".

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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

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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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


Review our place Whoopee-do! Telstra offers "unlimited free mobile downloads" for a day to those customers inconvenienced by its latest national outage ("Telstra CEO Andy Penn 'sincerely sorry' for second outage", March 18). Mr Penn, how about sending your team of international experts to our place to conduct "its deep review of Telstra's network and services"? We'd be delighted to show them that you can't even provide an effective mobile service for one day, let alone offer an apology or compensation.

John Richardson, Wallagoot 

Fairfax news striking There will be many like me who will join with Myree Harris and Mukul Desai (Letters, March 18) to lament the swingeing cuts to editorial staff and hope it does not herald the long-term demise of a newspaper I have been enjoying since childhood. Just as I like a proper paper version of a book I like, each morning, to be able to unfold my paper Herald and enjoy the fruits of its many percipient contributors  its columnists, letter writers and in depth investigations particularly. Long may it continue to flourish.

Ron Sinclair, Bathurst

I have lived in households that have taken the paper for many many moons. I also used the broadsheet issues within my English classes and hopefully weaned many kids away from tabloid news as well. There is no denying the place in our society for digital news reportage but nothing beats getting up early and walking across the dewy grass, wrestling with the plastic wrap and there on the breakfast table spread out the world.

Patricia Slidziunas, Woonona



Mukul Desai asks what readers can do to keep those hard-working journos and other staff in Fairfax. It's easy, we have to continue reading the paper but more importantly we should also subscribe to their product or diligently buy a copy of the SMH each day. With little money, the paper will probably cease to exist in its present format, which would be a blow to the interests of the community and society.

Con Vaitsas, Ashbury

'Fair go' fairly gone

Exciting time to be alive in Australia all right! People who oppose CSG invasion of their properties could be jailed for seven years, and the same, though a lesser term, goes for professionals working in detention centres who publicly reveal the abuse of detainees. Whatever happened to the land of "fair go" and democracy?

Samantha McKay, Katoomba

What's going wrong Waleed Aly's column on the thinking around England's June vote on departing the EU and Donald Trump's march to the 2016 presidential election (March 18) is a tremendous look at what is going so viciously wrong with the management of our world. This idea of overturning the orthodox by means of the savagery that is the promotion of lowest most unethical thought bubbles is so frightening. Surely in the pursuit of betterment and decency, even with just a few seconds of reflection, people can see the solution to fire is not more petrol? The solution to hunger is not more famine. The orthodoxy may be in need of repair, but what repair can come from the shameful sale of unprincipled and sinister thinking?

David Gunter, Arncliffe



Indigenous youth crisis

New figures showing that it costs almost a quarter of a billion dollars each year to lock up Indigenous children ("Locking up Indigenous kids costs $236 million a year", March 17) are clear evidence that a new approach is needed to work with vulnerable young people. The broader issue of over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system means young children can grow up familiar with life in prison and, for some, incarceration can seem part of life's trajectory. Compared with their non-Indigenous peers, Aboriginal children aged 10-14 years are 25 times more likely to be in detention. This issue is at crisis levels and urgent intervention is required. Jesuit Social Services believes prison dollars should be reinvested into community-led and culturally-specific solutions to help prevent Indigenous children from becoming involved in the justice system in the first place.

We have also called for specialist Koori Children's Courts in each jurisdiction. Children who enter the youth justice system at a young age are often society's most vulnerable. We cannot stand by and allow our nation to continue to fail them.

Julie Edwards,

CEO, Jesuit Social Services,

Richmond, VIC Weirdness emerges in politics

The Trump Show I never thought I live to see the day that I would agree with views expressed by Christopher Pyne. I am in total agreement with him in regard to Donald Trump ("Pyne hits out at 'terrifying' Trump surge", March 18).

John Cotterill, Kingsford Calling the popularity of Trump terrifying and the American democracy weird is not a proper analysis that involves "Why" and "How". We expect a more considered response from Mr Pyne and other parliamentarians.

Mustafa Erem, Terrigal



Isn't it kind of weird that Christopher Pyne labels something "kind of weird"?

Kent Mayo, Uralla

Many of us feel as Christopher Pyne does, that the prospect of Donald Trump in power is indeed terrifying. Mind you, we feel the same way about Christopher Pyne.

Peter Barnes, Revesby

Donald Trump makes Tony Abbott look like Socrates. Discuss.

David Young, Leichhardt

Most Americans are aghast to learn that voting in elections here is compulsory, and failure to do so attracts a fine. The advantage of compulsory voting is that it ensures a more fully representative expression of opinion and reduces the chance of an extremist government being elected on a small rump vote. A person like Donald Trump would have very little chance of election if voting was compulsory. Yet it seems that he can be a serious contender for president where voting is not compulsory. That will probably not persuade the Americans to change their system but it should strengthen our resolve to keep ours.

Greg McCarry, Epping

Long sitting for Senate reform was ridiculous

How is it possible to keep a clear, critical mind while presumably debating legislation in Parliament, after over 31 hours and with the "threat" to sit until Good Friday?

Sure we expect politicians to "work hard", but this is absolutely ridiculous, especially considering it's being done for party political reasons, to benefit a particular party in the name of "simpler voting" procedures. This kind of "democracy" we can do without.

Dimitris Langadinos, Concord West

The proliferation of minor political parties at elections can be traced directly to the dissatisfaction of electors with the major parties. Both the LNP and Labor have become less relevant to the people because of the party politics they espouse which has very little, if any, benefit for the people they represent. The politicians are more intent on solidifying their place in the parliaments where they can suck on the public purse like leeches for their own financial benefit. There are very few who can honestly claim that they are trying to benefit the people who elected them. The present attempt by the government to remove/limit the election of minor parties is aimed at cementing the major parties' position and allowing them to, often, ram legislation through without any proper scrutiny.

Graeme Brewer, Biggera Waters, Qld

There are negative ramifications with regard to any person who works overnight and does not sleep in such period. If humans are awake for 17 hours, it is equivalent of a blood-alcohol content of 0.05per ent. Hence some irrational, or impetuous, decisions may have been made when the senators worked throughout Thursday night. They need to have more time allocated in the future.

Steve Barrett, Glenbrook

Having observed the shambles of self-interest that our current parliaments have become, in particular the on-going Senate electoral reform farce, I think it may well be time to introduce one more seriously overdue electoral reform: namely, the addition of one more box at the bottom of every ballot paper simply labelled "None of the above". I'd vote for that.

Les Tomlinson, Berowra Heights

Is there any real reason why we need a Senate? Surely, considering the time we need to elect a government and the major investigations on each person standing, added to after they are elected and continuing thereafter, provides us more than enough in the way of people to run our country? It was OK to have a Senate all those very many years ago, because no one could rely on the elected politicians being able to do the job properly, and a Senate was needed to maintain a constant check on how the government operated, and correct errors. But with all the media and other constant checks and comments on all who stand for election to councils, states or governments, we actually do not need this any more  a Senate is today only an overly expensive (in virtually everything, not just money) group of people who are actually not at all needed nowadays.

Geoff Cass, Tewantin, Qld



I hope Malcolm Turnbull does not rue the day he got into bed with the Greens to get the Senate reform bill passed.

Leo Vilensky, Castle Cove

It is hard to imagine Malcolm Turnbull receiving a "mandate" from the people at the next election to do anything other than the status quo. So far he is thoroughly wedged by the conservative side of his party. He is either unwilling or unable to stand up to them and to offer alternative policies to those proffered under Abbott. And then he is wedged from the other side of politics who are out there championing fair and equitable taxation and superannuation, policies that wind back unsustainable middle and upper class welfare, marriage equality and action on climate change which he is vacuously opposing and running scare campaigns on. He will need to stand up before the next election and articulate policies that are different from the old Abbott government, or else he'll be just Abbott in a shinier suit and will have no new mandate.

Anthony van den Broek, Erskineville

Well I suppose we're destined to experience a "double disillusion" after first having Tony Abbott as PM and now Malcolm Turnbull.

Mark Pearce, Richmond

Any vestigial respect I had for the party of Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating has been stripped away by the unedifying spectacle of senators caterwauling, name-calling and screaming at each other in the debate over electoral reform.

John Newton, Glebe

Thanks heavens the Senate has finally passed those electoral changes. Does this mean now we'll only get really good people elected?

Bruce Hulbert, Lilyfield
Where's Walty's Shoreline?, an art installation by Andrew Mackenzie and University of Canberra students, is a feature of the Art Not Apart exhibition that opens on Saturday. This activity is directed at provoking comment on the planned altered foreshore at West Basin.

The students are to be commended for this idea; using white floats visually displays the extent of the massive landfill operation to create Walter (Walty) Burley Griffin's foreshore. There is to be a boardwalk, promenade and other features extending about 40 to 50 metres into the basin from the new foreshore alignment. Canberrans who visit the installation have an opportunity to consider not just the altered foreshore but the whole of West Basin and the overall impact of the proposed building estate on Griffin's public lakeshore parkland.

Walter Burley Griffin, visionary. Credit:National Archives

The Foreshore Promenade, being touted as a Griffin legacy, is nothing more than an expensive ploy to give developers the green light to destroy Griffin's West Basin concept. The large triangular shaped park as shown on his 1911, 1914 and 1918 plans, extends to a tiered land space at Griffin's water axis, and would provide an elevated viewing platform across the basin and beyond.

By itself, the proposed foreshore development resplendent with cafes and pocket parks is a reasonable idea that may indeed provide the ACT Government's sought-after ingredient of vibrancy. But the building estate concept with 6 storey (and higher) buildings will destroy all of the West Basin parkland, blight the dignity of the iconic Commonwealth Avenue and block vistas from the avenue across the lake. The packed in buildings will take over all the parking space, some of which is needed for events such as Art Not Apart. The building estate will extend out to the line of floats. West Basin will suffer as a development site for well over 10 years with associated noise pollution and traffic congestion.
Artist Susan Norrie doesn't mooch around the studio plucking ideas out of the ether. She gets out into the field, investigating the world.

The latest result is centred on the world's largest mud volcano, which has been bubbling and oozing away in East Java for a decade.

Artist Susan Norrie with an image from Aftermath. Credit:Wayne Taylor

At its peak, the Sidoarjo volcano spewed out 180,000 cubic metres of mud a day. There is dispute about whether mining, earthquake or geothermal activity initiated the eruption, but for the locals, life was drastically altered when the volcano began to spill its guts in 2006.

Norrie documented the site after the eruption and, more recently, returned to investigate how the still-active site has challenged those around the Porong River.
The literate country

Australia has come 16th in a ranking of the World's Most Literate Nations, undertaken by Central Connecticut State University. The survey is based on "not their populace's ability to read but rather  their populace's literate behaviours and their supporting resources". So the survey used five criteria to indicate the literate health of nations: libraries, newspapers, education input and outputs, and computer availability. The 10-most literate nations were: 1, Finland; 2, Norway; 3, Iceland; 4) Denmark; 5) Sweden; 6) Switzerland; 7) USA; 8) Germany; 9) Latvia; 10) Netherlands. In the five categories, Australia finished: computers, 13; education system, inputs, 29; libraries, 33; newspapers, 18; education, test scores, 14. New Zealand finished one spot higher overall, in 15th place, Britain one spot lower, in 17th. Indonesia was 60th and Botswana finished last in 61st spot. The survey grew out of CCSU's survey of America's most literate cities, which was started in 2003.

Italian professor Marcella Marmo denies she is the author Elena Ferrante.

The woman who says she isn't Ferrante

Marcella Marmo is the professor identified by an Italian newspaper as the woman behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. Who knows if the author of the piece, a philologist and novelist named Marco Santagata, is on the money? But certainly Marmo was playing a straight bat in response, saying the she had read only one of the four Neapolitan novels by Ferrante. She denied being the novelist but admitted that like Elena, the narrator, she too had studied in Pisa. According to The New York Times, Marmo's political, intellectual and life interests match those of the concerns of the books, but she told the paper she wasn't a Jekyll and Hyde figure, but added "one always has more than one identity". Interestingly, Marmo was married to the nephew of Carlo Levi, author of Christ Stopped at Eboli.
They played initially to black audiences because at that time, in the south, they were the only gigs they could get. Carter is philosophical about the past; they attended a segregated school, had to perform gigs and even eat meals at blacks-only establishments and "didn't know anything else". "It was segregation full time, you know? We had to go through all of that, but fortunately we came out pretty good ... we knew our place at that time and we knew what we could do and what we couldn't do. So what we couldn't do, we didn't do," he says. "Of course, because that's all we were allowed to do, we played to predominantly black audiences, but once we could play for white people, we found out the white people love the Blind Boys  now we have more white audiences than black!" By the 1960s, the group had gone from young blind kids from the south, minorities even among the segregated, to joining the civil rights movement and performing at benefit gigs for Dr Martin Luther King. And while other groups embraced more secular styles as traditional gospel waned from favour in the '60s and '70s, the Blind Boys stayed true to their message.

"Oh yeah! We might record with secular people but we're not deviating from gospel music. All these secular people we record with, they have to conform to what we're doing. We sing gospel  that's all we do. When they bring other things to us that's not gospel, we don't use it." But over the years, they have worked with a varied group of non-believers; their most recent album, Talkin' Christmas, was a collaboration with blues legend Taj Mahal, and their 2013 album I'll Find A Way was produced by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. "We didn't know anything about him, but we met him and went to his house where he has a studio and we had a good time, we enjoyed working with him." When The Wire producer chose their cover of Tom Waits' track Way Down In The Hole for his series theme song, they reached yet another new generation. Over the years they've also worked with Booker T, Yo Le Tengo, Tom Waits Dr John, Ben Harper, kd lang and dozens of others.

There's one musician they're yet to collaborate with, but it's "on the cards": Stevie Wonder. "We would like to do something with Stevie, oh yeah," says Carter. "We've talked about that and he's into it. We don't know when, but we're working on it!" Carter is pretty happy though with the band's lot so far, which includes five Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and performing at the White House for three presidents. "We weren't looking for no kind of  accolades; we just lucked out," says Carter with a laugh. "But we glad we got 'em!" Of all the US Presidents they've performed for  Clinton, George W Bush and Obama  it's not surprising Carter nominates meeting President Obama as the most emotional experience.

"We never thought we would see black president in our time  it is amazing! It was a special honour and tribute to sing for him. We enjoyed singing for all of the Presidents but to him! He's a black man that has become President of the United States! It was a pleasure, an honour." This month Carter and his bandmates will tour Hawaii and Australia, playing a mix of their biggest songs and some new material. But it will, says Carter, be strictly gospel. "I do listen to some music that isn't gospel. I love country music  we've got a country-gospel crossover song we do every night  and I'm a Frank Sinatra guy, but we're still out to spread the message," he says, before asking if I am a believer. I confess while I love gospel music, I'm not a believer. "You're not? Well  we're gonna come down there and convert you," he says. "We're gonna make a believer out of you yet!"
Anohni, formerly known as Antony Hergaty of Antony and the Johnsons, is coming to Sydney. Credit:Alice O'Malley As a journalist interviewing Anohni, the name she has used for just over a year, it is wise to be aware that she is not much interested in talking about herself, and that questions about her gender identity are off limits. She was born a boy and grew up to become a beautiful woman, as she sings on For Today I Am A Boy. Her transition, or lack of it, is none of your business. When I broach the subject of hormone therapy, after half an hour of amicable conversation, she politely shuts me down. The transgender equality movement has made significant advances in recent years, but visible progress obscures continued violence and prejudice. Former Olympian Caitlin Jenner is on the cover of Vanity Fair, Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox is on the cover of Time, but more trans women of colour were murdered last year in the United States than ever before.

Our brokenness as a species is beyond being an issue at the moment. Anohni "If you're 15 and you want to go online and see pictures of other trans kids, you can do that now, whereas 30 years ago, you'd be groping in the dark for anything, and it wouldn't necessarily mirror you or your story," Anohni says. "It was a lonelier experience. Not that it isn't a lonely experience now, but I do see a lot of young people that are empowered around the issues of gender identity." Growing up in the English town of Chichester, then as a teenager in California, she scrabbled for whatever information and encouragement she could get. In 1990, she moved to New York and found a community that accepted and understood her. An "obsessive historian", she learned about artistic forbears such as the Cockettes and the Hot Peaches, and sought out the drag queens she'd seen on Mondo New York, a documentary about the Alphabet City cabaret scene.

Together with Johanna Constantine, she founded Blacklips, a variety troupe with a bawdy, confrontational aesthetic fit for a transgender community reeling at the peak of the AIDS crisis. Late at night at the Pyramid Club, they sometimes threw offal at their audience. At school, she had developed her unique singing voice by copying artists she admired, including Boy George, Alison Moyet, and especially Nina Simone. The revelation that came to her over long days at the piano was that the more personal her songs were, the more people they touched. "I would literally be sitting there crying and singing all the time," she told Debbie Harry, in Interview magazine. "The goal for me at that age was just to be as close to crying as I could be while I was singing." Antony and the Johnsons, named for transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, could easily have remained a underground legend, beloved by the cognoscenti and unknown outside downtown Manhattan. But then in 2003, a copy of their EP, Fell In Love With A Dead Boy, found its way to Lou Reed. Reed took Antony on tour, to sing backing vocals, and their duet on Candy Says, his song about transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling, became a highlight of his gigs. He promoted his new friend tirelessly, telling reporters, "When I heard Antony, I knew that I was in the presence of an angel."

On Hopelessness, Anohni's voice is as beautiful and sad as ever, keening to the musical firmament created by producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. "I wanted to do something that had a seductive sound, using contemporary pop language, and then embed within that this hardcore, very direct language," she says. "Not dressing anything up or hiding it. Just saying what I really feel." The lyrics veer from anger to despair. "Drone bomb me  blow my head off," pleads the opening number. One track has "Execution, it's an American dream," for a refrain. Another addresses the surveillance state: "I know you love me, because you're always watching me." The human race is presented as a virus attacking its host cell, the earth. In 2013, Anohni spent 10days living with the Martu of Parnngurr in the Western Australian Desert, and she has since campaigned against a proposed uranium mine on their ancestral land. "What's happening in Australia now is a free-for-all. It's a gold rush," she says. Despite her advocacy, including a high profile appearance on ABC's Q&A, the mine looks set to go ahead. The federal government has granted conditional approval to Cameco and Mitsubishi to dig at Kintyre, inside the Karlamilyi national park.

Four Degrees, a single released to coincide with the Paris climate conference, is a stunning meditation on our complicity in global warming. To a hammering synth track, Anohni fantasises about seeing dogs crying for water and lemurs burning in the trees. "It's only four degrees," she sings  a benign-sounding rise in average temperatures predicted by many climate scientists, that would have disastrous consequences for the planet. Ecological destruction has been the second great theme of her career. On Another World, from her third album, The Crying Light, she lamented that "this one's nearly gone". Manta Ray, a track she wrote with J. Ralph for the documentary Racing Extinction, was nominated for an Oscar this year. There were five nominees in the Best Original Song category, but only Sam Smith, Lady Gaga and The Weeknd were asked to perform. In an open letter published on line, Anohni declined her invitation to sit with the Hollywood aristocracy.

"I will not be lulled into submission with a few more well manufactured, feel-good ballads and a bit of good old-fashioned T. and A.," she wrote. "They have been paid to do a little tap dance to occupy you while Rome burns." It was quite an RSVP. This refusal to be co-opted is evident throughout Hopelessness, in particular on a track about Barack Obama, a president Anohni campaigned and cried for. Seven years into his administration, her sense of having been deceived is acute. The song is a dirge of his name and a list of his perceived crimes, from executions without trial to punishing whistle-blowers. "It's as much an indictment of my own naivety. 'Like children we believed'," she says. "Obama ran on a platform of transparency. The only person that's in prison for war crimes is Chelsea Manning  the one completely powerless American soldier that had the moral courage to call it out. "Would Obama have the moral courage to pardon her when he leaves office? Not if he wants Hillary to win."

What about you? I ask. Would you like Hillary Clinton to win? For years, as a co-founder of the Future Feminist Foundation, Anohni has campaigned for "a shift towards more feminine systems of governance", starting with more women in positions of authority. "It's the last time I'll get suckered into identity politics as a reason to vote for someone," Anohni answers. "If Hillary's the first woman president, well, in England we already know what a Margaret Thatcher is. It's not an end unto itself to be the first woman president." So what would it take to usher in real change? Is she talking about a revolution? As ever, she resists easy answers, preferring to respond with a question of her own. "Our brokenness as a species is beyond being an issue at the moment. We're totally out of control," she says. "The only question that remains is: 'Is it possible to change our trajectory?'."
By 1940, more than 10 murders and 30 bombings had been attributed to the 'Ndrangheta in Australia. By the end of the century, from the corridors of power to the aisles of the nation's biggest supermarket chains, there was barely an Australian who hadn't been touched in some way by the influence of the Calabrian Mafia. Joseph 'Pino' Acquaro was gunned down in Brunswick in March last year. For more than 30 years, from the mid-1960s until the 1990s, the 'Ndrangheta controlled the fruit and vegetable markets in Victoria with an iron fist. The racket involved bribing supermarket buyers to take fruit and vegetables at inflated prices from Melbourne's market stall-holders, who had been forced to pay a levy of 50 a case directly to the Mafia. The scam netted tens of millions of dollars, all of which was ultimately paid for by consumers. A confidential police report, which formed the basis of a joint Fairfax Media and Four Corners investigation last year, alleged a similar racket operated out of Sydney's seafood markets, only this time it was control of the supply chain for prawns, rather than fresh produce, that netted millions for the mob.

Extortion, bribery, cannabis cultivation and racketeering have been the hallmarks of the 'Ndrangheta in Australia for almost a century. But Italian investigators warn that the new generation of mobsters are involved in a much more damaging trade. The Melbourne and Sydney families are believed to be the liaison between Calabria and the trafficking of drugs to Australia. They are believed to control the supply and trafficking of large quantities of methamphetamine into Australia. Franco Roberti, who comes from Naples, is known for prosecutions against members of the Naples Mafia, the Camorra. He was appointed Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor in 2013. He has been particularly outspoken about the changing role of the Mafia in Italy. He spoke publicly this week about how the Mafia was simply using the threat of violence to intimidate a growing number of businesses in Italy. "Only when they don't get what they want, do they take violent action," he told the national daily, La Repubblica, on Wednesday. But, generally, the Mafia gets what it wants. In Australia, it wants the methamphetamine trade. In 2014, the Parliament of Victoria's Law Reform, Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee conducted an inquiry into "the supply and use of methamphetamines, particularly ice, in Victoria".

The committee was told the key organisation behind the trafficking of large quantities of ice out of Europe was the Calabrian Mafia. Evidence was given by Dr Sergi, who has worked closely with Italian anti-Mafia investigators. Dr Sergi told the inquiry the path for ice to the streets of Melbourne and Sydney was controlled by Italian crime families via "brokers", who tend to be Spanish and Armenian, and Italian authorities were aware of the trade. "The channels to Australia for methamphetamines that we found to have been organised by Italians generally go from Armenia, where they are transported ... to Bilbao, and then on flights from Bilbao to Europe, mainly in the plastic parts of suitcases, that is the favourite way," Dr Sergi told the inquiry. "From Prague and Frankfurt, they are ... shipped to Australia." From there, the inquiry was told, "Melbourne and Adelaide are the ports of choice for the arrival of drugs in Australia."

Dr Sergi said Italian investigators knew the trafficking of methamphetamines from Armenia to Australia was controlled by the Calabrian Mafia. "The branches of the 'Ndrangheta are identified and known to Italian authorities and have been known for more than 50 years," she said. "They have names of families, and they believe that there are at least from seven to 15 active clans in Australia at the moment ... Italian organised crime is trusted to complete the trafficking, precisely for reasons that are related to the fact that they are the trustworthier [criminal] group in circulation for Australia." Italian authorities may be aware of the pathway of ice from Armenia to Australia, but they have been unable to stop it. That is due, they say, to a breakdown in communications between Australia and Italy. When lawyer Joseph Acquaro was gunned down on Melbourne's streets this week, Italian prosecutors were quick to call for a joint investigation. Solving a murder in faraway Australia was the least of their priorities. The key game was re-opening communications between Australia and Italy. Outside of Calabria, the 'Ndrangheta has three known strongholds. Dr Sergi calls them the Mafia's "chambers of control". One is Lombardia, in Italy's north. The second is Canada. The third is Australia.
The driver who hit and killed Kogarah schoolgirl Aneri Patel in a horrifying accident in 2014 has been sentenced to at least two years and nine months' jail.

In a sentencing hearing at the Downing Centre District Court on Friday, Judge David Frearson said it was a particularly tragic and emotive matter.

Ms Patel, 16, was killed when a four-wheel-drive mounted a footpath in Kogarah, in Sydney's south, before ploughing through the O'Reilly & Daly Chemist in Railway Parade about 11.25am on September 15, 2014.

The Mitsubishi Challenger, which demolished half the shop, also injured employee Suzanne Ferguson and trapped 84-year-old customer Frederick Cook.

Puipuimaota Galuvao, 28, was charged with several driving offences, including dangerous driving occasioning death and driving without a licence.
While Cr Betts initially claimed to be on side with the community opposition to mergers, she quickly declared mergers an unstoppable train. "We voted to merge because we believe we need to take control of our future and be part of the decision-making process," she said after Waverley agreed to merge with Randwick. "If the amalgamation does proceed, I would certainly give consideration to making myself available as a candidate for mayor of the amalgamated council," Cr Betts said in a written statement to Fairfax Media, sent via her lawyers. The position as Eastern Suburbs mayor will rival that of Clover Moore at the City of Sydney. The new council will cover a population of more than 260,000, roughly the same as City of Sydney. But it will have a very wealthy cohort of ratepayers and include the lion's share of Sydney's movers and shakers. In a deft political move, Cr Betts also engineered the option that was most likely to cement her power base  an eastern suburbs council  rather than the option put forward in an independent report on amalgamation for a larger "global city" council incorporating the City of Sydney and Botany with Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra. This would have pitted her against Clover Moore.

It is likely  though not certain  that the new council will be controlled by the Liberal Party, particularly if Woollahra is forced into the mix. So who is Cr Betts? Arriving as an immigrant from South Africa in 1974, Ms Betts settled in the eastern suburbs and worked in the tourism industry before deciding to join the Liberal Party in 1983. According to her website, she wanted to make a contribution to her new home and became integrally involved with the Liberals. Her first tilt at office was for the state seat of Waverley in 1988, which was unsuccessful. After that she set her sights on local government. As one of the longest standing councillors she rules the roost among the Liberals. The only time Labor has held the mayoralty in the eight years was for one year in 2011-12, when Cr Bett's deputy, Kerryn Sloan resigned and crossed the floor. The falling out between the two women is deep and bitter, prompted, according to Ms Sloan, by Cr Betts refusing to listen to community concerns about hotel opening hours in Bondi Junction. More on that later.

Ms Betts' ability to "move on" from people, is frequently mentioned. Ms Betts secured power over the eight years by encouraging conservative independents like Miriam Guttman-Jones to run, effectively giving the Liberals the edge over Labor. Since a byelection in 2013, the Liberals now have an outright majority and Ms Betts has no need of independent support. It too has left a bitter taste. Others cite Betts' forthrightness as the reason behind the deep divisions in council. "Outside of council she and I have a very polite and civilised relationship," says John Wakefield, the most senior Labor councillor on Waverley council. "In council she is pig-headed, arrogant and vindictive," he said. "Her attacks on people who she believes have slighted her are extreme. Members of the public have been branded 'a rentacrowd' and 'a rabble'."

There is also bad blood with neighbouring mayors. Toni Zeltzer, the Liberal mayor of Woollahra, is no fan. She is deeply worried about what she sees as the more pro-development stance of Betts' council, evident in Bondi Junction, and what she will bring to Woollahra and Paddington, one of the largest neighbourhoods of well preserved terrace houses in the world. "The cultural differences, were evident during the amalgamation debate, where the Liberal mayors of Waverley and Randwick called meetings early in the morning on the weekends to vote on the amalgamation proposals, says Cr Zeltzer. "Woollahra prides itself in being transparent, accessible and inclusive which is not how one would describe the timing of meetings held by Waverley and Randwick at the ungodly hours of 9.30am on Sunday and 7am on Saturday." For all that, Betts is an effective political operator whose "can do" attitude seems to appeal to small and large property owners alike. Mr Notley Smith, the local state representative and a former Randwick mayor, said she's a hardworking, solid progressive, who has great leadership skills. "She's led the Liberals and been an exemplary mayor," he says. "Yes, she has her critics but they are mainly Labor and the Greens."

Under Betts, the Liberals have increased their majority. The council has embraced development in Bondi Junction and other shopping centres while home owners in Waverley face far less onerous conditions on development compared to neighbouring Woollahra. The council has also embraced the use of voluntary planning agreements with developers, in which developers agree to make contributions to the council in return for additional floor space. Such agreements have been controversial with residents because they involve the council weighing its own financial interests against those of local residents, who see them as embodying a conflict of interest. For instance, the Forum Building in Bondi Junction was allowed to build additional units and exceed the height limits in return for a $3 million payment to council under a VPA. In her written answers to Fairfax Media, Ms Betts said: "Returning the council to financial sustainability and improving local infrastructure are probably one of my greatest achievements."

It is Cr Betts' perceived close relationships with some of the biggest developers and financial interests that causes the most consternation. The council has implemented a business forum to meet with local business and developers, on a regular basis. In 2015, Cr Betts made headlines when she wrote a reference for Luke Lazarus, son of the family who owns two of the major pubs in Bondi Junction. Mr Lazarus has since been released after a successful appeal. Cr Betts said she did so because "I am friends with Luke's grandmother and I provided the reference at her request." "This issue has been debated at length and I have never been found to have acted other than properly." But her closeness to the Lazarus family and its offshoot the Parras family  the owner of two hotels in Bondi Junction  is a constant source of criticism from her political opponents.

Cr Betts has supported additions to the hotels and extended trading hours to 5am for the Parras-owned hotels, despite resident concerns that Bondi Junction mall will be awash with drunks in the early hours, as they wait for the early opener to begin service. Asked about her relationship with the family, Cr Betts acknowledged that she had held her 60th birthday at the Eastern Hotel "but added that she paid for it herself  and was not given any discount. I held my birthday party at the Eastern because I like it," she said. "I did not declare any gift to council because there was no gift to declare," she said. Other business interests with whom she is close are developers, Allen Linz and Edvard Litver, owners of the Swiss Grand Hotel which has just been extensively redeveloped into the Bondi Pacific multi-use development. Cr Wakefield said she recently initiated a fundamental change to the way Waverley licenses outdoor seating which will potentially benefit the Swiss Grand. Instead of the tenant applying for outdoor seating, Waverley council has now decided to licence the developer, who will sub-licence to the tenant.

In contrast the precinct committees, representing residents, say they rarely see the mayor at resident meetings. At the Western end of Oxford Street where a controversial tower development is proposed, precinct committee convener, Marcia McAdam said Cr Betts had attended only one meeting in 2015, and this was a meet-the-candidate session for the state election. "Since then  no Cr Betts at meetings despite several times personally contacting her office inviting her to attend to meet with residents," said Ms McAdam. "We know she is still very interested in her jewel in the crown known as Bondi Junction and the proposed Civic Precinct Centre, so residents are surprised she doesn't make the effort to meet with them." Woollahra councillors receive rude shock

Just before Christmas, several Liberal Party branches in the eastern suburbs held their annual meetings. Anthony Marano, a Woollahra councillor and president of the Darling Point branch, simply assumed he would be re-elected as president. As a Woollahra councillor he had taken the fight against council amalgamations up to the Baird government. Fellow councillor, Peter Cavanagh, in the Paddington branch also thought his would be a routine re-endorsement. They were in for a rude shock. Cr Marano arrived to find that another branch member, Andrew Isaacs, had rallied his supporters and had the numbers. Mr Cavanagh was ousted by James Brown, the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull's son-in-law. Shocked, the two men believe they were the victims of an organised campaign to remove them motivated by their opposition to plans to amalgamate Woollahra with Waverley and Randwick. Several branch members told Fairfax Media they see the long hand of Waverley mayor, Sally Betts, a mover and shaker in the east, who also works part time in Malcolm Turnbull's office, behind the branch ructions. In her capacity as an electorate officer, Cr Betts has a unique insight into the Eastern Suburbs branches.

Others say there is nothing more to it than younger members wanting to get involved and that it was time for new, more active people in the branches to step up. For her part, Cr Betts says allegations she was behind the changes are "untrue". The conspiracy theorists also point to the changes at the Cooper Park branch as proof that someone is co-ordinating a coup with an eye to the local government elections some time after September 2016. The long-time president retired and his anointed successor, Matthew Thompson, was beaten by Woollahra councillor, Katherine O'Regan. Even though Ms O'Regan's council is staunchly opposed to amalgamations, Ms O'Regan has been a less than enthusiastic member of the "anti" campaign. She was the only Woollahra councillor not to sign an anti-amalgamation letter co-ordinated by Waverley councillor John Wakefield, branding it a political stunt . There is a long way to go on council amalgamations, and the timetable could get longer if Woollahra challenges the mergers in court.
Work on the next stage of the Gold Coast Light Rail is expected to start in April after the $420 million contract for its construction was awarded to an Australian contractor.

The winning company, CPB Contractors, has been given a deadline to have the work done in time for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the state government would fund $270 million of the project.

The deputy premier said the project was one the Queensland government fought very hard to achieve, and was important for "the Gold Coast, for its future economy, and for its diversification".
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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

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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

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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".

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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

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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
Police charged two men with robbery in company on Saturday after an assault at West End involving an attack by eight males on one man.

A 26-year-old man was approached by eight males on the corner of Vulture and Browning Streets and was asked for a cigarette just after midnight. They then allegedly assaulted him and knocked him to the ground before taking his bag and phone.

Police said a gang attacked a man at West End. Credit:Paul Rovere

The man was transported to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Police located four males a short distance from the incident and they were arrested and taken into custody. Two juveniles were later released without charge.
Crazed killer and rapist Sean Christian Price has been jailed for life for his horrendous crimes.

The man who savagely stabbed 17-year-old Masa Vukotic to death as she took an evening walk, then raped a woman in her workplace, will be 70 before his is eligible for release on parole.

Sean Price was sentenced to life in prison.

Had Price not admitted the offences of murder, rape, robbery and attempted theft, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said he would not have fixed a minimum term, meaning the now 32-year-old would certainly have died in jail.

In sentencing Price on Friday, Justice Lasry said he was a danger to the community, but the judge also lamented the "catastrophic example of mismanagement" that allowed the convicted rapist to be living in the community.
The Mickelberg brothers will not have to pay back almost $300,000 after Legal Aid dropped a case against them to recoup legal fees after they were wrongly convicted for the 1982 Perth Mint Swindle.

WA police implicated Ray, Peter and their late brother Brian Mickelberg for the 1982 robbery of 49 gold bars, worth millions today, and they were jailed after police perjured themselves during their trial.

Peter and Ray Mickelberg have won another battle with the state's legal authorities. Credit:Nine News Perth

Ray was imprisoned for eight and a half years and Peter for just short of seven years.

The brothers were given an ex-gratia payment of $500,000 each in a 2008 deal made with Attorney-General Jim McGinty on behalf of the Labor state government, which included payment of the Legal Aid fees the Mickelbergs needed to clear their names.
A fire is bearing down on the small town of Eneabba, approximately 270 kilometres north of Perth on Friday.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services issued a watch and act for people in an area bounded by Brand Highway, Coorow Greenhead Road and Eneabba-Three Springs Road in the Shires of Carnamah and Coorow

A fire is burning out-of-control in Eneabba.

DFES said there is a threat to lives and homes and people in the area need to get ready to leave or defend their homes.

The fire, which started just after 10.30am, is burning in bushland on both sides of the Brand Highway, approximately 15 kilometres south of Eneabba.
New analysis of DNA from a collection of bones found in Spain  the oldest human DNA of its kind studied  could help write the history of early humankind. The research, published on Monday in the journal Nature, focuses on hominins from the Sima de los Huesos ("pit of bones") site in Spain. They were found back in the '90s, but scientists haven't settled on their genetic origin. Now, by managing to extract some truly ancient nuclear DNA, researchers believe they've shown that the 430,000-year-old bones belonged to Neanderthal ancestors, or at least close relatives. Homo naledi, an early human species found in South Africa. Credit:National Geographic That's not an entirely new idea. A recent study pointed out striking physiological similarities between these Sima hominins and Neanderthals, our close cousins. Neanderthals emerged only about 40,000 years ago, but researchers suggested the 28 hominins found in the pit of bones might belong to the species Homo heidelbergensis, which lived in the right place and time and was thought to be an ancestor of Neanderthals. Then the plot thickened: DNA analysis published in 2013 suggested the Sima hominins were more closely related to Denisovans  a less-understood lineage of human.

But this isn't just another he-said-she-said DNA tale. The 2013 study analysed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is easier to recover from ancient bones. But it doesn't tell the whole story. It's a small molecule of DNA found in the mitochondria of each cell  the cell's power plant. When an egg and a sperm meet, only the egg cell holds on to its mtDNA  so while a person's nuclear DNA will paint a unique portrait of their genetic lineage, mtDNA extracted from the same individual will show an identical copy made straight down the maternal line, save for any mutations that have been picked up along the way. While the new study confirms that the Sima hominins do have mtDNA that loops them in with the Denisovans, it also shows the nuclear DNA is consistent with that you'd find in a Neanderthal ancestor. The results suggest Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged a good 400,000 years back, giving the Sima lineage time to pick up a new set of mtDNA as the generations went on  one that would match Neanderthals as we know them. And based on the DNA analysis, the researchers believe Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have split from their last common ancestor more than 600,000 years ago, which is a few hundred thousand years earlier than previously assumed. "Research must now refocus on fossils from 400,000 to 800,000 years ago to determine which ones might actually lie on the respective ancestral lineages of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans," Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who wasn't involved in the study, told New Scientist.
Bangkok: South-east Asian nations are turning to Australia to seek closer defence ties amid rising concerns over China's military build-up in the flashpoint waters of the South China Sea.

The move comes as the United States warned that a ruling of an international court in a case brought by the Philippines over its South China Sea claims in the coming weeks could trigger Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the waters through which 30 per cent of world trade passes.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Malaysia's Defence Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, is scheduled to meet Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne next week to discuss China's placement of military equipment on disputed islands, in a sign that Malaysia is considering a tougher stand against Beijing, its largest trading partner.

"If the reports we've received from various sources regarding the build-up and placement of military assets in the Spratlys are true  this forces us in a pushback against China," Mr Hishammuddin said, adding he would also hold talks with the Philippines and Vietnam.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims who have fallen under its control in Syria and Iraq.

The militants, who have also targeted Kurds and other Sunni Muslims, have tried to slaughter whole communities, enslaved captive women and girls for sex, and sought to erase thousands of years of cultural heritage by destroying churches, monasteries and ancient monuments, Mr Kerry said.

An explosion rocks Syrian city of Kobane during a reported suicide car bomb attack by militants of Islamic State on a People's Protection Unit position in the city centre. Credit:Gokhan Sahin

The Islamic State's "entire world view is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology", he said on Thursday.

The statement by Mr Kerry, made in response to a deadline set last year by Congress for the Obama administration to determine whether the targeting of minority religious and ethnic groups by the Islamic State could be defined as genocide, is unlikely to change US policy. The United States is already leading a coalition that is fighting the militants, and US aircraft have been bombing Islamic State leaders and fighters, its oil-smuggling operations and even warehouses where the group has stockpiled millions of dollars in cash.
SEOUL: The student from the United States sentenced to 15 years of hard labour by North Korea's supreme court was convicted for trying to steal a banner invoking former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, state media footage of the trial indicates.

The court sentenced the student, Otto Warmbier, on Wednesday for "crimes against the state", North Korean media reported.

American student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years. Credit:Kim Kwang Hyon

The US condemned the punishment as politically motivated and called on North Korea to pardon the University of Virginia student from Wyoming, Ohio, and release him on humanitarian grounds.

The sentencing came as North Korea is increasingly isolated and facing tough new UN resolutions following a nuclear test in January and a rocket launch last month. A White House spokesman said it was "increasingly clear" North Korea sought to use US citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda.
Bangkok: "I came here for my children's education, that's all," Santamil Selvi angrily shouted at a Kuala Lumpur press conference, under close questioning from the ABC's Linton Besser.

It was a gotcha moment for Besser and his cameraman Louie Eroglu  this is probably when the official clock started counting down on their stay in Malaysia  but it was also a dramatic reminder of the role that patronage politics and an entrenched system of payments still plays in the way the country is run.

Reporter Linton Besser, right, and camera operator Louie Eroglu prepare to leave at Kuching International Airport. Credit:AP

Santamil had just revealed that she was offered 20,000 Malaysian ringgit ($A6460) to apologise to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his family for alleging their involvement in the sensational murder of a Mongolian socialite in Kuala Lumpur in 2006.

Santamil is the widow of a private investigator who watched over Altantuya Shaariibuu before she was killed. It is not the first time that money has intervened in the case surrounding this gruesome murder.
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PHILIPSBURG:--- On Wednesday, the 9th of March, the University of St. Martin officially launched their online journal, entitled Commentaries, to a roomdecorated with tall tables, fancy colored lights, and talk show stylefull of invited guest, including Ministers Silveria Jacobs and Emil Lee, USM board members and staff, participants in the journal, speakers, USM students, academics, writers, cultural icons, among others.

The journal, as President of University of St. Martin Francio Guadeloupe said, is about When a public sphere is created where the writings of scholars, activists, writers, public intellectuals, students and the general population/others, occupy the same space and is given the same importance, then, and only then, does a developmental university fulfill its role of contributing to the radical democratic project in the Caribbean, better known as the politics of decoloniality. In the end, Guadeloupe said, To comment is to be in common.

Minister Jacobs was given the opportunity to speak, and she commended USM on the job well done on having such a journal, especially given the importance of such from an academic and cultural standpoint.

Geneve Phillip, Dean of Academic Affairs, spoke next, as the keynote speaker. Phillip lamented the current situation of academics and their role in society and commented on the relevance of Commentaries in this day and age, about internalized oppression and post/colonialism, and finally, also about the current socio-economic situation within the region, as it relates to the concept of a journal at USM.

In her analysis offered on the journal, Phillip is quoted as saying: I view Commentaries as a particularly apt and timely response to knowledge hoarders, to the arrogance that is inherent in academia and to the individuals and groups which use knowledge as a means of oppressing and marginalizing others. With its multimedia, multilingual and multidisciplinary trajectory, Commentaries compels us to reconsider the places, spaces and niches we have carved out for ourselves, which have given way to some of us becoming overly protective and territorial about academic boundaries. The portrayal of film, art, poetry and creative writing, represents a refreshing departure away from our obsession with material that is theoretically, empirically and methodologically sound. It is a manifestation of ones freedom to think, act and express ones self without having to validate ones innermost thoughts with the thoughts of other academic gurus and stalwarts.

Other speakers included Meagan Sylvester, a musicologist and member of the International Editorial Board for Commentaries who spoke about the importance of having such a journal and its potential contributions to the advancement of various types of dialogue on different levels. Then there was Lysanne Charles and Rhoda Arrindel who spoke with the hostess talk show style on their articles in the journal. Afterwards, Liliane Mulder, gave a synopsis of her article to the crowd in attendance. On behalf of the film students, Clara Reyes spoke about her experience in the class and her perspective on the importance of such a class to society, then a short clip was shown of the documentaries.

Subsequent to the speakers presentations, limited amounts of DVDs were distributed to the audience and Dr. Guadeloupe thanked the audience, the MCDJ Sagan of Laser 101, and contributing members of the organizing committee.

Commentaries, Volume one, consists of two issues, namely: Issue 1, which commences with an introduction by Teresa Leslie and four academic papers. Three of the five writers are from St. MaartenLanguage as a Weapon of Mind Destruction by Dr. Rhoda Arrindell, Nigger Are You Crazy / Neger ben je gek by Lysanne CharlesArrindell, MSc., and Appreciating Callaloo Soup by Dr. Francio Guadeloupe and Erwin Wolthuis.

The other issue consists of four short documentary videos, completed by either cell phone or small camera, and nine reflective essays on film by the participants in the course: An Introduction to Film Studies: Activism, Caribbean Nation Building and the Politics of Filmmaking for Social Work. Within this issue there is also an introduction by the editor Pedro de Weever on how the Film project came about and an exploratory non-fiction piece Reflections of a Filmmaker: Representation in Documentary-art by the instructor of the film course: Sharelly Emanuelson.

Commentaries is available on the internet; via the following link: http://www.usmonline.net/#/Commentaries/.
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):--- Minister Hon. Ingrid Arrindell of the Ministry Tourism, Economic Affairs, Traffic and Telecommunications (Ministry TEATT), is encouraging members of the community to apply for the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) Scholarship Foundation program.

The CTO is now accepting applications for scholarships and study grants from Caribbean nationals in CTO member countries.

The main aim of the CTO Foundation is to provide opportunities for Caribbean nationals to pursue studies in the areas of tourism, hospitality and language training.

The foundation selects individuals who demonstrate high levels of achievement and leadership both within and outside the classroom, and who express a strong interest in making a positive contribution to Caribbean tourism.

The foundation offers the following types of assistance: scholarships of up to US$12,000; study grants of up to US$2,500; and a scholarship of up to US$2,500 offered in the name of CTOs former Director of Research and Information Management, Arley Sobers.

Studies can be pursued both within and outside the region. Interested persons must fill out forms; supply all necessary information and return directly to the CTO headquarters, in Barbados before the April, 29, 2016 deadline.

Application forms are downloaded-able from the the CTO website: www.onecaribbean.org/our-work/scholarship-foundation/2016-scholarships-grants/

Since 1998, the CTO Foundation has provided 101 major scholarships and 141 study grants to deserving Caribbean nationals, amounting to just over US$906,000.

Major Foundation sponsors include American Express, American Airlines, Interval International, the CTO Chapters worldwide and numerous allied members.
POINTE BLANCHE:--- Port St. Maarten officials are currently attending Seatrade Cruise Global in Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center in Florida which is from March 14-17.

Seatrade Cruise Global is the leading annual global business-to-business event for the cruise industry, which brings together buyers and suppliers for a four-day conference and three-day exhibition. The conference draws more than 11,000 registered attendees, over 800 exhibiting companies from 93 countries and more than 300 international journalists. Experts, leaders and thought-makers of the cruise industry from the worlds largest cruise companies are the highlight of the conference.

The conference programs offer attendees a comprehensive roster of panel discussions and workshops featuring experts, leaders and thought-makers from the cruise industry.

On Monday the conference touched on Shorex and the Rise of Voluntourism. The latter is one of the fastest growing areas of travel with cruise lines and tour operators meeting these trends by offering volunteering opportunities or social impact travel. Conference attendees learnt how ports can adapt and cater to the voluntourism trend.

The second topic covered on Monday was Seasonality and its Impact on Deployment. The cruise industry is challenging the conventions of seasonal deployment. How far can the cruise season in traditional areas be extended and what are the challenges that this strategy throws up for cruise liens and destinations?

The two aforementioned are very interesting to the Port St. Maarten delegation attending the conference which includes Port Management and Supervisory Board of Directors.

Port St. Maarten will be discussing with cruise stakeholders during the four-day conference onshore developments; inland passenger and crew spending; deployment of vessels; and homeporting.

Homeporting would have a positive spin-off for the destination whereby cruise passengers would be spending two to three days prior to boarding the vessel for their cruise and upon return.

On Tuesday port officials attended the State of the Global Cruise Industry, which looked at the Cuba, expansion in Asia and other geo-political issues affecting the cruise industry. The worlds chief executives of the largest cruise companies including Carnival, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Line, and MSC Cruises, examined the aforementioned.

There was also a presentation and panel discussion related to the State of the Industry: Upscale Cruising. Panelists examined how upscale operators are meeting costly technology demands, such as free Wi-Fi, and how theyre differentiating their brands in todays market.

The third workshop was on Global Ports and Terminals: Globalization Examined. This focused on the particular challenges of creating the right shore side facilities to match the needs of larger and more sophisticated ships, and how are they being addressed by the worlds leading cruise ports.

The other topic addressed on Tuesday was Cybercrime on the High Seas: How Cyber Attacks Occur and What You Can Do About Them. This presentation featured an expert on maritime cyber threats and an IT security executive from one of the major cruise lines discussed the latest attacks on maritime organizations, the threat actors who might target the shipping industry, and the specific methods that cyber criminals could use to target ships and their supporting networks.
CFT advices all political parties to follow the same framework when preparing budgets.

PHILIPSBURG:--- The board of the CFT felt that St. Maarten has made the right turn around, by accepting the advices and recommendations when they prepared the draft 2016 budget that reflects the real income of the country. Chairman of the CFT Age Bakker said St. Maarten attained its country status the budgets were not balanced and instead St. Maarten incurred huge debts with APS, and USZV. Bakker said because of that they advised the Kingdom Council last September to give St. Maarten a specific instruction in order for them to settle the debts with the two entities, in their advice to the Kingdom Council also suggested that St. Maarten be given three years to settle its arrears. He said that as soon as the budget is signed off on the budget, the CFT will approve the budget the minute they get the financial statements from government. He said after the budget is signed off on the budget the CFT then have 14 days to come up with their advice which he firmly believes would be positive.

Bakker said that government placed a caps on its expenditures in order to balance its budget which he said will provide more liquidity while the CFT believes that St. Maarten could manage with its day to day expenses. The current expenditures is kept at NAF.450M, but government could always have a budget amendment if they generate more funds through tax compliances or otherwise. Bakker also confirmed that the CFT did give a negative advice in February but was happy when the Minister took the necessary steps and implement their advice and recommendations.

Bakker said for the first time since 2010 St. Maarten provided a realistic budget, therefore he gave the Minister of Finance of St. Maarten Richard Gibson and his staff lots of credit for the hard work they have done in a very short period. He said his advice to the other political parties is that they should keep the current framework used by the current government to prepare budgets in the future. This budget sets the stage for the incoming government after the elections in September while they also provide security to the people of St. Maarten now that the debts with APS and USZV are being paid.

Bakker further explained that the economy of St. Maarten is declining and it is important for government and the private sector hold some kind of dialogue in order to boost the economy.

As for the St. Maarten Medical Center Bakker said he saw the plans of the current government which was showed to them by Minister of VSA Emil Lee and he made clear to the Minister that having a nice building is one thing but St. Maarten should strive to provide proper healthcare in order to cut down on the amount of patients that has to travel to Colombia or other countries for medical treatment, however, they believe if proper health care is available on St. Maarten the monies spent abroad will remain in the country. He said while St. Maarten has actions plans in place, but that action plan has to turn into law.

Bakker went on to say that St. Maarten could even borrow to construct the new hospital but that is something they would have to advice on, but for now they are even positive on that aspect.

Asked if the politicians accepted the advice or suggestion he gave on Friday morning when they met with the finance committee of parliament. Bakker said he could divulge the contents on the meeting but stressed that their remarks to the political parties was just an advice.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Finance Richard Gibson was paid a visit by university students attending the Opleiding en Trainingen Curacao college (OTC). These Financial Service Management students, who will graduate with a Bachelors degree, came on a study excursion in order to gain more information about public finances in preparation for their dissertation. The name of the students (from l-r) are as follows: Ms. Judeska Allee, Mr. Jordi van der Wall, (me), Ms. Olvia Fernandes Luis and Ms. Gabriela Fernandes Luis.
IDC Forecasts Worldwide Shipments of Wearables to Surpass 200 Million in 2019, Driven by Strong Smartwatch Growth and the Emergence of Smarter Watches

.2016  Worldwide shipments of wearable devices are expected to reach 110 million by the end of 2016 with 38.2% growth over the previous year. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, an expanding lineup of vendors combined with fast-growing consumer awareness and demand will generate double-digit growth throughout the 2015-2020 forecast period, culminating in shipments of 237.1 million wearable devices in 2020.

The market will also be driven forward by the proliferation of new and different wearable products. Watch and wristband shipments will reach a combined total of 100 million shipments in 2016, up from 72.2 million in 2015. Other form factors, such as clothing, eyewear, and hearables, are expected to reach 9.8 million units in 2016 and will more than double their share by 2020. This will open the door for new experiences, use cases, and applications going forward. Still, the primary focus of the wearables market will be on smartwatches.

Although smartwatches like the Apple Watch or Android Wear devices capture the spotlight, they will only account for a quarter of all wearables in 2016 and will grow to about a third by 2020, said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. Its time to start thinking about smarter watches  traditional watches with some sort of fitness or sleep tracking but are unable to run apps?built by classic watch makers. These devices have the potential of making the technology invisible while still integrating themselves within day-to-day activities.

By creating smarter watches, vendors also stand to side-step some of the typical challenges that smartwatch platforms face, added Ubrani. Theres no need to create a developer or app ecosystem for one thing, and theres plenty of room for simpler devices that appeal to the average user while smartwatches continue catering to the technophiles.

Meanwhile, smartwatches with an app ecosystem ? like Apples watchOS and Googles Android Wear ? are expected to gain further salience in the market as both products and experiences evolve. With few exceptions, this part of the smartwatch market is still in its initial stages, said Ramon Llamas, Research Manager for IDCs Wearables team. We expect to see major changes, with smartwatches that actually look like watches, user interfaces that are easier than swipes and gestures, applications that rival those on our smartphones, and connections to networks, systems, and other devices. This puts pressure on smartwatch platforms to develop further from where they are today.

Top Five Smartwatch Platform Highlights

Apples watchOS is likely to see some slowdown in the early part of 2016 as anticipation builds for the second generation device. However, with newer hardware and an evolving ecosystem, Apple will remain the smartwatch leader through the majority of the forecast.

Android Wear remains in second place as its list of partners grows and the platform further integrates into Googles larger ecosystem. Googles decision to limit UI differentiation will stifle further growth (unlike its success in smartphones) but this may have the positive side effect of forcing brands to compete on design and price, appealing to the fashion conscious, the budget conscious, or both. Adding Android-based smartwatches to Android Wear would push the category into first place in 2020. However, Android smartwatches are expected to remain a small portion of the overall market and will likely be relegated to emerging regions as local vendors attempt to differentiate themselves.

Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) ? primarily used as a proprietary operating system but capable of running third-party apps ? will become the third largest smartwatch OS, largely driven by gains in emerging markets and its use by Chinese ODMs. Appealing to consumers looking for a cheap alternative, RTOS devices will likely see relatively high adoption though the experience will be sub-par.

Tizens limited app ecosystem makes it a tough sell as a smartwatch, though this underdog has the potential to pose a serious threat to Android Wear if Samsung is able to provide some synergy between its lineup of Gear S watches and the rest of its consumer electronics portfolio.

Linux-based smartwatches will have similar appeal as RTOS-based devices. The focus will be low cost and adoption will be mainly in the Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan.

Pebbles avid fan base and unique hardware/software platform will enjoy modest growth in the short term. However, competitive pressures will cause it to gradually lose share to giants like watchOS and Android Wear.

This chart is intended for public use in online news articles and social media. Instructions on how to embed this graphic are available by clicking here.

About IDC Trackers

IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDCs Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly excel deliverables and on-line query tools. The IDC Tracker Charts app allows users to view data charts from the most recent IDC Tracker products on their iPhone and iPad. The IDC Tracker Chart app is also available for Android Phones and Android Tablets.

For more information about IDCs Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, please contact Kathy Nagamine at 650-350-6423 or knagamine@idc.com.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDCs analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a subsidiary of [url=http://www.idg.com/]IDG[/url], the worlds leading technology media, research, and events company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at [url=https://twitter.com/IDC]@IDC[/url].
UpGuard Signs Promark, an Ingram Micro Company, to Distribute Cybersecurity Platform

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA  (Marketwired)  03/17/16  UpGuard () today announced that its cybersecurity platform is now available to customers through Promark Technology (), a premier U.S.-focused value-added distributor (VAD) and wholly-owned subsidiary of Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM). Under the terms of the distribution agreement, Promark will sell UpGuard to corporate resellers and system integrators through a dedicated distribution sales team across the United States. By aligning with Promark, UpGuard expands its distribution network and further strengthens its channel strategy.

UpGuard takes an altogether different approach to an issue thats hindered companies and their ability to fully understand their risk for data breaches or unplanned outages. A platform that can not only scan an entire network for critical security gaps and provide actionable insights to help remediate, but also be deployed in as little as a day provides immediate value to our customers, said Dale Foster, executive director and general manager of Promark Technology. The solution also fits in well with our strategy to offer resellers and solution providers a broad array of best-of-breed products to fit all customer needs in securing systems and minimizing risk against unplanned outages and breaches.

UpGuards expertise in configuration anomaly and vulnerability detection allows for a complete picture of an organizations cybersecurity preparedness. Its cybersecurity platform tests an organizations IT infrastructure both internally and externally and calculates the potential risk for future intrusions and outages. Upon evaluating the ongoing configuration state of every server, network device and cloud service, companies are given an easy-to-understand score called CSTAR  a single number which indicates to IT staff, as well as executives, their risk level for data breaches. UpGuard customers can trace changes in their CSTAR evaluation down to the smallest building blocks of information technology and use the full report to then remediate potential risks, creating a safer environment for customer data and lowering insurance costs. Thousands of customers, including ADP, E*TRADE and Cisco Systems, use UpGuard to validate mission-critical infrastructure and continuously detect potential risks.

Promark has the market expertise, distribution channels and experience required to effectively bring our solutions to market. Our relationship is central to delivering on our go-to-market strategy, accelerating growth and bringing UpGuard to a much wider set of customers. Promarks world-class reseller support infrastructure will also ensure that our partners and customers receive the best support experience possible, said Tony Esposito, vice president of worldwide sales at UpGuard.

For more information, or to become an UpGuard partner, please visit: .

UpGuard is the company behind CSTAR, the worlds only comprehensive and actionable cybersecurity preparedness score for enterprises. The score allows businesses to understand the risk of breaches and unplanned outages due to misconfigurations and software vulnerabilities. It also offers insurance carriers a new standard by which to effectively assess client risk and compliance profiles. Thousands of companies, including ADP, E*TRADE and Cisco Systems, use UpGuard to validate infrastructure, continuously detect risks and procure cybersecurity insurance. UpGuard is headquartered in Mountain View, CA with offices in Portland, OR. To see how UpGuard works, or to get your CSTAR rating, visit .

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FunctionOne and 1550a Announce Digital Partnership

BERKELEY, CA  (Marketwired)  03/17/16  FunctionOne, a global provider of Premiere IT services and solutions across all industries, and 1550a, the leading digital technology advisory in the building design and construction industry, today announced their digital partnership. This collaboration provides FunctionOne Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) clients with direct access to 1550as industry specific CIO level leadership and insight.

Over the last nine years, FunctionOne has developed an extensive skillset in servicing firms in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) space. We understand the infrastructure required to enable these companies to compete effectively, and we have forged lasting relationships with key AEC-specific software and service vendors, said Joe Markert, Managing Director of FunctionOne. We have been looking for a CIO partnership to enhance further these capabilities for some time. Given our global footprint as a part of Dynamix Cloud Services, we required a partner with global presence and experience. 1550a is that perfect partner and we are excited as we know this new relationship will elevate our value to our building design and construction clients.

FunctionOnes ONESolution program combined with 1550as industry specific CIO Advisory Services will enable building design and construction industry organizations the ability to understand better, align, integrate, and manage digital technology. This partnership ensures our clients have outcomes that better aligned with their organizations strategic and operational goals, said Darren Rizza, 1550a Visionary.

Todays enterprise networks are complex and ever-changing, making it extremely challenging to identify key points of attack risk on an on-going basis, said Rich Nitzsche, The Scientist for 1550a. The partnership and integration between 1550a and FunctionOne combine two powerful companies that provide clients with a new approach to understanding and negating their risk in a meaningful and efficient way.

Together, said Russell Genest, The Connector for 1550a, we offer our clients industry specific expertise and guidance in developing digital technology strategies based on the strategic direction of their business coupled with the implementation and ongoing support of the consented approach; a real closed loop solution.

FunctionOne is a premier Managed Services Provider based in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on delivering a holistic approach to IT governance handling all aspects of IT management from CIO/CTO guidance to end-user support. Key Service Areas: Managed Services, Business Continuity, VoIP, Cloud Services and Infrastructure design, implementation and management.

Whether its providing seamless, human-centric, outsourced IT services, comprehensive data protection and business continuity solutions, network and VoIP implementation, or helping you navigate The Cloud  we get IT done.

We are an executive advisory comprised of visionary, strategic, and digitally informed thought leaders, leaning on sixty-plus combined years of business technology leadership in professional services within the building design and construction industry.

Our expertise and experience guide building industry owners  building owners, design firm owners, construction firm owners  on their ongoing growth and success based on an evolving digital strategy for their processes of design, delivery, operations, and management.

Dynamix is a leading provider of Cloud Based Voice and Data services enabling companies to communicate and collaborate on a global scale. Through our CloudControl platform customers gain the added benefit of a centralized platform to manage all aspects of their IT including valuable insight into the health of their networks.

Fully redundant, geo-diverse, private and compliant, Dynamixs cloud platform is designed to support enterprises of all sizes across all sectors of industry. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Fl., Dynamix supports customers worldwide with offices in Berkeley, Amsterdam, and Hyderabad.

Media Contacts

Michael Ammundsen

Morgan Abbott

Russ Genest
DOE Level VI Power Adapters With Non-Standard Voltages

ETA-USA is proud to announce its line of DOE LEVEL VI EFFICIENCY AC/DC External Power Supplies (EPS) for 65, 80, 120, 150, 200 and 300 Watts industrial and commercial applications. As of February 10, 2016, the US department of energy mandate will take effect to all direct and indirect manufacturers of external power supplies. DOE announced its intention to designate the proposed level Level VI in a revised and updated version of the International Efficiency Marking Protocol for EPSs. The standard increases the minimum energy efficiency requirements for external power supplies and brings several new EPS types within the scope of the new standard.

ETA-USA remains committed to providing its customers with the efficient power solution for their new and current designs.

See the online documentation link below, on voltage options. If there is a specific voltage requirement that is not listed, please speak to an ETA-USA sales representative

All of ETA-USAs DOE Level VI adapters are RoHS compliant and UL and/or CSA approved. For Technical information contact info@eta-usa.com or see the Adapters page under the product guide at: http://eta-usa.com.

*Note: To specify desired Voltage output, replace zz with value from Available Voltages table (i.e. 200 W Adapter with 16 volt output would be the DTE200-16SX-W6) All adapters may be ordered with customers choice of the following connectors at no additional charge (See link below)

http://www.eta-usa.com/external_desktop_power_supply.html

ABOUT ETA-USA.COM THE POWER PROFESSIONALS

ETA-USA offers a product line of over 4,500 high quality, AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies from 1.5W to 8 KW. ETA-USA also offers semi-custom and fully customized power-supply solutions for both low and high volume customer applications. Contact info@eta-usa.com or sales@eta-usa.com for inquiries or technical questions.

ETA-USA 16170 Vineyard Blvd. Suite 180 Morgan Hill, CA 95037 USA Toll-free (USA only): 800-ETA-POWR (800-382-7697) Telephone: 408778-2793 FAX: 408-779-2753 2016 ETA-USA All Rights Reserved
TC Transcontinental Finalist for the 36th Edition Mercuriades Awards

MONTREAL, QUEBEC  (Marketwired)  03/17/16  Transcontinental Inc. (TSX: TCL.A)(TSX: TCL.B) is proud to announce that it has been named finalist at the Mercuriades Awards, a prestigious competition which has celebrated the success and ambition of Quebec companies for over 35 years. TC Transcontinental was shortlisted in the business transfer category, which recognizes a company that has successfully transferred powers while securing its future through a development or growth plan.

I am extremely proud that TC Transcontinental is a finalist in the business transfer category at this years Mercuriades Awards, said Ms. Isabelle Marcoux, Chair of the Board of Directors of Transcontinental Inc. Its a real honour to be recognized for our successful transition to the second generation, especially this year, as the company celebrates its 40th anniversary. We have built a solid company based on values of respect, teamwork, performance and innovation and by always placing the customer at the heart of our priorities. In addition, we strive to generate profitable growth to ensure the Corporations long-term success.

In April 2015, Ms. Isabelle Marcoux was the recipient of the Germaine Gibara Leadership award, Large Company category. This award recognizes the exceptional contribution of a businesswoman. In 1988, Transcontinental Inc. was the recipient of the Business of the year award, SMB.

The Mercuriades Awards have been held since 1981 by the Federation des chambres de commerce du Quebec, the provinces largest business network. The awards recognize excellence and expertise of companies that contribute to Quebecs development. The award winners are an inspiration for the next generation of entrepreneurs and for Quebecs entire economic community.

About TC Transcontinental

Canadas largest printer, with operations in print, flexible packaging, publishing and digital media, TC Transcontinentals mission is to create products and services that allow businesses to attract, reach and retain their target customers.

Respect, teamwork, performance and innovation are strong values held by the Corporation and its employees. The Corporations commitment to all stakeholders is to pursue its business and philanthropic activities in a responsible manner.

Transcontinental Inc. (TSX: TCL.A)(TSX: TCL.B), known as TC Transcontinental, has over 8,000 employees in Canada and the United States, and revenues of C$2.0 billion in 2015. Website:

Contacts:

Media  Nathalie St-Jean

Senior Advisor, Communications

TC Transcontinental

514-954-3581

Financial Community  Jennifer F. McCaughey

Vice President, Communications

TC Transcontinental

514-954-2821
Political analyst: Russia tested its weapons in Syria (video)

Syria is of no value for Russia, says Director of the Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan. He adds that during this period Russia has fulfilled its tasks in Syria that is why Russia decided to pull part of its troops out of Syria. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Armen Navasardyan says Russias move was not unexpected for him. It was not a coincidence, there were preconditions for it.Russia has returned to the Middle East, and this is most important for Russia. That country (Russia) was able to transfer military actions onto a diplomatic level, he said. The reason for the cessation of active hostilities was that Russia was able to resolve some issues. Russia is currently involved in the Geneva talks as an active mediator though it was unable to get rid of sanctions imposed on the country over the conflict in Ukraine, said political analyst Stepan Grigoryan. He says before entering Syria Russian President Vladimir Putin understood that their resources were not infinite. Political analyst Aghasy Yenokyan said, in turn that Russia was unable to become a global player among the major powers. I do not know why Russia decided to withdraw its forces. In six months, Russia spent $0.5 billion. the sum was to be spent on testing weapons and Russia tested its weaponry on the battlefield, he said. Mr Iskandaryan added that the war will continue and more countries will be involved in it.
ColorChip Adds 100G QSFP28 PSM4 Transceiver to Its Portfolio of 100G QSFP28 CWDM4 and 40G QSFP+ LR4/LRL4 Datacenter Solutions

YOKNEAM, ISRAEL  (Marketwired)  03/18/16  Editors Note: There are three photos associated with this press release.

ColorChip Ltd., a pioneer and innovator in the field of Hyper-Scale Single-Mode Solutions, introduces 100G PSM4 QSFP28 transceiver and adding it to its existing 100G CWDM4/CLR4 offerings.

The 100 Gbps family of transceivers are implemented in the Pluggable Quad Small Form factor (QSFP28) package. The PSM4 solution is available with a pigtailed MPO connector, 8 pigtailed LC connectors (4 for Tx and Rx respectively) as well as an integrated MPO configuration. ColorChips 100G QSFP28 PSM4 and CWDM4/CLR4 QSFP28 Transceiver Modules will be demonstrated at OFC 2016.

Leveraging ColorChips pioneering SystemOnGlass (SOG) optical integration technology, as well as advanced NRZ modulator solutions, ColorChip is well-positioned to support present-day 100 Gbps Hyper-Scale Datacenters applications as well as future 200 Gbps, 400 Gbps and beyond Datacenter requirements with compact and cost effective solutions.

SystemOnGlass (SOG)  The Platform for Scalability

The 100Gbps CWDM4 and PSM4 transceiver family leverages ColorChips SystemOnGlass technology and builds upon ColorChips wafer-scale, waveguide-in-glass PLC core expertise coupled with fully automated photonic integration (PIC). This approach eliminates free-space optics to deliver compact 4xN Gbps optical engine solutions, including nested multiplexing functionality, meeting market needs for ever increasing data rates, low power and low TCO levels. The companys innovative SOG photonic integration know-how stands at the heart of ColorChips family of high speed transceiver products; a proven economical solution delivering repeatability, reliability and scalability from 40G to 400G.

Applications

The 100G PSM4 transceiver is an extension of ColorChips QSFPx optical transceiver product line, which includes 100G CWDM4/CLR4 QSFP28 transceiver and the first to market 40GBASE QSFP+ transceiver, available in both 10km LR4 and 2km LRL4 offerings. By using uncooled directly modulated lasers, ColorChips 100G QSFP28 low power transceivers are designed for use in hyper-scale data center, high performance computer (HPC) and enterprise applications.

Demonstration at OFC/NFOEC 2016

ColorChips 100G Transceiver Module demonstrations will take place at the ColorChip booth (#1533) during OFC, March 22nd-24th, 2016 in the Anaheim Convention Center. The demo is scheduled by invitation at . For more information on ColorChip, please visit .

About ColorChip

ColorChip () is a pioneer and a world leading innovator in the fields of integrated optical components and sub-systems, enabling reliable, scalable and robust high speed networking and communications solutions. Founded in 2001, ColorChip is dedicated to the development of advanced Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuits (ASPIC).

ColorChip delivers industry leading optical high-speed transceivers to the Datacom/Telecom markets and passive optical splitters to the FTTx markets. ColorChips robust PLC, waveguide-in-glass technology and the revolutionary SystemOnGlass platform have enabled the company to address critical technological obstacles to deliver groundbreaking solutions for the Datacom/Telecom customers worldwide.

To view the photos associated with this press release, please visit the following links:

Contacts:

Paul Goldgeier

Director of Product Development & Technical Sales

+972.54.439.3223
Livestream: Ralliers call on EU to punish Armenian authorities (video)

20:10 Members of the New Armenia opposition group today handed over a letter to the EU Office in Yerevan demanding the structure to impose sanctions against Armenia. As the work day was over, they left the letter with a security guard who kept the group waiting at the entrance of the Office for a long time. The action ended soon afterwards. 19:11 Participants of the rally held by the New Armenia Public Salvation Front are heading to Baghramyan Avenue. However, a group of police officers headed by Deputy Chief of Yerevan City Valery Osipyan have stopped them blocking their way. You are violating the pre-defined route. You did not warn us that you intend to march to Baghramyan Avenue, Valery Osipyan told Varujan Avetisyan, a member of the opposition movement. If the march is peaceful, the police are obliged to ensure its peaceful course, despite its final destination, Mr Avetisyan said. The ralliers were able to break through the police cordon and continue the march. But some time later, they were again met by a heavy cordon. The opposition group wants to hand a letter to the EU Office, demanding to use sanctions against Armenian authorities. 18:59 The New Armenia Public Salvation Front is holding a rally at Liberty Square in Yerevan. The current economic indicators show that Armenia has come to the point when economic collapse has become irreversible. In 2008, a criminal idea occurred to Sezh Sargsyan and he decided to usurp power with the help of his Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). The late Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan became the first victim of that vicious plan, Andrias Ghukasyan, a member of the New Armenia opposition mevement, said in his addressing speech. He reiterated that their primary objective is to unseat the authorities. We continue to insist that it is necessary to create special political conditions for holding free and fair elections. We need to hold early elections in the country and prevent forger HHK from participating in the elections, he said. We want to establish a sovereign, democratic, social state and we will achieve our goal. That is inevitable, he added.
Live scores and highlights: UNLV visits Notre Dame Saturday

UNLV and Notre Dame meet Saturday in South Bend for the first time ever on the college football gridiron
Marquette springs upset, Slinger survives in football playoffs

The nine Milwaukee-area top-seeded football teams all won Friday night. The results across Level 1 set up some interesting games for the week ahead.
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NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland  SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell on March 9 said the company expected to conduct 16 more launches this year, including an inaugural Falcon Heavy rocket in November, and would accelerate its launch rhythm in 2017.

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has made lavish forecasts in the past and has come up short. But the company has now launched, twice, the Falcon 9 Upgrade rocket and has not announced any major enhancements for the coming months. A stable product line makes it easier to accelerate launch cadence.

Addressing the Satellite 2016 conference here, organized by Access Intelligence, Shotwell said launching 18 times this year  two launches have already occurred  will not be a stretch, and that the launch rate could increase to 24 or more in 2017. [Photos: SpaceX Launches SES-9 Satellite, Tries Rocket Landing]

Shotwell's 2016 launch rate estimate was not surprising given her previous statements. But her conservative estimate of the savings to come when Falcon 9 first stages are recovered and reused was notable.

Given that SpaceX has no intention, for now, of recovering the second stage, she said a launch with a previously used first stage could be priced 30 percent less than the current Falcon 9 rockets.

SES of Luxembourg, SpaceX's biggest backer among the large commercial satellite fleet operators, has said it wants to be the first customer to fly with a reused stage. But SES Chief Executive Karim Michel Sabbagh said here March 8 that SES wanted a 50 percent price cut, to around $30 million, in return for pioneering the reusable version.

Shotwell said it was too early to set precise prices for a reused Falcon 9, but that if the fuel on the first stage costs $1 million or less, and a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so, a price reduction of 30 percent  to around $40 million  should be possible.

Shotwell's appearance here punctuated the changed atmosphere between the U.S. Air Force and SpaceX. A year ago, the company was just coming off a legal battle with the Air Force centered on the U.S. military's use of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, and on how Air Force rocket-purchase decisions are made.

Since then, the two parties have reached an understanding and SpaceX is now competing for an Air Force contract whose award Shotwell said should be announced in the coming weeks.

She said it would be the first contract that has been fully competed under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) procurement program since 2006. "It's great," she said. "The world is a new place. We have a great partnership with the U.S. Air Force."

The first use of the Falcon 9 Upgrade rocket occurred in November, for the launch into low Earth orbit of 11 small communications satellites for Orbcomm Inc. of Rochelle Park, New Jersy. SpaceX was able to return the first stage to a landing zone near the launch pad.

Shotwell said she visited the stage and was impressed with how little wear and tear it showed.

"[Y]ou pull off the cover and that wire harness is pristine," she said. "The metal is still shiny. You pull off the thermal protection system that we have near the engine, and that engine is beautiful. It is perfectly clean.

"It was extraordinary how great it looked. In fact we didn't refurbish it at all. We inspected it and then three days later we put it on the test stand and fired it again. The goal is not to design a vehicle that needs refurbishing. It is to design a vehicle that we can land, move back to the launch pad, and launch again. Hopefully our customers will get comfortable flying the third or fourth time."

The December launch of the inaugural Falcon 9 Upgrade rocket went smoothly. But the latest launch  the first with a heavy telecommunications satellite intended for geostationary orbit  faced three last-minute launch cancellations and one launch abort before a successful liftoff on March 4.

Shotwell said the learning curve at the SpaceX launch installation  the ground system, not the rocket  was steep as the company negotiated the transfer of supercooled liquid oxygen (LOX) to the vehicle. Chilling results in a denser, slush-like fuel that takes less volume than conventional cryogenic oxygen, allowing SpaceX to load more of it and generate the power and speed necessary for geostationary-orbit satellites.

"We identified problems with our chilled LOX," Shotwell . "For Orbcomm we did not have these problems. We were actually using a different LOX tank. And then we added additional tanks for extra capacity [for the latest mission]. We didn't overcome it for the first two attempts so we switched back to the original tank that we used for Orbcomm. Then we had to wait for a boat on the third attempt, there was a boat in the way. And then the fourth attempt was upper-level winds.

"We got it off on attempt number five. So we had five attempts in eight days. And there's no question but that the LOX issue, while painful for SES, was a kind of minor thing and it's definitely behind us.

Shotwell said SpaceX's does not need to start use of Launch Complex 39A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, spaceport to help work through its backlog. That launch pad will be used for the Falcon Heavy rocket, however.

"We don't need to have Pad 39A operational this year to get caught up on the manifest," Shotwell said. "But I do think we are probably going to launch a Falcon 9 before we do the Falcon Heavy in November. SES actually wants to fly from 39A so we are going to see if we can get that ready for SES-10 and maybe SES-11."

The SES-10 and SES-11 commercial telecommunications satellites, owned by SES, are scheduled for launch late this year.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
The central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud appears in this Hubble Space Telescope image, released March 17, 2016.

Some of the biggest and brightest stars in the universe are packed within a single cluster, a new study reveals.

Researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the young star cluster R136 in ultraviolet (UV) light for the first time. The cluster is located in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, about 170,000 light-years away from Earth.

The scientists were hunting for very big and very hot stars, which radiate most of their energy in the UV range of the spectrum. And the researchers hit the jackpot, spotting dozens of stars within R136 that are at least 50 times more massive than the sun, and nine that harbor more than 100 solar masses. (One of these giants, the previously discovered R136a1, is the largest known star in the universe, at more than 250 solar masses, NASA officials said.) [Celestial Photos: Hubble Space Telescope's Latest Cosmic Views]

Find out how Hubble has stayed on the cutting edge of deep-space astronomy for the past 20 years here. [ See the full Hubble Space Telescope Infographic here. (Image credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Infographics Artist)

These behemoths are extremely luminous as well as extremely large; together, the nine biggest ones are about 30 million times brighter than the sun, researchers said.

The sheer abundance of these giants in R136, which is just a few light-years wide, should help astronomers better understand how the massive stars form, study team members said.

"There have been suggestions that these monsters result from the merger of less-extreme stars in close binary systems," co-author Saida Caballero-Nieves, of the University of Sheffield in England, said in a statement.

"From what we know about the frequency of massive mergers, this scenario can't account for all the really massive stars that we see in R136, so it would appear that such stars can originate from the star-formation process," Caballero-Nieves added.

The researchers also determined that these enormous stars lose mass extremely quickly over the course of their brief and dramatic lives (which often end with the stars collapsing to become black holes). The stars eject up to one Earth mass of material every month, at speeds that can reach 1 percent the speed of light.

The new study will be published in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint project involving NASA and the European Space Agency, launched into orbit in April 1990 with a slightly flawed primary mirror. Spacewalking astronauts fixed the problem in 1993, and upgraded the observatory several more times over the years, with the last servicing mission launching in 2009.

The telescope continues delivering important science, and jaw-dropping images, to this day.

"Once again, our work demonstrates that, despite being in orbit for over 25 years, there are some areas of science for which Hubble is still uniquely capable," study lead author Paul Crowther, also from the University of Sheffield, said in the same statement.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The Soyuz TMA-20M rocket stands ready for lifoff at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Three new crewmembers will launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) this evening (March 18), and you can watch all the spaceflight action live.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to blast off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket today at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV; coverage begins at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).

If all goes according to plan, the trio's Soyuz spacecraft will reach the orbiting lab at 11:12 p.m. EDT tonight (0312 GMT on Saturday, March 19), less than 6 hours after leaving Earth. The hatches between the newly docked Soyuz and the space station are scheduled to open at 12:55 a.m. EDT Saturday (0455 GMT), NASA officials said.

You can watch these arrival activities live here at Space.com as well, also courtesy of NASA TV. Docking coverage begins at 10:30 p.m. EDT (0230 GMT Saturday), and hatch-opening coverage starts at 12:30 a.m. EDT Saturday (0430 GMT).

When they float through the hatch and into the ISS, the newcomers will bring the orbiting lab back up to its full complement of six crewmembers. NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, Briton Tim Peake and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko have had the space station to themselves since March 1, when fellow space fliyers Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov departed for Earth.

Kelly and Kornienko spent an unprecedented 340 straight days aboard the ISS, completing a mission designed to help lay the foundation for crewed journeys to faraway Mars.

During the 11-month mission, Kelly set an American record for the most total days spent in space  520. But veteran space fliyer Williams will break that record on his upcoming ISS mission; when he lands about six months from now, Williams will have racked up 534 days of spaceflight experience, NASA officials said.

Williams is also embarking upon his third ISS mission, which is another American record.

Williams, Ovchinin and Skripochka will soon be joined in orbit by a robotic visitor  the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which is built by American company Orbital ATK. Cygnus is scheduled to launch on a resupply mission Tuesday night (March 22) and arrive at the space station four days later.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard stands next to his first liquid-fueled rocket prior to its launch on March 16, 1926.

Launches of liquid-fueled rockets may be relatively routine today, but 90 years ago, they were brand-new. In fact, the first liquid-fueled rocket launched on March 16, 1926, under the direction of rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard.

A newly re-released animation (shown here) shows NASA employees celebrating the launch of Goddard's small rocket during a 1976 celebration (which was the 50th anniversary of the historic test flight).

The looped animation shows employees gathered in front of a school bus at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which was named in honor of Robert Goddard, watching the rocket replica take off. Liquid propellant is used for most major space launches today, from human flights to interplanetary missions.

Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket was small and did not fly all that high, but it marked a big change in how rocketry is done. Previously, all rocket launches had been done with solid materials. That work dated back to the 13th century, when Chinese engineers used gunpowder when repelling enemies.

A recreation of Robert Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket blasts off during a 1976 celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Goddard's initial launch on March 16, 1926. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

Goddard, however, believed that liquid would offer more advantages than solid materials. Liquid rockets provide more thrust per unit of fuel and allow engineers to specify how long the rocket will stay lit.

It took 17 years of work for Goddard's first launch to fly.

"It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame, as if it said, 'I've been here long enough; I think I'll be going somewhere else, if you don't mind,'" Goddard wrote in his journal the next day, according to a NASA statement.

Goddard dreamed of seeing interplanetary travel made possible. It didn't happen while he was still alive  he died in 1945  but liquid rocketry became very important in space history.

The first satellite, Sputnik, was launched in 1957 using a rocket that in part used liquid fuel. Liquid fuel was also used for the massive Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Liquid remains the fuel type of choice for human missions to this day; because the burn can be controlled, it is safer than solid rocket propellants.

Other rockets with liquid fuels in one or more stages include the European Ariane 5 (which will launch NASA's James Webb Space Telescope), Russia's Soyuz boosters, United Launch Alliance's Atlas V and Delta booster family, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, among many others.

In his lifetime and after his death, Goddard received more than 200 patents for his inventions. One of his major works included inventing multistage rockets, which are a foundation for just about every spaceflight today. They allow a rocket to have multiple fuel tanks and engines, which are discarded as the rocket gets higher in the atmosphere.

"The U.S. failed to recognize the full potential of his [Goddard's] work until after his death  in fact, some of his ideas about reaching outer space were ridiculed during his lifetime," NASA wrote in the same statement. "But the first liquid-fueled rocket flight was as significant to space exploration as the Wright brothers' first flight was to air travel, and 90 years later, his patents are still integral to spaceflight technology."

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
This snapshot captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft shows the western region of the heart-shaped area informally known as Sputnik Planum, which has been found to be rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC).

And the hits just keep on coming. Another batch of Pluto photos from NASA's New Horizons probe reveals the majesty and mystery of this icy world.

The images are the latest releases from the treasure trove of data and snapshots captured by during New Horizon's close flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015. One of the new images gives a close-up view of the unofficially titled Sputnik Planum, a heart-shaped region on Pluto's surface that is suspiciously crater-free.

This week, five new research papers appeared in the journal Science, discussing new discoveries about Pluto that have been revealed thanks to the data collected by New Horizons. Check below to see three more jaw-dropping snapshots of Pluto. [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

One haunting snapshot, taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), captures layers of atmospheric haze above Pluto's surface. The different layers of haze (about 20 can be seen in this image) have been found to extend across the surface for hundreds of kilometers. But according to NASA, they are not strictly parallel to the dwarf planet's surface. "For example, scientists note a haze layer about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the surface (lower-left area of the image), which descends to the surface at the right," according to a statement from the space agency.

The top portion of this image shows that a smooth section of the informally named Sputnik Planum is 228 miles (367 km) wide. Beneath it is a close-up of the also informally named Vulcan Planum on the surface of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, that is 194 miles (312 km) wide.

Sputnik Planum is free of craters, which suggests that it experienced recent geologic activity. Vulcan Planum is dotted with not only craters, but also deep troughs. Also visible is the mountain Clarke Mons, which appears to be surrounded by a deep "moat." The highly textured surface indicates that the surface of Charon is ancient, according to NASA. The new Science papers report that water-ice-rich Vulcan Planum "is likely a vast cryovolcanic flow or flows that erupted onto Charon's surface about 4 billion years ago. These flows are likely related to the freezing of an internal ocean that globally ruptured Charon's crust," the statement said.

It's Pluto in a whole new light. This enhanced color view of Pluto's surface was created using two of New Horizons' instruments: the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color imagery, and the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager panchromatic imagery.

The region shown in the image is just underneath the western lobe of Sputnik Planum (the tip of the craterless plane dips down at the top middle of the image). Ices that fill Sputnik Planum have altered the surrounding terrain, "creating a chaoslike array of blocky mountains," NASA officials said.

NASA has rounded up a list of the top new findings reported in those research papers. Because of the spacecraft's relatively low data transfer rate, information collected during the flyby is still being downloaded to Earth, which means scientists still have more layers to pull back on this amazing object.
The streak in the night sky in this photo is actually the International Space Station soaring overhead at 5 miles per second. NASA photographer Bill Ingalls captured this photo in a 30-second exposure on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2015 from Elkton, Virginia.

If you go out and carefully study the sky near dusk or dawn, and you have relatively dark skies, the odds are that you should not have to wait more than 15 minutes before you see one of the more than 35,000 satellites now in orbit around Earth.

Most of these "satellites" are actually just "space junk" ranging in size from as large as 30 feet, down to about the size of a softball. The Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) headquartered at Vandenberg AFB in California, keeps a constant watch on all orbiting debris. Try our Satellite Tracker from N2Y0.com and spot the International Space Station and more!

And in fact most satellites -- especially the bits of debris -- are too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. But depending on who's counting, several hundred can be spotted with the unaided eye. These are the satellites that are large enough (typically more than 20 feet in length) and low enough (100 to 400 miles above Earth) to be most readily seen a sunlight reflects off them.

The biggest

The International Space Station (ISS) is by far the biggest and brightest of all the man-made objects orbiting the Earth.

On-orbit construction of the station began in 1998, and is scheduled to be complete by 2011, with operations continuing until around 2015. More than four times as large as the defunct Russian Mir space station, the completed International Space Station will ultimately have a mass of about 1,040,000 pounds (520 tons) and will measure 356 feet across and 290 feet long, with almost an acre of solar panels to provide electrical power to six state-of-the-art laboratories.

Presently circling the Earth at an average altitude of 216 mi (348 km) and at a speed of 17,200 mi (27,700 km) per hour, it completes 15.7 orbits per day and it can appear to move as fast as a high-flying jet airliner, sometimes taking about four to five minutes to cross the sky. Because of its size and configuration of highly reflective solar panels, the space station is now, by far, the brightest man-made object currently in orbit around the Earth.

On favorable passes, the space station can appear as bright as the planet Venus, at magnitude -4.5, and some 16 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Some have made estimates as bright as magnitude -5 or -6 for the station (smaller numbers represent brighter objects on this astronomers scale).

And as a bonus, sunlight glinting directly off the solar panels can sometimes make the ISS appear to briefly "flare" in brilliance to as bright as magnitude -8; more than 16 times brighter than Venus!

Other things to see

Along with the ISS, you can also look for China's Tiangong-1 space laboratory, which has hosted visiting crews on Shenzhou spacecraft in recent years. Also visible to the naked eye is the Hubble Space Telescope.

Russia's Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, as well as SPaceX's Dragon and Orbital ATK's Cygnus capsules, are much smaller than NASA's space shuttles (which were also visible to the naked eye until they were retired in 2011). But they could potential be visible under the best observing conditions.

Multiple images of the International Space Station flying over the Houston area have been combined into one composite image to show the progress of the station as it crossed the face of the moon in the early evening of Jan. 4, 2012. (Image credit: NASA)

Viewing opportunities

During the northern summer, when the nights are the shortest, the time that a satellite in a low-Earth-orbit (like the ISS) can remain illuminated by the sun can extend throughout the night - a situation that can never be attained during other times of the year. Because the ISS circles the Earth about every 90 minutes on average, this means that it's possible to see it not just on one singular pass, but for several consecutive passes.

Moreover, because the ISS revolves around the Earth in an orbit that is inclined 51.6-degrees to the equator, there are two types of passes that are visible.

In the first case (we'll call it a "Type I" pass), the ISS initially appears over toward the southwestern part of the sky and then sweeps over toward the northeast.

About seven or eight hours later, it becomes possible to see a second type of pass (we'll call it "Type II"), but this time with the ISS initially appearing over toward the northwestern part of the sky and sweeping over toward the southeast.

Type I passes will initially be visible in the morning hours, prior to sunrise. By early July, Type I passes will be visible during the evening hours, just after sunset, while Type II passes will be occurring in the early morning. By late July, visibility of the Type II passes will have shifted into the evening hours.

When and where to look

So what is the viewing schedule for your particular hometown? You can easily find out by visiting one of these four popular web sites:

Each will ask for your zip code or city, and respond with a list of suggested spotting times. Predictions computed a few days ahead of time are usually accurate within a few minutes. However, they can change due to the slow decay of the space station's orbit and periodic reboosts to higher altitudes. Check frequently for updates.

Some passes are superior to others. If the ISS is not predicted to get much higher than 20-degrees above your local horizon, odds are that it will not get much brighter than second or third magnitude (10-degrees is roughly equal to the width of your fist held at arm's length). In addition, with such low passes, the ISS will likely be visible for only a minute or two. Conversely, those passes that are higher in the sky  especially those above 45-degrees  will last longer and will be noticeably brighter.

The very best viewing circumstances are those that take the ISS on a high arc across the sky about 45 to 60 minutes after sunset, or 45 to 60 minutes before sunrise. In such cases, you'll have it in your sky upwards to four or five minutes; it will likely get very bright and there will be little or no chance of it encountering the Earth's shadow.

While the ISS looks like a moving star to the unaided eye, those who have been able to train a telescope on it have actually been able to detect its T-shape as it has whizzed across their field of view. Some have actually been able to track the ISS with their scope by moving it along the projected path. Those who have gotten a good glimpse describe the body of the Space Station as a brilliant white, while the solar panels appear a coppery red.

For evening passes, the ISS will usually start out rather dim and then tend to grow in brightness as it moves across the sky. In contrast, for the morning passes, the ISS will already be quite bright when it first appears and will tend to fade somewhat toward the end of its predicted pass. This is due to the change in the angle of sunlight hitting the vehicle.

Lastly, remember that in certain cases, the ISS will either quickly disappear when it slips into the Earth's shadow (during evening passes) or quite suddenly appear when it slips out of the Earth's shadow (during morning passes). This becomes increasingly more likely for passes that take place more than 90 minutes after sunset or more than 90 minutes before sunrise.

Editor's note: If you have an amazing photo of the Intenrational Space Station, satellite or any other night-sky sight that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

This article was updated on March 18, 2016 to include new details about satellite tracking widgets, and other spacecraft that may be visible from Earth to the unaided eye. Correction: This article was updated 6/20/09 to name the Joint Space Operations Center as the organization that monitors space junk.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
With Connecticuts bear population coming out from their dens and winter hibernation, its time to be on the lookout.

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is reminding residents to take steps to reduce contact and potential conflicts with black bears. These steps are increasingly important because Connecticuts bear population continues to grow and expand and bear activity begins to increase in early spring. Some of the bears have emerged early because of the mild winter we had this season.
T ony Pidgleys housebuilder Berkeley lashed out at the Governments stamp duty tax rises as sales fell and investors dumped the shares.

Berkeley has seen its stock fall 13% so far this year and 5% of its shares are on loan with hedge funds including Crispin Odeys Odey Asset Management  in effect taking a 200 million-plus bet against the company.

The company slipped another 62p to 3196p on Friday as Berkeley  founded by Pidgley 40 years ago  revealed sales fell 4% between November and February against last year.

The top end of the market continues to struggle with 62 properties sold for more than 2 million  showing no signs of improvement on the market slowdown in the run-up to last years general election.

Berkeley insisted underlying demand has remained strong despite uncertainty including the impending EU referendum. But it criticised reforms to stamp duty enacted in December 2014 for raising the stamp duty bill on homes worth more than 937,500 and creating one of the worlds highest property taxation regimes.

The tax turmoil could prevent people moving and deter development, the builder said, adding: Transaction levels at the upper end of the housing market have been affected by the significant increase in transaction taxes over the past 18 months which will have effects on both social mobility and the supply of new homes.

Despite the recent concerns over the market, Berkeley added that profits will be at the top end of expectations  around 526 million  compared with a City consensus of 509 million.

It also remains on course to make 2 billion in profits in total by the end of its 2017/18 financial year as luxury projects in the capital complete and Berkeley shifts more of its building outside London.

City analysts said short-sellers could be burnt as fears of an over-supplied market in Nine Elms and Battersea were overplayed since Berkeley has already sold all the flats in its Riverlight scheme.

Jefferies Anthony Codling said: Berkeley still has developments in the Battersea area but it is not a pure play. Nor does it have significant exposure to the markets causing some to be concerned.
M uch has been made of the miracles wrought on fashion supply chains by the secretive Hong Kong-based Lindsey brothers.

Mark and Neal Lindsey  having done sterling work at Next  were hired to hammer down overheads at M&Ss general merchandise arm.

Details of their contracts remain secret, but rumours in the fashion world suggest they are on a points-based pay system that could see them pocket an extraordinary 5 million in the next couple of years if they hit their margin targets.

Thats big money by anyones standards, but raises the question: can they keep the quality up as well as the prices down?

Wanted: New name for merged London Stock Exchange

What will the merged London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse be called?

Xavier Rolet, LSEs CEO, suggests that it will not include the words London or Deutsche.

One can speculate on possible names or acronyms, he says.

But it will have to be something which reflects that our business is truly global.

Spy readers can surely come up with some clever suggestions.But note anything including the phrase uber alles will not be allowed.

Cannes reporters tell the real story?

Of all the Panglossian stuff from Cannes in Mipim News, the daily cheerleader for the property shindig, this headline really caught Spys eye: The future looks bright for investment in China.

Really? Yes, according to Montsalvy Consulting, which says most areas of the economy are now open to foreign investment.

No mention of slowing growth, market bubbles and mass unemployment here then.

The story is opposite an advertisement for the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, screaming Istanbul means opportunity.

Unless youre a journalist trying to write things the government doesnt like
M useums today are more popular, yet more beset, than ever. Former norms of purchase and pillage give way to demands for restitution and repatriation that deplete existing collections and imperil new acquisitions. The traditional term keeper now suggests an anal-retentive hoarder of other peoples stuff.

How  and even if  museums should display their wares is in flux. How do you show artefacts from cultures that dont want outsiders to see them? Past triumphalism gives way to remorse and recrimination; primacy accorded to material relics shifts to function and performance; elite patronage yields to populist fancy; ideals of objectivity and universality are discarded for identity boosting and partisan engagement.

Museums used to help us understand; now they instil faith. Those that resist are old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy, elitist. Tiffany Jenkins will have none of this. Far beyond the question of keeping their marbles, she skilfully critiques manifold issues that beleaguer museums today.

Jenkins first recounts how acquisition has altered. Cabinets of curiosities  collections of objects amassed by the rich and powerful morphed into instructive sanctuaries for artefacts of past times and primitive folk. Encyclopaedic Western museums emerged as showcases of imperial booty, taken by force or theft or derisory purchase from colonised and subjugated peoples. Eurocentric chauvinism justified looting and spoliation in the name of civilised progress.

Moral pedagogy became the canonical role of museums. They taught the masses to emulate their betters. Likenesses of admired exemplars in the National Portrait Gallery would inspire mental exertion, noble actions and good conduct, in Lord Palmerstons dictum. Relics of global antiquity at the British Museum would make viewers thoughtful, benign, more truly British.

Not all concurred: Nathaniel Hawthorne wandered wearily from hall to hall wishing that the Elgin Marbles and the frieze of the Parthenon were all burnt into lime and the mummies turned to dust, for antiquity worship blinded viewers from seeing for rubbish what is really rubbish.

Museum became the Futurists prime term of abuse. Italys museums stifled modern progress, Rome and Venice mired in mouldy relics, Florence besotted with antiquarian rubbish. Museums are still rubbished as boring, the BM stupefying. Finding an artefact there can be as fraught as Indiana Joness quest in the Temple of Doom.

Todays museums refute such canards. They are prime stimulants of domestic pride and foreign tourism, founts of group identity, envoys of diplomacy. Elitist diktats are ditched for populist taste that mandates motorcycles, hip-hop ephemera, Fifties fashions. Antiquities give way to retro nostalgia, display cases to interactive engagement, foregrounding issues that exercise us all, writes former British Museum director Neil MacGregor, political and religious turmoil, violence, displacement, exile, the struggle for liberties. No longer passive warehouses of global materials, museums actively support their local communities. Museum survival depends on the take at the gate.

Hence they become didactic, partisan, chauvinist. They foster group identity, celebrate victories, mourn defeats. tout achievements. Negotiating with restitution claimants makes museums front-line emissaries of imperial atonement.

More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics  the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review

They increasingly stress tragedy, not triumph, the horrors of victims, rather than the hubris of victors  sites of slavery, the Irish Famine, the Holocaust, the Gulag, tenement slums, prisons, workhouses, scenes of slaughter. Codes of ethics exhort shaping and restricting access to displays in accordance with the beliefs and feelings of aggrieved tribal descendants, vesting truth and authority in blood and belief.

Current demands for social activism clash with enduring goals. Todays museums must be exemplars of selfless scruples, of fleeting popular taste, of instant relevance, yet at the same time sustain traditional functions: gathering in the best, safeguarding sources of memory and inspiration, truth and beauty. The old verities  authoritative values, hierarchical standards, immortal treasures, civic edification  hardly figure in mission statements.

Yet they are deeply felt expectations. Curators and their clients remain dedicated to long-term preservation, contrary to newly mandated evanescence. To sell off, give away or junk holdings would unleash storms of protest. Those who visit museums dont want them used instrumentally, asserts the Royal Academys director. They want them to be open-ended places for individual experience of history and culture.

Museums uniquely mediate past, present and future. Some pillory stewardship as hoarding. But memorabilia of no immediate moment is our best defence against public amnesia. To privilege current demands maroons us in a shallow present. Populist immediacy disenfranchises the great majority: posterity.

The more museums heed today, the less they harken to our heirs. Empathetic concerns pervert museums to national or tribal agendas. They hallow emotional attachment to the detriment of historical awareness that amazes, awes and challenges.

These cosmopolitan merits inform Jenkinss plea to keep our marbles. Few antiquities were fashioned to be kept where made, much less where later found, never as surrogates of subsequent national identities. And the vicissitudes of time replace original contexts. An icon or a religious painting, once an object of devotion, becomes an object of inspiration or beauty, or a social text to be read, observes Jenkins. That is the value of museums. And without museums, most artefacts would be forever lost.

David Lowenthal is the author of The Past is a Foreign Country  Revisited (Cambridge, 22.99).

19.99, Amazon, Buy it now
P ing pong plays a crucial role in Timothy Blisss award- winning research into the brain. He and his colleague Terje Lmo used to hole up in a laboratory late at night, investigating how memories work, drinking beer and taking breaks with games of whiff whaff. Now he has been rewarded with the 1 million Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize for his work, sharing it with his colleagues Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris, for studies about what happens in the brain when we make memories and how we retain them.

This is the first time the prize has gone to three UK scientists, says Bliss, who is 75, wears natty orange socks, blue suede shoes and red cord trousers, and still likes beer  he has ordered a pint of bitter. Collingridge was in Canada but he and Morris celebrated by drinking champagne at 11am. Its never too early, he smiles.

His work is important, he explains, because it gives us information about a faculty of mind that is so precious to us. If we know how memory works we will be in a much better position when our memories start to fail.

It started in the 1960s when he and Lmo spent one night a week doing experiments at the University of Oslo, stimulating the synapses of anaesthetised rabbits. By looking at synapses  the gap between the ends of two nerve cells that are firing towards each other  they established how the brain stores memories, through something called long-term potentiation (LTP).

They were the most exciting experiments of my life, he says, patiently explaining the science behind his work.It was the first time anyone had been able to point to a particular group of synapses and say here are synapses which are capable of showing this kind of plastic change [the ability to strengthen or weaken]. We found that brief, intense stimulation immediately and permanently reset the strength of those synapses.

Matt Writtle

They showed how neural activity could control the strength of synapses. This discovery pointed the way to how the brain stores memories, through synaptic strengthening, an effect they called long-term potentiation (LTP). When you lay down a memory the synapses in a vast network of interconnected cells that are activated during the laying down of the memory become strengthened. So when a memory is recalled, a particular pattern of strengthened nervous connections is reactivated.

Memory is not infallible. Its not a tape recorder. Its an active process and not necessarily that accurate. Usually what you remember is the last time you remembered it.

Alcohol also affects the process. When you are drunk you lose the ability to lay down memories  having a memory requires it to be stored in the brain somewhere and then being able to retrieve it.

Drugs that act on NMDA receptors are being used clinically to alleviate mid stage Alzheimers. But to cure Alzheimers we need to know directly what is causing it. That isnt close but work on synaptic plasticity might help to alleviate the symptoms by allowing better use to be made of the synapses that remain.

There is a lot of interest in how adaptable the mind is. If we could understand how memories are formed, in principle we could install them  but we are a generation away at least from that. Being able to block memories is useful too, says Bliss. It has an impact for post-traumatic stress and is already being done in animals. Its about erasing the process of LTP which brought in that bad memory.

People who work in artificial intelligence, such as Demis Hassabis, whose London company Deep Mind was bought by Google in 2014 for 400 million, say that technology is improving brain function, but Bliss doesnt have much faith in AI: We could use electrodes to change synaptic strength in a few synapses it but we cant do that for hundreds of millions of them. Maybe in the future there will be ways of burrowing through your head to produce memories  or to remove them

For your hands only: top 10 gadgets for the spy within you 1 /13 For your hands only: top 10 gadgets for the spy within you Untitled-4.jpg Underwater escape: You might not be able to jump into Bonds submersible Lotus Esprit, but this bit of kit reaches underwater speeds of up to 4mph. Escape harpoon-wielding villains or simply enjoy underwater scenery at leisure. Bladefish 5000, 599.95 from red5.co.uk watch.jpg All the time in the world: The names Bond, Budget Bond. This sports watch simply conceals a very good time-keeping mechanism and, water resistant up to 100m, is perfect for underwater activity. Accurist Acctiv, from 60 from accurist.co.uk Untitled-6.jpg Tomorrow never fades: With the clever use of six on-board sensors, this wearable camera will capture all your days action. Using a combination of GPS, colour capture, accelerometer, a motion detector, magnetometer and thermometer, itll take a snap when something changes. Autographer, 399 from autographer.com (available November) Untitled-7.jpg The high life: Reaching speeds of up to 130mph and able to take off and land in spaces of just 750 feet, this is the ultimate commuter craft. A new generation of sports aircraft, it can be packed on to a trailer and transported in a less white-knuckle way. Icon aircraft, around 90,000 at iconaircraft.com chair.jpg Live like Blofeld: Bond might get the girls, but the villains get high-class home decor. To finish the look of your evil lair, simply surround yourself with hench-folk and a white cat. Suck UK Villain Chair, 3,299.99 from purelygadgets.co.uk pen.jpg From 007 with love: Cram up to two hours of undercover surveillance inside this High Definition recording pen. If you think your cover has been blown, you can pen a memo with its ink-based insert. Spy pen, 39.95 from red5.co.uk bonoc.jpg Licence to film: Far superior to the monocular used in GoldenEye, this set takes five megapixel stills and half-decent moving footage too. SpyMaster binoculars with camera, 390 from giftvault.com mask.jpg More than a mask: Gathering data digitally from up to five metres down, this underwater camera delivers at a spec MI6 would approve of. Itll take eight megapixel images and video footage, simply press at the top of the mask. The tempered glass is ideal for spotting sharks and scuba villains. Underwater camera mask, 109.95 from red5.co.uk Ipad.jpg iPad armour: Nothing puts more fear into anyone than a shiny device that has been under attack from solid objects (aka dropped on the floor). This case wont only protect your treasured iPad but, when under severe pressure, could be used as an effective projectile. Griffin Survivor for iPad, 49.99 from firebox.com shades.jpg Spy glasses: Uber-cool sunglasses with UV protection have always been standard issue of MI6 operatives and this pair offer more than meets the eye. Inside is an HD camera thatll record up to an hour of footage, ideal for spying in style. Pivothead, 299.99 from purelygadgets.co.uk

The brain can be trained. If you remain mentally alert as you grow older you have a better quality of old age. You dont want to be in front of the television all day.

He exercises his mind with a toy he bought his grandson where you move a small ball around an obstacle course. Its wonderfully difficult but the brilliant thing is you improve if you practice. My wife thinks Im insane.

Then there are so-called smart drugs, or benzos, which can stimulate the brain in the short term. I took drugs in the benzodiazepine class when I was a student, says Bliss. Its not clear how they work. Theres no doubt you can concentrate better with them and perform better at demanding tasks. But there is a long-term price to pay. They become less effective and you feel like shit. Is taking them cheating? Thats something provosts and students have to think about.

These days he sticks to coffee: It could be state-dependent learning  I have to have a couple of drinks before I can play ping pong. It might be like that with coffee and work.

Bliss grew up in Hampshire and went to Dean Close School. His father, who was in the Navy, thought itd be a good thing to go west to Canada for university. He spent seven years at McGill, originally studying physics but changing after a lecture about the Bell telephone system and spinal reflexes.

He began working at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill in 1967 and rose to become head of its neurophysiology division.

With the prize money he will buy an electric car in orange, like my socks.

I mention Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt, who resigned from his post at UCL after saying that when women are in the lab they fall in love... and when you criticise them they cry. Bliss says Hunt is a jovial chap but its not the sort of thing you should say. There are a lot of exceptional women scientists. The problem is they are the ones who have children and no one has a way to resolve that.

He is concerned about Brexit. For science, Brexit will be a bad thing. We are rather good at getting European funding, we pay into the fund but get more back, so it will be a net loss. It will be harder for scientists to move freely. If it takes six months to get a visa that doesnt help the progress of science.

The next challenge in Blisss field is to move from working with individual synapses to tweak and adjust networks of synapses. That will be tremendously exciting for the next generation, says Bliss. Pope said that the proper study of mankind is man, and the structure that defines us is our brain. So the study of the brain has to be the major challenge for neuroscience.

Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter
A drugs gang are facing jail after smuggling 24 million worth of cannabis concealed in industrial tubes wrapped up in carpets.

The men, who lived in east London and the Home Counties, were convicted at Wood Green Crown Court today, after police uncovered the international smuggling operation.

Martin Henry Beckett, 42, of Dukes Avenue, Theydon Bois, Essex, was charged with conspiracy to import cannabis and conspiracy to supply cannabis in the United Kingdom. He admitted the second charge and was found guilty of the first following a trial at Wood Green Crown Court.

Four other members of the gang had also pleaded guilty to the charges against them.

Lee Jones, 47, of Ongar Road, Fyfield, Ongar, admitted to conspiracy to import cannabis and conspiracy to supply cannabis in the United Kingdom, and Jonathon Zac Euesden, 44, of Lower Park Road, Loughton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import a controlled class B drug, and conspiracy to supply a class B drug within the United Kingdom, and possession of criminal property.

Marc Howell, 45, of Bramshill Road, Brent, admitted supplying cannabis, and possession of Class A and B drugs cocaine and ketamine with intent to supply, while Stuart Openshaw, 28, of Wooley Square, Andover, Hampshire, admitted to money laundering, supply of cannabis and supply of cocaine.

The court heard that on September 16 last year, police officers from Waltham Forest intercepted a lorry containing 350kg of skunk cannabis, with a street value of more than 2 million, which had arrived in the UK from Holland.

The drugs were found hidden in industrial pipes disguised with carpet rolls.

Lee Jones and Martin Beckett were arrested after attempting to collect the drugs, and further investigation revealed that Jones had made multiple trips to Holland before his arrest and had purchased materials to build the concealment in Holland and Belgium.

Detectives found a company called 'Mogafish Flooring' had been set up to purchase and transport the carpets across the continent using legitimate transport companies, and over a period of six months, approximately 2.5 tonnes of high grade cannabis was imported into the UK.

The drugs were taken to a warehouse in North Weald, Essex, rented by Beckett and were distributed to larger dealers.

On October 28 last year, Marc Howell was arrested and 60 grams of cocaine, 10 grams of ketamine and more than 10,000 in cash was recovered from his home address.

Further investigations later uncovered Stuart Openshaw had paid cash into the bank account of Mogafish.

Jon Euesden was arrested on January 11 this year at Southend Airport after he arrived on a flight from Malaga.

He was held on suspicion of conspiracy to import and supply cannabis, and a search of his home address revealed more than 40,000 in his loft.

DS Tom Mallinson, from Waltham Forest CID, said: "I am delighted with the convictions in this case. It sends out a clear message to those who think importing and supplying Class A and B drugs is a way to earn a living.

"This gang created a complex conspiracy to conceal their criminal activity and the impact on the people of London and the Home Counties was severe.

"The investigation identified a sophisticated network across the United Kingdom and my team worked across Europe with our partners to secure this conviction. I am grateful to everyone involved."
A man was Tasered by police after allegedly stabbing another man outside a bank in south west London.

Police were called to reports of a man stabbed in Victoria Road, Surbiton, at 11.55pm on yesterday.

A 25-year-old man was found with stab wounds and was given first aid by officers and paramedics before being taken to a south London hospital.

He has since been discharged.

A spokesman for Kingston police said: The suspect, a 39 year old male was located nearby and during the initial interaction with police he was Tasered.

The suspect was arrested at the scene on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and is still in police custody this morning.

Anyone with information should call DC Paulo Resteghini at Kingston CID on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
T he owner of a fashionable London brewery has been charged with a suspected 1 million fraud after an investigation by tax officials.

Julian De Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson, who runs London Fields Brewery in Hackney, faces three counts of cheating the public revenue in respect of VAT, national insurance and student loan contributions, and one count of fraudulently evading income tax.

The prosecution follows a raid on his brewery by HM Revenue and Customs in 2014 and a lengthy investigation into his business affairs.

Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson responded then by denying any wrongdoing.

But he was told of the charges after attending Stoke Newington police station to answer bail and will now appear before Thames magistrates in May.

Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson, 43, set up the brewery, which has been visited by celebrities such as Twilight star Robert Pattinson and Friends actor David Schwimmer, several years ago.

Its beers, which include Hackney Hopster and Love Not War  described as first brewed barricaded in the brewery during the London riots  have been well received and sold across the capital. A tap room and events space attached to the brewery on Warburton Street have also proved popular. The brewerys prospects were clouded, however, after a raid by HMRC investigators in December 2014.

Stock and equipment were seized and brewing operations had to be shifted out of London to be carried out by a supplier, while Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson was bailed over tax evasion allegations.

In a subsequent interview with the Evening Standard, he protested his innocence. He said he had begun the brewing business so that he could put mistakes made earlier in his life behind him.

He said then: Im determined to press forward and do the right thing. Thats why I set up the brewery: because I want ... to be a responsible member of society.

Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson was raised by his affluent family in Devon and came to London after attending Blundells, an independent school founded in 1604 where boarding fees now total 30,000 a year.

Announcing the decision to prosecute, HMRC said Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson had been charged in connection with a suspected VAT, tax and student loan fraud of more than 1,000,000.

A statement added: He was charged with three counts of cheating the public revenue between December 31 2011 to August 7 2014 in respect of VAT, PAYE/NIC and student loan contributions, and one further count of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of income tax.
A teenager has been jailed for stabbing a man in broad daylight outside a south London branch of Halfords.

Police were called to York Way in Battersea at about 2.30pm on January 30 this year, after Jacob Taylor attacked his victim outside the bicycle store.

Taylor stabbed his 21-year-old victim a number of times, but the man did not sustain life threatening injuries and was subsequently discharged from hospital.

The incident was investigated by the Metropolitan Polices Trident Gang and Area Crime Command, and Taylor was arrested the day after the stabbing and subsequently charged.

Taylor, 18, from Wandsworth, had previously pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent at Kingston Crown Court.

He was today sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment for the GBH, and six months imprisonment, to run concurrently, for possession of a an offensive weapon.
A detective working in the Met Police's child abuse investigation unit has appeared in court accused of sex attacks on an eight-year-old girl.

Detective Constable Christopher Maitland, 40, who works in the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command, faces 14 charges dating back to 2005.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court today accused of two charges of sexual touching of an eight-year-old girl in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, in October 2005.

He also faces five counts of taking an indecent image of a child and seven of making an indecent image of a child.

It is alleged the officer had 818 images and videos, ranging from the most serious category A to the lowest category C.

Maitland was originally arrested in November on suspicion of possession and distribution of indecent images of children and was arrested again on Tuesday on suspicion of sexual touching.

The officer, who wore a maroon jumper and grey jogging bottoms, was remanded in custody to appear at Southwark Crown Court on April 15.

He has been suspended from duty with his unit, named Sapphire, Scotland Yard said.
M urder squad detectives are investigating the suspicious death of a man in Romford.

Police were called at about 10am on Thursday by staff at Queen's Hospital, Romford, after a man died in hospital.

The man, 61-year-old Derek Bailey from Romford, was found collapsed in Maple Street in the town at 6.40 that morning by a member of the public.

Mr Bailey was taken by London Ambulance Service to the hospital, where he died two hours later.

Police said his death is being treated as suspicious at this early stage.

A post-mortem examination was held at Queen's Hospital mortuary earlier today and officers are awaiting the pathologist's conclusions as to formal cause of death.

A man aged in his 40s and a woman aged in her 50s were arrested in connection with the investigation on Thursday, and both have been bailed, pending further enquiries, to a date in mid May.

The investigation is being led by officers from the Homicide and Major Crime Command, based at Barking.

Anyone with information that may assist police is asked to call the incident room on 020 8345 1570. To remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
T ributes were today paid to a young carpenter with a heart of gold who died in hospital four days after being stabbed.

Rory Anderson, 25, is thought to have been knifed after stepping in to break up an argument outside a flat party near his family home in west London at 1am on Saturday.

There were emotional scenes as his heartbroken friends gathered at the property in Northolt last night for a solemn candlelit vigil in his memory.

Hundreds of bouquets had been left along with photographs and cards in a makeshift shrine to the former Northolt High School pupil.

Flowers were left at the scene as mourners gathered to pay tribute to Mr Anderson / Nigel Howard

His devastated father Kelvin told the Standard his family had been touched by the outpouring on affection both at the scene and on social media.

He said: There are so many flowers and messages out there, and weve heard some amazing stories being told about him.

At the moment I dont think we can say anything better than that. Everyone knew him, and everyone loved him.

A family friend is compiling dozens of anecdotes and memories being shared on social media into a memorial book.

In the hundreds of online tributes he is described as a fearless, kind and unforgettable young man, who worked building loft conversions and extensions.

One friend, leaving flowers at the scene, said: He was a lovely guy  loved by all. He was part of our community.

The flowers speak volumes  all day people have been leaving more. Everyone is shocked. His family are absolutely devastated. Its so raw  they havent had time to digest anything.

Tributes: One of the notes dedicated to Mr Anderson which was left at the scene / Nigel Howard

Another added: No-one really knows what happened. I dont know if he was on his way home or if hed been at the party. All I know for definite is that Rory would never have started any trouble, but if someone started on somebody else hed have tried to break it up.

Police and paramedics were called to the scene outside a ground floor flat in Hotspur Road at just before 1am. Mr Anderson was rushed to hospital where he died on Wednesday after a four-day fight for life with his relatives at his bedside.

Neighbours expressed their shock at the stabbing in the quiet estate of families and retirees.

Former schoolfriend Elliot Gibbs wrote on Facebook: Truly devastated to hear about the passing of one my of best childhood friends. Words are utterly useless in times such as these.

'Everyone loved him': Rory Anderson

Rory couldnt have been a better person. Funny, smart and kind are only simple words that just brush the surface when describing of man of his calibre. I have genuinely never met anyone the same as him.

Elliotts sister Megan Gibbs added: He made an impact on everyone who met him. He just did his own thing, his approach to life was what most people strive all their lives to reach. Fearless, so fearless. He made all of our childhoods.

Another friend wrote: You were the most gentle, random, caring and funniest guy I ever knew. And it breaks my heart to even be writing this now. Nothing can change the good times and the impact you made on peoples lives.

Detectives from the Mets Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating and are appealing for witnesses to the attack.

A 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm before the investigation became a murder inquiry. He was bailed to a date in mid-April. Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room on 0208 785 8244 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
T he government was hit with a fresh legal action today over its repeated failure to tackle illegally high levels of air pollution.

Campaign group ClientEarth is taking ministers to the High Court in a bid to force them to rip up their current insulting plans to bring pollution levels down to below legal limits and come up with stronger proposals. The latest move comes less than a year after the Supreme Court ordered the government to draw up a new air quality strategy for bringing down levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide to safe levels in the shortest possible time.

However, those plans, published in December, set a 2025 target for improving pollution levels in London.

Today lawyers for ClientEarth said this put the government in breach of the Supreme Court order.

Environmental lawyer Alan Andrews said: The government has repeatedly failed to tackle this problem, despite a ruling by the Supreme Court. As the government cant be trusted to deal with toxic air pollution, we are asking the court to intervene and make sure it is taking action.

Tens of thousands of early deaths are caused by air pollution every year. It is a disgrace that we have had to take further legal action to force the government to protect our health.

The governments plans were an insult to those being made sick and dying from air pollution and failed to consider strong measures to get the worst polluting diesel vehicles out of our town and city centres.

Latest estimates suggest that 40,000 people a year are dying prematurely as a result of unhealthy air  largely caused by traffic emissions.

London has some of the worlds worst recorded hot spots for nitrogen dioxide, which is pumped out by diesel engines and has been linked to a range of respiratory disorders, including asthma.

Putney High Street tops the table with 207 occasions already this year when average nitrogen dioxide levels exceeded 200 ug/m3 over an hour, The legal limit is 18 breaches over the course of an entire year. In Oxford Street this safe limit has been passed 113 times.

The danger posed by pollution has soared up the political agenda this year. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn challenged David Cameron over his indefensible record on tackling air quality at Prime Ministers Questions earlier this week.

The Labour leader said that 500,000 people will die early by 2025 because of this countrys failure to comply with international law on air pollution.

ClientEarth fought a five year legal battle with the Government before its Supreme Court victory last year. A YouGov poll for the group reveals that three in four Londoners say they back legal action against the government to force it to deal with air pollution.
T raders and residents in fashionable Bermondsey Street claim that a perfect storm of roadworks, street closures and a new cycle route has left them under siege.

They say disruption already means it can take drivers 30 minutes to get down the historic one-way street, a journey which used to take three minutes.

Businesses fear that road changes for a new cycle Quietway  a back street alternative to busy main roads  will be the last straw, crippling traffic flow and bringing the area to a standstill when it is launched in October.

Critics accused Southwark council of a lack of joined-up thinking and warned things will get worse when a large section of nearby Tooley Street closes in April for two years for more construction work at London Bridge station.

Sarah Wyndham Lewis, who runs a shop and bee-keeping business in the street, said: We have become used to traffic jams and live under siege. Emergency services struggle to get through. Businesses are finding it ever harder to get reliable deliveries and heaven forbid you have a car.

Now Southwark is intent on pushing through the Quietway in a way which local people believe will finally bring this area to a complete standstill. Campaigners say a new one-way traffic system will funnel more vehicles into Bermondsey Street.

They say the scheme will trap traffic, preventing it from turning off until it reaches Snowsfields and the partially closed Tooley Street. This will force vehicles to travel the length of Bermondsey Street, which has undergone a renaissance in recent years.

Celebrity chef Jose Pizarro, 44, owner of Jose Tapas Bar and Pizarro Restaurant, both in the street, who has appeared on Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch, said: What the council is proposing would not just kill business but the sense of community. I moved to this area nine years ago because I fell in love with it. Now you have people coming out of their cars screaming at each other.

The closure of Tower Bridge for several months this year for repairs will compound the chaos, opponents say. Southwark Lib-Dem councillor Damian OBrien said: There has been no joined-up thinking applied to this. We want the Cycleway, but not the way it is being imposed on us.

Labours Darren Merrill, cabinet member for environment and public realm, said: Were aware of the concerns raised by residents. The new Quietway route will help to address this by readjusting the road layout.

John Ferguson, 53, co-owner of Andrew Brown Hair Salon, said: The annoying thing is clients running 40 or 50 minutes late. Resident Gareth Davies, 46, founder of oil and gas consultancy Bestem, said: It will make visiting clients in the City a lot more difficult.

Ian Babb, 52, co-owner of RW Autos, said: The traffic is diabolical.
A Burger King outlet in London's busiest railway station has been granted permission to start selling alcohol.

Lambeth Council has given its consent for the fast food chain to sell beer at Waterloo station - but only until 8pm at night.

A licensing application was due to be heard by the council on Tuesday, but an agreement was reached between the company and the local authority ahead of the meeting, and the licence was approved.

Burger King will be allowed to sell alcohol in Waterloo providing it is sold between 11am and 8pm daily, purchased alongside food, and drunk on the premises.

Burger king not allowed to sell beer at Victoria and Paddington branches

All alcohol sold by the company must also be served in a plastic cup, and alcoholic drinks on sale must not be stronger than 5% ABV.

Lambeth Council said it had also imposed additional rules on the company when granting the license, including better staff training, increased record keeping, better CCTV, and increased management supervision.

The fast food giant recently lost a bid to sell beer at two of London's other busiest rail stations.

Burger King wanted to serve alcohol seven days a week at its branches in Victoria and Paddington stations, but Westminster Council turned down the application following strong opposition from police.
A south London church has been fined thousands of pounds for holding noisy 3am services aimed at fending off evil spirits.

Magistrates ordered the leaders of Camberwells Kingdom Church, a branch of the Bishop Climate Ministries, to pay 7,740.50 after Southwark Council was flooded with complaints about loud preaching and amplified music every Saturday morning.

It also said nearby residents were having to put up with persistent and excessive noise levels on an almost daily basis from the churchs regular services.

The services, held in the small hours, claim to offer deliverance from sickness, financial hardship and demonic soul ties, according to the churchs website.

When the Standard contacted the church today, a female worker said in broken English that the services had to be held at 3am because it was the best time to ensure very strong deliverance from evil.

She added a spokesman might be able to comment further this evening.

According to its website, the church teaches the word of the Bible, but it does not appear to be affiliated to any official branches of Christianity in the UK.

A history section on its website reads: God has confirmed Bishop Climate with a worldwide ministry through powerful signs and wonders.

One neighbour, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Standard the noise was incessant.

"I live directly next to it," he said. "The noise is constant.

"I dont mind being bothered on Sunday mornings, but the late evening and early morning sessions are horrible.

"When there is a pause, the congregation flood out to the street to get food from a small food stand for a recharge, making just as much noise as while inside."

South London church fined over loud 3am 'anti-demon' services

Church leaders were slapped with the fine at Camberwell Magistrates Court on February 22 after being found guilty of two charges under Section 80 of the Environmental Protection Act 1980.

Southwark council cabinet member for communities and safety Cllr Michael Situ said: We would have preferred to settle this matter out of court, but unfortunately our attempts to work with the church leaders were ignored.

We hope the penalty helps to remind both the leaders, and the wider community, anti-social behaviour of any kind will not be tolerated and wrongdoers will be made to pay one way or another.

In comments quoted by local newspaper the Southwark News, Bishop Climate Wiseman indicated the church would appeal the fine.

He said: It is a big fine and we will be appealing against it. I do not deny that we made some noise  we did. But we have spent nearly ten thousand pounds reducing the noise.

Were you affected by the noise? Contact our news desk on 0203 615 2500 or email news@standard.co.uk
S tudents from one of Londons top universities have dismissed criticism levelled at its Islamic society over a gala dinner where men and women were made to eat separately.

A large screen kept men and women apart during the London School of Economics Islamic Societys annual dinner on Sunday evening.

But today a group claiming to be former students hit back, accusing people of unfairly linking them to "jihadist ideology."

In a blog post, the group said that "soft segregation" was completely normal at Muslim family events such as weddings and other private functions.

Critics said the segregation at the dinner held at the Grand Connaught Rooms, near the universitys Holborn campus, was inappropriate for a university event.

One of the pictures taken on the men's side of the curtain during the party

The post hit back, stating: The segregation was consented to by all individuals. To date, there is no evidence any individual was deterred from going to the dinner, or was non-consenting, but was forced to sit somewhere, because of the segregation.

They added: We grew up as Muslims. We went to weddings, and private functions which had such soft segregation.

And although, in an ideal state, we might be inclined to agree there should be none, this doesnt mean such soft segregation has to be condemned and compared to jihadist ideology.

Some critics said they found the segregation intimidating and claimed it alienates Muslims.

Aniqa Haque, a female student, also wrote a blog post describing her experience of the event.

She said: We knew of the seating arrangements beforehand and were free to interact with anybody. It is important to realise that people have different beliefs, viewpoints and situations in which they feel safe.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the Islamic Society said: The curtain was in fact set up at the request of our members and the layout of the room was necessary for the facilitation of three prayers, a spiritual sermon, and Quran recitation.

One attendee posted this image of a man and woman chatting to each other around the screen with the caption referencing Adele's song Hello

Furthermore, the seating arrangement at the event was not mandatory, as there were numerous spaces around the venue that allowed men and women to mix freely.

Nona Buckley-Irvine, the general secretary of LSE students union, who attended the event said: Everyone felt comfortable, I am disappointed that this event has been misconstrued by the media as something that was oppressive to women.

"I defend the right of religious societies to organise themselves in the way that they wish.

An LSE spokesman said: LSE follows the EHRC guidance on this matter, and regards gender segregation at events on campus or organised by LSE or the LSE community as contrary to the law, except for certain exceptions such as occasions of religious worship or where segregation is entirely voluntary.

This dinner was organised by a society of the Students Union, which itself is a legally separate body to LSE. The School is raising this issue with the society and Students Union.

The Standard has contacted the Islamic Society for further comment.
C ontroversial plans for luxury flats that traders say will kill off one of Londons oldest markets have been blocked by senior judges.

Stall holders in Shepherds Bush have spent years fighting the redevelopment which would see more than 200 apartments built next door to the historic market.

They say the market, in operation since 1914, will be driven out of business if the scheme goes ahead.

Developer Orion Land & Leisure bought the site from Transport for London in 2014 and has applied for compulsory purchase orders to make way for the flats.

Former Communities Secretary Eric Pickles granted the orders, but the Shepherd's Bush Market Tenants Association took the case to the Court of Appeal, claiming the minister had ignored the concerns of a government inspector.

Judges at the High Court today upheld the traders' appeal after agreeing that Mr Pickles had failed to give proper reasons for his decision.

Lord Justice Lewison, sitting with Lord Thomas, The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and Lord Justice Longmore, said: "Although it is clear that the Secretary of State disagreed with the inspector's view that the guarantees and safeguards were inadequate, he does not explain why he came to that conclusion.

He said Mr Pickles had made "bald assertions" in his decision to grant the CPOs, and should "explain why he disagreed with the inspector, beyond merely stating his conclusion that he did.

"The Secretary of State may have had perfectly good reasons for concluding that the guarantees and safeguards were accurate. The problem is we don't know what they were."

Richard Stein, who represented the traders in court, said: "I am sure they will be delighted that secretary of state will now have to justify why concerns raised by the inspector were not adequately dealt with.

"Whatever the outcome, they will hope the decision will protect this extremely valuable resource locally and for the whole of London."

The decision on the CPOs may now be sent back to the secretary of state, or the whole process could have to start again.

James Horada, the chairman of the traders' association, had described the court battle as a fight for the livelihoods of market traders.

They fear major disruption to the market's operation, and claim the redevelopment would harm the ethnic diversity of Shepherd's Bush.

At a hearing earlier this month, they said Orion has not guaranteed a rent cap for the traders, leading to fears that many of the independent stall holders would quickly go out of business.

It is also said the arches around which the market is based are falling into disrepair and no guarantees have been made that they will be improve as part of the redevelopment.

Tenants in arches will end up with retail space not fit for retail, or they will have to pay to patch up the problems themselves" said Mr Horada.

"In the end tenants will leave and the redeveloper will get their hands on it and cash in on it.

In a petition signed by more than 10,000 in support of their cause, the traders claim that "businesses' livelihoods are being threatened".

"The redevelopers scheme is removing the tenants' security and forcing additional costs and liability onto the market businesses. It is wrong that the Shepherd's Bush Market businesses should be compromised."

The trader's fight has also been backed by Hammersmith and Fulham MP Andy Slaughter, who said "a part of west London history is under threat".

Following today's decision, a spokesman for Orion said they were "extremely disappointed" with the decision.

"We believe that our ability to deliver the much needed investment and regeneration of Shepherd's Bush Market will now be seriously affected.

"The decision creates further uncertainty for the existing market traders and consequently the future of the market, which has long been in decline."

He added: "We remain committed to providing a vibrant and successful market that will return it to its rightful place at the heart of the local community.

"However, without the wider investment and redevelopment needed to realise our common vision for the market, another one of London's historic landmarks may be lost."
A super-rich New York socialite and her estranged assets trader husband are set to battle it out in the High Court over allegations he has failed to pay her a multi-million-pound settlement.

Former model and ballerina Sheila Rosenblum and husband Daniel led a glamorous lifestyle before they split in 2014.

The couple, who have two teenage children together, were dubbed a staple of high society, enjoying a $21 million (15 million) Manhattan apartment likened to something out of an F Scott Fitzgerald story as well as a sprawling estate in the Hamptons.

Their duplex penthouse on Park Avenue was described in sales material as a chateau in the sky...inspired by the luxuries of another era.

But despite their wealth the couples marriage crumbled, and they have already launched legal proceedings over their split in the US.

Now, in papers lodged at the High Court, Mrs Rosenblums lawyers say her estranged husband was ordered by a US court to pay her more than $5.5 million (3.9 million) but the debt still remains unsatisfied. She says he has paid her just $500,000 so far.

Ms Rosenblum, now a successful racehorse trainer, believes her husband has substantial assets in the UK including a business at London Bridge Street, in Westminster, and is asking British judges to enforce the US financial ruling.

She was a Royal Ballet School-trained dancer and a model for Ford and Wilhelmina earlier in her career. She has since switched her attention to horse racing, and now runs Lady Sheila Stables, an all-female syndicate owning thoroughbreds.

Her filly La Verdad won a top female sprinter crown in the US last year and raked in more than $1.4 million in prize money.

She was born in Switzerland but moved to the US at the age of four, and was 31 when she married Mr Rosenblum.

In her High Court writ, her lawyers say the New York financial judgment was final and conclusive and add that Mr Rosenblum participated voluntarily in those proceedings.

The couple are still locked in legal battles in the US, and a further case between them is due to be heard by the New York Supreme Court next month.

When contacted by the Standard, Mr Rosenblums US lawyer Larry Carlin said he was unable to comment on pending litigation.

The Standard has also approached Mr Rosenblum for comment.
W estminster bridge is to become the fourth Thames crossing to have a segregated cycle superhighway, Boris Johnson announced today.

The Mayor confirmed plans to protect cyclists, who make up almost a third of traffic crossing the Grade-11 listed bridge in the morning rush hour, after majority support in a public consultation.

But separate plans to demolish the iconic Vauxhall bus garage have been put on ice after about a third of respondents opposed Transport for Londons planned changes to the area.

Work will begin later this year to install a 1.8m-wide cycle lane on both sides of Westminster bridge. Segregated lanes are already in place on Southwark and Vauxhall bridges, and one is due to open next month on Blackfriars bridge.

The Westminster lanes will link directly into the Mayors flagship east-west Crossrail for bikes scheme on the Victoria Embankment, which will be formally opened on April 30.

The layout of the roundabout on the south side of the bridge at Waterloo will be remodelled, with segregated space for cyclists, separate traffic lights giving cyclists an early start and improved pedestrian crossings.

There will also be a new cycle route along the South Bank as part of the central London grid.

Mr Johnson said: Every day we see flocks of cyclists sweeping back and forth across this iconic bridge, so it makes real sense for it to become the next bridge to benefit from a segregated lane.

Its going to make a real difference to the safety of cyclists, and with further improvements being made to this out-dated junction, pedestrians are going to benefit too.

"Weve been working flat-out to improve roads across the capital, and Im delighted that Londoners have once again stepped forward to back our plans.

TfL said that 74 per cent supported or partially supported the proposals. Leon Daniels, managing director of surface transport at TfL, said: This latest radical redesign of one of Londons most disconnecting and intimidating junctions will bring it into the 21st century to support an ever-growing London.

At Vauxhall, 61 per cent of 1,247 people responding to a TfL consultation were generally positive about removing the gyratory, while 31 per cent were opposed.

A sizable number of community activists objected to the loss of the bus station and said the proposals to convert the gyratory to two-way streets were not good enough.

TfL said it would review all points raised in the consultation and publish a fuller report this autumn.

Construction of the cycle lanes on Westminster bridge is due to start this Autumn and be completed by 2018, subject to works approval.
T he 30th anniversary of BFI Flare, Londons LGBT Film festival, kicked off this week, and this weekend is set to be full of cinematic treats. Including the world premiere on Sunday of Trouser Bar, an erotic fantasy film which is centered on a mens outfitters. But the short film, which stars Nigel Havers and Julian Clary, has been causing a few whispers on the South Bank: the author is credited to an anonymous gentleman but previous reports attributed it to John Gielgud, the late, great thespian who died in 2000.

Back in 2014, stories swirled of a discovery of a script called Trouser Bar, written by Gielgud and in the possession of director Peter De Rome, a friend and confidante of the actor. Following De Romes death in 2014, the script was found among his possessions.

Producer David McGillivray expressed his wishes to bring Gielguds lost story to the masses but expressed dismay that the charitable trust set up in Gielguds memory were far from thrilled with the news. But he was not dissuaded: the 20-minute film is finally set to see the light but publicity, interviews and credits make no mention of Gielguds association. The original script was once regarded as pornographic but by todays standards seems tame. It would get a U! McGillivray said in an interview yesterday, in which he mentions an author. It could be shown on TV before the watershed ... Its a fantasy. And, I believe, a very beautiful one.

The Londoner rang the John Gielgud Charitable Trust this morning, and a representative declined to comment about whether it had actively requested that Gielguds name be removed from the credits. The film that we are showing has no attribution, a representative of Flare confirmed.

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Good luck to Julia Hartley-Brewer, the journalist on the presenting line-up of new national radio station talkRADIO.

Launching on Monday, Hartley-Brewer hopes the studio sofa will prove appealing for an array of glittering guests. Ive already christened it the Idris Elba Memorial Sofa, she says. Because my number one aim is to get Idris on that sofa. I might even interview him too. Just dont tell my husband. Your secrets safe with us, Julia.

Hilary and the importance of family

The Londoner sharpened pencils and sat up straight for a British Government LSE lecture in Holborn last night, delivered by shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn. Europe is not perfect, he said. Its like a family. Your family can sometimes irritate the hell out of you but you wouldnt walk away.

Sticking with the theme of blood ties, Benn encouraged the packed hall to talk to their relatives about the importance of staying in the EU.

But what of Benns own family? Hilarys niece, Emily Benn, is a Labour councillor for Croydon but in two weeks will be taking a break from politics to follow her career with UBS to New York. Hopefully shes registered for a postal vote.

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Over to Christies last night, for a glittering auction organised by the Terrence Higgins Trust. The HIV and sexual health charitys lots included a Francis Bacon print and a private film screening with Barbara Windsor, but the one that caught The Londoners eye was a signed poster of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The item is covered with familiar scrawls by British stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley but one cast member was feeling mischievous. Clearly sour about his character, Luke Skywalker, not being featured on the poster, Mark Hamill signed it but added: not pictured. Cheeky.

Brangelina, the local heroes

With Hollywood stars charging big bucks for a conveyor belt of designer endorsements, its nice to see some brand loyalty in the A-List. In 2011, The Londoner revealed that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had been staying in Richmond, and had popped into local shop The Toy Station with their brood.

The pair recently reappeared in the well-heeled area  though Jolie, pictured, is now in Lebanon working as an ambassador with the UN  and they returned to their favourite spots. A Richmond local tells The Londoner that Pitt and Jolie were again seen making several visits to the toy store to buy treats for their children.

The pair have certainly proved expert at dodging attention: during their stay in the capital they also made a covert visit to watch acclaimed play The Encounter at The Barbican.

With six children in the family, some parents may shudder at the thought of the total. But at least the worlds most famous couple are supporting independent businesses.

Grab your piece of Yanis

The rock-star economist is back on tour, and hes coming to London: Yanis Varoufakis will be at Foyles on April 5 for a signing of his new book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must? But if the idea of the smouldering former Greek minister talking about the EU makes you want to throw your underwear at the stage, please dont  hes going to be the one giving away his clothes.

The Londoner has been told that Varoufakis will give the famous leather jacket he wears on his motorbike  our picture shows him giving his wife Danae a lift in Athens  to one lucky guest. Though jealous of whoever ends up owning this vital piece of European history, we will wait for the Barbour-like jacket Yanis wore to meet George Osborne.

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Gender equality of the day to the New Statesman: this weeks cover contains more articles by men called John than women.
A top Labour MP today branded it madness that members of the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Momentum group will protest against one of his partys election candidates.

Chuka Umunna claimed the demonstration amounted to Momentum in his constituency doing the Tories dirty work.

His outburst came after the protest against Labour London Assembly candidate Florence Eshalomi was raised at a meeting of Lambeth Momentum. Ms Eshalomi would be the first ever Labour London Assembly member of Nigerian descent, but the treasurer of the Momentum group branded her a Blairite.

After reports of the protest emerged ex-Labour European election candidate Anne Fairweather said she was disappointed.

On Twitter, Streatham MP Mr Umunna then responded: Agree. Its madness! Why do the Tories dirty work for them? . . . against Londons prospective first Nigerian GLA member!

Momentum was established to shore up Mr Corbyns leadership, but MPs fear it may be used as a vehicle to overrun local parties and de-select them.
S adiq Khan openly criticised Jeremy Corbyn today after Labours leader said Londons vital Crossrail 2 project should be delayed until cities in the north of England get better rail connections.

In the biggest rift yet to open between Labours leader and the partys candidate for Mayor of London, Mr Khan said Mr Corbyn, the MP for Islington, was in the wrong and should know better.

The rebuke was triggered when Mr Corbyn gave an interview to the Manchester Evening News in which he appeared to agree that the North of England was more deserving of better rail links than London. He also said the high-speed rail between the capital and Birmingham should have been delayed until northern cities had high-speed connections between themselves.

Asked if he would like to see HS3 confirmed for the North before Londons Crossrail 2 goes ahead, Mr Corbyn told the paper: Yes I would. I also think it would have been better if HS2 had been the Birmingham-to-the-North part rather than London to Birmingham but I think thats probably too late. Thats for the next issue.

Tory mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith today said Mr Corbyns remarks put a question mark over whether Crossrail 2, linking the capital south to north via a tunnel under the centre, would ever go ahead under Labour.

London Mayor Election 2016: Sadiq Khan

Mr Khans exasperation was clear when he told the Evening Standard: Crossrail 2 is absolutely vital to ensuring Londons future growth and prosperity  we need to get it built as quickly as possible.

As a London MP, Jeremy should know that.

The row erupted as Mr Goldsmith and George Osborne were visiting a Crossrail construction site in north London to publicise the Budgets support for the project.

Mr Goldsmith said: Its clear Khan and Corbyn would put Crossrail 2 at risk. Their four-year experiment in City Hall would end the infrastructure investment we so crucially need.

It is unusual for a party leader to suggest during elections for Mayor that the capital city should take a lower priority than others.
Q uitting the EU could cost every familiy in Britain 6,400, delivering a shock to incomes equivalent to the 2008 banking crash, according to a study published today.

Even the most optimistic post-Brexit scenario would see average incomes fall by 850 per household, said the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

Britains national earnings, or GDP, would fall by between 26 billion and 55 billion due to lower trade and productivity, a bigger hit than the rest of the other 27 EU states combined, it said.

The academic report was attacked as scaremongering by Leave campaigners.

And a prominent stockbroker, Peter Hargreaves, argued that the insecurity triggered by a Brexit would inspire people and boost the economy, as happened to Singapore when it gained independence.

TODO: define component type apester

David Cameron this morning welcomed an intervention by US senator John McCain, the former presidential candidate and war hero, who appealed to Britons to stay in the EU for the sake of Nato, the defence club of America and western Europe.

British membership in the EU is a vital contributor to the security and prosperity of Europe and the United States, said Mr McCain in a statement following talks with members of the cross-party Defence Select Committee.

The need for a strong and united Europe is greater than ever, he argued, citing action such as sanctions against Russia, support to Afghanistan and Ukraine, and grappling with the refugee crisis fuelled by Vladimir Putin.

Whatever the outcome of the referendum on EU membership, it will send a strong message to Vladimir Putin.

The Prime Minister tweeted that Mr McCains was an important intervention in the debate. It comes ahead of US President Barack Obama putting the authority of the White House behind Remain when he visits London next month.

The CEP report was seen as also significant at No 10 because it plays to peoples fears of what a Brexit might mean.

It predicted trade would fall, cutting national income by between 1.3 per cent and 2.6 per cent, depending on what sort of trade deals could be agreed. The effect on incomes would be far more than savings in contributions to the European Union coffers.

CEP director Professor John Van Reenen said: Our work leaves little doubt that there is a serious cost for real wages and pensions from leaving the EU.

The issue facing voters is whether they feel that the social and political benefits of Brexit outweigh the evidence that we will be poorer.

But Mr Hargreaves, who founded Hargreaves Lansdown, said people would become better off. Im firmly convinced, that day - hopefully - we decide to leave, that little bit of insecurity, that little bit of unknown, will be an absolute fillip to everyone, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

It will be a great incentive for us to go out and prove that its right.

Mr Cameron last night secured permission from the EU for Britain to scrap the tampon tax of VAT on sanitary products.

Vote Leave chief exec Matthew Elliott retorted: We shouldnt have to hold a referendum every time we want to alter a tax rate.
S candal-hit MP Simon Danczuk was today told to repay a record 11,500 which he wrongly claimed for his taxpayer-funded London home.

The Rochdale MP was told to make the repayment as his two children from his first marriage were not routinely resident with him in the capital during a period of more than three years from 2012/13 to 2015/16.

The sum, 11,583, is believed to be the largest which the expenses watchdog has demanded for an MP to repay since it was set up in 2010.

Mr Danczuk, currently suspended from the Labour parliamentary party after allegedly exchanging explicit messages with a 17-year-old girl, was also told by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authoritys compliance officer to pay back 96.50 in parking charges.

He had left his car at Manchester railway station while on holiday after a parliamentary trip last summer.

The fact that he was on holiday for part of this period was confirmed by him tweeting: View from my Spanish gaff this morning.

Blunder: Simon Danczuk's tweet from his holiday home in Spain

Mr Danczuk, 49, who is understood to now live in a two-bedroom flat in Pimlico, has rented two other properties in London since becoming an MP in 2010.

Two children from his first marriage to Sonia Rossington are teenagers while two from his second marriage to Karen Danczuk are younger. He is divorced from both women.

His daughter from his first marriage has never stayed with him in London, according to the provisional findings by IPSAs compliance officer Peter Davis.

While his son from his first marriage stayed one night after contacting Mr Danczuk in February 2012.

The MP registered his two oldest children in April 2012 to qualify for additional accommodation funding; he had done so for his two youngest children in 2010.

But the housing rules, updated in April 2012, says extra children allowance is for dependents who routinely reside at the rented accommodation.

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Mr Danczuk, who has agreed to repay the additional housing allowance claimed, insisted that at the time registration of his two older children was initiated, he was seeing them regularly and expected this to continue.

But after applying for registration, his relationship with his first wife deteriorated rapidly compromising his ability to maintain contact with his older children, according to the report.

He argued that his older children were still dependent as he continued to pay child support.

But Mrs Rossington told Mr Davis that she believed there had been no relationship between the older children and their father since 2009 and definitely not during the period when he claimed the budget uplift for them to stay in London.

However his second wife, Karen, who shot to fame with her racy selfie pictures posted on social media, said she thought Mr Danczuk maintained regular contact with the children from his first marriage possibly until 2013.

The report concluded: The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the MP obtained an increase to his Accommodation Expenditure budget by claiming dependent uplifts for his two oldest children for a period of over three years, when, at no point were either of the children routinely resident.

Mr Danczuk has been ordered to pay over 11,000 / Reuters

The Compliance Officer must also conclude that this was done knowing that there was no reasonable prospect of the children staying at the accommodation.

However, Mr Danczuk disputed this while stressing the extra money went to his landlord rather than him personally.

In a letter responding to the provisional findings, he said he expected his first wife to give an unsympathetic view of his relationship with his two older children.

However, I maintain that I continually wished for my oldest children to come and stay with me and I always thought that matters could be resolved to a point where they would come and stay.

Mr Danczuk said today: My accommodation claims were made according to what I believed at the time to be an accurate interpretation of IPSAs guidelines.

Regrettably, due to the vague wording of the rules, I inadvertently claimed 10% more than my annual living allowance, money which was paid directly to my landlord in London and not to me.

I hold my hands up and admit that this was an error on my part.

Mr Danczuk, a leading critic of Jeremy Corbyn, also argued that getting the train back to Manchester to pick up his car, after returning from a parliamentary trip to Ghana and before his holiday, would have cost around twice as much as the extra parking costs so he was saving the taxpayer money.

He became a high profile MP campaigning against child sex abuse.

But he has being caught in a string of controveries.

He was interviewed earlier this year under caution in connection with a rape allegation dating from 2006 which he has described as malicious, untrue and upsetting.
N orth Korea has test-fired two ballistic missiles just days after leader Kim Jong-un said he wanted to develop weapons capable of reaching the US mainland. American officials said the medium-range missiles flew about 500 miles before crashing off North Koreas east coast.

South Koreas joint chiefs of staff said they were the first medium-range missiles launched by the North since April 2014.

A senior US defence official described the test as a violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.

Lt Col Michelle Baldanza, of the US defence press office, said: We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region.

Japans prime minister Shinzo Abe also condemned the launch.

Tensions between the US and North Korea have already been raised by the sentencing of a US student to 15 years hard labour this week.

The US has demanded the release of Otto Warmbier, 21, who was arrested for trying to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel in Pyongyang while on a visit in January.

North Korea said the student had committed crimes against the state.

The launch came a day after President Barack Obama imposed new sanctions freezing North Korean government property in the US and banning US exports to  or investment in  North Korea as well as expanding powers to blacklist anyone dealing with the rogue state.

In recent weeks, Pyongyang has threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch.

The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls US military threats.

On Tuesday, North Koreas state media said Kim had ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. Kim issued that order while overseeing a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target.

This led South Korean analysts to suspect that the North would fire a missile soon to test the re-entry technology. Some analysts had also predicted the North might fire a missile carrying an empty warhead, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if the warheads parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures of re-entry into the atmosphere and if they were able to detonate at the right time.

Experts say it is the last major technology North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

South Korean defence officials said North Korea had not yet acquired re-entry technology so it does not yet have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.
A Canadian supermarket has come under fire for selling avocados cut in half and wrapped in cardboard and plastic.

The pre-peeled and de-stoned fruit were spotted on a shelf at a branch of Sobeys in Thornhill, Ontario.

Christine Kizik posted a photograph of one of the avocados to the company's Facebook page, writing: "Surprised and disappointed after a friend posted a picture of an avocado for sale at his local Sobeys in Thornhill, ON.

"It's been pre-cut, then wrapped in plastic and cardboard. Avocados have their own perfect, compostable, wrapping. Adding packaging to an avocado is strange to say the least.

"This is wasteful and I'm curious about the reasoning for Sobeys stocking avocado this way?"

Her post has since been liked and shared thousands of times with dozens of people contacting the company on the social networking site to complain about the packaging.

Ryan Watson wrote: "This is like advertising you don't give a damn about sustainability.

"Want to take guess work out of testing for ripeness? Tell your customers to give them a light squeeze.

"100% Hass Avocados. 100% Mass Waste!"

While Adrian William wrote: "Way to be environmentally sound Sobeys whats next individually wrapped grapes?

"2016 you think companies would have some sense."

In response, the company said the packaging was designed to keep avocados green and stop them from browning.

Replying to the Facebook post, a represtentative wrote: "This product was developed for people who might be new to using avocados...

"It eliminates the guess work when it comes to ripeness and any challenges if you are not familiar with peeling and seeding a fresh avocado."

Not everyone was critical of the idea, and some reached out to the company on Facebook to welcome the product.

Gavin Goodwin wrote: "Sobeys, I actually love your prepackaged avocado idea.

"I don't know who all these people are that can't believe you'd make this product. I can imagine all sort of situations where this would be convenient to have available.

"From wanting to have an avocado on the job site without needing to pack a knife. To elderly or handicapped people who can't easily navigate a knife.

"People tend to vote with how they spend so if people are buying it than it proves that it's meeting a need. I always keep a few avocados around but would utilise this product as well."

Earlier this month health food supermarket Whole Foods was criticised after a London woman tweeted a picture of pre-peeled oranges on sale in large plastic containers in a California store.

The company received a barrage of complaints and later withdrew the product from sale.
A prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks has been caught alive after he was wounded in a shootout with police at a Brussels flat.

Salah Abdeslam was captured in a huge anti-terror operation in the Belgian capital after four months on the run.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel confirmed the news at a press conference alongside French president Francois Hollande hours after heavily armed officers stormed a building in the city's Molenbeek district.

He said that two other men were also held in the operation in a part of the Belgian capital some of the Paris attackers, including suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, were from.

Shootout: Armed police outside the flat EPA/ Belgium OUT / AP/Belgium OUT

French police officials and the Belgian migration minister Theo Francken confirmed his arrest today, tweeting: "We got him."

French President Francois Hollande congratulated the Belgian authorities and said moves would start to extradite Abdeslam, who was born in Brussels, back to France.

Mr Hollande said: "I have a special thought for the victims of the attacks on November 13 in Paris, because SA is directly connected to the preparation, organisation and ... the perpetration of these attacks.

"We got him": A suspect is taken away by police / AP/ Belgium OUT

"I also think of the families who have been looking forward to these arrests, whether from close range or long distance, who are connected to that abomination."

Belgian migration minister Theo Francken confirmed the arrest earlier on Friday, tweeting: "We've got him".

Paris terror suspect Abdeslams fingerprints found in raided Brussels flat

Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel left the EU-Turkey migrant crisis summit amid reports of the raid.

TV footage showed armed officers descending on the area and gunshots and explosions were reported.

Cordon: Police on the streets in Brussels EPA

Fire engines and ambulances were seen driving into the gated complex, which remains under armed police guard, and a helicopter hovered overhead.

Members of the public also began to gather at the scene.

Local media said police, who were joined at the scene by the army, appeared to use grenades while eyewitness reports suggested white smoke could be seen coming from a property.

At least ten gunshots were reportedly heard.

Shots: Witnesses heard at at least 10 gunshots EPA / EPA

The news came after the Belgian authorities said a man shot dead earlier this week was probably an accomplice of Abdeslam.

Fingerprints found at the address where Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid was killed suggest Abdeslam had been there too.

Two men escaped from the apartment during the gunfight with police and one of them is now thought to have been Abdeslam, 26, who fled from Paris after the terror attacks in November which killed 130 people.

Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up.

Abdeslam: The wanted man fled after the Paris attacks EPA / EPA

Brussels-born Abdeslam, a childhood friend of Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Prime suspect: Salah Abdeslam / EPA

Abdeslam, 26, fled Paris after the November 13 gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people at a theatre, the national stadium and cafes. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up.

The Brussels-born Abdeslam, a childhood friend of suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.
C lassical pianist Ludovico Einaudi says his big fan Nicki Minaj is a wonderful artist  but concedes he couldnt listen to her music all day.

The 60-year-old, who trained at Milans Conservatorio Verdi and will play four dates at the Royal Festival Hall in July, said he could understand the appeal of Minaj, who walks on stage to his music at her gigs.

Einaudi  whose fans include Ricky Gervais, Iggy Pop and Tom Hiddleston  is in Britain on a European tour, playing Hammersmith Apollo this week. His music has been in shows such Gogglebox, The X Factor, and Doctor Foster. He worked with Shane Meadows on This is England 90, and wrote the music for J Edgar, starring Leonardo diCaprio.

The Italian composer said of Minaj, 33, whose tracks include Anaconda, Bang Bang and Super Bass: Nicki, I know she is a fan and uses my music to walk onto the stage. She is a very different artist to me.

I know a bit of her music, but not all. I can see why her music is listened to and her appeal, and I respect her as an artist. I couldnt listen to her all day. But she is a wonderful American pop artist. Einaudi is one of the most streamed artists on the internet with 400,000 Spotify followers  more than Paloma Faith and Pixie Lott. He said: I dont have time to sit down and listen to records in the traditional way. It is no surprise that people find my music through the internet even though it is classical.

He said the use of his music on TV happens a lot without me being aware. I know Ricky Gervais used it for Derek. I liked it.

Einaudi is believed to be the first classical pianist to sell out three dates at the Apollo: I like the venue. It is great to have a classical pianist play at a venue known for rock. He played tracks from new album Elements, out on Decca, which hit 12 in the mainstream chart.

Follow @StandardShowbiz for more entertainment news.
P olice in Seattle have released photos of the shotgun Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain used to kill himself more than two decades ago.

Cold case detective Mike Ciesynski is shown holding Cobains gun at different angles in five photos posted to the police departments website.

The pictures were taken in last June, put on the city of Seattles computer system on March 3 and since then have been added to the investigative file, according to police.

Police did not explain why they released the pictures.

Photographed: Detective Michael Ciesynski holds the shotgun which rock legend Kurt Cobain used to kill himself Seattle police via AP / Seattle Police via AP

However it followed a public records request from CBS News for the photos to dispel a rumour...that the shotgun had been melted down to hide evidence in a supposed...coverup of a potential murder.

Cobains body was found in Seattle on April 8 1994. An investigation determined that a few days earlier he had gone into the greenhouse of his large home and taken a massive dose of heroin. He then shot himself with a 20-gauge shotgun. His death was ruled a suicide.

Amid a swirl of rumours surrounding his death, Mr Ciesynski reviewed the case files on the 20th anniversary of Cobains death in 2014 and said he found no new information to change the police conclusion that the singer took his own life.

Cobain, who was 27 and married to the rock singer Courtney Love, helped popularise the Pacific north-wests grunge rock music, along with bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Mudhoney.

The Greatest Albums of All Time 1 /14 The Greatest Albums of All Time Definitely Maybe Definitely Maybe, the Oasis debut, has been named the Greatest Album of All Time in a poll of more than 40,000 music fans. Revolver The fab four also claimed third place for Revolver in the survey organised by the book of British Hit Singles and Albums and NME.com. OK Computer Another British band, Radiohead, were in fourth position with OK Computer. (What's the Story) Morning Glory? One ranking in the top ten wasn't enough for the Manchester lads and Oasis' album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? was voted into fifth place. Nevermind It's cover image became iconic in the nineties and Nirvana's music wasn't too bad either with Nevermind ranked at number six. The Stone Roses The Stone Roses' self-titled album is at number seven. Dark Side Of The Moon The legendary Pink Floyd get their first entry with Dark Side Of The Moon at number eight. The Queen Is Dead The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead was at number nine in the poll to celebrate 50 years of the Official UK Albums Chart. The Bends Radiohead get their second entry into the top ten with The Bends ranked at number ten. The Joshua Tree U2's The Joshua Tree was voted into eleventh place by fans from as far afield as New Zealand, Croatia and Colombia. London Calling The Clash's London Calling fly the flag for British punk at number 12.

Follow @StandardShowbiz for more entertainment news.
K anye West uses his Twitter to let off steam and Kim Kardashian posts the odd nude selfie  but Tom Hanks has been using his for a good cause.

Hanks, 59, has been attempting to reunite the public with lost miscellaneous items of clothing.

The actor has been tweeting pictures of single socks, shoes and baby mittens alongside puzzled captions about the misplaced items.

A striped sock found on March 16 was favourited 9,500 times at the time of writing, and was retweeted more than 2,500 times.

Another shows the actor making shadows with his hands next to a lone black glove. He captioned the image: 2 shadows but just a single lost glove. Bittersweet. Hanx.

In others he observes how a lone stiletto could mean the owner left in a hurry and that one member of the public was left with a one cold hand after losing a glove.

The actor's Twitter followers joked that the lost items are the results of "wormhole theories" but others were more sceptical, with one posting: Clever marketing ploy for next movie. Wilson will be miffed.

It's not the first time the Oscar winning actor has used the social network to reunite lost items with their owners.

In October Hanks launched a Twitter appeal to reunite Fordham University student 'Lauren' with her identity card which he found in a New York park.

He took to Twitter to post a picture and tweeted: Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx.

The actor himself thanked a member of the public after they handed in his lost credit card.

Thanking the man, Hanks tweeted: "A guy named Tony found my credit card on the street in NYC and returned it. You make this city even greater! Thanx. HANX."

Graham Norton: Tom Hanks, Peter Capaldi, and Duran Duran 1 /6 Graham Norton: Tom Hanks, Peter Capaldi, and Duran Duran November 20 Tom Hanks, Peter Capaldi, David Walliams, and Duran Duran PA / So TV Tom Hanks The Hollywood actor displayed his new grey hair and moustache for forthcoming Clint Eastwood film PA / So TV Peter Capaldi The Doctor Who actor praised his co-star Jenna Coleman PA / So TV Tom Hanks The Hollywood actor displayed his new grey hair and moustache for forthcoming Clint Eastwood film PA / So TV Duran Duran The Eighties band performed What Are The Chances On My Mind in the studio PA / So TV

Follow @StandardShowbiz for more entertainment news.
Deadly Law on California's Horizon

Contact: Alexandra Snyder, Life Legal Defense Foundation , 202-717-7371NAPA, Calif., March 18, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- A California law allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs will go into effect in just 90 days. Under the End of Life Option Act, physicians can prescribe "aid-in-dying" drugs (mega-doses of barbiturates) to patients diagnosed with a disease that, within reasonable medical judgment, will cause death within six months.The Act has been on hold for the past five months, as it was passed during a special legislative session that was called by Governor Jerry Brown to cut healthcare spending and address Medi-Cal funding shortfalls. The special session closed a few days ago, which means that on June 9, assisted suicide will be legal in California."The End of Life Act fundamentally changes the practice of medicine in California," says Alexandra Snyder, Executive Director of Life Legal Defense Foundation. "The new law violates the trust between vulnerable patients and their doctors, who should have an unequivocal commitment to protectingnot shorteninghuman life."The original Principles of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association provided that physicians "ought not to abandon a patient because deemed incurable." Patients already have the right to opt out of unwanted life-prolonging treatment. But now, under the guise of patient "autonomy," California will no longer protect the weak from pressure to end their lives prematurely."Aid-in-dying" proponents are working to abandon ever more patients to lethal drugs. They want to legalize doctor-assisted death nationwide. They want assisted suicide available even for those who are not terminally ill. Tragically, their efforts are often successful.In Oregon, the number of patients who die by assisted suicide has increased by over 800% since the so-called "Death with Dignity Act" was passed. Canada is getting ready to enact legislation that will allow assisted suicide even for those with non-terminal conditions. In the Netherlands, mentally ill patients can go to pop-up clinics to be put to death by doctors who have never treated them.Life Legal is preparing to challenge the End of Life Option Act before the June 9 implementation date.About Life Legal Defense FoundationLife Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit www.lldf.org
Over 100 Eastern Wyoming College staff and faculty plus students and community members were in attendance for the groundbreaking for the Career and Technical Education Center on March 17. Eastern Wyoming College held a groundbreaking ceremony to commemorate the start of the new building.

The cost for the CTE Center is about $23 million. Twenty million dollars was provided by the Wyoming State Legislature Appropriation and the difference came from the general obligation bonds supported by Goshen County voters two years during elections.

In June of 2013, the college received approval from the state to pursue funding for the project. The $20 million was approved in a legislative session in 2014.

The building is set to be completed by August 2017 and EWC is going to start programs in the center that fall. The new building will be about 69,000 square feet and will house programs in welding and joining technology, cosmetology and health technology.

Ron Laher, vice president for administrative services, said that there has been an increase in the Career and Technical Education programs with steady growth.

Its more about serving the number of students we have now and a way to increase the square footage for the programs, said Laher.

The building is a partial two-floor building and will have around 50 rooms or meeting areas.

The college will be able to replace aging facilities for the programs and place most of the career and technical courses under one roof. Currently, these programs are in three separate buildings on the campus.

The biggest benefit is that we get to retire some aging buildings and create some brand new space that our students will be able to get excited about, said Laher.

Laher also said there will be more room for the programs with larger instruction areas.

A big benefit is a large lecture classroom that will be able to hold over 80 students. In addition, the welding program will have an additional welding lab, cosmetology will get an area for skin treatment, be able to store more items, and are looking at starting a barbery program which the school supports. The biggest change for the Health Technology program will be that it will double the amount of educational space and they will have a couple more labs and they will be able to handle more students for the CNA class.

The community education and workforce program classes will also be at the CTE Center.

In the new building there will be a nice area for cooking classes, instructional trainings, a computer lab, and new areas for community trainings, said Laher.

To make room for the new building, the Community Trainings Center and the mechanical arts building will be demolished. The footprint of the CTE Center will also go into the softball field. The project also initiated creating a new parking lot north of the classes. This will provide for closer parking for the Verl Petsch Jr. Activities Center. The new parking lot will be much larger and better accommodate buses and large vehicles.

The leadership for the project has been a collaboration of the State of Wyoming Construction Management Office and two faculty members at EWC. Laher said the two people with the Construction Management Office greatly helped with the design and they will also watch the construction process. He said they will make sure it is a fully functioning building by August 2017.

Keith Jarvis, Director of Physical Plant Department at EWC, and Chuck Kenyon, Technology/Communications Administrator at EWC, will be involved in the day-to-day interaction with the main contractor. Laher said they will be the ones planning and executing the actual construction.

Construction is slated to begin next month.

FCI Constructors Inc., based in Cheyenne, is the Construction Manager at Risk for the project. As part of this they are considered the main contractor and work with the owners, EWC, to provide their services but also act as a consultant to the owner in the design development and construction phases. There will also be several sub-contractors that are hired through the construction process. Eight companies will be involved in the structural stages, providing material from steel to flooring. Seven specialized companies will be a part of the final stages.
GREELEY, Colo. (AP)  Colorado's appeals court has overturned a man's conviction and granted him a new trial in the killing of his wife more than two decades ago.

The Greeley Tribune reports the appeals court announced its decision Thursday in the case of John Sandoval, who was convicted in August 2010 of killing his estranged wife, Kristina Sandoval. The court ruled that a trial judge was wrong to allow evidence that Sandoval stalked other women and expert testimony correlating stalkers with murderers.

The Sandovals were married four years before she disappeared in October 1995.

Police long suspected John Sandoval, but they initially had no body, forensic evidence or witnesses. Detectives found witnesses to testify after Sandoval was arrested in 2009.

The appeals court says those witnesses jeopardized his right to a fair trial.
The festival will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Monument Mall. Admission is one can of food and attendees can enjoy games, a bounce house, crafts, miniature golf, a balloon room and other family activities.
On March 9, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, an African-American protester was being escorted out of a Donald Trump rally. As he was led up the steps and out of the stadium, a white man in a cowboy hat slid over to the aisle and threw a vicious elbow in his face, a blatant sucker punch.

When John McGraw, 78, was interviewed moments later he said, Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.

After video of the attack came out, McGraw was arrested and charged with a crime.

On Meet The Press the following Sunday, show host Chuck Todd asked Trump if it was possible that he would pay for McGraws legal fees.

Trump said, Ive actually instructed my people to look into it.

CNNs Jake Tapper asked the GOP frontrunner Trump at a recent debate: Do you believe that youve done anything to create a tone where this type of violence would be encouraged?

Trump said: I hope not. I truly hope not.

Hes also said: I certainly dont condone violence. I dont incite violence. And I dont talk about violence.

Lets see if thats actually true.

 At a Trump campaign rally on Nov. 21 in Birmingham, Alabama, a protester was roughed up and later Trump said it was the protesters fault. Maybe he should have been roughed up, Trump said.

 On Feb. 1 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he said that protesters at his rally were fair game. If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? he said. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.

 In Las Vegas on Feb. 22, he was complaining that Were not allowed to punch back anymore, referring to another protester. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? he asked the crowd. Theyd be carried out on a stretcher, folks...Id like to punch him in the face.

 On March 4, in Warren, Michigan, he said he would defend any of his supporters who assaulted a protester. Get him out. Try not to hurt em, he said. If you do Ill defend you in court. Dont worry about it.

A week later, in Chicago, the violence reached a fever pitch when protesters and Trump supporters clashed at a rally. Then Trump didnt want any part of the violence and canceled the rally.

He also didnt want any part of the hostility he helped create when on the next day, March 12, someone jumped a security barrier and tried to get on stage with him. He ducked, a stricken look on his face, until Secret Security formed a ring around him and removed the man. Trump gripped the arms of the security agents, then gripped the rails of his podium as he went back to whipping up his supporters.

Trump has complained that no one wants to hurt each other any more. He spoke like he was feeling nostalgic, for a better time, the glory days when people attacked each other.

This is also what he means when talks about how America has become too politically correct, that he wishes for the good ol days when people used racial epithets in public and assaulted those they disagreed with. He seems to wish that anyone who disagreed with him or his policies will get beaten up.

Is this strength? Is this an America made great? Or is this tyranny? Is this strongman ideology?

Last week, Josh Marshall, the editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, wrote an op-ed titled Someone Will Die. He stated (Trump) is drawing in, like moths to a flame, those who most want to act out on their animosities, drives and beliefs. It is the kind of climate where someone will eventually get killed.

That might strike some as hyperbolic, but it doesnt seem out of the realm of possibility. This presidential election has defied nearly every prediction. How many times have we heard We havent seen something like this before?

Strongman is just another name for dictator. And throughout history dictators have squashed dissent with an iron fist. Judging by his behavior and his words, thats what Trump would do if he was elected and the American people became dissatisfied with his presidency. He would treat the public just like he treats the protesters at his rallies.

While its easy to understand Americans anger, the problems in our country arent the fault of those brave enough to walk into hostile territory and protest.

Supporting someone in power who wants to crush dissent with violence is a risky proposition.

Would you want this man in charge of the military? Where will you be if he decides to do something you dont like? Will you feel like you can stand up and cry out? Or will you be afraid of the violence that might be used against you?
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Friday, 18 March 2016 14:44:53 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In the current week, demand for Turkish rebar in the export market has remained at low levels, while Turkish rebar offers to the export market have moved sideways in the range of $370-400/mt FOB after the price declines recorded in the first half of March. Although import scrap prices in Turkey have increased further in the same period, Chinese billet offers to the country have softened. In addition, with the deals they have concluded in their domestic market, Turkish steelmakers have gained relief in terms of rebar sales and are unwilling to reduce their rebar export offers.In the current week, steel producers in the UAE, one of Turkey 's most important rebar export markets, have also revised their rebar prices upwards. However, buyers report that local producers have continued to offer discounts depending on buyer and volume and that there is almost no difference between prices of imported and locally produced rebar . Accordingly, buyers in the UAE mostly prefer to purchase locally produced rebar . SteelOrbis has been informed that a Turkish steel mill has concluded a deal in the UAE for 10,000 mt rebar at $395/mt CFR and a deal in Oman for 20,000 mt rebar at $392/mt CFR, both on theoretical weight basis, though these deals have not been confirmed by the seller. Additionally, there has been speculation that the five percent import tax in the UAE will be increased to 15 percent, though no official announcement has been made yet.In Egypt, the deadline for export permit applications has expired but, since the Egyptian government has made no announcement regarding the suppliers which have been approved, rebar sales to the country are at a standstill. On the other hand, market sources report that at least one or two Turkish steel mills have been granted permits.On the other hand, buyers in the US still believe the increases in rebar prices will be short-lived and so they are still postponing their purchases and are waiting for more advantageous price levels.
Friday, 18 March 2016 16:34:20 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

During the past two weeks, export offers from Turkish merchant bar producers have increased by $35/mt and are currenlty at the following levels:

Product Price ($/mt) Angle 430-440 IPN-UPN 440-450 Flat bar 450-460 IPE 440-450

All prices are on FOB basis and for April shipment.
La Francofonie has been celebrated outdoor in the campus of Bucharest's University of Agronomy on Friday by dozens of youths at a genuine picnic with wine and fruit from the university's research stations.

The celebration was included in a series of poetic picnics styled Haikunoi (editor's note: a pun combining the Japanese poem haiku and the Romanian for 'join us') that took place simultaneously in 54 places countrywide. The participants were asked to write a haiku and publish it on their own Facebook pages or on the one dedicated to the event, using the hashtag #Haikunoi2016. "It's a start. We promise to do more for the future," said university's rector Sorin Cimpeanu, adding that the university is honoured to participate in La Francophonie events.

The event was also attended by the French ambassador in Bucharest Francois Saint-Paul, who spoke - in French and Romanian - about the value of multilingualism in Romania. He praised the Romanians ability to learning several foreign languages and said that multilingualism is "an attractive economic stake" for foreign investors, and that Romania is "the most Francophone country in Europe."

The 'Poetic Picnic - Haikunoi2016' event is organized by the French Embassy and the French Institute in Bucharest, with support from the Group of Francophone Embassies, Delegations and Institutions (GADIF), of the French Lectorates, the French Alliances, the Francophone centres, houses, high-schools and libraries, and the French language departments of universities.

Agerpres
AWARDS

The following were named Small Business Week award winners for 2016 by the U.S. Small Business Administrations St. Louis office:

Small business person of the year: David Bailey , CEO and founder of Baileys Restaurants

, CEO and founder of Baileys Restaurants Small business exporter: Jesse Stricker , Intek Corp.

, Intek Corp. Women-owned: Julia Escandon , AW Healthcare

, AW Healthcare Family-owned: Nathan and Christina Bennett , Hendels Market Restaurant

, Hendels Market Restaurant Veteran-owned: Josh Frank , RSM Federal

, RSM Federal Startup: Denny and Barry Foster , Main & Mill Brewing Co.

, Main & Mill Brewing Co. Home-based: Chris Robinson , R3 Coaching

, R3 Coaching Minority-owned: Tommy Davis Jr. , TD4

, TD4 Rural-owned: Michael Sloan , Hermann Wurst Haus

, Hermann Wurst Haus Technology business of the year: Venkat Pulumati , Nvision IT

, Nvision IT Immigrant-owned: Andres Benavides and Claudia Barona , Lifepack LLC

and , Lifepack LLC Entrepreneurial success: Russ Odegard and Mike Pruett , Dynalabs LLC

and , Dynalabs LLC 8(a) graduate of the year: Jeffery W. Kelley, Unitech Consulting LLC

The Bridgeton office of Trane received an award of merit from the St. Louis Green Business Challenge

The Marfan Foundation honored business leaders Robert and Donna Plummer, president and vice president of R.P. Lumber, with the its 2016 Corporate Champions Award. Dr. Charles Huddleston, professor of surgery at St. Louis University School of Medicine and SLUCare pediatric surgeon at SSM Cardinal Glennon Childrens Medical Center, received the 2016 Hero with a Heart Award.

Black & Veatch Corp. won the Grand Conceptor Award at the annual Engineering Excellence competition of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Missouri. Grand Awards were presented to: Donohue & Associates Inc.; Hanson Professional Services Inc. and POWER Engineers; HNTB Corp.; and Oates Associates Inc. Honor Awards went to Geotechnology Inc.; HDR Inc.; and HR Green Inc. The Distinguished Service Award was given to Alper Audi Inc.

EXPANDING

Space Race Storage, 2655 Victor Ave., signed on as a U-Haul neighborhood dealer.

HTE Technologies opened a collaborative robot resource lab to support manufacturers.

HELPING OUT

The Monsanto Fund granted Maryville University $120,000 to host a summer robotics program called CREST-M

(Children using Robotics for Engineering, Science, Technology and Math.)

CarMax of OFallon, Ill., donated $2,500 to St. Louis Fisher House, which supports members of the military and their families during a medical crisis. The CarMax Foundation provided a $5,000 grant to the OFallon YMCA to help at-risk youth participate in after-school tutoring and swim lessons.

Vanessa Keith, an officer at Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale P.C., was named general counsel to the Mathews-Dickey Boys & Girls Club.

MILESTONE

Collier Brothers Auto Body celebrates 70 years in business.

The Timmermann Group celebrates 35 years in business.

NEW OWNERS

Stephanie Flyn, Tom Gatti, Nick Benedick and Lauren Freinberg joined Mary DeHahn as owners of Black Twig Communications LLC.

OPENING

Associated Bank opened a newly remodeled branch:

326 Missouri Avenue, East St. Louis, Ill. 62201

FASTSIGNS opened a new shop:

4101 Mexico Road, St. Peters, Mo. 63376

CarMax Inc. opened a new store:

1254 Central Park Drive, OFallon, Ill.

RECOGNITION

Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale P.C. was named Missouri Firm of the Year by Benchmark Litigation.

Barb Walgren of POWERS Insurance and Benefits was named a State Auto Insurance Cos. PaceSetter agent.

Verizon was first in overall performance in Missouri and the sub-categories of data and speed in RootMetrics State RootScore Report for Missouri.

Larry VandeVen, regional director of Penn Mutuals north central region, received Penn Mutuals National Presidents Award for 2015.
Ferguson, the scene of 2014 riots over the fatal police shooting of a black teenager, will get its first Starbucks next month, a sign that Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz isnt backing down from his commitment to improve race relations.

A year ago this week, the 62-year-old coffee guru ignited an Internet firestorm when he asked baristas to write Race Together on paper and plastic cups. It was supposed to get customers talking about racial issues after demonstrations broke out nationwide over the police killing of unarmed black men, including Michael Brown, 18, of Ferguson. Instead, it was blasted on social media as a clumsy and superficial attempt to discuss a serious issue.

The Ferguson store, at 10776 West Florissant Avenue, is one of at least 15 units that Starbucks plans to open in poor urban neighborhoods as part of a diversity program aimed at improving the lives of minority residents. Other areas targeted include Jamaica, in the New York City borough of Queens; the Englewood section of Chicago; and Milwaukee.

You couldnt turn on the news media without seeing what was going on, and it troubled Howard, said Vivek Varma, who spearheads Starbucks efforts on race and other social topics. He said the cup fiasco was a valuable lesson.

Anytime we take on an issue like this, we know there is risk, he said. The lack of understanding about all of the things, and the thoughtfulness with which we were trying to bring this into the public, was lost.

Schultz declined to comment for this article.

At least five of the Starbucks stores in urban areas are expected to begin operating in 2016. The company says the jobs created will help achieve a goal of hiring 10,000 young people who face barriers to meaningful jobs and quality education.

When it comes to race, Schultz isnt the only CEO taking action. Starbucks is part of a coalition of more than a dozen companies  including Hilton Worldwide Holdings, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Macys  that are using apprenticeships, training and job fairs in an effort to hire 100,000 disadvantaged young people by 2018. So far, 20,000 have been hired, according to Varma.

In the technology industry, the lack of minority workers has prompted Amazon.com, Apple and other companies to be more transparent about hiring, and set goals to improve. In 2014, Google became the first technology company to report its ethnic and gender makeup, prompting similar moves by its peers.

The new Starbucks in Ferguson is already a rallying point for more investment, said Dan Bish, Fergusons community development coordinator. Clayton-based Centene Corp. built three new buildings on the site of a used-car lot that will employ 200 people, while McDonalds and Burger King have both fully refurbished their Ferguson stores, Bish said.

Starbucks was a huge get for us, Bish said. They are helping spur investment along the entire corridor. Were saying, Theyre willing to invest in us. You should invest in us, too.

In addition to the store, which will employ about 25 to 30 full- and part-time workers, Starbucks hired Natalies Cakes and More, a Ferguson bakery founded by Natalie DuBose, to provide desserts for all of its St. Louis-area stores and tapped a Ferguson resident to manage the new unit, Bish said.

Investors neednt worry that Starbucks is focused on philanthropy at the expense of its bottom line, said Varma, the Starbucks official. The Ferguson unit  as well as the others opening in poor urban areas  will be profitable, in part because of cheaper land, he said.

More than 40 percent of Starbucks U.S. workforce are minorities, along with about 28 percent of store managers and 18 percent of senior leadership. The U.S. population is about 77 percent white and 13 percent black, according to the U.S. Census.

Starbucks Ferguson store is an indication of broader support among business leaders to take concrete action to improve black lives, said Ron Parker, CEO of the Executive Leadership Council, a national organization. The group, which includes more than 600 current and former black CEOs, directors and other leaders, advocates promotion of black executives.

The most tangible signal of hope, he said, is an investment of bricks and mortar.
MillerCoors will keep its headquarters in Chicago and retain its name, according to a letter from CEO Gavin Hattersley to employees Thursday.

The announcement ends months of speculation that MillerCoors could move to Colorado or Canada once the brewer is absorbed by Molson Coors as part of Anheuser-Busch InBev's pending acquisition of SABMiller. As part of the proposed $107 billion mega-merger, Molson Coors would acquire the rest of MillerCoors for about $12 billion  a divestiture considered key to gaining Justice Department approval.

MillerCoors is a joint venture of Molson Coors, which currently owns 42 percent, and SABMiller.

About 450 people are employed in MillerCoors' 167,000-square-foot office at 250 S. Wacker Drive, just across the street from Willis Tower. The company signed a 15-year lease in 2008, said Jonathan Stern, MillerCoors spokesman.

It's too early to say whether there will be job cuts or additions, but the company has "no intention on cutting back on space in the building," Stern said.

Stern said Thursday that MillerCoors would function as a separate business unit owned by Molson Coors.

After news of the merger broke in the fall, some analysts speculated that Molson Coors would choose to consolidate MillerCoors' back-office functions in Denver or Montreal  where Molson Coors already has headquarters  in order to avoid redundancies and save money.

In his letter to employees, Hattersley acknowledged that "the excitement comes with some anxiety and questions."

In the email, he wrote: "First, our organization will keep the MillerCoors name. The name reflects our proud heritage here in the U.S. and has strong recognition and brand equity with our customers. ...

"Second, based on a thorough cost and benefits analysis, our MillerCoors headquarters will remain in Chicago, and the Molson Coors headquarters will remain in Colorado."

In November, Molson Coors executives said they expected to save $200 million a year by eliminating overlap by the fourth full year after the deal closes. Those savings will come from efficiencies in purchasing and its global supply network, among other things, they said.

In his letter to employees, Hattersley said he was confident the company would hit those targeted savings as planned and encouraged his employees to stay focused on delivering the plan for growing the business in 2016.

He signed off: "Cheers, Gavin."
Monsanto Co. has approached Bayer AG to express interest in its crop science unit, including a potential acquisition worth more than $30 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move underscores the Creve Coeur-based seed giants unabated expansion drive after Switzerlands Syngenta AG rejected its takeover approaches last year.

It also illustrates Monsantos determination to further consolidate its industry, as the global seed and crop protection market continues to suffer from high inventories and low prices for agricultural commodities.

Monsanto executives met in Chicago recently to discuss the companys interest in Bayers agricultural assets, the sources said this week. Monsanto sees valuable synergies between its seed business and the crop protection assets of Bayer, the sources added.

Among the possibilities discussed were an outright acquisition of the crop science unit and a joint venture or other type of partnership between the two companies, the sources said. These talks were preliminary, and another meeting between the two sides has been scheduled for April, the sources added.

Bayer has been holding the talks with Monsanto to gauge its interest, the sources said. The German company currently has no plans to actively pursue a sale of its crop science division, the sources added.

The sources asked not to be identified because the discussions were confidential. Monsanto and Bayer declined to comment.

Bayers crop science division has businesses in seeds, crop protection and nonagricultural pest control. It had sales of 10.4 billion euros ($11.7 billion) in 2015 and posted adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 2.42 billion euros.

Bayer is the second biggest player in crop chemicals, with an 18 percent market share, just behind Syngenta, which has a 19 percent share. Monsanto is a leader in seeds, with a 26 percent market share, followed by DuPont, with 21 percent. DuPont agreed last year to merge with Dow Chemical.

Bayer said last year it planned to keep its crop chemicals business, saying it was an integral part of the German health care group. It has said it aims to concentrate on its core brands in crop protection.

It also wants to strengthen its position in its established crops  cotton, canola, rice and vegetables  and to establish competitive positions in soybeans and wheat.
Despite the efforts of moderators to stick to subjects such as tax policy and infrastructure, a debate between Missouris four Republican gubernatorial candidates Thursday night descended into arguments over sex abuse allegations, strip clubs and out-of-state money.

At issue was the roughly $1 million in donations that candidate Eric Greitens has accepted from a California investor who was sued last week by a woman who claims the investor sexually assaulted her for more than a decade.

During the debate at the University of Missouri-Columbia, candidate Catherine Hanaway broke out of a discussion about the minimum wage to allege that Greitens refusal to immediately return the contributions from the investor  as did GOP presidential candidate John Kasich  is an affront to women.

An abused woman, (and) you wont take her word for it, Hanaway said. Powerful men always try to suppress their voices.

Greitens countered that Hanaway, a former prosecutor, is assuming the guilt of the contributor before the civil case plays out. Unlike career politicians, Im not going to convict someone in the court of public opinion, Greitens said.

Later, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder returned to the topic, telling Greitens: Eric, I dont think youre going to be able to maintain this with your million-dollar donor ... John Kasich did the honorable thing within a few hours.

Kinder then challenged Greitens  who has been criticized because a large portion of his campaign money comes from outside Missouri  to explain, Who are these billionaires giving money to a guy who was a Democrat 18 months ago?

Greitens responded with a reference to a 2011 controversy over Kinders earlier relationship with a stripper.

Peter, youre the last person on this stage, sir, who should be trafficking in tabloid stories about men hanging out in strip clubs, Greitens said.

Kinder called that comment a sliming, and noted that despite that controversy, he has been re-elected to statewide office.

It was a diversion from an otherwise policy-heavy debate at MUs Missouri Theatre, as Hanaway, Greitens, Kinder and businessman John Brunner agreed on the need for low taxes, looser regulations, right-to-work legislation and other standard Republican positions.

The campaign gift controversy first came up this week, when Hanaway demanded that Greitens return the $1 million his campaign has received from California venture capitalist Michael Goguen. The investor is the subject of a lawsuit filed last week alleging that Goguen sexually, physically and emotionally assaulted a woman for 13 years.

A super-PAC that supports Kasichs presidential bid has already returned a $250,000 donation from Goguen. Greitens campaign has said it will wait for the litigation to play out before deciding whether to return the money.

Other than the digressions into the sex-and-money controversies, the candidates stuck to what have become familiar campaign themes.

Brunner stressed his credentials as a former CEO and argued that will help him build the states economy. Hanaway stressed her experience as a prosecutor. Kinder noted he is the only candidate who has shown he can win a statewide election. Greitens stressed his background founding an organization to help fellow veterans continue to serve in their communities.

Missouris state primaries are Aug. 2. The winner of the Republican primary will most likely face Democratic Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster in the Nov. 8 general election.
WASHINGTON  Bernie Sanders said Thursday he will not seek a recount of results in Missouri's Democratic presidential primary, conceding defeat to Hillary Clinton.

"I think it's unlikely the results will impact at all the number of delegates the candidate gets and I would prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Whether we win by 200 votes or lose by 500, it's not going to impact the delegate selection," the Vermont senator added. "It's going to be evenly divided."

Clinton has a narrow lead of 1,531 votes, but under state law Sanders could have sought a recount because the margin was less than one-half of one percent.

Clinton will get an extra two delegates from Missouri for winning the statewide vote.

The win in Missouri means Clinton won all five of Tuesday's Democratic primary contests. She also beat Sanders in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina.

Donald Trump won the Republican race, but also by less than half a percent, according to unofficial final results from the Missouri Secretary of State's Office. Ted Cruz could seek an automatic recount.

Even though winning Missouri gives Clinton two additional delegates, she remains tied with Sanders at 34, with three delegates remaining to be allocated in the state. Democrats award delegates based on the share of the vote, both statewide and in congressional districts. Clinton was on track to come out ahead with one additional delegate, pending final vote data in two congressional districts.

Clinton now leads Sanders in pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, 1,147 to 830.

When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has a much bigger lead  1,614 to 856.
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 100 ends higher; Mordaunt makes UK PM tilt

Friday, October 21, 2022 - 17:22

The pound regained some poise on Friday afternoon but remained in precarious territory, after falling below the $1.11 mark in afternoon trade.

The pound was quoted at $1.1203 at the close on Friday, down versus $1.1294 at the London equities close on Thursday. It hit an intraday low of $1.1063 not long after midday.

Sterling was hurt by continued political uncertainty. Speculation about who will join Penny Mordaunt in throwing their hats in the ring in the race for Number 10 continues. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, one-time neighbours at Number 10 and 11 Downing Street - but now bitter rivals - have pockets of support from Tory MPs.

Adding to the pressure on sterling, disappointing UK retail sales data showed a bigger-than-expected decline in September, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail sales fell 6.9% annually in September, with the decline accelerating from a 5.6% fall in August. It also was worse than FXStreet-cited market consensus, which had expected a fall of just 5%.

The pound had initially found some support on Thursday after Liz Truss called an end to her disastrous tenure as prime minister - poking above $1.13 - but has since been dragged lower.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 25.82 points, or 0.4%, at 6,969.73 - closing out the week up 1.6%.

The FTSE 250 lost 182.38 points, or 1.1%, at 17,206.55, but still managed to gain 1.0% this week, and the AIM All-Share ended down 1.04 points, or 0.1% at 785.40 - but advanced 0.8% over the past five days.

The Cboe UK 100 closed up 0.4% at 696.31, the Cboe UK 250 ended down 1.0% at 14,694.15, and the Cboe Small Companies lost 0.3% at 12,240.46.

In European equities on Friday, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.3%.

The Tories have begun to declare their allegiances in the party's second leadership contest of the year as speculation mounts over who will seek to replace Truss at the helm of the party.

Supporters of Johnson are backing the former prime minister to make an extraordinary political comeback, while ex-chancellor Sunak and Commons Leader Mordaunt also have the public support of several MPs.

Mordaunt become the first to declare her candidacy, with a pledge to re-unite the bitterly divided party.

The leader of the House  who finished third in the last leadership election  said she had been encouraged by the support she had received from fellow Conservative MPs.

There has also been no declaration yet from Sunak, who did not answer questions from reporters as he left his home on Friday morning.

Whoever does win will face an immediate test, choosing whether to go ahead with the planned Halloween statement setting out how the government intends to get the public finances back on track, Downing Street has said.

Work is continuing in Whitehall, led by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, in preparation for the medium-term fiscal plan to be announced on October 31 along with an updated set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

However, a Number 10 spokeswoman said it would be up to Liz Truss's successor to decide whether to proceed with that approach and with the same timetable.

In London, blue chip miners helped push FTSE 100 higher. Glencore gained 3.6%, Anglo American 3.1%, Antofagasta 2.7%, and Rio Tinto added 1.6%.

Retailers, however, were showing weakness after the disappointing UK retail sales data. A profit warning from Adidas did nothing to help the mood either.

JD Sports closed down 6.1%, Frasers 4.0%, Burberry 2.2%, and Next shed 2.9%.

On Thursday, Adidas lowered annual guidance as it struggles with "deteriorating traffic" in China and high inventory levels.

The sports apparel maker said it has needed to turn to "higher clearance activity" to try and shift stock.

It lost 9.0% in Frankfurt.

Deliveroo gained 3.6%.

The London-based online food delivery service said gross transaction values rose 8.3% annually in the third quarter to 1.70 billion from 1.57 billion, though orders fell by 1.1% to 72.8 million from 73.6 million.

Deliveroo said the decline in orders was due to a difficult consumer environment. With economic data on Friday showing that UK consumer confidence remains near record lows, this seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

InterContinental Hotels gave back 2.2% but reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter to September 30, saying that high global employment levels are boosting occupancy levels.

Revenue per available room, or RevPAR, rose 28% year-on-year and now exceeds its pre-pandemic level, being up 2.7% on the third quarter of 2019.

In the third quarter of 2022, the average daily rate increased by 13% compared to a year ago and was up 11% on 2019.

Chief Financial Officer & Head of Strategy Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson will leave the company in six months time to become CFO of Flutter Entertainment in the first half of 2023.

IHG has started the process of finding a new CFO.

The euro stood at $0.9802 Friday evening, down against $0.9822 at the close on Thursday.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP148.03, compared to JP149.77 late Thursday. The yen was staging a fightback after the open on Wall Street, after nearly hitting JP152 during the Asia session.

Stocks in New York opened higher on Friday, with the DJIA up 1.1%, the S&P 500 index up 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.6% higher.

Brent oil was quoted at $92.84 a barrel late Friday, down from $93.29 late Thursday. Gold was quoted at $1,643.70 an ounce Friday, up against $1,641.90 from Thursday.

In the international economics events calendar next week, Monday will be dominated by a slew of composite PMIs, with Japan overnight followed by Germany, eurozone and the UK in the morning then the US in the afternoon. A quiet Tuesday will be headlined by a US house price index.

On Wednesday, there is Chinese GDP, retail sales and industrial production overnight, then on Thursday attention will be on the European Central Bank interest rate decision at 1315 BST. Friday will be headlined by a Bank of Japan rate decision.

In the local corporate calendar on Monday, there are half-year results from Dr Martens, while education publishing firm Pearson will issue a third quarter update.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
In January 2016 China put three more Type 72A LSTs (landing ship, tank) into service and there appear to be more under construction. At least 18 Type 72As have been identified and it is unclear how many China will eventually have but they are obviously intent on having a lot of them..

The Type 72A is a 5,000 ton ship that can carry 500 tons of cargo, five medium tanks or eight troops. There is also space for 250 infantry. The crew of 104 operates the ship along with one twin 37mm anti-aircraft gun, twin diesel engines and all the machinery necessary to operate the equipment needed to get cargo on and off the ship (via dock, smaller landing craft or onto a beach). There is also a helicopter landing pad but no hanger. Top speed is 37 kilometers an hour although while cruising speed it is 25 kilometers an hour. Range on internal fuel, at cruising speed is 5,400 kilometers. Max endurance at sea is about two weeks.

The LST was developed in the United States at the request of Britain before the U.S. had entered World War II in 1941. Nearly a thousand of these hundred meter (300 foot long) ships were built from 1942 to 1945. They could carry as many as 20 tanks and put them right on to a beach. The beaching process was not without its shortcomings. While the ship had a full load displacement of 4,000 tons, it could only be at 2,400 tons when running up on the beach. Even at that, there was usually damage done to the LST. The average landing operation would render ten percent of the LSTs involved unfit for further service. Moreover, the wear and tear on those that survived the run up onto the beach was such that, during the war, only about 85 percent of the LSTs still operational were actually fit enough for another landing. In effect, after about ten landings, an LST was a wreck and no longer useable for anything but moving cargo from one dock to another. This was typical of all ships that ran up on beaches to disgorge their cargo. The LST was basically a modified transport and, as such, was rather slow (14 kilometers an hour normally, with a max speed of 20-22 kilometers an hour). Normally they carried a crew of some 100 and were usually armed with eight 40mm anti-aircraft guns. LSTs were often converted to other uses, especially when they only had a few more beach landings left in their tortured hulls. Some were ended up serving as repair ships, PT-boat tenders, floating barracks and supply dumps, casualty evacuation ships, and even improvised aircraft carriers for light reconnaissance planes (eight of which could be operated off a portable airstrip set up on deck). It was often said that "LST" referred to "Large Slow Target" because of their slow speed and weak anti-aircraft armament.

Since 2000 China has been diligently building more amphibious ships. This was largely an effort to replace aging Cold War era relics while upgrading the amphibious fleet overall. Currently China has three LPDs (the U.S. has nine), over a hundred landing ships (LSMs and LSTs) and nearly 200 landing craft. The LPDs and landing ships can cross oceans while the landing craft can reach Taiwan and are mainly coastal but are often carried by larger ships for long distance voyages.

Most of the smaller amphibious craft actually belong to the army and, until recently you could tell that because the army ships were painted blue, while the navy ones were gray. But now the army is also painting its ships gray so you will have to get a closer look to tell who owns what. That is even more difficult now that the army is building more large ships, like one that appeared in 2013 which the army officially described as a RO/RO (Roll On/Roll Off) ship but on closer examination it was an LSM that could carry a dozen vehicles and about two hundred troops. In other words a mechanized infantry company. This new LSM was built in an army shipyard, has ramps in front and back and is armed with four 14.5mm machine-guns.

The Type 067 LCU can carry 50 tons for up to 800 kilometers and remain at sea for ten days at a time. These seagoing LCUs can operate in rough water while using its own navigation system. These Type 067s have been around for a long time. The first version began building in the 1960s and 130 were put into service. A scaled up version of the Type 067, the Type 271, can carry the latest, heavier (50 ton) Chinese tanks.

China also keeps track of hundreds of commercial ferries and barges that can be mobilized by the military and used for amphibious operations against Taiwan. It is believed that there is sufficient lift for over 300 infantry and mechanized (tank and mechanized infantry) battalions. Thats about 24 divisions. There is additional shipping (mostly civilian) for moving support units.

Since 2008 more landing craft have been built that can operate far at sea. This shows that the Chinese had their eyes on the South China Sea for some time and built all these long-range amphibious ships in anticipation of going after small islands and reefs far from the coast.
On March 4th yet another Irish terrorist group set off a bomb. This one was an attempt to kill a prison official in Northern Ireland (Ulster). This attack failed and the prison official was only wounded. Unfortunately this attack makes it clear that terrorism is not gone from Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain even though it comprises 20 percent of Ireland (the large island southwest of Britain) and 28 percent of the people living on the island. Although the rest of Ireland was granted independence in 1921 there has been a seemingly endless number of Irish nationalists willing to use violence to reunite all of Ireland. After this latest attack investigators made several arrests and seized bomb building materials. Yet another Irish terror group (the New IRA) was identified and is now the target for British counter-terror forces.

For the last 900 years Britain has been trying to pacify Ireland. The Irish kept fighting back and the last major outbreak of violence (from 1968-98) left 3,600 dead, most of them victims of Irish terror groups. In the late 1990s over a decade of peacemaking efforts finally paid off and actually achieved a level of peace not seen for centuries. A more recent milestone was achieved on July 12th 2014 where, for the first time, the annual march of pro-British Irish Protestants in Northern Ireland did not erupt in violence when the marchers sought to pass through a Catholic neighborhood. For the first time the marchers agreed to stop short of the Catholic area and after a short speech and a few songs, turned around and left without any violence breaking out. This was part of a trend that is still interrupted by new Irish terror groups forming and continuing the fight.

The British began withdrawing their troops after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1997. This process took a decade to complete. But the continued outbreaks of extremist violence led British special operations troops to return in 2009, not to fight but to collect intelligence on who was really doing what to whom. The original British Army operations in Northern Ireland, dubbed Operation "Banner", ran from 1969, when the insurgency in Northern Ireland revived, until 2007, when the province was deemed safe enough to withdraw all military forces. "Banner" was the longest continuous deployment of the British Army in history.

With the peace agreement in place and the primary combatants, the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defense Association, standing down, many people assumed that there would no longer be a need for the military to step in clamp down on terrorism. Many also assumed that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) would be able to keep a lid on any dissident republican violence.

However, smaller Irish terror groups like the Real IRA became more active and deadly. The problem of dissident republicans, and their potential to turn Northern Ireland once again into a virtually war zone, has had the British government taking no chances. Thus, the SRR (Special Reconnaissance Regiment) returned in 2009 to keep tabs and gather intelligence on groups like the Real IRA, Continuity IRA and now the New IRA.

Specialist units have long played a major role in the counter-terror war in Northern Ireland. The Special Air Service (SAS) at one point had an entire troop dedicated to carrying out operations against IRA targets in the province. Less well-known, however, was the 14th Military Intelligence Company, informally known as "The Det" (The Detachment). The 14 Det was the forerunner of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, carried out the exact same duties, and was, during its operation, regarded as possibly the most effective counter-terrorist intelligence organization in the world.

The purpose of The Det, unlike the SAS in Ulster, was not to arrest or neutralize IRA operatives, but to covertly gather intelligence on them. Operatives went through a secret program that included covert photography, surveillance and counter-surveillance tradecraft, disguise, accent training (to make the operators sound native Irish), unarmed combat, and, of course, close-quarter battle and weapons training. Although not tasked with confronting or capturing suspects, members of the 14 Company were notorious for being armed to the teeth, given the nature of their work, often carrying MP5 submachine guns and 9mm pistols on their persons and in their surveillance cars.

The group's work paid off, disrupting dozens of terrorist attacks and providing the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) with the information of dozens of IRA members and sympathizers. Most consider the unit's experience to have been a major success. The Det would provide the information they gathered from taking photos or bugging rooms to the RUC's HMSU (Headquarters Mobile Support Unit), or the SAS, who then arrested or killed the terrorists.

With the advent of the War on Terror after 2001 the unit morphed into the new Special Reconnaissance Regiment in 2004. This was done not only because the war in Northern Ireland was seen to be essentially over, but because the British military needed the same kind of surveillance and intelligence gathering skills, but needed it applied to Islamic terrorism in place like Iraq and Afghanistan. The SRR receives the same training as the old 14 Military Intelligence Company did, and has seen service all over the world.
For the last two weeks police throughout northern India have been on the alert for ten Islamic terrorists who are reported to have recently entered the country via boat from Pakistan. The ten were recently spotted Gujarat and three have been cornered and killed (after they would not surrender). Fir India most of the Islamic terrorist related violence continues to occur in the northwest (Kashmir) where Pakistan supported Islamic terrorists keep trying (and increasingly failing) to cross the heavily guarded border and maintain Islamic terrorist activity in Kashmir. India continues pressuring Pakistan to shut down the Pakistan based Islamic terror groups that specialize in attacking India. Pakistan has unofficially agreed to crack down on groups that seek to operate outside of Indian Kashmir, thus the latest unofficial help. But there are still over a dozen Islamic terrorist training camps In Pakistani Kashmir to support operations in Kashmir. These Islamic terror groups have a lot of fans inside Pakistan, especially with senior military and intelligence officers.

That is why Pakistan based Islamic terrorists continue fighting along the Kashmir border and on the Indian side of the border as well. In effect there is a new agreement in which India shares intelligence with Pakistan about Islamic terrorism that actually works. India has a lot of terror related intel that Pakistan does not have. Thus the major factor here is ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) recently showing up in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as continued attacks inside Pakistan by Pakistani Islamic terrorists who are not suitably grateful for the decades of support the Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) have provided.

This change in attitude is another side effect of the Pakistani military operations in North Waziristan. This has been going on since mid-2014 and has allowed the army to examine a lot of mosques and religious schools (madrasas) that had long been off-limits to the security forces. What was found was ample evidence that many mosques and most madrasas were basically part of an extensive Islamic terrorist infrastructure. The madrasas not only indoctrinated Moslem boys to be Islamic terrorists but took those who agreed to be killers and trained them. Mosques and madrasas were also found to have hidden (at least from public view) rooms for storing weapons, building bombs, training Islamic terrorists and housing veteran (but wanted) Islamic terrorists. In other words, what was found in North Waziristan changed minds among Pakistani officers who were either neutral on Islamic terrorism (at least when it was outside Pakistan) or enthusiastic supporters. There were also a lot of documents captured in these Islamic terrorist hideouts and hundreds of Islamic terrorists were captured and talked. So did many local civilians who had long been silent because the Islamic terrorists executed (or worse) informers. All this evidence said the same thing; the Islamic terrorists were far more powerful and numerous than thought and many of them were willing to destroy Pakistan in an effort to turn the country into a religious dictatorship.

This attitude adjustment also led to Pakistani officials admitting that they had provided sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban since 2002. This has long been common knowledge but until recently no one in the Pakistani government would admit it. This new openness was also facilitated by revelations that most of the civilians in North Waziristan, when allowed to give an honest opinion, said they backed the American use of UAVs to find and kill Islamic terrorist leaders. While this sometimes caused civilian casualties it mainly hurt the Islamic terrorists and civilians quietly approved of this. Some even risked their lives to provide targeting information for these UAV attacks. The same thing happened in Afghanistan, where U.S. officers were often approached by tribal leaders asking for more aerial efforts to find and attack Islamic terrorists. In Afghanistan it was widely known that over 80 percent of civilian casualties were from Taliban violence, which was often used to force civilians to support the Islamic terrorists or to punish real or imagined government informants. Since the Taliban worked closely with the drug gangs (which were very unpopular in Afghanistan) there was a lot of popular hostility towards Islamic terrorists in general. But in both countries the Islamic terrorists could bribe or intimidate the mass media to play down this lack of popular support and make more noise about American missiles killing innocent civilians.

India continues having success against the three internal threats (Islamic terrorism, tribal separatists and communist rebels). Together these three conflicts killed 772 people in India in 2015. This is a major decline since over the last decade these three conflicts have killed nearly 20,000 people (34 percent Islamic terrorists, 31 percent tribal separatists and 35 percent communist rebels). Actually that only accounts for about 99 percent of the deaths, most of the rest were caused by Hindu nationalists. So far this year the cause of deaths was 18 percent Islamic terrorists, 15 percent tribal separatists and 56 percent communist rebels. Overall violence is way down in all three areas. The Maoists are reorganizing and desperately trying to avoid eradication and they have been more successful at adapting than Islamic terrorists and tribal separatists. Like the other two groups the Maoists continue to decline in number and the amount of violence they cause. While much of the Islamic terrorism can be blamed on Pakistan all three of these conflicts are sustained by the corruption and poor government that has long proved difficult to deal with. Most Indians are unhappy about that, despite progress being made. That seems to account for the declining number of Indians willing to kill and die in an effort to solve these problems.

Pakistan has also greatly reduced it Islamic terrorism problem, which has always accounted for nearly all the terrorism related violence in Pakistan. In the last decade Pakistan has suffered more than twice as many of these deaths than India, which has six times more people. Thus on a per-capital basis Pakistan has about fifteen times as many such deaths as India. But attitudes are changing in Pakistan and the supporters of Islamic terrorism are on the defensive and Islamic terrorism related deaths are down more than fifty percent since the government decided to shut down the major Islamic terrorist sanctuary in North Waziristan with a major mid-2014 invasion. But there is still a lot of support for Islamic terrorism in Pakistan and it will take over a decade of additional effort to reduce such violence to Indian levels.

And then there is China. Pakistan imported $735 million in weapons in 2015. Most (76 percent) were from China while nine percent were from the United States. Pakistan is the largest export customer for Chinese weapons. Indian military leaders openly admit that India could not handle a war with China and Pakistan at the same time. That is one reason China is so helpful to Pakistan economically and militarily.

March 16, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (Peshawar) a bomb planted in a bus killed 15 government employees. This happened in a neighborhood containing many government and military installations. The Taliban was suspected but no one has taken credit for this yet.

March 13, 2016: India reports that its border forces have spotted Chinese troops on the Pakistani side of the LOC (Line of Control) in Kashmir. Chinese troops often cross the border in the nearby Indian state of Ladakh (northwest India). The Chinese are apparently in Pakistani Kashmir to work on the Karakoram Highway which connects Pakistan and China via Pakistani Kashmir and some of the roughest terrain in the world. Trade between Pakistan and China is increasing and the 1,800 kilometer long Karakoram Highway has been undergoing upgrades since 2010 to increase capacity. These improvements also make it possible for China to move military forces into northern Pakistan more quickly, something the Pakistanis like because it scares India. The highway was built largely by China and opened in 1979 after over a decade of effort.

March 11, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (Peshawar) a Taliban death squad killed another senior army officer as he left a mosque after prayers.

March 7, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (a town outside Peshawar) a Taliban suicide bomber got inside a courts compound and killed 17 people and wounded twenty. The military responded by increasing ground and air attacks in the Shawal valley (about 100 kilometers southwest of Miramshah, the largest city in North Waziristan) and killing at least 20 Islamic terrorists over the next 48 hours. Shawal has long been one of the most popular areas for Islamic terrorists in North Waziristan. The valley is rugged, remote and hard for troops to operate in. Pakistani bombers and American UAVs are still hitting the valley hard because it is one of the few places in North Waziristan where Islamic terrorists are still active, in part because the Afghanistan border is so close.

March 4, 2016: In south Yemen (the port of Aden) a group of ISIL gunmen attacked an old age home run by an Indian charity. The Islamic terrorists killed 16 people (including four elderly Indian nuns) and kidnapped an Indian priest. AQAP promptly denied any involvement but ISIL said nothing and there were soon rumors that ISIL had the Indian priest.

March 2, 2016: In eastern Afghanistan (Nangarhar province) Islamic terrorists tried to attack the Indian consulate but failed. Four of the attackers died and eight people in the vicinity were wounded. ISIL was believed responsible, as they were for a January Indian consulate attack.

March 1, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (Peshawar) two Pakistanis working for the local American consulate were killed by a roadside bomb, along with several soldiers. The consulate employees were working on an anti-drug operation.

February 24, 2016: In the eastern Afghanistan (Nangarhar Province) ten ISIL members surrendered and accused Pakistan of supplying ISIL forces in Afghanistan with weapons. Pakistan denies such charges but then Pakistan has long denied any connections with the Afghan Taliban despite the ample evidence that ISI (the Pakistani CIA) created the Taliban in the early 1990s and Pakistan has been supporting Islamic terrorism since the late 1970s. Since 2001 more and more evidence of this Pakistani perfidy has come to light. For example, officially Pakistan still denies that they sheltered Osama bin Laden, but its no secret that Pakistan still tolerates sanctuaries for all manner of Islamic terrorists who operate inside Afghanistan. So even if Pakistan is not supporting ISIL, a lot of people on both sides of the border have no problem believing otherwise.

February 23, 2016: In eastern Pakistan (Karachi) security forces carried out a series of raids that found two Islamic terrorist hideouts. The men found there would not surrender and twelve were killed in gun battles. Two police officers were wounded and many weapons and bomb making materials were seized. Other evidence indicated that the dead men were responsible for several recent attacks against civilians and security forces.
South Korea is on schedule to launch the seventh of nine new Type 2014 submarines in April. This one will enter service in 2017 and the last two by 2020. The growing South Korean submarine fleet (nine Type 209 and six Type 214 and the three additional Type 214s being delivered by the end of the decade) has become a major part of the fleet. In recognition of this in early 2015 South Korea created a new Submarine Command whose main purpose is to develop better anti-submarine capabilities against North Korea or even China.

Another reason for the Submarine Command was to make it easier to curb the procurement corruption that has developed in the navy. Several senior navy officers and officials have recently been prosecuted for this sort of misbehavior. Since the submarine service is rather elite and much more sensitive to getting the most for their money the Submarine Command, run by submarine officers, is expected to be more resistant to corruption. That is important because South Korea is putting a lot more money into submarines. North Korea currently has 70 subs, but most (over 70 percent) of them are very small (and often elderly) coastal types. There are twenty larger (1,800 ton) Romeo type boats but these are also very old, noisy and easy for other subs to detect under water.

South Korea has been upgrading its submarine force for some time now. In 2014 South Korea launched the fifth KSS-2 class (Type 214) submarine, which entered service in 2015. The last two KSS-2s were built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. These KSS 2 class subs are armed with South Korean made Haeseong-3 cruise missiles and torpedoes. The Haeseong-3 is like the torpedo tube launched American Tomahawk. Haeseong-3 has a range of 1,500 kilometers and can reach any target within North Korea.

The first three KSS-2s were built (from German components) by Hyundai Heavy Industries. Much to the chagrin of South Koreans, who are trying to develop their own submarine building capability, the first three Type 214s had quality problems. Mostly it was because of defective components and poor construction techniques that left the three boats noisy and easier to detect. The first three Type 214 subs were out of action for most of 2010 because of these problems. This was very embarrassing, as these subs were built in South Korea and that was a big deal for South Koreans. Building submarines is a very specialized and exacting type of manufacturing and South Korea has only been doing it only since 2000. The first subs built in South Korea were these three German Type 214s, and the first of those entered service in 2008. The boats were built using licensed technology from the German developer (HDW) and many of the components were manufactured in South Korea as well. But then in 2006 metal bolts in the Type 214s began coming loose or breaking. The problem was traced to the South Korean supplier of the bolts which were not, it turned out, manufactured to the German specification. Eventually, German specialists were called in, and by 2011 the problem had been fixed.

South Korea went ahead with plans to build six additional Type 214 subs over the next 12 years. South Korea already had nine 1,100 ton Type 209 subs, designed and built in Germany. The Type 214 boats use fuel cells, enabling them to stay underwater for up to two weeks, which is ten times longer than the Type 209s. The Type 214 is a 1,700 ton, 65 meter (202 foot) long boat, with a crew of 27. It has four torpedo tubes and a top submerged speed of 35 kilometers an hour. Maximum diving depth is over 400 meters (1,220 feet).

AIP boats go for up to a billion dollars each. The second batch of South Korean 214s will have an improved AIP system, which is apparently more reliable and provides a small increase in time underwater. South Korea will probably become a supplier of AIP systems as well because they now have the industrial expertise for this sort of high tech. The latest Type 214 boat is important because if it proves to be flawless it will make South Korea a contender in the international submarine market. Potential export customers, largely from East and Southeast Asia, are already showing interest.
The twin shocks of Boko Haram violence and lower oil prices has created some fundamental changes in Nigeria. Corruption, long a hated, crippling and persistent problem is finally being attacked in earnest. Boko Haram played a role in that because many Boko Haram recruits were attracted by the promise of cleaning up government via a religious dictatorship. The media and most Nigerians agreed that without all that corruption there would be no Boko Haram. All this caused big changes in the political leadership as corrupt politicians suddenly became unelectable. For decades you got elected because of corruption and the understanding that the new state governor or country president would distribute a large chunk of the oil revenues to his faithful followers. Everyone else (most Nigerians) got screwed. The sharply lower oil prices made that scam impossible and no one expected that because it was believed an oil price collapse was not possible. Now it is a reality and it has not only changed attitudes (and actions) towards corruption but the new, reform minded, politicians (like the president who took office a year ago) are making some long delayed changes. For example, since independence in the 1960s many African countries supported everything but agriculture in the belief that industrialization was the key to economic success. This ignored the lessons of history that showed agriculture was the basis for economic success. That message has finally been received in Nigeria and the government is at least promising to make it easier for farmers to prosper and do what successful farmers always do (make further economic growth possible). The lower (by two-thirds since 2013) oil revenue is still the main source for the government budget. To get anything done the government needs cash and the easiest way to get it quickly is to shut down the corrupt practices that diverted billions of dollars from more useful things each year. But longer term Nigeria needs more economic growth and farmers are present and ready to make it happen.

Boko Haram is still carrying out attacks in the northeast but at a much lower rate than 2015. The government, and most Nigerians, know that the Boko Haram presence has to be reduced to the point where these religious zealots are only a few hundred armed outlaws and basically a police problem. Currently there appear to be about 8,000 active Boko Haram. This includes a few thousand active (and armed) Boko Haram out in the northeastern countryside. There are even more unarmed supporters, often in urban areas where they must hide their affiliation. Most are in the northeast but others have fled the region. Despite the heavy damage done to Boko Haram so far this year there are still enough armed groups of Boko Haram operating in the northeast, mainly Borno State, to keep large rural areas empty of people and many main roads considered unsafe for commercial traffic unless travelling in an armed convoy. Because of that a very visible international military campaign against Boko Haram continues in the northeast, mainly in Borno. This often involves the air force, which uses helicopters and UAVs as well as conventional aircraft to regularly patrol large rural areas and there are armed helicopters and bombers on call to quickly bomb any Boko Haram camps spotted. This air force effort is a major reason so many of these camps are being put out of business (by air or ground attack) and why so many Boko Haram are hungry, living rough and losing enthusiasm for the mess they have gotten themselves in.

While Boko Haram is not a nationwide catastrophe, it has turned the northeast into an economic disaster zone. The three northeastern state where most of the mayhem occurs have a population of 11 million (Borno; 4.7, Yobe; 2.7 and Adamawa; 3.6). Thats about six percent of the national population. Locally these three states have seen a quarter of their population driven from their homes and more than half unable to survive without assistance (food, medical, water). About ten percent of the population (mostly in Borno) are still refugees but the economic situation is getting worse because small businesses (especially farms) are running out of savings and other reserves (like food) which means more malnutrition and disease. There are fewer healthcare personnel because many people with education and skill could afford to leave the region and have done so, if only temporarily. With less locally grown food and more markets being closed (to avoid suicide bombers) food and other goods have become more expensive for people with less to spend. These economic problems are also showing up in northern Cameroon, which is adjacent to the areas of Nigeria where Boko Haram is operating. The economic impact is not as bad as in Nigeria but Cameroon is a smaller country with an even smaller GDP than Nigeria. The government points out that the security forces are still killing lots of Boko Haram gunmen and driving the Islamic terrorists out of areas they have long terrorized. That is all true but Boko Haram is still out there and the people, the government and Boko Haram know it.

Government optimism aside it is true that Boko Haram is on a downward slide that will eventually, probably sometime in 2016 suddenly not be a major security threat anymore. The signs are everywhere, from rural businesses (especially farms) suddenly back in operation because the locals sensed it was safe and returned. Another telling trend is the growing number of Boko Haram who are surrendering because they are literally starving to death. By driving so many farmers and other civilians out of rural areas Boko Haram has created a rural food shortage. Refugees get government and foreign aid supplies but Boko Haram starves if there is nothing to steal.

March 16, 2016: In the northeast (Borno State) two female suicide bombers attacked near a mosque in the state capital (Maiduguri) leaving 25 dead.

Elsewhere in Borno a Boko Haram technical (a pickup truck with a machine-gun mounted on a tripod in the back) ran over a Boko Haram mine and was destroyed, killing two of the Islamic terrorists. Boko Haram is planting a growing number of these locally made mines in dirt roads and elsewhere. Since the Islamic terrorists do not keep any centralized records of where all this stuff, more and more of these mine locations are unknown to the Islamic terrorists as well as the security forces or local civilians. Even if Boko Haram know the location of mines in their area there can still be problem with mines in roads. In todays incident the Boko Haram vehicle was fleeing a failed ambush and were more focused on getting away from the pursuing troops than in checking where their group had earlier planed mines. Increased losses has also left Boko Haram with fewer experienced bomb makers and a growing number of bombs and mines do not work or go off prematurely as they are being planted. Meanwhile the army has learned how to cope with the growing mine risk, but that awareness slows down operations, something Boko Haram often takes advantage of.

Further east, about ten kilometers from the Cameroon border Cameroonian troops raided a smaller Boko Haram camp killing twenty Islamic terrorists and freeing twelve civilian captives.

Niger reported that in the last week there were two Boko Haram attacks near Diffa (on the Nigerian border adjacent to Borno state) that left three soldiers and five Boko Haram suicide bombers dead. The attackers were apparently from Boko Haram groups still operation in northeastern Borno. Nigerian troops are increasing their efforts to find and destroy these groups.

March 14, 2016: In the northeast (Adamawa State) a feud between two local self-defense militias led to seven militiamen killed and 19 wounded. The security forces feared there would be more of this militia violence than there actually was. The self-defense militias often arose without any government help or permission and have played a major role in keeping much of the northeast safe from Boko Haram. Neighboring Cameroon has noted this and encouraged (with permission, cash, weapons, vehicles and other equipment) northern tribes to form such groups to deal with Boko Haram raiders.

March 10, 2016: In the northeast (Borno State) a wanted Boko Haram leader was killed in a gun battle with police. Several other Boko Haram were wounded and got away.

March 8, 2016: Responding to international criticism president Buhari spoke out in defense of his harsh treatment of South African firm MTN. Nigeria finally got the attention of MTN one of the, largest cell phone companies in Africa, by convincing a judge to enforce a large fine ($250 million so far) because MTN did not disconnect five million unregistered cell phone SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards as ordered in 2015. Other companies did disconnect over ten million illegal SIMs but MTN thought they could beat this in court. Because the SIM card shutdown order was mainly directed at a murderous Islamic terror group (Boko Haram) and not just a lot of lesser criminals the courts agreed with the government and MTN was forced to comply and pay the fine. This is not a problem unique to Africa and is one of the unpleasant side effects of cell phones.

March 3, 2016: In the northeast (Borno State) troops moved through a rural area and killed five Boko Haram gunmen and forced many others to flee. The Islamic terrorists had been hiding out in the forest but had forced the remaining hundred or so civilians in four villages to stay where they were and provide the Boko Haram men with food and other services. Word of this situation eventually reached the local security forces who organized a rescue operation that got 63 women and children out of the four villages.

March 1, 2016: In central Nigeria (Benue State) Moslem Fulani tribesmen battled Christians from four farming villages for nearly a week, leaving several hundred dead before troops and police could restore order. The Fulani are angrier than usual because for over a year soldiers have been catching up with some of their raiding parties, killing some of the Fulani and returning stolen cattle and other goods. Tribal violence in this area has been a problem for generations because Moslem and Christian tribes do not get along. The violence has gotten worse lately. There were over a thousand casualties a year since 2013 and it looks like it is going to worse in 2016. Boko Haram has claimed involvement, but that appears to be marginal. The Moslem tribes have long claimed that the government was sending Christian soldiers and police to persecute them because of their religion not because they were constantly attacking Christian farmers. The settled (farming) tribes have been there a long time and in the last few decades more Moslem tribesmen have come south looking for pasturage and water for their herds and have increasingly used force to get what they want.

February 29, 2016: In the northeast (Borno state) Cameroonian and Nigerian troops cooperated in surrounding and destroying a major Boko Haram base near the town of Kumshe. Nearly a hundred of the Islamic terrorists were killed and not many got away during the three day operation. More importantly over 800 captives were rescued, including teenage girls being trained as suicide bombers. Also found were weapons and ammo stockpiles as well as a workshop that built bombs, bomb vests as well as car bombs. Elsewhere in Borno troops at a checkpoint arrested four known Boko Haram veterans who were trying to flee to southern Nigeria. It is unclear what these four planned to do down there but the captives showed signs of starvation and that is not unusual with many Boko Haram in the northeast. Avoiding detection has taken precedence over finding food and many dead or captured Boko Haram also show sighs of poor nutrition and health.

February 26, 2016: In the northeast (Borno state) troops located and raided a major Boko Haram camp, killing 37 Islamic terrorists while losing two troops. This camp had a bomb building workshop, a medical clinic and equipment for repairing vehicles. There were electrical generators and enough fuel to keep many vehicles, as well as the generators, going for over a week.
Kinetons Laura Hurley.

KINETON trainer Laura Hurley is celebrating the granting of a public licence by The British Horseracing Authority after a decade of training for members of her family, writes David Hucker.

An education that took in Bloxham School and university led to a young Laura moving to France, but an accident that left her mother Bronwen unable to look after the familys point-to-pointers meant a return home to become the third generation in her family to train.

Combining training with working for a local property firm, she sent out eight winners in point-to-points.

Ambitious to apply for a permit to train under Rules, she decided to go part-time in her job to gain experience riding out in various professional yards, including that of another Warwickshire trainer in Robin Dickin.

Obtaining her permit in 2010, Laura trained her first winner on her very first day with runners, when Orang Outan, ridden by David Bass, won at Towcester on 3rd February 2011.

Another seven winners later, Laura is keen to step up to the next level and start training for other owners.

Her stable star Catchin Time failed to win in Ireland but, after being sourced by Hurleys boyfriend Paddy Barcoe and bought privately from his breeder, he has now notched up four successes.

The family interest in horses had started with her grandfather Jocelyn Musson who, during the Second World War, served in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of lieutenant-commander.

While at sea, during 1942, he bought a farm in West Sussex, later moving to Hampshire where he would breed and train steeplechasers, including Charlie Potheen, winner of the Hennessy Gold Cup in 1972 and the Whitbread Gold Cup in 1973.

This is something that I was always wanted to do and the time is right to take the plunge said Hurley.

Horses are in my blood and, having had success as a permit holder, its a natural progression to taking out a full licence.

Having already successfully bought from Ireland, Hurley is hoping that lightning will strike twice with Allez Motto, currently trained in Co. Kilkenny by Paddys brother James, being acquired for a newly-formed syndicated to run as her first horse for public owners.

Having competed in two Irish National Hunt Flat Races and a brace of novice hurdles, Allez Motto is still able to contest maiden races and needs one more run to qualify for a British handicap mark that will open up other options.

There are no certainties in racing but, if Allez Motto does as well as Catchin Time, then his new owners wont have any complaints. Anyone interested in joining the syndicate can call Laura on 07999 693322.
Nomura Securities initiates coverage on ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) with a Reduce rating and a price target of $70.00, suggesting 15% downside.

Analyst Theepan Jothilingam commented, "Exxons downstream integration and resilience is a powerful tool against low oil prices, while the current AAA rating highlights a best-in-class financial position. What surprised us was a more balanced outlook on growth with a stronger reserve position, which suggests that the often discussed M&A risk is present but perhaps not necessarily as pressing as some argue. Our cautious outlook mainly reflects valuation. The business model is best-in-class but arguably the flight to quality leaves Exxons deserved premium multiple too wide to the peer group. We think this partly reflects positioning with US investors keen to retain exposure to Energy (and not veering too far away from the benchmark) but avoiding the US E&P and Services names. Moreover, while we place a lower probability on a large-scale transaction, the capex reduction for 2016 leaves limited scope to positively surprise. On a relative basis, others (notably Shell) can do more. Where could we be wrong? A further deterioration in oil prices is likely to see the flight to quality continue. Exxon could also deliver further material reductions to opex (in addition to the USD 8.5bn in 2015), despite no explicit forward-looking disclosure provided at the analyst update in New York."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on ExxonMobil click here. For more ratings news on ExxonMobil click here.

Shares of ExxonMobil closed at $84.10 yesterday.
Handout picture shows Belgian-born Abdeslam Salah seen on a call for witnesses notice released by the French Police Nationale information services on their twitter account November 15, 2015. REUTERS/Police Nationale/Handout via Reuters/Files

By Alastair Macdonald and John Irish

BRUSSELS/PARIS (Reuters) - The prime surviving suspect for the Nov. 13 Paris attacks planned to blow himself up at a sports stadium with fellow Islamic State militants but changed his mind, he told Belgian investigators on Saturday.

The admission by Salah Abdeslam came a day after he was shot in the leg and captured during a police raid in Brussels, ending an intensive four-month manhunt.

"He wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France and ... backed out," said the lead French investigator, Francois Molins,quoting Abdeslam's statement to a magistrate in Brussels before he was transferred to a secure jail in Bruges.

The gun and bomb attacks on the stadium, bars and a concert hall killed 130 people and marked the deadliest militant assault in Europe since 2004.

Molins told reporters in Paris that people should treat with caution initial statements by the 26-year-old French national. But his capture and apparent urge to talk marked a major breakthrough for investigators after the trail had seemed to go cold.

Abdeslam's lawyer said he admitted being in Paris during the attacks but gave no details. He told reporters his client, born and raised by Moroccan immigrants in Brussels, had cooperated with investigators but would fight extradition to France.

Legal experts said his challenge was unlikely to succeed but would buy him weeks, possibly months, to prepare his defense.

Belgian prosecutors charged Abdeslam and a man arrested with him with "participation in terrorist murder".

Abdeslam's elder brother Brahim, with whom he used to run a bar, was among the suicide bombers. Salah's confession suggested he was the 10th man mentioned in an Islamic State claim of responsibility for the attacks, after which police found one suicide vest abandoned in garbage.

Abdeslam's family, who had urged him to give himself up, said through their lawyer that they had a "sense of relief".

Authorities hope the arrest may help disrupt other militant cells that Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said were certainly "out there" and planning further violence. French security services stepped up their measures at frontier crossings after a global warning from Interpol that other fugitives might try to move country.

"We've won a battle against the forces of ignorance but the struggle isn't over," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said.

The case has raised tensions with France but Michel and French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for an EU summit when Abdeslam was arrested, praised each other's security services. Hollande was attending an international soccer match at the Stade de France when the bombers struck.

FLIGHT RISK

A man using false papers in the names of Amine Choukri and Monir Ahmed Alaaj was also charged with terrorist murder. As Choukri, he was documented by German police in the city of Ulm in October when he was stopped in a car with Abdeslam. French prosecutor Molins said Abdeslam traveled widely to prepare the attacks.

A third man in the house when the pair were arrested was charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. He and a woman who was present were charged with concealing criminals.

Police had sought Abdeslam since he called two acquaintances in Belgium in a panic, hours after the attacks, to have them collect him and bring him home. Suspected to be as far away as Syria, it seems he was in Brussels all or most of the time.

Failure to complete his mission could have limited his access to any support from Syria-based Islamic State; the chief Belgian investigator on the case said he had instead relied on a network of friends, family and neighbors with whom he had a history of drug trafficking and petty crime.

Security agencies' difficulties in penetrating some Muslim communities, particularly in pursuit of Belgium's unusually high number of citizens fighting in Syria, have been a key factor in the inquiry.

PARIS RELIEF

As Parisians, and families of the victims, voiced relief at the arrest, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency cabinet meeting that a trial could answer questions for those who suffered in the attacks.

"Abdeslam will have to answer to French justice for his acts," he said. "It is an important blow to the terrorist organization Daesh (Islamic State) in Europe."

A trickle of people came to a makeshift memorial in central Paris, near the scene of much of the bloodshed, to pay their respects.

"It's really a relief," said Emilien Bouthillier, who works in the neighborhood. "I can't wait for Belgium to transfer and return him to France so he can be tried the way he should be."

Friday's armed swoop came after Abdeslam's fingerprints were found at an apartment following a bloody raid on Tuesday in which an Algerian was shot dead and police officers wounded.

Later, local media said, a tip-off and a tapped telephone led police to a mobile phone number used by Abdeslam and, by triangulating the device's location, established where he was.

At his nearby newspaper store, a vendor named Dominique said Abdeslam had been well known and liked in the community: "He was a very nice lad before," he said. "How can things go this far?"

(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott, Clement Rossignol, Hortense de Roffignac, Philip Blenkinsop and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Miranda Alexander-Webber in Bruges; writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Lear Corp. (NYSE: LEA) is looking to move jobs back to Detroit, but not without a few concessions from the UAW and city.

According to the WSJ , CEO Matt Simoncini is in talks with Detroit about lowering certain taxes, which includes those on property. The company said it would relocate some jobs from Mexico back to Michigan in exchange for lower wages.

While Simoncini has met with UAW President Dennis Williams and other union execs, formal talks haven't begun.

Lear would initially repatriate around 1,000 jobs.

During an interview this week, Simoncini said, If companies start with lower manufacturing costs and they add in a reduction in freight, for example, since you are now shipping from Detroit rather than Mexico, then it becomes more competitive to put jobs here.

Shares of Lear are flat in early trading.
Konecranes Plc has become aware that its chairman of the board Stig Gustavson is facing criminal charges for aggravated subsidy fraud in the so called business park matter concerning the company called Industry Park East Management Oy. Konecranes is not a party in the matter.

According to Stig Gustavson, the matter is related to his position in 2011-2012 as the chairman of the board of the business park company that has since ran into financial difficulties. The purpose of the business park initiative was to help Finnish SMEs to become established in Russia. Stig Gustavson finds the charges unfounded and demands the court reject them in the upcoming trial.
Indianapolis, IN (PRWEB) March 18, 2016

The Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) convened regional meetings of the Global Advisory Panel on the Future of Nursing (GAPFON) 22-23 February and 25-26 February in Washington, D.C. More than 40 key nurse leaders from Canada and the United States participated in these meetings.

"It was a privilege to be with a group of North American nurse leaders who share similar concerns and desires to strengthen nursing and global health," said International Council of Nurses President Dr. Judith Shamian. "STTI and all the participating organizations are to be congratulated for the partnership and collaboration exhibited here this week."

Dr. Antonia Villaruel, Professor and Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, added, "The work of GAPFON provides an opportunity to unleash the power of nursing across the globe to make a significant impact on the health of populations."

GAPFON priority issues and health challenges in Canada and the United States

The strategic nurse leaders who participated in the meetings confirmed that priority issues and action strategies must focus on leadership, policy, education/curriculum, and workforce/practice. Participants spoke strongly about the fact that these priorities are inter-related and each is integral to the achievement of regional goals. They identified meaningful inclusion and evidence-based outcomes as essential components to be integrated within all strategies and recommendations.

The stakeholders verbalized the importance of universal health care and the value of leveraging the return on investment that nursing contributes to the attainment of health. They reiterated that ensuring access to healthcare  including community-based care  is an area where nurses can play a pivotal leadership role. Given the role that healthy behaviors play in optimal health, they agreed that health promotion focused on disease prevention is vital.

During their discussions, stakeholders identified specific strategies to enhance health promotion, including promoting and engaging in advocacy in environmental and social justice issues that impact public health. These strategies are congruent with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, stakeholders were unanimous about the need for coalition-building and interprofessional collaboration at all levels to improve health promotion. They noted that this collaboration is especially important to address the consequences of frequently overlooked or minimized mental health concerns, including those stemming from violence, poverty, and natural disasters.

After observing the discussions, STTI President Dr. Cathy Catrambone said, "It is evident that the GAPFON stakeholders are committed to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals that promote health and social empowerment for all populations worldwide. I am excited to see the long-term impact their efforts will have on global health"

The outcomes of the GAPFON North American Regional meeting also reflected strong regional support for the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organizations' nursing priority areas including education, research, policies and strategies, communication, and interprofessional collaboration. Community Health Nurses of Canada President Morag Granger, said, "This was an excellent opportunity to gather with key nursing leaders from North America to ensure the voices of nurses are heard with regard to improving health, both regionally and globally. It is through venues such as this that we can move health systems forward to improve health for all."

The GAPFON North American Regional Meetings represent one of seven global regions where STTI is holding meetings. In the coming months, STTI will also convene meetings in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Data from these meetings will provide the basis for an overall action plan with regional policy implications. GAPFON will analyze and prioritize key recommendations that address each region's challenges in both global and regional summary reports and will post these at http://www.gapfon.org.

GAPFON is a catalyst for nurse leaders to work together and develop a unified voice and vision for the future of global nursing and healthcare. GAPFON is sponsored by Pfizer, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. In addition, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) sponsored the North American Regional Meeting.

###

About GAPFON

The Global Advisory Panel on the Future of Nursing (GAPFON) was convened by The Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) to establish a voice and a vision for the future of nursing that will advance global health. GAPFON seeks to provide evidence on the value of nursing and to participate in and influence health policy, nursing leadership and practice, education, and the global health agenda. GAPFON is sponsored by Pfizer, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. For more information about GAPFON, visit http://www.gapfon.org.

About STTI

The Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is advancing world health and celebrating nursing excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service. Founded in 1922, STTI has more than 135,000 active members in more than 90 countries. Members include practicing nurses, instructors, researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs and others. STTI's roughly 500 chapters are located at approximately 700 institutions of higher education throughout Armenia, Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, England, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, the United States, and Wales. More information about STTI can be found online at http://www.nursingsociety.org.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/03/prweb13270765.htm
ELKHART, Ind., March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Drew Industries Incorporated (NYSE: DW), a leading supplier of components for the recreational vehicle and adjacent industries, today announced the appointment of Tracy Graham to the Company's Board of Directors, as an independent director. Graham will serve on the Board's Audit and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committees, and will also serve on the Board's newly formed Risk Committee. He will also be nominated as a director to be voted on by stockholders at the Company's May 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Graham, 42, is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Principal of Graham-Allen Partners, a private investment firm focused on investing in technology and technology-enabled companies. Prior to forming Graham-Allen Partners in 2009, he served as Vice President of SMB Technology Services for Cincinnati Bell, one of the nation's leading regionally focused local exchange, wireless, and data center providers. Graham also successfully built and sold three technology companies over a 12-year period, including GramTel USA, Inc., a provider of managed data center and related services to mid-sized businesses, which was sold to Cincinnati Bell. Further, during his 20-year career, Graham held several executive and leadership positions with technology-based companies.

"We are delighted to welcome Tracy to our Board," said Jim Gero, Chairman of Drew's Board of Directors. "His multifaceted understanding of the data technology and cybersecurity issues facing businesses today, as well as his strong leadership skills and strategic experience with growth-oriented companies, will be of significant benefit to Drew's management and stockholders."

Graham earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. He is also a director of 1st Source Bank, and during a three-year term expiring in 2015, was a director of 1st Source Corporation, a bank holding company headquartered in South Bend, Indiana that provides, through its subsidiaries, a broad array of financial products and services.

About Drew Industries

From 44 manufacturing and distribution facilities located throughout the United States and Canada, Drew Industries, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Lippert Components, supplies a broad array of components for the leading manufacturers of recreational vehicles and manufactured homes, and to a lesser extent supplies components for adjacent industries including buses; trailers used to haul boats, livestock, equipment and other cargo; pontoon boats; modular housing; and factory-built mobile office units. Drew's products include steel chassis; axles and suspension solutions; slide-out mechanisms and solutions; thermoformed bath, kitchen and other products; windows; manual, electric and hydraulic stabilizer and leveling systems; chassis components; furniture and mattresses; entry, luggage, patio and ramp doors; electric and manual entry steps; awnings and slide toppers; LED televisions and sound systems; navigation systems; wireless backup cameras; other accessories; and electronic components. Additional information about Drew and its products can be found at www.drewindustries.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drew-industries-appoints-tracy-graham-to-board-of-directors-300238352.html

SOURCE Drew Industries Inc.
SAN DIEGO, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- General Dynamics NASSCO has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Navy to support amphibious warfare and surface combatant ships home-ported in the Port of San Diego. The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract has a total potential value of $1.32 billion among three awardees.

As part of the contract, NASSCO will help modernize, maintain and repair Navy ships that dock in San Diego, including six classes of military combat and amphibious vessels.

"We look forward to the opportunity to work with the U.S. Navy in support of the modernization and repair efforts for the combatant and amphibious ships home-ported in the Port of San Diego," said Dave Carver, vice president and general manager for General Dynamics NASSCO's repair division.

NASSCO is currently conducting repair and modernization efforts in four ports throughout the United States, with the majority of work located in San Diego. Other ports include Mayport, Florida; Bremerton, Washington; and Norfolk, Virginia.

More information about General Dynamics NASSCO can be found at www.nassco.com. More information about General Dynamics is available at www.generaldynamics.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140428/81320

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-nassco-awarded-contract-for-repair-and-modernization-of-amphibious-and-combatant-ships-300238302.html

SOURCE General Dynamics
Nguyen Thien Nhan addresses the meeting. (Photo: VNA)

Addressing the meeting, Nguyen Thien Nhan, Politburo member and VFF President, affirmed that the meeting was very important to preparations for the election.



The VFF Presidium promoted a democratic, intellectual and responsible approach to discuss and make a preliminary list of candidates to earn voters confidence in residential areas, contributing to increasing the quality of NA deputies and satisfying the requirement of renewal in the organizing and operation of the NA term XIV.



During the meeting, delegates contributed ideas on the preliminary list of candidates who satisfy legal regulations for the election of deputies to the NA and Peoples Council.



They also discussed the earning of voters confidence for delegates in their residential areas.



On that basis, the VFF Presidium adopted a list of 197 candidates from central agencies and organizations to talk with the voters from March 20th to April 12th./.
(PRWEB) March 18, 2016

The LHA Trust Funds is proud to announce and welcome Benjamin Sheats as the new Director of Physician Programs. He joins the Trust Funds' team with a wealth of experience, having spent the last 13 years providing professional liability coverage to physicians and medical facilities across the country.

"I am excited to start working with the LHA Trust Funds team and look forward to working with the healthcare facilities and physicians across Louisiana and providing them with the best professional liability coverage," Sheats said. "I am fortunate to be joining such a respected company that prides itself on quality service," he added.

Sheats attended the University of Florida and has been working in the Atlanta area for 25 years. His past work experience includes Regional Director of The Georgia Medical Professionals Association and Regional Vice President of MedMal Direct Insurance Company.

"We are so excited to have Ben join the team," said Cindy Dolan, President and CEO of LHA Trust Funds. She added, "His experience speaks for itself and his expertise in professional liability coverage will complement our company's unique qualities."

#########

For almost four decades, hospitals, healthcare facilities and physician practices have relied on the specialized programs and services provided by the Malpractice Trust Fund, Workers' Compensation Fund and The Physicians' Trust. To learn more about the Trust Funds, please visit http://www.LHATrustFunds.com.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/03/prweb13275746.htm
Event to Highlight Majescos Growth Oriented Business Model that is Uniquely Positioned to Power the Multi-Billion Dollar Insurance Business Renaissance

MORRISTOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Majesco, a global provider of software, consulting and services for insurance business transformation, today announced it will host an Investor Day on May 11, 2016 in New York.

The event will be on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 with presentations starting at 1:00 p.m. ET at the Waldorf Astoria New York.

We believe this is an excellent time to showcase our compelling growth opportunities to investors and analysts, stated Ketan Mehta, Majescos Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder. Recently, Majesco has announced product wins from leading insurance carriers including Unum, Maine Mutual, Clear Blue Financial, Hallmark, and QBE, as well as partnerships with Deloitte, IBM, and Appulate.

Information technology (IT) spending by North America Insurers is massive and Majesco is just scratching the surface. According to one industry analyst, P&C and L&A insurers will spend $41.1 billion and $40.1 billion, respectively on IT in 2016. Majescos client centric business model and broad solution portfolio for both P&C and L&A / Group insurers is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these favourable trends and I look forward to sharing our excitement with investors and analysts, concluded Mr. Mehta.

Ketan Mehta, Majescos Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder and other members of senior management will host the meeting, which will include presentations, a customer panel, product demonstrations and a reception. Participants will have the opportunity to meet company executives and receive an update on Majescos business strategy and operations.

Those interested in attending the event should email Majescos investor relations department at [email protected]. Space is limited and pre-registration is required for admittance.

For those unable to attend, Majesco will provide a live audio webcast of the speaker presentations on May 11 and a copy of the slides at http://investors.majesco.com/. A replay of the webcast will also be available.

About Majesco

Majesco enables insurance business transformation for approximately 140 insurance customers by providing solutions which include software, consulting and services.

Our customers are insurers, MGAs and other risk providers from the Property and Casualty, Life, Annuity and Group insurance segments worldwide. Majesco delivers proven software solutions, consulting and services in the core insurance areas such as policy, billing, claims, distribution management, BI/ analytics, digital, application management, cloud and more. For more details on Majesco, please visit www.majesco.com.

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are made on the basis of the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of management, are not guarantees of performance and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty. These forward-looking statements should, therefore, be considered in light of various important factors, including those set forth in Majescos reports that it files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and which you should review, including those statements under Item 1A  Risk Factors in Majescos Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to: integration risks; changes in economic conditions, political conditions, trade protection measures, licensing requirements and tax matters; technology development risks; intellectual property rights risks; competition risks; additional scrutiny and increased expenses as a result of being a public company; the financial condition, financing requirements, prospects and cash flow of Majesco; loss of strategic relationships; changes in laws or regulations affecting the insurance industry in particular; restrictions on immigration; the ability and cost of retaining and recruiting key personnel; the ability to attract new clients and retain them and the risk of loss of large customers; continued compliance with evolving laws; customer data and cybersecurity risk; and Majescos ability to raise capital to fund future growth.

These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as predictions of future events and Majesco cannot assure you that the events or circumstances discussed or reflected in these statements will be achieved or will occur. If such forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. You should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by Majesco or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified timeframe, or at all. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this presentation. Majesco disclaims any obligation to publicly update or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005138/en/

Majesco:

Corporate

Ann Massey, (973) 461-5190

SVP-Finance

[email protected]

or

Investor & Media

SM Berger & Co

Andrew Berger, (216) 464-6400

[email protected]

Source: Majesco
First-in-class program completes integration of connected health platform

GP Link designed to enhance doctor-patient interaction

GP Link to provide future revenue stream to MedAdvisor

MELBOURNE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- MedAdvisor Limited (ASX:MDR) an Australian software developer focused on improving health outcomes by placing patients at the centre of connected health platforms, today launches the first phase of its GP Link program.

The first phase of the program will allow MedAdvisor to gather data and feedback from doctors as they test the two main functionalities: patient adherence tracking and remote prescription re-issue.

MedAdvisor CEO, Mr Robert Read, said: We are very excited to launch MedAdvisors highly anticipated GP Link feature. GP Link represents the final building block in our integrated health platform that connects patients, pharmacists and GPs, with the goal of influencing superior individual health outcomes.

GP Link will strengthen doctor-patient relationships, allowing doctors to access patients medication adherence profiles, enabling more accurate consultation, and reinforcing the role of the patients regular doctor as the primary healthcare provider. It provides patients with convenient features including reminders to see their doctor for a new prescription and also being able to request repeat prescriptions from their chosen doctor via their smartphone.

As a first mover in this space, MedAdvisor is poised to capitalise on significant opportunities in the short to mid-term, and we look forward to reporting back to the market on the uptake and success of GP Link.

Dr Frank Barbagallo, a General Practitioner in Deepdene, Victoria, said: Any tool that provides GPs with more evidence to make better clinical decisions and reduce the fragmentation of care is welcomed. As GPs, we will be looking forward to the successful first phase of this program so that it can be more widely rolled out. MedAdvisor looks to be an exciting practical innovation to assist primary care.

National Pharmacies has made the MedAdvisor program available at its 54 pharmacies across Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales.

Mr Sam Laing, Development Manager for National Pharmacies, said: "We are focused on enhancing the everyday wellbeing of our members and we feel strongly that the MedAdvisor platform is able to improve the quality of people's lives by helping them to manage their medications safely and effectively. We applaud the addition of the GP Link, making this a connected healthcare platform which will result in better health outcomes for our patients. The program is already being used by over 10,000 patients across the National Pharmacies network."

MedAdvisor will derive a revenue stream from GP Link in the future to allow low-risk patients to electronically request repeat prescriptions and have these issued.

In a recent survey of over 11,000 MedAdvisor users, 87 per cent of respondents indicated the ability to request new prescriptions from their GP would be a useful feature.

About MedAdvisor

MedAdvisor is an Australian software systems developer focused on addressing gaps in personal medication adherence. MedAdvisors free app connects to pharmacy dispensing systems to automatically retrieve medication records and drive an intelligent training, information and reminder system to ensure correct and reliable medication use. It was the most downloaded pharmacy or medication-related app in Apple and Android stores in Australia in 2014 and 2015, and is being used by more than 130,000 Australians. A quarter of all Australian pharmacies subscribe to the MedAdvisor software platform. By January 2016, MedAdvisors convenient Tap-to-Refill feature had resulted in one million prescription refills by Australian consumers,

MedAdvisor has established sales and marketing partnerships with private health insurer, BUPA, and has training and service contracts with top tier global pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, AstraZeneca, UCB and Apotex. MedAdvisor has a Health Association Partnership with Epilepsy Queensland.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160317006326/en/

For more information

MedAdvisor

Robert Read, +61 3 9095 3036

CEO

[email protected]

or

Buchan Consulting

Catie Corcoran, +61 2 8310 6966

[email protected]

Source: MedAdvisor Limited
SYRACUSE, N.Y., March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- U-Haul has repurposed a property that once housed furniture and auto service companies to make moving and rental products more convenient to the residents of DeWitt and surrounding communities.

U-Haul Moving & Storage of Carrier Circle opened for business on Dec. 10 at 6341 Thompson Road.

The building, constructed in 1954, has a Syracuse address but inhabits the town of DeWitt. The 7.81-acre property offers 82,580 square feet of space.

"The town has been pretty excited about an anchor business like U-Haul coming in to stay," said Mike Streeter, U-Haul Company of North Central New York president. "We hope to continue to work with the town to make this a great property that is providing more jobs for area residents."

Streeter and his team are currently offering an entire line of truck, van, pickup and trailer rentals, moving supplies and boxes, towing equipment and professional hitch installation, U-Box portable moving and self-storage containers and more.

This summer, construction on more than 400 state-of-the-art indoor climate-controlled storage units will be completed and the units will be available to rent. Customers will be able to load and unload their truck inside the building and away from the weather elements, something that no other facility in the area can provide.

"We had our first customer book a truck and he was super excited that he could rent down the street from his business and not have to go into downtown to get a truck," Streeter said. "It is going to be awesome to serve this part of the Syracuse area, right where people work and live."

The U-Haul store, located off Interstate 90 at exit 35, is named for the round-about Carrier Circle just to the north of the property. The Carrier Air Conditioner plant was located right next to the circle for years. Syracuse University's Carrier Dome is also named after the corporation.

The acquisition of the Syracuse facility was driven by U-Haul Company's Corporate Sustainability initiatives: U-Haul supports infill development to help local communities lower their carbon footprint. Our adaptive reuse of existing buildings reduces the amount of energy and resources required for new-construction materials and helps cities reduce their unwanted inventory of unused buildings.

Stop by U-Haul Moving and Storage of Carrier Circle for all your moving and storage needs or call us at (315) 883-8000. Hours of operations are 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 9a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday. Visit us online at uhaul.com or contact U-Haul Reservations at 1-800-GO-UHAUL.

To learn more about U-Haul in the news and in your community, visit myuhaulstory.com.

Contact

Jeanne RohrerJeff Lockridge E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 602-263-6194 Website: uhaul.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160318/345777

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090622/LA34860LOGO-b

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moving-and-storage-facility-at-carrier-circle-expands-u-haul-reach-in-syracuse-300238280.html

SOURCE U-Haul
Storage tanks are seen inside the Exxonmobil Baton Rouge Refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November 6, 2015. REUTERS/Lee Celano

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Union workers at Exxon Mobil Corp's (NYSE: XOM) Baytown, Texas, refinery will vote next week on a contract extension offer from the company, the president of the United Steelworkers union local said on Friday.

The extension offer fails to meet the pattern agreed to by USW oil workers in late 2014, Steelworkers Local 13-2001 President Ricky Brooks said.

"We're working to vote it down," said Brooks.

An Exxon spokesman declined to discuss the Baytown refinery negotiations.

Between February and June in 2015 more than 6,000 workers at 15 plants including 12 refineries accounting for one-fifth of national capacity walked off their jobs to win a contract that conformed to USW pattern.

While a national agreement was reached by the USW and refinery owners in early March, strikes continued at some plants into the summer over local issues.

Exxon workers have several local issues they want to raise with the company before finishing talks, Brooks said. Approval of the extension offer would cut off talks.

The current contract does not expire until mid-May and both sides have to observe a 60-day labor peace period before a strike could begin.

The 560,500 barrel per day (bpd) Baytown refinery is the second-largest in the United States and the company's largest in the nation.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Grant McCool)
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief executive of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency resigned on Thursday, one week after a female subordinate accused him in a lawsuit of racist and sexist behavior.

WPP Plc, the British parent of JWT, said Gustavo Martinez resigned "by mutual agreement" following "recent events," and that his resignation was "in the best interest" of the agency.

Martinez's departure came after chief communications officer Erin Johnson accused him in a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court of making "constant racist and sexist slurs" that demeaned women, blacks and Jews, and subjecting her to unwanted touching.

Johnson was put on paid leave last month, after JWT had curbed her pay and duties in retaliation for her complaints about Martinez, according to the March 10 lawsuit.

WPP declined to elaborate further on the resignation. A WPP spokesman said Johnson's lawyers requested her paid leave, and JWT accommodated that request.

Anne Vladeck, a lawyer for Johnson, did not respond to requests for comment.

Tamara Ingram, who was WPP's chief client team officer, is replacing Martinez, effective immediately. Her former job will be taken by George Rogers, who will remain WPP's global business development director.

Martinez, an Argentina native and the first Hispanic chief executive of a global advertising agency, had been JWT's chairman and chief executive since January 2015.

"The tone at the top determines the culture of a company," said Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco lawyer who represents plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases. "The most effective way to prevent discrimination and harassment is to show that no one is immune from scrutiny."

Martinez could not be reached for comment following his resignation.

After the complaint was filed, Martinez had said in a statement that he believed he led JWT "with a collaborative and collegial style" and did not create the working conditions that Johnson described.

JWT clients include such companies as Coca-Cola, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Shell and Wal-Mart. Martinez's biographical profile has been taken down from the JWT website.

According to Johnson's lawsuit, Martinez made "numerous" comments about rape, including the raping of JWT employees.

The lawsuit also accused Martinez of referring to airport customs agents as "black monkeys" and "apes," and telling a reporter that he disliked living in New York's suburban Westchester County because there were "too many Jews."

Vladeck on Monday asked for court permission to file a video she said showed Martinez making some of the alleged slurs.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chris Reese, David Gregorio and Alistair Bell)
By Megan Rowling

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Islamic State fighters tried to enter a center helping displaced Syrians in Lebanon's border town of Ersal in 2014, local people kept the militants out, telling them that Amel Association International, the Lebanese aid group running it, was independent and its staff should not be targeted.

The center has been able to continue offering services including healthcare, education and job training to more than 2,000 Lebanese residents and Syrian refugees at a time in the troubled town, after clashes made it too dangerous for most international humanitarian agencies to work there.

Virginie Lefevre, Amel's program and partnerships coordinator, said the situation in Ersal shows how national organizations with independent local employees are well placed to navigate complex, sectarian conflicts.

"The total lesson learned of this Syrian crisis is that localization is working and that it is more efficient," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Beirut.

"Localization" is a buzz word in the aid industry that means devolving funding and power to national and local humanitarian groups, often seen as more nimble and effective than global agencies, especially in perilous places like Syria.

International organizations have been accused of parachuting into crisis zones without forethought, pushing up prices and charging high overheads while the shortage of cash for life-saving work grows more severe.

As the United Nations gears up for May's World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, its chief, Ban Ki-moon, has joined a push to level the playing field for developing-world aid groups - something they have long advocated.

In a report ahead of the conference, the first gathering of its kind, the U.N. secretary-general noted "remarkable improvements" at national and local levels in preparing for, and responding to emergencies in the past decade.

"The international community has an obligation to respect and further strengthen this capacity and local leadership in crises and not to put in place parallel structures that may undermine it," he wrote.

FUNDING TARGET

National groups like Amel are pleased with Ban's call for the bigger players to support their efforts - but they worry that pledges made at the humanitarian summit may be too vague.

Lefevre said a set of commitments proposed by Ban does not include enough clear indicators and benchmarks, and this could make it hard to measure whether promises are kept.

"We are afraid that donors and states will say yes to all those recommendations, because there is no need to track what is going to happen," she said.

Amel and many other aid groups based in developing countries want the summit to agree what proportion of global humanitarian funding should go to national and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a target date for this to be done.

Their share of the total funding pie halved to 0.2 percent in 2014 from 0.4 percent in 2012, according to an annual report by consultancy Global Humanitarian Assistance, and their share of the money received by all NGOs also fell, to 1.2 percent.

Under a separate "Charter for Change", 18 international charities so far, including Christian Aid and Islamic Relief Worldwide, have agreed to put into practice by May 2018 eight commitments to boost the role of national agencies. They include passing 20 percent of humanitarian funding down to that level.

Major government donors, including Britain, have shown interest in expanding the work done by local NGOs, but regulations and anti-terror laws often restrict who they can fund.

The European Commission (EC), for example, requires agencies through which it channels aid to be registered in Europe, and to have their headquarters there or in a country that receives aid from the Commission.

Alexandre Polack, EC spokesman for humanitarian aid and crisis management, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the issue of aid localization should be "at the forefront" of the Istanbul summit.

"Humanitarian response should be as local as possible," he said. "But we also need to make sure the necessary capacity and accountability are there."

FREE FROM BIAS?

That isn't always the case, aid experts say. Gareth Owen, humanitarian director of Save the Children UK, recalled how, working for Oxfam after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, he had to cancel partnerships with local groups that were politically active or dedicated to helping specific marginalized communities.

That is because humanitarian principles stipulate that aid must be given on the basis of need alone, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress and making no distinctions on the basis of nationality, race, gender, religious belief, class or political opinions.

"Occasionally we have to be quite dirigiste about it," said Owen. "We want to be as national as possible but as international as necessary."

In highly insecure situations like Syria, where some four fifths of aid is being provided on the ground through local groups, ensuring neutrality and adherence to other humanitarian principles is a major challenge for donors.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former U.N. aid chief, said letting national groups run the show was more straightforward in natural disasters.

Why fly rescue dogs all the way from Norway to Nepal to search for survivors after an earthquake, for example? "It's idiotic," he said. "We have to do better local work."

But he does not agree with those who may argue at the Istanbul summit that national governments and local organizations should be given the bulk of funding to help those hit by civil war in their own countries.

"They are too often biased, or they are persecuted and they are part of the conflict, and the whole point of principled humanitarian action is that it is important to be able to come from outside and give impartial, neutral support," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The risk of corruption is another deterrent to channeling international aid through local NGOs and businesses - a concern that affected funding after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Less than 1 percent of the $1.3 billion overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development for the post-quake recovery effort has gone directly to Haitian groups, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

WASTEFUL CHAIN

One way for local groups to obtain money from nervous donors is via U.N. agencies or international charities that pass on funding for activities in the field.

But Lefevre said that chain is "not cost-effective", and can end up with the national NGO taking all the risk without getting the financial and technical means to do its work properly.

Amel, which runs 24 centers and six mobile medical units across Lebanon, is funded by a variety of donors and international NGOs, but is struggling to keep its activities going smoothly, despite growing needs due to the Syrian war.

As crises around the globe compete for the same pot of cash, partners often ask Amel to serve the same number of people for less money, Lefevre said.

But that can lower the quality of vocational training for youths, for example, or make Amel take a mobile clinic out of service for a few weeks and refer patients elsewhere, she added.

"It is a daily fight to get money," she said. "We are clearly not getting enough, and we're thinking about those admin costs that are going to some international NGOs - and which are huge."

(Reporting by Megan Rowling in Barcelona; additional reporting by Tom Esslemont in London and Anastasia Moloney in Bogota, editing by Tim Pearce. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
By Louis Charbonneau and Aziz El Yaakoubi

UNITED NATIONS/RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco ordered the United Nations on Thursday to pull 84 international staff from its Western Sahara mission after accusing U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon of no longer being neutral in a conflict over the disputed territory.

The Moroccan government, however, reversed a previously announced decision to withdraw all of its troops from U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Morocco said the United Nations and the African Union have three days to remove 84 civilian staff from Western Sahara.

Dujarric said, "All of these measures would seriously impede the functioning" of the mission known as MINURSO, or the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara.

U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman briefed theSecurity Council behind closed doors. He said the Moroccan ambassador had sent him a text message announcing that the 3-day deadline had been extended to "within the days to come," diplomats at the meeting told Reuters.

The staff to be withdrawn includes security personnel, political officers, and de-mining personnel.

Speaking to reporters after the council meeting, Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola, council president this month, said members had voiced their concern but agreed to individually approach Morocco to ensure the situation is "evolving in a positive manner."

The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the United Nations since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission.

Rabat accused Ban last week of no longer being neutral in the conflict, criticizing his use of the word "occupation" to describe Morocco's annexation of the region at the center of a struggle since 1975, when it took over from colonial power Spain.

Earlier this month, Ban visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them and fought a war against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire.

Their Polisario Front wants a referendum, including over the question of independence, but Rabat says it will only grant semi-autonomy.

Three of the people on the list submitted by the Moroccan mission to be withdrawn from MINURSO are from the African Union while the rest are U.N. staff, the U.N. press department said. The mission currently has 242 military personnel, 85 international civilian staff, 157 national staff and 12 volunteers.

Neither military personnel nor the head of the mission are affected by the cuts.

Speaking to reporters through an interpreter at the Moroccan U.N. mission in Manhattan, Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar complained of Ban's "stubbornness."

After speaking with members of the Security Council, Mezouar said Morocco had "decided not to withdraw its troops" from U.N. peacekeeping missions. He said Rabat was considering other possible actions but did not elaborate.

Ban has said he wants to restart stalled negotiations between Morocco and Polisario Front.

Ban canceled plans to visit Morocco, his spokesman said on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Grant McCool, Toni Reinhold)
NIAMEY (Reuters) - Three gendarmes were killed in one of two attacks against security and defense forces near Niger's borders with Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali, the ministry of defense said in a statement on public television on Thursday.

The attacks highlight the difficulties surrounding border security in West Africa, which has suffered several high-profile extremist attacks in the past five months.

Niger has also been targeted numerous times by Nigeria-based Islamist group Boko Haram, which has launched cross-border attacks in its effort to carve out an emirate in Nigeria's northeastern region.

One attack took place late on Wednesday in the region bordering Burkina Faso and Mali, launched by assailants who arrived on four motorcycles and a Toyota pick-up.

"The ... attack led by armed unidentified individuals took place around 11:10 p.m. (2210 GMT) against a unit of the national gendarmerie who had come to secure the Dolbel market," said Colonel Ledru Moustapha in the televised statement.

Security forces were searching for the armed men.

Three members of Niger's defense forces were injured and five suicide bombers killed in a separate attack earlier on Wednesday blamed on Boko Haram in the region of Diffa. About five other militants fled the scene.

Niger's interior minister Hassoumi Massaoudou ordered the land borders to be closed on Sunday, the day of the second round of the country's presidential elections, which the opposition has said it will boycott.

(Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Makini Brice; editing by Grant McCool)
Slovakia's Prime Minister and leader of Smer party Robert Fico answers questions after a live broadcast of a debate after the country's parliamentary election, in Bratislava, Slovakia, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/David W Cerny

By Tatiana Jancarikova

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia's ruling leftist party Smer and three small centrist and nationalist partners have drafted a coalition agreement and a new government could be installed by the middle of next week, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Thursday.

Fico's party won the most votes in the March 5 election but lost its overall majority, threatening instability before Bratislava takes over the rotating presidency of the crisis-ridden European Union in the second half of this year.

But Fico moved fast to cobble together a majority and said the coalition pact could be finalised in the coming days with the new cabinet, his third in a decade, sworn in next Wednesday or Thursday.

The four parties earlier this week agreed policy targets and an allocation of portfolios in the euro zone and NATO country's future government.

"We drafted the pillars of the coalition agreement today... We hope our efforts will lead to a stable and functional government and parliament because a demanding EU presidency is ahead of us," Fico told reporters.

Slovakia's EU presidency will give the strongly anti-immigration Fico a bigger voice on issues from the 28-nation bloc's refugee crisis to the aftermath of Britain's June 23 referendum on leaving the EU.

The new cabinet will maintain a strict line against admitting migrants, more than 1.1 million of whom have poured into the EU since the start of last year.

Three of the four coalition partners said before the March 5 vote they would oppose dropping the last government's lawsuit against a plan approved by a majority of EU leaders to share out 160,000 asylum seekers among member states.

Fico's Smer party won 49 of the 150 seats in parliament, down from 83 it had in the past four years, and seemed at risk of losing power.

Fico's party will be dominant in the coalition and hold key ministries such as finance, interior and foreign affairs.

Government sources said the finance ministry is almost certain to be run again by Peter Kazimir, respected for keeping budget deficits under control and known for his tough stance in the euro zone's negotiations with debt-plagued Greece.

The coalition plans moderate cuts in taxes for corporates and small entrepreneurs, and a balanced budget by the end of its term in 2020. It has also agreed to tackle shortcomings in healthcare and education and increase transparency in government and public spending after a series of corruption scandals.

(Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and the Philippines announced a deal on Friday allowing for a rotating U.S. military presence at five Philippine bases under a security agreement inked amid rising tensions with China in the South China Sea.

A joint statement after an annual U.S.-Philippines Strategic Dialogue listed the sites as Antonio Bautista Air Base, close to the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Basa Air Base north of Manila, Fort Magsaysay in Palayan, Lumbia Air Base in Mindanao and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Amy Searight said the deal was reached under a 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that grants Washington increased military presence in its former colony through rotation of ships and aircraft for humanitarian and maritime security operations.

Searight told the meeting Manila was a "critical U.S. ally" and ties had never been stronger. She said U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter would visit the Philippines in April to discuss implementation of the agreement.

U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg told reporters movements of supplies and personnel to the base locations would take place "very soon."

He described the agreement, valid for an initial 10 years, as "a pretty big deal," that would allow for a greater U.S. presence as part of the U.S. rebalance to Asia and enhance the alliance with the Philippines.

However, he stressed that it did not allow for permanent U.S. bases that existed for 94 years until 1991, when the Philippine Senate voted to evict them.

"This isn't a return to that era. These are different reasons and for 21st century issues, including maritime security," he said, adding that all U.S. deployments would require Philippine approval.

The United States is keen to boost the military capabilities of East Asian countries and its own regional presence in the face of China's assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest trade routes.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said Friday's agreement came at an important time ahead of a ruling in a case the Philippines has brought against China over its South China Sea claims in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague.

On Thursday, the U.S. Navy said it had seen activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more Chinese land reclamation in the South China Sea.

In an interview with Reuters, Navy chief Admiral John Richardson also expressed concern that the Hague ruling, which is expected in late May, could prompt Beijing to declare a South China Sea exclusion zone.

Searight said the Pentagon had told the U.S. Congress of its intention to provide $50 million to help build regional maritime security. She said the Philippines would get "the lions share" of the funds, which are expected to go toward improving radar and other South China Sea monitoring capabilities.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman)
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington D.C. 20549

FORM 8-K

CURRENT REPORT

Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

March 18, 2016

Date of Report (Date of Earliest Event Reported)

Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc.

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)

Nevada 001-36493 20-2543857 (State of Incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 294 Grove Lane East

Wayzata, Minnesota 55391 (Address of Principal Executive Offices) (Zip Code)

(952) 473-9950

(Registrants Telephone Number, Including Area Code)

(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 (see General Instruction A.2):

 Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)  Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)  Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))  Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Item 8.01 Other Events.

On March 18, 2016, Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc. (the Company) received a letter of notice from Jeffrey E. Eberwein of Lone Star Value Management, LLC and Lone Star Value Investors, LP regarding the nomination of individuals for election to the board of directors of the Company (the Lone Star Value Letter). On March 18, 2016, the Company issued a press release in response to the Lone Star Value Letter. A copy of the press release is attached hereto as Exhibit 99.1 and is incorporated herein by reference.

Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits (d) Exhibits The following exhibits are filed with this Form 8-K: 99.1 Press Release, dated March 18, 2016

1

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Registrant has duly caused this Current Report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.

Date: March 18, 2016 DAKOTA PLAINS HOLDINGS, INC. /s/ Timothy R. Brady Timothy R. Brady

Chief Financial Officer

EXHIBIT INDEX

Exhibit No. Description Manner of Filing 99.1 Press Release, dated March 18, 2016 Filed Electronically

Exhibit 99.1

Dakota Plains Comments on Nomination of Directors

WAYZATA, Minnesota, (March 18, 2016)  Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc. (Dakota Plains), (NYSE MKT: DAKP) today issued the following statement in response to Lone Star Value Managements announcement of its nomination of five director candidates.

The Board and management welcome stockholders constructive input and respect the right of stockholders to nominate directors. However, we are disappointed that Lone Star Value has decided to pursue a control proxy contest  offering no premium to stockholders and potentially triggering significant costs  at a time when the company is working successfully to manage operations in a severe oil price environment and is pursuing initiatives that can diversify the companys business platform and create new sources of revenue.

Lone Star Values criticisms ring hollow. The Board and management have completely reshaped the company and exited an extremely onerous and value-destroying joint venture structure and have protected value creation at its principal asset, the Pioneer Terminal. Lone Star Value also completely ignores the impact of the oil price collapse and the sweeping loss of value across the midstream market and MLPs. Indeed, just last year Lone Star Value demanded that the company convert to an MLP,(1) which would have been an unmitigated disaster for the company. Lone Star Values approach smacks of self-interest and either breathtaking ignorance or something worse  an effort to distract from performance issues across the entire Lone Star Value investment portfolio.(2)

Moreover, after the Company appointed William DeRosa of Lone Star Value to the Board in 2014, Mr. DeRosa subsequently violated his fiduciary duties to all stockholders and committed unlawful acts by sharing material non-public information.(3) Mr DeRosa resigned from the Board because of this breach of fiduciary duty and will stand trial in court for his actions later this year. Dakota Plains stockholders would be well served by a careful and critical analysis of any nominee put forward by Lone Star Value given these questions of judgement and duty on the part of Mr. DeRosa.

The Dakota Plains Board of Directors urges stockholders to take no action at this time and to wait until receiving the Companys proxy materials, which we will be sending once the annual stockholders meeting has been scheduled.

(1) http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lone-star-value-issues-open-letter-to-the-board-of-dakota-plains-300009412.html

(2) http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1589350/000092189516003309/xslForm13F_X01/infotable.xml

(3) Copies of the complaint against Mr. William DeRosa are available by contacting Dakota Plains. For contact details, please see the end of this press release.

About Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc.

Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc. is an integrated midstream energy company operating the Pioneer Terminal transloading facility. The Pioneer Terminal is centrally located in Mountrail County, North Dakota, for Bakken and Three Forks development and production activity. For more information please visit the corporate website at: www.dakotaplains.com .

Important Additional Information

The Company, its directors and certain of its executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Company shareholders in connection with the matters to be considered at the Companys 2016 Annual Meeting. The Company intends to file a proxy statement and WHITE proxy card with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) in connection with any such solicitation of proxies from Company shareholders. COMPANY SHAREHOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO READ ANY SUCH PROXY STATEMENT AND ACCOMPANYING WHITE PROXY CARD WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Information regarding the ownership of the Companys directors and executive officers in Company stock, restricted stock and options is included in their SEC filings on Forms 3, 4 and 5, which can be found through the Companys website (www.dakotaplains.com) in the section Investor Relations or through the SECs website at www.sec.gov. Information can also be found in the Companys other SEC filings, including the Companys definitive proxy statement for the 2015 Annual Meeting and its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015. More detailed and updated information regarding the identity of potential participants, and their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be set forth in the proxy statement and other materials to be filed with the SEC in connection with the Companys 2016 Annual Meeting. Shareholders will be able to obtain any proxy statement, any amendments or supplements to the proxy statement and other documents filed by the Company with the SEC for no charge at the SECs website at www.sec.gov. Copies will also be available at no charge at the Companys website at www.dakotaplains.com, by writing to Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc., to the attention of the Corporate Secretary, 294 Grove Lane East, Wayzata, Minnesota 55391.

2

Forward-Looking Statements

This written communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Statements contained in this written communication that are not historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding plans and objectives of management for future operations or economic performance, or assumptions. Words such as anticipate, believe, continue, estimate, expect, intend, may, should, will and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements.

Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated as of the date of this written communication. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or anticipated in the forward-looking statements. These include risks relating to the effectiveness of the Rights Plan as a deterrent to transactions that might result in a change of control of the Company without a premium to stockholders, global economics or politics, the Companys ability to obtain additional capital needed to implement our business plan, minimal operating history, loss of key personnel, lack of business diversification, reliance on strategic, third-party relationships, financial performance and results, prices and demand for oil, the Companys ability to make acquisitions on economically acceptable terms and other factors described from time to time in the Companys periodic reports filed with the SEC that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You should carefully review the disclosures and the risk factors described in the documents we file from time to time with the SEC, including our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained throughout this written communication. Therefore, you should consider these risk factors with caution and form your own critical and independent conclusions about the likely effect of these risk factors on our future performance.

For more information, please contact:

Company Contact Investor and Media Contact Tim Brady, CFO Dan Gagnier, Sard Verbinnen [email protected] [email protected] Phone: 952.473.9950 Phone: 212.687.8080 www.dakotaplains.com www.sardverb.com
Three people are in hospital after the car they were in hit a parked car and flipped.

Police northern communications commander Inspector Jason Greenhalgh said police got the call to Kurahaupo St in the Auckland suburb of Orakei about 12.10am on Saturday.

Initial reports said the people were trapped inside the car but when police arrived the people were free and there were no serious injuries.

St John ambulance said staff treated three patients, who were transported to Auckland Hospital.

READ MORE: Trapped in rolled SUV

One had moderate injuries, while two had sustained minor injuries.

Greenhalgh said it was not known exactly what caused the car to hit the parked car and local police were investigating.
A Makara Model School school bus rolled onto its side after hitting a bank.

Primary school-aged children used a fire extinguisher to escape when their school bus tipped on a windy rural Wellington road.

At the scene, on South Makara Rd, Makara, on Friday morning, a tyre track could be see reaching about two metres up a steep bank just before where the bus lay on its side, with smashed front, side, and back windows.

Remarkably, apart from a shaken driver, there were no injuries in the crash that happened shortly before 9am on Friday.

CAMERON BURNELL/FAIRFAX NZ Emergency services attend the bus crash, near Makara.

This was despite an initial report from Wellington Free Ambulance that six children had been injured.

There were six children on the bus, which was heading to Makara Model School, on Makara Rd.

Principal Gail Dewar confirmed there were no injuries.

The children, who were wearing seat belts, had acted admirably and had the presence of minds to use a fire extinguisher to break the rear window of the bus to escape, she said.

The children involved in the crash had since gone on a school trip.

The driver of the bus, who was not directly employed by the school, was shaken but okay, she said.

Three Wellington Free Ambulance crew and the Lifeflight helicopter were sent to the crash.

The Fire Service also sent a truck to help but no children were trapped in the bus.

Police had called a towing company to help lift the bus back onto its wheels.
The car used in a ram raid at The Warehouse in Hillcrest on Monday is yet to be recovered.

Cigarettes were the target of what is the second ram raid on a store in Hamilton this week.

The thieves used a grey coloured Nissan Pulsar to smash through the front glass window of the dairy on Prisk St in Hamilton.

Once inside, Senior Sergeant Robbie Herman of Waikato police, said the thieves were believed to have raided the cigarette cabinet.

A resident nearby looked out to see two people leaving in the car at 2.20am, he said.

"Someone has heard the smash and called it in to us."

READ MORE: Thieves smash way into The Warehouse, raid electronics

Police's Tactical Crime Unit were investigating and would be undertaking forensic work at the dairy in Melville on Friday.

Detective Sergeant Andre Kavanagh said the vehicle was yet to be located.

Police were still working to obtain clear CCTV images of the raid, he said.

This was the second ram raid in Hamilton this week after The Warehouse in Hillcrest was targeted on Monday.

Two people were also involved in the earlier smash and grab which happened at the store at 2.30am.

They used an older model silver two-tone car to smash through the front of the store on Clyde St.

One person, wearing head to toe in black clothing, was captured on CCTV footage taking electronics. The pair then fled in the car before police arrived.

Kavanagh said the car used in the Warehouse smash and grab was yet to be recovered.

"We are making other inquiries to try and identify the people."

Police were not ruling out any links between the two raids, which Kavanagh said were similar, but ram raids were not uncommon.

Anyone with information can contact Hamilton police on 07 858 6200. Information can also be left anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Simon Lusk is guest speaker at a local government seminar in Blenheim next month.

A political strategist who boasts about getting councillors and MPs thrown out at election time will address potential candidates running for the Marlborough District Council.

Simon Lusk will be guest speaker at a local government seminar next month organised by former Kaikoura MP Colin King.

Lusk denied he would be King's campaign manager when he runs for election to the Wairau/Awatere ward in the local government elections in October.

King said he would reveal in June if he intended to run for mayor.

READ MORE:

* Next Marlborough mayor must come from within council

* Business man denies running for mayor

* Colin King to run for Marlborough District Council

Lusk, who is Auckland mayoral candidate John Palino's new campaign manager, said he would not be approaching election candidates in Marlborough to represent them.

The seminar was invite only for "sensible candidates" from across the top of the South Island, Lusk said.

He would speak about campaigning and what successful candidates do to win.

"Often good people running for council for the first time do not know how to run a campaign, so they get it wrong. This includes strategy, fundraising and message. I'll also be covering the issues that voters at local elections care about, which is usually rates, council spending, especially when councils undertake expensive projects that have substantial cost overruns, and regulation."

Lusk said he loved visiting Marlborough because it had exceptional fly fishing and quail shooting.

"I was invited because on previous fishing and shooting trips I have got to know people involved in politics, and discussed campaigning with them."

Lusk's website said it was almost always cheaper to pay to remove difficult politicians who were blocking projects than fighting them through the courts.

King said rumours he had employed Lusk as his campaign manager were untrue.

"Simon is certainly not my campaign manager. I will run my own campaign.

"There is no substitute for hard work when it comes to electioneering. If you think there is, you are doomed."

King said he invited Lusk to the seminar to give candidates a good understanding of what they will encounter if they run for election.

"It makes sense for someone standing to have someone with experience to keep them going. It can be a long and drawn out process. When you run for central government you have the party machine behind you. When it comes to local government you are very much on your own."

King denied he had become more active on social media because of the forthcoming election.

"When I was in Government I didn't engage with that enough. There were so many untruths circulated. I will challenge people that say the wrong things."

The seminar would be held in Blenheim on April 9 at a venue yet to be confirmed, King said.

Mayor Alistair Sowman said he was undecided if he would run again.

He still had a lot of work to do with the council's environment plan and the annual plan, he said.

Sowman said he had not been approached by Lusk to be his campaign manager.

It would be disappointing if a candidate had to hire somebody to secure a position, he said.

Kaikoura Labour Electorate committee chairman Corey Hebberd said he would not be running for the council to focus on his career.

"I didn't want to run for council and do a half-baked job. The ratepayers deserve better."

Hebberd said he had been approached to use Lusk if he ran for election.

Mayoral candidate Brian Dawson said he knew of Lusk but had not been approached by him.

"Simon is a skilled and talented operator. People have to understand what is at stake when it comes to an election campaign. It is not an amateur activity. A lot of candidates will seek professional assistance.

"If you don't like it, you shouldn't be there. Campaigning is pretty cut and thrust at times and gets very personal."

If a candidate employed Lusk it showed how serious they were about the election, Dawson said.
"You slow the traffic down, you take car parks away and you put cycle lanes everywhere. It's a real worry," Christchurch developer Antony Gough says.

A prominent developer says Christchurch is becoming the "inaccessible" city.

Antony Gough, who is behind The Terrace development on Oxford Tce, took aim at the new 30 kilometre an hour speed limit, the lack of car parking, convention centre delays  even cycle lanes  in the central city at a rebuild conference on Friday.

He said they put potential developers off.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ Gough said without a convention centre, Christchurch could kiss new hotels goodbye.

"Our 'accessible city' is actually a joke, because actually it's inaccessible. You slow the traffic down, you take car parks away and you put cycle lanes everywhere. That is not accessible, it's inaccessible and it's a real worry for us."

READ MORE:

* Gough: Inaction 'dragging city down'

* 'Too early' for centre certainty

* Lovatt leads Regenerate Christchurch

An Accessible City was the name of the transport chapter developed by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) for the Christchurch Central Recovery Plan. It included a 30kmh inner city speed zone.

SUPPLED Otakaro chairman Ross Butler speaks at Seismics and the City 2016.

Gough had no issue with the lower speed limit on "inner core streets", but said the one way streets should be exempt.

"That's critical that they are 50kmh  and it's a subject we will need to go back on.

"It was interesting it was bought in under the Cera legislation, not council, so they bypassed the normal consultation," Gough said.

SUPPLIED The convention centre precinct was announced as an anchor project in 2012.

Gough said the Christchurch City Council had "finally" got car parks down, but it was yet to make a decision publicly about what would replace the Lichfield St car parking building.

"You've got area like what I call west of the Avon River  there are all these office buildings, [but] there's no car parking yet," Gough said.

Gough said without a convention centre, Christchurch could also kiss new hotels goodbye.

BRENDON O'HAGAN Regenerate Christchurch chairman Andre Lovatt said the new entity will be able to request changes to Christchurch's district plan.

The centre was "absolutely critical" to Christchurch's development. Hotels needed the centre to bring winter trade, Gough said.

"That's why we're not getting any new hotel builds, other than this Rydges we're standing in at the moment.

"There's lot's of people who are interested, but they said 'we've got to have a convention centre', and as you can see here [at Rydges] we're packed out.

Cera acting chief executive John Ombler in February cast doubt over whether the convention centre would be built.

Labour's Canterbury spokeswoman Megan Woods grilled Ombler about the inaction over the convention centre precinct. When asked if the convention centre would proceed, Ombler said it was "too early to give a definitive answer".

Gough rubbished uncertainty around the convention centre going ahead, but said work needed to start as soon as possible.

"It is going to happen.

"We actually need to put a stake in the ground and say 'OK, we'll build this'."

The convention centre precinct, which would span two prime city blocks from Cathedral Square to Victoria Square, was announced as an anchor project in 2012.

It was supposed to be completed in early 2017, but had been pushed out to 2018. At least $284 million of taxpayers money had been allocated to it.

ANCHOR PROJECTS REVIEWED

Okataro chairman Ross Butler said one of government-owned company's roles would be to review Christchurch's anchor projects, to make sure each was "appropriate".

Butler said the next year would include investments of Crown land into "other larger commercial projects".

Otakaro would have about 90 staff. Some will be short term because they will be employed for specific projects, such as the Avon river precinct.

It has had over 1200 applications for jobs.

Butler was aware of research finding 94 per cent believed Christchurch needed a modern outdoor events facility.

"There is no business case for a stadium at the moment. I would've thought the parties should be getting together pretty quickly, and I would put my hand up for Otakaro to be a part of that, to get a substantive business case in place to determine the needs and the capacity of the community to pay for it.

Butler said he had not seen any sign of "a dollar" coming from Canterbury or from New Zealand Rugby Union.

*Comments have now closed on this story*
The dairy industry is in extreme volatility but is outside of crisis mode, says Nathan Guy.

OPINION: The dairy downturn will affect us all at some stage as the depressingly low on-farm returns ripple through the economy.

The former chief executive of Fonterra Andrew Ferrier used to say that when dairy farmers were smiling the country was smiling. The converse is also true.

It's tempting to say that dairy farmers have only themselves to blame for taking on too much debt on overly optimistic scenarios provided to their bank managers.

BEN CURRAN/FAIRFAX NZ Dairying is starting to look like the typical NZ agricultural fad industry except on a massive scale.

Farming is no different to any other business that has an element of risk and you would have thought advisors and banks would have stress-tested the viability of proposals using the worst-case scenario.

READ MORE:

* Low dairy payouts could cost NZ banks billions, Reserve Bank stress tests show

* Dairy prices fall following European moves to support farmers

* Dairy downturn will have 'massive' effect on South Island economy

The worst case scenario has arrived and clearly some very serious mistakes have been made. Large scale and high cost dairy farming has turned out to be a very marginal business at best unless, of course, debt is at manageable levels.

MAARTEN HOLL/FAIRFAX NZ Banks, however, were lending at 50-60 per cent of the cost of converting farms so it's easy to see how the total dairy farm indebtedness has climbed to nearly $38b nationally.

Banks, however, were lending at 50-60 per cent of the cost of converting farms so it's easy to see how the total dairy farm indebtedness has climbed to nearly $38b nationally. To put that into context that's only about three times the student loan debt.

Dairying is starting to look like the typical NZ agricultural fad industry except on a massive scale. Initial optimism led to far too many jumping on the band wagon thinking fortunes would be made. Gold fever, in other words.

All industries go through corrections or rationalisations as conditions change. What is concerning for the country as a whole is how vulnerable NZ Incorporated is to changing conditions over which it has no control, and how frequently and quickly they occur.

The smart dairy operators have probably already taken their profits and left the industry. As one commentator put it, farmers are not so different from urban speculators. Some will have converted to dairying just to reap the returns of a land sale at the top of the market.

High equity farmers will no doubt pick up some of the farms going under at prices unheard of a few years ago. You can't blame them but it's a perfect example of how the rich get richer.

The effects of the downturn will be felt at all levels. I doubt that many of the big operators will be pulling their children out of private schools or selling their luxury vehicles or cancelling their overseas trips.

It will be the truck driver whose hours have been cut down or the small contractor who has beefed up his equipment and staff who will feel the pinch most.

One downstream effect not so frequently mentioned is the spending power of the retired farmer whose offspring have carried on farming on the family farm by converting to dairy. They will want to help out their sons or daughters by putting back some of the cash they took out when handing over the operation. Their spending will have been an important fuel for small town retail.

The real question is what the Government needs to do to ensure the damage is limited or mitigated.

We seem to be viscerally averse to any sort of Government bail out even when the European Union is bolstering dairy prices for its farmers. There is no level playing field in the international dairy trade and probably never will be. The Government cannot be blamed for not wanting to throw good money after bad and some things must be allowed to fail.

So the dairy industry must take its lumps but the Government can at least stop NZ farmland from falling into foreign hands. Foreign investment funds have deep pockets and invest for the long term so will be eyeing up the opportunity of building up portfolios of NZ dairy country.

The tricky issue about foreign buyers is they will help prop up land prices. Banks need those prices to remain high in case they have to foreclose and rescue their loan money.

The other issue is whether the Government can do something to stop the rich NZ farmers buying out farmers less well endowed with equity but just as efficient and hard working.

Lessons from the dairy debacle will be learned, you would hope. Government and organisations like the Reserve Bank can do only so much. The crisis should make individual farmers and their advisors more cautious and more realistic about prospects. The dairy industry will have to work harder at spreading the breadth of its products. It has strived to diversify but that is not as easy as it sounds. Adding ingredients to the food product developed from the dairy component also increases vulnerability. Developing brands in the bigger markets takes years and massive investment.

Although the current disaster does not engender great faith in the business prowess of NZ farming and banking we should remember that NZ farming is still the most sophisticated and least cushioned in the world. The land is still there and many options are available. Irrigation paid for by big dairy prices can be used to grow grass for other purposes.

Most farmers will get through with a bit of pain as they always do. The rest of the country will have to grit its teeth as well.
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
Clint Rouse tests how it feels to sit in a $30,000 Italian marble tub.

It's not the usual sort of item you see in a dusty salvage yard.

Among the wreckage airlifted from Christchurch's red-zoned cliff top homes is a $30,000 bathtub.

The tub, carved from a single chunk of Italian marble, was imported to grace a luxury home built for businessman and richlister Tim Glasson on Sumner's Whitewash heads.

SUPPLIED Fundraiser group organiser Kate Whithear said the bath would be listed on Trade Me and the proceeds would go to Sumner charities.

Before it could be installed, the earthquakes wrecked the multi-million dollar house. Parts of the section fell into the sea.

The tub weighs almost 1000kg and was still in its shipping crate. Like everything else lifted from the site, it had to come out by helicopter as the driveway had gone over the cliff.

Gerard Daldry, director of earthmoving firm ProTranz who did the demolition, said most other items of value had been stripped from the house by thieves, who must have found the bathtub too heavy.

DEAN KOZANIC Tim Glasson is behind the $80 million build on the old Triangle Centre site in City Mall.

Daldry said he "had never seen anything like it before".

"We're more sort of tin bath people around here."

ProTranz will give the bathtub to an annual Sumner charity fundraiser planned for May.

Kate Whithear, who heads the fundraising group, said they were delighted with the gift and would auction it on TradeMe. Proceeds will go to 10 local charities plus others further afield.

The Christchurch City Council now values what remains of the property at $10,000.
Ashleigh Stewart returns to the disaster-ravaged country five years after the earthquake and tsunami.

Toshihiko Fujita's face is not weathered by age, or the years of struggle and tragedy.

If anything, time has been kind to him. His tousled hair is still held back by a bandanna as his arms fly in all directions, spiritedly handing out orders to those encircling him. He looks well-rested, happy. His face has filled out a bit more.

He is a different man to the one I happened upon half a decade earlier, wandering listlessly through the streets of the devastated port town considering his fate.

Ashleigh Stewart A child eats at a temporary housing shelter in Ishinomaki, Japan, on the five-year anniversary.

From the second floor of his house, Fujita had watched a wall of water engulf his town, as his mother struggled downstairs to help her elderly sister out of harm's way.

"Mum!" he called as the water advanced on their house. "Mum," he called again, as cars floated by and the water level rose to the windows.

She never replied.

Ashleigh Stewart Toshihiko Fujita, outside his home in Ishinomaki, Japan, April, 2011.

Four days later, Fujita was rescued from the roof of his house. For 96 hours, he could see his mother's lifeless body lying in the water below.

The city lost 3162 of its citizens to the water, and about 430 are still missing.

Three weeks after the tsunami, while in Ishinomaki volunteering, I saw Fujita walking his bike along the street, and approached seeking directions.

Ashleigh Stewart Toshihiko Fujita, outside his home in Ishinomaki, Japan, April, 2016.

Instead, Fujita indicated the crumbling building behind him, which had once been his family home. He described yelling to his mother from upstairs as the water lapped at his door. The force of the initial earthquake had been so strong it had jammed the front door shut, locking his aunty outside.

His mother had opened a window and grabbed her hand when a giant wave came along and swept them both away.

Much has changed since then. He ran a soup kitchen in the area for a while, and founded a small organisation co-ordinating teams of volunteers.

Ashleigh Stewart Toshihiko Fujita, hosting an event at a temporary housing shelter March 11, 2016.

He has rebuilt the kindergarten he owned that had been swept away by the tsunami.

His house has been rebuilt too, but he is overcome with laughter when I ask about it.

"It's not perfect," he laughs. "It's  how do you call it  DIY."

Ashleigh Stewart The destroyed shell of the former disaster management centre, and a shrine covered in flowers for the 5-year anniversary.

And today, exactly five years on from the day it all changed, he is volunteering again.

Almost 9000 people still live in Ishinomaki's temporary housing shelters, a large slice of the 57,667 evacuees across three prefectures. Many are showing signs of depression and stress.

This anniversary, like every one before it, a group from Japan's southernmost island has arrived at one shelter to dole out homemade ramen. Refugees, mostly elderly, stream from the prison camp-like rows of makeshift housing.

Tears fall as hands are clasped for a minute of silence.

Exiting Ishinomaki Station, it's unclear anything ever happened here. Five years ago buildings were stacked sideways on top of each other, huge barges found their resting places on rows of houses, and piles of debris clogged the roads. Now, every inch of mud has been scrubbed from every corner. The roads are clear and buildings rebuilt. Residents fill the streets as they did pre-disaster. Life goes on.

But the closer to the sea you get, the more reminders appear. House foundations still dot the streets, albeit guarded by barriers made of cute, smiling ducks. The sounds of hammering and power tools is constant, as is the sight of scaffolding.

The flattened land right beside the coast has been condemned, and has been earmarked for a memorial national park.

When the clock finally ticked over to 2.46pm, the Japanese stopped in their tracks. Roadworkers downed tools and bowed their heads, shop attendants formed rows, residents lined broken seawalls and tsunami evacuation areas. Some stood in the same spot they had five years ago, watching the water wash their livelihoods away.

Comforting words from the Prime Minister and Emperor rang out across the nation, via live stream from Tokyo.

In Minamisanriku, they gathered at the mangled wreckage of the former disaster management centre, which issued the last warnings of the impending 16-metre waves and has been left as a makeshift memorial.

Just two other buildings interrupt the vast dirty wasteland; a ravaged white shell that served as an evacuation centre, and a brand-new 7-Eleven.

The rest is a giant construction zone. Giant convoys of trucks endlessly ferry in dirt from the surrounding hills, which are being gnawed away to raise the land by over 10 metres. The convoys continue well after 9pm.

Upon spotting a foreigner in their midst, residents muster every English word in their arsenal to wish them well. Since the disaster, tourists are few and far between, they say, and they're desperate to have them back.

Nowhere is that more apparent than Fukushima.

FUKUSHIMA

On any given day, 20,000 Japanese workers are out in force in Fukushima's evacuation zone, scrupulously scrubbing buildings, and scraping away the top layer of radiation- poisoned dirt from every inch of the area. The dirt is bagged, and the bags transported to "temporary" catchment areas  namely, the Fukushima countryside.

Hundreds of thousands of stacks of radioactive waste litter the landscape. They are stacked at the base of roadside tree trunks, behind a house, in paddocks. From here they will be transported to an "interim" holding place, and from there an unknown "final" destination.

Greenpeace Japan estimates 9 million cubic metres of it is scattered over at least 113,000 locations. They also cast doubt on assertions from the Government it is safe for residents to return.

Twenty-five kilometres north of the stricken power plant, parts of the town of Minamisoma recently rejoined the world after an evacuation order was lifted earlier this year.

Shops remain shuttered and houses deserted. Coastal houses have retreated, and now look out over vast, deserted plains.

Minamisoma mayor Katsunobu Sakurai blasts Tokyo Electric Power Company's (Tepco) plans to restart two reactors at its mammoth Kashiwazaki-kariwa plant. It will be the company's first restarts since the Fukushima meltdown.

Speaking from their Tokyo headquarters, Tepco spokeswoman Yukako Handa is quick to admit the under-fire company's mistakes.

In February, three former Tepco executives were charged with contributing to deaths and injuries stemming from the meltdown.

"We deeply apologise to the residents near the power station and society as a whole for the many concerns we have caused," she tells Stuff.

It took almost five years for the utility to admit its fault in announcing the meltdowns in three reactors two months after the accident.

Over 7000 clean-up workers were in the second phase of the decommissioning process of the plant, which is expected to take four decades.

In Fukushima City, authorities are desperately vying for tourists to return to the city.

The aptly named Decontamination Information Plaza outlays every detail of the recovery, featuring English-speaking guides eager to share how safe the city now is.

The city authority handed out personal radiation meters in 2015 and found 96 per cent of the participants were exposed to half the internationally accepted annual dose of radiation.

The levels in Fukushima City were lower than that of Paris.

Japan's standard for radiation in foods is already less than one-tenth of regulations imposed by the rest of the world on tap water and general foodstuffs, and Fukushima-produced food was well within those guidelines.

Regardless, the rest of Japan are still steering clear of Fukushima-grown produce and meats  a serious blow to a prefecture whose economy is buoyed on agriculture.

KIWIS LENDING A HAND

Kiwi William Vosburgh moved to Fukushima City two and a half years ago. He eats the produce and drinks tap water. He wants to live here for the foreseeable future.

Hailing from Christchurch, Vosburgh is not ill-informed on natural disasters. His family lost its home in the quakes.

"I really like living here. What has really impressed me is the speed of rebuilding. They don't ask for people's opinions here, they just go out and fix things."

"Initially I was worried coming here, but it comes from a lack of knowledge about radiation.

"People are left with the image they first had [of the disaster]. I don't think people realise the impact it's had on people's lives here."

This year, Vosburgh was working with his colleagues to restart an exchange problem between Fukushima and New Zealand, which was cancelled after the disaster.

"There's a lot that can be learnt here," he says.

Further south in Tokyo, Luke Bradley still returns to Tohoku every chance he can.

He still remembers March 11, when the earth started to move at the school where he was teaching English in the northern city of Yamagata.

"Our school had practised earthquake drills so many times so I thought the teachers would be cool, but they lost the plot.

"The ground was moving so much the kids were smashing their heads on the desks."

He had originally planned to be in Matsushima that day, directly in the tsunami's path, but changed his plans last-minute.

Bradley spent several years working in Matsushima, before moving to Tokyo to be with his pregnant partner last year.

But his heart remains in the north. He still returns to help with beach clean-ups, charity events and to run cultural ceremonies such as Kapa Haka. He believes his second home is "bouncing back".

"Everyone was quite shaken up for a while. Japanese don't show their emotion very well so for me to see them at breaking point was hard.

"A lot of my friends have flashbacks of certain things.

"But I'll keep going up, I can't stay away."

Ashleigh Stewart travelled to Japan with the assistance of an Asia New Zealand Foundation media travel grant.
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Smart Law

with Michelle Carabine of Harris Tate

www.harristate.co.nz

Uplifting roots and making a fresh business start in a new country can be a daunting task.



To reduce this stress, it pays to do some homework to get a real idea of what to expect, meaning fewer surprises and increasing the likelihood of a successful transition into the Bay of Plenty economy.



The latest Statistics New Zealand figures show the Bay has an overseas-born population of 17 per cent, or 51,000, a figure thats expected to rise with net migration by 16,400 between now and 2031, and a further 35,600 expected through

natural increases.



For immigrating business owners, due diligence is vital in ensuring you have the ability to successfully transplant your business from one nation to another. Many assume what works in one country will work in another, which is often not the case.

Integrating into a new business culture can be a challenge.



There are various factors to consider, such as language barriers, work and social environments, and the economic situation.



It is always advisable to do market research so you have sound knowledge of the intended industry, as well as both the immigration criteria and any restrictions or specific requirements that may apply.



Another smart move is to visit New Zealand on a temporary visa to check out the business landscape, speak to business brokers, bankers, financial advisors and other advisors ahead of the big move. Business visitors can come to New Zealand for three months to discuss or negotiate business arrangements.



New Zealand immigration laws are exceedingly complex and extensive. If you need help with New Zealand immigration law and policy, or help with visa applications to migrate to New Zealand, it is prudent to talk to an immigration lawyer.








Josh Svendsen was like a new baby once he was fixed at just eight days old. He doesnt remember much of what happened, but his mum Tash does.

The 11-year-old Tauranga boy was born with a coarctation of the aorta and doctors fixed his heart.
One day soon robots will take over the world and their first step towards global domination will be by delivering our pizzas.

Transport Minister Simon Bridges says New Zealand is one of the first countries in the world to be considered for testing an autonomous pizza delivery unit named DRU.
The shortlist of possible buyers for Taurangas state houses is four, with the Government today requesting formal proposals to buy and manage state housing in Tauranga and Invercargill.

The Pact Group wants to buy the Invercargill houses, while Accessible Properties, Hapori Connect Tauranga and Kainga Community Housing Partners for Tauranga are all vying for the Tauranga houses.

The Government announced in January 2015 that it intended selling 1000 to 2000 Housing New Zealand properties and tenancies to registered Community Housing Providers.

The shortlisted respondents submitted high-quality Expressions of Interest for the 348 properties and tenancies in Invercargill and 1124 properties and tenancies in Tauranga, says Housing New Zealand Minister Bill English.

These transactions are about tenants, ensuring they are being housed in properties that suit their needs and supporting those who are able to transition back into independence, says Bill.

I was particularly pleased at the number of EOI respondents with the capability, understanding and motivation to deliver a better service for tenants.

Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett says the Government is changing the social housing system because it wants it to be aspirational instead of generational.

We expect the community housing sector should work with financiers and asset managers to share expertise and figure out innovative new ways of providing housing for our most vulnerable. Those on the shortlist have been thinking creatively and seriously about how to do this, says Paula.

The shortlisted will now proceed to the next stage in the procurement process, Request for Proposals, which will close May 30 for Invercargill and June seven for Tauranga.

The Government expects to announce the preferred bidder for each region in the third quarter of this year.

Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller says the Government is looking forward to receiving comprehensive proposals from the three Tauranga respondents.

We are looking for social housing services providers with better approaches to supporting social housing tenants and managing properties, says Todd.

I thank all providers involved in this process for their interest  we share a commitment to the delivery of higher quality social housing for New Zealanders in need.

The announcement of this shortlist is the next step in getting more and improved social housing here in the Bay of Plenty.

Were working with community groups, non-government agencies, and the private sector to solve some of New Zealands longstanding challenges, says Todd.
A proposed new law that will enable wine and spirit makers to register the geographical origins of their products is a step closer says Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith.

The Geographical Indications (Wines and Spirits) Amendment Bill was debated for the first time today and will now go through the select committee process, including public submissions.

The Bill amends the Geographical Indications (Wines and Spirits) Registration Act which was passed in 2006 but never brought into force.

Giving New Zealand wine and spirit makers the ability to register regional names as geographical indications for their product will help protect their reputation and build value.

Geographical indications will give consumers confidence in a products authenticity, assuring them of its value for money, says Mr Goldsmith.

The Bill also makes it easier for wine and spirit makers to take action if someone falsely claims a product comes from a certain region.

It is important we guard the reputation of New Zealand wines and spirits. Being able to register geographical indications makes it easier for New Zealand exporters to promote and protect their product in competitive overseas markets,says Mr Goldsmith.

SOURCE: Office of Paul Goldsmith
Pensioners are warned they will have to fight if they want to fend off the latest government attack on the Supergold Card, a popular pensioners concession card.

NZ First leader Winston Peters says more than 640,000 New Zealanders now have the SuperGold Card and enjoy superannuation at levels his party secured.
Bay of Plenty referee Brett Johnson couldnt have picked a better match to make his Investec Super Rugby debut.

The former Steamers flanker made his debut appearance as assistant referee in the closely fought Blues and Hurricanes game at Eden Park last weekend.

It was an intense affair and I was extremely excited by being involved, says Johnson.

Bay referees will once again be in the thick of it for round four of the Investec Super Rugby competition this weekend with Shane McDermott, Nick Briant and Glen Jackson controlling matches in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

McDermott will again be take his place in the TMO chair when the Hurricanes take on the Force at in Palmerston North tonight.

Straight afterwards, coverage heads to Sydneys Allianz Stadium where Nick Briant will be the man in the middle when the Highlanders clash with the Waratahs.

While early Saturday morning Glen Jackson, fresh from his Six Nations match in Edinburgh last weekend, will referee the Bulls and Sharks match at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria, South Africa.

Jackson will then head to Johannesburgs Emirates Airlines Park where hell be assistant referee for South Africas Stuart Berry when the Lions and Cheetahs game on Sunday morning.
Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith has hit back at the critics during his first reading of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill this week.

Acts labelling the Bill as greenwashing because fish will swim through and still be caught outside the zone.
Three of the four police officers shot near Kawerau on 9 March have now been released from hospital, Police Commissioner Mike Bush has revealed.

The fourth police officer shot in the incident is still receiving treatment in hospital, Bush said.

Four officers were wounded during an armed standoff in the Bay of Plenty on Wednesday. Photo: Cameron Avery.

I know the police family will continue to support them and we wish them a speedy recovery. I also want to thank the New Zealand public for their good wishes and kind thoughts.

A 27-year-old man, Rhys Warren, was arrested and charged with using a firearm against police and faces more serious charges.

The four police officers were shot in the course of an armed cannabis, when several officers entered a home on Onepu Spring Rd, near Kawerau. They exchanged gunfire with a man who was inside the house.

Three officers were all hit in the exchange - one in the head - and a fourth officer was shot later in the hand.
jail

This is the 55-bed 5C pod inside the Onondaga County Justice Center jail in downtown Syracuse.

(Brett Carlsen | bcarlsen@syracuse.com | File photo, 2013)

Syracuse, NY -- An Onondaga County jail inmate who died Thursday night did not have any obvious injuries, leaving an explanation for his death up to an autopsy, a sheriff's office spokesman said.

Christopher Duxbury, 28, of Syracuse, was found unconscious and unresponsive at 8:53 p.m. Thursday in a one-inmate jail cell, said Detective Jon Seeber, a spokesman for the department. Duxbury was in jail on burglary-related charges from Solvay.

There were no obvious signs of what caused Duxbury's death and deputies do not believe anyone else was present when he died, Seeber said.

An autopsy will be finished next week. It's possible the medical examiner will need to wait for toxicology tests -- including drug and alcohol tests -- before determining what happened, Seeber said.

Right now, there is no confirmed cause of death or explanation for what happened. Any criminal investigation into what happened is dependent upon the results of the autopsy, Seeber said.

Duxbury's lawyer, Scott Brenneck, declined comment out of respect for the family.

In addition to his latest arrest, Duxbury was a small player in what authorities in 2009 called "one of the largest cocaine operations in Central New York." He plead guilty and was not jailed, but instead given three years of supervised release.

He also was arrested in 2010 on drunken driving charges, according to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard archives.
David Sprague.JPG

David Sprague

(Provided)

CAYUGA HEIGHTS, N.Y. -- Deputies are searching for an elderly Ithaca man with dementia who went missing on St. Patrick's Day.

David Sprague, 81, went missing around 2:30 p.m. Thursday from the Cayuga Heights area, said the Tompkins County Sheriff's Office. Sprague suffers from dementia and is considered vulnerable, deputies said.

Sprague was last seen driving a four-door, brown 2010 Buick LaCrosse. The sedan's license plate number is 182ACL. The vanity plates are decorated with sailboats.

Sprague has white hair and is balding. He is 5 foot 11 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds.

The state issued a missing vulnerable adult alert for Sprague at 11:53 p.m. on Wednesday.

The alert was issued to counties in Central New York, the Finger Lakes and parts of the North Country and Southern Tier. Flashing signs on state highways -- including Interstate 690 and Interstate 90 in the Syracuse area -- shared a description of Sprague's car.

Deputies asked anyone who has seen Sprague or his car to call 911 or the Tompkins County Department of Emergency Response at (607) 272-2444.
hayes.jpg

Jennifer Hayes at sentencing in County Court. Her lawyer (left) is Ed Klein.

(Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com)

Syracuse, NY -- The former bookkeeper and girlfriend of a Skaneateles businessman will spend 90 days in jail and be required to pay back $140,000 she stole, a judge ruled today.

Jennifer Hayes, 56, now of Georgia, pleaded guilty to felony grand larceny for nearly five years of thefts from Carroll Equipment, 8125 Grant Avenue Road (Route 5), Weedsport.

Hayes was the longtime bookkeeper and girlfriend of William Carroll, the company's owner who lives in Skaneateles.

She was "my girlfriend for 13 years , my bookkeeper for 11 years," Carroll told Syracuse.com in an email. "She left in the middle of the night when I went out of town back in June of 2011."

Hayes has repaid $60,000 and agreed to a term of her probation that requires her to pay back the remaining $80,000 in monthly installments over the next five years on probation.

Hayes has since married and moved to Georgia. She was originally arrested on a fugitive warrant, but has since made payments back to Carroll.

As part of a plea deal, Hayes will spend 90 days in local jail. She's hoping to remain in Georgia during her probation.

State Supreme Court Justice John Brunetti called Hayes "extremely lucky" that prosecutor Michael Kasmarek and Carroll agreed to her plea terms.
NELSON, N.Y. -- Three people were seriously injured early Friday morning after a crash in Madison County.

The one-car accident occurred just before 1:30 a.m. on Old State Road in Nelson between Stearns and Hall roads, according to the Madison County Sheriff's Office.

Three patients were rushed to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse in critical condition, deputies said. Attempts to airlift two of the victims to the hospital by helicopter were prevented by weather conditions, deputies said.

A half a mile stretch of Old State Road is closed between Stearns and Hall roads while deputies investigate the crash.

More information about the accident -- including the victims' identities -- will be released later on Friday, deputies said.

Deputies were assisted by the Erieville Fire Department, Cazenovia Fire Department, Smithfield Eaton Volunteer Ambulance Corp., Cazenovia Area Volunteer Ambulance Corps, New York State University Police at Morrisville State College and Onondaga County Air 1.
jail

This is the 55-bed 5C pod inside the Onondaga County Justice Center jail in downtown Syracuse.

(Brett Carlsen | bcarlsen@syracuse.com | File photo, 2013)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- An Onondaga County Justice Center inmate who died Thursday night was one of 33 people arrested six years ago in a federal cocaine bust.

Christopher T. Duxbury, 28, of Syracuse, was found unconscious and unresponsive at 8:53 p.m. Thursday in his jail cell, said Detective Jon Seeber, a spokesman for the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office. Duxbury was rushed to Upstate University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, he said.

In October 2009, Duxbury was one of scores of people charged in what one prosecutor called "one of the largest cocaine operations in Central New York."

Duxbury, who was 21 at the time of his arrest in 2009, was not a leader of the drug operation, a prosecutor said at the time.

Duxbury pleaded guilty to conspiracy to posses with intent to distribute cocaine on Dec. 9, 2010 in in the United State District Court in Syracuse, court documents show. He admitted distributing less than 25 grams of cocaine.

It was Duxbury's first conviction. Before the federal bust, Duxbury had no criminal record, Assistant United State Attorney Carla Freedman in a sentencing memorandum.

"The defendant clearly participated in a large scale conspiracy to distribute cocaine, though the government believes that the defendant's involvement was limited to distributing smaller amounts of cocaine...to the defendant's friends," Freedman said.

Duxbury was sentenced on May 6, 2011 to serve three years on supervised release and pay $100, according to court documents.

Ten months into his sentence, a probation violation led the court to adjust Duxbury's sentence.

Duxbury's federal probation officer learned on Jan. 20, 2012 that Duxbury was being investigated by the Syracuse Police Department for stealing scrap metal from Jaquith Industries, according to court documents. Duxbury worked for the company at the time and told police he had stolen the scrap metal on his day off, court documents show.

Duxbury had worked for Jaquith Industries for over two years when the theft occurred, according to court documents.

When Duxbury gave his employer the approximately $450 he made at the scrap yard, the company declined to file charges against him -- explaining the incident was "uncharacteristic of him as a long term employee in good standing," court documents show.

At the time of the incident, Duxbury was wrangling with financial and emotional difficulties, federal probation officers stated in court documents. He was financially strained from the holiday season and "emotionally drained" after breaking up with a longtime girlfriend, officers wrote.

The court ordered Duxbury to seek counseling. Duxbury agreed to attend.

After the federal bust, Duxbury was arrested twice more in Onondaga County: Once in 2010 and once three months before his death.

Duxbury was arrested by the New York State police on April 24, 2010 in Marcellus and charged with driving with a blood-alcohol count of more than 0.08, according to syracuse.com | The Post-Standard archives.

Duxbury was charged by Solvay police on Dec. 10 on burglary-related charges, according to syracuse.com | The Post-Standard archives.

He remained in the jail until Thursday night, when he was found unconscious and was rushed to the hospital where he was declared dead.

Deputies are investigating Duxbury's death, Seeber said. The New York State Commission of Correction will also review the death, he said.

An autopsy will be conducted by the Onondaga County Medical Examiner's Office to determine Duxbury's cause of death, Seeber said.
MV fatal in the Town of Lyme -1.jpg

State Police in Watertown responded to a submerged vehicle complaint in an inlet of Three Mile Bay in Jefferson County. A man was killed in the accident.

(Provided photo)

State Police in Watertown responded to a submerged vehicle complaint in an inlet of Three Mile Bay that crosses under state Route 12E in the town of Lyme.

TOWN OF LYME, N.Y. -- A 58-year-old man died after a one-vehicle crash this morning in the town of Lyme in Jefferson County, according to New York State Police.

State police responded to a submerged vehicle complaint in an inlet of Three Mile Bay that crosses under state Route 12E at 8:37 a.m.

David R. Hutchinson, 58, from Three Mile Bay was found dead in the vehicle, state police said. Hutchinson was driving a 2000 Chrysler sedan and traveling east on state Route 12E.



For an unknown reason, the vehicle left the south shoulder of state Route 12E while entering a left hand curve. The vehicle then struck an earth embankment, became airborne, struck a guiderail, and came to rest completely submerged in about 5 feet of water, state police said.

The cause of death is pending an autopsy and the investigation is continuing.

Sarah Moses covers the northern suburbs of Onondaga County and Oswego

County. Contact Sarah at smoses@syracuse.com or 470-2298. Follow @SarahMoses315
British Fidelity leaves Australia

The last Australian-crewed product tanker, the MR British Fidelity, is to be taken off the Australian coast.

This is due to the termination of the vessels contract with oil major BP on 9th May, according to the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). The seafarers reportedly received a letter from the ships manager, ASP, informing them of the contract termination. The crew of the 2004-built tanker, which is currently in Singapore, had earlier objected to sailing to Asian fearing they could loose their jobs. Although ASP assured the crew that the vessel would return to the Australian coastal trade, the crews worst fears were realised, the MUA claimed. In the letter sent to the crew ASP allegedly said that it regrets the departure of the vessel and the possible need for redundancies to occur. These are decisions by BP and not ASP. British Fidelity operated carrying fuel from Kwinana to Adelaide and more recently from Kwinana to Devonport/Hobart (Tasmania). The news comes on the back of last years letter of termination sent to the crew of BP-contracted British Loyalty and Turnbull Governments aim to remove hardworking Australians who pay tax in this country and replace them with exploited foreign labour on as little as $2 per hour who are employed on flag of convenience shipping, MUA national secretary, Paddy Crumlin, reportedly said.




Product flows could change

Opinions have changed as to the direction that global product flows will take in the future, a leading broking house said.

This is due the fact that the anticipated rationalisation of European refining capacity has been put on hold in the face of strong margins and setbacks to various greenfield refining projects, Gibson said in a report. Recently, the IEA released its Medium Term Oil Market Report, which was revised to take account of changing markets. Looking at the detail, it can be seen that the expectations for regional balances have, in some cases, changed substantially, especially in Asia Until recently, it was anticipated that Asia might have a 1 mill barrels per day deficit of light distillates (Gasoline/Naphtha) by 2020. However, the IEAs more recent projections now point to a massive 2.8 mill barrels per day deficit by 2021, pointing to a substantial import possibility. Gibson said that in its naphtha report earlier this year, the broker highlighted how supportive a 1 mill barrel deficit might be, and thus news that this deficit could nearly triple bodes particularly well for products trade. To identify how supportive this development might be, one must look towards to the regions which are net long on lighter distillates, namely Europe and the Middle East. Imbalances will also remain a feature of the middle distillates market. However, whilst Europe is set to remain structurally long on light distillates, such as gasoline and naphtha, the opposite is true for middle distillates (ie gasoil/jetfuel) where projections indicate a substantial deficit of 2 mill barrels per day by 2021. In short Europe will have a significant deficit of middle distillates by 2021, thus being heavily import reliant. However, with other regions increasingly long on the grade, there will be a fight for market share with the main suppliers being the Former Soviet Union (FSU), US and Middle East., Gibson said. Interestingly, despite Russia remaining long on middle distillates, constant changes to fiscal policy make the longer term picture less predictable. However, under the current scenario, Russian refineries are expected to cut runs in response to tax changes, whilst demand growth is also expected to recover over the medium term. Thus exports of all clean products from Russia could come under pressure, although FSU states are set to remain significant exporters. Other regions will also be short on the fuel, with Africa and Latin America both remaining large importers. The Asian middle distillate market will also evolve, as last year, Asia was a net exporter of middle distillates, but by 2021 Asia will slip into a deficit resulting in the region becoming a net importer. Developments in India should also be monitored closely. In India, refinery capacity additions have not been enough to keep pace with surging demand and thus exports have fallen whilst import demand has risen. In addition, with increased petrochemical capacity coming online in the future, not only will Indias demand for naphtha continue to increase, also its exports of clean products are likely to face further declines. Of importance to product tanker owners, the IEA stated that oil product flows will continue to grow at faster pace than crude flows, supported by widening regional imbalances. These imbalances are structurally supportive for the product tanker sector, Gibson concluded.




PSM Instrumentation has joined forces with Scanjet Holding.

Combined, the two companies now offer a more comprehensive product range that fulfils the concept of intelligent tank management (ITAMA), providing a single source total package for the marine market.

PSM, based in Haywards Heath in the UK, designs and manufactures marine tank gauging systems.

Swedish-based Scanjet, with facilities worldwide in all the main shipbuilding regions, is known for its tank cleaning, venting, monitoring and control solutions.

John Bullivant, PSM Instrumentation managing director, said,PSM has enjoyed a wonderful 30 years as an independent company. We now feel that, for the benefit of our customers and staff, we need a strong partner to take us to the next level. Scanjet is the perfect choice because of the many synergies between the two companies.

Magnus Wallin, Scanjet CEO, said,Scanjet is joining forces with PSM to provide customers with new products that broaden and enhance our portfolio, allowing us to offer the full range of intelligent marine tank management solutions demanded by our major global shipbuilding customers. This supports our strategic growth plan by investing in product development and company acquisition.
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Janet Taylor, Clewiston

Letter: Glades lives matter; we won't be flooded out

The swanky Biltmore in Coral Gables. The Breakers in Palm Beach. Upper-crust Everglades Coalition and Everglades Foundation folks have celebrated in style, making their case that working-class Glades residents should give up their homes and livelihoods to make way for Lake Okeechobee's excess water.

Now some radical activists in the Sierra Club suggest, "A dike failure would fix everything. The human toll would be inconceivable. The benefits to our environment would be immeasurable."

Inconceivable is right. More than 39,000 people live in Hendry County. About 13,000 live in Glades County and 31,000 in Clewiston, Belle Glade and Pahokee cities. Glades lives matter.

But, at the ritzy resorts, trust-fund-born-and-bred Nat Reed and his followers are still attacking Florida's sugar cane farming region, trying to destroy our agricultural heritage.

Reed's parents made a fortune developing Jupiter Island and Hobe Sound. What about that environmental destruction? While Reed has never worked a day at farming, he wants to determine when and where farming should be "allowed."

Lake Okeechobee discharges are terrible. But that it isn't water from the Everglades Agricultural Area that ends up in the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. Lake Okeechobee's water comes primarily from the north, east and west.

Only 5 percent of the water entering Lake Okeechobee comes from the south, and that water comes from our rural communities to protect homes and people from flooding, not from farms.

One-percenters in exclusive places like Jupiter Island seem to have no problem advocating flooding our communities and sugar cane fields, destroying an industry that employs more than 12,000 hard-working Floridians. Now, they want to flood us out.

Farming is the backbone of Florida's economy. We're the first environmentalists, caring for the land because it provides for us all. We won't be driven away by people too privileged to understand that.

Janet Taylor is a Hendry County Commissioner.
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Arthur Apissomian, Port St. Lucie

Letter: Potential for catastrophic mishaps should heighten resolve against All Aboard Florida

Stanford Erickson, (Feb. 21 guest column, "Keep Fighting to derail train") nails the core reason why we should resist All Aboard Florida: "Florida East Coast Industries will discontinue the (unprofitable passenger) service, and run freight on those passenger rail lines." This is certain, since FEC bought 24 new GE freight locomotives in January 2014.

The consequences: Freight trains will eventually transport chemicals and oil, these being among the most profitable cargoes. Spillage from train accidents will result in environmental catastrophes. The odds of this happening increase with the speed of the train.

Statistics show an ever-increasing number of oil-train incidents. To see what they look like, visit http://tinyurl.com/h8fj3xn  a gallery of photos taken within the past two years, on the Sightline website.

Last year, the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, had to be evacuated after oil cars derailed and caught fire. Eight tankers from a BNSF train carrying 103 cars loaded with crude oil derailed and caught fire near Galena, Illinois. Firefighters had difficulty suppressing the fire source, and had to let it burn its self out. Toxic fires are common.

We must ask: When this happens in our communities who will bear the responsibility and costs for physical damages? Who will be charged with remediation?

Will we be confronted with corporate denial, as Mayflower, Arkansas, was when the ExxonMobil pipeline burst in 2013, and spewed "dilbit"  a tar sands sludge over roads and lawns?

This sludge is technically "not oil" under industry-scripted federal regulations; therefore the company claimed no responsibility. ExxonMobil has since paid about $5 million in costs, but last year's consent decree is still being contested, and water contamination remains a concern.

We should be asking more questions, and getting more answers.
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Debra Goodley, 54, 5100 block of Palmetto Drive, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order for violation of pretrial detention and termination of pretrial supervision, battery on an officer.

Valerie Salvati, 27, 600 block of Roseland Road, Sebastian; warrant for uttering a forged bill, check or draft.

Stephanie Greer, 30, 800 block of 24th Street, Vero Beach; warrants for grand theft, uttering a forged instrument.

Jose Hernandez, 36, 400 block of Gasparilla Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for use or possession of drug paraphernalia.

Krislande Irelus, 22, 500 block of Greenway Terrace, Port St. Lucie; warrant for grand theft of a motor vehicle.

Michael Marchione, 36, 2200 block of Savage Boulevard, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of parole, burglary, grand theft, opium possession, habitual offender.

Sarah Long-scardigno, 20, 100 block of Westglen Drive, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, grand theft.

Javar Wyche, 37, 5400 block of Moorhen Trail, Port St. Lucie; crime against a person  corrupt by threat of a public servant or family member.

Anthony Davis, 48, 300 block of Eastport Circle, Port St. Lucie; destroying, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence; possession of cocaine.

Jared Diaz, 34, 1100 block of Haleyberry Avenue, Port St. Lucie; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

Michael Miskovsky, 57, 2300 block of Santana Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrants for DUI, leaving the scene of an accident.

Joel Rodriguez, 34, 1200 block of Glastonberry Avenue, Port St. Lucie; out-of-county warrant, Miami-Dade County, violation of probation, burglary of an unoccupied dwelling, grand theft, armed burglary.

Earl Demery, 51, 2900 block of Hanson Way, Fort Pierce; warrants for sale/delivery of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church, possession of cocaine.

Jermaine Thomas, 40, 1900 block of Avenue E, Fort Pierce; warrants for possession of marijuana, sale and delivery of marijuana within 1,000 feet of a convenience store.

Mark Boardman, 42, 4900 block of Silver Oak Drive, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order to revoke bond, new arrest, leaving the scene of an accident, causing serious bodily injury, leaving the scene of an accident, causing property damage, DUI impairment  blood or breath alcohol level of .15 or more, two prior convictions within 10 years, damage to property or person.

Alan Zuniga, 18, 1000 block of Jamaica Avenue, Fort Pierce; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Julian Alfaro-magana, 20, 600 block of Roselyn Avenue, Fort Pierce; possession of marijuana over 20 grams; possession of marijuana with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver.

James O'Connor, 24, Lake Worth; out-of-county warrant, Palm Beach County, failure to appear, status check, fraudulent use of a credit card, fraudulent use of personal I.D. information, grand theft.

Ivan Miller, 75, 1900 block of Capri Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, DUI with property damage.

Susan Guillory, 50, 100 block of Avenue E, Fort Pierce; batter on an officer.

Tracy Justice, 51, 600 block of Bacon Way, Port St. Lucie; warrants for sexual offense, video voyeurism, first offense, video voyeurism by person 24 or older on child, less than 16, cruelty towards child, directly promoting sexual performance by a child.

Lahavia Tippins, 38, Brunswick, Georgia; readmit, driving while license suspended, prior conviction.

Jared Yanes, 27, 1500 block of Curtis Street, Port St. Lucie; readmit, DUI impairment, blood or breath alcohol .15 or more.

Kaleb Wheeler, 22, 6000 block of U.S. 1, Fort Pierce; readmit, driving while license suspend, prior conviction, failure to register vehicle.

Chandra Spires, 27, 400 block of Eighth Street, Fort Pierce; readmit, dealing in stolen property.

Andre Valente, 61, 2700 block of Somber Road, Port St. Lucie; warrant for court order to revoke bond, use or possession of drug paraphernalia, petty theft.
Florida Power and Light Co. ran a floating pipe about 1,000 feet onto the Indian River Lagoon from the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant, apparently in violation of a permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. (ERIC HASERT/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

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By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

ST. LUCIE COUNTY  Florida Power and Light Co.'s construction of a transmission line under the Indian River Lagoon has been cited  but not fined  for 421 noise violations. The company also ran a floating pipe about 1,000 feet across the lagoon from the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant, apparently in violation of a Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit.

The utility in September began installing a transmission line under the lagoon from the nuclear plant on Hutchinson Island to a substation on the mainland between Walton and Midway roads. The St. Lucie County commissioners gave FPL a permit to work around the clock, as long as nighttime noise to nearby residences stayed below 60 decibels. That's about the same level as conversation in a restaurant or business office, or an air conditioner 100 feet away, according to the Federal Interagency Committee on Noise.

Dana Wade, whose house is about 200 yards from the work site, said the noise was so bad "there was no way we could sleep at night."

TOO NOISY

After numerous complaints from neighbors, the county hired  and FPL paid for  a contractor to measure noise around the site. The noise exceeded 60 decibels 421 times between Dec. 11 and Jan. 12, the county's code enforcement supervisor, Danielle Williams, told the county at a March 2 Code Enforcement Board hearing.

FPL attorney Daryl Krauza admitted at the hearing the company violated the noise permit at least once, but added all the after-hours work has been completed.

The board found FPL in violation of the permit, but levied no fines. Fines can't be levied at the first hearing for a code violation, county spokesman Erick Gill said, citing state law.

"But if they're found in violation again, they can be charged as a repeat offender at double the fine, or $500 for each violation," Gill said.

Wade called the board's action a "slap on the hand."

"What good is it to tell someone not to do something after they've already stopped? ... And during the day, they can make all the noise they want."

PIPES IN VIOLATION

A DEP permit allows the utility to float sections of pipe on Big Mud Creek as a staging area adjacent to the nuclear plant.

Halting round-the-clock work forced FPL to extend the staging area and the pipes into the lagoon, said company spokesman Bill Orlove.

"We discussed this with DEP in February," Orlove said. "We told them it was necessary and would be temporary, and they were OK with it."

That's not true, DEP spokeswoman Jessica Boyd said, adding area residents told DEP about the pipes and their concerns about them being a boating hazard.

DEP, which consulted with the U.S. Coast Guard and state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, decided the pipe, which had lights at night, "did not pose a navigational hazard or environmental harm," Boyd said.

FPL removed the pipe Wednesday. DEP has not decided whether the utility should be cited, Boyd said.
Board members of the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust tour research facilities Thursday at Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute guided by Paul Wills (right), associate director for research. The trust is helping fund a research project to grow bonefish for stock enhancement. (PATRICK DOVE/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

SHARE JIM LUCIANO/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Caleb Butler, son of Wounded Warrior Cpl. Derek Butler, is holding one of five bonefish caught and released last July near the Crossroads in the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon while fishing with host Jim Luciano, of Port St. Lucie, and Mike Cawby.

By Ed Killer of TCPalm

FORT PIERCE  For Russ Fisher, few things compare with his love for "hunting" bonefish. When he sets out from his home in Key Largo to catch and release one of the state's most popular inshore sport fish, Fisher said it's a lot more like hunting than it is fishing.

He prefers to pursue the torpedo-shaped target in shallow, relatively clear waters. There, he can stealthily approach one, or a small school of, bonefish. He selects a fly he thinks will entice one to bite, then makes a presentation he hopes won't spook the wary trophy and, instead, start a tug of war.

Fisher is like thousands of other anglers who revere bonefish and their grassflats game fish cousins, tarpon and permit. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars  tourist dollars in many cases  are spent specifically on the same type of "hunting" Fisher finds rewarding. But in recent years, an alarm has been sounded by fishing guides who work the waters of Florida Bay and the adjacent Florida Keys.

The bonefish numbers simply seem to be in severe decline. According to Aaron Adams, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust director of science and conservation, reports from longtime guides in the Upper Keys indicate bonefish populations there could be off as much as 85 to 90 percent.

So the trust is aiming to reverse the decline. Thursday, several members of the organization's board of directors toured the aquaculture facility at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute campus in Fort Pierce to see firsthand what its team of scientists can do to help bonefish in Florida Bay, the Keys and elsewhere in Florida. This week, the organization, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, announced it has awarded Harbor Branch a $3 million grant to fund first of its kind research to design and test and experimental project to grow bonefish for stock enhancement.

"Our larger goal is to try to determine what has happened to the bonefish stock in the Florida Keys and Florida in general," said Harold Brewer of Key Largo, trust president. "Working with Harbor Branch, we have an opportunity to start from scratch. This is the beginning of a much larger endeavor once we get these steps in place."

Fisher said Harbor Branch was chosen for this challenging research for a variety of reasons.

"They've given us more than a year's head start over other options we had," Fisher said. "Not only do they have the skill set, but they have the team to work through the challenges that will arise."

Paul Wills, associate director for research at Harbor Branch, said he and his team are ready to do something that has never been done before  raise bonefish in captivity and get them to reproduce.

"The current research plan is a five-year project and at least the first half of it is devoted to brood stock conditioning, hatchery components and producing that first fish," said Wills, who has been with Harbor Branch since 2006, where he and his team produce red drum, pompano and cobia. "I hope we can get to that point much earlier than that  perhaps in the first year  where we'll be able to get the technology to where we can produce the juveniles."

But, Wills admits, there a lot of "ifs."

"Since it has never been done with this species, there is a lot to be done," Wills said. "What are the water quality requirements of the juveniles? What can we feed them? Can we train them to feed themselves once they are back in the wild? There are a lot of real basic questions to be answered first."

The bonefish quandary is a tough one. According to the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, recreational fishing in Florida is a $9.3 billion a year business with $7.6 billion coming from the saltwater fishing sector. In the Florida Keys, some $465 million is attributed to flats fishing, where bonefish, permit and tarpon are commonly encountered. The Everglades region accounts for an estimated $1 billion in recreational fishing economic contribution.

Since the trust was founded in 1998 by concerned anglers, guides and scientists, it has worked to enhance fisheries for these species. Recently, it launched a clean water education campaign that focuses on how healthy habitats equates to healthy fisheries.

"We're concerned at how low the bonefish population is in the Keys and that even as we try to fix the problems, we don't know if those populations will be able to sustain themselves once whatever it is that is impacting them is fixed," Adams explained. "This will be one tool we can use in the bonefish restoration toolbox."

Sport fish restoration is not a new concept, although it has not been done frequently in marine environments. Throughout the country, states including Florida have established hatcheries for freshwater sport fish like largemouth bass, walleye, muskie and more. It's been done to help the quality of the fishing and the quality of people's lives, Wills said.

"But we may also be working on bolstering a species that may be in decline," Wills said. "Do we want to lose that species? As a biologist I have to say 'No!' We want to maintain that diversity."

One of the first steps, Wills said, when it is time to introduce fish to the tanks at Harbor Branch, will be for scientists and trust anglers and guides to catch bonefish with hook and line methods to bring them to Fort Pierce.

Bonefish Bio

Scientific name: Albula vulpes

Nicknames: Silver ghost, white fox, macabi

Food value: Seldom eaten in Florida, too bony

Range: A tropical species caught in the Keys, Biscayne Bay, Bahamas and Caribbean, as well as on the Treasure Coast

Habitat: Shallow mud or grassflats

Game quality: Legendary for speedy, long-distance runs in shallow water

Size: Common from 2 to 10 pounds

State record: 16 pounds, 3 ounces, Robert Schroeder, Islamorada, March 19, 2007

State fishing regulations: Catch and release only; Bag limit: 0 per day.

Conservation information: www.bonefishtarpontrust.org

Source: Sport Fish of Florida by Vic Dunaway, Florida Sportsman magazine
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump meets with attendees during a campaign stop Feb. 2 in Milford, N.H. If Trump is on the November ballot, he could affect other federal and state races, stimulating independents and Democrats who might not otherwise come to the polls. (The Associated Press)

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By Bartholomew Sullivan, bartholomew.sullivan@tcpalm.com

WASHINGTON  If Donald Trump is on the November ballot, he could affect other federal and state races, stimulating independents and Democrats who might not otherwise vote to come to the polls.

Or he could be such a noxious force within the Republican Party that he would attract only the demographic he has attracted in the primaries so far and other Republican candidates could suffer.

That's what insiders who pondered Trump at the top of the ticket said about his potential impact on candidates seeking election in November. Until Florida's primaries in August, no one knows for sure who those other candidates will be.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, hopes to become one of them by beating U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter, for the open U.S. Senate seat being given up by Republican Marco Rubio.

"I think a Trump candidacy will have a devastating effect on all Republicans down ballot throughout Florida," Grayson said Friday. Asked why, he said: "Because Donald Trump is changing and narrowing the base of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is excluding minorities  wholesale  from the party, despite the efforts Republicans have made over the years to try to do minority outreach, and hoping he can substitute for them some kind of strength among working class whites.

"It won't work in Florida," he added. "Florida is very diverse, very cosmopolitan. It has one of the largest minority populations in the entire country," Grayson said. "Whatever effect that strategy may have for him in Ohio or in Michigan, it's going to be disastrous for Republicans in Florida."

CIRCLE THE WAGONS

Murphy said: "The Floridians I meet want leaders who will cut through the dysfunction in Washington to get things done for the middle class. Donald Trump's bigoted, anti-woman, anti-Hispanic campaign should have no place in our politics. Unfortunately, it's now clear this is Trump's Republican Party. This November, you can count on Floridians to reject Donald Trump and his fellow Republican candidates."

U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-St. Augustine, is running for the Republican nomination to seek the Rubio Senate seat this year. His spokesman, Brad Herold, said the congressman wouldn't comment, but added: "All I can tell you is that it's not going to affect us one way or another. We will campaign on what we believe no matter who the presidential nominee is."

John Xuna, a retired engineer from Stuart seeking the 18th congressional district seat Murphy now holds, said Trump would stimulate Democrats to come out in November. A Bernie Sanders supporter, Xuna said Trump would attract younger Democrats to vote against him in the same way Sanders would attract them to vote for Sanders.

"We don't want to go back to the bigotry and the hate," Xuna added. "It (Trump on the ballot) will help Democrats across the state."

Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who helped Gwen Graham win a congressional race in the Panhandle two years ago, said Republicans are likely to coalesce around Trump if he is the nominee.

"I do think the GOP will circle the wagons, just as they did in 2010 with Rick Scott," Schale said in an email message. "A lot of Scott supporters today said some pretty tough things about him in that primary, but when it came to choosing sides in general, they defaulted back to the party.

"Problem for GOP down-ballot is Trump will be strongest in areas where they are already strong," he continued. "One place where he's a huge liability is Miami, an area with a number of key down-ballot races, where the GOP candidates are going to have to find ways to separate themselves from Trump, which in this hyper-partisan world, can be nearly impossible to pull off."

NO TRUMP EFFECT

Some local politicians declined to comment or gave views that were unresponsive. Others tended to be noncommittal. Martin County Commissioner Ed Fielding offered only this emailed response: "Certainly will be interesting."

Bill Paterson, St. Lucie County's Republican Party chairman, is concerned Republicans seeking to upend Trump's race toward the nomination could succeed, which he thinks would do real harm to the GOP. He said "99 percent" of the people he talks to say they will vote for Trump if he is the party's nominee. But he's working on a husband and wife who say "we can't, we can't."

He predicts they will by November, when he plans to drive them to their polling place, he said. Paterson said the independent voters he saw turned away from the Florida primary last week because they weren't registered Republicans  and wanted to vote for Trump  will swell the vote in the general election.

Some take the view that Trump's name on the ballot won't have any effect on other federal, state and local races, including Matthew Rensen, a Port St. Lucie retiree and member of the Treasure Coast tea party.

"I can't say I'm an expert. I'm just as confused as everyone else," he said Friday. "I don't think people are stupid enough  or, let's put it this way, selfish enough  to say, 'He's not my guy. I'm not going to vote.' I don't see that happening.

"Democrats who want to vote are going to vote anyway, and Republicans who want to vote are going to vote anyway, regardless," he said.
The Martin County Sheriff's Office leases a Lenco BearCat G3 that it began using in 2014. (FILE PHOTO)

First, a clarification.

A few months back, in a column on civil asset forfeiture, I wrote that the Martin County Sheriff's Office had used forfeiture proceeds, seized from drug dealers and other criminals, to purchase an armored battle wagon  a Lenco Bearcat G3, a vehicle capable of stopping a .50 caliber round and transporting heavily armed deputies to the scene of a crisis.

The department actually is leasing the vehicle, 36 monthly payments of $6,649.31 per month, money that indeed comes from forfeiture proceeds. Come December 2017, the department will own the Bearcat outright.

Which still begs a question:

Do they really need it?

Martin County is a pretty placid place, with one of the lowest crime rates in the state. And the stats on how often the Bearcat actually gets used bear this out.

When the department got the Bearcat in December 2014, Sheriff William Snyder said he expected to use it about 20 times per year. In the 15 months since, the Bearcat has been deployed 18 times  14 times to serve warrants, four times for "call-outs," where something like a standoff or hostage situation is happening or possible. It's also been used 30 times for training events.

And listen, if I was law enforcement, I'd love this thing. I'd want to roll up to the scene of every call in it. Safety first, right?

And yet ...

For the past two years, ever since the post-Michael Brown riots in Ferguson, Missouri, cops have been under a microscope. One part of that is the "militarization" of police, the fact that local law enforcement has come to look a lot like the armed forces, with the same equipment and capabilities.

In addition to the Bearcat, for example, the Martin County Sheriff's Office also has an MRAP  a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle  courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense, which doles out surplus military gear via its "1033" program. Snyder said the county doesn't use the MRAP, though it could be utilized for hurricane rescues or similar emergencies.

According to federal 1033 data, the Indian River County Sheriff's Office got an MRAP, too; the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Department and the Fort Pierce Police Department each go two of them. Someone starts laying mines around the Treasure Coast, we're set.

But what are the chances of that? Might all of this be, you know, overkill?

Martin County got five helicopters from the feds (Snyder says his department cannibalizes them for parts to fix its existing helicopters); St. Lucie County got a tracked personnel carrier. All told, Treasure Coast law enforcement agencies got some $7 million worth of used military gear between 2006 and 2015  which doesn't include Martin County's Bearcat, leased separately.

Do we need all this stuff? Depends on how we define "need," I guess.

As the deployment figures suggest, Martin County's Bearcat isn't sent out on just any old call.

"If there's the possibility that one of our citizens' or one of our officers' lives may be put in danger, then we consider the Bearcat," said Capt. Brian Bergen of the Special Investigations Division.

"Theoretically, we look for reasons not to use it," he said.

But nearly half of all search warrants are served via the Bearcat. Bergen said the sheriff's department executed 23 such warrants last year; the Bearcat was used for 10 of them.

"It's the safest way to get your personnel up to a vehicle or a structure where there is a known propensity for violence or for bad things to happen," he said.

Previously, he said, SWAT teams deployed in a minivan. Which I guess looks a little less intimidating pulling into a suspect's driveway.

Indeed, said Bergen, the armored vehicle is a huge deterrent even by itself. "We've hit several houses where we've discovered numerous firearms, AK-47s and, with the Bearcat out front, we hopefully deterred those folks from any thought of grabbing those firearms," he said.

I'm of two minds about all this. As noted, I get it  if I was a cop, I'd love all this stuff. I'd feel like it made my job safer and made it easier to take down the "bad guys."

At the same time, when officials in Martin County  even Martin County  feel the need to spend $239,375 in forfeiture funds on a war wagon, well, maybe that makes some people feel more safe. But it might create the impression the county is a more dangerous place than ever before.

"We're very sensitive about using any more force or display of force than is necessary," said Sheriff Snyder.

"We don't want to look like an occupying army. But I want my guys to go home safe."
FILE PHOTO

Quiet zones are more dangerous than rail crossings where trains are required to sound their horns.

I continue to hear and read similar statements from All Aboard Florida opponents, who seem to view the installation of quiet zones as a concession to the passenger rail project. They cite the "danger" of quiet zones without offering a shred of evidence.

It's time for a reality check.

"The Federal Railroad Administration wouldn't allow the substitution of a quiet zone in lieu of a horn if it weren't as safe or safer," said Brightline/All Aboard Florida President Michael Reininger, who recently visited Treasure Coast Newspapers.

Quiet zones are federally regulated safety upgrades that eliminate the need for trains to sound their horns at rail crossings.

At the risk of being branded a proponent of the project and a mouthpiece for Reininger  as I was last week by a few irate readers  I put Reininger's words to the test.

Here's what I found.

If quiet zones are more dangerous than standard rail crossings, a lot of communities are stepping into harm's way.

As of February, there were 683 quiet zones nationwide. Twenty-nine were added in the past seven months. The vast majority of quiet zones were installed after 2005, when the federal government began allowing local governments to silence train horns by adding safety upgrades at rail crossings.

There are 17 quiet zones in Florida. Most are located on CSX tracks in South Florida. Currently, the lone quiet zone on the Florida East Coast rail line, which will carry All Aboard Florida's passenger trains, is in Miami.

"Because the absence of routine horn sounding increases the risk of a crossing collision, a public authority that desires to establish a quiet zone usually will be required to mitigate this additional risk," according to the Federal Railroad Administration. At a minimum, this often includes the installation of supplementary safety measures, such as medians or channelization devices, one-way streets with gates or four-quadrant gate systems.

Are quiet zones more dangerous than rail crossings where trains must sound their horns? No.

In August 2014, FRA officials presented a study  "Analysis of Safety at Quiet Zones"  at (take a deep breath) the Global Level Crossing Safety & Trespass Prevention Symposium in Urbana, Illinois.

The study examined 203 quiet zones  covering 903 rail crossings  that were established between May 2005 and April 2011. The authors compared incident data for each quiet zone in the 12-month periods before and after safety measures were installed.

Conclusion: The study found "no significant difference in collisions before and after the establishment of quiet zones."

All Aboard Florida plans to begin running 32 daily passenger trains between Miami and Orlando in late 2017. Local governments north and south of our three-county area have applied for quiet zones, according to Reininger. Not so for Treasure Coast governments, which have raised two main objections to quiet zones: cost and liability.

I dealt with these issues in my previous column. Suffice it to say, the barriers for local governments to install quiet zones appear to be coming down.

With respect to safety, let's put to rest the notion that quiet zones are more dangerous than standard rail crossings. The best evidence seems to indicate it's a push  with no significant difference in safety one way or another.

That said, quiet zones could help prevent certain types of accidents. Case in point? The deaths of two Martin County men early Tuesday at a rail crossing in Port Salerno.

Michael Franklin Gearde, 51, of Hobe Sound, and Daniel Wayne Faulk, 40, of Port Salerno, died when Gearde drove around the crossing gates and into the path of the train, according to Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Mark Wysocky.

If this rail crossing had been a quiet zone equipped with additional safety measures, such as a median divider between lanes or four-quadrant gates, driving around the gates would not have been an option.

Quiet zones don't necessarily make rail crossings safer  or more dangerous. But they make one huge difference for those who live within earshot of the tracks: a substantial reduction in horn noise.

When you factor in freight traffic, the Treasure Coast may have as many as 50 trains a day slicing through our communities within two years.

The debate over quiet zones is likely to intensify as All Aboard Florida moves closer to completion. It will reach fever pitch if and when our region becomes one continuous horn blast  and local officials have done little or nothing to mitigate the noise.
Thank you for reading!

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MadAbtCars BHPian



Join Date: Sep 2014 Location: Mumbai Posts: 103 Thanked: 254 Times

re: Happiness is 'Doing Something Good' (DSG) : My Skoda Rapid TDI DSG in Black & White Dealership and Booking Experience :



After Senator Skoda decided on shutting shop after duping few people, I was left out with only Two Dealerships i.e. Autobhan & JMD. (JMD stands for Jai Mata Di - A fact I came to know during my car buying process). At the time when I booked the car, both JMD & Autobhan had two Sales outlets at Thane, Navi Mumbai & Andheri, Prabhadevi respectively. While I visited JMD's Thane showroom only, I had visited Autobhan's both the showrooms. In any case my job entails lot of travelling in and around Mumbai so that made it easier. In fact I was also thinking to drop in Viraj Skoda in Pune while I was there on some official work but that didn't happen. Anyways coming back to the initial dealership experiences, both the Autobhan dealerships were very cold hearted in their response. None of them actually bothered to follow up even once. They were not very transparent in their offer as well. I found the quotes to be inflated as compared to what I got from JMD. On asking about discount's they were very firm on the amount (1Lac) of discount and said it is the maximum they can offer. It was kind of take it or leave it type of statement. Only when I said I have a much better offer from JMD, they said they will match whatever JMD was offering. I somehow never felt very comfortable and walked away from them.



JMD on the other hand was very professional. I enjoyed talking to them during my entire process of car purchase. They were very transparent on the pricing and discounts. The Sales Person initially was pushing me to go for the Style Plus model sans the black package. She said since the variants nomenclature have recently undergone a change, (i.e. top model was renamed from Elagance Plus to Style Plus) there is not any clarity whether the Black Package would be available or not. I first said that Style Plus in black package is mentioned on official Skoda website and I further conveyed her, that the only reason I am interested in Skoda Rapid is because of the Black Package wherein I would get those lovely Black Alloys and the projector & fog lamps in smoked black finish. She had a quick chat with the Showroom Manager and Viola, magically she produces the price list of Skoda Rapid Style Plus TDI A/T in Black Package in no time. That was the only moment wherein I felt they were trying to be not true to me, but overall I was happy with their offer so I let it pass. In fact the entire time I was super happy with them. However this feeling was to be curtailed the very next day I took delivery. More on that later in the post.



On Road Price and Discounts :



Ex-Showroom Price : 1,140,229

Skoda Shield : 56,807

RTO & registration Charges : 144,328

CRTM & Depot Charges : 6,000

Drive Assure : 10,495

Total : 1,357,858



Total Discount offered : 138,023

Final On Road Price : 1,219,835



Since I stay in Mumbai Suburbs (Thane) and recently LBT was abolished, I got a benefit of about 60,000. It can't be considered as discount but On-Road price is now lesser if get your car registered outside Mumbai district limits. So if I had been staying within Mumbai city Municipal limits, my On Road Price would had been 12.8 Lacs against 12.2 Lacs



Skoda Shield included 1st Year comprehensive Insurance, 2 Years Road Side Assitance and 2 + 2 Years warranty.



Drive Assure is basically the premium for Zero Depreciation cover. The dealership gave an option to either pay the Zero Dep premium to the Insurance company or Pay JMD instead and get an exclusive JMD club membership wherein all the benefits (+some more) which are covered by the Zero Dep premium through the Insurance company will now be covered by JMD dealership instead. I confirmed whether it would be possible to have the Zero Dep cover through Insurance company when I renew my Insurance next year to which they confirmed in affirmative. So I choose to have the JMD club membership as I was very impressed with them till now. I hope I wouldn't repent this decision in future.



The Skoda Standard discount Scheme during December 2015, the month I made the booking was 100,000 (This was also the final Discount which Autobhan was offering me). Now we all know that all automobile dealers include charges like Depot, CRTM, agent commission, etc in the On-Road pricing. Now these charges are merely aimed at maximizing Dealership Profits and are actually not required. Also not to mention the Insurance payouts the dealerships receive from Insurance companies as commission . So did some quick Maths :



Depot & CRTM Charges : 6,000

Agent Charges : 7,500 (Part of the RTO & Registration charges mentioned above)

Insurance Payout : 17,000 (Considered 25% of Total Insurance + Extended warranty)

Total : 30,500



Thus I inferred that the dealership was actually passing on these benefits in the total discount and it was a fair deal in my opinion. So I did not contest or raise any issue on these charges and made the booking my giving them a token amount of 25,000 on Sunday Afternoon of 20.12.2015. This was after almost 2 months after I made my first visit to JMD. yes you read that correctly I had walked into JMD showroom sometime in beginning of November. It was during my first visit that I had got my Liva evaluated with them and they gave a quote of 3.8Lacs. After that I tried to sell it on my own thinking, if I get a direct buyer might as well be able to extract some additional 20 - 30K. But more than a month and numerous ads posted on various site all I could was get some calls from people and the offers they were making were ridiculous. So had no option but to give it in exchange to JMD only. And even though >45 days had passed since they had made the offer they didn't make any fuss or tried to re-negotiate again. Full marks to JMD on this. Up to this point was supremely impressed by them.



Since it was already nearing year end, the dealership suggested that I take delivery in new year itself. Also in the remaining days of the year there were many government holidays and additionally it was financial year end in my company so I was to be super busy, hence decided I would bring her home sometime in the new year only. They ordered the car as per my exact specifications i.e. Skoda Rapid Style Plus TDI A/T in Black Package and the car reached their stockyard on 29.12.2015. I had informed them earlier only that I would be making further payment only after I do a PDI and they had gladly accepted to it. Only thing they said was that I wouldn't be allowed in their Stockyard and they will get the vehicle to their dealership and once I give my thumbs up, they shall send it back again to their stockyard since there will be some days in between for me to complete my payment & the vehicle goes for registration and they wouldn't stock a customer's car at their dealership. I somehow was not comfortable with the Idea of my car making so many to & fro trips from their stockyard to dealership even before registration so I asked them to give me the VIN number instead. I decoded the same and found it to be December 2015 manufactured. I was informed during booking, that vehicle may be from October, November batch and here I was getting a December manufacturing model. I couldn't be more happy and my trust and faith in JMD goes even further up. I informed them that I am skipping the PDI for now, but will still do a PDI a day before it goes for registration, which they happily agreed too.



So next few days I was busy with Year end closing in my company and then on 02.01.16, I hand over my Liva car keys and make balance payment except for 6Lacs which I was taking as a top-up loan on my existing Home Loan. Though it has its own benefits of taking top up on an existing Home Loan, it is more time consuming than taking a car loan and more so since it was delaying in getting my beloved car home.



During the weeks in between, quite a few thoughts / decisions happened simultaneously. I had contemplated not taking the 2 Years extended warranty initially. Not that I didn't want it, I surely wanted it since I know what can be in future considering its from VAG stable. I only thought that since it can bought later also why spend on it now. Had got it confirmed from JMD before booking, that 2 years extended warranty can be bought later as well and they had confirmed it whereas Autobhan on the other hand were adamant that take it now or you won't get it later. During this period had a few conversation's with the Zonal Sales Head (West) from Skoda Auto India and even he had confirmed that it can be bought later on. Overall I was very impressed with all the communications so far both from the dealership as well as Skoda Auto, - A fact which wouldn't be lasting much now. Both the dealership as well as Skoda Auto were to show their ugly side of customer satisfaction soon - On that just a little later in the post. However finally decided to take the extended warranty at the time of Car Purchase only.



At the time we had got the Liva home, during one casual conversation with my wife, I had said that next time we get a car I will get us a choice number representing our marriage date. ( I thought it was a fool proof way of never forgetting our anniversary , Since I will never forget the number of any of my past, present or future rides). So to remember our anniversary date I needed the number 0612, which would also add up to 9. I checked with Dealership and they said that a new series has just been started and I might very well get the choice number 0612 easily. Since it would be within next 1000 numbers from the current number in the series, the official charges would be 5,000 and additional 3,000 for agent charges. I generally prefer not involving agents as much as possible hence the next day I go directly to the RTO and trust me, it is very easy and people are very helpful. I just had to get a form which costed 1Rs and was available right outside the RTO. Filled up the form (basically a format of declaration and there is no official form to be filled up for this; just an application is all that is required), attached the necessary documents and walked up to the designated counter. The present number which was allotted was MH 04 XX 0237, so that mean 0612 should be available. But sadly some one else had already booked it. Now I had two options, jump the series and thereby pay 3 times the fees i.e. 15,000 or chose some other number. I thought that instead of an dd-mm representation of my anniversary date why not go for mm-dd format representation. So I checked for 1206 availability which would also fall under 5,000 fees category. Yes it was available. I felt it was a better trade off than paying three times the fees, so booked it. The entire process involved filling up form, taking signatures from 2 - 3 windows and paying the fees and doesn't take more than 15 - 20 mins. It worthwhile to get these things done by oneself than relying on agents. It only takes some time and effort.



So I completed the payment on 12.01, car reached dealership on 13.01 and did the PDI, found everything in order and gave them the go ahead and requested them for delivery the next itself, however the dealership requested to take delivery the after i.e. on 15.01 since it was Makar Sankranti an auspicious day. Not that I am a very religious person, but it doesn't hurt to do something good on a festival day. So here's a few pics from the delivery day. Post which I will share how the super excellent experience so far started to turn totally opposite.























The delivery day experience was also nothing less than stellar from JMD. The only downside was that the stock Tyres came with MRF rubber. I hadn't planned on Tyre change anticipating the stock rubber would be Apollo's. However MRF would certainly not do justice to the 250NM that was to be laid down on the tarmac. So right after delivery I headed straight to the authorized Michelin Tyre Dealership. Was absolutely smitten by the Primacy 3ST and that would also mean an tyre size upgrade since 3ST doesn't come in the stock size of Rapid. The error was also within the 2% band, contemplated a lot and somehow I didn't want to take chance with Skoda not honoring warranty and wanted to keep the car as stock as possible. So finally went with XM2 series which are available in stock size of 185/60/R15. He quoted 5,400 per tyre and gave a buy back price of 3,500 per tyre for my MRF's. So total damage to the pocket = 7,600



The ugly side of Skoda Experience :



The moment I drove out from the dealership and had not even covered 2 - 3Kms, I could feel the car was drifting considerably towards the left. Since I was in a hurry to reach somewhere, I didn't bother much. The next day I took it up with the dealership and they told them about the issue, they asked me to get the car to their workshop. And here I was visiting the so famous Skoda Service center within the first week of ownership. Here's my car being checked for wheel alignment :







Having experienced the Toyota Service for past two years and having read all those Skoda horror stories, I had already decided not to set my expectation very high. But what followed made me realize that I shouldn't have any expectation from them altogether. First day they kept the car half a day and finally returned me saying the problem was sorted. I drive out of the service center and come back after driving not more than 500mtrs. Asked their senior most technician to come for a test drive with me and he was also convinced that the problem still existed. Since it was closing time, they asked me to come back tomorrow. The next day also they keep the car the whole day and return me saying it's now finally sorted. I drive for a few kms and still feel the car drifting to left. Fed up, I take my car to the Tyre Dealer from whom I switched to Michelin's. He confirmed that the wheel alignment was still out and corrected the same. I wonder what is the competency level of these technician who work at Skoda.



Now even after getting it checked & corrected I somehow felt it was still pulling left. Took the local mechanic on a long ride and he kept saying that the alignment is perfectly fine and the car won't just keep going in a straight line if you don't hold the steering wheel. It is bound to go left or right. Mostly left since Indian roads have right - left banking. I guess, I was only getting paranoid since it was a Skoda. But then again though the Skoda Service people tried hard to satisfy me and were very polite and courteous all along, the fact remains that they are extremely clueless of their own vehicle and can only do the routine service work - This fact scares me a lot !!



Now take a look at the below snap shot, before I say about the other misery I faced :







Now, as the prevailing RTO taxation, for any Diesel car with Ex-Showroom price more than 10Lacs is taxed at the rate of 12%. So as per the Price List given by JMD while booking and also mentioned on their website, the RTO tax should have been 1,140,229 x 12% = 136,828. This was approximately the value mentioned in the Invoice given to me at the time of delivery. The next day when I got the actual Tax receipt I was shocked to see the amount paid as RTO taxes. The Tax receipt indicated an amount of 128,187 has been paid as life time taxes. Also from past experience of owning cars, irrespective of whatever discount the dealer offers from his Insurance payout, the value on the policy remains the same. In my case the policy should have come with a value of 39,008, however the cover note was for an amount of 25,891. So this is the following conversation I have with the Manager of JMD dealership.



Me: Am I correct in my understanding that whatever discounts you pass on has to be adjusted from anything except from RTO taxes.

Manager : Yes Sir, the price list of any car is made available to RTO authorities by the company directly and irrespective whatever promotions or discounts, the RTO will tax as per the taxation rate and price list available with them.

Me : Am I correct in my understanding that whatever discount you give out of your Insurance payout, the Insurance policy value won't change

Manager : Yes Sir, you are absolutely right in your understanding.

Me : Then why does the RTO tax receipt doesn't match your Invoice but in fact exactly tallies with Ex-Showroom value mentioned as per Invoice.

Manager : (takes out a calculator, 1,068,220 x 12% = 128,127).. sirrrr, sirrr, sirrr, I will check with my team and let you know.

Me : And how would you explain the difference in Insurance value.

Manager : Mmmm, Mmmmm.. Sir why don't you write me a mail about this issue and also mark a copy to the Sales Head of Skoda Auto India (West).



I write a mail to all concerned with all necessary documents. Follow it up with the Manger and Skoda Auto Sales Head for West. It's been almost two months and no one has bothered to clarify anything.



At the time, I had booked my car there was a team-bhp thread as to how, Skoda dealers are over charging on RTO fees. Hence I was keeping track of the RTO charges in particular. Somehow the price list on Skoda website was constantly saying "Page under construction" This was the time when I first started interacting with Skoda Auto Western region's Sales Head. I asked him as to why is the price list not updated on website and asked him to share the price list for Rapid. To which he reassuringly said that he would certainly share the price list with me and also check as to why is the price not update on website. I followed up with him but he never shared with me any price list. The website however was now updated with the price list and it was the same that was quoted to me by the dealership. So I never thought that anything could go wrong.



The way I look at it, there can be only two reasons for the difference in RTO fees. Either Skoda Auto wrongly mentions the price list on their website so that they can make the customer feel that they are giving out huge discounts or the Dealership has found out some way of underpaying the RTO taxes. Either way I am not sure, in case in the future the RTO raises some issue who will be at fault ?



Also the dealership has not yet given me the Extended Warranty certificate and gave me a lame excuse that it takes 45 days for the same. I feel it's total non-sense and only a way of utilizing the amount for 45 days by the dealership. It's almost two months since I have took delivery and no sight of any extended warranty yet. I am pretty sure unless I take it up with them again, they will be least bothered to send me the extended warranty.



I do not know whether I made the right decision of not pursuing the above matter any further. I thought it's better to enjoy my drive rather than breaking my head. Bhpians please advice whether or not to take this issue any further.



Coming up next, my initial ownership report and pictures. After Senator Skoda decided on shutting shop after duping few people, I was left out with only Two Dealerships i.e. Autobhan & JMD. (JMD stands for Jai Mata Di - A fact I came to know during my car buying process). At the time when I booked the car, both JMD & Autobhan had two Sales outlets at Thane, Navi Mumbai & Andheri, Prabhadevi respectively. While I visited JMD's Thane showroom only, I had visited Autobhan's both the showrooms. In any case my job entails lot of travelling in and around Mumbai so that made it easier. In fact I was also thinking to drop in Viraj Skoda in Pune while I was there on some official work but that didn't happen. Anyways coming back to the initial dealership experiences, both the Autobhan dealerships were very cold hearted in their response. None of them actually bothered to follow up even once. They were not very transparent in their offer as well. I found the quotes to be inflated as compared to what I got from JMD. On asking about discount's they were very firm on the amount (1Lac) of discount and said it is the maximum they can offer. It was kind of take it or leave it type of statement. Only when I said I have a much better offer from JMD, they said they will match whatever JMD was offering. I somehow never felt very comfortable and walked away from them.JMD on the other hand was very professional. I enjoyed talking to them during my entire process of car purchase. They were very transparent on the pricing and discounts. The Sales Person initially was pushing me to go for the Style Plus model sans the black package. She said since the variants nomenclature have recently undergone a change, (i.e. top model was renamed from Elagance Plus to Style Plus) there is not any clarity whether the Black Package would be available or not. I first said that Style Plus in black package is mentioned on official Skoda website and I further conveyed her, that the only reason I am interested in Skoda Rapid is because of the Black Package wherein I would get those lovely Black Alloys and the projector & fog lamps in smoked black finish. She had a quick chat with the Showroom Manager and Viola, magically she produces the price list of Skoda Rapid Style Plus TDI A/T in Black Package in no time. That was the only moment wherein I felt they were trying to be not true to me, but overall I was happy with their offer so I let it pass. In fact the entire time I was super happy with them. However this feeling was to be curtailed the very next day I took delivery. More on that later in the post.Ex-Showroom Price : 1,140,229Skoda Shield : 56,807RTO & registration Charges : 144,328CRTM & Depot Charges : 6,000Drive Assure : 10,495Total : 1,357,858Total Discount offered : 138,023Final On Road Price : 1,219,835Since I stay in Mumbai Suburbs (Thane) and recently LBT was abolished, I got a benefit of about 60,000. It can't be considered as discount but On-Road price is now lesser if get your car registered outside Mumbai district limits. So if I had been staying within Mumbai city Municipal limits, my On Road Price would had been 12.8 Lacs against 12.2 LacsSkoda Shield included 1st Year comprehensive Insurance, 2 Years Road Side Assitance and 2 + 2 Years warranty.Drive Assure is basically the premium for Zero Depreciation cover. The dealership gave an option to either pay the Zero Dep premium to the Insurance company or Pay JMD instead and get an exclusive JMD club membership wherein all the benefits (+some more) which are covered by the Zero Dep premium through the Insurance company will now be covered by JMD dealership instead. I confirmed whether it would be possible to have the Zero Dep cover through Insurance company when I renew my Insurance next year to which they confirmed in affirmative. So I choose to have the JMD club membership as I was very impressed with them till now. I hope I wouldn't repent this decision in future.The Skoda Standard discount Scheme during December 2015, the month I made the booking was 100,000 (This was also the final Discount which Autobhan was offering me). Now we all know that all automobile dealers include charges like Depot, CRTM, agent commission, etc in the On-Road pricing. Now these charges are merely aimed at maximizing Dealership Profits and are actually not required. Also not to mention the Insurance payouts the dealerships receive from Insurance companies as commission . So did some quick Maths :Depot & CRTM Charges : 6,000Agent Charges : 7,500 (Part of the RTO & Registration charges mentioned above)Insurance Payout : 17,000 (Considered 25% of Total Insurance + Extended warranty)Total : 30,500Thus I inferred that the dealership was actually passing on these benefits in the total discount and it was a fair deal in my opinion. So I did not contest or raise any issue on these charges and made the booking my giving them a token amount of 25,000 on Sunday Afternoon of 20.12.2015. This was after almost 2 months after I made my first visit to JMD. yes you read that correctly I had walked into JMD showroom sometime in beginning of November. It was during my first visit that I had got my Liva evaluated with them and they gave a quote of 3.8Lacs. After that I tried to sell it on my own thinking, if I get a direct buyer might as well be able to extract some additional 20 - 30K. But more than a month and numerous ads posted on various site all I could was get some calls from people and the offers they were making were ridiculous. So had no option but to give it in exchange to JMD only. And even though >45 days had passed since they had made the offer they didn't make any fuss or tried to re-negotiate again. Full marks to JMD on this. Up to this point was supremely impressed by them.Since it was already nearing year end, the dealership suggested that I take delivery in new year itself. Also in the remaining days of the year there were many government holidays and additionally it was financial year end in my company so I was to be super busy, hence decided I would bring her home sometime in the new year only. They ordered the car as per my exact specifications i.e. Skoda Rapid Style Plus TDI A/T in Black Package and the car reached their stockyard on 29.12.2015. I had informed them earlier only that I would be making further payment only after I do a PDI and they had gladly accepted to it. Only thing they said was that I wouldn't be allowed in their Stockyard and they will get the vehicle to their dealership and once I give my thumbs up, they shall send it back again to their stockyard since there will be some days in between for me to complete my payment & the vehicle goes for registration and they wouldn't stock a customer's car at their dealership. I somehow was not comfortable with the Idea of my car making so many to & fro trips from their stockyard to dealership even before registration so I asked them to give me the VIN number instead. I decoded the same and found it to be December 2015 manufactured. I was informed during booking, that vehicle may be from October, November batch and here I was getting a December manufacturing model. I couldn't be more happy and my trust and faith in JMD goes even further up. I informed them that I am skipping the PDI for now, but will still do a PDI a day before it goes for registration, which they happily agreed too.So next few days I was busy with Year end closing in my company and then on 02.01.16, I hand over my Liva car keys and make balance payment except for 6Lacs which I was taking as a top-up loan on my existing Home Loan. Though it has its own benefits of taking top up on an existing Home Loan, it is more time consuming than taking a car loan and more so since it was delaying in getting my beloved car home.During the weeks in between, quite a few thoughts / decisions happened simultaneously. I had contemplated not taking the 2 Years extended warranty initially. Not that I didn't want it, I surely wanted it since I know what can be in future considering its from VAG stable. I only thought that since it can bought later also why spend on it now. Had got it confirmed from JMD before booking, that 2 years extended warranty can be bought later as well and they had confirmed it whereas Autobhan on the other hand were adamant that take it now or you won't get it later. During this period had a few conversation's with the Zonal Sales Head (West) from Skoda Auto India and even he had confirmed that it can be bought later on. Overall I was very impressed with all the communications so far both from the dealership as well as Skoda Auto, - A fact which wouldn't be lasting much now. Both the dealership as well as Skoda Auto were to show their ugly side of customer satisfaction soon - On that just a little later in the post. However finally decided to take the extended warranty at the time of Car Purchase only.At the time we had got the Liva home, during one casual conversation with my wife, I had said that next time we get a car I will get us a choice number representing our marriage date. ( I thought it was a fool proof way of never forgetting our anniversary, Since I will never forget the number of any of my past, present or future rides). So to remember our anniversary date I needed the number 0612, which would also add up to 9. I checked with Dealership and they said that a new series has just been started and I might very well get the choice number 0612 easily. Since it would be within next 1000 numbers from the current number in the series, the official charges would be 5,000 and additional 3,000 for agent charges. I generally prefer not involving agents as much as possible hence the next day I go directly to the RTO and trust me, it is very easy and people are very helpful. I just had to get a form which costed 1Rs and was available right outside the RTO. Filled up the form (basically a format of declaration and there is no official form to be filled up for this; just an application is all that is required), attached the necessary documents and walked up to the designated counter. The present number which was allotted was MH 04 XX 0237, so that mean 0612 should be available. But sadly some one else had already booked it. Now I had two options, jump the series and thereby pay 3 times the fees i.e. 15,000 or chose some other number. I thought that instead of an dd-mm representation of my anniversary date why not go for mm-dd format representation. So I checked for 1206 availability which would also fall under 5,000 fees category. Yes it was available. I felt it was a better trade off than paying three times the fees, so booked it. The entire process involved filling up form, taking signatures from 2 - 3 windows and paying the fees and doesn't take more than 15 - 20 mins. It worthwhile to get these things done by oneself than relying on agents. It only takes some time and effort.So I completed the payment on 12.01, car reached dealership on 13.01 and did the PDI, found everything in order and gave them the go ahead and requested them for delivery the next itself, however the dealership requested to take delivery the after i.e. on 15.01 since it was Makar Sankranti an auspicious day. Not that I am a very religious person, but it doesn't hurt to do something good on a festival day. So here's a few pics from the delivery day. Post which I will share how the super excellent experience so far started to turn totally opposite.The delivery day experience was also nothing less than stellar from JMD. The only downside was that the stock Tyres came with MRF rubber. I hadn't planned on Tyre change anticipating the stock rubber would be Apollo's. However MRF would certainly not do justice to the 250NM that was to be laid down on the tarmac. So right after delivery I headed straight to the authorized Michelin Tyre Dealership. Was absolutely smitten by the Primacy 3ST and that would also mean an tyre size upgrade since 3ST doesn't come in the stock size of Rapid. The error was also within the 2% band, contemplated a lot and somehow I didn't want to take chance with Skoda not honoring warranty and wanted to keep the car as stock as possible. So finally went with XM2 series which are available in stock size of 185/60/R15. He quoted 5,400 per tyre and gave a buy back price of 3,500 per tyre for my MRF's. So total damage to the pocket = 7,600The moment I drove out from the dealership and had not even covered 2 - 3Kms, I could feel the car was drifting considerably towards the left. Since I was in a hurry to reach somewhere, I didn't bother much. The next day I took it up with the dealership and they told them about the issue, they asked me to get the car to their workshop. And here I was visiting the so famous Skoda Service center within the first week of ownership. Here's my car being checked for wheel alignment :Having experienced the Toyota Service for past two years and having read all those Skoda horror stories, I had already decided not to set my expectation very high. But what followed made me realize that I shouldn't have any expectation from them altogether. First day they kept the car half a day and finally returned me saying the problem was sorted. I drive out of the service center and come back after driving not more than 500mtrs. Asked their senior most technician to come for a test drive with me and he was also convinced that the problem still existed. Since it was closing time, they asked me to come back tomorrow. The next day also they keep the car the whole day and return me saying it's now finally sorted. I drive for a few kms and still feel the car drifting to left. Fed up, I take my car to the Tyre Dealer from whom I switched to Michelin's. He confirmed that the wheel alignment was still out and corrected the same. I wonder what is the competency level of these technician who work at Skoda.Now even after getting it checked & corrected I somehow felt it was still pulling left. Took the local mechanic on a long ride and he kept saying that the alignment is perfectly fine and the car won't just keep going in a straight line if you don't hold the steering wheel. It is bound to go left or right. Mostly left since Indian roads have right - left banking. I guess, I was only getting paranoid since it was a Skoda. But then again though the Skoda Service people tried hard to satisfy me and were very polite and courteous all along, the fact remains that they are extremely clueless of their own vehicle and can only do the routine service work - This fact scares me a lot !!Now take a look at the below snap shot, before I say about the other misery I faced :Now, as the prevailing RTO taxation, for any Diesel car with Ex-Showroom price more than 10Lacs is taxed at the rate of 12%. So as per the Price List given by JMD while booking and also mentioned on their website, the RTO tax should have been 1,140,229 x 12% = 136,828. This was approximately the value mentioned in the Invoice given to me at the time of delivery. The next day when I got the actual Tax receipt I was shocked to see the amount paid as RTO taxes. The Tax receipt indicated an amount of 128,187 has been paid as life time taxes. Also from past experience of owning cars, irrespective of whatever discount the dealer offers from his Insurance payout, the value on the policy remains the same. In my case the policy should have come with a value of 39,008, however the cover note was for an amount of 25,891. So this is the following conversation I have with the Manager of JMD dealership.Me: Am I correct in my understanding that whatever discounts you pass on has to be adjusted from anything except from RTO taxes.Manager : Yes Sir, the price list of any car is made available to RTO authorities by the company directly and irrespective whatever promotions or discounts, the RTO will tax as per the taxation rate and price list available with them.Me : Am I correct in my understanding that whatever discount you give out of your Insurance payout, the Insurance policy value won't changeManager : Yes Sir, you are absolutely right in your understanding.Me : Then why does the RTO tax receipt doesn't match your Invoice but in fact exactly tallies with Ex-Showroom value mentioned as per Invoice.Manager : (takes out a calculator, 1,068,220 x 12% = 128,127).. sirrrr, sirrr, sirrr, I will check with my team and let you know.Me : And how would you explain the difference in Insurance value.Manager : Mmmm, Mmmmm.. Sir why don't you write me a mail about this issue and also mark a copy to the Sales Head of Skoda Auto India (West).I write a mail to all concerned with all necessary documents. Follow it up with the Manger and Skoda Auto Sales Head for West. It's been almost two months and no one has bothered to clarify anything.At the time, I had booked my car there was a team-bhp thread as to how, Skoda dealers are over charging on RTO fees. Hence I was keeping track of the RTO charges in particular. Somehow the price list on Skoda website was constantly saying "Page under construction" This was the time when I first started interacting with Skoda Auto Western region's Sales Head. I asked him as to why is the price list not updated on website and asked him to share the price list for Rapid. To which he reassuringly said that he would certainly share the price list with me and also check as to why is the price not update on website. I followed up with him but he never shared with me any price list. The website however was now updated with the price list and it was the same that was quoted to me by the dealership. So I never thought that anything could go wrong.The way I look at it, there can be only two reasons for the difference in RTO fees. Either Skoda Auto wrongly mentions the price list on their website so that they can make the customer feel that they are giving out huge discounts or the Dealership has found out some way of underpaying the RTO taxes. Either way I am not sure, in case in the future the RTO raises some issue who will be at fault ?Also the dealership has not yet given me the Extended Warranty certificate and gave me a lame excuse that it takes 45 days for the same. I feel it's total non-sense and only a way of utilizing the amount for 45 days by the dealership. It's almost two months since I have took delivery and no sight of any extended warranty yet. I am pretty sure unless I take it up with them again, they will be least bothered to send me the extended warranty.I do not know whether I made the right decision of not pursuing the above matter any further. I thought it's better to enjoy my drive rather than breaking my head. Bhpians please advice whether or not to take this issue any further.Coming up next, my initial ownership report and pictures. Last edited by MadAbtCars : 16th March 2016 at 19:26 .
Consumers understanding of what encryption does apparently doesnt determine whether they use the technology, with iPhone owners much more likely to use encryption than Android users.

Most Android phones are not encrypted, either by user choice or manufacturer design. About 95 percent of all iPhones are encrypted, compared with less than 10 percent of Android phones, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Why? Google has been slow in mandating full-disk encryption. The feature generally is turned off by default in Android smartphones that have it.

A majority of consumers perceive encryption positively, and 95 percent believe their sensitive information should be encrypted online, according to a survey released this month byZixCorp.

More than 500 users responded to the poll. When asked if they had ever used encryption, 43 percent said no and 25 percent said they werent sure. Just 32 percent said they had used encryption.

The survey did not match respondents as Apple or Android users.

The Value of Encryption

Seventy-five percent of respondents said they provided sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers, addresses and Social Security numbers when online shopping, banking, and sending or receiving email, the survey found. Respondents associated encryption with privacy (24 percent) and security (72 percent).

Smartphones and tablets are a window into our lives. They contain sensitive data  from our location to bank account information to personal communication with friends and loved ones, said David Wagner, CEO of ZixCorp.

Based on survey results, I am pleased people in the U.S. understand the value of encryption and how it is used to secure their data and, more importantly, their privacy, he told LinuxInsider.

Understanding vs. Acting

The encryption issue may be the root of a new category between the haves and the have-nots.

When it comes to security threats on mobile devices, there is no comparison. Studies show that as much as 97 percent of all mobile malware targets Android, while iOS suffers from functionally none, said Alex Pezold, CEO ofTokenEx.

This is deeper than just encrypting data. Android phones are outright sitting ducks to a degree, he told LinuxInsider.

Users on only a handful of Android phones that launched with encryption have their data secured, according to Jason L. Bauman, SEO associate atTrinity Insight Philadelphia.

While whole-device encryption is actually available on any Android phone starting with Gingerbread  Android 2.3  which was released in 2011, most users wont have it because the option is buried deep in the device settings, he told LinuxInsider.

Whats the Difference?

Several critical differences exist in encryption technology applied to Apple and Android phones, noted Navroop Mitter, CEO ofArmorText. Android smartphone owners have to take extra steps to encrypt their data.

Apple puts out a single device variant at a time and controls how the operating system updates work with older devices, he told LinuxInsider. This determines if certain new security features will be available for older iOS devices or not and if the user experience impact is acceptable.

Manufacturers often use the Android OS on lower-end devices. Those cheaper smartphones lack the processing power to encrypt the device without destroying user experience, Mitter said.

Apple has simplified the process of encrypting its devices and their contents, but it requires using a passcode.

This is something more than 64 percent of smartphone users do not do, said Mitter.

Why the Difference?

Google does not require manufacturers of Android-based phones to encrypt their devices. Thats partly because of a long-standing concern from manufacturers that performance would be impacted, according to Nathan Wenzler, executive director of security atThycotic.

Since Googles Android business model relies on as many manufacturers as possible building and selling Android phones, they are not in a good position to require the manufacturers to encrypt everything, he told LinuxInsider.

It should be noted that Google does use encryption on their own Android devices and has publicly discussed how they would prefer if their partners would do the same, Wenzler said.

Design is another factor. The Android OS has supported encryption for a long time, although it has not been enabled by default on most Android devices, according to Robert Grapes, vice president of marketing and operations atGraphite Software.

Android users have been capable of enabling the encryption on their devices since Android 4.x. While Apple, as the sole provider of iOS, can declare encryption by default, it is more difficult for an open ecosystem like Android to enforce encryption by default across all of the OEMs, he told LinuxInsider.

Perhaps without consumer demand, the OEMs simply chose performance over a feature that may or may not have been valued, Grapes added.

Impact on Users

Users of unsecured Android devices have no way to protect their data from criminal activity or government reconnaissance, Wenzler said. Users in countries that are notorious for disregarding the privacy of their citizens are at greater risk of having their personal information compromised.

That is where the encryption controversy comes into play, with Apple opposing federal efforts to require a backdoor into the iPhone of one of the shooters in last years San Bernardino, California, attack.

A multitude of malware exists for Android devices, Wenzler said.

When data is encrypted, even if hackers intercept traffic or infect a device with malware, what they are able to retrieve is virtually useless, according to Vishal Gupta, CEO ofSeclore.

When the data is not encrypted, this final defense is removed, making these devices much more lucrative targets for cybercriminals, he told LinuxInsider. Google is all in on encryption, but the same cannot be said for the various device manufacturers who produce Android-powered phones.

If you ask any phone user, including iPhone users, if their device is encrypted, only a small percentage would know, Graphite Softwares Grapes suggested.

Encryption by default is simply a good thing, and the performance of devices today supports that direction, he said.

Making It Public

The FBI may have engineered the public fight with Apple as part of an effort to block better privacy software development, according to Wendell Adams, CEO ofAB Mobile Apps.

The case defiantly seems engineered by the FBI, as Apple requested the case to be sealed and the FBI wanted it public, he told LinuxInsider.

That view is supported by Thycotics Wenzler. The FBI had little reason to take the case public, and Apple made similar requests in other encryption cases to not go public.

Its possible that the FBI attempted to gain public support and force Apples hand before encryption and security measures in iOS devices became so good that it would be impossible for Apple to unlock and decrypt its devices under any circumstances, Wenzler suggested.

To me, this is the gambit the FBI chose to take, and the only path they had to try and gain support was to take it public, he said.

However, he concluded, public sentiment is shifting toward Apple and protecting user data.
The GermanCartel Office on Wednesday announced the launch of an investigation into Facebook over allegations that it abused its market position by infringing data protection rules, specifically in connection with the terms of service governing user data.

The investigation is aimed at Facebook Inc. USA, the companys Irish subsidiary, and Facebook Germany GmbH in Hamburg. The office, or Bundeskartellamt, is looking into whether Facebooks terms of service violate data protection provisions.

Dominant companies are subject to special obligations, said Andreas Mundt, president of the Bundeskartellamt. These include the use of adequate terms of service as far as these are relevant to the market.

User data is hugely important at advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, Mundt added. The investigation will look into whether users are adequately informed about the type and extent of data collected.

Questionable ToS

Facebooks terms of service could be imposing unfair conditions on users, the office said.

The company collects a large amount of personal user data, and users are required to agree to the terms of service, which often are difficult to understand, the Bundeskartellamt said.

The company has complied with the law and will work with the Bundeskartellamt to answer its questions, a Facebook spokesperson said.

The office is conducting the investigation with the cooperation of data protection officers, consumer protection offices, the European Commission and authorities in other EU member states.

The Working Group on Competition Law met at the Bundeskartellamt in October and to discuss dominant digital and social media platforms such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Rules of Competition

Germanys investigation may not be about Facebook violating any rules regarding data protection, but rather about competition, said Susan Schreiner, an analyst atC4 Trends.

This is the first time that a company has amassed the sheer volume of data, she told the E-Commerce Times. In todays world, where data is the new currency, is this about user data ultimately translating into market power and giving Facebook an advantage over German and other EU Internet companies?

German regulators are focusing on two central issues, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

First is the way Facebook dominates social markets via four of the eight most popular social apps/services, including Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, he told the E-Commerce Times. The second is the companys business model, which is largely based on selling advertising informed by information about Facebook users.

If Facebooks business is as clean as the company claims, then it shouldnt be a problem, King said. However, rival companies have faced similar allegations and defended their practices, facing months of painful inquiries and eventual penalties.

French Investigation

Facebook has come under scrutiny in various European countries in recent months, as officials have examined issues including the security of data that could be transferred to the U.S. and be subject to U.S. government surveillance.

The French data protection authority, the CNIL, last month sent a formal notice to Facebook requiring it to comply with the French Data Protection Act within three months, specifically regarding the browsing data of Internet users who do not have a Facebook account.

The company has 30 million users in France, according to the office.

The office also found that Facebook collects information on the sexual orientation and religious and political views of users without their explicit consent and sets cookies that have an advertising purpose without proper consent.

If Facebook fails to comply in the French case, the chair could appoint a rapporteur who might refer the matter to the CNIL select committee regarding sanctions.

Protecting the privacy of the people who use Facebook is at the heart of everything we do a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by media rep Arielle Aryah. We are confident that we comply with European data protection law and look forward to engaging with the CNIL to respond to their concerns.
Google this week launched a section of its transparency report to track the progress of efforts to encrypt the Web, by both the company and third-party sites estimated to account for about 25 percent of Web traffic.

The report will be updated weekly with information about progress the company has made toward implementing HTTPS by default across its services.

Gmail, Drive and Search have long been secured with HTTPS, and traffic from products such as ads and Blogger were added over the past year, Google said. It plans to bring other products under HTTPS protection over time.

Implementing HTTPS can be difficult.

There are a lot of details that you have to get right  the right version of TLS certificates, HFS with Mozilla, said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at theElectronic Frontier Foundation.

Were trying to change the situation, he told TechNewsWorld.

Obstacles to implementing HTTPS include older hardware and software, which dont support modern encryption technologies; governments and organizations that may block or degrade HTTPS traffic; and some organizations unwillingness or lack of resources to implement HTTPS, Google said.

The Encryption State of Play

As of January, just over 75 percent of requests to Googles servers used encrypted connections, excluding YouTube traffic, Googlesstatistics show.

Maps was the most encrypted Google product, with 83 percent of Maps traffic being encrypted. Advertising came next with 75 percent, and News and Finance tied at 59 percent.

Among the top 10 countries with encrypted traffic, Mexico led with 86 percent, Brazil was second with 84 percent, and the United States was ninth with 72 percent of request encrypted.

Mobile traffic accounted for 95.5 percent of unencrypted traffic to Googles servers.

Dangers Inherent in Mobility

Mobile devices account for one-third of all Web pages served worldwide, according toStatista.

Most of the unencrypted traffic originates from devices that may no longer be updated and may never support encryption, Google said.

Only 10 percent of Android phones are encrypted, because Google does not control this, said David Jevans, VP of mobile security atProofpoint. Its controlled by the handset maker [and] cannot be fixed because the phone carriers wont take on the burden of validating new Android releases on old phones.

Google is forcing handset manufacturers to turn on encryption by default in the next version of Android, known as Marshmallow, he told TechNewsWorld.

Possible Solutions to the Mobile Problem

Mobile device insecurity is a transient condition [because] the replacement cycle for mobile devices Is 24 to 36 months, pointed out Frank Dickson, a research director atFrost & Sullivan. The issue gets solved simply with the passage of time.

Google is responsible for this problem because they obviously control the Android platform, he told TechNewsWorld.

For the really long tail of websites, we need them to ignore the Android 2 series and Windows XP user bases because theres this important security feature inside TLS called SNI that they dont support, the EFFs Eckersley said, referring to the clair, Froyo and Gingerbread releases of Android.

SNI makes virtual hosting easier on HTTPS because it adds to the Transport Layer Security handshake the domain name of the host the requester wants to connect to, he said.

There are workarounds. The EFFsLets Encrypt certificate authority gives people up to 100 domain names in one certificate, but not everyone wants to do that because it slows things down, Eckersley noted.

Making a Virtue Out of Necessity

Googles revenues depend on commerce being transacted on the Internet, Dickson asserted. The companys revenues will suffer if the Internet is viewed as unsafe for commerce.

Encryption efforts now better protect people against bulk dragnet surveillance and against hackers on their WiFi connections, but thats still only maybe 40 percent of traffic, Eckersley noted.

Weve made progress with the big sites  Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, he said, but there still are millions more that need to be protected.
Researchers atMIT and theUniversity of Innsbruck last week announced that they had designed and constructed the worlds first scalable quantum computer, a development that could make existing encryption technology obsolete.

They built the computer using five atoms in an ion trap, according to a report published in the journal Science.

The researchers used laser pulses to carry out an algorithm  conceived in 1994 by MIT Professor Peter Shor  on each atom to correctly factor the number 15. The computer system is designed so that atoms and lasers can be added to factor much larger numbers, creating the worlds first system that can scale Shors algorithm.

The algorithm is the most complex quantum algorithm known, but it can be upgraded in a laboratory setting, said Isaac Chuang, professor of physics, electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

Chuang, considered a pioneer in the field, designed a computer in 2001 based on a single molecule that could be held in superposition and manipulated through nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15. Those results, published in the journal Nature, were not scalable and were considered experimental.

The New Math

Unlike traditional computing, which relies on 0s and 1s to carry out algorithmic instructions, quantum computing relies on qubits, which are atomic-scale units that can be 0 and 1 simultaneously, a state known as superposition. That allows a supercomputer to carry out two separate lines of instructions at the same time, for example.

Weve been hearing about quantum computers for many years and the concerns about how they may be able to break existing encryption schemes, said Steve Pate, chief architect atHyTrust.

A lot of the work came from the academic community and resulted in the DES algorithm being replaced with 3DES and later AES, which is widely used now, he told TechNewsWorld.

3DES  pronounced trip-DES  is a mode of the DES encryption algorithm that encrypts data three times. Three 64-bit keys are used, instead of one, for an overall key length of 192 bits. The first encryption is encrypted with a second key, and the resulting cipher text is again encrypted with a third key, Pate explained.

This improves the security of the algorithm and uses a larger key size but makes the overall encryption/decryption time longer, he said.

Out of the Laboratory?

The MIT development shows that quantum computing has moved beyond an idea and into a question of implementation, said Kevin OBrien, CEO ofGreatHorn.

The implications here are twofold, he told TechNewsWorld. First, this development suggests that quantum computing is becoming a question of scale rather than theory, much as the development of smaller chip sizes allow for increased complexity in traditional computing.

The second point is that the question of relying on the exchange of keys, even with larger key sizes, will not be sufficient in a quantum-enabled world, he said. New types of encryption will be required.

Implementing quantum computing on a large scale is not cost effective, said Mike Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

The technology to maintain a 5-qubit computer is very complex and difficult, he told TechNewsWorld, noting that it involves supercooling and laser entrapment. These are not likely to become desktop components any time soon. In fact, the very act of using a qubit destroys it, so a 5-qubit computer is good for one solution before it has to be rebuilt.

While we still have a few years before quantum computers become mainstream, Eli Dourado, director of theTechnology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told TechNewsWorld, governments and a few other security-conscious organizations should start using quantum-safe encryption techniques now.
ProtonMail, which offers encrypted email, on Thursday launched free iOS and Android mobile apps worldwide, through the iTunes App Store and Google Play, respectively.

They have been in beta since August, company CEO Andy Yen said.

The email service features end-to-end encryption; emails stored on ProtonMails servers also are encrypted and thus cant be accessed.

Not even ProtonMail has the ability to read the emails of our users, and thus its technically impossible for us to hand over user messages to third parties, Yen told TechNewsWorld.

Based in Switzerland, its servers are out of reach of United States authorities.

All ProtonMail client-side code is open source and is reviewed by the ProtonMail community.

No Advertising

The basic service is free, offering users 1 GB of storage.

ProtonMail was launched through a 2014 Indiegogo campaign that raised more than US$550,000 within one month from more than 10,500 backers. The campaigns goal was $100,000.

Additional backers include Charles River Ventures and the Fondation Genevoise pour lInnovation Technologique, a nonprofit foundation.

Users can upgrade to a paid account or donate money to help fund the company, which doesnt take ads.

Since we do not violate user privacy to serve targeted advertisements, we cannot offer the service for free, Yen said. [We charge for] more storage and advanced features, so that we can cover our operational expenses.

ProtonMails encryption is fully compatible with PGO, because PGP has withstood the test of time  over 20 years now  and is well trusted and vetted by the community, Yen said.

Other Secure Email Systems

Several other secure email systems are available.

For example, open source Tutanota, which is based in Germany, offers a free option and a premium service for 12 euros yearly, and has mobile apps for iOS and Android. It encrypts all data on the users device  emails, contacts, subjects and attachments. It provides 1 GB of storage.

Kolabnow.com, like ProtonMail, is based in Switzerland. Its available for groups and hosting accounts, as well as individuals, and is priced from US$4.70 to $103 a month for hosting accounts with 10 users, payable in Swiss francs.

Gmail provides secure connections between a client and its servers, but data sent over the connection is plain text, noted Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

If Google receives an order from the FBI, theyre going to have to disclose the text, he told TechNewsWorld.

Apple encrypts emails end to end, and it also encrypts messages sent through iMessage. However, iMessage backups go to Apple, which has access to the key, Eckersley said, so if you backup to the iCloud, Apple can retrieve the data.

Encryption Is Here to Stay

The FBI has obtained a court order compelling Apple to assist it in accessing encrypted data, a move that has sparked strong emotions on both sides of the argument.

The release of yet another encrypted email system highlights one aspect of the debate. That is, even if the U.S. authorities should prevail in their case against Apple, there would still be many other encryption options that would not be subject to their investigations.

We are supportive of Apples efforts, but ultimately I dont think what happens in Switzerland will dramatically impact the outcome of that case, Yen remarked.

As far as encryption is concerned, the genie is already out of the bottle, Chen said, and theres nothing to be gained by trying to legislate or control it. The sooner governments realize this, the sooner we can all work together to tackle the even more severe threats facing the Internet community today, such as the rise of cyberattacks and cyberterrorism. For that, encryption will be a hugely important defensive tool.
Wipro Limited a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, has announced a strategic partnership with Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automated systems, to develop convergent solutions for Indias Smart Cities.

Wipro and Schneider Electric will collaborate to enable the delivery of cost-effective and efficient citizen services to urban and rural communities. Both organizations will jointly develop solutions in the Smart City space for India and global markets.

Smart Cities have a strong and equal play of operational technology (OT) along with information technology (IT) to provide convergent solutions. Wipro and Schneider already have a strong partnership around IT, Data Centers, connectivity, Intelligent Building Management Systems and Data Center Infrastructure Management solutions. Both the companies are now collaborating to focus on key OT areas like energy optimization, analytics and citizen service improvement for smart cities.

Kiran Desai, Vice President and Head  Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited said, Wipros strength in system integration across technologies combined with Schneiders world class products and solutions will help create a unique proposition for customers. With its strong IT background, industry domain and focus on Internet of Things, Wipro is uniquely positioned to create convergent solutions with optimal total cost of ownership thereby enabling enhanced citizen experience.

Commenting on the partnership Anil Chaudhry, Country President and Managing Director, Schneider Electric India said, The world of energy is transforming. The convergence of IT and energy technologies such as the internet of things applied to energy, allows increasing control and anticipation in the use of energy and resources. The energy world is becoming more connected, more distributed, more electric and more efficient. Our collaboration with Wipro will see new and innovative technologies coming into existence and making Indias cities better places to live, work and play.

Technuter.com News Service
EMC has been recognised as one of the Best Workplaces in Asia 2016 by Great Place To Work at the Institutes Asia Conference held in Sydney on March 16, ranking #4 on the Best Multinational Workplace list. The study considers the 60 best Asian companies based on five key metrics of workplace culture  credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. This follows EMCs 6th place position on the Worlds Best Multinational Workplaces list in 2015, up 12 places from 2014.

EMC was recognised for creating a great workplace built on trust, as rated by employees in seven countries across Asia. The company received high marks from employees for its steadfast commitment to living by its 10 core values and supporting employees throughout their career with EMC: including a talent acquisition strategy that ensure employees fit well into the EMC culture and are equipped for success right from the start. It also rated highly for its flexible work practices; providing friendly work environments with facilities that support employees mental and physical well-being; and its collaborative, cohesive energy towards achieving and exceeding results.

EMC runs a number of programs designed to drive the continuous improvement of its corporate culture including employee volunteerism, learning and development, and an accelerated programme of career development for women. In 2014, EMC launched YouDefine EMC, a worldwide initiative aimed at highlighting how each employee contributes to EMCs success. This has been embraced by teams across Asia maximising positive impact within regional communities and strengthening dialogue and connections between EMC employees around the world.

For EMC in India, talent development and engagement has been a constant journey. Over the past couple of years, this has seen an increase with continuous focus from the leadership team and active participation by employee groups. The teams have utilised the feedback from the survey to identify areas for improvement. This led to sub teams focusing on Corporate Social responsibility, employee engagement, learning and development, reward and recognition, awareness on benefits and leadership communication. Each of these areas were led and managed by employees and resulted in a highly engaged and happy workforce.

Technuter.com News Service
SAP SE today announced an initiative to support start-ups in India and train teachers in collaboration with The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), Indias leading university. SAP will partner with two different programs: the Entrepreneurship Development Initiative and The Train 10,000 Teachers Programme (T10KT)  a STEM education initiative.

In conjunction with the incubator center at IIT Bombay, SAP aims to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem and fosterscalable high growth social enterprises. This collaboration will augment a knowledge and innovation driven culture across India, while further strengthening the entrepreneurship ecosystem and facilitating networking with professional resources, mentors and funders.

Im always inspired by the ambition and determination of this young generation in India, said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. Im especially pleased that SAP is partnering with IIT Bombay to help students build sustainable career paths in this global economy. Initiatives like this one are critical to help students realize their bold dreams by bridging the classroom to the workplace.

SAP also announced a STEM education initiative that will support the training of around 2,000 teachers across India. The teachers will be trained in science, technology, engineering subjects, and information and communication technologies. SAP has teamed up with T10KT to work with engineering colleges in the country to enhance teaching skills in core engineering and Science subjects.

Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Acting Director, IIT-Bombay stated that IIT Bombay is committed to help improve college education in India. Our partnership with SAP will enable us to scale up this initiative and address critical unmet needs. In association with SAP, we also look forward to further enrich our entrepreneurial ecosystem. I am confident that working together, SAP and IIT Bombay can make a long-term difference.

For SAP, which has operated for 20 years in India, this initiative is in tune with its goal of accelerating growth and tapping into the enormous potential of Indias entrepreneurial culture. This initiative also fits well with the Indian governments vision of developing local skills.

Technuter.com News Service
People say some pretty ridiculous things when they're drunk. Years ago, people only really had to worry about making an ass of themselves around friends and family but now with outlets like Twitter, virtually anyone can read your liquid courage-influenced ramblings.

It's this type of behavior that inspired researchers at the University of Rochester in New York do a study on the matter. Specifically, they set out to create an algorithm that could detect tweets that were likely published by someone under the influence of alcohol and even try to determine if they were at home or out while drinking.

Between July 2013 and July 2014, Nabil Hossain and a few other fellow researchers collected geo-tagged tweets in select areas of New York state. They filtered tweets based on if they included a mention of alcohol (those with keywords like "drunk," "beer," party" and so on).

The team then hired Amazon Mechanical Turks to apply a series of three questions to each tweet. Data from those answers was then used to create three different algorithms. As it turns out, the machine came to the same conclusion about a particular tweet as the human turks did between 82 percent and 92 percent of the time.

As Ars Technica notes, the researchers took it a step further to determine if a tweet was sent from a user's home or elsewhere. They did this by first filtering keywords (like "sleep," "TV, "bath" and so on) then again asked turks to comb through the tweets and see if they thought they were sent from home or not. This data was used to create another algorithm which they claim can determine a user's home location at an accuracy rate of up to 80 percent.

Just think, the next time you send a drunk tweet, you may end up being part of a large scientific study without even realizing it.

Image via Kostenko Maxim, Shutterstock
If Apple ends up losing their impending court battle with the FBI, and are compelled to help unlock the 'San Bernardino iPhone' through the creation of a custom software update, the engineers set to work on this task may throw up some roadblocks.

According to The New York Times, which talked to "more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees", engineers tasked with breaking in to the iPhone may refuse to complete the work, while others may quit their jobs entirely. For some, quitting the company is a better option than helping defeat the security measures they designed in the first place.

This may present some issues for the FBI. While a court order can force Apple to help break into the iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple employees from quitting rather than helping the FBI. If enough engineers decide to leave, it may take a very long time for others to force their way inside the device.

Apple is already on the offensive against the FBI in regards to the San Bernardino iPhone. The company has stated that circumventing the security measures they implemented is completely against their values, and they will fight to prevent the FBI from forcing their way in and creating dangerous precedents in the process.

In the event that the courts decide against Apple, the company believes it would take a team of around six to ten engineers between two and four weeks to develop the update needed to break the iPhone. If any of these engineers decide to resist or quit, that timeframe would extend.

It's looking likely that this case will drag on for years, so engineers at Apple can continue to work as normal for a while yet. But when the time comes, it's not going to be a straightforward task to comply with the FBI's demands.
A new virus called WIV1-CoV could bind to the same receptors the ways SARS can, which means that there is a possibility that it can infect people too, researchers say. The SARS-like virus was found in Chinese horseshoe bats.

Vineet Menachery, the study's first author, said that while mutations are required to create an epidemic, many viral strains that are currently circulating among bat populations in the world have pushed beyond the barriers of reproducing in human cultured cells.

The research team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed the coronavirus sequences taken from Chinese horseshoe bats, where SARS originally came from, to determine its capacity to potentially infect human cells. In the sequencing study, the researchers found that like SARS, the WIV1-CoV attaches to the same receptors.

They demonstrated that the WIV1-CoV can efficiently reproduce in lab cultured human airway tissues. This suggested that the new virus has the capability to jump to humans directly  without the need to adapt.

Moreover, it has been found that the capacity of the new virus group to jump to a person is bigger than was initially thought, said Menachery. Although he added that along with the possibility of being acquired by humans, there is also the chance that it will not.

"To be clear, this virus may never jump to humans, but if it does, WIV1-CoV has the potential to seed a new outbreak with significant consequences for both public health and the global economy," he said.

SARS stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome, a serious type of pneumonia. During the 2002 outbreak, SARS

infection led to more than 8,000 cases and almost 800 deaths.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SARS infection begins with high fever. Other symptoms include feelings of discomfort, headaches and body aches. There are some individuals who experience symptoms of mild respiratory discomfort in the beginning.

Approximately 10 to 20 percent of SARS-infected individuals suffer from diarrhea and after two to seven days of infection, some patients can suffer from dry cough. Majority of SARS-infection cases lead to pneumonia.

The WIV1-CoV study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Tuesday.

Photo: Bernard Dupont | Flickr

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Researchers developed an oral pill that could help detect cancerous tumors by lighting them up. The findings can help improve imaging techniques in cancer detection.

In recent years, there has been a lot of debate and controversy about breast cancer screenings especially about the age when screening is advisable. For some, early screenings can be lifesaving as it can potentially detect the disease early and help patients get the treatments needed. However, it can also produce false positives that can lead to aggressive but unnecessary treatments for patients who don't really need them.

"We don't know how to select the right patients to treat. Our work could help change that," said Greg Thurber, Ph.D. The research was presented at the American Chemical Society's 251st National Meeting & Exposition in San Diego, California.

Led by Thurber, a team of scientists from the University of Michigan created an oral pill that has an imaging agent that binds selectively to cancer cells or to the blood vessels that are exclusive to tumors. When the imaging agent attaches to its target, the dye helps the tumors glow under near-infrared light.

But at the near-infrared light wavelength, detection of the glowing tumors can only be possible at one to two centimeters deep. According to Thurber, the breast tissue's elasticity in conjunction and ultrasound can help the latter spot most of the cancerous tumors.

In the mice study, about 50 to 60 percent of the imaging agents were absorbed into the bloodstream with the proper formulation. The imaging agent also attached selectively to cancer cells and the resulting image had little background noise, which means the glowing tumor was more distinct compared to the signals of nearby tissue.

For breast cancer detection, X-rays are used in latest screening standards. These images provide information on the lump's size and location; however, they don't distinguish between benign and malignant tumors. A biopsy is needed to find out if the lump is cancerous and the procedure involves a surgery. Unfortunately, biopsies are not always 100 percent conclusive.

When doctors find suspicious growths, they often recommend getting treatment/s that range from surgery to chemotherapy. These procedures take months and come with severe side effects. The new technique can help doctors rule out the patients who don't need aggressive treatments.

Photo: Gisela Giardino | Flickr

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A German shepherd presumed dead after falling off a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean was found alive on in island.

Luna, the one-year-and-a-half old dog, was with Nick Haworth, a fisherman from San Diego. When they were harvesting lobsters from their traps, the dog disappeared.

As soon as Luna disappeared, Haworth notified the authorities. He was sure that the dog made it to shore since she was a good swimmer.

For two days, Haworth looked for Luna and Navy personnel searched the island for a week but to no avail. She was the presumed dead.

"RIP Luna, you will be greatly missed," Haworth posted in his Facebook account as a tribute to her lost dog on Feb. 20.

On March 15, Haworth received good news; Luna appears to have swum ashore on San Clemente Island, 80 miles off the coast of San Diego, California.

Navy staff who came to the island for work spotted a dog sitting by the side of the road. It is something unusual for the staff since domesticated animals are not allowed on the island.

The staff immediately identified the dog as Luna, who was lost at sea five weeks ago. When they called the dog, she came right over.

A biologist from the San Diego Zoo examined the dog and found her healthy other than being thin and a little undernourished.

"It looks like she'd been surviving off of mice for the past few weeks," said Sandy DeMunnik, spokeswoman for Naval Base Coronado.

When Haworth received the news, he was overwhelmed and happy. On March 16, Luna was flown to the mainland and was handed over to Haworth's best friend, who will take care of Luna until her owner returns from a trip.

"Beyond stoked to have Luna back. I always knew she was a warrior," Haworth posted in his Facebook account.

Since Luna lost her dog tag during her journey, the Navy staff gave her a new one as a remembrance of her incredible survival. The reunion of Haworth and his beloved dog is much awaited as it showcases the strong bond that humans and dogs have

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The African and Australian continents are both known to be the homes of some of the richest and most diverse species in the world. However, it seems that the two may also share similar problems with the sudden appearance of barren patches of land on their grasslands.

For years, scientists have been trying to find out the cause of arid grass formations known as fairy circles. These barren spots of land were first mentioned in technical literature during the 1920s, but have since become widespread in the western region of Africa, particularly in Namibia.

Possible reasons for the appearance of fairy circles include an unbalanced distribution of nutrients in the soil, deposits of toxic underground gases and even termite or ant infestations. Some researchers have also suggested that the pattern of the patches seen in Namibia had some similarities with the pattern typically observed in the organization of skin cells.

However, with similar fairy circles appearing in some parts of the Australian Outback as well, researchers say they may have discovered new information that could help them understand the cause of these strange land formations.

In a new study featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stephan Getzin, an ecological modeler from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, led a team of scientists in examining the fairy circles in Australia.

They found that the arid grass formations seem to appear in a self-perpetuating pattern that is likely influenced by the scarcity of water in the region.

The area in Pilbara, Australia where the fairy circles were discovered is known to be a flat, sunbaked terrain that is regularly exposed to temperatures of up to 167 degrees Fahrenheit.

Getzin and his colleagues believe that this harsh environment is what likely produced the conditions that allowed the barren patches of land to appear and not the presence of termite or ant colonies as suggested in the formation of the circles in Africa.

The research team also analyzed soil samples taken from the area of the fairy circles. They also looked at how water in these places is able to penetrate the soil.

The fairy circles in Australia were formed on top of sandy soil that is covered in a hard layer of clay, which prevents water from being able to penetrate the crust. The water would instead run off to where the plants were able to take root around the clay spot.

The soil inside the fairy circles tends to remain barren because it is too hot and too difficult to penetrate to allow any plant life to grow there.

Getzin explained that this may also be the case in fairy circles in Africa, although with a few differences.

While the runoff of water that led to the formation of the circles in Pilbara tended to occur above ground, the one in Namibia may occur below ground. Getzin said this is because the water in that area is able to drain more efficiently than in Pilbara.

The researchers said that more fairy circles may also be found in drylands in other parts of the world. They are likely confined to narrow climatic envelopes where there may not be enough rainfall.

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With the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge now out and about, the rumor mill is now busy churning in anticipation of Samsung's next big flagship: the Galaxy Note 6.

The company's Galaxy S7 line of high-end smartphones may get most of the attention these days, but the flagship Galaxy Note line is also set to get a new member this year. The Galaxy Note 6 is expected to replace the Note 5 in a few months and should rock top-notch specs and features all around.

While Samsung has yet to make an official announcement in this regard, the rumor mill has already started to paint a picture of what to expect. With no guarantees that the following specs and features will actually grace Samsung's next flagship phablet, here's what could be in store for the Galaxy Note 6:

Display

Considering the current trend of increasingly bigger smartphone screens, the Samsung Galaxy Note 6 may go beyond its predecessors and sport an even larger display. Samsung was the one that started this whole trend in the first place, when it launched the original Galaxy Note several years back.

The company kept the display size of its last three Galaxy Note iterations at 5.7 inches, but the next generation Galaxy Note 6 could boast a slightly larger 5.8-inch display with a QHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440 pixels).

Samsung Gear VR Support

With virtual reality on the rise, Samsung recently joined the party with its Gear VR headset. The company is currently offering the Gear VR as a free accessory to Galaxy S7 and S7 edge preorder customers and it would make sense to integrate the headset with the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 as well.

If the Galaxy Note 6 launches with a 4K screen, it could definitely take things to the next level. Sony already tapped into 4K smartphone territory with its Xperia Z5 Premium, but Samsung could go even further and maximize the potential of its Gear VR as well.

"Smartphone display density is a big, huge limiting factor for VR, so a 4K Note 6 would be able to offer much sharper visuals than Samsung's current handsets. (For regular apps that don't need insane pixel density, Samsung could follow Sony's lead and render this stuff at Quad HD)," Android Central points out.

Processing Power, RAM

It's pretty safe to assume that the Galaxy Note 6 would pack the highest-end Qualcomm Snapdragon or Samsung Exynos processor (or both, with different versions bound for different markets). It remains to be seen whether Samsung will manage to upgrade its Exynos 8 octa chip in time for the Note 6, or whether a refreshed Snapdragon 820 will hit the scene by then.

At the same time, we're already starting to see smartphones packing a whopping 6 GB of RAM under the hood, and it wouldn't be too surprising if the Galaxy Note 6 joins the fray. If not, at least 4 GB of RAM should be a given.

Camera

With the Galaxy S7 smartphones focusing on low-light photography features, the Galaxy Note 6 could take a similar approach and borrow some of those camera tricks.

Should Samsung want to better compete against rivals, it could also equip the Galaxy Note 6's camera with other popular features such as laser autofocus, as well as greater improvements to optical image stabilization (OIS) and lenses.

On the other hand, it would be preferable if Samsung stuck to a single camera sensor instead of pushing both Sony and ISOCELL sensors like it did with the new Galaxy S7 line.

Battery

Seeing as the new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge sport notable improvements in the battery department, the Galaxy Note 6 should also pack a significantly larger unit than the 3,000 mAh battery powering the Galaxy Note 5.

The Galaxy S7 edge, for instance, rocks an impressive 3,600 mAh battery, so it would make sense for the larger Galaxy Note 6 to boast at least a 4,000 mAh battery capacity.

Features

Again, judging by the new features found on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, the Galaxy Note 6 should also come with some great improvements. Samsung's next-generation flagship phablet could borrow some features from the S7 line and come with a water-resistant body, expandable storage and wireless charging among the highlights.

At the same time, the Galaxy Note 6 could also be the first Samsung smartphone to feature a USB Type-C port.

Availability

The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 never made it to Europe, to the disappointment of many, as the company chose to launch only the S6 edge+ in the region. This year, however, the Galaxy S7 edge already features a large 5.5-inch display, which means that Samsung may not release an S7 edge+ version as well. This, in turn, could mean that the Galaxy Note 6 could reach European markets.

Release

When it comes to a launch time frame, the next Galaxy Note flagship should make its debut in early fall. The Galaxy Note 5 arrived in August 2015, so the Galaxy Note 6 could hit the scene in August this year if Samsung sticks to a similar launch cycle.

However, considering that Google's upcoming Android N is expected to arrive in October, the Galaxy Note 6 could launch with Marshmallow on board and get an upgrade to the latest Android version later on.

With no official hints or announcements from Samsung, however, it's highly advisable to take this article with a grain of salt. While it would make sense that all of the aforementioned specs and features could grace the Galaxy Note 6, nothing is certain until formal confirmation.

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It's been almost two years since the studio released its last film, "When Marnie Was There," so seeing anything new from Studio Ghibli is a treat, especially for fans. The latest treat is an animated adaptation of "Scrolls of Frolicking Animals" or "Choju Jinbutsu Giga."

Having been made in the 12th and 13th centuries, the picture scrolls could be considered the earliest iterations of manga works so popular in Japan today. Though never meant to be animated, "Choju Jinbutsu Giga" was brought to life so gracefully by Studio Ghibli, which it did in collaboration with Marubeni Shin Denryoku.

An energy company, Marubeni is shifting to low-pollution energy production involving solar, wind and water sources and it has chosen to mark its move with "Choju Jinbutsu Giga" as the picture scrolls symbolized the natural beauty of Japan's pre-industrial era. To further show the energy company's concern for the environment, it donates a part of what customers pay to conservation efforts.

After animating the "Choju Jinbutsu Giga," Studio Ghibli and Marubeni will be meeting again to further discuss environmental issues, which will also be released in video.

The collaboration may come as a surprise to some but this is not the first time that Studio Ghibli had dabbled in making commercials. Last year, the studio also released a summer campaign for JR West Japan (West Japan Railway Company), which was produced by Yoshiaki Nishimura. He was also part of "When Marnie Was There" and "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya" as producer.

Aside from working with Marubeni, recent news of Studio Ghibli's activities include involvement in the production of "The Red Turtle" by Michael Dudok de Wit.

Some of the studio's biggest hits, which were also adapted from other original works, include "Howl's Moving Castle," "Whisper of the Heart" and "Kiki's Delivery Service."

Watch the 30-second animated adaptation of "Choju Jinbutsu Giga" below!

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Samsung getting ready to launch the Galaxy J3 (2016) in Europe soon. On the company's official sites in Spain and Italy, the device is already listed on the consumer support pages.

Samsung's official arm in the Netherlands went one step further when it revealed the key highlights found in the device, which added more emphasis to the fact that the Galaxy J3 (2016) is finally hitting the store shelves in Europe.

Samsung's Galaxy J-series of handsets is just one of the smartphone lineups brought by the company. Unlike its cousins from the Galaxy S-series, which come with premium design and higher price tag, the Galaxy J3 and the rest of the handsets in the Galaxy J-series are usually priced lower and are designed to cater to prepaid users on a global scale.

The Galaxy J3 2016 edition is one of the newly released handsets from the company's Galaxy J family.The smartphone initially launched in China, then expanded its availability.

Earlier this month, U.S. carriers such as Boost and Virgin Mobile launched the Galaxy J3 (2016) as one of their offered devices, while AT&T plans to follow suit in the coming days.

Samsung also plans to launch the Galaxy J3 (2016) in India toward the latter part of March.

In other words, the new Galaxy J3 is now available in the world's biggest markets after launching in China and in the United States. India, now known as the world's second largest smartphone market, is also included in the handset's launch schedule.

The Galaxy J3 (2016) belongs to the midrange tier of handsets that promise to deliver a decent performance along with a budget-friendly price tag. Designed with a 5-inch HD AMOLED display, the new Galaxy J3 has a slightly smaller screen compared to the Galaxy S7's 5.1-inch display.

While the Galaxy J3 is clearly not a flagship device, it somehow comes equipped with good specs and features for its category. These include a 16 GB internal storage, a 2,600 mAh battery, microSD support for expandable storage, a 5 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front camera.

According to the handset's listing on the Netherlands site, the Galaxy J3 is one of the slimmer and more compact handsets ever made by Samsung. It measures only 0.31 inch (7.9 millimeter) in thickness and 2.80 inches (71.05 millimeter) in width. It also describes the handset to have a molded grip that will allow users to hold the Galaxy J3 comfortably in their hands.

The Samsung Galaxy J3 will reportedly retail at $212 or around 189 in Europe and 14,182 rupees in India. It comes in a trio of white, black and gold color options.

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A killer bacterium called Elizabethkingia anophelis has sickened and killed people in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), Division of Public Health (DPH) is now conducting investigations, but is yet to determine the source of what seems like a mysterious infection.

"At this time, the source of these infections is unknown and the Department is working diligently to contain this outbreak," the DHS writes.

The Elizabethkingia Anophelis Outbreak In Wisconsin

From Nov. 1, 2015 to March 16 of this year, DPH has received a total of 54 case reports of Elizabethkingia anophelis. Majority of the patients reported are aged 65 years old and above and have a history of at least one serious illness.

Among the counties affected by the infection include Columbia, Milwaukee, Ozaukee and Washington, among many others.

DPH says the case counts are still ongoing and it will update its records every Wednesday. This means that counts may change from time to time as more infections are detected via laboratory examinations.

DPH has already informed health care facilities, infection prevention specialists and laboratories throughout the state about the situation. The agency has also given information and treatment guidance to these centers for reference.

The intervention seems to be reaping positive results as there have been fast identification of cases, more efficient treatment and improved patient conditions since the information has been disseminated.

What Is Elizabethkingia Anophelis?

Elizabethkingia anophelis was first discovered in mosquitoes in 2011. The disease has been associated with meningitis among infants and hospital-related disease.

The mode of transmission of the bacteria is yet to be confirmed, but experts say the infection cannot be transferred from person to person. The main sources of bacteria being considered at present are food supply, medication system, water supply and dirt.

The bacteria's name was derived from Dr. Elizabeth King from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who studied meningitis among infants in 1959.

Signs And Symptoms Of Elizabethkingia Anophelis

The clinical presentation of patients with Elizabethkingia anophelis infection is just like any other bacterial infection such that they experience fever, chills, shortness of breath and cellulitis, which is a type of skin infection.

Diagnosis And Treatment Of The Infection

Elizabethkingia anophelis may be detected via microbiology laboratory testings. Blood or body fluid samples of suspected patients may be used to grow the bacteria in different laboratory dish environments to identify that it is indeed present.

Elizabethkingia anophelis is a bacterial infection and thus should be treated with antibiotics. However, the strain of the bacteria seems to be unresponsive to standard drugs. Fortunately, combination antibiotic therapies appear effective and are usually recommended.

CDC Action

In February, the health department of Wisconsin has called on the CDC for assistance. The agency has sent a team of seven personnel to the state.

As per initial investigations, CDC thought that the bacteria mainly originate from tap water. In January, the agency has issued a report about an Elizabethkingia outbreak in a London critical care ward. Turns out, the outbreak was due to contaminated tap water in hospital sinks. However, the tap water in Wisconsin tested negative for the bacteria in laboratory examinations.

As investigating the medical records of a single hospital is not feasible for effective detection, the CDC has knocked on patients' doors, surveying, investigating and looking for possible sources of the infection.

"Our main priority here is to try and find out where this is coming from so that we can prevent additional cases," says CDC Deputy Director of healthcare quality division Michael Bell.

Although the outbreak is still ongoing, Bell is hopeful. This is because the strain of the bacteria in Wisconsin may be resistant to many antibiotics, but not to all.

Doctors have also grown their knowledge about disease management thus resulting in a steady number of mortalities for what was once a dubious medical condition.

Wisconsin may be in the midst of a bacterial threat, but at least the CDC and the health department are learning how to handle the disease more and more.

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Days before President Barack Obama sets foot in Cuba - the first U.S. President since 1928 - a pair of American scientists proposed that Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, dubbed Gitmo, be transformed into a marine research center and international peace park.

In the proposal published in the journal Science, the researchers suggested that the station becomes a conservation zone to help resolve conflicts between the two countries.

American Presence At Gitmo

For more than 100 years, there has been American presence at Guantanamo Bay. When Cuba won its independence from Spain, the U.S. has occupied the island in 1898.

Havana was obliged to lease Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. as a naval station. The lease is perpetual and could only be broken by mutual consent.

This is under the 1903 Cuban-American treaty, but since the '60s, Cuba declared that the U.S. presence on the island is illegal. Cuba refused to cash the annual rent check of $4,085.

To address the conflict, the Obama recently voiced out his desire to close the detention facility. This can normalize the relations between the two countries.

Here's The Plan

U.S. scientists, Joe Roman and James Kraska, said that if the plan would push through, Guantanamo could become the "Woods Hole of the Caribbean."

If the island will be transformed into a U.S. ocean science center, it could open doors to attain the administration's campaign to close the prison while protecting nature reserve.

"Now the U.S. embassy in Cuba is open, more business and tourists will be coming, which will place more pressure on coastal systems," said Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont.

The scientists see the island as an opportunity to help Cuba develop toward sustainability. This will help not only people from both countries, but also wildlife.

"This model, designed to attract both sides, could unite Cuba and the United States in joint management, rather than serve as a wedge between them, while helping meet the challenges of climate change, mass extinction and declining coral reefs," the researchers said.

Aside from possibly ironing the relationship between the two countries, the scientists believe that since Cuba is a developing country, rebooting Gitmo could help it pursue a more sustainable and eco-friendly path.

Photo:The U.S. Army | Flickr

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Having two breakfasts is better than none when it comes to preventing kids from being overweight or obese, a new study has found.

Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health and the University of Connecticut were able to discover new evidences that may help seal the deal of policy-making efforts concerning daily school breakfast provision.

"When it comes to the relationship between school breakfast and body weight, our study suggests that two breakfasts are better than none," says study author Marlene Schwartz.

The Effects Of Two Breakfasts: A Complicated Puzzle

In the past, studies have shown that eating breakfast may help improve academic performance, promote better health and result in healthier weight among students. However, having a second breakfast in school after eating at home have raised concerns that it could shoot up the risk of bad weight gain.

In the new study, however, senior author Jeannette Ickovics from Yale School of Public Health says their work does not back up those worries. In fact, she says that giving a healthy breakfast in school lifts food insecurity among children and is linked with sustaining a healthy weight.

Finding Out The Truth

To investigate, the team conducted a study involving 584 middle school students from 12 schools in an urban community. Breakfast and lunch are served to these schools at no extra fees.

The scientists monitored the participants' breakfast patterns, as well as the locations where they eat their early meals. They also tracked the weight of the students for two years from 5th to 7th grade, or from school year 2011-2012 to 2013-2014.

The findings of the study show that students who did not eat breakfast or have irregular breakfast-eating patterns had more than twice the risk of being overweight or obese than those who consumed two breakfasts.

Even if the kids ate double breakfasts, their weight changes did not manifest differences from the weight changes of all the other kids.

Implications Of Study Results

The research may provide valuable insights for policy makers and advocates who work to tackle childhood obesity.

About one-third of kids aged 6 to 11 years old in the U.S. are considered overweight or obese. Higher rates are seen in kids with black and Hispanic descent that those with white origins.

Although school breakfast programs have already been initiated, careful monitoring is still needed to ensure that children do not consume excessive calories that may lead to obesity.

The study was published on Thursday in the journal Pediatric Obesity.

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TransCanada, which failed to win approval for the controversial KeyStone XL Pipeline, has agreed to acquire Columbia Pipeline for $10.2 billion, though the deal is valued at $13 billion when including the assumption of debt.



The acquisition is expected to wrap in the second half of this year, subject to regulatory approval and other usual conditions. If everything goes as planned, TransCanada will become one of the largest movers of natural gas in the U.S.



TransCanada is offering $25.50 per share in cash for each share in Columbia Pipeline. That's about an 11 percent premium based on Columbia Pipeline's closing share prices on the New York Stock Exchange on March 16.



"This transaction delivers tremendous value to our shareholders and places Columbia Pipeline Group within a leading energy platform that can maximize the value of our strategic positioning and deep inventory of transformational growth projects," said Columbia Pipeline CEO and Chairman Robert C. Skaggs, Jr.



The addition of Columbia Pipeline's hold of 15,000 miles of gas pipeline, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to New York, gives TransCanada a network of oil and gas pipes that spans about 57,000 miles.



Columbia Pipeline's footprint in the northeastern U.S. offered TransCanada a lucrative opportunity to claim territory in the Utica and Marcellus shale gas region, according to Russ Girling, CEO of TransCanada.



"The assets complement our existing North American footprint which together will create a 91,000-kilometre (57,000-mile) natural gas pipeline system connecting the most prolific supply basins to premium markets across the continent," Girling. "At the same time, we will be well positioned to transport North America's abundant natural gas supply to liquefied natural gas terminals for export to international markets."



The deal offer TransCanada a high rate of return at a time in which it has seen it pipelines fall from 7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2000 to 3 billion cubic feet per day in 2015. The deal also takes out a rival.



Last year, TransCanada failed in its seven-year bid to win approval for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. A few months ago, President Barack Obama issued an executive order blocking the deal to construct the massive pipeline.



The pipeline would have moved oil from Canada oil sand, down the middle of the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico.

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Xbox One fans recently got a surprise from Microsoft, which launched two new special edition controllers dubbed Copper Shadow and Dusk Shadow.

As the names suggest, the two console controllers sport a special visual design. Copper shadow has a copper-to-black color gradient, while Dusk Shadow's gradient changes from blue to black. Although specially blended colors and patterns decorated Microsoft's controllers before, the faded gradient represents a premiere for Xbox.

The manufacturer points out that the multiple controller options are a result of players' feedback.

Microsoft also notes that gamers who chose its platform "value choice," so the company is committed to offering various options, writes Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, the programming director for Xbox Live.

Looking at availability, we know that the Copper variant can be purchased in the United States via the Microsoft Store, as well as GameStop. Should you enjoy shades of blue more than copper, buying the Dusk Shadow version will be possible via Best Buy or the Microsoft Store.

Take note that Best Buy offers the controller for a limited amount of time, though.

Regardless which of the model you choose, you will have to shell out $69.99 for the new controller.

Otherwise, both controllers come packed with the standard features of the Xbox One Wireless Controller. This means that aside from a gorgeous new color scheme, you receive Impulse Triggers, an enhanced D-pad, 3.5mm stereo headset jack to plug in whatever gaming headset you own and responsive thumbsticks.

The color of the trim and buttons is full black, with letter buttons painted in each Shadow controller's hue.

Preorders opened on Thursday, but the release dates may vary.

According to GameStop, the Copper Shadow rolls out on March 24. Microsoft, on the other hand, touts that it will release its first Copper Shadow on March 22.

Meanwhile, console gamers will start receiving Dusk Shadow controllers from Best Buy as late as April 10.

A number of countries such as Mexico, Chile, Columbia, Argentina, Brazil and Canada should be able to get the controllers in March. Other global markets need to summon patience until April for the Shadow consoles to reach their owners.

Last year, Xbox presented a trio of controllers inspired by military camouflage: Midnight Forces, Armed Forces and Covert Forces, respectively. Microsoft also launched the Xbox One Elite Wireless Controller last year for a hefty price of $149.99.

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Porsche's former executives, ex-CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and ex-CFO Holger Haerter, were acquitted in a regional trial court in Stuttgart, Germany, on charges of manipulating the market in a bid to take over Volkswagen in 2008.

Frank Maurer, the judge who presided over the case, said there is nothing he could find in the allegations of the prosecutor in Stuttgart.

The prosecutors reportedly urged that Wiedeking and Haerter should both be sentenced to prison terms of more than two years. More specifically, prosecutors sought prison terms of 27 months for Haerter and 30 months for Wiedeking.

Prosecutors also intended to slap both Wiedeking and Haerter with fines of 1 million euros ($1.13 million) each.

Apart from manipulating the market, the former executives were also charged with misleading the public and intentionally concealing their plans to increase Porsche's stake in Volkswagen from regulators and investors.

From March to October in 2008, Porsche denied five times that it plans to take over Volkswagen. On Oct. 26, the company changed its course and revealed that it owned 74.1 percent of VW, in part through options. As a result, the price of VW shares went up as short sellers hurriedly tried to cover their positions. From 290 euros, VW's stock price reached up to 1,005 euros per share, which made the automaker the most valuable company in the world for a brief period of time.

The frenzy caused speculators to lose around 15 billion euros ($19 billion) in two trading days at the time, according to estimates.

In 2009, Porsche's takeover plan was revealed after the company went underwater for trying to finance a 10 billion euro, or about $1.13 billion, loan. When funding eventually dried up, Porsche aborted its plan and had to face the repercussions. In the end, the tables turned and it was Volkswagen which actually took over Porsche.

Prosecutors of the case had reportedly sought fines of around 800 million euros ($869.5 million) from Porsche. Maurer ruled that Porsche is not obliged to pay a fine.

News of the acquittals on the two former Porsche executives brought up the shares of Porsche Automobil Holding SE by up to 1.1 percent to 45.30 euros, about $51.

For years, the case on Porsche made top local headlines and it has been described as the highest profile failure by a German-based automaker. The Porsche case was then overshadowed by VW when it became involved with the emissions scandal.

Porsche is also facing civil suits wherein plaintiffs are reportedly seeking a whopping 5 billion euros (around $5.6 billion) from the German automaker.

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Mark 2016 as the year that virtual reality becomes, well, a reality.

VR headsets go on public sale this year, including what is possibly the most viable system, the PlayStation VR. Thanks to it not requiring a high-end PC to use, players with a PlayStation 4 already have most of what they need.

Sony, though, hopes to make the move to VR gaming a little easier, thanks to a new PlayStation VR bundle the company announced today. That bundle includes everything players need to get started with VR on the PlayStation 4: the headset, cables, stereo headphones, a PlayStation camera and 2 PlayStation Move controllers.

The bundle also includes a VR demo, along with PlayStation VR Worlds, a collection of virtual reality experiences.

"PS VR Worlds is a collection of five different VR experiences that have all been built from the ground up exclusively for the PS VR headset," reads the PlayStation blog. "When we started out to make this game we wanted to create the very best collection of varied experiences, each to showcase VR in different ways and show how incredible VR can be as a media."

The PlayStation VR bundle goes on sale March 22 for $499.99, but interested players will have to act fast: only limited quantities are available and once they're gone, Sony won't release more for preorders until the summer.

This bundle becomes available even before the core PlayStation VR bundle, but for those gamers who already have most of what they need for VR gaming, the standard headset bundle will retail for $399.99.

The only thing left is to see what games will make it to PlayStation VR. The company recently laid out its minimum standards for game developers who plan on creating titles for the system, and teased a few games players can expect on PlayStation VR.

"With gamers in mind, PlayStation delivers a new world of unexpected gaming experiences through PlayStation VR," writes Sony on its website. "Play some of the most highly anticipated titles of 2016 on PS VR, including an all-new Star Wars Battlefront gaming experience and games like PlayStation VR Worlds, Golem, and RIGS Mechanized Combat League."

PlayStation VR launches in October, 2016.

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Right before the new year, Domino's Pizza introduced its new high-tech delivery truck called the DXP, a transformed Chevrolet Spark, which touts a built-in 140-degree oven and the ability to hold 80 pizzas, along with a cooling area for sodas and salads.

The aim is for every Domino's to eventually have a DXP vehicle at their disposal to ramp up their efficiency in delivering pizzas to their customers.

Now, the company is taking things a step further by introducing what it claims to be the world's first autonomous pizza delivery robot.

Developed in Australia, DRU (Domino's Robotic Unit) is set to debut in New Zealand's capital of Wellington, though Domino's tweeted that "an exact time frame is unknown" for its launch and that "it will vary while we work through policy and legislation regarding deployment."

Domino's says its 3-foot-tall robot will deliver "piping hot meals" and be equipped to greet you with a "cheeky personality" at the door, with CNBC adding that DRU will be able to hold up to 10 pizzas in its heated compartment, each unlocking with a unique code geared toward each customer's order. The website adds that the robot will be able to travel on roads and sidewalks, and will feature obstacle-detecting sensors to ensure that it's maneuvering around efficiently.

Although there's excitement about the rollout, there has also been quite the doubt in New Zealand that it will actually perform the task better than a human.

"I doubt this thing could out-perform a car going 50k [30mph], be able to open gates, climb stairs, dodge homeless people or avoid opportunistic thieves ready to pull it apart," James Stewart wrote on the Domino's New Zealand Facebook page, as spotted by CNBC.

About that latter concern, we hope that Domino's has somewhat safeguarded itself from having the actual DRU robot being messed with by customers or, worse, kidnapped altogether. Perhaps it will learn some ways to do just that during its imminent launch and testing period.

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One woman decided to create a fan fiction project centered around Ann M. Martin's Babysitters Club series and take it as far as it could possibly go  not just imagining the adult lives of the BSC crew, but actually cultivating a fashion style around each and every one of them. And it you haven't guessed it already, the name of the project is pretty perfect. Welcome, dear readers, to The Babysitters Fashion Club.

Created by Ruth Barabe, the idea came to her when she was working at a museum, where the business-casual dress code left her feeling a bit uninspired.

"I was a little bored with my regular rotation of outfits," Barabe said in an interview with the Billfold, "so a co-worker and I decided to do a week of Baby-Sitters Club-inspired outfits, just to liven things up a bit."

A few years after the fun experiment, Barabe once again began to suffer from fashion ennui, and decided to try the whole thing a second time around. In her words, she "kind of just ran with it"  and The Babysitters Fashion Club was born.

To give you an idea of what the whole enterprise entails, here's an excerpt from the blog  a snippet about the artsy, former junior BSC member Mallory, including a photo of Barabe dressing up as her imagined adult version of the character:

"Mallory had a Francophile phase in college, specifically of the French New Wave variety. She dated a film student who smoked Djarum cigarettes and showed her Truffaut and Godard movies and ... things kind of got out of hand. She dressed in pencil skirts and Jean Seberg stripes, and got Anna Karina-style bangs, despite her hairdresser's woeful pleading that they wouldn't work with her curls. You could often find her at parties encamped on the sofa, chain smoking and saying eye-rollingly terrible things like 'modern music is so boring.' Her film student boyfriend made a short movie for class of her waking up in her bed, brushing her teeth, and wandering around a playground on a windy day, looking despaired. The film was torn to shreds by his classmates in the critique, and he broke up with her. It took her a year to grow her bangs back out."

While Mallory had more of a literary bent in the series  writing short stories and reading literature on the regular  it definitely isn't a huge leap of the imagination to think that she'd get into movies by Truffaut or Godard  and that, as a character who wasn't always super-fond of her hair, she'd want "Anna Karina-style bangs."

You can see more of Barabe's fan fiction stylings over at her website here.

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As the U.S. Census Bureau prepares for its most diverse count yet, officials have chosen multicultural Los Angeles to test a pilot project that uses technology to collect responses for the first time in four different languages.This test  which includes English, Spanish, Korean and Chinese  aims to lay the groundwork for the census four years from now, when the government counts the estimated 330 million people in the country.Los Angeles County's large Asian American population, varying levels of Internet access and high number of vacant homes allows the census to test several things at once.Over the next six weeks, the U.S. Census Bureau will mail several notices to 225,000 homes in the Los Angeles area asking people to go online and answer questions about how many people live in their home, how they are related and who owns the property.The 2020 census will be the first time people can respond online or by phone, rather than by filling out a paper form.Lisa Blumerman, associate director of the decennial census, said she expects about 60,000 of the 225,000 Southern California test homes wont respond to the mailed reminders. Those who don't might get a knock on their door from a census worker, who, unlike in previous years, wont be carrying a clipboard and pencil.Instead, workers will use a phone and tablet application called Compass to immediately collect responses from the doorstep. The application notes that a response has been made from that address, meaning workers would need to make fewer unnecessary follow-up visits, Blumerman said. The application is being tested on both iPhone and Samsung devices.In the past ... it was all paper and pencil. Theyd have a stack of questionnaires, theyd go out and fill it out, theyd have a stack of paper maps, theyd have to figure out where to go. Now, were doing all of that with automation, Blumerman said.It will also be the first time people can answer census workers' questions in English, Spanish, simplified Chinese or Korean.We want to make sure when we conduct the census that we can reach all communities, and part of being able to reach all communities to ensure an accurate and fair census is providing them ways that they can respond that make them feel comfortable, Blumerman said.The Los Angeles County test is a chance to see if the new systems recognize Chinese and Korean letters properly.Were moving into the use of non-Roman characters, she said.A similar test focused on Spanish responses is being held in the Houston area at the same time.(Also new in 2020 will be the chance to respond to the census by phone in languages including Vietnamese, Tagalog, Arabic and French.)For Lydia Lee, the changes mean no more suspicious looks from people who struggled to answer the forms because they were only in English.I encountered many reluctant households concerned about why the government needed that information. They were concerned about privacy, said Lee, 55, of Los Angeles.Lee, who worked with the census in 2000 and 2010, expects this test, and the 2020 census overall, to be easier for people who dont easily speak English.Its going to be a totally different scenario, she said. If we have the Chinese form for someone that speaks Chinese, they are going to be helped.The census is even streamlining how it knocks on doors. Census officials asked FedEx and UPS about choosing best routes for workers to walk and what times people are more likely to be home to answer the door, Blumerman said.They are trying to get packages to your door and they have to get a lot of packages to your door, Blumerman said. We really wanted to learn from them, how their routing and their algorithms worked, because what were trying to do is get [workers] to peoples doors efficiently.Using more technology to conduct the test could shave $5 billion off what would otherwise be a more than $17-billion price tag for the census and prep work, Blumerman said.Just comparing aerial photos of neighborhoods to look for changes will save $1 billion that would have been spent sending out workers to walk every block in America, Blumerman said.That allows us to do the vast majority of address canvassing in an office, where we have clerks at our national processing center in Jeffersonville, Ind., looking at two pictures, two vintages of imagery of a block, and looking to see if growth has occurred, she said.The census also plans to use existing federal public data, such as post office delivery information or tax filings, to determine whether anyone might live in a home before they send a worker to the residence to knock on the door. Eventually that will expand to using data collected by each state, such as which residences house a food stamp recipient, she said.There is no need for us to send a field worker to a vacant housing unit, she said.It may seem obvious, but it's a big leap for the census, which wasn't doing these things in 2010.We are bringing the census into the 21st century. Were bringing modern technology, modern data, new information and using it in a holistic way for the entirety of the census that hasnt been done before, Blumerman said.Getting it right matters, Blumerman said. The data collected during the constitutionally required count of the nation's population taken every decade is used to draw congressional districts and divvy up more than $400 billion in annual federal spending.The number of residents on a particular street can determine where fire stations or schools are built.We want to make sure we count everyone once and only once and in the right place, and to do that requires a lot of effort on our part, Blumerman said.
A 40 anos de Malvinas

"Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo.
Why has it taken so long for the United States to acknowledge that there is a genocide happening in the Middle East? Yesterday John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, said that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is ethnically cleansing Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims.

The White House has hitherto avoided sectarian language for fear of pouring fuel on the fire  but the fire is already out of control. Antoine Audo, Chaldean bishop of Aleppo, said this week that two thirds of Syrian Christians had either been killed or driven away from his country.
What is fashion romance? And what does it mean in New York, where the focus is less on spinning dreams than on building brands? Copping takes on these questions from his light-filled office, once Oscars own, in a skyscraper overlooking Bryant Park. De la Rentas books still line the shelves. Outside the office, Coppings team toil away on speculative designs for the forthcoming autumn 2016 show  everywhere you look, there are scraps of bead-embroidered tulle, strings of beads. Its the worlds most beautiful trash.

When you talk about romance in fashion, youre talking about a few things, Copping says. Youre talking about fantasy, first of all. And youre talking about craft  those details of construction and embellishment that make a garment feel special. And the challenge in creating a sense of romance that feels modern, he goes on to note, is that the customer has changed. We still have our loyal client, and we want to serve her. These are women who understand the make of clothes, they know how things are supposed to feel, how theyre supposed to fit.
Iain Duncan Smith has dramatically resigned from the Government in protest at George Osborne's proposed cuts to benefits for the disabled.

The former Conservative leader said that plans to cut the benefits paid to the disabled by more than 1 billion were a "compromise too far" and said that welfare for pensioners should be cut instead.

He added that they are "not defensible" when announced alongside a budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers. Mr Duncan Smith also accused the Chancellor of forcing through cuts to welfare for "political" rather than national economic reasons.
The Venezuelan government celebrated on Friday the arrival in the country of the last five crew members of the Emtrasur aircraft that had been held in Argentina since June 6. | Read More
Sardar Hindi Teaser: Pawan Into Action Mode

The teaser of Power star Pawan Kalyan's much awaited film was released and took internet by storm. The comedy of pawan was highlight in the telugu teaser. But Sardaar seems to have much more than that and here is the proof.



A new teaser of Sardar Hindi version was unveiled. This is basically the same teaser as the first one but with minor caveat. The fun energetic parts of the telugu teaser are cut out and in its place we have some action bits. Its really thrilling for all the fans to watch him in action mode. Sardaar Gabbar Singh arrives in Telugu and Hindi on April 8.



Checkout the new Hindi action trailer below.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ9xdZhV9p4









News Posted: 17 March, 2016








Revoke illegal layoffs of Nizam Sugar Factories: Uttam

Hyderabad, March 18 (INN): Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday demanded that the TRS Government cancel all the illegal layoffs of Nizam Sugar Factory and release the salary arrears of sugar cane farmers at the earliest. He also asked the State Government to resolve the total issues of the factory workers on priority basis.



He was speaking after a delegation of employees of Nizam Sugar factories from Medak, Bodhan, Nizamabad and Metpally met him at his residence.



The delegation of the factory workers explained various issues pertaining to the sudden closure (lay-off) of the Nizam Sugar factory without showing any reason by the current management.



Stating that the Nizam Sugar Factory workers have played a key role during the Telangana movement, Uttam Kumar Reddy alleged that the TRS Government has completely ignored the problems being faced them. He reminded that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, during election campaign, had promised to take over the factory by issuing an ordinance, if not by legislation. However, the issue was completely forgotten once the elections were over.



The delegation informed that due to the sudden lay off, hundreds of factory workers and indirect dependents were left in lurch and were jobless. They reminded that earlier the factory was run under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. KCR had promised that after the formation of Telangana, it would be run by State Government. But the management had announced the layoffs from December 23, 2015 citing filmsy reasons.



Uttam Kumar Reddy said that TRS Government was wasting public money to construct a palatial and lavish camp office for KCR at a cost of Rs. 36 crore. But it is showing no concern to resolve the problems of hundreds of NSF workers and their families who are literally starving due to illegal layoffs. "KCR has been distributing freebies to big corporates in the name of new industrial policy. But he has no time to review and resolve the problems of workers of Nizam Sugar Factor. While making fake claims of generating employment, KCR is hushing up the fact that his government has snatched the livelihood of thousands of poor workers by not reviving Nizam Sugar Factory, Sirpur Kagazghar Mills and other sick industries in the State," he said.



The TPCC Chief said that the Congress party would not remain a mute spectator to the injustices being done with the workers of Nizam Sugar Factory and other sick industries. He said that the Congress would soon convene an all party meeting to discuss the issue. While announcing that the issue would be raised in Telangana Assembly and Council, he said that the Congress was ready to take this fight to streets.



Interacting with TPCC Chief Spokesperson Dr Sravan Dasoju, the delegation members informed that the management has ignored prior agreements with sugar cane farmers, did not release pending arrears and did not resolve the genuine issues of workers and despite no losses, it has announced for the lay off. Hundreds of sugarcane farmers and workers were hit due to this manufactured crisis, they lamented. Senior congress leader Gosula Srinivas Yadav was also present during the interaction.









News Posted: 18 March, 2016








Cong MLA challenges TRS ministers

Hyderabad, March 18 (INN): Congress MLA A. Sampath Kumar on Friday challenged TRS Ministers to visit the Osmania University without any security.



Speaking to media persons at Assembly Media Point, Sampath Kumar accused the TRS of exploiting the students. He said TRS had promised 2 lakh jobs if it comes to power in the new State of Telangana. While addressing the first budget session, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had promised to fill 1.07 lakh vacancies in various departments of the State Government. However, this year Finance Minister claimed that there were only 56,000 vacancies and process has been initiated to fill 18,000 posts. Contrary to his Eatala's claims, Telangana Public Service Commission chairman Ghanta Chakrapani said that recruitment was being done only on 11,000 posts.



The Congress MLA said KCR, Eatala and Chakrapani were misleading the jobless youth by giving contradictory statements. He said that the students of Osmania University and other institutions have actively participated in the Statehood movement. It was due to the sacrifices and struggle of those students that Telangana became a reality. However, the TRS Government has exploited their sentiments to the extent that the entire student community is quite angry with the ruling party. Therefore, he said no minister had courage to visit Osmania University without security fearing 'gherao' by students.









News Posted: 18 March, 2016








German authorities banned a neo-Nazi group known as the White Wolves Terrorcrew after police conducted morning raids on Wednesday in 10 of the country's 16 states, confiscating weapons but making no arrests, the Interior Ministry said.

Far-right parties have gained strength as Germany struggles to integrate more than 1 million migrants, and the ban is intended to demonstrate that authorities will not tolerate agitation against foreigners and migrants, "and certainly no violence," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.

Nine right-wing groups in seven states since 2012, Credit:Washington Post

"This group is an association of neo-Nazis who openly and aggressively agitate against our state, against our society, against people who think differently, against migrants and against the police," he said.

De Maiziere said the group wanted to build a dictatorship and that its aim "is supposed to be realised with all means available," including violence. He added that the core of the group was made up of approximately 25 people, their leaders coming from Hamburg.
But because they are both men, their special day threatens to be overshadowed by the political debate surrounding their union.

They will be serenaded by Australian songbird Katie Noonan and feast on award-winning catering as the sky ignites in bursts of colour.

Josh Carr and Jamie Gray will be getting married on Skyfire night at the National Museum of Australia. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

Their six-year relationship will culminate in a poignant civil ceremony surrounded by family and friends in one of Australia's foremost national institutions.

Like the fireworks they'll watch explode above Lake Burley Griffin on Saturday night, Jamie Gray and Josh Carr's wedding promises to be spectacular.

As politicians in that other national institution across the lake weigh up a plebiscite on same-sex marriage projected to cost the nation more than half a billion dollars, the Canberra couple wants the warring parties to remember the people at the centre of the debate.

"This is our private relationship and the people who matter least are the people who are having a fairly significant impact on the way we see it," Mr Gray said.

The couple became engaged two years ago and, after much deliberation, decided to marry here in Australia despite the unfavourable political climate.

"We really umm-ed and ahh-ed as we were approaching this stage as to whether we would register our relationship or getting a civil union," Mr Gray said.

"We considered potentially heading off to New Zealand but even if we did that the relationship would still not be recognised by some states and territories in Australia so until Australia legalises and upholds international relationships and marriages that wasn't an option."
Cyclists have restrained three people after they allegedly assaulted and robbed two riders in Tuggeranong, police said.

Police said two young people and a man approached the first male cyclist near Jenke Circuit, Kambah about 6.20pm.

A man and two young people allegedly assaulted two cyclists, stealing from them. Credit:Darren Pateman

"The cyclist was assaulted and his mobile phone was stolen," police said in a statement.

"About 6.30pm yesterday [Thursday], another male cyclist riding on the underpass footpath on Athlon Drive, Greenway was approached by two juveniles and a man. The man was forced from his bicycle, assaulted and his wallet stolen.
Fear of the unknown causes many children to shed a tear on their first day of school.

But after six-year-old Tega Levy migrated from Nigeria to Canberra, he cried every day.

Nefe Levy, right, with her husband Richard, and children, Tega Adegbite, and Charles and Amaury Levy. Nefe works in family daycare. Credit:Rohan Thomson

"He would get home from school and cry because he thought no one liked him," his mother, Nefe said.

"He even said he wanted to go back to Africa."
Strong gusts uprooted trees across the capital on Friday as a cold front swept through the region.

Winds of 87 kilometres per hour were recorded at Canberra Airport, while surrounding areas suffered blasts of more than 90 kilometres an hour.

Maria Bendall, of Macgregor, left, and Margaret Klemmer, of Page, outside the High Court in the rain. Credit:Scott Hannaford

The ACT State Emergency Service attended 46 calls for help as a result of the severe weather, most of which were completed by 7.30pm.

There were no reported injuries or serious damage. An SES spokesperson said the vast majority of calls were to attend fallen trees on roads.
Striking Fairfax Media journalists have branded the company's proposed editorial cuts "aggressive" and "unnecessary".

On Thursday, Fairfax announced it would seek cost reductions equivalent to 120 full-time jobs from its newsrooms in response to difficult market conditions.

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood.

As well as job cuts, the company has flagged the potential to save money through tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses.

The announcement sparked a wildcat strike at Fairfax's operations in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Illawarra.
The question is, which new strategic direction will the man known as J-S take the miner? "We'll miss Sam," says Robert Penaloza, head of Australian equities at Aberdeen Asset Management, which has a stake in Rio. "To his credit, he took the helm at a time when the ship was listing and he's managed to sail through treacherous conditions to come out with a much stronger sturdier ship and leaner crew. "We hope that some of the hard lessons learnt over the years will stick with J-S, as he clearly has big shoes to fill." That Jacques beat chief financial officer Chris Lynch and iron ore boss Andrew Harding in the top job will surprise some investors, particularly in Australia where he isn't exactly a household name.

All-rounder But his background is that of an all-rounder who has developed strong strategic skills across a range of sectors, with a focus on manufacturing. Rio chairman Jan du Plessis said in an internal email to staff that the appointment was "the culmination of a comprehensive and deliberate executive succession process" and praised Walsh for leaving the company "stronger, safer and more confident". "Now is the right time for a change in leadership and the board is confident that J-S is the right person to lead the company into the future." After graduating from university Jacques, now aged 44, moved to Indonesia to work in manufacturing for cosmetics giant L'Oreal (this is when and where he learnt Bahasa) before returning to Europe to work for at a business that made pipes and tools for the oil and gas sector.

After roles at aluminium company Pechiney and steelmaker Corus, where he spent four years as corporate development and strategy director, Jacques took a role at Indian giant Tata Steel Group in 2007 as group strategy director. He joined Rio four years later as president of international operations copper group, and was then made head of the entire copper business by Walsh. Mongolian deal Not only has he managed the copper business well during a difficult period of falling prices, but he also succeeded in striking a deal with the Mongolian government for the $US5 billion ($6.7 billion) expansion of the Oyu Tolgoi mine, after a torturous three-year negotiating process. Along the way, Jacques also picked up responsibility for Rio's coal business, and has overseen the sale of a number of assets from a mineral Rio is keen to exit, albeit at the right price.

It appears that is this is a mix of operational nous, strategy and big picture deal-making that edged Jacques ahead in the race for the top job. "Clearly the board viewed him as having done a good job in copper, overcoming some recent challenges, delivering cost out and overseeing the successful coal divestments," says Rio shareholder Andy Forster of Argo Investments. "It is perhaps also a reflection of the future growth direction of the company." Macquarie analyst Hayden Bairstow agrees, saying Walsh has made it clear that Rio wants to build its copper business. "In elevating J-S, the man both in charge of copper and responsible for the successful negotiation of their large greenfield project, Oyu Tolgoi, we see this as an affirmation of this statement." UBS analyst Glyn Lawcock is less sure there will be "material" changes to Rio strategy, with cost reduction to remain a key focus in an environment of shaky commodity prices.
Canada's explanation for the sell-off is reasonable enough: actual bullion bars cannot be liquidated as easily as, say, government bonds. And over the long term, central banks and governments have generally gotten a better return by investing in safe assets such as US Treasuries.

This puts Canada in last place - well behind Albania, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Papua New Guinea - in the most up-to-date compilation of data on gold reserves compiled by an industry group, the World Gold Council.

It has been a long process. Canada held 1088 tons of gold in 1955. By 2000, it was down to 46 tons. Today, just 77 ounces remain.

Canada, home to some of the world's largest gold-mining companies, recently announced that it had in effect liquidated all of the country's holdings of the shiny metal and is moving to what a government spokesperson described as "easily tradeable" assets.

But the real question is not why Canada has sold its gold; it's why other countries remain so wedded to maintaining - even accumulating - stocks of the precious metal despite the fact that it no longer plays any role in the money supply.

The reason some countries hold on to gold may have little to do with sound fiscal policy. Instead, the practice reflects the less tangible or rational weight of history. A look at which countries own the metal - and which countries do not - presents an unexpected pattern. Countries that possess significant reserves tend to have some history as global hegemons, imperial powers or economic powerhouses - or aspirations to such status.

In a fascinating paper from 2012, two economists at the University of Santa Cruz, Joshua Aizenman and Kenta Inoue, crunched some numbers and found that "the intensity of holding gold is correlated with 'global power' - by the history of being a past empire". This, they said, is especially true of "countries that are or were the suppliers of key currencies".

The US remains No.1, just as it remains the world's biggest economy and the issuer of the most common reserve currency. But the pattern reaches into the distant past. The Netherlands was an imperial heavyweight in the 17th century, but it lost that status long ago. Nonetheless, it holds the 10th largest gold reserves, even though it has a population of only 17 million.

Portugal, a country that once possessed an empire that stretched from Brazil to Angola to Macau, has 382 tons of gold, yet only has a population of about 11 million. The better-known imperial powers - Germany, Italy, France, Russia, and of course, Britain, all have gold holdings in the global top 20.
Recently one of my favourite movies of all times, The Blues Brothers, was shown on the big screen again.

It is fascinating to see how society functioned in 1980. Phone calls were made from a phone booth, as there were no mobiles. With no internet, they literally drove around searching for a gig.

Smokers trying to quit in WA have been denied a useful aid. Credit:Jason South

Another sign of change was when Elwood asks whether the car he is driving is the new Blue's mobile, to which Jake answers "fix the cigarette lighter". He had previously lit a cigarette and thrown the lighter out the window.

Throughout the movie some characters smoke. According to current views about the impact of such depictions (remember the Carmen debacle), this means I should have left the cinema and immediately started a two-pack-a-day habit. Miraculously I did not.
This is tough to write, especially since I will be accused of ageism or misogyny (or as you like to call it, mysongony, who says you're not a comedian). I have no problem whatsoever with you being of a certain age and still performing. Dame Shirley Bassey is still going strong at 79 so you still have years left  but not if you keep your audience waiting. Arriving on stage a few hours late is rude, doing so in Melbourne and Brisbane after a 23-year wait is appalling. To paraphrase a colleague, it is simply bad business to under-deliver.

Your Girlie Show concert at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1993 was the greatest concert I ever went to. I wish I could say I will be seeing you again this weekend but you and I are having a few issues.

Judy Garland was also late to stage when she toured here in 1964 but we forgive her now because of her drug and alcohol issues. You are fit and healthy so what is your excuse? Is there some costume drama with your pole-dancing nuns? Did your probiotic chef burn a lentil? And why are you suddenly "drinking" on stage - surely you don't think doing shots is shocking?

Madonna in Brisbane as part of her Rebel Heart Tour. Credit:Bradley Kanaris

Don't you realise, after all the taboos that you smashed, we don't need you to be shocking anymore? Relax. Bring it down a few notches. You are Madonna  just be professional and treat your fans with more respect instead of saying "greatness equals lateness".

All this unfortunate carry-on distracts us from what is meant to be important  your music. From your self-titled debut album in 1983 through to 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, we never stopped dancing. And then came 2008's Hard Candy, memorable only for the fact that you had your legs apart (again) on the cover. Then last year's Rebel Heart had you covering familiar territory with songs about the death of your mother and the Catholic Church (again and again). Seriously darl, it is time to move on.

While we're at it, drop the guitar playing - it's not your specialty and neither is rap. Rein in your constant use of the "F" word, it's boring. And stop dressing and acting like a trashy teen. Don't pull women up on stage and say, "She's the kind of girl you just want to slap on the ass and pull" before accidentally revealing their breast. Yawn. You used to be the Queen of Reinvention - now it's time for a more sophisticated look.
Japan's avowed intention to put high-tech lithium ion batteries in the replacement fleet for the Collins Class submarines could put Australian navy personnel at physical risk, the rival French bid has said in a dramatic escalation of the public battle for the $50 billion contract.

Signalling the gloves are well and truly off in the three-way contest between France, Japan and Germany, the French shipbuilder DCNS has also warned Australia that it would be taking on Japan's strategic baggage if it tightens its relationship with China's historic rival through a submarine deal.

The firm has even raised the spectre of Australia's being dragged into a future conflict between the north Asian giants if it becomes wedded to Japan through any submarine deal.

Speaking to Australian journalists in Paris this week, the firm's chairman Herve Guillou and deputy chief executive Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt said lithium ion battery technology was not yet sufficiently developed to use in submarines and doing so before it was perfected would be dangerous.
The estranged husband of dedicated school teacher Sharon Edwards has been confirmed as a suspect in her disappearance on the first anniversary of her suspected homicide.

The 55-year-old was last seen alive by her husband John Edwards at about 10.30pm on Saturday March 14 last year at her home in Grafton.

John Edwards with his wife Sharon Edwards and their sons. Credit:Facebook

Ms Edwards had returned home from a night out with three friends at a local Grafton hotel.

CCTV footage collected from the venue showed her in high spirits.
A manhunt is underway for a gunman that inadvertently shot dead the driver of a car while shooting at two pedestrians during an altercation in Sydney's west.

The dead man's car went on to hit one of the two pedestrians, leaving him with minor injuries.

The car involved in a fatal shooting at Heckenberg in Sydney's west. Credit:Jason Webster

A NSW Police spokesman said shortly after 6.30pm on Friday an altercation occurred between a driver and two male pedestrians in Matthew Street, Heckenberg.

The driver of the car confronted the two pedestrians, firing a handgun at them.
The auction of a Queensland cattle station owned by Clive Palmer has been postponed so potential buyers can assess previously undisclosed mining compensation agreements.

The 6258 hectare Mamelon Station, north-west of Rockhampton, has attracted private Chinese interests and was supposed to go under the hammer to help raise funds for the embattled Queensland Nickel operations.

Administrators pulled the pin during the auction of a cattle station owned by Clive Palmer. Credit:Glenn Hunt

But administrators pulled the pin in front of a full house on Friday after they were told landowner QNI Metals had signed three conduct and compensation agreements with other Palmer companies, Fairway Coal and Styx Coal.

It's understood the agreements mean Fairway and Styx, who hold mining tenements over the property, will have to pay compensation to access the land for exploration.
The Gold Coast: where millionaire property magnates in BMWs roll up at traffic lights besides overseas tourists straddling scooters with towels over the shoulders.

And outside Surfers Paradise's Marriott Resort  where the Gold Coast's final mayoral debate was held on Thursday afternoon  that was indeed the case, with bare-chested tourists wandering relaxed as local council hopefuls prepared for their final pitches inside.

Six in a row: Gold Coast's mayoral candidates. Credit:Tony Moore

Inside the Marriott, the assembled mayoral six-pack was, in alphabetical order, John Abbott, Brett Lambert, Andrew Middleton, incumbent Mayor Tom Tate, Penny Toland and Jim Wilson.

Gold Coast issues:

Tackling traffic congestion, overdevelopment, Southport Spit, new cruise ship terminal, increasing jobs.
Memory loss is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's and heartbreaking for loved ones to watch progress. Gone are the details of a first love or a child's wobbly first steps. The achievements of a distinguished 30-year career. And the tall tales of travelling the globe that once had everyone rolling on the floor with laughter.

Scientists had assumed for a long time that the disease destroys how those memories are encoded and makes them disappear forever. But what if they weren't actually gone  just inaccessible?

Alzheimer's may not destroy memories or prevent them from being stored, it may just prevent them from being accessed. Credit:Peter Braig

A new paper published on Wednesday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nobel Prize-winning Susumu Tonegawa provides the first strong evidence of this possibility and raises the hope of future treatments that could reverse some of the ravages of the disease on memory.

"The important point is, this is a proof of concept," Tonegawa said. "That is, even if a memory seems to be gone, it is still there. It's a matter of how to retrieve it."
Others expected Pluto to look somewhat like Triton, a Pluto-size moon captured into orbit around Neptune. Instead, New Horizons photographed a dazzling variety of landscapes, from soaring mountains to flat plains. Pluto is proving to be far more diverse than and quite different from Triton. "The big surprise is that Pluto turned out so surprising," said Jeffrey Moore of NASA's Ames Research Centre in California, who heads the mission's geophysics and imaging team. An ice volcano? Nitrogen might also flow deeply enough to be warmed by the interior and then erupt back at the surface - producing what scientists are surmising might be an ice volcano. They are studying a mountain named Wright Mons that rises 3.2 kilometres, spans 144 kilometres across and has a hole at the centre.

"It's not like any feature we've seen anywhere else in the solar system," said John Spencer, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The varying mix of ices could form different alloys with very different properties, similar to how adding carbon transforms iron into steel, and that could help explain the wide range of topography. "That's the new physics that needs to be learnt," Grundy said. A big, fractured moon The fly-by spotted an enormous gash in Pluto's largest moon, Charon, that differs from Pluto in the make-up of its surface.

Charon appears to made of just water ice without the other ices seen on Pluto. That matched expectations, because Charon, with less gravity, would not have been able to hold on to methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide. The most striking feature on Charon is the 1000-kilometre long gash, longer than the Grand Canyon. Harold Weaver, the mission's project scientist, said the gash was probably formed early in Charon's history when the surface cracked and material from the still-warm interior oozed out. "Charon burst at the seams," he said. Smaller moons spin rapidly, while tipped over The four small moons of Pluto turned out to be brighter and smaller than expected and spin quickly. Their axes are also tipped sideways, a configuration that defies easy explanation.

Pluto and its miniature planetary system are believed to have coalesced out of a cataclysmic collision earlier in the history of the solar system. Over time, the rotation of moons tend to become gravitationally locked so that the same side of the moon is always facing the planet. That occurred with Charon. But the four smaller moons - Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos - are tiny and further away. A month before the fly-by, based on years of Hubble photographs, two astronomers suggested that Nix and Hydra appeared to be rotating chaotically, jostled by the competing gravitational pulls of Pluto and Charon. They also said that Kerberos was markedly darker than the other three. The New Horizons photographs showed otherwise. None of the moons appear to be rotating chaotically, and their spin is faster than expected, not at all locked to their orbital periods, which range from 20 to 38 days. Hydra spins fastest, at once every 10 hours. Kerberos turns out not to be dark; the four small moons are all brighter and smaller than previously estimated, ranging in reflectivity between fresh concrete and fresh snow. The rotation of the small moons are also tipped over, almost at 90-degree angles from what would be expected. "We have no idea what that means yet," Spencer said.

One of the astronomers who reported the chaotic rotations, Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said that the New Horizons' observations surprised him, and that he was working on reconciling them with what Hubble had seen. Surprise in Pluto's atmosphere Another finding indicates that the upper atmosphere of Pluto is much colder, meaning that nitrogen escapes at a rate of about a hundredth of what had been expected. Frances Bagenal of the University of Colorado, head of the team that performed that analysis, said the calculation runs counter to what mission scientists were saying a week before the fly-by, when New Horizons had already detected nitrogen escaping from Pluto. "We were being fooled by something else," Bagenal said.
Adele Ferguson has been named Australian Journalist of the Year and been awarded the Melbourne Press Club's Gold Quill  recognising her journalism as the best in Victoria  at an awards ceremony on Friday night.

The awards capped an outstanding night for The Age, which took home seven major awards.

Luke Shambrook reunited with his mother after being found alive in bush near Eildon in April 2015. Joe Armao won best news photograph for his shot of this "miracle on the mountain". Credit:Joe Armao

The ceremony praised Ferguson's work for The Age and Four Corners, describing her expose of corruption and abuse in the 7-Eleven retail empire as "an outstanding feat of investigative journalism".

The stories triggered the resignation of 7-Eleven's Australian founder and chairman, high-level inquiries and big compensation payouts.
Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Franco Roberti, has urged Australian police to immediately launch a joint investigation with Italian crime fighters into the killing of Mr Acquaro, who was gunned down on a Melbourne street on Tuesday.

Two of Italy's most senior anti-Mafia prosecutors have slammed Australia's policing of Calabrian organised crime as "inadequate" in the wake of the murder of lawyer Joseph "Pino" Acquaro, and warned that local authorities must do more or lose the fight against the secretive crime organisation.

Joseph 'Pino' Acquaro at Parkville's Reggio Calabria Club. Credit:Paul Rovere

"This is the most serious crime and underscores the extreme danger that the Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, poses in Australia," Mr Roberti told Fairfax Media.

"Gunning down a professional, a lawyer like Acquaro, sends the strongest message to Australians that the Mafia is particularly strong there. I don't believe the authorities fully realise how dangerous this phenomenon is, and how widespread Italian organised crime is there."

Mr Roberti heads Italy's National Anti-Mafia Directorate in Rome. He said it was critical for Australian investigators to notify his office in Rome and regional prosecutors in Reggio Calabria, the capital of the southern region of Calabria, which is the stronghold of the 'Ndrangheta.

Mr Acquaro was shot dead while walking from Gelobar, his cafe and gelataria in Melbourne's inner suburbs, to his black Mercedes sedan, at 12.55am on Tuesday.
Motorists fed up with traffic jams on their way to the city are considering quitting their jobs or moving house to avoid major delays due to widening works on the Tullamarine Freeway.

On Friday morning, it took some motorists 80 minutes to travel just 14 kilometres on the West Gate Freeway between the Western Ring Road and the Kings Way exit  about four times the usual.

Traffic chaos is becoming the norm on the Tullamarine Freeway due to continuous works. Credit:Eddie Jim

And it's going to get worse as the works ramp up. The $1.3-billion CityLink Tulla Widening works started this week and are expected to take 18 months. A longer section of road will be shut off within days and entire sections of the freeway closed at various times.

A spokesperson for the project said lane closures and reduced speed limits would result in long delays. "During the works, we suggest drivers consider alternate routes or transport modes, allow extra travel time, plan ahead and keep an eye out for on-road signage with real-time traffic advice," she said.
Police have released the image of a man who allegedly sexually assaulted two female staff members of a clothing store in Melbourne's CBD.

Police say the man sexually assaulted two female workers inside the Little Bourke Street store on two separate occasions in December.

The man police are looking for in relation to two sexual assaults.

He also allegedly masturbated through his clothing after talking to a female staff member earlier this month, police say.

Investigators have been told the man entered the clothing store at about 7pm on 18 December, striking up a conversation before grabbing the woman and sexually assaulting her.
West Australian Premier Colin Barnett says he's can't understand why a government inquiry into embattled Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi has taken so long.

The government inquiry was initiated after a damning Corruption and Crime Commission report that exposed Ms Scaffidi's failure to disclose a BHP Billiton-funded trip to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and other gifts and travel.

Colin Barnett is frustrated at the time it's taken to investigate Lisa Scaffidi. Credit:Erin Jonasson EJZ

"All I want to see is that inquiry completed, released and then - depending what its conclusions or recommendations are - Lisa Scaffidi will have to make a decision on her future," Mr Barnett told ABC radio.

Ms Scaffidi's reputation had been damaged, he also said.
A man is in hospital with serious facial injuries after a St Patrick's Day brawl erupted in Northbridge Piazza early on Friday.

About 3.40am, the 31-year-old Padbury man was with three friends on the corner of James and Lake streets when they had a fight with another group.

"The victim was hit multiple times to the face and body and had his mobile phone and wallet stolen," WA Police spokeswoman Sarah Dyer said.

"The group then left the area north along Lake Street before dispersing."
The idea of a massive exhibition put on by a certified Lego professional (yes that is a real job) is exciting many Perth fans.

But the price is making some wish they could pay with toy money.

Lego Travellers take in the sights of Perth. Credit:Lego Travellers Facebook page

With entry costing $41.90 for an adult, and a children's ticket priced at $26.90, the fee appears to be putting many off attending the exhibition known as The Brick Man Experience - The Complete Collection by Ryan McNaught.

The event will be held at Perth's Elizabeth Quay from April 7-20.
Surf Life Saving WA wants more state government funding spent on stemming beach drownings in WA rather than shark spotting programs.

General manager Chris Peck said media and government focus on the relatively low number of shark fatalities in the state should be directed to quelling WA's double-digit drowning deaths each year.

Surf Life Saving WA believe shark spotters are effective only at South West beaches. Credit:Sean Geer

"If you've got that much money to invest in an issue, can we please invest in drowning prevention, because 15 to 17 people in Western Australia drown at the beach every year," Mr Peck said.

"We've got such a myriad of issues in WA that we deal with from a coastal safety perspective and drowning is more significant than shark attacks and shark fatal deaths."
With buzz saws and heavy equipment, workers in hard hats finished dismantling part of one of Europe's most notorious migrant camps on Wednesday less than a month after a judge ruled that the operation could proceed.

Day after day, police officers in riot gear kept watch in the southern half of the camp as the saws sliced through wooden shelters and mechanical diggers crunched the debris into large metal bins.

Migrants arrive in a new camp with wooden sheds built by Doctors Without Borders in Grande Synthe, outside Dunkirk, northern France. About 150 migrants have abandoned the squalid, mud-filled Grande Synthe camp to move into wooden sheds with access to showers and other facilities. Credit:Michel Spingler

Now that the migrants in the southern part of the camp have been evicted, the question of where they will go lingers.

"Dismantling all of this is all well and good, but once it is done, what are they going to do?" said Olivier Marteau, a field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders at the camp.
SEOUL, March 18 (Reuters)  North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile on Friday, which flew about 800 kilometres before hitting the sea off its east coast, South Korea's military said, as the isolated state stepped up its defiance of tough new UN and US sanctions.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the missile was likely a medium-range Rodong-missile. If confirmed, it would mark North Korea's first test of a medium range missile, capable of reaching Japan, since 2014.

A TV screen shows a file footage of the missile launch conducted by North Korea, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. Credit:Ahn Young-joon

The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula after the North rejected UN Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January and the United States issued fresh sanctions this week.

The missile was launched from north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsula and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
When Donald Trump came along disenfranchised Middle America thought "That's my guy". Credit:Patrick Semansky By contrast, Senator Cruz, who has done well in caucus states, is seeking to get his supporters elected as delegates who are nominally pledged to Mr Trump, but who would desert him after the first ballot. "The Cruz campaign has been organised down to the district and county levels all the way across the country," said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who has participated in meetings for the Cruz campaign about delegate selection. "You're dealing with people who are party activists. They will trump the Trump loyalists in winning delegate slots." Donald Trump's rapid rise has sent the Republican Party into a panic. Credit:Andrew Harrer The Trump campaign seems to have recently awakened to this possibility. Friday, it announced a new "delegate selection team" of four people, led by Ed Brookover, a former campaign manager for Ben Carson with long experience as a Republican operative.

Mr Brookover said the campaign is working to get Trump supporters selected as delegates, including in Georgia, building on state operations in place during primaries and caucuses. "The good news is, in going through my review of Mr. Trump's operations in these states, these folks have not dropped the ball," he said. A handful of states and territories give candidates a direct say in naming delegates, but 44 states do not, and those account for about 73 per cent of all delegates, according to Benjamin Ginsberg, who was the national counsel to Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. "It's this under-the-radar competition and exercise of massive proportions that campaigns really need to be doing," Mr Ginsberg said. He recalled attending several state conventions four years ago where Romney supporters were "rolled" by delegates loyal to Representative Ron Paul of Texas, embarrassing Mr Romney with a protest at the national convention. Ohio is one of the few states that allow candidates to submit their own list of delegates. Many others hold state conventions to elect them, and in some cases executive committees of the state party pick delegates, often from a list of donors or party stalwarts.

John Yob, a Republican strategist who was Rick Santorum's national convention director in 2012, coined a name for delegates pledged to one candidate but quietly sympathetic to another: "supporters in name only". "There is almost 100 per cent certainty there will be people elected" as delegates in states across the country, he said, "that do not support the candidate they say" they back. "The ultimate nominee will likely be determined in the convention because of the strength of the ground games at state conventions across the country," he added. Another complication for Mr Trump is that party activists, who have historically dominated the state conventions where delegates are elected, tend to favour people with ties to the party establishment. Mr Trump's powerfully insurgent campaign has been anti-establishment since Day 1, and he has attracted few endorsements from Republican leaders. He faces the challenge of getting his outsider troops to attend arcane, lengthy and often boring meetings. Mr Trump, who on Tuesday won decisively in Florida, the largest of five states that voted, still has the most likely path to a majority of delegates among the three remaining Republicans.

But as the race moves to the west and north-east, and with many states awarding most delegates based on votes by congressional district, Senator Cruz and Mr Kasich may be able to hold back Mr Trump in Indiana, Wisconsin, Washington, New York and California. If Mr Trump continues to pick up delegates at the rate he has won them so far, he will finish with about 1148, which is 89 short of the majority needed to lock up the nomination. Senator Cruz's path to a majority is harder: at his current pace, he would fall 559 short of a majority. Mr Kasich, who has no mathematical path to a first-ballot victory in Cleveland, is preparing for a convention-floor fight. He announced late on Tuesday that he had hired a new adviser, Stu Spencer, who in 1976 helped President Gerald Ford secure the nomination over Ronald Reagan, the last time no candidate arrived at a Republican convention with a majority. The most recent conventions that went into multiple ballots were even longer ago: when the Democrats met in 1952, and the Republicans in 1948.
In unusually candid remarks, President Barack Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors Friday that Sen. Bernie Sanders is nearing the point where his campaign against Hillary Clinton will come to an end and that the party must soon come together to back her.

Obama acknowledged that Clinton is perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate and that some Democrats did not view her as authentic.

Hillary Clinton in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday. Credit:Bloomberg

But he played down the importance of authenticity, noting that President George W. Bush whose record he ran aggressively against in 2008 was once praised for his authenticity.

Obama made the remarks after reporters had left a fundraising event in Austin, Texas, for the Democratic National Committee. The comments were described by three people in the room for the event, all of whom were granted anonymity to describe a candid moment with the president. The comments were later confirmed by a White House official.
A few weeks ago, I saw a bad production of a great play. I won't mention the play's title or the theater's name, because I like the people involved, I value their efforts, and I bear them no ill will. They chose to do a great play, they fought hard to do it justice  oh, how well all of us in the theater know that story!  and they didn't succeed, except in patches. But I won't write them off, and neither should you. After all, they aimed for greatness.

Naturally, the event set me thinking. Great plays do that. This one made me think about power and politics, about the state and the individual, about why we live and how we should live. But then, contemplating the frenzied flood of press invites to new plays in my inbox, I started to think about something else: the dearth of greatness within our profusion of productions. It sometimes seems to me as if today's theatermakers shy away from greatness, as if they had been actively discouraged from aiming for it.

A week or so after my great-play misadventure, I saw a rather good new play by a young writer  again I won't mention names. It was intelligently written, smartly acted and staged, and tackled a serious topic. I went away feeling that my time hadn't been wasted. But I did feel that something was lacking. The playwright's clever  maybe too clever  notion of who the characters were and how they interacted wasn't wholly credible, while the big serious idea came into the action through a gimmick that contained a major logical flaw, which none of the educated, highly articulate characters seemed to notice. The result, despite all the fine work involved, felt small and predictable.

Many such plays had already bothered me this year. Some were marked by uncertainty, on their young writers' parts, about how to shape and focus the work. That isn't necessarily bad in itself. Like all arts, playwriting is a process of discovering what you mean, not pre-deciding. These troubled and troubling plays often gave me more to take away than the irritating clever kind, in which you feel that the playwright has settled everything in advance, leaving nothing for you or the characters' to decide. Plays of both these types, if they catch the public awareness, can become commercial successes. But only playwrights of the first kind, sorting their way through our great uncertainties, are likely to achieve greatness at some point.

George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House is a comedy that, when well-produced, has a dizzying effect on our moral sense. Above: A scene from the 1921 British production of Heartbreak House at the Court Theatre, with Eric Maturin as Randall Utterword, James Dale as Hector Hushabye, and Edith Evans as Lady Utterword.



I had better try to explain what I mean by greatness. It isn't simply a matter of choosing a big ponderous theme, and spouting a lot of abstractions that will make academics write learned articles about your work. Nor is it a matter of an old play's having survived long enough to become a "classic," a term we use far too loosely. Any play that's over a certain age, or that's frequently revived, or that was written by an author famous for other, better plays can be called a "classic," but that doesn't necessarily make it one. Many fine plays live in these loose categories including some that indeed are classics  old plays worth reading or seeing for their own sake, not for their author's name or their age.

Such plays are worth seeing once in a decade, or in a generation. New York theatergoing has no shortfall in this area, thanks to the off- and off-off-Broadway companies who make such rediscoveries part of their mission. The Pearl, the Peccadillo, the Mint, the Metropolitan Playhouse, Red Bull Theater, and Classic Stage Company all exist to remind us that there is a world elsewhere of non-new, noncontemporary plays, full of works that can enrich our lives.

But these companies were mostly founded in a time when standard plays of acknowledged greatness got a regular hearing in larger venues: Circle in the Square was a go-to venue for Ibsen, Shaw, and Moliere; the Roundabout tilted more toward classics than toward the commercial hits of yesteryear; the Vivian Beaumont was less often occupied by long-running musicals. So the smaller companies aimed more and more toward acts of rediscovery. I am not ungrateful: My theatergoing life is better for having included Susan Glaspell and Rachel Crothers, The Good-Natur'd Man and The Witch of Edmonton. But I want something more: I want greatness. And I think the public wants it too.

Modern audiences rarely get a chance to see August Strindberg's The Father, a great play that makes disquieting observations about families. John Douglas Thompson (above) is set to star in The Father, as well as Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, at Theatre for a New Audience's Polonsky Shakespeare Center.

( courtesy of Theatre for a New Audience)

A play with greatness in it attains the force and resonance of a myth; you feel it taking over you while you watch. One of the best descriptions of greatness I know is Eric Bentley's recollection of the first time he saw Strindberg's The Father: "Before the curtain had been up five minutes, I felt the unseen hand of the author had me by the throat." Anyone who knows The Father will realize that Bentley intended this graphic assertion to convey more than simple excitement. All good plays are exciting. But for a play that embodies an intellectual critique of life to grip you as The Father does, means something more: It means that the playwright has been able to seize your whole being  to seize you, as it were, spiritually by the throat.

We do not often get to see The Father. It will be back this spring, thanks to the good offices of Brooklyn's Theater for a New Audience, which is playing it in rep with Thornton Wilder's adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House. One reason we so rarely see The Father is that, like many plays of its stature, it makes people uncomfortable in a great way. New York audiences like their comforts. The Father's intent is to discomfit us out of all predictability. What it asserts about husbands and wives, parents and children, cannot be explained simply  or comfortingly.

Great plays can have many effects other than this deep discomfiture. Moliere's The Misanthrope, Shaw's Heartbreak House, and Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest are comedies that, when played well, literally have a dizzying effect on our moral sense. What happens in them is wrong, outrageously wrong; we sit delighted by it. Each of these three works exemplifies a different aspect of our problem with great plays. We sacrifice Moliere, when we produce him at all, to directorial gimmickry, Wilde to actor-camp, and Shaw to near-total neglect. New York's last Heartbreak House, at the Roundabout in 2005, was so pallidly staged I barely remember seeing it.

Which brings up the issue, vital on this topic, of play versus production. I'll have more to say about that  and about new plays with a touch of greatness to them  next week.

Part II of this "Thinking About Theater" column will appear next Friday, March 25.

Michael Feingold has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, most recently in 2015 for his "Thinking About Theater" columns on TheaterMania, and has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. He serves as chairman of the Obie Awards and has also worked as a playwright, translator, and dramaturg.
- New 7-passenger crossover brings refined style and maturity to the segment -

RICHMOND HILL, ON, March 17, 2016 /CNW/ - Mazda Canada Inc. (MCI) today announced pricing for the completely redesigned 2016 Mazda CX-9, which will bring a new standard of refinement and sophisticated design to the intermediate crossover segment. With a starting MSRP of $35,300, the all-new second-generation CX-9 includes a long list of standard features, including a brand-new SKYACTIV-G 2.5 litre turbocharged engine with near best-in-class fuel economy and torque.

When the first-generation CX-9 debuted, it instantly redefined the three-row intermediate segment with its bold styling and dynamic handling capabilities that were noticeably absent in the segment. The new 2016 CX-9 takes this theme to another level, once again raising the bar for exterior design with elegant KODO Design. As with all Mazda vehicles, handling characteristics lead the segment, proving that a seven-passenger family vehicle doesn't have to leave driving pleasure behind.

"With the powerful new SKYACTIV-G 2.5T engine and up to 35 percent improvement in fuel economy versus the outgoing model, the all-new CX-9 demonstrates Mazda's true capabilities in the intermediate segment, providing more torque where you need it most, while offering amazing real-world fuel economy," said David Klan, Senior Director, Sales, Marketing & Regional Operations (MCI). "Add that to the new level of refinement and interior flexibility and you've got a seven-passenger family vehicle that is hard to beat."

In addition to the potent new SKYACTIV-G 2.5T engine which is paired with a SKYACTIV-Drive 6-speed automatic transmission, all trim levels of the CX-9 will also include a long list of standard equipment such as 18-inch alloy wheels, auto-levelling LED headlights, LED rear combination lamps, electronic parking brake, push-button start, Mazda Connect with 7-inch display and HMI Commander, wide-angle rearview camera, heated front seats, 3-zone automatic climate control, and rear climate control display.

The CX-9 will go on sale starting in June with a new four-trim strategy, starting with the standard front-wheel drive GS trim at $35,300 which includes the above-mentioned items and other key features including 8-way power adjustable driver's seat with lumbar, Bluetooth with Audio Profile, cruise control, steering wheel buttons for Bluetooth, audio, and cruise control, and heated power exterior mirrors with integrated turn signal indicators. The only available option for the CX-9 GS is Mazda's predictive i-ACTIV AWD system, which is available for an additional $2,500, taking the MSRP up to $37,800.

The CX-9 GS-L takes over from there, taking all of the items from the GS with AWD and adding key features such as a power glass moonroof, leather upholstery in either black or beige, 4-way power passenger seat, power liftgate, heated steering wheel, advanced keyless entry, rain-sensing wipers, and more. The GS-L also brings standard i-ACTIVSENSE safety equipment into the picture with Advanced Blind Spot Monitoring (ABSM), Rear Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA), and Smart City Brake Support (SCBS). MSRP for the CX-9 GS-L is $41,500. No optional equipment is available for the CX-9 GS-L trim.

The next step upwards is the CX-9 GT, which was previously the top-trim. With an MSRP of $45,500, the GT brings more opulence, trading the 18-inch wheels for 20-inch alloy wheels in a bright finish, and adding a 12-speaker BOSE audio system, navigation, Mazda's first-ever windshield-projected colour Active Driving Display (ADD), and aluminum instrument panel decoration, air vent bezels, and shift panel.

An optional Technology Package is available for the CX-9 GT, which includes the rest of Mazda's i-ACTIVSENSE safety equipment available on the CX-9, including Mazda Radar Cruise Control (MRCC), Smart Brake Support (SBS), Forward Obstruction Warning (FOW), High Beam Control (HBC), Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS), and Lane-keep Assist System (LKAS). MSRP for the Technology Package is $1,600.

Finally, the fourth and final trim level is all-new to Mazda, and takes refinement to a whole new level for the CX-9. For $50,100, the new Signature trim includes all equipment from the GT with Technology Package and further enhances with premium interior features such as Nappa leather upholstery in a rich Chroma Brown colour, open-pore rosewood on the centre console and door switch panels, signature grille illumination, LED console and door trim illumination, and LED interior lighting.

Colour options for the CX-9 are Snowflake White ($200), Soul Red ($300), Jet Black, Deep Crystal Blue, Titanium Flash, Sonic Silver, and new on the CX-9, Machine Grey ($300).

The CX-9 will be available in Mazda dealerships across Canada starting in June.

Mazda Canada Inc. is responsible for the sales and marketing, customer service and parts support of Mazda vehicles in Canada. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Mazda Canada has a nationwide network of 165 dealerships. For additional information visit Mazda Canada's media website at www.media.mazda.ca.
WASHINGTON, March 17, 2016 -- Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) announced today that it will make Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) standard on all of its new vehicles by September 1, 2022, as part of its i-ACTIVSENSE safety technologies strategy.

AEB helps to prevent crashes and to reduce their severity by applying a vehicle's brakes automatically. The systems use on-board sensors such as radar, cameras or lasers to detect an imminent crash, warn the driver, and prepares the vehicle by adjusting the brake pads closer to the brake discs, and if the driver does not take sufficient action, apply the brakes.

This technology is already standard or available on select trim levels of Mazda3, Mazda6, CX-3 and CX-5, but will become standard over all trim levels on all Mazda vehicles sold in the U.S.[1]

Mazda's i-ACTIVSENSE is an umbrella term covering a series of advanced safety technologies which make use of detection devices such as milliwave radars and cameras. They include active safety technologies that support safe driving by helping the driver to recognize potential hazards, and pre-crash safety technologies, which help to avert collisions or reduce their severity in situations where they cannot be avoided.

"Mazda's safety philosophy is based on understanding, respecting, and trusting the driver, because driving matters," said Masahiro Moro, president and CEO, MNAO. "To that end, Mazda is committed to implementing both passive and active safety technologies on our vehicles to help drivers in unpredictable driving situations."

To watch a video on Mazda's Smart City Braking System visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHn0SJmI_wE.

Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through nearly 700 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City. For more information on Mazda vehicles, including photography and B-roll, please visit the online Mazda media center at www.mazdausamedia.com.

[1] Current versions of AEB available on certain Mazda vehicles are referred to as Smart City Brake Support and Smart Brake Support, each is intended to operate under certain potential collision situations. Smart City Brake Support operates under certain low speed conditions (2-18 mph) and Smart Brake Support under certain higher speed conditions (above 10 mph). While very helpful, these active safety technologies are not a substitute for safe and attentive driving. Factors including movement and shape of the object in front of the vehicle, weather and road conditions can all impact automatic brake control and collision warning.
MARYSVILLE, OH, March 17, 2016: Acura announced that the all-new Performance Manufacturing Center will begin serial production of the next-generation Acura NSX supercar in late April, with customer deliveries to commence immediately thereafter.

The new Performance Manufacturing Center (PMC) is the exclusive global manufacturing facility for the all-new Acura NSX supercar and is structured around an innovative blend of people and technology. Combining human craftsmanship and technological innovation, the PMC utilizes new approaches to vehicle construction, paint, assembly and quality confirmation to deliver on the Acura brand DNA of Precision Crafted Performance.









The PMC is constructing the Acura supercar entirely in-house and, like the NSX itself, is a clean-sheet development  a manufacturing facility designed around the NSXs unique Multi-Material Body and aluminum-intensive space-frame design and optimized for low-volume production of high-performance specialty vehicles.

All of the innovative thinking and hard work that has gone into the creation of this state-of-the-art manufacturing facility has fulfilled our goal to build a supercar in America, said Clement D Souza, the engineering large project leader of the PMC, who managed the creation of the facility. The incredible passion and challenging spirit of our highly skilled associates enabled us to develop and build a new supercar factory from the ground up simultaneously with the ground up creation of an incredible new supercar in the Acura NSX.

The PMC was designed to innovate both the means and the methods of producing low-volume specialty cars and to explore new ideas for next-generation Acura craftsmanship and quality. The efforts of PMC associates to innovate many areas of the NSX manufacturing process have led to the application for 12 U.S. patents. The PMC employs approximately 100 associates that support and are directly engaged in body construction, painting, final assembly and quality confirmation, working in concert with advanced robotics to build the NSX to the highest levels of quality and craftsmanship.



Complementary production of the Acura NSXs bespoke, 75-degree, twin turbocharged V-6 engine takes place at the companys nearby Anna, Ohio engine plant and is undertaken by a small group of master engine builders.



With trial production underway and serial production starting in April, Acura is revealing additional details of the innovative manufacturing processes at the PMC and Anna Engine Plant.


Car Question Or Concerns? Get Expert Advice From The Auto Lab Team, Saturday March 19 8A-10A







March 19, 2016

Car Question or Opinion? 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 http://saleminteractivemedia.com/listenlive/player/wmcaam">Listen Live on WMCA Radio

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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 http://www.theautochannel.com/">www.theautochannel.com.

Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures

March 19, 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

Joseph Guarino-Joe Guarino's Auto Repairs

Howard Lepzelter-Retired Bronx Community College, CUNY

Joanne Porcelli, Esq

Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR

Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY

March 19, 2016 - Correspondent Reports - Car Reviews, Opinion and Other Automotive News and Information

Robert Sinclair-AAA Northeast

NEW YORK LAWMAKERS AGAIN CONSIDER A MANDATORY SEAT BELT LAW

Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

TOYOTA HIGHLANDER 2016 TOP SAFETY PICK +

REDESIGNED AUDI Q7 TOP SAFETY PICK +
Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it

The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in...

Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,...

Grant advances CSUCI research Cal State Channel Islands assistant professor of computer science Scott Feister and assistant professor of mathematics Alona Kryshchenko recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation to continue a grant to support their research project, Enhancing Laser Based Ion Sources...

Healthcare agency recommends flu shots The Ventura County Health Care Agency offers options for the community to receive flu shots through its Ambulatory Care Clinic system, public health clinics and pop-up clinics. Although seasonal influenza viruses are detected year-round in the United States, they are...
It is hard to find a bigger fan of Donald Trump than conservative columnist and Sharknado 3 star Ann Coulter. Ever since the current Republican presidential frontrunner launched his campaign last June, Coulter was an early high-profile supporter of his candidacy  and from the beginning said Trump would be the strongest general election candidate.

Coulter has been doing what she can to push the national case for a Trump presidency and, lately, that means trolling for new voters in one of Americas staunchest Democratic strongholds: Liberal Hollywood.

Coulter, who has a home in Los Angeles (you can read about her partying with her conservative friends in LA here), is perhaps Trumps biggest booster in Hollywood, a town far better known for its progressive artistic output or major-league Democratic donors than for its closet (or not-so-closeted, see: Jon Voight or James Woods) conservatives.

There are definitely more conservatives in Hollywood than anyone would expect, Coulter told The Daily Beast. I always say that if they all came out at once, theyd realize theyre a majority.

A recent Hollywood Reporter story on Friends of Abe (a secretive group for Hollywood right-wingers, both famous and not) noted that Coulter has been making the rounds in Hollywood preaching the Trump gospel. This has generally involved her promoting his positions on illegal immigration. Recently, she has done so at dinner events with Clint Eastwood (a Republican whose top political issue is being incredibly anti-war), as well as dozens of others in the film industry.

Coulters more private advocacy also includes anything as simple as emailing clips around to like-minded, politically engaged friends in Los Angeles, encouraging them to come out for Trump. She has shared her enthusiasm for his 2016 White House run with other members of Friends of Abe. The organization  which includes actors Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Jon Voight (who officially endorsed Trump last week), Gary Sinise, and Eastwood  does not endorse candidates, but it did host Trump at a sold-out, invite-only dinner at Los Angeless Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel last July. (The invitation identified the real-estate mogul as the very definition of American success.)

FOA has been described as a stealth right-wing group that is influential in conservative circles, and as operating under the same PR rules as Fight Club.

The group is focused on creating fellowship among Hollywood Republicans and conservatives within the industry, but their exclusive gatherings have also emerged as chances for GOP candidates to explore potential support and future fundraising opportunities, much in the same way that Democratic politicians often swing through Hollywood in order to charm their famous, deep-pocketed fans and thus potential bundlers and surrogates.

Ann is not in Friends of Abe, but she's a friend of the groupshe has spoken at events before, and she has a lot of friends in the group and is always welcome at our events, an FOA member told The Daily Beast.

According to multiple individuals in FOA, members generally tend to favor Texas senator and Trump rival Ted Cruz more than the Republican frontrunner.

I don't support Trump and I would say most of FOA does not support Trump, another member told The Daily Beast. Leans more for Cruz. (FOA previously hosted and toasted Cruz at a prior event. Coulter has, as has Trump, suggested that Cruz is not even eligible to be president of the United States.)

"Hollywood should support [Trump] for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it's impossible to get around in LA with two million illegals on the road," she told THR. "On the other hand, Hollywood liberals may have to start paying their maids more."

When asked by The Daily Beast if she could elaborate on her behind the scenes, pro-Trump advocacy mentioned by THR or the aforementioned dinners with film-industry insiders, Coulter demurred.

I think I can give you my answer to all of these [questions] by saying my support [for] Trump has been pretty much on public display, she said. I can't lay claim to any hand-behind-the-throne stuff.

Needless to say, Coulter will continue to press her case for Trump no matter what city she is in, or whatever coast she is on. After all, she has been doing so for years.

Our side needs Donald Trump, the conservative pundit told Fox News host Sean Hannity back in October 2012.

Thanks Ann, Trump tweeted in response to Coulter, one of the 42 accounts he actually follows on Twitter.
For thousands of unwitting residents of Colorado and Washington, the reach of the nations opioid addiction crisis just got closer to home.

As reported by The Seattle Times, patients who underwent surgery at two area hospitals over the span of several months from 2011 to 2012 are being contacted and told to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. Concern about possible exposure to these blood-transmitted illnesses stems from the indictment this year of a man briefly employed as a surgical technician at both institutions.

Rocky Allen, 28, was indicted this February in Denver on charges of tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by deceit. According to the indictment, in January Allen swapped a syringe containing the narcotic painkiller Fentanyl for a similar syringe filled with an unspecified substance. At the time, he was working at that citys Swedish Medical Center, and as in Seattle, thousands of Colorado residents who had surgery there are now advised to get tested for the same illnesses.

Because the potentially tainted Fentanyl is an injected medication, if other substitutions by Allen went undetected, screening for blood-borne infections is prudent.

The recommendation to be tested springs from an overabundance of caution, according to Karen Peck, a spokesperson for Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, one of the two Washington hospitals where Allen had been employed. (The other, nearby Lakewood Surgical Center, has issued similar advice to a little over 100 patients who received care there when Allen was an employee.) A statement from Northwest stresses that there is no evidence that any patients there were actually exposed to tainted medication, and that actual risk is extremely low.

We know patients are very concerned, Peck told The Daily Beast. However, while an investigation is ongoing, at this time there is no evidence that Allen made a similar swap while employed there. Peck hastened to reassure that patients currently receiving care at Northwest are not being exposed to risk.

Fentanyl is a particularly potent opioid pain medication, and comes in numerous dosage forms. It is often used as an adulterant or substitute for heroin, and using both in combination poses a substantial risk for overdose.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued new guidelines for prescribing narcotic pain medications. In its report, the CDC notes that since the turn of the new century over 165,000 people have died of such overdoses. Over the past decade, this trend has been on the incline, in contrast to falling rates of death from other causes like heart disease and cancer. This increase in mortality parallels the increase in sales of opioid medications (which also includes drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin, among numerous others). The authors note that in 2012 alone, enough of these prescriptions were written to supply every adult in America with their own bottle.

In an attempt to stem this tide, the CDC advises that for management of pain lasting more than three months, non-pharmacological and non-opioid medications are preferred. For those for whom narcotic prescriptions are appropriate, providers should proceed with caution, starting with low-dose, short-acting options.

Of course, there are times when such prescriptions truly are appropriate. The period immediately after major surgery would certainly be one of them. Medications like Fentanyl are often necessary for patients who are being treated for truly painful conditions.

But as the situation plays out in Washington and Colorado, it serves as a stark reminder that the fallout from the opioid addiction crisis can land in very unexpected places. Even patients whose own pain management was entirely appropriate have now been affected by it, albeit distantly. Efforts to combat the growing health problem are needed not only for those now struggling with addiction to pain medication, but for those who might be touched by it in ways they could never have predicted.
Not many world leaders call Vladimir Putin a terrorist and get away with it.

But Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite refused to resort to diplomatic euphemism in describing Vladimir Putins aggression in Ukraine. If a terrorist state that is engaged in open aggression against its neighbor is not stopped, she declared in November 2014, about eight months after Moscows annexation of Crimea, then that aggression might spread further into Europe.

Sometimes referred to as the Baltic Iron Lady, Grybauskaite is outspoken about NATOs responsibility to fortify its eastern periphery and forestall any future acts of Russian military adventurism into Europe. Lithuania, she has said, is already under attack from Kremlin propaganda and disinformation, a targeted campaign she considers the possible curtain-raiser to an invasion of her country.

The Daily Beast got in touch with Grybauskaite via email to discuss the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Article Vs relevance in the 21st century, the Mideast refugee crisis, and Lithuanias vulnerability as the smallish neighbor of re-militarized and revanchist Russia.

You were one of the few European heads of state to boycott the Sochi Olympics over the Kremlins crackdown on human rights, particularly LGBT rights. This was, of course, before the invasion of Ukraine and what many consider to be the Wests waking up to Putins Russia. What has Lithuania experienced during your presidency that made you an outspoken critic of Putin and his policies?

We are not critics, we simply call Russias actions by their real names. The Kremlin conducts confrontational policy, violates international law, destroys the global and regional security architecture, and seeks to divide Europe and weaken trans-Atlantic structures.

For the Kremlin, silence signifies consent. We cannot be complicit or create a climate of impunity that encourages dangerous behavior. That is why speaking the truth is our obligation.

Along with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, you used the word terrorism to describe the actions taken by Russian-backed separatists (and Russian soldiers) in Donbas. Obviously this is the word used by Kiev to describe its military response to these activities, but doesnt accusing a major power of terrorism suggest that something more than sanctions is in order to confront it? What should NATO and the EU and United States be doing that they arent?

Its evident that having a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council that occupies and annexes territories of its neighbors poses a serious threat to the international security system. This is the goal pursued by the Kremlin. Divide and rule is the name of the game.

We cannot accept any new normal in our relationship with Russia. With the war continuing in eastern Ukraine, Crimea occupied, and the Kremlin directly helping the murderous Assad regime to stay in power in Syria, cooperation cannot be built on blackmail and menace. The EU and NATO should see beyond Kremlin propaganda. The EU and NATO must have their own agenda with Russia, not be part of the Kremlins puppet show. That means expanding our influence in the neighborhood, strengthening our defenses, breaking barriers for trade, and protecting the rule-based international order.

Kremlin information warfare is particularly acute in the Baltic states. What is the Russian government trying to achieve in Lithuania? Is it seeking regime change by appealing to the Russian diaspora or fringe political movements here?

Propaganda and information attacks are part of hybrid warfare. They seek to provoke social and ethnic tensions, promote mistrust in government, discredit our history, independence, and statehood, and demonstrate that Western democracy is functioning on dual standards.

But the most dangerous goal of information warfare is to break the peoples will to resist and defend their state, and to create a favorable environment for possible military intervention. And the example of Ukraine is proof that conventional war in Europe is no longer theoretical.

Many Americans dont count the trans-Atlantic relationship among their top foreign policy priorities. What does the fate of Europe, much less the fate of the postwar liberal democratic order, mean for the United States? Do we have to fear another world war? Do you see that as a proximate or remote possibility?

Perhaps there is less debate about the trans-Atlantic relationship because everyone agrees that it remains strong and must only be getting stronger. We all have the same perceptions of existing threats. What we should do now is take the necessary defense measures against those threats through NATOs defense planning, updated defense scenarios, sufficient and credible deterrence, rapid reaction, and smooth decision-making process. We shouldnt just fear war but do everything possible to make sure it doesnt happen.

Lithuania has not been too directly affected by the Middle Eastern refugee crisis. There are only six Syrians living here, although members of your government have said they would welcome more. What policies should European countries be adopting with respect to this crisis? Do you agree with Gen. Breedlove that Putin is weaponizing refugees to try to undermine democratic societies and governments, namely Germany?

Migration routes can change very quickly, and all of us have to be prepared. We already see migrants coming through Russia to Norway and Finland.

Helping refugees is our duty. But it is also important to try to solve the problem at its source, use all diplomatic tools to find a peaceful solution, provide humanitarian support, engage more with Turkey and other countries in the region to fight smuggling networks, and give people support closer to home so they are not forced to choose a dangerous trip by sea.

Regarding Russias involvement, no one can deny that Russias support of Assad as well as airstrikes only contributed to the destabilization of the situation in Syria and made many more people flee their homes.

EU sanctions have not deterred Russia from continuing to arm and escalate in Ukraine. Just this last week we saw an uptick in violence in Donbas. Also, both the separatists and Kiev seem to be underreporting the violations of the ceasefire; the OSCE Monitoring Mission typically carries many more violations (by orders of magnitude) in its weekly reports. Are new sanctions a possibility? There seems to be more of a willingness by other countries in Europe to roll back the existing sanctions regime and return to business as usual with Russia.

The European Council agreed that the duration of sanctions against Russia is linked to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreements. We are nowhere near that. Russia continues to send its troops and military equipment to Donbas in direct violation of the Minsk agreements. Therefore I do not see a reason to discuss lifting sanctions or rolling them back. On the contrary, sanctions are the only thing that could force Russia to take its Minsk commitments seriously. And if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, all options should be on the table for the EU to consider how to increase the cost of Russian involvement.

Russian corruption has been described as one of the countrys chief exports, alongside oil and gas. All of the Baltic states have suffered, since their independence, from gangsterism, issues with money-laundering, and so on. How bad is it the situation in Lithuania?

While the culture of corruption has its roots in the Soviet system, it is something that we have to fight ourselves. Lithuania is ranked 32nd in Transparency Internationals Corruption Perception Index. Thats 15 places up from five years ago. But theres another 31 to goWe are focusing on fighting impunity, ensuring that responsibility is both unavoidable and sufficiently severe.

Ensuring competition and transparency in the energy sector is another area where there has been substantial progress, including by limiting Russias influence. Lithuania has successfully built the LNG terminal, which ensured the security of supply and fair competition in the gas market. We also unbundled energy supply from ownership, which helped us to create more transparent relations in our energy sector.

Similarly, Russian espionage in the Baltic states continues to be a major national security issue. One recalls the Hermann Simm case in Estonia and annual arrests of Chekists in the state security services. And the problem is just as bad, if not worse, in other former occupied states. Just today, it was announced that a military adviser to your Czech counterpart had his security clearance taken away because of his perceived closeness to Russia. Are you concerned about the infiltration of Lithuanias security and intelligence establishment? Is counterintelligence in general something that NATO and the EU should place a greater emphasis on?

No one can be 100 percent sure that there wont be such attempts. But we take all the national security threats very seriously. Our and NATO security services are vigilant and on high alert.

Are we in another Cold War, as Dmitry Medvedev said at the Munich Security Conference? If so, what does that mean for Western defense policy? Do we need a strategy of containment with respect to Russia?

With over 9,000 dead in Ukraine since the conflict started two years ago, the war is far from being cold. And Russias aggressive actions did not start with Ukraine. We should not forget its role in frozen conflicts throughout Eastern Europe or the 2008 war in Georgia.

The only containment strategy is not to underestimate the nature of the threat and be prepared to act in our own defense.
When President Obama travels to Cuba next week, hell not only be following in the footsteps of Republican Calvin Coolidge (the last president to visit there), hell be accompanied by a living, breathing member of todays GOP: Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has been calling for an end to American travel-and-trade restrictions since he was elected as a congressman in 2001.

As it happens, I traveled to Cuba a few weeks ago with Flake and a group put together by the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes the website which I edit. At the risk of celebrating a politicianwhich for a libertarian like myself is a nauseating ideaits worth taking note of the 53-year-old Flakes long, principled commitment to normalizing relations with Cuba. Hes done so despite the ire of his own party (and more than a few Democrats) because he believes in free trade and free travel for us all. In this, hes an inspiring example of putting partisanship aside not only to make Americans a little bit more free but to potentially liberate desperate Cubans from one of the most despotic regimes in the Western Hemipshere.

Both the United States and Cuban governments have loosened travel restrictions over the past year or so, and our groups main goal was to see the Castro brothers personal island prison before it eventuallyif belatedlyends its self-imposed exile from wealth and prosperity (the typical Cuban takes home just $20 per month). Flake related a conversation hed had a few years ago with the Polish anti-communist Lech Walesa.

I have no idea why you guys have a museum of socialism 90 miles from your shore and you wont let anybody visit it, the Solidarity leader complained, shaking his head.

The first thing to understand, Flake stressed during an interview conducted on our trip, is that the travel ban, trade embargo, and other restrictions that were first put into place back during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years arent sanctions on Cubans, these are sanctions on Americans. When the Cuban government was exporting revolution around, he continued, there was a good case for a trade embargo, but there was never a good case in my view for an outright travel ban. Or having Cuba being really the only country in the world where your government tells you you cant go.

That attitude doesnt sit well with his fellow Republicans or Democrats such as Sen. Bob Menendez, who has called Obamas normalizing of diplomatic ties a vindication of the Castro regimes brutal behavior. Thats simply wrong, says Flake.

When others who I normally agree withMarco Rubio and otherssay these latest moves by the president are a concession to the Castros or to the regime, theyre wrong. Its not a concession to allow your own population to travel. Thats an expression of freedom. Thats how Ive always viewed it, he said.

Beyond that rights-based libertarian argument, Flake makes a pragmatic case, too. The embargo has been in place for nearly 60 years and what do we have to show for it, he asked rhetorically. Will another 60 years do the trick?

Flake argues that unilateral sanctionsthe U.S. is the only country that categorically blocks trade and, until recently, most travel and remittances to Cubaalmost never work as intended. Flake knows this from doing Mormon missionary work in Namibia back in the 1980s, when that country was governed by South Africa and included in many of the investment and other sanctions leveled against that racist government. Multi-lateral sanctions are no silver bullet, either, though he says they did help to bring an end to apartheid.

One of the toughest unresolved issues between the United States and Cuba is the question of restitution. Flakes says that various tribunals have estimated that the U.S. property seized by the revolutionaries comes to around $8 billion in todays dollars. About 5,000 of the smaller claims, he claims, can be settled for about $200 million while the rest are held by five or six big companies (sugar companies, the mining firm Freeport McMoran, and the old ITT). Wheels are in motion, Flake said, to move forward in novel ways.

Starwood Hotels owns what was first ITT and then Sheraton, and so they have an outstanding claim against the Cuban government, he said. They are looking to do a hotel deal down here where it would put an American brand and manage hotels down here. In exchange, if they like that deal well enough, they will relinquish their claim that they have.

Persistent human-rights abuses also present a stumbling block. Flake was involved in the release of Alan Gross, an American imprisoned in Cuba for five years, and he described returning to U.S. airspace with the USAID worker as one of the most exhilarating moments of his life. Flake doesnt minimize these issues any more than he does the historical rupture represented by the Castro revolution.

If you can imagine being here in 1959 and seeing Castro roll in, turn toward the Soviet Union, and then expropriate propertyor imprison or kill your parentsthat is a very good reason for a long grudge, and I do understand that, he said. But at some point you have say, What are our policies doing? Are they helping that regime stay in power? Are we giving them a convenient excuse?

And so Flake will be accompanying Obama on a historic trip to Cuba. This trip in and of itself will not reset U.S.-Cuban relations to a new year zero or anything like that. But it does represent a moment of real change, one that bodes well ultimately for the future of Cubans, who will certainly become not only richer but freer via an influx of American investment and attitudes about individual rights and freedom of expression.

And to the extent that a Republican senators involvement and support for an initiative headed up by a Democratic president represents the triumph of principle over partisanship, Jeff Flakes next trip abroad sets a pretty good example for those of us back here at home, too.
A 21-year-old man was arrested in College Station on Tuesday night after police say he had a safe holding jars that contained almost a pound of marijuana.

According to College Station police, officers responded to a home in the 3000 block of Papa Bear Drive around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday after someone complained that a marijuana smell was coming from the garage. Officers spoke to two women in their 20s who lived in the home. The women allowed police inside and officers spoke to one of the resident's boyfriend, Gary Hunter Swarb, 21.

According to police, Swarb said he had smoked marijuana earlier in the day and led officers to a bedroom, where he opened a safe inside a closet. The safe contained three jars filled with a total of 13.7 ounces of marijuana, officials said.

Swarb was arrested and charged with possession of more than four ounces of marijuana, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years in jail and $10,000 in fines.
SAN DIEGO -- It sounds like a pitch for a far-fetched movie: "Cast Away," but with a dog instead of Tom Hanks. Only this sea tale is true.

A California fisherman's beloved German shepherd fell overboard and was presumed drowned. More than a month later, she was found.

The 1 1/2-year-old dog named Luna was spotted this week on San Clemente Island, a Navy-owned training base 70 miles off San Diego.

The blue-eyed pup disappeared Feb. 10 as Nick Haworth, a commercial fisherman from San Diego, worked on a boat 2 miles from the island.

"They were pulling in their traps, and one minute Luna was there, and the next minute she was gone," said Sandy DeMunnik, spokeswoman for Naval Base Coronado. "They looked everywhere for her. They couldn't see her. The water was dark, and she's dark."

Haworth notified Navy personnel.

"He insisted that he was 90 percent sure that she made it to shore because she was such a strong swimmer," DeMunnik said.

Haworth searched the waters for about two days and Navy staff searched the island for about a week but found no sign of Luna.

She was presumed lost at sea. Until Tuesday, that is, when staff arriving for work at the island's Naval Auxiliary Landing Field spotted something unusual -- a dog sitting by the side of the road. Domestic animals aren't allowed on the island for environmental reasons.

It was Luna.

"She was just sitting there wagging her tail," DeMunnik said. The staff called to Luna, and she came right over.

A biologist then examined the dog and found her a little thin but otherwise healthy.

"It looks like she was surviving on rodents and dead fish that had washed up," DeMunnik said.

Officials called Haworth, who was out of state, working in the middle of a lake.

"He was overwhelmed. He was so happy and grateful and thrilled," DeMunnik said.

Luna was flown to a Navy base on the mainland Wednesday and handed over to Haworth's best friend, who will care for the dog until Haworth returns Thursday night.

Luna, meanwhile, has a souvenir of the experience. Her dog tag was lost but the Navy gave her a new one, DeMunnik said.

Along with her name, it bears a key lesson in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course taught on the island to Navy and Marine personnel. The tag reads: "Keep the Faith."
The world continued to make progress towards a low-carbon economy during 2015, according to analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It says analysis of preliminary data for the year reveals that global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide - the largest source of man-made greenhouse gas emissions - "stayed flat for the second year in a row."

"Global emissions of carbon dioxide stood at 32.1 billion tonnes in 2015, having remained essentially flat since 2013", says the IEA.

"Preliminary data suggest that electricity generated by renewables played a critical role, having accounted for around 90% of new electricity generation in 2015; wind alone produced more than half of new electricity generation."

The IEA announcement is doubly welcome as some Arctic temperatures continue to warm bizarrely. It comes a day after reports from Fort Yukon in Alaska said temperatures there had reached up to 10C higher than expected for this time of year.

And as reported today on The Ecologist, temperature rises recorded in January and then in February this year broke all records following two consecutive 'hottest ever' years in 2014 and 2015. Temperatures is some parts of the Arctic were as much as 16C higher than usual in February. The northern hemisphere as a whole was 2C warmer.

Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said of the emissions report: "Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change."

Global economy grows 3% showing new emissions disconnect



Significantly, the global economy continued to grow in 2015 by more than 3%, which the IEA says is further evidence that the link between economic growth and emissions growth is weakening.

In more than 40 years, it says, there have been only four periods in which emissions stood still or fell compared to the previous year. Three of those - the early 1980s, 1992 and 2009 - were associated with global economic weakness. But the recent stall in emissions comes amid economic expansion. According to the International Monetary Fund, global GDP grew by 3.4% in 2014 and 3.1% in 2015.

"The new figures confirm last year's surprising but welcome news", commented Birol. "We now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth.
Good help is hard to find everywhere, but to find a person who is willing to get down and dirty caring for animals is a special person indeed. One who loves those he takes care of on a daily basis, knowing full well that they may not be there tomorrow, but treats them as if they were the most special anyway, is a unique individual in my eyes.

The Franklin County Animal Shelter has been fortunate to have had two such young men lately. That is in no way intended to take away from Stevie, who has returned to take care of the dogs and cats. He is wonderful with the animals, and they respond to him because they know he sincerely cares about them.

It seems that when an inmate finally learns the ropes, and understands the multiple tasks for which he is responsible at the shelter, he gets to know the animals, and they get to know him, something happens. It seems, for whatever reason, Michael was shipped off to Richmond, then, God bless him, Williams lawyer got him early release.

As I said before, that is not to take away from Stevies service at the shelter. He is a good worker with a terrific sense of responsibility for the animals in his care. The point is that the shelter is totally dependent upon inmates to do the feeding, cleaning and any menial labor required around the facility. It is not a crip job by any stretch of the imagination. It is a physically intensive job, requiring heavy lifting, socialization of dogs that well may not wished to be socialized at any given moment. It requires scrubbing runs every morning after the dogs have spent the night without being allowed out to relieve themselves, scrubbing cat cages that even my loyal readers dont want to read about, and after chores are done he can enjoy his daily repast: a peanut butter sandwich and apple.

We all know that the shelter is an antiquated shell of a facility hidden in the shadow of the now defunct landfill, sitting on land where the ground water is tainted so badly that it is undrinkable by humans and cats. The dogs, however, drink the water with apparently no discernible ill effects. The official report says the H2O is completely safe for human consumption, but I wouldnt drink it on a bet.

Years ago an officer ingested a couple of swallows without thinking and had to miss work the next day. Kittens were getting sick for no apparent reason, but Faye figured it out. It was the water. Between Faye and Marvins imploring the powers-that-be, they were permitted to install bottled water in the cathouse, and the water-born, kitty illness problem was eliminated.

Pet food is donated by Walmart, supplemented by gifts of love from unofficial supporters of the shelter. In other words, the animals at the Franklin County Animal Shelter are totally dependent upon the kindness of strangers for their groceries.

The proposed shelter to be built on 220, just around the corner from the present facility, will have safe and secure storage space for food and supplies. The present location has no such storage. The dog and cat food is stored in the only place available -- a small outbuilding across the road from the office. But, alas, the vermin have invaded. Mice and God only knows what else have gnawed into sacks of dog food and cat food rendering it inedible. They chewed their way into sacks of donated, black sunflower seed, intended food for the birds; after all that they chewed up brand new packages of puppy pee-pads.

Its been a hard winter for all the animals, large and small. I guess all Gods children gotta eat where they find it. Sticky traps lie, in testament, on the floor with tiny mice corpses lying in repose. Stevie opened the door of said outbuilding one day last week and a gargantuan rat ran out, so needless to say, Stevie was nonplussed for a moment or two. No doubt the rat wasnt expecting company either.

The point of the matter is -- free food for the animals, eaten by the uninvited. So, now an enclosed trailer is being utilized for storage. I have no idea what makes anyone think the mice wont figure that one out.

Now for the good part: It seems the out buildings are not the only places where tiny creatures hang out to escape the elements and dine at their pleasure. I guess every dwelling and building with four walls and a roof has been invaded by the dreaded stink bugs; however, Katie tells me that the main building (such as it is) is now home to cockroaches. None of us can figure out why there would be those nasty vermin in a place where food is so seldom seen, and when it is, nary a crumb is left for anything to eat. Maybe they just decided to spend the winter inside as well. But these varmints are so bold that they actually skitter across the desk while Katy is working there. This understandably makes Katy cringe in disgust. It is imperative that Katy be happy. Is there a single soul out there who thinks his/her tax dollars are not being well spent on a new shelter? I certainly hope not.

Beautiful dogs pine to be adopted. It breaks my heart to see such glorious animals sit, day after day, waiting for a fur-ever home. I still have hope that more citizens of Franklin County will eventually come down to Our Lady of Noxious Vapors to see the wonderful array of dogs that populate the facility. As of last week, there are no cats available. That will be temporary.

More and more the ASPCA is raiding puppy mills around the country, rescuing dogs that have never set foot on grass, or have run and played as dogs are born to do. Sadly, there are creatures out there disguising themselves as human beings who dont care for anything except the almighty dollar, and if it means cruelty to animals to make a buck, so be it. However, those rescued dogs must go somewhere. Some are ill, many have been grossly mistreated and all must be given at least preliminary medical attention. The money has got to come from somewhere. Personally, I believe the owners of puppy mills, (be they individuals or CEOs answering to boards of directors) should be fined sufficiently to pay for that careor go to prison; not slap-on-the-wrist county jail, but the big time. As I have said before, its times like these I wish I were a judge.

If you dont like pictures of animal cruelty being posted on social media, you need to help stop the cruelty, not the pictures. You should be bothered that its happening, not that you saw it. -- Marie Saratakis
The world is constantly changing around us.

It makes sense that education would change with it.

And thats one of the messages that teachers in Franklin County were able to hear recently, when Superintendent Mark Church hosted a screening of the film Most Likely to Succeed in the Franklin County High School auditorium.

The film focused on how schools in other parts of the country are better educating children by tossing out standardized learning procedures and allowing students to learn through hands-on, collaborative activities.

This is to educate our community on a different way to look at education, Church said. Our education system has not changed since the turn of the century.

For those of us with school-age children, this could be a breath of fresh air. Currently, many public schools lean heavily on frequent testing and standardized procedures, to the point school becomes a repetitive and dull exercise. The film, all 90 minutes of it, focused on making school informative and stimulating for children.

The premise: The more interesting you find school to be, the more attentive you will be. And that ultimately leads to more learning.

According to the film, 53 percent of recent college graduates cannot obtain jobs, or they are working at a job they could have obtained without their education.

Any time you begin to talk about the way our children learn and the way schools are teaching them, you are talking about a sensitive subject. Our schools are filled with hard-working, dedicated teachers who use everything at their disposal to build the leaders of tomorrow.

But theres nothing wrong with critical thinking every now and then. When if, instead of textbooks and scantrons, first graders could become better equipped for the world through board games and group activities? What if, instead of reading a 20-page chapter out of a science book, our fourth graders are able to go outside and learn in a natural setting. Whats more interesting to you, a three-page essay on the life cycle of a butterfly or walking outside and letting a butterfly land on your hand?

This documentary film followed a group of students in California who attend a school that does not have textbooks, but rather teaches students through hands-on learning. The students were taught subjects deemed necessary by the state, but in a manner in which they learned to work in groups to create projects that are shown at public exhibits.

Students are graded on how well their exhibit works and how the public responds to it, rather than graded on how well they are able to memorize facts before a test.

It is doubtful that change would happen overnight, but theres no harm in discussing change.

When the film was over, Church encouraged teachers who were in attendance to begin to think about ways they can incorporate hands-on, interactive learning, while meeting the skills required for standardized testing.

Weve got some things to think about and I look forward to the discussion, Church said.
Former Rocky Mount Mayor Mark Newbill has announced his candidacy for the May 3 election of Rocky Mount Town Council.

Newbill was first elected to council in 1998 and was Rocky Mount Mayor from 2001 to 2006.

Newbill said his campaign is focused on three specific issues -- economic development, cooperation between Rocky Mount and Franklin County, and community building.

During my previous service on council, I was part of a team that worked with the county on projects like locating the county library in Rocky Mount and boundary adjustments in the Franklin Heights - 40 East Corridor, he said. There are now nearly 30 businesses, with more coming, located in that area because of the utility upgrades the town made.

Newbill believes that cooperation with the county is essential for strong economic development.

New and growing businesses create more jobs, and with the growth of community and commercial activity in Rocky Mount, more people throughout Western and Southside Virginia will know the towns value to the entire region, he said.

His earlier tenure on council also saw the town complete and open a new fire and police station on North Main Street. Newbill was also involved in Rocky Mounts downtown revitalization project.

As a council member and businessman, Newbill will seek a stronger dialogue with existing businesses so they can grow and expand in Rocky Mount.

We have a wealth of talent here in our community that has to travel to work every day outside of Franklin County, he said. Lets work to make Rocky Mount a destination for new businesses so our children and their children can have good paying jobs right here.

Newbill has lived in Rocky Mount for 25 years and Franklin County all his life. He is a 1984 graduate of Franklin County High School and earned a bachelors degree from Virginia Tech. He operated a dairy farm in Ferrum for more than a decade, and for the last 11 years has owned and operated Newbilt Construction. He is a licensed general contractor whose most recent project was the four-story addition to Rocky Mount United Methodist Church, where he is a member.

Newbill is the son of Jack Newbill and Nancy Hamlin. He and his wife, Becky, have one daughter, Tatum, who is also a graduate of FCHS and will graduate from Virginia Tech in May.

Newbill is a past president and current member of the Rocky Mount Rotary Club. He also is a member of the Virginia Agriculture Council, where he has served since 2003.
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By Gleaner Staff

The Easter Bunny will be busy Saturday.

The city of Henderson Parks and Recreation will host its annual Easter egg hunt in Community Park, at 1776 Madison St.

Children ages 3-10 can hunt for 10,000 Easter eggs that have been scattered around the park by Parks and Recreation staff members. Adults can also participate in the annual adult Easter egg hunt.

These activities are free and open to the public.

The start time is 10 a.m. Children should be in place 10 minutes before start time.

Parks and Recreation staff members will be located in the large open-air shelter to provide help and answer questions. Signs will be posted with directions.

In case of rain, the Easter egg hunt activities will be canceled.

For more information, contact the Parks and Recreation Department at 270-831-1274.
West Burlington pool shooting suspect found not guilty

After two days of testimony, the suspect in the shooting at the West Burlington Swimming Pool was found not guilty of all charges.
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Another reason might be a lack of technical knowledge, making VPS servers harder to set up, manage, and secure. But thats why managed VPS hosting is such a good choice.
The Feb. 28 editorial Good reasons to get more revenue from cigarettes completely missed the mark. The list of reasons cited in the editorial for raising the Nebraska cigarette excise tax to fund property tax reform is simply flawed.

There is no good reason why some in the Legislature are proposing to reform our property tax system with a $1.50 increase in the per pack cigarette tax. Raising the cigarette tax to pay for property tax reductions makes for feel-good politics, but is bad public policy. In the real world of sound tax policy, its one of the most unreliable revenue sources available to states.

The editorial points out that four neighboring states currently have higher cigarette taxes. However, there are also bordering states that have lower excise taxes today. If the $1.50 increase is implemented, all of our neighboring states will have much lower excise taxes. Heres the line-up:

- Missouri: 17 cents per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $4.87.

- Wyoming: 60 cents per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $5.45.

- Colorado: 84 cents per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $5.85.

- Kansas: $1.29 per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $6.27.

- Iowa: $1.36 per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $6.21.

- South Dakota: $1.53 per pack state excise tax  average pack price of $6.58.

In Nebraska we currently have a 64-cent per pack state excise tax, with an average pack price of $5.59. If the tax is increased to $2.14 per pack the average pack price would jump to $7.44 a pack. That would make Nebraska the most expensive  significantly more than the tax in Missouri.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Cigarette taxes are not a stable source of revenue. Why? Because cigarette excise tax increases usually yield lower-than-expected revenues.

The fact is that when the price of cigarettes goes up dramatically adult smokers find ways to avoid it. The National Bureau of Economic Research published findings about tax avoidance behavior and found that adult smoking is largely unaffected by taxes.

Cigarette taxes are also regressive, because they most negatively affect lower-income adult smokers, taking a larger portion of their take-home pay to purchase tobacco products. A $1.50 per pack tax increase will have an adverse effect on adult smokers in Nebraska, as these consumers make their purchases in other states to avoid the higher tax.

This happens repeatedly. When Iowa raised the states cigarette tax $1 per pack in 2007, revenues came in $23 million below estimates. Iowa retailers saw sales plummet by 28 percent to 40 percent along the border with lower-tax Missouri, while Missouri border retailers saw a corresponding sales surge of 49 percent to 115 percent.

Kansas has endured similar experience. In July 2015, the state raised the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack to $1.29. Actual revenues have missed projections so far, including coming in 16 percent below forecast in February alone. Kansas retailers have also experienced a similar situation to Iowa, with sales falling along its borders and sales increasing at retailers along all its bordering states.

This could easily happen in Nebraska. With a $1.50 per pack tax hike, adult smokers in Nebraska could save nearly $1,000 a year by purchasing their cigarettes in Missouri. Based on the experiences of our neighboring states, it makes perfect sense to expect this will happen.

The editorial goes on to justify support for the proposal because other states have raised cigarette taxes since Nebraskas last increase. However, it is important to note that most of these increases have not raised the expected revenue. Of the 32 states that raised cigarette taxes during fiscal year 2009 through fiscal year 2013, 29 (91 percent) failed to generate the revenues projected and four actually saw revenues decrease.

There is clear potential for state revenue losses in Nebraska if the cigarette tax increase is implemented. Based on the Iowa and Kansas experiences alone, Nebraskas revenue projections likely will not happen. This will put at risk future funding of the ongoing and important property tax reduction plan.

Finally, cigarette purchases already contribute $129 million in annual revenue to Nebraska. These existing revenues could be at risk if the Legislature approves an unsound $1.50 per pack tax increase.

We all would like to see property tax relief in our state, but the solution is to make sound public policy decisions and develop reliable revenue streams to fund this program. A cigarette tax increase is simply not the right approach.

Justin Hoff of Hastings is president of Uncle Neals County Convenience Store.
'How Hoax mom' Bonnie Sweeten violated probation before new charges

Court records associated with Bucks County 'Hoax mom' Bonnie Sweeten Rakoczy say she continued stealing money after her release from prison.
This week, SIUE Interim Chancellor Stephen Hansen, PhD, welcomes Gireesh Gupchup, PhD and dean of the SIUE School of Pharmacy (SOP), to the Segue studio.

The final interview to conclude Hansens Deans Discussions series, Gupchup jokes with Hansen, saying, I thought you saved the best for last?

Gupchup begins the conversation by explaining the academic and professional path which led him to pursuing a career in academia at SIUE. A native of India, Gupchup holds a masters in industrial pharmacy and a masters in pharmacy practice, each from the University of Toledo, as well as a PhD in pharmacy practice from Purdue University. He joined the SIUE SOP at the programs birth in 2004, having previously served as a pharmacy professor at the University of New Mexico.

I was either the second or third person hired in the SIUE School of Pharmacy, Gupchup explains. When I came in, we had two rooms in the Engineering Annex in University Park. Then we got our own building, and now were spread across several buildings. So, its been a wonderful journey.

It was daunting and scary at first, because youre coming to start a new school. But I did a lot of research on SIUE and the community, and it all turned out to be true. This is quite a genuine place, and its because of the community - at SIUE and the pharmacy community in the area - that weve been able to be so successful.

At a School that trains students to pursue highly competitive career fields, Gupchup emphasizes the SOPs unique strongpoints, which set it aside from others across the U.S. Among those qualities are features such as 18-week semesters, which include three weeks of experiential learning, a joint PharmD/MBA program, direct student engagement with nationally recognized research faculty and interprofessional educational opportunities.

Gupchup stresses the importance of interprofessional education opportunities by adding, When you learn with other health professionals, you learn to respect and understand what other health professionals know, and you learn to rely on their expertise. You become like Wayne Gretzky (NHL Hall of Fame player) - you learn to anticipate and work together as a team.

With one of the premier pharmacy schools in the country under their supervision, the scholars discuss the academic aspects that make SIUE pharmacists the cream of the crop. Unlike most pharmacy schools, Gupchup explains that the SIUE SOP has a holistic admission process, analyzing 11 different admission components - only two of which are based on academic performance.

The way I explain this to students is, You have to have the grade-point average (GPA) and the Pharmacy College Admissions Test (PCAT) score to be in the pack of horses, but then we look for the unicorns among horses, says Gupchup. Those other aspects are the horns of the unicorn. So you cant just hang your hat on the academics - you have to work to grow that horn.

A program that has consistently been in high demand since being founded 12 years ago, the SIUE SOP annually receives between 300 and 350 student applications. Further, entry to the School is competitive, as only 80 students are admitted each year.

While the numbers may seem daunting, Gupchup explains the outstanding outcomes achieved only in the SIUE SOP. Our graduates get jobs, and our Boards pass-rates have been outstanding - theyve consistently been higher than the state average, as well as the national average, he says. Further, we dont have the concept of teaching assistants (TAs) or instructors - it is the same faculty members who are getting on the cutting edge of research and getting these national grants that are teaching these students.

Curriculum enrichment, academic program additions, further development of clinical sites, enhanced global experiences and community service initiatives are among the future planning topics discussed by Hansen and Gupchup.

Gupchup returns for a curtain call, concluding the interview by sharing a little-known talent he possesses.

Tune in to WSIE 88.7 FM every Sunday at 9 a.m. as weekly guests discuss issues on SIUEs campus.

By Logan Cameron, SIUE Marketing & Communications
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Linkedin Bambang Nurbianto (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, March 21, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama has denied financing Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), especially in the form of a grant of Rp 500 million (US$38,233) for the initial operations of the group of volunteers who support the incumbent governor.

"I don't have money. Where did I get that money? It's his [Hasan Nasbis] business," Ahok said.

Ahok referred to Hasan Nasbi, director of political campaign consultancy the Cyrus Network. Ahok said Hasan was a supporter of the Jakarta Baru (New Jakarta) movement when Ahok and President Joko Jokowi Widodo ran as gubernatorial and deputy gubernatorial candidates in the 2012 election.

After that, Hasan and I became good friends, Ahok said.

Separately, Hasan said that the Rp 500 million was donated by 10 people who supported Ahok. "Each of us gave Rp 50 million. Most of the donors are my business partners," Hasan told thejakartapost.com on Friday.

The money was used by Teman Ahok volunteers to make merchandise and print support forms, said Hasan, adding that aside from being a political consultant, he also owned restaurants and a property business.

Previously, lawmakers from the House of Representatives Commission II overseeing domestic affairs and regional governance proposed additional articles for the Regional Elections Law to require audits of the financial resources of independent supporters like Teman Ahok.

In response to the proposal, Ahok said he had no opposition to the idea. Just audit them [the volunteers]; it is not my business," Ahok said.

Ahok added that he kept all of his money in the bank so all of his transactions could be traced by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK). (bbn)
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Linkedin Raras Cahyafitri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Badak NGL, the country's major liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, is projecting declining cargo outputs for the next few years following insufficient supply from depleted gas fields.



The company's president director Salis Aprilian said on Thursday the firm estimated production of 152 LNG cargoes this year, down from 182 cargoes last year.



'This is because of a predicted decline in output from Mahakam block, which will be quite significant. We will see additional input from Bangka field, but [not by much],' Salis said.



Badak NGL, located in Bontang in East Kalimantan, processes LNG using gas from various blocks, including the Mahakam block operated by Total E&P Indonesie, the East Kalimantan block operated by Chevron and the Sanga-sanga block operated by Vico. Additional production of around 100 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) is expected from Bangka, part of the Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD) project by Chevron Indonesia, this September, Salis said.



Badak NGL currently runs four LNG trains to support its operation, out of a total of eight trains. The company is expecting to shut down one more train in June or July this year due to declining supply, bringing total plant operations down to only three units.



'We are also facing uncertainty as the operation of Mahakam block will change hands from Total to Pertamina. We hope Pertamina can improve the block's production so that we can switch on more LNG trains,' Salis said.



Unless the production from Mahakam is increased or at least maintained, Badak will need to shut down another train. Based on the company's projections, it is likely to operate with only two LNG trains by 2019.



In 2001 Badak's eight LNG trains reached peak production and that was maintained for two years. The company then started to reduce the number of active trains following declining supply from nearby fields. In a worst case scenario, the company would need to consider modifying its facilities due to supply shortage.



The options include creating a re-gasification unit, as has been done at the Arun LNG plant in Aceh, now the Arun re-gasification terminal; turning into a distribution hub for sending LNG or LPG to the eastern part of Indonesia; or changing course to receive and process CNG (compressed natural gas) instead of LNG. Given the lifetime of gas fields supplying the plant, Badak NGL is likely to need to modify in 2034, Salis said.



Indonesia has long been known as a major player in the global LNG market due to the significant potential of its gas resources. LNG production, which now mostly comes from the Bontang plant and the Tangguh plant in Papua, is mostly sent abroad. The government has been calling for higher utilization of gas for domestic markets as part of an attempt to reduce dependency on petroleum products. However, many fields have been depleted due to exploitation in the past.



Domestic demand is expected to continue rising following the introduction of new gas distribution infrastructure and increasing demand for power generation. While demand increases, the country is facing a possible lack of supply due to a number of delayed new gas projects.



'In case of on-time development, the spare capacity of domestic LNG could meet growing LNG demand. But, project delays and corporate dynamics could create a need for international contributions,' said Edi Saputra of Wood Mackenzie.

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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Batang, Central Java  Fri, March 18, 2016

The Batang regency administration in Central Java is leading the way in budget transparency, with funds managed by local administrations, from village and district levels to regency level, now able to be monitored and criticized by the public.



Batang Regent Yoyok Riyo Sudibyo told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday evening that he would go further still to make the budget transparent to fulfill his responsibilities to the public. Part of this effort is the Budget Festival, which was first held in 2014.



'We [held] the festival again this year, and I will organize it annually,' he said.



This year, 10 model budget-transparency villages were appointed. 'We have around 230 villages across our 15 districts. I'm confident all of them will be able to do this,' said Yoyok who along with Surabaya Mayor Tri 'Risma' Rismaharini received the prestigious Bung Hatta Anti-Corruption Award last year.



The 2016 Batang Regency Budget Festival, which took place over three days from March 13 to 15, was designed to demonstrate the openness and accountability of the Batang regency administration, Yoyok said, particularly with regard to the Development and Budgetary Policy Program.



In addition, the festival provided room for community consultation and dialog on the disbursement of village funds - aimed at achieve sovereign and dignified villages.



The festival involved regency agencies, non-government groups and the 10 model villages. Displays by each group were arranged thematically in four corridors: Financial management, public services and licensing, infrastructure and village development.



Yoyok invited Risma along to provide motivation to the people of Batang. The Batang community looked forward to Risma's visit on Tuesday, and jostled to greet her and ask her for selfies.



'Mbak (elder sister) Risma is my teacher. She gave input to improve the next Budget Festival in Batang and the pride of Batang residents can be seen at this festival because we learned from Mbak Risma,' said Yoyok.



The Batang regency administration this year prioritized infrastructure development to spur economic growth and to attract entrepreneurs' investment in the regency.



Data provided during the 2016 Budget Festival showed that Batang's 2014 budget amounted to Rp 1.32 trillion (US$97 million), Rp 194.19 billion of which went toward infrastructure development. In 2015, Rp 245.92 billion of its budget was allocated to infrastructure, and this year Rp 243.72 billion of its Rp 1.67 trillion budget will fund infrastructure.



Yoyok said programs would be focused on infrastructure development for the length of his final term in office, until 2017.



Indeed, the 2016 Batang regency budget is focused on infrastructure, or public works, which will absorb around Rp 120 billion from it. The second largest funding amounts go to healthcare (Rp 32 billion), education (Rp 4.9 billion), spatial planning (Rp 1.3 billion), industry and trade (Rp 26.9 billion), agriculture and livestock (Rp 5.8 billion), civil servants' payroll (Rp 1.8 billion), tourism (Rp 6.3 billion) and fisheries (1.1 billion).



Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform deputy for public service Mirawati Sudjono has hailed the festival as an effort to serve the public, saying, 'People will realize that the state is there to provide good public service.'
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), along with several other business associations representing port service users, have called on state port operator PT Pelindo II to revoke penalty fees levied on firms that fail to clear their containers on time at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port.



The regulation, introduced by the company on Feb. 23, stipulates that owners must clear their containers from the country's busiest port on the day of arrival. Failure to do so results in a 900 percent increase in the rate for daily stacking services.



The company's executives, including acting president director Dede R. Martin, say the decision is aimed at streamlining the flow of goods and reducing dwelling times at Tanjung Priok, a hub for more than 50 percent of the goods shipped in and out of Indonesia.



Kadin, the country's most influential business lobby group, however, lambasted the regulation, saying that the imposition of higher fees had no immediate correlation to reducing dwelling times and ran counter to the government's efforts to reduce logistics costs. Instead, the government should conduct further deregulation to simplify import licenses, infrastructure improvements and better coordination with all relevant authorities, Kadin deputy chairman for logistics and supply chain management Rico Rustombi said.



'Reducing dwelling times can't be done by increasing fees,' he said on Wednesday in a press briefing. 'This offends port users' sense of fairness as logistics costs will remain high.'



Also presented in the briefing were representatives from 15 associations, including the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), the Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers (Gaikindo) and the Indonesian Footwear Producers Association (Aprisindo).



Data compiled by Kadin showed that even without the container clearing penalty, Indonesia's terminal handling charges (THC) were already the second highest in Southeast Asia after that of Singapore.



They currently range from US$95 for a 20-foot container to $145 for a 40-foot container, compared to Singapore's $155 and $235, respectively.



Cikarang Dry Port CEO Benny Woernardi, who was also present at the event, said the implementation of the penalty would make Indonesia's logistics costs among the highest in the region.



'Around 70 percent of ship arrivals happen late at night, the three-to-four-hour unloading process means it finishes early the next day. The company, however, counts that as the second day and straight away imposes the 900-percent rise in service fees,' he said, comparing the situation with Malaysia and Singapore, which impose higher fees on the fourth day after a container's arrival.



At present, Indonesia ranks 109th on the World Bank's ease of doing business list, having risen by only one notch from its position in 2015. Singapore continues to top the list, while Malaysia sits at 18th.



The two neighbors fare better, as well, in terms of port dwelling times, with one-and-a-half days at Singapore and three days in Malaysia.



Indonesia's average dwelling time stood at 4.7 days as of last year.



Last June President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo sunk his teeth into the stubbornly high dwelling times, which begin from the time a vessel moors at a port to the time its cargo is unloaded and leaves the port, or when the cargo arrives at the port, is loaded and the ship departs.

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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The government on Thursday issued a railway infrastructure business permit for PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), paving the way for the China-Indonesia joint venture company to develop the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project.



KCIC, however, needs to secure one more permit ' the construction permit ' before it can begin the construction of the railway track.



KCIC is a consortium consisting of China Railway Corporation and four Indonesian state-owned companies.



During the signing of the agreement, which gives KCIC a fixed concession period of 50 years, on Wednesday, Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan promised to issue the necessary permit this week.



'Yes, the ministry has signed the railway infrastructure operational permit,' Joice Hutajulu, spokesperson for the ministry's railway directorate general, said on Thursday.



Hermanto Dwiatmoko, the ministry's director general for railways, was reported to have had a private, lengthy discussion with Jonan before the announcement of the signing.



KCIC president director Hanggoro Budi Wiryawan confirmed the news, stating that the permit had been signed by Jonan.



'They will sign the construction permit tomorrow morning,' he said over the phone, referring to the construction permit for the first five kilometers of the project.



He said that all of the necessary documents had been submitted but he could not confirm whether construction work would start right away next week or whether the company would need to prepare more.



Also, the company has not retrieved the loans from China Development Bank, which make up roughly 75 percent of the US$5.1 billion slated for the project. The delay in the concession agreement signing was blamed for the delay in the loan.



The project's groundbreaking ceremony was conducted in January and featured the attendance of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo.



The two-month vacuum between January's groundbreaking and the commencement of the project was due to the failure of KCIC to submit the necessary documentation.



Meanwhile, Hanggoro said KCIC had started preparing the necessary documents to get the construction permit. He planned to submit the documents in April at the latest.



Based on the concession agreement, KCIC gets the right to operate the Jakarta-Bandung railway line for a span of 50 years, starting from May 31, 2019.



The company estimates that it will break even within 40 years.



The ministry has also set a three-year time limit for the construction of infrastructure from the issuance of the construction permit.



The flagship project between Jakarta and Bandung spans 142.3 kilometers and will stop at four stations, namely Halim, Karawang, Walini and Tegalluar.



In one point of the concession, the ministry also granted KCIC the authority to approve or disapprove of other high-speed railway operators that intend to use its track.



The ministry also decided to give KCIC the exclusive right to operate the railway track. The ministry will allow other rail operators to use the track and build stations as long as the stations are about 25 kilometers away from a station belonging to KCIC. Previously, KCIC wanted the distance to be 50 kilometers.



'During the concession period, this exclusivity is their right. But after that, it's not,' Joice said.

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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The Jakarta administration and bus operators have become locked in a disagreement over maximum vehicle age.



The authorities want to limit the age to 10 years, but operators want a graded maximum of between 12 and 20 years depending on the type of bus. A ministerial regulation, meanwhile, sets the limit at 25 years.



City bylaw no. 5/2014 on transportation, which limits the age of small and medium- and full-sized buses allowed to ply the city streets to a maximum of 10 years after production. Small buses refer to mikrolet (public minivans), while medium-sized buses are Metro Mini and Kopaja and full-sized buses include Mayasari Bakti and those operated by city-owned firm PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta). The

bylaw was issued and took effect in April 2014, and operators were obliged to renew their vehicles within 12 months of the bylaw's issuance.



The limit aims to guarantee public transportation safety and worthiness, as well as curbing corruption relating to vehicle road worthiness (KIR) tests. KIR test officers are widely known to accept bribes from bus drivers in return for declaring their vehicles roadworthy.



Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) chairman Shafruhan Sinungan said that Jakarta's regulation on vehicle operational age was too harsh, calling on the city to revise the limit.



'Ten years is too short a time; we need to collect enough money to procure new buses. We propose the maximum vehicle age be prolonged,' Shafruhan said during a recent meeting at the Jakarta Transportation Agency in Central Jakarta.



Operators, he explained, need at least seven years for a turnover, which leaves just three years for them to gain income and save enough money to procure new vehicles. Ten years, he argued, would not greatly degrade a vehicle.



The latest data from the transportation agency reveal that there are more old than new buses operating in Jakarta.



Of the total 2,444 full-sized buses in Jakarta, 1,277 are more than 10 years old, or around 50 percent of the total fleet. The number of medium-sized buses aged above 10 year is 3,084 of the total 3,295, or about 93.5 percent.



Of the total 13,692 small buses, 6,419 are more than 10 years old.



Shafruhan said that in 2013 operators had initially proposed age limits of 12, 15 and 20 years for small and medium- and full-sized buses, respectively. However, he said, their suggestions were not taken into consideration and the bylaw was approved without further discussion with Organda.



Meanwhile, transportation ministerial regulation no. 98/2013 on minimum service standards for motorized public transportation with designated routes allows operators to operate their vehicles much longer. For example, Mikrolet, Kopaja, Metro Mini and other inner city transportation vehicles may operate up to 20 years, while the limit is 25 years for inter-province vehicles.



Jakarta Transportation Agency head Andri Yansyah said that the bylaw would take months to revise, and that doing so would be unfair on those operators who had already begun to renew their fleets. However, he said, operators could renew their fleets gradually over the course of the next three years.



Jakarta Transportation Council (DTKJ) chairwoman Ellen Tangkundung called on the city to revise the bylaw, saying that minimum service standards for public transportation did not depend on vehicle age. The city should instead improve vehicle road worthiness to ensure public transportation safety, Ellen said.



She said that the 10-year limit was suitable for Transjakarta buses, as the buses operated almost 24 hours a day and were almost always full of passengers, but that it should not be applied indiscriminately to other types of bus.



'Age is not the only factor determining vehicle worthiness. There are many vehicles that under 10 years old but aren't roadworthy, and yet there are vehicles more than 10 years old that still function well,' Ellen said.
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Linkedin Steve Peoples & Nicholas Riccardi (The Jakarta Post) Sun City, Arizona  Fri, March 18, 2016

Fearful of a Donald Trump nomination to lead the Republican party, conservative leaders huddled privately in Washington on Thursday in search of a plan to stop the billionaire businessman. His Republican rivals braced for another Trump victory next week, this time in delegate-rich Arizona.

The Republicans have an eager alternative in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, yet some party leaders are exploring "other avenues" instead of rallying behind the fiery conservative, an ominous sign that Republican leaders' deep dislike of Cruz complicates their overwhelming concern about Trump.

"The establishment is like a wounded animal, now cornered," said Mark Meckler, an early leader in the tea party movement. "They are terrified, irrational and flailing wildly."

Even after being denied victory in five contests Tuesday, Cruz insists he still has a path to the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim the Republican presidential nomination. In the U.S. primaries voters elect delegates representing the candidates who then vote at the parties' conventions to pick a candidate.

"This is the moment for all those who believe in a strong America to come together and craft a new path forward," Cruz declared on Twitter while conservatives were meeting in downtown Washington to brainstorm ways to stop his party's front-runner.

Organizers of the meeting included conservative commentator Erick Erickson and Christian conservative leader Bob Fischer. The goal, as stated in the invitation, was "to strategize how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, and if he is the Republican nominee for president, to offer a true conservative candidate in the general election."

The group released a statement after roughly four hours behind closed doors calling for a "unity ticket that unites the Republican Party."

While many in the room supported Cruz, they declined to endorse the Texas senator or the only other remaining presidential contender, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and instead urged all former Republican presidential candidates to unite against Trump. They also embraced the possibility of a contested convention.

"Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump," they said, an apparent reference to a possible third-party candidacy that might stop Trump but would likely sacrifice the Republican Party's chances in the general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Amid the Republican chaos, Democratic front-runner Clinton focused on fundraising as her campaign begins to look ahead to the general election. She claimed a fifth victory in Tuesday's primaries, as rival Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in Missouri.

However, Sanders continued to campaign aggressively ahead of contests next Tuesday in Arizona and Utah.

Arizona residents are far more likely to see commercials for Sanders than for any other candidate in either party, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows. Though trailing badly in delegates, he is spending about $1.8 million on Arizona ads, triple Clinton's media plan.

Julie Bykowicz, Julie Pace, Andrew Taylor, Stephen Ohlemacher, Chad Day and Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this report.
People transport the corpose of alleged terrorist Fonda Amar Sholihin from his family home to be buried in a cemetery in Surakarta, Central Java, on Friday. Fonda, apparently a member of the MIT group led by terror convict Santoso, was killed during a shootout against security officers in Poso, Central Sulawesi, on Feb. 28.(thejakartapost.com/Ganug Nugroho Adi) " height="508" border="0" width="640">

The corpse of 22-year-old alleged terrorist Fonda Amar Sholihin arrived in Surakarta, Central Java, early on Friday; his body had been kept in Poso, Central Sulawesi, for nearly three weeks after he was killed in a shootout at the end of last month.



After Fonda's body arrived in Surakarta at 4:30 a.m. on Friday, his family took the body to the family house in Bengosan village, Purwosari, to pray over the body. Fonda was then buried in Polokarto cemetary, Sukoharjo regency.



Fonda aka Dodo died on Feb. 28 in a shootout with joint officers of the National Police and Indonesian Military (TNI) in Torire village, Central Lore subdistrict, Poso.



"His body was damaged in several places. There were gunshot wounds to the head, he had lost his front and lower teeth and his knees were dislocated," cemetery official Endro Sudarsono said on Friday.



Hundreds of people escorted Fonda's body to the cemetery, including several carrying black flags identical to the ones used by militant group Islamic State (IS). Meanwhile, a poster displayed in front of the family home read, "Welcome, Fonda Amar Sholihin, God's willing defender of Islam (died in syahid)
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Linkedin Andrea Rodriguez (The Jakarta Post) La Habana  Fri, March 18, 2016

A 76-year-old Cuban woman who invited President Barack Obama to her Havana home received a response from the US leader Thursday in one of the first letters to travel directly to Cuba in decades.

Ileana Yarza wrote to Obama on Feb. 18, saying "there are not many Cubans so eager as I to meet you in person" and asked him to have a strong cup of Cuban coffee with her sometime. Obama wrote back that "hopefully, I will have time to enjoy a cup of Cuban coffee" when he visits Havana Sunday.

His letter flew to Cuba Wednesday on the first direct mail flight since shortly after the 1959 Cuban revolution and arrived Thursday afternoon.

"I'm pleasantly surprised," Yarza told The Associated Press. The White House published the letter Thursday but Yarza said she was waiting to open it until relatives arrived to watch.

She said she began writing to Obama during his first presidential campaign and had written him four or five times since then, all demanding the lifting of the US trade embargo on Cuba.

Yarza, a retired economist, speaks and writes fluent English thanks to a private school education in American-run schools before Cuba's 1959 socialist revolution.

She said she was "charmed" by Obama's "gentlemanliness" and while she didn't know if she would see the president during his time in Cuba, she said: "If I had the opportunity to see him I would say 'I admire you, I respect you, and I think you've done something very important," by moving toward normalizing relations with Cuba.

"I'd love to show him and his wife my house," she said.

US officials have said in recent days that direct mail ended shortly after the Cuban revolution. Cuban state press say it was cut after a letter bomb was sent from New York to Cuba in 1968. William LeoGrande, an American University expert on U.S.-Cuba relations, said he believed the Cuban version was correct.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

After a recent rise in cases concerning freedom of expression throughout the country, the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) has called on the government to guarantee the protection of citizens who express their thoughts publicly.



With reference to the case of Alexander Aan, a Minang [an ethnic group from West Sumatra] civil servant who was arrested for blasphemy after he declared himself an atheist on social media in 2012, Wahyudi Djafar, a lawyer from ELSAM said Thursday that freedom of expression is a basic human right and it should not be restricted by the government.



'He is suspected of spreading blasphemy because he publicly declared himself an atheist. That is part of his faith and his manifestation where he should be respected since they are his beliefs,' Wahyudi said after the launching of ELSAM's book about freedom of expression.



Concerning the Electronic Information and Transaction (ITE) law, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher Syamsudin Haris said the revision of the ITE law should be more concerned with protecting the public's right to express their thoughts.



'The law should not be used by people who want to criminalize others for expressing their opinion,' Syamsudin said.



ELSAM also demanded the lawmaker to revoke the conventional criminal act's punishment outlined in the law.



'The ITE law is regulated for internet users while the punishment of the conventional criminal act has been regulated in the Criminal Code,' Wahyudi said.



Seperately, on the threats addressed to the venue of a recent film screening ' the documentary Pulau Buru Tanah Air Beta, the commissioner of National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), Roichatul Aswidah, said the police were afraid that there would be a riot after the screening.



'We watched the movie in our office and nothing happened. We can prove to the police that no harm came upon the audience,' she said.



The film is a political documentary about former political prisoners who come back to Buru Island, Maluku, a place where alleged Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members who were involved in the 1965 abortive coup were held captive.



'If it doesn't contain violence, an opinion or film screening shouldn't be banned,' Roichatul said.



Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) executive director Kuskridho Ambardi said there are some reasons that might cause the police to react to events relating to communism.



'People who come to the event can influence whether it is canceled or not. For example, the discussion about the Pulau Buru Tanah Air Beta film at the faculty of social and political science in Gadjah Mada University was not canceled because the director general of culture was present at the event,' he said.



Kuskridho added that social media could influence an event being canceled. He gave an example of an unofficial poster of a theater that went viral on social media portraying two women kissing.



'The public thought it was LGBT promotion, became angry and wanted to ban the theater. But in fact, the story was not about LGBT at all. ' (wnd)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

JAKARTA: Players in the country's furniture and craft industry have called on the government to provide them with supporting facilities to improve the skills of local workers and maintain the role of the sector as an important driver in the country's economic growth.



Indonesia Rattan Furniture and Craft Association (AMKRI) secretary-general Abdul Sobur said such facilities were needed to ensure the sustainability of the industry.



'We hope the government could provide supporting facilities such as a design center and intellectual property rights on industry-based regions,' he said during the closing of the Indonesia International Furniture Expo (IFEX) 2016. Last year Indonesian furniture exports amounted to US$ 1.9 billion, up only 1,3 percent from 2014. The value of global furniture market amounts $141 billion.



Apart from providing facilities, Sobur also outlined the importance of the government promoting furniture events like IFEX ' which is managed by the AMKRI ' to support the domestic furniture market.



IFEX is an annual event that has been staged by the AMKRI since 2014, aimed at boosting Indonesia's furniture exports. This year the four-day event recorded US$325 million in on-the-spot transactions, up 20 percent from last year's $270 million. ' JP/adt
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Linkedin Lorne Cook & Raf Casert (The Jakarta Post) Brussels  Fri, March 18, 2016

European Union leaders have agreed upon a common stance on a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey something they will propose to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later on Friday.

At late night talks in Brussels on Thursday, leaders backed a mandate for negotiations with Turkey that they said would not result in mass deportations and some differences were bridged over sweeteners to give Turkey in exchange for its help.

"The 28 have agreed on a proposal," French President Francois Hollande said. "It was late in the evening, but it has been done."

But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that reaching an agreement had not been easy.

"There too, it is a complicated process," he said. "I think we can get a deal out of this, we have to get a deal out of this. But the race is not really finished yet."

Desperate to ease the pressure placed on Europe's borders by the arrival of more than 1 million migrants in a year, the EU has turned to Turkey hoping to stem the flow of refugees into overburdened Greece.

The plan would essentially outsource Europe's biggest refugee emergency in decades to Turkey, despite concerns about its sub-par asylum system and human rights abuses.

Under it, the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don't qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every migrant returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, for a total of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.

In exchange for the help of Turkey ' home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees ' the EU will offer up to 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in aid, an easing of visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and faster EU membership talks.

The summit chairman, EU Council President Donald Tusk, and Rutte are scheduled to present Europe's terms for an agreement to Davutoglu on Friday for his endorsement.

If Davutoglu objects, the heads of state and government of the 28 EU nations will meet again to reconsider their position.

But Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned that Turkey must not expect a free ride.

"An agreement can be no blank check," he said after the first day of the summit. "A deal is possible but not a certainty. We'd rather have no agreement than a bad agreement."

Human rights groups and leading EU legislators have decried the plan as a cynical cave-in, sacrificing universal rights to pander to a restless electorate fed up with hosting people who are fleeing war and poverty.

Even some leaders acknowledged the EU was walking a tightrope.

"It is on the edge of international law," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said before leaders signed off on the tentative deal.

Some also criticized Turkey, complaining it was cynically trying to exploit the situation to win concessions well beyond its reach under normal circumstances.

Still, many see this potential deal as perhaps the only way to halt the flow by land and sea, especially as the weather turns warmer, and prevent people from turning to unscrupulous smugglers.

Thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Greek or Italian islands. About 46,000 people are stranded in Greece after Macedonia shut its border to stem the flow along a popular migrant route through the Balkans. At least 14,000 are camped in the mud at a makeshift tent city in Idomeni, on the Greece-Macedonia frontier.

At one tent, 29-year-old Soukeina Baghdadi warmed herself by a fire shared with neighbors. Like many, she wants to move to Germany and is hoping that Europe's leaders can help.

"All the people here are waiting for the summit, waiting for the borders to open," she said.

The threat of a veto by Cyprus did not materialize, as the leaders' draft statement adroitly avoided explicit mention of any timeline on Turkey's EU membership. Turkey does not recognize the Mediterranean island's Greek-Cypriot government; a stance that has been a major obstacle to smooth accession talks.

When asked if he would veto a deal if he had to, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters: "If needed, yes."

Menelaos Hadjicostis and Costas Kantouris contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

There is nothing brand new in the foreign policy of the current President, a distinguished professor emeritus from the University of South Carolina says. Instead, he argues, there is something missing that his predecessor had: some emotion in democracy.



Donald E. Weatherbee ' a Southeast Asia expert from the US ' used the Garuda, the mythological bird and Indonesia's state symbol, to describe the country's course of foreign policy, suggesting that the bird was still up there looking for the best way to go.



'During the first three presidencies of the new democracy, the Garuda was still struggling. I call it the wounded Garuda,' he told a forum jointly held by the US-Indonesia Society (USINDO) and the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.



During Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's term, Weatherbee describes the Garuda as being 'in flames; global flames, not just local flames'.



'The Garuda hovered and looked for a direction, for which course it would follow in the future. We're not quite sure where it's flying, and that is the question that I am posing,' Weatherbee said.



'Bebas dan aktif; an independent and active foreign policy, is not a foreign policy. It explains the way foreign policy should be conducted, and its terminology is unchallenged, but what is its content?'



The term bebas dan aktif was coined by Indonesia's co-founder and first vice president Mohammad Hatta to describe the country's non-alignment policy and its willingness to actively be engaged in promoting world peace and justice.



Weatherbee saw signals of a break in continuity during the 2014 presidential campaign, with then Jakarta governor Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and retired general Prabowo Subianto seemingly trying to distance themselves from Yudhoyono by emphasizing national interest in their campaigns.



He said that when Jokowi, a businessman seemingly uninterested and ill-informed on foreign policy, rose to become president, none of his policy was brand new or not previously considered by his predecessors.



The fact was, claimed Weatherbee, that although almost every point was inherited from his predecessors, there was one case of discontinuity (...) and it was the emotion of democracy, which he said had faded during Jokowi's presidency.



'The promotion of democracy as the overall goal of Indonesia's foreign policy has led to international backlash, some saying that Indonesia itself is failing in democracy on questions of human rights and the rights of minorities,' he said.



Jokowi, who pledged during his campaign to end the impunity shrouding Indonesia's long list of past human-rights abuses, has garnered criticism from a number of human-rights groups for failing to fulfill this promise and for increasingly encroaching on freedom of expression.



Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an international relations scholar and advisor to Vice President Jusuf Kalla, disagreed with Weatherbee.



Regardless of who the president was and what their interpretation of bebas dan aktif and national interest was, she said, Indonesian foreign policy was clearly mandated by the 1945 Constitution. Thus, Indonesia could not recognize Israel as a state as it opposed colonialism in the Constitution, she offered as an example. Continuity, she said, was guaranteed by the Constitution.



She added that Yudhoyono enunciated 'democracy, moderate Islam and modernity' as key elements in Indonesia's identity in his first speech on foreign policy, because Indonesia's image on the international stage was badly tarnished then by internal conflicts and borders issues.



During the Jokowi era, she said, Indonesian foreign policy has become more pragmatic as economic interests have received more attention and the focus has been on bilateral relations with key countries, without forgetting historical legacies in multilateralism being honored, such as the celebration of the Asia-African Conference's 60th anniversary in 2015.



'The Garuda knows where it is flying, and picks its selective targets, conserving energy if possible, but when we need to take flight, we do,' Dewi said.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

A Golkar Party politician claims five major political parties will set up a grand coalition to nominate a gubernatorial candidate to challenge incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama, who has announced his plan to run as an independent candidate.

The five parties are the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Gerindra Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Golkar and the United Development Party (PPP), said Golkar's Jakarta branch secretary Zaiuddin in Jakarta on Thursday.

'Golkar has communicated with the PDI-P, Gerindra, the PKS and the PPP,' Zainuddin said, adding that he had just met with PDI-P Jakarta branch chairman Boy Sadikin to discuss the nomination.

Zainuddin stressed that his party would not support Ahok in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election because he had declared himself as an independent candidate.

'The wish of political parties is to nominate a suitable candidate. Golkar will support any figure, who has been agreed upon [by the planned coalition],' he said.

The five political parties control 70 out of 106 seats in the Jakarta City Council. With 25 seats, PDI-P is the largest political party in the city, followed by Gerindra with 15 seats, the PKS with 11 seats, the PPP with 10 seats and Golkar with nine seats.

He believed the collation would be able to increase the electability of the candidate that would be nominated.

Ahok has declared he will run as an independent candidate and has appointed Heru Budi Hartono, a civil servant working for the Jakarta administration, as his deputy candidate. Currently, Ahok's supporters, calling themselves Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), are collecting photocopies of Jakarta residents' identity cards to support his bid.

Under the current law, Ahok needs to collect about 533,000 photocopies of IDs to be allowed to run in the gubernatorial election as an independent. (bbn)
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Linkedin Bambang Nurbianto (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, March 21, 2016

The government has strongly denied reports about secret talks between Indonesian and Israeli officials in connection with Foreign Minister Retno Marsudis recent trip to the Middle East to officiate the Indonesian honorary consulate in Ramallah.

"I want to assert that Indonesias Foreign Ministry has never had any meeting with Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir said on Thursday.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, Israeli and Indonesian officials had agreed during a meeting in Jakarta that Retno would meet with Israeli officials in Jerusalem during her visit to the region.

The agreement was reportedly reached during a visit by the Israeli foreign ministrys deputy director-general in the Asia-Pacific division, Mark Sofer, to the Indonesian Foreign Ministry in Jakarta, where he reportedly met Retno and made the agreement.

The Israel-based Jerusalem Post quoted a statement made by Israels deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely in parliament on Wednesday, when she said that even though the two countries had no formal diplomatic ties, any foreign officials wanting to visit Ramallah were obliged to meet Israeli officials in Jerusalem.

After being denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli authorities, Retno inaugurated Maha Abu Susheh  a Palestinian local and a prominent businesswoman in the region  as the Honorary Consul in Ramallah, in a ceremony at the Indonesian Embassy in Amman on March 13.

Arrmanatha said there had never been any discussion or agreement between Indonesia and the Israeli foreign ministry related to Retno's visit to Jerusalem.

The government had never had any intention to visit Jerusalem, as the core points of the recent trip to the region were to have a bilateral meeting with Jordans foreign minister in Amman as well as to meet the Palestinian foreign minister and president, he said.

Most importantly, the trip had been organized to inaugurate the honorary consul as a concrete measure of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's promise to open an Indonesian representative office in Ramallah in support of Palestinian independence, Arrmanatha added.

Even though in the end the plan to take Retno to the Palestinian government building in Ramallah in a Jordanian air force helicopter did not work, Arrmanatha said the objectives of the trip were all met, as Retno successfully inaugurated the honorary consul.

"To quote her [Retno], 'mission accomplished," Arrmanatha added. (bbn)
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Linkedin Ina Parlina and Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

As a result of public demands that the truth behind decades-old cases of human rights abuse be revealed, the government has declared its readiness to resolve and find solutions to all past human rights cases.



Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters on Thursday that the government had no intention of forgetting past cases of human rights abuse, and President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo had ordered the government to resolve them.



'We want to resolve all cases [of past human rights abuses], as well as cases in Papua. We will solve this using our way,' Luhut said, adding that the Indonesian people should find solutions, and not only seek to decide who was right or wrong.



'We expect to settle six cases by May 2,' he added.



The six cases are the purge of communists following the Sept. 30, 1965 killing of six Army generals, the Talangsari, Trisakti, Semanggi I and II shootings and the disappearance of pro-democracy activists.



Luhut underlined that Indonesia should stop following 'others' points of view'.



It was reported that a government-sanctioned team was set up last year and tasked with finding options on how to resolve past rights abuses.



The team had concluded that a truth and reconciliation committee should be established to answer directly to the President. It recommended that the choice between using judicial or non-judicial mechanisms should be decided on a case-by-case basis.



The team consists of officials from the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Attorney General's Office, the National Police, the National Intelligence Agency, the military and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).



On Thursday, Komnas HAM commissioner Nurcholis said the commission had sent a letter requesting the US government release its documents on the events of 1965. This was part of the efforts by the commission to obtain more documents on the case although there is no decision as yet on whether or not to settle the case, along with other past atrocities, through legal proceedings or reconciliation.



'Whether it will be reconciliation or prosecution, it depends on the [future] decision. However, such documents [from the US] are still relevant. The more complete the data is, the better it will be,' Nurcholis told reporters.



The Associated Press previously reported that Komnas HAM had met with US State Department

officials and had made a formal request to President Obama for the release of files from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies that would help in 'encouraging the Indonesian government to redouble its own efforts to establish the truth' and promote reconciliation.



Meanwhile, Thomas Blanton, director of the nongovernment US National Security Archive, said the Obama administration had quite a good track record on declassifying documents for human rights accountability, as it did last October for Chile, revealing that former dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the 1976 assassination of a Chilean diplomat.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Alliance of Indigenous Peoples (AMAN) secretary - general Abdon Nababan on Thursday demanded the government involve indigenous people in spatial planning processes.



'A lot of customary land conflict occurrs in the country primarily because the government never lets indigenous people, especially who live in the forests, voice their aspirations in planning deliberations,' Abdon told The Jakarta Post.



National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) member Sandrayati Moniaga said the absence of participation in spatial planning process was categorized as a violation to the right of information and right of participate in development.



'It became more difficult for them to participate since they have to acquire formal recognition of their presence and customary right from the government,' Sandra said on Thursday.



On Wednesday, Komnas HAM revealed that the absence of formal recognition is one of the root causes to customary land conflict occurring in the country.



'The recognition would only be acquired when the regional administration issues a regional regulation on their status. Though, in fact, their ancestors have lived in the forests for generations,' Abdon explained.



Sandra said in the spatial planning process, the government frequently invites traditional leaders but remote indigenous communities are never invited.



'For instance, the Dayak Customary Council in Central Kalimantan and the Papua traditional community institutions (LMA) in Papua, which were established by the regional administration in their respective areas. But indigenous people in cut off areas don't know anything about any spatial planning occurring,' Sandra said.



The process to obtain the recognition is also hurdled by the lack of coordination among state institutions concerning indigenous people.



Pocut Eliza, head of the center for national law evaluation and analysis at the National Law Development Agency (BPHN), said the authority to regulate indigenous people lay with several ministries, including the Home Ministry, the Environment and Forestry Ministry and the Law and Human Rights Ministry.



In an effort to resolve the hurdle of getting indigenous people involved in spatial planning, AMAN, along with the Community Mapping Network (JKPP), has been mapping customary land across the country since 2001.



'We conveyed the customary land map to the government every year,' Abdon said.



Abdon said he had hoped the government would use their data as the basis for spatial planning processes.



'We did the project because regional administrations and regional legislative councils, which are the parties that create the spatial planning, use the central government's map as their basis in preparing the spatial planning. These are our good intentions, but it depends on them whether they use our data and finally involve indigenous people in the process,' Abdon said.



Sandra said the mapping should have been conducted by the government, not an NGO like AMAN.



'If the government doesn't want to do the mapping project, it should allocate part of its budget for indigenous people to do the mapping,' she said. (mos)
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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

A plan to shackle independent candidates in local elections met with growing resistance on Thursday as House of Representatives leaders voiced their opposition.



House Commission II overseeing home affairs, which has proposed raising the minimum support requirement for non-partisan candidates in the amendment to the 2015 Law on regional elections, found it difficult to get approval from House leaders.



House Speaker Ade Komarudin said Commission II should not carry on with its plan after government officials expressed their disagreement.



'If the government disagrees, why should we push it? The deliberation of an amendment should consider opinions from both sides [government and legislators],' said the Golkar Party politician.



Several factions at the commission had proposed increasing the requirements for independent candidates to garner the support of 15 to 20 percent of the final voter list (DPT), from the current 7.5 to 10 percent, in the amendment.



They argued that the requirements for the independents had become easier since the Constitutional Court ruled that the minimum percentage was based on a region's DPT, instead of its population.



Lawmakers argued that it was not fair for the independents to get so easy a target when a political party or a group of political parties still had to gather 20 to 25 percent of seats in a region's legislative council to be able to endorse a pair of candidates.



The plan to raise the bar for independents has been resisted by the government. Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said the government, which initiated the amendment, had never considered such a provision.



In the government's draft amendment there were no articles making requirements harder for independents. 'Don't take the amendment as an opportunity to block independent candidates,' said the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician.



General Elections Commission (KPU) member Hadar Nafis Gumay suggested that the requirement for independents should in fact be lowered to 3.6 to 5 percent.



'We should provide room for independent candidates. Until now many qualified people have been unable to run in elections under the existing benchmark,' Hadar said.



The country's first concurrent regional elections in December only saw 13 pairs of independent tickets winning from a total of 264 regions contested.



The independents who ran in the elections had to collect greater initial support to earn their tickets as the candidacy selection was held before the court ruling.



House Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon of the Gerindra Party said the plan to raise the requirement for independent candidates was absurd since the current standards were still difficult enough for candidates wishing to enter the race.



'Gathering support from 7.5 to 10 percent of the total DPT is actually difficult for independent candidates, so we don't need to make it higher. Otherwise, it will prevent people running on non-partisan tickets at all,' Fadli said.



However, he also acknowledged that it was equally difficult for political parties to name candidates under the current regulations. The hurdles may become even higher for the political parties as the government's proposal in the amendment also include an article to sanction political parties that refuse to endorse candidates in a local election.



In an additional point in the law's Article 40, the government has proposed that any party that fails to nominate a ticket should be barred from the next election.



Dadang Rusdiana of the Hanura Party also opposed raising the minimum requirement for independent candidates. 'Such a plan is just a trick by political parties to prevent others running for election,' he said.



Dadang said the idea of raising the bar for independents was an attempt to block Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama from running as an independent candidate to secure a second term.



'Political parties have infrastructure, such as DPP [central executive boards] and DPC [branch executive boards], while individuals don't, thus requiring more effort,' said Dadang, whose party has declared its support for Ahok.

______________________________________

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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The incoming Jakarta Police chief, Insp. Gen. Moechgiyarto, who is to be sworn in on Monday, brings high expectations of police impartiality given his track record in his previous position in West Java, where he promised to protect minority groups.



Moechgiyarto is replacing Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, who has been appointed as the new boss of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).



Tito was officially inaugurated by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo at the State Palace on Wednesday but he will still lead the Jakarta Police until after Moechgiyarto takes up his new position, said Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Mohammad Iqbal.



'The inauguration will take place at the National Police headquarters [in South Jakarta] next Monday,' Iqbal told reporters at the Jakarta Police headquarters.



Moechgiyarto, who graduated top of his class in the Police Academy in 1986, is known for his firm stance on protecting minority groups.



When inaugurated as the West Java Police chief in June last year, the two-star general promised to protect minority groups such as the Ahmadis and Shiites, whose members have been prohibited from exercising their beliefs in the province due to pressure from hard-line groups. 'There will no longer be closures [of houses of worship],' he said back then.



In October last year, when Shia followers in West Java's capital Bandung celebrated their Asyura Day ceremony, the Bandung Police deployed hundreds of officers to guard locations where the Shiites were celebrating the holiday.



In Sidolig Stadium, for example, Shiites celebrated Asyura despite protests from hundreds of people from the West Java Ahlus Sunnah Defenders (PAS). Police officers held the protesters back from the venue.



His stance on protecting minority groups is expected to continue in his new post in the capital where minority groups have frequently faced harassment. In such cases, the police have either not taken action or worse appeared to help intolerant groups carrying out their actions.



On Wednesday, for example, the documentary film Pulau Buru Tanah Air Beta was screened amid threats from a hard-line group accusing organizers of spreading communism. The police told the organizers that they could not guarantee the safety of the participants if they insisted on going ahead.



Host Goethe Institute canceled the event and the organizers moved the screening to the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) headquarters in Central Jakarta.



Last month, another event called the Belok Kiri (Turn Left) Festival conducted by a leftist group was dispersed by around 200 officers from the Jakarta Police following opposition from various organizations.



The police argued that the event was dispersed because it did not have permission from the police.



Since November last year, Jakarta has seen a total of six events being canceled or moved after the police refused to protect the organizers.



The police claimed the events had not secured permits from and caused unrest among certain groups of people. Organizers have retorted that they do not need permits but simply notification letters to the local police.



Moechgiyarto's track record, however, has been marred by his much criticized standpoint in support of virginity tests for female cadets of the National Police. He stated his support in 2014 when he led the law division of the National Police.



He said back then that virginity tests would be necessary to ensure that female cadets lived up to high moral standards.



The idea was criticized by various human rights organizations including the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), which told the police to monitor their own moral standards before talking about those of others.
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

As ASEAN member countries compete to attract investors following the implementation of the AEC, the Indonesian government needs to simplify licensing procedures to improve its investment climate, the business community says.



Indonesia's main competitors within ASEAN in attracting investors are Vietnam and the Philippines, said Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) vice chairman Antonius Joenoes Supit, adding that Myanmar will soon become another potential competitor.



"We should pay attention to Myanmar, after Aung San Suu Kyi's party won they are easing their policies. Now foreigners can buy apartments and in the future foreign companies may be able to buy land," Antonius told thejakartapost.com on Thursday.



President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo needs to consistently implement his plan to revise about 400 regulations to help achieve his target of moving the country up from 109th place to 40th in the World Bank's ease of doing business rankings, he added.



'People have to go through 13 procedures, which takes an average 47 days, to start a new business here," he said.



Regarding the type of investment, Antonius said that Indonesia should focus on labor-intensive technological investment. "Samsung in Vietnam exported US$ 40 billion, but we need to focus on the labor intensive side," Anton said. (bbn)(+)
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Linkedin Connie Rahakundini Bakrie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The 21st century is the ''World Ocean Century', where all countries compete to demonstrate their ability to make claims. President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has made arrangements to address this issue by initiating the vision of a maritime axis to brace Indonesia for the competition for access to natural resources (mineral and non-mineral), to act as a stabilizing force in the region and to secure trade not only at the national, but also the regional and international level.



Since President Jokowi introduced his maritime axis vision with the objective of making Indonesia's territorial waters the safest corridor in the world for all marine activity, suddenly anything associated with the sea has turned sexy. All ministries without exception want to be involved in implementing the vision and mission of 'going maritime' in line with their own perceptions, interests and benefits.



Only with a fleet of cargo vessels (energy and non-energy), fishing boats and passenger ships that are well guarded by patrols and naval force, supported by sophisticated air power, can we ensure not only the integrity and sovereignty of our territory, but also the existence of natural resources and their distribution for the greatest benefit of the people.



The maritime axis vision must clearly be supported by the readiness of a well-equipped naval integrated fleet weapon system (SSAT), comprising warships, aircraft, marines and bases. The capability of the Air Force should serve as an umbrella for the main strength of the Navy supported by the ability to carry out the point defense for anti-aircraft missiles as well as means of air detection to secure the country's sovereignty.



Indonesia's territorial waters are vulnerable to abuse of sea lanes of communications (SLOC) and sea lanes of trade (SLOT). These aspects of military threat overshadow Indonesian waters, including the spillover of power rivalries in the name of national interests, such as those between China and the US.



Given Australia's position in the constellation of the regional energy players, the initiative to build adequate capabilities of outward-facing naval bases can start with the eastern fleet, especially our naval bases (Lantamal) VII and IX as an appropriate force to face Darwin, which lies about 300 km from the islands of Tanimbar. The Masela gas plant development will not be far away from the Australian-owned Caldita-Barossa gas fields.



The Tanimbar Islands, Maluku, form the eastern end of the Wallacea biogeographical area, the region between Southeast Asia, Australia and Papua. The outer islands bordering with Australia are the island of Yamdena and a small island in front of it; further west lies the island of Sermata, part of Southwest Maluku. The Masela block itself is located to the West of Saumlaki and is about 400 km from Darwin and 800 km from Timor Leste.



As an Indonesian frontier area, the Tanimbar island group is included in the national strategic concept. From the 15th to the 19th century, this territory was contested between colonial countries, such as Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Ironically, the islands are well known as 'the forgotten islands', called so not only because they have been completely forgotten since the president Sukarno era, but also because they were not included on a map for the master plan on accelerated development by the administration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and are still overlooked in the context of Jokowi's sea toll agenda.



Therefore, the development of the Masela block should be done through an offshore LNG (FLNG) scheme in view of the maritime strategy related not only to the use and exploitation of the sea but also to control of the sea.



It is important not to consider the development of the Masela block merely from the technical and commercial aspects of the project itself, but through a holistic policy approach including human living space, for the sake of prosperity, sustainability and environmental preservation of the region itself.



Why? The island is very small compared to Kalimantan, Sumatra or even Java. Not many of those who stubbornly demand an onshore LNG (OLNG) plant realize that Yamdena Island is only 1:223 in size compared to Kalimantan, and 1:38 compared to the area of Java. The population is only 1:141 of the population of Kalimantan and 1:1,070 to the inhabitants of Java. We can imagine the undesirable impact from a sudden influx of thousands of workers and their families on the people of this small island and on the natural environment.



An FLNG would be more conducive for control of the outer islands, because an FLNG will provide flexibility not only in transporting gas to various locations of Indonesia at lower cost, but also because it can be transferred to other gas fields discovered in the future. An FLNG will improve connectivity between islands both in terms of communication and transportation, seaports, airports, etc.



There will be a need to support the movement of supplies for FLNG operations (logistic supply base, offshore supply vessel, crew/supply boats); transport of LNG/condensate to meet the needs of industry and power plants, and of course support economic growth not only of Tanimbar Islands but of the entire province of Maluku.



Supporters of the OLNG concept overlook these aspects. Moreover, an OLNG plant will require an area of 600 to 800 hectares in Yamdena, while this island covers an area of only 3,333 sq km and its small capital of Saumlaki measures only 124.1 sq km in size with a population of only 149,790 people. These people are certainly vulnerable to social conflict with the expected influx of thousands of migrant workers and their families.



An FLNG plant that only require a land area of about 40 to 50 hectares in Saumlaki to accommodate 6,000 FLNG workers will certainly have multiplier impacts on such as activities as flights, car and boat rentals, heavy equipment, stevedoring services, hotels, housing, catering, etc.



The paradigm of Indonesia as a global maritime axis and the development plan of FLNG Masela is an opportunity that should not be lost if we wish to have clear direction and commitment to our concept of ocean frontline force development (Navy) and aerospace (Air Force) along with the welfare of the people of Tanimbar Islands.



Besides, defense is not only about guns, but also about economic prosperity that will derive from the movement of ships and FLNG supply boats and fishing and trade in the cluster of these beautiful and forgotten islands.

_______________________________



The writer is the president of the Indonesian Institute of Maritime Studies, Jakarta.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) is negotiating with the local tap water company in Surabaya (PDAM Surabaya), East Java, over the use of technology to filtrate polluted water into household water.



If the two parties reach an agreement, PDAM Surabaya will become the second tap water company in the country to make use of the technology. BPPT bio-filtration and ultra-filtration technology was used for the first time in 2012 by PDAM Taman Kota in West Jakarta.



'The technology is a solution for dense cities, where quality of water degrades along with the density of population and pollution from the industrial sector,' BPPT clean water and sanitation team leader Rudi Nugroho told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.



In big cities, PDAM have favoured the use of conventional equipment and add chemicals to purify water. With the application of the technology, less chemicals will be required. The equipment is also easier to install, Rudi said.



Rudi revealed that the technology installation stands at an approximate cost of Rp 300 million (US$23,076) for a litre-per-second capacity. PDAM production capacity usually starts from 100 litres-per-second.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Media mogul and the Perindo Party chairman, Hary Tanoesoedibjo has dismissed the allegation that he had some involvement in the fictitious transactions that are plaguing the Mobile-8 telecommunications company, insisting that he had no control over the day-to-day affairs of the company.



'I'm not involved with operational conduct in the company. I was a commissioner there. But if there's anyone who wishes to pin this on me, please do [investigate me],' he told reporters prior to giving his testimony as a witness at the Attorney General's Office (AGO) on Friday.



The case emerged in 2009 when Mobile-8, which was at the time owned by Hary, acquired a tax restitution of Rp 10.75 billion (US$774,776). In an attempt to acquire the restitution, between 2007 and 2009, Mobile-8 allegedly made a series of fictitious telecommunications equipment sales to Surabaya-based telecommunications provider company PT Djaja Nusantara Komunikasi (DNK).



Hary's lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea, said that the case was not a corruption case, adding that that the transactions were fictitious and had not led to any state losses.



Junior attorney general for special crimes Arminsyah insisted that the office would continue with the prosecution.



'The PT DNK director has admitted that the transactions were fictitious,' Arminsyah said.



In January, the House of Representatives' Commission III overseeing legal affairs created a special team to investigate the case.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Newly installed National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian aims to include "big fish", or leading, terrorists in the agency's deradicalization programs as part of government efforts to combat terrorism.

Tito, who was installed by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo on Wednesday, said his agency needed to switch focus to the big fish of terrorism, in the wake of several cases of terror acts being planned behind bars.

BNPT considers leading terrorists to have ingrained radical convictions, but believes they can be persuaded to abandon these beliefs and return to normal lives.

"It may work and it may not work. There are some that have been successfully [deradicalized], but I don't want to mention names. It requires special treatment," Tito said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com.

The cases included a military training camp in Aceh in 2004 that was plotted within Jakarta's Cipinang Penitentiary and allegedly involved terrorist convict Abubakar Baasyir, the spiritual leader of Islamic organization Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT).

Meanwhile, a January attack conducted in Jakarta by four terrorists was allegedly planned on Nusakambangan prison island by terror convicts Aman Abdurrahman and Iwan Darmawan Mutho. The police have also revealed that two of the perpetrators of the Jakarta attack, Afif and Muhammad Ali, had also been imprisoned on terror charges.

"That means there is something that is not working. Their rehabilitation was ineffective. As such, we need improvement," said the former Jakarta Police chief.

Techniques used to deradicalize big-fish terrorists include moderate teachings and communication restriction, Tito said, but declined to elaborate. (rin)
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Linkedin Gino Fanelli (The Jakarta Post) Rochester, New York  Fri, March 18, 2016

A Yemen-born pizza shop owner who admitted he tried to recruit people for the Islamic State group was sentenced Thursday to 22 1/2 years in prison.



Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, had pleaded guilty in December in federal court to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization in 2013 and 2014.



A naturalized US citizen, Elfgeeh was operating a convenience store and pizzeria in Rochester, New York when he was arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in May 2014.



Investigators said he had bought two handguns and silencers that he planned to use to kill returning U.S. soldiers. Authorities said he also tried to recruit three people to join the Islamic State group to fight in Syria.



"Thanks to today's sentence, one of the first ISIL recruiters ever captured has been brought to justice and will now serve a very long jail sentence," said US Attorney William Hochul. "But while this case strikes a significant blow against ISIL killers and wannabes, our ongoing efforts to eradicate terrorist groups will continue until all are brought to justice."



Elfgeeh did not speak at his sentencing, but his lawyer read a statement that included a renunciation of the Islamic State group.



"I watched ISIS carry out acts of violence, such as beheadings and burning people alive," Elfgeeh said. "They say they do this for religion, I believe they are wrong."



He also discussed his motivation.



"Like many, I was interested in the Arab Spring in Tunisia, and how it spread through Africa and the Middle East," Elfgeeh said. "I wanted to help my Muslim brothers fighting the horrors of the Assad regime. I was an early supporter of ISIS, as they were the first to address the crisis in Syria."



His sentence includes more than 27 years of supervision after his release, including monitoring all of his Internet activity. Assistant US Attorney Brett Harvey said that was because of Elfgeeh's active social media use during his plot.



Elfgeeh was accused of creating 23 Facebook pages, under various aliases, in order to contact ISIL members and recruit, as well as a WhatsApp account to arrange a contact for two people, referred to as "individuals A and B," to travel to Syria.



"The defendant showed use of social media, through various aliases, to support ISIL and help encourage other members," Harvey said. "The defendant worked to send three people to Syria to fight with ISIL, and though he did not fight on the ground, he considered himself a fighter to help form the Islamic State and impose Shariah Law." (+)
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk and Ambassador of India to Ukraine Manoj Kumar Bharti have discussed the possibility of holding a Ukraine-India investment forum in the near future.

Yatseniuk drew the ambassador's attention to the considerable potential the Ukrainian and Indian relations haven't unlocked yet, though "the development of partnership is of great interest" to Ukraine, the Ukrainian Cabinet's press service said.

"Yatseniuk stressed that the Ukrainian-Indian relations need a new, serious impetus, and the government of Ukraine is very interested in boosting bilateral cooperation in all spheres. To develop the bilateral relations, the meeting [between the prime minister and the ambassador] was devoted to the organization of a Ukraine-India investment forum in the near future, which could act as a catalyst for both countries' business contacts," the Cabinet's press service said.

Ambassador Bharti in turn pointed out the particular importance of active dialogue with Ukraine. "In a 15-year outlook, have a look at India as a source of considerable advantages, which may be of undoubted interest to the Ukrainian economy, business circles, and simultaneously whole Ukrainian society."

The sides also discussed preparations for a meeting of the Ukrainian-Indian intergovernmental commission for trade, economic, scientific, engineering, industrial, and cultural cooperation, which is scheduled for this year.
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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The Jakarta administration faces further delays to draft bylaws on the zoning of Jakarta's coastal areas and small islands after the approval meeting at the City Council failed to meet the quorum and was canceled on Thursday.



The meeting, set for 2 p.m., was attended by 50 of 106 city council members ' less than the quorum of 50 percent plus one, which is 54.



The City Council's Legislation Agency (Balegda) head, Muhammad Taufik, who is also the deputy council speaker, said that many members had not been able to attend the ratification meeting because they had health problems and or family issues.



'This happens. If we cannot reach the needed quorum, we cannot proceed. We must obey the rules,' said Taufik after announcing the cancellation.



The scheduled meeting had been the second meeting set to approve Jakarta's coastal areas and small islands zoning bylaw drafts to have been canceled this year. The first meeting, scheduled for Feb. 22, was also canceled due to a lack of the required quorum.



The bylaw drafts regulate the zoning of Jakarta's coastal areas and small islands. Zoning is expected to encompass fisheries, tourism, public facilities, mining and conservation zones.



Asked by reporters whether the lack of a quorum was a form of opposition, Taufik said that none of the council members opposed the draft bylaws nor was there an intention to sabotage the plan by buying time.



'If they opposed the bylaws, they would voice their opposition in the forum using rational arguments. We usually do that. There's no sabotage,' Taufik said, adding that the draft bylaws were already finished and had been accepted by all members of Balegda.



Taufik could not confirm when the next meeting would be. He said that the schedule would be reviewed by the House of Representatives steering committee (Bamus) and rescheduled.



He added that despite the cancellations, council members were able to reschedule the ratification meeting as there was no regulation regarding how many times they could cancel a meeting.



He further said that, in a bid to ratify the bylaws, Balegda would meet with all factions to confirm the absence of their members and call for them to attend the meeting.



Separately, council deputy speaker Triwisaksana of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) said that his faction members had mostly attended Thursday's forum. However, he confirmed that two members had been absent due to health and family issues.



Triwisaksana, better known as Sani, criticized Balegda for its inability to encourage council members to attend the meeting, emphasizing that the agency should be firm on factions so that they encourage members to attend.



'The consequences of being absent from an approval meeting need to be discussed so that future meetings will not be canceled,' Sani said, adding that the third meeting might be held within three days. 'Nonetheless, the meeting depends on the Bamus review'.
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Linkedin Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

With the central government enacting aggressive deregulation measures, observers are calling for a nationwide regulation mandating the same spirit among local administrations to ensure a broader impact.



Regional Autonomy Watch (KPPOD) executive director Robert Endi Jaweng said on Thursday the government needed to make deregulation a national movement to accelerate implementation down to the lowest level.



'There should be a national guideline on deregulation for local governments to draw on,' he said after the launch of a KPPOD study on the simplification of business regulations in regions.



The study, which began in June last year and ended this month, was conducted in six selected cities and regencies, and found that deregulation had progressed more significantly in a number of smaller regions than in some major cities.



The regencies and cities representing the spirit of deregulation were Medan in North Sumatra, Surabaya in East Java, Makassar, Jeneponto regency and Barru regency in South Sulawesi and Kediri in East Java, Robert revealed.



Kediri was the most progressive city, slashing the number of local regulations to 72 from 142 previously, as well as Barru, which reduced 129 regulations to 22 and Jeneponto from 66 to 15, according to the study.



Bigger cities Surabaya, Medan and Makassar, meanwhile, progressed very slowly, with Surabaya only launching its one-stop integrated service (PTSP) agency last month.



Of 540 regencies and cities in the country, 50 still have no PTSP.



The study also proposed the integration of trade permit letters (SIUP) and company registration certificates (TDP), the removal of Hinder Ordonantie (HO) or nuisance permits, the simplification of licensing procedures to obtain building permits (IMB) and the simplification of business location permits (SKDU).



Kediri Mayor Abdullah Abu Bakar, who has enacted major deregulation in the city, said that the central government should guide and introduce deregulation measures to local governments.



He also called for local authorities to be compensated for deregulation with a greater allocation of state funds, as a large chunk of their revenue was from IMB and HO licensing fees.



Voicing a similar view, Hervian Tahier, a member of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), said there needed to be assurances that deregulation would not significantly reduce regions' revenue.



Speaking at the same event, British Ambassador to Indonesia Moazzam Malik said that the government's ambition to climb from 109th in the World Bank Group's Ease of Doing Business (EODB) 2016 survey to 40th in next year's survey would require a lot of hard work.



'Over the last few years, we have amended or deleted 3,000 regulations in the UK [']. We have an office specially tasked to simplify regulations,' Malik noted.



The UK aims to boost its EODB ranking from number eight in this year's survey to number five next year, he said.



Malik, who has been in the job for 17 months, said a better regulatory system and better infrastructure were among the issues most commonly highlighted by both local and foreign businesspeople in Indonesia.



He added that businesspeople demanded simple, consistent and transparent government regulations.

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

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Dozens of people gathered around a Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok) booth in a mall in South Jakarta on Thursday afternoon.

Some of them were filling out the forms while others submitted forms to the volunteers at the booth.

The booth was set up by Friends of Ahok, a group of volunteer supporters that aims to help Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama in his independent bid in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election by collecting photo copies of supporters' identity cards.

Advertising agency employee Marietha Magdalena Sianipar went to the booth her during lunch break to fill in a form and hand over a copy of her ID card to support Ahok.

She had previously done the same thing, but was required to do so again to include Ahok's running mate on the support form.

Ahok has announced that he will run with Jakarta Financial Asset Management board chairman Hery Budi Hartono as his partner.

Marietha willingly repledged her support for Ahok despite the city's remaining woes, such as traffic congestion, as she said significant improvements had been made during Ahok's tenure.

"We have seen his work. It would be unfortunate if he could not continue his programs," the 27-year-old told thejakartapost.com.

Marietha sees Ahok's decision to run as an independent candidate as an advantage, saying that public trust in political parties was declining.

Another visitor to the booth, Adi, 51, also filled in a form to pledge his support for the former East Belitung regent.

"I believe in Ahok. He acts firm and is an honest man. It's not easy to find an honest man these days," said Adi, who works for a private company in Kuningan.

People visited the booth not only to fill out forms but also to buy Ahok-related merchandise, such as Teman Ahok bracelets, T-shirts, polo shirts and calendars.

Various merchandise is being sold, such as bracelets for Rp 12,000 (9 US cents) and polo shirts for Rp 130,000.

Marline, 36, who is unable to vote or pledge support for Ahok as she is not a resident of Jakarta but of Depok, West Java province, bought a bracelet to demonstrate her support for Ahok.

Booth keepers, twin sisters Hersini and Hersina, patiently served visitors who wanted to fill in forms or buy merchandise.

The 22-year old unemployed sisters tend the booth as Teman Ahok volunteers willingly as they said they wanted to do all they could to help Ahok retain his grip on the capital.

After Ahok declared last week that would run as an independent candidate with Heru in next year's election, Teman Ahok has garnered a lot of public support.

One of Teman Ahok's founders, Richard Handris, said that prior to the announcement, the group could collect up to 3,500 ID-backed signatures per day, which skyrocketed to 18,800 per day from across the capital, meaning that 94,000 people had signed up within five days of the announcement to support Ahok and Heru.

The group wants to re-collect ID-backed signatures as their previous achievement of more than 700,000 signatures did not comply with requirements as they lacked the name a running mate for Ahok.

As of Friday afternoon, 117,373 people had pledged support through Teman Ahok.

Ahok and Heru need the pledged support of at least 532,000 Jakartans to pass the minimum requirement set by the Jakarta General Elections Commission for independent candidates. Ahok had set a goal for Teman Ahok to collect photo copies of at least 1 million IDs to secure his candidacy.

In order to facilitate citizens in pledging support, Teman Ahok has set up booths in 15 malls across Jakarta, such as in Kelapa Gading Mall in North Jakarta, Puri Indah Mall in West Jakarta, Cilandak Town Square and Pondok Indah Mall II in South Jakarta, and plans to open more in other places.

The booths in malls, of course, do not come for free,

Richard said that Teman Ahok had received discounted prices for the space to set up booths from the malls' managements.

"We pay, but it is a discounted price. It only takes skill to negotiate," Richard said, declining to reveal the cost of each booth.

Teman Ahok covers its operating costs by selling merchandise, Richard said.

"Our T-shirts are selling well. New T-shirts once sold out within a day," said the 23-year-old.

Some visitors attempted to make cash donations to the group, which rejected the offer and suggested they buy merchandise instead.

Besides setting up booths in malls, Teman Ahok has also collected support through 150 supporting posts created by residents in several areas in the capital.

Volunteer Arum Ara Sekar said instead of visiting a mall, supporters could download the forms at the Temanahok.com website, fill them out and mail them to the secretariat office.

Volunteers

Teman Ahok was established by five young people. Besides Richard, there are Aditya Yogi Prabowo, 25, Amalia Ayuningtyas, 25, Muhammad Fathony and Singgih Widyastono, 23.

Besides organizing Teman Ahok activities, each of them has their own activities.

The only female founder, Amalia, who graduate from the University of Indonesia, has an online business selling hijab, while Singgih studies at the University of Pamulang in South Tangerang, Banten.

Aditya works at a pharmaceutical company while Fathony is employed by a tire company. Richard is a teacher at a private school in Jakarta and is also a freelance graphic designer.

The five friends were volunteers for Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Ahok during the 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial campaign. Jokowi went on to become President.

The volunteers reunited and formed Teman Ahok as they believed that Jakarta needed Ahok to continue his development programs and did not want his lack of political party support to get in the way.

Ahok has had no political party affiliation since 2014, when he left the Gerindra Party, which supported him in 2012 election.

Teman Ahok volunteers number 450, with most being university students. Their tasks vary, from tending the booths or posts to working at the group's secretariat office in Pejaten, South Jakarta.

Merchandise sales also contribute to paying for volunteers' transportation, Richard said.

Not all volunteers are Jakarta residents. Arum lives in Tangerang and is majoring in anthropology at the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java.

She is using her experience as a volunteer as the topic of her thesis. However, her main focus is to help the capital get the best leader, which she believes is Ahok . (rin)
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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Indonesia is planning to ask Australia to revise its strict policy on refugees at the upcoming Bali Process international forum through a multilateral mechanism that demonstrates Indonesia is not alone in wanting the neighboring country to let more refugees into its territory.



Initiated in 2002 to address people smuggling, trafficking in persons and related transnational crimes, the Bali Process is slated to take place on the island on March 22-23, cochaired by Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi and her Australian counterpart Julie Bishop.



The forum comes at a sensitive time, with Australia in the international spotlight for its policy to turn back boat people and strict quota on asylum seekers and with Indonesia seeing overcapacity and financial problems at detention centers housing refugees.



When asked if the forum's declaration would include an attempt to appeal against Australia's strict policy on refugees and use of a refugee quota, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said the matter would be discussed over the course of the conference.



'It is an issue that we hope to see discussed during the meeting. We will see to what extent it can be discussed,' he said.



Citing the emergence of a potential humanitarian crisis in the wake of an influx of Rohingya refugees into the region last year, the Foreign Ministry has previously said that the forum will yield a declaration expected to set guidelines for an emergency response mechanism regarding irregular migration.



The Law and Human Rights Ministry's director general of immigration Ronny F. Sompie, said recently that his office was currently too short of funds and human resources to properly manage asylum seekers and refugees, and called for the forum to be used to persuade Australia to allow more room for refugees.



Indonesia's 13 immigration detention centers, Ronny said, are already suffering from extreme overcrowding, with the number of illegal migrants soaring more than fivefold over the past seven years.



Arrmanatha said Indonesia was working with the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization on Migration (IOM) to handle refugees, adding that serious efforts were needed to improve facilities, which was among the goals the Bali Process would work toward.



'Refugee issues need always to be discussed in the regional context, not the individual [country] context. It's pointless for just one or two countries ' like Indonesia with Australia or Indonesia with New Zealand ' to discuss the issue, as we need to find long-lasting solutions,' he said, emphasizing that origin, transit and destination countries should all be involved in the discussion.



As of January, there were 13,679 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the UNHCR in Indonesia, many of whom have been stuck in transit for years. An asylum seeker is someone who says he or she is a refugee, but whose claim has not yet been definitively evaluated.



Australia resettled around 808 refugees from Indonesia in 2013, but that figure was halved by 2015.



Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and refugees cannot legally work here while waiting for resettlement in a third country.



Arrmanatha said that representatives from 44 countries had confirmed attendance at the Bali Process, including 13 ministers, eight deputy ministers and senior officials.



Representatives from five countries have requested or have indicated that they want to hold bilateral sessions with Retno in the sidelines of the event, he added, namely New Zealand, the Netherlands, Fiji, Japan and Afghanistan. Retno is also expected to meet with representatives from the IOM and UNHCR.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Seoul, South Korea  Fri, March 18, 2016

North Korea on Friday fired a ballistic missile into the sea, days after their leader Kim Jong Un ordered tests likely aimed at developing technology it needs to acquire in order to build a reliable missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile flew 800 kilometers (500 miles) before crashing off the North's east coast on Friday.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it wasn't immediately known what type of missile was fired. South Korean media said it was believed to be a medium-range Rodong missile.

On Tuesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. North Korea also said it simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at return a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target.

This led South Korean analysts to suspect that the North would likely fire a missile soon to test the re-entry technology.

Some analysts had also predicted the North might install on a dummy device on a missile or even empty warheads, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if those warhead's parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures upon re-entry into the atmosphere and if they were able to detonate at right time.

Outside experts said it is the last major technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

South Korean defense officials said North Korea hadn't yet to acquire the re-entry technology so that it doesn't yet have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.

Friday's launch came amid a heightened international standoff over the North's weapons programs in the wake of its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch. The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls US military threats.
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Linkedin Masayuki Kitano (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Fri, March 18, 2016

Singapore's exports unexpectedly rose in February from a year ago, helped by a surge in shipments from the statistically volatile pharmaceuticals sector, but the broader trade outlook remains clouded by poor demand from Asian countries.



Non-oil domestic exports (NODX) rose 2.1 percent in February from a year earlier, trade agency International Enterprise Singapore said in a statement on Thursday.



The median forecast in a Reuters survey was a contraction of 2.6 percent. In January, exports fell by a revised 10.1 percent from a year earlier.



Jeff Ng, an economist for Standard Chartered Bank, said despite the surprise increase, the numbers are not particularly impressive given the low export base a year earlier.



'The result looks weak, given that the 3-month moving average continued to fall 5.6 percent year-on-year,' he said, adding that base effects will be higher in March and pose headwinds to the year-on-year reading.



Another concern is the sluggishness in exports to emerging Asian countries, Ng said.



'Given our own house view that growth in the US and Europe may actually start to slow a bit, it does provide some challenges ahead,' he said.



Like much of Asia, trade-reliant Singapore's export sector has been hit hard by a collapse in demand from major trading partners, particularly China. Data from the Singapore's main port operator showed container volume at the island's ports fell 9.7 per cent in the first two months of the year compared with the same period last year.



Exports to China, Singapore's top overseas market, fell 1.2 percent in February from a year earlier, after a 25.2 percent slide in January.



The slowdown in China, a major export market for commodities and consumer products, has dealt a severe blow to economies around the world, including Asian exporting giants such as Japan and South Korea.



An ongoing shift in Singapore's economy towards higher value-added services and away from the manufacturing sector bodes ill for the outlook for non-oil domestic exports, said Vaninder Singh, an economist for RBS.



'As the transformation continues to unfold, the NODX number will continue to remain under pressure,' he said.



Domestic exports of electronics rose 0.7 percent, while shipments of pharmaceuticals, which are produced in batches in quantities that can vary sharply from month to month, jumped 40.0 percent in February from a year earlier.



Singapore's electronics sector has been underperforming neighbours such as South Korea and Taiwan, due to the city-state's lack of popular high-tech products such as smartphones.
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Linkedin Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

The House of Representatives (DPR) finally passed into law on Thursday the long-awaited financial crisis bill, despite several experts criticizing the fact that it strictly shuts the door for any bailout scheme during a crisis.



The new law ' officially, the Financial System Crisis Prevention and Mitigation (PPKSK) Law ' is designed to give policymakers legal basis for their actions in times of financial crisis.



The law is crucial, especially as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other organizations have predicted continued uncertainty in the global economy.



In its latest report, the IMF called the financial crisis bill a top priority for strengthening the institutional framework supporting financial sector stability.



Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro is satisfied that after eight years the country finally has a financial crisis law.



'This is the optimal result for the government and lawmakers, taking into consideration all aspects, technical and political,' Bambang said, referring to the key areas of debate during the bill's deliberation.



But the law leaves little room for the president to take action during any future financial crises.



The government proposed financial intervention in the event of a crisis, but the House opposed this idea, saying the use of state funds resembled the Bank Century bailout in 2009 that turned out to be scandalous.



In the past, it was only a government regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) that contained measures on crisis prevention and management.



The Perppu was issued in October 2008, at a time when the global economy was suffering from a financial crisis and it became the foundation for the controversial Bank Century bailout. The Perppu was revoked last year, paving the way for fresh deliberations of the crisis bill.



According to the new law, only the president has the authority to declare that the country is in financial crisis. The president can issue the Perppu to handle the crisis of his or her own accord if he or she deems the recommended actions from the Financial System Stability Committee (KSSK) are insufficient.



The issuance of the Perppu will have to be coordinated with the House of Representatives, even though the president is required to take a decision within 24 hours. The Perppu may also be called into question as it has less legal authority than a law.



The financial crisis law contains measures and procedures that must be followed by the KSSK, which consists of the Finance Ministry, Bank Indonesia (BI), the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and the Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS).



Unlike the Perppu that allowed the use of state funds to save a failing bank, the new law shuts all doors to such a measure and instead puts the highest emphasis on a bail-in scheme.



The scheme demands that owners of a domestic systematically important bank (DSIB) ' or a 'too-big-to-fail bank' ' be responsible for its finances, prepare a detailed action plan and inject capital whenever necessary.



Bambang even said the government would pursue banks' owners 'till the last drop of blood', demanding they take responsibility should their bank run into trouble.



If the scheme fails, the LPS will be the institution tasked with stepping in, relying on its own limited financial resources to cover customers' deposits and finance the lender takeover.



Consequently, this scheme also puts much greater pressure on the OJK to do its best to supervise banks.



OJK commissioner for banking supervision Nelson Tampubolon said his office would soon issue additional regulations to follow up on the new law and also come up with a list of important banks before June.



'We have issued a regulation that describes the criteria for identifying a [DSIB],' he said.



The criteria involve size, inter-connectedness with the financial system and business complexity.



The country's four biggest banks, with core capital exceeding Rp 30 trillion (US$2.28 billion) each, will certainly make the list. They are state lenders Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) and private lender Bank Central Asia (BCA).



Foreign branches, whose parent companies have been declared global systematically important banks, will be included on the list as well.



Meanwhile, several experts have aired criticism of the crisis law, arguing that the lack of government assistance in times of crisis may be detrimental and may trigger negative sentiment toward the banking industry.



BCA chief economist David Sumual said the bail-in scheme would still involve state funds because state banks and regional development banks controlled sizeable amounts of depositors' funds.



'These banks will need capital injection from their owners when facing solvency issues. Given the fact that they are largely controlled by the government, the capital injection will come from the state's coffers.'



Highlights of the Financial Crisis Law



* Article 6: The KSSK is authorized to make recommendations to the President regarding changing [the country's] financial status from normal to crisis or from crisis to normal.



* Article 11: The KSSK's decision-making mechanism is deliberation with consensus. If no consensus is achieved, a decision can be made through a vote [the LPS does not have voting rights].



* Article 15: The KSSK will report on financial system stability every three months.



* Article 17: The OJK will coordinate with BI to update the list of DSIBs once every six months.



* Article 18: Each DSIB is obliged to meet requirements regarding capital and liquidity and submit an action plan to the OJK.



* Article 22: The LPS will mitigate solvency issues at a DSIB by partially or wholly transferring its assets and liabilities to a recipient bank or to a bridge bank or by taking over the DSIB in accordance with the LPS Law.



* Article 28: The difference between proceeds from the sale of a bridge bank and costs borne by the LPS is not considered a state loss.



* Article 32: The President must make a decision within 24 hours after receiving a recommendation from the KSSK to change the financial status to crisis.



* Article 34: When deciding if the country is in a crisis, the President can partially or wholly accept recommendations from the KSSK.

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Linkedin Rendi A. Witular and Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Former terrorist convict Sofyan Tsauri may not have come to terms with his past under the twisted influence and teachings of his former mentor Aman Abdurrahman, Indonesia's master recruiter for the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.



Aman, the convicted terrorist whom the police alleged to have masterminded the Jan. 14 terrorist attack in Central Jakarta, cast a profound spell over Sofyan after the later was expelled from the police's Mobile Brigade in 2006 due to polygamy and other acts of disobedience.



Sofyan recalled that he had joined Aman's congregation in 2007 and had been included among the cleric's small circle of trusted disciples.



'But, when he repeatedly declared the killings of fellow Muslims permissible under the takfiri doctrine, I became disillusioned with his teachings,' Sofyan told The Jakarta Post recently.



Takfiri is an offshoot of fundamentalist Salafism that accuses other Muslims of apostasy, and thus liable to be killed. It is the prime doctrine of IS, which is occupying territory in Syria and Iraq in its quest to revive the Islamic caliphates that ruled the Middle East and beyond over the course of Islam's 1,400-year history.



'Aman has zero tolerance for Muslims who are not part of his congregation. He told us to kill them all. This is just not right. He has this twisted mind and obsession to see others killed in order to clear his path to setting up a caliphate,' Sofyan said.



Sofyan and Aman collaborated with Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the elder statesman of the regional terrorism network, to form a joint terrorism training camp in Aceh in 2010 that united the different factions of terrorism groups. Due to the Aceh camp incident, Sofyan, Aman and Ba'asyir received 10, nine and 15 years in prison, respectively, in 2011.



Sofyan was released early in late 2015 due to good behavior, while Aman and Ba'asyir continue to serve out their detention on Nusakambangan, an island off the shores of Cilacap, Central Java.



Although detained, Aman seems to have the freedom to meet his followers, who usually come in droves.



A recent conversation recorded between Aman and unidentified visitors to his prison cell revealed not only his stern belief in the takfiri doctrine, but also his attempt to prophesize an imminent apocalypse.



The voice in the discussion, recorded after the Jan. 14 terrorist attack and obtained last month by the Post, was recently confirmed by the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister as belonging to Aman.



In the recorded conversation, Aman said that Judgment Day was near ' a practice considered as shirk, an act that carries harsh punishment in Islam.



'Do not think that the end of the world is far away. Rasulullah [Prophet Muhammad] reportedly prophesied that the length of our existence is 1,500 years, and we have already spent 1,437 years of that time.'



'So the end [of the world] is imminent,' said Aman.



Like other IS supporters, Aman argued that the emergence of IS was merely a prelude to the ensuing Armageddon that leads to the Muslim Day of Judgment and the end of the world.



Aman said that the upcoming to-be chaos in the Arabian Peninsula would give the rise to the prime savior, Imam al-Mahdi, whose fight to uphold Islamic law would be supported by a sprawling 'army from the east, marching and hoisting the black flag', a force he referred to as IS.



The Prophet, said Aman, reportedly predicted that the Day of Judgment would come after the IS defeat 'Rome' (US and its Western allies) at Dabiq, a town near the Syrian border with Turkey.



The IS movement has attached great importance to Dabiq and has named its propaganda magazine after the town.



'After the defeat of the Western forces in Dabiq, God will initiate the countdown to the end of the world,' said Aman.



It was prophesied that after the fight, Imam would restore the Islamic Caliphate to the Arabian Peninsula before Isa (or Jesus as he is known in Christianity) descended from the sky to kill Dajjal, the false messiah, and lead the Muslims to victory and to the end of the world, explained Aman.



In response to Aman's stated beliefs, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) immediately labeled him as shirk, emphasizing that Islam disallowed anyone from predicting the timing of the end of the world.



'There is indeed a prophecy in Islam regarding the arrival of Dajjal as a signal to begin the countdown to Judgment Day. But it is a sin to predict the exact timing of the event,' MUI chairman Makruf Amin said.



'Anyone who comes up with such predictions usually wants to recruit followers for the promulgation of a misleading cult,' he said.



While appealing for all Muslims to join IS in Syria for the fulfillment of the prophecy, Aman also ordered those of his followers who were unable to join the fight to relentlessly uphold Islamic Law and 'flick the ear' of those who prevent the cause.



'Communism and democracy were upheld through bloodbath. Blood was also spilled during the forming of the New Order [the Soeharto era] and the reform movement [of 1998]. No political system has arisen without sacrifice,' said Aman.



'Why then should anyone be prevented from propagating Islam through the spilling of blood?'



Aman also said in the recording that he felt highly honored to have been labeled as a terrorist by infidels. 'But in front of my fellow Muslims, I tell them that I am a mujahidin.'



While the police have yet to uncover any evidence to suggest that he orchestrated the Jan. 14 attack, Aman has refused to comment on the allegations, despite the fact that one attacker, Sunakim, went to visit him on Sept. 15 last year.



The attack took place in a Central Jakarta district packed with shopping centers, embassies, the UN headquarters and government offices, and killed four civilians and four perpetrators, including former terrorist convict Sunakim.



The Post's attempt to contact Aman to seek his comments regarding the recording and the allegation was unsuccessful. He has assigned no lawyers to represent him and refuses to acknowledge the Indonesian judicial system. His followers are a close-knit group that holds a grudge against mass media outlets.



Sofyan said that Aman's followers have gradually declined, not because of his imprisonment but due to his teachings that hinge mostly on dubious hadiths (words, actions or habits of the Prophet Muhammad) and have misled many Muslims.



'Aman and IS are merely an apocalyptic, genocidal form of devious cult. It is not the true face of Islam,' he said.
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Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Poso  Fri, March 18, 2016

The police put four more Chinese Uighurs on their latest most-wanted list on Thursday after determining that the Uighurs had joined the Eastern Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terror group led by Santoso, alias Abu Wardah, in Poso regency, Central Sulawesi.



Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi said the four militants were part of a group of six ethnic Uighurs to have infiltrated the country.



Five of the six Chinese citizens have been identified as Joko, Ibrohim, Mus'ab alias Nuretin, Faruq Magalasi alias Faruq and Abdul. The last Uighur has not been identified.



Two of the six militants, Nuretin and Magalasi, were killed during a shootout in Poso on Tuesday.



'I have reported it to the National Police headquarters. We are waiting for a decision from the National Police as to whether the bodies will be sent back to China or buried here in Palu,' he said.



Rudy said that the Uighurs had left Xianjiang province in China and crossed into Bangkok, then to Malaysia, before heading to Pekanbaru, Riau.



They then proceeded to Puncak in Bogor, West Java, where couriers picked them up to head to Makassar, South Sulawesi.



'From Makassar overland they entered Poso and joined Santoso's group,' Rudy said.



Separately, Palu Immigration Office head Tantawi said that his office no longer examined the documents of foreign citizens entering Central Sulawesi through Mutiara SIS Aljufri Airport in Palu, because the examination was conducted at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.



'We just conduct monitoring here. It would be difficult to detect them if they entered overland and directly joined the terrorist group in the jungle,' Tantawi said.



Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he had taken note of the shootout and was trying to find out more.



'China and Indonesia are both the victims of terrorism and are both facing new threats from international and regional terrorism,' he said on Thursday.



'In recent years, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) has continued to infiltrate Indonesia and members of the group have linked up with Indonesian terrorists to open up a shipment route for people to participate in international terrorist activities,' Lu was quoted by Reuters as saying.



'This not only threatens China's national security, but it is also a real danger to Indonesia's and the region's social stability.'



China says the ETIM is a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. The group wants to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.



Lu said China and Indonesia supported each other on counter-terrorism, and China was willing to increase cooperation in this area.



Four Uighur men were imprisoned last year in Indonesia for attempting to join the Sulawesi-based militant group.



Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uighurs are eager to escape unrest in their homeland of Xinjiang province in western China. China says the Uighurs often travel clandestinely to Turkey, and then cross over into Syria and Iraq to fight as Islamic State militants.



Hundreds of people have been killed over the past few years in resource-rich Xinjiang, on the borders of Central Asia, in violence between Uighurs and the ethnic majority Han Chinese.



Beijing has blamed much of the violence on militants led by ETIM.



Rights groups and exiles argue that it is not a yearning for a separate state, but rather anger at Chinese control on the religion and culture of the Uighurs that is at the root of the unrest in Xinjiang.

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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

Continuous political infighting between a senior Cabinet minister and the energy minister has left the future of Japan-led Masela gas block in limbo as its financiers decided to delay their investment until the end of 2020 and downsize personnel in their Indonesian units.



Japanese oil and gas company Inpex, the operator of the project, had submitted a revision of the block's plan of development (POD) in September last year.



Along with its partner Anglo-Dutch firm Shell, Inpex initially expected to realize their investment by the end of 2018 contingent upon the revision's approval.



But Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli and Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said have been in war of words over the Inpex's proposed revision.



While Sudirman is in favor of Inpex's plan to make an offshore platform for Masela's development, Rizal repeatedly says an onshore facility will ensure wider benefits for local people.



The oil and gas regulator said late Wednesday that even if the government ultimately makes a decision on the issue, the investment ' known as the final investment decision (FID) ' can only be scheduled for the end of 2020 due to political factors.



'We have to think like the international investors who include country risks in their calculations. [Realizing the investment] at the end of 2018 will still be acceptable. But, in 2019 there will be elections, which is a difficult time to make any large investment decisions,' said Amien Sunaryadi, head of the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas).



The delay of the US$14 billion project means that it will not be operational until 2026, just two years before the contract expires.



The Masela block, which is located in the Arafura Sea, is currently operated by Inpex and Shell, where each company holds a 65 percent and 35 percent stake respectively. The Masela's original plan of development was submitted in 2010, but the discovery of larger resources led contractors to revise the plan and adjust the floating LNG plant's capacity to 7.5 million tons per year from 2.5 million tons.



However, the plans were put on hold after Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli claimed that an onshore scheme could save $6 billion and be more beneficial to locals on Aru Island.



The decision on whether to commence with an offshore or onshore scheme now lays in the hands of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo.



In addition, Amien said Inpex had planned to downsize its personnel of around 400 in Indonesia by 40 percent, while nine Shell engineers attached to the Masela project had been asked to seek other work within the company.



Meanwhile, Inpex reaffirmed its commitment to the project but emphasized that it hoped for a swift decision.



'As soon as a decision is made, we will immediately follow up the project by completing the FEED [front end engineering design], as we had proposed,' Usman Slamet, Inpex's senior manager of communication and relations, said in a statement.



He added that Inpex would also accommodate a number of their human resources to work at the company.



Shell's general manager of external relations, Haviez Gautama, also echoed Inpex's commitment and said it would continue 'working with Inpex to review re-sourcing requirements pending approval of the revised POD, to ensure that preliminary work on the project continues and we can then move as quickly as possible once the approval is granted.'



Delays in the approval may hurt Indonesia's oil and gas sector, which has been facing declining production due to lack of new explorations. This may lead to a wider supply and demand gap for natural gas in the country and increase reliance on imports.



Furthermore, Bloomberg has reported that there is also a weak global outlook for gas as the Japanese LNG market is predicted to be oversupplied by 20 percent by 2020.



However, Pri Agung Rakhmanto, an energy expert from the ReforMiner Institute, said investors should understand the political influence over business decisions and include it as a country risk factor for Indonesia.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk at a meeting with European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides has thanked the EU for humanitarian aid provided since the start of the conflict in Donbas, including a new package of such assistance in the amount of EUR20 million.

"We feel that the European Commission supports the Ukrainian people, helps us solve security issues and humanitarian challenges. Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. (Russia invaded) Crimea and (occupied buildings) in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, areas of which (are today) under temporary occupation," Yatseniuk said at the meeting in Kyiv. He added that Ukraine now has more than one million displaced persons.

The commissioner assured the premier of the EU's solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The EU's agenda takes into account serious risks associated with the situation in Syria and the problem of refugees, but assistance to Ukraine remains a priority, he said.

"Given the new financing of EUR20 million, the total amount of humanitarian aid provided by the European Commission in support of the victims in the east of Ukraine exceeds EUR63 million. In addition to direct financing provided by the EU member states, since the beginning of 2014 the European Union has sent over EUR 146 million to help those affected in the conflict," the report says.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, March 18, 2016

After 34 years as one of the country's leading business schools, Prasetiya Mulya Business School officially transformed itself into Prasetiya Mulya University on Thursday in a bid to prepare students for real-world future challenges.



The transformation into a university was inaugurated at a ceremony held at the Indonesian Convention Exhibition (ICE) in Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) City, Tangerang, and was attended by Research and Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir.



'With the change into a university, Prasetiya Mulya will better prepare people to implement their technical skills in the business world,' Djisman Simanjuntak, a rector of Prasetiya Mulya University, said in his speech.



The university offers interdisciplinary programs such as international business law, business economics, business mathematics, software engineering, computer engineering, food technology, product design engineering and energy engineering.



The programs will begin in August 2017. At present, the university offers one master's program, namely the Master of Management, in addition to two bachelor programs in Accounting and Management. Furthermore, it also provides non-degree programs for employees to develop their management and organizational skills.



The first campus is located in Cilandak, South Jakarta. This campus is used for master's and non-degree programs. The second campus, which occupies 8 hectares of land near the ICE exhibition center in BSD, is used for undergraduate students.



With these new additional fields of study, Djoko Wintoro, the vice-rector of Prasetiya Mulya University, predicts that the number of students will grow from 3,000 today to 15,000 over the next few years.



Nasir hopes the new programs offered by the university will open up opportunities for young Indonesians and prepare the country to compete with other countries.



He said that the government had encouraged science-based research in seven sectors, one of them in food technology, to help increase of the country's business competitiveness.



'We want Indonesia to use its rich diversity to boost the country's global market competitiveness so that it doesn't need to import from other countries,' he said.



'For instance, we have applied genetic engineering to increase the weight of cows from 200-250 kilograms to 500-550 kilograms,' he said.



Nasir also stated that Indonesia needed to upgrade the skills of its people in information technology in order to reduce the country's dependence on foreign products.



'At present, Indonesia still needs to import microchips, which cost around Rp 10,000 [76 US cents] to 15,000 each. Now, there are around 50 million people who need to make e-ktp [electronic identity cards],'' he said. Nasir pointed out that if the cost of one microchip was Rp 15,000 Indonesia needed about Rp 30 trillion to buy chips in four years. 'This is a tremendous business opportunity,' he said.



In the energy sector, Indonesia needs to use renewable energy sources such as geothermal energy and wind and solar cells instead of fossil fuels.



Currently, the country still depends on conventional technologies. Nasir expressed the hope that Prasetiya Mulya would take a role in developing Indonesia's future by teaching the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. (win)

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More than 40,000 people died on the country's roads last year, while the actual count is estimated to be as high as 80,000 if you consider underreporting and the number of people who succumbed to injuries days after an accident. The country has recorded among the highest number of deaths in road accidents in the world, despite fewer cars on the streets than in the US, which is considered the poster child of road accidents.



The US has enforced laws on drunk driving but erratic driving, a total disregard of traffic regulations and street safety, making phone calls and sending text messages while driving, are serious problems in Indonesia.



So what should we do? Ban certain types of headwear so helmets fit better? Ban cell phones? Ban careless drivers? Ban motorcycles and cars? Go back to horseback riding?



People who do not make passengers in their cars wear seatbelts, are not courteous to other drivers and do not wear helmets when riding a motorbike should be banned from the roads as they are not only putting their lives at risk but others as well. Blaming others for accidents, swearing and pointing a finger at someone else when a road accident occurs is normal behavior in Indonesia.



Pazuzu

Jakarta



In 2013, 10,076 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31 percent) of all traffic-related deaths in the US. Of the 1,149 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2013, 200 (17 percent) involved an alcohol-impaired driver. Of the 200 child passengers aged 14 and younger who died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2013, over half (121) were riding in a vehicle with an alcohol-impaired driver.



In 2012, over 1.3 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. That is 1 percent of the 121 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among US adults each year.



Drugs other than alcohol are involved in about 18 percent of motor vehicle driver deaths. These other drugs are often used in combination with alcohol. The drunkards and alcoholics must also be boycotted economically. People should not transact any business with them and they must also be socially boycotted.



Proposals for their marriage must be rejected and none should keep company with them. An ideological war must be carried out against them. They must also be a spiritually cured. Along with heavy penal punishment, they must be informed of the ill effects of liquor and other intoxicants.



It is no secret that alcohol consumption can cause major health problems, including liver damage and injuries sustained in automobile accidents. But if you think liver disease and car crashes are the only health risks posed by drinking, think again.



Researchers have linked alcohol consumption to more than 60 diseases. Indonesia must prohibit all types of alcohol. The New York Times once reported that in the US, arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922.



Following the repeal of prohibition, alcohol consumption increased. Today, alcohol is estimated to be the cause of more than 23,000 motor vehicle deaths and is implicated in more than half of the 20,000 homicides in the US.



Azizur Rachman

Jakarta
The Lower East Side got some good news this morning when the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC) voted to allocate another $12 million for a new park at Pier 42.

In 2012, the agency created to administer 9/11 recovery funds set aside $16 million for a large recreational area on the dilapidated pier. Today it added $7 million from a settlement fund tied to the fatal 2007 fire at the Deutsche Bank building. The LMDC also shifted $5 million to Pier 42 from unspent funds originally allocated to other projects, including the pavilion in Columbus Park. All told, theres now about $28 million for the first phase of the park, located just to the north of Montgomery Street.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and State Sen. Daniel Squadron, who have long advocated for Pier 42 funding, released a joint statement this afternoon:

This gives all of New York 12 million more reasons to celebrate. Weve worked together since 2010 to make a park at Pier 42 a reality. In 2012 we secured $16 million. And we have seen successful interim use the last three summers. This funding is a big step in our long push for a Harbor Park  a Central Park for the center of our city, and an emerald ribbon around Manhattan, which will be so important for the local community and the whole borough.

The grand plan for Pier 42 is expected to cost nearly $100 million. The current funding will pay for an interim park. According to LMDC documents, almost $6 million will be devoted to the demolition of a large shed thats obstructing views of the East River. Initial plans called for planting grass and trees and building a 7-foot-high knoll. Additional funding will pay for a comfort station (bathrooms) and a playground. Construction was supposed to begin this spring, but design delays forced the city to push it back to January of 2017.

The lawsuit settlement created a $50 million fund for new projects. Other Lower East Side initiatives receiving allocations today include:

East River Esplanade  $10 million for construction of a new sidewalk, paving and curbs for a section of the esplanade from the Brooklyn Bridge to Catherine Slip.

Brooklyn Bridge Beach  $5 million for sidewalk paving and curb construction along the waterfront from Peck Slip to the Brooklyn Bridge. An LMDC handout stated, the project will include the installation of new railings and site furnishings while creating limited beach access near the Brooklyn Bridge. The city has already committed $7 million for the project.

University Settlement  $1,126,850 for facility improvements at the Houston Street Center and the agencys headquarters at 184 Eldridge St.

While allocations were made today, the LMDC board will weigh in once again as plans for various projects progress and contracts are drawn up. David Emil, the organizations president, reiterated in remarks before the board that the LMDC will be winding down during the next couple of years as the last funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are spent.
The Witches, Stacy Schiffs novelistic examination of Salem in 1692, reveals how religious literalism and paranoia was baked into the New England soil. The first capital crime of the colonists legal code was idolatry. The second, Schiff notes, was witchcraft: If any man or woman be a witch, that is, has or consults with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.

Less than a year after Schiffs book comes The Witch, the directorial debut of Robert Eggers. Labeled a New England Folktale and set in 1630, The Witch feels like an apocryphal precursor to the mania in Salem. The film begins with a town council banishing a Puritan family, likely based on the unidentified sins of William, the father. While the family soon appears happy enough on their own small, secluded farm, they are manacled by faith. The family does not simply believe in God; they fear the divine. Prayers are laments. God, impatient and unkind, is watching.

William, it seems, has recreated God in his own image, imbued him with fire and vengeance, and not a small amount of interest in their farm and clan. We never learn much about the community from which the family has been cleaved, but we can assume that a literalist becomes even more literal when he reads sacred text alone. That said, William is more eager than evil. He casts judgments rather than aspersions. He truly loves his wife, Katherine, along with his children.

His young son, Caleb, is industrious, a good hunting companion. Twins named Mercy and Jonas are mischievous, and claim to communicate with one of the familys goats, named Black Phillip. Mischief is a precursor to misery. Early in the film, Thomasin, the familys teenage daughter, is playing peekaboo with the familys newborn, Samuel. She closes her eyes, and the boy vanishes in a moment. A dark figure shadows through the forest with the baby, leading to a shocking scene of midnight ritual. Although it might be a product of its 17th-century setting, The Witch feels like a film that we should not see; events that belong on parchment, that are too legendary for moving images.

Anthony Lane sees the farms setting on the verge of a forest as the classic habitation of a fairy tale. He compares the film to the stories of the Brothers Grimm or the Venice-set Dont Look Now. Both comparisons are merited, but there is a distinctly American tinge to The Witch, and it is not merely the fact that tales of baby-snatching witches were also a continental staple. Schiff writes that As the magician molted into the witch, she also became predominately female, inherently more wicked and more susceptible to satanic overtures. European witches flew; their displays of power were more vulgar. In contrast, Continental witches had more fun. They walked on their hands. They made pregnancies last for three years. They rode hyenas to bacchanals deep in the forest. They stole babies and penises. The Massachusetts witch disordered the barn and the kitchen. The devil works in mysterious ways.

The devil in The Witch has his eyes on young Thomasin. In one scene after the newborns disappearance, Mercy and Jonas heckle their older sister near a river. Thomasin takes their bait and pantomimes as an actual witch, documenting the hellish actions she would take with children. The performance is too perfect: the twins know it, and the viewer knows it. Yet Eggers has more of a story to tell. The Witch is purely a New England tale, a descendent of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, Nathaniel Hawthorne returned to his hometown of Salem. There he wrote Young Goodman Brown among other stories. A tale of a man discovering the fiend in his own breast, Young Goodman Brown reads as the product of Hawthornes own cloistered life.

In an 1837 letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hawthorne wrote By some witchcraft or other, for I really cannot assign any reasonable cause, I have been carried apart from the main current of life, and find it impossible to get back again. Malcolm Cowley thought Hawthornes self-imprisonment in Salem was an essential time in his artistic life; those years were his term of apprenticeship and his early travels, corresponding to the years that other American writers of his time spent traveling in Europe or making an overland expedition to Oregon or sailing round Cape Horn on a whalerLeft alone, he traveled into himself and worked or idled under his own supervision. It was the Salem years that deepened and individualized his talent.

Young Goodman Brown demonstrates that talent. It is one of those tales anthologized into simplicity, a staple of American Literature high school reading lists. Yet the story remains clever and rather chilling. Brown sets off on a journey that must needs be done twixt now and sunrise. His wife of three months, Faith, is worried. She has good reason to be; Brown is heading for the wilderness. The story never hides his present evil purpose, and that forms the first connection with The Witch. New England horror is less about surprise and more about the slow burn of suffering. In Hollywood, horror sneaks into your home, leaps from behind doors; in New England, horror festers in your soul.

Brown meets the devil in the forest. The path he has taken was lined with the gloomiest trees, which closed immediately behind his entry. The devil knows his grandfather and father; in fact, I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman. Of course, this is typical Salem fare: the devil is in each of us. Yet Hawthorne, like Leo Tolstoy, remains long enough in the moments of his stories to force us to look deeper. Brown continues alone into the forest, which becomes transformed. Trees creak, wild beats howl, and even the wind tolled like a distant church bell. It seemed as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.

That shift  The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man  weds Hawthorne to The Witch. If Thomasin is the potential vessel for evil, then her father opens the door for the devil. Williams lie about the disappearance of his wifes silver wine cup becomes an act of betrayal. Whereas at the start of the film he might resemble, in stature and temperament, the father from Ingmar Bergmans The Virgin Spring, he might best be considered Goodman Brown. The burning light of God has blinded him to the evil in front of his face.

As Hawthornes tale enters its final quarter, Brown becomes maniacal as the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. He discovers what resembles a witches Sabbath in the forest, lead by the devil. Brown and his wife are about to be the newest converts, ready to be baptized in sin. Yet in a move so common in such tales, Brown finds himself amid calm night and solitude in the tranquil forest, with no sign of the fiery ritual remaining.

Hawthornes extended description of the dark Sabbath shows that its reality was present in Browns soul  the only place that matters. In The Witch, characters carry the forest to their farm, their beds, their hearts, and then return to that darkness for more. Unlike Brown, what they experience is fully real, quite bloody, and surprisingly disturbing. The Witch is worth watching for a new approach to old horror: the feeling that we have heard this story before, and that is exactly why it scares us so much.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has reported a decrease in the number of currency purchase and/or transfer transaction schemes..

The NBU said that the regulator in February rejected only 706 currency purchase transactions, compared to 2,800 rejections in November and 6,700 in December 2015.

The central bank on December 18, 2015 and January 29, 2016 sent letters to Ukrainian banks. The regulator said that banks are currency control agents and must monitor compliance with legislation on currency transfers.

"Banks by December formally had accumulated a list of currency control documents. They could report on suspect transactions to the financial monitoring services. But they included these transactions into the register and submitted it to the NBU. The regulator had to stop doubtful transactions, instead of banks. The letter campaign helped create legal grounds for changing the approach in general. We see good progress. Banks have started revealing and halting doubtful activities themselves," the press service of the regulator said, citing Director of the NBU's financial monitoring department Ihor Bereza.
The list of people against whom individual sanctions have been proposed for their role in the Nadia Savchenko case (the so-called "Savchenko list") contains over 40 names, a source in diplomatic circles told Interfax.

"According to our information, the number of people on the Savchenko list is much bigger than was said," the source said commenting on the media reports about the list including 44 Russians and two Ukrainians.

On March 17, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko handed over to European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Parliament President Martin Schultz, Ukraine's proposed sanctions against the individuals who "fabricated" the case against Savchenko.

On March 15, Poroshenko said that Ukraine is drafting sanctions against individuals involved in Savchenko's illegal arrest and trial, is cooperating with the EU and the United States, and that the matter is fully backed by Ukraine's international allies.

Savchenko has been held in custody in Russia, since July 2014, on the charge of killing Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. She pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed that she was moved to Russia forcibly.

The criminal case against Savchenko was heard by the Donetsk city court in Russia's Rostov region. At the court hearing on December 17, 2015, Savchenko announced a hunger strike until the end of the trial, and on March 4 she announced a "dry" hunger strike, refusing to drink water, but called it off on March 10, before the sentencing due on March 21-22.
Campus free speech was again put under the spotlight this week after a debate was suspended at the University of Southampton.

It was revealed that the University are being taken to court by two professors for imposing a conditional payment of 24,000 to cover security and policing for a conference debating the legitimacy of Israel.

For the second year running, the university has suspended the conference, entitled International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility, and Exceptionalism , amidst concerns that the safety of staff, students and visitors could not be guaranteed.

But Paul Heron, the solicitor at Public Interest Lawyers representing the professors, said that, we are of the view that Southampton University were put under unreasonable and unjustified pressure from parties outside the university and that when properly scrutinised there was simply no credible reason to cancel the conference.

In summary, a controversial debate has been cancelled because some groups disagree with its premise and because of a threat that does not exist. This highlights a wider problem in university culture, an epidemic which, paradoxically, stifles free speech by championing free speech.

It is a phenomenon which most of you, consciously or otherwise, are likely to have encountered at some point in your university life: safe-space fever.

Now, let me make it absolutely clear that I hold no contempt for safe-spaces used in the appropriate context.

They are a fabulous mechanism for protecting those who require or wish for a trigger-free environment: people who experience problems with mental health, victims of rape or sexual assault, and anyone who is neglected or vulnerable.

Above all others, individuals that fall into any of the above categories deserve a safe haven free from malicious remarks or occurrences, and it would be impertinent and wrong to suggest otherwise.

With that in mind, what I find utterly reprehensible is the use of safe-space conventions as an excuse to suppress another individuals opinions simply because they are deemed to be controversial.

The prevailing attitude in universities is that everyone wants the freedom to express themselves as well as the freedom to not be offended, and there lies the quandary: one must supersede the other.

"You can say whatever you want. Except that, that offends me."

I'll be the first to admit that getting offended can be an unpleasant ordeal. But to cultivate the idea that we should never be offended by anything, to keep young adults in a little bubble where everything is lovely and nobody fights, is cataclysmically moronic because it leaves them in such an undeveloped frame of mind.

We learn by making mistakes, by encountering obstacles, by being offended and reacting to the offensive material.

More broadly, some of the finest articles of human knowledge began as offensive debates. Darwin's theory of evolution, for example, was considered so damaging, so provocative, so controversial that it was denounced and banned for decades.

Now we take it as a scientific staple. What would epistemology look like if someone had said, "OMG Charles that's so offensive," and censored him?

Regardless of whether one agrees with the premise of a debate or not, regardless of whether it is mainstream or radical, we cannot claim to be a democratic society at the same time as silencing individuals who choose to dissent.

We cannot infringe on someone's right to speak before they have opened their mouths.
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Kyiv recorded over 40 strikes against its positions in Donbas in past 24 hours

Positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas have come under fire 42 times in the past 24 hours, Kyiv has said.

The press center of the headquarters of Kyiv's army operation in eastern Ukraine said in a report, published on its Facebook account on Friday morning, that yesterday, having reduced their combat activity near Avdiyivka and the Donetsk airport, militants' forces "increased the number of strikes against fortifications of anti-terrorist operation forces in the vicinity of other localities along the entire contact line from 5:00 p.m."

Ukrainian military positions near Luhanske came under intense 82mm mortar fire, with militants launching some 200 mines. The mortar strikes were interspersed with shelling involving infantry fighting vehicle weapons, anti-aircraft systems, grenade launchers of different systems and large-caliber submachine guns, according to the report.

The press center also said that 120mm and 82mm mortars were fired against Ukrainian checkpoints near Zaitseve. Submachine guns and mortars were subsequently used as well.

Strikes involving grenade launchers and submachine guns were conducted in the vicinity of Mayorsk.

In a separate development, 120mm mortars, infantry fighting vehicle weapons, grenade launchers and large-caliber submachine guns were used against Ukrainian military positions in the vicinity of Novotroitske, near the city of Mariupol, while mortars, grenade launchers and small arms were fired at Shyrokyne and Vodyane, the press center said.

Sporadic small arms attacks on Ukrainian positions were recorded near Maryinka.

The intensity of shelling has not declined since midnight. Ten strikes against Ukrainian military positions have been recorded.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stresses that Kyiv's international partners will continue pressure on Russia for de-occupation of Crimea.

"Ukraine and the international community will continue pressure on the aggressor. Talks on de-occupation of Crimea are under way in international formats, including the Geneva+ one. Russia will pay the costs an aggressor should pay," Poroshenko said in a statement on his official Facebook page on Friday morning.

In the past two years after its occupation, Crimea has widely seen arrests and acts of repression. "Crimean Tatars' rights are cynically violated. The occupiers' behavior in Crimea resembles more and more the Stalin era," he wrote.
The Finnish government has announced it will provide a EUR 500,000 grant in the form of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Ukrainian Ambassador to Finland Andriy Olefirov said.

"Today the Finnish government said it would allocate another humanitarian aid tranche to Ukraine worth EUR 500,000,"Olefirov wrote on his page on Twitter on Thursday.

As reported earlier, in 2014 Finnish government provided EUR 6.4 million assistance to Ukraine.
International DJ confirmed as Phuket motorbike crash victim

PHUKET: The international DJ Howard Kaii of the Netherlands has been confirmed as the man who died in the motorcycle accident near Chalong Circle, in the south of Phuket, last night (Mar 17).

accidentsdeathtransportpolice

By The Phuket News

Friday 18 March 2016, 04:57PM

International DJ Howard Kaii played alongside greats such as Judge jules, Pete Tong and Paul van Dyk. Photo: Haward Kaii / Facebook

Mr Kaii, 45, was travelling towards Rawai, where he lived, when his motorbike and the motorbike ridden by a Thai man collided, spilling Mr Kaii onto Chao Fa West Rd and into the path of an oncoming bus. (See story here.)

Lt Chollada Chokdeesrijan of the Chalong Police confirmed to The Phuket News that his mother identified the body at Vachira Hospital this morning.

A friend to Mr Kaii told The Phuket News this afternoon that the Dutch embassy is assisting his mother.

Mr Kaii was well known for his talents as a DJ in a career spanning nearly three decades, during which he played alongside Ministry of Sound greats including Judge Jules and Pete Tong from the UK and Paul Van Dyk from Germany.

Mr Kaii was to launch his Summer Tour 2016 on March 25 at Xana Beach Club With Attica at Phukets Bang Tao Beach, followed by performances from April 17 at Bliss Beach Club further north on Surin Beach.

By May he was to perform in his home town of Eindhoven in the Netherlands and again in Antwerp, Belgium. From there, his tour was to take him to St Tropez in France, then Marbella and Ibiza, Spain.

Howard was a high-spirited, gregarious and positive individual who loved Thailand, said friend Ana Jeffrey.

He had a very close bond with his mother and brought her to live with him in Thailand when he moved to Phuket with him in 2009.

Howard was well known in the south of the island as an ex-professional DJ having toured Europe and played at some of the largest clubs alongside some of the biggest names in House music. Howard was in high spirits the evening of the accident, returning home to Rawai from a meeting at Dream Beach club in Cherng Talay, where he secured some dates to play, she told The Phuket News.

Howard loved his music almost as much as he loved Thailand, she added.

Lt Chollada, who is investigating the accident, told The Phuket News, We are questioning the bus driver, Eakkachai Taweepermphoon, about the incident and we have CCTV footage from the bus that might be able to help us figure out what happened.

However, I still have to go to the hospital to check on the condition of the injured Thai man, who we still have yet to identify, she added.

Additional reporting by JP Mestanza
Phuket cops search home for kratom, find unregistered gun

PHUKET: Police today (Mar 18) arrested a 76-year-old Phuket man at his home in Rassada for illegal possession of a firearm. They had initially gone to the property looking for kratom.

crimepolicedrugs

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 18 March 2016, 04:49PM

Prachum Klankularb,76, admitted that the gun was his but had never had it registered in his name.

A team from the Narcotics Suppression Division of Phuket Provincial Police went to a property in Srisena Rd, Rassada at 11:30am this morning after receiving complaints from local residents stating that groups of people often would gather at the home.

Police said that after receiving the complaints, and before going to the property, they made investigations and discovered that in the past the home has been used as a krathom den so they went there this morning with a search warrant.

Upon arrival, police were greeted by home owner Prachum Klankularb who invited officers to search the premises.

Although no drugs were found during the search, police did find a Walther PPK loaded with seven bullets hidden under a mattress.

Police said that Mr Prachum admitted the gun was his and that he purchased it 30 years ago. However, he said that he had never had it registered in his name.

Prachum was taken to Phuket City Police Station where he was charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Police hunt Phuket company owner for alleged B10mn fraud

PHUKET: Police are currently looking for the owner/s of a company named Royal World Express Co Ltd after a number of minivan and limousine drivers filed complaints against the company with Thalang Police yesterday (Mar 17) accusing the company of fraud after it failed to pay them their monthly service fees.

transportcrimepolice

By Darawan Naknakhon

Friday 18 March 2016, 09:32AM

Representatives for the taxi drivers speak to Col Chanuchan Cholsuwat. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

The drivers say that the money owed to them is in the region of B10 million.

Around 50 Phuket limousine and van drivers, led by Thammarat Maneetrithip and Yenprasit Wanman, went to Thalang Police Station at 10:30am yesterday and filed a complaint with Col Boonlert Onklang asking him to investigate Srisoonthon based Royal World Express Co who controlled work for 115 vans and limousines.

Mr Thammarat said that the company failed to pay them their service fees for February which was due to be paid on Tuesday (Mar 15).

The owner closed the companys Line account on Wednesday (Mar 16) and also turned off his telephones. When we went to check the company office in Pa Khlok we found it was closed, as in no longer in business, and realised all 115 drivers had been cheated, said Mr Thammarat.

Mr Yenprasit added, We have been picking-up and dropping-off tourists for this company for six months and in the past we never encountered a problem with payment.

Our monthly payments were deposited direct into our bank accounts after the company deducted their queue fee, he said.

In the contract, the company agrees to pay our fee no later than the 15 of the next month. This time the company failed to follow the agreement and the owner is no where to be found. The company owes the drivers at least B10mn in total, he added.

Col Chanuchan Cholsuwat from Thalang police said, We have already got information about the company (Royal World Express Co Ltd) and the drivers contracts.

We need to question all drivers affected by this, not only the ones ere today he said.

Officers are looking for the owner of the company right now and will bring him in for questioning as soon as possible, he added.
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Ukrainian foreign ministry says attempt to ban Mejlis in Crimea reveals intent to oust Tatars

The intention of so-called "Crimean authorities" to ban the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar people in Crimea is more evidence of their intent to oust Crimean Tatars from the peninsula, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Maryana Betsa said.

"We regard the plans to ban Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People on the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea as a deliberate step by Moscow to oust Tatars from Crimea," Betsa said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

She said steps taken by occupational authorities recall the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944.

As reported earlier, prosecutors in Crimea have asked the regional supreme court to declare the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, a public organization not registered in Russia, 'extremist' and to ban its activity in Russia.

"I have signed a petition to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea, asking that it declare the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People an extremist public movement and ban its operation in the Russian Federation," Crimean prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya said.

The prosecutor invoked Article 9 of the Federal Law "On countering extremism."

She said she handed a copy of the lawsuit to Mejlis deputy chairman Nariman Dzhelalov.
One Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and another three have been injured in the area of Kyiv's army operation in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian presidential administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko has said.

"One of our soldiers has been killed and another three have been injured as a result of fighting in the past 24 hours," Lysenko told a press briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

The press center of the headquarters of Kyiv's army operation in eastern Ukraine said on its Facebook account earlier on Friday that Ukrainian military positions in Donbas had come under fire 42 times in the past 24 hours.

For its part, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic has accused the Ukrainian Armed Forces of conducting 272 strikes and violating the ceasefire on 51 occasions.
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Ukraine needs to take legislative decisions aimed at simplifying the delivery of humanitarian aid and resolving problems faced by internally displaced persons, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides has said.

According to the press service of the Verkhovna Rada, the official expressed the opinion at a meeting with Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Groysman on March 18.

Stylianides reported that he has recently visited the demarcation line eastern Ukraine. He said the humanitarian situation in the region remains worrisome. "It is necessary to focus on the long-term needs of people and provide people with an economic outlook," he said.

Groysman, in turn, agreed to the feasibility of establishing a framework legislation, which would allow the systematic solution of these issues, noting that the parliament has adopted several necessary bills on facilitating humanitarian aid delivery procedures.

The commissioner thanked the parliament for efforts made in this regard.
The visit by OSCE monitors to the areas around Avdiyivka and Yasynuvate in Donetsk region has helped to dramatically reduce the intensity of the shelling by the opposing side, Ukraine's Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko has said.

"Following yesterday's visit by the OSCE mission to the area near Avdiyivka and Yasynuvate, the intensity of warfare in this sector has decreased dramatically. However, large-scale shelling continues of the Ukrainian positions in Luhanske and Zaitseve. [...] More than 200 mortar shells were fired from 82mm and 120mm mortars on our positions in the two flashpoints in the past 24 hours. Our servicemen came under sniper fire twice near Donetsk airport," Lysenko said at a briefing conference in Kyiv on Friday.

He revealed that 27-time shelling on the part of the enemy was registered in the Donetsk sector over the past 24 hours, and that heavy weapons were used in every third instance.

The opposing side used mortars seven times during this period in the Mariupol sector, specifically, in Novotroitske, Vodiane, and Shyrokyne, he said. The enemy also used infantry fighting vehicles and snipers, Lysenko added.

"Due to the accelerating efforts of the enemy in this sector, the special operation forces repeatedly opened return fire," Lysenko said.

It was calm in the Luhansk sector over the past 24 hours.
Hours after the owner of the Los Angeles Times successfully bid $56 million (U.S.) to buy the bankrupt Orange County Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust suit Thursday to block the sale, saying it would create a newspaper monopoly in Southern California, resulting in increased prices and harm to readers, advertisers and possibly employees.

If this acquisition is allowed to proceed, newspaper competition will be eliminated and readers and advertisers in Orange and Riverside counties will suffer, Bill Baer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Departments Antitrust Division, said in a statement accompanying the suit, which was filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

Tribune Publishing Co., the chain that owns the Times, the Chicago Tribune and 10 other daily newspapers, won a Bankruptcy Court auction early Thursday against two competitors to acquire Freedom Communications, which owns the Register and the Press-Enterprise. Freedom Communications had filed for bankruptcy protection in November after losing a reported $40 million under an expansion plan initiated by new owners in 2012. The expansion included the acquisition of the Press-Enterprise for $27.25 million in November 2013.

If the purchase goes through, the Justice Department said, Tribunes share of local newspaper circulation will increase from 41 per cent to 98 per cent in Orange County, and from 12 per cent to 81 per cent in Riverside County. Tribune Publishing also owns the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Tribunes dominant position in both Orange County and Riverside County would allow it to . . . increase subscription prices and advertising rates, Justice Department lawyers said in the court filing. Consumers would be harmed by the lost competition between the newspapers.

If the sale takes place while the legal challenge is pending, the department said, Tribune Publishing would have access to competitively sensitive information from the Register and Press-Enterprise, such as prices paid by their top advertisers and information about prices subscribers pay. It could also start shuttering assets, such as firing employees or shutting down and selling facilities and equipment.

The Justice Department asked for a restraining order that would halt the sale  which is scheduled to go before a bankruptcy judge for approval on Monday  while courts decide whether the purchase would violate antitrust laws.

Tribune Publishing spokeswoman Dana Meyer derided the governments claims in a statement quoted by the Los Angeles Times.

The (Antitrust) Division is living in a time capsule, with a framework that predates the arrival of iPhones, Google, Facebook and modern media outlets that are killing the traditional newspaper industry, Meyer said. It wasnt competition from the L.A. Times that forced the Register into bankruptcy. It was the Internet and related technology.

But Robin Feldman, a law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco who teaches antitrust courses, said the Justice Departments role is to ensure that competition survives even when the industry is under siege.

A critical question in such cases, Feldman said, is whether the proposed owner was the only bidder. In this case, Tribune Publishing outbid another newspaper chain, Digital First Media, which owns some smaller newspapers in Southern California, and an investment group headed by Freedom Communications chief executive, Rich Mirman.

If its a matter of pure survival, its better to have one newspaper than none, Feldman said. Thats different than if theres a choice between one big consolidated press organization and two smaller ones.

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It seems hard to believe, but we may never build another pipeline in Canada. A nation whose wealth is closely tied to resources seems to have suddenly decided that economic stagnation is preferable to any project that might  and I stress the word might  have a negative effect on the environment.

If this is what we collectively believe, then we will presumably be content with the consequences. But is this approach really in our national best interest? Or are there solutions that enable us to do our part in combating climate change without stifling the growth prospects of one of our major industries?

Canada has been richly endowed with hydrocarbon resources. If responsively developed and managed, they could continue to be significant contributors to our GDP for decades to come.

The problem is access to markets. Historically, our distribution system ran north to south. We send most of our oil to the United States for refining, mainly through a pipeline system that was constructed over several decades after World War II. Our domestic refineries, which were located close to the major population centres in central Canada, relied mainly on imported oil for feedstock.

The system may have been imperfect, but it worked. Thats no longer the case.

The United States, perhaps giddy with the bounty from the shale revolution, has effectively said it doesnt want any new Canadian oil. First, President Obama rejected Keystone XL after years of dithering. Then Secretary of State John Kerry told the CBCs Rosemary Barton he sees no pressing need for any new pipelines from Canada, saying his country already has 300 pipelines and that new technologies such as liquefied natural gas have changed the dynamics.

If we cant sell any new production to the U.S., where will it go? Are we just going to throw up our hands and say no more oil patch growth?

Once it became apparent we could no longer look to the U.S. to consume our increasing oil output, attention turned to Asia. That was back in the years when it appeared the Chinese economic miracle would never end. In 2006, Enbridge Inc. proposed building the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Edmonton to Kitimat, B.C., where the oil would be loaded on tankers for export. That project isnt officially dead, but opposition from First Nations, a large segment of the B.C. population, and the B.C. government, plus the federal Liberal partys pledge to outlaw tanker traffic in the region, has effectively killed it.

In May 2012, Kinder Morgan announced plans to twin an existing pipeline between Alberta and Burnaby, B.C. If Keystone XL was a no-brainer, as Stephen Harper once described it, the Kinder Morgan plan should have been even more so. Their Trans Mountain pipeline was long established (it was built in 1953) and the $6.8 billion twinning would increase capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000, creating a huge economic win for Canada in general and Alberta in particular.

Well, this no-brainer may not happen, either. In January, the B.C. government announced its opposition to the plan, saying the company had not been forthcoming with details on how it would prevent spills and respond to any that occurred. Meanwhile, First Nations organizations, environmental groups, and others have gone on record as opposing the plan.

Finally, we have Energy East, TransCanadas ambitious proposal to move Alberta oil all the way across the country to refineries in Montreal, Quebec City, and Saint John, N.B. The latter also happens to be a deep-water port, from which our oil could be exported.

Its another no-brainer, at least at first glance. The pipeline would extend for 4,600 kilometres and carry 1.1 million barrels a day of Alberta and Saskatchewan crude. It would be an all-Canadian project, with no borders to cross. About 3,000 kilometres of the line are already operating, transporting natural gas. That section would be converted to oil.

But opposition is building. TransCanada had to cancel plans for a marine terminal on the St. Lawrence River because of its proximity to a beluga whale calving ground. The federal government has extended the review period to allow for more environmental assessment. Mayors in the Montreal area have gone on record against it. The Quebec government is seeking an injunction to ensure TransCanada complies with the provinces environmental rules. The chief of the Mohawk community that lies along the proposed route has denounced the project as potentially catastrophic for his people and says any construction without their consent would violate international law. And on it goes. The project start date has already been pushed back two years.

Is this what we really want? Do we as a nation truly wish to shut down the prospects for future growth in one of our most important industries? Because if we say no to any more pipelines, thats what is going to happen. The economic consequences wont be pretty.

Gordon Pape is editor and publisher of the Internet Wealth Builder and Income Investor newsletters. His website is www.BuildingWealth.ca . Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/GPUpdates

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President Vladimir Putin said he wants to identify an official who can be hanged if a bridge linking Crimea to Russia isnt built, as he complained that nobody wants to take charge of the project.

There should be a specific person who can be hanged if its not done, Putin said during a visit to Crimea to view construction work on Friday, the second anniversary of Russias annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine. Officials keep passing responsibility for the work to colleagues in different ministries, he said.

Construction of the 19-kilometre bridge to end the peninsulas isolation is a historical mission for Russia that must be completed by Dec. 18, 2018, Putin said. The span linking Crimea to Russia across the Kerch Strait will boost economic growth, he said.

Putin annexed Crimea in March 2014 after the peninsula approved joining Russia in a referendum branded illegal by the U.S. and the European Union, which imposed sanctions. The vote took place after masked, armed men seized the parliament and government buildings in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, following the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February. Putin at first denied sending troops to Crimea, then later admitted that Russian servicemen had assisted local self-defence units.

It was unclear if Putin was speaking figuratively when he made his threat, though a moratorium on the death penalty in Russia has been in force since 1996.

The Crimean peninsula is connected to Ukraine and has no land link to Russia. It was conquered by Russian Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century and became part of Ukraine only in 1954  a gift of then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Ukraine has vowed to reclaim Crimea. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel reaffirmed that the EU does not recognize the occupation of Crimea by Russia, at talks Thursday in Brussels with President Petro Poroshenko, according to the Ukrainian presidential website.

Crimeans decision to join Russia should be respected and the peninsulas status cant be the subject of any negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Friday.

Russias illegal invasion of Crimea wont be accepted under any circumstance and Moscow eventually has to end its occupation of Ukraines sovereign territory, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in December.

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The opening of new checkpoints between the territories of the self-proclaimed Donbas republics and Ukraine will be possible after security is ensured in these regions, Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) on Ukraine, Alexander Hug, has said.

It is important that the situation surrounding the contact line is normalized, only after the situation returns to normal will it be possible to open new checkpoints, Hug told Interfax on Friday.

He said that both sides should bear responsibility for those people, who are crossing the frontline. The long-term closure of these checkpoints does not help people, he said.

A truce is needed to be established, pull back weapons, demine the territory, in which the people will be traveling, and in this case it will be possible to open new checkpoints, Hug said.
BEIJING, March 18 -- The largest nuclear security center in the Asia-Pacific region, which was financed by China and the United States, opened Friday in Beijing, according to authorities.

The center, constructed by the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) and the U.S. Department of Energy, has the capacity to train about 2,000 nuclear security staff from China and other Asia-Pacific nations each year, said CAEA director Xu Dazhe.

The center is the largest nuclear program to receive direct Chinese and U.S. government funding. Construction began in December 2013.

According to the CAEA, the site will become a center for international exchanges and cooperation on nuclear security, the demonstration of advanced technology, testing and analyzing.

The center is a significant achievement in China-U.S. nuclear security cooperation, and will boost cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and the world, said Wang Yiren, deputy director of the CAEA.

It will also promote the peaceful use of nuclear power, added Wang, who is also deputy head of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence.

China and the United States agreed to establish a nuclear security center at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in 2010.

Under the agreement, the center, which is located in Fangshan District, Beijing, is run and administered by China, while the United States is responsible for providing nuclear-security equipment.

The two nations have also cooperated in other nuclear security areas such as low-enriched reactors, security of radioactive sources and radiation detection by customs authorities, according to Wang.

The Chinese mainland has 30 operational nuclear power generating units, with a total installed capacity of 28.31 GW. It also has 24 units with a total installed capacity of 26.72 GW under construction, ranking first in the world.

As planned, the nation's installed nuclear power capacity will reach 58 GW with an additional 30 GW under construction by 2020.

"Construction projects for six to eight new generators are expected to begin each year from 2016 to 2020," Wang said.

He also said China was mulling building of offshore floating nuclear power stations.

Earlier in January, the central government published a nuclear white paper detailing policies and measures relating to nuclear emergency preparedness and highlighting a "rational, coordinated and balanced" approach to nuclear security.

The document assured the world that China had "the most advanced technology and most stringent standards" to ensure safe and efficient development of nuclear power.
File photo of Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic has promised to look into the case in which a Chinese passenger was verbally abused by a white passenger and one flight attendant while flying from London to Shanghai on March 1, 2016.

The case became high-profile when the Chinese passenger, Liu Wei, posted an article on Chinas microblog platform Weibo on March 3, sharing her extremely upsetting experience of racial discrimination on Virgin Flight VS250.

A 55-something white man suddenly rose from his seat and walked towards me. Gnashing his teeth in anger and pointing at my nose, he said, You f*cking Chinese pig!!! Get the f*ck out of here! wrote the article.

Boarding pass of Liu Wei

I couldnt believe my ears at first. And then overwhelmed by shock and rage, I said, What did you say to me? He just repeated what he said, clutching his hands as if he is about to hit me, Liu said in the article.

According to the post, Liu has to seek help from other passengers before the flight attendant came, while the man kept using the f word and all other discriminative words behind her back. A British man and his Chinese wife decided they could not have it anymore and stepped up to stop him, but they were threatened by the man, Liu said.

Then came the flight attendant, but it did not come to Lius relief. The flight attendant walked towards me and loudly scolded me, asking me to stop quarreling with the man or I would be asked to leave the plane immediately, the article said.

After Lius explanation that it was the man who started it, the flight attendant unheedingly went away, only to return when other passengers stood in witness of Liu. The attendant said, I will change the mans seat to another because he suffers mental disorder. This would be good to all.

However, the change never came. For 11 hours on flight, Liu had to stay awake in terror in order to keep an eye on the man sitting rows behind her. When all the other passengers went to sleep, I sat there. Terror, anger, humiliation, and powerlessness and frustration of being a Chinese seized my heart. I cannot breathe. Liu wrote in the article.

A female Chinese flight attendant later comforted Liu by persuading her to give up the hope that the man would be shifted to another seat. The attendant who scolded you was our superior. He had told us to get you out of the plane if there is more saying in the dispute, Liu quoted the Chinese flight attendant in the article.

After the plane landed, Liu required the name of the male flight attendant, which was hesitantly given by some other attendants . His name is Nathan Smith, Liu said, which there is no way to verify on that.

The article has been reposted over 33,000 times on weibo and is widely publicized on Chinese media, causing a national rage over the aviation company for allowing safety-threatening passenger on flight and for the on-board crews improper handling of the case.

In response, the Virgin Atlantic Airways said the case is under investigation and their customer relations team has been in direct contact with Liu.
Rabbits are raised at the institute in an environment where temperature, humidity and air pressure must all meet national standards. [Photo/China Daily]

China is expected to adopt its first national standard on laboratory animal welfare and ethics by the end of the year.

This will mark a major legislative breakthrough for the protection of animals used in research and testing by the pharmaceutical and other industries.

The draft, which is available for public opinion until Sunday, is expected to greatly improve the welfare of laboratory animals in China, according to Sun Deming, chairman of the Welfare and Ethics Committee of the Chinese Association for Laboratory Animal Sciences.

"Although all users of laboratory animals are required to conduct welfare and ethics reviews, they adopt different standards, and some are too lax," Sun said.

Qin Chuan, the association's president, said the lack of legislation has become a bottleneck for the development of China's multibillion-yuan biological and pharmaceutical industries and other industries related to the use of laboratory animals.

The new standard, which aims to minimize the use of animals and also their pain, integrates the latest concepts and requirements for the ethical treatment of lab animals, Sun said.

It has been recognized by leading experts at home and abroad, Sun said during the two-day Sino-British Third International Seminar on Laboratory Animal Welfare and Ethics.

The conference in Hefei, Anhui province, which was co-hosted by the association and the British government, ended on Thursday.

"We drew on experiences and lessons in the legislation of laboratory animal welfare from other countries, such as the UK, when drafting the standard," Sun said. "If carried out, it will be of epoch-making significance for China's laboratory animal welfare and ethics."

The draft includes requirements for the production, transportation and use of laboratory animals, including qualifications for personnel, animal-raising facilities and the use of animals in testing.
The decision of some large advertisers in the country to eschew advertising on media outlets that spew hate and toxicity ought generally to be welcomed. They are entirely within their rights to hold that the moneys they spend should not underwrite such content.

This decision should serve as a wake-up call to outlets that have made it their business to garner viewers based on one-sided reportage that is often more an outpouring of the channels bias than a reflection of facts on the ground. Clearly the step taken by advertisers is an extreme one, but it must fairly be admitted it has not come without provocation.

As television channels especially and their self-regulatory mechanisms failed to put the brakes on toxic coverage, and as it emerged that the claims of reach made by channels were distorted if not manipulated, corporates appear to have rediscovered the merits of their products being advertised on outlets that at least strive for objectivity, even if they dont always achieve it.

More important, it means that some advertisers are prepared to take the space-buying decision out of the hands of anonymous media planners who look only at numbers. Bajaj Auto, Parle and Amul have already decided to base their media choices on the quality of content and it is to be hoped that others will follow in their footsteps.

The outspoken Mr Rajiv Bajaj was the first to draw the line, telling a television channel earlier this month that Bajaj Auto would not advertise on three channels for the toxicity and hate they spewed. This position is entirely consistent with the noholds- barred approach that has won him many admirers in the country.

Amul, too, has said it does not want its products associated with unsubstantiated news that spreads hate. These can be effective measures and it is to be hoped that they will over time lead to both soul-searching and cleansing. After all, advertisers did compel Facebook to prohibit content that denied or distorted the Holocaust, and around the world, the pushback against toxicity in social media is beginning to have effects.

It is unfortunate though that it took advertisers ~ and not viewers ~ to call out toxic content. It is the viewer ~ or the reader in case of the printed word ~ who must take the lead in punishing such content. This can be done by complaining to the media outlet and to the regulator if that fails.

If these measures do not work, it is best to stop subscription, even if the channel is aired free, as some of the most toxic channels are. There is no place for hate in societies such as ours, which with their in-built fault lines are always prone to exploitation by the unscrupulous.
The first satellite that China exported to an ASEAN country, Lao Sat-1, was officially delivered into orbit on March 16, China News Service reported on Wednesday.

Lao Sat-1 is the first satellite that China developed for Laos, and also the country's first communications satellite.

At present, all technical tests of the satellite have been successfully completed, and the satellite is ready to begin providing service.

Lao Asia Pacific Satellite Company Ltd., a joint venture between China and Laos, is in charge of commercial operation of the satellite, which will provide satellite communications, satellite television broadcasting, wireless broadband and other services for Laos and neighboring countries.

Experts believe the satellite is of great significance to the Belt and Road initiative as well as to China's space exploration.

Lao Sat-1 is one of the most major satellite projects Laos has had since the country was established. The project was initiated in December 2012. On Dec. 21, 2015, China launched the satellite into space using a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan province.
Merrick Garland could be the next justice to join the United State Supreme Court. If he's eventually approved, should Wall Street and industry fear this appointment by a liberal president who has nonetheless overseen one of the biggest equity market expansions of all time?

Soon after President Obama announced Garland as his choice for the next Supreme Court Justice, conservatives lobbyists were quick to charge that Garlands' opinions demonstrate a tendency to uphold the actions of federal regulations, even those of the Environmental Protection Agency. His apparent willingness to defer to regulators also set off alarms among business representatives.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the head of the National Federation of Independent Business, Juanita Duggan, declared her opposition to Garland because he's a friend to "regulatory bureaucracy, big labor and trial lawyers," adding that "with Judge Garland on the Supreme Court, the EPA and other regulators would have a freer hand to impose even more costs on small businesses."

Yet Garland's position on regulatory matters may be more nuanced than Duggan acknowledges.

In a thorough analysis of his judicial career, Tom Goldstein, publisher of the SCOTUS Blog, writing in 2010, said that "Judge Garland has in a number of cases favored contested EPA regulations and actions when challenged by industry, and in other cases he has accepted challenges brought by environmental groups. This is in fact the area in which Judge Garland has been most willing to disagree with agency action."

In American Bird Conservancy v. FCC in 2008, Garland voted to uphold an environmental challenge to an FCC ruling, and in American Corn Growers Ass'n v. EPA in 2002, Garland dissented from majority opinion thereby upholding an industry challenge to part of EPA's anti-haze regulations), Goldstein said.

When it comes to criminal law, the Libertarian blogger Damon Root argued that Garland's record as a judge tended to support the actions of prosecutors and police. In a particularly high-profile decision, Garland supported George W. Bush's actions in imprisoning terrorism suspect in Guantanamo, Cuba.

"While Garland is undoubtedly a legal liberal, his record reflects a version of legal liberalism that tends to line up in favor of broad judicial deference to law enforcement and wartime executive power," Root wrote.

Across the board, Garland's intelligence and demeanor have been portrayed as particularly suitable to appeasing activists on the left and the right who might find common group with the record of a centrist.

"He is not someone who carries around an ideology that decides cases, and in his opinion is a rationalization of what he thought anyway," Bruce Kraus, a partner in the New York corporate practice of Kelley Drye, said in a phone interview. "Our federal bench is composed of some of the smartest guys in the country, and in that rarefied group, this guy stands out -- all of his peers just know this."

In addition to conservative Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who has praised Garland on a number of occasions, Kenneth Starr, the former federal judge who led the investigation into former President Bill Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater scandal, also registered his support for the Chicago native's Supreme Court candidacy.

"The President has made a very wise choice," said Starr, who serves as the president of Baylor University, in a statement. "Chief Judge Garland is a brilliant jurist who believes in and upholds the rule of law undergirding our constitutional republic. I have known him well for many years. He is superbly qualified to serve on our nation's highest court."

Will Garland Get a Hearing?

Whether Garland, a 19-year judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, will get a chance to be questioned by the U.S. Senate about succeeding Judge Antonin Scalia, who died in February, remains a question fraught with politics.

Few, if anyone, doubt that Garland isn't qualified for a seat on the court. Yet denying him a hearing may be a simple matter of electoral year politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who made clear his intention to oppose everything Obama in 2010, has vowed not to meet with Garland nor to permit the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on his candidacy.

Nonetheless, a group of Republican senators comprised of Iowa's Chuck Grassley, Florida's Marco Rubio, New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, Arizona's Jeff Flake, Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois have at least agreed to meet with Garland.

It's doubtful that critics will unearth a smoking gun of liberal overreach, said Jeremy Byellin, an attorney writing for Thomson Reuters' Legal Solutions Blog.

"It's incredibly likely that Senate Republicans would find nothing of substance during the course of these hearings to justify blocking Garland's nomination by refusing to hold a vote," Byellin said. "That would spell trouble for a number of Senate Republicans who face contentious reelection battles and would need to draw support from independent voters to stay in office."

Republicans, therefore, would be made to seem weak on President Obama, an especially dangerous course given the success of Donald Trump's unorthodox and viscerally anti-Washington candidacy.

But Garland's qualifications appear to be unassailable.

"Garland is considered by the bar that practices before the Supreme Court, as one of the absolute best judges in the country," Kraus said. "There is nobody better prepared, nobody who knows the law better, nobody who digs into the facts of the cases more. In the opinion of the folks who practice the law and his colleagues on the bench, people just have the highest respect for the guy."

Maybe Mitch McConnell will agree as well.
Stock futures edged higher on Friday as crude oil extended its 2016 records on hopes of a production freeze.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.2%, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 0.23%, and Nasdaq futures climbed 0.19%.

A two-day rally pushed the Dow to wipe out its year-to-date losses. Wall Street's gains have been driven by a rally in crude oil prices that boosted energy stocks as well as residual goodwill following a dovish Federal Reserve meeting that ended Wednesday.

Crude oil extended recent highs after closing above above $40 for the first time this year on Thursday. The commodity has been on a tear on hopes members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries can agree on a production freeze when they meet in April. West Texas Intermediate crude oil jumped 1.5% to $40.86 a barrel on Friday.

Starwood Hotels (HOT) climbed 2% before the bell after reaching a deal to be acquired by Chinese company Anbang for $78 a share. Marriott (MAR) , which had previously made a play for Starwood, has five days to respond to Anbang's offer. Marriott and Starwood had agreed to a $12.2 billion deal late last year.

TransCanada (TRP) fell 5% after agreeing to buy Columbia Pipeline Group (CPGX) for nearly $10 billion. The move boosts TransCanada's presence in the U.S., increasing its total coverage to around 57,000 miles of pipeline in North America. The deal is expected to close during the second half of the year.

Adobe (ADBE) jumped 6.4% in premarket trading after quarterly earnings surpassed estimates on the back of strong growth in cloud computing services. The tech company earned an adjusted 66 cents a share in its recent quarter, a nickel above estimates, while revenue of $1.38 billion breezed past forecasts. The company also boosted full-year earnings guidance to $2.80 a share, up 10 cents from a previous target.

Aeropostaleundefined plummeted more than 40% in premarket trading after broaching the possibility of a sale. The teen retailer reported another quarterly loss, while sales slumped 16% over its holiday season. Aeropostale has suffered three straight years of losses.

Tiffany (TIF) added more than 2% after beating quarterly estimates, though warned of a likely first-quarter disappointment. The jewelry retailer anticipates a 15% to 20% decline in earnings in its first quarter, far sharper than an estimated 6% drop. The company said worldwide same-store sales fell 9% in its first quarter, driven by weakness in Europe.
All hope had appeared lost for a merger between Staples (SPLS) and Office Depot.

Spurred on by activist investors, most notably Starboard Value fund, the two companies have been trying to merge for more than a year, only to be blocked by U.S. regulators. But there is a glimmer of hope, not just for the attempted acquisition but for Staples' stock itself.

Is beleaguered Staples now a great value play?

In February 2015, Staples announced its intention to purchase its rival.

Both companies have been beset as of late, with neither demonstrating the flexibility needed to battle online head-to-head with the likes of Amazon. Nor have the office supply retailers kept prices competitive with brick-and-mortar discount powerhouses such as Target or Walmart.

The deal would be worth $6.3 billion, but the Federal Trade Commission has moved to block the merger at every turn. And to make matters worse, Starboard Value recently shed its stock in Office Depot.

In December, the FTC filed an administrative complaint stating that the deal would violate antitrust laws. The commission contended that as the two major players in the business-to-business office supply industry, Office Depot and Staples would leave a dearth of competition by merging.

Last month, the companies entered into a divestiture agreement with office supply wholesaler Essendant. This merger would involve more than $550 million in product revenue and related assets.

However, the FTC rejected using the deal to allay antitrust accusations.

But now another deal is on the horizon, and it just might clear the way for Staples to purchase Office Depot.



The New York Post has reported that Amazon itself might be working on a deal to purchase Office Depot's corporate business unit.

Amazon entered the business supply market by launching Amazon Business last spring. By purchasing Office Depot's business-to-business wing, it would gain a portfolio of corporate accounts and potentially pave the way for the FTC to OK a deal between Office Depot and Staples.

And Staples is also taking a cue from Amazon's playbook. The company is upping its online presence and is trying to become more technology-savvy.

Amazon's Dash button allows consumers to refill their Prime supply orders with the touch of a button. Staples has unveiled its Easy System, which centers around a Wi-Fi-enabled button to help customers place orders directly from wherever office supplies are stored.

Staples is clearly trying to gain some traction in the online market, which it had neglected for too long.

By harnessing efficient technology, as well as making strides in its continuing battle to acquire Office Depot, Staples isn't giving up just yet. In fact, it might actually see some positive growth this year.

Analysts have a mean 12-month price target on Staples stock of $12.65, with some forecasting as high as $21, which would be more than twice where it is now.

Last month, everyone had all but written off a merger with Office Depot. Furthermore, Staples' own business had begun to look so stale that some predicted both businesses couldn't survive without the other in case the FTC continued to block the sale.

But now Staples is looking like it might be poised for somewhat of a comeback this year.

There is a battle raging in the fast-moving world of Silicon Valley. Just as VHS tapes snuffed out Betamax and CDs killed cassettes, the winner of a new "gold standard" for data is about to be crowned. We have discovered a small company that figured out a way to corner this new $10 billion market, no matter who comes out the winner. Click here to learn more.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
The exploding cold-pressed juice market has a formidable new entry.



Since January, beverage giant PepsiCo (PEP) has been quietly testing its first-ever line of cold-pressed juices under its Naked Juice brand on the West Coast, a spokeswoman at the company tells TheStreet. The five flavors -- Bright Greens, Hearty Greens, Lively Carrot, Bold Beet and Cool Pineapple -- are currently available at select Target (TGT) , Costco (COST) , Vons and Safeway (SWY) stores in California, Washington, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona and Colorado.

It's priced at $4.99 for a 12oz bottle. That's almost half the cost of some of the cold-pressed juices found at popular West Coast hot spots like Pressed Juicery or within Hain Celestial's (HAIN) Blueprint line, found at most retailers.

PepsiCo says the juice line will be expanding to the East Coast in April.

Due to high disposable incomes and the propensity of celebs to be seen drinking green juices, the West Coast serves as the unofficial juicing capital of America. So, it's not a surprise PepsiCo launched its test of cold-pressed juices in the region. There was also a strategic consideration at play. The source explains that PepsiCo blends its Naked Juice in California. Over the past two years, it has constructed a cold-pressed manufacturing plant within its Naked Juice plant.



Beverage giant PepsiCo dives into cold-pressed juice market.

PepsiCo enters a market surging as people seek the nutritional benefits of fruits and veggies in an easy-to-consume form. According to First Beverage Group, the super-premium juice category generates approximately $2 billion in revenue, and continues to grow at double-digit rates.

Several other big-name food manufacturers have also gotten more aggressive in the space of late.

Last spring, Campbell's Soup (CPB) debuted a line of cold-pressed juices called "1915" under its Bolthouse Farms brand that it acquired for $1.55 billion in 2012. Coca-Cola (KO) announced a minority stake in Suja last August, which makes a range of cold-pressed juices and probiotic waters. More recently, Starbucks (SBUX) introduced four new flavors of cold-pressed juices within its Evolution Fresh brand, which it purchased back in 2011 for $30 million.


It is a legitimate action for China's nuclear submarine to enter the Indian Ocean since China has interests in the region, Yin Zhuo, a military expert, said in an interview.

China is a stakeholder in the Indian Ocean, said Yin in an interview with China Central Television. Every year, China transports goods worth $1.5 trillion through the waters, and China also use routes in the Indian Ocean to transport petroleum.

China's decision to send a nuclear submarine into the area simply demonstrates the countrys commitment to protecting its legitimate rights, according to Yin.

CCTV reported that China's activities in the Indian Ocean give India no reason to be concerned. Furthermore, the New York Times said that India and Japan are in talks to collaborate on upgrading civilian infrastructure in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian archipelago seen as a critical asset to counter Chinas efforts at expanding its maritime reach.

Yin pointed out that the Indian Ocean is free to all countries. India's deployment of P-8I and other anti-submarine frigates in the area indicates the countrys concern for security, but China has always been transparent about its activities in the region.
The widespread introduction of driverless vehicle technology was accelerated with the agreement among U.S. regulators and top global automakers to make automatic emergency braking standard in nearly all vehicles by 2022.

Automatic braking, which is increasingly available on a growing number of vehicle models, requires the installation of sensing hardware and software that will add to the enabling of more capable autonomous features and, finally, full-fledged driverless technology.

As systems like automatic braking become more common and familiar to drivers, they're likely to pave the way for consumer acceptance of cars that increasingly will decide on their own what speed to drive, what route to take, when to brake, and when to yield to other drivers, thereby averting many poor human decisions and the resulting accidents.

Tesla's (TSLA) Autopilot, which supports auto-steering and auto-lane changing functions, also support emergency auto braking. Other luxury and premium automakers offer the feature as well but it's becoming an option in more mainstream brands such as models built by Toyota (TM) .

Automakers worldwide are in a global drag race of sorts to offer the most advanced autonomous systems, a competition that has attracted non-automotive companies as well. Alphabet's GOOGL Google subsidiary is testing driverless prototypes in California.

Alphabet is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio.

Baidu (BIDU) , the Chinese tech giant, disclosed this week that it intends to begin testing a driverless car in the U.S. this year toward commercial availability by 2018. BMW said this week in Munich that it will offer an electric model around 2020-2021 with autonomous capability.

"It's an exciting time for vehicle safety. By proactively making emergency braking systems standard equipment on their vehicles, these 20 automakers will help prevent thousands of crashes and save lives," said Anthony Foxx, U.S. transportation secretary. "It's a win for safety and a win for consumers."

Investors are focusing on companies and automotive suppliers likely to benefit as advanced automotive safety technologies gain wider usage. On Wednesday, shares of driver assistance systems specialist Mobileye NV (MBLY) surged after Reuters broke news of the pact.

"We believe this would be positive for Mobileye," said Brad Erickson of Pacific Crest Securities, "but relatively in line with our longer-term expectations. Our view that Mobileye will be a key beneficiary of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) adoption over the longer term does not change."

Others caution that wider adoption of systems on top of regulatory mandates likely will attract more competition for smaller firms that pioneered the technologies by large auto suppliers like Delphi (DLPH) .

Automatic emergency braking uses cameras, radar and other sensors to see objects in the way and slow or stop a vehicle if the driver doesn't react, according to the Associated Press. Automakers are struggling with how to fit the feature into current product plans that might not be ready for the electronics, so some models may be awarded exemptions.

Doron Levin is the host of "In the Driver Seat," broadcast on SiriusXM Insight 121, Saturday at noon, encore Sunday at 9 a.m.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
The Middle East has been a land of opportunity for the defense sector in recent years, as a series of conflicts in the region has led to oversized spending on armaments by both the U.S. and local players. But the latest twist of uncertainty, low oil prices, threatens to eat into the business of some contractors as once-deep pocketed customers become pickier.

For most of recent history the volatile Middle East has been good to War Inc. Saudi Arabia alone spent $80.9 billion on its military in 2014, ranking fourth globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and neighbors United Arab Emirates and Turkey are also among the world's top spenders. In total the region spent nearly $200 billion on military in 2014, a 57% increase from 2005.

But the high oil prices that bankrolled much of that spending have come crashing down, and with it surely some future spending plans. Cowen & Co. earlier this week downgraded Harris (HRS) , citing fears of an oil-related delay in radio orders, and warned that other second-tier defense names could also face shortfalls.

With conflicts in Syria and against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant still going strong weapons procurements, including missile defense systems and munitions provided by the likes of Raytheon (RTN) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) should hold up well. But the analysts warn that vendors supplying less-urgent gear like Harris radios could be in for some disappointment.

Lockheed Martin is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio.

In addition to Harris Cowen's Cai von Rumohr and Gautam Khanna list L-3 Communications (LLL) , Oshkosh (OSK) and FLIR Systems (FLIR) as companies that appear more cautious about defense sales in the region. "In general this reflects the fact that they sell gear for which replacement needs are less critical, lead times are shorter, and backlogs are not in place," the analysts wrote.

Indeed some of the companies have warned investors that Middle Eastern sales could be challenged. Oshkosh CEO Wilson Jones told investors in late January that oil prices have caused "some budget concerns," while L-3's Mike Strianese around the same time said that "things that were once priorities are not tomorrow or it's taking a longer time to close."

The potential slowdown in Middle East sales comes at a tricky moment for the defense sector. Bulls will note that after years of budget battles and sequestration threats the worst from Capitol Hill appear to be over, and nearly all of the major presidential candidates are promising robust Pentagon spending in the years to come.

However, major defense contractors complain that the number of big-ticket U.S. weapon systems platforms up for bid in the years to come is on the decline, and European nations are ill-positioned to pick up any slack. With top tier consolidation among defense primes seemingly blocked by the Pentagon, the defense sector needs to look to new markets for growth.

Absent an oil price recovery, don't expect that growth to come from the Middle East.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Cisco Systems (CSCO) are increasing by 0.32% to $28.28 late Friday morning, as the company will invest over $100 million in India to support the country's plan to connect thousands of villages to the internet and create jobs, executive chairman John Chambers said today, according to Reuters.

Chambers said Cisco will work with Indian federal and provincial governments to start incubation centers for entrepreneurs and training students.

The company will invest $40 million of the total planned investment into funding early and mid-stage startups, Reuters added.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched several initiatives aimed at connecting millions of Indians to the internet, generating more technology jobs and moving more services online, Reuters noted.

San Jose, CA-based Cisco designs, manufactures and sells networking equipment.

(Cisco is held in Jim Cramer's charitable trust Action Alerts PLUS. See all of his holding with a free trial here.)

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Buy" rating with a score of A- on the stock.

This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks rated.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, notable return on equity, attractive valuation levels, expanding profit margins and impressive record of earnings per share growth.

Although the company may harbor some minor weaknesses, the team believes they are unlikely to have a significant impact on results.

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.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: CSCO
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN) stock is down 3.33% to $7.83 on Friday afternoon as oil prices turned lower immediately following the Baker Hughes report, released this afternoon.

For the first time in three months, the U.S. oil rig count increased by one to 387 this week.

Crude oil (WTI) is slipping 1.47% to $39.61 per barrel and Brent crude is sliding 1.01% to $41.12 per barrel.

Despite the bearish Baker Hughes data, the total number of rigs still remains low at 387, Reuters noted.

Earlier today, futures were jumping ahead of the meeting in Qatar on April 17, as OPEC and non-OPEC members are set to meet to discuss output levels.

"Focus for now is firmly placed on a global macroeconomic environment that is propelling other industrial commodities such as the metals as well as world equities back to around highest levels since late last year," Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based energy markets consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates, told Reuters.

Based in Spring, TX, Southwestern Energy is an independent natural gas and oil company that explores for, develops, and produces natural gas and oil primarily in the U.S.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings currently has a "Sell" rating on the stock with a letter grade of D.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins and weak operating cash flow.

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.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: SWN
Wills can be a touchy subject. For many people, the thought of estate planning gives them the heebie jeebies. Its planning for a world after their death, and thats enough to put anyone off. Yet theres a side of estate planning that many people dont consider, and its not just for the rich and famous.

Charitable bequests have become a major part of fund raising, because, as a financial planning technique, they are both on the rise and a very good idea. Especially for Millennials, a generation known for both its shaky finances and strong social commitment, estate planning can be a way to help out a beloved cause without actually going into hock.

As Russell James of Texas Tech University noted in his research on the subject, among "adults aged 55 and above who have completed a will or trust there is an increased trend to include a charity as a beneficiary," with likelihood of estate giving going up by nearly a quarter from 2000 to 2010. Planned giving, including estate planning, has become a major facet of fundraising drives at virtually every level.

The appeal is simple: its a way of knowing that ideas and causes you care about are being taken care of. For those without immediate family (for example, individuals or childless couples), it can also be a way to pass on money without having to figure out whos who among the various cousins. Doing this does take some real planning, though, because, like all estate work, the devil is in the details.

One thing we talk about is that you never want to be doing philanthropic planning in a vacuum," said Sara Montgomery, senior fiduciary manager with Wells Fargos Philanthropic Services Group. Her team advises clients on how to give their money and works frequently with those who want to donate some after death. The first thing she suggests is having a sound strategy to make sure nothing else gets shortchanged.

Most of the time, the philanthropy is the icing on the cake, Montgomery said. What we find is that most of our clients want to look at that once they have the financial piece and the estate piece on solid ground.

First things first: make sure that future generations dont suffer based on the commitments you make today.

Hindsight is 20/20, and this can be the same thing, Montgomery said. We wouldnt want someone to make a significant philanthropic commitment and then look back and say, I wish I would have known this.

Regret, in particular, should cause would-be donors to take care with the difference between a revocable and an irrevocable bequest. Once money has been pledged in exchange for something, say particular benefits from the organization, your estate may not be able to claw it back. Things can easily become a problem, say for the 25-year-old who pledges his entire estate in exchange for a pile of PBS tote bags and then goes on to have three kids.

Now, this approach is not new. Charitable bequeathments are a popular way of giving money -- and have been for a long time. Yet the trend is headed upward. Increasingly more and more people are choosing to give after death, as a way of getting meaningfully engaged with causes they care about.

Engagement, in fact, is key. As Montgomerys group has experienced, at the same time as giving has been on the rise so, too, has been donor engagement. People want to see the results of their gift now even if it wont arrive until much later.

Historically what you see is a lot of folks have named institutions, and the institution is not aware of it, she said. Theres sort of a privacy factor.

What were seeing, especially with donors that maybe are younger and very successful, is they want to make those contributions right now and they want to be communicating with the organization right now about how those gifts are going to be used and deployed, she added.

And institutions have noticed.

Groups as diverse as NPR, the Red Cross and universities include appeals for donors to consider them in their wills, for good reason. Institutions that intend to be around for decades or centuries can wait for giving, especially if that means the gift will be that much larger in the end.



Its also a way to solicit without the donor feeling quite so pressured. They can give without giving today.

It continues to grow, said Todd Bailey, the assistant vice president for development for the University of Michigan. It is an extremely important part of what we do, [and] we generally account for about 20% of our goal coming from bequests or planned giving activity.

As a major research institution, the University of Michigan actively seeks out donations from alumni and others in the form of bequests. Its something that every gift officer thinks about, according to Judith Malcolm, a senior director with the Universitys development office.

Ive just gone through this kind of planning, she said. When youre thinking about your estate planning you dont really know how much you need [for your family]. And if you have a fixed amount of money, as many of us do now or when were retired, you dont know how much money youll need.

[But when I die] I can leave the rest of my estate to the University of Michigan if I want to," she added. "Im not taking anything away from my family, from my care, but whatever is left I can give.

And in the meantime Michigan, like most institutions, treats the donor like he'd given today, engaging him with students and campus life so he can see where the money is going.

It is, Bailey pointed out, a real lifetime experience that they want to have in addition to their estate. The catch is to keep it all in proportion.

While estate giving is on the rise and an effective way to give assets without sacrificing quality of life, too many people see it as an excuse to feel like they own the place. Thats bad enough when a massive donor demands his own slot on the campus radio station, but for someone with only a few thousand dollars to give, its just plain eye-roll-inducing.

We have clients where they are just trying to figure out whats appropriate when they make a gift to an organization, Montgomery said. Theyre saying, Well I dont want to burden them, and well say you just gave them a half a million dollars. You can ask for some information.
A school bus was pulled over by police, only to be found that it was overloaded with 62 people, in Yingshui village, Huoqiu county, east Chinas Anhui province, on March 16, 2016.

The maximum capacity of the bus was merely 19 passengers. The incredibly overloaded vehicle illegally exposed the students and teachers on it to severe security threat.

The bus has been temporarily confiscated, and the driver arrested for further investigation. The students were safely sent home by other vehicles.
With the S&P 500 back to its 2016 starting point, after dropping more than 10% by mid-February, TheStreet is looking to wrap up its 2016 competition for the Worst Stock in the World.

Over the last few weeks, we received 12 recommendations from our network of writers and contributors, which also included feedback from our readers. After careful review, TheStreet has narrowed our choices down to five and we are looking for your feedback before making our final decision.

While the Worst Stock in the World for investors is the one they've lost the most money on, what we're looking for is who made the best case for the Worst Stock in the World among all our writers. Vote in our poll below!

Here are the finalists:

GlobalStar (GSAT) : Shares of this Louisiana-based provider of mobile satellite voice and data services are down 60% over the last year. The Deal's Ron Oral cites regulatory issues as one of five reasons for the stock's demise. It has been petitioning the Federal Communications Commission for more than two years to let its customers use its main asset (a spectrum of Wi-Fi). Even if the petition is approved, the space is already full of competitors, Oral wrote. Read his analysis here.

Rackspace Hosting (RAX) : It is tough to play against the big boys, and that's just what this San Antonio-based hosting and clouding computing company finds itself doing. Shares are down 62% over the last year, while Amazon, Google, and Azure are increasingly taking market share. As for Rackspace's future, TheStreet's Chris Ciaccia notes that the company has no technical advantages to offer amid headwinds the company faces. Read his analysis here.

Sears Holdings (SHLD) : Shares of the Chicago-based retailer are down 62% over the last year. In a 20 point takedown of the company, TheStreet's Brian Sozzi noted that retailer's CEO appears to be out of touch with the business, the layout of its stores -- including Kmart -- is "embarrassing," consistent losses, and worrying debt levels as reasons to be bearish on the company. Read his analysis here.

Tesla Motors (TSLA) : The battery-powered cars may look sleek but it will take a miracle for the stock to grow into its present valuation, writes Real Money contributor Ed Ponsi. Over the last year, shares of the company are up 18%, with much of the increase seemingly driven on the S&P 500 that started in mid-February. At the time of Ponsi's analysis, the stock was trading at 100-times next year's anticipated earnings. "Changing the world is neither easy nor cheap. I'm rooting for Tesla to change the world, but we can't value a company based on the sentiments it inspires," Ponsi wrote. Read his analysis here.

Workday (WDAY) : The human capital management software vendor was called the "Frankenstein of companies" by TheStreet contributor Alex Barrow due the company's negative earnings, increasing costs, and challenged business model. Shares of the company are down 16% over the last year as the company has troubles continuing to benefit from years of the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy, Barrow wrote. Additionally, the company appears to be paying dearly for its growth with marketing and R&D eating up nearly 80% of its revenue, nearly double what competitor Oracle spends in this space, Barrow wrote. Read his analysis here.

Now, you tell us, which of these is the best case for the "Worst Stock in the World"?

THIS POLL IS CLOSED. STAY TUNED TO SEE WHO WON!
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, left, speaks with French President Francois Hollande, center, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. The European Union and Turkey have reached a landmark deal to ease the migrant crisis and give Ankara concessions on better EU relations, The Czech prime minister announced Friday. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
Tents are placed between railway tracks and on platforms in the make shift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Thursday, March 17, 2016. Leaders of the EU's 28 divided nations plan to reconvene in Brussels this week in hopes of ironing out disagreements on a proposed agreement with Turkey in the migrants crisis. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades arrives for an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday said the refugee emergency is not something to be bargained over, as the European Union looks to send back tens of thousands of migrants to Turkey. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to reporters at the State Department in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. Kerry has determined that the Islamic State group is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, as he acted to meet a congressional deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A man looks at the military wire fences attached with South Korean national flags at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border with North Korea, in Paju, South Korea, Friday, March 18, 2016. North Korea defied U.N. resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials said, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
In this photo taken March 2, 2016, Dilsia Acosta holds her grandson Joshua in Durham, N.C. The Obama administration is openly stepping up efforts to find and deport immigrants who were part of the 2014 surge of illegal crossings by unaccompanied children and families. One of those unaccompanied children-turned-adults targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is 19-year-old Wildin David Guillen Acosta. His mother, Dilsia Acosta, said her son came to the U.S. in June 2014 at the peak of a wave of immigrant children. His father, Hector Guillen, came to the United States illegally in 2005 and his mother followed in 2013. Wildin Acosta was arrested in January after a judge ruled that he should be deported. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, French President Francois Hollande, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and European Council President Donald Tusk (from L to R, front) talk at family photo session during a two-day European Union leaders summit at the EU Council headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 17, 2016.(Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

BRUSSELS, March 17 -- European Union (EU) leaders gathered here for a new round of talks to tackle the migration crisis on Thursday, a week after initial agreement with Turkey, with tough negotiations expected.

European Council President Donald Tusk said hours ahead of the summit that he was "more cautious than optimistic" on the chance of reaching agreement with Turkey as there was resistance from EU member states to Ankara's proposals presented at the last summit.

"Only if we all work together in a coordinated manner and keep our cool, will we achieve success. I am cautiously optimistic, but frankly speaking more cautious than optimistic," he told a news conference earlier the day.

Cyprus threatened to veto the possible EU-Turkey plan unless Ankara recognizes the country's government, it was reported Thursday.

"Turkey has to open its harbors and airports (to Cypriot boats and planes) and normalize its relations with Cyprus," Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades was quoted as saying.

"If Turkey fulfills its obligations, according to the Ankara negotiation framework, there is no problem, but without it we can do nothing," he later told reporters on his arrival at the summit.

"I am sure our partners will find a way," he said, adding that he hoped that there would be an agreement by Friday.

Tusk admitted that the talks would be "difficult", stressing that the possible agreement "must be acceptable to all 28 member states, no matter big or small" and "must fully comply with EU and international law."

The agreement must effectively help solve the migration crisis and contribute to a comprehensive strategy, including getting back to Schengen, ending the wave-through policy, humanitarian assistance to Greece, support to Western Balkans and reinforcing cooperation with Turkey, he noted.

Ankara on March 7 presented to Brussels new proposals to tackle the migrant crisis, asking for extra financial aid, speeding up its EU membership negotiation process and a more liberalized visa scheme in exchange.

EU leaders were divided on Turkey's controversial proposals. German Chancellor Angela Merkel viewed the would-be agreement as a breakthrough but others were more skeptical.

"I think it is possible, and I am being clearly cautious, to get a joint position," Merkel told reporters when arriving at the summit.

She said there would be complicated negotiations and Germany would negotiate intensively.

France was wary of Turkey's demand on visa-liberalization which would allow 75 million Turks travel to Europe without visa by June. French President Francois Hollande has insisted that Turkey needs to meet all 72 criteria.

"We also need guarantees that what Turkey wants is doable and that rights are guaranteed," Hollande said.

Meanwhile, the EU leaders voiced concern on Turkey's ambitious objective of accelerating its negotiations on accession to the 28-country bloc via the summit.

Talks with Turkey should not be linked to the country's efforts to join the EU, European Parliament President Martin Schulz warned when addressing the European leaders at the start of the summit.

"We need a partnership, not a dependence on Turkey. We cannot and should not 'outsource' our problems to Turkey," Schulz said.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has long put pressure on Turkey to fulfill the bloc's "high standards" regarding to the country's membership bid.

"Working with Turkey does not mean working only on refugees," Mogherini said on Thursday, suggesting the bloc should keep a close eye on Ankara's "internal situation."

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said the EU could not put faith in an agreement that sought to deliver more than it can. Otherwise, another migrant route would emerge after the closure of Balkan route.

"It is advisable not to have illusions about what this agreement means," Costa said.

Britain would not offer visa-free access to Turks as part to the agreement, said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "We have kept our own border control."

Greece, a front line country of the crisis, was anxious about the EU's inefficiency on migrant relocation, as the EU leaders agreed to relocate 160,000 refugees last year but so far only got some nine hundred people settled down.

The EU has to "accelerate relocation to enable these people to reach their destination," said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The European leaders would be joined by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday.

Europe is experiencing the worst migrant crisis since the Second World War. More than one million people have traveled to the continent through various transit routes across Africa, Asia or the Middle East, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Turkey currently hosts 2.7 million refugees or migrants, mainly from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, who were keen to cross the Turkish border for final settlement in Europe. An overwhelmingly majority chose to risk their life to be shipped to Greece.

Ankara proposed a refugee swap under which the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey in exchange for every Syrian that Turkey takes back from the Greek islands.

The European leaders were set to discuss whether to reach such an agreement with Turkey.

Some experts have warned that Ankara's "one for one" idea could violate international laws about whether the illegal migrant could be deported back to Turkey.


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Hospital acquires new surgical robotics technology Burke Health announced the purchase of new robotics technology for use during spine surgical procedures last week. The Globus ExcelsiusGPS is a revolutionary robotic navigation platform system designed to be intuitive and streamline the surgical workflow. Real-time tracking of instruments and implants, along with audible, visual and tactile feedback, enables...

County center wins senior trike Local seniors now have access to an adult tricycle. Director Kimberly Mathis attended the Move Augusta Senior Expo and Bike Rodeo sponsored by Augusta Urban Ministries October 8. The event, held at The Salvation Army Kroc Center, was aimed at people over 50 years old, and included resources and health...

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County rehashes trash problem I am bringing up the trash again, Commissioner Evans Martin said during the October 11 meeting. We have to do something about the trash. Martin asked that the record show that he wants to do something about the countys dumpster sites. He made a suggestion that eliminating 10 sites would...
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By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Five years ago, her election slogan was poriborton (change). This month, as Mamata Banerjee kicked off her campaign to retain power in West Bengal, the slogan has become much more dramatic: Thanda, thanda cool, cool... abar asbe Trinamool (Be cool, the Trinamool Congress will come back to power). As fate would have it, a few days after Mamata launched the new slogan, her party is facing the heat of corruption following a sting operation conducted by a Delhi-based news portal.

The portal, Narada News, released a video footage on March 14 showing eleven senior Trinamool leaders and a serving police officer from West Bengal taking bribes. These politiciansformer Union minister Mukul Roy, former state transport minister Madan Mitra, senior ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, MPs Saugata Roy, Sultan Ahmad, Suvendu Adhikari, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasoon Banerjee, MLA Iqbal Ahmad and Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjeeand IPS officer M.H.A. Mirza were shown as accepting or demanding money for favours including lobbying for Impex Consultancy, a company set up for the sting operation. Over $70 lakh was allegedly paid to the politicians and the officer. Although the sting operation was carried out during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the timing of its release could not have been more damaging for Mamata.

Surya Kanta Mishra, state secretary of the CPI(M), said what was revealed in the sting operation was unprecedented in the political history of West Bengal. I had some respect for Saugata Roy and Subrata Mukherjee, which I have just lost. The entire Trinamool Congress is run by the corrupt and hooligans. We demand immediate action by the Election Commission, said Mishra.

Roy, who refuted the allegations, said the video was doctored and that he would contest it. When asked whether the Trinamool was planning to mount a legal challenge, he said, We are open to all necessary action. Trinamool Congress secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said the party would discuss the issue in detail after Mamata returned from her north Bengal trip. Trinamool spokesperson Derek O'Brien issued a statement criticising the sting operation. All I can say to my political opponents is, come and fight us politically. Do not take recourse to your dirty tricks department, he said.

The Lok Sabha on March 15 witnessed a ruckus over the allegations. While the BJP, Congress and left MPs demanded action against the alleged culprits, the Trinamool members defended their colleagues saying the video was part of a conspiracy against the Mamata government.

The new allegations could hurt the Trinamool's prospects in the elections even as the party faces the possibility of the CPI(M) and the Congress joining hands. A Congress leader said there was a belief that Mamata could be defeated in Bhabanipur this time. But a strong BJP candidate has crushed our hope. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool had trailed in the Bhabanipur assembly segment of the Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency by around 5,000 votes. The CPI(M) has left the assembly seat to the Congress this time, but the BJP is fielding Chandra Bose, grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose. If Chandra Bose could take away Mamatas votes like the BJP candidate did during the last Lok Sabha elections, we can think of winning the seat. But the Modi wave in 2014 is missing this time, said the Congress leader.

Mamata and her party can draw comfort from the fact that the bickering within the Left Front over seat sharing with the Congress has come out in the open. The CPI(M) is unwilling to cede much space in places like south Bengal, where the Congress has little presence. The Congress, too, is not prepared to give up seats, a sentiment which has hardened considerably following party vice president Rahul Gandhi's directive that the partys interests should not be sacrificed. Rahul has told us that under no circumstances should we give away our winning seats to alliance partners, said a senior Congress leader, who was part of a delegation that met Rahul last month. State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury, who once talked about bigger sacrifices for the alliance, has now confirmed that the Congress and the left would enter into a friendly fight in at least a dozen seats.

The alliance with the Congress has divided the CPI(M). While Left Front secretary and Polit Bureau member Biman Bose said the CPI(M) would never share a platform with the Congress and that the alliance would be based only on seat sharing, the faction led by Mishra chose to launch his campaign in his constituency Narayangarh in the company of Congress leaders. He also asked his supporters to be in touch with the local Congress leadership. Mishra is seen as the CPI(M)'s chief ministerial candidate.

Division is evident among the CPI(M)'s traditional allies, too. The RSP, CPI and Forward Bloc are still controlled by veterans, who are not comfortable with forging ties with the Congress. RSP state secretary Kshitij Goswami said the Congress could well ally with the Trinamool after the elections. If needed, the Congress high command might force its Bengal leaders to join hands with the Trinamool Congress. If that happens, what would we tell our workers? asked Goswami.

After realising that seat adjustment with the Congress would not be approved by its left allies, the CPI(M) launched direct talks with the Congress. But it spoiled the Left Fronts negotiations with parties such as the Socialist Unity Centre of India. The SUCI, which had allied with the Trinamool in 2011, has decided to go it alone this time. It is a serious issue for us. We could have won many seats in South 24 Parganas district had the SUCI been with us, said a CPI(M) leader from the district, which is an SUCI stronghold.

Tangled web: Trinamool leaders and the police officer who are allegedly part of the scam1) Firhad Hakim 2) Mukul Roy 3) Iqbal Ahmad 4) Kakoli Ghosh 5) Madan Mitra 6) M.H.A. Mirza (IPS officer) 7) Prasoon Banerjee 8) Suvendu Adhikari 9) Saugata Roy 10) Sovan Chatterjee 11) Subrata Mukherjee 12) Sultan Ahmad .

A CPI(M) state committee member said his party had reached an adjustment with the Congress in more than 250 seats. That itself is a big achievement although a grand alliance involving all parties like in Bihar could not be a possibility, he said. But he warned that when the final list of candidates was out, many disgruntled leaders could contest as independents, which could help the Trinamool.

Apart from the Congress, the CPI(M) is also working with the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, which is, in fact, a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance. It has already announced support for three GJM candidates in the Darjeeling hills. The GJM has made it clear that it is working to defeat the Trinamool Congress in this elections.

However, for those who are hoping for a change of guard in Kolkata, the left alliances list of candidates has been a disappointment. I am not at all happy seeing the list of candidates. The CPI(M) is still living in the age when their cadres used to manipulate the election and when candidates did not matter. They had earlier promised that their candidates would be from different walks of life and include well-known faces. But this is nothing but old wine in new bottle, said academician Sunando Sanyal, who worked to set up the Save Democracy Forum to oppose Mamatas misrule. Sanyal quit the organisation after a large number of CPI(M) workers joined it. He said the sanctity of such a forum, which was set up as a watchdog of political forces in West Bengal, was lost after it started accepting CPI(M) workers and leaders. Seeing its candidates, I dont think the CPI(M) has reformed completely. Then how could one allow its leaders to be part of the forum? asked Sanyal.

Although the left alliance wooed many of its members to participate in the election, the forum made a unanimous decision to keep away from electoral politics. However, two of its members, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, who was arrested for sharing a Mamata cartoon on Facebook, and Pratima Dutta, the wife of a Trinamool Congress leader who was killed in intra party violence, are fighting as independent candidates.

The Mamata government is very unpopular, said Sanyal. So, a tie-up [between the left and the Congress] will make the elections 50:50. However, had they been dynamic in choosing their candidates, the combine could have won easily.
SEOUL, March 18 -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday fired a medium-range ballistic missile into east waters in what appeared to be a move to respond to the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States and tougher-than-ever sanctions on Pyongyang.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying that the missile was launched around 5:55 a.m. local time (2055 Thursday GMT) from the western area of Sukcheon.

The missile, fired from a mobile launcher, flew about 800 km before falling off the DPRK's east coast. In consideration of the flying distance, it was believed to have been a Rodong ballistic missile.

One more DPRK projectile, estimated to have been a missile, was fired from the same place at around 6:17 a.m., but its trajectory disappeared from a radar screen at an altitude of about 17 km. It was estimated to have been detonated in the air.

It was the first time in about two years since March 26, 2014 that Pyongyang fired the Rodong missile, which can target the entire South Korean territory and major cities in Japan as it has a maximum range of about 1,300 km.

The missile launch came in an apparent show of force and anger at the ongoing joint annual war games between Seoul and Washington and harsher-than-ever sanctions on the DPRK over its latest nuclear test and rocket launch.

UN Security Council unanimously adopted the toughest sanctions in decades toward the DPRK earlier this month as Pyongyang tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a rocket, which was condemned as a disguised test of missile technology, on Feb. 7.

Hours after the sanctions adoption, the DPRK fired six rounds of its new 300-mm multiple rocket launchers in protest. The artillery flew about 100-150 km and crashed off the DPRK's east coast.

Pyongyang fired two short-range ballistic missiles, estimated to have been Scud missiles, on March 10, three days after the spring war games kicked off. The Key Resolve command post exercise is set to end on Friday, but the Foal Eagle field training exercise will last until April 30.

Top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of delivering the warhead in a short time to enhance the credibility of its nuclear strike capability, according to the DPRK's KCNA news agency report on Tuesday.

Kim also guided a simulated ground test of a re-entry vehicle for technology needed to return a warhead into atmosphere from space to fall down and reach a target on the ground. It is regarded as the last major technology Pyongyang should master to develop a missile hitting the U.S. mainland.

In protest against the U.S.-South Korea war games, the DPRK threatened a pre-emptive and offensive nuclear strike against South Korea and the U.S. mainland.

>>>Related:

Obama's unilateral sanctions opposed

Beijing has said any unilateral sanctions must not hurt China's interests after Washington imposed additional sanctions on Pyongyang because of its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.
OU Kosher presents the most frequently asked questions to-date on the OU Kosher Hotline (212-613-8241) by consumers. Questions may be submitted to [email protected] as well.

The Purim questions were answered by Rabbi Eli Gersten, rabbinic coordinator and halachic recorder for OU Kosher. The responses were reviewed by Rabbi Yaakov Luban, OU Kosher executive rabbinic coordinator. Rabbi Moshe Zywica, OU Kosher executive rabbinic coordinator, supervises the OU Consumer Relations Department.

Q: Taanis Esther this year will be Wednesday, March 23rd. What time does the fast begin and when does it end?

A: The fast begins when one goes to sleep at night, unless one plans to wake up early to eat before the fast begins. If one planned to wake up early, he can eat until alot hashachar(dawn)[1] which is 72 minutes before sunrise. The fast ends at tzeit hakochavim, nightfall. (There are different opinions regarding when tzeit hakochavim occurs. Rav Moshe Feinstein evaluated that it is 50 minutes after sunset, but if one is having difficulty fasting, he may break the fast 40 minutes following sunset.)

However, it is preferable to refrain from eating until after hearing the Megillah. If one is having a difficult time fasting, especially if he/she is waiting to hear a later reading of theMegillah, one may eat a snack after tzeit hakochavim. If one is very weak and needs to eat a meal, they may do so, but they should assign someone to remind them to hear theMegillah[2].

Q: Who is obligated to give a Machtzit Hashekel and when should it be given?

A: When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, there was an obligation in the month of Adar for every adult male to contribute a half-shekel coin toward the purchase of the upcoming yearly communal offerings. Today, as a remembrance of those coins, a machtzit hashekel(half dollar coin) is given to charity. Since the word shekel is repeated in the Torah three times, the common custom is to donate three half-dollar coins to charity.

There is a difference of opinion as to whether all men from age thirteen are obligated, or only from the age of twenty. However, many have the custom that young men beginning at age thirteen to give the machtzit hashekel, and fathers give the machtzit hashekel on behalf of their young sons before the bar mitzvah age[3]. The coins are contributed onTaanit Esther before Mincha, but if they were not given then, they may be donated anytime afterwards as well[4].

Q: Can one fulfill their obligation of Purim seudah (festive meal) on the first night of Purim?

A: The mitzvah to eat a seudah on Purim is specifically in the day. However, it is proper to eat a partial seudah at night as well[5], and it is customary to eat seeds or grains on Purim night to remember the difficulty that Esther had in eating kosher when she was in the palace[6].

Q: What is the earliest/latest time that one can read the Megillah on the day of Purim?

A: The Megillah can be read anytime during the day of Purim, from sunrise until sunset[7]; however, to show our enthusiasm for the mitzvah it is proper to read the Megillah as early as possible. In cases of pressing need, one can read the Megillah from alot hashachar(dawn, 72 minutes before sunrise), but it may not be read any earlier. If one still had not read the Megillah by sunset, they should read the Megillah without reciting the beracha.[8]

Q: If I began my Purim seudah during the day, but it did not finish until after tzeit hakochavim, do I still recite Al Hanisim in bentching?

A: Yes. However, there is an opinion that if one already davened Maariv, then they should no longer recite Al Hanisim in bentching. Therefore, to avoid this question, it is proper tobentch before davening Maariv.[9]

Q: What are the guidelines for mishloach manot?

A: Both men and women are required to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloach manot. One must send two different portions of food or drink to at least one other Jew. The foods should be ready to eat items (e.g. not raw chicken, meat or fish) that one would typically serve at the Purim seudah. The items need not be foods with different berachot.

For example, one may send as mishloach manot an apple and an orange. While there is no specific size or value for what constitutes a portion, some authorities maintain that the portions must be considered important by the receiver[10]. Therefore, one should not send a wealthy person a portion that he would consider inferior. It is proper to send shalach manot (a common slang usage), as the name implies via a messenger[11].

Q: What are the restrictions for an aveil (one who is in their year of mourning the loss of a parent or thirty days of mourning the loss of other close relatives) regarding sending and receiving mishloach manot?

A: Everyone is obligated to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloach manot, including one who is in mourning. However, because these gift baskets are associated with an extra happiness, which is an unfitting display for one who is in mourning, the mishloach manot should be scaled back to the minimum. The mourner should send only one package of mishloach manot, and it should contain simple foods that do not give the appearance of a celebration[12]. Additional mishloach manot can be sent by the family without designating the aveil specifically.

Likewise, it is considered improper to send mishloach manot to a mourner. Instead one should address the mishloach manot to the family. However, some permit sendingmishloach manot to a rebbi or teacher who is in mourning, since in this case the gift is viewed more like a payment or a tip[13]. If mourners did receive mishloach manot, they may accept the gift[14].

Q: What are the guidelines for matanot levyonim?

A: Every Jew is obligated to give gifts to two needy individuals. All men, women and children over the age of bar mitzvah are obligated in this mitzvah, even if they do not have their own income, and even if they themselves would qualify to receive these gifts[15]. It has become customary for rabbis and other community leaders to collect funds on behalf of needy individuals. Monies can be given to these collections before Purim, provided the funds are distributed on Purim.

While there is a difference of opinion as to the exact minimum amount one can give to satisfy their obligation, (a few pennies or a few dollars), it is well known that the Rambam(Megillah 2:17) writes that it is better to increase the amount one gives to matanot levyonim even more so than for the Purim seudah or mishloach manot. Additionally, there is a custom that on Purim anyone who puts out their hand for assistance should not be turned away empty handed.

Q: How should one conduct himself with respect to drinking on Purim?

A: While there are different halachic opinions regarding drinking on Purim, clearly, the safety of you and those around you takes precedence. One should exercise proper discretion. The OU does not condone underage drinking. Furthermore, excessive drinking is inappropriate. One must be vigilant in preventing any trace of chilul Hashem from inappropriate behavior on Purim.

Take the OU Purim Pledge

The month of Adar is a period of celebration on the Jewish calendar, culminating in the celebration of Purim.

The consumption of alcohol on Purim is just one of the many ways we celebrate the great miracle that took place in the time of Queen Esther  the story we read about in themegillah.

However, it seems that a percentage of people each year are putting themselves and others at risk by consuming too much alcohol, serving those who should not be served, and getting behind the wheel of a car when they are in no condition to do so.

We are all for maintaining Purim as the great day of celebration it is, but we feel that includes keeping as many people as safe as possible.

This year, the OU is asking all to pledge not to over-consume alcohol, serve alcohol to minors or those who are intoxicated and, perhaps most importantly, not to drink and drive. Wont you join our efforts to ensure a safer Purim in 5776?

Best wishes for a Chag Purim sameach!

After you take the pledge be sure to have your friends and family join the cause. Share this page on Facebook and Twitter  use the hashtag #purimpledge.

THIS PURIM:

I will not serve alcohol to minors.

I will not drink and drive, nor will I serve alcohol to guests who are driving.

I will not serve alcohol to any intoxicated guests.

[1] Shulchan Aruch O.C. 564:1

[2] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 692:16

[3] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 694:5

[4] See Teshuvas Avnei Yashfeh O.C. I:133

[5] Shulchan Aruch O.C. 695:1

[6] See Yalkut Yosef KSA O.C. 695:18

[7] Shulchan Aruch O.C. 687:1

[8] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 687:5

[9] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 695:16

[10] Biur Halachah 695 s.v. Chayiv

[11] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 695:18

[12] Mishnah Berurah O.C. 696:18

[13] Teshuvas Divrei Malkiel V:237

[14] Teshuvas Shevet HaLevi X:107

[15] Mishnah Berurah 694:1
A chareidi man apprehended smuggling cigarettes by customs agents at Ben-Gurion Airport is off to prison for three months after the defendant failed to pay the fines levied on him for breaking the law.

Customs agents have begun cracking down on collecting from persons fined after apprehended smuggling prohibited items. This includes Y.Y.G. 27 from Bnei Brak, who was sentenced to three-months imprisonment by the Petach Tikvah Magistrate Court. In 2013 he entered the country via the Green Line and was stopped, found to be smuggling 45 cartons of cigarettes to avoid the NIS 10,000 tax on the load. He was ordered to pay the tax and fined an additional NIS 10,000. He has ignored all payment notices sent to him since, and has now been sent to prison.

Customs officials report they have filed dozens of requests to have persons imprisoned for failing to pay fines, announcing they are cracking down and those who owe money are well advised to pay before they too are imprisoned.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
[COMMUNICATED CONTENT]

Sweet, vivacious Miriam was devastated! With the sudden death of her mother, her entire world caved in, and her bright, winning smile disappeared.

Over 130 years ago Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin began gathering orphaned children from the streets of Jerusalem and bringing them into his own home. With love and wisdom, he cared for those innocent souls whose hopes for life had been snuffed out. Before he passed away, Rabbi Diskin promised that from his place in Heaven he would act on behalf of all those who support Diskin.

For many years Diskin was a model orphanage, bringing joy to the hearts of children in desperate need, all over Eretz Yisrael. In recent decades, we at Diskin have changed our approach. We now enable our charges to remain at home with the surviving members of their families. Social science has proven that this approach gives children a much better chance to overcome the huge challenges they face in the wake of their loss. To help these shattered households function and grow, Diskin provides a full array of services; and in recent years we have extended our reach to assist not only orphaned children but also children from broken or dysfunctional homes, who face so many of the same challenges.

Preserving the dignity of our charges and avoiding making their families feel like helpless beggars is Diskins top priority. As such, all assistance is provided in the most discreet manner possible.

Diskin makes sure that the children receive all the medical and dental care they need. In many cases we deliver delicious hot meals daily, and always with a smile and an encouraging word. To help children advance academically, we mainstream them into the most appropriate schools, and we provide tutoring and mentoring whenever it is deemed necessary. We do our best to see to it that these children grow up to become self- supporting adults who will contribute to society.

We at Diskin consider all of our children to be our family members, and we celebrate their milestones. When a boy becomes bar mitzvah, we are there, providing a festive catered meal at a beautiful simchah hall. We arrange for the entire family to receive new clothing, and we see to it that lively music graces the occasion. When one of our children gets married, we are the mechutanim. Besides helping with the wedding expenses, we make sure that the new couple will have a furnished home and all the basic necessities to begin their life together.

One of Diskins major projects is to provide clothing twice each year, at each holiday season. In keeping with our policy of making the children feel good about receiving our assistance, we do not simply distribute garments and pairs of shoes. Instead, we give the families vouchers they can use at quality stores to purchase clothing and shoes that they themselves choose, just as other children do. Indeed, it is most important to us that our children feel just like everyone else.

If only you could see Miriam today  smiling, jumping rope with her friends. She is a joy to her family members and teachers. As we watch her personality and talents blossom, we know that all our efforts, all our tears and prayers, have borne fruit.

The Father of all orphans has graciously allowed us to be His partners, as He showers His blessings on Miriam and on all the pure, innocent children who have so much to gain from Diskin. We can never replace Miriams mother, but we can build Miriams life in so many significant ways!

This Pesach we will be providing clothing for over 1,700 orphans so that they can enter the holiday season and the spring and summer with pride, wearing the stylish, high-quality clothing we enable them to choose. This will help them feel true freedom, as we are all meant to feel on Seder night!

Please join us at this time; help us maintain and increase the vital assistance we provide. Together we can bring some measure of comfort and even joy to those about whom the Al-mighty promises, If you will bring joy to those of My Household and to those of your household during the holidays that I have given you, then I in turn will bring joy to Mine and yours in My House (Midrash Tanchuma, Parshas Reeh).

For details about the Diskin please visit the Diskin site: www.diskin.org.il

Credit card donations can be made by phone, Or online: http://diskin.org.il/donations.php

Checks can be sent to

ISRAEL:

16 Reiness St. POB 36320

Jerusalem 91363, Israel

Phone: +972 2 5488621

USA:

1533 44th St.

Brooklyn, NY 11219

Phone: 718-851-2598

CANADA:

2823 Bathurst St.

Toronto, ON M6B 3A4

Phone: 416-784-1414

Donations are Tax Deductible in the Israel USA and Canada.
Fearful of a Donald Trump nomination to lead the GOP, conservative leaders huddled privately in Washington on Thursday in search of a plan to stop the billionaire businessman. His Republican rivals braced for another Trump victory next week, this time in delegate-rich Arizona.

The GOP has an eager alternative in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, yet some party leaders are exploring other avenues instead of rallying behind the fiery conservative, an ominous sign that Republican leaders deep dislike of Cruz complicates their overwhelming concern about Trump.

The establishment is like a wounded animal, now cornered, said Mark Meckler, an early leader in the tea party movement. They are terrified, irrational and flailing wildly.

Even after being denied victory in five contests Tuesday, Cruz insists he still has a path to the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim the Republican presidential nomination. But in a strategy memo obtained by The Associated Press, his campaign essentially cedes Arizonas March 22 primary to Trump and acknowledges Cruz must win 79 percent of the remaining delegates before the GOPs July national convention.

This is the moment for all those who believe in a strong America to come together and craft a new path forward, Cruz declared on Twitter while conservatives were meeting in downtown Washington to brainstorm ways to stop his partys front-runner.

Organizers of the meeting included conservative commentator Erick Erickson and Christian conservative leader Bob Fischer. The goal, as stated in the invitation, was to strategize how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, and if he is the Republican nominee for president, to offer a true conservative candidate in the general election.

The group released a statement after roughly four hours behind closed doors calling for a unity ticket that unites the Republican Party.

While many in the room supported Cruz, they declined to endorse the Texas senator or the only other remaining presidential contender, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and instead urged all former Republican presidential candidates to unite against Trump. They also embraced the possibility of a contested convention.

Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump, they said, an apparent reference to a possible third-party candidacy that might stop Trump but would likely sacrifice the Republican Partys chances in the general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

On Capitol Hill, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said hed help Cruz raise campaign cash in the hope of stopping Trumps march.

Graham, who dropped his own presidential bid last month, called Cruz a reliable Republican. That was a sharp shift from Grahams recent statement comparing the choice between Trump and Cruz to the difference between poisoned or shot  youre still dead.

Amid the Republican chaos, Democratic front-runner Clinton focused on fundraising as her campaign begins to look ahead to the general election. She claimed a fifth victory in Tuesdays primaries, as rival Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in Missouri.

However, Sanders continued to campaign aggressively ahead of contests next Tuesday in Arizona and Utah.

Arizona residents are far more likely to see commercials for Sanders than for any other candidate in either party, advertising tracker Kantar Medias CMAG shows. Though trailing badly in delegates, he is spending about $1.8 million on Arizona ads, triple Clintons media plan.

On the Republican side, so far only Cruz is advertising in the state, a relatively light $256,000.

While none of the Republican candidates campaigned publicly on Thursday, Cruz was to appear in Arizona on Friday before shifting his attention to Utah, which his campaign identified in the strategy memo as a key state in his path forward.

Kasich is also making an aggressive play in Utah, with four public events scheduled there over the next two days. The Ohio governor also unveiled the endorsement of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who praised the temperament and the tone of the Kasich campaign, an indirect jab at Trump.

Kasich has seized on Trumps sometimes violent rhetoric, while an allied group began airing running a TV ad across Utah Thursday that shows a protester being punched in the face at a Trump rally.

There was a time when presidents were honorable. Trustworthy. Whats happened? the narrator asks, later adding, John Kasich is presidential.

With a big delegate lead over Kasich, Cruz remains the Republican best positioned to catch Trump.

Even under a best-case scenario, however, Cruzs campaign envisions a slim chance he can win enough delegates to claim the nomination before the convention. The campaign is predicting success Tuesday in Utah and upcoming contests in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Colorado.

The Cruz strategy also depends upon victories on the final day of primary voting, June 7, which features contests in California and New Jersey, among other states.

In Arizona, experts believe about half of all Arizona voters have already cast their ballots  many of them for Trump.

Cruzs state director, Constantin Querard, downplayed Arizonas importance Thursday even as he said Utah and Arizona have the potential to reset the race as a two-person contest.

I think Utah will be a better measure than Arizona, Querard said.

(AP)
Foreign Ministry calls for avoiding 'any move' on the DPRK issue that would increase tension

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea launches a long range rocket launched into the air in this file still image taken from KRT video footage, released by Yonhap on February 7, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Beijing has said any unilateral sanctions must not hurt China's interests after Washington imposed additional sanctions on Pyongyang because of its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

China always opposes any unilateral sanctions and "any move to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula is opposed", Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in Beijing on Thursday.

US President Barack Obama imposed the new sanctions on Wednesday.

His executive order freezes any property in the United States of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and prohibits exports of goods from the US to the DPRK, Reuters reported.

"All the relevant parties, it is hoped, will exercise restraint, remain calm and avoid any provocative words or actions," Lu added.

The Republic of Korea Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the country's top envoy for the stalled Six-Party Talks will visit China on Friday to discuss issues regarding the DPRK.

Meanwhile, the ROK and the US are conducting joint military drills, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, from March 7 until April 30, reported to be the largest ever.

Pyongyang said on Wednesday that Washington and Seoul are pushing the situation to the point of explosion through the provocation posed by the drills.

A statement issued on Wednesday by the DPRK through the official Korean Central News Agency said the drills amount to "a provocation to the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK and an open declaration of a war against it".

Shi Yongming, an Asia-Pacific studies researcher at the China Institute of International Relations, said Washington and Seoul "have paid too much attention to sanctions, and they proposed few offerings for politically settling the nuclear issue".

Zhang Liangui, an expert in Korean studies at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said Washington and Seoul "are now determined to push Pyongyang to the brink (with all their measures) and finish the whole issue once and for all".

The unilateral sanctions imposed by the US, the ROK and Japan are coordinated with one another, Zhang added.

Kim Hong-kyun, chief ROK envoy for the six-way dialogue to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, will visit China on Friday to meet with Wu Dawei, China's special representative on Korean Peninsula affairs, ROK Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuk told a news briefing.

It will be the first meeting between them since Kim was named in late February as special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs to represent Seoul at the Six-Party Talks.

The talks, which involve the DPRK, China, the ROK, the US, Russia and Japan, have been stalled since 2008.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said hes all in for Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential primary, even if hes not so happy about it.

Graham, R-S.C., threw his support behind Cruz on Thursday, calling him the best choice for Republicans who want to avoid nominating Donald Trump in July.

The bottom line is that I believe Donald Trump would be a disaster for the party, Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. I dont think hes a Republican. I dont think hes a reliable conservative. I think his campaigns been based on xenophobia, race baiting and religious bigotry. I think the damage he would do the party would be enormous, and I dont think hes qualified to be commander in chief.

Graham, who supported Jeb Bushs now-defunct campaign, said he is backing Cruz because Trumps other rival  Ohio Gov. John Kasich  does not have a path to the nomination.

I prefer John Kasich; Cruz is not my first pick by any choice, Graham said. But I dont see how John Kasich can mount the opposition that Ted Cruz can to stop Donald Trump from getting 1,237  the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, last week became Cruzs first Senate endorsement, a sign of the Texas senators persistent unpopularity among his colleagues.

Cruz has worn this outsider status as a badge of honor on the campaign trail, saying he wants to take on the Washington cartel.

Asked if Cruz welcomed his endorsement, Graham said: He certainly welcomes my effort to raise money, and in the pro-Israel community, I think I have some resonance. Ive sort of dedicated my public life to national security. Im seen as a strong supporter of Israel, Im proud of that fact, and Ted has been great on Israel.

Cruz will speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference on Monday in Washington, D.C. According to CNN, Graham will host a fundraiser for Cruz that day on the sidelines of the event.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said the campaign is thrilled by Grahams endorsement, saying it indicates that Republicans realize if we do not defeat Trump in this primary we will have a Democrat as the next president.

Former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio on Wednesday called Cruz the only true conservative left in the race, a sign he could be leaning toward endorsing Cruz.

But it is unclear whether Grahams announcement will bring more establishment GOP lawmakers to Cruzs side.

Graham, who withdrew from the presidential primary in December, has been consistently critical of Cruz and made it clear in January he wasnt thrilled about the idea of having to choose between Cruz and Trump.

If you nominate Trump and Cruz I think you get the same outcome, Graham told reporters Jan. 21. Whether its death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter?

Graham has a history of negative comments about Cruz. If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you, he joked Feb. 26.

The same day, he suggested Cruz and Trump were both liars. I was asked the hardest question in my political life: Do you agree with Donald Trump that Ted Cruz is the biggest liar in politics?' he said. Too close to call.

Graham on Thursday acknowledged his about-face.

This an odd moment, Ill be first to say, he told reporters.

We started out trying to nominate somebody to run in 2016; now I find myself having to fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party, Graham said. I think if we nominate Donald Trump, then we put at risk the heart and soul of conservatism.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Elise Viebeck, Mike DeBonis
Councilman Chaim Deutsch has announced that he has arranged for several safety enhancements on Elm Avenue and East 12th Street. With two schools situated in the vicinity  Bais Yaakov Academy (BYA) and PS 199  parents, neighbors, and school administrators have been requesting a stop sign at this intersection for nearly twenty years. The New York City Department of Transportation repeatedly denied this, despite the hundreds of children who walk to and from school along this block each day.

Recognizing the serious need for this stop sign to prevent speeding cars in these school zones, Councilman Chaim Deutsch contacted NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg directly. Commissioner Trottenberg immediately approved the request, and worked with Councilman Deutsch to arrange for installation within the week.

With the new stop sign already installed, Councilman Deutsch has also arranged for a speed bump on Elm Avenue, between Coney Island Avenue and East 12th Street, which has just been approved by NYCDOT. A speed bump is another important way to limit the ability of cars to speed on our streets.

The safety of our precious children is of utmost importance, said Councilman Chaim Deutsch. We have hundreds of young kids crossing Elm Avenue to get to school each day, and these enhancements are vital for their safety. I am grateful to Commissioner Trottenberg, as well as the administration of both schools, for working with me to ensure that we get the safety enhancements that we need.

As a neighbor to two schools and the father of several young children, the need for increased safety measures at my corner was significant. On behalf of my family and my neighbors, I thank Councilman Deutsch for getting these safety improvements on Elm Avenue, said Yaakov Abadi, a resident of Elm Avenue.

Councilman Deutsch has also arranged for local campers to have use to outdoor recreational space during summer months. With hundreds attending neighborhood camps each year, it is important for children to have recreational space.

In addition, Councilman Deutsch worked with Principal Rosalia Bacarella of PS 199, and identified a need for upgraded chairs in the school auditorium. The outdated seats were a safety concern, with childrens feet often getting stuck in the gaps. Councilman Deutsch allocated a capital grant to PS 199, to fund new chairs for the auditorium.

On behalf of the students, parents, and administration at PS 199, I thank Councilman Deutsch for his support of our school. The seating in our auditorium has been in need of an upgrade for some time, and we are so grateful that Councilman Deutsch supplied us with this grant to replace them, said Principal of PS 199 Rosalia Bacarella. In addition, the significant safety enhancements that have been made on Elm Avenue, thanks to Councilman Deutsch, are instrumental in protecting our 499 students every day. It is wonderful to have a representative who makes the time to visit our school, meet the students, and work to resolves our concerns!

Thank you to Councilman Deutsch for being so responsive to BYAs needs. With 800 students, and 800 campers in the summer, the safety enhancements made on Elm Avenue are essential to improving the safety of more than a thousand children who utilize our school building every day. In addition, Councilman Deutsch helped our camp to obtain a permit so that our campers have access to a park during the summer. We are so grateful to the Councilman for all that he does for our school and for our community, said Rabbi Chaim Milworm, administrator of BYA.

Councilman Chaim Deutsch is a strong advocate for enhancing the safety on streets near our local schools. He continues to work to ensure the protection of children, pedestrians, and motorists in these, and all areas.

(YWN Desk  NYC)
HaGaon HaRav Moshe Sternbuch Shlita during a shiur in his Ramot yeshiva equated the hate that senior government officials and the judicial system have for Yiddishkheit to that of Amalek.

Rav Sternbuch referred to the recent cabinet decision allocating an egalitarian prayer area near the Kosel for the Reform Movement. He explained that such actions against Yiddishkheit are from Amalek in our generation. He mentioned a painful case in which a Jewish child is raised as a Jew and then given over by a court to the Arab father in line is Islam, ignoring halacha totally. He blasted the judge, who handed down the verdict this week, deciding to ignore the fact the boys mother is a Jewess, preferring to address the fact that his father is a Muslim.

The rav cried over the fact that this innocent neshama which now leads a frum life of Torah and Mitzvos, will be given over to the father RL to be raised as a Muslim.

The rav explained that the system realizes the chareidim are not going to be stopped so for the judges, the main thing is not to permit the chareidi child to be raised chareidi, preferring to give him to the Muslim father. He adds it does not matter, for the chareidim will continue as we are firm and committed in the derech of Torah.

Rav Sternbuch quoted HaGaon HaRav Chaim of Brisk ZTL who explains that the mitzvah of eradicating Amalek is not specifically the descendants of Amalek but the   which includes kofrim who battle against HKBH.

In our generation we see the growing hate of religion among the heads of government and judicial system in Eretz Yisrael. Their entire mission is to bring us pain and hound us, and they are literally like Amalek whose entire mission in their wars was just to bring pain to Hashems nation and they are the zecher Amalek in our generation.

The rav stated the way to strengthen our hand is by increasing limud Torah, which also weakens the opponent.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
An inspection of the books carried out by a head of the Achva VReut nonprofit of a shul in the community of Reut, near Modiin, revealed over NIS 100,000 missing from the account. The missing money was from donations. The report appeared in a local paper last week.

Officials report NIS 105,000 has vanished from the Sephardi shuls account. Shul officials explain this was money from pledges, including NIS 18,000 for new chairs and NIS 29,500 for memorial objects and NIS 52,000 for a bar mitzvah.

It appears the shuls books are not in order and there are partial entries and a lack of transparency. One of the person who recently complained is shul treasurer Yechiel Ratzabi, who detected money was missing. Amos Cohen, who heads the nonprofits audit committee confirms the sum that has vanished. The inspection covered a period from 2008-2013. Cohen reported there were many problems with their computer during this same period, and this might account for some of the discrepancies.

A general meeting of the shul was held last week and members were promised answers within two weeks. The shul has decided for the time being not to involve police, hoping to rectify the matter in house. Cohen however explains that as head of the nonprofit, which is a registered charity, he is compelled to notify relevant agencies including police. He explained his resources and abilities are limited and police must be called in to see where the money vanished.

Attorney Avi Sasson, who runs the shul the past two years explains public funds were not put in private pockets but in many cases, persons pledge money but fail to make good on the pledge. This might be the case here too he states. He is confident that no one stole anything but this is a case of unfulfilled pledges and mismanagement at worst. He also stated the issues being probed deal with a period of time that precede his assuming his current position as head of the shul.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Special to Yeshiva World News

It is a shiur for two types of people.

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It is an interactive conference call shiur,with remarkably prepared Marei Mekomos delivered by Rabbi Yair Hoffman. The shiur will begin on Sunday evening at 9:45 PM.

The Marei Mekomos are prepared by the Lakewood Yeshivas remarkable Shivti program.

It covers the most pertinent subject matters. This Sunday, it will be an in-depth analysis of the Mitzvah of Matanos LEvyonim. Next week, it will be on the obligation of learning the laws of Pesach 30 days beforehand.

The shiur will be presented by Rabbi Yair Hoffman who is known for his clear presentation and understanding of the relevant material.

The Shivti learning program now has over 30 chaburos in ten different cities: Toronto, Dallas, Far Rockaway, Detroit, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Miami Beach and more.

It is coordinated by Rav Avrohom Yishayah Frand, a chassidisha yungerman from England. He is an extremely talented Talmid Chochom who heads a whole team.

Rabbi Avrohom Colman, one of the coordinators, says, The goal of the program, to quote Rav Aharon Kotler ztl, part of the mission of BMG is to provide opportunities for serious Torah learning. That is what this program does.



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North Korea ignored U.N. resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials said, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile fired from a site north of Pyongyang flew about 800 kilometers (500 miles) before crashing off the Norths east coast. It was the first medium-range missile launched by the North since it fired two in April 2014, said a South Korean defense official, requesting anonymity citing department rules.

A senior U.S. defense official said the missile appeared to be a Rodong type fired from a road-mobile launcher. The test violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from engaging in any ballistic and nuclear activities, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The launch came as North Korea condemned ongoing annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that it sees as an invasion rehearsal. The two sets of drills are the largest ever, in response to the Norths nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year. One of the drills, computer-simulated war games, was to end later Friday while the other, field training, is to continue late April.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in an apparent anger over the drills and tough U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch.

South Koreas military said its surveillance equipment detected the trajectory of a suspected second missile fired from the same site. A Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said the object later disappeared from South Korean radar at an altitude of 17 kilometers (10 miles) and that it was trying to find out if a missile had been fired or something else was captured by the radar.

No fresh sanctions on the North were expected for Fridays launch. The U.N. Security Council slapped the country with sanctions each time when it conducted nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches, but it usually responded to short- and medium-range ballistic launches with statements criticizing them.

On Tuesday, North Koreas state media said Kim had ordered tests soon of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. Kim issued the order while overseeing a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target, according to the Norths Korean Central News Agency.

Taewoo Kim, a military expert at the Souths Konyang University, said it is likely that Fridays launch was a test of a re-entry vehicle mounted on the purported Rodong missile.

The North Korean missile fired may not be a Rodong but a long-range missile whose launch angle was altered so that it didnt fly its full range, said Kwon Sejin, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. He said the missile may have carried an empty warhead, which contains trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if it can survive the fiery re-entry and detonate at the right time.

Outside experts said it is a key remaining technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. South Korean defense officials said earlier this week that North Korea had yet to develop the re-entry technology, so it still does not have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.

The South Korean defense official said Seoul has no immediate plans to try to retrieve debris of the missile that appeared to have landed in the waters inside Japans air defense identification zone. South Korea did not retrieve missile parts after the Norths 2014 launches either.

North Korea is thought to have a small arsenal of atomic bombs, but South Korean officials and many outside experts say they are not small enough to place on missiles that can strike faraway targets.

Analyst Lee Choon Geun at South Koreas state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute said the North can probably place nuclear warheads on its shorter-range Scuds and medium-range Rodong missiles, which would put South Korea and Japan under its striking range. Other analysts question that.

The North began to develop ballistic missiles in the 1970s by reverse-engineering Soviet-made Scuds it acquired from Egypt. After several failures it put its first satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket launched in December 2012. Its second successful satellite launch occurred this February. The U.N., the U.S. and others say the launches were a banned test of missile technology. Ballistic missiles and rockets used for satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

(AP)
In a year when the Republican Party is breaking apart because of Donald Trump, the only man left with a chance to beat him is trying to build a big tent  by GOP standards  when it comes to foreign affairs.

On Thursday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced his campaigns national security advisory team, and it includes many foreign-policy insurgents and a few more establishment types. The list includes conservatives who disagree on one of the most pressing issues facing the next president: defining and confronting radical Islam.

The first name on the advisory list that stands out is Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official who has emerged as a lightning rod in the Obama era, accused by the Southern Poverty Law Center of being one of the nations leading Islamophobes.

When Trump proposed a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration, he quoted from a 2015 survey of American Muslims commissioned by the think tank Gaffney founded, the Center for Security Policy. It concluded that a quarter of U.S. Muslims supported violent jihad against the U.S. This led to speculation in the Washington press that Gaffney was advising Trump.

But Gaffney is a Cruz man. In an interview, he said that he met Cruz when he was running for Senate in 2012, and that he has briefed him on the FBIs investigation into a Muslim Brotherhood-linked charity known as the Holy Land Foundation and on how Sharia law is a threat to America. I hope that some of that went into his decision to introduce legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Gaffney said.

Until this year, these views were considered radioactive by the Republican establishment. George W. Bush, after Sept. 11, famously appeared at a Washington mosque and declared that Islam was a religion of peace. Arizona Sen. John McCain, as his partys presidential nominee in 2008, famously rebuked a talk-radio host for calling his challenger Barack Hussein Obama, a dog whistle to the presidents Arabic middle name. In 2012, the campaign of Republican nominee Mitt Romney spurned Gaffney and other conservatives who warned that Sharia was a domestic threat.

This time around its a little different. As Cruz makes the case that he is the last, best chance to prevent Trump from winning his partys nomination, his foreign-policy advisers include not only Gaffney, but also three others who work for Gaffneys think tank: former CIA officers Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez and former Army Special Forces Master Sgt. Jim Hanson. Also on the list is Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the first World Trade Center bombing. McCarthy has been outspoken in his view that adherents at least to political Islam are seeking to impose Sharia law in the U.S.

At the same time, Cruzs team includes former officials who reject Gaffneys broad view that any Muslim who believes in Sharia law by definition believes in a totalitarian and violent ideology at war with America.

Were at war with a coalition of radical Islamists and radical secularists. Its not all one thing, nor is Islam all one thing, Michael Ledeen, a former Reagan administration official and a Cruz campaign adviser, told me.

Jim Talent, a former Missouri Republican senator who was a key adviser to Romney in 2008 and 2012, is signed up for the Cruz team. So is Mary Habeck, a former staffer on George W. Bushs national security council, who is an expert on jihadi organizations and has warned against demonizing the entire religion of Islam.

Another Cruz adviser, Elliott Abrams, helped craft Bushs policy to empower moderate Muslims in the Middle East against radicals. He told me he feels much the same way as Habeck. Its now 15 years since 9/11, and I think its obvious that Muslim citizens in the U.S. and Muslim leaders abroad have an absolutely critical role to play in fighting jihadis and other Muslim extremists, Abrams said. This is partly a battle within Islam that they are going to have fight and win. Alienating these potential allies is the kind of foolish policy that the Obama administration has engaged in when it comes to Arab states that are our allies.

Victoria Coates, who has been Cruzs main adviser on national security since he came to the Senate, told me this tension on the policy team is by design and not an accident. She added: Both Frank and Elliott are people I went out of my way to set up meetings with the Senator. He has met with both of them individually for years.

Cruz threaded this needle between Gaffney and Abrams in his response to Trumps call in December for a temporary ban on Muslims coming to the U.S. Cruz never criticized Trumps position directly. (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did.) But he also didnt endorse the position, instead introducing a bill to halt refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or Islamic State presence, with exceptions for asylum seekers fleeing genocide. When Donald Trump talked about barring all Muslims from entering into the United States, Senator Cruz of course did not endorse that opinion, in part because he knows the law, Abrams said.

Cruz also knows politics. He has not won over the Washington mandarins who came out early for Jeb Bush, like former CIA director Michael Hayden. But after Rubio dropped out of the race on Tuesday, Cruz made an appeal to his former rivals supporters to join his campaign.

Cruz is hoping Republican leaders in Washington will embrace his candidacy now, even though he has railed against them since he came to the Senate. Cruz also knows that long-time supporters like him precisely because he so infuriates the Republican establishment.

His new team of national security advisers, in this respect, has something for everyone.

(c) 2016, Bloomberg View  Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist writing about politics and foreign affairs.
A few weeks ago, New York makeup artist and beauty blogger Alaha Majid shared pictures of her putting on a full face of makeup  including smokey eyes and false lashes  all while in the middle of giving birth.

In one of her Instagram updates, she told her followers how she was managing to do such precision makeup while in the middle of contractions.

I was pausing during contractions and picking up where I left off once the contractions passed, she wrote, explaining that she had a completely natural birth.

And, when the contractions got a little too strong, her husband was there to carry on contouring.

Alaha Majid posted on Instagram and Twitter to let her friends and followers know that she had given birth to a daughter, including an image of herself doing make-up.

We would like to take a second to welcome our precious angel, Sofia Alaya Karimi, into the world. Baby Sofia was born two nights ago, on February 15, 2016 at 6:19 p.m. weighing 8lbs 13oz and a height of 21.5 inches, Alaha Majid wrote in her Instagram, admitting that she did go full glam to welcome her daughter into the world. (Photo/Instagram)
If I had a tenner for every time Ive been delayed on a train I would be a rich woman. The same can't be said for the times Ive actually claimed for said delayed or cancelled trains.

Now while this is partly due to the fact Im the kind of person who rarely gets to the end of a to-do list, its also due to the ridiculously over-complicated system for claiming.

More often than not Ill skip the compensation process altogether and ask for it (rant) via Twitter when stuck in the middle of nowhere on a train with no air conditioning (the people running these accounts must have the patience of saints).

The fact every train company has a different set of rules with some allowing compensation for 15 minute delays, others for at least an hour, and others offering vouchers for the same train line rather than cash.

Train delays: The rail regulator has found 80% of passengers don't claim for delays or cancellations

Add to this the fact each has a different claiming system  often youll have to do it in the train station where you bought the tickets, or via an online system on the train operators' websites, or by printing off a form and sending it off by post.

Its very rare for it to happen automatically - in fact the only line to do this is c2c, which is currently testing out an automatic option.

And it seems Im not alone as the results of the regulators report into a super-complaint launched by Which? last year show that 80 per cent of passengers do not claim.

Just think how much of that unclaimed money is still with the train companies and yet the trains still dont run on time and Im often still squished into a doorway next to a blocked toilet surrounded by equally angry passengers on a four-hour train to Wales (thanks First Great Western).

After receving a deluge of complaints, Which? issued a super-complaint to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) and the results are back.

The big reveal is that millions of passengers are not getting the compensation they are owed for train delays and cancellations (exactly what Which? and others have been saying for years).

It also says while progress is being made, the awareness of passengers is not high enough and the information they receive needs to be improved.

So what is to be done about the impending train crisis? The ORR has suggested five things:

- A national campaign to increase passenger awareness of the compensation available

- Clearer forms and website information to make the process simpler

- Better training of staff

- A review of consistency between train companies

- A clearer licence condition for train companies so explaining compensation is considered and enforced as a key element of good passenger information.

Which? says millions of passengers are not getting the compensation owed for cancellations and delays

Now, while any change in this sector are a positive thing  and theres no doubt making the whole process simpler, improving staff training and a big campaign to make people aware will help - there seems to be one obvious flaw here.

Its 2016 and almost everyone does everything digitally - so why isn't automatic compensation being rolled out across the network? This is not only desperately needed, its something consumers should demand.

The problem isn't that people don't know they can claim - the problem is the way they have to do it.

Executive director for Which? Richard Lloyd says about the regulator's proposals: This alone will not be enough to solve the problem for passengers in the long term.

The Government must now ensure that the rail regulator has all the powers and duties it needs to be a consumer watchdog with real teeth.

The regulator will launch a nationwide campaign to make passengers more aware of how to get compensation

Why is there not a system in place whereby delayed customers are able to automatically get compensation  in the way they paid for it. If c2c can do it, why can't every train line? Surely the amount we're not claiming in delays and compensation could be used to fund the investment in creating a digital platform for claiming?

Or at best, why isnt there at least a universal app whereby passengers can instantly claim for delays without having to go through the process of working out how long they were delayed, then how much theyre due, then going through a website form or paper work in a ticket office staff before theyre able to claim?

Times have moved on and the UK rail network has not caught up. This report was the chance to create something meaningful and useful to train passengers instead of the current antiquated system.
Berkeley Group shares fell 3 per cent today after the builder hinted that sales in its core London market had started to slow due to a significant increase in property taxes over the last 18 months.

The upmarket housebuilder, which predominately focuses on London and the South-east, recorded a 4 per cent decline in forward reservations in the three months to the end of February.

Since its half year results in December, the group said it has sold 62 properties worth more than 2million - 'a similar number to the same period in 2014/15, when the market slowed in the run-up to the general election.'

Shaky: There is currently a lot of nervousness about the top-end of the London market with a possible 'Brexit' from the European Union, Stamp Duty changes, and the fact more supply is coming on stream in the capital

The FTSE 100-listed firm cited increased transaction taxes over the past 18 months as a reason for the tail off in activity at the upper end of the housing market, as well as uncertainty surrounding the upcoming European Union membership referendum, scheduled for June 23.

Berkeley described the UK as 'one of the world's highest property taxation regimes' following the changes to stamp duty, which made purchases of homes costing above 937,500 more expensive.

And there is more pain to come, with a further 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge for second homes and buy-to-let properties scheduled to take effect from April.

Berkeley shares were down 3 per cent, or 92.0p at 3,164.0p in mid morning trading, although analysts did point out that the stock has been up 11 per cent since March and so the movement could be nothing more than a spot of profit-taking.

Chris Millington, analyst at Numis Securities said: 'I think there is a lot of nervousness about the top-end of the London market at the moment with Brexit, the Stamp Duty changes and the fact that more supply is coming on stream (mainly Nine Elms etc) - which undoubtedly impacts sentiment for Berkeley.

'However, what I think people miss on the stock is that they are generally very good at designing schemes and setting the right price point, the land has been bought very well and forward orders (including cash already on deposit) is over 4bilion  which is over 2 years of sales.'

He added: 'I think they are well insulated against short term trends and I actually think London will be a good performer over the medium term - more in terms of volume than price however after the big rises over recent years.'

The group said it remains bullish about the year ahead and its long term prospects.

It stated that results for the current financial year would be 'at the top end of expectations'.

And it added that it was on course to produce pretax profits totalling 2billion in the three years to 2018.

Analysts have pencilled in profits of 525million for the year ahead, albeit lower than the 539.7million made in 2015.

At its half year results in December, Berkeley posted a 3.8 per cent decline in pretax profit to 293.2million.

Clyde Lewis, analyst at Peel Hunt, said: 'While sentiment to the London housing market has dipped on fears about Brexit and a global slowdown, Berkeleys operating performance has not.

'With full-year profits expected to be at the top end of the range, and with 3billion of cash due from forward sales, the risks to medium-term expectations look modest.

'With the large-scale deficit in Londons housing supply and the groups track record in creating value, we are happy to ride out the short-term sentiment swings. Remains a Buy.'

And Ian Forrest, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, said: This was a mixed update for investors, but for income-seekers it was reassuring to hear that the company remains on course to deliver 2bn in profits in the three years to 2017/18. This should enable it to continue the generous level of dividends.
Telecoms giant BT Group has appointed Simon Lowth as its new finance director following his departure from oil and gas explorer BG Group, which has been bought by Royal Dutch Shell.

Lowth will join BT on July 4 after stepping down from his position as chief finance officer at the energy company in the wake of the 35billion takeover.

BT revealed in February that its long serving finance boss, Tony Chanmugam will step down and take up a new role overseeing the integration of mobile phone giant EE into BT after their own 12billion tie-up, which completed in January.

New boy: Former BG finance director Simon Lowth joins BT after the oil company was taken over by Shell

Lowth - who has also held top-level positions at drugs giant AstraZeneca and utilities provider ScottishPower - said he was joining the telecoms company at an 'exciting time'.

He added: 'Having acquired one of the UK's leading mobile operators and with super-fast fibre broadband available to well over 24 million homes, BT is well-placed for growth in consumer, business and wholesale markets.'

Lowth, a veteran of management consultancy McKinsey, joined ScottishPower in 2003 and worked as the company's corporate strategy director before being promoted to finance director in 2005.

He moved to become chief finance officer for AstraZeneca and served as the company's interim chief executive from June to September 2012, before joining BG Group in November 2013.

He has also been a non-executive director of Standard Chartered bank since 2010.

One of his key tasks as the company's incoming finance head will be to help manage BT's 12.5billion buyout of EE, which handed the telecoms firm 35 per cent of the mobile consumer market and a similar share of the UK's consumer broadband business.

The deal means BT will be able to offer bundles of telecoms, TV, broadband and mobile products to its customers to compete better with rivals such as Sky and Virgin Media.

BT chief executive, Gavin Patterson, said: 'Simon brings a wealth of experience to BT, having served as CFO and a board director for a number of major international companies, and I'm thrilled he's joining.

'On top of his solid financial acumen, his strong organisational leadership and engineering experience at a number of leading infrastructure companies will be a real asset for BT.'

He added: 'I'd also like to thank Tony Chanmugam for his tremendous hard work, commitment and the strong results that he has delivered during his career.

'BT is a much stronger business today as a result of the phenomenal role Tony has played in BT's cost transformation and strategic direction. I wish him all the best in his future enterprises.'

Last month, BT reported third quarter pretax profits of 862million, up 24 per cent on the same stage a year earlier and above market expectations.

But the company also remains embroiled in a fierce industry debate over its subsidiary Openreach.

In February, the regulator Ofcom told BT it must give its competitors full network access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles.

In addition, the company will be required to operate Openreach at arm's length from BT.

If BT fails to do this, and shrugs off reforms demanded by the watchdog, then it could yet be forced to cut sell Openreach.
Sainsbury's appeared to have won the 1.4billion race for Argos last night after fending off advances from a South African challenger.

The supermarket giant and Steinhoff International, which owns Bensons For Beds and Harveys in the UK, have been battling to gain control of Argos owner Home Retail Group for weeks.

The suitors were given a deadline of 5pm yesterday to table a firm offer or walk away.

But after a tense waiting game to see who would bid first, and with the deadline fast-approaching, Steinhoff ducked out of the race for Home Retail and instead announced plans to buy French chain Darty in a 673million deal.

Got it: High Street favourite Argos looks set to remain in British hands after Sainsbury's appeared to have fended off advances from South African challenger Steinhoff International with a 1.4bn bid

Steinhoffs announcement that it was buying Darty came at 3.20pm UK-time, and a minute later it revealed the bidding battle for Argos was over. Home Retails shares tumbled 11 per cent on the news that Steinhoff had walked away.

At 4.31pm, Sainsburys launched its cash and shares offer of 1.4billion.

But it came after the stock market closed at 4.30pm and Home Retail shares finished the day down 18p at 163.2p.

Sainsburys first made a secret approach for Home Retail in November but was rebuffed.

The supermarket came back with an increased offer of 1.1billion in early February.

This won the backing of the Home Retail. But before Sainsburys was able to lodge a formal bid Steinhoff gatecrashed the deal  offering 1.4billion in its attempt to get its hands on Argos.

The counter-offer set the scene for yesterdays dramatic deadline day developments with Sainsburys finally coming out on top.

Sainsburys new offer was made up of 0.321 of Sainsburys shares and 55p in cash and a special dividend for every Home Retail share.

It was the same as the offer it made last month but it is now valued at around 1.4billion due to the increase in the Sainsburys share price since it first made the proposal.

The bid is at a 75 per cent premium to Home Retail Groups share price in early January, before any offer became public.

Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe has previously stated that combining Argos would create the UK's 'food and non-food retailer of choice', with 2,000 stores

In the updated proposal, and following due diligence, Sainsburys said it expects earnings synergies or savings of 160million  up from a previous estimate of 120million.

The victory is an accomplishment for chief executive Mike Coupe. His desire to get his hands on Argos is part of the grocers strategy to compete in the world of online shopping.

Coupe has said the takeover would create the largest non-food retailer in the country with more than 2,000 shops selling 100,000 non-food products to more than 25m customers.

He wants to use Argoss home delivery supply chain expertise to compete with online rivals such as US giant Amazon. Argos runs around 800 shops and has been trialling concessions in Sainsburys supermarkets.

Sainsburys chairman David Tyler said: We will create a multi-product, multi-channel proposition with fast delivery networks that we believe will be very attractive to the customers of both businesses.

If the deal goes ahead it was estimated that Sainsburys could close as many as 200 Argos stores as leases come up for renewal.

However, Coupe and finance boss John Rogers said they would be closing fewer stores than predicted, and emphasised that there would be more Argos outlets overall as it increases its concessions across Sainsburys stores.

Home Retail said its board looks forward to working with Sainsburys towards a recommendation for the offer.

The grocery sector has been under huge pressure amid competition from the growth of discounters such as Lidl and Aldi, changing shopping habits and the move to online shopping.

Furniture retail and manufacturer Steinhoff operates in 20 countries across 24 brands including Conforama in France, which confirmed it had outbid French books and music retailer Fnac to win London-listed Darty yesterday.
Experts are concerned the insurance industry faces too many challenges to be attractive to investors

Annual results have boosted the share prices of L&G, Prudential and Standard Life over recent weeks, but some experts are concerned the industry faces too many challenges to be attractive to investors.

While the financial crisis brings banking stocks to mind, the insurance industry also faced its fair share of woe in the aftermath of the global meltdown.

Between February 2007 and March 2009, Legal & Generals share price collapsed from 1.65 to just 23p.

Increased regulation over the insurance industry has also added to costs, while a flood of money from quantitative easing has reduced the returns on the safe-haven assets such as gilts and bonds, which they invest their cash in to make sure they can meet their obligations.

Meanwhile, the introduction of pension freedoms last April saw demand for annuities  a big part of many insurers business  nosedive.

On top of that, insurance premium tax was increased from 6 per cent to 9.5 per cent in November, pushing up the cost of policies and making it harder to win customers with cheap deals. IPT will increase again to 10 per cent later this year.

But is there light at the end of the tunnel for these firms, or are the headwinds too strong to overcome?

Today, L&Gs share price has more than recovered, standing at 238p. Analysts were disappointed with its solvency when it posted its annual report last week but profits up 10 per cent and a dividend hike of 19 per cent were enough to allay many concerns.

Earlier this month, Prudential reported strong results with a dividend increase of 5 per cent and a special dividend announced, and in February Standard Life also upped its dividend as it revealed that profits had risen and inflows into its funds had increased.

Tom Becket, chief investment officer at Psigma, says: Its a complicated picture for insurers, at the moment. A lot of different factors are pushing and pulling on their businesses all at once.

Since the financial crisis, investing in insurers has been seen as an easy way to access the financial sector without taking on the risk of banks. But banks have now faced a lot of their problems and are set to pay dividends again.

Meanwhile, with so many challenges, you have to question whether insurers will be able to keep growing their own dividends.

Helal Miah, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, likes Prudential.

The company has around a third of its business in Asia, where demographics make for good prospects.

A flood of money from quantitative easing has reduced the returns on the safe-haven assets such as gilts and bonds, which insurers invest their cash in to make sure they can meet their obligations

He says: Populations are rising and ageing, and incomes are increasing, and that means more people start to look at life and insurance products.

'Middle-class Asian consumers will start to think more about how to protect themselves in old age, as we do in the UK and the US.

In the UK, the Pru has partnerships with banks, which help its sales. One major negative for the firm, however, has been its asset management arm M&G that saw savers pull almost 11billion out of its funds in 2015.

Miah also rates Aviva, which seems to be on a better footing after restructuring and selling some of its poorly performing European business.

The company recently acquired smaller firm Friends Life, and its integration has been faster than expected.

Investing in individual shares is, of course, risky.

Darius McDermott, director at FundCalibre, likes the Polar Capital Global Insurance fund, which invests in around 35 different insurance businesses.

Its biggest investments include insurer Chubb, underwriting business Validus and catastrophe reinsurers RenaissanceRe.

Some 47 per cent of its cash is in US companies. It has returned 8 per cent over the past 12 months, and 41 per cent over the past three years.

McDermott, director at Fund Calibre, says: I like this fund because the managers have an intimate knowledge of the market, having worked in it for the past 17 years.

Other funds invest in big insurance firms but do not have all of their money concentrated in a single industry.
Impatient: Sir Richard Branson accused MPs of putting their own ambitions ahead of the country

Sir Richard Branson has attacked short-sighted politicians for delaying the decision to build a third runway at Heathrow.

The founder of Virgin Atlantic accused MPs of putting their own ambitions ahead of the country.

In what will be seen as a thinly veiled attack on London mayor Boris Johnson, the billionaire said: Britain and London is being held back massively, and sadly one or two politicians are doing what is right for themselves rather than whats right for the country, in my opinion.

'They should be bold and brave on big infrastructure decisions.

His comments could also be seen as a swipe at the candidates seeking to succeed Johnson  Conservative Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan for Labour  who are both campaigning against Heathrows expansion.

The debate over expanding the UKs airport capacity has been a long-running row.

Airline bosses and big business have slammed a succession of governments for failing to address the issue of airport expansion.

It was hoped the publication last year of the report on the UKs airport capacity by Sir Howard Davies, which recommended building at Heathrow rather than expanding Gatwick, would solve the crisis.
Greek entrepreneur, Stelios Haji-Ioannou this week published a letter warning Fastjet could go bust

The bitter row between Fastjet and investor Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou has exploded into the open and could now end up in court.

The Greek entrepreneur, who has a 12.6 per cent stake in the budget airline, this week published a letter warning that the company could go bust.

Fastjet hit back yesterday, accusing Haji-Ioannou of 'wholly inappropriate' meddling and threatened to sue him and his investment group EasyGroup over the damage caused.

The billionaire responded by accusing the Africa-focused carrier of 'trying to cover the matter in a veil of secrecy'.

And in another dramatic development, Tim Ingram, EasyGroup's representative on the Fastjet board, resigned.

Fastjet shares fell another 17 per cent or 6.12p to 30.12p yesterday.

Referring to Haji-Ioannou's decision to make his concerns about the health of the company public, Fastjet said it 'cannot understand why EasyGroup has published this particular letter without first raising its concerns with the company'.

It went on: 'The board considers the publication of this letter as wholly inappropriate and is taking legal advice on the matter.

The company holds EasyGroup responsible for any damage caused to the business by the publication of this letter.'

The low-cost carrier has struggled after telling investors earlier this month that earnings would be well 'below market expectations'  its third profit warning in less than a year  and that it would slump into the red.

Haji-Ioannou has been unhappy with its performance and Fastjet bowed to shareholder demands calling for the immediate dismissal of chief executive and founder Ed Winter days ago.

Winter had announced in January he would step down, but only when a replacement is found.

At present the airline is being run by executive chairman Colin Child.

Operating from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, Fastjet has been undercutting larger carriers. But it has struggled in the face of tough conditions in Tanzania, where most of its fleet is deployed.

Haji-Ioannou is concerned that the company stopped publishing passenger numbers four months ago, which he says could be in breach of its licensing agreement with EasyGroup.
Young savers torn between saving for a home or a pension were offered help to do both by Chancellor George Osborne in this week's Budget.

A cash bonus worth up to 1,000 a year will be added to every 4,000 saved into a Lifetime Isa after it is launched in April 2017. You need to be aged 18-40 to open one, and you can only touch the money to buy a home, or else face a stiff penalty on any withdrawals before you hit the age of 60.

The Lifetime Isa was broadly welcomed as an innovative new savings product. But some finance experts voiced concern that it could be a Trojan horse for axing pension tax relief and introducing Pension Isas for all.

Helping strivers and savers: If you are under 40 and save the maximum 4,000 a year into Lifetime Isa, you will be handed 1,000 from the Government toward a first home or retirement

Meanwhile, like all the Help of Buy schemes, it could well push up property prices. Keeping prices artificially high makes renting and buying more costly for everyone, and encourages people scrambling to get on the housing ladder to take on outsize mortgages they might be unable to repay.

We explain what the Lifetime Isa offers and the pros and cons of taking up the deal below, and round up views on how much of a threat it poses to traditional pensions.

How does the new Lifetime Isa Work?

Young workers will no longer have to choose between getting on the housing ladder or putting money aside for old age from April next year.

If you are under 40 and save the maximum 4,000 a year into Lifetime Isa, you will be handed 1,000 from the Government toward a first home or retirement. So for every 4 you save, that's a 1 bonus. You can keep that money in cash, or put it into stocks or investment funds, as with other Isas.

Savers can tap into their pots if they want to use some or all of the money to buy their first home, or wait until they are 60 to withdraw cash and their bonus tax-free.

Your savings and the bonus can be used towards a deposit on a first home worth up to 450,000 - and the deal allows two first-time buyers to both earn bonuses then pool their resources to buy a home.

Poll Is the Lifetime Isa a good idea? Yes No Is the Lifetime Isa a good idea? Yes 1066 votes

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What if you already have a home?

All savers aged under 40 will be able to open a Lifetime Isa, even those who already own a home and are saving into a pension.

This opens up the door for investors who can find the money to benefit from both tax relief on pension contributions and the bonus on a Lifetime Isa.

What happens when you hit 40?

You must open an account before you are 40, but you can carry on earning bonuses until you are aged 50, and continue saving after that without bonuses. After 50, you can transfer your pot between providers or change your investment portfolio if you wish.

The overall annual Isa allowance is being hiked from 15,240 to 20,000 in April 2017, with the new Lifetime Isa pot falling under this umbrella.

Those who prefer to use the allowance to save for retirement, can take out all the savings tax-free when they are 60 and get their Lifetime Isa bonus paid out.

You can only take out one Lifetime Isa a year, but you can take them out with different providers in other years.

This will allow you to keep your savings under the 75,000 level, and qualify for a payout from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if an Isa provider goes bust. Read more here about the FSCS.

Budget 2016: Young savers torn between saving for a home or a pension were offered help to do both by Chancellor George Osborne

What if you already have a Help to Buy Isa?

Those with a Help to Buy Isa can transfer those savings into a Lifetime Isa when they are launched in 2017, or continue saving into both. However, you can only use the bonus from one to buy a house.

The Help to Buy Isa, launched only last December, will be axed in November 2019.

These products allow first-time buyers to save 200 each month, while the government provides a 25 per cent bonus on the interest and contributions once the product is closed.

However, the bonus is limited to 3,000 so the most you can save is 12,000, giving you 15,000 in total when you come to buy a home.

Read our guide to Help to Buy, a catch-all slogan which also includes loans towards new-build properties, mortgage guarantees, and targeted offers to Londoners and shared ownership borrowers.

What are the penalties for early withdrawals?

There will be fairly stiff penalties for making withdrawals from a Lifetime Isa for anything other than buying a home.

You can cash in at any time before you turn 60, but you lose the bonus and any interest or growth on this, plus savers doing this will have to pay a 5 per cent charge.

However, the Government is looking at the possibility of letting people take money out for a non-house purchase, but not slapping on any penalties if they replace it again before the age of 60.

In addition to withdrawing your money from the Lifetime Isa to buy a home, you can also do so without penalty if you fall terminally ill.

Home ownership dream: Like all the Help of Buy schemes, the Lifetime Isa could well push up property prices

Andy Bell, chief executive of broker AJ Bell, said the proposed 5 per cent early exit penalty was unnecessary and should be abandoned when the final rules for the Lifetime Isa are agreed.

'Unless they are buying their first house, investors will already lose the Government bonus and any interest or investment growth on that bonus if they cash in their investment early. This seems ample deterrent from making early withdrawals.

'Assuming the Treasury will receive the 5 per cent penalty there is a huge sense of irony that the Government is making moves to ban early exit fees levied by pension providers but is happy to levy one itself. Early exit penalties are a relic of a bygone pension industry and there is no role for them in modern savings products.'

What are the advantages of the Lifetime Isa?

* You can save towards two big life goals, a home and retirement, without locking up money into a pension until you are aged 55.

* Isas are simple, easy to understand and popular financial products.

* You get a Government bonus going in, equivalent to basic rate tax relief, and then withdrawals are tax free as well.

* A nifty bit of arithmetic by Legal and General Investment Management shows that if a 25 year-old started a Lifetime Isa and contributed 4,000 a year combined with 1,000 from the Government and 5 per cent annual growth, that would equal a tax-free pot of over 416,000 at age 60.

* Lifetime Isas are likely to be attractive to self-employed people, who don't receive employer contributions into their pensions so won't miss out on any of this cash.

Aspiration: Young people are struggling to achieve life goals like buying a house and still save enough to retire as comfortably as their elders

* If you are wealthy and have already maxed out pension tax relief benefits, you can still take out a Lifetime Isa and earn what is effectively an extra tax break on savings.

The annual amount you can put into a pension without having to pay tax is 40,000 at present. From this April, higher earners making between 150,000 and 210,000 a year will see the size of their annual allowance gradually reduced from 40,000 to 10,000.

Also from April, the lifetime amount you can put into a pension without tax penalties is set to fall from 1.25million to 1million. It's less likely you will have hit this by age 40, but even if you just suspect you are going to later on, diverting funds into a Lifetime Isa might seem like a tax-efficient option.

What are the disadvantages of the Lifetime Isa?

* There is a 5 per cent penalty on withdrawals and you will lose your bonus and any interest earned on it, unless you use the money for a home, become terminally ill, or wait until you are 60.

* Your employer won't be able to make any contributions, which is a big perk of workplace pensions.

* You can't earn any more bonuses from a Lifetime Isa after you reach the age of 50.

* The bonus is equivalent to pension tax relief of 20 per cent for basic rate taxpayers, but looks less attractive to higher earners who get tax relief at 40 per cent or 45 per cent. Fidelity International has compiled the following table showing how Lifetime Isas stack up against pensions at different income tax rates.

Income tax comparison: Green indicates that a pension is as good or better than a Lifetime Isa, while red shows that a Lifetime Isa is better than a pension (Source: Fidelity International)

* You can access your pension at age 55, but with a Lifetime Isa you have to wait until 60 if you want to keep the bonus and avoid the penalty. It's possible that the rule is a forerunner for raising the age limit for accessing traditional pensions from 55 to 60 as well.

* Many people might be willing to pay the penalty to tap their pot for short-term spending needs or emergencies. Locking up money in a pension until you are 55 might seem restrictive, but it does remove any temptation to fritter away savings you will need when you reach old age.

* Savers might end up choosing cash over investments, limiting long-term growth potential and the accompanying rewards of compounding which are key advantages of pensions. They are more likely to stick with cash if they are trying to protect capital ahead of buying a house.

* Another new product adds more complexity to the savings decisions facing younger people.

'They now have a choice to make between pensions, LISAs, ISAs, help-to-buy ISAs and normal savings. Each of these have different rules, but only one has the benefit of employer contributions,' said Richard Smith of pension specialist Spence & Partners.

Will Osborne introduce Pension Isas for all?

Chancellor George Osborne was recently forced to ditch radical plans to slash the pension tax relief bill - either by launching a Pensions Isa or imposing a flat rate for all earners - for fear of a backlash from voters ahead of the Brexit referendum.

At present, everyone saves into a pension from untaxed income. The Government pays tax relief at your 20 per cent, 40 per cent or 45 per cent income tax rate, which means that it forgoes 34billion of income tax every year.

The Lifetime Isa is seen by some as a half-way measure towards a Pensions Isa, possibly laying the groundwork for it once the EU referendum is over.

'If the Lifetime ISA proves a roaring success, this could be a prelude for the Government to revisit the issue of tax relief on pensions  from which it recently made a tactical withdrawal,' said Jason Hollands, managing director of Tilney Bestinvest.

'It has in effect, set up a live experiment for the much mooted pensions Isa. But there remains the possibility of a much more rapid return to a full frontal assault on upfront tax relief on pensions, given talk of a 50billion hole in the Chancellor's projections for achieving a budget surplus by the end of the parliament.

Trojan horse: How much of a threat does the Lifetime Isa pose to traditional pensions?

'The future of tax relief on pensions could be back on the table once the small matter of the Brexit referendum is out of the way.'

Adrian Walker, retirement planning expert at Old Mutual Wealth, said the Lifetime Isa was 'a gimmick' that would only appeal to younger savers looking for help getting on the housing ladder, with very few people using it to save for old age because pensions are still the best retirement savings vehicle.

'The link with retirement savings indicated in George Osbornes Budget speech is not reflected in the detail of the policy proposal. Of greater concern is whether the Lifetime Isa is a precursor to either a 20 per cent flat rate of pension tax relief or the Pension Isa.

'If government finances deteriorate further, the Chancellor may be tempted to extend its reach, allowing Government to slash pension tax relief or benefit from income tax on pension contributions upfront. It could be a prototype for the pension system of the future.'

Lynda Whitney, partner at Aon Hewitt, said: 'The Chancellors announcements on pension issues look like unfinished business. A number of the key issues raised in the pensions tax consultation have not been decided, but deferred. The new Lifetime ISA may be welcome, but it could well be the Trojan Horse that kills off pensions at a later stage.'

John Blowers, head of Trustnet Direct, said: 'These changes to Isa limits and especially the introduction of the new lifetime Isa with that 25 per cent bonus really do look like the pension reforms many had feared, just wrapped up in something of a Trojan horse.

'Those higher rate taxpayers who topped up pension contributions in haste just a few weeks ago probably dont have much to worry about - it seems inevitable that the current structures generosity cannot be sustained and the end goal appears to be a Pension/Isa hybrid, and thats going to appeal to politicians right across the spectrum.'

Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'The Chancellor has left pension tax relief alone, so there is still a big upfront incentive to save into a pension, particularly where there is an employer contribution too.

But he noted: 'We are mindful that we havent yet had a formal response from the Treasury to the pension tax consultation, so ultimately the future of tax relief still has a question mark hovering over it.'

Meanwhile, Richard Parkin, head of pensions at Fidelity International, said: 'Suggestions that the LISA will undermine pension savings are, we think, overdone. The idea that people will opt out of pensions to save for house purchase in a LISA seem to confuse cause and effect.

'Those who are determined to buy their own home but cant afford to do that and contribute to their workplace pension will surely opt out of the pension in any case. The LISA just gives them a product that they can do that in more tax effectively allowing them to get back into retirement saving sooner.'

Lifetime Isa versus SIPP - how do they compare

The table below from AJ Bell lays out the key differences between a Lifetime Isa and a self-invested personal pension.
This years two sessions have left the deepest impression on me, not just because it was the first time for me to cover the sessions as a journalist, but it is an event that deserves to be remembered by both China and the rest of the world. Its distinctions have surely exerted milestone significance to Chinas development.

The first distinction is the adoption of the 13th Five-Year plan, a blueprint for Chinas development in the next five years.

The Five-Year plan is of great significance as the plan ends at 2020, the year China is resolute to achieve the goal of building itself into a moderately prosperous society in all respects. It is also the first of Chinas two centenary goals.

The 2016 National Peoples Congress (NPC) and Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) also laid out the starting year of the 13th Five-Year plan.

China has gone through several starting years, including those of comprehensively deepening reform and promoting the rule of law. A smooth starting year will ensure the successful implementation of the top-level design, and elevate peoples trust in reform.

Another feature that sets this years two sessions apart is that China has assured a stable economic growth while the whole world is watching how it would cope with downward economic pressure.

Amid a world economic slowdown, each move of the worlds second largest economy will leave certain impact. Against such background, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has set the GDP growth target of 2016 between 6.5 percent and 7 percent in his government work report, unveiling a glimpse of Chinas confidence.

Other than the economic expectation, the rapid yet steady progress of Chinas reform is sending more signals. Macro-economic policy, supply-side structural reform, the Belt and Road initiative, other opening-up strategies as well as other agendas also showed Chinas strength and attitude while addressing the worlds concern to China.

Confidence and determination were also highlighted during this years political season. Confidence values more than gold, because it has real impact on development.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping, also the General Secretary of CPC, was visiting members of the China National Democratic Construction Association and All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce on the sidelines of the CPPCC, he reaffirmed the governments support to the non-public sector, offering private entrepreneurs more confidence.

When he joined the deliberation of the Shanghai delegation group, he explicitly stated that the central government will stick to the political foundation of the 1992 Consensus when promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.

Meanwhile, Xi reiterated Chinas determination in poverty alleviation when he met with delegates from northwest Qinghai province and central Hunan province.

As the modern communication theory points out, humans communication activities carry ritualistic connotations. In events with strong ceremonial sense like the two sessions, its signals, confidence, and determination will spread across China and to the world through various channels.

China and the rest of the world will remember the 2016 two sessions.

(The author is an editor of Peoples Daily)
Banking customers are being urged to watch out for a growing army of fraudsters as losses due to fraud leaps by more than a quarter in just one year.

Criminals, often working in gangs, are targeting personal and business banking customers remotely to drain current accounts, new evidence suggests.

There was worrying growth in the number of victims of internet and telephone banking fraud in 2015, according to new data from Financial Fraud Action UK.

Total losses to remote banking fraud rocketed 72 per cent last year to reach 168.6million. Internet banking fraud losses were up 64 per cent to 133.5million, while telephone bank fraud losses ballooned 92 per cent to 32.3million.

Growing losses: The total amount of fraud, especially online and telephone scams, ballooned in 2015

Overall financial fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques totalled 755million in 2015, an increase of 26 per cent in just one year.

That's just the fraud that was successful. Prevented fraud totalled 1.76billion last year - the equivalent of 7 in every 10 of all attempted fraud stopped by banks and card companies.

The shock figures come as more bank customers are targeted by scammers, who use an array of tricks and smooth talking tactics to swipe cash from current accounts.

In total, the FFA UK said 524.6million of attempted remote banking fraud was stopped by security systems, highlighting the wave of criminals attacking Britons and battle financial firms have to stop them.

A huge driver of the increase is deception and impersonation scams in which a criminal dupes the victim into giving away their personal and security details.

The criminal then uses these details to gain access to their victim's remote banking account.

This is Money has reported on a number of scams in the past, including phishing e-mails in which malware is installed to a computer to steal log-in details and fraudsters who call, pretending to be from the bank, and convince people to transfer money into a 'safe' account.

There has also been a rise in other types of fraud, such as fake invoice scams and ones where criminals e-mail pretending to be a firm you could be using, such as a solicitor, saying bank details have changed.

The rules around refunds can be murky - and can mean customers are not automatically refunded stolen cash, if the bank believes they have been 'negligent'. What constitutes as negligent can vary from bank to bank.

FFA UK also says the number of internet fraud cases rose by 23 per cent, compared to losses up a much higher 64 per cent.

This suggests criminals are targeting high-net worth and business customers and are becoming more efficient.

We have warned in previous years that small businesses are prime targets for scammers, as they tend to hold higher amounts of money in accounts, make more transactions and have numerous staff members who have access to online banking.

Cash grab: Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting high-net worth and business customers, the data suggests

Katy Worobec, director of FFA UK, said: 'With the continued rise in impersonation scams and data breaches it's vital that all customers are alert to the dangers.

'Everyone should be very cautious about giving out personal or financial information, and organisations holding data need to do all they can to protect people's private details.'

In total, financial fraud losses totalled 755million 2015, with total fraud losses of 1.76billion being prevented, FFA UK claims.

VICTIM OF A BANKING SCAM? Contact This is Money in confidence: lee.boyce@thisismoney.co.uk

Fraud losses on UK payment cards totalled 567.5million in 2015, an 18 per cent increase from 479million in the previous year.

Cheque fraud losses totalled 18.9million in 2015, a six per cent fall from 20.2million in 2014, and the lowest ever annual total.

Tony Blake, senior fraud prevention officer for the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit, said: 'Criminals will do all they can to make their approach seem genuine, so it's important to be vigilant.

'If you receive a call, text or email out of the blue asking for your personal information, hang up the phone and do not reply directly.

'Instead, wait five minutes and ring your bank to alert them to the scam, using a phone number that you trust  such as the one on the back of your bank card or from the official website.'

FFA UK says the industry is investing in innovative security tools, including more sophisticated ways of authenticating customers, such as using biometrics and customer behaviour analysis.

It also points to a joint fraud taskforce, which was launched by the Home Secretary in February 2016. It says: 'This will use the collective powers, systems and resources of government, law enforcement and industry to crack down on financial fraud.'
85-year-old Shu Liao draws Beijing hutongs. (Photo/Youth.cn)

Shu Liao, 85, spent 15 years walking around every hutong inside Beijing's second ring road. After that, he spent eight years drawing maps of all the hutongs he saw.

Even as someone who used to run 5,000 meters every day, Shu now feels that walking has become strenuous. Thus, he has worried about his hutong maps.

Luckily, workers from the Xicheng district archives recently went to Shu's home to relieve his concerns. When they left, they took with them his hutong maps, cameras, shoes, caps and bookcases. "We are going to organize an exhibition for Mr. Shu," said one of the workers.

A total of 30 maps are displayed in Shu's home, all of them painted by Shu.

"These paintings are amazing. He not only draws every lane, but also records important locations such as former residences of celebrities, guildhalls, palaces and churches. He even marks the width of every lane," said Zhou Hainan, one of the workers from the archives.

"During the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, court painters drew a Beijing hutong panorama. Since Beijing has witnessed many changes in recent years, my father's paintings are of high value," said Shu Po, Shu's son.
(File photo)

Scientists are working on a new breakthrough in stem cell research: creating eyes in the laboratory. This week, Britain's Nature magazine published an online paper describing a method of generating eye tissues with human stem cells.

The method, which works by transplanting the stem-cell-generated eye tissue into animals with corneal blindness, is very similar to the actual development process of eyeballs. Scientists hope that the tissue can repair injured eyeballs and help people to recover sight.

Kohji Nishida, professor at Japan's Osaka University, together with his research team, reported the method of generating multiple ocular cell systems with human-induced pluripotent stem cells. This method could produce a self-forming ectoderm autonomous multi-zone (SEAM) structure.

According to the results of the research, corneal epithelial cells can be cultured in the laboratory. When transplanted into the eyes of blind rabbits, these cells were functional, repairing the front of the rabbits' eyeballs and returning their sight.

The author of the paper said the results also have potential for creating cells that treat other parts of the eye. More importantly, they open the possibility of a clinical trial through which blind people may be able to see again.

This article was edited and translated from . Source: www.kjrb.com
Wei Xinmin, an 80-year-old man from the city of Shangluo in Chinas northwest Shaanxi province, is preparing to publish a 190,000-word novel, which took him three years to finish.

I fell in love with literature when I was a kid, and I havent given it up since, Wei said, explaining his enthusiasm for writing. I used to publish short novels and stories in magazines, he added.

Even after he was diagnosed with cancer, Wei still focused all his energy on the novel.

In order to write it, Wei even learned to type on a computer. His fellow villagers affectionately refer to him as the old man who is obsessed with writing novels.

The novel, which is the first in a trilogy, depicts the way ordinary people pursue their dreams and introduces the history of Shangluo, which was the birthplace of the Shang dynasty (16001050 B.C.). Some of the characters are also based on Weis own life experiences.

If my health allows, I will finish the other two novels. They are like the trilogy of my life, Wei said.

When the first draft was finished in 2014, Wei decided to publish the novel at his own expense. Even though his family was not very supportive, Wei thinks doing this will give him a sense of achievement.

Weis neighbor, Zhao Qihou, thinks it is admirable that Wei could write anything given his condition. Feng Jianshun, Weis army buddy, felt very touched by the elements of Shang culture in the novel after reading it.

Jia Jianxia, former deputy director of the local publicity department, applauded Weis creation.

With strong appeal and a touch of mystery, the novel is both true literature and a textbook for life, Jia said.
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By Patrick Donachie

The NYPD intends to expand a program that combats stalkers throughout Queens in the coming months.

Cecile Noel, the commissioner of the Mayors Office to Combat Domestic Violence, relayed the news about the NYPDs plan to beef up the Coordinated Approach to Preventing Stalking during a meeting of the Queens Borough Cabinet at Borough Hall Tuesday morning. The program began in precincts throughout Staten Island in June 2014, and the results were successful enough for the city to expand it throughout the city.

In Queens, the program currently operates only in the 101st, 103rd, 105th and 113th precincts, but Noel told the assembled group that the NYPD would begin training for in all other borough precincts next month.

The program is preventative in approach and Noel noted that many victims of violence reported prior incidents of stalking. About 54 percent of homicide victims previously reported being victims of stalking to the police, according to an oft-cited 1999 study on female victims of homicide. The NYPD increased identification of new stalking cases by 233 percent in Staten Island since the introduction of the so-called CAPS program in June 2014, the city reported last year.

Noel said CAPS and other initiatives from the NYPD and the mayors office were vital for Queens, which has reported significant numbers of domestic violence incidents. Of the 19,000 domestic violence incident reported in Queens in 2015, Noel said most involved violence against an intimate partner.

A home should be a safe and wonderful place, she said. And when its not, it tears at the heart of every community.

She also noted that the actual number of domestic violence incidents was likely higher than the reported number indicated.

Overall, we know domestic violence is an underreported issue. Theres a lot of stigma and a lot of shame, she said. They think theyre responsible and theyre not, but theyre led to believe that by their abusers.

The cabinet meeting, which included the district managers from every community board in Queens, also heard a presentation from Carolien Hardenbol, the co-director of the Immigration Intervention Project at Sanctuary for Families. The service and advocacy organization has assisted over 630 survivors and victims of trafficking since its founding in 1984, according to Hardenbol. She stressed that the organization operated with open arms when it came to the people it helped.

We dont want individuals arrested, she said, maintaining the groups aim is to provide services to those individuals when necessary.

Hardenbol pointed to the success of the citys Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, which were established in 2013 as an alternate court proceeding that would treat individuals arrested on prostitution charges as victims or survivors, as opposed to criminals. Such courts operate in all five boroughs, as well as in Erie, Monroe, Nassau, Onondaga, Suffolk and Westchester counties. Hardenbol said the Queens court, headed by Judge Toko Serita and located in the Queens Criminal Court building, was of particular note due to its high success rate in dealing with human trafficking victims.

Queens is looked at as a model for the state and the country, she said.

(fixing the number of trafficking victims)
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A small miracle is in the works in southern Queens.

Starbucks, the national coffee house chain, opened a store earlier this month in downtown Jamaica. But its in the business of doing far more than selling coffee and snacks to customers hovering over their laptops and other devices at tables around the store.

The Jamaica Starbucks is the first of at least 15 stores the company plans to open around the nation as training centers for idle youth in diverse urban neighborhoods. The beta site for the ambitious program is at 89-02 Sutphin Blvd. in the heart of Jamaica. What happens in Jamaica will shape the agenda for stores still on the drawing board in communities such as Ferguson, Mo., where the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager set off waves of protests.

Starbucks aims to hire 10,000 youths, who are not employed or in school, from the ages of 16 to 24.

In addition to acquiring skills as Starbucks employees, the Jamaica staff has their own classroom that nonprofits can use to provide job training for young people in the area.

The new store has gotten a rousing reception from patrons, who are delighted to have a high-end coffee house in their midst. And some of the young employees already are fulfilling roles as unofficial guidance counselors for the rootless youth who come in off the streets to check out the scene.

The store manager, an 18-year Starbucks veteran who was raised in Jamaica, hired 17 workers who hail from Queens, Brooklyn and the Caribbean. They range in age from 16 to 36.

The Jamaica experiment is not Starbucks first benevolent mission. In 2014 the Seattle-based chain teamed up with Arizona State University to help underwrite college educations for employees who worked at least 20 hours a week in stores across the country, the Atlantic Monthly reported. The company hopes to improve the dismal track record of Americans who fail to complete their degrees or even enter college.

The Starbucks opportunity youth, as the employees of the new Jamaica venture are called, represent the companys effort to engage young people who have fallen by the wayside.

The company also is committed to hiring women and minority-owned vendors at its 15 new stores.

The Starbucks initiative dovetails perfectly with the Queens borough presidents Jamaica Now Action Plan to revitalize the downtown area as it snaps back from years of economic stagnation.

Queens is proud to be the prototype for Starbucks bold undertaking to rescue vulnerable youth.
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By Madina Toure

A 22-year-old woman was in critical condition after plunging off an overpass last weekend during a four-car accident that started when she was coming to the rescue of her friend, who was allegedly driving drunk on the Whitestone Expressway, the NYPD said.

Samantha Maloney, 22, was charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Maloney was arraigned Sunday and she was released on her own recognizance, Brown said. Her next court court date is April 13.

At about 5 a.m. Saturday, officers responded to a vehicular accident in the vicinity of the Grand Central Parkway and Whitestone Expressway, according to a police spokeswoman.

Officers arrived and discovered Maloneys friend, who was seriously injured, the police spokeswoman said.

EMS responded and took the victim to NewYork-Presbyterian/Queens, where she remained in critical condition as of Wednesday afternoon with severe body trauma, the spokeswoman said.

Maloney was operating a 2014 Nissan Juke when she hit a barrier and her vehicle stopped working, according to Brown.

She pulled over to the side of the elevated roadway at the northeast intersection of the Whitestone Expressway and 126th Street and called her friend, whom a police spokeswoman identified as a 22-year-old woman driving a 2015 Dodge, for help, Brown said.

An off-duty EMT worker, who a police spokeswoman identified as a 34-year-old man driving a 2008 Chevy, also stopped to offer assistance as did another vehicle. When Maloneys friend arrived at the scene, she pulled her car behind Maloneys car, the DA said.

As the two women and the EMT stood outside their cars, a fifth vehicle driven by an off-duty NYPD lieutenant hit one of the cars and caused a chain reaction crash, resulting in Maloneys friend tumbling over the expressways railing and fall about 23 feet to the ground, the DA said.

The police spokeswoman said EMS also took the EMS worker and the NYPD lieutenant to NewYork-Presbyterian/Queens. Both were in stable condition as of Wednesday afternoon, with the EMT suffering a broken arm.

When police arrived at the scene, Maloney allegedly had bloodshot, watery eyes, a flushed face, a heavy odor of alcohol on her breath and was swaying, the Queens DA said.

A field sobriety test and a Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test were administered and Maloney allegedly failed both tests and refused to submit a portable breathalyzer test, Brown said.

She was later taken to the NYPDs 112th Precinct where an intoxilyzer test was administered to her about four hours later, indicating that she had a .095 percent or more of alcohol in her blood, above the legal limit of .08 in New York City, the DA continued.

Maloney alleged told police in a statement that on the evening of March 11, she was at Central Club in Astoria and at about 10 p.m., she had a vodka tonic and left the club between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. to drive home, the official said.
(File Photo)

India recently declined a U.S. proposal suggesting it participate in joint patrols in the South China Sea. An expert said that the country does not want to be tied to the chariot of the U.S. because its core interests are not in the South China Sea.

Harry B. Harris, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, in his recent Indian visit, proposed that the navies of Japan, Australia and India join the U.S. in conducting joint naval patrols in Asia-Pacific, especially in the South China Sea in the name of freedom-of-navigation operations.

He said India is an important fabric in the American tapestry, adding that India is a critical part of tapestry of the United States Pacific Command.

But the idea was not echoed by India. Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said, "As of now, India has never taken part in any joint patrol, and we only do joint exercises. The question of joint patrol does not arise.

Indian naval spokesman D.K. Sharma underscored Indias position that it only participates in military operations that take place under the U.N. flag. The biggest example in contemporary times is the Gulf of Aden patrols, he added.

According to Ye Hailin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Southeast Asia is not a core strategic zone for India. The southern Asian country is more of an opportunist in the region, who is unwilling to shoulder any risks. By participating in the joint patrol, it can earn more trust from the U.S. However, India is unlikely to play the leading role.

On the other hand, the so-called joint patrol in the South China Sea is clearly targeted against China. Joining the patrol will severely damage its ties with China, Ye pointed out.

Conflicts within Chinas sovereignty are not exactly a good thing for Indias security strategy. Therefore, it is unwilling to get involved, or to be tied to the U.S. chariot.

What India needs is military cooperation with the U.S., Japan and Australia, including the military logistic supply agreement with the U.S., said Ye. But it does not mean that India will blindly follow the superpower, he added.

With the help of the U.S., India hopes to strengthen its presence in the Indian Ocean, not the South China Sea. As a result, India will stay vigilant to Chinas activities in its key strategic area, the Indian Ocean, Ye concluded.
By Prem Calvin Prashad

After yet another year of foundering enrollment numbers for black and Hispanic students at the citys specialized high schools, the Independent Democratic Conference in Albany is taking a crack at reforming the admission process for those schools.

The IDC, which consists of centrist Democrats in the state Senate, including Tony Avella (D-Bayside), put forward a proposal March 9 that outlines three issues that the conference believes are at the root of the problems black and Hispanic students face when accessing the citys best public education resources.

To date, test-reform proponents have criticized the current admission standardswhich currently hinge on a single, high stakes test and no other factors. While supporters of the current policy have extolled the tests blindness to grades, as well as societal factors, such as poverty, skeptics have questioned whether the test can present the best-rounded candidates for admission.

An NYU-Steinhardt study into alternative proposals to consider community service, grades and other factors, found that such multiple measures wouldnt sufficiently address the disparity and would overall favor white and Hispanic students, while not substantially affecting black enrollment and decreasing enrollment for Asian American students.

Complicating this assessment is the fact that Asian-American students form a supermajority across all the specialized schools, with white students a distant second. Despite having some of the highest rates of household poverty in the city, these students have managed to beat predicted trends. Though some critics have attributed this to access to paid and free test preparation, the Steinhardt study found that Asian Americans were also more likely to take the test and more likely to accept the offers of admission than their peers.

There is an undeniable link between preparation and admission, as evidenced by Queens-based Khans Tutorial, a chain of test prep centers that claims to be linked to 10 percent of students at Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, according to CEO and President Ivan Khan. The chain has managed to place 330 students this year and in 2014 launched a scholarship program, reserving two seats at each of their 10 locations for 18 months of free test prep for high achieving African American and Hispanic students. Of the 16 African-American and Hispanic students from Khans Tutorial offered admission this year, eight were scholarship recipients. The organization said it hopes to demonstrate that under-represented minorities could do just as well as other groups as long as the resources are made available to them.

To address the issue of awareness, the IDC proposes designating $350,000 to fund outreach coordinators and related efforts at middle schools with underrepresented populations. It noted that citywide, white and Asian students comprise just 27.6 percent of students, but combined, account for 47.3 percent of students taking the test.

Issue two identifies the preparation problem, in that some students set out to prepare for the test as early as the sixth grade, but many lack the resources to do so. For the proposed cost of $1 million, the IDC suggests expansion of free test prep access in 32 Community School Districts. Issue three also relates to the pipeline, noting the lack of Gifted and Talented Programs in districts with low household income. Specifically, in Queens, of the 31 Gifted and Talented Programs, the IDC report said, 40 percent are located in the districts covering Flushing, Bayside and Fresh Meadows. Schools with these programs are considered feeder schools, typically sending the most pupils to specialized high schools. The conference estimates the cost of establishing more such programs would be $2.55 million.

The IDC appears to have taken the Steinhardt study into careful consideration when crafting their policy solutions. As a specialized high school alum from southeast Queens, I can attest that the combination of involved parents, outreach by guidance counselors, a gifted and talented program, and the DOEs free test prep were all instrumental in my admission. It remains to be seen however, if the legislature will find the consensus to fund any of these proposals at a meaningful and sustained level.
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By Patrick Donachie

A teenager brought a loaded gun into his Jamaica school Thursday morning, the second such incident at a Jamaica public school in the past week, police said.

The NYPD was called after school administrators found the 15-year old student had smuggled a loaded handgun into York Early College Academy, at 133-25 Guy R Brewer Blvd., the authorities said. School administrators learned that the student was in possession of a firearm after he threatened another student, according to a police spokeswoman.

The weapon was confiscated and the student was arrested at the school, she said. He was subsequently charged with criminal possession of a weapon, as well as menacing, according to the NYPD spokeswoman.

Students at the school were held in their classrooms before being dismissed.

Three days earlier, an 11-year old student was caught after he brought a loaded 9mm pistol to Public School 40, at 109-20 Union Hall St., police said. The gun was hidden in his backpack and allegedly belonged to Kenneth Miley, 54, the students grandfather, the NYPD said. Miley was later arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon, endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment, according to police.

The NYPD spokeswoman said the incidents at PS 40 and York Early College Academy were wholly unrelated.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Toya Holness responded to the arrest at York Early College Academy in an e-mailed statement.

This is deeply alarming and we are working closely with the NYPD to ensure that all students and staff are safe, she said. The Police Department immediately responded and are investigating the troubling incident. We are providing additional resources to support the school community and families were notified.

York Early College Academys high school received high marks from students, parents and teachers in a 2014-2015 School Quality Snapshot conducted by the DOE. The school has a 94 percent four-year graduation rate, compared to a 70 percent citywide average. Some 91 percent of students at the school feel safe in the hallways, bathrooms, locker room, and cafeteria according to the report.
Airport development adding to economy, jobs in the region

Pittsburgh may always be known as the Steel City, but a wave of new industries are popping up near its airport to redefine business in the region.
File photo: The construction site of the gas pipe along China-Myanmar border

China is still the biggest foreign investor in Myanmar with over US$15 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 126 projects from 1985 to 2015, according to a report released by Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA).

Singapore comes second with over US$12 billion of FDI in 199 projects in the same period. Due to sanctions imposed on Myanmar by Singapore, the latter often acts as conduit for investors such as the U.S.A.

The EU ranks third with nearly US$6 billion.
Captain Frazier leads Hirschi to 56-14 win against Snyder

Javian Frazier bore the captain's "C" on his shoulder proudly Friday, plugging a hold in the Hirschi backfield and leading the Huskies to victory.
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Benghazi fighters to headline Republican Women event

Mark "Oz" Geist and John "Tig" Tiegen will be the guests of honor and speakers at an event sponsored by Wichita County Republican Women titled "An Evening with Two Heroes of Benghazi" March 29 at the Wellington Banquet & Conference Center, 5300 Kell Blvd.

Geist and Tiegen are two of a handful of contract security personnel who went to the aid of those in the consulate in Benghazi the night Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. They will walk through those 13 hours of Sept. 11, 2012.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. Regular tickets are $60 and include food and a cash bar. A pre-party event begins at 5:45 p.m. for those who wish to purchase a VIP ticket for $80. VIP ticket holders will have a chance to meet Geist and Tiegen during the party. Books will be available for purchase.

Geist and Tiegen, along with their colleague Kris Paronto and Mitchell Zuckoff wrote the book "13 Hours  the Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi" and were consultants on the recently released movie "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi."

For reservations, contact Sandra Ross at 940-781-0448 or go to www.wcrepublicanwomen.com before March 24.

MSU Crime Stoppers plan anti-drug walk

The Campus Crime Stoppers at Midwestern State University is selling T-shirts commemorating the 2016 Moonlight Walk Against Drugs.

All T-shirts are green and sell for $10 each. Both youth and adult sizes, through 3XL, are available. Order forms can be downloaded from the MSU website (www.mwsu.edu, search "Crime Stoppers") and emailed to officer Elwyn Ladd at elwyn.ladd@mswu.edu.

The 2016 Moonlight Walk will be at 7 p.m. April 23 starting from D.L. Ligon Coliseum.

Burk health fair coming up April 2

The Boomtown Health & Wellness Fair will be 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 2 at Burkburnett Community Center.

The free event will include health screenings for agility, balance, glucose and blood pressure. Health care and wellness representatives will offer informational booths, and an area will be set aside for Zumba.

The event is sponsored by the city of Burkburnett and the Burkburnett Library.

Electrical course to cover code changes

The Wichita Falls Building and Code Administration, working with the Red River Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, is offering a continuing education seminar designed for electrical contractors, masters, journeyman, apprentices, inspectors, architects, engineers and suppliers. The seminar will cover the 2014 National Electrical Code and will count toward continuing education requirements by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

The seminar will be April 9 at the MPEC Ray Clymer Exhibit Hall. Check-in begins at 7 a.m. and the class will run 8 a.m. to noon. The cost is $40 per person for those registering before April 2. After that date, registration is $50.

Call 761-6020 for registration or information.

Ag Appreciation Day slated in Seymour

The 26th annual Baylor County Ag Appreciation Day and Health Fair will be April 5 at the Cliff Styles Activity Center, 1205 Archer Road in Seymour.

Seymour Hospital will offer free fasting blood tests from 7 to 9 a.m., with a free breakfast supplied by the Baylor County Farm Bureau for after the test.

An applicator training class worth 2 continuing education credits will start at 8 a.m. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., more than 80 agriculture and health related booths will offer information and products.

Barry Mahler will be the emcee for a sponsored lunch served by members of the 4-H clubs. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller will be the speaker. Highlighting the lunch will be presentation of the Rancher/Cattleman of the Year, the Farmer/Conservationist of the Year and Agribusiness of the Year awards. Raffle and door prize winners will also be announced.
<p>Contributed photo Gov. Greg Abbott will consider five local residents to be named to the vacant 89th District Court seat. Those who have applied include Wichita County Court at Law No. 2 Judge Greg King, attorneys Charlie Barnard, Tom Key and Jeff McKnight, and Wichita County assistant district attorney Dobie Kosub.</p>

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By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News

Allred Unit prison guards did not use excessive force when they used force to subdue Daniel Moses Scope in 2013, a jury in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas in Wichita Falls found Thursday.

Scope, who in 2013 was an inmate at the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls, filed a civil suit against prison guards who he said were complicit in "maliciously and sadistically" assaulting him after he asked why he and other inmates weren't being allowed out of their cells to eat.

Evidence in the trial showed that Scope was pepper sprayed by one guard before suffering lacerations to his head and face. Despite the man's injuries, jurors ruled in favor of the defendants in the case, Sgt. Adam Wright and guard Richard Smith.

Jurors began deliberations just after 2 p.m. Thursday and delivered their verdict about 4:30 p.m.

In making their decision, jurors were asked to answer a series of questions related to the case, a court official said. Questions included whether they thought Wright or Smith had used excessive force in bringing Scope into submission.

Jurors answered "No" to those questions.

Scope testified that at the time of the incident he was trying to lodge a complaint with Wright about not being let out of his cell for "chow" and "dayroom." Other inmates were having similar problems, he said.

Wright reportedly told Scope to stop whining and also to stop staring at him, though testimony showed the exact language used by Wright may have been more colorful. Scope testified that he tried to leave before the confrontation was escalated, but Wright blocked his way and pepper sprayed him.

Before the incident ended, Scope reportedly was cuffed and had been punched several times in the head. He spent the next two years in solitary confinement, he said.

The defendants were represented at trial by attorneys with the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. Scope was represented by Rickey G. Bunch of Wichita Falls.
Twin Falls, Idaho

Greek yogurt company Chobani plans to invest nearly $100 million in expanding its Idaho factory, already the largest yogurt manufacturing plant in the world.

The New York-based company will begin producing yogurt-based dip and drinkable yogurt products at the Twins Falls factory this summer, reported the Times-News. Chobani says it will incrementally invest the $100 million in the plant.

The expansion will include new equipment for those upcoming product offerings, the company said Wednesday.

"Building the largest yogurt manufacturing plant in the world and expanding it three years later is a really proud moment for us and an example of how right it was to pick Idaho as our second home," said Chobani chairman and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya in a statement.

The Twins Falls plant currently employs more than 1,000 people. Nearly 100 of them were hired in the last half of 2015.

Chobani's building permit covers a nearly $7.9 million addition with packing and filling rooms. The company said it will also build office expansions, an employee cafeteria and a global research and development facility for its Twin Falls scientific team.

In addition to adding production lines for its fast-growing Flip products, Chobani is planning a new bulk production line for food-service opportunities in schools, hotels, airlines and restaurants.

In the second quarter of this year, the company plans to launch products from the facility for international markets, including Mexico.

The statement says the company is also considering expanding its Central New York plant.

"The kind of success that Chobani is experiencing in the Magic Valley is setting a great example of regional collaboration between employers and community leaders throughout Idaho," said Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter in Chobani's statement. "And it has economic development leaders all over America standing up and taking notice of what Idaho has to offer."
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Schenectady

The final site plans for the construction of a Stewart's shop and gas station in the Bellevue neighborhood and got Planning Commission approval Wednesday with minor conditions.

In addition, the commission consented to subdividing the 60-acre parcel where Rivers Casino & Resort at Mohawk Harbor is being developed. It also approved construction of a two-story office building at 724 State St.

The new 3,675-square-foot Stewart's on Broadway between Bradt and Thompson streets will feature three islands with two gas pumps covered by a canopy. There will be 23 parking spaces and entrances on Thompson Street and Broadway, said Marcus Andrews, a project manager for Saratoga Springs-based Stewart's.

As part of the Stewart's project, the commission approved a plan for Maranatha Ministries to shift its parking to Bradt Street and Broadway while Stewart's parking would be at the corner of Thompson Street and Broadway and on land once used by the vacant, century-old Broadway United Methodist Church that will be demolished along with a home next door on Broadway.

Andrews said Stewart's will allow an architectural company to salvage what it can from the building before it comes down. Inside are pews, stained glass windows and other religious artifacts.

The agreement with Maranatha keeps high traffic volume off Bradt Street, which is a one-way.

After the new Stewart's opens, the one located a few blocks away at Broadway and Fairview Avenue, will eventually close.

Jacqui Hurd, president of Bellevue Preservation expressed concerns about what will replace the old Stewart's and if the new tenants or owners will be good neighbors.

Andrews said Stewart's doesn't yet have a tenant but it wouldn't be a convenience store because that would be competition. He assured Hurd there were no plans to close the Bonfare store on Broadway down the street that carries Stewart's products.

The commission's action on the casino project follows the need to split up the parcel for financing purposes, said David Buicko, chief operating officer with Rotterdam-based Galesi Group. His company is partnering with Rush Street Gaming of Chicago on the $480 million project that features the casino, a marina and condos along with two hotels on the former Alco property on Erie Boulevard.

Approval for the two-story 22,440-square-foot office/clinic building on the edge of downtown will feature brick on the building, a new parking lot on the east side of the property with two trees and the main entrance off State Street.

Commissioner Mary Moore Wallinger told John Roth of Schenectady-based Highbridge Development that she was impressed with the architecture.

"I've long driven by that site and wished it looked different than it had," said Wallinger.

At Wednesday's meeting, Wallinger was elected chairwoman of the nine-member panel, and Bradley Lewis was chosen as vice chair, the post Wallinger formerly held.

pnelson@timesunion.com  518-454-5347  @apaulnelson
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Clarification: A story on A1 Saturday inaccurately described the status of the charges against Frank Chrysler, who was indicted as part of an alleged fraud ring that targeted the elderly, based on information provided by the Albany County District Attorney's Office. A judge dismissed the indictment in November after prosecutors missed a motion filing deadline, so there are no active charges against Chrysler. The district attorney's office is appealing that decision, which is why, according to a spokeswoman, it described the case as pending.

Albany

One by one, they pleaded for leniency. They blamed their addictions and abusive childhoods. One begged not to be sentenced to die behind bars. Another wept about the baby she hardly knows.

One by one Friday, acting state Supreme Court Justice Roger McDonough sent them to prison anyway.

Their 18-month crime spree bilked nearly a dozen frail victims in Albany, Colonie and Bethlehem out of tens of thousands of dollars for shoddy or non-existent home repairs  a scam prosecuted as a hate crime against the elderly.

The victims included a 90-year-old woman with Alzheimer's, a developmentally disabled man and Korean War veteran mourning the loss of his wife.

McDonough blasted the five co-conspirators as a "crime family" and seconded a detective's description of them as army ants who targeted the most vulnerable and used them "like an ATM machine."

"I don't want to die in no prison. I don't think I've got six months to go," pleaded John Risto, 61,stooped heavily as he sat on his wheeled walker before the judge.

"I'm just begging the Lord," Risto said, his voice ghostly and aided by an oxygen canister. "I'd get down on my hands and knees right now, but I wouldn't be able to get back up."

McDonough said he hoped Risto would survive his sentence but noted his victims were just as frail when he and his fellow scammers preyed on them. "Perhaps it's one of life's cruel ironies that you seem to be in an extremely vulnerable position now," McDonough said before sentencing him to one-to-three-years for felony conspiracy as a hate crime, slightly less than the maximum allowed by his plea bargain.

Comparatively, Risto got off light.

Henry Hicks of Albany, who authorities called a career felon and a central figure in the scheme, was sentenced to 8-to-16 years despite what Assistant District Attorney Jessica Blain-Lewis described as his extensive cooperation with investigators.

Hicks, 59, was the first to plead guilty but wound up with the stiffest punishment.

"It appears that prison is the only place that you can exist in a manner that you don't prey upon your fellow citizens," McDonough said.

Hicks, who said he was addicted to crack and heroin, faced up to 18 years and cursed angrily when McDonough sentenced him to nearly the maximum.

"I don't care about (expletive)," Hicks barked.

"You've got 8-to-16 years to not care," McDonough shot back.

Jessica Paradiso sobbed when she spoke of her three children, including one born just before she was arrested.

"I just want to go home to my baby," the 28-year-old Schenectady woman said. "I don't even know him."

McDonough  invoking Dante's "Inferno," the first part of a 14th-century epic poem that describes a circle of Hell occupied by those who commit fraud  chastised Paradiso for thinking only of herself and failing to once mention her victims during her plea for leniency. He gave her 6-to-12 years, the maximum under her plea. ("Paradiso" is the name of the third part of the poem.)

Blain-Lewis said Paradiso was recorded on phone calls from jail arranging to have checks forged to funnel money into her commissary account.

McDonough prodded Paradiso's boyfriend and father of three of her children, Brian Barr, 37, of Schenectady to publicly acknowledge he targeted the elderly because they were so vulnerable before branding him a "villain" and a "scoundrel" and sentencing him to the maximum 71/2-to-15 years under his plea to grand larceny and conspiracy.

Barr's mother got the maximum too.

"I'm very sorry about what happened to the people in this case," said Susan Barr, 58, of Altamont, who will serve 2-to-4 years for conspiracy. "I wouldn't want it to happen to me."

The defendants must also pay $42,000 in restitution.

A sixth defendant, John Waterson of Albany, faces between 31/2 and 7 years in prison at sentencing next month. He pleaded guilty to grand larceny but without the hate crime provision. Charges are pending against Frank Chrysler of Watervliet, said Cecilia Walsh, a spokeswoman for District Attorney David Soares.

Under state law, a hate crime is one in which the perpetrators target their victims because of their race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation and carries enhanced penalties.

Blain-Lewis said some victims not only feared losing their money but also their independence.

"We had victims say to us point blank that they did not want to tell anyone what happened for fear that their family would remove them from their home," she said.

jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com  518-454-5445  @JCEvangelist_TU
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In Denmark, youll find the happiest country in the world. (Though its up for debate whether its a socialist paradise or, merely, paradise)

Scandinavian countries dominated the newly updated World Happiness Report 2016. Denmark moved back into the top spot, overtaking last years winner, Switzerland. The region's other three countries -- Norway, Finland and Sweden -- also ranked in the top 10.

SURVEY: The happiest cities in America

The United States landed at No. 13. The country moved up to second in its region this year, surpassing Costa Rica and Mexico. In the Americas, only Canada does better at No. 6.

The index has been published since 2012 by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a U.N. organization. Researchers look at several factors to determine quality of life in 157 countries. The report analyzes GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support, trust in government and business, perceived freedom and generosity (full report here).

The worlds happiest country has been a favorite reference point for one liberal candidate for president. Democratic socialist candidate Bernie Sanders repeatedly has praised the Danes as a country that represents his vision for the United States. In response, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen has said Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

READ THIS: 15 things you didnt know about Bernie Sanders

Still, Denmark and the rest of the countries at the top of the list have strong social safety nets, including widely available health care and education. However, these countries also have fairly homogeneous populations unlike the United States. Rasmussen came to power with support from the anti-immigration Danish Peoples Party.

The least happy countries are made up of impoverished nations, often in the middle of political crises and violent unrest. Burundi finished last, just ahead of Syria, Togo and Afghanistan.

Global powers like China (No. 83) and Russia (No. 56) finished far behind the U.S. A couple of countries, such as Venezuela (No. 44) and Greece (No. 99), plummeted in rankings from 2015 to 2016 due to recent economic disasters.

Meet the 25 happiest countries in the world in the gallery above.
Unity State, South Sudan

After hearing Republican presidential candidates denounce big government and burdensome regulation, I'd like to invite them to spend the night here in the midst of the civil war in South Sudan.

You hear gunfire, competing with yowls of hyenas, and you don't curse taxes. Rather, you yearn for a government that might install telephones, hire a 911 operator and dispatch the police.

From afar, one sees the United States differently. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz seem to think that America's Achilles' heels are immigration and an activist government. But from the perspective of a war zone, these look more like national strengths.

Indeed, take what Trump is clamoring for: weaker government, less regulation, a more homogeneous society. In some sense, you find the ultimate extension of all that right here.

No regulation! No long lines at the DMV, because there is no DMV in the conflict areas. In practice, no taxes or gun restrictions. No Obamacare. No minimum wage. No welfare state to breed dependency. No sticky rules about eminent domain. And certainly no immigration problem.

Yet it's a funny thing. In a place that might seem an anti-government fantasy taken to an extreme, people desperately yearn for all the burdens of government and tolerance of social diversity that Americans gripe about.

In a country where to belong to the wrong tribe can be lethal, South Sudanese watch U.S. aid workers arrive  a mixed salad of blacks and whites, Asian-Americans and Latinos, men and women  with some astonishment. These Americans come in all flavors of faith: Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and more. And while they may snap at one another, they don't behead one another.

One lesson of South Sudan is that government and regulations are like oxygen: You don't appreciate them until they're not there.

Two political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, argue that America's achievements rest on a foundation of government services but that we Americans suffer from "American Amnesia" (that's also the title of their book coming out this month) and don't appreciate this.

"We are told that the United States got rich in spite of government, when the truth is closer to the opposite," they write. Every country that journeyed from mass illiteracy and poverty to modernity and wealth did so, they note, because of government instruments that are now often scorned.

These instruments also create a sense of national identity that eclipses tribal identities, even if this process is still incomplete in America.

I came across a group of homeless women and girls in the South Sudan swamps, hiding from soldiers who would have killed or raped them. One teenager was wearing a castoff T-shirt that read "Obama Girl," so I asked her if she knew who Barack Obama was.

She was confused; there are no functioning schools in the area, so she can't read and didn't know what her shirt said. But I explained. That didn't help, for she had never heard of Obama. I asked her friends if they knew, and finally I found one woman who did. She said shyly that Obama is president of the United States.

These women and girls are all members of the Nuer tribe, which the army of South Sudan has often targeted and which remains to some degree marginalized in the central government. And the Nuer are related to the Luo tribe, which is the tribe of Obama's father. So a Nuer now cannot in practice become president of South Sudan, but someone of similar ancestry can be president of the United States.

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That's an inclusiveness that enriches America and that should be a source of pride. Yet Trump sunders that unity and divides us by heritage: He turns us from Americans into people of many tribes.

What we Americans excel at are our institutions. We have schools, laws, courts, police, regulators, bureaucracies, safety nets  arms of a government that is often frustrating but always indispensable. These institutions are the pillars of our standard of living.

From the perspective of a South Sudanese war zone, our greatest challenge isn't big government or immigration, but the threat to those pillars from those who miscalculate our national strengths and weaknesses.

It's odd that some conservative candidates should be so anti-government when an intellectual forerunner was Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher who rightly warned that life in the natural state is "nasty, brutish and short." Trump and Cruz would do well to remember his point:

Government, laws and taxes are a burden, indeed, but they are also the basis for civilization.

Nicholas Kristof writes for the New York Times.
Ballots were still being counted in Florida's presidential primary when I landed there on a short business trip this week, but the outcome wasn't in doubt: another win for New York's gift to the GOP, Donald Trump.

Anybody who knows Florida could have seen this coming. I'm not the first columnist to see Trump as the ideal candidate of the Florida Man  the Internet meme that links people in that state with the wacky behavior that seems commonplace there.

You've read the sort of headlines that produced this meme:

"Florida Man Performs Fire-Breathing Routine at High School Pep Rally, Eight Hospitalized."

More Information Rex Smith is editor of the Times Union. Share your thoughts at http://blog.timesunion.com/editors. See More Collapse

"Florida Man Charged With Assault After Throwing Alligator Through Wendy's Drive-Thru Window."

"Florida Man Found in Hotel Room With Dead Body, Two Live Monkeys."

There's something about Donald Trump, quite aside from his Palm Beach estate, that makes him the Florida Man of the presidential race, even when two actual men from Florida were running against him.

Trump, born a New Yorker, presents now as a quintessentially Florida blend of carelessness, bluster and glitz, conveying to many people the image of a hard-driving leader.

I can no more identify his personality with the Republicanism of my heritage than I could see my late mother wearing one of those sequin-encrusted T-shirts on sale near the Tampa Bay beaches.

But with New York's presidential primary now just a month away, it's time for us to give serious thought to the traits we look for in a leader. For all the other qualities we might hope to see in a president  intelligence, grit, empathy, integrity  history suggests the nation will fare best if we put a person with extraordinary leadership skills at the helm.

After all, Franklin D. Roosevelt was notoriously perfidious  which is to say that he lied a lot  and John F. Kennedy hardly personified the family values that voters supposedly care about. Yet FDR, in the longest-ever presidency, adroitly marshaled military forces and managed economic policies to steer the nation through the 20th century's greatest threats, and JFK, in his short tenure, inspired a generation to service and set the country on a new course on civil rights and relations with America's greatest adversary. Both were, in fact, extraordinary leaders.

So if we hope for another FDR or JFK  or another Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, say  we need to weigh the leadership qualities of those who now aspire to succeed them in the Oval Office. Of course, leadership is hard to recognize until you notice its absence, because it arises from a diffuse set of skills and characteristics.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

One provocative notion of the skills that we might be seeking arises from a study recently published in an academic journal of psychology, and reported more widely in the Harvard Business Review. It suggests that we tend to make the wrong choice if we turn to the person who displays confidence and authority, attributes often linked to the image of leadership.

A more crucial characteristic for a leader, the authors of the study found, is competence, or even technical expertise.

The study involved teams competing in imaginary survival-in-the-desert scenarios. It found that teams did better when they chose leaders with proven survival skills  hardly surprising, of course  but that some teams instead picked as leaders people who were taller, or spoke louder, or who projected an aura of assurance. They didn't do as well.

"Don't be snowed by persuasiveness or the appearance of authority," one of the researchers, Stanford University business professor Lindred Greer, told HBR. "Some of these things can be useful, but competence comes first."

You may find one particular number from the study to be revealing: 45 percent of the groups picked the wrong leader, opting for the loud and cocky choice over the simply competent one. That's the same percentage of Republican voters in Florida who chose Donald Trump this week.

Purely coincidental, certainly. But after I happily set foot back in New York, I couldn't help but wonder about the appeal Trump may display in the New York race. Officially, he's one of us. In fact, though, he's more a Florida Man, don't you think?
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[March 18, 2016] 11th Annual New Technologies, New Vaccines Conference Features Advances in Fighting World Epidemics and Disease

Researchers, scientists, regulatory and industry professionals from the vaccine community from around the world will convene in Wilmington, Delaware for the 11th Annual New Technologies, New Vaccines (NTNV) conference at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware from March 20-23, 2016 to share advancements in the fight against deadly diseases including cancer and potential pandemics. With a goal to provide a forum for sharing advancements and resolving challenges faced in vaccine development, the NTNV conference is organized by Fraunhofer (News - Alert) USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB), in cooperation with the International Association for Biological Standardization (IABS), Geneva, Switzerland. Conference sponsors are Merck, MedImmune, Protein Sciences, Bio-Rad, IITRI, iBio and VWR. "New vaccine technologies have led to the introduction of efficacious vaccines with improved tolerability and safety profiles," noted Fraunhofer USA CMB Executive Director Dr. Vidadi Yusibov. Additionally, Yusibov added, "New technologies are enhancing our ability to identify new vaccine candidates, provide innovative manufacturing platforms, and develop safe and effective formulations and delivery mechanisms." The 2016 NTNV conference will commence with a keynote address by Gregory Poland, M.D., director of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group - a state-of-the-art research group and laboratory that seeks to understand the genetic divers of viral vaccine response and investigates issues surrounding novel vaccines important to public health. Through research, Dr. Poland and his team aim to explain how vaccine-induced immune responses and vaccine-related adverse events may be genetically determined - and therefore predictable.



Dr. Poland's presentation, Vaccinology 3.0: An Evolving Paradigm in the 21st Century, will discuss how the field of vaccinology is rapidly changing by advances in the science and the pressing public need for the development of vaccines against hyper-variable viruses and complex pathogens. Additional topics covered throughout the conference include: the current situation in neglected and emerging infectious diseases; new developments in antibody vaccines; the potential for systems biology approaches; the need for better methods of candidate vaccine identification; formulations for enhanced potency; and assays and ex-vivo systems for safety and efficacy evaluation.

Additional information about the conference is available at www.ntnv.org. About Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology Fraunhofer USA CMB, a division of Fraunhofer USA, Inc., is a not-for-profit research organization whose mission is to develop safe and effective vaccines targeting infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. CMB's technology provides a safe, rapid and economical alternative for vaccine production. The Center conducts research in the area of plant biotechnology, utilizing new cutting-edge technologies to assist in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of human and animal diseases. The Center houses individuals with expertise and excellence in plant virology, pathology, molecular biology, immunology, vaccinology, protein engineering, and biochemistry. Fraunhofer USA, Inc. is a subsidiary of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Europe's largest organization for applied research. Further information is available at www.fraunhofer-cmb.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005097/en/

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[March 18, 2016] Stripe to allow Cuban nationals to set up a U.S. business entity, bank account, and more

As part of President Obama's historic trip to Havana next week, today Stripe announced the expansion of Stripe Atlas to include Cuban entrepreneurs. For the first time, Atlas will give Cuban entrepreneurs access to:

-- an incorporated U.S. business entity

-- a U.S. bank account for the newly-created U.S. entity

-- a Stripe account to receive payments from customers around the world The basic infrastructure for starting an internet business in Cuba is nearly nonexistent. The country's internet penetration is among the lowest in the world, with less than 4% of the population online today. In addition, the financial rails aren't in place to transact with markets outside of Cuba. Hardly anyone has a credit card, so Cubans can't pay -- or more importantly, get paid -- for things available online to billions of people around the world. Despite these challenges in their local market, more than 70% of Cubans surveyed recently said they wanted to start their own business. Stripe Atlas will now allow entrepreneurs to set up an online business and expand beyond Cuban borders to sell to customers anywhere in the world. "Today's announcement and our work with President Obama here in Havana are about facilitating a smooth path for Cuban entrepreneurs into the modern global economy," said Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe. "The promise of the internet is that geography should be largely irrelevant. But that is not yet true. Especially here in Cuba, people simply do not have access to the high-quality banking or payments infrastructure they need to join the internet economy." Stripe Atlas gives entrepreneurs around the world a way to access the robust business and banking infrastructure of a global business hub. The U.S. is one of those hubs. Incorporating in Delaware, for example, allows companies to easily issue stock to employees and raise money from global investors. Delaware also provides the stability of clear corporate rules and case law. In addition, many more business services are available to U.S. companies than businesss located in emerging economies.



To help identify and support Cuban entrepreneurs for whom Atlas can be most useful, Stripe is working with Merchise Startup Circle, a Havana-based group supporting the startup community across Cuba. "There are lots of very good software developers, with very good ideas, inside Cuba. But until now, there has been no way for people to put those ideas into practice, no way to create a company that investors could put money into," said Alex Medina, Co-founder and Director of Merchise Startup Circle. "For the first time, Stripe Atlas will give people in our community a way to start their own business online and get paid for the things they create." Stripe Atlas initially launched on February 24, 2016. During the beta period, entrepreneurs will need an invitation from Stripe or one of our 70 incubator, accelerator and investor partners around the world, including Merchise Startup Circle in Cuba. Beta pricing is $500 USD, which includes around $400 of fees that anyone incorporating a Delaware entity would have to pay. In preparing for the February launch, Stripe worked closely with advisory board members including Lawrence Summers, Fadi Ghandour, Linda Rottenberg and Ben Lawsky.

The expansion of Stripe Atlas to Cuba was facilitated by the rule changes announced earlier this week by the Obama administration. Among other things, the new regulations allow U.S. banks to open accounts for Cuban nationals who reside in Cuba. There are still some restrictions on the types of transactions that American banks are able to process; therefore, Stripe and Silicon Valley Bank will apply normal account due diligence, including reviewing applications from Cuban entrepreneurs and ensuring that any banking services provided to the U.S. business entity comply with the updated guidelines and restrictions. "We're excited to work with entrepreneurs here in Cuba to help them get started, expand their businesses, and access the full power of the internet economy," said Patrick Collison. About Stripe Stripe is a technology platform that developers use to build internet businesses. Thousands of businesses -- ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies -- rely on Stripe's software tools to accept payments, expand globally, and create new revenue streams. Stripe has been at the forefront of expanding internet commerce, powering new business models, and supporting the latest platforms, from marketplaces to social commerce. Stripe users include Twitter (News - Alert), Kickstarter, Shopify, Salesforce, Lyft, and many more. Stripe was founded in 2010 by John and Patrick Collison, who set out to fix a critical problem: how online businesses could quickly and easily accept payments from anyone, anywhere in the world. Today, merchants in 24 countries can use Stripe to accept payments in 130+ currencies, as well as Apple Pay, Android (News - Alert) Pay, Alipay and Bitcoin. By reducing the barriers to starting and operating a business regardless of location or means, Stripe aims to bring more would-be companies online and accelerate the internet economy. Stripe has received around $300 million in funding to date from investors including Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Visa, American Express, and PayPal (News - Alert) founders Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Elon Musk. For more about Stripe Atlas, please visit https://stripe.com/atlas/press View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005640/en/

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[March 17, 2016] WOW! Reports Results for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2015

WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone ("WOW!"), a leading, fully-integrated provider of residential and commercial high-speed data, video and telephony services to customers in the United States, today reported financial and operating results for the year ended December 31, 2015. Financial & Operating Highlights (1) For the year ended December 31, 2015, WOW! reported Total Revenue of $1.217 billion and Adjusted EBITDA of $443.9 million representing a year-over-year increase in Total Revenue of $8.2 million (or 0.7%) and a year-over-year increase in Adjusted EBITDA of $31.6 million (or 7.7%) from the Pro Forma Total Revenue and Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2014. Conference Call WOW! will host a conference call on Friday, March 18, 2016 at 10:00 am Eastern to discuss the operating and financial results contained in this press release. Conference call information is as follows:







Call Date: Friday, March 18, 2016 Call Time: 10:00 a.m. Eastern Dial In: (877) 541-5069 Intn'l Dial In: (443) 842-7607 Conf. ID: 66721486

A recording of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the completion of the call until April 18, 2016. Dial in # for this replay is (855) 859-2056. Additionally, a copy of the transcript will be available approximately forty-eight hours after the call, at www.wowway.com/investor-relations. About WOW! WOW! is one of the nation's leading providers of high-speed Internet, cable TV, and phone serving communities in the U.S. Our operating philosophy is to deliver an employee and customer experience that lives up to its name. WOW! is privately owned by Avista Capital Partners and Crestview Partners. For more information, please visit www.wowway.com. _________________ (1) Refer to "Definitions of Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Operating Metrics," "Unaudited Reconciliations of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures", and "Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial, Operating & Customer Information" in this Earnings Release for definitions and information related to Adjusted EBITDA and Pro Forma financial, operating and customer information. WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations

($ in millions) Three months ended Year ended December 31, December 31, 2015 2014 2015 2014 Revenue Residential subscription $ 242.9 $ 252.2 $ 987.3 $ 1,038.2 Commercial subscription 25.6 23.4 99.7 95.8 Total subscription revenue 268.5 275.6 1,087.0 1,134.0 Other commercial services 5.9 5.4 24.0 24.6 Other 26.9 28.2 106.1 105.7 Total Revenue 301.3 309.2 1,217.1 1,264.3 Costs and expenses: Operating (excluding depreciation & amortization) 165.5 187.8 678.6 737.0 Selling, general and administrative 27.4 33.5 110.6 135.8 Depreciation and amortization 54.9 57.2 221.1 251.3 Management fee to related party 0.5 0.4 1.9 1.7 248.3 278.9 1,012.2 1,125.8 Income from operations 53.0 30.3 204.9 138.5 Other income (expense): Interest expense (54.7 ) (59.8 ) (226.0 ) (237.0 ) Realized and unrealized gain on derivative instruments, net 1.3 1.0 5.6 4.1 Gain on sale of assets - 0.3 - 52.9 Loss on early extinguishment of debt - - (22.9 ) - Other income (expense), net 0.1 0.9 (0.4 ) 3.4 Income Tax (expense) benefit (1.2 ) 0.5 (3.9 ) 14.9 Net loss ($1.5 ) ($26.8 ) ($42.7 ) ($23.2 ) The condensed consolidated statements of operations above and the information in this press release should be read in conjunction with our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on March 17, 2016. For ease of use, references in this press release to "WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone" or "WOW!" mean WideOpenWest Finance, LLC and its consolidated subsidiaries. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain 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 statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this release that address activities, events or developments that we expect, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and we caution you not to place undue reliance on such statements. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of the words "may," "will," "should," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "intend," "project," "continue," or the negative of these words, or other similar words or terms. The forward-looking statements included in this release are made as of the date hereof. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, even if new information becomes available in the future. Actual results may differ materially from those expected because of various risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. You should review our filings with the SEC, including the section titled "Risk Factors" contained in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 17, 2016. Definitions of Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Operating Metrics We have included certain non-GAAP financial measures in this press release including Adjusted EBITDA. We believe that these non-GAAP measures enhance an investor's understanding of our financial performance. We believe that these non-GAAP measures are useful financial metrics to assess our operating performance from period to period by excluding certain items that we believe are not representative of our core business. We believe that these non-GAAP measures provide investors with useful information for assessing the comparability between periods of our ability to generate cash from operations sufficient to pay taxes, to service debt and to undertake capital expenditures. We use these non-GAAP measures for business planning purposes and in measuring our performance relative to that of our competitors. We believe these non-GAAP measures are measures commonly used by investors to evaluate our performance and that of our competitors. Adjusted EBITDA is defined by WOW! as net loss before net interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization (including impairments), gains (losses) realized and unrealized on derivative instruments, management fees to related party, the write-up or write-off/disposal of any asset, debt modification expenses, loss on extinguishment of debt, integration and restructuring expenses and all non-cash charges and expenses (including equity based compensation expense) and certain other income and expenses, as further defined in our credit facilities. Adjusted EBITDA is not a presentation made in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America ("GAAP") and our use of the term Adjusted EBITDA varies from others in our industry. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to net income (loss), operating income or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP as measures of operating performance or operating cash flows, or as measures of liquidity. Adjusted EBITDA has important limitations as an analytical tool and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. For example, Adjusted EBITDA: excludes certain tax payments that may represent a reduction in cash available to us;

does not reflect any cash capital expenditure requirements for the assets being depreciated and amortized that may have to be replaced in the future;

does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs; and

does not reflect the significant interest expense, or the cash requirements necessary to service interest or principal payments on our debt. See "Unaudited Reconciliations of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures" and the accompanying tables below for reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA to our net loss, which is the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. Furthermore, Adjusted EBITDA in this release is sometimes presented on a Pro Forma basis, giving effect to the increase in our investment in AAB on May 1, 2014 and the sale of our South Dakota systems on September 30, 2014 as if such transactions had been completed at the beginning of each period presented (see "Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial, Operating & Customer Information" below for a complete discussion). In addition, we use the following operating and customer metrics in this release: Homes Passed - We report homes passed as the number of residential units, such as single residence homes, apartments and condominium units, passed by our broadband network and listed in our database excluding those we believe are covered by exclusive arrangements with other providers of competing services.

- We report homes passed as the number of residential units, such as single residence homes, apartments and condominium units, passed by our broadband network and listed in our database excluding those we believe are covered by exclusive arrangements with other providers of competing services. Total Customers and RGUs - Because we deliver multiple services to our customers, we report the total number of customers ("Total Customers") as those who subscribe to at least one of our high-speed data ("HSD"), video ("Video") or telephony ("Telephony") services without regard to which or how many of those services they subscribe. We report Video subscribers as the number of basic cable subscribers and do not include customers who only subscribe to HSD or Telephony services in this total. Each of the individual Video, HSD and Telephony subscribers is referred to as a Revenue Generating Unit ("RGU"). Subscriber information for acquired entities is preliminary and subject to adjustment until we have completed our review of such information and determined that it is presented in accordance with our policies. Unaudited Reconciliations of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures The following two tables provide an unaudited reconciliation of our consolidated net loss to Adjusted EBITDA for the respective quarters ended: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Reconciliation of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2015 2015 2015 2015 Net loss $ (6.6 ) $ (27.5 ) $ (7.1 ) $ (1.5 ) Depreciation and amortization 54.8 55.5 55.9 54.9 Management fee to related party 0.4 0.6 0.4 0.5 Interest expense 58.9 57.1 55.3 54.7 Loss on extinguishment of debt - 22.9 - - Unrealized gain on derivative instruments, net (2.0 ) (1.1 ) (1.2 ) (1.3 ) Non-recurring prof. fees, M&A and restr. exp. 3.5 4.2 4.8 3.5 Other expense (income), net (0.2 ) - 0.7 (0.1 ) Income tax expense 0.9 1.0 0.8 1.2 Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 109.7 $ 112.7 $ 109.6 $ 111.9 WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Reconciliation of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2014 2014 2014 2014 Net loss $ (20.3 ) $ (7.8 ) $ 31.7 $ (26.8 ) Depreciation and amortization 66.0 64.1 64.0 57.2 Management fee to related party 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.4 Interest expense 57.8 59.4 60.0 59.8 Unrealized gain on derivative instruments, net (1.0 ) (0.8 ) (1.3 ) (1.0 ) Gain on sale of assets - - (52.6 ) (0.3 ) Non-recurring prof. fees, M&A and restr. exp. 4.9 13.0 8.9 19.8 Other expense (income), net 0.1 (0.2 ) (2.4 ) (0.9 ) Income tax (benefit) expense 1.1 (16.7 ) 1.2 (0.5 ) Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 109.0 $ 111.5 $ 109.9 $ 107.7 (1) See "Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial, Operating & Customer Information" below for a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA for the respective quarters ended. The following table provides an unaudited reconciliation of our net income (loss) to Adjusted EBITDA for the respective years ended: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Reconciliation of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Year ended December 31, 2015 2014 Net loss $ (42.7 ) $ (23.2 ) Depreciation and amortization 221.1 251.3 Management fee to related party 1.9 1.7 Interest expense 226.0 237.0 Loss on extinguishment of debt 22.9 - Unrealized gain on derivative instruments, net (5.6 ) (4.1 ) Gain on sale of assets - (52.9 ) Non-recurring prof. fees, M&A integration and restr. exp. 16.0 46.6 Other expense (income), net 0.4 (3.4 ) Income tax (benefit) expense 3.9 (14.9 ) Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 443.9 $ 438.1 (1) See "Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial, Operating & Customer Information" below for a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA for the respective years ended. Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial, Operating & Customer Information The unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial, operating and customer information for the periods presented in the tables below has been prepared giving effect the increase in our investment in Anne Arundel Broadband ("AAB") on May 1, 2014 and the sale of our South Dakota systems ("South Dakota") on September 30, 2014 as if such transactions had been completed at the beginning of the periods presented by applying pro forma adjustments to the individual historical unaudited condensed combined financial, operating and customer information of AAB and South Dakota. Accordingly, the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial, operating and customer information presented in the tables below includes the unaudited financial, operating and customer information for AAB for the period from January 1, 2014 to April 30, 2014 and excludes the unaudited financial, operating and customer information for South Dakota for the period from January 1, 2014 to September 30, 2014. The historical combined financial, operating and customer information has been adjusted to give effect to pro forma events that are (1) directly attributable to such transactions, (2) factually supportable and (3) expected to have a continuing impact on the combined results. The unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial, operating and customer information is for informational purposes only and does not represent what our results of operations, operating and customer information would have been if the transactions had occurred at any date, nor does such information project the results of operations for any future period. The unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information does not reflect non-recurring charges that have been incurred in connection with the transactions, including any related financing fees, legal fees, broker fees and accounting fees. The following table provides an unaudited reconciliation of our Total Revenue to Pro Forma Total Revenue for the respective quarters: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Information (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2015 2015 2015 2015 Total Revenue $ 312.3 $ 305.8 $ 297.7 $ 301.3 Pro Forma Adjustments: Revenue related to AAB - - - - Revenue related to South Dakota - - - - Pro Forma Total Revenue $ 312.3 $ 305.8 $ 297.7 $ 301.3 Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2014 2014 2014 2014 Total Revenue $ 312.1 $ 319.8 $ 323.2 $ 309.2 Pro Forma Adjustments: Revenue related to AAB 5.3 1.8 - - Revenue related to South Dakota (21.3 ) (20.0 ) (21.2 ) - Pro Forma Total Revenue $ 296.1 $ 301.6 $ 302.0 $ 309.2 The following table provides an unaudited reconciliation of our Total Revenue to Pro Forma Total Revenue for the respective years ended: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Information (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Year ended Dec 31, 2015 Dec 31, 2014 Total Revenue $ 1,217.1 $ 1,264.3 Pro Forma Adjustments: Revenue related to AAB - 7.1 Revenue related to South Dakota - (62.5 ) Pro Forma Total Revenue $ 1,217.1 $ 1,208.9 The following two tables provide an unaudited reconciliation of our Adjusted EBITDA to Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA for the respective quarters ended: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Information (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2015 2015 2015 2015 Adjusted EBITDA $ 109.7 $ 112.7 $ 109.6 $ 111.9 Pro Forma Adjustments: Adjusted EBITDA related to AAB - - - - Adjusted EBITDA related to South Dakota - - - - Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA $ 109.7 $ 112.7 $ 109.6 $ 111.9 Three months ended Mar 31, Jun 30, Sep 30, Dec 31, 2014 2014 2014 2014 Adjusted EBITDA $ 109.0 $ 111.5 $ 109.9 $ 107.7 Pro Forma Adjustments: Adjusted EBITDA related to AAB 0.8 0.2 - - Adjusted EBITDA related to South Dakota (9.4 ) (8.0 ) (9.4 ) - Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA $ 100.4 $ 103.7 $ 100.5 $ 107.7 The following table provides an unaudited reconciliation of our Adjusted EBITDA to Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA for the respective years ended: WideOpenWest Finance, LLC

Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Information (Unaudited)

($ in millions) Year ended Dec 31, 2015 Dec 31, 2014 Adjusted EBITDA $ 443.9 $ 438.1 Pro Forma Adjustments: Adjusted EBITDA related to AAB - 1.0 Adjusted EBITDA related to South Dakota - (26.8 ) Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA $ 443.9 $ 412.3 The unaudited pro forma financial information should be read in conjunction with the information contained in "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," the consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes appearing in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 as filed with the SEC on March 17, 2016. The following table provides an unaudited reconciliation of our previously reported operating, total customer, subscriber and Total RGU data to Pro Forma operating, total customer, subscriber and RGU data for the respective quarters ended giving effect to the increase in our investment in AAB on May 1, 2014 and the sale of South Dakota on September 30, 2014 as if such transactions had been completed at the beginning of the periods presented: 4Q-13 1Q-14 2Q-14 3Q-14 4Q-14 1Q-15 2Q-15 3Q-15 4Q-15 Reported Homes Passed 2,995,000 2,997,000 3,114,000 2,978,000 2,985,000 2,988,600 2,993,100 2,997,200 3,003,100 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 112,000 112,000 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (142,000 ) (142,000 ) (142,000 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma Homes Passed 2,965,000 2,967,000 2,972,000 2,978,000 2,985,000 2,988,600 2,993,100 2,997,200 3,003,100 Reported Total Customers 841,100 852,900 867,800 816,000 809,100 799,200 787,100 781,700 777,800 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 16,400 16,600 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (52,300 ) (52,700 ) (52,300 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma Total Customers 805,200 816,800 815,500 816,000 809,100 799,200 787,100 781,700 777,800 Reported HSD Subscribers 740,000 756,700 769,600 729,700 727,800 722,000 713,100 712,300 712,500 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 11,700 11,800 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (43,500 ) (44,200 ) (44,100 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma HSD Subscribers 708,200 724,300 725,500 729,700 727,800 722,000 713,100 712,300 712,500 Reported Video Subscribers 694,400 694,300 699,000 653,800 634,700 606,500 582,700 564,500 547,500 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 14,400 14,600 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (34,400 ) (34,200 ) (33,700 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma Video Subscribers 674,400 674,700 665,300 653,800 634,700 606,500 582,700 564,500 547,500 Reported Telephony Subscribers 423,800 418,800 416,200 373,900 359,400 339,600 324,500 310,600 296,800 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 5,500 5,400 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (32,900 ) (32,200 ) (31,500 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma Telephony Subscribers 396,400 392,000 384,700 373,900 359,400 339,600 324,500 310,600 296,800 Reported Total RGUs 1,858,100 1,869,800 1,884,800 1,757,500 1,721,900 1,668,100 1,620,300 1,587,400 1,556,800 Pro Forma Adjustments: AAB 31,600 31,800 - - - - - - - South Dakota systems (110,800 ) (110,600 ) (109,300 ) - - - - - - Pro Forma Total RGUs 1,778,900 1,791,000 1,775,500 1,757,500 1,721,900 1,668,100 1,620,300 1,587,400 1,556,800 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160317006077/en/

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[March 17, 2016]

Appvion Introduces Triumph Treated Universal High-Speed Inkjet Paper

APPLETON, Wis., March 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Appvion, Inc. has expanded its Triumph Treated High-Speed Inkjet Paper line with the introduction of Triumph Treated Universal.

Triumph Treated Universal High-Speed Inkjet Paper is engineered to run smoothly and effectively on both dye-based and pigment-based high-speed inkjet presses. This new product replaces Appvion's original high-speed inkjet paper, Triumph Treated, which was compatible primarily with dye-based presses. Triumph Treated Universal is a drop-in replacement for Triumph Treated dye placements to make transitioning to Triumph Treated Universal easy.

The versatility of Triumph Treated Universal is ideal for printers whose operations include dye-based and pigment-based ink presses. "Triumph Treated Universal delivers excellent color, vibranc, runnability, and dry time. The versatility of Triumph Treated Universal can also help simplify the buying experience for printers and reduce inventories for those who use multiple presses and ink types in their operations," said Ethan Haas, Appvion's vice president and general manager of carbonless and specialty papers.







Triumph Treated Universal joins Triumph Treated Ultra P High-Speed Inkjet Paper in Appvion's inkjet product line. Ultra P is a high-performance paper engineered to deliver ultra-bold and vibrant color in the most demanding applications as well as improved productivity with roll-fed, high-speed inkjet presses using pigment-based inks. Ultra P needs no on-press pretreatment or bonding agents, so it can help lower printing costs and simplify operations.

All Triumph High-Speed Inkjet Papers are made in the U.S. and are qualified on major OEM presses including HP, Canon, Ricoh, Kodak, Screen, and Memjet. Appvion's inkjet papers are acid free, elemental chlorine free (ECF), and manufactured under ISO 14001:2004-certified environmental management systems. FSC Certified (FSC-C003368) versions of Triumph High-Speed Inkjet Papers are also available.

Appvion offers a roll-stocking program for its inkjet papers as well as low minimum order quantities, custom roll widths and sheet sizes, and short lead times. The company ensures timely delivery via its network of strategically located distribution centers and supports its products with a dedicated technical services team and a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

About Appvion

Appvion creates product solutions through its development and use of coating formulations and applications. The company produces thermal, carbonless, security, inkjet, digital specialty, and colored papers. Appvion, headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, has manufacturing operations in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, employs approximately 1,400 people and is 100 percent employee-owned. For more information, visit www.appvion.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130513/CG12038LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/appvion-introduces-triumph-treated-universal-high-speed-inkjet-paper-300238008.html

SOURCE Appvion, Inc.
[March 17, 2016] CEL and THine Electronics Announce a Partnership for Advanced Video Transmission and Signal Processing Solutions

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and TOKYO, March 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- California Eastern Laboratories (CEL) and THine Electronics, Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange/JASDAQ: 6769) today announced a partnership for introducing THine's advanced video transmission and image signal processing solutions to customers in the Americas. THine's products usher in new generation capabilities for consumer and mobile devices as well as industrial and automotive applications. CEL will provide local design expertise, leveraging THine's proven technology, promising product roadmap and commitment to customers' success. "These are very exciting additions to CEL's communication semiconductors portfolio," said Paul Minton, President and CEO of CEL. He went on to say, "Our collaboration with THine Electronics broadens CEL's offerings to address needs across IoT and high bandwidth video and data communications. It increases our ability to help customers across many applications. In general, THine's solutions reduce cost, enable higher bandwidth and are easier to integrate than today's alternatives." Kazutaka Nogami, CEO of THine Electronics added, "We are truly excited at THine to add CEL's extensive experience at selling and marketing semiconductors in the Americas." Mr. Nogami also stated, "Many leading companies have located design centers in the Americas. CEL's long experience with Japanese suppliers provides easy entry for us to support those design locations." He concluded with, "Through CEL's strong support of our industry-leading products, we expect to grow our design wins in the Americas substantially." In closing, Mr. Minton stated that, "THine Electronics brings us outstanding products, solid technology and a strong commitment to support customers in the Americas. As word gets out about their solutions, more and more customers will seek them out and we are ready to help! For convenience and ease of access, the THine interface products with evaluation boards are already available at Digi-Key."







Contact Us





California Eastern Laboratories

Sergio Almanza +1 (408) 919-2283 or [email protected] Jeremy Dietz +1 (408) 919-2228 or [email protected]



THine Electronics, Inc.

Yasuhiro Takada +81 (3) 5217-6660 or [email protected]



Information can also be found on our website at cel.com.

About CEL CEL offers a wide range of solutions for communications and IoT applications. CEL sells signal processing, wireless and optical devices as well as the Cortet and MeshConnect family of radios, software, mobile applications and cloud services. CEL is active in many industry bodies including the Bluetooth SIG, ZigBee Alliance and Thread Group. With 60 years of experience, CEL provides customers with hardware and software that simplify designs and reduce time to market. CEL supports customers through sales offices, sales representatives and distributors worldwide. Visit us at www.cel.com. About THine Electronics THine Electronics Incorporated is a fabless semiconductor company that provides innovative mixed signal LSI and analog technologies such as V-by-OneHS, LVDS, other high-speed data signaling, timing controller, analog-to-digital converter, ISP, power management and drivers for LEDs and motors in growing niche markets for our customers' solutions, targeting strategic markets in flat screen TVs, smart phones, document processing, amusement, industrial application, and automotive markets. THine is headquartered in Tokyo, and has subsidiaries in Taipei, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. THine Electronics is listed on JASDAQ of Tokyo Stock Exchange under the security code of 6769. For more information, please visit www.thine.co.jp/en/. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160317/345627LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cel-and-thine-electronics-announce-a-partnership-for-advanced-video-transmission-and-signal-processing-solutions-300238045.html SOURCE CEL

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[March 18, 2016] holic holic - Women's Fashion Brand Alluring Housewives Globally

SEOUL, South Korea, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A Korean women's wear brand, 'holic holic (www.holicholic.com)' increased its sales tenfold in the global market in 2015 compared with the previous year growing into a global brand. This achievement was made only in 2 years after it has been receiving offers from buyers and agencies from all around the globe, thus deciding to challenge the global market in 2013. "We have been receiving offers from buyers in many countries in addition to individual orders from customers overseas even when we were operating in Korea only," explained CEO Moon Sun-young, 33. She also added that the growing global popularity of the Korean Wave was also one of major reasons holic holic has decided to start a full-scale operation overseas. holic holicstarted out in Korea in 2007 and has made continuous growth while introducing achromatic, natural, and modern style products through clever, yet stimulating coordination.



Its products are known for having excellent quality and design, and are greatly popular among housewives in their 30s-40s, sometimes considered to be the "pickiest" customers. More than 70% of holic holic's customers have returned more than twice to repurchase items. Currently, the products of holic holic can be purchased through its Korean, English (en.holicholic.com), Japanese (jp.holicholic.com), and Chinese (cn.holicholic.com) sites developed by the global e-commerce platform, cafe24 (www.cafe24.com). The offline shop, opened to reflect customers' requests, is located in Daebong-dong, City of Daegu, Korea.

CEO Moon went on to say, "We are striving to make better achievements by renewing our shopping sites to reflect the culture and main traits of different countries as well as by holding regular promotions. For we have built up our competitiveness through quality rather than price, we will continue to make efforts to keep our customers' trust strong." To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/holic-holic---womens-fashion-brand-alluring-housewives-globally-300237591.html SOURCE holic holic

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[March 18, 2016] ASAE Great Ideas Conference Inspires Executives to Innovate, Build Influence, Elevate Leadership

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ASAE's 2016 Great Ideas Conference, March 1315, had its highest attendance when located at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs with 790 attendees. The total represents an increase of 131 percent from 2012. Association professionals and industry partners participated in more than 70 education sessions with 160 content leaders including keynotes from: Boston College's Carroll School of Management dean Andrew C. Boynton, MBA, PhD and because I said I would founder Alex Sheen. Andy Boynton, a regular contributor on Forbes.com, and author of The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen, kicked off the conference. He revealed that great business ideas do not spring from innate creativity or necessarily from the brilliant minds of people, but those who are in the habit of looking for great ideas around them all the time. Boynton encouraged attendees to understand the difference between invention and innovation, to be systematic, to have clear goals, and to hunt for ideas outside their industry. "We continue to see Great Ideas grow in attendance as well as the quality of educational sessions for our attendees. Participants mentioned this year's conference was the best in its history, as they discovered new ideas and strategies they could implement into their own organizations," said ASAE President & CEO John H. Graham IV, FASAE, CAE. Wrapping up the conerence was Alex Sheen, who challenged leaders in the association community to explore the true value of honoring our commitments, even when it is difficult, expensive, or inconvenient. He talked about his story and dared attendees to build greater trust, influence, and impact with their teams as well as how to create meaningful interactions. He shared his insights on the importance of keeping promises, and a reminder that whenever a leader might consider quitting, they should remember why they started in the first place.



The event began on Sunday, March 13 with two half-day Executive Leadership Workshops. In "Executive's Guide to Profitable Education & Learning," Jeff Hurt, who is EVP, education and engagement for Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, explored six brain-based learning principles, the role of technology, and how to ensure there is a business ROI within the education programs associations offer their members. In "A Silicon Valley Guide to Engagement, Loyalty and Optimal Revenue," Robbie Kellman Baxter, founder of Peninsula Strategies, LLC, and author of The Membership Economy, explored how associations can transform how they engage customers, build loyalty, and establish predictable revenue through subscription pricing and community engagement business models.

For more information about this year's conference, visit Great Ideas website. Next year, the Great Ideas Conference will be held in Florida at the Hyatt Regency Orlando on March 57, 2017. ASAE thanks the following Alliance Partners for continued support of the association community: Strategic Partners

Abila

Atlanta CVB

Business Events Canada

Personify

Reno Tahoe USA

Team San Jose

YourMembership Corporate Partners

Visit Baltimore

Dallas CVB

Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB

Fort Worth CVB

GEICO

Louisville CVB

Mexico Tourism Board

Naylor Association Solutions

Omaha CVB

Visit Orlando

Visit Salt Lake

Meet in Washington State Event Partners

BrightKey

The Broadmoor

CliftonLarsonAllen

DelCor Technology Solutions

Dubai Association Centre

Hong Kong Tourism Board

Johnson Lambert LLP and Vault Consulting

Korea Tourism Organization

Manifest

MemberClicks

Meet In Minnesota

New Orleans CVB and New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center About ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership ASAE is a membership organization of more than 21,000 association executives and industry partners representing 9,300 organizations. Its members manage leading trade associations, individual membership societies and voluntary organizations across the United States and in nearly 50 countries around the world. With support of the ASAE Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity, ASAE is the premier source of learning, knowledge and future-oriented research for the association and nonprofit profession, and provides resources, education, ideas and advocacy to enhance the power and performance of the association and nonprofit community. For more information about ASAE, visit www.asaecenter.org Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130227/DC67174LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/asae-great-ideas-conference-inspires-executives-to-innovate-build-influence-elevate-leadership-300238177.html SOURCE ASAE

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[March 18, 2016] Patriot Scientific Corporation Announces Annual Shareholder Meeting

CARLSBAD, Calif., March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Patriot Scientific Corporation (OTCQB: PTSC) today announced that its Annual Meeting of Stockholders will be held on April 28, 2016. The meeting will be conducted in a virtual format and broadcast via web-streaming. Additional details regarding the meeting are available in the Company's Definitive Proxy Statement as filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. About Patriot Scientific Corporation Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, Patriot Scientific Corporation is the co-owner of the Moore Microprocessor Patent Portfolio. For more information on PTSC, visit www.ptsc.com. About the MMP Portfolio The MMP Portfolio includes US patents as well as their European and Japanese counterparts for techniques that enable higher performance and lower cost designs essential to consumer and commercial digital systems ranging from PCs, cell phones and portable music players to communications infrastructure, medical equipment and autmobiles.



Safe Harbor Statement: Statements herein which are not purely historical, including statements regarding Patriot Scientific Corporation's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations, representations, projections, plans or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the risks and uncertainties relating to the future of our MMP joint-venture and the licensing and litigation strategies employed by the joint venture. It is important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those in any such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties associated with the effect of changing economic conditions, trends in the products markets, variations in the company's cash flow, market acceptance risks, patent litigation, technical development risks, and seasonality. Our business could be affected by a number of other factors, including the risk factors listed from time to time in the company's SEC reports including, but not limited to, the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the periods ended November 30, 2015, and the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 31, 2015. The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained herein. Patriot Scientific Corporation disclaims any obligation, and does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements made herein. Contact:

Patriot Scientific

760-795-8517

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/patriot-scientific-corporation-announces-annual-shareholder-meeting-300238331.html SOURCE Patriot Scientific Corporation

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Volunteer walks in honor of her husband Thousand Oaks resident Joan Hull will be among those participating in this years Conejo Valley Walk to End Alzheimers at 9 a.m. Sat., Oct. 22 at the Westlake Promenade. Hull...

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,...

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The best songs are like bad dreams is as much a prophecy as it is an opening lyric. Its (Gareth) Liddiard firing a warning shot ever so slightly over your head. The kind of slap that stings the back of your neck and the pit of your stomach all at once. If the best songs are, indeed, like bad dreams, then Feelin Kinda Free sees The Drones offering up a sweaty nightmare.

As an overall picture its a really good representation of where the band are at the moment percussionist Chris Strybosch reflects. Its been a long time in the making, this onewhich tends to be the case for some of The Drones records.

Feelin Kinda Free is The Drones seventh studio album, their first since 2013s I See Seaweed, and in most parts represents a notable departure from the sound of their past records.

Its such a different sound for us and we just enjoy doing different stuff. None of us can keep doing the same old stuff  even if its just a slight change in Gazzas writing, or the way we approach working in the studio, or the massive change which this isit keeps us interested and we just love it.

Its always pretty organicstarts with Gaz writing these songs which we love playingand essentially he hasnt changed the way he writes too much. Once he brings something bare bones to the studio  its how we go about putting it together.

Rather than just bashing away at drums and guitarsthis time we used more triggers and loops, synth, minimal guitars in places, mixed samples with livesometimes its like working at a little space station. It was conscious in the way that we wanted it to sound different from other (The Drones) records, and I think we achieved that.

We also had a lot more time than in the pastthis pretty much took a good year really from start to finish. We have our own studio and spaceso we had the luxury of time and it got away from us a little, which is pretty predictable towards the end, when you give a band free reign in a studio. It meant we could spend a lot of time on the songs, and could get them sounding just the way we wanted

Feelin Kinda Free also represents a return to the group for the drummer (affectionately known as Chrisso) since taking a hiatus following the 2005 record Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By.

Its really really special for me I certainly missed it while I was away. I was always in close contact with the guys, its so good to be back. Theyre all my mates which makes it all the more enjoyable to be seeing them all the time, to be making music together, thats what its all about. 

The Drones have always been known for delivering an intensity of live performance which sets them right apart on the local scene. Their ability to blend the visceral with the intellectual, to seemingly move and unite a room around them, is a patch upon which they are rarely rivalled.

If youre not offending people who ought to be offended, youre doing something wrong.

This album tour is probably going to show it even more than past albums have we probably dont play the songs exactly as they are on the album. We can be two very different bandswe dont feel any pressure to be true to the exact sound on the record, we prefer to thrash it out on stage. Thats what you get when you come out to see us on tour. Thats what keeps us interested, the songs change from show to showit could be quite a spectacle, or debacle!

The honesty, themes, and strength of the song writing on this record is as worthy of admiration as the production value. Everything from nationalism (what Liddiard describes as Anzacery/being gallipolized), to racism, classism, the banality of the right and of the left, is all on the table and is fair game.

From a song writing perspective, its an almighty breath of fresh air and contains some messages that are bound to resonate very deeply. Liddiards sentiments and lyrics strike right at the choke-points of the modern Australian experience.

The reality of releasing an album like this, in Australia, in 2016, means that not all folks are going to take kindly to some of those messages. Australia doesnt love a mirror, mostly because its hard to stare that of ugly in the face for too long. A young country still trying to arm-wrestle some kind of identity from within itself, still (at least politically) unsure of where it sits on some very basic principles.

[include_post id=461609]To share a quote from Liddiard as to why he thinks that might be: The reason people dont like to look back in Australian history is sooner or later you get back to the bit with the Aboriginal people. And its not nice to know thats what you are: the offspring of a bunch of colonial parasites that just destroys anything in their wake, even humans.

As a good example  tabloid journalist Andrew Bolt responded after being named in a lyric of the albums second track Tamam Shud, a tune that also calls out other frustrations with similar undesirable and ineffectual parts of current Australian culture and psyche. Apparently also a music critic, Mr Bolt was quick to decry The Drones as stamping on the ashes of the Wests musical traditions in a column that he writes.

Truth is, he might not be altogether wrong. This is not like other music.

It was Chomsky who told us that if youre not offending people who ought to be offended, youre doing something wrong. If the likes of Andrew Bolt are paying attention enough to at least feign some kind of outraged offence, then The Drones might just be the most relevant and important group in Australia right now.

Feelin Kinda Free is available in stores and digitally today March 18th

Independently through Tropical F*&k Storm Records and MGM Distribution.
Wu-Tang is 100% all natural; you know what Im saying? No artificial ingredients.

These are the words of a young RZA speaking directly to camera in the 1994 documentary Enter The Wu-Tang. You could see it in his eyes, even back then, he knew  the Wu Tang-Clan was changing history. Just one year previous, in 1993, their debut record 36 chambers was released and the impact it has had on the genre has been astronomical.

Jay-Z, Kanye, Joey Badass  theres barely a rapper alive who hasnt drawn influence from Wu-Tang either directly or indirectly through a secondary vessel. But just how did the Wu create such a storm in such a short amount of time? Ill let RZA explain that one.

People caught onto us so fast cause they was starving for some real hip hop, they was tired of all that wackness man. When they got a chance to hear fat lyrics AND fat tracks  thats like getting thats like getting bananas in yo cereal.

When we get on stage its like going to the old school block party and they let you get on the mike. You get on, you represent, you take yours, and you get off man. We aint there to do no flips, you aint gonna see no magic tricks, no dancin, no booty shakin  none of that man. Wu-Tang; you gon hear lyrics and hear fat tracks. You gon like it.

The cool part about being a journalist besides the nervous breakdowns and shitty pay is that you occasionally get to meet some pretty awesome people, so naturally I jumped at the chance to interview the legendary rap group when I found out they were returning to Australia after a five year absence.

Beyond The Valley, the guys responsible for bringing Wu-Tang to Australia, are already quite familiar with me. Earlier this year I went to their music festival and traded my way up from a cigarette to a bag of cocaine. So when I asked if there was any chance of grabbing an interview their response was: Wanna come on tour?

White-Tang Clan, the five young men who brought Wu-Tang to Australia. Michael Christidis (far right) instructed me to call him when I arrived at the first show in Melbourne. Fast forward to a stinking hot Tuesday evening  show day  Im standing at the front of Margaret Court Arena amidst the growing convoy of Wu fans not really sure what to expect. I called Mike. What happened next was nothing short of magical  an unexpected once in a lifetime occurrence.

We are whisked through a back door and given all access passes. Hang in Nicos room for a bit, Mike says as he runs off towards Wus Change rooms. Mike never sits still; hes always doing shit, top bloke though.

Nico Ghost already knew me from a previous interview. He paced around the room and his body seemed to be filled with some volatile hyper reactive concoction of energy about to explode at any minute, understandable, in just under half an hour he would be opening for Wu-Tang.

He was gazing intently into a full body mirror rapping silently to himself when I asked if he ever gets nervous. Yeah man, really nervous but also excited. Later that evening I ran into DJ Mathematics in the halls, I asked him the same question, Nah son, just another day in the office. I miss the butterflies.

After watching Nico mesmerize Melbourne I ducked into the artist car park for a quick smoke. There I found the girlfriends of Ivan Ooze, Junor, and Nico Ghost  all of whom were opening for Wu-Tang. Three of these girls are dating cool as fuck rappers, one of them is stuck with me.

I wish I had more photos of the Melbourne show but security took my camera and I was pretty high. I also cant remember most of it but here is a photo of me creeping out Raekwon from my Instagram.

Photo credit: Ben Townsend // Ivan Ooze. Baggage claim in Sydney the next morning. The eagle has landed.

Seywood, Nico Ghost, Ivan Ooze, and Junor at hotel check-in in Sydney. Talented blokes, genuine as fuck human beings. I was meant to be rooming with Nico Ghost but ended up scoring RZAs room after he left for a better hotel, because the one we were staying at was like the projects. Later that afternoon I got a call from Mike.

Dave, are you gonna be in your room for the next half hour? A guy is gonna come deliver weed to you, can you bring it to Masta Killas room when you get it?

Sure man.

When I dropped off the devils lettuce to Masta Killa he invited me in, made me vegan falafel, then poured me juice and spoke some crazy wisdom for like half an hour.

After passing a joint and talking about the universe I had to leave to shower. Sydney show was just a few hours away. Throughout the tour Masta Killa took on a almost mentor-type role for me, spilling out life advice in the form of abstract metaphors almost always out of nowhere.

Nico Ghost greeting fans just after performing in Sydney. The Ghost hypnotized the crowd with chilling renditions of his tracks Night Terrors and Silent.

Sink piss Its the Brooklyn way. Free alcohol is always fun. I thought Id get over it after a week. I didnt.

Josh Jackson joined Ivan on stage for all three shows. The guy was a freak of nature doing backflips and shit. I also bummed smokes form him the whole tour, pretty sure I owe the guy about 47 cigarettes.

Ivan Ooze cooling off after performing in Sydney. Maybe hes born with it.

There was a bit of time before Wu were due to step on stage so we ducked out to smoke a spliff and eat fried chicken.

I really dont remember why everyone was laughing in this photo.



The whole tour encapsulated in one photo.



Oh by the way, meet Seywood  Nicos DJ. He couldnt pose for this photo because he was too busy making high powered business deals with New York and Tokyo at the same time.

Fuck the lockout laws.

Photo credit: Sam Cooke // Seywood

I watched most of the Sydney show perched in this little corner, occasionally Id creep out on to the stage for just a few seconds. I could see half the patrons of an almost sold out arena, the other half blinded by bright lasers and flashing lights. Dj Mathematics words echoed in my mind. Just another day in the office son.

I was about four steps away from touching Raekwons back sweat. Amazing.



After the show, food was delivered straight to the Wu change rooms. Contrary to some reports, there was no sushi. Also, GZA REALLYYYY didnt like photos, so I decided to see how many sneaky photos of him I could get before being punched in the face. Also this shit  this shit right here  is the best fried chicken Ive ever had in my life.



Seriously. Ghostface. Dude. You gotta try this chicken.

Ghostface didnt talk much and when he did his short sentences were tinged with a deep raspiness. He seemed happier to observe than engage and thats what he always seemed to be doing. He was sharp, always knew what was going on.

At one point after the Sydney show he was sat on his own with a piece of fried chicken in his hand, quietly surveying the commotion caused by the 40 odd people in the room around him, not reacting, not judging, just observing. I wouldnt say the guy seemed happy, rather, he seemed satisfied  the kind of satisfaction that comes with knowing youve made an impact on your craft and the world, spawning a legacy that will live on for generations after youve passed.

At the after party I found out RZA, much like John Howard, DJs like a mad cunt. And man did he look smooth doing it. The guy exuded an effortless mixture of class and cool. He could steal your wallet and your girl with one hand a pour your oblivious ass a glass of cabernet with the other.

While RZA did his thing I went back and chilled in the VIP section with these blokes.



Photo credit: Seany Foster

Where I passed a joint with Ghostface Killa and shared champagne with Raekwon. And teachers said Id never be shit.



Mike and Nico talking about some important shit. I think. I dunno man we were all fucked by this point.

Seywood was pretty popular.

Photo credit: Ben Townsend // Ivan Ooze.

The next day we flew to Brisbane for the final leg of the tour. We stopped at Chur Burger which was fucking amazing. Seriously if youre ever in Fortitude Valley stop by, grab a burger, and say hey to Riley who works there hes a mad dog.



Photo credit: Michael Christidis

So essentially, Mr Ghostface, thats why Im CONVINCED aliens built the pyramids.



Photo credit: Michael Christidis

Think about it. Thats all Im saying.

Photo credit: Michael Christidis

That night we ate Thai food. Food of the gods.

Later we ended up in some Salsa club in Brisbanes Fortitude Valley that night because Ghostface said it looked real nice. When Ghostface tells you he wants to go to a salsa club you take him to a salsa club.

I was leaning over this balcony thing talking to RZA when a girl came up to me asking if it was true that Wu-Tang was in the club. I looked around and looked at RZA then looked back at her and said Nah.

She left. RZA fist bumped me. Respect son. If she dont know the face she aint deserve it.

I dont remember how I got back to the hotel that night, but I do remember being woken up by a text from Nico before dawn the next morning. There was a room mix up which resulted in Nico Ghost and Masta Killa being placed in the same room. When Masta Killa walked into his room after leaving the club he found Nico sleeping in his bed.

The next day Ivan Ooze and Ghostface Killa shot a music video for their upcoming collaboration track Bills, scheduled to be released later this year.



Photo credit: Kevin Hoang

Whilst shooting, Ghostface left half of his cheeseburger unguarded so I ate it in the hopes of gaining some of his rap powers. It didnt work.

The calm before the storm. Nico Ghost sits on stage pre-show in Brisbane.

Photo credit: Jacob Pedersen // Alter Ego Visuals

Ivan Ooze. Not only a decent rapper but a top human as well. The guy killed it holding his own supporting what is arguably the most influential hip hop group in history.

The catering, as always throughout the tour, was fucking amazing. Tom Caw, Christian Serrao, and Michael Christidis of Beyond The Valley sit above stage engaged in conversation while Joshua Dowdle of Gold Coast band Lastlings looks slyly at the camera. Dont touch my food cunt.



Somehow I ended up on stage for the Brisbane show.

Wu-Tang motherfuckerrrrrrr.



At the end of the Brisbane show RZA called up the boys from Beyond The Valley to join him on stage. I jumped down from the stage and snapped this pic.

RZA: Hey son, get back up here  get a picture of us with the crowd in it.

Its been over two decades since the release of 36 Chambers and throughout the tour I found myself subconsciously examining each of the Wu-Tang Clan members for any signs that they were over it.

The hype is nowhere near what it was back then, and understandably so. They were stopped for autographs and the odd photo every now and then, but never mobbed by the public.

At restaurants they just seemed like ordinary middle aged men. They sat in nightclub VIP areas with a slight air of weariness, as if tired of the whole game. Yet the fire in their performances reigns strong, on stage they were ageless. When the lights shone and the crowd roared, the Wu-Tang Clan well and truly brought the Ruckus.

This is the fucking life. If you didnt see any more articles from me its because Ive quit writing and started a rap career. Check out my mixtape.
Local crooks continue to target cars and this small caliber shooting is one of many instances where drivers rolling past or through the east side have been targeted. Take a look: Woman's car window shot out while driving down Bannister in south Kansas City
Not so long ago, LGBT advocates told us that former MO State Sen. Jolie Justus would be a qualified voice for change and neighborhood representation on the City Council.Turned out that she mostly just does what Mayor Sly tells her . . . Just like every other Kansas City lawyer desperately clinging to middle-class life by the fingernails.On the bright side, she's always willing to talk to constituents and is nicer than most people . . . Which is really the only qualification for any job in this town, anyhoo.And so, because the campaign never ends . . .and probably deserves it more than most.You decide . . .
Followup from the newspaper tells most of us what we already know . . . Not that anybody cares but Latino communities would be the first to endorse deporting violent "undocumented" criminals despite partisan hype or the fact that some reactionaries would rather start with women and children. You decide: Serrano-Vitorino, accused of five murders, has history of violent acts
BOLD STATEMENT FROM A BLOGGER: KANSAS CITY TRUMP PROTESTER IS 'JIHAD JOURNALIST' WITH CONNECTIONS TO SKETCHY MUSLIM GROUPS!!!

"Now if you bothered watching the video aired by local TV station you might be feeling all warm and fuzzy. well, if you watch the next video, from the Kansas City Trump rally on March 13th, you are going to see the little lady engage police using tactics she likely learned while traveling to GAZA on a HAMAS support convoy . . . Brace yourself, the sweet little girl in the video above is about to go all out jihad . . ."

"I have been studying Islam for around 10 years, the more I learn of prophet Mohamed the more disgusted I become. I have also become aware of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the Kansas and Missouri area . . . We have met several times, they know I am a kaffir who is causing fitna . . ."

In our relentless pursuit of the scoop TKC turns to all manner of sources in order to provide an alternative to the commercials and propaganda disguised as news.To wit . . .Here's the word . . .Read the whole thing here . . .In ane-mail interview with TKC the author of this investigative allegation directed us toward his latest work and this passage about his research:Of course, benefit of Free Speech is that Americans believe it's an inalienable human right which extends to even the critics of this nation and its leaders . . . But the background on some of the protesters is appreciated if only to get a sense of what some adversaries of GOP leader Trump believe from both the MSM and Internets angle.You decide . . .
36 arrested for DUI during KCPD checkpoint : Nearly 750 vehicles were stopped at 39th Terrace and Southwest Trafficway during the checkpoint.

"Obviously the police are enfocing a vendetta against Westport. Nothing is worse for our business than being encircled and having our customers interrogated at every turn. We're finally starting to make progress against P&L District and that was taken away last night."

"The traffic shut down was just bad planning. A 30 minute wait to leave makes it totally not worth my while."





"Got the alert bout the crackdown and called an Uber. Out of there in no time on Broadway as my idiot friend had to stand in line all night and now faces at least 10k in legal fines for blowing .01 over the limit. Good times . . . Think I'm gonna use this as my opportunity to 'have a talk' with his gf about maybe setting up an intervention and see if she is DTF. My guess is that her yoga pants say YESH. Keep the fire, brother."

The Kansas City po-po was out in full force last night keeping the local drunks in line and protecting the streets of this exceptionally violent town. Like it or not, the thankless jobs earns a more than a bit of rebuke this morning . . .Here's "news" that a great many of online denizens, social media scumbags and all manner of malcontents mentioned last night . . .Again, the response is typical . . .Here's some of the messages sent our way . . .From a frustrated driver . . .Smartphones seem to be the solution.Fair play, a few police friends complain about the greying Westport crowd and rampant bad breath.Meanwhile, drinking alone while crying and looking at the Internets always seems to be the safer and much more commonplace option.You decide . . .
While the European Union Summit on refugees is still in progress, EU sources revealed that European Council President Donald Tusk presented a new plan based on which the talks will continue today.

The plan provides European Union to support Greece at technical level, so as to legitimize and make sustainable the mechanism for the readmission of refugees and immigrants to Turkey.

According to a EU official, the European Union proposes the member states to provide administrative support to Greece, including judges, interpreters, translators and administrators of Frontex aiming to efficiently equip the refugee centers on the Greek islands and mainland to process more quickly the asylum requests.

All this is done in the context of not leaving Greece alone, and achieving a massive European support. The alternative to this plan is to have many Idomeni camps, said a EU top official.

According to Reuters, key elements and negotiating difficulties in a draft EU plan to have Turkey stem the flow of migrants to Greece, in return for various concessions are as follows:

1. RETURNS

Turkey to take back anyone who crosses to Greek islands from its coast without regular travel papers.

Problems:

Greece needs to set up tribunals to hear asylum claims and appeals quickly.

Turkey needs to amend legislation so that the EU can say it is a "safe third country" for refugees who are sent back. The United Nations and rights bodies are sceptical about the plan.

Returns cannot start until Turkey agrees at least a basic level of protection to all nationalities returned to its soil. At present it only grants such protection to Syrians, but non-Syrians make up two-thirds of the migrants.

The draft does not say when the scheme starts. Diplomats say Germany is keen for it to begin as soon as possible, so that people arriving on Greek islands as early as Monday could be held for expulsion back to Turkey. Greece says its services are not ready. EU officials fear delay may fuel a rush to cross the Aegean before any deadline.

2. RESETTLEMENT

For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU, with priority given to those who have not previously crossed to Greece.

Problems:

EU states are divided on sharing out asylum seekers. They have outstanding voluntary offers to resettle only about 18,000.

A further 54,000 places could be offered by tweaking a scheme intended to relocate people from one EU state to another. But eastern states oppose those obligatory quotas.

If more than 72,000 places are needed, there would be more arguments about who would provide them. But officials say if that number of Syrians are still reaching Greece, the entire scheme, intended as a deterrent, may be considered a failure.

3. ALTERNATIVE ROUTES

Turkey to work with EU to bar other routes.

Problems:

Bulgaria is especially concerned about its Turkish border.

There are signs more people may try to sail to Italy.

4. LONGER TERM RESETTLEMENT

In the longer run, once EU states are satisfied that Turkey has really stopped the flow of migrants across the Aegean, the EU is offering to admit more refugees directly from Turkey. EU member states would make voluntary offers of the number they are willing to resettle.

Problem: Governments face voters hostile to immigration.

5. VISA LIBERALISATION

Turkey to fulfil remaining requirements - about half of 72 criteria - by the end of April so the EU executive can recommend EU states to waive visas for Turks on brief trips by the end of June.

Problems:

Many governments, notably France, do not want Turks coming to Europe without visas, partly on security grounds, partly due to popular fears it would mean more immigration - though only the few with modern, biometric passports would be eligible.

Among the EU criteria are that Cypriots be treated like other EU citizens, something Turkey rejects since it does not recognise Cyprus as a state. Ankara has raised expectations at home of visa-free travel, making this a tough issue to crack.

6. AID FOR REFUGEES

EU ready to double its aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey to 6 billion euros up to the end of 2018.

Problem: EU governments are arguing about where the money comes from and whether it is premature to promise without seeing that Turkey is delivering on agreements first made in November.

7. FASTER EU MEMBERSHIP TALKS

"The EU, together with Turkey, will prepare for the decision on the opening of new chapters in the accession negotiations as soon as possible."

Problem: Many EU states see little or no prospect of Turkey joining in the foreseeable future. Cyprus has vetoed opening several "chapters" in a dispute relating to Ankara's refusal to recognise Cypriot statehood. The draft wording is conditional and vague enough for Nicosia, but will Turkey accept it?

8. SYRIA SAFE AREAS

EU ready to help Turkey help Syrians be better off and safer within their own country.

Problem: EU has no military clout and member states which do are wary of Turkey's proposal of "safe areas" in northern Syria.

Source: Reuters

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
The head of the Russian Federal Tourism Agency Oleg Safonov said Friday that Greece is ready to issue visas for Russians 48 hours

Greece is ready to issue visas within 48 hours, head of Russias Federal Agency for Tourism (Rosturizm) Oleg Safonov announced, according to TASS news agency.

We want to create favourable conditions for our tourists and made efforts in this direction. We discussed the possibilities with our western colleagues. The Greeks appointed more people so that they can issue visas within a day or two, Safonov noted.

The Russian institution is also holding negotiations on lowering visa prices since Bulgaria offers the most favourable conditions in this respect.

Bulgaria has taken steps in this direction. The country now offers more special conditions  visas will be free of charge for children younger than six and lower tariffs for adults are also discussed, the official commented.

TASS says the issuing of Schengen visas takes 3 to 5 days and new rules came into force as of September 14, 2015, requiring that fingerprints are taken.

TASS mentions that Bulgaria will not require fingerprints this year.

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
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko tried to reassure the EU on Thursday that his country would soon overcome a political crisis that has rattled Western lenders and won support for Kiev's cherished goal of visa-free travel in Europe for its ci

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko tried to reassure the EU on Thursday that his country would soon overcome a political crisis that has rattled Western lenders and won support for Kiev's cherished goal of visa-free travel in Europe for its citizens.

Ukraine's Prime Minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, survived a parliamentary vote of no-confidence last month but three parties have quit his coalition and Western creditors who are keeping Ukraine's economy afloat are frustrated with the slow pace of reforms.

"We have a political crisis in Ukraine and I hope that by the end of the month we will find a solution," Poroshenko told reporters, alongside European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

"There will be no early parliamentary elections and the political coalition will remain, will be responsible, orientated on reforms," Poroshenko said after his talks with the two top EU officials, adding an EU-Ukraine summit would be held on 19 May.

Western donors, who include the EU and US, are urging Kiev's leaders to remain unified to pass the reforms needed to secure a further 1.7 billion dollars in aid from the International Monetary Fund and to do much more to tackle rampant corruption.

Approval by EU's 28 governments and European Parliament

Diplomats said Tusk and Juncker had repeated this message to Poroshenko on Thursday and had also argued against new elections which would only further delay reforms.

In happier news for Kiev, Juncker said the European Commission, the EU's executive, would formally propose next month ending the requirement for Ukrainians to get visas to visit EU member states. The proposal would have to be approved by the EU's 28 national governments and the European Parliament.

While lifting the EU visa requirement will be sensitive, especially in Germany, as Europe struggles with its migration crisis, the step would be the most tangible sign for Ukrainians that their 2014 Western-backed uprising against a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich, was finally paying dividends.

After Yanukovich fled to Russia, Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea region and gave support to armed separatists in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine in a conflict in which more than 9,000 people have been killed and is still simmering.

Moscow denies sending arms or troops into Ukraine but has demanded greater autonomy for the country's heavily industrialised eastern region.

Source: Reuters

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
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LONDON



At least 80 million children living in areas affected by war or natural disaster had their education disrupted last year, leaving them prey to child labour, trafficking and extremism, experts said on Thursday.



Many humanitarian aid appeals for 2015 ignored education, and aid appeals for education were only one-third funded. Overall, education received 1.4 per cent of all humanitarian funds, British charity Theirworld said in a report.



"The new analysis ...(confirms) 2015 was a disastrous year for children who had their education disrupted by wars and natural disasters," said Susan Nicolai, head of development progress at the London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute.



"World leaders need to urgently guarantee that there isn't a future humanitarian emergency response where education isn't seen as critical," said Nicolai, whose institute's research produced the 80 million figure featured in the report.



"Without this we will continue to see short-term crises result in multi-generational disasters," she added.



Schools help new generations develop the skills they need to build their lives and their countries, and also offer a safe place to learn and play which in turn can help children deal with trauma in the aftermath of a crisis, Theirworld said.



Education during emergencies also protects children from exploitation and poverty, it said. "Out-of-school children are at greater risk of being coerced or exploited by extremists, traffickers and criminals," it added.



Theirworld was set up by Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and launched a global education campaign in 2013.



Although the number of children affected by crises is rising, humanitarian aid for education has almost halved since 2010, leaving an annual funding shortfall of $9 billion, the charity said.



The report looked at funding in 28 countries hit by emergencies, including natural disasters, conflicts or health crises like the Ebola outbreak.



"In the face of increasing needs and the immense cost of not investing today, it is shocking that less than 2 percent of all humanitarian aid goes to education," said Tom Fletcher, global strategy advisor at Theirworld.



"Humanitarian aid must provide children with a safe school, a future and hope," he added.



U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and others, including the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF), are calling on world leaders to set up a multi-million dollar humanitarian fund for education in emergencies, that can be mobilised quickly when needed.



The leaders are meeting for the first ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May.



The report's funding data was drawn from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Financial Tracking Service, which monitors all humanitarian aid. - Thomson Reuters Foundation
Photo credit: Dan MartensenDrake has decided to expand his brand into the liquor business.

The rapper has taken to Instagram to give fans a glimpse into the packaging of his own whiskey, called Virginia Black, which comes housed in a sleek, golden bottle.

Last month, Drizzy revealed he created the line for celebratory moments. "After that legendary moment what else is there to do but celebrate with class. Virginia Black coming soon...," he wrote on his Instagram.

It's unknown when Virginia Black whiskey will be released.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
New Service Delivers Instant Access to a World of Customized Experiences to Consumers.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - March 17th, 2016

NEW YORK, New York, March 17, 2016 -- Venture, a new travel concierge service from Holiday Estates USA, is inviting visitors to explore its new website at ventureny.com to "Add Venture to Your Vacation." Launching today, the modern, user-friendly website is designed to offer easy access to general information for Venture members who join their travel program in addition to any tourists and local New York City residents with guides to prominent local attractions, customized tour packages, and access to Ventures unique arrangements for services and accommodations.



Utilizing a responsive design, visitors can access the site from anywhere in the world on their desktop, tablet, or smartphone. The Venture website provides unique access to special and negotiated rates that are not only easy to book through a representative, but will also make sure that you experience the same consistency of professionalism throughout your entire experience. Venture provides the highest caliber of travel and concierge service for any need. This is why Venture is excited to present all of their services to you by announcing the launch of the new website, ventureny.com.



Venture has worked hard on developing a website that portrays the same level of service and high standards as the premium network of partners that fulfill your needs. According to Jose Zavala, designer of the website, "The new online experience in simple: once visitors to the site have a general idea of the desired experience, they simply complete a brief online form embedded on every page and one of their experienced travel concierges will respond within 12 hours.



For those travelers already on the ground in NYC requiring immediate assistance, they simply select the telephone number on any one of the site's pages to call Venture directly. Ventures website is a critical component in making your lifestyle work for you: with Venture, there is no task that is out of reach. Whether you are executing a business trip or planning a family vacation, they can fully customize your journey.

Venture enables a personalized and dedicated concierge service, tailor-made trip arrangements, and extensive accommodation support. Venture strives for exceptional experiences with each client and partner. NextHome Residential, a premier brokerage and Venture real estate partner, entrusts our clients to their impeccable standards and also license their professionals to enable an extra level of service delivery unlike any other in New York, " says Edward Hasicka, licensed real estate broker and owner. Ventures DNA embodies luxury and their standard of communication is personalized. Stanley Ramdhany of Murray Hill Suites regards their team as trustworthy professionals who pride themselves on providing unparalleled services and support.

About Venture

Venture by Holiday Estates is a personalized travel service that has established a new benchmark in the travel industry by changing the way people explore the world in both their personal and professional lives. Venture's partner network and negotiated rates empower clients to completely customize their travel experience while ensuring a quality journey at an incredible value. Expertise and in-depth knowledge of destination provide a stress-free atmosphere at the core of Venture. Holiday Estates experienced professionals with 15 years of accommodation and service experience, along with a global track record of nearly a decade, invite you to add Venture to your vacation at ventureny.com.

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Reasons to why people choose to climb Mount Kilimanjaro over other adventure destinations are Many. Several geographic nature attractions include volcano, wildlife, rocks, glacier, machame route ice fields and snow are some of things which Made Kilimanjaro to be chosen as one of 7 Natural wonders Africa.



(TRAVPR.COM) TANZANIA - March 18th, 2016 - Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is a natural wonder tours to explore.

Mount Kilimanjaro is among 7 natural wonder Africa which was announced in 2013. Reasons to be natural wonders are countless however few are Volcano features like Rocks.

Kilimanjaro is made of three distinct volcanic peaks: Kibo, the highest at 5,895 m (19,341 ft); Mawenzi at 5,149 m (16,893 ft); and Shira, the shortest at 3,962 m (13,000 ft).

Mount Kilimanjaro Nature forest and beauty wildlife flowers make part of Kilimanjaro. ; Kilimanjaro has a large variety of forest types over an altitudinal range of 3,000 m (9,843 ft) containing over 1,200 vascular plant species. Montane Ocotea forests occur on the wet southern slope. There are unique plants like heath, moor and wildflowers.

Forests hosts different kind of wildlife species on different Kilimanjaro routes. Tourists trekking Kilimanjaro on Lemosho route can see big game wildlife such as buffalo and elephants.

Glacier and Ice fields are more on Machame route. Machame route climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is cheap and beauty. Lemosho route is beauty scenic but need more $ than Machame. So most tourists who trek Kilimanjaro choose cheap travel package which fits pocket budget of most.

Climbing Kilimanjaro trip - 6 days machame route itinerary is below:

Day 1.Machame Gate (1634 m/5,363 ft) to Machame camp (2834 m/9,300 ft)

Drive to machame gate after registration begins your climb. The first day is a nice leisurely hike through the tropical rain forest. As you pass through the rainforest, you are most likely to spot Colobus monkeys and wild birds. Have dinner and overnight at Machame Camp.

Day 2. Machame camp (2834 m/9,300 ft) to Shira camp (3749 m/12,300 ft)

From the Machame camp, you cross the stream onto its west bank and follow the path up the steep rocky ridge - criss-crossing a few times before reaching Shira camp, at the base of a semi-circular wall of rocks. Have dinner and overnight at Shira camp.

Day 3.Shira camp (3749 m/12,300 ft) to Barranco camp (3901 m/12,800 ft)

From Shira Hut, you hike to Lava Tower (15,000) to acclimatize and then proceed down to Barranco Camp via the Great Barranco Wall. This nights camp is one of the best on the mountain. Have dinner and overnight at Barranco camp.

Day 4.Barranco camp (3900 m/12,800 ft) to Barafu camp (4,600 m/15,091 ft)

Today is a long and tough hike than the past few days, hiking up to the final camp before your last ascent day to the summit.

From Barranco Hut, you climb up through the edge of great Barranco Wall. It's a tough morning climb on a steep trail, but once you reach the top, the views are wonderful. Today is the best day to get lots of rest. Have dinner and over night at Barafu camp.

Day 5 .Barafu Camp (4,600m/15,091 ft) to the Summit (5896 m/19,343 ft) and then to Mweka Camp (3100 m/10,170 ft)

You will start trekking early before sunrise (1-2 am), as the walk today will take 10 - 14 + hours. The 1,100-meter (3,600) ascent in just over 3 km (1.86 miles) will take you about 6-8 hours. As you try to reach the summit t watch the sunrise over the Great Rift Valley. After watching the sunrise and taking pictures, descend down back to Barafu camp for lunch then proceed to Mweka camp. Have dinner and overnight at Mweka camp.

Day 6.Mweka camp (3100 m/10,170 ft) to Mweka Gate (1828 m/6,000 ft)

On the final day, you will have a short three hour hike out, walking through the lush forest. you meet our driver with the vehicle at the Mweka park gate to drive back to Moshi . Have overnight at the Hotel.

Price is ..

Skype ID: k.tanzanitesafaris

THE prices include all services: Airport transfers from Kilimanjaro Airport, Transport from Hotel to Kilimanjaro Machame gate, all park fees, salaries of guides/porters/cook, all meals on the mountain, clean safe drinking water, accommodation equipment, and Government tax, certificate of climbing, first aid, rescue and transfer to/from Arusha or Moshi.

Services not included: Flight to Tanzania, Good deluxe hotel, Entry VISA, Climbing gears (available for rent), tips to guides, porters, coordinator and items of a personal nature.

Equipments: Pulse Oximeter (25 $) and Oxygen bottle (150 $) can be provided on Request.

If you want extra time to acclimatize, book 7 days Machame route and so add extra day to above itinerary. Meaning Day 4.Barranco camp (3900 m/12,800 ft) to Barafu camp (4,600 m/15,091 ft) will be divided to 2 days and hence you have one night at Karanga Valley. This gives you extra energy before summiting day.

To Add extra day, add 200 US $ per person.

More information and Travel tips are: More details we can discuss as we go ahead.

- Exercises and training

- Diamox use

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Almost two years after a ketchup snub sparked a patriotic backlash in Ontario, sales for French's ketchup remain strong.

It's been over a year and a half since we reported on the Ketchup Wars of Ontario. In case you don't remember, and you don't feel like clicking on that link, here's a quick recap:

It all started when supermarket chain Loblaw's announced it was going to pull French's ketchup off its shelves, since it didn't sell as well as the Heinz brand. But in light of Heinz's recent withdrawal from the farming community of Leamington, Ontario, where it had been based for 104 years, and the fact that French's ketchup was still made using tomatoes from Leamington, many residents of Ontario reacted strongly to the decision.

What ensued was a social media-fuelled, patriotic, pro-French's frenzy in grocery stores across the province, complete with the premier taking pictures of herself bagging French's ketchup at the checkout and editorial cartoons of Donald Trump banning it from the United States. "Support Canadian workers and tomato farmers! Buy French's ketchup!" was the impassioned message.

But that was winter 2016. Where have things ended up? Did the loyal support wear off over time? According to an article in the December 2017 print edition of Maclean's, titled 'Condimental Drift,' it has not. Aaron Hutchins writes:

"Twenty months on, new numbers suggest the interloper has taken full advantage, cracking the Heinz stranglehold on Canada's ketchup market by wrapping itself in the Maple Leaf. Through 2016, French's market share stood at 3.2 percent amid the national goodwill. This year -- long after Canadians stopped talking about Leamington tomato farmers -- its share more than doubled to 6.7 percent... Its growth has come almost exclusively at the expense of Heinz... whose market share in Canada has dropped from 84 to 76 percent over the past two years."

Loblaw's continues to stock French's ketchup, as well as many restaurants, including fast-food chain A&W.; Particularly in the Leamington region, both in stores and restaurants, there is little love lost for Heinz these days. Hutchins quotes Scott Holland, author of a Heinz-commissioned book about the company's role in Canada:

"Heinz is almost forgotten here. The loyalty definitely isn't there. Before, the groceries would go out of their way to serve Heinz products. Now you go to the ketchup aisle and see all these other ketchups taking up the same amount of space. It seems strange to see three or four brands sitting next to Heinz."

What Hutchins points out, however, is that French's is not as authentically Canadian as we'd like to think. It was owned by a British company at the time of the Ketchup Wars, then was sold earlier this year to American McCormick & Co. But French's has done a very good thing for Canada by moving its bottling operations from Ohio to Toronto for all its Canadian ketchup in 2017, making Ontarians all the more happy to buy it.

I've wondered about this on occasion, since I, too, reach for the French's automatically now whenever my kids need a ketchup refill. It's always nice to see patriotic and local buying habits stick, long after the initial hubbub has died down, and it does send a valuable message to food companies that consumers care, that we pay attention, and that we will persist in voting with our dollars.
Singapore

Singapores Changi Airport has been voted the Worlds Best Airport for the fourth year in a row at the 2016 World Airport Awards, said Changi Airport Group. This is the seventh time that Changi Airport has picked up this title at the World Airport Awards, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. IANS

Chandigarh

Goyal is chairman of HCCI Panchkula chapter

A general body meeting of the Haryana Chamber of Commerce and lndustry (HCCI) was held here on Friday and unanimously elected Vishnu Goyal as the chairman of its Panchkula chapter. Goyal was also authorised to select chapters executive. tns

New Delhi

Kidswear brand Poney expands India presence

Malaysian childrens wear brand Poney is expanding its presence in India by opening a second store in Delhi. The second Poney store will launch the brands spring-summer collection 2016 at DLF Saket mall here next week. IANS
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 17

Rejecting the Jawaharlal Nehru University's (JNU) High-Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) report, the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) today called the probe a farce that violates principles of natural justice. It alleged that the enquiry was conducted to witch-hunt Left student activists at the behest of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry.

Members of the JNUSU accused the varsity administration of insensitivity and high-handedness and alleged that the High-Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) was operating on the same pattern of the Hyderabad University's enquiry which led to institutional murder of Rohith Vemula. They said the enquiry committee was biased and bogus

which was set up by Vice-Chancellor Prof M Jagadesh Kumar to probe the February 9 event on campus when anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

A resolution in this regard was passed post last midnight by the university's students body during its council meeting in which it raised questions over the composition, terms of reference and functioning of the HLEC.

It was also decided in the Council meeting that the JNUSU members would hold a demonstration tomorrow at administrative block against the show-cause notices served to 21 students which they said had failed to specify charges against any individual.

We will protest at 2 pm tomorrow as a mandate of the council meeting. We will not give any explanation to the administration in our stance as neither the enquiry is fair nor the charges are specific, said JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shohra, while adding that later union representatives would meet the VC.

The entire articulation is clear in the resolution that we had our apprehensions to the findings of the report. The whole enquiry has been biased and non-transparent. The autonomy of the JNU has been attacked. We are not going to tolerate this and collectively fight it out, said daughter of senior CPI leader D Raja, Aparajita, who also denied having received any show-cause notice.

Noting that between the last two Council meetings, the JNUSU has made its dissent clear.

Shehla said, The administration has been insensitive as none of our concerns have been taken on board. Eight students of the Left were suspended for a month without giving them a chance. We will fight against the futile enquiry committee that was formed on the diktat of the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) as a part of political vendetta.

The JNU had first assigned the task of probing the incident to a proctorial committee which was later replaced by a three-member high-level committee without any valid reasons, claimed the JNUSU members.

We have communicated to the JNU administration how the HLEC has violated the principles of natural justice in the enquiry process. The administration has neither addressed our concerns nor has taken any step regarding this, read the resolution of the JNUSU.

According to the student body members, without addressing these concerns no free and fair enquiry is possible.

Students have been issued show-cause notices which hold them guilty. The accused students have not been provided the entire report despite the JNUSU demanded for the same. The accused students have also not been told the specific charges against them. The JNUSU will oppose any disciplinary action based upon the findings of this partial and biased enquiry, read the resolution proposed by the JNUSU vice president, seconded by Satarupa Chakravarthy.

The resolution was favoured by 18 votes as against three dissents.
Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, March 18

As many as 87,000 Tibetans living in exile across the world will elect the Sikyong (their elected leader) and 45 members of the 16th Parliament-in-Exile on March 20.

Incumbent Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile Penpa Tsering are contesting for the post. In the preliminary elections held for the post in October last year, there were five candidates. However, Sangay and Penpa Tsering polled more than 10 per cent of the votes that made them eligible for the next phase of elections.

The election to the post of Sikyong holds importance in view of the fact that the Dalai Lama had devolved all his political and temporal authority to the elected leader of the Tibetans after he announced his retirement 2011. Since then, the Dalai Lama has not issued any political statement over the issue of Tibet and has confined himself to spiritual matters.

Even the Dalai Lama, who was the temporal and spiritual head of all Tibetans, has expressed doubts on weather his institution will continue after him. The selection of the Dalai Lama was done through a complex set of Tibetan religious rituals and it was believed that the Dalai Lama reincarnated and was identified through signs he had left before his demise.

In the recent past, the Dalai Lama has said he would take a decision on whether his institution would continue or not at the age of 90. At present, the Dalai Lama is 80 years old. The Tibetan exiles are apprehending that China may install its own Dalai Lama after the present Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. In such a case, the Tibetans will have their elected leader Sikyong to continue their struggle.

Sources said while incumbent Sikyong Lobsang Sangay was boasting of the work he had done in the last five years for the welfare of the Tibetan community in exile, his rival was targeting him on his failure to resume talks with China and no virtual progress over the issue of Tibet.

Despite the fact that the Dalai Lama had mellowed down his stand from total independence to a middle-way approach calling for autonomy to Tibet under Chinese sovereignty, China has refused to engage in a dialogue with the present Sikyong, Lobsang Sangay. A section of Tibetan monks who still have considerable influence in the Tibetan society are also supporting Penpa Tsering, the sources said. Most of the voters are Tibetans living in India, Nepal and Bhutan. While in North America, there are 9,800 registered voters, Europe 5,600 and 950 voters are living in Australia and the rest of Asia. More than 87,000 of the 1.5 lakh Tibetans living in exile have registered to vote, out of which 45,000 are from U-Tsang province of Tibet and the remaining from the Kham and Amdo region.

This is the second direct election to the post of Sikyong.. In the last elections, Lobsang Sangay had got 55 per cent of the votes.

While it is the second election for the post of Sikyong, it is the 16th for the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile since the Dalai Lama fled into exile from China.
Karachi/Dubai, March 18

An ailing Pervez Musharraf today left for Dubai hours after the Pakistani government allowed the former dictator facing trial in a number of cases, including for high treason, to go abroad for medical treatment.

I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months, said 72-year-old Musharraf, who is suffering from a spinal cord ailment. Vowing to face all pending cases against him, Musharraf said he was keeping himself abreast with developments in the country and will actively take part in politics after his return.

He said he was going abroad to seek medical treatment of a decade-old illness which has now developed several complications.

The former military ruler boarded the Emirates flight 611 bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am (0425 IST).

He was the last person to be embarked on the plane and then the gate was closed. The retired general appeared relaxed, a media report quoted an airport source as saying. He landed in Dubai at 5am. Musharraf intends to go back to Pakistan after his medical treatment as he wants to serve the country, said the All-Pakistan Muslim League.  PTI
Beirut, March 18

The Islamic State group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. "The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members" of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in fighting near Palmyra. A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military adviser. Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the adviser whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died in the Dawa area," Aamaq claimed.  AFP
Some people climb Mount Everest.

Others swim the English Channel.

Tulsa attorney Richard Borg chanted all 80 Haftorah passages of the Jewish Bible during services at Bnai Emunah synagogue.

It took him 18 years.

When Rabbi Emeritus Charles Sherman of Temple Israel suggested this was an accomplishment worthy of note, I had questions.

What is a Haftorah passage?

Whats so special about chanting all 80 of them? I mean, some Muslims memorize the entire Quran.

And why did Borg do it?

Answering those questions, it turned out, became a lesson in Jewish scripture and worship, courtesy of Sherman, Bnai Emunah Rabbi Marc Fitzerman and Rabbi Micah Citrin at Temple Israel.

Its a rare achievement for a variety of reasons. Richard is the only one I know personally who has ever accomplished it, Fitzerman said, adding that has not heard of any other Tulsan who has done it.

The rabbis explained to me that the Jewish Bible, which is essentially the same as the Scripture that Christians call the Old Testament, is divided into three parts.

The first part is the Torah, the first five books  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy  called the books of Moses.

The second division is the Prophets, which include First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and other prophetic writings. And the third part is the Writings, which is everything else.

For millennia, Jews around the world have read the Torah during Sabbath services each week and during Jewish holy days. Some are on a rotation that takes the congregation through the five books in a year, others in three years.

The Haftorah passages are readings from the Prophets that follow the Torah readings at each service. The passages have been selected to relate to the Torah reading. Haftorah means conclusion.

The Torah is written without vowels, but the Haftorah passages are written with vowels, as well as musical notations that allow it to be sung, or more accurately, chanted, in what the rabbis described as a beautiful, minor mode.

In the course of a year, all 80 of the Haftorah passages are read. They average about 25 verses each.

For one person to get the opportunity to chant all 80 of the passages in services is rare and difficult because it is an honor to do the readings, and people want to do them. Many of the available times to chant the Haftorah are taken by young people who do the readings as part of their bar and bat mitzvah observance.

Fitzerman said that in a large congregation it would be impossible for one person to have the opportunity to read all of the passages in their lifetime.

Last Saturday was the big day for Borg. He chanted 1 Kings 7:51 to 8:21, the dedication of Solomons temple in Jerusalem. It was the first time he had chanted that passage in a service, and it was the only remaining Haftorah passage that he had not previously chanted.

It was thrilling, actually. It took me 18 years to do this, Borg said later. The occasion was marked with a celebration.

Borg said he was inspired by the Haftorah reading of his uncle, Joe Borg, of Borg Compressed Steel in Tulsa.

His uncle was born in the Ukraine and died recently at age 98.

He was my role model, he said.

Borg took classes in Haftorah reading and did his first reading in 1998 when he was 47.
When veterans of the Vietnam War came home, their welcome bore little resemblance to todays celebrated events that often mark the return of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But while Vietnam veterans didnt get the homecoming they wanted in the 1960s and early 1970s, the federal government has helped plan 50 belated welcome-home events around the country, including in Tulsa.

Dozens of those veterans received commemoration pins and coins imprinted with Welcome Home during an honor ceremony Thursday.

Its a tremendous honor  especially to get the public acknowledgement and honor that were receiving, veteran Robert Allen said. It makes you really feel appreciated and wanted back in the family.

The Tulsa chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, an authorized partner of the U.S. Department of Defense Vietnam War Commemoration, presented the pins at VFW Post 577, 1109 E. Sixth St. The ceremony took place ahead of Mayor Dewey Bartletts monthly Veterans Advisory Council meeting at the facility.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized the Vietnam War Commemoration program, became law in 2008 and started 50th anniversary remembrances on May 12, 2012. It recognizes those who served between Nov. 1, 1955, and May 15, 1975, and will end on Nov. 11, 2025.

A law that took effect in Oklahoma in 1998 states that the third Thursday of March of each year will be designated as Vietnam Veterans Day.

Ron Painter, president of the Tulsa chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, thanked the veterans for their service and sacrifices ahead of the pinning ceremony. He told them to wear the pin as a reminder of our thanks and pride.

At the time period these people came home, they were not properly thanked. In fact, many times (they were) denigrated when they should have been celebrated, Painter said. Were going to try to make up for that today.

Bartlett, in his remarks, told the crowd he was celebrating his 69th birthday on Thursday and discussed briefly his own time in the Oklahoma Air National Guard. He said the public owes respect to everyone who serves in the military.

When I was in college, when I was of age, when I was drafted and ended up going in the Air National Guard, that was my class, Bartlett said. Those were my friends, my classmates that went off to war.

Allen said he remembers how poorly his fellow Vietnam veterans were treated when they returned to the U.S., but that it warms the veterans heart to now see everyone being recognized.

I dont consider myself to be a hero, he said. Our heroes are the brothers and sisters that did not come home.
AUSTIN  Several familiar faces dotted the packed crowd outside the venue, but most of those who came to see Leon Russell and other Tulsa-area natives play this South by Southwest stage Thursday came from across the region, country and world.

And organizers like Abby Kurin said she hopes the crowds came away with a fresh take on Tulsa.

People are taking note because we are here, said Kurin, director of the Tulsa Office of Film, Music, Art and Culture.

The Tulsa Boom Factory party was an official South by Southwest event, the second year that partners from across Tulsa have supported a showcase of Tulsa talent and culture.

More than 600 people attended Thursdays party, with 10 bands playing throughout the day. Russell closed out the afternoon, with John Moreland, Desi & Cody, Fiawna Forte, Verse, FM Pilots, All About a Bubble, The Young Vines, Grazzhopper and Ben Kilgore all performing on stages inside and outside the Bungalow bar in downtown Austin.

More than 100,000 people attend the annual music, film and technology conference in Austin each year, and with thousands of bands playing over several days, it can be hard to draw attention. But Kurin said this years lineup, with Russell at the top of the bill, grabbed peoples attention.

We really wanted to lift it up by bringing in a headliner, but curating a strong lineup that shows our variety, Kurin said.

The event was free, sponsored by the Tulsa Office of Film, Music, Art and Culture, the Tulsa Convention and Visitors Bureau, the BOK Center, Cubic, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa, The Hop Jam, Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation, Signal Factory and the Woody Guthrie Center.

Among those who attended were John Tobin and Adele Gregory, both from Liverpool in the United Kingdom. It was their third time to attend South by Southwest, and they said they came across the Tulsa Boom Factory and were drawn in by Leon Russell.

I think we were lucky to stumble upon it, Gregory said.

By the time Russell took the stage, they said they were blown away by Moreland and Desi & Cody, noting their voices and songwriting set them apart.

When we heard about it, we thought it would be difficult to get in, Tobin said. They arrived early to get a good spot and ended up near the small stage in the backyard of the bar while Russell and his band went through his hits and classics.

Ive been at festivals all over Europe and there is nothing like this in the world, Tobin said.

With the Tulsa Boom Factory, Tulsa joins towns like Nashville and Des Moines, and countries like the United Kingdom, Canada and Spain, all highlighting their best and brightest. For Tulsa to be featured among those hopefully helps to raise its profile, Kurin said.

We really felt it was time to focus on our creative industry, Kurin said. She and others from VisitTulsa also staffed a booth in the SXSW Trade Show, with thousands of booths and tens of thousands of people walking through the event.

Seeing the city put more focus on its creative industries is something that drew Ben Kilgore back to Tulsa. He moved with his family to Arizona in 2014, but moved back to Tulsa in December. He said living away from home, but seeing how the city was changing, drew them back. Hes started again focusing on his songwriting and has even laid the groundwork to open a new recording studio and space for musicians in the 18th and Boston district.

I would come to Tulsa and go to The Colony and see the collaborative experience that was there through J.J. Cale to now, Kilgore said. We want to be part of giving people space to make beautiful things.
An investigative audit into Dove Science Academys charter schools and the foundation that operates them shows the foundation collected $1.2 million more in rent from the schools in a 2-year period than it spent on the lease agreements for the buildings.

The audit report, released Wednesday, also shows that Sky Foundation, which operates the schools, spent $175,000 to sponsor an out-of-state event that no Dove students attended.

The audit was requested by the Oklahoma State Department of Education in November 2014, when the department was under the direction of former Superintendent Janet Baressi.

Dove has two charter schools in Tulsa, sponsored by Langston University, and two in Oklahoma City, sponsored by Oklahoma City Public Schools.

According to the audit, the Department of Educations request for a special audit noted that financial information submitted by the charter schools indicated that the non-profit entity that formed and operates the charter schools had managed the schools in a manner inconsistent with state law.

State Auditor Gary Jones told the Tulsa World on Thursday that though the school and foundation claim they are separate entities, in effect, the foundation is the school. He said the two use the same federal ID number.

The audit states that the foundation reports the financial activity of all Dove Charter Schools as their financial information on their tax returns. All funds received and deposited into the Sky Foundation bank account for the period July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2014, were public funds, lease payments received from the Dove Charter Schools. The Sky Foundation appears to be the managing entity of the Dove Charter Schools, operating as one and the same with the schools, solely supported by public funds.

Former Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who now has a private practice, was retained by Sky Foundation as its attorney when the audit process started.

Edmondson said though the foundation and the school share a federal tax ID for some purposes, the two are separate entities with separate boards.

The auditor has it in his mind that the Sky Foundation and Dove schools are the same thing, he said, which has led to conclusions that leave an impression of impropriety.

But in point of fact and law, they are not the same thing, he said.

The audit states that: Skys only income is public funds received through lease agreements with their own schools. We did not find any evidence of Skys soliciting funds on behalf of the schools or donating funds to the schools. It appears the schools were supporting Sky instead of Sky supporting the schools.

Edmondson said Sky pours any excess money it receives back into the schools for educational purposes.

But he said the $175,000 that was spent to sponsor an out-of-town science fair that Dove students were not eligible to attend that year was a legitimate expenditure for the foundation. If Dove schools spent the money themselves, then the auditor might have an argument, Edmondson said. But he called this argument bogus. He said that the rental money paid by Dove to Sky is a source of income for the foundation.

It ceases to become school money and becomes foundation money, he said.

Edmondson also notes that Sky Foundation is essentially the landlord for the facilities used by the schools.

Lease payments charged were at or below fair market value  the schools were not overcharged, he said.

The audit also states that, in addition to the higher rent that Sky charged the schools, one of the Oklahoma City campuses, which was in a facility owned by Sky, paid the foundation about $3.2 million in excess of the original price of the property.

Edmonson said no landlord stops charging rent on a property just because they have finished payments on it.

He also said, If the Sky Foundation had charged only what it cost to pay off the note, then who would have paid to fix the roof if the roof needed to be fixed?

A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Department of Education said the audit findings were concerning, but said the agency was still reviewing the audit report and could not provide further comments.

Tulsa Public Schools used to be the Dove Science Academy sponsor in Tulsa, before ending its sponsorship in 2009 citing concerns about services for special education students and the legality of consequences for certain behavior infractions.

Wednesdays audit report says, During the course of our investigation it was noted that the sponsors of the Dove Charter Schools did not appear to be providing adequate oversight of the charter schools as required by law.
The possible economic impact of Vision Tulsas plan to add low-water dams and improve the Arkansas River corridor could reach $122 million per year, according to a long-anticipated study released Thursday.

In all the town hall meetings weve held for two years, people have always asked what the anticipated return on investment is, said Councilor G.T. Bynum, who led the Arkansas River Infrastructure Task Force. We will have a significant impact on drawing economic impact into the core of the city. Weve always known that on a theoretic level, but its important to have that verified professionally.

The study looks at money spent on river activities, jobs attracted to Tulsa, residential construction and other long-term attractions that could add to Tulsas economy assuming residents approve the Vision Tulsa tax on April 5 and both dams are built.

The river infrastructure project is a $144 million request on the ballot that is part of the 15-year, $511.6 million tax item for economic development. In addition to plans for low-water dams, the river project has funding for expansion of the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area, parks, trails and levee rehabilitation.

As part of the $122 million annual impact, the study estimates river development could help attract 1,850 jobs and $85 million in income each year, largely as an amenity that helps skilled workers choose Tulsa over other communities.

The study, prepared for the Tulsa Regional Chamber, references growth in cities of similar size that invested in river development but focuses on a long-term lag Tulsa has experienced behind Oklahoma City since 1990.

The study was conducted by the University of Oklahoma Center for Economic and Management Research at no cost to the city or the Vision Tulsa campaign.

Bynum said the wait for the study was long because the researchers couldnt begin until the final ballot package was ready. Once completed, Bynum said, the study went to peer reviews by economists at both the University of Tulsa and Oklahoma State University.

So weve talked to the top three economists at universities in the state, Bynum said.

A focus of the study was showing that Oklahoma City has left Tulsa behind through residential construction, personal income and employment  all adjusted for population difference.

Between 1990 and 2014, Oklahoma Citys personal income grew by 368 percent, while Tulsas grew by only 348 percent, according to the studys data.

Had the Tulsa region grown at the Oklahoma City area rate, personal income would be $2.9 billion higher in Tulsa than it was in 2014, according to the study.

In that time, Oklahoma City grew by 200,000 jobs, while Tulsa has grown by only 116,000 jobs.

The $122 million also assumes successful, concurrent annual events on the river that are staples of other communities with river development, including regattas, races and festivals, generating as much as $35 million per year.

Relative to many such endeavors, we fear that the Tulsa community is behind the curve in local amenities in comparison with many cities across the land, the study states. Conservative estimates of economic impacts reveal it would require only modest employment and income responses to justify the proposed plan for Tulsa riverfront development.

Bynum said the possibility of generating a $122 million impact per year sounds like a lot but can be compared to the money spent on the BOK Center in Vision 2025.

The benchmark is the BOK Center, which brought $900 million in investment in the decade since it was built, Bynum said. The most important number in there is that it would have over $120 million annual economic impact  not one time but on an ongoing basis.  That to me was the biggest number, because the cost of the dams and lakes is costing just over $130 million.
The state Department of Corrections new search unit discovered a large amount of contraband, including cellphones, drugs and alcohol, at a prison in southeast Oklahoma this week, the DOC announced Thursday.

A special operations unit known as Strike Force conducted a surprise search at Mack Alford Correctional Center in Stringtown for four hours Wednesday and found 19 cellphones, 23 phone chargers, 15 lighters, 10 hands-free devices, about six grams of marijuana, two screwdrivers, three syringes, four mP3 players, about eight grams of tobacco and 100 ounces of alcohol inside five 20-ounce bottles, according to a DOC news release.

The Strike Force team included eight K-9 units in addition to correctional officers and emergency response members, the release says.

The team deployed new CellSense towers to detect the phones, and also used deep tissue scanners and two dogs in the search, it says.

The Tulsa World reported in December on the DOCs efforts to revamp its K-9 units, which included training dogs to find cellphones in prisons.

DOC Director Joe Allbaugh said in the news release that the agencys efforts to find contraband are only going to increase as inmates attempt to be more creative in hiding items. The DOC said some of the items were found inside a wall.

The attempts to conceal contraband seem to be getting more desperate and creative, Allbaugh said. Teams have found items in ceilings, locking mechanisms of doors, books and now in the wall.

One thing I will promise the inmates  we are going to continue our all-out assault on removing the contraband from our facilities and places we contract with. The inmates need to know there are no secrets in prison.

DOC staff conducted a similar search at Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy during January using a CellSense tower, which is a 7-foot-tall portable device that scans inmates and housing units. Deep tissue scanners, officials say, help search inmates for items not found during a pat-down search.

The DOC said in January that all Oklahoma prisons would have access to a CellSense tower by February.
It's Divali time so at TV6 over the next few days, we bring you some of the interesting aspe
Next month ABC screens Matilda and Me, the story of the Australian debut of the hit musical and its composer Tim Minchin.

It includes interviews with Tim Minchin, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Roald Dahls wife Felicity, Mara Wilson from Danny DeVitos 1996 film Matilda, plus Eddie Perfect, Andrew Denton, the musicals writer Dennis Kelly and director Matthew Warchus.

Mandy Chang, Head of Arts, ABC said: This is a story for everyone and the ABC is excited to be airing a new documentary, Matilda and Me  featuring an Australian icon whose musical genius and a 30 year relationship with Roald Dahls marvellous novel culminated in a worldwide smash-hit musical.

Narrated by Tims sister Nel Minchin, and co-directed by Nel and Rhian Skirving (Rock n Roll Nerd) Matilda and Me explores Tims life from an insiders perspective, with intimate access to Tim, his family, close colleagues and friends.

It reveals how Tim has evolved from loud-mouthed iconoclastic comedian to being Australias most recognized musical theatre export, and shows how an unlikely partnership led to the most successful musical of its generation.

When the Royal Shakespeare Company took a seemingly big risk by asking Tim to compose a musical based on Roald Dahls childrens classic Matilda, little did they know he had been preparing for the job his whole life. Through candid interviews, rare archive, glimpses into Tims daily life and personal performances at his home piano, the film reveals how the boy from Perth went from WAs beaches to Broadway and the West End.

Anyone who has a brother or sister knows what its like to grow up so close to someone, and yet still be surprised at who they turn out to be, said Nel.

It was a chance for me to go back in time and piece together how my brother Tim became Tim Minchin right before my eyes.

Against the backdrop of preparations for the Australian premiere, the high energy of the rehearsal room features the original Aussie cast and songs from the musical, propelling the story towards its star studded opening night climax.

When Nel approached me about being involved in a Matilda doco, I was mostly just excited that she (and her co-director, Rhian, who is one of my best mates) had an excuse to come to LA to hang out, said Tim.

But what theyve created is really lovely and surprising. They have explored my (unremarkable) origin story, and woven it beautifully into the (remarkable) origin story of this musical celebrating the world- class Aussie theatre industry on the way. Clever sis.

A largely personal story, the film examines the life and work of Tim and why bringing it home to Australia is perhaps his most important challenge yet.

The film will be complemented by additional childrens behind the scenes content produced especially for ABC3.

Matilda & Me is an IN FILMS production for the ABC. Directed by Nel Minchin (Gaycrashers) & Rhian Skirving (Rock n Roll Nerd) Producers: Ivan OMahoney (Hitting Home), Nial Fulton (Hitting Home; The Outlaw Michael Howe) & Nel Minchin.

Sunday 3 April at 7:40pm on ABC.
Spied some recent news on two acclaimed Euro-dramas Happy Valley and The Bridge and whether both will continue.

Happy Valley has just concluded its second season in the UK, which is yet to come in Australia. It will debut on BBC First.

Writer Sally Wainwright told BBC Breakfast that her busy schedule means its hard to find time to work on new storylines.

Im so busy with other projects at the moment  I havent got time to sit down and come up with the stories, she said.

What Id hate to do is do a third series and people say it wasnt as good. So I want time to go away and really come up with stories that I think are going to make a third series.

Never say never, I guess.

Meanwhile, The Bridge creator Hans Rosenfeldt told Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, there was some hope for a fourth season, but also not for a while.

Everyone is very busy and they need space in their calendars to do it, he said of the cast.

But its going to be realised. I can almost promise it, but I cannot say when. We must try not to wait too long, it will probably not be in 2017 but maybe in 2018.

Source: Digital Spy / The Local
11:34 a.m., March 18, 2016--When it was recently revealed that Volkswagen had been involved in a massive emissions regulation evasion scheme from 2007-15, many wondered how such widespread deception went unnoticed by its board of directors, which was responsible for monitoring and oversight functions.

Charles Elson, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance and director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, discussed the scandal at Volkswagen during a luncheon meeting of the University of Delaware Association of Retired Faculty (UDARF) held March 8 in Clayton Hall.

Elson spoke about many of the issues addressed in The Bug at Volkswagen: Lessons In Co-Determination, Ownership and Board Structure, an article he wrote in the Nov. 25, 2015, issue of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.

Co-authors were Craig K. Ferrere, a UD alumnus and a member of the Harvard Law School Class of 2017, and Nicholas J. Goossen, a junior mathematics and economics major at UD.

For many years, Volkswagen was dominated by Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Porsche company founder Ferdinand Porsche, and the Piech and Porsche families, Elson said. Piech, along with the government of Lower Saxony, Germany, controlled over 50 percent of the stock. Basically, Piech ran the show.

Piechs goal, Elson noted, was for Volkswagen to become the worlds largest automobile company.

To help realize this goal, Volkswagen engineers had developed a new diesel engine that delivered great mileage and fuel economy, but didnt meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. Emissions from the engine contained as much as 40 times the allowable amount of nitrogen oxide, among other pollutants.

Rather than change the engine to comply with EPA standards, which would mean reduced mileage and power, Volkswagen came up with a defeat device that would give a good reading when the car was plugged in at an inspection site and, when unplugged, would revert to the actual reading. The device was installed on at least 11 million vehicles.

The Volkswagen board claimed to have been unaware of this scheme, and Martin Winterkorn, the companys CEO, expressed surprise at the news of the wrongdoing.

It was brilliant, but it got discovered, Elson said. The bottom line is that it did happen, and the question is, how could a scandal so massive occur in a major corporation?

In the article, the authors noted that, From a corporate governance standpoint, three major problems existed, including board composition and function, the identity of certain large shareholders, and the unique corporate regulatory structure common to many German corporations.

Among these problems, Elson noted, is the conflicting nature of the dual-class stock held by the Piech and Porsche families, who own 31.5 percent of Volkswagens equity.

Usually, when you buy shares in a company, its one share, one vote, Elson said. In Piech and Porsches dual class stock they got many votes for each share, and this magnified their control of the company.

The danger of dual class stock, Elson noted, is that it has the potential to cause misfeasance and malfeasance on the part of management.

The second problem with the Volkswagen board had to do with the nature of the ownership of the company, Elson said.

In addition to the Piech family, you have the government of Lower Saxony, which owns 20 percent of the company, Elson said. The government got it when the state-owned company evolved into a private company, but they still maintained the right to chose two directors on the board.

The government of Lower Saxony had very different goals than those of the other shareholders, Elson said.

Profitability is not the first goal of the government as an investor, Elson said. Their goal is political, with the bottom line being to get themselves re-elected. When you create employment in your area, you are more likely to get re-elected. Volkswagen employs 400,000 workers in the area and the governments goal is full employment.

The third problem, Elson said, is co-determination, mandated by German corporate law, which states that half of the board of directors of a private company have to be representatives of the owners or shareholders, with the remaining half consisting of employees.

The Volkswagen supervisory board has 20 members, with 10 elected by the shareholders and the remaining 10 selected by the workforce. This board is mainly responsible for selecting and monitoring a separate management board that in turn runs the company.

The idea of a union, Elson added, is to guarantee better working conditions, wages and more jobs for its members.

The goal labor members on the board is not necessarily being profitable for the company, but getting better wages, hours and employment for their members, Elson said. On the other half of the board you have Mr. Piech, whose interest was building a bigger and better automobile company, and his co-directors from Lower Saxony, whose goal was jobs for their citizens.

The result, Elson noted, was the creation of a corporate culture where the main objectives became full employment, growth in revenue and growth in size and market share. Profitability and compliance with the law may have been relegated to second place, he said.

Elson noted that the second half of the problems at Volkswagen had to do with compensation, as he introduced Goossen, a co-author whose research appeared in an article from Ethisphere, a compliance magazine for corporations.

While board and ownership structure played a key role in creating the kind of atmosphere that sustained the compliance failure at VW, we believe there was another salient element present that may have exacerbated the problems created by do-determination and further contributed to the compliance breakdown, Goossen said. Under a significant change in German law (VorstAG), enacted in the aftermath of the financial crisis, mimicking to some extent the U.S. Dodd-Frank legislation, corporate boards were strongly encouraged to reduce executive compensation in the event that, among other things, they had to lay off workers or reduce general wages.

Under this regime, Goossen noted, it would appear that Volkswagens primary executive focus was job creation and preservation to sustain the income stream.

The incentive, as in co-determination, was to maintain employment with ultimate profitability enhanced by an appropriate compliance regime, a seemingly unimportant goal, Goossen said. This statutory compensation regime only acts to reinforce the bias toward employment created by co-determination and further places shareholder interests along with the concomitant compliance regime lower on the priority list.

Elson finished by noting that when the company culture says that unethical conduct is acceptable, the possibility for a major scandal is certainly possible. Corporate structures that embrace transparency and integrity thrive, while those that are lacking do not.

Its rare to hear the term integrity today, but it is a critical thing to have, Elson said. Integrity is the ingredient that keeps things going, and you cant justify not having it. When you dont, its a very slippery slope.

Article by Jerry Rhodes

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson
Marine scientists from throughout the region gathered at UD to share preliminary findings of a Superstorm Sandy mapping project.

Marine scientists from throughout the region gathered at UD to share preliminary findings of a Superstorm Sandy mapping project.

11:38 a.m., March 18, 2016--Marine scientists involved in a Superstorm Sandy mapping project came together on University of Delawares Newark campus earlier this month to share preliminary findings about the storms effect on coastal and marine habitats.

The research was funded by the National Park Service and included field work at four locations along the East Coast over the last year:

Cape Cod National Seashore, by the Center for Coastal Studies in Massachusetts;

Fire Island National Seashore, by the University of Rhode Island;

Assateague Island National Seashore, by the University of Delaware; and

Gateway National Recreation Area, by Rutgers University.

The daylong workshop, hosted by professors Art Trembanis and Doug Miller in UDs College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE), enabled colleagues to share field work accomplishments and future plans, as well as discuss challenges associated with the work.

Mohsen Badiey, acting dean of CEOE, welcomed the participants to campus and thanked them for their continued collaboration.

This is a new and promising area of research for our university, and we look forward to continued collaborations so we can be prepared to address future problems that might occur, he said.

About the workshop

In October 2012, winds from Hurricane Sandy reached up to 90 miles per hour, tearing through the East Coast and resulting in over $70 billion dollars of damages to cities, towns and homes.

Areas within miles of Delaware like the Jersey Shore, Fire Island and Assateague Island in Maryland were among those affected. Significant erosion, overwash and coastal flooding were encountered in Delaware along both the Atlantic and Delaware Bay shorelines.

Though the visible damage was apparent, underneath the waters surface, the bay and ocean seafloor and the organisms that live there were also severely affected.

Understanding how animals, plants or other organisms that live on the seafloor were affected by or recovered from the superstorm is key to predicting or anticipating effects in the future.

According to Trembanis, these studies are particularly valuable to the National Park Service in its mission of stewardship for our national parks.

In order to manage the park resources it is critical to have both baseline and storm impact change maps of the extensive marine sector of the coastal parks. These studies have provided some of the first ever inventory of the biological and geological features in these parks, said Trembanis, an associate professor of oceanography in the School of Marine Science and Policy.

In their mapping studies, diverse teams of scientists, graduate students, undergraduates and summer interns used side-scan and bathymetric sonar, a system used to detect objects on the seafloor, to observe the morphology and biology of the ocean or bay seafloor of their particular marine environment.

The teams also examined and classified the organisms within the different marine environments they studied. For example, side-scan imagery and photographs showed that the bay side waters contained more diverse species than the ocean side waters in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Some data even revealed interesting findings, such as mussel beds, sea grass and new, unidentifiable species that were not previously present.

Following the research presentations, Mark Finkbeiner from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Office for Coastal Management walked workshop participants through ways to incorporate the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) into their mapping studies.

CMECS is a complex framework for organizing information about coastal and ocean habitats. It helps researchers cross-reference data about previous storms and also enhances future research by providing recommendations for future projects.

Having an archived history of storms of this magnitude can help scientists to better predict the impacts that may be expected with future storms in a time of rising sea level and climate change.

"Everyone knows the extent storms impact the coast, but rigorous scientific data are remarkably rare. We need to make the most of every opportunity to collect and synthesize data, and to share it within the scientific community and the affected communities," said Miller, also an associate professor of oceanography in CEOE.

Article by Laura Bilash

Photos by Evan Krape
Sylvia Hurtado says hearing from people with different backgrounds, experiences and views challenges us to open our minds.

10:47 a.m., March 18, 2016--Sylvia Hurtado, a higher education scholar who is known as a national leader and advocate in the study of diversity, told an audience at the University of Delaware on March 16 that being part of a diverse community is an educational experience in itself.

Why would diversity be related to learning? she asked, then cited research to provide an answer. Were lazy thinkers.  We save our active thinking for times when were in new situations and cant merely rely on our habits or operate on a kind of autopilot.

Hearing from people with different backgrounds, experiences and views, she said, challenges us to open our minds and think more deeply as we realize that the world isnt the way we always saw it. College students in particular can broaden their education by opening their minds in that way, she said.

Hurtado, professor of education and former director of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles, focused most of her talk at UD on research related to students. The lecture, Social Justice and a Diverse Democracy: Challenges and Opportunities in College, was part of the Diversity Spring Lecture Series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Diversity, part of UDs College of Arts and Sciences.

Hurtado has worked with colleges and universities across the country on creating positive campus climates that benefit teaching and learning for all students. She has led several national projects on diverse learning environments and retention, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education and diversification of the scientific workforce, and innovation in undergraduate education.

In her talk, she discussed findings from a variety of research reports, including surveys of employers (who increasingly value employees who have the skills to respect and communicate with people of different backgrounds and to work in a diverse environment) and of college students themselves.

Hurtado said that, in those surveys, students from underrepresented groups reported numerous incidents of discrimination and bias on their campuses, most commonly in the form of verbal comments or feelings of being excluded. Those incidents, while often examples of unintentional, or subconscious, bias, came not just from fellow students but also from faculty and staff, she said.

The more diverse the campus, the more those numbers go down, she said. But they never disappear.

When institutions and individuals seek ways to make their communities more inclusive, the natural tendency is to try to treat everyone as if they were all alike, Hurtado said. That may superficially seem fair, she said, but it ignores the disparities that have been created over time by social systems, structures and individuals.

Not all students come to higher education in the same way, she said, and those differences must be taken into account when working to create diverse and inclusive campuses.

She offered suggestions for implementing promising practices, including encouraging students to share personal stories and ask questions, using conflict as an opportunity for learning, acknowledging the multiple social identities of individuals and proactively finding ways to make one and only or solo status students (the only African American student in a class, for example) feel comfortable.

Previous lecture: If Elephants Could Talk

An earlier presentation in this semesters Diversity Lecture Series was held March 1, when Howard Stevenson, a University of Pennsylvania professor and author of a book on promoting racial literacy in schools, spoke to an audience of about 100 UD students, faculty and staff, as well as members of the education community.

In his lecture, If Elephants Could Talk: Racial Literacy, Stevenson discussed racial encounters and racial stress, including examples of his own experiences growing up in southern Delaware. He spoke about teaching ways to recast racial conflict and led the audience in two exercises focused on racial awareness and encounters.

Stevenson also presented details on his RECAST theory  Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory  from his recent book, Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences that Make a Difference.

After the public lecture, an undergraduate student panel organized by Residence Life and Housing and moderated by Stevenson continued the conversation. Student panelists Garry Johnson, Harry Lewis, George Morales, ChiChi Madukwe, Jahaan Davis and Lovely Lacey discussed their own encounters with race, racism and discrimination and responded to questions from the audience.

Stevenson is the Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education and professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His work provides strategies to classroom teachers, educational leaders, psychologists and parents on how to develop culturally relevant, strength-based responses and interventions that promote healthier school climates.

More about the lecture series

The Center for the Study of Diversitys lecture series this semester focuses on several aspects of diversity in higher education, as part of the centers mission to promote academic research and scholarship that facilitates dialogues on the subject.

The series will continue with two more talks:

On Friday, April 22, Ana Mari Cauce, the new president of the University of Washington, will deliver the 2016 Distinguished Lecture on Diversity in Higher Education, discussing her commitment to inclusivity and the proposition that we can only be better off when we really are all better off. The lecture will be held at 11:30 a.m. in Trabant University Center Theatre.

On Thursday, May 5, Scott Page, a professor at the University of Michigan and director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, will present a lecture in UDs Thought Leader speaker series. Author of The Difference, a classic argument for the benefits of diversity, Page will demonstrate that groups with a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts and will also show practical ways to apply diversity to a host of problems. His lecture will be held at 4 p.m. in Gore Recital Hall at the Roselle Center for the Arts.

Article by Ann Manser

Photos by Wenbo Fan
First leg: Bayern Munchen v Benfica, Tuesday 5 April

Second leg: Benfica v Bayern Munchen, Wednesday 13 April

Facts about the tie

Bayern have won four of their six matches against Benfica, drawing the other two. The clubs have not played each other since 1995.

Bayern beat Benfica 5-1 on aggregate (0-0 away, 5-1 home) in the 1975/76 European Cup quarter-finals, and 7-2 overall (4-1 home, 3-1 away) in the 1995/96 UEFA Cup third round, going on to win the trophy each time. There were 20-year intervals between those ties: 2016 comes next!

They also defeated the Portuguese side in the 1981/82 European Cup second round (0-0 away, 4-1 home) and went on to reach the final again, losing to Aston Villa.

Bayern overcame Portuguese opposition in the 2014/15 quarter-finals, losing the first leg at Porto 3-1 but winning the Munich return 6-1.

Bayern's home record against visitors from Portugal is W9 D2 L0. They have won their nine previous two-legged ties against Portuguese teams.

Benfica's 40 games against German clubs have ended W12 D13 L15 (W10 D7 L2 in Lisbon  W2 D6 L13 in Germany). They have won five of their last seven home fixtures against German visitors.

Bayern's incredible comeback v Juve

Expert comment

Logic suggests that Benfica will approach the first leg in Munich cautiously but as we saw from Juventus on Wednesday, there can be reward for going against the grain. Bayern are prone to conceding on the counterattack and a quick, technically strong Benfica will see an opportunity. The onus is on Bayern to get a result to take to Portugal, not least due to the negative experience at this stage in Porto last season  a 3-1 reverse. Philip Rober

Reaction

Xabi Alonso, Bayern midfielder

"We have learned from the experience of last year against Porto  at this stage everyone is difficult [Bayern lost 3-1 before winning the return 6-1]. Of course there are bigger names, but we have to focus on our tie; you can't take anything for granted. We came through a tough tie against Juventus and need to keep going. We have to respect Benfica, but we have plenty of time to analyse them."

Franck Ribery, Bayern midfielder

I think it's a good draw for us but Benfica have a great team and some fine players. Their stadium is superb and they have fantastic supporters.

David Alaba, Bayern defender

We're looking forward to it although it won't be easy: Benfica won both their round of 16 matches against Zenit and deserved to get through. They're dangerous.

Eduardo Salvio, Benfica midfielder

Together we are capable of achieving anything. We've proved before that we can do what others thought was impossible.
The militants launched 42 attacks on the ATO troops in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

In particular, the militants used 82mm mortars, infantry combat vehicles, anti-aircraft mounts, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns to shell Ukrainian positions near Luhanske (59km north-east of Donetsk).

The Ukrainian troops also came under fire from 82mm and 120mm mortars, machine guns and small arms near Zaitseve (67km north-north-east of Donetsk).

The terrorists used grenade launchers and machine guns to shell the ATO troops outside Mayorske (45km north of Donetsk).

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Ukraines Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak and Britains Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt have signed a defense cooperation memorandum between the two governments.

The Ukrainian dense ministry released a relevant report.

Today, on March 17, in Kyiv Defense Minister of Ukraine, General of Ukraines Army, Stepan Poltorak and Armed Forces Minister of Britain, Penny Mordaunt have signed a Memorandum on Mutual Assistance between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on the cooperation in the sphere of defense, according to the report.

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U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby said at a daily press briefing in Washington that the Unites States will continue to urge Ukraine to speed up political reforms.

Its the joint responsibility of Ukraines president, prime minister, and all those in government and in parliament to put aside their differences and deliver on the reforms that Ukrainians themselves demand. And we believe they will do so, and we will continue to monitor this and press that case as aggressively as we have, Kirby said, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The State Department spokesman also added that Ukraine should implement its part of the Minsk agreements, including political reforms in the country. Now, we believe that the Government of Ukraine can carry out the reforms and implement Minsk, and we recognize its not fully implemented, he said.

At the same time, Kirby noted that the Unites States would not relief sanctions against Russia, until Moscow is in full compliance with its obligations under the Minsk peace deal. The sanctions against Russia are going to continue as long as they continue to violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine and until Minsk is implemented. Thats not going to change, he said.

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The Czech Republic supports a European Commissions initiative to cancel visas for Ukrainians, Radio Praha reports.

This poses no threat to the Czech Republic, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said.

Czech Foreign Ministers Lubomir Zaoralek, in turn, stressed that he also supports such a step.

We support aspirations of the countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, or Turkey to visa liberalization, he said.

At the same time, Zaoralek recalled that such countries should fully implement all the needed requirements.

Press secretary of the Union of Industry and Transport of the Czech Republic, Milan Mostyn also commented on the situation and said that this would open doors for Ukrainian workers, as the local industry had a huge demand for them.

As it is reported, by the end of January, the number of legally employed Ukrainians in the Czech Republic totaled 106,000. At present, Ukrainians are the largest category of migrants in the Czech Republic and make 23% of the general number.

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The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine states it has sent Russia 160 notes of protest urging to release Ukrainian political prisoners, 69 of them concerned Nadiya Savchenko.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko said this during an hour of questions to the Government in the Parliament of Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The Foreign Ministry has sent 160 notes of protest, 69 of them concerned Nadiya Savchenko. We have taken exhaustive measures to free the citizens, not only Savchenko but all of our citizens who are political prisoners. Their number is up to 29 people," he said.

Prystaiko added that another way of legal protection was used in respect of four political prisoners.

"Four families of our political prisoners wrote the statements on negotiations between Ukraine and Russia on serving the sentence of those people in the territory of Ukraine. We involve the wide range of partners to the issue of release," he said.

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Donetsk region governor Pavlo Zhebrivsky has asked the UN to focus on humanitarian aid on the residents living at the contact line.

Office of Information Policy and Public Affairs of the Donetsk regional state administration told reporters on Friday noting that talks about cooperation with international donor organizations took place at an official meeting in Kramatorsk city.

"Zhebrivsky has addressed the UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine Neal Walker to focus humanitarian assistance only on residents who live at the contact line," a statement said.

Walker noted that the number of people in need of assistance in the region is declining compared to last year.
Assistance to Ukraine remains a priority for the EU, despite the fact that the EU should solve now many serious problems associated with the situation in Syria and the refugees.

European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said this at the meeting with Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Kyiv today, the Government portal reports.

"The European Commissioner has assured of the EUs solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Although a lot of serious threats associated with the situation in Syria and the problem of refugees are on the agenda of the European Union, the assistance to Ukraine remains a priority, the European Commissioner said," reads the statement.

The total amount of the humanitarian aid provided by the European Commission to support the people affected by the conflict in eastern Ukraine has exceeded EUR 63 million, including the new aid package worth EUR 20 million. Taking into account direct financing provided by the EU Member States, the European Union has allocated over EUR 146 million in assistance to the Donbas conflict victims since the beginning of 2014.

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Notorious Ukrainian Ambassador to the Czech Republic Borys Zaychuk has submitted his resignation.

MP Serhiy Leshchenko told Ukrainska Pravda website .

According to him, the ambassador resigned without any consultation with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

The foreign ministry said they do not comment on personnel issues.

Earlier, Czech media reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in the Czech Republic attempted to release from prison a former Yanukovychs adviser who was charged with collaborating with terrorists. Ambassador Zaychuk was ready to post bail for the suspect.

Borys Zaychuks twin brother, Valentyn, had been a long time chief of staff at the Rada.
There is no reason to discuss lifting sanctions against Russia. On the contrary, the strengthening of sanctions should not be ruled out in case of deterioration of the situation in Ukraine.

President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite said this in an interview with The Daily Beast.

"The European Council agreed that the duration of sanctions against Russia is linked to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreements. We are nowhere near that. Russia continues to send its troops and military equipment to Donbas in direct violation of the Minsk agreements. Therefore I do not see a reason to discuss lifting sanctions or rolling them back," she said.

According to Grybauskaite, "sanctions are the only thing that could force Russia to take its Minsk commitments seriously."

"And if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, all options should be on the table for the EU to consider how to increase the cost of Russian involvement," President of Lithuania noted.

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The total amount of humanitarian aid to Ukraine has reached over $649 million.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko made a statement at his meeting with the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides on Friday.

"The total amount of aid that Ukraine has obtained for humanitarian needs totals more than $649 million," said Poroshenko.

He noted that most of these funds has been directed to humanitarian mission in the occupied territories.

He added that donors were from the EU, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, the International Committee of the Red Cross.
| By Karen Robinson

University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (SOL) Dean Donald B. Tobin, JD, has embarked upon a 10-day trip to China to strengthen the law schools international ties, increase its international diversity, and expand international opportunities for its students.

To achieve these goals, Tobin will visit six law schools in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting with students, faculty, and officials. He also will meet with many of the SOL alumni practicing in China. Tobins visit is part of a larger effort by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, to increase the states presence in China.

School of Law Dean Donald Tobin exchanges gifts with Professor Xu Lan, director of the Office of International Cooperation and Exchange at China University of Political Science and Law.

Katrin Hussmann Schroll, JD, director of admissions at the SOL, is sending regular dispatches home from China, excerpts of which will be published here along with photos Schroll has provided.

Tobin, an expert on U.S. tax law, is visiting six Chinese law schools to deliver a lecture on how the law can help or hinder business innovation, especially among online businesses such as Uber and Airbnb.

Tobin will deliver his lecture to faculty and students at the following law schools:

March 14, Beijing: China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) & Tsinghua University School of Law

March 15, Beijing: University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) School of Law

March 16, Beijing: Peking University (PKU) Law School

March 17, Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong University

March 18, Shanghai: East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPL)

In addition to Tobins and Schrolls trip, faculty, staff, students and alumni of the SOLs Environmental Law Program are participating in the programs separate biennial visit, which is focused on Chinas environmental policies. They include Robert Percival, JD, MA, professor and director of the Environmental Law Program, associate professor Michael Pappas, JD, MA, and William Piermattei, JD, the programs managing director.

Travel Journal, by Katrin Hussmann Schroll, JD

Saturday, March 19:

First, Dean Tobin provided opening remarks at the Green China: Public Interest Litigation and Environmental Governance Summit hosted at KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiaotong University. This forum was a great way to end our trip since it fostered discussion about US-China relationships and recent developments in the international Environmental Law arena. Prof. Percival, Prof. Pappas, and some of our students had the opportunity to present at the conference.

In the afternoon,we met with alumnus Charlie Paglee 98. He is the CEO of Brannan Auto Engineering located in Shanghai, China. Mr. Paglee has more than two decades of business experience in China and speaks fluent Chinese Mandarin. He is an electrical engineer who started working with electric vehicles in 1991. Mr. Paglee has been with the Brannan since December 2011 and manages the company's automotive manufacturing operations in mainland China.

Friday, March 18:

We started our day with the folks from the Maryland China Center. We met with Chief Executive Ning Shao and Senior Account Executive Vikki Wang. They provided us with an overview of the programs history, and what they have accomplished since 1996. Dean Tobin provided a summary of our trip to China, and discussed all of the cooperation agreements we have talked about with our hosts on the trip. He talked about potential collaboration with the Maryland China Center as we consider internship options for students who want to work in China to gain exposure to Chinese Law practice.

We spent the afternoon with Professor Fei Xia, director of the international exchange center at East China University of Political Science and Law, and discussed ways in which we can establish a cooperation agreement. The meeting was very productive and expect to have an agreement signed soon.

Friday night, we attended a reception with the Environmental Law School Students group and Prof. Percival, Prof. Pappas, and Prof. Piermattei. Special guests in attendance included Daniel Guttman, who served in the Clinton administration as executive director for the advisory commission on human radiation experiments, as well as Zhenzi Zhang, head of the Shanghai Roots and Shoots office, a program designed to educate youths about environmental law issues and humanitarian values.

Thursday, March 17:

We began the day by visiting Shanghai Jiaotong University KoGuan Law School. The visit was coordinated by Professor Huiyu Zhao. She was a visiting scholar at the SOL with the Environmental Law Program, academic year 2011-2012. Now she is a well-respected professor at KoGuan law school.

First, we started off the visit by meeting with the dean of the law school, Weidong Ji. He shared the history of the law school, his international student body and his push for interdisciplinary education - especially in the health field. Dean Tobin provided an overview of our law school. We opened the conversation for possible collaborations between the schools given our common specialty areas in health law and environmental law. Dean Ji agreed to sign a cooperation agreement in the coming months.

In the afternoon, Professor Jiaxiang Hu hosted a luncheon presentation for Master and LLM students at SHU. Faculty members also attended. In honor of the Americans present, they served KFC for lunch.

Dean Tobin discussed legal education in the United States, the diversity in the coursework available, and the various specialties. Then the students asked that I give an overview of the application process for law degree programs in the United States, including JD, LLM, and MSL.

Later that afternoon, we were hosted by Jones Day Shanghai Office partner-in-charge Peter Wang. Peter has worked for Jones Day for 23 years. We had a meeting with more than 10 of their partners and discussed the legal market in China, similarities and differences with the US legal market, and the focus of their Shanghai practice. Dean Tobin asked about hiring practices in China, and what curriculum strengths they are looking for when hiring.

In the evening, we met our alumna Meg Utterback at the Shangri-la Hotel Restaurant overlooking the entire city of Shanghai. It was quite a spectacular view.

Meg is the only female western partner in a leadership position at King and Wood Mallesons. Her firm is the sixth largest firm in the world.

Wednesday, March 16:

In the morning, we shared breakfast with a prospective law student who is applying to our LLM program. She was very impressed with our internship opportunities, location, and student-to-faculty ratio.

After breakfast, we spent the day at Peking University. Our visit was facilitated by Andy Sun, JD, a JD alumnus who is an intellectual property law professor at Peking University. Dean Tobin met with the dean of Peking University to talk about their common academic interest in tax law, and to discuss their respective law schools. Dean Tobin then lectured about business and law to a group of PhD students, faculty members and the dean at Peking University. The students were engaged and enthusiastic, asking questions about how the law might change with more startups in the vein of Uber and Alibaba.

After the lecture, we joined the dean and our alum Andy Sun for lunch. We talked about possible collaborations, including an exchange program. Peking University already offers many courses in English in its Chinese law program. We took a walking tour of the campus after lunch to learn more about the history of the university. Then, Andy escorted us to Beijings Summer Palace and served as a fantastic tour guide as we explored the grounds. In the evening, we flew to Shanghai.

Tuesday, March 15:

We met Nancy Chen, Education Officer of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in China, who also serves as Director of EducationUSA China and Fulbright programs at the Beijing American Center. We discussed legal education in China. We also talked about ways in which U.S. schools can better collaborate with the Center and educate Chinese students about opportunities to study law in the U.S. During the meeting, Dean Tobin discussed what makes our LLM program unique compared to other programs in the United States. We also learned about Chinese government incentives for faculty exchanges

Later, we met with a reporter from Future Magazine. They will be doing a feature on Dean Tobin and legal education in the United States in their May issue. The interview focused on the history of the law school, our diverse law curriculum, our practical training opportunities, and our great location.

In the afternoon, we visited the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) School of Law. We met with law school Dean Jingxia Shi to talk about the ways in which we collaborate, with hopes of developing faculty exchanges and short-term law trainings in the future. Dean Tobin lectured to a group of students and faculty about the intersection of business and law.

Monday, March 14:

Morning: China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL)

We met with the leadership at CUPL to discuss ways in which we can establish a formal relationship between our schools.

We met with:

Prof. Xu Lan, Director, Office of International Cooperation and Exchange

Prof. Chen Jingshan, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Journal of CUPL

Ms. Wang Ping, Assistant of Dean, Civil and Economic Law College

Associate Prof. Wang Zhuhao, Director of International Exchanges and CooperationInstitute of Evidence Law and Forensic Science

Mr. Lyu Yong, Vice-Director, Office of International Cooperation and Exchange

Ms. Gao Fei, Program Officer, Office of International Cooperation and Exchange

A very productive conversation including discussion of the existing collaborations between UMB and CUPL, including a Master of Forensics degree program. Then, we discussed strengths and similarities of each program, including how we could complement one another. We ended the meeting with hopes of moving forward on ideas such as a student exchange, Master of Law (LLM) scholarships for CUPL graduates, and the hosting of faculty visiting scholars.

Afternoon: Tsinghua University

Professor James Li invited us to speak to his international law class of first-year students at Tsinghua University School of Law. More than 100 students attended and listened as Dean Tobin provided an overview about the SOL, the state of Maryland, his own background and the road to becoming a dean. We opened the floor for questions. Prof. Li from Tsinghua moderated as students asked questions about law education in the U.S., judicial discretion, the relationship between law and politics in America, tax law, and campaign finance law.

Evening: Beijing Bar Association at Dentons Law Firm

We ended the day with a great meeting at Dentons Law Firm in Beijing, talking with 10 members of the Beijing Bar Association from various law firms including Dentons, King & Wood Mallesons, and more. Vivien Tao, Senior Partner at Dentons, invited us to dinner after the meeting.

Sunday, March 13

Morning & Afternoon: Great Wall

The group was thrilled to visit the Great Wall outside of Beijing. Dean Tobin and his traveling group met up early that morning with Bob Percival, Michael Pappas, Will Piermattei, Environmental Law Program alumni, and current Environmental Law Students.

We left early for the hour-and-a-half trip to the Great Wall. We were very lucky to have amazing weather with very little smog and no clouds  just a bright blue sky.

On the way, we stopped at a jade factory and had a lovely lunch with the students before entering the Great Wall. The dean had the opportunity to discuss with the students important comparative law issues between China and the United States. Also, the students shared their initial impressions of China, and talked about their observations on the differences in the culture, people, and society.

Once we reached the Great Wall, we took a chair lift up to the top. There, overlooking an amazing view of the mountains surrounding the wall, we walked and discussed its history. We spent the afternoon walking most of the wall  it was quite a hike! We finished our trip by tobogganing down the mountain, as depicted in the great photo of Bob Percival and Dean Tobin.

Upon returning to our hotel that evening, we met up with alumnus and Board of Visitors member Yitai Hu 98. He is a partner at Alston and Byrd, with an office in San Francisco and an office in Beijing. He took us to a local restaurant, where we chatted over a hot pot and learned more about his intellectual property law practice. He shared about his most recent cases that concerned the Economic Espionage Act with regard to patent trade secrets. He discussed ways in which we have a lot of room to collaborate with Chinese law schools, including which schools might offer the most productive partnerships.
UNHCR notes today's agreement between the European Union and Turkey on the situation of refugees and migrants seeking to make their way to Europe.

We recognize the shared need of countries to find properly managed solutions to this situation. Indeed UNHCR has on several occasions in recent months offered its own specific recommendations to Europe in this regard. The chaos that has prevailed in 2015 and till now in 2016 serves neither the interests of people fleeing war and needing safety, nor of Europe itself.

Today's agreement clarifies a number of elements. Importantly, it is explicit that any modalities of implementation of the agreement will respect international and European law. In UNHCR's understanding, in light of relevant jurisprudence, this means that people seeking international protection will have an individual interview on whether their claim can be assessed in Greece, and the right to appeal before any readmission to Turkey. This would also entail that once returned, people in need of international protection will be given the chance to seek and effectively access protection in Turkey. We now need to see how this will be worked out in practice, in keeping with the safeguards set out in the agreement - many of which at present are not in place.

How this plan is to be implemented is thus going to be crucial. Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution. Refugees need protection, not rejection.

Firstly, Greece's reception conditions and its systems for assessing asylum claims and dealing with people accepted as refugees must be rapidly strengthened. The safeguards in the agreement have to be established and implemented. This will be an enormous challenge needing urgent addressing.

Secondly, people being returned to Turkey and needing international protection must have a fair and proper determination of their claims, and within a reasonable time. Assurances against refoulement, or forced return, must be in place. Reception and other arrangements need to be readied in Turkey before anyone is returned from Greece. People determined to be needing international protection need to be able to enjoy asylum, without discrimination, in accordance with accepted international standards, including effective access to work, health care, education for children, and, as necessary, social assistance.

Thirdly, while UNHCR has noted the commitment in this agreement to increase resettlement opportunities for Syrian refugees out of Turkey, it is crucial that such commitments are meaningful and predictable. Increased EU resettlement from Turkey should not be at the expense of the resettlement of other refugee populations around the world who also have great needs - especially in today's context of record forced displacement worldwide.

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Wyoming Business Tips for March 27-April 2

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Robert Condie, WSBDC southwest regional director

How do I, as an entrepreneur, stay alive in an economic downturn? Chelsea, Green River

During these current economic hard times in the state Wyoming, here are just a few pointers on what to do to survive and move forward:

-- Create a business plan. One of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur in a time of a downturn is either refer back to your business plan or plan on writing one as soon as you can. Having this plan in place helps you think back on what you wanted to accomplish when you started the business and compare numbers that you projected at the beginning. It also helps your business strategize and confront a downturn even before it comes.

-- Rationalize spending. Taking a good look at your spending habits is a great way to not only know what is going on in your business, but also help find things that might not be as pertinent to the going concern of the business. Streamline your processes as much as possible without hurting production when prioritizing essential expenditures. Implementing flexible working setup without terminating staff is considered productive and also can be an option to lower costs.

-- Invest in marketing. Small businesses compete for a smaller share of the pot, making it even more important to remain visible and convince people why they should choose you. Keeping your name in the minds of your customers and potential customers is important when people start to become warier of spending their money. Set aside some funds to promote your products or services in the most cost-effective way possible.

-- Existing customers. Doing all you can to keep existing customers can bring in a consistent source of revenue during harder times. Keeping current customers is less expensive than finding new ones. So, instead of spending more to attract new customers, focus on the existing with promotions or coupons, and make sure the existing clientele know that you appreciate them and their loyalty.

-- Deliver outstanding customer service. Something that can often be overlooked and seen as less important is outstanding customer service. Customers are more likely to return to a store after they have received outstanding customer service. Going above and beyond, offering things like fast delivery, courteous staff and great follow-up, are some ways to help current customers stay loyal to your brand during a downturn.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at http://wyen.biz/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18



By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:



Azerbaijan's freight air carrier Silk Way West Airlines signed an agreement with Malaysia Airlines Cargo, Malaysian media reported March 18.



The agreement envisages the mutual use of the aircraft fleet and the expansion of aviation route networks in different regions of the world.



Meanwhile, the agreement provides flights from/to Kuala Lumpur and Amsterdam twice a week with a stopover at Azerbaijan's Heydar Aliyev International Airport.



Silk Way West Airlines is a part of the Silk Way group of companies, which also includes 23 companies operating in the aviation industry, and operates since June 19, 2012.



Silk Way West Airlines offers regular flights to various regions of the world - Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America, using the Heydar Aliyev International Airport as a transit hub.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $34.3 million to two local banks through the auction held by Azerbaijan's Central Bank (CBA) March 18, SOFAZ said March 18.

SOFAZ offered $100 million for sale through the auction, and will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016.

The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at 7.615 billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

As of January 1, 2016, SOFAZ assets reduced by 9.5 percent compared to 2014 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $33.57 billion.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Beer wholesale for cash has been banned in Azerbaijan, according to the amendments to the Criminal Code of the country made at the plenary session of the Milli Majlis (the country's parliament) March 18.

In accordance with the amendments, along with the tobacco, the wholesale price of the beer will be paid only through bank or through payment cards.

Thus, except for retail sale of beer and tobacco products, a fine in the amount from 1,000 manats to 2,000 manats, or correctional labor for up to one year, or imprisonment for up to one year is envisaged for the sale of a large batch of products (goods) for cash subject to labeling with excise stamps, or for purchase for cash of a large batch of such products (goods) with the purpose of their sale.

The amendments to the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan have been adopted by the parliament after voting.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

The prices on global oil markets may reach $50-$60 per barrel by early summer 2016 amid oil producing countries' freezing of extraction level, Russian company Alpari's Analytical Department Director Alexander Razuvaev told Trend March 18.

On February 16, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Venezuela held talks on the current oil market situation in the Qatari capital of Doha and agreed to freeze the oil output at Jan.11 level if other countries followed the deal. The proposal was later backed by Ecuador, Algeria, Nigeria, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE.

The OPEC and non-OPEC countries can hold a meeting in mid-April in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the possibility of freezing oil output, according to media reports.

Commenting on the issue of increasing duties on oil by Russia, the expert said that this step is a usual procedure.

The duty on oil export from Russia will increase by $15.4 to $54.9 per ton starting from April 1 (compared to $39.5 per ton in March), according to the ministry of finance of Russia.

The average price for Urals crude oil for the monitoring period from February 15 to March 14, 2016 amounted to $33.38 per barrel, or $243.7 per ton, according to the ministry.

"The increase of duties on oil by Russia is a normal procedure," said Razuvaev. "Duties depend on oil prices, pegging to oil prices is common practice."

He said that this measure won't lead to higher prices for gasoline in Russia.

"This is a simple replenishment of budget," said Razuvaev.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk has called on the sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to avoid tension in light of the upcoming Novruz and Easter holidays.

"In light of the upcoming Novruz Bayram and Easter holidays, I call on the sides to strictly adhere to the ceasefire and to avoid any action on the line of contact or on the border that could lead to an increase in tensions," Kasprzyk said in a statement made after a monitoring along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

"I received information from both sides on recent developments on the border, and listened to their concerns," he added. "Both sides highlighted the proximity of villages to the front lines, and that civilians have suffered greatly from ceasefire violations as a particular concern."

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Amazon has been dedicating its resources to get into the logistics sector and create a global delivery and logistics business, competing with existing established companies including FedEx. However, FedEx has downplayed any threat posed by Amazon as the carrier company believes it would costs Amazon too much time and money to replicate its current extensive network.

FedEx Executive VP Mike Glenn told analysts that the company doesn't feel threatened by Amazon's plan with logistics. Glenn shared his views, as reported by Yahoo News, "While recent stories and reports of a new entity competing with the three major carriers in the United States grab headlines, the reality is it would be a daunting task requiring tens of billions of dollars in capital and years to build sufficient scale and density to replicate existing network like FedEx."

Amazon is quite serious with its efforts in logistics. The company showed its move with its deal with the Air Transport Services Group to lease 20 Boeing 767s that would fly to handle shipments. The deal, made last week, enclosed that the planes would fly between a hub in Ohio and airports close to Amazon fulfillment centers across the country. Previously, Amazon operates drones to handle products delivery.

In the efforts to reduce its dependence on other carriers, Amazon has planned its own logistical infrastructure, including last-mile delivery. The company achieves that both through individuals operating under its Uber-like Flex program and contractor businesses. According to The Motley Fool, Amazon's shipping costs represented 12.5 percent of its Q4 sales, totaling about $4.2 billion.

Analysts believed that Amazon is tightening up its supply chain to reduce costs as well as ensuring reliable delivery. However, as analysts with RBC Capital Markets told Seattle Times, a full-blown operation would likely take Amazon years to complete, thus giving time for rivals, both FedEx and UPS, time to react. RBC also stated that no single customer represents more than 3 percent of FedEx's revenue. The estimation revealed that Amazon accounts for about $1.5 billion of FedEx's revenue in the U.S. and $3 billion of UPS' U.S. revenue.

Even so, Mike Glenn reassured that FedEx's partnership with Amazon remains strong. "Amazon is a valuable customer that we've worked with for many years, we expect to work with them for many years to come," Glenn noted.

FedEx responded to Amazon's plan to launch a business in logistics partly as a way to tightening up its supply chain and reduce costs. FedEx believes that it would take any new player years and at least tens of billions to replicate the company's existing network.
The UK government and Office for National Statistics (ONS) turned keen on improving data quality, taking its central bank Governor Charlie Bean's suggestions into consideration on enhancing statistics. ONS has earmarked GBP 17 million ($24 million) investment for creating new centers of excellence.

The Office for National Statistics has decided to set up a new campus for Data Science at its headquarters in Newport, Wales. In addition to this, ONS will also create an Economics Center of Excellence in London. ONS will be investing GBP 17 million ($24 million) to develop these facilities.

Bloomberg reports that the British government and ONS are acting upon suggestions from Charlie Bean, Governor, Bank of England (BoE) on enhancing data quality and greater regulatory scrutiny to the statistics office. An independent Regulation and Evaluation Office will monitor the accountability, accuracy and quality of statistics from Office for National Statistics.



Osborne said in a statement "Funding announced at budget will help ensure UK statistics are fit for the future. These ambitious plans will help the ONS rise to the challenge of an increasingly technological economy and make sure the UK is a global leader.

Professor Sir Charles Bean commenced working on UK economic statistics on 5th of August 2015 and submitted his report to the UK government. The British government recently announced Bean's review on enhancing quality of data where he suggested UK government to establish UK Statistics Authority. It will take care of future challenges in measurement and production of economic statistics, according to GOV.UK, government's official website.

The economic data affects all walks of life as it influences policy decisions of government and Bank of England while key economic data will affect decisions on pay and pension increase, farming investment and corporate decisions as well.



George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his budget speech, said that Treasury would accept Charlie Bean's suggestions. Charlie Bean has presented a government-commissioned report on economic statistics. His suggestions include setting up two new centers.

Office for National Statistics defines accuracy as it's the difference between an estimated value and the true value. Another definition for timeliness states that it's the time between the data of publication and date to which the data refers. Clarity indicates quality and sufficiency of metadata, illustrations and accompanying advice.



Bean has also recommended to the British government on how to better use administrative data. Bean said it was important to measure contribution of digital activity to the economy. Greater regulatory scrutiny on Office for National Statistics will also help enhancing quality of data.
American luggage manufacturer and retailer Samsonite International S.A. is seeing a boost in profit due to strong sales in China. The company's 2015 net profit reached 136 million from the total sales of 1.6 billion.

Per the end of last year, the net profit grew by 6.1 percent to 136 million ($197.6 million). As for the total sales, the company hit its own record at 1.6 billion ($2.43 billion). The Chinese market is reported to account for a significant part of the sales. According to This is Money, net sales in China increased by 13 percent.

The Standard noted how Asia is a driving market for the American luggage maker. Excluding exchange losses, the net sales of 2015 hit $947.6 million in Asia,12.8 percent up from the year before. The growth is bigger than the sales in North America which only brought $811.3 million, or up to 7.4 percent. Online sales rose the most, up 40.4 percent to $205.8 million. While the company's outlets in China has enjoyed strong sales, Hong Kong is considered as the most challenging markets in all Asia due to the strength of the Hong Kong dollar currency.

However, in a filing with the Hong Kong Exchange, the company revealed that 2015 had been a tough trading year globally. In the statement, Samsonite chairman Timothy Charles Parker said, "Our business has emerged stronger from 2015 despite various headwinds around the globe."

Despite the strong sales and profit increase last year, the company acknowledges an uncertain outlook for 2016. Chief Executive Ramesh Dungarmal Tainwala said, as reported by The China Post, that the outlook for this year "remains uncertain, with challenging trading conditions expected in a number of our key markets including China, and the negative currency translation impacts from the strong U.S. dollar expected to continue affecting our business." The emerging markets of online businesses are also seen as a concern to the company's business.

Meanwhile, Samsonite has just reached an agreement with American luxury bag maker Tumi in a takeover deal worth more than $1.8 billion. The deal is still waiting for shareholder and regulatory approval. Last year, the company purchased airport retailer Rolling Luggage and Italian accessories seller Chic Accent.
Boeing has opted for the UK as home for the proposed new European headquarters. London will be the new home for Boeing's Europe operations. Its decision comes close on the heels of a joint pronouncement of a host of businessmen in favor of Britain staying in Europe.

The world's largest aircraft maker seems to be not bothered about Brexit concerns as it chose London. Allaying fears that If Britain moves out of European Union (EU), it'll result in exodus of firms, Boeing's latest decision is supporting the UK. Britain will have voting on Brexit in June.

This is Money reports that Boeing has taken a decision to make London as its base for European operations regardless of public voting on Brexit in June. Boeing's spokesperson says the UK is a critical market for Boeing, which has long standing relationship. On the other hand, 36 chiefs of business firms in FTSE-100 index wrote a letter claiming that Brexit would damage economic growth.



Businessmen said in the letter "We believe that leaving the EU would deter investment, threaten jobs and put the economy at risk. Britain will be stronger, safer and better off remaining a member of the EU."

Sir Michael Arthur, President of Boeing in the UK and Ireland, will manage the European operations of the company. Arthur will focus on strengthening its regional alignment and enhance its operational efficiency.

Boeing's UK business head has been given responsibility of the European operations as part of restructuring exercise. US aerospace company's new Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg has undertaken revamp plan at Boeing, as reported by Financial Times.



FTSE-100 companies such as Asda, BT, Kingfisher and Vodafone signed the letter favoring Britain staying in EU. However, Boeing has clarified that its decision has nothing to do with Brexit or staying in EU. Boeing is neutral on this issue.

Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, has fixed the public voting date on 23 June for referendum on Brexit. Downing Street has gone overdrive cautioning potential economic damage of a Brexit.

Meanwhile, Boeing has reported encouraging performance for January 2016. A major order for 737-700 has boosted January orders and these were in line with expectations. Boeing booked 68 orders in January unclyding 61 orders for its single-aisle product and seven orders for a wide-body aircraft. 90 percent of orders were for narrow body aircraft and these account for 80 percent of the market value. The orders are valued at $9 billion on list price, but after discounts, it's pegged at a market value of $4.8 billion, according to Seeking Alpha.



Latest orders list includes Air China's order for six Boeing 777-300 ERs. Order inflow was further boosted by United Airlines' order for 40 Boeing 737-700. This order is worth $3.2 billion on list price. United States Navy on the other hand, has purchased 20 Boeing 737-800A airframes and this order accounts for 29 percent of the total order flow.
The chief executive of car insurance company Admiral Insurance is retiring in May, but before Henry Engelhardt leaves the company, he will give every full-time employee in the company 1,000 as a personal thank you gift.

The announcement was first made in a letter to staff, where he wrote, "Saying Thank You to all the staff who work so hard every day to make Admiral great is the most important thing we can do. We are making this gift in recognition of the hard work and team spirit that has underpinned Admiral's success as we've grown from a startup with value of 0 to a FTSE 100 company with a value of 5 billion today."

Engelhardt will allocate his personal money to give 1,000 to every full-time employee who have worked for the company for more than a year. Other employees will still receive cash gift of 500. In total, it costs Mr Engelhardt and his wife Diane more than 7 million for the gifts, as reported by BBC.

Admiral, who also owns the Bell, Elephant and Confused brands, employs more than 6,000 in the UK. In total, Admiral's employees reach 8,375 staff in its Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Halifax, Spain, Italy, France, Canada, U.S., and India offices. Engelhardt's position will be held by co-founder David Stevens, currently serving as the company's chief operating officer.

According to Management Today, Engelhardt is also leaving the insurer in good health, with a 6 percent rise in pre-tax profits in 2015 at 377 million. The rise in profits could be attributed to the company's decision to increase rates ahead of the market and its efforts to look for revenue growth abroad.

The company is now worth more than 5 billion with large contributions made by Engelhardt. He has spent 25 years working with the company which he co-founded in 1991. In the letter to staff, he added, "I am proud to have been part of the team of thousands who have created such a great business and great place to work."

This is Money noted that Engelhardt is known for always having a quirky approach to business as an entrepreneur. He makes it his task to greet every new employee personally. The firm also has a generous employee bonus scheme and has special division to organize company social events.

Admiral boss Engelhardt has dedicated more than 7 million as a gift to every employee in his company. The chief executive is retiring after 25 years working for the company he co-founded in 1991.
Global telecommunications services provider 373K's founder Kelvin Williams is moving his company out of Georgia because of the state's anti-gay bill. Georgia lawmakers have passed a religious freedom bill, allowing anti-gay discrimination.

According to Business Insider, Williams is already in the process of moving the company to Delaware. it's reported that other states without the similar bill will be happy to host the 373K company. When he announced the decision to move, economic development officials all over the country invite Williams to move his business to their states. Williams chose Delaware to host its company after Governor Jack Markell called him and extended a personal welcome.

Williams first stated his intention to move from Georgia on February. It was when the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), Bill 757, passed the Georgia Senate. The bill has also passed the Georgia House on Wednesday night and is now headed to Governor Deal. Many urged the governor to veto the bill, but Williams decided to move instead of wait for a definitive decision from the governor.

"When they passed FADA the first time, we decided to move at that point. Everyone thought it was a threat, but no. We were dead serious," he said.

Williams, who is gay, noted that his decision to move the company is not just because he feels personally unwelcomed. He emphasized his concerns for his employees as well. The final decision to move is a result of company voting. The fact that the votes are in favor on moving proves that his employees feel uncomfortable with the bill as well. As of now, 373K has about 20 employees and is hiring, as reported by Yahoo Finance.

373K is not the first and only company having a serious consideration moving from Georgia over the religious freedom bill. Cloud computing company Salesforce has also threatened to pull global conference from Atlanta, Georgia, over the same concern, as reported by Fortune. The company's CEO, Marc Benioff, asked on his Twitter account whether the company should leave the state if the law passes, and 80 percent votes said yes. Salesforce has employees of over 16,000 staff.

Kelvin Williams announced his company's decision to move from Georgia to Delaware because of the religious freedom bill that would allow anti-gay discrimination. The bill is passing through the process and is now waiting for Governor Deal. The company's decision was reached through a vote involving the 20 employees working for the company.
Photographer, Rob Shanahan poses for a portrait at the Studio Channel Islands Blackboard Gallery on Saturday during the presentation of his Rock Photo Tour, featuring photographs of famous musicians including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and more. KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR

SHARE KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR Gallery manager, Dania Gutierrez, of the Studio Channel Islands, thanks "Dynamic" artists and music photographer Rob Shanahan for their participation in the Blackboard Gallery during the artists' reception and meet and greet for both the local artists' show and that of Shanahan, on Saturday in Camarillo. Contributed Photo/Rob Shanahan Joe Perry (left) and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith perform in one of the shots from photographer Rob Shanahan. His photos are on display at Studio Channel Islands in Camarillo. Contributed Photo/Rob Shanahan Photographer Rob Shanahan snapped this shot of former Beatles Ringo Starr, on drums, and Paul McCartney laughing and playing together. Contributed Photo/Rob Shanahan Avril Lavigne photographed by Rob Shanahan.

By Amy Bentley, Special to the Star

Rob Shanahan has earned a reputation in the world of professional photography as one of the most prolific photographers of legendary musicians and rock stars.

He's photographed Beatles Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney; Aerosmith, Motley Crew, Iron Maiden and the Rolling Stones; and Sting and Stewart Copeland of the band The Police. He's shot Elton John, Todd Rundgren, Sammy Hagar, Sarah McLachlan, Christina Aguilera, Natalie Cole, Jason Mraz, Quincy Jones, Mick Fleetwood and many more well-known artists.

Shanahan attributes his success, in part, to heeding the good advice he received many years ago from another photographer: "Find what you love to photograph and find a way to make that your career." So that's what he did.

Over the years, Shanahan's photos of music icons have appeared in advertising campaigns, on record and DVD covers, in books and in magazines worldwide. A selection of Shanahan's photographs is on exhibit at the Blackboard Gallery at Studio Channel Islands in Old Town Camarillo through March 31. Shanahan's works from his "Rock Photo Tour" are being shown alongside another new exhibit called "Dynamic," which presents paintings and sculptures from different artists that capture movement, motion or kinetic energy. The two exhibits were paired in the large gallery because the themes work well together, explained Studio Channel Islands Gallery Manager Dania Gutierrez.

"A lot of rock and roll photography is known to have movement and energy and these complement each other," Gutierrez said.

Shanahan, 50, who lives in Venice Beach with his wife and 16-year-old daughter, is one of the music industry's most published and in-demand photographers. Serving as Ringo Starr's personal photographer, Shanahan has photographed and designed covers for Starr since 2001. In 2012 he published his first book  a collection of music photographs titled "Volume 1: Through the Lens of Music Photographer Rob Shanahan." Copies of his book and signed prints of Shanahan's works are available at the Studio Channel Islands gift shop.

A drummer since the age of 10, Shanahan is also a musician who has been performing with a Rolling Stones tribute band called "Hollywood Stones" for 23 years. Being a musician has given Shanahan a unique perspective and an inside advantage to working as a successful photographer of other musicians.

"Being a drummer, I know drummers and I know musicians," he said. "I know how to work with musicians because I've been one forever. I know when to get in their way and not get in their way. Plus I am such a music fan. I love discussing music, records and songs and different drum parts, and they dig it. They're tired of the same old questions. When you can really get into their art and the music and the passion, they get off on it. It's important to know the artist when you're going into these photos shoots."

When asked to name his favorite musician to photograph, Shanahan named drummer Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones. Years ago, he explained, he called for a band audition job and didn't realize the job was to play with a Rolling Stones tribute band. On the phone Shanahan said he was asked how much he looked like Charlie Watts.

"Back then there wasn't a whole lot of tribute bands out there like there is now," said Shanahan, who decided to go for it. "I wanted people to be blown away by my Charlie Watts impersonation, so I studied him. I got so into his character. Finally meeting him and photographing him was such a dream come true."

Shanahan first photographed Watts in 2006 in Los Angeles. Shanahan had called Ringo Starr for help in contacting and hooking up with Watts. At the end of the day that Shanahan met and photographed Watts, he told himself, "Man, that was a magical day. You got amazing photos from that day. Nobody can really get him to smile. I've seen a lot of photos of Watts where he looks really bored. I was able to bust in and find the real Charlie."

Studio Channel Islands' Blackboard Gallery is located at 2222 Ventura Blvd. in Old Town Camarillo. Gallery hours are Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesdays-Fridays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Visit www.studiochannelislands.org or call 383-1368. For more of Shanahan's work, visit www.robshanahan.com.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Kristin Davis

By Mike Harris of the Ventura County Star

The owner of a now-defunct management company in Thousand Oaks was ordered Thursday to make more than $2 million restitution for systematically looting two homeowners associations in Simi Valley and Calabasas.

Kristin Davis, 46, was ordered by Ventura County Superior Court Judge Nancy Ayers to pay back $1.2 million to the Big Sky Homeowners Association in Simi Valley, $908,000 to the Oak Park Calabasas Homeowners Association, and $55,000 to Travelers Insurance, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Wise.

The restitution is in addition to the 12-year state prison term Davis received in the case two weeks ago.

Davis the former CEO of the now-closed Paradigm Management Group, was convicted in February at the conclusion of a two-month jury trial of eight counts of felony grand theft, four counts of felony tax evasion, two counts of felony forgery and one count each of felony insurance fraud and failure to file state income taxes.

The jury acquitted her of two other forgery counts and deadlocked on 10 other counts.
Star file photo A mother and daughter check class lists at Meiners Oaks Elementary in 2012.

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By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Special to The Star

An Ojai Unified School District committee has reversed its decision to recommend closing Meiners Oaks Elementary School after dozens of angry parents, students and teachers condemned the idea.

All 11 members of the school district's 7-11 Committee voted Thursday to rescind an earlier motion that recommended declaring Meiners Oaks Elementary School surplus property. In a separate motion, the committee voted 7-4 in favor of keeping all of the district's five elementary schools open.

Glenn Fout, Chris Danch, Merv Van Auker and Steve Quillici voted against that motion.

"We shouldn't be in the business of closing schools," said committee member Demetri Corbin, who has advocated that the cash-strapped district look for alternative funding mechanisms instead of closing schools. "We should be in the business of opening schools."

The committee, which is responsible for advising the district's school board on whether to close an elementary school, voted 6-5 at a March 3 meeting to close Meiners Oaks Elementary. But during the public hearing on the proposed closure Thursday night, about 170 parents, students, teachers and other community members crammed into Chaparral Auditorium to plead with the committee to reverse its decision.

Meiners Oaks students stood outside the auditorium before the start of the meeting and chanted "Save our school! Save our school!" Parents inside wore stickers expressing their love for the school.

More than 40 people spoke at the hearing. Some accused the committee of racism, pointing to Meiners Oaks' large Hispanic and low-income population. Others argued that moving the students to nearby Mira Monte Elementary School would affect academic performance, add to traffic congestion, remove the opportunity for Meiners Oaks students to walk to school, and cause some students to flee the district.

"Meiners Oaks (school) is at the heart of the community of Meiners Oaks, and without Meiners Oaks School it would not be the community of Meiners Oaks," said Camille Jurado, mother of a fifth-grader at the school. "There's got to be another way."

Ernestina Lopez, also the mother of a Meiners Oaks student, scolded the committee in Spanish for what she said was a lack of information and outreach to the school's Hispanic families about the proposed closure.

"It makes me think you didn't take us into account for being Hispanic," she said. "Is this discrimination?"

Several speakers called for the school to be turned into a magnet for environmental science or bilingual education. Teachers and students highlighted already established environmental programs at the school.

Fourth-grader Addy Syn, 10, stood before the committee with a group of her classmates and talked about field trips to a nearby farm where students get to milk goats and catch chickens.

"If you were to close down our school we wouldn't get to do these opportunities," she said.

Ojai Unified School District is facing a steep drop in enrollment, which has resulted in decreased state funding to the district and a projected $1 million deficit in the 2017-18 school year, according to Assistant Superintendent Andrew Cantwell.

The district is also trying to figure out how best to distribute $35 million in bond funding approved by voters in 2014 for school repairs. That funding is not enough to pay for all of the needed repairs, officials have said. With fewer schools or classrooms, the district would have more money to spend on the remaining facilities.

After reversing its recommendation to close Meiners Oaks on Thursday, the committee turned its attention to declaring parts of some elementary campuses as surplus.

In separate motions, the committee voted unanimously to recommend removal of four portable classrooms at Meiners Oaks Elementary that have fallen into disrepair and to move the district's nutrition services department and food storage to the school from downtown. They also voted 10-1 to declare four classrooms at Mira Monte school surplus property and will decide on a use for them at a future meeting.

The committee is scheduled to meet again at the district headquarters March 30 to finalize their recommendations to the school board. Those recommendations will likely include a call to declare the district headquarters as surplus instead of closing an elementary school, Cantwell said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18



Trend:



The United States welcomes the positive step by the Government of Azerbaijan to release a large number of prisoners, said the statement of US Secretary of State John Kerry, posted on the website of US State Department.



"We look forward to working with Azerbaijan on additional positive steps", also said in a statement.



Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 17 pardoning 148 people. Under the decree, 137 people, sentenced to imprisonment, have been freed from serving the remainder of the prison terms.



Moreover, six people were freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and five people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine. Sixteen foreign citizens are among the pardoned.
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Agoura Hills

Businesses can sponsor series

The city of Agoura Hills welcomes sponsorships for its "Summer Concerts in the Park" series.

Benefits include logo on 10,000 flyers, logo in various newspaper ads, mentioned in radio ads and street banners.

For more information, call 818-597-7361.

Ojai

New yoga spot will have grand opening

Ojai Yoga Shala owner Alana Mitnick and her partner Adam Rumack will open a new home for yoga in the Ojai Valley on Sunday at 306. E. Matilija St.

Ravi Ravindra will offer a talk on the "Heart and Purpose of Yoga" from 6-7 p.m. The event will include food and nonalcoholic drinks.

The talk costs $15. For more information, visit www.ojaiyogashala.com, email ojaiyogashala@gmail.com or call 552-6524.

Speaker will share about author

The Ojai Valley Museum will present a Town Talk by local historian Patricia Clark Doerner about Helen Hunt Jackson from 4:30-6 p.m. Sunday at 130 W. Ojai Ave.

Jackson's 1884 best-seller "Ramona" sparked a nationwide fascination with California's romantic Mission period.

Admission is $5 and free for museum members. For more information, call 640-1390.

Simi Valley

Talk focuses on cancer research

Simi Valley Hospital will offer a free community lecture on new advances in cancer research and care from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Tuesday in room 106 at Simi Valley Senior Center, 3900 Avenida Simi.

Simi Valley Hospital's Dr. Sam Slomowitz, an oncologist, and Nurse Navigators Patty Knipper and Deirdre Dunbar will speak.

To RSVP, call 583-6363.

Thousand Oaks

Senior Concerns will host seminar

Senior Concerns will present a seminar "Alzheimer's and Dementia: Early Detection" from 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday at Hodencamp Road.

Dr. James P. Sutton, founding medical director of Pacific Neuroscience Medical Group, will speak.

A $10 donation is requested. To RSVP, call 497-0189.

Ventura

Meeting shares info with volunteers

Ventura County Resource Parent informational meeting will be 6-8 p.m. Tuesday at 855 Partridge Drive.

The meeting will share about resource parenting.

For more information, visit www.fostervckids.org.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/OXNARD POLICE DEPARTMENT Andrew Carlson, 23, of Oxnard.

By Staff Reports

A man was arrested Thursday morning in connection with stealing lottery tickets from gas stations in Oxnard over the last four weeks, officials said.

Andrew Carlson, 23, was taken into custody about 8:30 a.m. in the 900 block of Stern Lane, Oxnard police said.

Three of the burglaries were reported at a Shell gas station in the 600 block of South Ventura Road and six others occurred at a Chevron gas station in the 800 block of South Ventura Road, authorities said. The first burglary was reported Feb. 16 but beer was stolen in that incident, police said.

Surveillance footage from the businesses and assistance from California Lottery investigators helped detectives identify Carlson as the suspect, officials said.

Additional burglaries at the gas stations were reported Wednesday night and detectives believed Carlson was responsible, police said. Family members alerted detectives to his location Thursday and he was arrested in connection with the burglaries, which was estimated to have produced several thousand dollars in damages and property loss, authorities said.

At the time of his arrest, the Oxnard man was found to be in possession of property reported stolen from two commercial burglaries in Ventura, officials said.
STAR FILE PHOTO Oxnard erred when paying its former fire chief, James Williams (right), a $60,000 settlement without getting City Council approval, the District Attorney's office says, though there is no evidence anyone intended to violate the law.

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By Gretchen Wenner of the Ventura County Star

Oxnard's $60,000 settlement payment to its former fire chief last year did not comply with state law, a review by the Ventura County District Attorney's office found, though the error appeared unintentional.

The DA's office looked into the issue after getting a citizen complaint when the settlement was made public by The Star in November, records show.

The payment should have had City Council approval because it exceeded a $50,000 cap, according to a letter sent to the city this week by Special Assistant DA Michael Schwartz.

Instead, Oxnard officials relied on a city ordinance adopted more than 15 years ago that allows the city manager and city attorney to settle certain claims up to $75,000 without City Council approval.

Read 'Letter to Oxnard on Settlement' (PDF)

Firefighters union statement (PDF)

City statement

"Our interpretation of the law is that the ordinance is invalid and exceeds the $50,000 cap allowed by state law," Schwartz said Thursday. "But there's no evidence here anyone intended to violate the law or have any kind of bad faith."

The separation agreement authorizing the payment was signed in April 2015, when former Chief James Williams "agreed to resign," the document reads, and received the lump sum to "release any and all claims he may hold against the city."

The city issued a statement Thursday afternoon via Twitter and online announcing results of the DA review and saying its risk-management policy "is inconsistent with state law." The city also posted the DA's letter.

"Adhering to California law is a top priority for the city of Oxnard," the joint statement from City Manager Greg Nyhoff and Interim City Attorney Stephen Fischer reads. "We regret that this policy has not been updated since 2000 when it was originally adopted."

A revised policy will be brought to the City Council, and the $50,000 cap will be followed going forward, the statement says.

The DA letter does not address whether the excess payment requires any remedy. Schwartz said one course of action would be to have the City Council ratify the settlement retroactively. City spokeswoman Delana Gbenekama said the matter will be brought to the council.

The complaint was originally made to the DA's office in November by Phillip Molina, a former finance director for the city, who sent an email referencing The Star's story and questioning whether the funds had been disbursed appropriately when there had been no council approval. Complaints are typically anonymous, but because Molina's email was submitted as an "open letter" to the DA, Schwartz said he considers it public.

The Oxnard Firefighters Association, in a release Thursday, said: "This 'mistake' is very difficult to understand as the city has paid millions of dollars in legal fees and (Human Resources) consultant fees, yet they are unable to follow the state law?"

The statement also says the union has asked the Ventura County grand jury to investigate the legality of the city issuing multiple small contracts to the same firms.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO "The Wonder of It All" a collection of 100 stories from National Park Service volunteers and staff.

By Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star

Dan Richards of Ventura jumped out of a helicopter and tried to free a whale entangled in a fishing net off the Channel Islands.

A Calabasas couple joined a National Park Service mountain bike unit and rode farther  and longer  than they ever thought possible.

Robert Angstadt, of Thousand Oaks, had no idea how close he would live to national parkland when he moved to Ventura County.

All of their stories were included in a book released this week to celebrate the National Park Service's centennial year.

"The Wonder of It All" is a collection of 100 stories from National Park Service staff and volunteers throughout the country. The Yosemite Conservancy published the book and released it this week.

The group sent out a call for stories from employees and volunteers throughout the country, said Adonia Ripple, the conservancy's general manager of Yosemite operations. Then, a team of retired park service staff vetted the stories and selected finalists.

"They are all so unique," Ripple said of the national parks. "The common thread is the human experience."

Dan Richards, 59, of Ventura

Favorite spot in the park: Just about anywhere. My answer to the usual question of which island is my favorite is the one that I am on.

The short stories spanned the country, from Governors Island National Monument in New York to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.

Richards, now retired from the Channel Islands National Park off the Ventura coast, wrote that it was only his second time on a helicopter the day he jumped into the ocean.

They didn't get the whale free from the net that day, but hopefully the whale survived, and he never forgot that rescue attempt.

Angstadt wrote about pulling over on a whim to check out a brown national parks sign on the side of the road after moving to Ventura County.

Robert Angstadt, 46, of Thousand Oaks

Favorite local spot: Mishe Mokwa Trail near Circle X Ranch. Its just a fabulous trail that will give you 360-degree views.

"I wasn't near a national park (or so I thought), and was curious why a national park location was in the area," he wrote.

That day, he learned about the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, an urban park that stretches from the Oxnard plain to Los Angeles. After hiking the trails for several years, he spotted an ad in a local newspaper asking for volunteers.

As he interviewed for the post, Angstadt said he thought: "It almost sounded like I was about to relive every Boy Scout merit badge I ever earned."

Over the past five years, Steve and Cheryl Blizin, of Calabasas, handed out water, tips and directions while on patrol in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Steve Blizin, 56, and Cheryl Blizin, 53, of Calabasas

Favorite local trail: Overlook Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. Its an endless climb, but once you get up to the top, you can see the ocean, Steve said. You feel like youve done something when youre finished.

In the beginning, the rides were hard, and the couple spent the rest of the week recovering. But they also loved it, Steve wrote.

They got to help on the trails and also have heard a tiny coyote cub howl, spotted a pair of bobcats poking around and watched deer grazing on a misty morning.

"We live in such an urban area and we have this natural resource literally in our backyard," Cheryl said.

On the net: http://www.yosemiteconservancy.org.
JUAN CARLO/THE STAR U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (left) and U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, distribute park passes to more than 90 fourth-graders from Grace Thille School in Santa Paula as they prepare to board a boat headed to Santa Cruz Island on Friday in Ventura.

By Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell spotted a fox during a few hours Friday on Santa Cruz Island. Maybe two.

That's kind of a big deal. The cinnamon-colored foxes smaller than a house cat came close to extinction just 16 years ago.

Fox populations on three of the islands in Channel Islands National Park had declined by more than 90 percent. Only 15 foxes were left on San Miguel and Santa Rosa, while Santa Cruz, the largest island, had an estimated 55.

But their numbers have rebounded, marking the fastest recovery of any mammal on the endangered species list.

"This is a model for what we can do elsewhere," said Jewell, who went to the island about 20 miles off Ventura with Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and dozens of Santa Paula fourth-graders.

They spotted dolphins, sea lions, a young humpback whale, and, once on land, bright yellow coreopsis and the foxes.

When the fox numbers were low, a small group of people got together, figured out the issue and removed much of the problem, Jewell said.

The foxes were cooperative, and reproduced well.

"But I will take with me forever that the actions of a small group of people can have an impact on a species and stop it from going extinct in a very short period of time," Jewell said. "That is really inspirational to me."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed last month that island foxes on Santa Cruz, San Miguel and Santa Rosa be removed from the endangered species list.

The National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, which owns most of Santa Cruz Island, Fish and Wildlife and others worked on efforts that range from a captive breeding program for the foxes to relocating golden eagles, which had come to the islands in the 1990s and decimated the fox population. Nonnative feral pigs, which biologists say attracted the golden eagles and took a steep toll on the vegetation, were killed.

"A partnership came together to bring this island to a state when we see recovery of the fox, we see the bald eagle coming back, we see the vegetation coming back," Channel Islands National Park Superintendent Russell Galipeau said.

Funding continues to be a challenge for national parks. The National Park Service has a $12 billion maintenance backlog nationwide.

At Channel Islands, the deferred maintenance was $16.7 million last year, and docks at two islands were severely damaged in high surf this winter, limiting access to the five-island park.

"The National Park Service is dependent on congressional appropriations," Jewell said Friday. "Really for many years, we suffered what I will say is kind of death by one thousand cuts."

About half of the backlog is made up of transportation projects, so passage of a highway trust fund will help with some of that work, Jewell said. Other bills making their way through Congress would help pay for at least high-priority projects, but their fate is unknown.

The upside is that park visitation has increased and likely will again in 2016  the centennial year for the federal agency.

"When you have more people who get a chance to see some of those places ... they will understand better," Jewell said. "I think that provides advocacy that would be very helpful."

Hours earlier, she stood at Ventura Harbor and asked dozens of fourth-graders if they liked to play outside.

"Yes!" they yelled back.

The students' trip was part of the Every Kid in a Park initiative launched last year by President Barack Obama to get children nationwide outdoors. On Friday, Jewell and Capps handed out national park passes to fourth-graders from Thille School in Santa Paula.

"Because you're in the fourth grade, we're going to give every single one of you a free pass, not just for you but for your whole family," Jewell said.

They can use the pass to go to national parks and other federal lands nationwide while in fourth grade.

On the Net: Visit https://www.everykidinapark.gov for more information about Every Kid in the Park passes.
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The state Board of Equalization needed a door replaced to its file room. So it went, as required, to the Real Estate Services Division, a unit of the Department of General Services.

The division came back with its estimate: $17,000. It said replacing the door would cost $3,000. Planning for that replacement and managing the project would cost $14,000.

The Board of Equalization, to its credit, said no.

But that headline, which will become fodder for every anti-government candidate for a generation, did not tell the full problem.

The door issue was revealed in a report by State Auditor Elaine Howle. The audit, requested by Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, found much deeper problems with the Real Estate Services Division.

Part of the division's responsibility is to oversee the maintenance of most state buildings, including the management and design of many construction projects. What Howle's audit found was that the division has no procedure for monitoring the scheduled time or cost of the projects. And this is not a new problem. The audit says the problem was pointed out to the agency 10 years ago, and nothing has been done.

Any construction project manager can regale you with tales about problems on a job that caused delays and ran up costs. That is not uncommon. But a good project manager tracks those issues and learns from them, so the next time he or she can avoid a repeat.

The Real Estate Services Division has no tracking system for these delays or cost increases. It relies on the individual project manager to explain what is happening.

This cavalier attitude toward spending your state tax money  combined with the outrageous estimate of the door replacement  supports long-held beliefs that Sacramento is a bloated bureaucracy out of control.

It's hard to argue against that position when we see reports like this.


Guests are invited to grab their sombreros and serapes for a margarita fiesta at Tacos & Tequila (T&T), inside Luxor Hotel and Casino, as tequila lovers salute National Margarita Day.

Party-goers will feel as if theyre south of the border at T&Ts all-day happy hour with two-for-one house margaritas on Wednesday, Feb. 22 from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. T&Ts signature house margarita is poured with Jose Cuervo Tradicional, organic agave nectar, Grand Marnier and house-made margarita mix, made from scratch daily with fresh squeezed limes. Served on the rocks with a salted rim, guests will enjoy two margaritas for the price of one on National Margarita Day.

Named one of the best tequila bars of 2011 in America by USA Today, Tacos & Tequila embodies the cool modernism of Mexico City while incorporating traditional elements of Mexican style and Las Vegas flair. The color mixture of old and new creates a vivid picture of brushed aluminum, dark wood, leather, bright fabrics and colored glass. The focal point of T&Ts design is its abstract sombrero composed of 20 brushed-aluminum panels featuring thousands of laser-cut images, including two, 30-foot dancing, tequila-drinking skeletons. Lit from within, the breathtaking panels stretch across the entire length of the restaurant floor and across the common area, connecting the T&T retail store and walk-up daiquiri bar.
An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2020 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam....
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18



Trend:



Finnish MP and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva and Portugese MP, Chairperson of the OSCE PA Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions Isabel Santos welcomed the release of 148 people in Azerbaijan, following a pardon decree issued by President Ilham Aliyev.



"I welcome this ethical decision by President Aliyev, and we will continue to encourage Azerbaijan to fulfill its OSCE commitments and I look forward to future constructive dialogue and progress," President Kanerva said.



A senior OSCE PA delegation visited Azerbaijan on 25 January, meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, members of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the OSCE PA and members of civil society.



Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 17 pardoning 148 people. Under the decree, 137 people, sentenced to imprisonment, have been freed from serving the remainder of the prison terms.



Moreover, six people were freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and five people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine. Sixteen foreign citizens are among the pardoned.
The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange dropped 0.2 per cent to close at 578.09 points. - VNs Photo Truong Vi

Meanwhile, information and technology firm FPT Corporation rose on speculation that the company would sell one of its units at the end of this year.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange dropped 0.2 per cent to close at 578.09 points, while the HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange inched up 0.1 per cent to end at 80.67 points.

Information and technology firm FPT Corporation (FPT) added two per cent at the end of this morning, following speculation that the company would sell its retail and distribution chains at the end of this year.

The deal is expected to bring FPT between US$103 million and $121 million.

Meanwhile, investors were cautious as investment fund Market Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM ETF) was to announce its new investment portfolio for the second quarter of this year.

Plastic producers helped lift the markets this morning, led by Binh Minh Plastic JSC (BMP) and Tien Phong Plastic JSC (NTP), which rose 2.9 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively.

Securities companies also made good gains. HCM City Securities Corporation (HCM) gained 2.5 per cent and Kim Long Securities Corporation (KLS) jumped 3.7 per cent.

However, insurance companies and property developers such as Bao Viet Holdings (BVH) and property firm Vingroup JSC (VIC), respectively, weighed on the markets.
Deputy Minister Do Hoang Anh Tuan said that 287 businesses across the country were waiting for tax refunds but there are both objective and subjective reasons for the delay. - Photo baogiaothong.vn

The ministry's decision is in response to complaints about tax refund delays caused by tax agencies, which is blamed for the shortage in businesses capital sources.

Deputy Minister Do Hoang Anh Tuan said that 287 businesses across the country were waiting for tax refunds but there are both objective and subjective reasons for the delay.

One of the reasons is that some enterprises owe the State budget but the State budget must also refund tax to these enterprises. However, under regulations previously issued, the two debts are not allowed to be offset, so enterprises are required to settle debts with the State budget before receiving tax refund.

According to Tuan, there are 20 enterprises facing this situation.

The ministry officially abolished the regulation via a document sent to local tax offices on Monday.

The ministry's leader also asked the General Department of Taxation (GDT) to check and inform local tax agencies within 6 working hours upon receiving their proposals for tax refund approval.

If they receive approval, the agencies would then issue a decision to refund tax to enterprises and update the tax payers database.

Local tax offices must take full responsibilities if they are slow in refunding tax to enterprises, Tuan said.

However, the ministry still requests localities to delay the tax refund if they detect any breaches of tax or customs regulations committed by companies or if tax payers are unable to prove the eligibility of the tax amount declared in their applications.

Tuan added that some businesses which were under scrutiny also have to be put in the waiting list.

Another reason for the tax refund delay is that some localities do not have enough funds to return to enterprises.

Nguyen Thi Tuyet, general director of the Nhat Tri Thanh Company which specialises in supply materials for the metallurgy industry, said the firm should have received VND38 billion (US$1.7 million) of tax refunds by the end of January, but due to a shortage of money, the local tax office delayed the refund until the beginning of February.

Nguyen Huu Quang, an official from the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee, said a delay like this was not rare.

Deputy head of central Da Nang City's tax authority Nguyen Dinh An said that there are five to six pending applications at his office because of capital shortages. Normally, due to the limited quota set for each locality, the GDT would approve the refund in accordance with the order of priority such as type of business, export and big investments.

Deputy Minister Tuan said that the ministry had enough resources for tax refunds nationwide. Currently, funds reserved for tax refund total VND3.8 trillion ($173 million). However, he did not deny the possibility that "This man has much to eat but that man finds no small piece."

He said HCM City now had only VND92 billion ($4.2 million) in the reserve while it needed VND800-900 billion ($36-41 million) for tax refunds. In contrast, the central Ha Tinh Province has VND1.1 trillion ($50 million).

To fix the problem, the ministry would remove quotas set for each locality and be more flexible in allocating funds for tax refunds.

Dinh Nho Hau, head of the Ha Tinh Province's tax office, said that the changes in tax refund regulations would help tackle difficulties for both local tax offices and businesses.

He also suggested that there should not be any discrimination among enterprises. Tax offices should repay tax to enterprises right after they complete procedures applying for the refund, regardless if they are big exporters or investors.

Over the past two months, 3,100 applications were sent to local tax agencies and all of the enterprises successfully reclaimed tax with total amount of funds worth VND13 trillion ($591 million). This year, the Government set aside VND98 trillion ($4.5 billion) for tax refunds.
On March 8, a Boeing 787 of Swiss airline TUI Nordic, packed with Northern European tourists, landed at Phu Quoc International Airport. A representative of the airline said that in the last months of 2016 they are going to have weekly flights to Phu Quoc.

Besides being a popular destination for tourists from Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, Phu Quoc has recently started welcoming visitors from Europe. In the past year, many foreign airlines have opened routes or increased the frequency of flights to Phu Quoc because the infrastructure serving tourism, especially accommodation, has improved remarkably.

As the island is looking forward to a boom in tourism, now is a unique time to invest in real estate here.

In fact, foreign investors from a variety of countries have already shown great interest. At the beginning of 2016, an event to introduce Sun Groups hospitality real estates in Singapore attracted representatives from more than 200 real estate companies. Leong Boon Hoe, managing director of CBRE Singapore, said that three factors making hospitality real estate in Vietnam attractive to Singaporean investors are their competitive prices, good location, and the prestige of the developers.

In Singapore, a three-bedroom condotel is priced between $500,000 and $840,000 while a similar condotel in Vietnam only costs about 25 per cent of that.

Sun Groups condotels are within the resort and close to the seaside. The building density is 30 per cent, while the remaining 70 is reserved for green space and 5-star amenities. The developer commits a profit of at least 9 per cent per year for nine years, and the owner of the condotel gets 135 nights in their estate or a comparable accommodation for these nine years.

Condotels are also an attractive choice compared to other investment options. If one buys a condo in the city, one remains hard-pressed to think of ways to earn a profit. In case of a condotel, the developer commits a fixed profit. Sometimes the profit one makes is even higher than the committed rate. It could reach 15 per cent per year or higher if the condotels are managed by internationally renowned hotel companies.

The condotel model is a recent addition to the Vietnamese real estate scene, though enjoying international popularity for a while now. Condotels in Singapore, Boracay in Phillipines, Bali in Indonesia, and Sydney in Australia have proved extremely profitable.

Condotels were hot in Vietnam five years ago, when investors raced to get their hands on condotels from international projects, such as Hyatt Regency and Azura in Danang. At that point, the price was $4,500 per square metre. At the end of 2015 condotels made a comeback with Sun Groups Condotel Premier Residences Phu Quoc Emerald Bay project, and judging by the warm welcome of the market, one can say that condotels have not lost their shine.

With not only Sun Group, but also many real estate companies, such as Vingroup and LDG Group, seeing big opportunities in the condotel segment, investments in the area are poised for a surge in 2016.
Vietnam Airlines has announced on its website that customers can book tickets at rock-bottom prices and join in on special deals exclusively in March for the upcoming summer.

The two promotional events booking period stretches from March 18 to 27 while the travel period varies by booking, the website said.

Cool Deals for a Hot Summer will offer customers fabulous fares for over 100 routes, including one way domestic services from VND199,000 (US$8.92) and round-trip international routes from $9 to Southeast Asia, Vietnam Airlines said.

Flights to Northeast Asia will start at $39 and flights to Europe and Australia can be booked for as low as $249, the carrier added.

The prices have not included taxes, fees, and are dependent on each seats position, its website noted.

The Vietnam Airlines Holidays promotion packages offer flyers a booking combination of a round-trip flight and a three-star hotel or above listed in each.

Total payment includes airfares, hotel accommodation charges, and tax, according to the flag carrier.

The promotional packages prices are based on a four-day-three-night journey for two people starting from VND4 million ($179) for domestic trips and from VND5.793 million ($260) for international flights, the airline said, adding that a higher price may be applied, depending on flight and hotel availability.

Detailed information can be accessed at www.vietnamairlines.com.

Vietnam Airlines is headquartered in Long Bien District, Hanoi, and founded in 1956 under the name Vietnam Civil Aviation.

In April 1993, Vietnam Airlines was officially established as the countrys national flag carrier.

The airline has placed purchase orders of the worlds most modern, environment-friendly fleets, such as Airbus A350-900 and Boeing B787 aircraft, according to its website.

The airline aims to reach 101 and 150 modern aircraft in 2015 and 2020, respectively, making solid steps towards integrating into the global aviation industry as one of the leading regional carriers, which is fully ingrained in Vietnamese traditional culture, Vietnam Airlines said on its website.
Developers are being forced to quickly understand the markets quickly changing landscape

Vietnams real estate sector recently went through a very exciting cycle which reached its peak by the end of 2008 and entered a correction period.



Co-incidentally, or intentionally as some may argue, this was also the time the government introduced some significant changes to the tax regulations affecting developers and buyers. We have examined and commented on these fundamental changes as perceived by the market at the time (VIR December 8th-14th, 2008).



With over a year of practical application of the new tax regulations affecting the real estate sector, albeit with a lot less excitement due to the market cool-off, there are a number of issues being identified and looming for the attention of regulators and taxpayers.



Based on many recent positive signs we have seen with many reported real estate merger and acquisition projects, inactive licenced projects being revived and new projects explored, new players showing up in Vietnam, there is a perception that a market recovery may be around the corner.



In light of this, we believe it is a good time to raise these identified problematic tax issues which may hinder the positive development of the market and hopefully with the appropriate corrections from the tax authorities the issues can be resolved and lending support to the development of a more healthy and strong real estate market. Due to the limitation of space in this article, we shall cover two issues here first.



Transfer of land use rights - Value Added Tax exemption

Under Circular 129/2008/TT-BTC dated December 26, 2008 effective from January 1, 2009 on Value Added Tax (VAT), the transfer of Land Use Right (LUR) is VAT exempt.



The circular further provides details that the revenue subject to VAT is the real estate transfer value minus the LUR value at the time of the transfer. For example, the transfer value of a property is VND8 billion, while the building value is determined at VND5 billion and the balance of VND3 billion is attributable to the value of the LUR. The revenue subject to VAT in this case is only VND5 billion.



The deduction of the LUR value from the revenue subject to VAT also applies in cases of instalment payment, from the first instalment payment. Under the above example provided in Circular 129, if the first instalment payment of the property is 30 per cent, then a deduction of 30 per cent of the LUR value (30 per cent x VND3 billion) can be deducted from the revenue subject to VAT. The LUR value is determined and fixed at the time of the first instalment payment.



The above taxation principle as set out by the regulations and demonstrated by these examples is simple, clear and straightforward. However, there are various implementation issues faced by the taxpayers in practice.



Firstly, how the LUR value at the transfer time may be determined and fixed for this VAT deduction purpose? Circular 129 provides that where the price of the land at the date of transfer declared by the taxpayer is not deemed to have sufficient basis in order to determine a reasonable VAT taxable price pursuant to law, the deductible price of the land shall be the price of the land (or the rent for the land) stipulated by a peoples committee under central authority at the date of transfer of real estate.



Under some official letters issued by Ministry of Finance (MoF) (i.e. Official Letter No. 10383/BTC-TCT dated July 22, 2009), it is confirmed that when determining the price of land at the date of transfer of real estate property, enterprises and their customers can make reference to the land price listed at Real Estate Transaction Centre or enter into a contract with price assessment agencies. This indicates that market price can be used. Can this market price for land be determined appropriately in a true and fair manner and can be acceptable by the tax office?



Secondly, for apartment sales, especially with the high-rise apartments, how the common owned LUR value (even if assuming can be determined correctly and appropriately) may be allocated to each apartment unit for VAT deduction purposes? The current tax circular does not specifically address this issue. Reference to the Land Law, Law on Housing, Law on Real-Estate Business and other relevant implementing regulations would be required here and this can be very legally complex. We have seen LUR ownership paperwork for a number of different high -rise apartments showing different ways of calculation and presentation of the allocated land here even within the same city.



Finally, having the LUR value deducted from the revenue subject to VAT effectively implies that the developer is in a partial VAT exemption position. Accordingly, the developer cannot claim all the input VAT incurred relating to the land and building development. In other words, the input VAT incurred relating to the LUR transfer revenue (e.g. land improvement expenses) which is VAT exempt, is not technically creditable.



If the input VAT relating to the LUR transfer revenue cannot be clearly identified (i.e. the expenses and related VAT incurred may be related to both land and building development), then the input VAT must be claimed based on the ratio of the VATable revenue (the house/apartment transfer value) over the total revenue (the house/apartment transfer value plus the LUR transfer value). This would create certain VAT leakage to the developer.



The practice so far has indicated that in most cases in Hanoi, the developers issue invoices for VAT purpose on the full property transfer value without deduction of the LUR transfer value portion. On the other hand, we have seen that some developers in Ho Chi Minh City do try to work this out and exclude the VAT charge on the LUR transfer portion.



For a healthy market development and to make it fair for individual property buyers (i.e. not having to pay VAT on the value of LUR of the property they purchase as clearly allowed under the VAT law), it is important that practical and easy to follow guidance from the tax authority would be required here on this subject for strict and consistent application of the tax regulations



Long-term lease upfront payment-Corporate Income Tax (CIT) implications

It is common to see industrial park developers around the country is to rent the land from the government, develop the infrastructure and then sub-lease the land to the tenants over a long period of time. Recently, qualified foreign buyers may buy only long-term leases for their properties say for 50 years as allowed under current regulations. In some projects located in central business districts of the cities or beachfront, properties may only be sold by the developer on a long-term lease basis even to Vietnamese national buyers.



Tenants/buyers in the above cases would typically be required to pay the full lease value upfront for many years to the developers. For accounting purposes, we understand that many developers do recognise the full lease upfront payment as their sale revenue in the year of receipt.



However, for CIT purposes, under the previous CIT regulations (i.e. Circular 134/2007/TT-BTC applicable to December 31, 2008), developers may choose to recognise the above taxable sale revenue on the basis of an one-off full lease upfront payment or deferred basis with taxable revenue recognition annually over the lease period.



The current Circular 130/2008/TT-BTC dated December 26, 2008, replacing Circular 134 and effective from January 1, 2009, no longer allows the above two options. Taxable revenue must now be recognised on a deferred basis (i.e. option 2 above) only.



Circular 130 fails to provide any provisions for transitional cases i.e. can developers with projects already operational before January 1, 2009 be allowed to continue with what they may have in place for many years e.g. recognition of sales revenue for both accounting and tax purposes on an one-off full lease upfront payment basis or all have to change to the new rule from January 1, 2009.



The more serious related problem in connection with this new tax provision is how the difference between the tax and accounting profits may be addressed in terms of dividend payment. The current regulations on dividend payment require that dividends may only be declared and paid out after the company has fulfilled its Vietnamese tax obligations (i.e. only profits after tax can be paid out as dividends).



Many developers would face the situation that they may have substantial accounting profits, but be unable to pay out full dividends for many years because full CIT cannot be declared and paid for these accounting profits recognised. For real estate developers who may constantly need quick cash turn, this can be another challenge that needs careful management and advance planning.



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

-Ninh Van Hien (ninhvanhien@kpmg.com.vn) and Do Thi Thu Ha (htdo@kpmg.com.vn) - tax partners leading the Real Estate Practice at KPMG Vietnam.

-The views expressed by the authors here do not necessary represent the views and opinions of KPMG.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

Trend:

Russia, as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair should monitor the use of weapons by Yerevan, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said in his interview with Russian Kommersant newspaper.

Commenting on the note that Baku sent to Moscow due to the weapon supply to Armenia, Mammadyarov said that Russia is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

"On the other side, we recognize that every state has the right to supply weapons to the country, which it deems necessary," said the minister. "The note's content was to request Russia to take into account that when supplying Armenia with weapons, these weapons should not be in the occupied Azerbaijani territories."

"A rule of the end user exists in such supplies. If Armenia was the end user, the issue wouldn't go beyond the framework of bilateral relations between Moscow and Yerevan," said Mammadyarov.

If the weapon is in Azerbaijan's occupied territories, it is quite another matter, he added.

Earlier, commenting on the entry into force of the loan agreement for the sale of Russian arms and military equipment to Armenia in the amount of $200 million, spokesman for the Azerbaijani foreign ministry Hikmat Hajiyev said that the ministry sent the note to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The note stated that Azerbaijan has repeatedly brought to the attention of the international community irrefutable facts that the weapons and military equipment purchased by Armenia are deployed in Azerbaijan's occupied territories in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Regarding the agenda of the nearest meeting, Mammadyarov said that foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Russia will discuss the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"We will discuss the development of bilateral cooperation, in particular, the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict," he said.
North Korea is following a familiar pattern of defiance in response to the tough new international sanctions imposed on the country for conducting its fourth nuclear test and launching another long-range rocket.

Pyongyang launched its latest provocation on Friday morning, firing two medium range ballistic missiles from its east coast and sending them about 800 km into the sea. One of the Rodong missiles, which have the potential range to reach Japan, appeared to have exploded mid-flight.

North Korea did not declare a no-sail zone prior to the launch, even though it is required under international conventions to warn ships that may be in the area.

Neither missile was assessed to be a threat to the United States or its regional allies, according to the U.S. Defense Department.

The launches, which are a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting the North from developing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, occurred one day after the United States announced further unilateral sanctions against the Kim Jong Un government.

History repeats

The missile launches are the latest retaliatory acts North Korea has made since the United Nations imposed tough new sanctions on March 2. They mirror the Norths response to the last round of U.N. sanctions imposed in 2013 after its third nuclear test.

Almost immediately after the U.N. sanctions were announced this month, North Korea fired several short-range projectiles into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.

And Friday, the North launched two medium range missiles into the sea.

North Korea launched a series of short-range missiles over one weekend in May 2013.

Nuclear advancement

This month the countrys Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un ordered further nuclear and missile tests. State media KCNA published photographs of Kim inspecting sites where miniaturized nuclear warheads and advanced long-range ballistic missile technologies were supposedly being developed.

However, North Korea has yet to demonstrate this type of capability and many analysts express skepticism that the countrys nuclear program has reached that advanced development stage.

In 2013 Kim ordered the country's atomic energy department to restart the uranium enrichment plant and the five-megawatt reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The North had closed the facility in 2007 under an agreement reached at six-party talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Korean-American's public sentencing

This week the North Korean Supreme Court sentenced an American college student to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state.

The student, Otto Warmbier from the University of Virginia, was visiting Pyongyang with a group of tourists when he was apprehended for attempting to take down a banner with a political slogan.

In 2013 North Korea sentenced Korean-American tour operator Kenneth Bae to 15 years of hard labor after being convicted of hostile acts against the reclusive state.

Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, another American being held by North Korea, were released in 2014 after U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper visited Pyongyang.

The continued repetition of provocation and crisis have led many, especially in South Korea, to downplay the reality of North Koreas nuclear advancement and growing threat to regional peace and stability, said analyst Ahn Chan-il, of the World Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.

At this point, it is regrettable that we have become dull on North Koreas military provocation which continues to upgrade, he said.

While the Norths aggressive responses follow the same defiant pattern, advocates for sanctions say there is cause to believe that the new U.S. measures, in addition to the U.N. sanctions imposed this year, will deliver a different outcome.

I think it is good to see that the Obama administration is imposing actual sanctions and pressure while it had had a naive policy in the past against North Korea, said Ahn.

International condemnation

As international sanctions increase economic pressure on Pyongyang, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have increased their defense readiness postures. U.S. and South Korean forces are currently conducting joint annual military exercises.

The U.S. allies condemned the Norths latest violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, which prohibit it from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capability. North Korea's missile launch is a frontal attack against the U.N. Security Council Resolution and a significant threat to peace and stability in the international society," said South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman, Moon Sang-Gyun.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the launch extremely problematic and called on the North to cease such actions.

And U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement calling on North Korea to focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations.
Farmers and development organizations say they welcome the release of water from a hydropower dam on the Mekong River in China, but they warned against negative impacts if too much water is discharged.

China is releasing the water from its Jinghong power station in Yunnan province, in order to help ease drought and help irrigation in Lower Mekong countries. In January and February alone, it released 2.3 billion cubic meters of water.

The Mekong River Commission, a consortium of governments from countries along the river, praised the discharge following a two-day meeting in Vietnam, calling it good will from China.

I would encourage that the member countries use this extra volume of water in an appropriate and effective manner, Le Duc Trung, chairman of the Mekong River Commissions Joint Committee, said in a statement.

The pulse of water will not only help farmers, but Cambodian fishermen, as well.

Phork Nimul, a fisherman in OSvay commune, Stung Treng province, said the water would help with his crops and enable fishing boats to better navigate the river, bringing in more fish to feed families. First it helps boats to navigate, and second is that it would help with agriculture, he said.

Some, however, remain cautious, fearing too much of a good thing.

Phork Sareith, chief of a fishing community in Stung Treng citys Samaki commune, said that he is worried that too much water will be discharged, damaging crops that people grow on the banks of the Mekong.

If they discharge too much water, it could affect people living along the Mekong River, he said. If too much water is to be released, the crops will be flooded, so it could affect the people living along the river.

Tek Vannara, director of NGO Forum, said the water could help alleviate the effects of drought, especially in agricultural communities, but too much water could also do damage to ecosystems. Stored water is already against the natural flow, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

The UK Minister for Europe, David Lidington, welcomes the pardon decree signed by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev on March 17, said the message from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

This is a positive development, said the minister.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 17 pardoning 148 people. Under the decree, 137 people, sentenced to imprisonment, have been freed from serving the remainder of the prison terms.



Moreover, six people were freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and five people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine. Sixteen foreign citizens are among the pardoned.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
An American who said he defected from the Islamic State has admitted he "wasnt thinking straight" when he decided to go to the Middle East and join the militant group earlier this year.

"I made a bad decision to go with [a] girl and go to Mosul. ... I wasnt thinking straight," Mohamad Jamal Khweis told an interviewer in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The 26-year-old surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar and has been held by them since Monday.

Khweis, who was born in the United States and grew up in a Virginia suburb of Washington, was interviewed by Kurdistan24 television station in Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq.

No mention of fighting

Khweis spoke in English during an extensive interview that was boiled down to 16 minutes. It contains no mention of fighting or other violence, though it reveals some of the mans background and his travels as of December, when he set out to join the extremist group.

U.S. officials and analysts are taking a close look at the interview, focusing on Khweis answers and demeanor. While parts of his story seem plausible, holes in the account raise concerns.

"The answers he is giving don't appear to be satisfactory," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation to Protect Democracies, told VOA. "The question then becomes whether he's lying, obfuscating, or just doesn't want to talk about aspects of his story. And then the next question is why?"

The interview shows a bearded young man in khaki pants and a short-sleeved, collarless gray-blue shirt, speaking calmly and occasionally smiling.

Khweis said he studied criminal justice while in college, though he did not say where. He also attended mosques, but "not that often," he said in the interview, which does not indicate what motivated him to join the Islamic State.

In an interview with VOA on Monday, a woman identified as his mother said the family "thought he was in Canada lately. We also know he has been traveling to Turkey."

After leaving the United States in mid-December, the alleged IS defector said he traveled from London to Amsterdam to Turkey, where he met an Iraqi woman and "we spent some time together."

The woman, whose sister was married to an IS fighter, arranged for a trip for herself and Khweis by bus and taxi from Istanbul to Syria and then Iraq, where they were separated.

Khweis described a series of transfers among residences, most of which sheltered foreigners. In one, there were "a lot of Asians, Russians and people from the surrounding area, like Uzbekistan." He also mentioned Middle Eastern residents.

However, he noted, "During my whole trip there, I didnt meet any Americans."

Studying sharia

Eventually, Khweis and other recruits began religious studies at "a house of worship" in the IS stronghold of Mosul. He said "a few Russians were in charge," but he may have been referring to IS recruits from Russias republic of Chechnya, which has sent many fighters to the Islamic State.

"There was an imam who taught us about sharia," Khweis said, later noting that "our daily life was basically prayer, eating and learning about the religion for about eight hours."

Khweis said he did not complete the full training program and "didnt agree with their ideology." He told his interviewer, "Thats when I wanted to escape."

"It was pretty hard to live in Mosul. Its not like Western countries. Its very strict. Theres no smoking," Khweis said during the interview, which also showed him puffing on a cigarette. "The lifestyle in Mosul was very difficult  not just for me, for everybody there. ... I stayed there for about a month."

"After things didnt work out," the young man said, "I didnt see myself living in that environment. I wanted to go back to America."

A friend helped arrange his travel from IS-held territory toward an area defended by Kurdish peshmerga fighters, and other contacts advised him how to reach the main road to the Iraqi town of Sinjar, under Kurdish control since November. The area has seen fighting between peshmerga and IS fighters since 2014.

"They told me which side [of the road] is Daesh side and which side is peshmerga, the Kurd side," Khweis said. "I wanted to go to the Kurd side because I know that theyre good with the Americans."

After he surrendered, the Kurds "treated me very well and Im happy I made that decision."

In the video, Khweis denounced the Islamic State and summed up his experiences in Mosul:

"My message to the American people is the life in Mosul  its really bad. The people [who] were controlling Mosul dont represent the religion.  I dont see them as good Muslims."

Jeff Seldin, VOA's national security correspondent, contributed to this report.
At Athens old, disused airport, the new arrivals come not by plane but by boat, having traveled from Turkey to the Greek islands and then on to the capital.

The terminal is now a refugee camp, ill-equipped to deal with its 1,900 residents. The luggage carousels and mobile stairways are now playgrounds for the hundreds of children living at the site.

Like most of the migrants living in the airport, Farahnaz Alizade is from Afghanistan. When asked about the conditions, she broke down in tears.

Please open the door," she said. "We going from here. We cant stay here. Its a very bad place. You cant feel that, because we are here, and we know that. You are not here. You are not here. We escaped from war. And you think our country is safe? I dont know why. I dont know.

The European Union and Turkey are aiming to finalize a deal this week to stop the flow of migrants traveling from the Turkish coastline to Greece. Over 100,000 people have made the journey so far this year, following hundreds of thousands of others in 2015, coming from the Mideast, Central Asia and North Africa.

The EUs refugee relocation scheme is aimed at Syrians. The fate of other nationalities is as yet undecided. Part of Europes proposed deal with Ankara would see migrants here in Greece sent back to Turkey.

Alizade rejected that idea: No, no. We will not come back to Turkey. Because Turkey is very bad, more than here.

Different nationalities are separated into three buildings across the airport and the adjacent Olympic Park that hosted the 2004 Games. The migrants say tensions between the different nationalities are fueling frustration, and fights often break out.

With the borders to the north closed, the migrants are stuck. Valia Gkeka of the U.N. refugee agency, which is helping at the camp, said 60 percent of those arriving in Greece are women and children.

More reception places need to be created in Greece in order to cover the needs of the population arriving and in need of international protection, Gkeka said.

Bakhtair Hushangi, his wife and their four young children have been in the camp for two weeks. They are Kurds from Iran and say they escaped persecution back home.

He said they want to settle in Europe because the people are much better, and that they cannot live in an Islamic country. He added that they cannot go back to live in Turkey because there is fighting between Turkey and the Kurds.

Under normal European rules, those subject to persecution are able to claim asylum in the EU. But the European rulebook is being rewritten  and the future for the refugees stranded in Greece is highly uncertain.
Intelligence officials are taking a close look at what an American Islamic State (IS) fighter is telling Kurdish media; parts of his account raise as many questions as answers.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, the 26-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia, spoke just days after he claims to have fled from the IS-held city of Mosul.

Kurdish forces saw him wandering near the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar Monday and fired upon him before he surrendered.

During the heavily edited version of the interview released by Kurdistan24 television, Khweis seems relaxed and, at times, smokes a cigarette, something he said is prohibited in the terror groups self-declared caliphate.

I made a bad decision to go with [a] girl and go to Mosul, Khweis said in English. I wasnt thinking straight.

Journey to Mosul

He described how the Iraqi girl, the sister of a woman married to an IS fighter, made arrangements for the fairly uneventful journey.

First, we took a bus from Istanbul to a city, Gaziantep, he said. From there, a driver picked us up and took us to the border and then [we went] from Syria to Iraq.

U.S. intelligence officials hope to learn more about Khweis travels and, if possible, to validate his accounts of IS, including information on foreign fighters in the Mosul area.

For now, current and former intelligence officials, as well as analysts, are approaching the account with caution.

There are a ton of holes in his story, said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The answers he is giving don't appear to be satisfactory, he added. The question then becomes whether he's lying, obfuscating, or just doesn't want to talk about aspects of his story. And then the next question is why?

How did he get ID and cash?

One of the red flags is Khweis account of his escape.

In the interview, he described how upon arriving in IS territory he was stripped of his identification papers.

All the foreigners had to give their IDs and passports to one of the person in charge there, Khweis said. From there, after we gave all our IDs and passports, we got picked up we drove into Raqqa.

Yet when Khweis surrendered to Kurdish forces, he was carrying his Virginia drivers license, as well as a stack of what appears in photos to be U.S. $100 bills, Turkish money, debit and credit cars and three cell phones.

One former intelligence officer who watched the interview called that part of Khweis story  magically getting his docs and cash  odd.

It doesnt make sense, said Patrick Skinner, now with The Soufan Group, a strategic security intelligence consultancy.

I've interviewed lots of people like that and if you don't ask for details you don't get them -- get the old 'every time frame is a week' spiel and generic 'went to a house,' he said. But odd from an educated person.

Why was his escape so easy?

Skinner also wondered why Khweis never speaks to a basic question.

What made him travel in the first place, not just to Mosul but the whole trip? Skinner asked.

The ease of Khweis escape also raises questions given ISs reputation for executing fighters and others who try to flee.

About a month [after] I was there, I decided to return back home, Khweis said.

At first [a friend] said he could help me, but then he said it will be difficult to take me all the way to Turkey, he said. He told me he will take me close to Turkeys border.

According to his account, though, his escape from Mosul is seamless.

The Iraqi girl?

Another claim that has raised suspicions is his story about the Iraqi girl who escorted him from Turkey to Syria.

IS has long used the promise of women or brides to lure would-be foreign fighters. And intelligence officials have said IS does make use of unofficial networks, like family relations, to help bring in more recruits.

But the role Khweis described for the Iraqi girl is, at least, unusual.

It's surprising that ISIS would allow a woman who is not related to the recruit to travel with him alone, said terror analysts J.M. Berger, a fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism and co-author of ISIS: State of Terror. "It could also be a sign something isn't right with this story.

Still, officials and analysts say parts of Khweis account are plausible.

It is very possible he was lured over through a network that used women to alleviate suspicion of a single male or single female, said ex-undercover Canadian security and counterterrorism operative Mubin Shaikh. It does seem that she was indeed part of a network waiting for him.

There is also Khweis journey from London to Amsterdam to Turkey, where he finalized his travel plans to Syria and IS territory.

We've seen this route before, Shaikh said.

And his description of the training and the array of foreign fighters is consistent with other accounts.

Khweis said he spent about a week at a house in Raqqa, spending time with a lot of Asians, a lot of Russians, people from the surrounding area, like Uzbekistan, as well as Egyptians, Moroccans and Algerians.
American lawmakers have differing expectations about President Barack Obama's visit to Cuba. Some think the trip will give both countries a chance to strengthen their recently renewed relations, but others say the historic visit marks a concession by the United States to Havanas flawed human rights record.

Senator Jeff Flake of the western state of Arizona said he was excited to be traveling to Cuba with Obama on Sunday, along with several other members of Congress from both major U.S. political parties.

Flake, a Republican, said he hoped the presidential visit would result in improved conditions for the Cuban people.

It's always bothered me that, as Republicans, we talk about engagement, travel and commerce as something that will nudge countries toward democracy," Flake said. "But with Cuba, we tend to say, 'No, no, it won't work there.' But it will work. It is working."

Negative view

A member of Obamas own party, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, did not share Flakes enthusiasm. The Cuban-American Democrat faulted the president for embarking on a visit that does not meet criteria set by his own administration.

"The president said he would only go to Cuba if he could honestly say he saw changes, in terms of the people's basic, fundamental freedoms," Menendez said.

What we have seen in the first 2 months of this year is 1,400 new arrests. And several of the people who were released under the original deal have been rearrested and are now in jail. To me, that cannot be seen as progress as it relates to the basic, fundamental elements of democracy and human rights."

Amnesty accents rights

Amnesty International released an open letter Friday urging the presidents of the United States, Cuba and Argentina to treat as a high priority several human rights issues. They include the continuing detention by the U.S. in its Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba of prisoners who once were held as suspected terrorists but have no criminal charges pending against them, and the decades-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.

Obama is scheduled to head to Argentina upon leaving Cuba on Tuesday.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ed Royce, said any easing of sanctions against Cuba by the United States will further prop up a communist regime ... that has a long record of brutal human rights abuses. The California Republican's statement cited Cuban government corruption, Cuban workers low pay and risks to the U.S. financial system.

Dollar penalty

Despite some congressional reluctance, Obama has moved aggressively to restore economic and diplomatic relations with the communist island.

In the days before the president's departure, for instance, the U.S. government eased travel restrictions for Americans hoping to visit Cuba, by allowing people-to-people visits instead of just costly tour groups, and said American banks could now process financial transactions to and from Cuba.

Cuba reciprocated by announcing Thursday that it would soon cut a 10 percent tax it has imposed on dollar transactions. Cubas foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said he hoped "that in the near future, the financial persecution against Cuba will end," and he called on Obama to take executive action to further relieve the economic strain.



WATCH: Susan Rice, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on Obama's Cuba trip

From Kennedy to Obama

Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since the Castro revolution, and he will be remembered for opening a new chapter in relations between Havana and Washington. But over the past half century, other American leaders also have tried to do the same.

In late 1962, after the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of global nuclear conflict, then-President John F. Kennedy explored the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba by capitalizing on Castro's displeasure that Moscow withdrew its missiles from the island without consulting him.

Kennedy asked an Algerian-French journalist, Jean Daniel, to convey a message to Castro in 1963, and Daniel later wrote that Castro and Kennedy "seemed ready to make peace." But the diplomatic project collapsed after Kennedys assassination in Texas on November 22 of that year, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson did not pursue the initiative when he took over at the White House.

In fact, suspicions abounded in some parts of the U.S. for years afterward that Cuba had a role in orchestrating Kennedy's assassination.

During Gerald Ford's presidency in the mid-1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explored the idea of rapprochement with Cuba, under conditions of the utmost secrecy. The intervention of Cuban forces in Angola's civil war in 1975 killed Kissinger's efforts.

Breakthrough began in 2013

A few weeks after Jimmy Carter took the presidential oath of office in 1977, he ordered a new round of talks in the hope of normalizing ties with Havana, but Cuba's military adventures in Africa in support of leftist causes and candidates doomed that initiative, too.

Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush maintained a foreign policy that ruled out any concessions toward Havana unless there was regime change in communist Cuba.

It was not until the spring of 2013, when Obama was already in his second term, that he authorized the start of exploratory discussions with Havana. The first meeting took place in June that year in Canada, in full secrecy.

In Photos: US Rapprochement With Cuba

Pope brokered talks

Pope Francis wrote the U.S. and Cuban leaders  Obama and Raul Castro, who had by then succeeded his brother, Fidel, as president  urging them to normalize relations.

In October 2013, U.S. and Cuban delegations met in the Vatican, together with officials from the Holy See, to finalize the terms of re-establishing diplomatic ties. That development managed to stay out of the public eye until December 17, 2014, when Obama and Castro announced that Washington and Havana would resume diplomatic ties.
The European Union and Turkey agreed Friday on a deal that all sides hope will relieve Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II.

European Council President Donald Tusk and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called it a "landmark" agreement. The prime minister said Friday was a "historic day" for Turkey and the EU.

"We today realized that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future," Davutoglu said.

The deal takes effect Sunday. All migrants who illegally enter Greece from Syria and elsewhere  including those already in Turkey  will be sent to Turkey after they are registered and their claims for asylum in Europe are considered.

In exchange, thousands of refugees who fled to Turkey and legally sought asylum will be resettled equally across the 28 EU members.

Turkey already shelters nearly 3 million Syrian refugees. It will get EU financial help to deal with the refugee crisis  it will eventually double to about $6.7 billion  along with quicker EU membership talks and visa-free travel for Turkish citizens across the EU by the end of June, if Turkey meets a number of preconditions.

Tusk warned that the deal, by itself, would not solve Europes migrant crisis.

Some may think this agreement is a silver bullet, but the reality is more complex," he said. "It is just one pillar of the comprehensive European strategy and can only work if the other pillars are implemented.

Those other pillars include strengthening the EUs external borders, keeping a well-traveled migrant route across the western Balkans closed and returning to the open-borders Schengen system internally.

Turkey has a shaky human rights record, and some human rights groups said the plan uses people looking for refuge from war, poverty and terrorism as political pawns.

Amnesty International slammed the agreement, saying Turkey was not a safe country for refugees or migrants, and that the process of returning asylum seekers would inevitably be "flawed, illegal and immoral.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was vital that all sides respect international and European law.

"How this plan is to be implemented is ... going to be crucial. Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution. Refugees need protection, not rejection," the UNHCR said in a statement.

Even some EU leaders who signed off on the plan said they were not entirely happy with it.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the proposal "is on the edge of international law" and might be hard to implement. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel accused Turkey of blackmail.

But Europe has been struggling with the refugee crisis for months, and no one has come up with a solution on which everyone can agree.

More than 1.2 million migrants have landed primarily on Greek and Italian shores since January 2015, and about 4,000 have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

Thousands more have drowned in the dangerous Mediterranean after paying human smugglers. Children have been among the victims.

Davutoglu said the refugees plight was not an issue of bargaining, but an issue of humanitarian values as well as European values.

VOA's Lisa Bryant contributed to this story from Paris.

In Photos: Idomeni Camp Refugees Mull Future in Europe
Rights groups are discussing a legal challenge to a potential deal between the European Union and Turkey for the transfer of tens of thousands of migrants from the EU to Turkey.



After tense negotiations, EU and Turkish leaders appeared close to agreeing on a deal Friday thats meant to curb the refugee flow. However, amid accusations that the EU is compromising core values and claims Turkey that has blackmailed Europe, the agreement may not be workable and risks being derailed by legal and bureaucratic challenges.

The EU has been attempting to tackle a refugee crisis that saw more than 1.2 million refugees and migrants arrive in Europe last year and is roiling European politics, risking to end for good the blocs hallowed visa-free internal travel system.

This new proposal is only the latest in a dangerous trend, Human Rights Watch declared Friday.

Over the past few months, European governments have imposed discriminatory border closures and unlawful caps on asylum applications. No one should be under any illusion ... the very principle of international protection for those fleeing war and persecution is at stake, the rights group said in a statement.

Legal challenges



An overall challenge in the courts isnt the only legal uncertainty facing a deal that will see Turkey get billions of dollars in EU aid for Syrian refugees in the coming years in addition to the $3.3 billion the bloc has already committed to help Ankara cope with its refugee crisis.



Greece must alter its asylum laws to consider Turkey a safe third country to receive asylum-seekers, otherwise it will be in violation of its own laws when deporting back to Turkey refugees arriving on smuggler boats on its islands in the Aegean.

Likewise, Turkey also will have to overhaul its laws to become compliant with the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees, which it only partially applies, including providing greater protection of refugees and speedier processing of asylum claims. There are at least 140,000 unprocessed refugee asylum applications pending in Turkey and some European officials think the true number is much higher.

If Ankara and Athens fail to reform their refugee laws and improve their treatment and processing of asylum-seekers, then rights groups will likely pounce quickly with court challenges.



Legal problems aside, logistical challenges both for the EU and Greece could quickly imperil the deal  much as with less ambitious efforts in the past two years to stop the refugee flow, admit EU officials. For the plan to work, the EU and Greece will have to quickly develop an asylum-processing and containment infrastructure on the Aegean islands.



Up to 200 judges and civil servants, as well as an army of translators, will have to be dispatched to Greece to process thousands of arriving refugees to hear their arguments about why they should not be returned to Turkey. An appeals process will have to be observed to avoid falling foul of EU rights laws.







The same, too, in Turkey to implement the process of accepting refugees who play by the new EU rules and apply there for settlement in Europe. Challenges in Turkey will include where hot spots are set up  most of the 2.7 million Syrian refugees in the country are not in camps and they are spread along the border with Syria with many in Istanbul. On top of that, refugee lists are highly inaccurate.



Even discounting the high numbers of refugees who are not even registered in the Turkish system, the lists we are getting from the Turks are full of sloppy misspellings, says a relief official who has been assisting the U.N. refugee agency. When we check them out we find the Turks have failed to list all the members of a family, for example, she adds. The relief worker asked not to be named in this article as she is not authorized to speak with the media.

We are really not set up to be an implementing organization, an EU diplomat based in Turkey told VOA. Brussels decides on policy without fully appreciating that we dont have the manpower or resources and it takes time to build up capacity, he added.

The diplomat points to the six-month time lag before the EU could get so-called registration hot spots set up in Greece. The EU first decided in September to establish four registration and sorting centers to process arrivals on the Greek islands but they only started to operate last month.

Now these hot spots will not only have to register arrivals but will have to organize the detention of newcomers while their claims are being considered, meaning new secure prison-like facilities will have to be built and security staff employed. And a transport system for those to be returned to Turkey will have to be set up.

The chances of frustrated and desperate newcomers who have spent their life savings on trying to reach Europe turning violent are high. Forcing asylum-seekers  many of them likely children and women  onto ferries or buses for their return journeys to Turkey has all the the makings for a public relations disaster for the EU.

A lot of the logistics will fall on the cash-strapped and disorganized Greek state, and even with extra EU funding to help, Athens will struggle. You dont need to tell me that this is going to be very complicated in legal and logistical terms, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission vice president, acknowledged this week.





Logistical issues



For the Greeks, the logistical nightmare begins with how to transport to mainland Greece the 8,000 refugees and migrants already on the islands before a return-to-Turkey-policy starts.

Refugee camps are already straining at the seams and more capacity needs to be developed, not only for the 8,000 who will have to be moved from the islands but the 11,000 or so still on the Greek-Macedonian border at Idomeni.

By returning thousands of asylum-seekers, the EU hopes to deter others from trying to smuggle themselves into Europe, convincing them that their best chance to secure re-settlement in the EU will be through applying in Turkey. But fearing an open-ended commitment, EU officials say they are unlikely to accept more than 72,000, a figure close to a total they mentioned last year but have failed so far to settle. And it isnt clear what criteria the EU will use to decide on which Syrians to accept.

With such a low ceiling and a lack of transparency about the basis on which the lucky 72,000 will be chosen, many Syrian refugees eager to leave the Mideast are still likely to chance an illegal attempt to make it to Europe. And Iraqis and Afghans, who are not part of the deal, have no incentive, to play by the new rules at all.

In Photos: Idomeni Camp Refugees Mull Future in Europe


A global health expert is sounding the alarm that an epidemic of Zika infections may be headed to western Africa, in countries ravaged over the past two years by Ebola. He says efforts to contain Zika are essential to head off another devastating public health emergency on the continent.

This week, a baby in Cape Verde, a Portuguese-speaking island off the northwestern coast of Africa, was born with the neurological defect microcephaly, a small head due to an undeveloped brain. Tests are still pending to see whether the birth defect was caused by Zika virus, a pathogen carried by mosquitoes.

The disease has infected dozens of pregnant women in South America, mostly in Brazil, who have given birth to babies with microcephaly. The condition causes stillbirth, or if the baby lives, severe neurological complications.

Daniel Lucey, an infectious diseases specialist at Georgetown University in Washington fears the case of microcephaly in Cape Verde could be a sign of things to come in Western Africa.

He is calling for strong and immediate preventive measures.

If we had the chance to prevent that from happening in West Africa and parts of continental Africa, wouldnt we want to do it? And now is the time to do it," he said. "Now is the time we have the opportunity to intervene against the Zika virus and subsequent microcephaly epidemics in other parts of West Africa besides Cape Verde.

Lucey is calling for aggressive genetic testing in cases where Zika is suspected, especially in pregnant women.

He says aggressive, widespread mosquito-control efforts against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika should commence. These include destroying mosquito larvae with insecticides and limiting exposure to bites by encouraging people to stay indoors during the day and wear long-sleeved garments outside.

Lucey is particularly worried about the impact of Zika in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, countries that were the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic. Thousands died from the highly infectious disease as the developing nations tried desperately to cope with new cases.

The symptoms of Zika, which are relatively mild, could be mistaken for the early signs of Ebola, which Lucey worries could overtax medical resources as health workers tried to determine what disease they were facing.

Lucey sounded the warning in a commentary published in the journal Health Security.

The World Health Organization is considering some dramatic experimental methods of mosquito control. They include releasing sterile mosquitoes into the wild, so the insects cant reproduce, and setting out swarms of aegypti mosquitoes infected with the bacteria wolbachia.

The concept, as I understand it," he said, "iis mosquitoes that are infected with the wolbachia bacteria are much less likely to then be infectible with viruses like the Zika virus and, therefore, they are not going to be able to transmit the Zika virus to people, to us, to our species, to human beings.

Meanwhile, computer modeling conducted by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research concludes that warmer weather conditions in the United States could attract aegypti mosquitoes, possibly bringing the threat of Zika to an estimated 50 U.S. cities.
As Nigeria vows to stifle unrest during this weekends election, some voters say they remain too scared to cast ballots.

Despite assurances from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who says security forces will crack down on anyone who incites violence during Saturday's local and federal legislative elections in oil-rich Rivers State, the country remains on edge.

And the concerns aren't unfounded. Nigeria's two main political parties have accused each other of inciting violence ahead of this weekend's polls, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) Party says dozens of its supporters in Rivers State have been killed in the run-up to the vote.

Austin Tam-George, a spokesman for the state government, which is controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party, said the killings were the fault of gang members.

He accused the state's former APC governor of inciting violence.

A police spokesman declined to comment.

Everybody is apprehensive

Livingstone Membere, a youth leader in the Akuku-Toru area of Rivers State, says he has seen people killed and their bodies set on fire in recent days.

"Everywhere is tense, everybody is apprehensive. So it might [reduce] the turnout," he said.

Rivers State and its capital, Port Harcourt, are home to major sectors of Nigeria's oil industry. The country is Africa's largest producer of crude, which brings in about 90 percent of its export earnings.

Sofiri Joab-Peterside, a sociology teacher at the University of Port Harcourt, says the struggle to control that oil wealth is one reason for the state's do-or-die political atmosphere.

"Every political party sees the region as an area where it needs to deploy its power to make sure that it wins election," Joab-Peterside said.

Unfortunately, says Anyakwee Nsirimovu of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt, if voters stay away, then the killings have served their purpose.

"The [fuller] sense of killing is to put fear into people, to stop people from coming out to exercise their civic responsibilities, Nsirimovu said. "When you do that, when you don't have people at the polling units, of course politicians can get their way."

The re-elections were ordered by a tribunal convened to answer challenges to last year's governorship and legislative elections.
The verdict that a U.N. tribunal will hand down next week in Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's trial for genocide has re-opened old wounds for many Bosnians, who for years feared him as the "master of life and death".

The long-awaited decision by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, to be handed down on Thursday after a five-year trial, reminds Bosnians that Karadzic's legacy lives on in a country still divided along ethnic lines two decades after the war that killed 100,000 people.



He remains a deeply divisive figure, hated by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats but championed by many Serbs who say he has been demonized by the international community.

"Karadzic is the most responsible for everything that happened in Bosnia," said Fikret Grabovica, whose 11-year-old daughter was killed by a Serb grenade in front of their Sarajevo home 23 years ago.

"He needs to be remembered as one of the greatest criminals of the recent history and not, as some would wish, as a national hero."

Grabovica's daughter Irma was among 600 children killed by random shelling or sniper fire during the 43-month siege of the Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces, the longest siege of a city in Europe's modern history, in which around 11,500 people died.

If he is found guilty, Karadzic would be Europe's highest-ranking official since the Nazi trials after World War Two to be sentenced for genocide by an international court.

Prosecutors have asked for a life sentence. Now 70, Karadzic was the first president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, which the Bosnian Serbs tried to

carve out of Bosnia and link to Serbia and which survives as an autonomous part of Bosnia under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war.

He is widely seen as the mastermind behind the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced two million people from their homes and led to thousands being held, tortured and raped in detention camps.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged the former psychiatrist with 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the Srebrenica massacre, where Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in just a few days in July 1995.

A warning

Kada Hotic, a Srebrenica survivor who lost her husband and son in the massacre, said the verdict was important to show that "such an evil is punishable (and) as a warning to those who would dare to push the people into doing crimes in the future."

The Bosnian war broke out after Bosniaks and Croats voted for independence from the former Yugoslav federation in a 1992 referendum boycotted by Serbs.

Under Karadzic's leadership, Serbs occupied 70 percent of the country, killing and persecuting Muslims and Croats. A year later, war broke out between Muslims and Croats, previously allied against Serbs.

Most Serbs deny that crimes were committed during the war.

Current Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik has said that Karadzic did not order any crimes and argued that the massacre in Srebrenica was not genocide, although the tribunal has ruled that it was. Dodik's view is widely shared by Serbian officials.

"As long as you have in Bosnia three different history books used by the Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak communities with a totally different assessment about not only the war but the last 200 years... how do you want to move forward?" ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in The Hague last week.

The Srebrenica killings were conducted under the command of Karadzic's military chief, General Ratko Mladic, whose trial, also on charges of genocide, is under way at The Hague.

Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run in Belgrade, where he had lived disguised as a white-bearded New Age healer.

He said that he would defend himself alone and easily prove his innocence. He also maintained that the late U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke offered him immunity from prosecution in a secret deal, which Holbrooke denied.

Legacy lives on

The effects of the war are felt today in the political structure of modern-day Bosnia, which is made up of the Serb Republic that Karadzic established and a federation shared by Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, and Croats. They are linked via a weak central government whose decisions are usually disputed by the Serb region, which often threatens secession.

"Karadzic's political legacy is very much alive and it still shapes the lives of our children," Bosnian Serb commentator Srdjan Susnica said.

"It's all there - the borders, the name, the symbols, the legal and political legitimacy, the ethnically cleansed municipalities in Republika Srpska - so I think that he succeeded in everything he wanted," he told Reuters.

"Whatever his sentence will be, it won't make any significant difference, because the political territory, which was created on genocide and national homogenisation, first of Serbs and then of all others, lives on."

Karadzic's daughter Sonja Karadzic Jovicevic, who serves as a vice-chairman of the Serb Republic's parliament, said in a statement on Thursday she feared that a guilty verdict could endanger the region's institutions.

Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's wartime ally who was released in 2013 after serving a prison term for persecution and forcible transfer of civilians during the war, maintains that Karadzic is not guilty, and argues that reconciliation is possible only through forgiveness.

"Apologies are not needed or possible here, we need forgiveness, that everyone forgives everyone else," said Krajisnik, 71.

But forgiveness cannot come without recognition that crimes were committed, says Radoslava Habul, a Serb married to a Bosniak whose son was killed and daughter injured by a mortar shell in Sarajevo.

"If those who committed crimes go through the catharsis, we shall accept them and live together," she said.
Beijing has reportedly asked Hong Kong officials to present a plan for boosting tourism from mainland China following a 3 percent decline last year amid growing anti-mainland sentiment in the territory.

A plan for drawing tourists to Hong Kong could include cruises between the mainland and Hong Kong and an expansion of the number of cities from which people can travel to Hong Kong without joining a tour. Currently, residents of 49 mainland cities can travel to Hong Kong individually.

Hong Kong and Beijing officials have also discussed ways to limit tour groups that force people to shop in Hong Kong.

Joseph Tung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, said the mainland Chinese market is important to Hong Kongs economy.

China is a main market, and everyone, all over the world, is trying to induce or promote tourism from China to their countries, he said.

The decline in mainland tourists is affecting Hong Kongs economy, which is expected to grow 1 or 2 percent this year.

Raymond Yeung, a senior economist with ANZ bank, said the mainland tourists who continue to visit Hong Kong are spending less.

The spending pattern of Chinese tourists has changed," he said. "They no longer think Hong Kong is the place to buy luxurious products. With the opening of individual visas for Chinese tourists to go to Europe, traveling on an individual basis, this trend will continue.

Fear of disturbances

Protests have also scared some mainland tour groups from visiting the city.

In 2014, Hong Kongs pro-democracy umbrella movement filled the citys streets for nearly two months to protest Beijings decision to vet all candidates for the territorys top job. Since then, local groups have staged demonstrations against traders from the mainland who cross the border to buy Hong Kong goods that then will be resold back home.

In February, there was a violent riot in Mong Kok that injured dozens of people. The riot was sparked when police attempted to clear food stands during the Chinese New Year holiday. Protesters said they were demonstrating against the gradual erosion of Hong Kong local culture.

But even if protests ease in Hong Kong, the new Chinese middle class, with its rising discretionary income, may increasingly choose to travel elsewhere.

A lot of the mainland tourists have been to Hong Kong many times, and they are all traveling farther, to Japan, Korea, Europe, the U.S.," said Mariana Kou, a retail analyst at the brokerage firm CLSA. "But at the same time, even without this expansion, the local government is putting out a number of initiatives to try to support the tourism sector, by putting out a number of products and expanding their festival circuit and number of events.

Hong Kong authorities expect the number of tourists to drop another 2 percent this year.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

Trend:

Armenia's criminal military and political leadership is responsible for the escalation of tensions on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, Azerbaijani defense minister, colonel general Zakir Hasanov said, the country's defense ministry told Trend March 18.

He made the remarks in Baku during a meeting with the delegation led by Gunther Bachler, special representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus.

The Azerbaijani minister also talked about the military and political situation in the region, Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijani lands.

Armenia's criminal and terrorist leadership carried out state-level genocide against Azerbaijani civilians, Hasanov said. The only way to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in line with the principles and norms of international law is the withdrawal of the occupying Armenian forces from Azerbaijan's territories, according to the minister.

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Gunther Bachler, in his turn, spoke about the priorities of the German OSCE Chairmanship. He added that special attention is paid to the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which threatens peace and stability in the region.

In addition, the sides discussed the prospects of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the OSCE, as well as several issues of mutual interest at the meeting.
In India, calls for strict privacy laws are growing after this week's passage of a measure that allows federal agencies access to biometric data of the nation's citizens, the world's largest such repository.

The government says the use of biometrics will help cut rampant graft in the distribution of subsidies, but activists and opposition lawmakers warn it could usher in an era of increased state surveillance.

Raghubir Gaur, who works as an electrician in the capital, New Delhi, says he has never collected subsidized rations such as wheat and rice, because somebody else has been taking the rations I should have gotten. Now, with a national proof of identity, or "Aadhaar" card in his hands, Gaur says he is confident he will be able to access his designated subsidies.

The Aadhaar card is being used to give welfare benefits to the poor, who often cannot provide any proof identity, allowing corrupt officials to siphon entitlements.

The government says it has saved nearly $2 billion by preventing misuse of the subsidies in the last fiscal year alone.

Critics fear police state

Civil activists and research groups, however, have dubbed the Aadhaar program surveillance technology that constitutes a serious breach of privacy. They point to identity-verification systems in other countries, where cards or identification numbers are used for verification without creating a gigantic central database that documents every last transaction.

Indeed, the Aadhaar database also stores fingerprints and iris scans of every account holder, labeling each with a 12-digit identification number.

Concerns that this could lead to a massive invasion of privacy have been heightened because the new law allows the data to be used in the interest of national security.

From verifying yourself to the ticket conductor on a train to someone who is delivering something at your house, all the way to opening a new bank account, all these transactions get logged against the centralized data base," says Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore. "So this invades your life completely and thoroughly.

Some lawyers and privacy advocates say this has made it even more important to support a strong privacy law to ensure the huge government database isn't misused.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has defended the biometrics legislation, saying the data will be accessed only in rare cases that require authorization by a senior official.

You mark my words, you are midwifing a police state, said lawmaker Asaduddin Owaisi, just one parliamentarian opposed passage of the legislation and found no comfort in Jaitley's assurances.

Fraud concerns

Despite objections, the bill was passed by legislators who argued that such a move is critical to ensuring subsidies reach intended beneficiaries in a country where millions are poor and illiterate.

Attempts to draft a right to privacy bill to protect individuals against misuse of data by government or private agencies date back to 2010, but have made little headway. The latest push started in 2014.

Citing a cyberattack targeting the U.S. government, in which a hacker gained access to the information of millions of people, research groups have also flagged security concerns around Indias ambitious Aadhaar program.

If this database gets leaked, the entire identification system collapses because people will be able to authenticate themselves as anyone else. So identity fraud is a great concern, said Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society.

Nearly one billion biometric identity cards have been issued in India in the last six years.
The Russian government announced this week that three Islamic State-linked militants were arrested in Dagestan, one of the seven republics of Russia's North Caucasus region.

According to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the insurgents revealed the location of their safe house on the outskirts of a village, where authorities found four improvised explosive devices and nearly a ton of explosives.

The North Caucasus has experienced large-scale insurgency-related violence over the last two decades. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the 1994-1996 war between the Russian military and insurgents in Chechnya, and tens of thousands more died after Russian security forces intervened in Chechnya in 1999.

The second Chechen war never really ended. Instead, it evolved into a low-grade conflict after an iron-fisted pro-Moscow regime in Chechnya pushed the insurgency, which was now more Islamist than separatist, into neighboring North Caucasian republics, particularly Dagestan.

Attack in North Caucasus

According to Caucasian Knot, a Russian website that covers the region, last year saw the first claim of responsibility by Islamic State-linked militants for an attack in the North Caucasus. At the same time, the number of people killed in the conflict in the North Caucasus actually dropped by around one half  to 258 from 525 in 2014.

Some observers say that is at least in part because many militants from the North Caucasus went to fight in Syria. Earlier this week, after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his troops in Syria had killed 2,000 militants from Russia, including 17 field commanders.

Caucasian Knot editor-in-chief Grigory Shvedov said he does not trust Shoigu's figures.

"I always treat with skepticism the figures with three zeros, regularly heard from very authoritative sources at various levels, of the number of dead [militants] in Syria, the number of Russian nationals now fighting in ISIS-controlled territory," Shvedov told VOA, using an acronym for Islamic State. "I don't trust this data."

Still, Shvedov said, "a very large number of people from the North Caucasus" did go to the Middle East to fight in the Islamic State ranks, including "ideological leaders" of the militants in the North Caucasus.

"So Russia became calmer," he said, adding, "it is clear that both the number of incidents and the number of dead and wounded in the North Caucasus have decreased."

At the time, Shvedov said, Islamic State militants set up an infrastructure and began operations in the North Caucasus.

"Unfortunately, I think, they are preparing some new special operations, and therefore require replenishment from among the people who fought in Syria and Iraq," he said.

Russia, Syria and Islamic State

Shvedov added that it is not clear what effect the winding down of Russia's military involvement in Syria will have on the Islamic State presence in the North Caucasus.

"Maybe, some of the militants now want to return home [to Russia]," he said. "But this is still a matter of conjecture."

Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center told VOA that Russia's economic downturn makes the North Caucasus, already one of the poorest parts of the country, particularly vulnerable to Islamic State influence.

"If our economy continues in the same depressed state, this will sooner or later result in some sort of resistance, in some sort of protests," he said. "Unemployment in Dagestan, according to various estimates, ranges from 9 to 28 percent."

Given these grim indicators, Malashenko said, "fighters steeped in the ideology of Islamic State may be in demand tomorrow."
Millions of Africans suffer from mental illness, but local superstition  and, some say, ignorance  can leave them undiagnosed and forced to suffer mistreatment and abuse.

That's why a new approach to counter the problem has been headquartered in Ngong, a town of in Kenya's Kajiado county, where a local initiative known as "Reason to Hope" is sending volunteers into surrounding villages teach people about psychiatric illness and identify those in need of care.

A recent visit to a Massai village in the north illustrated what the team is up against.

Do you have any sick people here, people you think may be mad? said one of the volunteers, who asked that his name be withheld.

No, said the local resident, allowing only that the village had had a history of "bewitched" individuals, and that one, a mad man, had recently died.

According to Reason to Hope, such exchanges are typical.

Launched by the Ngong-based Kenya Schizophrenia Foundation (KSF), the program raises awareness about mental illness.

[People in some communities] still believe that mental health is not a sickness but something that can be dealt with by the community spirits, exorcism of demons and other things," says Reason for Hope Program Director Mary Wahome. "So for us, our main work is to let them know that it is an illness which, if treated well and given early intervention, can be managed.







Working with rural health clinics, Reason for Hope has reached over 30,000 mentally ill people in rural areas all over Kenya.

For some clients, the intervention is life-altering.

My mum is bipolar, by the way, and sometimes you think its that curse from the ancestors, especially if you come from the western region like I do," says 25-year-old Sheldon Moses, who was diagnosed with the disorder only after finishing high school. "Sometimes its alluded to that stuff but I think its also ignorance.

Cost factor

Sheldon is covered under his parents' private health insurance, otherwise he couldnt afford the medicine that controls his symptoms, which costs about $30 a week.



It is seriously expensive and I am [wondering] if a policy can be put in [place] on how to take care of this, the way HIV/AIDS has been taken care of with [antiretroviral drugs] being brought in by ... USAID, which has chipped in and made it so much affordable to curb," he said. "I know it's not as much disastrous as how HIV/AIDS is, but if a program like that is to be done, it would really be helpful.

Mainly funded by program members and outside supporters, KSF lakcs funding to cover regular treatment for all those in need.

But Wahome says dispelling myths and stigmas surrounding mental illness has made communities more proactive in caring for members who suffer.

When the communities are aware, it is lifetime support [mental health sufferers] need, and the communities take over," she said. "We have places where the communities are very strong, where they are the ones who go for their own people, they know that in such a family there is this person. They get them medication. They even assist in cleaning them, they assist in helping them so we have seen the strength is through the communities.

Still, she added, that effective treatments for psychiatric disorders do exist, she believes the government should help provide them to those in need.
Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who is facing treason and other charges, has left the country after having his travel ban lifted.

The Supreme Court ordered the government earlier this week to lift the former president's ban.

Musharraf flew to Dubai early Friday and is expected to go abroad for medical treatment for what he described as a "decade-old illness."

The former ruler promised to return to Pakistan to face all pending charges against him.

He told Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, "I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months."

Political analyst Hasan Askari told the French News Agency, however, the chances of Musharraf coming back to Pakistan are "minimal" because his return could cause problems for the government and embarrass the military. "In order to defuse the conflict, the government agreed to let him go," Askari said.

The former ruler has faced a slew of charges since returning home in 2013 to contest elections. In March of the same year, the travel ban was imposed.
Three policemen have been killed in an attack on Niger security forces near the border with Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Niger's Ministry of Defense made the statement on public television Thursday. Colonel Ledru Moustapha said in the statement the attack was launched by assailants who arrived on four motorcycles and in a Toyota pickup truck.

In an earlier attack, three members of Niger's defense forces were wounded and five suicide bombers were killed Wednesday in an ambush in the Diffa region authorities have blamed on Boko Haram.

The attacks come just before Niger voters go to the polls Sunday for a presidential runoff vote.

A spokesman for the opposition coalition, Amadou Bjibo, is asking supporters to boycott the vote. The opposition says the February 21 election was marred by vote-rigging.
The Nigerian military has seized newspapers accused of publishing seditious materials that could undermine the country's unity, as well as negatively impact the ongoing fight against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, according to military spokesman Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman.

The seizures are reportedly generating anti-government sentiment in the country's Igbo-speaking southeast. Army officials say officers seized newspapers from newsstands in the city of Aba.

Officials say the publications call for secession of the region from Nigeria. The affected newspapers include Authority Newspapers, Voice of South-East, Vesym, the New Republic and the Freedom Journal.

Usman dismissed the idea that the seizures would whip up anti-government sentiment. The army works hard to ensure the West African country maintains its territorial integrity, he said. However, he added, it is regrettable that people would seek to use the country's freedom of speech to thwart social cohesion and unity.

"Contrary to some media reports that there were seizures of such nature, actually they were not newspapers per se, but some seditious publications capable of causing disaffection among the components of the Nigerian society," Usman said.

Publishers of the seized works condemned the action, saying no amount of orchestrated effort to gag the press will work. They accused the military of undermining their rights to free speech, of harassing journalists in the region, and of working to silence those deemed to be opponents of the government. The publishers also denied that their newspapers were meant to incite violence.

Usman disagreed.

"The Nigerian press is one of the most vibrant, free and independent, he said. We have quite a number of publications, radio stations and television stations, both locally and internationally, [that] operate unhindered."
North Korea has fired another ballistic missile, days after the United States imposed new sanctions on the reclusive state.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile flew 800 kilometers before crashing off the North's eastern coast early Friday. The South said it tracked the projectile and was monitoring the situation.

A U.S. defense official says the U.S. tracked the launch of two ballistic missiles from North Korea. The official said neither was assessed to be a threat to the U.S. or its allies, and noted that the launches are a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing new sanctions Wednesday in response to the authoritarian regime's latest nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang's state media said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads.

Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean Peninsula since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. military threats.

After the latest firing, the United States called on North Korea to refrain from actions that raise tensions in the region. The State Department issued a statement saying it was closely monitoring the situation and urging North Korea to focus on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations.
The U.N. Security Council has "strongly condemned" North Korea's launch of two medium-range ballistic missiles, saying it clearly violated U.N. resolutions.

In a unanimous statement, the council "expressed grave concern" over the launches it called "unacceptable."

It demanded North Korea refrain from further actions that violate U.N. resolutions and urged all countries "to redouble their efforts" to implement all sanctions against the communist nation.

The statement was adopted during a closed-door meeting called by the United States, and was backed of China, North Korea's ally.

North Korea fired the missiles Friday in defiance of U.N. resolutions prohibiting that country from developing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

South Korean officials said one of the missiles traveled 800 kilometers before crashing off the North's east coast. A second missile disappeared from South Korean radar and appeared to have exploded in flight. Both were believed to be Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles. Rodong missiles have the potential to reach Japan.

North Korea did not declare a no-sail zone prior to the launch, even though it is required under international conventions to warn ships that may be in the area. Neither missile's launch path was assessed to be a threat to the United States or its regional allies, according to the U.S. Defense Department, which tracked the launch of the missiles.

New sanctions

The North's actions came a day after President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang in response to the reclusive state's latest nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The executive order followed North Korea's fourth nuclear test January 6, as well as a February 7 long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. Both tests were in violation of long-standing international talks aimed at curbing Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement Friday saying the United States is closely monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The statement, in part, read, "We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations."

Kerry said the U.S. remained steadfast in its commitments to the defense of its allies, including South Korea and Japan.

WATCH: Video footage of missile launch

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Pyongyang to "halt these inflammatory and escalatory actions."

Citing the secretary-general, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, "The situation on the Korean Peninsula, including the latest ballistic missile launches, is deeply troubling," and urged Pyongyang to comply with its international obligations, including relevant Security Council resolutions.

History repeats

Friday's missile launches were the latest retaliatory acts North Korea has made since the United Nations imposed tough new sanctions March 2. They mirrored the Norths response to the last round of U.N. sanctions imposed in 2013 after its third nuclear test.

In May of that year, North Korea launched a series of short-range missiles over one weekend.

Nuclear advancement

This month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered further nuclear and missile tests. State media KCNA published photographs of Kim inspecting sites where miniaturized nuclear warheads and advanced long-range ballistic missile technologies were supposedly being developed.

The North, however, has yet to demonstrate this type of capability, and many analysts have expressed skepticism that the countrys nuclear program has reached that advanced stage of development.

In 2013, Kim ordered the country's atomic energy department to restart the uranium enrichment plant and the five-megawatt reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The North closed the facility in 2007 under an agreement reached at six-party talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Continued provocation

The continued repetition of provocation and crises has led many, especially in South Korea, to downplay the reality of North Koreas nuclear advancement and growing threat to regional peace and stability, said analyst Ahn Chan-il of the World Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.

At this point, it is regrettable that we have become dull on North Koreas military provocation, which continues to upgrade, he said.

While the Norths aggressive responses follow the same defiant pattern, advocates for sanctions say there is cause to believe that the new U.S. measures, in addition to the U.N. sanctions imposed this year, will deliver a different outcome.

I think it is good to see that the Obama administration is imposing actual sanctions and pressure while it had had a naive policy in the past against North Korea, Ahn said.

International condemnation

As international sanctions increase economic pressure on Pyongyang, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have increased their defense readiness postures. U.S. and South Korean forces are currently conducting joint annual military exercises.

We take the threat [from North Korea] extremely seriously, U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert told VOA Friday by phone, adding that the U.S. was continuing to consult with South Korea on the desirability and feasibility of deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD.

"North Korea's missile launch is a frontal attack against the U.N. Security Council resolution and a significant threat to peace and stability in the international society," said South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the launch as extremely problematic and called on the North to cease such actions.
In a village in the Umerkot district of Pakistans Sindh province, where Harya said she was kidnapped, hers was one of only two Hindu families. Her parents said she disappeared after going to fetch water from the village well.

A few hours later, her family tracked footsteps from the well to an influential household in the village, but was told she was not there. Later that night, they called the police.

It was not until a week later that some of the villagers told them what happened.

In another week, their daughter was presented in a local civil court and was declared a Muslim and the wife of the man who had abducted her.

Pakistans Hindu community complains that conversion and marriage is often used as legal cover for the kidnapping of young girls, who are allegedly threatened with harm to them or their families to get false statements in court.

Harya, the oldest of five siblings, stayed with her alleged kidnappers for a month and a half. She claims she was beaten and her so-called husband stole the jewelry she wore. She also said she was drugged when presented in court.

A female police officer gave me some kind of an injection. Both the judge and the police were bribed, she said. They told me I was married. They also told me I was now a Muslim.

Her parents spent everything they had, even sold their only buffalo for $1,000 to get their daughter back. A higher court finally ruled in their favor.

They have now moved from that village and Harya has stopped going out to fetch water.

Police say situation complicated

Hindu leaders say girls from poor communities are particularly vulnerable since influential Muslim men feel they can carry out a kidnapping without reprisal.

Multiple police officials throughout the district, however, said they were unable to take action because the situation was often more complicated than was presented by Hindu parents.

In most cases, they said, poor young Hindu girls eloped with more affluent Muslim men.

In such cases, police officials shared with VOA, it was common for both sides to lie to try and strengthen their case in the eyes of a judge.

Sonari, a Hindu girl who belonged to the poor Kohli community of Umerkot, said she fell in love with a Muslim man from the influential Halipoto community, and ran away from home to marry him. She claimed she was 21.

I have married Shahnawaz because my parents were forcing me to marry a man I did not like, she told a VOA team.

Since a Muslim is not allowed to marry a Hindu, she had to convert to Islam and now calls herself Zarina.

Her father, who lived only a few kilometers from her new home, insisted she was only 15, was kidnapped by Shahnawaz and afraid to tell the truth.

Ravi Dawan, the general-secretary of the All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat, explained that the concern of his community centered on girls who were too young to make life-changing decisions.

What does a 12-13 year old know about love? he asked. Girls between 12 to 18, he said, were often lured away with false promises and later threatened with harm to them or their families to force them to give false statements in court.

Often, he added, the parents are not allowed to meet them.

Converted and married the same day

Dawan also blamed Muslim clerics who have converted under-age girls in the absence of their parents, often performing their marriage the same day.

One such cleric is Pir Mohammad Ayub Jan Sarhandi, who claimed to have converted many Hindus in Umerkot. He denied that conversions took place under duress.

Whenever a male brought a girl to him for conversion, he said he took her aside, and even offered her protection from him and his family to ensure she made her decision freely, without fear or harassment. Once satisfied, he said he converted her, performed the marriage, and then called the local police.

He did not think it was necessary to call the police before performing the conversion or marriage, insisting such girls had ample time to make up their minds.

She only leaves home once they both decide they cant live without each other. They have already done their thinking, he said.

He also acknowledged that some of those girls were under the legal age for marriage.

They say a girl is not mature till she is 18. We condemn this law. We do not accept it. We will never accept it, he said, reflecting the views of a majority of religious clerics in Pakistan.

The legal age for marriage is 16 in Pakistan and 18 in Sindh province. But some Pakistani clerics believe a girl is old enough to marry with her first menstrual cycle.

There is no legal minimum age in Pakistan for conversion from one religion to another.

Sarhandi denied that conversion would create a problem if the girl later changed her mind and wanted to go back to her parents, even though he accepted that according to sharia law, she would be then considered a murtid, or someone who leaves faith. The designated punishment for a murtid is death, according to many in Pakistan.

Instead, he said, the courts had a right to decide.

Dawani claimed dozens of Hindu girls were kidnapped every year and forcibly converted to Islam to marry someone.

Pakistani Hindus want any girl under 18 to be returned to her parents, even if she left home herself.

They are also pushing for a law that would make 18 a minimum legal age for conversion.
Russia has removed most of its strike aircraft from Syria and has curtailed airstrikes there this week, according to a U.S. military official.

"The majority, if not all, of their strike aircraft have left," Colonel Pat Ryder, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Central Command that oversees operations in the Middle East, told Pentagon reporters Friday.

Ryder said the Russian military still has helicopters and transport aircraft in Syria, along with ground forces.

In an email to VOA, Ryder said he received information Friday afternoon indicating that Russia did not conduct airstrikes in northern Syria this week but did carry out some airstrikes near the southern city of Palmyra in support of Syrian troops fighting Islamic State militants.

Earlier Friday, however, Ryder had told VOA and other reporters at the Pentagon there had been no Russian airstrikes in the country this week, saying Russia's strikes countering the Islamic State around Palmyra and the town of Tadmur had been carried out "via artillery systems," not aircraft.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18



Trend:



The Penitentiary Service of Azerbaijan's Justice Ministry has started the execution of the pardon decree signed by the country's President Ilham Aliyev March 17.



Sixteen people, including Israeli and Pakistani citizens, were released from a correctional institution on March 18.



Meanwhile, the pardoned are being released from other correctional institutions as well.



Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 17 pardoning 148 people.



Under the decree, 137 people, sentenced to imprisonment, have been freed from serving the remainder of the prison terms.



Moreover, six people were freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and five people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine. Sixteen foreign citizens are among the pardoned.

Edited by SI
Thousands of supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in the center of Baghdad for a fourth consecutive Friday, amid calls for government reform.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said it refused permission for the protest, but security forces appeared to have relented. Iraqi television channels showed throngs of the al-Sadr supporters crossing several bridges into Baghdad's governmental Green Zone. Other video showed protesters setting up a sit-in inside the zone, which houses parliament, top leaders' residences, and the U.S. and British embassies.

Other demonstrators marched on Baghdad's central Tahrir Square.

Iraqi media reported that al-Sadr issued a statement to security forces thanking them for assuring the safety of demonstrators and allowing them to hold their sit-in.

One middle-aged protester sitting on cushions inside a sit-in tent told Iraqi media that he and fellow demonstrators were determined to continue their movement until it yielded results. He said the Green Zone was now open to the people and the sit-in protesters wouldn't leave the area until the entire regime was changed, adding that he hoped such change would happen soon.

Al-Sadr's spokesman, Sheikh Salah Obeidi, claimed that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are participating in Friday's demonstrations to demand reform of the government. Al-Sadr has given the government 45 days to appoint a new cabinet made up of technocrats.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared in a televised address earlier that he supported the people's right to demonstrate if they did so legally. He said citizens have the right to express opposition and to demand public services, the sanctioning of corrupt officials and reform  if it is done within the law.

Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, told VOA he thought al-Sadr was probably acting at the behest of neighboring Iran. He said al-Sadr is part of Iran's chess game in Iraq, alongside other pro-Iranian actors, and might be trying to develop a civil movement to protest corruption with Iran's encouragement.

Former Shi'ite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iranian ally who was ousted as head of government in 2014 after bitter political wrangling, has expressed support for Sadr's protest movement.
Scientists are in a race against time in their efforts to stop the spread of the Zika virus. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 4 million people could be infected with the Zika virus by the end of the year and, of course, the biggest fear is the virus' link to birth defects.

Until there's a vaccine against the Zika virus, controlling it comes down to controlling the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries it. Countries in Latin America are aggressively spraying insecticides to kill adult mosquitoes, but more needs to be done.

Professor Peter Armbruster studies the Aedes albopictus, a mosquito that carries dengue, a virus related to Zika, at his laboratory at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

"Outdoor spraying has limited effectiveness in that these mosquitoes breed in a wide variety of container types that typically aren't going to be exposed when widespread spraying occurs," Armbruster said.

The mosquito that carries the Zika virus lays its eggs in old tires, water cisterns, bottle caps  any place where there's a drop or two of water.

"Insecticides can also be used to target the larval stages where the mosquitoes are living in their aquatic habitats," Armbruster said.

The downside to insecticide use is that other insects are also killed, and it leads to broad environmental exposure to insecticides.

Other options

Other techniques use the Wolbachia bacterium to either sterilize the males or render the mosquitoes incapable of transmitting the virus.

Some researchers are working to genetically modify the mosquito. Assistant professor Alexander Franz is doing that at the University of Missouri Department of Veterinary Pathobiology.

"We try to manipulate mosquitoes in such a way that they are resistant to these viruses. This way the transmission cycle can be interrupted," he said.

Franz said that in the past, his research group was able to produce genetically modified mosquitoes that were resistant to dengue. The idea is to release the virus-resistant mosquitoes into the wild, where they breed with wild mosquitoes and pass on the particular gene that resists the virus.

Another route is one being followed by Oxitec, a British firm that has modified the male mosquito so its offspring die before they can reproduce. Oxitec scientist Derric Nimmo told VOA that trials in the Cayman Islands and Brazil have reduced the wild mosquito larvae by more than 80 percent.

Nimmo said that, once the Aedes aegypti mosquito population falls to a level where it's no longer a threat, communities can monitor their numbers to determine if additional modified mosquitoes need to be released or if insecticides can do the job. With a plant in Brazil and a larger one in the works there, Oxitec is perhaps the company closest to having a ready solution.

Armbruster said the most effective approach will involve a combination of methods.

"The most effective approach to suppressing the populations is going to be to take an integrated strategy that combines things like these genetically modified mosquitoes as well as traditional use of insecticides and elimination of breeding habitat," he said.

In the meantime, millions of pregnant women are depending on these scientists to come up with something quickly to spare their babies from the risk of enduring lifelong disabilities linked to Zika.
The United Nations has condemned recent airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, which have killed more than 100 civilians this week alone.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Friday that two air attacks Tuesday on a crowded market in northwestern Yemen were among the deadliest incidents since the Saudis and their Arab partners in the Gulf began attacking Yemen's Houthi rebels last year.

Saudi Arabia announced late Thursday, just hours before the U.N. issued its statement, that the Arab military coalition was scaling down combat operations in Yemen.

Zeid said the latest attack was one of "these awful incidents [that] continue to occur with unacceptable regularity." Despite many previous complaints about civilian casualties caused by indiscriminate military action, he said the Saudi coalition failed to take actions to avert such incidents, or to report any progress on investigations of the carnage.

"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces [in Yemen] put together  virtually all as a result of airstrikes," Zeid said.

Civilian casualties



The human-rights official said airstrikes carried out by Saudi pilots and their allies from the Gulf states "have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities, including the capital, Sana'a."

U.N. Human Rights office staff in Yemen who visited this week's attack site and interviewed survivors "could find no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack," U.N. officials reported.

The rights commissioner said the scope of the destruction in Yemen and the attackers' apparent failure to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilians, who are protected under international law, raise the possibility that "international crimes" were committed.

Since the fighting in Yemen began a year ago, the U.N. Human Rights Office said it has recorded just under 9,000 casualties. including 3,218 civilians killed and a further 5,778 injured.


A helicopter belonging to NATO-led forces made a hard landing in southern Afghanistan Friday, but all personnel on board have been recovered with no casualties, a U.S. military spokesman said, dismissing Taliban claims of shooting down the aircraft.

The incident happened in the restive Helmand province, the site of intense fighting in recent weeks where many of its 14 districts are under the control of the Taliban insurgency

"We can confirm a Resolute Support helicopter made a hard landing in Helmand province on 18 March 2016. Initial reports indicated that there was no enemy activity in the area, U.S. Army Col. Michael Lawhorn told VOA.

He added the incident is currently under investigation.

Taliban's claim



In a statement sent to reporters, a Taliban spokesman claimed it brought down a U.S. military helicopter in the Shawal Manda area of the Nad Ali district and all American soldiers on board were killed on the spot.

Hundreds of U.S. troops have recently arrived in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to help Afghan forces defending the city, which has been under pressure from the insurgents.

However, coalition officials insist the redeployment of forces to Helmand does not change the non-combat nature of NATOs Resolute Support mission, which remains focused on training, advising and assisting Afghan troops.

Local and coalition commanders anticipate a spike in insurgent activities during the coming warmer months in Afghanistan.

Taliban's gains



The Taliban has captured more Afghan territory over the past year than at any time since it was ousted from power in 2001, taking advantage of the withdrawal of NATO's combat forces from the country in 2014.

The insurgent groups refusal earlier this month to engage in direct peace talks with the Afghan government have fueled concerns of more bloodshed in 2016.

Fugitive Taliban Chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, in a statement posted on the Talibans official website Thursday, strengthened those fears.

The Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate [Taliban fighters] are in a much better state than at any other time to wage a decisive battle because of their great conquests in various provinceWe shall witness many conquests in the coming months, Mansoor said.

He again rejected reports of rifts in the insurgency and its willingness to seek political reconciliation as enemy propaganda, military plots and insinuations.
Several Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would expand immigration eligibility for immediate family members of U.S. citizens and allow same-sex married couples to join spouses in the United States.

Representative Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who sponsored the Reuniting Families Act (RFA), says the immigration reform legislation is designed to cut backlogs that separate some 4.4 million family members from U.S. citizens and green card holders.

"The act will cut red tape and get rid of bureaucracy that results in lost visas and lost opportunities," Rep. Honda announced at a Capitol Hill news conference, explaining that the RFA will utilize thousands of visas that have gone unused over the past two decades.

Bill faces opposition in Congress

The bill is likely to face stiff opposition from lawmakers advocating increased restrictions on U.S. immigration, which has been at top issue in the 2016 presidential race.

According to current U.S. immigration law, immediate family members of U.S. citizens include spouses, unmarried children under 21 years of age and parents 21 years of age or older.

The bill, originally introduced in 2013, classifies the spouse and minor children of green card holders as immediate relatives and separately, increases visa allocations for siblings, and ensures that same-sex, interfaith and other couples unable to wed in their home countries are treated the same as opposite-sex couples.

"If you have more people coming into the category of immediate families, they would automatically be put into the queue for getting the visa actually granted," Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who supports the bill, told VOA.

Thousands of gay couples could benefit

According to U.S. census reports, as of 2000, an estimated 36,000 same-sex, bi-national couples could benefit from the RFA.

The existing backlog of immigration applications has had an unusually large impact on Asian-American citizens, for whom family reunions represent a primary path to immigration.

Bill supporters, including the Pacific American Labor Alliance, the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, Asians Advancing Justice, Immigration Equality, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, say that without reform, it will take the current immigration system nearly 20 years to cycle through the current backlog of unresolved visa applications.

Rep. Honda's office says the RFA is supported by more than 65 legislators in the House.
Officials say U.S. personnel who were involved in the devastating, half-hour aerial attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan have been or will be punished.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S.-Central Command said "those individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties and were referred for administrative action."

The punishments have not been publicly announced, but are reported to include letters of reprimand, which can block promotions.

The Defense Department is set to soon publish a redacted version of its investigation of the attack.

The attack on the hospital in Kunduz in October killed 42 people, including medical staff and patients.

Army General John Campbell, who was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, but has since relinquished command, has said the attack on the hospital was "directly the result of avoidable human error." He called the strike "a tragic mistake."

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, has called for an outside, independent investigation of the airstrike, but that has not happened.

American forces misidentified a target in Kunduz on October 3 that resulted in the attack on the MSF hospital, according to a U.S. military investigation conducted last year.

Afghan forces asked for U.S. air support to strike a National Directorate of Security building believed to be occupied by Taliban fighters. According to the report, the AC-130 air crew instead fired 211 shells at a hospital operated by MSF that was 450 meters away.

Several factors contributed to the mistake. The air crew launched more than an hour earlier than planned, missing out on a crucial brief that would normally include identifying no-strike areas such as the MSF hospital. Once in flight, the aircraft's electronic systems malfunctioned, eliminating the crew's ability to transmit video, send and receive email, or send and receive electronic messages.

The crew then believed it was the target of a missile, so they moved out of the aircraft's normal strike range, degrading the accuracy of the targeting system. That loss of accuracy appeared to cause the coordinates of the Taliban target to land on an open field. The crew visually located the "closest, largest" building to that field and, thinking that was the target, fired on it.

MSF said the errors pinpointed in the U.S. report showed "gross negligence" on the part of U.S. forces.

Days before the attack, MSF had provided geographic coordinates of its hospital to U.S. military authorities.

The barrage on the hospital lasted 29 minutes before commanders realized the mistake, even as hospital staff members made 18 attempts to call or text U.S. and Afghan authorities about the attack as it was occurring.

Many of the doctors and nurses at the hospital were killed instantly, and some patients who could not be moved to safety died in the ensuing flames from the attack.

Within days of the October 3 incident, President Barack Obama called Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders, to apologize for the mistaken attack.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday that 2015 had increased violations of humanitarian law and principles by all sides to the conflict in Afghanistan, undermining delivery of much needed assistance to the war victims.

The violations hampered efforts to direct humanitarian activities in a neutral, impartial and objective way, ICRC President Peter Maurer told reporters in Kabul at the end of a five-day visit to the country.

"We also look back to a year where, once again, we have seen more hospitals attacked, more medical workers and doctors attacked, more medical facilities overall attacked, more difficulties for civilians and arms bearers to get treated according to international humanitarian law," Maurer said.

Maurer called for more international attention and involvement in addressing critical economic, health, shelter, water, sanitation and food security challenges facing Afghans, without waiting for a political solution to the war.

Heavy civilian toll



The United Nations says last year, the conflict caused more than 11,000 civilian casualties, including around 3,500 dead, and that women and children were among them. The number of civilian casualties is the highest since 2009, when the U.N. mission in Afghanistan began documenting them.



The conflict here in Afghanistan seems to defy any human logic because the more victims we see, the less attention the international community seems to bring to this conflict, the ICRC president said.

Maurer also added his voice to international calls for the Afghan government and Taliban-led insurgent groups to urgently find a negotiated and sustainable settlement to the devastating conflict.

The Afghan government was expected to open peace negotiations with the Taliban earlier this month, but in a last-minute announcement, the insurgent group refused to attend, citing certain preconditions, including the withdrawal of all U.S.-led foreign forces.

It is our assessment that no sustainable response can be found unless there is a credible and stable peace process and peaceful solution in place, Maurer said. "Pending a political solution, international humanitarian law must be respected and neutral and impartial organizations must be able to work."
The International Monetary Fund has dispelled remarks by Zimbabwes central bank that the country is likely to get its first fresh loan in 20 years in the third quarter this year amid concerns that Zimbabwe is likely to grow by only 2 percent and not the projected official 2,7 percent in 2016.

President Robert Mugabe is set to address a rally in Zimbabwes Mashonaland West province amid deepening factionalism in his party. Some groups, including one backing his wife, Grace, are battling to succeed the 92 year old president, who has ruled the country for more than 35 years.

Millers start importing maize from Mexico amid a crippling drought that has affected 4 million people.

Zimbabweans agree that people responsible for the alleged looting of diamonds worth $15 billion should be arrested regardless of their political affiliation.

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. We also broadcast on www.channelzim.net. Please check us out on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

Today on LiveTalk our hosts Blessing Zulu and Gibbs Dube will be talking with listeners and experts about the alleged looting of diamonds worth $15 billion in Zimbabwe.

Send us your numbers on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. Stay tuned!!!!!!
The International Monetary Fund says its not automatic that Harare will get a loan in the third quarter of this year as the determination will be made by the international lender of last resorts executive board.

Getting fresh money will also depend on Harare settling its $1,8 billion in arrears to the international lenders. In Lima, Peru, last year at the annual IMF/World Bank annual meetings, Zimbabwe had set an ambitious target to repay the loan by April.

John Mangudya told Reuters that Harare expects to pay arrears by June and thereafter the IMF to resume lending the country money for the first time since 1999.

However, skepticism remains on whether the southern African nation can pay back its debts, as it is presently repaying a paltry 150 thousand dollars a month on its $124 million debt to the IMF.

Economists have also urged Harare to normalize ties with Washington which has veto power in the Board. America holds 16.85 percent of the boards total votes compared to Germany, Japan and Britain with a combined 15,81 percent of the influential boards votes. The U.S has similar veto power in the World Bank.

America has sent mixed signals on the issue. Former U.S ambassador to Harare, Bruce Wharton, said the U.S will not block Harare despite its sanctions regime.

But recently Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a letter to the U-S secretary of the treasury stating that Washington must insist on democratic reforms as per the U.S law before endorsing Harares bid for fresh loans.

IMF resident representative in Harare, Christian Beddies, says the debt repayment date has remained fluid for Zimbabwe.
A High Court judge in Bulawayo on Friday reserved judgment in a matter in which Matson Hlalo, an expelled member of Morgan Tsvangirais Movement for Democratic Change, is challenging his expulsion from the party and the Senate.

High Court judge Justice Nokhuthula Moyo said she would make a ruling at a later date in the case in which Hlalo filed an urgent chamber application, seeking to have the court set aside his recent recall from the senate as well as his dismissal from the party.

Hlalo is also seeking an interim order to stop the MDC-T from appointing another person as senator until the matter is finalised.

Asked how confident he is in having the courts rule in his favour in a matter that is between him and his political party, Hlalo, who is being represented by attorney Godfrey Nyoni, said he had been compelled to approach the courts as a last resort, because he felt the MDC-T had failed to follow the dictates of justice, one of the principles that the party espouses.

He said his dismissal from both the party and the senate was not procedural as the MDC-Ts constitution had not been properly followed.

But MDC-T secretary general Douglas Mwonzora, who is representing the party, said the party has clearly laid down procedures that are meant to address members grievances.

He the MDC-T decided to expel him as he had chosen not to follow laid down regulations, adding that Hlalos case has no merit as the party followed some provisions of its constitution to recall and expel him.

Hlalos clash with the MDC-T emanates from his refusal to accept the election of Gift Banda as the partys chairperson for Bulawayo province. Hlalo argued that the internal vote in which Banda was elected in 2014 was marred by violence. His fight over Bandas election is still in the courts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

Trend:

Professors, lecturers, administrative staff members and students of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) celebrated Novruz holiday.

Opening the celebration ceremony, BHOS rector Elmar Gasimov congratulated the attendees on the occasion of the holiday and spoke about historical roots, values, traditions connected with Novruz.

Saying that Novruz is associated with the unity and fraternity, BHOS rector also said that it is also characterized by the nature reviving and reigning of peace and reconciliation. He wished everyone all the best.

The celebration proceeded with attractive musical performances. In frames of the show program, BHOS students performed songs, dances and demonstrated the symbols of Novruz.
Zimbabweans generally agree that people responsible for the alleged looting of diamonds worth $15 billion should be arrested regardless of their political affiliation.

Zanu PFs London-based Nick Mangwana and George Mkhwanazi of the Peoples Democratic Party are among Zimbabweans calling for the punishment of people who looted diamond proceeds.

They say it is worrying that the country lost billions of dollars in potential revenue at a time Zimbabwe needed a huge financial injection to revive the ailing economy.

President Robert Mugabe claimed recently that the government only received $2 billion of the estimated $15 billion that could have been generated from diamond sales in Zimbabwes Manicaland province.

Mkhwanazi claims that the money was allegedly used to finance Zanu PFs previous election campaigns.

But Mangwana argues that this is impossible as the alleged looting of the gems may have mostly happened when Zimbabwe had a government of national unity.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

The bill on approving an amendment to the convention "On Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials" was discussed at a plenary session of the Azerbaijani parliament March 18.

"The convention was adopted in 1966," Ziyafat Asgarov, first vice-speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament, said. "The world countries have begun joining this convention since 1980."

He said that Azerbaijan joined the convention in 2003.

"The convention was amended in 2005," he said. "Therefore, we must ratify this amendment."

In his turn, Azerbaijani MP Azay Guliyev said that the fourth Nuclear Security Summit will be held in the US in the coming days.

"As it is known, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has been invited for the summit by the US counterpart Barack Obama," he said. "I believe that Azerbaijan will contribute to this summit by ratifying the amendment to this convention."

The MPs positively assessed Azerbaijan's ratification of the amendment to the mentioned convention.

The amendment to the convention was ratified by the Azerbaijani parliament following the discussions.
The Lebanese Telecommunications Minister, Boutros Harb, has announced the seizure of vast and very sophisticated secret installations, says LOrient-Le-Jour.

He presented photos showing the seized equipment, including telecommunication towers, 3-meter satellite dishes, receivers and other major facilities.

The network covered the whole territory. It seems to have been installed by a foreign power to escape state supervision. It was a very serious threat to the security of Lebanon.

It seems that the originator is Israel, but French and Turkish Cypriot personalities are involved. Hagop Andranik and Imad Lahoud are accused of having installed a network of optical cables to connect the different stations. The Justice Ministry and the army have opened Investigations.
On March 14, 2016, The House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution, introduced by Republican Jeff Fortenberry and 212 of his colleagues, calling the crimes of the Islamic Emirate ("Daesh") against minorities "genocide" (H.Con.Res.75). This follows the position of the European Parliament [1].

The resolution follows a report of the Knights of Columbus, the main Catholic charity in the United States. [2]

Referring to the position of Pope Francis, parliamentarians hope to force the hand of Secretary of State John Kerry so that the Obama Administration will adopt their views.

The text urged the Regional Government of Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to provide assistance to people fleeing persecution by the IE, but said not a word of the role of Turkey, the Iraqi central government and Syria.

The text was written to support the Christians, and was extended to the Yazidis (mithraic Kurdish religion), the Mandaeans (Saint John the Baptist disciples) and yarsanites ( "Kakae"), and Turkmen and Kurd ethnic groups. It ignores the Shiite  Daeshs principal target - but also Druze and Alawite (often considered as Shia).

The Obama administration is reluctant to use the term "genocide" because of its legal consequences. It in fact implies that anyone connected to this crime can be prosecuted anywhere in the world. But initially, Daesh was created under the name "Islamic Emirate of Iraq" -in conjunction with chiites- organizations under the supervision of John Negroponte and General David Petraeus to deter Iraqi Resistance to the US occupation and divert their anger toward Sunni / Shia sectarian conflict (preparation of the "Surge"). Taking into account the number of high U.S. officials involved in this strategy in 2006-2008 and beyond, the term "genocide" could turn against Washington.

The Presidents of the United States do not recognize the genocide of Christians by Sultan Abdulhamid II and by the Young Turks (genocide of Armenians and Pontian Greeks) so as not to impede present day Turkey ... which specifically supports the Islamic Emirate.
President Obama has decided to replace the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, created in 2011, by a Global Engagement Center. To that end, on the 14th March 2016, he signed a secret decree  but a copy is already in circulation (see document below).

The new administration will be charged with fighting recruitment by terrorist groups. While still placed under the authority of the Secretary of State, it will be directed by Michael D. Lumpkin (photo). It will be integrated, in other words, administered by a council including representatives from various Ministries and agencies which deal with intelligence or propaganda. It has an annual budget of 20 million dollars. This money will be used not to produce messages, but to subsidise as discretely as possible bloggers or leaders of opinion whose messages are judged to be useful. The GEC will work exclusively in foreign countries.

Lets remember that the United States may unofficially support certain groups that it considers as terrorist, as well as any group resisting imperialism  which is why the Centre is attached to the Secretary of State, while being directed by a senior civil servant of the Defence, Michael D. Lumpkin, currently the Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
The week Baskets aired its premiere episode, introducing the story of an American clown who returns from Paris to his hometown of Bakersfield, I was setting off on my own extended trip to Paris. Tonights episode, which flashes back to reveal how Chip fell in love with the magical city, airs the same week I flew back to America. So I am coming at this show, and Picnic in particular, with more of an unavoidable personal connection than most.

Im not saying this to brag, like Chip, about some phony cultural enlightenment I hold over my American peers simply because I spent time in Paris (which is in France, which is in Europe). But my experience did give me a newfound appreciation for what Baskets  and this episodes writer, Rebecca Drysdale  gets absolutely right about Chips character, his place in the world, and the mythic siren song of fulfillment that Paris can hold for creatively minded Americans. Even  maybe especially  if they dont speak the language.

In the canon of contemporary Greater Journey/Lost Generation narratives about Americans in the City of Light, Picnic deftly sidesteps the entitled smugness of something like Woody Allens Midnight in Paris. Instead, were treated to a tempered and contemplative story thats more in line with Bernardo Bertoluccis The Dreamers. The feel is at once both warmly nostalgic, as Chip retreats from the dark reality of his mothers diabetic coma into the last moments that made him happy, as well as cautionary. Even at his emotional high point, we see he struggles to truly fit in with his surroundings. We struggle a bit, too, since much of the episodes dialogue is in unsubtitled French  a bold move even for a basic-cable comedy, but one that allows us to get a partial sense of Chips alienation. (And it sets up a great joke toward episodes end: Chips companions are speaking English, but due to their accents he thinks theyre still speaking French.)

The first act is largely dialogue-free, anyway, and lovely. Frustrated by his class  and having accidentally committed turtle-slaughter while trying to complete an assignment  Chip instead attempts to be a street clown. But before he can so much as toss a handkerchief, hes stymied by the local police for not having the proper permits. Hes rescued by a fellow gang of street performers, who take him on an intoxicating journey through the streets and bars of Paris. Its the misfits and weirdos, finally at home with each other.

Chip catches a glimpse of Penelope, his wife-to-be, singing at a club, then tracks her down to begin an unlikely courtship. Why does their relationship work when he seems to constantly radiate the air of a pretentious American buffoon? It helps that, for the first time in the series, we sense some honest similarities between Penelope and Chip: Both of them feel adrift and alone, desperate to rebel against their upbringings without a clear idea of how to actually do it. Penelope wants to escape the shadow of her father, a renowned musician played with a great air of European dismissiveness by Ronald Guttman, without actually exerting the effort to distinguish herself professionally. Dating the idiot who just shattered dads champagne pyramid and pretended the act was some sort of Dadaist performance art just happens to be the most convenient way to get on his nerves.

But theres something deeper here, too. Penelope feels some affection for the guy, mixed with a bit of pity and a genuine desire not to see him hurt himself on her account. Chip, as always, is in a susceptible position. The myth of Paris as a utopian mecca, a home for creative redemption, is a powerful one, and it will always have a strong pull for those emotionally vulnerable people whod like to be the next Hemingway or Baldwin or whomever (ahem). Indeed, it has such a hold on Chip that hes blinded himself to the reality of his situation: The part of Paris he desperately wants to bring back doesnt even find him attractive.

Weve seen the repercussions of Chips love affair with this myth throughout the series, as his preoccupation with pleasing Penelope effectively neutered any professional or personal ambitions. But its Paris, not Penelope, that truly has Chips heart, and Mama Basketss instincts were in the right place when she drove her surprise daughter-in-law out of the country. In the long run, it may be the only way to save her sons soul. If only he could realize it.

This is all very sad and nuanced stuff, so lets end with a bit of comic genius: Chip attempts to recreate that magical Paris feeling by ordering a giant party sub and pretending its a baguette. Setting up his picnic amidst Bakersfields strip-mall backdrop, chowing down on that outrageous sandwich (with the yellow sauce) and having it immediately fall apart in front of him is a wonderful burst of physical comedy, and a much-needed moment of levity to escape the stuffy hospital room. The last two episodes, along with Picnic, have reached the ideal balance of pathos with deliriously goofy stuff like this. As we head into next weeks season finale, my hopes are riding high for a strong narrative finish that validates the bold artistic choices made by co-creators Zach Galifianakis, Louis C.K., and Jonathan Krisel these past few go-arounds.

Or maybe thats just the myth talking.

Clowning Around:
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Photo: VALERIE MACON/Getty Images

Welcome to Hollywood Signs, a new monthly column by Mark Harris.

On the morning of Tuesday, March 15, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences attempt to solve its diversity problem was interrupted by  a diversity problem. Even as the AMPAS Board of Governors  51 people (49 of them white) elected to represent the Academys 17 branches  was meeting to formalize and fine-tune the reforms announced after the #OscarsSoWhite protest moved from hashtag to headline in January, a new issue was exploding. Two dozen Academy members of Asian descent, ranging from two-time Best Director winner Ang Lee to actress Sandra Oh, had signed and made public a letter protesting what they called a tone-deaf  tasteless and offensive set of jokes on this years Oscars telecast, including one in which host Chris Rock used a couple of young Asian children as a sight gag and a punch line. (After introducing them as PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants, Rock said, If anyone is upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phones  also made by these kids.)

After issuing a pro forma apology that got a verdict of Not good enough on social media (admittedly, that is social medias favorite verdict about everything, which doesnt mean it was incorrect), the Academy quickly agreed to meet with the signatories face to face. And by the end of the day, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the quiet, politic, and very determined woman at the center of what has become one of the major pivot points in Academy history, had gotten the governors to sign off on a set of reforms that, if they work, will literally and figuratively change the face of the Academy.

This is no small accomplishment. Isaacs, a longtime publicity executive for Paramount and New Line, was first elected in 2013, one year after a Los Angeles Times study of Academy demography showed it to be even more overwhelmingly white than its detractors had imagined. Some Academy-watchers greeted that report with a shrug  whaddya gonna do, the Oscars only reflect industry inequities, it was ever thus. Isaacs did not; she viewed the information not as an intractable misfortune but as a call to action. The 35th president in AMPASs 89-year history, she is the first person of color to be elected to the post, and only the third woman. The first, Bette Davis, quit angrily in 1941 after just weeks on the job, disgusted to realize that she had been given the gig as a mere figurehead. Isaacs is in no danger of suffering a similar fate.

***

On paper, this should not have been the year that a controversy over the overwhelming whiteness of either the Academy or its nominees flared up. Initiatives to increase the percentage of women and people of color in the votership were put in place a few years ago, and were already reflected in the annual list of invitees that the Academy makes public every spring. Last year, for instance, roughly 30 percent of newly invited actors and directors were nonwhite, a big change for an organization that, as of 2012, was 94 percent white. In addition, there was no single galvanizing omission this year. The highest-profile movies made by and with people of color that were left out  Creed and Straight Outta Compton (each relegated to a single nomination for their white participants) and Beasts of No Nation  were all considered by Oscars handicappers to be close calls. (Perhaps it should be noted that the demographic makeup of handicappers is, if anything, whiter than that of the Academy.) And its odd that so much wrath was focused on the Academys acting nominees since, notwithstanding two straight years of wall-to-wall whiteness, the Actors branch has historically been more inclusive than any other. (Over the years, 64 black actors have been nominated and 15 have won; by contrast, the Directors branch has nominated only three black directors and four women.)

But cultural issues dont tend to hit the boiling point when optimum laboratory conditions suggest they should. They explode because they have to, and, whether because Black Lives Matter had gained immense cultural currency and urgency over the previous 12 months or because the issue of diversity in the movie industry as a whole had moved to the center of the conversational agenda, this was the moment. The resulting fury hit the Academy hard and fast.

And, remarkably, an institution not previously known for either speed or transparency has demonstrated, in response, an unusual degree of both. Just days after the nominees were announced, Isaacs, using a careers worth of public-relations training in how to strike the right tone, issued a statement saying that while the Academy would celebrate  the wonderful work of this years nominees, she found herself heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion  its time for big changes.

She wasnt kidding. Within days, working in conjunction with the Academys sometimes-polarizing CEO Dawn Hudson, Isaacs had overseen a meeting of the Board of Governors at which three initiatives were advanced. The first was the appointment of three new governors to rectify the lack of diversity on the board itself (those governors, announced this week, are the African-American producer Reginald Hudlin, who oversaw this years Oscars show, El Norte screenwriter Gregory Nava, and Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3 director Jennifer Yuh Nelson). The second was the formalization of a push to double the number of women and minorities in the Academy over the next five years. And the third  the tough one  was to move Academy members who have long been inactive in the movie business to non-voting status. All past winners and nominees would get to keep their voting rights, as would any voter who had worked on movies at least once in three consecutive ten-year periods after becoming members. The rest would become  a kind word  emeritus.

It was this last move that sparked a furious public backlash from a handful of members. Over the following weeks, The Hollywood Reporter ran more than a dozen op-eds on the subject, most by voters who felt irate or affronted. A documentarian named Milton Justice used his piece to lash out sneeringly (and one year late) at the black director and leading man of Selma. Bill Mumy, the child star of TVs Lost in Space who was invited to join AMPAS in 1975 but has worked mainly in TV for the last 30 years, accused the Academy of giving in to a handful of whiners. Onetime executive and producer David Kirkpatrick cried ageism, as did many others, and John Van Vliet, a member of the Visual Effects branch, labeled the decision a momentary appeasement of the mob. Writers branch member Stephen Geller even wondered, What Academy, historically, ever has dealt with contemporary realities?  That has never been its role.

Tonally, the pieces ranged from Dont listen to those people, theyre just sore losers to I still have value to This isnt fair. Many of the angry voters noted, with justification, the danger of stereotyping a group of people as anti-diversity just because theyre older and/or inactive in the industry. But the language and rhetoric some of them used as they fumed about political correctness and suggested the whole thing was an overreaction to bad publicity made it clear that those who just dont get it  people who continue to equate diversity with a lowering of standards and insist that racial bias plays no role in an almost entirely white organization  constitute a real and longstanding Academy demographic. On Tuesday, Isaacs and the Board agreed to tweak some of their revised standards for voting: A members 30 years of active work dont need to have taken place entirely after the invitation to join (thus, Angie Dickinson, in movies from 1955 through 2004, is saved, which seems only fair!). The Academy reiterated that an appeals process will be available to members, and branches will have latitude to set their own standards for active, the definitions of which may be different for, say, an actor, a working writer whose scripts havent resulted in recent onscreen credits, and a studio executive. However, when all is said and done, a few hundred of the Academys 6,000-plus members will likely have to surrender their voting rights.

Some might argue that the anger aimed at Isaacs and the Board over these changes represents the purest form of privilege  a body of white people used to holding power and unwilling either to loosen its grip on it or to imagine that it should. But I think a sense of powerlessness may have had more to do with it. The voting initiative exposed a massive fault line in the Academy  a divide between members who were invited to join because of their achievement and those for whom being invited to join was the achievement. For the latter group  which is among the least active in the industry but the most present at Academy screenings and events  this decision threatened to add insult to the injury of not being able to get work, or the injury of the suggestion that a career in television is a step down, or the injury of losing the certainty that, at least when you fill out your ballot, you have exactly the same impact as Steven Spielberg or George Clooney.

Feeling wounded is understandable. And certainly, the decision to yoke a rule change that had been bruited about within the Academy for years to the issue of diversity conflated two problems: how to make the membership more diverse, and how to clean up a voting roster that reflected decades of lax, friend-of-a-friend admission policies from the 1950s through the 1990s, when you could get in because a couple of people liked you. (That mostly ended in the early 2000s, when the Academy started making its annual invitee lists public.) As it stands, AMPAS is overstuffed with people  not just or even primarily actors, but publicists, executives, documentarians  who, in some cases, voluntarily left the industry for other professions long ago (one of the Hollywood Reporter op-ed writers is a former studio PR VP turned psychotherapist) or who, on the basis of their film achievements, never should have been invited to join at all. Printing their names would be cruel, but for the curious, heres a partial membership roll; cross-checking it against an IMDb credits list is eye-opening.)

***

This is, in some ways, a challenging moment for the Academy. Ratings for the Oscars ceremony arent what they used to be  this years broadcast hit an eight-year low. That slippage shouldnt matter, since with around 35 million viewers, the Oscars are still, by far, the highest-rated non-sports show of any kind during the TV season. But it does, because the Academy is deep into a $350 million, years-in-the-making attempt to expand its brand by building a museum, and ad revenue from the ABC telecast represents a major chunk of its business plan. Given that, Academy-on-the-precipice stories have become such a journalistic norm that its now an easy go-to to portray it as an institution perpetually in crisis and either over- or underreacting.

Those within the Academy who are opposed to the diversity changes traffic in that rhetoric as well. In the wake of AMPASs decision to go forward with the new initiatives, there have been dark mutterings about ageism lawsuits. The actor James Woods seethed on Twitter about unelected governors joining the ranks, and one trade report passed along the notion that members who feel they have been sold up the river by the governors in the name of political correctness might run for election against the current governors. (Academy members successfully campaigning for the board on an anti-diversity slate? Dont hold your breath.)

In the face of those pressures, Isaacss calm decision to hold firm on the initiatives  and to rip the Band-Aid off all at once  was not only levelheaded, but indicative of a deep understanding of Academy history. When #OscarsSoWhite started making news, many people complained that the Academy was being scapegoated for a larger industry issue. But that accusation is a way of saying the Academy can only serve as a reflection of Hollywood, not a leader of it  a belief that history refutes. During World War II, for example, the Academy took an active role in coordinating efforts that involved the War Department and the studios. So if Isaacs wants to argue that an institution meant to celebrate the best of an industry should also demand the best of that industry, shes on very solid ground. This isnt unprecedented for the Academy, she wrote in her initial statement promising changes. In the 60s and 70s it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. The Academy president back then was the unsurpassably authoritative Gregory Peck; nobody would have dared accuse Atticus Finch of succumbing to the forces of political correctness even if the phrase had existed. His push to overhaul the membership roster helped modernize the Oscars and freshen the nominations just as American studio filmmaking was undergoing a major revitalization. Today, hes remembered as one of the most influential of all Academy presidents.

Isaacs seems likely to join him on that short list. Shes been elected three times, and this spring, she will decide whether to run for a fourth (and, by the Academys bylaws, final) one-year term. Whether she does or not, her place in Oscars history may be secure. Will the initiative succeed? If you define succeed as create an Academy composed of people of more varied backgrounds and perspectives that in turn demands more of those perspectives from its art and rewards the best of them, then, you know, yes, of course it will succeed! How could it not? Inevitably, therell be some reactive griping about lowering the bar in order to increase Academy diversity, but so what? Nobody familiar with AMPASs past admission practices can argue that it ever honored a bar  if one even existed  with any consistency. And equally inevitably, we will probably overmonitor progress, claiming victory or defeat based solely on what happens to, say, this years Sundance prizewinner The Birth of a Nation, a version of the Nat Turner story written, produced, and directed by its African-American star Nate Parker that was already being burdened with the label test case before the print was even flown back from Utah.

But this cant be about one movie, one artist, one redemptive win, or even one year. If the nomination roster next spring, or in 2019, or 2021, looks enough like America not to generate an OscarsSoAnything protest, that will be a victory. And for that, some credit will surely have to go to Isaacss determination to treat diversity not as an irksome public-relations issue that will just blow over but as an actual goal  and to lead the Academy, despite some kicking and screaming, to do the same.
Get well, soon! Photo: Mike Windle/Getty Images

Dylan OBrien, star of Teen Wolf and the Maze Runner series, has suffered multiple broken bones while shooting the third film in the Maze Runner series, The Death Cure, reports TMZ. There arent a lot of details yet, but apparently OBrien was filming a scene with a car when he was accidentally run over. He was rushed to a hospital in British Columbia, Canada, where he is currently being treated.

2oth Century Fox released the following statement saying that production would be halted:

Dylan OBrien was injured yesterday while filming Maze Runner: The Death Cure in Vancouver, Canada. He was immediately transferred to a local hospital for observation and treatment. Production on the film will be shut down while he recovers. Our thoughts go out to Dylan for a full and speedy recovery.

Well update this story as we get more information.
Photo: Ian Gavan/Getty Images

Of all the recent solo albums by high-voiced frontmen of Britpop bands, the best one belongs to Gaz Coombes, whose 2015 record Matador is at least as good as any of the excellent ones he made with his former group Supergrass. Matador gets a deluxe vinyl release in America today, and Coombess first-ever solo U.S. tour will stop at New Yorks Rockwood Music Hall on March 24 and 25. Vulture spoke with him about going solo, the time he met David Bowie, and whether weve heard the last from Supergrass.

You didnt have much downtime after Supergrass split in 2010. You and Danny made an album as the Hotrats that same year, and then your first solo album, Here Come the Bombs, came right after that.

Im lucky enough  or dumb enough, whichever way you look at it  to have a studio at home. My wife can get frustrated with how often Im in here, but my kind of downtime is to make music. I never really planned to do a solo thing, I just kept writing and recording new stuff, and there it was.

Youve said you recorded most of Matador at home, which is a little hard to believe given the level of production. How much gear do you have in your basement?

Ive just got a few key things, really. Some instruments, synthesizers, just a few really old compressors, and then one great microphone. I had an old vintage U47 for a while, which I guess is the mic. What Im doing at home is recording demos, but when Im doing it, theres a potential for them to be more than that. I did the second half of the record at a studio, but half, if not two-thirds, was done at home. When I started talking to myself too much, I knew it was time to go to the studio to see other human beings.

Usually when someone leaves a band to make a solo album, the arrangements get smaller. But youve gone in the opposite direction  there are choirs, strings, and synthesizers all over Matador.

I wanted to capture big moments. I probably shouldnt say this, but I was in a famous broadcasting house in London, and this orchestra was playing, so I opened the door, and just recorded half a minute of it on my iPhone. What they were playing was incredible. And then I got home and looped about ten seconds of it, which led to the chords of Detroit.

Matador has a couple of songs about American Rust Belt cities, Detroit and Buffalo

Buffalo isnt about the city. Its about the animal, but its not even really about the animal. Its a weird desert tale. Its a kind of  I guess, yeah, throwing in a few metaphors here and there, but something saving you, finding you, rescuing you. I have this image of climbing onto a buffalo and it taking me out of the desert to safety. Its how my mind works.

Is it different writing lyrics for solo albums? Most early Supergrass songs were written in the first-person plural, like they were coming from the whole band, so you had some cover. But do you feel more exposed writing in the first person?

Ive really enjoyed discovering how I write on my own. I wasnt afraid of being honest and direct, but I also had an eye on not being too morose or depressing. No matter what, the lyrics always have to have a hook. You cant just go rambling on in first person about your feelings or everyones going to get really bored.

Youve said that when Supergrass was writing music together, some of your ideas died in committee. Is there anything on Matador you think would have been vetoed if youd proposed it to your old bandmates?

All of it.

Really?

I havent got a clue. We were great when we worked together. We were all open to anything, and we would all feed off each other really well. When youre working with a group, and something good happens, and theres a shared look of recognition, thats really powerful. But when something wasnt connecting, and we werent on the same page, it was really frustrating. So I love working on my own. Its been great.

Your voice sounds better than ever on this album. Have you noticed any difference in what youre able to do with it after 20 years?

Not particularly. I can still reach the high stuff. Ive learned a lot over the years. Ive actually been working with Nigel Godrich, who has lots of little hints and pointers, just helping with certain inflections and bad habits that I got into. I do feel that I can probably do anything now, and I didnt feel like that before. Its a different kind of confidence. I was confident in an ignorance is bliss way before.

Matador has more than a few allusions to David Bowie on it, including the cover, which seems like a nod to Heroes. What did you think of Blackstar?

Its completely insane. Blackstar was a crazy album, with some beautiful, moving bits. I dont know if theres anyone else his age that would make an album like that. Maybe Lou Reed would have, or Neil Young. But so many artists just get more watered down as they get older. Listening to it now [since Bowies death]  I dont know if theres another record I listen to the same way. Maybe Dennis Wilsons Pacific Ocean Blue, which was a late recording for him and there was a lot of pain in those songs. With Blackstar, I wouldnt say its an uncomfortable listen now, but its really unique and has lots of weight.

Did you ever meet Bowie?

Yeah, once. He asked us to play his Meltdown festival in London. And then a week later, he was performing somewhere else, and just at the very end of the night, he walked past us  I was with my girlfriend  in the hallway, and I thought, Ive got to get my girlfriend to meet him cause shes such a huge fan. So I called after him, Dave! and he turned around and walked back. He really wanted to chat. I said, Im Gaz, Im in Supergrass And he said, I know who you are. His minder called him to leave, and he didnt want to. He was lovely.

Last fall, you put out an expanded version of Supergrasss first album, I Should Coco, with lots of demos and bonus material for its 20th anniversary. Any plans to do the same for In It for the Money next year?

I think it would be good. It was great to acknowledge the anniversary and remind myself what a great album I Should Coco was. And, yeah, theres no reason why it shouldnt happen for In It for the Money, I guess. There were more outtakes and demos and rarities as time went on, because the recording equipment got better. It was actually quite tough to find stuff for I Should Coco, but theres loads more stuff to uncover from later.

Will we ever hear anything from the sessions for Release the Drones, the album you were working on when Supergrass broke up?

I dont know, man. Its really hard to say. Theres a reason why I left and didnt want to make that record. There are some cool moments here and there, but it just wasnt feeling good and I wouldnt want to release something that was substandard. But who knows?
Whos for dinner? Photo: Brooke Palmer/NBC

Is it your fault theres no more Hannibal to devour? Martha De Laurentiis, one of the executive producers of the show, blames piracy for the shows noted cancellation: Hannibal was one of the most pirated shows of 2013, with 2.1 million downloads per episode. De Laurentiis writes in an op-ed on The Hill:

it wasnt much of a leap to connect its fate with the fact that the show was ranked as the fifth-most illegally downloaded show in 2013. When nearly one-third of the audience for Hannibal is coming from pirated sites  despite the fact that a legitimate download for each episode was available the following day  you dont have to know calculus to do the math. If a show is stolen, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fairly compensate a crew and keep a series in production.

While theres no way to know for sure if thats what happened (hey, maybe people just werent digging Hannibals jaunt around Florence), its not hard to draw the conclusion that over two-million pirates are responsible. De Laurentiis will be on Capitol Hill this week at a Meet the Producers event discussing how piracy undermines the creative community.
Sarah Lancashire. Photo: Ben Blackall/Netflix

Happy Valley is set in the English county of Yorkshire, the same region as the fictional Downton from Downton Abbey. But Lord Grantham wouldnt last on the streets of Hebden Bridge, with its violent ex-cons, drug addicts, and prostitution. Telling of a harsher, bleaker side to life in Northern England, Happy Valley revolves around the dedicated and excellent police officer Catherine Cawood, following her professional life and watching how a harrowing incident from her past dominates her life.

Season two of the series arrived in full on Netflix this week so heres a spoiler-free guide to what you need to know.

It features a brilliant central performance.

BAFTA winner Sarah Lancashire inhabits her role as Cawood so completely you get the impression you could pitch up outside her stone-clad house and invite yourself in for a cup of tea. Happy Valley offers a rare glimpse of somebody who is dedicated to solving a crime without feeling the need to shut everyone else out. In season one, Cawoods world is turned upside down when the man she blames for her daughters death  Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton)  is released from prison. In lesser police dramas, shed be shunning all responsibility to crack her cases; instead, what we get is a woman whose whole reason for putting on her uniform is to keep her family together. Above all else, its Lancashires performance that makes Happy Valley tick. At various stages of the series she is left bruised and hysterical, and you feel every single emotion along with her.

It stars Americas next big British import.

Having already starred in Happy Valley plus two period dramas (War & Peace, Grantchester), James Norton is currently on British TV more than most actors. If anyone is going to follow the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Matt Smith, and Benedict Cumberbatch to America anytime soon, its going to be him. Hes good in this, too, showing he can pull off working-class psycho and landed gentry.

Watch out for the Yorkshire slang.

If you dont know what nowt, mardy, and tara mean, you may need a book of Yorkshire phrases by your side while watching Happy Valley (thats nothing, moody, and good-bye respectively). Sally Wainwrights script is lighthearted in places and punchy in others but, like all good Yorkshire pubs, doesnt necessarily cater to outsiders.

Its truthful about life outside of London.

Between the films of Richard Curtis and Mike Leigh, you might think Britain is either a delightful wonderland or a grim and gray trudge through mediocrity. Happy Valley tells the truth: Its somewhere between the two. The beautiful rolling fields and trickling rivers of the Yorkshire moors engulf the town in which its set, but the historically poor area comes with its own issue, which the show doesnt shy away from. Season two also picks up on the growing levels of immigration in the area, with Polish residents and an organized crime gang both cropping up on Cawoods radar. There are Happy Valleys all up and down Britains countryside, few of which ever get their stories told in this way.

Season two maintains season ones high standards.

Picking up from the emotional fallout of season one, the second run introduces three hugely compelling plotlines. Theres even a brief appearance from Harry Potters Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) as a man spotted drinking vodka at the wheel while kerb-crawling. What would they say about that at Hogwarts?
Ernest Hemingway is here to kick ass and write the great American novel and, baby, hes already written a ton of novels. While many viewers will associate an older Ernest Hemingway with subtle, pared-down writing about seas, Papa: Hemingway in Cuba showcases the sexier side of the author in his later years. The film follows Giovanni Ribisis character Ed Lynch, who is based on journalist Denne Bart Petitclerc, who was invited to stay with Hemingway in Cuba in the late 50s after sending him a fan letter. Unfortunately for Lynch and Hemingway, but fortunately for us, the two meet just as the Cuban Revolution has begun. Their experience served as the basis for The Old Man and the Sea 2: Time to Kick the Seas Teeth In.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

Trend:

The search for the oil workers, who went missing in the Caspian Sea, continues in Azerbaijan, the website of the country's ministry of emergency situations said March 18.

The oil workers went missing in an accident on the platform No. 10 of Azerbaijan's Guneshli oil field and the platform No. 501 of the Oil Rocks field.

The fire broke out on the offshore platform Dec. 4, 2015, as strong storm damaged an underwater high-pressure gas pipeline.

As many as 33 people were rescued in an ensuing large-scale operation. The bodies of 12 killed were retrieved, while 18 oil workers are still listed as missing.
As this Funny or Die mash-up proves, its about time we got dramatic reenactments of big Kanye moments. For example, it would be great to see real actors do the VMAs ambush, the paparazzi carpool, and the time Yeezy hung out with Kimmel at a wedding. Not to mention the KanyeSteve Ballmer lunch conference  bald cap for David Schwimmer? Not sure what other peoples schedules are looking like, but if Chloe Grace Moretz wants to play Taylor Swift, that should probably happen, too. Roll the clip above to enjoy the American Crime Story parody (and get inspiration).
For PJ Harveys new album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, the rock goddess traveled to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington, D.C., for inspiration. As she probably figured when choosing each destination, her findings ended up being rather bleak, particularly in D.C., where the video for her new song The Community of Hope was filmed. While there, Harvey essentially took a poverty tour with a writer for the Washington Post (who didnt know at the time that he was guiding PJ Harvey), through some of D.C.s forgotten neighborhoods, like Ward 7. His is the voice that narrates the video, which doesnt feature Harvey, but rather the people of Ward 7 whom she encountered along the way.

Though shes singing from an outsiders perspective about a drug town and a highway that leads to death and destruction, she paints the people that call such dire living conditions their home as the districts unsung pillars of strength. The song ends with whats intended to be a grim prediction, repeatedly chanted: Theyre gonna put a Walmart here. Though that ultimately didnt happen, its a fate that the people of Ward 7 tried not to view as a death sentence  the video closes with a black church choir singing Harveys ominous words. Theyre almost rejoicing, as if salvations but a blue vest away; the whole church sounds happy enough just to have been considered for a superstore chain most of them couldnt afford.

But not everyones happy with PJ Harveys D.C. expose: The Districts former mayor, Vince Gray (who is running to represent Ward 7 on the city council), said, I will not dignify this inane composition with a response. His campaign treasurer, however, did respond to say Harvey is to music what Piers Morgan is to cable news. D.C. nonprofit Community of Hope (which likely inspired the songs title) has written an open letter to Harvey addressing their concerns with the songs incomplete portrayal of the district: By calling out this picture of poverty in terms of streets and buildings and not the humans who live here, have you not reduced their dignity? Have you not trashed the place that, for better or worse, is home to people who are working to make it better, who take pride in their accomplishments?
Son Of Saul starts in a blur, an unfocused patch of green from which its central character Auslander (Foreigner) Saul (Geza Rohrig), a Hungarian Jew working in the Auschwitz death camp, looms into focus. For much of the film, Sauls the centered part of the frame thats in focus, surrounded, as he moves, by images on the periphery.

In a curious irony, its what on the edges that carry the movies visceral power while Saul, the center of action, remains somewhat an enigma.

Hes a Sonderkommando, one of the Jews forced to work as guards in the German death camps where much of the Holocausts slaughter took place. While that status spares them from imminent death, they know their execution is only delayed.

Sauls blank face betrays the emotional deadening that his tasks require: helping German guards unload the trains and transports arriving at the death camp, shepherding their occupants into gas chambers, then removing the corpses and scrubbing the chambers for the next arrivals to be executed.

A boy happens to survive a gassing, however, sparking something deep within Saul. An attending German doctor smothers the boy and orders an autopsy, but Saul, with the camp access given the Sonderkommandos, intervenes and manages to spirit the body away. He believes the boy is his son and wants a proper Jewish burial for him, starting a race against time to find a rabbi to say a Kaddish for the dead before the bodys discovered and hes killed as well.

His journey, seen by a mobile, constrained camera, takes him through the camp. In the process, he becomes partially involved in a Sonderkommando plot to revolt against the Germans, as the Soviet Army inches its way closer to Auschwitz.

The laconic Saul keeps his motives masked, but doubles down on his pursuit as the danger increases, even as his blood connection to the boy becomes questionable. Its enough, however, simply as a symbolic, moral protest undertaken in the shadow of a slaughter of anonymous thousands  the films foreword notes that one translation of Sonderkommandos is bearers of secrets  dying with no burial or memorial.

Son of Sauls power comes in its partial view. By making viewers concentrate to make sense of the images and sounds that frame Sauls nightmarish world, director Laszlo Nemes and cinematographer Matyas Erdely cause them to assemble a death camps horror from pieces. A gas chamber whose interior is never seen, but whose walls muffle the pounding, shouts and screams within. Workers hurridly scrubbing blood from chambers floors before the next arrivals. Piles of dirt shoveled into a river that turn out to be piles of ashes from the crematorium. An aural mosaic of guards commands, worried murmurs turning into shouts, barking dogs, occasional pistol shots and the ever-present groans and clanking of an industrial-scaled factory of death.

In narrowing the focus to a single man and his immediate surroundings, Son of Saul makes the viewer imagine the greater hell in which hes trying to survive  and the value of the effort to retain ones humanity, however impossible, in it.

The Hungarian film, winner of this years Best Foreign Film Academy Award, will run Monday through Wednesday at the Waco Hippodrome.
It doesnt take much to convince a film director of an images power, so when Brandon Dickerson heard his friend and fellow Baylor grad Jeff Bowden relate how a particular photograph of an Albanian refugee had gripped his life, the Austin director suspected there was a movie in there somewhere.

A trip to Kosovo with Bowden convinced him and the documentary that they made, A Single Frame, arrives in Waco Monday for a free 7 p.m. screening at the Waco Hippodrome. Both Bowden and Dickerson will be at the Monday showing to talk about their film.

Dickerson, known to many at Baylor University and in Waco as director of the shot-in-Waco film Sironia, met Bowden, a former senior editor of D Magazine and an Austin real estate seller, while on set during Sironias filming five years ago and the two continued their friendship over the years.

Bowdens connection to the story began during a family vacation to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where his daughter steered him to an exhibit of work by women photographers. There he saw the picture that changed his life: French photojournalist Alexandra Boulats striking image of an anxious Albanian boy standing, arms crossed, off a road in the country.

It captivated him, so much so that his family bought the photo for him in 2010. The only photo in his office that didnt have family members in it eventually motivated Bowden to go abroad to find out what had happened to the boy. Dickerson tagged along on one of his trips  as a co-adventurer, he said  and while accompanying Bowden on his journey to Kosovo, meeting a fixer accustomed to acting as guide and middleman to foreign journalists, the light went on about making a film of it.

The documentary that resulted, A Single Frame, not only follows Bowden and his search for the photos subject  no spoilers here on what he found  but looks at the aftermath of war in Kosovo as well as the career of Boulat, who went on to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before dying of a brain aneurysm in 2007.

Dickerson is no stranger to overseas film shoots. His early commercial work was in Italy and filming projects for his wife Kirstens Raven + Lily company took him to Kenya and India. A Single Frame had the typical logistical challenges of filming in another country, he said, with one exception - the time he was warned to watch out for landmines.

A Single Frame debuted at the Austin Film Festival last fall, winning the audience award, and the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the first stops on a festival circuit for the movie.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

Trend:

Azerbaijan is set to actively work in the next six months to create its first-ever free trade zone.

The free trade zone is being created under an order signed by President Ilham Aliyev on March 17. It will be located in the Alat township of Baku's Garadagh district and will also include the new Baku International Sea Trade Port.

The presidential order states that the purpose of creating the free trade zone is to ensure a sustainable economic development and increase competitiveness, strengthen Azerbaijan's position as a logistics and transportation center, and create a multi-vector transportation infrastructure in the country.

So, what benefits can Azerbaijan, its economy and citizens make from the free trade zone?

More foreign investments

The creation of the free trade zone is a logical continuation of Azerbaijan's policy of becoming a logistics and transportation hub, and attracting transit cargo flows.

There are many examples of how the free economic zones, such as, for example, those in Hong Kong or the UAE's Jebel Ali, turned the cities into centers attracting investors from around the world and bringing huge profits to their governments.

The most successful free trade zone has been China's Shenzhen Free Trade Zone, created in 1980 near Hong Kong. It brought thousands of foreign investors and made it possible for Chinese authorities to experiment with reforms in a small area. Currently, Shenzhen, a city with population of 10 million, has a GDP exceeding 185 billion euros.

So, first of all, it is expected that the free trade zone's creation in Azerbaijan will bring a large amount of foreign investment.

In a recent comment, the Director General of the Baku International Sea Trade Port Taleh Ziyadov said the free trade zone's creation will bring up to $1 billion just in the first few years.

This will be possible thanks to the special tax and customs policies in the free trade zone. Tax benefits in the free trade zone may cover the profit tax, VAT, income tax and, in particular, the property tax.

Facilitation of cargo transportation

Currently, Azerbaijan is actively working to set a single tariff for cargo transportation with the countries involved in the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor. A tentative agreement has been already reached with Georgia. Single tariff talks are underway with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Turkey. If the single tariff plans are realized, the competitiveness of the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor will increase greatly.

In addition to the benefits set by the rules in the free trade zone, Azerbaijan has reduced the costs for cargo transportation by high-capacity vehicles by 40 percent.

And as a result, the carriers operating between China, India and the EU will also pay attention to Azerbaijan.

Large range of goods for Azerbaijani consumers

Azerbaijani consumers too will benefit from the free trade zone's creation. As for example, the range of goods in the country will expand.

Moreover, the increased competitiveness and removal of customs duties will lead to lower prices for certain goods.

The increased competitiveness will also force the local producers to improve the quality of their products.

Further development of infrastructure

A free trade zone needs good infrastructure that usually provides more advantages than tax benefits. A free trade zone also often requires large capital investments in the modernization of roads, railways and ports, which is currently underway in Azerbaijan.

For instance, according to Taleh Ziyadov, a roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) terminal will be built at the new Baku port by late 2016, and the first phase of its development will end in 2017.

Meanwhile, it is planned to increase the speed of trains running through Azerbaijan's territory up to 80 to 120 kilometers per hour.

Azerbaijan can also consider constructing an airport near the new Baku port.

Great work is ahead of Azerbaijan, which will eventually bring large investments and benefits, and will turn the Baku free trade zone into a large logistics and trade center standing at the crossroads of China, India, Iran, Russia and Europe.

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Maksim Tsurkov is Trend Agency's staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Advocates for ex-offenders will gather at Heritage Square on Saturday to urge employers to give former inmates a chance to make an honest living.

Leaders of Fair Chance Waco, an advocacy group formed by Mission Waco Legal Services, are expecting elected officials, employers and ex-offenders to join them at the 10 a.m. rally.

The group is asking employers to do away with blanket bans on hiring ex-felons, instead doing individualized assessments that balance the applicants skills and references with the nature and severity of the crime committed, the nature of the job and the time elapsed since the offense.

A petition by the group on change.org won more than 1,000 signatures seeking a city or county policy requiring employers to follow those principles, but Fair Chance Waco is backing off the idea of making it a law, said Kent McKeever, an attorney at Mission Waco Legal Services.

What we really want in the immediate future is to build support among the business community, to gather employers willing to give people with criminal records a fair chance, and to get them to help lead the effort, McKeever said. We want them to see it as a good thing for them, for their employees, for their business and for their community.

The rally will include employers from local businesses that are open to interviewing ex-offenders, such as Fuego Tortilla Grill and The Reinforced Earth Company. McKeever said a state legislator and two Waco City Council members, including Councilman Dillon Meek, have indicated they will attend.

The city of Waco has already lowered barriers to ex-offender employment as part of the Prosper Waco effort to reduce poverty in the community.

We found it encouraging that the city was trying to lead the way in giving people a fair chance, McKeever said.

McKeever made national headlines in 2014, when he spent the 40 days of Lent dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit to dramatize the stigma ex-offenders face. Since then, Mission Waco Legal Services has printed up orange T-shirts for the cause, and rally participants are encouraged to wear them.

Jerrod Clark, a social work official at Mission Waco who has joined McKeever in the Fair Chance campaign, said the well-being of the entire community is affected by the treatment of ex-offenders.

This is a baby step toward equality, Clark said. We have to work toward equity to get to equality. If we disenfranchise people and dont include everyone, crime and poverty will continue.

For more information visit www.fairchancewaco.org.
A move by the engineering firm Walker Partners to the former Pioneer Savings and Loan building is a vote of confidence in a resurgent downtown, President George E. Jed Walker says.

The marble-fronted building at 823 Washington Ave. has been empty since 1991, the low point of the savings-and-loan bust.

Last week Walker bought it from businessman Gordon Robinson, taking it off the dwindling list of vacant downtown buildings. Walker intends to renovate the building during the next year and move in about 30 surveyors and engineers, leaving room for a potential leased space for another professional firm.

Walker, who currently leases office space on Austin Avenue, said he never considered moving out of the central business district.

We like being downtown, Walker said. Since we moved here in 2004, weve all seen downtown transform.

Its a fun place to work, he said. There are restaurants and activities going on. There are a lot of places to get a cup of coffee with a client and places to go after work.

Walker has retained Keith Bailey of RBDR Architects to design the remodel, which could include enclosing a covered carport on the back of the building to maximize space.

But he said he doesnt plan to make radical alterations to the look of the building, which was erected for Pioneer Savings and Loans headquarters in 1955. The building is notable for its black and white marble exterior, its corner atrium, large windows and original floors of terrazzo and travertine.

Its one of the few midcentury designs in downtown Waco, Walker said.

Megan Henderson, executive director of City Center Waco, said shes pleased to see Walker making an investment in downtowns future and said it proves downtowns increasing appeal.

It think its wonderful and makes a lot of sense, Henderson said. I agree that building has some really cool architectural features that make it unusual in downtown, and Im excited that (the owner) will be someone who appreciates that uniqueness and wants to play it up.

Walker, a Waco native and Texas A&M graduate, left the Wallace Group in 2004 to start his own firm. He chose to lease from David Lacy at St. Charles Place at 600 Austin Ave., at a time when Austin Avenue was lined with empty buildings.

When I moved down here I was a little leery, Walker said. I didnt know what to expect.

But he said downtowns vibrancy has grown along with his own business, and it has proven to be a good environment for clients and employees.

Senior project manager Nancy Nichols said she originally didnt feel safe walking around downtown, but now she walks to visit clients or get a bite to eat.

I think things have really changed, Nichols said.

Walker Partners clients include the city of Waco, which has hired the firm for major road, airport and utility improvements now underway. The company also is working on major projects for McLennan County and the cities of McGregor, Robinson and Bellmead.

The firm, which has offices in Austin and Killeen, has about 350 active projects in the works in Central Texas, including work in Temple, Schertz, Seguin and Austin, where it is designing a major hike and bike system.

Strong office market

Bland Cromwell, commercial broker at Coldwell Banker Realtors, handled the sale of the Pioneer building. He said downtown has a strong office market, and tenants should be easy find both for the Pioneer building and for the space Walker leaves behind at St. Charles Place.

Everything is getting absorbed, Cromwell said. The Pioneer building is a great fit for Jed, not only because of space and visibility but because it came with parking.

The property has 46 parking spaces on-site, plus street parking.

The building once housed both Pioneer Savings and Loan and a law firm upstairs. Pioneer, founded in Waco in 1922, built it in 1955 during a postwar housing boom that meant flush times for savings and loan businesses. Southwest Savings bought the company in 1987, but the company failed in 1991 during the savings and loan crisis. Its assets were sold to a Kilgore company that closed the branches in downtown and on Valley Mills Drive.

Gordon Robinson said the building was a vacant pigeon roost when he bought it in 2008, along with most of the 800 block of Washington Avenue.

Robinson said he bought the building to be able to control the property adjacent to his other investment, which includes the Baylor School of Social Work building. He was reluctant to sell it until Walker came along.

It seemed like the right time and the right use, he said. I think it will be a fantastic addition to downtown.
Multiple Region 12 school districts were recognized for their exceptional work in education communications at the 54th annual Star Awards Celebration, hosted by Texas School Public Relations Association (TSPRA) at the Horseshoe Bay Resort in Horseshoe Bay.

Awards were classified by media outlet, such as newsletters, posters, photography, graphics and websites, and categorizes were further divided by population reached. Nearly 1,100 entries were received and evaluated by independent judges not affiliated with TSPRA.

Waco ISD received five Gold awards, one Bronze and two medals for Best of Category for brochure and annual report.

Midway ISD received one Bronze award, one Gold award, one medal for Best of Category for Special Event and a Crystal Certificate of Merit for the Hewitt Elementary Bus Shelter Project.

The Hillsboro ISD Education Foundation received two Gold awards and one medal for Best of Category for program.

Education Service Center (ESC) Region 12 received six Gold, four Silver and one medal for Best of Category for the Summer Symposiums marketing campaign.

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ESC Region 12 photos

Representatives from around Region 12 with their awards included (from left) Mary Senter, Waco ISD; Wendy Sledd, Copperas Cove ISD; Kristin Zastoupil, Corsicana ISD; Kaitlyn Skinner, ESC Region 12; Jennifer Marshall-Higgins, ESC Region 12; Traci Marlin, Midway ISD; Sarah-Jane Menefee, ESC Region 12; and Krystin Peaslee, Waco ISD.

Hillsboro Education Foundation Director Katharine Matthys receives a Best of Category medal at the TSPRA Star Awards from President Ian Halperin.
The Young Marines, a national youth organization, has named Sgt. Maj. Seraphina Faye Gayle, 17, of Waco, as one of six division winners of its Division Young Marine of the Year Award.

Gayle is a member of the Heart of Texas Young Marines, which is under the command of Henry Gonzales. She is a junior at Rapoport Academys Meyer High School.

The six winners are invited to the annual Reunion of Honor trip to Guam and Iwo Jima this spring, where they will act as escorts for the veterans during the trip. This year marks the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and the 72nd for Guam. Annually, American and Japanese veterans come together for remembrances of their fallen brothers and to recall the battles that took place on the two islands during World War II.

From these six winners, one will be named the National Young Marine of the Year, which will be announced May 7 at the adult leaders conference in Las Vegas.

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Seraphina Gayle of Rapoports Meyer High School is the Division 6 Young Marine of the Year.
A West man was convicted Thursday in the 2012 strangulation assault on his wife and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Jurors in Wacos 54th State District Court deliberated about 30 minutes before convicting Jay Warren Arnold, 39, of aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping.

Arnold, a former minor league pitcher drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers, faced up to life in prison on each of the two counts. The jury sentenced him to 60 years in prison for each count, to be served concurrently, plus a $10,000 fine on each count.

They deliberated for about two hours before deciding Arnolds punishment.

During a week of emotional testimony, Katie Arnold, his estranged wife and the mother of their three children, testified Tuesday that Arnold assaulted her and dragged her in a headlock to the garage, where he wrapped insulated copper wiring around an exposed wooden stud and then looped it tightly around her neck.

She told jurors that she thought he was going to kill her.

He put it around my neck and twisted it and then went around my neck again and twisted it like a bread tie, around and around, she said.

During the sentencing phase Thursday afternoon, prosecutors called the crime horrendous and said Arnolds estranged wife and children would never be safe if Arnold is allowed to be released on probation  a request made by the defense. Prosecutors Gabrielle Massey and Robert Moody told the jury about how the fear would not end for Katie Arnold unless he was sentenced to life in prison.

Defense attorney Michelle Tuegel told jurors to think of Arnold as a human who is seeking mercy.

Look at him not just as a monster that the state is calling him but as a human being that can still love, Tuegel said. He is a broken man . . . A prison sentence is a death sentence.

Arnold took the stand Wednesday. He testified he could not remember the night of the attack but said he would never do something like what he was accused of. He did not testify for the sentencing phase.

Arnolds mother, Valerie Crail, insisted that better care for her son would be available outside of a state prison. Crail said her son would comply with all probation guidelines.

Does it not scare you that your son almost killed his wife? Massey asked Crail in cross-examination.

I know that was not my son. I dont think my son knowingly and intentionally did that, Crail said.

After sentencing, a bailiff escorted Arnold from the courtroom.
Politicians in Mississippi have used campaign money to pay for such things as a BMW, an RV and $800 cowboy boots. In Wisconsin, a railroad executive was caught violating contribution limits after an ex-girlfriend he met on a sugar-daddy dating website reported him for illegally funneling cash to Gov. Scott Walkers campaign. Key to the investigation, election officials say, was a requirement that donors disclose their employers  but Republican lawmakers have since wiped out this rule.

Meanwhile, dark money spending by outside groups that arent required to disclose their donors is expected to explode during this presidential election year. States can take action to stem the tide at the local level, but few have. Congress could require more disclosure about who is financing campaigns, but it has made no move to do so.

Yet disclosure may be the publics best and often only remaining way of knowing who is supporting political candidates in the wake of recent court decisions.

Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote in an opinion in favor of disclosing petition signatures.

The U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has ruled in favor of public disclosure of campaign contributions, even in its earth-moving and controversial Citizens United decision. The 2010 ruling found that political spending is protected under the First Amendment  and that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on political activities.

It effectively wiped out key campaign finance regulations that had been in effect for decades. But it also upheld disclosure requirements.

That and other Supreme Court decisions have resulted in unprecedented amounts of money pouring into elections. Because Congress has not acted to require further disclosure, the old limits are gone and new rules have not been passed to take their place, leaving citizens more in the dark than ever about whether elected officials are working for them or for special interests behind their campaigns.

Richard Hasen, a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, said that despite the highest courts support for disclosure of campaign donors, the Federal Election Commission and Congress remain frozen when it comes to requiring greater transparency about who is funding political groups: Political operators often look for ways to shield their donors. The laws have to be constantly updated.

Congress could quickly require more disclosure if there was the political will to do so, said Hasen, author of the book Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court and the Distortion of American Elections. Groups that advocate for more transparency say the federal stalemate has driven reform efforts to the local level in some states, where they see greater opportunity to push for change.

Targeting states seems like the only outlet for making change at this level, said David Donnelly, CEO of Every Voice, an organization working to advance state ballot initiatives that would require more disclosure about money in politics.

Donnelly argues state-level efforts, if successful, could restore the faith of voters who perceive an uninhibited flow of money into politics. The changes also could generate interest that would build the political power, around the country, to eventually press Congress to require some reporting of donors in national elections.

States as battlegrounds

Efforts to change state disclosure laws are not just a function of opportunity, advocates say. They also are a necessity, given a state-level influx of dark money paralleling the federal flood.

Attempts to force more disclosure from outside special-interest groups have succeeded in some states. But theres a limit to what states can do, since they dont have oversight of spending on federal races  such as presidential and congressional contests, consistently the costliest elections. While some state election agencies have moved to make more donor information public, they often struggle to win support from lawmakers, said Denise Roth Barber of the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Barbers group is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization  known as a 501(c)3  which isnt required to publicly disclose its donors but voluntarily identifies major contributors.

In a number of states, lawmakers have rejected bills seeking to expand disclosure requirements to politically active groups. Some cheer that result.

Since Republicans are in the majority in most state legislatures, these efforts have often failed, said Bradley Smith, founder and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics.

The center, a group that also isnt required to publicly disclose its donors, opposes campaign contribution limits, public financing of political campaigns and many disclosure requirements for private groups, as well as campaigns.

State lawmakers in Arizona are working to pass a bill stating that nonprofit groups cannot be categorized as seeking to influence elections and thus cannot be compelled to disclose their donors. The legislation also would change what share of money some outside groups can spend on ballot measures without being required to register as a political committee. But their spending would still be disclosed.

Theres definitely a push to get more disclosure  that is a trend, said Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman. But the reverse side is that it has been to a large extent unsuccessful, and I think that reflects the fact that disclosure has been abused and made into a partisan issue.

Fight over disclosure

More than a century ago, Congress created the legal framework for nonprofit groups devoted to social welfare. Those groups did not have to disclose their donors. But in the 1950s, regulators expanded the exemption from disclosure. Instead of applying only to groups focused exclusively on social welfare, the exemption applied to groups primarily engaged in such activities.

In the wake of Citizens United, which allowed these groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on political activities, they have become increasingly popular with donors who want to keep their spending secret.

Candidates themselves are required to provide basic information about donors to their own official campaign coffers: names, addresses and the amounts of their contributions. In many states, those who make contributions over a certain amount must list their employers. However, Smith said information about political donors was being used to harass or intimidate them, citing boycotts, Twitter mobs and other activities he believes push ordinary people to decide not to contribute.

James Bopp Jr., a conservative attorney based in Indiana, said he supports transparency for public officials, but that its another matter when people obtain and use information about donors to punish them and harass them.

More than $308 million in dark money was spent during the 2012 election cycle, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. Of that, about 86 percent was spent by conservative groups, 11 percent by liberal groups and 3 percent by others. The center found that, as recently as the 2006 cycle, dark money spending tallied only about $700,000. Four years later, for the 2010 cycle, it reached $127 million.

Smith estimates that dark money makes up only a tiny fraction of total political spending, saying most is still done by candidates and parties.

But Fred Wertheimer, president of the government transparency group Democracy 21, argues there is nowhere near enough information about money in politics: Unlimited secret contributions are the most dangerous money in American politics. Theres no way of knowing whether that individual is getting government benefits in return.

Even though the Citizens United ruling upheld disclosure, the 2010 decision triggered a flood of more than $500 million in secret contributions in the various elections following the ruling, Wertheimer said.

Kevin Kennedy, director and general counsel of the Wisconsin board that oversees ethics and elections, echoes Scalias comments about the importance of disclosure in politics.

When we talk about more speech, maybe there should be more disclosure, too, he said. Its an act of political courage. Its something we foster. Youre judged by the company you keep.

Mary Spicuzza is a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Jeremy B. White is a reporter for the Sacramento Bee.
Ten billion dollars. Thats what some experts predict the 2016 election will cost (at least financially). And thats just what we can track because of the exorbitant rise of dark money spending  mostly on negative ads that can make or break a candidate. This kind of political spending from groups that do not have to disclose their donors has risen by an astronomical 5,188 percent since 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

This Sunshine Week, as news organizations and advocates reflect on the progress weve made on transparency and right-to-know reforms, it is critical to urge President Obama to sign an executive order that would shine a light on one tranche of money in politics by requiring disclosure of all political spending by businesses that receive taxpayer money through federal contracts. That way, voters would know who is behind efforts to influence their vote. Likewise, it would ensure that government contracts go to companies offering the most efficient and high-quality product or service  not those who pay to play.

Across the ideological spectrum, there is a growing consensus in America that the dominance of political money coming from a small group of vested interests must be curtailed. Last year the New York Times reported a mere 158 wealthy families contributed nearly half the funding for the 2016 presidential race. This concentration of political influence contributes to the sentiment behind the equal percentages of liberals and conservatives  76 percent  who say money has more power than ever before, according to the Pew Research Center.

Moreover, 87 percent of Americans believe our system should be reformed so that a rich person does not have more influence than a person without money. And 91 percent of likely Republican 2016 Iowa caucus-goers reported they were unsatisfied or mad as hell about the amount of money in politics.

Our imbalanced campaign finance system is a significant contributor to the electorates overwhelming feeling of disempowerment. One popular remedy with bipartisan support to fix this insidious problem is transparency. Public opinion is strongly in favor of it  78 percent of both Democrats and Republicans in an Associated Press poll said they agree with requiring donor disclosure. Presidential candidates from both parties have spoken out in favor of more transparency, including Republican frontrunners Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz.

The executive order that awaits the presidents signature is the one common-sense disclosure reform that would give Americans the right to know how much federal contractors are spending in our elections. This would help restore trust in our government. It would help ensure taxpayer-funded federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars are awarded based on merit and competition  not on which company can dole out the most campaign contributions. The executive order would cover a large number of companies, including 70 percent of the Fortune 100.

And it would not run afoul of the ban Congress established on disclosure of political donations during the bidding process, instead requiring businesses to disclose after they have been awarded a government contract. Its also not unprecedented: Three states (New Jersey, Utah and Delaware) have similar rules on the books to discourage pay-to-play politics in their local democracies.

Yet it languishes, even though it would not require a Supreme Court decision nor approval by Congress and enjoys broad public support  including by a resounding 66 percent of Republican voters. High-profile Republican political leaders echo this call, including:

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman who said, This executive order is about fairness for taxpayers.

Former South Dakota Sen. Larry Pressler, who decried the current system, saying: (When) Congress hands out billion-dollar checks to companies that have paid for preferential treatment, thats not a free market. Thats not small or smart government. And its certainly not a cost-effective use of our money.

Former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter, who lamented Obamas delay in signing this order, saying: I have no idea why this was not done by the president years ago given [White House] statements about the importance of disclosure.

Democratic leaders, too, support the order. More than 130 members of the presidents own party in Congress have called on him to act including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and, in a recent op-ed, Rep. Steve Israel, the former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who earlier this year announced his impending retirement from Congress because of the exorbitant time spent dialing for dollars.

And the people have spoken out in favor, with more than one million of Americans publicly rallying behind it. More than 117,000 citizens petitioned the White House through its official We the People platform, making this particular petition one of the few to have earned an official response from the administration, albeit one that failed to do little more than thank signers for their concern.

Its true this administration has many pressing priorities, but for President Obamas promises and rhetoric concerning better politics to stick, the onus is now on him to ensure that this executive order does not die on the vine.

Gabriela Schneider is senior director of communications at IssueOne, dedicated to battling the influence of money in politics.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF) has paid the compensations worth over 23 million manats to clients of the bankrupt Bank of Azerbaijan, a statement posted on ADIF's website said March 18.

The official exchange rate is 1.5971 AZN/USD as of March 18.

The applications have been received from Bank of Azerbaijan's insured depositors since January 29, 2016.

The amount of the insured deposits in Bank of Azerbaijan is 24.2 million manats. The payments are made in the branches of Muganbank and Rabitabank, assigned as agent banks.

At the same time, more than 821,000 manats have been paid to Ganja Bank's clients since Feb. 4. In general, the amount of insured deposits in Ganja Bank is 1.5 million manats.

The payments to Ganja Bank's depositors are made in the branches of Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank.

ADIF has also started paying compensations to Texnikabank's depositors since February 12. More than 98 million manats have been paid to the bank's clients recently.

The payments to Texnikabank's depositors are made in the branches of Muganbank, Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank.

The fund returns up to 30,000 manats for each insured deposit.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey supports Azerbaijani energy projects in the region, Yeniakit newspaper quoted Turkish minister of economy Mustafa Elitash March 18 as saying.

He said that such important projects as TANAP and Star refinery testify to the significance of the Azerbaijan-Turkey relations.

Star refinery is expected to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2018.

The annual naphtha production volume, used by Petkim as the main raw material, will hit 1.66 million tons at the Star refinery.

Along with naphtha, the new oil refinery will produce diesel fuel with ultra-low sulfur to the amount of 5.95 million tons, aviation kerosene - 500,000 tons, reformate - 500,000 tons, petroleum coke - 630,000 tons, liquefied gas - 240,000 tons, mixed xylene - 415,000 tons, olefin LPG - 75,000 tons and 145,000 tons of sulfur. The refinery will not produce petrol and fuel oil.

It is planned to refine Azeri Light, Kerkuk and URALS oil at the plant.

TANAP project envisages transportation of gas of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field from Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey.

Turkey will get gas in 2018 and after completing the construction of Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), it will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.

Currently, the shareholders of TANAP are: the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) - 58 percent, Botas - 30 percent and BP - 12 percent.
Who will you meet in the galleries of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force? Be one of the first to visit the museums new fourth building, and you can find out! On June 11-12, the museum will come alive with special activities to celebrate the grand opening of the fourth building, which will feature 10 presidential aircraft and a world-class collection of flight test aircraft, along with the Space Shuttle Exhibit and huge cargo planes. Visitors can climb aboard the Space Shuttle Exhibit, walk through four presidential and three cargo aircraft, and try out the Air Force Museum Foundations new suite of simulator rides, including the Pulseworks Virtual Reality Transporter, the first of its kind in North America, featuring an exclusive Space Voyage experience.

To celebrate the grand opening, entertaining and educational activities are being planned from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. on June 11-12. Throughout the weekend, the museum and a number of partner organizations will offer free hands-on activities for all ages, including educational demonstrations, special costumed characters, the Air Forces customized Vapor Special Ops Supercar, plus a number of displays from the Air Force and other groups. Most activities are free, although there is a cost for simulator rides and movies at the Air Force Museum Theatre.The 224,000 square foot fourth building, which opens to the public on June 8, will house more than 70 aircraft, missiles and space vehicles in four new galleries  Space, Research & Development, Global Reach and Presidential. Three dedicated, interactive educational spaces, known as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Learning Nodes, will accommodate student-centered, technology-enhanced learning through hands-on programs, demonstrations and lectures. When not in use for structured educational programming, there will be a variety of programs available to the visiting public, including science and engineering demonstrations, hands-on activities, special presentations, videos and more.

Mark your calendars for this special weekend of activities and watch the museums website, www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/ Expansion.aspx, for up-to-date details.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 16

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR exported about 320 million cubic meters of gas to Georgia since the beginning of 2016, a source in SOCAR told Trend March 16.

"In average, nearly 5.3 million cubic meters of gas per day has been exported to Georgia since the beginning of the year, which is almost 50 percent more than in 2015," said the source.

Over 70 million cubic meters of gas has been exported to Iran since the beginning of 2016 with a daily volume of 1.2 million cubic meters of gas, according to the source.

SOCAR exported 1.36 billion cubic meters of gas to Georgia in 2015.

Azerbaijan exports gas to Georgia via a pipeline linking the two countries in the Azerbaijani district of Gazakh.

This pipeline can pump about three billion cubic meters of gas a year.

Deliveries to Iran are carried out in order to provide gas to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (NAR), located in the blockade because of the occupation of Azerbaijani lands' 20 percent by Armenia.

About 287 million cubic meters of gas was delivered from Azerbaijan to Iran in 2015 for the needs of NAR.

Azerbaijan and Iran are connected with the Gazi-Magomed-Astara-Bind-Biand gas pipeline, 1,474.5-kilometers long, and also 296.5 kilometers in the Azerbaijan's territory. This route is a branch of the Gazakh-Astara-Iran pipeline commissioned in 1971. Three compressor stations - Gazi-Magomed, Aghdash and Gazakh - were built.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Increase of export duty on oil from Russia is a forced measure explained by prolonged sanctions of the West against the Russian Federation, a consultant for the Expert Council of the Union of Russian Oil and Gas Producers Eldar Kasaev told Trend March 18.

The duty on oil export from Russia will increase by $15.4 to $54.9 per ton starting from April 1 (compared to $39.5 per ton in March), according to the ministry of finance of Russia. The average price for Urals crude oil for the monitoring period from February 15 to March 14, 2016 amounted to $33.38643 per barrel, or $243.7 per ton, according to the ministry.

"Such a measure has been adopted in a situation when prolonged Western sanctions urge the government to make decisive, often uncompromising steps," said Kasaev.

He went on to add that this doesn't always satisfy business, but officials try to meet oil workers halfway, if possible.

"For example, in accordance with the new formula, preferential rate of duty on crude oil from East Siberia, Caspian fields, Prirazlomnoye oil field will remain at zero level (as it is now) if the average price for raw materials is lower than $65 per barrel," said the expert. "It should be recalled that the export duty has been gradually reducing since March 2015."

Today, oil producing countries have to cut investment programs and maintain only the most profitable projects, said Kasaev, adding that states are not to blame for all the problems in this sector.

The expert noted that the prices for motor gasoline will also rise in 2016, since the excise duty on gasoline will again increase from April 1.

The government has adopted this decision based on the required budget policy, according to Kasaev.

Moreover, Russia's multi-year tax maneuver in oil industry, leads to higher fuel prices at the country's gas filling stations, he added.

The export duty on high-viscosity oil will rise from $4.2 per ton in March to $6.2 per ton in April, according to Russia's Finance Ministry.

Edited by SI



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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Premier Investments' bold expansion of the Smiggle stationery chain in Britain is paying off, with the group's 42 Smiggle stores trading significantly ahead of budget as British parents and youngsters shell out with gusto for bright pencil cases, backpacks and trinkets.

Premier's retail operations, which also include fashion stores Just Jeans, Jay Jays and Portmans, and sleepwear group Peter Alexander, have delivered a strong first-half result, with net profit up 26 per cent to $71.5 million.

Premier Investments CEO Mark McInnes, left, and chairman Solomon Lew, say Smiggle is heading to being a global business. Credit:Greg Briggs

Premier chairman, billionaire Solomon Lew, said all seven retail brands in the stable, which also includes Dotti and Jacqui E, had generated positive same-store sales growth. Overall, the like-for-like sales, which strips out the impact of new store openings, increased by 6.9 per cent. Total sales revenue was up 15.1 per cent to $565 million. Mr Lew said Smiggle was on course to be a global business and would be successful wherever there were children.

"The world is the big prize. It's going to be a world brand," he said on Friday.
I write this from London, where Donald Trump is only the second biggest story. But it's an instructive vantage point from which to watch the Republican odyssey. In one sense, it's about the furthest place you can imagine from Trump's unvarnished parochialism. Trump probably sounds foreign to anyone not in his thrall: like the themes are vaguely familiar but the language isn't.

But in London  a thoroughly global city  Trump inhabits a completely different planet. He's not merely talking strangely  something of a feat in a city that's home to more than 300 languages  he's expressing inconceivable thoughts. Mexicans (or Arabs or Asians) aren't remarkable here. London doesn't build walls. It's boundless.

But in another sense, this is the kind of city that made Trump. Its increasing number of kinky skyscrapers stand as testaments to global capital: shiny, innovative. London has always had a sense of old money  how could it not with its parade of palaces and castles? Now it's just money. Money with no apparent local history, and certainly no need for it. The kind of money that is its own justification. Money that, to riff on a central Trump theme, wins.

But all that winning creates losers. London is now systematically expelling its own people because, with the fabulously wealthy parking their money there, it's an increasingly rare Londoner who can even afford to rent. Soon we'll see schools unable to find teachers because no one on a teacher's salary can live close enough to work there. Turns out this glorious, boundless world has boundaries after all. It erects its walls, too, just not with Trump's bellicosity.
Science has a reputation for being all head and no heart but for one Melbourne researcher the fight to crack a genetic code has become personal. Dr Elena Tucker, from Melbourne's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, will next week receive a prestigious L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Rising Talent award. Handed out at the Sorbonne, in Paris, the award (Dr Tucker's second, she received a Australian L'Oreal fellowship in 2014) recognises her recent work trying to understand premature menopause. Elena Tucker, fertility researcher at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, is about to fly to Paris to receive the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Woman in Science International Rising Talent award. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer Also known as primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), this fertility-affecting disease affects one-in-100 women. By a quirk of fate, 32-year-old Dr Tucker, who stopped having regular periods when she was a teenager, is six months pregnant with her second child, conceived via IVF. "I guess it was a bit coincidental that I fell into the lab that had the opportunity to study these women," she says of her study's 30 patients, who have the most severe form of POI, developed in childhood and adolescence.

"But I definitely had the motivation because although I didn't have premature menopause, I did have fertility problems and from a young age I've known it would be difficult to have kids. It did occupy my thoughts a fair bit and the idea of being able to help some women that experienced that feeling is pretty important to me  and motivating." The average age of menopause is 51. But it's still unclear why premature menopause can strike some girls and young women so early. Dr Tucker has spent the past year crunching the DNA sequences of the women in her study, hoping to isolate the gene or genes responsible so other at-risk women can be identified before the damage of menopause sets in. This would enable eggs to be preserved for future IVF use. "Then, more broadly, if we can understand what goes wrong with ovaries that's when we can start to think about how to treat it and intervene to prevent that problem." Premature menopause has also been linked to osteoporosis, heart disease and early mortality. But finding the right gene is like looking through a book with 3 billion letters, Dr Tucker explains. "We're searching through to find the single spelling mistake that changes the book's meaning. It's quite a challenge." Complicating the task are all the other "spelling mistakes": genes that make some people tall or short, others blonde or brunette, for example.
Once upon a time there was a dress so alluring, every girl in the kingdom coveted it. No wonder: made in China and spun from the finest polyester and gauze, in hues of vivid pink and purple, this was a gown befitting the fairest Disney princesses in the land: Snow White and Cinderella, Belle and Rapunzel.

But now there's a new Disney heroine in town - and this one wouldn't be seen dead in a silly old princess dress. Just opened in Australia, the wildly wonderful Zootopia tells the tale of Judy Hopps, a young bunny who dreams of becoming the first rabbit to serve on the police force of her animal city.

Unlike her predecessor, the pneumatic Jessica Rabbit, Judy's bottom is bigger than her bust and she wears not a princess dress but a smart cop uniform. She has no love interest - her only passion is for her job - and she dreams of career fulfilment rather than a wedding ring. When she first casts eyes on the grotty apartment she has rented, her sigh of delight is Virginia Woolf-esque in its satisfaction at finally having a room of her own.

Widely hailed as a clever commentary on diversity, Zootopia is also the latest attempt by Disney to deflect criticism that its Princess oeuvre is insidiously sexist. Starting with the Little Mermaid's Ariel in 1989, Disney's "Renaissance Era" saw a decade of princesses less passive and drippy than their pre-feminist sisters Snow White and Cinderella.
That wouldn't surprise anyone who caught his 2014 John Peel lecture on Free Music in a Capitalist Society, or more recent musings on a career of corporate "humiliation" and life as an unassailable Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame legend doing fashion shoots to make ends meet. The rest of the kiss-off is on the record, between the acerbic recrimination of Vulture, the earnest yearning for American Valhalla and the bilious rejection of the whole phoney and spiritless techno-world in Paraguay. "My very particular quirk in my vocational history," he says, "is that although I started out in a field that's supposed to provide an occasion for self-expression, I ended up for many years having to suppress all sorts of aspects of self-expression, for all sorts of reasons, to survive and prosper. "After a while, you just wanna say what's on your mind and you don't give a f---." After a while, you just wanna say what's on your mind and you don't give a f---. Iggy Pop

Given decades of collegial tension and company rejections, ownership was key to this project. No managers, no labels. Pop had met Homme on only a couple of fleeting backstage passes, but he knew him well enough to fire off a text that read, in full: "I thought maybe we could write something and record it. Iggy Pop." The only song he had was written "on a sort of lonesome day in 2014," he says. "I didn't wanna tour that year. I needed a break from being in front of peeps. And I wrote the three verses and choruses to the song that appears last on the album, Paraguay." That's the one that begins, "I'm goin' where sore losers go/ To hide my face and spend my dough/ Though it's a dream it's not a lie/ And I won't stop to say goodbye." "I was in a little house that I have here where I tell the truth," he says. "I just wanted to walk away. From everything. And basically I knew I wasn't gonna. Hah! Out came that song and I recognised truth in it, and also quality."

At the same time, he recognised he'd need a collaborator "who could help me modernise [the sound] and expound on some of these themes, and do so with me singing in my natural baritone voice, without having to scream." It was only after he was ensconced in Homme's Mojave Desert studio that he realised the potency of the partnership. "Honestly, if Stevie Wonder had a band defection on Friday, Josh could come in Saturday and fill. He is that flexible. And that good. He could do the same thing with Led Zeppelin." Just as importantly, Homme proved a worthy foil to Pop's intellectual curiosity. It was another text conversation that conjured the notion of American Valhalla, a concept that resonates deeply in the lungs of one of that battle-scarred nation's senior rock warriors. "One of the underlying currents of life here for many years now  is this constant low-grade war going on," he says. "You see these guys on the streets. They come back and some of them don't do so well.

"At the same time, I was kinda feeling like a [war veteran] myself, and then the whole experience of becoming recognised by the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame begs that question. Is there an American Valhalla?" If only some of his closest war buddies could speak. Stooges Ron and Scott Asheton have both died in the last seven years. David Bowie is off-limits for this interview, though the spirit of those two Berlin albums of the late '70s, The Idiot and Lust For Life, was something Homme specifically sought to reference, Pop says. Asked how such clear and present reminders of mortality affect his work, he's perhaps understandably reticent. "It creeps up little by little. I wouldn't say it casts a shadow, but it casts a kind of ... gauze, is the best way I can put it. A curtain. How 'bout that?" The spotlight is about to blaze cruelly on this side of the curtain, as the rock vet steels himself to forsake the domestic beachside routine he shares with his third wife, Nina Alu, for what he calls a bout of "grunt touring" with Homme. He hopes they'll make it to Australia in January, when the weather won't mess with his health. That's another subject he skirts around with a hint of anxiety. For a man who turns 69 next month, it can't be easy for James Osterberg to be the incandescent explosion of raw power that we've known for 45 years as Iggy Pop. But he will say this.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 18

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend:

Turkmenistan and the Czech Republic discussed the expansion of cooperation and the possibility of partnership in the fuel and energy industry, transportation and communications sectors, read a Turkmen government message, released March 18.

These discussions took place during a meeting with the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, Jan Hamacek, at the parliament of Turkmenistan.

Trade and economic partnership, cooperation in industry, agriculture, pharmaceutical sector, high technologies, use of alternative energy sources and investment activity were named the promising areas of cooperation between the two countries.

Turkmenistan is one of the main partners of the EU in the sphere of energy security. Delivery of gas from the Caspian region to the EU will allow diversifying the supply sources.
Trumponomics will bring recession rather than a great economic revival. Credit:AP "There's a tendency, in the third election in a row for a party, for there to be some sense of complacency," said former White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. What Democrats need to do in the coming months is clear, he said: "The difference between Donald Trump winning or losing is whether Obama's 2008 coalition turns out in 2016." Many Democrats think that if Mr Trump is the GOP nominee, he will help the Democratic Party solve the mobilisation problem. They think that Mr Trump's strident anti-immigrant positions and his controversial comments about women and minorities will help Democrats in the fall. Latino voters, especially, are receiving the attention of advocacy groups, including super PACs friendly to the Clinton campaign and to Democrats in general. Liberal investor George Soros is among the backers helping to amass about $US15 million ($19.7 million) for a super PAC devoted to increasing the participation of Latino voters as well as African Americans and women.

Democratic Party officials say they are taking the threat of a Trump nomination seriously and plan to begin attacking him immediately, on policy and on his temperament. They also vow not to make the mistakes that Mr Trump's GOP opponents made early in the primary season. They are not assuming that the billionaire real estate magnate will self-destruct, they say. "We're ready for Donald Trump," DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters on Wednesday. "We're not treating him like the laughing stock that Republican establishment folks treated him for far too long." Mr Obama in recent days has been in the forefront of those taking Mr Trump seriously. More than once, the President has gone on extended riffs about why he thinks Mr Trump as a political leader is bad for the country. "The best leaders, the leaders who are worthy of our votes, remind us that even in a country as big and diverse and inclusive as ours, what we've got in common is far more important than what divides any of us," he said in Dallas last Saturday, just as reports about violence at Trump rallies were dominating the news. Increasingly, Mr Obama has been using Mr Trump's candidacy to talk about what kind of country the United States is becoming. At a St Patrick's Day luncheon at the Capitol on Tuesday, Mr Obama again alluded to Mr Trump's harsh campaign rhetoric.

"In America, there aren't laws that say that we have to be nice to each other, or courteous, or treat each other with respect. But there are norms. There are customs," he said. "The longer that we allow the political rhetoric of late to continue, and the longer that we tacitly accept it, we create a permission structure that allows the animosity in one corner of our politics to infect our broader society. And animosity breeds animosity." Clearly, once there is a Democratic nominee, which Mr Obama advisers say they expect will be Mrs Clinton, the President will hit the campaign trail on her behalf. He recently endorsed two Democrats involved in contested Senate primaries, former Ohio governor Ted Strickland and US Representative Patrick Murphy. And Mr Obama has begun making his case to the Democratic Party's most dedicated financial backers. "My main message to Democrats over the course of the next several months - I'm sure I'll be saying, 'Write cheques,' because that's part of the process - but what I'm really going to be saying to people is, 'Keep your eyes on the prize here,' " he said at the DNC fundraiser in Austin. "Change doesn't happen overnight, and we never get 100 per cent of change."

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in an email that Mr Obama will be "a huge liability" in swing states because he has "job approval numbers that continue to struggle." "An overwhelming majority of the people want a different approach than Obama," Mr Walters wrote. "Polls show Americans are tired of the status quo and want to take our country in a new direction." Democrats, by contrast, think the key to winning this year is, in the words of one party strategist, "more about mobilising your own voters than persuading some rapidly shrinking middle." Several Democratic strategists say they are confident that Mr Obama can boost turnout for their candidates in key states, including Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia. And if Mr Trump becomes the GOP nominee, they say, that could put more congressional seats in play. By contrast, the President rarely made it out on the trail in 2014, when Senate Democrats were running in states such as Arkansas and Alaska. "These are states growing in population, and they are growing in diversity," said Guy Cecil, co-chairman and chief strategist for Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Mrs Clinton. When it comes to Mr Obama, "he'll be a terrific validator for Hillary, or whoever is the Democratic nominee," Mr Cecil added.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, March 18

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Border troops of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan have taken measures to strengthen protection of the country's borders, including those with Kyrgyzstan, due to preparation for the celebration of Novruz holiday, according to the report of the Committee for State Border Protection of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan March 18.

At present, the situation at the Uzbek state border is calm, no incidents have been recorded, according to the committee.

Increased security measures have been taken in Uzbekistan on the eve of Novruz holiday, measures on protection of public order in places of holding festive celebrations, as well as on prevention of emergency situations and provision of road and fire safety have been strengthened in the country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:

Iran is carrying out gas exploration in its north-eastern Soufikom region, which is bordering with Turkmenistan.

Yousef Etemadi, director for exploration at the Khazar Oil Company, said the gas exploration reached 2,000 meters of depth, SHANA news agency reported.

"We expect to hit gas reserves if the operations are successful. But this is just a probability," he added.

The 56th rig of Iran's National Drilling Company started operations in the region in December 2015.

The rig is expected to end its operations in spring this year.
Tehran, Iran, March 17

By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend:

Iran's export of oil and gas condensates will reach their highest levels in the next Iranian fiscal year (to begin March 20), the country's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said.

He pointed out that during the Iranian month of Bahman (January 21 to February 19), the country added 300 thousand bpd to its oil export, IRIB news agency reported.

Iran has aimed at the production of four mbpd of oil. It suffered a severe decline of export due to sanctions. While before the sanctions the country used to export 2.3 mbpd, it could only export one mbpd up to January when the sanctions were lifted.

The country has refused to join an output boost freeze announced by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and some other countries. Zanganeh recently said Iran will not consider a freeze until it regains its official OPEC quota export.

Speaking about the ministry's priorities for the coming year, he said accomplishing development projects at South Pars, West Karun, as well as petrochemical units will be top on agenda.

Making deals on oil field developments and improving rural gas distribution to above 93 percent are other priorities, he said.
Tehran, Iran, March 18

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The Islamic Republic of Iran has condemned a recent terrorist attack in Nigeria that killed dozens of people.

Condoling the families of the victims, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said that such acts of terror show the necessity to launch an all-out campaign against extremism, the Iranian Foreign Ministry website reported March 18.

A suspected Boko Haram terrorist group suicide bomb attack on March 16 killed at least 22 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria.

Rescue officials said two female suicide bombers were believed to have carried out the attack, which injured 17 people. One bomber blew herself up inside the mosque and the second did so outside as survivors of the first blast tried to flee.
A pair of bodies discovered in Kentucky Lake this week
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 17, 2016 | 01:43 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Local authorities conducted a search along the Ohio River Thursday afternoon for someone that was reportedly on a railroad bridge as a train approached.

McCracken County Sheriff Jon Hayden said emergency management officials and sheriff's deputies went to the area of Metropolis Ferry Landing Road. Hayden said that a railroad employee reportedly saw a person on the bridge that spans the river to Metropolis, but the person was gone when the train reached that point.

Rescue boats and personnel were quickly dispatched to the scene to investigate, but Hayden said they were never sure if there was ever a person in the water.

Nothing unusual was found, and the search was eventually discontinued.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 18, 2016 | 10:09 AM | BENTON, KY

A utility contractor for the City of Benton plans to close a portion of the US 641/Poplar Street northbound one-way section in Benton on Sunday, March 20.

The northbound lanes of US 641/Poplar Street will be closed along the one-way section at mile point 8.7 in Benton to allow utility work to prepare for future reconstruction of KY 348/5th Street between US 641 and the Purchase Parkway Exit 43 Interchange. This northbound closure is along US 641/Poplar Street between 4th Street and 5th Street in Benton near the Marshall County Co-op Store.

The northbound lanes of US 641 will be closed at this site on Sunday, March 20, from approximately 6 am to about 3 pm. This northbound closure will extend from KY 408/8th Street to the US 641 Couplet at 5th Avenue where the one-way sections of US 641 meet the two-way section.

There will be no marked detour for northbound traffic. Passenger vehicles traffic may self-detour via KY 408/West 8th Street and Olive Street or Commerce Drive. Trucks should self-detour via an appropriate state route.

The southbound one-way section of US 641/Main Street through Benton will remain open during this utility work.
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The 439th Airlift Wings 58th Aerial Port Squadron has been SMSgt. Henrys home since 2014, when he left the Inactive Ready Reserve and returned to the active reserve after his first bout with a life-threatening disease.

The first time I went through cancer, I leaned heavily on my faith, SMSgt. Henry said. The cancer has returned, and on March 9, 2016, he was just days away from deciding between chemotherapy and alternative medicine.

Eventually its going to become clear to us in the next 24 to 48 hours, and if we pick the wrong choice, it could escalate the cancer and it could kill me, he said three days after a drill weekend, while traveling on the other side of the country with his wife Stacey Henry.

The high school sweethearts, of sorts, werent traveling on vacation: They were seeking a second-medical opinion. A lot of traditional medicine is just a bunch of testing with no real fix in sightand thats what scares us, they said.

RESILIENCY

My faith is very important to me, and I pray all the time that we make the right decisions, SMSgt. Henry said during a phone interview from an airport. He flew from his home in Washington to see world-renowned alternative medicine doctors in Nevada, and that was just days after flying from Westover for a drill weekend. A lot of the traditional medicine doctors told us that no alternatives will work.

SMSgt. Henry and his wife Stacey went to the same high school, but they reconnected after many years, and after separate marriages, on Facebook. Although they debate over who liked whose profile first, theyve been inseparable ever since.

As always, he said she was right by his side waiting for the flight back to Spokane. Theyve traveled the many miles together for Air Force work and to seek medical advice since his cancer returned in 2016. Now, SMSgt. Henry says, when he is so near to fulfilling his Airman goal of making chief in May, he finds himself in the fight of his life.

A few days earlier, during the March drill weekend, SMSgt. Henry stood an imposing, broad-shouldered figure, at least six feet; he said hell wear his military battle dress for as long as he can. I visited the base clinic, and Ill be back to drill as long as they clear me.

For SMSgt. Henry, and the more than 160 aerial port Airmen he mentors, the military is like family, and second to only his blood family.

In between drill weekends and medical visits are the quiet hours. The all-important time he gets to spend with his wife and kidsfour grown children, two from marriageand two granddaughters. He says lengthening and enriching that time requires a regiment of chemotherapy, among other acts of resilience, all in defiance of the cancer wracking his body. It started in his lungs and then spread to the rest of his body. He is not a smoker. He became aware of it after a routine colonoscopy earlier this year.

The fight, he says, comes from the simple act of not giving upno matter how big the challenge or the task. The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, he said, recalling the tender question he asked a doctor when he first came face to face with his elephant. I needed a sense of time. The doctor said four to six months. Im like how do you come up with a number like that? I asked what happens if I fight? He said eight to 10 months.

Traditional medicine dictated that he start a regiment of chemotherapy right away.

But that was not an option for SMSgt. Henrynot without a second opinion. Youre going to make me sick for eight to 10 months with chemo? Wheres the quality of life versus the quantity of life?

Questions. Life, he said, became a series of questions, such as how would he plan now for the eventuality of not being here for his loved ones?

FAMILY



SMSgt. Henry became expert at researching the resources available for his treatment, and ultimately to support his family when he is gone. He said, perhaps, one of the best kept secrets he learned is that service members diagnosed with a terminal disease are eligible to take out half of their Servicemembers Group Life Insurance policy. He said the rule on usage was not limited to medical treatment, either. It can be used for anything, SMSgt. Henry said.

I have the opportunity to plan ahead for my familys care, to seek out the resources and to ensure that all of my paperwork is in order, SMSgt. Henry said, foot stomping the importance of what he had just explained to all Airmen. Someone who dies in an accident doesnt have the opportunity to ensure that the right name is on the life insurance policy, that its updated, or even that there is .

Whichever treatment they choose, it starts in March. Harnessing in and gaining strength from family would be easier should SMSgt. Henry take the traditional route and stay back in Washington State. There, the doctors recommended chemotherapy.

Nevada would be a bit more difficult to see family; the course of treatment would be a blend of chemo and alternative approaches not widely used by mainstream medicine. We know people who have gone to this clinic and were successful, he said.

They take treatments from around the world that have been successful in integrating those treatments with a traditional medicine approach, Stacey added. So, its all about making your body healthy and putting your body in a position to win the fight.

The difference between the traditional and alterative doctors is the former focuses on a large regiment of chemotherapyto poison the cancerand in so doing poison the patient; the latter uses a much lower dosage of chemotherapy, coupled with alternative medicines that boost the immune system.

SMSgt. Henry described the aftereffect of chemotherapy as feeling raw, dry, turned inside out, and with your stomach in knots. Chemotherapy destroys the immune system, he said.

Stacey described her husband as loving, and a fighter; she said they were prepared for the rough patches ahead. He is the type of person who always puts others before himselfand thats why I fell in love with him, she said, adding that the road before them on her husbands journey to get better had a fork in it: One path was paved with traditional medicine, and the otheralternative medicine.

Were meeting with one more oncologists in Spokane today, Stacey said on March 9, while seated in an airport terminal for the fourth time in a week. Her fatigue from the medical appointmentsin one day and located 800 miles apartwas in her voice. After that, well make the decision of whether we go the traditional route or we go the alternative route Were trying to figure out what to do Theres really no wrong answer.

FAITH

Stacey said she and her husband would next return to Westover in May, skipping the April UTA for his medical treatments. Theyre leaning heavily on the side of taking the alternative approach, SMSgt. Henry added.

All of traditional medicine says this wont work, he paused, then chuckled. I scratch my head and ask Why wouldnt it work?

SMSgt. Henry is familiar with staring death in the face as part of his joband still going to work. He spent 13 years as a state trooper in Washington. Hes always been willing to serveanywhere he is needed. He worked for more than two years as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan.

Whats kept him alive, and what even now fills him with a sense of purpose thats bigger than the limitations of his body?

Weve always relied heavily on our faith, said SMSgt. Henry, who identifies himself as a Christian.

BENEFITS

To learn about Accelerated Benefits through the Veterans Administration, which includes rights under SGLI and VGLI policy terms, among others, http://www.benefits.va.gov/INSURANCE/abo.asp

3 LAST THINGS FROM SMSgt. Henry

Preparation: The fit to fight could be what saved my life. Preparing at 50 and having breathing issues is what prompted me to say Thats not right. So, I checked with my doctor. You have to stay on top of your fitness. Staying in shape has helped me survive.

Suicide Prevention: There are estimates out there that were losing 23 members a day to suicide, and it would be so easy for me to go and say Why am I here? But I have more of a purpose than everand that goes for everyone. If you have trouble finding your purpose, seek help because there is a lot of support out here for everyoneyou just have to seek it.

Dedication to Goals: My professional goal is to make chief. My personal goal is to stay true to myself, my family, and my faith. Without those three thingsthere is no you.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov discussed the latest developments in Syria, IRNA reported.

Zarif and Lavrov underlined the need for conducting regular contracts between the two countries' officials.

The Iranian and Russian foreign ministers also focused on political negotiations on ceasefire, humanitarian airs and the need for war on terrorist groups.
Equipped to handle electronic warfare, China has unveiled its latest spy plane, Sputnik reported.



Dubbed the "Scout" Electronic Reconnaissance Aircraft CSA-003, the new aircraft is built by the China Electronic Technology Corporation Avionics division, and is a form of special mission aircraft typically used for maritime patrol and oil spill response.



A variant of the Austrian-designed Diamond DA42 utility plane, the 1.7 ton aircraft features twin turboprop engines and can carry one or two pilots as well as a sensor operator. To carry out surveillance, the CSA-003 comes equipped with the latest Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) equipment and a state-of-the-art processing suite, all of which is housed in a pod beneath the fuselage.

The plane can detect, track, and analyze enemy electronics, including radar, weapons guidance, and communication systems.

The CSA-003 has the optional capability of including an electro optical/infrared sensor turret.



While the plane can operate independently, it can also use satellite connections to coordinate electronic attacks with multiple units, including the Y-9 aircraft and configured ground stations.

Given that the Diamond DA42 is subject to EU arms restrictions, analysts predict that the CSA-003 will most likely be used for border patrols.




Cyprus plans to veto the EU-Turkey agreement on migration if Turkey fails to recognize the Greek Cypriot government, President Nicos Anastasiades said Thursday.



Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is due to join the EU member state leaders discussion on further steps in resolving the European migrant crisis on Friday, with the Turkey-EU deal on migration set to be finalized then.

"That is what I stressed to our partners during the previous Council on March 7th. As long as Turkey doesn't implement its obligations, we don't have any other choice," Anastasiades told the Euronews television channel.

Earlier in March, Europe and Ankara agreed on a deal under which Turkey pledged to take back all undocumented migrants that had arrived to the European Union in exchange for Syrian refugees on a one-for-one basis. In return, the European Union pledged to provide a total of 3 billion euros (over $3.3 billion) to Turkey for dealing with refugees, with a possible further 3 billion-euro provision, accelerate Turkey's EU accession process and introduce a visa-free regime between Turkey and Europe.

On Tuesday, Anastasiades said Cyprus would not agree to the opening of new chapters in Turkey's accession to the European Union if Turkey did not meet the commitments stipulated by the bloc, including the recognition of Cyprus as a state.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu headed to Brussels on Thursday to join a summit to discuss Turkey's proposals on the refugee and migrant crisis, Anadolu agency reported.



Speaking during a news conference before leaving for the summit, Davutoglu said that Turkey was exerting a diplomatic effort to stop human trafficking.



"We have submitted a clear and humanitarian offer to Europe [over the refugee deal], but Turkey will not be a transit country for human trafficking or a depot of refugees," Davutoglu said.



All 28 EU heads of government gathered in Brussels on 17-18 March to discuss how refugees and migrants entering Europe via Greece could be sent back to Turkey.



European Parliament President Martin Schulz said Thursday that the EU would reach an agreement with Turkey.



"Commonsense will prevail; we will reach an agreement with Turkey about the return of migrants who have reached Europe," Schulz said.



The EU has already pledged three billion euros [$3.4 billion] to meet the needs of Syrian refugees hosted in Turkey along with visa liberalization and the acceleration of the candidate country's accession process.



In exchange, the EU expected Turkey to crack down on human smugglers and stem the flow of refugees coming into Europe via its neighbor Greece.



Turkey is hosting the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world and has spent more than seven billion euros [$7.7 billion] on meeting the needs of the refugees, according to European Commission figures released last year.



Under Turkey's proposal to the EU, the country wants the 28-nation bloc to "share the burden'' based on a formula of "for every Syrian readmitted by Turkey from the Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU member states".



Ankara also wants visa liberalization by June, speeding up Turkey's accession talks, and additional three billion euros to meet the needs of Syrian refugees in the country.



Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of refugees have crossed the Aegean Sea to reach Greece. This has placed a huge strain on the austerity-hit EU member and threatened the EU's internal open border system, as countries to the north of Greece impose frontier restrictions.
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This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CACHE CREEK, B.C.  Actor Dylan OBrien has been injured on the set of Maze Runner: The Death Cure during production in British Columbia.

20th Century Fox said in a statement Friday that OBrien was immediately transferred to a Vancouver hospital after being hurt Thursday.

Production on the film will be shut down while he recovers. Our thoughts go out to Dylan for a full and speedy recovery, the statement said.

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2015 photo, Dylan O'Brien attends the premiere of "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" in New York. OBrien has been injured on the set of Maze Runner: The Death Cure during production in Vancouver, Canada. 20th Century Fox said in a statement Friday, March 18, 2016, that OBrien was immediately transferred to a local hospital after being injured Thursday. The studio said shooting will be shut down while the actor recovers. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)

WorkSafe B.C. said in a statement that staff members have gone to a film set at Cache Creek airport in the provinces Interior, about 340 kilometres from Vancouver, after being alerted to OBriens injury by 20th Century Fox.

The prevention officers will gather information including: what led up to the incident, the incident itself, and the actions immediately following the incident, the agency said.

The officers will speak with workers, the set crew and the employer while on site, and 20th Century Fox will be required to submit an incident investigation to WorkSafe B.C.

The agency is responsible for investigating workplace accidents in the province.

Local media outlets reported the film was being shot around Cache Creek, Ashcroft and Kamloops this week.

James Dashner, the author of the Maze Runner book trilogy, posted on Twitter Friday that OBrien had been hurt, but he was going to be OK, and his injuries were not life-threatening in any way.

Production is postponed but certainly not cancelled. All that matters now is that Dylan recovers, he wrote. We love you, Dylan!!!

The 24-year-old is the star of the dystopian science-fiction series, and The Death Cure is the third in the franchise. He is also known for his co-starring role in the MTV series Teen Wolf.

Representatives for OBrien didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

The films production address is listed on Creative B.C.s website as a Vancouver Film Studios facility in east Vancouver. A woman who answered the phone at the studio said she had no information to give out before hanging up.

Vancouver Coastal Health, the authority that operates Vancouver General Hospital, said it had no information and B.C. Ambulance Service said it was not the agency that transported OBrien to hospital.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure is scheduled to be released in theatres on Feb. 17, 2017.

 With files from The Associated Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version reported the actor was injured in Vancouver.
Opinion

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This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When HudBay Minerals moved its head office to Toronto from Winnipeg in September 2008, it did not cause much of a stir.

But it was part of a trend that has not helped the Manitoba economy.

In the last 10 years, no fewer than three other corporate head offices in the city have shut down or moved away  Agricore, Canwest Global and Ridley Corp. StandardAero, which has been owned by various private equity firms over the years, also saw its management operations move out of the city in 2008.

supplied Jason Stefanson: not a positive sign.

In the same period, only two new public company head offices were formed here through initial public offerings, and since then, both of them  IMRIS Inc. and Legumex Walker Inc.  have effectively left town.

As the head of CIBC World Markets Prairies investment banking operation  the only one of the Big Five banks with such a senior investment banking presence in Winnipeg  Jason Stefanson has a unique perspective on the those kinds of corporate dynamics.

That is not a positive sign, Stefanson said of the dwindling head-office count.

Part of that is cultural. People are intensely private here. Access to capital through that period has been plentiful enough from other sources that privately owned businesses have been able to fund their growth without going public. But it does create a challenge for us in the longer term.

Notwithstanding that challenge, in a presentation to Winnipeg members of the CFA (Chartered Financial Analysts) Society, Stefanson was convincing in his analysis of the strengths the Manitoba economy has shown over the last 10 years with an increasing population, strong housing growth and the rise of many local companies to regional, national and international operations.

While things have been very vibrant  we have had a great run in Manitoba  we worry about the large-cap public head offices and all the professional services that support them like consulting, accounting, banking. It is a real challenge. Those head offices are huge drivers of the economy.

The other long-standing sore point in the economic-development story in Winnipeg is the lack of venture capital. Stefanson was not saying anything new by pointing out the dearth of it here, noting Saskatchewan has two funds totalling $800 million in capital.

He said there are plenty of mid-sized companies that are increasingly on the radar screens of international private equity and venture capital firms and a couple, such as Farmers Edge and 24-7 Intouch, that have recently received substantial funding rounds of U.S. venture capital.

But he said the lack of funding available for early-stage financings in the $1-million to $5-million range continues to be a problem in this market.

If we are going to have a competitive economy in the future, we are going to have to have access to that capital, he said.

And even though there are a number of Winnipeg companies that have succeeded in landing significant capital from outside sources, such as the $11-million round Librestream closed this week that was led by a Swiss fund, he said the province needs a fund thats based here.

He said its not just the cheques the Toronto, Boston or California-based funds might cut, but its also the subsequent involvement theyd have in the companies they invest in.

And as a fly-over region where most of the investment targets would be smaller in size, it makes sense it would take some aggressive promotion for them to commit to a Manitoba company. (For instance, it took Kerry Thacher and his team at Librestream nine months of being hard at it to close its financing.)

Stefanson said while he may be the only Winnipeg-based Big Five investment banker in town, it does not mean CIBC gets all the business.

He said it has been a terrific experience. But he said just like every other element of the process of marketing the city, you have to get out there and sell.

The point is, no matter how vibrant and enterprising the Manitoba entrepreneurs are, capital is not going to automatically materialize.

Even Stefanson, an avowed free-market capitalist, acknowledged there is a role for the public sector in the venture capital field.

He even reopened the old debate about regional public-sector pension funds allocating a small portion of their funds for local venture capital investment.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
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VANCOUVER  British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has vowed to require universities and colleges to have policies protecting students from sexual assault, saying in an emotional address to the legislature that more must be done to make students safe.

The premier committed on Wednesday to working with Green party Leader Andrew Weaver to either pass his private members bill, the Post-Secondary Sexual Violence Policies Act, or amend and pass a similar version.

A rapists best friend is silence. A rapists best friend is shame. A rapists best friend is the failure of authorities to recognize a complaint when it comes forward and failure to act on it, she said.

We will not reduce the prevalence of sexual assault until we strengthen the institutions that are there to protect women, until we ensure that women feel safe coming forward.

Weavers bill would require post-secondary institutions to write and maintain stand-alone policies to respond to sexual violence, which advocates say are crucial because they set out procedures for responding to complaints and outline support services for victims.

Clarks commitment marks a sudden turnaround from her governments previous approach. Ontario and Manitoba have introduced similar bills but B.C. has until now resisted calls for legislation, instead striking a working group to create a framework to provide guidance to universities.

The premier did not give a timeline for introducing legislation, but said she agreed with Weaver that it was an urgent issue.

Weaver, also a University of Victoria professor, modeled the bill after Ontarios legislation and introduced it in response to growing concerns about sexual violence on campus.

The bill also requires that policies be developed with the input of students and would compel universities to report assaults to the ministry. It would empower the province to impose fines for non-compliance, Weaver told reporters outside the legislature.

He also stressed that prevention and education were major elements of the bill.

Weaver pointed to the alleged experience of a University of Victoria student who told The Canadian Press she felt invalidated and silenced after an investigation concluded she hadnt been sexually assaulted because she didnt verbally say No.

Consent means saying Yes. Just because you dont say No doesnt mean youre saying Yes,' he said. There needs to be a broader understanding of this.

Wayne MacKay, a Dalhousie University law professor, applauded the B.C. governments commitment. He led a report on the 2013 rape chants at Saint Marys University in Halifax and recommended that school revise its sexual assault policy.

There are a number of reasons why having a stand-alone discipline policy on sexual assault is important, but one of the big ones is that anybody who has been through the trauma of a sexual assault needs to know clearly where to go to try to get a remedy, he said.

MacKay said while one option is the criminal process, many sexual assault victims fear how they will be treated by police and universities should offer a shorter and clearer route to accountability.

Kenya Rogers, director of external relations at the University of Victorias student society, said she was thrilled by the premiers promise but urged the government not to water the bill down with amendments.

I want the provincial government to recognize that this bill is what students have been begging and asking for, said Rogers.

The B.C. government has an opportunity right now to prove that they are going to prioritize safety of students, and anything less than the bill that currently exists wouldnt (accomplish that).

 With files from Dirk Meissner in Victoria
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OTTAWA  After a week of bad press for Tom Mulcair, his supporters are starting to speak out in favour of the beleaguered NDP leader.

Two young Quebec MPs who were supported by Mulcair at the start of their political career say they will back the NDP leader in Edmonton when he faces a do-or-die moment at the partys convention next month.

And the head of a major union  the Steelworkers is also stepping up.

Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who made headlines in the 2011 election campaign over a vacation trip to Las Vegas, said few people took her seriously when she was first elected. But Mulcair believed in her.

Tom really reached out to me after the election, along with Jack (Layton), she said. Tom was really there from the beginning.

Brosseau said Mulcair helped her get through the first few weeks, months and years of being a rookie MP.

He was a really important figure helping me  he trusted me, she said. He really encouraged me to get over this hump and just work hard.

She said members of her riding association will also be voting in favour of Mulcair during his leadership review.

Matthew Dube, a former McGill student also elected to the Commons in the NDPs 2011 orange wave, said he, too, supports Mulcair.

Dube said it was Mulcair who first convinced him to become a member of the party and that support continued after he was elected.

He played a big role in making sure, even if it wasnt always him directly, working closely with Jack to make sure that we had the mentorship necessary not only to not fall on our faces but also to excel in the work that we needed to do, Dube said.

Getting rid of such an experienced leader is a bad idea given all of the work Mulcair has done, he added.

He did really do such a great job in Parliament and still does right now . despite everything else that is going on, Dube said.

The NDP leader is facing increased pressure from rank-and-file members to show why he deserves to stay on as leader following a disastrous campaign which punted the party back to third party status.

The party has made a concerted effort to return to its leftist roots following the election but there is a whisper campaign about whether Mulcair is the right frontman for this movement. The same concerns were echoed during the leadership race in 2012 by party members including former leader Ed Broadbent.

A group of critics such as Sid Ryan, a former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, have recently come out swinging against the leader.

Ken Neumann, the national director of the United Steelworkers union, released a direct response to that criticism this week and in support of Mulcair.

Many of us share the belief that there are things that could have been done better during the last campaign, but public attacks  are not how we build a strong social democratic movement, he said.

To see movement on these important issues, we need a tough, articulate and experienced question-period fighter like Tom Mulcair to lead our movement.

Matters were made worse this week for Mulcair when a group of 37 New Democrat activists from Quebec, including three defeated MPs, is also calling for new direction.

Jamie Nicholls, Elaine Michaud and Helene LeBlanc said they did not feel represented in the NDP electoral platform they had to defend last year.

And at a press conference in Ottawa, NDP MP Niki Ashton also refused to categorically state whether she wants Mulcair to stay on as party leader.

She ran against Mulcair for leader in 2012.

Its up to members to decide how they want to go forward, she said.

The NDP leader has refused to say what level of support would prompt him to quit but NDP President Rebecca Blaikie has suggested 70 per cent is likely the threshold.

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A former police officer who committed a brutal attack on his ex-wife has been banned from Winnipeg and Saskatoon as part of his unique parole conditions.

The 60-year-old  who cant be named in order to protect the identity of the victim  was sentenced in August 2009 to 12 years, 10 months in prison, in addition to 13 months of time already served, after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault and break-and-enter with intent.

Documents obtained by the Free Press show he was recently granted day parole provided he follows a series of conditions. Those include staying away from two specific Canadian cities.

Given your history of obsessive and violent behaviour, the concerns expressed by the close family members are legitimate and reasonable, the parole board wrote in their decision. The family members of the victim have the right to have some measure of comfort in knowing you will not be able to be in the cities where they reside.

Other parole conditions include reporting all intimate, sexual and non-sexual relationships and friendships with females to his supervisor and continuing to attend psychological counselling.

The board remains concerned with the nature and gravity of your index offence as you committed a very brutal and prolonged sexual attack on a highly vulnerable woman, the documents state. The crime was premeditated and planned and involved a considerable amount of gratuitous violence and degradation of the victim.

Although the accused has been deemed a low-risk for sexual re-offending, the parole board also expressed concerns about his degree of remorse. However, they noted he has performed well in the community while on more than 200 escorted temporary absences from the minimum-security facility where hes been lodged since 2013.

His day parole will now extend for six months but could be revoked at any time if there are concerns about his behaviour.

The violent attack took place in Winnipeg in July 2008. At the time, the 25-year veteran of the Winnipeg Police Service had been arrested five times since 2006 for breaching a protection order the victim obtained against him.

According to an agreed statement of facts about the attack, he knew his wife had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy, which left her considerably weakened. He left his home in the middle of the night  leaving two sleeping young children alone in their beds  and went to the womans home, which he knew had no alarm coverage on the windows.

The victim awoke to the sight of a man on top of her wearing plastic gloves and a black nylon stocking over his head. She later told police she initially thought it was a dream, but then recognized the attacker as her ex-husband. The man restrained the woman and repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted her over the course of several hours.

The victim managed to secretly call 911 while the man was in another room.

Police arrived moments later and caught the accused trying to leave. The woman suffered numerous injuries that required hospitalization. Her ex-husband admitted to the attack and told the arresting officers, I should have just had you shoot me.

Just days before the attack, the man told a retired cop he was frustrated his ex-wife was going to sell their home.

In the next seven days, Im gonna do something, and you are not going to be happy with me, he said. The friend apparently didnt do anything with the information.

Police also uncovered evidence of planning, including a rape kit the man had made with various items he purchased.

The victim died of cancer in 2012. Family members have previously told the parole board they believe her illness was aggravated by the assault and contributed to her death.

www.mikeoncrime.com
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OTTAWA  Former premier Gary Doer is heading into the corporate world.

Doer has been nominated to serve on the boards of Great-West Lifeco Inc. and Investors Group.

The nominations are to be voted on and confirmed at annual general meetings for both companies in May.

Former premier Gary Doer has been appointed to two boards in Winnipeg.

Doer, 67, moved back to Winnipeg after finishing more than six years as Canadas ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, D.C. at the end of January.

Im really pleased to be home, he told the Winnipeg Free Press.

Doer always kept his home in Winnipeg, and his wife and two daughters remained in Winnipeg while he was in D.C., splitting their time between the two cities.

He said he is happy to be joining the boards of both companies.

Great-West Life and Investors constitute in Winnipeg the largest density in the financial sector anywhere in Western Canada, he said. I had a great relationship with them when I was premier.

Doer has become an adviser to the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. He said there are other potential appointments in the works, but they havent been finalized.

I think people approaching me are interested in my experience as both premier and ambassador, he said. The contacts and the knowledge I have from both areas are helpful.

Although Doer returns to the city just as the provincial election is getting underway, he said he is not getting involved. His appointments to these two boards and other work he hopes to do require him to maintain a distance from partisan politics.

I cant be involved in a partisan way, he said. Obviously, I have emotional attachments. I recruited many of the people who are running.

Premier Greg Selinger, who faces a steep challenge to being re-elected April 19, was Doers finance minister.

Doer was premier of Manitoba from 1999 to 2009 and ambassador to the United States from 2009 until Jan. 31, 2016.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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OTTAWA  Promising to work toward reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians, Manitoba Justice Murray Sinclair accepted his appointment as one of seven new senators named by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the upper chamber Friday.

Sinclair, who just wrapped up six years as the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, will fill one of the four vacant seats in Manitoba, alongside Raymonde Gagne, the former president of the Universite de Saint-Boniface.

It is with heartfelt gratitude that I receive this nomination to the Senate of Canada, Sinclair said in a prepared statement. Public service is a higher calling and a sacred honour and he was accepting the Senate appointment with great humility and hope for the future. Sinclair said hes still committed to reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous people  something I believe in my heart is possible It is my wish to work toward repairing this relationship and doing what I can to make reconciliation a reality in Canada, Sinclair said. He promised to speak for the people of Manitoba in the upper chamber and to focus on establishing regional balance for the men and women he will represent.

ADRIAN WYLD / CANADIAN PRESS FILES Murray Sinclair

Sinclair, 64, was the first indigenous person appointed to the bench in Manitoba when he was named to the provincial court in Manitoba in 1988. He was named to the Court of Queens Bench in 2001. In 2009, he took over as chairman of the TRC after the first chairperson and two commissioners quit when they were unable to work together. Under his guidance, the TRC spent six years travelling the country, hearing from more than 6,000 witnesses to the residential schools tragedy in Canada. Last year, the TRC released its final report with 94 recommendations for governments, school systems, businesses and churches to do their part to achieve reconciliation with Canadas indigenous people.

I think the indigenous community is pretty excited and really proud, residential school survivor and former grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, said of Sinclairs Senate appointment. Ive had conversations with a number of people, said Fontaine, who was in Winnipeg Friday. Theyre happy. They believe, as I do, that this was an excellent appointment and a very thoughtful appointment.

Marie Wilson, who served as a commissioner with Sinclair on the TRC, sees it as an opportunity to keep the reconciliation discussion going.

Its a really great place to use his long-established expertise and skills, but I also think its a wonderful platform for the continuation of the public discussion and dialogue on how we fulfil and implement the (TRCs 94) calls to action, said Wilson, who is teaching at McGill University in Montreal. She hopes Sinclair can help to pass legislation establishing a national council for reconciliation. It would provide oversight to fulfilling the calls to action and closing the huge gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous reality, she said.

Hes carrying a huge pocket of expertise, said Wilson. His lens of reconciliation will help when the government is reconsidering laws and policies so were not creating new examples of wrong ways to be, she said.

Sinclair was one of the first people Mayor Brian Bowman said he consulted about how to respond after Macleansmagazine dubbed Winnipeg Canadas most racist city last year.

Hes someone who doesnt pull any punches, Bowman said Friday. He calls a spade a spade, but he also offers real, heartfelt and useful suggestions on a path forward that would build bridges rather than allow greater divisions. Sinclair is a member of the mayors indigenous advisory circle that has dedicated 2016 to reconciliation.

Sinclair is a perfect candidate for the chamber of sober second thought, said Manitoba treaty commissioner Jamie Wilson. Hes highly educated in both the western sense and the indigenous sense, said Wilson. Hes able to bring a really balanced perspective to issues that are important to Canadians right now, he said  especially reconciliation between Canadas indigenous and non-indigenous people. He understands those issues at a really high level. He can articulate really complex issues in a down-to-earth manner.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Raymonde Gagne is the former president of the Universite de Saint-Boniface.

Gagne stepped down as the president of USB in 2014 after 11 years in the role. She had worked at the university since 1984 in a number of roles. She was credited with increasing enrolment, improving the importance of research at the school, and oversaw the schools first physical expansion in more than three decades.

Trudeau intends these appointments to be the beginning of a new era of non-partisanship in the Senate, with appointees not named to represent any party. He signalled his intention to move on his Senate reform promise by establishing a non-partisan board to come up with a list of candidates to fill five vacancies in the Senate, two each in Ontario and Manitoba and one in Quebec. He ended up filling seven of the vacancies.

The two Manitoba members of the advisory board were musician Heather Bishop and Susan Lewis, the former head of the United Way in Winnipeg. The advisory board was to consult with local governments, businesses, unions and organizations, and then provide Trudeau with five suggested names per vacancy.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
The Turkish General Staff has said that 17 PKK terrorists were killed in a fresh wave of anti-terror operations in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, Anadolu agency reported.



The military said on Thursday that four PKK terrorists in Nusaybin district of Mardin province, seven others in Sirnak province and six other terrorists in the Yuksekova district of Hakkari province were killed.



It is added that several home-made explosive devices were disposed of and 50 shotguns and four radios were seized.



The PKK -- also listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU -- resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in late July 2015.



Since then, more than 290 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.



The new wave of operations in southeast Turkey started on Monday.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadians have waited anxiously for the Trudeau government to announce its appointments to vacant Senate seats; at least those Canadians who understand what this august institution actually does. OK, so not that many Canadians are on the edge of their seats over this. On Friday, the prime minister announced seven appointments to the chamber.

In the tradition of British parliamentary government, the Senate is our counterpart to the House of Lords. In Britain, the lords transitioned from an aristocratic check on unruly House of Commons interference in the monarchs preogatives in the 17th century, to a benign talk-shop in the early 20th when the government of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith threatened to swamp the lords by creating scads of new peers when the lords were about to reject a government finance bill. The Commons has been supreme ever since.

At the time of confederation, Canada was not blessed with an aristocracy. The Commons was still a rather fractious institution. Yet, parliamentary government had matured to the point that, while the Senate still had to pass bills originating in the Commons, the latter was the centre of gravity of our government.

The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Nonetheless, since the Senate had authority to reject House of Commons legislation, the government has traditionally appointed partisans to the red chamber. The Trudeau government, however, has declared its appointments would be non-partisan.

How should we as citizens evaluate these first seven appointments? After all, the Senates only activity of recent public note is the possible felonious appropriation of public funds by some members for questionable expense claims. Although there are rumblings from time to time, the Senate will not risk a constitutional crisis by refusing to pass Commons legislation. So, it is in effect, a talk shop, euphemistically described as the chamber of sober second thought. Senate debates over significant or controversial legislation tend to be highly partisan, they really just reflect what has already taken place in the Commons.

Should we be concerned about an institution that does no apparent harm beyond the occasional petty theft? Since it costs us around $100 million a year, and to abolish it would require a constitutional amendment (not going to happen), the answer must surely be yes. It may be that Senate debate results in useful alterations to legislation, or that Senate enquiries produce recommendations that have a positive influence on Canadian society. Most Canadians have not the faintest idea whether or not this is so. Most of us think of it as a happy and lucrative sinecure for faithful Liberals and Conservatives, and since we cant abolish it, lets at least reform it.

The first order of reform is non-partisan, merit-based appointments. Should we elect senators for recommendation to Ottawa as Alberta has done in the past? Certainly not; it would just produce more politicians, something we dont need in the Senate.

Every candidate should be required to submit a written plan for senate reform. One might start with how the Senate can document and communicate the results of its work, assuming there are any; and if there arent, how can it refocus to produce meaningful results for Canadians? A thorough examination of conflict-of-interest rules might also be targeted, as senators can sit on corporate boards in spite of them being a constitutionally mandated part of our legislative process. A new senator might also insist on a user-friendly Internet posting, in excruciating detail, of expense claims. Every potential senator should also submit a personal communications plan to inform citizens in their own provinces.

Being a senator must not only be job No. 1, it must be the only job. Senators are generously paid a $135,000 base salary, remuneration sufficient to command a full-time employee; no second jobs please. Candidates should be required to sign a pledge to serve a fixed term, say six years. This would not be enforceable due to the constitutional entrenchment of Senate terms, but at least anyone reneging on that public commitment would be exposed as a scoundrel. Candidates should be sought who have actually accomplished something of significance in the private or public spheres.

The criteria of being non-partisan has already been set by government, although it may be harder to meet than you might think. We are told there has been a process in place, apparently secret, certainly not public, to recommend suitable candidates to government; and hopefully we will at some point be informed of the criteria upon which recommendations were made.

Senate reform seems to have wide public support. Should Ottawa apply the above and other sensible criteria to its selection process, we may actually have appointments that go beyond the usual suspects and begin by reforming the composition of the Senate.

Norman Brandson was deputy minister of the former Manitoba departments of environment, water stewardship and conservation from 1990 to 2006.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2016 (2410 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Progressive Conservative candidate accused of using her office at the Old St. Vital BIZ to conduct her campaign may not be welcomed back to the business group if she is unsuccessful in the April 19 election.

Brent Konantz, the business improvement zones board president, said former executive director Colleen Mayer should probably have been asked to take her leave sooner.

Back when we were informed that she wanted to run we should have put her on leave and let her go about her business, Konantz said, following a BIZ board meeting on Thursday.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS St. Vital PC candidate Colleen Mayer answers questions from the press on allegations about using Green Team employees to plant flowers at her home residence outside a seniors complex in St. Vital.

He said the board is in the process of changing its policies regarding leaves. What we would like moving forward is that the executive director be the executive director.

Mayer won the PC nomination for the St. Vital constituency last May but did not leave the BIZ until sometime in January. Her contract came to an end in December, but she stayed on for a few weeks to handle some duties until an interim executive director was hired.

Mayer is accused by a former BIZ intern of holding campaign meetings and carrying out other political activities inside the non-partisan business groups office. Elizabeth Dickson blew the whistle on Mayers alleged mixing of work and campaigning after she was terminated last month. She has since negotiated a settlement with the business group, but not before filing a complaint with the provinces commissioner of elections and going public with her story.

Mayer has said Dicksons accusations are the allegations of a disgruntled former employee. She said the BIZ was aware of her candidacy and was supportive. She could not immediately be reached for further comment late Thursday.

In a Free Press report on Saturday, it was also alleged that taxpayer-funded BIZ staff planted flowers on Mayers property last year, causing the province to tighten its rules governing community beautification projects.

Mayers current status with the BIZ seems to be in dispute. She has described herself as being on leave from the organization. Some board members appear to agree with that interpretation. Others dont.

I think everybody believes it will be problematic bringing her back, Konantz said.

He said BIZ members have not complained to him about Mayers alleged use of her former office for campaign work. But they have raised concerns about how Dickson was treated, he said.

Konantz largely dismisses the use of government resources to plant flowers in Mayers yard as a misguided decision by a former employee. He said the decision to plant the flowers was made by the former BIZ employee.

Meanwhile, the BIZ board is to hold a special meeting on personnel matters before its next regular board meeting on April 14, Konantz said.

Weve taken the totality of all of the allegations seriously, he said.

Yet he also hinted that the Old St. Vital BIZ would just like to see the whole issue go away.

I think everybody is really hoping she (Mayer) wins (the St. Vital seat), Konantz said with a laugh.

It lets us off the hook.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
St. Pauls Catholic Church in Minnesota City will host a Palm Sunday ham dinner at 11 a.m. on March 20. The event will include a bake sale, silent auction and a big-ticket raffle. The ham dinner, $9, will include homemade desserts and conclude at 1 p.m.
In celebration of its heritage, Saint Marys University presented awards to a community leader, a staff member, a faculty member, and two outstanding seniors at its Founders Day celebration March 15.

The Presidential Award for Outstanding Merit was presented to Fatima Said, executive director of Project FINE, for her remarkable service to others and exemplary commitment to the human dignity of all people. Through Saids leadership in Project FINE, she has contributed greatly to the lives and dignity of refugees and immigrants in southeast Minnesota. Said also shares her gifts with numerous other civic organizations, including the Winona Human Rights Commission, Winona County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Council on Diversity, and the Cotter Schools Board of Directors. Said has, through her own lifes journey, modeled the qualities of perseverance, generosity, and humility and serves as a shining example of what it means to be a person of hope and resilience.

Nikki Richmond, secretary for the Office of Campus Ministry on the Winona Campus, received the Distinguished Lasallian Educator award. These awards are given by Lasallian institutions in the North American-Toronto Region of the De La Salle Christian Brothers to honor contributions and commitment to the Lasallian mission of education. In a variety of roles since 1983 (including the past 17 years with Campus Ministry), Richmond has had a lasting and positive impact on countless students and parents through caring and respectful interactions.

Dr. Joseph Tadie, associate professor of philosophy, received the Bishop Patrick Heffron Award for service to the university. Every other year the university recognizes an employee who has demonstrated a long-term commitment to the values of the university, has been a positive member of the university community, and has modeled the Lasallian spirit in interactions with colleagues and students. This year, Dr. Tadie received the award for his contributions to serving, teaching, and mentoring students at Saint Marys and for his willingness to take on important responsibilities and roles outside of the classroom. Dr. Tadie has taught at Saint Marys since 1993 and is a 1991 alumnus.
John Dippel

John Frederick Dippel, 77, of Asheville, North Carolina, died on Feb. 26, 2016, in Fletcher, North Carolina. He was born on Sept.18, 1938, in Baraboo, the son of the late Dr. Frederick and Loretta (Pleumer) Dippel.

Upon graduation from Baraboo High School in 1956 he attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating with honors from the School of Business in 1960. After active duty in the United States Army Reserves he returned to the University of Wisconsin, receiving his M.B.A. degree in 1962. His career included positions in marketing research, sales and marketing management in several major consumer-product corporations. He retired from Turtle Wax, Inc. and relocated from Chicago, Illinois to Asheville, North Carolina.

He was a life member in the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association and the University of Wisconsin Foundations Bascom Hill Society. He was also a member of the Acton United Methodist Church of Asheville, North Carolina.

He is survived by two nieces and one great- niece, Cory (Dippel) Washkevich and her daughter Katerina of Oak Creek and Renee Dippel of Rolling Meadows, Illinois; as well as numerous cousins.

He was predeceased by his parents, Frederick Christian Dippel and Loretta Anna (Pluemer) Dippel; and his brother, William.

Groce Funeral Home at Lake Julian is assisting with the arrangements and a memorial guest register is available online at www.grocefuneralhome.com.
Dr. Quentin Young, one of the greatest economic and social justice campaigners of the modern era, has died at age 92. Young served as a personal physician for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and organized the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which provided medical support for activists during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. He helped to shape and advance the call for an understanding of health care not as a commodity but as a human right.

Young was a friend and ally of this newspaper, a source of insight and inspiration for many years, and an ally in our campaigning for universal health care, which dates back to the days when Capital Times founder William T. Evjue was cheering on the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman to establish a national health care program. Over the years, we celebrated Youngs work and joined him and his dear friends, the late Madison area physicians Gene and Linda Farley, in championing efforts to establish a single-payer Medicare for all health care system in the United States.

More than three decades ago, as he was working to forge the Physicians for a National Health Program movement, Young warned of the corporate takeover of medicine. As PNHP notes, he sounded the alarm about the growing encroachment of corporate conglomerates on U.S. health care, noting that giant investor-owned firms were rapidly subordinating the best interests of patients and the medical profession to the maximization of corporate profit.

To counter the crisis, PNHP said in its statement on the doctors death, Young became the nations most eloquent and high-profile spokesperson for single-payer national health insurance, or improved Medicare for all. He worked closely with an old ally from civil rights movement days, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., on behalf of H.R. 676, The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, the single-payer health care proposal backed by dozens of House and Senate members. Young gave credit to the efforts of President Obama  a friend and a patient of the physicians Chicago clinic  to develop and implement the Affordable Care Act. But while he could identify positive elements of the ACA, Young argued it was an inadequate reform that left too many Americans with no coverage or insufficient coverage and that failed to control costs because it maintained an arrangement where the insurance companies are still going to make their profits.

Young, who served as PNHPs national coordinator for more than two decades, remained an outspoken advocate for single-payer to the end. Making his case for single-payer national health insurance, government-run, based on the tax system, Young said in a 2004 interview posted on the organizations website that universal health care is no longer the best answer; its the only answer. There was a time when there were alternatives that might have worked, but that day is passed. Weve had too much of a transfer of power from patients and physicians, for that matter, to giant corporate interests that are dedicated to the goal of maximizing profits, which accounts for much of the distress in the American health system.

During the course of the 2016 presidential race, proposals for single-payer reform have taken hits from the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and a number of the Republicans who are seeking the presidency. Clinton has argued that the plan for single-payer offered by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, is an idea that will never, ever come to pass.

In the Democratic debate on March 10 in Miami, the former secretary of state complained about Senator Sanders wanting to throw us into a contentious debate over single-payer. Sanders, who has hailed Young as a national hero, replied: I think if the rest of the world can do it, we can. And by the way, not only are we being ripped off by the drug companies, we are spending far, far more per capita on health care than any other major country on earth. You may not think the American people are prepared to stand up to the insurance companies or the drug companies. I think they are.

That was the view that Young advanced in his last years, including in his brilliant 2013 autobiography, Everybody In, Nobody Out: Memoirs of a Rebel Without a Pause. The doctor wrote: Ive never wavered in my belief in humanitys ability  and our collective responsibility  to bring about a more just and equitable social order. Ive always believed in humanitys potential to create a more caring society.

The Capital Times has embraced that faith since its founding in 1917, but there is no question that our faith was enhanced and extended by our association with Young. We will honor his memory by continuing to be absolute and unequivocal in our championship of the essential understanding that health care must never be undermined by profiteering. It must always be understood as a human right that should be guaranteed for all.
The Dane County Sheriffs Department on Tuesday presented a seminar to area business people about everything they should know about bomb threats.

The presentation, conducted by Lake Delton Emergency Management at the Delton Fire Department, was designed to assist business owners, managers, supervisors and employees in creating a readiness plan in the event of a bomb threat.

If not properly handled, a bomb threat can severely disrupt the operations of any business or school, Lake Delton Emergency Management Director Darren Jorgenson said. With the ever-changing threats we face, it is important more now than ever, to be prepared to respond to situations such as a bomb threat.

There are six FBI certified bomb squads in Wisconsin  one each in Dane, Brown, Marathon and Kenosha counties and two others in the Milwaukee area. The Dane County squad is based out of Madison and serves 26 counties in southern Wisconsin including Sauk and Columbia.

Dane County bomb squad member Bob Richardson conducted most of Tuesdays session, going over the squads background, step-by-step best practices for responding to a threat, an overview of what business owners need to tell bomb squad personnel and how businesses can develop a bomb-threat policy.

Beyond safely detonating bombs, a squad must walk a tightrope of whether to even respond to a threat.

Richardson said 99 percent of bomb threats are not real, so the squad is put into a precarious position of telling local law enforcement agencies, businesses or schools that theyre not coming to assist. Richardson said there is not a budget for a squad to respond to every call, adding that they are kept busy enough responding to calls once every three days on average during the course of a year.

As a rule, we do not respond to generic bomb threats, he said. Its just the reality. He noted a generic threat is one that contains little or no detailed information such as what a bomb looks like, when it will go off and what kind of bomb it is.

Richardson said that because local businesses or schools have information about their property that his squad doesnt, bomb squads must rely on the people that are being threatened.

When I walk into large businesses its a cubicle farm, he said. I have no idea what should or should not be in that cubicle. The people that work there, they do. This can be a difficult concept for employers.

Tthe same thing is true for schools. In the past, teacher unions have said its not our job to search. (We say) youre the only one who knows whats in your classroom.

Richardson said its vital that if an organization receives a bomb threat they ask the caller as many questions as they can  recognizing that some of the questions may seem senseless to ask. He told the audience, you would be surprised at what questions a person making a bomb threat will answer.

Questions Richardson suggests asking include:

Where is the bomb located?

What time is the bomb going off?

Where is it located?

Did you put the bomb there and why?

Dane County bomb squad member Garrett Page said if an organization receives a threat they should call local law enforcement immediately. From there local emergency personnel will work with a bomb squad to determine what action needs to be taken.

If it is a valid threat were going to put our search teams into action and make a decision based upon what areas were going to search, whether or not to do a lock-down, an administrative hold or an evacuation, Page said.

Lake Delton Emergency Management has put together an emergency procedures quick reference guide that is available to local businesses and schools. It contains critical information that can be quickly and easily accessed in the event of unexpected situations, including bomb threats, evacuation procedures, medical, fire and weather emergencies as well as critical phone numbers.

To obtain a guide for little or no cost, call Jorgenson at 254-8404.
USDA announces $1 billion debt relief for 36,000 farmers

The USDA announced a program to provide $1.3B in debt relief for about 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on loan payments or face foreclosure.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

A major terrorist attack has been prevented in Turkey's Tunceli province, Sabah newspaper reported March 18.

During the special operation in the province, the police found 650 kg of explosives.

The terrorist attack was planned by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist group, said the newspaper citing the country's law enforcement bodies.

Turkish police have recently warned that PKK plans to commit a series of terror attacks in the country's large cities from March 20 to March 30.

A car bomb exploded in Ankara on March 13, near a crowded bus stop. The explosion killed as many as 37 people, 125 more got injured.



Preliminary reports said the two suicide bombers, one male and one female triggered the explosive device, while in the car. According to reports, the mentioned car was hijacked Feb. 10 in the Turkish south-eastern province of Sanliurfa.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Reacting to the migrant deal between Turkey and the European Union, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron offered his country's full support.

He said: "I welcome the agreement we've reached with Turkey today. We will work together to stop migrants leaving Turkey in the first place, to stop at sea those that do leave and turn back the boats and return back to Turkey those that do make it to Greece."

"For the first time in this crisis, I believe we have a plan, if properly and fully implemented, that really could help to make a difference - deterring people from coming and shutting down the trade that smuggling gangs have been exploiting."

He added: "It will require a comprehensive and large-scale operation. Britain will help. We have the expertise, we have skilled officials."

Cameron also confirmed Britain would not be bound by the visa-free agreement for Turkish nationals.
China's ZTE Said to Appeal US Export Ban After Lobby Efforts Fail

ZTE is set to appeal on U.S. export sanctions following the failure of lobbying efforts. (Photo : Getty Images)

Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. plans to appeal U.S. export restrictions that took effect last week after lobbying efforts have been unsuccessful.



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According to The Wall Street Journal, the United States' Department of Commerce applied the ban to the telecommunications supplier because the Chinese company allegedly exported American goods to Iran and other countries.



On Tuesday, a commerce department senior official revealed that the company and the U.S. government are currently in talks to find a solution for the issue.



"The U.S. Department of Commerce and ZTE Corp. are in ongoing discussions. These discussions have been constructive, and we will continue to seek a resolution," the official explained to Reuters.



According to the outlet, ZTE Corp. had been accused of engaging in deals with Iran in 2012.







Because of this, the Guangdong-based company increased its investment on lobbyists in Washington from $212,000 in 2011 to $5.1 million for the past four years.



In fact, Reuters revealed that ZTE used five lobbying firms, boosting the efforts with the involvement of former Nebraska congressman Jon Lynn Christensen.



On behalf of ZTE, Christensen convened with several U.S. bureaus such as the Department of Treasury and the Department of Commerce, as well as some legislators, to provide education on "cybersecurity issues" and "supply-chain security."



"My work was educating members of congress on a smartphone manufacturer and the opportunities (ZTE) provided for a very affordable phone," Christensen explained.



Meanwhile, Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng expressed the Chinese government's protest against the sanction given to ZTE.



Gao also expressed the Chinese government's hopes for the speedy removal of ZTE from the restriction list to avoid "harming the stable, healthy development of China-U.S. economic and trade relations."



According to Washington lawyer Doug Jacobson, the export ban on ZTE Corp. proved to have a significant effect not only on the company, but to the Chinese government as well, as the country is hindered from procuring technology supplies from the U.S.


Announcing the first Reveley Interdisciplinary Fellows

The first six teams of W. Taylor Reveley III Interdisciplinary Fellows, funded by a $2.6 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, have been chosen.

In keeping with the grant, the Fellows projects are focused on integrative and interdisciplinary teaching, as well as a research and scholarship components. The teams will receive an annual stipend for three years  the first year for course development and the second and third years for course instruction.



The grant is named in honor of William & Mary President Taylor Reveley, who served for 21 years on the Mellon Foundation Board of Trustees, his last three as chair. Reveley, the universitys president since 2008, retired from the Mellon Board in 2015.



"The impact of these unique fellowships cannot be overstated," Provost Michael R. Halleran said. "The Mellon Foundation grant enables us to advance our priority of unique and important interdisciplinary scholarship, led by creative faculty, to the enrichment of some of our most extraordinary students. I could not be any more excited to see the impact of these fellowships."



The teams, and their projects, are:



Daniel Parker, associate professor of English and linguistics, and Maurits van der Veen, associate professor of government.



The issue: Every day, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data are uploaded, including existing books, newspapers, audio and video recordings. This also includes vast quantities of social media, digital pictures and videos. These are known as big data.



Although big data overwhelms the analytical ability of any one person or group of people, a growing arsenal of computational techniques and tools allows researchers to unlock and uncover the patterns hidden within. Until now, these tools and techniques have been largely inaccessible to those without an extensive computer science background, which includes the vast majority of students in the humanities and social sciences.



The proposal: To develop a course on big data analysis targeted specifically at those students. It will develop the skills to collect, process and analyze vast collections of texts, without requiring prior programing skills. The course advances the universitys strategic priorities in three ways: by teaching state-of-the-art computational skills that can be used to address real-world problems; by making computational tools more accessible to non-computer science students, and by reaching across all three knowledge domains of the new COLL Curriculum.





M. Lee Alexander, visiting assistant professor of English, and Ryan Vinroot, associate professor of mathematics.



The issue: On the surface, literature and mathematics may seem like disparate, even near-opposite, subjects of study. Over the years, however, a number of authors have drawn on various mathematical ideas in order to shape classic and contemporary literary works. In these works, the language of mathematics plays a central role in the development of symbol, plot and theme, and becomes integral to the works meaning.



The proposal: To explore examples in a number of genres  short story, novel, play, poetry, film, even video game  to discover how the blending of word and number inform one another and result in a unique interplay that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The course will trace this growing trend from the Victorian era, with works such as Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland, to contemporary films and the recent genre known as mathlit to discover why this seemingly paradoxical overlap is becoming increasingly popular, and where it may be headed in the future. At the same time, the course will look at some of the mathematical concepts involved, along with their social settings and historical significance.



Silvia Tandeciarz, associate professor of modern languages and Betsy Konefal, associate professor of history.



The issue: The leaders of Argentinas last military dictatorship (1976-1983) saw themselves as saving the nation from the threat of communism by ordering the abduction, torture and disappearance  a euphemism for secret executions  of tens of thousands of political opponents. In Guatemalas internal armed conflict (1960-96), there was a brutal and eventually genocidal state murder of a generation of young leaders working for change, along with 200,000 mostly Maya civilians. These histories were meant to be unknowable, deniable and forgotten. They are not.



The proposal: The creation of a research agenda and an undergraduate course that opens students to study a subject with no clear disciplinary boundaries. Cultural and historical documents can be powerful tools in shaping recollection. Art, literature and film offer impassioned interpretations of events that not only reflect and intervene in the debates of their time, but seek to move their audiences and generate action; official paper trails, witness testimony, legal trial proceedings and even exhumed bones reveal detail; and nuance and causation, factors that often challenge established emblematic narratives of the past. The course will offer an exploration of the multiple ways Cold War-era violence and terror are being unearthed in Argentina and Guatemala and the memory-work being done by a new generation of Argentines and Guatemalans recovering histories of opposition and remembering their protagonists.



John Riofrio, associate professor of modern languages and Hispanic studies, and Jeremy Stoddard, associate professor of secondary education.

The issue: Specific efforts like the university-wide diversity committee and the Presidents Task Force on Race and Race Relations have opened up important and necessary spaces for faculty across campus to discuss the wide range of diversity issues that are relevant to William & Marys community and beyond. Concurrently, the university has seen a growing number of courses that seek to address these same issues as well as inter-student dialogues initiated and sustained by the Center for Student Diversity.



The proposal: The creation of a course  Unequal by Design: Race and Education in the U.S.  that would seek to address these issues by bringing together faculty and students from Arts & Sciences and the School of Education.



Riofrios work will focus on the ways in which cultural products (film, literature, political discourse) craft and reflect societys overall understanding of both race and education. Stoddards teaching, research on teaching and learning about controversial topics provides opportunities to explore how race emerges within the vast educational enterprise in the U.S. This includes educational policy related to the charter school and standardized testing school reform movements.



The course will provide opportunities for students to engage in thinking about how race is constructed in a society and the effects of these constructs in American schools.



Dorothy Ibes, lecturer of environmental science and policy, and Tanya Stadelmann, lecturer of film and media studies.



The issue: Effective communication of environmental science is essential for informed policy-making, generating support for scientific research and inspiring eco-critical thinking and political activism. Documentary films are uniquely positioned to not only evoke empathy in the viewer but also to bring insights from scholarly research into practice, and to navigate the space between hard scientific data, politics and policies and those who are affected by them. Yet, there is disagreement about which mode of documentary  the one that evokes empathy or the one that informs -- affects more awareness and change in the viewer.



The proposal: Bring together an environmental scientist and a documentary filmmaker to explore this tension and expand their own scholarly research with a collaborative film project and innovative new course, Communicating Environmental Science with Documentary Film.



In the first year, they will research and produce a short film exploring the capacity of various documentary styles (expository to experimental) to tell the story of the emerging science of ecotherapy. The course will guide students in communicating environmental issues via different modes of documentary, and help them learn how to select a meaningful and timely subject matter, compile and translate relevant scientific research, discuss their ideas, constructively critique their fellow students and structure a visual narrative.



Annie Blazer, assistant professor of religious studies, and Jaime Settle, assistant professor of government.



The issue: Increasing polarization in American politics has changed how citizens view other actors in the political system. There is growing evidence that liberals and conservatives have different moral foundations and that political ideology can act as a form of motivated social cognition. Political scientists have explored how these differences manifest in contemporary culture, as Americans signal their political identities in ways that are not explicitly political. For example, scholars have found that liberals and conservatives have different food preferences, summer habits and tastes in art. Many of these cultural associations are highly correlated with religious practice and religious expression.



The proposal: A project entitled Social and Cultural Signaling in Contemporary America, with three components: a survey of W&M students conducted through the Social Science Research Methods Center, a new course for the COLL Curriculum and two proposed opportunities for students to share their work at conferences and through publication.



The project seeks to introduce students to, and allow them to apply, methodologies from two disciplines. It also aims to investigate how contemporary college students use cultural codes and social signals to infer religious and political affiliations.
Cut in Coal Use Brings down Chinas C02 Emissions by 1.5% in 2015

Smoke billows from stacks as a Chinese woman wears as mask while walking in a neighborhood next to a coal fired power plant on Nov. 26, 2015 in Shanxi, China. (Photo : Getty Images)

Because of Chinas reduction of coal use, the countrys carbon dioxide (C02) emissions went down by 1.5 percent in 2015.



The International Energy Agency said that China had the biggest decline in C02 volumes compared to other countries. The lower use of coal is part of the Asian giants economic restructuring as it moves toward industries that use lesser energy and decarbonize generation of electricity, said Fatih Birol, executive director of IEA.



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Last year, coals contribution to Chinas energy mix was less than 70 percent, 10 percent lower compared to 2011. At the same time, low-carbon share rose to 28 percent from 19 percent. Most of the addition was in the form of hydro and wind, reported CRIEnglish.



Globally, energy-related C02 emissions, which is the biggest contributed to greenhouse gas, was flat for two consecutive years, said the IEA, based on its analysis of preliminary data.



Birol said it is a surprising but welcome new. Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change.



Greenpeace, an environment advocacy group, lauded Beijing for the achievement. China is very serious about tackling air pollution, noted Lauri Myllyvirta of Greenpeace.



Chinas air pollution problem, especially in major cities, is the result of 20 years of economic growth as the country became the global factory because of its cheap labor. However, because of the negative impact of the C02 on health of Chinese, China has started the shift to solar, nuclear and hydro power use.










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These are not crop circles, but fairy circles that were first reported 2014 in Western Australia (Photo : ABC/Bronwyn Bell)

Australian "fairy circles" are not similar to "crop circles," and now, scientists are finally able to explain that humans nor aliens are responsible for these mysterious circles spread out over vast areas in Western Australia. A new research indicates that the Australian circles have been created by plants themselves.



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Crop circles stand as a mystery to this day, where conspiracy theorists and scientists have strictly opposite views. However, the fairy circles discovered in Western Australia's Pilbara region, on outskirts of small mining town called Newman, have a brief explanation. Previously, similar circles were discovered Namibia, located in sourth-western Africa and the Australian circles are the second known case, ABC reported.



The fairy circles in Australia are not caused by extra-terrestrials or humans beings, but these small clearings are the results of plants managing to survive together in scarcity of water. Located 15-kilometers to the east to south-east of Newman, the circles were observed to show uniform hexagonal patterns throughout the arid grasslands.



These bare soil intervals are approximately four meters in diameter, gaped at 10 meters from a common focal point. the hexagonal shape of the fairy circles is most visible when observed from the air, they can hardly be noticed walking around those fields.



The Australian circles were first reported in 2014 by Australian environmental scientist Ms Bronwyn Bell. Bell later informed and co-studied the phenomena with Dr Stephan Getzin, who is a fairy circle expert from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research.



Since their discovery, the fairy circles have been subject of many theories, including insect invasion and carbon monoxide bubbles rising to the surface. But the latest research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points out that the plants are maneuvering the patterns, grouping themselves together and leaving the empty patches to compensate scarceness of water.



Dr Todd Erickson, from the Restoration Seed Bank Initiative at the University of Western Australia has been working on the phenomena for the last eight years. According to him, people have known about the existence of the Australian circles for years, but no skilled person like Getzin has ever gone as far as mapping it out on the landscape scale.



"Our soil analysis revealed that there are strong infiltration contrasts between vegetation areas and bare soil gaps [with hard soil crusts]," ABC quoted Dr Getzin as saying. Aerial mapping of the fields by Dr Getzin has ruled out the insect hypothesis, while according to the researcher, rarity of these circles also makes the study exciting.



Research analyzed temperature and permeability of the soil, showing that water flowed across the hard-baked patches where spinifex grasses were cropping up. The plants maintained cool temperature and briskness of soil towards edges of the circles, allowing more plants to grow on the area.



Australian and African circles appear very similar despite the fact that they are 10,000 kilometers apart. The only difference is that Namibia circles did have ant nests populating the strange hexagonal patches, but the majority of Australian circles lacked any kind of termite mounds.



While Australian fairy circles are backed by scientific evidence, crop circles will continue to dance the mysteries between conspiracists and researchers. The following video shows some beautiful crop circles.






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OnePlus is currently soak testing Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based OxygenOS update for OnePlus 2. (Photo : YouTube/Marques Brownlee)

Earlier this month, OnePlus 2 received OxygenOS 2.2.1 with some new features. November 2015 saw the company detailing it would roll out its Android 6.0 Marshmallow-based OxygenOS update to the OnePlus 2 in Q1 2016.



With the Q1 2016 deadline looming, it is not surprising that the company is reportedly testing an OxygenOS 3.0 update based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. One user according to Android Police received the update OTA sharing a screenshot with the publication. Since there is no official confirmation for the company and there are varied user reports, the update is rumored to a soak test - the rollout of an update to a limited number of customers to establish last minute bugs before the official rollout.



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The screenshot shared by the user confirms not only OxygenOS 3.0 but also unveils some alterations made in the ROM like inclusion of a slider for alerts, new wallpapers, and customizations to the home-screen. There is no much information known concerning the upcoming OS version, but it seems to be considerably different from the Marshmallow implementations from other manufacturers.



With regard to the Marshmallow update for the first smartphone, OnePlus One, the company announced back in November that users should expect the OxygenOS-based update in the first quarter of 2016. The first CM13 Snapshot builds based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow are currently rolling out, and the CM13 OS rollout is not too far away, according to NDTV.



OnePlus 2 received OxygenOS 2.2.1 update earlier this month with RAW file support for the native camera app. Furthermore, the update fixes the frequent image corruption problem in the OnePlus 2 camera. Notably, OnePlus X as well received an update recently, which fixes some camera problems, although it was not an OS update.



The latest OS version features some improvements in Bluetooth compatibility, Ultra-SIM compatibility, and roaming problems. Include in the latest OxygenOS 2.2.1 incremental update are security patch update, GMS 3.0 upgrade, and Romanian language support.



Meanwhile, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei revealed last month that OnePlus 2 successor, OnePlus 3, will be coming out in Q2 2016. According to him, the device will arrive in the US and other markets as an unlocked smartphones, and it will be sold directly by OnePlus.



Watch the footage below for further information on Android Marshmallow-based OxygenOS.






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Global real estate consultant Knight Frank is reporting this week that a total of 8.8 billion ($9.6 billion USD) was invested in Spain's commercial property sector in 2015, which is the highest figure since 2008. 2015 was also a record-setting year in terms of investment volume in Spain, increasing by 13% compared to the previous year.By sectors, offices and retail remain the most popular segments for investors. Shopping centres and High Street recorded 4.6 billion ($5.2 billion USD), accounting for 52% of investment. Offices accounted for 3.3 billion ($3.7 billion USD), representing 38% of investment. The logistics sector has grown exponentially, mainly due to the higher yields, reaching record levels of more than 850 million ($961 million USD) in 2015.Nevertheless, hotels is close behind. This is for the strong recovery of the tourist sector - both national and international.Humphrey White, Partner Head of Commercial Property Spain, commented: "Forecasts for this year suggest that investment levels will remain slightly lower than in 2015, although a greater number of transactions are expected. Essentially we are facing a lack of product, not investor demand."By investor type, investment funds and SOCIMIs have been the most active, accounting for more than half of all investment (55%). Active in Spain since 2013, SOCIMIs have increased their market share to become one of the main players in the sector, driving the market in the process.Nevertheless, we would note the gradual increase in private investors and family offices taking on more commercial property exposure. In 2014, private investment accounted for 5% of all investment, while in 2015 this figure reached almost 14%.In terms of investor type, we would note that opportunistic investors have been gradually disappearing as the market has moved on. Prime and core plus investors have taken their place and have increased their market share (43% and 28% respectively), which traditionally operate in more stable and conservative markets. Value add investors are especially active, accounting for 27% of the market.By country, the lion's share of investment has been carried out by local investors (47%), bearing in mind that SOCIMIs are considered local investors, despite the fact that much of their equity comes from international investors. France, the United States and the United Kingdom are still the main players in the Spanish commercial property sector. The Philippines stands out for the size of a sole asset investment (Torre Espacio, in Madrid for 558 million euros, or $630 million USD).
Married couple (illustration)

By: Feng Qian

A 17-year-old girl was arrested on a charge of murder after allegedly killing her husband because he married her against her will, police in Nigeria said.

Plateau police said that they have arrested Mariam Yahaya, after being accused of killing her husband, 30-year-old Lawal Bala, just two weeks after their wedding.

Yahaya was charged with one count of murder.

According to the police investigation, Bala married Yahaya against her will after arranging her as his bride with family members.

Several days after the wedding, Bala went on a business trip, leaving his young wife alone at home. When he returned, Yahaya pulled a knife and stabbed him numerous times as he slept in bed.

Neighbors who heard the husbandas calls for help, came to the scene and found Bala suffering from stab wounds all over his body.

He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Yahaya initially told investigators that armed robbers killed her husband, but she then confessed to the crime, saying that she did not want to live the rest of her life with Bala.
Martin Blackwell

By: Tanya Malhotra

(Scroll down for video) A man was arrested on a charge of battery after allegedly pouring hot water on his girlfriends son and boyfriend because they were sleeping together in bed, police in Georgia said.

Atlanta police said that they have arrested 48-year-old Martin Blackwell, after being accused of assaulting Marquez Tolbert, 21, and his boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, 23, because they are gay.

Blackwell was charged with two counts of aggravated battery.

He was booked into the Fulton County Jail, where he is being held without bail.

According to the police investigation, Blackwell came to his girlfriends apartment, where he saw the young couple sleeping together in bed.

Blackwell got angry, and went to boil a pot of hot water. He then used it to burn the couple. Tolbert suffered second and third-degree burns on his neck, back and arms.

He spent 10 days at the Grady Memorial Hospital, where he underwent skin graft procedures. Gooden was also taken to a hospital, where he was treated and released.
The upcoming iPhone SE will boast 4K iSight Camera. (Photo : YouTube/EverythingApplePro)

The upcoming 4-inch iPhone SE may be more exciting than initially speculated, since it now appears that the smartphone will rock a high-end iSight 4K video shooting camera.



Latest rumors indicate that Apple is currently developing a new demo video to display the 4K-capable camera of the upcoming iPhone SE, which is slated for a release on March 21. The 4K camera would place the iPhone SE side by side with the flagship iPhone 6s in terms of camera prowess.



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A tipster told Apple Insider that the company is planning to tout the imaging power of the iPhone SE in the upcoming promotional clip that features a scene made up of 4K footage captured completely on-device. According to the source, Apple employees have been shooting at the New York location since last week, seemingly preparing for the big event. The publication could not verify the precision of these claims, and therefore, it is better to take the news with a grain of salt.



If the claims are to be believed, the upcoming iPhone SE would be closer to the iPhone 6s than initially thought. Reports indicated that the iPhone SE would pack the same Apple A9 processor as the iPhone 6s line. Furthermore, recent analysts hint at a 12MP rear camera as opposed to the 8MP shooter previously rumored.



The smartphone was also said to ship without 3D Touch feature, as the company apparently wants to differentiate the 4-inch model from high-end iPhones. The 4K iSight camera would reduce the differences, though.



iPhone SE will reportedly pack an NFC chip and support Apple Play, which is the company's reputable mobile payments solution. While the information remains to be a rumor, the 4-inch iPhone SE could be a real hit if it packs powerful specs and the same 12MP 4K camera with Live Photos as the iPhone 6s.



With regard to pricing, KGI securities project the iPhone SE to have a price tag of between $400 and $500, according to 9to5mac. For this reason, it is likely that Apple will push down the price of iPhone 5s to about $250.



With the March 21 event around the corner, fans will learn straight from the source. For now, watch the footage below to get a glimpse of what iPhone SE will look like.






Council Urged to Consult With Public Before Rushing Into Groves Demolition

This article is old - Published: Friday, Mar 18th, 2016

Wrexham Councils controversial handling of the proposed demolition of the former Groves School has been raised in the National Assembly for Wales.

In the Senedd earlier this week, First Minister Carwyn Jones, noted that Wrexham County Borough Council do not need to demolish the iconic building before they apply to Welsh Government for funding for a new school, dismissing an argument which had been put forward by the Local Authority.

The First Minister was made aware of the controversial decision after visiting the site with Wrexhams AM Lesley Griffiths last month.

Ms Griffiths has also received correspondence from Welsh Governments Minister for Public Services, Leighton Andrews AM, which made it clear that currently, the decision lies in the hands of the Local Authority and the Welsh Government cannot intervene in the process.

Last month, campaigners from the Save Our Heritage group contacted Cadw, the Welsh Governments historic environment service, to obtain listed building status to stop the school from being demolished.

Lesley Griffiths AM said: From the very beginning, the handling of this whole process has been questionable and the lack of consultation and effective communication from Wrexham Council has been well documented.

The First Minister and Welsh Government have made it crystal clear the responsibility belongs to the Local Authority and rushing through the demolition of the building will not affect the future chances of securing funding from the 21st Century Schools programme.

A decision of this magnitude, which has clearly upset many of my constituents, should not be rushed or forced through. The latest developments have created the ideal opportunity for Wrexham Council to listen to the people and undertake an open, transparent consultation regarding the future of the site in order to achieve the best possible outcome for the town.
Motorbike Destroyed by Arsonists

This article is old - Published: Friday, Mar 18th, 2016

A motorbike has been destroyed after it was set alight by arsonists in the early hours of this morning.

North Wales Fire and Rescue Service were called to the Maes Hyfryd area of Rhosrobin at 3:11am this morning.

One crew from Wrexham attended the incident and one hose reel jet was used to extinguish the fire.

The motorbike received 100% fire damage as a result of the blaze.

A spokesperson for North Wales Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the motorbike had been set alight deliberately.
Mystery Bangs Heard in Wrexham Over Past Three Nights

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Mar 17th, 2016

Loud bangs or explosions have been heard in the early hours of the morning over the last three nights in Wrexham.

Yesterday Donna contacted Wrexham.com to say: Did anyone else hear about 10 loud bangs/shots at 5am this morning in the Hightown area? Scared the life out of me. Curious to know what it was.

It woke my little one up & my mum who lives the other side of Hightown to me. I found it very odd at that time of morning & strange how it was quite methodical, one after the other.

The loud bangs are believed to have been heard in the area over the past three nights, with speculation ranging from people reporting seeing green flashes to fireworks with another linking them to the meteor that burnt up over the UK yesterday.

After a brief investigation earlier today Wrexham.com has yet to find any official reports or explanation to the bangs.

Back last year there was a period of time when similar bangs were heard over a period of days, however no explanation was found and police confirmed they had not had any reports of incidents.

Back in 2014 several containers were broken into with fireworks stolen, with the presumed thieves treating Caia residents to an unwanted display in the early hours.
After barely overcoming rank-and-file resistance to the national agreements it signed with General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler last fall, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has sought to shut down potential struggles at factories where local agreements have not been reached.

Local contracts address working conditions inside the factories, the use of temporary workers and outside contractors, job classifications and other issues not under the national UAW agreements.

After the 2011 agreements, the UAW had a hard time pushing through local deals at a number of factories, including a Fiat Chrysler plant in Dundee, Michigan, where workers opposed forced overtime and other measures pushed by the UAW by designating the engine facility for critical plant status. At several factories, the UAW simply stopped negotiating and ordered workers to continue laboring without local agreements, in some cases for years.

During the 2015 round, the UAW tried to get workers to ratify local agreements along with the national contract, hoping that signing bonuses and the intense focus on the national agreement would allow the union to push through local concessions.

However, many factories have remained without an agreement, including until recently, GMs massive Lordstown complex near Youngstown, Ohio, where 4,150 assembly and stamping workers produce the Chevy Cruze and Buick Verano models.

Workers at the facility are angered over health and safety conditions, unbearable workloads due to manpower shortages, low-paid temporary workers being prevented from becoming full-time employees, medical coverage, the lack of proper areas to take breaks and filthy bathrooms.

Since small car models are less profitable than pickup trucks and SUVs, GM, with the full backing of the UAW, subjects workers to relentless speedup in the factory where similar conditions provoked wildcat strikes in the early 1970s. At one of GMs most productive North American plants, factory workers churned out 299,227 Cruze compact cars last year, an increase of 4.5 percent from the 2014 total, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

UAW officials completely ignore workers concerns. You cannot get a grievance filed, a Lordstown worker told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. The UAW reps wont file them. They probably get a bonus or kickback if they file the lowest number of grievances. If the reps see workers who want to file grievances they will turn the other way.

Instead, local officials are boasting that they are opening a new UAW-GM Learning Center at the factory and that they are sending a new flock of team leaders to the UAW Black Lake Education Center where they will be trained to crack the whip and victimize resistant workers.

Last January, workers at the complex in Ohio voted overwhelmingly to strike if no local agreement was reached. According to the Facebook page of Local 1112, which covers 3,000 assembly workers at Lordstown East, the local sent a five-day strike letter to UAW Region 2-B Director Ken Lortz on January 8. A local flier said the companys demands are examples of Management trying to take away everything that is important to our membership and weaken this local union. This will not be tolerated by your leadership.

The last thing UAW International and local union officials wanted was a local strike that could rekindle the festering anger of rank-and-file workers who continue to fume over the national sellout agreements the UAW rammed through at GM, Ford and Chrysler. The UAW immediately intervened in the local talks to get the contract through.

Nevertheless, on February 23, 55 percent of the skilled trades workers on the assembly side voted down the local deal, while production workers approved it. Skilled trades workers also rejected the UAW-GM national contract but the UAW simply ran roughshod over its own constitutionwhich requires ratification by both skilled and production workersto ram it through.

Local 1112 officials announced they would follow the same protocol as national contract ratification and would hold informational gathering meetings on March 1 about why our division 2 team members rejected the local agreement.

In the words of one skilled tradesman at the factory, at these meeting UAW officials simply said they would keep lines of communication open with the company about the skilled workers concerns, and then promptly announced the deal would be put in place.

At UAW Local 1714, which covers 1,400 stamping and janitorial workers at Lordstown West, 52 percent of production workers voted to reject the local contract on February 11, while skilled trades workers approved the deal. This time, the UAW announced that there would be no strike because the deal had passed the combined vote by a 31-vote margin. Instead, the UAW would hold a re-vote of production workers only.

Afterwards, the locals Facebook page declared, Due to the fact that the majority (Division 1) voted against ratification and the minority (Division 2) voted to ratify, the Shop Committee, along with encouragement from the UAW International, has chosen to re-vote on the Tentative Local Agreement. The Shop Committees expectations for ratification are for both divisions to pass the Tentative Agreement.

The local organized inquiry meetings on February 18 to supposedly survey workers about what issues to discuss with management. Meanwhile, the UAW International announced a 10-day ratification deadline extension, approved by Lordstown management, from March 4 to March 14.

The delay, the local claimed, would allow the Membership time to understand the changes/additions toward the Tentative Local Agreement. The UAW decided not to hold any roll-out meetings for workers to question them on the supposedly redrafted deal and instead local officials handed out a Shop Flyer during the March 10-11 votes, which contained sugar-coated highlights and proclamations that the deal included no concessions.

The local made it clear that another rejection would not lead to a strike. Instead it wrote, If no resolution can be accomplished locally, the issues will be forwarded to UAW International Parties. In other words, if rejected, the UAW would force workers to vote again and again until they got it right! On March 4, UAW officials met with team leaders to push the sellout through.

Under these conditions, stamping and janitorial workers reluctantly ratified the deal by a 61-39 percent margin.

Workers on the shop floor are concerned that both workers and the factory are being run to the ground in anticipation of a possible closure of the plant. In order to boost the profits of the Big Three automakers, the new UAW national agreements sanction the shifting of small car production to lower-wage GM plants in Mexico.

The UAW rejects out of hand any fight to unify US, Mexican and Canadian workers to defend the right to a good-paying and secure job for all workers in North America and the rest of the world. Therefore, if the UAW is to convince the automakers to retain any small car production in the US it will be by helping GM brutally slash the wages and benefits of current and future workers, while brutally increasing exploitation.

Instead of buying new parts for the stamping presses in need of repair, they strip parts from working presses and shut down production lines, a Lordstown worker told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. There are not enough people, not enough parts and management tells skilled trades to fix things the way they want, not the right way. Then they have to re-fix it the right way taking twice as long.

I think its sabotage because they plan to close the plant. There are 2,000 new cars parked in the back because the trunks leak and they still have not fixed the problem. There is a shortage of workers in the plant because older workers are retiring and not being replaced. They were supposed to bring in temporary workers to fill in but the company did not want to transform the current laid-off temp workers into full-time workers. They want to keep them as temps and pay them less.

As far as safety, if there is any way they can get a repair done without shutting down the line they will do it. Stamping workers are required to move large dies but the equipment is not suited for it. When youre crawling in a press anything can happen and a hard hat wont help. Im amazed a terrible accident hasnt already happened. You can only roll the dice so many times.

Even the bathrooms are disgusting, and, if they can, workers avoid going for eight hours until they get home. The local union officials say they wont tolerate these conditions. The UAW pays its people to cover this up. Anytime there is a mess it does not come out of companys multibillion-dollar profits but out of the wages, jobs and pensions of workers.
Leaders of the Pimicikamak Cree First Nation in Northern Manitoba declared a state of emergency on their Cross Lake reserve last week after the suicide of fourteen-year-old Finola Muswaggon.

Muswaggon was the sixth person in the community of 6,000 to kill themselves since December 12. Five of those who took their lives were teenagers. The sixth was a young mother of three children.

The community is in a state of shock, said Band Councilor Donnie McKay. In the previous weeks alone, the local nursing station had recorded 140 attempted suicides said McKay. Acting Chief Shirley Robinson told reporters that of the 1,200 students at the local high school, 170 are currently on suicide watch. Our front-line workers that we have in our nation are all burnt out, said Robinson. The teachers are exhausted. The school counsellors are exhausted. The ministers are tired. The leadership is tired.

The ongoing tragedy at Cross Lake follows on the heels of a much publicized school shooting at a Dene nation reserve at La Loche, Saskatchewan where a seventeen-year-old student killed his two cousins at home and then entered his high school, shot dead a teacher and a teachers assistant and wounded seven students before being apprehended. La Loche, a community of 3,000, and the surrounding region has the highest suicide rate in Saskatchewana rate five times the provincial average.

This is the La Loche of northern Manitoba, said Cree Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson, except the shooter (at Cross Lake) is society.

In point of fact, the shooter in the centuries-long string of tragedies that have afflicted aboriginal communities across the entire country is Canadian capitalism. The Canadian nation-state was consolidated through the subjugation and systematic dispossession of the native people. Those who survived were reduced to abject poverty, shunted onto reservations, and until 1960 denied basis citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

The statistics concerning mental health and suicide amongst Canadas aboriginal people are a horrific tragedy and a searing indictment of the countrys economic and political elite.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for indigenous youth and adults up to 44 years of age. Aboriginal youth take their lives at a rate five or six times greater than their non-aboriginal counterparts, with suicides amongst First Nations children as young as ten-years-old not uncommon. Suicide rates amongst Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, at eleven times the national average. The scourge is not limited to populations on the economically isolated native reserves. More than one of every five natives living off-reserve has reported contemplating suicide.

Manitobas New Democratic Party (NDP) government has now dispatched several emergency mental health-care workers and counsellors to Cross Lake and the federal Liberal government has pledged to cover the costs for this intervention, but only for eight weeks. Prior to this temporary deployment, which was prompted by last weeks declaration of a state of emergency, Cross Lake had only one part-time federally funded mental health therapist.

In addition to emergency assistance, Pimicikamak band leaders have reiterated longstanding demands for funds to build a hospital and recreational facilities in the community and for assistance in creating ongoing employment opportunities.

Currently, eighty percent of the Cross Lake population is unemployed. There is a serious housing shortage and no community or recreational center. Many children are in the care of child welfare services.

Many of the social ills afflicting the community stem from a massive hydro-electric project that was initiated under a previous NDP government in the 1970s and implemented by its Conservative successor. As a result of changes to water-levels, flooding and diversions perpetrated by government-owned Manitoba Hydro, transportation routes and wild-life habitats in the Cross Lake area have been disrupted and often destroyed. Even now, decades after the project was completed, flooding routinely displaces people from their homes.

The hydro project has contributed to mass unemployment and mass poverty for our people, said Chief Catherine Merrick. It has piled on top of the other difficulties we have faced.

In 2014, after decades of appeals to provincial and federal officials for action to address the devastating impacts on the local economy caused by the hydro-electric project, members of the reserve occupied the Jenpeg generating station that sits at the edge of the reserve. Only after six weeks of occupation did NDP Premier Greg Selinger agree to come and offer a personal apology for the provincial governments role in destroying the communitys traditional economic base. Government promises of revenue-sharing of Jenpeg profits, environmental cleanup, and relief from massive winter electricity bills have yet to be fulfilled.

In addition, many of the older people in Cross Lake are products of the Canadian states residential school programa horrific, century-long practice of forcibly removing native children from their homes and incarcerating them in religious run schools cum work-camps, often hundreds of miles from their parents. Cross Lake was itself the site of one such school until 1969.

The Canadian government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the removal of one-third of all native children to these schools over generations met the definition of cultural genocide and is responsible for continued family dysfunction in many native communities.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 children died whilst in the custody of the residential schools from disease, malnutrition, fires, suicide and physical abuse. In some cases, healthy children were consciously placed in dormitories with children suffering from tuberculosis.

Discipline was harsh, with children systematically humiliated and physically abused by teachers who would berate them as stupid Indians. Children were often corporally punished for speaking their native language. Many were also sexually abused.

The social crisis engulfing Cross Lake arises from conditions common to aboriginal populations across the country. Life spans for native people fall far below the national average. Diseases such as tuberculosis are rampant in some communities. HIV and AIDS rates are higher on some western Canadian native reserves than in the most vulnerable of African countries.

More than half of all native children live in poverty. Education opportunities are deplorablefewer than 50 percent of students on reserves graduate from high school. The federally-funded- schools on native reserves receive on average 30 percent less funding than other Canadian schools.

Numerous native communities dont have access to potable water, with boil water advisories in effect, on average, at over a hundred of the 631 native reserves at any given time.

Overcrowding in dilapidated homes is endemic. Almost half of all residences on native reserves require urgent, major repairs.

Incarceration rates for aboriginals are nine times the national average. A native youth is more likely to go to prison than get a high school diploma. Although they make up just 4 percent of Canadas population, 25 percent of those held in federal prisons are aboriginal.

Poverty conditions are not restricted to those living on reserves. Natives in urban centers, which comprise about half of the rapidly growing 1.2 million native population, have the countrys highest unemployment rates, second only to the rates for native reserves. Nationwide, about 50 percent of First Nations people and Inuit are unemployed.

The vast mineral deposits in the Canadian North and the drive to further expand oil and gas extraction, pipeline construction, and hydro-electric mega-projects continue to place aboriginal communities directly in the firing line of exploitation by governments and the giant corporations they represent. It has been estimated that over the next decade exploitation of these resources on or near First Nations lands will generate at least $600 billion for oil, mining, construction, and drilling corporations. Already, commodity extraction earns the provincial and federal governments some $30 billion annually in taxes and royalties alone. What little revenues that are distributed to First Nations seldom reach the general population.

Many native youth mobilized by the 2013 Idle No More protest movement have begun to investigate the full gamut of questions surrounding the endemic poverty and exploitation of the aboriginal peoples. But what is required is not a retreat into the dead-end of a native nationalism that seeks a new deal with the Canadian bourgeoisie, through expanding native political structures within the Canadian capitalist state and the development of small pockets of native entrepreneurs. Rather, a mass political movement of the working class, uniting native and non-native people, must be developed so as to challenge the very foundations of the profit system and bring about the socialist reorganization of economic life so as to provide the resources for decent jobs, living standards and social facilitiesincluding education, health, and housingto all, regardless of ethnic or national origin.

This author also recommends:

Canadas aboriginal Truth and Reconciliation Reportthe class issues

[13 June 2015]

Canadas Truth and Reconciliation Report and the crimes against the native people

[6 June 2015]
According to a new report by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, the average price of brand-name drugs increased by 16.2 percent last year. Between 2011 and 2015, branded prescription drug prices have nearly doubled, rising 98.2 percent. Since 2008, the prices have increased by a whopping 164 percent.

Drug spending rose by 5.2 percent in 2015. This was about half the increase seen in 2014, the year of the largest hike since 2003.

The report is based upon prescription use data for members with drug coverage provided by Express Scripts plan sponsors. In assessing changes in plan costs, the report distinguishes between the relative contributions from changes in patient utilization (e.g. more patients being prescribed the drug) and changes in the unit price of the drug (e.g., price hikes).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most drug spending was on traditional drugs (small-molecule, solid drugs) to treat conditions such as heartburn, depression and diabetes. The recent trend has been a shift to specialty drugs. Still, within traditional therapy categories there were significant increases in spending on medications to treat diabetes, heartburn and ulcers, and skin conditions.

Diabetes medications remain the most expensive of the traditional drug categories. Drug spending in this category increased by 14 percent, with the hike being equally influenced by increased utilization of the drugs and rise in unit cost. Three diabetes treatmentsLantus, Januvia and Humalogwere among the top five drugs in terms of spending across all traditional therapy classes.

Although not discussed in the report, an investigation by Bloomberg News last year found evidence of shadow pricing by drug manufacturers, where companies raise their prices immediately after their competitors do so. The investigation found that the prices of diabetes drugs Lantus and Lemivir had increased in tandem 13 times since 2009, and evidence of similar shadow pricing for the drugs Humalog and Novolog.

Heartburn and ulcer drugs saw a 35.6 percent increase in spending, almost solely due to the rise in unit cost. Although 92.3 percent of the medications filled in this category were generic, the price unit trend was heavily influenced by the increase in prices of branded drugs such as Nexium, Dexilant and Prevacid.

Treatments for skin conditions also saw a significant increase of 27.8 percent in spending, again due almost completely to rises in the unit costs of the medications. The report notes that these increases occurred for both generic and branded therapies, largely due to industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions leading to less competition in the market. While 86.3 percent of the drugs filled were generic, many of the generic versions saw sharp increases in unit cost, including the two most widely used corticosteroids, clobetasol (96.2 percent) and triamcinolone (28 percent).

While the overall spending increase for traditional therapy classes was nominal (0.6 percent), the primary factor for the increase in spending came from specialty medications. Specialty medications require special education and close patient monitoring, such as drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis. Spending on specialty drugs rose by 17.8 percent in 2015. The report found that 37.7 percent of drug spending was for specialty drugs in 2015, and the figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2018.

Spending in this category was topped by inflammatory conditionssuch as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and psoriasiswhich rose by 25 percent, driven by a 10.3 percent increase in utilization and 14.7 percent rise in unit cost. The average cost per prescription in 2015 was $3,035.95. The medications Humira Pen and Enbrel, which captured more than 66 percent of the market share for this class, saw unit cost increases of more than 17 percent.

Spending on oncology therapies increased by 23.7 percent, due to both increased use (9.3 percent) and increased unit cost (14.4 percent). New cancer therapies average $8,000 per prescription and the average cancer regimen is around $150,000 per patient. Between 2005 and 2015, the anti-cancer drug Gleevec, manufactured exclusively by Novartis, has seen its price more than triple, with an annual cost of $92,000. In 2015, the year prior to the drugs patent expiration, Novartis increased the unit cost of the drug by 19.3 percent. This is a common practice for companies facing patent expiration.

Drug spending on cystic fibrosis treatments rose by a significant 53.4 percent, largely based on increases in unit cost (40.9 percent vs. 13.3 percent from patient utilization). This rise was largely due to use of the new oral combination therapy, Orkambi, which became available in mid-2015. The drug costs more than $20,000 per month.

The report forecasts that between 2016 and 2018 spending will increase annually by 7-8 percent for traditional drugs and around 17 percent for specialty drugs.

The prices of generic drugs have on average decreased, although there are notable exceptions. Pharmaceutical companies like Horizon Pharma, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals have purchased generic drugs and then significantly hiked their prices.

The report notes the emergence of captive pharmacies in 2015 as another factor responsible for higher drug spending. Captive pharmacies are owned or operated by pharmaceutical manufacturers and tend to promote their manufacturers drugs, rather than generic or other low-cost alternatives. The report gives as examples the arrangements between Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Philidor Rx Services, and between Horizon Pharma and Linden Care Pharmacy.

The Express Scripts data matches the findings released earlier this year by the Truveris OneRx National Drug Index, which found that branded drugs rose by 14.8 percent in 2015.

Despite the widespread media publicity of the notorious drug price hikes by companies like Turing and Valeant, pharmaceutical companies have continued to inflate prices in 2016, with Pfizer leading the way with an average price hike of 10.6 percent for 60 of its branded drugs.

Workers are rightly outraged at the skyrocketing price of drugs. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that 74 percent of respondents felt that the drug companies put profits before people.

The political establishment, however, has sought both to exploit this anger for electoral support and to direct it into safe channels that do not disrupt the status quo.

A congressional hearing held in January placed a spotlight on the price-gouging practices of Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose dubious activities were highlighted in a pair of congressional memos. The purpose of the hearing, however, was not probe the underlying causes of the sharp rise in drug prices. Instead, legislators sought to safeguard the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole through a verbal lambasting of the industrys most notorious culprits.

Drug prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign. The Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released a campaign advertisement earlier this month attacking the predatory pricing of Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the congressional hearing, this is all for show. Of all the presidential candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry, taking in $410,460 according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Clintons rival, Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he will support Clinton if he loses the Democratic nomination, received $82,094 in donations from the industry. Sanders has proposed a series of minor reforms to address drug prices, such as the re-importation of drugs from Canada, allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, and decreasing the patent life of branded drugs.

None of the candidates, including the democratic socialist Sanders, challenge the private ownership of the pharmaceutical industry in which everything from research and development and clinical testing to drug pricing and promotion are subordinated to the profit interests of corporations.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy testified on their roles in covering up the Flint water crisis before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, amid new revelations that up to one-fifth of Americas water supply may be contaminated with lead.

Flints drinking water has been linked to at least 10 deaths stemming from an outbreak of Legionnaires disease. The citys entire population of about 100,000 people, including some 8,000 children under the age of six, has likely been exposed to elevated lead levels in their drinking water. Elevated blood lead levels, which can lead to irreversible cognitive and developmental damage, has been detected in 221 children and 104 adults in Flint so far. That figure undersestimates the actual extent of lead poisoning because of limited testing and the short time that lead actually appears in the bloodstream.

At the hearing, congressmen ritualistically grilled Snyder and McCarthy based on their political affiliations, with Republicans taking shots at the Obama-appointed EPA head, and Democrats hurling rhetorical denunciations at the Republican governor. Several called for the resignation of Snyder or McCarthyoften with heated rhetorical sound bites intended for the nightly news.

But on matters of substance the representatives circled the wagons; no one called for the impeachment, firing or criminal prosecution of the officials, despite ample evidence of a criminal conspiracy on both the state and federal level. That is because both parties, which are mutually responsible for the calamity, want an end to further exposures as soon as possible.

Flint is an impoverished, predominantly working-class and multiracial city, which was once a center of US auto production and working-class militancy. In April 2014, the city switched its water source from Detroits systemwhich supplied and treated water from Lake Huronto the heavily polluted Flint River.

The move, carried out at the instigation of Snyders appointed state treasurer and Flint emergency manager, both Democrats, received the blessings of local Democratic elected officials, who toasted the changeover with glasses of clean water. The US Environmental Protection Agency, despite warnings, did nothing.

Snyder, one of the most culpable figures in the crisis, sought to spread the guilt around as widely as possible. This was a failure of government at all levels, Snyder declared. Local, state and federal officialswe all failed the families of Flint. On the state level, Snyder pointed to negligence by career bureaucrats for failing to inform him of the dangers.

In reality, Snyder was warnedrepeatedly. US Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, noted that Snyder received an internal email in October 2014 from his head legal adviser recommending that Flint get back on the Detroit (water) system as soon as possible before this thing gets too far out of control. The governor did not order the city to switch its water source until a year later.

But the Environmental Protection Agency was equally culpable, having received complaints by residents for nearly a year before taking any action. In an email released Wednesday, EPA head Gina McCarthy wrote in September 2015 that the issue of Flints drinking water was really getting concerning, months before the EPA issued an order requiring the city and state to protect the population.

The EPA silenced its own scientistMiguel Del Toralwhose tests showed extremely high lead levels. He also reported to superiors that Flint was violating federal law because it was not treating the highly corrosive river water.

Hundreds of Flint residents, some bringing their children, traveled to Washington to attend the hearing, but were barred from entering the 60-seat hearing room, where space was reserved for dignitaries such as civil rights activist and Democratic politician Al Sharpton.

Sixty-seven-year-old Flint resident Doris Patrick, who traveled 14 hours by bus to attend the hearing, took umbrage at being barred from the room, telling the Wall Street Journal, Flint cant get in the hearing.

Unlike the members of Congress, who studiously avoided calls for criminal prosecutions, she called for jailing those responsible. Rick Snyder should be in jail. He should be in prison. He committed a crime. Anyone else would have been arrested by now. Period, she said.

Resident Lewenna Terry, who traveled to Flint to attend the hearing, said that her son, also in attendance, had been exposed to lead, leading him to experience reduced grades and lower attention span. The teachers have noticed its not just my son but other kids. The whole city has been poisoned, she told Reuters.

In the face of growing revelations about federal complicity in the poisoning of communities all over the country, the Obama administration made an unequivocaleven gratuitouspublic defense of the EPAs handling of the Flint water crisis, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest declaring Thursday, Theres a strong case to make that the United States of America has never had a better administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency than Gina McCarthy.

This statement was rendered all the more wanton by the testimony at an earlier hearing Tuesday by Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, who was among the first to draw national attention to the Flint water crisis.

EPA had everything to do with creating Flint, Edwards said, saying the federal regulator has effectively condoned cheating on lead and copper monitoring since at least 2006. He noted that an earlier incident of lead poisoning in Washington, DC between 2001 and 2004 was up to 30 times worse than that in Flint. But he said the EPA completely covered that up for six years, creating a climate where anything goes.

He added, If a landlord were to engage in similar practices, and through their negligence, to allow even a single child to be exposed to lead paint risk, the EPA would argue for prosecution and incarceration. Yet, the EPA has allowed entire cities to be unnecessarily exposed to elevated lead in their drinking water and theyve covered up evidence of their unethical actions by authoring these falsified scientific reports.

Further revelations this week give credence to Edwards charges of a conspiracy at the local, state and federal levels to cover up a national epidemic of lead contamination.

On Thursday, the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported, startlingly elevated levels of lead were found in the water in Mississippis capital in June, but a warning was not issued by government officials until January. The newspaper said the government found that over one-fifth of homes in Jackson, Mississippi, had lead levels exceeding federal limits, but failed to issue any warning to residents for months.

Even more worryingly, USA Today revealed Thursday that hundreds of schools and child care centers have tested positive for lead contamination in drinking water, a rate that represents 20% of the water systems nationally testing above the [EPAs] action level of 15 parts per billion.

The USA Today report noted that drinking water at one school in New York tested at above 5,000 parts per billion, a level that the EPA classifies as hazardous waste.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Flint water crisis represents just the tip of the iceberg. If Dr. Edwards is right about the national drinking water system, as he was in Flint, that means that potentially millions of children may have been and continue to be exposed to dangerous levels of lead throughout the United States, right under the nose of the federal government.

The systematic criminality, falsification and deception at every level of government revealed by the Flint crisis, while certainly an unanswerable indictment of the individuals involved, is in fact an indictment of a whole social order.

This is a society that puts the most basic social needs of the population, including the safety of children, behind the real priorities: funding the military-intelligence-police apparatus to the tune of a trillion dollars a year and securing the perpetual enrichment of the financial oligarchy that dominates American society.
This is the first part of a two-part article.

Opposition to British membership of the European Union in the June 23 referendum is dominated by two rival nationalist and pro-big business groups, Leave EU and Vote Leave.

Britains two largest pseudo-left groups, the Socialist Party (SP) and Socialist Workers Party (SWP), claim to offer a progressive alternative that allows workers to cast a leave vote without endorsing the xenophobic campaign dominated by the right wing of the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

In reality, neither group is mounting a genuine opposition to the chauvinist agenda of the official Leave forces. For years, they have lent a left cover to some of the worst purveyors of nationalism within the Labour and trade union bureaucracyabove all, those influenced by the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain (CPB).

The Socialist Party has been in a political alliance with the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union since 2009. The RMT, together with the Aslef train drivers union and the BFAWU bakers union leadership, are urging a leave vote alongside the Trade Unionists Against the European Union (TUAEU) campaign, which is politically led by the CPB and its newspaper, the Morning Star. TUAEU is reportedly seeking funding from the RMT.

Above all other considerations, the opposition to the EU by the trade unions involved in the Leave campaign centres on the free movement of labour (for EU citizens.) Whether or not this is portrayed in explicitly nationalist terms, it is what unites the Stalinist trade union apparatchiks and the far-right UKIP.

Seven years ago, the TUAEUs forerunner, Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution (TUAEC), launched No2EU as a front to stand candidates in the European elections. No2EU was backed by the RMT executive, led by long-time Stalinist Bob Crow, along with the CPB and the Socialist Party.

Central to the TUAEC/No2EUs campaign was nationalist opposition to the use of migrant labour. This was coupled to a distinctly militarist agenda centring on the complaint by the TUAEC that the Lisbon Treaty would make it significantly harder to direct UK government investment into essential industries and services and would be the main obstacle should we want to ensure that we had a merchant fleet again. The campaign called for a referendum on the treaty and the return of national democratic rights.

TUAEC was an affiliate of the Campaign Against Euro Federalism (CAEF). Founded in 1991, CAEF declared, Our nation state can only be democratic if it has the right to self-determination. It called for Britain to restore sovereign control over its own military forces.

CAEF, in turn, was affiliated to the Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB), which traced its origins back to the right-wing Monday Club in the Conservative Party. CAEF also called for anti-immigration measures, stating in 2009, The use of foreign workers in Britain stems from the Single European Market defined as the free movement of capital, goods, services and labour.

Not surprisingly given this political pedigree, No2EU from its founding focused on intervening in or publicising disputes in which trade unions opposed the use of foreign contract labour, beginning with the 2009 Lindsey oil refinery strike.

The Lindsey dispute achieved notoriety when numbers of those involved raised the demand, British jobs for British workersin the process attracting the support of the fascist British National Party. No2EU professed opposition to this slogan, but nevertheless railed against ferrying workers across Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform.

In 2011, No2EU published an article by Alex Gordon, then the RMTs president, which made an explicit call for immigration controls, stating, Across Europe, it is clear that we are witnessing large movements of capital eastwards as labour heads west.  To reverse this increasingly perverse situation, all nation states must have democratic control over their own immigration policy and have the right to apply national legislation in defence of migrant and indigenous workers.

Calls for migrant labour to be covered by national labour agreements do little to disguise the clearly anti-migrant thrust of No2EUs policies, the main demand of which is for migrant labour to be excluded wherever possible from the UK. In 2013, Crow, in his role as RMT general secretary, made this clear by denouncing the EUs free movement of workers for undermining the control of national parliaments. Crow, who died in 2014, declared that Free movement within the EU impoverishes workers.

Brian Denny, the Stalinist press officer of the RMT, complained of social dumping, whereby cheap foreign labour displaces local workers. Denny is now the spokesman for TUAEU, which has taken over No2EUs programme in its entiretyincluding a word-for-word repetition of a passage insisting, Nation states with the right to self-determination and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks.

The central role in glossing over the nationalist opposition to immigration of the TUAEU and its predecessors has been played by the Socialist Party. Behind ritual invocations of the necessity for a United Socialist States of Europe, the SP has consistently minimised or apologised for the nationalism of the Stalinist wing of the trade union bureaucracy.

In July 2009, commenting on the Lindsey oil refinery dispute, the SP wrote of the shame of some on the Left for being taken in by the headlines in the capitalist press during the dispute, which highlighted the British jobs for British workers elements of this struggle. They blamed this on the fact that the unofficial strike began without any leadership, implying that the trade unions had done nothing to promote nationalismeven when the then-general secretary of Unite, Derek Simpson, used the dispute to support a Daily Star campaign pushing the demand, British Jobs for British Workers.

They praised the RMT for its decision to launch No2EU in 2009, supported by the SP after its conference was addressed by Gordon and Denny. Later, in the 2010 general election, they promoted the Trades Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) electoral front, which still exists today.

In a September 2015 article, the SP cites the Lindsey dispute as a seminal event, with Clive Heemskerk writing, While some on the leftmany now calling for a Yes vote or abstention in the EU referendumfailed to understand Lindsey, the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union (RMT) gave immediate support and drew the most important political conclusion: workers needed their own political voice against the EU.

Describing No2EU as at bottom a pro-worker bloc, the SP admits in passing a danger in posing issues in such a way as to reinforce the idea that there are lasting solutions to the problems workers face within the confines of a nation state, before stressing that the bigger danger is vacating the field to the right within the national terrain.

Not leaving the field to the right for the SP means fighting on its anti-migrant labour terrain.

Heemskerk compares the fate of Greece with how Germany was made to pay war reparations under the Versailles peace treaty. He writes: Trotsky insisted, the working class cannot abandon the field to the nationalist right, as its mass organisationsthe Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the KPD (Communist Party)did in December 1929 when a referendum was promoted by the German National Peoples Party (DNVPled by the media baron Alfred Hugenburg) to reject the Young Plan re-affirming German war reparation debts. The KPD abstained in the referendum while the SPD deputies voted for the Young Plan in the Reichstag, in support of international law.

Heemskerk implies that the KPD was wrong to boycott the 1929 referendum, commenting that The Nazis participation with the DNVP in the referendum campaignthe first time an important section of the capitalists had collaborated with Hitlerwas a factor in their phenomenal surge from 810,000 votes (2.6 percent) in the May 1928 general election to 6.3 million (18.2 percent) in September 1930, against the backdrop of the 1929 crash.

He cites Trotskys comment that in the general election the working class had been given yet another chance to put itself at the head of the nation as its leader but had not done so, following the missed opportunities of the previous decade. The intention is for the reader to conclude that Trotsky viewed the KPDs referendum abstention as one such example of a missed opportunity.

This is a deliberate historical distortion. The position taken by the KPD in 1929 towards the referendum called by the nationalist right was correct and was never opposed by Trotsky. His critique in 1930 makes no mention of 1929 and is directed at the KPD for its designation of the SPD as social fasciston the basis of which it refused to call for a united front against the fascist danger. He attributed the weakness and strategic impotence of the revolutionary party to the wrong policy of the Communist Party, which found its highest generalisation in the absurd theory of social fascism, which enabled the Social Democrats to maintain their hold over the working class.

Under instruction from Stalin and the Comintern, the theory of social fascism became the starting point for an increasingly open and politically disastrous adaptation, defined as national Bolshevism, to German nationalism on the part of the KPD. It led to the KPDs support in 1931 for a referendum initiated by the Nazis urging the removal of the Social Democrats from power in the state of Prussia. The SP has nothing to say on the position taken by the KPD on what it dubbed the Red Referendum to justify lining up behind the Nazis, because to cite Trotskys scathing critique would undermine the political justifications employed by the SP in covering for the nationalist Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum.

To be continued
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the war in Syria that has claimed well over a quarter of a million lives, and, between turning nearly five million into refugees and internally displacing another seven million, has driven more than half the countrys population from their homes.

The national economy has been shattered, with over half of Syrians unemployed and 85 percent living in poverty. Much of the country has been plunged into darkness after continuous attacks on power stations and other electricity infrastructure.

Perhaps most staggering of all, the unrelenting violence combined with the destruction of the countrys health care system and other social infrastructure as well as the plummeting of living standards has driven down life expectancy in Syria from 70.5 years in 2011 to just 55.4 years in 2015.

The rape of Syria, alongside the decimation of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, constitutes one of the great crimes of imperialism in the 21st century. What is commonly referred to by the media as the Syrian civil war or uprising has in fact constituted a massive regime-change operation carried out by Washington and its regional allies with complete contempt for the lives and well-being of the Syrian people.

This proxy war has been waged almost entirely by Al Qaeda-linked militias armed and funded by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, which all collaborated to funnel in tens of thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

The attempts to sell this war to the American people, as a humanitarian intervention by the Obama administration and its media accomplices, and evenby various pseudo-left organizationsto portray it as a revolution have fallen totally flat.

As the anniversary fell this week, the level of fighting had diminished significantly under a cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by Washington and Moscow. The United Nations has brought together representatives of the Syrian government together with the collection of Islamist fanatics and foreign intelligence assets united in the Riyadh opposition in a third attempt to negotiate a cease-fire and political transition.

Meanwhile, the government of Vladimir Putin announced on Monday that it was withdrawing the majority of its military forces from Syria, while maintaining its naval facility in Tartus and its air base in the western province of Latakia.

In less than six months, the Russian intervention enabled Syrian government troops to regain some 4,000 square miles of territory and 400 towns, solidifying their grip over the western part of the country which includes the major population centers, while cutting off the main supply routes from Turkey for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front, Syrias Al Qaeda franchise.

The Russian intervention only underscored the phony character of the war on ISIS waged by the US, which was calibrated not to weaken the rebels, among whom ISIS and al-Nusra counted as the most potent contingents.

The recent turn of events prompted angry and sarcastic editorials from both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both of which from the outset have reflected the views of those within the US ruling establishment and the Obama administration itself who have pressed for a more direct US military intervention. Both papers ridiculed Obama for suggesting that the Putin governments Syrian intervention would lead it into a quagmire.

As quagmires go, Mr. Putin will take it, the Journal commented. On Monday he announced that Russia will begin withdrawing the main part of its forces in Syria having accomplished his strategic goals at little cost.

Similarly, the Post editorialized that far from landing in the quagmire, Mr. Putin has accomplished quite a lot, and his gains have come at the expense of US interests and of Mr. Obamas stated goals in the region.

It would be a serious mistake to interpret the immediate conjuncture and the bitter recriminations over Putins supposed victory as a signal that Washington has thrown in the towel over its Syrian intervention. US imperialism is not about to accept the consolidation of a regime in Syria allied to Moscow, any more than it will countenance the rise of Russia as a regional, much less global, rival.

For the moment, the Obama administration will seek to exploit the UN-brokered peace talks and any concessions that it can wring from Moscow, Tehran and the government of President Bashar al-Assad itself to pursue the regime change that it has been unable to bring about by force.

After the election in November, however, it may rapidly turn to new tactics. It is a longstanding practice of the US government to delay as much as possible the launching of new wars in election years until after the vote in order to prevent militarism from becoming a subject of popular political debate.

Within the Obama administration, there is a substantial faction that has consistently pressed for more direct US military intervention, as was highlighted by the recent article published in the Atlantic magazine, headlined Obamas doctrine. It quoted figures like current Secretary of State John Kerry, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, former defense secretary Leon Panetta and others criticizing Obama for failing to launch missile strikes in September 2013 over the fabricated charges that the Syrian government had carried out chemical weapons attacks.

Current Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is quoted explaining that Obamas view is that Asia is the part of the world of greatest consequence to the American future. He is therefore loathe to have another US war in the Middle East distract from preparations for a military confrontation with China.

Regime change in Syria was always for US imperialism a means to an end. It was aimed at preparing for confrontations with both Russia and Iran by depriving them of a key regional ally.

That the US military is preparing for such a wider conflict found fresh and ominous confirmation in testimony given this week by the uniformed commander of the US Army.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned the House Armed Services Committee that, while his troops were prepared to conduct counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions, fighting ISIS, Al Qaeda, al-Nusra and any other terrorist groups, he had grave concerns about their readiness to engage in a great-power war with an enemy such as China, Russia or Iran.

There is a high level of risk associated with those contingencies right now, he added, arguing that failing to build up US troop strength would be to roll the dice. After testifying, General Milley and other service commanders gave the congressional committee risk assessments for another major war in a closed session.

For all of the immense carnage suffered by the Syrian people, the dangerous spread of the conflict regionally and the massive flow of refugees into Western Europe, it is becoming increasingly clear that the criminal war for regime change in Syria represents only the antechamber of far bloodier and indeed global military conflagrations.
On Tuesday, Podemos entered into coalition talks with the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) on possibly forming a government together with the right-wing Citizens party. Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias exchanged text messages with PSOE chief Pedro Sanchez via Internet, while Compromis, the affiliate of Podemos in the Valencia region, is preparing to meet with the PSOE and Citizens.

It must be bluntly stated that the political differences between Podemos, the PSOE, and Citizens are minimal. Podemoss Greek ally Syriza formed a government last year with the far-right Independent Greeks that imposed savage austerity on the workers, which Podemos enthusiastically supported. Nonetheless, the broaching of government alliances including Podemos and an explicitly right-wing party like Citizens is a significant new step to the right, and a warning that the bourgeoisie is preparing deep attacks on the working class.

Podemos is brazenly discarding its past criticisms of the ruling elite. It had called Citizens a thinly disguised rebranding of the right-wing Popular Party (PP) and a tool of the ruling caste, and Iglesias called the PSOE-Citizens alliance despicable and a tool of the oligarchy when it was announced. Nonetheless, Iglesias offered to serve in a PSOE-led government as a vice-prime minister for media and intelligence matters, as long as Podemos held a number of ministerial posts.

On Tuesday, however, as news of his talks with the PSOE broke, Iglesias sent an open letter to Podemos supporters, titled Defending Beauty, and demanding that they respect party unity.

He accused unnamed opponents of trying to sabotage Podemos: They are trying to set up a new myth to weaken us, according to which there are two Podemoses, one of which is docile and ready to facilitate the installation of a PSOE-Citizens government, and which is facing off against a more radical Podemos.

Iglesias baldly argued that Podemos was joining talks for the good of Spain: In a crucial historic moment for the future of our country, they are again putting our maturity to the test and trying to sow discord.  In Podemos there must not be currents or factions that compete for control of bureaucracies and resources, that would turn us into what we always fought: just another party.

In fact, the political crisis that erupted after the December 20 elections produced a hung parliament in Spain is exposing all of Podemoss factions as reactionary pro-capitalist tendencies. In the run-up to Iglesiass statement Tuesday, tactical divisions inside the Spanish bourgeoisie and state machine over how to form a government were threatening to tear Podemos apart.

After Sanchez predictably failed to form a PSOE-Citizens governmentthe two parties had only 130 parliamentary seats, while 176 are needed to form a governmenta crisis erupted in Podemos.

This crisis re-emerged yesterday, when Podemos sacked its number-three member, Sergio Pascual. It cited his deficient management whose consequences have seriously damaged Podemos at such a delicate moment as the negotiation process to put together a government of change.

Podemos members did not try to hide that the question at stake in the faction fight was how quickly to join a government and drop the pretense of being a party of change. Podemos founder and former leading member Juan Carlos Monedero told El Pais, Some want to enter into government as soon as possible even though the circumstances are not optimal; others meanwhile want to continue consolidating their claim to represent change, and they will not want to subordinate themselves so urgently to policies which are not their own.

The Anticapitalist Left (IA), the Spanish affiliate of Frances Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party and a founding tendency in Podemos, spoke of those within Podemos who believe they will obtain more power and influence in future elections if, for now, they keep projecting a false, left image.

It argued against supporting a grand coalition between the PP, PSOE, and Citizens, arguing that the forces of change have to promote a grand social coalition that will seek to continue disordering the social and political landscape. They added, we have to prepare ourselves to be in the best situation in a scenario full of risks but also opportunities.

Iglesias also opposed direct talks with the PSOE and Citizens, instead holding up the model of a Valencian governmentreferring to the Valencian region, where Compromis and the Stalinist-led United Left (IU) support a PSOE government.

Increasingly, however, IA and Iglesias could not contain the frenzied rush of Podemos members to obtain lucrative posts in the state machine and attack the workers. Manuela Carmena, the Podemos-backed mayor of Madrid, said that she defended entering into talks, calling on Podemos to make a difference between forming a government with the PSOE and Citizens, and supporting Sanchez as prime minister. She claimed that such deals are very elastic and allow for converging in a very subtle way.

This subtle strategy appears to have possibly been a reference to a cynical deal in which Podemos would abstain from voting against a PSOE-Citizens government, allowing it to be formed and giving it political support without formally joining it.

In the Madrid region, nine party officials of the regional Executive Council of Podemos close to the partys number two, Inigo Errejon, resigned, declaring their lack of support of pro-Pablo Iglesias Madrid leader Luis Alegre. Emilio Delgado, the partys organisation secretary in Madrid, had previously resigned.

There are also internal tensions in other Podemos regional branches. In the Basque country, Galicia and Cantabria, the branches attacked the national leadership for overstepping its authority and trying to decide their territorial affairs, as they each try to set up their own regional alliances with the social democrats or other pro-austerity parties.

In Catalonia, Podemoss Albano Dante Fachin and Joan Giner nearly succeeded in removing the pro-Iglesias leadership under Gemma Ubasar. They tried to call a congress to renew the leadership in Catalonia and ally themselves with Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.

Colau recently gave a glimpse of what a Podemos government would be like. The so-called mayor of change worked to defeat a strike of 3,200 workers of Barcelonas public metro system (TMB). She opposed strike action and, once it was called anyway, set a strike-breaking, legally mandated minimum service requirement to keep trains running during the strike.
Last Tuesday, the states attorneys in Cleveland and Chicago lost primary races to secure the Democratic Partys nomination. The two prosecutors, Timothy McGinty of Cuyahoga County, Ohio and Anita Alvarez of Cook County, Illinois, had protected police from criminal charges in high profile killings. Both defeats were the result of widespread anger over police brutality.

In Cleveland, McGinty was responsible for the decision not to prosecute Officer Timothy Loehmann for killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November 2014. Video in that case showed the policeman shooting the child within seconds of getting out of his vehicle. McGinty solicited reports from independent investigators chosen for their sympathy to law enforcement who declared that shooting this child was objectively reasonable.

A year after the killing, the grand jury led by McGinty exonerated Loehmann, with McGinty declaring: The Supreme Court prohibits second-guessing police tactics with 20/20 hindsight, and the law gives the benefit of the doubt to the officers, who must make split-second decisions when they reasonably believe their lives or those of innocent bystanders are in danger.

McGinty lost the primary to Michael OMalley who received 56 percent of the vote. Since there is no other general-election candidate for the office in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, OMalley has in effect won the position.

In Chicago, Alvarez was complicit in the attempted cover-up of the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014. The administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sought to prevent video of the shooting from being released to the public and authorized a $5 million wrongful death settlement with McDonalds family on the condition that the video not be publicized.

Alvarez had delayed any charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald 16 times, including as he lay bleeding on the ground, until a judge ordered the release of the dashcam footage which showed the officers claims of self-defense were a complete fabrication. Alvarez filed the charges against Van Dyke the day that video of the killing was released in order to stem the protests that erupted after the official cover story collapsed.

Alvarez lost to Kim Foxx, a former prosecutor in her office, by 36 percentage points. Foxx will compete with a token Republican candidate in November.

Despite the popular hostility to incumbents who shielded killer cops, the channeling of this thoroughly justified anger through the Democratic Party insures that the replacement prosecutors have been carefully vetted and are just as much part of the anti-working class criminal justice system as those voted out.

Both OMalley and Foxx have had thoroughly conventional careers, with many years in and around law enforcement, and they received endorsements from the same figures that originally promoted Alvarez and McGinty. Their role is to use talk of reform to divert and disperse the popular anger over the well-publicized police killings so that police brutality and corruption can continue largely undisturbed.

OMalley is a former Cleveland City Councilman with a background as a bailiff and probation officer. For eight years he has been working as an assistant prosecutor under McGinty and McGintys predecessor Bill Mason. As part of his campaign, OMalley received endorsements from the mayors, state representatives, city councilors and other Democratic establishment figures.

In Chicago, Foxx is the former aide of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and ran with her endorsement. Despite the widespread protests demanding Emanuels resignation that had surrounded the McDonald killing, the day after Foxxs victory, Preckwinkle told the Chicago Sun-Times: I dont think its a message for the mayor. The message is simply that the people of Cook County believe its time for a transformative change in the states attorneys office.

For her own part, Foxx made no direct mention of the McDonald case during her victory speech, only saying that her victory was about turning the page. Her campaign received large donations from major Democratic donors. Fred Eychaner, who gave more than $14 million to Democratic super PACs in the 2012 election, donated $600,000 to the Foxx campaign. Preckwinkles campaign provided another $300,000, and Service Employees International Union affiliates added more than $200,000.

Although Foxx criticized Alvarez for her handling of the McDonald case, Foxx has raised no criticisms of police brutality in general despite the Chicago Police Departments long history of violence and torture.

Police killings in the United States continue at a steady rate of nearly three a day with at least 223 victims so far this year. Far from being anomalies, the killings of Rice and McDonald express the fact that under conditions of ever-greater social inequality, the financial elite responds to mounting opposition and unrest by systematically building up its police force and arming it to the teeth.

Under the Obama administration, with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, the police have been armed with military surplus equipment and increasingly trained as an occupying force to suppress dissent in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. Democrats like Foxx and OMalley do not represent an alternative to this program, just a desire from some Democrats to be more sophisticated in the justification and defense of police brutality.
Europe

English sixth-form teachers protest

Teachers in sixth-form colleges in England held a one-day strike Tuesday to protest the underfunding of sixth-form colleges by the government.

Members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) voted by a nearly 90 percent majority for the strike. An attempt by the government to prevent the strike going ahead was defeated, when the High Court in London ruled against the governments challenge.

Striking teachers in London lobbied Parliament and handed in a petition to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, calling on her to increase funding.

Lobby in London by primary school teachers

Primary school teachers, organised by the NUT, lobbied the Department for Education offices in London on Thursday afternoon. They are calling for the over-testing of primary school pupils to stop. Teachers say the current testing system is in crisis and they are being forced to make their pupils jump through hoops.

UK haulage driver vote for action

The result of a ballot of 700 haulage drivers working for the Co-op retail firm was announced on Monday. It showed 77 percent of the drivers had voted for strike action and 84 percent in favour of action short of a strike.

The Co-op is seeking to transfer 87 driving jobs in the Midlands to the haulage company Eddie Stobart Ltd (ESL). Unite is seeking further negotiations with the Co-op before authorising action.

In 2012, 184 drivers employed by supermarket firm Tesco were transferred to ESL, which subsequently sacked them. According to Unite, many of them are still without work.

UK-based Eurostar drivers to strike

Eurostar drivers in England have voted for strike action by 51 to 3 over the long-running issue of lone working and the victimisation of one RMT member. No date has yet been set, but a strike over Easter has not been ruled out.

Scottish container port staff in dispute

Employees at Grangemouth container port in Scotland operated by Forth Ports began a two-week strike midnight Tuesday. Members of the Unite union voted by a 100 percent majority on a 97 percent turnout to oppose the attempts by the employer to impose a change in shift rotas, removal of weekend overtime pay and a pay freeze for this year. According to the union, the new rota would mean workers losing up to 1,800 a year.

Grangemouth is Scotlands largest port and handles around 9 million tonnes of cargo each year.

Strike by school janitors in Glasgow, Scotland

More than 100 school janitors in the Scottish city of Glasgow came out on strike Monday through Wednesday this week. The janitors, members of the Unison union, work for the Glasgow City Council arms-length company, Cordia.

The dispute is over janitors claiming Working Context and Demands Payments. This is in return for carrying out dirty or unpleasant duties, working outside or heavy lifting, which can add between 500 and 1,000 to their annual salaries. The janitors argue Cordia has been refusing to make the payment, claiming the criteria for doing so have not been met.

Glasgow CCTV staff walkout

Around 20 staff working for the Glasgow City Council arms-length company Community Safety Glasgow (CSG) walked out on strike on Thursday at 7 p.m. on a 48-hour strike. The members of the Unison union held a similar 48-hour strike earlier this month.

In a long-running dispute, the CCTV staff are seeking parity on similar shift patterns with Glasgow City Council staff, who receive an additional 7,500.

Strike at Icelandic aluminium plant continues

The strike by staff in the export section of the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium smelting plant in Straumsvik, Iceland, is continuing. Although production is also continuing, the strike action prevents the finished aluminium being exported via the attached dock facilities. The workers are seeking a pay increase.

Talks on Monday between the Hlif union and Alcan management were brokered by a government official but failed to resolve the dispute. The union is pushing for a pay rise to cover the period May 2015 through 2018 while Alcan wants the pay rise to take effect from May 2017. Alcan is seeking to be able to hire contractors at the plant who would be denied the right to strike.

Construction workers on Moscow metro walkout

Construction workers employed on Moscow metro walked out on strike last Friday, saying they are owed five months wages. The migrant workers held a protest outside the offices of the construction company Ingeocom. They told the press that each of them is owed around 100,000 rubles (US$1,400). They vowed not to return to work until they had been paid.

Spanish rail strike announced

Rail staff employed by train operator Renfe and by rail network company Adif have announced they will hold a 23-hour strike beginning midnight next Tuesday. They are organised by the CCOO union body.

They are protesting loss of collective bargaining rights and the failure of the two companies to honour an agreement to hire more staff.

Planned action by drivers on Irish capitals light railway system cancelled

A planned 48-hour strike by drivers on the Dublin light railway system (LUAS), due to have begun on Thursday to coincide with St. Patricks Day celebrations, has been cancelled. They had held previous 48-hour strikes in an attempt to secure a substantial pay increase.

Talks brokered by the Workplace Relations Commission between the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) and the company operating LUAS, Transdev, came up with a pay deal for three of the four groups, including drivers, involved in the dispute.

SIPTU members will be balloted on the terms of the settlement next week. As part of the negotiations, Transdev agreed to scrap plans to use buses to replace the trams if the strike had gone ahead. Under the terms of the pay agreement current salaries will rise by about 13,000, to 55,000 over the next five years.

Former staff at closed Irish store hold protest

A protest was organised last Saturday by the SIPTU outside the now-closed retail store Clery, in the capital city Dublin.

The new owners of the store, Natrium, closed the store in June last year with no notice and with the loss of 130 jobs. The new owners did not pay outstanding wages or redundancy payments to the dismissed staff.

Middle East

Striking Palestinian teachers suspend action

Palestinian teachers demanding the Palestinian Authority (PA) abide by a 2013 agreement on pay announced they are suspending their strike. The decision came after President Mahmoud Abbas announced the 2013 agreement would be imposed from the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year.

Teachers have been critical of the unions pursuit of their dispute. PA security forces have made attempts to disrupt protests and demonstrations by the striking teachers.

Africa

Namibian building workers protest

Workers at the New Era Investment Company, Namibia, went on strike on Monday after a building worker was injured on the construction site. He suffered severe head injuries while working on Namibias police headquarters in Windhoek when metal fell on his head.

The Namibia Building Workers Union members complain that they carry out their duties in sandals and without head safety gear. Alongside the lack of safety gear, they also protested the absence of any safety officers on site. They also wanted the company to reinstate transport provision to their workplace, complaining they cannot afford the taxi fares on their poor wages.

Nigerian road construction workers strike

Construction workers across Nigeria have gone on strike this week over the breakdown of negotiations for a new wage agreement. Negotiations through the National Joint industrial Committee (NJIC), comprising the builders union and the Federation of Construction Industry, broke down over the unions demand for a 100 percent wage increase.

The National Union of Civil Engineering, Construction, Furniture and Wood Workers (NUCECFWW) insists negotiations continue through the NJIC and that the strike continue until the employers return to the negotiations. Road works throughout Nigeria have come to a standstill.

Nigerian power distribution workers threatened with victimisation

Members of the Nigerian National Union of Electrical Employees (NUEE) returned to work last week, but are threatening to walk out again. Workers went out on strike at the Nigerian Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IEDC) over 400 recently sacked workers and high electricity tariffs.

The power workers are being questioned by management, asking why they were not at their post on the days of the strike. Management is demanding answers to their questions within 24 hours. The union spokesman says management has gathered reports on strikers activities, and those on the picket lines. The union gave the company 48 hours to withdraw the questioning or face renewed action.

Nigerian civil servants demand wage arrears

Civil servants in the Federated Capital Territories are continuing with their strike, even though the government has now paid their December salaries. They are owed three months pay altogether, and initially the government promised to pay two of the outstanding months but reneged on that, paying only one month.

The National Union of Local Government Employees said it would not return to work until the remaining two months are paid.

South African refuse workers attacked by police again

Johannesburg employees of the South African refuse company Pikitup went on strike March 9, leading to a backlog of waste throughout the city. They are demanding a wage increase of R4000 (US$250) a month.

Police again attacked the strikers using teargas and stun grenades on March 11, which left some workers injured and likely to end up in court. Pikitup workers who were recently on strike in Johannesburg were violently assaulted by police and then arrested but have yet to appear in court.

Four thousand employees are ignoring company threats of no-work-no-pay and the sack if they do not return to work. A South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) regional secretary is reported as saying in the online Citizen, At this point, we are not willing to back down, no one would return to work under Amanda Nairs management or without any pay increase. Other reports state SAMWUs national leadership has called on its members to return to work but is being ignored by the membership.

Pikitup management have brought in a rival contractor, Red Ant, to clear the streets. A smaller union in Pikitup, the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (IMATU), has been accused of attempting to scab on the strike.
6 years, 7 months ago QPD

Juanita J Williams 63, 418 N 28th for stealing at Walmart on 3/17/16. NTA

Brooke D. Sweet, 26, 649 Jackson St. for Failure to Yield - Left Turn in the 800 block of S. 8th on 03-17-16. PTC

Christopher Robinson, 26, 219 N. 10th #B for Improper Backing and No Valid DL at 9th & Broadway on 03-16-16. NTA

Corey D. O'Dear, 28, Hannibal, MO for Expired Registration Sticker and Operation of an Uninsured Motor Vehicle at 4th & Broadway on 03-17-16. NTA

Timothy O. Perkins, Jr., 45, address unknown, for Unlawful Possession of a Weapon/Felon at 2321 Monroe on 03-12-16. NTA

Jessica A. Hollensteiner, 1825 Maple reported her unlocked 2015 Kia Sedona was entered by an unknown suspect sometime between 2030 hours on 02-26-16 and 0900 hours on 02-27-16. Hollensteiner said her white purse with black polka dots containing miscellaneous ID's and credit cards was stolen from her vehicle.

Jena Howell of California reports she left her handheld work scanner lying in Walmart and upon her return it was missing.

Jeremiah D Carver (29) 911 1/2 N 28 for Uninsured Vehicle at 10/Vermont on 2/17/16. NTA

Erica D Valez (30) 1123 N 6th for Uninsured Vehicle at 8/Maine on 3/16/16. NTA

Calvin J Stinnett (43) 529 N 3rd for DWLR at 7/Chestnut on 3/16/16. NTA

Nicholas A Rinella (33) 2001 Seminary Rd for Speeding at 36/E. Lake Centre on 3/16/16. PTC

Ann M Bickhaus (49) 234 S 16 for Speeding at Maine/Lexington on 3/16/16. PTC

Joseph E Stanberry (29) 626 Payson Ave for No Insurance at 8/State on 3/16/16. NTA

Timothy S Musick (29) 824 Jackson for Speeding at Gardner Exp & Kentucky on 3/16/16. PTC

Brandon T Gramc (19) Palmyra Mo for FTA Operating Uninsured Vehicle and FTA No Valid Registration at 8th & State. Lodged

Trenton A Matson (27) 800 Shady Acres Ln for PTR-DUI. Located at 6/Oak on 3/16/16 and lodged.

Jason L Cameron 140 Maine St reports a semi owned by Kohl Wholesale had a window shot out by a BB between 2/26-2/27/16.

Jeremiah D Carver (29) 911 1/2 N 28 for Uninsured Vehicle at 10/Vermont on 2/17/16. Released on NTA.

Erica D Valez (30) 1123 N 6th for Uninsured Vehicle at 8/Maine on 3/16/16. Released on NTA.

Calvin J Stinnett (43) 529 N 3rd for DWLR at 7/Chestnut on 3/16/16. Released on NTA.

Nicholas A Rinella (33) 2001 Seminary Rd for Speeding at 36/E. Lake Centre on 3/16/16. Released on PTC.

Ann M Bickhaus (49) 234 S 16 for Speeding at Maine/Lexington on 3/16/16. Released on PTC.

Joseph E Stanberry (29) 626 Payson Ave for No Insurance at 8/State on 3/16/16. Released on NTA.

Timothy S Musick (29) 824 Jackson for Speeding at Gardner Exp & Kentucky on 3/16/16. Released on PTC.

Brandon T Gramc (19) Palmyra Mo for FTA Operating Uninsured Vehicle and FTA No Valid Registration at 8th & State Lodged

Trenton A Matson (27) 800 Shady Acres Ln for PTR-DUI. He was located at 6/Oak on 3/16/16 and lodged.

Jason L Cameron 140 Maine St reports a semi owned by Kohl Wholesale had a window shot out by a BB between 2/26-2/27/16.

Jason A Quincy (36) 921 Kentucky St. Quincy, IL for vandalism at 2801 College Ave on 2-25-16. NTA.

Boni E Huston (20) 2213 Ohio St. Quincy, IL for driving under the influence-drugs, possession of cannabis, and obstructing traffic at 18th and Broadway on 3-7-16. NTA.

John J Maxwell (86) 400 Parkview Dr. Quincy, IL for improper driving at 4400 block of Broadway on 3-15-16. PTC.

Steven L Thompson (51) 827 Cherry St. Quincy, IL for a warrant for FTA - possession of drug paraphernalia and parking in a handicapped space at 827 Cherry on 3-15-2016. Cash Bond.

Sheldon R Tasco (29) 918 State St. Quincy, IL for a warrant for FTA - speeding at 918 State St. on 3-15-16. Cash bond.

Rachel L Poe (28) Homeless for a warrant for FTA- Larceny at 1801 Broadway on 3-15-16. Lodged ACJ.

Lisa M Freeman (39) 201 Columbus St. Coatsburg, IL for possession of methamphetamine less than 5 grams, driving while license suspended, and operating an uninsured vehicle at 8th and Vermont on 3-15-16. Lodged.

Casey L Clevenger (22) 2032 College for Trespassing at 1800 College NTA

Amber L Brown (43) 1301 1/2 N 12th for Operating Uninsured Vehicle and Speeding at 4th & Lind NTA

Bradley D Bowen (24) 1229 N 25th for Operating Uninsured Vehicle at 17th & Broadway NTA

Miracle Jo Howser 36) 657 Harrison for Shoplifting at 5211 Broadway NTA

Tina Wells 836 Lind reported a cell phone stolen from her residence on 3/2/16
6 years, 7 months ago by Jim Dewey

A Ralls County, Missouri Jury has found Krystal Tressler of Hannibal Guilty of Second Degree Murder and First Degree Robbery for her part in the October shooting death of a Hannibal Convenience store clerk.

Tressler is the 4th suspect in the case to be convicted in the crime which resulted in the death of Adrienne Arnett.

Gary Wiltermood and Michael Studer and Amanda Lehenbauer are already in prison.

Cuda Dodd is still awaiting trial.

According to the Hannibal Courier Post - the jury also decided to sentence Tressler to ten years in prison on each count.

The Missouri Department of Corrections will conduct a sentencing assessment and Judge David Mobley will determine if the sentences should be consecutive or concurrent.

Mobley has set May 11th as the date for final disposition of the case.
The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, told a German magazine that Europe must support all moderate Islamic institutions that adopt the Al-Azhar curriculum, adding that the curriculum is the most eligible one for educating the youth.

El-Tayeb has been visiting Germany this week and will head next month to Paris, as part of a tour to facilitate dialogue between the East and the West.

The head of the prestigious Sunni Muslim institution will meet with a number of scientific leaders and intellectual thinkers in order to discuss the misconceptions of Islamophobia, according to Al-Ahram Arabic news website.

During the interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine, El-Tayeb said that Al-Azhar is ready to train European imams in order to maintain and spread the culture of moderation, coexistence and peace which are part of the curricula of the religious institution.

El-Tayeb visited the Indonesian capital Jakarta last month where he met with President Joko Widodo as well as top Muslim clerics and preachers.

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STEINHATCHEE, FL (WTXL) - UPDATE: 3/19/16

Time is running out for Two Taylor County murder suspects to fight extradition back to Florida.

20-year-old Douglas Mihal and his teenage girlfriend are being held in the Kern county jail in Bakersfield.

The two were taken into custody last week by U.S Marshals.

Officials say the couple is connected to the death of 38-year-old Aaron Tappe whose body was found last week in Steinhatchee.

The Kern County Sheriff's office says they have until Tuesday to contest the charges.

The sheriff's office says they can only hold them for 5 days.

Mihal is being held without bond on felony murder and grand theft charges.

no word on what charges his girlfriend faces.

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

Two people were arrested in California for the murder of a Steinhatchee man who was reported missing in January.

According to deputies, 20-year-old Douglas Mihal from Ohio and his 17-year-old girlfriend were arrested in Bakersfield, California Thursday.

Both are being held on charges of first degree homicide and grand theft auto.

According to deputies, 38-year-old Aaron Michael Tappe went missing from his Taylor County home in late January. They recovered his body last week in Steinhatchee.

Deputies said Mihal and his girlfriend fled to California after the murder.

Both suspects will be extradited back to Florida.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- An email glitch at Florida State leads to possibly hundreds of students receiving details of confidential assault and harassment complaints.

For one affected student who wished to remain anonymous, she says she's concerned about the reaction of a student who reportedly harassed her.

"In one word, it honestly made me feel violated," she said, "which is some way I didn't want to have to feel again."

On Monday, she got an email from University Housing, claiming she violated a fire safety code.

But the email also listed a complaint she filed - about concerns she and her roommate had with a male student in her residence hall.

"It stated his name, my name and her name -- and sort of the details, the really personal details of the report."

Other students received similar emails, listing incidents involving them -- some from years ago. But the university says third party software is to blame.

"The emails were sent out by that software program and were not intentionally or directly sent out from anyone -- university staff member or employee," said Steve Kleuver, a University Housing assistant director.

The university says it shut down the email server within minutes of noticing the glitch, issuing an email to students who were affected.

"There is no further action required on their part, nor do these emails initiate any conduct proceedings," Kleuver said.

But the student says the damage is done and worries about if it might happen again.

"I'm really just concerned about other people. I don't want anyone to have to be afraid to report sexual misconduct or any sort of harassment at all."

Kleuver says students who are concerned about their particular situation should contact University Housing.

After contacting the third party vendor, the software was updated to prevent future glitches. In addition, university staff will no longer be using the email function of the software after the incident.
Policemen who allegedly attacked doctors earlier this year have yet to be referred to court

Egypt's Doctors Syndicate will organise protests in one large hospital in each governorate on Saturday, the syndicate has said, in protest to the lack of accountability for policemen who allegedly assaulted doctors earlier this year.

According to the syndicate's Friday statement, doctors will protest at 9am outside the selected hospital, without disrupting the work of the institution.

On 28 January, a number of policemen allegedly assaulted two doctors at Matariya Hospital in Cairo, after one of the doctors refused to document fake injuries in a medical report for one of the policemen.

Following the attack, a general assembly convened, with thousands of doctors flocking to the syndicate's Cairo headquarters to protest the attacks.

They have agreed on a number of scheduled escalatory measures, including nationwide-strikes.

Friday's statement said the protests would take place as a reminer that "the attackers of doctors at Cairos Matariya Hospital have not been referred to court yet."

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Egypt reaffirmed its support for the unity of Syrian lands following a Thursday announcement by Syrian Kurds of the establishing of a federal region in areas under their control, Egypt's foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters on Friday.

The Thursday declaration by Syrias Kurds has been condemned by the Syrian government as well as the opposition.

Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abo Zeid said that Egypt has continually stressed on the necessity of Kurdish participation in Syrian affairs, adding that any arrangements that do not ensure Syrian unity should be addressed by Syria internally under UN sponsorship.

He added that Egypt has warned against Kurdish exclusion, calling on all parties inside and outside Syria to uphold the country's interest above all, and not to interfere in Syrian affairs or impose measures that lead to the disintegration of the Syrian state.

More than 150 delegates from Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and other parties meeting in northeastern Syria agreed to create the "federal system" unifying territory run by Kurds across several Syrian provinces.

The new "federal system" is expected to centralise governance in three cantons under councils elected by the people, according to AFP.

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The IDF and the Shin Bet's efforts are currently focused on keeping the " lone wolf intifada " from turning into an all-out popular uprising. The security services and government are especially worried about the increasing use of homemade firearms and improvised explosives. Furthermore, the incitement in Palestinian social media and on the Hamas affiliated Al-Aqsa television station are other extremely worrying developments.

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Efforts are focused on monitoring Facebook, which is flooded with incitement. There are 1.7 million Facebook users in the West Bank, about half of whom are women. This fact helps to explain why there has been an increase in the number of women and teenage girls carrying out attacks. The IDF, in coordination with Palestinian security forces, has stopped dozens of lone wolf attacks by monitoring various Facebook pages.

Incitement not only occurs on social media, but also on Palestinian mass media outlets such as radio and television. The owners of private radio and TV stations in the West Bank were warned by security forces to stop broadcasting incitement, and as a result, some owners are voluntary requesting official confirmation that their broadcasts are not crossing the line into incitement. Some have even toned down the rhetoric in what they broadcast.

Palestinian incitement

However, it recently came to light that the primary source of incitement is not coming from the West Bank, but from the Hamas affiliated Al-Aqsa TV station, which openly calls for the start of a new intifada and the murder of Jews.

A pilot project was carried out by security forces to try and disrupt Al-Aqsa TV's signal. However, the initiative failed once it became clear that the channel is broadcasted via internet and satellite, thereby making the project ineffective.

In fact, it is impossible to shut down the internet and satellite broadcasts.

Contrary to what Israeli officials may imply, it is difficult to define the Palestinian Authority's broadcasts as incitement, and even in Israel people know that the PA has very little influence over the young people in the West Bank. Hamas TV and radio, however, are followed closely.

Fading aspirations

Over the past few weeks, the IDF and Shin Bet have been carrying out operations in the West Bank to confiscate home-made weapons and the materials used for making them. The operations take place every night everywhere, from small towns to large cities such as Nablus.

The results are yet to be seen on the ground  incitement continues and terrorists continue to use homemade firearms in their attacks.

Perhaps the results of these efforts will be seen in the coming months, and there will be a decrease in the number of attacks carried out. At least, this is the hope of both the Israelis and Palestinian Authority, which is also worried about the possibility of this "lone wolf intifada" turning into a full-fledged popular uprising.

This is the hope, but people in the know are predicting a much gloomier result. We can at least say for sure that this "lone wolf intifada" will be with us for at least several months.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Istanbul on Saturday and meet with President Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign ministry said on Friday.

The foreign ministry said in a statement "current regional and international developments" as well as bilateral relations between the two countries would be discussed.

Iran and Turkey back opposing sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen, but their economic interdependence has kept relations broadly on track.

Meeting in Tehran earlier this month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Davutoglu agreed they must cooperate to end sectarian strife, including support for a fragile Syrian ceasefire.

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Purim events will be held across Israel next week, but the ongoing wave of terrorism has security forces in the large cities preparing to handle cases of unnecessary panic, among other scenarios.

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Toy store owners in Jerusalem decided to limit the sale of toy guns and knives, while customers in Tel Aviv said they were refraining from purchasing exploding accessories.

"This year, we brought fewer toy rifles and pistols; people are afraid that the children will walk around with these things," said Albert from the Cinderella store in Jerusalem. However, Albert expressed his optimism regarding the preservation of the holiday's festive character: "There have always been attacks and people celebrated. We'll celebrate again this year, and we'll continue to celebrate in the future."

Dummy guns in stores (Photo: Yaron Brenner)

Yossi from the Stock Shop store was also hopeful: "Nothing will change what happens in Jerusalem: people go out and celebrate. Jerusalem will not surrender to terrorism."

Albert added that the fragile security situation in the capital raised the prestige of the security forces. "There's more sympathy and demand this year for soldier and police costumes, so we brought more of their costumes. To each his own."

A store owner on Matalon street in Tel Aviv, where there is a large concentration of toy and costume shops, presented a different view: "The security situation affects people; they want fewer guns, firecrackers and exploding stuff. I offered a noisemaking toy this week to someone, and she immediately stepped back and said, 'No, no, no. It's stressful for us. We want happier things.'"

Praising the security forces (Photo: Yaron Brenner)

Racheli from the My Toy store said on this topic: "From what I've seen so far, people don't want guns and rifles, but more costumes of knights, and of course of Anna and Elsa. There was a time when people bought jellabiyas costumes with a keffiyeh, which was great in my opinion, but, unfortunately, we're not there. These days, it's very dangerous to wander the streets with weapons and keffiyehs."

Eliran Ben David, who works at a store that imports costumes and accessories, said that the security situation has not affected the demand for costumes of soldiers and police. However, Ben David noted, there is demand in Israel for an unusual costume: "The orange ISIS prisoner costume sold like crazy. It also has a collar of blood; it's really is a hit. The costume is designed for adults, but there were also parents who bought it for their children. It looks like a crazy gimmick."

(Photo: Yaron Brenner)

Lizzie, a mother of two, said that her son will dress up as Spiderman and her daughter as a dancer. "I didn't want the kids to have costumes that will involve guns. The security situation is a big factor: you never know where it's going to come from. We'll have fun and go out, but I'll keep my eyes peeled."

As of now, Purim celebrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are to be held as planned. Police reinforcements are expected to be present to maintain order at large events. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Economy heightened its enforcement campaign against the import and spread of firecrackers and cherry bombs.

(Photo: Yaron Brenner)

Beyond the regular panic that these accessories can cause, there is a concern that their use will unnecessarily tax the security forces by resulting in false reports of terror incidents.

The ministry's campaign is reminding the public that the possession, use and sales of smoke bombs, cherry bombs and firecrackers of all kinds are forbidden. It is also forbidden to possess pistols and rifles that resemble real weapons.
Israel is the 11th happiest country in the world, according to a report ranking countries by order of happiness published this week by Columbia University.

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Denmark leads before Switzerland in the World Happiness Index's annual rating. According to the report, prepared at by Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, only in Burundi are people less happy than in Syria, which marked the 5th anniversary of its bloody civil war's outbreak this week.

World Happiness Index (Graphic: Reuters)

All the countries that are at the top of the index are western, and four of them are Nordic. In addition to Denmark at the top are Iceland (third place), Norway (fourth place) and Finland (fifth place), followed by Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden to round out the top ten. Israel follows in eleventh place with a score almost identical to Sweden's. Denmark bumped down Switzerland and Iceland by jumping up from its number-three position last year. Israel ranks happier than the United States (13th place), the United Kingdom (23rd place), France (32nd place) and Italy (50th place). Last year and in 2013, Israel was also in 11th place. On the other end of the spectrum are failing African countries Benin, Togo, Rwanda and Liberia, as well as Syria and Afghanistan, which also suffered a long war.

"This is a strong message for my country, the United States, which is very rich, has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier," said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of the SDSN, regarding the American place outside the top ten.

The report ranks 157 countries according to several criteria: GDP, social support, life expectancy, freedom of choice and generosity. This is its fifth year. Since 2012, when it was first published, five countries appointed ministers who were responsible for their countries happiness: Bhutan, Ecuador, Scotland, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed David Keyes as his English language spokesperson. Keyes will replace Mark Regev, who will move to London soon to serve as Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom.

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Keyes, an Israeli-American, is known for trying to embarrass Iranian diplomats over their government's record on human rights violations. Iranian diplomats, who negotiated the Iranian nuclear deal with world powers last summer, almost certainly remember his provocative questions, such as, "Who is your most beloved political prisoner?"

"I use humor and satire to shed light on Iran's record as the greatest violator of human rights on earth. It hangs gay people, arrests students, and tortures bloggers," Keyes says in a short online video.

David Keyes punking Iranian diplomats over human rights

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Keyes managed to ask Wendy Sherman, the chief US negotiator in Vienna, "What are the chances of lowering the rate of executions in Iran to one every two hours?"

In October 2013, Keyes publically confronted the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammed Zarif, when the latter visited New York for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly. He asked Zarif about the irony of him using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, while the Iranian government blocks its citizens from accessing such platforms. Zarif responded, "That's life."

Keyes was born in Los Angeles and immigrated with his family to Israel when he was 23 years old. He speaks English, Hebrew, and Arabic and holds a bachelor's degree in Middle East Studies from UCLA and a master's degree in Diplomacy from Tel Aviv University. He also served in the IDF's Foreign Affairs Unit. In his most recent position, he served as the director and founder of Advancing Human Rights, New York-based organization interested in the promotion of human rights in the Arab world and Iran.

David Keyes mocks American and Iranian diplomats in Vienna

In 2009, while working for Natan Sharanksky, he founded cyberdissidents.org, which aims to support Arab and Iranian dissidents.

Keyes has also harshly criticized China an Egypt, which could cause friction between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu because the latter hopes considers the two countries as possible strategic allies. Keyes also frequently criticizes Vladimir Putin and other international leaders, close to Netanyahu.

In response to the announcement of his appointment, Keyes thanked Prime Minister Netanyahu for his trust in him and said it is a great privilege to serve the State of Israel in light of the multiple challenges it faces.
Last week, a new class of soldiers finished basic training in a base in the far north of Israel. These 420 men and women will be going to units all over the Israel Defense Forces and be stationed in all branches and roles.

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The base, Mikhve Alon, is under the command of the Education and Youth Corps, and is perhaps best known for its Hebrew program. New soldiers go to this base if their initial Hebrew level is too low. The course provided is a three-month program combining intense Hebrew, Zionism, and Israeli history lessons alongside basic training.

Of these soldiers, 350 were lone soldiers, meaning they don't live with their parents. Many of these soldiers move to Israel alone with the purpose of joining the IDF. Some are from Africa, the former Soviet bloc, or Latin American countries, and come to Israel to seek better lives and opportunities than they could in their countries of origin. Some come from other areas of Europe where anti-Semitism is once again rearing its head. Others are from North America or Australia, looking to serve before heading off to college.

Yet, there is a small but significant number of people whose circumstances are different. They come from Western countries with relatively little anti-Semitism and strong economies - at an older age and with academic degrees. They have the keys to the world in their hands. Still, they decide to leave the West and their professional life behind in order to enlist in the IDF.

One of the people who chose this path less travelled, and finished her basic training at Mikhve Alon last week, is Rochelle Windman, 22 - with a degree in communications from Indiana University  who will be an IDF combat engineer instructor, teaching soldiers how to handle explosives.

Rochelle knew she wanted to enlist while she was in high school. My parents told me that if it was truly important to me I would wait until after college. Even though they thought the four years would change my mind, I stuck to my plan: one month after graduating I got on the plane and began this abnormal post-grad life."

Rochelle Windman (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Unit)

Although the salary in the IDF may not be comparable to that of her friends, she still feels that her situation now is not much different than what her life would have looked like had she stayed in the US.

I see that my friends, who are fresh out of college, are both thriving and struggling in their own way. So when I look back and think about where my friends are in new jobs and new cities, I don't feel like I'm so different: Just as I moved to a new place and started from scratch, they're all doing the same thing, Rochelle observes.

Another soldier who recently finished basic training at Mikhve Alon is Lee Mash, 27 - with a degree in international business from the University of Texas at San Antonio - will soon begin training with the Nahal infantry battalion. Before he enlisted, he worked with his familys investment firm, which invests primarily in medical startups.

Lee acknowledges that being almost a decade older than most of his fellow soldiers and commanders presents its own set of challenges.

It's crazy to think that I moved out of my parents house and lived on my own before my commanders were even bar/bat mitzvahed, he says. But he doesnt let the age gap bother him. I think of my commanders as my bosses and its my job to do what they tell me to do. They are the experts here, and I have full trust and confidence in them.

By contrast, as Rochelle is closer in age to her colleagues, she doesn't feel any difference at all.

"My commanders have more responsibility than I could've ever handled in college," she comments. "To me, their age doesn't mean anything. I personally feel more ready for this experience after college, and really commend these young girls who go in at eighteen."

Many people find it hard to imagine why people with such backgrounds and in their mid-20s would decide to up and leave the comforts of the US and launch their life in a completely different direction.

I wanted to do something different, Lee says. I went on a Birthright trip and did a six-month Jewish Agency program and I felt a special connection to Israel. I believe in the State of Israel and I wanted to fight for what I believe in. I also wanted a new kind of challenge and I believed it was time to start a new journey.

However, joining the IDF doesnt come without sacrifice.

I really miss my friends and family back home, and that's one of the most difficult parts of being a lone soldier," Lee says. "All of my friends are getting married, buying houses, nice cars, making lots of money, and I'm in Israel being paid by the army, which is not much. Meanwhile, my family is getting older and I'm watching my brothers grow up and start their careers from the sidelines. I haven't been home in over a year and I probably won't be home for another year. It's very difficult.

Lee Mash (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Unit)

Another soldier, 25, who obtained a degree from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands - also in international business - experiences many of the same hardships. He currently serves in the intelligence unit of the paratroopers, and his name is withheld.

Its hard for me to see my friends in Europe moving on with their lives. I feel like my life has stopped, and that it isnt progressing, he says.

At times when I feel like this, I stop and I think about the big picture, he continues. I think about the reasons why I joined the IDF. At the end of the day, Im happy I joined the army, and I know that when I get released, Ill be in the same position as them.

The University of Maastricht School of Business and Economics is one of the best in Europe, and it counts some of Europes top business and economic leaders amongst its alumni. With the world of European business at his fingertips, he was still compelled to come to Israel and serve.

After graduating in the summer of 2014, I decided to come to Israel and do an Ulpan (Hebrew school - ed.) at Tel Aviv University. While I was studying, Operation Protective Edge broke out. After that, I knew 100 percent that I needed to join the IDF, specifically to a combat role.

As with Lee, he sometimes feels the age difference between himself and his commanders.

This was the most difficult thing for me, he admits. In university, I was independent, while in the army, it's completely different. Someone else is in complete control of my life. It was really hard at first, but I had to accept it. I was 24 when I joined the army, and my Lieutenant was 22.

How did you deal with this?

I learned very quickly that in the army, especially in combat roles, everyone starts at zero - age really doesnt matter. What matters in the end is how good of a soldier you are. Are you willing to help your friends and be part of the team - or do you only think about yourself?"

Aliza Green, 24, a tank crew and gunnery instructor, who graduated from Temple University with a degree in Middle East studies, shared similar sentiments.

Age and life experience can be a factor, but at the end of the day, my commanders went through things and learned things which I didnt. I completely trust and respect them, regardless of the age difference.

However, she continues, Sometimes, I feel really limited by the army routine, and this does affect me. But I knew that it would be like this coming in, so I was mentally prepared for it.

Aliza didnt grow up in a particularly Zionist family. She has no relatives in Israel and no family members served in the IDF. But after a college Birthright trip, something changed.

I came here on a Birthright trip and I really connected with the country, she said. After that trip, I made every effort I could to come back. Whenever I returned to the US, I felt depressed, like I was missing or lost something. I decided that I never wanted to feel that way again.

This feeling is what ultimately led her to move to Israel and join the army.

'The nation builds the army, and the army builds the nation' (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Unit)

I came here to live. Here I feel complete. I look at my friends in the States  they work all the time, and many of them dont seem very happy or fulfilled in their lives. I feel extraordinarily fulfilled in my life, and I feel that my life has meaning as a soldier in the IDF.

Lee agrees with Aliza - Most of my friends go to high school, go to college, then work a corporate job after they graduate - and many hate their career. While it is difficult being alone in a foreign country, I'm so happy I made the decision to move here. I've grown so much as a person and learned a lot about myself. It's the best decision I've ever made.

Lee also plans on staying in Israel long term.

I feel that the best way to be successful in Israel is to join the army. The entire culture is based on the army - the conversations, the humor, the politics... When I finish the army I will have Israeli rapport, excellent Hebrew and I will have a much better understanding of Israeli culture, all of which will enable me to be successful in this country.

I came here to stay, the paratrooper says. I knew that I had to join the army in order to learn the Israeli mentality. In the army, I've met people from all sectors of Israeli society  Druze, ultra-Orthodox, seculars, rightists, leftists, centrists, etc. I feel its easier to understand what goes on here after being in the military, and it makes it easier for new immigrants to live here in general.

At the end of the day, Rochelle added, I love that my first job out of college is being a soldier in the IDF. Every morning I get to wake up and put on the uniform of an army that my Jewish ancestors could have only dreamed of.

On the parade grounds of Mikhve Alon is a sign which reads the nation builds the army, and the army builds the nation. These men and women with academic degrees and professional skills came to Israel to serve the IDF, and will leave with skills necessary to succeed in and strengthen Israeli society.
An eight-day seminar, bringing 45 lawyers, scholars, and judges from all over the world to aid Israel in its fight against BDS, started earlier this week in Israel.

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The goal of the seminar, organized by Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, is to help its participants learn about the security threats facing Israel and how the country is fighting for its defense and international image. Israeli legal experts will give lectures to the visiting jurists, and high-ranking security officials will provide briefings.

Participants of anti-BDS legal seminar

Among the planned activities for the participants are meetings with Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, the deputy president of the Supreme Court; renowned American jurist Professor Alan Dershowitz; Lt.-Col. Menachem Lieberman, the president of the Ofer military court; Daniel Reisner and Pnina Sharvit, lawyers who are experts in international law; and Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer from Arnold and Porter, which won a lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority.

Seminar attendees will participate in two workshops with experts, who will teach them how to fight BDS on university campuses with the help of legal tools and social media. They will also tour courts and observe ongoing terror trials in addition to visiting the security barrier, West Bank checkpoints, and the Lebanese and Syrian borders.

A lawyer who is participating in the seminar said that he specifically wanted to come to Israel at the height of current violence to understand what is happening in the region and to what extent Israel is threatened in terms of security and policy. He added that he is interested in hearing the perspective of high-ranking security officials to receive a fuller picture and hopes to understand how he can help Israel in its fight against BDS and terror.

The goal of the seminar is to create a network of jurists who can help Israel fight against BDS and those calling for Israel's destruction with legal tools. The participants will brainstorm ways to fight terror and delegitimization with their legal talents.

"We hope that the selected group will create a basis for an international network to fight for Israel in courts of law throughout the world," said Nitzvah Darshan Leitner, the director of Shurat HaDin. "The State of Israel desperately needs forces to fight against the threats it faces. Additionally, many Jewish and non-Jewish lawyers want to help the State of Israel fight for its existence. This seminar is a meeting of those two forces."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Breaking the Silence of "crossing another red line" on Thursday evening following an investigative report aired on Channel 2 documenting the NGO's activists trying to obtain sensitive and classified operational intelligence about the IDF.

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The prime minister said that the "security investigative authorities are examining the issue."

The Channel 2 report claimed that Breaking the Silence worked to place its people in classified units in the IDF in order to gather information that the organization could then use in its activities against "the occupation." In addition, the report claimed that the NGOs activists interviewed IDF veterans on issues that do not concern human rights, but rather military secrets.

Breaking the Silence activists (Photo: Louise Green)

The report, based on hidden-camera footage filmed by activists of the right-wing organization Ad Kan (enough in Hebrew), showed Ron Zaidel, the head of Breaking the Silence's Testimony Gathering Department, asking veteran soldiers a series of questions, including:

"The mortar platoon, are they stationed inside the checkpoint area?"

"Doesn't the company over there do border fence missions?"

"What were the missions there?"

"What do you mean, working on the tunnels?"

"Is this operational or is this an experiment?"

"The things we are asking are for our knowledge," Zaidel is seen claiming. "You know, for our professional knowledge and ... things that sometimes are important but it's hard to see why, and question that would appear irrelevant to you."

The report documents one conversation in which Zaidel and Alon Sa'ar from Breaking the Silence are collecting testimony from Haim, an undercover Ad Kan activist, and in the process asking him sensitive questions about the IDF's activity in the Gaza border area.

Zaidel: "You mentioned something about the tunnels, that there were alerts?"

Haim: "Yes."

Zaidel: "Can you tell me a bit about it?"

Haim: "Yes, there were alerts about tunnels."

Zaidel: "Was it just alerts or was there any operative activity too?"

Haim: "No. In Kissufim, there was. In Kissufim there was a tunnel they found half a kilometer from the base."

Sa'ar: "How did they find it?"

Haim: "I think some ... scout that was in the area saw some graben ... maybe the rain created that graben, I can't remember exactly what that was."

The report also showed a woman called Prima Bibes, who told the Ad Kan activist with the hidden camera that one of the Breaking the Silence's prominent activists told her to go serve at the Civil Administration and come back two years later to tell the organization about her service.

Former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter and former GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi, were interviewed for the Channel 2 report, criticizing the NGO's conduct. "Bringing a female soldier to glean information about what is being done in the military is a serious thing," Mizrahi said. "If any other cases like this occurred, then this is a far graver case."

Following the Channel 2 report, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon instructed the IDF's criminal investigation division (CID), the Information Security Department, and the Military Advocate General to launch an investigation to see whether released soldiers revealed classified information about their service. This follows a previous decision by Ya'alon to stop IDF cooperation with Breaking the Silence.

Breaking the Silence, meanwhile, denied the accusations made against them, despite being documented by the cameras of the activists from Ad Kan.

"We don't collect classified material and we don't monitor units," said Yuli Novak, the director of Breaking the Silence. "This is the work of several organizations that, alongside MKs from the Likud and Bayit Yehudi parties, are working to silence those who seek to criticize the government and the occupation. We're working closely with the IDF censor, the only body authorized to determine what can be published and what cannot."

In response to the prime minister's condemnation, Breaking the Silence said: "A prime minister that turns Israel's security services into a political tool - that is the true dangerous crossing of a red line, and should be investigated.

"Breaking the Silence has nothing to hide or fear, but Prime Minister Netanyahu's attempt to shut down Breaking the Silence and hurt soldiers and fighters who oppose the occupation should worry anything who is concerned for the future of the State of Israel."

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid also slammed the organization, noting that "Breaking the Silence is undermining the State of Israel and causing it serious damage from both within and without."

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) said that "We must say 'Ad Kan' (enough) to Breaking the Silence."

Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuli added that "the findings are grave and very concerning, and there's no confusing the definitions of right and left in this manner. Instead of the declared activity of working for human rights, there is an undermining activity of collecting sensitive information that there's no knowing to whom it is being passed and for what."
Jews and Catholics offered prayers Thursday at the graves of Jews hunted by the Nazis and a Polish family killed for trying to save them, a solemn prelude to the opening of a museum honoring Poles who died for offering refuge.

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Polish President Andrzej Duda was to lead the formal opening of the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews, in the village of Markowa.

It stands near the place in southern Poland where in 1944 German soldiers killed Jozef Ulma, his pregnant wife Wiktoria and their six children, as well as eight members of the Goldman, Gruenfeld and Didner families that the Ulmas were sheltering.

Photo: AFP

The museum is Poland's first memorial devoted to the Christians who helped Jews during the war, an act punishable by the immediate execution of helpers and their entire families.

The day's observances began with Jewish and Catholic prayers at the wooded cemetery near the village of Jagiella, where the slain members of the Goldman, Gruenfeld and Didner families are buried. Local, state and Catholic Church authorities as well as schoolchildren heard Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, say Hebrew prayers for the dead.

Three children and two granddaughters of Abraham Segal, 86, who survived the Holocaust thanks to Polish farmers in the area who hid him, came from Israel for the ceremonies.

Men lays a wreath during a ceremony at the grave of The Ulma family (Photo: AFP)

"We are very excited by these ceremonies," Segal's daughter, Pninit Naveh, told The Associated Press. "We are opening a new chapter for the new generations who must know history."

She said her father brought his family on an emotional visit to the area in 2006 and met with the families that helped save him.

Later, prayers were said and wreaths were laid at the Markowa cemetery where the Ulma family is buried, and a brief ceremony remembering the Jewish and the Polish victims was held at the synagogue in the region's main town of Lancut.

Polands President Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda light a candle to officially open the Ulma Family Museum (Photo: AFP)

Israel's Holocaust remembrance institute, Yad Vashem, has bestowed the title of the Righteous Among the Nations on some 6,600 Poles who saved Jews during the Holocaust - more than any other nationality.

It is estimated that between 1,000 and 1,500 Poles were killed for defying German decrees of 1941 and 1942 that banned any aid for Jews.

Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, says prayers for the dead at a cemetery where eight Jews killed by the Germans in 1944 were buried, along with the Polish Ulma family that was sheltering them (Photo: AP)

The museum was an initiative of regional authorities but supported by the national government and cost some 8 million zlotys ($2 million; 1.9 million euros). It focuses largely on the fate of the Ulmas, but is also meant as a way to honor and remember all of the Poles who died helping Jews.

In 1995, Yad Vashem bestowed the title of the Righteous Among the Nations on the Ulmas. Yad Vashem said the Ulma family "has become a symbol of Polish sacrifice and martyrdom during the German occupation."

In 2003 the Catholic Church opened a beatification process for the Ulmas, which is still underway.
ANKARA - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Istanbul on Saturday and meet with President Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign ministry said on Friday.

The foreign ministry said in a statement "current regional and international developments" as well as bilateral relations between the two countries would be discussed.

Iran and Turkey back opposing sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen, but their economic interdependence has kept relations broadly on track.

Meeting in Tehran earlier this month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Davutoglu agreed they must cooperate to end sectarian strife, including support for a fragile Syrian ceasefire.
Supreme Court Judge Zvi Zilbertal surprised the justice system on Thursday when he announced his intention to retire in a year's time, six years before the end of his term, citing the extreme workload put on the judges.

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This brings the number of the judges retiring from the Supreme Court in 2017 to four, as President Miriam Naor, Deputy President Elyakim Rubinstein and Judge Salim Joubran are also retiring next year.

The departure of four judges will lead to a battle to shape the Supreme Court's make-up for the coming decade, and it is likely that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked will work to put on the bench conservative judges who raise the banner of judicial restraint.

Justice Minister Shaked meets with Supreme Court President Naor (Photo: Justice System's PR)

Shaked will head the Judicial Selection Committee. She supports the complete separation of powers between the Supreme Court, the Knesset and the government. She also believes in judicial restraint in Supreme Court rulings on the reasonableness of decisions implementing the government's policies on defense, the territories, political appointments, and religion and state.

In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth several months ago, Shaked said that "the root of the problem is that Aharon Barak, who is the most outstanding justice of this generation, led a revolution that gave the attorney general and the Supreme Court too much power to restrain the government. Barak said that the government cannot act not just against the law - but also in an unreasonable manner. And who determines whether something is reasonable? The attorney general and the Supreme Court. This we must change."

Officials in the justice system estimated that among the candidates to be considered by the Judicial Selection Committee will be representatives from the religious right-wing sector. The committee is also expected to debate whether to replace Judge Joubran with another representative from the Arab sector and if so, who.

The Supreme Court's justices (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Despite the great power and influence Shaked will wield in the committee, she will still have to convince the other eight members of the Judicial Selection Committee of her choices as a supermajority (seven members) is required to approved an appointment for the Supreme Court.

In addition to Shaked, three Supreme Court judges are on the committee: Naor, Rubinstein and Joubran, as well as Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, Knesset representatives MKs Nurit Koren (Likud) and Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beytenu), and representatives from the Israel Bar Association, Elana Saker and Khaled Zoa'bi.

Because of the requirement to have a supermajority, the justice minister and the Supreme Court president often reach agreements in advance and then convince the political and legal representatives in the committee to join them.

Over the last decade, there have been quite a few instances in which these "deals" fell through, and the decision on appointments took a long time.

The relations between Shaked and Naor are good, and they have so far managed to reach agreements on many issues. But while Naor also believes in judicial restraint, she shows judicial activism when it comes to human rights, for example in rulings about the treatment given to illegal migrants.

Officials in the judicial system said Naor wants the selected judges to be of high legal stature and liberal, and that despite her desire to reach an understanding with the justice minister, the Supreme Court president will not allow for contempt of the process.
The night between Wednesday and Thursday this week was saturated with rain. It fell periodically. It began with a sprinkle, putting the windscreen wipers at dilemma whether or not to move, sometimes getting stronger and sometimes drizzling again. A soft English rain, the last winter rain or the first spring rain. It was two o'clock in the morning. The convoy of seven armored military vehicles crossed the Ofer camp. The electric barrier was pushed aside, the vehicle lights went out, and the communications network was filled with voices. We entered Beitunia, a Palestinian town in area A, which is the southwestern portion of Ramallah.

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During the day, a Palestinian policeman is stationed at the side of the bridge that marks the entrance to the town. This is the Palestinian Authority's way to demonstrate sovereignty. At night, he disappears. The night kingdom belongs to the IDF; the day kingdom belongs to the Authority, with reservations. If the IDF decides there are special circumstances, it can also enter during the day. The only neighborhood the IDF is careful to avoid entering is the Muqata, the central government compound in Ramallah. Muqata is out of bounds by command.

Israeli armored truck en route to West Bank (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

One of the commanders  lets call him "a military official in the region"  tells me that when he was asked by foreign visitors why the IDF arrests minors at night, pulling them out of bed and causing them considerable panic. "If we arrest them during the day, that would undermine the quality of life," he said. "Our goal is to fight terror with minimal harm to the population.

The result is complex. Typically, IDF brigade commanders inform their PA counterparts when IDF forces enter PA territry. Sometimes they announce this a few hours in advance and sometimes in real time. The Palestinian Authority security leaders did not like the freedom of movement that the IDF gave itself, but accepted the reality. Some think this acceptance is running out: If we do not reach an understanding with the Palestinian security apparatus, they will turn against us. Against this background, last week a bitter conflict broke out between ministers Elkin and Bennett, members of the Cabinet, and the prime minister and the defense minister. I will return to this confrontation later.

Meanwhile, in Beitunia, the rain falls. The roads, covered in deep pits thanks to years of neglect, filled with water. A cold, wet wind blowed at the soldiers backs. A cloud settled on Beitunia. In the street lamps light we all looked blurry, hazy, like a Chinese painting. Dogs roamed the streets but refrained from barking. Beitunia looked like a deserted town, the set of a movie. They repressed ourexistence; we repressed their existence.

Col. Israel Shomer, brigade commander of Binyamin, sends the forces out to the area every night. Tonight, they are operating in six places simultaneously in the Ramallah area - Beitunia, Qalandiya, Bayt Surik, Bayt Deko, al-Judeirah , and Hizmah. Their mission is to arrest suspects. Some places are in areas A, others in B and C. According to the Oslo Accords, the IDF is prevented from entering areas A. Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 abolished this distinction.

The force in Beitunia was based on a coed combat battalion of the Home Front Command. Some arrived at their destinations on foot, some on a Safaron -- a formidable, tall and opaque armored vehicle, which can fit a squad of soldiers. Its name is derived from the Safari trucks that served in the IDF in Lebanon.

The first target was a young man who wrote a farewell letter to his friends on the internet: he was about to become a martyr. His family lives in an apartment in a four-story building, on the first floor, the door on the left. It is a three-room apartment: a living room, bedroom and a room decorated with a Palestinian flag where the four sons, one of whom is an amputee, slept. They received the soldiers quietly, without protest, as if waiting for them. Only the mother, a young, bleary-eyed woman, looked frightened.

The suspect was handcuffed and a blindfold was tied around his head. It will cover his eyes when he enters the Jeep. The other brothers were recorded in a Shin Bet agents notebook. Although the soldiers were silent, there was no doubt that all occupants of the building woke up; the whole neighborhood woke up. People followed what was going from their dark apartments. Only one apartment, up the hill, turned on the light.

We went to the north end of Beitunia, just a five minute drive from the Palestinian prime minister's office. In a lone home, lower than the road, lives a suspect defined as a riot activist. Rioters are usually handled by the PAs forces: they can live with he knife-wielders, but the demonstrators threaten them as well. This man is suspected of throwing stones. He also lives with his parents and brother. After half an hour of interrogation, he comes out, led by the soldiers. His brothers follow behind, a family of big, heavyset men.

The third target was a Palestinian security forces member. He is suspected of running an arms trade business alongside his regular job in the PA security forces. The sale of improvised Carl Gustav rifles, improvised pistols, rifles stolen from the IDF, has become a popular line of work as shooting attacks on Israelis increase.

He lives in a small apartment on the ground floor of an apartment building, with a separate entrance. On the wall hangs a picture of Arafat, and under it an old shotgun. The soldiers ransack the apartment, hoping to find weapons. They fish out only one pistol of shabby appearance, with the bolt and firing pin removed. The gun is displayed on a nearby table while the suspect, handcuffed and wearing a jumpsuit, tries to convince the investigator that he was innocent. Someone listening to the conversation might think that it was between two friends. It was three-thirty in the morning.

57 terrorists

Beitunia is a middle-class suburb. It has houses with three or four floors, one of the few industrial zones in the West Bank, with Fatah's activities on the surface and Hamas activities beneath those. If Ramallah is Tel Aviv, Beitunia is Bat Yam.

In the 90s, Jibril Rajoub, head of the Preventive Security apparatus, build its headquarters here. It was a real palace, in the style of Ceausescu, large, luxurious, powerful. Legends had it that in the brief brief time that Arafat ordered full cooperation, in 1996, Rajoub took Hamas operatives to the hills of Beitunia and shot them dead with his pistol.

During the second intifada, the IDF demolished the building to the ground. I met Rajoub a short time later, at a safe house in Beitunia, when he was pursued by Israel and also by terrorist organizations. He tearfully mourned the loss. Since then, he has never forgotten or forgiven.

The area controlled by the Binyamin Brigade supplied the current intifada with 57 terrorists. Thirty-one went to attack inside the Green Line, mostly those from Qalandiya and Kfar Aqab, villages that are part of greater Jerusalem. Most of the attackers were killed; a minority was arrested. Others operated against settlers and soldiers in the brigades district. There are still a few firing squads roaming about in the area. Just as we look for them,so are the Palestinian security forces, for their own reasons. Like the man from Silwad, a beautiful Hamasite village near Ofra. Two months ago, he fired on an IDF jeep, injured a company commander, and fled. His father gave him up to the Palestinian security forces. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In the absence of a system that would neutralize attackers in advance, the IDF prepares to deal with them in the field. Soldiers were dispersed during the day along the paths and intersections where most attacks occur. They check the persons of every Palestinian, be they male or female. Anyone who pops up in the IDF Military Intelligence's and the Shin Bets intelligence lists is picked up at night.

The air must be cleared, IDF officers tell the Palestinians. Hatred and incitement encourage the terrorists; the air must be cleared, say the Palestinian. When a military convoy passes near the school, do not be surprised if children throw stones.

The general atmosphere was the axis around which talks betwee IDF officers and PA personnel revolved. There are two versions of this story, involving considerable differences. One version, the IDF one, arose in remarks that were said this week by Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot to members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In recent years, the IDF greatly expanded its presence in Palestinian cities. It hurts the sense of governance there and makes it difficult for the Palestinian security apparatus to cooperate.We need to examine where we can reduce our presence. Some of the talks on this issue are at the tactical level  brigade commander talks to another brigade commander. This is no political issue. The talks continue: there is no explosion.

Immigration and Absorption Minister Ze'ev Elkin is a member of the Cabinet. His version is inverted. "You can not play dumb and say that it is a tactical thing," he told me this week. "The Palestinians have made this threat: if you do not return complete control over the Area A, we will stop security cooperation.

"This is a political demand, not a defense one. We looked for a compromise. We said, we will go in only when there is a ticking bomb. Then Netanyahu demanded that the Palestinians recognize officially that we are allowed t go in. Even this is a political demand: It actually erases what was said in the Oslo Accords.

"I was angry at Ya'alon and Netanyahu, who concealed the negotiations from the Cabinet. When I gave my opinion openly, I was called to Netanyahu to clarify. He explained that the Palestinians refused to accept his demand, and the talks were stopped. There was no point in bringing the issue to the Cabinet, he said. There was an attempt to communicate, and the matter exploded.

Elkin has very harsh words regarding the defense policy:"I have a dispute with our defense leadership. They, Ya'alon and the IDF, still cling to Rabins hope that the Palestinians will do the work for us, without the High Court of Justice and B'Tselem. They believe the Palestinian security mechanisms are part of the IDF's order of battle. This illusion led us to the second intifada. What has improved the situation is the IDF's freedom of action in Area A. I am absolutely against change in this matter, certainly not now, when things are unstable.

"Their threat to cease cooperation is similar to the threat by Abbas to resign. The cooperation is beneficial to them more than it is beneficial to us. Eighty percent of the security in the West Bank is us. Because of us, Abbas and the Palestinian security mechanisms continue to exist.

"Ya'alon is going along too much with the conventional perception among the top brass. He was wrong. Even regarding settlements he is wrong. When he was minister of strategic affairs, he attacked defense minister Barak because he moved against the settlers. Now he is more anti-settler than Barak was."

The relationship between what is stirring up Cabinet ministers and what happens during Beitunia's nights is loose. The chief of staff noted in remarks at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee an additional four incidents in which he believes unnecessary politics were inserted into military affairs. The first was removal of Jewish identity training from the military rabbinate; second, the shaving requirement in the IDF. "I came to a pilots' graduation ceremony," said Eisenkot. "They all shaved; I was at a graduation ceremony of officers. Everyone has his own beard. The main problem, by the way, are the secular people. The current generation of soldiers hates to shave.

A third issue is the rules of engagement. Politicians, and now rabbis, preach to the IDF about when and where to shoot. The fourth matter is particularly interesting: Eisenkot said that some in the Left, apropos the Buchris affair, that he was promoted in the IDF because he was wearing a yarmulke. "I have known Buchris since he served under me when I was a brigade commander," he said. "He's an excellent officer."

Dying on the knife

This statistic I heard from two different sources, from two different security branches, revealed an interesting angle in the current intifada: in the past six months, the rate of suicides in Palestinian society decreased dramatically. Unfortunately, I did not get numbers that illustrate this statement, but I can say that policy makers in the security establishment consider it a key to understanding the motives of some of the attacks. This is true for teenage boys and girls experiencing problems at home or at school; it's true for women, including mothers, who were suspected of bringing dishonor onto the family; and it is true for people suffering from mental health issues.

The assumption is that when suicidal thoughts encounter dreams of a heroic death, the knife is the obvious solution. When the knife is unsheathed, an accursed outcast is transformed into a martyr, a hero. His or her picture is taped to the walls, his fame is carried by everyone, and his family is respected and gets financial assistance. More than the terrorists want to kill Israelis, they want to be killed. True, this is a convenient explanation for the Israeli establishment - too convenient. It dwarfs the decisive contribution of the occupation to Palestinian youths willingness to die on their knives; it buries the problem in a psychological closet and erases the sense of guilt and expectation from the government to do something - diplomatically, economically, militarily - to change the reality. In short, it fits current policy like a glove. Nevertheless, it is worthy of discussion.

When Police Commissioner Ronnie Alsheikh spoke three weeks ago at an event for bereaved families in Eilat, he compared Israeli society to Palestinian society: "While we elected to sanctify life, our enemies have chosen to sanctify death," he said.

The audience loved the phrase. Many, including bereaved Druze and Bedouin families, came over to thank him. But when the remarks reached the TV channels, their scope changed. The police chief was seen as someone who entered a debate that did not pertain to him. The unusual curiosity that the new commissioner arouses in the media, and perhaps in the public, boomeranged back to him.

It will not help him to say that he did not ask to issue a moral verdict on Palestinian society, but but was thinking of the young women and men who are seek refuge from their plight in police bullets.
The Islamic State group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

"The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members" of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in fighting near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

"Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area," Aamaq claimed.

Aamaq also published a video, showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass. A packet of bandages was filmed with instructions written in Russian.

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the "Pearl of the Desert", last May, sending shock waves across the world.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that Russian advisors were present near Palmyra, but could not confirm whether any Russian forces had been killed there in recent days.

President Vladimir Putin, Assad's main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russia's armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike militant targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

Russia's defence ministry did not reply to an AFP request for information on the militant claim.

"Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged," Putin said Thursday, adding that "fierce fighting" was raging near Palmyra.

He also named four Russians killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched a military intervention in Syria on September 30, including a military advisor.

Previously, the defence ministry's official toll had been three, excluding a soldier who committed suicide.

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LOS ANGELES - The governing board of California's flagship public university system is to vote next week on a statement condemning anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, a proposal sparking sharp faculty debate over the line between free speech and intolerance.

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The controversy playing out at the University of California reflects a broader clash between pro-Israel groups and Palestinian rights activists over what constitutes legitimate criticism of Israeli polices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The UC's Board of Regents is slated to act next Wednesday on a draft document produced by a working group to address the issue. Both sides in the debate say they believe that if adopted it would be the first such policy statement by the leadership of a major US public institution of higher education.

Anti-Israel protest at a university campus (Photo: AP)

The University of California is considered one of the most prestigious public university systems in the country, comprising 10 campuses, among which are the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Supporters say the document grew out of a recent rise in anti-Semitism on UC campuses stemming from heated anti-Israel protest frequently expressed as anti-Zionism, which supporters define as calls for Israel's destruction or denials of its right to exist.

According to proponents of the draft, such rhetoric constitutes a contemporary brand of anti-Semitism that is often accompanied by or escalates into more explicit forms of anti-Jewish hatred.

Foes of the proposal say it would trample on academic freedom. Some call it a thinly veiled attempt to squelch political criticism of Israel, including student movements pressing for divestiture or boycotts against the Jewish state.

A letter of opposition signed by more than 250 UC faculty members argued that anti-Zionism is a "loose term and is often deployed against any number of political positions" that should "not to be conflated with anti-Semitism."

"We urge you not to adopt a position that will censor political viewpoints that are rightly considered to be constitutionally protected speech," the letter said.

A separate letter from 130 other faculty insisted the proposal was necessary to address "a lack of understanding of when healthy debate about Israel and the Middle East ends, and anti-Semitism begins."

Critics, however, says the draft's very formulation is ambiguous.

As currently written, references to Zionism are confined to a brief introduction stating: "Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California."

But the term is omitted from the 10 "Principles Against Intolerance" that follow, with anti-Semitism condemned, along with forms of bigotry based such factors as race, national origin, religion and gender.

It remained unclear whether the regents would vote on the principles alone or adopt the entire document as enforceable policy.
IDF and police forces arrested two Palestinian minors at the entrance to the Shaar Binyamin industrial zone on Friday after finding knives on their person.

The troops spotted the two walking towards a barred area of the industrial zone, which arose their suspicion. They stopped the two teens and upon searching them, found two knives in their possession.

Initial investigation found the two were planning to commit a stabbing attack.

IDF and police forces were searching the area for the vehicle that drove the two to the industrial zone.
An Israeli judge has jailed for two years the Jewish extremist author of an instruction manual for acts of violence against Palestinians, in a case linked to a deadly firebombing, judicial authorities said.

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Prosecutors said the digital document entitled "Kingdom of Evil" contained among other things instructions for arson attacks on houses, a transcript released by the Israel Courts Administration said.

Inside the Dawabsheh family home in Duma after firebomb attack (Photo: AP)

"It is in its entirety incitement to criminal activity and clear directions for the commission of violence against the property and persons of the Arab community," said the judgment, seen by AFP on Friday.

Moshe Orbach, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, was arrested in July and charged with sedition, possession of material inciting violence and of racist material. He was convicted on all counts in February.

The prosecution linked the "Kingdom of Evil" document with the July arson attack on a house in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Saad Dawabsheh and his parents.

Two Israelis have been charged with the firebombing.

"The murder in Duma, carried out days after charges were filed, was carried out in a way similar to that described in the document," the court transcript quoted the prosecution as saying, without accusing Orbach of direct involvement.

The Duma killings prompted a police crackdown on other Jewish extremists, some of whom are suspected of a string of nationalist hate crimes targeting Palestinians, Christians and even Israeli soldiers.

The prosecution says Orbach's manifesto, reportedly found on a USB drive in his car, called for the establishment of hermetically-sealed extremist groups which would be hard for Israeli security services to infiltrate.

"It is a document for conspiracy which calls for setting up small terror cells insulated from one another," the court document said. "It is an open call for revolt against the government, acts of murder and violence."
The most-wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was wounded in a shootout in Brussels on Friday, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said.

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Media reported Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect, was wounded in the operation as EU leaders met on the other side of the city to discuss Europe's migration crisis. "We got him," Belgium's Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, said on Twitter.

Security forces during the tense raid (: )

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Several exchanges of gunfire rang out in the city's Molenbeek area - the scene of past investigations into the Paris attacks - and police officers were seen surrounding an apartment block there.

French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel left the summit to discuss the operation, officials said.

Television footage showed black-clad security forces wearing balaclavas guarding a street. Reporters at the scene described white smoke rising from a rooftop and a helicopter hovering overhead.

Media reported two people had been arrested, a third suspect may have been involved and Abdeslam had been wounded in the leg, though there were conflicting accounts.

Belgian police had found fingerprints belonging to Abdeslam at the scene of an apartment raided on Tuesday, prosecutors said earlier.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

Raid near Brussels this week (Photo: EPA)

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up in Paris, was "more than likely" one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.

She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organiser of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

France's BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a Frenchwoman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Abdeslam's elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Paris during a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later.

Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. There has long been speculation in Belgium that he could have fled to Syria.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for Islamic State.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.
Back in 1969, when Bob returned from Vietnam, we purchased our home at 408 Ohio Ave.

The guest room was established. We had very few out of town relatives so it was always the cleanest and least used room in our home. In 1971 our son, Ryan, arrived and he took up residence in our extra bedroom. In 1974 we brought our daughter, Amber, home and the guest room became Ambers room. The room has always been decorated in soft pastels and while Amber called it her room it was different shades of mint green, pinks and yellows. At one time a patchwork sherbet colored canopy bed occupied this room. That gave way to the messy floors and food dishes left on night stands typical of a teenage girls room.

Then came college and once again the room became a guest room. It stayed clean and neat for almost 12 years. Then my mother came to live with us in the last two years of her life. The room was then known as moms room. It consisted of her dresser, pictures from her home and all of the medical needs of a hospice patient. At that time we put a screen door on so the many foster cats coming and going wouldnt disturb her. In September of 2011 my mother passed away and as hard as it was to accept, it once again became the guest room.

The room has so many special memories. It was there to welcome our daughter and it was there when my mother passed away. It now has a fresh coat of pale yellow and with south and west windows the room is always sunny.

I left the screen door on, I dont know why but I am glad I did. The guest room has now become a foster room for senior and special needs cats. A steady stream of cats has used the foster room since 2011. The most recent Is Calie. She was relinquished and was having difficulty adjusting to living in a shelter environment. She is very content to sleep in the sun and have the privacy that she once had in her home. Hopefully we can get her adopted back into a quiet and loving home soon. Daisy, a 13-year-old cat, spent several weeks in the foster room before being adopted. Cats that stop eating or show signs of stress seem to immediately regain ground when they take up residence in the foster room.

Sadly, a number of these senior foster cats have crossed the rainbow bridge. Stories were written about Spirit, Francis and Tillie to name just a few. Their last months were spent in a sunny, quiet room they could call their own. Just recently brothers Colby and Cheddar stayed for several weeks until their owner could come back from Colorado to pick them up. Their story was published two weeks ago.

I like to think this room has given more to me when it is occupied, so much more than sitting clean and empty. If you have an empty room please consider fostering a cat from York Adopt a Pet. It is always very difficult for a relinquished cat to adjust to shelter living, especially if it is a senior cat. If you would be interested in fostering, please give me a call at 402 366-0533. We have several on the foster list waiting for a room to be opened up for them.
655th ISRG continues to grow, paves the way for DoD

Since standing up in 2012, the 655th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group has come a long way in just a short amount of time and continues to pave the way in future Air Force intelligence initiatives.



The 655th ISR Group is an independent group under 10th Air Force that ensures the training and readiness of Air Force Reserve Command intelligence squadrons engaged in diverse and complex intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission sets. The intelligence missions include human intelligence, signals intelligence, geospatial and measurement intelligence, targeting, distributed common ground systems and ISR support to Special Operations Forces and Airborne Linguists.



The 655th supports Air Combat Command; Air Force Materiel Command; Air Force Special Operations Command; National Air and Space Intelligence Center; Defense Intelligence Agency; National Security Agency; and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with classic associate intelligence squadrons imbedded and working daily with their active duty counterparts to further the intelligence capabilities of the US Air Force.



Stood up in October 2012 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio as Detachment 2 with 38 people, the 655th ISR Group has grown from being a detachment and now consists of 11 classic associate unit intelligence squadrons spanning across six states conducting eight different missions with more than 1,000 people.



Col. Douglas Drakeley, 655th ISRG commander, has been at the helm since the group stood up and says it seems like just yesterday the initiative was only on paper.



During the summer of 2012, we conducted a site activation task force that stood up the units at Wright Patt. At that time, I was assigned to Beale (Air Force Base, California), as the director of intelligence for the 713th Combat Operations Squadron. I was asked to be the project integration officer for standing these units up. On the books we had the ability to eventually build nine new intelligence squadrons and an intelligence group. By September, we got the orders to stand up the operating detachments.



The operating locations for the five new squadrons were two squadrons at Wright-Patt, one at Beale and two squadrons at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.



Drakeley arrived at Wright-Patt in November and became the Detachment 2 commander, reporting to 10th Air Force. Fast forward one year later to September 2013. The orders finally come down to create the group and the squadrons.



We finally got the organizational change request for the 655th ISR Group and five new squadrons stood up. Each squadron had a new name plus we got to take command of the other two intelligence squadrons in the enterprise  the 50th Intelligence Squadron that stood up in 2008, and the 718th Intelligence Squadron that stood up in 2010 respectively. Those squadrons didnt belong to us yet so the order that came down in September 15, 2013 made those part of the 655th, bringing us to seven squadrons.



Drakeley said with the new fiscal year, the group had the ability to stand up four new intelligence squadrons. Those became detachments of the 655th and included a squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, one at Hurlburt Field, Florida, one at Fort Meade, Maryland and one at Wright-Patt. With each new squadron came a new mission area, therefore four new missions were added to the group.



Looking back from just a span of three years, the group stood up with five squadrons then it went to seven squadrons then it went to 11 squadrons. Thats where were at today, obviously a lot of growth over the past couple years.



Drakeley said the 655th isnt done growing yet.



On the books for FY17 are three new squadrons. Two are cyber intelligence squadronsone at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and one at Fort Meadeand another targeting squadron that will stand up at Offutt. Cyber is a growing requirement for the nation to be able to both defend and be able to potentially determine the correct response to a threat in the cyber world. Our new squadrons will focus on intelligence to support the cyber world. Those squadrons will be helping to do that and thats part of the whole investment that the nation is making in the cyber mission force.



With the group expanding, the next focus will be on meeting the requirements and the timelines to become a wing. In 2015, the 655th ISR Group experienced a net growth of 113 percent, 14 new ISR billets and experienced 11 months of positive growth, with only one month of zero net sum growth. The 655th rose from 99 percent manning across the group to 111 percent, with one squadron reaching 165 percent manning.



We went from 38 people when I showed up here, starting off to having more than 1,000 people and with the three new squadrons that will put us at more than 1,300 people.



As an independent group, the 655th is a wing equivalent organization.



We havent grown to a wing yet. Its on the horizon to eventually become a wing. Currently, it hasnt been fully mapped out. Different elements of the command support different timelines. Right now, were shooting for the next year or so to be able to make that work but that will depend on the programmatics, what the command decides programmatically they can do. There are not that many organizations that will have 14 squadrons in one group so its imperative that we grow in size and capability very quickly.



Drakeley is proud of the men and women in his group and the results of their role in the Air Force Reserve that they bring to the table every day.



The great thing about these jobs from a reserve standpoint is that most of these jobs are here in the United States at operations centers so our reservists can do their civilian job during the week then come to work on the weekend and work missions from here. In nine out of our 11 squadrons, that is possible for us to do those types of activities from the U.S. on operations floors that are in the fight here. Its a great role for reservists.



Drakeley said his Airmen make a difference with what they do for national defense. Information that his reservists have worked on have gone not only to combatant commanders, but to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Secretary of the Air Force and to the President himself.



Things that our reservists have touched and worked on as intelligence products have spanned that chain of command. Its impressive when you start looking at the impact that these 1,000 plus Airmen have in being able to support the National Defense.


Air Force, NASA team up to ready for America's return to human spaceflight

Air Force Guardian Angel Airmen from the 920th Rescue Wing here and astronauts practiced aspects of safe rescue operations recently when they completed rehearsals at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, Texas, and at Langley Research Center, Virginia.



NASA recently released news that its Commercial Crew Program is set to perform human spaceflight launches to the International Space Station from U.S. soil in the near future. NASA's critical obligation is to ensure crew safety and success for NASA missions, and the commercial providers are responsible for safe operations of commercial crew transportation systems.



Serving as guardians of the astronauts is nothing new for Reserve Airmen, during NASA's previous 50-years of launching humans into space the GA triad of pararescuemen, combat rescue officers and search, evasion, escape, evasion (SERE) specialists, have waited in the wings to respond in case of a contingency during any stage of human space launches until their human spaceflight program ended in July 2011.



One of the first requirements for the program included provisions to equip spacecraft with launch escape systems to survive launch and ascent emergencies. From there, each design phase has included ever-more-exacting consideration of safety factors in areas ranging from subsystems, to integrated systems to mission operations.



Boeing and SpaceX have built simulators and mock-ups that design teams work in and refine with an eye toward safety, as well as practicality and manufacturing. Like previous human spaceflight programs, the astronauts will have extensive training prior to flight, preparing them to fly the spacecraft on launch day. The crews will have rehearsed every scenario possible in the commercial crew vehicles before their first mission.



Astronauts have been deeply embedded with all of the testing and evaluations throughout, too. They work through regular and contingency scenarios frequently with Boeing and SpaceX designers and engineers.



For the astronauts, the focus on safety permeates everything Boeing, SpaceX and NASA are doing.



"I think I just see how important safety is in all aspects, from the everyday aspects to the less routine parts of the mission," NASA astronaut Victor Glover said. "In Mission Control, we talk about the safety of the crew, the safety of the vehicle and the safety of the mission - in that order. So at every level in this agency, I see safety as an integral part of what we do."



Safety considerations go far beyond equipment and reach into numerous processes to make sure unintended consequences of adjustments are fully known.



For example, NASA, the Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard recently held one of their first astronaut rescue exercises of the commercial crew era off of Florida's coast.



"From a safety perspective, Exercise Tern Migration allowed our Guardian Angel teams an opportunity to refine existing techniques they will use to rescue astronauts during a spacecraft landing contingency," said Lt. Col. Jason Havel of the 45th Space Wing Operations Group Detachment 3 here, who plans the Department of Defense rescue support to NASA. "Our rescue forces conducted four air drop scenarios from a C-17 aircraft allowing us to refine the techniques needed to rescue astronauts from spacecraft during off-nominal landing scenarios."



During each scenario, different aspects of recovery operations were focused on, depending on the situation envisioned and teams required. For instance, the operation in Florida required several aircraft and numerous communications links between a network of pilots, controllers and stand-in astronauts spread miles apart from each other as they would be in the unlikely event that their spacecraft had to make an emergency escape from a failing rocket and splash down in the ocean. For that exercise, a life raft about the size of a spacecraft was used by engineers and active duty Air Force personnel acting as astronauts who needed to be pulled from the water and treated.



The training at the other locations had a much tighter scope, such as astronauts practicing exiting the capsule inside a Crew Dragon mock-up at SpaceX headquarters in California. At NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, Boeing dropped a Starliner test article into a giant pool to test the company's contingency landing systems, followed by a test with NASA engineers and Air Force pararescuers to perfect the work needed to climb aboard the spacecraft and stabilize it so astronauts could be safely rescued.



"The knowledge we gained at NASA's Langley Research Center was instrumental in allowing further development of rescue support equipment specific to Boeing's Starliner," said Air Force Maj. Chris Slauson, chief of safety for the 45th Operations Group Detachment 3.



According to NASA, the work rehearsing rescue operations -- even using simple stand-ins instead of actual spacecraft - is time well-spent, because it clears up potential confusion. That is vital to the overall focus on safety and the attention to detail that goes with it.



"Exercises like this are extremely important to the development of tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as practicing and refining communication protocols between the flight crew and ground support teams for both NASA and the Defense Department," said Tim O'Brien of the Ground and Mission Operations Office in the Commercial Crew Program. "While Air Force Reserve pararescuers jumped from the C-17 aircraft and practiced their hands-on skills, real-time coordination took place between those rescue forces, a simulated flight crew, the aircraft, and command centers in order to execute a safe rescue scenario. Every time we conduct an exercise like this, we learn and improve our processes."



Boeing and SpaceX are developing the CST-100 Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, to take up to four astronauts at a time to the station along with time-critical cargo to the orbiting laboratory. Currently, only a crew of three can travel to the station at a time. By adding a fourth crew member, NASA will double the amount of research time astronauts can perform during their missions, ultimately benefiting everyone on Earth and advancing the technology needed to allow astronauts to make the journey to Mars.



(Editor's note: The 45th Space Wing and NASA contributed to this article)
Reserve Command wins AF production of year

Air Force Reserve Commands video production Winning Your Wings II earned top honors as the Production of the Year in the 2015 Air Force Visual Information Products Awards.



Brig. Gen. Kathleen Cook, director, Air Force Public Affairs, made the announcement March 18.



The video, produced by AFRC Public Affairs and the 4th Combat Camera Squadron, March Air Reserve Base, California, also won in the Public Information/Internal Category.



This is another great example of how Citizen Airmen have proven to the country the ability to transform ideas of whats possible into mission complete, said Col. Bruce Bender, AFRC director of Public Affairs. Congratulations to our AFRC PA and Combat Camera team for bringing home the gold.



Winners, by category are:



Recruitment

1st: 17th STS Recruiting, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H

2nd: AFLCMC - Today's Talent Ensures Tomorrow's Air Superiority, 88th Air Base Wing, Air Combat Command

3rd: Are You Ready for the Challenge, 20th Fighter Wing, Air Combat Command



Documentary:

1st: 25th Anniversary of AFSOC, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H

2nd: SICOFAA, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H

3rd: 45 Years and Counting, 460th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command



Training:

1st: A Critical Role, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H

2nd: Air Superiority, 42nd Air Base Wing, Air Education & Training Command

3rd: Ali & Josh Hobson, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H



Public Information/Internal:

1st: Winning Your Wings II, Headquarters Air Force Reserve Command

2nd: Team Hill F-35 Mission Video, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H

3rd: CENTCOM Mission Video, Air Force Public Affairs Agency Operating Location-H:



Production of the Year:

Winning Your Wings II, Headquarters Air Force Reserve Command.



All 12 products will go forward to represent the Air Force in the Department of Defense competition hosted by the Defense Media Activity.


Thousands of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr defied a government ban Friday to stage sit-ins at the main gates of Baghdad's Green Zone aimed at pushing for reforms.

Most of the demonstrators were wearing black and many of them carried Iraqi flags as they muscled past tight security to begin what they said was an open-ended protest.

"The sit-ins have started in front of the Green Zone gates as a message to the corrupt people who live there," Ibrahim al-Jaberi, a local official from Sadr's movement, told AFP.

The Najaf-based Sadr has called his supporters to remain in front of the fortified "Green Zone" -- home to the country's main institutions and embassies -- until his demands are met.

The young Shia cleric has demanded Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reshuffle the cabinet to bring in technocrats and threatened a no-confidence vote if he failed to do so soon.

"The sit-in is open-ended," said Jaberi, as Sadr followers started laying out sheets and blankets on the street and under trees in front of the Green Zone gates.

Their move was in defiance of a cabinet decision denying the rally the necessary permits and a warning from the interior ministry not to provoke the security services.

Sadr had issued a statement on Thursday saying his movement would ignore the ban but also calling on his supporters to refrain from violence in dealing with the security forces.

Sadr heads a militia called Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades) that had caused intense concern when it deployed armed men during a previous protest in Baghdad.

Amid fears the stand-off could escalate, Iraqi security forces locked down Baghdad, the Arab world's second most populous capital with an estimated eight million residents.

"All entrances to Baghdad have been blocked and some main streets and bridges are also closed, especially those leading to the Green Zone," a police colonel said.

A group of Sadrist demonstrators clipped the barbed wire on one of the bridges over the Tigris river to reach an entrance to the sprawling Green Zone but no violence ensued.

"We'll stay days, weeks or months if needed, until the government implements reform and sacks all the corrupt politicians," said one demonstrator, Muntadher Kadhem, a 25-year-old history student.

Moqtada Sadr, the scion of an influential clerical family, rose to prominence when he launched a Shia rebellion against US troops following their 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He had lost some of his political influence in recent years but has brought himself back into relevance with a series of rallies against corruption.

Senior politicians from his own Ahrar bloc are perceived as some of the most corrupt in Iraq but the mercurial leader has recently distanced himself from them.

Sadr is seen as a nationalist with fewer ties to neighbouring Iran than many of the country's other leading Shia politicians.

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This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

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A bomb attack by Kurdish militants killed a police officer in southeast Turkey on Friday and another device was defused outside a local government building, as embassies issued security warnings about expected demonstrations this weekend.

Turkey has been on high alert since a suicide bombing, claimed by a Kurdish militant group, killed 37 people in the capital Ankara on Sunday. Germany shut down its diplomatic missions and schools in Turkey, while the US and other European embassies warned citizens to be vigilant.

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were believed to have staged Friday's attack on the armoured police vehicle during security operations in the town of Nusaybin, near the Syrian border, security sources said.

In the town of Hani, also in the mainly Kurdish southeast, police found a vehicle loaded with 150 kg (330 lb) of explosives which they believed was to be detonated during events to mark the anniversary of a World War One battlefield victory at Canakkale on Friday, state authorities said.

"Thanks to the alertness of security forces, there was no loss of life or damage. Efforts to ensure peace and security for our people will continue decisively and uninterrupted," the provincial governor's office said.

The Spanish and Italian embassies urged their citizens to avoid busy locations, celebrations and rallies on Sunday and Monday, when Kurds celebrate the Newroz New Year festival.

At the height of the PKK insurgency in the 1990s, the festival was often marked by violent clashes between Kurdish protesters and the security forces. It coincides with the spring thaw, a time when in previous years PKK fighters re-entered Turkey from mountain hideouts in northern Iraq.

NATO member Turkey also faces a threat from Islamic State militants, blamed for several attacks including a suicide bombing in Istanbul in January that killed 10 German tourists.

With conflicts in the region driving migrants towards Europe, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU leaders tried to clinch a deal in Brussels on Friday to help stop the flow via Turkey.

Germany said it was keeping its diplomatic missions and schools closed until the weekend due to a highly credible security threat. Der Spiegel magazine reported that US and Turkish intelligence, as well as Kurdish security sources, had warned Berlin of a planned suicide attack, linked to Islamic State, on German diplomatic missions or schools.

"Dancing in a minefield"

A PKK ceasefire collapsed in July, triggering daily violence which has killed more than 1,000 militants, security force members and civilians.

In the latest clashes, 10 PKK militants were killed in fighting in the southeastern towns of Yuksekova, Sirnak and Nusaybin on Thursday, the Turkish military said.

European leaders have expressed concern about the loss of civilian life in military operations and have urged Turkey to use proportional force.

President Tayyip Erdogan retorted: "Our struggle against terrorism is measured and legitimate ... Every terrorist organisation active in our region and in Turkey has unified against Turkey.

"Many states, primarily Western countries, still cannot display a principled stance against these groups," he added in a speech on Friday.

"Europe's continued reckless behaviour is like dancing in a minefield ... I am telling nations that directly or indirectly embrace terrorist groups: you are nursing a viper in your bosom," he said at Canakkale commemorations.

The Istanbul governor's office has dismissed the German closures, accusing Berlin of taking action on the basis of "unconfirmed rumours" without consulting Turkish authorities.

Under the headline "The merchants of fear are at it", the pro-government Sabah newspaper said Germany was trying to stoke unrest and that a investigation had been opened into the German High School in Istanbul for closing without consulting the education ministry.

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North Korea test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles on Friday, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un promised a series of nuclear warhead tests and missile launches amid surging military tensions.

Friction on the divided Korean peninsula has deepened since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

US defence officials said they had tracked two launches -- both believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

The Rodong is a scaled-up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres (800 miles).

South Korean military officials said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the country's southwest at 5:55 am (2055 GMT Thursday) and flew 800 kilometres before splashing down in the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off radar early into its flight.

They came a day after US President Barack Obama signed an order implementing tough sanctions adopted earlier this month against North Korea by the UN Security Council, as well as fresh unilateral US measures.

For the past two weeks, Pyongyang has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, Kim Jong-Un announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of "several kinds" of ballistic missiles would be carried out "in a short time".

South Korea's defence ministry said Friday's launches were clearly the result of Kim's order.

"North Korea appears to be speeding up test launches to advance its nuclear capabilities," said ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun.

Calling the move a direct challenge to the UN Security Council and the international community, Moon said the South's military stood ready to respond immediately to any North Korean threat to national security.

Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.

A Rodong test is more provocative, given its greater range, which makes it capable of hitting most of Japan.

The last Rodong test was in March 2014, when two of the missiles were fired into the East Sea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned the launch and said his government would coordinate its response with the US, South Korea and other nations concerned.

"We strongly demand North Korea exercise restraint," Abe told a parliamentary committee.

The US State Department urged Pyongyang to refrain from any actions that could "further raise tensions."

While North Korea is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, its ability to deliver them accurately to a chosen target on the tip of a ballistic missile has been a subject of heated debate.

Most experts believe it is still years from developing a working inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could strike the continental United States.

But Kim's announcement of further tests on Tuesday came as he monitored a simulated test of the warhead re-entry technology required for such a long-range nuclear attack.

The test was a complete success, state media said, and provided a "sure guarantee" of the warhead's ability to withstand the intense heat and vibration of re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

South Korea said it doubted the North had mastered re-entry technology, although it was less sceptical a few days before when Kim said it had miniaturised a nuclear warhead that could fit on a missile.

South Korean markets shrugged off the latest launches, with the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closing at a yearly high Friday, and the Korean won climbing to its highest level against the US dollar this year.

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As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on...
Far-right anti-immigrant Dutch MP Geert Wilders appeared before a top security court Friday for a hearing ahead of his trial later this year on charges of incitement to hatred.

On his way to the tribunal, Wilders tweeted: "On my way to the courthouse. Nobody will silence me. No terrorist, no prime minister and no court."

The case against Wilders centres on comments by the populist politician -- famous for his trademark peroxide blond hairdo -- at a March 2014 local election rally.

He asked supporters in The Hague whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?"

When the crowd shouted back "Fewer! Fewer!" a smiling Wilders answered: "We're going to organise that."

The remark triggered 6,400 complaints from across the Netherlands, and Wilders even faced criticism from within his Party for Freedom (PVV).

"You are here as a suspect in a criminal case. You are not required to say anything or answer any questions," Judge Hendrik Steenhuis told him as the hearing started.

Dressed in a blue suit, Wilders appeared relaxed, getting out his phone to take a video of the photographers jostling to take his picture.

"Racism and hatred towards foreigners are in direct contravention of the freedoms we have in a democratic society," prosecutor Wouter Bos told the court.

"The prosecution believes that you insulted Moroccans as a group and committed incitement to hate speech," he added, saying that while "freedom of speech is a fundamental principle .... (it) is not an absolute."

But Wilders' lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops told a three-judge bench the case should be stopped immediately so an investigation could be launched into how sensitive documents including Wilders' opening statement had been leaked to a Dutch newspaper.

The popular tabloid Algemeen Dagblad on Friday printed an unauthorised version of Wilders' defence strategy as well as a draft of his opening statement which both Wilders and Knoops described as a "shocking" development.

"We believe a crime has been committed," said Knoops, adding that "communications between an advocate and his client are sacrosanct."

"We absolutely want to know what happened. There may be more documents that are in the hands of third parties," he said.

Outside the heavily-fortified court complex, a handful of supporters, waving Dutch flags and scarfs, gathered early Friday watched by dozens of police and gendarmes.

Security forces lined the road to the high-security complex, a few kilometres (miles) outside Schiphol Airport.

Some supporters wore pink hats depicting a cartoon pig, seen as an apparent insult to Islam and Muslims.

The spike in the numbers of refugees arriving in The Netherlands has polarised Dutch society, with Wilders's party tapping into popular discontent and currently topping opinion polls.

Wilders has denounced the decision to prosecute him as "incomprehensible," telling AFP in a recent interview that he was referring to a "criminal element" among Moroccans and not to the group as a whole.

Friday's hearing has been called to examine where the investigations stand ahead of the full trial due to start on October 31.

If found guilty, Wilders could face up to two years in jail or a fine of more than 20,000 euros.

Wilders, who has repeatedly denounced Islam and famously compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," was acquitted during a first hate trial in 2011 which concluded he could not be found guilty because his remarks targeted a religion and not a specific group of people.

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Police found fingerprints of Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam in a Brussels apartment raided earlier in the week, Belgian prosecutors said on Friday.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in (the Brussels district of) Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, refusing to add further details.

Belgium's RTBF television said that it was "more than likely" that Abdeslam was one of two suspects who fled the apartment after the raid, but it was not confirmed by Belgian authorities.

The firefight on Tuesday, in which an Algerian national with suspected ties to Islamic State group was killed, erupted after Belgian and French police searched a property in connection with the November 13 Paris massacres, claimed by IS that killed 130 people.

The officers visited the apartment believing it was rented under the same false identity as a hideout in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used by the Paris attackers.

Abdeslam, 26, who is believed to have played a key logistical role in the attacks, fled across the border to Belgium hours after the November 13 killings and is now one of the most wanted men in Europe.

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EU leaders approved a controversial deal with Turkey to curb the huge flow of asylum seekers to Europe, with all migrants arriving in Greece by Sunday to be sent back.

Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila said the 28 EU leaders approved Friday the deal negotiated with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a bid to end an unprecedented crisis dividing the continent.

"The Turkey deal was approved," Sipila wrote on Twitter.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka confirmed that the expulsion of migrants arriving on the Greek islands would begin on Sunday.

"Deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey as of March 20 will be returned!" Sobotka wrote on Twitter.

More than 1.2 million migrants have come to Europe since January 2015 in the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War II, and around 4,000 have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

But the deal comes at a heavy cost for Europe, with many members of the bloc expressing misgivings about the legality of the deal and Turkey's human rights record.

Turkey has demanded an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to six billion euros ($6.8 billion) and visa-free travel in return for taking back all new irregular migrants coming to Greece, the main entry point to Europe.

Davutoglu is now set to formally sign off on the accord at a final meeting with EU leaders.

"Tusk's proposal for the EU-Turkey agreement approved by EU leaders, in principle, as it is now up for final talks with the Turkish prime minister," a senior EU official told AFP.

But in a sign of the tensions that remain between Ankara and Brussels, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted several EU states for taking only a "handful of refugees" in contrast to the nearly three million Turkey has admitted, most of them fleeing the Syrian war.

Erdogan also accused the Europeans of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels allegedly linked to the group.

"European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield," he said.

Critics have said the mass expulsion planned under the EU-Turkey deal could infringe international law on the treatment of asylum seekers.

Under the terms of the plan, the EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian readmitted to Turkey from Greece.

The move is meant to discourage them from risking their lives in often rickety and overcrowded boats operated by smugglers.

EU officials insisted the deal would be stressed repeatedly each application would be treated individually, with full rights of appeal and proper oversight.

EU sources said last-minute sticking points were cleared up over the deal's legality, Turkey's membership bid, the date for launching the agreement and a plan to double the amount of aid to Turkey to six billion euros ($6.8 billion).

Another major hurdle that was overcome was opposition from Cyprus, rooted in long-standing tensions with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to recognise its government on the divided island.

Many European Union states have expressed concerns about Ankara's human rights record, including its treatment of the Kurds and a crackdown on critics of the government.

The United Nations and rights groups fear the deal could violate international law that forbids the mass deportation of refugees.

Amnesty International set up a sign outside the summit venue: "Don't trade refugees".

The crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populism and anti-immigrant sentiment.

The deal also envisages major aid for Greece, where tens of thousands of refugees are trapped in dire conditions after Balkan countries shut their borders to stop them heading north to richer Germany and Scandinavia.

The agreement does not however affect the more than 46,000 refugees and migrants already in Greece.

Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroublis described the overwhelmed border town of Idomeni where many of the migrants are camped out as a "modern-day Dachau".

British Prime Minister David Cameron was also hosting a meeting with Merkel and several other EU leaders on how to tackle migration flows from lawless Libya, which appeared to be increasing again.

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(Beijing)  A graft probe into the head of a state-run utilities firm in Shanghai put investigators on the trail of two top local government officials, people with knowledge of the matter say.

Feng Jun, the former general manager of State Grid Shanghai Electric Power Co., is accused of taking more than 37 million in bribes. The sources said his downfall precipitated graft investigations into two other senior Shanghai officials: former vice mayor Ai Baojun and Dai Haibo, former chief of staff to the mayor.

Investigators came across their first clues about wrongdoing by the government figures when interrogating Feng, the sources said.

Feng stood trial in a Shanghai court in November, a year after the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Communist Party's graft-busting agency, started probing into his dealings. Feng pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, the state-run Labor Daily newspaper said.

Shanghai party officials detained Feng at the Beijing International Airport after he had come to the capital for an meeting on October 28, 2014, the newspaper said. His wife was detained in Shanghai in February last year.

Prosecutors charged Feng with accepting over 17 million yuan in kickbacks from private companies that won supply contracts or construction projects from the Shanghai and Jiangsu branches of State Grid under his watch. He was also accused of taking another 20 million yuan in bribes together with his wife, Chen Jiali.

Feng could not explain at the trial how he got other assets worth 76 million yuan, including luxury items and a collection of antiques, the newspaper said.

The graft watchdog said in March last year that it was looking into "serious violations of party discipline and laws"  the party's euphemism for corruption  committed by Dai. They started a probe into Ai, the vice-mayor, in November.

Ai is the highest-ranking official in Shanghai's government to run afoul of corruption busters.

Several people with knowledge of the matter said that the fall of these two men were closely linked to information uncovered by investigators while questioning Feng. The party's anti-graft agency has handed the cases to the prosecutor's office in Shanghai, the sources said.

A Tangled Web

A person close to the probe into Feng said his ties to Dai went back years. It was unclear how Feng was linked to Ai.

Dai, a 54-year-old from the eastern province of Jiangsu, rose through the ranks of the Shanghai government over two decades and was named the mayor's chief of staff in February 2013.

He was made the deputy director and party secretary of the Shanghai Free- Trade Zone, which was launched as a testing ground for economic reform, in 2013. He lost that position in September 2014, days before the experiment marked its first anniversary.

Ai, 56, was the first director of the free-trade zone. He was replaced and fired from his position as vice mayor in November last year, when the government announced he was being placed under investigation on suspicion of corruption.

Dai's wife, Xue Dongmei, a property developer, won 1 billion yuan worth of contracts from State Grid to build facilities at power plants during Feng's tenure, the person close to the inquiry said. In exchange, she gave Feng a 30 million yuan villa in the city's Pudong District.

Xue was detained shortly after the anti-graft agency announced an investigation into her husband, the source said.

Prosecutors said Feng also took money and expensive gifts from several entrepreneurs from Jiangsu.

Prosecutors said Feng and his wife got their largest bribe  nearly 20 million yuan in cash and later another US$ 100,000, also in cash  from Li Tong, a businessman from Jiangsu who supplied cables and equipment to power companies.

Prosecutors revealed that between 2005 and 2014, Feng abused his positions as head of State Grid's subsidiaries in Jiangsu and then in Shanghai to help Li secure several supply contracts. Li gave Feng and his wife several expensive handbags and jewel-encrusted watches in addition to the generous kickbacks, prosecutors said.

In 2014, the Jiangsu branch of State Grid suspended orders to one of Li's factories, Nanjing Youlu Cable Co., due to quality concerns, prosecutors said.

Lu Yonghua, chairman of Jiangsu Linyang Electronics Co., China's largest producer of ammeters, devices used to measure the current in circuits, was also part of Feng's web of graft, prosecutors said. From 2005 to 2014, Feng received payments worth 2.8 million yuan, HK$ 2.2 million and US$ 200,000 from Lu for approving contracts to supply these instruments to the utility giant's branches in Jiangsu and Shanghai, prosecutors said.

The charge sheet against Feng also listed other companies and individuals suspected of paying him bribes, including Jiang Raofeng, the legal representative of property developer Jiangsu Xingyu Construction Co.; Zhou Bingren, general manager of Nanjing Sanneng Electric Power Instrument Co.; and Zhang Xuesong, legal representative of Nanjing Puxu Technology Development Co.

Several businessmen accused of greasing Feng's palms to curry favor refused to respond to Caixin's inquiries.

Newspapers in Shanghai reported that Feng challenged the prosecutors' assessment of his personal assets. He said investigators overestimated his wealth by valuing antiques purchased decades ago at the prices they can fetch in the market now. Feng said this was unfair because the values rose a lot in recent years.

Feng said at the trial that his family's assets included capital gains made by selling stocks and money made by investing in wealth management products, the Labor Daily reported. He claimed his annual salary was 1 million yuan, while his wife, a manager at China Merchants Bank, earned about 2 million yuan per year.

A Model Worker

Feng, 59, spent most of his career in state-owned utility companies. He was head of the Jiangsu branch of State Grid for two decades before being appointed the general manager of State Grid's Shanghai branch in December 2011.

Once he took over the reins in Shanghai, Feng squeezed 13 subsidiaries  through mergers and layoffs  into nine companies and stepped up power plant construction and refurbishment.

Employees at the utilities company said Feng's aggressive reforms surprised many in the industry. "There was a lot of internal opposition (to the changes)," said a former employee of one of the subsidiaries because they led to job cuts.

Feng took over the selection of suppliers and contractors from lower-level managers and had the final say in most of these decisions, said the employee.

"In the past I just thought he was a workaholic, but now I know there was profit behind it," said an engineer at Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of State Grid.

Many of Feng's colleagues in Shanghai described him as an aggressive leader.

"Everyone was compelled to work extra hours because of his work style," said another Shanghai Electric Power employee. "Nobody dared to leave work before he left."

But another source at State Grid said that although Feng had a few disputes with subordinates, senior executives approved of his methods because he "could always implement orders from the headquarters well."

The head office in Beijing recognized him as a model worker three times, the person said, and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions gave him a national award for his work in 2013. That same year, he was named a delegate to the National People's Congress, the country's legislature.

Feng's trial has ended and he is awaiting a court verdict.

The sources familiar with the matter did not reveal whether Feng made a deal with prosecutors to gain leniency in exchange for providing information on wrongdoing by others.

(Rewritten by Han Wei)
Guwahati: Assam Congress on Friday asked the Election Commission to withdraw Election Expenditure Observer Raghavendra Singh from the state for allegedly acting in a "partisan" and "high-handed" manner against a particular political party.

"Singh, accompanied by CRPF and police personnel had surrounded the residence of senior Congress Minister Rakibul Hussain on March 16 without any prior intimation or notice," APCC Chief Anjan Dutta said in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

He alleged Singh had stopped the vehicle of Hussain, who was accompanied by his wife and son, when they were coming out of their residence, refused to divulge his identity and forcefully conducted search of the minister's personal vehicle and accompanying security escort vehicles.

Later, Singh allowed Hussain and his family members to leave but he along with his team raided and searched the minister's residence in the absence of any member of the family or third party independent witness which is "absolutely illegal and not permissible under the existing procedure of law," Dutta said.

The APCC chief also alleged the vehicle in which Singh came had the registration number of a stolen vehicle with an FIR registered with the Basistha police station here.

"The use of such a vehicle by a responsible officer of the Election Commission casts doubt on the search and detention operation of a Cabinet Minister and his family members. It indicates the operation is devoid of credibility and leads to ill motive, bias and illegal action," he added.

It is pertinent to mention that Hussain has not yet filed his nomination and the action taken by the Election Expenditure Observer is absolutely uncalled for and "seems to be malafide and is definitely designed through him by vested interests," Dutta said in his letter.

The Congress leader alleged that the presence of an officer like Singh was "detrimental to the interest of conducting a free, fair and peaceful election" and he should be called back and his services as Election Expenditure Observer must be withdrawn with immediate effect.
Delhi: The Delhi Police on Friday told the Patiala House Court here that allegations against ex-DU lecturer SAR Gilani are grievous and against the country while opposing his bail plea.

The Delhi Police made its intentions clear shortly after the court began hearing the arguments on the bail application moved by former DU lecturer Gilani, who is in judicial custody.

However, the hearing on Geelani's bail plea in the Patiala House Court will now resume tomorrow, ANI reported.

Yesterday, Additional Sessions Judge Amit Bansal had posted the matter for today, after noting that the judge concerned was on leave.

Gilani had moved a fresh bail application on Wednesday before the Patiala House Courts registry and was listed for Thursday before Additional Sessions Judge Deepak Garg, who was absent.

Gilani has been arrested under sedition charges in connection with a Press Club event here.

At the Press Club event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Afzal Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons.

Earlier on February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Gilani, who was arrested on February 16, after the police alleged that "hatred" was being spread against the government.

Police had earlier told the court that an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs.

It had also said the hall in the club was booked by Gilani through one Ali Javed by using his credit card and another person Mudassar was also involved.

The police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident.

Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned DU professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event, for two days.

Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005.

(With PTI inputs)
Delhi: A Delhi court will hear on Friday the arguments on the bail application moved by former DU lecturer SAR Gilani, who is in judicial custody.

Yesterday, Additional Sessions Judge Amit Bansal, had posted the matter for today, after noting that the judge concerned was on leave.

Gilani had moved a fresh bail application on Wednesday before the the Patiala House Courts registry and was listed for Thursday before Additional Sessions Judge Deepak Garg, who was absent.

Gilani has been arrested under sedition charges in connection with a Press Club event here.

At the Press Club event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Afzal Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons.

Earlier on February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Gilani, who was arrested on February 16, after the police alleged that "hatred" was being generated against the government.

Police had earlier told the court that an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs.

It had also said the hall in the club was booked by Gilani through one Ali Javed by using his credit card and another person Mudassar was also involved.

The police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident.

Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned DU professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event, for two days.

Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Taking Punjab's side in its ongoing row with Haryana over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue may prove costly for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Taking a serious view of Kejriwal's stance, the Haryana government has threatened to stop supply of water to Delhi.

It may be noted that the national capital primarily depends on water supplied by Haryana to meet its daily needs.

Haryana's Agriculture Minister Om Prajash Dhankar has categorically stated we will not be able to supply water to Delhi.

The Delhi Chief Minister has opposed the construction of SYL canal which was to be constructed so that Haryana could get water through Bhakra Nangal Dam, Dhankar said.

We supply water to Delhi through the western Yamuna canal for which we reduce water supply to our farmers, the minister said, adding we have told the Delhi CM to construct his own canal system to bring water from Nangal Dam and Tajewala to Delhi.

Dhankar had yesterday said that Haryana was left with no other option after Kejriwal opposed the SYL Link canal project.

"Water is lying available in the Nangal Dam for Haryana and Delhi, but we don't have any resource to supply it and you (Kejriwal) opposed our only resource SYL canal in Punjab for your political gains. By doing this, you in fact stood against the interest of the people of Delhi," Dhankar said in a letter written to Kejriwal yesterday.

"Seeing your stand, Haryana will be unable to supply your share of water through its own canal as you have stood against the interests of the farmers and people of Haryana," he said.

According to the minister, Haryana provides 0.2 million acre-feet water to Delhi by its main line canal which reaches Delhi through the Narwana branch of the West Yamuna canal system.

"Due to this load, Haryana could not get 496 cusecs water of its share. Other than this, Haryana also supplies 330 cusec water from the Yamuna canal to Delhi," Dhankar said.
Chandigarh: Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Friday described the resolution passed by the Punjab Assembly against construction of SYL canal as "gross violation" of the orders of the Supreme Court.

Khattar, who was replying to the Governor's address in Haryana Assembly here, was referring to the resolution passed unanimously by Punjab Assembly today, stating that they would not allow construction of Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal at any cost. The resolution also stated that neither there was ever any need to construct the SYL Canal nor it is today.

The Chief Minister was referring to this issue as the Supreme Court has ordered status quo on the issue of SYL Canal.

He said the state government would present its view point in the Supreme Court along with the resolution passed by Punjab Assembly.

The Chief Minister, while talking to the media after the session today, said "it appeared that the issue now raised by Punjab aimed at gaining mileage during ensuing elections."

However, he said the issue belonged to Haryana and not to Punjab as the Presidential reference had been pending for the last several years and Haryana government had pleaded for its early hearing.

"As the Supreme Court accepted the request of Haryana, the nervousness of Punjab was revealed. Now, it is between the Supreme Court and Punjab government and Haryana has no role in it," he said.

He said the Supreme Court has taken up the issue and in case the Punjab does so, as its today's resolution states, the Supreme Court would take its cognizance.

The CM assured the House that Haryana would do everything possible to get its share of Ravi-Beas waters through SYL canal.

He said that SYL canal is a lifeline for farmers of Haryana and BJP has always been serious on this issue and six of its MLAs had resigned nine months before the elections, he said.

Khattar said the present state government did not sit idle on the issue of SYL canal and met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi and convened a meeting of MLAs and MPs of Haryana.

Taking a dig at Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Khattar said the move to pass a Bill to de-notify farmers land acquired for construction of SYL canal could also be an excuse of Badal to "leave" the government in the midst due to "fear" of upcoming Assembly Elections so that he might contest the polls from outside.

Earlier, Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala sought to pass a resolution in the House to condemn today's act of Punjab Assembly.
Chandigarh: Crucial talks between Haryana government and Jat leaders on the issue of quota demand commenced Thursday afternoon.

The Jat delegation is meeting with Chief Secretary and Haryana DGP at Haryana Niwas in Chandigarh.

The Jat leaders have said that they would not resume their agitation till then.

Various Jat organisations had on Monday threatened to resume their quota agitation, which rocked the state last month and claimed 30 lives, if the Manohar Lal Khattar government does not meet their demand by today.

Meanwhile, bracing for the stir, the state government has deployed paramilitary forces and police in sensitive districts and they carried out Flag Marches in various places on Wednesday to instill confidence among people in the state which witnessed widespread violence during the first phase of the agitation last month that left 30 people dead and caused extensive loss.

The Centre has sent 80 companies (about 800 personnel) of paramilitary forces to the state which are being deployed in sensitive areas like Rohtak and Jhajjar districts, which were the worst-affected during the first phase of the agitation last month.

On the other hand, Haryana government said on Wednesday that a bill to give reservation to the community will be passed during the ongoing Budget session which ends on March 31.

Finance Minister Abhimanya said that it was taking time to draft the bill as the government wants to make it sure that the new law does not get entangled in a legal quagmire.

"We are sure that during this session, this Bill will be passed," he had told reporters, as per PTI.

"The Bill (to give reservation to Jats) is being drafted and we are making efforts to bring and pass such a Bill in the assembly which is in the interest of Haryana people and it does not get entangled in legal quagmire... This is why it is taking time (for introducing Bill in assembly)," he had added.

He had also said that Jat organisations should give their suggestions to draft this for their benefit instead of giving any ultimatum on resuming agitation.

Previous Congress-led Haryana government had also brought bill for giving reservation to Jats and four other castes which was stayed by Punjab and Haryana High Court.

(With PTI inputs)
Kolkata: Five special teams, led by Chief Electoral Officers of different states, on Friday started a five-day visit to the districts of West Bengal to undertake a comprehensive review of poll preparedness.

Deputy CEO Amitjyoti Bhattacharya said the teams have started arriving in the districts and started working.

"They will see the overall poll preparedness till March 22," he said.

The CEOs - VK Singh of Punjab, Anil Kumar Jha of Karnataka, Narinder Chauhan of Himachal Pradesh, Nidhi Chibber of Chhattisgarh and Dr Chandra Bhushan Kumar of Delhi - have been assigned different districts for monitoring work.

The teams will submit their report on March 23.

Each of the five teams will have five members comprising CEO of a state, a joint or deputy CEO, an IPS officer and two election commission officers.

The Election Commission had last night removed 37 officials, including a District Magistrate and four Superintendents of Police, following complaints from Opposition parties.

The first phase of the six-phased Assembly poll in the state will be held on April 4 and 11.

Today was the last day of filing nominations for the 18 seats in the districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura in the first part of first phase.

Altogether, 138 candidates have filed their papers which includes 18 from Trinamool, 11 from CPI(M), 5 from BSP, one each from CPI and Forward Bloc, 56 from other parties and 18 independents.

Another 23 candidates have however filed their papers saying they are from BJP.

"Some of them will either withdraw their candidature or their nominations will get rejected," the EC official said when asked how 23 nominees from the party have filed papers from 18 seats.

Scrutiny of papers will be done tomorrow and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is 21st.

The poll watchdog is also sending central awareness observers in each of the districts.

Headed by senior IIS officers, their task will be to monitor the overall voter awareness programs being taken by the districts.

The commission had yesterday issued showcause notices against two Trinamool Congress leaders Anubrata Mandal and Abdur Rezzak Mollah and CPI(M) MP Md Salim for allegedly violating the model code of conduct.

"We have received the replies from Mandal and Mollah which we are examining. Md Salim has yet to respond. If we don't get reply from him within the stipulated time then action will be taken according to the rules," Bhattacharya said.
Jaipur: The Indian Air Force will on Friday demonstrate its combat and fire power capabilities as part of the mammoth Exercise Iron Fist 2016.

The exercise will be witnessed by President Pranab Mukherjee, the supreme commander of India's armed forces, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the deserts of Pokhran, Rajasthan.

The mammoth exercise in the Thar Desert would witness participation of 181 aircraft. These aircraft will depart from multiple bases and perform a synchronised aerial ballet to demonstrate their deadly combat capability.

IAF would showcase its multi-layered air defence operations which will comprise fly-past by flight refuelling aircraft, IL-78 FRA, along with two Su-30 aircraft which will demonstrate the ability to extend on-station endurance and strategic reach of fighter aircraft. This phase would also include surface-to-air guided weapons like IGLA shoulder-fired missile system and the OSA-AK missiles striking down airborne targets.

Capability demonstration of the indigenously developed 'Tejas' aircraft to deliver laser-guided bomb and fire an air-to-air missile and the capability of the indigenous Light Combat Helicopter to carry out rocket firing would be carried out for the first time.

The demonstration will also see the power of Akash Missile for the first time. At the same time, 22 types of platforms and weapons systems will be showcased at the event.

The exercise will also showcase the journey of the IAFs transformation over the years.

To showcase this would be a flypast showing IAF's journey over eight decades, with the aircraft of yesteryears like Tiger Moth flying along with the latest acquisitions of IAF. The flypast by a mixed formation comprising MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and the mighty Su-30, would represent the transformation of IAF over the decades.

Glimpses of an exponential increase in the operational capabilities of the Air Force with focus on the concept of all weather, network-centric operations, precision weapon delivery and ability to deliver lethal fire power would also be on display.

On show will be net-enabling operations of aircraft as well as a synchronised weapon delivery demonstration comprising precision based bombing at simulated targets by Mirage-2000, Su-30, MiG-27 and Jaguar.

Light Combat Aircraft 'Tejas' and Light Combat Helicopters would also be a part of air display.

Transport aircraft like the An-32, Embraer, IL-76, IL-78 and C-130J would participate in all their glory while medium lift helicopters (Mi-17, Mi-17 1V, Mi-17V5) and attack helicopters (Mi-25, Mi-35) would also showcase their capabilities.

Visitors will also be enthralled to see aerobatic displays by modern combat aircraft like the Su-30 MKI, Sarang and the Surya Kiran Aerobatic team.

Pokhran is the place where India had conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and in 1998.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the government was "prepared" for the upcoming visit of a special investigation team from Pakistan to probe the Pathankot terror attack but the modalities were yet to be worked upon.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function here, Singh skirted a direct reply on whether the visiting Joint Investigation Team would be given access to the strategic India Air Force (IAF) base, saying: "We are prepared."

Terrorists, believed to be from Pakistan, attacked the IAF base in Punjab`s Pathankot town on January 2, leaving seven security personnel dead. Security forces eliminated the six terrorists.

The home minister on Friday indicated that detailed modalities would be worked out by the officials from the home ministry and external affairs ministry after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj returns from Nepal where she is attending a Saarc ministerial meeting.

After a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Swaraj had said in Pokhara (Nepal) on Thursday that the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan would arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward the probe into the Pathankot attack.
Delhi: In a significant statement, the RSS said on Wednesday that gay sex was not a crime.

To a question on whether homosexuality is a crime as considered under Article 377 IPC, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said, at an event organised by India Today group, "I don't think homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society."

He added, "sexual preferences are private and personal. Why should RSS express its views in a public forum? RSS has no view on that. It is for people to have their way. Personal preference of sex is not discussed in RSS and we don't even want to discuss that."

Section 377 of Indian Penal Code terms homosexuality as unnatural and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. Going by the global trends in this regard, there have been demands within the country to decriminalise homosexuality.

On the other hand, Hosabale accepted that RSS sends "signals" to the BJP-led government at the Centre but dismissed suggestions it held a "remote control" over it.

"There is no control, but certainly remote is there. Remote is there, signal is there. RSS is not having any remote control on BJP or any other political party. RSS swayamsevaks are working actively and are participants in BJP. BJP also subscribes to certain views and ideology of RSS and the inspiration they take in public life. If family members come to RSS for suggestions, is it remote control or affection. There is no complaint from BJP and there is no wish from RSS," he said.

Asked if RSS was an 'extra-constitutional authority' in the present government, he said, "Where is the extra- constitutional authority? We are not doing any hide and seek. Presentations at RSS meeting is not wrong. If they make presentations before RSS, they can make presentations before this conclave. It is a democracy. We have every right to make suggestions to any government."

Rejecting criticism that RSS gave diktats to the Modi government, he said RSS swayamsevaks are working actively in BJP and they are like "family members".

Hosabale said in a democracy the RSS can make suggestions to any government of the day, be it BJP or Congress, even though Congress will not listen to them.

"We are proud that RSS has produced two prime ministers. Both are listening to the voice of the people," he said, adding both Vajpayee and Modi listened to them. Vajpayee also listened and Modi also is listening. But, listening does not mean he is heeding (to) it. We are proud. I wish Vajpayee also had the opportunity to become prime minister at Modi's age," the RSS leader said.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to state the criteria for granting compensation to dog bite victims, especially when someone bitten dies.

"Which forum should the victim go to seek compensation in the dog bite cases, especially in case of death? What are the criteria for grant of such compensation from Chief Minister Relief Fund," a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra asked.

The bench's observation came during the hearing of a petition filed by one Jos Sebastian whose wife, a MNREGA worker, was killed after she was bit by a stray dog.

Advocate VK Biju, appearing for the petitioner, sought a direction to the concerned authorities for grant of appropriate compensation to the victim.

The bench, also comprising Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, posted the matter for further hearing on April 5.

The apex court, had on March 9, asked states and civic bodies to take steps to sterilise and vaccinate nuisance- causing stray dogs under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Senior advocate Dushyanat Dave, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, had said that balance needs to be created as there were instances of death due to dog bites.

Dave had said he was yet to come across news where animal-loving NGOs have come forward to help victims of dog bites and hence, the need of the hour is to strike a balance.

The apex court is hearing a batch of appeals, including those filed by Animal Welfare Board and dog lovers, against the decisions of some high courts including the Bombay High Court and Kerala High Court to allow municipal authorities to deal with the stray dogs menace.

Earlier, the court had said the local authorities have a "sacrosanct duty to provide sufficient number of dog pounds, including animal kennels/shelters" which may be managed by the animal welfare organisations.

Animal Welfare Board of India, in its plea, has sought that the central law, which mandates birth control of street dogs through strict implementation of the Animal Birth Control Dogs Rules, be followed.

The apex court had earlier declined to pass an interim order to stay culling of stray dogs by Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation on a PIL by advocate Anupam Tripathi, saying the killing of dangerous dogs and those inflicted with rabies should be guided by the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001.
A Donald Trump presidency is the sixth biggest threat facing the world, tied with the prospect of terrorism destabilizing the global economy, according to an assessment by British research group EIU.

Its latest ranking of global risks has a sharp economic slowdown in China at the top. That is followed by Russia's actions in Syria and Ukraine bringing a new cold war, a corporate debt crisis in emerging markets and the fracture of the European Union.

EIU says it does not expect Trump to win the November election, but that there is a moderate probability he will and a high impact if he does.

The group cites his hostility toward free trade, advocacy of the killing of families of terrorists, support for ground troops in Syria and alienation of both China and Mexico that could result in trade wars and fueling terrorist groups.

Trump has promised to drive hard deals in international negotiations, particularly with China. One of his most repeated campaign pledges is to build along the southern U.S. border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants, a project he says Mexico will fund itself.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday granted six-month interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya in sedition case. They have been accused of raising anti-national slogans in the varsity campus on February 9.

While granting bail to two JNU students, the court asked them to furnish bail bond of 25 thousand each and one surety of same amount.

A five-member high-level inquiry committee constituted to probe the controversial February 9 event at the university has concluded that Umar and Anirban facilitated unauthorised entry of some people into the campus.

Delhi Police on Wednesday had told the court that the two JNU students led the crowd which shouted anti-Indian slogans.

While opposing the arguments of both the accused , the investigators said the students' intention was to create hatred against the established government which attracts the sedition charge.

The police told Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh that Khalid and Bhattacharya organised the February 9 event.

The committee was formed on February 10 to probe the event organised to protest hanging of Afzal Guru, the Parliament attack

Khalid and Bhattacharya were arrested on charges of sedition in connection with the programme.

JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was released on bail from Tihar on March 3.
New Delhi: In fresh attack on the NDA government, JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Friday vowed to wage a "direct fight" against "dictatorship" as he accused it of targeting universities across the country and sought support of all democratic forces it was about saving the country.

He said those talking about Constitution should allow law to take its own course in the sedition case in which he as well as JNU PhD scholars Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested, noting delivering justice on street was not acceptable.

"You may not agree with my politics. It is not about JNU only. The universities are being attacked across the country. Now our fight is direct against dictatorship. All democratic people will have to come together. This unity is required in the country," he said at the India Today conclave here.

Kanhaiya said while the question confronting the people today was about saving the country, the whole JNU episode was given a national versus anti-national spin.

"The whole episode has been portrayed as a case of national versus anti-national. The job of a patriot is not to use a black law like sedition against people of the country, against youngsters and students.

"You are behaving with them in a way as if you have become the British and we are the soldiers of Bhagat Singh. If you don't hesitate to use a black law like sedition, then we don't have any problem in becoming the sepoys of Bhagat Singh," he said.

Speaking on the occasion, JNUSU Vice President Shela Rashid said the very idea of India which stands for accommodation and acceptance is under threat.

"Since politics decides our future, we will decide our own politics. Universities are democratic places. We need to protect them from RSS," she said.

During her short but passionate address, Shela, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, said she grew up watching a very violent image of India but JNU gave her the democratic space.

She said the ABVP raises very violent slogans as well which are specially directed at women but students largely do not complain against them respecting the spirit of free speech.

"We do not want to see you behind the bars," she said looking at ABVP's JNU leader Saurabh Sharma who was also part of the discussion.

She said since the NDA government came to power, the ABVP has been misusing the political power to frame students.

Earlier, Kanhaiya said the sedition law must be scrapped. Welcoming bail granted to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, he said all parties and people supporting democracy must come forward to demand abolishing the British-era law.
New Delhi: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisis refusal to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' has sparked anger among the members of Muslim community, who said the Hyderabad MP had made such remarks for political gains.

According to a report published in the Times of India on Friday, a prominent Muslim community leader Mohammad Imam and his supporters held a protest march at the Bachcha Park in Meerut where they criticised Owaisis remarks.

They maintained that Islam doesnt stop its people from expressing love for their country or shouting slogans in that vein.

The remark of Owaisi is completely anti-national and is not acceptable, the Imam was quoted as telling his supporters during the protest.

Imam and his supporters also wrote the slogan 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' in blood on a map of India to express their love for the motherland.

Imams blood was drawn out using a syringe and then he and his supporters wrote Bharat Mata Ki Jai using it as ink on three maps of India which they got specially made for the purpose.

Mohammad Imam, who is the district vice-president of Congress and noted community leader, said that Owaisi is making these remarks for political leverage and that he is defaming the name of Islam.

We are Indians and saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai is our responsibility.

Commenting on Owaisis speech three days ago, Imam further said, Saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai is equivalent to hailing the land, women, children, sisters and soldiers of India. The remark of Owaisi is completely anti-national and is not acceptable. The posters of Owaisi have BR Ambedkars pictures along with him. I would like to ask Owaisi: is this what Baba Ambedkar taught him?



Owaisi has faced intense criticism for his speech and got a fitting reply from legendary film personality Javed Akhtar in Parliament.
New Delhi: The deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir continues on Friday with the Bharatiya Janata Party refusing to accept any new demand from the People`s Democratic Party (PDP).

The PDP, however, appeared to soften its stand tonight in a bid to reach out to BJP, with a senior party leader saying "our doors are not closed".

Earlier in the day, the PDP had denied setting any new terms, saying it was insisting only on implementation of issues agreed upon in the 'Agenda of Alliance' between the two parties.

Later, PDP MP and one of its founding leaders Muzaffar Hussain Baig told PTI that no fresh demand has been made during the talks held by the two parties.

"What we have asked for is very much part of the agenda of the alliance. For example handing over of two power projects, reviewing AFSPA, vacating land held by the Army..Now all these have been part of the earlier document which received its nod from late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Baig said.

Earlier in the day, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, the party's pointsman in the state, said that the stalemate that existed earlier in government-formation continued and that conditions cannot be the basis for the exercise.

Ram Madhav's remarks sought to create a perception that PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has made some new demands whereas the fact is that no fresh demand has been made.

"I think there is some miscommunication and no new condition has been put forth. It's better that both parties sit together and clear the air. Our doors are not closed," Baig said.

Baig said PDP has asked for an assurance from the Centre that it will look into the demands, which are a part of the agenda of alliance, raised by the PDP chief.

About vacating of land by the army, Baig said that the Army has taken out its men and material from Tatoo ground on the outskirts of Srinagar city.

"They are only holding the land on paper while the Army has been given land in lieu of that. So, what's the issue in that? This land can be used by the Union Government for building a national institute," he said.

Another issue flagged by Baig, a former deputy chief minister and Finance Minister of the state, was that of enhancement of relief to flood victims.

"We have said that relief to some of the flood victims could be enhanced after thorough verification. This is not something unjustified. People of the state were Indian citizens first and residents of Kashmir later," he said.

He said both the parties should learn to "trust each other" and allay all fears.

"I have maintained in the past that the agenda of alliance should not be a mere power-sharing agreement. It's a very good document which needs to be implemented in good faith."

Talking to reporters earlier in the day, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav said: "There is no progress. As far as we are concerned there is no change in conditions that existed when Mufti Mohammed Sayeed sahab was the Chief Minister. The only change is that Mufti Saheb is no longer there and it was for PDP to appoint a new leader and carry on."

Replying to questions on Mehbooba Mufti-Amit Shah meeting, which took place yesterday, Madhav said: "There is no change in our stand. We have told them that a new government should be formed on the basis on conditions that existed earlier."

PDP with 27 MLAs and BJP with 25 members had formed an alliance on March one last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an "Agenda of Alliance" which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state.

Asked about the new demands put forward by the PDP chief, Madhav had said in clear terms that "whatever fresh has to done has to be done after government formation".

"The first thing is that no new demand is acceptable to us and the second thing is that if there are new demands then it can be taken up once a new government takes over.

"A state government always has a right to make demands to the Centre. A government cannot be formed on the basis of conditions," he said.

The PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by Army before the coalition could be resumed.

Governor's rule was imposed in the state on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death.

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: Scholars on Friday made a strong pitch for strengthening Sufism and "changing the perception" about Islam globally by spreading the faith effectively.

Speaking at the first World Sufi Forum organised by All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), speakers from various parts of the world underscored the need to tackle terrorism, which has cast negative perceptions on the Muslim community.

"We can see the effects of terrorism on Muslim community. In a recent survey, majority of Canadians expressed negative opinion about Islam. This is because what continues to happen in parts of the world. The Forum is doing a good job and hopefully we will come up with an action plan. We can meet the challenge (of terrorism) with Sufism," Canada-based scholar Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdul Razaq said.

Razaq pitched for renewing efforts to bring Sufism to mainstream of Muslim community to tackle terrorism and suggested involving more women in the process of spreading peace.

Syed Shamimuddin Munami of India seconded Razaq and stressed on the need to fight terrorism "without funds and on the back of character and values".

AIUMB president Syed Mohammed Ashraf Kichhouchhwi said followers of Ganges-Yamuna culture should strive to "export" inherited values of Sufism to the world where terrorism is bred.

Syed Asad Ali Shah Abualai from Pakistan, said Sufism can play a big role in improving New Delhi-Islamabad ties even as he blamed "some foreign forces" for the strained relationships between the two countries over the years.

He noted that militant elements were present "not only in Islam, but all religions" and sought to condemn that.

US-based Sufi scholar Kabir Helminski said in order to tackle terrorism, it is necessary to understand the causes of how and by whom wars are "engineered and created" and who will benefit from the same.

"Of course, we need to understand what is actual Islam and its teachings. What is being taught in the name of Islam is distorted and corrupt version and almost opposite of Islam," he rued.

Helminski also sought to admonish Muslim clerics who termed music and dance as "haram" (against Islamic law), saying joy and celebrations are "natural response" to God's love and generosity and a way of the heart to experience "divine reality".

Meanwhile, the AIUMB maintained that the event was "apolitical" and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited to inaugurate the event as "head of the State".

"The forum is in the national interest," AIUMB president said.

The second day of the four-day event was addressed also by scholars like Tolegen Mukhamjanov (Kazakhstan) and Damir Hazrat Mukhetdinov (Russia) and ex-vice president of UN's NGO committee on disarmament among others.

Inaugurated by Modi yesterday, the World Sufi Forum is being attended by Sufi scholars from 22 countries.

The event will culminate in a mass congregation on Sunday with over one lakh people expected to attend the same, its organisers claimed.
Delhi: India has sought a report from the Indian embassy in Beijing regarding an Indian national who was detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Tweeting about it, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "I have asked for a report from our Embassy in China."

I have asked for a report from our Embassy in China. pic.twitter.com/YPyawnLHk5 https://t.co/TOD59Y2Rtb  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 18, 2016

She was responding to a tweet which said that an Indian businessman who was working in Shenzhen with a resident permit and a business licence was taken by police on Tuesday.

"Wife has been released after questioning but my friend is detained with a notice of 30 days," the tweet said.

The tweet also said that the businessman's wife was alone in Shenzhen and the Chinese authorities were not allowing her to contact him.

(With IANS inputs)
New Delhi: Hours after a Delhi court granted six-month interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, Bollywood actor Anupam Kher questioned how can one who "speaks ill" of the country be celebrated as if he was an Olympic medal winner.

Kher has been critical of JNU students in wake of the sedition row.

Speaking at JNU campus ahead of screening of his movie "Buddha in a traffic jam", Kher made a reference of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar and said: "He is out on bail, he hasn't come back with a medal from Olympics that he should be accorded such huge welcome."

"One who talks ill of the country, how can he be celebrated as hero? Has he got an Olympic medal? He is out on bail. He is not Sachin, Saina or Hanumanathappa," he said, without naming Kanhaiya.

"He said that he comes from a poor family but my question is what did you contribute to remove their poverty? My father's salary was Rs 90 when I got my first scholarship of Rs 200 and I had sent Rs 110 to my family. What did you do," he asked.

The screening of Kher's film went on amid shouting of slogans by Left-affiliated groups who gave him a thumbs down.

"We have laid the foundation of this nation. The national flag is in our hearts. Saying 'Bharat mata ki jai' is not a matter of debate," he said to his audience comprising mostly Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad-affiliated students at the JNU's administration block.

Kher had earlier alleged that JNU refused to screen his film considering the present atmosphere at the campus, a charge denied by the university.

Further attacking Kanhaiya, Kher asked, "You talk about everything that according to you is wrong in the country. But what did you contribute to nation other than your criticism?

"Let's not talk about what is not working in the country but what is happening in the country. You are here to study and not do politics and even if you are doing it, don't do any politics against the country," he said.

"I also heard someone saying that he wants freedom in India and not from India. If the country is your home than how is freedom in or from is different," he asked.

Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kher said, "It is after years that we have got such a good prime minister. We are also trying to get you all back on road to revolution and patriotism."

Referring to himself as a true Indian he said, "The India in me will always be alive. I am not old. I am like our country who will get younger with times."

A case was registered against Khalid and Bhattacharya at the Vasant Kunj police station in south Delhi, soon after Kanhaiya was arrested on the same charges of sedition on February 12.

(With Agency inputs)
London: Britain on Friday lifted a 15-year-old ban on a pro-Khalistan militant group after the House of Commons concluded that "sufficient evidence" does not currently exist to link it to terrorism.

According to sources, British Home Secretary Theresa May signed the order lifting the ban on International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF).

The ISYF, established in the 1980s in militancy-wracked Punjab, was involved in "assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, mainly directed against Indian officials and interests", the British Parliament heard this week.

However, the debate entitled 'Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism' on Tuesday night concluded that "there is not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief" that the ISYF is currently concerned with terrorism.

"The decision to de-proscribe the ISYF was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of all the available information," UK minister for security John Hayes told the Commons.

The ban on the ISYF in the UK came in force in March 2001, which led to the organisation being banned in India in December that year and in Canada in July 2003, where it is still banned.

The Sikh Federation (UK) had applied for the ban to be lifted last year, followed by a legal challenge against UK home secretary Theresa May for refusing to lift the ban.

The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) had sought further reasons for May's refusal to lift the ban but the UK government decided instead not to further contest the ban and moved the order for parliamentary approval on February 22 this year.

Sikh Federation chair Bhai Amrik Singh said: "The Home Secretary has shown courage in making this decision despite the inevitable pressure from the Indian authorities and so close after the attacks in Paris (last November). However, this also shows there was no case against the ISYF that would stand up to legal scrutiny".
New Delhi: Hours after bail formalities were completed, Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya  arrested on sedition charges for allegedly raising anti-national slogans at the campus on February 9  were released from Tihar jail on Friday evening.

The duo were released from the jail after a trial court in Delhi granted bail to the duo today. Additional sessions judge Reetesh Singh granted an interim bail for six months to Khalid and Bhattacharya saying "at this stage bail is made out."

Both the JNU students had sought bail on grounds of parity with co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar, JNUSU president who recently got bail in the case. Claiming innocence, they had also said that they have already been in custody for more than 20 days and they are not even required for custodial interrogation. They had said that they had not raised any anti-national slogans and video footages of them raising these slogans were "false and doctored".

The court observed that the "role attributed" to JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar does not appear to be different from the allegations levelled against these two accused.

The court also directed Umar and Anirban not to leave Delhi without its permission during the period of interim bail and to make themselves available before the investigating officer as and when required for the purpose of the probe.

In its 12-page order, the court said, "At the outset, it is to be kept in mind that co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar has been granted bail by the High Court".

Meanwhile, scores of JNU students today celebrated the news of six months interim bail to Khalid and Bhattacharya with holi colours and 'Azadi' chants.

Umar and Anirban facing a sedition case after a controversial event on JNU to mark the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru on February 9, had surrendered before the police on the intervening night of February 23-24, hours after the Delhi high court refused to grant them protection from arrest.
Bengaluru: Petrol, diesel, beer, liquor and soft drinks will be costlier in Karnataka from April 1, as the state budget for the coming fiscal (2016-17) seeks to hike various taxes on them.

Presenting the budget for the next fiscal, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told lawmakers in the legislative assembly here on Friday that petrol price would go up by Rs.1.89 per litre, with four percent increase in tax to 30 percent from 26 percent.

"Similarly, diesel price will be 89 paise costlier per litre with increase in tax to 19 percent from 16.65 percent," Siddaramaiah, who also holds the finance portfolio, said in his two-hour-long budget speech delivered in Kannada.

Justifying the increase in fuel taxes, the chief minister said though the central government had increased excise duty three times on petrol and diesel during the current fiscal (2015-16) despite steady fall in crude oil prices in the international market, the state government did not raise tax on them.

While doubling excise duty on beer to Rs.10 from Rs.5 and increasing same duty by Rs.5 on Indian made liquor to Rs.50 from Rs.45, the chief minister has also hiked additional excise duty on liquor by four percent to 12 percent across all the 17 slabs.

"I propose to increase additional excise duty on beer to 150 percent from 135 percent. I also propose to levy an administrative fee of Rs.2 per litre on export and Re.1 per litre on import of spirit, excluding ethanol.

To mobilise additional resource, the budget has increased value added tax (VAT) to 20 percent from 14.5 percent on aerated and carbonated non-alcoholic beverages, including soft drinks and soft drinks concentrates.

The budget also increased motor vehicle tax on transport vehicles to mobilise Rs.121 crore additional revenue next fiscal.

"As the motor vehicle taxes have not been revised since 2010, I have proposed to enhance taxes on private stage carriage by Rs.300 to Rs.900 from Rs.600 per seat, on private city service stage carriage by Rs.150 to Rs.450 from Rs.300 per seat, on contract carriages by Rs.500 to Rs.1,500 from Rs.1,000 per seat," Siddaramaiah said.

Vehicle tax on all India tourist omni buses has been increased by Rs.750 to Rs.3.500 from Rs.2,750 per seat and tax on stage carriages operating on special permit to Rs.1,500 to Rs.1,000 per seat.

"As transport and non-transport electric vehicles are eco-friendly, I propose to exempt them fully from taxes," Siddaramaiah added.

The budget proposals also raise entertainment tax by four percent to 10 percent from six percent collected from multi-system operators and direct-to-home service providers.


U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order Wednesday targeting North Korean officials who work in mining, energy, transportation or banking or are involved in procuring supplies for its nuclear and missile programs.

The order implements recent UN Security Council sanctions and also bans ships that have recently done business with North Korea from U.S. ports.

It prohibits North Korea from exporting "slave labor," which could deal a blow to the North's foreign-currency income from some 50,000-60,000 workers abroad who are often kept virtual prisoners in squalid conditions.

"These actions are consistent with our longstanding commitment to apply sustained pressure on the North Korean regime," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

But the order leaves room for a secondary blockade of foreigners who provide financial, material or technological support to North Korea or do business with blacklisted companies there. The sanctions freeze any North Korean assets in the U.S. and ban trade, but since neither exist that step is largely symbolic.
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly on Friday unanimously passed a censure motion against AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi for his recent remarks that he won't chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

Congress member Jitu Patwari brought the censure motion slamming Owaisi during the Zero Hour of the budget session of the MP Assembly underway here.

Even as he condemned the AIMIM leader for his comments, Patwari recalled that the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharalal Nehru had immense respect for the country.

He said that Nehru in his book 'Discovery of India' mentions his love for the country and touched upon the rich and diversified cultures describing it as 'Mother India.'

He said that his party is against all sort of fundamental mentalities - be it of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and any other religion.

MP Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi saying that such type of anti-national mentality is being noticed since last one and an half year.

He said that India has loved and respected both "Ram and Rahim" equally, and blasted people sympathising with divisive forces.

Mishra also hit out at people behind the sloganeering of "Pakistan Zindabad" and supporting Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

He said that even the anti-national acts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus too should be condemned along with Owaisi.

MP Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress.

But Speaker Sitasaran Sharma sensing a tussle between the treasury and opposition Congress, got up and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members including Congress' Patwari and Hardeep Singh Dang.

On March 13, Owaisi had said he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' comments that came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," Owaisi had said, at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra.

"I won't utter that (slogan) even if you put a knife to my throat," Owaisi said, amid loud applause by the crowd.

"Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai," he had said.

Bhagwat, on March 3 had said, "Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India)."

"It should be real, spontaneous and part of all-round development of the youth," the RSS chief had said.
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly today unanimously passed a censure motion against AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi for his recent remarks that he won't chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

Congress member Jitu Patwari brought the censure motion slamming Owaisi during the Zero Hour of the budget session of the MP Assembly underway here.

Even as he condemned the AIMIM leader for his comments, Patwari recalled that the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharalal Nehru had immense respect for the country.

He said that Nehru in his book 'Discovery of India' mentions his love for the country and touched upon the rich and diversified cultures describing it as 'Mother India.'

He said that his party is against all sort of fundamental mentalities - be it of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and any other religion.

MP Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi saying that such type of anti-national mentality is being noticed since last one and an half year.

He said that India has loved and respected both "Ram and Rahim" equally, and blasted people sympathising with divisive forces.

Mishra also hit out at people behind the sloganeering of "Pakistan Zindabad" and supporting Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

He said that even the anti-national acts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus too should be condemned along with Owaisi.

MP Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress.

But Speaker Sitasaran Sharma sensing a tussle between the treasury and opposition Congress, got up and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members including Congress' Patwari and Hardeep Singh Dang.

On March 13, Owaisi had said he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' comments that came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," Owaisi had said, at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra.

"I won't utter that (slogan) even if you put a knife to my throat," Owaisi said, amid loud applause by the crowd.

"Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai," he had said.

Bhagwat, on March 3 had said, "Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India)."

"It should be real, spontaneous and part of all-round development of the youth," the RSS chief had said.
Sindh: Pakistan`s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who faces charges of treason and murder, left the country early Friday for what his lawyers said was urgent spinal care after a three-year travel ban was lifted.

Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am (2255 GMT) an airport source told AFP, adding the retired general appeared "relaxed".

A local party spokesman in Karachi said later Friday that he had landed in Dubai and reached his residence, where he will stay for some weeks before seeking an appointment with doctors in the United States.

Lawyers for the former president, who is facing multiple charges including treason and murder over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have said he needs urgent medical treatment not available in Pakistan.

"I am going abroad for treatment but will return to face the cases against me," a party spokesman in Karachi quoted him as saying. "I am a commando. I love my motherland."

"Six to eight weeks are required for the treatment and then he would go back home," said Dr Amjad Malik, a spokesman for Musharraf`s All Pakistan Muslim League party in Dubai.

But analyst Hasan Askari told AFP Friday the chance of Musharraf coming back was "minimal", adding that his return could cause problems for the government and embarrass the military.

"In order to defuse the conflict, the government agreed to let him go," he said.

Musharraf was banned from leaving Pakistan in March 2013 after he returned to the country on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.

The former ruler was barred from taking part in the polls and instead faces a barrage of legal cases.

In January, Musharraf was acquitted over the 2006 killing of a Baloch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.

But four cases against him remain -- one accusing him of treason for imposing emergency rule, as well as those alleging the unlawful dismissal of judges, the assassination of opposition leader Bhutto and a deadly raid on Islamabad`s radical Red Mosque.

Bhutto`s son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of her Pakistan People`s Party, vowed to launch country-wide protests against the government for allowing Musharraf to travel.Last June, the Sindh High Court lifted Musharraf`s travel ban, but the federal government, headed by his long-time rival Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Sindh High Court decision and ordered the government to allow Musharraf to travel.

"Today, lawyers of General Musharraf filed a proper application and in the light of the Supreme Court decision, the government has allowed him to go abroad for medical treatment," Pakistan`s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan confirmed Thursday.



Musharraf`s lawyers have provided guarantees he will return to Pakistan in six weeks and pledged he will appear in court for several ongoing cases against him, Khan said.

A large convoy of police and paramilitary rangers left Musharraf`s home in Karachi around 3.30 am Friday as a decoy to waiting media crowding his street, while the general travelled to the airport separately.
Islamabad: Pakistan's ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf left the country early on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai, a day after the government allowed him to go abroad.

"I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months," Musharraf was quoted as saying by the Dawn.

Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am (0425 IST), a media report said.

"He was the last person to be embarked on the plane and then the gate was closed. The retired general appeared relaxed," the report said.

Musharraf, 72, has been facing treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government. The order was declared as illegal by the Sindh High Court in the same year.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the decision of the Sindh high court, rejecting the appeal of the government. But it did not stop the federal government from putting new bars on Musharraf's foreign tours.

Interior minister Nisar Ali Khan yesterday told a press briefing that after consultation the government decided to let Musharraf leave the country for treatment.

He said Musharraf's lawyers had formally asked the government to allow him to undertake foreign travels.

"The government has decided to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment. He has also committed he will face all cases against him in court," Khan said.

He was referring to several cases faced by Musharraf including the high treason charged in a special court for suspending the constitution in 2007, which has been declared under Article 6 as being punishable by death.

He was indicted in April, 2014 but since then no progress has been made in the case for various reasons.

Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League said yesterday that Musharraf was having problem in the backbone and he needed to go to the UAE to see a doctor.

It is believed that the decision to let Musharraf go out of the country will help heal a rift between the powerful army and the government, as the former was unhappy over treason trial of the former chief of army staff.

Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Facing impeachment following elections in 2008, Musharraf was forced to resign as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.


Hyderabad: A 15-year-old boy, who was kidnapped for ransom in Hyderabad, was found murdered on Thursday.

The body of Abhay Modani, a Class 10 student, was found in a TV package box near Alpha Hotel in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad. His hands were tied with a rope.

Abhay was the son of Rajkumar, a resident of Shah Inayat Gunj. The aggrieved father is a plastic scrap trader.

The 15-year-old was kidnapped from near his house in Shahinayatgunj area of Hyderabad on Wednesday evening.

After receiving the ransom call, Abhay's father lodged a complaint at Shahinayath Gunj police station.

His family members later received a phone call from the abductor, who demanded Rs.10 crore as ransom. Following a complaint by the boy's family, police traced the call to Secunderabad and launched a hunt for the suspects. The body was found by the roadside near Alpha Hotel on Thursday morning.

The CCTV cameras in the area have revealed that Abhay riding pillion on a two-wheeler with a youngster, who appeared to be familiar to him.

Police have formed 10 special teams to arrest those involved in the kidnap and murder. They suspect business rivals of the boy's father to be behind the crime.

(With agency inputs)
Dehradun: Political trouble seems to be brewing for Harish Rawat-led government in Uttarakhand as the main opposition BJP on Friday claimed that over a dozen Congress MLAs were ready to switch loyalties.

News agency ANI quoted top BJP leaders from the state as claiming that at least 12-13 Congress MLAs, who are fed up with the government's policies, are in talks with them to shift political loyalties.

There is a growing resentment among Congress MLAs in Uttarakhand, around 12-13 MLAs are in touch with us, said Tirath Rawat of BJP.

BJP leader and former chief minister of Uttarakhand Bhagat Singh Koshyari said, ''You will know by this evening what is happening. We are the people's voice.''

However, Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat dismissed reports of political threat to his government.

My government will remain intact since we have full public support and blessings, Rawat said.

Kishore Upadhyay, Uttarakhand Congress President, also echoed similar sentiments by saying, ''There is no danger to our party and the government, we're secure. All MLAs are with us.''

After Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand is the second state where the Congress government appears to be heading for a major crisis with senior party leaders reportedly rebelling against the chief minister.

The main opposition BJP wants to topple the Harish Rawat government with the help of Congress rebels, in a move similar to the recent political turmoil in Arunachal Pradesh in February.

As per reports, top Congress leaders such as former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, Harak Singh Rawat, and Satpal Maharaj are unhappy with the Harish Rawat government and want to topple it.

They claim to have the support of at least 12 rebel Congress MLAs in the house of 70 MLAs.

The sources said the Uttarakhand Assembly is likely to witness high drama after it convenes to pass the state budget today with the BJP planning a negative voting.

Importantly, Uttarakhand Governor KK Paul, who was in New Delhi for the last one week, cut short his visit and rushed back to Dehradun.

He is scheduled to meet a BJP delegation after lunch this afternoon.

If there is a negative vote on the budget, Presidents Rule is likely to be imposed in Uttarakhand as the state government would be in the minority.
Kolkata: Ahead of the high voltage state Assembly Elections, Congress on Friday pitted former Union minister Deepa Dasmunshi against Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur seat.

Dasmunsi's name figures in the second list of 42 party candidates announced by the AICC, taking the total candidates declared by the party to 95.

AICC leaders have indicated that it would not contest more than 100 seats in the 294-member House thereby leaving the rest to the Left parties with which it has struck a strategic alliance.

Dasmunsi had lost the Lok Sabha polls narrowly from her husband Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi's pocket borough of Raiganj by a narrow margin of 1600 votes to Mohd Salim of CPI-M. In that polls, Mamata Banerjee had fielded Satya Ranjan Das Munshi, Deepa's brother-in-law, against her as Trinamool Congress candidate.

Among the prominent candidates are senior leader Sankar Singh who is the party nominee from Ranaghat Uttar Paschim and Arunava Ghosh from Bidhannagar.

The Congress has renominated almost all its sitting MLAs.

The grand old party had on Tuesday announced names of its candidates for 43 seats for the assembly polls.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had on March 7 announced its first list of 116 candidates for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections.

The ruling Trinamool Congress had earlier slammed the CPI (M) for forging a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, calling it as a "shameless alliance". Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been sharply critical of the strategic alliance between the Congress and the Left.

In the last Assembly elections, Congress had contested 61 seats in alliance with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress which led to ouster of the CPI(M)-led Left Front after over 34 years in power.

The election in West Bengal will be held in six phases in which the polling for the first phase will take place on April 4 and 11. Polling for the second phase will be held on April 17, the third phase on April 21, fourth on April 25 and the fifth and six phases on April 30 and May 5 respectively.

The counting of votes will take place on May 19.

(With Agency inputs)
Baghdad: A 26-year-old American man who was captured by Kurdish forces in Iraq earlier this week, said he had travelled from Turkey to join Islamic State before deciding to escape, according to an interview with Kurdish television on Thursday.

Two Kurdish militia officers said on Monday an American, bearded and dressed in black, had surrendered after being surrounded near the village of Golat, in northern Iraq. The man`s Virginia drivers license identified him as Kweis Mohammed Jamal.

In the video Kweis, looking healthy but subdued, recounted his journey from the United States to Mosul and then into the hands of the Kurdish Peshmerga.

Kweis said he travelled from the United States to London in December 2015 and continued to Amsterdam and then Turkey. In Turkey he met a woman from Mosul who said she could help him get to the Iraqi city, which has been under the militant group`s control since 2014.

"We got to know each other. She knew someone who could take us from Turkey to Syria and from Syria to Mosul," he said.

After a series of car rides Kweis and the woman separated and Kweis continued with some Islamic State fighters who took him to Mosul. There he stayed in a house holding about 70 people, including foreign recruits, all of whom had to hand over their passports to the Islamic State.

The group included Russians, Uzbekis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Moroccans. Kweis said he was the only American.

"Our daily life was praying, eating and learning about the religion for about eight hours," he said. "I found it very, very hard to live there."

After a month, he decided to leave.

"I didn`t really support their ideology. And that`s the point when I decided I needed to escape," said Kweis.

He found someone to take him as far as the Turkish border, where he could make contact with the Kurds.

"I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul," he said. "I wasn`t thinking straight and on the way there I regretted it."

More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report.

At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted.
President Barack Obama will name a woman to head a major US combatant command for the first time, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

He said Air Force General Lori Robinson will be appointed as the next head of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which is responsible for the defense of the US "homeland" with an area of operations that extends from Alaska to portions of the Caribbean.

Robinson has "very deep operational experience" as well as "very good managerial experience," Carter said at a conference in Washington.

Her appointment to one of the military`s most senior jobs is subject to Senate confirmation.

The position also oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which provides aviation security for the United States and Canada.

Women play an increasingly important role in the US military, making up around 15 percent of personnel.

The Pentagon last year opened all combat positions to women, including elite special operations units.

Carter -- who has long said the military must look for ways to attract and retain top talent -- recently announced a package of family-friendly initiatives for personnel.

They include maternity leave of 12 weeks for all services and a requirement that military installations employing more than 50 women have rooms for mothers to breastfeed their babies.

In January, another woman, General Diana Holland, became the first female commandant of West Point`s Corps of Cadets.

Robinson is currently the commander of US air forces in the Pacific.
Beijing: A well-known Chinese columnist has gone missing after warning former colleagues of the danger of re-publishing an open letter calling for President Xi Jinping to resign, the journalist`s lawyer said on Thursday.

Jia Jia, who writes a regular column for Tencent Online, went missing late on Tuesday, around the time he was scheduled to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong, his lawyer, Yan Xin, told Reuters.

Before his scheduled departure, Jia had told friends that he believed something could happen to him after he had warned former colleagues about re-publishing the letter, Yan said.

Yan said Jia had told him that he had cautioned Ouyang Hongliang, a former colleague and an editor at the Watching news agency, after Watching had re-posted the letter.

Yan said Jia, a frequent commentator on political and social affairs, had told him that he had no connection to the letter, which was signed by a "loyal Communist party member".

The letter was seen by Reuters on a cached page on Watching`s website. It could not be found on Watching when Reuters checked on Thursday. Reuters was also unable to reach Ouyang for comment.

The letter also circulated on Chinese social media including the WeChat messaging app before authorities apparently took it down.

Jia had planned to fly to Hong Kong, where he was sometimes based, to renew his work permit there, Yan said. Jia was due to give a lecture on the media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on Thursday.

Family members and friends have not been able to reach him since, said Yan, who is based in Beijing.

Tencent Online did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Jia`s whereabouts.

It was unclear whether or not Jia has been taken into custody. Beijing law enforcement authorities could not be reached for comment.

His apparent disappearance comes amid mystery over five Hong Kong booksellers who dealt in gossipy books about Chinese leaders, and went missing only to resurface in Chinese custody.

President Xi has embarked on an unprecedented effort to clamp down on the Internet and censor opinions that do not fall in line with those of Communist Party leaders, including by imposing tougher penalties for "spreading rumours" via social media.

In a separate case, the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology, on Wednesday published a rare rebuke of authorities` threats against freedom of the press.

The writer of the piece, Zhang Gailun, said a government official had issued a threat for focusing on "negative issues".

"I`ve written down your press card number. Be careful or the relevant departments will nab you," Zhang cited the unidentified official, a delegate to the Chinese parliament`s largely ceremonial advisory body, as saying.

China sees its state-owned press as an extension of government authority and public mention of such exchanges is exceedingly rare.
South Korea has conducted a successful simulation of shooting down a North Korean Scud missile in mid-flight.

The military has developed a mid-range surface-to-air missile that can intercept an incoming North Korean missile 40 km above the ground, and the first test in January by the Agency for Defense Development was a success, a military source said Thursday.

The homegrown interceptor missile "accurately intercepted the incoming missile, which was heading to its target at supersonic speed," the source added.

North Korea is racing to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a Scud missile. The source said seven more tests are needed to achieve an 80-percent interception rate, "but it's clear is that we've made progress in developing a mid-range interceptor missile which so far only China, Israel, Russia and the U.S. possess."

Seoul hopes to deploy the finished article in 2020.


Seoul: North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile on Friday, which flew about 800 km (500 miles) before hitting the sea off its east coast, South Korea`s military said, as the isolated state stepped up its defiance of tough new U.N. and U.S. sanctions.

South Korea`s Yonhap news agency said the missile was likely a medium-range Rodong-missile. If confirmed, it would mark North Korea`s first test of a medium range missile, capable of reaching Japan, since 2014.

The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula after the North rejected U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January and the United States issued fresh sanctions this week.

The missile was launched from north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsula and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, the South`s Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

It appeared the North may have fired a second missile soon after from the same region, with a projectile disappearing from radar at an altitude of about 17 km, it added.

South Korea did not confirm the type of the missiles. But 800 km was likely beyond the range of most short-range missiles in the North`s arsenal. The North`s Rodong missile has an estimated maximum range of 1,300 km, according to the South`s defence ministry.

A U.S. official told Reuters in Washington that it appeared to be a medium-range missile fired from a road-mobile launcher.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement it was closely monitoring the situation and urged North Korea to focus on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations.

JAPAN CONCERNED

Japan quickly condemned the launch, lodging a protest with North Korea through its embassy in Beijing, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament.

"Japan strongly demands North Korea to exercise self-restraint and will take all necessary measures, such as warning and surveillance activity, to be able to respond to any situations," Abe said.

Last week, the North fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong Un ordered more nuclear weapons tests and missile tests to improve attack capability.

North Korea often fires missiles at periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programmes.

New U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang were issued on Wednesday aiming to expand its blockade by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the North`s economy.

The North has also reacted angrily to annual joint military drills by U.S. and South Korean troops that began on March 7, calling the exercises "nuclear war moves" and threatening to wipe out its enemies.

South Korea and U.S. officials began discussions this month on deploying the advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to the U.S. military in the South, despite Chinese and Russian objection.

Japan has previously said it was considering THAAD to beef up its defences.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7 in defiance of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions.

On Wednesday, North Korea`s supreme court sentenced a visiting American student to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against the state, a punishment Washington condemned as politically motivated.
Brussels: European Union and Turkish leaders were locked in tense negotiations today as the EU seeks to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey and ease the pressure from a human emergency that is increasingly dividing the bloc.

But making a tough early stand, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara's prime concern was the fate of almost 3 million Syrian refugees on its territory. At the same time, Davutoglu was looking for unprecedented concessions to bring the EU's eastern neighbor closer to the bloc.

"For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining, but values," he told reporters, staking out the same moral ground that the EU has claimed throughout the crisis.

Davutoglu said he hoped that beyond helping the refugees, the deal would also "deepen EU-Turkey relations" with the approval of unprecedented access to Europe for Turkish nationals and the speeding-up of bogged-down EU membership talks.

With more than 1 million migrants having arrived in Europe in a year, EU leaders are desperate to clinch a deal with Turkey and heal deep rifts within the 28-member bloc while relieving the pressure on Greece, which has borne the brunt of arrivals.

In the Idomeni camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, Muhammad Hassan, a Syrian from the devastated city of Aleppo, was looking for relief from the talks in Brussels and wondered why a continent of 500 million people could not deal with the situation.

"Europe have only 1 million" migrants, Hassan said. "How come it's difficult?" he asked, comparing the EU to Lebanon, a nation of 5.9 million. "If a small country takes 3 million refugees and didn't talk, how about Europe? It's not difficult."

The conditions in Greece and the Idomeni camp were called intolerable by the Greek government today. Interior minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis compared the crowded tent city to a Nazi concentration camp, blaming the suffering on some European countries' closed border policies.

During a visit to Idomeni Friday, Kouroumplis said the situation was a result of the "logic of closed borders" by countries that refused to accept refugees.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe's prosperous heartland. Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organised shelters.

The EU-Turkey plan would essentially outsource Europe's biggest refugee emergency in decades to Turkey, despite concerns about its subpar asylum system and human rights abuses.

Under it, the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don't qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every Syrian returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, for a target figure of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.
Washington: As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump surged forward in the US presidential race, President Barack Obama reportedly threw his weight behind the former, while the Republican establishment intensified efforts to dump the brash billionaire.

In unusually candid remarks, Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors last Friday that time is coming to unite behind his 2008 rival, the New York Times reported.

The President, according to the Times, told the group in Austin Texas that Clinton`s rival Bernie Sanders was nearing the point at which his campaign would end, and that the party must soon come together to back her.

"Obama acknowledged that Clinton was perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate, and that some Democrats did not view her as authentic," it said.

"But he played down the importance of authenticity, noting that President George W. Bush - whose record he ran aggressively against in 2008 - was once praised for his authenticity," the Times said.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest denied Thursday that Obama had endorsed Clinton, but acknowledged that he had made a case for party unity.

The Democrats, Obama told them "need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic President will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee."

"And the President did not indicate or specify a preference in the race," Earnest insisted noting that Obama had praised both Clinton and Sanders.

"But once this (primary) process comes to a conclusion, everybody in the Democratic Party will understand the stakes of the debate, and given those stakes, will need to unify behind the Democratic Party nominee to ensure that he or she can win in November," he said.

The Washington Post said Obama and his top aides have been strategising for weeks about how they can reprise his successful 2008 and 2012 approaches to help elect a Democrat to replace him.

Thus out of concern that a Republican president in 2017 would weaken or reverse some of his landmark policies, Obama "is poised to be the most active sitting president on the campaign trail in decades," it said.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, prominent conservatives called for a unity ticket and a convention fight to stop in "a sign of the growing desperation in the party establishment to find an alternative to the billionaire businessman," CNN reported.

Conservatives gathered in Washington Thursday to discuss ways to thwart Trump`s march to the nomination.

One proposal included a unity ticket involving Trump`s closest rival Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, CNN said citing a source familiar with the conversation.

But the group decided not to commit to that pairing "because of the egos involved," it said.

It also left the door open to potentially supporting a third party race if Republicans are unable to stop Trump.
Beirut: The Islamic State group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

"The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members" of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in fighting near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

"Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area," Aamaq claimed.

Aamaq also published a video, showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass. A packet of bandages was filmed with instructions written in Russian.

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the "Pearl of the Desert", last May, sending shock waves across the world.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that Russian advisors were present near Palmyra, but could not confirm whether any Russian forces had been killed there in recent days.

President Vladimir Putin, Assad`s main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russia`s armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike jihadist targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

Russia`s defence ministry did not reply to an AFP request for information on the jihadist claim.

"Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged," Putin said Thursday, adding that "fierce fighting" was raging near Palmyra.

He also named four Russians killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched a military intervention in Syria on September 30, including a military advisor.

Previously, the defence ministry`s official toll had been three, excluding a soldier who committed suicide.
Attica: Six suspected members of a trafficking network were arrested in Greece as they prepared to fly seven Iraqi migrants to Italy in a light aircraft, Greek police said Thursday.

The gang of four Greek nationals and two Iraqis were arrested in Messolonghi, western Greece, on Wednesday as a small Piper plane carrying the migrants, including four children, was about to take off.

The migrants had been driven from Athens by the two Iraqi smugglers.

"A criminal network was dismantled for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft," the police said in a statement.

The network had successfully sent 12 groups of migrants to Italy, the police said, adding that each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 to 7,500 euros ($5,100-8,500).

The migrant children were sent to a juvenile welfare centre, police said. It was not clear what happened to the adults.

Police also seized the Piper aircraft, 34,430 euros in cash, two cars, 700 grams of cannabis and shotgun cartridges during the raid.

The police identified the leader of the gang as one of the arrested Iraqis, and said they were continuing their investigation to find other accomplices.
Most if not all Russian warplanes have been withdrawn from Syria, a US military spokesman said Friday, adding that Russia has staged no air strikes during the past week.

The US military assessment contradicted assertions by the Russian military that its jets were flying as many as 25 sorties a day in support of a Syrian government offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (IS) group fighters.

US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said some bombardments have taken place in the Palmyra region but that they were believed to have been fired by Russian artillery.

"In the last week, we have not seen any Russian aircraft conducting any strikes in Syria," Ryder said in a telephone briefing with reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, where they have been backing Moscow`s close ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The first Russian aircraft returned Tuesday to a hero`s welcome.

"We assessed that the majority if not all of their strike aircraft have left," Ryder said.

The US military, which was taken by surprise by the development, has remained skeptical of Putin`s intentions.

On Thursday, a Baghdad-based US military spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, said there had been little change in Russian troop deployments on the ground.

There has been little movement of Russian ground forces, Ryder said, adding that Moscow has kept combat helicopters and some transport planes in Syria.

Russia intervened militarily in the Syrian civil war on September 30 at Assad`s request, deploying about 50 combat aircraft.

It also sent more than 4,000 ground troops, artillery, tanks and about 30 combat helicopters.

The Russians have directed their operations mainly against Western-backed anti-government rebels while a US-led coalition has been waging an air campaign against the IS group.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea off its eastern coast Friday, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un ordered further nuclear warhead and missile tests, South Korea`s defence ministry said.

A ministry spokesman said the missile was launched from Sukchon in the country`s southwest at 5:55 am (2055 GMT Thursday) and flew 800 kilometres (500 miles) into the East Sea, also called the Sea of Japan.

He did not confirm the type of missile, but South Korea`s Yonhap news agency cited military sources as saying it was a Rodong missile, a scaled up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres.

Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean peninsula since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The UN Security Council responded earlier this month by imposing its toughest sanctions on North Korea to date.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, Kim Jong-Un announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of "several kinds" of ballistic rockets would be carried out "in a short time".
Police found fingerprints of Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam in a Brussels apartment raided this week, officials said Friday as authorities continued searching for two suspects who fled the scene.

Reports suggested Abdeslam could even be one of the two men who slipped through a massive police cordon Tuesday in the Forest quarter of Brussels after another suspect was shot dead.

Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead.

Investigations have shown that several of those involved in the assaults lived in Brussels, where it seems increasingly likely the attacks were planned.

The Franco-Moroccan, whose older brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, fled across the border to Belgium hours after the massacre and is now one of the most wanted men in Europe.

Belgium`s RTBF television station, citing unidentified sources, said it was "more than likely" that Abdeslam was one of the two suspects who fled the Forest apartment but Belgian authorities refused comment on that issue.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, without elaborating.

The firefight on Tuesday erupted after Belgian and French police searched the Forest property as part of continued investigations into the Paris attacks.

The officers went to the apartment believing it was rented under the same false identity as a hideout in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used by the Paris attackers.

A report on Friday said that the man killed during the anti-terror raid in Brussels is on a list of IS fighters leaked last week.

TV channel VRT said that the 35-year-old Algerian identified by the authorities as Mohamed Belkaid and who was living illegally in Belgium, was listed as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Contacted by AFP, Belgium`s federal prosecutor declined to comment on the report.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and and IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

Asked whether the one of the suspects who escaped the shootout was Abdeslam, a source close to the investigation said: "We can obviously ask ourselves the question."

Another Abdeslam fingerprint was found in December in a different Brussels apartment, where investigators believe the fugitive hid for three weeks immediately following the attacks.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.

The ringleader, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris shortly after the attacks.

Both had links to the largely immigrant Brussels district of Molenbeek which was targeted by authorities after the attacks.

Brahim Abdeslam, Salah`s brother, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.


Brussels: Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, one of the most wanted men in Europe, was captured in Brussels on Friday during a raid by armed police, French police sources said.

It was not immediately clear if Abdeslam, 26, believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead, was injured in the raid.

One man was injured and another arrested unharmed in the raid in the gritty Molenbeek neighbourhood of the Belgian capital, French police sources said, without identifying which was Abdeslam.

The arrest came hours after prosecutors revealed that Abdeslam's fingerprints were found in an apartment in another part of Brussels earlier this week following a raid in which a suspected IS militant was killed.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel held a crisis meeting after the arrest with French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for a European Union summit.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.

Franco-Moroccan Abdeslam fled to Brussels after the attacks and is believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks.

He slipped past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the probe said in December.

His brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the massacre, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.

Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

Earlier this week, Belgian and French police raided an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels, shooting dead a 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors then announced today that Abedslam's fingerprints had been found in the Forest apartment.
Islamabad: Vladimir Putin has no immediate plan to visit Pakistan as there were not enough "substance" for a trip, the first by a Russian President, the country's envoy here has said.

"The problem is that usually the purpose of the visit is not participation in ceremonies. The visit should have some substance," Russian Ambassador Alexey Dedov said at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), a leading think-tank, where he was delivering a lecture on Pak-Russia relations yesterday.

"As soon as the substance is ready, we can discuss the visit," Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.

Dedov defined the substance as "signing of documents" for cooperation, "preparation of plans" for expanding ties and "declarations".

No Russian or even Soviet president has ever visited Pakistan. Putin had planned a visit to Islamabad in October 2012 for attending a quadrilateral summit between Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, but cancelled it at the eleventh hour.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was then hastily dispatched to Islamabad to explain the cancellation.

Lately, there were renewed talk of Putin visiting Islamabad after Russia agreed to invest in the USD 2 billion North-South gas pipeline project for carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Karachi to Lahore.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had invited Putin to inaugurate the pipeline.

The ambassador rued the "unrealised potential" of the ties, but noted that Pakistan was "seen (in Russia) as an important and reliable partner with whom relations could be developed".

He cited the geostrategic position of Pakistan and challenges and interests shared by the two countries as the motivation for Moscow to work for better and stronger bilateral relations.

Reports say Russia and Pakistan are also close to resolving a longstanding economic dispute that led to freezing of Russian assets worth USD 120 million in Pakistan.

A draft agreement has been initialled and a final accord is likely soon.

In a landmark defence deal, Russia last year agreed to sell Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan.
Vincent Brooks, the current commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, has been tapped as the new head of the U.S. Forces Korea.

Brooks is to replace USFK Commander Curtis Scaparrotti, who becomes NATO's top military commander.

A source in Washington said Brooks has yet to be formally appointed, but the U.S. Defense Department "is in the process of making the appointment official."

A graduate of West Point, Brooks became the academy's first African-American Cadet First Captain, the highest position a cadet can hold. He is considered a firm supporter of U.S. President Barack Obama's "pivot to Asia" doctrine and keenly follows South Korean, North Korean and Chinese military developments.


Geneva: The United Nations on Friday decried the "carnage" caused by recent air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, saying the alliance was responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict.

"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes," UN human rights chief Zeid Ra`ad Al Hussein said in a statement, expressing outrage at one of the deadliest air strikes on a market this week.

Since the Saudi-led coalition began its air campaign in Yemen a year ago, the UN rights office said it had tallied just under 9,000 civilian casualties in the conflict, including 3,218 killed.

It condemned "the repeated failure of the coalition forces to take effective actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, and to publish transparent, independent investigations into those that have already occurred."

Zeid decried that coalition air strikes "have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties, and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities."

"Despite plenty of international demarches, these awful incidents continue to occur with unacceptable regularity," he said, warning that "we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition."

Zeid voiced particular alarm at two air strikes on a market this week in northern Yemen`s rebel-held Hajja province.

The United Nations on Thursday put the death toll from those strikes at 119, and Zeid`s office said Friday 106 of those killed in the crowded market were civilians, including 24 children.

"The carnage caused by two air strikes on the Al Khamees market ... was one of the deadliest incidents since the start of the conflict a year ago," Zeid said.

Meanwhile, his staff on the ground "could find no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack," besides a small checkpoint 250 metres away, the statement said.

That attack came just weeks after a similar incident, in which air strikes on February 27 on a market in a northeastern district of Sanaa killed at least 39 civilians, including nine children.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened on March 26 last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after Huthi rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Zeid lamented the failure of the two sides to agree a peace deal, but welcomed a comment from a coalition spokesman to AFP this week indicating the alliance was nearing the end of major combat in Yemen.

"I urge both sides to swallow their pride and bring this conflict to a halt," Zeid said.
Seoul: South Korea on Friday protested Tokyo`s approval of updated high school textbooks that identify a cluster of small, Korean-controlled islets as part of Japanese territory.

"We deeply deplore that Japan has approved high school text books that contain distorted views about history, including unjustified claims about our territory," South Korea`s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Dokdo islets, known as Takeshima in Japan, lie roughly halfway between South Korea and Japan in the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

"The Japanese government must understand that a correct teaching of history is a duty, not only to its future generations, but also to neighbouring countries that have suffered from Japan`s past aggression", the statement said, urging a revision of the textbooks.

South Korea and Japan reached agreement at the end of last year on their dispute over wartime sex slaves that had soured relations for decades.

Japan offered a "heartfelt apology" and a one-billion-yen ($8.3 million) payment to Korean women forced into Japanese military brothels during World War II.

Among the updated textbooks approved by Tokyo were six history books that carried content related to the so-called "comfort women" issue.

According to South Korea`s Yonhap news agency, they stopped short of explicitly acknowledging the women`s forced recruitment to frontline brothels.
Washington: The situation in ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq is "dangerous" as the dreaded terror group is committing genocide there, the US has said indicating that it will ramp up its operation in the region.

"What's happening in Iraq and in Syria is deeply troubling. We do see this extremist organization targeting religious minorities. In their propaganda they're featuring evidence of trying to wipe out these religious minorities," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.

US President Barack Obama, has talked on a number of occasions about how this is deeply troubling and is an affront to every person of faith, he said.

"That is why the President has ordered military action against ISIL in Iraq and in Syria. In some cases, there have been military actions that have been ordered specifically to protect religious minorities," he said.

"There certainly is the example of Mount Sinjar, which we have cited here frequently that there were Yazidis who were trapped in it. ISIL fighters had them cornered, and those ISIL fighters were vowing to slaughter them," he said.

Earlier in the morning US Secretary of State John Kerry announced ISIL is committing genocide in the areas under its control.

"In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions ? in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities," Kerry told reporters.

The ongoing conflict and lack of access to key areas has made it impossible to develop a fully detailed and comprehensive picture of all that Daesh is doing and all that it has done, he said.

"We have not been able to compile a complete record. I think that's obvious on its face; we don't have access to everywhere. But over the past months, we have conducted a review of the vast amount of information gathered by the State Department, by our intelligence community, by outside groups. And my conclusion is based on that information and on the nature of the acts reported," Kerry said.

This designation is significant, Earnest said. "It reflects the gravity of the situation there. And it's one that continues to attract the attention not just of the United States, but it's also why the United States has been able to build a strong moral case against ISIL, and build a substantial international coalition," he added.

The US has taken steps to try to protect religious minorities in that region of the world from being the victims of violence at the hands of ISIL, he asserted.

"What it essentially indicates is that the United States will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate genocide," Earnest said.

"There obviously is evidence that has been collected, and we'll make sure that that evidence is preserved, and we'll assist in the effort, collecting and analyzing additional evidence of atrocities to support that investigation. But that's the next step in the process, and the United States will be supportive of it," he said while responding to a question.
Taipei: Taiwan needs to protect its international space as its diplomatic position is precarious, president-elect Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday after China resumed ties with former Taiwan ally Gambia and anger mounted in the self-ruled island at the move.

The small West African state was one of only a few African countries, along with Burkina Faso, Swaziland and Sao Tome and Principe, to recognise self-ruled Taiwan, which China regards as a wayward province to be recovered by force if necessary.

China and Taiwan have for years tried to poach each other`s allies, often dangling generous aid packages in front of leaders of developing nations.

But they began an unofficial diplomatic truce after signing a series of landmark trade and economic agreements in 2008 after the election of the China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan`s president, as Beijing tried to convince Taiwan of its friendly intentions after decades of hostility and suspicion.

That truce is now over, following January`s landslide election of Tsai and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). China has repeatedly warned her against any moves towards independence.

In comments released via a spokesman, Tsai said China and Taiwan did not need to do anything to harm each other`s feelings.

"(I) hope the establishment of ties with Gambia is not a targeted move," Tsai said.

"At present Taiwan`s diplomatic situation is not optimistic, and needs everyone to unite together to face up to it, to consistently protect our international space."

Senior Taiwanese lawmakers lined up to criticise China, including from the China-friendly Nationalists.

"It has seriously hurt the feelings of the Taiwan people," said Nationalist Party lawmaker Chiang Chi-chen, a member of parliament`s defence and foreign affairs committee.

DPP lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng said Tsai had pledged to maintain the status quo with China and that she would not take provocative actions.

"But very regretful, before her inauguration, China with its unilateral action has changed the status quo across the Taiwan Strait," Lo said.

Tsai assumes office in May.

While Gambia severed relations with Taiwan in November 2013, causing anger in Taipei, China had held off establishing formal ties with it until now.
Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Europe of "surrendering to terror" for allowing displays of support for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers` Party (PKK), days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels.

Speaking five days after the suicide car bombing that killed 35 people, Erdogan accused European countries of appeasing terrorist groups and leaving themselves open to attack.

"Despite this clear reality, European countries are paying no attention, as if dancing in a minefield," he charged.

Erdogan`s swipe came as Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu finalised a plan with EU leaders to curb the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

Erdogan blasted several EU states for having taken in only a "handful" of refugees, compared to the nearly three million people sheltering on Turkish soil, mostly Syrians.

He also took aim at Belgium for allowing Kurdistan Workers` Party (PKK) sympathisers to erect a tent outside the EU building in Brussels where the summit on migration was held.

"Be honest," Erdogan said at a ceremony in the western city of Canakkale to commemorate the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli. "This means surrendering to terror. They have surrendered to terror.

Reacting to the tirade, the Belgian embassy in Ankara said Brussels was "determined to fight terrorism" while upholding basic freedoms.

Erdogan has come under fire in recent days, including in Belgium, for calling for the definition of terrorism to be expanded to include journalists, activists and others who "exploit their positions, pens and titles and put them at terrorists` disposal."

As part of a growing crackdown on free speech, several Turkish lawyers and academics have been arrested for criticising the military`s heavy-handed tactics in Kurdish towns and cities in the southeast.

Erdogan has also pushed for lawmakers from a pro-Kurdish party to be stripped of their parliamentary immunity so they can be prosecuted for "terrorist propaganda".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week she would take up the issue of press freedom "and the treatment of the Kurds" with Ankara.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel also expressed concern over Turkey`s rights record and the renewed conflict with the PKK.Erdogan said Europe, where the PKK -- branded a terror group by Ankara and the West -- has considerable support among Kurds was "feeding a snake in its bosom."

Turkey is on a knife-edge after five major bombings since July that have killed over 200 people. Three have been blamed on the Islamic State group.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical Kurdish group with ties to the PKK, has claimed responsibility for two others, including Sunday`s suicide car bombing in a busy transport hub in Ankara that killed 35 people.

The German embassy in Ankara, German consulate in Istanbul and German schools in both cities remained closed for a second day Friday following what Berlin called "very serious" indications of planned attacks, two months after 12 German tourists were killed in a suicide attack in Istanbul.

The US embassy in Ankara also issued a warning to its citizens in Turkey to exercise caution ahead of Kurdish New Year celebrations at the weekend that have been a flashpoint for demonstrations in the past. Public gatherings have been banned in some cities during the holidays.

On Thursday, an explosives-laden car was found parked outside a government building in the Hani district of Diyarbakir province in the mainly Kurdish southeast, security sources said.

The vehicle was defused by police bomb disposal experts.

The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 to demand autonomy for the Kurdish minority.

The conflict, which resumed last summer after a two-year ceasefire collapsed, has claimed some 40,000 lives.
United Nations: North Korea`s latest missile tests were in "flagrant" violation of UN resolutions banning such launches, the US envoy said Friday ahead of urgent talks at the Security Council.

The United States called for consultations after North Korea test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles that US Ambassador Samantha Power said showed Pyongyang`s defiance of the Security Council.

"In further defiance, North Korea last night carried out additional launches using proscribed ballistic missile technology -- flagrant violations that the Security Council will hold urgent consultations to discuss," Power told an event on North Korean women held at the US mission.

Two weeks ago, the Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions on North Korea to date after Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test and fired a rocket that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

Japan`s UN Ambassador Motohide Yoshikawa called the latest missile launches "very, very unfortunate."

"We hope the Security Council will be united to tell the DPRK" to change its policy, he said.

The 15-member council was expected to agree on a statement condemning the latest launches during its closed-door meeting later Friday, diplomats said.

British Deputy UN Ambassador Peter Wilson said "this is exactly the sort of thing that they should not be doing."

"What we see yet again is the North Koreans defying the will of the international community and the Security Council," he said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the firing of the two missiles was "deeply troubling" and urged Pyongyang to halt "these inflammatory and escalatory actions," his spokesman said.

Ban called on North Korea to comply with UN resolutions that bar the country from developing missile technology.

During her remarks, Power took an apparent swipe at China, saying it would be "absurd" to disassociate North Korea`s dismal rights situation from its military ambitions.

China has opposed discussion in the Security Council of North Korea`s rights record, arguing that the forum for this was the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"Many of North Korea`s systematic human rights violations deliberately underwrite the government`s nuclear program, including the forced labor carried out by tens of thousands of women and children," said Power.

South Korean military officials said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the country`s southwest at 2055 GMT Thursday and the second about 20 minutes later.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un this week ordered multiple ballistic missile launches and a nuclear warhead test.

The launches came a day after US President Barack Obama signed an order implementing tough sanctions that were outlined in the recent UN sanctions resolution, as well as fresh unilateral US measures.
New York: US prosecutors on Friday unveiled charges against a China-born woman who was arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into a scheme to pay bribes to a former United Nations General Assembly president.

Julia Vivi Wang, 55, was accused in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan of having paid a bribe of at least $500,000 to buy Antiguan diplomatic positions for her late husband and another Chinese businessman.

The bribe was solicited and facilitated by John Ashe, a former U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda and who was General Assembly president from 2013 to 2014, the complaint said.

He was among six individuals charged in October for participating in a scheme that involved the payment of more than $1.3 million in bribes to Ashe by businessmen from China.

The latest arrest followed the guilty plea on Wednesday of one of the defendants, Francis Lorenzo, a suspended deputy United Nations ambassador from the Dominican Republic, who agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities in the investigation.

Wang, who was arrested on Thursday and is expected to appear in court later on Friday, was the vice president of South-South News, a U.N.-focused media organization where Lorenzo was president before his arrest.

The complaint charges Wang with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. A lawyer for Wang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the complaint, the $500,000 bribe was solicited and sought by Ashe and Lorenzo beginning in 2012 to allow Wang`s husband and the unnamed Chinese businessman to secure positions in an investment office Antigua was opening in Hong Kong.

In interviews with U.S. authorities, Lorenzo said Wang and her husband sought the positions because they would help them make money by helping others to obtain citizenship by investing in a country and by arranging for business deals.

At least a portion of the money was intended to pay off Antiguan officials, including its then-prime minister, who was not named in the complaint.
Washington: Hillary Clinton has taken big strides toward securing the Democratic nomination by winning all five primaries in a multi-state vote for US presidential poll after her rival Senator Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in keenly-contested Missouri.

Sanders, who was trailing by just 1500 votes in the Missouri primary elections on Tuesday, said he would not request for recounting of votes and has conceded defeat to Clinton.

"I prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money," Sanders said through spokesman Michael Briggs yesterday.

The 68-year-old former Secretary of State has swept the 'Super Tuesday 2.0' by bagging Florida and North Carolina while also posting crucial victories over Sanders in the industrial Midwest by taking Ohio and Illinois.

Results of the Republican presidential primary in Missouri is yet to be officially declared as it is too close to call. Front-runner Donald Trump is leading his rival Senator Ted Cruz by 1700 votes. So far, Cruz has not conceded defeat.

Since the margin of victory in each case is less than one percentage point, CNN and other US networks said they will not project a winner in either contest.

Missouri saw more than 1.5 million ballots, or 39 per cent of registered voters, cast on Tuesday. That was the highest amount recorded for a Presidential primary in Missouri history. The previous record of 1.4 million, or 36 per cent, was set during the 2008 primary.

Missouri went to polls along with the key states of Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.
Washington: The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef that China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said on Thursday.

The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.

Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move.

He said the U.S. military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay.

"I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. Thats an area of concern ... a next possible area of reclamation," he said.

Richardson said it was unclear if the activity near the reef, which China seized in 2012, was related to the pending arbitration decision.

He said China`s pursuit of South China Sea territory, which has included massive land reclamation to create artificial islands elsewhere in the Spratlys, threatened to reverse decades of open access and introduce new "rules" that required countries to obtain permission before transiting those waters.

He said that was a worry given that 30 percent of the world`s trade passes through the region.

Asked whether China could respond to the ruling by the court of arbitration in The Hague by declaring an air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did farther north in the East China Sea in 2013, Richardson said: "Its definitely a concern."

"We will just have to see what happens," he said. "We think about contingencies and  responses."

Richardson said the United States planned to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation exercises within 12 nautical miles of disputed South China Sea geographical features to underscore its concerns about keeping sea lanes in the region open.

JOINT PATROLS?

The United States responded to the East China Sea ADIZ by flying B-52 bombers through the zone in a show of force in November 2013.

Richardson said he was struck by how China`s increasing militarization of the South China Sea had increased the willingness of other countries in the region to work together, not just bilaterally, but also multilaterally.

India and Japan joined the U.S. Navy in the Malabar naval exercise since 2014, and were slated to take part again this year in an even more complex exercise that will take place in an area close to the East and South China Seas.

South Korea, Japan and the United States were also working together more closely than ever before, he said.

Richardson said the United States would welcome the participation of other countries in joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, but those decisions needed to be made by the countries in question.

He said the U.S. military saw good opportunities to build and rebuild relationships with countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and India, which have all realized the importance of safeguarding the freedom of the seas.

He cited India`s recent hosting of an international fleet review that included 75 ships from 50 navies, and said the United States was exploring opportunities to increase its use of ports in the Philippines and Vietnam, among others - including the former U.S. naval base at Vietnam`s Cam Ranh Bay.

But he said Washington needed to proceed judiciously rather than charging in "very fast and very heavy," given the enormous influence and importance of the Chinese economy in the region.

"We have to be sophisticated in how we approach this so that we dont force any of our partners into an uncomfortable position where they have to make tradeoffs that are not in their best interest," he said.

"We would hope to have an approach that would ... include us a primary partner but not necessarily to the exclusion of other partners in the region," he said.
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Blackstone Group LP is nearing a deal to acquire Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) controlling stake worth about $940 million in Indian IT outsourcing services provider MphasiS Ltd , according to three sources directly involved in the deal. HPE owns roughly 60.5 percent stake in MphasiS, and the U.S.-based parent had been looking to exit from the Indian venture to shore up its capital. Bids for buying the MphasiS stake were submitted earlier this month and the U.S. private equity firm has emerged as the front-runner for taking majority ownership of the mid-sized Indian IT services exporter, the sources said. Financial details of the possible deal were not immediately known. Based on MphasiS' stock price on Thursday, the HPE stake in the Bengaluru-headquartered company is valued at about $940 million. The company's total market value is about $1.6 billion. Blackstone and HPE declined to comment, while MphasiS did not respond to emails seeking comment. MphasiS, whose rivals include outsourcers Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd , is not likely to command a very high valuation as a major part of its business depends on subcontracting by HPE, one of the sources said. Until a few years ago, MphasiS generated roughly half of its revenue by providing services to HPE's clients. This has now come down to 24 percent of the firm's total revenue, it said in its latest annual report. The MphasiS deal, if closed, will be one of the biggest M&A transactions in India's $150 billion outsourcing sector, and underscores foreign investors' confidence in growth potential as western clients send more jobs to India to cut costs. Last month, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte [GIC.UL] and PE investors Advent International and Bain Capital jointly bought a minority stake in India-focussed outsourcing firm QuEST Global Services for $350 million. MphasiS was formed in 2000 and six years later Electronics Data Systems Corp acquired a majority holding in the company. In 2008, EDS was acquired by Hewlett Packard, which resulted in the transfer of the shareholding to the computer maker. A pact on the deal could be signed by early next month, two of the sources said, cautioning the acquisition terms had not yet been finalised. (This version of the story corrects company name throughout to HP Enterprise not HP Inc.) (Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Prakash Chakravarti at IFR/BasisPoint; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is spreading virulently in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf region, prompting the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a travel advisory for the area.

Some 69 MERS infections have occurred in Saudi Arabia, Oman and the U.A.E. since January, the KCDC said Thursday. Some 65 occurred in Saudi Arabia alone, where the number of patients is on a steep rise.

Of the 65, 35 became infected after direct contact with camels, 21 after visiting hospitals, and nine for unknown reasons.

The KCDC said travelers should wash their hands frequently, refrain from contact with animals or consuming camel meat or milk, stay away from hospitals and wear face masks if they show symptoms like fever, coughing, and a runny nose.

Anyone who develops a fever or respiratory symptoms within 14 days after their return from travel to these areas, should call 109, the KCDC's emergency number, and then visit a local public health center.


By Allison Lampert QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) - Quebec will balance its books for the second year in a row in 2016-2017, the Canadian province said on Thursday, while reaffirming prior debt-fighting commitments for the years ahead. Quebec, which confirmed its first balanced budget in fiscal 2015-16 after six consecutive deficits, has emerged with British Columbia as the only Canadian provinces expecting balanced books in 2016-2017, Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said. "This marks a major milestone for our government," Leitao said. "We've gotten our fiscal house in order." Quebec, Canada's second-largest province, said C$2 billion ($1.54 billion) in its C$100 billion budget would go towards a fund aimed at reducing the debt. Quebec introduced modest spending for social programs and infrastructure and said it would reduce its debt burden from 55 percent of gross domestic product this year, to 45 percent of GDP in 2026. Earlier, the province had expected to reduce the ratio to 54 percent of GDP this year, but had to change its forecast after Statistics Canada presented revised GDP figures. Elected in 2014, the Liberals have pledged balanced budgets from 2015 through 2020. Quebec has one of the highest public debt loads of any province. Quebec said it will need to borrow C$47 billion over three years to pay for maturing government bonds and capital investments. The government announced C$103 billion in revenues, up 3.2 percent in 2016-2017, and C$100 billion in spending, up 2.5 percent during the same period. The province expects to benefit from a 5.7 percent increase, or extra C$1 billion, in federal transfer payments in 2016-17. The Liberals, denounced by critics as an "austerity government", announced C$3.6 billion in new spending through 2020 to support infrastructure, education, company innovation and manufacturing. Leitao distanced his government from those in Europe who have made deep cuts. "It is a little insulting for those societies which have lived through real austerity." The government expects its debt-fighting Generations fund, which earns an average annual return of six percent, to grow by C$14 billion through 2021. The fund's growth sends a clear signal to the market about Quebec's debt-fighting priority, said Sebastien Lavoie, assistant chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities. "Some people might think a balanced budget is boring but for this season it's very good news," Lavoie said. The spread between the yields on Quebec and Canada's 10-year bonds was little changed at 96.5 basis points. (With additional reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto)
By Silke Koltrowitz BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) - Swiss watchmakers are braced for another difficult year as economic woes in major markets curb consumers' appetite for pricey timepieces, industry executives said on Thursday. Sales in Hong Kong, the biggest market for Swiss watches, have been depressed as China's economic slowdown and Beijing's anti-corruption campaign have hurt spending by mainland Chinese, which shows no signs of rebounding. Zenith, the upmarket watch brand owned by LVMH , sells almost two out of three watches to Chinese customers. "2016 is very complicated because people no longer have the confidence needed to simply go and buy our products," Zenith's Chief Executive Aldo Magada told Reuters at the Baselworld watch fair. He said he could not rule out job cuts. As well as China's slowdown, tourism in Paris, another luxury goods hub, has been hit by the Islamist attacks in November, while Russians travel and spend less because of the weak rouble, the Ukraine crisis and the low oil price - which is also tempering luxury spending in the Middle East. Like other upscale brands, Zenith has expanded into more affordable watches to meet the demands of more price-conscious consumers, a trend already visible at January's Geneva watch fair dominated by luxury goods group Richemont's high-end brands. "Our product mix has changed, we sell fewer gold watches, more steel," said Magada. Competition from smartwatches is also threatening the luxury watch sector. Among luxury giant LVMH's watch brands, Zenith has suffered the most with a single-digit decline in sales last year, whereas TAG Heuer and Hublot generated growth thanks to their smaller exposure to China, said LVMH watch and jewelry head Jean-Claude Biver. "The first quarter makes us think that we'll again outperform the market this year," Biver said, adding TAG Heuer was hiring staff to push ahead with its smartwatch project. Swiss watch exports, which reflect the value of watches leaving the country but give no indication on what has really been sold to end consumers, tumbled 7.9 percent in January year-on-year after falling 3.3 percent last year. "I'm hearing from peers that the overall situation has become rather more tense since the beginning of the year," said Laurent Dordet, head of Hermes' watch business, who would not comment on his own company's performance this year. Tissot and Longines, Swatch Group's mid-price luxury brands, had slightly negative to flat sales growth last year and see at best a slight improvement this year. Independent high-end label Patek Philippe, so sought-after by collectors that it can grow sales by 1-3 percent in good times and bad, says many luxury watchmakers made the mistake of focusing too much on China and Chinese travelers. "They went too quickly. Now stock levels are too high everywhere," said Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern. Shares of luxury watchmakers and their parent groups have been hit hard in the past year as sales have slowed. However, some analysts say selling may have been overdone as industry executives see some brightspots such as Japan and South Korea, which are drawing more Chinese tourists. Shares in Swatch, the world's biggest watchmaker, for example, fell 21 percent last year and are down a further 2 percent this year, while Richemont has shed 11 percent this year after sliding nearly 19 percent last year. "There is of course the special case of Hong Kong, where a lot of wholesalers are still very cautious. Overall, however, the mood has become too negative," said Scilla Huang Sun, portfolio manager of the Julius Baer Luxury Brands fund. She forecasts 5 percent organic growth for luxury brands this year, but says most of that will come in the second half. For a graphic on the Swiss watch industry, click on this link: http://tmsnrt.rs/1XuXPjH (Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian prosecutors on Wednesday named a 35-year-old Algerian as the man shot dead by police on Tuesday during a police raid on a Brussels apartment in the hunt for clues to bloody attacks in Paris last November. Police found an Islamic State flag in the apartment used by Mohamed Belkaid and two others suspected of being with him after officers were met with a barrage of automatic weapons fire as they arrived to search the flat. Belkaid, who was living in Belgium illegally and had a police record for theft but was not on security watchlists, was killed by a special forces sniper after a three-hour siege. A manhunt for the two other suspects continued on Wednesday. The government held its alert status steady at Level Three, one step below the maximum. The prosecutors said a radical Islamic text was found next to Belkaid's body and a cache of ammunition was also discovered. It was not clear if he had any links to the Paris suspects. Two people detained overnight on suspicion of links to the shootout in the suburb of Forest were released without charge. Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the Nov. 13 shooting and bombing rampage in Paris that killed 130 people was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought as militants in Syria. Ten people are being held in Belgian custody on a variety of charges relating to the four-month investigation, though prime suspects, including Salah Abdeslam, a brother of one of the Paris suicide bombers, are suspected of having fled the country. SHOOTOUT On Tuesday, six Belgian and French police officers arrived to search the flat and came under automatic fire through a door from at least two people barricaded inside. Four officers, one of them a Frenchwoman, were wounded, none very seriously. Ministers said the police visit to the apartment had not been expected to provide much new evidence and that the presence of French officers did not imply a major break in the case. Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was holding the state of alert steady after a meeting of security and intelligence chiefs in Belgium's national security council . Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks because of fears of a major incident there. The city has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular occurrence. Belgium, with a Muslim population of about 5 percent among its 11 million people, has Europe's highest rate of citizens joining Islamist militants in Syria. People living in the quiet neighborhood of Forest suffered hours of lockdown on Tuesday and voiced shock at the events. Schoolboy Maxime, 11, was at home sick when he heard gunfire and helicopters and saw masked commandoes on a rooftop. "They had a huge weapon," he said, adding he was "very, very scared". (Additional reporting by Miranda Alexander-Webber; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Tom Heneghan)
A group representing Canada's major grocers has committed to buying cage-free eggs by the end of 2025.

The Retail Council of Canada issued a release Friday saying the voluntary commitment would be contingent on "availability of supply within the domestic market."

The Retail Council includes Loblaw Co. Ltd., Metro Inc. Sobeys Inc. and Wal-Mart Canada Corp., which together represent 90 per cent of grocery retail in Canada.

The commitment to raising egg-laying hens in a humane manner is a further escalation in a movement that has been gathering speed for the past two years.

Restaurateurs such as McDonald's, Tim Hortons and Burger King have already committed to cage-free eggs by 2025. A&W has said it wants cage-free, antibiotic free eggs by 2017.

All of this is putting pressure on Canada's more than 1,000 egg farmers, who work in a supply-managed market.

Big transition for farmers

Currently about 90 per cent of Canadian egg production is in what the industry calls "conventional housing" meaning cages.

In February, industry association Egg Farmers of Canada committed to a "systematic, market-oriented transition from conventional egg production toward other methods of production for supplying eggs."

Egg Farmers of Canada declined an invitation for an interview with CBC on the transition, but posted a statement on its website saying it remained committed to meeting market demand for cage-free eggs.

"We look forward to working with retailers to ensure high quality Canadian eggs remain on grocery shelves everywhere and we will continue to work with our supply chain to do so and to align our approaches as much as possible," the statement said.

The farm group also warned of some of the trade-offs in the transition, including worker health and safety and food affordability.

In February, the group said it might have achieved change to half of the existing conventional housing within eight years, with battery cages gone by 2036. The grocers' commitment will likely push producers to move more quickly.

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The Retail Council said it has been in discussions in recent months with producers, processors, the scientific community and consumers regarding the best approach for raising hens.

David Wilkes, vice-president of the grocery division of the Retail Council, also warned of restrictions as a result of Canada's supply management system, which might prohibit importing of cage-free eggs from elsewhere.

Enriched housing or free-run?

Since egg farmers will have to make significant investments in creating more humane conditions for hens, the farm group said it is most interested in a move to what it calls enriched housing, which allows hens more natural behaviour, including perching, scratching, foraging and nesting.

This is not the same as free-run conditions, which animal rights groups and some consumers have said they prefer.

The National Farm Animal Care Council, which works with both retailers and producers to develop guidelines for raising animals, is currently finalizing recommendations on a code of practice for layer hens.

Sayara Thurston, campaign manager (farm animals) for Humane Society International/Canada, welcomed the announcement by the Retail Council.

"The overwhelming demand for cage-free eggs from the largest purchasers in the country sends an irrefutable message to egg producers that cage systems are no longer welcome in Canadian supply chains," Thurston said.

"This decision will impact tens of millions of laying hens and spells the end of the practice of confining chickens in cages for their entire lives."
The leaders of the 28 EU countries and Turkey have unanimously reached a landmark deal aimed at halting illegal migration to Europe.

Under the controversial agreement, migrants arriving on Greek islands from the Turkish coast in the coming days will be returned to Turkey in operations paid for by the EU.

In the "one in, one out" deal, for every migrant that Turkey accepts, the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee, with priority given to those who have not previously crossed the sea to Greece.

There is a target figure of 72,000 Syrians to be distributed among European states, amid the biggest migration crisis since World War Two.

The aim is to reduce the incentive for Syrian refugees to board dangerous smugglers' boats to Europe, as around 4,000 people have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

Following the two-day summit, Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the agreement, saying it could "significantly" reduce numbers of migrants crossing the eastern Mediterranean to enter Greece by boat.

And Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called it an "historic day".

European Council president Donald Tusk said that under the agreement, all "irregular" migrants would be returned to Turkey from Sunday.

But there are doubts over whether the plan is within the law or workable, with Germany's leader Angela Merkel admitting the pact will have setbacks and legal challenges.

The EU will also offer Turkey - currently home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees - up to 6bn euros (4.6bn) in aid, faster EU membership talks and visa-free travel for Turkish citizens to the EU.

Last year, around a million migrants and refugees entered the EU by boat from Turkey to Greece and tens of thousands of others have arrived in 2016.

Around 46,000, who want to go to Germany and other richer nations, are currently trapped in Greece as their northern route is blocked after Austria and several Balkan countries stopped letting refugees through.

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The EU agreement will not affect them - they will either be expelled as economic migrants or granted asylum.

After talks with Mr Davutoglu, Mr Tusk recommended the 28 EU member states approve the text without changes and they rapidly agreed at a summit lunch in Brussels.

Sky's Senior Political Correspondent Sophy Ridge said the deal may not deter the large number of refugees on the move.

She said: "The aim of this summit was to break the traffickers' business model and to send a message that the unofficial routes to Europe will no longer work.

"But these are desperate refugees, and if one route closes to them they may make other, more perilous, journeys."
By Gabriela Baczynska and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Leaders of the European Union meet in Brussels on Thursday to agree on a deal to offer Turkey the following day that would secure Ankara's commitment to a scheme intended to halt migrant flows to the Greek islands. A year into a crisis in which more than a million people have arrived in chaotic misery, many of them Syrian war refugees and most of whom come from Turkey via Greece to Germany via dangerous sea crossings and long treks, hopes have risen around the summit table that they may have found a way to at least slow the movement. But leaders acknowledge there is no silver bullet and face many obstacles over the next two days, from howls of outrage that they plan mass expulsions of vulnerable people to a country with a patchy and worsening human rights record, to a lingering feud between Ankara and small but vocal EU member Cyprus. "Work is progressing but there is still a lot to do," European Council President Donald Tusk wrote to leaders inviting them to the summit he will chair. After discussing the economy, the 28 EU national leaders will discuss the migration issue over dinner, starting around 8 p.m. (1900 GMT). A breakfast is set for Friday with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, where Tusk hopes to finalize a deal which the Turkish premier first sprang on the EU, with backing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a special summit 10 days ago. Under the deal, which was set out in fuller fashion by Tusk in a draft for EU leaders on Wednesday, Turkey will, in addition to a previous agreement to try and prevent the smuggling of migrants via rafts, take back all those, including Syrian refugees, who do make it to Greek islands off Turkey's coast. The draft, which was seen by Reuters, says the plan is "to break the business model of the smugglers and to offer migrants an alternative to putting their lives at risk". It stresses the plan is "a temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order". CYPRUS QUESTION Potentially the most explosive topic, which diplomats say risks derailing the whole deal, will be how Davutoglu responds to a vague offer to open new "chapters" of Turkey's snail-like negotiations to join the EU at some distant future date. Several of these have been blocked by Cyprus over Turkey's refusal to give it the same rights as other EU states in access to Turkish ports and airports - a result of the 42-year dispute since the violent partition of the island into a Greek-speaking state and a Turkish-speaking north recognized only by Turkey. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has made clear he will lift his veto on Turkish accession chapters only if Ankara ends its refusal to recognize Cyprus. Turkey wants concessions for its northern Cypriot allies in return. The EU and world powers are keen not to derail U.N. talks that could reunite the island. Tusk's draft says the EU would work with Turkey to "prepare for a decision" on opening new accession chapters "as soon as possible" - a hazy prospect Davutoglu may not appreciate. But in his invitation letter, Tusk stressed that only if the migrant deal could help advance the broader talks on ending the long confrontation with Cyprus, could it hope to succeed. To satisfy EU and international law, Greece and Turkey will have to modify domestic legislation so that Turkey is regarded as protecting asylum seekers in line with the Geneva Convention, even though Ankara limits its formal commitments to that treaty. EU officials argue that the alternative to holding people back in Turkey is to see a further build-up of migrants stranded in deteriorating conditions in Greece, whose European neighbors have closed their borders. Already over 40,000 are marooned. Legal gymnastics, and the scorn of U.N. and other rights bodies, aside, the deal foresees all those arriving having a right to state their case for asylum and to appeal. However, EU officials stress that the intention is quickly to deter most people from even trying to make the crossing, so the arrival of thousands a day as occurred last year is unlikely. If such numbers keep coming, the plan will have failed, they say. For each Syrian refugee who eludes efforts to stop illegal migration whom Turkey agrees to take back, Turkey will see a Syrian refugee resettled directly to Europe. The draft makes clear the total number is likely to be limited to about 72,000 out of nearly 3 million Syrians in Turkey. That figure represents what the deeply divided EU states agreed last year to take in under two different schemes for sharing responsibilities. Leaders may talk more about who takes how many. Tusk's draft spoke of the process being "voluntary" in a nod to eastern EU states which oppose a series of refugees quotas Brussels imposed last year. Longer-term, the EU leadership and the likes of Merkel are pushing hard for a system of resettling much larger numbers of refugees from the Middle East in Europe. That is opposed by others who say it would fuel xenophobic nationalism which has already surged, as seen in elections on Sunday in Germany. Diplomats said there was also likely to be discussion of how quickly a second 3-billion-euro tranche of aid for Syrians in Turkey should be on the table for Davutoglu and of the precise details of an offer to provide visa-free travel to Europe for Turks by late June, if Ankara meets numerous conditions in time. (Writing by Alastair Macdonald; @macdonaldrtr)
Hundreds of thousands of animals have died in Mongolia's extreme weather this year but charities say the crisis has gone almost unnoticed by the world.

More than 350,000 goats, sheep and cows have been killed by a natural phenomenon called "dzud" - a hot summer drought followed by a severe winter.

The combination means that animals can't graze enough during the warmer months to build up the reserves they need to survive winter temperatures that regularly plunge to -50C.

For a country where a third of the population rely on livestock to survive, many families are quickly going from affluence to poverty due to the slow-moving disaster.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched an appeal for more than $800,000 (552,000) two weeks ago hoping to help 25,000 vulnerable Mongolian herders but less than half of that target has been raised.

IFRC's East Asia communications delegate Hler Gudjonsson told AFP that the disaster was foreseen last November but it was difficult to "raise funds for something that hasn't happened yet".

He added: "It's not a tsunami, it's not an earthquake and it's not a sudden disaster. It's a long-term condition and situation, so we don't have a breaking point where we can say, today this happened, and people suddenly need a lot of assistance.

"We're expecting to see a large number of families who will have lost everything, who will have gone from affluence to utter poverty."

Most of these people would be forced to move to tent districts on the outskirts of Mongolia's urban areas, living without even the basics and with little or no income.

Bayankhand Myagmar, 50, has a disabled daughter and ill husband and has lost about 400 of her 700 animals, despite letting the weakest sleep in the family tent.

She now fears for her family's future, saying: "My husband and I are over 50, so nobody will employ us.

"We will not find any other jobs, but we are not yet entitled to pensions."
The Government has said it remains committed to making "much needed reforms" to disability benefits in the face of a Conservative rebellion against the cut.

Tory rebels have written to Chancellor George Osborne, warning him of a Commons defeat if he tries to push through changes to Personal Independence Payments (PIPs).

Mr Osborne has said he will consult with disability charities to make sure the reforms are "absolutely right", and insisted the Government would "protect the most vulnerable".

Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he will force a vote on the proposals.

:: Personal Independence Payment Explained

He said: "We will get a vote on it and I'm confident all opposition parties will vote the same way - and I hope a significant number of Tories who listen to their constituents, listen to their hearts and decide to vote with us."

As pressure to perform a U-turn continued, the Prime Minister's spokeswoman insisted the Government's position on the issue had not changed.

She said: "We remain committed to making these much needed reforms.

"We have got the time now to be explaining it to colleagues across the House, and engaging with disability groups.

"This is about making sure we can get PIP back to what it was originally intended to do, which is to target support to the most vulnerable and in need.

"This is about reining in the ballooning of this spending we have seen over recent months."

The intervention by Downing Street came after Education Secretary Nicky Morgan appeared to indicate on Thursday that ministers could be open to a rethink, describing the plan as no more than a "suggestion" that is still being discussed.

When asked later about the reforms by Sky News during an interview on Friday, Ms Morgan said it was "very much a matter for the Government press office" and walked off.

Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who resigned as a patron of a charity for the disabled after it called on him to quit the role over his support for Government cuts, said the reforms were not a "fait accompli".

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Opponents claim the reforms could see up to 640,000 people affected by tighter rules and lose up to 100 a week.

The proposals follow a review by health professionals which found people were being awarded points for aids and appliances already in homes or provided by the NHS and councils.

Conservative MP Andrew Percy, who organised the rebels' letter, warned the Government, which has a working majority of 17, it faces defeat in the Commons if it tries to push through the changes.

Robert Mooney, of the Community trade union's National League of the Blind and Disabled, said the cuts were "fundamentally unfair".

"Once again, disabled people are paying the price so the Chancellor can give tax breaks to the rich," he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama in an executive order Wednesday implemented unilateral sanctions that leave room for action against private individuals and organizations in third countries doing business with the North. The question is whether the measures will be effective in persuading the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Traditionally the North has responded to UN sanctions by conducting more nuclear tests or missile launches, and it is already threatening another nuclear test or missile launch after claiming that it has succeeded in a test simulating the intense heat a nuclear warhead would experience during atmospheric re-entry. Pyongyang is convinced that its nuclear weapons program is not only a terrific bargaining chip to get concessions from the U.S. but a means of survival. Its latest threats cannot simply be written off as hot air.

If North Korea has decided to walk down the path of nuclear armament, more nuclear and long-range missile tests are inevitable. Seoul must accept this reality and make the necessary preparations. More powerful sanctions against the North must be agreed by the international community. Strategic dialogue with the U.S. and China can achieve the necessary consensus against North Korea's threats.

If the North does push ahead with another nuclear test, all loopholes in the current sanctions must be plugged, above all the supply of oil. The U.S. has sanctioned North Korean individuals and organizations in banking, shipping and procurement of materials for missiles and nuclear arms. But sanctions on people or firms in third countries remain only a possibility, and North Korea can still dispatch workers abroad to earn the regime some US$300 million annually. Sanctions also need to be imposed on the North's exports of textiles and other manufactured goods. The next provocation is imminent. It must not succeed.
By Kieran Guilbert DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Health workers are rushing to the site of a fresh Ebola outbreak in Guinea to bolster efforts to contain the virus and prepare for the likelihood of more cases, aid agencies said on Friday. Four people in the southern region of Nzerekore were tested on Thursday and two of them were found to have Ebola. They were all from Korokpara, a village where three people from the same family have died in recent weeks from diarrhea and vomiting. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and aid agencies have sent experts to investigate the origin of the new cases and to identify, isolate, vaccinate and monitor all of their contacts. The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) has reopened its Ebola treatment unit in Nzerekore, while the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) is reinforcing its team in the region and providing protective equipment and medicine. "There has been a very professional and experienced response across the board," said Augustin Augier of ALIMA, which admitted the two patients, a child and his mother, to its treatment unit. "We are doing all we can to be ready to receive more cases," he said, adding that ALIMA were flying in more staff from Paris. More than 28,500 people have been infected and 11,300 have died since the world's worst recorded Ebola epidemic began in December 2013 - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. While the epidemic has come under control, experts have warned of the risk of new flare-ups, as Ebola can linger in the eyes, central nervous system and bodily fluids of survivors. The two fresh cases in Nzerekore, where the Ebola outbreak began in 2013, were reported just hours after the WHO declared neighboring Sierra Leone's latest flare-up over. Guinea had been nearing the end of a 90-day period of heightened surveillance when the fresh cases were reported - the country's first known re-emergence of Ebola after the outbreak was officially declared over there at the end of December 2015. "The heightened surveillance means mechanisms were in place and that we were vigilant and prepared to deal with the flare-up," said Guy Yogo, UNICEF's deputy representative in Guinea. "The population is now aware of the disease and listening to the guidance it receives from the authorities," Yogo added. It was not immediately clear how the villagers from Korokpara had contracted Ebola but the area had resisted efforts to fight the disease in the initial epidemic. (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will load weapons-grade plutonium onto a ship as early as this weekend to send to the United States, in what will be largest such shipment of the highly dangerous material since 1992, Greenpeace said on Friday. The shipment of 331 kilograms of plutonium, enough to make about 50 nuclear weapons, will be loaded in Tokai Mura northeast of Tokyo onto the Pacific Egret, an armed British ship, and transported to the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the environmental group said. Shipments of plutonium are highly sensitive because the material can be used in advanced nuclear weapons or as a so-called dirty bomb. In Japan, public sensitivity is also high because the country is the only nation to be bombed with nuclear weapons. The U.S. embassy in Tokyo declined to comment. The shipment is a tiny portion of the nearly 50 tonnes of plutonium Japan holds. Most of Japan's plutonium comes reprocessing spent nuclear fuel burned in the country's reactors. All but two of Japan's reactors have been shut down since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011. The plutonium being shipped this weekend was supplied by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France for the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Fast Critical Assembly project in Tokai Mura, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials. The agreement to transfer the material to the United States was reached in March 2014, according to the panel's website. A spokesman at the Japanese atomic agency declined to comment, citing security reasons. (Reporting by Aaron Sheldrikc and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Premier Philippe Couillard and provincial opposition leaders are keeping clear of the controversial leader of France's far-right party, the Front National.

Marine Le Pen is arriving in Montreal today and plans to spend six days in the province.

During her time in Quebec, she will hold news conferences in Montreal and Quebec City. She'll also travel to the French self-governing territory of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, south of Newfoundland, and hold a news conference there.

Premier Philippe Couillard, Parti Quebecois Leader Pierre Karl Peladeau and Coalition Avenir Quebec leader Francois Legault have all declined to meet her.

Sights set on 2017

Marine Le Pen has been criticized by many in France for what are seen as thinly veiled racist positions.

However, the Front National, a one-time fringe party founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has gained popularity under her leadership.

She has her sights set on the 2017 presidential election and has been striving to clean up the party's image.

A rundown of Le Pen's itinerary:

- Friday and Saturday: Montreal.

- Sunday: Quebec City.

- Monday: Quebec City and Montreal.

- Tuesday: Montreal (news conference).

- Wednesday: Montreal.

- Thursday: Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

- Friday: Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, then back to Montreal.
Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities has confirmed that scans done on King Tutankhamun's tomb last November show there are two hidden spaces or chambers behind it.

The ministry said the scans also showed that there is organic and metallic matter in the chambers, suggesting it could be another burial site.

Egypts Minister of Antiquities, Mamdouh el-Damaty, told reporters in Cairo this could be "the discovery of the century".

"It means a rediscovery of Tutankhamun. It is very important for Egyptian history and for all of the world," he added.

British Egyptologist Nicolas Reeves has argued that Queen Nefertiti's burial chamber is in the room beyond her stepson King Tuts tomb.

The idea is that the sudden and early death of the King caught everyone by surprise and as they didnt have time to build a tomb, they buried him in Nefertitis.

Mr Reeves points to the fact the tomb looks similar to others that were built for women, contained artefacts belonging to a female and is too small for a king.

But other Egyptologists say that, although there may be chambers, there are unlikely to be "new" tombs, still less that of the notorious Nefertiti.

Dr Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, told Sky News: "We need to be careful about separating reality from speculation.

"There are interesting marks on that wall in King Tuts tomb - fact.

"That they look possibly like the outlines of doorways I think we all agree with.

"But after that it goes into a range of possibilities."

Dr Dodson and others have questioned why Egypt has been so slow to reveal the results of the scan.

By drilling a small hole into the wall and feeding in a fibre optic camera, they argue, we would be able to determine exactly what are in those chambers.

But Egyptian authorities say they dont want to risk any damage to the tomb or priceless paintings on the wall until they are 1005 sure there is something in there worth exploring.

Story continues

King Tuts tomb was found in 1922 in good shape and considered to be the biggest antiquities find of the century. Now, decades later, an even bigger discovery may be revealed.

Queen Nefertiti, who ruled alongside her Pharaoh husband in mid-1300s BC, was one of ancient Egypts most important and influential figures and has become a symbol of Egyptian culture and history.

The next step will be on 31 March when more radar scans will be done in order to determine the size of the chambers and thickness of the walls.

The results of that scan could be announced as early as 1 April in Luxor at the Valley of the Kings.

Egyptologists say even if nobody is buried in those chambers it is still of major archaeological value that they are there at all.

Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University of Cairo, told Sky News "I think that all of us Egyptologists alive now would be excited whether it is Nefertiti or not because we missed out on Tutankhamun and so we want our own version."

The mystery of whether the missing queen is actually hidden in the Valley of the Kings continues.
By Emily Flitter NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some rabbis and Jewish students are planning protests against Donald Trump's speech on Monday at a conference of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC over what they say are his belittling comments about Muslims and other groups. About 18,000 people are expected to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's three-day annual conference in Washington. It is not clear how many will either boycott or walk out of the Republican presidential front-runner's address. "He has taken every opportunity to vilify women, Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants and the disabled," said Jeffrey Salkin, a rabbi in Hollywood, Florida, who asked rabbis across the country to join him in a boycott. He said 40 had agreed and signed a protest letter he hoped to distribute at the conference. Another group of rabbis and students called Come Together Against Hate is planning to walk out of the room after Trump takes the stage. Jesse Olitzky, one of its organizers, said he did not know how many people would participate. The group's Facebook page had 300 members. Some of the students received an email earlier this week from AIPAC warning that if they disrupted the speech, they would have their conference access revoked. An AIPAC official said on Thursday the message "went out in error and was not authorized." "I know nothing about that," Trump said in a Reuters interview on Thursday when asked if he had heard about the planned protests and whether he intended to respond. When he announced his candidacy last summer, Trump said some people crossing the U.S. border from Mexico were criminals and rapists, and promised to build a wall along the border. In December, he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, on national security grounds. Last week, he told CNN: "Islam hates us." The Anti-Defamation League and an organization of Reform rabbis condemned his comments. AIPAC, which is non-partisan, routinely hosts presidential hopefuls at its conference. Trump's remaining Republican rivals, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich, will address the group as well. "The job of AIPAC is not to decide whose policies we like or look into the souls of people," said Seth Siegel, an AIPAC veteran who said he was not speaking on behalf of the organization. "It's the organization's job to try to educate elected officials about how to deepen the U.S.-Israel relationship for the benefit of both parties," he said. "Having Trump speak at the policy conference is unambiguously part of that mission." (Reporting by Emily Flitter; Editing by Peter Cooney)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she expects legislation to help tackle Puerto Rico's ongoing financial crisis to come soon and that lawmakers will hopefully act on it quickly. "We should have a bill pretty soon. And I think the Republicans are acting in good faith on this," Pelosi, the chamber's minority leader, told reporters. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to leave for a recess on Wednesday. "It would be my hope that we would see something before we leave here, that would be marked up as soon as we come back and then taken to the floor and ... sent to the Senate," she added. (Reporting by David Morgan; Writing Susan Heavey)
Seasonal employers are relieved they will be able to hire additional temporary foreign workers this year after the federal government lifted caps on the industry.

The seafood industry is one specific sector that stands to benefit from the federal government's decision to erase restrictions on the number of temporary foreign workers seasonal employers can hire in 2016

Jerry Amirault, the president of the Lobster Processors Association of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, said the exemption will help processors get through the busiest time of the year.

"There's about 4,500 temporary workers in all of Atlantic Canada and about 2,000 of them had been in the seafood sector, so for some plants, this will help them get through the gluts so the harvest can go on in an orderly fashion," Amirault said.

The former Conservative government had capped the number of temporary foreign workers that employers could hire at 20 per cent of a company's workforce and 10 per cent on July 1, 2016.

The Liberal government provided an exemption to the cap for all seasonal industries which employ workers for a maximum of 180 days.

Those employers still have to undergo a labour market assessment for each position to confirm the job cannot be filled locally, but for 2016 there's no limit to the number of foreign workers they can bring in under the program.

Companies must search for local workers

Amirault said employers try to find local workers through job banks, ads and job fairs but there's a limit to what they can do.

When they have exhausted those options, they turn to temporary foreign workers.

"It's not our job  if someone's unemployed and doesn't want to take the work, we can't force them," Amirault said.

"I mean, that's government and their program and whether they're going to allow a claim or not."

New Brunswick's unemployment rate hit 9.9 per cent in February, according to Statistics Canada.

Even with a high local unemployment rate, seasonal industries have found it difficult to find workers.

When the former Conservative government announced the changes to the temporary foreign worker program last year, seasonal industries warned their ability to process seafood would be hurt by these new rules.
By Paul Taylor BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A deal between the European Union and Turkey meant to curb the flow of migrants into Europe in return for financial and political rewards could unravel within months because neither side looks able to deliver on its commitments. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and European Council President Donald Tusk wore relieved smiles on Friday as they sealed a pact for Ankara to take back all migrants and refugees who cross to Greece in exchange for more money, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks. But for Turkey to halt the flow of migrants to Europe will require a major redeployment of its security apparatus to shut down a lucrative people-smuggling business at a time when President Tayyip Erdogan has more pressing priorities. With impeccable timing, Turkish authorities announced they had detained 3,000 would-be migrants on Friday, but Greek officials say Ankara has done little to stop the flow since November, when the EU and Turkey made a first deal. Yet Erdogan is more focused on extending his presidential powers, fighting Kurdish militants and preventing spillover from Syria's civil war. For Greece to be able to process and send back those migrants who continue to reach its islands would require a transformation of its threadbare asylum and justice systems with scant resources and uncertain EU assistance. The European Court of Human rights considers Athens' system so poor that it ruled that sending migrants back there from other European countries was inhumane. Yet the new arrangements are supposed to start from Sunday, with the first returns set for April 4. One EU diplomat said that was like expecting Greece to turn itself into the Netherlands over a weekend. For the EU to resettle, as promised, thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey - one for each Syrian returned from the Greek islands - will require most member states to take in more refugees than they have been willing to share out so far. In the current climate of anti-immigration populism in many countries, that may be a tall order. The joint statement did not spell out who would return potentially unwilling migrants from Greece to Turkey, a task that may fall to the EU's Frontex border agency under the critical gaze of the media and humanitarian groups. Greek officials say they are worried it could turn violent. Images of Afghans, Iraqis or Syrians being removed against their will could lead to an international outcry. In a foretaste, rights group Amnesty International posted a harrowing picture of refugees cowering behind barbed wire outside the EU summit center with the slogan "Don't trade refugees. Stop the deal!" LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE Greece already faces a huge logistical challenge with 43,000 migrants bottled up in the economically ravaged country since its northern neighbors shut their borders, and more continuing to arrive daily, albeit at a slower pace. And all this is before the summer weather and calmer seas that facilitated last year's mass influx. For the EU to give Turks visa-free travel by the end of June also requires a leap of faith, since Ankara has so far met fewer than half of the 72 conditions. European officials stress the ball is in Turkey's court to pass the necessary laws and change its visa regime with other, notably Muslim countries. The EU managed to sidestep a potential stumbling block over Cyprus by agreeing to limit Turkey's progress in snail's pace membership negotiations to one policy area - budget - which Nicosia has not blocked. That got around a standoff over Ankara's refusal to open Turkish ports and airports to Cypriot traffic. A late addition to the agreement also reminds Ankara of its commitments to the Turkey-EU customs union under which it should open its ports. If both sides are lucky, the vexed Cyprus issue may not impinge on the migration deal for months, leaving time for peace talks now under way that may lead to the reunification of the east Mediterranean island after more than 40 years of division. EU leaders desperate to stop the chaotic migration flow were willing to suspend their disbelief and swallow legal qualms - at least in public - because they had no better alternative. But they have few illusions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the deal's co-architect, said there were bound to be setbacks and big legal challenges but she hoped the deal had "irreversible momentum". Tusk, who chaired the summit, said the deal was the best the EU could do for now. "A piece of something is better than a piece of nothing," he said. "There are many bits of this deal that clearly don't add up," a senior EU official acknowledged. "Much of the details will be left to be worked out at lower level later on." The optimistic version, voiced by Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders, is that some "intelligent synchronization" can be found between the Cyprus peace process and Turkey's migration deal. Critics say that is just EU wishful thinking. 'NO BETTER PLAN' Some experts believe Turkish leaders don't expect the EU to keep its word on visas, refugee resettlement or the membership talks and are planning to turn a predictable failure to domestic political advantage. "Davutoglu and Erdogan know perfectly well that neither side will deliver," said Michael Leigh, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think-tank and a former director-general of the EU's enlargement department. "What Erdogan wants is a constitutional power change ... so he will present it at the right moment as a European betrayal and call a vote to get more powers," Leigh said. At most, he said, the EU could fulfill the financial part of the bargain if Germany pays the lion's share of the extra 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) Ankara was promised to support Syrian refugees in Turkey. Sidelined by Merkel when she drafted the outline deal with Davutoglu last week, French President Francois Hollande made clear he would hold Turkey to meeting EU visa standards in full. "Visas can only be liberalized if all the conditions are met and I remind you there are 72 of them," Hollande told reporters. A French diplomat said Turkey had only fulfilled 10 benchmarks fully so far and another 26 were under way. EU diplomats are skeptical that Ankara will be able to meet all the required benchmarks in time, but such is the urgent need to get the migration crisis under control that they would rather clinch a deal now and deal with shortcomings later. "It's difficult but everyone has an interest in trying to make this work and no one has a better plan," a senior EU diplomat said. ($1 = 0.8872 euros) (Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Pravin Char)
By Michael Erman, Diane Bartz, Arunima Banerjee and Sayantani Ghosh (Reuters) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc on Friday said a $13 billion cash offer from China's Anbang Insurance Group Co was superior to one from Marriott International Inc , setting the stage for the largest ever deal by a Chinese company in the United States. The operator of Sheraton and Westin hotels said the Chinese insurer's offer beat Marriott's previously agreed cash and stock offer by nearly 15 percent, and that it planned to scrap the proposed deal with the rival hotel chain. Anbang has been on a U.S. hotel buying spree as Chinese insurers rush to acquire high-yielding assets as they struggle to keep up with the policy liabilities of the country's aging population. U.S. assets are also seen as a good hedge against weakness in the Chinese yuan. The Anbang-led consortium - which also includes private equity firms J.C. Flowers & Co from the United States and Primavera Capital from China - has bid $78 per share in cash, or $13.16 billion overall, based on shares outstanding as of Feb. 19. At Thursday's close, Marriott's bid for Starwood was worth $68.06 per share, or around $11.5 billion overall. Starwood's shares were up 4.7 percent at $79.99 in midday trading, their highest level since November. Marriott, which has until March 28 to counter Anbang's offer, said it was considering its options. [nPn5RVBT] Dan Wasiolek, a hotel industry analyst at Morningstar, said Marriott could still counter with a higher offer. "Marriott can increase their offer because they have the balance sheet flexibility," he said, suggesting the larger rival hotel company could sweeten its offer by $700 million in cash. If Anbang's offer is successful, it would boost the company's reputation as one of China's top corporate acquirers, adding Starwood with its nearly 1,300 hotels in about 100 countries. The offer follows Anbang's $6.5 billion deal struck last week for Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc and its $2 billion purchase of New York's iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel last year. [nL1N16K0OQ] The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel that reviews deals to ensure they do not harm national security, will look at Starwood's several hundred U.S. hotels to see if any are close to critical facilities, said Stephen Heifetz, a partner with law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP, who has experience of CFIUS reviews. In 2012, CFIUS ordered the purchase of a wind farm in Oregon to be reversed because it was too close to a naval base. Heifetz said this was unlikely in this case. "I'd be surprised if there were any deal-killer for a large multi-property location," he said, although he warned that the companies might have to make some concessions to get the deal through. Other CFIUS experts have said previously that U.S. regulators might be concerned about a Starwood property, the W Hotel in downtown Washington, which overlooks the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House. Starwood shareholders will also receive stock in Interval Leisure Group Inc , which is buying Starwood's vacation ownership business for about $5.67 per Starwood share.
By Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi'ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations. "In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi'ite Muslims," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. "Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions." Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants' atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such. U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated. While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants. On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States." U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops. Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack. "We didnt act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didnt act militarily in Darfur. In this case within ... days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them," said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'WE'VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT' Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world. The group's videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony. Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide. "We're very confident we've done an enormous amount," he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department. "The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi'ites because they are Shi'ites," Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing. Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls. On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile "cessation of hostilities" has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks. (Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will name the first woman to head a U.S. combatant command, selecting Air Force General Lori Robinson as the next head of the military's Northern Command, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday.

The position, which is subject to Senate confirmation, is one of the most senior in the U.S. military and would make Robinson - who now leads U.S. air forces in the Pacific - the top general overseeing activities in North America.

"General Robinson, it just so happens, would also be the first ever female combatant commander," Carter said, disclosing Obama's plans to nominate her.

"That shows yet another thing - which is that we have, coming along now, a lot of female officers who are exceptionally strong. And Lori certainly fits into that category," Carter said at an event hosted by Politico.

Carter also announced Army General Vincent Brooks, the commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, would be nominated to become the next commander of U.S. Forces in South Korea.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Frances Kerry)
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The governing board of California's flagship public university system is to vote next week on a statement condemning anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, a proposal sparking sharp faculty debate over the line between free speech and intolerance.

The controversy playing out at the University of California reflects a broader clash between pro-Israel groups and Palestinian rights activists over what constitutes legitimate criticism of Israeli polices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The UC's Board of Regents is slated to act next Wednesday on a draft document produced by a working group to address the issue. Both sides in the debate say they believe that if adopted it would be the first such policy statement by the leadership of a major U.S. public institution of higher education.

The University of California is considered one of the most prestigious public university systems in the country, comprising 10 campuses, among which are the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Supporters say the document grew out of a recent rise in anti-Semitism on UC campuses stemming from heated anti-Israel protest frequently expressed as anti-Zionism, which supporters define as calls for Israel's destruction or denials of its right to exit.

According to proponents of the draft, such rhetoric constitutes a contemporary brand of anti-Semitism that is often accompanied by or escalates into more explicit forms of anti-Jewish hatred.

Foes of the proposal say it would trample on academic freedom. Some call it a thinly veiled attempt to squelch political criticism of Israel, including student movements pressing for divestiture or boycotts against the Jewish state.

A letter of opposition signed by more than 250 UC faculty members argued that anti-Zionism is a "loose term and is often deployed against any number of political positions" that should "not to be conflated with anti-Semitism."

Story continues

"We urge you not to adopt a position that will censor political viewpoints that are rightly considered to be constitutionally protected speech," the letter said.

A separate letter from 130 other faculty insisted the proposal was necessary to address "a lack of understanding of when healthy debate about Israel and the Middle East ends, and anti-Semitism begins."

Critics, however, says the draft's very formulation is ambiguous.

As currently written, references to Zionism are confined to a brief introduction stating: "Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California."

But the term is omitted from the 10 "Principles Against Intolerance" that follow, with anti-Semitism condemned, along with forms of bigotry based such factors as race, national origin, religion and gender.

It remained unclear whether the regents would vote on the principles alone or adopt the entire document as enforceable policy.

(Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A construction worker plunged to his death on Thursday from the 53rd floor of an unfinished downtown Los Angeles skyscraper that will rank as the tallest building on the U.S. West Coast when completed next year, according to the city fire department.

It marked the first fatality on the site of the 2-year-old, $1 billion Wilshire Grand project, being developed by Korean Airlines, said Chris McFadden, a spokesman for the building's New York-based general contractor Turner Construction Company.

Details of the fatal fall, which occurred just after noon, were not immediately available, but the man's body struck a vehicle on the street below, fire department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said.

A woman who was driving the vehicle was uninjured but was taken to an area hospital for evaluation as a precaution, Stewart said. She said circumstances of the incident were under investigation by police.

Los Angeles Times staff photographer Mel Melcon, who was at the site on assignment, told the newspaper he heard a loud thump, then glimpsed the man's body on the ground, lying off the driver's side of a car.

"It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building," he was quoted as saying.

Rising 73 stories into the Los Angeles skyline, the hotel and office tower will measure 1,100 feet (335 meters) high, including a spire affixed to the stop of the building in a design that will make it the tallest structure west of the Mississippi.

That distinction currently belongs to the U.S. Bank Tower, located a few blocks away.

The Wilshire Grand is slated for completion early next year. Construction began in earnest in February 2014 with the laying of the foundation in what was then certified by the Guinness World Records as the largest continuous pour of concrete.

Thursday's death came days after the project's "topping out" ceremony to mark the placement of the tallest, final support beam of the tower.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Carnival Corporations CCL Princess Cruises recently announced its Japan itinerary for 2017. The cruise brand will deploy a number of ships from Tokyo and Kobe next year that will go around Japan, and stop at the important cultural ports. The 2017 season  from April through November  will have 39 voyages, shipping 75,000 guests, up 27% from the 2016 level.

All the voyages would be on the Diamond Princess ship with itineraries varying from 5 to 17 nights, with 31 destinations in 6 countries. The cruises will stop at Tsuruga port, Japan, gateway to Tojinbo Cliffs and Eiheiji Temple, along with visits to South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

The cruises would also visit nearly 10 UNESCO World Heritage sites and participate in some of the popular Japanese cultural festivals and events. Further, there would be two Land and Sea Vacation packages, offering tours to Kyoto in Tokyo and the UNESCO creative city of Kanazawa.

Carnivals decision to deploy its ships in Japan comes as most cruisers are looking to capitalize on the fast growing Asian market. The Asian source market for cruises is expected to continue to grow significantly as it becomes more consumer-driven.

Carnival is especially optimistic about the growth prospects of the Japanese market. The country boasts a rapidly developing cruise market with passenger numbers soaring over the past few years, which are expected to rise further. The growing middle-class with high disposable income makes these markets an attractive bet for Carnival. Moreover, increasing number of ports and tourist destinations in the country present tremendous growth opportunity for the cruise operators.

Apart from Carnival , Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. RCL is also planning to tap into the Asia Pacific region through significant investments to boost revenues.

Carnival carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the same sector are Vail Resorts Inc. MTN and International Speedway Corp. ISCA. Both the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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Icelandic English

Arion Bank completed a bond offering in Swedish kroner on Thursday 17 March. Bonds with a nominal value of SEK 275 million were issued, maturing in 2019.

The bonds bear floating rate STIBOR + 2.65%, and were sold to investors in Norway, Sweden and continental Europe. The sale was managed by Pareto Securities. The bonds are issued under Arion Banks EMTN program, and will be listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.

For further information please contact Haraldur Gudni Eidsson of Arion Bank's Communications division at haraldur.eidsson@arionbanki.is, or tel. +354 444 7108.
Lithuanian English

Notice is hereby given that on the initiative and by the resolution of the Board of AB Klaipedos Nafta, legal entity code 110648893, with the registered office at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda (hereinafter, the Company), from 18 March 2016, an ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company will be held on 26 April 2016 at 1:00 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Companys offices at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda, in the administrative premises of the Company (in the hall of the meeting on the 2nd Floor).

Agenda of the meeting:

1. On the announcement of the Auditors Report regarding the Financial Statements and Annual Report of the Company for the year 2015 to the shareholders.

2. On the announcement of the Annual Report of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015 to the shareholders.

3. On the approval of the audited Financial Statements of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.

4. On the appropriation of profit (loss) of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.

The shareholders will be registered from 12.00 a.m. to 12.55 a.m. The persons intending to participate in the meeting shall have a personal ID document (an authorised representative shall have additionally a proxy approved under the established procedure. The natural persons proxy shall be notarised. A proxy issued in a foreign state shall be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalised under the procedure prescribed by laws).

A shareholder or his proxy shall have the right to vote in writing in advance by filling in a general ballot paper. At the request of the shareholder, the Company shall send a general ballot paper to the shareholder by registered mail free of charge at least 10 days before the meeting. The filled-in general ballot paper and the document attesting the voting right shall be submitted to the Company no later than until the meeting, sending by registered mail or providing them at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice.

The shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes may propose additions to the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders by submitting with every proposed additional item of the agenda a draft resolution of the general meeting of shareholders or, when no resolution is required, an explanation. Proposals on addition to the agenda shall be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt. The agenda shall be supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the ordinary general meeting of shareholders. If the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders is supplemented, the Company shall notify on the additions no later than 10 days before the meeting in the same ways as in the case of convocation of the meeting.

The shareholders, who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes, at any time before the general meeting of shareholders or during the meeting, may propose new draft resolutions on items which are or will be included in the agenda of the meeting. The proposals may be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt.

The shareholders shall have the right to submit to the Company in advance questions relating to the items on the agenda of the meeting. The shareholders may submit their written questions to the Company on business days or send by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice no later than 3 business days before the meeting. The Company will reply to the questions by e-mail or in writing before the meeting, except the questions which are related to the Companys commercial (industrial) secret, confidential information or which have been submitted later than 3 business days before the meeting.

The Company does not provide the possibility of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications means.

The Shareholder shall have the right to authorize through electronic communications means another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the meeting on behalf of the shareholder. No notarisation of such authorization is required. The shareholder must confirm the proxy issued through electronic communications means by an electronic signature developed by a secure signature-creation device and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the proxy issued through electronic communications means to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt no later than until the last business day before the meeting at 1:00 p.m. The proxy and the notice must be issued in writing. The proxy and the notice to the Company shall be signed with the electronic signature but not the letter sent by e-mail. By submitting the notice to the Company, the shareholder shall include the internet address from which it would be possible to download software free of charge to verify the shareholders electronic signature.

The record date of the meeting shall be 19 April 2016 (only those persons who will be shareholders of the Company at the close of the record date of the general meeting of shareholders or their authorised persons, or persons with whom an agreement on assignment of the voting right has been executed, may participate and vote at the general meeting of shareholders).

The shareholders of the Company may familiarise with the draft resolution of the meeting and the form of the general ballot paper under the procedure prescribed by laws in the registered office of the Company at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda (tel.: 8 46 391636), or on the Companys website at http://www.oil.lt/. The following information and documents shall be provided on the abovementioned internet website of the Company:

- the notification on convocation of the meeting;

- total number of the Companys shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the meeting.

Enclosed:

1. Draft decision of the General Meeting of Shareholders.

2. General voting ballot paper of the General Meeting of Shareholders.

3. Financial Statements of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015, prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards, as adopted by the European Union, presented together with the Independent Auditors Report and Annual Report for the year 2015;

4. Draft appropriation of profit (loss) of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass., March 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Carando, the artisans of Classic Italian Meats, partnered with Big Y to donate more than 500 spiral sliced quarter hams to The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. The donation will feed more than 500 families in need, providing them with a ham to enjoy on Easter Sunday. Carando made the donation Friday at a Big Y grocery store in Springfield, Mass.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/979aa65a-eee6-44e3-a68c-d063b658c590

Carando Regional Manager Patrick Favalo presented 504 hams, weighing over 6,000 pounds, to Sean Nimmons, District Director of Big Y and Andrew Morehouse, Executive Director of The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Carando stands for quality and heritage, so its important that Carando continues its tradition of giving back to the community, said Dan Incaudo, General Manager, Carando. We are extremely humbled to be able to help so many families in need by providing 504 hams to an incredible organization like The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts distributes food to member agencies in Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties. In 2015, the non-profit organization distributed nearly 10 million pounds of food to more than 200 pantries, meal sites and shelters across the region. Big Y is a generous supporter of The Food Bank, regularly contributing food and transportation.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, a longtime supporter of Carandos charitable efforts, was also on hand for the donation. Mayor Sarno helped Carando and Big Y present The Food Bank with the hams.

Were proud to partner with Carando and the Carando Cares program to help give families in our community a happy holiday, said Guy McFarlane, Vice President of Fresh Foods, Big Y. We are honored to know our donation of Carando ham will mean more than 500 families will have an Easter ham on the table.

The donation was made as part of the Carando Cares program, an ongoing campaign established in 2013 to support organizations making a positive difference in local communities. Carando Cares has already made more than $250,000 in monetary and in-kind donations since the programs inception.

For more information about Carando and Carando Cares, please visit carando.com or www.Facebook.com/CarandoMeats. Carando is a brand of Smithfield Foods.

About Carando

All of our classic Italian meats stay true to the traditional recipes that our founder, Pietro Carando, brought to America from his boyhood home in Torino, Italy. One taste is all it takes to discover the authentic Italian difference of Carando. For more information, visit carando.com.

Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Farmland, Armour, Cook's, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Nathan's Famous, Kretschmar, Margherita, Curly's, Carando and Healthy Ones. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.
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By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired two ballistic missiles on Friday, one of which flew about 800 km (500 miles) while the other exploded shortly after launch, U.S. officials said, as the isolated state stepped up its defiance of tough new U.N. and U.S. sanctions. U.S. officials told Reuters the medium-range missiles appeared to be fired from road-mobile launchers. One missile, fired from north of the capital, Pyongyang, flew across the peninsula and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, South Korea's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. That would mark North Korea's first test of a medium-range missile, one of which was capable of reaching Japan, since 2014. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the second missile flew a short period before exploding. South Korea did not confirm the type of missile but U.S. officials said they were medium-range ballistic missiles. A range of 800 km was likely beyond the capability of most short-range missiles in North Korea's arsenal. The North's Rodong missile has an estimated maximum range of 1,300 km (810 miles), according to the South's defense ministry. North Korea's action provoked a barrage of criticism and appeals. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang urged it to abide by U.N. resolutions and not do anything to exacerbate tensions. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the United States was "analyzing the results of those launches," but called on Beijing to use its influence over Pyongyang. "China could do a lot more," Carter said, adding Beijing should seek a nuclear-free North Korea. The U.S. State Department in a statement urged North Korea to focus on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations. Japan lodged a protest with North Korea through its embassy in Beijing, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament. "Japan strongly demands North Korea to exercise self-restraint and will take all necessary measures, such as warning and surveillance activity, to be able to respond to any situations," Abe said. South Korea's Unification Ministry said Pyongyang should focus on improving the lives of its people and that provocative actions would help nothing. NUCLEAR WARHEADS North Korea often fires missiles during periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programs. Last week, the North fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong Un ordered more nuclear weapons tests and missile tests. That came after North Korean media said the North had miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit on ballistic missiles and quoted Kim as calling on the military to prepare for a "pre-emptive nuclear strike" against the United States and South Korea. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday over its nuclear test and satellite launch. The sanctions freeze North Korean government assets in the United States, bans U.S. exports to, or investment in, North Korea, and expands a U.S. blacklist to anyone, including non-Americans, who deals with North Korea. North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7 in defiance of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North has called annual joint drills by U.S. and South Korean troops that began on March 7 "nuclear war moves" and threatened to wipe out its enemies. The U.S. and South Korea remain technically at war with the North because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armed truce instead of a peace agreement. In recent weeks, the two Koreas have suspended economic ties over the mounting tensions. South Korea and U.S. officials this month began discussions on deploying the advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to the U.S. military in the South, despite Chinese and Russian objections. On Wednesday, North Korea's supreme court sentenced a visiting American student to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state, a punishment Washington condemned as politically motivated. (Additional reporting by Tokyo newsroom, Phil Stewart in Washington and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Bill Tarrant and James Dalgleish)
By Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Following are key elements and negotiating difficulties in a draft EU plan to have Turkey stem the flow of migrants to Greek islands in return for financial and political concessions: 1. RETURNS Turkey to take back anyone who crosses to Greek islands from its coast without regular travel papers. Problems: - Greece needs to set up tribunals to hear asylum claims and appeals quickly. - Turkey needs to amend legislation so that the EU can say it is a "safe third country" for refugees who are sent back. The United Nations and rights bodies are skeptical about the plan. - Returns cannot start until Turkey agrees at least a basic level of protection to all nationalities returned to its soil. At present it only grants such protection to Syrians, but non-Syrians make up two-thirds of the migrants. - The draft does not say when the scheme starts. Diplomats say Germany is keen for it to begin as soon as possible, so that people arriving on Greek islands as early as Monday could be held for expulsion back to Turkey. Greece says its services are not ready. EU officials fear delay may fuel a rush to cross the Aegean before any deadline. 2. RESETTLEMENT For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU, with priority given to those who have not previously crossed to Greece. Problems: - EU states are divided on sharing out asylum seekers. They have outstanding voluntary offers to resettle only about 18,000. - A further 54,000 places could be offered by tweaking a scheme intended to relocate people from one EU state to another. But eastern states oppose those obligatory quotas. - If more than 72,000 places are needed, there would be more arguments about who would provide them. But officials say if that number of Syrians are still reaching Greece, the entire scheme, intended as a deterrent, may be considered a failure. 3. ALTERNATIVE ROUTES Turkey to work with EU to bar other routes. Problems: - Bulgaria is especially concerned about its Turkish border. - There are signs more people may try to sail to Italy. 4. LONGER TERM RESETTLEMENT In the longer run, once EU states are satisfied that Turkey has really stopped the flow of migrants across the Aegean, the EU is offering to admit more refugees directly from Turkey. EU member states would make voluntary offers of the number they are willing to resettle. Problem: Governments face voters hostile to immigration. 5. VISA LIBERALIZATION Turkey to fulfill remaining requirements - about half of 72 criteria - by the end of April so the EU executive can recommend EU states to waive visas for Turks on brief trips by the end of June. Problems: - Many governments, notably France, do not want Turks coming to Europe without visas, partly on security grounds, partly due to popular fears it would mean more immigration - though only the few with modern, biometric passports would be eligible. - Among the EU criteria are that Cypriots be treated like other EU citizens, something Turkey rejects since it does not recognize Cyprus as a state. Ankara has raised expectations at home of visa-free travel, making this a tough issue to crack. 6. AID FOR REFUGEES EU ready to double its aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey to 6 billion euros up to the end of 2018. Problem: EU governments are arguing about where the money comes from and whether it is premature to promise without seeing that Turkey is delivering on agreements first made in November. 7. FASTER EU MEMBERSHIP TALKS "The EU, together with Turkey, will prepare for the decision on the opening of new chapters in the accession negotiations as soon as possible." Problem: Many EU states see little or no prospect of Turkey joining in the foreseeable future. Cyprus has vetoed opening several "chapters" in a dispute relating to Ankara's refusal to recognize Cypriot statehood. The draft wording is conditional and vague enough for Nicosia, but will Turkey accept it? 8. SYRIA SAFE AREAS EU ready to help Turkey help Syrians be better off and safer within their own country. Problem: EU has no military clout and member states which do are wary of Turkey's proposal of "safe areas" in northern Syria. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Paul Taylor and Andrew Heavens; @macdonaldrtr)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council expressed concern Thursday over an escalating row with Morocco over Western Sahara, but did not ask Rabat to drop plans to impose a drastic cut in staff at the UN mission in the disputed territory.

Morocco has ordered 84 staffers from MINURSO to leave in the coming days, a move the United Nations says will cripple the mission that was set up in 1991 after a ceasefire was reached.

"The council has expressed serious concerns," Angolan Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins, who holds this month's council presidency, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

"We have decided that we should all look bilaterally at continuing our engagement to make sure that the situation is stabilized when it comes to the work of that mission, mandated by the Security Council," he said.

There was no appeal to Morocco to reverse its decision, nor was there any expression of support for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who has been locked in a public dispute with Rabat.

During a recent trip to North Africa, Ban angered Rabat when he used the word "occupation" to describe the status of Western Sahara.

The UN chief then angrily accused Rabat of staging protests directed against him during which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators carried banners denouncing Ban's "lack of neutrality."

In response, Morocco decided to cut $3 million in funding for the UN mission and expel the MINURSO staff, decisions Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar said were "irreversible."

During his briefing to the council, the UN's top political affairs official, Jeffrey Feltman, asked the 15 members to back a UN request to scrap or ease the punitive measures against MINURSO, UN diplomats said.

- Cuts to UN mission -

Morocco's decision to remove 84 people from the 500-strong MINURSO was described as a crippling blow to the mission, affecting drivers, technicians and communications experts.

Story continues

"It hits the mission across the board," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, describing the decision as unprecedented and in violation of Morocco's agreement with the United Nations as host country.

Feltman told the council that the military force cannot operate without the civilian component and called for the "unified support" of the 15 members of the panel, UN diplomats said.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since the 1991 ceasefire ending a war that broke out when Morocco deployed its military in the former Spanish territory in 1975.

Morocco considers the territory as part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged.

"What Morocco is proposing is to put an end to the mission," said Ahmed Boukhari, the representative at the United Nations of the Polisario Front, which is campaigning for independence for Western Sahara.

"That would mean the shortest way to the resumption of war," he said.

Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara has been one of the most sensitive issues on the UN agenda, with Rabat sparing no effort to enlist support from council members Egypt, France, Spain and Russia for its stance.

The foreign minister recalled that Morocco was cooperating in international efforts to combat extremist groups and address the problem of foreign fighters joining groups such as the Islamic State.

"How can we accept these roles played by Morocco in the UN and stab Morocco in the back? This is not coming from a responsible approach, this is adventurism," he told reporters.

Mezouar said, however, that Morocco had decided against withdrawing its 2,100 peacekeeping troops from UN missions, dropping an initial threat to do so.
By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A small Native American community in coastal Louisiana is to be resettled after losing nearly all its land partly due to rising seas, a first in the United States. The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a Native American tribe living in the Louisiana coastal wetlands, has lost some 98 percent of its land since the 1950s. This is the first time an entire community has had to be relocated due in part to rising sea levels, said Marion McFadden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The land loss is also due to factors such as erosion and sediment mismanagement, a Louisiana official said. The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw have lived and fished on the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana's coastal south since the 1800s, a tribe's spokesman said. But land loss has caused the island to shrink from some 15,000 acres to a strip of about a quarter-mile wide by a half-mile long, a study by Northern Arizona University shows. From a peak of some 400 inhabitants, only around 100 remain. The loss of land to the sea and houses to hurricanes have caused families to leave, said Boyo Billiot, the tribe's deputy chief said in a telephone briefing to reporters. "No one likes to leave an area where they have history, a lot of memories," said Billiot. "We are people of the bayou. Water has played a central role in who we are." Climate advocacy group Climate Nexus said the relocation of the tribe was creating new "refugees" of climate change. But Louisiana and federal government officials offered a different interpretation. "We really don't think of the community as refugees. I think of refugees as being scattered and chaotic retreat. This is a resettlement and we are careful to use that word," said Patrick Forbes, a Louisiana state official. The relocation would be subsidized by around $48 million in government funds, said Forbes, and would take a few years to complete. Louisiana's coast has been sinking at a fast pace compared to most U.S. coastal areas, a phenomenon officials attribute to sea levels rise but also erosion, the official said. Sea levels have already risen by some 8 inches in coastal Louisiana over the last 50 years or so. According to a 2014 U.S. government report, as global sea levels continue to rise, relative sea leave rise will be greater along some coasts such as in Louisiana and Texas. The continuous decline of the band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw population has been threatening the tribe's ancestral traditions, including those related to fishing such as the weaving of catch nets. "As the people leave out, culture goes with it," said Billiot. Reflecting on the tribe's attachment to Isle de Jean Charles, he recalled his late grandfather's prophetic words. "He said...'The people will have to leave from the island'. But he said you all don't disturb the dead that are buried there because now a lot are in the water where the graves were at." (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Sao Paulo (AFP) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's supporters took to the streets to fight back at attempts to oust her, as a flurry of court battles raged over her controversial cabinet appointment of predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Waving the red flags of the ruling Workers' Party, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the country's largest city, Sao Paulo, greeting Lula with thunderous cheers when he was hoisted onto a parked truck to address the crowd.

But the ruling party's nationwide show of force drew less than one-tenth as many people as huge protests Sunday calling for Rousseff's ouster, according to police estimates that put the turnout at 267,000 in 55 cities across Brazil.

The leftist president's camp put the figure much higher, at 1.2 million -- still below the three million police counted Sunday.

With Rousseff fighting a newly relaunched impeachment bid and financial markets apparently betting her government will collapse, the Workers' Party sought to show it still retains the support that made it the dominant force in Brazilian politics over the past 13 years.

Rousseff's move to make her embattled mentor her chief of staff has triggered outrage among opponents, who filed some 50 court cases challenging the nomination over allegations that Lula was seeking ministerial immunity to avoid arrest in an explosive corruption scandal.

A Rio de Janeiro federal court ruling blocking him from taking up his new post was overturned on appeal.

But Brazilian media soon reported that a new federal court injunction suspending the appointment had been leveled.

Dozens of similar challenges are pending, and the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the government's request to definitively settle the matter.

- 'Right-wing coup' -

Rousseff accuses her enemies of mounting a "coup" against her.

Lula, speaking at the rally Friday, told supporters "We won't accept a coup."

Story continues

"It's absurd what they're doing to Lula, an attack on a person who has done so much for this country and its neediest people," said 53-year-old housewife Maria do Carmo Zafonatto in Sao Paulo, where Lula launched his political career as a union leader in the 1980s.

"This is a coup by the right. That's why I'm here, to defend democracy."

Maria Cicera Salles, a 60-year-old government worker, said "rich people" fear Lula.

"They want to get rid of him because they're afraid he'll run (for president) in 2018 and win. They're massacring him. It's a crime," she told AFP.

No clashes were reported at the demos, which had raised fears of violence in a climate of soaring tensions.

On Friday morning, riot police in Sao Paulo fired stun grenades and water cannons to disperse some 150 hard-core anti-government protesters.

The group had been camped out for nearly two days, blocking the very same avenue where Rousseff's supporters later marched.

The ongoing protests come against the backdrop of new impeachment proceedings against the 68-year-old Rousseff.

An impeachment committee in the lower house of Congress held its first session Friday, saying it expected to reach a decision within a month on whether to recommend removing the president.

Its recommendation will then pass to the full chamber, where a vote by two-thirds of the 513 lawmakers would trigger an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Rousseff is accused of manipulating the government's accounts to boost public spending during her 2014 re-election campaign, and again in 2015 to mask a deep recession.

- Pandemonium in Brasilia -

The battle to own the streets follows a day of pandemonium in Brasilia, where Rousseff swore in Lula, 70, as her new chief of staff Thursday -- only to have the courts block the appointment.

The Rio federal court intervened after a crusading anti-corruption judge leaked a wiretapped phone call suggesting the president was trying to shield her mentor from prosecution on money-laundering charges.

Lula, who stepped down in 2011 after presiding over an economic boom, is charged with accepting a luxury apartment and a country home as bribes from construction companies implicated in a multi-billion-dollar corruption scam at state oil company Petrobras.

He denies involvement.

Recent polls show Rousseff's popularity rating is down to about 10 percent and 60 percent of Brazilians would support her impeachment.
By Humeyra Pamuk and Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union sealed a controversial deal with Turkey on Friday intended to halt illegal migration flows to Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara. The accord aims to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before marching north to Germany and Sweden. But deep doubts remain about whether it is legal or workable, a point acknowledged even by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been the key driving force behind the agreement. "I have no illusions that what we agreed today will be accompanied by further setbacks. There are big legal challenges that we must now overcome," Merkel said after the 28 EU leaders concluded the deal with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. "But I think we've reached an agreement that has an irreversible momentum," Merkel said, adding it showed that the EU was still capable of taking difficult decisions and managing complex crises. Under the pact, Ankara would take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea. In return, the EU would take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks. Migrants who arrive in Greece from Sunday will be subject to being sent back once they have been registered and their individual asylum claim processed. The returns are to begin on April 4, as would resettlement of Syrian refugees in Europe. While many in Brussels hailed the agreement as a game-changer, Amnesty International decried it as a "historic blow to human rights", saying Europe was turning its back on refugees. "Guarantees to scrupulously respect international law are incompatible with the touted return to Turkey of all irregular migrants," the rights advocacy group said, criticizing Ankara's track-record on human rights. "Turkey is not a safe country for refugees and migrants, and any return process predicated on it being so will be flawed, illegal and immoral." Turkey's human rights record has drawn mounting criticism amid a crackdown on Kurdish separatists, arrests of critical journalists and the seizure of its best-selling newspaper. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte sought to reverse the narrative, saying the idea was to discourage illegal and perilous voyages across the Aegean and open legal paths to Europe instead. "There is nothing humanitarian in letting people, families, children, step on boats, being tempted by cynical smugglers, and risk their lives," he said. DOABLE? The EU would also accelerate disbursement of 3 billion euros already pledged in support for refugees in Turkey and provide a further 3 billion by 2018. It would help Greece set up a task force of some 4,000 staff, including judges, interpreters, border guards and others to manage each case individually. "All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey. This will take place in full accordance with EU and international law, excluding any kind of collective expulsion," the deal said. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it would be a Herculean task for Greece to handle the returns and the chairman of the EU leaders' summits, European Council President Donald Tusk, said the deal was not a silver bullet. "Reality is more complex," Tusk said, noting a broader EU strategy to control migration that included keeping the land route from Greece to Germany closed to irregular migrants. Just as the deal was clinched, Turkey said it had intercepted hundreds of migrants trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos. "It's a historic day today because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU," Davutoglu said. "Today we realized that Turkey and EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future." Turkey's four-decade-old dispute with Cyprus had been a key stumbling block. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades insisted there could be no opening of new "chapters" in Turkey's EU talks until Ankara de facto recognizes the Cypriot state. But the issue was sidestepped as EU leaders agreed to open a negotiating chapter that was not one of the five blocked by Nicosia. Anastasiades said he was "fully satisfied" after the sides agreed to swiftly open only chapter 33 on budget policy. Ankara's central objective -- visa-free travel for Turks to Europe by June -- would still depend on Turkey meeting 72 long-standing EU criteria. Facing a backlash from anti-immigration populists across Europe, the EU is desperate to stem the influx but faced legal obstacles to blanket returns of migrants to Turkey. EU partners would provide additional manpower and resources to help Athens cope with the new challenge and with a backlog of 43,000 migrants already bottled up on its territory. While the talks were in progress, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the EU of hypocrisy over migrants, human rights and terrorism, as supporters of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) set up protest tents near the summit venue. Erdogan said Europe was "dancing in a minefield" by directly or indirectly supporting terrorist groups. "At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves," he said in a televised speech. (Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Robin Emmott, Paul Taylor, Andreas Rinke, Gabriela Baczynska, Julia Fioretti, Jan Strupczewski, Humeyra Pamuk, Alastair Macdonald, Elizabeth Pineau, Tom Koerkemeir in Brussels and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Writing by Paul Taylor and Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Catherine Evans)
Fall Kills Construction Worker at LA's Wilshire Grand Site

Just four days earlier, construction workers and contractor personnel celebrated the building's topping out ceremony.

A construction worker at the Wilshire Grand construction site in Los Angeles died in a 53-story fall on March 17. Just four days earlier, construction workers and contractor personnel had celebrated the building's topping out ceremony.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the construction worker fell around 12:08 p.m. from the downtown building, which will be the citys tallest building, thanks to a 160-foot spire at its top, when it opens in 2017.

The man's body struck the rear of a car that was traveling on the street below. Its driver was shaken up but uninjured, according to the newspaper's report.

Windows have not yet been installed on the 53rd floor from which the man fell, but that floor is outfitted with an 8-foot-high metal barrier intended to keep workers, building materials and tools from falling from the tower, Veronica Rocha, James Queally, and Thomas Curwen reported.
OSHA Launches Nebraska Local Emphasis Program in Meat Processing Industry

The program calls on employers to reduce the most common musculoskeletal, repetitive motion injuries.

OSHA reports that Nebraska workers in the meat processing industry are more likely to be injured on the job than almost any other industry in the state. This has led the agency to launch a new local emphasis program that will concentrate education and enforcement efforts on common meat processing industry hazards, such as musculoskeletal and repetitive motion injuries, machine guarding, control of hazardous energy, and process safety management.

The agency cites Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate 7.5 percent of meat processing workers experienced recordable injuries or illness in 2014.

"The local emphasis program on the meat processing industry provides outreach and education to assist employers to eliminate hazardous working conditions," said Jeff Funke, OSHA area director in Omaha. "Workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths are always preventable when employers implement a safety and health program focused on hazard identification, corrective actions and employee training."

The emphasis program is scheduled to end Sept. 30, 2016, unless it is extended.
Britain leaving the European Union could be like Singapore becoming independent from Malaysia in 1965, a top British financier said on Friday, playing down the potential impact of Brexit on the City of London.

"When Singapore became independent from Malaysia, that little insecurity that they were no longer part of Malaysia, it was an inspiration," Peter Hargreaves told BBC radio.

"I honestly think that would be good for us too," said Hargreaves, the co-founder of stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown, which is in the FTSE-100 list of top companies listed on the London stock market.

Surveys show a majority of British businesses want to stay in the EU and the City of London's governing body also favours a "Remain" vote in the referendum on June 23.

But there is some support for Brexit, including from smaller companies which complain about excessive EU bureaucracy and business leaders who say Britain could negotiate better trade deals on its own.

"We raise money for the Russians, we raise money all over the world, for countries that are not in Europe," Hargreaves said.

"They've got to use London. London can raise billions on a few phone calls."

He added: "I'm firmly convinced, that the day -- hopefully -- we decide to leave, that little bit of insecurity, that little bit of unknown, will be an absolute fillip to everyone."

The Leave.EU campaign group said it was "absolutely thrilled" at his support.

"When true entrepreneurs like him come out to say that leaving the EU is a once in a lifetime opportunity, people listen," said spokesman Andy Wigmore.

Polling shows support for a "Remain" vote is slightly ahead of "Leave" but up to 20 percent of voters remain undecided.
Fast food giant Domino's is to trial pizza delivery robots in New Zealand, it said Friday, describing the hi-tech, driverless units as a world first.

In a move enthusiastically backed by the New Zealand government, Domino's said it was working with authorities on plans to roll out its DRU (Domino's Robotic Unit).

The four-wheeler, developed in Australia, is just under a metre (three foot) high and contains a heated compartment that can hold up to 10 pizzas.

It is battery powered and uses on-board sensors to avoid obstacles, with Domino's saying it can deliver pizzas within a 20 kilometre (12.5 mile) radius of a store before returning to recharge.

Customers are given a code when they order, which they enter onto a keypad to unlock the compartment containing their pizza.

"DRU is cheeky and endearing and we are confident that one day he will become an integral part of the Domino's family," the chain's New Zealand general manager Scott Bush said.

"He's a road to the future and one that we are very excited about exploring further."

While a date for the trial is yet to be finalised, Transport Minister Simon Bridges said the government working with Domino's on the project and was keen for it to proceed.

"This is an exciting opportunity for New Zealand... over the last 12 months I've been actively and aggressively promoting New Zealand as a test bed for new transport technology trials," he said.

New Zealand is still working on regulations relating to driverless vehicles such as the DRU, which is designed to operate on both roads and footpaths.
French lawmakers have voted to slash a surtax on imported palm oil -- dubbed the Nutella tax because the commodity is used in the popular chocolate spread -- after protests from top growers Indonesia and Malaysia.

The lower house National Assembly on Thursday voted to impose a surtax of 30 euros ($34) per tonne for next year, on top of an existing 104 euro levy, one-tenth of the surtax approved by the Senate.

The upper house, under pressure from environmentalists, had earlier approved a tax of 300 euros per tonne of palm oil, which is blamed for the destruction of huge swathes of rainforest to make way for vast palm tree plantations.

The Senate measure would have raised the tax to 500 euros in 2018, 700 in 2019 and 900 from 2020, while the lower house schedule would stay at one-tenth of those levels, rising to 90 euros in 2020.

The surtax is part of a bill on biodiversity that is to return to the Senate for a second reading, but the lower house will have the final say.

Indonesia had decried the Senate's proposed surtax as "arrogant" and "excessive" and a move that could threaten bilateral ties.

The greatly reduced surtax is "more realistic," said Barbara Pompili, a junior minister responsible for biodiversity issues.

Lawmaker Jean-Louis Bricout of the ruling Socialist Party added that it was out of the question to "suddenly destabilise supplies to companies in France, or the revenue of the producers of these oils, who are mainly in developing countries."

It was the third time since 2012 the tax has come up before the parliament.

Environment Minister Segolene Royal last year rankled Ferrero, the Italian company that makes Nutella, by urging people to stop eating the chocolate hazelnut spread, saying it contributes to deforestation.

She had to apologise a few days later for saying that Nutella, which is immensely popular in France, should be made from "other ingredients".

At 104 euros per tonne, palm oil is among the least taxed edible oils in France, where olive oil is taxed at 190 euros a tonne.

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While France imports only 150,000 tonnes of palm oil, of the total world output of 62 million, Indonesia and Malaysia fear that other consumers may follow its lead if it imposes an exorbitant green surtax.

Socialist lawmaker Anne-Yvonne Le Dain noted the inconsistency of targeting palm oil.

"We import little palm oil, but we import massive amounts of coffee, rubber, chocolate and peanuts" without concern for the deforestation those commodities entail, she said.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front seized bases and weapons from a Western-backed rebel group in overnight fighting in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Observatory, said the Nusra Front had also detained dozens of members of the 13th Division rebel group, one of the factions that has received foreign military aid, capturing U.S.-made anti-tank missiles. The 13th Division, which is led by the prominent rebel commander Ahmed al-Seoud and fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, said on Twitter that Nusra Front fighters attacked its bases and seized weapons, but gave no further details. Nusra Front accused the rebel fighters of launching surprise attacks on its own bases in the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province in northwest Syria. It said some Nusra fighters had been captured. The clashes came two weeks into a cessation of hostilities in Syria and on the eve of peace talks in Geneva between President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition. The halt in fighting, agreed by government forces, rebel groups and their international backers, excludes Nusra Front and Islamic State militants. Nusra Front fighters have often taken part in offensives alongside other rebel groups. But they have also fought them for territory, defeating groups such as the Western-backed Syria Revolutionaries Front and the Hazzm group last year. (Writing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans; Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
In the sun-soaked coastal city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, shopkeeper Khaled says he already misses the sound of Russian warplanes screaming overhead. When the stylish young man heard that Moscow would pull the bulk of its airforce out of Syria, he was devastated. "We don't want them to go, because we love them," the 30-year-old said, describing Russian soldiers as "kind-hearted and mild-mannered". Russian planes have been flying back home from Syria since Tuesday after President Vladimir Putin gave the surprise order to draw down Moscow's forces in the war-torn country. The Kremlin leader said his forces had achieved their military goals and expressed hope that ongoing peace talks in Geneva would put an end to the five-year war. Since the launch of their air campaign in Syria on September 30, several thousand Russian soldiers stationed at Hmeimim air base would venture into nearby Latakia during their spare time. The city and broader province of the same name are the heartland of Assad and his minority Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam. Russian servicemen would eat traditional meals at Syrian restaurants and buy trinkets and souvenirs from shops like Khaled's. He told AFP that several of his "Russian friends" came to bid him goodbye before they flew back to Moscow. "I don't know what the future has in store for us. I'm definitely afraid, but I hope God will protect this country," Khaled said. "We used to feel happy hearing the roar of airplanes above us -- they made us feel safe." - An economic boon - Air strikes by Russia's warplanes helped regime loyalist fighters advance in rural Latakia, nearby Aleppo province, and Daraa in southern Syria. On Friday, Russia's armed forces said jets were still flying "20 to 25 combat sorties each day" to back a government offensive to retake the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State jihadist group. In Latakia, posters of Putin and former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashar, hang side-by-side in Mouin's sandwich shop. The thin employee slices shreds of chicken off a spit to make a "shawarma" sandwich -- a favourite of his Russian clientele. For nearly six months, Mouin's small restaurant was overflowing with "Russian soldiers and their families tasting our sandwiches". "The Russians leaving will definitely affect the economic activity here," Mouin said worriedly. One of his favourite customers, a Russian serviceman, visited his sandwich shop on Tuesday to tell him: "Sadly, this is the last sandwich I'll eat in your shop because I have to leave." But Mouin said he's also concerned that Moscow's drawdown could slow -- or reverse -- the army's recent military gains on the ground. "This is a loss both materially and in terms of morale, because the Russians pushed a lot of military operations forward and scored speedy victories," he said. - 'Why would they do this?' - Along the Mediterranean seafront corniche, Russian flags billow in the spring breeze as families wander down to the sea. University student Alaa al-Sayyed, 22, said he was "shocked" when he heard Russia was withdrawing. "Why would they do this? Now is the height of their progress," he said. "Of course, the Syrian army was protecting our country even before the Russians showed up. But I'm afraid things will start regressing, especially since the biggest victories scored by the government were with Russian support," Alaa said. But in the nearby Dahiya Tishreen neighbourhood, Tareq Shaabo remained confident. "They will not let us down," said the owner of the popular coffee shop "Moscow Cafe." He says he opened the cafe back in 2012 and has offered Russian customers free drinks. "Russia announced a timeframe for its military operations in Syria. This timetable has expired, they finished their mission, and they withdrew," Shaabo said. Russia's presence gave Syrian citizens in Latakia a huge "morale boost", but it also changed the fortunes of government forces in the long term, according to Shaabo. Moscow's air war "destroyed the military, economic, and human resources of the armed (opposition) groups," giving Syria's army an advantage even in the event of a withdrawal. "Russia will not change its position towards Syria. it still supports us, but it will now pursue a political approach" to end the conflict, he said.
By Megha Rajagopalan BEIJING (Reuters) - Over two weeks after the United Nations slapped harsh new sanctions on North Korea, several Chinese shipping and trade sources say they have not been told of any curbs on the import of coal from the isolated nation - a lifeline for its struggling economy. China accounts for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade and its help is crucial in enforcing the sanctions announced by the United Nations on March 2 to punish Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Coal is particularly important to the economic health of North Korea because it is one of its only sources of hard currency and its largest single export item. Coal is also bartered for essentials, including oil, food and machinery. Although some curbs have been put in place in the border city of Dandong, half a dozen trade and shipping sources at ports in northeastern China said they had received no instructions from the government on any new rules on coal imports from North Korea. The ports account for the bulk of the coal trade between the two countries. "At this point, nobody has come to us and said you shouldn't do it," said an official at a company in the port city of Dalian that imports North Korean coal and other goods. "I'm not even clear on what the specific sanctions are." "It's chaos - at this time nobody knows what the impact will be on us and it's tough to tell," he added. International sanctions experts said U.N. members are expected to implement sanctions immediately, and it was not too early to expect signals of enforcement, including in trade. In practice, however, U.N. resolutions are often inconsistently enforced. China is North Korea's closest ally, but supported the U.N. resolution as it has become increasingly critical of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes. Nevertheless, Beijing prizes stability on the Korean peninsula and fears that any widespread unrest there could send millions of refugees across the border. Beijing has barred a North Korean freighter from one of its ports and blacklisted 31 vessels covered by the U.N. sanctions, but Chinese officials and experts have expressed concern that cracking down too stringently could result in disaster for the North's economy. China's Foreign Ministry said this week the country had always enforced U.N. sanctions and would "strictly manage" businesses accordingly. The Ministry of Transport did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The resolution bans U.N. member states from importing North Korean coal, iron and iron ore unless such transactions are for "livelihood purposes" and would not be generating revenue for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. WIDE EXEMPTION "I think it's an indication that the Chinese managed to negotiate a wide exemption for the coal trade," said Andrea Berger, deputy director of the proliferation and nuclear policy programme at the Royal United Services Institute. On Wednesday, the United States slapped harsh sanctions of its own on North Korea that included allowing Washington to blacklist any individuals, whether or not they were U.S. citizens, who deal with major sectors of North Korea's economy. Analysts say the reference to "livelihood purposes" in the U.N. resolution leaves open a window for China to continue trade with North Korea. "It's an explicit loophole," said Adam Cathcart, a specialist on China-North Korea ties at the University of Leeds. "Coal is a big lever for them. They're wise from the Chinese standpoint to keep some leeway (so) they're not branded as sanctions violators if a train goes from China to North Korea (carrying resources)." Last year, North Korean coal deliveries to China surged 26.9 percent to 19.63 million tonnes, making North Korea China's third biggest supplier behind Australia and Indonesia. China imported $1 billion worth of North Korean coal last year and $73 million worth of iron ore, according to Chinese customs data. "It's the source of hard currency to the government sector, and military sector as well," said Jong Kyu Lee of the Korea Development Institute. "Hard currency is very important to the North Korean economy." A coal trader in Dandong, the largest Chinese city on the border with the North, told Reuters his company had stopped importing coal and other products more than a month ago from North Korea, before the U.N. resolution was passed, because of policy concerns. But because North Korean coal arrives at an increasing number of ports around the country, enforcement of customs regulations must be coordinated nationally. However, China's coal trade is not completely centrally controlled. A shipping agent told Reuters that coal imports from North Korea to Lianyungang Port and Rizhao Port, both located in the country's north, can still be cleared by customs. "We've certainly had discussions about this (the sanctions) within the industry, but our business hasn't been impacted," said a representative from a Shandong-based trade logistics firm that specializes in importing coal from North Korea. "The government hasn't issued any notice to us about the sanctions." China has an incentive to show it is cracking down on trade in Dandong, experts said. "There is a visual element, the optics of sanctions enforcement," Cathcart said. "There are a lot of foreign journalists and other eyes on the border, everyone is watching Dandong. But the other areas on the border are much less scrutinised." (Additional reporting by Ruby Lian in SHANGHAI and Tony Munroe in SEOUL; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Turkish and EU leaders on Friday agreed a "historic" deal for curbing the influx of migrants that has plunged Europe into its biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II. Under the deal, all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey as early as Sunday will be turned back. But the leaders warned that a Herculean task lay ahead to implement the accord. And rights watchdogs said they would monitor it closely to ensure that those seeking asylum were protected. Turkey extracted a string of political and financial concessions in exchange for becoming a bulwark against the flow of desperate humanity heading to Europe from Syria and elsewhere. "It is a historic day because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the deal was struck at a summit in Brussels. "We today realised that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future." EU president Donald Tusk said that under the deal, all "irregular" migrants would be returned to Turkey from Sunday. For every Syrian refugee expelled, the EU would resettle one directly from Turkey. Tusk said the deal would only work as part of a broader plan, including support for Greece, the main point of entry for migrants to Europe, and cutting the flow of refugees through the Balkans to Germany. "Some may think this agreement is a silver bullet but reality is more complex," said Tusk, who has played a leading role in a crisis that has seen 1.2 million asylum seekers reach Europe since January 2015. - 'Herculean task' - Around 4,000 people including women and children have drowned crossing the Aegean Sea in flimsy smugglers' boats, including 400 this year alone. For its cooperation to stem the flow, Turkey won an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to six billion euros ($6.8 billion) and visa-free travel for its nationals to Europe's Schengen passport-free zone by June. But there remained huge doubts about how to implement such a scheme, not least due to still often-tense relations between Ankara and Brussels. "This is a Herculean task facing us," European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker told the press conference. He said some 4,000 border officials and other experts will need to start working immediately on implementing the deal that will cost the EU up to 300 million euros over six months. EU officials stressed that each application will be treated individually, with full rights of appeal and proper oversight. Turkish officials as well as UNHCR officials will be sent to the Greek islands to oversee the scheme. The deal also envisages major aid for Greece, where tens of thousands of refugees are already trapped in dire conditions after Balkan countries shut their borders. The deal will not affect the 46,000 migrants already in Greece, who will either be expelled as economic migrants or granted asylum. - 'Don't trade refugees - The United Nations and rights groups fear the deal could violate international law that forbids the mass deportation of refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stressed the right to asylum must be paramount. "Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution. Refugees need protection, not rejection," it said in a statement. Amnesty International set up a sign outside the summit venue saying: "Don't trade refugees". The deal a "historic blow to human rights," Amnesty said. John Dalhuisen, Amnesty director for Europe and Central Asia accused the EU of seeking to "wilfully ignore its international obligations. EU states have expressed concerns about Ankara's human rights record, including its treatment of the Kurds and a crackdown on critics of the government. Far from the smiles in Brussels, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted the EU for taking a "handful of refugees" in contrast to the nearly three million Turkey is hosting. Erdogan also accused the Europeans of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels allegedly linked to the group. "European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield," he said. But one major hurdle that was overcome was opposition from Cyprus, which has long-standing tensions with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to recognise its government on the divided island. The migrant crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis described the overwhelmed border town of Idomeni where many of the migrants are camped out as a "modern-day Dachau". Some migrants, speaking in a rain-sodden makeshift camp, told AFP said they would stay, others that they would try to get across the border, and others said they were against moving to reception centres. Imen, a 17-year-old girl travelling with her brother, mother and two aunts, said, "We have to meet our father who is in Germany now. He left a few months ago to wait for us there. What are we going to do?"
AFP News

Pro-Russian authorities on Saturday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city "immediately" in the face of Kyiv's advancing counter-offensive. It comes as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a "massive attack" on Ukraine, following reported strikes on energy infrastructure that resulted in power outages across the country. And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became the latest world leader to reproach Moscow for its talk of using nuclear weapons. Kyiv's forces have been advancing along the west bank of the Dnipro river, towards the Kherson region's eponymous main city. Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow's troops, and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine's counter-offensive. In recent days, Russia has been moving residents in the region -- which Moscow claims to have annexed in September -- east to Russia, in efforts Kyiv has denounced as "deportations". "Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank" of the Dnipro river, the region's pro-Russian authorities announced on social media. A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had made the crossing. Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said Russians were removing property and documents from banks and the passport office as they withdrew. Ukraine's general staff said Moscow's forces had abandoned two more settlements in Kherson and were evacuating medical personnel from a third, accusing them of looting local civilians. - A 'serious threat' - Earlier Saturday, Japan's Kishida denounced Moscow's comments regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict. "Russia's act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable," he said. The 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use "must not be ended", said Kishida, speaking in Australia. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that the Russian army would be "annihilated" if Russia launched such an attack. Washington has also warned Moscow of "catastrophic" consequences should they use such weapons. Japan is the only country ever to have been hit with nuclear weapons: the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people, and the second US bomb on Nagasaki, three days later, which killed 74,000 people. - 'Afraid for our lives' - At a train station in the town of Dzhankoy in the north of Crimea, a peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Kherson residents were boarding a train for southern Russia, an AFP reporter saw Friday. "We are leaving Kherson because heavy shelling started there, we are afraid for our lives," said Valentina Yelkina, a pensioner travelling with her daughter. More than a million households in Ukraine have been left without electricity following Russian strikes on energy facilities across the country, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Saturday. Fresh Russian strikes targeted energy infrastructure in Ukraine's west, the national operator said earlier, with officials in several regions of the war-scarred country reporting power outages as winter approaches. Russians "carried out another missile attack on energy facilities of the main networks of Ukraine's western regions", Ukraine's energy operator Ukrenergo said on social media. "These are vile strikes on critical objects," said Zelensky. "The world can and must stop this terror." Power outages were reported in other parts of the country and local officials repeated calls to reduce energy use. Some parts of Ukraine have already cut their electricity use by up to 20 percent, according to Ukrenergo. "Saturday in Ukraine starts with a barrage of Russian missiles aimed at critical civilian infrastructure," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. He once again urged Kyiv's allies to hasten the delivery of air defence systems. In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, at least two civilians were killed in strikes on Saturday, according to the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. Nearly 15,000 people were left without electricity, he added. Russia last week reported a "considerable increase" in Ukrainian fire into its territory, saying attacks had largely concentrated on Belgorod region and neighbouring regions of Bryansk and Kursk. bur-imm/jj/ah
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Salah Abdeslam, a prime suspect in November's Islamist attacks in Paris, probably evaded a police raid in Brussels on Tuesday, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF said on Friday after investigators found his fingerprints at the scene. "According to our information, it is more than likely that he is one of the two individuals who escaped during the shootout," RTBF said on its website, referring to Tuesday's raid in which one Islamist gunman was shot dead by a police sniper. The public prosecutor's office, which is investigating the extensive involvement of Belgians and Brussels-based French nationals in the Nov. 13 Islamic State attacks on the French capital, could not immediately be reached for comment. Belgium's Belga news agency quoted the prosecutor's office as saying they had found fingerprints of Abdeslam in the apartment police raided in the suburban Brussels borough of Forest on Tuesday while other media said DNA was also found. Other media were more cautious on the implications of the find, saying it demonstrated that the 26-year-old Brussels-born Frenchman may have visited the apartment at some stage. Abdeslam's elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Paris during a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later. Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Barbara Lewis)
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has been well received. Photo: Epigram Books

A graphic novel about Singapores history has made the best-seller lists of both The New York Times (NYT) and Amazon, while garnering critical acclaim from numerous publications in the United States.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, by award-winning artist Sonny Liew, debuted at number eight on NYTs hardcover graphic novel best-seller list. This ranking (see below) was shared with Liew by the works US publisher, Pantheon Books, and the list is not yet available on the NYT website.



It has also topped Amazons graphic novel best-seller lists in three categories: literary, art of comics and manga, and historical and biographical fiction.

The comic is a meditation on Singapores history, socio-political issues, comic art history, censorship and more. It examines key incidents in Singapores history such as the Hock Lee Bus riots and includes the late Lee Kuan Yew and Lim Chin Siong as characters.



The likes of National Public Radio (NPR) and periodical The Economist have also lavished praise on the book. A reviewer for the latter called it brilliantly inventive, while NPR reviewer John Powers said it is a startlingly brilliant tour de force.

Photo: The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye Facebook page

All this is a far cry from Liews situation last May, when the National Arts Council withdrew an $8,000 publication grant for Charlie Chan, citing its sensitive content. Singapore publisher Epigram Books has since gone on to sell about 9,000 copies of the book in Singapore.

In response to queries from Yahoo Singapore, Liew said that he is just happy that its gotten such a good response. Asked what might account for its popularity among American readers, given its heavily Singapore-centric subject matter, Liew said, I think the way the story is told pushes the comic medium a little bit. And theres also the human interest element,as a lot of Charlies struggles are quite universal.

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Liew admitted that that he is excited, but also a bit anxious, adding, Once a book is on the list, you wonder how long itll stay there. But mostly you just enjoy the ride whilst it lasts.



One of Singapores most high-profile comics creators, Liew has also done extensive work for Marvel and DC Comics, including a revival of the iconic character Doctor Fate.

Next month, Liew embarks on a two-week book tour in the United States that will take in major literary events such as the MoCCA Arts Festival, an independent comics showcase in New York.



Epigram Books publisher Edmund Wee said, We are happy for Sonny that the book is getting the acclaim it deserves. A great book knows no boundaries. We hope this will be the start of many others to come.

Award-winning Singaporean author Dave Chua, whose novel Gone Case was adapted into a graphic novel, also spoke enthusiastically about the success of Charlie Chan. I think its a great achievement and really wonderful that the book can find an audience beyond Singapore. Its a great comic that showcases the breadth of Sonnys skills, he said.


By Stephanie Nebehay and Angus McDowall GENEVA/RIYADH (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen may be responsible for "international crimes", a category that includes war crimes and crimes against humanity, the top U.N. human rights official said on Friday. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned an air strike in Yemen this week and added that the coalition was "responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together". More than 6,000 people have been killed since the coalition campaign began a year ago to fight Iranian-allied Houthis and forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and to restore the president they ousted, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri said on Friday major combat operations were less extensive than earlier in the war and there were "good signs" the U.N. might soon restart peace talks between warring Yemeni factions. Houthi officials travelled to Saudi Arabia this month for secret talks on the conflict that led to a pause in fighting on the border, a main battlefront of the war, and a prisoner exchange. Asseri said that despite those "positive signs", any formal peace talks would have to be carried out by Hadi's internationally recognised government, not by Saudi Arabia, and under a U.N. umbrella. Tuesday's strike near Mustaba in northwest Yemen hit an outdoor market and killed more than 100, a provincial health director and a U.N. official in Sanaa said, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the war. "These awful incidents continue to occur with unacceptable regularity. In addition, despite public promises to investigate such incidents, we have yet to see progress in any such investigations," Zeid said in a statement. "We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the Coalition," Zeid said. International crimes includes war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave violations of human rights. Saudi Arabia enjoys diplomatic backing and military help from the United States and other Western powers for its campaign in Yemen. The Obama administration is "deeply concerned by the devastating toll of the crisis in Yemen," a senior official said. It is urging all sides to comply with international humanitarian law and to minimize harm to civilians by taking steps including not positioning armaments or military equipment in places where civilians are known to gather. HOUTHI ATTACKS CONDEMNED Asseri urged the U.N. not to collect its information from those, like the provincial health director, employed by the Houthi-controlled administration in Sanaa. "We use the information coming from the (pro-Hadi) Yemeni army because they are on the ground. The attack was under the control of the Yemeni army. It gave the target," Asseri said in a phone interview. He forwarded a graphic prepared by Hadi's government that said the target of the air strike was a military area where Houthi forces had gathered and that "they deceived people by saying it was a market". A statement issued on Friday by Hadi's government said it had formed a committee to look into the bombing and whether it was the result of an air strike or of shelling by the Houthis, whom it accused of often blaming the coalition for attacks they carried out themselves. But Zeid's staff who visited the site of Tuesday's deadly strike and interviewed witnesses at al-Khamees market "found no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack", Zeid said. Coalition strikes "have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties  and hundreds of private residences," he added. There were 24 children among the 106 reported dead at Mustaba. Zeid also condemned indiscriminate ground attacks carried out by the Houthis and their allies which have killed civilians, saying these may also amount to international crimes. Asseri told Reuters: "Today, we have less of what in military science we call major combat, where we use a lot of forces. Today, most of the forces are in the phase of stabilising," he said, adding that military operations continued, particularly near Sanaa. The pause in fighting on the border, and the breaking of a Houthi siege on the city of Taiz in the south, both mediated with the help of local tribes, was part of a wider effort to reinvigorate the political process, he said. "When you increase the political process you decrease the military one to give the opportunity to talk. Today we want to give the ability to encourage and relaunch again the talks to come up with a political solution," he said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Angus McDowall, additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Andrew Roche, Bernard Orr)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and the Philippines have agreed on five locations for U.S. military bases in the Philippines under a security agreement inked amid rising tensions with China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said on Friday. The U.S. State Department named the five as Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Amy Searight said the deal was reached under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) signed last year that grants Washington increased military presence in its former colony through rotation of ships and planes for humanitarian and maritime security operations. Searight told the opening of the annual U.S.-Philippines Bilateral Strategic Dialogue in Washington that Manila was a "critical U.S. ally" and ties had never been stronger. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is set to visit the Philippines in April. Searight also said the Pentagon had told the U.S. Congress of its intention to provide $50 million to help build maritime security in the region and that the Philippines would get "the lions share." The funds are expected to go towards improving radar and other monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, where China's pursuit of territorial claims has raised U.S. concerns and those of rival claimants, including the Philippines. In January, the Philippines said it had offered eights bases for U.S. use, including the former U.S. air force base of Clark and the former U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay, and two sites on Palawan island near the South China Sea. Philippines Defense Undersecretary Pio Lorenzo Batino said Manila was pleased with the finalization of the locations. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said the deal would speed U.S. help in response to natural disasters and facilitate modernization of the Philippines armed forces. He said it came at an important time ahead of a ruling in a case the Philippines has brought against China over its South China Sea claims in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague. On Thursday, the U.S. Navy said it had seen activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more Chinese land reclamation in the South China Sea. Admiral John Richardson also expressed concern that the Hague ruling, which is expected in late May, could prompt Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in what is one of the world's busiest trade routes. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Grant McCool)
It follows closely the launch of Apples subsidiary Apple Vietnam LLC in Ho Chi Minh city last October

UPDATE 1: Bloomberg Hanoi has received confirmation from Apple that there would be no data centre in Vietnam. We will provide further updates once we have received further information.

Apple has announced that it will invest up to US$1 billion in a data centre in Vietnam according to a Viet Nam News Agency (VNA). It will be located in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, and will be used to carry out R&D.

The establishment of its own data centre is part of Apples strategy to reduce reliance on third-party data partners such as Amazon and Microsoft.

This will be Apples second venture into the Vietnamese market. Last October, Reuters reported that Apple invested VND15 billion (US$673,000) to build a subsidiary company Apple Vietnam LLC in the country. This will allow iPhone manufacturers to directly conduct sales in the market, and will also provide Apple-related information technology, maintenance as well as advising services.

Also Read: Startup Spring: A busy time ahead for Vietnams startups

Within the APAC region, Vietnam is currently the most lucrative market for Apple products. In the first half of 2014, iPhone sales in the country nearly tripled, surpassing even neighbouring China.

Apples major rival Samsung is also eyeing the Vietnamese market. It plans to open a US$300 million data centre also in Hanoi.

The Vietnam tech ecosystem has seen a flurry of investment activity in the past few months. Just yesterday, fintech startup MoMo announced that it raised US$28 million in Series B funding; Two weeks ago, leading startup accelerator and incubator 500 Startups launched a US$10 million micro-fund with a goal of investing up to 150 Vietnamese startups.

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The post [Updated] Apple to invest up to US$1B for data centre in Hanoi, Vietnam appeared first on e27.
Recalled paceman Mitchell McClenaghan grabbed three crucial wickets and then thanked his team's spinners Friday after New Zealand edged past Australia in a last-over thriller at cricket's World Twenty20. A year on from the Black Caps' heartache defeat to Australia in the 50-over World Cup final, New Zealand exacted revenge over their neighbours who were left to rue their decision to go with spin. Australia had appeared well set to chase down New Zealand's modest total of 142 for eight, needing a relatively straightforward 43 runs off the last five overs with six wickets in hand. But tight bowling from rookie spinners Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi put on the brakes before a devastating penultimate over from McClenaghan who finished with figures of three for 17. He conceded just three runs in his last six balls, taking the wickets of Mitchell Marsh and Ashton Agar after earlier snaring Shane Watson. It left Australia needing 19 runs in their last over bowled by Corey Anderson who just about held his nerve, conceding 10 runs. "Nice to perform like that but it was as a collective," said McClenaghan after being named man-of-the-match. "The spinners were fantastic and got us back in the game. It's nice to show some teams we can play in these conditions." Australian skipper Steve Smith agreed Sodhi and Santner had been the difference. "Obviously their spinners bowled extremely well, they ran through the middle," said Smith. "We didn't respond well, we lost wickets in clumps which you can't do in T20 cricket when you are chasing a total of 140." McClenaghan was a surprise replacement for Nathan McCullum, one of the heroes of New Zealand's dramatic victory over the hosts India on Tuesday. But skipper Kane Williamson's switch was vindicated in spectacular style while Australia came to regret picking two inexperienced spin bowlers in Agar and Adam Zampa. - Agar's game to forget - Agar had a game to forget, carted for three sixes in his one and only over. His first two balls were full tosses, dispatched over the ropes by Martin Guptill, who top-scored with 39 off 27 balls. Guptill and Williamson put on 61 in the first seven overs but the Black Caps' hopes of putting on a score close to 200 soon subsided. But poor shot selection and tight bowling from the veteran Watson and allrounders Glenn Maxwell and James Faulkner slowed their charge. Guptill was the first to go after racing to 39 off 27 balls, caught on the boundary by Maxwell off the bowling of Faulkner as he tried to go for another six at the beginning of the eighth over. Williamson and Anderson were then out in quick succession, both taken after they miscued expansive strokes. New Zealand never recovered their momentum and no batsman looked settled on what proved to be a slow pitch. Watson's first three overs yielded just 11 runs and he took the key wicket of Ross Taylor in his finale, one ball after being hit for six by the former Kiwi captain. Usman Khawaja and Watson got the Australian innings off to brisk start, putting on 44 before Watson fell. Khawaja stroked six fours in an attractive innings of 38 before he was run out just as he looked poised to post a big score. Australia seemed comfortably placed at the mid-way point in their innings, with 66 on the board. But David Warner perished in the first ball of the 11th over, holing out at deep mid-wicket after mistiming a pull shot off Santner. Sodhi conceded just 14 runs in his four overs while Santner took two for 30, figures slightly tarnished by two sixes off his last three balls. New Zealand's second win makes them firm favourites to reach the semi-finals of the tournament but is a big blow to Australia's hopes of winning a trophy that has so far proven elusive.
Tipping the balance in favor of traditional craftsmanship

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-18 10:22

Liu Guangcui runs a steelyard shop in Xiaomiao township in Hefei. The woman continues to practice the traditional craft of making the balances, which she learned from her father, despite shrinking demand for handmade steelyards.[Photo provided to China Daily]

With modern tools to measure weight widely available these days, craftspeople around the world are struggling to keep handmade steelyards from dying out.

Liu Guangcui, who inherited tools and techniques from her father more than two decades ago, is among the few Chinese makers of steelyards.

On a recent visit to her shop in Hefei city, capital of East China's Anhui province, Liu is seen setting dozens of scale markings on a straight beam made of mahogany. Once the beam is ready, she assembles the hook and sleeves made of copper. The entire process could take her days.

"To make a traditional Chinese steelyard, everything should be finished by hand," says Liu, 48.

The steelyard Liu is working on can weigh things up to 20 kilograms and takes about 48 hours to finish. The larger ones with weighing capacity of 150 kilograms or so take even longer.

Liu's shop, located in rural Xiaomiao township in Hefei's Shushan district, is popular among residents because "it seems buyers here don't have many choices", she says.

Her father had been engaged in the business since the 1950s.

"During my father's time, private businesses weren't permitted, so he would often travel to villages and make steelyards at buyers' homes," she says.

After the economy opened up in the late 1970s, the demand for steelyards increased sharply. Many more private businesses and street vendors got into the trade.

Liu Guangcui runs a steelyard shop in Xiaomiao township in Hefei. The woman continues to practice the traditional craft of making the balances, which she learned from her father, despite shrinking demand for handmade steelyards.[Photo provided to China Daily]

As the oldest daughter in her family, Liu inherited her father's business and opened a workshop in 1990.

In the first years of her business, there were many buyers of steelyards, she says. The prices back then averaged 10 yuan ($1.54).

The steelyards were also considered important for locals.

"Since steelyards are used to measure how much you harvest (among other things), Chinese people treasure them very much and hope they bring good luck."

During the Spring Festival, people often paste a piece of red paper with the characters huang jin wan liang ("thousands of kilograms of gold") on their steelyards, hoping for a good harvest in the new year, according to Liu.

The peak time for Liu's business came in the 1990s, when she was able to make several such steelyards and sell as many as 10 a day with the help of her husband, who had migrated to the city years before.

Liu's younger sister is in the same business in nearby Changfeng county. Their father didn't permit their younger brother to inherit the business as he wanted his son to receive a good education and have a different career. Besides Liu and her sister, their father taught the craft to six others, who ran their own businesses for several years before quitting.

"Nowadays there is just no need to hurry anymore," says Liu, who also started to sell electronic scales in 2008, when she moved her shop to a new street in Xiaomiao township.

Liu Guangcui runs a steelyard shop in Xiaomiao township in Hefei. The woman continues to practice the traditional craft of making the balances, which she learned from her father, despite shrinking demand for handmade steelyards.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Liu says she sold only 130 steelyards last year, which by no means encourages her to keep her business going.

Many buyers nowadays buy the steelyards not for weighing but for their cultural importance.

In Chinese, steelyard is pronounced cheng, which sounds similar to the word for "content".

In traditional Chinese weddings, the bride uses a piece of red cloth as a veil, and to unveil the red cloth, the groom often uses the beam of a steelyard instead of his hands, showing that he is "content with his wife".

"Though rare now, traditional weddings can still be seen in rural areas, so the steelyards are needed," says Liu, adding that there are also customers buying steelyards for collection purposes in the fear that they may disappear in the future.

"It is also my fear, but it seems I can do little to change the situation," she adds.

Video: Story of traditional Chinese steelyard craftsman
BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan pardoned 148 prisoners including journalists, rights activists and political opponents on Thursday, state media said, in an apparent move to deflect Western criticism of the ex-Soviet republic's human rights record. Analysts say President Ilham Aliyev has included some political prisoners in amnesties in recent years to deflect complaints over crackdowns on free speech in Azerbaijan, a major oil and natural gas exporter. Among those pardoned were rights advocates Taleh Khasmamadov, Hilal Mammadov and Rasul Jafarov, opposition National Statehood Party chief Nemat Panahli, six members of an opposition party and a civic youth movement, ex-election watchdog chief Anar Mammadli and journalist Parviz Hasimov. All were jailed after convictions on charges including tax evasion, illegal business activity and drug trafficking. Prominent journalist Rauf Mirkadyrov, convicted in 2014 of espionage and high treason which he denied, was also freed after the Baku court of appeals cut his six-year prison term to a five-year probation period. He was not in the amnesty list. Mirkadyrov and the other freed prisoners denied the charges against them, calling them politically motivated and fabricated. Mirkadyrov was a political correspondent at the independent Azeri Russian-language newspaper Zerkalo (Mirror) in Turkey, from where he was deported to Azerbaijan two years ago. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini welcomed the amnesty following talks she had in Baku two weeks ago, saying she hoped they would lead to releases of remaining imprisoned rights activists. About 10 are still jailed. The government says Azerbaijan, a Caspian Sea republic of about 9 million people sandwiched between Russia, Iran and Turkey, enjoys full freedom of speech and a free press. (Reporting by Nailia Bagirova and Margarita Antidze; Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Xiaoyi Shao and Clare Jim BEIJING (Reuters) - China's home prices rose at their fastest clip in almost two years in February thanks to red-hot demand in big cities, but risks of overheating in some places combined with weak growth in smaller cities threaten to put more stress on an already slowing economy. Average new home prices in 70 major cities climbed 3.6 percent in February from a year ago, quickening from January's 2.5 percent rise, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) on Friday. That was the quickest year-on-year increase since June 2014, and encouragingly, 32 of 70 major cities tracked by the NBS saw annual price gains, up from 25 in January. Ordinarily, that should be welcome news for policymakers who have rolled out a raft of stimulus measures to support an economy growing at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century. But the divergence in home prices - surging values in bigger cities and depressed markets in smaller cities plagued by a supply glut - makes Beijing's job harder as it looks to reanimate growth without inflating asset bubbles. "The governments all-out encouragement of housing sales seems to be working, but at the cost of surging prices in big cities," said Rosealea Yao, an economist at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing. "These surges in big cities are not sustainable and would increase uncertainties and instability in the overall housing market." The data showed tier 1 cities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, remained the top performers, with prices surging 56.9 percent, 20.6 percent and 12.9 percent respectively. SMALLER CITIES, BIGGER HEADACHES "Prices in first-tier cities are very expensive now, its hard for new families to afford a home," said Tan Huajie, vice president China's biggest property firm Vanke <2202.HK>. The trouble is that speculators and ordinary investors, who have been shaken by the summer crash in mainland stock markets, are increasingly ploughing their money into the housing market - most of it going to the frothy sector in big centres. A slowing economy has also meant most jobs are in the biggest cities, drawing more people into these places and feeding the insatiable demand for homes. A breakdown of NBS data showed that a slew of government measures and increased lending has failed to arrest persistent softness in property markets in smaller cities where a glut of unsold houses have weighed on prices. Most third-tier cities still saw on-year prices drops in February, though the declines eased from the previous month. POLICY CHALLENGE With the broader economy decelerating amid weak exports, factory overcapacity, slowing investment and high debt levels, authorities are hoping the property market will help stabilise growth. But signs that some places may be overheating even as prices remain depressed in smaller cities complicate matters for policymakers. While fears of a hardlanding for China's economy have abated in recent weeks, Beijing cannot afford a housing market crash in the big cities given the real estate industry and related investment activities account for 15 percent of gross domestic product. Underscoring the importance of the sector to the $10 trillion economy, Friday's home data helped fuel strong gains in steel and iron ore futures in Shanghai. Senior Chinese officials raised alarm over the country's overheated housing market during an annual parliament meeting this week. In an effort to deter speculation, some officials have suggested the release of more public land for sale in areas with the hottest price rises, while others have vowed to crack down on players illegally lending home-buyers to make downpayments. China's housing Minister Chen Zhenggao acknowledged on Tuesday that price divergence in China's big and small cities poses a challenge for housing market policy controls. "Now one important task for us is to stabilise home prices in tier 1 cities and some tier 2 cities," said Chen. (Reporting By Xiaoyi Shao and Nicholas Heath; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed its opposition on Thursday to unilateral sanctions against North Korea saying they could raise tension, after the United States imposed new curbs on the isolated country in retaliation for its nuclear and rocket tests. U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed sweeping new sanctions on North Korea intended to further isolate its leadership after recent actions seen by the United States and its allies as provocative. The new sanctions threaten to ban from the global financial system anyone who does business with broad swaths of North Korea's economy, including its financial, mining and transport sectors. The so-called secondary sanctions will compel banks to freeze the assets of anyone who breaks the blockade, potentially squeezing out North Korea's business ties, including those with China. Asked whether China was worried the sanctions could affect "normal" business links between Chinese banks and North Korea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said this was something China was "paying attention to". "First, as I've said many times before, China always opposes any country imposing unilateral sanctions," Lu told a daily news briefing in Beijing. "Second, under the present situation where the situation on the Korean Peninsula is complex and sensitive, we oppose any moves that may further worsen tensions there." "Third, we have clearly stressed many times in meetings with the relevant county, any so-called unilateral sanctions imposed by any country should neither affect nor harm China's reasonable interests." China is North Korea's sole major ally but it disapproves of its nuclear programme and calls for the Korean peninsula to be free of nuclear weapons. While China has signed up for tough new U.N. sanctions against North Korea, it has said repeatedly sanctions are not the answer and that only a resumption of talks can resolve the dispute over North Korea's weapons programme. The U.S. measures, which vastly expand a U.S. blockade of North Korea, prohibit the export of goods from the United States to North Korea. U.S. officials had previously believed a blanket trade ban would be ineffective without a stronger commitment from China, North Korea's largest trading partner. North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Jan. 6, and on Feb. 7 it launched a rocket that the United States and its allies said employed banned ballistic missile technology. China signed on to the new U.N. sanctions against North Korea this month. But U.S. officials and experts have often questioned China's commitment to enforcing sanctions on North Korea. China fears that too-harsh measures will destabilise the North. (Reporting By Ben Blanchard, Writing By Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Nick Macfie, Robert Birsel)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Cyprus said on Thursday it could use its veto to block an accord between Turkey and the EU to stem the migrant crisis if Ankara did not open its ports and airports to the island. In Brussels, European Union leaders are struggling to reach an accord with Turkey on how to stop a human tide of migrants and refugees fleeing conflict zones for Europe. Expediting Ankara's long-stalled EU entry talks was one of the conditions, touching a raw nerve with ethnically-split Cyprus. "Turkey has to open its harbours and airports (to Cypriot traffic) and normalise its relations with Cyprus, something that it doesn't do," Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told euronews in an interview. Anastasiades heads a Greek Cypriot government acknowledged to represent the whole island in the EU, though effective membership stops at a ceasefire line splitting the country in two. Northern Cyprus is a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state recognised only by Ankara, carved out of territory Turkey seized in a 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by a brief Greek inspired coup. Cyprus has blocked discussion on a number of EU policy areas, or "chapters" Turkey must conclude, partly because Ankara has not opened its ports and airports to Cypriot traffic. Asked if he would veto any deal which did not take Cypriot concerns into account, Anastasiades said: "Of course...As long as Turkey doesn't implement its obligations, we don't have any other choice." (Reporting By Renee Maltezou; Writing by Michele Kambas)
Brand takes visual route to promote green agenda

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-18 10:22

Pictures taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a director of Terra, while shooting the documentary[Photo provided to China Daily]

It's not the first time that luxury has been aligned with environmental causes, but probably the first time through a visual and emotional feast.

Swiss luxury watchmaker Omega recently held in Beijing a special screening of the documentary Terra, in collaboration with GoodPlanet Foundation, a Paris-based NGO that supports sustainability.

The 90-minute movie traces the natural history of the Earth and human beings, shedding light on how human activities have affected the planet and other living species.

Michael Pitiot, who directed the movie with renowned photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, attended the screening.

Pitiot says that he hopes Terra will raise the public's environmental awareness and encourage people to take responsibility to protect the Earth.

"The film is not about something that is far from us. It is about us, our history and the connection between humans and nature. As things are a little bad, we all need to be committed to the change," he says.

The movie took two years to make and features more than 20 countries including the rain forest in Venezuela, Botswana, Russia and China.

The director also worked with Li Gang, a renowned Chinese photographer who is best known for his shots of horses in the snow the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Pitiot recalls that they had to shoot with helicopters in Siberia. When in the rain forest in Venezuela, they set up a camp and stayed there for a week for the light to improve.

Aside from overall consideration for all living species, Pitiot calls for more awareness about small animals and plants.

Pictures taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a director of Terra, while shooting the documentary[Photo provided to China Daily]

"Conservation is mostly dedicated to big animals, symbolic ones like tigers ... We are forgetting about the rest, which might be more strategic for everybody. Many small, basic elements of life are dying because of chemical pollution and the changes on the ground. This is more dangerous. So we are engaged in something very tricky."

Making the movie has also transformed Pitiot's eating habits. He now eats less meat. He jokingly says that he has also stopped attacking spiders in his house as he used to.

"It's a small thing. But if 7 billion human do the same, that could change a lot of things. Small stories like this change the world."

The movie is the second documentary project between Omega and GoodPlanet, after the award-winning documentary Planet Ocean in 2012, which focuses on the marine world.

"What impresses me most is the freedom we had, which is something very valuable today. It's very rare to have partners who are able to understand that if something has to happen, everybody has to respect each one's expertise. Our relationship is based on trust and freedom," says Pitiot.

A company should go beyond its products and share its vision, as well as offer monetary support, with the rest of the world, says Jean-Pascal Perret, vice-president of communication and public relations of Omega.

"Many people think that when you share, it comes with a cost. In fact, sharing makes you richer. This experience has made me richer on a personal level, but also the company. So open your eyes and ears and especially your heart while watching this movie," he says.

Omega released its Seamaster Aqua Terra "Good Planet" collection in 2015. Part of proceeds from the sales will support an environmental project in Botswana.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him as he awaited a trial on treason and other charges, his spokesman said. Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the government to lift the travel ban on Musharraf, paving the way for him to leave the country. "General Pervez Musharraf has left the country for Dubai," his spokesman Mohammad Amjad told Reuters. The departure of Musharraf, who has faced a battery of court cases since returning home from self-imposed exile in 2013, will remove a source of friction between the army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Then army chief Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a 1999 coup and ruled Pakistan until 2008 when he stepped down in the face of widespread opposition to his rule. His lawyers argued that he needed to travel abroad for medical treatment and to visit his ailing mother in Dubai. (Reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Donald Trump

The Republican presidential race in Ohio is tightening, and it looks like a dogfight between local Gov. John Kasich and billionaire Donald Trump.

A new Quinnipiac University poll out on Monday morning found Kasich in a tie with Trump in one of the most important states of the entire primary.

The Buckeye State, with 66 delegates up for grabs, is the second-biggest winner-take-all state on the Republican side.

If Kasich loses his home state, he's said he would drop out of the race. If he wins Ohio, he predicted that the GOP would face a contested convention, in which no candidate gets a majority of delegates.

The Quinnipiac poll showed Trump and Kasich tied at 38%, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 15%, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 3%. Other recent polls found Kasich up by a few points over Trump.

Ohio and Florida are crucial for Trump's plan to wrap up the GOP nomination quickly, and the Republican frontrunner has invested a lot of his time in both states. Florida, like Ohio, is a large, winner-take-all state that will hold its primary on Tuesday.

Politico noted that the two primaries "will determine whether there's chaos or a coronation at the Cleveland convention" in July. Winning Ohio and Florida could propel Trump even further ahead of the other candidates in his delegate count, but losing both could set him back enough to call into question his status as the inevitable nominee.

Top GOP operatives have reportedly been discussing the possibility of a contested convention, in which the nomination is decided on the convention floor.

As Rubio is poised to lose his home state of Florida  polls found him losing to Trump by double-digit percentage points  a Kasich win in Ohio could help Republicans stop Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates necessary to lock up the nomination before the convention.

For his part, Trump has taken aim at Kasich as the race in Ohio tightened. In the week leading up to the primary, Trump trashed Kasich for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement while serving in Congress in the 1990s, questioned his strength as a leader, and called him an "absentee governor."

Story continues

But Trump has also expanded his focus to the other big states that will vote next Tuesday: North Carolina, Illinois, and Missouri. Even if Trump stumbles in Ohio, he could still be on solid footing going into the next round of contests.

NOW WATCH: 'Marco Rubio is trying to steal my girlfriend': Watch the bizarre moment a protester interrupted a Rubio rally





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The Independent

Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitters workforce if and when he becomes owner of the social media company, according to a report by The Washington Post.Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitters employee base of 7,500 workers, according to Thursday's report.If confirmed, the cuts would leave the company with a skeleton crew, according to the Post.The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.San Francisco-based Twitter and a representative for Musk attorney Alex Spiro did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.SEE MORE: What Happens If Elon Musk Buys Twitter?While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk's planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned.Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company's staff in the past, but he hadn't given a specific number - at least not publicly.Already, experts, nonprofits and even Twitter's own staff have warned that pulling back investments on content moderation and data security could hurt Twitter and its users.With as drastic a reduction as Musk may be planning, the platform could quickly become overrun with harmful content and spam.After his initial $44 billion bid in April to buy Twitter, Musk backed out of the deal, contending Twitter misrepresented the number of fake spam bot accounts on its platform.Twitter sued, and a Delaware judge has given both sides until 28 October to work out details.Otherwise, there will be a trial in November.Additional reporting by The Associated Press.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya said on Thursday it is confident of meeting an April 5 deadline set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to comply with its regulations by passing a law against doping. The East African nation has been a world beater in long-distance running, but it missed a WADA deadline in February to implement new regulations. Some 40 Kenyan athletes have been banned for doping in the last three years. If WADA decides that Kenya is not complying with its rules properly, the country's track and field athletes could miss out on the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August. The regulations also apply to other sports. Japhter Rugut, chief executive officer of the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK), told a seminar on doping in Kapsabet in Western Kenya that the way is clear for parliament to pass the bill into law to fulfil a major condition of WADA and criminalise doping in Kenya. "The consultant and WADAs legal experts went through the two documents, and the contentious areas were agreed upon. The documents have already been returned to us, and I hope by tomorrow afternoon the draft will be ready, Rugut said. One of the issues that was clarified was Kenya's constitutional requirement in making laws where the process must go through public participation, he said. Rugut said he was optimistic Kenya would meet the April 5 deadline set by WADA. We have fulfilled most of the WADA requirements, he said. WADA wanted a fully fledged independent agency which is not a branch of the ministry or its department. An agency that is beyond influence from external forces, he said. (Editing by George Obulutsa and Hugh Lawson)
By Sylvia Westall KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait is not a "free-rider" in U.S.-led campaigns against terrorism and other threats, a senior Kuwaiti security official said on Thursday, rejecting comments by President Barack Obama critical of some U.S. allies. Sheikh Thamer al-Sabah, President of Kuwait's National Security Bureau, was referring to Obama's remarks to The Atlantic magazine last week in which he said some states in the Gulf and Europe were "free-riders" who called for U.S. action without getting involved themselves. In an interview, Sheikh Thamer said Kuwait, like fellow Gulf state Qatar, had opened up air bases and airspace for the U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Aircraft from other Gulf countries had carried out sorties, said Sheikh Thamer, a member of Kuwait's ruling family. "I am just wondering what a free ride is when we do all of these things," he said, referring to Kuwait's role. "When we share intelligence, when we open our air, land and sea, when we spend billions of dollars in trying to combat terrorism and trying to help the Syrian refugees, how is it free?" he added. "I actually looked up 'free ride' in the dictionary and I would like other people to know what a free ride is and see what we are doing here in this part of the world, especially when he mentioned the Gulf." Sheikh Thamer's comments were unusually critical of the United States for a Kuwaiti official. They echo those on Monday by Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief, who said the American leader had "thrown us a curve ball" in criticising Riyadh's regional role. When asked about what Sheikh Thamer said, the White House referred to comments it made on Monday. Spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States viewed Saudi Arabia and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) "as effective national security partners who can and should do more." "Were encouraging them to do more to contribute to the security situation in their region of the world." HOT SPOT Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and lies across the Gulf from Iran, is working to combat the threat of attacks by Sunni Islamist militants like Islamic State on its own soil, Sheikh Thamer said, as well as Iranian-backed operatives. In June last year a Saudi suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shi'ite mosque in Kuwait, killing 27, in an attack claimed by Islamic State. The bomber was previously unknown to authorities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, where he had been in transit, Sheikh Thamer said. "He wasn't under their radar, they didn't know him. He was radicalised, to our understanding, through either the Internet or through people he might have known," he said. "This is something that is very serious for us, if you don't know the person, how can you defend yourself or how can you protect yourself?" He said countries from the six-nation GCC had been compiling blacklists of suspected militants and shared them with Western allies. He said Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers had not diminished Kuwait's concerns over Iran. These included militant sleeper cells and spies, involvement in regional conflicts and the safety of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Kuwait is the closest major population centre to it. "The security issue from Iran was always there and I think will always continue. It is not something new," he said. "I salute you for trying your best to work with Iran only on their nuclear programme despite knowing what Iran is doing for Hezbollah in Lebanon, for other places in the world, for bombings, for hijacking of aircraft, for assassinations of people," he added. "I salute them on how they can actually sit down and talk about only the nuclear programme with the knowledge they have of how Iran is capable of doing all of these things. I can't do it." He voiced concern about Iraq, where Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias are fighting alongside government forces against Islamic State. "We are living in a very hot spot in the world," he said. (Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington, Editing by Andrew Roche and Grant McCool)
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. State Department officials expressed optimism on Thursday that new sanctions imposed on North Korea may be more effective than earlier attempts to curtain Pyongyang's nuclear programme, pointing to China's apparent willingness to support them. Two weeks before a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Thomas Countryman, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told a Senate hearing there were signs of a shift in China, North Korea's sole major ally, towards regarding its nuclear programme as a threat. "They have made clear they are ready to work with us on detailed implementation and consultation on a range of issues," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed to harsh new sanctions on North Korea to starve it of money for its nuclear weapons programs this month. President Barack Obama imposed sweeping new U.S. sanctions on Wednesday. The hearing was contentious. Senators accused Countryman and Rose Gottemoeller, Undersecretary for Arms Control, of glossing over the global nuclear security threat, particularly in Asia, and underplaying the significance of the U.S. rift with Russia. Russia is not attending the March 31-April 1 summit. Republican Senator Bob Corker, the committee's chairman, said their testimony lacked "urgency and openness." "People are not honouring treaties. Asia is in going in a very different direction than we had hoped, and yet, y'all are here telling us how, 'Gosh, we've done a wonderful job,'" Corker said. Gottemoeller was nominated this month to be NATO deputy secretary-general, the number two post at the defence alliance. Although she does not face Senate confirmation, Corker said many lawmakers see her as too soft on Moscow, particularly over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) treaty. Washington has accused Russia of violating the treaty, which Russia denies. "People are very concerned that you really have not been the kind of person who has pushed back heavily against Russia and has been more of an apologist," Corker said. Gottemoeller said the administration looked for progress this year. "I see some progress in Russia's willingness at the highest level to recommit to the treaty now and we are looking forward to moving expeditiously in 2016 to try to make some progress on this difficult matter." She also defended her record, saying she had been pragmatic during years dealing with Moscow. "I do feel that pragmatic problem solving in the diplomatic realm is important," she said. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn.
Published On Mar 18, 2016 06:20 PM By Saad for Mercedes-Benz CLA

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled the updated versions of the CLA and CLA Shooting Brake. Both are scheduled to debut at the upcoming New York Auto Show. The CLA is the new sedan version while the CLA Shooting Brake is the estate version with slightly tweaked exteriors and some equipment upgrades.

Speaking of the changes in the new CLA twins, the cars carry forward the enhancements given to the A-Class hatchback in 2015. The changes to the exterior include diamond radiator grille with glossy black finish, multi-beam LED headlamps with daytime running lights and revised bumpers. The rear has been tweaked, with the inclusion of revamped tail lights and new dual exhausts. Moreover, buyers will have the choice of a new Cavansite Blue Metallic, 18-inch alloy wheels which come in five different designs and hands-free boot opening for the tail gate.

On the inside, the new Mercedes-Benz CLA Class features a new dashboard trim, grazed by aluminium with honeycomb grain, matte black ash wood, and black DINAMICA micro fibre. Further, one can choose from an array of seat upholstery. What makes this car more enticing is the inclusion of a new instrument cluster that now incorporates red needles, an 8-inch COMAND touchscreen infotainment unit that is compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and lashings of chrome for that much-needed oomph factor.

Under the hood, the CLA duos will be offered with the 1.6-litre and the zippier 2.0-litre 4-cylinder petrol engines, carried from the range-topping CLA 45. For the performance seekers, these engines are available in 7 different power outputs, ranging from 121 bhp to 380 bhp. As for people who love dynamics that support cruising and also the punch of turbo, there is a diesel line-up that includes a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder unit producing 108 bhp and the 2.0-litre engine available in two state of tunes: 136 bhp and 178 bhp, respectively.

The cars will go on sale in Europe in the 2nd quarter and in US in the 3rd quarter, but we are expecting the Indian wing to release them by the end of this year or early 2017. This could be part of the 12 new launches that Mercedes India has planned.

When launched, the CLA Class will be pitted against the upcoming Audi A3 facelift, while BMW is also preparing to counter them with its new 1-series sedan, the concept of which was showcased at the China Auto Show.

Also Read: Mercedes-Maybach S600 Guard Launched at Rs. 10.5 crore

Read More on : CLA-Class
Without simple, straightforward, but significant amendments, the Financial Accounting Standards Boards (FASB) current expected credit loss model (CECL) will amplify risks and could result in significant economic suffering, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) told FASB in a letter sent Thursday. CUNA and the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) sent the letter to urge FASB to take into account the proposals impact on community financial institutions.

Dramatic increases in loan loss allowances with no credible evidence of heightened risk and forceful adoption of modeling techniques is a sure path to stunt economic growth as community financial institutions are forced to severely limit or curtail a multitude of lending opportunities that promote economic growth, the letter reads. The end result is a significant reduction in credit extended, fewer homes being purchased, fewer small businesses being cultivated, fewer families being able to send a child to college, and overall economic malaise.

The effects are more greatly felt in rural and underserved communities, where local financial institutions are a pillar of strength when it comes to providing and expanding economic opportunity, the letter adds.

The CECL proposal would utilize a single expected loss measurement for the recognition of credit losses, which would replace the multiple existing impairment models in U.S. generally accepted accounting principles that generally use an incurred loss approach.
Audio made available from the city is a single, badly distorted 6 hour file, and the video of the 7pm session alone is more than 3 Gigabytes to download. Here we have reasonably sized segments of both audio and video that can be easily played, downloaded or shared.

Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page: <video style="width: 740px;" data-aspect-ratio="1.7804154302671" preload="none" poster="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/03/17/512-3mar16sc_council-c01.mp4_600_.png" controls><source src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/03/17/512-3mar16sc_council-c01.mp4" type="video/mp4" /><a class="video" href="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/03/17/512-3mar16sc_council-c01.mp4" title="download video: 512-3mar16sc_council-c01...."><br /><span class="video-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/03/17/512-3mar16sc_council-c01.mp4_600_.png" border="0" /></span><br /></a></video>

Above, we have the first of the public comments, from a homeless veteran who didn't give his name. Hea councilperson who "went hatemongering door to door and who should recuse himself from this vote". The veteran, pictured here, was then silenced on that topic by the mayor. The public comments are filled with insights, and our elected official reveal the limit of their ability to maintain a civil front near the end, when they assume they have closed the door on this minor attempt at relief for out most marginalized citizens.There are 4 video files and 4 audio files:

(1) The initial presentation of the proposed amendments to the camping ordinance 49:48 posted here

(2) Public Comments 55:48

(3) Public Comments 31:29

(4) Discussion by council and staff, followed their vote 52:43

The attached audio files have slightly better sound, but the sections are parsed differently.

(1) The initial presentation 48:57

(2) Public Comments 55:26

(3) Public Comments, Discussion by council and staff 43:04

(4) Discussion by council and staff, followed their vote 40:10
Considering that EBALDC had a fund balance of $22,884,524 during 2014, it appears that EBALDC, a so-called nonprofit housing developer, may be sucking its buildings dry financially with its general and administration fees, property management fees, repairs and maintenance fees, developer fees, and other charges it uses to collect huge sums of money from its many buildings and properties.

EBALDCs partnership with Urban Core has resulted in protestsBy Lynda Carson - March 17, 2016Oakland - On Tuesday March 15, protesters made it impossible for the Oakland City Council meeting to remain in its main chamber http://tinyurl.com/gllfq46 , and the protest resulted in the City Council members voting to approve a controversial deal behind closed doors involving a luxury high-rise project being proposed for the East 12th Street parcel. According to reports, the meeting was moved to a conference room of the mayors office, with only reporters in attendance, while protesters chanted nearby.During the past year protesters were able to block the original scheme involving Urban Core and the 24-story 298 unit market rate luxury tower proposed for the E. 12th St. parcel. Since then Urban Core teamed up with the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), which gave Urban Core another chance to try to get its hands on the prime real estate property near Lake Merritt, as was reported on by the East Bay Express http://tinyurl.com/hdoud75 . According to reports, city staff, Urban Core, and EBALDC will enter into a 6-month exclusive negotiating agreement for a final deal that has to be voted on by the City Council, at a later date this year.The controversial project of Urban Core and EBALDC included a proposed token amount of so-called affordable housing units in a smaller separate building at the property known as the Servants Quarters by protesters http://tinyurl.com/jul2pdv , in addition to a proposed luxury tower of market rate housing to be built.Additionally, the protesters also recently held a protest on Feb. 1, in front of the offices of EBALDC in downtown Oakland. The protesters demanded that the so-called nonprofit housing developer (EBALDC) pull out of the controversial partnership with Urban Core, and the luxury tower proposal for the East 12th Street parcel.According to a press release, On Monday, February 1, 2016, Asians4BlackLives, a Bay Area group of community organizers of Asian descent, staged a protest to call on East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) to terminate its partnership with luxury developer UrbanCore and support the community proposal http://proposal.e12thoakland.org/ for 100% affordable housing on the E.12th St public parcel.At 8:45 am, activists blockaded the EBALDC building to demand that EBALDC support the Peoples Proposal http://proposal.e12thoakland.org/ . This action took place a day before the Oakland City Council votes privately on E.12th St public parcel proposals. No arrests were made and EBALDC staff members, including Executive Director Joshua Simon, spoke to protestors about their demands."As Oakland has become the 4th most expensive rental market in the country, we reject the use of public land for profit," said Cayden Mak, a member of Asians4BlackLives."We call on EBALDC to stand by the communities they serve, drop the partnership with UrbanCore, and support the People's Proposal."Urban Core is not the only partner that EBALDC has had that is controversial, including the Related Companies of New York http://tinyurl.com/jkqx3ub , which is owned by 2 billionaires, Jorge M. Perez, and Stephen M. Ross.EBALDC http://www.ebaldc.org/homes is in a partnership with Related at its properties called Lion Creek Crossings and Noble Towers in Oakland. During 2014, Related has been sued by the United States and Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney of the Southern District of New York, in a federal civil rights lawsuit http://tinyurl.com/jx98ssh . The lawsuit alleges that Related Companies, Inc (Related), has been engaging in a pattern and practice of developing rental apartment buildings that are inaccessible to persons with disabilities in New York City, and elsewhere.The lawsuit with Related was settled http://tinyurl.com/zbxug5t , and among other things, Related was required to provide up to $1.9 million in funds to compensate aggrieved persons, and to pay a civil penalty of $100,000.According to public records and the latest 990 tax filing for EBALDC during 2014, EBALDCs gross receipts were $13,112,747 http://tinyurl.com/zedvd5f . After subtracting $54,994,840 in liabilities from $77,879,364 in assets, EBALDC had net assets or a fund balance of $22,884,524.According to public records: EBALDCs Mission  EBALDC is a community development corporation that develops affordable housing and community facilities with integrated services focused on tenants and neighborhood residents and the diverse low-income populations of the East Bay.In 2014, according to public records, Executive Director of EBALDC, Joshua Simon raked in $145,088 in compensation plus $23,751 in other compensation. Charice Fong, Chief Operating Officer, raked in $137,923 in compensation plus $4,138 in other compensation. Peter Sopka, Chief Financial Officer, raked in $139,867 in compensation plus $4,196 in other compensation. Edward Hammonds, Director of Commercial Real Estate, raked in $104,753 plus $3,142 in other compensation. Carlos Castellanos, Director of Real Estate Development, raked in $107,116 plus $3,213 in other compensation. Cindy Norton, Director of Property Management, raked in $108,389 plus $3,251 in other compensation.As an example of how EBALDC operates its properties, Ivy Hill Development Corporation is an affiliate of EBALDC that owns Effies House at 829 E. 19th St., in Oakland, a 21 unit residential building. Effies House has numerous one-bedroom units subsidized by project-based vouchers through the Oakland Housing Authority. Some tenants have section 8 vouchers (housing choice vouchers) and some tenants have Shelter Plus vouchers, and some people may have subsidized housing in the building from other voucher programs.EBALDC is the controlling entity of Effies House and Ivy Hill Development Corporation. According to public records, in addition to other expenses in 2014, by the time EBALDC charged Effies House/Ivy Hill Development Corporation for general and administration fees, property management fees, repairs and maintenance fees, including a developer fee of $75,000, in addition to employee wages and other compensation, Effies House/Ivy Hill Development Corporation had a negative fund balance of $739,988 http://tinyurl.com/h26dtph Some of EBALDCs http://www.ebaldc.org/homes other low-income housing affiliates/housing projects include Avalon Housing Inc, with a fund balance of $403,103 in 2014. Madrone Hotel Inc, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014. Mar Housing Inc, also had 0 dollars in assets during 2014. Seminary Avenue Development Corporation had a negative fund balance of $1,967,876 in 2014.Swans Market Inc, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014. Madison Park Housing Inc, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014. With gross receipts of $1,637,349 in 2014, Preservation Park Center Inc, had net assets or a fund balance of $312,930 in 2014. Bayporte Development Corporation, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014. West Oakland Neighborhood Housing Corporation, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014.Homeplace Initiative Corporation, which had $1,227,337 in gross receipts in 2014, had assets or a fund balance of $138,336 in 2014. Gosswood Housing Inc, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014. East 14th Street Inc, had gross receipts of 0 dollars in 2014, but had net assets or a fund balance of $609,632 in 2014. San Pablo Renaissance Inc, had 0 dollars in assets in 2014.Considering that EBALDC had a fund balance of $22,884,524 during 2014, it appears that EBALDC, a so-called nonprofit housing developer, may be sucking its buildings dry financially with its general and administration fees, property management fees, repairs and maintenance fees, developer fees, and other charges it uses to collect huge sums of money from its many buildings and properties http://www.ebaldc.org/homes As was reported above, the Oakland City Council, Urban Core, and EBALDC is presently entering into a 6-month exclusive negotiating agreement for a final deal on the E. 12th St. parcel that has to be voted on by the City Council, at a later date this year.Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com >>>>>>>
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that an insurance company breached its duty to provide a defense of an insured even though there was a settlement.

The court ruled that even if a settlement is reached, the insurer was responsible for defending the covered party until the maximum liability limit was paid on the plaintiffs claim.The plaintiff, Kenneth Burgraff, was injured at Menard hardware store after an employee loaded items onto Burgraffs trailer using a forklift. Millers First Insurance provided policy coverage for Burgraffs trailer and vehicle.The policy had a $100,000 bodily injury limit. Menard also had a separate insurance policy with a $500,000 liability limit through a third party. Both policies contained provisions that outlined what items were covered and Millers First duty to defend.Menard argued it was entitled to coverage under the plaintiffs auto policy as an insured party because the employee was authorized to be on the trailer. Millers First agreed.In light of the second policy, Millers First requested the court to limit its liability to $100,000 of the $600,000 available. The lower court agreed that the liability of Millers First would be capped at $100,000. Menard would be responsible for the remainder based on the other insurance policy provision.Millers Firsts policy stated that if there were any other insurances coverage, Millers would only pay its share of the loss, which in this case was $100,000.Menards policy included a self-insured retention provision that stated Menard would be responsible for the losses up to $500,000 and the policy would pay any excess up to $500,000.During mediation, Millers First and Burgraff reached a $40,000 settlement. Menard did not settle with Burgraff.Because Millers First reached a settlement, it moved to bifurcate the trials and requested summary judgment on the grounds that it had satisfied its portion of liability. The court agreed Millers First had met its liability but allowed the cases to proceed to trial. The trial court denied Millers First motion to bifurcate the trials.On appeal, Millers First argued its responsibilities were extinguished when the company settled with Burgraff for $40,000 and there was no duty to continue defending Menard. The company also argued that it should be released from defending Menard even if there was a duty to continue defending.The court stated, Millers Firsts had a duty to defend because Menards authorized the use of the plaintiffs vehicle. The policy clearly outlined that the duty to settle or defend ends when our limit of liability for this coverage has been exhausted.However, the court disagreed that the liability limit should pro-rated. The language of the policy extended a duty to the full liability limit. The court declined to rewrite Millers First policy to include a pro-rated duty to defend.This case isCase No. 2013AP907, Supreme Court of Wisconsin.
Top Class Action Lawsuits

Questionable Security? Heads up all you folks that have residential ADT security systems. The company got hit with a consumer fraud class action lawsuit this week, over claims they overstate the safety of its systems. Thats comforting.

Filed by Santiago L. Hernandez, individually and for all others similarly situated, the ADT lawsuit contends that, despite claims by ADTthat its home security equipment and monitoring services use the most innovative and advanced technology on the marketADTs wireless signals are both unencrypted and unauthenticated, and unauthorized third parties can easily intercept and interfere with them.

According to the lawsuit, Hernandez and other ADT consumers in the class are more vulnerable and less safe than ADT leads them to believe. The suit claims violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.

The case is US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Case number 9:16-cv-80335-WJZ.

Top Settlements

Hip-Hip-Hooray! Well, sort ofthough it probably doesnt go far enough to take away all that the victims have been through. But heres a whopper. To the tune of $502 million. Thats the verdict awarded to five plaintiffs in a bellwether trial concerning Johnson & Johnsons DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip replacement devices.

The math goes $142 million in compensatory and $360 million punitive damages. The verdict was reached following 37 days of testimony in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division.

The trial consolidated cases involving five separate plaintiffs who are residents of Texas. The lawsuits, including those of more than 7,000 plaintiffs nationwide in the multidistrict litigation (MDL), claim that the DePuy implants were defective and caused metal debris to enter into patients bloodstreams, causing severe injuries and sometimes leading to revision surgery.

According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the evidence in the testimony against J&J was ground breaking, particularly in relation to what, in effect, amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to orthopedic surgeons to use and recommend this product.

Plaintiffs attorneys also discovered several instances in which physicians lied in medical clinical testing of the devices and forged consent forms for patients who were using the product to lie about the results the patients experienced with the product.

Risperdal Settlement Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals also got hit with a large Risperdal settlement this week$124 million to be precise, ending nine years of litigation dealing with allegations it illegally promoted the anti-psychotic prescription drug Risperdal for unapproved or off-label uses. Ah, that old chestnut.

The charges were brought by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson. In February he announced that Ortho-McNeil-Janssen will pay $124,324,700 in satisfaction of the settlement to South Carolina.

According to the lawsuit, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen employed aggressive marketing techniques to persuade doctors to prescribe the drug to their patients, including children with disabilities and elderly dementia patients. The company sent more than 7,000 letters to doctors, allegedly overstating the efficacy of Risperdal without FDA approval.

Risperdal (generic name Risperidone) is an atypical antipsychotic that works by changing the activity of certain natural substances in the brain. Developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, Risperdal was approved by the FDA in 1993 for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. Risperdal side effects include gynecomastia (male breast growth), tardive dyskinesia, high blood sugar and diabetes, stroke, heart attack and even death. As of September 2012 more than 420 Risperdal lawsuits had been filed, 130 of which are gynecomastia claims.

Ok, thats a wrap folksHave a good one. See you at the Bar!
- Dr Kayode Fayemi, the minister of solid materials, was a speaker at the 2016 New Telegraph Economic Summit

- At the summit held in Lagos the ex-governor spoke on how mining can help Nigerian get back to economic stability

- He said that Nigeria's resources are under-exploited, and the potential of the illegal mining industry could tapped for the benefit of all

Dr Kayode Fayemi, the minister of solid minerals revealed on Thursday, March 17, that over 6 million Nigerians are involved in illegal mining in Nigeria.

Fayemi made the striking revelation at the 2016 New Telegraph Economic Summit held on Thursday, at the Sheraton hotel in Lagos.

Dr Kayode Fayemi

READ ALSO: Controversy: Unease as Gani Adams, Otunba Runsewe clash (video)

While speaking on the topic "Digging deeper for new wealth: Opportunities in solid mineral resources", the minister stressed that the potential of the ongoing illegal mining business can be tapped for the benefit and growth of the nation.

The ex-governor of Ekiti state noted in his address that Nigeria has for too long turned its eyes from the limitless possibilities that abound in the solid minerals industry.

While noting that even the common sand has great commercial potential in Nigeria, Fayemi stressed that many Nigerians are oblivious of the fact that gold exists in Nigeria, and that about 100kg of gold is stolen from the country daily.

Fayemi stressed that without a doubt mining is a key for Nigerian industrialization, hence, the nation is open to partnerships that will help transform the industry for the betterment of Nigeria.

Yinka Oyebode, Special Assistant on Media to Minister of Solid Minerals Development; Mojeed Jamiu, Executive Editor UPSHOT Media; and Frank Meke during the New telegraph Economic summit in Lagos. Photo: Michael Obasa

READ ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: Ambassador Zhong Jianhua reveals Chinas plan for Nigeria, Africa (photos)

He said that for those interested in mining, the government has provided a duty free waiver for those importing mining equipment for exploration in the country. He added that as part of the incentives to encourage mining and exploration the government will also give a five-year tax holiday to those ready to invest in the industry. However, he noted that agencies have been put in place to monitor consistency.

Dr Fayemi stressed that mining is not for money laundering, neither is it for those seeking overnight wealth; but for people who are committed to achieving great success on a long term basis.

Prof Okunlola of the department of geology at the University of Ibadan, highlighted the problems inherent in mining.

He said the nation must be prepared for the challenges that comes with mining even as it seeks diversification to boost its economy.

According to the scholar, mining operations induce earthquakes on different scales. He also stressed that in certain areas where solid minerals are deposited, communal clashes tend to affect the mining process.

Otunba Segun Runsewe, Ex-governor of Delta state- Emmanuel Uduaghan andd other special guests at the New Telegraph Economic Summit.

Speaker and discussants during the session during the New telegraph Economic summit in Lagos. Photo: Michael Obasa

Speaking on the challenges of mining and what the government must put in place, Prof Okunlola said the rail system must work for mining to thrive. He said the Nigerian government must be ready to construct effective rail systems from the mines to the coast.

Contributing to the discussion, Surveyor E B Awudu advised the government to invest in surveillance. He stressed that one of the major challenges facing the Nigeria mining industry is the dearth of valid statistics and records of the minerals which the nation has and the places where they can be found.

Awudu noted that a detailed record of what type and how much mineral resource abounds in different regions, would help Nigeria and all those involved in the industry to get the best from their explorations.

L-R Minister for Solid Minerals Development, Kayode Fayemi; Chairman of the event, Mr. Ray Ekpo; Deputy Governor, Economic Policy at Central Bank Of Nigeria, Sarah Alade; Prof. Adepelumi Adekunle, Geology Department OAU; Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Funke Egbemode; Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Tunji Bello; Formal Governor of Delta State Emmanuel Uduaghan during the New telegraph Economic summit in Lagos. Photo: Michael Obasa

Lolade Saraki, Digital Communication Officer, Bi-country Aviation Services Limited and Ms Adebisi Awoniyi, Chief Operating Officer, Bi-country Aviation Services Limited during the New telegraph Economic summit in Lagos. Photo: Michael Obasa

Master of Ceremonies, Gbenga Adeyinka during the New telegraph Economic summit in Lagos. Photo: Michael Obasa

Source: Legit.ng
- CBNs secret recruitment of 909 staff comes under scrutiny

- Reps says the process which brought in the workers is against recruitment laws

The House of Representatives has mandated its committees on Federal Character and, Banking and Currency to investigate the alleged secret recruitment 909 staff by Central Bank of Nigeria into various cadre of the bank without the required authority.

The committee is to submit its report to the House within three weeks for further legislative action.

The House faulted the alleged recruitment by the apex bank saying the exercise was in violation of the Federal Character principle.

READ ALSO: We have not failed by not passing the 2016 budget - NASS

Reps to investigate illegal recruitment of politicians' relatives

While moving the motion, Rep. Aliyu Sani Madaki (APC-Kano) told the green chamber that the alleged recruitment had generated a lot of negative reaction from a good number of Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Dogara mourns as Reps member dies

Madaki said that although the bank had the power to recruit, other laws of Nigeria stipulates that such recruitment must be subject to approval by other relevant authorities.

He said there was a clear case of non-adherence to the principles federal character as enshrined in the country's constitution, a conclusion he said was predicated on available data on the recruitment exercise.

This recruitment was done secretly without due advertisement carried out. The principles of fairness, equity and justice as enshrined in our constitution was not respected in the recent exercise by the CBN.

Sometimes last year when members of the public got wind of the secret recruitment exercise, the CBN came out and, outrightly denied any such recruitment or planned recruitment."

The move by the House of Representatives comes on the heels of discovery showing how the CBN unlawfully hired a daughter of former vice president Atiku Abubakar, a nephew of President Muhammadu Buhari and many others relatives of top officials.

The leaked document shows a list of people tied to powerful or highly placed Nigerians, who were recently proposed appointments.

Report sent in by Ifeanyo

Source: Legit.ng
iStock/Thinkstock(CONCORD, N.H.) -- A judge has revoked bail for prep school graduate Owen Labrie, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a classmate last August, after prosecutors accused him of missing his court-ordered curfew several times.



After the decision, which was made at a hearing this afternoon in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., Labrie was handcuffed and led out of court to Merrimack County Jail.



Merrimack County attorney Scott Murray said Labrie will be jailed and begin serving the 12-month sentence that was imposed in October but suspended during his appeal. Labrie's appeal -- which is being handled by the New Hampshire attorney general's office -- will continue, Murray said.



Defense attorney Jaye Rancourt said Labrie will stay in jail while the appeal is decided. She said he could serve the entire sentence before the decision is made.



Labrie, 20, was found guilty in August of a felony charge of using a computer to lure an underage girl into a sexual encounter, as well as three misdemeanor sexual assault charges and one misdemeanor charge of child endangerment. During the trial last year, Labrie was accused of raping a 15-year-old female student at New Hampshire's elite St. Paul's School in 2014.



While he was free on bail, he was supposed to have remained under curfew at the Tunbridge, Vermont, home of his mother between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m.



But prosecutor Catherine Ruffle said in court papers Monday that Labrie violated curfew at least eight times.



Rancourt disputed the allegations in an Objection to the Motion to Revoke Bail filed Thursday, which Rancourt provided to ABC News.



Rancourt argued that her client was meeting with his legal counsel and pursuing educational endeavors when he broke his court-mandated curfew. In his attempt to make productive use of his time and at the same time maintain some degree of privacy, he violated this courts order and for that he is sorry, Rancourt wrote.



Judge Larry Smukler ruled today that Labrie was unlikely to abide by any conditions of release.



Before the judges decision, Labrie's defense attorney said he violated curfew so he could go to Boston to get documents for school work.



Rancourt explained that the state had suggested Labrie take online courses, but she said even online courses require traveling to obtain resources and meet with professors.



She said in one curfew violation, after a morning in Boston, Labrie tried to catch a 1:30 p.m. bus home. She said he arrived at the stop before 1:30 p.m. but the bus had already left. He waited for the 3:30 p.m. bus "which caused him to miss his curfew that afternoon."



But prosecutor Ruffle said a bus schedule revealed Labrie could have traveled to Boston without violating his curfew.



Labrie could have followed the curfew "if he wanted to," but "he chose not to," Ruffle said.



Rancourt said the defense asked the state to extend curfew hours for employment and school but the state would only agree if the defense provided very specific information about his hours and where he was working. The defense said Labrie could not find employment locally in Vermont because "His name is well-known," Rancourt said. "No one was willing to employ him or associate with him."



Rancourt said telling the public where my client is at all times is not safe for him and would cause him danger. She said Labrie has received death threats and "hes gotten into physical scuffles with people."



Rancourt said Labrie "tried to fly under the radar" by going to Boston quietly, adding that "hes sorry."



But Ruffle argued that Labrie was not concerned for his privacy because he granted a revealing, personal interview to "Newsweek."



"If the conditions had created a hardship ... it was his obligation to seek an amendment by court," Ruffle said. "The defendant wants to seek forgiveness... the state is asking that you hold him accountable."



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Legit.ng is #1 online trusted source of the latest news in Nigeria. We are covering Nigeria news, Niger delta, world updates, and Nigerian newspaper reviews. We guide our readers to the world of politics, business, energy, sports, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle and human interest stories.
- PDP is alleging that Rotimi Amaechi is currently taking delivery of N5billion

- The party also alleged that the SGF Babachi Lawal, an INEC REC were also present at the airport

The bullion van reportedly taking delivery of the N5billion

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that Nigerias minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi is currently taking delivery of N5billion at the Port Harcourt international airport.

While Legit.ng cannot authenticate this report, pictures tweeted by the PDP via its official handle, @pdpnigeria, shows that bullion vans were seen on the tarmac of the Port Harcourt international airport.

READ ALSO: 16 things Olisa Metuhs counsels have against Justice Okon Abang

PDP also alleged that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachi Lawal, an unnamed INEC resident electoral commissioner are with Amaechi at the airport.

It remains unclear the purpose of the alleged N5billion cash but recall that PDP had earlier warned that dire consequences will follow any attempt by the APC to push its plot to impose a state of emergency in Rivers state.

On Thursday, March 17 gunmen stormed Mgbuitanwo, in Emohua Clan, Emohua local government area of the state killing a 28-year-old man identified as Mr. Ukeoma and beheading him. The assailants also abducted another resident who is yet to be identified.

The re-run election is expected to take place in three senatorial districts, 12 federal constituencies and 22 state constituencies of Rivers state.

The bullion van reportedly taking delivery of the N5billion

Source: Legit.ng


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Aerium completed over 1.16 billion of transactions in 2015, across five European countries, making it one of the most active years in the company's 13 year history.

Acquisitions:

 A 80,537 sqm site in Bemowo, Warsaw, Poland for 13 million, upon which Aerium intends to build 30,000 sq...

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According to Savills, Chinese investment into UK commercial real estate this year will exceed 2015 levels as the market remains buoyed by the Chinese Presidents state visit in October 2015, Britains status as an investment safe haven and, in particular, Londons continued attractiveness.

In the...

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Last year Corpus Sireo has concentrated intensively on acquisitions and have realised a total of 3.3 million worth of property transactions. In this current year, the Swiss Life daughter company is searching across Europe for larger portfolios and attractive individual properties for their national and international customers. Currently, we are

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Promotion Pavilion, Turkey demonstrated its skill in the construction area. Between the tents of Paris and London, The Pavilion, which was launched by ITO Emlak Konut GYO, as huge model called The Live Mockup of Istanbul showed the 24 hours of Istanbul which took place during the ceremony. Turkey also

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With one of the smallest populations in Europe, Norway climbed to number 5 in European real estate transaction volumes for 2015.

The real estate market in Oslo has been introverted and difficult to access for foreign investors for decades, Oslo real estate veteran Thor Thoneie relates. Now i...

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Panattoni Europe is celebrating the laying of the foundation stone for the new logistics centre of the international forwarding company F.W. Neukirch. In Oyten, near Bremen, the logistics real estate developer is implementing a building complex with approximately 21,000 square metres of logistics space and 500 square metres of office

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Life in the twilight zone constitutes a huge potential source of fishmeal and Omega 3 fatty acids needed to feed the world population. However, it exists in a kind of "no man's water," where there are no rules for fishing. Critical for assessing the resilience of the community and thus develop sustainable management strategies is a lack of understanding of the biological processes in the twilight zone making it impossible to accurately estimate the fishing pressure the stocks can sustain.

There are huge untapped resources of protein in the deep sea, but any potential exploitation should be done with caution, states the research community.

An international research group last year estimated that the so-called twilight zone (200 to 1,000 meters), maintains a community of fish, squid and crustaceans whose biomass far surpasses all the world's current fisheries. Furthermore, it is currently estimated that there are more than 1 million undescribed species in the twilight zone. According to the study, the twilight zone contains up to 90 percent of the world's total fish biomass. There are so many creatures here that if estimates hold, it would be equivalent to 1.3 tons of fish biomass per person on earth, and that excludes squid and krill.

Consequently, life in the twilight zone constitutes a huge potential source of fishmeal and Omega 3 fatty acids needed to feed the world population. However, it exists in a kind of "no man's water," where there are no rules for fishing. Critical for assessing the resilience of the community and thus develop sustainable management strategies is a lack of understanding of the biological processes in the twilight zone making it impossible to accurately estimate the fishing pressure the stocks can sustain.

In a Perspectives article in the open-access journal Frontiers in Marine Science an international group of researchers from Denmark, UK, Portugal and Spain raise a warning flag that a better understanding of the role of this community in the preservation of biodiversity and its influence on climate regulation is required if the Twilight Zone community, presently one of the most understudied regions in the world oceans, is to be exploited in a sustainable manner.

In order to define the limits of sustainable exploitation of this community, fundamental knowledge is needed on everything from population biology and controls on recruitment success to its role in the food web and for climate regulation. The community provides food for other key species, such as tuna and sharks however the importance of this community in the food web is not yet fully quantified. Furthermore, the mesopelagic community plays an important role in climate regulation. During their daily migration to the upper layers to feed, mesopelagic species feed on plankton, but release carbon at depth. The result is an additional mechanism for fast transport of carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean`s interior, dampening CO2`s contribution to global warming.

At present, there is no major fishing effort on this community although test fisheries are in progress. Existing techniques are marginally economically when the resource is used for fish meal, however the high essential fatty acid content of some species will make exploitation more economically viable, suggest the authors.

Lead author, oceanographer Professor Michael St. John, from DTU Aqua in Denmark, says : "As coastal stocks are overexploited, alternative marine resources in the twilight zone will be of growing interest. There have already been several attempts to exploit the mesopelagic community and the fear is that it may lead to an unregulated "gold rush," as soon as the technology is available and the cost justified. Therefore, the world community is faced with a major challenge. Of all the research I've done in my career, this is the most important issue, of that I'm sure."

What is The Twilight Zone?

The Twilight zone is the zone in the sea, where daylight can not reach. The most common fish here are lanternfish with one species of Bristlemouth Cyclothone, considered to be the most abundant vertebrate species on the planet. These fish are commonly called Myctophiids of which there are 245 species, 10-15 cm long fish, which are found throughout the ocean. Together with squid and crustaceans, they can be detected by acoustic surveys 500 meters under the surface over large areas during the day. At night they migrate to the surface to feed.
The results are based on a survey with nearly 3,000 participating students in south-western Uganda. The students responded to a number of questions, including aspects concerning sexuality, physical and mental health, sexual risk behaviour, and experiences with drugs. The questions about homosexuality pertained to the students' emotions as well as their actions. The results showed that one in three had been in love with a person of the same sex; almost one in five had been sexually attracted to a person of the same sex; and one in ten had been sexually active with someone of the same sex. In terms of percentages, 6-8 per cent of the men and 10-16 per cent of the women had engaged in homosexual relations.

"We were not surprised by the results, as the numbers are consistent with the situation in most other countries in the world. The real figures could actually be even higher. Although the survey was anonymous, the intense propaganda against homosexuality in Uganda may have intimidated some from providing honest answers," says Anette Agardh.

Anette Agardh is Associate Professor in Global Health at Lund University. The current surveys are part of her ongoing efforts to improve sexual health among young persons in south-western Uganda, a project she has been involved in since 2004. These efforts also include various health promoting activities with the aim of preventing risk behaviours, sexual violence, and HIV among young people.

The surveys showed that homosexual experiences appear to be associated with several health risks, including poor mental health, being the victim of sexual coercion and violence, and engaging in sexual risk behaviour and drug use. People with homosexual experiences also more frequently reported their need for, but lack of access to, sexual health counselling.

Considering the ongoing campaigns against HIV, Anette Agardh hopes that the results of this study will lead to increased prioritisation of health services for this vulnerable group as such campaigns are only effective if everyone -- regardless of their sexual identity -- is treated with equal respect by healthcare providers.

"This is hardly the case today, as strong prejudice against homosexuality exists in large parts of Ugandan society. In the absence of facts and knowledge about human sexuality, myths tend to proliferate, for example, that sex between two men not involve a risk for HIV, and that a homosexual woman can be 'cured' by so-called 'corrective rape', Anette Agardh says.

The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, is the first study that shows the prevalence of homosexual and bisexual relations in Uganda and their association with increased health risks. Anette Agardh hopes that it will help generate a more nuanced debate.

According to Anette Agardh, "Evidence-based knowledge is essential for creating openness about sensitive issues such as these. Hopefully, the results of our study can at the very least help alleviate some of the controversy surrounding homosexuality in Uganda today.
The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), working with international investigators, have discovered the source of a potential deadly blood infection in more than 50 South American cancer patients.

Using advanced genomic sequencing, TGen was able to track a potentially deadly and therapy-resistant fungus, Sarocladium kiliense, to a tainted anti-nausea medication given to dozens of cancer patients in Chile and Colombia, according to a report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Contamination of medical products, particularly with environmental fungi, poses growing concern and a public health threat, especially in vulnerable populations such as cancer patients," said Dr. David Engelthaler, Director of Programs and Operations for TGen's Pathogen Genomics Division in Flagstaff, Ariz.

"Increased vigilance and the use of advanced technologies are needed to rapidly identify the likely sources of infection to efficiently guide epidemiologic investigations and initiate appropriate control measures," said Dr. Engelthaler, Arizona's former State Epidemiologist.

This bloodstream-infection outbreak, from June 2013-January 2014, included a cluster of cases at eight hospitals in Santiago, the capital of Chile. All of the patients received the same four intravenous medications. But only one -- ondansetron, an anti-nausea medication -- was given exclusively to cancer patients.

All of the patients infected with S. kiliense received ondansetron from the same source, a pharmaceutical company in Columbia. Two of three lots of unopened ondansetron, tested by the Chilean Ministry of Health, yielded vials contaminated with S. kiliense, forcing a recall of all ondansetron in Chile made by the Columbian manufacturer.

Subsequently, Colombian officials discovered 14 other cases in which patients, given ondansetron from the same Columbian pharmaceutical firm, were infected with S. kiliense. The source of the contamination was identified only as "pharmaceutical company A" in the CDC report.

Read the full CDC report here: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/22/3/pdfs/15-1193.pdf

S. kiliense has been implicated previously in healthcare-related infections, but the lack of available typing methods has precluded the ability to substantiate sources.

"The use of whole-genome sequence typing (WGST) to investigate fungal outbreaks has become integral to epidemiologic investigations," Dr. Engelthaler said. "Our WGST analysis demonstrated that the patient isolates from Chile and Colombia were nearly genetically indistinguishable from those recovered from the unopened medication vials, indicating the likely presence of a single-source infection."
The most studied battleground from the American Civil War, from a geological perspective, is the rolling terrain surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here, the mixture of harder igneous and softer sedimentary rocks produced famous landform features such as Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top that provided strong defensive positions for the Union Army.

Another even more common type of rock -- carbonates such as limestone -- provided similarly formidable defensive positions at numerous other battlefields in both the eastern and western theaters of conflict.

Limestones and dolostones shaped the terrain of multiple important battle sites, including Antietam, Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, Nashville, and Monocacy, and these rock types proved consequential with respect to the tactics employed by both Union and Confederate commanders.

This article by Scott P. Hippensteel of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte describes how carbonate rocks produced rolling terrain that limited the range and effectiveness of both artillery and small arms. Additionally, thin soils above limestone bedrock prevented tillage and the resulting forests provided concealment and cover for advancing troops. From a defensive perspective, on a larger geographic scale carbonates provided natural high ground from chert-enriched limestones. On a smaller scale, erosion of these same rocks produced karrens (or "cutters") that provided natural rock-lined trenches for defending troops.
In Colombia, large areas are teeming with mines that are almost impossible to detect with traditional methods. In collaboration with partners from South America, engineers at the German Ruhr-Universitat Bochum and Technical University Ilmenau are developing a new mine clearance technology, based on ground penetrating radar. In the long run, they are aiming at creating a handheld device that will detect different mine types on rough terrain without fail and which can be used in the same way as metal detectors. The Ruhr-Universitat's science magazine Rubin has published a detailed report on the project.

In Colombia, large areas are teeming with mines. Finding them using traditional technologies is as good as impossible, because all mines are different.

In collaboration with partners from South America, engineers at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum and Technical University Ilmenau are developing an advanced method for humanitarian mine clearance in Colombia, which is based on ground penetrating radar technology. In the long run, they are aiming at developing a handheld device that will detect different mine types on rough terrain without fail.

Land mines almost impossible to detect with traditional methods

Even though Colombia has not experienced any military conflicts, many areas are teeming with land mines which had been laid by guerrilla forces and members of drug cartels. Because the booby traps were not industrially manufactured but had been assembled from various everyday objects, they are almost impossible to detect with traditional methods.

In the first step, the international research team built a number of land mines from everyday items, with empty detonators instead of explosives. They were used as templates for virtual computer models, which the engineers used to simulate the radar signal that each mine would generate.

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Simulation of radar signals

The engineers analysed the simulated radar signals to identify properties that are typical for mines, but are not generated by other objects, such as stones or shrapnel. This information is fed into the analysis of the gathered radar data; this is how they set up their system to perform an automated search for properties that are typical for mines.

In theory, the method works. Now, the engineers have to get it up and running in reality and optimise it for application in a handheld device. According to their estimates, it will take another two to three years for a prototype to be completed.

Mine clearance in Colombia agreed upon

In 2015, the FARC guerrilla and the Colombian government agreed on a comprehensive mine clearance. To date, the country's military has been mainly using metal detectors to search for booby traps. However, the traps contain barely any metal, and there are many other metal objects in the ground.

"Only one in 2,000 found objects is a mine," says Dr Christoph Baer from the Institute of Electronic Circuits in Bochum, who collaborates with Jan Barowski and Jochen Jebramcik from the Institute of Microwave Systems at the Ruhr-Universitat. This renders the search extremely difficult.

Baer: "All mines must be found, because it is a humanitarian project." This is why the team knows that they won't file any patents. The technology they develop is meant to be publicly available.
The northern Great Lakes are praised for being clean, but these aquatic systems don't exist in a vacuum. Contaminants still find their way into lake water and sediments. Mercury is of particular interest because of its toxicity and persistence.

In a new study published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research in February, an interdisciplinary team from Michigan Technological University examined the legacy of mercury in Lake Superior.

Currently, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program reports low levels of mercury deposition across most of the upper Midwest. However, those figures don't account for past mercury deposition and what that might mean for heavy metal contamination. In fact, when mining was booming around lake Superior in Michigan, Minnesota and Canada in the 1800s and 1900s, the researchers found mercury input was higher than expected.

"We document that the mining effort was discharging mercury at 1,000 times the normal deposition rate in the region," says W. Charles Kerfoot, a professor of biology and director of the Lake Superior Ecosystem Research Center at Michigan Tech. "We set out to quantify this deposition -- and it was a real wake-up call."

The team gathered dozens of cores in the Keweenaw Waterway and Portage Lake to analyze the large amounts of mercury they had observed in earlier studies. They dated the core samples, marking the high fluctuations in mercury from the 1860s through 1940s. They noted both the inorganic and organic forms of mercury, comparing their concentrations and deposition rates. In this case, as the team writes in their paper, the results "reveal that methylation occurred at the time of mining operations and shortly afterward, with an apparent time lag of 20 to 40 years."

To better understand the drivers of that lag time, Kerfoot collaborated with Noel Urban, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Water and Society at Michigan Tech. He explains that the cause of the lag is still unknown, but could result from the recovery of forests, wetlands and microbial communities. What's important, Urban says, is that these data provide a baseline for better understanding mercury in the Lake Superior region.

"We can show that the amount of mercury in the environment due to local activities is huge compared to the amount coming from other sources like regional coal power plants," he says, adding that the next step of the research will be to quantify how local activities have regional impacts.
This slow loris is only 8 weeks old, but he's already spent more time inside a cage than he has in the wild - or even with his mother. Pasar was cruelly taken from an Indonesian rain forest along with four other slow lorises so that they could be sold as pets.

International Animal Rescue

Slow lorises are known to have a venomous bite, so Pasar's teeth were filed down to make certain that he couldn't fight back or protect himself. He and the other lorises were taken to an animal market in Jarkata, Indonesia, to be sold. According to the International Animal Rescue (IAR), many slow lorises tend to die after their teeth are cut out.

Dodo Shows Little But Fierce Pocket-Sized Kitten Grows Up To Be A Wild Woman

International Animal Rescue

Who knows how long they may have had, if it weren't for a police raid of the market that occurred in early March.

International Animal Rescue

It was that very raid that brought Pasar and the others to safety at last. They arrived at the IAR center in Ciapus where vets found the lorises dehydrated, with bleeding, infected mouths. One of the adults was pregnant.

International Animal Rescue

Pasar was deeply affected by his difficult ordeal. The IAR said he and another baby slow loris named Warung were "severely traumatized and constantly crying out for their mothers." The whereabouts of Pasar's mother are currently unknown. The IAR believes that she might have been caught at the same time as him, but was kept away from him and sold separately. But the troubles of Pasar's past are far behind him now - and with rehabilitation and care, he'll never have to worry about falling into the hands of a poacher again.

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/International Animal Rescue
You know FOMO, we know FOMO, were all intimately familiar with the feeling of not wanting to miss out on seeing our favourite band, artist, festival, or event. Its the very reason EDM festivals invest so much in those derivative after-movies.

Australian ticketing company Eventbrite recently decided to investigate how FOMO manifests itself in Aussie concert-goers by conducting a survey of 1,000 Aussie punters, asking questions about their punting habits and social media use.

According to the study, Aussies plan on spending more on music events in 2016, thanks largely to the feeling of FOMO generated by social media. 40 percent of those surveyed admitted seeing social posts from friends and family inspired feelings of FOMO.

So who and what are Aussie punters afraid of missing out on? International acts were a big cause of FOMO, with Ed Sheeran (28 percent), followed by Taylor Swift (21 percent), and Foo Fighters (20 percent) topping the list.

When it comes to Australian acts, AC/DC topped the list with 31 percent of participants saying they wish theyd seen the classic hard rockers, followed by Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian (16 percent) and Chet Faker (13 percent).

For the millennial set, who suffer from FOMO way more than the older folk, AC/DC was once again the number one show they regret missing out on (27 percent), followed by Chet Faker (23 percent) and Tame Impala (21 percent).

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When it comes to music festivals, Splendour In The Grass was the most FOMOd over festival for Aussies in 2015. 39 percent of millennial respondents said they FOMOd over Splendour, followed by Falls Festival (35 percent) and Stereosonic (26 percent).

Music festivals overall managed to cause the strongest feelings of FOMO, with 47 percent of participants indicating they missed out on one event or another in 2015. Meanwhile, 49 percent plan on attending more music festivals and 60 percent plan on attending more concerts in 2016.

Interestingly, the survey also found that Sydneysiders suffer FOMO at the hands of their social media feeds (41 percent) more than Melburnians, who were affected slightly less (37 percent). That may or may not have something to do with the lockout laws closing all their venues.
IBMs Watson, the computational genius that has bested Jeopardy champions, published a cookbook and even been unleashed in the fight against cancer, now has what is perhaps its greatest challengetaking on the morass of federal procurement process.

For years, government agencies have tried to find ways to make the purchasing process more efficient. But now the Air Force has come to the conclusion that humans cannot on their own manage the Federal Acquisition Regulation, 1,897 pages of the densest prose on the planet. The only way to navigate a stifling bureaucracy that virtually everyone agrees it is broken, is to turn to the power of the machine.

The Air Force is currently working with two vendors, both of which have chosen Watson, IBMs cognitive learning computer, to develop programs that would harness artificial intelligence to help businesses and government acquisitions officials work through the mind-numbing system.

The idea is to create a bureaucracy buster, or lets call it a decoder, said Camron Gorguinpour, a senior official in the Air Forces acquisitions office.

The effort comes amid other efforts to reform the way the Pentagon buys weapons and services. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has made those reforms a top priority and is once again pushing legislation designed to speed up the procurement process and make it more efficient.

Critics have long focused on the schedule delays and cost overruns that have routinely plagued major weapons programs. But Thornberry, who said the military has had acquisitions trouble since the Continental Army of George Washington, said the problems have become so bad that they now create a national security threat.

The technology cycle is faster than its ever been, and speeding up, he said at a Brookings Institution forum earlier this month. If it takes us another 20 years to field the next airplane or the next ship, its going to be out date by the time it gets there, and we will not be able to defend the country.

Watson is perhaps best known for consuming enough data and understanding language so that it could win at Jeopardy in 2011. That version of Watson ran on a set of servers that could fill a large bedroom. Since then, IBM says it has invested $1 billion to create a business unit specifically for Watson, which runs on the cloud.

It is designed not only to ingest vast amount of data, but to learn over time. And in the last few years it has been used to help doctors diagnose cancer, athletes train and even come up with new recipes, such as Scandinavian salmon quiche and Austrian grilled asparagus.

The Pentagons procurement system is the perfect application for Watson, Gorguinpour said. While our acquisition system is very complex, it is document based. . .Its unreasonable to expect that a single individual or even a group of individuals to be able to fully understand all of the relevant documents to answer a specific question.

The system will not only help government procurement officials do their jobsby being able to query the system to find out, for example, whether a contract can be awarded on a sole-source basis. But it also would be designed to help businesses interact with the government to find programs they might be eligible to bid on. While major defense contractors have well-trained teams who can expertly navigate the system, small companies often struggle with the process.

We think cognitive computing can really help with transparency in government, said Juliane Gallina, the director of government solutions for IBM Watson.

But first Watson must be trained. The first step is for the Air Forces vendorsApplied Research in Acoustics and KalScott Engineeringto feed it all the relevant documents. Then its digital intellect will be molded by humans, asking question after question, about 5,000 in all, to help understand context and the particular nuance that comes with federal procurement law.

But as fast and efficient as the machine is, it will still need a human touch.

The best way to deploy [artificial intelligence] in this context is as a tool thats working with a human so that they can do something that neither alone could ever achieve, said Jason Summers, the chief scientist at Applied Research in Acoustics. Its the perfect task for human-machine teaming.
Bonnie J. Addario, who broke down gender barriers in the 1990s to become one of the countrys highest-ranking female oil executives, is taking on a new challenge: lung cancer. Through her private foundation in Silicon Valley, Addario is trying to do for lung cancer what the Susan G. Komen foundations pink-ribbon campaign did for breast cancer.

Lung cancer, perhaps more than any other type of cancer, has been thought of as a disease caused by lifestyle choices  namely, smoking. That thinking is counterproductive, Addario says, and has led to little progress in treatments or a cure over the years. Instead, Addario says scientists should look more closely at genes and other factors and has funded an usual study promoted through social-media outlets to understand why healthy young nonsmokers in their 20s and 30s also get lung cancer. Over the years, she has raised more than $30 million for the foundation, which has been spent on several initiatives including mobile apps to facilitate patients searches for clinical trials and funding researchers who have what she calls outside the box ideas related to early diagnosis, personalized treatment and other cutting-edge projects.

Addarios vision for disrupting medical research is similar to those articulated by other new philanthropists working on conditions such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers and allergies. But unlike her mostly young and privileged peers from the tech world who made their fortunes after going to brand-name colleges, Addario is a 60-year-old grandmother who worked her way up from company secretary to company president over more than 20 years.

A slim brunette with short, spiky hair, Addarios commanding voice speaks to the years she served as the boss of South San Franciscos Olympian Oil and the first female head of the trade group for the oil industry in California. Addario, herself a survivor of late-stage lung cancer, described her charitable work in a recent interview.

Tell me about your early career. Is it true the first jobs you had involved typing and administrative work during the day and then cleaning offices at night?

In the early 1980s, I was a single mom with three kids, and I wasnt receiving any child support or any of those good things. I had a job during the day with Kelly Girl, a temp agency, and then at night I cleaned banks with my kids. At some point I went to work at an oil company for the chairman of the board and got promotion after promotion. Im one of those people  if you put a barrier in front of me  I will find a way around it.

You had just negotiated a major coup for your company  a buyout by a big oil network that was planning on going public  when you were diagnosed with lung cancer.

I had this pain going across my chest for a year before. I had never been one to go a doctor a lot. I was kind of ignoring it and did go to the doctor, and he had me checked out, and he said, I cant find anything. Did not give me an X-ray or CT scan. It just didnt feel right. I finally had a full-body scan and paid for it myself. The radiologist came out and said, You see this? and pointed to a tumor that was coming out of my left lung and on my aorta. He said, Take this to your doctor today.

It was a typical lung cancer diagnosis. Most people are diagnosed late stage, and these tumors do a lot of damage before you become symptomatic. I had to have radiation five days a week and chemo every Friday. The good news is that they were able to shrink it enough that I could have surgery. Thats why Im here today and I shouldnt be.

During that time when I was getting all this therapy, I was on the Internet, and everything was so dire and so hopeless. It was then I made a decision that if I was going to make it, I was going to do something to change these horrible outcomes for lung cancer patients.

Youve said you started your foundation in 2006 with your daughters Andrea and Danielle to try to change peoples minds about this disease. What do you mean by that?

Did you know that in the 1980s lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as a leading killer of women? There hasnt been a lot of coverage of lung cancer in the media, and its about smoking. There are 31 diseases associated with smoking, but lung cancer just got stuck as the one everyone knows about so there are people who feel, Well, you smoked and you brought this upon yourself and therefore you deserve that you get. That is why funding for lung cancer is so low.

My thought is, Im a mom, Im a wife, a sister, a daughter. Do I deserve to die because I smoked? I dont think so.

What are the components of your lung cancer work?

One big focus is young lung cancer. Most of these people are in their 20s and 30s, and they are healthy, very fit, and most never smoked. The complete antithesis of who you think has lung cancer. They are like Jill Costello. She was 22 and the coxswain for the University of California-Berkeleys crew team. She tried all of the standard chemotherapy, and she died two weeks before the team went to nationals. We lose 1.4 million people worldwide to lung cancer each year, and this should not be happening.

We have a genomic study, and we are also working on public awareness. We recently took out ads in Delta magazine featuring three amazing young women, and it asks, What do you think these women have in common? Most people would never guess that they have lung cancer.

We also have a second foundation that is a biorepository, an honest broker for sharing and collecting specimens for researchers, and we created an international consortium of lung cancer researchers so they can collaborate more closely.

Most foundations in the United States, the money they make and what they accomplish is minor. We want to be one that makes a real difference. In breast cancer, if its caught early theres a 99 percent survival rate. In colon cancer in the 80s, but for lung cancer is closer to 50 percent. Our goal is to get the survival rates for lung cancer up to those major cancers.
In the speech from Hamlet in which Polonius says, This above all: To thine own self be true, the doddering father also gives his son advice on how to dress: Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy / But not expressd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; / For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

These words were written only a few decades before Anthony van Dyck began making his enormous portraits of sumptuously dressed aristocrats, mainly in England but influential throughout Europe and admired for centuries after his death in 1641. Several of the most impressive of these have been gathered in the exhibition Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, now at the Frick Collection, along with rooms full of drawings, engravings, oil studies and rare examples of the artists magnificent etchings.

The modern view of portraiture emphasizes the face as the locus of personality and meaning, and that seems to parallel the technique of artists such as van Dyck, who would paint his subjects face and then turn over much of the rest of the painting  including that of the clothes  to assistants in his factory-like studio. But even with deference to Poloniuss senility, its a worthwhile exercise for contemporary audiences to remember that in the 17th century, it wasnt a contradiction to celebrate truthfulness to oneself and meticulous attention to dress.

And so, too, its a mistake to look at these paintings as though only the face matters, as though only the actual hand of van Dyck limning the visage of the sitter will get you to the essence of the work. In fact, it is the whole package  the dress, the background, the appurtenances of wealth and power  that matters. These were collective works made by the studio, designed to serve an aim far more worldly and social than the mere distillation of personality and character. Van Dyck served his clients by aggrandizing their beauty, power and importance.

[An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery takes a retrograde view]

Anthony van Dyck. "Self portrait." Etching, black carbon ink on paper. (The Fitzwilliam Museum)

So submit, for a moment, to the greater impact of the work, well-described by a 19th-century journalist visiting an 1875 exhibition in London: Wherever a portrait of Vandyke hangs it presides; wherever his pictures muster they dominate . . . they fill the eye and the mind . . . they bid us pause and meet their gaze.

That description moves fluidly between psychological detail and the visual impact of lots of canvas covered in lots of paint, eliding what we might consider crucial distinctions between the personality of the subject and the showmanship of the artist.

Van Dyck didnt invent this tradition of portraiture, but he pursued it brilliantly. Early in his career, in Antwerp, Belgium, he was a principal assistant to Peter Paul Rubens and followed in Rubenss path, including spending time in Italy, especially Genoa, where he made stunning, full-length portraits of Italian elites. His 1623 painting of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (borrowed from the Pitti Palace in Florence) is an early masterpiece  a stern, intelligent-looking man surrounded by acres of crimson and red, draperies and vestments, including a virtuoso rendering of a lacy white rocchetto, which covers the prelates lap.

But van Dycks work is most often associated with his long residence in 1630s England, where he was a fashionable figure and a painter in the court of Charles I. The work takes on a new sheen  some have said a new superficiality  emphasizing personal grace and the supposed carefree lives of the wealthy, and heightening the alluring surface of clothing, jewelry, curtains, cloth and foliage.

The exhibition includes the magnificent 1633 full-length portrait of Charless wife, Queen Henrietta, depicted with a monkey and a dwarf, borrowed from Washingtons National Gallery of Art. It also includes a chalk drawing made in preparation for the painting, which gives insight into van Dycks process: The drawing renders only a few details and highlights of the folds of Henriettas dress, and her basic posture. It may have been made from a separate, anonymous model wearing the dress. It shows nothing of Henriettas face, which was likely to have been painted directly by the artist on the canvas.

[Kennicott: Why an exhibition about unfinished art feels overdone]

In an unfinished painting from about 1640, you see the process still underway: Edmund Verneys face is seen against a gray-blue halo, marking the line between van Dycks work and his assistants finishing touches.

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). "Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio," 1623. Oil on canvas. (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence)

Like Rubens, van Dyck not only celebrated power but also became enmeshed with it, a wealthy and celebrated cynosure for Londons elite. Several rooms of drawings and works on paper offer a welcome relief from the elegant harangues of his large-scale painted portraits. Two chalk sketches made in preparation for a painting of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, have particular appeal. One gives us only cursory information about Jamess face, but a full if minimalist sense of how he is standing and how his clothes fall on his body. The other is a sketch for the greyhound next to him, capturing exquisitely the dogs musculature, its elegant forepaws and the keen and affectionate gaze of its upturned face.

Another small gallery is devoted to van Dycks Iconographie, an extended collection of prints he instigated, documenting his social and intellectual circle, along with prominent political and military leaders and aristocrats. As it evolved and was published in book form, it became a visual whos who of the 17th century. But the pleasures here have less to do with celebrity than with the astonishing fluency of van Dycks preparatory drawings and monochrome grisaille paintings, from which engravers made their more leaden, heavy and ponderous reproductions. A self-portrait directly etched by van Dyck and then repurposed by other artists as a frontispiece for bound volumes of the Iconographie is one of the great masterworks on paper of any age. The artists hair is abundant, his mustache turned up jauntily, his eyes full of the spirited scrutiny and impatience of a consummate social animal.

The etched self-portrait shows only his face, with a single, sinuous line showing where his clothes meet his neck. Curiously, another print of the image is in the exhibition Unfinished, mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the new Met Breuer gallery. In this context, the lack of a body or clothing or anything other than the face seems to connect it to modernist currents. But there is no reason to think of it as intentionally unfinished any more than, say, a functioning radiator is unfinished because it isnt yet attached to a car.

And so some of the best moments of the Frick Collections van Dyck show are those that connect the process to the completed work, without privileging the final product  whether an engraving made by another artist after van Dycks original or the heroically scaled hagiographical spectacles of power  from any of their constituent parts.

Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture On view through June 5 at the Frick Collection in New York. For information, visit frick.org.


110 in the Shade at Fords Theatre, directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge. (Carol Rosegg)

Musicals just dont get a lot smarter or more sensitive than the loping 110 in the Shade that opened Wednesday at Fords Theatre. The 1963 show is simple but bighearted, with an underrated score by The Fantasticks team of Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones that is gorgeously sung. This sunny, direct production takes a laudable, matter-of-fact approach to its racially diverse casting and even has an answer for folks at odds with the storys throwback plot.

The problem: 110 is an adaptation of the early 1950s play The Rainmaker, a tale about a rural Texas gal named Lizzie whose father and brothers fret that shes just got to find a man to avoid being an old maid. Screamingly out of date, no?

It doesnt feel that way at Fords, even though an uncomfortable ripple swept through a section of the house as Lizzies tart-tongued brother Noah brutally tells her to face facts: Shes plain, and destined to be alone. Director Marcia Milgrom Dodge digs in with no apologies; she doesnt try to outfox it or torque it toward 2016. Lizzies cowpoke dad and brothers may be naggingly paternalistic (on a 1950s ranch  imagine!), yet this appealingly humane performance finds balance in a theme showered on several characters: loneliness.

[Schmidt and Jones on the Fantasticks phenomenon in 1996]

Dodges chief ally is Tracy Lynn Olivera, whose winning turn keenly dials into Lizzies bright mind and repressed, fretful isolation. In Oliveras sharp, open performance, Lizzie grasps everything and hides nothing. Olivera is a whiz with the roles tart wit and frank resignation, and the way she ultimately connects with men reveals how much damage (and optimism) there is to go around.



Ben Crawford as Starbuck, Tracy Lynn Olivera as Lizzie Curry and Kevin McAllister as File. (Carol Rosegg)

The masculine pickings are a slim way out of Lizzies parched little town, but a couple of options bubble up. One is File (Kevin McAllister), the local sheriff who has crawled into his own shell since his wife ran off. (The way this show twangs, you want to say, Since his wife done run off.) The other is a spectacular stranger who has renamed himself Starbuck (Ben Crawford). Starbuck is a flimflam man who promises the locals that for $100, by golly, he can make it rain.

Thats a metaphor for how Starbuck may be able to make Lizzie bloom, too, although she is the biggest skeptic of them all. They duke it out in duets such as Youre Not Foolin Me and Simple Little Things, supported by the unhurried, mellow tones of musical director Jay Crowders eight-piece orchestra.

If theres a snag in this production, it seems like it might be Crawfords Starbuck, who initially springs in like a greaser from another kind of show. (He even flaunts a Happy Days Fonzie move, coolly kicking his cheap-o trailer to make some fancy lights come on.) Crawford punches up Starbucks gaudy side when you think that maybe a smoother pitch might make the sale, but the crazy energy  which includes some giddy, unbridled rain-dance moves during his opening number  gradually makes sense.

[Audra McDonald in the 2007 110]

It helps that Crawford has a great set of pipes. Its delicious to hear him unfurl long, rich lines during Starbucks ballad Evening Star and the whip-the-town-into-a-frenzy Rain Song. Ditto McAllister, whose File is laid-back and deep-voiced as he croons the opener Gonna Be Another Hot Day and his duet with Lizzie, A Man and a Woman.

The balanced cast includes the assured trio of Christopher Bloch as Lizzies well-meaning father, Gregory Maheu as her sweet but dim brother Jimmy, and Stephen Gregory Smith as the bossy Noah. (This must have been particular fun for Smith, who played Jimmy when Signature Theatre revived 110 in 2003.) Dodges choreography includes nimble little two-steps for these fellas and a lively comic sequence for Little Red Hat, a second-banana number involving Jimmy and his girlfriend, Snookie (a perky Bridget Riley).

Michael Schweikardts set is a very pretty suggestion of drought-riddled Texas, with a windmill and a water tower in front of a romantic blue-red sky; the design is as picturesque as Wade Laboissonnieres notably well-tailored jeans-and-boots costumes. The production has the look of an earthy fable, and it complements the deceptively colorful Schmidt-Jones score. Dodges wonderfully pleasant show is as earnest and honest as Lizzie and, like Starbuck, just a little bit larger than life.

110 in the Shade, by N. Richard Nash, music by Harvey Schmidt, lyrics by Tom Jones. Directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge. Lights, Matthew Richards; sound design, David Budries. With Alex Alferov, Michael Bunce, Maria Egler, Kristen Garaffo, Jade Jones, Happy McPartlin, Ines Nassara, Chris Sizemore, Stephawn Stephens and Michael Yeshion. About 2 hours and 20 minutes. Through May 14 at Fords Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. Tickets: $22-$71, subject to change. Call 800-982-2787 or visit fords.org.
At one point in the intense and memorable 1984 by the British ensemble Headlong, a squall of paper swirls through the air. A wary freethinker named Winston, having found a momentary refuge from his grim totalitarian society, is getting to know a like-minded soul named Julia. Suddenly, Julia tosses an armful of documents into the air, tears off her sweater and kicks off her shoes, screaming Down with Big Brother! over and over. A percussive beat throbs. Around Winston and Julia, sections of wood-paneled wall collapse backward, as if an entire dystopian civilization were beginning to crack.

This gripping sequence dramatizes the conflict between freedom and prudence, as well as between personal autonomy and authoritarian control  some of the key themes of George Orwells influential novel 1984. It is also an example of the meticulously calibrated imagery that quickens this multimedia production, presented at the Lansburgh Theatre by the Shakespeare Theatre Company. (The work was originally produced by Headlong with the support of Britains Nottingham Playhouse and Almeida Theatre.)

Adapted from Orwells novel by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, who also direct, 1984 chronicles the political awakening of Winston (Matthew Spencer, pale and haunted-looking), a bureaucratic drone in a despotic social order that controls its citizens through surveillance, orchestrated conformity, the systematic sabotage of language, and the rewriting of historical records. As soon as Winston begins to carve out personal space for himself, starting a diary and beginning a relationship with Julia (a fierce Hara Yannas), he is at war with the Party, whose figurehead is Big Brother, and whose institutions include the Thought Police, the lingo called Newspeak and the daily ritual known as the Two Minutes Hate.

Orwell imagined this nightmarish society spying on its citizens with the help of surveillance gizmos called telescreens, which also broadcast propaganda. So, aptly, video appears intermittently throughout the Headlong production, relaying images that include Winstons diary and his computer screen at his job at the Ministry of Truth. When Winston rents an illicit love nest for visits with Julia, that cozy, cluttered space appears only as video, as if to emphasize the illusory nature of privacy under Party rule.

But the most powerful moments in the 100-minute production take place in three dimensions. Ominous figures appear and disappear behind panes of semi-frosted glass. Faces contort venomously during the Two Minutes Hate. A series of red objects and costume elements  a belt, a candy wrapper, a dress, an umbrella  seem to speak with increasing eloquence about rebellion, nostalgia and betrayal. (Chloe Lamford is the production designer. Tim Reid designed the video.)

And the clever repetition of a single scene points to the Partys sinister rewriting of history: A conversation between Winston, his gung-ho acquaintance Parsons (Simon Coates) and their brainy colleague Syme (Ben Porter) in the Ministry of Truth cafeteria recurs multiple times. In the final iteration, Syme is gone, having evidently become an unperson (as Newspeak puts it). His absence packs an emotional wallop.

Befitting a dramatization of one of the 20th centurys most nightmarish imaginings, this theatrical 1984 includes strident and potentially distressing sights and sounds, including bursts of piercingly bright light directed at the audience and some vivid evocations of torture.

Disturbing on a more intellectual level are the many seeming echoes of 21st-century America. You can detect similarities to Winstons world in our own worries about government surveillance and Big Data; in current political demagoguery and fear-mongering campaign rhetoric; and in the widespread addiction to screens and the devaluing of the written word.

Highlighting such resonances, Icke and Macmillan have woven in a frame tale set in a post-Newspeak society. The members of a kind of book club have met to discuss the meaning of Winstons story. At one point, during a break, they whip out their smartphones. Sometimes Big Brother comes as an app.

1984 Adapted from the novel by George Orwell and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. Lighting design, Natasha Chivers; sound, Tom Gibbons; associate director, Daniel Raggett. With Tim Dutton, Stephen Fewell, Christopher Patrick Nolan, Mandi Symonds, Koral Kent and Anais Killian. Presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company. About 100 minutes. Tickets: $20-$108. Through April 10 at the Lansburgh Theatre, 450 Seventh St NW. Call 202-547-1122 or visit shakespearetheatre.org.
The Points Guy mantra: If youre using cash, youre losing cash. Pay with credit cards so that you earn miles per dollars spent. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)

Brian Kelly got straight to the points.

Loyalty is important, and consumers want points, said the Points Guy, the guru of airline and hotel rewards programs. Miles and points made my life better.

Kelly, a former Wall Street dervish, founded ThePointsGuy.com in June 2010. (Early proof of his talents: As a teen, he organized a family trip to Grand Cayman paid with miles.) The website, which receives 2.6 million unique viewers per month, demystifies frequent-flier and hotel loyalty programs. His teams analytics and advice has helped countless travelers explore the world for free.

During a recent visit to Washington, a room packed with faithfuls, and at least one agnostic, gathered in Georgetown to hear the Gospel According to TPG.

I want today to become your aha moment, Kelly said, his 6-foot-7 frame towering over the audience.

Brian Kelly, known as the Points Guy, a guru of airline and hotel rewards programs. (Marco Pedde/BFAnyc.com)

He started by dispelling a misperception. Miles and points arent for cheapskates or scammers, he said. They are for maximizing travel.

Want to expand your wanderlusting opportunities? Here are some ways:

 Sign up for several credit cards and hit up those sign-up bonuses, which can range from 30,000 miles to more than 50,000 miles. His advice for one scrooge: Diversify.

 Take advantage of the strong U.S. dollar. For example, on Norwegian Air, a budget airline, book in krones to save even more on airfare. Use the Norwegian version of the site, www.norwegian.no,, which lists the fare in the local currency. A TPG employee, he said, recently snagged a $388 round-trip fare from New York to Oslo, including seat assignments. The South African rand also trembles before the mighty buck.

 Dont pay in cash. TPG mantra: If youre using cash, youre losing cash. Pay with credit cards, so that you earn miles per dollars spent. Credit cards are the biggest way to get points. But, he admonishes, pay your balance down. If you are behind on payments, settle your account before signing up for more cards.

 When shopping for everyday goods, never, ever, ever go directly through the retailer. Use an airlines shopping portal to earn miles. For example, at American Airliness AAdvantage eShopping mall, you can shop at more than 850 online stores, such as Kohls (earn two miles per dollar spent), Ace Hardware (four miles per dollar) and Sendflowers.com (15 miles per dollar).

 Sign up for dining programs. Some cards, such as Chase Sapphire Preferred and Amex Premier Rewards Gold cards, offer double points on dining, but you can bank even more by signing up for airlines dining programs and eating at their partner restaurants. Deltas Skymiles Dining, for instance, features such Washington establishments as Johnnys Half Shell, Lost Society, and Occidental Grill and Seafood.

 Book a trip with American Airlines miles before March 22, when the carrier plans to devalue its mileage program.

 Dont fret over your status in loyalty programs. Even low-level members receive preferential treatment over non-participants. For example, if your flight is canceled, Kelly said, elite members are accommodated first.

 If you have points that dont add up to a full ticket, dont transfer them to another program. Instead, redeem them for a one-way ticket or an upgrade.

 Of the three airline alliances, Star Alliance and Oneworld edge out SkyTeam.

In addition to the tips, Kelly handed out a worksheet  he was at Georgetown University, after all  ranking four transferable points programs. At No 1., Starwood Preferred Guest credit card from American Express, which buddies up with more than 30 partners, such as United, Delta, Alaska Airlines, Amtrak, British Airways and LAN. In second place, Chase Ultimate Rewards, which includes Chase Sapphire Preferred card (his recommendation for a millennial who is new to the points game) and the Chase Freedom card. Rounding out the list are American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards.

At the end of the talk, an audience member who had taken her mom to Paris with miles gushed her gratitude to Kelly.

Point taken.

More from Travel:

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The Districts water utility found itself on the defensive this week after a Virginia Tech professor who has crusaded against lead in drinking water told a congressional panel that the citys lead problem in the early 2000s was 20 to 30 times worse than what has occurred recently in Flint, Mich.

D.C. Water officials said that they didnt take issue with professor Marc Edwardss statement Tuesday to a House committee because the District is a much larger city than Flint, and the elevated levels of lead in the citys tap water occurred over several years vs. about 18 months in Flint.

Weve never denied what happened in the early 2000s, said George S. Hawkins, general manager of D.C. Water. No question, it was a very significant problem in the District . . . . We certainly learned from it, and now we have a very advanced [lead] control system in place.

Hawkins, who joined the utility in 2009, five years after the elevated lead levels were made public, said the agencys monitoring program has found D.C.s water lead levels to be below the federal limit since the mid-2000s. He objected, he said, to the publisher of the website insidesources.com teasing Thursday to its story about the congressional hearing by tweeting, D.C. RESIDENTS : Do not drink your tap water. Story breaking soon.

Thats fundamentally irresponsible, Hawkins said of the tweet. It inflamed the situation and certainly brought eyes [to the story], but its not responsible journalism in my view.

The websites story, published shortly after the tweet, did not quote Edwards or anyone else advising people not to drink city water.

In an interview Thursday, Edwards told The Washington Post that he didnt say anything like that to the websites reporter. Edwards said the utility and other government agencies covered up the citys water crisis in the early 2000s. However, since 2010, he said, D.C. Water has been as safe or even more safe in terms of lead than other U.S. cities with lead pipe.

The websites publisher, Shawn McCoy, did not respond to a request for an interview about his tweet. In an email, McCoy wrote, D.C. Water has not refuted any part of the [website] story. I read the story, and I have no intention of drinking D.C. tap water again.

McCoy also included a link to a Post story Thursday about a USA Today report based on an analysis of data from the Environmental Protection Agency. The story found that nearly 20 percent of U.S. water systems tested above the EPAs lead action level of 15 parts per billion.

[Its not just Flint. EPA records show water systems tainted across U.S.]

Flints drinking water became contaminated after April 2014, when the city switched its water source to the Flint River to save money. Because Michigan environmental officials did not ensure that the city added anti-corrosive chemicals during the treatment process, lead in older pipes leached into the water supply. That exposed residents, including thousands of children, to dangerous lead levels. The city switched back to Lake Huron water in October 2015, but residents still must filter their tap water.

D.C. water had alarming levels of lead between 2001 and 2004, when the Washington Aqueduct, which supplies city water, changed its treatment chemical from chlorine to chloramine. The aqueduct made the switch under an EPA rule that was designed to limit byproducts in the disinfectant process, the utility said.

However, the chloramine caused pipes to corrode, allowing lead to leach from the citys older pipes into the water supply. An investigation later found that the utility, then known as the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA), avoided sounding the alarm, even after federal law required it to issue warnings about health risks from rising lead levels. Records showed that WASA officials knew in summer 2001 that the water contained unsafe lead levels but withheld six high test results from federal regulators and said that the water was acceptable.

One study that Edwards co-authored found that 42,000 District children who were in the womb or younger than 2 during the water crisis were exposed to high levels of lead, putting them at risk of health and behavioral problems.

In 2004, the aqueduct began adding orthophosphate to the water to limit pipe corrosion. The city also continues to replace older lead pipes, Hawkins said, though he noted that some older homes that still have lead pipes or service lines have lead levels at around four parts per billion.

D.C.s lead problems attracted renewed attention Tuesday, when Edwards told the House panel that he was not surprised about the lead problems in Flint because of what he called federal officials willful blindness toward unsafe drinking water.

Edwards criticized EPA officials, who he said were responsible for Flints lead problems because they had been unable to learn from their mistakes.

The EPA and other agencies caused a similar lead-in-the-water crisis in Washington, D.C. from 2001 to 2004 that actually was 20 to 30 times worse in terms of the health harm to children in Washington, D.C., Edwards told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Edwards told the panel that EPA officials had completely covered up the Districts lead problems for six years. That, he said, created a climate in which anything goes across the United States regarding unsafe levels of lead in drinking water.

In an interview Thursday, Edwards said his comparison that D.C. had been 20 to 30 times worse than Flint was based on the number of people, the duration of exposure and the population harmed. He added that the levels of lead found in D.C.s water in the early 2000s were three times higher than the levels found in Flint.

D.C. Water is still facing five lawsuits related to the elevated lead levels. Edwards is involved as an expert for plaintiffs in all of the lawsuits, D.C. Water officials said.
Emily Selke at St. Andrews, Scotland, in August 2013. She and her mother were killed in the Germanwings crash in the French Alps in March 2015. (Julie Kimelman /Family Photo)

Julie Kimelman sat in the Barcelona airport waiting for her flight to Philadelphia and passed the time texting with her friend Emily Selke, who was about to board Germanwings Flight 9525 to Dusseldorf.

The two young women shared a connection through Drexel University and a love of travel and music.

It was March 24, 2015, and they had spent a week together touring the Spanish city, including taking a scenic hike on Montserrat, where they listened to the angelic voices of a boys choir at the mountain-top monastery.

It was breathtaking, Kimelman said. It was calm and beautiful.

They parted ways at the airport terminal. Kimelman was heading home, while Selke and her mother, Yvonne, were flying to Germany to continue their European vacation and meet up with family members.

I went to one gate, and they went to theirs, Kimelman said. Her last text to Emily read: See you on the other side.

The mother and daughter were among the 150 passengers and crew members who died when the co-pilot intentionally crashed the plane in the French Alps about 90 minutes into the flight. There were no survivors.

[Mother, daughter from Virginia on flight that crashed in French Alps]

The tragedy had a profound effect on Emily Selkes friends, who knew the 2013 Drexel alumna as an ebullient spirit with a gleaming smile. Selke, a Nokesville, Va., resident and 2010 summa cum laude graduate of Woodbridge Senior High School, had ambitions of becoming an organizer of music concerts.

To mark the first anniversary of the Selkes deaths, friends have created an all-day music festival featuring a dozen musical acts in Philadelphia, with proceeds benefiting a foundation in memory of Emily Selke and her mother, a longtime employee of Booz Allen Hamilton who did contract work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The charity will support Drexel students whose interests mirror Emily Selkes.

The 3rd Planet festival is scheduled for Saturday at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia and is named after a song by Emily Selkes favorite band, Modest Mouse.

The idea for the festival was inspired by Emily Selkes deep appreciation for music, said Ashley Kuhn, a college friend who bonded with Selke over their mutual love of Third Eye Blind.

We were just fans and concert-goers first and foremost, Kuhn said. The feeling of seeing your favorite band play your favorite song  you dont get that feeling anywhere else.

Kuhn said that Selke was the type of fan who would be willing to travel hours just for the opportunity to see a band play live. She said that one memory of Selke she cherishes is of the two friends sitting in the second row for a Third Eye Blind concert during their last year together at Drexel. The band played its 1997 hit Graduate.

Kuhn said the all-day festival will serve as a time of reflection for Selkes friends.

I knew that this was just what Emily would have wanted because she was so passionate about live music, Kuhn said. Im hoping that its going to be a healing thing for everyone.

The Germanwings crash captured international attention as an unusual tragedy that investigators concluded was a suicide by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. Lubitz, a 27-year-old German, locked the planes captain out of the cockpit, trapping the passengers and crew on the doomed aircraft as it accelerated into the side of a mountain in what was a voluntary action to destroy the aircraft, prosecutors in France said.

[Lubitz used autopilot to accelerate plane into mountain, black box shows]

Kuhn said that the purpose of the concert is to bring a positive event to Philadelphia every year to fill the void and replace the sadness created by Selkes death. Kimelman said Selke had this way of finding the positive in any situation.

Xela Batchelder, one of Selkes professors at Drexel, said last year that Selke was highly admired on campus.

She was great to hang around with, Batchelder said. She was always happy and smiling with that wonderful grin.

In a time of need, Selke was the person to call at all hours, Kimelman said: She was one of the best friends any of us could have ever had.

Trevor Selke said that a music festival is the most appropriate way to celebrate the lives of his sister and mother. Yvonne Selkes niece, Julia Ciarlo Hammond, said the family is still mourning the double loss.

Their passion and love of life, friends, family and volunteering within their communities serves as a constant example for those they left behind, Hammond said. Their memories will forever live in our hearts, and through the actions of friends and family, their influence will continue to be felt for years to come.

Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail
The Sidwell Friends campus on Wisconsin Avenue NW. D.C. police are investigating a report that a female student at the school was raped. (Mary F. Calvert/For The Washington Post)

MARYLAND

Burglars grab phones,

cash at Sprint store

Authorities are searching for two burglars who broke into a store and stole more than $57,000 worth of cellphones, Montgomery County police said Thursday.

The pair broke into a Sprint store in the Aspen Hill area at 6:07 a.m. Wednesday, police said.

Investigators said surveillance video shows that the burglars entered the store in the 13600 block of Connecticut Avenue through a rear door. Inside, one burglar pried open a safe, and both stole cellphones from it and cash before leaving the business at 6:25 a.m, police said.

An employee opening the business about 9:30 a.m. realized there had been a burglary and called police.

 Victoria St. Martin

THE DISTRICT

Maryland man dies

after shooting in NE

A man who was found shot Wednesday night inside a vehicle along the Anacostia Freeway in Northeast Washington has died, D.C. police said Thursday.

The victim was identified as Darnell Lee Richardson, 29, of Cheverly, Md.

Police said the man was found about 8:45 p.m. in the front seat of a vehicle along a highway exit near Benning Road. He was reported to be unconscious and not breathing at the time.

Police said the man may have been shot in the 3400 block of Benning Road, about two blocks west of where he was found.

 Peter Hermann

and Clarence Williams

Report of rape

at Sidwell school

D.C. police are investigating a report that a female student was raped Wednesday by a male student on the campus of the elite Sidwell Friends private school.

The reported assault occurred sometime after 2:30 p.m., according to a police report. The report said the female student told police she was forced to have sex without giving consent. It was not clear where on campus the incident she reported to police occurred.

The students had a prior sexual relationship, according to the police report. A police spokesman said the female student is in her upper teens.

No arrests had been made as of Thursday evening.

The Upper School of Sidwell Friends is in the 3800 block of Wisconsin Avenue NW.

Ellis Turner, associate head of the school, said in a statement, It is the longstanding policy of Sidwell Friends School to cooperate fully with any law enforcement investigation. It is also our policy not to comment on such investigations.

 Peter Hermann

and Clarence Williams
ANNAPOLIS, MD - Senate panel passed a criminal justice bill and the Senate advanced a bill that provides a tax break for most residents. (Photo by Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post) (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

A landmark bill advancing in the Maryland Senate would send people charged with drug possession to treatment instead of prison; lower the age at which longtime prisoners can win early release; and allow drug offenders serving mandatory-minimum terms a chance to appeal their sentences.

The legislation, which would save the state an estimated $250 million in prison costs over the next 10 years, was approved by the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Friday and moved to the Senate floor.

Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-

Baltimore County), chairman of the committee, called the 90-page bill a monumental piece of legislation . . . that will treat individuals smarter, use our tax dollars in a wiser way and creates more efficiency.

Nearly a dozen states, including Kentucky and Pennsylvania, have passed similar bills in recent years as governors and legislatures struggle to cut prison costs and address long-standing complaints about racial disparities and aging prison populations.

The legislation largely follows the recommendations of the Justice Reinvestment Coordinating Council, a broad coalition of advocates, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers appointed last year to examine prison and sentencing policies.

The legislation would eliminate disparities in penalties for offenses involving crack and powder cocaine; make it easier for people convicted of drug possession to have those convictions expunged from their records; lower the eligibility age for geriatric parole from 65 to 60; offer drug offenders the same number of credits to reduce their sentences as are given to other nonviolent offenders; and reduce the amount of time parolees can be given for technical violations.

[Md. panel recommends less prison for drug offenders, more treatment]

It does not include a repeal of mandatory-minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, even though several members of the council had pushed for that change, noting that such sentencing requirements disproportionately affect minorities (in Maryland, 87 percent of those serving mandatory-minimum sentences are African American).

Instead, the committee proposed allowing inmates currently serving mandatory minimums for drug offenses to file motions to have their sentences reduced.

The bill also would require prosecutors to explain why they are seeking a mandatory-

minimum sentence, instead of that sentence being brought into play automatically.

Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden (D-Baltimore), who pushed for a repeal of mandatory minimums, called the compromise a great start. . . . It really moves all of our society in going in the right direction.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), who sponsored the bill, noted that it had bipartisan support, and he singled out Sen. Michael J. Hough (R-Frederick) for his work.

Also Friday, the Senate gave preliminary approval to a bill that provides tax relief to residents at all income levels. The legislation, which involves $671 million in tax reductions over five years, aligns with Republican Gov. Larry Hogans goal of reducing the tax burden on Marylanders.

The bill would slightly lower tax rates for residents in the top four income brackets, mostly affecting individuals earning more than $100,000 and married couples earning more than $150,000. It would increase the personal income-tax exemption for middle-income taxpayers to $3,400 from $3,200 over four years and expand the earned-income tax credit for the working poor while extending that benefit to taxpayers who are younger than 25 and without children.

Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer (D-Baltimore County), the Budget and Taxation Committee chairman, said the reduction in personal income taxes is an attempt to help improve the states economic climate, create more jobs and attract more businesses.

But the heads of nine liberal-leaning groups criticized the cuts for high earners, saying the money should instead be used to bolster state programs.

This is money that could be better spent on our education system, improving highways and transit systems, or making other investments that would actually boost the states economy, said a letter signed by the state teachers union, a union representing state employees and other organizations.

The House on Friday also passed an expansion of the earned-income tax credit.

Earlier this week, the House Ways and Means Committee green-lighted a measure that would eliminate the corporate income tax on overseas earnings that foreign governments have already taxed and a bill that would allow businesses to base their tax rates on sales in Maryland rather than a combination of sales, property and payroll in the state. Supporters of the latter bill say many corporations with headquarters in Maryland would pay lower taxes under the plan.

The Senate voted unanimously Friday to scale back the use of kindergarten assessments. The state started requiring kindergartners to take the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, a computer-based test, in 2014. Under the bill, the tests would be administered only to a sample of students in each local district. A similar bill has passed the House. The two chambers have to agree on amendments made to the bill.

The Senate also gave preliminary approval to a bill that would increase annual funding for community behavioral health providers. The measure requires an additional $17 million in fiscal year 2018, the first year the program would be in effect.
Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen are having their first debate on Friday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) (TWP/TWP)

The two Democrats battling for a rare open Senate seat in Maryland hit each other hard Friday in the first debate of the primary season, with Rep. Chris Van Hollen describing Rep. Donna Edwards as dishonest and ineffective, and Edwards calling him an establishment figure who is out of touch with everyday voters.

The hour-long radio debate, hosted by WAMUs Kojo Nnamdi and Tom Sherwood of WRC-TV (Channel 4), was the first time the candidates had engaged each other directly in a contest that will probably determine who represents Maryland in the Senate for decades to come.

The high stakes were clear in the testy exchanges between the lawmakers, who share similarly liberal voting records and policy positions. With little to debate in terms of issues, the candidates focused on effectiveness and background.

Van Hollen, 57, a member of Congress since 2003, said that as the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, he has led the fights that Edwards only talks about. Edwards, who became a member of Congress in 2008, said she is a more consistent voice for working families.

So far, Edwards, also 57, more often has been the one to go negative, painting Van Hollen as too quick to compromise with Republicans. During the debate, however, Van Hollen was the prime aggressor. He said the congresswomans criticisms were essentially lies told to cover her weak record.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) meets with local community partners of the Benjamin Franklin High School at Masonville Cove during a campaign stop in Baltimore. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

Ms. Edwards has not been telling Maryland voters the truth, Van Hollen said. He accused her of a lot of rhetoric but no results, no record.

[Baltimore voters could decide tight Senate contest]

Most polls this year have shown the candidates essentially tied. But a poll by the Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore from last week had Edwards six points ahead. The primary is April 26.

Three times during the debate, Van Hollen invoked The Washington Post Editorial Board, which in its endorsement of Van Hollen called Edwards notorious for inattention to constituent services and teamwork. He said that Edwardss constituents call Van Hollens office because she fails to help them.

Edwards needled Van Hollen back, attacking his past support for free-trade agreements, budget negotiations based on a framework that included cuts to Social Security and proposals that he backed in the Maryland legislature to strengthen criminal sentences.

I really have to question whether he has the capacity to deliver on criminal-justice reform, Edwards said. Marylanders are tired of career politicians willing to trade away our values just to get a deal or get a headline.

She also made a forceful case that voters should consider her personal history and perspective as a black single mother before deciding who should replace retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in Congress.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) campaigns in Cambridge, Md. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

I think race does matter, Edwards said. Noting that there are only 20 women and two African Americans in the Senate, she said, It is time that we had the ability to speak for ourselves.

Van Hollen pointed out that Edwards is not co-sponsoring either of two congressional bills that would attack mandatory minimum sentences. He accused her of taking credit for bills that she had failed to even vote on.

I wish she would join me in co-sponsoring the legislation so she would actually get some of this work done, he said.

While she attacks him for being close to Wall Street, Van Hollen said he was literally leading the fight to close tax loopholes and better regulate the financial industry.

[Donations from Hardball guests to Matthewss campaign draw fire]

When Edwards criticized her opponent for agreeing to compromise with the National Rifle Association in a campaign-finance bill, the congressman said he was the only candidate here who has taken on the NRA and won.

Edwards pushed back, saying she was proud of her record and had worked across the aisle on science, transportation and education legislation.

Mr. Van Hollen is completely off base, she said. Attacking her for missing a recent meeting with Mikulski and Gov. Larry Hogan (R) was ridiculous, she said, because Van Hollen had missed similar events.

Edwards dismissed the endorsements Van Hollen held up as evidence of his superior skills. It is no surprise to me that the political establishment endorses the political establishment, she said. It is no surprise to me at all.

As in a fundraising email this week, she hammered state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) for saying that Van Hollen was born to the job.

I have walked in the shoes of the people I hope to represent, she said, recalling that she was the first in her family to go to college and got through law school while raising an infant son.

[Edwards: Why arent black women described as born to the Senate?]

Van Hollen said the support he has won from all across Maryland cannot be dismissed simply as the establishment.

These are people who have worked with both of us, and these are people who can testify to results, he said.

The clashes continued Friday evening at a candidates forum in Greenbelt that drew a capacity crowd. At one point, several Edwards supporters reacted angrily when Van Hollen addressed his opponent as Ms. Edwards rather than Congresswoman, prompting a baffled response from the lawmaker. The candidates interrupted each other, with Edwards twice interjecting as Van Hollen attacked her record.

Does anybody really believe that Im in the tea party? she asked when Van Hollen pointed to a vote of hers with Republicans against a debt deal.

When he brought up a group of employees from NASA that has accused her of ignoring complaints of racism there, she stood and cut in to say that she had been working on the issue for a year and the group simply didnt get the result they wanted. I worked at NASA, I think I know something about it, she said.

Edwards again emphasized her particular perspective, saying she knows what its like to live under student debt and talk to her son about dealing with the possibility of racial profiling by police. Van Hollen again countered that he has been more effective than she has in dealing with specific issues.

I didnt have a family member who was a victim of gun violence, he said, but he worked to pass gun safety legislation while a state legislator.

Several Republicans are running for their partys nomination for the Senate seat, including Del. Kathy Szeliga (Baltimore County), the minority whip in the House of Delegates. But both Van Hollen and Edwards have higher profiles in the state and more impressive political resumes.

The person who gets the Democratic nomination will face the winner of the Republican primary in November. With registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans in Maryland by more than 2 to 1, the Democratic nominee will be the overwhelming favorite.
The legislator from Perumbavoor who came out of hiding on Saturday has been suspended from KPCC and DCC for 6 months.
Tax-relief proposals have advanced to the floor of the Maryland House and Senate. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

The Maryland legislature has whittled down its list of tax-relief proposals, advancing measures this week that would provide relief for residents at all income levels and for corporations based primarily in the state.

The plans align with Gov. Larry Hogans goal of reducing the tax burden on Marylanders and with recent recommendations from a commission that legislative leaders created to develop proposals for improving the states economic climate.

Hogan (R) was elected in 2014 on a wave of anti-tax sentiment, after multiple increases in taxes and fees were put in place during the tenure of then-Gov. Martin OMalley (D) in the wake of the 2008 recession.

The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee on Thursday approved bills that would reduce tax rates for high earners while increasing an exemption for middle-income families and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, a benefit for the working poor.

The House on Friday passed legislation to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Earlier this week, the House Ways and Means Committee green-lighted a measure that would eliminate the corporate income tax on overseas earnings that have already been taxed abroad; and a bill that would allow corporations to base their tax rates on sales in Maryland rather than a combination of sales, property and payroll in the state.

Supporters say the latter bill would create an incentive for companies to move to Maryland or remain in the state, since many would face a lower tax burden that way under the so-called single-sales method. Opponents say businesses in agriculture, energy and retail could see their taxes increase under the plan, since many are headquartered in other states.

All of the proposals advanced by the committees are now under consideration in their respective chambers.

Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chairman Edward J. Kasemeyer (D-Howard County) described the Senate proposals as a balanced approach that helps residents across the income spectrum.

But the heads of nine liberal-leaning organizations criticized the decision to support cuts for high earners, saying in a letter to lawmakers on Friday that the state should refrain from giving tax breaks to those who need them the least at the expense of hard-working Marylanders and our states future.

The signers included the head of the Maryland teachers union and a labor group that represents state employees.

This is money that could be better spent on our education system, improving highways and transit systems, or making other investments that would actually boost the states economy, the letter said.

The Senate legislation, which involves $671 million in tax reductions over five years, would lower tax rates by 1 percent to 3 percent for residents in the top four income brackets, mostly affecting individuals earning more than $100,000 and married couples earning more than $150,000.

It would also increase the personal income-tax exemption for middle-income taxpayers from $3,200 to $3,400 over four years.

For the working poor, the Senate bill would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and extend the benefit to taxpayers who are under age 25 and without children. Hogan has proposed a similar expansion of the credit, but only for working families with children.


Ian Felenchak, 8, left, and Marley Felenchak, 7, ride in the sidecar of D.C. Police Lt. Robert Glovers Harley-Davidson motorcycle during the St. Patricks Parade in Washington on March 13, 2016. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office, new presidents have made their way from the Capitol to the White House escorted by D.C. police officers riding Harley-Davidsons fitted with sidecars.

But the two-wheeled pod or torpedo-shaped cars  which help stabilize the motorcycles and give a nostalgic nod to the inaugural pageant  could become obsolete. Harley stopped making sidecars five years ago and then built the newest model motorcycles without a way to attach the pods.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said her agency is working with Harley to come up with a fix. If none can be found, police will ride older-model bikes in the upcoming inauguration. But police in the nations capital worry that a tradition dating back to the 1900s  one that they take seriously  will soon be lost.

When we heard that we were no longer able to use the sidecars, to say the least, officers in the motor unit were very upset, Lanier said. These are signature to Metropolitan Police, and I think they represent Harley-Davidson extremely well. They are really kind of unique. They make the unit stand out.

[A close look at what it takes to be a D.C. police motorcycle officer]

The sidecars, which can run upward of $6,000 apiece, are rarely used to carry passengers. But they do have a practical purpose in a city where police regularly safeguard world leaders and other dignitaries: The extra wheels and weight increase the motorcycles stability in snow and ice.

Plus, police and other fans say, the choreographed formations of bikes with sidecars are integral to the inauguration pageantry.

Inauguration wouldnt be the same without sidecars, said Steve Tritt, a police vehicle enthusiast who lives in Florida and collects histories on a website called Policemotorunits.com. He said Harleys, sidecars and new presidents simply go together.

Harley is looked on as a tradition, and when people see the sidecars coming with the president, it means something, said Tritt, who spent three years as a police officer in South Carolina but credits his father, a longtime sheriff, with his interest in motorcycles. Thats the way it always has been. Thats American history.



A service member salutes as D.C. police pass during President Obamas second inaugural parade. (Craig Hudson/For The Washington Post)

D.C. police officers in the inaugural parade ride along Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest Washington. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

Officers from the D.C. and U.S. Park Police ride in the inaugural and other parades. The first record of D.C. police using motorcycles during an inauguration comes from 1933.

Lanier said the department has 55 motorcycles and a stockpile of 65 sidecars, many of them never put on the street. The problem now is finding enough older-model motorcycles with hardware to accommodate the sidecars. She said the most significant issue is that the automatic braking systems on the new motorcycles is not compatible with the brakes on the sidecars.

Were going to make what we have work as long as we possibly can, Lanier said.

The Park Police turned to a husband-and-wife-run company in Seattle called Liberty Motors and bought six custom-made sidecars that replicate the Harley sidecar used during President Kennedys inauguration in 1961.

And its not just D.C. area police who are searching for substitutes. Pittsburghs police force, which started using sidecars in 1909, bought five sidecars when Harley made its last batch, and the force is seeking a company to retrofit the newer motorcycles.

A spokeswoman for Harley-Davidson, Maripat Blankenheim, said she could not comment on specifics of the talks with the District because the company does not publicly discuss new products. But she said the work and the conversations that are needed are taking place.

Blankenheim said that her company agrees with the chief in her suggestion that Harley-Davidson wants to have its bar and shield lead the inaugural parade, and every other parade.

[History of the D.C. police motorcycle unit]

Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson stopped sidecar production in 2011, ending a 97-year run, citing declining sales, and promised to support existing warranties and to make repairs. The decision to drop the line touched off anger and angst among sidecar enthusiasts and motorcycle clubs across the country.

Police departments, too, were in a quandary, particularly those in cold-weather regions where sidecars are a must to put motorcycles on the streets year-round.

D.C. and Park Police keep their sidecars on the streets from October or November through St. Patricks Day to account for winter weather. In slow-moving parades and some escort situations, the extra wheels also help riders avoid tipping over when their speed is slower than a slow walk.

Police motorcyclists are in many ways like other two-wheeler enthusiasts  a club within a club, steeped in history and proud of the way they can intricately maneuver their 800-pound machines, such as the sharp, slow-speed turn called the little general. They participate in competitions, and in the St. Patricks Parade in Washington, the District force allows its motorcycle officers to ride with their children in sidecars, one of the rare times those seats are filled.



Children ride in the sidecar of D.C. Police Lt. Robert Glovers Harley-Davidson motorcycle during the St. Patricks Parade in Washington on March 13, 2016. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

U.S. Park Police will celebrate the motorcycle units 100th anniversary in 2017. The agency patrols public parks such as the Mall, helps escort dignitaries and protects large-scale events. It has 21 motorcycle riders and 30 Harley-Davidson motorcycles, including six recently ordered for Januarys inauguration. (The new ones do not take sidecars.)

Lt. Todd Reid, commander of the Park Police motorcycle unit, said he and a representative from D.C. police had checked out a Harley competitor that makes police motorcycles and sidecars. He said that company quoted a price of $68,800, including the cycle and sidecar. Harley sells its police motorcycles, without sidecars, for about $24,000.

Reid, a 28-year member of the force, said his department decided to buy six sidecars from Liberty, which sells them for $9,500, including shipping. We had to find something after-market that would be safe for our sidecar operations, he said. Harley took away all our options.

Reid said that Liberty has designed a bracket that can fit its sidecars onto the newer Harleys, and he said that Harley has told him that if this is done correctly, the alteration would not void the Harley warranty. Reid said the six new retro-style sidecars from Liberty will lead the inaugural procession for the next president.

Pete Larsen, the founder and president of Liberty Motors, said Harleys decision in 2011 left police and others in a lurch.

But its a problem hes happy to solve.
D.C. police on Thursday arrested a third suspect in connection with a fatal stabbing in December in the Districts Langston-Carver neighborhood of Northeast Washington.

Charles Edward McRae, 50, is charged with first-degree murder while armed. He could make an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Friday.

Police allege that McRae and two others were involved in the killing of Lenard Wills, 50, of Northwest, who was stabbed about 8:20 p.m. on Dec. 21 inside an apartment in the 700 block of 24th Street NE.

[Police arrest suspects in fatal Northeast Washington stabbing]

Police said they had previously arrested Willie Glover, 37, of Northeast, and Joseph Barbour, 35, of Northeast. Both men were charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said Glover and Barbour also were stabbed in the incident, and they survived.

A police arrest affidavit filed in court says that Wills was in an apartment with friends when three men wearing masks and carrying guns burst inside to rob the occupants of money and drugs. Police said Wills swung at one man and afterward was beaten with a gun and stabbed four times in the chest.

A gunshot was fired during the fight but no one was struck. It is unclear how two of the suspects were stabbed in the melee.
D.C. police are investigating a report that a female student at Sidwell Friends school was raped Monday by a male student on the campus of the elite private institution.

The report says the female student told police she was forced to have sex without giving consent. It was not clear where on campus the incident she reported to police occurred.

A police report indicated the incident occurred Wednesday, but authorities later said it occurred Monday.

The female student and the alleged attacker had a prior sexual relationship, according to the police report. A police spokesman said the female student is in her upper teens.

No arrests had been made as of Thursday evening.

The Upper School of Sidwell Friends is located in the 3800 block of Wisconsin Avenue NW.

Ellis Turner, the associate head of school, said in a statement that It is the longstanding policy of Sidwell Friends School to cooperate fully with any law enforcement investigation. It is also our policy not to comment on such investigations.
A former campaign treasurer to Virginia Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) was sentenced Friday to 56 months in prison for three fraud schemes totalling $1.4 million, including $653,000 embezzled from Saslaw.

Linda Diane Wallis, who also went by Lynn Wallis Miller, 51, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in October before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of Alexandria. Wallis admitted writing 73 checks without the lawmaker or his campaigns knowledge or permission to two fake entities she set up with a co-conspirator, identified by prosecutors in court papers as DM.

[Former campaign treasurer of Va. Senate minority leader admits to fraud]

Those who abuse a position of public and private trust by engaging in sophisticated fraud schemes will be held accountable for their actions, U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente of the eastern district of Virginia said in a statement. This prosecution should serve as a deterrent to anyone contemplating similar theft for their own benefit.

Wallis admitted the pair also used the same entities to take $368,400 from her husbands employer, a logistics company in Dulles, where prosecutors said he was general counsel in charge of hiring outside lawyers.

Separately, Wallis admitted commingling with the couples personal funds $482,000 raised from colleges and a Hungarian businessman for a charity that the couple founded to lobby for funding for colleges serving people with autism and intellectual disabilities, according to court documents. Wallis said the couple have two special-needs sons.
Psychiatrist and author Frances Cress Welsing was known for controversial views on race. (Elvert Barnes/elvertbarnes.com)

When family members, friends and colleagues of Frances Cress Welsing began planning a memorial service for the psychiatrist and author who devoted her life to studying racism and its root causes, they knew they would have a tall order trying to capture her impact.

She was celebrated and controversial, but never wavering in her belief that the persistent struggles of people of color were the result of the racism they had endured. Welsing died Jan. 2, a few hours after suffering a stroke. She was 80.

Welsing provided psychiatric services to D.C. government agencies and institutions for 27 years. She also maintained a private practice in the District beginning in 1967, counseling patients until days before her death.

Several of those she helped, such as motivational speaker and radio host Roach Brown, say they owe her their lives.

In 1965, Brown was a 21-year-old inmate at the D.C. Department of Corrections prison in Lorton, Va. A year earlier, he and two other men had been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a local fence in a dispute over the price of hot jewelry, Brown said.

The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in DC was packed with people and song celebrating the life of medical pioneer Frances Cress Welsing. (Hamil Harris)

[The price of redemption]

No weapon was ever recovered, and Brown, now 72, has always maintained that he was not the triggerman.

Welsing testified during his trial that his actions were consistent with someone whose environment had led to mental-health problems.

They ended up giving me life in prison because Dr. Welsing spoke up on my behalf, said Brown, who went on to start the prison theatrical group Inner Voices. She saw something in me that I didnt see in myself.

Brown, whose sentence was commuted in 1975, will be among those at the memorial service for Welsing on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. at Metropolitan AME Church in the District. Dr. Welsing turned me and other guys around, Brown said. She was our Harriet Tubman to get out of mental slavery.

Welsing first gained notoriety in 1969 when she wrote an essay, The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy). In it, she theorized that racism was rooted in the varying degrees of melanin and the color inferiority of white people. She argued that the lack of melanin led white people to develop hostility and aggression toward people darker than they.

She had a theory about race and why white people do what they do, and I dealt with the what, said Neely Fuller, author of The United-Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept.

In her 1991 book The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, Welsing again looked at the origins of white supremacy and its impact. She wrote that black males must help one another to understand that they are being led by the dynamic of white supremacy to inflict extreme damage upon themselves and each other.

[Welsings work provokes different reactions]

Kevin Washington, president of the Association of Black Psychologists, said, Dr. Welsings major contribution as it relates to black mental health was that she had the capacity to challenge the dominant, prevailing thought of our society, and she gave it the name global white supremacy. 

Ray Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University and former director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University, said Welsing drew heavy criticism for her views, which she expected. She frequently engaged her detractors.

In 1974, she and Stanford University physicist William Shockley, who had argued that blacks were genetically inferior to whites, engaged in a debate on the syndicated television show Tony Browns Journal.

Welsing was born in Chicago in 1935. Her father, Henry N. Cress, was a physician, and her mother, Ida Mae Griffen, was a schoolteacher, and there were high expectations.

We were taught that we were not special, said Welsings older sister, Lorne Cress-Love. We were encouraged to read and discuss all types of issues.

Cress-Love said their father and grandfather, who also was a physician, were passionate about fighting for equality. My father told us that our grandfather spent more time fighting for the race than practicing medicine.

In 1957, Welsing earned a bachelors degree from Antioch College, and in 1962 she earned a medical degree from the Howard University College of Medicine. After graduating, Welsing completed a residency at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington. From 1968 to 1975, she taught in the pediatric department of Howard Universitys Medical School.

Dr. Welsing stayed true to her calling as a healer, said Jeff Menzise, a professor at Morgan State University. As a scientist, she sought answers to what was the biggest problem facing her people, and what repeatedly showed up in her research and her clients was racism, and she sought to find a remedy to that problem.
Two-week-old Sophia receives a physical therapy session that can make a significant contribution to her long-term development, at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. (Felipe Dana/AP)

HEALTH

FDA approves 3-in-1 test for Zika, others

A new three-in-one laboratory test for Zika and two other dangerous viruses has received emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration and will be distributed soon, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kits containing the test, which could speed the diagnosis of Zika, will be shipped to qualified labs across the country over the next two weeks, the agency said Friday.

The test will allow doctors to determine in a single procedure whether an individual is infected with Zika, chikungunya or dengue. Currently, separate tests are required.

The CDC said it will distribute the test kits to facilities in the Laboratory Response Network, a grouping of domestic and international labs that respond to public health emergencies. The test, called the Trioplex Real-time RT-PCR Assay, will not be available in hospitals or other primary-care settings.

The Zika virus, which is transmitted primarily by mosquitoes, has been spreading rapidly throughout the Americas.

1 of 24 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Puerto Rico becoming a breeding ground for the Zika virus in the U.S. View Photos Cases of the virus are expected to rise on the island in coming months. And that raises the likelihood of transfer to the mainland. Caption Cases of the virus are expected to rise on the island in coming months. And that raises the likelihood of transfer to the mainland. Feb. 22, 2016 A statue stands guard atop a tomb stone at the Villa Palmeras cemetery in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The cemetery is one of the oldest in the city. Flower urns at many graves are breeding grounds for the disease-carrying mosquitoes. Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

 Laurie McGinley

NAVY

5-year sentence in major fraud scheme

A former manager of a Singapore-based company servicing U.S. Navy ships has been sentenced to more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to a fraud scheme that overbilled the maritime branch by more than $34 million.

U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino in San Diego also ordered Alex Wisidagama to pay $34.8 million in restitution to the Navy.

The 42-year-old businessman was the global manager of Glenn Defense Marine Asia and the cousin of its top executive, Leonard Glenn Francis. Francis, nicknamed Fat Leonard because of his wide girth, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in one of the militarys biggest bribery cases.

Ten people, including several Navy officers, have been charged in the case, and all but one have pleaded guilty. Wisidagama is the third defendant to be sentenced.

Francis has admitted to providing a long list of gifts  including paying for prostitutes, concert tickets and luxury hotel stays for Navy officers  in exchange for classified information that helped his company carry out the scheme.

 Associated Press

View Graphic What you need to know about the Zika virus and how it spreads

PENNSYLVANIA

3 Franciscan friars turn themselves in

Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he may have molested more than 100 children surrendered Friday in Pennsylvania.

Robert DAversa, 69, Anthony Criscitelli, 62, and Giles Schinelli, 73, are free on unsecured bonds until an April 14 preliminary hearing on charges of child endangerment and conspiracy. Each is a third-degree felony carrying up to seven years in prison.

The friars served successively as ministers provincial who headed a Franciscan religious order in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the orders members, including Brother Stephen Baker, who authorities say molested scores of children, most of them at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown, where he was assigned from 1992 to 2000. Baker killed himself in 2013.

 Associated Press

Ore. refuge occupier arrested over threat: A man who took part in the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon this year was arrested after threatening to kill federal agents investigating the standoff, a county prosecutor said Friday. Scott Willingham, 49, called 911 on Wednesday and said he would shoot investigators if local officials did not come to arrest him first, said Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter.

Prep-school graduate sent to prison for parole violation: A graduate of a New Hampshire preparatory school who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old freshman as part of a game of sexual conquest called Senior Salute was sent to jail Friday after acknowledging he had violated his bail agreement by repeatedly missing curfew. A judge in Merrimack County Superior Court said Owen Labrie, 20, would begin his one-year jail sentence immediately. Labrie was arrested in 2014, days after graduating from St. Pauls School, an elite school in Concord, N.H.

 From news services
Memory loss is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimers disease and heartbreaking for loved ones to watch progress. Gone are the details of a first love, a childs wobbly first steps or the achievements of a distinguished 30-year career.

Scientists had assumed for a long time that the disease destroys how those memories are encoded and makes them disappear forever. But what if they werent actually gone  just inaccessible?

A paper published last week by MITs Nobel Prize-winning Susumu Tonegawa provides the first strong evidence of this possibility and raises the hope for treatments that could reverse some of Alzheimers ravages on memory.

The important point is, this is a proof of concept, Tonegawa said. That is, even if a memory seems to be gone, it is still there. Its a matter of how to retrieve it.

The research, described in the journal Nature, involved two groups of mice. One was a normal control and the other was genetically engineered to have Alzheimers-like symptoms. Both groups were given a mild electric shock to their feet.

The first group appeared to remember the trauma of the incident by showing fear when placed back in the box where they had been given the shock. The Alzheimers mice, on the other hand, seemed to quickly forget what had happened and did not have an upset reaction to the box.

The latter groups behavior changed dramatically when the scientists stimulated tagged cells in the hippocampus  the part of the brain that encodes short-term memories  with a special blue light. When they were put back into the box following the procedure, their memories of the shock appeared to have returned, and they displayed the same fear as those in the control group.

Tonegawa and his colleagues wrote that the treatment appears to have boosted neurons to regrow dendritic spines, which are small buds that form connections with other cells.

The revelations have shattered a 20-year paradigm of how were thinking about the disease, Rudy Tanzi, a Harvard neurology professor who is not involved in the research, told the Boston Herald. He said that since the 1980s, researchers believed the memories just werent getting stored properly.

The technique used in the study  optical stimulation of brain cells, or optogenetics  involves the insertion of a gene into parts of a brain to make them sensitive to blue light and then stimulating them with the light.

In a commentary accompanying the paper, Prerana Shrestha and Eric Klann of the Center for Neural Science at New York University said that the potential to rescue long-term memory in dementia is exciting.

Electrical stimulation of the brain may be one alternative scientists can pursue, according to Christine Denny, a neurobiologist at Columbia University. Nature reported that early trials showed that deep-brain stimulation of the hippocampus may improve memory in some Alzheimers patients.
CUBA

Venezuelas Maduro visits ahead of Obama

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba on Friday for a day of high-level meetings and ceremonies that appeared designed to send a message of socialist solidarity two days before Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. president to visit the island in nearly 90 years.

Maduro was accompanied on the visit by several ministers. Communications Minister Luis Jose Marcano told Venezuelan state television that the two governments would agree on new cooperation in pharmaceutical production, urban agriculture, industrial development and tourism.

Later in the day, Maduro received the Order of Jose Marti, one of Cubas highest honors.

Venezuela has been sending hundreds of millions of dollars in oil to Cuba each year, while the island has sent teams of doctors and other state workers to bolster Venezuelan government efforts. Some of that aid has been cut back as Caracas struggles with a deep economic crisis. Venezuelas relations with the United States remain tense, although Cuba is working with the Obama administration to normalize ties.

Cuba has made repeated public statements about maintaining its close ties with Venezuela, even as President Raul Castros government moves closer to the United States.

Sweden has asked the European Union for help stopping an influx of U.S. lobsters, saying they could wipe out their European cousins with deadly diseases. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

 Associated Press

WEST BANK

Palestinian killed after attack, Israel says

The Israeli military said a Palestinian tried to attack soldiers with a knife in the West Bank before being shot and killed by Israeli forces at the scene.

The military said the Palestinian charged the soldiers Friday at the Gush Etzion junction near Jerusalem while brandishing the knife. The location has been the scene of many recent Palestinian attacks.

The incident follows six months of near-daily Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces. Earlier Friday, the military said troops arrested two Palestinians with knives who said they were planning an attack.

 Associated Press

THE AMERICAS

WHO urges trial runs in ght against Zika

The World Health Organization called on Friday for pilot projects to test two experimental approaches to curbing mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus, including testing the release of genetically modified insects and bacteria that would stop the insects eggs from hatching.

Zika, which is sweeping through the Americas, is transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which the U.N. health body has described as an opportunistic and tenacious menace.





Finding the most effective ways to control these mosquitoes could be a major boost to the fight against the disease, the WHO said. After convening a meeting of its Vector Control Advisory Group this week, the WHO said its specialists had reviewed five potential new weapons against Aedes mosquitoes.

Three were too experimental to consider for scaled-up pilot projects, the WHO said. But two others  releasing mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia bacteria and using genetically modified male mosquitoes to suppress the wild population  warrant time-limited pilot deployment, accompanied by rigorous monitoring and evaluation.

 Reuters

Sweden asks E.U. to block U.S. lobsters: Sweden has asked the European Union for help stopping an influx of U.S. lobsters, saying they could wipe out their European cousins with deadly diseases. The Swedish Environment Ministry said more than 30 U.S. lobsters have been found along Swedens west coast in recent years. It said the animals, also known as Maine lobsters, can carry diseases and parasites that could spread to the European lobster and result in extremely high mortality. Sweden asked the E.U. to list the Maine lobster as a foreign species, which would prohibit imports of live U.S. lobsters into the 28-nation bloc.

Former Sierra Leone militia leader violates terms of release: A former militia leader convicted of war crimes during Sierra Leones civil war admitted to attending a political meeting, a violation of the terms of his early release. Moinina Fofana also admitted at a court hearing in Freetown that he had failed to check in with police as required  another violation that had prompted a judge to order his rearrest last week. Fofana was convicted by a U.N.-backed special court in 2007 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and pillage. He received a 15-year sentence and was held in Rwanda before being granted early release in 2015, making him the first person to be freed after being convicted by the court.

 From news services
Barney Frank, a Democrat, represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013 and was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011.

There is a fundamental weakness in the position of those who insist that the only way to deal with financial institutions that are too big to fail is to break them up: their acknowledgment that the central question of how big is too big is too hard to answer. This is rarely made explicit, but it is universal. Across the ideological range from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve, the break em up advocates scrupulously avoid suggesting any size beyond which banks must not be allowed to exist.

The reason for this glaring omission  which renders their argument of little practical use for makers of actual decisions  is clear, once the focus is on the meaning of too big to fail, as opposed to its invocation as a general expression of distrust of banks. The issue is how to avoid a situation in which an institution has incurred so much debt that its inability to pay threatens the stability of the financial system. In other words, how do we prevent a repetition of the damage caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008? Therein lies their dilemma.

The Wall Street reform bill that I co-authored, commonly known as the Dodd-Frank Act, takes a three-step approach:

First, it includes measures to reduce the riskiness of financial activities  for example, prohibition of the issuance of mortgage loans to people unlikely to repay and a requirement that securitizers of bundled loans retain a portion of the risk.

Second, it mandates significant increases in the ability to repay debts, both for institutions as a whole and for particular transactions, most notably those involving derivatives. AIGs dubiously impressive feat of incurring $170 billion in credit-default-swap obligations that not only could it not pay but also of which it was not able even to keep track will remain a record in recklessness.

The best defense of these provisions comes from Steve Eisman, featured prominently in Michael Lewiss book The Big Short for being one of the first to understand what was going wrong: It is simply a fact that the United States financial system is much less risky than it was before. That does not mean that losses cannot occur, but United States banks are in much better shape to withstand them.

Better, but admittedly not absolutely. The restrictions on leverage do not guarantee that no institution will get in over its head, although they do mean that the level of excess indebtedness in such cases is almost certain to be much lower than it otherwise would be.

Consequently, the third part of Dodd-Frank allows large entities to fail without causing serious collateral damage. When the next Lehman Brothers or AIG cannot pay its debts, federal officials are legally instructed to begin the process of dissolving it; to borrow money from the treasury to pay, not all of its debts as the law required in 2008, but only as much as is needed to avoid threatening the system; and then, in a binding mandate, to recover any federal funds expended through assessments levied on all financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets.

Some of those who insist on reducing firms to a level incapable of incurring Lehman-size indebtedness describe this scheme as a protection for large institutions, reassuring their potential counterparties that the government will back them up. Reality refutes this.

The law automatically puts several large banks and securities firms into this category of enhanced supervision by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Others could be included either by a decision of the FSOC or by growth to the $50 billion asset threshold. Every institution faced with the possibility of inclusion is fighting as hard as it can to avoid it. It turns out that the tighter regulation, higher capital standards and the possibility of dissolution are less attractive than the laws critics would have us believe.

This brings me back to the dilemma that explains why those who dismiss the laws approach in favor of an across-the-board downsizing refuse to specify the appropriate maximum level.

Once again, the culprit is Lehman Brothers. Given that it was this firm that touched off the crisis in 2008, making sure that no entity is large enough so that its failure would be seriously destabilizing means imposing a cap at some level smaller than Lehman Brothers was at that time. Lehmans asset size was estimated at $639 billion, so allowing  perhaps dangerously  firms to be 95 percent Lehmans size means no bank or securities firm going forward could be larger than $607 billion.

In light of the enormous disruption the system would suffer in the process of getting our largest institutions down to that level, and the serious disadvantage it would mean for American businesses in a global economy  both for those providing financing and those needing it  I am not surprised that the vigor with which some insist that only breaking up the banks can defuse the too big to fail bomb vastly exceeds their willingness to tell us even approximately how low we must go.
Megan McDonough is a weddings and obituary writer for the Washington Post.

Much has been written about Winston Churchill but relatively little about his principal counselor and most-trusted confidante, his wife, Clementine. Now, more than 60 years after their departure from 10 Downing St., biographer Sonia Purnell explores how Clementine Churchill, a Victorian-age woman who never went to university, had five children and could not vote until her thirties, became one of the most influential, powerful and progressive first ladies of Britain.

In Purnells telling, there is little chance that Winston Churchill would have flourished, let alone become prime minister, without his wifes unwavering support.

She was, in effect, an early twentieth-century amalgam of special adviser, lobbyist and spin doctor, Purnell observes.

As Winston Churchills formidable counterpart for 57 years, Clementine devoted her life to furthering her husbands well-being and political ambitions, often at the expense of her own  and their childrens  desires, health and happiness. She not only offered wise counsel and rewrote his speeches, but once leaped in a flash over piles of luggage to save him when he was pushed in front of an oncoming train.

"Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchil" by Sonia Purnell (Viking)

But unlike her American counterpart Eleanor Roosevelt, Clementine Churchill was less concerned with becoming a political force in her own right. She carefully operated behind the scenes and never contradicted her husband in public. She used her influence, keen political intellect and positive public persona to boost morale on the home front and help cement positive relations with America. She became the human face of Winstons government and was looked to as someone who could get things done, Purnell writes.

[Hissing Cousins: a dual life of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth]

Consumed with her husbands career, she subordinated her role as a mother, too. She spent little time with her children. As their daughter Mary said, Father always came First, Second and Third. Decades later, Clementine Churchill would express regret for her neglect, remarking to Mary, You have so much fun with your children that I now realise how I missed out.

Purnells thorough and engaging account looks back at the early forces that shaped Britains beloved first lady. Born Clementine Hozier, the future Mrs. Churchills childhood was marked by scandal and sadness, including the death of her older sister from typhoid fever at age 17. Her parents became estranged, and her mother, a notorious philanderer and compulsive gambler, was emotionally distant. At 19, Clementine met Winston Churchill, 10 years her senior, at a ball in London. Four years later, they were reacquainted at a dinner party. Several months later, they were married.

Together, the Churchills steered Britain through war and sometimes rocky political waters. They also shared moments of personal tragedy, including the loss of their third daughter, Marigold, at age 2.

The Churchills busy life kept them apart a great deal  by one estimate, Clementine spent 80 percent of her marriage without her husband. But according to Purnell, the couple nonetheless managed to maintain a deeply affectionate and passionate relationship, corresponding almost daily with letters. In these, Winston revealed his unabashed love for, and dependence on, his wife. [My] greatest good fortune in a life of brilliant experience has been to find you, & to lead my life with you, he confided. I feel that the nearer I get to honour, the nearer I am to you.

Purnells extensive and insightful biography offers a much welcome portrait of Clementine Churchill, a woman whose remarkable life has long been overshadowed by her famous husband. As Purnell writes, Of all the influences in his life she was the most woefully unappreciated  but in truth she was the strongest.
Gordon M. Goldstein is a managing director at the global technology investment firm Silver Lake Partners and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

When the widely respected national security mandarin Robert Gates was appointed secretary of defense in late 2006, his daily intelligence reports on the cascade of cyberattacks directed against the United States left him incredulous. As author and Slate columnist Fred Kaplan recounts, Gates was so stunned by the volume of attempted intrusions into American military networks  his briefings listed dozens, sometimes hundreds every day  that he wrote a memo to the Pentagons deputy general counsel. At what point, he asked, did a cyber attack constitute an act of war under international law? When the defense secretary finally received a response  vague and evasive, in his estimation  almost two full years had passed.

The episode illustrates an enduring challenge for the United States in the digital age. While some bureaucratic actors within its government are not capable of operating at Internet speed, Americas adversaries  hostile sovereign powers, transnational criminal enterprises, hacker and terrorist collectives  continue to attack with all the relentless intensity and innovation afforded by a constantly evolving arsenal of modern cyberweapons, penetration technologies and tactics.

Dark Territory captures the troubling but engrossing narrative of Americas struggle to both exploit the opportunities and defend against the risks of a new era of global cyber-insecurity. Assiduously and industriously reported, Kaplans history underscores a double irony in American cyber-strategy. The severity and scope of cyberthreats against the United States have been consistently predicted and demonstrated for decades and have never meaningfully abated. The most extreme threats, such as decapitation strikes against U.S. military networks and critical infrastructure, have been effectively countered for more than 20 years, however, while the most pervasive and common penetrations against American business and corporate interests have been growing exponentially, with no plausible strategy in sight to engineer effective deterrence or a reliable defense.

Americas vulnerabilities have been clear for decades. In 1997, a secret National Security Agency Red Team was instructed to test the defenses protecting the Pentagons computer networks. The National Military Command Center was hacked in a day. The Defense Departments intelligence directorate was then penetrated with stunning simplicity: A member of the Red Team called, claiming to be from the Pentagon IT department, and explained that the directorates password would need to be changed. The person answering the phone gave him the existing password without hesitation, Kaplan discovered. The Red Team broke in.

"Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War" by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster)

The following year, the computers at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington were penetrated, a hack that swiftly spread to a dozen military locations. The breach, code-named Solar Sunrise, was initially traced by investigators to an Internet service provider in the United Arab Emirates, triggering speculation that the operation had originated from Iraq. Yet within days, a less dramatic explanation emerged. The culprits were a pair of 16-year-old boys in the San Francisco suburbs operating under the aliases Makaveli and Stimpy.

Kaplan recapitulates one hack after another, building a portrait of bewildering systemic insecurity in the cyber domain. Appointed director of national intelligence in 2007, Mike McConnell was by then a self-appointed proselytizer on the burgeoning cyberthreat. He lobbied the governments national security agencies  as well as the Treasury, Energy and Commerce departments  seeking to impart a greater sense of awareness and urgency. He would bring the cabinet secretary a copy of a memo, Kaplan writes.  Here, McConnell would say, handing it over. You wrote this memo last week. The Chinese hacked it from your computer. We hacked it back from their computer. 

The cyberthreat posed by China is among the most acute, Kaplan observes, because it is driven by a diverse spectrum of incentives. China executed the most spectacular breach ever of U.S. government data, hacking the Office of Personnel Management (an event that followed the completion of Kaplans manuscript). According to a Senate briefing provided by FBI Director James Comey, the personal information of up to 18 million Americans was stolen. In addition to conventional spying and penetration operations, Kaplan explains, China engages in highly organized commercial cyberespionage and intellectual property theft. In March 2013, national security adviser Tom Donilon confronted Beijing over its attacks against American corporations and the sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale.

The principal Chinese antagonist of American business, according to Kaplan, was well known across the senior ranks of the Obama administration. It was the Second Bureau of the Third Department of the Peoples Liberation Armys General Staff, also known as Unit 61398, headquartered in a 12-story building outside Shanghai. It is but one cadre of a cyber-force estimated to be in the tens of thousands.

Kaplan alludes to the scope of the cybersecurity crisis for American businesses and corporations, citing a report by telecommunications giant Verizon that there were 79,790 verified security breaches in the United States in 2014, with approximately 25 percent more penetrations and 55 percent more data losses than the year before. As arresting as this statistic may be, it does not convey the ultimate economic costs at stake. According to some cybersecurity industry estimates, more than $750 billion in economic value is stolen through global cybercrime and commercial cyberespionage operations annually.

One of the deep insights of Dark Territory is the historical understanding by both theorists and practitioners that cybersecurity is a dynamic game of offense and defense, each function oscillating in perpetual competition. The United States, Kaplan demonstrates, has excelled in offense.

Tailored Access Operations, an elite unit within the NSA, developed an arsenal of technologies enabling penetration across the communications network. Obscure points of entry were discovered in servers, routers, workstations, handsets, phone switches, even firewalls (which, ironically, were supposed to keep hackers out), as well as in the software that programmed, and the networks that connected, this equipment, Kaplan notes, ticking off now-ubiquitous hacking technologies. LoudAuto activated a laptops microphone and monitored the conversation of anyone in its vicinity. HowlerMonkey extracted and transmitted files via radio signals, even when a computer was not connected to the Internet. MonkeyCalendar tracked a cell phones physical location and conveyed the information through a text message. NightStand was a portable wireless system that loaded a computer with malware from several miles away.

During the Iraq War, NSA equipment and analysts were deployed on the ground in a heavily fortified concrete bunker north of Baghdad to assist with the surge in American operations to crush insurgent militias and terrorist groups. Captured laptops yielded e-mails, passwords, phone numbers, usernames and the identities of al-Qaeda leaders, all of which were used to launch entrapment and assassination operations that in 2007 alone resulted in the deaths of 4,000 Iraqi insurgents.

In 2009, Defense Secretary Gates created a dedicated Cyber Command. In the first three years the commands budget tripled from $2.7 billion to $7 billion, and cyberattack teams grew from 900 specialists to 4,000, with 14,000 anticipated by the end of the decade. The most ingenious and resourceful operation that has spilled into the public domain is code-named Olympic Games, a joint initiative by the NSA, the CIA and Israels cyberwar bureau, Unit 8200, to inject the now-famous Stuxnet malware program into the industrial computer systems at Irans nuclear facility in Natanz, disabling thousands of uranium centrifuges.

Today the United States  its defense complex, intelligence community, government agencies, and broad array of economic and corporate interests  is utterly engulfed in what appears to be a ceaseless cycle of offensive incursions and breached defenses. As the Defense Science Board stated in 2013 in a now grimly familiar conclusion, The network connectivity that the United States has used to tremendous advantage, economically and militarily, over the past twenty years has made the country more vulnerable than ever to cyber attacks. It is an unsettling thesis that Dark Territory indisputably substantiates.
DISAPPEARANCES, TORTURE and extrajudicial killings have become shockingly common under the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. According to the El Nadeem Center, a Cairo-based human rights group, there were 464 documented cases of abductions by security forces in 2015, at least 676 cases of torture, and almost 500 deaths of detainees. The abuses have largely been ignored by Egypts Western allies. But on Jan. 25, a 28-year-old Italian PhD. student researching trade unions, Giulio Regeni, disappeared in Cairo. His torture-scarred body was discovered dumped in a roadside ditch nine days later.

The case made headlines across Europe and prompted some long-overdue scrutiny of the Sissi regimes appalling human rights record. On March 10, the European Parliament overwhelmingly called on governments to cease arms sales and security assistance to Egypt, saying the students murder follows a long list of enforced disappearances, as well as mass arrests and sweeping repression of free assembly and speech. Respect for human rights, said Cristian Dan Preda, vice chair of the Parliaments human rights subcommittee, should be the basis of our relations with Egypt.

That principle also ought to govern U.S. ties with the Sissi regime, not least because its brutal repression is spawning extremism and pushing stability in Egypt out of reach. Instead, the Obama administration is moving in the opposite direction. In requesting another $1.3 billion in military aid for Cairo in next years budget, it has asked Congress to eliminate conditioning that has tied 15 percent of the aid to the governments human rights record.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has spent much of his tenure claiming that Mr. Sissi is restoring democracy, acknowledged in congressional hearings last month that there had been a deterioration in freedom there. There are disturbing arrests, there are disturbing sentences, he said. But he went on to argue that the regimes abuses had to be balanced against the fight against Islamist extremism. We have to try and work and thread a needle carefully, he said.

But how could that balance derive from removing all consideration of human rights from funding for Egypts armed forces? As it is, the administration can exercise a waiver, as it did last year, to allow full funding in the event the regime does not meet the conditions. But the language applies at least some pressure; to remove it would send a message of impunity for any and all abuses.

This would be a particularly dangerous time to offer such a free pass. According to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the regime is preparing to put as many as 37 Egyptian civil society groups on trial as part of a systematic plan to prosecute the entire independent human rights movement. Ten leading human rights defenders have already been banned from leaving Egypt, and the assets of four have been ordered frozen. The El Nadeem Center, which documented the cases of disappearances, was served with a closure order by police last month.

Weve argued for some time that the Sissi regime is incapable of stabilizing Egypt. Now even its former defenders in the civilian political elite are turning against it as its crimes mount and the economy flounders. For the Obama administration to hand Cairo a blank check now would be foolhardy. Congress should prevent it.
Dennis Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, worked at the Interior Department from 1971 to 77.

Its campaign time, 1944. Franklin D. Roosevelt is running for an unprecedented fourth term because the middle of a worldwide conflict is not a good time to break in a new president. But hes having trouble staying on message. To him, the threats posed by the German and Japanese war machines are less engaging than policies to ensure healthy forests. At one whistlestop, a voter ribs the president for dwelling more on trees, soil, and water . . . than [on] the war in Europe and the Pacific. I fear, FDR replied, that I must plead guilty to that charge. 

Trees, soil and water must have been welcome distractions from global savagery, but as portrayed in Rightful Heritage, Douglas Brinkleys high-spirited and admirably thorough new book on FDR, the 32nd president was a tree-hugger from way back. He was born in New York state, which had fostered a conservation ethic starting in the late 19th century by setting aside large tracts of forest in the Adirondacks and Catskills to be forever kept as wild. Nature loomed large for a boy who played along the Hudson River and whose mother had been raised on an estate designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, the countrys first great landscape architect. Roosevelt was recognized as a local authority on birds from a young age and grew up to be a crack sailor and a partisan of wild lands. To a man of such background and tastes, the presidency offered what his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt would have called a bully opportunity. Franklin left an environmental legacy second to none (albeit overshadowed by other aspects of his presidency).

In support of this thesis, you can list, as Brinkley does, the major landscapes that Roosevelt incorporated into the national park and wildlife refuge systems: the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, Okefenokee Swamp, the Olympic Mountains, the Great Smokies, Isle Royale in Michigan, Joshua Tree, Capitol Reef in Utah, Jackson Hole, Mammoth Cave, Kings Canyon, the Everglades, Big Bend and the Desert Game Range in Nevada. You can cite the many reforestation projects undertaken by the young men of the New Deals Civilian Conservation Corps. But perhaps the most dramatic evidence has to do with waterfowl. Wild ducks and geese were in a bad way until Roosevelt and his lieutenants went to work. Their efforts led to a doubling of the U.S. waterfowl population between 1934 and 1941. (Some urbanites may find it hard to believe that without those policies, the now-ubiquitous Canada goose might be extinct.)

Brinkley is good at showing how strands of Roosevelts life united to shape approaches to preservation that other presidents might have missed. Take an idea to raise money for waterfowl conservation which had been working its way through Congress. It culminated in the Duck Stamp Act of 1934, which requires all waterfowl hunters over 16 to buy, in addition to a state hunting license, a federal stamp, the proceeds from which go to acquiring wetlands and funding wildlife refuges. As a lifelong philatelist, Roosevelt loved stamps too much to allow each years duck issue to be anything but irresistible.

"Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America" by Douglas Brinkley (Harper)

Roosevelt was a great believer in bipartisanship, and the director of what was then the Biological Survey in the Agriculture Department (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Interior Department) was Jay Norwood Ding Darling, a Republican who, in his previous job as a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, lampooned the Democratic president repeatedly. At FDRs request, Darling designed the first duck stamp, featuring two striking mallards in flight descending on a lake. From this literally splashy beginning evolved a much-anticipated annual contest  still being held  in which wildlife artists vie to submit the winning design (and to rake in the income generated by fans who buy reproductions). In addition to excitement and artistry, the program has generated more than $500 million through 2009, which has been used to purchase 5 million acres of waterfowl habitat.

Besides Darling, Brinkley paints vivid portraits of the peppery Harold Ickes, greatest of all interior secretaries, and two Ickes opponents within conservationist ranks: Gifford Pinchot, who had headed the Forest Service under Teddy Roosevelt, and Henry Wallace, who supervised the Forest Service as secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940. Pinchot and Wallace lobbied FDR not to support Ickess fondest wish: that the Forest Service be transferred from Agriculture to Interior to form a Department of Conservation. Brinkley suggests that the timing was wrong. Ickes made his push in 1940, an election year, and the expected opposition of Westerners (the move almost certainly would have meant reduced harvests of federal timber) may have jeopardized the presidents chances of winning a third term.

Brinkley styles Rightful Heritage as a sequel to The Wilderness Warrior, his account of Theodore Roosevelts equally stellar environmental record. In the new book, Brinkley can be superficial when it comes to legal issues  its not always clear what authority FDR is drawing on when he takes a pro-environmental stance. And its misleading to say, as Brinkley does, that Missouri was a Confederate state during the Civil War. Missouri had its share of Confederate sympathizers, but the state never seceded from the Union.

More than any list of projects completed or tally of species saved, Franklin Roosevelts legacy as a conservationist may have been a kind of enlightened nostalgia. He wanted Americans to see the value  not so much dollars-and-cents as spiritual  in hanging on to as much unspoiled nature as they possibly could. That, in words spoken by Roosevelt and borrowed for Brinkleys title, is our rightful heritage.
An inmate looks out from his cell at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, Calif. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Charis E. Kubrin and Carroll Seron are professors of criminology, law and society in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California at Irvine. Joan Petersilia is a professor at Stanford Law School.

In an era of bitter partisanship, politicians and pundits across the ideological spectrum seem to agree on one thing: Our prison system is broken. With less than 5 percent of the worlds population yet nearly 25 percent of the worlds prison inmates, the United States spends too much money locking up too many people for too long.

Some fear that reducing sentences for nonviolent crimes and letting low-level offenders back on the streets  key components of prison reform  could produce a new and devastating crime wave. Such dire predictions were common in 2011 when California embarked on a massive experiment in prison downsizing.

But five years later, Californias experience offers powerful evidence that no such crime wave is likely to occur.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that Californias wildly overcrowded prisons were tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the state to reduce its prison population by some 33,000 people in two years. In response, the state enacted the controversial California Public Safety Realignment law , known in legislative shorthand as AB 109.

With a budget of more than $1 billion annually, realignment gave each of the states 58 counties responsibility for supervising a sizable class of offenders  the triple nons, or non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders  formerly housed in state prisons. Each county received unprecedented flexibility and authority to manage this population as it saw fit.

Recently, we brought together a group of distinguished social scientists to do a systematic, comprehensive assessment of Californias prison downsizing experiment. The results, published this month in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, show that Californias decision to cede authority over low-level offenders to its counties has been, for the most part, remarkably effective public policy and an extraordinarily rich case study in governance.

There has been great variation in how counties have dealt with their newfound authority. Some have decided essentially to continue with the status quo, placing offenders into local jails. Other counties have experimented with innovative reforms such as new reentry and rehabilitation programs to ease the transition of convicts back into the community.

To answer questions about the relationship between prison reform and crime rates, we not only compared statewide crime rates before and after the downsizing but also examined what happened in counties that favored innovative approaches vs. those that emphasized old-fashioned enforcement.

Clearly, our most important finding is that realignment has had only a very small effect on crime in California.

Violent crime rates in the state have barely budged. Weve seen no appreciable uptick in assaults, rapes and murders that can be connected to the prisoners who were released under realignment. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it; by and large, these offenders were eligible for release because of the nonviolent nature of their crimes.

On the other hand, a small uptick in property crime can be attributed to downsizing, with the largest increase occurring for auto theft. So is this an argument against realignment and against prison reform more broadly?

We think not. The cost to society of a slight increase in property crime must be weighed against the cost of incarceration. Take the example of auto theft. Our data suggest that one year served in prison instead of at large as a result of realignment prevents 1.2 auto thefts per year and saves $11,783 in crime-related costs plus harm to the victims and their families. On the other hand, keeping someone behind bars for a year costs California $51,889. In purely monetary terms  without considering, say, the substantial economic and social hardship that imprisonment can create for prisoners children and other relatives  incarcerating someone for a year in the hope of preventing an auto theft is like spending $450 to repair a $100 vacuum cleaner.

Turning to the question of which counties strategies were most successful, we have another important early finding: Counties that invested in offender reentry in the aftermath of realignment had better performance in terms of recidivism than counties that focused resources on enforcement.

As other states and the federal government contemplate their own proposals for prison downsizing, they should take a close look at what these California counties are doing right.
The Republican surrender has begun. Having described Donald Trump as an unacceptable, unconservative, dangerous demagogue, the party establishment appears to be making its peace with the man who keeps winning primaries.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page argued vociferously against Trump for months, pointing out that he is a huckster and a catastrophe, warning that if Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him. Yet this week, it ended a lead editorial urging Republicans to continue to see if Mr. Trump can begin to act like a President . . . and above all to decide who can prevent another progressive-left Presidency.

Karl Rove has also spent months denouncing Trump, starting off by calling him a complete idiot and detailing his many faults and flaws, predicting that were he the nominee, the Republican Party would lose the White House and the Senate and erode its majority in the House dramatically. This week he also changed his tune, offering some warm and friendly advice to the front-runner to raise his game.

[Eugene Robinson: The GOPs stop-Trump movement is a pathetic joke]

Marco Rubio has called Trump a con artist and compared him to third-world strongmen. He has said Trump has no ideas of any substance, has spent a career sticking it to working people, is trying to prey upon peoples fears, and encourages violence at his rallies. But, at this moment, he says he intends to support whomever emerges as the Republican nominee. So do John McCain and Paul Ryan, who has taken the rare step of intervening in the campaign three times to reprimand Trump for his ideas and rhetoric. Even Lindsey Graham, who has called Trump the most unprepared person Ive ever met to be commander in chief, will not say he will not vote for him. Indeed, there is currently just one Republican senator who has committed to not voting for Trump.

Ironically, conservatives today are in something of the same position that Republican moderates were in 1964, as Barry Goldwater steamed toward the nomination. It is difficult to understand today how dramatic a break this was for the Republicans. As Geoffrey Kabaservice documents in his illuminating book, Rule and Ruin, the party had prided itself on its progressive stand on race from Abraham Lincoln onward. Goldwater, on the other hand, opposed the Supreme Courts 1954 decision to integrate schools in Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights act. A hundred years of Republican work on these issues would be thrown away, the moderates felt, were they to nominate Goldwater.

Trump marks, in many ways, an even larger break from the past than Goldwater. The modern Republican Party has been devoted to free markets and free trade, social conservatism, an expansionist foreign policy and fiscal discipline, especially on entitlements. Remember that the speech that launched Ronald Reagans career was an attack on Medicare. On every one of these issues, Trump either openly disagrees or  as with abortion  has a past track record of disagreement.

[The Stop Trump movement is falling apart]

Over the past decade, Republican support for immigration and free trade has been collapsing. But Trumps nomination would transform the party into a blue-collar, populist, nationalist movement with a racial element  much like many others in the Western world. This would be a very different party from Reagans or Ryans.

When I was in graduate school, we were told to study carefully a seminal 1955 essay on American politics by the scholar V.O. Key on critical elections. Keys thesis was that every generation or so, there is an election that changes the preexisting groupings of voters in a way that endures for years, even decades. Scholars debate which elections were ones that realigned American politics. Most generally agree that 1932 was one, bringing together Franklin Roosevelts New Deal coalition of northern liberals, urban ethnics and Southern whites to form a Democratic majority. Key actually sees 1928 as the critical election, because it foreshadowed the 1932 coalition.

2016 might well go down as another such election, one that scrambles the old order but perhaps without setting up a new one. In this respect, it looks like 1964, also an election that realigned politics, shifting Southern whites to the Republican Party ever since. Then , too, there was enormous energy, new voters and a candidate who thrilled his supporters. Then, too, the establishment could not muster the courage and unity to oppose the front-runner, scared to push back against the energy and devotion of the new populist forces.

So instead the party went to the polls in November divided  and lost 44 states.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
SLOWLY BUT surely, like the proverbial aircraft carrier, the U.S. government is changing to a new and better course on the long-neglected issue of opioid abuse and addiction. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took an emphatic stand against the loose prescribing norms that have fueled the growth of opioid consumption for non-cancer pain, with the terrible result that 16,000 people a year die from overdoses. Labeling the drugs dangerous, and noting that evidence did not support their long-term efficacy for most cases of chronic pain, CDC Director Thomas Frieden urged physicians to follow more-cautious new CDC guidelines that emphasize alternative pain management techniques. Dr. Frieden and his colleagues deserve credit for incorporating a range of views in the guidelines while resisting pressure to weaken them from interest groups that support the status quo.

The CDC announcement followed the Senates passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 by a vote of 94 to 1. Whereas the White House this year called for more than $1 billion, over two years, in new mandatory funding for drug treatment, this bill includes no new funding beyond a previously allocated $400 million. Still, the legislation, co-sponsored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), is a step in the right direction  for three reasons.

First, it was bipartisan, and overwhelmingly so, suggesting that lawmakers can still work across the aisle on issues, such as public health, that should never be partisan in the first place. Second, the bill addresses addiction to heroin and prescription opioids as a public-health issue rather than a law enforcement matter, a sea change in federal policy. Even without new money to back it up, this was a statement worth making. Importantly, the bill authorizes grants to medication-assisted treatment programs based on substances such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone, which reduce cravings for heroin and help stabilize patients as a prelude to weaning them completely. Controversial because of what critics call substituting one addiction for another, medication-assisted treatment has been shown in studies to work better than abstinence-only programs, and the bill wisely recognizes this.

Third, like the CDC guidelines, the bill attacks the supply side of the problem. It provides for $25 million in grants over five years to states that mandate provider participation in their computerized Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. These programs help states track the flow of prescription opioids to prevent doctor-shopping by addicted patients. Despite federal aid through existing Justice Department grants, these programs remain underfunded and underenforced; the bills provisions should help, a bit, on both scores.

We repeat: The bill could be better. It omitted a proposal by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would have deregulated the administration of treatment medications so that more doctors could treat more than 100 addicted patients a year, which is the current maximum. Nevertheless, the legislation usefully reorients federal policy, thus setting the stage for more effective use of federal dollars when they come available, as they should and must. The House should take it up and pass it, soon.
A city of a thousand headlines. The race battles, police brutality and streets with empty storefronts and boarded-up houses paint a picture of Baltimore that isnt as shining as its tourism website tells you.

But what happens when even other Marylanders wont back up the city?

I live about 15 miles outside Baltimore in the suburbs of Harford County. When riots began after the arrest and death of Freddie Gray last spring, all school-sponsored trips to Baltimore City were suspended. The ban was lifted after the riots and protests subsided, but it was reinstated in January after what Harford County deemed threats to safety. Baltimore officials were frustrated for obvious reasons. Harford County Public Schools is doing an enormous disservice to its students and families with this bizarre policy, Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore) said.

Howard Libit, a spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), said, We are afraid the lesson being taught to the children of Harford County is to fear the city, and that is disappointing.

The policy indeed promoted a sense that the city was too unsafe or unfit for the dear children of Harford County to visit. Not only did the obvious race distinctions come to mind, but so did the idea that Harford County was above Baltimore City. If a group of kids from the suburbs isnt allowed to go to the aquarium because of safety issues, why is nothing being said about the students who have to walk those same streets to get to school?

Every politician pleads that we come together, hand in hand, but if the local government cant stand by trips to the Maryland Science Center, are we ever going to get anywhere as a nation?

After I reached out to the Harford County school board, the policy on field trip bans was reversed. I was overjoyed that members changed their position because of opposition from both communities, but I was still troubled by the county executives comment on the lifting of the ban: It affords our students a great opportunity not only to see those institutions but also the learning aspect of seeing how other folks live. Can we really join together as a state if neighbors describe neighbors as other folks?

Maybe what Im about to say sounds like something straight out of a Bernie Sanders promo, but as a white, middle-class high school student from the suburbs, I am disturbed that they are separating me and other folks.

This isnt just a small tiff among local governments; its a piece of a much larger issue facing the United States. There is a great divide among rural and urban communities. But we cant begin to fix what ails Baltimore until we see ourselves as one.

The writer is a UNICEF Voices of Youth blogger and American Society of News Editors national teen adviser at Patterson Mill High School.
We can no longer pretend this isnt happening. Donald Trump will very likely be the Republican nominee for president, and there is a non-zero chance he could win in November.

Trump won at least four of the primary contests Tuesday, including winner-take-all Florida. If you count Missouri, where he seems to have beaten Ted Cruz by a scant 1,726 votes, he won five out of six, losing only in John Kasichs home state of Ohio. Cruz and Kasich are his only remaining rivals  all others have been vanquished  and Trump has won more primaries and convention delegates than the two of them put together.

If we were talking about a normal candidate, rather than a dangerous demagogue, wed say he had pretty much sealed the deal for the nomination. But otherwise-sensible people seem to be gambling on some kind of miracle  rather than focusing on what needs to be done to keep Trump out of the White House.

The stop-Trump movement in the Republican Party has been, thus far, a pathetic joke. The fecklessness of the whole endeavor was encapsulated by Mitt Romneys performance earlier this month: He told voters why they should not vote for Trump but stopped short of endorsing an alternative.

The party establishment has no hope of defeating Trump if it is not willing to coalesce around one of his opponents. I understand that Cruz  the logical choice, since he has actually beaten Trump multiple times in primaries and caucuses  is widely disliked and almost certainly too conservative to win the general election. I understand that Kasich is seen as too moderate and has not demonstrated much appeal to the base. But if party leaders cant bring themselves to choose one or the other, Trump will continue to roll.

As Donald Trump has moved closer to the GOP nomination, two of Ted Cruz's loudest Republican critics have softened their tone on his candidacy. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Big-money GOP donors seem stunned into paralysis. Many of them supported either Jeb Bush, who bowed out last month after a drubbing in South Carolina, or his fellow Floridian, Marco Rubio, who withdrew Tuesday after being routed in his home state. No politician is invulnerable; a massive, sustained, well-financed media campaign against Trump in the states yet to vote could hurt him. But no one seems willing to coordinate or fund such an effort, and time is fast running out.

Given Trumps performance Tuesday, it looks increasingly possible that he will arrive at the convention in Cleveland with the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination. But it will be close, and he may end up with just a strong plurality, not a majority. This opens the possibility of a contested convention, which could, after several ballots, give the nod to someone else.

In typical strongman fashion, Trump ventured that I think youd have riots if the party did such a thing. Given the tension that surrounds his rallies, he may be right. But I have a hard time believing the GOP establishment would even attempt such a maneuver, let alone pull it off.

Snatching the nomination from a candidate who has demonstrated such popular appeal with the party base would be an act of self-sacrifice by the establishment. It might be the right thing for the nation as a whole, but it would fracture the GOP and all but ensure defeat in November.

There are signs that some leading party figures are becoming resigned to the prospect of Trump as their candidate. Uber-strategist Karl Rove, who has been a loud and steady anti-Trump voice, had a column in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday in which he offered Trump ten bits of unsolicited advice to help raise your game. The first suggestion was laughable: Change your tone. Where Trump is concerned, thats the same as saying: Become a different person.

In his primary-night appearances at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, Trump has begun calling for party unity. He may get it, or at least an approximation. Some establishment Republicans will decide its better to let Trump suffer a crushing loss and rebuild the party afterward, rather than tear it apart at the convention.

That would be an abdication of responsibility. Great political parties do not nominate for president someone who so glaringly lacks the knowledge and temperament to be the leader of the free world. But here we are.

In a general election, probably against Hillary Clinton, Trump almost surely loses. But there is always some degree of risk. Everyone should realize that Clinton fatigue is no excuse for electing a man such as Trump to the highest office in the land.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
THE DEATH in November in Washington of Mikhail Lesin, a prominent Russian businessman who long survived in the halls of power in Moscow, has left many questions. Mr. Lesin was found dead in his room at the Dupont Circle Hotel, after which family members told the Russian news media he died of a fatal heart attack. Now, four months later, the D.C. Medical Examiners Office reports that Mr. Lesin died of blunt force trauma to the head and had bruises on other areas of his body.

Mr. Lesin matured in the twilight of the Soviet Union and was among those who proved fleet-footed enough to capitalize on the opportunities created by the birth of capitalism in the new Russia. Some seized natural resources, others grabbed giant factories. Mr. Lesins gamble was on television advertising. When the stolid broadcasters of the Soviet era were replaced by a snazzy independent television news channel, NTV, founded by the oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, Mr. Lesins agency became the exclusive broker for advertising. He made a fortune, navigating business and the corridors of political power. Mr. Lesins agency worked to reelect the ailing president, Boris Yeltsin, in 1996. One time, it spliced a taped video message by Yeltsin right before the final vote to conceal the fact the president had just suffered a heart attack.

When President Vladimir Putin rose to power a few years later, Mr. Lesin helped him take control of Russian television and force Mr. Gusinsky out. Mr. Lesin became Russian press minister, played a major role in Mr. Putins drive to subjugate the news media, and helped establish Russia Today, a propaganda network. Mr. Lesin surely knew a lot about the obscure workings of Mr. Putins Kremlin. He also prospered while in power. According to a letter sent to the Justice Department by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Mr. Lesins family owned some $28 million in Los Angeles real estate. In late 2014, Mr. Lesin stepped down from a position at the media conglomerate Gazprom-Media, but did not seem headed for Kremlin ostracism. Nor was he made subject to the U.S. sanctions imposed on so many others in Mr. Putins coterie after his invasion of Ukraine.

We dont know why someone would have assaulted Mr. Lesin, if thats what happened. But it cant be forgotten that others who have found themselves on the outs with Mr. Putin have met with violence. Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Federal Security Service, was murdered in London with radioactive polonium. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in her apartment elevator. Business owners and others have fled Moscow out of fear.

Why was Mr. Lesin in Washington? What meetings did he hold, or plan? Why was the fact of the blunt force trauma kept quiet for so long? Law enforcement authorities should rule out foul play or thoroughly investigate it, and tell the public what they find.
Kate Cohen is a writer who lives in Albany, N.Y.

We were in it for the boat ride. Baltimore was hot by 9 a.m., and across the harbor, Fort McHenry beckoned. I knew it had something to do with the War of 1812 and The Star-Spangled Banner; I even knew (from the forts Web site) that September would mark the anthems bicentennial, and that celebrations were underway. But honestly I didnt care: I have no interest in military history, and Im not patriotic. My personality is less my country right or wrong and more lets look at the other point of view.

So I was unmoved when we docked at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. And I opened the door of the visitor center warily, like an atheist heading into church. Instantly, cold air enveloped my sweaty skin, tempting me to convert. Ah, the good old U.S. of Air-conditioning. Even my children opted not to tour the sun-baked garrison just yet but rather to stay inside and read a bit of history first.

The wall text in the exhibit off the lobby was impressively balanced; I read the arguments for and against declaring war on Britain in 1812. I decided I probably would have been against it, suspecting hawkish congressmen of being beholden to warmongering shipbuilders and cotton growers. I tried to picture myself in 19th-century garb, railing against the naval-agrarian complex.

Then the lights dimmed.

Movies in museums, no matter how bad, are always a relief. Nobody admits it, but everybody loves the chance to sit for a moment and stop thinking.

Which is precisely what this 10-minute orientation film intended. No other point of view here. The British invade, maraud and terrorize: Up and down the Chesapeake Bay they raided, destroying towns and farms and spreading fear, intones the deep-voiced narrator. The Americans  terrified citizen soldiers  frantically dig trenches and wait with bated breath. The soundtrack thrums with drums, horns and the whistle of cannonballs. Their bombardment is ferocious. Our return fire is desperate.

Oh, sure, were the ones who declared war, and didnt we invade Canada the year before? But this movie studiously avoids complexity. This is the kind of movie in which the voice-over informs us that citizens prepared to flee and then a re-enactor in a top hat shouts, Citizens, prepare to flee! and then we watch while . . . citizens prepare to flee. Then Top Hat adds something like, And take your valuables! and a distraught citizen, rushing to pack his cart, trips and drops the family silver.

Nothing subtle about the execution  or the point. Want to fire up a little patriotism? Dwell on the sense of threat, on the idea of America  Americans  under attack. I am lucky enough to have experienced that threat only rarely, and only briefly. But maybe in 1814, I would have feared for my young country and for my family. Maybe I would have voted for the war.

I know, I know: No voting for me until the next century! Still, I tried to imagine how it would feel to live in an underdog country. I tried to imagine how it would feel not to know whether America would prevail, or even survive.

In the movie, mud-splattered citizen-soldiers fight on. But would it be enough? the narrator frets, as Francis Scott Key peers anxiously through his spyglass.

A huge flag was raised above the fort. But whose . . . ?

And all of a sudden  even as I chuckled at the canned suspense  it hit me: the simple brilliance of The Star Spangled Banner. Why a hard-to-sing memento of a minor war succeeds as our national anthem. When you think of it as an earnest expression of anxiety, when you hear the plaintive questions behind the flowery language  Can you see the flag? Is the flag still waving?  it becomes deeply moving. To be on the verge of losing something is to realize how precious it is. And, in the song, the urgent question isnt even answered. It just hangs there, a crystallized moment of panic and hope and love of country.

Nobody sings it that way. Certainly not in the movie. Once Key espies the broad stripes and bright stars and his friend exclaims (Im not kidding), Huzzah! we get a mens choir in full, triumphant voice. Then a shot of the flag in the clearing smoke. And then, as the song reaches its climax, the movie screen rises and the room fills with light and we are looking through plate-glass windows to the outside, at our flag, in real life, against a blue and white summer sky.

Is the flag still waving? It is. And I have to clear the lump in my throat before I can say, Hey, kids. Lets go out and take a look around.
By international and historical standards, political violence is exceedingly rare in the United States. The last serious outburst was 1968 with its bloody Democratic-convention riots. By that standard, 2016 is, as yet, tame. It may not remain so.

The political thuggery that shut down a Donald Trump rally in Chicago last week may just be a harbinger. It would be nice, therefore, if we could think straight about cause and effect.

The immediate conventional wisdom was to blame the disturbance on the toxic environment created by Trump. Nonsense. This was an act of deliberate sabotage created by a totalitarian left that specializes in the intimidation and silencing of political opponents.

Its pedigree goes back to early-20th-century fascism and communism. Its more recent incarnation has been developed on college campuses, where for years leftists have been taunting, disrupting and ultimately shutting down and shutting out conservative speakers of every stripe  long before Donald Trump.

The Chicago shutdown was a planned attack on free speech and free assembly. Hence the exultant chant of the protesters upon the announcement of the rallys cancellation: We stopped Trump. It had all of the spontaneity of a beer-hall putsch.

Amid growing security concerns, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign canceled a Chicago rally on March 11. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

Given the people, the money and the groups (including MoveOn.org) behind Chicago, it is likely to be replicated, constituting a serious threat to a civilized politics. But theres a second, quite separate form of thuggery threatening the 2016 campaign  a leading candidate who, with a wink and a nod (and sometimes less subtlety), is stoking anger and encouraging violence.

This must be distinguished from what happened in Chicago, where Trump was the victim and for which he is not responsible. But he is responsible for saying of a protester at his rally in Las Vegas that I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that . . . ? Theyd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.

He told another rally that if they see any protesters preparing to throw a tomato, to knock the crap out of them . . . I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. Referring in an interview to yet another protester, Trump said maybe he should have been roughed up.

At the Vegas event, Trump had said, Id like to punch him in the face. Well, in Fayetteville, N.C., one of his supporters did exactly that for him  sucker-punching in the face a protester being led away. The attacker is being charged with assault.

Trump is not responsible for the assault. But he is responsible for refusing to condemn it. Asked about it, he dodged and weaved, searching for extenuation. The man got carried away. So what? If people who get carried away are allowed to sucker-punch others, wed be living in a jungle.

Trump said that it was obvious that the cold-cocker obviously loves his country. What is it about punching a demonstrator in the face that makes evident ones patriotism? Particularly when the attacker said on television, Next time we see him, we might have to kill him.

Whoa! Thats lynch talk. And rather than condemn that man, Trump said he would be instructing his people to look into paying his legal fees.

This from the leader of the now strongest faction in the Republican Party, the man most likely to be the GOP nominee for president. And who, when asked on Wednesday about the possibility of being denied the nomination at the convention if hes way ahead in delegates but just short of a majority, said: I think youd have riots, adding I wouldnt lead it but I think bad things would happen.

Is that incitement to riot? Legally, no. But youd have to be a fool to miss the underlying implication.

Theres an air of division in the country. Fine. Its happened often in our history. Indeed, the whole point of politics is to identify, highlight, argue and ultimately adjudicate and accommodate such divisions. Politics is the civilized substitute for settling things the old-fashioned way  laying your opponent out on a stretcher.

What is so disturbing today is that suffusing our politics is not just an air of division but also an air of menace. Its being fueled on both sides: one side through organized anti-free-speech agitation using Bolshevik tactics; the other side by verbal encouragement and threats of varying degrees of subtlety.

They may feed off each other but they are of independent origin. And both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.

Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Carl Gershman is president of the National Endowment for Democracy.

President Obamas forthcoming visit to Cuba comes as preparations are being completed for the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), scheduled to open in Havana on April 16. The main order of business will be to establish the process for transferring power to a new generation of Cuban leaders in 2018, when Raul Castro will step down as president. While this change will mark the end of the Castro era in Cuban politics, the regime has made clear that it considers the current system irrevocable  and that it wont renounce a single one of its revolutionary and anti-imperialist principles, as the partys official newspaper, Granma, stated recently in an editorial on Obamas visit.

The chief item on the agenda of the Seventh Congress will be the consideration of a new electoral law for the general election in 2018, when Castros successor will be chosen. Under the current system, according to the independent blogger Yoani Sanchez, the electoral machinery is strictly controlled to ensure whatever outcomes the regime wants. Control is enforced at the grass roots by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), which Fidel Castro called a Revolutionary system of collective surveillance when he established it in 1960. The CDRs determine the voter lists and oversee town hall assemblies at which candidates are nominated by a show of hands. The overall voter registry is administered by the Ministry of the Interior, which is a military institution. There is no secret ballot, and fear of reprisals blocks the selection of candidates who might have counter-revolutionary views. Campaigning is not allowed, candidates are banned from putting forward a program, and there is no right to ask what a candidate thinks about a specific problem. Voters, according to Sanchez, cast ballots for a photo and a list of merits  as inflated as they are impossible to prove. Needless to say, the PCC is the only recognized party.

The regime has not offered any details about the changes to the law being considered, presumably, to give some legitimacy to the 2018 election. There is talk, for example, of allowing the electorate a choice of candidates, and candidates might be permitted to engage in public debates. But the changes are unlikely to be more than cosmetic, another example of what Cuban democracy leader Oswaldo Paya, who died in 2012 under suspicious circumstances, called a fraudulent change so those that have all the power may keep it and once more marginalize the people of Cuba.

But Cuban democrats are not ready to accept that. Rosa Maria Paya, the daughter of the martyred activist, has launched a campaign called Cuba Decides that builds upon her fathers famous Varela Project and calls for a plebiscite on whether to hold free, fair and multiparty elections. And just last week a coalition of pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations called Another 18 (#Otro18) presented the draft of an alternative electoral law to the National Assembly and held a news conference and a forum on the theme For Freedom of Choice.

The alternative law drafted by Another 18 is a comprehensive set of legislative proposals to guarantee the right to freely elect officials and to remove the CDRs from the process; to establish transparent rules for updating and correcting the electoral registry; to give citizens the right to run as candidates for public office at all levels, thereby eliminating the Candidacy Commissions and town hall assemblies that control the nomination process; to recognize the basic freedoms of expression, assembly and association that are essential for real electoral competition; and to establish an independent electoral body to administer the voter registry and safeguard the integrity of elections.

The regime is fearful that Another 18 might begin to mobilize grass-roots support for its proposals, and it arrested Jose Daniel Ferrer, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, and detained others to prevent them from participating in the forum on free elections. International support for those fighting for democracy in Cuba has never been more needed.

When former president Jimmy Carter visited Cuba in 2002, he used an unprecedented public address carried live on state radio and television to urge that Cuba join the community of democracies, and to praise the Varela Project, which most Cubans knew nothing about, as the government had forbidden any mention of it by state media.

Obama needs to do at least as much when he visits next week. Given the timing of his visit, right before the party congress and at a moment when Cubans are beginning to think about the potentially historic election in 2018, his endorsement of the proposals advanced by Another 18 and for the cause of real democracy in Cuba could have far-reaching consequences.

Diplomatic relations between the Cuban government and the United States have now been normalized. The time has come for the Cuban government to normalize its relations with the Cuban people.
Nearly 50 African heads of state and government will gather this week for an unprecedented meeting in Washington that holds the prospect of reframing the continents image, from one defined by conflict and disease to one ripe with economic promise.

The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit  which will mark the first time an American president will convene Africas leaders at one conference  faces major hurdles, including the ongoing distraction of conflicts elsewhere and domestic budget constraints. Obama administration officials have deliberately played down their expectations, saying the event will not conclude with the sort of flashy financial commitments that Chinese leaders have announced at African summits in Beijing.

Instead, the meeting will focus largely on the economic potential that Africa offers the United States  provided that the two can solve ongoing problems around electricity supply, agriculture, security threats and democratic governance. It could allow President Obama to establish a broader legacy in Africa.

We want to do business with those folks, Obama said Friday at a news conference, noting that the United States is no longer providing aid only to countries on the continent to stave off malnutrition and the spread of HIV/AIDS. And we think that we can create U.S. jobs and send U.S. exports to Africa. But weve got to be engaged, and so this gives us a chance to do that.

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African affairs, noted that the United States still has strong ties based on years of development assistance.

I think history will show Africa is the continent of the greatest opportunity this century, he said. We have a moment that is passing us by, and we should build on these relationships.

The event is not a donor conference, said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, assistant secretary of state for African affairs. In fact, its a sprawling networking affair that will bring together foreign dignitaries, American and African chief executives, policymakers and activists for several days of business deals and panel discussions, as well as private dinners and at least one dance party.

There are close to 100 side events, on top of a three-day formal conference that includes one day devoted to business issues. Another day will cover more traditional development issues, including food security, health, womens empowerment and wildlife trafficking.

Although the recent Ebola virus outbreak in Africa is not specifically on the agenda, Gayle Smith, the National Security Councils director for development and democracy, said, We will obviously adapt as needed and in consultation with our partners, depending on their requirements.

The presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone  two of three nations experiencing the outbreak  have canceled their plans to attend the conference.

The less-formal nature of the gathering  especially compared with ones in countries such as Japan, where the prime minister sits down with each visiting head of state  has raised concern in some quarters. Some African leaders were surprised when they learned that they would not deliver individual speeches, and Obama has opted for large group discussions rather than one-on-one meetings.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) said in an interview that although he recognizes the problem of favoring some politicians over others, the administration risks offending some of our allied partners by not providing private audiences with the president.

View Graphic How familiar are you with Africas geography?

But Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser, told reporters that given the number of leaders coming to town, the simplest thing is for the president to devote his time to engaging broadly with all the leaders. That way were not singling out individuals at the expense of the other leaders.

State Department officials have been scrambling to prepare for the event. The departments first-floor bathrooms are being renovated ahead of the conference, and a breakdown in its computer system has delayed the issuance of visas for some delegations.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who will lead the business segment along with former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), is slated to announce new deals between the United States and Africa totaling $1 billion. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), who will co-host a reception at the Capitol on Monday night and will hold a second networking event with more than 100 chief executives and senior U.S. trade officials Wednesday, said his goal is to have some real deals that are cut before Wednesday is over.

Jennifer G. Cooke, who directs the Center for Strategic and International Studies Africa program, said the larger question facing the administration is to what extent the summit can deliver results. There will certainly be some leaders who walk away and say, What was that all about?  she said.

Obamas two immediate predecessors had a single policy achievement that defined their approach to the region. In the case of Bill Clinton, it was the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which reduced some trade barriers between the two partners. For George W. Bush, it was the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The administration has continued those two programs while beginning initiatives to promote food security, electrification, training for young leaders and regional trade between African nations.

As the son of a Kenyan father, Obama faced high expectations from Africans and specialists in the region when he became president. His friends and foes say he disappointed many Africans in his first term when he focused largely on the struggling U.S. economy and on passing a far-reaching health-care law.

Today the consensus among those same people is that he missed the mark, Royce said, adding that Obama has not moved swiftly enough to address instability in places such as Sudan or terrorist threats such as Boko Haram. The presidents approach to Africa has been more reactive than proactive.

But even Royce said Obama has elevated the issue in his second term, and administration officials and several outside experts said the president and his top deputies want to foster closer ties with Africa at a time when many other countries  including China  are increasingly focused on the continent. The United States still invests more in Africa than any other country, but trade between China and Africa has now surpassed that of the United States and the continent. The European Union, Brazil and others are watching a region that boasted six of the worlds 10 fastest-growing economies in the past decade.

Africa also has strong ties with other regions and nations, but Americas engagement with Africa is fundamentally different, national security adviser Susan E. Rice said at the U.S. Institute for Peace. We dont see Africa as a pipeline to extract vital resources, nor as a funnel for charity. The continent is a dynamic region of boundless possibility.

Business leaders are intensely focused on the summit. The chief executives of Coca-Cola, General Electric and other major firms will be in town, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is hosting 11 heads of state at seven events. One is a banquet dinner at the Grand Hyatt hotel honoring Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan; another is a much smaller dinner at the Chambers headquarters with the Ivory Coasts president, Alassane Ouattara.

Scott Eisner, the Chambers vice president of African affairs, said he and others had been pressing the administration to hold such a summit for years, because if you want to get CEOs to pay attention, you need to have your commander in chief leading the charge.

Human rights groups have questioned why the administration is not integrating members of civil society more fully into the sessions involving African leaders, given that about a dozen African nations have moved in recent years to crack down on dissent and minority groups, including gays. Separate sessions on civil society will take place Monday, while 500 young African leaders meet with Obama.

Sarah Margon, Human Rights Watchs Washington director, said the fact that African activists will not have a chance to speak directly when the leaders are gathered together really contradicts the administrations rhetorical commitment to civil society, independent voices and independent media throughout the continent.

Thomas-Greenfield said organizers decided to keep the activists on a separate program because the actual summit is a summit between leaders, but she added, We want to have frank discussions with those leaders on the issues that civil society brings to the table.

Only a handful of heads of state  from the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe  were not invited to the summit, and Margon noted that leaders such as Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang would be feted by corporate groups even though his administration has faced serious corruption and human rights charges during his nearly 35 years in power.

Then theyve made the circuit, theyve made new friends, and they dont have to answer any questions about their blemished records, she said.

And even as there is growing corporate interest in Africa, the continent still faces huge economic challenges. More than 70 percent of Africans do not have reliable access to electricity: Obama has pledged $7 billion in federal assistance and loan guarantees through his Power Africa program and the private sector has matched that with $14 billion, but a House-passed bill to make the program permanent has not made it through the Senate.

Amadou Sy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions Africa Growth Initiative, noted that the gross domestic product for all of Kenya is smaller than the size of the economy in Madison, Wis., while the amount of electricity used on game night at the Dallas Cowboys stadium is equal to that consumed nationwide in Liberia.

Still, there are signs of a change even when it comes to the push for development. Three decades ago, Western pop stars recorded We Are the World to raise money in response to the Ethiopian famine; recently the ONE campaign helped gather 2.2 million signatures from Africans urging more investment in agriculture, in part through the song Cocoa na Chocolate, which featured only African musicians.

Sipho Moyo, ONEs Africa director, said this shift does mean that Africans, and African leaders, become more responsible for the health challenges, the education challenges and the development challenges.

Perhaps Obama, she added, will be remembered as the president who changed the narrative about how we view Africa.
Here's a look at some of Merrick Garland's high profile work on the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

Here's a look at some of Merrick Garland's high profile work on the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. Top left: Nicholas Kamm/Getty; background: Bill Waugh/AP

Before Merrick Garland was announced as President Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court, he was a prosecutor and the linchpin in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation and ultimate convictions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Before Merrick Garland was announced as President Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court, he was a prosecutor and the linchpin in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation and ultimate convictions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Before Merrick Garland was announced as President Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court, he was a prosecutor and the linchpin in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation and ultimate convictions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Democrats began laying out an aggressive strategy Thursday to get Judge Merrick Garland considered by the Senate and seated on the Supreme Court, over what appears to be implacable Republican opposition.

The approach, which is being implemented in part by a well-organized group led by former aides to President Obama, involves targeting vulnerable GOP Senate incumbents for defeat by portraying them as unwilling to fulfill the basic duties of their office. The idea is to so threaten the Republicans Senate majority that party leaders will reconsider blocking hearings on Garlands nomination.

Youre going to be surprised at how hard were going to work to make sure this is on the front pages of all the papers, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters after meeting with Garland on Thursday.

At the White House, Obama held a conference call with thousands of supporters across the country while senior adviser Valerie Jarrett met on Capitol Hill with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters he had no details of a specific request Obama was making on the call. But I think the president sent a pretty clear signal, though, that this a high priority of his, and he hoped that this would be a priority that people all across the country would share, he said.

Before Garland arrived on Capitol Hill for the first time as Obamas nominee, Senate Democrats rallied in front of the Supreme Court to denounce Republican refusal to consider the nomination. Elsewhere in Washington, advocates on both sides readied for clashes across the country, but focused on states represented by GOP senators up for reelection in November.

Democrats acknowledged that Republican opposition will be slow to crumble.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), briefly addressing the standoff in a floor speech Thursday, insisted there would be no faltering.

When it comes to filling the current Supreme Court vacancy, which could fundamentally alter the direction of the court for a generation, Republicans and Democrats simply disagree, he said. Republicans think that the people deserve a voice in this critical decision; the president does not. . . . As a result, we logically act as a check and balance.

Several additional Republican senators said Thursday that they would grant Garland a courtesy meeting when the Senate returns after a two-week recess that begins Friday. In every case, however, they insisted that such a meeting would not change their position on hearings for Garland.

Ill meet with the guy, but trust me: Were not going to let the Supreme Court flip, said Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.). And this nominee obviously would flip the court, particularly on an issue that is pretty important in Wisconsin  the right to keep and bear arms.

Johnson faces what is expected to be a close reelection race this year against former Democratic senator Russell Feingold, who received an endorsement Thursday from Obama.

Two other GOP senators, Bill Cassidy (La.) and Mike Rounds (S.D.), also said they would be open to a courtesy meeting but would not change their minds on the election-year blockade of the nominee.

Many GOP senators had previously said they would not meet with whomever Obama nominated, so Democrats saw the willingness to meet with Garland as evidence that Republicans are aware of the political optics of the situation. Democrats are embracing a slippery-slope theory that begins with courtesy meetings and ends in hearings and an eventual up-or-down vote on the nomination.

Its a step at a time, said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). A good number of them put their foot in the water yesterday by saying theyd see him. . . . Therell be more of those. The next step will be to have a hearing.

In keeping with a long tradition, Garland did not address the controversy around his nomination during his visit on Capitol Hill. He huddled with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, for less than 20 minutes in Leahys office.

What you see is what you get with him, Leahy said. Theres no hidden agenda.

Garland left the meeting and headed down a hallway and out of sight, accompanied by several White House aides, led by senior adviser Brian Deese. Later in the day, he made a similarly discreet exit from Reids office.

I just told him to be himself, to be calm and collected, and I think thats his nature anyway, Reid said. I think he going to do just fine.

Leahy, a veteran of more than a dozen Supreme Court confirmation battles, said the two did not discuss politics or any role Garland might play in trying to persuade Republicans to give him a chance. Leahy said he did tell Garland about where the hurdles are in the typical confirmation process.

But the process this time promises to be anything but typical. The GOPs determination to keep the late Justice Antonin Scalias seat open for the next president to fill has already upended most of the usual customs, starting with the dust-up over courtesy meetings.

And where the Senate itself would typically take the lead role in vetting a Supreme Court nominee, there are no plans this time for the Judiciary Committee to hire its usual complement of additional staffers to conduct such checks. Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for the panels Republicans, confirmed Wednesday that there are no plans to hire additional investigators for a Garland probe.

That has given outside groups a central role in the coming fight, especially on the Republican side. Most prominent among them is the Judicial Crisis Network, which has coordinated the conservative response to the Scalia vacancy and has pledged to run millions of dollars in television ads to derail Obamas nominee.

The group issued talking points Tuesday that said Garland would support a laundry list of extreme liberal priorities, like gutting the Second Amendment, legalizing partial-birth abortion, and unleashing unaccountable bureaucratic agencies like the EPA and the IRS.

America Rising Squared, a GOP-aligned opposition research organization, had been working with the Judicial Crisis Network and the Republican National Committee to investigate potential nominees. Brian Rogers, the firms executive director, said Wednesday that he now had about a dozen researchers digging into Garlands background; some will be deployed across the country to vet the judge.

The White House is planning a big coordinated effort, and we need to, too, Rogers said.

The presidents mobilization call Thursday was organized by the Constitutional Responsibility Project, a nonprofit group formed by several former top Obama staffer. The group includes Stephanie Cutter, Julianna Smoot, Anita Dunn and Amy Brundage, all of whom worked both on his campaign team and in the White House.

The new tax-exempt organization, which is aimed at providing a platform for hundreds of groups to share information, has planned a series of events over the congressional recess, including a MoveOn Day of Action on Monday, with more than 50 grass-roots events outside senators offices, and a robust social-media campaign.

In Ohio, teachers will aim to put pressure on Sen. Rob Portman (R) with Do Your Job Learn-ins in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Lima. In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, nurses, firefighters and union members will call on Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R) to meet with Garland and hold a hearing on his nomination.

Democrats are piggybacking on the GOP line that the peoples voice will be heard, but they are betting that will happen before the election.

I think youre going to start seeing the public asking and asking and asking why there isnt a hearing, said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a Judiciary Committee member. I think youre also going to see, once you meet with the nominee . . . you think: Well, at least we should have a hearing. But what I really think is going to change their mind is their own constituents.

Karoun Demirjian and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.
Returnees wait to change money before getting a bus ticket home. Plane loads of undocumented Guatemalan migrants caught in the United States are returned to their home country on daily flights. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

 On the edge of the airport here is a one-story structure, the first stop for tens of thousands of migrants sent back from the United States. Its like a reverse Ellis Island.

Inside, government officials representing dozens of agencies patiently await planeloads of Guatemalans. Two banks are available to exchange U.S. dollars or Mexican pesos for quetzals, the local currency. A doctor stands ready in a clinic to help migrants with injuries.

On a recent morning, officials set out 115 bagged lunches for each passenger arriving on the first flight of the day. The bags held a sandwich of black beans smeared on bread, apple juice, cookies and a bag of Tortrix  Guatemalan potato chips, a brand chosen, officials said, to help returning migrants readjust to society.

Now youre in your country and with your people read a large placard at the front of the room. It was written in Spanish and Quiche, the most widely spoken of Guatemalas 22 indigenous languages. The placard was behind about a dozen kiosks at which officials were to quiz the returning migrants.

If living and working in the United States is the dream for tens of thousands of Central Americans immigrants, then ending up in this white building is the nightmare.

Scores of Guatemalans walk on the tarmac after deplaning an aircraft leased by the U.S. government to return them to their home country. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

The process that unfolds here most weekdays is at the heart of the Guatemalan governments plan to address the regional immigration crisis and convince the Obama administration that its a reliable partner, worthy of more economic assistance to deter more illegal immigration.

We have a process and were improving the quality of how theyre received, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. He said his government is preparing especially for the return of unaccompanied young children who made it across the U.S.-Mexico border but are due to be sent back in the coming weeks after sparking national outrage and a renewed debate on Capitol Hill.

We dont anticipate a massive deportation of children to Guatemala, he said. But we expect that it will happen gradually and that we will be able to receive them well and provide for them.

American officials closely tracking the process are impressed so far and say they believe that Guatemala has taken greater steps than El Salvador and Honduras to absorb the contraflow of migrants expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

In recent months, the Guatemalan government has refurbished shelters to temporarily house returning migrants who cant immediately find family or a ride home. And the government has launched a spirited advertising campaign on television, radio and the Internet in several western provinces that is urging Guatemalans to Quedate, or Stay.

Then theres the one-story white building on the military side of the airport thats barely visible from the gleaming glass passenger terminal on the other side of the tarmac.

Its better than most DMV operations in the United States, said Paco Palmieri, a deputy assistant secretary for Central America and the Caribbean, who is one of several U.S. officials who have visited and observed the process.

Guatemalan returnees often arrive back in their home country with nothing more than an orange fruit sack filled with all of their possessions. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Before one recent planeload of migrants arrived, someone turned on loud marimba music to help fill the air and lighten the mood.

Moments later, a flight from Alexandria, La.  a jet operated by the charter passenger service World Atlantic Airlines, dubbed Mission AEX1 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  pulled next to the building. There were 115 passengers aboard. They were served water. No food. And no in-flight movie.

Flights carrying illegal immigrants back to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras take off daily from runways near federal detention facilities in Mesa, Ariz.; Brownsville, Tex.; or Louisiana. Wheels up to wheels down, the flights cost U.S. taxpayers about $10,000.

The first person off the plane this day was an ICE official carrying documents in a large manila envelope. He was followed by three young women and dozens of men, who walked two by two into the building.

Some smiled, others bopped their heads to the marimba music. As they sat down, they tore into the lunches. Most were dressed in T-shirts, jeans and hiking boots or sneakers.

Then the marimba music abruptly cut off.

Out stepped Victor Mendez, an immigration official.

Bienvenidos a Guatemala! he said, welcoming them to the country.

The room erupted in cheers.

I have several instructions for you, he told them. If you changed your name in the United States for whatever reason, give us your actual name here. Officials also want to know dates of birth, home towns, why the migrants left the country, when they left and by which exit point along Guatemalas western border with Mexico.

You have crossed rivers, deserts and on trains, Mendez told the crowd. But thank God that you were able to get there, to do work and send help for your families.

When he said, You are now in your country, applause broke out again. Then the migrants were called up to the kiosks to be fingerprinted and interviewed. Minors warrant special attention, but none were on this flight.

Among those waiting was Jose Luis Maldonado Garcia, 34. He wore a yellow shirt from the landscaping company at which he worked in Alexandria, Va.

As he waited for his name to be called, Garcia could recall several specific dates. He first immigrated illegally in 2001 and stayed until returning to Guatemala in 2009. He tried again but was apprehended in Texas on March 5, 2012.

About a month later, he said, he entered the United States and made it to Northern Virginia by May 5, 2012. He lived and worked there until immigration authorities raided his home Aug. 7.

Garcia was taken to Richmond, then a federal facility in Louisiana. Two weeks later, he was back in Guatemala.

Asked whether he will ever try going to the United States again, Garcia said, No, I dont think so. The journey is too treacherous. He has a wife and two children  4 and 2  in the village of Chiquimula, and, from now on, he said he plans to try earning a living here.

Pascual Mateo Andres, 22, said he might try immigrating again one day. He spent eight years in the United States, entering along the Texas border in 2006 and traveling to Jackson, Miss., where he worked in a Mexican restaurant. On the night of July 4  Independence Day  he said local police apprehended him outside the restaurant and handed him over to ICE.

Unsure about whats next, he said, I guess Ill stay with my family. I wanted to bring my sisters up, but I couldnt. They didnt cross the border. Once he gets to his family in Acatenango, Ill find a new job as fast as I can, he said.

Within an hour, Garcia and Andres were interviewed and given free bus tickets to travel home.

Then it was time to sweep the floor and put out more lunches. Time to cue the marimba music and swing open the doors.

Another plane with 107 passengers was unloading momentarily. And many more will be coming.
Visual artists walk with signs that read in French, "Ebola leave us alone," during a rally in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to draw attention to the plight of people suffering from the outbreak.

Sept. 4, 2014 Visual artists walk with signs that read in French, "Ebola leave us alone," during a rally in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to draw attention to the plight of people suffering from the outbreak. Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images

Governments move to stop the epidemic from spreading further as the death toll from the virus continues to grow.

Governments move to stop the latest outbreak from spreading further as death toll from virus tops 1,300.

Governments move to stop the latest outbreak from spreading further as death toll from virus tops 1,300.

Tom R. Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was supposed to fly to West Africa on Monday to gauge the effects of the worlds worst Ebola outbreak.

Then his flight was canceled.

Brussels Airlines was forced to halt flights to the affected region after Senegals refusal over the weekend to allow the Belgium-based carrier to touch down in Senegals capital, Dakar, for crew changes. Senegal was sending a clear signal that it wanted nothing to do with flights going to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone, where the outbreak rages on. This move was just the latest by a growing wave of countries and airlines that appear to want to stave off the Ebola threat by stopping travel in and out of places confronting the virus.

Frieden, along with other U.S. officials, scrambled to jump on one of the regions few remaining options  a Delta flight to the Liberian capital that arrived Sunday, said Jeremy Konyndyk, director of the U.S. Agency for International Developments Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, who was part of the mad dash.

The increasing flight cancellations and border closures have alarmed public health officials worldwide. The cancellations have frightened residents in the affected countries who fear they may be trapped within their national borders. They also worry about the economic fallout from their dwindling air access to other countries.

The World Health Organization warned Monday that these curbs will only make the outbreak harder to deal with. That message was reinforced by the United Nations, which said that moving in medical supplies and personnel was being severely hampered by the restrictions.

David Nabarro, who is leading WHOs Ebola response effort, acknowledged Monday that the unprecedented scale of the outbreak is scary but stressed the importance of maintaining regular air routes and normal borders.

Yes, we understand it, Nabarro said in Freetown, referring to the restrictions placed by regional countries. But on the other hand, its making the job a whole lot harder.

Keiji Fukuda, WHOs assistant director general for health security, said it was essential to restore the confidence of airlines and foreign governments. Passengers are screened for fever and other symptoms before boarding planes in the Ebola-affected countries. And even if an Ebola-stricken passenger found a seat on an aircraft, transmission of the virus  which is not airborne and which requires direct contact with bodily fluids  is difficult.

Passengers and crew should not be alarmed, Fukuda said. We believe they are at very low risk of getting Ebola, he said.

Last month, Asky Airlines stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone after a Liberian passenger on a flight to Lagos, Nigeria, died from Ebola and sparked a small outbreak in that country. Nigerias largest flight operator, Arik Air, stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Then Emirates became the first major player to drop West Africa. Air Cote dIvoire also grounded flights, as did British Airways. Ebola prompted Korean Air to halt its three weekly flights to Nairobi, even though Kenya is on the opposite side of the African continent.

Borders are being closed, too. South Africa banned travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Senegal closed its border with Guinea. Chad closed its border with Nigeria.

Last week, Kenya Airways stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The small airliner Gambia Bird had already stopped flights to the affected region.

In Sierra Leone, just two commercial airliners  Royal Air Maroc and Air France  still serve Lungi International Airport.

Air France, which flies to Guinea and Sierra Leone, is under pressure from a crew union to stop its flights because some staff members are worried about being exposed to the deadly virus. The union called the continuation of flights inconceivable given the risks.

But Air France has said that it has studied the issue and thinks it can safely maintain its schedule.

In Freetown, uncertainty about flight options has fueled rumors. The few remaining flights are booked solid. Residents who might otherwise stick around are pondering jumping on a plane just so they are not stuck if the airport goes silent.

Its very manic. Its been a headache, said Geoffrey Awoonor-Renner, who runs VSL Travel, a travel-related services agency, in Freetown.

The travel agent was dealing with one client, eager to get to Europe, who had booked flights twice  on Gambia Bird and then on Brussels Airlines  only to see the carrier cancel on him. He cannot find another flight.

Were scrambling, Awoonor-Renner said.

The flight situation also has proved to be a burden for the WHO delegation now visiting Freetown. The team members were supposed to fly out on Brussels Airlines. On Monday, there was word that the carrier was negotiating with another country for access so crew changes could be made. Maybe flights would resume.

In the meantime, WHO officials were grounded. They were hoping that a small U.N. plane might become available.
The body of a man is carried by Liberian Ministry of Health workers in the capital of Monrovia. The man died in the morning, but his body was not picked up until after 3 p.m. Locals say he died from Ebola.

Sept. 13, 2014 The body of a man is carried by Liberian Ministry of Health workers in the capital of Monrovia. The man died in the morning, but his body was not picked up until after 3 p.m. Locals say he died from Ebola. Michel du Cille/The Washington Post

Health experts debate using unproved drugs to treat the deadly virus as it continues to spread in west Africa.

Health experts debate using unproved drugs to treat the deadly virus as it continues to spread in west Africa.

Health experts debate using unproved drugs to treat the deadly virus as it continues to spread in west Africa.

Steps from a chance at salvation, or at least a less excruciating death, Comfort Zeyemoh walked slowly from the Ebola treatment center on Saturday. It was one of only three in a city devastated by the lethal virus. And it was nearly full.

Zeyemoh, 22, was not sick enough to gain entry, though she had started vomiting the night before and was feeling weak. Those are telltale signs of Ebola.

They sent us here for a checkup, her boyfriend, Moses Sackie, said outside the facility run by the aid group Doctors Without Borders. Now they are telling us to wait for three days.

With each day, the small group of caregivers trying to cope with the worst outbreak of Ebola on record falls further and further behind as the pace of the viruss transmission rapidly accelerates. Health facilities are full, and an increasing number of infected people are being turned away, left to fend for themselves.

The epidemic has killed more than 2,200 people in five African countries and now poses a threat to Liberias national existence, according to its defense minister. The World Health Organization says the epidemics growth has been exponential in recent weeks, especially in Liberia.

The Doctors Without Borders center in Paynesville, on the outskirts of Monrovia, has 160 beds and is scheduled to add 25 on Monday. It needs 1,200  and a corresponding increase in staff  to cope with the epidemic, said Sophie-Jane Madden, a spokeswoman for the organization. As Ebola begins to race through this city, that number is certain to increase.

Were just running behind the virus, arent we? Madden said. And taking the sickest people because we dont have the capacity for more. On Friday, 23 people were admitted, 25 were turned away, nine died and seven were released after recovering, she said.

The sick arrive each day, hopeful that their timing and symptoms will get them past the gate. Even so, 7 in 10 will die inside, slightly better odds than the 9 in 10 who are dying in the community, Madden said.

On Saturday morning, Josh Tugbehs luck did not hold. He felt sick and weak, with pain in his joints that made it difficult to walk. I come here and they say they are not accepting patients, he said outside the ELWA 3 center, as the Doctors Without Borders facility is called. I want to go back home, but I am not able to walk to go home.

The scene was similar at the JFK treatment center run by the Liberian government in another Monrovia neighborhood, where Jatu Zombo cradled her 5-year-old son, Foday, beneath a tarp set up to block the sun. A few feet away, her 10-year-old boy, Zennah, sat on a paint can. Both children were listless and visibly ill. They felt cold and had been vomiting. Their father had died four days earlier, and Zombo, 36, spent days calling for an ambulance that never came. Finally, her brother paid someone $20 in U.S. currency to bring them to JFK.

But the children could not get in. No one has spoken to us, said Zombos brother, Abraham Sesky. So we are just sitting. We dont know.

At the former Redemption Hospital, now a holding center for the sick and the dead where no treatment is offered, an ambulance pulled up to the front gate Saturday afternoon and dropped off two adults and a girl. The ambulance driver said the childs name was Cynthia and that she was 10 years old.

Weak and wobbly, the girl walked a few steps before she lay on the concrete. Cynthia and the others could not be brought inside, because workers were loading bodies, wrapped in white plastic body bags, into the back of a pickup truck. The area needed to be disinfected first.

As a small crowd gathered on the street of the New Kru Town slum, Cynthia called to the ambulance driver a short distance away, saying she wanted to go home. The driver told her not to move, to wait for the people inside to get to her. A woman began to wail, and soon security personnel dispersed the crowd.

Around the corner and down a block or two, another small crowd had grown angry at the delay in retrieving a mans body that lay under a tree outside some homes. Residents said that it had been there since Friday and that Redemption officials had failed to respond to repeated calls to come get it. Ebola, a hemorrhagic disease, is at its most lethal in the body fluids that leak from corpses.

They have not come to spray disinfectant in the area around the corpse, Powell Johns, a preacher, said angrily. Thats wrong. Theyve got to do their jobs.

The group led some American and French journalists to the body. The tactic worked. Soon, workers in front of Redemption were donning full-body protective gear and heading over to collect the corpse.

Across Monrovia, such breakdowns in basic services are common. Schools are closed. Aside from the delivery of children, it is almost impossible to get any kind of medical care that would require a hospital, because Ebola has overwhelmed the system.

Few people are working. They have been told to stay home, to help slow transmission of the virus, which means that no money is coming in for basics such as food. People say they are relying on handouts from family and friends and hustling for a few dollars.

The United Nations has estimated that it will cost at least $600 million to fight the epidemic and address the economic and social devastation suffered by the hardest-hit countries  Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The U.S. government has spent more than $100 million in the region, and additional requests for aid, if approved by Congress, would bring the total commitment to more than $250 million. Critics called the U.S. response inadequate after the Pentagon said last week it is sending a 25-bed field hospital to treat health-care workers exposed to Ebola. Senior administration officials have suggested that additional assistance is forthcoming.

Mohamed Conteh, a tailor whose tiny shop sits just around the corner from the JFK treatment center, said his business has dwindled almost to nothing since the Ebola facility opened.

Since the center came, theres nothing here, because people are afraid to come, he said.

Some days I go home and there is no money, he added. I have to ask others to feed my family.

Francis Sampson, who lives in a tiny home next to the JFK gate, said he used to earn $120 a month working for a cellphone company. Now, he has nothing. My parents go to church, he said, and the church gives them food.

Not far away, Boimah Fully, 38, said he used to pick up gas at an oil refinery and sell it at the side of the road. Now he and his five brothers are living on rice they cadge here and there.

One day, he declared, Liberias latest crisis will end. Ebola will go, he said. I dont know when. But Ebola will go.

Lena H. Sun in Washington contributed to this report.
Nigeria distrusts U.S. efforts to help fight terror, while the Americans are frustrated by Nigerian military abuses. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)

When Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced early this month that the Obama administration was rushing a team of experts to help Nigerian officials rescue 276 abducted schoolgirls, the hope in Washington was that Nigerians would react with gratitude and energetic cooperation.

Instead, the U.S. assistance mission here  cloaked in secrecy and producing only vague hints of progress after six weeks of joint efforts to find and free the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants  has produced a more ambivalent and critical response.

One reason is the strong patriotic pride among citizens of this independent, oil-rich nation with a large professional security force that President Goodluck Jonathan said Thursday he had ordered to carry out a full-scale operation against the militants. While there is appreciation for the U.S. help, there is also resentment of what some Nigerian commentators call neocolonial meddling.

Part of it is national pride, perhaps one should say national vanity, said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Particular umbrage has been directed at comments by two U.S. officials who have nothing directly to do with the current crisis. One is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose sarcastic remark about Nigeria having a practically nonexistent government hit a deep nerve.

1 of 51 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Worldwide protests demand the rescue of kidnapped Nigerian girls View Photos International rallies protest the governments weak response to the crime. Caption International rallies protest the governments weak response to the crime. June 23, 2014 A member of the Abuja Bring Back Our Girls group speaks at a sit-in demonstration the group organized at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, Nigeria. Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

Let no Nigerian be fooled by these so-called friends who have ulterior motives, read a two-page ad in last Sundays newspapers, signed by Muhammadu Mamman. Excoriating McCain as an ignorant war-monger with no knowledge of Nigerias proud past, he asserted that only the Nigerian gallant forces can bring the girls back.

The second target is former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is criticized here both for having failed to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization and for making unflattering comments characterizing Nigerian leaders as corrupt and indifferent to peoples suffering.

Nigerian opposition leaders make the same criticisms. They say that despite the establishment of democracy in 1999 after years of military rule, a mix of official corruption and negligence has abetted the rise of Islamist extremism in the impoverished Muslim north.

What we really need from America is help building a democratic system that produces legitimate and responsible leaders, said Festus Keyamo, a human rights activist and lawyer. Otherwise we are going to keep growing a mass of idle and angry youth that are waiting to wreak havoc.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, an adviser to Jonathan said the international attention surrounding the girls abduction has drawn misdirected and unfair scrutiny of a government he said is doing all it can to bring the girls home.

There appears to be a dearth of information out there about what the government of Nigeria is doing, said Mike Omeri, a longtime political adviser to Jonathan.

Omeri led a delegation of Nigerian officials to Washington this week to make the case that the Jonathan government is responding appropriately.

More than six weeks after nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, a senior Nigerian official tells PostTV what he wants Americans to know about his government's response, and whether the #bringbackourgirls campaign is helping or hurting. (Anne Gearan, Gillian Brockell and Kate M. Tobey/The Washington Post)

When this crisis started, the government of Nigeria, the people of Nigeria, had no chance to explain, Omeri said. We were taken to the cleaners as having done nothing and being nothing.

President Obama, speaking at graduation ceremonies Wednesday at the U.S. Military Academy, declared that no American security operation can eradicate terrorists like Boko Haram and that the problem requires U.S. efforts to improve education and human rights in countries such as Nigeria.

Another sticking point in U.S.-Nigeria relations are the recurrent reports of abuses by Nigerias security forces, including the deaths of hundreds of Boko Haram detainees. Congress has banned all direct military aid to foreign forces with abusive records.

Campbell suggested that very, very few units of the Nigerian army could pass that test today. One reason for the Nigerians defensive reaction to U.S. help in locating the girls is that U.S. assistance always requires degrees of accountability, which the Nigerians dont like, he said.

Despite public pressure on the government to find the missing schoolgirls, there is little serious criticism of the army in Nigeria, where military rule is a recent memory and troops have been deployed across Africa as U.N. peacekeepers. In the past week, a series of highly organized rallies has been held here to express confidence in the military.

Until recently, experts said, U.S. officials also tended to focus on Nigerias democratic progress and overlook its military abuses. By the same token, Washington did not put Boko Haram on its list of terrorist groups until last year, allowing Nigerian critics to decry its sudden policy change as a matter of self-interest.

The absence of concrete information about the U.S. anti-terror role here has fueled warnings about an American occupation. Photos of U.S. drones participating in the aerial search for the missing girls and their captors have added to speculation about foreign spying.

American officials in Abuja have rejected all requests for comment on U.S. activities here. Nigerian officials, while hinting at unspecified progress in the joint efforts to track Boko Haram, have also refused to discuss any details of those activities.

What is the guarantee that ensures that Nigeria has not mortgaged her sovereignty to the Americans in an attempt to fight Boko Haram? demanded commentator Idang Alibi. Do the Americans have a blank check, or are there some safeguards to protect Mother Nigeria?

Such skepticism about U.S. involvement contrasts notably with the Nigerias strong appeal for cooperation from its neighbors to combat the spread of terrorism. At a meeting in Paris in early May, Jonathan begged for their help, saying Boko Haram had become an al-Qaeda of West Africa.

The response was overwhelmingly positive, with the presidents of next-door Chad and Cameroon committing themselves to an all-out war on Boko Haram. It remains to be seen whether such statements will lead to concrete actions, but Nigerians seem convinced that regional cooperation is both more urgent and welcome then Western help in combatting terrorism.

If we as a region dont come together to meet this challenge, said Ike Ekweremadu, a Nigerian senator and official of the Economic Commission of West African States, in a TV interview Monday, Islamist militancy will spread like a cancer and consume all of us.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Anne Gearan contributed to this report from Washington.
Supporters of Egypt's former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sissi celebrate at Tahrir square in Cairo. The former general was expected to have a sweeping victory in the country's presidential election.

May 28, 2014 Supporters of Egypt's former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sissi celebrate at Tahrir square in Cairo. The former general was expected to have a sweeping victory in the country's presidential election. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Just two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Just two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Egypts government announced late Tuesday that it was extending voting in the presidential election to a third day amid widespread reports of low turnout. The move could call into

question the legitimacy of front-runner Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.

Many polling stations in normally crowded neighborhoods of the capital were empty Tuesday, the second day of a two-way election seen as a referendum on

Sissis rule. A former defense minister and army chief, Sissi led a coup against President Mohamed Morsi  an Islamist who was Egypts first democratically elected leader  last July in the wake of protests that demanded his ouster, gaining broad popularity.

A spokesman for Egypts election commission told the state-run al-Ahram newspaper Tuesday that turnout had reached 37 percent. But local election monitors and the campaign of Sissis challenger, leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, reported turnout as low as 10 percent Monday. The government then declared Tuesday a holiday for public workers to encourage voter participation, suggesting that participation indeed had been low.

The election commission told the official Middle East News Agency that the decision to keep polls open into Wednesday was made to enable voters living outside their home districts to travel there to cast ballots. Egypts 54 million voters are required to cast ballots in the districts in which they are registered.

Both campaigns announced Tuesday night that they had submitted complaints to the election commission to halt the third day of voting. Sabahi said the extension was an attempt to manipulate the results. The Sissi campaign did not give a reason for its objection.

Pro-government media criticized Egyptians for staying away from the polls Monday and Tuesday.

Where are the people? Where is the nation? television talk-show host Hayat al-Dardiri lamented Monday on the pro-

military channel Faraeen.

Since Morsis ouster, the media have helped construct the narrative of Sissi as a widely admired general who is the peoples choice to be Egypts president. The Muslim Brotherhood, which backed Morsis presidency and remains the countrys largest opposition movement despite an official ban, boycotted the vote. Thousands of its members are in prison.

Ill tell them to cut off the electricity tomorrow in all the homes so that the air conditioners dont work and Egyptians will go out and vote, said Tawfik Okasha, a firebrand TV personality and owner of Faraeen, in a broadcast Monday night. He is a fierce opponent of the Brotherhood.

Some officials attributed the low turnout to a stifling heat wave, with temperatures topping 100 degrees Tuesday. Its too sunny, a low-ranking soldier said as he sat in the shade at an empty polling station in the greater Cairo district of Dokki on Tuesday afternoon.

In the central Cairo district of Manial, officials and security forces overseeing the vote drank cups of sweet black tea while they waited for voters.

Analysts here say such meager turnout will hurt Sissi politically and cripple his image as an invincible leader.

It has been clearly revealed that the Sissi campaign has no electoral machine, journalist Ibrahim Eissa said Monday on the private Tahrir TV network.
Supporters of Egypt's former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sissi celebrate at Tahrir square in Cairo. The former general was expected to have a sweeping victory in the country's presidential election.

May 28, 2014 Supporters of Egypt's former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sissi celebrate at Tahrir square in Cairo. The former general was expected to have a sweeping victory in the country's presidential election. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Two candidates are vying for the nations top office after Egypts first democratically elected president was ousted by the military last year.

Many polling stations were nearly deserted Wednesday on the third day of voting in Egypts presidential election, highlighting front-runner Abdel Fatah al-Sissis lack of a formalized political base and threatening the overwhelming mandate sought by his campaign.

With turnout figures from Egypts election commission unavailable, it remains unclear how many went to the polls. An election official told state media that participation had reached 37 percent Tuesday, but a local election monitoring group and the campaign of opposition candidate Hamdeen Sabahi said the initial turnout was as low as 15 percent.

It was a dismal showing despite signs that the state machinery tried to boost voter participation. The two-day election, which began Monday, was extended by a day, and banks and state workers were given a public holiday Tuesday.

Sissi, a former defense minister who has enjoyed unprecedented support since he ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last summer, is still widely expected to win the nations highest office. Partial results announced Wednesday showed him with 4.2 million votes compared with 133,548 for Sabahi, the Associated Press reported, after votes from 2,000 polling stations were tallied.

But because Sissis campaign relied largely on his personal popularity and a disparate group of supporters to mobilize voters, there was no unified electoral machine to grant the former army chief the ballots he needed to claim sweeping success. Sissi refused to even release a formal political platform ahead of the vote.

What were seeing is the manifestations of there not being organized civilian politics in the country, said Josh Stacher, a professor of Middle East politics at Kent State University.

Some observers here attributed the dearth of voters at the polls to hot weather, political apathy and an election boycott called by the Muslim Brotherhood, which backed Morsis presidency and is now the prime target of a Sissi-led crackdown.

But with little campaigning by Sissi, people feel like theyre not being consulted about the process, Stacher said Wednesday. So, in that case, they just wont go to the polls.

After the coup against Morsi, Sissi emerged as an admired strongman whom many here saw as the type of leader Egypt needed to end the political and economic turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising against the Hosni Mubarak government.

Government and private media, as well as other state organs, lined up behind him as he spearheaded an oppressive security campaign, first against the Muslim Brotherhood and then against dissidents of all stripes. Supporters plastered Sissis image on posters, chocolates, T-shirts and more. In that sense, his campaign unofficially started months ago.

But even supporters acknowledged there was little effort to engage in a coordinated way at the grass-roots level. This is in contrast to the Brotherhood, once the countrys largest and most organized political group. The Brotherhood tapped into its extensive and localized network of charities and social services during the 2012 presidential election, which Morsi won. Its disciplined political rallies targeted members with slick messaging.

We expected Sissis campaign to be organized like us. But we found ourselves hanging posters alone, holding conferences [with voters] alone, said Sameh Abdel Hamid, a member of the Salafist Nour party in Alexandria. Nour, a former Brotherhood ally, supported Morsis overthrow and says it backs Sissi in this election, seeing him as a candidate capable of ending Egypts political instability.

We have millions of followers, but Sissis core campaign has just a few individuals, Abdel Hamid said. No one could see them on the ground.

Another constituency Sissi failed to exploit was the voting population linked to the National Democratic Party (NDP), the ruling party under Mubarak. The party was dissolved in the wake of the 2011 revolt, but its former lawmakers maintain influence among tribes and villages across the country  and can still translate that clout into political capital.

Sissi did not reach out to the NDP, said Abdel Fattah Ali Hassan, a former NDP lawmaker from Cairos hardscrabble Sayeda Zeinab district. If he had reached out and secured our support, the turnout would have been noticeably higher.

Sissi may have wanted to steer clear of any connection with the widely reviled Mubarak era. But Stacher said it is likely that Sissi assumed that his wide following on the streets would translate into heavy turnout and that he did not need to court multiple constituencies.

Hisham Kassem, a Cairo-based analyst and former political activist, warned that meager turnout could cripple Sissi early on in his presidency.

Sissi will definitely start things off with a handicap if turnout is as low as reported, he said. Its much lower than I expected. And if Sissi doesnt deliver, I have no doubt there will be a third uprising.

Sharaf al-Hourani contributed to this report.
South African Judge Thokozile Masipa said in court on Thursday that former Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was not guilty of premeditated murder. She was expected to make the final verdict soon after. (Reuters)

South African Judge Thokozile Masipa said in court on Thursday that former Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was not guilty of premeditated murder. She was expected to make the final verdict soon after. (Reuters)

During his trial, Oscar Pistorius sometimes retched and sobbed. The double-amputee Olympian sobbed again Thursday, this time in apparent relief as a judge said the evidence did not support a murder conviction in the killing of Pistoriuss girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

The judge could still convict Pistorius of a negligent killing  a crime that can carry a lengthy jail term or just a suspended sentence and fine  when she likely finishes reading her lengthy conclusions in court Friday. Some legal analysts were surprised, saying the runner could at least have been convicted of a lesser murder charge, rather than the premeditated murder charge leveled by the state.

The Pretoria courtroom was packed for the ruling in the case against 27-year-old Pistorius, once a globally admired celebrity who competed against able-

bodied athletes at the 2012 Olympics in London. His brother, Carl, was there in a wheelchair because of injuries suffered in a recent car crash. So were Steenkamps parents, June and Barry.

Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, had been seeing the star athlete for only a few months before he killed her by shooting four times through a closed toilet door in his home in the pre-dawn hours of Valentines Day last year. Pistorius said he thought an intruder was in the toilet and about to attack him; the prosecution said he intentionally killed her after an argument.

Judge Thokozile Masipa, wearing a red robe, unveiled her analysis of the case after saying little throughout the sensational six-month trial as lawyers argued and witnesses testified about the shocking killing. South Africa does not have a jury system, and judges customarily issue verdicts only after explaining their reasoning.

View Graphic Graphic: What Blade Runner Olympian says happened the night he shot his girlfriend

The accused cannot be found guilty of murder, the judge said, noting there were just not enough facts to support the finding of guilt for premeditated murder, which carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, or an unplanned murder, considered a less severe crime.

To support her view that the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, the judge said some neighbors accounts of hearing a womans screams on the night of Steenkamps death  a key part of the prosecutions case  were unreliable. The defense had argued that it was Pistorius who was screaming in horror in a high-pitched voice after discovering he had fatally shot Steenkamp.

Masipa cited what she called an objective timeline of telephone calls made after the shooting, some involving Pistorius, that the defense had compiled in an attempt to discredit witness accounts about the sequence of purported screams and gunshots. She noted that Pistorius was reported to be in genuine distress in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and that he could not have been play-acting.

Even so, the judge appeared to lay the groundwork for a conviction for culpable homicide, which is the killing of someone through reckless or negligent behavior. She described Pistoriuss conduct as negligent and said he could have telephoned security or screamed for help on the balcony instead of grabbing his gun and heading to confront a perceived danger in the bathroom.

I am of the view that the accused acted too hastily and used excessive force, Masipa said. She also said that many people in South Africa have personally experienced the traumatic effects of the countrys high crime rate but do not sleep with guns nearby.

Five years in prison is a guideline for a culpable homicide conviction in which a firearm is used, though the sentence is at the judges discretion, according to legal experts. Pistorius also faces two separate counts of unlawfully firing a gun in a public place in unrelated incidents and one count of illegal possession of ammunition.

If he is convicted on any charge, the case will be postponed until a later sentencing hearing.

Kelly Phelps, a senior lecturer in the public law department at the University of Cape Town, said the judges rulings so far were sound because prosecutors never had very much evidence to support their central allegation that Pistorius carried out a premeditated murder.

Martin Hood, a South African lawyer and firearms expert, disagreed, saying there was a strong case to convict Pistorius on a lesser charge of unplanned murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 15 years in jail. Under that scenario, Hood said, Pistorius may not have intended to kill Steenkamp because he testified that he didnt think she was in the toilet, but he did intend to kill a perceived intruder by firing multiple times into a small space.

This was always going to be a showcase for South Africa, Hood said of the trial. I think theres a lot of uncertainty as to the correctness of the judgment.

He added: We have a problem in this country with violent crime. This sends the wrong message about the way we deal with violent crime.
The Obama administration implicitly endorsed Egypts new military-backed government Sunday with a visit from Secretary of State John F. Kerry, sealing the repair of a crucial Mideast bond and a return of American partnership with Egyptian authoritarianism after the tumult of the Arab Spring.

The United States has recently closed ranks with Egypts authorities, moving to restore suspended military aid despite lingering congressional objections about human rights abuses. All but about $78 million of an initial pledge of more than $600 million has been released, in spite of concerns about mass death sentences for political opponents, the jailing of journalists and the narrowing of free speech under the military-backed leadership that assumed power after a July coup.

Underscoring at least the partial return to the old dynamic in which regional security concerns largely defined the relationship, Kerry pledged Sunday that Congress would soon approve the delivery of Apache helicopters that Egypt badly wants. The aircraft have been held up over concerns that they might be misused.

He said the attack helicopters will be used against the surging Egyptian militant forces affiliated with or inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni jihadist group.

The groups rapid military gains in recent weeks and the potential unraveling of Iraq overshadowed Kerrys visit to Egypt, a Sunni Arab nation that has long been a U.S. political and security partner. The Obama administration is seeking Sunni help to curb support and cut illicit funding for ISIS.

Kerry was the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the former army chief who easily won election in May. Although he represents a return to elected rule in Egypt, as the United States had urged, his military ties and crackdown on opponents and others undercut his democratic credentials.

Kerry said he urged Sissi to rein in judicial and free speech abuses, but he offered mostly praise for the new leader during remarks later with Foreign Minister Sameh Hassan Shoukry.

There is no question that Egyptian society is stronger when all of its citizens have a say and stake in its success, he said. I welcome recent statements from President Sissi.

Kerry also met with a representative of an election monitoring group, advocates for womens rights and mild critics of the government. The group contained none of the fiercest critics or prominent organizations pushing for legal and human rights protections in Egypt, as well as prisoner rights.

Egypt faces simultaneous economic and security crises, with a limping economy, sluggish tourism, high unemployment and the spread of militancy in the Sinai Peninsula, which is flush with heavy weaponry smuggled easily from Libya.

Kerry has argued that a more politically inclusive and predictable government will stabilize Egypt, soothe international investment fears and attract vital tourism.

Earlier this month, President Obama called Sissi to congratulate him on his election, signaling an end to a period of estrangement and frustration on both sides that dated to the 2011 ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and the political confusion and dysfunction of the Islamist-backed government that followed.

The army ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a coup in July, and the former Muslim Brotherhood leader remains jailed and largely incommunicado. Hundreds have died in street protests and other violence related to the upheaval.

Analysts and opponents of Sissi contend that his government is throttling opposition even more harshly than Mubarak, who had held power for decades. The Muslim Brotherhood political movement was banned under Mubarak and is now banned again. The United States, although never an ally of the movement, is pushing Sissi to ease up on what is widely seen as an attempt to extinguish the group as a meaningful political force.

We have lots of concerns about a range of issues that are related to the political environment, such as the demonstrations law, the imprisonment of journalists and secular activists, the lack of space in general for dissent, the mass trials and death sentences, said a senior State Department official traveling with Kerry.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline Kerrys goals ahead of his visit, said there are a few flickering signs of positive movement from Egypt, including the release last week of an Al Jazeera journalist. There are also encouraging signals that the government will begin to address rampant sexual harassment and sexual violence against women.

Egypt has chafed under criticism from Washington and the brief suspension of some aid last year.

Egyptian officials in Washington have lobbied Congress, officials and opinion makers to argue that the country is better off and a better partner for the United States with the army back in a dominant role.

But Sissi is also assuming that the spat over money will be short-lived, Egyptian officials and analysts said.I think that there has been some change in the American perception of whats happening in Egypt, said one high-ranking official at Egypts Foreign Ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

U.S. lawmakers may not like Egypts political trajectory, in which democracy is taking a back seat to security concerns, he said, but they have no choice other than to accept Sissi as a partner.

Washington is realizing that the only way to preserve interests is to listen to the people of Egypt, not to ignore it  not to humiliate them and their choices by saying, Morsi was elected,  he said.

Egypt is banking on its strategic value as operator of the vital Suez Canal and enforcer of the 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty with Israel, as well as the staying power of a bilateral relationship that has seen billions of dollars in mostly military aid delivered by Washington every year for decades, analysts and Egyptian officials said.

Congress has attached new conditions to the aid this year, including requiring evidence that Egypt is maintaining its commitment to a strategic relationship with the United States and meeting its obligations under the peace treaty. Kerry determined in April that Egypt is doing so.

Hauslohner reported from Irbil, Iraq. Erin Cunningham contributed to this report.
A Nigerian military officials terse assertion Monday that the armed forces know the whereabouts of 276 abducted schoolgirls drew surprisingly little public reaction in the capital Tuesday, but it added a mysterious twist to a string of contradictory official narratives about efforts to find the missing girls.

The startling comments by Nigerias chief of defense staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, did not appear to signal a breakthrough in the dramatic saga of the girls, who have not been seen since they were seized by Boko Haram extremists in mid-April. But the remarks suggested that the security forces are less worried about the girls fates than previously indicated and are trying to figure out the safest way to bring them home.

At an impromptu encounter Monday with military supporters gathered outside the Defense Ministry, Badeh said, We know where the girls are, but we cannot tell you. He said the military was reluctant to free the victims by force for fear they would be harmed in the process, and he asked that the public have patience and confidence in the militarys plans. Just leave us alone; we are working to get the girls back, he said in comments that were shown on state TV.

Officials added no information or details Tuesday to Badehs brief remarks. A government spokesman, reached by e-mail, said he was traveling and unavailable to comment.

Monday night, suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed 54 people in two attacks in northeastern Nigeria, the Associated Press reported.

1 of 51 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Worldwide protests demand the rescue of kidnapped Nigerian girls View Photos International rallies protest the governments weak response to the crime. Caption International rallies protest the governments weak response to the crime. June 23, 2014 A member of the Abuja Bring Back Our Girls group speaks at a sit-in demonstration the group organized at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, Nigeria. Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

At a rally in Abuja, the capital, more than 500 people from a pro-government umbrella group called the Grand Coalition Against Terrorism gathered to express support for President Goodluck Jonathan and the armed forces. Many participants said that the military was right to use caution and avoid armed clashes with Boko Haram militants and that they hoped a negotiated solution could be found.

We trust our military, and we dont need them to tell us everything, said Princess Miriam Onuoha, one of the rally leaders and a member of Nigerias hereditary tribal royalty, who met with Badeh on Monday. They are on the right track, and they should be patient so as not to harm anyones human rights. It is not too late to negotiate and resolve this at the table, but it does not need to be done in public.

But several political opposition figures and human rights activists said they were baffled by Badehs seemingly casual reference to knowing the girls location after weeks of official statements about an intense ground search, supplemented by aerial surveillance by U.S. drone planes, yielding no significant breakthrough.

Observers said they were more confused than ever about the governments continued mixed signals and seeming shifts on whether to hold talks with the insurgents. Some senior officials have insisted that they will not negotiate with terrorists, while others have hinted at elaborate behind-the-scenes mediation efforts that were suddenly called off by the president.

Its hard to know what to believe, but from what I am being told, there is no activity, no searching  just a waiting game going on, said a politician from Borno state, the northern region and Boko Haram stronghold from where the girls were taken.

I think they want to have a dialogue, but they are also worried about a negative reaction from the international community, the politician said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussing Boko Haram.

The most widely reported mediation attempt involved a Nigerian journalist named Ahmad Salkida, who fled the country several years ago after being threatened by the government for interacting too closely with Boko Haram members. According to Nigerian media reports, Salkida was called home by the government in early May to act as a go-between with the militants.

He was then said to have traveled to the remote northeast forests and back to the capital, saying on his return that he had found insurgents willing to talk about swapping the girls for 100 of their detained associates and that he had seen a group of the girls safe and in good health.

Officials denied that any such effort had taken place, while some media reported that Jonathan had abruptly called off the initiative while meeting in early May with neighboring heads of state and Western officials in Paris.

Despite the governments denial of Salkidas alleged trip, some at the Abuja rally said such an encounter could well be the primary source of Badehs confident remark about knowing the girls location and waiting for the right time and method to rescue them.

It may also be a further indication that Boko Haram leaders are backing off from their original threats to enslave the girls, forcibly marry them or sneak them into neighboring countries. According to local media reports and some officials, the militant leaders have since lowered their demands, first seeking the release of fellow fighters and then asking only that their detained wives and children be freed in exchange for the girls.

Nigerian military officials have expressed strong reluctance to use force against the insurgents, many of whom are jobless youths drawn to Boko Harams mission of creating an Islamic state.Critics have accused the military of being afraid to fight a hidden guerrilla enemy, but the newly organized movement of civilian supporters has rallied belatedly this week to the governments cause.
Young girls take a ride in an open car trunk in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri. Residents of the city, the spiritual home of Boko Haram, feel under siege, afraid to venture beyond the city limits because of the high risk of attacks by the group. (Aminu Abubakar/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

With his lopsided grin and penchant for political gaffes, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has provided ample fodder for critics who question whether he has the mettle to lead a government at war with a terrorist sect.

While Jonathan and his government are confronting the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, their more worrisome adversary may be a political opposition that has seized on the international uproar over nearly 300 kidnapped schoolgirls.

In an effort to sabotage his reelection prospects next year, opponents are painting Jonathan as indifferent to the terrorist threat and ill-prepared to lead this fractured democracy of 175 million.

In turn, Jonathan and his supporters have smeared some opposition leaders as secretly sponsoring Boko Haram and denounced others as capitalizing on the emotional pull of the saga of the missing girls for partisan gain.

The clock that both sides are really watching is not the five-weeks-and-counting since the abductions, but the 11 months until voters go to the polls.

1 of 51 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Worldwide protests demand the rescue of kidnapped Nigerian girls View Photos International rallies have protested the Nigerian governments weak response to the crime abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls. Caption International rallies protest the governments weak response to the crime. June 23, 2014 A member of the Abuja Bring Back Our Girls group speaks at a sit-in demonstration the group organized at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, Nigeria. Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

Ever since this Boko Haram crisis started, the government and the political class have tried to play politics with it. Everyone is looking for scapegoats instead of solutions, said Mohammed Ali Ndume, a senator from the opposition All Progressives Congress who represents the terror-plagued Borno state in the north. What we really need to be focusing on is the root causes of the problem  poverty, illiteracy and lack of employment.

What is at stake in the mutual blame game is control of Africas most populous country, its largest economy and one of its most promising, if fragile, democracies. The countrys vast oil reserves have allowed the creation of a culture of official corruption while leaving millions in poverty. But the resources also have financed a gradually modernizing state.

Reelection prospects

Until the girls abduction thrust an Islamist insurgency into the international spotlight, Jonathans prospects for reelection next spring seemed relatively good. Although originally elevated to the post by chance in 2010, while he was serving as vice president and the president died, Jonathan easily won election in 2011, a contest widely described as the first truly fair national balloting since 33 years of military rule ended in 1999.

During his first two years in office, Jonathan championed a variety of reforms and development projects, from anti-corruption laws to rural electrification. Neither charismatic nor forceful, the former zoologist, 57, styled himself as a sympathetic brother to all Nigerians. His affable smile dominated roadside billboards, TV ads identified him and his Peoples Democratic Party with national unity and progress, and his popularity remained high.

But as a Christian from the south, he was accused of neglecting the mainly Muslim north and its growing terrorist toll. Since April, his hapless response to the kidnappings and the governments failure to articulate a coherent strategy against Boko Haram have given the All Progressives Congress  a year-old coalition of fractious political and interest groups  a unifying electoral target.

At first, the president attempted to ignore the abductions. Then, he canceled a trip to the village from which the girls were taken  and insensitively remarked that a presidential visit could not bring the girls back. A drumbeat of criticism intensified, with daily protests in the capital by womens groups demanding more state action to rescue the missing girls.

On Thursday, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, a spokesman for the All Progressives Congress, excoriated the presidents party as being without soul or conscience and said that on its watch, 12,000 Nigerians have been bombed to smithereens by Boko Haram. He accused the government of running shameless TV campaign ads that compare Jonathan to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., even as Nigerians continue to die daily due to the presidents . . . ineptitude and cluelessness.

Government spokesmen insist that the president, who rarely makes domestic public appearances, is fully engaged and in command. They accuse opponents of forcing him to cancel campaign rallies while pressing ahead with their own, financing a biased media campaign against him and using the terrorism threat as a partisan wedge at a time of desperately needed national unity.

In his May 17 speech at a conference on terrorism in Paris, Jonathan laid out an articulate case for taking on Boko Haram, calling it a new frontier in the global war of terrorism against our civilization and the kidnappings a watershed moment in this struggle that should not go unanswered. He also suggested that his administrations progress in promoting economic growth and opportunity had goaded the terrorists to action. Our success is their failure, he declared.

Internal conflict

But Jonathans administration continues to be its own worst enemy. There is little suggestion that Nigerias nascent democratic system is in danger. But the government appears to be conflicted over how to handle the terrorism threat amid signs of discontent in the army over a lack of funding and equipment, and insistence by northern Muslim leaders that negotiation, not force, is the only way to end the violence.

The simple fact of the matter is that government has conceded the initiative to the Islamist extremist group. It seems completely bereft of ideas on what to do, Kolawole Olaniyan, a legal adviser to Amnesty International and an expert on human rights in Africa, wrote in the national Nigerian newspaper Punch. The group estimates that in the past five months alone, some 2,000 Nigerians have died in political and sectarian violence.

The crisis also seems to have thrown the presidents party into turmoil. Party officials were to announce Jonathans formal reelection bid this month but have repeatedly postponed doing so. Nigerian media outlets reported this week that former president Olusegun Obasanjo, an influential leader who ruled Nigeria first as a military dictator and then as an elected civilian, has advised Jonathan not to run.

But far more important than one mans faltering electoral prospects, political observers said, is the old regional divide that has been wrenched open by the Boko Haram crisis and the partisan finger-pointing that followed. A political modus vivendi between the poorer, Muslim-dominated north and the wealthier, Christian-majority south has broken down, exposing severe regional inequities and playing into the hands of the Islamist militants.

By playing politics with a national security crisis, the government has galvanized all its opponents and risked turning Boko Haram into a religious issue, said Mohammed Kaita, an opposition delegate in the national assembly. The real problem is the failure of our leaders to address poverty and jobs and corruption. Boko Haram is not a religious or political issue, he said. It is madness and it is harming all of us.
In a 2007 interview, Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer describes her escape from the racist ideology she had grown up with. Gordimer died July 13 at her home in Johannesburg at the age of 90. (Nobel Media AB)

In a 2007 interview, Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer describes her escape from the racist ideology she had grown up with. Gordimer died July 13 at her home in Johannesburg at the age of 90. (Nobel Media AB)

Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer and Nobel laureate for literature whose intense, intimate prose helped expose apartheid to a global readership and who continued to illuminate the brutality and beauty of her country long after the demise of the racist government, died July 13 at her home in Johannesburg. She was 90.

Her family announced the death but did not disclose the cause.

Ms. Gordimer, who was white, was an early and active member of the African National Congress, but she did not craft political manifestos. Her role as an author, she said, was simply to write in my own way as honestly as I can and go as deeply as I can into the life around me.

Her characters with lofty ideals were often personally flawed; the racists and apolitical businessmen had the same depth and complexity as the freedom fighters.

The Conservationist, which won the Man Booker Prize in 1974, presents one of Ms. Gordimers most well-formed characters, a white industrialist who has purchased a large farm outside Johannesburg, in part to be a rendezvous spot for him and his married, politically radical mistress.

Former South African President and Nobel Peace Laureate Nelson Mandela (R) smiling as he receives the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award from Nobel Literature Laureate Nadine Gordimer in 2006. (Jon Hrusa/EPA)

Another acclaimed novel, Burgers Daughter, published in 1979, follows the personal and political struggles of Rosa Burger, the daughter of a charismatic Afrikaner doctor and anti-apartheid activist who died in prison. In a country defined by its political intensity, Rosa explores whether the real definition of loneliness is to live without social responsibility.

Ms. Gordimers 1981 novel Julys People tells the story of a liberal white family fleeing an imagined, violent revolution against apartheid and ending up in the village of  and beholden to  their former servant, July.

From her 1958 novel, A World of Strangers, which details the futile attempts of a young English businessman to maintain ties among whites and blacks in South Africa, to the 2012 No Time Like the Present, which follows an interracial couple struggling to navigate their troubled post-apartheid society, Ms. Gordimer wrote unsparingly of race, identity and place, and of how repressive political systems etched themselves onto the lives and relationships of individuals.

Exploring secrets

She makes visible the extremely complicated and utterly inhuman living conditions in the world of racial segregation, Sture Allen, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said while awarding Ms. Gordimer the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. In this way, artistry and morality fuse.

Ms. Gordimer noted that politics is character in South Africa, said Stephen Clingman, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an authority on the novelists work. She knew that if you wanted to understand any character, black or white, you needed to understand the way politics entered into the very individual.

The apartheid government, which imposed censorship laws capriciously, banned four of her novels  A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, Burgers Daughter and Julys People  with various claims of subversiveness.

This aesthetic venture of ours becomes subversive when the shameful secrets of our times are explored deeply, with the artists rebellious integrity to the state of being manifest in life around her or him, Ms. Gordimer said in her Nobel lecture. Then the writers themes and characters inevitably are formed by the pressures and distortions of that society as the life of the fisherman is determined by the power of the sea.

Ms. Gordimer was co-founder of the majority-black Congress of South African Writers and counted as her closest friends such intellectuals as Edward Said and Susan Sontag. Although a loyal friend and mentor to those whom she deemed worthy of her attention, she was known for her impatience with those she found pedantic.

She scoffed at the cautious sensibilities of liberal whites, preferring to call herself a radical, and expressed frustration at the hand-wringing attention to the plight of whites in post-apartheid South Africa.

She refused to move to a gated community in Johannesburg  even after she was stripped of her wedding ring given by her late husband and locked in a storeroom during a home invasion and burglary in 2006.

After the incident, she acknowledged her citys crime problem but also expressed sympathy toward the perpetrators.

I think we must look at the reasons behind the crime, she told the Guardian of London. There are young people in poverty without opportunities. They need education, training and employment.

At 5-foot-1, Ms. Gordimer had what one observer described as the carefully cultivated fierceness of the fragile. Despite her stature, she could turn a piercing, intimidating eye on those who suggested her works were about some real-life person or event. Her work was pure fiction, she insisted, although in her view that made the writing more true than nonfiction.

Stories, she said, gave clearer insight into policies and politics, and their lasting impact on human lives, than could any biographical or journalistic report.

She allowed us to see things about the political world that the political world could not really describe, Clingman said.

A South African from birth

Nadine Gordimer was born Nov. 20, 1923, outside of Johannesburg in the mining town of Springs, a place of burned veld round mine-dumps and coal-mine slag hills, she said.

Not a romantic vision, Ms. Gordimer said during a presentation to the University of Cape Town in 1977, titled What Being a South African Means to Me. Not one that most Europeans would recognize as Africa. But Africa it is. Although I find it harsh and ugly, and Africa and her landscapes have come to mean many other things to me, it signifies to me a primary impact of being; all else that I have seen and know is built upon it.

Her parents were Jewish immigrants  her mother from England, her father from Lithuania  but the family was secular and, Ms. Gordimer would say, excruciatingly middle class.

As a child she took dance lessons, attended a convent school and was warned that when she crossed the veld during her walk to school, she should steer clear of the compounds where black mineworkers lived.

When Ms. Gordimer was 11, she was diagnosed with what she later realized was a relatively minor heart ailment. Her mother  whom Ms. Gordimer described as energetic but bored in her married-off life  withdrew her daughter from school, canceled the childs beloved dance classes, hired a tutor and kept her resting for years.

This mysterious ailment is something that I can talk about now, Ms. Gordimer told the BBC magazine the Listener in 1976. I realized after I grew up that it was something to do with my mothers attitude towards me, that she fostered what was probably quite a simple passing thing and made a very long-term illness out of it, in order to keep me at home, to keep me with her.

It was in this strange, forced seclusion  taken along on adult outings, spending afternoons reading with her mother  that Ms. Gordimer began to write. She published stories in the childrens section of a local newspaper; she wrote her first piece for an adult journal when she was 15.

Captivated by the idea of being a writer, Ms. Gordimer moved to Johannesburg. She attended university there for about a year but got more of an education delving into the electric, interracial arts scene of the famous Sophiatown township.

Anthony Sampson, editor of the black South African magazine Drum, became one of her closest and longest-lasting friends.

A second birth

There is a second birth that can occur for the South African, Ms. Gordimer said at her University of Cape Town talk, a coming into consciousness when one realizes that apartheid is not, in fact, the god-given order of the world.

She pointed to various moments that began to open her eyes to the depravity of apartheid society: the dehumanizing liquor raid of her black nannys small living quarters behind her parents home, during which her parents stood by silently; the realization that the black miners who patronized the shops run by men like her father were not allowed to touch items before they bought them; her growing friendships with black writers who, despite being as talented as Gordimer, were far less able to pursue their craft.

Ms. Gordimer published her first short-story collection, Face to Face, in 1949, and she soon began contributing fiction to the New Yorker.

Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953 and follows Helen Shaw, the daughter of white, middle-class parents who live in a gold-mining town, as she begins to become aware of the black life around her.

I think the first novel is usually some kind of revenge against your background, she said at the time of her Nobel win. And, you know, youve got to get it off your chest.

Her first marriage, to Gerald Gavronsky, ended in divorce. In 1954, she wed Reinhold Cassirer, an art dealer who had been a refugee from Nazi Germany and was a nephew of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer.

Reinhold Cassirer died in 2001. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage, Oriane; and a son from her second marriage, Hugo.

Ms. Gordimer was a prolific, disciplined writer. While raising her family, she would shut herself in her office with her typewriter. No one was to disturb her unless the house was burning down, she said.

From that home office, Ms. Gordimer wrote more than a dozen novels, hundreds of short stories and essays, and collaborated on screenplays and edited collections of other works. She won many literary awards.

As her country stumbled into the post-apartheid 2000s, she was asked whether democracy would take the zip out of South African fiction. She responded, On the contrary. Weve got plenty of problems.

Those critics who suggested hers had been a privileged existence  that she was able to use as a muse the toils of her country from her leafy, white neighborhood without ever facing consequences  simply did not understand her job, she would say.

The tension between standing apart and being fully involved, she wrote in one of her introductions, that is what makes a writer.

Hanes is a freelance writer who covered South Africa for numerous U.S. publications.
Afghan resident and former refugee Ghafour Aryan, 24, shown here in Kabul, risked death on the migrant trail and two months in nightmarish refugee centers in Germany, before being sent back to Afghanistan. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

When Ahmad Ghyasi fled Afghanistan for Germany last fall, he left with a stack of papers he was sure would help his case for asylum.

He had evidence he was a Taliban target and references from the U.S. military. But German authorities made it clear, Ghyasi said, that it was unlikely they would ever grant him asylum. And now Ghyasi, a longtime interpreter for U.S. forces, is back in Afghanistan after just three months abroad.

Today, German and Afghan officials are negotiating an agreement that could see thousands of Afghans return to the country on either chartered or commercial flights from across Europe over the next few months. Germany wants to begin sending Afghans back immediately, officials here say. The Afghan government has insisted Germany provide Afghanistan with more economic aid to absorb the influx.

Germany announced a blanket ban on Afghan asylum seekers in December, on the grounds that they are fleeing poverty not war. The move came as Europe grappled with last years record flow of migrants, and one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises in years.

But Germanys decision to block Afghan refugees  and urge others to go home  has highlighted the international communitys failure to stabilize Afghanistan and locked the German and Afghan governments in a dispute over who is responsible for the thousands of migrants who may be forced to return.

[Afghans fleeing danger, hopelessness at home run into peril transiting Iran]

Close to 180,000 Afghans applied for asylum in Europe in 2015, E.U. figures show. Only about 1,000 Afghans in Germany have said they are willing to go back to Afghanistan. Last year, more civilians were killed or injured in Afghanistan than in any period since 2009, the United Nations says. The rise in violence even prompted Germany to keep its troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.

NATO failed in Afghanistan, but they dont want to say this. They spent billions [of dollars] here and still there is no security, Ghyasi, 28, said in an interview at the Kabul safe house where he now lives.

NATO and its partner nations, including Germany and the United States, maintain roughly 12,000 troops in Afghanistan to train and assist local security forces in their fight against the Taliban. Still, violence here has been on the rise.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 but now control more territory than at any time since the invasion that toppled their regime more than a decade ago, U.S. officials say. In October, the insurgents briefly seized the northern city of Kunduz, a once-peaceful city that hosted more than 1,000 German troops.

If there was security, why would we leave Afghanistan? said Ghyasi, who, as a translator for U.S. forces, applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to the United States.

The visas are granted to some Afghans who worked with U.S. and other international forces. Ghyasi says German authorities asked him why he did not flee to the United States.

The answer, he says, is that getting an American visa is a difficult and drawn-out process, and that without one it is impossible to cross the Atlantic. Germany, on the other hand, is reachable over land.

Who would willingly leave their homes and families like this? he said. The biggest mistake I made was working for the U.S. Army. It has cost me a lot. Everything I have.

[Afghan girls story of abduction and rape tests an incoherent justice system]

According to the E.U.s statistics body, Eurostat, Afghans are now the second-largest group of migrants in Europe after Syrians. But about half of fleeing Afghans will have their asylum claims rejected by German authorities, migration experts say.

Afghans have also applied for asylum in large numbers in Sweden, Hungary and Austria.

Last year, Germanys interior minister called the tide of migrants from Afghanistan unacceptable and reprimanded Afghans for fleeing while hundreds of German troops are still in the country.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested the displaced leave volatile areas for more secure cities inside Afghanistan, where Germany would assist with development aid.

But even in the capital, Kabul, insurgents are launching an increasing number of deadly attacks, causing an 18 percent increase in civilian casualties in the city in 2015, according to the United Nations.

There are some cities that are secure, but there is fighting in many more places, said Ghafour Aryan, a 24-year-old student who left for Germany last summer but returned to Afghanistan in February.

[Why disaffected young Afghans are warming to a Taliban comeback]

Aryan says he spent about nine months at a string of hostels and migrant camps in Germany before flying home with another 120 Afghans on a special flight chartered by the German government for returnees in February.

German authorities never asked Aryan to explain why he left, he said, and claimed Afghans were barred from taking German-language courses provided to Syrians and Iraqis in the camps.

Germanys stance is this: They want to expel by force the Afghan refugees whose cases have been rejected, said Islamuddin Jurat, spokesman for Afghanistans Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation. But the Afghan government wont accept this.

The German Embassy in Kabul did not respond to a request for comment.

If mass numbers of migrants are sent back to Afghanistan, the government wants Germany to help invest in the economy, to create jobs and to help the communities to which the refugees are returning, Jurat said. Afghanistan cant stop the migration on its own.

Afghanistan is pushing for at least four categories of asylum seekers to be allowed to stay in Germany, even if their applications have been rejected, officials close to the negotiations say. The categories are minors, female-headed households, disabled people and residents of areas where insurgents are fighting the government.

The Afghan government wants to exploit the opportunity and negotiate with Germany to help them invest in economic areas  to create jobs for communities, said an official with the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental organization that advises governments on displacement. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details of the negotiations between Germany and Afghanistan have not yet been made public.

The push by Germany and other E.U. countries to depict Afghan migration as an economic problem is part of a broader desire among European policymakers to put Afghanistan behind them, the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote in a recent brief. But Afghanistan, the brief concluded, is far from truly secure.
The European Union and the Turkish government reached accord Friday on how to contain Europes largest migrant crisis since World War II, agreeing to a deal that turns Turkey into the regions refugee camp and leaves untold thousands stranded in a country with a deteriorating record on human rights.

After a day and half of wrangling, European leaders and Turkey hashed out the specifics of a broad agreement announced last week that was the brainchild of the Turks and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Under the deal, which goes into effect Sunday, virtually all migrants who attempt to enter Europe via the Aegean Sea  including Syrians fleeing war  will be sent back to Turkey.

[New plan for migrants draws scorn as Germanys Merkel struggles for unity]

The goal, leaders said, is to finally shut down massive irregular migration along a route that runs from the battlefields of the Middle East through Turkey to Europe, a conduit for a almost 900,000 arrivals last year.

To those who would embark on this perilous journey: Do not risk your lives, there is no prospect of success, Merkel said after the deal was struck. This is how we want to end this inhumane business model of the traffickers and restore the protection of our external borders.

View Graphic Journey alongside refugees through Lesbos, the gateway to a new life

At a news conference in Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker described the deal as fair and in accordance with the law but conceded that implementing it will be a herculean task.

Four thousand E.U. staffers will be involved in the new effort to secure the Aegean Sea, at a cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Juncker said, adding, It is the largest challenge the E.U. has yet faced.

Smiling broadly, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu described the deal as historic and said it reflected deepening cooperation between his nation and the E.U.

Turkey and the E.U. have the same destiny and the same challenges, he said.

But the fissures in the relationship soon became apparent as Davutoglu denounced militant Kurdish groups as terrorist organizations and chided European leaders for allowing pro-Kurdish protests in their cities.

European Council President Donald Tusk shot back with pointed comments defending the right to protest as a core European value.

Under the agreement, Turkey gets cash  6 billion euros, or $6.6 billion  and other incentives, including jump-started talks on its bid for E.U. membership and a conditional promise of visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe. Such gifts are likely to provide a big boost at home to Turkeys authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now in the midst of a crackdown on domestic dissent.





Besides being logistically complex, the deal is filled with conditions that, if left unmet, could prove its undoing.

The Europeans did pledge to accept a relatively small number of Syrians after legal processing in Turkey. But E.U. countries have the right to reject refugees, and it remains unclear which would take them. No other nationalities, including Iraqis and Afghans, would qualify for sanctuary, and Syrians caught trying to enter without authorization would be effectively barred from legal entry.

In negotiating the accord, the Europeans pitched it as the only way to end the human suffering of migrants being exploited by smugglers. But human rights groups dismissed those claims, arguing that the deal is a possible violation of international and E.U. law and likely to cause more misery, not less.

More asylum seekers will now be stranded in Turkey, a nation that does not fully honor the Geneva Convention on refugees. European leaders say Turkey will rapidly strengthen protections as part of the deal  a claim that many observers found dubious.

[Seven things to know about the incredibly complicated migrant crisis]

Even as the agreement was being worked out, Erdogan suggested that calls for better human rights in Turkey were hypocritical coming from the leaders of wealthy countries that refuse to take in asylum seekers.

At a time when Turkey is hosting 3 million migrants, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves, Erdogan said in a nationally televised speech in Turkey.

Yet rights groups say that in Turkey, where more than 2.7 million Syrians fleeing war already live, many migrants being badly exploited. Amnesty International says Turkey has also arrested asylum seekers attempting to cross the Aegean, bringing them to detention centers where they have been kept for weeks without access to lawyers or family. Some, the group says, were given the choice to stay in Turkey or return to Syria or Iraq.

Turkey itself is a human-rights-abusing country, said Wenzel Michalski, Germany director for Human Rights Watch. We have worrying news of lawyers, activists and journalists being thrown in prison. They have started a war against the Kurdish, and parts of Turkey are now like a war zone. How does this make Turkey an appropriate country to manage refugees?

Activists sounded particularly disillusioned with Merkel, who was celebrated in human rights circles after vowing last year that there was no limit to how many asylum seekers Germany could take in. But after a million migrants, using myriad routes, took her up on that offer  and with anti-migrant sentiments mounting at home  she has grown increasingly desperate to curb the influx.

Merkel isnt the moral leader any longer, not with this deal, said Karl Kopp, a spokesman for the refugee aid group Pro Asyl.

In addition, critics said, the plan could force migrants onto even more dangerous routes to Europe. Arrivals via lawless Libya and a wide stretch of sea to Italy appeared to be spiking, with 700 migrants picked up just on Friday.

[Migrants seek landfall in Europe even as deal takes shape to send them back]

Even some European leaders conceded that the legality of the new Turkey deal is unclear.

Under the plan, migrants interdicted in Turkish waters will be forcibly sent back to Turkey. Rejecting asylum seekers without a hearing, however, violates E.U. and international law. For those migrants who make it as far as Greek waters, or even Greeces islands, the E.U. will try to technically comply with international law by offering flash hearings  supposedly within hours where possible.

The plans counterargument is that once Turkey implements required changes, it will be a safe country for refugees.

There was no sign of an immediate solution for the more than 40,000 migrants currently in Greece and barred from moving north.

Europe is, however, pledging to roll out a one to one deal on Syrians with Turkey. For every Syrian returned, another would be brought legally by air from Turkey into Europe. Initially, at least, Europe would offer legal slots to at most 72,000. Since the plan is not mandatory, European nations would need to volunteer to take Syrians in. Some countries, including Hungary and Slovakia, have rejected that suggestion outright.

To reach a deal, Europe and Turkey had to tackle sensitive issues, including lingering animosity between the Turks and the Cypriots and Greeks. In line with Turkish demands, the Europeans also agreed to broadened talks with Ankara on Turkeys bid to join the E.U. But many believe that Europes concessions are more political show than reality.

Marc Pierini, a former E.U. ambassador to Ankara, noted that Turkey still has to clear major E.U.-imposed hurdles to earn visa liberalization for its citizens, and he argued that the Erdogan government does not truly want E.U. membership, because it would have to dial back its autocratic behavior.

Still, he said, the concessions are important symbolic victories for the Turkish leader.

Its largely a show, Pierini said. But the fact that the E.U. is playing that game tells you about the political panic that the refugee crisis has created among leaders in Europe.

Witte reported from London. Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.

Read more:

Europes harsh new message for migrants: Do not come

Turkey to E.U.: If you want to send us your migrants, send money, too

David Cameron blasted for calling people in refugee camp a bunch of migrants

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Salah Abdeslam  the most-wanted fugitive in Novembers Paris attacks who was arrested Friday  is locked up at this prison in Bruges, Belgium.

March 20, 2016 Salah Abdeslam  the most-wanted fugitive in Novembers Paris attacks who was arrested Friday  is locked up at this prison in Bruges, Belgium. Eric Vidal/Reuters

Police with dogs and drones secure a residential area in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek.

Police with dogs and drones secure a residential area in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek.

The hunt for Europes most wanted man came to a sudden end in a hardscrabble Brussels neighborhood Friday afternoon when Belgian counterterrorism police raided an apartment building and came away with a suspect who could be the key to unlocking the mysteries of Novembers massacre in Paris.

The success of the operation, after repeated failures to apprehend 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, cheered European leaders and law enforcement officials, while offering the tantalizing prospect that authorities may soon uncover critical details of a terrorist plot that left 130 people dead on the streets of the French capital.

Abdeslam, who was shot in the leg during Fridays arrest, was believed to be the last surviving direct participant in the Nov. 13 attacks and was considered the operations chief logistician.

Speaking at a news conference, French President Francois Hollande praised French and Belgian investigators and said that capturing Abdeslam alive gives us the chance to know the whole truth.

But he also acknowledged that the web of accomplices in the Paris plot may be far wider than has been previously known, and suggested that Fridays raids would not be the final ones connected to the killings.

We have to catch all of those who allowed or facilitated this attack, Hollande said. There are more of those people than we thought.

Terrorism analysts said Fridays arrests, which netted Abdeslam and four others, could mark a turning point in an investigation that has so far failed to unearth some of the most basic details of the Paris plot, including where it was hatched and by whom.

Its really crucial, said Jean-Charles Brisard, chairman of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism. Salah Abdeslam had a role in virtually every stage of the planning and the preparation. He could be the missing link to the masterminds.

Abdeslam, a French national who grew up in Brussels and is of Moroccan heritage, visited Paris before the killings to scout out sites, and also leased cars, rented apartments and dropped off several attackers before they struck, investigators have said.

But instead of dying with several other attackers, including his older brother, he fled the scene, possibly after shedding a suicide vest. Investigators have theorized that he lost his nerve.

The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault on civilian targets across the city  including a sports stadium, restaurants and a music hall featuring a concert by an American rock band  which left at least 368 people wounded in addition to those killed.

Law enforcement authorities came close to apprehending Abdeslam in the hours after the attacks, when French police stopped a car he was riding in near the Belgian border. But the officers, not realizing he was a suspect, allowed the car to proceed.

View Graphic What we know so far about who carried out the Paris attacks

From then on, the search for his whereabouts was focused on Belgium, where authorities were so concerned that Abdeslam was planning a follow-up assault that they shut Brussels down for several days last autumn while conducting raids.

After months in which the investigation had seemed to go cold, the net tightened in recent days. Belgian federal prosecutors said that Abdeslams fingerprints were found in an apartment raided by police earlier this week.

On Tuesday in Brussels, a joint French-Belgian police operation had triggered clashes that left a suspect with possible Islamic State ties dead. Law enforcement identified the dead man as Mohamed Belkaid, a 35-year-old Algerian. Abdeslam may have narrowly escaped arrest that day.

But three days later, around 4:45 p.m., police closed in on him as he hid in an apartment block in Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood that he and others involved in the attack had called home.

Witnesses to the raid said they heard a fusillade of shots in the middle of a residential part of Molenbeek. Police began shouting into a megaphone, telling a person to put your hands in the air,  a resident identified as Ilias told Belgiums RTL television. I didnt understand what was happening. My son wouldnt stop crying. We heard gunshots. It didnt stop. A dozen gunshots. We saw a person on the ground.

Broadcasters later aired video of security forces dragging a limping man with a hoodie over his head out of an apartment building and into a black Volkswagen police car. Hours after the initial raid, explosions were heard in a Brussels neighborhood where police searched for other suspected terrorists.

Of the four others arrested, three were members of Abdeslams family, who had sheltered him, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutors office said. The fourth person, identified as Monir Ahmed al-Hadj, was wounded and transported to a hospital, the spokesman, Eric van der Sypt, told reporters in Brussels.

[He is a barbaric man  the Belgian who may be behind the Paris attacks]

Following the arrests, President Obama called Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to congratulate them.

Obama commended the work of Belgian security services and noted that this significant arrest was the result of hard work and close cooperation between Belgian and French law enforcement authorities, the White House said in a statement.

Sitting beside Hollande later in the evening, Michel hailed the arrests as a huge success in the battle against terrorism and against this awful negation of human life.

Hollande said France would seek Abdeslams extradition, a request that Belgian officials suggested they would quickly honor.

But even as the leaders celebrated Fridays arrest, officials acknowledged that deep-seated problems with homegrown extremists persist in both countries.

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said that cleaning up Molenbeek, which has earned a reputation as a hotbed of Islamist radicalism in Europe, is still not finished. He told Belgiums RTBF broadcaster: The jihadists must be neutralized, and not a single person more be radicalized.

Fridays raid took place on Molenbeeks Rue des Quatre-Vents, less than four blocks from the areas town hall. Abdeslam grew up in a modest residence across a cobbled square from the town hall, the seat of local authorities who have been criticized for doing little to monitor the growing radicalization in their midst.

[A decade ago, she warned of radical Islam in Belgiums Molenbeek]

The 5-foot-7-inch Abdeslam was unemployed, with a record of small-time crime. He was known to hang around a Molenbeek cafe owned by his older brother, Brahim, who detonated a suicide vest on the Boulevard Voltaire on the night of the attacks. Brahim was buried in Molenbeek on Thursday.

Another brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, told reporters after the Paris attacks that Salah Abdeslam was divorced and had no children. At the time, friends and relatives expressed astonishment that he could have been involved in mass murder.

Salah is a Muslim who prays, had in the last couple of months stopped smoking and drinking, and goes to the mosque once in a while, Mohamed told the French channel BFMTV. He dressed normally, didnt show any signs of him being radicalized. It is a frustration that our family lived together without noticing what was going on.

Witte reported from London and Birnbaum from Moscow. William Branigin in Washington and Souad Mekhennet in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.

Read more:

Belgium vows more raids after gunman with possible Islamic State ties is killed

In Pariss 11th arrondissement, joie de vivre became the target

Remembering the victims of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris

A decade ago, she warned of radical Islam in Belgiums Molenbeek
A TV screen at Seoul Railway Station in South Korea on March 10, 2016, shows file footage of a missile launch conducted by North Korea. (Ahn Young-Joon/AP)

North Korea conducted another medium-range ballistic-missile launch Friday, its latest defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and international pressure to give up its weapons of mass destruction.

Two missiles, believed to be Rodongs, were fired shortly before 6 a.m. local time, South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said. They flew about 500 miles from a launch site near Sukchon, north of Pyongyang, over the peninsula and into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea. One missile appeared to have exploded mid-flight.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a foreign military issue, said the missiles appeared to have been fired from a road vehicle. Neither was assessed to be a threat to the U.S. or our regional allies, the official said.

[U.S. tightens sanctions on North Korea for weapons tests]

The Rodong is an enhanced version of a Scud-C missile, experts say. The launches come at a particularly sensitive time on the Korean Peninsula.





Secretary of state John F. Kerry said the United States is closely monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations, he said in a statement.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries are conducting exercises aimed at preparing for the end of North Korean regime  whether that occurs through collapse or military conflict  at the same time as the international community seeks to inflict pain on Pyongyang for its continued defiance.

[North Korea sentences U-Va. student to 15 years of hard labor in prison]

The United Nations, the United States, South Korea and Japan have imposed new sanctions on North Korea over its January nuclear test and February launch of what Pyongyang said was a rocket to put a satellite into orbit. Experts think the launch was part of a program to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast.

The Obama administration unveiled additional sanctions this week, blacklisting North Korean mining companies. Pyongyang is thought to use revenue from coal sales to fund its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.

Fridays launch was the second in two weeks. Pyongyang fired two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan on March 10.

Enraged by the international sanctions, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has apparently directed his propaganda machine to crank out threats on a daily basis, including a warning that he can wipe out Manhattan.

The U.S. should give up its sinister attempt to deprive the sovereign state of its independent and legitimate right and immediately stop its brazen-faced action against satellite launches for peaceful purposes, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary Thursday.

Read more:

North Korea says it can fit nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles

North Korea claims it could wipe out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb

With (fake) blood and guts, U.S. Army practices for North Korean attack

North Korean video apparently shows U-Va. student taking propaganda sign

Ryan reported from Washington.
Russian warplanes are continuing to conduct airstrikes in Syria, Russian military officials said Friday, making clear that the Kremlin intends to maintain muscular support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite an announced military drawdown earlier this week.

The announcement came a day after President Vladimir Putin said Russia could redeploy to Syria within hours if it wanted to. Russian warplanes are conducting 20 to 25 sorties a day to support the Syrian armys attempt to reconquer the ancient city of Palmyra, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, a spokesman for the Russian militarys General Staff, said Friday.

That pace is slower than the more than 100 sorties a day the Russians were conducting in early February, before a shaky cease-fire took effect. But it is still a powerful indication that Putin has not abandoned Assad despite a hard-line stance taken by Syrian negotiators at peace talks in Geneva this week.

[Syrian government dims hope of new openings at peace talks]

The Russian aerospace forces will continue to deliver airstrikes upon the terrorist groups ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syrian territory, Rudskoi told reporters at a briefing in Moscow, referring to the Islamic State and al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate, respectively. The Islamic State took over Palmyra last summer.

The still-significant pace of strikes suggests that Russia retains a substantial number of warplanes at its Hmeimim air base in Syrias Latakia province even after the drawdown Putin announced Monday.

At the time, Russian officials said they would not abandon their fight against terrorism in Syria  a word they use to refer to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda but also to more moderate groups fighting Assad. The Syrian president is Russias major Arab ally, and the Russian military has had a presence in Syria since the Soviet era.

Russia has said it plans to leave its powerful S-400 anti-aircraft missile system in place in Syria, a deterrent against Turkey, Saudi Arabia and any other nation that might be tempted to engage in its own aerial intervention against Assad.

Fighting has diminished since the cease-fire went into effect three weeks ago, but the Syrian army has continued to battle its opponents on the ground, according to witnesses, Syrian rebel groups and U.S. officials. Opposition representatives at the deadlocked peace talks in Geneva this week were skeptical that the cease-fire could hold if there is no prospect of a lasting peace deal, since they see the current truce as locking in the Syrian armys recent territorial gains.

Russian airmen coming home from Syria this week were greeted as victorious heroes, with public rhetoric suggesting that the deployment was truly winding down. Over the more than five months of airstrikes, Russia managed to secure Assads slipping hold on power. The Kremlin has also pressed the West to reengage after two years of isolation following Russias annexation of Crimea.

That strategy appears to have worked: Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to visit Moscow next week to discuss Syria with top Russian officials.

Hugh Naylor in Beirut contributed to this report.

Read more:

Palmyras Temple of Bel withstood 2,000 years of war and invasions  until the Islamic State

Syrias warring parties return to Geneva to talk peace, but hopes are low

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Supporters of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take part in a sit-in protest in the streets, outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, Iraq. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)

Thousands of followers of an influential Iraqi Shiite cleric took to the streets of Baghdad on Friday, pushing through security lines to cross a bridge on the Tigris River and get closer to the highly secure Green Zone, where the government is headquartered.

The show of strength by the cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, follows his calls last month for government reforms. Sadr had refused to cancel the demonstration despite a statement from the Interior Ministry on Thursday that such a gathering was unauthorized.

The protesters pushed past security forces and checkpoints to move closer to the Green Zone, home to the countrys political elite and most of the foreign embassies in the city.

Bridges leading to the Green Zone were closed after the ministrys announcement, but Sadrs supporters cut coils of barbed wire and pushed aside barriers to cross the Jumhuriya Bridge.

Today we cut the barbed wire, we opened the bridge and achieved victory, said Fadil Hussein, 18, waving an Iraqi flag as helicopters buzzed overhead.

Hussein was among hundreds who surged across the bridge and to the walls of the Green Zone to begin setting up tents in anticipation of a prolonged sit-in.

Along with the war against the Islamic State, the Islamist group that has captured a third of Iraq, the government is also battling a crippling economic crisis.

Near-record-low oil prices have more than halved government revenue, and Iraqi officials predict a budget deficit of more than $30 billion this year. Many Iraqis blame their politicians for squandering the countrys fortunes when oil prices were high rather than investing in the countrys infrastructure, which is now crumbling.

Also Friday, pro-Sadr protesters pushed past barriers on a bridge farther up the Tigris, chanting, With our souls and blood, we sacrifice for Iraq. Despite the crowds and heavy security presence, no clashes were reported.

In February, Sadr demanded that Iraqi politicians be replaced by more technocrats and that the countrys powerful Shiite militias be incorporated into the Defense and Interior ministries. He also reiterated his threats to withdraw from Iraqs political process if his demands are not met. Previously, Sadr has not followed through on such threats.

While Iraqs political leadership has proposed multiple reform plans, progress has been slowed by a weak central government and increasingly sectarian politics.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally in Phoenix. He is the only presidential candidate who will not appear at the convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. (Ricardo Arduengo/AP)

Sen. Bernie Sanders has notified the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a leading pro-Israel lobbying group, that he will not attend its annual conference next week, the only presidential hopeful from either party to be a no-show.

In a letter sent Friday to AIPAC President Roger Cohen, the senator from Vermont and the only Jewish candidate in the race said he would be campaigning in the western half of the country, and the campaign schedule that we have prevents me from attending.

His primary Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, is scheduled to address the group Monday. The three remaining Republican candidates  Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  are all slated to speak later in the day.

[Rabbis organize boycott of Trumps speech to pro-Israel group]

Sanders expressed regret, saying that he would have enjoyed the chance to speak at AIPAC.

1 of 42 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Highlights from Bernie Sanderss campaign, in pictures View Photos The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Caption The senator from Vermont is Hillary Clintons rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. June 14, 2016 Bernie Sanders arrives at the Capital Hilton to meet with Hillary Clinton in D.C. Matt McClain/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Obviously, issues impacting Israel and the Middle East are of the utmost importance to me, to our country and to the world, he wrote Cohen.

Sanders offered to send a copy of the speech he would have made had he attended, citing AIPACs decision not to allow candidates to address the conference remotely, and ended on a breezy note: Thanks very much. Hope the conference goes well.

AIPACs annual convention always attracts an A-list array of politicians. Vice President Biden will speak at the opening of the multi-day conference, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will appear alongside the GOP candidates.

View Graphic Tracking the race to the Democratic nomination

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also canceled an appearance before AIPAC and a meeting with President Obama, is expected to appear live via satellite.
Romanian President Klaus Werner Iohannis is shown after laying a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on March 8. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP)

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was criticized as being unfairly tilted toward Israel, to the detriment of both countries, at a conference Friday examining whether pro-Israel lobbying groups have an undue influence on Congress and government agencies.

Several hundred people attended the event sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a D.C.-based magazine featuring articles questioning Israeli government policies and U.S. aid to the country.

The conference was timed to precede this weekends conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, a large, annual affair that this year will draw virtually all the presidential candidates as well as Vice President Biden.

Fridays conference in the ballroom of the National Press Club was an answer to AIPAC, offering a counternarrative in which U.S. support for Israel clashes with democratic and humanitarian values.

Speakers spoke gloomily of the prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an outcome backed by the U.S. government but made more difficult as Israeli settlements have expanded on West Bank land where Palestinians envision a future state.

Other speakers questioned the wisdom of giving Israel more than $3 billion a year in military aid, making it by far the largest recipient of U.S. aid, and lambasted ongoing negotiations to increase it further after the Iran nuclear deal. They said most Americans are unaware of the reality on the ground, in part because of the work of nongovernmental groups supporting Israel.

From the point of view of an Israeli patriot, I see AIPAC as one of Israels biggest enemies, said Gideon Levy, a leftist author who writes columns in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the impact of occupation.

Levy imagined a tour he would lead visiting U.S. lawmakers on. He said he would start with a Gaza family whose children were killed in an Israeli airstrike. He said he would also show lawmakers Hebron, an Arab city in the West Bank with a heavily guarded enclave of Jewish settlers. Then he would go on to Tel Aviv, a vibrant metropolis where Levy said residents are unconcerned about the circumstances of Palestinians living an hour away. They would end at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust history museum and the lesson, Levy said, of Never again, to any other people.

Levy said he considers it pointless to try to resume peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians now.

It would be another masquerade, he said, because a two-state solution no longer is viable. Its irreversible.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, was skeptical about the need for more military aid to Israel after the Iran nuclear deal, as President Obama has offered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I think its all a political maneuver to restore for [Hillary Clintons] benefit the national-security bona fides of the Democratic Party, he said in an interview after his talk. She and Obama may have squandered it in the fight with Netanyahu.
The 26-year-old Virginia man who was taken into custody in Iraq after he purportedly deserted the Islamic State told a Kurdish TV station Thursday that he decided to escape after he grew dissatisfied during intensive religious training in Mosul.

Mohamad Khweis told Kurdistan 24 that his life under the Islamic State in Mosul was a very strict regimen of prayer, eating and eight hours of daily instruction in religion and sharia law. He said he soon came to realize that I didnt really support their ideology.

Khweis said he stayed only about a month, then reached out to someone who could help him make his way toward Turkey. He said he planned eventually to return to the United States.

It was pretty hard to live in Mosul, he said. Its not like the Western countries, you know, its very strict. Theres no smoking. I found it hard for everyone there.

[Watch: Mohamad Khweis speaking on Kurdistan 24]

Khweis spoke haltingly but in fluent English in the roughly 17-minute video, which was edited and showed him sitting against a backdrop that included a Kurdish flag. Kurdish peshmerga forces took him into custody Monday near the town of Sinjar, about 80 miles west of Mosul. What will happen to him next remains unclear, although the FBI  which did not previously have Khweis on its radar  is investigating the matter.

In the video, Khweis said he is the son of two Palestinians who came to the United States more than 25 years ago and was born and raised in Virginia. Friends have said he is a 2007 graduate of Fairfax Countys Edison High School. Khweis said he attended college in Virginia and studied criminal justice.

Khweis said he attended American mosques only infrequently, and his friends from high school have said that he showed no signs of religious fanaticism.

[Purported American Islamic State fighter wasnt on FBI radar]

It was unclear from the video why Khweis decided to travel to Islamic State territory in the first place. He said he left the United States in December, traveling to Turkey via London and Amsterdam. He said he met an Iraqi girl in Turkey who said she knew someone who could take them into Syria.

So I decided to go with her, Khweis said.

Khweis said he took a bus from Istanbul to Gaziantep in southern Turkey, then took a taxi from there toward the Syria border. He said the sister of a woman he met had previously been married to an Islamic State fighter, and she made some arrangements for the trip.

According to an Iraqi Kurdish general, an American member of the Islamic State militant group has surrendered to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. Maj. Gen. Feisal Helkani of the peshmerga identified the man as Mohamad Jamal Khweis. (Jason Aldag,Adam Taylor/Twitter/@kurdistan83)

At some point after crossing into Syria, Khweis said, he and his female companion were split up, and he was eventually driven to a house where foreigners seemed to stay. He said he turned over his identification papers to those in charge and soon headed to other houses for foreigners in Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital in north-central Syria.

Khweis said he was surrounded by people from countries such as Russia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan but did not encounter any other Americans. Each person, he said, was given a nickname.

He said he waited in Raqqa for about a week until he was transferred to Mosul for religious training, which he did not complete. The timeline of when he arrived and when he fled was not exactly clear. Mosul is the largest city in northern Iraq and the Islamic States main stronghold in the country.

I didnt agree with their ideology, and thats when I wanted to escape, he said.

Khweis said a friend told him the way to Sinjar, and he tried to stay near territory he knew was under Kurdish control.

I wanted to go to the Kurd side because I know that theyre good with the Americans, he said.

Khweis said he wasnt thinking straight when he decided to travel to Syria and regretted his decision.

Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, they dont represent the religion, he said, using other names for the Islamic State. I dont see them as good Muslims.

A congressional report released late last year said that more than 250 people from the United States had joined or attempted to join extremist groups fighting overseas. It warned that many of them are only a plane-flight away from our shores.

Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
Correction: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect year for the signing of the treaty.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed a treaty intended to bring fair play to the fight for water in the parched deserts of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Nearly 70 years later, engineer Roberto Enriquez de la Garza stood on the lip of the Amistad Dam  vultures circling overhead, grassy islands poking out of the depleted reservoir below  and explained why Mexico cant hold up its side of the bargain.

The U.S. gets angry: Why arent you giving us water? Well, how can we when there is no water? he asked. I cant do anything. Its not raining.

The historic drought across the western United States that has drained the water table in California and devastated rivers and reservoirs in Arizona has intensified a diplomatic dispute here along the Texas border. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States is obliged to give Mexico water from the Colorado River, while Mexico must transfer water from the Rio Grande and its tributaries.

But in recent years, Mexico has fallen behind on its obligation. The accounting for the water sharing is tallied in five-year cycles. And at this point, in the fourth year of the present cycle, Mexico owes the United States 380,000 acre-feet of water, more than all the water consumed in a year by the 1.5 million residents of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

A fishing boat travels up the Sea of Cortez with the dry Colorado River delta on the banks in March. The Colorado River has not reached the sea of Cortez since 1998 due to over allocation, drought and climate change. This spring, an eight week experimental pulse flow connected the river briefly for a week - but only temporarily - to the sea. (Correction: A previoius version of this caption ommitted mention of the experimental pulse flow) (Pete McBride)

This issue is life or death for some of our farmers, their ability to support their families and make a living, said Texas state Rep. Eddie Lucio III (D), who has been leading the charge to make Mexico give from its rivers. Weve been good neighbors. We just want to share and share alike.

The Amistad Dam, with its one-quarter-full, border-straddling reservoir, is ground zero in the dispute. Finished during the Nixon administration in 1969, the dam is jointly administered by the two countries: Of the 16 floodgates, eight are maintained by Mexico and eight by the United States. Each country operates a hydroelectric power plant at the dam, and water levels and releases are calculated and coordinated by engineers from both countries. In the Cold War-era control rooms, clocks show both Mexican and U.S. time zones.

Mexico doesnt dispute its water debt but says that its own shortages make it impossible, at this point, to supply the annual 350,000 acre-feet that it should be giving to the United States.

We have had a prolonged drought since 1994 until now. It has been difficult for Mexico to give this water, said Ignacio Pena Trevino, Mexicos representative here on the International Boundary and Water Commission. There isnt rain like there was in the past.

The treaty, which was agreed on in 1944 and ratified by the U.S. Senate the following year, stipulates that in the event of a dam failure or extraordinary drought, either side can make up its shortage in the next five-year cycle. But water officials in Texas dont think Mexicos weather conditions meet that standard.

They havent been in any sort of significant drought conditions since March of 2012, said Carlos Rubinstein, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board. That excuse, pardon the pun, doesnt hold water.

Texass water supply has improved since its most acute drought a few years ago  in 2011, all 254 counties were suffering drought conditions. But pockets of the state are still suffering. Cities such as Raymondville and Rio Hondo have had to purchase water from other jurisdictions.

Water trickles out of the Amistad dam and into the Rio Grande on Aug. 28. (Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post)

A Texas A&M University study estimated that Mexicos failure to share water was causing a loss of nearly 5,000 jobs and $229 million in revenue from crops such as cotton, corn, sorghum and citrus fruits.

Texas officials of all ranks clamor for relief. Gov. Rick Perry (R) wrote to President Obama last year about the problem. Federal and state legislators are demanding that the State Department take further action to pressure Mexico to comply with the treaty. U.S. and Mexican technical officials regularly discuss the issue, Rubinstein said, but without State Department support, none of it has translated into a meaningful agreement.

In my mind, he said of the State Departments efforts, they have failed.

The diplomats insist they are engaged. Roberta Jacobson, the State Departments top official for Latin America, wrote in a letter last year that she and her colleagues raise the water issue everywhere we encounter Mexican leaders. She added that we will persist in our advocacy until we achieve our goal of securing sufficient water deliveries from Mexico to relieve the hardship of south Texas communities. A U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue said U.S. officials are continuing to stress to the government of Mexico the importance we place on reaching agreement on a durable solution quickly.

Whether the drought on the Mexican side qualifies as extraordinary or not, the signs of a dwindling water supply are everywhere. Grim little tributaries seem to barely clear the rocks before they reach the Rio Grande. Even if the floodgates were opened at the Amistad Dam, the water level wouldnt reach them.

The United States may not be getting its full legal share, but Mexican officials point out that their northern neighbor still draws far more out of the reservoir than they do. Of the 23 cubic meters per second flowing out of the reservoir on an average day, the United States is using 20 of them. Texas officials argue that if Mexico managed its tributaries better, there would be more water for both sides.

At the same time, demand for water in Mexico has also grown sharply. Many people have moved to Ciudad Acuna, the town closest to the dam, to fill factory jobs making parts for Mexicos booming auto industry. The population in the past 20 years has nearly doubled.

In these dry times, Mexican officials argue, the need to drink and irrigate crops trumps Trumans treaty.

You cant leave people without water, Enriquez said.
Enrique Zileri, left, with Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at the Peruvian Embassy in Washington in 2011. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Enrique Zileri, a preeminent Latin American journalist and scourge of a succession of repressive Peruvian governments during his decades at the helm of Caretas, his countys top newsmagazine, died Aug. 24 at a hospital in Lima. He was 83.

The cause was complications from throat cancer, said his daughter Drusila Zileri.

Mr. Zileri was widely noted as a persistent advocate for press freedoms in Latin America when many regional governments sought to suppress the media. In a statement, Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate, called him an indefatigable defender of freedom and democracy whose publication could never be bribed or intimidated.

Caretas  the title means Masks  was co-founded by Mr. Zileris mother in 1950 and became one of the countrys most influential news outlets. Its reach was compared to that of Time or Newsweek in the United States.

Mr. Zileri was credited with combining ambitious investigative reportage with cultural features and society gossip that together helped make Caretas a weekly must-read. The magazine distinguished itself from many other Latin American publications by showing no loyalty to any particular political faction and by seeking to expose government abuses, whoever was in power.

The newspapers office was located in Lima across from the presidential palace, as if in a constant faceoff with authorities.

I imagined the President peeping out from behind the palace curtains, training his binoculars on Zileris mischievous grin, journalist Isabel Hilton wrote in the New Yorker in 2001.

In his early years leading the magazine, Mr. Zileri contended with Perus military governments under Juan Velasco Alvarado and Francisco Morales Bermudez.

Caretas was shuttered numerous times, and twice Mr. Zileri was exiled. The first deportation  to Portugal in 1969  followed a report in Caretas that military leaders intended to secretly increase the pay of the armed forces by 30 percent.

In 1974, the Velasco government closed Caretas, citing the continuous and ill-intentioned attacks mounted by the magazine against the Peruvian revolution.

Later that year, as Mr. Zileri battled a jail sentence for printing an article that allegedly harmed the honor and reputation of high Government officials, the New York Times described him as one of the outstanding journalists of the Americas.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Mr. Zileri led the magazine through coverage of the guerrilla insurgency of the Maoist group known as the Shining Path. Among the reporters he hired for the dangerous work of reporting on the violence was Gustavo Gorriti, now one of Perus top journalists.

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READ: Edward Herrmann dies at 71. Edward Herrmann, the famed character actor best known in recent years for his starring role in Gilmore Girls, died at age 71. Herrmann, who got his Hollywood start in movies like The Paper Chase (1973) and was known for other roles in The Lost Boys and Overboard in 1987, did extensive work in movies, television and on Broadway. Evan Agostini/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue.

Writing in the Nieman Reports, Gorriti described the mandate for Latin American journalists at the time as Publish, try not to perish.

I was fortunate to work with a great editor  the talented and brave Enrique Zileri, Gorriti wrote. He... could inspire or terrify Caretass eclectic group of journalists with a simple, binary alternative: Produce a scoop or suffer temporal but stinging disgrace.

During the autocratic government of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s, Caretas aggressively investigated corruption and human rights abuses despite government efforts to stop the spread of such information.

Enrique and Caretas were really in the vanguard of this struggle, Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an interview. He was both incredibly gracious and absolutely irascible in the way that only great journalists can be.

Vladimiro Montesinos, the chief of national security under Fujimori, once sued Mr. Zileri for defamation when Caretas described him as Fujimoris Rasputin. Mr. Zileri was fined and received a suspended jail sentence.

I think the main idea was to keep us quiet, Mr. Zileri told the Los Angeles Times.

Enrique Alberto Zileri Gibson was born June 4, 1931, in Lima. His father, Manlio Zileri, was an Argentine diplomat of Italian descent. His mother, Doris Gibson Parra, was a Peruvian of English heritage dating back several generations.

Mr. Zileri attended boarding schools and studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., but did not complete his degree because his family ran out of money to finance his tuition, his daughter said.

He worked as a publicist and wrote for Caretas before becoming editor and publisher. The magazine, which continues as a family-run publication, is today led by his son Marco Zileri.

His wife of five decades, Daphne Dougall de Zileri, a noted photographer, died in 2011. Survivors include five children, Marco Zileri, Diana Zileri, Sebastian Zileri and Drusila Zileri, all of Lima, and all of whom work for Caretas, and Domenica Zileri of Tyler, Tex.; and eight grandchildren.

Mr. Gibson received many honors, including the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot prize for journalism that furthers inter-American understanding. He later helped administer the prize as a juror.

Its not an exaggeration  he was one of the giants of Latin American journalism, said John Dinges, a veteran foreign correspondent in the region and a professor at the Columbia Universitys journalism school.

Among U.S. journalists, Mr. Zileri was a go-to source for explanations of his countrys politics. Like the journalism his magazine produced, his quips often were insightful and stylish. Before the 1990 Peruvian election, in which Vargas Llosa would lose his presidential bid to Fujimori, Mr. Zileri weighed in with his estimation of the writers prospects.

You have to be willing to step on your mother, Mr. Zileri told the New York Times, and Im not sure that he is.
Demonstrators in Buenos Aires hold images of the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman on March 18, 2015, during a rally demanding justice more than a month after his death. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)

The fictional world of the late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was a place of bookshelves that stretched to infinity, dreams within dreams and detective stories that led in circles.

Argentina for the past 14 months has been lost in a real-life labyrinth worthy of a Borges fable  ever since prosecutor Alberto Nisman was discovered dead in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.

The body of Nisman, 51, was found the day before the prosecutor was expected to publicly accuse then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of making a secret pact with Iran to gloss over Tehrans possible role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. It was South Americas worst terrorist attack.

Investigators initially ruled Nismans death a suicide. Argentines took to the streets in protest.

As President Obama arrives in Buenos Aires on Tuesday for the first state visit by a U.S. president in 19 years, the unsolved mystery of Nismans death continues to hang over the country, casting a shadow far beyond Argentinas borders.

Everyone knows it was a homicide, said Jorge Asis, a columnist and retired diplomat, but no one can prove it.

Nismans family and supporters have been pressing for a formal homicide investigation, and on Friday a federal tribunal in Buenos Aires heard new arguments seeking to elevate the case to a high-level homicide probe. The three-judge panel could accept those arguments or leave the case with lower courts, upholding the version of events that points to a suicide. A ruling is expected in the coming days.

The judge previously overseeing the case referred it to Argentinas highest court after Antonio Stiuso, the countrys shadowy former intelligence chief, made a dramatic return from self-

imposed exile in the United States last month and testified that Nisman had been killed by a group of people with ties to former president Fernandez de Kirchner. Stiuso, who worked closely with Nisman, offered no evidence for the claim, according to attorneys who have seen his sealed testimony.

New Argentine President Mauricio Macri, a centrist whose election in November ended 12 years of governance by Fernandez de Kirchner and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, has promised Argentines a thorough, impartial investigation to clear up once and for all how and why Nisman died. But the circumstances of the death are so murky that few here think the country will ever know what happened.

Nisman had spent more than a decade investigating the 1994 bomb attack that killed 85 people at the Argentine-Jewish community center known by the acronym AMIA.

Argentina initially blamed Hezbollah agents and Iran for the attack, and in 2004 Nisman was assigned to the case by thenPresident Nestor Kirchner, who said the previous investigation had been botched. Interpol Red Notice arrest warrants were issued for several top Iranian officials, essentially barring them from leaving their country, and Kirchner denounced Tehran at the United Nations and other international forums.

In 2007, Kirchner was succeeded by his wife, Cristina, just as relations with Iran were beginning to improve. She drew Argentina close to then-President Hugo Chavezs Venezuela, which had friendly ties with Iran. Another close ally of Irans, Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, visited Buenos Aires for talks with the president in 2010.

[ Bashar al-Assads curious trip to Argentina]

It was then that Kirchner agreed to reset relations with Iran, a major market for Argentine grain. Nisman later alleged that her government had begun maneuvering to have the Interpol warrants lifted as part of an agreement she signed with Tehran in 2013 to form a truth commission to investigate the bombing.

Nisman objected to the accord, and his relationship with Fernandez de Kirchner frayed.

[ Macri pulls out of Argentine-Iranian truth commission]

The death

On Jan. 19, 2015, Nisman was preparing to go before Argentinas Congress to denounce Fernandez de Kirchner in a report accusing her government of colluding with Iran to bury the investigation into the bombing.

According to the official version of events, Nisman that weekend dismissed the government security team assigned to protect him, then summoned his aide Diego Lagomarsino and asked to borrow a gun. Lagomarsino said he returned with the weapon to Nismans apartment in an upscale Buenos Aires district, then left.

Nisman subsequently died from a bullet to the head that had been fired from Lagomarsinos .22-caliber Bersa pistol.

There was no sign of forced entry. No suicide note. Investigators swarmed the apartment, contaminating the crime scene, according to Nisman family attorneys. Nismans computer and cellphone appeared to have been altered.

Fernandez de Kirchner initially called the death a suicide, then backed away from the claim. A month later, 400,000 protesters marched in silence through the rainy streets of Buenos Aires.

It was not until last month that a government prosecutor, Ricardo Saenz, made the first official recommendation that Nismans death be investigated as a homicide.

The critical piece of evidence for Saenz: Nisman had no gunshot residue on either hand. In addition, he had displayed no signs of depression. On the contrary, friends and relatives say, he had seemed eager and determined to deliver his report to Congress.

As far as Im concerned, he was murdered, Saenz said in an interview.

Saenz, who has clashed publicly with Fernandez de Kirchner in the past, said: I wont rule out that the former president will be called to testify.

She said it was a suicide, then later it was a homicide, so she should be asked what information she had, he said. I think she should be called to clarify what she knows.

Supporters of Fernandez de Kirchner accept that Nisman might have been murdered, but they suggest that his killing could have been part of a diabolical scheme to frame Fernandez de Kirchner.

[Nismans ties to foreign intelligence]

The aides connection

Suspicion also falls on Lagomarsino, the aide hired by Nisman to help with his computer needs and whose fingerprints were strangely absent from the gun he said he lent to Nisman. Lagomarsino was the last person known to have seen the prosecutor alive, and his attorneys have fought the Nisman familys attempt to elevate the case to a federal murder investigation.

In a bizarre twist, Lagomarsino is under investigation in a separate probe along with Nismans mother and sister, whose names appear on a U.S. bank account of Nismans that contains more than $666,000. Nisman failed to report the account, which is illegal for a prosecutor, and investigators say he also used his mothers name to hide his ownership of three investment properties in Uruguay.

Stashing money and investments outside Argentina is nothing exceptional for someone with Nismans profile, prosecutors say. But tracing the payments in those accounts may be one of few ways to map out Nismans web of relationships and obtain new clues as to who might have wanted him dead.

This story has been updated to clarify that AMIA is an Argentine Jewish community center, not an Argentine-Israeli government initiative.

After 17 years on Argentine bomb case, prosecutor was sure truth will triumph

Argentinas new president is already changing everything

In Argentina, Obama will cheer on South Americas shift away from the left
An activist poses with a photo of slain environmental rights activist Berta Caceres during a march to mark International Womens Day in Managua, Nicaragua, on March 8. (Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

When two gunmen left an award-winning environmentalist and indigenous leader dead in her home in rural Honduras this month, they also inadvertently left behind a witness.

Gustavo Castro, a Mexican colleague of Berta Caceress and the only other person in the house at the time, was also shot, taking bullets in the ear and hand. After lying bleeding on the floor for a couple of hours pretending to be dead, Castro escaped by leaping over a gate and into a friends waiting car.

He was very desperate, very distressed, said Tomas Gomez, who picked Castro up that night. He was afraid the assassins were going to come finish him off.

Castro, now recovering in a house affiliated with the Mexican Embassy in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, has become a central figure in the murder mystery that has shocked and captivated the country. Relatives and colleagues of Caceres argue that the Honduran government is responsible for her death, either by failing to protect her after a string of threats or by ordering the killing  and Castros testimony could shed light on the culprits.

[A killing in Honduras shows that it may be the worlds deadliest country for environmentalists]

Soldiers guard the house where Caceres was fatally shot March 3 in La Esperanza, Honduras. The indigenous activist was a respected environmentalist recognized for her advocacy. (Ricardo Castro/AFP/Getty Images)

So far, in an open letter, Castro has criticized the handling of the case, alleging that the crime scene was altered, but has not implicated anyone.

The gunmen who killed Berta and tried to kill me remain unpunished as the government seeks to undermine the memory of Berta, he wrote.

President Juan Orlando Hernandez has called Caceress killing a crime against Honduras and promised a thorough investigation.

But colleagues and relatives of Caceres have raised questions about the possible role of Honduran soldiers and police in her March 3 death. They cite what they call a pattern of intimidation and abuse by security forces, including a national police unit called Los Tigres, which was set up by U.S. Special Forces soldiers over the past two years and receives funding and training from the United States. Before she died, Caceres warned U.S. visitors about Los Tigres, describing the unit as a repressive force in her region of western Honduras.

The U.S. Embassy in Honduras has looked into all allegations of abuse by Tigres commandos and to date, we have seen no credible evidence to substantiate them, according to an embassy official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Last week, a colleague of Caceress, Nelson Garcia, was shot to death after he returned home from helping indigenous people evicted from their residences by police.

This is an incredibly important test case for Honduran institutions, said Eric Olson, a Central America expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington who knew Caceres. She was very dynamic and clearly very committed and fighting this good fight trying to protect indigenous people.

Friends and supporters gather around Caceress coffin during a Mass outside the Virgen de Lourdes church in La Esperanza on March 5. (Jorge Cabrera/Reuters)

[Harrowing images of police battling gang violence in crime-stricken Honduras]

Caceres, a mother of four who lived in the western city of La Esperanza, was a member of the indigenous Lenca people who spent her adult life battling to preserve the environment and indigenous culture in the area. In 1993, she co-founded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH, to oppose logging in Lenca territory.

In recent years, she and her organization had opposed mining, dam and hotel projects, most notably targeting construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam  an effort for which she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize last year.

The Honduran company Desarrollos Energeticos S.A., known as DESA, has continued the project, even as its partner, the Chinese company Sinohydro, backed out. A statement on the Agua Zarca dam website denies any connection between the project and Caceress death.

Since 2013, as protests intensified, Caceres had received anonymous death threats, said her daughter, Berta Isabel Zuniga Caceres. In July that year, during a demonstration against the dam, soldiers based at DESAs offices shot into the crowd and killed Tomas Garcia, another COPINH member.

Last month, a delegation from Witness for Peace, a nonprofit group focusing on peace and justice in Latin America, met with Caceres and other COPINH leaders and toured the area around the dam site. Caceres told the visitors that dam opponents names were on hit lists. Any member of COPINH is in danger, she said, according to notes from the meetings.

Colette Knudsen, a nurse practitioner on the trip, said Caceres and others were photographed by DESA guards when they went down to a river to swim. Knudsen said that Honduran police followed their vehicle as they left the area.

We experienced the psychological terror, basically, she said.

In a meeting with Witness for Peace on Feb. 18, Caceres said that the Tigres commandos have been a hostile and aggressive presence, according to a transcript of her remarks. The unit, which has 283 members, has generated controversy before: In 2014, the Tigres arrested cocaine traffickers but allegedly stole more than $1 million. Dozens of them were fired, and 11 were arrested.

Caceres said that the United States was funding these repressive units.

So in a way, the government of the United States and the army of the United States is responsible for the violation of the rights of the Lenca people, Caceres said.

The U.S. official said embassy personnel have met with Caceress relatives, COPINH members and other supporters since her death to hear their concerns but added that the embassy has no credible evidence that supports the allegations of Tigres involvement in acts of violence, threats or intimidation against members of COPINH.

In late February, Caceres pressed police to capture a suspect wanted in the slaying of another COPINH member, and the Tigres found and arrested the person, which Caceres applauded, the official said.

[Honduran child migrants leave home because of poverty and violence]

The suspicion that has fallen on the security forces in connection with Caceress death has emerged in the absence of other suspects or hard evidence. The Honduran attorney general said that at least 50 people are working on the investigation, but relatives and colleagues see Caceress killing as a political assassination and dont believe authorities will conduct an impartial investigation. Her familys request for an independent autopsy has so far been rejected, according to her brother Gustavo Caceres.

You have to say that the assassination of my mom was due to her intense fight against this hydroelectric project, Caceress daughter, Zuniga, said in an interview. If theyve killed her, someone so well-known, they can kill anyone.

Castro, from the Mexican city of San Cristobal de las Casas, had known Caceres for several years in environmental and social-

justice circles and had gone to her house to take part in energy conservation workshops. After the shooting, the house was swarmed by officials, according to Caceress family.

Castro was taken into police custody and interrogated for two days, with little food and no sleep, according to his brother, Oscar Castro. Gustavo Castro tried to leave Honduras but was blocked at the airport, and a judge has ordered that he stay in the country for 30 days, a ruling his attorneys are contesting.

They are putting him at more risk by keeping him in Honduras, Oscar Castro said by phone from Tegucigalpa. This is causing a lot of stress.

This story has been updated to correct that opponents of the dam, rather than supporters, were allegedly put on hit lists.

Read more:

Why El Salvador became the hemispheres murder capital

Honduran president: U.S. has enormous responsibility for immigration crisis

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Lawyers who visit their clients in the Altiplano, Mexicos highest-security prison, say they must leave behind their wallets, pens, tie clips, shoelaces. They complain that guards check inside the mens underwear and women must take off their bras.

Those in solitary confinement, such as the prisons most famous inmate, drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, are under constant surveillance and receive just one hour of daily caged-in recreational time, according to those familiar with the prison.

So the news in July in the Mexican magazine Proceso that Guzman had organized nearly 1,000 prisoners to hold a five-day hunger strike to protest the prisons poor hygiene, medical care and food seemed curious. Not just that the worlds most fearsome drug lord was now apparently a human rights crusader but that he had the freedom of movement and communication inside the prison to pull it off.

The prison, amid rolling farmland west of Mexico City, is tough to get inside, and the Mexican government denied requests to visit or speak with those who run it. Mexican officials confirmed that the mid-July hunger strike took place but denied that Guzman, or the other famous drug lord apparently involved, Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a.k.a. La Barbie, participated.

There is no way that any one of them could participate because they are totally isolated, one Mexican official said.

The official, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said the strike lasted some hours and involved about 100 people. There were never 1,000, never.

That Guzman is in prison is a victory for the Mexican government. He had escaped from incarceration once before, in 2001, and his legend grew as he led the Sinaloa Cartel, the multibillion-dollar drug trafficking operation. In February, a team of Mexican marine commandos burst into his room in a beach condo and snatched him. After being briefly marched before a news conference in Mexico City, Guzman was taken to the Altiplano and out of public view. The Mexican government plans to pursue criminal charges against him before considering extradition to the United States, where he has also been indicted.

According to lawyers, former inmates, relatives and others, the Altiplano is hard living. Some people complained about dirty cells, not enough blankets, a lack of medicine. There is mold, they get sick, its cold, they dont take care of them, said a lawyer, who declined to give his name to preserve his access to the prison. They also said most prisoners, except for those in solitary, have plenty of opportunity to interact with each other.

A former inmate who spent nearly five years inside the Altiplano said that the prison has eight modules, each divided into four sections. When prisoners go out onto the patio for recreation hour, theyre only supposed to talk to other inmates from their section, he said. He slept in a bunk bed, with two prisoners per room, he said, and toilets were in public view. But he found the medical care sufficient and was treated for his hypertension.

They never ran out of medicine, he said. When he was imprisoned from 2008 to 2012, he said, there were periodic hunger strikes over different issues, including one seeking larger television screens.

After the most recent protest over food quality, medical care and hygiene, the Mexican official said, the demands were satisfied and the protests were reduced. He did not specify how the demands were satisfied.

Some inmates received new shoes, according to the sister of a prisoner. A subsequent Proceso article described the strike as a triumph for Guzman and Valdez.

Those familiar with the prison said Guzman does apparently get some preferential treatment: While other prisoners are forced to shave, hes been allowed to keep his mustache.
Brayan Duvan Soler Redondo, a 14-year-old Honduran boy, overlooking the Rio Grande. He is staying at a migrant shelter in Reynosa. He is traveling alone and trying to get to the United States to find work to help his family. (Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post)

Susanna Torres was a dimple-cheeked preteen living lonely with her stepmother in El Salvador  her father had disappeared, her mother was on Long Island, N.Y.  when she hatched her plan.

For three years, she secretly socked away the money her mom sent for school until she had $6,000. It was enough to hire a smuggler and join the underground network of buses and train tops, through jungles and deserts.

She had one thing in mind when she left in her freshman year of high school to travel 1,400 miles north to the United States by herself.

I wanted to be with my mom, she said.

Instead, she found herself on the banks of the Rio Grande in early June, too exhausted to walk on. She ended up behind coils of razor wire in a home for child migrants run by the Mexican government, watching Ice Age on DVD as she waited to be deported.

View Graphic Sudden surge in unaccompanied children at border

As migrants stream north from Central America, thousands of children such as Susanna are ending up alone and adrift in a border-land limbo. On the U.S. side, they are being crammed into Border Patrol stations designed to detain and deport single males, not provide food and care for third-graders without their parents. On the Mexican side, they are bunking down in the rough world of church shelters, surrounded by sunburned men heading north for work or reeling from deportation.

Right now Im small, but Ive heard theyre giving minors the opportunity to work in the U.S., said Brayan Duvan Soler Redondo, a 14-year-old Honduran boy who has spent the past two weeks alone in a shelter here in Reynosa. I have to trust in God to get me to the other side.

The surge of juveniles across the Rio Grande in south Texas is a new challenge for U.S. immigration policy and the debate in Washington about whether to change it. Although the overall number of illegal migrants arrested along the southern U.S. border is still far lower than the 900,000 per year or more apprehended before 2006, U.S. agents are ill-equipped to deal with so many Central Americans, let alone children.

In the past, border cities on the Mexico side have been more likely to have large groups of deportees on their streets  not child travelers on their way north  as illegal immigration from Mexico plummeted to its lowest levels in 40 years. Shelters became filled with anxious fathers kicked out of the United States, desperate to swim the river or hike the desert at night to get back to jobs, wives and U.S.-born children.

The children and mothers coming now from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are different. In many cases, they appear to be heading north to reunite with parents or husbands already in the United States. Some are being summoned by relatives because of rumors that the United States is offering permits for women and children to stay. The children, as young as 4, often arrive with no legal guardian but carry handwritten notes for the Border Patrol with relatives phone numbers.

To avoid the sweltering Texas heat, the border-crossers are fording the Rio Grande in large groups in the early evening, wading through shallow crossings or floating over in cheap dinghies. They follow dirt paths through cottonwood groves up to the levee roads where Border Patrol vehicles are parked every night, waiting. Sometimes theyll come right up and knock on your windows, said Chris Cabrera, an agent and Border Patrol union spokesman.

On one recent evening, a group of 15, including a woman with a baby strapped to her back and seven other children, emerged from the brush and climbed up the levee. They waited on the gravel road for the Border Patrol trucks to arrive, making no attempt to flee or hide.

Are there any unaccompanied minors? one border patrol agent asked in Spanish, as he took down names and nationalities. Who came alone?

A thin boy in an Aeropostale T-shirt raised his hand.

More children are on their way. A draft of an internal Border Patrol memo for the White House from last month estimated that the number of unaccompanied minors detained by the border patrol will reach 90,000 this year, higher than expected, and rise to 142,000 next year. President Obama has declared a humanitarian crisis and pledged $2 billion to build temporary housing for the new migrants. Thousands of unaccompanied children picked up by Border Patrol are being held on military bases and in converted warehouses if they dont have parents or guardians who can claim them.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) requested $30 million from the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to send more law enforcement officers to the border, because children have so overwhelmed the U.S. Border Patrol that federal agents are devoting time and resources to the humanitarian aspects of the influx, and are not available to secure the border and successfully stop criminal activity, his office said in a statement.

For those detained by Mexican authorities before they reach the United States, many will be deported. Some of these children await removal at the Attention Center for Border Minors, a government-run shelter in Reynosa, where as many as 400 children arrive each month.

The majority of their parents are already in the United States. Thats the main reason the children are coming, said Jose Guadalupe Villegas Garcia, the organizations director, who said he thinks U.S. immigration rules have gone lax. This was something President Obama ordered.

Maynor Delgado, a 16-year-old from Guatemala, has spent 84 days at the shelter, watching TV and making bracelets to pass the time, calling his family on Fridays, unsure whether he will be deported or released. I dont know how my papers are, he said.

His parents gave him $7,000 to pay a guide and join five others  none of them relatives  on the journey from his home town of Quetzaltenango, an 11-day trek by taxi, train and bus, with stays at crowded stash houses and campsites, eating occasionally and sleeping on the ground. He has an older brother in Washington and wanted to join him to help support his parents.

My family is poor. My mom washes clothes, he said. Ill do whatever I can find.

On his journey north, Brayan, the Honduran boy, parted ways with his elder brother after a fight over money. Left on his own, Brayan said he begged for food and rides along the way, until he arrived at a church in Reynosa, and eventually to Path of Life, a private migrant shelter. Im traveling with empty pockets, he said, patting his shorts. Zero.

He has no money to pay for a guide across the river and is afraid to venture out into city streets controlled by the kidnapping and drug-trafficking cartel.

I have no idea how long Im going to be here, he said.

Susanna Torress mother, Rosa, a 39-year-old nursing-home employee in Huntington, Long Island, didnt know until she received a phone call this month from the Mexican shelter that her daughter was traveling to find her. I had no idea, she said. I was very worried.

She has talked with a lawyer about her daughters chances of being with her and her two other children in the United States but was told its a slow process.

I want to be with my daughter, but theres nothing I can do, she said. To be with your kids is the most important thing in life. I only ask God that he protects her.

David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.
A member of the Vogue Club poses in a room at the swingers club in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. (Phil Clarke Hill/For The Washington Post)

At the Livraria Cultura bookstore on Paulista Avenue, a waiter circulated with champagne on a recent Monday evening as a line formed in front of Gabriela da Silva, 22, who had come to launch her first book, The Pleasure Is All Ours, written under the pseudonym Lola Benvenutti.

It is the story of her life as a prostitute  decorated with graphic descriptions of sexual acts, including rendezvous with couples in the love motels found scattered throughout Brazil  and also something of a manifesto for sexual freedom, written like a self-help guide.

The reaction has been curiosity, respect and even support  signs of how the wheels of social change are turning in Brazil.

This highly sexualized society indulges promiscuity in its men but looks askance at female sexuality even as it prizes the beauty of its women, argues da Silva, a literature and language graduate. She writes that she enjoys her work, embraces pleasure and gets paid  controversial sentiments for contradictory Brazil, a country that is obsessed with sex but deeply religious, conservative and macho.

At this landmark bookstore, a cultural hub for Sao Paulo intellectuals, these sentiments appeared to hit a nerve. I admire her, said Carol Monteiro, 18, after joining the line to buy a copy of the book. Added her friend Suzane Albino, 24: She had the liberty and strength to do what she wanted.

Gabriela da Silva has launched her first book, The Pleasure Is All Ours, written under the pseudonym Lola Benvenutti. (Photo by Victor Daguano)

Lola Benvenutti began as a blog persona, as da Silva used prostitution to pay her way through college. In an interview the day after the launch, she drew a distinction between her book and a 2006 novel by former prostitute Raquel Pacheco, later made into the hit Brazilian movie Bruna Surfistinha.

The way it was presented was about the prostitute as a victim, who suffers, da Silva said. Sex for me has always been very good. I do everything to have pleasure.

Da Silva said Brazilian society has a problem with female sexuality. Men make this distinction: A woman who has sex on the first night cant be taken seriously, she said. Women are raised not to have orgasms.

Brazilian women such as she are increasingly challenging these notions. The country is awash with sexually explicit literature  200,000 read online the erotic romance Love Has No Laws, by first-time writer Camila Moreira, according to Brazils biggest newspaper, the Folha de S. Paulo. The paper also hosts a blog, the X of Sex, in which one woman recently detailed realizing her fantasy of having sex with two men at the same time.

Brazil has a very sexually active population, said Carmita Abdo, coordinator of the sexuality studies program at the University of Sao Paulo. Just 8 percent of Brazilian women and 3 percent of men have no sex, according to a 2008 survey Abdo conducted for Brazils Ministry of Health. We are a people recognized for a lot of sexuality. And we end up wanting to live up to this, she said.

But Brazilians have problems talking about sex, said Jaqueline Barbosa, 25, and Emerson Viegas, 31, who four years ago started the relationship-and-sex blog Shameless Couple. It now has 80,000 visitors a day, they said in an e-mail interview.

We are seen as a liberal country, because Brazil is very associated with Carnival, the culture of the body, sexiness, TV programs with many exposed bodies. . . . Brazilian people converse very little about sex, they said. Women have certainly conquered more sexual freedom, but there is still a lot to be evolved.

That would include experimentation, as more Brazilian couples visit the swing clubs and liberal parties that have long discreetly existed in big Brazilian cities but are now emerging above ground. The Shameless Couple offers advice on how to manage threesomes but cautions that they are not for every couple. The option has to be discussed, because more and more couples are succeeding in establishing a differentiation between sex and love, they said.

In a 2011 survey by the international dating agency C-Date, 49 percent of Brazilian men and 19 percent of women said their fantasy was to have sex with more than one person at the same time. In one chapter of her book called Sodom and Gomorrah, da Silva describes being hired for an orgy by a group of well-to-do doctors and their wives at a remote ranch. They were very well mannered, paid me really well; they trusted me, she said. The women wore heels; the men wore Rolex watches. No one wore anything else.

Earlier this year, Andre Luiz, a 49-year-old lawyer, opened Apice Club, Sao Paulos newest swing house, in the upmarket Moema neighborhood, with his wife, Ana Paula, 35. Both are swingers, Luiz said. They plan to invest up to $1.1 million.

The popular saying is that swing is good. There is just one problem: It is addictive. Those who enter dont leave, Luiz said.

The club has a dance floor where couples interact, and a darkened, secluded area out back for sex. On a recent Friday night, couples watched a cowboy stripper or disappeared into the back area.

It is part of the culture of the newer generation to see sex as something open, said the club host, Fabio Gouvea, 39. He said 1,100 couples are connected to his profile on a network site. All swingers, he said. Its very cool.

Rio de Janeiros Vogue Club is a liberal party aimed at a younger market. About 400 couples celebrated the clubs first anniversary recently, said Claudio de Luca, 48, one of its partners. The club has a Cupid to introduce shy couples to each other on the dance floor.

The night after the clubs anniversary, some of its clients agreed to be interviewed and photographed if names were changed. I have a life that is not swing, that is of a normal person, who works, who goes to college, said Ninfa, 29, a nutritionist. There is prejudice.

Sandro, 42, and his wife, Deborah, 25, said swingers are reacting against social norms that accept male infidelity but do not allow women the same freedom. It preaches that a man can do what he wants, go out with as many women as he wants, Sandro said. The swinger sees it like this: The rights he has, the woman has.

Abdo said that young Brazilian adults are experimenting more and that the increasing visibility of clubs such as Vogue and Apice has heightened curiosity.

Experimentation is much more common today  hetero, bi, homo, sex with more than one person, she said.

But the fundamental shift in sexual behavior, Abdo said, has been among women, who start their sex lives earlier, marry later and demand more of the men with whom they have physical relationships. The man has to be always ready, if he is seduced, Abdo said. She is more demanding and does not just have sex to give pleasure.
Negotiations between the heads of 28 European Union (EU) governments and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over a deal to stop the flow of refugees from the Middle East to Europe began on Thursday and will continue today. While it remains unclear if a deal will be finalised, since several EU states have announced reservations, the goal is absolutely clear: the EU is prepared to pay any price to hermetically seal itself off from the suffering refugees.

This was explicitly stated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her statement made before the German parliament on Wednesday. In her speech, she called for a European solution to the refugee issue, aimed at reducing the number of refugees not only for some, but for all of us, and to do so sustainably and permanently.

The sealing off of Europe has nothing to do with the welcoming culture, attributed to Merkel after she allowed thousands of refugees who were stuck in catastrophic conditions in Hungary last September to travel on to Germany. Merkel was much more concerned that the reintroduction of borders within the Schengen zone (free travel area comprising 26 European states) would have adverse consequences for the continued existence of the EU and Germanys economic interests.

Merkel noted once again in her official statement that she was striving for a European solution because precisely Germany, as a country in the heart of Europe, has profited from freedom of movement like no other. That also goes for our industry.

The fate of the now more than 40,000 refugees confined to inhumane temporary camps in Greece is of no interest to Merkel. The chancellor remained unmoved by the disturbing images from the refugee camp at Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonian border, where the refugees are struggling to survive as the camp sinks in the mud. The only emergency care available at Idomeni is being offered by unpaid volunteers from across Europe.

With incredible cynicism Merkel stated, Together with the other 27 EU member states and the UN high commission for refugees (UNHCR), Greece intends to resolve the crisis in a humanitarian manner. She continued, Of course many refugees are disappointed if they cannot travel to where they want to, but we are all agreed in Europe that there is no right to asylum in a particular country.

A pact between the EU and Turkey will only serve to worsen the situation for refugees in Greece.

The talks prior to the summit culminated in the first draft of a six-point plan. This was a response to the criticismsmade by human rights organisations and the United Nations (UN)of the initial proposal to deport refugees who make it across the Aegean Sea immediately back to Turkey.

An Asylum-lite procedure has now been proposed, where refugees can apply for asylum in Greece, but the application will be considered within 48 hours. Objections to a deportation would be reviewed by the Greek judicial system within a week. This is aimed at complying with international legal norms, which require the opportunity for an individual to file an asylum application and forbid the immediate deportation of refugees from the border.

However, the entire plan is a fraud. The document states Migrants not applying for asylum or whose application has been found unfounded or inadmissible in accordance with the said directive will be returned to Turkey. This means that refugees will get the opportunity in principle to submit an asylum application, but these will be routinely rejected on the basis that Greece has declared Turkey to be a safe third country, and, because at the stroke of a pen, Turkey is considered a safe country for asylum. Vice President of the EU Commission, Frans Timmermanns, cynically declared that morally and legally they were obliged to carry out the asylum procedure.

In fact, international law is being completely violated. Turkey is to become a safe third country even though it has failed to fully ratify the Geneva Convention on Refugees, on the basis that in principle, Turkish officials will act as if the convention was in full force. In addition, the EU argues that no serious danger, like death or torture, will confront refugees in Turkey.

Quite apart from the fact that human rights organisations have documented numerous serious abuses of refugees by Turkish security forces, including obviously deliberate killings on the Turkish-Syrian border, Prime Minister Davutoglu has already made clear that after their deportation from Greece, the refugees will be confined to camps and deported.

Those seeking protection in Greece will not fare much better. Refugees arriving there, according to the prescriptions of the EU bureaucrats, must be registered in hot spots and then accommodated and provided for until the asylum procedure is complete. The country, which is on the verge of economic and social collapse, is already overwhelmed with the 40,000 refugees currently stranded in Greece. Moreover, between 1,500 and 2,000 are crossing the Aegean to the Greek islands every day, meaning that huge internment camps need to be constructed to confine them against their will.

The deportation of thousands of desperate people will now be carried out under the threat of violence. The EU is intent on maintaining the closure of the Balkan route to prevent refugees from reaching Central Europe under their own power.

The one for one principle agreed upon at the last summit will impact a much smaller number of refugees than was previously thought. The 72,000 Syrian refugees that the EU will voluntarily distribute across the continent is ridiculously low given the 2.7 million people stranded in Turkey.

It is clear masses of people seeking protection, and whoin their desperation to secure a better future for their childrenleft disastrous conditions in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan and relied upon smugglers to make it to the EU, will be deported and given no further chance to be accepted into the resettlement programme. This was confirmed by Timmermanns, who told German news programme Tagesschau, If you use a smuggler, you have a right to protection, but in Turkey, not in Greece or the EU. If you are prepared to wait until you can legally come to Europe, you can get protection in Europe.

The EU maintains that the resettlement programme will only be in place for a short time. Its communique stated, This is a temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end human suffering and reestablish public order. This order means nothing other than the complete halt of the flow of refugees. To this end, NATOs mission in the Aegean is to be further expanded, as Merkel noted in her statement. Warships will continue their ludicrously disproportionate activities along a stretch of coast against small smugglers boats packed full of unarmed people, which are at risk of capsizing at any moment.

However, there is considerable opposition in the EU to the agreement with Turkey. Cyprus intends to block the opening of a new round of negotiations with Turkey about its joining the EU until the government in Nicosia has been fully recognised by Ankara. The Turkish demand for visa-free travel for its citizens within the EU has provoked opposition, led above all by France and Austria. According to a report by the Suddeutsche Zeitung, there are grumblings in France about the agreement with Turkey being a betrayal by the German chancellor.

In Spain, an all-party coalition has emerged at the head of a protest movement opposed in principle to the EU-Turkey deal. More than 5,000 people rallied in Madrid against the EUs refugee policy on Wednesday night chanting Shame, shame. The foreign minister of the conservative government, which was recently voted out of office but still holds power, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, said his country would only agree to a compromise which was in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1951.

This merely reflects the hypocrisy and deceit of the European governments, who claim to be in favour of European values and humanitarianism, but move brutally against refugees and workers rights. It was the Spanish government which, in its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco, took ruthless action against refugees to prevent them from reaching European soil. In addition, the Spanish government has negotiated a repatriation agreement with the Moroccan ruling family that closely parallels the current agreement being sought with Turkey. Spain has also surrounded its enclaves with razor wire, whichdespite causing severe injuries to refugeesis a technique that has been exported to Hungary.

The EU-Turkey summit marks another grim chapter in the establishment of Fortress Europe. EU foreign policy spokeswoman Federica Mogherini stated that the EU would not stop there. A year ago, we concentrated on the route across the central Mediterranean Sea. A year from now, it could be an entirely different route, she told the Suddeutsche Zeitung, adding that in addition to Turkey, other countries of origin and transit had to be negotiated with. The outsourcing of asylum for refugees is thus only beginning, while mass deaths on the refugee routes to Europe will continue.
Striking Fairfax Media journalists spoke to the World Socialist Web Site at their rally in Sydney today, explaining why they have walked out until Monday to fight the threatened loss of a further 120 jobs and revealing some of the conditions under which they are already working.

Simon, a Sydney Morning Herald artist, said: Fairfax recently made a $27 million profit and the board get bonuses for cutbacks they carry out. This means that the money that they cut from us goes up the food chain to management.

It was an angry meeting yesterday because we didnt realise the cuts were coming. Although 20 people took redundancy last year, that had already been planned. Suddenly were told yesterday that there will be two weeks of consultations and then theyre starting the next round of job cuts.

Whats happening here is traumatic. I had three jobs to do yesterday, including a major feature page image. Id read the briefs and was getting to start producing something and the email arrives telling us that there would be 120 jobs cut. How can you work in this situation?

Michael said: Im a 20-year veteran of the redundancy cuts here and its getting very tough. Its like death by a thousand cuts. Weve had to become very multi-skilled and extremely efficient but it doesnt matter how good you are, youre constantly being told that you have to work smarter. How can you do this with a workforce that is more and more depleted? The loss of 120 jobs is going to make life here very difficult.

Tim, a senior writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, said: Ive been here for five and a half years and weve lost a lot of great peoplegreat writers, great photographersand we feel that the latest cuts are going to push this paper over the edge

People were very angry about that and the meeting was united about going on strike to fight it. Ive not been on a three-day strike before and I dont think Fairfax has seen that for many years. Thats a measure of the feeling here. People work very hard and give their best and cover over the gaps, but there must come a point when youre no longer able to do that.

Mat, a sub-editor, explained the impact of previous job cuts on working conditions. Its incredibly fast-paced, he said. You dont even have time to think. You dont have time to read the stories. Youve just got to ship it up. Its ridiculous.

Youre adding the metadata, sourcing the pictures yourself, and youve got to put everything on social media. Sometimes youre doing four stories an hour. A traditional sub-editor would have fact-checked things. Now you dont even have time to read.

These days they can monitor things instantly to see whats getting the most traffic. One of our jobs is to constantly be removing stories that arent doing well. More niche areas, and investigative stories that dont get as many hits, are overlooked.

My job is always under threat. A lot of my colleagues have been sacked. A couple of years ago, about 30 sub-editors were outsourced to New Zealand at half the wages. This week, theyve all been sacked and their jobs are being outsourced back here to workers who will be paid even less.

When they announced these cuts yesterday by email, one of the lines was that this was an ongoing process, so theyll keep getting rid of more jobs. Thats capitalism. I have a permanent part-time position, which was very hard fought for. I cant get full-time work. I have to beg for additional casual shifts to make up a five-day week, which I didnt get last week. They need more full-time staff, but they prefer people who are casual or on contracts because they have fewer rights.

Commenting on the MEAAs role, the sub-editor said: Like many unions, they lose their teeth because they deal with management a lot of the time, and they take on a lot of management thinking. Management are very savvy about how to handle the union and get them on side.

One young Sydney Morning Herald journalist said there was a lot of anger about the scale of the cuts and the swift and cold manner in which they were executed. The response was quite militant, he said, with the staff deciding to walk out even though such strikes were unlawful action under the draconian industrial laws introduced by the previous federal Labor government.

We cant keep doing this, he said, referring to the pressure already on journalists, who were being forced to double as sub-editors and undertake other kinds of work. As a result, there were stories that we just cant cover. Once again, he said, Fairfax Medias cuts were targeted at the editorial staff. This was his third strike in three years, he commented, but the stoppages had only tried to reduce the damage and protect the brand.

A Fairfax Media designer with 27 years experience said: This round seems to be aimed at writers and reporters. Most of the previous cuts in the past few years have been aimed at production. Thats what I think has really hit a nerve. Change is the only constant. I think a lot of it comes down to management. They have their KPIs [Key Performance Indicators], ticking the boxes. They kid themselves that theyve improved things, but its just window dressing.

You can feel the quality slipping, constantly Ive seen some superb people pushed out of the place The metrics are whats driving everything. Talking to some colleagues yesterday, they said the best metrics they got were for really seedy, low-brow articles.
Both official statistics and recent public opinion polls in Russia show a sharp fall in income levels and living standards.

In 2015, for the first time in many years, Russian citizens spent more money than they earned. The difference between the populations incomes and expenditures amounted to 420 billion rubles ($5.5 billion), the first deficit in 18 years. Experts with the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis told the newspaper Kommersant, the results of 2015 were really extraordinary for the overwhelming majority of the fifty million Russian households. In an article entitled, Citizens lose their liquidity, the newspaper described a shocking restructuring of household economic strategy.

The last time the economy experienced something similar was in 1998, when Russia defaulted on its debt and its currency collapsed to one fourth of its previous level. When account is taken of the fact that over the past two decades much of what remained of the Soviet-era infrastructure and social services has been eradicated, the situation facing the population is now much bleaker.

According to the figures of the state agency Rosstat, the populations real incomes have decreased by 4 percent compared to a year ago, and pensions have fallen by 3.8 percent.

The Russian Ministry of the Economy recently reported that in 2015 the volume of retail trade in the country fell by 10 percent compared to the previous year. It is now lower than it was in 1970. The depth of decline of foodstuff purchases in 2015 is unprecedented. It did not fall as much even during the crisis of 1998-1999, when the average income fell much more precipitously. This tells us that the present crisis, because of the Russian governments retaliatory sanctions, has hit particularly the poorest layers of population, those, whose share of food expenditures is the highest, it observed.

The portion of the Russian population with incomes below the official minimum has increased to 13 percent. Citizens have stopped consuming and are passive observers of the process of trade, says the Ministry. They save their money and spend it only for absolute necessities.

An investigation by the Higher School of Economics has shown that 12 percent of the population lives at or below the level of extreme poverty. Only a quarter of Russias citizens earn more than twice the subsistence minimum.

In a February article, the online publication Gazeta.ru pointed to a sharp increase in outstanding debt. During the past year, 40 million peoplemore than half the economically active populationhave borrowed 11 trillion rubles ($142 million) in new debt. Only 8 million of them are able to pay their interest in a timely manner.

International rating agencies have again cut their economic outlook for Russia. According to a new assessment by Moodys, in 2016 the countrys economy will contract by 2.5 percent, instead of an earlier forecast of 0.5-1 percent.

Standard & Poors has continued to keep the rating of Russian long-term foreign currency obligations at BB+ level. Reaffirming its negative outlook for the economy, the agency expects the situation to worsen.

For its part, the Russian government does not anticipate any significant improvement in the next few years. According to an estimate prepared by the Ministry of Finance, the economy will be growing at an annual rate of 1-1.3 percent from now until 2030. Overall, between 2014 and 2030 the Russian economy will grow by just 13 percent. This is the same increase it experienced during the three year period from 2011-2013.

The ministry also expects real wages to decline during 2015-2016 by 13 percent, and will not recover to the level of 2014 until the year 2025.

The rapid decline in the situation facing the majority of the population is accompanied by a further growth of social inequality. Every member of the governing board of the Rosneft oil corporation averaged a salary in 2015 of 336 million rubles ($4.3 million). At the same time, the average wage in Russia stood at 33,000 rubles ($425), or 1/850th of the income of the oligarchs running the state-controlled energy giant.

An ever growing number of the countrys inhabitants views the Soviet period positively. According to a recent survey by the Levada Center, when indicating their preferred economic model, 52 percent of respondents chose state planning. Only 26 percent chose a market economy based on private property, while 22 percent could not make up their minds.

Levada Center Director Lev Gudkov observed, The guaranteed modest prosperity of the Soviet system has taken on a function of a past normal. The contemporary situation is evaluated in comparison with the popular impressions of that memory.

Another notable feature is a growth of moods of protest, which, while not yet taking on a political character, are attracting wider layers of the population and gathering strength in the provinces, according to a leading expert of social and economic programs of the Center of Social and Labor rights, Petr Biziukov.

The two capitals [Moscow and Petersburg], he notes, account for just 15 percent of all protest actions. Regional centers [account for] another 40 percent. Oblast centers [account for] 27 percent, and small towns and villages [account for] 13 percent. This means that labor conflict is moving from the center to the periphery. In the past, strikes in the provinces were unusual. People in small towns were afraid to get the reputation of a scandal-monger or lose their jobs. The fact that they have begun to act tells us that they have overcome a certain amount of restraint.

Biziukov went on to note that strikes are no longer just local. The movement is changing form. In the past, the protests were very isolated. But last year we recorded a number of inter-regional actions. The most notable such action [was] the protests of long distance haulers. According to our data, 45 regions were affected by it. In May, there were the teachers strikes in 20 regions. Inter-regional protests are gaining ground. Whereas before, they involved at most 9 regions. Now, the number of simultaneously protesting regions is growing.
Siemens announced its latest round of job cuts on March 9. A total of 2,500 job cuts, including 2,000 in Germany, will take place globally in its engine division (process industries and engines). The greatest impact will be on workers at production sites for motors in Bavaria.

In Nuremberg, 700 jobs will be cut and in Ruhstorf, near Passau, half of the 1,300 jobs will go. In Bad Neustadt, 350 jobs will be cut and 150 are threatened in Erlangen. Between 20 and 30 jobs in this division will be cut in Berlin.

The destruction of these jobs comes on top of the 13,000 job cuts already announced by Chairman of the Board Joe Kaeser within the framework of the companys restructuring last year. In addition to administration, the energy sector has been the main victim of this programme of cost-cutting and job losses.

Like last year, the reasons given for the measures were the decline in oil prices, deepening global crisis, decreased demand for equipment and engines in the oil and gas industry and increased international competitiveness.

Under these conditions, shareholders are demanding drastic cost-cutting measures, an intensification of exploitation, as well as the outsourcing of jobs to cheap labour countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung cited Jurgen Brandes, the head of the process industry and engine division: As a result, we have to optimise our production network and reduce the number of production locations for products which are similar or the same. Currently, with a turnover of 9 billion, Siemens employs 46,000 workers globally in this sector, 16,000 of whom work in Germany. Overall, Siemens employs 348,000 workers globally, 114,000 in Germany as of October 30, 2015.

When the massive job cuts were announced at factory meetings in the affected locations last Thursday, workers responded with outrage and anger. Many of them have worked in Siemens factories for decades, sometimes including entire families.

Many workers suspect that behind the announcing of new job cuts in stages lies divide-and-rule tactics. The fear is widespread that the factories in Nuremberg and Ruhstorf, which are heavily impacted by the latest cuts, could soon be shut down completely.

In Nuremberg and Bad Neustadt, protests were held in front of the factories. According to a report in the Passauer Neue Presse, booing, whistling and angry shouts could be heard through the closed doors of the Lower Bavaria hall in Ruhstorf, where security guards guarded the door.

Representatives of the IG Metall trade union and works council responded as they always do. They acted as if they were surprised and outraged, claimed not to have been informed about the latest measures and assumed a combative pose. According to the online edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Siemens Central Works Council Chairwoman Birgit Steinborn had announced her intention to fight for every single job.

Steinborn is deputy chair on the supervisory board and it is well known what she means by defence of jobs in Germany. Early last summer, the works council and IG Metall organised a day of action under the reactionary slogan Strengthen our Germany location. The entire action served to divide the workers of the global company and mobilise them against each other.

IG Metall wants at all costs to prevent a joint international struggle by all Siemens employees. Steinborn now declares again, Outsourcing puts the industrial and innovation location Germany at risk. Siemens has a special responsibility here.

At many levels, IG Metall and the works council are part of Siemens leadership and management. In the name of competitiveness, they call for rationalisation measures and propose their own cuts.

The deceitful character of Steinborns statement that she intends to fight for every single job is made clear by a report on the web site of Bavarian state radio (BR). On the basis of information from works council sources, the report details problems with the production of large motors. The 28 global locations of the process industry and engine division are, according to BR information, only working at half capacity.

The report continued by noting that the division was the companys second weakest, which was with a margin of almost 6 percent far from the stipulated 12 percent. In justification of the job cuts, BR cited Works Council Chair Steinborn, Even Siemens central works council chairwoman Birgit Steinborn acknowledges that the business area is in a very challenging position.

With reference to the situation in Bad Neustadt, BR reported, Last year, the atmosphere was already tense and IG Metall expected that the next wave of personnel cuts could hit Bad Neustadt.

IG Metall and the works council function as co-managers and a factory police force in order to force through the job cuts and attacks against the workforce. They intend to smother all resistance to this as quickly as possible.

An internationalist, socialist perspective is thus even more urgently needed to defend jobs, whether at Siemens, VW or Bombardier, to name only a handful of the global firms that have announced massive job cuts recently.
TORONTO (Reuters) - A gaffe by the CBS show "60 Minutes," which mistakenly aired a photo of the actress Kim Cattrall implying she was the mother of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was cheerfully accepted by Cattrall, who said she couldn't be more proud. The episode broadcast late Sunday of the widely watched television news magazine featured a profile of Trudeau, who is due to visit Washington this week and attend a state dinner hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama. While a reporter on the show talked about Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister of Canada a generation earlier, and his mother Margaret Trudeau, a black-and-white image of the elder Trudeau and Cattrall depicted together was shown on screen. Pierre and Margaret Trudeau each dated a string of celebrities after their marriage broke up, and the sometimes high-profile relationships often made news in Canada, where the prime minister and his young sons were celebrated in the media. The photo of Trudeau and Cattrall was snapped by a photographer of the Toronto Star newspaper in 1981, the paper said on Monday. That was long before the Canadian actress became best known for her role in the hit HBO show, Sex and the City. Cattrall responded to the error good naturedly, saying in a post on Twitter: "I have a son who is the Prime Minister of Canada? I couldn't b (sic) more proud." The Prime Minister's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The gaffe made headlines across Canada, sparking jokes about Canada's typically low profile in the United States. (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Prince Harry Shares Bittersweet Princess Diana Memories, Wants to Be a Dad In an interview with Good Morning America, Prince Harry talked playdates with his late mom, Princess Diana, and wanting to be a dad  read more

Prince Harry cant wait for diaper duty. The British royal sat down for an interview with Good Morning Americas Robin Roberts that aired on Friday, March 18, where he opened up about his late mother, Princess Diana, and wanting to become a dad.

PHOTOS: 15 Charming Throwback Photos of the Royal Family

I cant wait for the day. So, you know, it will be fantastic," Harry, 31, revealed on GMA. "I've got a kid inside of me. I want to keep that. I adore kids. I enjoy everything that they bring to the party. They just say what they think."



He already has one part of being a dad down pat: giving great hugs. "Everyone needs a hug now and again and it just so happens that Ive been told over and over again that Im very good with hugs," Harry shared.

Until the time comes for the single, unwed prince to have children of his own, he is enjoying his role as uncle to Prince William and Kate Middletons two children, George, 2, and Charlotte, 10 months.

You've got to have fun in life. Otherwise, wow, imagine life without fun," he told Roberts. "Youve got to be taken seriously, but I hope that Im a fun uncle."

While fatherhood is one of Harrys main goals, the hunky Brit is currently focusing his energy on charitable work  efforts that he hopes mom Princess Diana (who died at age 36 in a car crash in August 1997) would be proud of.

"I hope she's looking down, you know, with tears in her eyes, being incredibly proud of what we've established, I suppose," he explained. "I'm sure she's longing for me to have kids so she can be a grandmother again.

"We will do everything we can to make sure that she's never forgotten and carry on all the special gifts, as such, that she had and that she portrayed while she was alive," Harry said of his mother, who was known for her philanthropic spirit. "I hope that a lot of my mother's talents are shown in a lot of the work that I do.

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PHOTOS: Prince Harry's Hottest Moments!

Much like Lady Di did, Harry has devoted time to helping those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In 2006, he founded Sentebale, a charity that helps the children in Lesotho, Africa, who have been orphaned by the life-threatening virus.



After serving 10 years in the British Army, hes gearing up to raise awareness for wounded veterans at the 2016 Invictus Games in Orlando, Florida.

"When you look past the amputees, when you look past the burns, they're still the same people. And to be able to call them all my comrades, friends, we all share something," he said about the event, which will take place at Walt Disney World in May. "We share that uniform. We share the training. We share, in some cases, Afghanistan. Its very special."

Ahead of his trip to Disney, Harry reminisced about the time Princess Diana took him and his older brother to the happiest place on Earth.

PHOTOS: Kate Middleton and Prince William's First Year of Marriage

"It's one of my very, very happy memories, of going to Disney World with my mum," Harry recalled. I went on Space Mountain 14 times. I was like, 'This is absolutely fantastic. This is the best thing ever.'"



"There's all sorts of places over the world where we were very lucky to have those moments with our mother, and very, very happy memories," Harry said of himself and William.




When Adamu Waziri was in London late last year, overseeing the logistics for the first shipment of plush dolls based on his animated series Bino & Fino, he was determined to make sure things went off without a hitch. The holiday season was just weeks away, and the Nigerian animator had already learned about supply-chain perils first-hand. Recalling his struggles when the series launched in 2011, he let out an exasperated sigh. It nearly killed us a few years ago, he says.

That year, Waziri began selling DVDs of Bino & Fino, an educational series in the mold of Dora the Explorer, on his e-commerce site. But he didnt anticipate how difficult it would be to ship orders across Nigeria, a vast country with poor roads and an unreliable postal system. The effort almost bankrupted the company.

The experience highlighted the challenges facing Waziri and his team of self-taught animators, the creators of a cartoon thats produced entirely in Nigeria but perhaps better known in Germany, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., where young audiences watch the DVDs and stream the series. The exec remains determined to do what the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon, Hasbro and Cartoon Network are doing  (and) create our own brands that we can sell to the world.

A pioneer in the local industry, Waziris EVCL animation house is one of a handful of Nigerian studios attempting to develop brands that are, as he puts it, immediately identifiable as coming from Africa. The small, energetic community of animators is equally intent on penetrating Africas largest market: Nigeria is a country of more than 170 million people, half of them under 18.

The only way you finance this content is through partnering with brands. Michael Akindele

The challenges in Nigeria are daunting. Production costs are high for companies on shoestring budgets, and the studios that are developing IP can generally afford just a handful of full-time animators  enough to create an attractive product, but not necessarily at a breakneck pace.

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In terms of doing a full animated series, its something we can do, flawlessly, says Ola Oyo of Lagos-based Spore-dust Media, which has five in-house animators. We just need to have additional manpower.

In order to finance development of its flagship property, animated series Chicken Core, Sporedust has been creating mobile games and ads for corporate clients. At EVCL, international DVD sales have provided a steady flow of foreign exchange that the company repatriates back into Nigeria.

But visibility remains a problem in a country with rampant piracy, while pay TV channels are crammed with U.S. imports. Worse, Nigerian broadcasters expect content creators to pay for airtime  an expensive proposition. Waziri notes that one reason his characters are virtually unknown in their home country is that theyve never appeared on local networks. (Episodes of the show can be downloaded from the companys website; some 20,000 DVDs have been sold worldwide, while YouTube views have hit roughly half a million.)

The only way you finance this kind of content is by partnering with brands, says Michael Akindele, producer of the animated series The O Twins.

Akindele forged partnerships with leading local brands including Indomie instant noodles, First Bank of Nigeria and Sweet Kiwi frozen yogurt to finance production of the shows first season. That leverage allowed him to negotiate deals with free-to-air and pay TV networks in Nigeria and across Africa.

Akindele also recognized a strength of the local industry: After exploring the cost of foreign animators, he realized he could slash his budget by more than 80% by utilizing Nigerian talent.

Being able to provide first-class animation at a premium has helped other countries, such as India, South Korea and the Philippines, to develop their own industries. Still, Waziri stresses that he wants foreign producers to look at Nigeria as a producer of intellectual property rather than as a cheap source of labor.

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A Cruz presidency could set the United States on a very different trajectory within hours  if he can make good on his many promises for change on Day One.

Throughout his campaign, GOP presidential hopeful and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has outlined the actions he plans to take on his first day in the Oval Office if he is elected president.

Mainstream America first heard this list during Cruzs closing statement at this election cycles first Republican presidential debate, on Aug. 6.

If I am elected president, let me tell you about my first day in office, he said at the Fox News debate. The list included overturning President Obamas executive orders, canceling the Iran deal and ordering the Department of Justice to investigate Planned Parenthood, among many other things.

Though extreme, these plans were somewhat drowned out by the sheer number of candidates crowding onto the GOP stage  and billionaire businessman Donald Trumps braggadocio.

Cruzs recitation of his Day One plans has become a staple in his speeches and town hall meetings, where hes further fleshed out the list.

Now that the primaries have winnowed out most of last summers Republican contenders  only Cruz, Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich remain  its worth returning to Cruzs plans.

Ted Cruz speaks during an election night party in Houston on March 15. (Photo: David J. Phillip/AP)

To discuss the likelihood that Cruz could actually deliver all he has promised, Yahoo News reached out to law professors Amanda Frost and Stephen Vladeck from American University Washington College of Law, and law professor Michael Gerhardt from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Legally, I think some of it is feasible. Practically, these are all going to be pretty darn heavy lifts for the first day, Vladeck said. A lot of the stuff hes discussing are actions that the executive branch can pursue unilaterally, but probably not in 15 hours.

Heres the busy schedule Cruz set up for himself for his first day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue  and legal takes on whether these plans are doable.

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Overturn Obamas executive orders: Possible, but more difficult with established regulations  and not on Day One

The first thing I intend to do is to rescind every illegal and unconstitutional executive action taken by Barack Obama. (Aug. 6, 2015; GOP debate)

An executive order can overrule an executive order.

The law scholars agree that Cruz would be able to reverse or modify Obamas executive orders under the Constitution. But practically speaking, its hard to change a law thats already on the books.

In theory, yes, a new president can reverse things that arent at the level of legislation that a previous president has done, Frost said. But in fact, there are a lot of bureaucratic hurdles that need to be jumped through.

If an executive order resulted in some sort of formal regulation, Cruz would need to convince the agency that promulgated that regulation to go through a process of repealing or withdrawing it. This could happen fairly quickly, but its not likely to occur on Day One.

Order Department of Justice to investigate Planned Parenthood: Possibly illegal

The next thing I intend to do is instruct the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these videos and to prosecute Planned Parenthood for any criminal violations. (Aug. 6, 2015; GOP debate)

According to Gerhardt, the president of the United States is not allowed to direct particular prosecutions or investigations; the president can set policies and priorities or appoint people who share his or her values, but may not direct the DOJ to go after individuals or organizations.

That is completely illegal. That is exactly one of the bases upon which Richard Nixon was impeached, Gerhardt added. The only president who really crossed that line was Richard Nixon, and look what happened.

The Articles of Impeachment against Nixon include interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States as one of the violations of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of the presidency.

In short, Cruz would be able to ask his attorney general to investigate potential criminal activity, but he cannot compel him or her to bring charges.

If the phone call is just Hey, attorney general, do me a favor and take another look at the Planned Parenthood case, theres nothing wrong with that, Vladeck said.

Fight to end the persecution of religious liberty: Possible with some methods, illegal with others

On day one, a President Cruz will instruct the Department of Justice, the IRS, and every other federal agency that the persecution of religious liberty ends today. (Campaign website)

As is often the case with Cruz, the devil is in the details.

Just as with the previous plan, Gerhardt said, Cruz cannot direct the DOJ to look away from his political friends or toward his political enemies, but he could emphasize the importance of protecting religious liberty.

And if Cruz thinks a particular regulation infringes on religious liberty, he will run into the same problem he would with overturning Obamas executive orders  namely, the Administrative Procedure Act, which dictates how the federal government establishes regulations. This could be a long process that would extend beyond his first day.

If he thinks there are specific regulations, obviously statutes, or even things that go below the level of regulation but are guidance documents that guide the agency, Frost said. If he has a problem with any of those, those cannot be reversed by him on Day One. He could try to get the ball rolling.

Cruz  with, from left, his daughter Catherine; wife, Heidi; daughter Caroline; and supporter and former rival Carly Fiorina at his side  reacts to the primary election results in Florida, Ohio and Illinois during a campaign rally on March 15. (Photo: Trish Badger/Reuters)



Cancel the Iran deal: There is domestic precedent for this, but its controversial

On day one, a President Cruz will immediately repeal every word of President Obamas dangerous Iran deal and will prioritize American national security interests in every instance. (Campaign website)

Gerhardt, who is scholar in residence at the National Constitution Center, said there has historically been a dispute over whether a president can unilaterally nullify a treaty.

Though such moves are not without controversy, it is generally within the purview of the president to back out of international agreements. At the very least, there is historical precedent.

Its kind of interesting, Gerhardt said. It looks like Ted Cruz would like to do what Jimmy Carter did.

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter unilaterally nullified the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which the U.S. signed with China. Late conservative icon and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater filed a lawsuit against Carter, arguing the president could not break an international treaty without Senate approval. That case was dismissed.

No federal law would prohibit Cruz from backing out of an executive agreement like the Iran deal, but it could violate international law: the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties outlines accepted international standards on how a country can unilaterally back out of an international agreement.

You couldnt point to a federal statute or constitutional prohibition on him unilaterally backing out, but it might have both legal and diplomatic ramifications on the international scale, Vladeck said.

Move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: Possible with international cooperation, but not on Day One

A Cruz administration will on day one recognize Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the US embassy will be moved to Israels capital city. (Campaign website)

A presidential administration could say that it wants to move the U.S. embassy, but it obviously would not be able to accomplish this unilaterally  consultation with international leaders, most notably the Israeli prime minister, would be necessary.

Get rid of Common Core: Not possible

Ive pledged to instruct the Department of Education on day one that Common Core ends today. (Aug. 18, 2016; GOP Town Hall)

Responding to Cruzs statement, Gerhardt said, That wont be necessary, because they [the Department of Education] dont really have a role in it anyway.

The president has almost no power over Common Core whatsoever, because its a state issue, not a federal issue. Common Core was put together by a compact of states, not by Congress. Its not up to the Department of Education to tell states what to do about education.

I would think Ted Cruz would, more than anything else, respect states rights and states sovereignty to make that choice themselves, Gerhardt said. No federal official has the power to tell our local schools, you ought to be doing Common Core or not.

Cruz is greeted by supporters in Houston during a March 15 election night party. (Photo: David J. Phillip/AP)



Strengthen the armed forces: Depends on what he means

Another one of the most shameful things that, I think, of the last seven years is that we are sending our servicemen and women into combat with rules of engagement that have their arms tied behind their back. That [makes] it impossible for them to fight and defend themselves and win, I think that is immoral, it is wrong, and I will tell you this: I give you my word as commander in chief, that will end on Jan. 20, 2017. (Feb. 18, 2016; GOP Town Hall)

A lot of whether Cruz can accomplish this depends on what he means when he says, arms tied behind their back. Cruz is suggesting that he will be a much tougher president and allow the U.S. armed forces to do what he feels must be done to succeed in war; in other words, as other GOP candidates have said, he does not want to wage a politically correct war.

The president does have some management over rules of engagement, but a lot of what troops may do depends on military and international law.

Crossing off items on this conservative checklist

In a way, the largest hurdles facing Cruz in enacting his agenda at all  not just on Day One  could be procedural rather than constitutional.

Frost said it is easy to make statements about what you would do once elected to the presidency, but that the procedural and administrative complexities of the government make changes challenging and slow.

Most of what the president does is manage the administrative state, she said, and that is difficult for so many reasons, including the formalities of going through the Administrative Procedure Act to change things that are already law in the form of agency regulation. But in addition, [it is] getting all the people in a bureaucracy to do what you want them to do. And every president has that problem.


A robot has built a prototype launch-and-landing pad in Hawaii, potentially helping pave the way for automated construction projects on the moon and Mars.

The robotic rover, named Helelani, assembled the pad on Hawaii's Big Island late last year, putting together 100 pavers made of locally available material in an effort to prove out technology that could do similar work in space.

"The construction project is really unique. Instead of concrete for the landing pad, we're using lunar and Mars material, which is exactly like the material we have here on the Big Island  basalt," Rob Kelso, executive director of the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration (PISCES) in Hawaii, told Hawaiian news outlet Big Island Now. PISCES partnered with NASA on the project, which is part of a larger program called Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement, or ACME for short. [The Boldest Mars Missions in History]

"And secondly, instead of a human workforce building construction for the landing pad, we're using robotics," Kelso added.

The overall goal of the ACME program is to enable the design and construction of infrastructure on the moon and Mars using local materials. Doing so would be much cheaper and more efficient than hauling everything from Earth, advocates say, since it currently costs about $10,000 to launch every kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of payload from our planet's surface to orbit.

Humanity has taken some steps toward making off-Earth manufacturing a reality. In 2014, NASA launched a 3D printer, which was built by the California company Made In Space, to the International Space Station. The machine soon built a number of items, showing that the technology can work in microgravity conditions. Made In Space aims to launch a larger, commercially oriented 3D printer to the station soon.

The ACME program fits into NASA's long-term vision, which sees robots and 3D printers smoothing humanity's way to Mars and other distant destinations  and helping prepare the off-Earth ground for astronauts' arrival.

Story continues

One way robots could do this is by building dual-purpose vertical takeoff, vertical landing pads. Such VTVL pads will be important for future missions, advocates say; they will eliminate or mitigate the dust storms that would otherwise result (and possibly damage space equipment and/or neighboring structures) during launch and landing operations.

Furthermore, moon dust is incredibly fine, and it sticks to everything. So keeping it out of astronauts' way, and off their equipment, will be a priority for the planners of future lunar efforts.

Hence Helelani, and its Hawaiian VTVL pad. The rover first worked to clear and grade a 100-square-foot (9.3 square meters) area. Using its robotic arm, the rover then laid out 100 interlocking basalt pavers, which were joined like puzzle pieces to help reinforce the pad.

Helelani was controlled remotely from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Time delays were added to the communications to help simulate a lunar or Mars mission, project team members said. The next step will be to test the pad's durability by blasting it with a simulated rocket engine plume, they added.

NASA engineer and project team member Rob Mueller will provide an update about ACME, Helelani and the VTVL pad next week, at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Donald Trumps suggestion that riots may break out at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland if he is denied the GOP presidential nomination was met on Thursday with condemnation by the head of the state party in Ohio.



"Politically its a terrible message for him to be sending. It will work against him. Matt Borges, an outspoken critic of Trump, told ABC News. No one is going to come to Cleveland thinking they better vote for Trump or there will be riots.



Borges insisted the convention is going to be an orderly process, transparent process, and said if Trump shows up without the majority of the delegates "thats his fault.



Borges said they have been working with state and local law enforcement and there is an extensive security plan in place as there would be at any convention.



Were ready, Borges said, so I think it will be a peaceful and orderly and fine.



Just Wednesday, however, Trump said he wasnt so sure.



I think well win before getting to the convention but I can tell you if we didnt and If were 20 votes short or if were 100 short and were at 1,100 and someone else is at 500 or 400 cause were way ahead of everybody...I think youd have riots, Trump said on CNN Wednesday morning.



Trump is leading his two remaining rivals - Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz - in the delegate race, but hasnt yet hit the magical number of 1,237 to secure the Republican nomination. If he doesn't hit that number, Trump faces a contested convention, where a portion of the pledged delegates are free to vote for whomever they want.



Kasich took his reactions to Twitter, calling Trumps talk of riots unacceptable language.



Sean Spicer, the RNCs communications director and chief strategist, said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday that he assumed Trump was speaking figuratively.



I feel very good about how we are going to run our convention, Spicer said.



But Tea Party activist and Trump supporter, Scottie Nell Hughes, argued that keeping the New York billionaire from the nomination could spark backlash.



Riots arent necessarily a bad thing if it means its because its fighting the fact that our establishment Republican Party has gone corrupt and decided to ignore the voice of the people and ignore the process, Hughes told CNN, Wednesday.



But she added a note of confidence that Trumps supporters wouldnt resort to violence.



I know they would not do it, Hughes said. However, they would make sure their voices are heard, that they can't be ignored.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
#coronavirus-additional cases New COVID-19 cases under 30,000 for 4th consecutive day South Korea's new coronavirus cases stayed below 30,000 for a fourth straight day Saturday with the daily death toll down to its 14-week low for a Saturday. The country reporte...

#BLACKPINK BLACKPINK to headline BST Hyde Park festival next year K-pop sensation BLACKPINK will headline British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park in London next year, the group's agency and the festival announced Saturday. The four-member act will...
With news earlier this week that a fifth Indiana Jones movie is on the way, pretty much everyone rolled their eyes at the thoughts of facing into another Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The 2008 entry to the franchise, although a commercial success, was a critical failure. Nobody liked it. How could they? It had Shia LaBeouf aping Marlon Brando, you had CGI monkeys, Steven Spielberg wildly out of step with what audiences expected and Karen Allen - the brilliant Karen Allen - shoehorned in for little or no reason. She deserved better. The few rays of hope for Crystal Skull came from Cate Blancett and her Ukranian mind-control expert and infusing Indiana Jones with the paranoia of the Cold War. That part worked. Everything else didn't.

Harrison Ford, for his part, filled out his part with a decent amount of charm and updated the character to include his now legendary gruffness. There were more than a few winks to the audience about his advancing years, not to mention the fact that Ford's willingness to hurl his body headlong into the action was still present. He could slide back into the leather jacket and hat without skipping a beat; it's just a shame the next story was so weak.

That fault lay with the various scripts that passed through several hands before whatever it was arrived on-screen. Frank Darabot, for example, took one pass at it. The alleged script that landed online - before being quickly suppressed - was beautiful and had everything we'd hoped for a fourth Indiana Jones. The blame, therefore, must rest with David Koepp's take on the script. While the film left it somewhat open for Shia LaBeouf to take on the mantle and become the next Indiana Jones, the revulsion was such that it never came to fruition. Thankfully.

So, what now? How can they honestly expect an audience to become excited about Indiana Jones? And furthermore, why are they doing it? The reason is simple. The Force Awakens. JJ Abrams' hugely entertaining take on Star Wars reminded audiences that, when given a decent script, Harrison Ford can actually be just as wily and charming as he's ever been. Ford's always had an uneasy relationship with his previous characters; whether it be Rick Deckard, Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Ford himself believed the knives were out for him with Crystal Skull, but the real problem with it was that it was just bad.

The only way that Indiana Jones can possibly be attempted for a fifth time is if there's a soft reboot. Basically, do what they did with Star Trek - take certain aspects of the original, but make it relevant to both those that remember the original and entice a new audience. Harrison Ford will be 78 when the film is released in 2019. Sean Connery, when filming The Last Crusade, was 59 when he played Henry Jones, Sr. Like it or not, Harrison Ford simply can't do the same level of action or stunts that is called for with Indiana Jones.

Here comes the harsh truth. There needs to be a passing of the torch with Indiana Jones V. That needs to happen either through Jones' retelling of a story in his earlier life - ala The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - or, perhaps, recasting Shia LaBeouf's character. Even if Harrison Ford is still game for a laugh and wants to continue throwing himself off tanks and riding horseback, the audience just can't buy it anymore. Consider how bad the CGI was in Revenge of the Sith. Ian McDiarmid, the actor who played Palpatine, was unable to complete the complex lightsaber sequences and had to use a stunt double for the majority of these scenes. You look back now and it's patently obvious which is which. Sure, you might have Liam Neeson fully prepared to murder half of Paris to convince people he's an action star, but those films are so ridiculous as to be laughable.

Indiana Jones was an old-school swashbuckling adventure. While it didn't necessarily have a basis in reality, it was convincing for us. Trying to get Harrison Ford to crack his whip and make us believe that he can survive the bumps and bruises of yesteryear isn't going to fly. Let someone - Chris Pratt or Alden Ehrenreich being the two most obvious choices - take the reigns and bring in a new generation along with it. Steven Spielberg, as well, should pass over the director's chair to someone else. There's an entire stable of directors who grew up watching Indiana Jones, learning how to block and pace a scene, how to infuse it with comedy without it being silly and who learned the value of economic dialogue. Directors like Jeff Nichols, Gareth Evans and Edgar Wright could easily bring back the enthusiasm and the buoyancy of the original series.

Spielberg, whether he likes to admit it or not, has become too caught up in technical exercises rather than crafting an entertaining story. Bridge of Spies, although it was serviceable, was perfunctory in how the story was told. There was something almost procedural about it. Meanwhile, The BFG - from what we've seen so far - looks more like a special-effects reel than an imaginative retelling of one of the greatest children's novels ever written. Sparing CGI, a focus on real locations with real stunts - that's what made Indiana Jones great. When they visited Petra in Last Crusade, it felt like they were really there - because they were. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it really did feel like Ford was taking every punch and scrape. There was a texture to it all; rough, unbalanced, craggy - just like Indiana Jones himself.

If Spielberg can pull this off, by essentially breaking himself from his recent habits and refocusing on what made Indiana Jones so special, there's something to hope for here.
Adele's tour has seen more than a few magical moments on the stage.

Whether it's Glenn Murphy and Ronan Scolard heading up to sing in front of literally thousands of people or an on-stage marriage proposal, she's made a huge impact with her tour so far. That looks set to continue as Adele announced - on-stage, of course - that she's to headline this year's Glastonbury Festival on Saturday night.

As @Adele just announced live on stage in London, she will headline Saturday night at this year's Glastonbury Festival!  Glastonbury Festival (@GlastoFest) March 18, 2016

Last year's performance saw Kanye West proclaiming himself to be the greatest living rock star and, well, attempting to sing Queen. Let's not relive it.

Adele joins Muse and Coldplay who'll be headlining the other nights of the festival, not to mention other acts due to be announced.
A longtime producer and collaborator of David Bowie's has discussed his opinion that the music industry is in peril.

Speaking at the SXSW festival in Texas, uber-respected producer Tony Visconti discussed the future of music and how the 'next David Bowie' is out there but cannot avail of the opportunities that there once were.

"The next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Bruce Springsteen, but they're not getting the shot," he said. "They're not being financed."

During his keynote speech, Visconti - who produced 14 of Bowie's albums, including his final one, 'Blackstar', also read from a short story that he had written about a vision of the music industry in the future, where only one record label existed on the planet, and they only released one single per week, chosen via a lottery.

He said: You know, theres kind of a downward spiral and its been happening for awhile, where singles all sound the same, where sales arent that great, where people are streaming and if you get 20 million streams you make enough for a nice steak dinner. Things are pretty bad."

He added: "I think we're living in a time when formulas are being repeated more than they ever were in the past... I didn't want to come out here saying this stuff, swinging two fists in the air," said Visconti. "If this was really working, record sales would be going through the roof."
Madonna's Australian tour isn't quite going as smoothly as planned.





The star's one-off Tears of a Clown gig in Melbourne last week saw her accused of being drunk or high after she got upset when talking about her son Rocco, and now she's managed to annoy a large number of people in Brisbane by taking the stage more than two hours late the other night.

What's more, when she finally arrived at 11.22pm, she said: "Its you people that get here early thats the problem. Stay home, do your hair and makeup, have a tequila. Roll yourself a fat one  no, I dont believe in that shit. Just come late and I wont have to come early. Weve got three more shows and we want to fix the problem.

Billboard report that hundreds of fans left the venue and asked for a refund, and that public transport to the venue in the suburbs of Brisbane had finished at 12.15am. The show apparently did not finish until 1.15am.

Promoters had allegedly warned fans beforehand that she may not take the stage until 10.30pm, despite being advertised to begin at 9pm.

Journalist Nathanael Cooper of the Brisbane Times described her comments as 'breathtakingly arrogant'. Not far off the mark there... we'd also add 'overprivileged diva with no respect for fans who have to get home or get up for work the next day', mind you.
It's all in the key change, folks.

If you'd wondered just how big Adele has become over the last year or so, here's your answer - although we're not sure that she'd take the phrase 'They'll be singing your songs in courtrooms around the world' as a compliment.

A criminal up on charges in a court in Ann Arbor, Michigan offered a musical apology to the judge, singing a song that sounded suspiciously like it was inspired by Adele's global smash 'Hello'.

According to the Ann Arbor News, 21-year-old Brian Earl Taylor - who was being charged with unlawful imprisonment and carrying a concealed weapon - sang the song to Judge Darlene O'Brien, and the video was recorded on courtroom video, as his lawyers and the people gathered in the court shifted uncomfortably.

His own lyrics went:

"Hello there, your honor

I want to say I'm sorry for the things I've done and I'll try and be stronger in this life I chose

But I want you to know -- that door, I closed

And your honor I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

To my mother I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

To the victim I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry"

Unfortunately it didn't quite work out for him, as Taylor was sentenced to 17 years - although Judge O'Brien did say he was 'obviously a talented young man'.

Watch the video below:

Via Billboard
The cancellation of Hannibal a few months ago was a particularly harsh blow to intelligent, artful TV.

The series, which dealt with the life and exploits of Hannibal Lecter before Silence of the Lambs, was regularly praised for its incredible writing, strong visuals and pitch-performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy. In fact, the show was so popular that it was the 5th most pirated of 2013.

It's that very reason that producer Martha DeLaurentiis believes contributed to Hannibal's eventual cancellation from television. "When nearly one-third of your audience for Hannibal is coming from pirated sites... You dont have to know calculus to do the math. If a show is stolen, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fairly compensate a crew and keep a series in production," explained DeLaurentiis in a recent interview.

She makes a fair point, to be honest. Hannibal always had a small viewership, however those who were committed watched it however they could and, yes, some of it came from piracy. However, it goes to show that if over 50,000 people are prepared to sign a petition begging NBC - the studio behind Hannibal - to put it back on the air, it's clearly got an audience - even if they can't be counted in the same way by ratings.

For their part, NBC were proud of Hannibal and promoted the show as best they could. What's more, everyone seems to have moved on to better things in the interim. Mads Mikkelsen is now lined up for Star Wars: Rogue One whilst Hugh Dancy is already signed up to upcoming TV series The Path. Showrunner Bryan Fuller, meanwhile, is taking over the Star Trek TV series and all signs so far for that endeavour are extremely positive.

While it all may have worked out for the topline people, Hannibal's demise does bring up an worrying trend for TV. Game of Thrones, as we know, regularly tops the piracy charts and HBO, for their part, don't give a crap. The audience is built by any means necessary, but if shows like Mr. Robot don't find an outlet outside of the US, what are people to do but pirate them?

Hannibal's cancellation means that if people want these shows to continue, they have to watch via conventional means. But how?

Who knows. All we know is we're still bummed out that Hannibal was cancelled.

Via Yahoo!
New airports needed to boost business aviation Updated: 2016-03-18 08:02 By Abudul Latheef(China Daily)

Workers clean planes taking part in an industry expo at Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport.[Photo/Xinhua]

The man who tracks the wealth of China's high-net-worth individuals believes the government's plan to build scores of new airports in the next five years will boost the country's business aviation sector.

"It's brilliant news, and will help growth substantially," said Rupert Hoogewerf, publisher of the Hurun Report featuring China and global rich lists.

"The number of airports in China is very limited compared with countries where private aircraft ownership is high," he said in a telephone interview from Shanghai, where business aviation leaders will be gathering next month for a major conference.

Hoogewerf spoke to China Daily last week after a draft document for the country's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) submitted to the national legislature, pledged to build more than 50 new civilian airports by 2020.

The lack of airports has long been cited as a factor holding back growth in business aircraft ownership in China.

Hoogewerf's latest list of the superrich, released last month, showed that China has the largest number of billionaires in the world at 568, compared to 535 in the United States.

But the number of business aircraft in the country remains relatively low, around 400 at the beginning of 2015, industry figures show.

By comparison, there are about 15,000 owners of 17,000 business aircraft in the US, according to the Washington-based National Business Aviation Association.

The US also has the most airportsmore than 19,000 at the end of 2014, a majority of them designated for civilian use. China has only a few hundred airports open to civilian use.

Hoogewerf noted there are other factors as well, affecting the pace of growth in China.

"One is the rules covering business aircraft operation.

"If you register onshore, you have to pay a 25 percent tax. If you register offshore, you've to follow a lot of complicated rules to operate the aircraft within China," he said.

"Another is that not all billionaires are cash-rich at the moment because of the stock market performance."

Despite that he and others are optimistic about the market potential.

"We are confident that business aviation in Asia and China will continue to grow, perhaps at a slower pace, but still growing," said Charlie Mularski, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Asian Business Aviation Association.

Most major players in the Chinese market including Airbus SAS, The Boeing Co, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp and Embraer SA, are equally optimistic.

"China is one of the largest growth markets in the world today, both for airlines and business jets, and Airbus sees it as an important market for its corporate jets in the coming years," said David Velupillai, marketing director at Airbus Corporate Jets.

Growing business in China will be high on the agenda when delegates from around the world meet in Shanghai for the Asian Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition, April 12 through 14. Some 40 aircraft will be on show at ABACE 2016.
Pharma tycoon looks for overseas healthcare deals Updated: 2016-03-18 08:06 (Agencies)

Liu Dianbo, chairman of Luye Group Ltd, is on a hunt for overseas healthcare businesses as he seeks to expand beyond pharmaceuticals and tap rising demand from more affluent Chinese for higher-quality services.

After agreeing to buy an Australian hospital operator in a $688 million deal last year, the group is looking for more hospital assets to acquire outside China, Liu said in an interview this week in Jiangsu province. A professor-turned businessman, he plans to list Luye's healthcare arm in Asia within three years.

The group already has a publicly traded pharmaceutical businessLuye Pharma Group Ltd, which sells drugs for conditions including cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Liu's goal is to introduce more international hospital brands into the country as patients show a greater willingness to pay for better care. Public hospitals in China are overburdened by the rising incidence of illnesses like heart disease and diabetes, and patients often face overflowing waiting rooms and lengthy lines.

Luye is looking for hospital deals in regions including Australia, Singapore, Southeast Asia, the United States and Europe, and is putting a special focus on those with treatment specialties that can be useful for China.

By buying up established foreign brands, it would gain the financial ability to raise funds and bundle them later into an initial public offering. Liu plans to accomplish that within three years, possibly through a listing of that business in Singapore, Hong Kong or the Chinese mainland.

"Healthcare assets have to be listed because the cycle is long and requires large amounts of funding," Liu said.

The group has also acquired Singapore-based Vela Diagnostics to venture into precision medicine, while its affiliates have made similar acquisitions in other parts of Asia.

The pharmaceutical company hopes to have the extended-release version of its Parkinson's drug to be approved in the US by as early as the second half of 2018. Extended-release medicines typically deliver their ingredients more slowly into the bloodstream. It expects another schizophrenia medicine approved in the US in late 2017.

While Luye probably won't see new drugs coming out of the existing pipeline over the coming year due to regulatory delays, it is looking at other ways to boost growth, Liu said.

"We are still hoping to push out some relatively large products to the market through acquisitions, cooperation or business development domestically or overseas," said Liu.

Luye is not likely to license its drugs to another company to sell overseas, and prefers to build its own global capacity through M&As and tie-ups to market products in developed markets.

A former biology lecturer, Liu started his own business with two partners in 1994. By 2014, Luye had revenue of about 3.2 billion yuan ($480 million).
One-stop app Updated: 2016-03-18 08:37 By Chen Yingqun and Su Qiang(China Daily Europe)

What started as a social media tool has morphed into a platform that can do virtually anything

Shayne Rochfort is an Australian who lives in Thailand, but the companion he relies on daily to survive socially and professionally is neither Australian nor Thai; it is Chinese - the phenomenally successful messaging app WeChat.

Rochfort, who has lived in the northern city of Chiang Mai for six years, started using the app in 2013 and says he has more than 2,000 contacts listed on it.

He is one of 650 million monthly active WeChat users worldwide, who have seen the transformation of what started as little more than a handy piece of software to help friends stay in touch into an indispensable tool now used to do all manner of commercial transactions and that has joined the arsenal of weapons that companies deploy to help their businesses grow.

Rochfort says WeChat has been invaluable in promoting his travel book, China to Chiang Mai, which will go on sale in China soon.

"I often use the 'People Nearby' function (of WeChat) to meet travelers in Chiang Mai," he says. "When they add me (to their list of contacts) I usually send out the food section of my book and a one-day trip planner so people know how to get around Chiang Mai."

When he first put a web link to his book on a section of WeChat called Moments, about 200 people visited the website almost immediately, he says.
China vows to root out soil pollution Updated: 2016-03-18 08:07 By Zheng Jinran(China Daily)

Threats posed by air and water pollution have often overshadowed the nation's contaminated farmland, but now the government has made the first moves to tackle a hidden killer. Zheng Jinran reports.

China has widened the scope of its anti-pollution efforts to include soil pollution for the first time.

A specific plan of action for the prevention and control of soil pollution will come into force during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), and the nation's first specific national law on the control and prevention of soil pollution is being drafted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

"The draft will be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for discussion in 2017, and placed on the legislative agenda," said Yuan Si, deputy director of the NPC's environmental protection and resources conservation committee, speaking at a media briefing about the legislation on March 10.

Although China already has legislation covering air and water pollution, there is no law to prevent soil pollution, let alone any comprehensive and practical legal specifications, he said.

The first national survey of soil quality, jointly conducted by the ministries of environmental protection and land and resources in April 2014, revealed the gravity of the situation.

Contaminants were discovered in more than 16 percent of soil samples collected across 6.3 million square kilometers of China's 9.6 million sqm, and farmland was found to have been hit particularly badly. The situation was far worse in the southern regions than in the north, and the levels contamination in major industrial zones, such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Northeast of the country, were higher than the national average.

Soil pollution can affect food safety, people's standards of living and the country's sustainable development. That means legislative support, for regulations similar to the regulations already in place to control and reduce air and water pollution, is urgently needed, Yuan said.

Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said the legislative process will be backed up by the Action Plan on Soil Pollution Prevention and Control, a national campaign targeting soil pollution, which is expected to be launched this year.

Speaking at a March 11 media briefing to introduce new measures to control air, water and soil pollution, Chen said the program took longer than expected to prepare, partly because of poor basic information about soil pollution.

"But we have introduced pilot programs to control soil pollution and restore quality in 10 provinces, and improved the warning systems in regions badly affected by heavy-metal pollution," he said.

New binding targets

China's war on pollution began in earnest in 2013, when an action plan was published to tackle air pollution, followed up last year by measures targeting contaminated water.

With the upcoming action plan on soil pollution, the country is taking steps to further raise the general quality of the environment by 2020.

Having promoted agricultural technologies in her village for more than 20 years, Qiu Xinghong, a national legislator, is calling for thorough surveys to be conducted into rural soil pollution, and for systematic efforts to control the deterioration of the land.

"Contamination along some rivers and in farmland has made the soil black and infertile," said the 43-year-old from Jiexi county in Guangdong province, who is deputy head of the county's agricultural technologies promotion center and an NPC deputy.

Because the excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has contaminated the soil, Qiu expends time and effort every year to show farmers how to apply the correct amount to their land.

In addition, a number of small workshops that produce preserved plums, a local delicacy, and factories that make wires and cables have also discharged untreated sewage directly into local rivers, she said.

"The (provincial, city and county) governments have shut down a lot of polluting factories, but there's still a lot to do with regard to the excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides," she added.

Qiu was not the only deputy at the recent two sessions to call for greater efforts to control soil pollution.

Tang Ming, a CPPCC National Committee member and professor of agriculture at the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Yangling, Shaanxi province, also submitted a proposal calling for tougher controls.

He cited data from the environmental and agriculture ministries that show that up to 2009, heavy-metal contamination of the soil caused reductions in grain yields and resulted in a loss of 2 billion yuan ($307 million), and that industrial wastewater was used to irrigate 1.4 million hectares of farmland, causing further contamination.

"Soil contaminated by heavy-metals poses a further risk to human health via the grain and polluted water," he said.

"It's time for governments to tackle soil pollution in the same way we curb air and water pollution."

Administrative reform

To achieve the aims of the plan, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has reformed its administrative structure by eliminating two departments - pollution prevention and control, and pollutants emission control - and setting up three new offices to target air, water and soil pollution.

The reform will streamline the working process and make the efforts to tackle pollution more efficient, according to Chen, the minister.

Moreover, new, binding targets on pollution control have been listed in the five-year plan for the first time. They stipulate that by 2020 the number of days of good air quality in 338 cities must be more than 80 percent per year, In addition, the concentration of PM2.5 - particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, so small that it can enter the bloodstream - should be reduced by 18 percent in major cities by the same year.

The new regulations have been well-received by experts and the public.

Wu Shunze, deputy head of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning - a think tank - said the guideline is a signal that the country has shifted the focus of its environmental protection strategies, which is a major reform.

The binding targets will force governments at all levels to impose tougher regulations, and to improve efficiency in their efforts to reduce pollution, "but it's only a start. To move forward, we will need follow-up plans to set more targets for governments," he said.

Barbara Finamore, Asia director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international environmental NGO, said the plan represents an important step forward in China's war on pollution, and the most striking feature is the emphasis on enforcement.

"This (to realize the goals, standards and reforms set out in the plan) will require a strong regulatory approach, as well as building the capacity for enforcement and compliance at both the provincial and local levels," she wrote in an e-mail exchange with China Daily.

Meanwhile, experts said the existing action plans on air and water pollution control and prevention are working as planned.

For example, China is making visible progress in controlling air pollution: last year, PM2.5 readings fell by more than 14 percent in 74 major cities, and the Pearl River Delta region achieved overall compliance with the national standard. The improvement in the air quality has been so pronounced that it has been observed by NASA satellites.

Progress has also been made in the control of water pollution. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has completed a wide-ranging survey of severely polluted rivers in urban regions and has set schedules for greater improvements.

"The current situations regarding air, water and soil pollution are different, yet connected with the sources of pollution," said Yang Fuqiang, a senior analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who stressed that air and water pollution are far more visible than soil pollution, which means it often goes unnoticed as a result.

About 40 percent of the mercury in China's air is the result of burning coal, and the poisonous element can fall to earth and contaminate soil and water, he said, adding that industries that rely on coal, such as mining, chemicals and power plants, can cause pollution during both extraction and processing.

The three types of pollution are interconnected, so governments should make coordinated efforts to tackle all three, and also take joint controls into consideration when formulating policies, he said.

Contact the writer at zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn

Bulldozers from a non-ferrous metal processing company spread waste residue across a mudflat in Wanwu township, Ningde, Fujian province. Last year, the mercury level in the mudflat's soil was 10 times higher than the national standard. Chen Jie / for China Daily

Smoke is emitted from chimneys at Gengchen Casting Materials Corp in Jinan, Shandong province, as lingering smog shrouds the city. Guo Xulei / Xinhua

A fisherman's wife wipes away tears on a boat on Tuohu Lake in Wuhe county, Anhui province, as thousands of fish killed by pollution float on the surface of the water. Liu Junxi / Xinhua

(China Daily 03/18/2016 page6)
Great grains of China Updated: 2016-03-18 08:42 By Pauline D Loh(China Daily Europe)

Editor's note: To understand China you have to sit down to eat. Food is the adhesive that holds the Chinese social fabric together. In the face of increasing globalization, food is also one of the last strong visages of community and culture.

The diversity of staple grains and cereals in China is as broad as the country is large. Most food historians agree that the Yangtze River forms a rough division between north and south.

Northern China mainly uses wheat to create an encyclopedic spread of noodles, buns and dumplings. In the south, rice is the main staple, although the varieties range in color - red, white, yellow and purple - and in texture, from long-grained or short-grained to glutinous or scented.

Grains have become premium health supplements that tout the benefits such as in buckwheat, naked oats, sorghum and oats. Provided to China Daily

It was not always simply rice or wheat. The first five grains listed in Huangdi Neijing, the first farmers' reference that translates as the Inner Canons of the Yellow Emperor, were soya bean, millet, rice, red and mung beans, and wheat.

Wheat became widely accepted only after Silk Road merchants introduced new strains, but the terroir in the Central Plains suited this grain so perfectly that it became the most widely cultivated.

In what is now Hebei, Shanxi and Henan provinces, wheat is still the main grain. Chefs in Shanxi are known for their vast repertoire of noodles, which can range from delicate strands of hand-cut egg noodles to chunks of dough rapidly shaved into boiling water.

It is probably no coincidence that the shapes and varieties of Chinese noodles often mirror the pasta of the Mediterranean region.

The difference is in the sauces and rituals. Food is symbolic in the Middle Kingdom, and to the Chinese the long strands represent longevity. To this day, while the loving Western parent may bake a cake for the birthday child, the caring Chinese mother will lovingly cook birthday noodles.

Chinese noodles are also more often than not eaten in soup. Even when the noodles are eaten with sauce they tend to swim in thick gravy.

The humble noodle may be rapidly rolled out and cut for a simple family meal, but they are also always included in Chinese banquets that celebrate births, deaths and marriages.

Various regions have specific rituals associated with eating noodles.

In Shanxi, elderly folks are honored with village feasts during which guests pick out the longest noodle in their own bowl and place it in front of the celebrant. Thus, the birthday boy or girl gathers the collective good wishes of the happy congregation.

In certain villages, newly weds share a bowl of noodles after the guests are gone and before they retire to the nuptial bed.

And when a child celebrates his first birthday, he or she is fed noodles and a hard-boiled egg that has been dyed an auspicious red. The same dish of noodles appears once again when a child is about to take an important examination, go for a job interview or embark on a long journey.

In comparison, the eating of rice is more mundane, although it is still made into special dishes to mark important occasions.

Deep in the hills of the southwest, rice is steeped in herbal infusions to turn it black, red and yellow. These are then shared on long tables laid out in the main street of the village during Chinese New Year and other festivals.

In the southern provinces of Fujian and Taiwan, precious glutinous rice is cooked with salted meat and oily deep-fried shallots to announce the arrival of a new baby.

Recently, there has been a shift back to wuguzaliang, the five coarse grains and rough cereals that our country cousins still enjoy. In the cities these have become premium health supplements that tout the benefits of such as buckwheat, naked oats, sorghum and oats.

As far as the land is concerned, we have come full cycle.

pauline@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/18/2016 page18)
Agriculture expert puts down roots in Kenya Updated: 2016-03-18 08:42 By Hou Liqiang(China Daily Europe)

When Liu Gaoqiong was dispatched to Kenya's Egerton University to join a Chinese government education program in 1997, he admits he originally thought it would be a hardship post.

Today, he is married to a Kenyan woman, with whom he has three daughters, and says the country is his second home. He has even been accepted as a son of his wife's tribe, the Kalengi.

The 52-year-old agricultural professor is now devoted to relieving Kenya's food security problems: "I live my life to the fullest here, and there is still a lot that I can do."

Liu Gaoqiong has been in Kenya since 1997 and often goes to Kenyan farms to help farmers with problems they encounter. Hou Liqiang / China Daily

Liu, who previously worked at Nanjing University of Agriculture, says he found Kenya to be "pleasantly different" from his expectations when he arrived and that the people were friendly.

Yet despite his solid knowledge and practical experience, he says he found it difficult at first to teach in English at Egerton, the main campus of which is in Njoro, about 180 kilometers northwest of Nairobi. "Sometimes my students and I just looked at each other, confused," he recalls.

He had to spend much more time on lesson plans than he had in China and had to use several dictionaries to find explanations for technical terms his students would understand.

In addition to teaching at undergraduate and graduate's level, he conducts scientific research, manages Egerton's Horticultural Research Center, acts as a bridge between the Njoro and Nanjing universities, and manages the foreign aid training program at Egerton that is supported by China's Ministry of Education.

He can also often be seen in rural areas, training farmers and local agriculture officials, and participating in pest prevention and control, which can bring fresh challenges. For example, last year, the vegetable leaf miner, a pest not indigenous to Kenya, wreaked havoc in the country. Liu and his colleagues helped develop a way for farmers to stop the pest from spreading.

Although the scientific research conditions in Kenya are not perfect and receive limited funds, Liu says he is proud, as his students are putting their skills to use across Kenya and even in other African countries.

"When I arrived, I found many managers of Kenyan farms were Europeans. Now many of them have been replaced by graduates from Egerton."

Liu has helped more than 1,000 students graduate from the university.

Away from the school, the professor is also director of the Kenya Overseas Chinese Association in Nakuru county, which administers Njoro, and is a member of the local Lions Club.

"My schedule is so tight that I often forget to do things," he says. He manages thanks to support from his wife, Elizabeth Chepkemboi, whose parents worked at Egerton before retiring.

"I'd been in Kenya for five years before I met Elizabeth. With a proper understanding of cultural differences, we've found no big problems communicating," Liu says.

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/18/2016 page19)
Man on Mars? Chinese could be the first Updated: 2016-03-18 08:43 By Andrew Moody(China Daily Europe)

Growing army of engineers help China gain the upper hand in cutting-edge technologies and medical advances, says author

Max von Zedtwitz believes the Chinese may not only be the first to land a man on Mars, but also the first to cure cancer.

The managing director of GLORAD, a research and development think tank, says the sheer number of science and engineering graduates being churned out by Chinese universities could dramatically speed up the whole process of innovation.

INNOVATION GURU Max von Zedtwitz believes the Chinese could be the first to cure cancer. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

While it took 200 years to move from the steam engine to the Internet, there could be major breakthroughs in what are now considered frontiers of science in just a matter of decades, he says.

"Innovation is to some extent a numbers game. If you just have one idea per 1,000 people, then a country that has a 1.4 billion population is going to have an advantage over anyone else."

Von Zedtwitz, who was speaking in the business lounge of the Sofitel Wanda Hotel in Beijing, had come over from the United States to promote his new book, Created in China: How China is Becoming a Global Innovator, which he has co-written with Georges Haour, a professor of technology and innovation management at the IMD Business School in Switzerland.

Although now based in San Francisco, the 46-year-old Swiss is no stranger to China, with Glorad being partly based in Shanghai and he himself having spent a large part of the past decade as associate professor of innovation management at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

"What we wanted to get across in the book was the impact of all the agents and actors involved in innovation in China, including the government, the education system and the companies. Outside of China, all the focus is on the big companies like Huawei and Alibaba that are global leaders, but what is not always seen is the role smaller companies are now playing in innovation."

The book points out that China is to increase fivefold the proportion of GDP it devotes to innovation from 0.5 percent in 1995 to 2.5 percent by 2020. This will involve the need for 3.7 million scientists working in research and development.

Currently, the figure is the same as the European level, 2 percent - despite the EU setting a target of 3 percent in 2007.

This has resulted in a 17 percent annual increase in patents since 2005 with applications reaching 2 million in 2014, three times as many as that of the United States, although importantly, a smaller proportion are higher quality invention patents.

Currently, 31 percent of undergraduate degrees in China are in engineering compared with 5 percent in the US, and by 2030 the country aims to have 200 million college graduates.

"There is definitely a race going on and I don't think the West has actually caught up with the severity of that race. China is opening up a new international front in the area of innovation. Because people matter so much in the race, the more people you have, the better you are at it."

Von Zedtwitz believes one of the cutting-edge areas could be in finding a cure for cancer.

"Cancer is a big issue in China because of fears of the impact of the environment on people's health. Because of the size of the country's population, many more people are going to be dying of cancer in China than anywhere else.

"There are also going to be a lot of resources devoted in China to diseases that affect older people such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and cardiovascular illnesses because China's population is aging fast. I think medical technology will be a cutting-edge area for China."

Von Zedtwitz says it would be wrong to expect instant breakthroughs since the lead time for scientific development can often take between 30 and 40 years.

He cites Tu Yoyou, the Chinese pharmacist who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine last year for developing the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. She began work in this area in the late 1960s, but the drug only became available in the middle of the last decade, eventually saving millions of lives.

"A breakthrough discovery generally takes about 30 years, certainly in terms of bringing it to market. So what we are doing now in terms of research and development might not have any impact until 2046," he says.

Von Zedtwitz, whose parents were originally from Germany, was born and brought up in Switzerland.

He studied computer science at ETH Zurich, one of the world's leading technological institutions, before a first spell in the Far East, working at a research institute in Kyoto in Japan in the mid-1990s. He returned to Switzerland to do his doctorate at the University of St Gallen, moving on to become a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard.

At just 29, he became one of the youngest professors in Switzerland at IMD, one of Europe's top business schools.

In 2002, he had a choice to teach in California or Beijing, and he chose the latter.

"There were not many people then who could say they had gone and worked in China, so that is the path I chose," he says.

After Tsinghua, he helped build a global innovation practice at a management consultancy before running GLORAD, which stands for the Center for Global R&D Management and Innovation, with a base at Tongji Universty in Shanghai.

It also is located at the University of St. Gallen, Kaunas University of Technology and in Silicon Valley, where von Zedtwitz moved to in 2014.

One area where China arguably has not been as fast as the US is in space exploration. American Alan Shepard went into space in 1961 and it took from there just eight years for Neil Armstrong to be the first man to walk on the moon. China had its first man in space in 2003, but is not expected to land a man on the moon until 2023.

"I suppose it is like Christopher Columbus sailing to America. After he had done that, it was hard to replicate.

"The purpose of going to the moon now is not the achievement itself but the commercial aspects of space exploration. It is not about planting a flag but about having permanently manned stations on the moon."

Many believe that China is likely to be the first to land a man on Mars by, according to some estimates, 2060. The return journey would be expected to take at least 21 months.

"I wouldn't be surprised if China gets there first. Those who go may have to do so without the prospect of coming back. Even I, if I was 20 years older with 10 or 15 years left to live, might want to go and live on Mars. Why not?"

Despite the massive investment in research and development in China, some argue that it is held back by its Confucianism culture.

According to some, creativity is stifled by the hierarchical structures, where those with ideas defer to their supervisors.

"I think it has more of a confused legacy. On the one hand, Confucianism is not a culture that necessarily favors innovation because it is a philosophy of stability. Innovation requires change, which is often unpleasant," he says.

"Yet it also places emphasis on education, and education drives innovation. And that is where China's advantage currently lies."

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

( China Daily European Weekly 03/18/2016 page32)
Great grains of China Updated: 2016-03-18 08:42 By Pauline D Loh(China Daily Europe)



Grains have become premium health supplements that tout the benefits such as in buckwheat, naked oats, sorghum and oats. Provided to China Daily

Editor's note: To understand China you have to sit down to eat. Food is the adhesive that holds the Chinese social fabric together. In the face of increasing globalization, food is also one of the last strong visages of community and culture.

The diversity of staple grains and cereals in China is as broad as the country is large. Most food historians agree that the Yangtze River forms a rough division between north and south.

Northern China mainly uses wheat to create an encyclopedic spread of noodles, buns and dumplings. In the south, rice is the main staple, although the varieties range in color - red, white, yellow and purple - and in texture, from long-grained or short-grained to glutinous or scented.

It was not always simply rice or wheat. The first five grains listed in Huangdi Neijing, the first farmers' reference that translates as the Inner Canons of the Yellow Emperor, were soya bean, millet, rice, red and mung beans, and wheat.

Wheat became widely accepted only after Silk Road merchants introduced new strains, but the terroir in the Central Plains suited this grain so perfectly that it became the most widely cultivated.

In what is now Hebei, Shanxi and Henan provinces, wheat is still the main grain. Chefs in Shanxi are known for their vast repertoire of noodles, which can range from delicate strands of hand-cut egg noodles to chunks of dough rapidly shaved into boiling water.

It is probably no coincidence that the shapes and varieties of Chinese noodles often mirror the pasta of the Mediterranean region.

The difference is in the sauces and rituals. Food is symbolic in the Middle Kingdom, and to the Chinese the long strands represent longevity. To this day, while the loving Western parent may bake a cake for the birthday child, the caring Chinese mother will lovingly cook birthday noodles.

Chinese noodles are also more often than not eaten in soup. Even when the noodles are eaten with sauce they tend to swim in thick gravy.

The humble noodle may be rapidly rolled out and cut for a simple family meal, but they are also always included in Chinese banquets that celebrate births, deaths and marriages.

Various regions have specific rituals associated with eating noodles.

In Shanxi, elderly folks are honored with village feasts during which guests pick out the longest noodle in their own bowl and place it in front of the celebrant. Thus, the birthday boy or girl gathers the collective good wishes of the happy congregation.

In certain villages, newly weds share a bowl of noodles after the guests are gone and before they retire to the nuptial bed.

And when a child celebrates his first birthday, he or she is fed noodles and a hard-boiled egg that has been dyed an auspicious red. The same dish of noodles appears once again when a child is about to take an important examination, go for a job interview or embark on a long journey.

In comparison, the eating of rice is more mundane, although it is still made into special dishes to mark important occasions.

Deep in the hills of the southwest, rice is steeped in herbal infusions to turn it black, red and yellow. These are then shared on long tables laid out in the main street of the village during Chinese New Year and other festivals.

In the southern provinces of Fujian and Taiwan, precious glutinous rice is cooked with salted meat and oily deep-fried shallots to announce the arrival of a new baby.

Recently, there has been a shift back to wuguzaliang, the five coarse grains and rough cereals that our country cousins still enjoy. In the cities these have become premium health supplements that tout the benefits of such as buckwheat, naked oats, sorghum and oats.

As far as the land is concerned, we have come full cycle.

pauline@chinadaily.com.cn


Accidental ballet star on the rise Updated: 2016-03-18 08:42 By Cecily Liu(China Daily Europe)



Zhang Jinhao performs his own choreography, Dying Swan, at the English National Ballet's emerging dancer competition in 2015. Provided to China Daily

A Chinese-born dancer took ballet when another class was filled, and he learned his life's goal from another unexpected turn of events

That Zhang Jinhao finds himself on stage, living out his love of ballet, is one of the little wonders of life.

He performs from the heart, and clearly this is his life's work.

"It's about feeling the details of every gesture, feeling the emotions and personality of the character I dance, and trying to understand what he is like and what he is trying to communicate," says the 20-year-old rising star of the English National Ballet.

Zhang, who started studying ballet at the age of 4, has won international acclaim, including winning the English National Ballet's emerging dancer competition last year.

He grew up in Dalian, Liaoning province, and started starting ballet by accident. "When I was young, I was very thin and did not eat meals properly, so my mother wanted me to do more exercise. She took me to enroll in a kung fu class, but sadly the class was filled."

The teacher in charge of registration told Zhang's mother that the difference between kung fu and ballet is small, and urged Zhang to try ballet instead.

He joined the English National Ballet in 2014. On stage, he wins his audience over with the perfection of his technique and his ability to create true and believable characters, be it a wealthy boss, a loyal servant or a beautiful swan.

In conversation, his youthful liveliness and passion for the profession shows through strongly, while his 185 centimeter, muscular body commands respect.

Sitting down for an interview in a small office above his rehearsal studio, he elegantly moves his head, hands and feet in the air to demonstrate how concepts like love, promise and suicide are acted out in ballet. Suddenly, these soundless movements seem to vividly describe what writers have attempted to convey for generations.

A favorite role is Basilio in Don Quixote, which is a ballet originally choreographed in 1869, based on episodes taken from the famous Spanish novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes.

When competing in Prix de Lausanne in 2013, Zhang performed the passionate dance of a proud Basilio as he is about to get married. The fast-moving excerpt, lasting for just over a minute on stage, consists of jumps and turns, and paints a cheerful and lively picture representative of Spanish culture. Zhang has loved this dance since high school and prefers the technical and artistic challenges required of the Basilio character, who is more of a free spirit.

Despite years of practice, Zhang felt nervous when he competed in Prix de Lausanne, which turned out to be a life-changing opportunity for him when he won a scholarship to study at the English National Ballet School as a result. In addition to the importance of the competition was the technical challenge of the 3.5 degree stage slope.

"I was so, so nervous," Zhang recalls. "I knew that many dancers actually fell when they landed on their tiptoes after a jump because of this slope, so I dared not to think about the slope when I was on stage."

To overcome this fear, he instead forced himself to forget about the stage, to focus on Basilio's joyful feelings in that particular marriage, to think about Basilio's beautiful bride, and to enjoy himself. "I did it, and I didn't make a single mistake."

Zhang fell in love with ballet immediately when he tried it, and he recollects his childhood encounter with ballet with fondness. "I was the only boy in a class full of girls, and they teased me about it. On the one hand I was embarrassed, but at the same time I enjoyed the attention for being able to stand out."

After four years, it was time for Zhang to choose the path of becoming a professional ballet dancer. "I chose it. But at the age of 8, I did not know what being a professional ballet dancer meant at all," he says.

As a professional dancer, Zhang joined the school affiliated with the Liaoning Ballet, where he trained for six years before starting his undergraduate degree in ballet at Shanghai Tongji University.

The glamorous milestones of Zhang's ballet career came one after other, but one big disappointment taught Zhang how much he really loves ballet.

In 2013, right after his success at the Prix de Lausanne, he continued to train for another international competition in Moscow. "I was not taking any rest, and pushed my body to the extreme of what it could bear. I was tired and didn't look after myself properly."

Zhang had never had a problem with discipline and just kept pushing himself. Just before the competition, he landed on the back of his foot in a jump during a rehearsal and fractured a bone.

For the next four months, Zhang lay on a bed unable to move his foot. "I was disappointed and frustrated. I was scared that I may not be able to dance again after the plaster was taken off."

Those days were the darkest in his memory, where he experienced intense grief and self-doubt. Then came his epiphany. "I realized that I could not live without ballet. I never knew how much I loved ballet until then."

Zhang is now working toward his next goal, which is to eventually perform lead roles at the English National Ballet. "Every performance is a new challenge because I have to do my best to give the audience the best experience."

cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Peek into Chinese politics reveals trends Updated: 2016-03-18 08:40 By Ed Zhang(China Daily Europe)

What has emerged from crucial meetings just concluded in Beijing are four points that indicate where things are heading

Every year, China's two sessions (annual meetings of the National People's Congress and National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) are not much like the parliamentary debates seen in other countries.

But the dual events (they take place in early March and each lasts around two weeks) do have an irreplaceable value as an important window for outsiders to peek into the workings of the Chinese political system.

Then what do the just-closed 2016 two sessions show to international businesspeople and investors? From watching them in Beijing, an observer may derive a few useful thoughts.

First, the government remains cool-headed in dealing with the many difficulties it will have to face (and frankly, for today's China, things can't be more difficult than the times were when Chairman Mao was alive).

There is no panic, no desperation, and finger-pointing among factions. There is no sign of beating a retreat even though many difficulties won't go away easily for the next couple of years at least.

Second, its leaders still harbor ambitious growth goals, even though they've kept saying a slowdown is inevitable and GDP isn't the only thing to gauge officials' merit.

The ambition is clearly reflected by the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) adopted in the two sessions.

Some critics say China is overambitious. It doesn't need to achieve that much. But the point is that the ambition is a political design, for marshaling support from citizens on the one hand, and for setting requirements for local bureaucrats on the other. And they need tough requirements.

Third, the two events have shown that the anti-corruption campaign has not impacted the country's top economic policymaking process. In the past three years, the anti-corruption authorities have rounded up thousands officials for investigation and criminal trials, some of whom once held high positions and immense power.

But there have been few changes among China's top economic officials, leading entrepreneurs (not officials of state-owned enterprises), government think-tank leaders, and senior advisers and economists.

They have proved their integrity in the most intense and extensive anti-corruption campaign in the history of the People's Republic of China. Many of them have been involved in China's reforms since the 1980s. The same brainpower will continue to guide China's economic progress in its forthcoming transition.

That is to say, the making of economic strategies and policies has not been affected by the anti-corruption campaign, as some people have alleged.

With those people remaining in charge of China's economic machine, the scenario of a China falling into a second "cultural revolution" looks even less likely.

Fourth, new discrepancies are emerging. Changing discrepancies are a healthy sign for an economy, and can encourage the flow of resources.

Geographically, people can clearly identify two business belts taking shape in the Chinese mainland. One business belt might be called the e-commerce business belt, covering mostly the newly industrial coastal areas and a few interior urban centers.

From there, all industries and services, and indeed all aspects of life, are connected by the Internet, especially mobile Internet, and much of its business development in the future will be based on e-commerce.

In contrast, the other business belt is the old, rusty industrial belt that covers mainly a few northern and northeastern provinces, where heavy industry and mining used to be the economic pillars.

They also include old industrial cities here and there where the local resources are depleted or are no longer needed in massive quantities.

They will have a hard time reorienting their economies. And the process may last for a considerable length of time. In the process, their growth rate probably will remain below the national average by two or more percentage points.

The question remains whether a third business belt can emerge to convert some of the formerly agrarian and least developed provinces, especially those in the south, into environmentally better-protected areas to attract large numbers of middle-class tourists and retirees.

If the 13th Five-Year Plan can help keep the first business belt stable while turning the third business belt into a reality, the new revenue that their growth generates would be enough for China to cover most of the debts its local governments and companies accumulated in the past few years.

The author is editor-at-large of China Daily.



Contact the writer at edzhang@chinadaily.com.cn
Chinese bidders expected for Turkish nuclear project Updated: 2016-03-18 08:42 By Lyu Chang(China Daily Europe)

The State Nuclear Power Technology Corp stand at an industry expo in Beijing. [Photo by Da Wei / China Daily]

Turkey will open up the bidding process to build the country's third nuclear power plant next year, and an official says he believes Chinese companies will aggressively pursue the contract, worth $22 billion to $25 billion.

The site of the project has been finalized, and the plan is to build four nuclear reactors with a total installed capacity of 5,000 megawatts, says Murat Mercan, Turkey's former deputy energy minister.

He spoke to China Daily during an event in Beijing held by the World Energy Council. Mercan is also a member of the council's Turkish committee.

State Nuclear Power Technology Corp, one of China's three nuclear giants, and the United States-based Westinghouse Electric Corp are potential bidders, he says.

"The bidding will be open to investors and firms from all over the world, but I think Chinese nuclear companies are very competitive in terms of price, safety and technology. China is building nuclear power plants using its own third-generation nuclear reactor, and I don't see why we can't use it."

China is embarking on a massive nuclear power program and plans to export its indigenous models such as CAP1400, a reactor developed by State Nuclear Power Technology, to overseas markets.

Experts say that after construction on the flagship CAP1400 project in Shidao Bay, Shandong province, starts in the first half of this year, foreign buyers will be more convinced about China's capacity to deliver reactors for the global market.

Mercan says Turkey needs at least $70 billion in investments in the energy sector to meet rising demand and optimize its energy mix as it relies heavily on imports.

Russia's Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corp is building the country's first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, in the southern province of Mersin, and the first unit is expected to be completed by 2022.

The second nuclear plant, to be located in the Black Sea province of Sinop, has been contracted to a consortium consisting of Mitsubishi Electric Corp of Japan and French power company EDF.

Sources say there is a great chance for a Chinese company to win the tender next year, given the close ties between the two countries.

Mercan also extended an invitation to Chinese companies to attend the 23rd World Energy Council congress in Istanbul in October.

lvchang@chinadaily.com.cn
China's latest GDP target is attainable, OECD Chief says Updated: 2016-03-18 20:21 By Fu Jing and Tuo Yannan in Paris(chinadaily.com.cn)

Chinese government's target of maintaining a "sustainable" range of 6-7 percent of annual growth is achievable in coming five years while it implements the structural reform, said Angel Gurria, chief of Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). [Photo by Tan Qiuying/China Daily]

The Chinese government's target of maintaining a "sustainable" range of 6-7 percent of annual growth is achievable in the coming five years as the country implements structural reform, said Angel Gurria, chief of Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"Right now for China this growth rate, in my opinion, is much better than the two-digital number, which can easily cause bubbles," Gurria told China Daily during an exclusive interview on Thursday morning at OECD headquarters before his organization's internal discussion on its China outlook.

While he was generally confident towards China's economic prospects for the coming five years, Gurria chaired this session to absorb comments from his team and advisers to hammer out talking points he is going to deliver over the weekend at the China Development Forum in Beijing.

China's top legislators have already approved the national 13th Five-year Economic and Social Development Program (2016-2020) at their annual gathering concluded on Wednesday. The growth target is a minimum of 6.5 percent on averaged basis annually.

Before bouncing back, he said China's economy will drop to 6.5 percent of growth in 2016, from last year's 6.9 percent. And the forecast of 2017 stands at 6.2 percent.

But he suggested that China should not pay too much attention to short-term downturns, which the market easily reacts to ,but concentrate on whether the economy is on track or not.

"We maintain this forecast mainly because of the world economic situation and China's ongoing gear-changing process of structural reform," said Gurria.

In its November economic outlook report, his organization forecast that the world economy would grow at 2.8 percent and 3.3 percent respectively in 2016 and 2017. But due to slowing growth in both some emerging and advanced economies and low prices which depressed commodity exporters, the OECD last month revised the forecast down to 2.5 percent and 3.1 percent respectively.

But the OECD has not revised China's forecasts in its February report. "We did not revise down China's forecasts this time, though globally the downward pressures are gathering," said Gurria.

At the same time, Gurria said the potential in implementing China's economic structural reform will also needs time to take effect before the economy bounces back.

He also said China's social policies in boosting inclusiveness by relaxing its family planning policy, household registration system and further efforts in lifting people out of poverty are all useful tools to speed up economic growth but the impact of these policies also needs time to be visible.

Gurria said China's determination in upgrading its growth quality and uplifting its businesses' position in the global economic chain, as well as improving the added value of its economy are viable options in the next five years.

"China is experiencing complicated transition. I think it is normal that there exist ups and downs and fluctuations. And the focuses of macroeconomic control should be whether the economy is on track or not," said Gurria.

Gurria said China will be encountering new challenges and solutions are not so simple. "However, I think the country's economy will be sustained in the range decided by the government."

Gurria said his organization will be working with the Chinese government on many global economic topics to prepare for G20 summit, which is scheduled in early September in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

China will chair the G20 summit.

The policy research topics will be focused on investment, trade, taxation, energy, green finance and anti-corruption to help deliver tangible outcomes at the G20 summit, said Gurria, whose organization is one of the key international organizations playing roles in contributing to the outcomes of the world leaders' gathering.

China has been in partnership with Gurria's OECD for twenty years and last July, Premier Li Keqiang paid a historic visit to OECD headquarters during his tour in France. China has joined the OECD Development Center, which includes up to 50 members and 22 of them are non-OECD countries.

Responding to the question of China's membership of the market economy club, he said: "We are ready and it is up to China's decision," said Gurria, whose organization has started to welcome China to join OECD nearly ten years ago.
Virgin investigates Shanghai flight incident, expresses regret Updated: 2016-03-19 00:21 By Chris Peterson in London(chinadaily.com.cn)

Virgin Atlantic said it had investigated an altercation on board one of its flights to Shanghai from London on March 1, and added that it "deeply regretted" the unpleasant experience one of its passengers had.

Chinese social media said a Chinese female passenger, on the Virgin flight VS250 on March 1, 2016, alleged she was insulted by a Caucasian male passenger and subsequently allegedly ignored by a flight attendant. The story went viral on social media in China.

By late Friday Beijing time, over 24.6 million users had read about the issue on the Chinese social media site Weibo, which is similar to a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook.

Today Carly O'Donnell, International communications manager for Virgin Atlantic, said their investigations showed there was an altercation between two customers on board the flight, and both passengers became "upset and distressed."

"Our cabin crew did their best to resolve the situation for all customers, including the female customer and her male companion."

"We would like to reiterate that Virgin Atlantic takes a zero tolerance approach to racism," she said in an emailed statement.

"We deeply regret the unpleasant experience our customer had on this flight."

O'Donnell said Virgin Atlantic was aware of the considerable interest in the matter on Chinese social media networks, and airline founder Richard Branson tweeted, in both Mandarin and English, that he was "Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight V250. We do not tolerate abuse and Virgin Atlantic are investigating."

To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
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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.
By Swati Pandey

SYDNEY, March 18 (Reuters) - Twenty-four people, many of them Chinese nationals, have been arrested in Australia and charged with illegally importing drugs, Australia's anti-money laundering regulator said on Friday.

The suspects used Australian-based money transfer operators to send funds offshore to pay for the drugs.

News of the arrests comes weeks after Reuters revealed that risks of money laundering and underground fund-transfers were growing in Australia after its major banks quit the remittance business.

"Many of those involved in the importations were Chinese nationals, based in Australia," the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) said on its website.

"The Australian-based suspects used mobile phones and the Internet, liaised with Chinese companies to organise drug importations."

It did not say when the arrests were made or identify any of those arrested or specify what type of drugs were imported.

The suspects transferred funds between A$1,000 ($765) to A$10,000 from Australia, usually via a remittance dealer, to companies in China. These companies then posted drugs to a variety of names and addresses in Australia, Austrac said.

The Australia-based suspects sent funds to Chinese companies or to "seemingly unrelated" Chinese individuals, making it harder to link the beneficiary in China with the entity that actually sent drugs, Austrac said.

If packages were intercepted, companies in China re-sent the drugs using different sender and recipient information to avoid further detection, it said.

Investigations also uncovered two clandestine drug laboratories, Austrac said, adding police seized 73 kg of drugs, 145 parcels, about A$153,000 in cash, counterfeit licences and improvised weapons.

In a separate announcement, Austrac said it cancelled the registration of an affiliate of the U.S. money transfer giant Western Union although it was not clear if it was involved in the crackdown.

The decision by Australia's major banks to quit the country's $35 billion a year remittance business last year is driving fund-transfers underground and exposing the country as a weak link in the global fight against money laundering and financial crime, regulators, operators who handle remittances and police said. ($1 = 1.3075 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Robert Birsel)
By Matt Siegel

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia plans to extend its scrutiny of overseas investment to include infrastructure sales by state governments, following an outcry over the leasing of a northern port to a Chinese firm said to have close ties to the country's military.

The federal Foreign Investment Review Board will be given oversight of the sale of critical infrastructure assets, Treasurer Scott Morrison said on Friday, with some A$20 billion (10.35 billion pounds) of state privatisations currently in the pipeline.

The Landbridge Group, owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, was chosen by the Northern Territory government last year to operate the strategic commercial and military Port of Darwin in a 99-year deal worth A$506 million.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull publicly defended the deal following reports that U.S. President Barack Obama had expressed anger at Turnbull for not having informed him of the deal.

Darwin is a hub of cooperation between a rotation of U.S. Marines, as well as the terminus for a critical underwater data cable.

"From 31 March this year the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) will formally review critical infrastructure assets sold by state and territory governments," Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

"While governments can and do work with the Commonwealth when selling such assets, the proposed change will formalise the process."

Upcoming major privatisations include the ports of Melbourne and Fremantle and Australian electricity distributor Ausgrid, but the change was unlikely to affect the sale process, said lawyer Simon Haddy, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills.

Most Australian state governments already regularly consult with FIRB on strategic sales to overseas firms, he said.

"I think it's part of a trend of formalising these processes and broadening the nature of what the Australian national interest is ... with an increasing focus on, particularly those broader issues of national security and the national revenue base," he told Reuters.

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Morrison said the changes would not be retroactive.

Although it is officially listed as a private company, Landbridge chairman Ye is a delegate on the advisory body to China's rubber stamp parliament, a high-profile but largely ceremonial position handed out to Communist Party backers.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute called the Landbridge Group a "front" for China's People's Liberation Army in a paper published last year.

A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said Australia alone was responsible for determining its sovereign criteria for foreign investment.

"As Treasurer Scott Morrison said, it is important that critical infrastructure sales are scrutinized to ensure any potential national security risks can be addressed," the spokeswoman told Reuters under the condition of anonymity.

($1 = 1.3074 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Igo Estrela | Getty Images. Amid its worst recession in 25 years, Brazil is also facing its worst political crisis in decades

Amid its worst recession in 25 years, Brazil is also facing its worst political crisis in decades.

CNBC takes a look at what is happening with the South American giant.







Both former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and president Dilma Rousseff, who Lula appointed as his successor in 2010, are under scrutiny along with key figures in their Workers' Party government. The investigation  known as Operation Car Wash or "Operacao Lava Jato"  is looking into a massive corruption scandal at Brazil's state-run oil company, Petrobras.



After Lula was briefly detained last week over accusations of money laundering and concealing ownership of a beachfront condo -- a charge he denies, according to Reuters -- moves were made this week to accelerate his appointment back into government.







It was announced on Wednesday that Lula would take a position in Rousseff's government as her chief of staff, a position she once held during his presidency.

Many critics of the government saw Lula's appointment as an attempt to protect the former premier from prosecution for money laundering. Cabinet members cannot be investigated, charged or imprisoned unless authorized by the Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press.

The announcement was met with enormous protests across 22 of Brazil's 26 states.

On Thursday, two judges issued an injunction saying this appointment could impede the money-laundering investigation into the former premier.

Despite this, Lula was sworn into office late Thursday.





A transcript published by the national media on Wednesday details a phone conversation between Lula and Rousseff that was allegedly taped by Brazilian Federal Police. In it, Rousseff says that her main goal in inviting Lula to join the cabinet is to try to avoid his detention.

Judge Sergio Moro, the federal judge who is leading the corruption probe at the state-run oil company Petrobras, is allegedly behind the transcript leak.



At Lula's swearing-in ceremony, Rousseff accused Moro of violating the constitution and acting in a partisan manner, reported the Associated Press. Lula's appointment now makes him immune from Moro's prosecution.



Story continues





Calls for Rousseff's impeachment have centered on allegations, unrelated to Petrobras, that she broke budget rules intentionally to boost spending as she campaigned for re-election in 2014. A 65-member impeachment committee of the lower house will now formally begin studying whether there are sufficient grounds to remove her, reported Reuters

However, it's not that simple. "It's a presidential regime not a parliamentary regime. So for the president to go down, it just takes a lot," Daniel Tenengauzer, Head of Global FX & EM Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said to CNBC.



Rousseff will have 10 sessions in congress to present her defense, Jimena Blanco, Head of Americas at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC Friday.



Starting Monday, the "clock is now ticking," for Rousseff, said Blanco.







The International Monetary Fund forecasts Brazil's economy will shrink by 3.5 percent this year, following a 3.8 percent contraction in 2015 - a slap in the face for a country until recently hailed as a shining example of a prosperous South American economy.

Business is suffering, said Tenengauzer. "There is nothing going on in Brazil right now. No one is taking a decision given the uncertainty," he told CNBC.

Brazil was recently handed a two-notch downgrade by U.S. ratings agency Moody's, the third agency to strip the country of its investment-grade rating.



"My main concern with the economy right now is people are avoiding taxes as much as they can because they don't believe in the regime so the fiscal story is deteriorating by the minute here and that's a huge concern so we should expect downgrades going forward," Tenengauzer said to CNBC.



However, Brazil's stocks were buoyed Friday by the prospect of a political change in leadership.











"The government focus today (Friday) will be to secure the lifting of injunction so that Lula can practise as minister," Blanco told CNBC. However, it's unclear that if the injunction is lifted, another could come through different courts, she added.

If Brazil's political party survives, Lula has not ruled out re-running for president in 2018.



"At the end of the day, we need clean elections in Brazil," said Tenengauzer, although he echoed the sceptic sentiment of many Brazilians that this would actually happen.







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SANTIAGO, March 18 (Reuters) - Eliodoro Matte, president of Chilean wood pulp company Empresas CMPC, will step down from his post next month, the company said in a note to Chile's SVS securities regulator on Friday.

"Eliodoro Matte Larrain has formally communicated to the company his decision not to apply for the post of director of Empresas CMPC in the election that will take place at the shareholder meeting in April," the company said in the note.

The note said Matte had held the post since 2002.

CMPC has forestry and wood pulp operations in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.

Chile's competition regulator said in October that CMPC had colluded with PISA, purchased by Swedish-owned SCA in 2012, for at least a decade to control nearly 90 percent of Chile's toilet paper and tissue sales and keep prices higher. SCA was fined $15.5 million, while CMPC escaped punishment because it admitted wrongdoing in March.

In December, Peru's consumer regulator said it could sanction Kimberly-Clark Corp with a fine of up to 12 percent of its earnings after competitor CMPC reported the two toilet paper companies fixed prices for years.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery)
* China Feb home prices rise 3.6 pct y/y

* Mega cities post double-digit gains, some smaller cities decline

* Home prices rise in 32 cities in Feb vs 25 in Jan

* Local authorities working on measures to cool key markets

* China metal prices climb on hopes of demand recovery (Adds economist quotes, more policy and economic context)

By Xiaoyi Shao and Clare Jim

BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters) - China's home prices rose at their fastest clip in almost two years in February thanks to red-hot demand in big cities, but risks of overheating in some places combined with weak growth in smaller cities threaten to put more stress on an already slowing economy.

Average new home prices in 70 major cities climbed 3.6 percent in February from a year ago, quickening from January's 2.5 percent rise, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) on Friday.

That was the quickest year-on-year increase since June 2014, and encouragingly, 32 of 70 major cities tracked by the NBS saw annual price gains, up from 25 in January.

Ordinarily, that should be welcome news for policymakers who have rolled out a raft of stimulus measures to support an economy growing at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century.

But the divergence in home prices - surging values in bigger cities and depressed markets in smaller cities plagued by a supply glut - makes Beijing's job harder as it looks to reanimate growth without inflating asset bubbles.

"The government's all-out encouragement of housing sales seems to be working, but at the cost of surging prices in big cities," said Rosealea Yao, an economist at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing.

"These surges in big cities are not sustainable and would increase uncertainties and instability in the overall housing market."

The data showed tier 1 cities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, remained the top performers, with prices surging 56.9 percent, 20.6 percent and 12.9 percent respectively.

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SMALLER CITIES, BIGGER HEADACHES

"Prices in first-tier cities are very expensive now, it's hard for new families to afford a home," said Tan Huajie, vice president China's biggest property firm Vanke.

The trouble is that speculators and ordinary investors, who have been shaken by the summer crash in mainland stock markets, are increasingly ploughing their money into the housing market - most of it going to the frothy sector in big centres.

A slowing economy has also meant most jobs are in the biggest cities, drawing more people into these places and feeding the insatiable demand for homes.

A breakdown of NBS data showed that a slew of government measures and increased lending has failed to arrest persistent softness in property markets in smaller cities where a glut of unsold houses have weighed on prices.

Most third-tier cities still saw on-year prices drops in February, though the declines eased from the previous month.

POLICY CHALLENGE

With the broader economy decelerating amid weak exports, factory overcapacity, slowing investment and high debt levels, authorities are hoping the property market will help stabilise growth.

But signs that some places may be overheating even as prices remain depressed in smaller cities complicate matters for policymakers.

While fears of a hardlanding for China's economy have abated in recent weeks, Beijing cannot afford a housing market crash in the big cities given the real estate industry and related investment activities account for 15 percent of gross domestic product.

Underscoring the importance of the sector to the $10 trillion economy, Friday's home data helped fuel strong gains in steel and iron ore futures in Shanghai.

Senior Chinese officials raised alarm over the country's overheated housing market during an annual parliament meeting this week.

In an effort to deter speculation, some officials have suggested the release of more public land for sale in areas with the hottest price rises, while others have vowed to crack down on players illegally lending home-buyers to make downpayments.

China's housing Minister Chen Zhenggao acknowledged on Tuesday that price divergence in China's big and small cities poses a challenge for housing market policy controls.

"Now one important task for us is to stabilise home prices in tier 1 cities and some tier 2 cities," said Chen.

(Reporting By Xiaoyi Shao and Nicholas Heath; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
A Cisco logo is seen at its customer briefing centre in Beijing, November 14, 2013. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Files

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc will invest over $100 million in India to support the country's ambitious plan to connect thousands of its villages to the internet and create jobs, Executive Chairman John Chambers said on Friday.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a series of initiatives under the 'Digital India,' 'Skill India,' and 'Startup India' schemes to connect millions of Indians to the Internet, create more tech jobs and move more services online.

Chambers said the company will work with federal and provincial governments in India to launch incubation centers for entrepreneurs and training students.

Cisco will invest $40 million of the total planned investment into funding early and mid-stage startups.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Anand Basu)
A nascent effort to organize a third-party bid by a conservative candidate as an alternative to Donald Trump appears to have been put on the back burner  at least until the Republican National Convention, according to a statement from the organizers.

Activist and pundit Erick Erickson, who has feuded with Trump since the billionaires first debate performance in August, helped to organize a meeting of long-time conservative donors and grassroots organizers in Washington yesterday.

Related: The GOPs House of Cards Plots and Conspires to Keep Trump from Victory

Erickson, who hosts a radio show, and founded the popular conservative blog RedState, was the most visible of the group of organizers, which also included former George W. Bush adviser Bill Wichterman and South Dakota businessman Bob Fischer.

On his show Wednesday, Erickson had argued passionately for a third party run against Trump, in which Republicans unhappy with The Donald could offer a true conservative alternative.

His point, boiled down to its essence, was that if Trump is the Republican nominee, he will lose to Hillary Clinton, and in doing so will drag down-ballot Republicans, from US Senators to candidates for the local school board, to defeat with him. This will happen, he said, because a large number of Republicans who simply refuse to vote for Trump wont show up at the polls at all in November, depriving other Republican candidates of their votes.

Therefore, he argued, it is essential for conservatives worried about preserving the party below the level of the president to offer Republicans repelled by Trump a conservative alternative who could attract them to the polls. He dismissed arguments that running a third party candidate would help the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, by arguing that Clinton is bound to win with or without a third party.

Related: Trump to GOP  Im Calling the Shots Now

But after the meeting, Erickson published a statement from the participants on his new website TheResurgent.com that suggested the others in the meeting werent quite ready to make the leap to a third party yet. The statement included a vague call for a unity ticket and for all former candidates who have won delegates to encourage their supporters to stay with them on the first ballot, until the majority of delegates are released from the requirement that they vote for the candidate to whom they were originally bound.

Story continues

We call for a unity ticket that unites the Republican Party, The statement said. If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the partys nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots. (This was a reference to Trumps warning that there could be riots if he is denied the nomination after winning a plurality of the delegates.)

We encourage all former Republican candidates not currently supporting Trump to unite against him and encourage all candidates to hold their delegates on the first ballot. Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump. Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life, and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties.

Related: Is This the GOP Plan to Deny Trump the Nomination?

Later, in an interview with Fox News, Erickson said that the consensus at the meeting was first to try to persuade the remaining two candidates, Florida Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, to join forces.

There's a strong coalition looking at going to the existing candidates, Cruz and Kasich, saying you need to cut a deal and find a unity ticket within the Republican Party, he said. The final fallback option would be a third party, but the consensus is everyone would rather settle this on the convention floor.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
An Uber car is seen parked with the driver's lunch left on the dashboard in Venice, Los Angeles, California, United States July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Edward Taylor and Harro Ten Wolde

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL] has sounded out car companies about placing a large order for self-driving cars, an auto industry source said on Friday.

"They wanted autonomous cars," the source, who declined to be named, said. "It seemed like they were shopping around."

Loss-making Uber would make drastic savings on its biggest cost -- drivers -- if it were able to incorporate self-driving cars into its fleet.

Volkswagen's Audi (VOWG_p.DE), Daimler's (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes-Benz, BMW (BMWG.DE) and car industry suppliers Bosch and Continental (CONG.DE) are all working on technologies for autonomous or semi-autonomous cars.

Earlier on Friday, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Uber had placed an order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, citing sources at both companies.

The top-flight limousine, around 100,000 of which Mercedes-Benz sold last year, does not yet have fully autonomous driving functionality.

Another source familiar with the matter said no order had been placed with Mercedes-Benz. Daimler and Uber declined to comment.

Auto industry executives are wary of doing deals with newcomers from the technology and software business who threaten to upend established business models based on manufacturing and selling cars.

"We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable...then disappeared," a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber.

NOT SO DISTANT DREAM

So-called "autonomous vehicles" have for years been a distant dream but technology advances and a push by Google (GOOGL.O), with its huge financial resources, to introduce a prototype have shifted the race to build them up a gear.

Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas have said they see a $25 billion market for automated driving technology by 2020, with vehicle intelligence becoming "the key differentiating factor". But the brokerage does not expect fully automated cars to hit the road until 2025 or 2030, in part due to regulatory hurdles.

Story continues

In August 2013, Mercedes-Benz responded to the Google push by developing an S-class limousine that drove between the German towns of Mannheim and Pforzheim without any driver input. The 103 km stretch is known as the Bertha Benz route, named after the driver of the first ever car, around 130 years ago.

Earlier this week Mercedes rival BMW (BMWG.DE) said it was considering launching its own ride hailing service in what would amount to a rival business to Uber.

"The value creation is shifting from the actual hardware toward software and services," BMW's new Chief Executive Harald Krueger said on Wednesday. That shift is expected to accelerate with the emergence of computer-driven autonomous vehicles, and BMW is investing in software and technology expertise as a result.

A key hurdle to driverless cars has been the question of liability in the event of an accident. Most countries are signatories to the 1968 United Nations Convention on Road Traffic which stipulates that a person, rather than a computer, must be in control of a vehicle.

In February this year, U.S. vehicle safety regulators softened the rules to allow driverless cars, by saying an artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.

Individual states and some countries have granted permission to test self-driving cars. The U.S. state of Nevada passed a law in June 2011 to allow test drives of autonomous vehicles there.

Auto industry executives say regulators are likely to help pass legislation for self-driving cars if these help cut congestion and pollution.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor and Harro ten Wolde and Jan Schwartz; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Keith Weir)
Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer's CEO Frederico Curado speaks during the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit 2013 in Sao Paulo May 23, 2013. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

(Reuters) - A sales consultant told Brazilian prosecutors he believes planemaker Embraer SA's top officials, including Chief Executive Frederico Curado, knew of illicit payments related to the sale of military aircraft to the Dominican Republic, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Embraer is under investigation by the U.S. and Brazilian authorities for allegedly bribing officials in the Dominican Republic to secure deals for commercial and defense aircraft.

According to official summaries of sales consultant Elio Moti Sonnenfeld's statements, he received a payment of $3.4 million from Embraer for work he did not perform, and which he passed along as a bribe to a public official in the Dominican Republic, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Journal, citing a person close to the case, reported on Thursday that a Brazilian judge had dismissed criminal charges against Sonnenfeld in February.

The alleged bribery helped Embraer secure a $92 million contract in 2008 to sell eight turboprop attack support aircraft to the Carribean country.

An Embraer official, declining to comment directly on Sonnenfeld's reported statements, said Wednesday's Journal story was based on allegations that were apparently leaked from confidential testimony in a legal case in Brazil, the details of which were not available to the company.

The official noted that Embraer had stated publicly that it was conducting an internal investigation and cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in relation to possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Prosecutors in Brazil filed a criminal complaint in 2014 against Sonnenfeld and eight former Embraer vice presidents, directors and managers, charging them with corruption and money laundering.

CEO Curado has not been named as a defendant and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

(Reporting by Priscila Jordao in Sao Paulo and; Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi)
Supporters of Interim President of the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI) Guy Brice Parfait Kole wave during a political rally in Brazzaville (AFP Photo/Marco Longari) (AFP)

Brazzaville (AFP) - Congo holds presidential elections Sunday, with incumbent Denis Sassou Nguesso seeking a third term after a controversial change to the constitution that allows him to extend his 32-year grip on power.

- Dwindling oil output -

The country has substantial deposits of oil, timber and diamonds, but oil production is its most important economic sector, and Congo is the fourth biggest producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

The epicentre of oil-based activities is at Pointe-Noire, the economic centre in the south-west on the Atlantic Coast.

In 2013, Sassou Nguesso warned that national oil output had declined, in part because reserves that had already been tapped were dwindling.

After civil wars ravaged the economy, growth resumed in 2000 to average out at five percent over the past five years, an IMF report said last year.

But almost half the population of 4.5 million people still lives in poverty, and according to World Bank data, per capita income stood at $2,720 (2,448 euros) in 2014. Economic reform programmes have been set up with help from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

- A vast forest -

The central African country of 342,000 square kilometres (136,800 miles) borders Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Angolese enclave of Cibinda.

With 60-65 percent of its territory covered with forest, Congo has begun to increase activity in the forestry sector, now its second biggest export, and the Congo River Basin is the world's second biggest rainforest after the Amazon.

China is by far the primary destination for Congolese exports, absorbing 52 percent in 2012 according to the CIA World Factbook.

- Brazzaville, capital of "Free France" -

Brazzaville, the area north of the Congo River across from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, came under French sovereignty in 1880 under French-Italian explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.

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Brazzaville became the capital of French Equatorial Africa (AEF) from 1910 to 1960 and of "Free France", the French government-in-exile led by Charles De Gaulle, between 1940 and 1944 during World War II.

It was also in Brazzaville that De Gaulle in 1958 proposed the creation of a Franco-African community.

- Instability after independence -

Since its independence in 1960, the country has been through a dozen putschs, attempted coups and insurgencies.

Three civil wars broke out -- in 1993-94, leaving some 2,000 people dead, in 1997 when between 4,000 and 10,000 people died, and in 1998-99, killing thousands more. Fighting followed in the southern region of Pool between government troops and insurgents.

- Sassou Nguesso: 32 years in power -

Sassou Nguesso served as president from 1979 to 1992 at the head of a single party, and returned to power in 1997 following a civil war.

After the introduction of multi-party politics in the early 1990s, he won two successive mandates, in 2002 with 85 percent of the result, and in 2009 with 68 percent, but both tallies were contested by opposition parties.

A controversial new charter adopted in October by referendum removed a 70-year age limit and a ban on presidents serving more than two terms, opening the way for Sassou Nguesso to stand for a third term at the March 20 election.
SAO PAULO, March 18 (Reuters) - Carrefour SA has nominated Brazilian billionaire Abilio Diniz, the French retailer's fourth-biggest shareholder, to become a board member, a statement from his investment company said on Friday.

In a statement, Peninsula Participacoes said that Diniz's name will be submitted to a general shareholders assembly. The meeting will be held in May.

Diniz and his family, who own 5.07 percent of Carrefour through Peninsula, will review their earlier decision to maintan their stake at that level. Although the statement did not make clear if they would increase or decrease their stake, it said Peninsula "believes in Carrefour's growth potential and expects to help contribute to the development of the group."

The Carrefour deal, which was sealed late in December 2014, marked Diniz's return to retailing. Diniz is the eldest son of the founder of GPA SA, Carrefour's arch rival in Brazil.

In 2011, Diniz fell out with Casino Guichard Perrachon & Cie, his then-partner at GPA, after he secretly sought to broker a merger with Carrefour. The deal ultimately fell through, allowing Casino to take a majority stake in GPA.

Shares of Carrefour shed 0.8 percent to 23.875 euros on Friday. The stock is down 9.7 percent this year.

(Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Editing by James Dalgleish)
ZURICH (Reuters) - An international review by creditors of Greece's reform programme is advancing and it could be wrapped up by May 1, the head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

"There is progress but it is too early to say when exactly the review will conclude," Klaus Regling was quoted as saying in an interview, adding that the ESM assumed Greece would need "significantly less" than the 86 billion euros (67 billion pounds) being discussed for a third assistance programme.

Regling said the reform programme had to be strictly separated from the refugee crisis that has swamped Greece with migrants, and said he did not believe any more countries such as Ireland, Portugal or Spain would need to tap ESM resources.

($1 = 0.8863 euros)

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Gareth Jones)
A worker carries a bundle of sugarcane on his head at a farmland near Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh, March 4, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India, the world's second-biggest sugar producer, is likely to export 1.9 million tonnes to 2 million tonnes of sugar in the 2015/16 marketing year started on Oct. 1, a leading trade body said in a statement on Friday.

Sugar mills have so far contracted 1.4 million tonnes for exports and another 500,000 tonnes to 600,000 tonnes could be shipped by September end, the Indian Sugar Mills Association said.

In the current year, so far mills have produced 22.13 million tonnes of sugar, almost steady compared with last year's output of 22.16 million tonnes during the same period, it said.

The first back-to-back drought in nearly three decades has trimmed cane supplies and forced 189 sugar mills to close operations, including 91 mills in top producing western state of Maharashtra, it said.

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Anand Basu)
By Hidayat Setiaji and Gayatri Suroyo

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A day after slashing interest rates, Indonesia's central bank governor on Friday called on the government to address some fiscal concerns on revenue and subsidies to win an investment grade rating from Standard & Poor's.

Bank Indonesia (BI), which has been under pressure from the government to ease policy to boost growth in Southeast Asia's largest economy, on Thursday cut its key rate for the third time this year to 6.75 percent.

Now, Governor Agus Martowardojo is putting the ball back in the government's court.

Martowardojo said the government has to explain revenue and subsidy concerns in order to get Standard & Poor's to upgrade the country's credit rating to investment grade, which could reduce borrowing costs.

He said Indonesia is attracting capital flows in line with improving economic conditions, with inflation and the current account deficit under control although fiscal concerns are obstructing a ratings upgrade.

"Fitch and Moody's have given us investment grade but S&P's (upgrade) is held back. I am sure (S&P's) is observing," said Martowardojo.

He said an explanation is needed on "whether the government is going to cut spending or increase bonds issuance" if state revenue falls below expectations.

The World Bank said it expects the government to miss its 2016 revenue target by 275 trillion rupiah ($20.99 billion).

Martowardojo also said the government needs to set up a mechanism to determine retail fuel prices after it removed subsidies at the start of 2015.

Last year, the government set fuel prices at what state energy firm Pertamina said were below market prices, forcing the company to shoulder the difference at a loss.

Fitch and Moody's gave Indonesia investment grade ratings in 2011 and 2012. S&P's changed its credit rating outlook for Indonesia to positive in May 2015 but has yet to give it the coveted investment grade status.

An investment grade from S&P's would help reduce Indonesia's risk premium and bring down government bond yields, Kartiko Wirjoatmojo, Bank Mandiri's finance director, told Reuters in an interview last week.

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Wirjoatmojo said banks compete for the same pool of funds as government bonds, and a reduction in bond yields would mean banks can also bring down the interest rate they offer for deposits, helping them to then lower lending rates.

The government wants commercial banks to offer a 9 percent lending rate to companies at the end of this year, down from the current average of 12 percent. That was one of the reasons it has asked BI to consider cutting its policy rate to 4-5 percent.

($1 = 13,100.0000 rupiah)

(Editing by Kim Coghill & Shri Navaratnam)
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) talks with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga at a lower house special committee session on security-related legislation at the parliament in Tokyo in this file photo dated July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

TOKYO (Reuters) - Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has denied a report in the Yomiuri newspaper saying Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is considering delaying a planned increase in sales tax for a second time if the economy continues to stagnate.

The paper said without citing its sources that Abe was considering a one- to two-year delay in the tax increase to 10 percent from 8 percent, currently planned for April 2017.

Suga told reporters there was no change in plans for Japan to increase the levy next year, except if a major financial crisis or natural disaster struck.

Abe will make his decision after seeing first-quarter growth figures in May and judging conditions within the Group of Seven industrial powers when he hosts a G7 summit late that month, the Yomiuri said.

Abe has long insisted that he would delay the hike only in the event of a shock on the order of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers bank that ushered in the global financial crisis. But he recently suggested the possibility of another delay, and his government has begun informally discussing another postponement, sources previously told Reuters.

The premier raised the levy from 5 percent in April 2014, as agreed under the previous government, to tackle Japan's massive public debt, but the move sent the economy into recession. He postponed the planned second increase, which was to have taken effect last October.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Writing by William Mallard; Editing by Sandra Maler and Eric Meijer)
PORT LOUIS, March 18 (Reuters) - The weighted average yield on Mauritius's 91-day Treasury bill rose to 2.68 percent at auction on Friday from 2.61 percent at the last sale on March 11, the central bank said.

The Bank of Mauritius sold all the 1.4 billion rupees ($39.75 million) worth of the debt it had offered.

Complete auction results were as follows: MATURITY 91-DAY 182-DAY 364-DAY WEIGHTED AVERAGE PRICE THIS AUCTION 99.336 98.623 97.189 LAST AUCTION 99.353 98.696 97.199 WEIGHTED AVERAGE YIELD(PCT) THIS AUCTION 2.68 2.80 2.90 LAST AUCTION 2.61 2.65 2.89 BIDS ACCEPTED (MLN RUPEES)

600 309 491 ($1 = 35.2200 Mauritius rupees) (Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff; Editing by George Obulutsa)
Merrick Garland

Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland's best-known vote involved what's considered one of the most important cases involving gun rights.

Garland, the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, wanted the entire appeals court to reconsider a decision that had invalidated a handgun ban in Washington, DC.

In doing so, Garland called for an "en banc" review of the DC Circuit's 2007 ruling that invalidated the handgun ban in Parker v. District of Columbia.

The ruling was made by a three-judge panel that Garland was not a part of.

The case, which would become known as District of Columbia v. Heller at the Supreme Court level, determined whether the handgun ban was constitutional under the Second Amendment.

Garland's vote called for a review of the court's ruling, which invalidated the handgun ban. All 10 judges would have been a part of that decision.

But that request was rejected by a 6-4 vote by the court.

He did not take a formal position on the case's merits, however.

At the Supreme Court level one year later, in one of Justice Antonin Scalia's most prominent majority opinions, the ruling of the appeals court was upheld.

The Supreme Court's ruling, a 5-4 decision, was based on an interpretation that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of gun ownership for private citizens, and not just for instances of necessary militia service.

Because Garland called for a review of the DC Circuit Court's ruling, even though he took no official position on the case, gun-rights advocates have slammed him for supposedly favoring gun control.

On Wednesday, Garland was nominated by US President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Scalia's recent death.

NOW WATCH: SEN. CORY BOOKER: The Republican position on the vacant Supreme Court seat doesn't make any sense





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Commuters get out of a taxi in front of Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Temple in Mumbai March 12, 2015. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Files

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The 200-year-old Shree Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai has said it will deposit a portion of its gold hoard with a bank by the end of the month for recycling, responding to a government campaign to monetise some of the country's thousands of tonnes of privately owned stocks of gold and cut costly imports.

Officials from finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India met on Friday to discuss modifying the much-publicised scheme after managing to attract deposits of only three tonnes of gold in four months out of an estimated pool of 20,000 tonnes stacked away in family lockers and temple vaults.

Indians love gold, both as a store of wealth and gifts for humans and gods alike, and the country's appetite for it is next only to China's. Annual imports run to as much as 1,000 tonnes, accounting for about a quarter of the annual trade deficit.

Dozens of rich temples have collected billions of dollars in gold jewellery, bars and coins over the centuries, hidden securely in vaults, some ancient and some modern.

One of them, the Shree Siddhivinayak temple devoted to the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesha, is now examining various proposals and will soon choose a bank to deposit 44 kg out of its total stash of 160 kg of gold, said a senior official at the trust that manages it.

The official said they did not want to be named before a statement is issued, which is likely to happen next week.

India's economic affairs secretary, Shaktikanta Das, said after Friday's meeting that temple trusts have started expressing an interest in the monetisation scheme but did not name any.

Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple, the richest Hindu temple in the world popularly known as the Tirupati Temple, said at the end of last year it could deposit more than 5.5 tonnes under the monetisation programme.

Apart from monetisation, last year Prime Minister Narendra Modi also launched a gold bond programme to soften demand for physical gold.

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai and Sankalp Phartiyal and Neha Dasgupta in New Delhi; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Barack Obama

President Barack Obama told NPR that Republicans were "worried and scared" that their base would "punish them" should they decide to hold hearings and vote on his nominee for the vacant Supreme Court seat.

"And, you know, one of the most puzzling arguments that I've heard from Mitch McConnell and some other Republicans is this notion that the American people should decide  we should let the American people decide, as part of this election, who gets to fill this seat," Obama said in the interview published Friday, referring to the Senate's majority leader.

He added that, because he won the national election in 2012, the people had "already weighed in" by reelecting him to fulfill the duties of the position for the entirety of another four-year term.

"The bottom line is that there has not been a coherent argument presented" by Republicans, Obama said.

He continued: "The real argument is the one that you made, Nina, which is that they don't want a Democrat filling the seat, and they are worried and scared about their political base punishing them if they allow a Democrat to fill the seat."

Obama on Wednesday announced the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to fill the seat left vacant after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

After Obama's announcement, McConnell was quick to say he would not even meet with the judge, let alone bend on the suggestion that Republicans would not hold confirmation hearings on the nominee. He said this was based on "principle" and not because of "the person."

"The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration," McConnell said. "The next president may also nominate someone very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy."

But other members of his party, including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, have said they either would be or would be open to meeting with Garland. Others have suggested that, should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton win in the November election, they might think of confirming Obama's nominee during the so-called lame-duck session of Congress between the election and the time Clinton would become president.

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Garland is seen by court watchers as a centrist or center-left judge, and he has also been known to swing to the right on criminal-justice issues. But some Republicans have rushed to label him a "liberal."

NOW WATCH: Here's what you need to know about President Obama's Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland





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(This version of the March 17 story corrects U.S. crude high for 2016 in sixth paragraph to $40.36, not $40.26)

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices hit 2016 highs on Thursday, with U.S. crude surging 5 percent to pierce the $40 barrier, on optimism that major producers will strike an output freeze deal next month amid rising crude exports and gasoline demand in the United States.

A weaker dollar (.DXY) after a Federal Reserve policy decision on Wednesday that indicated two U.S. rate hikes this year instead of four also drew oil buyers using currencies such as the euro (EUR=). [FRX]

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC producers led by Russia will meet on April 17 in the Qatar capital Doha, aiming for the first global supply deal in 15 years.

"The remote possibility that a coordinated supply control effort comes from this meeting, assuming it even happens, has put market bears on the defensive," said Pete Donovan, broker with Liquidity Energy in New York.

Oil prices have surged more than 50 percent from 12-year lows since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries floated the idea of a production freeze, boosting Brent up from around $27 a barrel and U.S. crude from around $26.

On Thursday, the front-month in U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures (CLc1) settled up $1.74, or 4.5 percent, at $40.20, after scaling a 2016 high of $40.36.

Brent crude's front-month (LCOc1) finished up $1.21 at $41.54, after earlier reaching the year's peak of $41.60.

"For now, the market is staying well supported," said Olivier Jakob, oil analyst at Petromatrix. "It will be difficult to return to the lows of the year."

WTI also hit a premium against Brent (CL-LCO1=R) in intraday trading, the first time since January, as traders piled into the U.S. crude market on bets of an uptick in domestic oil exports.

Venezuela's state-run PDVSA bought two more cargoes of WTI this month after becoming Latin America's first importer of U.S. oil since January after an export ban was lifted.

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"We're seeing increasing export activity in the U.S. Gulf, with over 2-1/2 million barrels currently loaded on tankers, ready to depart, and there's potentially more," said Matt Smith who tracks crude loadings for New York-headquartered Clipperdata.

U.S. crude has also gained traction on smaller stockpile builds of late, and surging gasoline consumption.

U.S. crude inventories last week climbed to its fifth straight week of record highs but by just 1.3 million barrels, a much smaller build than forecast, government data showed. Gasoline demand rose 6.4 percent over the past four weeks from a year ago.

(Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in LONDON; Editing by Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio)
If an unidentified group named "Ghost Raven Research" is right, one of South Koreas most valuable companies, and its largest biotech company, could be a near complete fraud. Earlier this month, the anonymous research group published a report saying Celltrion, a $10 billion "biosimilar" company, was a "massive accounting fraud, and that at about 90% of the companys revenue have been faked.

The report is juicy: Some of the highlights are that a top executive of Celltrion was chummy with a white collar criminal, claims an accounting scheme that has whiffs of Enron, and depicts a deeply competitive medical-related business with structural headwinds that will be hard to overcome, much like Theranos. The charges are also pretty close to accounting tricks Valeant was accused of by a short seller last year.

But Celltrion, which makes drugs that mimic well-established medications that go off-patent, received a nod of legitimacy from the FDA last month. An advisory panel overwhelmingly voted that its biosimilar of arthritis drug Remicade should be approved in the U.S. And Celltrion has signed a marketing deal with Pfizer to distribute its drug.

Biosimilars are similar to generic drugs. The difference is that medicines biosilimars are trying to duplicate tend to be much more complex than in the generic market, and the make-up of the copycat drug isn't always exactly the same as the original (hence, the name bio-"similar"). Although it's easy to imagine any number of problems that can go wrong with these knock-offs, pharmaceutical executives acknowledge that they are formidable competitors.

Speaking at a JPMorgan conference earlier this year, Roche CFO Alan Hippe said, "The biosimilar impact is coming." In 2018, three of Roche's biologics go off patent, including cancer treatments MabThera, Herceptin, and Avastin. The loss of patent protection is expected to significantly dent sales once biosimilar options hit the market in coming years.

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Ghost Raven's report centers mostly on accounting rather than science. According to the report, Celltrion Healthcare is a subsidiary of the company that is meant to help distribute Celltrion's drugs. Here's roughly how Ghost Raven says it works: Celltrion, the parent company which is also the developer and manufacturer, makes the biosimilar drugs. It then sells these drugs to Celltrion Healthcare. This division is responsible for selling the drugs to the masses.

The problem, according to Ghost Raven, is that nearly 98% of the revenue Celltrion has reported are from sales it has made to its own subsidiary. Worse, the subsidiary hasn't been able to offload most of these drugs yet--Ghost River says less than 18% of of the product ever purchased by Celltrions subsidiary has ended up with end customers--and has a huge, and growing, inventory of unsold drugs, the report says. What's more, the income statement of the subsidiary Celltrion Healthcare shows that these sales aren't being accounted for properly. For example, Ghost Raven says that, in theory, Celltrion Healthcare's costs should closely match the sales revenue for the parent company. (If Celltrion Healthcare is buying drugs from Celltrion, its out-of-pocket expenses are simply the price of the drug, and the money goes to the parent.) These two items are out of line, the report says. A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal pointed out similar issues with Celltrions accounting.

There are other problems, according to Ghost Raven. Seo Jung-jin, founder and CEO of Celltrion, was formerly a top executive at Daewoo Motor, and served as a standing advisor to the group chairman of Daewoo in charge of Daewoo Motors Co, according to an online profile. In 1999, shortly after Jung-jin left Daewoo, the auto manufacturer went bankrupt. In 2006, Kim Woo-chong, the former chairman of Daewoo Group, was sentenced by Korean court to 8.5 years in jail for embezzlement and accounting fraud.

Ghost Raven also believes the biosimilar business is overhyped in general. While the pharmaceutical market is huge, competition is fierce, and new companies continue to enter the market. Further, biosimilars will have to sell at a big discount in order to cut into the sales of companies like Merck and Roche.

The trouble for Ghost Raven is that Celltrion's business has recently been gaining momentum. Last month, the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee recommended approval of Inflecta, a drug developed by Celltrion and marketed by Pfizer that mimics Johnson & Johnson's Remicade. Celltrion's drug has already been cutting into J&J's sales in Europe. Celltrions shares, which are traded in South Korea, are up 60% in the past year to a recent 107,000 won, or nearly $93 a share.

However, late last year, Pfizer decided to scale back its ties to Celltrion, ending proposed marketing relationships on two other Celltrion biosimilars, for Roches arthritus drug Rituxan and breast cancer drug Herceptin. Pfizer looks interested in developing its own in-house biosimilar division. Ghost Raven says that a Herceptin biosimilar, which Celltrion is still developing and is not approved in the U.S., accounts for nearly 18% of the sales Celltrion has booked to one of its marketing subsidiaries.

Celltrion commented on the Ghost Raven research last week, saying that its drug has been officially approved in 70 countries and is "is selling in the global market through reliable partner companies such as Pfizer and Mundi Pharma."

"We believe that the short sellers of Celltrion stocks must have taken huge losses, and they are circulating these false reports to recover their damages," the company said in a statement. The company did not respond to Fortunes requests for further comment.

In the past, Celltrions Jung-jin has said that his company is misunderstood, and that the way the company books its sales are in line with standard accounting practices in his country.

Also unclear: Who or what Ghost Raven Research is. The report criticizing Celltrion appears to be the first Ghost Raven has put out. A disclaimer with the report states that Ghost Raven along with its members, partners, affiliates, employees, and/or consultants have been shorting the shares of Celltrion, mean it stands to benefit if shares of the biosimilar company go down.

Of course, plenty of short sellers publicize their bets, trying to drive down the prices of companies in their their portfolios. Bill Ackman has been publicly accusing Herbalife of fraud for several years. Although Herbalife recently said it had overstated some membership figures, the company has not been charge with any wrong-doing. Executives there have repeatedly stated that Ackmans claims are false or unfair. The companys shares recently have been rising.

(For more on Herbalife and Ackman: The Siege of Herbalife)

The one big difference: Short-sellers normally often identify not only their positions, but themselves too. Ghost Raven hasn't yet come forward.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008 (AFP Photo/Asif Hassan)

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who faces charges of treason and murder, arrived in Dubai Friday for what his lawyers said was urgent medical treatment after a three-year travel ban was lifted.

Lawyers for the former president, who is facing multiple charges including treason and murder over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have said he needs urgent medical treatment not available in Pakistan.

"I am going abroad for treatment but will return to face the cases against me," a party spokesman in Karachi quoted him as saying. "I am a commando. I love my motherland."

The spokesman added that Musharraf had reached his Dubai residence, where he will stay for some weeks before seeking an appointment with doctors in the United States.

"Six to eight weeks are required for the treatment and then he would go back home," said Dr Amjad Malik, a spokesman for Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League party in Dubai.

Musharraf was banned from leaving Pakistan in March 2013 after he returned to the country on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.

The former ruler was barred from taking part in the polls and instead faces a barrage of legal cases.

Last June, the Sindh High Court lifted Musharraf's travel ban, but the federal government, headed by his long-time rival Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Sindh High Court decision and ordered the government to allow Musharraf to travel, which it did the following day.

Musharraf's lawyers have provided guarantees he will return to Pakistan in six weeks and pledged he will appear in court for several ongoing cases against him, Pakistan's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said Thursday.

However, analyst Hasan Askari told AFP Friday the chance of Musharraf coming back was "minimal", adding that his return could cause problems for the government and embarrass the military.

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"In order to defuse the conflict, the government agreed to let him go," he said.

In January, Musharraf was acquitted over the 2006 killing of a Baloch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.

But four cases against him remain -- one accusing him of treason for imposing emergency rule, as well as those alleging the unlawful dismissal of judges, the assassination of opposition leader Bhutto and a deadly raid on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

Bhutto's son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of her Pakistan People's Party, vowed to launch country-wide protests against the government for allowing Musharraf to travel.

"After facilitating Musharraf's escape this government has lost the moral authority to govern," he tweeted Friday.

- Police decoy -

A large convoy of police and paramilitary rangers left Musharraf's home in Karachi around 3.30 am Friday as a decoy to waiting media crowding his street, while the general travelled to the airport separately.

Musharraf ousted Sharif from power in 1999 in a bloodless coup and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008.

He has been under house arrest in Karachi while the cases have ground through Pakistan's notoriously slow legal system, lurching from adjournment to adjournment with little clear progress apart from the granting of bail.

Analysts had previously said they believe the government lacks the will to offend Pakistan's powerful military by pushing for Musharraf's prosecution.
MarketWatch

As Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat says after conversations with clients this week: The main question is why should any investor expect equity prices to stage any meaningful gain from here, in the midst of a Fed tightening cycle and in the midst of great uncertainty around the Russia-Ukraine war, increasing stress in financial markets (UK issue tabled for now) and in the midst of massive gloom of CEOs and Americans and investors. A scenario where the CBOE Vix index (VIX) the gauge of expected S&P 500 volatility, spikes above 40, stocks drop another 20% and there is some sort of financial accident, like a hedge fund imploding. But this is not the only capitulation that could lay ahead, he argues in his latest note.
By Julia Fioretti, Barbara Lewis and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's most wanted man was captured after a shootout in Brussels in a major coup for authorities investigating November's Islamic State attacks on Paris. Salah Abdeslam, 26, the first suspected active participant taken alive, was being held overnight in hospital with a slight leg wound, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel announced at a news conference alongside French President Francois Hollande. "This is an important result in the battle for democracy," Michel said on Friday, adding that U.S. President Barack Obama had called to congratulate the Belgian and French leaders. A Belgian minister broke the news by tweeting, "We got him." Prosecutors said a second wanted man, who used the false name of Amine Choukri, was also wounded and captured in the raid on the apartment in Abdeslam's home neighbourhood of Molenbeek. The operation, planned after fingerprints and passports were found in a bloody raid three days earlier, was staged in a rush after media leaked word that police had found Abdeslam's trail. Hollande, who was visiting Brussels for a European summit, confirmed France would seek extradition for the Brussels-based Frenchman who, he said, was definitely in Paris on the bloody night of Friday, Nov. 13 when 130 people were killed. Abdeslam's elder brother, a Brussels barkeeper who shared a chequered history of drugs and petty crime, blew himself up outside a Parisian cafe that night. Hollande said the younger man's role in the killings was unclear but investigators were sure he helped plan the operation for the Syria-based group. Since all the identified attackers were killed, Abdeslam offers France a major new chance to understand what happened. It was now clear, Hollande said, that many more people had been involved in the Paris attacks on a sports stadium, bars and cafes and concert hall than was first thought. Security concerns remain, he added, "The threat level is very high." FINGERPRINTS Television footage showed armed security forces dragging a man with his head covered out of a building and into a car. Several bursts of gunfire rang out earlier in Molenbeek, a down-at-heel borough that is home to many Muslim immigrants, notably of Moroccan descent like Abdeslam's family. Two explosions were heard after the arrest, though it was unclear whether they were part of a new operation or the clear-up. Some four hours later, the main police presence had stood down but crime scene investigators were still at work. There had long been speculation about whether Abdeslam had stayed in Belgium or managed to flee to Syria. Security services will be seeking information from Abdeslam on Islamic State plans and structures, his contacts in Europe and Syria and support networks and finance. Over the past four months, France and Belgium have detained several people linked to the prime suspects but none they suspect of a major role. A man and two women, members of what prosecutors said was "the family which hid Abdeslam," were detained with the two wanted men and will be questioned. Investigators will want to know how extensive a network, under a code of silence, was able to hide such a high-profile fugitive in a busy inner city neighbourhood just a few hundred yards from his parents' home. Security agencies' difficulties in penetrating some Muslim communities, particularly in pursuit of Belgium's unusually high number of citizens fighting in Syria, has been a key factor in the inquiry, along with arms dealing in Brussels. A four-month inquiry that had seemed to go cold, heated up this week when French and Belgium officers went to an apartment in the southern Brussels suburb of Forest on Tuesday, thinking they were simply looking for physical evidence in the case. Instead, at least two people sprayed automatic gunfire at them as they opened the door, wounding three officers. An Algerian called Mohamed Belkaid was shot dead after a siege but two people were believed to have gotten away. Prosecutors said on Friday these may have been Abdeslam and the man called Choukri. They also said the Algerian was wanted, under the false name Samir Bouzid, since he appeared on CCTV wiring cash to a woman just after the Paris attacks. She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who fought in Syria and is believed to have been a local organiser for Belgian and French militants. Abbaoud and his cousin died in a gunbattle in a Paris suburb on Nov. 18. Crucially, police found Abdeslam's fingerprints. They also found a fake Belgian ID card issued to "Choukri" and a fake Syrian passport for the same man in the name Monir Ahmed Alaaj. That man had been fingerprinted - as Choukri - by German police when he and Abdeslam were stopped in a car there in October. Those prints turned up again in January at a house used by the plotters in a small town south of Brussels. On Friday, local media said, a tapped telephone confirmed that Abdeslam was in the house in rue des Quatre-Vents (Four Winds Street) in Molenbeek. After French media broke word of Abdeslam's fingerprints being found in the Forest flat, police moved in within three hours and seized the pair in minutes. PARIS TRAIL After his elder brother Brahim blew himself up, Salah Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris overnight by two men who admitted doing so and are now in custody on terrorism charges, along with eight other suspects in Belgium. French police stopped Abdeslam three times on the drive back but his details were circulated only after he reached Belgium. The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria. Hollande and Michel took pains to exchange compliments to their security services and warm cross-border cooperation. Among those still being sought is 31-year-old Belgian Mohamed Abrini, who was caught on CCTV with Abdeslam at a fuel station on the motorway to Paris two days before the Nov. 13 attacks. (Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Jan Strupczewski; Writing by Andrew Heavens and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Toni Reinhold)
Bagsvrd, Denmark, 18 March 2016 - Today, Novo Nordisk A/S held its Annual General Meeting, at which the following were adopted:

Financial year 2015 and 2016

The Company`s audited Annual Report 2015.

The actual remuneration of the Board of Directors for 2015 and the remuneration level for 2016.

Distribution of profit according to the adopted Annual Report 2015. The dividend will be DKK 6.40 per A and B share of DKK 0.20.

Elections

Re-election of Goran Ando as chairman and Jeppe Christiansen as vice chairman of the Board of Directors.

Re-election of Bruno Angelici, Sylvie Gregoire, Liz Hewitt and Mary Szela as members of the Board of Directors.

Election of Brian Daniels as new member of the Board of Directors.

Re-election of PricewaterhouseCoopers Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab as the Company`s auditor.

Shares and capital

Reduction of the Company`s B share capital by cancellation of part of the Company`s own holding of B shares. The Company`s B shares are reduced by DKK 10,000,000 from DKK 412,512,800 to DKK 402,512,800.

Authorisation to the Board of Directors to increase the Company`s share capital.

Authorisation to the Board of Directors until the next Annual General Meeting to allow the Company to repurchase own shares of up to 10% of the share capital subject to a holding limit of 10% of the share capital.

Other

Amendments to the Articles of Association regarding abolishment of bearer shares the change of NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen A/S` name to Nasdaq Copenhagen A/S deletion of the requirement that all members of the Executive Management shall be registered with the Danish Business Authority company announcements may be prepared in English only, if decided by the Board of Directors



Revised Remuneration Principles.

Composition of the Board of Directors and its committees

After the Annual General Meeting, the Board of Directors held a board meeting to appoint members of its committees.

The Board of Directors, including its committees are now composed as follows:

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Goran Ando (chairman of the Board, of the Nomination Committee and of the Remuneration Committee)

Jeppe Christiansen (vice chairman and member of the Remuneration Committee and the Audit Committee)

Bruno Angelici (member of the Nomination Committee)

Brian Daniels

Sylvie Gregoire (member of the Audit Committee)

Liz Hewitt (chairman of the Audit Committee and member of the Nomination Committee)

Liselotte Hyveled (employee representative and member of the Nomination Committee)

Anne Marie Kverneland (employee representative)

Sren Thuesen Pedersen (employee representative and member of the Remuneration Committee)

Stig Strbk (employee representative and member of the Audit Committee)

Mary Szela (member of the Remuneration Committee)

Further information

Media: Katrine Sperling +45 3079 6718 krsp@novonordisk.com Ken Inchausti (US) +1 267 809 7552 kiau@novonordisk.com



Investors: Peter Hugreffe Ankersen +45 3075 9085 phak@novonordisk.com Daniel Bohsen +45 3079 6376 dabo@novonordisk.com Melanie Raouzeos +45 3075 3479 mrz@novonordisk.com Kasper Veje +45 3079 8519 kpvj@novonordisk.com

Company announcement No 23 / 2016

Company announcement No 23 / 2016







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: Novo Nordisk A/S via GlobeNewswire

HUG#1995860


richard branson

Richard Branson just posted a heartfelt letter on Virgin Group's website about the dangers associated with knee jerk reactions to things posted on social media.

The billionaire tycoon and social media mainstay wrote the letter in reaction to an alleged racist incident that took place on a Virgin Atlantic flight earlier this month.

According to media reports, a Chinese passenger onboard Virgin Atlantic Flight VS250 on March 1 reported being racially abused by a Caucasian male.

According to the Chinese passenger, who refers to herself as Liu Wei, the male passenger reportedly called her an "F-ing Chinese pig" and to "Get the f--k out of here."

Liu then claims that Virgin Atlantic's cabin crew threatened to throw her off the flight instead coming to her aid.

Miss Liu then posted her account of the incident on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Her post has gone viral resulting in Virgin Atlantic's social media accounts flooded with posts from Chinese users demanding the airline apologize for its behavior.

Since the airline was in the process of conducting an investigation of the incident, it could not provide a detailed account on social media. This led to further anger from Chinese users who believed the company was discounting their demands.

After concluding the their investigation, Virgin Atlantic issued the following statement concerning the incident.

"We deeply regret the unpleasant experience our customer had on this flight. We have fully investigated this incident by speaking with those involved, fellow customers and the cabin crew present. We understand that there was an altercation between two customers on board the flight, which resulted in both individuals becoming upset and distressed. Upon noticing the argument, our cabin crew did their best to resolve the situation by suggesting that they could relocate the female customer and her male travelling companion following take off, and the passenger later relocated of her own accord. We would like to reiterate that Virgin Atlantic takes a zero tolerance approach to racism."

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Yesterday, Virgin founder Richard Branson weighed in on the incident with an apologetic tweet posted in both Chinese and English. That was followed up with today's letter.

Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight VS250. We do not tolerate abuse and @virginatlantic are investigating.  Richard Branson (@richardbranson) March 18, 2016

"The superfast age of social media and hyper-connectivity brings with it an enormous range of benefits," Branson wrote in the letter. "But as social media expands, we also have to be careful about how it is used."

Branson then gave his Airline's account of the incident following an investigation which indicates that a female passenger and a male passenger suffering from Parkinson's disease were involved in an altercation. The crew of the flight from the London to Shanghai dealt with the incident in a responsible manner and the trip continued without incident.

Branson continues, "Before the team was able to fully investigate the incident, one side of the story was already being shared widely online, and is generating headlines in news publications as well as social networks. This has resulted in allegations of racism."

As a leader, it is absolutely critical to hear all sides of the story before jumping to any conclusions https://t.co/jnc1N7c5gT  Richard Branson (@richardbranson) March 18, 2016

Unfortunately, the result of the knee jerk internet anger has resulted in airline's staff being abused online.

"Sometimes the consequences of jumping to conclusions can have a significant impact," Branson wrote. "In this case on crew members who were doing their job and have received an enormous amount of abuse online."

Branson closes the letter by imploring those who are as keen on social media as he is to practice moderation in the way they react to the things they see on the internet.

Love posting on social & encourage everyone to share, listen & learn from one another in productive & inclusive way https://t.co/jnc1N7c5gT  Richard Branson (@richardbranson) March 18, 2016

"I love posting on social media and will continue to do so, and encourage everybody to share, listen and learn from each other online. But before you post send a tweet or post a comment, ask yourself if you would be happy to say that to someone face to face. It is a great leveller and may prevent you shooting from the hip and saying something you will later regret. That way, we can all gain a lot more from interacting online in a productive and inclusive way."

Click here to read Richard Branson's complete letter.

NOW WATCH: How Richard Branson gets over his hatred of public speaking





More From Business Insider


By Michael Erman and Diane Bartz (Reuters) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc on Friday said a $13 billion (9 billion) cash offer from China's Anbang Insurance Group Co was superior to one from Marriott International Inc , setting the stage for the largest-ever deal by a Chinese company in the United States. The operator of Sheraton and Westin hotels said the Chinese insurer's offer beat Marriott's previously agreed cash and stock offer by nearly 15 percent, and that it planned to scrap the proposed deal with the rival hotel chain. Anbang has been on a U.S. hotel buying spree as Chinese insurers rush to acquire cash-generating assets as they struggle to keep up with the policy liabilities of the country's ageing population. U.S. assets are also seen as a good hedge against weakness in the Chinese yuan currency. The Anbang-led consortium - which also includes private equity firms J.C. Flowers & Co from the United States and Primavera Capital from China - has bid $78 per share in cash, or $13.16 billion overall, based on shares outstanding as of Feb. 19. Anbang's bid is binding and fully financed, Starwood said. At Thursday's close, Marriott's bid for Starwood was worth $68.06 per share, or around $11.5 billion overall. Starwood will have to pay a $400 million breakup fee to Marriott if it walks away from their deal. Starwood's shares were up 5 percent at $80.20 in afternoon trading, their highest level since November. Marriott, which has until March 28 to counter Anbang's offer, said it was considering its options. Dan Wasiolek, a hotel industry analyst at Morningstar, said Marriott could still counter with a higher offer. "Marriott can increase their offer because they have the balance sheet flexibility," he said, suggesting the larger rival hotel company could sweeten its offer by $700 million in cash. If Anbang's offer is successful, it would boost the company's reputation as one of China's top corporate acquirers, adding Starwood to its stable with its nearly 1,300 hotels in about 100 countries. Starwood brings with it several well-regarded hotel brands as well as a loyal business customer base. The offer follows Anbang's $6.5 billion deal struck last week for Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc and its $2 billion purchase of New York's iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel last year. John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson & Co, Starwood's largest shareholder, welcomed Anbang's sweetened offer, saying it "better reflects the value of Starwood." He called the Chinese company a "proven, sophisticated buyer of related assets." Beijing-based Anbang's bid for Starwood epitomizes its meteoric rise since it was founded in 2014 with an initial focus on car insurance. Thanks to a spate of dealmaking at home and abroad, privately held Anbang now manages more than 1.9 trillion yuan ($292.3 billion) in assets, according to its website. Its chairman Wu Xiaohui married the granddaughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. REGULATORY REVIEW A deal with Anbang would likely face a review by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel that reviews deals to ensure they do not harm national security. A CFIUS probe would take around 10 weeks and would focus on the proximity of Starwood's several hundred U.S. hotels to critical facilities and the protection of customers' privacy, such as credit card data and information that passes through hotel Wi-Fi, said a source close to the deal. Anbang won approval to buy the Waldorf Astoria last year and to buy annuities and life insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life just this week, giving it confidence that it can also win approval for the Starwood deal, the source said. In 2012, CFIUS ordered the purchase of a wind farm in Oregon to be reversed because it was too close to a naval base. Stephen Heifetz, a partner with law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP, said this was unlikely in this case. "I'd be surprised if there were any deal-killer for a large multi-property location," he said, although he warned that the companies might have to make some concessions to get the deal through. Other CFIUS experts have said previously that U.S. regulators might be concerned about a Starwood property, the W Hotel in downtown Washington, which overlooks the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House. The U.S. government would also likely reconsider allowing some government officials to stay in the chain's hotels, said Michael Wessel, a commissioner on Congress's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. "Anbang may have to requalify the chain for coverage under federal travel regulations," he said. "If any individual properties posed a problem, one of the mitigation strategies could either be the sale of problem assets to another chain or potentially to limit reimbursement for government employees on government business at those properties." In either deal, Starwood shareholders will also receive stock in Interval Leisure Group Inc , which is buying Starwood's vacation ownership business for about $5.67 per Starwood share. Lazard and Citigroup Global Markets Inc are financial advisers to Starwood and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP is its legal counsel. PJT Partners Inc is Anbang's financial adviser, while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is its legal counsel. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee and Sayantani Ghosh in Bengaluru, Michael Erman and Jeffrey Dastin in New York and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Kirti Pandey, Ted Kerr and Bill Rigby)
Hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen, founder and chairman of SAC Capital Advisors, listens to a question during a one-on-one interview session at the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada May 11, 2011. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

By Lawrence Delevingne and Jennifer Ablan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire Steve Cohen's investment firm, a family office that took over managing his fortune in 2014 after his hedge fund pleaded guilty to securities fraud, has a perfect regulatory compliance record, its president said on Thursday.

Point72 Asset Management, which manages about $11 billion and took over after regulators barred Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors from dealing with the public, has had zero point zero compliance and regulatory problems, Point72 President Doug Haynes said in an interview.

The firm succeeded SAC Capital Advisors, Cohen's hedge fund firm which pleaded guilty to securities fraud in an insider-trading settlement with U.S. regulators that also included a $1.8 billion fine.

In an interview with Reuters at Point72's Stamford, Connecticut headquarters, Haynes said the firm's compliance culture goes beyond strict legal parameters.

We have professional standards, and you get fired if you violate them," he said.

Haynes, a veteran of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., said compliance staff has increased 25 percent since Chief Compliance and Surveillance Officer Vincent Tortorella was hired in April 2014.

He said Tortorella, a former federal prosecutor, has changed the way Point72 does surveillance of its investment professionals. The compliance staff includes former personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Securities and Exchange Commission.

It employs technology from the likes of Palantir, a data analysis-focused company used by government agencies and others.

Even so, Point72s trading still draws attention.

This week, influential financial blog ZeroHedge asked in a post if Cohen was "back to his criminal ways," suggesting Point72 might have had traded on inside information.

The question came after Celator Pharmaceuticals (CPXX.O) shares appreciated Tuesday and Wednesday roughly 458 percent. The surge stemmed from news of Celators successful test of its new leukemia treatment VYXEOS, which was released on Monday after the market close.

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In a filing on Tuesday after the market close, Point72 revealed an 8.3 percent stake in Celator, or over 2.8 million shares.

ZeroHedge asked: "Why did SAC go long Celator Pharmaceuticals in the days immediately preceding the company's March 14 favorable Phase 3 trial result of Vyxeos for Acute Myeloid Leukemia? What was the investment thesis/catalyst for this decision."

A spokesman at Point72 said: The ZeroHedge post is ... false, wrong and absolutely inaccurate.

Point72 did not purchase any Celator shares before the company made its March 14th announcement," the spokesman added. "Point72 only purchased Celator shares after the March 14 announcement.

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Lawrence Delevingne; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Forensic experts investigate the scene of an explosion on March 14, 2016, the day after a suicide car bomb ripped through a busy square in central Ankara killing at least 34 people and wounding 125, officials said (AFP Photo/Adem Altan) (AFP)

Ankara (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday that the evidence so far pointed to Kurdish rebels being behind a deadly suicide car bombing in Ankara.

"There are very serious, almost certain findings that point to the separatist terrorist organisation," Davutoglu told reporters after visiting the wounded at an Ankara hospital, in reference to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Davutoglu said that of the 37 people killed in the blast, 35 had been identified as victims, one was confirmed as an attacker and one was believed to have been helping the attacker.

Eleven suspects have so far been detained over the bombing, he added.

"Wherever the terrorist organisation is backed into a corner and confronted with a serious security operation, it carries out such attacks directly targeting civilians in order to drag people into despair," he said.

"It is not the first time it has happened," he said, adding that the attacks including the latest one clearly revealed the "ugly face of the terrorist organisation".

He vowed that Turkey would "take any step required to defend this country" and said the army carried out a "very comprehensive operation" in northern Iraq targeting PKK bases, as well as rebels in the Kurdish-majority southeast.

Turkey has in recent months waged an all-out assault on the PKK, which launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, fighting for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority.

After the collapse of a fragile truce, deadly clashes resumed last year between security forces and rebels in the southeast.
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  March 18, 2016 Zacks Equity Research highlights Ulta Beauty (ULTA) as the Bull of the Day and United States Steel (X) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corporation (BAC).

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

Ulta Beauty (ULTA) reported another great quarter on March 10, to cap off another terrific year of growth. They also raised guidance and detailed expansion plans as their rollout of new cosmetic and salon boutiques accelerates.

This strong report and outlook from management not only vaulted shares 17% from $163 to an all-time high of $192 on March 11, it also inspired analysts to start raising their earnings estimates for this year and next. And that's why ULTA is back to a Zacks #1 Rank.

The Business of Beauty

lta Beauty is the largest US beauty retailer, with one-stop shopping for prestige, mass and salon products in 874 locations in 48 states (as of January 30). The company focuses on providing affordable indulgence to customers through a combination of product breadth, value and convenience with the distinctive environment and experience of a specialty retailer.

Since opening its first store 25 years ago, Ulta Beauty has grown to become the premier beauty destination for cosmetics, fragrance, skin, hair care products and salon services. They offer more than 20,000 products from over 500 well-established and emerging beauty brands across all categories and price points, including Ulta Beautys own private label.

Ulta Beauty also offers a full-service salon in every store featuring hair, skin and brow services. The company is recognized for its commitment to personalized service and distinctive, inviting stores and its industry-leading ULTAmate Rewards loyalty program. The online portal offers a collection of tips, tutorials and social content.

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The Beautiful Numbers

LTA reported a fourth-quarter earnings beat of nearly 10% with EPS of $1.69 vs the consensus of $1.54. Total sales increased 21.1%, reflecting 12.5% comparable (same store) sales growth vs expectations for 9.4% "comps."

The 12.5% same store sales increase was driven by 8.6% growth in transactions and 3.9% growth in average ticket where retail comparable sales increased 10.4%, including salon comparable sales growth of 9.2%.

Salon sales increased 16.7% to $54.6 million from $46.8 million in Q4 2014 while E-commerce sales grew 44.2% to $94.8 million from $65.7 million a year ago.

Management also described new-store productivity as "very strong" and indicated that cannibalization was minimal.

The Beautiful Outlook

In addition to guiding 2016 EPS growth of 18%-20%, which corresponds to EPS of roughly $5.87-$6.00, management offered these highlights in their earnings press release...

*Achieve comparable sales growth of approximately 8% to 10%, including the impact of the e-commerce business

*Increase total sales in the mid to high teens percentage range

*Grow e-commerce sales in the 40% range

*Expand square footage by approximately 11% with the opening of 100 net new stores

*Remodel 12 locations

*Deliver earnings per share growth in the range of 18% to 20%, including the impact of the new Dallas distribution center, the accelerated rollout of prestige brand boutiques, the accelerated share repurchase program, and continued open market share repurchases

Regarding the 100 net new stores, approximately 70% will be in existing markets and 30% in new markets, with 60% in existing retail centers and 40% in new retail centers.

According to analysts at William Blair...

"When asked about longer-term store potential, the company referred to its latest 1,200-plus five-year (2019/2020) domestic target for its primary larger-format stores as having strong visibility, as well as potential for smaller-format stores over time."

Bear of the Day :

United States Steel (X) has consistently been a Zacks #4 Rank (Sell) or #5 Rank (Strong Sell) for more than a year now. In that time, the stock has fallen from 52-week highs above $27 to new lows near $6 this quarter.

In early March, steel stocks were given a boost when the U.S. Department of Commerce ("DOC") levied preliminary anti-dumping duties on imports of cold-rolled steel from Brazil, China, India, Korea, Russia, Japan and the UK.

US Steel shares rallied strongly in the past two weeks on this news, regaining the $15 level not seen since last September. But until the earnings estimates for the company turn back up, X will remain in the cellar of the 4,000-plus companies in the Zacks Rank algorithm.

I'll show you those estimates in a moment. First, let me share some details on the DOC action from a Zacks Research article on March 3...

The commerce department, in its preliminary determinations, found that these countries are illegally dumping cold-rolled steel into the U.S. market and therefore, are subject to anti-dumping duties. The ruling marks yet another victory for crisis-hit U.S. steel companies in their ongoing battle against unfairly-traded, cheap imports that continue to flood the American market.

The DOC, on Tuesday, imposed a whopping duty rate of 265.79% on imports of cold-rolled steel from China. Chinese companies did not respond to the DOCs request for information and thus, got punished with big tariffs. This will badly hit Chinese exporters such as Angang Group Hong Kong Co., Ltd., Benxi Iron and Steel (Group) Special Steel Co., Ltd. and Qian'an Golden Point Trading Co., Ltd. Brazil and Japan exporters received duties of 38.93% and 71.35%, respectively.

Additional content:

"Break Up the Big Banks" Debate Resurfaces

Should big banks break up into smaller companies? The issue has once again come under the spot light as an activist shareholder is urging shareholders of Citigroup Inc. (C) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to vote in favor of breaking up these big banks.

Later this year, shareholders of the two Wall Street banking giants will get to vote on whether these banks should consider splintering into smaller entities. According to a proxy statement filed by Citigroup on Wednesday for its annual meeting to be held on Apr 26, 2016, the company included the proposal of breaking up the bank floated by Bartlett Collins Naylor, the financial policy advocate for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

A similar proposal from Naylor, who holds shares in both the banks (though not significant), is likely to appear in JPMorgans annual proxy filing for shareholders to vote on at its upcoming annual meeting.

Naylors Proposal

According to Citigroups proxy statement, Naylor has proposed the formation of a committee composed of independent directors to evaluate whether the divestiture of all non-core banking businesses of Citigroup would result in an enhancement of shareholder value. The committee would convey its conclusions to the shareholders within 300 days.

Naylor highlighted that while major banks like Citigroup have come under reformed regulations, post 2008 crisis, he doubts whether the existing rules are adequate to prevent another crisis. His supporting statement expresses the concern that a mega-bank such as Citigroup may not simply be too big to fail, but also too big to manage effectively so as to contain risks that can spread across Citis business segments.

Naylors recommendation to the board calls for exploring options to break the firm into two or more companies with one performing basic business and consumer lending with FDIC-guaranteed deposit liabilities, and the other businesses focused on investment banking such as underwriting, trading and market-making. Such a separation would lessen the risk of another financial crisis that affects one and all  depositors, shareholders and taxpayers.

The Response

In opposition to Naylors recommendation Citigroup stated that the company has taken strategic steps to improve efficiency of its core businesses and reduced the assets of Citi Holdings  the unit which primarily consists of non-core assets  from $619 billion in fourth-quarter 2008 to $74 billion at the end of fourth-quarter 2015, representing just 4% of the total assets.

Recommending its shareholders to vote against Naylors proposal, Citigroup mentioned that it is addressing the concerns recognized in the proposal. The company further stated that its competitive advantage would be affected if it has to make a public disclosure of its business information and plan, as per Naylors proposal.

A release by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week stated that Naylor refused a meeting offered by JPMorgan with the companys Chief Financial Officer in the hope that he might withdraw his proposal. The release also quoted the comments of the companys Chief Executive James Dimon made last year. He had said that The synergies (of being big) are huge, both expense and revenue. Regarding the potential breaking up of the firm, Dimon mentioned the unscrambling would be extraordinarily complexin debt, in systems, and technology and people.

Last year, Naylor managed to receive only a 4% vote as he advocated a similar proposal of splitting Bank of America Corporation (BAC). However, citing an interview with Naylor, a Reuters release stated that regarding the Citigroup and JPMorgan proposals, Naylor expects influence of proxy advisory firms on institutional investors.

What Triggered the Debate?

In the past, Naylor and several others had raised the issue of breaking up banks a number of times. However, the debate gained traction in recent times as the U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination put the issue at the heart of his campaign.

Further, last month, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said that the Congress and regulators should consider splitting the banks up to safeguard the financial system from another meltdown. Kashkari, also a former U.S. Treasury official who administered the 2008 bailout program for the biggest banks in the U.S., is of the belief that the largest financial institutions continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy.

Bottom Line

Since the 2008 crisis, banks (both large and small) have adapted to the ever-changing regulatory landscape as well as the operating environment to their credit. While regulators have staunchly insisted on reforms and rules to break the banks notion of them being too big to fail, banks have continuously undertaken restructuring measures including streamlining operations and cost reduction initiatives to sustain their profitability.

While banks have come a long way since the crisis and has recovered to some extent, litigation issues cannot be ignored. Breaking up banks might minimize risk, reduce legal hassles and simplify operations. However, in the absence of large-scale benefits, there will be pressure on profitability with stiffer competition.

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paris attacks

Many experts weren't surprised when Islamic terrorists targeted France in attacks that killed at least 130 people and injured hundreds more in Paris in November.

John Schindler, the national-security columnist for The New York Observer, tweeted after the attacks: "Jihadists with Balkan small arms were shooting up France in 1995 ... got no idea why anybody is surprised."

Attackers used guns and bombs at several sites across Paris in November, including the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, where a shooting rampage and hostage situation left about 89 people dead.

Salah Abdeslam, the most wanted man in Europe for his suspected role in the attacks, was wounded and captured in a police raid in the Molenbeek district of Brussels on Friday afternoon, ending a months-long manhunt.

ISIS  aka the Islamic State or ISIL  called Paris "the capital of prostitution and vice" in a statement claiming responsibility for the attacks last year. The terrorist group also stated that France and "all nations following in its path" are "at the top of the target list for the Islamic State."

Under President Francois Hollande, France launched its first airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria last September. The country is also a closer and more opportunistic target for extremist groups.

Witnesses at the Bataclan said the gunmen shouted in French, "This is because of all the harm done by Hollande to Muslims all over the world," according to The New York Times. Another witness confirmed this to CNN, telling the news network the attacker who shouted that statement sounded like a native French speaker.

Will McCants, an expert on extremism and author of the recent book "The ISIS Apocalypse," told Business Insider in November that the attack could have been a pointed warning to France to cease strikes in Syria.

Story continues

It could be "to say to France, 'If you continue to bomb our positions, there's going to be more of the same and you had better leave off or more of your civilians will die,'" McCants said.

But he pointed out that it's difficult to speculate about ISIS's reasoning because "it may be a matter of where they had the greatest opportunity."

"The nation that is ISIS' greatest enemy is the United States," McCants said. "And you would have to expect that [the US] would be at the very top of their list of targets. But it's also very difficult to get operatives into this country."

Paris attack

Paris might also be a more fruitful recruiting ground for ISIS than cities in some other Western countries.

Tensions surrounding France's Muslim community have long been simmering, as George Packer, a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker who covered the Iraq war, chronicled in an August article. The piece, "The Other France," wondered whether Paris suburbs are an "incubator for terrorism."

"France has all kinds of suburbs, but the word for them, banlieues, has become pejorative, meaning slums dominated by immigrants," Packer wrote.

"Inside the banlieues are the cites: colossal concrete housing projects built during the postwar decades in the Brutalist style of Le Corbusier. Conceived as utopias for workers, they have become concentrations of poverty and social isolation. The cites and their occupants are the subject of anxious and angry discussion in France."

After the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo earlier last year, which was carried out by Al-Qaeda operatives, local activists in a Paris banlieue worried that it would divide France even more.

"I fear for the Muslims of France," one woman wrote on an activist's Facebook page, according to Packer. "The narrow-minded or frightened are going to dig in their heels and make an amalgame" to conflate terrorists with all Muslims, the woman said.

ISIS reach map

Packer explained the context of the tensions between some French people and families who came over from Algeria:

When Algeria was settled by Europeans, in the early nineteenth century, it became part of greater France, and remained so until 1962, when independence was achieved, after an eight-year war in which seven hundred thousand people died. It's hard to overstate how heavily this intimate, sad history has been repressed. "The Battle of Algiers," the filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo's neo-realist masterpiece about insurgency, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and torture in Algiers, was banned in France for five years after its release, in 1966, and it remains taboo there. On October 17, 1961, during demonstrations by pro-independence Algerians in Paris and its suburbs, the French police killed some two hundred people, throwing many bodies off bridges into the Seine. It took forty years for France to acknowledge that this massacre had occurred, and the incident remains barely mentioned in schools. Young people in the banlieues told me that colonial history is cursorily taught, and literature from former colonies hardly read.

Andrew Hussey, a British scholar at the University of London School of Advanced Study in Paris, told Packer: "The kids in the banlieues live in this perpetual present of weed, girls, gangsters, Islam. They have no sense of history, no sense of where they come from in North Africa, other than localized bits of Arabic that they don't understand, bits of Islam that don't really make sense."

This can be isolating for Muslims in Paris' suburbs.

Packer explained that citizens of immigrant descent "often identify whites with the term Francais de souche  'French from the roots.' The implication is that people with darker skin are not fully French."

NOW WATCH: NEWT GINGRICH: The US should 'test' all Muslims and deport them if they 'believe in Sharia'





More From Business Insider


Oracle has had enough of Oregon.

The business technology giant has decided it will no longer take on new business with the states government amid an ongoing legal battle, Oracle senior vice president Ken Glueck told Fortune on Wednesday.

The decision follows a protracted legal tussle between the two parties over a disastrous state healthcare enrollment website that never came online. In 2011, Oregon enlisted Oracle to build a healthcare exchange website related to Obamacare after being impressed by the companys sales pitch, according to a previous legal filing.

However, a series of technical issues plagued the website from the get-go. The two side quickly had a falling out over who was to blame.

Oracle says it will still honor its existing business contracts with Oregon and related state agencies. The decision will have no impact on any corporate clients in the state, Glueck explained.

We are just not interested in expanding the relationship, he said.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune's technology newsletter.

Oracles state government clientele typically includes social services agencies, motor vehicle departments, and tax agencies. But now, if an Oregon agency seeks out Oracle for a new project, the company will essentially just say no way.

The Portland Business Journal first reported the news that Oracle wanted to scale back its business in the state. Oregon filed a lawsuit against Oracle in 2014 that accused the company of "racketeering activity that has cost the State and Cover Oregon hundreds of millions of dollars," according to the filing.

Oracle fought back in 2015 with its own countersuit that claimed certain Oregon officials connected with the state's former governor were responsible for the project's failure and that they had shifted the blame to Oracle.

In January, Oracle sued Oregon again over allegations that the state did not comply with a proposed settlement to end the litigation. Oregon, however, argued that the settlement talks did not include the state attorney general and therefore any agreement was invalid.

Story continues

Last week, Oracle filed yet-another lawsuit, this time against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The company wants to compel the department to investigate why Oregons health insurance exchange project collapsed.

In his interview with Fortune, Glueck said that Oracle was never the websites project lead (otherwise known as a systems integrator) and that all of Oregons allegations are unfounded. Additionally, the fact that Oregon sued five of our employees personally helped to factor into the decision to cut future ties to the state, he said.

Glueck didnt seem concerned that Oracle could lose out on new business with Oregon to rival companies like IBM and Amazon . He emphasized that Oregons government agencies account for only a small part of Oracles overall revenue.

The state of Oregon is really not material to our business, Glueck said. It's just too small.

For more about Oracle, watch:

A spokesperson for Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum downplayed the news of Oracles decision. In an email to Fortune, she pointed out that the state had asked in its original lawsuit that the court to prohibit the company from doing future business with the state of Oregon.

Apparently, the bad blood flows both ways.

Glueck, for his part, said he is unconcerned about any negative impact to Oracle from its other customers. He said other state governments and private customers wont be cut off, saying Oracle has almost no litigation anywhere in the country and that the Oregon legal drama is merely an anomaly that is never going to happen again.

We're the same Oracle, said Glueck. You know you can count on us.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Facebook and Whatsapp will not be restricted in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has taken a stand in the growing debate around the regulation and possible banning of over-the-top (OTT) services like Facebook and WhatsApp. These services, immensely popular in Africa, as around the world, have been targeted by networks who suggest the applications are taking advantage of their infrastructure for free thus leading to calls for governments to ban them. But Zimbabwes regulator has rejected these complaints.

Zimbabwes information communication technology minister Supa Mandiwanzira says networks in the country approached the government to ban or stifle so-called over-the-top services like WhatsApp and Skype to protect the networks profitability. Mandiwanzira says Zimbabwe being a country which promotes access to technology is averse to the idea of stifling or banning over the top services.

Going even further, Mandiwanzira says the government has convinced the local networks to commit 1% of their earnings to a fund which will be aimed at promoting the development of local technology and applications created by Zimbabweans.

Elsewhere on the continent, Nigerian regulators are also looking into the possibility of regulating over-the-top services following complaints by networks who say their revenues have been notably dented. The subject has also been raised in South Africa, the country with the highest smartphone penetration on the continent, and has been debated in parliamentary hearings.

Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief  the most important and interesting news from across the continent, in your inbox.

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Taipei, March 18 (CNA) President-elect Tsai Ing-wen () said Friday that there is no need for Taiwan and mainland China to target each other and she hoped that the resumption of diplomatic ties between mainland China and The Gambia was not such an act.
92 per cent of Canadians say that the energy industry is important for the national economy.



Sure it is, that is why everybody should have a fail-safe access to it, so far only the west has that level of access.



63 per cent believe Alberta should immediately receive $700 million in federal infrastructure money.



Depends what the plans are and then it might need $7B instead (over a longer period)



56 per cent say that the federal government should remove restrictions on EI for Albertans.



More access to home based business and contracting yourself out with all the deduction being yours rather than some company.



59 per cent believe that Alberta needs federal government help to help combat slumping oil prices.



Take away any existing subsidies and give those to industries that have a brighter future (when energy costs are as low as they will go).



59 per cent of Canadians support the Energy East pipeline.



Move this one higher and build the lines while the price of oil is cheap, waiting til the prices are higher only makes it more expensive to build. If oil ever gets expensive then the East can still get western fuel at discounted prices, no such deal if it comes via ship. (if you can even get some)
Mostly the honesty and efficiency in doing what they set out to do. Do you hate them for bringing a ceasefire to a region wracked with war for 5 years??Don't worry the S-400 will be staring and so will the heavy equipment like tanks. You two are really sore losers aren't you. Bitch when radical Muslims are pounded to dust when you claim to be trying the same. You should now be concerned about Turkey imploding and a big round war crimes charges being filed.Talk about somebody being in a quagmire.
Galen Hadley, speaker of the Nebraska Legislature from Kearney, is upset by remarks from Sen. Bill Kintner of Papillion that compare some members of the Legislature to monkeys on a rope.

There is some truth in Sen. Kintners statements. Omaha Sen. Robert Hilkemann introduced a Katies law bill (LB1054) that would expand Nebraska DNA collection laws to include people arrested and booked for certain violent crimes like rape, murder, etc.

This bill would allow people to request destroying their DNA record if they were acquitted of all charges or the statute of limitation has passed.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers has serious doubts, claiming it to be another scheme to get as much DNA on record as possible.

This bill was to go before the judiciary committee, which Chambers is a member of, on Feb. 18. As of March 14, this bill has not been reviewed by the judiciary committee and will likely die.

One senator that cannot be tagged as a monkey on a rope is David Schnoor of Scribner. Fremont and all in District 15 are fortunate to have Sen. Schnoor as our representative in the Legislature.

When Sen. Chambers identified local law enforcement as his ISIS, Sen. Schnoor stood face to face with Ernie and asked for his resignation from the state senate. Thats true leadership.

At the federal level, to the present and past public office holders who are trashing Donald Trump, share some of that anger at our D.C. establishment.

If our president and Congress were doing the job we elected them to do, there would not be a Donald Trump leading in this presidential race.

Robert L. Warner

Fremont
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Sony has pulled back the curtain on a comprehensive PlayStation VR launch bundle, which will be available to pre-order from 7am PT on March 22.

The $499.99 bundle will include all contents of the $399.99 core package, along with two PlayStation Move motion controllers, a PlayStation camera, and a copy of PlayStation VR Worlds.

According to Sony the first wave of pre-orders will be limited in supply, although a second wave will be arriving in the summer.

Canadian shoppers will also be able to pick up the bundle for $699.99 CAD. There's no word yet on whether the bundle will be made available to customers in the UK and Europe.

Curiously, Sony also announced that the core PS VR bundle, that's the standalone $399.99 offering, isn't available for pre-order.

Whether that means it won't be available for pre-order at any point, or is simply being held back for the time being, remains to be seen.
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest for Thursday, March 17, 2016:

CALL FOR SUPCO HEARINGS: Two former lieutenant governors, Democrat Sally Pederson and Republican Joy Corning, called for Sen. Chuck Grassley to hold hearings on President Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Threatening to block his confirmation by refusing to hold hearings is troubling and harmful, Pederson said at a Statehouse news conference organized by Justice Not Politics.

By refusing to hold hearings on Garland, Grassley, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is abandoning his reputation as fair-minded, common sense, consensus-builder, Corning said.

The rejected Grassleys rational that the Senate should wait until after the election to give voter an opportunity to weigh in on the garland nomination.

Courts should be above politics, Pederson said.

CLINTON COUNTY AID: Gov. Terry Branstad has issued a proclamation of disaster emergency for Clinton County that will allow state resources to be used to respond to and recover from severe storms that impacted the county March 15.

The proclamation also activates the Iowa Individual Assistance Program for Clinton County residents. The program provides grants of up to $5,000 for households with incomes up to 200 percent of the current federal poverty level or a maximum annual income of $40,320 for a family of three.

The grant application and instructions are available at http://dhs.iowa.gov/disaster-assistance-programs.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS: Iowans are being encouraged to think about a disaster, especially floods and tornadoes, two of Iowas most common hazards.

Heavy rains, flooding, tornadoes, ice storms, blizzards and heavy snow have caused most of Iowas 38 Presidential Disaster Declarations since 1990.

March 20-26 is Severe Weather Awareness Week. Adam Broughton, the Department of Natural Resources disaster response coordinator, said it's a good time to put together a supply kit with three days of food and water, batteries, a solar-powered or hand-cranked charger for batteries and cell phones, a light source, medicine, doctors numbers, prescription lists, insurance cards and supplies for pets.

Find more tips at www.iowadnr.gov/disaster.

ROAD JUSTICE: The Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case State of Iowa v. Maryo D. Lindsey Jr. at 7 p.m. April 14 in the Clinton High School Auditorium., 817 8th Ave. S. The oral arguments are open to the public and will begin at 7 p.m.

Lindsey is seeking further review of an Iowa Court of Appeals ruling affirming his conviction for possession of a firearm as a felon, carrying weapons on school grounds, going armed with a dangerous weapon and possession of a controlled substance.

Lindsey contends that after he was injured in a high school football game, school officials conducted a search and seizure of his school-issued football equipment bag constituting an unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment in violation of defendant's constitutional rights.

A public reception with the justices will follow in the school commons.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: When I think of American history, I think about the moderates. I think about Abraham Lincoln, I think about Teddy Roosevelt. I think about people who fought demagoguery, fought people who thrived on the politics of fear, and I hope that isnt finding its way into American politics because, in my opinion, thats always been entertaining to a certain extent  but for things to actually get done, it needs to be the politics of the middle.  Irish Parliament member John Deasy, delivering St. Patricks Day remarks to members of the Iowa Senate on Thursday.

-- Compiled by the Des Moines Bureau
NORA SPRINGS | The Nora Springs City Council met in a special session Thursday night to discuss blighted building properties at 14 and 20 N. Hawkeye Ave.

Council member Brian Hanft, who requested the meeting, said that the state fire marshal had inspected the Pole Barn Theater located at 14 N. Hawkeye Avenue.

Based on the report from the fire marshal, its pretty clear to me that there are some serious concerns inside that building, Hanft said.

The Pole Barn is a juice bar featuring exotic dancers. According to Floyd County Assessors records, the building is owned by Kevin Wedeking of Charles City. The property also has several apartments above the club space.

I believe that we as a city are obligated to do something, Hanft said.

City Attorney Todd Prichard referred to Iowa Code 657A regarding abandoned or unsafe buildings  abatement by rehabilitation.

The properties would have 15 days from the delivery of the fire marshals report to submit an abatement plan to comply with the code. Non-compliance injunctions to stop all activity on the property would be handled by the district court, according to Pritchard.

Interested persons would be anyone who owns the building, is a tenant of the building, has a mortgage on the building or an interest in the property, Pritchard said. The neighboring land owner may be an interested party.

It would be incumbent upon the owners of the properties to comply and address the fire, electrical and occupancy issues, according to Pritchard.

Photography by Michelle is located at 20 N. Hawkeye Avenue owned by Michelle Lindgren of Nora Springs.

Lindgren had previously told the council that she cant operate past 6 p.m. with the Pole Barn Theater open.

According to the council, the court would decide what adjustments the adjacent property to the Pole Barn Theater and any tenants within the buildings would have to do to comply with Iowa Code 657A.

Under the code, public nuisance is defined as a building that is a menace to the public health, structurally unsafe, and constitutes a fire hazard, among others.

Ive got concerns about the people who are entering this building regardless of who that is, Hanft said.

Pole Barn owner Dale Peterson entered 20 minutes into the meeting and asked questions of the council.

Why wasnt it ever a problem when it was a bar, Peterson said.

Theres a difference between a bar and a theater, theyre two different things, councilman and Mayor Pro-tem Steven Blickenderfer said.

City Administrator Deb Gaul added that concerned citizens had called in complaints to the fire marshal and that it was not the city who had called the fire marshal.

Peterson also offered free admission to his business to those in attendance at the meeting.

The council unanimously approved the request for Pritchards law firm to proceed with action to enforce Iowa Code 657A.

The City Council recently passed zoning amendments restricting where sexually-oriented businesses can operate.

The Pole Barn Theater was open though the meeting and several opponents of the business gathered outside the doors to protest.
WILMINGTON, Del., March 17, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rigrodsky & Long, P.A.:

Do you, or did you, own shares of Imprivata, Inc. (NYSE:IMPR) ?





(NYSE:IMPR) Did you purchase your shares between July 30, 2015 and November 2, 2015, inclusive?





Did you lose money in your investment?



Rigrodsky & Long, P.A. reminds shareholders of Imprivata, Inc. (Imprivata or the Company) (NYSE:IMPR) of an upcoming deadline involving a securities fraud class action lawsuit commenced against the Company. A complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of all persons or entities that purchased the common stock of Imprivata between July 30, 2015 and November 2, 2015, inclusive (the Class Period), alleging violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 against the Company and certain of its officers (the Complaint).

If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than April 4, 2016. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. Any member of the proposed class may move the court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member.

If you purchased shares of Imprivata during the Class Period, or purchased shares prior to the Class Period and still hold Imprivata, and wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact Timothy J. MacFall, Esquire or Peter Allocco of Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., 2 Righter Parkway, Suite 120, Wilmington, DE 19803 at (888) 969-4242; by e-mail to info@rl-legal.com; or at: http://rigrodskylong.com/investigations/imprivata-inc-impr.



Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
CALGARY, Alberta, March 17, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Toscana Energy Income Corporation ("TEI" or the "Corporation") (TSX:TEI) announces financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2015, and the Corporations 2015 year-end reserves.



2015 Highlights

Continued to grow its high quality, long life, low decline asset base

Increased Total Reserves by 9%

Proved Reserves at 72% of Total Reserves

Acquired four strategic acquisitions in an opportunistic commodity price environment

Realized hedging gains of $7.2 million

Reduced G&A by $1.12/boe



Financial and operating results:

The following summarizes information contained in the Consolidated Financial Statements and Managements Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for the year ended December 31, 2015. This news release should not be considered a substitute for reading the full disclosure documents, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Corporations website at www.sprott-toscana.com.

Three months ended December 31, Year ended December 31, 2015 2014 Change 2015 2014 Change Average daily production (boe/d) 2,517 2,407 5 % 2,259 2,484 (9 %) Petroleum and natural gas revenue,

net of royalties ($) 6,084,131 8,124,585 (25 %) 22,705,919 39,608,974 (43 %) Netback ($)1 4,972,688 5,571,213 (11 %) 16,403,222 22,015,104 (25 %) Netback per boe ($)1 21.47 25.16 (15 %) 19.90 24.28 (18 %) Funds flow from operations, prior to

Performance Fee internalization ($)1, 2 2,997,122 3,548,876 (16 %) 10,950,299 15,039,700 (27 %) Capital expenditures ($) 5,262,465 798,880 559 % 25,728,640 23,767,008 8 % Dividends paid per common share ($) 0.300 0.405 (26 %) 1.305 1.620 (19 %) At December 31, 2015 2014 Change Total assets ($) 122,250,976 115,465,094 6 % Credit facility availability($)1 8,652,111 37,164,365 (77 %) Shareholders equity ($) 42,157,240 67,235,345 (37 %) Common shares outstanding at period end 7,174,614 7,204,192 (0 %)

1 Non-IFRS measure.

2 One-time expense of approximately $4.6 million incurred in the second quarter of 2015, relating to the previously announced performance fee buyout.

Corporate Reserves:

The reserves data set forth below is based upon independent reserve assessments and evaluations prepared by:

Sproule Associates Limited (Sproule) dated February 18, 2016 with an effective date of December 31, 2015;

GLJ Petroleum Consultants (GLJ) dated March 7, 2016 with an effective date of December 31, 2015; and

McDaniel and Associates Consultants Ltd. (McDaniel) dated March 17, 2016 with an effective date of December 31, 2015

(together referred to as the Reserve Reports).



The following summarizes the Corporations crude oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas reserves and the net present values before income taxes of future net revenue for the Corporations reserves using forecast prices and costs based on the Reserve Reports. The Reserve Reports have been prepared in accordance with the standards contained in the Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation Handbook (the "COGE Handbook") and the reserve definitions contained in National Instrument 51-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities (NI 51-101).

All evaluations and reviews of future net revenues are stated prior to any provisions for interest costs or general and administrative costs and after the deduction of estimated future capital expenditures for wells to which reserves have been assigned. It should not be assumed that the estimates of future net revenues presented in the tables below represent the fair market value of the reserves. There is no assurance that the forecast prices and cost assumptions will be attained and variances could be material. The recovery and reserve estimates of our crude oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas reserves provided herein are estimates only and there is no guarantee that the estimated reserves will be recovered. Actual crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids reserves may be greater than or less than the estimates provided herein for the fiscal year ended 2015.

Reserves Summary

The Corporations total proved plus probable reserves (including royalty interests) increased by 9% in fiscal 2015 to 10,419 Mboe. Proved reserves increased by 12% to 7,463 Mboe and comprised 72% of the Corporations total proved plus probable reserves at December 31, 2015. The Corporation had 350 Mboe of proved undeveloped reserves (including royalty interests) at December 31, 2015, representing 3% of total proved and probable reserves and 5% of total proved reserves.

The future capital in the Reserve Reports (undiscounted) is $4.4 million for the proved and probable reserves and $3.0 million for total proved reserves.

The following table provides summary reserve information based upon the Reserve Reports and using published price forecasts used by each of Sproule, GLJ and McDaniel.

Light and Medium

Crude Oil



Natural Gas



NGL



Total Oil

Equivalent



Reserves Category Gross Net1 Gross Net1 Gross Net1 Gross Net1 (Mbbl) (Mbbl) (MMcf) (MMcf) (Mbbl) (Mbbl) (MBOE) (MBOE) Proved Developed Producing 2,430 2,207 18,931 19,096 599 502 6,184 5,891 Developed Non-Producing 112 111 1,828 1,724 28 19 445 417 Undeveloped 176 152 - 717 - 53 176 326 Total Proved 2,718 2,470 20,759 21,537 627 574 6,805 6,634 Probable 1,059 912 8,776 8,902 205 191 2,727 2,587 Total Proved plus

Probable 3,777 3,382 29,535 30,439 832 765 9,532 9,221

Notes:

(1) Net reserves means the Corporations working interest (operated and non-operated) share after deduction of royalty obligations, plus the Corporations royalty interest in reserves.

(2) Due to rounding, certain totals may not be consistent from one table to the next.





Light and

Medium Crude

Oil Natural Gas



NGL



Total Oil

Equivalent



Royalty Interest Royalty Interest Royalty Interest Royalty Interest (Mbbl) (Mmcf) (Mbbl) (Mboe) Developed Producing 63 1,773 118 475 Developed Non-Producing 8 5 - 8 Undeveloped 1 717 53 175 Total Proved 72 2,495 171 658 Probable 25 878 57 229 Total Proved plus Probable 97 3,373 228 887







Light and

Medium Crude

Oil Natural Gas NGL Total Oil

Equivalent Company Interest1 Company Interest1 Company Interest1 Company Interest1 (Mbbl) (Mmcf) (Mbbl) (Mboe) Developed Producing 2,493 20,704 717 6,659 Developed Non-Producing 120 1,833 28 453 Undeveloped 177 717 53 351 Total Proved 2,790 23,254 798 7,463 Probable 1,084 9,654 262 2,956 Total Proved plus Probable 3,874 32,908 1,060 10,419

Note:

(1) Company Interest reserves means the Corporations working interest (operating and non-operating) share before deduction of royalties and including royalty interests of the Corporation.



Reserves Values

The estimated before tax net present value of future net revenues associated with the Corporations reserves effective December 31, 2015 and based on the published future price forecasts are summarized in the following table:

Reserve Values ($000s) Undiscounted 5 % 10 % 15 % 20 % Proved Producing 169,583 123,383 96,761 79,574 67,625 Non-producing 8,581 6,622 5,245 4,258 3,160 Undeveloped 12,732 9,578 7,560 6,160 5,027 Total Proved 190,896 139,583 109,566 89,992 75,812 Probable 88,492 48,899 31,331 21,968 14,517 Total Proved and Probable 279,388 188,482 140,897 111,960 90,329

Notes:

(1) The estimated future net revenues are stated after deducting future estimated site restoration costs and are reduced for estimated future abandonment costs and estimated capital for future development associated with the reserves.

(2) The net present value of future revenues does not represent fair market value.

The following table sets forth development costs deducted in the estimation of the future net revenue attributable to the reserve categories noted below.

Forecast Prices and Costs Proved

Reserves Proved plus Probable

Reserves Year ($000s) ($000s) 2016 872 885 2017 737 1,059 2018 1,176 1,666 2019 - 571 2020 - - Remainder (FY 2021 and beyond) 248 247 Total Undiscounted (all years) 3,033 4,428 Total Discounted (10%) 2,510 3,598



Dividend Suspension

In light of the continued volatility and uncertainty in the outlook for commodity prices, Toscana announces that it is suspending its dividend program effective immediately. After careful analysis and weighing the risks associated with potentially increasing its debt position, Toscana believes that suspending the dividend is the right decision and will allow the Corporation to protect its balance sheet as well as to improve its ability to allocate capital to fund growth. The Corporation will consider reinstating its dividend program should industry conditions change.

Special Note Regarding Disclosure of Reserves and Resources

Contingent resources is defined in the COGE Handbook as those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from known accumulations using established technology or technology under development, but which are not currently considered to be commercially recoverable due to one or more contingencies. Contingencies may include factors such as economic, legal, environmental, political, and regulatory matters, or a lack of markets. It is also appropriate to classify as contingent resources the estimated discovered recoverable quantities associated with a project in the early evaluation stage. Contingent resources are further classified in accordance with the level of certainty associated with the estimates and may be sub classified based on project maturity and/or characterized by their economic status. The contingent resources estimates herein, including the corresponding estimates of before tax present value estimates, are estimates only and the actual results may be greater than or less than the estimates provided herein. There is no certainty that it will be commercially viable or technically feasible to produce any portion of the resources.

Probability

"Low Estimate" is a classification of estimated resources described in the COGE Handbook as being considered to be a conservative estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered. It is likely that the actual remaining quantities recovered will exceed the Low Estimate. If probabilistic methods are used, there should be a 90% probability (P90) that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the Low Estimate. "Best Estimate" is a classification of estimated resources described in the COGE Handbook as being considered to be the best estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered. It is equally likely that the actual remaining quantities recovered will be greater or less than the Best Estimate. If probabilistic methods are used, there should be a 50% probability (P50) that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the Best Estimate. "High Estimate" is a classification of estimated resources described in the COGE Handbook as being considered to be an optimistic estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered. It is unlikely that the actual remaining quantities recovered will exceed the High Estimate. If probabilistic methods are used, there should be a 10% probability (P10) that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the High Estimate.

BOE Equivalency

Barrel of oil equivalents or BOEs may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A BOE conversion ratio of 6 Mcf: 1 bbl is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given the value ratio based on the current price of crude oil as compared to natural gas is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 6 Mcf: 1 bbl, utilizing a conversion ratio of 6 Mcf: 1 bbl may be a misleading indication of value.

Oil and Gas Advisory

The reserves information contained in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 51-101. Complete NI 51-101 reserves disclosure will be included in our Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015. Listed below are cautionary statements applicable to our reserves information that are specifically required by NI 51-101:

Individual properties may not reflect the same confidence level as estimates of reserves for all properties due to the effects of aggregation.

With respect to finding and development costs, the aggregate of the exploration and development costs incurred in the most recent financial year and the change during that year in estimated future development costs generally will not reflect total finding and development costs related to reserve additions for that year.

This press release contains estimates of the net present value of our future net revenue from our reserves. Such amounts do not represent the fair market value of our reserves.

Reserves included herein are stated on a company interest basis (before royalty burdens and including royalty interests) unless noted otherwise as well as on a gross and net basis as defined in NI 51-101. "Company interest" is not a term defined by NI 51-101 and as such the estimates of Company interest reserves herein may not be comparable to estimates of gross reserves prepared in accordance with NI 51-101 or to other issuers' estimates of company interest reserves.

Netback equals (a) petroleum and natural gas revenue (including royalty revenues), net of royalty expense (b) realized gains and losses on risk management contracts and (c) less operating costs, net of processing income.

Non-IFRS measures:

Management uses netback, funds flow from operations prior to performance fee internalization, funds flow from operations, unused portion of credit facility, credit facility utilization and credit facility availability to analyze operating performance and to determine the Corporations ability to fund future capital investment. These terms, as presented, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and therefore may not be comparable with the calculation of similar measures for other entities.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release contains forwardlooking statements and forwardlooking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forwardlooking statements or information. Forwardlooking statements and information are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "appear", "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "approximate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targeting", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "would" and similar expressions.

More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forwardlooking statements and information concerning the Corporation's petroleum and natural gas production and reserves. The forwardlooking statements and information are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by management of the Corporation, including expectations and assumptions concerning well production rates and reserve volumes; project development and overall business strategy. Although management of the Corporation believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forwardlooking statements and information since no assurance can be given that they will prove to be correct.

Forward-looking statements and information are provided for the purpose of providing information about the current expectations and plans of management of the Corporation relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such statements and information may not be appropriate for other purposes, such as making investment decisions. Since forwardlooking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, the risks associated with the oil and gas industry in general such as operational risks in development, exploration and production delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to reserves, production, costs and expenses; health, safety and environmental risks; commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations; marketing and transportation; loss of markets; environmental risks; competition; incorrect assessment of the value of acquisitions and failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions; ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources; failure to obtain required regulatory and other approvals and changes in legislation, including but not limited to tax laws, royalties and environmental regulations. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forwardlooking statements, timelines and information contained in this news release. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive.

The forwardlooking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and no undertaking is given to update publicly or revise any forwardlooking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws or the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). The forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

About Toscana Energy Income Corporation

Toscana Energy Income Corporation is a conventional oil and gas producer with the mandate to acquire high quality, long life oil and gas assets including royalties, non-operated working interests and unitized production for yield and capital appreciation. Toscana Energy Income Corporation is managed by Sprott Toscana through Toscana Energy Corporation. Sprott Toscana is a member of the Sprott Group of Companies.

Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
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ALLGEIER SE / Key word(s): Preliminary Results 18.03.2016 12:42 Dissemination of an Ad hoc announcement according to  15 WpHG, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Munich, 18 March 2016 - Allgeier SE (ISIN DE0005086300, WKN 5086630) records growth in revenues and EBITDA in the financial year 2015 (1 January 2015 - 31 December 2015), according to preliminary figures. In the past business year, the group sold its subsidiaries b+m Informatik AG, Melsdorf, and terna Group, based in Innsbruck, Austria, as well as the segment Storage of the Allgeier (Switzerland) AG, based in Thawil, Switzerland. These units are shown as discontinued operations. By selling these units, the group yielded a return of EUR 10.0 million before tax, according to preliminary figures. For the next general meeting, the Executive Board takes this as an occasion to suggest besides the normal dividend a special dividend of EUR 0.20 for each share. Furthermore, the Munich-based Talentry GmbH, is also shown within the discontinued operations due to pending negotiations about a change in the shareholder structure to achieve strategic future development. Group's business development In total, the preliminary total revenues from continued and discontinued operations in the past financial year 2015 increased by 9 per cent to EUR 498.9 million (previous year: EUR 456.5 million). The group's preliminary operative EBITDA (before extraordinary effects and effects relating to other periods) from continued and discontinued operations rose disproportionately by 15 per cent to EUR 29.3 million, compared to the same period the year before (previous year: EUR 25.3 million). Allgeier's preliminary EBITDA including extraordinary effects and effects relating to other periods improved by 13 per cent to EUR 27.1 million, during the period (previous year: EUR 24.0 million). The group's preliminary EBIT of the period was at EUR 12.6 million (previous year: EUR 10.5 million) and was thus 20 per cent above previous year's EBIT. The Allgeier group recorded preliminary earnings before tax to the amount of EUR 8.8 million (previous year: EUR 5.5 million). Performance of continued operations The preliminary group revenue from continued operations in the financial year 2015 increased to EUR 452.2 million (continued operations previous year: EUR 384.2 million) which means an increase of 18 per cent. The group's preliminary operative EBITDA (before extraordinary effects and effects relating to other periods) of the continued operations increased by 11 per cent to EUR 25.3 million (continued operations previous year: EUR 22.8 million). Allgeier's preliminary EBITDA from continued operations including extraordinary effects and effects relating to other periods improved by 10 per cent to EUR 23.2 million, during the period (continued operations of the previous year: EUR 21.0 million). The group's preliminary EBIT from continued operations was at EUR 10.4 million (continued operations from the previous year: EUR 10.3 million). The Allgeier group achieved preliminary earnings before tax from continued operations to the amount of EUR 6.3 million (previous year: EUR 5.4 million). Balance sheet benchmark data as of 31 December 2015 On the balance sheet date, 31 December 2015, preliminary equity rose to EUR 116 million (previous year: EUR 100.7 million). The Allgeier group had cash and cash equivalents at its disposal as of the end of 2015 in the amount of EUR 83.7 million, according to preliminary figures (previous year: EUR 98.0 million). Preliminary current and non-current financial liabilities on the balance sheet closing date were at EUR 110.7 million (previous year: EUR 125.2 million). The preliminary balance sheet total at the end of the financial year 2015 stood at EUR 328 million (previous year: EUR 329.8 million). Outlook for the financial year 2016 The Executive Board expects a continuing growth for the business year 2016, according to current plans. The group's revenues from continued operations are expected to grow more than 10 per cent. The group's operative EBITDA (before extraordinary effects and effects relating to other periods) from continued operations is to grow disproportionately, according to Allgeier's plans, which expect a moderate increase of the EBITDA margin. These projections refer to the development of the actual group only. They do not content changes in portfolio so far neither through additional acquisitions nor additional disinvestments. Note All of the IFRS figures quoted in this announcement for financial year 2015 are preliminary and have not yet been conclusively verified by the group auditor. The aforementioned annual results from continued operations are not comparable with the Allgeier annual report 2014 owing to the retrospective adjustment in the previous year to account for the disposal of the units. Publication of the Allgeier annual report for 2015 is scheduled for 29 April 2016. The statements on the year 2016 represent expectations based on current plans and projections; there is no certainty that they will be realized. Contact: Allgeier SE Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Dr. Christopher Groe Wehrlestrae 12 81679 Munich Tel.: +49 (0)89/998421-0 Fax: +49 (0)89/998421-11 E-Mail: ir@allgeier.com Web: www.allgeier.com Allgeier SE is one of the leading IT companies for Business Performance today: Allgeier combines the advantages of an international provider with the merits of medium-sized companies with a growth strategy oriented consistently to innovations and future trends, and an integrative business model. Operating divisions, each with their individual specialist or sector-related focal points, work together for more than 3,000 customers from almost all sectors. With a highly flexible delivery model, Allgeier covers the full range of IT services, from on-site and nearshore through to offshore: A strong presence in India ensures flexibility and maximum scalability of the services, supplemented by highly qualified expertise in high-end software development. With more than 6,000 salaried employees and around 1,300 freelance IT experts, Allgeier, as a one-stop shop, offers customers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions and services. Allgeier's customers include globally operating groups as well as innovative medium-sized operations that wish to secure strategic advantages through high-performing IT solutions, intelligent software and flexible personnel services. This high-growth company, which is based in Munich, Germany, operates more than 90 sites in the German-speaking region, and at further locations in the rest of Europe, as well as in India, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and the USA. In 2015 Allgeier generated EUR 452 million of revenue (continued operations), according to preliminary figures. Allgeier SE was ranked first in the Lunendonk(R) List 2015 of "Leading German medium-sized IT consulting and system integration companies". The Allgeier Experts division ranks among the top three IT personnel service-providers in Germany according to the Lunendonk(R) 2015 market segment study "The market for recruiting, mediating and managing IT freelancers in Germany". The company is listed on the regular market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the General Standard segment (WKN 508630/ISIN DE0005086300). Further information is available on the company's website at: www.allgeier.com. 18.03.2016 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Company: ALLGEIER SE Wehrlestrae 12 81679 Munchen Germany Phone: +49 (0) 89 - 99 84 21 0 Fax: +49 (0) 89 - 99 84 21 11 E-mail: info@allgeier.com Internet: http://www.allgeier.com ISIN: DE0005086300 WKN: 508630 Indices: CDAX Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (General Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart End of Announcement DGAP News-Service ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATLANTA, March 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) welcomes Hadiyah-Nicole Green, Ph.D. as assistant professor in the department of physiology. In addition to her faculty role, Green will continue work that developed from patent-pending technologies, including a 3-in-1 system for early detection, targeting, a selective treatment of malignant tumors, and a nanoparticle-enabled 10-minute laser treatment that induces 100% tumor regression. She was recently awarded a $1.1 million HBCU-Research Scientist Training Program Career Development Award from the Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development Service of the Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development. Green will start at MSM on April 4, 2016.



"Dr. Green's ground-breaking research is developing revolutionary technologies that could result in life-saving alternatives for people fighting cancer, " Sandra Harris-Hooker, Ph.D., vice president and executive dean or research and academic administration. "We welcome her diversity of thought to not only help in the education of the next generation of providers, but to partner with our community of researchers in the advancement of health equity."



Green comes to MSM from Tuskegee University, where she served as an assistant professor in the department of physics with adjunct appointments in the departments of biological sciences and materials science engineering. She is a multi-disciplinary physicist who specializes in nanobiophotonics and targeted cancer therapeutics, using lasers, nanoparticles, and antibodies to develop biomarker-specific platforms to target, image, and treat malignant tumors including head and neck, prostate and women's cancers.



Green completed her bachelor of science in physics with a concentration in optics and minor in mathematics from Alabama A &M University in 1999. She received her masters of science in physics with a concentration in Nanobiophotonics in 2009 and her Ph.D. in physics in 2012 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). As a student, she received $300,000 in scholarships and fellowships including the National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship, National Science Foundation Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship, David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellowship and AAMU Presidential Scholarship.



About Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM)



Founded in 1975, MSM is among the nation's leading educators of primary care physicians and was recognized by Annals of Internal Medicine in 2011 as the top institution in the first study of U.S. medical schools for our social mission based on our production of primary care physicians, training of underrepresented minority doctors and placement of doctors practicing in underserved communities. Our faculty and alumni are noted for excellence in teaching, research and public policy, as well as exceptional patient care.



Morehouse School of Medicine is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award doctoral and master's degrees. For more information, please visit www.msm.edu.



Photos accompanying this release are available at:

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=39500

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=39501
Cindy Klumb spends her days running the drawing center at Pratt Institute, the arts and engineering school in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Among other duties, she manages payroll for the center's nude models. On weekends, she likes to paint. Or she did.

"I can do a little bit of watercolor, a little bit of drawing, but unless physical therapy fixes my arm, my painting days are over," she said on Thursday afternoon. She showed that she has trouble lifting her right arm above her belly-button, putting the easel out of reach.

Klumb is still recovering from being hit by a driver while trying to cross Myrtle Avenue back in January. She was leaving work around 5:45 p.m. on January 11th and had stopped at the Key Food on Myrtle at Ryerson Street to pick up a few things before heading home to Gravesend. Ryerson ends at Myrtle, forming a T at the Key Food, and the intersection is pocked with potholes and exposed layers of street strata. It lacks a stop sign or traffic light.



Looking across Myrtle in the direction Cindy Klumb was crossing when a driver hit her. (Nathan Tempey/Gothamist)

Klumb said the two nearest stoplights, one and three blocks away in either direction, were red when she stepped out into the road, but that she tripped on an edge in the distressed street and went down hard, losing her glasses on the way.

"I'm 63 years old, so I don't bounce straight to my feet," she remembered.

As she tried to get back up, she heard a woman scream, "There's a car coming!"

She says she had risen to a crouch when she felt the bumper hit her in the back.

"I went down face first on the pavement," she said. "The next thing I remember is the shadow of the car going over me."



Cindy Klumb the day after the crash (Cindy Klumb)

None of the wheels hit her. People ran to her from all directions. A group of people stopped traffic, picked her and her things up, and carried them out of the street. And that's when things started to get weird.

Pratt student John Cisneros was also leaving Key Food that evening and says he saw the driver of a light-colored minivan hit Klumb. The driver stopped about 50 feet up the road and was one of those who rushed to help Klumb, Cisneros recalled. A female good Samaritan with medical training tended to Klumb as Cisneros called 911, then Cisneros relayed instructions from the FDNY as paramedics headed to the scene.

The ambulance arrived, and shortly after, a patrol car. One of the responding officers, Officer Orlando Vargas, had begun interviewing the woman helping Klumb when Klumb says the woman spotted the driver hovering around the periphery of the crowd and pointed at him, yelling, "That's him! That's the one that hit her! That's the car parked down there!"

"She said, 'I tried to stop you! I looked you right in the eye! You're the one that hit her!'" Klumb said. "The whole time the officer's just standing there."

The driver objected, telling Klumb and the good Samaritan that it wasn't him, that a car in front of him hit Klumb. It took a lot of insistence on the unnamed woman's part to convince Officer Vargas to go talk to the guy, Klumb said. But as EMTs were loading her into the ambulance on a backboard she says that though her glasses were broken and she could only make out outlines, "I saw their body language. [The driver] relaxed when Vargas got there. It was almost like they had seen each other before." Then Officer Vargas let the driver go.

All through the ambulance ride, Klumb says, "I kept thinking, why isn't he detaining him? If this is the person that hit me, why did he let him go?"

Cisneros has a bit of useful information on this end: he says he saw the driver flash a badge to Vargas, and from then until he and Vargas left, wear the badge on a chain around his neck.

At Woodhull Medical Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Klumb learned she had two broken ribs, a concussion, and trauma to her neck and rotator cuff, but before she had completed the full battery of tests, Officer Vargas showed up at her bedside.

"I'm still bleeding, I've still got blood dripping off of my mouth and nose," she remembered. "He has no way of knowing if I'm going to make it."

"I said, 'You got [the driver], right?' He said, 'Nobody got a good look at him. Nobody really got a good look at the car.'"



Cindy Klumb and her lawyer have yet to get the NYPD to turn over its footage from these nearby cameras. (Nathan Tempey/Gothamist)

Klumb says that at that point she stopped saying much to Vargas, because "something didn't feel right."

An emergency room doctor later told her that her rib was inches from severing her spine, and that the way she landed on her face could easily have led to permanent brain damage or worse.

"The doctor said it's a miracle I'm alive," she said.

Klumb's son took her home in a cab late that night and she spent eight days out of work, the first few of them unable to lift herself out of bed without an aid. Vargas's crash report, meanwhile, lists the crash as a hit-and-run, with no description of the vehicle or driver, and no record of him having talked to the female witness. Cisneros is listed as a witness, but he says the detective assigned to the case didn't call him until seven weeks after the crash, the same time that Klumb first heard from him.

By that point, Klumb had retained a lawyer, Dmitry Levitsky, and he was pressuring the detective, Charles Sperco, to move on the investigation. Levitsky says that during one phone conversation, Sperco actually acknowledged knowing the identity of the driver, telling him that he is an auxiliary cop. He does not have a recording of the conversation, he said, and Sperco did not pick up at a number provided for him.

Levitsky says police claim that footage of the evening from a traffic camera overlooking the crash area doesn't show anything useful, but adds that they have yet to turn over the video despite numerous requests. A video from the Key Food has also been slow in coming. Levitsky thinks it's pretty clear at this point that there has been a cover-up, or at the very least, a severe breach of protocol by Vargas.

"Any contacts I've ever had with police were nothing but pleasant," he said. "Thats the reason why Im so outraged, not just as a legal professional but as a citizen, and as a resident of Brooklyn. In my opinion, it is despicable what this officer did."

Noting that he spent time working at the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, Levitsky said, "This whole notion of blue wall of silence is not alien to me."

The NYPD said an internal investigation into the handling of the incident is underway, but reps would not answer further questions about it. Levitsky plans to file a notice of his intention to sue in the next three weeks. While the legal processes play out, Klumb is still in physical therapy, and because the other party in the crash is missing, she fears tens of thousands in medical bills that her insurance has provisionally covered will be dumped back onto her. More than anything, though, she's angry at the cowardice of the driver.

"Ultimately, I want to find out what happened, who hit me, and why that person didnt stand up and take responsibility for it," she said. "I want to know why his first reaction was to pull out a badge and not an insurance card."
What will Williamsburg feel like without the L train? Forget the 300,000 New Yorkers who may live elsewhere and need it to get to workGovernor Cuomo has!will your favorite bars and restaurants feel blissfully accessible? How many pieces of copper will you need to strip from Urban Outfitters corpse to barter passage to the Jefferson stop? Who do you love and who do you trust?

Implausibly and regrettably, Instagram's geo-tagging feature may provide some useful clues.

On the weekend of March 1 and 2, 2014, before anyone knew what a vegetarian ramen burger was, the MTA shut down the L train between Myrtle-Wycoff Avenue and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, mimicking the impending L train shutdown the MTA has to initiate in order to make Sandy-related repairs to the tunnel underneath Manhattan next year.

Agustin Indaco, a Ph.D. student in economics at CUNY's Graduate Center, used Instagram's API to obtain all 490,000 geo-coded images shot in Williamsburg and Greenpoint between February 26, 2014 and August 3, 2014, and compared them to that weekend in March of 2014 when we somehow lived without most of the L train.

While this data is limited to People Hanging Out In Williamsburg Who Must Let Those Who Are Compulsively Glancing At Tiny Curated Squares Of Their Existence Know That They Are In Fact, In WilliamsburgDo You Not Want This Life?, it is all the same revealing.



(courtesy )

Insufferable Instagram activity decreases by as much as 50% near the Bedford Avenue stop, the Ls busiest station, and increases by roughly 30% next to the Marcy J/M/Z stop. Theres also a near-20% increase in geotagging near the Nassau G stop in Greenpoint.

Of course, anyone would have predicted that the blocks around the Bedford Ave station would see the biggest impact, but the magnitudes are impressive, Indaco writes in an email.

Indaco also broke down the differences during the day and at night.

The effect on Greenpoint is very interesting. During the day, the tracts close to the East River see a steep decline in activity, while those close to the G train see a small gain. But at night, the tracts close to the river see no significant difference and the ones close to the G train see a big increase, Indaco says. "This contrast between day and night for Greenpoint is compelling, and could have clear implications for different business owners (those that operate more during day or night) that I would not have predicted."

It's worth noting that these maps are only considering a weekend L train shutdownwhile the MTA is considering shutting down the L only on weekends to make the repairs (which could potentially take up to seven years), the option to cease service seven days a week is also being considered.

In either case, the MTA is planning on increasing M train service and adding two cars to the G train; shuttle buses are also a possibility. The good news is that the governor has allocated funding so that you will be able to geotag your Instagram photos from 30 new subway stationsafter they are closed for an indeterminate amount of time.

Play with Indaco's maps here.
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For 254 years now New York City has been hosting one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations on the planet, and yesterday was no exception. The centerpiece of the festivities was the big parade up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, extending from 44th to 79th Streets and lasting for at least five hours.

Parade organizers estimated that some 150,000 marchers and 2 million spectators would be in attendance, though there appeared to be ample room on the sidelines throughout much of the route, especially north of 59th Street. But what the parade may have lacked in claustrophobic crowds, it more than made up for in the exuberance of many wackily-clad viewers, who even three hours in were still getting excited as each band of bagpipers marched by.

Of course, another time-honored St. Patrick's Day tradition in NYC is for young visitors from Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, and New Jersey to get as drunk as possible in our local taverns or out on the streets (PSA: that's not coffee in all of those Dunkin Donuts cups). In Midtown, on the Upper East Side, and in the East Village, packs of effusive youths could be seen throwing themselves at the challenge of having a truly EPIC day.

As usual, a slightly more grown-up (though no less inebriated) vibe could be found at McSorley's Old Ale House, the city's oldest Irish bar and St. Patrick's Day ground zero for a certain breed of drinking traditionalists. One six-top of celebrants told me in the early afternoon that they had been sitting there since 8:00 a.m., and had so far drank 96 beers.
The authorities are investigating a threatening letter that was sent to the Manhattan home of Eric Trump, son of presidential candidate and provocateur Donald Trump. Trump's wife reportedly opened the envelope.

The Secret Service, FBI and NYPD are participating in the investigation. The NYPD said, "At approximately 7:15 p.m., the NYPD responded to a residential building at 100 Central Park South to investigate a report of a suspicious letter received by a tenant. The letter has been removed and is being examined by law enforcement authorities. No injuries have been reported in connection with this incident."

According to CBS News , "A source close to the investigation said the letter had a Massachusetts postmark and warned that if Donald Trump doesn't withdraw from the race for the Republican presidential nomination -- paraphrasing -- harm will come to the kids.... [The source] said the envelope contained suspicious white powder that's been sent to a lab for testing. The source said a preliminary field test indicated the substance didn't appear to be hazardous."

Hacktivist group Anonymous says they have hacked Donald Trump's information "[releasing] what it claimed was Trump's Social Security number, and a number it claims is his cell phone number as well as public information such as his birth date, childrens names, and company address in addition to outdated information such as his legal representation."
Culture

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Upcoming events

Clancy holy week concert planned

The Clancy United Methodist Church choir will present I am the Resurrection on Monday, March 21, at 7 p.m. at the church, 6 N. Main St., in Clancy with Mary Bair soloist and choir director. A reception for the community will follow.

***

Superintendent candidate to speak

Melissa Romano, Democrat candidate for superintendent of the Montana Office of Public Instruction, will address citizens from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5, at the Lewis & Clark Public Library, 120 S. Last Chance Gulch. Romano teaches in Helena's public schools, has received numerous awards for her work and is very active in national education organizations. She will introduce herself, present her views and priorities for public school education and take questions from those who attend. This meeting is hosted by Helena's Democratic Action Club. As always, DAC meetings are free and open to all.

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Announcements

RMDC, SOS partners seek homes, yards to improve

Rocky Mountain Development Council and its partners are looking for applicants for the upcoming Spirit of Service spring cleaning event. The program has the capacity to assist at least 50 homeowners.

On Thursday, May 19, volunteers from area businesses and nonprofits will assist homeowners with basic yard work, trash cleanup, window washing, exterior paint and repair projects and more. The service is free of charge, and SOS volunteers and organizations provide the tools, materials and labor required to complete the projects. Interior work does not qualify, and volunteers are restricted from entering homes.

Homes must be owner-occupied and located within Helena or East Helena city limits. Income is not a factor, but applicants must be unable to take on the work themselves due to age, health, limited mobility or other factors. Priority will be given to homes that have not received assistance in the last three years. Special consideration will be given to veterans and deployed service members whose families currently reside in Helena.

Applications are due by April 1. A backup date of May 23 is scheduled in case of inclement weather.

For more information, contact Curt Chisholm or Megan Grotzke at 406-447-1680 or visit www.rmdc.net to learn more.

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Kelly Kuntz scholarship offered

In 2014, the Montana Chamber Foundation created the Kelly Kuntz Memorial Fund Scholarship, in memory of Kuntz who was a senior vice president, financial consultant with D.A. Davidson & Co. Kuntz passed away in February 2014. At the time of his passing, was on the board of directors of the Chamber Foundation.

Applicants must be a graduate of a Montana high school; have a minimum 2.5 cumulative GPA; and be a post-secondary, second-, third- or fourth-year student. Preference will be given to a business major and past participants of the Montana High School Business Challenge.

Applications are being accepted from March 15-April 5. Go to MTHSBC for details and to access the online application.

For more information regarding the scholarship or the Montana High School Business Challenge contact Stacye Dorrington (HSBC Coordinator) at 888.442.MONT (6668) ext. 100 or Stacye@MontanaChamber.com.

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Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame seeks nominations

The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame & Western Heritage Center are seeking nominations for the 2016 Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame induction round.

Nominations are open to the public and can be made by anyone. We encourage all to reflect on those that have made notable contributions to our western heritage here in the great state of Montana, said Christy Stensland, executive director of the MCHF & WHC.

One living inductee and two legacy inductees from each of the MCHF & WHCs 12 Trustee Districts will be chosen from votes cast by the MCHF & WHC Board of Trustees based on nominations from the public.

Nominees can be men, women, ranches, stage coach lines, animals, hotels, etc.  anyone or anything that has made a notable contribution to our Montana western heritage. The 2016 nomination instructions and more about the induction process can be found at www.montanacowboyfame.org. If you would like to make a nomination, you must contact the MCHF & WHC at Christy@montanacowboyfame.org or by calling 406-932-5444 prior to the submission deadline to express your intent to nominate. All nomination documents must be in electronic format and emailed by April 30.

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Charitable giving campaign application period open

The Montana State Employees Charitable Giving Campaign is currently accepting applications from 501(c) 3 nonprofits located in the state of Montana that would like to participate in the upcoming 2016 SECGC campaign. State of Montana employees can donate to participating organizations during the annual campaign, which will run from September to November 2016. Last year, employees donated over $500,000 to nonprofit organizations through the SECGC.

The SECGC is the only authorized charitable solicitation of state employees in the workplace. The campaign is administered by the state of Montana Department of Administration with the assistance of a governor-appointed advisory council of volunteer state employees, representatives of federations and independent nonprofit participants, and a Financial Services and Program Coordinator, which is currently the United Way of the Lewis and Clark Area.

The deadline to submit a 2016 application is Friday, May 13. Eligibility guidelines and the full online application can be found at www.secgcapp.mt.gov. For more information or questions, contact Jessica Tate at 406-442-4360.

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Citizens sought to serve on boards

The Lewis and Clark County Commission is seeking interested citizens to serve on the following boards:

Augusta Solid Waste Management District

City-County Consolidated Planning  county representative

Forestvale Historic Preservation Committee

Lewis and Clark County DUI Task Force  citizen

Lincoln Parks Board

Lincoln Solid Waste District Board

Planning and Zoning Commission  county resident must reside in a SZD

Transportation Coordinating Committee  county citizen at large

Applications are available at www.lccountymt.gov/bocc/boards or by calling 447-8304 and can be submitted to the Commissioners Office, 316 N. Park Ave., room 345, Helena, MT 59623. All positions open until filled.

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Carroll receives grant to establish internships

Carroll College has received a grant of $41,580 from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to establish the Vision & Call Ministry Internship Program. The program provides for three internships per academic year for senior theology majors that are committed to more deeply engaging in a vocation of ministry.

Carroll Colleges Theology Department is creating a new ministerial path that includes an emphasis in ministry for both the major and the minor, which was prompted by expressed student interest in a degree that prepares them for a career in ministry.

The grant provides full funding for two years, which will support three interns per year for a total of six interns. The college plans to sustain the program through grant-matching funds.

The Vision & Call ministry internships will fold into theologys new structure as a senior capstone experience for students who have completed their ministry coursework and a three-credit internship and are confident in their call to post-collegiate ministry.

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Time to renew expiring passports

An estimated 37 million passports are set to expire through 2018. A U.S. law that went into effect in 2007 that requires U.S. citizens to have a valid passport when traveling to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Many European countries will not accept passports expiring within six months.

Renewing a passport costs $110. First-time passport applications must be done in person at designated government institutions, at a cost of $135. For travelers only needing access to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, there is also the cheaper option. A passport card costs $40 for citizens who currently hold a passport book, and it allows for faster border crossing by land and sea, although it is not valid for international air travel. A first-time passport card costs $55.

The impending Real ID Act further complicates the issue. The Real ID Act was passed in 2005 to introduce consistent security features to state-issued ID cards. According to the TSA website, TSA will continue to accept valid drivers licenses and identification cards issued by all states until Jan. 22, 2018. Montana currently has an extension, allowing federal agencies to accept drivers licenses as ID until Oct. 10, 2016.

For more information, call 406-259-0999.

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Humanities Montana awards grant for Yorks 150th

Humanities Montana awarded a $1,000 grant to the York Historical Society in support of the York, MT at 150 Celebration. The York Historical Society is sponsoring a celebration of the 150th anniversary of gold discovery in New York Gulch northeast of Helena. The celebration will include special museum displays and exhibitions addressing the unique history of the York area and community. Events will occur from April 2016 to September 2016, starting with an Earth Day kick off and culminating with Yorkfest.

The celebration is centered around the Welch Ranch Cabin Museum. Displays will include topics such as mining, ranching, logging, and pioneer families. Military artifacts, the natural history of the area, Native American artifacts, and Lewis and Clark history will also be featured.

Humanities Montana is the states independent, nonprofit state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1972, Humanities Montana has provided services and grants to hundreds of Montana organizations in support of public programs in history, literature, cultures, and public issues. For more information, visit www.humanitiesmontana.org.

Student news

Students travel to Idaho to compete in mock trial competition

Nine members of Helena Highs mock trial team traveled to Boise, Idaho, to compete in the Idaho State Mock Trial Competition on March 16-18.

Helena Highs varsity mock trial team earned the right to compete at the state tournament during a regional meet held Feb. 27 in Coeur d Alene, Idaho. The top six teams at the regional meet qualified for the upcoming state meet in Boise.

Mock trial competition is a relatively new extracurricular activity at Helena High School, where it is in its second year. The competition involves a detailed fictional court case, the transcripts of which are released in November. The students spend hours learning the details of the case and developing arguments to support either the defense or plaintiff. Three or four judges will evaluate the effectiveness of the entire team, awarding points based on the teams performance.

Because no other high schools in Montana currently have mock trial teams, the teams from Helena High must compete in Idaho. Idaho has allowed the team to compete, but the Bengals will not be allowed to advance beyond the semifinal round. The top placing Idaho team will advance to the national competition.

The team is coached by Kacey Askin, a teacher at Helena High, and local attorneys David Morine and Kayleigh Brown. The team advancing to the state competition include: Faith Scow, Kaitlyn Crnich, Sam Bryan, Aidan McGinley, Ella Currier, Jordan Straub, Emma Sihler, Meriweather Schroeer-Smith and Aurora Boutin.

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Students headed to UM as part of health science conference

Missoula will host the 12th annual Montana HOSA: Future Health Professionals State Leadership Conference, on March 21-22.

This years conference theme is Big Sky Big Dreams, and more than 300 Montana high school students will compete in 30 health-science-skills events to qualify for the International HOSA Leadership Conference that will be hosted in June in Nashville, Tenn.

Montana HOSAs mission is especially critical when considering the acute shortage of qualified workers for Montanas health care industry.

The University of Montana, Missoula College UM and local health professionals will judge 30 competitive events with topics that range from bio-medical debate to sports medicine. Online test scores are averaged with skill performance to determine medal winners.

Participants from Helena High include: Barber, Audrey; Berry, Jamie; Bryan, Samuel; Coyle, Jeanne; Crawford, Hailey; Danz, Alexis; Dartman, Hannah; Ellsworth, Jessica; Fischer, Grace; George, Abbie; Johnson, Hannah; Jones, Abby; Lieberg, Taelyr; Martin, Patricia; Peccia, Ally; Pennington, Pepper; Richards, Kady; Roberts, Laura; Romine, Abby; Scherting, Braden; West, Kennedy.

Students from Capital High include: Andersen, Chloe; Blunt, Desaray; Burger, Clarice; Carlson, Ashley; Conrady, Charlie; Cowee, Aiden; Cummings, Caelan; Frederick, Kyer; Hanson, Alex; Hoffman, Seely; Ibsen, Alfred; Knaff, Elissa; Leslie, Sarah; Magera, Sarah; McMahon, Madi; Olson, Jade; Pipinich, Tanlee; Sanchez, Celina; Seney, Jamie; Standish, Braelyn; Sullivan, Taylor; Tupper, Francie; Wrigg, Lexi.

For more information call Martha Robertson, Montana HOSA director, at 406-243-4746 or email martha.robertson@mso.umt.edu.

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Area students have been named to Montana State University-Northern's fall semester dean's List. To be included, students must carry a minimum of 12 credits and earn a grade point average of 3.25 or better.

Boulder: Krista D. Grant

East Helena: Darby D. Covey

Helena: Travis J. Blatter, Timothy L. Bradham, Lisa M. Irvin, Emily J. Semenza, Austin R. Ybarra, Patrick E. Yuhas

Townsend: Dustin A. Clark, Kasee R. Clark, Daniel L. Davis, Jacy D. Thompson
By now, politicians should know that supporting the transfer and sale of public lands in Montana is a surefire way to collect unemployment benefits rather than a paycheck. The issue is toxic to Montanans because we value the freedom that public lands offer all of us, from the billionaire to the busboy. Politicians also like to try and hide what they really feel by issuing statements that are evasive and noncommittal.

One stellar example of this kind of verbal juking is a recent statement by gubernatorial hopeful Greg Gianforte. Recently, in the Boulder Monitor, a statement appeared where Mr. Gianforte apparently doesnt want the state to own 31 million acres of federal land, just pay to manage it. Essentially, this is the modern day political equivalent of sharecropping, where the state gets to pay for the management while the fed gets to reap the reward.

But maybe thats not what he means. Maybe he thinks that Congress will finally appropriate enough money to clear the billions in dollars of backlog maintenance, while simultaneously paying the state to manage all 30-plus million acres of public land in Montana.

In either scenario, Mr. Gianforte shows that hes grossly misinformed on how public land management works, or hes naive in thinking that the citizens of the United States will give up their public lands. While he tries to split the baby and not come out totally in favor of transfer and sale of public lands, he does tip his hand. His statement shows that ultimately, if a bill to eliminate public land landed on his desk, he would likely sign it and promote the elimination of the public from public land.

Public land in Montana is an economic juggernaut that feeds our diversified economy. Outdoor recreation alone is a $6 billion industry, supplying close to 60,000 jobs that start at entry level, and end up with small business owners, manufacturers and, yes, even tech companies.

Livestock producers rely on inexpensive grazing leases on BLM and Forest Service land to run profitable operations, while protecting valuable winter range. Does Mr. Gianforte believe we should charge those lessees state rates that can be up to 900 percent higher than federal rates in order to make a profit off of public land grazing?

The rhetoric doesnt match the reality either. While some of our politicians preach doom and gloom about public lands and conservation, others are working to find compromise and improve management without inspiring more conflict and distrust. Weve seen what rhetoric like Mr. Gianfortes brings about in places like Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (Oregon) and Bunkerville (Nevada). Its a losing proposition designed to simply create conflict over compromise.

Montanans have roundly rejected the farce of transfer and sale and are working together to find a better way forward. Those efforts like the Blackfoot-Clearwater & Kootenai National Forest Collaboratives deserve time to be successful. Just as the hard work of Montanans deserves to be respected and encouraged, not thrown out the window in favor of Ponzi schemes and snake oil scams.

We Montanans value our public land and are prepared to defend it from these short-sighted politicians peddling bait-and-switch proposals.

Ed Tinsley is a former county commissioner and a lifelong advocate of public lands.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Denmark, perhaps better known for its fictional, suicide-agonizing prince Hamlet and fierce marauding Vikings than being a nation of the happiest people, has just won that very accolade. Again.

Even U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have singled out the small Scandinavian country as an example of a happy, well-oiled society. On Wednesday, the United Nations made it official: It found Danes to be the happiest people on Earth in a study of 156 countries.

Knud Christensen, a 39-year-old social worker, knows one reason why his compatriots are laid-back: they feel secure in a country with few natural disasters, little corruption and a near absence of drastic events.

"We have no worries," Christensen said, smiling as he stood on a Copenhagen street near the capital's City Hall. "And if we do worry, it's about the weather. Will it rain today, or remain gray, or will it be cold?"

The Scandinavian nation of 5.6 million has held the happy title twice before since the world body started measuring happiness around the world in 2012. The accolade is based on a variety of factors: People's health and access to medical care, family relations, job security and social factors, including political freedom and degree of government corruption.

Egalitarian Denmark, where women hold 43 percent of the top jobs in the public sector, is known for its extensive and generous cradle-to-grave welfare.

Few complain about the high taxes as in return they benefit from a health care system where everybody has free access to a general practitioner and hospitals. Taxes also pay for schools and universities, and students are given monthly grants for up to seven years.

Many feel confident that if they lose their jobs or fall ill, the state will support them.

Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University, one of those behind the report, says that happiness and well-being should be on every nation's agenda.

"Human well-being should be nurtured through a holistic approach that combines economic, social and environmental objectives," he said in a statement before the World Happiness Report 2016 was to be officially presented in Rome on Wednesday.

The Roman Catholic Church welcomed the study, declaring that happiness is "linked to the common good, which makes it central to Catholic social teaching," according to Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, one of Pope Francis' key advisers.

Kaare Christensen, a university professor in demography and epidemiology in Odense, where fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen was born, says it doesn't take much to satisfy Danes.

"They are happy with what they get. Danes have no great expectations about what they do or what happens to them," she said.
SPRINGFIELD  Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate dug their trenches a little deeper Thursday as the stalemate over the states budget continues.

Democrats voted to approve a bill that would authorize spending $3.8 billion on higher education, social services and other programs that have been deprived of funding since the fiscal year began July 1. Republicans, meanwhile, reiterated Gov. Bruce Rauners call for increased spending on elementary and secondary education in next years budget.

The vast majority of this years spending has continued due to court orders, consent decrees, state statutes, and a small number of budget bills that have been approved by the General Assembly and signed by the governor, most notably one covering elementary and secondary education. But the programs the Senate bill covers havent received any funding.

The bill passed on a 39-18 vote, garnering enough support to override a potential veto from Rauner.

State Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, one of the bills sponsors, said it would allow universities, community colleges, social service providers and others to get in line for payment from the state.

Before we decimate our higher education institutions here, before we decimate our community service providers that we need as our partners  we need to get them into the queue so they can actually get paid, Steans said.

But state Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, said doing that would be like telling someone to get in the back of the line at a bank thats already been shut down.

Youre telling people, Go get to the back of the line, after the bank run has already shut the doors, Rose said.

Democrats argued that without spending authorization those programs have no hope of ever receiving money.

At an appropriations committee hearing earlier in the day, University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen expressed the schools support for the bill while also calling on lawmakers and the governor to work with universities to come up with a long-term plan to stabilize higher education funding.

It would be a ruinous legacy of the legislative branch and the administration branch to somehow destroy public higher education in this state, Killeen said.

Testifying at the same hearing was Comptroller Leslie Munger, who estimated that the states backlog of unpaid bills could reach $10 billion by June 30, not counting any new spending authorized by the Senate bill.

However, Democrats noted that the bill would authorize payments to entities with which agencies under the governors control have signed contracts. That includes a $38 million deal with Amtrak that the Rauner administration announced in February.

The path forward for the legislation is unclear.

The House passed a similar measure earlier this month that would spend about $100 million less and is tied to a bill that would forgo repayment of $454 million borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last years budget. Neither chamber is scheduled to return to Springfield until the first week of April.

Rauner has indicated that hell veto either version if it reaches his desk.

Rather than adding billions to our debt and risk further delaying payments to social service providers, the General Assembly needs to stay in Springfield and negotiate a balanced budget alongside structural reforms that create jobs and grow our economy, spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans held a news conference Thursday calling on Democrats to join them in supporting the governors plan to fully fund general state aid to public schools for the first time in seven years.

The state aid formula includes a minimum amount of funding that is designed to be required to be sent to our schools so that all of our students across the state have a foundation level of educational support, state Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, said.

State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, a leading proponent of overhauling the state aid formula, said the foundation level is a fictional number that doesnt address funding inequalities.

Democrats, who want to change the formula before putting more money into the system, are still waiting for a district-by-district breakdown of Rauners proposal, Manar said.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  Parents who fear the judgment of neighbors if they leave their kids alone at home or in a car may soon have more than a "tsk, tsk" to worry about in Rhode Island.

State lawmakers are debating a bill that would punish parents for leaving a child younger than 7 alone in a car. They've also proposed legislation to ban kids under 10 from being home alone and older kids from being home alone at night. Legislation could even extend to private preschools, where a bill would ban outdoor recess when the temperature drops below freezing.

Rhode Island's efforts come years after many other states implemented such measures, but have been met by counterattacks from a growing movement of parents who say enough is enough.

"You can't legislate parenting, and you can't legislate common sense," said Rema Tomka, who is raising three kids in the leafy Providence suburb of Smithfield. "I'm in one of those neighborhoods where the children run free. They all know their boundaries, and we keep an eye on them."

In some headline-grabbing cases nationwide, including one involving Maryland siblings Rafi and Dvora Meitiv, the sight of children walking to a playground or playing without supervision has triggered visits from police and neglect charges against parents. Critics say the harsh enforcement is traumatic, can tear families apart and disproportionately hurts poor and single parents who can't afford constant child care.

"Basically we are punishing people who don't have the resources to be helicopter parents, as if helicopter parenting is essential, which it's not," said New York author and columnist Lenore Skenazy, who runs a popular blog called "Free-Range Kids."

The Rhode Island lawmakers who sponsored the bills say they're just trying to catch up with other states that already have firm rules in place to keep kids safe from irresponsible parents.

Illinois in the 1990s enacted tough laws against kids being home alone, and some states followed by setting age limits for when kids can stay at home unattended. The death of a 6-month-old left in a parked car on a hot day led California in 2001 to make it illegal to leave kids alone in a vehicle; more than a dozen states now have similar laws on the books.

"We have kids constantly left home alone. It's a danger," said state Sen. William Walaska, the Warwick Democrat who introduced "home-alone" age restrictions that could affect child custody cases. "Imagine they open up a cupboard and there's some chemicals in there."

Nineteen states have laws against leaving kids alone in cars, said Amber Rollins, director of Kansas-based Kids and Cars, which warns of the dangers, from heat stroke to car thieves, of leaving kids alone in a vehicle.

"We feel there should be a law in every state," she said.

Tomka was among a group of families from around the state speaking out against Walaska's bill this year.

"I feel responsible enough to stay home by myself," said one 9-year-old boy, Pascal Dubuc, who testified before a state Senate committee.

Helping to spread the parental outrage and mobilize opposition was Skenazy, who has repeatedly ridiculed Rhode Island lawmakers.

"These laws are preposterous," she wrote in her blog. "They assume it is the government's job to dictate family life. They criminalize maturity in children and common sense in parents, and turn mundane decisions  like running out to do an errand  into legal minefields."

State health officials also weighed in, saying it would lead to a surge of unwanted calls to the child welfare hotline for situations that aren't a safety risk.

The uproar helped stall Walaska's legislation, but a bill to penalize parents for leaving young children in cars is moving forward in both chambers of the General Assembly.
Thai prosecutors have called their first witnesses in the trial of 92 suspected human traffickers in the Rohingya Boat People smuggling case, the UK Telegraph reported.

Former Thai army Lieutenant General Manas Kongpan and a number of senior police officers are among the defendants, the Asian Correspondent said.

Last year, a scandal ensued when more than 8,000 migrants were stranded in the Malacca Strait. They were turned away by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and Bangladesh, said the Telegraph and many ended up being lost when traffickers tried to hide their crimes. Many passengers were from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority from Burma/Myanmar.

Evidence includes testimonies from Rohingya and Bangladeshi trafficking survivors and investigators, as well as unidentified bodies exhumed from mass graves.

Thai prosecutors charged the defendants with human trafficking involving international crimes, illegally holding others and concealing bodies, reported Radio Free Asia. If convicted, the human trafficking charges alone carry a sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to 1 million baht (US$ 28,469).

"The court is accelerating the case to finish within a year," Prayut Porsuttayaruk, deputy director-general of the Attorney-Generals human-trafficking office, told the Bangkok Post.

The crisis was allegedly kicked off by a regional crackdown on people smugglers, according to earlier reports by theBBC. The traffickers panicked and abandoned boatloads of migrants on the Andaman Sea. Brokers and agents went into hiding.

The crackdowns followed the discovery of mass graves and makeshift detention camps found in the jungles along the Thai-Malaysian border in May last year, reported the BBC and the Telegraph.

Gangs of human traffickers allegedly held migrants for ransom in the camps in Thailand or sold them for slave labour to crime syndicates. Some buyers controlled Thailands seafood industry making for lucrative profit for the traffickers, the Guardian detailed in an investigation last summer. Many died from disease, beatings or killings if their families could not afford the US$ 2,000 ransom, added the Telegraph.

Earlier this year, activists from the human rights group Fortify Rights expressed their concerns over inadequate protection for key witnesses in the case. Some key witnesses have been forced into hiding and, of the around 500 scheduled to testify, only 12 are being given formal protection by the Ministry of Justice, reported Asian Correspondent.

Deputy-Director General Porsuttayaruk has refuted Fortify Rights' numbers, Reuters reported.

"I don't know where they got their numbers from. Eighty of the witnesses are victims, and they are foreigners, and they are under the protection of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security," Porsuttayaruk told Reuters

He said that more than 200 witnesses are police officers, and the rest are investigators, bank office workers and "Thai people who do not need the protection program."

The executive director of Fortify Rights, Amy Smith, emphasized the fact that a key witness, the head of the investigation into the transnational ring ex-Police Major General Paween Pongsirin, fled to Australia in December, saying he feared for his safety after Thai authorities ordered a stop to the probe, reported Radio Free Asia.

Weve talked to other witnesses who are also afraidand for good reason. Witnesses in this case are testifying against members of the Thai Army, Navy, Police, the Internal Security Operation Command and others, she added.

Thailand is ranked on the lowest tier of the United States Department of State 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for not taking effective measures against human trafficking. The Thai government has suggested the crackdown and trial prove it is serious about tackling human trafficking, reported the Telegraph.

occrp.org
Did state intelligence or law enforcement help a Serbian tabloid smear independent investigative reporting organisation KRIK in a dirty-tricks campaign to stop revelations about the countrys government?

By Drew Sullivan

To the unwitting, the latest investigation by the Serbian tabloid Informer is presented as a probe into an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government of Serbia. Agents of the mafia and foreign governments are posing as non-profit journalists to smear a hard-working, progressive prime minister. The intrepid reporters from Informer even figured out the plot, which they patiently explained to their readers  the evil reporters were trying to show that the prime minister had amassed a massive real-estate portfolio in Belgrade which he hid under the names of relatives.

To the trained eye, the Informer piece is laughable propaganda designed to lessen the blow of yet another revelation of wrongdoing by the Serbian government by KRIK.rs, BIRN and other non-profits. But looking deeper, there is something far more sinister and may indicate the Serbian government is committing gross crimes against the people in order to ensure its own longevity.

Informers ties with Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic are well known. The tabloids owner and editor Dragan Vucicevic and Vucic have called each other friends, and Vucic has said the paper supports him. Informer has been a knee-jerk apologist and attack dog for the PM, slandering any and all media that dares to mention Vucics problems.

Since it was founded last summer, KRIK has dominated the tabloids pages, with repeated allegations of mafia and foreign intelligence service ties, including claims against this author and my organisation, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

But the latest series of stories is scarier for another reason.

While Informers attack stories in the past have been basically empty, anonymous charges, the latest have very disturbing information that appears to come from state intelligence or law enforcement sources.

Firstly, the article published on Thursday identified the story that KRIK was working on  investigating allegations that the prime minister has substantial real estate hidden in his familys name. It is unlikely that Informer, generally known for its lazy, unsubstantiated, slipshod yellow journalism, was capable of figuring out what KRIK was doing.

The article also featured surveillance photos of Stevan Dojcinovic, the editor of KRIK, talking with people with criminal backgrounds, as he often does. The article stated that he is working for them.

A second article on Friday lists a number of intelligence and other sources who Dojcinovic allegedly talked to and questions he allegedly asked them. The information, if true, could only have been gathered from wire taps or from the BIA, Serbias intelligence organisation.

If false, its designed to discourage sources from talking to Dojcinovic and to hamstring his reporting.

Either way, why would law enforcement or the BIA help Informer unless theyre acting in the interests of the prime minister and using state resources to do so? It appears to be a grievous attempt at prior restraint of reporting by using state resources to stop the gathering of information by a free and open press. It also puts Dojcinovic and those who talk to him in danger.

From a journalistic standpoint, Informers behavior is criminally negligent.

Firstly, it has yet to prove anything journalistically. Dojcinovic, as every good reporter does, speaks to police, criminals, intelligence agents and anyone who might help him understand what is happening in the world. What is criminal about that? Nowhere is there any proof that KRIK is undermining the state.

But, if Informer is actually a dirty tricks agent for the government, this makes more sense and has dire implications for Serbia.

KRIK has examined allegations that people close to Vucic have ties to organised crime and corruption, has reported on controversies over the health ministers alleged links with the criminal underground, uncovered apartments bought by Vucics protege, Belgrade mayor Sinisa Mali and published videos of the foreign minister meeting with a convicted drug lord.

These investigations brought strenuous attacks from Informer but nothing with any substantial information. But when KRIK dared look at Vucic and his family, it was immediately attacked using what may be government-collected data. It may be that Vucic is using the power of the state to try to crush independent media looking too closely at corruption allegations.

This behaviour is akin to the actions of Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in Russia. If the Vucic government will do this to media that investigate it, what else is it capable of? And why is it so worried about the work of KRIK?

It appears that KRIKs carefully-researched stories on corruption could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Drew Sullivan is editor and co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Source: Balkan Insight
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Wisconsin Republicans are gearing up for what could be the first contested presidential nominating convention in 40 years, but what influence they wield could vary depending on what happens in the states April 5 primary.

State GOP party rules require Wisconsins delegates to stick with their designated candidate unless that candidate wins less than a third of the convention floor vote. In contrast, a majority of the delegates from other states will be able to switch candidates after the first ballot.

Still, with more than half of the total delegates already allocated, there will be a scramble for the remainder, including 42 from Wisconsin, which holds the biggest contest in a monthlong stretch after March 23.

Wisconsin is in a position to affect the course of this race in some way, shape or form, said Josh Putnam, a political science lecturer at the University of Georgia who studies the primary calendar.

Three GOP candidates remain, with only real estate mogul Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz having a mathematically possible path to the nomination prior to the convention, though both would have to win more than 60 percent of the remaining delegates. Ohio Gov. John Kasich cant win enough delegates prior to the convention, but vowed to campaign all the way to the convention floor after winning his home state Tuesday.

If no candidate reaches 1,237 delegates before the convention, there could be multiple rounds of voting, something that hasnt happened at a Republican convention since 1948.

The last contested convention was in 1976, when both President Gerald Ford and challenger Ronald Reagan were short of the nomination threshold entering the convention. Ford eventually won on the first ballot, but not before tense debate and political wrangling.

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who attended the 1976 convention, recalled seeing fistfights on the convention floor and even one delegate hitting another over the head with a telephone.

You hear about fights at these Trump rallies, Thompson said. There were fistfights galore during the Reagan/Ford convention.

Thompson, who is backing Kasich, predicted this years convention will be equally if not more exciting than 1976. He noted if Kasich wins any delegates from Wisconsin, they could play a major role if Kasich doesnt win one-third of the vote on the first ballot and they become free to switch candidates. Thompson declined to say what he would do if he were a delegate in such a situation.

I dont care where you are, if youre committed or non-committed, whether as a delegate or spectator, youre going to want to be in Cleveland, Thompson said. This is going to be a historical convention.

Eighteen of Wisconsins GOP delegates will be selected by whichever campaign wins the most votes statewide. The states eight Congressional districts also each get three delegates, who are elected at local caucus meetings and pledged to the candidate with the most votes in that district on April 5.

Scott Grabins, Dane County GOP chairman, said he is among 15 Republicans vying to be a delegate in the 2nd Congressional District. Grabins said this years process has been more intense than past primaries.

There are people who are supporting Cruz or Kasich and are very anti-Trump, Grabins said. There are Trump folks who are against the other candidates. It feels very natural for a primary. There are people who feel strongly both ways.

If the convention is contested and the 2nd Congressional District winner gets less than a third of the first floor vote, Grabins said hell likely play it by ear as to what to do next. As a county party official, he has yet to commit to a specific candidate.

Ive already signed an affidavit saying Ill abide by state rules, Grabins said. For my own purposes, that trumps anything that might happen.

Both Kasich and Cruz supporters in Wisconsin said both candidates are beginning to establish a presence in the state, while the Trump campaign didnt respond to a request for comment. Cruzs wife, Heidi, is planning three days of stops in the state over the next week and a half, according to Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville.

Quite frankly I hope we dont ever get there, Stroebel said of a contested convention. The beauty of Wisconsin (is) were going to be relevant in this race.  The more people that come out and vote, the better.

On the Democratic side, prospects of a contested convention are far less likely as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is continuing to pull away from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to Paul Maslin, a Democratic strategist who is uncommitted.

Maslin said Sanders could still win Wisconsin, which hell need to do if he wants to remain competitive until the end. But at this point Clinton has built a larger lead than Barack Obama had over her in 2008.

The state has 96 Democratic delegates, 57 of which are assigned proportionally in the eight Congressional districts and elected in caucuses held at the county level on April 17, and then at the district level on May 1.

Another 29 delegates, including 10 state and local elected officials, are selected at the state party convention on June 3 and assigned to candidates proportionally. And 10 so-called super-delegates, comprising members of Congress and party leaders, are not bound by the April 5 vote. So far four of them have said theyll support Clinton.
WASHINGTON  By international and historical standards, political violence is exceedingly rare in the United States.

The last serious outburst was 1968 with its bloody Democratic-convention riots. By that standard, 2016 is, as yet, tame. It may not remain so.

The political thuggery that shut down a Donald Trump rally in Chicago last week may just be a harbinger. It would be nice, therefore, if we could think straight about cause and effect.

The immediate conventional wisdom was to blame the disturbance on the toxic climate created by Trump. Nonsense. This was an act of deliberate sabotage created by a totalitarian left that specializes in the intimidation and silencing of political opponents.

Its pedigree goes back to early 20th-century fascism and communism. Its more recent incarnation has been developed on college campuses, where for years leftists have been taunting, disrupting and ultimately shutting down and shutting out conservative speakers of every stripe  long before Donald Trump.

The Chicago shutdown was a planned attack on free speech and free assembly. Hence the exultant chant of the protesters on the announcement of the rallys cancellation: We stopped Trump. It had all of the spontaneity of a beer-hall putsch.

Given the people, money and groups (including MoveOn.org) behind Chicago, it is likely to be replicated, constituting a serious threat to a civilized politics. But a second, quite separate form of thuggery threatens the 2016 campaign  a leading candidate who, with a wink and a nod (and sometimes less subtlety), is stoking anger and encouraging violence.

This must be distinguished from what happened in Chicago, where Trump was the victim and for which he is not responsible. But he is responsible for saying of a protester at his rally in Las Vegas that I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that ... ? Theyd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.

He told another rally that if they see any protesters preparing to throw a tomato, to knock the crap out of them ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. Referring in an interview to yet another protester, Trump said maybe he should have been roughed up.

At the Vegas event, Trump had said, Id like to punch him in the face. Well, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, one of his supporters did exactly that for him  sucker-punching in the face a protester being led away. The attacker is being charged with assault.

Trump is not responsible for the assault. But he is responsible for refusing to condemn it. Asked about it, he dodged and weaved, searching for extenuation. The man got carried away. So what? If people who get carried away are allowed to sucker-punch others, wed be living in a jungle.

Trump said the cold-cocker obviously loves his country. What is it about punching a demonstrator in the face that makes evident ones patriotism? Particularly when the attacker said on television, Next time we see him, we might have to kill him.

Whoa! Thats lynch talk. And rather than condemn that man, Trump said he would be instructing his people to look into paying his legal fees.

This from the leader of the now strongest faction in the Republican Party, the man most likely to be the GOP nominee for president. And who, when asked on Wednesday about the possibility of being denied the nomination at the convention if hes way ahead in delegates but just short of a majority, said: I think youd have riots, adding I wouldnt lead it but I think bad things would happen.

Is that incitement to riot? Legally, no. But youd have to be a fool to miss the underlying implication.

Theres an air of division in the country. Fine. Its happened often in our history. Indeed, the whole point of politics is to identify, highlight, argue and ultimately adjudicate and accommodate such divisions. Politics is the civilized substitute for settling things the old-fashioned way  laying your opponent out on a stretcher.

What is so disturbing today is that suffusing our politics is not just an air of division but an air of menace. Its being fueled on both sides: one side through organized anti-free-speech agitation using Bolshevik tactics; the other side by verbal encouragement and threats of varying degrees of subtlety.

They may feed off each other but they are of independent origin. And both are repugnant, dangerous and deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-18 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Greek PM: Success of EU-Turkey deal will depend on low migration flows [02] Tusk, Davutoglu, Juncker welcome EU-Turkey deal [03] Maarten Verwey appointed EU Coordinator to organize asulym services in Greece [01] Greek PM: Success of EU-Turkey deal will depend on low migration flows BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/ M. Spinthourakis) The deal achieved between the European Union and Turkey was a diplomatic success for Greece in collaboration with Cyprus, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Friday after the European Council meeting on the migration crisis. He warned, however, that it was a "difficult agreement" to implement and that a condition for its success will be a reduction in refugee flows, as seen in recent days. "We achieved the best that we could achieve with respect to the refugee issue and must now work hard to cope with this difficult crisis we are facing," Tsipras told reporters in a press conference after the summit. He noted that Greece and Cyprus had successfully fended off the Turkish side's "unreasonable demands" with respect to the Cyprus issue and managed to have the five chapters blocked by Cyprus and one chapter blocked by Greece "taken off" the table in the talks. This was done without fanfare but on the basis of a specific plan, he added, while noting that Greece's agreements with Turkey will be compatible with international and European law. He also hailed the EU's success in achieving a common approach to the refugee crisis that was humanitarian and concerned the EU in its entirety. The Greek prime minister stressed that there could be no solution to the refugee crisis that did not involve an agreement with Turkey, noting that the plan that many had thought abandoned a few days earlier was now a common EU decision, while unilateral decisions were "put on ice". Tsipras said that Greece will receive European support in terms of both personnel and resources, with 2,300 asylum and security experts and interpreters expected in Greece to assist in managing the refugees and migrants. "We sought and achieved an agreement for immediate assistance in infrastructure, with reinforcements for the asylum service staff," Tsipras said, noting that the reinforcements will be arriving within the next few days. An effort was underway to close off all illegal routes for refugees while opening up legal avenues for refugees entitled to international protection in their stead, the prime minister added, while highlighting the importance of NATO's assistance, even if the results were modest as yet. He said this would require three "filters", including action against traffickers operating along the Turkish coast, the NATO operation with Turkey and creating strong disincentives for refugees and migrants. A successful implementation of the agreement would require a positive attitude from the EU member-states and from Turkey, he warned, adding that Greece's first priority was relieve the humanitarian crisis on its northern borders "as a result of the unilateral and illegal actions of certain states, he added. He appealed to those currently in Idomeni and other informal shelters where their health was at risk to leave the area and make their way in safety to organised accommodation being prepared by Greek authorities, while thanking all the state employees and volunteers providing aid for the refugees. Replying to reporters' questions, Tsipras stressed that the staff arriving to assist Greece will be under the orders of Greek authorities, which will in charge, while denying that the presence of Turkish liaison officers on Greek islands implied any compromise in sovereignty and pointing out that Greece will also have its own liaison officers on the Turkish shores. He again pointed out that the agreement was a success achieved in the face of very different attitudes in Europe, from those that wanted no refugees at all to those happy to ignore the problem as long as it wasn't "in their back yard". He criticised those member-states that he said wanted to "selectively" follow the rules that benefit them but ignore the ones that call for sharing burdens. Implementation of the agreement would also be yet another criterion to be observed by Turkey in its path toward EU accession, he pointed out, adding that a solution to the refugee problem will come only via EU-Turkey cooperation and EU-Turkey rapprochement. Tsipras also underlined Greece's position that relocation and resettlement quotas should not be on a voluntary basis but on a proportional basis, depending on each country's ability to shoulder the burden, and noted that if the countries did not want to accept refugees then they must contribute financially. Questioned about the row over Alternate Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas and demands by the government's coalition partner ANEL that the minister be removed, Tsipras said he intended to meet with ANEL leader Panos Kammenos when the latter returned from a trip to the United States to discuss the issue and expressed confidence that a "golden compromise" on the issue will be achieved, praising the contribution of both Mouzalas and Kammenos to the effort to manage the refugee and migration crisis. [02] Tusk, Davutoglu, Juncker welcome EU-Turkey deal BRUSSELLS (ANA-MPA/C. Vasilaki)  European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday they're satisfied with the deal achieved between the EU's 28 member-states and Turkey in Brussels. Speaking during a joint press conference after the summit, Davutoglu said it is a "historic day" foe Europe and Turkey as the new deal will help tackle illegal migration. Asked to comment on the criticism leveled against Turkey for the living conditions of refugees in the country's camps, Davutoglu said he's "proud" of the centers and urged anyone who has doubts to visit them. He also said that Turkish citizens live in peace with the refugees without incidents of racism and xenophobia. Asked by journalist to comment on the critical statements made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Europe, Davutoglu retorted that Europe's reality has "two faces". One face is its leadership, with whom he works hand-in-hand and which wishes to find a solution for humanitarian reasons. The other reality to which Erdogan referred to, is of some European states and politicians who try to block refugees from coming to Europe, with specific and even aggressive actions. Commenting on the same issue, Juncker said it would be better to avoid "exaggerated statements", while Tusk first described the agreement as "innovative" for EU-Turkish relations and then added that "Europe is the main destination for the refugees because it is the most open, tolerant continent  and it wants to stay that way." Juncker also spoke of the "herculean task" which mainly has to be taken on by Greece so as to implement the EU-Turkey deal, noting that Dutch economist Maarten Verwey will act as the EU Coordinator for the refugee crisis in Greece. Verwey will organize both the economic assistance and the logistics support provided to the country. He then concluded: "Idomeni is not the idea I have for Europe." On the opening of chapter 33 of its EU accession procedure that concerns the budget, the Turkish premier welcomed the EU's decision and the new steps that will be taken to speed up the opening of other chapters in the future. Commenting on the same issue, Tusk also welcomed the opening of the new chapter but also noted the importance of negotiations to resolve the Cyprus issue. On the issue of visa waivers for Turkish citizens, Davutoglu said his country will implement its commitments by the end of May and the same is expected of the EU. [03] Maarten Verwey appointed EU Coordinator to organize asulym services in Greece BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/ C. Vasilaki) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appointed on Friday Dutch economist Maarten Verwey to act as the EU Coordinator of the refugee crisis in Greece, according to a Commission press release. The decision follows the agreement achieved by the heads of State or Government who met at the European Council today that "the Commission will coordinate and organise together with member-states and agencies the necessary support structures to implement it effectively." The EU will provide Greece at short notice with the necessary means, including border guards, asylum experts and interpreters, to tackle the refugee crisis. As part of this agreement, the EU will dispatch 4,000 staff in Greece to help the government organize its asylum process. "Verwey will organise the work and coordinate the dispatching of the 4,000 staff that will be needed from Greece, member-states, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and FRONTEX. We need case workers, interpreters, judges, return officers and security officers," Juncker said. Verwey is the Director-General of the European Commission's Structural Reform Support Service. He leads a team which has already been on the ground in Greece since October 2015, working hand in hand with the Greek authorities to address the refugee crisis, by accelerating access to emergency funding, improving the coordination between the various actors, addressing administrative bottlenecks and facilitating knowledge sharing on border management and relocation.BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/ C. Vasilaki) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appointed on Friday Dutch economist Maarten Verwey to act as the EU Coordinator of the refugee crisis in Greece, according to a Commission press release. The decision follows the agreement achieved by the heads of State or Government who met at the European Council today that "the Commission will coordinate and organise together with member-states and agencies the necessary support structures to implement it effectively." The EU will provide Greece at short notice with the necessary means, including border guards, asylum experts and interpreters, to tackle the refugee crisis. As part of this agreement, the EU will dispatch 4,000 staff in Greece to help the government organize its asylum process. "Verwey will organise the work and coordinate the dispatching of the 4,000 staff that will be needed from Greece, member-states, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and FRONTEX. We need case workers, interpreters, judges, return officers and security officers," Juncker said. Verwey is the Director-General of the European Commission's Structural Reform Support Service. He leads a team which has already been on the ground in Greece since October 2015, working hand in hand with the Greek authorities to address the refugee crisis, by accelerating access to emergency funding, improving the coordination between the various actors, addressing administrative bottlenecks and facilitating knowledge sharing on border management and relocation. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Cruz events were well-attended and he received a lot of institutional support and favorable coverage by some local conservative media. So, how to explain this dichotomy of Trump outperforming despite not having much of a permanent staff in the state and Cruz underperforming with a larger staff and network of influential supporters?

But Donald Trump also outperformed winning 39 delegates out of a possible 54 in the 18 Congressional Districts. Cruz got 9 and Kasich got 6. Trump also won 15 more delegates to be chosen at the state convention in May as a result of winning the statewide vote. But Trump also beat expectations receiving nearly 39% of the statewide popular vote despite hovering around 33% in the recent polling leading up to election day. Senator Cruz only tallied 30% despite spending major time in Illinois the last few days of the campaign, including a five-city fly around.

Senator Mark Kirk won his primary fight for the Republican nomination quite handily with a 3 to 1 margin over his opponent James Marter. Kirk clearly performed better than many conservatives in the state had hoped, although Mr. Marter did not have the funds to run a vigorous campaign against a well-known incumbent.

I suggest that Trump truly is tapping in to a new mother lode of voters for the Republican party and any attempts to derail Trump at the convention will likely lead to permanent damage to the Republican party. Many of these new voters are willing to try out the GOP because of Trump and will quickly abandon the party if he is not the nominee.

Consider some statistics from the city of Chicago only. Every one of the congressional districts in the city had substantial increases in votes cast in the city in the Republican delegate races from the 2012 race to the 2016 race.. The 1st district went from 4,759 to 7,026. More impressive though was the southwestern suburban and working class 3rd district which went from 13,193 to 25,864. The 5th district went from 42,714 to 85,408 and the 9th had the biggest percentage gain going from 13,286 to 29,049. In addition, the overall Republican ballots cast in the city of Chicago went from 47,896 in 2012 to 85,243 this election.

These are all impressive gains in participation in the GOP primary. Some of it is crossover by true Democrats just trying to muddy the Republican race. But this factor is limited due to what was a close Clinton-Sanders race. It is clear that much of these solid increases are due to Donald Trump being in the race. And Trump did win most of these districts delegate races.

Now Senator Mark Kirk faces the race of his political life in November. He goes up against two-term Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth and is considered the most endangered Republican Senate incumbent this cycle. Polls have consistently shown Duckworth beating Kirk but her numbers are well below the crucial 50% threshold so this is not a sure thing for her by any stretch.

To be honest, I think this is a very winnable race for Kirk, but a lot will hinge on who the Presidential nominee of the party is. If the party poobahs pull a fast one and deny Trump the nomination through the usage of arcane and byzantine convention rules, much of the base will be severely depressed and turnout will be lower than ever. I mean, why turn out to vote if youre not listened to and a cabal of oligarchs just decide what they want? This feeling is now manifold in the party grassroots. So there will be a lot more than three million missing conservative voters as there was in 2012. And the increased GOP turnout of mostly moderate voters in the city indicative of a realignment of certain voters will dissipate completely.

But if Trump is indeed the nominee, whether he wins Illinois or not, he will bring more new Republican voters to the polls again in November and many of them will vote for Kirk as well. Kirk is despised by the ultra conservatives, who will vote against him no matter what as they did in the primary. But new voters to the GOP will probably not be as picky in selecting a Senator and a lot of this will rebound to Kirks benefit.

Kirk, the skillful politician that he is, is right now playing both sides of the fence. He recently told Donald Trump in a WGN interview to Callate or Shut Up after the events at the UIC Pavilion. But Kirk has also stated to NBC that he would support Trump if he is the GOP Presidential nominee. Kirk must see the benefits to a Trump candidacy as well.

Kirk is a political heavyweight. He had some of the best political ads Ive seen in Illinois politics in his 2010 race against Alexi Giannoulias. He also found a way to win every race hes been in including a tough Congressional race in 2008 against Dan Seals . So, dont count Mark Kirk out, his re-election may be one of the surprises on November 8, and he may very well have Donald Trump to thank. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.


Democrat primary challenger says Chicago state rep's daughter attacked him with a staple gun

CHICAGO - If you think Republicans are playing it rough and tough this primary season at the presidential level, it's nothing compared to what Chicago Democrats.

Friday, an incumbent state representative's daughter was charged with three felony counts for allegedly brutally assaulting her mother's opponent in Chicago's 4th House District Democrat primary.

Bob Zwolinski, who lost Tuesday's primary challenge, complained to police that State Rep. Cynthia Soto's 26 year old daughter and a friend kicked, choked and hit him with a beer bottle, then stapled him in the head.
So as to make sure that no more Kanhaiyas are born, Rajasthan Minister of State for Education (primary and secondary) Vasudev Devnani stated that major changes were being made in the school curricula.

By India Today Web Desk: So as to make sure that no more Kanhaiyas are born, Rajasthan Minister of State for Education (primary and secondary) Vasudev Devnani stated that major changes are being made in school curricula, in which biographies of freedom fighters would be included so as to ensure "no one like Kanhaiya Kumar is born" in the state.

According to newspaper reports, he said in the assembly that this step would inculcate the feeling of patriotism in students, and that is why major changes were being made in the same. State Higher Education Minister Kali Charan Saraf said that in view of the recent JNU incident, government universities have been asked to hoist a national flag, so as to inculcate patriotism in students.

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Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students' Union President Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on sedition charges over a controversial event on the campus where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised. The event was organised at the Sabarmati Dhaba, against the execution of Afzal Guru and separatist leader Maqbool Bhat, and for Kashmir's right to self-determination. He was later released on bail.

Many changes have already been made to the school curriculum in the state. Earlier this week, the minister said the life stories of Indian saints will also be added in the new syllabus.

"Figures like Hemu Kalani, Maharaja Dahrsen, Saint Kanwar Ram and Swami Tauram have been added so that students can know about them. Devnani has already removed works by John Keats, Thomas Hardy, William Blake, T S Eliot and Edward Lear from the revised Class 8 English textbooks.



Read: UGC recommends introduction of anti-corruption related topics in university curriculum



Read: Dearth of classrooms in govt schools: Sisodia



For information on more latest updates and news, click here.



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22-year-old Shakir Banthia and 21-year-old Vasim Shaikh have been arrested for sharing an image combining Mohan Bhagwat's torso with that of a woman's body clad in brown pants.

By India Today Web Desk: Two youth have been arrested in Madhya Pradesh for sharing online a morphed image of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat.

22-year-old Shakir Banthia and 21-year-old Vasim Shaikh have been arrested for sharing an image combining Mohan Bhagwat's torso with that of a woman's body clad in brown pants. The duo was arrested after the police received complaints stating that the picture had hurt Hindu sentiments.

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The image allegedly sought to make fun of the RSS decision to change its dress code.

The RSS had last week said that its members will now do away with the traditional khaki shorts and will opt instead for a pair of trousers.

The decision to change the dress code to wood brown/coffee colour trousers was taken at a three-day annual meeting of Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the highest decision-making body of the RSS.

Many view the move an attempt to attract more young people towards the RSS.

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By India Today Web Desk: History teaches us that it is the voice of the minority that any democratic government needs to protect most, internationally-acclaimed lawyer and activist Amal Clooney said today.

"Silencing minority voices did not serve society well" when Mandela and Gandhi were imprisoned for sedition, she noted, before drawing on modern parallels.



Delivering the final lecture at the two-day India Today Conclave 2016 in New Delhi, Clooney said, "Protecting free speech is not only a matter of principle, it is also pragmatic. Locking up dissenters does not reduce dissent, it fosters it."



"Locking up students for sedition will be a step in the wrong direction," the 38-year-old lawyer said when she was informed about the JNU row by moderator Karan Thapar.



Speaking on 'Free Speech in Repressive Regimes', the high-profile lawyer, also known as actor George Clooney's wife, gave examples from the recent cases she worked on in Egypt, Azerbaijan and other countries. "Consider me your travel agent warning you about what not to do on your holiday," she quipped.



Clooney's clients include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. When Thapar asked why Assange refuses to face law if he thinks he is innocent, Clooney said the Australian had not been charged with a crime but equally had not been given any assurance by the Swedish government that he would not be extradited to the United States.



Assange should not be prosecuted there, she argued, because like the New York Times, Der Spiegel and other newspapers that carried the stories released by WikiLeaks, "WikiLeaks' disclosures should be protected under the First Amendment," the British-Lebanese lawyer said.



Clooney stated that there was a "free speech crisis" in the world because criticism of the three Rs - royalty, rulers and religion - was increasingly off-limits. She also noted reports showing that an increasing number of journalists are being persecuted by regimes for their opinions and activities around the world.



Addressing India's youths, the glamorous lawyer suggested three more Rs for them to work on: reconciling community relations, reducing poverty and respecting women's rights. The 38-year-old also said India, the fastest growing economy in the world, should be made a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.



When asked the inevitable question what it feels to be married to the "sexiest man in the world", Clooney laughed and only said, "He is a wonderfully supportive husband....". She also said she could recommend marriage to anyone who finds the right partner, even if it is later in life.



Any message for men? "They should consider women's issues to be their issues, something they should be fighting for as well," the high-profile lawyer signed off.

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Also Read

From India Today Conclave: Freedom is a prayer; I have experienced what it is like to not be free: Sanjay Dutt

From India Today Conclave: Kashmir an integral part of India: JNU's Kanhaiya Kumar at India Today Conclave

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A scientist with multiple patents to his credit, Dr Bill Andrews is focused on trying to find a cure for ageing, and says his company will have a product in less than a year that can actually reverse ageing.

By India Today Web Desk: For the second session on Day 2 of the India Today Conclave, Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa introduced Dr Bill Andrews as the man who has a cure for ageing; the scientist who promises to make us all young again. Dr Andrews has over 45 patents on telomeres, a component in our DNA, directly linked to ageing.

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Watch video :



In what turned out to be an enlightening session with a rapt audience, Dr Andrews explained the process of ageing and talked about how we can reverse it. He believes ageing is a disease that we all suffer from but wanting to be young forever is more than just about what we look and what we feel. "We all have a big problem especially in India, of the 'silver tsunami'. Because of the baby boomers and a lot of developments in the world we're creating a lot of old people and they're all getting sick from old age. Right now the number of people over 65 is just 5 per cent, and by end of century it's going to be around 25 per cent. Where is India going to get the caregivers for these people? How is India going to cover all the medical costs? I believe the solution is don't let them get old, let them stay healthy and take care of themselves," he said.



Talking about all the theories and anti-ageing products in the market, Dr Andrews said "they don't do anything in terms of ageing and very little for your health, and I'm amazed how much money they make on the market."



He further explained the process: "Think of ageing as a stick of dynamite burning inside yourself. Think of multiple sticks of dynamites and each being a different cause of ageing. What matters is which stick of dynamite has the shortest fuse because the others won't matter anymore once the first one goes off."



The real front-runner that's been showing up in thousands of publications and journals is telomeres. So, what are telomeres? "A human is made up of a hundred trillion cells; we age because our cells age. Every cell contains a nucleus and inside these are the chromosomes. The chromosomes further contain DNA, which is like a long string of beads. Think of it as shoelaces. At the end are caps that prevent laces from falling off. Similarly, at the end of the strings of DNA are telomeres," he said. When these telomeres get shorter, we age. The key, then is to increase the telomeres.



"When we are conceived, telomeres are about 15,000 bases in length. Every single time a human cell divides, the telomeres reduce. When you are born, they're down to 10,000 bases. So you still have a lot more cell division as you get older. When telomeres get to 5,000 bases, your cells don't function and you die of old age. This is happening in all humans. No matter how well you eat, how much you exercise, do everything your doctor tells you to do, there's nothing you can do to stop this."



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Dr Andrews further said he has discovered an enzyme called telomerase than lengthens the telomeres. "In collaboration with a laboratory at Harvard, we lengthened telomeres in mice and they actually got younger. They were old mice but after this enzyme, they could breathe again, their memories came back, and they could reproduce again. But the method we used, genetic engineering, on mice can't be used on humans yet."



So what can we do to reverse ageing?

"First, you should measure your telomeres. There are many ways but the one I've found. A company in Spain is doing it, which is not in India yet, but will eventually come to Bangalore. This is the best marker of your age."



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Then, there are ways to reduce oxidative stress. Some of them, as listed by Dr Andrews, are:

Endurance exercise: India is a big part of all this. The premiere endurance event in the whole world is here in India, La Ultra, in the Himalayas. It's 333km in length, and I've done it. It's non-stop , slow, long-distance endurance running. It keeps your telomeres long and really healthy. Also, walking is as good as running. The point is, get out and move. Meditation and yoga. People who do this have longer telomeres than those who don't. Don't smoke. Don't be obese. Reduce depression. Take antioxidants; Omega 3 is important. Vitamin D is equally important; take 10,000 units a day. Reduce gluten, dairy, trans- and saturated fats. Most exciting, we've found several natural products that will lengthen telomeres. TA 65 and Product B are two that I use. The royalties from the sales of these go towards our research. Gene therapy: A company in Fiji Islands has licensed this from us and is going to make it available, but at USD 2 million a treatment, only the super wealthy will be able to do it. I promise, in less than a year we will have a small molecule that we can all have to help lengthen telomeres.

advertisement "For more, you can read my book, Curing Aging. A movie was also made on my research called The Immortalists."

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Anupam Kher, who was at the Jawaharlal Nehru University for the screening of his film, Buddha in a traffic jam, further said someone who has returned on bail is not an Olympic hero.

Bollywood actor Anupam Kher addresses the students before the screening of his film 'Buddha in a Traffic Jam' at JNU on Friday. Photo: PTI

By India Today Web Desk: "People who are out on bail cannot be welcomed on campus like heroes," actor and activist Anupam Kher said today. Anupam Kher was at the Jawaharlal Nehru University for the screening of his film - Buddha in a traffic jam.

"How can some students make a hero out of someone who criticises the country and is currently out on bail?" Kher said in his address to students in JNU.

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"Someone who has returned on bail is not an Olympic hero," Kher said without naming JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

"I want the focus to be shifted back from kranti (revolution) to desh bhakti (nationalism)," said Kher amid chants of Bharat Mata Ki Jai from some of the students inside the JNU campus.

Last week, Kher had claimed that the JNU authorities had refused to give permission to screen his film. The university had rubbished the actor's statement.

Hours before the actor's visit to JNU, a Delhi court granted bail for six months to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested last month for sedition.

The court, while granting the relief to the two doctoral students from JNU, asked them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each. The court also asked the two not to leave Delhi during the period of their bail.

Also Read:

Anupam Kher to JNU: Screen my film if you stand for freedom of expression



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By Mail Today: Security agencies at the IGI airport had a tough day with two flights bound for Nepal and Bhubaneswar grounded for four to six hours on Thursday after the airport call centre received a bomb threat.

Security agencies conducted a full security check and the threat eventually proved to be a hoax.

Security agencies had to evacuate almost 340 people on board after the airport call centre received the call, which lasted for almost nine minutes. After over four hours of conducting antisabotage checks, the two flights were cleared for take-off. Officials at the airport said that while the Air India flight to Bhubaneswar took off at 5.20 pm, the Kathmandu-bound flight of Royal Nepal Airlines had a late clearance.

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According to sources, the flights had four Members of Parliament, who were travelling from Delhi. The threat was triggered after the airport control room received a call at around 10 in the morning from a person identifying himself as Abhishek Singh. He claimed to be a CBI officer.

that there is a time bomb in the Nepal bound flight (RA-206) and that some suspicious movement was in progress at the terminal area to strike down the Delhi-Bhubaneswar flight (AI-705). Soon after the call was received, passengers on board the two planes were evacuated and taken to the isolation bay, where security agencies carried out anti-sabotage checks. While the Kathmandu flight had 155 passengers and nine crew members, the flight bound for Odisha's capital had 169 fliers and seven crew members. Passengers of both the flights and their baggage were subjected to a second round of checking with the Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) at the IGIA.

Security personnel from the CISF and Delhi Police had cordoned off the two planes along with bomb disposal squads, sources said. They added, "Police are trying to track the number, location and the person, who made the hoax call to the airport call centre."

Talking about the menace of hoax calls, a police official said that it appears as if someone was deliberately trying to delay the flights. Delhi police have registered a case against the unknown person. Central Industrial Security Force chief Surender Singh has said that 44 such calls were received last year across various airports and 16 such calls have been made till early March this year.

ALSO READ



Air India, Jet Airways flights from Delhi to Kathmandu delayed after bomb scare Multiple bomb scares disrupt flights across India. What's happening?



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Chhota Rajan's health is deteriorating and the medical facilities available in Tihar Jail can do little to aid his condition.

Gangster Chhota Rajan's health is deteriorating and the medical facilities available in Tihar Jail are not adequate.

By Sneha Agrawal: Chhota Rajan's health is deteriorating and the medical facilities available in Tihar Jail can do little to aid his condition.

The gangster's poor medical state has left the jail authorities in a fix. They have moved an application before a Delhi court seeking permission to get his treatment done in one of the well-equipped hospitals of the Capital.

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The application was moved on March 15 before Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar. In the application, the authorities mentioned that Chhota Rajan is in urgent need of dialysis and the inhouse medical facilities are not enough to handle his flailing health. Rajan wants his treatment to be done in a hospital.

The 55- year-old is battling his way through multiple medical conditions like diabetes, heart problems and kidney failure. Rajan reportedly has a history of kidney problems and has been in poor health for quite some time.

Both his kidneys have failed and he is on constant dialysis. Although the matter was fixed for hearing on March 17, but since the CBI is yet to file its reply on the application, the court has fixed the matter for hearing on March 30.

Chhota Rajan, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was sent to the high-security Tihar Prison on November 19, last year. He was nabbed as soon as he reached Bali from Australia.

The underworld don was being closely monitored by the police before he got arrested. It was the Australian authorities who identified him after their system alerted them about the lookout notice. They in turn informed the Indonesian Police. Chhota Rajan was handcuffed at the airport itself.

Rajan, once a close aide of Dawood, was brought in to the country to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai. For the security reasons, Chhota Rajan has been produced before courts through video conferencing from Tihar, after he had earlier moved an application fearing threats to his life if taken to Mumbai.

He applied to a special court requesting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take him in custody in all the cases registered against him by various law enforcement agencies.

A Delhi court had then directed the CBI to urge the Maharashtra government to arrange the trial of the J Dey murder case through video-conferencing from Tihar Jail. Later, according to sources, the Lieutenant Governor had passed an order that Rajan would be produced before the court in all his cases through video-conferencing only.

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ALSO READ

Agencies doubt if Chhota Rajan can help nab Dawood

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The 15th edition of the India Today Conclave will move to another eclectic lineup of discussions with thought leaders, artists, celebrities and youth icons.

By India Today Web Desk: After a power-packed Day 1, the 15th edition of the India Today Conclave will move to another eclectic lineup of discussions with thought leaders, artists, celebrities and youth icons on Friday. The theme of this year's conclave is 'India Today, World Tomorrow'.

On Day 2, 26 speakers will take the stage. The conclave will begin at 11 am, at Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi, with a session titled 'Life as a Balancing Act' featuring a famous high wire artist named Philippe Petit. The 66-year-old French artist gained fame in 1974 when he walked on a high wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.

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JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar, British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, Pakistan broadcaster Reham Khan, actor and activist Gul Panag, champion boxer MC Mary Kom, renowned actor Shabana Azmi, comedian-writer Varun Grover and Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, will be among the key speakers to watch out for on Day 2.

On Wednesday, India Today Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie welcomed the guests at conclave. He was followed by a range of newsmakers from the political and international circle. Photos and videos from Day 1 sessions can be found here - India Today Conclave 2016

"We should all have faith in our democracy and above all in our people. We are an amazing country with such diverse, talented and smart people. Our country is bursting with youthful energy with 65 per cent of our population being below the age of 35. My hope comes from watching ordinary Indians doing extraordinary things all around us," said Aroon Purie.

ALSO READ

RSS does not believe homosexuality is a crime: Dattatreya Hosabale at India Today Conclave 2016

India Today Conclave 2016: Jaitley to answer if India can deliver double-digit growth

--- ENDS ---
The recipients could be tricked into clicking links to malicious websites or opening attachments containing malicious software.

By Reuters: The FBI and U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a bulletin Thursday warning that motor vehicles are "increasingly vulnerable" to hacking.

"The FBI and NHTSA are warning the general public and manufacturers - of vehicles, vehicle components, and aftermarket devices - to maintain awareness of potential issues and cybersecurity threats related to connected vehicle technologies in modern vehicles," the agencies said in the bulletin.

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In July 2015, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recalled 1.4 million U.S. vehicles to install software after a magazine report raised concerns about hacking, the first action of its kind for the auto industry.

Also last year, General Motors Co issued a security update for a smartphone app that could have allowed a hacker to take control of some functions of a plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt, like starting the engine and unlocking the doors.

In January 2015, BMW AG said it had fixed a security flaw that could have allowed up to 2.2 million vehicles to have doors remotely opened by hackers.

"While not all hacking incidents may result in a risk to safety - such as an attacker taking control of a vehicle - it is important that consumers take appropriate steps to minimize risk," the FBI bulletin said Thursday. (here)

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind told reporters in July 2015 that automakers must move fast to address hacking issues.

The Fiat Chrysler recall came after Wired magazine reported hackers could remotely take control of some functions of a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, including steering, transmission and brakes. NHTSA has said there has never been a real-world example of a hacker taking control of a vehicle.

Two major U.S. auto trade associations - the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers - late last year opened an Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The groups share cyber-threat information and potential vulnerabilities in vehicles.

The FBI bulletin Thursday warned that criminals could exploit online vehicle software updates by sending fake "e-mail messages to vehicle owners who are looking to obtain legitimate software updates. Instead, the recipients could be tricked into clicking links to malicious websites or opening attachments containing malicious software."



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The most-wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was wounded in a shootout in Brussels on Friday and still holed up at the scene, Belgian newspaper DH reported.

By Reuters: The most-wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was wounded in a shootout in Brussels on Friday and still holed up at the scene, Belgian newspaper DH reported. Other media said a person had been wounded and possibly killed in the Brussels district of Molenbeek while television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street in the capital.

A police spokeswoman said an operation was ongoing and could not give further details.

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Belgian police had found finger prints belonging to Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman from Brussels suspected of taking part in the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, during an earlier operation, prosecutors said.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation at the apartment in Brussels on Tuesday was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up in Paris, was "more than likely" one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organiser of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

France's BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a Frenchwoman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Belgian officials said earlier in the week that police had not expected to find armed suspects at the apartment and that the presence of French officers was not an indication the raid was of special importance to the investigation.

Abdeslam's elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Paris during a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later. Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. There has long been speculation in Belgium that he could have fled to Syria.

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Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for Islamic State. The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.

Also read:



IS terrorists entered UK with Paris attacks ringleader: Report

Woman in hiding tells why she blew whistle on Paris attacker

3 Paris attackers feature in ISIS recruitment files: Reports

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On Tuesday (March 15), Hrithik Roshan had sent a legal notice to Kangana Ranaut demanding an apology from the Katti Batti actor for allegedly referring to him as her "silly ex" in an interview. In response to his legal notice, Kangana also gave a 21-page reply to the Dhoom 2 actor, charging Hrithik with intimidation and threat.

By India Today Web Desk: Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's legal battle is getting murkier with each passing day. It has taken an ugly turn with the ex-lovers sending legal notices to each other, which has opened a can of worms. Hrithik, in his legal notice, had earlier said that there was no relationship between Kangana and him. It also stated that Kangana is doing all this to gain nothing but just publicity.

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ALSO READ: Hrithik finally breaks his silence on the legal battle

ALSO READ: Proposal in Paris to Rebound Relationship, 10 shocking revelations

And now Kangana's lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee has claimed that statements made by Hrithik against his client Kangana are nothing but efforts to "gain public sympathy". Rizwan told PTI, "Hrithik's statements made to the media are nothing but efforts to gain public sympathy. He cannot wash his hands off the matter now after having criminally threatened my client and having intimidated her, without any provocation. He also cannot deny the fact my client never named him anywhere and it was he himself who claimed to be "Silly Ex" in his notice."

"Besides his own acts of stating in the media that he would rather 'date a Pope' gave enough fodder to the media to start speculating. How can he blame my client for all his own acts of commissions and omissions?" he added.

On Tuesday (March 15), Hrithik had sent a legal notice to Kangana demanding an apology from the Katti Batti actor for allegedly referring to him as her "silly ex" in an interview. In response to his legal notice, Kangana also gave a 21-page reply to the Dhoom 2 actor, charging Hrithik with intimidation and threat.

Kangana's lawyer has also said that the Queen actor doesn't need Hrithik's name for her benefits as Kangana herself is a big star. Rizwan also said Hrithik's legal notice was "absolutely baseless". "Most importantly I would like to point out that at least Hrithik Roshan should have bothered to ensure that he has a good reason to send a legal notice to my client," added Siddiquee.

Siddiquee also claimed that Hrithik has been lying as the Bang Bang actor has been a part of Kangana's private parties. "He specifically claimed he does not know my client socially at all. If that were the truth, then how was he attending my client's private birthday party with his entire family and my client was attending his party besides his sister's and his father's birthday party as well. There is enough proof on public platform, which sufficiently proves that Hrithik Roshan is lying," said Siddiquee.

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From slapping each other with legal notices to shocking revelations, Kangana and Hrithik have taken their battle on to an entirely different level. Kangana and Hrithik have worked with each other in two films, Kites and Krrish 3.



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The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraq's north earlier this week said he made "a bad decision" joining IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station.

By AP: The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraq's north earlier this week said he made "a bad decision" joining IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters.

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Khweis said in the interview aired late last night that he met an Iraqi woman with ties to IS in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul. There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee.

"I didn't agree with their ideology," he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. "I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul."

Khweis said a friend helped him escape Mosul to nearby Tal Afar. From there he said he walked toward Kurdish troops. "I wanted to go to the Kurdish side," he said, "because I know they are good with the Americans."

The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from IS militants late last year. In the past year IS fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq. Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation.

Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling IS said that they are seeing an increase in the number of IS members surrendering following recent territorial losses. As the militants lose territory, US officials predict there will be more desertions.

"I wasn't thinking straight," Khweis said. "My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad," he said, adding that he doesn't believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam.

The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other extremist groups.

An earlier estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a think tank at King's College London, said IS fighters include 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans.

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Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif's break-up has affected the shooting of their upcoming film Jagga Jasoos time and again. Earlier, there were reports that the two were in Morocco shooting for some portions, but the cold vibes between Ranbir and Katrina made Anurag Basu cancel the shoot.

By India Today Web Desk: Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif are no longer together is known to all. But their break-up has affected the shooting of their upcoming film Jagga Jasoos time and again. Earlier, there were reports that the two were in Morocco shooting for some portions, but the cold vibes between Ranbir and Katrina made Anurag Basu cancel the shoot.

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ALSO SEE: Ex-lovers Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif resume shoot for Jagga Jasoos

ALSO READ: Jagga Jasoos delayed once again. Is Ranbir-Katrina's break-up a big reason?

According to DNA, a source has said, "This schedule of JJ started in Mumbai more than a week ago. Director Anurag Basu doesn't know what to do. First, Katrina and Ranbir's best friend director Ayan Mukerji was requested to come every day, so tempers wouldn't flare between the two stars and so that both Katrina and Ranbir would finish the schedule. But now the vibes between the two are icy cold and nobody is taking a chance. Anurag and the producers decided to take a call and complete the remaining portions in Mumbai."

And now Ranbir Kapoor has denied all the rumours of issues related to the shoot of his upcoming film Jagga Jasoos. In an interview to Indian Express, Ranbir said, "There are no problems. It's going really well. There are only a few days of shoot left. Whether it is Katrina or Anurag (Basu) or myself, all of us are working our hearts out for it."

"I am extremely excited about the film. The first look and teaser will be out next month. I hope everyone likes it," added the Tamasha actor.

Ranbir and Katrina's film Jagga Jasoos was set to hit the screens in June this year, but it has now been postponed to July or August. Earlier, Anurag Basu had also said, "Having a real-life couple is not an advantage but it is rather a disadvantage. The actors know each other so well and you are lovers in real-life, it gets difficult for them to bring their chemistry on the screen. So this is going to be very challenging."

Directed by Anurag Basu, Jagga Jasoos is touted to be a romantic comedy and is about a detective in search of his missing father.



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About 30 people were killed and properties worth crores were destroyed in the Jat agitation last month.

By Ajay Kumar: Professor Virender Singh, who is facing sedition charges for allegedly provoking supporters during the Jat stir in February, surrendered before Rohtak Superintendent of Police (SP) on Thursday. In a week-long Jat agitation in Haryana about 30 people were killed last month.

Singh, the political advisor to former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, came under fire after the audio clip of his 1.30 minute-long telephone conversation with one Maan Singh Dalal of Jhajjar district was put online on February 21.

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In the audio clip Singh is allegedly heard directing Dalal to commit arson in the Bahadurgarh area and also suggests that he maintains a distance from INLD leaders. Following his surrender, Singh has claimed that he has done no wrong. "An attempt was made to malign my image and former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. I will come out clean from the judicial process and I have full faith in it," he claimed.

Singh was produced before a local court which sent him to two days of police custody.

"We had given him time till February 28 to surrender. Despite that he had been on the run till now. He came to my office to surrender and we took him into custody and produced him before a local civil court," Rohtak SP Shashank Anand said, adding that the other accused, Man Singh Dalal, is still on the run and that all attempts are being made to nab him.

Meanwhile, the Haryana government is all geared up to control the unrest as the 72-hour ultimatum given by Jat leaders to drop cases registered against protesters and provide reservation to the community, ended on Thursday. Refusing to drop the criminal cases registered against Jats, the state government has invited Jat leaders for talks and has asked them for help in preparing the Bill.

"Jat Reservation Bill was being drafted after all considerations and discussions with stakeholders. This Bill may be introduced in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha during the ongoing Budget Session," Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar said.

"Nobody will be allowed to take law in their hands. We have made it clear that cases registered against the people involved in criminal activities during the protests will not be dropped as investigations are on," Captain Abhimanyu said.

Around 3,000 paramilitary forces have been deployed in Haryana to ensure peace. Close to 300 security personnel were specially sent to guard the Munak canal, which was damaged by protestors last month causing huge water crisis across Delhi for several days.

Sources said the police may resort to preventive arrests of Jat leaders. The state government has already delegated power to deputy commissioners under NSA to arrest people engaged in inimical activities.

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Jhajjar district magistrate Anita Yadav said that they would book agitators under national security law (Rasuka) if they are found guilty of arson, damaging property or being involved in violence.

The administration has also suspended 2G and 3G services in the district to prevent provocation through social networking sites. It has also imposed a ban on selling liquor till March 19.

ALSO READ

RSS disapproves of reservation demands by affluent sections of society

Quota row: Alert sounded in Haryana as Jat leaders threaten another agitation



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Shakun Batra's Kapoor And Sons, the tale of a dysfunctional family, hits the screens today. Will this Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan and Alia Bhatt film be able to make it to people's hearts? Here's the review.

By Ananya Bhattacharya: Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Alia Bhatt, Rishi Kapoor, Rajat Kapoor, Ratna Pathak Shah

Direction: Shakun Batra

Ratings: 3.5/5)

Not every family is perfect. Hell, no family is perfect. Shakun Batra's Kapoor And Sons wins in being able to portray the quick fixes that every family has to employ sometime or the other. In Sidharth Malhotra and Fawad Khan's dysfunctional Kapoor family, this is what shines through.

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PHOTOS: Sidharth and Alia give us major relationship goals, even when at the airport

ALSO READ: Alia Bhatt learnt this from her rumoured boyfriend Sidharth Malhotra

Dadu (Rishi Kapoor), the 89-year-old patriarch of the Kapoor family suffers a heart attack. Rahul (Fawad Khan) and Arjun's (Sidharth Malhotra) lives in London and New Jersey respectively are disrupted, and the brothers come back home to Coonoor. In this picturesque small town in Tamil Nadu resides this not-so-picturesque Kapoor family. Rahul and Arjun's mom (Ratna Pathak Shah) and dad (Rajat Kapoor) are stuck in a bickering, at-each-other's-throats marriage. Family fights are an everyday affair and the story sucks you in into it in a way that seems real. The Kapoors get under your skin and make a home for themselves there.

Tia (Alia) and Arjun have a drunken night between them when the latter gatecrashes and lands in the party at her place. Arjun is instantly taken by Tia. On the other hand, Tia wants to sell her bungalow that Rahul wants converted into an artists' retreat, and in the process, the girl develops a massive crush on the guy.

Younger brother Arjun desists living in the shadow of his elder brother, the 'perfect son', the successful novelist who has a perfect life in London. On the other side is Dadu, whose only wish in life is a family photo, which will have 'Kapoor and Sons Since 1921' captioned beneath it. Rahul and Arjun throw their lot behind trying to fulfil their grandfather's wish, and also want to throw a surprise party for the octogenarian's 90th birthday. But how?

With these several parallel tracks running through Kapoor And Sons, director Shakun Batra crafts a refreshing tale of family problems and the art of sweeping them under the carpet. There are scenes in the film which remind you of your own not-so-absolute families. A special mention for the scene where a plumber gets unwillingly stuck in a family fight and leaves everyone in splits.

Batra, along with Ayesha Devitre Dhillon, displays a story that is at once the beauty and ugliness of rain in the mountains. Sure, sitting on the window-sill, you breathe in the fragrance of the wet earth; but there's the claustrophobia too, of being stuck indoors. Kapoor And Sons is a depiction of the lives spent dithering, of time that you've lost doing nothing but waiting for a better period of time.

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In this tale of the flawed family, Fawad Khan is spectacular. The actor, whose debut in Khoobsurat was lauded by most people, does a fabulous job of bringing Rahul's dilemmas and the burden of protecting secrets on screen. Sidharth Malhotra tries his best to infuse life into Arjun, and is successful in doing so. However, in the frames with the two brothers on screen, you can't help but realise that Fawad outshines Sidharth.

As the bubbly, outgoing Tia, Alia is the quintessential pretty distraction. But her role doesn't allow her to be a lot more than that. In her not-as-fleshed-out part too, Alia makes her presence felt.

Rajat Kapoor and Ratna Pathak Shah are both incomparable in the way they bring alive the problems of a marriage in tatters. Rishi Kapoor is unbelievable in the film. His character teaches people how to live, and full marks to the actor for being able to nail that.

However, underneath all the brilliance of Kapoor And Sons, there lies the problem of the quick-fix solution. Half of Batra's film is a lesson in embracing the imperfections and searching for a proper solution to them. Therefore, when the story uses that very hasty, knee-jerk climax to get things in place, it comes across as a betrayal.

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Jeffery F Bierman's camera captures the essence of Coonoor in the best way possible. A middle class family in a small town, sons who stay abroad, the beauty of the sun setting on the hills... Coonoor comes alive in Kapoor And Sons, thanks to the cinematography.

The music is soothing. Ladki Beautiful, of course, is already the party anthem of the year. Among the other tracks, Bolna is a memorable one.

In all, watch Kapoor And Sons for everything. And if you happen to have a crush on Fawad Khan, watch it for him.

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According to the police, the 8-year-old girl was walking alone around 5 pm when a stranger approached her. He allegedly touched her inappropriately and she raised an alarm. The stranger then fled from the scene.

By Mail Today: The Karnataka police are searching for an unidentified man, who molested a minor girl when she was returning home from school in the mining town of Hosapete in Ballari district on Thursday.

According to the police, the 8-year-old girl was walking alone around 5 pm when a stranger approached her. He allegedly touched her inappropriately and she raised an alarm. The stranger then fled from the scene.

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Her parents lodged a complaint with the Hosapete police, who analysed the CCTV footage from the nearby commercial establishments. However, they failed to identify him. A case has been registered and a probe is on.

Also read:

Minor abducted and raped by two in Noida sector 58





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Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2016, Kanhaiya said: "There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues."

By India Today Web Desk: Kashmir is an integral part of India and therefore, Indians have the right to discuss the issues pertaining to Kashmiris at any forum, JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar said today.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2016, Kanhaiya said: "There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues."

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Kanhaiya, who was charged with sedition, denied supporting Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who was hanged for his role in the terror attack on Parliament.

When asked by India Today TV Managing Editor Rahul Kanwal if he had raised slogans against the Indian Army's alleged atrocities in Kashmir, Kanhaiya was backed by his deputy in the JNU Students Union, Shehla Rashid, who is also a Kashmiri woman.

"It pains me to say that but it is a fact that there are allegations against the Indian Army of raping women in Kashmir. But we are not able to do much about them because of the impunity that Armed Forces Special Powers Act provides to the soldiers," Rashid said, appealing especially to the women in the audience to come to terms with the allegation.

Rashid further said that even as a Kashmiri, who have a very hostile image of India, she began to have faith in the Indian democratic institutions after she joined the JNU. "For a Kashmiri who boycott elections in the Valley to fight an election in JNU was a big leap of faith, and I am glad I made it," she said.

Kanhaiya also defended the February 9 event on the campus by saying people should have a right to oppose capital punishment. "Our protest was against capital punishment, not in support of Afzal," he said, adding that even if an ABVP activist was given capital punishment, he would oppose it.

"The JNU culture promotes debate and discussion. It is not our culture to stop people from speaking or putting forth their point of view, even if we do not agree with it," he added.

Asked why he did not stop people from raising anti-India slogans at the JNU campus on February 9, he said neither he or nor his All India Students Federation (AISF) supported anti-India slogans or Kashmir's secession.

When ABVP's Saurabh Sharma, also the joint-secretary in the JNU Students Union, contested Kanhaiya's claim that he was not present in the Afzal Guru event, Kanhaiya asked him to produce any evidence he has to the court.

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Kanhaiya is currently out on a six-month interim bail in the sedition case along with fellow JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who, incidentally, also got their bail today.

It was a fiery debate at the Conclave today with Kanhaiya and Rashid taking on a three-member ABVP panel, which also included ABVP's media convener Saket Bahuguna and Miranda House vice-president Mahamedha Nagar.

Also read:

'We don't want more Kanhaiyas to be born', says Rajasthan minister: Wants change in school textbooks

JNU students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya get bail in sedition case



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Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda has become one of the famous star kids on the block, courtesy her pictures on Instagram. Amitabh has recently revealed that Navya is not on Twitter.

By India Today Web Desk: Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda has become one of the famous star kids on the block, courtesy her pictures on Instagram. Navya, who resides in London, has a great fan following on social media.

Amitabh has recently revealed that Navya is not on Twitter and the account made on the star kids' name is fake. He wrote, "ALARM : my grand daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter .. that account is fake ..!! I responded to it by mistake .. BE WARNED !! (sic)."

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T 2178 - ALARM : my grand daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter .. that account is fake ..!! I responded to it by mistake .. BE WARNED !! Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) March 18, 2016

Earlier, Amitabh had a Twitter conversation with Navya (fake account) after India lost against New Zealand. Navya on Twitter wrote, "Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you. #IndvsNZ."

Replying to her tweet, Senoir Bachchan wrote, "the grand daughter speaks .. and speaks well ... !!!" The Wazir actor further said, "A jolt for our T20 team .. but faith in them .. do not worry TeamIndia, we are with you .. "Well said, don't you think?"

Amitabh's granddaughter Navya studies at the Sevenoaks school along with Shah Rukh Khan's kids, Suhana Khan and Aryan Khan. And there were rumours that soon after pursuing her studies, she might debut in Bollywood.

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Drop some sovereign beat here please, North Korea fired a ballistic missile again. Kim Jong -un got snappy with his trigger-happy attitude and up above the world so high, like a missile in the sky.

By Mohak Gupta:

Like a legend gone bad is Kim Jong -un. Face the fascism here please. It will help your kids understand how it is like to live in the Stone Age. But Stone Age did not have ballistic missiles, but North Korea has missiles.

Maybe Stone Age did not know what communism was, or what it now is. We don't intend to define it that way but desperate times call for desperate measures it seems.

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If North Korea tests a missile, a lot happens. Nobody needs nationalistic right-wing trouble for no reason since Kim Jong -un and his kingdom of North Korea has barely taken notice of UN or US and has continued to test missiles ever so casually because he is Kim Jong-un.



This recently tested missile is a medium-range missile and is very much capable of reaching Japan though it's still not confirmed if that's the case or not.

Whatever is the case, one thing is for sure, North Korea fired the ballistic missile and Japan has strongly condemned the very launch. Japan is condemning the very act because nobody wants their neighbour to mess around with nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. Imagine if your neighbour brings hand grenades and drops it in your garage. No, you don't want that to happen right?



South Korea and US officials are gearing up their anti-missile systems which for obvious reasons, could not impress China and Russia but after North Korea's frequent missile tests, the action taken by US and South Korea can not be opposed blatantly.

So the thing is, North Korea does not give a bull's horn. And Kim Jong-un be like -

Jokes apart though, the whole nuclear weapon game is getting escalated and things might just get out of hand. All countries are up on their weapons and we might just get in serious trouble if nations like North Korea keep the same hostility and rudeness.

Oh boy, whatever happened to WORLD PEACE!



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By India Today Web Desk: Shilpa Shinde, who shot to fame with her portrayal of Angoori Bhabhi in popular show Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai, has been making headlines for a couple of weeks now over her exit from the show. Shilpa's exit turned into a full-blown controversy after the producer of the show Binaifer Kohli from the Edit II team released a statement, accusing Shilpa of "blatant breach of agreement" and "irresponsible attitude."

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The actress in turn alleged mental torture by the show's makers, and called Binaifer "a terror on the sets". She also said that her co-stars--Saumya Tandon, Aashif Sheikh and Rohitash Gaud, didn't stand up for her; she also termed them as insecure.

Also read: Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai: Here's what CINTAA ruled on Shilpa Shinde controversy



Saumya Tandon who plays the role of Anita on Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai, spoke to The Times of India about the controversy.

Harassment on the sets: There's no question

"It came as a surprise for all of us. Shilpa never discussed her problems with us. All we knew is that she stopped coming for the shoot. There is no question of harassment or torture on the sets. We all come, work, pack-up on time and the facilities are also good here. She never spoke to us about any of her problems. We had nothing to do with matter. I don't understand why our name was dragged into the entire controversy," said the actress.



Also read: Five reasons why we will miss Shilpa Shinde on Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai



About Shilpa's exit from the show: There is always a procedure to leave the show

"I feel when an actor signs a contract or they are hired, they should abide by the terms and conditions. One can't just randomly stop coming for the shoot. There is always a procedure to leave the show. I don't think one should stop coming for their shoots at once."

On not standing up for Shilpa: I don't know what has gone wrong between Shilpa and her (Benaifer)

"Standing up for what? The 'Bhabiji Ghar Par Hai' set is the most happy place to be at. In the past one year we have never faced any kind of problem. We are always seen having fun, joking around on the set. I would like to say, our producer Benaifer Kohli is the most professional lady. I don't know what has gone wrong between Shilpa and her. I can't comment as I don't know anything about the entire controversy. Whatever wrong has happened, I feel things can be resolved by talking it out. When a show becomes popular, the entire team is credited for it. From writers, actors to technicians everyone contributes equally for the show's success. I feel the responsibility is more on actors as people associate us with the shows. We are the face of the show for them. So when one of the primary characters goes missing from the show, the entire show suffers. I hope Shilpa understands this and comes back to the BGPH."



Also read: Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai controversy gets ugly; production house sends legal notice to Shilpa Shinde



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On co-stars feeling insecure of Shilpa Shinde: Passing such personal comment on co-stars is in very bad taste

"It is very sad that our names have unnecessary got dragged into this. Passing such personal comment on co-stars is in very bad taste. Aashif Sheikh has a decade long career and Rohitash Ji has great body of work as well. I have also been in this industry for last 10 years. I am shocked Shilpa has such things to say about us. It would be below my dignity to comment on Shilpa's insecurity remarks. It is a very petty allegation," said Soumya.

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The House has passed a resolution unanimously that circumstances be what they are and that the SYL canal cannot be allowed to be built in defiance of the rights of the state over its river waters. Since the case is before the Supreme Court, it must be decided before the canal can even be talked about," Badal's advisor Harcharan Bains told India Today.

By India Today Web Desk: Defying a Supreme Court order, the Punjab Assembly today unanimously passed a resolution moved by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal stating that the government will not allow the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal since it is not in the interest of the state.

The House has passed a resolution unanimously that circumstances be what they are and that the SYL canal cannot be allowed to be built in defiance of the rights of the state over its river waters. Since the case is before the Supreme Court, it must be decided before the canal can even be talked about," Badal's advisor Harcharan Bains told India Today.

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered a status quo on the SYL canal and appointed Union home secretary as well as the Punjab chief secretary and police chief as the court's receiver of the canal and assets associated with it.

A constitution bench headed by Justice Anil R Dave had said: "Prima facie, it appears that an effort has been made to see that the execution of a decree of this court is being made inexecutable and this court cannot be a silent spectator of the said fact and therefore, we direct that status quo shall be maintained by the parties...

Appointing the court's receivers, as prayed for by Haryana, the court said that the status quo is maintained in respect of "lands, works, property and portions of the SYL canal and all lands within the alignment of the SYL canal within the territories of the state of Punjab" which are covered by its 2002 and 2004 judgments.

The court order would affect the transfer of 3,928 acres of land along the 122-km stretch of the SYL canal in Punjab to the farmers from whom it was acquired for the construction of the water channel for transporting 3.5 million acre feet of water to Haryana.

The SC bench, which also has Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Amitava Roy, gave the order on an application by Haryana seeking appointment of the central government as the court receiver of the land, works, property and portion of the SYL canal in Punjab.

Haryana had also sought to restrain Punjab from publishing the Punjab Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal (Rehabilitation and Re-vesting of Proprietary Rights) Bill in the official gazette. The bill was passed by the Punjab Assembly on March 14.

The constitution bench is holding a hearing on the presidential reference seeking apex court's advisory opinion on the 2004 law passed by Punjab during the rule of Congress government led by Amarinder Singh, terminating all water-sharing agreements with neighbouring Haryana and other states.

Describing all the arguments advanced by Haryana as "rhetorical exuberance", senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for Punjab, told the bench that every agreement was reviewable after a lapse of 25 years on the grounds of change in conditions.

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He said that Haryana's share in SYL water was based on 1920 data and the situation had radically changed now. "Conditions have changed completely," he said.

Referring to Haryana's application, Dhavan said what it was actually seeking was the invalidation of Punjab's law of 2004 that terminated all river water-sharing agreements and seeking notification of Justice Eradi water tribunal's order which has not been notified so far as a legal challenge to it was pending before the apex court.

Senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, also appearing for Punjab, told the constitution bench that it was hearing a presidential reference for its advisory opinion which is always accepted but is not binding.

Referring to the language of Article 143 of the constitution, he said that "(plea for) interim relief (sought by Haryana) can't come up in advisory jurisdiction (of the top court). It will be in the form of advice and not interim order".

The court directed for further hearing in the matter on March 31.

Also read:

SYL canal issue: INLD MLA's protest outside Punjab Assembly

Punjab, Haryana lock horns over SYL canal as Punjab de-notifies land acquisition





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Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2016, Javed Akhtar said he is ready to contest against Owaisi from any constituency in India which has equal number of Hindu and Muslim voters.

By India Today Web Desk: A couple of days after he hit back at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi over 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan row in Parliament, noted poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar has challenged the Hyderabad MP to fight election against him. | Read: In his Parliament farewell speech, Javed Akhtar takes on Owaisi

Watch video :



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Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2016, Javed Akhtar said he is ready to contest against Owaisi from any constituency in India which has equal number of Hindu and Muslim voters.

"I am ready to contest election against Owaisi in any constituency which has 50 per cent of Muslim voters and 50 per cent of Hindu voters," Akhtar said.

"Problem with fundamentalists is that they want to kill your identity and make you fit in a monolithic identity," he said.

Commenting on Owaisi's remark, Akhtar said," Confrontational attitude causes problems. Democracy needs muti-party system, democracy needs citizens."

"Will Owaisi say Bharat Ammi Ki Jai if he has problem saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai?" was Shabana Azmi's response during the session at the Conclave.

Azmi, however, said he would never contest election as that would require her to join a party and accept its ideologies.

"I won't contest election, you lose your independence if you join a party," Azmi added.

"Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata Ki Jai," Owaisi had said during a rally in Latur in Maharashtra last week. | Read: ABVP worker burns himself while setting fire to Owaisi's effigy

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab . Will not chant Bharat Mata Ki Kai even if a knife is put to my throat," he had said.

Owaisi's assertion came days after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said the new generation needed to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India. Owaisi's remarks drew sharp criticism from the RSS, the BJP and Shiv Sena.

Also Read



India Today Conclave 2016: LIVE Coverage

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Delivering a lecture in Pune in 1983, the then sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), Balasaheb Deoras, took the scourge of untouchability head-on. Citing the former US president Abraham Lincoln, who once said if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong in this world, Deoras said: "If untouchability is not wrong, then nothing is wrong."

As the three-day annual Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the main decision-making body of the RSS, came to an end at Nagaur in Rajasthan on March 13, old-timers among the 1,150 participants were harking back to the same Deoras speech while discussing the crucial issue of caste discrimination. The ABPS further deliberated the need for "reviewing" the reservation policy along the lines laid out by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat during the Bihar assembly elections in 2015 (later cited as a main reason for skewering the BJP's chances there) while ensuring reservations for Dalits and the socially and economically poor, as specified in the Constitution.

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Review of reservations

The recent discourse on caste triggered by the suicide of Dalit doctoral scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, the Hardik Patel-led Patel demonstrations in Gujarat and the Jat agitation in Haryana has caused visible unease within the Sangh parivar. Given such a backdrop, the review of reservations for the creamy layer will indeed be a bold move as large sections of these castes (Patels and Jats) form the core constituency of the RSS's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party. A firm stand on reviewing of quotas for the affluent castes establishes the nationalist credentials of the RSS, since it'll be seen as willing to take the risk in the larger interest of the nation, rising above short-term considerations of caste votebanks.

On caste reservations, RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi says: "Even after 60 years, reservations have still not benefitted the last person in society. Why is this so? This has to be studied and measures should be suggested to address the issue." When asked about the creamy layer taking all the benefits of quota at the cost of the needy amongst the backwards, Joshi said this is precisely why a review is needed.

The RSS stand on affirmative action is nuanced. It doesn't stop at asking affluent Hindus not to seek reservations. Instead, the RSS leaders invoke the views of the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly, Babasaheb Ambedkar, since he's the man who mooted reservations constitutionally. Has Ambedkar's dream been realised? Has the quota system ended caste discrimination? Has reservation benefitted the last man among the deprived? These were the questions that RSS leaders raised in Nagaur. If not, then it is time to review reservations, they claimed.

That the RSS's stand did not snowball into a big issue this time was due to reasons both political and strategic. Perhaps Joshi, who answered the media's questions on the reservations issue, had considered the political impact before taking a clear stand. He possibly knew that reservations had never been an issue in Assam or West Bengal, states where elections are scheduled. Even in poll-bound Tamil Nadu, most sections except for the Brahmins have been under reserved category for a long time now. Additionally, Joshi's careful language and Ambedkar idioms left no room for any ambiguity that could be exploited by the opposition political parties. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati did raise the quota issue in Parliament. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, put an end to the debate by claiming: "It is the stated policy of the government that the present arrangement of reservations will be maintained."

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Meanwhile, on the other critical issues of the day, the ABPS was unequivocal in its stand on the significance of "nationalism" and condemned the "anti-national slogans raised in various universities". On the issue of gender equality, the Nagaur meet did clarify in a media interaction that the RSS was for the entry of women into the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu temples. But the process of entry must be through discussion and cooperation, not conflict, it stressed.

BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao, a former convenor of the RSS's Swadeshi Jagran Manch and a close confidant of the late RSS leader Dattopant Thengdi, says, "The Sangh has always stood for the progressive interpretation of religious texts. And anyway, the Vedas say there is nothing like man or woman before the divine force. I'd like to add here that what many observers interpret as a new turn for the RSS is in fact only a reiteration of what the Sangh has broadly believed since the beginning."

Shorts to trousers

However, the decision that really created a sensation among the media was the change in uniform-the khaki shorts making way for brown trousers, an issue that has been debated in the organisation since 2010. Given the demographic dividend in the country, the main reason for changing the ganvesh (uniform) was a bid to attract youngsters to the 91-year-old organisation. However, sartorial changes may not be enough to draw them in. The Sangh leadership knows that the battle to draw young men into the fold has to be fought on the ideological front as well. Towards this end, around 1.15 lakh youth were trained in residential camps in the last year.

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The rise of the RSS in the past five years has been significantly steady, partly due to the efforts of its leaders and partly due to the wave created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. The figures are impressive: the total number of shakhas today stands at 56,859 with over 10,500 of these coming up after 2012. Last year, around 15,000 RSS workers took leave of their family for a week to spread the Sangh's message, which in turn has led to additions to the number of shakhas. The long-term aim is to have a shakha in all of the six lakh villages in India.

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Though the RSS's reach has increased significantly in the past six years, the majority of those joining the movement are still either in higher secondary school or college. A section is driven by power politics, since the BJP-RSS are seen as establishment forces. That said, studies show that those who join at the primary school level and at a tender age grow up to be ideologically stronger than those who join in later years.

However, the latter are fewer in number these days, with a section of parents seeing the brotherhood of khaki shorts as "old-fashioned". They are unwilling to send their kids to the shakha despite being impressed by its nationalist objectives. Says a senior RSS functionary, "The decision to switch over to trousers is a very thoughtful one. It aims at drawing the children to the shakhas in what is a search for an ideologically stronger cadre for the future."

A section of RSS functionaries argues that another serious change required is married pracharaks. That is easier said than done. From day one, when the RSS was floated, a cardinal rule has been that the pracharak has to remain unmarried. And if at some stage he wants to, he has to leave his post. Interestingly, even marrying from the women's cadre, the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, is frowned upon.

However, fresh winds are blowing. One factor is because fewer parents are allowing their sons to become pracharaks (and this has as much to do with the smaller families of today). In the past, larger families and more sons meant at least one of them would end up becoming a pracharak. Says a senior RSS worker, "Sooner or later, the Sangh will have to effect this major change: married pracharaks to replace unmarried ones."

Among the other two resolutions taken up, one called for quality affordable education and a second, affordable health services. All India Prachar Pramukh (publicity head) of the RSS Manmohan Vaidya says, "The RSS has been adjustable to the tides of change from the beginning. And in spite of the attacks of our ideological rivals, we have continued to grow."

On the last day of the meet, the overall feeling was one of enthusiasm as the Sangh's stand on most contentious issues-often used by Left strategists to beat it with-had taken the wind out of the latter's sails. And the path breaking resolution holding Hindus responsible for the discrimination on a section of their own based on caste (even while maintaining that such a thing was never preached by the scriptures but was a later perversion) went a long way in the session's success. The medieval town of Nagaur, symbolised by its strong fort, has been witness to many changes in history. Today it was witnessing fundamental changes in India's largest family: the Sangh parivar.

Follow the writer on Twitter @UdayMahurkar

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By India Today Web Desk: JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested last month for sedition, walked out of Tihar Jail hours after they were granted interim bail for six months by a Delhi court today.



The court, while granting the relief to the two doctoral students from JNU, asked them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each. The court also asked the two not to leave Delhi during the period of their bail.



Khalid and Bhattacharya had surrendered before the police on February 22 following a massive standoff after the arrest of JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar on February 12.



The three students, along with others, have been accused of organising a seminar in the memory of Parliament attacks convict Afzal Guru on the JNU campus on February 9 during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

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A jubilant Kanhaiya told India Today TV that the students in JNU are planning a victory march tonight. "We have full faith in the Indian judiciary," he said. Kanhaiya, who since his release on March 3 has been leading the protest to get Khalid and Bhattacharya out of jail, will be speaking at the India Today Conclave 2016 today.

A high level inquiry committee instituted by the JNU administration, in its report submitted earlier this week, found that on February 8, a booking requisition form was filled out by Khalid for the Guru event. An undertaking was signed by four students: Khalid, Komal Mohite, Anirban Bhattacharya and Aswathi A Nair.



The form had to be approved by the rector, the approving authority. Mohite took the form, which sought permission to hold a 'Poetry Reading - A Country Without a Post Office' at the Sabarmati Dhaba on February 9 from 5 pm to 7.30 pm, to Professor Anupama Ray to have it forwarded by her.



Khalid took the form to the dean of students but as he was not available, the additional dean of students signed it. The form had to be sent to the rector for approval, but was never taken to his office.



In the report it mentions that as per many eyewitness accounts, Kanhaiya, Rama Naga and Bhattacharya addressed the gathering but what they said was not audible.



The inquiry panel has named two people for anti-India sloganeering, JNU student identified as Mujeeb Gattoo of Kaveri hostel, accused of participating in sloganeering with the a group of outsiders who shouted slogans such as "Kashmir ki Azadi tak, jang rahegi, jang rahegi", "Bharat ko ragda de, zor se ragdo, de ragda", "Ain (constitution) Hindustan ka manzoor nahi", "Go India Go Back", "We want freedom".





Also Read

Top JNU panel recommends rustication of Kanhaiya Kumar, 4 others

10 things you should know about Umar Khalid

JNU row: Kanhaiya confronted with Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya



--- ENDS ---
By Javed Anwer: While announcing a number of leadership changes within the company, Lenovo on Friday said that Rick Osterloh, who heads Motorola Mobility, is leaving the company. His place as the head of Mobile Business Group (MBG) will be taken over by Xudong Chen and Aymar de Lencquesaing. Both will be the co-presidents of the MBG and will report to Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang.

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"Rick Osterloh has decided to leave Motorola Mobility. The Motorola Mobility teams that currently report to Osterloh will now report under de Lencquesaing, who will become chairman and president of Motorola," a Lenovo spokesperson said. "The mobile markets in China and the rest of the world are very different, so Chen will focus on the China mobile business, while de Lencquesaing, formerly head of Lenovo North America, will use his global experience in complex, competitive tech industries to drive rapid growth in emerging markets (and mature markets)."

Lenovo had bought Motorola Mobility, the company which makes Moto phones, in 2014. But since then it has allowed Motorola to operate as a separate entity. This year all of that is changing as Lenovo looks to consolidate all of whole of phone business in one place. It earlier formed the Mobile Business Group, merging all of its divisions, including Motorola, in one place. It has also decided to retire the Motorola brand. Going forward, the company will primarily focus on two sub-brands -- Moto and Vibe. The Moto brand will be primarily for the high-end phones while the Vibe brand will cover phones in other segments. Under the new branding scheme, the company may also kill its K series brands, which has popular phones like K3 Note and K4 Note.

While Lenovo has tried to explain how the Moto brands will survive in the future, there is still no clarity on how the Moto phones will evolve. The Moto phones are known for staying away from all the third-party software customisations that Chinese phone companies like Lenovo like to put in their phones. They are also, mostly, aggressively priced. The good pricing strategy and clean software, which helps in performance, has made Moto phones popular among consumers. Phones like the Moto G and the Moto Play are among the most popular phones in India.

It is possible that Lenovo will keep the winning formula intact for the Moto phones. However, with the Moto team now integrated deep within Lenovo and with Rick Osterloh leaving, it is also possible that the Moto phones may change somewhat in future.



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Ukraine has already obtained international humanitarian aid worth more than $649 million, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has stated.

"I am very grateful to you, Mr. Commissioner, for the European Commission's decision to issue an additional EUR20 million as humanitarian aid, including that for the needs of internally displaced persons, victims in Donbas and treatment of the wounded. I would like to note that the total amount of aid Ukraine has received for humanitarian needs exceeds $649 million," the president said in a joint statement with European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides.

According to the head of state, this aid came from various international institutions and states, including the EU, the United States, the UN, the ICRC, Canada, Australia and Japan.

"The lion's share of these funds has been spent on a humanitarian mission in the occupied territories," Poroshenko said.
Ukraine's top 100 largest state-run companies saw revenue of UAH 187 billion in 2015, a 45.1% rise compared to a year ago, First Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Yulia Kovaliv said at a government meeting on Friday.

"Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of the top 100 largest state-run companies was UAH 36 billion, with a profit of UAH 2.2 billion," she said.

EBITDA increased by UAH 59.31 billion and profit by UAH 68.7 billion from 2014.

Kovaliv said total asset value reached UAH 927 million, up 44.9% year-over-year.

She said that representatives of top 17 largest companies were present at the meeting. Odesa Port-Side Plant, Ukrinterenergo, Ukrgazvydobuvannia and Skhidny Mining showed the largest growth in sales last year, while Centrenergo's revenue declined and Ukrnafta and Ukrposhta stayed at 2014 levels.

Energoatom, Ukrainian Sea Port Authority and Ukrenergo posted the best profit figures. Additionally, Naftogaz Ukrainy decreased its loss from UAH 89 billion in 2014 to UAH 25 billion in 2015, Kovaliv said.

"Ukrnafta showed the worst figure [from the point of loss]," she said.

She said that all state-run enterprises in 2015 saw UAH 2.6 billion in profit after taking a UAH 7.4 billion in loss in 2014.

The state owns near 3,500 enterprises, including 1,723 operating ones. A total of 72 enterprises are located in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone and 1,683 are being liquidated.

National legislation bans the privatization of over 1,700 enterprises. However, the ministry has drawn up a bill to halve that number to 765.
The list of individuals engaged in the Nadia Savchenko case who may be subjected to personal sanctions (the so-called Savchenko List) may be expanded, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko has said.

"It goes by the name of the 'Savchenko list', but the idea is to apply it to all political prisoners. This list will be similar to the Magnitsky List, named after a Russian human rights activist who died in prison, and I hope it will be used to force Russia to release Savchenko and other persons whom we do not forget," Prystaiko said at the Verkhovna Rada on Friday.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on March 15 that Kyiv stayed in touch with the EU and the United States in its work on the sanctions list against individuals related to the detention and trial of Nadia Savchenko. He added that the effort was backed up by international allies.

On March 17, the Ukrainian president submitted proposals on the Savchenko-related sanctions to EU Council President Donald Tusk and European Parliament President Martin Schulz.

"There are more than 40 names on the Savchenko list," a diplomat told Interfax.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said Ukraine is preparing a new list of persons against whom sanctions should be imposed in connection with their involvement in the torture of 11 Ukrainian political prisoners.

"We won't limit the list to those involved in the Savchenko case. The agenda includes preparing a new list of sanctions against persons involved in the torture of other 11 Ukrainian political prisoners," he said in a joint statement with European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides in Kyiv.

Poroshenko said that at the talks in Brussels on March 17 the parties discussed coordination of efforts for international pressure on the Russian Federation in order to secure the immediate release of the illegally detained Ukrainians.
Exclusive interview by the Ambassador of India to Ukraine Mr. Manoj Kumar Bharti with the Interfax-Ukraine News AgencyWe observed that development of relations between our countries slowed over the past two years. However, we want to start the year 2016 with new ideas to activate cooperation. We have already scheduled a large number of meetings and events in this respect. The resumption of activities has already started. A delegation of the Ukrainian-Indian intergovernmental working group on public health and pharmaceuticals recently visited Ukraine. We hope that this visit will both help to resolve some of the issues that Indian pharmaceutical companies face, and that it will facilitate mutually beneficial contacts in other important for us areas. The trade turnover in 2013 between India and Ukraine reached $3 billion. This figure has decreased, but we've set a goal to return to this level in 2016. Speaking globally, Ukraine is a strategic partner of India. These are not lofty words. It is the truth. Our relations have a rich history, and at present, we have a fruitful development in economic and defense sectors. In addition, we are very active in specialized areas, such as pharmaceuticals and import of sunflower oil from Ukraine to India. We also consider various opportunities to cooperate in medical field. Indian medical services are developed on a rather high-level and we are ready to set up joint enterprises to provide medical services for Ukrainians.I think that it will possibly be relevant for Indian companies to invest into Ukraine later. In my opinion, now Ukrainian farmers have to realize that India needs their products and take steps to tap into the new market. I believe that Ukrainian agricultural producers are simply unaware of this yet, though, there are a few Ukrainian companies in this business. I have already suggested that they organize a delegation of Ukrainian farmers to visit India and see with their own eyes the prominence of exactly legumes in the Indian cuisine. As soon as Ukrainian farmers realize the demand spread for legumes in India, our businessmen will be ready to come to Ukraine to start joint ventures.The main impediment is lack of information about these opportunities, as Ukrainians are more oriented to the West than the East. Besides, I also noticed that Ukrainians perceive India as located faraway. In fact, this is not true, for example, the distance between Odessa and the nearest Indian port is not that big. And if we launch direct flights from Kyiv to Delhi, like a few years ago, an air trip will take only around five hours.I'm trying to convince them to include Kyiv on regular routs. If we speak of only Kyiv-Delhi direction, I don't think there will be a lot of carriers. I believe such a flight should cover a few cities, for example, Kyiv-Sofia-Delhi or Kyiv-Vienna-Delhi, therefore, the rout has to have more than two destination points. There are opportunities for such routs, and it is a matter of time, when one of the carriers uses this option.Perhaps, there are some technical details, since the transportation is carried out by water via ports. I haven't received any information of systemic problems so far. I would have known if there were such reports. Ukraine can produce over 11 million tonnes of sunflower oil, while India is among its biggest buyers  about four tonnes. These are fairy large transportation volumes. If any problems arise, I think businesses have means to resolve them.As of today, this project hasn't been completed. It is ongoing. We try to make use of all the opportunities created when Ukrainian experts participate in the "Made in India" project. In line with the agreement, part of the aircraft should be modernized directly in India, while technology should also be transferred. All of this is in progress. It's a long-term project.I don't think there might be a competition. It will be a mutually beneficial cooperation, as Ukraine may find areas of demand in India, just like India  in Ukraine. For example, one of the ideas concerns the creation of "smart city"  construction of ecological and energy-efficient houses for various social groups of Indian population. There are numerous sectors and niches in this area that Ukrainian companies may receive orders and profits from.Ukrainian tractors are not very attractive for India, as the country produces many types of these machines, being the second largest tractor producer in the world. However, tractors that are manufactured in India have low horse power capacity, around 35 hp. India also produces agricultural machinery; to my knowledge, Ukraine and India never cooperated in this sector, also due to differences between agricultural models of the countries. For example, Indian land plots are much smaller than Ukrainian ones, so large agricultural machines are not used. But, of course, if Ukrainian companies adapt to these specifics and offer solutions to improve agricultural machines based on the conditions on the ground, I think cooperation in this sector would also be possible.We actively cooperate with Indian and Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce at the moment. In particular, we plan to hold business meeting and seminars both in India and Ukraine. Perhaps, a business delegation from India will visit Ukraine in April or May, and we hope that a delegation of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce will visit India in October-November.Yes, this problem really exists. Indian businessmen face problems obtaining Ukrainian visas. We are making efforts to resolve this problem and I have been assured by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry that it was actively considering this issue. I am confident that the situation will improve in the nearest future.I would say that it was a working meeting. The last meeting of this working group was held in India in 2013; the next one was scheduled for 2014, but it was postponed; that's why we are very pleased that this meeting took place after over two-year break. Besides, we had time to reassess and rethink everything that had happened in Ukraine and its economy, and how this has affected the pharmaceutical industry. For example, there are reports that Indian pharmaceutical exports to Ukraine overall declined in 2015, compared to 2014. Exports of pharmaceuticals to India also declined. There is a need to discuss this issue, because supply of Indian drugs and substances to Ukraine is a win-win undertaking. Indian pharmaceutical products are of high quality and cost relatively little, compared to analogous European products. Ukraine saves money by importing Indian pharmaceuticals. And this is a mutual benefit. This was a topic that we tried to discuss during our meeting. I am very pleased that both Ukraine and India have realized that the system of market access itself needed improvements, so that Indian pharmaceuticals could enter Ukrainian market without artificial barriers. Additionally, we exchanged ideas as to the training and education of experts and also discussed cooperation in biotechnologies and bioproduction. These are the main achievements of these meetings.No, there is no such problem that Indian companies have left the Ukrainian market. Ukraine is important and attractive for them. Just official data on turnover shows billions of dollars and this is very interesting for companies. I think that Indian pharmaceutical companies would like to increase their presence on the Ukrainian market. Ukrainians know the reason: the efficacy of Indian medicines. From this perspective, Ukraine has already a well-established market for Indian products. I don't think any of the Indian companies would leave the Ukrainian market. We are now observing the implementation of European standards in the Ukrainian legal framework, both regulatory, and those related to drug control. We welcome these processes. The more Ukrainian legislation will comply with EU standards, the easier it will be for the Indian products to enter Ukrainian market, as our products are already on the European market streamlined with the EU requirements. At the same time, it is also true that some Indian companies face challenges today. But I think that is a result, in particular, of the instability of Ukrainian society. As soon as both the economy and society stabilize, it will be easier to do business in Ukraine, including for Indian companies.I'm very optimistic. People in Ukraine are very honest, logical, and consistent. We have to remind Ukraine that India is a huge market which may interest any Ukrainian company. And Ukrainians sometimes even don't fully realize that just 0.1% of Indian population equals to 125,000 people. I like giving this example: no one in India eats cottage cheese and sour cream, but if you want to sell these products, it's enough to focus on four large cities, which together account for over half of Ukraine's population. You will just need to make a proper advertising on big boards, show how useful sour cream and cottage cheese are, and how they can be consumed. In this way, one may already target a huge number of people. I think that it is quite easy to develop business in India. Ukrainian businessmen just need to think a little bit and concentrate.India can give Ukraine a lot of money, particularly if Ukraine opens its touristic market. Make it easier for rich people from India to come to Ukraine. The problem today is that it is very difficult to get a Ukrainian tourist visa. In 2015, around 20,000 tourists came from Ukraine to India, however, we don't know how many tourist visas Ukrainian Embassy to India had issued. And I would be very surprised if they had issued real tourist visas, not just visas for people who live in Ukraine and have families here, but real tourist visas for tourists, who come to Ukraine for touristic purposes. We also don't realize that Indian students, who study in Ukraine, spend $ 30 million annually.I'm sure they'd love to come to Ukraine. For example, Ukrainian weather is very comfortable in summer, while people in India suffer from heat in this period. There are many wealthy people in India who are willing to come to Ukraine and spend a lot of money. According to our data, 30% of India's population has the same balance of purchasing power as U.S. residents, that is, they spend approximately the same amount of money. Some 30% of India's population equals 360 million people, almost the entire population of Europe. Ukraine should understand that India presents them with a huge tourism market. One can make and create a lot in this sphere. You only need to open the country. I'm really looking forward to an improvement with respect to the Ukraine-India visa regime already this year.
[March 17, 2016] Shegerian & Associates to Help Famed Political Cartoonist Ted Rall Pursue Defamation, Blacklisting and Wrongful Termination Charges Against LA Times

Shegerian & Associates, Inc., a Santa Monica-based litigation law firm specializing in employee rights, has announced that it is representing famed columnist, cartoonist and author Ted Rall in his attempt to seek justice against the Los Angeles Times for defamation, blacklisting, wrongful termination and breach of contract. Shegerian & Associates founder Carney Shegerian describes the case as a distinct violation of the labor code and an example of egregious wrongful termination coupled with public defamation. Rall was hired by the Times as an editorial cartoonist in 2009 and published approximately 300 of his cartoons and more than 60 of his blog posts between 2009 and 2015. At no time during his employment was Rall disciplined or written-up and he was consistently praised for his work. In May of 2015, Rall created, and the Times reviewed, approved and published, a cartoon titled, "LAPD's Crosswalk Crackdown; Don't Police Have Something Better to Do?" In the accompanying blog post criticizing the LAPD's crackdown against jaywalking as reported by the Times, Rall referenced his own previous experience of being falsely arrested, unduly rough-housed and handcuffed by an LAPD officer allegedly for "jaywalking." In July, after the LAPD contacted The Times to question the accuracy of this cartoon and blog post, the Times decided to terminate Rall within 24 hours. In his filed complaint, Rall explained that at no point did the Times allow him to speak to hisregular supervisor, or to the editorial board to discuss his case. Shortly after the termination, The Times published a rare "Note to Readers," indicating that the paper had doubts about the veracity of Rall's blog post due to an audio recording they obtained of Rall's original jaywalking incident. The note also stated that the Times would no longer be publishing Rall's work.



The Times failed to follow the standard of procedure for authenticating evidence and thus did not have grounds to publicly accuse Rall of falsifying information on his blog entry. After the Times' note was published, Rall took it upon himself to have the audio examined by experts. The enhanced version of the audio supported Rall's version of the encounter, and he presented this to the Times. Despite this exonerating evidence, the Times published yet another article further defaming Rall. "The specific facts and circumstances surrounding this case may be unique, but what Mr. Rall has endured at the hands of the Times is actually a classic example of a large corporation not following its own rules, let alone the labor code - and subsequently taking steps to defame its former employee," said Shegerian. "The Times' suspicions about the veracity of Mr. Rall's blog post were unfounded in that they failed to properly investigate the accusations and refused to acknowledge proof that Mr. Rall's blog post was, in fact, accurate. The public defamation and subsequent blacklisting of our client have added insult to injury. We look forward to making that point loud and clear during this trial."

Rall is a New York Times Best-selling author of 19 books, Pulitzer Prize finalist, winner of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Graphics, and twice the winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged. He is also one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists in the United States and is a past President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Located in Santa Monica, Shegerian & Associates is a law firm specializing in protecting the rights of employees who have been wronged by their employers. Richly experienced in labor and employment law and possessing an unparalleled success record as litigators (Carney Shegerian, Trial Lawyer of the Year Award winner for 2013, has won 73 jury trials in his career, including 31 seven figure verdicts), Shegerian & Associates is passionately dedicated to serving the needs of its clients. For more information about the firm, visit www.ShegerianLaw.com Media Contact: To arrange interviews about this case with Carney Shegerian or Ted Rall, please contact Paul Williams, 310/569-0023, [email protected]. (Case no. BC613703) View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160317006159/en/

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[March 17, 2016] Fitch Affirms FirstHealth of the Carolinas, NC's Bonds at 'AA'; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the 'AA' rating on approximately $97.7 million of revenue bonds issued by the North Carolina Medical Care Commission on behalf of FirstHealth of the Carolinas (FirstHealth). The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY Bond payments are general unsecured obligations of the restricted group. KEY RATING DRIVERS STRONG MARKET POSITION: FirstHealth has consistently maintained a leading market share in its primary service area (PSA) and faces limited competition with three community hospitals located in its PSA and only two tertiary care hospitals located over 40 miles away in its total service area. ROBUST LIQUIDITY: Liquidity metrics remain robust relative to debt with 34.9x cushion ratio and 222.2% cash to debt at Dec. 31, 2015 exceeding Fitch's 'AA' category medians of 27.0x, and 201.7%, respectively, and providing strong cushion for payment of debt service. LIGHT PROFITABILITY: Consolidated operating profitability remains light for the rating category, primarily due to growth within FirstHealth's employed physician group and health plan. Consolidated operating EBITDA margin equaled 8.8% in fiscal 2015 and 7.9% in the three month interim period ending Dec. 31, 2015. Concerns regarding the light operating profitability are currently mitigated by FirstHealth's moderate debt burden. MODERATE DEBT BURDEN: FirstHealth's debt burden remains moderate with MADS equal to 2.1% of operating revenue in fiscal 2015 relative to Fitch's 'AA' category median of 2.4%, allowing for solid MADS coverage by EBITDA of 6.1x, exceeding Fitch's 'AA' category median of 5.7x despite the light profitability metrics. The system has no plans for additional debt at this time. RATING SENSITIVITIES MAINTAINED LIQUIDITY AND COVERAGE: Fitch expects that FirstHealth will maintain its strong liquidity metrics and coverage metrics consistent with the rating category to offset its light profitability while executing its increased capital spending plans in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. CREDIT PROFILE FirstHealth, headquartered in Pinehurst, North Carolina, operates two hospitals on four distinct campuses with 531 licensed beds. Additional operations include a health insurance company, 13 primary care clinics, 16 specialty clinics, home health services, a foundation and other healthcare related services. Total operating revenue equaled $652.1 million in fiscal 2015. Fitch's analysis is based upon consolidated financial statements. The restricted group is composed of FirstHealth and the foundation, accounting for 82.7% of consolidated operating revenue and 92.6% of consolidated total assets in fiscal 2015. STRONG MARKET POSITION FirstHealth's leading market share position is a primary credit strength and is expected to enhance operating stability. The nearest competing tertiary care hospitals are located over 40 miles away. FirstHealth holds a leading 55.6% in its six county PSA, with no other hospital holding over 10% share. Further, the system's market share in the six county PSA increased from 52.6% in fiscal 2011. The PSA accounts for 85% of admissions. ROBUST LIQUIDITY FirstHealth's liquidity position relative to debt continues to be robust, providing a strong cushion for timely payment of debt service. Unrestricted cash and investments equaled $475 million at Dec. 31, 2015, equating to 277.9 days cash on hand, 34.9x cushion ratio and 222.2% cash to debt, consistent with or exceeding Fitch's 'AA' category medians of 289.4 days cash, 27.0x and 291.7%, respectively. Capital spending is projected to increase in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, averaging $67.7 million per year (204.2% of fiscal 2015 depreciation). Capital spending had previously averaged $38.3 million per year (122.3% of depreciation) over the pas five fiscal years. The increased capital spending primarily reflects installation of a new IT system, which is expected to be completed by late fiscal 2017. The project is expected to be funded through cash and cash flows. Fitch does not expect the capital spending to materially impact FirstHealth's liquidity metrics.



LIGHT PROFITABILITY Consolidated profitability remains light for the rating category. However, restricted group profitability, representing the system's core hospital operations, has improved since Fitch's last review with the restricted group's operating EBITDA margin increasing to 13.8% in fiscal 2015 from 12% in fiscal 2013.

Consolidated operating EBITDA margin declined from 9.2% in fiscal 2013 to 8.6% in fiscal 2014 and 8.8% in fiscal 2015, below Fitch's 'AA' category median of 11.5%. The decrease in consolidated profitability is due to growth in FirstHealth's physician group and health plan operations. Combined physician group and health plan other operating revenue increased 51.2% since Fitch's last review, diluting consolidated profitability. Management is projecting operating EBITDA margin to decrease to 8.5% in fiscal 2016 due to increased expenses related to the implementation of a new IT system. Fitch's concerns regarding the light operating profitability are currently mitigated by FirstHealth's moderate debt burden. MODERATE DEBT BURDEN Despite the relatively light operating profitability, debt service coverage metrics remain adequate for the rating category due to FirstHealth's moderate debt burden. FirstHealth's debt burden has continued to moderate with MADS decreasing from 3.1% of revenue in fiscal 2009 to 2.1% in fiscal 2015. MADS coverage by EBITDA and operating EBITDA equaled 6.1x and 4.2x, respectively, in fiscal 2015 and was consistent with Fitch's 'AA' category medians of 5.7x and 4.4x. DEBT PROFILE FirstHealth had approximately $213.8 million of total debt outstanding at Dec. 31, 2015. The debt portfolio is comprised of 36% underlying fixed rate bonds and 64% underlying variable rate bonds. The system is counterparty to three fixed payor swaps with a total notional amount of $57.7 million, effectively converting 27% of the bond portfolio to synthetic fixed rate. Additionally, the system is counterparty to two basis swaps with a total notional amount of $159.4 million. FirstHealth was not required to post any collateral related to the swaps at Dec. 31, 2015. DISCLOSURE FirstHealth covenants to provide annual disclosure no later than 120 days after each fiscal year end and voluntarily provides quarterly disclosure. Disclosure is provided through the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's EMMA website. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. Applicable Criteria Revenue-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 16 Jun 2014) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=750012 U.S. Nonprofit Hospitals and Health Systems Rating Criteria (pub. 09 Jun 2015) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=866807 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1001116 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1001116 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160317006277/en/

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La aerolinea israeli El Al y Rolls-Royce firmaron un acuerdo estrategico
CARBONDALE -- Mattoon High Schools student journalists took home 17 total awards from the recent Southern Illinois School Press Association Conference at Southern Illinois University, according to a press release.

It was the MHS Mirror newspaper and MHS Riddle yearbook staffs second time competing at SISPA, and although they were not able to attend due to the winter weather, the staffs still placed at the highest possible levels for both yearbook and newspaper.

For the MHS Mirror newspaper, the highest honor was being named a 2016 Blue Banner Newspaper, under Co-Editors-In-Chief Derby Roan and JJ Bullock. The staff also won first place in overall layout and design. Individual awards were given to the following students for the 2015-16 MHS Mirror:

JJ Bullock, senior, first in sports feature; honorable mention in sports column

Trenton Bitting, senior, second in editorial column; third in review writing

Kayla Tolliver, senior, third in feature story

Derby Roan, senior, honorable mention in news story

Victoria Leitch, junior, first in front page design; honorable mention for computer-produced graphic

Sophie Collings, junior, second in sports story; third in photography with caption

Gabriel Tomer, junior, second for news story

The MHS Riddle 2014-15 yearbook, Dont You Forget About Me, was selected as part of the Golden Dozen, making it one of the best yearbooks in the SISPA region. Within that book, with Co-Editors-in-Chief Macie Drum and Mattie Eaton, the Riddle staff earned a third-place spot in advertising and a third-place finish in photography.

For this years MHS Riddle (2015-16), which is still currently in production (go to Jostens.com to purchase your copy), Darien Harvey, senior co-editor-in-chief, took home second-place for her yearbook football spread.

MHS journalism adviser Amanda Bright noted that 17 awards among such talented competition was a huge honor -- particularly for both the newspaper and yearbook to place in the top ranks among other publications.

Mattoon High School journalists are so very passionate about telling the stories of their peers and their school. I love that SISPA judges saw that, and I love that the students will be encouraged to continue their ethical and important work. I am proud to be their adviser each day," Bright said.
By nominating Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court, President Barack Obama took firm command of the principled high ground in American governance.

If Senate Republicans stick to their vow to not even hold hearings to consider his nomination theyll set a new low for partisanship.

Garland is precisely the sort of person who helps make America great.

Consider his career. Garland was well on his way to a lucrative legal career. He made partner in only four years at Washington D.C. based Arnold & Porter, one of the largest law firms in the county

Then Garland made the surprising decision to stop chasing the almighty dollar to become an assistant U.S. attorney.

Thanks to that decision, Garland was ready when the country needed a razor-sharp and ultra-competent public servant to bring American terrorist Timothy McVeigh to justice after the Oklahoma bombing that killed 168 people.

Garland was the lead investigator and put together the trial team that prosecuted McVeigh. Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican, wrote of Garland, During the investigation Merrick distinguished himself in a situation where he had to lead a highly complicated investigation and make quick decisions during critical times. Merrick Garland is an intelligent, experienced and evenhanded individual.

Garland is no stranger to Washingtons dysfunctional judicial confirmation process. He waited in limbo for 19 months before the Senate finally approved his appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1997, where he has earned a reputation as a fair and meticulous judge.

Dont take our word for it. In 2010 Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that if Obama nominated Garland for the U.S. Supreme court there was no question that Garland would have bipartisan support and Hatch added I will do my best to win votes for Garlands confirmation.

Now Hatch wont even hold a hearing to allow senators to review his suitability for the position.

Thats a disgrace.

Its particularly exasperating that Hatch and other leading Republicans say that Obama should wait until the people have spoken. They have already spoken. They handed Obama the right and the responsibility to make judicial appointments until he steps down in January. Theres no fine print in the U.S. Constitution that says the right expires in an election year. And in fact the Senate has voted on U.S. Supreme Court nominees eight times in an election year since 1900. In the most recent vote Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988.

Its worth noting, again, that theres a chance the Republican strategy could blow up in their faces.

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, she might pick a nominee with a more liberal record.

And if Trump is elected president, who knows? He has promised to pick someone like Scalia, but he has also said his sister, a federal appeals judge known for a blistering opinion in favor of partial birth abortion, would be a phenomenal Supreme Court justice. Republicans might rue the day they stonewalled Garland.
As a Nebraska native and farm animal welfare specialist for Humane Society International, I oppose LR378CA, the Right to Farm amendment (" 'Right to farm' amendment emerges from legislative committee ," March 2). Senator John Kuehn introduced the measure in response to a New York Times expose of inhumane animal treatment at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay County (" Animal welfare group takes on Clay County Sheriff ," Jan. 1). The experiments uncovered there subjected animals to deplorable practices including painful experimental surgeries, breeding trials resulting in deformed offspring and animals perishing from starvation or exposure. Its a perfect example of the pervasive culture of indifference to animal suffering in some animal science institutes and industrialized agricultural production facilities, and LR378CA would make it difficult to address such shortcomings.

To give producers the right to engage in dubious practices is not only harmful to the animals, but also undermines consumer trust. Certain conventional practices, such as confining animals in crates and cages, for pigs, and hens, respectively, so tight they can barely move, and cutting off cows tails are unconscionable. These practices would be protected under this amendment. The social ethic regarding acceptable animal treatment is evolving and this legislation ensures that Nebraska will be left behind.
Male members of a skiing association at Beijing's Tsinghua University hang a banner on campus to celebrate Girls Day on March 7, 2014. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

The sexist messages have angered many, but the real culprit is pop culture that scorns women who make unconventional choices and stigmatizes them as an appendage of wealth and status.

March 8 as International Women's Day is facing a unique hurdle: Its Chinese acronym, sanba, is a homonym for a busybody and the Chinese translation for women here is a very formal word that emphasizes the status of marriage.

With such linguistic baggage, no wonder it has seen a rival in the form of parody. Women students in China increasingly celebrate March 7 as Girls Day. As the joke goes, it takes just one day for a girl to become a woman.

Online sources say that the trend started in 1986 at Shandong University. And one of the main activities, it seems, is male students hanging out giant banners extolling their female peers.

This year, Girls Day caught public attention when some of the campus slogans crossed over from humor and fun to outright obnoxiousness. There were various couplets that express young men's urge to get their "goddesses" into bed and even puns on sexual positions. OK, here is a relatively clean one, maybe fit for print in this paper: "The first time I saw your face, porn vanished from my place."

Many women were indignant, and rightly so. Yet I do not believe the guys intended sexual harassment. It could well be that they could not distinguish between a good joke and a dirty one and instead saw the occasion as a kitchen sink where they could pour out anything from their libido-heavy minds.

Humor may be a human instinct, but expressing it appropriately does not come naturally to everyone. It's an ability that taps into both in-born genius and well-honed craft.
RACINE  As all nine seats for the Racine Unified School Board go up for election next month, District 4 is one of several key districts where the two incumbents facing off present a stark choice for voters, especially on district-union relations.

In particular, candidates Julie McKenna and Kim Plache have disagreed over the past year on how the School Board should deal with the controversial process of changing the handbook, which calls for a handbook committee of union representatives and district administrators to come to consensus on changes and bring them before the board.

Many, including the districts legal counsel, fear the policy violates Act 10, a controversial state law approved in 2011 that sharply curtailed collective bargaining rights for many employee unions.

While both McKenna and Plache agree that the board has final say over the handbook, they see different paths forward for the handbook committee.

McKenna walked out of a board meeting in August to prevent the board from voting on revisions to the controversial process for changing the handbook and has called for more groups to be added to the process.

I would like to see the current committee change to add non-union staff and others as appropriate to meet and confer with the purpose to review the handbook and recommend changes to the school board for approval, she said in an email.

Meanwhile, Plache sees the current process as at best unworkable and at worst illegal and said administrators should get input from all staff groups, but bring recommendations before the board unilaterally and let the board hear all stakeholders views on changes.

The board needs to ensure all policies are unquestionably legal and meet the needs of employees, union and non-union, and all district stakeholders, Plache wrote in an email.

The race

The two will face each other in the general election on April 5 for District 4s seat on the Racine Unified School Board. All nine seats on the board are up for election this spring under a new state-imposed election system that breaks the district up into nine elections districts with one seat each.

District 4 sits near the center of the overall school district with about 15,000 residents, about 79 percent of them in the City of Racine and about 21 percent of them in the Village of Mount Pleasant, according to district records.

Outside of the School Board, McKenna, 54, of Racine, is a respiratory care practitioner for Wheaton Franciscan Health Care. She was first elected in 1998 and has won five elections since then.

Plache, 55, of Mount Pleasant, was a state representative from 1989 to 1996, then a state senator from 1996 to 2002 and now works as business development officer for the Wisconsin Housing & Economic Development Authority. She was first elected in 2009, despite telling voters not to elect her to School Board while she made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Racine.

Differences on block scheduling

Plache and McKenna also disagree on how quickly the district should implement block scheduling in the districts three main high schools. The scheduling system will make for longer but fewer classes per day, with classes meeting for about 90 minutes every other day.

District administrators plan to implement block scheduling next year, saying that it is vital for the project-based classes coming with the career and college-focused Academies of Racine also starting next year. Union leaders have argued that the change is happening too fast for teachers and have called for the district to wait an extra year.

McKenna acknowledged that block scheduling works well with the academies, but she argued for a slower implementation, starting next year with freshmen only and phasing the schedule in with that class as its students get older, which is the also the plan for implementing career academies.

My preference if given the choice would (be) to start it off with the freshmen next year and the following years to phase it in with that class, she said in an email. I am not sure what the sophomores and juniors and seniors for school year 2016 will benefit from it, for them it will be the same curriculum they are receiving now.

Plache said the district should continue with its plan to implement block scheduling and the academies next fall and offer more training to staff as needed. She criticized union leaders for not taking opportunities to be involved early planning of the changes, an accusation made by district administrators. Union leaders have vehemently denied the accusations and blamed administrators for not including them.

We cannot allow the union leaderships unwillingness to participate in the planning undermine our efforts on behalf of the students, Plache wrote in an email. We cannot delay the education of our kids for the career opportunities of today and tomorrow. This change is critical for the future of our kids and our community.

Voters in District 4 will have the opportunity to weigh in with their votes on April 5. For more information on how these and other candidates stand on the issues, visit http://journaltimes.com/elections/news/.
JURIST Guest Columnist Dr. Sandra Mantu of Radboud University discusses Frances upcoming vote on a bill that would grant the legislator authority to revoke citizenship of natural born citizens

On February 10, 2016, the French National Assembly adopted a billConstitutional Law to Protect the Nationthat introduces in the French Constitution provisions dealing with the declaration of the state of emergency and specifies that the legislator has the competence to regulate nationality law, including conditions under which a person can be deprived of French nationality or of the rights attached to it where she has been condemned for a crime or offense that constitutes a serious violation of the nations life. The French Senate (upper house) will vote on the text on March 22, 2016. To become law, the bill needs to receive a 3/5 majority; based on the results in the National Assembly (162 in favor, 148 against and 22 abstentions) one expects a close vote. This article will focus only on the issue of citizenship deprivation and the legal implications of the proposed measures.

What are the rules?

At present, citizenship deprivation is regulated by the French Civil Code that sets down the rules for the acquisition and loss of French nationality. French law distinguishes between perte (loss) regulated by Article 23 of the Civil Code and decheance (deprivation) regulated by Article 25 of the Civil Code. Article 23 covers voluntary and involuntary loss of nationality and its personal scope can includedepending on the specific casepersons who acquired French nationality by birth, whereas citizenship deprivation is applicable only to persons who have become French after birth (naturalized citizens). Loss of nationality is considered something of an academic provision since in the recent past it has never been used. Since 1998 (law no. 98-170 of 16 March 1998) a person can be deprived of citizenship only if she is not made stateless by the measure, which in fact means that the person has more than one nationality. Naturalized citizens may have their naturalization withdrawn in cases of fraud or misrepresentation according to Article 27-2 of the Civil Code. The latter case is the most common ground for loss of French nationality.

Citizenship deprivation based on Article 25 of the Civil Code sanctions lack of allegiance (defaut de loyalisme) in the following circumstances:

(1) conviction for acts against the fundamental interests of the nation, or conviction for ordinary or serious offenses which constitute acts of terrorism;

(2) conviction for crimes considered to be crimes against the public administration (crimes committed by persons holding a public office);

(3) conviction for acts of insubordination in relation to performance of national service;

(4) engaging, for the benefit of a foreign state, in acts that are incompatible with the quality of French national and commission of acts that are prejudicial to the interests of France. No prior conviction is necessary.

Since 2003 citizenship deprivation can occur for facts prior to the persons acquisition of French nationality. As a rule, deprivation can be pronounced only within 10 years of the perpetration of the facts. In 2006 the time limits increased to 15 years in case of acts of terrorism or acts against the fundamental interests of the nation. Citizenship deprivation entails an administrative procedure that gives the executive the power to decide whether to pursue a citizenship deprivation or not. The person concerned must be notified of the governments intention to deprive, and be given the opportunity to make observations and mount an appeal (Decree no. 93-1362). The order to deprive has to specify the legal and factual grounds upon which the measure is taken; the authorities can proceed with deprivation only after the favorable opinion of the Council of State. The Council of State is a body of the French government with a dual function: (a) legal adviser of the executive branch on state issues and legislation, and (b) supreme court for administrative justice. The concurring opinion is issued as part of its consultative function. Citizenship deprivation operates only for the future.

What will change?

The constitutional bill clarifies that the legislator has the competence to regulate nationality law, including deprivation of nationality and that any French national can be subject to a citizenship deprivation measure, irrespective of how she acquired nationality. There is no indication that the French executive or legislator intend to water down the protection against statelessness introduced in 1998. With the occasion of the new bill, there has been talk of France ratifying the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness; no concrete steps have been taken yet.

If the bill is adopted by the Senate in its current form, the French legislator will be able to make changes to the current provisions on loss of nationality. It is unclear whether this will take the form of abrogating altogether Article 25 of the Civil Code and replacing it with a new provision applicable to all French citizens irrespective of how they acquired citizenship or whether Article 25 will survive but a new case of citizenship deprivation will be added alongside it. The initial proposal was phrased differently from the current textthe provision only referred to the possibility to deprive of citizenship French citizens by birth; it did not cover naturalized citizens for whom Article 25 of the Civil Code was the relevant provision. The text adopted by the National Assembly applies to all persons holding French nationality giving the ordinary legislator the power to create a single framework applicable to the citizenship deprivation of all French citizens, provided that they hold another nationality.

Prior to this constitutional bill, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to modify the provisions of the Civil Code in respect of citizenship deprivation. In 2014 proposals were put forward to deprive of citizenship all French dual nationals if arrested, caught or identified fighting against the French armed forced, their allies or the French police forces. The proposal was rejected by the Constitutional Law Commission of the French Parliament. This failure explains the need to amend the French Constitution since most political parties and the executive believed that the Constitutional Council will not approve an ordinary law allowing dual nationals to lose French nationality acquired at birth. In a decision from 1996 (upheld in 2015) the Council stated that although naturalized citizens and citizens by birth enjoy a similar position in respect of nationality law, differential treatment between the two categories in the context of the fight against terrorism is justified as long as citizenship deprivation is limited in time. Historically, French citizens by birth have never been covered by the scope of legal provisions on citizenship deprivation and there is an ongoing discussion as to whether one can speak of a constitutional and republican principle preventing such Frenchmen from losing their nationalitythe Constitutional Council will have the final say if and when asked to decide.

Below is a short analysis of the main elements of the proposal:

Personal scope: any person who has French nationality, irrespective of how nationality was acquired. This includes all modes of citizenship acquisition be it at birth or later on in life. The person must have another nationality, thus the measure will only be relevant for dual or multinationals.

Material scope: the person must be condemned for a crime or offense that constitutes a serious violation of the nations life; the conviction must be final. There is no definition of what constitutes a serious violation of the nations life and the ordinary legislator will have to clarify the scope of this notion if it will proceed to amend the rules on citizenship deprivation. The formulation resembles one of the grounds listed in Article 25 of the Civil Code but the latter covers a broader range of acts for which citizenship deprivation can be engaged in respect of naturalized citizens. When introducing the law in Parliament, the prime minister referred to crimes of terrorism, treason, espionage and similarly serious crimes affecting the life of the nation. He underlined that only the most serious crimes and offenses will justify a measure of citizenship deprivation including direct financing of terrorism, individual acts of terrorism and participation in a criminal group or constitution of a criminal group that intends to commit terrorist acts. Under the current rules, citizenship deprivation affecting naturalized citizens can occur for both terrorism crimes and offenses, which include a wide range of activities. It remains to be seen whether such a large material scope can be justified in relation to French-born citizens or whether the scope needs to be much more limited.

Effects: deprivation of nationality or of the rights attached to it. The possibility to be deprived of the rights attached to nationality is a novelty explained by the fact that persons holding only French nationality cannot lose it since they would become stateless. Thus deprivation of the rights attached to nationality can be seen as an alternative measure to be used where citizenship deprivation is not possible. In practice this would lead to a person losing those rights that only French citizens can havepolitical and voting rights, as well as the right to hold certain official positions. Deprivation will operate only for the future and will have an individual character, thus the spouse and children of the person concerned will not be affected by the measure.

The ordinary legislator will have to decide whether citizenship deprivation should remain a prerogative of the executive or become a complementary sanction to be administered by a judge as part of the judicial procedure leading to the condemnation of the citizen of a crime covered by the notion of serious violation of the nations life.

How effective will a new law be?

Citizenship deprivation has been rarely used by the French executive and since 1973 there are 13 reported cases of citizenship deprivation for acts of terrorism and acts against the fundamental interest of the nation (2015five; 2014one; 2006five; 2003one and 2002one). President Hollande announced his intention to change the law after the events of November 2015, although his party was against similar proposals in 2014. In light of the attacks that took place in 2015 and in which a number of French born citizens were involved, politically it became necessary to demand that such citizens be deprived of French citizenship. Moreover the government is concerned about the number of French citizens involved in terrorist fighting abroad (sometimes against French troops)if born French they cannot be deprived of citizenship, even if they were dual nationals. The allegiance of dual French-Algerian citizens who under current rules cannot be deprived of citizenship since they acquired French citizenship at birth based on double jus soli has been a constant presence in public and political debates about changes to nationality law. Although the proposed law is couched in terms meant to reflect the republican principle of equality between citizens, since only dual nationals can be deprived of citizenship, the measure will affect primarily French citizens of immigrant background whose allegiance to the French nation has been constantly questioned by the far-right. The new measure is seen even by its initiators as having a limited and primarily symbolic effect. The Council of State reached a similar conclusion in its opinion [PDF] on the bill when stating that citizenship deprivation will have a limited dissuasive effect for those planning to commit terrorist acts bearing in mind also that citizenship deprivation can only be applied against persons who have been condemned of very serious crimes in line with the principles of proportionality and necessity. Moreover France is bound by several human rights conventions; it is unclear whether a person deprived of citizenship can be that easily removed from France. Concerns that citizenship deprivation leads to the creation of de facto stateless persons seem justified. Although symbolic, the proposed measure sends a strong message about who belongs to the French nation, at least from the perspective of the French authorities.

Sandra Mantu is researcher at the Centre for Migration Law of the Faculty of Law of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

Suggested citation: Sandra Mantu, Citizenship Deprivation in France: Between Nation and the Republic, JURIST  Academic Commentary, March 17, 2016, http://jurist.org/forum/2016/03/sandra-mantu-french-citizenship.php
JURIST Guest Columnists David Frakt discusses President Obamas recent Supreme Court nomination

Yesterday, President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to serve on the US Supreme Court. Within minutes, the Republicans in the Senate confirmed, as they had previously made clear, that they will refuse to even meet with Judge Garland, much less allow a confirmation vote for him.

The Republicans claimed rationale for refusing to even consider President Obamas nominee is that they want to let the people decide who should appoint Justice Scalias replacement in the next Presidential election. The Republicans have lately refined their message to assert that by declining to allow a vote that they are exercising their Constitutional right to advise and consent, as opposed to completely abdicating their constitutional responsibility. The actions of the Senate Republicans are, in my view, completely illegitimate. But, legitimate or not, they are clearly determined to deny President Obama the opportunity to fill this vacancy. Republicans know that replacing Justice Scalia with even a moderately liberal Justice will dramatically alter the composition of the court, and they simply are not willing to allow President Obama the chance to shape the legal landscape potentially for years to come by consenting to his nominee. At this point, the only real value of the open seat on the Supreme Court to the President and his party is political. The behavior of the Senate Republicans in abdicating their Constitutional responsibility in this unprecedented fashion provides further evidence of the dysfunction and obstructionism of the Republican majority, providing an argument for returning the Senate to the Democrats; the Democratic Presidential candidate may also benefit somewhat by raising the specter of the Republican Presidential candidate getting the opportunity to appoint another conservative to the court. This frightening prospect may well serve as a useful incentive to get out the Democratic vote. But leaving the seat unfilled could just as easily benefit the Republican nominee  keeping the Scalia seat in conservative hands is undoubtedly a powerful rallying cry on the right; indeed, this theme has already become a regular feature in Republican Presidential candidate stump speeches.

Meanwhile, the court is faced with several important decisions that they must make with only eight members, which is likely to lead to numerous 4-4 tie votes on important issues. This undesirable state of affairs is likely to last well into 2017. The precedent being set by the Senate Republicans virtually ensures that the confirmation process for future Supreme Court nominations, especially for this vacancy, will be a bitter and lengthy partisan battle. Even if the next President nominates someone to fill the vacancy on his or her first day in office, it could take months to get the candidate confirmed.

What if Judge Garland were to promise, if confirmed, to offer his or her resignation to the next President, whomever it might be, as soon as he or she is inaugurated, effective upon the confirmation of a replacement nominee? The next President could decline or accept the resignation, as he or she saw fit. If the resignation were accepted, Judge Garland would simply remain on the court until his or her replacement was confirmed, then return to his seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (a vacancy that is very unlikely to be filled during the last few months of President Obamas term anyway). This would ensure that the court would not have to operate without a full complement of nine justices. If this offer managed to break the political stalemate in the Senate, the worse case scenario for Judge Garland would be a brief stint on the Supreme Court, followed by a return to his lifetime position as a Federal Appellate Judge. Making such an offer would also show Judge Garland to be a selfless jurist, who is above politics and willing to put the good of the country and the judiciary before his personal ambitions.

Although offering such a compromise would, in one sense, be rewarding very bad behavior by the Republican Senators, it does offer benefits to Democrats as well. If this offer were enough to persuade Republican Senators to confirm him, it would presumably enhance the likelihood of the Obama Administrations preferred outcomes on the cases that Justice Garland would sit on over the next year. Such a compromise would also give President Obama at least some chance to cement his legacy by exercising the right to make an appointment to the Court that he has earned by winning two Presidential elections, an opportunity that he is currently being denied. At the same time, this compromise would allow Republicans to get exactly what they say they want, which is for the 2016 Presidential election to determine which party will get to choose Justice Scalias life-appointed replacement. This compromise might also be appealing to Republicans as a hedge against the strong possibility of the Democratic nominee winning the Presidency, in which case President Clinton or Sanders might well nominate someone far younger and more liberal than Justice Garland. Since a Democratic President would be unlikely to accept the offered resignation, confirming Judge Garland would preclude ending up with a far more objectionable nominee. And if the Republicans refused this eminently reasonable compromise, it would provide even greater political value to Democrats, not only in the Presidential race, but perhaps even in crucial Senate races as well, as Republicans could be portrayed not only as the party of no, but also as hypocrites, who wont even accept a deal that gives them exactly what they claim to be seeking.

David Frakt is a legal scholar and former law professor, now in private practice in Orlando, Florida

Suggested Citation: David Frakt, How Judge Garland Can Get to the Supreme Court, JURIST  Professional Commentary, Mar. 17, 2016, http://jurist.org/hotline/2016/03/david-frakt-supreme-court.php.
The Botswana Court of Appeal on Wednesday ruled [judgment, PDF] that the Home Affairs ministrys refusal to register a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights group was unconstitutional as it violated the right to freedom of association. The Botswana High Court had previously ruled in 2014 [JURIST report] that the Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) [advocacy website] could formally register their organization under the Botswana Societies Act. A representative of the Home Affairs ministry argued that registration of the group may encourage members to break anti-homosexuality laws in the country, but the court found [News24 report] that, [t]hat concern or reason for refusal was irrational on the evidence before us[.] The decision was applauded [press release] as a groundbreaking achievement for LGBT rights in Botswana.

Recent court rulings in Botswana, Kenya and Zambia illustrate significant progress [JURIST op-ed] in human rights in Africa and in LGBT rights in particular. The Kenya High Court handed down a similar judgment [text] to that of the Botswana High Court in April when three judges rejected subjective moral convictions and asserted fundamental human rights and the rule of law: No matter how strongly held moral and religious beliefs may be, they cannot be a basis for limiting rights. In May, the Zambian High Court upheld the acquittal [text, PDF] of a human rights activist, Paul Kasonkomona, and distinguished between soliciting someone to engage in same-sex sexual acts, a criminal offense in Zambia, and advocating for peoples rights.
A Brazilian judge issued an injunction on Thursday to block the appointment of ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as chief of staff to his successor and current president, Dilma Rousseff, shortly after he was sworn in to the position. Lula was charged [JURIST report] earlier this month in connection with money laundering and misrepresentation of assets involving a giant graft scheme at Petrobras. The federal judge issued the injunction to protect the investigation, as cabinet members can only be investigated by the Supreme Court, not by federal courts. On Wednesday a telephone recording [BBC report] was released which has been interpreted by some to show that Lula was appointed to the position to be protected from prosecution. The recording prompted widespread protests [FT report] across the country.

Brazils political establishment has been in turmoil as many powerful politicians including former presidents have been recently brought to the center of embarrassing corruption investigations. Also in March, Brazils Supreme Court unanimously authorized [JURIST report] the corruption charges against member of Congress Eduardo Cunha to proceed. Eduardo Cunha was implicated in the Petrobras scandal. President Rousseff herself has been implicated in that very same scandal and has been at the center of impeachment proceedings [JURIST report] for months. More than 100 individuals and 50 politicians have been arrested in connection to the Petrobras scandal.
[JURIST] EU leaders agreed to a deal with Turkey Friday to stem migrant flows, particularly of Syrian refugees, to Europe in return for financial and political incentive to Ankara. Under the terms of the deal [WP report], all migrants crossing the Aegean into Greece would be sent back to Turkey, effectively turning the country into the regions migrant holding center. In return for receiving the migrants, the EU is promising [Reuters report] to speed disbursement of 3 billion to Turkey, while offering an additional 3 billion by 2018 contingent upon creation of plans qualifying for EU assistance. The agreement is in line with a recent European Commission [official website] press release [text] outlining how to provide [l]egal safeguards for the return of all new irregular migrants and asylum seekers crossing from Turkey into the Greek islands. While the EU contends this agreement serves to further alleviate human rights issues associated with the migration, some have denounced the agreement as Europe washing its hands of the matter, expressing concerns about sending refugees back to Turkey, a country with a history of human rights issues.

The rights of migrant populations has emerged as one of the most significant humanitarian issue around the world. On Tuesday Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Executive Director Kenneth Roth urged EU leaders to reject [JURIST report] a proposed EU Joint Action Plan with Turkey to handle the influx of migrants due to the disregard for international law covering the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants. Last week the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, expressed concerns over a proposed migrant exchange program [JURIST report] between the EU and Turkey, arguing it may violate international law. The Joint Action Plan [text, PDF], was proposed to decrease human smuggling along the shores of southern Europe and to help alleviate the massive influx of refugees hosted by Turkey. The most controversial aspect of the deal is the objective to resettle, for every Syrian readmitted by Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian from Turkey to the EU Member States. Grandi said in his speech before the European Parliament I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law.
Simone Gbagbo, formerly the Ivory Coast first lady will be tried for crimes [AFP report] against humanity on April 25, her lawyer said Friday. Gbagbo was already sentenced to 20 years in jail for attacking state authority, which occurred following the countrys debated 2010 elections. The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] in The Hague has accused Gbagbo of having a significant role in the post-election violence, which resulted in 3,000 deaths. The Ivory Coast government refused to turn Gbagbo over to the ICC, instead insisting that their own courts can effectively dispense justice.

The former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo pleaded not guilty in January to charges of crimes against humanity at the start of his trial at the ICC. Laurent Gbagbo faces four charges of crimes against humanity for murder, attempted murder, rape and persecution during a wave of post-election violence between December 2010 and April 2011. He is charged along with [JURIST report] former militia leader Charles Ble Goude, who also denies the charges. This is the first time [BBC report] the ICC has tried a former head of state.
[JURIST] US Secretary of State John Kerry [official profile] in a speech [text] at the State Department [official website] on Thursday declared that the Islamic State (IS) is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Detailing the steps that the US has taken to halt the spread of the terrorist organization, Kerry explained the atrocities committed by IS, including the destruction of cultural heritage, rapes and kidnappings, and murder resulting in full-out genocide. He then urged the US to respond to the atrocities being committed through military force as well as the continuation of aid to the victims. He called for unity within the US and the affected nations. This was the first time [NPR report] the US declared genocide since the 2004 genocide in Darfur, though it is unclear how this will change national policy.

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has been accused of war crimes on a massive scale in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this week the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution [JURIST report] denouncing the actions of IS as genocide and calling for the establishment of international and domestic tribunals by UN member states. In December Amnesty International said that the Islamic State is in possession of a large and lethal arsenal [JURIST report] due to decades of reckless arms trading and the poorly regulated international flow of weapons into Iraq. In November IS claimed responsibility for a series of coordinated attacks in Paris [JURIST report] that killed more than 120 individuals. That same month President Barack Obama ordered [JURIST report] an assessment of whether intelligence reports from US Central Command were changed before formal submission to present a more optimistic picture of the American military campaign against the IS. In September members of Iraqs Yazidi community met with International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and urged the court to open a genocide investigation [JURIST report] into IS actions in Northern Iraq.
North Korea defied the new UN [WP report] and US sanctions [JURIST report] by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday. This development comes within days of the weapons tests ordered by Kim Jong-un [JURIST report] which has been linked to the countrys pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the US mainland. According to the South Korea military, the missile was launched from the north of the countrys capital, Pyongyang, and flew approximately 500 miles before hitting the sea off its east coast. A US official stated that the missile was launched from a road-mobile launcher, and would mark North Koreas first test of a missile capable of reaching Japan since 2014. The missile launch prompted stern responses from various countries. The US State Department urged North Korea to fulfill its international commitments and obligations, while China and South Korea warned North Korea not do anything to exacerbate tensions. Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe [official website] demanded of North Korea to exercise self-restraint and stated that his country will take all necessary measures, such as warning and surveillance activity, to be able to respond to any situations.

North Korea has been on the radar of many countries and the UN over the past few months over both its missile tests and its human rights violations. In February, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned [JURIST report] North Korea for violating international obligations after another missile launch was conducted. In January the US House of Representatives approved [JURIST report] legislation that would increase sanctions against North Korea for its continuation of nuclear testing. Japan has expressed particular concern over the missile tests. Last September, the House of Councillors, Japans upper house of parliament, approved a measure that allows Japans Self Defense Forces to deploy troops abroad for the first time since World War II. Japan PM Shinzo Abe specifically pointed to threats from North Korea [JURIST report] in arguing that the national military must take a more active role in order to strengthen its position. 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, 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. In November 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman said that there is enough evidence to hold Kim Jong-un responsible [JURIST report] for massive human rights atrocities 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.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein[official profile] on Friday criticized [press release] the Saudi Arabian coalition forces in Yemen for the more than 3,000 civilian casualties resulting from the conflict in just the past year. The High Commissioner said, [l]ooking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of airstrikes. The UN called for transparency on behalf of the forces and for an investigation into the attacks. According to Zeid, the indiscriminate attacks on non-military targets and lack of prevention of such attacks could amount to war crimes. Zeid also condemned the Houthis for their part in the casualties, calling for both sides to swallow their pride and bring this conflict to a halt.

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Yemen has sparked significant international concern. Earlier this week UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned [JURIST report] that the use of cluster bombs by the Saudi-led coalition against neighborhoods in Yemen may amount to a war crime. Also this month the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said [JURIST report] that the civilian death toll in Yemen has reached nearly 2,800 over nine months of fighting. In January the UN World Food Programme appealed to all the parties involved in the Yemen conflict to allow the safe passage of food [JURIST report] to the city of Taiz. In October Amnesty International called for an independent investigation into possible war crimes surrounding the destruction of a hospital [JURIST report] run by Doctors Without Borders [advocacy website] in Yemen.
The United Nations Security Council [official website] on Thursday urged [UN press release] the South Sudan government to protect its civilians from the deteriorating conditions within the country. Although there has been a ceasefire, the country is experiencing ongoing violence. Last month, armed men wearing uniforms of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army entered the UN Mission site housing civilians, where they killed and injured [UN News article] approximately 50 individuals. The Security Council, in an effort to finalize a seven-month-old peace deal, has set out a five step plan in the hopes of bringing stability to the area.

The conflict in South Sudan has taken more than 50,000 lives and has displaced over one and a half million people. Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] last week urged [JURIST report] the African Union to establish a hybrid court to prosecute members of the South Sudan government for war crimes committed in the Western Equatoria region. Last month the United Nations Mission in South Sudan strongly condemned [JURIST report] the violence that took place between Shilluk and Dinka youths at one of its Protection of Civilian sites in South Sudan. The OHCHR reported in January that shocking crimes have been committed [JURIST report] in the war-torn South Sudan.
Top UN officials urged [UN News Centre report] the international community on Thursday to develop human-rights-based responses for combating violent extremism as opposed to using a security only approach to dealing with the scourge. In a video message [statement, text] to the Human Rights Council Panel discussion in Geneva, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official website] stressed that human rights and the rule of law should be central whether we are countering violent extremism or trying to prevent it . That means addressing discrimination, ensuring good governance, and providing access to education, social services and employment opportunities. The secretary general also stressed the need to avoid use of sweeping definitions of terrorism or violent extremism that encroach on human rights. The UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore [official profile] pointed in this regard that heavy-handed counter-terrorism responses following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US widened rifts between communities, deepened distrust, and generated divisive and often hateful public discourse. Gilmore specifically pointed to the selective application of the term violent extremism only to Muslim believers which she warns reinforces intolerance and discrimination. Gilmore stressed that accountability for human rights violations, access to justice and remedies, equality and nondiscrimination are crucial to preventing and combating violent extremism. The UN General Assembly adopted the UNSGs Plan of Action, which provides more than 70 recommendations to Member States and the UN system on February 12.

Human rights continue to be an important issue across the globe. On March 5, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official profile] urged [JURIST report] UN member states to remain focused on human rights in their struggle against violent extremism. Earlier the same week the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that more than 6,000 people have died [JURIST report] in the Ukraine conflict. Last month the UN reported widespread human rights abuses in Myanmar and increasing deaths [JURIST reports] in Iraq resulting from the Islamic State. Earlier last month human rights experts from the OHCHR urged [JURIST report] Spanish authorities to reject two suggested legal reformations that they say may disrupt freedom and fundamental human rights.
Ex-leader Musharraf leaves Pakistan after travel ban lifted

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has left Pakistan to seek medical treatment in Dubai, days after the Supreme Court lifted a travel ban.
India, Pakistan to host Saarc disaster, environment centres

The Saarc Environment and Disaster Management Centre will be set up in Indian and Pakistan as a split entity.
Islamic State inspired California attacker, FBI says

A student who stabbed four people at a California university was inspired by the so-called Islamic State group, the FBI has said.
Mini Saarc proves shot in the arm for Pokhara

The Saarc foreign ministers meeting held in Pokhara for the first time is expected to give a big boost to the countrys flagging tourism industry.
Nepal Intl Trade Fair 2016 begins

The fifth edition of the Nepal International Trade Fair got underway at Bhrikuti Mandap on Thursday with President Bidhya Devi Bhandari inaugurating the mega event which hosts 340 stalls and exhibitors from Nepal, China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Nepali Congress decides to initiate dialogue to resolve Madhes issue

The main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) has decided to take forward the constitution implementation by resolving Madhes issue.
Poverty major enemy of South Asia: PM Oli

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said that poverty is the common enemy of South Asia.
Power from organic waste in 3 months

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has joined hands with private companies to generate electricity from the organic waste.
Watered down

Is water no more one of the key issues between Nepal and India?
Yemen conflict: Saudi Arabia to 'scale back' military operations

Saudi Arabia has said its military coalition will scale back operations against rebels in Yemen.
By John Cussen

They are, of course, wrong  the more finical sects of North Korea experts, that is, those who advise us to set aside as unreliable North Korean defectors' memoirs. Too novelesque to be trusted, they say. Too infrequently backed up by corroborative testimony, they say. Too often controverted in their plot details by the memoirists' own spoken accounts of their childhoods in North Korea and of their lives in peril in China. In short, not to be relied upon in the all-important project of knowing what everyday life is like in North Korea, they say.

As readers of this newspaper, you know of these experts' complaints because The Korea Times columnist Casey Lartigue, Jr. has been the memoirists' chief defender. Meanwhile, here in Pennsylvania, I know of them because my efforts to place a combined essay review of Yeonmi Park's "In Order to Live," of Lucia Jang's "Stars Between the Sun and Moon," of Hyeonseo Lee's "The Girl With Seven Names" and of Eunsum Kim's "A Thousand Miles to Freedom" in scholarly journals based in North America have been frustrated by rumors that the books are at least in part fiction.

Fortunately, as I say, the experts and editors are wrong, for all of the several reasons already advanced by Lartigue and others, as well as for another reason  a literary reason  that I'd like to introduce here.

First, however, let's recall the arguments in favor of the books that have already been offered: first, the unreasonableness of expecting those of the memoirists who are now celebrities to remain consistent in every one of their stories' details while giving interviews. Also, says Lartigue, fears of regime reprisals against their families back in the North may at times cause the defectors to obscure and displace details of their printed stories; however, Lartigue insists, the stories remain essentially unchanged. Trauma is also a factor, say both Blaine Harden (co-author with Shin Dong-hyuk of "Escape from Camp 14") and Maryanne Vollers (co-author with Yeonmi Park of "In Order to Live"). Consciously and unconsciously, as their traumatized psyches require, the memoirists scramble the more gruesome and/or shameful facts of their stories. That they do so is not symptomatic of dishonesty but, ironically, of the gravity of the memories they are struggling to articulate.

Not to be overlooked, too, in the nitpicking critique of the narratives is the agency of the North Korean propaganda machine. "The regime's most common weapon against its critics is character assassination," says Vollers.

We ought also to remember, says Andrei Lankov, the skepticism that originally greeted firsthand accounts of the barbarities of the Soviet gulags, of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and of the Cambodian Genocide. Before they were read like gospel, Solzenhitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago," Loung Ung's "First They Killed My Father," and Jung Chang's "Wild Swans" were all in some quarters disbelieved. It's possible, he says, that the North Korean memoirs I've listed above might, too, survive their detractors' efforts to bring them down, might, too, become touchstone texts in the complicated project of knowing North Korean ground realities in the famine and post-famine eras.

Indeed, as Blaine Harden has remarked, the recent rush of memoirs authored and co-authored by North Korean defectors has amounted to nothing less than the staking out of a fresh new literary genre. To be sure, this new genre shares space with other established nonfiction genres: with memoirs of captivity (e.g., Mary Rowlandson's "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson"), of hiding ("The Diary of Ann Frank"), of exodus (Csaba Teglas's "Budapest Exit: A Memoir of Fascism, Communism, and Freedom"), of internment (Primo Levi's "If This is a Man"), and of female life in a maniacally patriarchal society (Malala Yousafzai's "I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban"). Still, despite this shared space, the new genre is also decidedly sui generis--a type of memoir as unmistakably North Korean as a Rodong Sinmun editorial or a bowl of mul-naengmyeon.

And here, finally, is my contribution to the argument, the reason I say the experts are wrong to disdain the memoirs: because the border between fiction and nonfiction is not the imporous, thread-narrow, determinate line that they imagine. No, the whole history of captivity and refugee narratives from the "Book of Exodus" tells us that the real meeting site of unspeakable fact and telling fiction is a wider zone, one like the miraculously generative DMZ that buffers the DPRK's and the free world's guns-drawn contiguity on the Korean Peninsula's 38th parallel.

When, for example, I read in the moving first pages of Kim's "A Thousand Miles to Freedom" of a starving, 11-year-old child lying down on the cold, cement floor of her disappeared family's furniture-stripped apartment, of her squirreling in among rags, and of her sidling over pencil and paper as she prepares to write her last will and testament  in the day's fast-fading light and under the cheery gaze of the side-by-side portraits of "Eternal President" Kim Il-sung and "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il  I know I have in my hands a book conceived in the inspired zone where heartbreak and memory meet, and I don't worry about whether or not it all happened in just the way the survivor-become-writer describes.

So, too, the bizarrely necessary, late plot detour in Jang's "Stars Between the Sun and Moon," wherein the long-suffering and oft-abused narrator steals away from her Christian rescuers in order to return to the remote "Wuthering Heights"-like redoubt of a parentally bullied, provincial Chinese farmer, and there gets with child with the guy (the child to whom the memoir will eventually be addressed); yes, that portion of Jang's book also, it seems to me, springs from a psychic DMZ of sorts, wherein trauma and remembrance cobble, stitch and blend their stories together.

Lastly, I call your attention to the most controversial of these memoirs, Yeonmi Park's "In Order to Live," specifically to that late China episode in which she, her mother and some dozen other North Korean defectors are being prepared for their imminent transit to Mongolia and to the free world by a Christian pastor. A few pages later in the book, when we hear of his mission's being shut down and of its staff being imprisoned, we will think highly of this man. Indeed, we will imagine him a martyr. However, in the passage I have in mind, he requires of Yeonmi and her mother a fuller, more complete confession of their sins before he will allow them to travel with the group to Mongolia.

Many will read this passage and think that the pastor's zeal for repentance and conversion oversteps privacy's discrete limits. Others will credit him with knowing well sin's subtle mechanisms of bondage. In any event, despite the minimal further confessions that he gets from the pair, he lets Yeonmi and her mom travel to Mongolia. So, too, those experts who rebuke these North Korean memoirists for their stories' minor inconsistencies, who require of them a more literal truth than they have so far offered  these experts, too, should blink and nod, should acquiesce and lighten up, as did the pastor. Further, they should admit the memoirs into the canon of estimable Korean books lately published. For the hard fact of the matter is that though these defector-memoirists found their physical exits from North Korea at the country's northern, breachable, river-marked border, their stories  burdened, manacled and muzzled by the unspeakable abasements of starvation, rape, bride trafficking, sex trafficking, defection and existential helplessness  needed an exit site more like the rarely breached, yet preternaturally fecund DMZ. Further, for what these memoirs tell us of North Korean ground realities, of the horrors of sex and bride trafficking in China's northeast, of the psychological challenges faced by North Koreans who succeed in escaping to the free world  as well as for what they tell us of human pluck, determination, and resilience  we should be glad their authors and co-authors allowed the stories to choose the route they chose, that of the DMZ-like nonfiction/fiction armistice area.

Dr. John Cussen, who now teaches at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, taught in South Korea from 1995 to 2000. Contact him jcussen@edinboro.edu.
Russia effectively slapped its own sanctions on North Korea earlier this week when its state-run energy firm Gazprom severed ties with the North, Seoul's top envoy to Moscow said Friday.



Ambassador Park Ro-byug's remarks came a day after Russia dismissed the United States' new sanctions on Pyongyang, saying it does not recognize unilateral pressure.



A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry instead called for adherence to U.N. Security Council sanctions adopted earlier this month with Russian approval.



"Russia's stance is that the Security Council sanctions should be implemented, nothing else," Park said during a luncheon with local reporters.



Pointing to Gazprom's recent decision, however, he noted there is a trend toward unilateral sanctions too.



"They're effectively doing it. A lot of things aren't disclosed," the ambassador said.

Park especially stressed the significance of Gazprom's decision at a time when trade and other ties between Russia and North Korea are weak.



"Because there are few ties between the two sides, there are few tools that can be used as leverage" against Pyongyang, he said.



China and Russia have traditionally opposed strong punitive measures against Pyongyang over concerns they could aggravate tensions in the region and spark instability in the North.



In a departure from their previous stance, however, the two veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council this month endorsed a new resolution imposing the toughest yet sanctions on the North over its fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch last month.



They include a ban on North Korea's exports of coal and other mineral resources, which serve as a key source of hard currency for the cash-strapped regime.



On Seoul's decision to suspend a trilateral logistics project involving North Korea and Russia, the ambassador dismissed speculation it could hurt relations between South Korea and Russia.



"Even without a complete convergence of views, we will continue to work to find areas in common and room for cooperation," he said. (Yonhap)




aoberlin@kpcmedia.com

LAKE JAMES  Shape Up Steuben is looking at ways to make a difference in school lunchrooms.

Jennifer Mansfield, a graduate student studying nutrition at Purdue University, attended this months Shape Up Steuben community meeting at the Potawatomi Inn Thursday. She presented her study on school lunch and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, and her survey, designed to assess Indiana food service departments and community health coalitions perceptions on how to properly provide nutrition to children while meeting federal guidelines.

The idea, she said, is to gather information and present it in a neutral way to spur communication and cooperation between school districts and communities. The survey will be distributed to all the school districts in Indiana, as well as community nutrition coalitions.

People have no idea the number of hungry children in our communities, said Stephanie Haynes-Clifford, MSD food service director. Clifford provided input on how MSD cooperates with vendors to provide nutrition under enhanced national guidelines. She said students have responded fairly well to whole wheat and colorful fresh fruit and vegetable offerings.

While school gardens and local produce are options, Haynes-Clifford said there are many roadblocks. In Steuben County, MSD worked with a local apple orchard, but getting the product delivered from the facility to MSDs six schools became a hurdle. Health department guidelines also must be considered when growing food for student consumption, she said.

An idea being bantered by Shape Up Steuben is an after-school program that would get children into a local kitchen learning how to make their own healthy snacks. There was also talk about teaching children to garden in cooperation with summer youth programs. Purdue Extension soon will start a gardening project with a Carlin Park Elementary School third-grade class.

Other discussion included Parkview Healths 18-week Planting Healthy Seeds program, which is being piloted this year in Allen and Noble County schools. The program is loosely tailored to allow third- and fourth-grade teachers to implement nutrition and activity lessons.

Kylee Bennett, co-director of Shape Up Steuben and community outreach director for Parkview Health, said the free curriculum has been approved for expansion to kindergarten through fifth grade.
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Here's a good one for you. On Tuesday, the L.A. Times broke a story describing how the UC Regents, those in charge of the University of California system, are proposing to denote "anti-Zionism" as an unacceptable form of discrimination on its campuses.

As you would probably expect, the proposed amendment has incited an absurd amount of strong opinions from every direction. Supporters of the amendment argue that classifying anti-Zionism as discrimination is absolutely needed to protect Jewish students at public university campuses. Broadly, Zionism is the title applied to the movement that pushed for the establishment of a Jewish state, and the continued defense of that state.

On the flip side, the amendment has triggered a large constituency of the student and faculty body to argue against the proposed change, saying it is a blatant attempt to censor criticism directed towards Israel.

There's not too much else to say about this, other than to expand a bit more on the gravitas of the rift currently spreading apart the UC system. As the L.A. Times reports, a letter signed by 130 UC faculty members supported naming anti-Zionism as an expression of anti-Semitism. That letter reads that the university system must distinguish "when healthy political debate crosses the line into anti-Jewish hatred, bigotry and discrimination, and when legitimate criticism of Israel devolves into denying Israel's right to exist."

"We're very, very pleased that the working group really indicated very clearly what Jewish students have been feeling and all of us have known for a long time, which is that anti-Zionism is the most common face of anti-Semitism in college campuses," said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, to ABC News.

Yet another letter, signed by 250 UC faculty members, says basically the opposite, that the proposed amendment would curtail free speech the ability to teach and research Israel and the Zionist movement.

Intellectual heavyweight Judith Butler, a Berkeley professor of comparative literature, explained to the Times how including "anti-Zionism as an instance of intolerance and bigotry is actually to suppress a set of political beliefs that we actually need to hear. It saddens me and strikes at the heart of the task of the university."

The question comes down to whether or not anti-Zionism is or isn't the same thing as anti-Semitism. While I'm hardly a constitutional scholar, I can already imagine a divisive First Amendment Supreme Court case should the UC Regents approve the new language.
On 17 March groups of academics, businessmen, and lawyers presented an anti-corruption initiative signed by nearly 300,000 people to Mexicos federal senate.The government led by President Enrique Pena Nieto is under intense pressure to step up the fight against corruption. There is serious scepticism about whether the secondary legislation currently being debated to enact the anti-corruption system approved last year will have the necessary teeth to combat the scourge. Speaking at an event for the new president of the Mexican employers association (Coparmex) yesterday, Pena Nieto addressed the issue of corruption. He said that corruption was not exclusively a problem of the public sector but also the private sector and sometimes they go hand in hand. He applauded the various proposals for the secondary legislation by different political parties and especially the citizen proposal, sponsored by the Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, as well as businessmen and lawyers. But opposition political parties have accused the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its ally, the Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico (PVEM), of ignoring all of the proposals other than their own in a draft working paper presented to the senate anti-corruption commission.

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Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

The board earmarked $1.54 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the dredge, designed to keep channels open and supply sand to nourish eroding beaches up and down the York County coast and beyond.
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The top suspect in the terror attacks in France in November 2015 has been arrested in Belgium.

Reports say Salah Abdeslam was arrested by Belgian police during a raid Friday in Brussels.

Abdeslam and another person were injured in the operation, said Molenbeek Mayor Francois Schepmans. Reports say Abdeslam was wounded in the leg.

Belgian authorities found the suspect's fingerprints in an apartment earlier this week in another area of Brussels.

Abdeslam has been the top target in an intense hunt. Officials have searched for suspects and militants who carried out the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris four months ago.

Police say the attacks were, in part, prepared and coordinated in Brussels.

Since mid-November, 11 people have been arrested and charged in Belgium in connection with the killings. Eight are still in detention.


China will not relax government control over the stock market, said a new securities regulator.

Those controls include how stocks are offered for public sale. Official control over first-time stock offerings, known as initial public offerings (or IPOs) will continue. Government-supported trading will also continue.

Liu Shiyu is the new chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (or CSRC). The CSRC is the government agency in charge of overseeing the countrys stock markets.

Liu said recently that reforms in the IPO system will not take place soon.

Supporting the reforms will require a process and a period of time, and the reform of (the) registration-based IPO system cant move ahead on its own, Liu said.

The reform would force the CSRC to give up vetting the plans of companies seeking to raise funds through IPOs.

The plan would give companies that offer stocks to the public greater independence to set the IPO stock price. The information would be registered with the stock exchange.

Government control over IPO vetting had led to serious corruption.

least three senior regulatory officials are being investigated. They include Yao Gang. He is a CSRC vice chairman at the regulator in charge of IPO issues, who was placed under investigation for serious disciplinary violations.

Two other officials dealing with IPOs, Li Liang, and Li Zhiling, have been detained for the same reason.

Some experts say delays slow market reforms

The decision to delay action by the CSRC will slow market reform. That is what Oliver Rui, a professor of finance and accounting at the China Europe International Business School, says.

I wish the government could change its mindset on governance and let the stock market run by itself. Frequent intervention from the government does not help, he said.

The new CSRC chief also said government-run organizations, which support the market during price drops, will continue to operate. There were no plans to stop them from playing their roles, Liu said.

China makes no secret that it directly intervenes in the market to support stock prices if they fall too far.

The government-run China Securities Finance Corporation Limited has played a major part in supporting the market. This was especially true after stock prices on Chinas major exchanges sharply dropped in June 2015.

The fund has invested in almost 600 publicly traded companies, according to Bloomberg data.

Last month, an attempt to control market behavior by halting trading when prices fall too far did not work. The CSRC was forced to withdraw its rules. The government responded by replacing the groups chief, Xiao Gang, with Liu.

At least 700 Chinese companies have planned IPOs, but some of them might be delayed, sources said.

Johnny Fang is an stock expert with Shanghai-based Z-Ben Advisors. He says there has been improvement in the way IPOs have been approved since the beginning of 2016. But, the regulator still regards market stability as a top priority, he said.

I'm Mario Ritter.

Saibal Dasgupta reported on this story for VOANews.com. Mario Ritter adapted the report for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

vet  v. to investigate to see if something or someone should be approved for a position or certification

priority  n. something that is more important than other things


Actress Danai Gurira calls herself a Zimerican.

Her parents came from Zimbabwe. She was born in the American state of Iowa. But her family moved back to Harare, Zimbabwe, when she was five years old. She returned to the United States for college and has lived there ever since.

"I was always in a hodgepodge of culture," she said. "There's no other identity I know, really."

The actress may be best known as Michonne, the zombiekiller in the television series "The Walking Dead." But when Gurira is not killing zombies, she is busy with other projects.

She recently played rapper Tupac Shakurs mother in a film. And she is now busy racing between theaters for two plays in New York City  plays that she wrote.

Stories from both sides of the Atlantic

Her play "Familiar" is an off-Broadway comedy-drama. It centers on the cultural clashes between American and African traditions.

The play takes place in the state of Minnesota. The eldest daughter of Zimbabwean parents is getting married to a white man. The story was taken from her own observations, Gurira said.

"I was at a wedding and I was just struck by all of my family's absurdities  and my own included. And I just knew I couldn't not write about it!"

The upper middle-class life of "Familiar" may seem familiar to many American audiences. But the setting of her play "Eclipsed"  Gurira's Broadway debut  is something else entirely.

Gurira decided to write "Eclipsed" after reading a New York Times story about the civil war in Liberia, and the young women who fought in it.

She described it like this.

"These were, like, 22-, 23-year-old girls, women, who had, like, you know, little skimpy jeans on, little skimpy tops, and really looked cool and hip and current and then, they had these big AK-47s on their backs."

Gurira went to Liberia and met with women who were former soldiers, sex slaves and peace negotiators. She wrote the play based on their stories.

A Broadway first

In "Eclipsed," Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o plays a 15-year-old girl who is trying to survive under the rebels. The girl is continually raped by a commander, but believes that she can find her freedom in the rebel army.

"Well, I think the girl is our way into this world," Nyongo said. She comes into this world and is trying to figure out what the rules are. And she has to make a lot of choices about how she intends to survive."

"Eclipsed" is making Broadway history. It is the first production with an all-black female cast. It is also the first Broadway directed by a black woman and written by a black woman.

Theater critics have praised the play.

With two plays and movie, Gurira is still not slowing down. She is now working on a play about the women's movement in Africa.

I'm Mario Ritter.

Jeff Lunden reported on this story for VOANews.com. Hai Do adapted his report for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section and on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hodgepodge  n. a mixture of different things

zombie  n. a dead person who is able to move because of magic usually in stories or movies

absurdity - n. the state of being silly, foolish or unreasonable

debut  n. the first time an actor, musician etc. does something in public or for the public


Today we tell a traditional American story called a tall tale. A tall tale is a story about a person who is larger than life. The descriptions in the story are exaggerated  much greater than in real life. This makes the story funny. Long ago, the people who settled in undeveloped areas in America first told tall tales. After a hard days work, people gathered to tell each other funny stories.

Each group of workers had its own tall tale hero. Paul Bunyan was a hero of North Americas lumberjacks, the workers who cut down trees. He was known for his strength, speed and skill. Tradition says he cleared forests from the northeastern United States to the Pacific Ocean.

Some people say Paul Bunyan was the creation of storytellers from the middle western Great Lakes area of the United States. Other people say the stories about him came from French Canada.

Early in the twentieth century, a writer prepared a collection of Paul Bunyan stories. They were included in a publication from the Red River Lumber Company in Minnesota. It is not known if the stories helped the companys sales, but they became extremely popular.

Here is Shep ONeal with our story about Paul Bunyan.

Many years ago, Paul Bunyan was born in the northeastern American state of Maine. His mother and father were shocked when they first saw the boy. Paul was so large at birth that five large birds had to carry him to his parents. When the boy was only a few weeks old, he weighed more than 45 kilograms.

As a child, Paul was always hungry. His parents needed 10 cows to supply milk for his meals. Before long, he ate 50 eggs and 10 containers of potatoes every day.



Young Paul grew so big that his parents did not know what to do with him. Once, Paul rolled over so much in his sleep that he caused an earthquake. This angered people in the town where his parents lived. So, the government told his mother and father they would have to move him somewhere else.

Pauls father built a wooden cradle -- a traditional bed for a baby. His parents put the cradle in waters along the coast of Maine. However, every time Paul rolled over, huge waves covered all the coastal towns. So his parents brought their son back on land. They took him into the woods. This is where he grew up.

As a boy, Paul helped his father cut down trees. Paul had the strength of many men. He also was extremely fast. He could turn off a light and then jump into his bed before the room got dark.

Maine is very cold for much of the year. One day, it started to snow. The snow covered Pauls home and a nearby forest. However, this snow was very unusual. It was blue. The blue snow kept falling until the forest was covered.

Paul put on his snowshoes and went out to see the unusual sight. As he walked, Paul discovered an animal stuck in the snow. It was a baby ox. Paul decided to take the ox home with him. He put the animal near the fireplace. After the ox got warmer, his hair remained blue.

Paul decided to keep the blue ox and named him Babe. Babe grew very quickly. One night, Paul left him in a small building with the other animals. The next morning, the barn was gone and so was Babe. Paul searched everywhere for the animal. He found Babe calmly eating grass in a valley, with the barn still on top of his back. Babe followed Paul and grew larger every day. Every time Paul looked, Babe seemed to grow taller.

In those days, much of North America was filled with thick, green forests. Paul Bunyan could clear large wooded areas with a single stroke of his large, sharp axe.

Paul taught Babe to help with his work. Babe was very useful. For example, Paul had trouble removing trees along a road that was not straight. He decided to tie one end of the road to what remained of a tree in the ground. Paul tied the other end to Babe. Babe dug his feet in the ground and pulled with all his strength until the road became straight.

In time, Paul and Babe the Blue Ox left Maine, and moved west to look for work in other forests. Along the way, Paul dug out the Great Lakes to provide drinking water for Babe. They settled in a camp near the Onion River in the state of Minnesota.

Paul decided to get other lumberjacks to help with the work. His work crew became known as the Seven Axemen. Each man was more than 2 meters tall and weighed more than 160 kilograms. All of the Axemen were named Elmer. That way, they all came running whenever Paul called them.

The man who cooked for the group was named Sourdough Sam. He made everything -- except coffee -- from sourdough, a substance used in making sourdough bread.

Every Sunday, Paul and his crew ate hot cakes. Each hot cake was so large that it took five men to eat one. Paul usually had 10 or more hot cakes, depending on how hungry he was. The table where the men ate was so long that a server usually drove to one end of the table and stayed the night. The server drove back in the morning, with a fresh load of food.

Paul needed someone to help with the camps finances. He gave the job to a man named Johnny Inkslinger. Johnny kept records of everything, including wages and the cost of feeding Babe. He sometimes used nine containers of writing fluid a day to keep such detailed records.

The camp also was home to Sport, the Reversible Dog. One of the workers accidentally cut Sport in two. The man hurried to put the dog back together, but made a mistake. He bent the animals back the wrong way. However, that was not a problem for Sport. He learned to run on his front legs until he was tired. Then, he turned the other way and ran on his back legs.

Big mosquitoes were a problem at the camp. The men attacked the insects with their axes and long sticks. Before long, the men put barriers around their living space. Then, Paul ordered them to get big bees to destroy the mosquitoes. But the bees married the mosquitoes, and the problem got worse. They began to produce young insects. One day, the insects love of sweets caused them to attack a ship that was bringing sugar to the camp. At last, the mosquitoes and bees were defeated. They ate so much sugar they could not move.

Paul always gave Babe the Blue Ox a 35-kilogram piece of sugar when he was good. But sometimes Babe liked to play tricks. At night, Babe would make noises and hit the ground with his feet. The men at the camp would run out of the buildings where they slept, thinking it was an earthquake.

When winter came, Babe had trouble finding enough food to eat. Snow covered everything. Ole the Blacksmith solved the problem. He made huge green sunglasses for Babe. When Babe wore the sunglasses, he thought the snow was grass. Before long, Babe was strong and healthy again.

One year, Pauls camp was especially cold. It was so cold that the men let their facial hair grow very long. When the men spoke, their words froze in the air. Everything they said remained frozen all winter long, and did not melt until spring.

Paul Bunyan and Babe left their mark on many areas. Some people say they were responsible for creating Puget Sound in the western state of Washington. Others say Paul Bunyan and Babe cleared the trees from the states of North Dakota and South Dakota. They prepared this area for farming.

Babe the Blue Ox died in South Dakota. One story says he ate too many hot cakes. Paul buried his old friend there. Today, the burial place is known as the Black Hills.

Whatever happened to Paul Bunyan? There are lots of stories. Some people say he was last seen in Alaska, or even the Arctic Circle. Another tradition says he still returns to Minnesota every summer. It says Paul moves in and out of the woods, so few people ever know that he is there.

You have just heard the story of Paul Bunyan. It was adapted by George Grow. Your narrator was Shep ONeal.

Now its your turn. Tell us in the comments section about a tall tale from your culture. Does the hero of the story have unusual size or strength? Visit our Facebook page, too, for more stories.

Quiz - Paul Bunyan, An American Folk Tale Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

reversible - adj. having two sides that can be used

blacksmith - n. a person who makes or repairs things made of iron (such as horseshoes)


President Barack Obama travels to Cuba Sunday, becoming the first American president to visit the communist-ruled island nation in almost 90 years.

Obama administration officials say the president will meet Cuban President Raul Castro on Monday. He will meet with members of Cuban civil society, including human rights activists, and will give a speech to the Cuban people on Tuesday.

Ted Henken is a professor at Baruch College in New York. He has written about Cuba. He will be in the country during President Obamas visit.

He told VOA that the president is traveling to Cuba to ensure that relations between the United States and Cuba are not reversed when he leaves office. Henken said that Obama wants to speak directly to the Cuban people.

Henken said the president will meet and talk with whom he chooses and not just with whom the government wishes him to meet with only."

He added that the president and his aides will work to convince Cuban officials to change their policies. He said they will not stop pushing for the nation to accept the American values of democracy and respect for human rights.

But Henken said the president has made it very clear that it is the Cuban people who should and who will decide their future, and the United States will not be making demands on anyone in Cuba, but will be communicating a message of friendship, of assistance, of solidarity.

Henken said Obama also will explain to the Cuban people that the United States is not the reason for the islands poor economic conditions.

After his trip to Cuba, Obama will travel to Argentina. In his final months in office, he will also visit Canada and Peru.

Im George Grow.

VOA's Victor Beattie reported on this story. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

ensure - v. to guarantee

reversed - v. changed; overturned

convince - v. persuade


This is Whats Trending Today.

The American Bald Eagle has long been the national bird of the United States.

In 1782, the Continental Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States. The seal appears on some official U.S. documents. It shows a bald eagle with its powerful wings out-stretched.

This week, thousands of people have been watching live video of bald eagles breaking open their eggs.

In 2014, two adult eagles built a nest high in the trees of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, DC. The nest is 1.5 meters wide and about 1.8 meters deep.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says this is the first pair of bald eagles to make their home within the arboretum since 1947.

Some people are calling the adult eagles Mr. President and The First Lady. The pair already raised one baby eagle in the same area last year.

Mr. President and The First Lady temporarily left the nest site in the summer of 2015 for their annual migration. A short time later, the non-profit American Eagle Foundation set up cameras in trees near the nest, with the help of tree climbers.

This weekend, people from around the world get to watch as the Bald Eagle pair hope to add more eaglets to their family. The First Lady laid the eggs on February 10 and February 14.

Egg #1 began to hatch on Wednesday night, March 16. The baby eagle was born Friday morning. Park officials expect egg #2 to break open sometime this weekend.

On social media, people are using the hashtag #dceaglecam to follow the nest and to guess when they think the eggs will hatch.



But, on the DC Eagle Cam website, the American Eagle Foundation warns that this is a wild eagle and anything can happen.

And thats Whats Trending Today

Im Lucija Millonig.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

wing - n. a part of an animal's body that is used for flying or gliding

migration - n. the movement from one area to another at different times of the year

hatch - v. to be born by coming out of an egg
LEXINGTON,Neb. - A different kind of job fair is coming to Lexington.

Central Community College will host a job fair targeted at non-traditional students and other adults.

Meredith OHanlon and Rob Czaplewski with CCC said similar fairs have been held in Kearney and Hastings, and another in Grand Island that was focused on the health care industry. The fairs have met with mostly positive results, which prompted the idea to bring the idea to Lexington.

The fair will be held Tuesday, March 29 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Room 204 at the Dawson County Opportunity Center. Czaplewski said employers will be looking to fill both full and part-time positions. Attendees should come prepared to fill out applications, provide resumes, and be interviewed on-site.

Im telling my students to come dress-prepared, OHanlon said. You dont know exactly what employers will be looking for.

The event is open to the public free of charge. Personnel from the Nebraska Department of Labor also will be available to help with resumes and interview skills.

Czaplewski said there is also no cost to employers and there are still openings for businesses who are interested in participating. He encouraged those businesses to contact him at (308)398-7951 or email robinczaplewski@cccneb.edu.

The fair is sponsored by Central Community College and the Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce.
COZAD, Neb.  The community of Cozad earned its recertification in the Nebraska Economic Development Certified Community Program. The city was originally certified in September 2007 and recertified in December 2010 and February 2016.

The program is sponsored by the Nebraska Diplomats and administered by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. Designation as a Nebraska Economic Development Certified Community indicates that Cozad is prepared for business growth and ready to meet the needs of companies seeking new business and industrial locations.

For nearly ten years now, Cozad has done everything right to grow and sustain a vibrant economy that meets the needs of citizens of all ages, through a mix of projects encompassing downtown redevelopment, new affordable housing, job creation, technology, health care, education and fine arts, said Nebraska Diplomats President Dean Hart.

Cozad sets the bar very high as one of Nebraskas hot spots in which to do business, find good paying jobs, raise families, and enjoy the quality of life that Nebraskans have come to expect, Hart said.

It is an honor to continue to be a certified economic development community and I thank everyone involved in the recertification process, said Cozad Mayor Nancy Meyer.

Great things are happening in Cozad through continued investments by both new and existing businesses and this recertification is another push to keep our momentum moving forward, Meyer said.

During the past five years, the City of Cozad, along with the Cozad Development Corporation (CDC) and Dawson Area Development (DAD), attracted two new manufacturing businesses and five new service and retail businesses. These community additions brought in 26 new jobs and helped two existing businesses expand.

Cozads recertification demonstrates our communitys commitment to the continued growth of our economy through the development of new industry, expansion of current businesses, the creation of jobs, and support for our local agriculture producers, said CDC Executive Director Robyn Geiser.

Other community development projects completed over the past five years include:

Creation of the Cozad Community Foundation in 2015

Cozad Telephones $10 million investment in new underground fiber leading to every home and business

Expanded facilities and services (including new equipment) at CozadCommunityHospital

A new $100,000 gallery showcasing featured artists at The Robert Henri Museum

A new $65,000 greenhouse for agriculture education and entrepreneurship training at Cozad Community Schools

A planning and implementation grant (the second of its kind) in the Downtown Revitalization category for facade renovations and alley improvements.

Additional accomplishments during the past five years include:

Housing Development Projects:

DAD and the City completed a local and area-wide housing study in 2015 with financial assistance from the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority. The plan has sparked a number of projects, including construction of seven duplex rental units for senior residents in Cozad.

DAD and the City also received two housing grants in 2015. The Department awarded DAD with Nebraska Affordable Housing Trust Funds to establish a regional Purchase Rehab Resale program, and the City of Cozad with Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to undertake Owner-Occupied Rehabilitation. Previously Cozad was awarded Neighborhood Stabilization Program 3 funds to raze the former middle school, clear the property and build new duplexes for elderly residents. This project transformed the downtown neighborhood and opened up an entire city block for new housing.

Community Development Projects:

Cozad was awarded $500,000 in CDBG Downtown Revitalization Funds in 2013 and used $225,000 of that amount for downtown business improvements. Cozad was one of the first communities in Nebraska to become an eligible municipal Rural Utility Service borrower to access Rural Economic Development Grants (REDLG) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Cozad received two REDLGs in 2012 totaling $480,000. The first REDLG grant to the CDC went toward creation of the CozadBusinessCenter (a speculative office and training center) in a former carpet store. CozadCommunityHospital received the second REDLG grant for the purchase of new equipment. These grants have helped create a $570,000 revolving loan fund for future projects.

Workforce Development Projects:

The City accessed funds from the Nebraska Workforce Investment Board to create an economic recovery plan that identified many strengths and weaknesses throughout the area. Cozad used job training funds from the U.S. Department of Labor to retrain displaced workers in blue print reading, welding, OSHA requirements, leading and motivating, and root cause analysis. In addition, the NebraskaBusinessDevelopmentCenter offered classes on interviewing and resume writing. CDC and DAD sponsored Money Matters seminars to help individuals manage and control their finances.

Economic Development Projects:

In 2009, Cozad voters renewed its LB 840, sales tax for economic development. The LB840 funds have been used to assist more than 50 business expansions or locations in Cozad during the past five years. In addition, sales tax funds have gone toward development of an industrial site at the interstate exchange. CDC contracted with Olsson & Associates in 2015 to develop master planning for the site and conduct an environmental review. Funds also were used to purchase and rehab a vacant industrial building, which attracted a new business to the community. The City also partnered with the USDA to conduct workshops on applying for energy conservation grants, leading three Cozad businesses to receive funding to install new windows and roofs, and upgrade electrical wiring.
Rick Osterloh has been president and chief operating officer of Motorola Mobility since Lenovo acquired the company in 2014, and he was a vice president at the company before that.

Now Osterloh is stepping down as Lenovo reorganizes its PC, data center, and mobile businesses.

Its a bit early to say what, if any, impact this will have on future smartphones from Motorola. But the development follows news that Lenovo would be phasing out the Motorola name on upcoming phones, while keeping the logo and possibly using the Moto by Lenovo name on some devices in markets where the Motorola name might be stronger than Lenovos.

Osterloh will be succeeded by two co-presidents of Motorola Mobility: Xudong Chen will lead the team in China and focus on development of phones for that (enormous) market, while Aymar de Lencquesaing takes over as chairman and president of Motorola, which means that everyone who had formerly worked under Osterloh will now be managed by de Lencquesaing.

Interestingly, another part of the companys reorganization brings the tablet, smart home products, and PCs (including Windows and Chrome OS products) under the same roof which is also responsible for phablets.

That suggests Lenovo sees large-screened phones or small tablets with cellular capabilities as a distinct product category thats separate from smartphones and also suggests that we probably wont see any 7 inch Moto by Lenovo products anytime soon.

via recode
A news release dated March 1965 commemorating the 25th anniversary of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbes arrival to the United States:

The following article is in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn to the United States, 1940-1965, which will be marked on the 9th day of Adar Sheni, this year on Saturday, March 13.

It was a typically brisk windswept March morning, that Tuesday back in 1940, which saw a crowd of several thousand at New Yorks pier 97, gathered there to witness what was to be one of the finest hours in Judeo-American history.

The Drottingholm, a Swedish liner, had just weighed anchor and its passengers prepared to disembark. New York City police suggested that the distinguished passenger whom the assembled had come to greet, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, the great sage and hero who narrowly escaped the European onslaught, be the first to go ashore, to avoid unnecessary confusion on the part of the surging crowd.

Even the transatlantic voyage of the celebrated Chassidic leader was, as his life story, stormy and eventful. North Atlantic waters were infested with U boats; no one was at any time certain that the ship would ever reach its destination. No less than four times was the Drottingholm stopped on the high seas by warships of various countries who wanted to assure themselves of its neutrality and search for military cargo. In fact, the liner was the last commercial transport to cross the Atlantic prior to the shipping ban of World War II.

But the Rebbe had finally made it and his long awaited arrival to the shores of America had become a reality. Here he stood surrounded by the official reception party which had gone out to sea aboard a special boat to greet him as the Drottingholm approached the harbor.

As he made his way to a special platform set up on the pier for his reception, a resounding but grateful Sholom Aleichem rocked the pier.

The reception was brief. The Rebbe addressed the gracious crowd and acknowledged the presence of the various dignitaries, representatives from all levels of government and nearly all Jewish organizations, and all who had come to welcome him.

Your warm and cordial reception is deeply moving, the Rebbe said, but the joy in my heart caused by this meeting is overwhelmed with pain and concern for the plight of our brethren on the other side. Their cry for help echoes in my ears and heart. I have not come to seek my own refuge, the Rebbe exclaimed.

Europe is aflare, countries are being savagely overrun, Jews are being mercilessly massacred, there exists in Europe a holocaust which defies description. Americas conscience must be awakened, and above all, American Jewry must alert itself to the life saving mission now on its hands as never before in the history of mankind.

As it turned out, the Rebbes mission was actually twofold. While he had to focus concern on what was happening in Europe, he knew that religious Jewish life in America sorely needed to be revitalized.

American Jewry was by in large frozen in complacency, and he realized that  as he phrased it  the ice of American Jewry must be melted. Toward this enormous task with all its ramifications he vowed to dedicate himself.

On the very first day of his arrival he founded his first school in the United States. A number of senior Yeshiva students registered to study under his guidance, and temporary quarters were immediately arranged. This small group of scholars soon became the nucleus of the large school network he was to establish in America.

The Rebbe could not contently acquiesce to the new community which had formed around him in New York alone. With his keen pioneering perception he concluded that if there was a lost generation of Jews in America, it was the new one, the children, which can and must be salvaged from ignorance of their glorious heritage and way of life.

He sent forth capable and determined young men to found Jewish day schools in Jewish communities far from New York. These schools would educate all Jewish children regardless of background or previous orientation. Characteristically, the young emissaries encountered strong opposition. The schools were refuted by those who considered them unfashionable and the whole idea preposterous. But the stubbornly dedicated young men, most of whom were American born, held their ground, and before long opposition gave way. The Rebbes schools were not only there to stay but also became the forerunner of the Jewish day school system with schools in nearly all sizeable Jewish communities throughout the country.

The Rebbe soon after his arrival also founded a number of other organizations to cope with matters of Jewish concern. His Merkos LInyonei Chinuch (Central Organization for Jewish Education) has become one of the largest Jewish international educational organizations of its kind in the world today. His Machne Israel is devoted to problems of Jewish welfare; Kehot Publication Society is the worlds largest publisher of Chassidic literature  to mention but a few of his more popular organizations.

Rabbi Joseph Schneersohn possessed a uniquely multifarious personality. For despite his expansive communal activity, he was, after all, a spiritual leader of countless thousands from all walks of life, from all over the world, who continually sought his counsel.

His mind and heart were constantly and devotedly attuned to the call of the Jewish masses, yet his sincere concern for the individual was fatherly.

In the tradition of Chabad-Lubavitch leaders of which he was the sixth in succession, he contributed his profound and articulate teachings to the annals of Chabad philosophy. The recent gradual publication of his discourses and writings attest to the genius and stature of this man so completely steeped in the inexhaustible amplitude of the Torah.

It is unfortunate that the Rebbes epoch making heroism while in the Soviet Union has not been, and for obvious reasons cannot be, committed to print. During his many years in Russia, despite vicious and relentless attempts to destroy Judaism, the Rebbe lead his adherents in raising generations of loyal Torah true Jews. The persecution, imprisonment and physical torture suffered as a result of his efforts there, left its mark on his body. Those who had seen him during his visit to the United States in 1930, saw a marked difference in seeing him upon arrival in 1940. His voice was not nearly as audible, his reddish golden beard turned silver, his body noticeably weaker.

Yet the temptation of abundance and sudden freedom can be an equally difficult obstacle to surmount. As far as the Rebbe was concerned, though, his undaunted spirit, his vision and determination was, to say the least, unchanged, in the free world.

During his ten years in the United States until his passing in 1950, he succeeded in transplanting the Israel of Old in this country. In the land once thought to be doomed never to see a Torah true future, he sunk deep and fruitful roots.

As Divine Providence would have it that decade served as a prelude to the era of his successor and son-in-law, the present Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, whose spiritual affluence and magnanimous abilities have since his ascension in 1950 long become universally recognized, and whose influence  directly or indirectly  today penetrates the mainstream of Jewish life in communities throughout the world.

Therefore, in marking the 25th anniversary of the late Rebbes arrival to the shores of the United States of America on the 9th day of Adar Sheni  this year on Saturday, March 13  it is not only American Jewry but indeed world Jewry at large which has much thanks to give in commemorating this auspicious milestone in Jewish history.

* * * * *

3/1/65
A day after news emerged that Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan had sent legal notices to each other  containing allegations of intimidation and threat, and stalking and defamation, respectively  the story got murkier.

In a report published in the Mumbai Mirror on Thursday, a close friend of Kanganas has been quoted as saying that the two actors were engaged to be married in 2014, although the relationship ultimately fizzled out.

From the report, the source provided a date line of sorts of the reported relationship between the two Bollywood stars.

2009: Just friends

It was in 2009 that Hrithik and Kangana worked together in Kites. The Mirror report quotes their source as having said: It started out as a friendship between two people who were both going through a rough patch. His marriage was in trouble and his relationship with his Kites co-star, Mexican model/actress Barbara Mori, wasn't working out. Kangana was going through troubles of her own and they found solace in each other's company and became good friends.

It was when work began on Krrish 3 that the Kangana-Hrithik relationship changed from that of friendship, the report states. Apparently, it was Hrithik who pursued Kangana  although she initially felt uncomfortable with the attention  and she gave in after six months.

2013: Relationship develops

Krrish 3 was released in November 2013. By mid-December Hrithik had released a statement that his 17-year-long marriage with Sussanne was over. Sussanne has decided to separate from me and end our 17-year-long relationship, he wrote to fans, in a statement. But news reports at the time pointed out that Sussanne had moved out of the family home at least four months before the announcement of their separation was even made.

In December 2013, Kangana received a call from Hrithik telling her his marriage was over. He reportedly told her that he wanted to marry her, although the Mirror source says that Kangana was afraid that he was doing this on the rebound.

2014: A "proposal in Paris", and a downward slide

In January 2014, Hrithik reportedly proposed to Kangana in Paris. But by February, things were going downhill. In the first week of February, soon after he resumed shooting for Bang Bang, Hrithik stopped communicating with her (Kangana), Mirrors source says.

In March  after she won the National Award for Queen  Kanganas friend claims that Hrithik once again made contact with Kangana, asking her to take him back. But by May 2014, the relationship had soured again, and was reportedly over.

2016: Rumours, and then the legal notices

While rumours of their relationship dogged both actors all through 2015, it was only in January 2016 that they came to a head with the speculation over Aashiqui 3, and whether or not Hrithik had a role to play in getting Kangana dropped from the project. Then came the now infamous interview where Kangana made an oblique reference to silly exes, Hrithik tweeted about being more likely to date the Pope than any of the women the press had linked him up with, and finally, the legal notices that brought the saga into the public eye.

The email trail from 2014-16

Even as the actors trade accusations through their lawyers, an email ID purportedly in Hrithiks name is at the centre of the controversy.

According to the legal notice Hrithik filed through his lawyer Deepesh Mehta, he first became aware of a fake email ID, being operated by someone impersonating the actor, when Kangana approached him at Karan Johars birthday party in May 2014, thanking him for some congratulatory emails she received. He then shared his correct email address with her, after which she began bombarding him with up to 50 emails a day.

During December 2014, Hrithik had a series of communications with the Mumbai police about the bogus email ID.

On March 5, 2016, days before the news of the legal notices emerged, Hrithik once again sent a request to the Mumbai police, urging them to trace the imposter who was communicating with people through a bogus ID.

Kanganas legal notice, however, contends that the email ID in question is real and that Hrithk himself had created it to communicate with her. It further states that he was not serious about his complaint and that he first approached the police only seven months after she mentioned it to him at Karan Johars birthday party in May 2014.

A report published in DNA on Thursday also states that Hrithik was aware that the issue with Kangana would take a legal turn, and had a closed door meeting with top officials of the Mumbai police, where he handed over all his correspondence with the actress to them.
Mumbai: Actor Hrithik Roshan has decided to again request the cyber crime division of Mumbai police to trace the person who was allegedly talking to actress Kangana Ranaut on his behalf from an email address.

Hrithik and Kangana have slapped legal notices on each other.

The actor, 42, who was the first to send the legal notice to his Krrish 3 co-star, has demanded that Kangana apologise in a press conference and clear the air about their alleged affair which he firmly refutes.

A defiant Kangana, 28, said she was not a "dim-witted" teenager and refused to apologise. She instead shot off a counter-notice to Hrithik warning him to take back his notice or face a criminal case.

On December 12, 2014, Hrithik had first complained to the cyber crime division about an unknown person using the email-id hroshan@email.com and talking to his fans. The complaint letter was then sent to concerned police officials.

"My client had filed the complaint first on December 12, 2014 regarding an imposter using the email address hroshan@email.com and talking to people. This was followed up with the authorities quite a few times. Again on March 5, 2016, my client had requested to find out the imposter and take action," Hrithik's lawyer Dipesh Mehta told PTI today.

"We would again pursue the matter with the cyber crime division as this is the crux (of legal battle between Hrithik and Kangana) of the whole matter. We are confident that the authorities would nail the person at the earliest, and this would put the matter to rest once and for all," he said.

The complaint letter had stated that, "I have a personal email address which is hroshan@mac.com and I do not have any other email address. I only communicate with public from this email address. Recently it was brought to my notice that some unknown person is using an email address hroshan@email.com and is impersonating himself as Hrithik Roshan before the public."

The letter further said, "Many innocent people including my fans and certain people from the film industry have told me that they are communicating with me on hroshan@email.com. When I told them that my email id is hroshan@mac.com they are not ready to believe the same."

In his letter, Hrithik revealed that a young girl (apparently implied to Kangana) has sent a lot of personal

stuff on the email address hroshan@email.com.

"A young girl sent a lot of photographs and film clips on the email address hroshan@email.com thinking that she is sending it to me. I believe the said material if used wrongly can ruin my reputation and the girl completely," the letter added.

PTI
Investigative agencies seem to be on a an overdrive to get a tighter grip on wilful defaulter billionaire Vijay Mallya, who flew out of India on 2 March and is rumoured to be in his plush country home in London, a few days before lenders moved the apex court to restrain him from escaping from the country.

According to latest reports, the CBI is looking into about three lakh banking transactions, most of them made to foreign countries, related to over the Rs 7,000 crore bank loan default case involving Mallya. According to a report in The Times of India, the investigative agency has now brought under its ambit all the 17 banks that form the consortium of lenders. Earlier, it was only probing Mallya's Rs 900 crore loan default with IDBI Bank.

A PTI report, which said 6 lakh such transactions are under scanner, said the CBI is following substantive leads of money trail to four nations in the case. The official sources quoted in the report, however, refused to divulge the name of the countries as it might affect the probe.

Officials of the 17 banks which gave loan to Kingfisher Airlines (now defunct) and UB Group, promoted by Mallya, are also under the agency's scanner for their alleged involvement in the case, they said.

Interestingly, none of the banks has so far reported "fraud" to the CBI in this case despite being approached by the agency.

The CBI had in 2012 and 2014 approached IDBI Bank, which has allegedly sanctioned Rs 900 crore loan in violation of norms, to report the default. Similarly, Union Bank of India was also approached early this year by the CBI to report the alleged fraud. But both these banks, and 15 others, have not come forward with a formal complaint so far, the sources said.

The CBI had recently questioned former chief financial officers  A Raghunathan and Ravi Nedungadi  of the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines and UB Group respectively.

While Raghunathan is a named accused in the CBI's case registered in October last year, Nedungadi had resigned recently from the post of CFO of the UB Group.

CBI had registered a case against the then UB Group Chairman Mallya, Kingfisher Airlines, Raghunathan, and unknown officials of IDBI Bank alleging that the Rs 900 crore loan sanctioned to the airline was in violation of norms.

The agency had alleged that Kingfisher Airlines had diverted a substantial chunk of the loans secured from public sector banks to tax havens for purposes not specified in loan applications.

According to a report in The Hindu, in IDBI Bank cases the charges pertians to "Section 409 (criminal breach of trust) read with Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and other provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act against unknown IDBI officials". The agency now plans to add cheating charge too, says the report.

The CBI will have to build a water tight case against the baron, who still has a net worth of about Rs 7,000 crore. This is because proof of money laundering is key to pinning him down.

Shriram Subramanian, founder of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research Services, says in a report in the Mint newspaper today that unless this charge is proven, Mallya is not a criminal.

He can return to India and settle with the banks to the extent of his personal guarantees on the loans taken by Kingfisher Airlines," Subramanian has been quoted as saying in the report. If the money laundering charges are proven, it will be difficult for him to do this, he says.

The 17 banks whose loans have come under the scrutiny of CBI also include UCO bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Vijaya Bank, Bank of Baroda, Corporation Bank, Bank of India, United Bank of India, State Bank of Mysore and Indian Overseas Bank.

The total default in repayment of loans by Kingfisher Airlines, which stopped its operations in October 2012, is over Rs 7,000 crore.

A consortium of banks led by SBI wants to liquidate Mallya's assets to recover the loans.

With PTI
Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who is in the United Kingdom, has been given time until 2 April to appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the over Rs 900 crore IDBI Bank loan default case.

Mallya, who left the country on 2 March, days before the Supreme Court heard a plea by banks seeking recovery of the dues from his group firms, had on Thursday said that he would seek extension until April.

ED had earlier issued summons to Mallya for "personal appearance" before it in Mumbai on March 18 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The tycoon's moved out of India has kicked up a controversy and political blame game between the ruling NDA and opposition parties. What made matters worse is the revelation that Mallya left the country despite a look out circular issued by the CBI.

The directive in the CBI circular, however, did not want Mallya to be detained even if he is seen flying out. The notice merely wanted the investigative agency to be informed of his move.

Media reports said the look out circular issued in November 2015 was amended to change the word 'detain' to 'inform'. The agency later said the first notice seeking his detention was sent by mistake.

A report in The Economic Times on Friday said the status of the CBI look out circular cannot be changed immediately since there are no criminal charges against Mallya yet.

In short, the report said, even if Mallya comes to India to appear before the ED, the CBI notice will continue to be "in the inform category", indicating he will be able to fly out easily as earlier.

In a related development, the government on Thursday made it clear that banks will recover every penny of loan of over Rs 9,000 crore given to his group firms. Mallya's net worth is estimated to be around Rs 7,000 crore.

"... His (Mallya's) facts are very clear. Every government agency, whether its taxation department or investigative agency, wherever he has violated law, is going to take strong action. As far as banks are concerned, they are going to recover every penny of the rupee that they can from him," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said.

The minister was answering questions at India Today Conclave in New Delhi on what the government was doing to recover money from Mallya.

In Mumbai, auction of Kingfisher House, once the headquarters of Mallya's defunct airline, proved to be a flop show today with no bids coming in, presumably due to litigation fears and a high reserve price of Rs 150 crore.

The auction of the property, with a built-up area of over 17,000 sq ft in Vile Parle area near domestic airport here, started at 1130 hrs and ended in about an hour with no success.

The ED had recently registered a money laundering case against Mallya and others based on a CBI FIR registered last year. The agency is also investigating the overall financial structure of the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines and will look into any payment of kickbacks to secure loan.

The CBI had booked Mallya, the Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines, its Directors, former Chief Financial Officer of the airlines A Raghunathan and unknown officials of IDBI Bank in its FIR alleging that the loan was sanctioned in violation of norms regarding credit limits.

With PTI
Three hours east of New Delhi, in the village of Piplera, recently married Abhilekh Swami has stopped to refuel his first automobile, a Hyundai hatchback, at an Indian Oil filling station.

Late model SUVs and Mercedes also ply the potholed roads and dusty lanes of the small gathering of dwellings in Uttar Pradesh.

"Earlier I used to hire a taxi for taking my wife and old parents for long distance travel. Now we travel in our car," said Swami, 28, an accountant with a private company.

Swami said he is averaging about 2,000 kilometres a month in the vehicle he bought last August, mostly for commuting to work, shopping and visiting relatives.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians, spurred by cheap credit and rising incomes, are buying cars each month to free themselves from creaky, unreliable public transport.

This is expected to help push India ahead of China as the energy demand growth leader, with its total fuel consumption rising by a tenth to a record in the fiscal year-to-date.

Underpinned by annual economic growth of 7-8 percent, India's fuel demand is seen as a key oil price support over 2016-2017, eating into a supply overhang that has pulled down global crude as much as 70 percent since mid-2014.

India has already pipped Japan as the world's third-largest oil consumer. By 2040, India will have more than doubled its current oil use to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about on par with China's consumption last year.

This roar of motor - as well as power and household - fuel use means some refineries initially planned for exports, such as the 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery on India's east coast, have been flipped to serve domestic oil demand.

"When we conceived Paradip we were hoping to export gasoline, but now the products will be for meeting local demand," said Sanjiv Singh, head of refineries at Indian Oil Corp.

Reflecting India's rising importance as a buyer, Igor Sechin, chief executive of the world's biggest listed oil company Rosneft, was in New Delhi this week to sign several deals with Indian companies such as IOC, Oil India Ltd and Bharat PetroResources Ltd.

FUEL GOES BOOM

Over April-February - the first 11 months of India's current fiscal year - fuel demand rose 10 percent to about 170 million tonnes (4 million bpd), according to a report this week by the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).

For the next fiscal year through March 2017, the PPAC has forecast fuel demand growth at 7.3 percent.

"India's push to Make-in-India, reforms in mining, and improvements in infrastructure like better roads, airports and job creation will help increase fuel consumption in the country," said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Energy Economics.

India plans to spend Rs 97,000 crore ($14 billion) in 2016-2017 on expanding and improving the country's road network, which at 4.7 million km is already vying with China as the world's second-longest after the United States, although highways make up less than 2 percent of that figure.

A 23.55 percent increase in the salaries, allowances and pensions of millions of government employees later this year is also expected to shore up consumer spending, boosting purchases of cars and motorcycles.

Sales of passenger cars and utility vehicles in India are expected to grow by as much as 12 percent in the next fiscal year, up from an estimated 6 percent this year.

That translates to around 230,000 new passenger vehicles hitting the roads each month.

The main impact has been on gasoline demand, which the PPAC expects to grow to 24.2 million tonnes (560,000 bpd) by next year, up more than 12 percent from 21.5 million tonnes estimated for this fiscal year.

"Gasoline demand has been growing in double digits and we expect this to continue as it depends on sales of two-wheelers and cars," said Indian Oil Corp's Singh.

Other fuels are seeing growth as well, and for similar reasons.

To meet rising demand, state refiners are planning a 1.2 million bpd plant on the country's west coast, adding to current overall capacity of 4.6 million bpd, although a fixed timeline has not been set.

In east Delhi, at one of India's busiest motor fuel pumps, owner Ajay Bansal said demand was soaring.

"There is a growing demand for new and second hand cars. Now second hand cars are very cheap," he said. "That's an attraction to first-time buyers."

Reuters
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly was the centre of high drama here on Friday as Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy entered into an argument with security staff which denied entry to YSR Congress MLA R K Roja citing the Speaker's order.

The YSRC legislators staged a sit-in demanding that Roja, who was suspended for a year during the winter session of the AP Assembly in December last year, be permitted to enter the Assembly in accordance with the interim order issued by High Court Justice A Ramalingeswara Rao here yesterday.

Assembly Chief Marshal Ganesh, however, told the YSRC leaders that Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao directed them not to allow Roja into the House.

Jagan then entered into a verbal duel demanding that the Chief Marshal show the Speaker's order and displayed the order of the High Court judge.

Roja tried to enter the Assembly through Gate 2 along with her lawyer but the police prevented them.

Jagan then tried to take the lawyer inside in his car but he too was blocked saying lawyers were not permitted.

"I have my right to take anybody inside. They can come to my chamber. I will send my pass," Jagan told the police officials.

The opposition MLAs then staged a sit-in on the Assembly premises protesting the Speaker's decision to prevent Roja's entry into the House.

"This amounts to contempt of the court," they said.

The single judge of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad issued an interim order yesterday suspending the proceedings of the Assembly wherein Roja was suspended from the House for a year for using unparliamentary and abusive language against certain ruling TDP members, including Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, during the winter session in December last.

The state government has said the single judge's order will be challenged before a division bench of the High Court.

PTI
Chandigarh: Prohibitory orders were clamped and mobile internet services suspended at many places in Haryana on Friday as the state braced for possible renewal of the Jat quota agitation that had led to widespread violence claiming the lives of 30 people last month.

Mobile internet services for 2G, 3G and 4G have been suspended for the time being in many sensitive districts, including Rohtak and Jhajjar, which were the epicentre of the recent Jat stir, officials said.

Prohibitory orders banning assembly of five or more persons have also been issued by some district authorities, including Sonipat, as a precautionary measure to maintain peace.

"There were some messages which were being circulated on WhatsApp about fake untoward incidents. Some messages were

also forwarded on the mobile number of Rohtak's Superintendent

of Police. We have rounded up few persons in this regard," Rohtak's deputy commissioner, Atul Kumar told PTI.

Asked how long the internet services will remain suspended, he said, "We will not prolong it. These are just precautionary measures."

Jhajjar's SP Jashan Deep Singh also said they had taken a similar step as such messages were being circulated. "In order to prevent any wider circulation, we have taken the step to suspend the services for the time being," he said.

Meanwhile, the Haryana government said it was holding talks with Jat leaders on Friday afternoon on their quota demand. The All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghursh Samiti president Yashpal Malik said that in view of their meeting with Haryana chief secretary and director general of police, the agitation will not be resumed. "After meeting the top officials, the next course of action will be taken," he said.

Various Jat organisations had given a 72-hour deadline on Monday threatening to resume their quota agitation if their demands were not met by the Manohar Lal Khattar government. The deadline ended on Thursday following which the state government invited Jat leaders for talks.

Jats are demanding a 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational institutions, besides withdrawal of FIRs registered against the protesters, compensation to those killed during the stir and action against Raj Kumar Saini, the BJP MP from Kurukshetra, for his "anti-Jat" reservation stand.

PTI
By Keshav Upadhye

A controversy is raging in the country now about whether one should say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' or not. That a controversy has erupted on the issue of chanting slogans in praise of one's country is unfortunate. One of the two MIM MLAs, who refused to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', have been suspended from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly. Now, the question has been raised about whether patriotism exists in only saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

All these occurrences are not only irritating but nauseating as well.

The arguments of the pseudo-seculars started as soon Asaduddin Owaisi spoke. The question is not whether or not one should say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', but whether we are now going to question every icon of pride in this country. Some time ago, the hoisting of the tricolour in universities was also criticised. The question was, and is, asked about what such symbolism can achieve. Some even asked a very laughable and irrelevant question about whether criminals would be pardoned if they said 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. By raising objections like what hoisting of flags will achieve, why one should chant slogans, and whether it will eradicate corruption or whether patriotism will do away with hunger etc, where are we taking our nation?

To proclaim that the Constitution of the country is supreme and at the same time labeling Afzal Guru's hanging  who was executed after completing all due legal processes  as a 'judicial killing' at a college programme and to brand the programme as freedom of expression; supporting the slogans of destruction of India directly or indirectly and at the same time, searching for the validity of slogans in India's praise in legal books is a blatant falsehood. Such double-faced forces must be opposed in the country.

Some have claimed that they would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai because it was RSS' agenda. Actually, the statement that 'people in the country have to be told to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai' was made by Sarsanghchalak Mohanrao Bhagwat in the backdrop of incidents at JNU. However, MIM's Owaisi bragged that he would never chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife was held to his throat. His party's legislators ran the same line forward and said in the Assembly that they would not say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

Actually, Kiran Chandra Banerjee put forward the concept of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' in 1873 and the songs Bharat Mata and Vande Mataram appeared in the famous novel Anandmath by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1882. It became a historic song, and an inspiration for India's freedom struggle. Thereafter, the song Vande Mataram used to be sung in the Congress sessions after 1885. Vande Mataram was sung even when Muslims presided over Congress sessions. It was sung in 1887 when Badaruddin was president, then in 1896 when Rahim Sayani, in 1913 when Sayyad Mohammad Bahadur was president and also in 1927 when MA Ansari was Congress president. None objected to it until 1937 when Mohammad Ali Jinnah objected to it.

On 1 March, 1938 he propounded the thought that Vande Mataram must go. In the Calcutta session of the Muslim League on 6 April, 1938, Vande Mataram was opposed and the history that followed is known to all.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, says in his Discovery of India, When I went to public meetings, I was welcomed by chants of Bharat Mata ki Jai. I ask, who is Bharat Mata? The people in front of me gaped at me in surprise...he hills, rivers, forests, agriculture here, income received from it and people living on this land... There is a common thread binding all of them together... Bharat Mata. To say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' is to hail all these people... They are the sons of this Bharat Mata.

Thousands of people sacrificed themselves in India's freedom struggle saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. When he was flogged, martyr Chandrashekhar Azad cried 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' with every cane he received.

The reason for all these events today is that MIM wants to do exactly what Jinnah wanted to do.

In fact, millions of Muslim brethren in this country have no objection to saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. The Muslims here claim their legacy stemming from revolutionaries like Ashfaq Ullah Khan all the way to Abdul Kalam Azad. However, when a political party says that it will not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', one has to check the context. MIM runs the legacy of anti-India Razakar in Hyderabad. Kasim Rizvi, the leader of Razakars and the MIM party, handed over the party to the grandfather of Asaduddin Owaisi before he left for Pakistan. When one looks at this context and the history, one understands why it is necessary to oppose such vitriol.

The first sentence in the preamble of the Constitution of India says, We, the people of India,... for a sovereign secular democratic republic. Now, a democratic republic can be built only when the unity, brotherhood and love among each other grows. The chants of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' or unfurling of the tricolour not only remind us of our glorious freedom struggle, but also breed affection among us. Will chanting of slogans reduce crime or end corruption? There are laws to take care of that. However, if saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' increases the feeling of brotherhood, what is wrong with that?

Bharat Mata is not an icon of religion or any organisation. It is a slogan which inspired an enslaved nation to attain independence. In Nehru's words, Saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' is to hail the people of this country. Then why should one object?

The questions is now being asked as to under which rule this MLA was suspended in the Assembly. The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has a tradition of members across the parties coming together on issues of wider consequences, leaving aside their party politics. All parties unanimously supported the bill in Legislative Assembly banning the dance bars. Yesterday, when two members refused to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', the legislators were obviously enraged. Although there is no stipulation to chant these slogans, there is no prohibition against doing so either.

In fact, does one need a Constitutional provision for patriotism? There is no sense is asking for legal and Constitutional provisions for something that should flow in the blood. In such a situation, the unanimous demand by the enraged members to suspend the member who refused to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' is justified.

The author is a spokesperson for the Maharashtra BJP. He tweets @keshavupadhye
By Jyoti Punwani

The RSS has achieved one thing with its insistence on everyone chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. Hindus may not have done so, but many young Muslims have added Bharat Mata to the list of Hindu deities.

This came through in a conversation with two such youths after AIMIM MLA from Mumbai Waris Pathan was suspended from the state assembly for refusing to raise the slogan 'Bharat Mata ki Jai. Their views can be seen as a representation of a large section of young urban Muslims.

Shanul Syed moved from Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party to Asaduddin Owaisis AIMIM in just a few months. The young Jogeshwari resident, who once campaigned for former Aam Aadmi Party leader Mayank Gandhi, is fully in agreement with his party chiefs views on Bharat Mata. "I cannot worship my country but will always be proud of being Indian," he said. "I am willing to say 'Hindustan zindabad'. But Bharat Mata is a goddess. Shes always depicted in a saffron sari with a tiger. Shes up there on the wall with other deities in RSS offices. The RSS cant force me into worshipping an idol.

His views were echoed by Adil Khatri, an idealistic young man from Bandra, who made the same political journey that Shanul did, except that he soon realized Owaisi was not the leader for him. He has now started, along with non-Muslims, an NGO called Jai Ho on civic issues.

"I would willingly say victory to my motherland, but I wont say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'," said Adil. "She was originally painted as a goddess by Abanindranath Tagore. When Mohan Bhagwat refers to her, it's as a deity. The RSS worships her."

This is another victory for the RSS  in Modi's India, the ideological body has become the defining word on Hinduism, for many non-Hindus. Was there any other basis for their view? "Wikipedia," replied Adil, adding that there were five temples dedicated to Bharat Mata in India, and her idol could be found in many others.

When the Aam Aadmi Party set up base in Mumbai before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Muslims were conspicuous by their presence in the AAP candidates' election campaigns. "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai" were staple slogans raised during these campaigns.

But Adil said that as long as 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' meant "victory to the motherland", he would unhesitatingly shout it, he admitted he had not done so even as an enthusiastic AAP member, who himself had got many Muslims into the party fold. Adil said that Kejriwal and his followers had no Hindutva intention, yet, he maintained, Bharat Mata was a goddess.

Speaking with the two young men, another alarming realisation dawned: they knew very little about the religion followed by 80 percent of Indians. And both of them are educated urban Muslims.

Perhaps thats the reason for their ignorance. Rural Hindus and Muslims are steeped in each others traditions. Mumbai, on the other hand, has always had ghettos. Its common for Hindus in this city to grow up without striking an acquaintance with a single Muslim. For such Hindus, Islam and Muslims would probably mean nothing more than fanaticism, beards, qurbani, shervani, biryani, sevaiyan and four wives.

What do Hinduism and Hindus mean for Muslims whove never had a Hindu acquaintance? Neither Shanul nor Adil personally knew any Hindu who worshipped Bharat Mata. But for them, it was quite natural to assume that a religion which had crores of deities, could have the motherland as one of them. As Shanul put it: "Anyone can be a goddess."

Trying to convince them that having a portrait of someone in a temple does not confer divine status on them didnt work. They agreed that temples of Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachhan did not make the two icons into gods. But Bharat Mata had the stamp of the RSS, hence she had to be a goddess.

Though Adil insisted that Asaduddin Owaisi or the AIMIM did not represent him, this ignorance of the others beliefs is exactly what the Hyderabad MP is looking for in his voter: Muslims whose knowledge does not extend beyond their community, for whom the English-speaking Barrister, who has won the Best Parliamentarian Award many times, is the fountain of wisdom.

Not surprisingly, this situation, wherein the two communities live as separate blocks with little intimacy with each other, suits the RSS perfectly. It makes it so much easier for Bhagwat and Co to perpetuate the "anti-national violent" Muslim stereotype.

But theres one development that goes against this dismal scenario of fanatics feeding off each other from ghettoisation. Despite Mumbai being full of Muslim ghettoes where schools are many but male dropout rates are high, ie, ideal breeding grounds for the AIMIM, only 200 Muslims turned out at the partys protest in support of suspended MLA Waris Pathan. Pathans plight and Owaisis bluster seem to have left his potential voters unmoved.

Does that mean the concept of "Bharat Mata", goddess or not, is too distant for ordinary Muslims, 60 % of whom live below the poverty line in Maharashtra (according to the Mehmood-ur-Rahman Committee report? The RSS-Shiv Sena-BJP have always depended on Muslims getting provoked. If they dont, what will the Hindutvawadis do?
Raipur: An eight-year-old girl was killed on Thursday when a pressure bomb, suspected to have been laid by Naxals, went off in a dense forest pocket in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, police said.

The incident took place in Muraliguda forests on the under-construction Konta-Banda road when the victim, Muchaki Anita, was heading towards her village Kanhiguda along with her mother, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police Santosh Singh told PTI by phone.

The girl and her mother had gone to the weekly market at Konta and were returning home by foot in the evening.

Near Murliguda, the girl inadvertently stepped on a pressure improvised explosive device (IED) planted beside the road. The IED went off, killing the minor on the spot.

"The explosion was so powerful that her body was blown to pieces," the ASP said from Sukma, around 400 km from Raipur.

The girl's mother escaped unhurt as she was a little away from the spot, he added.

On getting information about the incident, security forces were rushed to the place and the body of the victim was brought to Konta, Singh added.

Anita was a Class III student at Bhejji Ashram school in Konta, a tehsil town in the insurgency-hit district.

Separately, security forces today recovered a powerful IED - weighing about 10 kg - from Gorkha forests under the restive Bhejji police station area of Sukma, the ASP said.

PTI
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday allayed fears over possible renewal of quota agitation by Jats in Haryana and expressed confidence that a solution will be found soon.

Singh called up Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and took stock of the situation.

"I have spoken to the Haryana Chief Minister. There is no need to worry about anything. I am sure a solution will be found soon," he told reporters on the sidelines of a function in New Delhi.

The Jats, who had issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the state government to address their demands by Thursday, said they would take a decision on the future course of action after holding meeting with Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police today.

Bracing for the stir, the state government deployed paramilitary forces and police in sensitive districts and they carried out flag marches in various places to instil confidence among people in the state which witnessed widespread violence during the first phase of the agitation last month that left 30 people dead and caused extensive loss.

The Centre has sent 8,000 personnel of paramilitary forces to the state which are being deployed in sensitive areas like Rohtak and Jhajjar districts, which were the worst-affected during the first phase of the agitation last month.

Around 300 paramilitary personnel were also deployed at Munak canal, which supplies water to Delhi. It was badly damaged during the Jat agitation last month.

Prohibitory orders were today clamped and mobile internet services suspended at many places in Haryana as a precautionary measure.

PTI
In a relief to JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, a Delhi court has granted interim bail to them for six months, news reports said. The two, along with JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, were at the centre of a raging controversy over alleged anti-national slogans at the JNU campus on 9 February. The duo is likely to walk out of jail on Saturday, CNN-IBN reported.

Khalid and Bhattacharya, who are lodged in jail since 23 February, sought bail on the ground of parity with JNU student's union President Kanhaiya Kumar, saying he has already been granted bail and the incident did not attract charges of sedition. The court accepted the argument on parity with Kanhaiya Kumar while granting them interim bail.

Soon after the news of the interim bail came out, celebrations broke out the JNU campus, with students shouting slogans in favour of the students who have been slapped with sedition charges.

"The order granting bail will embolden all of us to go forward in our movement," a JNU student was quoted as saying by India Today.

The bail plea of Umar and Anirban was opposed by the investigators who said the students' intention was to create hatred against the established government which attracts the sedition charge.

The police said the case against Kanhaiya "is very different" from that of Umar and Anirban as the JNUSU President was not the organiser of the event and there are 10 independent witnesses including security guards, JNU staff and the students who have confirmed that "anti-Indian slogans were raised" at the programme.

However, the counsel for both the accused said, in this case there was no violence prior or later to the incident.

Advocate Trideep Pais, who represented Anirban, said there are a number of reports and even the police is saying that several videos on the incident which are in public domain are doctored and "even the report of JNU on the incident says that the slogans were raised by outsiders".

Pais said that event organised by both the accused cannot be termed as unlawful assembly, even though the permission to hold that meeting was cancelled as no violence took place.

While seeking bail on the ground of parity, the counsel said, "Their co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar has already been granted bail and there were similar allegations against him as well. This case is not different from Kanhaiya's. Besides these three, seven persons were also named in the case but they are also free."

Advocate Yashpal, caught on camera attacking JNU students and media persons in the Patiala House Court Complex on 15 and 17 February, was also present in the proceedings on 16 March, which took place amid high security.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Renowned lawyer and activist Amal Clooney on Friday asserted that minority voice should always be protected in a society advocating a free speech.

"The minority voice is the one you should always protect a society that advocates a free speech. Countries must allow criticism of its rulers, governments and religion, Clooney said addressing a session at India

Today Conclave.

"Locking up a dissenter will not stifle dissent. In fact it will fester it further. For India. using sedition law against students would be a step in the wrong direction, she added.

Clooney added that sedition is an anachronistic crime but it is unfortunate if a country starts using it more actively.

"I hope we could have a healthy debate on the freedom of speech in India since it is well placed for such discussion, Clooney said insisting free speech is not only a human right but also an essence of being human.

Clooney is a British-Lebanese lawyer, who has fought the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his fight against extradition. She has also represented the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy who was jailed during the Arab Spring for expressing dissent against the then Egyptian government. She is married to popular Hollywood actor George Clooney.

IANS
Four Kashmiri students had an innocent get-together in mind when they started cooking in their hostel room in Mewar University in Chittorgarh. News spread like wildfire that the students were cooking beef in their room and a mob gathered outside their door. The four students  Shakib Ashraf, Hilal Farukh, Mohammad Makbool and Shaukat Ali  were beaten up by an angry mob and later arrested.

The meat samples collected from their hostel room were tested in the laboratory and proved that it wasn't beef. According to The Indian Express, the police is claiming that they had picked up the students to save them from the angry mob.

The Indian Express report suggests members of the Bajrang Dal were involved in the incident.

A police officer deployed at the university was quoted saying that it was imperative to placate the mob or else "no one can say what would have happened," the report added. The students were arrested as a "preventive measure."

Protesters had taken to streets and a meat shop was burnt down. Security in the town and university had to be stepped after the incident.

The local court had released the students on Wednesday night with a warning that they will be under watch. In fact, one of the students said that though they were initially scared, the situation got better with the police intervention.

"The police didn't take us when the incident happened. We went to the Registrar's office and they asked us which meat that was and from where we had bought this. They asked us to show the shop from where we bought it and they took us along with them and we remained in custody for around 26 hours and it was a quite friendly atmosphere," the student said after their release.

Meanwhile, the police filed a case a local student for allegedly spreading the rumour. Chittorgarh superintendent of police PK Khamesra told The Times Of India, that a complaint against a student named Gaurav, who is the administration of a social media group, was filed for "promoting enmity between two religious groups."

According to the NDTV, the university officials played down the incident and said that small clashes between students from different socio-cultural background happen.

With inputs from PTI
Chinese Navy soldiers observe from China's amphibious landing ship Changbaishan during an escort mission in the Gulf of Aden, Aug 26, 2014. [Photo/Xinhua]

China would not have thought of establishing a logistic supply station in Djibouti were it not for fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. As the country contributing the largest force to the counter-piracy mission, China has had at least three ships in the Gulf of Aden at any given time since 2009. So far 65 ships from the People's Liberation Army Navy's 22 task forces have been deployed on counter-piracy missions, and they have escorted more than 6,100 ships, half of them foreign vessels.

These achievements have been made under stringent conditions, however. Since the PLA Navy vessels have no supply or maintenance stations overseas, they have to carry huge amounts of food and spare parts, prompting some Chinese Navy personnel to say the spare parts are more than enough to assemble a helicopter on board.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been largely curbed thanks to joint international efforts which includes, but is not limited to, military operations. But nobody can safely conclude piracy is no longer a threat.

The piracy threat at sea has its roots on land. Although a federal government is now in place in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, its control over the country remains miserably weak. A Western analyst has said, almost sarcastically, that the Somali government's control is restricted only to the airport and the presidential palace. And the United Nation has repeatedly warned piracy could stage a comeback if the political situation in Somalia remains unstable and the problem of high unemployment unsolved.

Therefore, the counter-piracy mission is likely to continue, though under a more flexible arrangement. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union have even publicly discussed discontinuing their counter-piracy missions by the end of 2016 but promised to maintain some kind of presence off the coast of Somalia if necessary. Every year about 1,600 Chinese vessels pass through the Gulf of Aden, and more ships carrying oil for China are likely to sail to through the Strait of Hormuz. The security of sea lanes cannot be more critical for China, which relies on maritime transport for up to 90 percent of its foreign trade.
New Delhi: The National Commission for Minorities has issued a notice to JNU authorities over a professor's alleged remarks calling Dalits and Muslim teachers "anti-national", days after the National Commission for Scheduled Caste issued a similar notice.

Amita Singh, who is the chairperson of the varsity's school of governance has made the alleged comments in an interview to a web portal.

"A complaint has been received by the National Commission for Minorities regarding derogatory remarks by professor Amita Singh. You are hereby requested to submit the facts and information and the action taken on allegations/matter within five days of this notice," the letter sent to the JNU Vice Chancellor said.

The varsity administration has already asked Singh to clarify her remarks after the VC had received a letter from the National Commission for Scheduled Castes on 8 March.

On being asked by the interviewer "how many teachers and students in JNU are anti-national" in her interview to the website, the professor had said, "Teachers are hardly 10 but they portray as if everybody is with them. You think a teacher in an institution like JNU would be so stupid as to back anti-national slogans? These are just five or six persons and they are Dalits and Muslims. They have their grudges."

The faculty member talks about anti-national activities in JNU, the family background of students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar and another student Umar Khalid.

The teacher had also alleged about foreign funding to anti-nationals while claiming that Bijnore, from where one of the arrested JNU student hails, is a "den of terrorism and Islamic State." According to the professor, one student still in custody believes in "strong Kashmiriyat".

The professor has been maintaining that she was quoted out of context in the interview.

PTI
New Delhi: In order to effectively deal with loan default cases similar to that of Vijay Mallya in the future, government on Friday directed public sector banks(PSBs) to immediately invoke personal guarantees of promoter directors and recover loans from them in case the companies fail to repay.

Issuing the directive to heads of PSBs, the Finance Ministry regretted that they seldom recover loan from guarantors in case of loan default by companies.

"It has been observed that there are a less number of cases where action has been taken for recovery against guarantors for attachment of assets owned by them and sell the same for recovery of defaulted loan," it said while issuing the directive in consultation with the RBI.

The ministry further told banks that "it would be pru

dent to take steps against guarantors immediately when no sign of revival is visible".

Asking banks to approach Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT), it said action against guarantors should be taken under SARFAESI Act, Indian Contract Act and relevant legislations.

Exit of beleaguered industrialist Mallya to London early this month created huge uproar in Parliament as well as outside. Various companies associated with him owe over Rs 9,000 crore to different banks.

Mallya and his group firms are being probed by several agencies including Enforcement Directorate.

Gross NPAs of PSBs rose to Rs 3.61 lakh crore while that of private lenders were at Rs 39,859 crore at the end of December 2015.

PTI
New Delhi: Justifying Lok Sabha's rejecting the amendments made by the Upper house to the Aadhaar Bill, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said adoption of changes would have pushed the legislation, aimed at streamlining the payment of benefits, into realms of unconstitutionality.

Acceptance of the amendments would have led to much wider encroachment of the Right of Privacy and an auditor or an anti-corruption authority overseeing issues of national security, he said.

"These lacunae would have pushed the Aadhaar law to the realm of unconstitutionality. Obviously, the Lok Sabha did not agree with the above suggestions, and in my view, rightly so," he said in a Facebook post.

The Lok Sabha on the last of the first half of Budget session on Wednesday waited for Rajya Sabha to decide on the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, and then swiftly rejected the amendments made to the legislation.

The amendments to be bill in Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA does not have majority, were moved by Congress members including Jairam Ramesh.

Jaitley said the legislation, aimed at better targeting of subsidies and benefits through use of unique identification number, contains stringent provisions both substantially and procedurally to protect privacy.

While National Security is the only ground on which a Competent Authority can share core bio-metric information contained in Aadhaar, amendments wanted the condition to be replaced with "vague" and "elastic" Public Emergency or in the interest of public safety.

"It is also not clear as to how Aadhaar information would have been used in dealing with situations of public emergency or public safety," he said.

Jaitley said adoption of the amendment "would have provided a scope much wider for encroaching upon privacy than the words 'National Security' which existed in both the 2010 (law moved by the UPA) and 2016 law, and would have potentially become the grounds for constitutional challenge at a later date."

Jaitley said the Congress, using its superior numbers in the Rajya Sabha, forced an amendment to replace the words 'National Security' with the words "Public Emergency or in the interest of public safety". None of these two phrases are well defined. They are vague and can be elastic.

"It is also not clear as to how Aadhaar information would have been used in dealing with situations of public emergency or public safety," he said.

Jaitley added that there had been an extensive public debate on the need for the Unique Identity Number for each resident and the desirability of not compromising with the Right to Privacy.

"The 2010 Bill drafted by the UPA had provisions in chapter VI which led to this debate. The Bill provided for sharing of identity information with the consent of the Aadhaar number holder, or by an order of any court, or a Competent Authority, disclosing the information on the grounds of 'National Security'. The draft Bill was criticised for making provisions which could compromise an individual's Right to Privacy," he said.

Stating that privacy is an essential aspect of personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution, he said the denial of privacy must be based on procedure which should be fair, just and reasonable.

"The 2016 law, therefore, contained stringent provisions both substantially and procedurally with regard to the Right of Privacy," he said.

The core bio-metric information cannot be shared with any person even with the consent of the Aadhaar card holder.

Also, the information cannot be unlawfully shared and instead of permitting any court to direct production of any such information, only a Court of the District Judge or above has been given the power to order disclosure of information excluding core biometrics.

"National Security is the only ground on which a Competent Authority can share this information," he said adding such decisions would be reviewed by a committee comprising the cabinet secretary, the law secretary and the information technology secretary before it is given effect.

The period of the direction of this Competent Authority has been limited to a maximum of three months.

The finance minister said the ground of National Security as the only ground on which the Competent Authority can share information is common to both the 2010 and 2016 laws.

"National Security is a well defined concept. The phrase exists in several legislations and also finds indirect reference in the Constitution in Article 19(2)," he said.

Stating that National security has always been held to be an exception on account of larger public interest, wherein individuals rights give way to larger public interest, he said the same principle is followed in most advanced liberal democracies.

On the proposed another amendment that the Oversight Committee to review the Competent Authority's decision should also comprise either the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) or the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), Jaitley said one is an anti-corruption authority and the other audits the government's accounts.

"Both have no nexus whatsoever with the issues of National Security," he said.

The minister said the Congress amendment proposed to delete Section 57 of the 2016 law.

Section 57 states that if under any other law the use of Aadhaar number for establishing the identity of an individual is permitted, the same law is not being over-ruled.

Stating that this proposed amendment wanted all future laws to be over-ruled, he said: "Had a Money Bill started over-ruling future unknown legislations, it would have ceased to be a Money Bill. Had the amendments proposed in the Rajya Sabha had been accepted, the encroachment to the Right of Privacy would be much wider.

"The Oversight Committee, on issues of national security, would have consisted of either an auditor or an anti-corruption authority, and the Money Bill would have gone beyond the scope of the Money Bill."

The Aadhaar database scheme, started seven years ago, was aimed at streamlining payment of benefits and cut down on massive wastage and fraud. Already, nearly a billion people have registered their finger prints and iris signatures.

Passage of the legislation now makes its mandatory for individuals to produce Aadhaar number for obtaining government benefits and subsidies.

PTI
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee - the highest temporal body of Sikhs - to suggest the areas where it could give direction for curbing Sikh-centric jokes and which are implementable.

"What are the areas where we can give directions and they can be implemented," said a bench of Chief Justice T.S.Thakur and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit as SGPC's counsel Satinder Singh Gulati told the court that because of Sikh-centric jokes, the community had got a stereotype image which was an impediment in their progress in the competitive world.

While entertaining the plea by the SGPC, the court tagged it with an earlier plea by Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) and one by advocate Harvinder Chowdhury seeking to sensitise the people about the impact of Sikh-centric jokes on the community particularly the children and clamp down on the more than 5,000 websites circulating these jokes.

The SGPC has sought direction to communications ministry to install filters to screen websites which targets Sikh community with indecent, offensive and oppressive jokes being violative of the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Besides this, the SGPC has sought direction to the website owners to pay adequate compensation to the National Legal Aid Authority for having caused damages to the reputation and dignity of Sikh community.

Addressing the court, Gulati said that the stereotype image that Sikh centric jokes creates of the community impacts them at all levels.

Pointing to the difficulties being faced by the community, Gulati said that even before a Sikh child faces an actual competition, he/she has to get over the stereotype of his/her image.

The SGPC has urged the court to decide "whether such acts of circulation of funny jokes on Sikhs, amounts to violation of their fundamental right to live with dignity under Article 21 of the constitution; their right of equality under Article 14 of the Constitution; and their right to profess and propagate their religion, as enshrined under Article 25 of the constitution."

The petition, filed by the advocate on record Kamaldeep Gulati for the SGPC, has referred to an article by Justice Sunil Ambwani of Allahabad High Court which argues that "negative stereotypes about minorities may affect decision-making in myriads of areas".

The SGPC's plea along with that of DSGMC and advocate Harvinder Chowdhury would come up for hearing on April 5.

IANS
Cairo: A spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition says that major combat operations in Yemen are coming to an end, after which the coalition will work on "long-term" plans to bring stability to the country.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri told The Associated Press today that the coalition will continue to provide air support to Yemeni forces battling Shiite Houthi rebels and Islamic militants on the ground.

The yearlong air campaign and ground assault was intended to roll back the Houthis, who seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and still control it.

Al-Asiri says the coalition is investigating reports of mass killings in northern Yemen after two Saudi-led airstrikes hit a market on Tuesday.

The Houthi-controlled state news agency, SABA, said at least 65 people were killed and 55 wounded.

AP
Dehradun: Police horse Shaktiman, who was subjected to a brutal attack during a BJP protest here on Monday, had his injured hind leg amputated in an emergency life-saving surgery on Thuesday even as a party worker was arrested. The surgery was conducted at a veterinary hospital here by a team of doctors led by surgeon Feroze Khambatta, hours after Army doctors from Pune opined that one of the hind legs of the horse that was fractured will have to be amputated as the animal might lose its life by tomorrow due to spread of gangrene from the wound.

"The surgery has gone as planned," Uttarakhand DGP BS Sidhu said tonight after a limb of the horse, which was still in pain and could not stand on its feet, was removed, three days after the attack that sparked an outrage and led to an FIR being filed against BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi. "The surgery was basically necessitated by the fact that the blood supply has ceased to the portion of multiple fractures and it was essential for saving the life of the animal. We got the best possible surgeon in the country to perform the surgery and we hope he will be able to survive," Sidhu said.

Stating that Shaktiman will take a month to recover from the surgery, Sidhu said that in the meantime he will be given temporary prosthetic aid in the form of artificial legs which will be tailor made to his specifications. "Army doctors are attending on the horse. We are doing everything we can to help it recover fully from the injuries," Dehradun SSP Sadanand Daate had said earlier in the day.

The BJP worker identified as Pramod Bora was arrested from Haldwani in Nainital district for forcefully pulling the bridle of the horse and causing its fall at the protest venue on 14 March and leaving it injured, Daate told PTI. Bora was arrested from Mukhani area of Haldwani on a requisition by Dehradun police, Nainital SSP Sweety Agarwal said, adding he has been handed over to a police team from Dehradun and is being taken to the state capital.

On reports that summons were issued to BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi by him in connection with the attack, Uttarakhand DGP BS Sidhu said only the Investigating Officer is competent to issue summons. When queried, Investigating Officer Arun Pandey neither denied nor confirmed issuing summons to the legislator, saying investigations are still on.

The horse in fact fell with its entire weight on its hind quarters under the combined impact of Joshis frontal attack with a lathi and Bora pulling up its reins from one side, Daate said.

Shaktiman, a well-trained horse which was part of Uttarakhand Mounted Police for years, was allegedly attacked by Joshi, an MLA from Mussoorie, during the march. The animal suffered fractures in one of his hind legs during the protest. An FIR had been lodged at Nehru Colony police station against Joshi and his associates.

Chief Minister Harish Rawat also expressed concern over the horse's condition.

The BJP has been demanding withdrawal of the cases lodged against its workers including Joshi with the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Ajay Bhatt asserting that they were being framed at the behest of the state government to cow down the Opposition.

PTI
The India-Pakistan moment in the picturesque lake town of Pokhara took place Thursday, with a bilateral between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart Sartaj Aziz.

Being the first meeting since the Pathankot terror attack, the conversation expectedly focused on the investigations.

Its not possible that I and Pakistan foreign affairs adviser meet and the Pathankot issue is not taken up. Yes, it was discussed, Swaraj told reporters after the talks. A Pakistan joint investigation team will visit India on 27 March and begin work the next day, Swaraj said.

The Pathankot terror attack had been a test case for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had taken the initiative to visit Lahore and greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday.

Though the foreign secretary level talks which were to follow in January are on hold, the two sides continue to engage. The NSAs talk regularly on the phone. So far this is the new element that Modi brought into the relationship but whether it will work remains to be seen. Much will depend on whether Pakistan finally delivers on its promise of co-operating on terror and if finally there is justice not just for Pathankot victims but for families of the Mumbai attack of 2008. That remains a searing memory in the psyche of most Indians.

Prime Minister Sharif had ordered a joint investigation by Pakistans Intelligence Bureau, Inter-Services Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Federal Investigation Agency and police to probe the Pathankot attack links to Pakistan. This was announced shortly after the daring strike on Indias frontline airbase.

The fact that New Delhi has agreed to allow a Pakistan team to come here to assist in tracking the terror trail speaks volumes for the new found maturity between the two countries.

In the past, a team from Islamabad would never have been allowed in. Initial murmurs of disquiet from certain expected quarters were soon squashed as the green signal came from none other than the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval himself.

While Pathankot investigations was high on Indias priority list, Pakistan is keen to ensure that Modi travels to Islamabad late this year for the Saarc summit in Islamabad. Aziz handed over an invitation to Swaraj for the Prime Minister from Nawaz Sharif.

Though neither Swaraj or Aziz spoke about it, it is evident that the two also cleared the grounds for an eventual meeting in Washington between the two prime ministers. Both Modi and Sharif will be in the US for President Barack Obamas nuclear summit scheduled for the end of March. It was after all the Paris tete-a-tete between them that resulted in the NSAs meeting in Bangkok and Sushma Swaraj flying to Islamabad for the heart of Asia meeting on

Afghanistan and the Indian Prime Ministers eventual stopover in Lahore.

Another conversation between Modi and Sharif may help to get the comprehensive dialogue moving. The two foreign secretaries were to meet in Islamabad to formalise the arrangements but had been left hanging because of the terror attack in Pathankot on 2 January.

Build stakeholders for peace

However many are wondering whether these high level meetings between Modi and Sharif add up to anything, considering that terror attacks inevitably follow such peace moves. No one has an answer to this.

Certainly not Modi by the looks of it. But as all prime ministers know, it is better to talk and keep engaging with Pakistan rather than block it out and pretend it does not exist.

While it is imperative to keep the communication lines open, it is as important to build stakeholders for peace. It is important for Prime Minister Modi to push Pakistan for opening up the trade links between the two countries.

Despite repeated promises Pakistan has so far not acted on removing tariff barriers to make it worthwhile for people to engage in profitable trade between themselves. Much of the trade is done through third countries, which leads to higher prices and unnecessary waste. Sharif himself is keen on encouraging trade and spoken of it with much enthusiasm in the past. But the army has poured cold water on his plans.

It is perhaps time that within the ambit of the comprehensive talks, which includes trade and commerce, the focus should be much more on business. After all, Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek and other issues have been talked about for years within the composite dialogue, but has achieved very little. While comprehensive talks can be taken up, the

focus should be trade and commerce, and people to people relations which can give the much needed impetus to peace building. Both countries should be generous in issuing visas and encouraging exchanges. The constituency for peace on both sides needs to expand and this can be done only when travel is made easier.
New Delhi: A lawyer at Delhi's Rohini court on Friday tried to set himself on fire inside a courtroom apparently upset over not being allotted a chamber inside the complex.

Other lawyers in the court rushed to his rescue and took off his robes which was on fire. He was rushed to a hospital for first aid and soon discharged.

Police rushed to the spot after receiving information around 11 AM of a lawyer having poured kerosene over himself in court number 216 at the Rohini court.

Ravinder Dabas, is believed to be upset over not being allotted a chamber inside the court complex for a long time, a police official said.

The police later registered a case of attempted suicide against him, the official said.

"We also talked to senior members of the bar association in the court who told us that chambers are allotted under a certain protocol and the decisions are taken by a bench of district judges.

"The allotment takes place entirely on the ground of seniority, experience and one's tenure as a practising lawyer in the court," the official added.

PTI
Jaipur: A day after they were arrested following rumours that they had cooked beef inside a university in Rajasthan's Chhittorgarh district, the Kashmiri students on Thursday said they were a "bit scared" initially but the situation got better after police intervened.

"At that particular time, we were a bit of scared that a mob has arrived and we were confused... We had taken refuge in a room and early morning when we were handed over to the police and they took us to the custody and it was nothing, they were quite friendly," one of the four students told the media.

Asked why the police took them to custody, he said "actually they (police) didn't take us when the incident happened. We went to the Registrar's office and they asked us which meat that was and from where we had bought this.

"They asked us to show the shop from where we bought it and they took us along with them and we remained in custody for around 26 hours and it was a quite friendly atmosphere," the student said after their release.

He said there was nothing to be worried about and nothing to be scared of.

"It was surprising how it is possible to buy beef from here in a state where beef is banned," said the student.

Four Kashmiri students  Shakib Ashraf, Hilal Farukh, Mohammad Makbool and Shaukat Ali  aged between 21 and 27 years, were arrested on Thursday on charges of disturbing public peace following rumours that they had cooked beef in their hostel room in a private university in Chittorgarh district.

The incident occurred on Monday night when the rumour spread that the Kashmiri students were cooking beef in their hostel room.

Sample of the meat has been sent to the forensic laboratory for testing and the report is awaited, police had said, adding prima facie the meat wasn't beef.

PTI
By Seema Kamdar

The Art of Livings gigantic event at the Yamuna floodplain has not damaged the river or the floodplains in any tangible way, let alone in the long term. This statement comes from Dr Rakesh Kumar, environmental scientist, and head of Mumbai office of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.

Dr Kumars statement assumes significance as the National Green Tribunal has criticised the World Culture Festival of the Art of Living (AOL) in its orders largely on the basis of expert opinion. The order had claimed that the floodplains and the natural flow of the river would be adversely affected. Dr Kumar had surveyed the World Culture Festival, organised by the Art of Living (AOL) in Delhi to assess the environmental situation on the ground. He says he had had a good look at the event from both sides of the Yamuna and though he did not tour the entire area used for the WCF, he could safely say that it is unlikely that the floodplains were going to be affected in any way by the event.

Coming as it does in the middle of a controversy over the alleged environmental damage caused by the AOL on the Yamuna floodplains, Dr Kumars statements stand out. Its required to hold more non-polluting events to bring attention to the Yamuna and make people connect to the river banks, said Dr Kumar, who is a respected name in environmental engineering and water-related issues.

He clarified that he is not an AOL follower and his only interest in the event was professional. On the second day of the three-day festival (March 12), I moved around the area, crossed the pontoon bridge and came to the other side of the river. So I got a reasonable decent overall glimpse of everything, he told Firstpost.

There were around 10 to 15 gates, which kept the flow of people comfortable. The entire layout was very well mapped. There were more than adequate toilets (650 chemical toilets to dissolve the waste and leave no residue on the ground), plenty of litterbins, and the participants were very disciplined. This was unlike many other events that I have seen.

As for the pontoon bridges, he said those were necessary in case of the need of sudden evacuation. I didnt see any damage to the river due to the pontoon bridge, he said. In any case, pontoon bridges are very common in the north. On the issue of the use of the army, the AOL has already said the Delhi government requisitioned the forces to ensure safety of the participants.

On the claim made by some environmentalists that the compaction of the ground would destroy the floodplains, Dr Kumar said: Compaction is done to keep it stable. It is not critical to the environment unless its done for, say, water tanks holding lakhs of litres or a reservoir. Any real compaction would require two of three layers of material, which is pressured into place by road rollers. However, at the WCF, I did not see any construction-related compaction.

In fact, he said, there were no semi-permanent structures anywhere. Everything built was temporary and that could be easily dismantled, he explained. I visited the venue on the second day in a police vehicle and even though it was an SUV, the tyres sank in the mud due to the rain. There was no compaction of the kind that could have a lasting effect. They would have perhaps laid some rubble where vehicular movement was anticipated but even at those places, the ground was very muddy beyond a point.

The Art of Living has claimed that it has used eco-friendly materials like wood, mud and cloth. For instance, it has said, the ramp to the stage was made of mud, as was the pathway. No cement or concrete was used in any form. Not trees were cut. The wetland was covered with construction debris and weeds; they remained untouched except that the debris and weeds were removed.

The seven-acre dais rested on itself; it had no foundation in the river or the riverbed, a fact that led to concern among some sections of the media that the stage would cave under the weight of thousands of performing artists and attendees. It was built over-ground, of scaffolding material, with a shuttering plate beneath scaffolding and wooden boards on top. The stage held for the three days of the festival.

Because no digging was undertaken, Dr Kumar said the dais was safe.

Although he is uninterested in stepping into the controversy that the event has been rigged up to become, he maintained that on the basis of whatever he saw no real damage appears to have been done to the river of the floodplains.

Insisting that it is important to keep the spotlight on the Yamuna, he cited the example of Mithi river in Mumbai. The reason Mithi could not really be salvaged is because everyone had made it their backyard. Now that there are bridges connecting the river, you can see what people are doing to it. This exposure is important, he said. Its not as if the Yamuna is being taken care of otherwise  quite the opposite in fact, he said. The banks of Yamuna are perpetually being abused all through the year by many...with garbage, illegal activities, gambling, unauthorised hutments, etc.

Incidentally, the Art of Living had taken up the task of cleaning the Yamuna in 2010 in a campaign they called Meri Dilli, Meri Yamuna. It claimed to have cleared 512 tonnes of garbage and toxic debris, which is said provided it enough confidence to mount the WCF  that and its efforts at reviving 17 rivers in India. Two years ago, the Karnataka High Court had acknowledged its work in river rejuvenation as a role model for the rest of the state.

Last year, when AOL decided to host the WCF near the Yamuna, the land was far from a green paradise that many environmentalists have been projecting it to be. More than 20 acres of the site was filled with debris from Delhis construction sites.

After clearing and cleaning a land filled with rotting garbage and debris, the next challenge came from the river  how to get rid of the foul stench from the Yamuna. Toxic waste was being dumped in the river for years through the drains that made it impossible for anyone to stand on the river bank for two minutes, let alone host a three-day festival. The organisers then injected enzymes made from raw household waste and worked on reducing the pollutants in the water.

Correction: This report has been amended to rectify an error: Dr Rakesh Kumar visited the site of the World Culture Festival on 12 March and not 14 March as stated earlier.
New Delhi: Pitching for more reforms, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said the world no longer ridicules India for clocking 'Hindu rate of growth'. Economic liberalisation has helped it grow at a faster pace.

The constituency that favours reforms today, he said, is much more than those who oppose it and the country can grow at a faster rate generating more resources to effectively fund anti-poverty schemes.

"Right till about 40 years of independence, India was growing at about paltry 2-2.5 per cent. The world was ridiculing us and the Indian economy, and its growth was referred to globally as the Hindu rate of growth. So, anybody who grew slowly and was satisfied with that growth level was sarcastically referred to as Hindu rate of growth," Jaitley said at the Skoch event in Delhi.

The moderate growth recorded till 1980s was described by economists as the Hindu rate of growth. After economic

liberalisation in 1991, India has been growing at a much faster pace and in some years also crossed the 10 per cent

mark.

He said as the economy grows faster, people get more jobs, wealth is generated, people are pulled out of poverty

lines and then a resource-full state is able to generate a lot of anti-poverty programmes.

"If we continue to follow the (reforms) path... we will probably be able to write a new chapter in that history," he noted.

Making a point that the economic literature of 1970s and 1980s "taunted" India for low growth, Jaitley said, "1991 was a defining moment for India. It was India's misfortune that what happened in 1991 should have started 20 years before. Had it started 20 years earlier, the 1970-80s would not have been the wasted decades as far as the Indian economy is concerned."

He said that in the two decades, the ultimate objective was to have a restrictive regime where the government of the day instead of focusing on increasing productivity and wealth generation concentrated on distribution of existing inadequate resources, which distributed poverty.

Jaitley regretted that even a few years ago, India started going back to the pre-1991 days, where sloganeering

was given more priority over growth.

"Again, redistribution of existing resources rather than increasing productivity... But at the end of the day, the idea was rejected and India realised that only when you grow faster that you pull up a major part of people and start a lot of poverty alleviation programmes," the minister stressed.

PTI
Houstan, Texas: Mobile phone-based microscopy can be used to diagnose skin cancer accurately in settings where a traditional microscope is not available, according to a new study.

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston (UTHealth), said smartphone microscopes could improve the detection of skin cancer in developing countries.

"Doctors in some remote areas don't have access to the high-powered microscopes we use to evaluate skin samples," said Richard Jahan-Tigh, assistant professor of dermatology at UTHealth.

"Doctors there could use their smartphones to photograph growths and forward them for examination," said Jahan-Tigh.

"We did a head-to-head comparison with a traditional light microscope and while the smartphone microscope wasn't as accurate it resulted in the detection of about 90 per cent of the non-melanoma skin cancers," said Jahan-Tigh, who conducted the study with colleagues at McGovern Medical School and Harvard Medical School.

"With the smartphone microscope, the detection rate for melanomas was 60 per cent," he said.

"This is a good first step to show that smartphone microscopy has a future in dermatology and pathology," Jahan-Tigh said.

A smartphone microscope can be made with a 3 mm ball lens, a tiny piece of plastic to hold the ball lens over the smartphone lens and tape to grip everything in place.

A ball lens costs about USD 14 at an electronics store and is typically used for laser optics, researchers said.

A doctor or technician holds a smartphone microscope over a skin sample that has been placed on a slide and waits for the sample to come into focus.

The doctor then either reads the sample if he or she is a pathologist, or takes a photo and emails it to a pathologist for interpretation.

Researchers examined 1,021 slides of specimens, which had a total of 136 basal cell carcinomas, 94 squamous cell carcinomas and 15 melanomas.

The smartphone microscope was used to pick up 95.6 per cent of the basal cell carcinomas and 89 per cent of squamous cell carcinomas.

Researchers said that mobile phone-based microscopy has excellent performance characteristics for the inexpensive diagnosis of non-melanoma skin cancers in a setting where a traditional microscope is not available.

The findings appear in the journal ARCHIVES of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

PTI
Arunachal Pradesh Part 2 is unfolding in far-off Uttarakhand. The Harish Rawat Congress government is in crisis, and in real danger of losing power.

The processes of the unfolding political crisis in Uttarakhand could be different from that of Arunachal Pradesh, but the pattern remains the same  a group of rebel Congress MLAs joining hands with the BJP to overthrow the incumbent Congress government.

The occasion, chosen by about a dozen Congress rebels to raise their banner of revolt against chief minister Rawat is interesting  the passage of the annual budget by the state assembly. Rawat's government's failure to pass the budget would mean that the government has lost the confidence of the assembly or a majority therein. This could mean that the government falls. The state can't run without authorisation by the assembly to take money out of Consolidated Fund of the state. A constitutional crisis is looming large on Congress government and chief minister Rawat's fate hangs in balance.

If the Congress rebels and BJP succeed in their endeavour, then there could be three situations--imposition of President's Rule in the state, explore possibilities of formation of an alternate government or hold elections a few months earlier than scheduled. But the Congress is still very confident that it will tide over the crisis.

The Congress has been hoping that its rebels which includes likes former chief minister Vijay Bhahuguna, Haraksingh Rawat, Yashpal Arya, Ambika Rawat and others would finally see the reason and take a conciliatory position. If that does not happen and the Congress rebels actually insist on voting against their own government, then all eyes would be on Speaker Govind Singh Kunjal; on whether he allows a division (voting) or insist on passing the budget through voice vote.

Anticipating the turn of events, the BJP had sought appointment with the Governor KK Paul in the afternoon to appraise him of situation and seek his intervention.

The strength of Uttarakhand assembly is 71 (including one nominated member) and the Congress has a razor thin majority. The Congress has 36, the BJP has 29, Bahujan Samaj Party 2, Independent 3, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (P) 1. Rawat's government could be in danger even if a small number of Congress MLAs choose to defy the party whip to vote against their own government or abstain from voting.

The Congress leadership and chief minister had been generally dismissive about revolt by Vijay Bahuguna and others. Senior party leaders said the unrest was being used as a bargaining tactic. They claimed that Bahuguna wanted a Rajya Sabha berth, Harak Singh Rawat greater prominence. The Congress leaders also charged that BJP was playing dirty tricks for luring its MLAs.

Assembly elections in the state are due in next nine months, January 2017 and it appears that Uttarakhand is already in election mode. This is around the time when MLAs start exploring their future possibilities.

Though the BJP officially denies that it has anything to do with the internal dissensions with Congress ranks, some of its senior leaders including Kailash Vijavargiya and Shyam Jaju are camping in Dehradun.
New Delhi: Signalling a tough line on the issue of chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' despite controversies, BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday said 99 percent people were agreeable to hailing 'Mother India' with the slogan and the party would "convince" the rest.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi, Shah justified the government's action on the JNU row, insisting that some people deciding to hold a programme to commemorate Afzal Guru's death anniversary in itself is "anti-national".

In his over an hour interaction, the BJP President expressed confidence of that BJP will form a government in Assam but reacted cautiously about its prospects in other states, saying the party will work to increase its influence and play a role in government formation in these states.

Responding to a number of questions on the controversy surrounding the issue of chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', Shah said that the particular slogan was in vogue even before RSS and the BJP came into picture.

"99 percent of people agree with the slogan. This debate is irrelevant. Those who do not want to chant this should be asked what is their problem with this slogan. We will convince the one per cent people, who do not want to chant it," Shah said but declined to answer how will the BJP go about it. "You leave it to us, how will we do it," he said.

When asked whether MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who said he would not raise the chant hailing 'Mother India' "even if a knife is put to my throat", is a traitor, he said," No one becomes a traitor due to just one thing" and added, "we will have to consider all other things and then come to a conclusion".

The BJP chief also said there is no need to say Bharat Maata Ki Jai under pressure from RSS or BJP.

"This slogan is being chanted much before RSS and BJP came to power," Shah said.

Asked about controversial comments made by party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya that those who do not chant the slogan should be sent to Pakistan, the BJP chief said one should rather listen to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and he himself said.

To queries on the JNU row, he said the very fact that an event was organized on February 9 to commemorate Afzal Guru's hanging is anti-national.

"There is no confusion in BJP about this. If some people decide to hold a programme to commemorate his death anniversry, this itself is anti-national," he said.

Shah said he does not consider Rahul Gandhi's visit to JNU during the students' protests as wrong but voiced reservations against the Congress vice president delivering a speech there accusing the Modi government of trying to suppress their freedom of expression.

"I am against this statement of Rahul Gandhi that some people want to suppress your freedom of expression," he said.

Referring to alleged anti-India slogans raised at the JNU during the Afzal Guru event, he said, "If there are voices like these, then they must be suppressed."

When asked about raising of anti-national slogans in places like Jammu and Kashmir, where the BJP had allied with PDP, he referred to the arrest of separatist leader Masarat Alam and said he would have never been arrested had BJP not been in power.

Alam was sent to jail even when PDP was in power in Jammu and Kashmir, Shah said when asked about PDP's alleged soft corner for Afzal Guru.

When asked about a Supreme Court observation that merely raising anti-India slogan is not treason, he shot back, saying that the same court had once said that calling Congress activists goondas was also treason.

Congress was in alliance in Kerala with Muslim League, which was responsible for India's partition, Shah said.

At this Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was seated among the audience rose and defended the alliance, saying the Muslim League in Kerala was different and was founded after the partition. Tharoor said its policies were not communal.

When told about the allegations that his government was crushing freedom of expression, Shah shot back asking "give me one example."

Rejecting the charge, Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was called "Hitler, Ravan, a mass murderer" but BJP did nothing against those who called him names. "We will tolerate criticism against people and government but not the country," he said.

Taking a dig at Congress for its criticism of BJP over alleged intolerance, he said the UPA government had acted against internet giant Google for allegedly showing a cartoon against Congress president Sonia Gandhi "while I keep all cartoons against me on by website".

Asked whether his relationship with the Gandhi family is not good, Shah said, "It is true that the relationship is not good. As far as I am concerned, the relationship is not good. I do not know about them."

Shah said BJP was on course to achieve its target of a "Congress-free India" and cited the election results in some states as example.

Asked about BJP's prospects in five states, Shah reacted cautiously. "Party will work to increase its influence and to play a role in government formation in these states."

About Assam, he, however, expressed confidence that the BJP will form the government.

On Aligarh Muslim University's minority status issue, he said that AMU is "not a minority" institution.

He said the BJP demands that it should implement reservation for SC/ST and OBCs in admission there.

About black money, he said the government was moving in the right direction but there was some delay.

PTI
By Sushanta Talukdar

In 2006, the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) with 11 seats emerged as the kingmaker when the Congress fell short of the magic number 64 in 126-member Assam Assembly and won 53 seats against 71 in 2001. BPF desperately wants to play the kingmakers role again this time but it wants the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)to wear the crown and not the Congress.

The Bodo political party controls the Bodoland Territorial Council, an administrative set up under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution which is vested with territorial autonomy for governance in 40 subjects barring Home and Police, in Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) comprising four lower Assam districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri. The BTAD covers 12 assembly seats and also partially includes areas under four adjoining assembly constituencies.

In 2011, the BPF lost the opportunity to play the role of a kingmaker despite increase in its tally by one seat as the Congress had 14 seats more than the magic number. Tarun Gogoi, however, chose to continue the alliance and inducted a minister from the BPF. The BPF snapped its eight-year long ties with the Congress in the aftermath of 2014 Lok Sabha polls when the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government was grappling with dissidence by some legislators of the ruling party. Former health and education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who led the Congress dissident and later joined the BJP with nine of his followers, played the key role in forging a pre-poll tie up between the BJP and BPF. However, the pre-poll tie-up has not gone down well with a section of the BJP rank and file in BTAD and some BJP leaders have already quit in protest.

However, new political equations in BTAD threatens to shatter BPF chief Hagrama Mohilarys dream of becoming a kingmaker. The Congress has clinched a pre-poll tie-up with the former Rajya Sabha member Urkhao Gwra Brahma-led new Bodo political party United Peoples Party (UPP) to put spanner in BPF wheels. The Congress will support UPP in four constituencies in BTAD in lieu of support from the Bodo political party outside BTAD areas.

Apart from the BJP-BPF and Congress-UPP combinations, two other key players in BTAD are All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) -- the principal opposition party in Assam Assembly with 18 legislators and three of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state and the Sanmilita Jangosthiya Aikyamancha(SJA)a conglomerate of 23 non-Bodo organisations, including those representing linguistic and religious minoritieswhich won the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat in 2014 polls. AIUDF won four seats in 2015 BTC polls while the BJP won one seat.

The UPP is pinning hopes on erosion in BPFs support base in 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2015 elections to the tribal autonomous council. In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Brahma polled more votes than the BPF candidate. In 2015 BTC polls, the BPF managed to win only 20 seats in 46-member BTC (40 elected and six nominated). The All Bodo Students Union-backed People's Co-ordination for Democratic Rights (PCDR), which floated the UPP on August 5, 2015, won seven seats of the BTC and its candidates lost by close margins in several seats. The BPF swept the 2010 BTC polls with 31 seats.

The new political equations can be seen as a fallout of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2015 BTC polls. In 2014 Lok Sabha polls a non-Bodo candidatea former commander of the insurgent United Liberation Front of AsomNaba Saraniawas elected for first time in the electoral history of Kokrajhar Lok Sabha constituency which covers the BTAD and nearby areas and is reserved for the Scheduled Tribe.

Sarania won by huge margin of 3,55,779 votes by defeating his nearest rival Urkhao Gwra Brahma benefitting from a sharp polarisation of votes as Bodos and non-Bodos. Brahma secured 3,04,899 votes to push the BPF candidate Chandan Brahma to the third position with 2,43,759 votes. Of 15,06,212 voters of Lok Sabha constituency, the Bodos account for about six lakh votes and about four lakh Muslim voters, majority of them of erstwhile East Bengal origin who speak Bengali dialect and Assamese, constitute the second largest group. Koch-Rajbongshis and Adivasis are two other major population groups.

Peace continued to be fragile in BTAD and adjoining areas as violent clashes between factions of different communities over land, resources and political space kept the region on the boil over the past five years widening the existing faultlines and also exposing new faultline of breakdown of interdependence among various communities for agriculture and other activities. In 2012 violent clashes between factions of the Bodos and Muslims of erstwhile East Bengal origin claimed 103 lives and led to displacement of 4.85 lakh people in BTAD and adjoining districts. In May 2014, 46 Muslims of erstwhile East Bengal origin were killed in terror attacks by armed militants on twin villages of Nanke-Khagrabari and Naryanaguri in Baksa district. In 2015 violence revisited BTAD when militants National Democratic Front of Boroland (Songbijit faction)s terror attacks on Adivasi villages claimed 80 lives (68 adviasis killed by militants and about 12 Bodos killed in retaliatory attacks on Bodo villages) and led to displacement of thousands of families belonging to both the communities.

New political equations in the back drop of such a fragile demographic set up have thrown up new electoral possibilities in BTAD. The BPF, no doubt, faces a daunting task to keep the dream alive.

The author is Editor, nezine.com. Views are personal.
It's really simple to explain India's linguistic diversity. Just pick up a currency note and look at the obverse. Right there, you will see fifteen of our twenty two officially recognised languages. This means that on our currency notes, we have seventeen languages. It was thought important to be able to say "Ten Rupees" in seventeen different languages.

Today, we are being asked to express our nationalism in one. When did we get to a point where Vande Mataram or Hindustan Zindabad or even Jai Hind was somehow not as good as "Bharat Mata Ki Jai"? Surely Jai Hind has the same meaning as Bharat Mata ki Jai? Both call for the victory of our country, but they clearly do not seem to convey the same meaning and therein lies the objection when the RSS tries to say that every nationalist and patriot should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' for they do not see Jai Hind as being equally valid.

'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' was one of the many slogans used during the independence struggle along with slogans like Vande Mataram, Jai Hind, Hindustan Zindabad, Inquilab Zindabad etc. Our independence movement included many people of various languages and various faiths. In fact, there was never a uniting slogan that became a rallying cry. Even these slogans kept changing through the course of our history. If there was one united rallying cry, it would have come in the national motto. But our national motto says "Satyameva Jayate" unlike France and other countries that maintain their revolutionary cries as their national mottos.

Mr Owaisi may have never said 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' maybe because he speaks Urdu and it Urdu you say Jai Hind, or maybe he has an objection that comes from his faith. The Urdu equivalent to Bharat Mata Ki Jai is Jai Hind or Hindustan Zindabad and he has said so many times. The Bengali from West Bengal has probably never said it either, because he says Vande Mataram. There are many different languages and ways one can praise their country and express their patriotism.

Once there was a case that some people from the Jehovah's Witnesses faith in Kerala were suspended from school for refusing to sing the national anthem. Singing the national anthem violated the tenants of their faith. The Supreme Court said they had a right not to sing it. No person can be asked to say anything, each person has the right to maintain their silence or express themselves in a manner they see fit.

India is a strangely diverse country, linguistically, ethnically and socially and that's what makes it so wonderful to live here. You can eat idli vada for breakfast, biryani for lunch and Calcutta Chinese for dinner, but you can all bring that under one head which we call Indian cuisine.

When I was studying in Chennai, I was surprised at an incident during flag hoisting on national holidays. After the hoisting of the flag on Independence day, they would sing a song called Tamil Thai Vazhthu and the national anthem would be played at the end of the ceremony. But soon I came to learn that this is just one of the many things that makes our country India. Each state, people actually person has a very different way of expressing their love for our country. Some people find that saying nothing is best and pick up the litter instead, others wish to express their love by shouting it from the roof tops. Each person has their own way of expressing their love for India.

Mr Owaisi is no less a patriot for refusing to say Bharat Mata ke Jai then is Tamil Nadu singing Tamil Thai Vazhthu before the Indian National Anthem at official functions.

Our constitution begins with a wonderful phrase. It says ["India, that is Bharat" shall be a Union of States"]. There are some who would like Bharat to be a country. But that should not be the case. The People of India are Bharat. Bharat is not a country, Bharat is a people. The descendants of Bharata who happen to inhabit the lands south of the snowy mountains of the Himalayas and north of the Southern Ocean. Bharat is the people who live east of the Hindu Kush to the West of the Arakan Ranges in Burma.

That is what Bharat should mean to all of us, Bharat should not mean a piece of land or a form of government. Bharat is a people, a diverse people, a people who come in many shapes, many sizes, many colours and many faiths, but a people who share a common history and bear a commitment to a common future. Bharat should not be a way of life that comes via a diktat from an organisation in Nagpur. India is the nation state and Bharat refers to the people who live in that nation state.

'Jai Hind' means the same thing as 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' and will always mean the same thing, no matter how much the organisation in Nagpur tries to prove otherwise. Just like I do not see why a Tamil needs to learn Hindi I do not see why Owasi needs to use a particular rallying cry. There is no need to have one national rallying cry.

We all speak to our mothers in our mother tongues, or in the languages we are most comfortable with, or in the manner we are most comfortable with. Why must an organisation in Nagpur insist that we treat Mother India any different?
The Punjab Assembly on Friday unanimously passed a resolution on the controversial issue of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, stating that the canal will not be allowed to be constructed at any cost, reported DNA.

Harcharan Singh Bains, Advisor to Punjab Chief Minister, was quoted saying that political parties 'cannot allow it to be built in defiance of the rights of the state over its river waters.'

"The case before the Supreme Court (challenging government of India's power to distribute water between the states) must be decided before SYL canal can even be talked about," he added.

The Supreme Court had stopped Punjab from returning nearly 4,000 acres of land to farmers meant to be used for this canal, which was meant to enable sharing of water with Haryana, reported NDTV.

The apex court fixed the next hearing on 30 March.

On Wednesday, Punjab had returned a cheque of Rs 190 crore to Haryana. Punjab's politicians pledged that they would not allow a single drop of water from the river Sutlej to Haryana, in violation of historic treaties and carefully-configured agreements, reported NDTV. Punjab started filling up canal land with lose soil, to which Haryana government created an uproar.

Delhi's role in the water war

Supporting Punjab in its fight was Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who opposed the construction of SYL canal in Punjab and said that the state does not have enough water to share with Haryana. Haryana's irrigation minister OP Dhankar attacked the Delhi CM on Thursday and suggested to "get his own canal constructed for carrying Delhi's share of water".

"Seeing your stand (opposing the construction of SYL canal in Punjab) Haryana will not be able to deliver your share of water in Delhi since you have stood against the interests of the farmers and people of Haryana," he said in a letter to Kejriwal.

Dhankar termed Kejriwal's stand as "wrong" and alleged that he has opposed the proposed canal for gaining "political benefits" in Punjab at a time when elections are round the corner.

"For Delhi's needs of water, you may take the trouble of getting your own canal constructed from Nangal Dam and Tajewala Headwork's (Yamunanagar) so that Delhi's share of water reaches the national capital with your efforts," Dhankar told the Delhi Chief Minister.

"You would be aware that from Ravi-Beas, Haryana was allocated 3.5 MAF (million acre-feet) and Delhi 0.2 MAF of water. Haryana gets Delhi's 0.2 MAF share through the Bhakra Main Line from Punjab which then, through Narwana Branch and Western Yamuna Canal systems, reaches Delhi," he wrote in the letter.

Besides, Haryana also transfers 330 cusec of Yamuna water through the Western Yamuna Canal to Delhi, he said.

He also said Haryana is not able to lift its share of 498 cusec of water.

On Wednesday, Haryana Assembly had passed a resolution condemning the reported statement of Kejriwal, where the CM supported Punjab's decisions.

Many believe that if Punjab gets away with the filling up of canals with mud, to block the flow of water, it could set a dangerous precedent for other states of the country. This could threaten federal unity with inter-state battles for waters that ignore the law.

Political ties between Punjab and Haryana severed

With sharing of river waters becoming a bone of contention between these two states, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) on Thursday severed its ties with long-time ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

"The party's (INLD) alliance with Akalis has now ended as it has brought a Bill against the interests of Haryana," said INLD Secretary General and Leader of Opposition in Haryana assembly Abhay Chautala, who is also younger son of jailed leader and former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala.

"We now do not have any relation with SAD in Punjab," he said announcing the breaking of the decades-old ties between the two parties.

SAD has one MLA Balkaur Singh from Kalianwali assembly seat in Haryana.

"Because of the Bill (by which the owners whose land was acquired by government will be returned to them), there is a lot of anger against Punjab among Haryana people," he said.

"We have always considered Punjab as our elder brother but today they have betrayed us. Now the people of Haryana will have no faith in Punjab...They have ended the relationship between the two states," he said.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Instead of "propaganda of different types which indoctrinates people", sustained campaigns by media on issues like healthcare can play a major role in educating the public, Union Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.

The Information and Broadcasting Minister, who also holds the Finance portfolio, was speaking at the 6th National

Community Radio Sammelan in Delhi, where channels were awarded for innovative programming.

"Instead of having propaganda of different types which indoctrinates people, if you have sustained campaigns of this kind, which will drill into the human mind the healthcare, preventive health care system, radio can become a very powerful tool of education," Jaitley said, referring to a community radio station which won for its health campaign.

The Minister said in India dialects, weather, crop patterns change in every district and the role of community

radio stations in informing and educating people gains importance.

Globally, he said, newspapers are shrinking but in India regional newspapers are expanding. The same trend could apply to community radio as well, he said.

Jaitley said that around 191 community radio stations are functioning though around 400 have been permitted. "Therefore, there should be a significant growth and connectivity as far as community radio is concerned," he said.

The I&B minister said that about two decades ago, an "erroneous impression" that the entire system including

governments had was that radio and TV are monopoly of state.

The trend, he said, had to change as people just can't be fed with state controlled or public broadcasting controlled radio and television only, though these too have an important role.

The situation changed when airwaves were thrown open and ownership was vested in the people after which there was an "explosion" of TV channels and a large number of FM channels came up, he said.

Jaitley said that at one point it appeared TV had taken centrestage but with expansion of FM, radio is back with a

bang.

Earlier speaking at the event, Minister of state for I&B Rajyavardhan Rathore said community radio can play a vital

role in empowering people by giving information including that on key government programmes.

I&B secretary Sunil Arora said that the ministry plans to scale up its support to community radio stations.

PTI
Rajkot: Nearly 110 cow protection activists were rounded up from various parts of region amid a Gujarat bandh call given by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti' in support of their demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata".

The bandh got a mixed response in Rajkot district and some parts of Saurashtra. However, the shutdown did not have much pull outside Saurashtra region.

In Rajkot city, most of the shops located in the main market in Dharmendra Road area were closed in the morning hours, while shops and offices remained unaffected.

The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti exempted educational institutes and health care services from the bandh. Nearly 15 persons protesting at Trikaun baugh area were detained by the police in Rajkot.

"We detained 15 persons who were protesting at Trikaun Baugh area. There was a report of road blockade. Barring this, the bandh was observed in a peaceful manner," said Pradhyuman Nagar Police Inspector Manish Nakum.

The Rajkot City Police had made adequate security measures by deploying 800 policemen and four companies of State Reserve Police (SRP).

Some 60 cow protection activists were taken into custody in Morbi town of Rajkot district town, 'A' division Police Inspector N K Vyas said.

"Nearly 35 persons were rounded up in Manavadar town of Porbandar district as they blocked the road and disrupted traffic," said Manavadar PSI S V Gojiya.

As many as eight cow right activists had on Thursday consumed pesticide at District Collector's office premises

in Rajkot after which they were all rushed to the civil hospital.

One of them, identified as Hindabhai Vambadiya, died at the civil hospital. Two of the seven  Dinesh Loriya (42) and Raghuvirsinh Jadeja (27)  are in a critical condition.

The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti had called for the bandh while Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) had extended their support to it.

The activists also submitted a memorandum to the city mamlatdar Pragyesh Jani demanding that cow should be announced as "Rashtra Mata" and protection for cow protectors.

The activist also demanded compensation for the family members of Hindabhai as he had sacrificed his life for cow

protection.

PTI
Washington: The situation in Islamic State-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq is dangerous as the dreaded terror group is committing genocide there, the US has said, indicating that it will ramp up its operation in the region.

"What's happening in Iraq and in Syria is deeply troubling. We see this extremist organisation targeting religious minorities. In their propaganda they're featuring evidence of trying to wipe out these religious minorities," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Thursday.

US President Barack Obama has talked on a number of occasions about how this is deeply troubling and is an affront to every person of faith, he said. "The President has ordered military action against IS in Iraq and in Syria. In some cases, there have been military actions that have been ordered specifically to protect religious minorities," he said.

"There certainly is the example of Mount Sinjar, which we have cited here frequently that there were Yazidis who were trapped in it. IS fighters had them cornered, and those IS fighters were vowing to slaughter them," he said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry had also said IS is committing genocide in the areas under its control. "In my judgment, IS is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians and Shia Muslims. IS is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. It is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities," Kerry said.

The ongoing conflict and lack of access to key areas has made it impossible to develop a fully detailed and comprehensive picture of all that IS is doing and all that it has done, he said. "We have not been able to compile a complete record. I think that's obvious on its face; we don't have access to everywhere. But over the past months, we have conducted a review of the vast amounts of information gathered by the state department, by our intelligence community, by outside groups. And my conclusion is based on that information and on the nature of the acts reported," Kerry said.

Earnest said, "It reflects the gravity of the situation there. And it's one that continues to attract the attention not just of the United States, but it's also why we have been able to build a strong moral case against them, and build a substantial international coalition," he added.

The US has taken steps to protect religious minorities in that region of the world from being the victims of violence at the hands of IS, he asserted. "What it essentially indicates is that the US will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate the genocide," Earnest said.

"There obviously is evidence that has been collected, and we'll make sure that that evidence is preserved, and we'll assist in the effort, collecting and analysing additional evidence of atrocities to support that investigation. But that's the next step in the process, and the US will be supportive of it," he said.

PTI
Chandigarh: The quota agitation by Jats in Haryana was today put off till 3 April with the community

leaders agreeing to give the state government time to get a Reservation Bill passed during the ongoing Assembly session that ends on 31 March.

Announcement in this regard was made by All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti President Yashpal Malik here after the Jat leaders held talks with Haryana Chief Secretary and DGP here.

"We have given time to Haryana government to bring and pass the Jat Reservation Bill by 31 March (when the ongoing Budget session ends)," Malik told reporters here today.

"If the government does not pass the Reservation Bill by 31 March, then we shall chalk out our next course of action in our meeting on 3 April to be held in Delhi," he said.

Replying to questions, he said, "There will be no agitation till 3 April." He appealed to other leaders of Jat community also not to hold any agitation or protest in the state till 3 April.

Haryana government had already assured the Jat leaders that it will bring the Bill to provide for reservation to Jats and four other communities in the state during the current session of the Assembly.

Malik expressed satisfaction over the discussion held with the officials of Haryana government to chalk out a "workable solution".

"We are fully satisfied with the talks at today's meeting and would appeal to the people not to resort to any protest," Malik said.

PTI
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has raised issue of alleged attack on an RSS worker by CPI(M) workers in Kannur, with Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala.

"I have spoken to the Kerala Home Minister. He has assured me that he will take proper action," he told reporters in Delhi.

The Union Home Minister was replying to a question on the alleged attack on RSS and BJP workers in Kerala in the recent past.

An RSS worker, EK Biju, carrying primary class students to school in an autorickshaw was pulled out and brutally attacked with lethal weapons on 8 March allegedly by CPI(M) workers in Kannur district of Kerala.

BJP has alleged that hundreds of party workers have become victims of political killings in Kannur over the years.

PTI
First, full disclosure: Saugata Roy, the Trinamool MP seen to be nonchalantly pocketing bundles of cash, reportedly amounting to Rs 5 lakh, in the videos released by Narada News, is a friend. A friend from college days, Presidency College, Kolkata, 1964 batch, a friend still.

Saugata was Physics Honours, commanding the highest cut-off marks for admission, I, Political Science, way down the scale. We could well have remained strangers, except that we soon became part of an in-group, a band of twenty odd, studying different subjects but having one thing in common: we were all from English-medium schools, something that was still unusual enough in Presidency College to earn us the derisive sobriquet of the English Speaking Union.

This language barrier may have walled some of us off from the majority of the students, but not Saugata. With his gift of the gab and biting wit, his phenomenal recall of Tagore songs and modern Bengali poetry, the way he ad libbed limericks, he was equally at ease and equally welcome in all circles, English-medium and Bengali-medium, science students and arts students, city slickers and provincial hicks, scions of the wealthy and scholarship holders, Leftists and non-Leftists. As he remained in later life, moving easily between slum-dwellers and captains of industry, intellectuals and illiterates, public rallies and exclusive cocktails.

Those were the turbulent 60s, we were still in college when the first non-Congress government came to power in Bengal with CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu as the deputy chief minister. Presidency College was ruddier, a hotbed of Naxalite activities. Saugata opposed them all, the organised Left fighting elections and the ultra-Left in college. Yet, then as later, even dyed in the wool, fire-breathing, I am a communist, not a gentleman like former finance minister Ashok Mitra enjoyed his company, coveted his views, lamenting he was the right man in the wrong party.

It is this cache of being a bhadralok, i.e. a cut above the hoodlums masquerading as politicians that surrounded him, first in Congress then in Trinamool, of being in politics by choice and not because he could do no better, a throwback to the pre-Independence days when politics was not putrid and radioactive to men of means, of being one of us that has made Saugatas fall from grace so devastating to the Bengali middle class. Narada has shot at least fourteen Trinamool leaders with their hidden camera, including Kolkatas mayor, ministers in the West Bengal government, other MPs, all accepting thick wads of rupees as their due, but eyebrows are being raised about only one. Et tu Saugata, wisecracked a political opponent. Oh no, not Saugata, these videos must be doctored, wailed a friend.

Confusion has been compounded by his demented behaviour since. Screaming you thief, you thief at CPI(M)s Mohammad Salim in Parliament, strongly protesting the Speakers decision to send the matter to the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee, snapping at a journalist for reminding him about the fate of former CPI MLA Muhammad Iliyas. Iliyas, then MLA from Nandigram, had been forced to resign from the Bengal assembly in 2008, following a similar sting operation. Saugata, then an MLA, had taken the lead in forcing Iliyass hand. Dont insult the people, is Saugatas angry retort now. All so very undignified, so unseemly.

Nonetheless, will Saugata now be a social pariah, will we stop inviting him to our events and parties? Not really. Sure we were mortified by those bytes, theyll haunt us for ages, but what we are really feeling is deep chagrin. To be caught with the hand in the till, what shame. No one can be shocked, after all politicians being on the take is old hat. True, suspecting someone of wrongdoing and seeing hard evidence with your own eyes are wholly different. But then, no one really believes political graft is so reprehensible that it should lead to a social boycott of the perpetrator. In a society which lauds success at all costs, ridicules the virtues of simple living, it is, at best, on par with crimes like, say, tax evasion, insurance fraud, real estate jugglery  accepted as part of life. We, the hedonistic bourgeois voter would like things to change but only if it can be done through fun, low-energy engagement. No surprises then that politics continues to remain the dirty business it is.

First-time Trinamool MP and yesteryear filmstar Moon Moon Sen is sure to find this, as she has been reported as saying, hugely embarrassing while Harvard professor Sugata Bose is bound to squirm at being lumped with such tainted people, but then theyve never had to dip a toe in the muddied waters of day-to-day politics  manning unruly party workers, keeping them loyal through judicious uses of carrot and stick, keeping thugs on a leash, doing favours, calling in favours, all for the greater good of the party. Such tasks, essential for electoral victory, have been and will continue to be taken care of by the professionals, career politicians like Saugata. For which they need moolah, loads of it.

As RBI governor Raghuram Rajan pointed out so succinctly in a 2014 speech, the system tolerates corruption because the street smart politician is better at making the wheels of the bureaucracy creak, however slowly, in favour of his constituents. An idealist who is unwilling to work the system can promise to reform it, but the voters know there is little one person can do. Moreover, who will provide the patronage while the idealist is fighting the system? So why not stay with the fixer you know even if it means the reformist loses his deposit? So the circle is complete. The poor and the under-privileged need the politician to help them get jobs and public services. The crooked politician needs the businessman to provide the funds that allow him to supply patronage to the poor and fight elections. The corrupt businessman needs the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply. And the politician needs the votes of the poor and the underprivileged.

This is all the more critical in a disorganised party like the Trinamool Congress run for the gratification of one highly strung woman hellbent on using a clean image as political capital but equally determined to stay in power any which way. No wonder Matthew Samuel of Narada News could find as many as fourteen leaders of this party to grab his handouts. He could easily have got many more. Politics under Mamata Banerjee is an uninspiring, unintelligent and, often, humiliating business. It is risky, too, quite arbitrary and involves enormous stress and unceasing conflict. It stands to reason the compensation has to be commensurate.

Of course I wish Saugata was not so flawed. I wish more he had been smarter. As smart as many others in his party and in rival camps, as canny as many businessmen we may or may not know, as wily as many bureaucrats our college has produced. If Parliament punishes him itll probably end his political career. Well be sad but will also nod our heads sagely and say, this is as it should be. But nothing will change because we the middle class voters wont.
New Delhi: Yamuna does not belong to Haryana but the entire country and giving water to the city was not a "favour" by some minister, Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra said on Friday, hitting back at Haryana Agriculture Minister O P Dhankar.

Mishra's reaction came a day after Dhankar attacked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for opposing SYL canal construction, saying Haryana will not be able to deliver water to Delhi and asked him to get "your own canal constructed" for carrying Delhi's share of water.

The Delhi Minister said Dhankar does not have "understanding of laws".

"Haryana minister perhaps has not read the Constitution. Secondly, he does not have the understanding of laws and

third, he is not aware about the dignity of his post.

"Delhi is not getting water because some minister is doing a favour to us. Delhi is getting water because the Supreme Court has ordered. Yamuna doesn't belong to Haryana but to the entire country," Mishra said.

In a letter to Kejriwal, Dhankar had said that seeing his stand (opposing the construction of SYL canal in Punjab)

Haryana will not be able to deliver the share of water in Delhi since he had stood against the interests of the farmers and people of Haryana.

Terming Kejriwal's stand as "wrong", Dhankar said he had opposed the proposed canal for "political benefits" in Punjab.

"For Delhi's needs of water you may take the trouble of getting your own canal constructed from Nangal Dam and

Tajewala Headwork's (Yamunanagar) so that Delhi's share of water reaches the national capital with your efforts," Dhankar had written in his letter to Delhi Chief Minister.

PTI
Beirut: At least 16 civilians, among them eight children, were killed on Friday in air strikes on the northern Syrian city of Raqa by unidentified planes, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five women were also among the dead in Raqa, the main Syrian bastion of the Islamic State jihadist group.

"The death toll could rise as there are around 40 wounded and missing people," the Observatory said.

The Britain-based Observatory typically identifies aircraft by flight patterns and munitions used.

However, it said today's strikes could have been carried out "by either the Syrian regime, the Russians, or the coalition led by Washington," referring to the US-led effort to strike IS in Syria and Iraq.

But Aamaq, a self-styled news agency linked to IS, said strikes by Russian warplanes had left 17 people dead in Raqa today.

On Monday, Moscow announced it would withdraw the bulk of its air force from Syria after a nearly six-month air war in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

It warned that it would continue targeting "terrorist groups".

Russia's military said on Friday it was still conducting about two dozen combat sorties per day to back a government offensive to retake the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria from IS.

AFP
The Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, was in Geneva for two days for a side-event of the UN Human Rights Council. The Mission of the Holy See and Caritas Internationalis a confederation of over 160 Catholic member organisations doing humanitarian work  had invited him on a peace campaign.

The ancient city of Aleppo has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. It has seen intense fighting in recent days --parts of the city have been sieged by armed opposition groupsand its possible recapture is of much significance to the Syrian government.

Speaking at a press conference at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Audo, who is also the head of Caritas Syria, said that in five years of war, the city of Aleppo has been emptied out of Christians with only 40,000 remaining out of the original 1,60,000 Syrian Christians. A total of one million Syrians have left the country out of the original 1.5 million. The Islamic State has killed thousands of Christians. In February, Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox church head, Patriarch Kirill, had issued a historic statement where they decried the flushing out of Christians from the Middle Easta region considered the cradle of the faith. The Christians in Aleppo now live mostly in areas under government control.

In a counterview to the mainstream narrative about Syria, Audo, said that the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was not be blamed for the war, that more than 80 percent of the Christians would support Assad if he were to run for re-elections, and more than 50 percent of the overall population, including Sunnis, would vote for Assad.

Even the Sunnis would choose Bashar al-Assad to drive away extremists he said. And the demonisation of Assad was a pure propaganda by the West, he added.

The future of Assad has been a key sticking point at the peace talks in Geneva with the "main" opposition party backed by Saudi Arabia and the West saying that Assad must go before any kind of talks on a transitional government while the Syrian government delegation has said that Assad is a red line that cannot be crossed.

Audo blamed the extremists and external interference for the mess in Syria. He further said that the Russians were fighting extremists and the Islamic State and that the people were in a safe moment during the Russian fight against the armed groups. Speaking to an American journalist, he said that the US must respect the Syrian people and not impose solutions from the outside for economic and strategic interests. "I think... this war is not coming from inside Syria... I think all is organised from outside to destroy Syria," he added.

Audo spoke to Firstpost

How has life changed in the last five years? Could you please tell us something about the daily lives of the people in Aleppo?

We can say that (we were a) normal city with lot of possibilities, lot of rich families, restaurants, universities, schools and we became a poor country with (poverty) everywhere. I (am) used to repeat(ing) that the rich families left Syria for Lebanon, Europe and Canada. The middle class became poor and the poor miserable. I walk on the streets and look to the people and to the faces and discover how they are sick, becoming poor, and tired without desire of living, only to have some vegetables, some bread, just to not die. This is our situation, unfortunately, in Aleppo (and) not only in Aleppo but we can say in all (of) Syria, this is the result of the war.

Our daily life in Aleppo is very paradoxical. As you (can) imagine from far, war, destruction, bombng from time to time is a reality. Where we are living is under the official army the west part of the city. So in one way, (we have) a lot of the difficult (ies) without water, without job, without electricity, without fuelwe had a very hard winter. Terrible, really. This is one reality. The second one, we do all we can to continue (living normal lives)to have organisations (organizing things such as) manifestations (demonstrations), theatre, prayers, scout groupsvery Aleppo mentality, always trying to be together and to fight. There are schools, there are universities, there are exams and at the same time, from time to time (there is) bombing, victims, injured (people). This is our life in Aleppo, more than in Damascus or in other cities.

Was there tension between religious communities, particularly Christians and Muslims, before the civil war started?

No, no. Generally (speaking), in Aleppo, we have the tradition of living together. There is a respect for (the) other. There is an art of living together. Everyone knows who he is (but) at the same time (there is) a lot of friendship between Christians and Muslims. It is a tradition in Syria, even now. Even the armed people tried to put the idea of confessional war, even between Christians and Muslims.

Who are the armed people?

Armed people, extremiststhey are not worth(y) (of) the name of opposition. They are armed people, manipulated to a big project of destruction. They tried a lot to create this ambience of confessional fighting but they didnt succeed because the reality of Syria is different.



Do you think the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad should have a role in post-conflict Syria?

He is ready to implement the Syrian constitution. This kind of demonisation, or as we say in French, diabolisition, is not just. He is a doctor, he is well-educated. We have to put him in a context, in a history. There are a lot of (political) interests and he is in the middle of all those interests. We have to understand the situation to have the right answer. Its propaganda, orchestration. The war is more than 50 percent propagandaa psychological war, it is used a lot by the strong (dominant) media of the world.

What is your evaluation of Mr. Assad?

He was a normal man trying to do the best for the countrylot of effort at the level of education, construction, infrastructure. He was a normal president. But we have to put him in the context of the Middle East (situation). And this big fighting between Shias and Sunnis and they use (d) Syria to destroy, at their level, at the international level. (At the) international level, economic and military interests (were the reasons for the war in Syria).

Not because he is (an) Alwaite so (it means that) he is a demon, he is the devil. This (is) big (false) propaganda in the west he is a dictator, he is killing women.

But the independent UN Commission of Inquiry has said that the government has also committed crimes against humanity? This is not any government saying but a group of independent experts

How to speak about atrocities of the government and not to speak about atrocities of thousands of armed people pushed from outside to destroy Syria. From inside, there is some self-defence. Perhaps, they (the government) use violence and bombing but we have to put it in this context, it is self-defence.

Was there a huge escalation in fighting in Aleppo after the Russians started the airstrikes?

Not in Aleppo. Outside Aleppo, they attacked Daesh (Arabic acronym for the Islamic State), those armed groups to push them far out from Aleppo who were always threatening by attacks.

The writer is a journalist at the UN in Geneva
Dhaka: Bangladesh is suspecting the involvement of insiders within the central bank in the USD 81 million heist by hackers from its foreign exchange account in the US Federal Reserve in New York, in a scam that shocked the financial world.

"Of course, it (heist) would have never been possible unless some of the local people (Bangladesh Bank officials) were involved...the order for the transaction has to be complied with only after biometrics of six people are confirmed," finance minister AMA Muhith said when asked if he believed the central bank officials had any hand in the theft.

Muhith also said that he was unsure about the possibility of recovering the stolen amount.

"I am not sure if the stolen amount could really be recovered, though we got back some of the amount from Sri Lanka," he told Prothom Alo newspaper.

The finance minister's comments came as US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is expected to join hands with Bangladesh police's Criminal Investigation Agency (FBI) in investigating the heist.

"We will hold a meeting with the FBI officials on Sunday," CID's special superintendent Abdullah Hel Baqui said as the agency earlier seized the central bank's computer server to scrutinise the security of the server networking system.

In a scam that shocked the financial world, unknown hackers tried to steal around USD 1 billion from Bangladesh's deposits with the US Federal Reserve in New York on 5 February, using information stolen through the malware.

They got away with USD 81 million which was entered into the banking system of the Philippines while some amount to the Sri Lanka visibly to be used in casino businesses.

Sri Lanka, however, immediately stopped the delivery of the amount that entered their banking system and returned the money immediately, complying with a Bangladesh Bank request.

But the uncertainty over the recovery of the stolen amount from the Philippines grips Bangladesh as reports from Manila said the amount by now appeared to have transferred out of the country.

According to the Philippines' Inquirer newspaper, Philippine Senator Sergio Osmena on Thursday said there was a "very low" chance that Manila would be able to retrieve the USD 81 million stolen from the Bangladesh Bank because the money is now likely outside the country.

Osmena, however, said tracking the money would depend on the "cooperation of casinos at the resumption today of the Senate inquiry" into the money-laundering scheme.

"It would be very difficult to retrieve the money given that it has entered the black hole," the daily reported, quoting Sen Teofisto Guingona, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee, as saying.

PTI
Sao Paulo: Supporters of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called mass street rallies Friday in her defense, counter-attacking in a political crisis that threatens to drive her from office.

As police fired tear gas and stun grenades to keep at bay angry protesters demanding Rousseff's resignation late Thursday, her embattled left-wing support base mobilized.

They called rallies for Friday in more than 30 cities - a chance for a show of strength after three million people joined in anti-government demonstrations last weekend.

The rival protests followed a day of political drama as lawmakers on Thursday relaunched impeachment proceedings against Rousseff, 68.

The courts, meanwhile, blocked her bid to bring her powerful predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva into the cabinet.

Rousseff and her allies are fighting off corruption allegations and struggling with discontent over a deep recession.

The setbacks for the leftist leader came a day after new evidence in a corruption scandal: a wiretapped telephone call that pointed to connivance between Rousseff and her predecessor and mentor Lula.

Rousseff swore in Lula, 70, as her new chief of staff on Thursday.

A judge in Brasilia issued a ruling suspending that appointment over allegations that she was trying to protect him from corruption charges by giving him ministerial immunity.

That ruling was overturned late Thursday on appeal, but a separate federal court in Rio de Janeiro upheld another lawsuit blocking Lula's appointment.

Rousseff accused her enemies of mounting a "coup" against her.

Counter-demos

Thursday's events plunged Rousseff's government into deeper uncertainty as she struggles with public anger, economic chaos and the splintering of her coalition in congress.

Lula and Rousseff have between them governed Brazil for the past 13 years. He presided over a boom, but political and economic crises are now gripping Latin America's biggest economy.

Anti-government protests erupted Wednesday when an anti-corruption judge leaked a wire-tapped phone call between Rousseff and Lula that suggested she appointed him to the new post to save him from arrest.

The biggest counter-demos on Friday were expected in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, called by Rousseff's Workers' Party, the major CUT union and other groups.

Organizers said in a statement the demonstrations aimed to fend off a "coup" and to defend Rousseff's social policies. The CUT in Sao Paulo vowed the rallies would be peaceful.

Brazil grabbed world headlines in 2013 when it was gripped by mass riots against corruption and increased transport costs.

Rousseff was scheduled to attend a ceremony in northeastern Brazil to unveil a new social housing project on Friday morning.

Corruption claims

Brazil's lower house of Congress launched a committee Thursday to consider impeaching Rousseff over corruption accusations.

She is accused of manipulating the government's accounts to boost public spending during her 2014 re-election campaign.

The drive to impeach her was launched by the opposition in December but had been halted by the courts over procedural issues which were finally resolved late Wednesday.

"The putschists' shouting won't make me veer from my path or bring us to our knees," said Rousseff as she was heckled at Lula's swearing-in.

"If they violate the rights of the president, what will they do with those of the citizens? That is how coups start."

Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2011, is charged with accepting a luxury apartment and a country home as bribes from executives implicated in a multi-billion-dollar corruption scam at state oil company Petrobras.

Investigators say construction companies conspired with Petrobras executives to overbill the oil giant to the tune of $2 billion, paying huge bribes to politicians and parties along the way.

Lula denies involvement in the scandal.

AFP
Washington: All charges have been dropped against an Indian- American journalist, who was arrested last week while covering Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's election rally in Chicago which was called off due to unprecedented protests, his news network said.

Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police in a statement said they have dropped all charges against CBS News reporter Sopan Deb, who is assigned to cover Trump's presidential campaign.

"While this incident was very dynamic and troopers and officers were forced to make split-second decisions in the interest of public safety of demonstrators and police officers, we have collectively decided to drop the administrative charges in this case. "This decision was made after a methodical review of the physical evidence including video and interviewing both troopers and police officers involved in the incident," CBS News reported, citing the statement.

Last week while covering an election rally of Trump in Chicago, which was marred by violence, Deb was handcuffed and briefly detained by the Chicago Police. The White House had condemned the incident. "A police officer, at least one police officer, maybe multiple, pulled me down from the back of my hoodie and threw me to the ground and bashed my face into the street and then this police officer put his boot to my neck and cuffed me. "I am continuously identifying myself as press, I said, 'I have credentials, I can show you I have credentials,' but they are not listening to me," Deb said, adding that he was then taken to a police van and driven to the station, where he was charged with resisting arrest.

"Eventually they put me into the back of this police van along with the man that was bloodied and another gentleman. "And we are in pitch black, in essence. I was in handcuffs for you know maybe an hour before the police van took me to the station processed me, they cuffed me again at the station and where the police officers told me I was charged with resisting arrest," Deb said. Deb, who has been covering Trump's presidential campaign from his announcement in New York last year, said there have been protests going on in his rallies for months and months and months.

"However, there has definitely been a recent uptick; I have certainly never seen anything like last night. That was unprecedented," he said.

PTI
Islamabad: Pakistan's ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf left the country early on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai, a day after the government allowed him to go abroad.

"I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months," Musharraf was quoted as saying by the Dawn. Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am (0425 IST), a media report said.

"He was the last person to be embarked on the plane and then the gate was closed. The retired general appeared relaxed," the report said.

Musharraf, 72, has been facing treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government. The order was declared as illegal by the Sindh High Court in the same year.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the decision of the Sindh high court, rejecting the appeal of the government. But it did not stop the federal government from putting new bars on Musharraf's foreign tours.

Interior minister Nisar Ali Khan on Thursday told a press briefing that after consultation the government decided to let Musharraf leave the country for treatment. He said Musharraf's lawyers had formally asked the government to allow him to undertake foreign travels.

"The government has decided to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment. He has also committed he will face all cases against him in court," Khan said.

He was referring to several cases faced by Musharraf including the high treason charged in a special court for suspending the constitution in 2007, which has been declared under Article 6 as being punishable by death. He was indicted in April, 2014 but since then no progress has been made in the case for various reasons.

Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League said on Thursday that Musharraf was having problem in the backbone and he needed to go to the UAE to see a doctor. It is believed that the decision to let Musharraf go out of the country will help heal a rift between the powerful army and the government, as the former was unhappy over treason trial of the former chief of army staff.

Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Facing impeachment following elections in 2008, Musharraf was forced to resign as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.

PTI
Washington: Rabbis and Jewish religious leaders are planning to boycott US presidential hopeful Donald Trump's speech to a pro-Israel conference here, accusing him of encouraging hatred, CNN reported on Friday.

Trump is scheduled to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on 22 March. Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky are at the forefront of a campaign called "Come Together Against Hate".

Paskin has organised a group of more than 300 rabbis, cantors and Jewish voters and professionals who plan to signal their distaste for Trump.

AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying group focused on energizing Americans around strengthening the US-Israel relationship and encouraging members of Congress to support its agenda.

The annual conference is a key stop for politicians seeking an audience with the influential group and is the largest pro-Israel policy gathering of the year.

Other groups have also spoken out against Trump's attendance at AIPAC though they have not officially announced plans to protest.

The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), representing the largest Jewish denomination in America, has slammed Trump.

"At every turn, Trump has chosen to take the low road, sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic," said the URJ.

The American Jewish Committee also condemned the "presidential campaign violence" but it did not specifically name Trump.

Citing in part Trump's statements on immigrants, women and refugees, another Israel advocacy group, J Street, said Thursday that "these factors in our view render Trump unfit to be president of the US".

Trump has been criticised throughout his campaign for comments he has made, including calling for a temporary ban on all foreign Muslims entering the US and blocking Syrian refugees.

IANS
Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect in the Paris attacks arrested on Friday, showed little sign of religious fervour before the assaults and was even known to enjoy a beer and a joint in the bar he ran with his brother in the Brussels district where he was captured.

The 26-year-old Franco-Moroccan, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in the French capital during the November 13 attacks, is said to have fled into the arms of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria but he was eventually tracked down to Molenbeek, the immigrant neighbourhood where he had lived for years.

But far from being religious fanatics, Salah and Brahim were known to enjoy a drink and some pot in Les Beguines, the bar they ran in Molenbeek.

The bar was shut down two weeks before the Paris attacks after police said it was used "for the consumption of banned hallucinogenic substances".

A Molenbeek resident, who identified himself only as Youssef, told AFP last year the brothers were "friends of ours, big smokers, big drinkers, but not radicals".

Salah certainly knew radicals though, having come into contact with another Molenbeek resident, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is believed to have been the mastermind of the Paris attacks.

Salah was fired from his job as a technician on the Brussels trams for skipping work in 2011. Around the same time he was arrested for robbery along with Abaaoud.

Salah also developed a taste for casinos, gambling in the Dutch city of Breda in June 2014 and in Brussels last year.

But in 2015, in a possible phase of preparation for the Paris attacks, he criss-crossed Europe, visiting Greece in August, then Austria and Hungary, at a time when tens of thousands of migrants were transiting Europe from Syria and Iraq.

A routine search in Brussels earlier in the week went wrong and four Belgian police were wounded in an exchange of fire.

That led to Belgian police killing an Algerian, Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who had been with Salah in Austria in early September.

Belgian prosecutors announced Friday that Salah's fingerprints were found in the apartment they had been searching. Several hours later, he was arrested with two other men after shots were fired and Abdeslam was hit in the leg.

In charge of logistics

It was not just his disappearance that made Salah the enigma of the Paris attacks.

Prosecutors believe he was in charge of logistics for the attacks, which were planned in Brussels.

Salah rented the cars that the IS team used to travel to Paris, and booked the apartment-hotel rooms where they stayed before launching the worst ever terror attacks on French soil.

His brother Brahim, with whom he ran the Brussels bar, detonated his suicide vest in a bar in Paris on November 13, as at least eight other IS attackers were shooting and blowing up 130 people who had been enjoying a Friday night out in the French capital.

It is possible Salah drove three suicide bombers to the Stade de France stadium and he appears to have also been in central Paris where his accomplices where carrying out their slaughter.

But the evidence suggests he backed out of detonating his own suicide vest.

An explosives vest was founded abandoned in a dustbin in a Paris suburb and although none of Salah's DNA was found on it, mobile phone data puts him in the area at the time.

Before police were alerted to his possible involvement, Salah had been stopped three times by officers in France as he fled back to Belgium by car the day after the attacks.

Two men with him in the vehicle, Hamza Attou and Mohammed Amri, are said to have been smoking marijuana but a policeman waved them on and Salah was able to remain on the run for 126 days.

AFP
Washington: Space environment around Pluto and its moons is almost empty, containing only about six dust particles per cubic mile, according to data collected by a student-built instrument riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

The spacecraft found only a handful of dust grains, the building blocks of planets, when it whipped by Pluto at about 49,000 kilometres per hour July last year, scientists said.

"The bottom line is that space is mostly empty," said Fran Bagenal, a professor at University of Colorado Boulder, who leads the New Horizons Particles and Plasma Team.

"Any debris created when Pluto's moons were captured or created during impacts has long since been removed by planetary processes," said Bagenal, a faculty member at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Studying the microscopic dust grains can give researchers clues about how the solar system was formed billions of years ago and how it works today, providing information on planets, moons and comets, said Bagenal.

Launched in 2006, the New Horizons mission was designed to help scientists better understand the icy world at the edge of our solar system, including Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

A vast region thought to span more than a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit, the Kuiper Belt is believed to harbour at least 70,000 objects more than 96 kilometres in diameter and contain samples of ancient material created during the solar system's violent formation some 4.5 billion years ago.

The Student Dust Counter (SDC) logged thousands of dust grain hits over the spacecraft's nine year, 3 billion-mile journey to Pluto while most of other six instruments slept, said Professor Mihaly Horanyi from LASP.

"Now we are starting to see a slow but steady increase in the impact rate of larger particles, possibly indicating that we already have entered the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt," said Horanyi, the principal investigator for the SDC.

The dust counter is a thin film resting on a honeycombed aluminium structure the size of a cake pan mounted on the spacecraft's exterior.

A small electronic box functions as the instrument's "brain" to assess each individual dust particle that strikes the detector, allowing the students to infer the mass of each particle.

"Our instrument has been soaring through our solar system's dust disk and gathering data since launch," said Jamey Szalay, a former CU-Boulder student, now postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

"It's going to be very exciting to get into the Kuiper Belt and see what we find there," said Szalay.

The research was published in the journal Science.

PTI
Karen Nettleton, the mother-in-law of notorious Australian Islamic state terrorist Khaled Sharrouf is travelling to Turkey in a bid to recover her five grandchildren.

With the children trapped in the Syrian city of Raqqa following the death of their mother, Tara Nettleton, Karen Nettleton left Sydney with her solicitor Robert van Aalt on Thursday night.

It is understood Ms Nettleton self-funded the trip. She had planned on being in Turkey for two to three weeks and will wait for the children to cross the border before checking into a safe house.
The most-wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was arrested after a shootout with police in Brussels, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said.

Media reported Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect, was wounded in the operation as EU leaders met on the other side of the city to discuss Europe's migration crisis. "We got him," Belgium's Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, said on Twitter.

Abdeslam was caught by police during raids in the Molenbeek borough of Brussels, an area characterised by unemployment, low education, poor housing and hostile relations with local police.

Several exchanges of gunfire rang out in the city's Molenbeek area - the scene of past investigations into the Paris attacks - and police officers were seen surrounding an apartment block there.

French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel left the summit to discuss the operation, officials said.
Farmers and development organizations say they welcome the release of water from a hydropower dam on the Mekong River in China, but warn against negative effects if too much is discharged.

In January and February, China released 2.3 billion cubic meters of water from Jinghong power station in Yunnan province as part of efforts to ease drought and help irrigation in Lower Mekong countries.

The Mekong River Commission, a consortium of governments from countries along the river, praised the discharge following a two-day meeting in Vietnam, calling it "goodwill" from China.

"I would encourage that the member countries use this extra volume of water in an appropriate and effective manner," Le Duc Trung, chairman of the Mekong River Commissions Joint Committee, said.

The increased flow will not only help farmers, but Cambodian fishermen as well. Phork Nimul, a fisherman in OSvay commune, Stung Treng province, said the water would help his crops and enable fishing boats to better navigate the river, bringing in more fish to feed families.

Some Cambodians, however, remain cautious, fearing too much of a good thing.

Phork Sareith, chief of a fishing community in Stung Treng citys Samaki commune, said he worries that too much water could be discharged and hurt crops.

"If too much water is to be released, the crops will be flooded, so it could affect the people living along the river," he said.

Tek Vannara, director of the Phnom Penh-based NGO Forum on Cambodia, echoed that sentiment, saying that although the water could alleviate the effects of drought, especially in agricultural communities, too much water could also damage sensitive ecosystems. Stored water is already "against the natural flow" of the river, he said.
An internally flawless blue diamond, weighing 10.10 carats, was the star attraction at a recent press event in London.

The largest oval blue diamond ever to appear at auction is to be sold April 5 in Hong Kong.

"Blue diamonds are extremely rare, and when they are over 10 carats and flawless, they are quite special," Quek Chin Yeow, deputy chairman for Asia at Sotheby's auction house, said at the press event.

According to the website minerals.net, most diamonds used as gemstones are colorless or have a very faint tint. However, colored diamonds, known as "fancies," can be extremely rare and valuable. The most valuable gemstones ever known have been fancy diamonds.

"This is a beautiful sky blue, baby blue shade of blue, and the shape is very rare, said Chin Yeow. The gorgeous color, and the fact that it's an oval, "will make it a little different from everything else that's sold before and to come," he added.

The diamond, mined in South Africa, is one of a collection of 11 cut by luxury jewelers De Beers in London in 2000.

"De Beers cut these to celebrate the millennium here in London. So to have it offered here 16 years later now in Hong Kong for the private Asian collection, it is extremely wonderful," said Chin Yeow.

Only one of the diamonds has previously appeared on the market before, selling at Sotheby's in Hong Kong for more than $6 million in April 2010.

This rare gem will lead Sotheby's Hong Kong spring sale after being exhibited in London, Geneva, New York, Singapore and Taipei.

It is estimated to sell for $30 million to $35 million.
The World Health Organization reports that an outbreak of yellow fever in Luanda, the capital of Angola, has now spread to seven other provinces as well as to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya. WHO is calling for a large-scale vaccination campaign to stop the spread of the disease.



The latest official figures find the number of confirmed deaths from yellow fever in Angola now stands at 146, with 885 suspected cases. But, WHO yellow fever expert Sergio Yactayo, who has just returned from a mission in Angola, said these figures are seriously underestimated.



That is only the point of the iceberg because it means that we can detect only the most severe cases, but there are other cases and you can multiply this number by 10, for example, to have an idea of the part of the problem," Yactayo says.



Most of the deaths and cases are in Luanda, where the outbreak began in early December. Such outbreaks usually occur in tropical rainforests, when monkeys infected by wild mosquitoes pass the virus on to other mosquitoes. The infected mosquitoes then bite humans entering the forest.



The U.N. agency said outbreaks of yellow fever in an urban setting are generally more dangerous and difficult to contain because the disease can spread easily from one person to another. It said a largely unvaccinated population that is bitten by infected mosquitoes can trigger an epidemic.



Vaccination crucial

Vaccination is the most important preventive measure against yellow fever. Yactayo said WHO, its partners and the Angolan ministry of health have undertaken a massive vaccination campaign in Luanda, targeting 6.5 million people. He told VOA this is having positive results.



In Luanda, this urban severe outbreak will be under control in the following days," he says. "The problem is in the other provinces in Angola and outside of Angola. So, the situation is not under control. There are risks that we need to consider and we need to prevent other things.



Yactayo said 100 million people in endemic countries in Africa have to be vaccinated to prevent further outbreaks of yellow fever. But, there is a problem. He says only 25 million doses of the vaccine are currently available, and much of the $200 million needed to cover the cost of the vaccines and operational costs is yet to be found.



Mosquitoes to blame

Yellow fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. The mosquito that transmits the virus is the same one responsible for the Zika virus, dengue fever and Chikungunya.



As with Zika, the yellow fever virus is usually very mild and most people that are infected have little or no symptoms.

However, about 15 percent of patients become severely ill and up to 50 percent will die if they do not get treatment.

In the 1990s, the WHO estimates that 200,000 cases of yellow fever, including 30,000 deaths, occurred globally every year, with 90 percent of the cases in Africa.

But William Perea, the WHO coordinator for control of epidemic diseases, said there has been a significant decrease in the number of cases and deaths since WHO launched the Yellow Fever Initiative 10 years ago.



Since 2006, we have vaccinated 105 million people. That is a huge amount of people in so few years and that is the main reason we do not have any more outbreaks today in West and Central Africa, he said.



We need to do this, however, in the rest of the continent. There are many other countries that are still endemicmiddle-level countries. They are in the order of 12 of them and we really need to increase the pace of vaccinations of these countries.



Countries in West Africa used to have almost monthly outbreaks of the yellow fever virus. A mass vaccination campaign was held in the region two years ago. Since then, the World Health Organization says there has not been a single known case of the disease.


The top suspect linked to the November 13 terror attacks in France has been arrested in Belgium, a Belgian minister said

Salah Abdeslam was arrested by Belgian police during a raid Friday in the Molenbeek area of Brussels. Authorities said Abdeslam has a leg injury and has been transferred to a hospital.

Belgian immigration minister Theo Francken confirmed the arrest in a tweet that said, "We got him."

Footage aired on Belgian TV showed police dragging a man in white into a police car. A government spokesman said another man, identified as Monir Ahmed Alaaj, with the alias Amine Choukri, was also injured during the shootout and hospitalized.

Belgian authorities found the fugitive's fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighborhood.

A spokesman for the Belgian prosecutors office said police in Germany had questioned Abdeslam and Choukri in October. They took Choukris fingerprints, which later were found in a Belgian safe house used by the terrorists. Police later found a fake Syrian passport and fake Belgian identity card bearing the mans two different names.

Three other people were arrested during Fridays raid; prosecutors identified them as members of a family that had hidden Abdeslam.

WATCH: Josh Earnest statement to reporters

The arrests ended a four-month manhunt.

Abdeslam had been the chief target in an intense hunt for suspects and associates of the militants who carried out the November 13th terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. His older brother, Brahim, was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves during the rampage.

It was unclear whether French-Moroccan Abdelslam had remained in Brussels since November.

Since mid-November, 11 people have been arrested and charged in Belgium in connection with the killings. Eight are still in detention. The attacks were prepared and coordinated, in part, in Brussels.

French and Belgian leaders praised the cooperation between the two countries leading to the arrests, but warned that the terrorist threat remained. French President Francois Hollande said his country would issue an extradition request for Abdeslam.

Hollande said the investigation revealed that many more people were involved in the attacks than authorities originally believed, in a network that spanned several countries.

Paris Assailants, Suspects Where Are They Now?

Status: Captured

Name: Salah Abdeslam

Background: French national born in Belgium

Investigation: Considered eighth attacker; believed to be driver of car outside the Bataclan

Status: Dead

Name: Abdelhamid Abaaoud

Background: Belgian of Moroccan origin

Investigation: Ringleader of Paris attacks

Name: Ibrahim Abdeslam

Background: French citizen

Investigation: Suicide bomber at cafe on Boulevard Voltaire; brother of Salah Abdeslam

Name: Samy Amimour

Background: Born in Paris

Investigation: One of three suicide bombers at Bataclan concert hall

Name: Bilal Hadfi

Status: Dead

Background: Nationality unknown, living in Belgium prior to attacks

Investigation: One of three suicide bombers at soccer stadium

Name: Ismael Omar Mostefai

Background: Chartres, France

Investigation: Suicide bomber at Bataclan concert hall

Name: Ahmad al Muhammad (falsified name)

Background: Unknown; emergency passport said he was from Syria

Investigation: Suicide bomber at soccer stadium; emergency passport found on his body

Name: Unknown

Background: Unknown

Investigation: Suicide bomber at soccer stadium; carried falsified Turkish passport

Name: Unknown

Background: Unknown

Investigation: Suicide bomber at Bataclan concert hall; has not yet been identified
Secretary of State John Kerry has determined that the Islamic State group is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. officials, as he acted to meet a congressional deadline.

But Kerrys finding, set to be announced today, will not obligate the United States to take additional action against IS militants and does not prejudge any prosecution against its members, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview Kerrys decision.

A day after the State Department said Kerry would miss the March 17 deadline, the officials said Kerry had completed his review and determined that Christians, Yazidis and Shiite groups are victims of genocide. The House this week passed a nonbinding resolution by a 393-0 vote condemning IS atrocities as genocide.

Lawmakers and others who have advocated for the finding had sharply criticized the departments disclosure Wednesday that deadline would be missed. The officials said Kerry concluded his review just hours after that announcement and that the criticism had not affected his decision.

The determination marks only the second time a U.S. administration has declared that a genocide was being committed during an ongoing conflict.

The first was in 2004, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that atrocities in Sudans Darfur region constituted genocide. Powell reached that determination amid much lobbying from human rights groups, but only after State Department lawyers advised him that it would not  contrary to legal advice offered to previous administrations  obligate the United States to act to stop it.

In that case, the lawyers decided that the 1948 U.N. Convention against genocide did not require countries to prevent genocide from taking place outside their territory. Powell instead called for the U.N. Security Council to appoint a commission to investigate and take appropriate legal action if it agreed with the genocide determination.

The officials said Kerrys determination followed a similar finding by department lawyers.

Although the United States is involved in military strikes against IS and has helped prevent some incidents of ethnic cleansing, notably of Yazidis, some advocates argue that a genocide determination would require additional U.S. action.

In making his decision, Kerry weighed whether the militants targeting of Christians and other minorities meets the definition of genocide, according to the U.N. Convention: acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

His determination, however, does not carry the legal implication of a verdict of guilt or conviction on genocide charges, the officials said. Such decisions will be left to international or other tribunals.

In a bid to push the review process, several groups released reports last week documenting what they said is clear evidence that the legal standard has been met.

The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians, which had applauded Mondays House resolution, said they hoped the delay would ensure that Kerry makes the determination.

There is only one legal term for this, and that is genocide, said Knights of Columbus chief Carl Anderson.

The groups 280-page report identified by name more than 1,100 Christians who they said had been killed by IS. AP
Follow Times-News journalists into the field as they undertake a special reporting project: following a family of four refugees through their first year in Twin Falls.

In today's episode, a local activist says putting a ballot measure before Twin Falls County voters is the only legitimate way to measure support for refugee resettlement. But while he gathers signatures in support of the measure, which seeks to ban refugee centers in the county, a few people around Twin Falls are demonstrating their support in direct and individual ways  like bringing presents to a baby shower for a Congolese refugee expecting to give birth in her new land.

This is the final episode of the podcast season that launched Jan. 8.

Listen to and download episodes at Magicvalley.com/podcast or search Refugees in a New Land in your podcast player, iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud to subscribe and automatically download future episodes to your mobile device.

On May 8 in the Times-News and Magicvalley.com, watch for the third installment of the special reporting and photography project, which concludes in November.
Voters are going to the polls this year with economic worries uppermost in their minds. Although the headline unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9 percent, the labor force participation rate remains near historic lows, indicating that many people who might work are not doing so. Discouraged workers have given up looking for work, and middle-class jobs with benefits are scarce. One issue ties these troubles together  manufacturing.

Americas factories are struggling. In spite of economic growth, U.S. manufacturing is in a recession. The sector has now contracted for four straight months, with exports lower due to a weak global economy and a strong dollar. But competition from illegally subsidized foreign producers is the main culprit.

Federal data shows the United States has lost roughly 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, including roughly 7,000 jobs in Idaho alone. The loss of so many skilled, high-paying jobs has profoundly hurt Americas middle class, with formerly well-paid workers forced into unemployment, early retirement, or lower-paying service jobs. No wonder voters are angry. To restore the viability of domestic manufacturing, voters need to choose candidates who will tackle the big problem facing the nations factories, namely, bad U.S. trade policies.

When Americans are asked why U.S factories are moving overseas, they usually think cheap labor. But labor is only a small part of the picture. What really hurts Americas factories is the massive subsidies that foreign governments provide to their industrial sectors. China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and some EU countries deliberately intervene in currency markets to weaken their currencies, making their goods artificially cheap against American-made products. Thats why the annual U.S. trade deficit with China has exploded over the past 15 years, jumping from $83 billion in 2000 to $366 billion in 2015.

Thats a lot of lost jobs, and both the Bush and Obama administrations failed to take action. Voters should be asking, Who will stop this hemorrhaging of our manufacturing base?

In 2013, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress urged President Obama to include strong, enforceable currency measures in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Congress did so again in 2015 when they passed negotiating objectives for the TPP. Inexplicably, the Obama Administration ignored Congress, and there are no penalties for currency manipulation in the TPP. That means the deal, if passed, will allow even more artificially cheap goods to enter the U.S. market, further weakening domestic industry.

Americas manufacturers are beset by a host of other unfair trade practices. China massively subsidizes its energy sector, and props up key industries like autos, steel, glass, paper, rubber, and electronics. These subsidies are actionable under world trade law, and could be countered if only a U.S. president enforced existing trade laws.

Most countries have cohesive industrial strategies to grow their manufacturing sectors  but not the United States. Thats why Germany, and not America, enjoys a trade surplus with China and the world, successfully exporting its products while restraining imports.

A strong manufacturing base is critical to Americas economic future. Manufacturing jobs pay better than service jobs, and provide better benefits. They support related jobs throughout the economy. And manufacturing undertakes 70 percent of private sector R&D, spawning future industries.

Voters must help rebuild manufacturing. Step one is to identify candidates who support action against currency manipulation and subsidies by China, Japan, and others, as well as candidates who reject outsourcing deals such as the TPP. When voters listen closely to candidates on trade issues, theyll quickly find out who wants a robust future for Americas factories, jobs, and middle class.
Studies show that by the second grade students have made decisions about the subjects they are good or bad at. These types of early decision-making points have long-term effects on the classes students want to take in high school or what careers they choose as an adult. It also puts a heavy burden on schools to present these topics in ways that help our kids feel successful. If an 8-year-old has determined that they are poor at math, for example, they may never consider industries in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). We have the tendency to gravitate to those things we are good at, but to be successful, as defined by the ability to support yourself as adult, students must have a broader view of the skills they already possess. Industry is begging education on the macro level and students on the micro level to take another look at these important subjects.

In his book "One Nation Under Taught," author Vince Bertram portrays the sobering news. Economic projections for the next decade tell us we will need approximately 1 million more STEM field professionals than we are on a course to produce. In order to fill those needs the number of STEM students graduating with STEM degrees must increase by 34 percent. He gets down to the whys of an education. We should not be asking our students to learn math for the sake of doing more math. We do math to solve problems, all sorts of problems.

Career counseling is an essential part of resources available to our high school students. No longer do we hear advice that sounds like, follow your dreams, it will all work out. Counselors seek to pair a student with the right path forward. Not every student is university-bound, and thats OK. A school counselor should seek to find the best fit for a student. This year, the Idaho Legislature appropriated $5 million for academic and college- or career-ready advisers. Getting students lined up with the appropriate next step is critical.

The majority of people are still working in industries that existed 100 years ago. The change is that we are working at it differently. Skills in math, science, engineering and technology contribute to positions in cybersecurity, welding, applied science, lab tech and material and computer science, just to name a few. The key is showing students how what they are learning actually translates into a job they can do and will enjoy doing.

Idaho has a STEM action center that provides resources for STEM activities, projects, camps and professional development throughout the state. Its mission is to connect STEM education and industry for economic prosperity, and it works to implement STEM education kindergarten to career.

STEM fields are at the core of everything we do. They not only develop the technology to operate our computers, but they manufacture the hardware, screens and keyboards that allow us to use it. STEM fields design and then build our bridges.

The effort to better engage our students in these critical fields must be threefold. First, a locally determined curriculum should drive critical thinking and problem solving. Cassia County and many other school districts in the state have taken another look and adopted curriculum to suit these needs. Second is high teacher quality and preparation. There is a good investment of time spent developing the best and most effective teaching strategies. Third is a joint effort from school to home that fosters interest and attention on the subjects that give our students the advantages they need to be competitive, not only in Cassia County, but globally.
President Sisi in an interview with Italys La Repubblica newspaper said countries considering military intervention in Libya should rather give the needed support to the Libya National Army headed by General Khalifa Haftar because it can do the job much better than anyone else.

The Egyptian president said foreign intervention in the war torn country is too risky and the situation is complicated because it is not only about fighting the Islamic State.

Some European countries are willing to intervene in Libya if a request is forwarded by a unity government.

According to him, the problem is that the Europeans look at Libya and act as if Daesh were the only threat saying it as a serious mistake to concentrate only on them because the threat is the extremist ideology.

General Haftar said last years promised support by the Arab League to help launch a proper attack on the Islamic State is yet to be received and Sisi thinks that arming and supporting the army loyal to Tobruk is better than any external intervention that would risk putting us in a situation that could get out of hand and provoke uncontrollable developments like in Somalia and Afghanistan.

Egypt is concerned about actions that could escalate tensions in Libya because they share a 1000km border prone to smuggling and trafficking.
A day after the UN Security Council was briefed on the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah imposed through resolution 1701 to end the 2006 war between the two parties, the Council raised concerns about the presidential hiatus in Lebanon stressing that it is a serious impediment to Lebanons ability to address the security, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges.

The country has been without a president for 21 months and that has hindered the adoption of crucial decisions by the cabinet led by Prime Minister Tamam Salam.

The Security Council urged Lebanese political leaders to prioritize the countrys stability and national interests ahead of partisan politics. Political parties are divided between two major alliances and members of parliament have been practicing a systematic boycott of electoral sessions leading to postponements due to a lack of quorum.

Sigrid Kaag, U.Ns Special Coordinator for Lebanon, earlier on told the Security Council during her briefing that there is a steady but demonstrable erosion of the institutions of State that are precious and important to the future of the country. Kaag said Lebanon is one of our last jewels in the Middle East that is really dealing with so many other issues including extreme violence and constant conflict.

The Security Council said the constitution, the Taif Agreement and National Pact should be upheld by leaders and they should refrain from involving in the Syrian crisis as agreed upon in the ministerial declaration of the current Government and in the Baabda Declaration of 12 June 2012. Hezbollah has openly admitted that its militants are fighting in Syria. The council also showed concern about the activities of terrorist and extremist groups in Lebanese territory which could jeopardize the countrys stability.
The intensity of the Yemeni war is expected to cool down after the spokesman of the Saudi-led coalition Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri said they are bringing major military combat to an end.

The decision came barely a week before the coalition marks its one year engagement to bring President Hadi back to power but Assiri gave assurances that they will continue to stand by the legitimate Yemeni government and offer support until it is able to restore stability in the country.

The coalition spokesman said the next step of actions will be rebuilding and reconstructing the country but didnt state when it will begin. He said long term plans will continue and the small coalition teams that would remain in Yemen will equip, train and advise Yemeni forces. He said the process will take time and needs patience but was confident that the departing troops will gradually be replaced by Yemeni forces.

The Houhti Movement which controls the northern part of the country including the capital Sanaa, has not reacted to the statement. The rebels lost control of several territories to the government after the coalition sent in ground troops last year.

Military deployments at the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea are not affected by the decision. Assiri said the aim of the coalition is to create a strong cohesive government with a strong national army and security forces that can combat terrorism and impose law and order across the country. The Hadi government is based in the liberated town of Aden but it is struggling to control it as terrorist groups continue to operate in some parts and target senior authorities.
Relations between Morocco and the United Nations have entered a turbulence zone following the diplomatic blunder of the UN Secretary General during his recent visit to Algeria and the Tindouf camps.

After the vehement response made by the Moroccan Government and the Moroccan Parliament last week, after the march staged by more than 3 million Moroccans in Rabat on Sunday and after the demonstration organized in Laayoune, southern Morocco, by some 180,000 people on Tuesday, Morocco announced it will significantly scale down the civilian component of MINURSO, the UN mission supervising the cease fire in the Sahara.

The Kingdom also decided to stop its voluntary contribution to the functioning of MINURSO and said it is considering the withdrawal of Moroccan troops engaged in peacekeeping operations.

According to a statement of Moroccos Foreign Affairs Ministry, the North African country took these measures in response to the inappropriate and unacceptable remarks made by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Sahara issue and reserves the legitimate right to resort to other measures that may be required, to defend, in strict line with the UN Charter, its supreme interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar held a meeting in New York Monday with the UN Secretary General and handed him a letter detailing the formal protests of Morocco and its rejection of his remarks regarding the Sahara issue during his recent visit to Algeria.

Moroccan authorities consider that such acts are incompatible with the responsibilities and the mission of the Secretary-General that compel him to dutifully observe objectivity and impartiality and to respect the framework established by UN bodies, says the statement.

Mezouar reminded Ban Ki-moon that he committed a legal absurdity and a serious political mistake when he used the word occupation when talking about the presence of Morocco in its Sahara and that the UN Security Council never used such an offensive word in its resolutions on the Sahara. Using this reference constitutes an insult to the Moroccan people and to a nation that has made heavy sacrifices to gradually regain its independence and defend its territorial integrity, the statement points out, adding that the referendum, mentioned by Ban Ki-moon, to settle this regional dispute was dismissed by the Security Council, which calls, since 2004, for finding a negotiated political solution, based on realism and the spirit of compromise.

In its letter, Morocco also asked the UN Chief to publicly clarify his positions to restore a climate of trust and mutual respect, the statement says.

Ban Ki-moons blunder has marred his relations with Morocco but may have other serious consequences, mainly complicate further the already tense relations between Morocco and neighboring Algeria, the main stakeholders in the Sahara issue.
South-Africa ruling partys secretary general on Thursday said no one in the party is untouchable, including President Jacob Zuma.

He made the comment in response to questions about allegations of interference in politics by Zumas business friends.

The allegations follow an extraordinary public statement made by deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas saying that a business group close to Zuma offered him the job of finance minister late last year.

Jonas statement said he was contacted by the Guptas and offered Nhlanhla Nenes job after Zuma summarily dismissed the respected finance minister and replaced him with a rank non-entity African National Congress backbencher, David van Rooyen, on December 9 last year.

Jonas says he declined the offer out of hand on the basis that only the president has the constitutional authority to appoint cabinet ministers.

In response to Jonas statement, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, a constitutional rights advocacy group, noted that the revelation showed the extent to which South Africas constitutional project is under threat from a patronage network that has grown ever more insidious since Zuma came to power in 2009.

While some ANC members, including ex-treasurer Mathews Phosa and Ben Turok, the former head of the partys ethics committee, want Zuma to go, his allies dominate the committee and he has shrugged off a succession of previous scandals.
US defense officials on Wednesday restricted US service members travel to five West African countries, days after al-Qaida gunmen killed 19 people at a beachside resort in Cote dIvoire.

The Pentagon said the restriction concerns unofficial travel by US military personnel to Senegal, Guinea, Cote dIvoire, Burkina Faso and Ghana.

According to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for US Africa Command, the move is part of increased vigilance following the recent events in the West-Africa region.

The order remains in effect until June 30, and does not restrict official travel to the countries involved, the Pentagon stated.

Nineteen people were killed on Sunday at a beach resort in Cote dIvoire in an attack claimed by al Qaedas North African branch, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.)

The militant group said the attack on beach goers was revenge for French offensive against its members in the Sahel region. France, a key player in West African security issues has more than 3,000 troops in the region and lost four nationals in the Grand Bassam attack.

The bloodshed followed several similar attacks in neighbouring countries in recent months.

While peaceful and credible elections were held in several countries in West Africa in the past six months, violent extremism continues to pose a serious threat throughout the area.
The world's top Go player Lee Sedol (R) puts his first stone during the last match of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo in Seoul, South Korea, in this handout picture provided by Google and released by Yonhap on March 15, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

Google Deep Mind's AlphaGo artificial-intelligence program has beaten South Korean Go master Lee Sedol 4:1, sparking a debate world wide on whether AI could pose a threat to humankind.

The development of AI began decades ago. In 1997, Deep Blue developed by IBM defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In 2010, Apple added Siri (speech interpretation and recognition interface) to its iPhone, which understands the users' audio commands and replies accordingly-similar examples include Xiaobing of IBM and Jimi of jd.com.

But Siri, Xiaobing and Jimi can only deal with a limited number of questions, as they compare the user's command with those pre-installed in their "memories" and answer accordingly. The Deep Blue, on the other hand, relies heavily on fast computing; it decides its next move in a chess game mainly by evaluating the condition on the chessboard and comparing it with the manuals saved in its "memory". That's why it cannot win a Go game, which involves many more possibilities than chess.

AlphaGo, in this sense, is a big step forward because it uses multi-layered artificial neural network, or ANN, and reinforcement learning alGorithm, which can more exactly imitate the way a human brain thinks. AlphaGo repeatedly observes the Go board, analyzes it with its processor and makes the best choice. More importantly, it can store the decisions in its "memory" for future references. In other words, it can more efficiently "learn" and improve.

ANN has become a hot subject of research since the 1980s. It is already being used in many fields besides games. For example, the driverless car developed by Google "observes" the environment through sensors, using calculations to judge how things are moving, and chooses its route accordingly.

AlphaGo marks another step forward because the ANN it uses has more than 30 layers thanks to developers and faster computers. Each layer has multi-parameters that get adjusted each time it obtains information from the outside world, a process through which AlphaGo constantly optimizes its strategy. The more information it gets, the more exactly it can adjust the parameters to suit new situations.

Many people jocularly say AlphaGo is a hardworking student that "studies" hundreds of manuals every night. That may be a joke, but AlphaGo has learned a great deal about Go, or it couldn't have defeated Lee Se-dol. Let's hope its victory would make more people interested in AI research.

Yang Feng is an associate professor at the School of Automatics, Northwestern Polytechnical University.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy keeps piling up endorsements from members of Congress and political leaders in Florida, but his chief rival Alan Grayson said hes far from concerned about them.

In fact Grayson, an Orlando Democrat, said he hopes Murphy, a Democrat from Jupiter, keeps rolling out the endorsements to further stress who is the anti-establishment candidate.

Everytime he rolls out another one of these, it makes the choice even clearer, Grayson said in an interview with the Times/Herald.

On Monday former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who also served two terms as that states governor, is scheduled to do a campaign event with Murphy. And yesterday, Murphy announced he has now gained the endorsement of 46 of the 188 Democrats currently in the House of Representatives.

Im honored to have so many progressive leaders and Democratic colleagues supporting my campaign for U.S. Senate, Murphy said in a statement on Thursday.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama and vice president Joe Biden also endorsed Murphy.

Grayson said he doesnt spend much time trying to get inside the Beltway endorsements. He said his campaign is operating in a fundamentally different way.

The Patrick Murphy campaign is a campaign that revolves around buying endorsements, Grayson said.

Grayson instead is highlighting small donations that he says is evidence of more grass roots support.

Murphy and Grayson square off in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate on Aug. 30. On the Republican side, Manatee County Developer Carlos Beruff; U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Ponte Vedra Beach; U.S. Rep. David Jolly, R-Indian Shores; Florida Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, of Miami; and Tampa businessman Todd Wilcox are battling to win the Aug. 30 primary.

The candidates are vying to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who bypassed running for re-election in his failed bid for the White House.
Watch the latest video at &amp;lt;a href="http://video.foxnews.com"&amp;gt;video.foxnews.com&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

@JeremySWallace

Under the way Gov. Rick Scott wants to award Donald Trump the Republican nomination, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy would never been presidents of the United States, Fox News host Neil Cavuto argued with Scott during a prickly interview with the two-term governor.

Scott had just told Cavuto that Trump should be the Republican nominee if he gets close to the 1,237 delegates needed to be the partys candidate. If Trump is very close to having all of the delegates he needs and doesnt get it it will be difficult for Republicans to win in November, Scott told Cavuto.

But that brought a quick rebuke from Cavuto.

You seem to be saying there will be hell to pay if he doesnt get the nomination when he doesnt have the 1,237 delegates, Cavuto said during the segment on Your World with Neil Cavuto. Those are the rules. Everyone understood its 1,237.

But Scott said taking the nomination away from Trump if hes close would become a big problem for the party in November because of how Trump has drawn new voters into the party.

I would hope hed have 50 percent, but if hes close he needs to be our nominee, said Scott, who endorsed Trump on Wednesday after he won Floridas presidential primary.
@JeremySWallace

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi left no doubt on Thursday that she is not interested in running for governor in 2018.

Moments after Fox News host Neil Cavuto introduced her as "frontrunner, maybe" for governor in 2018, Bondi, a Republican from Tampa, was quick to shoot down the idea.

"I will say on the record, I am not running for governor," Bondi told Cavuto 19 seconds into the more than 8 minute long interview. "Im supporting Adam Putnam who I feel, he is our Agricultural Commissioner, and I think hell be a great governor for our state.."

Though Putnam, a Polk County Republican, has been widely speculated as being interested in running for governor, Putnam has not declared for the race and has sidestepped questions about whether he is running.

Despite Bondi's assurance she is not running in 2018, Cavuto wasn't done suggesting Bondi could still do it.

"Ive looked at polls that indicate otherwise, but you could be right," Cavuto said on his program called Your World with Neil Cavuto.

Cavuto then closed the interview by saying "so far she says not governor, we'll see."

While Putnam has been building up his fundraising in a political action committee he runs for most of the last year, raising over $4 million in 12 months, Bondi has done little in her political action committee. In her fund, called Justice For All, Bondi has raised just $53,000 since Sept. 1, 2015.
by @JKnipeBrown and @MaryEllenKlas

The officers descended on Franklin Correctional Institution on Jan. 3, 2016, in riot gear, armed with 12-gauge shotguns, non-lethal grenades and chemical agents. They launched the grenades, which propelled rubber balls at the agitated prisoners, then fired at least one shot, a rubber bullet, at inmate Frenel Romain, who had been sitting on a rail, waving his arms, daring officers to shoot him.

Other inmates were jumping around, inciting violence against the guards that spiraled in the midst of a gang war that had been escalating for days, incident logs show.

The disturbance was the most violent crisis in a Florida state prison since Secretary Julie Jones took control of the agency almost a year to the day earlier.

There were one or two officers and more than 100 inmates outside the chow hall that morning when the conflict broke out. Like most prisons in Florida, Franklin is dangerously understaffed. That same week, records show, 38 security breaches were logged in Florida prisons, ranging from missing keys and broken perimeter fences to inmate counts where prisoners couldnt be found and officers and inmates who were attacked and injured.

During the past year, Jones has faced some of the toughest challenges of her 31 years in state government. She has been interrogated by state lawmakers, dressed down by veteran corrections officers and overwhelmed by complaints, grievances and lawsuits filed by the families of inmates who allege that prisoners have been beaten, medically neglected and mentally and sexually abused.

There are a lot of situations, day to day, that are scary, said Jones, in her most comprehensive interview with the Miami Herald since she was coaxed by Gov. Rick Scott to come out of retirement to try to right the agencys sinking ship. Story here.

Photo: Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Julie Jones talks with Wakulla Correctional Institution inmates Tuesday morning, March 8, 2016, during a visit to the Betterment Dorm at the Crawfordville facility. Courtesy of the Florida Departme Courtesy of the Florida Department of Corrections
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Rivers have been a constant in my long life. I was lucky enough to be born and raised in Lincoln, with the Big Blackfoot River just down the trail, and I spent my life river guiding. Even as a little boy fishing the river, I began to sense the mystical and real significance the waters held for me, for the community, for the critters.

Over the seven decades Ive been a witness to Lincoln and this valley, much has changed. At times its been a sleepy little place with some small lumber mills, some mining and some ranching. In other, more exciting times, it was a bustling center of big production mills, countless logging trucks and significant big mine exploratory activity. Boom and bust! As is often the case, Lincolns sense of hope and power seemed to follow the same up-and-down path.

Lincoln, just like many communities in Montana, has been forced to deal with significant change. As the timber industry struggled and the uncertainty of mineral extraction took its toll on many small Montana towns, we in Lincoln began looking at what we do have. How can we reinvent ourselves? How can we honor and respect our history, culture and natural resources and leverage those realities to a future for our kids in this place we call home?

In a recent study by the Outdoor Industry Association, it was noted that over 65,000 jobs were generated because of the recreational opportunities under the big sky. Fly fishing in our rivers, snowmobiling in our mountains, hunting in our wilderness  all of these activities are drawing folks from around the world to Montana. Because of the great natural landscape and outdoor recreation amenities our state holds, Montanans go to work. Nearly $6 billion of consumer spending is injected into our states economy because of outdoor recreation.

Many folks in Lincoln are putting time and energy into fleshing out options for economic growth, and ways to grow our already established timber economy. What we are finding is that the common denominator is our land, river and forests, and our access to all. Two excellent examples of those efforts are the Base Camp group, which is focused on growing our economy in Lincoln, and the Sculpture Park. Both of these initiatives are exactly the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that we can implement as a community to partner with our already established timber interests and grow our economy.

Lincolns community members and our partners are working together to grow a sustainable local economy. As we work together, our sense of hope and power grows creating new ideas and bringing energy to the process. For example, a parcel of riverfront property within walking distance of downtown Lincoln has recently been purchased, and community members have been working diligently with Five Valleys and Prickly Pear Land Trusts to create a community river park providing easy access to the Blackfoot River.

During my life spent living and working in the Big Blackfoot Country, Ive learned one thing is certain: passion, hope and a sense of power are critical to effect positive change. This community and its partners are making a wonderful investment in this place. And its working.
On March 19, 2003, the United States began our second war in Iraq. On Dec. 15, 2011, our government declared the Iraq War officially over and the last of our U.S. combat troops were withdrawn from Iraq a few days later. But today, we still have more than 4,000 troops serving there. Contrary to past statements concerning the removal of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2015, we currently have 9,800 troops there, with plans to keep 5,500 troops into 2017. We also have our servicemen and -women stationed in about 150 countries around the world: 28,500 troops in South Korea, 50,900 in Japan and 47,700 in Germany.

With the end of the Cold War in December of 1991, the United States became the world's only military superpower. Since then, many insiders in Washington  like Zbigniew Brezinski and think tanks like Project for a New American Century and Foreign Policy Initiative  have put forth policies under which the United States should maintain worldwide military supremacy at any cost. The result has been to immerse our country in continual war to maintain this ascendency.

What our politicians, pundits and generals fail to realize is that wars are always very costly undertakings that seldom play out the way they envision. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria are clear examples of our hubris. The cost of the Iraq War alone exceeds $1.64 trillion, which does not include lives lost and ruined on both sides, and future costs of care for our veterans.

A real debate or discussion on the role of our country in the world has yet to take place. Are "we the people of the United States" better served by our projection of military force around the world, as advocated by think tanks like the Foreign Policy Initiative, or would we be better served by turning our resources to improving conditions at home and working peacefully for changes around the world? We, the members of the Western Montana Chapter of Veterans For Peace, are advocates of the second option, working for peace at home and around the world. This does not mean that we support standing back as terrorists pillage the planet.

We see that our military actions have not only been unsuccessful, but counterproductive. A strong argument can be made that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have inadvertently done more to empower terrorists and ISIS than to stop them. Our peak of 100,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan in May of 2011 seems to have had little lasting positive effect on securing stability or peace in the Middle East.

Many insightful Americans have offered their ideas on how best to protect our country and the world from terrorists without engaging in wars around the planet. These people have spent their adult lives in service to our country and include Andrew Bacevich, Phyllis Bennis, Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Jeremy Scahill, Ray McGovern and many more.

What we, Western Montana Chapter 133 of VFP, are asking is for our political leaders to explore a full range of options, beginning with peaceful negotiations, with military force considered only as a last resort, answering all questions before taking our country into future conflicts or more deeply into current ones. If recent history is any indicator, however, our use of military force will continue unabated. We owe our servicemen and -women more. The sacrifices we ask of them require us to be informed and our leaders to be held accountable for the use of violence as the default response to international disagreements. We are long past the time when we can just give peace a chance.

President Kennedy, in his September 25, 1961 address to the United Nations said, "Mankind must put an end to war  or war will put an end to mankind." This statement is just as true today as it was 54 years ago.
A pot of green huckleberries to all those who help bring the Irish spirit to Missoula each year for St. Patricks Day, and especially to those who maintain local connections to the Emerald Isle year-round. Friends of Irish Studies, for example, should be showered with shamrocks for its fundraising efforts in support of Irish Studies at the University of Montana, for bringing visitors to speak to the larger community, and for organizing evening classes, cultural events and trips to Ireland.

Fish fillets with chokecherry sauce to the five members of the Ravalli County Tourism Business Improvement District who approved a billboard that prominently features a bass instead of the local  and widely renowned  trout. Next time these well-intentioned board members seek to promote a beloved Bitterroot Valley industry, perhaps they should run their plans by someone who actually knows the industry.

Huckleberries to the participants and attendants of the latest City Club Missoula meeting, which tackled the hotly debated issue of refugee resettlement. The event featured the founder of an organization working to re-establish a local resettlement office, the founder of an organization opposed to those efforts, and a refugee who left Liberia in the 1990s to settle in Montana with his family. They, and all those who came to listen to them, were faultlessly respectful and considerate throughout the meeting, and we sincerely hope their civil behavior is emulated by those on both sides of this controversy.

Chokecherries to the steep increase in highway fatalities in Montana. A team of state leaders met in Helena on Tuesday to discuss the tragic problem of why Montana has seen 33 deaths on state highways so far this year alone, when there were only 13 deaths counted by the same date last year. While Missoula is a bright spot in these numbers, with a slight decrease in highway deaths, a 17 percent increase statewide since 2014 is a matter that concerns all Montanans.

Huckleberries to Missoula City Council member Julie Armstrong for recommending a local preference hiring proposal for public projects. While Missoulians are all for saving tax money and awarding public contracts to the lowest bidder, its also worth acknowledging that local tax dollars are best kept circulating in the local community. A bidding process that balances this benefit against the need to make the most efficient use of public dollars would certainly get our bid, and our huckleberries.
HELENA - A former Helena Public Schools student allegedly raped by a mentor in the now-defunct Wakina Sky after-school program is suing the school district for negligence.

First filed in Cascade County District Court in August 2015 and later transferred to Lewis and Clark County District Court, the suit accuses the school district of being negligent in its oversight of Wakina Sky Learning Circle, a nonprofit that provided its own after-school learning program for Native American youth. For several years, the school district had acted as a fiscal agent for federal grant money to Wakina Sky.

The suit states that beginning in 2001, when the plaintiff was 9 years old, he was sexually assaulted by William Augustus Henness, a mentor at Wakina Sky.

It also states that Henness was assigned as the plaintiffs Big Brother in the Helena Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and that the plaintiff was continually assaulted and molested by Henness for a decade.

The plaintiff named Henness, Wakina Sky Learning Circle and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Helena (and affiliates) as defendants in earlier lawsuits dating back to 2013.

In 2011, Henness was charged in Lewis and Clark County District Court with three felony counts of sexual intercourse without consent. However, the sexual assaults occurred multiple times from 2001 to 2011, the document states.

Henness pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent and sexual assault and was sentenced to the Montana Department of Corrections in August 2012 to 20 years with 16 suspended on each count. He was released on parole Jan. 22 of this year.

We are still trying to understand why they think the school district has a duty (here)," said the school districts attorney Dave Dalthorp with the law firm Jackson, Murdo & Grant, P.C.

It was an after-school program run by Wakina Sky with their staff and volunteers, he said.

All of this happened way before I was here, said school district Superintendent Kent Kultgen, who was hired by the district in 2012.

To Kultgens knowledge, no Wakina Sky programs ever took place on school property or involved the school district.

The district states in its answer to the complaint that Henness was not an employee or volunteer of the school district, and the district had never heard about the abuse until the school district was recently named as a defendant.

The district's involvement was solely a fiscal arrangement to pass through federal funds, Kultgen said.

However, the plaintiffs attorney, Dan Flaherty, with Flaherty Law Office in Great Falls, said thats going to be the hotly contested issue.

The complaint alleges that the school district had various oversight and managerial duties over Wakina pertaining to students' safety and security. Helena Public School District received grant money for its oversight of Wakina Sky.

The lawsuit also alleges the school district had a duty to use reasonable care in the investigation, participation, and oversight of adults who applied to become Wakina mentors and who had substantial and regular interaction with minor children.

There are a lot of requirements and paperwork that go with federal grants, which will be the focus of his initial discovery efforts, Flaherty said.

The school district, in its answer to the complaint, denies that it had any duty to oversee Wakina Skys program and do background checks on its people.

Now were going through paperwork and trying to find people who remember things from 15 years ago, Dalthorp said.

During the discovery stage, which the case is just entering, both parties exchange written information requests and get answers and documents back from the other side, said Dalthorp.

Then we go and take depositions to try to figure out if there is any validity to the allegations. So far, no deposition dates have been set.

During the discovery process, each side gets to do their own investigation, Flaherty said. Thats how we get on the same page. ... I hope the parties will be able to sit down and discuss things and resolve what happened in the past. Theres a lot to work through.

Suits against the other parties, Wakina Sky and Big Brothers Big Sisters, have been dismissed for agreement within the parties, Flaherty said.

In recent years, Wakina Sky Learning Circle was administratively dissolved by the Montana Secretary of State's office after it failed to file its 2013 annual paperwork with the state. A call and phone message to a former Wakina Sky board member asking for comment were not returned.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Executive Director Colleen Brady said she became aware of the case when she was hired in 2012.

Evidently when we became aware of the situation the board took very quick action and the matter was resolved. Child protection is our top priority. I know Big Brothers Big Sisters was very proactive on cooperating with authorities, she said.

All of our employees are background checked by the human resource department, Kultgen said of school district protocols. All volunteers in the schools who are unsupervised when working with children are also background checked, he said.
The former general counsel of Turing Pharmaceuticals said on Thursday that he and other executives had repeatedly objected to a plan by Martin Shkreli, then chief executive, to impose a huge price increase on a decades-old drug.

In testimony to a Senate committee, the lawyer, Howard Dorfman, said he had told Mr. Shkreli that the move would have a severely negative impact on Turings business and reputation and was not justified because the company had not spent anything yet on research and development.

Mr. Dorfman said he was fired in August, two to three weeks after voicing his objections.

Mr. Shkreli told me that he was the most knowledgeable person with regard to this business model, that I was seriously misinformed, Mr. Dorfman said, noting that he himself had been in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years. He added that Mr. Shkreli, 32, basically said that no one cares about prices.

It turns out people did care. The overnight price increase in August in a drug used to treat a potentially dangerous parasitic infection  to $750 a pill from $13.50  set off a national furor that has lowered pharmaceutical stock prices and made drug prices into an issue in the presidential campaign.
White men narrowly backed Hillary Clinton in her 2008 race for president, but they are resisting her candidacy this time around in major battleground states, rattling some Democrats about her general-election strategy.

While Mrs. Clinton swept the five major primaries on Tuesday, she lost white men in all of them, and by double-digit margins in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, exit polls showed  a sharp turnabout from 2008, when she won double-digit victories among white male voters in all three states.

She also performed poorly on Tuesday with independents, who have never been among her core supporters. But white men were, at least when Mrs. Clinton was running against a black opponent: She explicitly appealed to them in 2008, extolling the Second Amendment, mocking Barack Obamas comment that working-class voters cling to guns or religion and even needling him at one point over his difficulties with working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.

She could not sound more different today, aggressively campaigning to toughen gun-control laws and especially courting black and Hispanic voters.
SEOUL, South Korea  North Korea flouted United Nations resolutions on Friday by firing what appeared to be a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, the South Korean military said.

The projectile, believed to be a Rodong missile, took off from Sukchon, north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and flew across the peninsula before crashing into the sea off the Norths east coast. The missile flew about 800 kilometers, or 500 miles, the South Korean military said in a statement.

The missile appeared to have been fired from a mobile launcher, South Korean military officials said. The Rodong missile has a range that covers all of South Korea and much of Japan.

Shortly after the launch, another projectile appeared to have been fired from the same location, but it disappeared from the radar soon afterward, the South Korean military said. It was believed to have been a missile, but analysts said they needed more time to be sure, the military said.
A. Rather than creating just another program, we said we have got to go deeper. Because laws can change behavior, and must change behavior, but laws dont change hearts. Weve got to be about the work of changing and transforming hearts. And that happens by deepening real sustained relationships, and listening to and telling and sharing of our life stories.

Q. One of the most visible roles you have is to represent the Episcopal Church in the global Anglican Communion. At a meeting in January, you tried to make the connection between the exclusion and bigotry experienced by black people and the exclusion of gay people, telling primates of other Anglican provinces, many of whom are from Africa and have rejected the Episcopal Churchs decision to bless gay marriages, I stand before you as your brother, as a descendant of African slaves. What impact did that have on them?

A. What I was attempting to do was to describe the deep pain for L.G.B.T. folk whove had to live with not being accepted by the church of Jesus Christ. And sometimes by families and loved ones, and by society. I wanted my brothers to know that our actions would bring them real pain. I said, anytime anybody is excluded, it hurts. I can tell you in all honesty my brothers listened. They did listen.

Q. The primates still voted overwhelmingly to sanction the Episcopal Church.

A. I knew that was coming. But I wanted them to know, and I meant that sincerely, that this love of God is big enough to embrace all of us, and even embrace us in our disagreements. Love is big stuff, and it can save us all.

Q. Over the years, I have heard from many Episcopal leaders and laypeople the notion that those who are opposed to gay marriage and gay equality will eventually come around. That they will eventually realize they are on the wrong side of history.
Leaders of the European Union reached a deal with Turkey to secure its help in resolving the migrant crisis, the largest displacement of people on the Continent since World War II. Under the terms of the agreement, what will happen to the migrants, and what will Turkey gain for its cooperation? Below are the main provisions of the deal.

Sending Migrants Back to Turkey From Greece

All migrants who travel to Greece from Turkey using irregular means after an agreement is reached will be returned to Turkey, in what the agreement calls a temporary and extraordinary measure, which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order.

Human rights groups have heavily criticized this provision, saying that the European authorities have a legal and moral obligation to assess asylum claims wherever migrants land.

To address this concern, the agreement calls for migrants arriving in the Greek islands to be duly registered and for the Greek authorities to process individual applications for asylum. Anyone not applying for asylum, or whose application has been found unfounded or inadmissible, will be returned promptly.
BERLIN  Guido Westerwelle, who served as Germanys first openly gay foreign minister and kept his country out of NATOs intervention in Libya, died on Friday in Cologne. He was 54.

His foundation and the German government announced his death. The cause was complications of leukemia, which was diagnosed in 2014.

Mr. Westerwelle was a former leader of the Free Democratic Party, which governed in a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Angela Merkel until the party suffered a crushing defeat in the 2013 elections.

He was the highest-ranking openly gay person in the German government, having risen to the position of vice chancellor. As foreign minister from 2009 to 2013, he had the uncomfortable task of visiting countries where homosexuality is not accepted, or even legal.
The capture was the biggest breakthrough in the case since the days immediately after the attack, which killed 130 people and wounded more than 400 others in the deadliest terrorist violence in Western Europe since 2004.

Image Salah Abdeslam. Credit... Belgian Federal Police, via Associated Press

It could give security and intelligence agencies an opportunity to interrogate Mr. Abdeslam about his ties to the Islamic State and how the attacks were planned and carried out, at a time when officials are saying that the Paris plot might have been larger and more elaborate than first thought.

He was arrested three days after the police found his fingerprints in an apartment in another Brussels neighborhood. The authorities gave few details about how they had tracked him down, but the Belgian prosecutors office said it had also arrested three members of a family on charges of sheltering him.

The capture concluded what had been a frustrating hunt for Mr. Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French citizen of Moroccan ancestry who is thought to have driven the car that carried a team of terrorists to the French national soccer stadium outside Paris on Nov. 13. Mr. Abdeslams brother Ibrahim blew himself up as a member of a separate team of attackers in Paris.

This evening is a huge success in the battle against terrorism, Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said at a news conference with President Francois Hollande of France.
Even huddled under an umbrella Debra Messing was impossible to miss as she left The Late Show With Stephen Colbert the other week. There was the torrent of red hair. There was the explosive, infectious laugh.

It was my first time on his show, so I was nervous, said Ms. Messing, 47, making a dash for the black S.U.V. that would take her and her friend Ted Gibson, a celebrity hairstylist, to dinner at Sant Ambroeus on the Upper East Side, then to to her next TV appearance on Watch What Happens Live on Bravo.

Colbert was riffing, said Ms. Messing, who wore an ivory gown, cigarette pants and a metal belt. Thats the sign of someone whos a really great host. It was just awesome. He was free-floating, and I was with him.

She paused to take a breath. And I found out the most amazing thing: that he auditioned for the N.Y.U. graduate acting program that I went to, and he was accepted and didnt go, she said. I try to think of him in Shakespeare class and in circus class. I was really good on the trapeze.
Mixing artistic processes is another, more modern approach, Ms. Albert said. It can be seen in Robert Rauschenbergs For Artists Rights Today (1976), which combines lithograph, screenprint and collage. The work includes a red paper bag, red polka dots and an image of the top of a columned courthouse with the words Equal Justice Under Law inscribed above the columns.

A wall text written by Ms. Albert explains the four major printmaking methods. Relief prints, mainly woodcuts and wood engravings, are created by carving into wood and cutting away the areas not to be printed. In intaglio, the image to be printed is incised into a plate to which ink is added,with the plate then wiped clean so that only the ink that has fallen into the incisions will transfer to paper. Lithography, invented in 1798, allows the artist to draw an image with a greasy crayon or paint directly on a stone or plate; the surface is treated so that ink adheres only to the greasy areas. In screen printing, an artist uses a tightly stretched screen, blocking out the areas that will not be printed. The method was used commercially in the 1930s and adapted by artists in the 1960s.
At her arraignment Thursday in Butte district court, a Butte woman denied stealing a pair of boots from a Butte store and hiding in a garage in an attempt to elude police.

Butte-Silver Bow police say Satchel Theresa Gordon, 26, committed felony burglary and misdemeanor theft after she allegedly stole cowboy boots from Murdochs Ranch and Home in early February and fled, causing police to track her whereabouts to a residential garage on the 4000 block of Paxson Avenue.

Judge Brad Newman told Gordon that she could face up to more than 20 years and possible restitution if she is convicted of the offenses.

Gordon is being held at the Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center on $5,500 bond. At the time of her arrest, she was wanted on a misdemeanor warrants issued in Butte city court and by the Montana Highway Patrol. An omnibus hearing was slated for April 21.

In other action in Butte district court before Judge Kurt Krueger on Thursday:

Tammy Jo Kuenzel, 53, pleaded not guilty to felony criminal possession of methamphetamine. She was allegedly caught with a small baggie of field-tested methamphetamine at the county jail. She is free on $5,000 bond. An omnibus hearing was set for April 7.

Neil Ray Ouellette, 46, of Butte entered a plea of not guilty to felony DUI, a fourth or subsequent offense. He was released on his own recognizance and is subject to 24/7 alcohol monitoring. An omnibus hearing was slated for April 7.

Michael Dean Kelly, 54, of Butte pleaded not guilty to felony DUI, a fourth offense, and driving with a suspended or revoked license, also a fourth offense. He was ordered to participate in 24/7 alcohol monitoring and was released on his own recognizance. An omnibus hearing was set for April 7.
We spied the slender young woman enter the Uptown bar with a female companion on Buttes Irish holiday.

Sgt. Jimm Kilmer asked her age. Twenty-three, she replied. Her friend said she was 22 and turning 23 soon. An ID from Florida turned out to be fake and the women quietly left, walking south on Main Street.

Kilmer along with Butte-Silver Bow Undersheriff George Skuletich and Officers Gary Philpot, Bryce Foley and Kyle Barsness were on the prowl for underage drinkers as they walked the streets and dipped into bars on a snowy St. Patricks Day.

Foley showed me a portable breath testing device that fit into one of his pockets. It wasnt used during my nearly two-hour foot patrol with police in Uptown, but the men were ready  their eyes constantly scanning the crowds on the street and inside the six bars we visited.

Theres nothing quite like entering a watering hole and silencing the queries of bouncers and ID checkers with the sweetest of replies.

Im with police, I said coyly.

The green holiday is one of the Mining Citys biggest drinking days. About an hour before I joined the patrol, a 54-year-old man was arrested for indecent exposure after he reportedly pulled his pants down and defecated on himself on the 200 block of Park Street.

The undersheriff said the man was intoxicated.

Prior to walking into the raucous Party Palace on West Park Street, we came upon a 29-year-old man who had just fallen into a front window of Gamers Cafe. He could barely stand and his words were slurred. Barsness asked for an ID and said police would give him a ride home.

For those who imbibe too much, Philpot said police advise them to leave the area or offer a ride home.

Its just better for them and better for us, he said.

On nearly every block and in each of the bars we patrolled, revelers reached out to the undersheriff and the police officers to express their gratitude. A man wearing a green cap and a tweed-like coat stopped extended his hand.

Thanks for what you guys are doing. I really appreciate it, he said.

Inside one bar a particularly grateful patron shook the hand of Skuletich and each officer as they entered. I was in the middle of the lineup and about to extend my hand when I realized I was just a reporter tagging along. I just smiled.

Then I thought, What am I? Chopped corned beef?

At the Muddy Creek Brewery, two children dressed in green playing with wooden blocks as the afternoon light streamed through the windows. Judge Kurt Krueger, sporting a sublime green tie, greeted us and shook hands.

Officer Kyle Barsness said he tries to bring compassion and patience to a job that isnt always about people being in trouble.

Retired Officer Jim Lester, who initially joined the force as deputy sheriff in the late 1970s, joined our patrol for a bit. He reminisced about the large crowds in bygone years when the sidewalks were filled with merrymakers.

I just miss it so bad. Id go back and do this any second of the day, Lester said.
A live streaming broadcast event called the Messiah Sing is planned Good Friday, March 25, in the East Middle School auditorium, 2600 Grand Ave., Butte. The event features the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, and four soloists from the New York Metropolitan Opera. They will perform Handels Messiah. A pre-concert video feed starts at 7 p.m. with the sing-a-long performance at 7:30 p.m. The performance is expected to run two hours and 20 minutes. Admission is free, but donations of food, cash or check will be received on behalf of the Butte Emergency Food Bank and the Butte Rescue Mission. For more information call Timothy Allred at 406-564-7678.
Central's 'Shrek' performances Friday, Sunday

Beauty is in the eye of the ogre in Shrek the Musical Jr., which will be presented by Butte Central Schools at 9 S. Idaho. The performances are at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, March 20.

Part romance and part twisted fairy tale, Shrek Jr. is an irreverently fun show with a powerful message for the whole family. Donations for the music-drama program will be accepted. For more details, call 406-782-6761.

Lenton fish fry buffet in Dillon Friday

DILLON  The Dillon Knights of Columbus Father Kellehar Council 4069 will prepare and serve a Community Lenten Fish Fry Buffet from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 18, at the St. Rose Family Center.

At 5:15 p.m., the community is invited to pray the "stations of the cross" in the St. Rose Church. The buffet follows. It features baked and fried pollock, baked potatoes, potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw, fruit salad, and beverages. Prices are $25 per family, $8 per adult, $6 per child, and free for children 6 and under.

Whitehall KC fish fry March 18

WHITEHALL  The Knights of Columbus will have its 11th annual fish fry on Friday, March 18, at St. Teresa's Hall, 109 E. 2nd St., Whitehall.

This yearly event supports charities in Whitehall and Ennis such as Coats for Kids, Whitehall Food Bank, Special Olympics, and the Poor Clares.

Food will be served from 4:30 to 7 p.m. and is $9 for adults, $6 for children ages 4-10, and $27 for a family.

Remote-controlled airplanes featured

The Butte Plane Nutz will show their remote-control model aircraft from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 19, at the Butte Plaza Mall.

All sizes and types  including helicopter, fixed-wing and multi-rotor  will be on display. People can talk with the builders and pilots of their aircraft. People can learn more about the hobby, and how to get involved. Maps to the clubs Forbes Field will direct people to site where the planes are flown in Butte. Details: 406-299-2705.

Lincoln-Reagan Dinner Saturday in Butte

The Republican Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner will be Saturday, March 19, at the Butte Country Club. Cocktails are at 5:30 p.m., and dinner is served at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets to the prime rib and chicken dinner are $40 a person or $75 a couple. Keynote speaker will be Montana Sen. Duane Ankney of Colstrip. Details: 406-593-1090.

Casino Night Saturday in Twin Bridges

TWIN BRIDGES  The Rotary Club of Twin Bridges annual Casino Night scholarship fundraiser will be Saturday, March 19.

This years dress theme is vintage Virginia City attire. The event will be held at the Blue Anchor Bar and Cafe in Twin Bridges. Bingo and poker will run from 7 to 10 p.m. Local merchants and individuals donated the prizes used for the live and silent auctions.

Rotary plans to have tables for poker in the bar and dance area and bingo in the cafe. The silent auction is from 8 to 9:45, with a live auction to wrap up the evening at about 10:15. Details: Rand Bradley, 406-684-5259.
Montana's highest court has allowed a high-profile political corruption trial against state Rep. Art Wittich to proceed.

The Montana Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal filed by Wittich's attorneys that threatened to delay or derail long-awaited proceedings against the Bozeman Republican, who is accused of accepting unreported contributions from an anti-union group in 2010.

Friday's ruling means that trial is still on track to begin March 28 in Helena.

Wittich's attorney, Quentin Rhoades, had argued that Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl, the state's top political cop, didn't have jurisdiction to seek penalties against Wittich since he wasn't included on the complaint that sparked Motl's initial inquiries into anti-union groups.

Rhoades asked Montana's top court to overturn District Court Judge Ray Dayton's dismissal of that argument, something four high court justices declined to do Friday, siding with Motl's contention that the appeal filing was premature.

Chief Justice Mike McGrath's majority opinion said Wittich's concerns over Motl's complaint procedures did not undermine Dayton's right to hear the case but merely raised complaints "which will no doubt be addressed during the trial of this matter.

"Moreover, should he not prevail at trial, Wittich will have the right to raise his preserved arguments on appeal with the benefit of a full record of the District Court proceedings," McGrath wrote. "Therefore, he will not be without a remedy."

Two other justices, Laurie McKinnon and Jim Rice, dissented, arguing Wittich had "clearly raised an issue" as to whether the District Court had jurisdiction to hear the case.

They feared the high court's opinion lent credence to a District Court ruling that "would appear to justify investigation of any candidate" by Motl, even in the absence of a complaint.

Rhoades, who did not expect to hear a decision from the court until Tuesday, said he was surprised the court "implicitly suspended its standard internal operating rules to rule on the issue so quickly.

"In any event, we were of course disappointed the court dismissed the appeal," he added, "although we do agree with the reasoning of Justices McKinnon and Rice, who wrote in dissent.

"We are now looking forward to our day in court before a jury of Mr. Wittich's fellow Montanans."

Motl declined to comment on the ruling.
A top Environmental Protection Agency regional executive paid a brief visit to Butte-Silver Bow Council of commissioners Wednesday night to give a nod to the public's concerns and stress that the agency is here to stay.

Assistant Region 8 administrator Martin Hestmark attended the council meeting. Hestmark oversees Superfund sites in six states and answers directly to Region 8 administrator Shaun McGrath.

"We're all very aware of the community's concerns," Hestmark told the commission. "Butte is impressive, and what Butte's done for the country is impressive."

The "Richest Hill on Earth" supplied copper to the Allied troops during both world wars and helped electrify the entire nation.

Hestmark, who was in Butte for a behind-closed-doors consent-decree meeting Wednesday, said he stopped in, along with Butte Hill project manager Nikia Greene and Montana Superfund manager Joe Vranka, to provide a few remarks to the council. Once the consent decree is signed by all responsible parties and both EPA and the state, the legal document will establish liability for the cleanup of upper Silver Bow Creek and the Butte Hill.

Because EPA didn't get Hestmark on the agenda in time, he gave brief remarks for about five minutes, but the council could not question him due to procedural issues.

Community involvement coordinator Robert Moler told the Standard outside of the meeting that EPA wanted Hestmark to talk to the council because retired Department of Environmental Quality project manager Joe Griffin mentioned Hestmark when he gave his presentation at the March 9 council meeting.

Griffin, now a member of the citizen environmental group Restore Our Creek, told the council Hestmark should have oversight of the Silver Bow Creek and Butte Hill cleanup. Griffin's presentation addressed a number of issues on the Butte Hill that he's worried about the EPA leaving undone.

Hestmark did not respond to Griffin's previous remarks directly, but he stressed that EPA is not going anywhere.

"We're very concerned about what remains to be done," Hestmark told the council. "Butte's a priority for us."

He also said, we learn as we go, and added that EPA documents are available for public review through the Citizens Technical Environmental Committee (CTEC).

"If you have any concerns, contact me," Hestmark urged the council. "We're not going away. I'm not going away."
A brainstorming session will enable residents to dream out loud about what they want to see in the contested channel from the Butte Civic Center to the visitors center.

The Restore Our Creek coalition and The Montana Standard are co-sponsoring a public workshop from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday at the Mining City Center, 400 W. Park St., to give Butte residents a chance to give input about the eventual outcome for the mile-long stretch from the Civic Center to the visitors center.

The area, officially known as Upper Silver Bow Creek, is hotly contested between the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Montana. The state says there are tailings that need to be excavated all along the waterway. EPA says it supports the state cleaning out the Parrot tailings behind the Civic Center with restoration dollars but so far says it will not order Atlantic Richfield Company to do the work of removing the rest of the tailings. EPA and ARCO both say the current "remedy"  a 5-foot-deep horizontal pipe lying on top of a 50-foot-deep aquifer  is adequately capturing contamination and protecting Blacktail and Silver Bow creeks as they run through town south of the Butte Hill. Independent hydrologists have questioned that assessment.

The meeting will be facilitated by Ray Rogers, co-founder of the private nonprofit National Center for Health Care Informatics, which is housed at Montana Tech.

Restore Our Creek president Northey Tretheway called Rogers a great facilitator.

The Restore Our Creek group doesnt want to limit Butte residents imaginations with practical data for the first session, so Mondays meeting will give residents a chance to dream about what they would like to see. Another meeting, tentatively planned for early April, will address practical issues such as where water might come from and what engineering obstacles exist.

Bring your ideas, Tretheway said. This is an opportunity for everybody in Butte to say what they would like to see and try and drive this process rather than letting it be driven for us by outsiders. Were trying to get in front of that process.
U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, on Friday clarified his position on President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The Congressman believes that the President has the Constitutional right to put forth a nominee for the Supreme Court," said his communications director, Heather Swift. "He also believes the Senate should also embrace its constitutional right to advise on any nominee."

A press release issued by Zinke's office after the nomination earlier this week, headlined "Zinke on SCOTUS nominee," began with the following statement:

"President Obama has a history of writing his own rules and ignoring the laws he doesn't like. This is clearly beyond his constitutional authority, and I have voted every chance possible to stop him in his tracks. Montana Attorney General Tim Fox has brought cases forward at every opportunity to stop Obama's Clean Power Plan, WOTUS, and executive amnesty. With this administration's onerous rules looming in the courts, the severity of the nomination before us can't be overstated.

"My colleagues in the Senate have a unique opportunity before them. To the Senate I say: Fully embrace your job. Fully embrace the Constitution and proactively define the criteria for who should fill Justice Scalia's shoes. They are big shoes to fill, but America did not give us the congressional majority to do small things."

After a Montana Standard editorial on Friday criticized Zinke for characterizing the nomination as beyond Obama's constitutional authority, Swift issued the clarification. She added Friday, "This does not mean that Rep. Zinke supports Judge Garland's nomination, but he agrees the President has the right to nominate."

Zinke drew up his own list of criteria, saying he thinks any Supreme Court nominee "should  possess:

"Unconditional respect for the Constitution and its original intent, knowing decisions must be based upon what is written in the text;

"Belief that the Second Amendment guarantees all law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms and that the government may not infringe on that right;

"Belief in the separation and balance of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and that no one branch or person is above this;

"Belief that the president cannot unilaterally create laws or force agencies to ignore laws."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will not hold hearings or vote on Obama's nomination of Garland. McConnell and many other Republican Senators, including Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, have said they will not even meet with Garland.
Must we have partisanship over common sense, time and time again?

As we see protesters sucker-punched by lawless racists in the name of patriotism at Trump rallies, vicious infighting in both political parties, and the House of Representatives paralyzed by what would have been considered the lunatic fringe a few years ago, is there no time for anything but posturing and positioning?

And while were asking, must Montana be subjected to the same hack politics that afflicts the rest of the country?

Judging from our Republican lawmakers reaction to the presidents nomination of an absolutely impeccable candidate to the Supreme Court, apparently the answer is yes.

Sen. Steve Daines chose politics over doing his job when he marched in lockstep with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and pompously announced that he would not even meet with Merrick Garland, a centrist and a formidable legal scholar who has been almost universally praised for his judgment, hard work, judicial temperament and even-handedness.

And Rep. Ryan Zinke, not to be outdone, announced that President Obamas nomination of Garland was clearly beyond his Constitutional authority.

Thats not only untrue, its a ridiculous caricature of the truth.

The President has not only the authority but an obligation to put forward a nominee when there is a Supreme Court vacancy. The Senate is obliged to confirm or reject. Nowhere in the Constitution does it specify that either the President or the Senate gets the last year of the presidential term as a vacation from those responsibilities. The whole argument that the Senate should let the American people decide is a chimera. The American people elected President Obama for eight years, not seven. And the voters elected senators to do their jobs, not turn their backs and hope that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump will pick somebody more to their liking  and more Scalia-like -- for the Court.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, isnt rushing to approve Garland. But he has expressed a willingness to meet with him, and an understanding that refusing to hold a hearing or take a vote is not in accordance with the Senates Constitutional responsibility.

Its interesting that Republican senators deemed most vulnerable  Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mark Kirk of Illinois  have agreed to meet with Garland. They must understand that the voters want jobs done, not politics played.

If Trump or Cruz is beaten as soundly as polling suggests they would be in a general election, Senate Republicans may well find themselves back in the minority, unable to stop a Supreme Court nominee far less palatable to them than Garland would be. Right now, it appears they are willing to play that political Russian roulette, with the option of confirming Garland in the lame duck session after the election and before a new President takes office.

Thats a pretty shoddy way to do business. And nobody should be confused as to who is shirking their Constitutional responsibilities.
Its been 50 years since Congress adopted the Freedom of Information Act, which provides access to documents held by federal agencies. Since 1966, Congress has adopted many other laws designed to promote openness. But have we gone too far, and undermined the capacity of public officials to solve our major problems? The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri invited two experts -- Bruce Cain and Charles Lewis -- to weigh in. Watch a video of the debate at https://www.rjionline.org/events/opengovernment
Readers impressed by Mary Pooles February 26th guest opinion, Facts show Missoula can safely welcome refugees, might want to learn about contemporary realities in refugee resettlement that Poole, co-founder of Soft Landing Missoula, didnt mention.

First, refugee resettlement in the U.S. is hardly the work of private, sacrificial charity that one might expect from the names  such as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Episcopal Migration Ministries  of prominent national voluntary agencies, or volags, involved. For example, International Rescue Committee [IRC], the volag that Poole says would plant refugees in Missoula, is a $560 million/year organization (2014 financials) whose main support, approximately 80 percent, is grants from governments, including at least $190 million from U.S. taxpayers. (Refugee programs are about 15 percent of IRCs activities, which also include distributing assistance abroad following wars and natural disasters.)

For the nine national refugee volags and their hundreds of regional and local affiliates, maintaining the refugee influx is essential for their finances. This fundamental point was made explicit by David Robinson, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration until April 2012. In a paper prepared for a year 2000 seminar at the National War College, Robinson wrote, [The volags], including the IRC, form a single body called the Committee on Migration and Refugee Affairs (CMRA). The CMRA wields enormous influence over the Administration's refugee admissions policy. It lobbies [Congress] effectively to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each year . In fact, the federal government provides about 90 percent of its collective budget. If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned.  The solution [the CMRAs] members offer to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets or competing foreign policy considerations.

Because their performances are judged in part on how soon refugees brought in under their auspices attain economic self sufficiency, the volags focus on this. But self sufficiency in this context is defined by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, and  amazingly  it merely means that refugees arent receiving either Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Refugee Cash Assistance. So refugees can be collecting SNAP (i.e. food stamps), medical benefits, housing benefits, energy assistance, and/or Supplemental Security Income, yet still be officially considered self sufficient! Thus a priority of the volags is to get their newly settled refugees signed up for benefits.

Further, those welfare programs are almost exclusively federal, thus not counting the financial burdens that an influx of refugees also levies on local governments, especially their schools and courts.

Then theres the matter of Just who is a refugee? Condensed and paraphrased from the 1980 Refugee Act, a refugee is a person who is outside his country of citizenship and is unwilling to return there because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. But when applied by U.S. bureaucracies and courts, there are surprises here, too. For example, deaf Mexicans who come illegally to the U.S. and apply for asylum (another category of refugee status) now have a substantial chance of succeeding. Its understandable that such people may have difficult lives, especially in rural Mexico, but its absurd to call their situations persecution, and it sets up the U.S. to become welfare agency for the whole world.

Cases of Central American women with abusive husbands provide another example of the elastic criteria for persecution  and further costs for U.S. taxpayers.

To be blunt, going back decades and even ignoring terrorism concerns, U.S. refugee programs have been fraud-ridden, another class of example being the refugee families from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea, and Ghana that DNA testing in 2008 revealed werent families at all, just unrelated people whod spotted an opportunity to move to the U.S.

Perhaps all these additional considerations have previously eluded Soft Landings Mary Poole. In any event, the United States exists to benefit our own citizens, and public policy should be made with that concept foremost in mind, not based upon uninformed sentiment and emotion.

-- Paul Nachman, a retired physicist, volunteers in a research group at MSU-Bozeman and is a founding member of Montanans for Immigration Law Enforcement [MILE], www.MontanaMILE.org

References:

- IRC grants from U.S. government agencies http://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-file/FY2014%20IRC%20990.pdf [See file pages 19  20.]

- David Robinsons seminar paper: http://tinyurl.com/Robinson-talk [See pp. 6  7.]

- Criteria for refugees self sufficiency: http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592975.pdf [See footnote #6 on page #3 and text and footnote #43 on page #27.]

- Asylum for deaf Mexicans: http://fusion.net/story/205119/deaf-mexican-immigrants-declaring-asylum-us/

- Asylum for Central American women whove suffered domestic abuse: http://immigrationimpact.com/2014/09/02/landmark-decision-on-asylum-claims-recognizes-domestic-violence-victims/

- Fraud among families of African refugees: http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/746446_Refugee_Program_Halted_As_DNA_Tests_Show_Fraud_Africans_Lied_to_gain_entry_to_the_US_.html
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
A Kenyan man living in the US on Wednesday killed a US officer from Massachusetts State Police department in a fatal road accident.

30 year old David Njuguna who lives in Webster, Massachusetts is said to have been speeding on the highway known as Massachusetts Turnpike, when he veered across three lanes and crashed into the state troopers car.

The officer identified as Trooper Thomas Clardy had stopped a vehicle over traffic violation before returning to his car to record the statement, when David Njuguna crashed into his cruiser.

The impact thrust the officers car onto a guarding ridge, where it crashed.

Emergency team responding to the accident found Clardy with severe injuries and rushed him to UMass Memorial Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Njuguna, who sustained multiple injuries, was airlifted to the Medical Center where he is receiving treatment.

Police are now seeking to suspend his driving licence stating that he poses an immediate threat.

He is also set to face charges of negligent operation of a motor vehicle and failure to stay in marked lanes, with reports indicating that more charges could be added.

Clardy is survived by his wife, Reisa, and their six children aged between four and 17.

Here are the photos courtesy of John Blanding






The Kenya Television Network (KTN) has moved swiftly to fill the void left by top news reporters who were poached from the station by Citizen TV.

The Standard Group television station has added to its roster of talented journalists, Akisa Wandera. The barely 25 year old news anchor was poached from Ebru TV which is rumored to be on the verge of closing down.

Akisa Wandera made her debut on KTN Prime Time News on Wednesday night where she was introduced to the viewers by Ben Kitili.

Allow me to introduce to you the next big thing in the Kenyan media. The latest addition to KTNs exceptional pool of talent. Akisa Wandera.

She is a graduate of the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication.

On Thursday, an elated Akisa took to social media to thank her friends for the feedback from her debut.

She wrote, The amount of feedback received from yesternight as I debuted on KTN was and still is overwhelming.. Thank you so very much for the support and the criticism The journey continues



Here are some photos












Nairobi senator Mike Sonko has warned those planning to kill him that he will not take any chances.

The flamboyant senator expressed concern over the current political climate, saying that politics has become so dirty that competitors were scheming to execute their rivals.

Politics is dirty. Kuna cowards wanachora kuuwa wengine(There are cowards planning to kill others). With what is on going I will not take chances anymore try me at your own risk, warned Sonko on Facebook.

Sonkos stance comes two weeks after one of his bodyguards was shot dead in Mwiki area, Kasarani, moments after dropping off the Senator.

The senator also raised fears for his life last year when five people trailed Sonko for more than five hours from Machakos to Nairobi.

The five who were later arrested were said to have followed the Senators entourage in two Porsche vehicles and made stopovers at every point that Sonko stopped.


Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right) meets with his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye in Beijing on March 17, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye signed a joint communique in Beijing Thursday to resume diplomatic relations.

"The People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of The Gambia...have agreed and decided to resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level as of the date of the signing of this Joint Communique," the communique says.

The two countries also agreed to exchange ambassadors and, in accordance with the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, provide necessary assistance for the establishment of embassies and the performance of their respective duties on a reciprocal basis, it says.

According to the communique, the Chinese government supports the Gambian government in its efforts to safeguard national sovereignty and develop the economy.

The Gambian government recognizes that there is only one China in the world and that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, it says.

The Gambian government undertakes not to establish any official relations or engage in any official contact with Taiwan, it says.

The Chinese government appreciates this position of the Gambian government, it says.

"The time of the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Gambia was determined through consultation between the two sides," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Thursday.

The resumption of diplomatic ties is not directed against anyone, he said, reiterating China's adherence to the one-China policy and peaceful development of cross-Strait relations remains unchanged.

There is only one China in the world, and both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China, he said, adding that China's sovereignty and territorial integrity will not be divided.

Asked if China had provided enormous aid to Gambia to resume ties, Lu said the resumption of diplomatic relations is based on mutual respect,trust and benefit and on an equal footing.

"China will discuss friendly and reciprocal cooperation with Gambia following the resumption of ties," Lu said.

"The Chinese people have always held friendly sentiments toward the Gambian people," said Wang, adding that the resumption of the ambassadorial relations reflects common aspirations and are in the fundamental interests of both nations.
(As delivered)

Prime Minister Kucinskis, very much welcome to NATO headquarters. It is a great pleasure to have you here and to meet with you here at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

And let me also congratulate you on your appointment as Prime Minister, Im looking forward to cooperate with you in your new capacity.

You are taking office at a challenging time for European security.

And NATO is adapting to keep all Allies safe.

Latvia is strongly committed to NATO.

And NATO is strongly committed to Latvia.

You contribute to NATO in many different ways. You contribute to our Response Force. And to our exercises on land, at sea and in the air.

Your troops help make a difference in Afghanistan.

And you provide strong support for our partner Ukraine, both politically and practically.

You, Latvia, host one of our new Force Integration Units in Riga.

This small headquarters will play a key role in planning and exercising.

And to help ensure that our forces can deploy quickly, if needed.

We recently decided to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our Alliance.

We also agreed that this presence will be multinational.

This sends a very clear signal. An attack on any Ally will be met not just by national forces, but by all Allies.

Our military authorities will provide advice on the size and composition in the coming weeks.

These decisions mean that there will be more NATO in Latvia than ever before.

In July, we will meet again at the Warsaw Summit.

The decisions we take there will ensure that our Alliance is even stronger and more flexible, to adapt to threats from any direction.

But what will never change is our steadfast determination to keep our people safe.

So Prime Minister, once again welcome to NATO headquarters, Im looking forward to our cooperation.

Please.

MODERATOR: Latvian radio.

Q: Hello radio Latvia. My first question to Secretary General how would you rate overall security situation in the Baltics and in Latvia particularly and if I may Latvian for Prime Minister Kucinskis.

INTERPRETER: Question asked in foreign language. Prime Minister what are the questions that youve discussed? What does Latvia have to do to until the Warsaw Summit when receiving assurance that there will be a continuous presence, a NATO presence in Latvia.

JENS STOLTENBERG (NATO Secretary General): When it comes the security situation in the Baltic Region we see a changed and more challenging security environment. We dont see any imminent threat against any NATO ally including the Baltic allied members of NATO but we see a more assertive Russia with a significant military buildup in the region and thats also the reason why NATO is responding and NATO has responded by increased presence in the Baltic Region with air policing, with naval presence in the Baltic Sea and also with more exercises of troops on the ground on a rotational basis. And we decided to further increase our presence in the Eastern part of the alliance including the Baltic region. We made that decision at our Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Now we are working on how this decision is going to be implemented and I expect decisions to be taken at our Summit in Warsaw deciding more on the numbers and how we are going to follow up. What we can already say is that the increased presence of NATO in the Baltic region is going to be a multi-national presence meaning forces from different NATO allied countries sending a very clear signal about that an attack on one ally will be met by forces from the whole alliance that we stand together. And this is a strong and important signal not least for Latvia and for the other Baltic countries. Moreover we have also increased the readiness and responsiveness of our forces. We have tripled the size of the NATO Response Force so we can deploy forces quickly if needed. So NATO together with Latvia we are responding to a more challenging security environment in the Baltic Region.

INTERPRETOR (Translator for Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis): And at NATO Summit it will speak about works to be done, till that time, in fact we speak about how its important that Latvia shows that we step by step increase our defence budget. Regarding long term rotational forces we should be prepared and should prepare to host them. And of course Latvia should discuss and make a common position with Lithuania and Estonia, thats very important to us because unity of Baltic States is important and co-operation between our countries, all three countries too.

Q: A couple of days ago there were two Russian military ships and a submarine in Latvian economic (sic) zone waters, how would you interpret that and would you say that relationship with Russia is growing more intense, there is more tension? And the second question for the Latvian Prime Minister.

INTERPRETOR: Question asked in foreign language. Dear Mr. Kucinskis there are asylum seekers are looking for the ways to go through Russia too have you

JENS STOLTENBERG: We have seen a significant Russian buildup, military buildup in also the Baltic region with more planes, with more naval presence and also with more troops and thats the reason why NATO is responding both with increased military presence and with increased readiness and preparedness of forces to deploy if needed. At the same time I think its important to also underline that everything NATO does is defensive, it is proportionate and it is absolutely in line with our national commitments. And we do not seek confrontation with Russia. We dont want a new cold war so therefore we also convey a message of that there has to be a balance between military strength and political dialogue and engagement and I discussed with the Prime Minister the importance of both pursuing the path of strengthening our military capabilities, our defences but at the same time pursuing political engagement with Russia because Russia is going to be our biggest neighbour. Russia is going to continue to be our biggest neighbour so therefore we also need to continue to strive for a more constructive and cooperative relationship with Russia. But that has to be based on some fundamental rules and values and one of the most important values is of course the importance of respecting the borders of your neighbour because thats a pre-condition for a constructive relationship.

INTERPRETOR: The question about asylum seekers is on the agenda of European Union and the context with the cooperation with Turkey. This question of cooperation with Turkey, NATOs presence in the Aegean Sea is very important its one of the points to be discussed and the point will be discussed if the results of this plan may bring other ways then we also as a member of European Union we must stress that these questions will be kept on agenda, therefore two, two possible ways one through one through Baltic countries and Balkans.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much this concludes this press point. Thank you.
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Emorys Department of Theater Studies and Creative Writing Program recently announced the selection of Jireh Breon Holder as the 2016-2018 Fellow in Playwriting.

One of only a few of its kind, the Emory Playwriting Fellowship provides an emerging playwright the opportunity to explore creative pursuits while engaging passionate Emory students and the Atlanta theater community at large.

Known for exploring political themes and everyday life in the South, Holder comes to Emory as an exciting new voice in American theater.

As a young artist gaining recognition in American theater, he is a terrific role model for our students, explains Janice Akers, artistic director of Theater Emory. When he speaks about his chosen path in life, his exuberance is palpable.

Lisa Paulsen, director of The Playwriting Center of Theater Emory, describes Holder's work as "at once captivating and provocative."

"We are delighted to offer him an artistic and academic home at Emory for the next two years, affording him the opportunity to renew his connections to Atlanta and create his newest work within our community," Paulsen says.

Holder is no stranger to Atlanta or Emory. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, he took playwriting classes at Emory while earning his BA in drama from Morehouse College. In 2011, Theater Emory became the first professional theater to stage his work.

Originally developed during 2010s Brave New Works festival, Holders The Book of Joe was one of six student-written, one-act plays produced as a part of the Theater Emory production 6 X 6.

It means a great deal to me to return to the institution that helped launch my own career in writing, Holder says. I am especially delighted to return to Atlanta. So much of my writing springs from my experiences in Atlanta and the music of the South. It is a tremendous opportunity.

After graduating from Morehouse, Holder served as the 2012-2013 Kenny Leon Fellow at the Alliance Theatre before completing his MFA studies in playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

Jirehs voice is important and original, and I love the idea of him returning to Atlanta to make theater there," says playwright and Yale faculty member Sarah Ruhl.

As a joint appointment, the Playwriting Fellow contributes to both the Creative Writing and Theater Studies programs.
01:29

Hours after his release from Tihar jail in a sedition case, Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid on Friday said he has no regrets of being jailed and was rather proud of being booked under the said charges.



"We have no regrets of being jailed in this particular case. We are in fact proud of the fact that we have been booked under sedition, a law under which activists like Arundhati Roy and Binayak Sen were booked," Khalid said.



"Our names have been added to the list of those who have been jailed for raising their voices," he told a gathering at the varsity.



In a 35-minute speech, Umar said, "I am not ashamed that I was in jail. Criminals are those who are in power, those in jail are the ones who raise their voice."



"I also don't think that freedom of expression is in danger. It only belongs to those in power. People like (Pravin) Togadia and Yogi Adityanath have all the freedom of expression," he said.



Umar claimed that he was being labelled a terrorist because of Islam, which, he said, he did not practise.



"I never followed Islam but I was called Islamist terrorist. It was not just my trial but entire Muslim community's trial. But I want to ask what if I was practicing Muslim? What if I came from Azamgarh and wore a skull cap? That will be enough to give me a terrorist certificate," he said.



Khalid, who was welcomed at the gathering by JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and his 6-year-old sister Sara, said, "Those who are raising concerns about wastage of taxpayers' money, we want to tell them we are not going to go back to studies now that we are back from jail. By jailing us you have given bigger responsibilities on our shoulders and we will fulfil that by fighting."
U.S. agriculture secretary to speak at SIU

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will present the Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture next week at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Vilsack, the last remaining member of President Barack Obamas original cabinet, will speak at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 23, in the Student Center Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public. The Department of Political Science and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute sponsor the lecture.

David Yepsen, institute director, said he expects Vilsack will discuss USDAs work to build stronger rural communities, improve access to healthy and nutritious foods, and economic opportunities for rural regions, such as Southern Illinois.

His agency touches American life in so many ways, especially in a region as rural as Southern Illinois, Yepsen said. Were honored to have a sitting member of the cabinet visit SIU and have the opportunity to meet with some of our students interested in public service, rural policy and agriculture law.

Vilsack, a former two-term Iowa governor, was confirmed by unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate to be the nations 30th agriculture secretary on Jan. 20, 2009. The Obama Administration and USDA have made historic investments in Americas rural communities, helping create ladders of opportunity for rural people and building thriving rural economies for the long term, according to the agencys website.

Vilsack is chair of the first-ever White House Rural Council, which looks to strengthen services for rural businesses and entrepreneurs by finding new ways to make the connection between the demand for investment in rural areas and the financial community. The agency, under Vilsack, has also worked to improve the health of Americas children by combatting childhood hunger and obesity under the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act. There have also been efforts to improve safety of the nations food supply and to conserve our natural resources.

Yepsen said Vilsack, who began his political career as mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in the late 1980s, has dedicated his life to public service. Vilsack also served in the Iowa State Senate prior to becoming governor in 1999; he was the first Democrat to hold that office in 30 years.

Vilsack has a bachelors degree from Hamilton College in New York, and he earned a law degree in 1975 from Albany Law School.

Vilsack is the 39th lecturer in the series that began in 1995. The Morton-Kenney lecture series brings speakers to campus in the spring and fall of each year. Jerome Mileur, originally from Murphysboro, is a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, retiring in 2004 after a 37-year teaching career there. Mileur established the series in 1995 in honor of two of his political science professors -- Ward Morton and David Kenney -- who inspired him as a student. Mileur earned his bachelors degree in speech communication in 1955, and a doctorate in government in 1971, both from SIU Carbondale.

For more information on the program, contact the institute at 618/453-4009 or visit paulsimoninstitute.siu.edu/.
Common painkillers or Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are used to alleviate fever symptoms and reduce pain, have more side effects than previously believed, as per a new study. The Aarhus University study shows that arthritis medicine is particularly dangerous for heart patients and also that older types of arthritis medicine, which have not previously been in focus, also appear to be dangerous for the heart. Lead author Morten Schmidt said that it's been well-known that newer types of NSAIDs, what are known as COX-2 inhibitors, increase the risk of heart attacks and so, many newer types of NSAIDs have been taken off the market again. He added "We can now see that some of the older NSAID types, particularly Diclofenac, are also associated with an increased risk of heart attack and apparently to the same extent as several of the types that were taken off the market." As per Schmidt, this is worrying, because these older types of medicine are frequently used throughout the western world and in many countries available without prescription. In the study, the researchers have gathered all research on the use of NSAIDs in patients with heart disease. The survey means that the European Society of Cardiology has now for the first time formulated a number of recommendations about what doctors should consider before prescribing painkillers to their patients. Christian Torp-Pedersen, Aalborg University, Denmark, added, "When doctors issue prescriptions for NSAIDs, they must in each individual case carry out a thorough assessment of the risk of heart complications and bleeding. NSAIDs should only be sold over the counter when it comes with an adequate warning about the associated cardiovascular risks. In general, NSAIDs are not be used in patients who have or are at high-risk of cardiovascular diseases." The study is published in European Heart Journal. (ANI)
During the meeting, Mauritius requested for Indias help in recruitment of doctors, upgradation of Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, mutual recognition of medical degrees, assistance in upgrading medical education facilities, scholarships and setting up a state of the art cancer unit.

India has assured of all possible help, according to an official release.

During the meeting a decision was taken for constitution of a Joint Working Group under the MoU on health cooperation, the release said.

--Indo-Asian News Service nd/vd

( 113 Words)

2016-03-18-20:37:32 (IANS)
The 97th birthday of first Prime Minister of Bangladesh Bangabandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman was celebrated in Tripura today with a series of programmes.Bangladesh has dedicated the day as their national children's day.Assistant High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Agartala hoisted their national flag in the morning in the visa office and paid tribute to Mujibar Rahman's memory. This was followed by a sit and draw competition among the students of neighborhood.Bangladesh minister for affairs of Liberation fighter Mozzammel Haque, accompanied by a group of officials and parliamentarians who arrived here yesterday, also paid their tribute to Bangabandu.Bangladesh minister Haque along with Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and leading intellectuals of the state and Bangladesh interacted with each other last evening at the civil secretariat.Both Haque and Sarkar spoke on strengthening bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh and recalled the history of liberation war and the contribution of the people of Tripura, the Indian army and the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.Appreciating the role of the present government in Bangladesh, Mr Sarkar pointed out that India, particularly Tripura and northeast, had come closer to Bangladesh due to the positive role of Prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina."We were able to set up 726 MW capacity power project, one of the biggest clean development mechanism in south Tripura, only because Bangladesh allowed us to use their Ashuganj Port for carrying over dimensional cargo. In turn India is giving 100 MW power to Bangladesh which would start next week along with connecting internet bandwidth of Bangladesh submarine cable," Sarkar said.He also pointed out that the Indian government is connecting Akhaura of Bangladesh with rail and constructing a bridge over River Feni in South Tripura to get direct access to Chittagong Sea Port of Bangladesh. This would connect the region with South East Asian countries.Haque reciprocated the sentiment of Bangladesh to India, particularly to Tripura, for unconditional support in their liberation war and shelter the people of that country in 1971. He also reiterated that Bangladesh is also sincere to further strengthening relationship with India.Haque and his team along with Mr Sarkar are scheduled to address the gathering in a city auditorium in the evening in the central celebration of the day where two books on Bangabandu and contribution of Tripura in the liberation war of Bangladesh written by a local writer will be unveiled. Besides, Border Guards of Bangladesh (BGB) celebrated the day in their outposts along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Tripura and greeted their Indian counterpart the BSF. UNI BB PL SHS PR1300 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-640982.Xml
The event, named exercise Iron Fist, will be attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi among other dignitaries.

Exercise Iron Fist is a biennial event that showcases the firepower capacity of the Indian Air Force.

The exercise will include combat manoeuvres and live firing of Air-to-Ground and Air-to-Air precision weapons by Fighters, Transport Aircraft and Helicopters

181 aircraft including Sukhoi and Tejas will demonstrate a synchronized aerial ballet that would showcase its combat capabilities.

Glimpses of an exponential increase in the operational capabilities of the Air Force with focus on the concept of all weather, network centric operations, precision weapon delivery and ability to deliver lethal firepower will be on display during the exercise.

Apart from live fire power demonstration Indian Air Force Surya Kiran team will showcase aerobatic displays.

Live demonstrations by IAF Garuds and special heliborne operations will also be show cased during the event. (ANI)
According to reports, the leaders will meet Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police, and till then will not resume the agitation.

Various Jat organisations had, on Monday, threatened to resume their quota agitation if the Haryana government does not meet their demand by yesterday.

Security has already been beefed up in the state. State Home Secretary said, the administration has called 100 companies of paramilitary forces to tackle any untoward situation.

Centre has also rushed 3,000 personnel of paramilitary forces to guard the Munak canal which supplies water to the national capital as it was breached during the Jat agitation recently.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghursh Samiti President said, the state government must bring a Bill in the ongoing Assembly session to ensure reservation for Jats.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has assured that the government will table the bill in the House soon.

Earlier, at a press conference in Chandigarh, State Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said, the government is working on the bill.

When asked about the expiry of ultimatum, he said that the district administration has been given power to register cases under National Security Act against the miscreants. He warned that arson will not be tolerated.Last month, the jat agitation had claimed 30 lives.

Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's aide Prof. Virender Singh, who was booked for sedition, criminal conspiracy and inciting violence during the agitation, was arrested yesterday. Rohtak Police said, Singh will be produced before a court and his custodial interrogation will be sought. (ANI)
Shaktimaan, the police horse who got his left hind leg amputated after being allegedly attacked by BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi, has found a friend in the United States who will donate a him a prosthetic limb in order to make him stand again. Last night, it took two hours for the doctors to get his leg amputated, which according to them was successful. The horse's amputation surgery took place two days after his fractures were fixed by external fixation by a group of 10 doctors - six from Pantnagar and four district veterinary officers. Jamie Won of Maya Foundation, who owns a non-profitable animal rescue centre in the United States, told ANI that she has contacted one of her friend who would get a leg donated for Shaktimaan. "They had the leg amputated as it was completely damaged. We have fitted it with a temporary prosthesis to help get him up and stabilize the wound. In the coming weeks, we will have a permanent prosthesis made for him. "I have found a friend in US and they are going to donate a leg. We would make a mould for the leg and send it there," she added. Dr. Firoz Khambata, who was one of the doctors involved in the surgery, told ANI that the operation was successful but it was too early to say about the long term success as there was a lot of tissue loss. "We had to remove his gangrene leg. There was no blood supply. There was a lot of tissue loss during the operation as well. Although we have closed it, but it still needs dressing in the coming days. By the grace of God, he is standing on his leg. It is very early to say anything but we are hopefully optimistic," Dr. Khambata said. "It took us two hours to get him operated. As of now, he is standing with the help of a string and we have that he would stand on his legs soon. I think the operation was successful as Shaktimaan is standing now. Long term success is yet to be seen," he added. The BJP MLA had yesterday visited the injured animal and said that the horse needs better treatment and must be send to the national capital in that regard. The Dehradun Police on Sunday had registered a case against Ganesh Joshi for beating a police horse, reportedly breaking one of its legs, during a protest against Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat on Monday for "misuse" of funds. (ANI)
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2016 - With lawmakers struggling to agree on national GMO disclsoure standards, General Mills Inc. announced that it will start labeling its products for biotech ingredients as required by a Vermont law set to take effect this summer.

The General Mills announcement, which follows a decision by Campbell Soup Co. in January, comes as legislation to preempt state GMO labeling laws has stalled in the Senate.

Negotiations are ongoing on a compromise version of the legislation, but the Senate broke Thursday for its two-week Easter recess without a resolution to the issue. The move by General Mills could serve to increase pressure on senators to reach a compromise.

We cant label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers and we simply will not do that. The result: consumers all over the U.S. will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills products, Jeff Harmening, executive vice president and chief operating officer for U.S. retail at General Mills, said in a blog post announcing the decision.

Harmening said there still must be a national solution to the labeling issue. He said the company also is providing information about its biotech ingredients on its website.

General Mills is sticking with the industry-wide effort to get Congress to set national disclosure standards, said General Mills spokeswoman Mary Lynn Carver. Shoppers should begin seeing the new labels over the next several weeks. But depending on the type of packaging, it could take several months for the new wording to appear.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, of which General Mills is a member, said that the company's decision shows how Vermonts looming labeling mandate is a serious problem for food companies and should give urgency to the need for congressional action.

Food companies are being forced to make decisions on how to comply and having to spend millions of dollars, according to a GMA statement. One small states law is setting labeling standards for consumers across the country.

Proponents of mandatory, on-package GMO labeling praised the General Mills announcement. Nine out of 10 Americans want the right to know whether their food contains GMOs -- just like consumers in 64 other nations, said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group and director of the Just Label It coalition.

Like General Mills, we hope Congress will craft a national, mandatory GMO labeling solution and we welcome the opportunity to work with industry to find a solution that works for consumers and works for the food industry, he said.

The Vermont law, which takes effect July 1, requires foods that have biotech ingredients to be labeled as produced or partially produced with genetic engineering.

The food industry has been lobbying the Senate to allow companies to disclose GMO (genetically modified) ingredients and a variety of product attributes on the web, call centers and a smartphone-based system, SmartLabel.

Many Senate Democrats have insisted that the disclosure be mandatory and that labels include a symbol or wording that makes clear foods contain genetically engineered ingredients. Industry officials are concerned such wording or symbols would demonize biotechnology.

Democrats blocked advancement of a preemption bill on Wednesday on a vote of 48-49. Sixty votes were needed to move the legislation, and leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee still appear to be far apart on resolving the issue.

General Mills is based in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, the home state of two key senators seen as potential Democratic supporters of a preemption bill, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken. Both voted against the cloture motion.

Are you following food labeling issues? Agri-Pulse is the place for the latest news on the topic. Sign up for a four-week free trial subscription

Meghan Cline, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, said Thursday that the committees top Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, hasnt been talking to Republicans and hasnt offered any alternative bill language of her own.

Farmers and ranchers who want to see this resolved had better demand some action from her, Cline said.

Stabenows staff responded that she had provided numerous proposals to Roberts ahead of Wednesdays cloture vote. Stabenow is prepared to work with Chairman Roberts and any other Republican leader on a viable path forward, an aide said.

Sen. Joe Donnelly, an Indiana Democrat who has been working to broker an agreement, has proposed requiring food labels to include a special phone number that consumers could call to find out information about a products GMO contents.

But Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told Agri-Pulse that there is a significant dispute over what wording would have to accompany the phone number. At issue is whether the label would have to specifically say that the number could be called to determine a products biotech or GMO contents, or whether the label would just say that the number could be called to get information about the product.

(Updated 4:30 p.m.)





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Later, when Prime Minister Modi was about to begin his speech, the slogan was again chanted, reportedly by same men.

The greeting to the Prime Minister comes in the backdrop of a bitter row over the slogan, triggered by Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat's comment that the young generation should be taught to praise Mother India.

In protest, All India Muslim Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi said he cannot be forced to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan to prove his patriotism. (ANI)
With the Jat community threatening to protest yet again over their demand for reservation in government jobs, the Delhi Government has expressed hope that the Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana Government would not be negligent this time around and there would be no water crisis in the national capital. Delhi Water Resource Minister Kapil Mishra told ANI the government doesn't see any water crisis coming in as of now, adding the Munak canal is completely operational. "Last time, though, there was negligence on the part of the Haryana Government during the Jat agitation when the canal was badly damaged by the protestors. However, this time I hope that there would not be any negligence. I hope that the water supply would remain unaffected and there would no crisis," Mishra said. The Haryana Government will hold talks with Jat leaders as the deadline set by the community ends today. According to reports, the leaders will meet Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police to put forth their demands. Various Jat organisations had on Monday threatened to resume their quota agitation if the Haryana Government does not fulfill their demands by Thursday. During the Jat agitation earlier in February, the water supply to the national capital was severely hit for about 10-15 days as the Munak Canal, from where 70 percent of capital's need is fulfilled, was damaged by the agitators. (ANI)
Another hike in prices of petrol and diesel and steep rise in cost of vegetables have rendered a double blow to common man but the ruling BJP leadership "changes its stance and tunes withtheir seating position in Parliament", showing apathy to people's miseries, alleged the opposition Congress. "Petrol price hiked againanother blow to the common man from an insensitive Government..,..these are the words of the then leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the current Foreign Minister Ms Sushma Swaraj..Ms Swaraj had tweeted this message in November 2011, when the international crude oil price was at a high of USD111 per barrel, resulting in the price of petrol touching Rs 66 per litre mark in Delhi", the principal opposition party said in a note last evening."Figures speak for themselves, on who was compelled to respond to global cues and who is using record low prices for own gains..,..today, the global crude oil price is at a historic low of USD38 per barrel..,..But this week, the Modi Government again hiked fuel prices and petrol price touched Rs 59 per litre", the party said. "This Government has shown time and again that they are devoid of any intellectual integrity, and change their tunes depending on where they sit in Parliament..,..we have seen it in the debate on Aadhaar, GST, Land Acquisition Bill, FDI in retail, when the views of the BJP changed drastically as they moved from Opposition benches to the Treasury benches in Parliament", the party charged. "This petrol hike comes as a double blow because this week, prices of vegetables have risen by 29 to 58 per cent in various 'mandis' of Delhi and Mumbai", it added."Mr Narendra Modi is leading a Government that appears to lack empathy for problems that plague the life of common man..,..be it pulses and onions last year, or vegetables this month, or fuel for the last 20 months, this Government has shown little concern for Indian households", the party said.UNI SS SV 1052 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-642602.Xml
An amount of Rs 552.62 crore has been distributed so far among families and traders, who were affected by September 2014 floods, in Kashmir valley. An official spokesperson here today said Rs 494.74 crore has been released under Prime Minister's Development Package (PMDP) for flood-hit households across Kashmir valley. Meanwhile, he said Rs 57.88 crore has been released to business establishments affected due to floods across Kashmir valley under Chief Minister's Relief Fund (CMRF). Meanwhile, Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir Dr Asgar Hassan Samoon informed that under PMDP, money was released among the flood-hit families and affected traders in Kashmir. The spokesperson said Rs 19.085 crore was disbursed yesterday among flood affected victims whose structures were damaged during the floods in south Kashmir district of Kulgam. Pertinently, the development came after the State Administrative Council (SAC) which last week under the chairmanship of Governor N N Vohra approved financial assistance under PMDP - 2015 for providing relief to people, whose houses were damaged due to the floods of September, 2014. UNI BAS ASM SV NS1315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-642595.Xml
During the meeting, he explained to the Prime Minister the elements of CISCO's Country Digitization Acceleration Programme, and how it is aligned to the Prime Minister's vision and initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India, Start-up India, Smart Cities and Cyber Security initiatives.

The Prime Minister appreciated this initiative of CISCO, and emphasized its benefits in areas such as long distance education.

He said that use of digital technology has been useful in eliminating leakages in subsidy.

The Prime Minister also discussed possibilities of cooperation in the area of cyber security with Chambers. (ANI)
The morgues run by the government in Goa have 58 unidentified bodies which are waiting to be claimed, according to Goa Deputy Chief Minister Francis D'Souza, who also holds health portfolio. In a written reply to a question tabled by St Cruz MLA Atanasio Monserratte in the State Legislative Assembly, Mr D'Souza said,'' there are total 58 unidentified bodies at Goa Medical College (GMC), Bambolim, T B Hospital, Margao, North Goa District Hospital, Mapusa and Sub District Hospital, Ponda mortuary (morgue).'' ''Morgue at TB hospital, Margao, is fully functional. A new mortuary is proposed at the New South GoaDistrict Hospital, which is under construction. Presently, post-morterm are being carried out at Hospicio Hospital, Margao,'' he informed. Mr D'Souza said unclaimed bodies were of those people with no claimants, who were brought to GMC hospital by Police/108 EMRI, in unconscious state etc found at bus stand, road side with limited or no information for example no name, no address except residence of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Bangalore. ''Hence, whatever limited information that is available with GMC authorities is sent to the Police. As such, within the limited information, it becomes difficult to verify name and address in the locality and confirming of that there are relatives or otherwise in time bound manner. As such it causes delay in issue of No ObjectionCertificate for disposal. However, disposal of dead bodies at Sub District Hospital, Ponda Mortuary are under process and dead bodiesat T.B. Hospital, Margao and North Goa District Hospital, Mapusa are recently referred by concerned Police Stations,'' he said. UNI AKM NV AY AE NS1500 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-642807.Xml
LT Foods said that the company has entered into an agreement to acquire the branded rice business of Hindustan Unilever. ''The acquisition includes the acquisition of 2 Iconic Brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana which have been in business for some decades. company said in a filing with BSE. The total cost of the acquisition is approx. Rs 25 crore which is subject to closing adjustments and CCI approval. The acquisition will be funded by debt and internal accruals.''''The acquisition will strengthen our position in the Middle Eastern Market, as it gives us an entry in the markets of Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain in addition to strengthening our existing presence in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait,'' it added.UNI JS NV AW1516 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-643061.Xml
Expelled Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh is all set to rejoin the party six years after his expulsion in January, 2010.Party sources here today said he is likely to enter the Rajya Sabha as an Independent candidate supported by the party. Along with him, Bollywood actor and former Rampur MP Jaya Prada is also set to return 'home'.Mr Singh's entry is now just a formality as the leader is frequently seen at government functions and now even has brought investors to the state. Recently, he came with Zee group chairman Subhash Chandra, who had shown interest in investing Rs 8,500 crore in Uttar Pradesh. Eleven members of the Rajya Sabha from UP will retire on July 4, this year. As per its present strength in the state assembly, the ruling Samajwadi Party can get six members elected on first preference vote. Mr Singh is a three-time former Rajya Sabha MP from the SP.Discarding the vehement opposition to his entry by state minister Mohammad Azam Khan and general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has approved Mr Singh's rejoining the SP, the sources said. To keep him free from the shackles of the party line and whip in the Upper House, the party has decided to support him as an Independent candidate.Entry of Mr Singh has been a matter of intense speculation within the party for nearly two years. His entry was on the cards ever since he had attended a party meeting at Janeshwar Mishra Park in October 2015. What has finally clinched the deal in his favour are the impending elections in the state which are less than a year away. PWD Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav also played a key role in 'Ghar Wapsi' of Mr Singh.The sources added that Mr Shivpal Singh Yadav wanted to bolster the SP campaign as the party can no longer solely bank upon its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. For this reason, he vigorously pursued the unity of the Janata Parivar, so that the party could mobilise battery of leaders to counter the onslaught of the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.The state government is also likely to recommend to the Centre 'Z' plus security to Mr Singh. The security accorded to the expelled leader was withdrawn in May 2008, during the regime of Mayawati in UP.Mr Singh has already demonstrated his clout in the Samajwadi Party by getting his two nominees inducted in the council of ministers -- Balwant Singh Ramuwalia as cabinet minister and Madan Chauhan as minister of state.In January 2010, Samajwadi Party parliamentary board, terming Mr Singh an 'intruder,' had expelled him from the party. Along with him, Ms Jaya Prada and four MLAs Madan Chauhan, Sandeep Agarwal, Ashok Chandel and Sarvesh Singh, were also suspended. Madan Chauhan, the protege of Mr Singh, has now been elevated as a UP minister.UNI MB SW RP AN1503 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-642747.Xml
"With the incessant and heavy rains again wrecking havoc in the Chenab Valley region, the passengers on the National Highway were again at the receiving end due to road blockage," S N Acharya, officiating defence spokesperson here said.

He said Jammu-Srinagar Highway remained blocked at areas Ramsu, Painthal, Sherbibi and Gangroo due to massive landslides that occurred due to heavy rains.

"Stranded passengers faced hardships due to road closure and non availability of basic amenities," he said, adding that to provide succour to the aggrieved passengers, Rashtriya Rifles Battalion under Delta Force located at Nachlana mobilised resources to provide meals and other allied facilities on the spot.

A column of Delta Force of almost 100 troops reached the landslide area and almost 30 families stranded with 100 males, 30 females and 30 children were evacuated to the nearest Rashtriya Rifles camp, said the spokesman adding, "around 250 passengers were provided meals, drinking water and emergency medical aid".

"Delta Force is providing relief to as many stranded passengers as possible, especially elders, ladies and children in the camps nearby," he added and said the relief will continue till the time road opens."

Harshita Paul, 16,a resident of Kolkata, who was coming back with her parents from Srinagar towards Jammu after a wonderful trip, got stranded with her family for almost 10 hours without any food and water.

She said, "We were given hot food and warm blankets by the army after we were evacuated from the site".The prompt response and goodwill gesture was appreciated by the locals and the stranded passengers. UNI VBH RSA AE 1720

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0104-643382.Xml
Aizawl, the picturesque capital of mountainous state of Mizoram, that aspires to set an example to other state capitals in India in terms of cleanliness, produces 159.80 tonnes of waste per day."Aizawl, which has a population of 3,19,837 people, produces 159.80 kilograms of waste. The per capital waste produced in Aizawl is 2 kg," Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation Minister Zodintluanga informed the state assembly today.In his reply to queries from Mizo national Front legislator Er Lalrinawma, Zodintluanga said two dustbins, one for biodegradable waste and the other for non-biodegradable waste, each have been distributed to 11,975 families in Aizawl. With one bin costing Rs 186.86, Rs 231.61 lakhs have been spent for purchasing waste bins for the 11,975 families, the Minister said.The double wastebins would be distributed to all the 66,094 families under the 19 Aizawl Municipal Council wards, where waste disposal is being carried out under PPP mode, Zodintluanga said.Waste management in the state capital is undertaken by the SIPMIU (state investment programme management and implementation unit) that aims to make Aizawl a "Singapore of India" in terms of cleanliness.The per capita waste produced in Aizawl is now said to be less than that of Singapore."Even at the present state, Aizawl is one of the cleanest cities in India. With more concerted efforts, we can make it the cleanest city in India, you may call it a 'Singapore of India'," SIPMIU officials said.According to SIPMIU, 38 per cent of waste produced by Aizawl city is biodegradable while 39 per cent are recyclable.The waste produced by Aizawl residents are eight loads of a truck with a capacity of carrying 200 quintals. However, as per the government's guidelines of 90 quintals per truck, it comes to 18 truckloads.However, producing lesser waste does not make Aizawl cleaner than Singapore."The disposal system is a problem. More public awareness is required to make Aizawl as clean as Singapore," the officials said.At present, garbage disposal is taken up under PPP mode in the 82 localities in Aizawl since October last year. With the introduction of garbage disposal on PPP mode, the UD & PA discontinued the service of trucks to collect garbage from all the localities in Aizawl. Instead, each locality hires a truck to collect the garbage.SIPMIU is a nodal agency for Asia Development Bank-funded infrastructure development in Aizawl that includes renovation of water distribution line, sewerage system and waste disposal system.About Rs 330 crore had been allocated for Aizawl under the North Eastern Region Capital Cities Development Investment Programme (NERCCDIP).The ADB has provided up to 200 million dollar to improve infrastructure in five state capital cities of Northeast, Shillong (Meghalaya), Aizawl (Mizoram), Kohima (Nagaland), Gangtok (Sikkim) and Agartala (Tripura), benefiting an estimated 1.2 million people.UNI ZS AD AE AN1740 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-643234.Xml
A Delhi Court today granted six months' interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested on the charge of raising anti-national slogans in the varsity campus on February 9.Delhi Police has registered a case against Khalid and Bhattacharya at the Vasant Kunj police station soon after JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar's arrest on the same charge on February 12.Both Khalid and Anirban sought bail on the ground of "parity", saying that Kanhaiya Kumar was already granted interim bail by the Delhi High court in the sedition case.Prosecution has opposed the bail application of Khalid and Anirban by submitting that they were organisers of the controversial event on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus where anti-national slogans were raised on February 9. Police said that Kanhaiya Kumar was not the organiser of the event and their case was different from that of JNUSU president. Prosecution further said cops not only depended on video footage to prove their guilt but also had statements of 10 independent witnesses against both Khalid and Anirban.Counsel Khalid and Anirban refuted the charge of prosecution by submitting that Delhi government's report suggests the video was doctored. He further submitted that the citizens have the right to criticise the government and this couldn't be termed sedition.Additional Session Judge Reetesh Singh today after hearing the arguments of prosecution and defence counsel granted interim bail to both Khalid and Anirban with furnishing a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each with a surety of the like amount. The Court said, "I am granting them interim bail for six months but the duo will not leave the country without prior permission."UNI XC RSA AE 1817 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0104-643566.Xml
Ahead of the assembly election in West Bengal, the city police today arrested four miscreants along with firearms from a bus near College Street Market area in north Kolkata. According to police, a police team from Jorasanko Police Station stopped a bus, which was coming from Bihar's Nawada district, in the morning at College Street area and started checking the vehicle.Two single-shot pipe-guns, few crude bombs and as many as eight cartridges from a fruit-carton were found from the vehicle.The arrested were identified as Mohammad Mintu, Md. Jumman, Sk. Raju and Sk. Siraz,during the operation . According to police, Md. Mintu is a resident of Bihar and the remaining three are the residents of Kalabagan under Jorasanko Police Station area in Kolkata. "We had a tip-off that firearms were being trafficked from Bihar. We searched a bus, which was coming from Bihar, and seized these firearms. Four miscreants have also been arrested. They are being interrogated now. We are recovering firearms and arresting miscreants regularly from the entire city," a senior official of Kolkata Police said.However, miscreants will be produced in a local criminal court in Kolkata later. Meanwhile, Bidhannagar City Police booked one local miscreant- Nihar Mondal last night along with two firearms, cartridges and few bombs, and recovered at least six crude bombs from a ground at Sulongburi and Yatragachi areas respectively in Kolkata's satellite town New Town, according to reports. Assembly polls in the state will be starting from April 4.UNI BM AKM PY GC1844 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-643472.Xml
The Department of Tourism Studies, Pondicherry University, recognised by the UGC under the Special Assistance Programme DRS Level-II today organised a two day National Conference on Pro-Poor Tourism: Strategies to Ensure Sustainable Growth". A University press release said the ideals of Pro-Poor Tourism are gaining coinage owing to its remarkable potential for the upliftment of economically marginalised sections of the societies. The strategic dimensions of pro-poor tourism ensures the pragmatic, ethical, and pro-active participation of all the stakeholders concerned; the public and private enterprises, NGO's consultants, the civil societies, and the economically backward segments. Pondicherry University vice-chancellor (in-charge) Prof.Anisa B Khan who presided over the function said that "Pro-Poor Tourism must entail initiatives which gives tremendous accent to inclusive development by empowering the poor people through skills' development, capacity building and other programmes". The Chief Guest, Sitikantha Mishra, Advisor Cum Dean, School of Hotel Management, Shiksha 'O' Anusandhan University, Odisha categorically pointed out the profound significance of the quality of hospitality ventures in making the pro-poor tourism endeavours highly impactful. Dr.Deepak Raj Gupta, Professor, School of Hospitality & Tourism, Jammu University,Mr.Prem Subramaniam, Former Advisor, Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) , Prof.G.Anjaneya Swamy, Dean, School of Management , Y.Venkata Rao, Head of the Department among others participated in the function. About 22 papers were presented in the technical sessions and the deliberations threw light on the nuanced approaches in the contemporary perspectives of pro-poor tourism that foster the socio-economic progress of the financially backward segments,the release added.UNI PAB KVV RSS 1927 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-643469.Xml
Serving an ultimatum to Uttar Pradesh government and the state police department, Union Minister of State for Agriculture Sanjeev Baliyan today said if eve-teasing do not stop then the parents would be forced to stop sending their daughters to schools and colleges. He said if people stops sending their daughters to schools and colleges then too these institutions would be forced to close down. " If the police do not stop eve-teasing then, BJP will stage a protest and will force the closure of schools and colleges and stop sending the girls to educational institutions," he added. The Uunion Minister, who is also the local MP, visited the family members of the girl in Naya Bansh who was eve-teased on Wednesday night and later violence broke out yesterday, held the district police officials responsible for the incident. " The district administration and the police acted in a biased note leading to communal tension," he added. The Union Minister also criticised the police for lathicharge on the BJP leaders and workers staging peaceful protest in the city yesterday. " The police is working at its own whim and the state government has lost control over it," he said. Meanwhile, the youth arrested for eve-teasing in the Wednesday's incident has been sent to jail under judicial custody for 14 days. Chief Judicial Magistrate Sunder Lal ordered the accused Akib to be sent to jail for 14 days.UNI XC-MB AE BL2012 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-643723.Xml
The functioning in Bihar Civil Court was hit today when a large number of advocates struck work in protest against killing of their colleague Pramod Kumar Rai at Naugachhia in Bhagalpur district on March 15.Advocates abstained from work throughout the day, adversely affecting the functioning at Patna Civil Court and other lower courts of the state in support of their demand of compensation of Rs. 25 lakh to the family of their slain colleague and immediate arrest of assassin.Demanding fulfillment of their request, advocates said they would also hold demonstration before the state Assembly if the government did not concede to it immediately. Advocates held a condolence meeting to pay respect to the departed soul.Rai, an advocate at Bhagalpur Civil Court, was shot dead at Naugachhia in Bhagalpur district on March 15, sending shock waves within the legal fraternity.UNI DH IS KK DJK SB BD2030 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-643681.Xml
A division bench, headed by Justice V M Kanade, was hearing the petitions including one by MMRDA, challenging the report of the Fare Fixation Committee as well as the proposal by R-Infra-run Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL) to hike fares.

The court was also hearing an intervening application filed by Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam challenging the fare hike.

The high court had, in an interim order on December 17, stayed the proposed hike in fares of the Versova-Ghatkopar Metro Rail Corridor.

Aggrieved MMOPL, a subsidiary of Reliance Energy, which operates the Metro, moved the Supreme Court challenging the stay.The apex court, on January 27, refused to interfere with the order and asked the high court to take up the matter for final hearing.

The high court today said it will hear the petitions on the interim relief on April 12.UNI AAA SS SB AN2202

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-644067.Xml
Entry to the DefExpo to be held at Naqueri Quitol in Quepem taluka of South Goa would be free for the people of the state, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar informed Legislative Assembly today. Speaking on the issue in the House, the Chief Minister said the decision had been taken after having consultations with the Union Government and the Ministry of Defence. ''Till now close to 1,000 companies and 47 companies have registered for the mega event. For the benefit of those interested the fee has been waived. It would benefit educational institutions and particularly students who can visit the event and draw inspiration. Defence Ministry has accorded permission to locals to have free entry to the event on the March 31, the last day of four-day event,'' he said and appealed to the people to visit the event. The public entry would be subject to production of valid photo ID cards, he said. To avail free entry, educational institutions would have to send names of the students interested in visiting the expo in advance to the authorities, he added.UNI AKM SS SB AN2204 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-644128.Xml
RJD supremo Lalu Prasad today targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for proposed erection of his paraffin statue in a museum at London, saying the wax statue will not withstand the heat. Virtually hijacking the launch of "Any thing but Khamosh", a biography of cine star and BJP MP Shatrughna Sinha here, Mr Prasad , in an oblique reference to Mr Modi, said the moment " heater is switched on, the wax statue will melt down".RJD supremo said, "although the title of biographgy emphasises on Khamosh(silence) but it was not the time for Mr Sinha to remain silent". He went on refusing to accept the fact that Mr Sinha was in BJP, saying he did not know in which party the Cine star belonged to."No risk, no gain", was the suggestion of Mr Prasad to BJP MP, saying he would not gain any thing if kept silently looking the activities taking place in the country. Mr Sinha had been speaking frankly without any fear of facing the consequences and he should continue to do so in days ahead as well, he remarked, in an apparent encouragement to target Narendra Modi government on various issues.Mr Prasad lamented the fact that Mr Sinha was ignored by BJP in Bihar assembly elections last year.The contribution of Mr Sinha had been vital in expanding the mass base of BJP which enabled it to become ruling party at the Centre but he was thrown into dustbin by the party leaders who were now calling the shots, he added.Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar,while speaking on the occasion, stated that Mr Sinha was known for taking his own decision without under the influence of anyone. Notwithstanding the encouragement of Mr Prasad, the Cine star would take the decision in his own way, he noted."If Mr Sinha takes any decision to quit BJP, I will support him," Mr Kumar, however, remarked virtually giving him enough hint to think over the issue.Chief Minister said that he was prepared to get constructed a film city in Bihar, if Mr Sinha offered his experience and expertise for the venture.UNI KKS IS SB SB2244 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-644140.Xml
The US Air Force said it had removed the assistant Air Force vice chief of staff, Lieutenant General John Hesterman, after an investigation showed he had engaged in inappropriate emails with a female Air Force officer about five years ago.Hesterman gave up his duties yesterday and submitted a retirement request, the Air Force said in a statement. It said it was still reviewing whether to downgrade Hesterman's rank.The Air Force said the misconduct occurred between May 2010 and May 2011 when Hesterman was a major general, and exchanged inappropriate emails with a female Air Force lieutenant colonel."These e-mail exchanges were found to have constituted an unprofessional relationship. The investigation did not uncover any additional misconduct," the Air Force said. REUTERS PS PM0405 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0139-642470.Xml
The United States government will declassify documents from US military and intelligence agencies related to Argentina's 1976-83 "Dirty War," the seven-year period when a military dictatorship cracked down on left-wing opponents, US officials said.The move coincides with President Barack Obama's visit to Argentina next week on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that installed the dictatorship, which the United States initially supported. Argentina returned to democracy in 1983.The declassification effort will include records from US law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the presidential libraries at the National Archives.It follows the declassification in 2002 of more than 4,000 State Department cables and other documents related to human rights abuses from the 1976-83 period."President Obama, at the request of the Argentine government, will announce a comprehensive effort to declassify additional documents, including for the first time military and intelligence records," US national security adviser Susan Rice said in a speech hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington."On this anniversary and beyond, we're determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation," she said.It is the latest effort by Obama to reconcile with Latin Americans by addressing Washington's past backing of former military dictatorships in the region, such as he did on previous trips to Chile and Brazil.The US role in Latin America during previous administrations helped fuel ant-American sentiment, especially on the left.Obama has declined on previous trips to Latin America to apologize for CIA activities in the region during decades past, but he left open the door to US assistance in investigations of human rights abuses committed by former military governments there.Argentina welcomed the announcement."Anything that helps analyze what happened during this chapter is a positive," an Argentine government spokesman said, declining to comment further on a matter he said Obama and President Mauricio Macri would address.Obama plans to visit Parque de la Memoria, or Memory Park, to honor the victims of that period.The declassification announcement was aimed also at soothing criticism of the White House for planning the Argentina trip during such a sensitive week.REUTERS PS PM0435 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0139-642473.Xml
North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile today, which flew about 800 km (500 miles) before hitting the sea off its east coast, South Korea's military said, as the isolated state stepped up its defiance of tough new UN and US sanctions.South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the missile was likely a medium-range Rodong-missile. If confirmed, it would mark North Korea's first test of a medium range missile, capable of reaching Japan, since 2014.The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula after the North rejected UN Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January and the United States issued fresh sanctions this week.The missile was launched from north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsula and into the sea off the east coast early today morning, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.It appeared the North may have fired a second missile soon after from the same region, with a projectile disappearing from radar at an altitude of about 17 km, it added.South Korea did not confirm the type of the missiles. But 800 km was likely beyond the range of most short-range missiles in the North's arsenal. The North's Rodong missile has an estimated maximum range of 1,300 km, according to the South's defence ministry.A US official told Reuters in Washington that it appeared to be a medium-range missile fired from a road-mobile launcher.The US State Department said in a statement it was closely monitoring the situation and urged North Korea to focus on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations.JAPAN CONCERNEDJapan quickly condemned the launch, lodging a protest with North Korea through its embassy in Beijing, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament."Japan strongly demands North Korea to exercise self-restraint and will take all necessary measures, such as warning and surveillance activity, to be able to respond to any situations," Abe said.Last week, the North fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong Un ordered more nuclear weapons tests and missile tests to improve attack capability.North Korea often fires missiles at periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programmes.New US sanctions on Pyongyang were issued on Wednesday aiming to expand its blockade by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the North's economy.The North has also reacted angrily to annual joint military drills by US and South Korean troops that began on March 7, calling the exercises "nuclear war moves" and threatening to wipe out its enemies.South Korea and US officials began discussions this month on deploying the advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to the US military in the South, despite Chinese and Russian objection.Japan has previously said it was considering THAAD to beef up its defenses.North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January 6 and launched a long-range rocket on February 7 in defiance of existing UN Security Council resolutions.On Wednesday, North Korea's supreme court sentenced a visiting American student to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against the state, a punishment Washington condemned as politically motivated.REUTERS PS PM0700 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0139-642486.Xml
Noting that Pakistan was seen in Russia as an important and reliable partner, Russian Ambassador Alexey Dedov said it was just lack of substance which was preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Islamabad.Delivering a lecture on Pakistan-Russia relations at Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad here, Mr Dedov said,''The problem is that usually the purpose of the visit is not participation in ceremonies. The visit should have some substance." The ambassador rued the "unrealised potential" of the ties, but noted that Pakistan was "seen (in Russia) as an important and reliable partner with whom relations could be developed", Dawn news reported.He defined the substance as "signing of documents" for cooperation, "preparation of plans" for expanding ties, and "declarations".Citing the geo-strategic position of Pakistan and challenges and interests shared by the two countries as the motivation for Moscow to work for better and stronger bilateral relations, he said over the past few years, the two nations have signed important agreements for military-to-military cooperation, and technical military cooperation, besides regularising meetings of the Inter-Governmental Commission and initiating a business and investment forum.In a landmark defence deal, Russia last year agreed to sell Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan. "Technical issues related to delivery of helicopters are being discussed now, which may require time," Mr Dedov said about the helicopters' sale describing it as a "pilot deal". Russia is also supporting Pakistan's entry into Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).Moscow was also focusing on creating a positive atmosphere in South Asia (in a reference to India-Pakistan ties) and believes that the SCO could provide the platform for fostering confidence and cooperation between Delhi and Islamabad, he said.Mr Dedov said that the upcoming SCO meeting in Tashkent would provide a good opportunity for a meeting between President Putin and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.Despite the perceived lack of incentive for taking the relationship to a higher plane, Moscow has, nevertheless, kept Pakistan engaged because of strategic and political compulsions, particularly the evolving situation in Afghanistan, terrorism concerns and anti-narcotics collaboration.Earlier, President Putin had planned a visit to Islamabad in October 2012 to attend a quadrilateral summit between Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, but cancelled it at the eleventh hour. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was then hastily dispatched to Islamabad to explain the cancellation. It was being speculated that Mr Putin could visit Pakistan for performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the 2 billion dollars North-South gas pipeline project for carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Karachi to Lahore.UNI XC SV RP1355 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0103-642788.Xml
The verdict that a UN tribunal will hand down next week in Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's trial for genocide has re-opened old wounds for many Bosnians, who for years feared him as the "master of life and death".The long-awaited decision by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, to be handed down on Thursday after a five-year trial, reminds Bosnians that Karadzic's legacy lives on in a country still divided along ethnic lines two decades after the war that killed 100,000 people.He remains a deeply divisive figure, hated by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats but championed by many Serbs who say he has been demonised by the international community."Karadzic is the most responsible for everything that happened in Bosnia," said Fikret Grabovica, whose 11-year-old daughter was killed by a Serb grenade in front of their Sarajevo home 23 years ago."He needs to be remembered as one of the greatest criminals of the recent history and not, as some would wish, as a national hero."Grabovica's daughter Irma was among 600 children killed by random shelling or sniper fire during the 43-month siege of the Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces, the longest siege of a city in Europe's modern history, in which around 11,500 people died.If he is found guilty, Karadzic would be Europe's highest-ranking official since the Nazi trials after World War Two to be sentenced for genocide by an international court.Prosecutors have asked for a life sentence.Now 70, Karadzic was the first president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, which the Bosnian Serbs tried to carve out of Bosnia and link to Serbia and which survives as an autonomous part of Bosnia under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war.He is widely seen as the mastermind behind the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced two million people from their homes and led to thousands being held, tortured and raped in detention camps.The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged the former psychiatrist with 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the Srebrenica massacre, where Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in just a few days in July 1995.A WARNINGKada Hotic, a Srebrenica survivor who lost her husband and son in the massacre, said the verdict was important to show that "such an evil is punishable (and) as a warning to those who would dare to push the people into doing crimes in the future."The Bosnian war broke out after Bosniaks and Croats voted for independence from the former Yugoslav federation in a 1992 referendum boycotted by Serbs.Under Karadzic's leadership, Serbs occupied 70 percent of the country, killing and persecuting Muslims and Croats. A year later, war broke out between Muslims and Croats, previously allied against Serbs.Most Serbs deny that crimes were committed during the war.Current Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik has said that Karadzic did not order any crimes and argued that the massacre in Srebrenica was not genocide, although the tribunal has ruled that it was. Dodik's view is widely shared by Serbian officials."As long as you have in Bosnia three different history books used by the Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak communities with a totally different assessment about not only the war but the last 200 years ... how do you want to move forward?" ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in The Hague last week.The Srebrenica killings were conducted under the command of Karadzic's military chief, General Ratko Mladic, whose trial, also on charges of genocide, is under way at The Hague.Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run in Belgrade, where he had lived disguised as a white-bearded New Age healer.He said that he would defend himself alone and easily prove his innocence. He also maintained that the late U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke offered him immunity from prosecution in a secret deal, which Holbrooke denied.THE LEGACY LIVES ONThe effects of the war are felt today in the political structure of modern-day Bosnia, which is made up of the Serb Republic that Karadzic established and a federation shared by Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, and Croats. They are linked via a weak central government whose decisions are usually disputed by the Serb region, which often threatens secession."Karadzic's political legacy is very much alive and it still shapes the lives of our children," Bosnian Serb commentator Srdjan Susnica said."It's all there - the borders, the name, the symbols, the legal and political legitimacy, the ethnically cleansed municipalities in Republika Srpska - so I think that he succeeded in everything he wanted," he told Reuters."Whatever his sentence will be, it won't make any significant difference, because the political territory, which was created on genocide and national homogenisation, first of Serbs and then of all others, lives on."Karadzic's daughter Sonja Karadzic Jovicevic, who serves as a vice-chairman of the Serb Republic's parliament, said in a statement on Thursday she feared that a guilty verdict could endanger the region's institutions.Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's wartime ally who was released in 2013 after serving a prison term for persecution and forcible transfer of civilians during the war, maintains that Karadzic is not guilty, and argues that reconciliation is possible only through forgiveness."Apologies are not needed or possible here, we need forgiveness, that everyone forgives everyone else," said Krajisnik, 71.But forgiveness cannot come without recognition that crimes were committed, says Radoslava Habul, a Serb married to a Bosniak whose son was killed and daughter injured by a mortar shell in Sarajevo."If those who committed crimes go through the catharsis, we shall accept them and live together," she said.REUTERS CJ VP1548 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-643111.Xml
The security situation of German diplomatic missions in Turkey is still not fully cleared up and they will remain closed over the weekend, Germany's foreign minister said today."Yesterday we decided to leave the German embassy and the general consulate in Istanbul closed due to the still not fully determined threat situation," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters todayThe German government has installed a crisis committee to evaluate all information, Steinmeier added.On Thursday, Germany had closed its diplomatic missions and German schools in Ankara and Istanbul over security threats. REUTERS CJ BL1813 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-643573.Xml
Abidjan (AFP) - Former Ivory Coast first lady Simone Gbagbo will go on trial in Abidjan on April 25 accused of crimes against humanity, defence lawyer Mathurin Dirabou has told AFP.

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady", the 66-year-old had already been sentenced to 20 years in jail last year for "attacking state authority" for her role in violence that followed elections in 2010 which her husband Laurent Gbagbo lost.

Gbagbo is the subject of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague which accuses her of a key role in the post-election violence that left more than 3,000 people dead.

However, the government refused to transfer her and instead she was judged by an Ivorian court, with her sentence handed down in March last year.

Her husband went on trial at the ICC in January along with his former militia chief as the court investigates the post-election violence.

Despite ICC requests to hand her over to stand trial alongside her husband, President Alassane Ouattara in February declined to send "any more Ivorians" to the ICC, insisting his country's judicial system was capable of dispensing justice.

A senior magistrate who requested anonymity told AFP that the path to try her had effectively been cleared following a prosecution recommendation to that effect in January.

The magistrate indicated that "the misdeeds for which she is being judged in Abidjan are the same as for the ICC, whose principle is either that you judge the person or you hand her over to us".

None of Ouattara's supporters has been charged by the ICC so far, prompting accusations by Gbagbo's camp of "victor's justice" -- a view the president dismisses.
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) - Billionaire investor William Ackman adjusted his battered hedge fund portfolio on Wednesday when he sold 20 million shares of snack maker Mondelez International <MDLZ.O>, one day after another key holding, Valeant Pharmaceuticals <VRX.TO>, lost half of its value.

In a three paragraph letter sent to investors after the close of trading on Wednesday and seen by Reuters, Ackman said his firm, Pershing Square, has no plans to sell other investments right now and has "substantial uninvested cash."

The letter came one day after Pershing Square lost about $800 million when Valeant was pummeled after raising the possibility that it may default on its debt and posting a worse-than-expected financial outlook.

Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings has now lost 26.4 percent since January, marking one of the worst performances in the hedge fund industry this year.

Before today's sale, Pershing Square owned 43 million shares, or 7.5 percent, of Mondelez, which makes Oreo cookies, Trident gum and Milka chocolate. It now owns 5.6 percent of the company. The hedge fund unveiled its position in Mondelez in August 2015 and has since been pushing for a sale.

"We continue to believe in the potential for operating improvements and margin expansion that we expect will lead to substantial further increases in value," Ackman wrote in the letter.

On Tuesday, Ackman barely contained his frustration with Valeant in an earlier note, warning the company and assuring his investors that Pershing Square was "going to take a more proactive role at the company to protect and maximize the value of our investment."

Last week, Pershing Square's vice chairman, Steve Fraidin, a veteran mergers and acquisitions lawyer, joined Valeant's board.

It was roughly a year ago that Ackman unveiled his investment in Valeant, coming not quite a year after working with the fast-growing company on a deal in 2014 to buy Allergan, in which Pershing Square owned shares. The bet on Allergan helped Pershing Square earn a 40 percent gain in 2014.

Story continues

The size of Ackman's fund has shrunk dramatically to roughly $12 billion at the end of February from about $19 billion in early 2015. But because he listed shares on the Amsterdam stock exchange in 2014, he has a cushion of permanent capital.

Still, investors have expressed concern about the fund's performance and Ackman urged them in Tuesday's and Wednesday's letters to call the investor relations team or him personally with any questions.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Sandra Maler and Alan Crosby)
By Daria Sito-Sucic SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The verdict that a U.N. tribunal will hand down next week in Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's trial for genocide has re-opened old wounds for many Bosnians, who for years feared him as the "master of life and death". The long-awaited decision by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, to be handed down on Thursday after a five-year trial, reminds Bosnians that Karadzic's legacy lives on in a country still divided along ethnic lines two decades after the war that killed 100,000 people. He remains a deeply divisive figure, hated by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats but championed by many Serbs who say he has been demonized by the international community. "Karadzic is the most responsible for everything that happened in Bosnia," said Fikret Grabovica, whose 11-year-old daughter was killed by a Serb grenade in front of their Sarajevo home 23 years ago. "He needs to be remembered as one of the greatest criminals of the recent history and not, as some would wish, as a national hero." Grabovica's daughter Irma was among 600 children killed by random shelling or sniper fire during the 43-month siege of the Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces, the longest siege of a city in Europe's modern history, in which around 11,500 people died. If he is found guilty, Karadzic would be Europe's highest-ranking official since the Nazi trials after World War Two to be sentenced for genocide by an international court. Prosecutors have asked for a life sentence. Now 70, Karadzic was the first president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, which the Bosnian Serbs tried to carve out of Bosnia and link to Serbia and which survives as an autonomous part of Bosnia under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war. He is widely seen as the mastermind behind the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced two million people from their homes and led to thousands being held, tortured and raped in detention camps. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged the former psychiatrist with 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the Srebrenica massacre, where Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in just a few days in July 1995. A WARNING Kada Hotic, a Srebrenica survivor who lost her husband and son in the massacre, said the verdict was important to show that "such an evil is punishable (and) as a warning to those who would dare to push the people into doing crimes in the future." The Bosnian war broke out after Bosniaks and Croats voted for independence from the former Yugoslav federation in a 1992 referendum boycotted by Serbs. Under Karadzic's leadership, Serbs occupied 70 percent of the country, killing and persecuting Muslims and Croats. A year later, war broke out between Muslims and Croats, previously allied against Serbs. Most Serbs deny that crimes were committed during the war. Current Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik has said that Karadzic did not order any crimes and argued that the massacre in Srebrenica was not genocide, although the tribunal has ruled that it was. Dodik's view is widely shared by Serbian officials. "As long as you have in Bosnia three different history books used by the Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak communities with a totally different assessment about not only the war but the last 200 years ... how do you want to move forward?" ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in The Hague last week. The Srebrenica killings were conducted under the command of Karadzic's military chief, General Ratko Mladic, whose trial, also on charges of genocide, is under way at The Hague. Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run in Belgrade, where he had lived disguised as a white-bearded New Age healer. He said that he would defend himself alone and easily prove his innocence. He also maintained that the late U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke offered him immunity from prosecution in a secret deal, which Holbrooke denied. THE LEGACY LIVES ON The effects of the war are felt today in the political structure of modern-day Bosnia, which is made up of the Serb Republic that Karadzic established and a federation shared by Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, and Croats. They are linked via a weak central government whose decisions are usually disputed by the Serb region, which often threatens secession. "Karadzic's political legacy is very much alive and it still shapes the lives of our children," Bosnian Serb commentator Srdjan Susnica said. "It's all there - the borders, the name, the symbols, the legal and political legitimacy, the ethnically cleansed municipalities in Republika Srpska - so I think that he succeeded in everything he wanted," he told Reuters. "Whatever his sentence will be, it won't make any significant difference, because the political territory, which was created on genocide and national homogenization, first of Serbs and then of all others, lives on." Karadzic's daughter Sonja Karadzic Jovicevic, who serves as a vice-chairman of the Serb Republic's parliament, said in a statement on Thursday she feared that a guilty verdict could endanger the region's institutions. Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's wartime ally who was released in 2013 after serving a prison term for persecution and forcible transfer of civilians during the war, maintains that Karadzic is not guilty, and argues that reconciliation is possible only through forgiveness. "Apologies are not needed or possible here, we need forgiveness, that everyone forgives everyone else," said Krajisnik, 71. But forgiveness cannot come without recognition that crimes were committed, says Radoslava Habul, a Serb married to a Bosniak whose son was killed and daughter injured by a mortar shell in Sarajevo. "If those who committed crimes go through the catharsis, we shall accept them and live together," she said. (Additional reporting by Maja Zuvela, Gordana Katana and Reuters TV and by Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam; Editing by Adrian Croft and Sonya Hepinstall)
(Reuters) - A 26-year-old American man who was captured by Kurdish forces in Iraq earlier this week, said he had traveled from Turkey to join Islamic State before deciding to escape, according to an interview with Kurdish television on Thursday. Two Kurdish militia officers said on Monday an American, bearded and dressed in black, had surrendered after being surrounded near the village of Golat, in northern Iraq. The man's Virginia drivers license identified him as Kweis Mohammed Jamal. In the video Kweis, looking healthy but subdued, recounted his journey from the United States to Mosul and then into the hands of the Kurdish Peshmerga. Kweis said he traveled from the United States to London in December 2015 and continued to Amsterdam and then Turkey. In Turkey he met a woman from Mosul who said she could help him get to the Iraqi city, which has been under the militant group's control since 2014. "We got to know each other. She knew someone who could take us from Turkey to Syria and from Syria to Mosul," he said. After a series of car rides Kweis and the woman separated and Kweis continued with some Islamic State fighters who took him to Mosul. There he stayed in a house holding about 70 people, including foreign recruits, all of whom had to hand over their passports to the Islamic State. The group included Russians, Uzbekis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Moroccans. Kweis said he was the only American. "Our daily life was praying, eating and learning about the religion for about eight hours," he said. "I found it very, very hard to live there." After a month, he decided to leave. "I didn't really support their ideology. And that's the point when I decided I needed to escape," said Kweis. He found someone to take him as far as the Turkish border, where he could make contact with the Kurds. "I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul," he said. "I wasn't thinking straight and on the way there I regretted it." More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report. At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted. (Reporting By Jonathan Landay; Writing by Don Durfee; Editing by Michael Perry)
By David Schwartz

PHOENIX (Reuters) - An Arizona man was found guilty on Thursday of plotting with others to attack a "Draw Mohammed" cartoon contest in Texas last year and providing material support to the Islamic State group, prosecutors said.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 44, was convicted on all five charges against him by a federal jury in U.S. District Court in Phoenix stemming from the May 3 attack in the Dallas suburb of Garland that left his two alleged associates dead in a shoot-out with police.

The case against Kareem, also known as Decarus Thomas, was the first Islamic State-related prosecution to reach trial of the dozens brought by the federal government across the nation. It is the second jury verdict in such a case, as U.S. Air Force veteran Tairod Pugh was convicted earlier this month in New York.

"This verdict sends a strong message to those who support terrorists," acting special agent in charge of the FBI's Phoenix division, Justin Tolomeo, said in a statement.

Kareem maintained his innocence and denied involvement in the attacks when he took the stand for two days in the federal trial. His attorney, Daniel Maynard, said he was very disappointed with the verdict.

"I obviously didn't do my job since I believe the jury convicted someone who is innocent," Maynard said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Kareem's roommates, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, of Phoenix were killed by Garland police after they opened fire with assault rifles outside the May 3 cartoon drawing event.

The contest was intended to satirize Islam's Prophet Mohammed. It came months after gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in what was said to be revenge for its cartoons depicting Mohammed.

Such portrayals are considered offensive by Muslims. None of the approximately 150 people attending the event in Garland in May were hurt.

The original indictment said Kareem supplied the two gunmen with arms and helped them prepare for the attack. He was later charged with showing support for the Islamic State militant group in social media posts, researching travel to the Middle East to train with terrorists and seeking to make explosives that could be used during last year's Super Bowl in Arizona, the most-watched U.S. sporting event annually.

Prosecutors said Kareem could face a potential sentence of at least 45 years in prison.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Curtis Skinner and Sandra Maler)
Indian soldiers killed two suspected rebels early Friday in a gun battle in restive Kashmir near the de-facto border with Pakistan, an army spokesman said.

Soldiers and police launched an overnight operation in Peethawada area, 70 kilometres (around 45 miles) northwest of the main city of Srinagar after receiving a tip-off that armed militants were hiding out in a local village.

"Two terrorists were killed in the operation," army spokesman Colonel N. N. Joshi told AFP.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan by a heavily militarised Line of Control or LoC since the two countries won independence from Britain in 1947.

Both claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety.

Several rebel groups have for decades been fighting Indian forces deployed in the disputed region, for independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan.

The fighting has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians.

Violence in the territory has sharply declined during the last decade, but armed encounters between rebels and government forces occur regularly.

In February nine people including three Indian army special forces commandos were killed during a stand-off between militants and government forces that lasted three days.
The sale of major Australian state-owned infrastructure to private foreign investors will face tougher scrutiny under new rules announced Friday, after a deal involving a Chinese company last year drew criticism.

The new rules will apply from March 31 and ensure that sales of critical infrastructure to private foreign investors will be subject to a formal review by Australia's foreign investment advisory body.

Under previous rules, the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) was only required to assess the sale of such infrastructure to foreign state-owned enterprises.

The rules cover major assets such as airports, ports, public transport infrastructure, and electricity, gas, water and sewerage systems, while existing and proposed roads, railways, telecommunications infrastructure and nuclear facilities could also be reviewed by the body.

"While we welcome foreign investment in Australia it is imperative that critical infrastructure sales are scrutinised to ensure any potential national security risks can be addressed," Treasurer Scott Morrison said.

The new rules follow the granting in 2015 of a 99-year lease for the Port of Darwin to China's Landbridge Group.

United States President Barack Obama, whose Marines rotate through Darwin, reportedly chided Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over that deal, with the Australian Financial Review quoting him as saying: "Let us know next time".

Canberra defended the decision which had been made in consultation with Australia's Department of Defence, but a review of the rules followed.

"Foreign investment is an important source of capital to build the infrastructure that Australia needs and the government recognises that this investment can provide access to funds to restore and enhance ageing infrastructure networks and assets," Morrison said Friday.

"But the government recognises this investment should occur on our terms, must be appropriately scrutinised and not be contrary to the national interest."

Under pressure over the seemingly increasing foreign ownership of farmland, the government is already in the process of compiling a register of agricultural land owned by foreigners.

It has also lowered the threshold for screening proposed foreign purchases of agricultural land to Aus$15 million.
The Australian parliament descended into farce with lawmakers hurling Monty Python insults and even donning pyjamas in a poisonous all-night debate before the biggest shake-up of the voting system in decades was passed Friday.

The government won a revamp of the way senators are elected -- which could take a heavy toll on small parties -- after acrimonious clashes one former minister warned risked "destroying public confidence" in parliament.

Bitter argument ran through Thursday, overnight and well into Friday afternoon before the Liberal administration finally prevailed in the teeth of Labor opposition, thanks to the support of the Greens.

"I fart in your general direction," said senior Labor senator Doug Cameron, a reference to a Monty Python sketch.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon turned up to the debate in his pyjamas, and with a pillow under his arm.

Labor senator Penny Wong bashed the Greens. "What about the dirty deal... that this leader, the Liberal lap dog that is Senator (Richard) Di Natale, the Liberal lap dog has done a deal," she yelled.

Australia uses a transferable ballot system, where voters rank parties or candidates according to preference. Previously, senatorial elections allowed them to either opt for a single party or rank preferences among a plethora of often-niche groupings.

Under the new system, the automatic transfer will be scrapped, and votes will only be transferred if a preference is expressed.

After nearly three years of deadlock in the senate, the government was supported by the Greens to pass the legislation, which could wipe out minor parties at the next election, due this year.

That angered Labor into supporting groupings such as the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party and the Palmer United Party of self-declared billionaire Clive Palmer, who stand to lose their seats, and sent filibustering into overdrive.

Labor argue that the 15 percent of Australians who voted for minor parties at the 2013 election will be disenfranchised under the reforms.

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Despite threats to test the legislation in court, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the government was confident the changes were constitutionally sound.

- 'Clowns at a circus' -

But former resources minister Ian McFarlane said the government's victory could come at a high cost.

"The fierceness of personal politics and the lack of respect for other people's views, combined with the win-at-all-costs... politics attitude may provide a spectacle for the media, but it is destroying public confidence in this institution.

"Is it any wonder when politicians regularly denigrate their political opponents... that we find ourselves being referred to in the general populace as clowns, and this place as a circus."

Monash University political scientist Nick Economou told AFP the brutal exchanges were nothing new.

"If you look back, Australian parliamentary debates have always been really low quality..."

Economou added lawmakers often resorted to "puerile arguments" rather than "great oratory".

"This is a post-colonial country with a very strong egalitarian and very strong philistine streak," he said.

Politicians -- colloquially dubbed "pollies" -- are not held in high regard by many in Australia, where politics can be turbulent.

Malcolm Turnbull last year became the fifth prime minister in as many years when he ousted Tony Abbott in a leadership coup.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's Senate on Friday passed voting reforms after a marathon session lasting over 28 hours, clearing the way for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to dissolve both houses of parliament and call an early election to end a hostile Senate. Independent and minor party senators elected at the last election in 2013 have stalled key aspects of the government's agenda, including changes that would make higher education and health care more expensive and limit access to welfare. The Senate voting reforms would make it harder for smaller parties to enter parliament through vote sharing deals. Turnbull is now seen as likely to opt for a rare double dissolution election, which sees both houses of parliament face voters, arguing that it will clear the Senate of obstructionists and allow long-stalled economic reforms. The debate on the voting reforms began on Thursday morning in the Senate and went well into Friday as lawmakers, at least one dressed in pyjamas, employed delaying tactics aimed at breaking their opponents' will. The reforms were eventually passed and parliament rose until May when the annual budget is due. "It's a reform which will help ensure that future Senate election results truly reflect the will of the Australian people," Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the Senate. Turnbull has consistently led opinion polls since he came to power last year and his ruling Liberal-National coalition is leading the opposition Labor party comfortably in recent polls. But there are signs Turnbull's honeymoon period as prime minister may be ending, prompting election speculation. An election is due by January 2017, but has been expected to be called for the second half of 2016. Under Australia's constitution, Turnbull faces a May 11 deadline to call a double dissolution election and the earliest it could be held is June. In order to call such a poll he needs a piece of legislation twice defeated by the Senate as the trigger. He has a labor bill which has been defeated once, but would need to recall parliament early to May 3 to allow time to reintroduce the labor bill and have it voted on by the Senate before the May 11 deadline. But to recall parliament early Turnbull must bring forward the May 10 budget as an excuse. (Story refiles to fix typo in headline.) (Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Michael Perry)
By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) called on Friday for pilot projects to test two experimental ways to curb Zika-carrying mosquitoes, including testing the release of genetically modified insects and bacteria that stop their eggs hatching. Zika virus, which is sweeping through the Americas, is transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which the U.N. health body has described as an "opportunistic and tenacious menace". Finding the most effective ways to control these mosquitoes could be a major boost to the fight against the disease, the WHO said in a statement. After convening a meeting of its Vector Control Advisory Group (VCAG) earlier this week, the WHO said its specialists had reviewed five potential new weapons against Aedes mosquitoes. Three - including sterile insect technique, vector traps and toxic sugar baits to attract and kill mosquitoes - were still too experimental to consider for scaled-up pilot projects, the WHO said. But a further two - releasing mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia bacteria, and using genetically modified, or transgenic, male mosquitoes to suppress the wild population - "warrant time-limited pilot deployment, accompanied by rigorous monitoring and evaluation". The WHO in February declared the Zika virus an international public health emergency due to its association in Brazil with suspected cases of birth defects known as microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads. Brazil authorities have said they consider most of the cases of babies born with abnormally small heads to be related to Zika, though the link between the virus and the birth defects has not yet been scientifically established. Brazil said on Friday the number of confirmed and suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil associated with the Zika virus has risen to 5,131 from 4,976 a week earlier. Of these, the number of confirmed cases climbed to 863 from 745 a week earlier. Transgenic mosquitoes developed by Oxitec, a British subsidiary of Intrexon, are genetically modified so their offspring will die before reaching adulthood and being able to reproduce. Wolbachia bacteria, which do not infect humans, cause the eggs of female mosquitoes that mate with infected males to fail to hatch. Mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia have been shown to reduce transmission of dengue fever, another mosquito-borne disease. (Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
The Bangladesh finance minister has accused central bank officials of being complicit in an audacious $81 million theft from an overseas account, in an interview with a leading Bengali newspaper published Friday.

Hackers stole the money from the Bangladesh Bank's account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 5 and managed to transfer it electronically to accounts in the Philippines.

In a damning interview, A.M.A Muhith told the Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo that Bangladesh Bank officials were "100 percent" involved in the scandal.

"Of course! One hundred percent they are (involved). This cannot be possible without complicity of the locals," the newspaper, which has the highest circulation of any in Bangladesh, quoted Muhith as saying.

Muhith said the New York bank requires hand prints and other biometric information from central bank officials to activate transactions, appearing to suggest the hackers could not have carried out the attack without inside help.

"The rule is that the transactions are activated only after the hand prints of the six persons are serially placed on a specified plate," Prothom Alo quoted him as saying.

The central bank governor and his two deputies lost their jobs following the theft and the government has been scrambling to contain the damage from the spiralling scandal.

Muhith said the official explanation that action against the hackers was delayed because the theft took place on a Friday, when the bank is closed, was "totally implausible".

"Why won't there be people on a Friday? There should be people to answer calls and provide information even on the holidays," he said.

The heist has hugely embarrassed the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and raised alarm over the security of the country's foreign exchange reserves of over $27 billion.

Subhankar Saha, executive director and spokesman of Bangladesh Bank, told AFP he was not immediately able to comment when asked about the minister's remarks.

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- IT expert 'disappears' -

The minister's comments came as the family of a Bangladeshi cyber security expert who criticised the central bank over its security system and said it bore some responsibility for the attack went missing, his family said Friday.

IT expert Tanvir Hassan Zoha, who said he was helping the government investigate the crime, told a local TV station last week that "apathy" over security at Bangladesh Bank had contributed to the audacious theft.

Zoha has not been seen since Wednesday night when he was picked up on his way home from work in the capital Dhaka, his wife Kamrun Nahar said, citing a friend who was with him.

"Several men in plainclothes stopped their auto-rickshaw and put them in two different vehicles. Later they dropped Yamir (Zoha's friend) on a road blindfolded but took Zoha with them," Nahar told AFP.

"We've not heard anything from him since then," the wife said, saying police had not filed a case on her husband's disappearance.

Zoha, 34, told Ekattor TV station on March 11 that "the database administrator of the (Bangladesh Bank) server cannot avoid responsibility for such hacking".

The government committee probing the case had "noticed apathy about the security system (of the server)", he said.

Authorities have denied that Zoha was working with them on investigating the case.

Police have yet to make any comment on his disappearance.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters Thursday that it was possible Zoha could have been picked up by law enforcers in the course of the investigation, but said he had no information.
London (AFP) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office on Friday said it had issued European arrest warrants for five bankers currently living in France and Germany over alleged manipulation of the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor.

"The arrest warrants were applied for these five individuals and they were granted," an SFO spokeswoman told AFP.

The five include four former Deutsche Bank employees -- Andreas Hauschild, Joerg Vogt, Ardalan Gharagozlou and Kai-Uwe Kappauf -- as well as former Societe Generale employee Stephane Esper.

Esper's lawyer, Francois de Casto, said his client would be contesting the warrant in France.

A preliminary hearing was held at a London court in January in a case that is due to go to trial in September next year. The five did not attend.

Six other bankers appeared at the January hearing, charged with conspiracy to defraud in relation to alleged manipulation of the Euribor between 2005 and 2009.

The Euribor is the eurozone equivalent of the daily London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, which was found to have been manipulated.

It is alleged that collusion to manipulate the Euribor rate occurred between employees of Deutsche Bank, British lender Barclays and French giant Societe Generale to profit the accused and their employers.
By Andrew M. Seaman Reuters Health - People who are lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) are more likely to run into obstacles when trying to get healthcare than their straight peers, according to a number of new studies. "I think we know or at least weve suspected that LGBT people have had trouble reaching healthcare broadly," said Dr. Mitchell Lunn of the University of California, San Francisco, an expert on sexual and gender minority health who was not involved with the new studies. Investigators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) write in the American Journal of Public Health that researchers have in the past that significant barriers made it hard for LGB people to get healthcare. Those barriers include lack of insurance coverage and few culturally competent providers. For one of the new studies released this week, James Dahlhamer of the CDC and colleagues analyzed data from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey, collected from 521 gay or lesbian people, 215 bisexual people and 25,149 straight people. Compared to their straight counterparts, LGB people were more likely to delay or not receive care due to costs. Bisexual people were also more likely to delay care for reasons other than costs. Gay and bisexual men were more likely than their straight peers to report trouble finding healthcare providers. Also, bisexual women were more likely than gay and lesbian women to report three of the five barriers to care the researchers asked about on the survey. Based on their findings, the researchers call for "sustained research on health care access among LGB adults." In a separate report in the same journal, researchers from Sweden say health disparities between LGB people and their straight peers may be a result of unequal distribution of health-protective resources like knowledge, prestige, power and supportive social connections. Richard Branstrom of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and colleagues examined Swedish illness data collected from 2001 to 2011 on 66,604 straight people and 1,654 LGB people. They compared illnesses in LGB people and their straight counterparts in relation to how preventable the diseases were. For example, high-preventable diseases included pneumonia, flu, accidents and liver disease. Low-preventable diseases included pancreatic cancer, heart muscle disease, and multiple sclerosis. Overall, there was no difference between LGB and straight people when it came to low-preventable diseases. However, gay and bisexual men were 48 percent more likely than straight men to have a high-preventable illness. Similarly, lesbian and bisexual women were 64 percent more likely than straight women to have highly preventable illnesses. The researchers say their findings support the "fundamental cause theory," which says disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged groups will be greater for preventable conditions than non-preventable conditions. Overcoming healthcare barriers for LGB and transgender people will take a multipronged approach that includes educating healthcare providers and everyone involved with the healthcare system, said Lunn. Also important, he said, is better data collection from the LGBT community. "I think that information will help us develop some targeted public health interventions to help change access," Lunn said. "A lot of people focus on disease for public health approaches, but hopefully we can improve access to healthcare." SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1WwEbE3 and http://bit.ly/1WwEazK American Journal of Public Health, online March 17, 2016.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's federal prosecutor said a total of five people were arrested on Friday in a four-hour police operation, including the most wanted-fugitive following the Paris Islamist attacks in November. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said in addition to Salah Abdeslam and another suspect linked to the Paris attacks, they were holding three other people, all of whom were members of the family that had sheltered Abdeslam. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti, Jan Strupczewski and Barbara Lewis)
Cotonou (AFP) - Benin's presidential elections reach a climax on Sunday, when Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou takes on businessman Patrice Talon to succeed Thomas Boni Yayi in the country's top job.

- The technocrat: Lionel Zinsou -

The 61-year-old Franco-Beninese banker surprised everyone when he quit as head of one of Europe's biggest investment funds, PAI Partners, to become prime minister last June.

Despite initial denials he was Boni Yayi's appointed successor, he has since been endorsed as the candidate for the president's ruling Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE) party.

Two major opposition groupings have also come out in support.

But in the first round of voting on March 6, Zinsou beat Talon by only a tight margin -- 27.11 percent versus 23.52 percent -- and has since seen 24 beaten candidates come out for his rival.

Zinsou, a graduate of France's elite Ecole Normale, was a speechwriter for the socialist former prime minister Laurent Fabius in the 1980s.

But since his appointment in Benin, he has swapped his tailored business suits for flowing African robes and punctuates his political rallies with expressions in the local Fon language.

He also regularly reminds voters of his political pedigree: his uncle, Emile-Derlin Zinsou, was a former president.

To critics who accuse him of knowing nothing about Benin, he responds that despite his work in France he has "never stopped coming" to the West African nation.

The walls of his elegant Cotonou villa are covered with works of art from his large contemporary African art collection

"My father, children, business, charitable foundation and fledgling companies have all been here," he told AFP.

Yet he has struggled to shake off his image as a Parisian technocrat.

His detractors, who dismiss him as "yovo" or "the white man", claim France, Benin's former colonial masters, has "parachuted" him in to revive its "Francafrique" policy.

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His supporters on the other hand highlight his successful career, his optimism for Africa and an address book including US President Barack Obama and the philanthropist Bill Gates.

For them, he is the man to develop impoverished Benin.

- The businessman: Patrice Talon -

Patrice Talon turned up to vote in the first round of the election driving a Porsche, wearing a white open-necked shirt, a fitted suit and sun-glasses.

The image he portrays is of a big-spender and a self-made man, hoping for a break with the past in the country's politics.

The well-known entrepreneur, who made his money in the key sector of cotton and running Cotonou's port, was one of the most powerful figures in Beninese business.

But he became public enemy number one of Boni Yayi, whose successful presidential election campaigns he bankrolled in 2006 and 2011.

In 2012, he was accused of being the brains behind a bizarre alleged plot to poison the president, then the following year of attempting to endanger the security of the state.

At the time, Talon was being prosecuted in several embezzlement cases and fled the country. Boni Yayi pardoned him in May 2014, paving the way for his return and bid for election.

Talon comes from modest origins in the coastal town of Ouidah and is the son of a primary school teacher father.

His ethnicity -- Fon -- like the former president Nicephore Soglo has been seen as an advantage in his early career and since then he has maintained close links with power.

He decided to run for president following his return from exile in Paris "perhaps as a way of protecting himself by becoming a major political figure rather than a rich but vulnerable businessman", said analyst Gilles Yabi, from the Wathi West Africa think-tank.

His success and taste for luxury have attracted support from many young Beninese, who see in him a person who knows how to create jobs and wealth on a national scale.

For the second round, he has the support of 24 of the 32 candidates from the first round, including fellow businessman Sebastien Ajavon, who won 22.07 percent of the vote.
After Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton swept the five delegate-rich nominating contests on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders' campaign urged supporters of their progressive insurgency to keep the faith.

"Starting today, the map now shifts dramatically in our favor," campaign manager Jeff Weaver wrote Wednesday in a fundraising to supporters. "We think we have a great shot at winning every single state that votes in the next month."

That's more than mere spin. A look at the lay of the land finds Sanders well-positioned in the eight contests that vote over the next four weeks, with the Vermont senator likely to notch at least a handful of victories that would underscore the durability and resonance of his populist message.

Here's a look at the upcoming nominating contests  and why even a clean sweep would still leave him with a steep climb to victory over Clinton.

March : Utah, Idaho and Arizona

Tuesday is likely to deliver Sanders at least two victories, with Utah and Idaho looking like sure bets for the senator and a win in Arizona potentially within reach.

While Utah consistently ranks as one of the Republican states in the country, Democrats aren't extinct there. And those who remain are often quite liberal.

Salt Lake City voters elected progressive populist Rocky Anderson as mayor, and Anderson, who mounted a third-party bid in 2012, is firmly in Sanders' camp ahead of Tuesday's primary.

Caucuses in neighboring Idaho should also prove fertile ground for Sanders. Like Utah Democrats, Idahoans overwhelmingly favored then-Sen. Barack Obama over Clinton in 2008, and Sanders' 19-point win in the Colorado caucuses points to Clinton's continuing struggles with Democrats in the Mountain West.

Meanwhile, a victory in Arizona would mark a major coup for Sanders. He boasts the support of Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva, who recently cut a series of Spanish and English-language ads for Sanders. But Clinton has a high-profile backer of her own: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was nearly fatally wounded in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, and is starring in ads touting Clinton's support for new gun control measures.

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Bernie Sanders stumps with Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, one of his few congressional supporters.

A poll this week found Clinton leading Sanders 50% to 24% in Arizona, but the tiny 300-person sample and high rate of undecided voters cast some doubt on those figures.

With a combined pledged delegates at stake Tuesday, Sanders needs to do more than eke out wins. To prevent his path to the nomination from narrowing even further, he must rack up large margins over Clinton.

March : Alaska, Hawaii and Washington

The caucuses in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington will award a total pledged delegates, and Sanders ought to walk away with most of them.

Obama routed Clinton by about 50 points in both Alaska and his birth state of Hawaii eight years ago, and he narrowly prevailed over her in the Washington caucuses.

On average, Obama won about 67% of the vote in the three states, and as the New York Times' Nate Cohn notes, Sanders tends to finish about four points worse than Obama's performance in caucus states.

April 5: Wisconsin

With a Democratic electorate that was 88% white 2008, the Badger State's demographics are favorable to Sanders, and the state's robust history of progressive and union activism  dating to the turn of the 20th century  may also prove a boon to the senator.

A Marquette University poll in February found Sanders edging Clinton 44% to 43%. But given the state's demographic profile and the liberal bent of Democratic voters there, Sanders needs a result more along the lines of Obama's 17-point landslide in 2008.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigns in Wisconsin in 2008. To remain viable, Bernie Sanders needs an Obama-style landslide in the state.

An outcome in which Sanders and Clinton more or less evenly split Wisconsin's pledged delegates would signal persistent support for the senator, to be sure, but it would also highlight the tall order he faces in marshaling a winning coalition.

April 9: Wyoming

It's not exactly rife with delegates  there are only pledged delegates at stake  but Wyoming's caucus should look kindly upon Sanders.

Clinton's weakness in much of the West and Obama's 24-point win eight years ago point to a good showing for Sanders.

From there, it only gets tougher: Say Sanders goes 8-0  a rather big if, but far from an inconceivable scenario.

Even landslide wins would only slightly narrow an already incredibly difficult to surmount Clinton delegate lead. Moreover, the map then gets considerably more difficult for Sanders.

On April 19, Clinton is virtually assured of winning a large majority of New York's pledged delegates. An Emerson College Polling Society poll released Thursday found her leading Sanders 71% to 23% in the state she once represented in the Senate, despite the Sanders campaign's insistence that it will be competitive in New York.

In the month and a half after New York votes, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California offer the largest delegate prizes. Those are all states Clinton eight years ago, and their demographic profiles create considerable hurdles for Sanders.

But wouldn't a winning streak between now and mid-April give Sanders vital momentum heading into the later contests? Perhaps he'd be aided a bit, but the Democratic results so far underscore the limits of using nebulous "momentum" as a gauge of what's likely to happen next. Sanders was unable to parlay his landslide New Hampshire win into a victory in the Nevada caucuses, and his shock win in Michigan on March 8 didn't prevent him from getting routed on Tuesday.

The bottom line: The headlines are probably going to get a bit better for Sanders over the next few weeks. But to paraphrase John McCain, the fundamentals of Clinton's campaign are strong.
Beth Behrs will make her New York stage debut in May, heading the cast of Halley Feiffer's world-premiere comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City.

The 2 Broke Girls star will play a foul-mouthed twentysomething comedian who strikes up a friendship with a middle-aged man in the midst of a messy divorce when their cancer-stricken mothers become hospital roommates. The play examines how these two lost people learn to lean on each other and ease their pain with inappropriate jokes.

Trip Cullman will direct the production for off-Broadway's MCC Theater, which will also feature Lisa Emery, Jacqueline Sydney and other cast to be announced. The play begins previews May 19 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, ahead of a June 7 opening.

Behrs is currently on the big screen opposite Sally Field in the indie comedy Hello, My Name Is Doris.
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's office of the attorney general said on Friday former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva could exercise his role as chief of staff after a court in Rio de Janeiro struck down a second injunction blocking his Wednesday appointment. Lula is likely to face more legal challenges to joining President Dilma Rousseff's government as many Brazilians believe his appointment was made to grant him immunity from money laundering charges that he denies. Only the Supreme Court can try sitting politicians in Brazil. (Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - A Brazilian court cleared ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Friday to start work as chief of staff to his embattled successor Dilma Rousseff, overturning an injunction blocking his appointment.

But Lula still faces a flurry of other court challenges to his nomination, which opponents reject on grounds that he faces corruption charges and is suspected of seeking ministerial immunity to avoid arrest.

Government lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to issue a definitive ruling putting the 12 cases before it to rest.

Rousseff says she needs her mentor, "the greatest politician in Brazil," to help her deeply embattled government, which is fighting an explosive corruption scandal, a deep recession and the splintering of its coalition.

But hours after the leftist president swore him in Thursday, a federal court in Brasilia blocked Lula from taking up his functions over suspicions that he and Rousseff were trying to obstruct the course of justice in the very same corruption case.

Lula is charged with accepting a luxury apartment and country home as bribes from companies implicated in a multi-billion-dollar graft scheme at state oil company Petrobras.

The initial injunction against Lula was overturned on appeal, only for another federal court, in Rio de Janeiro, to issue a similar ruling.

In all, some 50 cases have been filed against Lula's appointment in courts at different levels, according to the government's lawyers.
By Daniel Flynn and Anthony Boadle SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) - Supporters of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party joined street rallies on Friday to back the beleaguered government of President Dilma Rousseff, while her opponents in Congress started the clock on impeachment proceedings. Brazil's political crisis also reached the Supreme Court, which has received a dozen motions to suspend this week's appointment of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as Rousseff's chief of staff. The post, which has inflamed government opponents, gives a boost to Lula's political heir and also provides him with legal shield from graft investigators, as only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over cases involving sitting cabinet ministers. Before Friday's pro-government protests, thousands of supporters gathered on Sao Paulo's Paulista Avenue, clad in the bright red Workers' Party shirts and surrounded by a heavy police presence. "We are all Dilma," read a sign carried by several women. Hours earlier, riot police fired water cannon and tear gas disperse anti-government protesters who had blocked the same central Sao Paulo thoroughfare since Wednesday evening, when demonstrations erupted against Lula's appointment as minister. Opponents say his nomination is designed to help Lula evade prosecutors who charged him with money laundering and fraud linked to the biggest corruption probe in Brazil's history, centered on state oil firm Petrobras. Lula's legal situation as minister was uncertain after Rousseff's opponents filed a flurry of requests for court injunctions to suspend his appointment on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and obstructed justice. Two injunctions were issued but overruled after the attorney general appealed, asking the Supreme Court to rule on the motions. In Brasilia, where thousands of demonstrators have demanded Rousseff's ouster over the last two days, police told protesters to stay away from the Congress building, where a pro-government demonstration was planned for 5 p.m (2000 GMT). In the lower house of Congress, opposition parties hurried along impeachment proceedings against Rousseff by holding a session on Friday, when lawmakers are usually away from Brasilia. The president has 10 sessions in the lower house to present her defense and the clock started on those 10 sessions on Friday, even though the special impeachment committee did not meet. The impeachment case is centered on allegations that Rousseff broke budget rules to boost spending as she campaigned for re-election in 2014. Lula and Rousseff both deny any wrongdoing. Antonio Imbassahy, the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB) in the lower house, said the committee could present its findings by mid-April. Committee chairman Rogerio Rosso, of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) that is part of Rousseff's governing coalition, said the committee was balanced between lawmakers for and against unseating Rousseff, but recent political events would influence their decisions. "The large street demonstrations are echoing here. Political instability is growing," Rosso said on local television. Rousseff's main coalition party, the fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), has scheduled a March 29 meeting of its executive to decide whether to break with her government and seek her impeachment. The PMDB's leader, Vice President Michel Temer, would become Brazil's acting president if the lower house votes to impeach Rousseff and the Senate agrees to start a trial. "The PMDB's hurry is based on the will of the people. On Tuesday the 29th, the party will decide to break away," a party leader, Wellington Moreira Franco, said on Twitter. The party is considering expelling Mauro Lopes, a PMDB lawmaker who became Rousseff's civil aviation minister on Thursday despite a party ban on taking up new posts in her administration. PHONE CONVERSATIONS Rousseff appointed Lula, who remains one of Brazil's most influential politicians six years after leaving office, in an attempt to fight impeachment and win back working-class supporters amid the worst economic recession in decades. But his appointment has been overshadowed by taped telephone conversations between Rousseff and Lula that were released by a crusading anti-corruption judge who said they showed the pair discussing how to interfere with his Petrobras probe. The release of the recordings has inflamed tensions that were already running high between the judiciary and government. "This was illegal," Rousseff told a rally on Friday. "Only the Supreme Court has the authority to wiretap a president." In another recorded conversation made public on Friday, the president of the Workers' Party asked Rousseff's then-chief of staff Jaques Wagner to intervene after Sao Paulo prosecutors requested Lula's arrest. "Alert the president. There needs to be a State decision", said Rui Falcao. "You have to do something, because the state judge may decide today." Wagner answered: "Ok, let me do something here." (Additional reporting by Brad Haynes, Eduardo Simoes and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo, Maria Carolinea Marcello in Brasilia, and Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Frances Kerry)
By Anthony Boadle and Leonardo Goy BRASILIA (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sworn in as chief of staff to his successor Dilma Rousseff on Thursday as a judge sought to block his appointment and Congress began proceedings to impeach her in a deepening political crisis. Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of opposition demonstrators who clashed with Lula's leftist supporters outside the presidential palace where he was sworn in, while ministers and corruption investigators traded barbs throughout the day. Spontaneous protests also blocked major avenues in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, spurred by anger that Lula's appointment will shield the former president from prosecutors who charged him with money laundering and fraud as part of a sweeping graft probe centered on state-run oil company Petrobras . Only Brazil's Supreme Court has jurisdiction in cases against ministers. Shortly after the swearing-in ceremony, a federal judge in Brasilia issued an injunction against Lula's appointment on the grounds it blocked "the free exercise of justice." Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo vowed to appeal the injunction against Lula joining the government, which he called the decision of a partisan judge. The standoff inflamed tensions that are already running high between Brazil's executive and judiciary branches, as the Petrobras probe reaches Rousseff's inner circle and hangs over a congressional impeachment committee named on Thursday. Calls for Rousseff's impeachment have centered on allegations, unrelated to Petrobras, that she broke budget rules to boost spending as she campaigned for re-election in 2014. A 65-member impeachment committee in the lower house of Congress will now study if there are grounds to try her in the Senate. Rousseff and Lula have both denied any wrongdoing. Deliberations could drag on for months on the impeachment committee. Seats were spread among all parties in the lower house of Congress, but the key roles of committee president and rapporteur were given to close allies of Speaker Eduardo Cunha, a sworn political enemy of the president. Brazil's benchmark stock index <.BVSP> rallied 6.6 percent, the biggest daily jump in seven years, and the Brazilian real firmed 2.3 percent as the political crisis increased bets that Rousseff's ouster could bring a more market-friendly administration to power. The real's 10 percent gain so far this month led the central bank to scale back its currency intervention. Rousseff appointed her mentor, who remains one of Brazil's most influential politicians six years after leaving office, in an effort to fight impeachment and win back working-class supporters amid the worst economic recession in decades. The corruption probe, however, has weakened Lula's sway in Congress and there are growing signs that Rousseff's main coalition partner is ready to abandon the unpopular government. "UNDERGROUND WAR" As Rousseff swore Lula into office, she strongly criticized the release on Wednesday of a taped telephone conversation between them that was made public by Sergio Moro, the crusading federal judge overseeing the Petrobras investigation. Moro, the public face of the biggest graft probe in Brazilian history, said the tape showed they had discussed influencing prosecutors and courts to protect Lula, who leaves Moro's jurisdiction by joining the government. "Convulsing Brazilian society with lies, with reprehensible practices violates constitutional rights and as well as the rights of citizens," said Rousseff, who called the recording illegal and anti-democratic. Judiciary associations and prosecutors working with Moro sprang to his defense, repudiating what they called efforts to intimidate him and his team of investigators. "Those telephone conversations provide evidence of obstructing the investigation, part of a treacherous underground war waged in the shadows, far from the courts," wrote 13 federal prosecutors on Moro's task force in a public statement. Moro said in a court filing released on Wednesday that the taped telephone conversations did not provide proof that Lula and Rousseff were interfering with his investigation. He said, however, that he released the recordings because citizens had a right to know how they were being governed. One recording, made public by the court, included Rousseff offering to send Lula a copy of his appointment urgently "in case it was necessary" - a possible reference to the ministerial post providing him with immediate immunity from arrest. Brazil's biggest-ever corruption probe, which centers on bribes and political kickbacks at Petrobras, has convicted dozens of powerful executives and politicians while recovering 2.9 billion reais ($795 million) in stolen money. Prosecutors accuse Lula of concealing ownership of an oceanfront apartment that was built and furnished by one of the Petrobras contractors in the graft scheme. The widening bribery scandal has divided Rousseff's fractious coalition and moved the PMDB party, the largest in Congress, closer to breaking with her government. Vice President Michel Temer, leader of the PMDB, did not attend the swearing-in of Lula because Rousseff appointed a lawmaker from his party as civil aviation minister, Temer's aides said. A PMDB convention on Saturday banned its members from taking new posts in her government. (Additional reporting by Caroline Stauffer and Maria Carolina Marcello; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Brad Haynes and Tom Brown)
SKIEN PRISON (Norway) (AFP) - Lawyers for mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik called Friday for the Norwegian state to be found guilty of "inhuman" treatment, at the close of his lawsuit over his solitary confinement.

Representatives for the state have insisted that the rightwing extremist, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, must be kept in isolation because he is dangerous.

"The plaintiff is not, nor has he ever been, subjected to inhuman treatment," argued Adele Matheson Mestad from the office of the general attorney.

Norway's most infamous inmate is serving a maximum 21-year sentence -- which can be extended if he is still considered dangerous -- for killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then murdering another 69, mostly teenagers, in a rampage at a Labour Youth camp.

His shooting spree on the island of Utoya lasted over an hour, as he methodically stalked and killed up-and-coming leaders of Labour, Norway's dominant political party, which he blamed for the rise of multiculturalism in the Nordic country.

He finished off many of his young victims with a bullet to the head.

Since his arrest on the day of the attacks, Breivik has been held apart from other prisoners and his contacts with the outside world, including visits and correspondence, have been strictly controlled.

Stressing his client's almost five years in isolation, Breivik's lawyer Oystein Storrvik accused the state of breaching two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and guaranteeing respect for "correspondence".

"The crimes my client was accused of are irrelevant," he told the court.

As expected, the killer used the four-day proceedings as a platform to grandstand his extremist views.

After making a Hitler-style salute on the first day, he claimed he was now a Nazi who had renounced violence and even compared himself to Nelson Mandela.

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Storrvik told the court his client was "in a vulnerable state of mind," a remark to which Breivik, clad in a dark suit and shaven head, did not react.

"This is not a broken man suffering from problems caused by his isolation that we see, this is the same narcissistic, ideologically disturbed" man convicted in 2012, Mestad countered.

- With or without PlayStation -

While Utoya survivors and families of the dead admitted it was difficult to see the mass murderer complaining about his prison life, they insisted he should be granted the same rights as other inmates, in the name of the law.

Norway prides itself on a humane prison system aimed more at rehabilitation than punishment, and Breivik's conditions are considered comfortable by most.

At the Skien Prison he has three cells, one for living, one for studying and one for physical exercise. He also has a TV with a DVD player, a games console, a computer without Internet access, and books and newspapers, according to authorities.

"It's clear he needs to talk to other people. When you're alone, whether it's in one or three cells, with or without PlayStation and Xbox, your mind rages and your thoughts run in all directions," Storrvik said.

"That's when you might need someone to tell you 'Becoming a Nazi is maybe not so smart, you should forget about that'," he added.

Breivik's complaints ranged from the trivial -- cold coffee and microwaved frozen dinners, which he called "worse than waterboarding" -- to hundreds of strip-searches and headaches which he claims have been caused by his solitary confinement.

Doctors, psychiatrists and prison staff who have examined him in prison testified they had seen no major change in his physical or mental state due to his prison conditions.

Lawyers defending the state argued the strict prison regimen was needed because Breivik was "extremely dangerous".

They also insisted on the need to prevent him from corresponding with supporters. "There could be a new Breivik among them," Mestad said.

The verdict is due in late April or early May.
By Julie Gordon VANCOUVER (Reuters) - British Columbia pledged on Friday to crack down on real estate contract assignments - dubbed "shadow flipping" by local media - in a new effort to help cool down red hot housing markets, particularly in the Vancouver area. Shadow flipping is where a party agrees to buy a property for a set price, but before the sale closes, they resell the contract to a third party for a higher price, taking the difference between the original and new selling price as profit. The ruling Liberals said they would introduce new rules in the coming weeks to prevent the "potentially predatory" practice, undertaken by some real estate agents and purchasers. "New provincial rules will prevent the abuse of assignment clauses by requiring the express consent of the seller and mandating that any profits from assignments are returned to the home-owner," the province said in a statement. Shadow flipping has been pointed to as one of many factors driving Vancouver's runaway housing prices, particularly on the city's desirable West Side, where the median selling price for detached homes hit C$3.4 million ($2.6 million) last month. The price for a typical home in metro Vancouver, including condos and townhouses, hit an eye-watering C$795,500 in February, with sales volumes jumping 36.3 percent. The province also pledged to work with the city of Vancouver on "collaborative steps" the two governments could take together to help boost housing affordability in the city. The promises comes just days after hundreds of residents packed into a Vancouver community center to discuss factors behind the wild real estate market, including international capital flows - particularly from Asia - local real estate practices and speculation. (Reporting by Julie Gordon, editing by G Crosse)
London (AFP) - Welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith resigned over planned reductions in welfare payments for people with disabilities in a blow for Prime Minister David Cameron.

Duncan Smith, one of six senior ministers who broke ranks to back Brexit in the upcoming EU membership referendum, blamed Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in a scathing letter.

"Changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they've been made are a compromise too far," he wrote in a letter, following uproar against the plans announced by Osborne in parliament this week.

"They are not defensible in the way they were placed within a budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers," said Duncan Smith, who had been in his post since 2010 and led the Conservative Party between 2001 and 2003.

He said the government's aim of cutting the deficit by 2020 was "more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest."

Cameron said he was "puzzled and disappointed" by Duncan Smith's decision to resign.

"I regret that you have chosen to step down from the government at this time," Cameron said, in a letter to the former minister made public by Downing Street, adding that the government had agreed to review the controversial welfare reform.

Duncan Smith's resignation highlights growing divisions within Cameron's Conservative Party in the run-up to the June 23 referendum.

Cameron is leading the campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union but around a third of the party's MPs want out.

The Financial Times said the resignation was "a huge blow" for Cameron that would inflict "serious damage" on Osborne.

The Daily Telegraph said the move "threatened to throw the government into disarray".

Several Conservative MPs, along with the main opposition Labour Party, had criticised the disability benefits cuts announced by Osborne.

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Osborne said the plan would cut around A1.3 billion a year off the bill for so-called Personal Independence Payments (PIP), a weekly allowance covering extra costs for people with long-term ill health or disabilities.

A government source earlier on Friday said they would be "kicked into the long grass".

"We need to take time and get reforms right and that will mean looking again at these proposals," the source said.

On the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "We are going to discuss what we've put forward with the disability charities and others."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the plan was "appalling", claiming that 200,000 of the 640,000 people affected by the proposed changes would lose out altogether as a result.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A teenager who injured four people in a stabbing spree on a California university campus before he was shot dead by police last year was inspired by the Islamic State militant group but acted alone, the FBI said on Thursday.

Faisal Mohammad, an 18-year-old freshman majoring in engineering and computer science, started his Nov. 4 attack in a classroom at the University of California Merced, slashing at victims with a hunting knife, authorities said.

The FBI said in a statement that Mohammad's laptop contained "pro-ISIL propaganda" and that he visited websites linked to the Islamic State as well as other extremist groups before the attack.

The FBI said Mohammad was carrying a backpack that included a photocopy of the Islamic State flag and a two-page handwritten note detailing his plans to take hostages as well as kill students and police.

All evidence indicated however that he acted alone in the attack and that he had no ties with any foreign organizations or groups, the FBI said.

Local authorities said at the time that the attack seemed personal in nature, as the document listed a specific target he planned to attack for removing him from a study group.

Mohammad intended to tie students up with plastic zip-tie handcuffs and wait for a police officer to enter by a door where petroleum jelly would be on the floor to make the entrance slippery. He would ambush and stab the officer, steal a gun and start shooting students, local authorities said.

Mohammad was a dormitory resident at UC Merced, according to officials at the campus of some 6,600 students in California's Central Valley, and he was from Santa Clara, 45 miles (70 km) southeast of San Francisco.

The attack sent two students, a university employee and a construction worker to the hospital with stab wounds, though none of their injuries were life-threatening.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Marty Graham SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A San Diego man who inherited from his father a 1974 aluminum penny valued at $2 million has surrendered it to the U.S. Mint to settle a lawsuit over ownership of the rare coin, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday. Randall Lawrence, the son of a former Mint official, and Michael McConnell, the owner of a San Diego-area coin shop, sued the federal government in 2014 after it demanded the return of the penny. Lawrence and McConnell had planned to display the coin at shows across the country and then sell it through an auction house, which estimated it would bring up to $2 million. The pair turned it over to the Mint and relinquished all claims to ownership as part of a settlement, Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said in a statement. The settlement "vindicates the government's position that items made at U.S. Mint facilities but not lawfully issued ... remain government property and are not souvenirs that government employees can merely remove and pass down to their heirs," Duffy said. She did not disclose further terms of the settlement. The aluminum cent was proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1973, at a time when copper prices had increased dramatically, according to the Smithsonian Institution. The Mint made about 1.6 million of the aluminum coins and distributed them to Congress in anticipation of approval. When lawmakers rejected it, the Mint reclaimed the aluminum cents and destroyed almost all of them, leaving one to the Smithsonian in Washington, where it remains. Lawrence inherited one of the coins and a third aluminum penny turned up in the possession of a U.S. Capitol police officer, who said it was given to him by a member of Congress, according to the Professional Coin Grading Service website. (Reporting by Marty Graham in San Diego; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Peter Cooney)
Montreal (AFP) - Police in the Canadian city of Halifax warned residents Friday about the release of an 80-year-old woman -- dubbed the "Internet Black Widow" -- who spent time behind bars for killing or bilking her husbands and lovers.

Melissa Ann Shephard was freed under strict conditions after "completing a sentence for serious assaults against her intimate partners" -- and could try to commit more crimes, police said.

"A high risk offender is residing in our community," they said.

And they cautioned: "Shephard has been assessed as being a high risk to re-offend."

Under the conditions of her release, Shephard cannot access the Internet -- that's where she found her prey -- and is not allowed to contact past victims or their families.

In fact, she is not even allowed to "to enter into any romantic relationship, cohabitation, common-law relationship, or marriage until that person has been identified by a member of the police agency where she resides" and informed of her criminal past, according to police.

Shephard was arrested in 2012 after trying to poison her last husband, Fred Weeks, aged 75, whom she had married just two weeks earlier.

Shephard had previously spent several years in prison for manslaughter, theft and forgery, in Canada as well as in the United States.

She was convicted for having drugged her ex-husband Gordon Stewart, before running him over with her car in 1991.

Sentenced to six years in prison, she was released early and moved to the US state of Florida, where she met a man by the name of Robert Friedrich. The two married in 2000. Friedrich's health then began to deteriorate -- and the funds on his bank account diminished. He died of a heart attack in 2002.

Shortly thereafter, Shephard met 73-year-old Alex Strategos online. The day they moved in together, he was hospitalized for injuries he sustained, including to his head. Similar incidents took place seven times over the course of two months.

Shephard was imprisoned in Florida after a little-known drug was found in Strategos's system. Strategos also saw his bank account emptied out.

Released after five years, in 2009, Shephard was deported to Canada.
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that he would name seven people to the Senate, whose members are all appointed, and reiterated a pledge to reform the troubled upper chamber of parliament. The Senate, which reviews government legislation, has been embroiled in a long scandal over expense account abuses by some of the lawmakers. This has prompted critics to call for the 105-member body's abolition. Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper stopped filling vacant Senate spots in 2013 after several of his appointees landed in legal trouble. The current prime minister names the senators, and in the past, appointees have often had ties to the ruling party. Trudeau, who took power in November, set up an independent advisory panel that came up with candidates. "The government is today taking further concrete steps to follow through on its commitment to reform the Senate, restore public trust, and bring an end to partisanship in the appointments process," he said in a statement. Former senior government official Peter Harder will be the Liberals' representative in the Senate. His job will be to push through legislation. The seven new candidates, which also include a judge and a journalist, will fill two vacancies for Manitoba, three for Ontario and two for Quebec, leaving 17 spots still vacant. (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
This is the story of a phantom who sponsored a political attack ad in the heat of Floridas critical presidential primary and sidestepped federal transparency laws.

It begins with a single TV spot  one that aired last week on an independent, Spanish-language station in South Miami.

The ad first chided Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for supporting normalized relations with Cuba.

It then cut to Sen. Marco Rubio decrying how the United States is lifting its trade and travel ban on Cuba.

And like all political ads, the spot ended by disclosing its sponsor: Inspire America. Federal law requires such disclaimers for the sake of political transparency and informing voters.

But exactly what  or who  is Inspire America?

An easy answer refused to reveal itself.

So the Center for Public Integrity sought answers from the Federal Communications Commission.

Related video: Inspire America advertisement

This story is part of Source Check. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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Thanks to the Communications Act of 1934, broadcast TV stations must make public certain details of TV ads containing political candidates and issue advocacy. This includes the cost and run times of an ad buy, as well as basic information about the sponsors officers.

Inspire America, however, was nowhere to be found in FCC records.

Next, the Center for Public Integrity scoured Federal Election Commission databases for any mention of or reference to a political group named Inspire America.

Nothing.

Web searches? Equally unfruitful.

The Center for Public Integrity then contacted the station where the ad aired. An employee referred questions to Marcell Felipe, general counsel for WFUN and WJAN, co-owned Spanish-language stations that had aired Inspire Americas ad.

Felipe said the ad  which aired 14 times on WFUN just before the March 15 primary  was not political, but instead a public service announcement to encourage voter turnout.

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Therefore, he argued, his station wasnt required to provide federal regulators with information about the ad or its sponsor, Inspire America.

But how could this be?

The ad, after all, featured two legally qualified candidates and addresses an issue of national importance  factors the FCC say triggers automatic disclosure.

The Center for Public Integrity pressed Felipe on this point. It was not until several correspondences later that Felipe revealed what he had withheld to that point: he was the true sponsor of the ad.

It was Felipe, too, who founded Inspire America  what he says is a new 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit. The group has yet to appear in Internal Revenue Service records, and such nonprofits are not supposed to make politics their primary purpose.

Felipe appeared nonplussed when informed about disclosure requirements.

If we are told that we have to disclose it, well disclose it, said Felipe, who deemed the ad a get out the vote ad. He said he would consult with an FCC lawyer about disclosing this particular ad.

And as general counsel of the very station that ran the ads, Felipe said he convinced WFUN to run the ad at no charge, given the ads supposed public service announcement status.

Having acknowledged being behind the ad, Felipe explained why he produced it.

"I believe that immigrants who come to the United States in search of democracy provide valuable contributions to our civic engagement and should be heard, particularly on how to promote democracy throughout the world, Felipe said.

Communities like ours that have come to the U.S. looking for democracy need a platform for dialogue on how to shape American policies and American values, Felipe added.

WFUN and WJAN, to be sure, played a small, but nevertheless important role ahead of the Florida primary. It broadcasts "America TeVe," which targets Cuban-Americans in South Miami. It also reaches homes in as far as Key Largo, Florida, about 70 miles south of central Miami.

Rubio, himself a Cuban-American from Miami, had much to gain from a high Cuban-American turnout.

But while Rubio won 62 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Tuesdays Florida primary, he ultimately lost the Florida contest and dropped out of the presidential race after a crushing second place finish behind Trump.

Felipe is both a supporter of Rubio and the Republican Party: Federal records show he donated $2,700 to Rubios presidential campaign and has previously contributed to U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, a lobbying organization that itself has donated more than $250,000 to Republican lawmakers and $51,000 to Democratic lawmakers during the 2016 election cycle.

Why should knowing an ads sponsor matter to voters?

Knowing the messenger of an ad is important in evaluating the ads message, said Meredith McGehee, policy director at Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign reform group. If ads are running and the station isnt disclosing, it creates a problem.

After the Center for Public Integritys inquiry, Felipe and WFUN did eventually file details of the ad buy with federal regulators.

But the filing came one day after Floridians cast their votes, and by then, presidential candidates had packed their bags, leaving Florida to campaign in other states.

This story is part of Source Check. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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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.
By Fiona Ortiz

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who faces calls for his resignation over police misconduct, must weigh whether an insider or an outsider is the best choice for police chief to reform a long-troubled department that is under federal investigation.

Emanuel told reporters he will quickly interview three finalists for Chicago police supervisor, two experienced police chiefs from outside the city and a veteran of 36 years on the local force. The names were sent to him on Thursday by a board of prominent citizens.

Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy last year when protests erupted over video footage of a white police officer shooting 16 times and killing a black 17-year-old who was moving away from police carrying small knife.

There is a lot on the line for the mayor, who was re-elected last year but whose political future could be harmed by the uproar over policing.

The top prosecutor in the city, Anita Alvarez, was dumped this week by voters unhappy with her year-long delay in bringing charges against the officer in the shooting caught on video. And the Justice Department is investigating whether Chicago police use lethal force too much.

"An outsider might have the courage to take on the Fraternal Order of Police," said pastor and activist Ira Acree, referring to the police union, which critics say has shielded officers from discipline.

"But an insider would have more of a capacity to bridge the gap between the community and police, would know Chicago's unique gang culture," Acree said.

Local media are reporting that the favorite of the three finalists is Cedric Alexander, who has led police departments in Dekalb County, Georgia, and Rochester, New York. Alexander, who has a doctorate in psychology, has advised President Barack Obama on policing and appears on CNN to analyze law enforcement.

But the black caucus of aldermen - which put pressure on Emanuel to fire McCarthy - is backing Eugene Williams, a 36-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department who has been everything from beat officer to district commander, and was a finalist for top cop in the past, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

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The dark horse in the race may be Anne Kirkpatrick, the only white contender and a retired police chief of Spokane, Washington.

While the mayor weighs his options, murders have soared. Chicago has had 114 murders so far this year, double the number in the same period last year.

Emanuel, who has a reputation for closely managing the police, brought McCarthy to Chicago from New Jersey. Although a progressive police leader, he did not change how the department handles allegations of misconduct.

Chicago, a racially diverse city of 2.7 million people with high levels of gun violence, needs someone with big-city experience, said Dean Angelo, head of the FOP, which represents rank-and-file officers.

"I don't know that small agencies experience can meet the requirement," said Angelo, who stressed that the FOP is not endorsing any candidate.
Vacations have been known to make, or break, a couple. It's the ultimate test of a relationship's staying power, so best choose wisely.

To help couples of all relationship stages, travel experts at Cheapflights have come up with destination ideas for the couple who's only just announced their commitment on Facebook to those who will mark a milestone anniversary.

Check out their suggestions:

Officially In a relationship

You've both agreed to delete your dating profile, and have taken yourselves off the market by making the announcement official on Facebook. This is the make-or-break test that will determine how compatible you are. Start slow, says Cheapflights, and consider a weekend getaway to a major city near you. On the East Coast? Consider Montreal, Chicago, New York or Boston. Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego or San Jose for those on the West Coast.

Honeymoon phase

For couples who have passed the one-year mark but are still in the honeymoon phase, look for travel ideas that will keep the flame alive. Experts suggest Ireland, for instance, where couples can hit up Dublin and Edinburgh, but also cozy up in charming bars and pubs in the emerald countryside.

Married and settled in

By year five to 10, couples have settled in nicely to a routine. You're well acquainted with each other's quirks and oddities. You may have kids, a dog and a mortgage. The next 10 years are pretty much mapped out. To break with routine, look for a destination that takes you out of your comfort zone and helps you reconnect. A holiday in Southern Thailand, for instance, ticks off the boxes. Island-hopping along the region will change up the scenery, while the beaches provide the romance.

You've made it

You're the admiration of couples at dinner parties. You've put in your dues and raised grown children. You've managed to survive the many curveballs life has thrown at the both of you and can boast a double-digit figure when people ask you how long you've been married. This calls for a celebration. If you're marking a particularly big anniversary this year, consider checking off a bucket-list vacation, be it the Galapagos Islands, or over-water bungalows in the Maldives. Hiking up the Great Wall of China together, or embarking on a South African safari will also create lasting memories the two of you can share for years to come.
Brazzaville (AFP) - Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso will seek re-election Sunday after 32 years at the helm of an oil-rich but impoverished nation which is clamouring for jobs and decent living standards.

One of Africa's five longest-serving leaders, the 72-year-old former paratrooper colonel is running for a new term after an October vote modified the constitution, removing a 70-year age limit and two-term barrier to enable him to extend his rule.

The changes were approved in a referendum by 94.3 percent, which the opposition dubbed it "a constitutional coup" and protests erupted in the run-up to the vote that left several people dead.

But in down at heel Makelekele and Bacongo, southern parts of the capital where opposition support is strong, residents say Sassou Nguesso has failed to make good on his last election pledges and question why this round of promises would play out any differently.

"There's no work, it sucks," said a 31-year-old with a degree in public administration who gave his name as Eric.

Chatting with friends at a roadside cafe, or "nganda", in an area where the muddied streets are potholed and the sewerage is overflowing, he said he worked occasionally in restaurants but had "no stable job".

"My parents are elderly and retired," he said. "I have a wife but have to wait to have children."

- 'Fears of instability' -

While the Republic of Congo saw "robust growth" of five percent over five years through to 2014 with oil and timber providing its main revenues, the country remains in dire straits.

"(Congo) continues to suffer from high rates of poverty and inequality, large infrastructure gaps, and important development challenges," a report by the International Monetary Fund released in July 2015 report said.

Unemployment hit 34 percent in 2013 (the last data available) and stood at 60 percent for 15 to 24 year-olds.

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The IMF fears "domestic instability" without progress in the battle to eliminate poverty.

"We're really disappointed about what's happening in Congo," said 20-year-old student Yette. "Most young people have diplomas but no work."

Sassou Nguesso admits there is a problem.

His new election platform underlines government efforts in education while noting that "60 percent of graduates without work" qualified at the country's sole university.

- 'We need change' -

In the run-up to the 2009 election he had promised "A path towards the future" that would bring the country "modernisation" and "industrialisation".

In his latest election pledge, Sassou Nguesso says he needs more time.

"Seven years were insufficient to fully make these solutions operational... which is why we need to continue the country's modernisation and industrialisation," reads the new platform, which proposes "an accelerated march towards development".

But while a pro-Sassou banner hung at a traffic roundabout proclaims "Yes, the country can be industrialised in five years", some voters are sceptical.

"(Sassou Nguesso) did nothing in 32 years, so why would he get anything done in five," said a man in his 50s.

"There's no hope for many young people. All they've got is drink, cigarettes and hemp," added Eric.

In Bacongo and Makelekele, few are ready to give their names as they complain about the lack of electricity, the "dirty water", the taps that run dry, and the lack of cash.

Eudes Makoundou, a 43-year-old graduate who turned carpenter to make ends meet, is one of a few to agree to be named publicly.

"What we need from the next president is a better quality of life for the Congolese, in terms of education, employment," he said. "Really, what we want is change!"
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Building materials companies CRH <CRH.I> and LafargeHolcim <LHN.S> are contesting the final price of CRH's acquisition of assets from the Swiss-French company, the two companies said.

CRH agreed to buy the assets for 6.5 billion euros in February last year after they were put up for sale so then separate Holcim and Lafarge could get antitrust clearance to create the world's biggest cement company.

"LafargeHolcim has received from CRH several notices claiming a reduction of the purchase price. LafargeHolcim is contesting those claims," the Swiss-French company said in its annual report, published on Thursday.

"In view of the information available to the management and on current analysis, CRH's claims to a further price reduction under the price adjustment mechanism in the sale agreement are considered to be without merit and are not accepted."

CRH said in its annual report, also released on Thursday, that it was engaged in a process to finalize the post-completion consideration that was "not sufficiently advanced to make a financial adjustment in respect of the final purchase price".

A source familiar with the deal said on an acquisition of this size and complexity, such a process was "not unusual".

The deal closed at the end of July and the final assets moved to CRH in September, transforming the Irish company into the world's third-biggest building materials supplier and helping boost its 2015 earnings by 35 percent.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, Freya Berry in London and Oliver Hirt in Zurich; editing by David Clarke)
By Andy Sullivan and Alana Wise WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mitt Romney said on Friday he would vote for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in Utah's presidential nominating contest, but the party's 2012 election standard-bearer stopped short of an official endorsement as he urged voters to deny the nomination to front-runner Donald Trump. In a Facebook post, Romney said a vote for Cruz in Utah's caucus on Tuesday was the best way to prevent Trump from locking down the nomination, which would give opponents a chance to select another candidate at the party's July convention. "The only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible," Romney wrote. Romney did not offer any praise for Cruz, who emerged as a favorite of the party's most ardent conservatives after clashing with party leaders in Washington. Romney did not say whether or not he would campaign with Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas. Trump responded quickly. "Mitt Romney is a mixed up man who doesn't have a clue. No wonder he lost!" he wrote on Twitter. Cruz, acknowledging the tepid nature of Romney's support, said the pledged vote enforces the idea that his campaign is the only one that can beat Trump, likening a vote for Ohio Governor John Kasich, the third remaining Republican contender, to tacit support for Trump. "In my book, when someone says Im voting for you, and I encourage everyone else to vote for you, thats pretty darn good," Cruz, a self-styled Washington outsider, told reporters in Arizona. "And Ill take that and take that happily." Arizona also holds its nominating contest on Tuesday. "As Mitt Romney observed today, if you want to beat Donald Trump, Cruz is the only campaign that can do it. Thats why hes voting for me in Utah," Cruz said. Romney has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of Trump, the billionaire businessman and reality-TV star who has become the surprise front-runner in the battle to secure the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Romney, who lost to Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012, called Trump a "fraud" and a dangerous demagogue who would lose to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party front-runner, in November. "Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism," Romney wrote, adding that Trump has encouraged racism, misogyny and violence. "I am repulsed by each and every one of these," he wrote. Kasich's campaign called Romney's turn to Cruz the result of "bad political advice." "This is just the old establishment trying again to game the political system, but John Kasich's defeated the Republican establishment his entire career," the campaign said. Romney's support for Cruz comes a day after U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham threw his support behind the Texas senator, saying in similar fashion that Cruz has the best chance of stopping Trump, even though he thinks Kasich would have a better chance of winning in November's general election. Trump has continued to notch victories in the state-by-state nominating process as Republicans have failed to unite behind Cruz or Kasich. At this point, those who oppose Trump say their best bet is to prevent him from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock up the nomination before the convention in Cleveland. So far, Trump has won 678 delegates. Cruz would need to win 81 percent of the remaining delegates to reach a majority, according to the Cook Political Report. It is impossible for Kasich to reach 1,237 delegates, according to the nonpartisan election tracker. Romney said Kasich has a "solid record" as a governor and he would have voted for him in Ohio last Tuesday. (Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Grant McCool and Leslie Adler)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades is satisfied with the latest draft of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey to send back migrants reaching Europe across the Aegean sea, a diplomat said. Cyprus has previously threatened to bloc the agreement over tensions with Turkey if what the EU was offering to Turkey was not agreed with Nicosia as well. "He said he was happy, he accepts the proposal and thanks the negotiators," an EU diplomat said of Anastasiades who is among 28 EU leaders meeting now to sing off on the Turkey deal. (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski)
It was on this day in 1963 that the Supreme Court handed down the Gideon decision, which guaranteed the rights of the accused to have a public defender in court.

Clarence Earl Gideon

Clarence Earl Gideon

In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Court concluded that the Constitution required state-provided legal counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys.

The Gideon decision touched on three amendmentsthe Sixth Amendment, the 14th Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. But the Sixth Amendment was at the decisions core.

Prior to 1962, indigent Americans were not always guaranteed access to legal counsel despite the Sixth Amendment. Clarence Earl Gideon, a Florida resident, was charged in Florida state court for breaking and entering into a poolroom with the intent to commit a crime.

Due to his poverty, Gideon asked the Florida court to appoint an attorney for him. The court declined to do this and pointed to state law which said that the only time indigent defendants could be appointed an attorney was when charged with a capital offense.

Left with no other choice, Gideon represented himself in trial and lost. Gideon then studied the law while in prison, and he filed a petition of habeas corpus to the Florida Supreme Court, arguing that he had a constitutional right to be represented with an attorney, but the Florida Supreme Court did not grant him any relief.

Gideon then sent a handwritten five-page petition to the United States Supreme Court asking for his appeal to be accepted. The Court agreed, and future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was assigned to represent Gideon.

A unanimous Supreme Court said that state courts were required under the 14th Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys, guaranteeing the Sixth Amendments similar federal guarantees.

The right of an indigent defendant in a criminal trial to have the assistance of counsel is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial, and petitioners trial and conviction without the assistance of counsel violated the Fourteenth Amendment, wrote Justice Hugo Black in the unanimous opinion.

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The Court also said that the Constitutions Sixth Amendment gives defendants the right to counsel in criminal trials where the defendant is charged with a serious offense even if they cannot afford one themselves; it stated that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to  have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours. From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law, said Black.

Gideon did receive a second trial in Florida, where he was found not guilty with the help of an attorney.

An equally significant book from Anthony Lewis, Gideons Trumpet, memorialized the case in our culture.
Kinshasa (AFP) - Two activists arrested at a pro-democracy workshop in the Democratic Republic of Congo have gone on hunger strike, the pair's lawyer said Friday.

Fred Bauma, 26, and Yves Makwambala, 33, who were detained on March 15, 2015, have refused food since Tuesday, according to the LUCHA pro-democracy movement of which Bauma is a member.

Their lawyer, Beaupaul Mupemba, described the pair as "physically weak".

They were refused bail earlier this week by the country's supreme court.

Eighteen LUCHA activists were arrested in Goma, in the country's east, during a peaceful march on Tuesday to protest the supreme court's decision.

Bauma and Makwambala's arrest came amid a government crackdown on those speaking out against President Joseph Kabila's bid to extend his stay in power beyond a constitutional two-term limit, ending December 19.

The pair were arrested along with at least two dozen other people during a workshop on good governance in Africa.

Authorities then accused them of planning terrorist activities and a violent insurrection. They were held without charge for weeks and then transferred to Kinshasa's main prison where they remain.

In June last year they were charged with belonging to an association formed to attack people and property, plotting a conspiracy against the head of state, and attempting to either destroy or change the constitutional regime or incite violence against the state.
When a doctor takes out his or her pad and writes a prescription, patients typically take it for granted that they are being guided towards the most effective medicine available for their problems, regardless of the price.

But a new study by ProPublica, the independent, non-profit news organization, discovered an intriguing finding: Doctors who receive payments from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries tend to prescribe brand-name medications far more than physicians who dont accept payments, gifts or other honoraria.

Related: Ignoring Warnings, Drug Companies Hike Prices By 10 Percent

Moreover, the larger the payment, the more doctors tend to steer their patients to brand-name drugs instead of less expensive generic drugs that have essentially the same effect, the study found.

Doctors who got money from drug and device makerseven just a meal prescribed a higher percentage of brand-name drugs overall than doctors who didnt, our analysis showed, according to the report released on Thursday and authored by Charles Ornstein, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Mike Tigas. Indeed, doctors who received industry payments were two to three times as likely to prescribe brand-name drugs at exceptionally high rates as others in their specialty.

ProPublica reached this conclusion after comparing records on drug company and medical device manufacturers payments to doctors in 2014 with corresponding data on the types of medication that the physicians prescribed under the Medicare program for seniors.

Related: Get Ready for Fireworks Over Soaring Drug Prices

They found that physicians who received more than $5,000 from drug companies and others in 2014 for speeches, meals, consultations or other promotional activities typically had the highest brand-name prescribing percentages.

Among those doctors, the rate of brand name prescribing was about 30 percent, compared to just 20 percent for doctors who didnt accept payments from the drug industry.

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Obviously when youre sitting there with a patient, the patient expects their physicians to be prescribing them the best drugs for them  or the best procedures or the device -- according to their best professional knowledge, Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, said in an interview Thursday.

And I think that when physicians have these sort of marketing relationships with pharmaceutical and medical device companies, I think that actually creates a conflict of interest, he said.

Related: Extreme Rise in Some Drug Prices Reaches a Tipping Point

To be clear, there is nothing in ProPublicas study to suggest that doctors are heavily influenced by industry payments to prescribe particular drugs or drugs from a particular company. And in fairness, most doctors would never consciously put profits ahead of their patients well-being.

However, the new analysis raises some troubling economic and ethical issues. And, for the first time, it demonstrates that there is a proven relationship between physicians receiving money from drug companies other than for research and the way that they prescribe drugs.

Before, a lot of people would say that folks who get more payments are prescribing more brand-name drugs but you didnt really have a lot of good evidence to support that, explained Dr. Wallid Gellad, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and co-director of its Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing, who reviewed the data for ProPublica.

While researchers have yet to make a causal connection between industry payments to doctors and their prescribing practices, At least you can say that it is true that theres an association between getting more money and prescribing more brand name drugs, Gellad told The Fiscal Times.

Related: Drug Company Profits Soar as Taxpayers Foot the Bill

He cautioned that some doctors who receive large payments from pharmaceutical companies for their expertise may have practices with sicker or more challenging patients, and that those physicians might prefer to choose from a larger array of brand-name drugs. Thats still possible, and you cant rule out thats what were seeing, Gellad said.

With consumers, government agencies and policymakers in an uproar over the soaring cost of prescription drugs  especially biologic drugs for the treatment of cancer and the Hepatitis-C virus  any physician bias towards costlier brand name drugs can compound the economic problem.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, there is a huge difference between generic and brand name drugs when it comes to price. Indeed, the cost of a generic drug is on average 80 to 85 percent lower than a brand name product, an FDA fact sheet states. In 2010, for example, FDA-approved generics saved $158 billion  or an average of $3 billion a week.

Just for the average patient purchasing prescription drugs for cardio-vascular disease, a generic anti-cholesterol medicine might cost no more than a $4 co-payment. But if the patient has to purchase a non-preferred brand drug, the co-payment could be as high as $60 to $80.

Related: New Tech Tools Beat the High Cost of Prescription Drugs

Beyond that is the ethical question of whether  subconsciously or otherwise  doctors who favor brand name drugs over generic drugs are being influenced by their dealings with major pharmaceutical companies. While the AMA offers guidelines for doctors dealing with drug companies to protect their patients interests, doctors have wide latitude in contracting with drug companies to deliver speeches, provide testimonials for drugs and engage in other activities that sometimes will net them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the ProPublica report, a handful of doctors who received substantial payments from industry and had above-average prescribing rates of brand-name drugs asserted they were acting in the best interest of their patients. I do prefer certain drugs over the others based on the quality of the medication and also the benefits that the patients are going to get, Dr. Amer Syed of Jersey City, N.J., told the investigative news organization.

Syed received more than $66,800 from companies in 2014 and his brand-name prescribing rate was more than double the rate of his colleagues in internal medicine. My whole vision of practice is to keep the patients out of the hospital, he said.

Holly Campbell, senior communications director for PhRMA, the drug industrys chief lobby, said yesterday that many factors affect physicians prescribing decisions.

A 2011 survey she cited found that 91 percent of physicians felt that a great deal of their prescribing was influenced by their clinical knowledge and experience. That industry survey also found that factors such as a patients particular situation, including drug interactions and side effects, articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and clinical practice guidelines affected prescribing decisions a great deal.

Working together, biopharmaceutical companies and physicians can improve patient care, make better use of todays medicines and foster the development of tomorrows cures, Campbell said in an email. Manufacturers engage with physicians to keep them current on new indications for approved medicines, potential side effects of medicines, and both emerging benefits and risks of medicines. Physicians provide real-world insights and valuable feedback and advice to inform companies about their medicines to improve patient care.

However, some medical experts seriously question the propriety of doctors trading on their experience and reputations to collect fat payments and fees from drug companies and medical devices manufacturers. And the latest ProPublica findings about the relationship between payments and prescribing practices only further fuels those concerns.

I dont think it means that every decision is necessarily driven one way or another or that all physicians who have these kinds of relationships do this sort of thing, Kesselheim of the Harvard Medical School said in an interview.

But I think that that kind of conflict of interest exists, and theres been decades worth of data. And this [ProPublica study] is another large data point showing that those kinds of relationships are associated with changes in physicians prescribing behavior. Thats not something patients expect, and its potentially problematic in terms of the sort of trust that patients might have in their physicians.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Niamey (AFP) - Niger's presidential run-off is far from being a level playing field with President Mahamadou Issoufou's re-election a shoo-in after his challenger Hama Amadou was imprisoned in November and then hastily flown for unspecified medical treatment to Paris just days before the second round vote.

Here are profiles of the two rival veteran politicians nicknamed "The Lion" and "The Phoenix" respectively:

- Issoufou, 'The Lion' -

The 64-year-old president, who is seeking a second term, is nicknamed the "Lion" for his political prowess and capacity to pounce at the right time. But this time round his legitimacy is under question with the opposition boycotting the vote.

Issoufou has repeatedly pledged to bring prosperity to the desolate but uranium-rich country and prevent further attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters based in its vast remote northern deserts.

The twin vows have resonance in the west African nation, where he has been a key political player since the start of multi-party politics in 1990.

"He's a great tactician and has a sharp mind," said an expert on Niger politics.

A mining engineer who worked for French nuclear giant Areva which mines uranium in northern Niger, Issoufou has contested every presidential election since 1993 but was beaten in 1999 and 2004 by his charismatic rival Mamadou Tandja.

His ascent to power began in 1993 when he was named prime minister under Mahamane Ousmane, Niger's first democratically elected president.

He held the post for a year and also served as parliament speaker from 1995 to 1996.

The next years saw him in opposition and spearheading a campaign against Tandja's attempts to extend his tenure beyond its constitutional limit -- a bid that finally led to a February 2010 coup.

Issoufou's patient wait for the top job finally paid off in 2011 when he won a presidential election organised by the military junta that had toppled Tandja.

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His winning pitch was a pledge to restore stability to a country wracked by coups since 1974 and to secure it from jihadist groups active in restive west Africa.

His critics, however, accuse him of bending over backwards to pander to former colonial ruler France, and spending far too much on defence at the cost of welfare schemes in one of the world's poorest countries.

- Amadou, 'The Phoenix' -

Currently holed up at the well-known American Hospital in a western Paris suburb after being evacuated from prison in Niger for urgent but unexplained medical reasons, the 66-year-old Amadou ran an unequal campaign from behind bars where he has been languishing since November.

His ability to rise from the ashes had led to the veteran politician being showered with monikers such as "The Phoenix" along with "Niger's Mandela" for his long stints in prison like South Africa's anti-apartheid icon.

The rallying cry of his supporters has been "from prison to presidency", and they often make cross marks on their face or arms to replicate the tribal scars on his cheeks, which have also sparked another nickname "Hama+".

"Hama+" is also a play on the French word "plus" or "more" and used by his backers in this uranium-rich but deeply poor nation on the fringes of the Sahara.

"Hama plus means more work, more money and more of everything for the people of Niger," was the rallying cry during the campaign for the first round of the election on February 21.

Amadou cut his political teeth during the iron-fisted rule of president Seini Kountche (1974-1987) and after the advent of multi-party politics in the 1990s became prime minister in 1995.

He was one of the key figures in the regime of former president Mamadou Tandja, in power from 1999 to 2010, serving as prime minister before being jailed for allegedly stealing public funds.

Although some had written him off, Amadou's popularity soared after Tandja was toppled following an abortive attempt to prolong his rule, leading to his "Phoenix" nickname.

He joined the opposition and became a leading figure but was jailed in November on baby trafficking charges that he says are trumped up.

Calm, discreet and plain speaking, Amadou is also a "great opportunist and a man of courage," according to an African diplomat.

But whether he will be able to resurrect politically yet again remains to be seen.
Schiphol (Netherlands) (AFP) - Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders remained unrepentant Friday over statements made which prosecutors say incited racial hatred in the Netherlands, saying "I will not take back what I said".

Wilders appeared before a top security court ahead of his upcoming trial, charged with discrimination and incitement to racial hatred over statements made two years ago about Moroccans living in the country.

"I meant what I said, speaking on behalf of millions of Dutch people. I will not take back what I have said and I have no remorse," Wilders told a three-judge bench at a hearing, held at a fortress-like courthouse close to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

The case against Wilders centres on comments by the populist politician -- famous for his trademark blond hairdo -- at a March 2014 local election rally and will test the boundaries of the liberal Dutch laws on the issue.

He asked supporters in The Hague whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?"

When the crowd shouted back "Fewer! Fewer!" a smiling Wilders answered: "We're going to organise that."

The remark triggered 6,400 complaints from across the Netherlands, and Wilders even faced criticism from within his Party for Freedom (PVV).

But on Friday, Wilders stuck to his guns.

"Why did I speak about fewer Moroccans? The answer, as said before, is because I do want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands," said Wilders, who also stressed that "I don't hate anybody and I'm not inciting hatred."

"I am simply saying what millions of Dutch people are thinking," he said.

- 'Moroccans insulted' -

Dressed in a blue suit, Wilders appeared relaxed, getting out his phone to take a picture of the photographers jostling to take his picture as the hearing opened.

Prosecutor Wouter Bos told the judges: "Racism and hatred towards foreigners are in direct contravention of the freedoms we have in a democratic society."

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"The prosecution believes that you insulted Moroccans as a group and committed incitement to hate speech," he added, saying that while "freedom of speech is a fundamental principle .... (it) is not an absolute."

Wilders' lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops told judges the case should be stopped immediately so an investigation can be launched into how sensitive documents including Wilders's opening statement were leaked to a Dutch newspaper.

- 'Hit lists' -

Outside the heavily-fortified court complex, a handful of supporters, waving Dutch flags and scarves, gathered early Friday watched by dozens of police and gendarmes.

Six people -- all believed to be members of a fringe rightwing extremist group -- were later charged with illegal weapons possession after police found knives, pepper spray and a blackjack in their car, police said.

Security forces lined the road to the high-security complex, a few kilometres (miles) outside Schiphol Airport.

Wilders is described as the "most heavily-guarded man" in the Netherlands because of his views and has around-the-clock protection.

Knoops told the court that his client is "on hit lists drawn up by Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State" group.

Given that Wilders was being constantly guarded "freedom of speech is the last freedom he has left" and that Wilders had a right to a fair trial, Knoops said.

The spike in the numbers of refugees arriving in the Netherlands has polarised Dutch society, with Wilders's party tapping into popular discontent and currently topping opinion polls.

Wilders has denounced the decision to prosecute him as "incomprehensible," telling AFP in a recent interview that he was referring to a "criminal element" among Moroccans and not to the group as a whole.

Friday's hearing has been called to examine where the investigations stand ahead of the full trial due to start on October 31.

If found guilty, Wilders could face up to two years in jail or a fine of more than 20,000 euros.

Wilders, who has repeatedly denounced Islam and famously compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," was acquitted during a first hate trial in 2011 which concluded he could not be found guilty because his remarks targeted a religion and not a specific group of people.
Conakry (AFP) - A medical charity said Friday it had reopened its specialist Ebola clinic in southern Guinea to treat an infected woman and her child after the virus killed at least two of their relatives.

The pair were receiving treatment after they tested positive for the virus on Thursday, the Alliance For International Medical Action (ALIMA) said.

"We hope that this new episode will be rapidly contained because today the authorities and communities are well versed in the appropriate measures to fight the disease," Richard Kojan, a Conakry-based doctor for ALIMA, said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday Guinean health officials had alerted it to Ebola symptoms in the family's village of Koropara, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Guinea's second city of Nzerekore, on March 16.

The child being treated was a boy aged five, the WHO said.

An expert team had already been dispatched to conduct tests after the two new diagnoses, and a larger WHO deployment was en route.

"More specialists are expected to arrive in the coming days. Response teams will work to investigate the origin of the new infections and to identify, isolate, vaccinate and monitor all contacts of the new cases and those who died," the world health body said in a statement.

- Close to original outbreak -

The Guinean government said a quarantined area around the family's home would be established, and announced a door-to-door search for other potential Ebola cases in the district.

The village is in the same region where the first Ebola case of the current outbreak was registered in December 2013.

A source close to the local anti-Ebola coordination team told AFP that the two deceased relatives were a married couple.

On Thursday the world health body was already warning that a recurrence of the deadly virus -- which has claimed 11,300 lives since December 2013 -- remained a possibility.

The four confirmed cases were the first in Guinea since the country was declared free of Ebola transmission at the end of last year, though a significant number of deaths are believed to have gone unreported.

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The WHO refers to these isolated cases as "flare-ups" but maintains that what it calls the original "chains of transmission" have been stopped in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The Guinea diagnoses came the same day the WHO declared a similar flare-up over in Sierra Leone, announcing there had been no new cases for 42 days -- the length of two Ebola incubation cycles.

Sierra Leonean health official Foday Dafai told AFP the cases detected in Guinea "are obviously a threat to Sierra Leone."

Dedicated teams were on alert at the borders between the two countries, he said, with a rapid response team also primed.

"All hospitals in the country have reactivated treatment centres at regional headquarters and in (the eastern diamond mining town of) Kono," Dafai added.
Nairobi (AFP) - An elderly Kenyan man was clawed by a lion that was wandering along a busy road during morning rush hour in the capital Nairobi on Friday, wildlife officials said.

It is the third time in a month that lions have caused panic as they roamed outside of Nairobi National Park, a 117 square kilometre (29,000 acre) reserve almost surrounded by a fast-growing city of over three million people.

The 63-year-old man was injured when the lion became agitated and swiped at him, said Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) spokesman Paul Udoto.

"People were there, hooting their horns, taking selfies and all that and the lion got agitated," Udoto said, adding that the man was taken to hospital and was in stable condition.

Soon afterwards, the lion returned to the park, followed by rangers who encouraged it to move deeper into the reserve.

"The lion is safely back but our teams are still on the ground in case there are any others around that have not been spotted," Udoto said.

In a video shared on social media, commuters honked their horns continuously at the large, dark-maned male lion as it trotted along Mombasa Road, a traffic-clogged four-lane highway that is one of the capital's main arteries.

Bystanders peered out from behind fences and gates.

The park is not entirely fenced to enable traditional migration by animals in search of grazing.

The big cats are under growing pressure as one of Africa's fastest growing cities expands onto ancient migration routes and hunting grounds.

Conservationists say lions predate people in the area and are not "escaping" the park nor "straying" into human settlements, rather people have moved into the lions' home ranges.

In mid-February, two lions spent a day wandering through Kibera, a densely-packed city slum, before returning to the park, and days later more lions were spotted in town.

While lions on the loose are increasingly common in Nairobi, it is unusual for anyone to be injured during their outings.
Indian Wells (United States) (AFP) - Roger Federer used a colorful series of Twitter emojis on Thursday to announce his return to action at next week's Miami Open after recovering from knee surgery earlier than expected.

The former world number one was expected to return to action at the Monte Carlo Masters in April, but the Swiss star confirmed on Twitter that he will be playing in Miami after all.

The 34-year-old underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus sustained the day after his semi-final defeat to Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open in January and had been expected to be sidelined for a month.

The Miami Open gets underway on Wednesday.
Brussels (AFP) - Turkish and EU leaders on Friday agreed a "historic" deal for curbing the influx of migrants that has plunged Europe into its biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

Under the deal, all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey as early as Sunday will be turned back.

But the leaders warned that a Herculean task lay ahead to implement the accord. And rights watchdogs said they would monitor it closely to ensure that those seeking asylum were protected.

Turkey extracted a string of political and financial concessions in exchange for becoming a bulwark against the flow of desperate humanity heading to Europe from Syria and elsewhere.

"It is a historic day because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the deal was struck at a summit in Brussels.

"We today realised that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future."

EU president Donald Tusk said that under the deal, all "irregular" migrants would be returned to Turkey from Sunday.

For every Syrian refugee expelled, the EU would resettle one directly from Turkey.

Tusk said the deal would only work as part of a broader plan, including support for Greece, the main point of entry for migrants to Europe, and cutting the flow of refugees through the Balkans to Germany.

"Some may think this agreement is a silver bullet but reality is more complex," said Tusk, who has played a leading role in a crisis that has seen 1.2 million asylum seekers reach Europe since January 2015.

- 'Herculean task' -

Around 4,000 people including women and children have drowned crossing the Aegean Sea in flimsy smugglers' boats, including 400 this year alone.

For its cooperation to stem the flow, Turkey won an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to six billion euros ($6.8 billion) and visa-free travel for its nationals to Europe's Schengen passport-free zone by June.

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But there remained huge doubts about how to implement such a scheme, not least due to still often-tense relations between Ankara and Brussels.

"This is a Herculean task facing us," European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker told the press conference.

He said some 4,000 border officials and other experts will need to start working immediately on implementing the deal that will cost the EU up to 300 million euros over six months.

EU officials stressed that each application will be treated individually, with full rights of appeal and proper oversight.

Turkish officials as well as UNHCR officials will be sent to the Greek islands to oversee the scheme.

The deal also envisages major aid for Greece, where tens of thousands of refugees are already trapped in dire conditions after Balkan countries shut their borders.

The deal will not affect the 46,000 migrants already in Greece, who will either be expelled as economic migrants or granted asylum.

- 'Don't trade refugees -

The United Nations and rights groups fear the deal could violate international law that forbids the mass deportation of refugees.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stressed the right to asylum must be paramount.

"Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution. Refugees need protection, not rejection," it said in a statement.

Amnesty International set up a sign outside the summit venue saying: "Don't trade refugees".

The deal a "historic blow to human rights," Amnesty said.

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty director for Europe and Central Asia accused the EU of seeking to "wilfully ignore its international obligations.

EU states have expressed concerns about Ankara's human rights record, including its treatment of the Kurds and a crackdown on critics of the government.

Far from the smiles in Brussels, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted the EU for taking a "handful of refugees" in contrast to the nearly three million Turkey is hosting.

Erdogan also accused the Europeans of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels allegedly linked to the group.

"European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield," he said.

But one major hurdle that was overcome was opposition from Cyprus, which has long-standing tensions with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to recognise its government on the divided island.

The migrant crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populism and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis described the overwhelmed border town of Idomeni where many of the migrants are camped out as a "modern-day Dachau".

Some migrants, speaking in a rain-sodden makeshift camp, told AFP said they would stay, others that they would try to get across the border, and others said they were against moving to reception centres.

Imen, a 17-year-old girl travelling with her brother, mother and two aunts, said, "We have to meet our father who is in Germany now. He left a few months ago to wait for us there. What are we going to do?"
Brussels (AFP) - EU president Donald Tusk recommended Friday that European Union leaders approve a revised deal with Turkey to halt the massive influx of migrants into the bloc, an EU official said.

"President Tusk presented a revised text to the 28 leaders and recommended that they adopt it without changes," the official said as they met to discuss the results of intense morning talks between Tusk and Turkish Premier Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels.

The official, who asked not to be named, said Tusk believed the new proposals, which include a controversial plan for Turkey to take back all new migrants arriving in Greece, took full account of their wishes.

He added: "It is acceptable to the Turkish side."

Under the terms of the deal, migrants arriving in Greece after a cutoff date of Sunday would be sent back to Turkey following assessment, the official said.

The Turkish delegation to the EU said in a tweeted message: "Look forward 2 a deal before dinner."

The head of cabinet for European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker also tweeted: "We will have an agreement today."

Davutoglu had warned on arriving for the talks Friday that there could be no bargaining over the refugees' plight.

Tusk had also faced reservations that the EU was compromising too much on core values in its desperation to settle the crisis.
Brussels (AFP) - EU leaders on Friday approved a deal with Turkey to curb the migration crisis after premier Ahmet Davutoglu visited Brussels for talks, Finland's prime minister said.

"The Turkey deal was approved," Finnish premier Juha Sipila wrote on Twitter as the 28 European Union leaders met to discuss the deal.

An EU official separately confirmed the agreement which all 28 European Union national leaders will now discuss with Davutoglu before signing off on an accord meant to end Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II.

"Tusk's proposal for the EU-Turkey agreement approved by EU leaders, in principle, as it is now up for final talks with the Turkish prime minister," said the official who asked not to be named.

The plan includes a hugely controversial plan for Turkey to take back all new migrants arriving in Greece which critics said could infringe international law on the treatment of asylum seekers.

EU officials stressed repeatedly that this would not be the case because each application would be treated individually, with full rights of appeal and proper oversight.

The Turkish delegation to the EU said earlier in a tweeted message: "Look forward 2 a deal before dinner."

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey from Sunday will be sent back.

"Deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey as of March 20 will be returned!" Sobotka wrote on Twitter.
By Humeyra Pamuk and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders will try to convince Turkey's prime minister to help end Europe's migration crisis in return for financial and political concessions but they remain unsure if Friday's Brussels summit can clinch a deal. "Tomorrow's negotiations with Turkey won't be very easy," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who devised the outlines of the plan with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, after EU leaders agreed a common stance on Thursday. A senior Turkish official told Reuters that Davutoglu would press the EU to open up new areas of negotiation on its long-stalled bid to join the bloc, despite a veto threat by Cyprus. "We're on the right track but we're not there yet," French President Francois Hollande told reporters after the first day of talks in Brussels. "I can't guarantee you a happy ending." Even if they can overcome possible Turkish objections, Thursday's EU discussions revealed considerable doubts among the Europeans themselves over whether a deal could be made either legal in international law, or workable. Over dinner, leaders gave EU negotiators a mandate to conclude an accord with Turkey by which it would take back all migrants who reach Greek islands off its coast. In return the EU would take in Syrian refugees direct from Turkey, increase aid for Syrians there, speed Ankara's EU membership process and a scheme to let Turks visit Europe without visas. Much of the debate, Merkel said, focused on ensuring that a plan that has outraged human rights agencies could ensure that those returned to Turkey, a country with a patchy and worsening record on the matter, would have rights to asylum protected. "An agreement with Turkey cannot be a blank check," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned, echoing many colleagues who face complaints that Europe is selling out to anti-immigrant nationalists at home by outsourcing its problems to the Turks. Outside the summit, rights group Amnesty International had planted a large screen in the middle of Brussels' European quarter proclaiming "Don't trade refugees. Stop the deal." Summit chairman Donald Tusk will open negotiations with Davutoglu at 8:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) to prepare for a lunch meeting at which all 28 EU national leaders aim to wrap up a deal with the Turkish premier. A major problem is Turkey's four-decade-old dispute with EU member Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades insisted there could be no opening of new "chapters" in Turkey's EU membership talks until Ankara allows Cypriot traffic to its sea and airports - a result of a refusal to recognize the Cypriot state. After EU leaders told Tusk where they could give ground and where they had "red lines", Anastasiades he was ready to veto a deal if necessary. There is anger in Nicosia at Merkel for appearing to make Davutoglu an offer last week without having consulted Cyprus at a time when talks on reunification with the Turkish-backed north of the island are at a delicately hopeful stage. Tusk, a former Polish premier, made clear Cypriot interests must be respected. But Turkey is impatient with what it has called Cypriot "caprice" and a Turkish official in Brussels with Davutoglu said: "The EU has to see the big picture ... We think there are many steps to be taken for the opening of those (accession) chapters. And that is still our expectation." DESPERATION After a year in which more than a million people have arrived in Europe fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, EU countries are looking desperately to Turkey to seal its coastline and stem the flow. One senior EU official said that a lack of legal clarity in Turkey on the status of refugees from countries other than Syria - notably large numbers of Iraqis and Afghans - was a serious sticking point to Greece sending such people back. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, facing a build-up of more than 40,000 refugees stranded in Greece by recent border closures in the Balkans, said his economically struggling country needed more help to care for migrants. EU officials said Greece also needed time to set up legal and administrative structures to carry out the deportations and grant migrants individual asylum and appeal hearings. Diplomats said talks among the EU states had watered down inducements to Turkey and included new safeguards intended to overcome legal objections to sending back migrants. Ankara's central objective - visa-free travel for Turks to Europe by June - will depend on Turkey meeting a raft of long-standing EU criteria. With French voters alarmed at the idea of 75 million Muslim Turks free to travel, Hollande stressed the need to fulfil all 72 prior conditions. The draft, seen by Reuters, says the aim is "to break the business model of the (people) smugglers" and to offer migrants an alternative to putting their lives at risk. It stresses the return is "a temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order". Leaders set no date to start the scheme. Some want all those arriving on Greek beaches from next Monday to be held for deportation, but Athens says it needs weeks to prepare. Yet such delay may trigger a rush to cross before Europe shuts down. Merkel said any hold-up would create a "pull factor". She also said Europe must be ready to start resettling legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey days after migrant returns starting from Greece. (Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou, Robin Emmott, Paul Taylor, Gabriela Baczynska, Julia Fioretti, Jan Strupczewski and Elizabeth Pineau in Brussels; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Paul Taylor and Mark Bendeich)
By Benet Koleka TIRANA (Reuters) - The European Union will give financial aid to help Albania cope with any influx of migrants from Greece if they switched routes in an attempt to reach western Europe, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Friday. Macedonia and other states on the Western Balkans migration corridor between Greece and the west of the EU have sealed their borders, stranding around 43,000 refugees and other asylum seekers in Greece, some of them close to Albania. Avramopoulos said there were no signs so far that refugees were seeking alternative transit through Albania but the EU's Frontex border agency was monitoring matters on the ground and the Albanian government had drawn up a contingency plan. "Whatever comes as a request from the Albanian government, our reaction will be positive. If it happens, Albania will not be unprepared because we shall be here to help the Albanians address this issue," Avramopoulos told reporters in Tirana after talks with Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri. The EU will provide financial and political assistance in the event Albania faced a tide of migrants, said Avramopoulos, who visited the Idomeni camp of stranded migrants on Greece's border with Macedonia on Tuesday. In Brussels on Friday, EU leaders approved a deal with Turkey intended to halt a tide of mainly Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan migrants from that country into Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara. Prime Minister Edi Rama told Avramopoulos that Albania stood ready to handle any arrival of migrants "within its possibilities and capacities as part of a joint European plan", a statement from his office said. Albania, a NATO member and a candidate for EU membership, is already getting help from Italy to reinforce security at its border with Greece to stop any Islamist militants from slipping in disguised as migrants and human smugglers from luring migrants to cross the Adriatic Sea to Italy in speedboats. Such sea journeys have often proved deadly. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is expected to finalize a cooperation agreement with Albania during a visit to Tirana next week. The deal would see Italy helping Albania record the biometric data of refugees entering the country and electronically sharing information on their identities and the route they had taken with Frontex and possibly Greece, an Albanian official said on Tuesday. Avramopoulos said EU member states were not well-prepared when the migrant influx began last year "to face such a very complex and difficult situation and we still do not know what will its implications in our larger neighborhood will be". Recalling the migration of Albanians to Italy and Avramopoulos's native Greece after communism crumbled in Albania in 1990, he pleaded for latter-day migrants be treated with "humanity and decency". (Reporting by Benet Koleka; Editing by Adrian Croft and Mark Heinrich)
If Republican officials think they're playing to the base by blocking the president's Supreme Court pick, they might want to think again.

Almost half of Republican voters disagree with GOP senators' refusal to hold hearings on President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court, a new poll shows.

A Morning Consult survey released Friday found 43% of GOP voters think the Senate Judiciary Panel should hold hearings on Garland, who was nominated on Wednesday to succeed late Justice Antonin Scalia.

About a third, or 34%, opposed hearings, and 23% were on the fence.

More than half of Democratic voters polled, 56%, approved of hearings, as did 42% of independents, Morning Consult said.

Even backers of Ted Cruz's bid for the Republican nomination for president, in which he's framing himself as the most conservative choice, aren't uniformly against hearings. More than a third of Cruz supporters, 37%, are in favor of holding hearings.

The numbers were higher among supporters of frontrunner Donald Trump (44%) and underdog John Kasich (54%).

That doesn't mean Garland's actual confirmation is in the bag, Morning Consult reported, and members of all parties have their reservations about the D.C. jurist:

The question becomes more typically partisan when it comes to whether Garland, widely considered a centrist and a moderate by both parties, should be confirmed. Only 19% of Republican voters said he should be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice, compared with 59% of Democrats and 28% of independents.

Morning Consult polled a total of 2,011 registered voters from March 16 to 18. The survey had an error margin of plus or minus 2%.

Correction: March 18, 2016

An earlier version of this article misstated that the Morning Consult poll was conducted from March 11 to 18. It was conducted from March 16 to 18.
By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland on Friday urged a federal appeals court to overturn his conviction on charges that the Republican tried to use sham contracts to hide his political work in two U.S. congressional campaigns, saying prosecutors went too far in applying the law. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York heard arguments over whether Rowland used illegal consulting contracts for candidates who in 2010 and 2012 ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives. Rowland, who was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison in March 2015, is free on bail during his appeal. He had previously spent 10 months in prison following his 2004 guilty plea to separate charges arising from his acceptance of illegal gifts while he was governor. Rowland resigned from office that year. Andrew Fish, Rowland's lawyer, told the appeals court on Friday that a draft contract rejected by one of the candidates, Mark Greenberg, did not constitute a falsified document. "Frankly, the government saying that a contract proposal is a falsified document makes little sense," Fish said. He said prosecutors went too far in trying to criminalize Rowland's conduct under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a governance law passed after Enron Corp's collapse, that prohibits falsifying documents to hide financial wrongdoing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Liam Brennan countered that the case was in the "heartland" of the statute. "This is creating a fake record to have in the file in case there is an investigation," he said. A federal jury in New Haven found Rowland guilty in March 2015 on charges of conspiracy, falsifying records in a federal investigation, causing false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission, and causing illegal campaign contributions. Prosecutors said Rowland, 58, sought to advise Greenberg, who testified that in 2010 he rejected Rowland's offer and a contract to conceal the ex-governor's role. Rowland was also accused of negotiating a deal to work for a nursing home company owned by Brian Foley, the husband of 2012 congressional candidate, Lisa Wilson-Foley, and receive $35,000 intended to compensate him for advising her campaign. Wilson-Foley and Foley pleaded guilty to conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions. Wilson-Foley received a five-month prison term, while Foley was sentenced to three months in a halfway house. (Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Peter Cooney and Richard Chang)
By Robin Emmott and Francesco Guarascio BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Nearly half a million people displaced in Libya could travel to Europe, the EU's foreign policy chief has told the bloc's foreign ministers in a letter, urging action to prevent another escalation in the region's migration crisis. In the message seen by Reuters, Federica Mogherini warned that people traffickers were operating freely in Libya and said the EU was working on sending a civilian security mission to boost the country's police, border forces and counter-terrorism operations. The letter, sent on March 12, came in the build-up to a series of top-level meetings on the migration crisis, including one hosted by Britain in Brussels on Friday with Mogherini and leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Malta. Diplomats and activists have said they are concerned Libya could be forgotten while the bloc focuses on reaching a deal with Turkey to return refugees from Greece. An effective deal with Turkey may also push traffickers to focus on other routes to smuggle migrants to Europe. "There are more than 450,000 internally displaced persons and refugees in Libya who could be potential candidates for migration to Europe," Mogherini wrote. SANCTIONS, SECURITY OPERATIONS The European Union is working on helping Libya boost its institutions and on ensuring that a U.N.-backed government, currently based in Tunis, can operate from Tripoli. The North African oil producer plunged into chaos after rebels ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, backed by British and French air strikes supported by the United States. London and Paris struggled for months to win broader EU support for sanctions on three Libyan leaders seen as blocking the U.N. process to establish a government in Tripoli. They finally won support this week to go ahead with preparations to impose asset freezes and travel bans, though the sanctions have yet to be adopted. Beyond such measures, Mogherini said she was exploring "all possible options" that could help combat people traffickers in Libya. The EU and the United States hope they will be in a position to act quickly if a unity Libyan government is strong enough to call for foreign assistance. EU defense and foreign affairs ministers will hold a joint meeting focused on Libya on April 18 in Luxembourg to discuss Mogherini's plans, an EU official said on Friday. "The possibility of setting up a team of 'deployable experts' on migration and security issues ... could be explored," Mogherini said in her letter. Last June the EU deployed a military naval force in the central Mediterranean to counter traffickers who last year smuggled nearly 160,000 people from North Africa to southern EU shores, EU data show. (Reporting by Robin Emmott and Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Heavens)
By Ludwig Burger and Mike Stone (Reuters) - Monsanto Co , the world's largest seed producer, has approached Bayer AG to express interest in its crop science unit, including a potential acquisition worth more than $30 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The move underscores Monsanto's unabated expansion drive after Switzerland's Syngenta AG rejected its takeover approaches last year and agreed earlier this year to be acquired by ChemChina for $43 billion. It also illustrates Monsanto's determination to further consolidate its industry, as the global seed and crop protection market continues to suffer from high inventories and low prices for agricultural commodities. Monsanto executives met in Chicago recently to discuss the company's interest in Bayer's agricultural assets, the sources said this week. Monsanto sees valuable synergies between its seed business and the crop protection assets of Bayer, the sources added. Among the possibilities discussed were an outright acquisition of the crop science unit and a joint venture or other type of partnership between the two companies, the sources said. These talks were preliminary, and another meeting between the two sides has been scheduled for April, the sources added. Bayer has been holding the talks with Monsanto to probe its interest, the sources said. The German company currently has no plans to actively pursue a sale of its crop science division, the sources added. The sources asked not to be identified because the discussions were confidential. Monsanto and Bayer declined to comment. Bayers crop science division has businesses in seeds, crop protection and non-agricultural pest control. It had sales of 10.4 billion euros ($11.7 billion) in 2015 and posted adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 2.42 billion euros. Bayer is the second biggest player in crop chemicals, with an 18 percent market share, just behind Syngenta, which has a 19 percent share. Monsanto is a leader in seeds, with a 26 percent market share, followed by Dupont , with 21 percent. DuPont agreed last year to merge with Dow Chemical . Bayer said last year it planned to keep its crop chemicals business, saying it was an "integral part" of the German healthcare group. It has said it aims to concentrate on its core brands in crop protection. It also wants to strengthen its position in its established crops - cotton, oilseed rape/canola, rice and vegetables  and to establish competitive positions in soybeans and wheat. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Mike Stone in New Orleans; Additional reporting by Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt and PJ Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said on Thursday. The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route. Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims. Richardson said the U.S. military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay. "I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. That's an area of concern ... a next possible area of reclamation," he said. Richardson said it was unclear if the activity near the reef, which China seized in 2012, was related to the pending arbitration decision. Asked about Richardson's statement, Lu Kang, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it was hypocritical for the United States to criticize China for militarizing the region when it carries out its own naval patrols there. "This is really laughable and preposterous," he said. The Philippine foreign ministry said it had yet to receive a report about Chinese activity in Scarborough Shoal. A Philippine military official who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media said he was unaware of a Chinese survey ship in the area. "China already has de facto control over the shoal since 2012 and they always have two to three coastguard ships there. We are also monitoring their activities and movements," the official told reporters. Richardson said China's pursuit of South China Sea territory, which has included massive land reclamation to create artificial islands elsewhere in the Spratlys, threatened to reverse decades of open access and introduce new "rules" that required countries to obtain permission before transiting those waters. He said that was a worry given that 30 percent of the world's trade passes through the region. Asked whether China could respond to the ruling by the court of arbitration in The Hague by declaring an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did to the north, in the East China Sea, in 2013, Richardson said: "It's definitely a concern. "We will just have to see what happens," he said. "We think about contingencies and ... responses." Richardson said the United States planned to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation exercises within 12 nautical miles of disputed South China Sea geographical features to underscore its concerns about keeping sea lanes open. JOINT PATROLS? The United States responded to the East China Sea ADIZ by flying B-52 bombers through the zone in a show of force in November 2013. Richardson said he was struck by how China's increasing militarization of the South China Sea had increased the willingness of other countries in the region to work together. India and Japan have joined the U.S. Navy in the Malabar naval exercise since 2014, and were due to take part again this year in an even more complex exercise that will take place in an area close to the East and South China Seas. South Korea, Japan and the United States were also working together more closely than ever before, he said. Richardson said the United States would welcome the participation of other countries in joint patrols in the South China Sea, but those decisions needed to be made by the countries in question. He said the U.S. military saw good opportunities to build and rebuild relationships with countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and India, which have all realized the importance of safeguarding the freedom of the seas. He cited India's recent hosting of an international fleet review that included 75 ships from 50 navies, and said the United States was exploring opportunities to increase its use of ports in the Philippines and Vietnam, among others - including the former U.S. naval base at Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay. But he said Washington needed to proceed judiciously rather than charging in "very fast and very heavy," given the enormous influence and importance of the Chinese economy in the region. "We have to be sophisticated in how we approach this so that we don't force any of our partners into an uncomfortable position where they have to make tradeoffs that are not in their best interest," he said. "We would hope to have an approach that would ... include us a primary partner but not necessarily to the exclusion of other partners in the region." (Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Manila and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Peter Cooney and Nick Macfie)
Graduate nursing programs usually require a student's full dedication. Between hours of studying, students spend time in clinical settings to get hands-on patient care experience, making it critical that prospective students get a feel for working in health before committing to this kind of degree.

For 27-year-old Omonike Akinleye, that experience came in the form of volunteer work.

"When I was in undergrad, in about 2009, I started interning with local public health departments," says Akinleye. She volunteered in the Greensboro, Durham and Wilmington areas of North Carolina and focused on preventive health, helping organize community health fairs, conduct glucose screenings and do other basic health care work.

"I think it definitely solidified my dedication to the field," she says. Akinleye also believes it boosted her nursing applications, especially the essay portion.

"I talked a lot about my involvement in public health and how that has influenced my desire to work in community health," says Akinleye, who's now in an accelerated graduate nursing program at Johns Hopkins University for college graduates who do not have a nursing background.

[Boosta career in nursing with a graduate degree.]

The program at Hopkins -- Master of Science in Nursing: Entry Into Nursing -- is like many others that allow accountants, social workers or others in careers outside of nursing to get a graduate degree in the field in about two or three years.

Because students may have limited or no prior health experience, volunteering can help them stand out as applicants.

"We really want to make sure that the applicant is the best fit for an accelerated program," says Maureen O'Brien, associate dean for graduate programs in the Marquette University College of Nursing. "For them to be able to show us that they have some knowledge of the health care system or some experience and how that has impacted their decision to go into nursing is very helpful."

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Nurses who have a bachelor's degree and are headed back to school for a master's can also benefit from volunteering, says Kathleen White, director for the master's Entry Into Nursing program at Johns Hopkins.

Those who want to enter a family nurse practitioner program but are currently working in adult care, "might want to think about volunteering at that point at a family practice clinic or something like that just to make sure in fact that you'll be interested in women's health and children," she says.

[Transitioninto nursing with an accelerated graduate degree.]

There are a variety of ways to get volunteer experience and health care training for a nursing career, experts say.

At community health clinics and hospitals, volunteers may greet patients in the waiting room or do clerical work, such as filing or answering phones, says White.

Applicants can also do similar volunteer work at nursing homes or assisted living facilities, which can be a great training ground for improving soft skills that are needed in nursing, she says.

In these settings, volunteers may spend significant time chatting with or reading to elderly residents.

"In a way, it's establishing and working on your interpersonal relationship skills," says White. "That's extremely important in health care so that you're able to establish a relationship with your patients, in order to be able to get the best information from them."

In other health care settings, volunteers may also interact with the youngest of patients.

"Some places have opportunities, for example, for you to go to the playroom in a children's hospital and play with the kids. Some neonatal intensive care units have opportunities for volunteers to come and rock babies," says O'Brien.

[Find outwhich schools have top nursing master's programs.]

Other nursing applicants may get training to be a specific type of health care assistant, such as a doula, says Angela Amar, an associate professor and assistant dean for BSN education at the Emory University Woodruff School of Nursing. "You have some understanding that that's the person who's like a layperson that works with people through their pregnancy," she says.

Nursing applicants can start searching for opportunities in their backyards, experts say.

"Prospective students could start where they are," says White. She suggests they check with their local hospital, community health clinic or chamber of commerce to learn of opportunities.

Also, Veterans Affairs hospitals can be a good place to volunteer, says O'Brien.

Akinleye, the student from Johns Hopkins, recommends aspiring nurses see what opportunities they can find through Volunteers for America and check the website for the Health Resources and Services Administration.

She was focused on a career in medicine as an undergrad at North Carolina A&T State University but later realized that nursing was her calling, making a career decision that can be tough for those who want to work in health care.

"I wanted to be able to be a health care provider that can spend quality time and build relationships with my patients," she says. "I know that oftentimes physicians -- the patient load they have is a lot so they don't get to spend as much time with their patients as they probably would like to, and I just feel like nurses get that connection and they get that time with their patients."

For more in-depth rankings, searchable data and an expanded directory of programs, sign up for the U.S. News Nursing School Compass.

Delece Smith-Barrow is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering graduate schools. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dsmithbarrow@usnews.com.
(Reuters) - The United Nations war crimes tribunal will hand down its verdict next Thursday in Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's trial for genocide during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Here are some facts about Karadzic's life and trial: -- Karadzic, now 70, was president of the self-declared Bosnian Serb Republic and supreme commander of its armed forces during the Bosnian war, during which 100,000 people were killed. -- The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged him with 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity and violations of the customs of war, including the Sarajevo siege and the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. -- If convicted, he would be Europe's highest ranking official sentenced by an international court since the Nazi trials after World War Two. -- The Hague tribunal first indicted Karadzic in July 1995 for the shooting of unarmed civilians in Sarajevo and taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage. He was indicted again four months later for orchestrating the slaughter of some 8,000 Muslim men after Serb forces seized the U.N.'s Srebrenica "safe area" in eastern Bosnia. -- He lost power in 1996, went into hiding the following year, and for the next 11 years was one of the world's most wanted men. He was arrested in July 2008 on a bus in Belgrade, where he had been living as a New Age healer under the false name of Dragan Dabic. -- He represented himself during his trial with the help of a court-provided expert. The trial lasted 497 days and involved 586 witnesses, while prosecutors entered 3 million pages of evidence. -- The tribunal said more than 150 victims, 200 journalists, 50 diplomats and 100 researchers had asked to attend Thursday's verdict and the court would be full to capacity. -- Karadzic was born on June 19, 1945, in a hamlet in the mountains of Montenegro and raised in poverty by parents who despised the communist rule of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. His father was a Serb nationalist fighter wounded by Tito's partisans at the close of World War Two. -- After completing his training, he worked as a psychiatrist in Sarajevo, specialising in neuroses and depression. He wrote poetry and lived with his physician wife and two children in the city. -- He joined the nationalist Serb Democratic Party in 1990, becoming its leader, and became president of the self-declared Bosnian Serb Republic in 1992. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Adrian Croft and Hugh Lawson)
(Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is probing the cyber theft of tens of millions of dollars from the Bangladesh central bank's U.S. account, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. FBI agents are looking for evidence in the United States and beyond to determine who was behind the theft, which transferred money from the Bangladesh central bank account in New York to the Philippines, the Journal reported. (http://on.wsj.com/1PguXWw) The heist netted $81 million and took place between Feb 4 and Feb 5, when unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements. A spokeswoman for the FBI in New York declined comment. Bangladesh Bank had earlier asked the FBI for help. The theft prompted the head of Bangladesh Bank to resign and has triggered concerns over the safety of the financial system in the Philippines after the funds were transferred to Manila. A public hearing in the Philippines' Senate was told this week that the money stolen from the U.S. Federal Reserve account was wired to a Manila branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) . The money was passed on to a foreign exchange broker, which transferred some $30 million in cash to an ethnic Chinese man who is believed to be a casino junket operator and the rest into accounts at two casino companies, officials told the Senate's anti-corruption committee. Bangladesh Bank has said there is little hope of apprehending the perpetrators and that recovering the money would be difficult and could take months. FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics division is helping investigate the cyber heist. The bank has also been in touch with the Fed and other U.S. authorities, including the FBI and the Department of Justice. (Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman)
On the surface, it may appear that the FBIs demand in the iPhone hacking case is rather straightforward: the bureau simply wants Apple to help them access the locked iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

If we go deeper, though, its hardly a coincidence that the FBI chose this particular case to bring the debate over mobile encryption into the spotlight. After all, this is hardly the first time the FBI has come across an iPhone it was unable to access.

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The truth is that the FBI is hoping to use the current iPhone case to establish a precedent for future cases, a fact that FBI director James Comey recently conceded.

Exploring the topic further, Quartz has an interesting piece up which does a good job of articulating that the FBI has ulterior motives in seeking Apple to hack into the aforementioned iPhone.

The FBI has apparently decided that its time for federal law to change. So its officials have been searching for a particular case that would give them a shot at changing the established legal precedent.  The San Bernardino shooting case offers a promising avenue. The FBI has hitched its strategy to create legal precedent to a widely reported terrorist attack. Few people are concerned about maintaining the privacy of Syed Rizwan Farooks iPhone; a lot of people are worried about national security. And so the FBI found a way to market its case to the general public as well as the courts and political leaders.

The problem is that the FBI, in their zeal to bolster national security actually set into motion a process that might actually hurt national security. As Apple has argued, theres absolutely no way for the FBI to ensure that Apples backdoor software would remain out of the hands of nefarious actors. Indeed, it shouldnt come as a surprise that nearly every crypto-expert, not to mention former NSA and CIA chiefs, have all sided with Apple.

This fight has very little to do with this phone or this act of terrorism, Quartz adds. Its about the next bank robbery in Cleveland, a drug ring in Miami next year, and a new money-laundering scheme in Seattle. The government is determined to create new precedentmessy facts be damned.

Story continues

Indeed, arguments from Tim Cooks original letter on the controversial issue still rings true.

But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone. Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software  which does not exist today  would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someones physical possession. The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

Apple and the FBI are slated to meet again in court this coming Tuesday, just one day after the companys special media event.

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Ferrari announced Thursday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with two Chinese companies to build a theme park in China.

The non-binding deal with Beijing Automotive and Biac Eternaland Property will, if implemented, see the two Chinese companies licensed to establish the park in a still-to-be-decided Chinese city.

The luxury sportscar maker and Formula One powerhouse already has a theme park on an island near Abu Dhabi and is in the process of constructing another one in Spain.

The parks are one of the ways in which the company is hoping to leverage its luxury brand to generate additional revenues.

The company's sales in China, which represent about five percent of its total worldwide, fell 22 percent in 2015.
Brussels (AFP) - Belgian police arrested five people in counter-terror raids in Brussels on Friday, including Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam and the family who sheltered him, prosecutors said.

"A total of five people were arrested following three raids this afternoon," Thierry Werts, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office, told a press conference.

Special federal police forces arrested Abdeslam, who has been on the run since the deadly November 13 attacks, wounding him lightly in the leg during an afternoon raid in the capital's gritty immigrant neighbourhood of Molenbeek.

"He was taken to the hospital for treatment," Werts said.

The police also shot and slightly wounded another man at the same address and took him to hospital.

Another three people, all members of the same family who sheltered Abdeslam, were also arrested and will be interviewed by investigators, Werts said.

At an earlier joint press conference, French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel reported that Abdeslam and two other people had been arrested in the raids.

Earlier this week, Belgian and French police raided an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels, shooting dead a 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Werts said police were trying to determine whether Abdeslam and the other man arrested with him were the two who fled the raid in Forest. "It's a theory," he added.
By Saif Hameed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Supporters of Iraq's powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr began a sit-in outside the walls of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on Friday to press the government to see through a move to stem endemic corruption. Leveraging his ability to mobilize grassroots pressure on the government, Sadr wants Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to replace cabinet ministers with non-party technocrats to tackle systemic political patronage that has fostered graft. Sadr rejected calls to cancel the sit-in prompted by fears of clashes between his supporters and security forces guarding the highly sensitive Green Zone, which hosts major government offices and foreign embassies in the Iraqi capital. There were no reports of disturbances. A senior Sadr aide, Ibrahim al-Jabri, said the protest would last for 10 days if needed, until the end of a 45-day deadline Sadr gave on Feb. 12 to Abadi for a cabinet overhaul. Corruption is eating away at the central government's financial resources at a time when revenues are declining due to rock-bottom oil prices and Abadi needs to increase funding the U.S.-backed war against Islamic State militants. Abadi on March 11 asked political blocs in parliament and "influential social figures" to nominate technocrats, but his room for maneuver appears limited by pressure from political factions not to erode their powerful influence. GREEN ZONE The Green Zone was originally set up in 2003 to protect U.S. occupation forces that had toppled Saddam Hussein from suicide bombings and other Islamist militant attacks, and has been kept in place by successor Iraqi authorities for security reasons. Thousands of demonstrators held Friday prayers in a main street leading into the Green Zone nearby, then set up tents to accommodate those staying on for the sit-in. The Interior Ministry said it had not granted approval for the sit-in and riot police initially blocked roads and bridges leading to the Green Zone, before relenting and allowing demonstrators to march almost to its entrance. On al-Jumhuriya (Republic) Bridge, riot police moved aside and let the demonstrators pull aside barbed wire barriers. "Let's get rid of them, they're all thieves!" they shouted as they advanced across the Tigris River span. Waving Iraqi flags, the protesters also chanted, "Yes, yes to Iraq; no, no to corruption!" Sadr published a statement on his website thanking the police for "their cooperation and devotion to their people." On Thursday, he branded the Green Zone "a bastion of support for corruption" but also asked followers to refrain from any violent reaction should they be stopped by security forces. Authorities beefed up security around the sprawling capital, deploying additional checkpoints and police patrols, amid fears that the Shi'ite crowds could be attacked by Islamic State, whose Sunni militants hold swathes of northern and western Iraq. (Reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
By Ange Aboa (Reuters) - A former first lady of Ivory Coast will go on trial on April 25 for crimes against humanity for her role in a 2011 crisis in which around 3,000 people were killed, her lawyer said on Friday. Simone Gbagbo, who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, has already been sentenced to 20 years in jail for crimes including disturbing the peace, organizing armed gangs and undermining state security. The charges stem from a brief civil war that broke out when her husband, then-president Laurent Gbagbo, refused to accept his defeat by Alassane Ouattara in a 2010 election. He is now accused of crimes against humanity and awaits trial at the ICC. Ivory Coast refused to transfer Simone Gbagbo to The Hague to face similar charges, however, arguing that she could receive a fair trial in a domestic court. The Gbagbo trials have reopened divisions in a nation still recovering from years of political turmoil and conflict. Gbagbo supporters claim the legal action is politically motivated. (Reporting by Ange Aboa; writing by Edward McAllister, editing by Larry King)
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him as he awaited trial on treason and other charges, his spokesman said. Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the government on Wednesday to lift the travel ban, paving the way for Musharraf to leave. "General Pervez Musharraf has left the country for Dubai," his spokesman Mohammad Amjad said. The departure of Musharraf, who has faced a battery of court cases since returning home from self-imposed exile in 2013, will remove a source of friction between the army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Media showed images of Musharraf leaving his home in a heavily guarded convoy for the airport in the port city of Karachi. He entered the airport through a gate reserved for staff and left for Dubai on an Emirates flight. "I am a commando and I love my homeland," Musharraf told Pakistani media at the airport. "I will come back in a few weeks or months." His lawyers have argued that he needed to travel abroad for medical treatment and to visit his ailing mother in Dubai. Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Thursday the former ruler was being allowed to travel abroad for treatment after a commitment from his lawyers that he would return in 4-6 weeks to face the charges against him. Musharraf came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup against Sharif and stood down nine years later when threatened with impeachment. He returned to Pakistan in March 2013 after nearly four years of self-imposed exile to contest elections, despite the possibility of arrest and death threats from the Taliban. He was acquitted earlier this year of the murder of a separatist leader in 2006. Musharraf has also been charged in connection with the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the murder of a prominent cleric. Pakistan's military has ruled the South Asian nation for almost half of its 69-year history. It sets foreign and security policy even when civilian administrations are in power. But the powerful generals have meddled far less in politics than in Musharraf's era, preferring instead to let civilian governments take the heat for Pakistan's failures. (Editing by Paul Tait)
PARIS (Reuters) - French lawmakers approved plans for a total ban on some widely used pesticides blamed for harming bees, going beyond European Union restrictions in a fierce debate that has pitched farmers and chemical firms against beekeepers and green groups. The EU limited the use of neonicotinoid chemicals, produced by companies including Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, two years ago after research pointed to risks for bees, which play a crucial role pollinating crops. Crop chemical makers say the research blaming neonicotinoid pesticides is not backed up by field evidence and a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors. Farmer groups, meanwhile, say no viable alternatives exist and a full ban would put France at a disadvantage to other crop producing countries in the EU. The outright ban on neonicotinoid pesticides was adopted by a narrow majority late on Thursday by France's National Assembly, as part of a draft bill on biodiversity that also contains an additional tax on palm oil. The measure, however, would not come into effect until Sept. 1, 2018, later than the January 2017 deadline previously proposed by some lawmakers. The proposed neonicotinoid ban still needs to be pass before the French Senate, which rejected it in a previous reading, before a final vote in the National Assembly expected in the middle of the year. The full ban was backed by France's environment minister, who is also in favor of phasing out common weedkiller ingredient glyphosate in an EU review that has split member countries. "This decision will prepare us for the future and protect bees and the role they play," Segolene Royal said in a statement on Friday. "Research and development of substitute products has to accelerate." Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll, who had warned a unilateral French move on neonicotinoids could hurt farmers in the EU's biggest crop producing country, said he welcomed the deferred 2018 deadline. Le Foll has been piloting a wider French plan to halve pesticide use. But he put back by seven years the initial target for reaching that goal in the face of rising farm chemical use, partly due to weather patterns such as a wet summer two years ago that increased crop disease. Bayer said the parliamentary vote was a setback for farmers. "Some farmers are going to find themselves in a dead-end regarding crop protection ... and could see their harvests fall by 15 to 40 percent depending on the crop," it said in a statement. (Reporting by Emile Picy and Gus Trompiz; Editing by David Clarke and Mark Potter)
By Michel Rose CALAIS, France (Reuters) - A Monet painting inspired the field of red poppies embroidered onto the delicate lace at Gerard Dezoteux's 126-year-old lace factory in Calais, northern France. The samples at Desseilles Laces, supplier to lingerie brands such as La Perla, Ralph Lauren and Victoria's Secret, may never make the shop floor as the company is on the brink of collapse. Competition from Asian rivals has squeezed the region's lace industry so Dezoteux cut jobs to save money. But a court overturned the decision, a costly blow that may force the company to shut and business groups say is another case of outdated labor laws making it hard to operate in France. "This was my own masterpiece," Dezoteux said, holding up the red fabric on the factory floor where "tullists" still adjust threads by hand on clattering machines that are even older than the factory. "It could now end up in a museum. What a total waste." There were over 300 lace factories in Calais at the turn of the 20th century, and the town has a museum celebrating the industry. There will only be two left if Desseilles closes as a result of the December court order to rehire five of the workers it laid off in 2013, pay two-and-a-half years of salary arrears, plus an amount of compensation that has yet to be set. Dezoteux estimated it could cost at least 750,000 euros ($850,000) overall, more than the company's loss for the whole of 2015 and about 10 percent of its turnover. "It's just absurd," Dezoteux, who took over the company in 2011 with two partners. "This is the final straw for us." The redundancy scheme had been approved by labor inspectors, the labor ministry and another tribunal so the decision highlighted the legal uncertainty created by unwieldy labor laws that the Socialist government is trying to slim down to make France a more business-friendly place. In a rare move, the government's local administration has joined Desseilles in appealing the court's decision. DEATH KNELL This conflict played out on the national stage this week when Prime Minister Manuel Valls unveiled a labor reform bill but was forced to water it down amid a Socialist party revolt and protests from unions. One of the measures that was dropped - a cap on compensation packages labor courts can award unfairly dismissed workers - would have helped businesses in similar court cases to Desseilles Laces. Business leaders and many economists say the unpredictable cost of laying off workers puts companies off doing business in France. "This court decision is the death knell for this company," Frederic Motte, local head of the Medef business group, told local TV channel GrandLille.TV. "With one administrative decision we are going to kill historical know-how, scare off investors and weaken the whole supply chain." It also discourages hiring, a factor which has helped keep France's unemployment at over 7 percent since 1983 and stopped it falling below 10 percent recently despite a recovery that has brought down the jobless rate for its European neighbors. Along with concern about compensation for laid off workers, companies worry about lack of clarity about the conditions for firing workers for economic reasons. This leaves room for magistrates' interpretation. If approved, the government's labor reform bill would go some way to addressing this by saying a drop in sales for at least four quarters or two consecutive quarters of losses are legitimate conditions for layoffs. POISONED RELATIONS But any changes would be too late for the Calais lacemaker. Uncertainty about the company's future labor costs while it appeals the court's ruling has already put off a Chinese investor interested in injecting new funds, Dezoteux said. Its workers could lose their jobs as soon as next week if no buyer is found, pushing the unemployment rate in the wider region around Calais, already the highest in France at 12.5 percent, that little bit higher. The court's decision has also soured relations among the 74 workers at Desseilles, with some angry at those who fought to be reinstated. "These people only think about themselves," said Brigitte Coterez, 59, a designer who has worked in the company for more than 30 years. "I am near the end, but what about the young people, those who have children?" Eating lunch next to the company's huge looms, the reinstated workers say they should not pay the price for business mistakes by the management. "It's not our fault if orders dried up," said Sandy Bomble, one of their number. "Lacemakers in nearby Caudry are doing better, so that means management made strategic mistakes." Dezoteux says those rivals work in a different sector making lace for dresses and not lingerie, and that re-tooling to cater for that market would require investments he could not afford. "I told the workers: 'if you think you can do a better job, I'll sell you the company for one euro'," Dezoteux said. "But they didn't take up the offer." (Editing by Anna Willard)
ROME (Reuters) - Fried cow's brains might not be to everyone's taste, but more people may sample the Florentine specialty now that Italy's art capital has ordered food outlets in the city center to sell mostly local produce. Florence is the latest Italian tourist destination to adopt the mantra "you are what you eat", and is requiring shops and restaurants to make sure that 70 percent of their food comes from the surrounding region. "We are seeing an unstoppable distortion in our cultural heritage, of which food is a part," Mayor Dario Nardella wrote on his Facebook page. "A restaurant opens every week in Florence, not to mention minimarkets and Asiamarkets," he said, apparently referring to food and drink shops often run by immigrants and open all hours. Promoting a short supply chain and seasonal eating has been fashionable in Italy for years, promoted by the Slow Food movement and upmarket food hall chain Eataly. But now local governments are turning up the heat. Last month for example, Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi said he would not allow new kebab shops to open in the historic center of the city where William Shakespeare set "Romeo and Juliet". These measures have prompted a mixed reaction among Italy's legion of gastronomic pundits and business people, some noting that local products could also be of low quality while others said the move would help defend local biodiversity. Nardella's drive in Florence appeared even simpler, though: to offer good local food and less junk to the city's crowds of visitors. "Where once there were artisans' workshops, historic cafes, cinemas and old taverns, now fast food, pizzerias and low-grade restaurants have opened, ready to snare the first unsuspecting tourist," he said. (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
(Reuters) - A self-described gang member killed a South Carolina police officer on Friday, then called his own mother before turning the gun on himself, police said.

The suspect committed suicide moments after firing on officers who were trying to serve him with an arrest warrant at a house in Greenville, South Carolina, Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller told reporters.

Miller said the names of the officer and the suspect would not be released pending notification of the families.

"We lose, we hurt, we ache," Miller said. "In an instant, lives can change forever."

The officer, whose job was to investigate gang activity, was among several serving the warrant targeting a man police said was a known and self-described gang member, Miller said.

The man ran down the street and the officers chased him until the man opened fire, hitting one officer several times, Miller said.

The suspect then ran a short distance, called his mother, and shot himself to death, Miller said. He had no further details on the man's phone conversation.

The officer was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

(Reporting by Karen Brooks in Fort Worth, Texas; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Hundreds of workers have been scrambling for days to touch up building facades, patch potholes and spiff up Havana's monuments ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit.

A number of the capital's main avenues have been given a fresh paving -- including the landmark Malecon seawall avenue which runs by the US Embassy -- to look its best for the guest.



Obama next week will become the first US president to visit Cuba while in office in almost a century.



On other roads, cleaning has been done and road signs updated, particularly in Spanish-colonial era Old Havana. The Obama family is expected to do a walkabout there -- typical fare when heads of state visit the Cuban capital.



"It's all just fine. Just wish they would do it all more often," joked a taxi driver, Pedro, 50 who declined to give his family name -- referring to the pothole fixes.



Cubans are famous for their love of humor -- and it serves as a coping mechanism in a country of almost endless frustration with waiting, delays and bureaucratic nonstarters. So far, the top-down economy has been tweaked on the rules and regulations front, but without Cuba giving up on one-party rule or state-led economics.



Most Cubans earn around 20 dollars a month, and struggle to put food on the table. Many spend much of the day queuing for food and lining up to wait for buses or other transport.



Cuba's capital has recently undergone a huge renovation project. And in the Cerro neighborhood, the fabled Estadio Latinoamericano -- set to host a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba's national squad -- also has been remodeled.



Teacher Armando Manzano, 56, said he wished Obama could see more of Havana. Adding: "no society in the world is perfect."



Once Obama heads out, the Rolling Stones will roll in with a massive benefit show in Cerro, another first for them.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU leaders meet Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday to discuss a possible deal with Turkey to limit migration to Europe in return for concessions for Ankara. The following are comments by the Turkish prime minister, EU heads of state and government and senior EU officials before the meeting. TURKISH PRIME MINISTER AHMET DAVUTOGLU "All these events show how Turkish EU relationship is important not only for Turkey and the EU but for all the international issues. We are working here in Brussels for humanitarian issues. For us, for Turkey, the humanitarian issue is not a bargaining issue, but an issue of value, or humanitarian values as well as European values. Turkey has received 2.7 million refugees without any significant assistance from anywhere. "Of course the EU and Turkey have the same goal, the same objective to help Syrian refugees especially and also to have a new feature in our continents in a right manner. This is our purpose. "I am sure, I hope we will be achieving our goal." "Our target is very clear - to help the migrants from a humanitarian perspective and also to make sure that the relations with EU and Turkey deepen and are on solid ground. We are working for a common cause. I hope it will be possible to find common ground and a common framework that will include all of these fundamental targets. I am hopeful on this." (Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Barbara Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk)
Once hailed as a premium for fireproofing and insulating, asbestos has become widely known as a dangerous set of fibrous minerals. When its fibers become airborne and are inhaled, asbestos can wreak havoc on a person's lungs, heart and abdomen, causing mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer.

From the roof to floor, ceiling texture to pipe insulation, it's possible you have asbestos in your home, especially if it was built in the 1970s or before -- with asbestos decreasing due to a wider understanding of the material's health risks.

Asbestos will not necessarily be considered an immediate danger in every form. Only when the material is friable, meaning its fibers can become airborne, does it run the risk of being inhaled by a person and causing internal damage.

"If you can crush it by hand, then in the normal wear and tear of the building or that material, then it's possible for it to become airborne," explains Darryl Watson, a certified industrial hygienist in the Atlanta area for ATC Group Services, an environmental consulting and industrial hygiene company.

Fibers that become airborne cannot only be breathed in by people and animals, but they also can linger for a long time, remaining dangerous even if they settle because moving air can easily pick them up again.

[Read: New Year's Resolution: Take Back Your Bad DIY Renovation.]

"Asbestos fiber itself does not degrade, and it's extremely aerodynamic. So even fibers that do eventually settle, any airflow would then re-entrain that fiber back into the air, so it can last for really extensive periods of time," says Scott Compton, a certified asbestos inspector and co-founder of Hazardous Materials Assessment Inc. in San Leandro, California.

The best way to protect yourself from asbestos is to be aware of it in your home -- and follow the proper procedure to monitor its durability or have it removed by a professional.

How Do You Know if Asbestos Is in Your Home?

It's hard to narrow down where asbestos could be in your home. Since it was previously used so widely for a variety of products, just about any room in your home could have asbestos in some form.

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One of the most common places to find asbestos in a home is popcorn ceiling, Compton says. Following that, common culprits are drywall surface texture and drywall joint compound, which is used like a plaster to cover up flaws in the wall. He adds, "Right up there on the top of the list are resilient flooring materials -- things like floor tiles and vinyl flooring."

Compton adds duct insulation is also a common source, and while piping insulation is less common, it is more typically seen in homes built in the 1930s or before.

Recently renovated or built structures are less likely to contain asbestos, so verifying the installation date for textured ceilings or walls, vinyl flooring or even the roof will give you a better chance of avoiding asbestos, says Larry Wasson, a certified general inspector and owner of Affiliated Inspectors in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

[Read: What's Dragging Down the Value of Your Home?]

"When I walk into a building, as an example, and see a textured ceiling, I'll start asking about dates -- trying to find out when it was done," Wasson says. "So I use a benchmark of 1980 -- if it was installed before 1980, then that texturing may contain asbestos. And depending on how it was installed, it could be potentially friable."

While there are at-home asbestos-testing kits allowing you to take the sample and send it on to a lab, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends an accredited professional be used instead. When you're not sure something is made of asbestos or if it's potentially friable, a trained professional knows the procedure to avoid further contaminating the air.

What Should You Do When Your Home Has Asbestos?

Receiving a positive test result for asbestos in your home can be scary, but Watson says in many cases the asbestos can be contained or professionally abated to eliminate the chance of it becoming a bigger problem in the future.

"I consider asbestos to be a risk, not a threat. If I had a house and I found I had asbestos in the flooring, would I abandon the house? No. Would I deal with it? Yes," Watson says.

Similar to lead abatement, removing asbestos should be done by certified professionals who are trained to properly seal off the environment and avoid spreading asbestos dust to other parts of the home.

But a heavy duty hazard zone isn't always necessary when it comes to asbestos. Watson recalls an inspection he conducted in a school where they confirmed there was asbestos, but it didn't require abatement since the location of the asbestos didn't expose it to the general atmosphere within the school. "We intended to manage it in place," Watson says.

[Read: 9 Common Real Estate Myths That Plague Buyers and Sellers.]

If you've discovered asbestos after disturbing it by accident, the best thing to do is stop what you're doing and consult a professional. According to Compton, the next step could be vastly different depending on what you've disturbed and how severely.

"Some circumstances where they've disturbed a small section of a [heating pipe insulated with asbestos], for example. And the answer is set it aside and isolate it, and call the appropriate people to come pick it up for disposal," Compton says. "I've found other circumstances where, say, an acoustic ceiling has been scraped, and as a result they get a widespread contamination of the entire facility."

How Does Asbestos Change the Way I Renovate My Home?

Federal law is pretty stringent when it comes to verifying the presence of asbestos for the renovation or demolition of any commercial building, structure or residential property exceeding four units, under the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants. But when it comes to a single-family home, regulations vary and exemptions exist.

"Many of the local jurisdictions make a conditional exemption [for homeowners]. For example, a single-family homeowner doesn't have to hire a consultant to do the inspection, as long as they do the sample collection themselves and get it to an accredited laboratory and have the material tested to make sure there's no asbestos there before the disturbance," Compton says.

Watson explains that Georgia regulations require an inspection before demolition. "Here in Georgia, anytime you tear a building down, you have to have an asbestos inspection ... but that varies from state to state, and the enforcement varies from state to state," he says.

In Oregon, for example, regulations on asbestos checks before commercial and large-scale residential demolition has been a source of debate in recent years. The Oregonian reports the state enacted a mandate in 2002 requiring all contractors to inspect for asbestos before demolition, but the requirement was retracted a year later. In 2015, a state bill passed reinstating the requirement, which went into effect at the start of this year.
The time has nearly come for a verdict in the first-ever trial pitting a celebrity against a media organization for the posting of a sex tape. The proceedings represent a probing of newsworthiness and whether the press can be held to maintain a standard of decency. More than three and a half years since Gawker published a post titled, "Even For A Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex In A Canopy Bed Is Not Safe For Work But Watch It Anyway," jury deliberations began after Hogan and Gawker gave a six-member jury in a Florida courtroom their closing arguments. These jurors began deliberations without having yet seen the sex tape in question.

Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) contends that a less-than-two-minute excerpt of a 30-minute video, showing the famous wrestler sleeping with Heather Cole, then the wife of his best friend Bubba the Love Sponge (a radio host born Todd Clem), was an invasion of privacy, illegal wiretapping, a violation of the right of publicity and inflicted emotional distress. In weighing Hogan's claims, the jury has been instructed to consider whether the video was highly offensive and was outside the bounds of human decency, causing (purposely or by reckless disregard) Hogan to experience shame and embarrassment. The jury will also consider whether Hogan had a reasonable expectation of privacy and whether Hogan's name and likeness was used in a commercial purpose. If Hogan has proven the elements of his claims, the jury will also take up Gawker's defense  that the publishing of the video is protected by the First Amendment because it related to a public concern, meaning it was "newsworthy."

Before closing arguments began, Pinellas County Judge Pamela Campbell noted the line between free speech and unfair intrusion, telling the jury they'd have to consider what "ceases to be the giving of legitimate information to which the public is entitled and becomes a morbid and sensational prying into private lives for its own sake."

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Ken Turkel gave Hogan's summary of the case.

Read More: Gawker Can't Compel Key Witness in Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Trial

"I want to begin our discussion with a simple thought," began Turkel. "Mr. Bollea didn't create this. ... He didn't consent to the video or post. He wasn't even called before this post was put up. ... The idea that in 2012 this video was sent to Gawker and they didn't have the common decency to make one call gives you all you need to know about whether they are protected by the First Amendment."

Turkel took the jury back to October 2012, presenting Gawker as "a bunch of young kids" and "rule-breakers," making sick jokes in a private online chat room about Hogan, who he said "was at the lowest point of his life" thanks to the disintegration of his marriage. The post went up, Turkel continued, and "traffic soars. ... It becomes a defining story" for Gawker, who refused to abide a demand from Hogan's attorney David Houston "to be decent" and take the video down.

"Denton," said Turkel, referring to Gawker owner Nick Denton, "doesn't believe in privacy rights. He said it."

In his closing, the attorney repeatedly attacked Denton for philosophizing that Gawker's goal is not to intentionally do good or commit journalism. "He's so proud of being the guy who ruins lives," said Turkel, shaking his head, later characterizing Denton as a "porn king" via ownership of a since-sold site called Fleshbot.

And as for A.J. Daulerio, the former Gawker editor who wrote the piece in question, Turkel brought up his flippant comment in a deposition that sex tapes featuring children over 4 were fair game: "They want to talk about First Amendment, wrapping the constitution around this guy? Please. Please."

Read More: At Trial, Gawker Focuses on Mysterious Circumstances of the Hulk Hogan Sex Tape

Turkel told the jury that Hogan was fortunate to play the same character for 35 years, but that "nobody cares who Terry Bollea is," the man behind the famous personality, who grew up in the rough parts of Tampa and has dealt with difficulties nobody saw such as health problems. "One of the places he thought he had privacy was his best friend's bedroom. He knows when he goes out, people will ask for selfies. ... This case has nothing to do with that. This case deals with the area where he believed he had privacy."

Hogan is targeting about $50 million for the seven million people who watched the video, $15 million for Gawker's increased value from posting the tape and more money for emotional damages. Sullivan directed jurors to look over at Hogan, who was wearing the black bandana he's sported throughout the case. Upon the cue, Hogan gave his best sad look.

Approaching the jury, Turkel gave them a question to chew over in deliberations.

"Do you think the media can do whatever they want?" Turkel asked. "All they had to do was the decent, decent thing. The power of the media to do great harm, and the profits that come with it. ... Let's get to the punitive stage, and let's get some justice here."

Michael Sullivan gave Gawker's summary of the case.

He started by talking about everything that the jury heard during the two-week trial  tweets, screenshots, Daulerio's commentary about the video  and said that none of this was the basis of the lawsuit. Sullivan seized on what the jury didn't see.

"What video did they not show you?" he asked. "The very one that that Mr. Bollea claims is so damaging. Ask yourself why did they not show you that video?"

Read More: Gawker's Nick Denton Testifies Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post "Stands the Test of Time"

Sullivan provided an answer: "Because that video does not show that much. You don't see close ups of body parts or sex acts in vivid detail. Here, it's nine seconds of sexual acts. It's grainy. I say to you members of the jury: When you retire, please watch the video. Decide for yourselves, make your own judgment, ask yourself: Do you think anyone is going to pay $5 for that?"

The purpose of Gawker's post, said Sullivan, was to make a broad social commentary about celebrity sex tapes. If Gawker had really wanted to exploit the sex tape for commercial value, Sullivan told the jury, "you can bet your bottom dollar that what Gawker published would have been dramatically different."

To figure out what's newsworthy, Sullivan said the context of the video has to be considered, context that included the prior coverage of the Hogan sex tape that existed before Gawker's posting as well as Hogan's own media appearances. The first came with TMZ, which broke news about the existence of the sex tape. "Who among us thinks it is a good idea to send a message through TMZ?" asked Sullivan. "TMZ is the place where people go to get more attention for a sex tape."

Gawker's attorney also walked the jury through the mysterious circumstances of the tape and how people were initially "scratching their heads" at a video where Hogan is seemingly with a woman who's the wife of his best friend  and the best friend was present. If people enjoy a zone of privacy in their own bedroom, Sullivan pointed out that Hogan wasn't in his own bedroom. He was at his friend's, having sex with the guy's wife.

Sullivan suggested that having visual proof of the tape and being able to provide more background was indeed newsworthy and lampooned the plaintiff's claim that Hogan enjoys broad privacy rights on matters of sex, which the attorney argued was injected into the public domain by Hogan himself. For example, he pointed to a Hogan appearance on Bubba's radio show bragging about the size of his penis and another on Howard Stern's about sexual exploits. These appearances were made for promotional purposes, Sullivan noted, and when the sex tape came out, Hogan sought no medical help for his alleged emotional distress.

Read More: Gawker Trial: Editor Admits Hulk Hogan's Penis Isn't Newsworthy

"And even if you credit [plaintiff's] notion that Hogan and Mr. Bollea are two different people, the fact is that the rest of us can't tell them apart," said Sullivan.

There are still uncertainties surrounding the tape in question, Sullivan continued, addressing the absence of a key witness. "Was it a publicity stunt? Only two people know for certain: Bubba the Love Sponge and Mr. Bollea. But you will not hear from Bubba."

The attorney also told the jury that Gawker's decision to post the video was a judgment call, that Hogan was hardly key to Gawker's brand identity, and that "we don't sue people" for making jokes. He addressed the importance of free speech rights in this country. Asking the jury to not hold Gawker liable, Sullivan warned "otherwise we become a nation where powerful people, celebrities, corporations, politicians will use our courts to punish people for saying things they don't like."

Sullivan acknowledged that the jurors might not like Gawker's post nor sympathize with its ethos. Bringing up neo-Nazis, flag burners and radio shock jocks, Sullivan said all these things were protected under the U.S. Constitution. "We don't need the First Amendment to protect what's popular," he said. "We need a First Amendment to protect what's controversial."

Given a last chance to rebut, Turkel responded, "This is not about political speech. This case is unique. ... You're not going to condemn someone's right to engage in speech. You're balancing the right to make the speech versus privacy rights."
By Justin Madden (Reuters) - A daughter of an Illinois state representative has been charged with participating in an attack on one of her mother's political rivals that included using a staple gun on the victim's forehead, police and the victim said on Friday. Jessica Soto and Bradley Fichter, both 26 and of Chicago, have been charged with three counts of aggravated battery in a March 6 attack on Robert Zwolinski, who was defeated in a primary this month by Soto's mother, state Representative Cynthia Soto, Chicago police said. Lawyers for the two were not immediately available for comment. The attack took place outside of Zwolinski's campaign office. Frank Avila, a lawyer for the couple, told local media that Zwolinski started the fight and possibly put a stable in his own head for attention. Avila identified Soto as the daughter of Representative Soto and denied the daughter was part of the attack. Police said Zwolinski was hit with a metal object and glass bottle. Zwolinski said the metal object was the staple gun and he had his forehead repeatedly stapled by the pair. The night of the fight, Zwolinski posted photos on social media of a staple sticking out of his forehead, a bloodied face, and a swollen nose. "The girl was yelling, while I was on the ground fighting the man off of me, 'This is Soto's territory! This isn't your territory,'" Zwolinski said. Representative Soto could not immediately be reached. (Reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and Steve Orlofsky)
By Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Three hours east of New Delhi, in the village of Piplera, recently married Abhilekh Swami has stopped to refuel his first automobile, a Hyundai hatchback, at an Indian Oil filling station. Late model SUVs and Mercedes also ply the potholed roads and dusty lanes of the small gathering of dwellings in Uttar Pradesh. "Earlier I used to hire a taxi for taking my wife and old parents for long distance travel. Now we travel in our car," said Swami, 28, an accountant with a private company. Swami said he is averaging about 2,000 kilometres a month in the vehicle he bought last August, mostly for commuting to work, shopping and visiting relatives. Hundreds of thousands of Indians, spurred by cheap credit and rising incomes, are buying cars each month to free themselves from creaky, unreliable public transport. This is expected to help push India ahead of China as the energy demand growth leader, with its total fuel consumption rising by a tenth to a record in the fiscal year-to-date. Underpinned by annual economic growth of 7-8 percent, India's fuel demand is seen as a key oil price support over 2016-2017, eating into a supply overhang that has pulled down global crude as much as 70 percent since mid-2014. India has already pipped Japan as the world's third-largest oil consumer. By 2040, India will have more than doubled its current oil use to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about on par with China's consumption last year. This roar of motor - as well as power and household - fuel use means some refineries initially planned for exports, such as the 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery on India's east coast, have been flipped to serve domestic oil demand. "When we conceived Paradip we were hoping to export gasoline, but now the products will be for meeting local demand," said Sanjiv Singh, head of refineries at Indian Oil Corp. . Reflecting India's rising importance as a buyer, Igor Sechin, chief executive of the world's biggest listed oil company Rosneft , was in New Delhi this week to sign several deals with Indian companies such as IOC, Oil India Ltd and Bharat PetroResources Ltd . FUEL GOES BOOM Over April-February - the first 11 months of India's current fiscal year - fuel demand rose 10 percent to about 170 million tonnes (4 million bpd), according to a report this week by the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC). For the next fiscal year through March 2017, the PPAC has forecast fuel demand growth at 7.3 percent. "India's push to Make-in-India, reforms in mining, and improvements in infrastructure like better roads, airports and job creation will help increase fuel consumption in the country," said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Energy Economics. India plans to spend 970 billion rupees ($14 billion) in 2016-2017 on expanding and improving the country's road network, which at 4.7 million km is already vying with China as the world's second-longest after the United States, although highways make up less than 2 percent of that figure. A 23.55 percent increase in the salaries, allowances and pensions of millions of government employees later this year is also expected to shore up consumer spending, boosting purchases of cars and motorcycles. Sales of passenger cars and utility vehicles in India are expected to grow by as much as 12 percent in the next fiscal year, up from an estimated 6 percent this year. That translates to around 230,000 new passenger vehicles hitting the roads each month. The main impact has been on gasoline demand, which the PPAC expects to grow to 24.2 million tonnes (560,000 bpd) by next year, up more than 12 percent from 21.5 million tonnes estimated for this fiscal year. "Gasoline demand has been growing in double digits and we expect this to continue as it depends on sales of two-wheelers and cars," said Indian Oil Corp's Singh. Other fuels are seeing growth as well, and for similar reasons. To meet rising demand, state refiners are planning a 1.2 million bpd plant on the country's west coast, adding to current overall capacity of 4.6 million bpd, although a fixed timeline has not been set. In east Delhi, at one of India's busiest motor fuel pumps, owner Ajay Bansal said demand was soaring. "There is a growing demand for new and second hand cars. Now second hand cars are very cheap," he said. "That's an attraction to first-time buyers." (Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Henning Gloystein and Tom Hogue)
By Suzannah Gonzales

(Reuters) - An Indiana man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for his part in causing a 2012 home explosion that killed two neighbors, injured dozens of people and damaged scores of homes in an Indianapolis neighborhood, a court official said.

Bob Leonard Jr received two consecutive life sentences without parole for two murder counts, said John McGauley, court executive of Allen Superior Court in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Monserrate Shirley and brothers Bob and Mark Leonard had been charged with murder and arson in the Nov. 10, 2012, explosion that destroyed the home where Shirley lived with Mark Leonard. The explosion and fire also burned the home next door, killing John and Jennifer Longworth.

Prosecutors have said that the three tried to burn down the house for insurance money. Personal property insurance was increased on the house and photographs and personal financial records were removed before the blast, prosecutors have said.

The explosion was caused by using a microwave oven on a timer to ignite natural gas that was allowed to build up in the house, according to prosecutors.

Bob Leonard also was sentenced to an additional 70 years for arson and conspiracy charges, McGauley said. A lawyer for Leonard could not be reached for comment.

In August 2015, Mark Leonard was given two life sentences without parole and another 75 years in prison for other charges.

Shirley agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts of conspiracy to commit arson. Other charges against her were dropped. She also provided information for prosecutors.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Emma Batha LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - European Union leaders clinched a controversial deal with Turkey on Friday intended to end a mass influx into Europe of migrants fleeing war and poverty. Under the pact, Ankara will take back all illegal migrants who cross to Greece, while the EU will take thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. Doubts remain over whether the deal is legal or workable. Here are some instant reactions from aid agencies. SAVE THE CHILDREN: "We're incredibly disappointed by the reports emerging so far of the EU-Turkey agreement on the 'return one-settle one' policy. People, not borders, should be protected. "For the many thousands of refugees stranded in the mud, cold, and wet, anxiously awaiting the news from Brussels, this deal will only create more uncertainty. "While the reported assurance that all migrants arriving in Greece will be protected in accordance with the relevant international standards is welcome, it is unclear how this will work in practice. Going in circles and dumping this on Greece and Turkey will not make this problem go away - responsibility sharing is a must. "European leaders must instead focus on increasing their commitments to relocation and safe and legal routes to the EU." OXFAM: "EU and Turkish leaders today made an agreement on the migration crisis that not only fails to respect the spirit of international and EU laws, but may amount to trading human beings for political concessions. "Last week's EU decision to 'end' the Balkans route has led to another humanitarian emergency, and taking this approach with the Turkey-Greece route is a further step down this path of inhumanity. The cost of European border control cannot continue to be paid with human lives. "Oxfam calls on the EU to adopt effective solutions for managing migration, including safe and legal routes for those seeking to enter Europe. "EU member states need to do their fair share to resettle people in need of international protection. There can be no cap on this fundamental responsibility." BRITISH RED CROSS: "Overall this plan appears to be about containment, rather than about people's right to protection. It increases the pressures on those countries least able to cope and reduces the pressures on those most able to cope but least willing. "It will also potentially leave Greece to become a place where hundreds of thousands of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers will reside in camps while they await relocation or a decision on their asylum claim. "This is despite the fact that we know that Greece is already home to nearly 50,000 people who have been stranded with no way to continue their journey and no way home. Many are living in appalling conditions, sleeping in tents in the freezing cold with only the most basic supplies. "No one is denying how difficult it is to find practical solutions, but what is clear is that EU member states need to substantially increase safe and legal routes for refugees and asylum seekers to reach a place of safety. "Elements of this plan are still unworkable - we are particularly concerned about how Greece will be supported to process asylum claims for those who the EU accepts cannot be turned away." UNICEF: "UNICEF is concerned that returning refugee and migrant children to an uncertain future in Turkey could be deeply distressful and damaging for them. "Common ground that puts children's best interests first and is fully aligned with international law, needs to be found. That means putting in place minimum measures that secure children's basic needs, and protect their fundamental rights." (Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran will hold run-off elections next month for 69 parliamentary seats where no candidate secured 25 percent of votes cast in a general election on Feb. 26, state radio said on Tuesday. Results so far show moderate allies of President Hassan Rouhani making big gains from the conservative Islamic establishment but neither faction has a majority, meaning the run-offs will decide who controls the 290-seat parliament. "We will hold the second round of the parliamentary election on April 29, as approved by the Guardian Council," state radio quoted Interior Ministry official Ali Motlagh as saying. In a parallel vote on Feb. 26, Rouhani and his allies won a stunning 15 out of the 16 Tehran seats in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which selects the person with the most clout in Iran, the supreme leader. Some 62 percent of nearly 55 million eligible Iranians voted in February's twin elections, the first since a nuclear deal was reached with six major powers in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear programme in return for an easing of economic sanctions. Supporters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Rouhani's moderates both claimed victory in the elections, from which prominent reformist and many moderate candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council, a hardline vetting body. The poll results have to be confirmed by the Guardian Council, which has so far approved just over 50 constituencies out of 196. The new parliament and the Assembly of Experts will start work on May 27. A reformist-backed list of candidates aligned with Rouhani won all 30 parliamentary seats in Tehran and his allies have underlined the importance of the April run-offs, which will decide who dominates parliament. "Our aim is to get at least 40 of the 69 seats in the run-off elections to secure the majority in the next parliament," said former vice-president Mohammad Reza Aref, who won the first seat in Tehran. The capital's results were a blow to the hardline clerical rulers, although they retain decisive power due to Iran's unwieldy dual system of clerical and republican rule. Conservatives, wary of losing their grip in the next parliament, aim to gain more seats by winning run-off elections outside the capital. Most of the lawmakers who failed to win re-election had strongly opposed the nuclear deal. Iran lacks rigid party affiliations and some candidates are backed by various political camps, which makes it difficult to specify which faction has won a parliamentary majority. An unofficial tally by Reuters shows conservatives have so far won about 112 seats in parliament, reformers and centrists 91 and independents and religious minorities 18. A loosening of control by the anti-Western hardliners who currently dominate parliament could strengthen Rouhani's hand to open Iran further to foreign trade and investment following lifting of sanctions in January under the nuclear deal. But many analysts and officials expect a sudden shift in power in Iran as the president's legal authority to permit more social and political freedom is constrained by hardliners' control of the judiciary, security forces and state media. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Helsinki (AFP) - An Iraqi migrant to Finland has been found guilty of committing a war crime after he posted images of himself on Facebook with the head of an Islamic State group fighter.

Jebbar Salman Ammar, 29, was given a 16-month suspended sentence by the Pirkanmaa district court.

The court found he had desecrated the corpse of a fighter by posting three images on Facebook of himself with the head of the fighter in the Iraqi city of Tikrit.

He admitted to publishing the pictures and to having fought against the Islamic State group, but he denied committing a war crime.

Prosecutor Juha-Mikko Hamalainen said his conduct was defined as "a war crime" by the International Criminal Court. He had sought a two-year prison sentence.

Jebbar Salman Ammar arrived in Finland about six months ago as part of Europe's huge migrant influx.

Finland, a country of 5.4 million people, received 32,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers last year, as Europe experienced it biggest migrant crisis since World War II.

More than one million migrants fleeing war in Syria and upheaval across the Middle East, Asia and Africa have landed in Europe since the start of 2015.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Influential Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rejected calls to cancel a planned sit-in on Friday at the gates of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which he called "a bastion of support for corruption". He published a statement on his website on Thursday in response to politicians who asked him to drop the protest over concern that it could lead to violence near the sensitive district, which houses government offices and embassies. Sadr called for the sit-in last week to press Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to replace cabinet ministers with technocrats unaffiliated with political parties in order to counter systemic political patronage that has abetted corruption. Early on Friday, the Interior Ministry published a statement saying it had not authorised the sit-in but did not indicate how it would deal with any protesters who do show up. Sadr asked his followers to refrain from any violent reaction should they be stopped by the security forces and instead to await his instructions. "We have other methods besides the sit-in ... that are no less effective," he said in his statement. "(But) no clashes, no weapons, no cutting off roads, no assaults, no disobedience." Abadi on March 11 asked political blocs in parliament and "influential social figures" to nominate technocrats but he is also under pressure from political factions not to erode their powerful influence. Corruption is eating away the central government's resources as it struggles with declining revenues due to rock-bottom oil prices while having to raise spending to fund the war against Islamic State militants. "It will be a peaceful sit-in in front of the gates of the Green Zone, which is considered a bastion of support for corruption," Sadr said in his website statement. Sadr, heir to a Shi'ite clerical dynasty in Shi'ite majority Iraq, has threatened a no-confidence vote in parliament unless technocratic ministers are named soon. But his al-Ahrar bloc commands just 34 of 328 seats in parliament, and since he may not be able to vote down an eventual new cabinet, he has had to resort to street protests to maintain pressure on Abadi, leveraging his popularity among the poor in Shi'ite districts of Baghdad. (Reporting Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Louise Ireland)
By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - Italian ships picked up some 600 migrants and recovered one body on Friday, as European leaders met in Brussels to try to stem the flow of migrants to the continent. Italy's coastguard and navy tweeted that they had picked up the migrants from several different vessels. Rescue operations were continuing and the number was likely to rise, a coastguard spokesman said. "Despite some bad weather and choppy sea conditions, the boats are coming," the coastguard spokesman said. More than 1.2 million migrants, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have arrived in Europe since the beginning of 2015. Arrivals from Libya have risen this week, when three bodies were recovered before the latest death. "This year we are actually noticing a slight increase in the number of migrants arriving from Libya," Federico Soda, director of the International Organization for Migration Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, said in the statement. "As of today, almost 12,000 migrants have landed in Italy, about 2,000 more compared to the number of migrants that arrived in the same period last year," he said. European Union leaders are trying to put together an agreement to stem the flow of refugees from Turkey, which is hosting some 3 million Syrians fleeing war. At the same time, EU leaders met to discuss ways to get Libyan factions to back a national unity government, which would clear the way to clamp down on people smuggling. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, editing by Larry King)
Algiers (AFP) - Rockets on Friday struck an Algerian gas plant run by foreign energy giants in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda, three years after a deadly hostage crisis at another facility in the country.

There were no casualties reported in the attack on the plant operated by Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Algerian company Sonatrach.

It was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on its Telegram channel in a message saying that it comes within its "war on the interest of the Crusaders in every place," according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Friday's attack was the most serious since other Al-Qaeda-linked militants stormed a complex in Algeria's remote east in 2013 and began a four-day siege that left dozens dead.

The defence ministry said two homemade rockets crashed near a guard post of a Sonatrach facility in Krechba, 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) south of Algiers, without causing casualties or damage.

"The rapid reaction of the army detachment tasked with protecting the site foiled this attempted terrorist attack," it said in an online statement, without elaborating.

Statoil said the gas asset was hit by "explosive munitions fired from a distance" in the early morning attack.

A processing facility was shut down "as a safety precaution", BP said.

A plant employee who did not wish to be named told AFP that the site is surrounded by a security fence and soldiers are permanently on guard.

"The rockets seem to have been fired from very far away," he said.

Military personnel mobilised soon after the rocket fire to prevent the attackers gaining access to the facility, the employee added.

Algeria's official news agency APS said "two terrorists fired homemade rockets on the gas plant in Krechba," using Algeria's official term for Islamist militants.

A manhunt was launched to find the attackers, it said.

- Anti-militant operations -

In 2013, a four-day siege and two rescue attempts by the Algerian army at a gas facility in In Amenas resulted in the deaths of nearly 40 foreign workers and 29 attackers.

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The assault -- which also targeted a site run by Sonatrach, BP and Statoil -- was claimed by Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants led by the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former AQIM chief.

The attack prompted a widespread security review in the North African country, heavily reliant on income from gas exports.

The head of Algeria's army last week called for increased vigilance following what he termed an "unprecedented deterioration" in security.

Algeria has been on guard against jihadist attacks such as those experienced by its neighbours Libya and Tunisia, with local press reporting the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers along its vast desert borders.

On Monday, a security source said a militant leader who had joined IS was killed during an army operation west of Algiers.

A brutal civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists killed 200,000 people.

Despite adopting a peace and reconciliation charter in 2005 aimed at turning the page on the conflict, armed groups remain active in the centre and east of Algeria.

A total of "157 terrorists, including 10 commanders" were killed or arrested in military operations last year, according to the defence ministry.

Algeria, a member of the OPEC oil cartel, is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas, with revenue from fossil fuels accounting for 95 percent of its exports.

It has an estimated 16 billion cubic metres of conventional gas and 20 million cubic metres of non-conventional gas, according to Sonatrach figures.
Washington (AFP) - The first track off British rocker PJ Harvey's new album delves into urban blight in Washington and it turns out she did her homework -- she took a tour with an unwitting reporter.

A journalist for The Washington Post wrote Friday that he gave the acclaimed artist a windshield tour in his "beat-up Mazda" after she requested to see the US capital's "darker side."

Paul Schwartzman said they were joined by a photographer who had contacted him through a mutual friend. Known for political profiles, Schwartzman acknowledged he had not heard of Harvey, described to him as a "musician/poet."

"As a middle-aged man with three kids, a dog and a sizable mortgage, I'm more than willing to acknowledge that I am not what anyone would consider hip," he wrote.

But he said he had covered Washington for more than a decade and was well acquainted with its rougher areas, away from the monuments, politicians and quickly gentrifying neighborhoods.

The result, he was surprised to discover, was "The Community of Hope," the first single on Harvey's latest album, "The Hope Six Demolition Project," which comes out on April 15.

Harvey on Friday released a video for the song -- whose title refers to a local charity -- that opens with footage of Schwartzman in the driver's seat.

The video depicts both impoverished areas of the city and more familiar sites such as the Washington Monument as Harvey offers her own tour musically -- set to her trademark guitar that draws from both punk and blues.

"Here's the highway to death and destruction / South Capitol is its name," she sings, referring to the main artery in the historic but low-income neighborhood of Anacostia.

"Does this look like a nice place? Here's the old mental institution," she sings.

The song culminates as Harvey -- and, in the video, an African-American church choir -- sings, "They're gonna put a Walmart here."

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Schwartzman, who said that he told her on his tour that the chain was coming to the neighborhood, voiced mixed feelings about the concluding imagery.

"The video's joyousness, punctuated by the image of a congregant raising his arms, is palpable. But then comes the uncomfortable thought: Salvation as a big-box store is hollow, especially for neighborhoods of boundless needs," he wrote.

Harvey, who has said little about her upcoming album, won rave reviews starting in the 1990s for her experimental rock in which she plays virtually all of the instruments.

Her last album, 2011's politically charged "Let England Shake," won the Mercury Prize, the second time she has taken the prestigious British award.
Brussels (AFP) - The EU and Turkey are negotiating a controversial deal to curb an unprecedented flow of migrants to Europe in exchange for concessions to Ankara.

Here is a summary of the key points under discussion, according to a draft by European Union president Donald Tusk that the bloc's leaders agreed to present to Turkey's premier.

- Migrants returned -

The key point of the deal: "All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands will be returned to Turkey."

This includes both refugees fleeing conflict and persecution as well as economic migrants, and it applies irrespective of where the refugees originally come from.

The draft says it will be a "temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order".

To meet international law, migrants will be "duly registered and any application for asylum will be processed individually by the Greek authorities". Those to do not, or whose applications are rejected, will be returned.

The UN refugee agency will help with the returns process, according to a clause inserted late on Thursday.

All costs will be covered by the EU.

The EU also will also "welcome Turkeys commitment that migrants returned to Turkey will be protected in accordance with the international standards."

An EU official said it was "in our interest to limit the time between the deal and its entry into force to a minimum so as to avoid the creation of a 'pull factor'."

- One for one -

For every Syrian refugee being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU.

The idea is to reduce the incentive for Syrian refugees to board dangerous smugglers' boats to Europe, as they will have good hope of being resettled directly from refugee camps.

Women and children will be prioritised under "UN Vulnerability Criteria." Priority will also be given to those who have not previously been deported from Greece.

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The EU will use 18,000 spare places from an earlier resettlement scheme, and up to 54,000 places from a slow-moving plan to redistribute refugees in Greece and Italy around the EU. If the numbers exceed 72,000 the scheme will be reviewed.

- Visas -

The EU agrees to accelerate plans to bring in visa-free travel for Turkish nationals to the Schengen passport-free zone by June 2016 "provided that all benchmarks have been met".

In practice it will be almost impossible for Turkey to fulfil the list of 72 requirements demanded by Brussels, especially on a shortened timeline.

- More aid -

The EU agrees to speed up the payment of three billion euros ($3.4 billion) in aid for refugees in Turkey, under the terms of an earlier summit in November.

It also agrees to mobilise "up to a ceiling of an additional three billion euros up to the end of 2018" -- but only once the initial three billion has been spent.

- New chapters -

The EU will "prepare for the decision on the opening of new chapters" in Turkey's long-stalled bid for membership of the EU "as soon as possible."

At the request of Cyprus, which has long blocked the opening of new chapters because of tensions with Turkey, a mention of Ankara being involved in the preparations was removed from the proposal.
The Kremlin has been riled by U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trumps video featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin and a jihadist militant, state news agency Itar-Tass reports.

Trump posted the campaign video on Thursday night, attacking Democrat Party front-runner Hillary Clinton. The caption asks Is this what we want for a president?, referring to Clinton while branding a judo-practicing Putin and a masked islamist extremist our toughest opponents.

Is this what we want for a President? A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Mar 16, 2016 at 9:15am PDT

We respond negatively to this, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlins spokesman, said when asked how the presidential administration felt about the video.

It is not a secret to anyone here that this, lets call it, demonisation of Russia and everything related to it is unfortunately a mandatory attribute to the U.S. election campaign, Peskov said. We always regret this and we would like it that all of these electoral processes go ahead without such references to us.

Trump has made several mentions of Putin during his campaign, most notably insisting he met Putin backstage at the CBS show 60 Minutes which featured separate interview with them both. Although Trump insisted it went pretty well a CBS fact check later confirmed the two interviews were filmed on different days, on different continents, making it impossible that the two could have met.

Trumps campaign hysterics has seen many Putin-critics such as Garry Kasparov and Pussy Riot turn against him, while he recently denied there was any proof Putin was responsible for the deaths of any journalists.

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Port-au-Prince (AFP) - At least seven people were killed and about 30 others seriously burned Thursday in Haiti when a tanker truck transporting fuel for the Total oil company caught fire and exploded.

The accident took place in the town of Hinche, 110 kilometers (65 miles) northeast of the capital Port-au-Prince, Haiti's Civil Defense office said.

Witnesses told AFP that the tanker truck hit a wall and spilled fuel as it was preparing to unload at a Total service station.

The flammable liquid spread and caught fire when it reached vendors cooking food on outdoor grills. The flames quickly returned to the tanker, which set off the explosion.

Seven people died on the spot, and the burn victims were rushed to area hospitals and to Port-au-Prince for treatment, the Civil Defense office said.

"I saw people screaming as they were being burned alive, and no one could come to their aid," a motorcycle taxi driver told AFP.

Hinche, like many Haitian towns outside of the capital, has no fire department.

"Blue Helmet" soldiers with the United Nations stabilization force rushed to the scene and were able to contain the blaze.

Four homes neighboring the service station also went up in flames, and 22 vehicles were destroyed, local authorities said in a preliminary assessment.

The truck was an independent carrier that loaded up with Total oil and delivered it to service stations, but "did not belong to Total," a spokesman for the French oil company told AFP, correcting earlier reports.

The vehicle had been inspected and met all safety standards, the spokesman said.
Americans are more likely to accept the idea of living together out of wedlock and having children out of wedlock than they were a decade ago, according to a new report of the nation's attitudes toward marriage, childbearing and sexual behavior.

Americans are less likely, however, to accept the idea of divorce than they were a decade ago, according to the report, released today (March 17) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the report, the researchers used data from the National Survey of Family Growth collected in 2002, 2006 to 2010, and in 2011 to 2013. Over 45,000 people ages 15 to 44 were included in the surveys.

The survey reflects changes in behavior that have been going on for some time, said Paula England, a professor of sociology at New York University. [13 Facts on the History of Marriage]

Wendy Manning, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, agreed.

These results are not entirely surprising, because they're following general trends, Manning told Live Science.

Living together

The percentage of Americans who agreed with the statement, "A young couple should not live together unless they are married" decreased, according to the report. In 2002, 35 percent of women agreed with the statement, compared with 28 percent in 2011 to 2013; for men, 32 percent agreed with the statement in 2002, compared with 25 percent in 2011 to 2013, according to the report.

Manning attributed this trend in positive attitudes toward living together out of wedlock to what she calls the "cohabitation revolution."

More and more Americans are serially cohabiting, Manning told Live Science. This increase is driven in part by the fact that the average age of marriage is going up, Manning said. People see living together as a path toward marriage, and it gives them a chance to help test out their relationships, she said. People also think living together is a good thing, because they think it will help prevent divorce, she added.

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Indeed, 60 percent of women and 67 percent of men agreed that living together before marriage may help prevent divorce, according to the report. (The researchers collected data on this only in 2006 to 2010 and 2011 to 2013, and the results did not change.)

Similar to the shifts in attitudes toward cohabitation, there has also been an increase in the percentage of Americans who agreed that it is okay for unmarried women to have and raise children. In 2002, 70 percent of women agreed with this sentiment, compared with 78 percent in 2011 to 2013, and for men, 59 percent agreed in 2002, compared with 69 percent in 2011 to 2013, according to the report.

This appears to fall in line with the increase in the number of Americans living together before getting married, Manning said. People may be having children during this time, she said.

Same-sex relations

The percentage of Americans who agreed with the right of gay and lesbian adults to adopt children increased. The percentage of women who agreed increased from 55 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2011 to 2013, and the percentage of men who agreed increased from 47 percent in 2002 to 68 percent in 2011 to 2013, according to the report.

There was also an increase in the percentage of Americans who agreed with the right of people to have same-sex sexual relations. The percentage of women who agreed increased from 42 percent in 2002 to 60 percent in 2011 to 2013, and the percentage of men who agreed increased from 40 percent in 2006 to 2010 to 49 percent in 2011 to 2013, according to the report. (Data was not available on this question for men in 2002.)

The data on sex-same relations is not surprising, England told Live Science. Since about 1990, Americans from a number of groups, including men, women, those from all socioeconomic levels, and blacks and whites, have been becoming steadily more liberal on this issue, she said. "It's really consistent with what we find from other surveys," she said. [Same-Sex Marriage: 6 Effects of the Supreme Court's Decision]

Manning agreed.

The changing attitudes have a lot to do with people being more accepting overall of gay and lesbian couples and families, she said. More Americans today think of gay and lesbian couples as families than in the past, she added.

Divorce

While the percentage of Americans who had positive attitudes toward living together, having children out of wedlock and same-sex relations has increased, the percentage of Americans who had positive attitudes toward divorce decreased, according to the report.

The percentage of women who agreed with the statement, "Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can't seem to work out their marriage problems," decreased from 47 percent in 2002 to 38 percent in 2011 to 2013, and the percentage of men who agreed decreased from 44 percent in 2002 to 39 percent in 2011 to 2013, according to the report.

This finding is very different from the others, England said. While the other findings indicate that trends are going in a more liberal direction, the attitudes toward divorce are moving in a more conservative direction, she said.

England noted that it can be difficult to obtain answers concerning attitudes about divorce. For example, if you ask couples about it when they get married, it's unlikely you'll find people who say they think they will get divorced in the future, she said.

Divorce rates were higher in the 1960s and 1970s, and then leveled off from 1980 on, England said. Some people speculate that the shift away from divorce could be because parents may think that divorce could put their children at a disadvantage, she said.

Another potential explanation for the more negative attitude toward divorce could be because of how Americans think of marriage.

We think so highly of marriage, so it may be that the fear of divorce looms large, Manning said.

Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @SaraGMiller. 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.
London (AFP) - Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron needs left-wing voters to keep Britain in the European Union in a June referendum, but the opposition Labour leader has so far shown little enthusiasm to deliver them.

Jeremy Corbyn has committed his centre-left Labour Party to campaign against a so-called Brexit, but his personal ambivalence and political calculations have left him dragging his heels.

"You can hardly imagine less activity," said Professor Sara Hobolt of the European Institute at the London School of Economics.

She warned: "If this referendum is going to be won by the government, it's essential that Labour mobilise its voters to turn out actually to vote."

Corbyn supported the "Remain" camp in recognition of the majority opinion in his party, but the lifetime socialist has never hidden his antipathy to the European project.

"Corbyn has suggested that the EU has moved too far toward a 'free market' model," said Matthew Goodwin, professor of political science at the University of Kent.

Opinion polls indicate a slight lead for the "Remain" camp but the result remains in the balance, and up to 20 percent of voters remain undecided.

"Without Labour votes, Britain will be out of Europe and Cameron out of office as the most disastrous prime minister since Lord North lost America," wrote left-wing commentator Polly Toynbee in The Guardian.

- Political calculations -

Personal views aside, Corbyn may be asking himself why he should be helping the prime minister in what is shaping up to be a damaging internal fight for the Conservatives.

A YouGov poll this week put Labour ahead for the first time since the May 2015 election, with analysts blaming in part the squabbles between Cameron and eurosceptics in his party.

"Playing a quieter role may be helpful just now to Jeremy Corbyn," commented YouGov director Anthony Wells and founder Stephan Shakespeare.

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YouGov's head of political and social research, Joe Twyman, described Corbyn's position in more blunt terms.

"What he is basically saying is 'I don't care, I don't give a shit and neither should you'," he told AFP.

- Getting out the vote -

Corbyn's apathy is causing concern among Labour campaigners.

"We have to make the case to members and get the vote out," said Alan Johnson, leader of Labour's "Remain" operation.

He said it was particularly important for the party's trade union supporters to break their silence and focus "on the adverse effects that turning our backs on our continent will have on working people".

Chuka Umunna, a lawmaker who briefly stood for the Labour leadership last year before endorsing one of Corbyn's rivals, acknowledged that the EU is "not perfect".

"But now is not the time for us to sit on our hands -- now is the time for us to fight for the politics of solidarity and collaboration," he said.

A YouGov survey earlier this month found that 43 percent of respondents did not know where Labour stood on the referendum. Even 35 percent of Labour voters were unsure.

In the absence of any clear guidance, many Labour supporters may not bother to vote.

"They might have an incentive to try and punish the government for other things that they are unhappy with," said Hobolt.

Twyman notes that turnout will be crucial -- there is a solid minority for whom a Brexit is important and if only they vote, they are more likely to win.

"If it's 60 percent turnout, around about the level of the general election, then we'll vote to stay because, on current polling, enough people who want to stay will have been actually persuaded to turn out," he said.
RIYADH (Reuters) - The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition battling the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen has been quoted as saying major fighting in the country is drawing towards a close, one year after the military campaign began. Fighting on two of the main battlefronts in Yemen, along the border with Saudi Arabia and in the city of Taiz, has calmed this month following mediation by local tribes and there have been secret talks in Saudi Arabia towards finding a resolution. Saudi TV channel al-Arabiya quoted the spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, as saying on Thursday that "the major fighting in Yemen is nearing an end ... (and) the next phase is a stage of restoring stability and reconstructing the country". Arabiya gave no further details and Asseri could not be immediately reached for comment. The Saudi-led coalition began its military campaign a year ago with the aim of preventing the Houthi group and forces loyal to Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking control of the country. It also aims to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power in the capital Sanaa. Asseri and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir have in recent days said that any peace talks can only take place between Hadi and the Houthis, and through the U.N. special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. Asseri announced last April that the coalition's initial operation had ended, saying it had "neutralized most of the military capabilities of the Houthi militias and their allies that represented a threat to Yemen and neighboring countries". However, the fighting then intensified as the coalition added small numbers of ground troops to support Yemeni fighters, backed by an increasingly heavy air campaign. The coalition retook Yemen's second city, Aden, from the Houthis and Saleh's forces in July, the northeastern town of Marib in September and the small northwestern port of Midi this year. Bitter fighting in Taiz since the autumn calmed somewhat this month and a Houthi siege of the city ended. Near-daily attacks on Saudi border positions have gone on for months, killing hundreds of the kingdom's soldiers and civilian residents of frontier regions. More than 6,000 Yemenis, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting and airstrikes over the past year, the United Nations says. Millions more have been displaced. (Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Paris (AFP) - European fears are mounting that Libya could once again become a hotspot in the migrant crisis, with several thousand people who fled from the troubled country rescued in the southern Mediterranean this week alone.

Analysts warn that the Islamic State group -- which has significantly expanded its control in Libya -- could send jihadists to mingle with those trying to reach Europe.

The coast of the north African state has for several years been one of the main launch points for migrants, many escaping the chaos that erupted after longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi was ousted and killed in 2011.

Around 330,000 have landed in Italy via Libya since the start of 2014, many on the southernmost island of Lampedusa.

But last year the number taking that route was dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands who made their way to Europe through the Balkans via Turkey and Greece.

Now it seems Libya could again become a major springboard for those seeking a new life in Europe, just as the EU clinched a deal with Ankara to stem the flow from the Turkish coast.

- 'Can't take eye off ball' -

Leaders from six EU nations led by Britain were holding talks in Brussels Friday on how to tackle migration from Libya.

"We can't afford to take our eye off the ball and just focus on the eastern Mediterranean route, we should be looking at other routes too," British Prime Minister David Cameron's spokeswoman said.

In a three-day period this week, more than 3,100 people who set off from the Libyan coast were rescued in the Mediterranean, and spring has only barely begun.

Around 950 people were picked up by a German naval vessel and the Italian coastguard on Tuesday.

The next day, almost 1,500 packed onto 12 rickety boats were rescued by the Italian coastguard. They included dozens of children.

On Thursday, another 700 were picked up and three bodies were also recovered.

French President Francois Hollande warned at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday of a "very serious risk" that if the turmoil in Libya continued, a new wave of migrants could try to move "through Malta, Italy and, eventually, once again, through Germany and France".

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"It's obvious that the spring is going to bring a lot of migrants" from Libya, said Alain Coldefy, a former admiral in the French navy.

It is however impossible to say whether the recent surge represents an early stage of a massive new wave of migrants or a spike that tends to occur when people smugglers seek to profit from a period of calm weather.

With fine weather over southern Europe this week, conditions at sea have been easier than they have been for months.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 11,912 people have arrived in Italy by sea since the start of the year.

In the first three months of 2015, 10,165 successfully made the crossing from Libya to southern Europe, so the increase is negligible so far.

As in the past, almost all are from sub-Saharan Africa, and not from Syria and Iraq -- people fleeing those countries typically take routes through the Balkans.

By contrast, more than 143,000 people have crossed the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek islands in the last three months alone.

- 'Obvious route' -

The spectre of a massive exodus from Libya looms large for the EU, which is already struggling to cope with the influx of those fleeing five years of war in Syria.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Thursday there was "a risk of a wave of refugees two or three times bigger than we have now".

Coldefy said: "Now that we are about to agree a deal with Turkey, and the route through Greece is possibly about to be choked off, the most natural route for the migrants, and the simplest, will be to go through Libya."

The US-based Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) warned of another danger with the Libyan route -- that jihadists from IS, which has consolidated a stronghold in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, could try to mingle in with migrants to reach Europe.

"There... remains the very real possibility that the Islamic State in Libya could serve as a springboard for attacking Europe," it said.

In the past, IS has condemned those who try to leave Islamic countries to live among the "infidels", but now it may well be making money from the lucrative business of people trafficking.
By Louis Charbonneau and Aziz El Yaakoubi UNITED NATIONS/RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco ordered the United Nations on Thursday to pull 84 international staff from its Western Sahara mission after accusing U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon of no longer being neutral in a conflict over the disputed territory. The Moroccan government, however, reversed a previously announced decision to withdraw all of its troops from U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Morocco said the United Nations and the African Union have three days to remove 84 civilian staff from Western Sahara. Dujarric said, "All of these measures would seriously impede the functioning" of the mission known as MINURSO, or the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman briefed theSecurity Council behind closed doors. He said the Moroccan ambassador had sent him a text message announcing that the 3-day deadline had been extended to "within the days to come," diplomats at the meeting told Reuters. The staff to be withdrawn includes security personnel, political officers, and de-mining personnel. Speaking to reporters after the council meeting, Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola, council president this month, said members had voiced their concern but agreed to individually approach Morocco to ensure the situation is "evolving in a positive manner." The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the United Nations since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission. Rabat accused Ban last week of no longer being neutral in the conflict, criticizing his use of the word "occupation" to describe Morocco's annexation of the region at the center of a struggle since 1975, when it took over from colonial power Spain. Earlier this month, Ban visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them and fought a war against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire. Their Polisario Front wants a referendum, including over the question of independence, but Rabat says it will only grant semi-autonomy. Three of the people on the list submitted by the Moroccan mission to be withdrawn from MINURSO are from the African Union while the rest are U.N. staff, the U.N. press department said. The mission currently has 242 military personnel, 85 international civilian staff, 157 national staff and 12 volunteers. Neither military personnel nor the head of the mission are affected by the cuts. Speaking to reporters through an interpreter at the Moroccan U.N. mission in Manhattan, Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar complained of Ban's "stubbornness." After speaking with members of the Security Council, Mezouar said Morocco had "decided not to withdraw its troops" from U.N. peacekeeping missions. He said Rabat was considering other possible actions but did not elaborate. Ban has said he wants to restart stalled negotiations between Morocco and Polisario Front. Ban canceled plans to visit Morocco, his spokesman said on Wednesday. (Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Grant McCool, Toni Reinhold)
By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE, March 18 (Reuters) - The prototype "halo" head protection device, aimed at shielding Formula One drivers from flying debris, is on track to be adopted for the 2017 season pending a safety review, race director Charlie Whiting said on Friday. The halo, which is fixed to the cockpit at three points including a central pillar right in front of the driver, made its debut in Spain earlier this month. F1 outfit Red Bull, whose team principal Christian Horner has expressed misgivings over the halo's design, are developing a separate device but Whiting said it was unlikely to be ready in time for 2017. "I think (the halo's) going pretty well," Whiting told reporters at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. "It's been tested quite extensively now, and I think it will offer very good protection for a flying wheel, for example, that's the main way it's been tested so far. "We need to do a thorough risk assessment on it, we need to look at a number of other related things like extrication. We've got to talk to the medical crews about it. But I think it's going quite well." Improving head protection became a priority after the deaths last year of Briton Justin Wilson, a former F1 racer who suffered head injuries from debris in an IndyCar crash, and Frenchman Jules Bianchi. A working group led by Mercedes and Ferrari hoped to set standard specifications for the halo by the end of May to allow teams to incorporate it into their designs for next year's cars, Whiting said. Most drivers favour the halo, but some have reservations about how quickly they could get out of their cars after an accident. Whiting had few concerns about that, though, pointing to Ferrari's test of the device in Spain. "One team did put a halo on their car, and did get the driver to see how quickly they could get out, and it looked perfectly simple, and arguably easier, because the driver can get hold of this thing and lift himself out much easier," he said. "It looked very simple, I must say." (Editing by Nick Mulvenney)
Washington (AFP) - Most if not all Russian warplanes have been withdrawn from Syria, a US military spokesman said Friday, adding that Russia has staged no air strikes during the past week.

The US military assessment contradicted assertions by the Russian military that its jets were flying as many as 25 sorties a day in support of a Syrian government offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (IS) group fighters.

US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said some bombardments have taken place in the Palmyra region but that they were believed to have been fired by Russian artillery.

"In the last week, we have not seen any Russian aircraft conducting any strikes in Syria," Ryder said in a telephone briefing with reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, where they have been backing Moscow's close ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The first Russian aircraft returned Tuesday to a hero's welcome.

"We assessed that the majority if not all of their strike aircraft have left," Ryder said.

The US military, which was taken by surprise by the development, has remained skeptical of Putin's intentions.

On Thursday, a Baghdad-based US military spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, said there had been little change in Russian troop deployments on the ground.

There has been little movement of Russian ground forces, Ryder said, adding that Moscow has kept combat helicopters and some transport planes in Syria.

Russia intervened militarily in the Syrian civil war on September 30 at Assad's request, deploying about 50 combat aircraft.

It also sent more than 4,000 ground troops, artillery, tanks and about 30 combat helicopters.

The Russians have directed their operations mainly against Western-backed anti-government rebels while a US-led coalition has been waging an air campaign against the IS group.
How Badly Did Railroad Traffic Derail as of March 12?

North American rail traffic

Every Wednesday morning, the AAR (Association of American Railroads) releases the weekly rail traffic data for the previous week. The latest report is for the week ended March 12, 2016. For the week, total US railcar units fell to 243,000, representing a marked fall of ~13% from 279,000 units in the corresponding week in 2015.

In the previous week, US intermodal growth offered some relief. But this time, even intermodal growth seems to have seen a slowed. Its traffic fell by 10.3% to 246,000 units from 274,000 units during the corresponding week in 2015.

Canadian and Mexican railroads were also in the line of fire. Canadian railroads reported a fall of 11.3% in railcar units and a fall of 3.9% in intermodal volumes in the week ended March 12, 2016.

For Mexican railroads, intermodal traffic contracted by 13.2%, whereas railcar units fell by 6.7% in the week ended March 12, compared to the same period in 2015.

Commodity groups

Motor vehicles and parts, miscellaneous carloads, and chemicals surged ahead in the reported week. The weekly laggards were coal, which fell by 34.1%, petroleum products, and metallic ores and metals.

This weeks intermodal volumes are comparable to last years figures. This is mainly due to the resolution of the labor dispute at West Coast ports by this time in 2015.

North American freight traffic

The railroads submitting the weekly data handle about 95% of total US and Canadian freight traffic. Much of the freight is hauled by Class I railroads. These are BNSF Railway (BRK.B), Union Pacific (UNP), Norfolk Southern (NSC), CSX (CSX), Kansas City Southern (KSU), Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), and Canadian National Railway (CNI).

Investors interested in logistics stocks can opt for the iShares Transportation Average ETF (IYT). Railroads make up 21.4% of IYT, and trucking companies make up 11.5% of IYT.

In this series, well take a look at how each freight rail giant fared in the week ended March 12, 2016.

Story continues

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama will name a woman to head a major US combatant command for the first time, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

He said Air Force General Lori Robinson will be appointed as the next head of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which is responsible for the defense of the US "homeland" with an area of operations that extends from Alaska to portions of the Caribbean.

Robinson has "very deep operational experience" as well as "very good managerial experience," Carter said at a conference in Washington.

Her appointment to one of the military's most senior jobs is subject to Senate confirmation.

The position also oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which provides aviation security for the United States and Canada.

Women play an increasingly important role in the US military, making up around 15 percent of personnel.

The Pentagon last year opened all combat positions to women, including elite special operations units.

Carter -- who has long said the military must look for ways to attract and retain top talent -- recently announced a package of family-friendly initiatives for personnel.

They include maternity leave of 12 weeks for all services and a requirement that military installations employing more than 50 women have rooms for mothers to breastfeed their babies.

In January, another woman, General Diana Holland, became the first female commandant of West Point's Corps of Cadets.

Robinson is currently the commander of US air forces in the Pacific.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - One person was wounded and possibly killed during a police raid in the Brussels district of Molenbeek on Friday, Belgian newspaper L'Echo and broadcaster RTL said. RTL said one of its journalists had seen a person fall to the ground and was possibly dead. Police could not be reached for comment. Belgian federal prosecutors on Friday confirmed that they found the fingerprints of a key suspect of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in a Brussels raid on Tuesday. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti, editing by Barbara Lewis)
Zanzibar (Tanzania) (AFP) - Zanzibar is due to hold repeat elections on Sunday despite a promised opposition boycott following a controversial decision to annul October's vote.

The Zanzibar Election Commission (ZEC) cancelled the results of the first poll but diplomats said they saw no evidence of the "massive fraud" alleged by commission chairman Jecha Salim Jecha.

The annulment came after opposition Civic United Front (CUF) candidate, Seif Sharif Hamad, declared himself the winner before results were officially announced.

CUF leaders say the nullification was designed to block their party's victory and deliver another win for the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) which dominates on the Tanzania mainland.

Zanzibar's 500,000 registered voters also cast ballots for Tanzania's national president and, despite the cancellation of the vote on the islands, new Tanzanian President John Magufuli was sworn in last year.

Campaigning on Zanzibar has been subdued with public rallies banned to keep a lid on simmering tensions that frequently bubble over during elections on the semi-autonomous islands.

While the opposition CUF has called for a boycott of Sunday's vote, CCM activists have been conducting door-to-door meet-and-greets and holding indoor hustings hoping to secure a clear victory for incumbent Zanzibar President Ali Mohamed Shien.

Jecha said everything was in place for Sunday's polls. "We have ballot papers ready, we have 1,583 polling stations, and polling officers with materials ready. We ask people to get ready for the polls," he said, adding that the ballot papers are unchanged with CUF candidate Hamad's name still listed.

The rerun is expected to cost an estimated $3.4 million (7.5 billion Tanzanian shillings, 3.2 million euros).

Sunday's election is unlikely to ease political tensions in the islands, with the CCM concerned that a CUF victory could lead to the collapse of the 52-year old union with mainland Tanzania.

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In recent weeks some homes have been burned, people have been beaten and arrested, and a homemade bomb was placed outside the police chief's home.

Senior CUF official Nassor Ahmed Mazrui said allegations of arson and bomb-making levelled at some party members by police were baseless and in turn accused police and a ruling party militia of targeting his supporters.

"The democratic future of Zanzibar is bleak," he said. "There are violations of human rights just because we oppose the fresh polls, but we will continue opposing them, even after the elections, Mazrui said.

Zanzibar's police chief said the arrests were all above board.

"We are looking for criminals including those threatening people not to vote on Sunday," said Hamdan Omar Makame. "We have vowed to leave no stone unturned in making sure that Sunday's polls are peaceful. Those who are against the polls should remain indoors," he said.

A dozen other candidates are contesting Sunday's vote but are not expected to pose a serious challenge to the two main parties.
Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who faces charges of treason and murder, arrived in Dubai Friday for what his lawyers said was urgent medical treatment after a three-year travel ban was lifted.

Lawyers for the former president, who is facing multiple charges including treason and murder over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have said he needs urgent medical treatment not available in Pakistan.

"I am going abroad for treatment but will return to face the cases against me," a party spokesman in Karachi quoted him as saying. "I am a commando. I love my motherland."

The spokesman added that Musharraf had reached his Dubai residence, where he will stay for some weeks before seeking an appointment with doctors in the United States.

"Six to eight weeks are required for the treatment and then he would go back home," said Dr Amjad Malik, a spokesman for Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League party in Dubai.

Musharraf was banned from leaving Pakistan in March 2013 after he returned to the country on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.

The former ruler was barred from taking part in the polls and instead faces a barrage of legal cases.

Last June, the Sindh High Court lifted Musharraf's travel ban, but the federal government, headed by his long-time rival Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Sindh High Court decision and ordered the government to allow Musharraf to travel, which it did the following day.

Musharraf's lawyers have provided guarantees he will return to Pakistan in six weeks and pledged he will appear in court for several ongoing cases against him, Pakistan's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said Thursday.

However, analyst Hasan Askari told AFP Friday the chance of Musharraf coming back was "minimal", adding that his return could cause problems for the government and embarrass the military.

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"In order to defuse the conflict, the government agreed to let him go," he said.

In January, Musharraf was acquitted over the 2006 killing of a Baloch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.

But four cases against him remain -- one accusing him of treason for imposing emergency rule, as well as those alleging the unlawful dismissal of judges, the assassination of opposition leader Bhutto and a deadly raid on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

Bhutto's son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of her Pakistan People's Party, vowed to launch country-wide protests against the government for allowing Musharraf to travel.

"After facilitating Musharraf's escape this government has lost the moral authority to govern," he tweeted Friday.

- Police decoy -

A large convoy of police and paramilitary rangers left Musharraf's home in Karachi around 3.30 am Friday as a decoy to waiting media crowding his street, while the general travelled to the airport separately.

Musharraf ousted Sharif from power in 1999 in a bloodless coup and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008.

He has been under house arrest in Karachi while the cases have ground through Pakistan's notoriously slow legal system, lurching from adjournment to adjournment with little clear progress apart from the granting of bail.

Analysts had previously said they believe the government lacks the will to offend Pakistan's powerful military by pushing for Musharraf's prosecution.
Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Friday before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a months-long wave of violence.

"An assailant, armed with a knife, exited his vehicle and charged at the soldiers guarding the (Gush Etzion) junction," an army statement said, referring to a popular road crossing near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

"Forces responded to the threat and shot the attacker, resulting in his death."

The Palestinian health ministry identified the dead man as Mahmud Abu Fanuna, 21, from Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.

Elsewhere, two Palestinians were arrested after knives were found in their possession, the army said, claiming the suspects admitted to planning an attack.

Since October 1, a wave of violence has killed 197 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese, according to an AFP count.

Most of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to the Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead during protests and clashes.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence.
Brussels (AFP) - Police found fingerprints of Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam in a Brussels apartment raided this week, officials said Friday as authorities continued the hunt for two suspects who fled the scene.

Reports suggested Abdeslam could even be one of the two men who slipped through a massive police cordon Tuesday in the Forest quarter of Brussels after another suspect was shot dead.

Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead.

Investigations have shown that several of those involved in the assaults lived in Brussels, where the attacks were planned.

The Franco-Moroccan, whose older brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, fled across the border to Belgium hours after the massacre and is now one of the most wanted men in Europe.

Belgium's RTBF television station, citing unidentified sources, said it was "more than likely" that Abdeslam was one of the two suspects who fled the Forest apartment but Belgian authorities refused comment on that issue.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, without elaborating.

The firefight on Tuesday erupted after Belgian and French police searched the Forest property as part of continued investigations into the Paris attacks.

The officers went to the apartment believing it was rented under the same false identity as a hideout in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used by the Paris attackers.

- 'Probably Belkaid' -

Prosecutors also said that the man killed in the Forest shootout was very likely a suspect wanted by police in connection with the Paris attacks.

Investigations show that "the so-called Samir Bouzir, against whom a wanted notice was issued, most probably is the Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid" killed Tuesday, a statement said.

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Investigators in December determined that a fake identity card in Bouzir's name was used to wire 750 euros ($800) from a Brussels Western Union office to the cousin of attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud four days after the massacre in the French capital.

Abbaaoud and his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen, as well as another Paris attacks suspect, died in a hail of bullets north of the French capital on November 18.

Meanwhile Belgian TV channel VRT said that Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium, was listed as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Contacted by AFP, Belgium's federal prosecutor declined to comment on the report.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

Asked whether one of the suspects who escaped the shootout was Abdeslam, a source close to the investigation said: "We can obviously ask ourselves the question."

Another Abdeslam fingerprint was found in December in a different Brussels apartment, where investigators believe the fugitive hid for three weeks immediately following the attacks.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.

The ringleader, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris shortly after the attacks.

Both had links to the largely immigrant Brussels district of Molenbeek which was targeted by authorities after the attacks.

Brahim Abdeslam, Salah's brother, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.
Brussels (AFP) - Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was wounded and captured in a dramatic raid by armed police in the Belgian capital on Friday.

Abdeslam, 26, and four other suspects were arrested in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where the Franco-Moroccan allegedly helped plan the November 13 attacks in which 130 people died and 350 were injured.

Abdeslam was lightly wounded in the leg, prosecutors said. France said it would swiftly seek his extradition.

"The battle against terrorism does not end tonight, even though this is a victory," French President Francois Hollande told a news conference in Brussels with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

"I think of the victims of November 13, because Salah Abdeslam was directly linked to the preparation, the organisation and unfortunately the perpetration of these attacks."

Hollande, whose embattled presidency will be defined by his response to the worst terror attacks on French soil, said Paris would request Abdeslam's extradition from Belgium "as rapidly as possible."

"Our fight is not over, and tomorrow morning, in the light of the information that has been given to me, I will chair a meeting of the defence council," bringing together ministers and senior officials in charge of security, Hollande said.

France has been under a state of emergency since the attacks. The measure was extended by parliament in February for a further three months, to May 26.

Michel, who rushed out of an EU summit for a crisis meeting with Hollande, said Abdeslam's capture was "extremely important in the battle for democracy against this abominable form of extremism."

The two leaders received the congratulations of US President Barack Obama who reaffirmed a "shared commitment" to "degrading and destroying" Islamic State.

Also arrested was a man known under the fake name of Amine Choukri who also used a false Syrian name, Monir Ahmed Alaaj.

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Abdeslam and the so-called Choukri were fingerprinted by police in Germany on October 5, one month before the attacks.

Choukri could also be a so-called Soufiane Kayal who was pulled over by police on the Austrian border with Hungary in September, again with Abdeslam.

The only man known for sure to be still be on the run is Mohamed Abrini who was filmed with Abdeslam two days before the attacks at a filling station on a motorway close to Paris.

- Last survivor -

Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out attacks on the Bataclan rock venue, restaurants, bars and the Stade de France stadium.

He apparently fled by car to his hometown Brussels the day after the rampage, having refused to blow himself up, and is believed to have spent much if not all of the subsequent four months in the city.

His brother Brahim carried out one of the suicide bomb attacks in Paris and was buried in a quiet ceremony in Brussels on Thursday, the day before Salah was captured.

Prosecutors said special forces raided a house in Molenbeek on Friday because of evidence found in an operation in Brussels on Tuesday, in which a Paris-linked suspect died in a gunbattle with police and two other eople escaped.

One of Abdeslam's fingerprints was found at the scene of Tuesday's raid, sparking the huge manhunt that led to his capture.

A witness told AFP the operation began at around 1530 GMT when dozens of police cars swooped into the rundown Molenbeek neighbourhood.

"I heard about three or four shots fired, but they were muffled, as if taking place indoors," said Karim, an Oxfam charity employee who lives in the largely Muslim Molenbeek.

Footage in Belgian media appeared to show a white-hooded Abdeslam being dragged to a waiting police car by armed special forces officers.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one, and has been criticised for alleged blunders that let the perpetrators slip under the radar.

- Paris network 'much wider' -

With Belgium having arrested a series of people over links with Abdeslam, Hollande said many more were involved in the Paris attacks than originally believed.

"We realise that there were many more people than we at first thought," Hollande said.

Investigators believe Abdeslam hired one of the cars used in the attacks and then used it to drive suicide bombers to the Stade de France with the task then of blowing himself up.

But he apparently backed out, and an explosives-filled suicide vest was later found in Paris in a region that mobile phone signals indicated he had been in.

Police believe he fled across the border the next morning. Several people have been arrested on suspicion of helping him and one of his fingerprints was found in December at different Brussels apartments.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was last week buried quietly in the same cemetery as Abdeslam's brother.

Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

Abdeslam and his brother had run a bar in the area until it was shut down by the authorities a few weeks before the Paris attacks.

Belgian authorities have meanwhile identified the man killed in the raid on Tuesday linked to Abdeslam as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, 35, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors also said he was wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine security forces wounded a leader of an al Qaeda-linked militant group wanted by the United States in a clash on Friday but he escaped, an army general said on Friday. Radullan Sahiron, a one-armed leader of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, has been on a U.S. State Department wanted list with a $1 million reward for his capture since his involvement in the kidnapping of U.S. tourists in 2001. "There's an intelligence report that Radullan Sahiron was wounded in the firefight," General Alan Arrojado told reporters referring to a clash between soldiers and about 100 militants on the southern island of Jolo. "We don't know where he was hit but one of his assistants was shot in the leg." Several other militants were wounded while seven militants and a soldier were killed, he said. Security forces were chasing the fleeing militants, he said. The Abu Sayyaf, known for kidnappings, beheadings, bombings, and extortion activities, is one of the most hardline Islamist rebel factions in the Muslim south of the largely Christian Philippines. Arrojado said Sahiron was linked to the kidnapping of 20 tourists, including three Americans, from a resort on Palawan island in 2001. An American national, Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded while another American, Martin Burnham, was killed during a rescue operation a year later. His wife, Gracia, was wounded. Last week, another Abu Sayyaf faction threatened to execute two Canadians and a Norwegian if ransom demands were not met in a month. In November, the militants killed a Malaysian engineer. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Moscow (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea on Friday as Russia marked two years since annexing the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in a move that dramatically damaged its ties with the West.

The Kremlin strongman stopped over on the island of Tuzla to oversee progress on a $3-billion (2.66-billion-euro) bridge project connecting Russia to Crimea, a key link that Moscow hopes will further bind it to the isolated region.

Putin said the bridge's construction -- which he called a "historical mission" -- should be completed by December 2018, and that the first direct link to the mainland was essential for bolstering Crimea's struggling economy.

The Russian leader also said an undersea power cable that could reduce the peninsula's electricity dependence on Kiev could become fully operational in May, a pressing concern after blasts severed power lines from Ukraine last year and left much of Crimea in the dark.

In an address broadcast on national television, Putin congratulated Russians on the annexation's second anniversary and said the bridge between Crimea and Russia would be "yet another symbol of our unity".

"We will confidently move forward together, and only forward," he said.

Meanwhile, state-sponsored concerts and public festivities took place across Russia to commemorate the March 2014 takeover that Moscow insists followed a referendum in which Crimea residents voted overwhelmingly to swap countries.

In Moscow, thousands gathered just off Red Square for a concert featuring pro-Kremlin pop stars including 78-year-old crooner Joseph Kobzon, who was blacklisted by the EU last year after he performed for rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Spectators waved large Russian flags and released balloons as they faced a giant stage set up outside the Russian capital's iconic St Basil's Cathedral.

- 'Pervasive climate of fear' -

The annexation of Crimea boosted Putin's popularity with state media going into overdrive over a move to reclaim a region many see as Moscow's rightful property.

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A survey published last month by the independent Levada Centre showed 83 percent of Russians support Moscow's takeover of Crimea, which was transferred to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

Ahead of the annexation, Putin sent in thousands of special forces to take control of army bases and government institutions across Crimea after the ouster of a pro-Russian leader by protesters in Kiev.

Ukraine and the West insist the takeover -- which has not been recognised internationally -- was an illegal landgrab and that the vote to join Russia was a Kremlin-organised farce.

"The Russian Federation has demonstrated that it is not prepared to return to a civilised way of conducting international relations," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Friday.

The annexation pushed Russia's relations with the West to a new post-Cold War nadir, with Washington and the European Union slapping sanctions on Moscow.

Since then, rights groups say those who opposed the annexation have faced a crackdown.

Human Rights Watch on Friday accused the authorities of creating "a pervasive climate of fear and repression in Crimea" in the two years since annexation.

The group deplored abuses perpetrated against the Crimea Tatar community, a minority Muslim group that opposed the Russian annexation, as well as a crackdown on pro-Ukraine activists and journalists.

The West continues to condemn the annexation, vowing to keep sanctions in place as long as Crimea remains under Russian control.

The US State Department on Wednesday called on Russia to "end that occupation and return Crimea to Ukraine" -- a prospect Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected.
Baghdad (AFP) - Thousands of supporters of prominent Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr defied a government ban Friday to launch sit-ins at the main gates of Baghdad's Green Zone aimed at pushing for reforms.

Many of the demonstrators carried Iraqi flags as they muscled past tight security and set up tents to begin what they said was an open-ended protest.

"The sit-ins have started in front of the Green Zone gates as a message to the corrupt people who live there," Ibrahim al-Jaberi, a local official from Sadr's movement, told AFP.

The Najaf-based Sadr has called on his supporters to remain in front of the fortified "Green Zone" until his demands are met.

The young Shiite cleric has demanded Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reshuffle the cabinet to bring in technocrats and threatened a no-confidence vote in parliament if he failed to do so soon.

"The sit-in is open-ended," said Jaberi, as Sadr followers started setting up camp on the streets and under trees.

The vast restricted area in the heart of the city is home to most key institutions, including the prime minister's office, parliament and the US embassy, which is the world's largest.

Demonstrators chanting slogans such as "Yes, yes to reforms" moved to crossroads around the Green Zone and started setting up tents, rolling out mats and pulling blankets out of bags.

"We and all the people demand improvement in the country, a solution to corruption and the sacking of all those who stole our money," said Abu Hassan, 65, sitting by a tent with his three brothers and two of his sons.

His walking stick by his side, the man from Sadr City, a huge Shiite neighbourhood in northern Baghdad where Moqtada Sadr is very popular, said: "He told us to hold a sit-in, so we will stay here years if that's what it takes."

- Peaceful protest -

Sadr promptly issued a statement claiming victory in his tussle with the authorities and thanking God "for letting the will of the people triumph".

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The move was in defiance of a cabinet decision denying the rally the necessary permits and an interior ministry warning not to provoke the security services.

Sadr had issued a statement on Thursday saying his movement would ignore the ban but also calling on his supporters to refrain from violence.

Sadr heads a militia called Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades) that had caused strong concern when it deployed armed men during a previous protest in Baghdad.

Amid fears the stand-off could escalate, Iraqi security forces have locked down Baghdad, the Arab world's second most populous capital with an estimated eight million residents.

"All entrances to Baghdad have been blocked and some main streets and bridges are also closed, especially those leading to the Green Zone," a police colonel said.

A group of demonstrators clipped the barbed wire on one of the bridges over the Tigris river to reach an entrance to the sprawling Green Zone but no violence ensued.

In his statement, Sadr praised the behaviour of the riot police and army forces deployed en masse to protect the Green Zone.

"The cooperation of the security forces exceeded all the expectations of some corrupt people who had bet against it," he said.

The 42-year-old scion of an influential clerical family rose to prominence when he launched a Shiite rebellion against US troops following their 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He had lost some of his political influence in recent years but has brought himself back into relevance with a series of rallies against corruption.

Senior politicians from his own Ahrar bloc are perceived as some of the most corrupt in Iraq but the mercurial leader has recently distanced himself from them.

He is seen as a nationalist with fewer ties to neighbouring Iran than many of the country's other leading Shiite politicians.
By Lefteris Papadimas IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) - Baby Zaynab lay swaddled in a multicolored blanket as her mother gently tried to rock her to sleep. She didn't get much sleep the previous night, kept awake by the bitter cold which sweeps across the plateau straddling the Greek-Macedonian border and penetrates the flimsy tent which is the only shelter for the 11-day-old baby and her parents. "I am relying on charity to keep my baby alive," said mother Shukria Al Bakr, 19, trying to suppress sobs as she sat in the tiny red plastic dome among the sea of other temporary dwellings at Idomeni. "There is no clean water, no food, and I can't breastfeed her," the Syrian said. "All I ask is that they (EU leaders) be merciful to the children here, and let us in." That is unlikely to happen. European Union leaders and Turkey reached a provisional deal on Friday which would try to stem the influx that has brought hundreds of thousands into Europe in the past year from conflict zones and poverty in the Middle East and beyond. Among a population of at least 10,000 are an estimated 4,000 children living in squalid conditions at Idomeni, where people queue for hours for a plate of food and fight over firewood to keep warm. Al Bakr gave birth to her first child Zaynab, or "fragrant flower", in a Greek hospital via caesarian section. At the hospital someone suggested she give the baby up for adoption rather than return to Idomeni. "I said no," Al Bakr said, as the baby made a small whimper. She and Zaynab returned on Wednesday to continue what looks like a hopeless wait for an opening of the border fence. Under the pact brokered on Friday, Ankara would take back all illegal migrants who cross to Greece, including Syrians, in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. Al Bakr, a hairdresser, and husband Hasam, a beauty products salesman, first fled fighting in the Syrian city of Idlib to Aleppo. The war followed them and the couple, who married a year ago, decided to leave their country. "We want to get to Germany. We have family there," said Al Bakr. BOTTLENECK When they returned with baby Zaynab from the local hospital, they found their tent and bedding soaked through. Other Syrians helped find them another tent and a charity gave them a couple of blankets. Aid organizations reported a big rise in respiratory infections in the past week because of heavy rain. "There were people living in wet clothes for days," said Vicky Markolefa of medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres. Migrant arrivals in Greece showed no sign of letting up, swelling the bottleneck of people trapped there. More than 46,000 were stuck in the country on Friday, scattered from islands close to Turkey to the waterlogged fields on the northern frontier with Macedonia, halted by the closures of borders along the Balkans route previously used to reach northern Europe. "It simply defies logic when a Europe of 580 million people hesitates to offer sanctuary to 1-1.5 million persecuted people," Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroublis said during a visit to Idomeni on Friday. Greek police distributed leaflets to migrants at Idomeni in Greek and Arabic, urging them to move to official shelters run by Greek authorities. "The borders are closed. In the camps you will find food and shelter. Do not trust irresponsible people who put you at risk, do not be inconvenienced without reason," they said. The camp at Idomeni is unofficial and assistance there comes from non-governmental organizations. After weeks of trekking from Syria to Turkey, then taking the short but treacherous journey to Greece on an inflatable boat, Shukria Al Bakr is starting to wonder if it was worth it. "It's easier for me to handle bombings in Syria than this situation here. If I had known how bad it would be, I would never have left," she said. (Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and George Georgiopoulos in Athens; editing by Andrew Roche)
Paris (AFP) - Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect in the Paris attacks arrested on Friday, showed little sign of religious fervour before the assaults and was even known to enjoy a beer and a joint in the bar he ran with his brother in the Brussels district where he was captured.

The 26-year-old Franco-Moroccan, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in the French capital during the November 13 attacks, is said to have fled into the arms of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria but he was eventually tracked down to Molenbeek, the immigrant neighbourhood where he had lived for years.

But far from being religious fanatics, Salah and Brahim were known to enjoy a drink and some pot in Les Beguines, the bar they ran in Molenbeek.

The bar was shut down two weeks before the Paris attacks after police said it was used "for the consumption of banned hallucinogenic substances".

A Molenbeek resident, who identified himself only as Youssef, told AFP last year the brothers were "friends of ours, big smokers, big drinkers, but not radicals".

Salah certainly knew radicals though, having come into contact with another Molenbeek resident, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is believed to have been the mastermind of the Paris attacks.

Salah was fired from his job as a technician on the Brussels trams for skipping work in 2011. Around the same time he was arrested for robbery along with Abaaoud.

Salah also developed a taste for casinos, gambling in the Dutch city of Breda in June 2014 and in Brussels last year.

But in 2015, in a possible phase of preparation for the Paris attacks, he criss-crossed Europe, visiting Greece in August, then Austria and Hungary, at a time when tens of thousands of migrants were transiting Europe from Syria and Iraq.

A routine search in Brussels earlier in the week went wrong and four Belgian police were wounded in an exchange of fire.

That led to Belgian police killing an Algerian, Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who had been with Salah in Austria in early September.

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Belgian prosecutors announced Friday that Salah's fingerprints were found in the apartment they had been searching. Several hours later, he was arrested with two other men after shots were fired and Abdeslam was hit in the leg.

- In charge of logistics -

It was not just his disappearance that made Salah the enigma of the Paris attacks.

Prosecutors believe he was in charge of logistics for the attacks, which were planned in Brussels.

Salah rented the cars that the IS team used to travel to Paris, and booked the apartment-hotel rooms where they stayed before launching the worst ever terror attacks on French soil.

His brother Brahim, with whom he ran the Brussels bar, detonated his suicide vest in a bar in Paris on November 13, as at least eight other IS attackers were shooting and blowing up 130 people who had been enjoying a Friday night out in the French capital.

It is possible Salah drove three suicide bombers to the Stade de France stadium and he appears to have also been in central Paris where his accomplices where carrying out their slaughter.

But the evidence suggests he backed out of detonating his own suicide vest.

An explosives vest was founded abandoned in a dustbin in a Paris suburb and although none of Salah's DNA was found on it, mobile phone data puts him in the area at the time.

Before police were alerted to his possible involvement, Salah had been stopped three times by officers in France as he fled back to Belgium by car the day after the attacks.

Two men with him in the vehicle, Hamza Attou and Mohammed Amri, are said to have been smoking marijuana but a policeman waved them on and Salah was able to remain on the run for 126 days.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, responding to reports President Barack Obama called on Democrats to rally around Hillary Clinton as the likely nominee, said on Thursday it was "absurd" to suggest he drop out of the race. Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors last Friday that Sanders was nearing the point at which his campaign against Clinton would end, and that the party must soon come together to back her, the New York Times reported. Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, while saying he did not want to comment directly on Obama's reported remarks, pushed back on the idea that his campaign had run its course and he should throw in the towel. "The bottom line is that when only half of the American people have participated in the political process ... I think it is absurd for anybody to suggest that those people not have a right to cast a vote," Sanders told MSNBC in an interview. The White House on Thursday said Obama did not indicate which candidate he preferred in his remarks to the donors. Clinton, a former secretary of state in the Obama administration, has a large lead in the race for the Democratic nomination and she won all five states that were contested on Tuesday. Sanders said he will do better in upcoming contests in western states, after losing to Clinton in a number of southeastern states. "To suggest we don't fight this out to the end would be, I think, a very bad mistake. People want to become engaged in the political process by having vigorous primary and caucus process. I think we open up the possibility of having a large voter turnout in November. That is exactly what we need," Sanders said. "A low voter turnout, somebody like a Trump can win. High voter turnout, the Democratic candidate will win," he said, referring to Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race to pick the Republican nominee for the November presidential election. (Reporting by Eric Beech)
Brazzaville (AFP) - Republic of Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso, seeking a third term in Sunday's election, began his political career as a Marxist-Leninist and has become a wealthy strongman determined to extend his 32 years in power.

One of Africa's five longest-serving leaders, having first taken office in 1979, he used the army as a springboard to power, while allegedly amassing a fortune.

Sassou Nguesso has come under pressure in former colonial power France about his lavish lifestyle, with rights groups pressing for a probe into his acquisition of luxury homes and expensive automobiles.

French judges are investigating the supposedly vast "ill-gotten gains" of the Congolese leader and his extended family despite him warning them in 2013 to lay off "domestic affairs".

A lawyer for anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, William Bourdon, says Sassou Nguesso embodies "a caricature of kleptocracy, of a rich head of state that leads a poor country."

But asked in April 2013 whether he was losing sleep over the issue, Sassou Nguesso replied with a jovial "Certainly not!"

An imposing 72-year-old with close cropped hair, clad in tailored suits enhancing his confident air, Sassou Nguesso's first 13-year stint as president ended in 1992 when, then a Marxist-oriented leader, he was voted out of office.

After some time in exile in Paris the former paratrooper colonel returned to Congo in 1997 and seized power in an armed uprising ending the central African country's civil war.

Five years later he became president for the second time, succeeding Pascal Lissouba in disputed 2002 elections.

In the country's last presidential election in 2009, he won nearly 79 percent of the vote, with half of his 12 opponents boycotting the polls. Now he is vying for a third mandate after a controversial referendum in November approved a new constitution.

He has ruled over the poor nation of 4.5 million people by facing down challenges from rebels and accusations of corruption and mismanagement of resources, especially in the state-run oil sector upon which Congo heavily depends.

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- African 'patriarch' -

Sassou Nguesso, an ethnic Mboshi, was born in 1943 in Edou, a town 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Brazzaville.

He had the affectionate nickname of "Otchouembe", which means "palm nut" in his local language and is commonly used to describe a wrestler with muscles as hard as ebony.

From the age of 13 he trained to become a schoolteacher, before enrolling in an Algerian military academy in 1961, followed by another in Saint-Maixent, France, two years later.

Back in Congo, Sassou Nguesso supported a 1968 movement that toppled president Alphonse Massamba-Debat and brought Marien Ngouabi to power.

Named head of a commando unit and then defence minister, Sassou Nguesso became the regime's ideological head and co-founded the Marxist-leaning Congolese Labour Party (PCT) in 1969.

In 1979, two years after Ngouabi was assassinated, Sassou Nguesso became head of state.

He was forced to introduce multi-party elections in 1991 and was defeated by Lissouba in a presidential poll a year later.

The decade that followed was wracked with civil war, from which Sassou Nguesso ultimately emerged victorious in 1997.

Back in power he organised a presidential election in 2002, which he officially won with a score of almost 90 percent.

His 2009 victory, which was supposed to mark the start of his last term, was cleared by monitors from the African Union and Economic Community of Central African States but deemed "neither fair, nor transparent, nor balanced" by the Congolese Observatory of Human Rights.

Unfazed, Sassou Nguessou, after the 2009 death of Gabon's president Omar Bongo, who had married his daughter, took on a role of African "patriarch" serving as a mediator in regional crises.

Under his so-called "hybrid socialism", he has used Congo's oil revenues for major infrastructure and development projects.

But poverty "remains endemic" in the country, according to the International Monetary Fund.
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain on Thursday urged Defense Secretary Ash Carter to investigate what he called troubling remarks by a former senior United Launch Alliance executive about his company's dealings with the Pentagon. Brett Tobey resigned Wednesday as vice president of engineering for ULA, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, after his comments at a Colorado university were posted by Space News, a trade publication. In his remarks, Tobey contradicted ULA's reason for skipping a competition to launch GPS satellites and said the Defense Department "bent over backwards to lean the field" to ULA's advantage in that competition with new market entrant SpaceX. He also said the Pentagon was trying to figure out "how do we silence McCain," who has urged the government to penalize ULA for failing to bid in the competition despite receiving $800 million in support funding for launch services every year. "This committee treats with the utmost seriousness any implication that the Department showed favoritism to a major defense contractor or that efforts have been made to silence members of Congress," McCain told Carter at a hearing on the U.S. Defense Department's fiscal 2017 budget request. ULA said Tobey's remarks were inaccurate. ULA, the sole provider for U.S. military launches for nearly a decade, is scrambling to restructure so it can compete with Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. ULA last year said it had skipped the GPS-3 launch competition because it lacked the required accounting systems and did not have enough Russian-built RD-180 engines to power its Atlas 5 rockets due to a ban imposed by Congress after Russia's annexation of the Ukraine region of Crimea. Tobey said ULA did not want to get into a "price shootout" with SpaceX since its launches cost $125 million, or close to $200 million including the separate launch support contract, compared to around $60 million for SpaceX. Carter did not respond to McCain's request for a "full investigation" into the comments from the former ULA executive. Winston Beauchamp, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space, had no immediate comment on Tobey's remarks. He said the Air Force had concluded it could not penalize ULA for not bidding in the GPS-3 launch competition since there was no requirements for companies to bid. He also noted that the launch support contract was solely associated with launches already awarded to ULA under an earlier block buy contract. (Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by David Gregorio)
PRAIA (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation said on Friday it is sending a team to Cape Verde to evaluate the first case of the neurological disorder microcephaly, thought to be linked to the Zika virus, in the island nation off West Africa. The team, which includes epidemiologists, laboratory experts and maternal health specialists, will seek to understand the dynamics of an outbreak of Zika on the archipelago and improve the response, the WHO, the health arm of the United Nations, said in a statement. "WHO is also assisting the Ministry of Health to implement WHO guidelines for managing pregnancies of women infected with Zika to ensure women's decisions about their pregnancies are based on the best possible information about risks to the foetus," it said. Cape Verde this week identified Africa's first case of microcephaly and said the baby was born at the main hospital in the capital Praia on March 14 to a woman who was not among more than 100 women being monitored for the mosquito-borne virus. The Atlantic Ocean nation around 570 km (350 miles) west of Senegal has historic ties to Brazil, where an outbreak of Zika is suspected of causing a spike in birth defects including babies born with abnormally small heads. WHO in February declared the virus an international public health emergency due to its link to the birth defects in Brazil. (Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling party ANC said on Friday the relationship between President Jacob Zuma and a business family was not on the agenda at a meeting of the party's leadership. The Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen who moved to South Africa in the early 1990s, have been accused of making top government appointments. The Guptas have rejected the claims, saying they are the victims of a plot. "There is no item on that matter. If it comes, it comes and will be part of the discussions," Gwede Mantashe said, adding that the meeting would also discuss the economy of Africa's most industrialized country. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by James Macharia)
MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) - Five-times world champion Pavel Kulizhnikov is one of three Russian speedskaters who have tested positive for the banned drug Meldonium, the International Skating Union (ISU) said. The B samples of Olympic short track gold medalist Semion Elistratov and 2015 European short track champion Ekaterina Konstantinova also tested positive. "The results of the B sample do not change anything for us," Russian Skating Union (RSU) president Alexei Kravtsov told the R-Sport news agency on Friday. "We are still confident that our athletes are not guilty and we will defend them." Meldonium was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency's list of banned substances on Jan. 1. Kulizhnikov, 21, served a suspension for doping violations between 2012 and 2014 and a second positive test could leave him facing a life ban. (Reporting by Dmitriy Rogovitskiy, editing by Ed Osmond)
New York (AFP) - Starwood Hotels said Friday that it favors a takeover bid from a consortium led by China's Anbang Insurance over an earlier deal with Marriott, after the Anbang group increased its offer.

Starwood's board was persuaded by Anbang's $2 increase in its Monday offer to $78 a share, and said it plans to notify Marriott International that their already agreed merger was off.

Starwood had agreed to Marriott's $63.74 per share cash-and-stock offer last November for its network of 1,270 properties in 100 countries, including the Westin, Sheraton, Le Meridien and W brands.

But the Chinese giant stepped in the way this week as it announced nearly $20 billion in two proposed hotel takeover deals.

The Anbang proposal values Starwood at $13.2 billion and comes as the Chinese giant has also agreed to buy a portfolio of 16 luxury hotel and resort properties from the Blackstone group for $6.5 billion.

With the new Anbang offer, Starwood's board said in a statement that it "intends to terminate the Marriott merger agreement and enter into a definitive agreement with the consortium."

The news pushed Starwood shares up 4.5 percent to $79.91 in early trade. Shares of Marriott, which will earn a $400 million fee for Starwood cancelling their deal, rose 2.0 percent to $73.23. Anbang is privately controlled.

Anbang's partners in the deal include China-based Primavera Capital and US private equity investor JC Flowers & Co.

Anbang first pushed into the US hospitality industry in October 2014 by acquiring the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan for nearly $2 billion from Hilton Worldwide Holdings.

The purchases are part of an aggressive international push by the 12-year-old insurer, which reports assets of 1.65 trillion yuan ($254 billion), more than 3,000 branches in China and over 30,000 employees globally.

In November, Anbang bought US insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life for $1.6 billion, after snapping up Korean insurer Tong Yang Life for around $950 million and Dutch insurer Vivat for about $167 million earlier in the year.
New York (AFP) - A threatening letter containing white powder was sent to a son of Donald Trump warning the Republican frontrunner to quit the presidential race, New York police and reports said Friday.

The letter was sent to Eric Trump, 32, who has been out campaigning for his father across the United States, at his swanky Manhattan apartment at 100 Central Park South, also known as Trump Parc East, CBS News reported.

It had a Massachusetts postmark and warned that if Trump does not abandon his run for the White House harm will come to his children, the television channel said, quoting a source close to the investigation.

The envelope contained white powder that has been sent for testing but which does not initially appear to be hazardous, CBS reported.

New York police, who are investigating, told AFP that officers responded to a call about a suspicious letter at 100 Central Park South at around 7:15 pm (2315 GMT) Thursday.

"The letter has been removed and is being examined by law enforcement authorities. No injuries have been reported in connection with this incident," the police department said in a statement.

Eric Trump is the third son of the New York real estate tycoon and works as executive vice president of development and acquisitions at The Trump Organization.

Donald Trump has five children from three different marriages.
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Millions of Syrian refugees just want to return home and will do so if peace talks in Geneva are successful and the fighting ends, a spokesman for the main opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said on Friday. More than 4.8 million Syrians are refugees in countries bordering Syria, including Lebanon and Turkey, and in north Africa, while a further 900,000 have applied for asylum in Europe, mostly Germany, since the war began five years ago, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. "Honestly, if you ask any person about what place is better for him, he will say home," said Salim al-Muslat as a round of U.N.-mediated peace talks entered its fifth day. "We appreciate what the other countries did, embracing the Syrian people and the Syrian refugees. But their presence in these countries is temporary, they must return and they will return when they find a safe home in Syria," Muslat said."They are waiting for the results of these negotiations. If the results are positive, everyone will pack their luggage and head to Syria." Muslat said the negotiating team representing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government was procrastinating and refusing to enter direct talks with the HNC delegation, which wants to get quickly into negotiating a political transition. "If they insist on indirect talks, they came here in Geneva just to waste time and buy time for Assad," he said. Although the HNC is the main opposition delegation, the United Nations' mediator Staffan de Mistura has also invited several other groups who say they are part of the anti-Assad opposition. "With all respect to some people who were invited by Mr de Mistura as consultants or whatever, most of them, they were sent by the regime," Muslat said. "Theyve been defending this regime even when he (Assad) is committing crimes in Syria and I dont think that's acceptable for the Syrians. The Syrians want people who care about them to represent them here." The Geneva talks are part of a diplomatic push launched with U.S. and Russian support to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world's worst refugee crisis and allowed for the rise of Islamic State. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Gareth Jones)
A tanker truck explosion killed at least seven people and seriously injured about 30 others on Thursday in Haiti.

The incident took place in Hinche, a town located about 110 kilometres northeast of Port-au-Prince.

A witness told AFP that the tanker truck hit a wall, spilling gasoline. The truck was getting in place to unload at a Total service station. The flammable liquid spread, catching alight when it reached vendors cooking food on outdoor grills, according to Times Live reports.

I saw people screaming as they were being burned alive, and no one could come to their aid, another witness told AFP.

Seven people died immediately, Haitis Civil Defence office said. A number of burn victims were rushed to hospital for treatment.

Soldiers with the United Nations stabilisation force rushed to the scene, where they contained the fire.

As a result, four houses went up in flames and 22 vehicles were damaged, local authorities said in a preliminary assessment.

Image: Wikimedia commons
ZURICH (Reuters) - A Swiss court sentenced three Iraqis for terrorism offences on Friday, a verdict that the senior prosecutor said should send a message to jidhadists not to see the country as an easy target. In Switzerland's first convictions of foreign Islamist militants, the three were jailed for between 42 and 56 months for belonging to or supporting a terrorist organization, at a trial conducted under tight security in the city of Bellinzona. A fourth man was acquitted The three main defendants, who had denied wrongdoing, were arrested in early 2014 on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks and helping Islamic State militants enter the country. Authorities said they had used code words such as "watermelons" for bombs when communicating via social media. One of the men was convicted of being in Switzerland illegally. Swiss TV said the man identified as the ringleader had been granted asylum status which had since been revoked. The verdicts are not final. The defendants, aged between 29 and 35, and the prosecutors all have the right to appeal. The prosecutors had asked for sentences of up to 7-1/2 years. "The verdict says very clearly that Switzerland will not tolerate abuse of its liberal and open values via terrorist activity," Attorney General Michael Lauber, Switzerland's most senior prosecutor, told reporters. Lauber's office said in December, when Geneva temporarily raised its security alert level amid a hunt for terrorist suspects, that it was conducting 33 criminal proceedings linked to Islamist militancy. (Reporting by Michael Shields and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. In one of the southern units of the Defense Army, on March 17, at 17: 30 pm, serviceman of the Defense Army Hovhannes Harutyunyan, born 1997, was mortally wounded as a result of violation of the rules of use of weapons. As "Armenpress was informed by the press service of the Ministry of Defense of Nagorno Karabakh, an investigation is underway to determine the details of the incident.

The Nagorno Karabakh Defense Ministry shares the grief of loss and offers its support to the soldier's family, relatives and co-servicemen.

On the contact line of the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan opposing forces, on March 17 and early morning of March 18, the adversary fired more than 600 shots towards Armenian positions from different caliber weapons. The Defense Army conducted punitive actions to suppress the adversarys aggression.
Hillary Clinton in Florida after her victory there this week. (Carlos Barria / Reuters)

In contrast to Donald Trumps theme, Ive been saying all along that America Is Already Great Again. But his campaign is certainly making the country even greater in one specific way, which is the volume of interesting and impassioned correspondence that is coming in about the man, the era, and the implications.

Ill keep doling these out in regular increments, combining them thematically where possible. Todays assortment starts with a question about his most likely general-election opponent:

OK, Trumps an outlier, but why is Hillary Clinton considered equally beyond the pale? From a reader in California who was in grade school when Hillary Clinton became First Lady:

I have noticed that the Trump supporters you quote on your blog have a common disdain for Clinton. It's almost like their support for the TV actor is linked to her at least in part. In fact, every person I have personally spoken to who supports Sanders or one of the Republicans mentions her almost immediately when asked why they prefer their candidate of choice. Nearly all my life (I was 10 years old in 1992) I have heard of the horrors and evils of this woman. Yet, since I was a child and now into my mid-30s I haven't understood exactly why she is so hated. Do you have insight? What about this woman is so distasteful beyond basic partisanship? She seems like the only serious candidate to me and if she truly is that awful I would really like to know why!

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp <6502.T> said it is currently conducting a stress test on its nuclear business to assess whether it will require a writedown. The Asahi newspaper earlier reported that Toshiba is considering a 200 billion yen ($1.8 billion) writedown for it U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse. The electronics conglomerate had previously said such a writedown was not needed because its nuclear business was mostly profitable. The company, which is trying to streamline its bloated business and move beyond an accounting scandal, forecast an operating profit of at least 120 billion yen in the year starting in April. (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Tunis (AFP) - A Tunisian court has sentenced ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to 10 years in jail for abuse of power, the prosecution said Friday, in the latest case against him.

The exiled former dictator was on Thursday found guilty in absentia of "using his position to obtain unjustified advantages, causing harm to the administration" in a case involving an advertising agency, spokesman Kamel Barbouche told AFP, without providing further details.

Ben Ali, who fled Tunisia to Saudi Arabia in January 2011 following a popular uprising against his 23-year rule, has been convicted in a number of cases in the past five years including for corruption.

He also received a life sentence in absentia in 2012 for ordering security forces to fire on protestors during the revolt.

Ben Ali's lawyer Mounir Bensalha was not immediately available for comment.

On Monday, government spokesman Khaled Chouket said in comments aired on radio that he wished Ben Ali would return from exile.

Authorities have faced a string of deadly jihadist attacks and failed to redress the economy since Ben Ali's ouster.

Nostalgia for the Ben Ali era has spread among a small section of society, but the former president remains largely discredited in public opinion.
By John Irish TUNIS (Reuters) - France on Thursday called on Tunisia's youth to resist the path of Islamic extremism and set the example for the rest of the region, while Paris vowed to firm up security and economic ties with Tunis as it struggles with rising Islamist militancy. With its free elections and secular history, France's former North African colony has been a target for jihadists looking to upset the young democracy just five years after Tunisians overthrew their autocratic leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in a model of democratic transition. It has since managed the political transformation but is suffering the effects of home-grown radicalization and instability in Libya, where a political void has enabled the Islamic State militant group to expand with violence spilling into Tunisia. Economic development and reforms have failed to keep pace with the political changes. Widespread unemployment, especially in disadvantaged areas and among young people in a country where more than half the population is under 29, has helped fuel growing social unrest. "In the most remote areas, in the most marginalized segments of the population (...), young people become easy prey for the preachers of hate, isolationism and violence," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at the inauguration of the French Institute in Tunis. "The wrong path should not be chosen." More than 3,000 Tunisians have left to fight for Islamic State and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. Security officials say Tunisians are taking more and more command positions in Islamic State in Libya. "The success that Tunisia has traced is what's at stake and through that the future of the entire region," Ayrault said. "This is why the Tunisian youth have a duty to resist. Your success is a bloody denial of Islamic State." A major economic partner, France has increased its support fearing derailment of the political transition. It has pledged a 1 billion euro (US$1.1 billion) aid package over 5 years to stimulate development in poor regions, foster job creation, especially for young people, and modernize Tunisia's administration, a major hurdle to the disbursement of international aid. "There is a socio-economic breeding ground on which radicalization is prospering," said a senior French diplomat. "There is a direct link between massive youth unemployment, neglected regions and the fact that Tunisia provides one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters for jihadists." In terms of security, Paris is providing intelligence and training for Tunisia's special forces and implementing a 20 million-euro package aimed at equipping them, but it has ruled out sending advisers to help Tunisians stop border infiltration. (Editing by Patrick Markey, Toni Reinhold)
Brussels (AFP) - Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hailed a "historic day" Friday as the European Union and his country clinched a deal to try and curb the flow of migrants to Europe.

"It is also a historic day because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU," Davutoglu said at a press conference following a Brussels summit.

"We today realised that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future."

Under the deal, all new irregular migrants arriving in Greece will be sent back to Turkey.

The EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian readmitted to Turkey from Greece in a move designed to discourage them from risking their lives in boats operated by smugglers.

In return, Turkey won an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to six billion euros ($6.8 billion) and visa-free travel by June.
Brussels (AFP) - Turkish premier Ahmet Davutoglu warned EU leaders ahead of crunch talks Friday that Ankara's offer to curb the refugee flow to Europe was strictly a humanitarian rather than a "bargaining" issue.

"For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining but an issue of values, humanitarian values as well as European values," Davutoglu said as he arrived for a summit in Brussels with the bloc's 28 national leaders.

"EU and Turkey we have the same goal, the same objective to help Syrian refugees especially and also to have a new future in our continent in a bright manner," the premier said ahead of an initial meeting with EU Council President Donald Tusk.

Tusk will present Davutoglu with the EU's controversial plans to halt the flood of migrants, which would see Turkey take back all those landing in Greece in return for key concessions, including speeding up Ankara's long-stalled EU membership bid.

Europe is counting on a deal to curb an unprecedented influx of 1.2 million migrants since the start of 2015, driven by the war in Syria, although Turkey is expected to exact a heavy price for its consent.

"I am sure we will be achieving our goal to help all refugees as well as deepen our relations," Davutoglu said.
By Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday Europe should look at its own record on migrants before telling Turkey what to do and accused it of "dancing in a minefield" by supporting terrorist groups. In combative comments made as Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu meets European Union leaders in Brussels, Erdogan also said Turkey would only listen to external criticism on its rights record when it was justified. "At a time when Turkey is hosting three million (migrants), those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves," Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television. He accused some countries of directly or indirectly supporting terrorism, in apparent reference to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey's southeast. A PKK offshoot has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed 66 people in Ankara in the last month. European leaders have expressed concern about the loss of civilian life in the southeast amid Turkey's military operations to flush out the PKK, urging it to use proportional force. "Our struggle against terrorism is measured and legitimate ... Every terrorist organization active in our region and in Turkey has unified against Turkey. Many states, primarily Western countries, still cannot display a principled stance against these groups," he said. He complained that Belgian authorities had allowed a pro-PKK tent to be put up outside the summit venue in Brussels, although he said its flag and posters had later been taken down. European Union leaders are trying to convince Turkey's prime minister to help end Europe's migration crisis in return for financial and political concessions, but they remain unsure if Friday's Brussels summit can clinch a deal. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Exports of the IT field have significantly increased in 2015, reaching 214.4 million US dollars, which makes 50% of the software and services sector (without internet service providers). The export market is still dominated by foreign companies, whose share of exports is 76%.

As "Armenpress" reports, according to the data of Enterprise Incubator Foundation, the maximum share of exports- about 79.5% goes to the US and Canada, 10.8 percent to Europe and 8.4% to Russia and other CIS countries. Among other countries where there is demand towards Armenian services is the UAE, which mainly outsources customized accounting, banking and finance programs.

Software and services companies are branches of foreign enterprises that export their products almost completely. In addition, many local businesses also export significant portion of their products and services. Over 50% of IT companies export their products and services, but by different volumes.

The study identified the main factors impeding the growth of exports. These include the poor awareness by international business community of the Armenian IT sector, remoteness from major IT markets, as well as the language barrier, which, however, is less important.
By Steve Bittenbender

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Reuters) - Two staff members of the Kentucky youth detention center where a teenage girl died have been indicted by a grand jury on misdemeanor charges of failing to perform their official duties, prosecutors said on Friday.

The indictments against Reginald Wyndham and Victor Holt for failing to do proper bed checks came late Thursday. Hardin County Attorney Jenny Oldham said no arraignment date has been set and attorneys for the pair could not immediately be reached for comment.

If convicted, they face up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $250.

While medical examiners determined that 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen died in her sleep on Jan. 11 due to a genetic heart condition, an investigation at the Lincoln Village Detention Center revealed that guards failed to perform all of the required checks on McMillen.

Only 75 of the 117 checks could be verified, the report from state justice officials said.

Hardin County Commonwealth Attorney Shane Young, whose office presented the case to the grand jury, has been investigating the circumstances leading to McMillen's death, which a medical examiner determined to be of natural causes.

He said he did not expect to present anything else to a grand jury, unless state police provide additional information.

McMillen arrived at the detention center after being arrested on Jan. 10 for an altercation at her mothers house in Shelbyville, 30 miles east of Louisville.

While being processed, guards used a restraint technique on her to check for drugs or weapons.

Activists have questioned whether the technique played a role in the black teens death and said her race may have been a factor in her treatment. Medical examiners said they found no signs of lethal trauma.

Justice Secretary John Tilley promised to provide McMillens family with 60 hours of video footage that detailed her day at the center once the state police investigation ends. That footage, however, does not include an unobstructed view of the restrained search, he said.

(Reporting by Steve Bittenbedner; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Jeff Mason and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States government will declassify documents from U.S. military and intelligence agencies related to Argentina's 1976-83 "Dirty War," the seven-year period when a military dictatorship cracked down on left-wing opponents, U.S. officials said on Thursday. The move coincides with President Barack Obama's visit to Argentina next week on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that installed the dictatorship, which the United States initially supported. Argentina returned to democracy in 1983. The declassification effort will include records from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the presidential libraries at the National Archives. It follows the declassification in 2002 of more than 4,000 State Department cables and other documents related to human rights abuses from the 1976-83 period. "President Obama, at the request of the Argentine government, will announce a comprehensive effort to declassify additional documents, including for the first time military and intelligence records," U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice said in a speech hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington. "On this anniversary and beyond, we're determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation, she said. It is the latest effort by Obama to reconcile with Latin Americans by addressing Washingtons past backing of former military dictatorships in the region, such as he did on previous trips to Chile and Brazil. The U.S. role in Latin America during previous administrations helped fuel ant-American sentiment, especially on the left. Obama has declined on previous trips to Latin America to apologize for CIA activities in the region during decades past, but he left open the door to U.S. assistance in investigations of human rights abuses committed by former military governments there. Argentina welcomed the announcement. "Anything that helps analyze what happened during this chapter is a positive, an Argentine government spokesman said, declining to comment further on a matter he said Obama and President Mauricio Macri would address. Obama plans to visit Parque de la Memoria, or Memory Park, to honor the victims of that period. The declassification announcement was aimed also at soothing criticism of the White House for planning the Argentina trip during such a sensitive week. (Additional reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Leslie Adler)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday the United States had been helping French and Belgian authorities to boost security since November's Paris attacks, and that this would continue. The comments from White House spokesman Josh Earnest came after news broke that Salah Abdeslam, the most wanted fugitive from the attacks in which 130 people died, was wounded and caught in a shootout in Brussels Friday. Earnest told a daily press briefing he did not know whether President Barack Obama had been briefed. "The United States obviously has significant resources and significant capabilities, and we have used them to assist the French and the Belgians as they have conducted investigations into the attacks and as they have taken steps to try to safeguard their country," Earnest said "We're going to continue to stay in close touch with them on this," he said. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Mohammad Zargham; Writing by Megan Cassella; Editing by James Dalgleish)
A U.S. court sentenced a man to 22 and a half years in prison on Thursday after he attempted to recruit fighters to join the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Syria. It is the longest prison sentenced given to an American for supporting the radical Islamist group.

The Western District of New Yorks lawyer William Hochul called Mufid Elfgeeh, a 32-year-old from Rochester, one of the first ISIL recruiters ever captured by U.S. authorities, in reference to another term for the group. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford said that he was clearly on a path of destruction.

Elfgeeh is a pizza shop owner but was the first American accused of recruiting for ISIS. He was convicted of providing material support to the group. If he is sufficiently well behaved during his incarceration, he would only have to serve 85 percent of his time.

Prosecutors said that Elfgeehs arrest and jailing were significant as it had prevented possible attacks on U.S. soil, recruitment to the group.

Most importantly, they said, he rejected his support for group before he was sentenced, showing that the group did not have the dedicated support that it attempts to project.

"They try to create this false narrative that everyone is in favor of them," said Hochul.

He was arrested after attempting to buy firearms and silencers from undercover FBI agents and authorities accused him of wishing to kill American soldiers with the handguns.

"I think that, beyond any doubt, he was interested in not only getting individuals to join ISIS but he himself was interested in and made overt steps to actually engage in violence," Adam Cohen, who heads the western New York office of the FBI, told the USA Today affiliate the Democrat and Chronicle after Elfgeehs sentencing.

His sentencing came on the same day that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry defined the militant groups mass killings of Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Syria as genocide.

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By Chris Arsenault TORONTO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As recession bites and land disputes hit Brazil's agricultural heartland, indigenous people face land grabs and assaults by violent gangs, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people. Once a world leader in restoring indigenous land rights, Brazil, with a government mired in a corruption scandal, is not doing enough to protect indigenous people who are attacked for protecting their ancestral land, she said. "There have been extremely worrying regressions in the protection of indigenous peoples' rights," Tauli-Corpuz said in a statement after a 10-day fact-finding mission to the country. "Through its paralysis, the Brazilian state appears to be establishing the conditions for conflict which will ultimately have a devastating impact on indigenous peoples and society as a whole." Brazil's National Indian Foundation, a government body responsible for ensuring the rights of indigenous people, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the U.N. report, nor did the Ministry of Agriculture. Brazil was one of the first countries to grant indigenous rights on a large-scale following 1973 legislation allowing indigenous people control over territory they historically inhabited, even if they didn't have formal legal title to those lands. The country's National Indian Foundation has granted 545 titles for indigenous lands covering nearly 13 percent of Brazil's territory. But these rulings are not always enforced in South America's largest country, as powerful interests covet territories for resource projects, Tauli-Corpuz said. She singled out the Belo Monte hydro-electric dam, currently under construction along the Xingu River which could displace more than 20,000 people, as one of the big resource projects hurting indigenous peoples. "Threats and intimidation" against indigenous land activists have been "perpetrated with impunity" in recent years, she said. Tauli-Corpuz called for immediate measures to be taken to protect indigenous leaders, 138 of whom were killed in 2014, according to the United Nations. Indigenous people account for less than one percent of Brazil's population of more than 200 million, Tauli-Corpuz said. Nearly 40 percent of indigenous people in Brazil live in poverty, compared to less than 10 percent of the general population, according to a 2010 census. (Reporting By Chris Arsenault, Editing by Ros Russell please add:; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and the Philippines announced a deal on Friday allowing for a rotating U.S. military presence at five Philippine bases under a security agreement inked amid rising tensions with China in the South China Sea. A joint statement after an annual U.S.-Philippines Strategic Dialogue listed the sites as Antonio Bautista Air Base, close to the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Basa Air Base north of Manila, Fort Magsaysay in Palayan, Lumbia Air Base in Mindanao and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Amy Searight said the deal was reached under a 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that grants Washington increased military presence in its former colony through rotation of ships and aircraft for humanitarian and maritime security operations. Searight told the meeting Manila was a "critical U.S. ally" and ties had never been stronger. She said U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter would visit the Philippines in April to discuss implementation of the agreement. U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg told reporters movements of supplies and personnel to the base locations would take place "very soon." He described the agreement, valid for an initial 10 years, as "a pretty big deal," that would allow for a greater U.S. presence as part of the U.S. rebalance to Asia and enhance the alliance with the Philippines. However, he stressed that it did not allow for permanent U.S. bases that existed for 94 years until 1991, when the Philippine Senate voted to evict them. "This isn't a return to that era. These are different reasons and for 21st century issues, including maritime security," he said, adding that all U.S. deployments would require Philippine approval. The United States is keen to boost the military capabilities of East Asian countries and its own regional presence in the face of China's assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest trade routes. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said Friday's agreement came at an important time ahead of a ruling in a case the Philippines has brought against China over its South China Sea claims in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague. On Thursday, the U.S. Navy said it had seen activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more Chinese land reclamation in the South China Sea. In an interview with Reuters, Navy chief Admiral John Richardson also expressed concern that the Hague ruling, which is expected in late May, could prompt Beijing to declare a South China Sea exclusion zone. Searight said the Pentagon had told the U.S. Congress of its intention to provide $50 million to help build regional maritime security. She said the Philippines would get "the lions share" of the funds, which are expected to go toward improving radar and other South China Sea monitoring capabilities. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman)
This perfume bottle could be yours if you take an Uber on March 26. (Photo: getty/ Collage Stephanie Jones)

Much like Kanye West circa 2012, Uber is doing everything it can to appeal to the fashion crowd  and its working. The car service has been keen on proving just how friendly it is to the Louboutin-clad crowd through recent partnerships. Recently, the company collaborated with Rag & Bone to provide regular people with tickets to the labels spring 2016 show and even teamed up with Lyst, its largest competitor, to deliver designer wares to a few lucky New Yorkers. Now, according to WWD, Uber continues being uber-eager, this time collaborating with Marc Jacobs to promote the brands Daisy fragrance.

Taking note of the pungent smell epidemic sweeping car services around the world, Uber users now have the option to hail special cabs decked out in daisies, with full-size bottles of the fragrance available to spritz  and purchase  by using the promo code MJDAISY. The offer starts Saturday, March 26, and lasts from noon to 6 p.m. (Unfortunately, despite Ubers presence from Uganda to Ukraine, the option is available only in the DUMBO, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint areas of Brooklyn, as well as below 59th Street in Manhattan.)

Uber has steadily been trying to branch out from its regular taxi service, offering programs like UberRUSH, in which businesses can use Ubers cars to quickly deliver their goods to customers. On the surface, Ubers interest in wooing fashion fans and insiders may seem a bit random, but in reality it makes a lot of sense.



The service is beloved by the women who wear open-toe stilettos in the winter while running to and from fashion shows, market appointments, and events. Front-row regulars seek the warm comfort of a backseat to recharge their chilled bodies (and iPhones), especially during Fashion Week. In February, Uber penned a post lauding the virtues of using its Uber POOL service during the shows. In September 2014, it joined forces with the Glamsquad app to bring NYFW showgoers access to hair and makeup artists to help get them front-row-ready. During Mens Fashion Week in Paris in June 2014, the company linked up with Mr. Porter on a special fleet of branded taxis that included a goodie bag curated by the e-tailer.

Ubers moves to both appeal to fashion insiders and help make the industry more accessible for outsiders is pretty genius. Granted, this latest action with Marc Jacobs, though smart, does seem a little random. The scheme might not come up smelling like roses, but it certainly will smell of daisies.



Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


Tunis (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon will visit Tunisia on March 28 and 29, mainly to take part in a conference on the post-revolt problem of employment, a UN representative said Friday.

The secretary general will also meet members of quartet that won the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to the success of Tunisia's democratic transition.

It will be his third visit to the North African country since the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

According to the UN Information Centre in Tunis, Ban will be joined on the first day of his visit by World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim in a meeting with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.

Since its revolution, Tunisia has managed to transition to democracy but has struggled to restart its economy.

It registered economic growth of less than one percent last year, as the vital tourism sector struggled to recover from attacks on the Bardo museum and the resort of Sousse, which killed 38, including 30 Britons.
Sanaa (AFP) - The Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen for one year has caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, the UN rights chief said Friday, warning international crimes may have been committed.

During its campaign against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen there have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.

Rights groups have also raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the Huthi rebels, but United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the coalition bore the greatest responsibility.

"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes," Zeid said in a statement.

"We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition."

That could include war crimes but an investigation would need to be conducted, Zeid's spokesman said.

His office said it had tallied just under 9,000 civilian casualties, including 3,218 killed, since the coalition on March 26 last year intervened to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

The Huthis are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Zeid voiced particular alarm at two air strikes on a market this week in northern Yemen's rebel-held Hajja province.

The UN children's agency on Thursday put the death toll from those strikes at 119, and Zeid's office said Friday that 106 of those killed in the crowded market were civilians, including 24 children.

- 'Repeated failure' -

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded an investigation into the incident, one of the deadliest yet in the war.

During an exclusive interview on Wednesday the coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP the strikes targeted "a militia gathering", the term he uses to describe Huthis.

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Assiri said an independent panel was being formed nationally to examine charges of possible abuses against civilians in the war.

The alliance says it does not aim at civilians, and that targeting is verified many times to ensure non-combatants will not be killed.

Zeid's office condemned "the repeated failure of the coalition forces to take effective actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, and to publish transparent, independent investigations into those that have already occurred."

Assiri said the coalition itself has investigated various incidents and some of the findings have been released.

The latest controversy comes with the coalition "in the end of the major combat phase", according to Assiri, who said security stabilisation and then reconstruction would follow.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday that "we would welcome and do welcome" Assiri's comment about an end to major operations.

"We have expressed our concerns about the loss of innocent life in Yemen. The violence there that is plaguing that country has caught too many innocent civilians in the crossfire," Earnest said.

- 'Horrific costs' -

While the United States has provided logistical and intelligence support to the coalition, the White House has privately expressed anger about the loss of civilian lives.

US support includes targeting assistance, which officials say makes strikes less indiscriminate.

"The Yemen operation I think by all accounts has produced horrific costs and tangled the United States in this conflict," said Frederic Wehrey of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

There may now be "the start of a recalibration" but the proof will lie in what happens on the ground, he said.

"They've done these announcements before," Wehrey told AFP.

Last April, Saudi Arabia announced an end to its initial air strikes in Yemen, dubbed "Decisive Storm", and a Saudi newspaper proclaimed "Mission Accomplished".

But the war has continued, with coalition forces providing training, equipment and guidance to Yemen's army, backed by the coalition air support, Assiri said.

Anti-rebel forces have retaken territory, including much of the south, but have failed to dislodge the Shiite Huthi rebels from Sanaa or to completely remove them from the country's third city Taez where intense battles continue.

Mustafa Alani, of the independent Gulf Research Centre, said that although fighting is not necessarily going to finish by March 26 "the operation is basically reaching its end".

He said the coalition was keen "not to go beyond that psychological date."
Havana (AFP) - US President Barack Obama's historic visit to Havana on Sunday will cap the launch of a new era in relations between the United States and Cuba.

Their troubled relationship has been marked by more than a century of US dominance and Cold War hostility.

April 25, 1898

The United States covets Cuba throughout much of the 19th century but fails to buy or annex the island, located less than 125 miles (200 kilometers) off the coast of Florida, from its Spanish colonial rulers.

In April 1898 Washington declares war on Spain after a US warship sinks in Havana harbor. US troops are sent to the island to shore up the Cuban struggle for independence.

The Treaty of Paris formalizes the island's independence later that year, but Cuba now comes under a US military government.

Although the United States allows Cuba to gain formal independence in 1902, Washington retains control by grafting the "Platt Amendment" onto its constitution, allowing it the right to intervene in Cuban affairs, even militarily if needed.

January 1, 1959

Washington is initially indifferent when Fidel Castro and his band of "bearded ones" seize power after three years of guerrilla warfare against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. But their revolution sets in motion a breakdown in relations.

Castro's regime angers the Americans by launching a campaign to nationalize US assets. President Dwight Eisenhower in turn severs diplomatic ties on January 3, 1961.

The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-sponsored anti-Castro troops in April further alienates Washington and Havana. It is then that Castro officially declares the "socialist character" of his revolution.

October 14, 1962

The pivotal Cuban Missile Crisis, which takes place between October 14 and 28, 1962, comes a hair's breadth from launching a global nuclear conflict.

Eight months earlier, in February, Washington had enacted a financial and economic embargo against the island in response to the Soviet Union's courting of Castro, who begins supporting various Latin American guerilla groups.

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March 1977

The two sides experience a period of detente after US President Jimmy Carter's election in 1976.

In March 1977 Carter lifts some travel restrictions -- later restored by Ronald Reagan in 1982 -- and agrees with Castro to open interest sections in each other's countries that would mainly function as consulates.

In 2002 Carter becomes the first former US president in decades to visit the island. He urges the Castro regime to democratize and improve human rights.

December 17, 2014

December 17 -- or "17D" in Cuba -- is remembered as the day Obama and President Raul Castro surprised the world in simultaneous speeches announcing their countries would begin normalizing relations.

The two sides restore diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015. US Secretary of State John Kerry visits Havana a month later to raise the US flag outside the newly re-opened embassy.

On Sunday, Obama is set to become the first US president to set foot on Cuban soil since Calvin Coolidge, who visited the island for a Pan-American summit in 1928.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. North Korea launched a ballistic missile off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, Armenpress reports, citing CNN, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday.

The South Korean military said it was closely tracking and monitoring the situation and maintaining a readiness posture for any North Korean provocation.

The launch was confirmed by U.S. officials. A U.S. defense official told CNN the United States tracked two ballistic missiles.

The launch came around 5:55 a.m. local time, near Sukchon county, South Pyongan province, and flew a distance of 800 kilometers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

It comes one week after North Korea fired two missiles from North Hwanghae province, south of Pyongyang, toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The South tracked the projectiles and is monitoring the situation, it said.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned North Korea's actions and called on the country "to exercise self-restraint." He said Japan would take "precautionary measures," including surveillance.

The action is the latest display of military power on the peninsula that roils with tension.

Last week's launch appeared to be confirmed in a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency. It followed a North Korean claim that it had miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit on ballistic missiles, according to KCNA.

The agency published a statement that "all agreements on economic cooperation and business exchanges adopted by North and South are invalid."

And Seoul last month ordered the closure of the Kaesong industrial complex, a rare symbol of cooperation between the two Koreas.

Describing the shuttering of Kaesong as a "unilateral" move, KCNA said Pyongyang "will completely liquidate all South Korean companies and relevant assets" within its borders.

Seoul has condemned the suspension of economic ties, with the Unification Ministry saying it would "never accept" the move, which it described as a "provocative action."

The statement added it would hold Pyongyang responsible for any damage to South Korean assets north of the border.

Tensions have heightened on the Korean Peninsula since a fourth North Korean nuclear test and joint U.S.-South Korean military drills.
Sanaa (AFP) - As tribal mediation brings calm to the Saudi-Yemen border after a nearly year-long campaign led by Riyadh against Yemeni rebels, Washington has welcomed talk of an end to the coalition's major combat.

The United Nations on Friday echoed US concerns over non-military casualties, saying the alliance had caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the war.

"We have expressed our concerns about the loss of innocent life in Yemen. The violence there that is plaguing that country has caught too many innocent civilians in the crossfire," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday.

He said "we would welcome and do welcome" a statement from the coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, who told AFP in an exclusive interview that the coalition is "in the end of the major combat phase".

This would be followed by security stabilisation and then reconstruction, Assiri said.

The coalition intervened on March 26 last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Supported by coalition air strikes and some ground troops, anti-rebel forces have retaken territory, including much of the south.

But they have failed to dislodge the Shiite Huthi rebels from Sanaa or to completely remove them from the country's third city Taez where intense battles continue.

Mustafa Alani, of the independent Gulf Research Centre, said that although fighting is not necessarily going to finish by March 26 "the operation is basically reaching its end."

He said the coalition is keen "not to go beyond that psychological date."

Rights groups have raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the coalition as well as by the Huthis, who are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

There have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.

Story continues

"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together," UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

The United Nations said 119 people were killed in air strikes on a market in the rebel-held northern province of Hajja on Tuesday.

Zeid's office said 106 of those killed were civilians, including 24 children.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded an investigation into the incident, one of the deadliest yet in the war.

- 'Unspoken war' -

During his interview with AFP on Wednesday, Assiri said the strikes targeted "a militia gathering".

He said that an independent panel was being formed nationally to examine charges of possible abuses against civilians in the war.

The alliance says it does not aim at civilians, and that targeting is verified many times to ensure that non-combatants will not be killed.

While the United States has provided logistical and intelligence support to the coalition, the White House has privately expressed anger about the loss of civilian lives.

US support includes targeting assistance, which officials say makes strikes less indiscriminate.

"Absent the intel and precision guided munitions we provide, the civilian casualties would be worse," a US defence official said.

The World Health Organisation says fighting in Yemen has killed more than 6,200 people over the past year and the United Nations has warned of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

About half the dead have been civilians.

The Huthis launched cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the intervention, with more than 90 people -- both military and civilian -- killed on the Saudi side of the frontier by shelling and in skirmishes.

Assiri said the border was essentially calm since a mediation effort by tribal leaders last week allowed aid to start moving into Yemen, including to rebel-held areas, at the Alb crossing in Dhahran al-Janoub, northeast of Jazan city.

Alani, the analyst, said the Saudis hope the same model could work for "the city war", where Yemeni forces are making progress, albeit slowly.

On a third front, the coalition is fighting jihadists who have taken advantage of Yemen's conflict to gain ground in the country's south.

"The Saudis hit a number of targets in Mukalla (the capital of Hadramawt province) and in the south," Alani said.

"This war is an unspoken war but it is going on."
By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Virginia man pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court on Friday to trying to join Islamic State in Syria earlier this year, becoming the fourth American this week to be convicted of attempting to support the group.

Joseph Hassan Farrokh, 28, a U.S. citizen from Woodbridge, Virginia, admitted that he attempted to fly to Jordan in January in order to cross into Syria and fight for Islamic State, in a plea agreement hearing at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria.

An acquaintance of Farrokh, Mahmoud Elhassan, 25, was also charged in January with helping Farrokh join the militant group by driving him partway to the airport and by introducing Farrokh to someone he believed to be an Islamic State recruiter -- but who was actually an FBI informant.

Elhassan has not yet entered a plea in his case, but he planned to eventually join Farrokh in Syria to fight with Islamic State, according to Farrokh's plea agreement.

Convictions for Islamic State-related activity by Americans have become more frequent in recent months as more than 80 such cases brought by U.S. prosecutors since 2013 work their way through federal courts.

Farrokh is the fourth American to be convicted of attempting to support Islamic State since last Friday, when a Mississippi man pleaded guilty to trying to join the jihadist group with his wife.

An Ohio man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to urging people to join the militant group through social media, and an Arizona man was convicted by a jury on Thursday of helping his roommates attack a "Draw Mohammed" cartoon contest in Texas last year.

Farrokh is one of five people whom federal prosecutors in Virginia's Eastern District have accused of trying to join Islamic State in the past year and a half.

One of them, Reza Niknejad, 20, successfully traveled to Syria last year to join the group, according to court records. Two other defendants in the district were sentenced last year to 4-1/2 and 11-1/3 years in prison for trying to do the same.

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More recently, a 26-year-old American man who fought alongside Islamic State was identified through his Virginia driver's license as Mohammed Jamal Khweis after being captured by Kurdish forces in Iraq earlier this week.

Iraqi authorities will have to transfer him into U.S. custody before federal prosecutors can bring any charges against him, the Justice Department said.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Alistair Bell)
If you have a couple of million to spend on a fixer-upper, youll love the home sitting atop our weekly look at the most-clicked homes on realtor.com.

Located in Louisiana, the locally infamous fixer-upper has been under construction for over a decadeand still isnt done! Originally built for a local attorney who wound up in jail on drug trafficking charges, the enormous mansion has an exterior thats complete, but inside its an eerie vision of sawdust and wood.

The local agent we spoke with said almost $5 million has been spent on the homes construction (its being sold as is), which makes the homes $1.93 million asking price a mite more attractive. If you have the wherewithal to spend a million more to finish the mansion, perhaps this Louisiana purchase could prove savvy.

Outside of the top spot, we found a horse farm in Indiana, a charming Southern Colonial in Baton Rouge, and, of course, a log cabin in North Carolina.

Whether you prefer a home thats move-in ready or are curious about the most massive fixer-upper weve ever seen, this weeks most popular homes are right this way

Price: $419,900

Why its here: Only 6 years old, this cute brick home oozes charm. Wed like to set up shop in the basement, where youll find an elegant mahogany bar ready for entertaining.

Homer Glen, IL



Price: $455,000

Why its here: The cheapest Frank Lloyd Wright home currently for sale continues to attract interest. Whether the interest will translate into a buyer for this Usonian gem remains to be seen.

Galesburg, MI



Price: $599,988

Why its here: The home of former Syracuse football coach Scott Shafer is a spacious five-bedroom structure just 20 minutes from the university. Orange paint is entirely optional.

Manlius, NY



Price: $1,395,000

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Why its here: This charming Southern Colonial was designed by architect Hays Town in 1937. Its only one of about 100 homes designed by Town in Baton Rouge, according to listing agent Ann Mullins. She said whenever one of Towns designs hits the market, it creates a stir.

Baton Rouge, LA



Price: $5,500,000

Why its here: This 380-acre farm was owned by NASCAR legend Kyle Petty. The sale of the massive compound, known as Adaumont Farm, is nearing the checkered flag.

Lakeside view



Price: $149,900

Why its here: Our week wouldnt be complete if we didnt see at least one log cabin make the most popular list. This particular cabin has all the rustic touches youd expect, and it sits on 10 acres of land.

Siler City, NC



Price: $325,000

Why its here: Listing agent Cindy Peters said the homeowners shared the link on Facebook and generated a bunch of interest in this charming Craftsman from the early 1900s. Theres just not a lot of homes with this type of historical integrity matched with modern touches, said Peters, who already has potential buyers circling the home and suspects itll be under contract soon.

Celina, TX



Price: $1,500,000

Why its here: Guard the towers! Last weeks most popular home slipped two spots. This Wisconsin castle was a dream project for its builder, but will it fulfill the dream of some fair maiden?

Beaver Dam, WI



Price: $3,450,000

Why its here: Listing agent Jack Lawson said he couldnt pinpoint exactly why this 192-acre compound was so popular. He said hes been advertising the farm to buyers who make their living with horsesthe property comes with an outdoor horse arena, three indoor arenas, and two horse barns. About 40 minutes outside of Indianapolis, the property would also be well-suited for a corporate retreat, Lawson said.

North Salem, IN



Price: $1,925,000

Why its here: According to listing agent Will Frederick, theres a lot of local gossip surrounding this home about an hour north of New Orleans. Frederick said about $4.6 million has already been sunk into the mansion to reach its current (unfinished) status, making it a relative bargain at the current price. Conceived as a grand personal residence for local class-action attorney Hugh Sibley, the project stalled when Sibley was arrested in 2009 on charges of money laundering and drug conspiracy. He pleaded guilty in 2010. Sibley was then sued by the federal government in 2013 for failure to pay his income taxes. He died in 2015.

Meanwhile, the mansion has been sitting empty. Frederick said hes partnered with a local builder and is marketing the structure as is to businesses and home buyers who can afford the estimated $500,000 to $1,250,000 in costs to finish the construction. His gut tells him the building will probably become commercial space. Not too many people walk around with $2 million to spend on a fixer-upper, he noted.

Hammond, LA

The post This Weeks Most Popular Home Is a $2M Fixer-Upper in Louisiana appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.





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Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been on the run since the November 13 attacks (Photo: AFP)

Europes most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, has been arrested in Brussels after a police raid Friday.

The 26-year-old Belgian national is the only known living suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people last November  and he has been on the run ever since. According to the Belgian federal prosecutor, Abdeslams fingerprints were found in a Brussels apartment that was raided earlier this week.

The day after the November 13 attacks, the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, claimed responsibility, referring to eight brothers, though police had initially only identified seven suspected attackers. ISIS also referred to attacks in the 10th, 11th and 18th arrondissements. An attack had not taken place in the 18th, but that is where authorities found the car they believe Abdeslam had been driving, suggesting that he was the eighth brother and may have backed out of another planned attack.

Abdeslam's brother is Ibrahim Abdeslam, the suicide bomber believed to have been responsible for the explosions outside a cafe on Boulevard Voltaire.

Abdeslam, a French citizen, has been on the run since the city-wide attacks, eluding authorities, who, at one point, believed he might have fled to Syria. Investigators reported that Abdeslam bought 10 detonators and batteries at a fireworks shop outside Paris before the November attacks.

In this framegrab taken from VTM, armed police officers take part in a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium, Friday March 18, 2016. After an intense four-month manhunt across Europe and beyond, police on Friday captured Salah Abdeslam, the top fugitive in the Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighborhood where he grew up. (VTM via AP) BELGIUM OUT

Slideshow: Paris attacks suspect captured in Brussels >>>

In January, images surfaced showing Abdeslam at a gas station in northern France, near the Belgian border, on November 14.

According to the British newspaper the Independent, Abdeslam's professional resume includes a two-year stint as a railway mechanic, in addition to working for family businesses, and a personal reputation as a hard-partying gambler, drinker and smoker. A childhood friend who recalled Abdeslam's interest in football and motorcycles told the Independent, I didn't see any sign of hatred in him whatsoever.

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However, another childhood friend of Abdeslam's was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind behind the Paris attacks, who was killed in a raid by French authorities days after the attacks. Before the November attacks, Abaaoud had been suspected of organizing a number of other acts of terrorism throughout France and Belgium and was the subject of an international arrest warrant for recruiting people to join radical Islamic groups in Syria. The Independent has reported that the two were arrested together for armed robbery in 2010 and may have been radicalized during their time in prison.

A man holds his head in his hands as he lays flowers in front of the Carillon cafe, in Paris, Nov.14, 2015. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Slideshow: Attacks in Paris >>>

The armed robbery wasn't Abdeslam's first brush with the law. His rap sheet includes convictions for a number of petty crimes, including possession of cannabis, for which he was arrested and fined by Dutch police in February 2015. The same month, Belgian investigators questioned Abdeslam and his brother Ibrahim after Ibrahim took a trip to Turkey and was deported by Turkish authorities.

Rumors emerged after the Paris attacks that Abdeslam was a regular at a gay bar in Brussels. Other acquaitances of the alleged terrorist reported that Abdeslam often spent time playing video games at a bar previously owned by his brother, Ibrahim.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. The outgoing court session of Russian soldier Velery Permyakov accused of murdering the Avetisyans family will go on at the Russian 102nd military base located in Gyumry on March 18. Armenpress reports the process of promulgation of documents related with the case will continue during the session. During the March 11 session only 4 out of 26 volumes of documents were promulgated which included only part of the conclusions of the scene examination and records of expert conclusions. Photos of the scene were also promulgated.

The March 11 session was postponed as a result of deterioration of Permyakovs health. 15 minutes remained till the end of the session when it was announced that Permyakov feels sick. 5-minute interval was announced and after the medical examination it turned out that blood pressure fluctuation was diagnosed.

The six members of the Avetisyan family were shot and killed in Gyumri at around 6 a.m. on January 12, 2015. The only survivor was 6-month old Seryozha Avetisyan, who was transferred to a hospital with injuries caused by a cutting and piercing tool. The childs health condition became worse on January 19. After fighting for his life and undergoing several difficult surgeries for a week, six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan also died on January 19. There was severe renal insufficiency and cardiac insufficiency, and doctors werent able to save his life. Soldier of the 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Valery Permyakov is charged with killing the members of the Avetisyan family and causing numerous injuries to little Seryozha. Russian border guards found him when he was trying to cross the Armenian-Turkish border and handed him over to the commanders of the 102nd Russian military base. Permyakov has confessed his guilt.

After joint discussions in Yerevan and Gyumri the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia received the materials of the criminal case investigated in the Investigative Committee of the RF in relation to the murder of the Avetisyans family in Gyumri on 12 January 2015.

Valery Permyakov accused of murdering the Avetisyans family in Gymri was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for desertion, usurpation and illegal bearing of arms on September 17. The trial was presided by Alexander Sheldyaev. The trial took place in the territory of the 102nd Russian military base in Gyumri in the outgoing session of the 5th garrison military court of the North Caucasus Okrug. After a three-hour discussion the court returned from the consultation room and issued the verdict. The trial was conducted within one day.

Armenuhi Mkhoyan
To hear House Republican leaders tell it, the GOP budget for fiscal 2017 contains cures for nearly every U.S. financial ill.

It lays before the American people a positive vision for how we can solve our fiscal, economic, and national security challenges through reforms that would grow our economy and hold Washington accountable Budget Committee chair Tom Price (R-GA) said in a statement Wednesday night after the panel approved the $1.07 trillion spending plan in a 20 to 16 vote.

Related: Paul Ryan Is Taking a $30 Billion Gamble With the GOPs Budget

This is a budget that balances the budget, pays off the debt, honors our military with equipment that they need, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Thursday during a press conference. It calls for tax reform. It repeals Obamacare. It does everything we need to do on the entitlement side to move people from welfare from work and to pay off this debt.

So we think this is a very good budget.

Truth be told, the proposed budget continues the age-old fiscal gamesmanship that observers have come to expect from both parties. It assumes revenues and savings that are unlikely to ever materialize, while laying out greater expenditures in the future.

Despite leadership claims to the contrary, there is a widely held belief among many federal budget watchers that Price had to resort to budgetary smoke and mirrors to create a pathway to a balanced budget without raising taxes.

Here are three of the gimmicks the House GOP is relying on:

1. The promise of savings.

The trillion-dollar roadmap sticks to the two-year budget deal struck last year by congressional leaders, with a level of spending that is unacceptable to fiscal hawks, including the roughly 40 members of the House Freedom Caucus, who want spending cut by at least $30 billion.

Related: Why the GOPs Budget Plans Are Going Off the Rails

A previous proposal by Price was to accompany the budget with a sidecar of real spending cuts, but the lawmakers ditched that. Instead, they approved a Republican amendment that encourages House leadership to find $30 billion in cuts in future fiscal bills and urges them to attach a separate deficit reduction measure to other must-pass legislation if the Senate doesnt take up the savings package.

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The Senate isn't expected to act on either the budget or the accompanying package of cuts.

2. Gaming the war fund.

President Obama asked for $74 billion for the Defense Departments Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, also known as the war fund. The House GOP budget matches that figure, but assumes that $23 billion will go toward the Pentagons basic budget needs.

By increasing the amount of normal defense funding provided through the OCO designation while keeping the same total amount for OCO, the budget is effectively underfunding true OCO needs requested by the Defense Department by $18 billion, says an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The sleight of hand has enraged defense hawks, who argue it shortchanges the military, as well as fiscal hawks, who believe that the difference will likely be made up through a supplemental spending request.

3. That it can pass.

More so than last year, when an intraparty brawl between defense and fiscal hawks over OCO funding nearly derailed the budget process, the fate of the fiscal 2017 resolution is grim, with the very real chance it wont even receive a vote on the floor of the House.

Related: Paul Ryans Three Perilous Paths to a Budget Deal

Consider the budget panel vote. Two Republicans, both members of the Freedom Caucus, joined Democrats in voting against the resolution, and a handful of others who supported it in committee said they would oppose it on the floor.

Ryan cant lose more than 28 votes to pass the budget, which is usually a party-line vote. Making it harder to round up the votes is the looming Easter recess, with lawmakers not set to return to Washington until April 12.

Ryan is being tight-lipped about the path forward.

We don't have an answer to that question yet. We're going to be discussing this with our conference on how best to proceed, he said, adding that he envisions a lot of budgets coming to the floor from groups like the congressional Black and Progressive caucuses, the conservative House Republican Study Committee and others.

Asked if he agreed with recent efforts to revive No Budget, No Pay legislation for congressional lawmakers  something GOP leaders used as a bludgeon against Democrats for failing to move a budget resolution when they controlled the Senate -- Ryan, a former budget chair who has not twisted arms to get a blueprint done, replied: I think we should pass a budget, plain and simple. I'll just leave it at that.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Yahoo file photo

The Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) would be overstepping its powers and would be legally challenged if it sought to further punish the two officers involved in the death of the late serviceman Dominique Sarron Lee, said a ministry spokesman.

In letters to The Straits Times and Today, director of public communications for MINDEF Lim Chuen Ni noted that disciplinary action has already been taken against platoon commander Captain Najib Hanuk Muhamad Jalal and safety officer Major Chia Thye Siong.



Lee, 21, died in 2012 following an allergic reaction during a training exercise that involved the use of smoke grenades.

Lim noted that the Attorney-Generals Chambers (AGC) had decided not to prosecute anyone as the cause of death was an unforeseen allergic reaction that was something that could not have been predicted, and recommended disciplinary measures against Najib and Chia for breaching training safety regulations.

Mindef has done so, with penalties consistent with other servicemen who have committed similar offences, including fines and delay in promotions. It would be wrong to punish SAF servicemen beyond the level of offence which has been determined by independent and impartial judicial processes, said Lim.

In particular, the level of punishment has to take into account the coroners findings that Pte Lees fatal allergic reaction was unlikely to have been predicted.



And while any deaths of servicemen is greatly regretted, it is vital to maintain societal trust and integrity in respecting the due independent judicial processes to determine the facts and mete out the appropriate punishment where required, said Lim.

She added that the coroners inquiry into Lees death, conducted in August 2013, had been a transparent process taking the form of an open hearing fully accessible to the public and media. Lees family and their legal counsel were present and were allowed to pose questions to the officers.

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The coroners full findings and conclusion are also open for public viewing upon application and approval by the court.

And while recognising that no amount of compensation will make up for the loss of a loved one, a package of financial compensation based on the maximum extent of the compensation framework was offered to the family.

In a length Facebook post recently, Lees family had called for accountability from MINDEF and to reveal the punishment that had been meted out to the two officers.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Long Island banana importer already convicted of engaging in a cocaine distribution scheme was found guilty on Friday of stealing more than $750,000 from his employees' retirement plan.

Thomas Hoey, 48, owner of now-bankrupt Long Island Banana Corp, was found guilty by a federal jury in Manhattan on charges including pension embezzlement and wire fraud, federal prosecutors said.

Dominic Amorosa, Hoey's lawyer, said his client "is disappointed in the verdict and intends to appeal." At trial, he argued the money was not stolen but was borrowed by the company, which was facing financial problems.

Hoey's conviction came less than a year after he was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to running a cocaine distribution scheme that authorities said led to the death of a woman who joined him in a three-way sex party.

The April 2015 federal sentence came two months after Hoey was ordered to serve one to four years in prison for beating his girlfriend in 2012. A state court jury found him guilty of third-degree assault and tampering with evidence in that case.

In the latest case, prosecutors said that from 2009 to 2012, Hoey transferred almost all of the assets in his company's employee benefit plan to corporate accounts.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristy Greenberg said in her opening statement that Hoey then used the money to pay for the company's expenses and "to line his own pockets."

Greenberg said that during that time, Hoey took trips to England, Spain, Mexico and Aruba, spent large sums on fine dining and concerts, and stayed in luxury hotels in Manhattan and Long Island despite having residences in both places.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York)
By Curtis Skinner

(Reuters) - A New York foster parent of 140 children over two decades has been indicted for alleged sexual abuse of seven boys, endangering the welfare of children who were reported to have rummaged through garbage for food and bestiality, prosecutors said on Friday.

Cesar Gonzales-Mugaburu was indicted on 16 charges of sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of the boys and one charge for sexual conduct with a dog, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

Officials said Gonzales-Mugaburu took in 140 children, all of whom were boys, during this period. Spota said he knew of the victimization of other children during this period, but the statute of limitations prevented prosecutions of those alleged crimes.

Authorities said they had investigated complaints in the past against Gonzales-Mugaburu but were never able to substantiate them. Spota said he would also investigate why children were being placed with Gonzales-Mugaburu and how the abuse occurred for so long.

"To have these type of acts committed upon them, it's disturbing, that it was allowed to go on for so long," Suffolk County Police Chief of Detectives Gerard Gigante told reporters at a news conference, adding some of the children had emotional problems beforehand.

Gonzales-Mugaburu's attorney, Dan Driscoll, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The abuse began in 1996 at Gonzales-Mugaburu's home in the hamlet of Ridge, some 65 miles (105 km) northeast of downtown New York City, and continued through 2015, Spota said.

Spota said victims told investigators they were physically abused, denied meals and forced to stand outside in the cold as punishment. Spota added that neighbors told detectives they saw children rummaging through garbage cans for food multiple times.

Spota said Gonzales-Mugaburu was paid as much as $2,400 per child under his care and may have had as many as eight children at his home at a time. He also adopted five of the seven children he allegedly abused, officials said.

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St. ChristopherOttilie Child and Family Services of New York placed children in Gonzales-Mugaburu's care. It said in a statement they were cooperating with authorities.

"SCO considers the safety and well-being of children in our programs to be our absolute highest priority," the statement said.

Spota said the New York City Administration of Children's Services contracted with St. ChristopherOttilie to place children with Gonzales-Mugaburu. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Gonzales-Mugaburu is due to be in court on Tuesday, the prosecutor's office said. If convicted, he could face 50 years in prison, Spota said.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By MacDonald Dzirutwe HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe on Friday said veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war had indicated they wanted him to retire and he would consider it if they asked him directly. Mugabe, at 92 Africa's oldest leader, pointed out however that others had tried to push him out in the past and failed. He told supporters at a rally in Bindura, north of Harare, that leaders of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association (ZLWVA) were pushing for him to step down. Mugabe, himself a war veteran and patron of the ZLWVA, said the organization would hold a "frank" meeting with him in the first week of April, where the veterans should freely express their views. "They have this thinking that the president has overstayed and should go. So war veterans come to Harare ... so that we can discuss this. No one should intimidate anyone," Mugabe said in his native Shona language. "We will be saying: speak your mind. I will leave if that's what you want. It has to come through the party. But will that help you at this moment?" Friday's comments are likely to be met with scepticism, coming from a man who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. War veterans have been key to the veteran leader's re-election at polls since 2000. Last month police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse veterans who had planned a march on ZANU-PF's headquarters, amid tussles between party factions over who should succeed Mugabe. Zimbabwean media has quoted ZLWVA chairman Chris Mutsvangwa, fired from the cabinet by Mugabe two weeks ago, as accusing some members of the ruling ZANU-PF party of trying to manipulate the president by rallying behind his wife Grace. Earlier this month Mugabe said his successor must be chosen democratically by the ruling party, but that it would not be his wife as some have speculated. Mugabe said on Friday former army general Solomon Mujuru, husband of former Vice President Joice Mujuru, had failed to get him to retire ahead of elections in 2008. Mujuru died in a fire at his farm in Aug. 2011. His wife Joice was fired from the vice-presidency in Dec. 2014 over accusations of plotting to remove Mugabe from power and launched a new political party on March 1. Mugabe said he was surprised by calls for him to step down midway through his five-year presidential term. "Wait until we go to congress. If there are those you think can do a better job than the president, you then choose them. If congress approves them, fine," he told Friday's rally. ZANU-PF's next leadership congress is due in 2019, a year after a presidential vote. No senior party members are expected to openly challenge the veteran leader. (Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa and Andrew Roche)
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. U.S Secretary of State John Kerry declared on March 17 that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims who have fallen under its control in Syria and Iraq, Armenpress reports citing the official website of U.S Department of State.

We know that in areas under its control, Daesh has made a systematic effort to destroy the cultural heritage of ancient communities  destroying Armenian, Syrian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches; blowing up monasteries and the tombs of prophets; desecrating cemeteries; and in Palmyra, even beheading the 83-year-old scholar who had spent a lifetime preserving antiquities there.

We know that Daeshs actions are animated by an extreme and intolerant ideology that castigates Yezidis as, quote, pagans and devil-worshippers, and we know that Daesh has threatened Christians by saying that it will, quote, conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, noted U.S. Secretary of State.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Ex-President of France Nicolas Sarkozy has reconfirmed his support to the process of criminalization of the Armenian Genocide. Armenpress reports, citing Nouvelles dArmenie, Sarkozy made an announcement about this during an honorary dinner delivered by the representatives of the Council of the French Overseas Departments and Territories, which was also attended by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Chairman of the Council Patrick Karam addressed a number of questions to the ex-President of France, including a question referring to his position on the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide. I am an advocate of criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, Sarkozy answered, reminding that it was the period of his presidency when both chambers of the French parliament adopted Boyers law which was suspend by the Constitutional Council which was presided by Jean-Louis Debre at that time. He also mentioned that French-Turkish relations were rather tense during that period, but cancellation of this issue by left-wing forces improved the situation. Sarkozy mentioned that despite one year is left until the end of Francois Hollandes term, no further clarifications have been made over the issue.

Minister of Education of France, regional officials and representatives of the Armenian community in France Murad Papazian and Ara Toranian were invited to the honorary dinner.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens of increased threats from terrorist groups throughout Turkey and to avoid travel to southeastern Turkey. Due to threats from international and indigenous groups, U.S. citizens should exercise caution when traveling throughout the country. This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Warning dated February 29, 2016, Armenpress reports, citing the official website of the U.S Department of State.

Recent terrorist attacks from international and indigenous groups have targeted popular tourist sites, U.S. government buildings, police, and other local authorities throughout Turkey. The threat of kidnapping remains a concern, especially in the southeast. There have been incidents of cross-border shelling from Syria into Turkey.

Travel restrictions remain in place for U.S. government employees to southeastern Turkey for the provinces of Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Sirnak, Diyarbakir, Van, Siirt, Mus, Mardin, Batman, Bingol, Tunceli, Hakkari, Bitlis, and Elazig. Additionally, the following neighborhoods in Adana: Sakirpasa, Gulbahcesi, Daglioglu, Barbaros, Anadolu, Ondokuzmayis.
Student in court for bringing cutlass to school

Estate Constable Ragbir of the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Limited (MTS) laid the charge. The accused student pleaded not guilty as he stood next to him mother in the courtroom. The accused cannot be named because he is legally a minor. Court Prosecutor Sgt Robin Ramdhan informed the magistrate that although the accused boy had neither previous conviction nor pending matters, he was suspended from school on seven occasions. The prosecutor added that police officers had cause to interact with the boy several times.

Community Police Office, Constable Hercules, Sgt Ramdhan noted, was also present at the court hearing yesterday to attest to what he (Ramdhan) said.

On hearing the prosecutors comment, the boys mother, an assistant accountant, noted that she had no knowledge that police had interactions with her son.

His father works as a director at a Government Ministry based at Port-of-Spain. The boy lives with both parents, the mother added.

The charge against the student alleged that on Wednesday last, MTS and Safety officers found the cutlass hidden in a school girls bag during a routine search.

Attorney Ashton Dinanath represented the accused. The magistrate yesterday granted the accused surety bail in the sum of $5,000 to reappear on March 31 for trial.
Headless body may be Barataria woman

Yesterday, relatives of a woman identified as Zania Livingston contacted the Homicide Investigations Bureau and informed them that they have a relative who is missing and who has the same tattoo markings as those found on the body of the murdered woman stuffed in the barrel.

Relatives were advised to go to the Forensic Science Centre today with a photo and other identification documents of Livingston to assist in identifying her.

Newsday understands the identification will take place today and if the remains are identified through the tattoo markings, an autopsy will be carried out by Dr Valery Alexandrov. Homicide officers yesterday awaited word from the public following media publications of the tattoo markings of the headless woman.

Senior homicide officers said were it not for the media which printed the photos of the tattoos of the headless woman, they would not have received the call from the Barataria family which could lead to the body being identified.

The nude body of the headless woman was found cut in two parts from her neck to her waist, which was stuffed in one crocus bag while the other body parts from her waist to her feet were found in another crocus bag.

All her limbs were intact. Yesterday homicide officers returned to the area of the Mitan river to carry out searches for the head of the woman but nothing was found. On Tuesday night at about 9.30 pm, a fisherman saw what appeared to be two feet protruding from a barrel floating in the Mitan river.

He contacted Inspector Ken Lutchman who is in charge of crime in the Eastern Division and officers, along with their colleagues from the Homicide Bureau, went to the scene and the body was retrieved from the river.

The two crocus bags with the womans remains were taken to the Sangre Grande mortuary then transferred to the FSC on Wednesday.
Bullet hits policewomans house

However, investigators into the incident involving WPC Maxine Timothy, of the Erin police station, and her daughter, are working on the theory that the bullet may have been fired by a person who may have been engaged in illegal hunting in the area as no spent shells or projectiles had been discovered near the house and no suspicious persons had been observed in the area.

Police reports also note that hunters also operate in the area both in and out of season.

When Newsday visited the area yesterday, landlord John Perreira described the rural community as peaceful and loving though he expressed concern about the origin of the suspected projectile which had blown a hole in a glass louver pane at the back of the house.

It was around 6.45pm, [on Wednesday], and I was coming out of the bathroom and heard an explosion at the back of my house, just one, not more than one, and said to myself that it is firecracker but the sound of the explosion was sounding kinda of different, Perreira said. He said Timothy telephoned him a few minutes later and informed him that someone may have shot at the house. So I was kinda scared and I start to peep through the windows and looking at the back where I hear the explosion, but it was semi dark so I could hardly see despite the fact it have a street light, it was kinda darkish, he said. And I didnt see anything so I went across by her and she told me she call the police and it wasnt long after a squadron of policemen came down and they started to do their investigation, he said. Perreira described Timothy as very quiet and friendly. He said a bullet had entered through a back window, smashed a hole in a louvre pane and exited through a wooden wall at the side of the house.Asked how he felt about the incident, Perreira said, Well you know I am not feeling that scared because I am guarded by Almighty God but I am greatly concerned.
MARLENE AXED

Sources added that McDonald later stormed out of the meeting, telling her driver that she had just been fired before making a call on her cellular phone as she entered her vehicle which sped off.

A press release, issued at 7.47 pm, by Arlene Gorin-George, Press Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) stated: Please be informed that His Excellency Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona, acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister under subsection (3) of section 76, subsection (1)of section 79, subsection (9) of section 3 and subsection (3) (c) of section 77 of the Constitution of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has revoked the appointment of Ms Marlene McDonald as Minister of Housing and Urban Development.

The Prime Minister has also advised His Excellency on the following: to reassign Mr Randall Mitchell from Minister with responsibility for Public Administration to Minister with responsibility for Housing and Urban Development; to reassign Mr Maxie Cuffie from Minister with responsibility for Communication to Minister with responsibility for Public Administration and Communication and; to assign Mr Stuart Young as Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister. This is in addition to his current portfolio as Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General. McDonalds firing from the Cabinet followed media revelations earlier this week that she had employed her common-law husband Michael Carew in her Port-of- Spain South Constituency office.

A report from Fixin T&T head Kirk Waithe stated he received information from Parliament which showed that Carew and a director of the Calabar Foundation were employed at McDonalds Port-of- Spain South constituency office for five years, while Carews brother Lennox Carew still worked at the MPs office.

McDonalds common-law husband, who worked at the office from June 1, 2010 to September 7, 2015, had earned the second highest salary of $13,400 on the Constituency payroll for the full parliamentary term while Lennox began working in the office on March 1, 2011 and has been in receipt of the highest salary of $14,000 out of 13 people working in the office.

Rowley in an interview on Wednesday night on CNC3, said that he could not ignore these new revelations which had surfaced in the media. An issue had surfaced sometime before and certain adjudications were made (by the Integrity Commission). (But) This morning...I saw what appears to be new information and I spent the day looking at it. And I just want to give the assurance to the national community, that if the facts bear out what is there...and I have to take action, then I will, he said.

Both Fixin T&Ts Waithe and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad- Bissessar had called for Mc- Donald to be fired with the former threatening to move a Motion of Censure in the Parliament if Mc- Donald remained as a Government Minister. While there were mixed reports over whether or not the McDonald issue was discussed yesterday at the weekly Cabinet meeting, Newsday was told that the issue was raised at the meeting chaired by PM Rowley and Mc- Donald - who attended - was given the option to resign.

She stoutly refused to do so and, according to sources, discussions became very heated among several Cabinet members including Mc- Donald. At the end of the meeting, McDonald did not stay for the luncheon as she usually did, instead leaving immediately. After lunch, the Prime Minister called Communications Minister Cuffie, Public Administration Minister Mitchell and Community Development, Culture and the Arts Minister Nyan Gadsby-Dolly into a meeting.

Contacted for comment last night, Cuffie told Newsday he could not confirm if McDonald had been fired from the Cabinet.

At 6.30 pm, McDonald was summoned to the Office of the Prime Minister where she met with Dr Rowley. During the meeting, loud exchanges were heard between the two and shortly before 7 pm, Mc- Donald stormed off. Contacted for comment last night, McDonald told Newsday she was on another call and had no time to speak. She then terminated the call.

McDonald was also facing heat, and an investigation by the Integrity Commission, over a $375,000 cheque made out to the Calabar Foundation on May 12, 2010, some 10 days before the Local Government elections. The cheque dated May 12, 2010 was issued from that Ministry while the Peoples National Movement (PNM) was still in office, before its electoral defeat by the Peoples Partnership coalition on May 24.

She also previously faced allegations of giving secret scholarships while Community Development Minister under the Patrick Manning administration. McDonald was first elected to the House of Representatives as the Member for Port-of-Spain South on November 5, 2007 and was appointed Minister of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs. From 2010 to 2015 she served in Opposition as the Chief Whip.
Students set fire to school

I was made aware of the fire by the Chief Education Officer and what the initial investigations pointed to, Minister of Education Anthony Garcia said as he confirmed the incident yesterday. The suspicion  and this follows initial investigations  is that those who set the fire were among those students who are to be taken out of the school.

But I want to assure the national community that deviance in the nations schools will be stamped out. The fire was also among a number of matters related to errant students engaging the attention of the Education Ministry resulting in 23 students overall being taken out of the school system yesterday alone.

The incidents also included reports of a fight between two mothers who were called by the St Augustine South Government Primary School on matters concerning their children. Reports are that a heated argument broke out between the two women which ended in the trading of blows. Police also had to be called and it is only by the intervention of the officers that the situation was quelled. The small blaze in the ceiling quickly extinguished reportedly by officers of the Tunapuna Fire Station.

A tough talking Garcia repeated that indiscipline will not be tolerated in the nations school.

It seems as though some students are bent on continuing with their errant behaviour, and a school must be made safe for all those who operate within, the Minister added, And I am going to make sure that our schools are safe If it means taking out students, I will do that. Schools must be safe places so that learning and teaching could take place. Garcia also revealed that a decision was taken at the school yesterday to suspend the 21 students whose names were listed among 31 cited for indiscipline.

The 21 who were suspended are to be sent to the Learning Enhancement Centre in Couva, while the remaining ten would be dealt with at the school itself.

The action in both instances is to see how we could assist them in correcting their behaviour, Garcia told Newsday. The El Dorado East suspensions followed a major meeting at the school yesterday between senior officials of the Ministry, guidance officers, both deans and the principal of the school.

That meeting was held as a consequence of discussions with parents on Monday.

He also referred to the situation at the Chaguanas North Secondary School which sent home 20 students for deviance last week.

In this case suspension followed a volatile situation in which a plot involving a gun attack on the school including the possible killing of a teacher was discovered.

He said 12 of those students were sent to the Learning Enhancement Centre in Couva.

He said the remaining eight were over the ages of 16 and, accordingly, under the law which speaks to compulsory education from the age of five to 16, they could not be forced to attend the Learning Enhancement Centre to be rehabilitated.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. First and foremost political will is necessary for fair and transparent elections in Armenia. Head of RPA faction Vahram Baghdasaryan expressed such an opinion during the parliamentary briefings. We must first of all be able to demonstrate that will and if we do it the elections will fair and transparent. The opposition always disputes that this or that provision of the electoral code gives opportunities for electoral frauds. Political will is required above all, Armenpress reports Baghdasaryan saying.

The MP added that the Electoral Code should quell all the doubts that existed previously.

To the question if that political will did not exist previously, Vahram Baghdasaryan answered, There were assessments in the past to which you can agree or disagree. There were disservices, and negative phenomenon. By the way, you should have noted that the frauds that were voiced about in the past, could have no decisive impact on the results of the elections. Now, if we adopt a new electoral code, it must be a code by which we will be able to quell the doubts of the opposition and the civil society. We move forward in that path now.

Constitutional referendum was held in Armenia on December 6, 2015. The electoral code must be changed before June 1, 2016.
Mayor under probe for discharging firearm

He said the matter is currently engaging the attention of Western Division police and said, it is unfortunate that it was reported in the Express before completion of the police investigation and in a manner which did not completely reflect the events which occurred on that night. Valentine explained that on the said date, he was in the company of his driver Leslie- Paul Alexis and they both were on their way to Benares Street, St James when they were approached by three men, one armed with a knife.

As I alighted from my vehicle at the corner of Hyderabad and Benares Streets, St James I was the victim of an attempted robbery by three men who approached my vehicle. He continued, One of them was armed with a sizeable knife. Out of fear for myself, I retrieved my licensed firearm and the man stepped back, he explained.

Further, Valentine said one of the men intimated that he was in possession of a firearm and he (Valentine) became fearful for his life and discharged his licensed firearm twice in the air.

We both gave chase to the assailants and apprehended one of the men, whom we later handed over to the police.

The other assailant was apprehended by the police later that day and the matter is still under investigation, the Mayor said.
CWU wants TSTT executive to go

Union members gathered yesterday outside TSTT House on Edward Street, Port-of- Spain, to highlight their concerns about the way the company was being run.

CWU Secretary General Joseph Remy claimed that since the appointment of the Executive Vice-President, Residential Services and Delivery, Vinood Radge Coomar, there has been a dip in the Companys market share.

Our customer base is dwindling and we are not winning new customers at all and we are not seeing any effort being made by him to ramp up this service, he said.

Remy claimed Coomars appointment was a political one as he was hired under the Peoples Partnership government.

He said the Company had until March 29 to remove him.

Remy also raised concerns over the Companys insurance plan for its retirees. The plan, he said, forces retirees to pay more than $400 a quarter for medical coverage and then they are subjected to a $5,000 deductible.

Which means you must rack up $5,000 in claims before you get reimbursement. That is a dangerous thing for retirees, they are the ones who need medical attention more, he said. He admitted that progress was made in discussions with the company after a meeting yesterday.

We were able to discuss with the providers some different scenarios in terms of what we believe are reasonable combinations for retirees to be included in the plan. They have to go back and come back with some information. Once that is done, we will meet again with the company because it is a step forward from where we were the last time. We believe we will make some progress going forward, he said.
Camille: No response yet from Integrity Commission

Earlier this month, Robinson- Regis called a news conference after being sent questions by newspaper Express on an alleged $150,000 cash financial transaction at First Citizens, Arima. At the press conference she stated that it was $93,000 in cash and cheques which had been moved from Republic Bank to First Citizens bank in order to pay a number of bills including a medical bill for her husband. She also reported that she had closed her account at First Citizens claiming breach of confidentiality by the bank.

Last week Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said an internal investigation led by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley had cleared Robinson-Regis of wrongdoing in connection with the bank deposit.

Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge in a letter dated March 4 wrote to the Integrity Commission requesting an investigation into the matter. Robinson-Regis reported that her attorney wrote to the Integrity Commission but are still awaiting
Nidco pledges to complete Point Fortin Highway

On Tuesday, approximately 860 workers employed Construtora OAS began receiving their Termination of Service due to Redundancy letter and retrenchment packages at the Companys headquarters at Golconda, San Fernando.

However, NIDCOs President (Ag) Steve A. Garibsingh, in an emailed statement reaffirmed the companys commitment to complete the highway.

The National Infrastructure Development Company Limited (NIDCO) wishes to state that it is committed through the mandate given by the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to complete the Solomon Hochoy Highway Extension to Point Fortin, NIDCO stated.

NIDCO pointed out that the Brazilian contractor had demobilized from the site for the Christmas vacation with the intention to remobilize on January 5, 2016. To date, works are yet to resume and OAS has reported that it has several issues regarding payments to suppliers, sub-contractors and workers that restrict their ability to restart works, NIDCO stated.

The company noted that to meet its contractual commitments, OAS plans to engage several local contractors to undertake outstanding works on the highway in order to leave the site by the end of May 2016, NIDCO stated, adding discussions between OAS and local contractors were currently ongoing.

NIDCO also noted that OAS had given an undertaking to the Oilfields Workers Trade Union, [OWTU], to pay severance benefits to 860 bi-monthly workers directly employed by OAS on or before May 25, 2016.

The highway comprises 47km of 4-lane dual carriageway and 2.5km of 2-lane roadway and will connect San Fernando to southern towns of Debe, Penal, Siparia, Fyzabad, La Brea and Point Fortin.
Imbert seeks hard facts on Mittal

Imbert said he will seek to ascertain the companys total debt, the status of the pension fund, annual cost of operations, the level of support given by the State to the company through natural gas and energy supplies (including via TTEC), and the concerns of workers.

I need to establish the facts, the minister said at a Cabinet media briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister, St Clair. He said the facts were needed so that we can make an informed decision that will be to the benefit of all concerned and that will be in the best interest of everyone concerned. The minister is due to report on his findings at a press conference on Monday at 11 am.

Imbert also called for reform of the law to allow companies to file for Chapter 11-style bankruptcy  common in the US  as opposed to invoking insolvency provisions.

Chapter 11 is quite different, Imbert said. It allows companies to continue, keep their staff, keep their workers, keep functioning while they get themselves out of difficulty.

Its something that we really need to take a look at and I think this is where we need to go as a country. Thats my preliminary view on this. He said the question of considering a purchase of the company could not yet be addressed.

The Finance Minister said Arcelor Mittal has, over the last three years, closed facilities at France, Spain, South Africa, and the US. Whats happening here is not unique to Trinidad and Tobago, Imbert said.

They are shutting down operations all over the world.
Imbert reviews multiple board appointments

This practice has resulted in attorney Gerry Brooks sitting on nine boards.

We are reviewing this practice in the context of the modern era, Imbert told reporters at a post Cabinet news conference held at the Office of the Prime Minister, St Clair.

Should we continue this practice that has been in existence for at least 20 years? Though the Finance Minister appeared to concede there was need to review the matter, he nonetheless criticised Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for alluding to Brooks multiple board appointments. Brooks many posts came up on Wednesday in the context of his role as vice president of the Law Association which is reviewing Attorney General Faris Al-Rawis handling of the Malcolm Jones case.

I am disappointed that the Opposition Leader would be so mischievous, Imbert said. It has been the practice for at least 20 years that the chairman of NGC would also chair the major subsidiaries of NGC. And I also checked today and the former chairman, Mr (Roop Chan) Chadeesingh, also chaired several subsidiaries of NGC and also received the stipend for these subsidiaries. To give the impression that this is something new is mischievous. At the same time, Imbert said the question of payment of multiple stipends to the same official sitting on several boards was under review.

I would also say that this Government is reviewing this arrangement to see whether it is appropriate that chairmen of boards that have subsidiaries and associated companies should also get stipends for serving on the boards of those companies, the Finance Minister said. He gave no timeline for his review.

Asked to state the quantum of stipends that would be paid to Brooks, Imbert said, I heard $100,000. I am pretty sure thats wrong. I cant give you the exact figure. Some of them would be nominee companies that would meet once a year, the stipend might be $2,000 or $3,000, others might be more substantial subsidiaries where the stipend might be $5,000. But what I can tell you is that we think its very important for Mr Brooks to chair the subsidiaries of NGC. In addition to being the chairman of National Gas Company, Brooks is also the chairman of eight subsidiary companies, namely: the National Energy Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago; Phoenix Park Gas Processor Ltd; La Brea Industrial Development Company Ltd; NGC CNG Company Ltd; NGC NGL Company Ltd; Trinidad and Tobago NGL Ltd; NGC Petrochemicals Ltd; and NCG Pipeline Company Ltd.

The Finance Minister said there was a need for overlapping appointments at NGC, because of the condition of that company with the failed Beetham Wastewater Plant, the drastic reduction in revenues, the fact that the company seemed to have lost its way, getting involved in building recreation grounds, that sort of thing. He gave no details.

On the question of payments to former cane farmers, Imbert said funds were not released by the European Union.

The funds have not been released so the statement made by the Opposition Leader that the funds have been released is not true, Imbert said.

Also at yesterdays press briefing, Communications Minister Maxie Cuffie announced that Timothy Affonso, the former deputy chairman of CNMG, will be the new CNMG chairman. The board includes former members Nyla Ali and Alice Borrel as well as accountant Gillian Pollidore, and Human Resource Manager Adana Castellano Jones.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. The civil initiative for providing homeless people of Gyumri with apartments has acquired 22 flats instead of previously announced 13. Many businessman and individual philanthropists have joint the initiative.

"Electric Networks of Armenia" will donate 10 apartments to Gyumris homeless people. Armenpress reports that the Director General of the company Karen Harutyunyan informed that by the initiative of the owner of the company Samvel Karapetyan 60 million drams will be donated for obtaining 10 apartments for Gyumris homeless people. The beneficiaries were selected by the "Electric Networks of Armenia" from the list provided by Gyumri Municipality and Shirak Governorate, considering the conditions of the families. Karen Harutyunyan mentioned that this is not the only surprise made by the company. He mentioned that two more apartments will be obtained from other funds.

Special thanks to Gyumri Municipality for the support and technical assistance, members of Gyumri without huts, civil initiative stated.
Speech by the Shri Pranab Mukherjee at roundtable on financing of innovations with leaders of banking and financial sectors

New Delhi, Fri, 18 Mar 2016 NI Wire

1. I am happy to attend this summarization session of the Roundtable on "financing of innovations" with leaders of the banking and finance industry. This Round-table is a part of the ongoing Festival of Innovations 2016. I congratulate National Innovation Foundation and the organizers of this Roundtable  NABARD and SIDBI  for smooth conduct of this programme.

2. NABARD has played an important role in Indias development process. Through credit support, institution development and other activities, NABARD has been promoting sustainable and equitable agriculture, and rural prosperity. SIDBI has etched a very crucial role for itself in Indias industrial economy. As the principal financial institution for the promotion, financing and development of the MSME sector, it has been contributing to production, jobs and exports in no small measure. These two entities have a key part to play in an innovation-filled India.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

3. Innovation is the harbinger of socio-economic development. It facilitates growth and creates job opportunities. Innovation holds great promise in uplifting the living standards of people. A novel idea if transformed into a useful product can usher in progress for the society. But the path to convert novelties into new products or services is riddled with challenges.

4. Any new business venture require resources for investing in factors of production like capital, workforce and technology. A well laid-out structure exists for conventional enterprises to access resources from the market including financial institutions. But in the case of innovation-led entrepreneurial set-ups, there are unique circumstances that cause certain constraints. For one, innovation-oriented firms mainly have intangible assets in the form of knowledge base embedded in human capital.

Distinguished participants:

5. As per a study, ninety percent of new ventures that dont attract investors fail within three years. Investors prefer a proven business model before investing and scaling it up. Innovation-based projects have a high degree of uncertainty. It is not only difficult to ascertain the probability of their desired outcomes; even the form of the outcome is hard to predict. The true potential of any innovation activity cannot be gauged clearly at the start.

6. Returns from innovation processes are skewed. Every start-up has to confront the "valley of death. It is that early phase comprising the seed and start-up stages in which: (i) a novel idea or a concept is developed; (ii) its technical feasibility, market potential and economic viability are determined; (iii) a product prototype is designed; and (iv) a formal business organization is established. These early stage activities result in sunk costs being incurred leading to negative cash flows for the nascent firm. Innovation start-ups having lesser developmental expenses to incur up-front  like website and smart phone applications - have a higher chance of surviving the death valley.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

7. Once an innovation enterprise takes off bringing in revenues, the degree of difficulty in accessing financial resources reduces. In the growth and expansion phases where the goals are scalability and market penetration, norms to secure bank loans become easier to fulfill. It is, however, the preliminary stage which posits a bigger challenge for innovators, entrepreneurs, financiers and policy-makers alike. To my mind, there has to be a hybrid model rather than a one-stop solution for financing of innovations. New-age financing options like angel investors, venture capitalists, crowd funding, seed finance, and innovation on technology funds can meet the special requirements of innovation projects at formative stages.

8. Having said that, the banking sector remains crucial for an innovation culture to take deep roots in the country.A thriving and supportive financial sector is the key to a nations performance on the innovation front. We cannot allow the many innovations taking place at grassroots level to languish for want of financial support. I have said earlier that the trinity of innovator, entrepreneur and financier has to be linked through a strong network mechanism. A cooperative spirit can help in the flowering of many budding ideas.

Distinguished participants:

9. Many potential innovators require technical expertise to take their novel ideas to the market. Banks and other financial institutions, over and above their financing function, can also play a facilitatory role in this regard. They can help innovators tie up with entrepreneurs interested in their ideas and with relevant institutions for assistance on validation, design, market feasibility, and setting up of enterprise. They can identify a pool of mentors to assess and meet the needs of innovators. This role in establishing linkages between creative minds, entrepreneurs, and technical institutions can result in greater turnover of innovative ideas in the country.A monitoring mechanism to ensure managerial facilitation for innovators may also be in order.Financial institutions need to create greater awareness about the institutional mechanisms in place for innovators.

10. Central institutes of higher learning like central universities, IITs and NITs have set up innovation clubs and hubs to act as a platform for exchange of thoughts and ideas between students and faculty, and grassroots innovators. Many of these central institutions have also established innovation incubators for ideas-to-market transformation. Banks and other financial institutions may join hands with these innovation clubs and incubators for greater synergy.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

11. Focused attention by the government, and public and private organizations, has seen several initiatives being launched for the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship in India. The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is being set up as a platform involving academics, entrepreneurs and researchers to foster a culture of innovation and promote a network of world-class innovation hubs. The Self- Employment and Talent Utilization (SETU) mechanism is a techno-financial, incubation and facilitation programme to support start-up businesses and other self-employment activities, particularly in technology-driven areas.The Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank(also called MUDRA Bank) has been set up to provide fillip to entrepreneurship in India through the funding of non-corporate small business sector.

12. The Start-up India programme was recently launched with an action plan which includes the creation of a dedicated start-up fund of Rs. 10,000 crore for funding start-ups. Funds for promoting innovation have also been launched by industry bodies, corporate players and educational institutions. NABARD has a Rural Innovation Fund to support innovative, risk-friendly and unconventional experiments in farm, non-farm and micro-finance sectors. This scheme has the potential to boost income and promote livelihood opportunities in rural areas.

13. I am happy to have launched today an online platform, 'SIDBI-STARTUP-MITRA' that will act as a one-stop solution to meet the financing and other needs of early stage and start-up enterprises.I compliment Department of Financial Services and SIDBI for conceptualizing this national innovation finance programme. The integration of start-ups with investors,angel funds, mentor funds, and other service providers will help create an inclusive innovation eco-system in the country.

14. With these words, I now conclude. Let me thank the representatives from the banking and financial sectors for their enthusiastic participation in this platform. All the concerned agencies must consider the recommendations that have emerged from the deliberations and start working on them. I once again compliment the National Innovation Foundation, along with NABARD and SIDBI, for organizing this fruitful dialogue on financing of innovation. Wish you all the very best for the future!

Thank you.

Jai Hind.

Source: PIB
Ravi Shankar Prasad dedicates Wi-Fi Hotspot at Vaishno Devi

New Delhi, Fri, 18 Mar 2016 NI Wire

Union Minister for Telecom and Information Technology, Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad today dedicated 1000th WI-FI hot spot to the nation with the operationaliation of WI-FI facility at Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine. Speaking on the occasion, he said that as part of Governments initiative to modernize BSNL so as to make it relevant in the competitive environment which telecom sector is facing today. He said the Public Sector has plans to invest Rs 2000 crore for the upgradation of its network which includes adding another 21000 BTS. He said the addition would include 13000 BTS which BSNL would use for its 3G services.

As part of its drive to tap new sources of revenue while meeting aspirations of the Government, it has introduced a plan to deploy public Wi-Fi hotspots across the country covering all religious, tourist and important locations in the country. In first phase of the plan it proposes to set up 2500 WIFI hotspots across the country.

As part of its strategy to regain financial health and popularity, BSNL has taken several initiatives recently. It includes introduction of free night calling from BSNL fixed line to any other service provider between 9PM to 7AM. BSNL has also introduced free incoming calls while roaming for BSNL mobile customers which is perhaps a first step taken by any telecom operator. BSNL has upgraded minimum speed of broadband from 512 kbps to 2mbps so that broadband customers of BSNL should have better surfing experience.

BSNL is in the process of upgrading and expanding both mobile as well as fixed telephone network. As part of this initiative BSNL is converting the existing PSTN telephone exchanges with NGN (Next Generation Network). Approximately 660 telephone exchanges have already been upgraded to NGN.

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad also gave go ahead to the NGN technology designed and manufactured locally by CDOT (Centre for Development of Telematics). The initiative part of Make in India program of the Government will facilitate BSNL in accelerating deployment of NGN technology in urban and rural part of the country. The Minister also inaugurated several Value Added Services (VAS) on NGN, namely all India IP Centrex, multimedia voice conferencing, fixed mobile convergence and prepaid version of fixed telephone. He also started a new innovative services called Fixed Mobile Telephony(FMT) which helps customers to carry his/her fixed telephone in his/her pocket while moving around the world and able to receive and initiate outgoing calls from mobile telephone instrument.

Source: PIB
Government to facilitate growth of Community Radio Sector in the country: Shri Arun Jaitley

New Delhi, Fri, 18 Mar 2016 NI Wire

I&B Minister inaugurates 6th National Community Radio Sammelan

Shri Arun Jaitley Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information & Broadcasting said that Radio as a medium of communication had made a comeback in view of the growing popularity of FM transmission and its reach. Community Radio as a variant of the medium had provided a value addition to the narrative by addressing the information needs regionally, addressing diverse status and issues and capturing the language, culture and social practices. Shri Arun Jaitley stated this while delivering his address at the inaugural session of the 6th National Community Radio Sammelan here today.

Elaborating further, the Minister said the scope for expansion in the sector was vast in view of the communication needs at the regional level. It had the power to connect with people by exchanging experiences and content of programs. As a consequence, this provided the bandwidth for effective programming to grow on a sustainable basis. Shri Jaitley said that the government would facilitate the medium through policies which would spur the growth in the total number of operational community radio stations in the future. The Minister lauded the efforts of the stations which focussed on sustained campaigns on critical issues related to health and education. This had led to people imbibing the spirit of the messages.

Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore said that Community Radio was an important communication medium that empowered local people and had a connect with them. It could play an important role in dissemination of information about government schemes and policies to the common man in their local language, which in many cases has not reached them through conventional mediums of communication such as Television and FM Radio.

Elaborating further, Col. Rathore said that Community Radio could help in disseminating benefits of various government initiatives such as Mudra Yojna, Fasal Bima Yojna, and Soil Health Card to the local people. He said Community Radio should inspire people by informing them about the local achievements and endeavours of people who were one amongst them. He also encouraged participation of all the concerned stakeholders to take the Community Radio Movement in the country further ahead.

Speaking on the occasion Shri Sunil Arora, Secretary Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said that Community Radio empowered people who generally found no voice in traditional media. He said that Community Radio provided empowering experiences to farmers, local fishermen, folk artists who shared their stories in programmes conducted by the community radio stations. He said that Ministry of I&B had opened a Community Radio facilitation Centre at Shastri Bhawan to streamline approval process for the CR stations. Elaborating further he mentioned that Ministry had given permissions to 439 CR stations out of which 191are already in operation. He also said that the setting of agenda for this year National Sammelan was a participative process wherein feedback from CR stations across the country was solicited.



Shri Arun Jaitley Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information & Broadcasting and Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore also felicitated the winners of the 5th National Community Radio Awards. The award for the most creative/Innovative Programme content was presented to Radio Benziger from Kerala for their program Sukrutham. The other categories included Awards for Program with Best Theme, Community Engagement, and Promoting local culture. They also released the Community Radio Compendium and Community Radio Map which illustrated Community Radio Stations across the nation.

Source: PIB
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. The State Youth Orchestra of Armenia performed in the concert hall after Emil Bustan on March 17 in the framework of the international festival Al Bustan held in Beirut.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia, the first part of the concert included the overture King Lear composed by Hector Berlioz and then after the Violin concerto N2 by Henrik Wieniawski. The symphonic work piece Falstaff by Elgar was perfectly performed by the State Youth Orchestra under the conducting of artistic director of the festival Gianluca Marciano.

Legendary festival Al Bustan was brought to life in 1994. It is the member of the Association of European festivals. Over the past few years this prestigious international festival has hosted more than 4000 artists from all over the world. The program includes opera, symphonic, choral, chamber music, as well as jazz, oriental music, dance and theatre performances, master-classes and seminars. This has been the third time for the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia to take part in the Al Bustan festival as its official orchestra.

The participation of the youth orchestra is supported by the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Armenia.
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YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. 154 thousand and 886 migrants have reached Europe through the Mediterranean Sea since the start of the year, 467 have died or are lost. With winter ending and warmer conditions prevailing, the Central Mediterranean migrant route between North Africa and Sicily has become busier, monitors from IOM in Rome report, indicating a surge of migrant and refugee arrivals under way in the months to come, Armenpress reports, citing the official website of the International Organization for Migration.

Including sea routes to Spain and the Greek Islands, IOM estimates that some 156,000 migrants and refugees have landed in Europe from Africa and the Middle East in the first ten and a half weeks of 2016. That compares to fewer than 20,000 migrant and refugees during the same period last year.

Since the start of 2014, IOM calculates almost 1.4 million migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean and entered Europe via one of five EU coastal borders: Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta. Through March 16 of this year, IOM counts over 997,000 seaborne arrivals just to Greece, still short of the one million mark. However, combined land and sea arrivals to Greece have moved slightly ahead of the one million mark, as reported earlier this week by the Associated Press.

About 2,400 migrants were rescued at sea in the Channel of Sicily between 15 and 17 March. Ships of the Italian Navy, the British Navy and the German Navy, and by the Norwegian Siem Pilot and the Aquarius ship from the Sos Mediterranee association have carried out the rescue operations. Rescued migrants were mainly Western African and Eritrean.

Arrivals to Italy have never really slowed down; this year we are actually noticing a slight increase in the number of migrants arriving from Libya. As of today, almost 12,000 migrants have landed in Italy, about 2,000 more compared to the number of migrants that arrived in the same period last year, said Federico Soda, Director of the IOM Coordination Office for the Mediterranean.

For the moment flows are only composed of African nationals while the number of Syrians has dropped: in the first 2 months of the year, only 6 Syrians arrived by sea to Italy.

The nature and composition of the migration flows to Italy are mixed, said Soda. They include smuggled and trafficked persons, unaccompanied and separated children, environmental migrants, pregnant women and refugees.

Italys efforts and those of the international vessels in rescuing over 2,400 migrants at sea in only 48 hours are outstanding: IOM praises the work carried out by the many different ships that are constantly patrolling the Channel of Sicily.

According to IOM estimates, almost 470 migrants lost their lives at sea this year: 362 in the Aegean Sea, 100 in the Channel of Sicily, and five more in the waters between Spain and Africa.

Last year, through the end of March, more than 500 migrants drowned, mainly in the Channel of Sicily between Italy and Libya.

According to the IOM estimates, 467 migrants have died since the start of the year . TASS reported that in the first quarter of the previous year 505 migrants and refugees died or were lost in the sea.
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...RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON TO 8 PM CDT SUNDAY FOR WIND AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR A PORTION OF NORTHEAST NEBRASKA... The National Weather Service in Omaha/Valley has issued a Red Flag Warning for wind and low relative humidity, which is in effect from noon to 8 PM CDT Sunday. The Fire Weather Watch is no longer in effect. * Affected Area...In Nebraska, Knox, Antelope, Pierce, Boone, Madison and Platte counties. * Winds...South 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. * Relative Humidity...As low as 24 percent. * Impacts...Any fires that ignite may spread rapidly and exhibit extreme fire behavior. Use extreme caution if engaging in any activities that could start a fire. Outdoor burning is not advisable. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior. &&
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The Algerian government has reportedly reached in 2012 a secret agreement with Algerian terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar to attack Moroccan interests in the Sahara, reveals a confidential e-mail of former US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, made public by Wikileaks on Thursday

According to sources with access to the Algerian DGSE, the Bouteflika government reached a highly secret understanding with Belmokhtar after the kidnapping in April 2012 of the Algerian consul in GAO (Mali). Under this agreement Belmokhtar concentrated his operations in Mali, and occasionally, with the encouragement of the Algerian DGSE, attack Moroccan interests in Western Sahara, where the Algerians have territorial claims, the e-mail states.

The e-mail dated January 18, 2013 is part of thousands of messages stolen from Hilarys private e-mail server during her tenure as Secretary of State.

The e-mail on Latest French Intel on Algeria hostage was sent by Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time confidant of Hilary Clinton and former aid to her husband Bill during his presidential tenure.

The message says that the Algerian leader Abdel Aziz Bouteflika was chocked and disoriented by attacks carried out by Signed in Blood Katiba, led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar on BP facility which resulted in the death of 35 hostages.

According to the e-mail, as result of the attacks, Algerian security officials feared that they might mark a resumption of the 20 year civil war and the Algerian government was less concerned by the fate of the 35 hostages.

Sidney Blumenthal also mentions in his message the Abu Zayd Group which is deeply committed to the jihadist struggle against what it sees as the secularism of Tunisia and Morocco.

The groups leader Abu Zayd is based in the Hoggar (Ahaggar) Massif, in the Tamanrasset region, southern Algeria, and his group, is one of the most active and important of the AQIM member groups, and it has the resources, personnel, and flexibility to support operations into Western Sahara and Morocco, the e-mail states.

This bombshell e-mail evidences again Algiers animosity towards Rabat and its repeated attempts to destabilize the neighboring country.

Local e-journal le360 which also reported Sidney Blumenthals e-mail, recalled that Algeria had facilitated the smuggling into Morocco, via the Amgala oasis in the Sahara, of weapons and ammunitions by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The arsenal discovered in January 2011 by the Moroccan army included Russian-made weapons and ammunition, mainly 16 kalachnovs, 32 loaders, a rocket launcher (RPG) and a mortar. The origin of these weapons left no doubt that they came from Algeria which has maintained ties, through its military intelligence department, with Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

According to the Moroccan e-journal, this new disclosed e-mail reveals the involvement of Algeria in the turmoil shaking not only the Sahel-Sahara region, but also Libya, Tunisia and even beyond.

The terrorist attacks that have just targeted Grand-Bassam, in Cote dIvoire, and the previous bloody attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Bamako, Mali, perpetrated by Mokhtar Belmokhtars group, give evidence of the worrying role played by Algerian intelligence services in the regional tinderbox, wrote Le360.
Those guys  meh. Photo: NBC

Mohamad Jamal Khweis  the 26-year-old American who had been serving with ISIS until earlier this week, when he was detained while trying to quit  explained on Kurdish TV today that living with the architects of the caliphate was no fun at all. Our daily life was prayer, eating, and learning about the religion for eight hours, he said. It was pretty hard to live in Mosul. Its not like the Western countries  Theres no smoking.

Khweis said that he didnt take to his sharia studies, didnt like his imam, and eventually came to the same conclusion that most of the planet figured out a long time ago: ISIS does not represent Islam. I dont see them as good Muslims, he said during the broadcast. But he really wanted to hammer home his crucial point: My message to the American people is, the life in Mosulits really, really bad.

Not only was living with ISIS a total drag, but getting to Mosul was a huge schlep. Khweis left his family in Virginia in 2014, making his way to Turkey, where he met an Iraqi woman who said she could get them across the border. They took a bus to the Turkey-Syria border, then a taxi into Syria, where he stayed with a series of foreigners who were also headed to join ISIS. A ten-hour all-male bus trip got him through the desert to Mosul.

Khweis eventually quit his sharia studies and decided to give himself up to Kurdish forces. He had, he says, been having second thoughts the entire time. I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul  I wasnt thinking straight, and on the way there I regretted  I wanted to go back, he said. ISIS has lost 40 percent of its land in Iraq and recently had to cut fighters salaries in half. Meanwhile, U.S. counterterrorism officials are eager to get their hands on the dissatisfied defector and have called Khweis a gold mine of information.


Migrants face police officers standing guard at the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija on November 26, 2015. Photo: Robert Atanasovski/AFP/Getty Images

Leaders of the 28 European Union member-states and Turkey made a deal Friday to absorb tens of thousands of people seeking refuge in Europe.

The agreement, which will go into effect as early as Sunday, March 20, requires Turkey to take back new migrants who arrive in Greece and do not qualify for asylum in the EU. In return, EU countries will accept one refugee directly from Turkey for each migrant resettled there, though that number is capped at 72,000. The EU will also give Turkey 6 billion euros in aid, ease visa restrictions for Turkish citizens, and expedite talks on the countrys accession to the union that have been ongoing for nearly three decades.

EU leaders presented the plan on Friday to Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who apparently agreed to the terms. The offer reflects how badly Europe has been overwhelmed by the arrival of more than 1 million refugees and economic migrants  mainly from Syria but also from Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq  last year. For its part, Turkey is already hosting some 2.7 million Syrian refugees.

European leaders had wanted to implement the deal right away, predicting a mass exodus of refugees from Turkey who want to cross to Europe before the agreement goes live. Those already present in Greece will not be sent back to Turkey, says the Times, but some European officials are wary of Greeces capacity even to screen new arrivals. The country will receive an additional 30 million euros in aid as part of the new deal, but a recent Times report put the number of migrants stuck in Greece at more than 44,000.

Critics had previously attacked the deal on moral grounds, arguing that the EU is sending migrants to an uncertain fate in Turkey, where their legal status and rights would be uncertain and where President Recep Tayyip Erdogans regime has grown increasingly authoritarian. Authorities there recently seized an opposition-linked newspaper, and Erdogan has proposed a radically expanded definition of the word terrorist to include some journalists and politicians  presumably the ones he doesnt like.

Some European leaders, however, see Turkey as the villain in this drama, accusing it of exploiting a crisis to shake the EU down for concessions it would never otherwise hope to get.

Turkey is really asking for a lot. I refuse to accept negotiations that sometimes resemble a form of blackmail, the AP quoted Belgian prime minister Charles Michel as saying.

This post has been updated.
Cut that out, man. Photo: Piyal Adhikary/epa

You know how it goes: You get a text just as the light changes. Its from Garrett, he wants to chill l8r, prolly. You immediately hit him back, just to tell him youre down, and suddenly youre in the middle of Broadway and a car is screeching to a halt to avoid hitting you. Well, Pamela Lampitt, who represents Cherry Hill in the New Jersey State legislature, presented a bill on Monday that would make texting and crossing the street akin to jaywalking. Shed impose a $50 fine, or a jail sentence of up to 15 days, for answering Garrett before you get to the opposite curb (oh, and for putting yourself, as well as drivers and pedestrians around you, in mortal danger).

We need to have people be more aware of whats going on around them, Lampitt told the Mahwah Patch. Even if you have permission [from the signal] to walk, you should not be distracted, you should be aware of whats going on around you, especially in the street. Lampitt works at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of her students was hit by a bus and killed while texting.

Pedestrian injuries relating to cell-phone distraction have become commonplace and are up 35 percent since 2010. Some researchers say 10 percent of the 78,000 pedestrian injuries in the United States in 2012 owed something to mobile-device use, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. Other such bans have been proposed  Israel passed a bill in 2014 that prohibited crossing the street with headphones in  and a push to cut down on distracted street crossing and make texting pedestrians more aware of their surroundings has been part of New York mayor Bill de Blasios Vision Zero campaign.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenian and Russian Ministers of Emergency Situations consider opening Armenian-Russian humanitarian response centre located in Getargel community of Kotayk Province a step forward in civil protection sphere. The centre is the first one in the region and this is a great achievement and step forward. We have implemented major tasks, the camp- settlement of INSARAG members is also located here. We are the 34th member state of that institution. The Armenian-Russian humanitarian response centre will serve both the Republic of Armenia and other states that will apply to us for help. Here we see the first steps, there will be major investments and our partners will supply us with different types of equipment. This is only the start and we will move forward, Armenpress reports Minister of Emergency Situations of Armenia Armen Yeritsyan saying.

This is a drastically important step that allows the Ministries of Emergency Situations of both countries to consolidate efforts, coordinate joint measures and apply advanced approaches to ensure public security, Minister of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters Vladimir Puchkov mentioned.
Can Republicans really get their act together to stop Trump? Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images, NBC/NBC NewsWire

Earlier this week, conservative gabber and opinion-leader Erick Erickson was talking mighty big about the plans of an anti-Trump conservative cabal he was helping convene. Among the options under consideration by the cabal were a third-party candidacy and even a presidential election decided in the U.S. House.

Well, the cabal had its first strategy session in Washington on Thursday, and heres the brilliant conclusion it reached, according to CNN:

Conservatives at a meeting in Washington on Thursday had absolute consensus on trying to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump from getting enough delegates to clinch the partys presidential nomination, according to a source familiar with the discussion.

Is that it? Yeah, pretty much:

The idea of a third party being formed to combat Trump remained a bone of contention for the group, the source said, adding, there was real division over the idea.

Okay. How about a contested convention that might nominate a dark-horse candidate?

Not all the attendees appeared to be giving up on Trumps existing challengers. Im there to support Ted Cruz, said Mike Farris, a Republican lawyer, as he left the Army and Navy Club, where the group met behind closed doors for close to three hours. Theres a lot of Cruz support.

No wonder another reporter with sources in the meeting, the Washington Posts Robert Costa, described it as less than a success:

Per three people familiar with the talks, the mood of the room was muted and downbeat. Attendees voiced frustration with the lack of coordination so far and wondered aloud whether Trump could be halted. The third-party scenario drew intense interest, but it also acknowledged that it would be logistically and financially difficult with few major politicians willing for now to agree to take the political risk that such a run would entail.

No kidding.

This and many accounts of schemes to rig the convention against Trump  or otherwise keep him out of the White House through means other than beating him in the primaries  generally suffer from an extreme overvaluation of the ability of Republicans to reach and execute a complex coordinated strategy. If they had that capacity, would 17 people have run for president in this cycle? Would it have taken the Establishment so long to settle on a candidate that it basically did not matter? Does anyone in particular really strike you as having the power to broker a brokered convention, and if so, what have they been waiting for?

Some seem to put faith in the Republican National Committee and Reince Priebus to orchestrate things to a successful conclusion. And its true the RNC may not have a putative nominee telling him and the quadrennial army of convention volunteers exactly what to do every moment of the day leading up to and through the convention. But that doesnt mean the party hacks will be free to do what they want. No, any surviving candidates, including presumably Trump and Cruz, will demand input on every single decision, no matter how minor. There will be no private, much less secret meetings at which deals go down; there will instead exist the special transparency imposed on people who dont trust each other at all.

Right now, the only people who look likely to head to Cleveland knowing exactly what they want and being able to communicate with each other without fearing an imminent knife in the back are the candidates and their loyal retainers, for whom the elevation of their lord and god to the nomination is not just the first but the only consideration. Everyone else may well look as feckless as the conservative revolutionaries who sounded like a threat to Trump until it became apparent they couldnt find their butts with both hands.
Whats the matter? Photo: Getty Images

Over the course of 12 debates, the Republican presidential candidates were never asked to address the budget problems in Kansas. That may not sound like an odd omission but it is. To see why, lets take a quick trip to a parallel political universe:

In Bizarro America, the tea party never happened. Instead, the Great Recession sparked a left-wing populist movement that swept democratic socialists into statehouses all across the country. In Vermont, these Denmark-worshippers took full control of state government and implemented their radical agenda. They raised income taxes to unprecedented heights, upped the minimum wage to $15 an hour, made all state universities tuition-free, and established a single-payer health-care system. As he signed the last of these programs into law, Governor Bernie Sanders declared that Vermont would serve as a blue-state model, one that the Democratic Partys 2016 ticket could use to say, See, weve got a different way, and it works.

But by 2016, that model had collapsed. Every warning that conservatives had made about Sanderss program proved prescient. The tax hikes chased all the job creators out of state. The new minimum wage didnt raise low-income workers living standards; it raised their unemployment rate. The costs of free college and universal health care proved so onerous, the state was forced to raid its rainy-day funds and borrow at high interest rates just to keep the government running. Vermont now faced a billion-dollar deficit. Schools were shuttered. Pensions were cut. The states department of social services could no longer afford to investigate child abuse. The legal system could no longer provide indigent defendants with representation. Nonetheless, in the race for the White House, every Democratic candidate ran on some version of Sanderss economic model.

Wouldnt it be important for those candidates to explain why their program wouldnt fail the country in the same way it had failed the Green Mountain State? If you think yes, then you should demand that Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz explain why their tax policies wont fail America in the same way theyve failed the people of Kansas.

In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower States governors mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movements blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, See, weve got a different way, and it works. 

As youve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownbacks real live experiment proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). Backers of the budget touted projections from the Kansas Policy Institute, which predicted it would generate $323 million in new local revenues by 2018. But marginal gains at the municipal level were dwarfed by the $688 million loss that Brownbacks budget wrought in its first year of operation.* Meanwhile, Kansass job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouris 1.5 percent and Colorados 3.3.

Photo: Orlin Wagner/AP

Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nations economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 100,000* new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. Whats more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.

Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the states public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownbacks inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the states university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas  as of November, Brownbacks approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.

Louisiana has replicated these results. When Bobby Jindal moved into the governors mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past years plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the states history and then refusing to reverse course when the states biggest industry started tanking. Jindals giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the countrys second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the states rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017. Like Bizarro Vermont, Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The states hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year.

What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself  my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War!  Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of dynamic scoring that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas. Under a conventional analysis, the bill runs well over $3 trillion, with 44 percent of that lost money accruing to the one percent. John Kasichs tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasichs appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trumps economic peers.

If any of these men are elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the red-state model. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownbacks Kansas, This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but cant, at least for now. Speaker of the House Paul Ryans celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.

This campaign cycle has inspired an unusual amount of soul-searching in Republican circles. The rise of Trump has forced many conservatives to reckon with the moral odiousness of Nixons Southern Strategy  a blueprint for GOP electoral success that relied on coded appeals to white racial animus. Unfortunately, the fall of Kansas has failed to inspire a similar reckoning with the policies that those ugly advertisements were designed to sell. The GOP front-runners praise of mob violence and religious discrimination has spurred much righteous outrage from the National Review. Kansass shortened school-years have spurred none.

When Donald Trump makes a gaffe, reporters confront Republican leaders and demand a response. When the GOPs economic platform decimates two U.S. states, a similar confrontation is in order.

*An earlier version of this piece said that Brownback had pledged to bring 25,000 new jobs to Kansas in his second term. The pledge was actually to bring 100,000 new jobs (or 25,000 for each year of the term).

*This post has been corrected to show that KPIs revenue projections specifically pertained to local property and sales taxes over the proposed budgets first five years of operation.


Things are getting way to real in the GOP. Photo: Rainier Ehrhardt/AP

One unexpected side effect of a tough-talking political outsider taking over the GOP: Everyones abandoning the politician speak and getting brutally honest about their political maneuvering. After endorsing Donald Trump last week, Ben Carson admitted that he doesnt care for the front-runner all that much, and on Thursday, former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham threw his support behind top foe Ted Cruz.

Like Carson, Graham said there are other candidates he likes better, but he doesnt think they can win. I prefer John Kasich; Cruz is not my first pick by any choice, the South Carolina senator explained. But I dont see how John Kasich can mount the opposition that Ted Cruz can to stop Donald Trump from getting 1,237 (the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination).

Unlike Carson, Graham has made it abundantly clear that he really doesnt like Cruz at all. In January, he said Cruz has exhibited behavior in his time in the Senate that make it impossible for me to believe that he could bring this country together, adding that choosing between him and Trump is like being shot or poisoned  what does it really matter? Last month, he joked about Cruzs general unpopularity among his colleagues, saying, If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.

Nevertheless, Graham says hell help Ted in every way I can, as he hates Donald Trump even more. CNN reports that Graham will host a Cruz fundraiser on Monday, and he even managed to say something nice about him, calling him a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

A Cruz spokesperson said theyre thrilled about the endorsement, but Grahams assessment of Cruzs reaction was more blunt. He certainly welcomes my effort to raise money, and in the pro-Israel community, I think I have some resonance, he said. Ive sort of dedicated my public life to national security. Im seen as a strong supporter of Israel, Im proud of that fact, and Ted has been great on Israel.

MTV should lock all the former GOP candidates in a house and start filming, because this is already more entertaining than watching boozed-up 20-year-olds whine about their fake jobs.
An Iraqi man inspects the remains of members of the Yazidi minority killed by ISIS on February 3, 2015. Photo: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

ISIS is committing genocide against religious minorities in the parts of Syria and Iraq that it controls, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Thursday. The militant groups entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology, the New York Times quoted Kerry as saying.

While Kerrys statement does not signal any shift in policy toward the organization  which the U.S. has been bombing for a year and a half  it was still significant, as the Obama administration had heretofore been reluctant to attach the genocide label to the well-documented crimes ISIS has committed against Christians, Yazidis, Shiite Muslims, and Kurds.

That reluctance provided fuel for the administrations critics on the right  as well as some on the left  and fed a long-standing narrative among conservative Christians who sought to depict President Obama as hostile to Christianity.

The House of Representatives unanimously voted on Monday to declare ISISs actions genocide. Kerrys statement came in response to a deadline the president had set last year for the State Department to decide whether to do the same.

Numerous individuals and organizations, including United Nations human-rights investigators, the European Parliament, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have stated that some of ISISs atrocities  including massacres, forced religious conversions, mass rape, and sexual slavery  rose to the level of genocide, particularly against Christians and Yazidis.

Although labeling these actions genocide has little practical effect, as ABC News notes, it does expand the potential for criminal cases against ISIS members at the International Criminal Court and in Iraqi or Kurdish courts, and could have some deterrent effect on ISISs international recruitment.
Photo: AFP

Belgian police reportedly have captured one of the main suspects in the Paris terrorist attacks, Salah Abdeslam, in a police raid Friday. Abdeslam suffered a leg injury from a gun shot in the raid while trying to flee. He was the only remaining fugitive  and only attacker still alive  from the November 13 massacre that killed 130 and wounded scores more.

The raid allegedly took place in Molenbeek, a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in Brussels. A second person was also arrested with Abdeslam, and a third suspect was also taken into custody after hiding out in a nearby apartment. The BBC got footage of the operation (below). Witnesses also heard explosions outside the home where the suspects hunkered down.

Footage emerges of raid at apartment in #Molenbeek. Follow live updates here: https://t.co/FeZgz1XfDf https://t.co/EtYpRTIO5Z  BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 18, 2016

Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national of Moroccan descent, had been a fugitive since the Paris attacks. He escaped with two others that night in a getaway car to Belgium, where authorities let him cross the border, and hes been on the run ever since. Authorities got a surprise break this week when police found Abdeslams fingerprints in an apartment they raided, unrelated to Abdeslam, in a different Brussels neighborhood on Tuesday. That operation erupted in a shootout, leaving one suspect dead and four cops wounded. Two other individuals also got away, but Belgian police havent said whether they think Abdeslam was one of those escapees, reports NPR.

Suivi des operations policieres avec le President de @fhollande Opvolging van de politie acties met Franse president pic.twitter.com/6QX5QAHVWw  Charles Michel (@CharlesMichel) March 18, 2016

Officials believe Abdeslam helped coordinate the Paris massacre, and that he rented the car that drove some of the gunmen to the Bataclan, one of the bloodiest sites that night. His brother, Ibrahim, also participated in the deadly attacks; he blew himself up in a suicide bombing at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe. The Abdeslam brothers knew the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attack, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, from that Molenbeek neighborhood, where they grew up and Salah was just arrested. Abaaoud was killed in a police raid soon after Paris.

This post has been updated throughout.
Mufid Elfgeeh is serving prison time for recruiting ISIS fighters. Photo: Handout

On Thursday, 32-year-old Mufid Elfgeeh of Rochester, New York, was handed the longest prison sentence of any American convicted of supporting ISIS so far. He faces 22 1/2 years in prison, followed by 27 1/2 months of federal probation, for attempting to recruit fighters to join the militant group in Syria. Elfegeeh pleaded guilty to recruiting two men on behalf of ISIS in December. According to Reuters, he bought them a laptop computer, a high-definition camera, and an expedited passport for their trip to Syria. He also activated a network of Islamic State sympathizers in Turkey, Syria and Yemen who could facilitate their trip. Despite Elfgeehs efforts, neither recruit made it to Syria.

During the same period of time, prosecutors said Elfgeeh also reached out to the commander of a Syrian rebel battalion and put him in contact with the Islamic State so his fighters could join up with ISIS. He also tried to buy firearms and silencers from an undercover FBI agent; according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Elfgeeh was planning to use the weapons to kill returning U.S. troops. He regularly used more than 20 social-media accounts, both under his own name and under aliases, to voice support of the Islamic State and to try to recruit ISIS fighters. Judge Elizabeth Wolford, who sentenced Elfgeeh, said he was clearly on a path of destruction.

Elfgeeh isnt the first American to be charged with offering material support to ISIS. Last summer, a New Jersey man was arrested in Jordan for his alleged plan to form a small army of ISIS supporters in New York and New Jersey, and a 17-year-old was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for pro-ISIS activity online. On Thursday, an Arizona man was convicted of conspiring to support ISIS, and on Friday two more men in unrelated cases pleaded guilty to recruiting for the terrorist group as well  all three have yet to be sentenced, but their sentences could be even longer than Elfgeehs.

Elfgeeh reportedly disavowed ISIS in prison, saying he couldnt support the group after seeing its members commit beheadings and other violent acts. He was allegedly an ISIS fan in the first place because he saw the group as a threat to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. According to William Hochul Jr., the U.S. attorney for western New York, Elfgeehs disavowal is important because it destroys ISISs false narrative that everyone is in favor of them. The group has long used social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to recruit abroad, but recent crackdowns have put a dent in recruitment numbers.
Clinton celebrated her victory in Florida on Tuesday night. Photo: Justin Sullivan/2016 Getty Images

Tuesday was a good day for Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of State won Democratic primaries in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, and (eventually) Missouri in a sweep she called another Super Tuesday. Her series of victories added significantly to her overall delegate count, putting her even further ahead of Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination (she now has 1,606 delegates to Sanderss 851). Despite Sanderss surprise victory in Michigan earlier this month, Clintons winning streak has persuaded many Democrats, whether or not they support her, that shell beat out Sanders for the nomination. In private remarks to donors, President Obama urged his fellow party members to unite behind Clinton, and her campaign, convinced Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee, is already hard at work plotting his downfall.

The presidents remarks came even before Clintons string of victories on Tuesday, the New York Times reports. Speaking at a fundraising event in Austin, Texas, last Friday, President Obama told a group of Democratic donors that Senator Sanderss campaign was nearing an end and that they must prepare to unite behind Clinton. Although he was reportedly careful to keep from criticizing Sanders, whos beloved for his authenticity, Obama pointed out that an authentic candidate doesnt necessarily make a good president (he named George W. Bush as an example). He described Clinton as smart, tough, and experienced, and promised shed continue his administrations work.

Over the past few days, the president has also stepped up his criticism of Trumps rhetoric, most recently at a St. Patricks Day luncheon at the Capitol on Tuesday. The longer that we allow the political rhetoric of late to continue, and the longer that we tacitly accept it, we create a permission structure that allows the animosity in one corner of our politics to infect our broader society, he said. And animosity breeds animosity. His advisers told the Washington Post that they expect the nominee to be Clinton, and that the president will campaign heavily on her behalf.

Meanwhile Clintons campaign is already preparing a strategy to defeat Trump in the general election. A Clinton aide told The Wall Street Journal that her team has closely monitored how Trumps Republican rivals have tried  and failed  to make a dent in his ascent. Shes reportedly planning to attack Trump on substance and stay out of the war of insults, trusting in Trumps heated rhetoric to repel voters. Although its natural for Clintons own campaign to prepare for her victory in the Democratic race, Sanders has yet to announce such a specific strategy to oust his potential Republican rival.

But the Vermont senator contends hes just as likely as Clinton to win the nomination  on Thursday he called the suggestion he drop out of the race absurd. The bottom line is that only half of the American people have participated in the political process, he said, referring to primaries still to be held in 24 states and Washington, D.C.To suggest we dont fight this out until the end would be, I think, a very bad mistake. In an interview with the Associated Press, Sanders predicted wins in states like Arizona, Washington, New York, and Pennsylvania would give him a chance to catch up to Clintons delegate count.

Sanders is technically right, and his campaign has certainly generated more excitement (as the president put it) than Clintons. But her widening delegate lead, coupled with the presidents non-endorsement endorsement, have helped her regain significant momentum.
Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The ongoing refugee crisis has stretched many European countries to their limits  so much so that some are beginning to question how many refugees they can feasibly take in. By February, more than 76,000 people had risked crossing to Europe so far this year, and the influx shows no signs of slowing. Whats more, a new study published in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) suggests that host countries might need to take refugees mental health into consideration just as much as their physical presence and well-being. According to the study, which compared the mental health of refugees to that of Swedish-born citizens, refugees fleeing a war zone are 3.6 times more likely to develop psychotic disorders.

To reach this conclusion, researchers gathered public mental-health data for more than 1 million people born in Sweden to Swedish-born parents. They also examined records for refugees and non-refugee migrants, excluding undocumented migrants or people with a pending asylum decision. They then compared the prevalence of a ICD-10 clinical diagnosis, which includes schizophrenia and all other psychotic disorders that arent related to moods or emotions, in all three populations.

Taking into account age, sex, income, and urban versus rural residency of both Swedish citizens and migrants, researchers found not only that refugees are more likely to develop a psychotic disorder than Swedes, but that theyre also 66 percent more likely to do so than non-refugee migrants from the same regions of origin. According to Mother Jones, last year Sweden took in 32,600 refugees, which means 41 will likely develop a psychotic disorder at some point.

James Kirkbride, a co-author of the study and a senior research fellow in the Division of Psychiatry at University College London, told Mother Jones that although data on children is limited, people who migrate earlier in life might be even more likely to develop a psychotic disorder. To Kirkbride, such evidence makes a compelling case for countries to provide counseling and other mental-health services to people fleeing war zones. If you subscribe to the view that we have a moral duty to care for those we accept in our countries as refugees, this should extend to providing appropriate mental healthcare, he said. The burden of mental health disorders which occur in already vulnerable populations is an important humanitarian issue.
Photo: Ron Koeberer

In 2013, educator and writer Jessica Lahey wrote a convincing piece for The Atlantic in which she argued that her introverted students needed to learn to speak up in class. In it, she defended her decision to keep class participation as a small but significant portion of her students grades. The quieter kids in the class simply needed to learn how to speak up in a world where most people wont stop talking, she wrote.

Two years later, she changed her mind.

Last summer, Lahey wrote about her new, more nuanced take on class participation in a post for Quiet Revolution, a site launched last year by Susan Cain, the author of the 2012 mega best seller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking. There are ways to encourage participation other than asking students to speak up in class, Lahey wrote in that follow-up piece, and silence is an incredibly important tool for promoting learning and teaching patience.

This is essentially the heart of the idea behind the Quiet Schools Network, a new initiative Cain is readying to launch this summer with her for-profit company, Quiet Revolution. Led by former teacher Heidi Kasevich, the network will be a group of 50 educators  including teachers and administrators  who will meet this summer for a workshop that will, Kasevich and Cain hope, help both public and private schools pay more attention to their quietest students. (Schools will pay a fee to join the network, though there is limited financial assistance available, Kasevich said.)

One of their central arguments is that introverts are different from extroverts not just on a behavioral level  their physiology is distinct, too, in a real, measurable way. Research in psychology dating back to the 1960s backs this notion up: In a classic, often-cited study, for example, researchers placed four drops of lemon juice onto the tongues of 100 volunteers. Those who scored higher in introversion had a markedly different reaction to the sour taste, with an increased production of saliva. In his 2013 book, Me, Myself and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, University of Cambridge psychologist Brian Little touches on that in a section on introversion and extroversion:

One biological model of this dimension postulates that the differences in extraversion reflect differences in the arousal level of certain neocortical areas of the brain: those high in extraversion have low levels of arousal, whereas introverts have high levels. Given that effective performance on daily tasks requires an optimal level of arousal, extraverts are typically seeking to increase their levels of arousal, whereas introverts are trying to lower theirs.

As Cain explained to Science of Us, The big insight, really, is all human beings have nervous systems that respond differently to stimulation, so we all have different needs to be at our sweet spot and be at our best and most ready to learn.

Back to the matter of class participation: Part of the mission of the Quiet Schools Network will be to encourage teachers to reframe classroom participation as classroom engagement, the idea being that there are other, quieter ways to measure students understanding of the material than how quickly and loudly they can talk about it. A lot of kids  and not just introverts  need a longer runway, Kasevich said, meaning more time to prep before theyre ready to make a useful contribution to the discussion. A lot of these kids prefer to learn by thinking and processing deeply, Cain told Science of Us. They might want to contribute when they have something they really want to say, but they resent that feeling that they should be piping up throughout. Lahey, for example, now requires a brief moment of thoughtful silence after she poses a question to her classroom. I noticed that the most extroverted students would jump right in there before knowing what they wanted to say, she said. The extroverted kids also needed to think about what they wanted to say [before they blurted it out].

Some educators Cain has spoken with are already moving away from traditional classroom participation models by using social media in the classroom. Students can respond to ideas discussed in class on Twitter, or Facebook, or a classroom blog. You very often find that the students who are more reticent to raise their hands are much more vocal when theyre typing into an online forum, she said.

Beyond the classroom, Cain and Kasevich would love for schools to reconsider the structure of their physical spaces as well. For instance, the entire point of recess for little kids  and breaks for older kids  is to allow them time to refresh themselves, so that afterward theyll be ready again to learn. But think of your typical school: Its loud, its noisy, its brightly lit. If a kid wants to get away from that, there usually arent many options beyond the library or the bathroom. Recess is loud, the cafeteria is loud, the lights tend to be bright, Kasevich said. An abundance of social interactions and really bright lights can feel like fingernails grating on a chalkboard for the introverted students. And this is where I think its an unconscious bias. In her dream scenario, those quiet spaces are something really cozy by a window overlooking trees  just a place for silence.

Importantly, Kasevich is not advocating to shield the shy kids from their fears of public speaking. Rather, the changes she and Cain are proposing are just a way of helping the quiet students feel more comfortable with speaking up. Another class-participation method Cain and Kasevich are excited about is something they call think/pair/share: a period of quiet thought, followed by a discussion with another student, followed by the two presenting their thoughts to the classroom. Similarly, Lahey has instituted something she calls peer-to-peer teaching, where she enlists individual students  both the loud ones and the quieter ones  to teach a section of material for the day. Its interesting  I think one of the big helpful parts for them is in the preparation, she told Science of Us. I give them the answers, and I offer to sit down with them and talk about how they might present the information  Just having more time to process and think about it is very helpful.

And most teachers know that you dont fully understand something until youve taught it, she continued. So the students have found that their learning is much deeper. None of this, incidentally, is about excluding the loud kids, who will still be able to talk through their thoughts. Its about helping the quiet kids recognize that their thoughts are worth sharing, too.
So this is the unofficial discussion post, then?

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marvel ain't shit

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Wait I thought it was presumed it was all in the same universe?

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his hustle is on level with andrew garfield's, which means he's gonna get the boot and then marvel will reintroduce a lesser version of him for the films

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Omg I love this gif lol

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amen

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he thirsty for that movie money can't blame him netflix probs don't pay well

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he probably makes better money with netflix



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He probably wants that plus merchandise



It's doing amazing on Netflix, I don't blame him for wanting to get in on the movie money too

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marvel pays peanuts to their movie actors (not named Robert)

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I'm really glad my concerns about Matt not having the black costume and showing off that ass were unfounded. The red costume has done a great job at displaying it particularly in ep 3.

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nnnnn that's the kind of spoiler i like to hear!

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:) I might try to make some GIF's this weekend.

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have to wait for my friend to get off work to watch. at least it gave me time to make a double batch of brownies. anyway i'm so excited i want elektra to step on me.

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Then he said Frank Grillo should have played The Punisher and I was like ??? because I can't tell the difference between those two guy's ethnicities!



I showed him a pic of Elodie Yung as Elektra to see his reaction and I told him she wasn't greek and his reply was "but she's HOT."



He's an embarrassing self-hating Brazilian but this is a whole other level of wtf lmao. I haven't watched it yet because I'm at work but I just had the wildest conversation with a co-worker who thinks Jon Bernthal is too "ethnic" to play The Punisher lmao. At first he was like "he's too mediterranean, too latin" and I was like "but isn't he a white guy?" Then I looked him up on google and told the dude "wiki's telling me he's a jewish guy with like lithuanian and polish descent" and the dude was like "that's it, his face is too eastern mediterranean."Then he said Frank Grillo should have played The Punisher and I was like ??? because I can't tell the difference between those two guy's ethnicities!I showed him a pic of Elodie Yung as Elektra to see his reaction and I told him she wasn't greek and his reply was "but she's HOT." #dead He's an embarrassing self-hating Brazilian but this is a whole other level of wtf lmao.

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did anyone besides frank grillo actually think frank grillo had a shot at the punisher?? he's already in the mcu as the poor man's manu bennett

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lmao he really is the poor man's Manu Bennett.

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I know there were talks about Tom Hardy wanting to play the punisher, like maybe two years ago, before he signed on for suicide squad (and then had to drop out)



He would have been great but so is Jon so I'm happy

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I was so glad they got a similar scene from season 1 in s2.

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I loved it, it was so, weirdly, fun to watch.

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I appreciate all the booty shots

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This scene was everything. The fight choreography is so on point in DD.

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!!!



one of the highlights of this show tbh. the fights are always on point

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That was AMAZING

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[ Spoiler (click to open) ] that extended fight scene in the stairwell in ep 3 was so awesome! i'm on episode four

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Yeesssssssssssssssss. I need to watch when I get home.

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the movies already have too many characters without the tv people



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Apparently Infinity War is going to have unintroduce characters in it as well, it is a literal definition of a clusterfuck.

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I'm on episode two and holy shit I LOVE Jon as the Punisher



*even though I still think Tom Hardy would be amazing*

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I'm on ep 11 and I love him so much

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On ep 5 and I looove his Frank Castle so far.



lol I feel like I'm watching Tom Hardy at times.

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I'm on epi 4 and I agree! They both have that menacing stance/body without saying a word you know you want nothing to do with them





Like they're both fantastic at physical acting, without actually touching anyone

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me too he's my favourite part of the season so far (I'm on ep 5)

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Superhero movies need to die asap :/

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Girl bye



They make a shit ton of money and are entertaining as fuck, they're here for a while

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girl bye when did i say the are going to disappear? i say that they need to dissapear because they are awful and all are the same boring shit

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People have been saying/predicting that for over 10 years, they're not going anywhere.

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they've always been around, they always will be. comments like these are the ones that need to die asap tbh.

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I won't be able to fully marathon til tomorrow night. Still on episode one lol



Maybe I can convince the BFF to watch some tonight. I don't think she finished season 1 either but whatever. I'm convincing.

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your icon <3

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He just got introduced and now I have to leave for work ;_;



I should call out.



I won't. But I should lol

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YESSS @ this ICON!

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YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. NASDAQ OMX Armenia OJSC made no USD sale and purchase deals on March 18. Armenpress was informed about this from NASDAQ OMX Armenia. The Central Bank informs that dollar depreciated by 0.78 drams on March 18, forming 486.07 drams, the Euro depreciated by 2.59 drams, forming 548.09 drams and the Russian ruble depreciated by 0.03 drams, forming 7.08 drams.

The currency market has the following average exchange rates.




We begin with a look at the key figures for the U.S. oil and energy industry this week from which we see a minor decline in U.S. oil production and rising crude oil stocks

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Friday, March 18, 2015

Oil prices are nearing their highs for 2016, with WTI topping $40 per barrel for the first time since the days surrounding the OPEC meeting in early December. The rally has been impressive  crude prices are up more than 50 percent since early February.

Is the rally for real? The fundamentals are still pretty poor, raising questions about the durability of the latest rally. Oil inventories are still massive (setting another record this week) and global supply continues to outstrip demand. The upward movements in prices are largely being driven by market sentiment and a weaker U.S. dollar over the past month and a half. A sustained rally in prices may not be here just yet, so there is a risk that prices retreat in the weeks ahead.

Brazil crisis explodes. The brewing political and economic crisis in Brazil exploded this week after President Dilma Rousseff appointed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to her cabinet, a move widely seen as an attempt to protect Lula from corruption charges that were levied against him only a week earlier. On March 13, more than 3 million people took to city streets around the country, protesting widespread corruption and demanding the removal of President Rousseff. The appointment of Lula set off another wave of protests on March 17. Related: Dear President Trump or President Clinton, Here is Your Energy Agenda

The political firestorm is unfolding at a break neck pace, causing widespread confusion. Lulas appointment was also intended to protect President Rousseff from her own impeachment proceedings, as Lula is a more popular figure. However, on March 17, a judge blocked the appointment of Lula, saying it was illegal. The outcome of the decision is not clear at this time. On the same day, an investigator looking into the Petrobras scandal published recordings of wiretapped conversations between Lula and President Rousseff, conversations in which the two apparently plotted Lulas appointment to head off the corruption investigation. Rousseff portrayed the release of the tapes as the beginnings of a coup, while Rousseffs opponents say they are solid proof of corruption. Protestors clashed violently with riot police in Brasilia, the countrys capital, late in the evening on March 17.

While the turmoil in the Brazil doesnt necessarily affect the oil industry directly, at least as of now, the political crisis will only worsen the economic crisis. The highly indebted Petrobras, still suffering from the corruption investigation, has no scope to invest in new oil projects. On the other hand, the political crisis could add impetus to the Congress pending decision to open up the pre-salt oil fields to greater private sector control, both as a way of stimulating the economy and because Petrobras position continues to deteriorate.

UK cuts taxes on oil industry. The British government took further steps on March 16 to aid its struggling oil industry, scrapping the 35 percent petroleum tax and reducing another tax on profits from 20 to 10 percent. The North Sea oil industry has been suffering worse than most during the downturn in prices, due to the aging oilfields and expensive production costs. The industry widely praised the move. Related: The Rationale Behind Russias Withdrawal From Syria

New pipeline safety regulations. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) finally released new proposed safety regulations on oil and gas pipelines, more than five years after the deadly San Bruno, California explosion, which killed eight people and sparked a call to overhaul regulations. The proposed rules will raise the bar on safety inspections of older oil and gas lines, particularly in populated areas. Industry groups welcomed the long-awaited proposal and said they would review the rules.

TransCanada to buy Columbia Pipeline for $10.2 billion. TransCanada (NYSE: TRP) announced its decision to purchase Houston-based Columbia Pipeline Group (NYSE: CPGX) for $10.2 billion while also taking on $2.8 billion in debt. Columbia Pipeline owns 15,000 miles of natural gas pipeline infrastructure across the United States, but a large portion of the assets are located in the Marcellus and Utica shales. The purchase is equivalent to $25.50 for Columbias shares, or a 32 percent premium. The move is seen by TransCanada as a way to knock off a rival  TransCanada has struggled to move oil and gas from Canada to the United States.

Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell split up. The state-owned Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) have decided to split up their joint venture Motiva Enterprises LLC. Motiva consists of three major refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, plus an array of fuel terminals. Aramco will take the Port Arthur refinery, the largest in the United States. Shell will assume control of the two other refineries, based in Louisiana. The joint venture was established in 1998, but the two companies have diverging interests and saw a breakup as the best path forward. Aramco is looking to spin off assets in some sort of public offering while Shell is looking to divest itself of some assets. Related: Playing The Volatility Game In Oil

Renewables could save $4.2 trillion through 2030. A new report finds that if the world doubled its share of renewable energy to 36 percent by 2030, it could save $4.2 trillion for the global economy. The report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says that an aggressive ramp up in renewable energy installations not only makes economic sense, but doing so will be less expensive than not doing it.

Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) nearing bankruptcy. The worlds largest private sector coal company warned that it could go bankrupt as depressed coal prices and weak demand cut into the companys revenues, while debt becomes increasingly difficult to service. Peabody failed to pay interest on two loans that came due, and a 30-day grace period has begun. The company will fall into default if it does not pay within 30 days. We may not have sufficient liquidity to sustain operations and to continue as a going concern, Peabody said wrote in an SEC filing. We may need to voluntarily seek protection under chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code.

Pacific Exploration & Production (TSE: PRE) looking at a buyout to avoid bankruptcy. The largest oil producer in Latin America, Pacific Exploration, is considering six buyout offers in order to avoid going bankrupt. Based in Bogota but also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Pacifics share price has collapsed by more than 95 percent in the last two years.

By Evan Kelly of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff looks more vulnerable than ever, and her exit from power no longer looks unlikely.

More than 3 million people protested in the streets of major cities across Brazil on March 13, numbers that may have exceeded even the massive rallies that took place at the end of the countrys military dictatorship in the mid-1980s. The population is fed up with corruption, fed up with the ruling party, and are seeking the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff.

The list of problems facing President Rousseff runs long. The scandal plaguing the state-owned oil company Petrobras continues to spread. Brazil is facing the worst economic recession in about a century, in large part due to the crash in prices for oil and other commodities. GDP shrank by 3.8 percent in 2015 and could contract by almost as much this year. And President Rousseff herself is facing impeachment proceedings for cooking the budgetary books.

She isnt the only one to blame. The Petrobras scandal and the ongoing investigation, known as Lava Jato, have implicated politicians from several political parties, not just her own. Also, the impeachment proceedings are being led by an opponent of President, Eduardo Cunha, who himself is under investigation for corruption as part of the Petrobras scandal. Still, the pressure on Rousseff is growing by the day. One of her major coalition partners, the PMDB party, could abandon her in the coming weeks. Related: Dear President Trump or President Clinton, Here is Your Energy Agenda

In a bizarre turn of events, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was charged with money laundering last week, but as of March 16, agreed to become President Rousseffs Chief of Staff. (At the time of this writing, it appears that a Brazilian court suspended the appointment, so his admittance into the cabinet is unclear).

The move offers him some legal protections against the corruption investigation  ministers of government can only be tried by the Supreme Court, so investigators will now have a tougher time going after him. Lula has been ensnared in the Petrobras kickback scandal, a scheme in which Petrobras was overcharged by contractors whom then turned around and kicked back billions in payments to high level figures in both the oil company and the ruling party. Much of the graft apparently took place during Lulas presidency.

The fact that Rousseff would turn to Lula  a once popular figure who is now much diminished  illustrates the extent of her predicament.

In fact, analysts are now debating when she might be forced from office, not if. The Eurasia Group, a political risk outfit, put odds on Rousseff not finishing her term at 65 percent. The climate in Congress has changed, said Ricardo Caldas, a Brasilia-based political scientist, according to The Wall Street Journal. If they dont vote for impeachment, it will be hard to explain to voters. Related: The Rationale Behind Russias Withdrawal From Syria

This is a complicated political backdrop that the oil industry must navigate. One of the major international oil companies operating in Brazil is Royal Dutch Shell, who announced on March 14 that it had started oil production at the third and final phase of its Parque das Conchas project, an offshore field in Brazils Campos Basin. The latest development will add 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day at peak production. The project includes a subsea production system and ties back to a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.

Shell also recently completed the takeover of BG Group, which granted the oil major significant offshore positions in Brazil.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian Congress is weighing legislation that could liberalize the countrys offshore pre-salt deposits, vast oil fields located in deep water underneath a thick layer of salt. Petrobras is legally required to operate Brazils pre-salt fields, and take a substantial stake in any project. Shells CEO has advocated for a removal of such requirements, arguing that oil companies such as his could move forward with development much faster. Related: Oil Wont Stage A Serious Rebound Until This Happens

Speaking on the possibility that the Brazilian Congress might ease Petrobras control, Shells CEO Ben van Beurden said the move was only logical. Its up to congress to decide. But I think it makes sense to call on other companies who have the technology, who have the money, van Beurden said. I dont see how this is not beneficial for Brazil, he added.

There are a lot of moving pieces. Former President Lula is reportedly going to be tasked with getting the economy back on track. The Brazilian stock market and the countrys currency have reacted negatively, expecting growth policies that could worsen the fiscal outlook.

From the oil industrys perspective, opening up the offshore sector to private companies, some assert, would help attract much needed foreign investment. As a result, privatizing pre-salt assets could be pushed forward in part because of the political turmoil, and it is a testament to Brazils current problems that such a massive piece of legislation would probably be a mere sideshow to the political upheaval taking place in the country right now.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Egypt is close to joining the club of unconventional gas producers after Shell and Apache announced their local joint venture was ready to start work on a pilot project in the Western Desert, involving hydraulic fracturing, by the end of this month.

For Shell, this project represents an expansion of its presence in the gas industry of the North African country, which used to be a net exporter of the fuel before the revolution. It has substantial reserves of gas, including the biggest deposit in the Mediterranean, the Zohr Prospect, and much of these are awaiting development. In other words, Egypts gas industry has growth potential that the Anglo-Dutch company has not failed to overlook. Related: Enis Arctic Field Comes Online, But Will it Ever Be Profitable?

This expansion, which builds on the already solid presence of BG Group in Egypt, is part of Shells efforts to maintain its position as a leading global supplier of gas, as stated in its annual report.

And getting at Egypts gas through hydraulic fracturing is relatively easyat least in terms of environmental opposition to the process. Egypt is in no position to block gas development as the nation is energy-starved and in urgent need of new sources of supply.

Shell and Apache together control half of the enterprise that will develop the Western Desert field, which is part of the North East Abu Gharadig oil and gas deposit, the other half in the hands of Egypts General Petroleum. Shell is the operator, with a 52 percent interest in their half. Three wells will be drilled at the field by June, when Shell and Apache will discuss the full-scale development of the project with the Egyptian government. Related: OPEC-Russia Meeting Set For April With Or Without Iran

A Wood Mackenzie report last year noted Shells focus on gas, especially on LNG, as a major growth driver for the company. Now, after the acquisition of BG Group, itself with a solid gas portfolio, the Anglo-Dutch firm has practically become the largest player in the global LNG field.

Over the near-term, this might not be a reason to cheer, given the bearish gas market at the moment; but over the medium- and long-term, a focus on gas may well prove to the be the smartest move. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global gas demand will continue to climb over the next five years, albeit not at a terribly significant rate. Growth drivers will be markets in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, where demand currently outstrips supply.

With its gas portfolio and this latest addition to its gas operations, Shell is among the companies in a very good position to benefit from this demand growth. Related: Irans Return To The Oil Markets Less Damaging Than Expected

But then again, Egypt is not the most stable environment to work in, and security concerns are mounting. In August 2014, an American employee of Apache Corp. was killed in an apparent carjacking in the Western Desert. While this particular type of incident was a one-off, energy security experts see a growing problem with everything from militant bombings to organized crime.

According to University of Oxford energy expert Justin Dargin, the chaos following Mubaraks ouster has caused terror attacks aimed at the energy sectorespecially of the natural gas sectorto increase dramatically.

With exception to the Sinai, however, militant attacks far have been focused largely on urban centers and security forces, and not really on oil and gas installations. The fear, however, is that eventually oil and gas could become a primary target because of its importance to the future stability of the Egyptian government.

By James Burgess of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com
Two hundred and three years after David Melville patented the gas streetlight, and oil prices are lit up once again today. Prices are rallying for a third consecutive day, and for a fifth consecutive week  the longest streak since last May. WTI has now leapt into forty-dollardom to boot, with an impending prompt month rollover to a higher level on Tuesday (contract expiry on Monday). Henceforth, here are six things to consider today:

1) There has been little in the way of economic data overnight to influence markets, with the Uni of Michigan sentiment data the main release of note in the U.S. today  all measures came in below expectations. We have several Federal Reserve FOMC speakers on deck  Dudley, Rosengren and Bullard  who all could all provide further insights into Fed policy going forward. This could filter through to our dearly beloved commodities via U.S. dollar oscillations.

2) The inverse relationship betwixt the U.S. dollar and crude cannot be understated. As we discussed yesterday, the rebound in risk appetite means crude is charging to multi-month highs as the U.S. dollar charges to multi-month lows. As ongoing loose monetary policy and stimulus measures are undertaken around the world, deterioration in the financial state of the U.S. shale industry is likely being postponed by the respite of an oil price rally:

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3) In the broader scheme of things, the chart below is rather fascinating, for global carbon emissions have remained flat for the last two years. This move has been in large part due to the rise of renewables in the global generation mix: they accounted for 90 percent of new electricity generation last year. Hence, despite a global economy growing at ~3 percent last year, CO2 emissions have essentially been flat since 2013 at 32.1 billion tonnes: Related: Largest U.S. Refinery Now Belongs To Saudi Arabia

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4) Statoil has confirmed that a gas facility at Algerias third largest gas field, In Salah, was hit by rocket-propelled grenades early this morning. This is stoking geopolitical concerns, given Algerias proximity to Libya (neighbors), where there has been such as surge in violence from the Islamic State. Algeria is the largest natural gas producer in Africa, and the second largest supplier to Europe (after Russia).

It is also one of the top three largest oil producers in Africa. Similarly to natural gas, the vast majority of oil exports head into Europe. According to our ClipperData, ~85 percent of Algerias ~450.000 per day of oil exports went into Europe last year, with the rest heading to North America (mostly Canada) and Asia (mostly India and Indonesia). Related: Dear President Trump or President Clinton, Here is Your Energy Agenda

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Algerian oil exports by region (source: ClipperData)

5) @CapEconComms stands up for Brent today on Twitter, highlighting that while headlines may be focusing on WTI clambering into forty-dollardom, plucky Brent got there first. Stiff upper lip, old chap!

(Click to enlarge) Related: The Rationale Behind Russias Withdrawal From Syria

6) Finally, the chart below is from Wood MacKenzie, highlighting average production of wells in the lower 48 states in the U.S. They estimate that stripper wells  marginal wells nearing the end of their economically useful life  account for some ~17 percent of onshore U.S. oil production.

By Matt Smith

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee is back for another round, brought to you by Great Northern Distilling: grain to glass spirits, handmade in Wisconsin. The whole month of March, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun articles on bars and clubs  including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars readers poll and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!

Since the earliest days of the OnMilwaukee Best of Bars poll, when it comes to the category of best LGBT bar, there's pretty much only been one winner: La Cage. But for the first time since ... well, since ever, a new name sits at the top of the podium. Indeed, Hamburger Mary's has nabbed the LGBT bar gold medal from La Cage.

After spending the last three years coming in second place to La Cage, stuck playing bridesmaid but never bride, the Bay View bar and eatery took the top spot this year by a tight 34 votes. Hamburger Mary's tasty menu of burgers together with its regular events  including its karaoke and Dining with the Divas drag revue on Fridays and Saturdays nights  simply proved to be too tough a combination to beat this year, allowing the diner to claim victory.

Walker's Pint  the OnMilwaukee editors' pick this year  took the bronze, while This Is It and D.I.X. wrapped up the rest of the top five.

OnMilwaukee editors' pick: Walker's Pint

Runners-up:

2. La Cage

3. Walker's Pint

4. This Is It

5. D.I.X.


Reprinted from AlJazeera

Despite his controversial past, David Keyes is taking over as Netanyahu's foreign media adviser and spokesman.





Jerusalem -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the appointment of a new foreign media adviser and spokesman this week, the latest in a series of moves viewed as snubs to the Obama White House.

US-born David Keyes replaces Mark Regev, who became familiar to English-language audiences as the voice of the Netanyahu government during Israel's repeated attacks on Gaza. Regev will be Israel's new ambassador to the UK.

Keyes, aged 32, has been plucked from his current position as executive director of Advancing Human Rights, a New York-based lobby group he founded in 2010. He also heads a web operation known as Cyberdissidents, which claims to connect political dissidents around the world.

Keyes took Israeli citizenship nearly a decade ago, and then served as a spokesperson in the Israeli army. Netanyahu's office said Keyes would start in his new role "very soon." Rumors of the appointment had been circulating since January.

Keyes steps in as Netanyahu's foreign media adviser at a time when Israeli officials have been accused of conducting a "witch hunt" against both the foreign press corps in Israel and Israeli social media activists.

Palestinian human rights groups, meanwhile, have highlighted Keyes's failure, despite styling himself a supporter of human rights activism, to challenge Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights. Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including hundreds being held on secret charges.



His appointment is also likely to heighten tensions with Washington, given his high-profile campaigning to undermine the White House's foreign policy efforts to end a long-running standoff with Iran.

Keyes is best-known for a series of publicity stunts he staged in 2014 in Vienna, during key negotiations between Washington and Iran over the latter's nuclear energy program.

He published videos of himself admonishing -- or what he called "punking" -- Iranian diplomats in the streets of the Austrian capital over Tehran's human rights record. He also held a mock press conference denouncing Iran in a hotel lobby, next to someone dressed in an ayatollah outfit.

Last July, as the White House prepared to sign an agreement with Iran, Keyes published an article on the Daily Beast website in which he declared his goal had been to "cause as much trouble as possible" for the negotiators.

Netanyahu was a vocal opponent of the talks, and controversially bypassed the White House to speak directly to the US Congress last spring in a last-ditch attempt to pressure legislators to scupper the deal. An agreement was signed a short time later.

Many of the online videos of Keyes's stunts have been taken down over the past two months, in an indication of apparent concern by Israel that his appointment might be viewed adversely by the White House.

Yossi Alper, a former adviser to Ehud Barak, one of Netanyahu's predecessors, said Israeli moves such as Keyes's appointment were now a staple feature of US-Israeli relations mired in "permanent crisis."

"Netanyahu appears confident that he can weather any storm with Obama," Alper told Al Jazeera. "The view seems to be that there is only so much more damage that can be done in the remaining nine months of this presidency."
By David Swanson, Telesur

Former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg's "The Obama Doctrine" in The Atlantic presents President Barack Obama's view of his own foreign policy (with input from a few of his close subordinates). Obama views himself as a radical leader in military restraint, in brave resistance to war mongers, and in scaling back excessive fear mongering in U.S. culture.

The U.S. President who has overseen the highest Pentagon budget in history, created drone wars, launched wars against the will of Congress, dramatically expanded foreign arms sales and special operations and the arming of proxies, claimed to be "really good at killing people," and openly bragged about having bombed seven nations that are inhabited largely by dark-skinned Muslims, bolsters his "doctrine" by offering accurate antiwar assessments of Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush's wars. (He essentially admits to Reagan's October Surprise negotiations with Iran that sabotaged the 1980 U.S. elections.) Obama's and Goldberg's discussion of Obama's own wars does not display the same accuracy or wisdom.

The Goldberg / Obama portrait is shaped largely by the choice of what to include. The primary focus is on Obama's 2013 reversal of his plan to bomb Syria, with a minor emphasis on his negotiation of the Iran nuclear agreement. Much of his more militaristic behavior is completely ignored or brushed aside in passing reference. And even in those cases that come into focus, myths go unquestioned -- even when they are debunked later in this same book-length article.

Goldberg writes as unquestioned fact that "Assad's army had murdered more than 1,400 civilians with Sarin gas" many paragraphs prior to stating that one of Obama's reasons for reversing course on bombing Syria was the CIA's warning that this claim was "not a slam dunk." Goldberg writes that "the strong sentiment inside the Obama administration was that Assad had earned dire punishment." Thus a proposal to drop 500-pound bombs all over Syria, killing countless people, is made respectable in Washington by depicting it as revenge, and nowhere does Goldberg mention oil pipelines, a Russian rivalry, the overthrow of Assad as a step toward Iranian overthrow, or other factors actually at work for which the dubious chemical weapons claims served as an excuse to bomb.

Of course, not bombing was the right thing to do, and Obama deserves praise for it, while Hillary Clinton's publicly stated belief that this was the wrong decision, and John Kerry's continued private advocacy for bombing, are reprehensible. It's also quite valuable that Obama does something rare in this article when he admits that public and Congressional and British opposition to bombing Syria helped prevent him from committing that crime. This is clearly not a false claim but the admission of what is generally denied by U.S. politicians whom even the public cheers for their usual pretense of ignoring polls and protests.

But the public was even more opposed in polls (if less engaged as activists) to arming proxies in Syria. Obama commissioned a CIA report on the past success or failure of such operations, and the CIA admitted there had been no successes (except in 1980s Afghanistan, which involved a bit of well-known blowback). So, Obama chose not, as he puts it, to "do stupid sh*t," opting instead to do halfway stupid sh*t, which proved quite predictably to make matters worse, and to make cries for even stupider sh*t shriller.

In a similar manner, though it goes virtually unmentioned in Goldberg's tome, Obama has launched wars with drones that he has viewed as the exercise of great restraint in comparison to the launching of ground wars. But the drone wars kill large numbers and do so just as indiscriminately, and they contribute to the destabilization of nations just as disastrously. When Obama was holding up Yemen as a model success, some of us were pointing out that the drone war had not replaced some other kind of war but would probably lead to one. Now, Obama, whose "doctrine" claims to have discovered the unimportance of the Middle East (in comparison with the supposed need to build up for wars in the Far East), is dealing unprecedented levels of weapons to Middle Eastern nations, first and foremost to Saudi Arabia. And Obama's military is collaborating in the Saudi bombing of Yemen, which is killing thousands and fueling al Qaeda. Obama, through Goldberg, blames his Saudi policy on "foreign-policy orthodoxy," which somehow "compels" him to do this particular stupid sh*t -- if that's a sufficiently harsh term for mass murder.

Obama's Only-Do-Halfway-Stupid-sh*t doctrine has proven most disastrous where it has succeeded in overthrowing governments, as in Libya. Obama now says that illegally overthrowing the Libyan government "didn't work." But the President pretends, and Goldberg lets him, that the United Nations authorized that action, that the best laid plans were made for after the regime change (in fact, none were), and that Gadaffi was threatening to slaughter civilians in Benghazi. Obama even seems to claim that things would have been even worse somehow without his criminal action. That he's resumed bombing Libya in an effort to fix what he broke by bombing Libya gets the barest mention.

Obama's doctrine has also included tripling down on the stupidest of stupid sh*t. Through Goldberg he blames the Pentagon for imposing an escalation of troops in Afghanistan on him, though the escalation he has in mind is clearly the second one he oversaw, not the first, the one that tripled the war he'd inherited, not the one that doubled it and which he'd promised as a candidate for the presidency. When military commanders publicly insisted on that escalation, Obama said nothing. When one of them made some minor rude comments to Rolling Stone, in contrast, Obama fired him.

Obama laughably claims to be an internationalist (in part, he brags, because he's forced other countries to buy more weapons). This is the same Obama whose abuse of the U.N. in attacking Libya finally moved China and Russia to block a similar attempt on Syria. Obama even claims that he backed off bombing Syria in 2013 because the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power of war. This is the same Obama who has since been bombing Syria and who told Congress in his final State of the Union speech that he'd wage wars with or without them -- as he's done in Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, etc. Goldberg even quotes an "expert" characterizing the Obama doctrine as "spending less" despite Obama's increases in military spending.

Goldberg's Obama uses the military primarily for human rights, supported the uprising of the Arab Spring, and has developed a very sage and serious approach to ISIS based on his analysis of a Batman movie. ISIS, in Goldberg's telling, was created by the Saudis and Gulf states plus Assad, with no mention of the U.S. role in destroying Iraq or arming Syrian rebels. In fact, Obama, through Goldberg, restates the imperial view that backward Middle Easterners suffer from millennia-old tribalism, while the United States brings humanitarian services to all it touches. In Obama-Goldberg history, Russia invaded Crimea, only the threat of war made Syria give up its chemical weapons, and Rwanda was a missed opportunity for war, not the result of U.S.-backed war and assassination.

"Sometimes you have to take a life to save even more lives," says Obama confidant John Brennan, pushing the drone propaganda also found in the film, Eye in the Sky. Facts are apparently irrelevant to a portrait of a president. Obama, who signed an executive order last year ridiculously declaring Venezuela to be a national security threat tells Goldberg that he wisely came into office in 2009 and squashed any silly idea that Venezuela was any kind of threat. Goldberg's Obama is a peacemaker with Russia whose weapons build-up on Russia's border goes unmentioned, as does the coup in Ukraine, even as Obama packs insults of Vladimir Putin into this article.

The fact is that Barack Obama has slaughtered human beings with missiles and bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia -- and every one of those places is worse off for it. He's passing his successor greater war-making powers than ever possessed by any previous member of the human species. The unquestioned assumptions of his doctrine look more like a disease. There's little an American president could do to make things better in the Middle East, he says, never stopping to consider the possibility of halting arms shipments, stopping the bombings, grounding the drones, ceasing the overthrows, dropping support for dictators, withdrawing troops, paying reparations, giving aid, shifting to green energy, and treating others with respectful cooperation. Those sorts of things just don't qualify as a doctrine in Washington, D.C.
In an act Hillary Clinton has labeled "constitutional malpractice" and a "San Francisco Chronicle" editorial "a dereliction of duty," the Republican-led Senate has actually gone much further by committing what should rightly be condemned as an "originalist sin" against America's founding document.



In refusing even to consider a nominee to replacement the most ardent advocate of 'originalism,' in Supreme Court history, Senate leaders could hardly have positioned themselves more directly in opposition to both the language of the Constitution as well as the late Justice Antonin Scalia's philosophy of "original intent."

In this instance, the Senate's pretext, invented out of thin air, that the next president rather than the current Chief Executive should make the nomination, flies in the face of both the literal wording of the Constitution and its original spirit. We have only one president at a time, like it or not, and his or her term runs for four full years.

The Constitution is clear and unambiguous on the duty of President to nominate, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint Judges of the Supreme Court. Nowhere does it diminish that power toward the end of the Chief Executive's term. And nowhere in the document does it reduce the responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent in a timely manner, rather than delaying the process hoping for a more favorable political climate.

If Senate Republicans truly want to be operating under a different Constitution, it is certainly their prerogative to attempt to amend or replace it through accepted constitutional means. Unilaterally altering the Constitution to fit current political interests or styles, however, is not one of them. Indeed, it is merely the latest and most transparently unconstitutional expression of the obstructionist politics they have practiced throughout the Obama presidency.

In their blatant "if you won't play by our rules, we'll take the marbles and go home" approach, Republican leaders are directly threatening both the spirit and practical ability to govern the Founders built into their carefully balanced constitutional system.

For despite their many differences, those first 'originalists' shared a basic agreement about the functional authority of the state. By carefully dividing power and sharing responsibility, their intent was to prevent any one individual, faction or branch from misusing its share to further narrow, partisan ends. The system they created required adherence to established rules and a fundamental willingness to compromise.

We've been through passionate struggles over the proper exercise and limits of governmental power before. Pre-Civil War attempts by states to "nullify" federal authority, like mid-twentieth century southern efforts to avoid complying with Supreme Court civil-rights rulings through the invented doctrine of 'interposition', were rightly and thoroughly discredited. Though frequently at great risk and cost, the Constitution prevailed.

Similarly, any hope of legally and peacefully resolving today's bitter disagreements over such issues as individual and civil rights, gun rights, abortion, religious freedom, immigration, free speech and national security likewise requires adherence to the essential boundaries and functions set down in the national compact all our elected officials swear to uphold.

As a breathtakingly nakedly political act, the Senate's tactic exemplifies precisely the dangers the Founders sought to prevent when they designed a government based on fundamental laws rather than the temporary passions and arbitrary interests of individual men or powerful factions.

Crossing that line is not only indefensible on Constitutional grounds but a dangerous political precedent. Even more tragically, as a form of 'nullification' by other means, it makes a mockery of the principle of rule by law America continues to promote around the world.

Les Adler is a commentator on current events and an emeritus profess of history at Sonoma State University.

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"No culture in history has ever embraced moral relativism and survived. Our own culture, therefore, will either:



1. be the first, and disprove history's clearest lesson, or

2. persist in its relativism and die, or

3. repent of its relativism and live.

There is no other option."

--Peter Kreeft, Philosophy Professor, Boston College

Progressives are intimate with the principle of voting for the lesser of two evils, also knows as the moral relativity principle. Most of us have never been offered candidates whose policies echo ours. For decades, we've been relegated to voting "against" rather than "for." It's a principle that's ingrained in us from the time we're little baby progressives"and it's an extremely hard habit to break, especially when we feel we have no alternative. However, break it we must, or we will never have representation.



In this election, we have an alternative. In Senator Bernie Sanders, we have a truly progressive candidate who has spent 25 years in Congress passing substantive legislation, never wavering from his ethics and principles for the sake of money or power. Unlike past progressive candidates, Senator Sanders has built a strong following, has more than adequate funding, and can handily beat any Republican candidate in the general election. Yet the DNC is supporting--again!--Hillary Clinton"a weak, flawed candidate who constantly flip-flops on crucial issues, has a record of hawkish foreign policy, may be indicted for violations of national security, is in bed with corporate interests, has a consistently unfavorable rating with voters, and will be hard-pressed to beat even the weakest Republican in the general election.

And with every primary that Hillary Clinton wins, even those by slim margins, Bernie Sanders' supporters are increasingly exhorted, threatened, and insulted regarding voting for Clinton in the general election. "You have to unite the Party!" they say, as if we progressives divided it and, therefore, are responsible for healing the fracture by compromising every principle we hold dear. "If you don't vote for Hillary, you're responsible if Trump wins," they say, completely disregarding the DNC's, media's, and their own complicity in shutting out the progressive candidate while polishing the tiara for the establishment queen at every opportunity.

It's time to revisit the moral relativity principle and its ethical implications, because the lesser of two evils is still, by definition, evil. My vote for Barack Obama in 2012 means that, in some small way, I bear a portion of responsibility for drone strikes and the fast-tracking of the TPP. In a like manner, I can celebrate that my vote contributed to the Iran nuclear deal, the classification of broadband as a public utility, normalized relations with Cuba, the death of the KXL, and the legalization of same sex marriage. I will always know what my "for" vote accomplished, but I can never know what voting against the Romney/Ryan ticket prevented"and I have a rich imagination.

In the end, therefore, a vote for Hillary Clinton is not a vote against Donald Trump; it's a vote of support for Hillary Clinton. I cannot base my vote on the "D" after her name, ignoring the statements, votes, policies, decisions, and viewpoints that are on her record, because that record belies the promises she is making on the campaign trail. Nor do I buy the argument that she has "evolved," because the recent record disproves it.

Based on her record as candidate, Secretary of State, Senator, and FLOTUS, and based on her plans, a vote for Hillary Clinton, then, is a vote supporting:

- the "drive-by regime change" in Libya, including the destruction of the Great Man-Made River and of the budding pan-African union with its own gold-based currency, so that France and Britain could continue neocolonialism and divide up Libyan oil;

- the continuation of fracking across the US, unless states ban it, and attempts to garner global fracking deals for US corporations;

- trade deals that further deprive Americans of jobs, but benefit corporations;

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YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. A robot has built a prototype launch-and-landing pad in Hawaii, potentially helping pave the way for automated construction projects on the moon and Mars, Armenpress reports citing Space.com.

The robotic rover, named Helelani, assembled the pad on Hawaii's Big Island late last year, putting together 100 pavers made of locally available material in an effort to prove out technology that could do similar work in space.

"The construction project is really unique. Instead of concrete for the landing pad, we're using lunar and Mars material, which is exactly like the material we have here on the Big Island  basalt," Rob Kelso, executive director of the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration (PISCES) in Hawaii, told Hawaiian news outlet Big Island Now. PISCES partnered with NASA on the project, which is part of a larger program called Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement, or ACME for short.

"And secondly, instead of a human workforce building construction for the landing pad, we're using robotics," Kelso added.

The overall goal of the ACME program is to enable the design and construction of infrastructure on the moon and Mars using local materials. Doing so would be much cheaper and more efficient than hauling everything from Earth, advocates say, since it currently costs about $10,000 to launch every kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of payload from our planet's surface to orbit.

Humanity has taken some steps toward making off-Earth manufacturing a reality. In 2014, NASA launched a 3D printer, which was built by the California company Made In Space, to the International Space Station. The machine soon built a number of items, showing that the technology can work in microgravity conditions. Made In Space aims to launch a larger, commercially oriented 3D printer to the station soon.

The ACME program fits into NASA's long-term vision, which sees robots and 3D printers smoothing humanity's way to Mars and other distant destinations  and helping prepare the off-Earth ground for astronauts' arrival.
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Give a group of 21 Republican and Democratic Florida mayors credit. When it comes to sea level rise, they live at what might be considered Ground Zero for climate change in the U.S. As Philip Levine, the mayor of Miami Beach, put it, "Some people get swept into office. I floated into office." The group wrote to the moderators of the recent Republican and Democratic debates in Miami asking that the candidates be questioned on the subject. Amazingly enough, though previous debates often didn't even hint that the warming of the planet might be an issue of importance, the questions were indeed asked. It was a rare moment in which the media people leading the debates in this endless primary season bothered to address what could be history's deal-breaker. In the Republican debate, only Marco Rubio and John Kasich got to respond and Rubio offered a classic version of what is now the Republican establishment position on the subject. (On Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, of course, we know from statements elsewhere that they are deniers of the first order -- wildly so.) As it happened, Rubio did forthrightly accept the reality of a changing climate since, as he put it, "the climate has always changed." Doh! And his answer only went downhill from there.

Of course, in the race to do us all in, it's no news that, Kasich aside, the Republicans are so out of step with what the burning of fossil fuels is doing to this planet that it should make your head spin. In recent weeks, for instance, here are a few of the transformations reported or predicted: in February, we learned that January had been the ninth-straight "hottest" month ever experienced and that it was a particular record-setter, being "above normal by the highest margin of any month on record." Then, when the February numbers came in, they, too, were jaw-dropping. And if that wasn't cheery enough news, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere "exploded" to levels not seen in at least 11,000 years and possibly not in millions of years, while across the northern hemisphere the temperature briefly hit 2 degrees Celsius more than the pre-industrial revolution norm for the first time in history, even if only for a few hours. Meanwhile, the vast Greenland ice sheet is melting ever faster in a self-feeding loop of destruction, and that is anything but good news, since a recent study revealed that, even if temperature rises were capped at that two-degree mark, "20% of the world's population will eventually have to migrate away from coasts swamped by rising oceans." And given how long carbon remains in the atmosphere, any such sea level rise will hang in there for at least another 10,000 years.

So it went in the early months of 2016 and that -- though given the pace of melting on this planet, it's a metaphor we might have to abandon one of these days -- is just the tip of the iceberg.

There may only be one area where the present crew of media interrogators and presidential candidates are more out of touch when it comes to asking or answering crucial questions, and that's foreign policy and the national security state. In a piece posted four years ago, during the last set of presidential debates, State Department whistleblower and TomDispatch regular Peter Van Buren laid out a series of such questions on foreign and military policy that no one then showed the slightest interest in asking or answering. Like so many things one says (and writes), that was then and this is now and who even remembers? Recently, however, he and I went back and reread that piece, and I must admit that the experience was a heart-sinking one. But let him explain. Tom

Back to the Future

Five Questions That Weren't Asked During the 2012 Presidential Debates and Are Unlikely to Be Asked in 2016

By Peter Van Buren The nuances of foreign policy do not feature heavily in the ongoing presidential campaign. Every candidate intends to "destroy" the Islamic State; each has concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea, and China; every one of them will defend Israel; and no one wants to talk much about anything else -- except, in the case of the Republicans, who rattle their sabers against Iran. In that light, here's a little trip down memory lane: in October 2012, I considered five critical foreign policy questions -- they form the section headings below -- that were not being discussed by then-candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Romney today is a sideshow act for the current Republican circus, and Obama has started packing up his tent at the White House and producing his own foreign policy obituary. And sadly, those five questions of 2012 remain as pertinent and unraised today as they were four years ago. Unlike then, however, answers may be at hand, and believe me, that's not good news. Now, let's consider them four years later, one by one. Is there an endgame for the global war on terror? That was the first question I asked back in 2012. In the ensuing years, no such endgame has either been proposed or found, and these days no one's even talking about looking for one. Instead, a state of perpetual conflict in the Greater Middle East and Africa has become so much the norm that most of us don't even notice. In 2012, I wrote, "The current president, elected on the promise of change, altered very little when it came to George W. Bush's Global War on Terror (other than dropping the name). That jewel-in-the-crown of Bush-era offshore imprisonment, Guantanamo, still houses over 160 prisoners held without trial. While the U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq... the war in Afghanistan stumbles on. Drone strikes and other forms of conflict continue in the same places Bush tormented: Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan (and it's clear that northern Mali is heading our way)." Well, candidates of 2016? Guantanamo remains open for business, with 91 men still left. Five others were expeditiously traded away by executive decision to retrieve runaway American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan, but somehow President Obama feels he can't release most of the others without lots of approvals by... well, someone. The Republicans running for president are howling to expand Gitmo, and the two Democratic candidates are in favor of whatever sort of not-a-plan plan Obama has been pushing around his plate for eight years. Iraq took a bad bounce when the same president who withdrew U.S. troops in 2011 let loose the planes and drones and started putting those boots back on that same old ground in 2014. It didn't take long for the U.S. to morph that conflict from a rescue mission to a training mission to bombing to Special Operations forces in ongoing contact with the enemy, and not just in Iraq, but Syria, too. No candidate has said that s/he will pull out. As for the war in Afghanistan, it now features an indefinite, "generational" American troop commitment. Think of that country as the third rail of campaign 2016 -- no candidate dares touch it for fear of instant electrocution, though (since the American public seems to have forgotten the place) by whom exactly is unclear. There's still plenty of fighting going on in Yemen -- albeit now mostly via America's well-armed proxies the Saudis -- and Africa is more militarized than ever. As for the most common "American" someone in what used to be called the third world is likely to encounter, it's no longer a diplomat, a missionary, a tourist, or even a soldier -- it's a drone. The United States claims the right to fly into any nation's airspace and kill anyone it wishes. Add it all together and when it comes to that war on terror across significant parts of the globe, the once-reluctant heir to the Bush legacy leaves behind a twenty-first century mechanism for perpetual war and eternal assassination missions. And no candidate in either party is willing to even suggest that such a situation needs to end.

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Traditional economic trade theory holds that free trade is a "win-win" strategy inasmuch as it enables the trading countries to "specialize" in the areas of their comparative advantage. Or another version of this requires a labor-rich country to produce labor-intensive goods, while a capital rich country would produce capital-intensive goods--and the trade these goods. The general effect of trade under trade liberalization is both more trade (with lower costs) and higher incomes. This is a rationale for countries coming together to eliminate trade barriers among themselves--examples include but not limited to NAFTA and the EU. It is also the rationale for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Trade agreements, however, lead to strange bedfellows--namely, Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA with a mostly republic Congress providing legislative support. Though opposition was hardly muted, it was ineffective to stop it: Ross Perot warned of a "Giant Sucking Sound" referring to American jobs going to Mexico. It also put Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton on different sides of the conversation and the vote on NAFTA. In hindsight, it appears that Bernie Sanders was right and the Clintons wrong about NAFTA.

Recently, President Obama put the weight of his office behind the TPP arguing that it would raise income in poor countries without harming American workers. Initially, Hillary Clinton backed the agreement, but Bernie Sanders opposed TPP at the outset. Hillary Clinton has moderated her position on TPP and that position is now similar to Senator Sanders'. That is understandable inasmuch as politics is about currying votes, in this case to ascend to the highest office of the land. Sanders has a populist message that appeals to workers; Hillary has a perception that she carries water for Wall Street. However, there is little daylight between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders' position on TPP.

What trade agreements do is bastardize trade theory. How? The agreements open the door for businesses to take a largely unanticipated aberrant leap in trade. By removing barriers (such as tariffs and quotas and other restrictions), CEOs were able to move their operations (companies) overseas--to Mexico, China, etc. and reduce their labor costs. This is understandable, too. Reducing costs is exactly what shareholders would expect them to do in their effort to increase profitability and stock value. Trump has openly charged that Ford's plan to build a $2.5 billion automobile plant in Mexico will cause thousands of American jobs. (See The Detroit News) And you could argue that U.S. income goes up even when the distribution of that income goes mostly to the CEOs and not U.S. workers: National income is higher and the financial types reap billions because they can sell their goods in the U.S. market profitably. What is going on here? When a U.S. company moves to Mexico to produce goods, like Ford, we are not competing with Mexico by trading our U.S. goods for Mexico's goods. We are competing with ourselves. We are producing American cars in Mexico and selling them in the lucrative U.S. States auto market. This is not what advocates of comparative advantage and free trade envisioned.

Trump's threatened taxes on imports of American firms that produce abroad is easier stated than actualized. There's a plethora of international trade agreements that a unilateral discriminatory tariff would violate. But there are ways to get around these legalities--The Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese have found ways. We complain they don't play fair. One way not to play fair is through currency manipulation: The Chinese have been doing this when Yuan for years. By keeping the value of the currency low relative to other currencies like the U.S. dollar, the Chinese make the goods relatively competitive in these markets, and simultaneously, make foreign goods more expensive to Chinese buyers. This strategy has two effects: (1) it grows the Chinese economy through exports, and (2) runs and trade surplus cum the U.S. Not to be overlooked is the possibility that open global markets are good because they help to mitigate the lives of the poor. (See Krugman)

The Europeans use another strategy--they might band genetically treated farm products or they might impose value added tax (VAT) on imports. A VAT is applied to goods in the hands of domestic consumers but it does not apply to the good sold to foreign buyers. However, imports are taxed to keep the system fair. Such a system creates a price disparity between the value of imports and exports--it also discourages imports and encourages exports. And as in the China case, tends to create balance of trade surpluses in these countries with respect to trade with the U.S.

Trade agreements open the door for the shenanigans of CEO's to avoid higher labor costs, stricter environmental standards, and higher corporate taxes in the U.S. Trade agreements invites companies to move their operations abroad (to lower their costs) and then leave these companies free to sell their goods in the U.S. market.

The presidential debates have revealed interesting discussions around trade agreements on both sides of the political divide. Hill1ary morphed her thinking on TPP evolving to a place where Bernie Sanders has long been--against it. President Obama tried to assure Americans that TPP would be good for American workers. The problem is how! Democrats are generally against trade agreements because they believe American workers are harmed by them. Republicans, on the other hand, are strong advocates of trade agreement--NAFTA was voted on by a minority of Democrats. Among Republicans who tend to be pro-trade agreements, Donald Trump, the brash leading presidential republican candidate, is a glaring exception for his opposition to trade agreements he believes, not only hurt U.S. workers, but also the US. economy. After all TPP is a secret trade agreement with the input of 600 corporate advisers. There is hope that the incentive to export companies (engage in foreign direct investment) will be mitigated with the November 2016 general election results--the anti-TPP Hillary Clinton or the builder turned politician anti-TPP Donald Trump.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Governor General of Qazvin Fereydoun Hemmati appointed Sediqeh Rabiei as the first woman district governor of Alborze Markazi District Office in the province, Armenpress reports citing IRNA agency.

In line with implementation of Article 6 of the High Administration Council and upon the proposal of governor of Alborze Markazi, you are hereby appointed as the district governor of Alborze Markazi District Office, Hemmatis decree to Rabiei said in part.

The governor general of Qazvin also wished Rabiei success through prudence and planning within the framework of the approved duties while creating coordination and interaction with other institutes and organizations and taking advantage of qualified forces.

Sediqeh Rabiei hold a Masters degree in political sciences and is a staff member of the Interior Ministry working at Qazvin Governor Generals Office.
Pervez Musharraf travel abroad to seek medical attention: Chaudhry Nisar Ali

ISLAMABAD: Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Thursday said the government had allowed former dictator Pervez Musharraf to travel abroad to seek medical attention after the Supreme Court lifted a ban on his foreign travel yesterday.



The government has decided to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment. He [Musharraf] has also committed he will face all cases against him in court. The interior minister said Musharraf has promised to return in four to six weeks.



Nisar said Musharrafs lawyers had formally asked the government to allow foreign travel to the former president.



Following his lawyers' application, the government has decided  in light of the decision taken by the apex court  to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment.



Lashing out at opposition's criticism of the PML-N government for not going hard on Musharraf, who is facing a treason case for abrogating the constitution and imposing emergency in 2007, Nisar said:



Those who gave a safe passage to Musharraf and offered him a guard of honour are now politicising the matter.



Without naming the PPP, the interior minister said: Why did they not initiate a single case against Musharraf during their five years of rule?



Defending the incumbent government, the interior minister said in the past two years the government has opposed Musharraf's foreign travel in all courts.



He said the Supreme Court, while removing the ban on Musharraf's travel abroad, had left it up to the government to make decisions on whether his movement should be restricted.



Musharraf had attacked the courts and the judiciary. Today, if the apex court has struck his name off the ECL, everyone should respect that.



Later, the interior ministry issued a notification to formally announce the removal of Musharraf's name from the ECL.



Musharraf, a free man

The apex court on Wednesday lifted a ban on Musharraf's foreign travel by upholding a June 12, 2014, Sindh High Court (SHC) order that called for removing his name from the Exit Control List (ECL).



But the order from the top court came with the rider that the federal government or the three-judge special court trying the retired general for treason was free to make decisions to regulate his custody or restrict his movement.



For reasons to be recorded separately, this appeal is dismissed, Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali dictated while heading a five-judge Supreme Court bench.



However, this order will not preclude the federation of Pakistan or the special court, seized with the proceedings under Article 6 (high treason) of the constitution against Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf from passing any legal order for regulating his custody or restricting his movement, the order said.
Report of Chinese troops in AJK are baseless

ISLAMABAD: Indian media reports regarding the presence of Chinese troops in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) are baseless, said Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria on Thursday.



Commenting on recent events and debates in New Delhi on the contentious Kashmir issue, the spokesman said "now the Indian intelligentsia and scholars are also questioning the Indian government over its position on Kashmir".



"The Kashmir issue is still mentioned in the UN Security Council resolutions list as an unsettled matter," Zakaria remarked, while addressing a weekly press briefing in the federal capital.



The FO spokesman said Islamabad had conveyed its disappointment to the Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad over New Delhi's decision to bar Pakistani diplomats from travelling to Kolkata for the World T20 match between India and Pakistan.



"We were disappointed, but the matter will now be sorted out," Zakaria said.



When asked, the spokesman said "currently there is no proposal under consideration for a meeting between the Pakistani and Indian prime ministers on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington later this month."



But "such a meeting cannot be ruled out," he added.



Zakaria said Pakistan is pushing forward the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan, requesting stakeholders to avoid blame games on the issue.



The spokesman said no dates had been announced for the Iranian president's visit to Pakistan, but said Rouhani is "expected later this month."
Sartaj Aziz invited Modi for Saarc summit

POKHARA: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Thursday formally extended an invitation to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the Pakistan-hosted 19th Saarc summit which is to be held later this year.



Sartaj handed the invitation over to Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the 37th Saarc Council of Ministers Meeting, ANI reported.



The two dignitaries then held a one-to-one meeting in the evening, the first after the Jan 2 terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base.



Talking to media after the meeting, Swaraj said a Pakistani joint investigation team probing the Pathankot terror attack will visit India on March 27 and begin work the next day, the Hindustan Times reported.



She said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had accepted Aziz's invitation to attend the Saarc Summit in Islamabad in November this year.



Aziz, meanwhile, expressed hope that Modi and Sharif will meet in Washington on March 31, on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.



I hope both prime ministers will meet on March 31, he said, but went on to add he was not sure if a structured dialogue between the two leaders will take place.



Earlier today, the two ministers met over breakfast on the sidelines of the ministers meeting, Hindustan Times reported.



Sartaj and Swaraj chatted while sitting next to each other at the breakfast hosted by Nepals Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa. They were also seen standing separately and talking informally for a few minutes.



On Wednesday night, the two exchanged pleasantries at a dinner hosted by Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli. The two were seated next to each other and talked at length.
Phuket Pride Week, one of the biggest festivals in Phuket, will be held from 24 April to 1 May 2016. This year, proudly themed Hand in Hand in Thailand, the festival allows participants to enjoy eight days of fun and celebrations, including sporting events, dinners and parties, competitions, grand parades, and island trips. Not to be missed and attracting visitors from across the globe, the event is also for a good cause. All the funds raised will go to The Phuket Loves You club, founded just over 5 years the organisation aims to help build a stronger LGBT community in Phuket.

Take advantage of Amari Phukets convenient location to this spectacular event, highlighted by a colourful parade with LGBT performances along Patong Beach Road on 1 May 2016 with the Hot Deal package. With prices starting at 16,800 THB+++ for a five-day, four-night stay. Other benefits include:

Complimentary round trip Phuket International Airport transfer

20% discount on food, beverages, Breeze Spa and laundry service for the whole period of stay

Guaranteed late checkout until 15:00

The package is now available for booking. Terms and conditions apply.

For more information about room reservations, please contact +66 (0) 7634 0106-14 extension 8033 and 8034, e-mail reservations.phuket@amari.com or visit www.amari.com/phuket.

For more information on Phuket Pride 2016, visit www.phuket-pride.org
A robot being developed to help elderly people stay independent and active for longer has been named by residents of three local care homes where it is going to be tested.

As part of the ENRICHME project  pioneering robotics research funded by an EU Horizon 2020 grant  residents from LACE Housing Association's housing with extra care in Lincolnshire in the UK have called the first prototype robot Alfie.

ENRICHME (ENabling Robot and assisted living environment for Independent Care and Health Monitoring of the Elderly) is an international collaboration involving the University of Lincoln in the UK. The research will develop and test the ability of robots to support our ageing populations and see service robots integrated with 'smart home' technology in order to provide round-the-clock feedback to elderly users, carers and health professionals. Tasks the robots will be designed to help with include giving reminders to take medication, locating lost objects around the home and enabling video chat with family and friends.

The first ENRICHME development robot, programmed by artificial intelligence and robotics experts from the University of Lincoln's School of Computer Science, was introduced to the residents in December 2015. During a special launch event, the researchers showcased the robot, explained the project and conducted some initial tests in the home environment to aid early development processes.

Residents from the LACE housing with extra care schemes in Lincoln, Grantham and Bourne were then invited to vote for their favourite name for the robot. 'Alfie' was selected as the winner from a shortlist of five names put together by the ENRICHME team.

Dr Nicola Bellotto, Reader in Computer Science at the University of Lincoln and Principal Investigator for the ENRICHME project, said: "We are delighted that the residents have named our first prototype robot, with 'Alfie' proving to be a popular choice. The name is a diminutive of Alfred, which means 'sage' or 'wise', and it also refers to the famous Lincolnshire poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, so it has wonderful connotations locally. The robot has received an extremely positive reception from the residents so far and we are pleased that they are keen to be involved at each stage of the project.

"The system we are developing builds on recent advances in mobile service robotics and ambient assisted living to help people improve health and wellbeing. It will be of particular benefit to those people who have mild cognitive impairments, for example older people who are still physically healthy but may have early symptoms of dementia."

Hazel Ashmore, Project Lead Officer for LACE Housing, said: "Initial reactions from our residents have been very positive, with many looking forward to potentially participating in the final testing phase in 2017."

Explore further Mobile robots could help the elderly live fuller lives
A. Bonito-Oliva, F4E Project Manager for Magnets, R. Harrison, F4E Technical Officer for Magnets, standing next to Europes first Toroidal Field coil winding pack. ASG Facilities, February 2016. Credit: F4E

Powerful superconducting magnets will confine ITER's plasma which is expected to reach 150 million C. Basically, an impressive magnetic shield will entrap the hot gas and keep it away from the walls of the vessel of the world's biggest fusion machine. Discover the manufacturing progress of ITER's first Toroidal Field coil. It is 14 m high, 9 m wide and 1 m thick. Its weight is approximately 110 tonnes which compares to that of a Boeing 747!

One of the biggest and most complex magnets in history is being manufactured at the ASG facilities, Italy. This gigantic "D" shaped coil will be form part of the system that will confine ITER's super-hot plasma which is expected to reach 150 million C. Basically, an impressive magnetic shield will entrap the hot gas and keep it away from the walls of the vessel of the world's biggest fusion machine.

F4E is responsible for the supply of 10 out of the 18 TF coils that ITER will need to operate. Witnessing the first TF coil taking shape is a turning point for the project and the 600 people having contributed to this milestone from at least 26 companies. This is the result of various contracts starting in 2008 when F4E started its collaboration with several suppliers for the production of Europe's TF conductor, which reached a length of 20 km.

Iberdrola, ASG and Elytt Energy, have used parts of this conductor to manufacture Europe's first TF coil. Winding, sandblasting and heat treatment have been some of the main steps taken in order to fit the conductor into stainless steel plates, known as radial plates, manufactured by CNIM and SIMIC. Piece by piece the conductor had to be lifted, wrapped, insulated and placed back in the grooves of the plates before it got covered. Then, the structure containing the conductor has been laser welded and wrapped with insulating material, before going through impregnation.

iew of Europes first winding pack, the inner-core of a Toroidal Field coil, which will magnetically confine ITERs plasma. ASG Facilities, February 2016. Credit: F4E

To create the inner-core of the TF coil, a pack of seven of these structures had to be stacked, electrically jointed, wrapped, insulated and impregnated. Pipes through which cold liquid helium will circulate inside the magnet to help it reach a superconducting state and instruments to measure its performance have also been added. Each of these packs, known as a winding pack in the ITER jargon, is 14 m high, 9 m wide and 1 m thick. Its weight is approximately 110 tonnes which compares to that of a Boeing 747!

For Alessandro Bonito-Oliva, F4E's Manager for Magnets, and his team, this has been an accomplishment of significant importance. "Thanks to our determination to meet the tight planning for magnets and the excellent collaboration between F4E and its suppliers we are heading towards Europe's first TF coil, which also happens to be a first for ITER. Seeing a magnet of such complexity taking shape suggests that we can deliver some of the most technically challenging systems of ITER. Sharing expertise and good communication between F4E, ITER International Organization and Japan's Domestic Agency for ITER have been fundamentally important for the achievement of this milestone and will continue to be as production is still ongoing.

So what are the next stages for the inner-core of the first TF coil? The stacking of the first pack has been completed and the electrical insulation material is being applied. When its vacuum-pressure insulation is concluded it will be transferred to SIMIC to conduct a series of tests. Then, it will be inserted in the massive case of the coil and in the end the final casting process will be performed, during which additional epoxy resin will be injected to fill in any remaining gaps.

And what about the progress of the other TF components? In March the production of radial plates for which F4E is responsible has accelerated reaching 45 out of a total of 70. Meanwhile, the manufacturing of the components of the second TF coil have been completed paving the way for its assembly.

Explore further ITER has arrival

Provided by Fusion for Energy
Two technicians in China's Wolong Nature Reserve measure tree growth to chart forest recovery. Credit: Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

China's sweeping program to restore forests across the country is working.

The vast destruction of China's forests, leveled after decades of logging, floods and conversion to farmland, has become a story of recovery, according to the first independent verification published in today's Science Advances by Michigan State University (MSU) researchers.

"It is encouraging that China's forest has been recovering in the midst of its daunting environmental challenges such as severe air pollution and water shortages," said co-author Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). "In today's telecoupled world, China is increasingly connected with other countries both socioeconomically and environmentally. Every victory must be measured holistically, or we aren't getting a true picture."

Forests are crucial to ensuring soil and water conservation and climate regulation. The fate of forests in the world's most populous nation has global consequences by virtue of the country's sheer magnitude and its rapid development.

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, China has implemented the largest forest conservation andRecovering forests, with deforested areas in the background in Wolong China restoration programs in the world, the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP), which bans logging, and in some forested areas compensates residents for monitoring activities preventing illegal timber harvesting.

In the foreground, recovering forest in China's Wolong Nature Reserve. In the background are deforested areas. Credit: Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

The MSU scientists used a unique combination of data, including the big-picture view of NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) annual Vegetation Continuous Fields tree cover product, along with high spatial resolution imagery available in Google Earth. Then they combined data at different scales to correlate the status of the forests with the implementation of the NFCP.

And, as the Chinese government has contended, the program is working and forests are recovering, with about 1.6 percent, or nearly 61,000 square miles, of China's territory seeing a significant gain in tree cover, while 0.38 percent, or 14,400 square miles, experienced significant loss.

"Our results are very positive for China," said author Andres Vina of MSU-CSIS. "If you look at China in isolation, its program is working effectively and contributing to carbon sequestration in accordance to its agenda for climate change mitigation. But on the other hand, China is not in a vacuum."

In the future, it is important to quantify how much China's forest gain and improved carbon sequestration may be a loss for places like Madagascar, Vietnam and Indonesia. Those are among the countries that are chopping down their forests to sell products to China. And the global increase in greenhouse gases and loss of biodiversity may have just changed addresses.

Vina noted more research is needed to document the broader impacts of forest degradation and recovery around the world. He also noted that the voracious appetite for natural resources - both timber and the agricultural products grown on converted forestland - is not just China's issue.

"We are all part of the problem one way or another," he said. "We all buy products from China, and China has not changed their imports and exports of wood at all. What has changed is where timber is coming from."

More information: Effects of conservation policy on China's forest recovery, Science Advances, dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500965 Journal information: Science Advances Effects of conservation policy on China's forest recovery,
Figure 5 from the Hippensteel article, "Carbonate rocks and American Civil War infantry tactics." Union reenactors during a National Battlefield Park demonstration in the limestone outcrops at the center of the Union line at Stones River on the 152nd anniversary of the battle. Karrens (or "cutters," right) provided critical defensive positions for the center of the crumbling Union line during the Battle of Stones River. Credit: Scott P.Hippensteel and Geosphere.

The most studied battleground from the American Civil War, from a geological perspective, is the rolling terrain surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here, the mixture of harder igneous and softer sedimentary rocks produced famous landform features such as Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top that provided strong defensive positions for the Union Army.

Another even more common type of rockcarbonates such as limestoneprovided similarly formidable defensive positions at numerous other battlefields in both the eastern and western theaters of conflict.

Limestones and dolostones shaped the terrain of multiple important battle sites, including Antietam, Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, Nashville, and Monocacy, and these rock types proved consequential with respect to the tactics employed by both Union and Confederate commanders.

This article by Scott P. Hippensteel of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte describes how carbonate rocks produced rolling terrain that limited the range and effectiveness of both artillery and small arms. Additionally, thin soils above limestone bedrock prevented tillage and the resulting forests provided concealment and cover for advancing troops. From a defensive perspective, on a larger geographic scale carbonates provided natural high ground from chert-enriched limestones. On a smaller scale, erosion of these same rocks produced karrens (or "cutters") that provided natural rock-lined trenches for defending troops.

Explore further War from the ground up

More information: Carbonate rocks and American Civil War infantry tactics, Carbonate rocks and American Civil War infantry tactics, http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/content/early/2016/03/16/GES01266.1.abstract
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. On March 18 Armenia Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan received Minister of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters Vladimir Puchkov.

Armenian PM congratulated Vladimir Puchkov for deepening Armenian-Russian cooperation in rescue services, strengthening the Armenian-Russian friendly relations and for being awarded by the Order of Friendship by the Armenia President for Puchkovs significant contribution in the issue of development. Abrahamyan highly appreciated Puchkovs contribution to the elimination of the consequences of the Spitak citys earthquake.

Armenpress was informed from the Information and Public Relations Department of the Armenian Government that head of the government stressed the importance of development and deepening of the Armenian-Russian alliance collaboration, one of the priorities of which is expansion of the cooperation in preventing and overcoming the emergency situations. The Prime Minister welcomed opening of the Armenian-Russian humanitarian response center in the region of Kotayk on March 18 and expressed confidence that it will operate efficiently.

Vladimir Puchkov expressed his gratitude to the Prime Minister Abrahamyan for the warm words noting that it is an honor for him to be awarded by the Order of Friendship by the Armenian President. Mr Puchkov highlighted the importance of opening of the Armenian-Russian humanitarian response center in the region, emphasizing that it will help improve qualitatively new level of cooperation between the two countries in the mentioned sector and the implementation of new joint projects.

Armenia PM expressed satisfaction with the cooperation of the Ministries of Emergency Situations of Armenia and Russia and highlighted its development and expansion both in the sector of civil protection and emergency situations.
Heather Hughes

Hawazin Alhawsaw sees culture shock as a normal part of the acculturation process for Arab refugees settling in Canada.

Alhawsaw, a master's student in Nursing, was talking with a friend about her struggles as a refugee to feel part of her new home. These questions about acculturation  or combining one culture with another  became the seed of her research study, "An Incomplete Jigsaw Puzzle: A Narrative Study On Arab Refugees In Canada."

In the past, studies have attributed symptoms of mental-health disorders to the collective violence refugees experienced in their homeland. However, Alhawsaw argues the stress of the acculturation process also contributes  and sometime contributes greatly  to these issues.

"Most of the studies say exposure to collective violence will lead to psychological disorders among refugees. But what I found is, yes, those refugees suffer from mental-health problems or psychological disorders, but not totally related to collective violence. It is related to the acculturation process because it is a stressful process to acculturate."

When the Arab refugees she interviewed first learned they were coming to Canada, they were happy and felt safe; however, when the realities of their new home set in, they were disenchanted.

"They were happy because they fled from the war and they had a safe place. But then they arrive here and everything is different. They went through to the other stage of culture shock, which is the crisis stage. They say, 'We are depressed. We are isolated.' It is really like those exposed to shock."

During the interviews, Alhawsaw noted more negative responses among the male participants. This was largely due to the shift in gender roles and family dynamics. Particularly, the men described a loss of authority in Canada as they were used to living in a patriarchal society. The women were happier because they had more independence and rights in Canada.

"I was shocked by the reality," said one man in her study. "I felt there is no point in what I am doing and my emotional state was getting worse. I was shocked: Is this the Canada I was dreaming of? That is impossible."

The refugees also expressed concerns about childrearing in a Canadian context.

"Canada is a foreign country with different customs and traditions from Arabs. I am worried about my children and their future  what will they face? Everything is mysterious," said one mother.

Further study is needed to examine how what Alhawsaw describes as "ambiguous loss"  real or presumed death of a family member, or separation from community in a war-torn country  prevents or inhibits acculturation in Canada.

Of the 12 adult refugees she spoke to, all of which had been in Canada for three to five years, only one had received full-time employment during the time of the study. The participants, who hailed from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, experienced significant challenges in assimilating into Canadian culture, with the primary barriers being language, communication and employment.

"According to them, finding a job and mastering the language was successful acculturation," she said. "They say, 'no one appreciates our educational background or professional experience.' When they arrived here they had to start from zero.

"Most say they don't want to be a burden to the government."

Needing to understand and master the language was the primary goal, as it opened doors to employment and had various social advantages.

The refugees also wanted to feel a sense of belonging, she noted. Some tried to create a new identity in Canada because they felt they had lost their previous identity, but others were unable to do this successfully, she explained.

"We tell them this (culture shock) is a normal condition and you have to pass through this, and finally you are going to build or create a new identity," she said.

If social determinants, such as achieving employment, housing or mastering the language, are achieved, refugees would be able to acculturate, she continued. When it comes to how long this process can take, Alhawsaw said "it depends on the individual themselves."

Canadian citizens have a role to play in assisting with this process, including offering empathy and providing opportunities for refugees to participate in social activities and employment.

For nurses, Alhawsaw sees the frontline workers as being able to identify culture shock and connect refugees with the necessary support services to help them address their specific needs.

"As a nurse or a health-care provider, we have an important role in helping these refugees by helping them understand what they pass through is a normal condition and finally they will acculturate," she said.

Explore further Health care for Syrian refugees: A guide for Canadian physicians
A more inclusive approach toward Muslim immigrants and refugees could help reduce the growth of homegrown radicalism, new Stanford research shows.

A more inclusive approach toward Muslims could help reduce the growth of homegrown radicalism, new Stanford research shows.

A growing body of research suggests that election-year demands from politicians to stop admitting Syrian refugees and other Muslims would prove counterproductive and even dangerous, according to Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a Stanford social psychology expert.

She explains in a new article in the journal Behavioral Science and Policy that telling Muslims they are not welcome in the United States simply reinforces the narrative that the West is anti-Islam. In turn, this can actually fuel support for violent extremist groups like the Islamic State.

If U.S. policymakers truly seek to prevent radicalization in the Muslim community, Lyons-Padilla wrote, they should discourage such discrimination and promote policies that allow Muslim Americans to more effectively integrate their American and root culture identities.

Research findings

Lyons-Padilla is a research scientist for Stanford SPARQ: Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions. Her co-authors were Michele Gelfand, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland; Hedieh Mirahmadi and Mehreen Farooq, president and senior fellow, respectively, at the World Organization for Resource Development and Education; and Marieke van Egmond, a researcher with Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.

Lyons-Padilla and her colleagues administered surveys to about 200 immigrant and American-born Muslims in the United States. They also conducted 20 in-depth interviews with the subjects.

Prior studies, the researchers wrote, show that violent extremist organizations like the Islamic State group prey on youth who lack clear purpose and direction by promising them they can belong to a group and receive recognition for doing so.

"This seems to work," said Lyons-Padilla. "Some Muslim Americans who feel a lack of meaning in their lives report being more attracted to fundamentalist groups and radical ideologies."

The new study found that:

The more Muslim Americans experience discrimination, the less purpose and meaning they feel. "This is especially the case for those who feel culturally homeless," Lyons-Padilla said. "That is, belonging neither to one's heritage culture nor to American culture."

The vast majority of Muslims do not support violent extremism, and say they want to combine American customs and values with those of their heritage culture. "This challenges the widespread belief that American values and Islamic principles are incompatible with one another," said Lyons-Padilla.

She noted that research suggests that immigrants and minorities do best when they can successfully integrate their American identities with their other cultural identities. "Wherever we come from, we can all embrace both our heritage cultures and American patriotism."

Policy implications

For the most effective policy approach to Syrian refugees and other Muslim immigrants, the researchers suggest that it is important to "be anti-ISIS, not anti-Islam."

Lyons-Padilla said, "When public figures speak out against Islam, Muslims can start to feel excluded and insecure about their place as a Muslim in American society."

The Islamic State group knows this and exploits it, she noted, and if the United States does not do a better job of including Muslims, the militant organization will.

The good news is that people in Lyons-Padilla's study who did feel well integrated were better protected against radicalization.

The authors caution against confusing integration with assimilation. Assimilation means pressuring immigrants to completely adopt their new culture at the expense of abandoning their own heritage culture. Integration, in contrast, means encouraging immigrants to call themselves American and to also take pride in their own cultural and religious heritage.

It is possible to encourage immigrants to learn the local language and adopt American cultural traditions while not forcing an immigrant to "give up their culture," Lyons-Padilla said.

This research points to a strategy for preventing homegrown radicalization: encouraging immigrants to participate in both of their cultures plus curbing discrimination against Muslims.

For young people who already feel culturally excluded, she suggests policymakers can provide outlets for fostering a sense of purpose in socially adaptive ways.

"We can make it harder for terrorists to recruit by making the culturally homeless feel more at home," Lyons-Padilla said.

Explore further New study finds nearly half of American Muslim doctors feel scrutinized on the job

More information: Belonging Nowhere: Marginalization & Radicalization Risk Among Muslim Immigrants. Belonging Nowhere: Marginalization & Radicalization Risk Among Muslim Immigrants. behavioralpolicy.org/article/b  g-muslim-immigrants/
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. The trial session over the case of Russian soldier Valery Permyakov, accused in the gruesome murder of the Avetisyan family, will continue in 102nd Russian Military Base on March 25.

Publication of documents of the case will be continued during the session. At this stage 26-volume document packages of the case will be submitted. At the moment, only 10 of them were published.

The 6 members of the Avetisyans family were shot and killed in Gyumri at around 6 a.m. on January 12, 2015. The only survivor was 6-month old Seryozha Avetisyan, who was transferred to a hospital with injuries caused by a cutting and piercing tool. The childs health condition became worse on January 19. After fighting for his life and undergoing several difficult surgeries for a week, six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan also died on January 19. There was severe renal insufficiency and cardiac insufficiency, and doctors werent able to save his life. Soldier of the 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Valery Permyakov was charged with killing the members of the Avetisyan family and causing numerous injuries to little Seryozha. Russian border guards found him when he was trying to cross the Armenian-Turkish border and handed him over to the commanders of the 102nd Russian military base. Permyakov confessed his guilt. The trial will take place on January 18.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Armed terrorist groups in Aleppo violated the ceasefire regime after the afternoon of March 18.

Armenpress was informed from the Aleppos Kandzasar newspaper that Nor Gyugh district of Aleppo was shelled in the result of which Nvard Furunjyan-Asaturian (b. 1955) was killed; a group of civilians were injured. Injuries are not life-threatening.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenian MFA Spokesman Tigran Balayan answered to a question by the First News Service of Public TV on the reaction of the Foreign Ministry of Turkey concerning the press conference of the President of Armenia and Prime Minister of Greece held in Athens.

As Armenpress was informed from the Press, Information and Public Relations Department of the Armenian MFA in response to the question How would you comment on the reaction of the Foreign Ministry of Turkey concerning the press conference of the President of Armenia and Prime Minister of Greece held in Athens? Tigran Balayan said:

The centuries-old friendship between the Armenian and Greek peoples is based on interwoven fate and many expressions of mutual support.

Making of denial as the pivot of state policy does not rid Turkey of the responsibility to face its own history.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. A regular meeting of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission was held in Moscow.As Armenpress was informed fromthe press service of the EEC, EEC Board considered a number of important issues in the areas of integration and macroeconomics, trade, economic and financial policy, industry and agriculture, technical regulation, internal market, information technology and information and communication technologies.

EEC members of the Council approved the development plan acts and activities to implement the Guidelines for the industrial cooperation within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The document provides specific measures and actions of the Union countries and the Commission on the expansion of industrial cooperation in the framework of the EAEU. Normative work on the preparation of legal acts of the Union is also planned, necessary for the implementation of practical cooperation between Member States in accordance with guidelines for the industrial cooperation.

EEC Minister for Industry and Agroindustrial Complex Sergey Sidorsky explained that the Industrial Policy Action Plan is designed for medium and long term. "The document is concerned, first of all, of existing production facilities that define the face of economies Union. The parties will jointly decide matters of import, cooperation with access to high-tech innovation of production ", - Sergei Sidorsky said.

EEC Council also approved a draft regulation on the establishment and functioning of the Eurasian technology platforms, which will be submitted for consideration of the Union Government at the next meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council. "We are going to create technological platforms in the EAEU, which will consolidate the best scientific and engineering developments, will allow entering the transfer of technologies. Technical platforms planned to be developed, especially in innovative fields such as nanotechnology and biotechnology, development of modern medical equipment, and other ", the Minister of EEC said.

Formation and functioning of the Eurasian technology platforms will encourage mutually beneficial innovative development of national industrial complexes, creating competence centers in the EAEU, systemic technological innovation, as well as improving the global competitiveness of the industry.

In addition, EEC Council adopted a decision to establish a working group, which will discuss the digital agenda of the Eurasian Economic Union. The working group will include representatives of the authorized state bodies, business and expert community of EAEU countries. Until December 1, it is planned to develop proposals for the formation of a digital space of the Union in the following areas: digital modernization of the integration processes, digital markets, digital infrastructure, institutions, and development of the digital economy. Collaboration Parties will understand the actual digital agenda, showing exactly where the most effective solutions in the digital space are.

The event was attended by EEC Members of the Board: Vice Prime Minister, Armenian Minister of International Economic Integration and Reforms Vache Gabrielyan, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Vasily Matyushevsky, First Deputy Prime Minister ofKazakhstan Bakhytzhan Sagintayev, Kyrgyzstan's Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Pankratov, Russian first Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Tigran Sargsyan and members of the Board of the EEC.
Text Messaging remains a key factor for marketers

There are so many different ways people can use smartphones today, including apps, email, music and social media. That being said, it might be surprising to hear that 97 percent of smartphone owners still use text messaging according to Pew Researchs most recent analysis of smartphone use. This remarkably high figure illustrates that basic communication remains a key driver of behavior even as the number and complexity of potential distractions increase.

SMS Is for Every Business

This basic ability to connect with others is a driver as to why businesses of every size look to leveraging text messaging to communicate with their users. SMS marketing is a universal way of communicating with customers and has proven to be a highly reliable and personalizable medium. Whats more, SMS is ubiquitous across all platforms and any type of mobile device, allowing businesses to reach their customers regardless of if theyve purchased the latest device or if they are using a basic prepaid handset. Combine this with the fact that everyone carries their mobile device with them at all times (even to the point of sleeping with them!) and youve got a recipe for success.

From a marketers perspective, more than 90 percent of people read a text message within three minutes of receiving according to VentureBeat, making this one of the most effective marketing tactics. Even the popularity and proliferation of e-mail marketing cant even come close to those results.

Still a Game Changer for commerce

At a time when many retailers remain unsure about how to leverage the smartphone for other aspects of their business, text continues to evolve with new uses and opportunities being deployed in-store and beyond.

Walmart now leverages SMS as a personal in-store concierge, allowing customers to text a certain code in order to receive real-time information on the products location and any deals currently offered. The brand also uses SMS for e-receipts, enabling customers to receive purchase receipts directly to their mobile device. Customers who pair their device with an account online may also gain access to their complete order history.

Some of the largest pharmacy chains in the world leverage text messaging to drive user actions with significant positive results for their business. Customers are reminded when its time to renew their prescriptions, notified when their prescriptions are ready, and prompted to return to the store if they forget to pick up their medicine. This program has helped pharmacy chains decrease their customer wait times with fewer calls to the pharmacy, while increasing positive customer feedback. It has also resulted in the decline of abandoned perscriptions, generating millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

The expanding power of text

Aside from business use, Americans can expect to leverage text messages to stay abreast of the 2016 Presidential election. Sure, there are plenty of mobile apps that will provide round-the-clock news updates, but many consumers are starting to turn to SMS for real-time information.

An example of this is that , during the recent Super Tuesday primaries, many consumers leveraged SMS and opted into services such as Purple, an SMS-based service that follows the election and provides updates to people who have opted in. Users say its an unobtrusive way to get real-time updates on the status of their favorite candidate.

Purple is an example of a growing trend of chat bots that extend the communication power of text to expose additional services and data. While the concept has been around for a while (I can recall creating several on AIM almost ten years ago), it is really gaining steam this year.

A role in public safety

Another, less commercial, reason why text messaging remains as a priority for organizations comes in the form of safety. As a recent example of the reliability and speed of SMS, the Government of Victoria in Australia has plans to transfer its emergency parent communication system to an SMS message-based format. This will replace other forms of communication, which included letters sent home with children or individual phone calls in the event of urgent emergencies.

This follows moves by colleges and school systems in the US who already rely on text to communicate safety and weather related events.

Summary

With all the talk of new ways to use a smartphone, youd think text messaging would slowly sunset into the background. However, just the opposite is taking place, with businesses, organizations and consumers finding new ways to leverage text messaging. Whats more, even younger audiences who are extremely peculiar in their selection of the ways in which they use their mobile devices continue to leverage text as a way to communicate regularly. As such, its important for brands and organizations to understand how to best leverage text messages in any of its forms (such as SMS, MMS, OTT or the emerging RCS standard) in an effort to increase sales, communications or even municipal safety.

About The Author

Brian Heikes is Vice President of Product at 3Cinteractive. Through mobile marketing services, 3C deepens and extends the connection between customers and brands, driving increased loyalty, brand awareness, and results. Leveraging 3Cs expertise connecting mobile to business results and its Switchblade platforms multichannel capabilitiesincluding SMS and MMS messaging, mobile coupons, mobile wallet, mobile web, location based services and moremarketers can deliver timely, relevant engagement at the customers moment of need. For more information please visit www.3c.com.

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BALTIMORE, MD(Marketwired  Mar 17, 2016)  In todays cutthroat economy, speed and efficiency are the benchmarks of success: Together they form the foundations of a seamless customer experience. And nowhere is the need for speed and efficiency more pressing then when it comes to payment processing.

While often overlooked by business owners and consumers alike, the last 40 years have witnessed a radical transformation in how payments are transferred and processed between entities like banks, customers, businesses, and more. Instead of physically writing a check or handing over paper currency, the world began developing a system for the electronic transfer of money directly from bank accounts. The system, known as the Automated Clearing House, or ACH, now forms the backbone of all U.S. electronic financial transaction. Today the ACH handles more than 23 billion payments, up from only 9 billion in 2003, a 144 percent increase.

Key to the ACH usage jump has been a proliferation of online businesses  companies that require all-electronic interfaces, including payments. But the growth has also come in part thanks to an increase in third-party ACH payment-processing solutions. These companies are working to create products that make using the ACH easier. And E-Complish, a leading payment solutions provider, is pleased to be setting the standard of what best-in-class ACH payment processing can achieve.

A Look Under the Hood: The Power Behind ACH Payment Processing

E-Complish offers ACH processing that allows simplified batch billing through an automated system that integrates easily with a companys existing payment processing software. The result is a streamlined electronic payment process and one that is designed to save accounting teams from the pain-staking task of processing ACH payments manually.

Chief benefits of the E-Complish solutions include:

Reliable security features like Internet encryption

Multi-password protection and user-level security with PIN

The ability to find, edit, and/or replicate any transaction

The inclusion of ACH payment types for any bank

ABA bank database verification

The ability to print and export statements and reports

NACHA compliant letter and email processing

The benefits of E-Complishs ACH processing are clear. Thanks to the handling of a far greater volume of transaction data (batching), a businesss cash flow is greatly improved, as are collections. The system is also designed to alert users when there are insufficient funds in an account. Add in the benefits of lower fees and a faster notification of settlements, and its likely the business in question, no matter its size, will enjoy rapid success and newfound customer engagement.

With the U.S. third quarter only days away and as millions of businesses shift to their spring promotions, now is a great time to consider adopting ACH payment processing solutions that will transform how these brands do business by making that business easier to transact, said Stephen Price, E-Complishs CEO. Also, as an ACH processor, were committed to ensuring maximum flexibility with our products. That means the ACH processor can be used as a stand-alone solution or together with our VirtualPay, EBPP, HostPay, RecurPay, MobilePay, Text2Pay, DirectPay, EnterAct, and developer API solutions.

The Future Is Here: Next-Day to Same-Day ACH Has Arrived

In addition to the above benefits, ACH processing is also getting a boost from the growth of same-day transactions  ideal for tasks like: payroll, bill payments, invoice payments, and account transfers. But more importantly, all that speed and efficiency means more time a brand can spend innovating their next breakthrough product and less time balancing the books.

E-Complishs ACH payment processing is transforming the back end of business, ensuring that its consumer-facing and employee-facing elements run smoother
SAN FRANCISCO, CA(Marketwired  Mar 17, 2016)  Euclid Analytics, the leader in location analytics, today announced it is working with AGACI, one of the fastest growing brick-and-mortar fashion brands. The San Antonio-based company currently manages 65 stores in ten states and Puerto Rico, and plans to add more than 20 stores in the U.S. next year. AGACI is leveraging Euclid across its entire chain to view customer engagement trends, build smarter loyalty programs and make data-driven decisions to improve operations.

AGACI focuses on fast fashion for 18-to-24-year old women. To cater to this trend-setting segment, AGACI updates its merchandise assortment a dozen times a year and provides personalized in-store recommendations. Euclid is directly impacting AGACIs business by measuring the impact of critical in-store operations activities such as floor set changes (the arrangement of merchandise in the store). Observing the length of time customers stay after a changeover helps AGACI evaluate the impact of each new floor set. As more insight is provided over time, the fashion chain will be better able to define trends and drive more in-store engagement.

Requiring no new hardware, Euclid was fast and easy to deploy on AGACIs existing Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi system. Euclid has proven to be the perfect complement to AGACIs existing reporting tools and processes, allowing a truly complete view of their business and in-store customers. Additionally, the company uses Euclids data to help make decisions regarding store locations, staffing (down to hourly increments) and store hours (e.g., the best times to be open for holidays).

Euclid supports the dynamic nature of AGACIs business, said Brent Franson, CEO of Euclid Analytics. With AGACIs frequently rotating merchandise, its essential to understand customer behaviors and in-store trends. Euclids ability to rapidly deploy across AGACIs entire chain and measure key operations activities is helping fuel the companys next phase of growth.

Weve always been revolutionary in the fashion world, with an emphasis on highly personalized customer service and the newest fashions for the trendy young woman, said Reid Hackney, CFO of AGACI. Equipped with Euclids data, were innovating once again. In 2016, we plan to leverage in-store analytics to bring a new, seamless omnichannel culture and guide future growth.

To learn more about Euclid Analytics, please visit http://euclidanalytics.com. To find out more about AGACI and its upcoming stores, visit http://agacistore.com.

About Euclid

Euclid Analytics is the world leader in location analytics. Over 500 brands across retail, banks, quick service restaurants, airports and shopping malls are using Euclid to understand customer behavior in their physical locations to optimize marketing, operations and staffing. Affordable and requiring no new hardware, Euclid is easy to deploy on leading Wi-Fi systems in less than 48 hours. Euclids growing network captures billions of measurements per day across 65 countries and tens of thousands of locations, analyzing hundreds of millions of physical customer touch points per year.

Euclid is backed by leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and NEA, as well as Cox Enterprises and Groupe Arnault, the controlling shareholder of LVMH  Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world leader in luxury products.
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations (ES) of the Republic of Armenia on March 18 by 20.30 Goris-Sisian highway is closed because of heavy snowstorm and lack of visibility.

Armenpress was informed from the Armenia Ministry of Transport and Communication that additional information will be given.
As a result of relentless rebel activities on Bougainville, the PNG government under Sir Julius Chan resorted to hiring Sandline mercenaries of the Executive Outcome company, the latter being a sub-contractor of Sandline International.

It came about as a result of landowner grievances over unequal distribution of wealth and large amount of environmental damage caused by the mining giant, Rio Tinto.

THE Bougainville Crisis was the biggest conflict fought on the soil of Papua New Guinea since World War II.

There were several reasons for this including Chans desire to restore order in Bougainville, to reopen the copper mine and to remove rebel leaders.

The explosive nature of the Bougainville crisis had taken Papua New Guineans and Bougainvilleans by surprise. The war worsened resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and the destruction of assets and property.

Before the outbreak of the crisis a series of events took place. There was the November 1988 blowing up of power pylons and other acts of sabotage which led to the shut-down of the mine. As a result of these criminal acts, an order for police to shoot to kill was given by then Minister for Police, Paul Tohian.

The militants formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) under the leadership of Sam Kaouna and landowners spokesperson, Francis Ona, who was very vocal. They stated that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for a worthy cause.

As the rebel activities on Bougainville increased, the PNGDF (Army) was troubled that it was unable to establish a stronghold on the island and soon afterwards a blockade was imposed in an effort to force the militants to surrender.

The BRA and other elements declared unilateral independence and established an interim government in May 1990.

This followed the St Valentines Day massacre which had been carried out by the PNGDF in February 1990 that saw many casualties among militants and civilians.

It was during this time that prime minister Chan and his deputy Chris Haiveta became convinced that the only way to defeat the rebel activities on Bougainville was to engage an international mercenary organisation.

They believed the proposed operation was a last resort to get back the once wealthy province.

The Sandline mercenaries were tasked to get the criminals, by which the mercenaries assumed the rebel leaders on Bougainville.

Sandlines plan was to use helicopters to support and ferry an operational force of contract soldiers to do battle where they would defeat the BRA and force a negotiated settlement.

In addition to armed force, the tactics used by the Sandline involved manipulating the media and using psychological warfare on the people of central and south Bougainville. This instigated fear in Bougainville and PNG as a whole.

The Sandline deal met opposition from Port Moresby Governor Bill Skate, who described it as a crazy plan because it reflected a failure on the part of the PNG government to address the crisis and issues of landowner grievance and environmental damage.

Soon after, in March 1997, the mercenaries were flown out of the country as unrest broke out on the streets of Port Moresby and prime minister Chan stepped down.

Historian James Griffin also believed that long unattended corruption issues were seen as the result of Chan being ousted in Parliament.

However, Chris Haiveta stated he had no regrets in signing the Sandline contract as he believed it was the right decision at the time.

It was not until 2001 that an official peace agreement was signed by the PNG government and the leaders of Bougainville.

The role of the Sandline mercenaries remains a topic of great controversy in PNG.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer is asking federal officials to hold a federal forum on the heroin and opioid epidemic at a central New York hospital.

In a letter to Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli, Schumer, D-N.Y., said Crouse Hospital in Syracuse should host one of the agency's forums on the challenges of addressing heroin and opioid addiction.

Botticelli plans to hold meetings on the subject throughout the country. The first hearing was held in Oklahoma.

Schumer noted that Crouse would make a great setting for a forum because of the heroin epidemic's impact on central New York and Onondaga County. The county's heroin overdose death rate is higher than the national and state averages. And the number of people admitted to Crouse for heroin addiction has increased by 700 percent over the past 16 years.

"The prescription drug abuse and heroin crisis in central New York is symptomatic of the larger opioid epidemic New York state and the entire country are facing, and we need to fight back now," Schumer said. "The only way we can do this is with an 'all-of-the-above' approach  by increasing resources for prevention, treatment and law enforcement."

Crouse has an opioid treatment program, but it's had difficulty keeping pace with demand.

At a heroin town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. John Katko last week in Auburn, Monika Taylor, who serves as director of behavioral health at Crouse, said there are 650 patients from 18 counties in Crouse's methadone program. At least 350 people are on a waiting list.

Schumer's office said Crouse admitted 890 people last year who were seeking treatment for heroin addiction. That's a 700 percent increase from the 112 heroin addicts who were admitted to the hospital in 2000.

"Crouse Hospital is leading the effort to combat this epidemic head-on and I strongly encourage you consider using its campus to host a community forum on opioid abuse and heroin use," Schumer wrote in his letter to Botticelli.

Schumer is the latest New York official to urge the Office of National Drug Control Policy to hold a forum on the heroin epidemic in the state.

Katko and members of the state's congressional delegation sent a letter to Botticelli in January asking him to select upstate New York as the host of a future community forum.

Here is the letter Schumer wrote to Botticelli:

Dear Director Botticelli:

Thank you for your ongoing efforts to treat and prevent opioid and heroin use in the United States. This epidemic is one of Central New Yorks most serious health problems. Specifically, Onondaga Countys heroin death rate per 100,000 people in 2014 was higher than the state and national averages, and deaths from all opioid drugs jumped from 24 to 57 in Onondaga County last year.

In light of these tragic figures, I urge the Office of National Drug Control Policy to host a community forum at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, New York to address the growing need for treatment and prevention opportunities. Crouse Hospital is an ideal location for such a forum as its methadone clinic currently serves 650 addicts from a 17 county area, with over 370 people on its waiting list. Crouse admitted 890 heroin addicts in 2015, up from 112 in 2000- a nearly 700 percent increase; and Onondaga County has the states third highest rate of newborns addicted to heroin and other opioid drugs. Crouse Hospital is leading the effort to combat this epidemic head on and I strongly encourage you consider using its campus to host a community forum on opioid abuse and heroin use.

It is imperative that we continue to work together to advance legislation, create awareness, enhance treatment options and provide adequate funding to curb this opioid and heroin abuse epidemic. I look forward to working with you on this issue.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer

United State Senator
QUEENSBURY  An agreement to keep trains running on Warren Countys rail line was endorsed Friday after a bizarre chain of events in which the county Board of Supervisors briefly shelved the contracts renewal, then reversed itself an hour or so later.

The countys contract with Saratoga & North Creek Railway was passed shortly after a weighted majority of the board voted to table it amid questions about the pact.

In all, the board spent more than 90 minutes discussing the contract  much of it a question-and-answer session with the company president  before 15 of 18 supervisors voted in favor of it. It had been tabled earlier in the meeting when nine of 20 supervisors voted to hold off on it.

A number of the supervisors said they questioned why the contract did not include a stipulation that SNCRR would not store out-of-service oil tankers on the rail line or on the line north of North Creek. The companys proposal last summer to bring old oil tank cars to the Adirondacks for storage generated a firestorm of controversy.

Ed Ellis, president of Iowa Pacific Holdings LLC, said he could not legally put that in the contract because of a covenant related to financing. But he repeatedly said he had no plans to bring the tank cars there, and that owners of the cars had already made other arrangements for them.

Im not putting any oil tankers up there, he said at one point.

Some supervisors questioned the length and terms of the deal, and whether the idea of using the rail line for a recreational trail should be reviewed first.

There are issues with this contract. We dont need to rubber-stamp it, Glens Falls 3rd Ward Supervisor Claudia Braymer said.

Horicon Supervisor Matt Simpson pointed out the railroad had brought in $519,000 in revenue for the county and produced 40 jobs, while not requiring any taxpayer subsidy. Hague Supervisor Edna Frasier said she was frustrated that supervisors were second-guessing the county attorney on a legal issue.

Corinth Supervisor Richard Lucia attended the meeting and said the Town Board supported renewal of the contract. The railroad has done a lot of good for his town, he said.

Former county Public Works Superintendent Fred Austin also spoke in favor of a new contract, saying that the mine tailings in Tahawus are in demand.

Ellis said negotiations for a contract to remove the tailings are ongoing. He said $4 million in revenue was on the line, but he was optimistic a deal to transport them to a customer on Long Island could be reached.

It is one of the most complicated pieces of freight business Ive worked on in 43 years of railroading, Ellis said.

SNCRR runs tourist trains and freight trains on the line from Saratoga Springs to North Creek. The company also owns the line from North Creek to Tahawus.

The companys five-year contract expires in June. County Attorney Brian Reichenbach said SNCRR had a right to renew the contract for an additional five years, but the overseeing board generally has a right to debate it.
In a press statement late Friday, the minister said the ministry " wishes to temporarily withdraw the Administrative Directive for the Exportation of Raw Cashew Nut" to enable it widen "its consultations with stakeholders in order to ensure that the cashew industry becomes competitive in a broad-based manner that would lead to job creation and the general well-being of all stakeholders."

The statement said other issues informing the suspension includes;

 The view that the timing for the implementation of the directive would be best when traders or agents who have purchased RCN for exports would not have challenges with warehousing cost, deterioration in quality and the loss in weight of RCN;

 Acceptance of the view that ideally the directive should have been issued at the beginning of the year to enable farmers, agents and traders plan for the management of the impact;

 The challenge of managing the transit through Ghana from Burkina Faso of RCN for export though Ghanaian ports.

The ban incensed the MPs from the ruling government who rarely criticise government ministers.

The Majority leader Alban Bagbin said the minister was acting like Don Quixote and that the directive has no legal basis.

Deputy Majority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Banda in the Brong Ahafo region, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim described the directive as very weak and illegal, questioning the basis of the directive.

Cashew farmers derided the directive, saying the directive is putting the farmers at the mercy of two processing cashew plants.

The statement also announced measures by the trade ministry to boost cashew production.

These include;

1. Support for the National Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) to enable them purchase the Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) and establish a Just-in-Time inventory to ensure that the indigenous processors have an all-year-round supply of RCN.

2. Initiate discussions concerning establishment of a credit scheme for cashew farmers.

3. Assist indigenous processors to purchase the RCN.

4. Examine the merits of the setting up of the Ghana Cashew Management Board to license, supervise and monitor all activities in the cashew value chain.
Spio-Garbrah said as much as 95% of Ghanas total production of cashew nuts estimated at 68,000MT is exported in its raw form to overseas for processing.

This implies that the industry is operating at just 5% of its installed processing capacity of 65,890MT, according to the directive.

But the acting Chairman of the Cashew Buyers Association in Techiman, Mr Mumuni Issah said tons of cashew nuts are rotting as a result of the directive.

He called for the ban to be lifted so farmers can export the commodity for foreign exchange to pay their investors.

He added that the directive is putting the farmers at the mercy of two processing cashew plants.

We want government to lift the ban on export of raw cashew nuts to allow us export the commodity to generate revenue to pay back our investors and provide livelihood for our families, he told Accra based Onua FM.

The ban on export of cashew is putting farmers at the mercy of the two functioning processing plants who can quote low prices to buy the cashew, but farmers will have no choice since there are no alternatives, he said.

The ministers directive has roundly been condemned by Members of Parliament. Majority Leader Alban Bagbin said the minister was acting like Don Quixote and that the directive has no legal basis.

The strongest statement on the floor of parliament against the directive came from the Deputy Majority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Banda in the Brong Ahafo region, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim.

He described the directive as very weak and illegal, questioning the basis of the directive.

Under what law is the Ministry going to confiscate raw cashew nut without due process? " he asked.

Paapa Owusu Ankomah, MP for Sekondi, said the Ministry's directive contradicts the Importers and Exporters Act, section 13 and article 11 (7) of the 1992 constitution.

On his part, MP for Tain, Mr. Kwesi Agyeman Gyan-Tutu said the Ministry of Trade should work with the local farmers to form a cashew marketing board.

The country has 12 cashew processing factories. Out of the 12, only three are in operation.
He told Ghana News Agency that even though statistics on the cases are not readily available, the trend, since 2015 has reached an alarming point as several of the customers' efforts to retrieve their monies from the defunct microfinance company have proved futile.

Mr Yere however said his outfit has stepped up supervision to ensure that affected patients strictly adhered to their medication to avert the trend.

Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama in his 2016 State of the Nation Address said lack of effective supervision by the Central Bank of Ghana led to the DKM crisis.

The Chief Executive Officer of DKM Microfinance LTD, Martin K. Delle was arraigned before an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Aboagye Tandoh for dishonestly appropriating GH40,000 last two months.

Three other microfinance operators in the Brong Ahafo Region are also in the custody of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) over their alleged roles in swindling peoples of their monies.

The arrested people were Noel Nortey, Nkoranza Branch Manager of God Is Love Fun Club; Charles Asum, Managing Director of Jastar Group of Companies and Monica Afriyie popularly called Maame Korkor, Managing Director of God Is Love.

The Bank of Ghana in October 2015 froze accounts of DKM Microfinance after the central bank placed a 120 day moratorium on the company for flouting the Banking Act.

An audit report by the Bank of Ghana released to the Brong Ahafo Regional Security Council (REGSEC) established that DKM has no investment in the country and beyond after it collected huge amounts of money from numerous customers.

DKM, contrary to Bank of Ghana (BoG) regulation, set up subsidiary companies and lent peoples money to themselves, the report said.
Dr Dennis Bortey, a senior medical officer at the Adabraka Polyclinic said an average of three persons test positive for HIV every week.

Many young people in Ghana are testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, on a weekly basis.
New realty group announces grand opening

Realty One Group Mountain Desert is holding a grand opening of its new Flagstaff office from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. March 25 at 2076 S. Woodlands Village Blvd., Suite 101.

Appetizers and beverages will be served and there will be live music and raffle prizes. The event is co-sponsored by Academy Mortgage, Pioneer Title, Stewart Title, Lawyers Title, Metro Title, Old Republic Home Warranty and Busters Restaurant.

Free health care screenings

North Country HealthCare is holding its 8th annual Small Business and Community Health Fair from 7 a.m. to noon on April 8 at the Flagstaff Aquaplex, 1702 N. Fourth St.

The event is open to the public and offers free health screenings, fitness advice, health insurance and wellness information, snacks and more. Each participant will receive a goody bag.

Participants can sign up early to receive a free baseline blood test that looks for 31 health risk indicators. For more information or to sign up for a blood test, contact Jessica Stephenson at (928)522-9505.

Symple Surgical selected for program

Symple Surgical is one of six Arizona startup bioscience firms have been selected to participate in the 2016 Flinn Foundation Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program.

The companies will receive $30,000 in funding support and a set of program services administered through a nonprofit partner. The program was established to foster entrepreneurship and help early-stage bioscience firms develop into successful and sustainable businesses.

Following a rigorous and competitive process we believe these six bioscience startups are excellent representatives of the innovation taking place throughout Arizona, said Jack B. Jewett, President & CEO of the Flinn Foundation. The services and funding they will receive as participants in the Flinn program will benefit these entrepreneurs as they work to improve the quality of life in Arizona and around the world while strengthening our states economy.

The other winning companies for 2016 are AniCell Biotech, Breezing, EpiFinder, Neolight and Omica.

Over the past three years, the Flinn Foundation has selected 15 bioscience firms to participate in the program. In addition to the funding and services through a nonprofit partner, the firms may also participate for one year as members of Arizonas Bioscience Roadmap Steering Committee, a group of the states science, health-care, business, academia, and policy leaders responsible for overseeing Arizonas Bioscience Roadmap.

The application for the 2017 Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program will open later this year. To learn more about the program, visit www.flinn.org/entrepreneur.

Gore gains FDA approval for new device

The Food and Drug Administration approved the Gore Excluder Iliac Branch Endoprosthesis, making it the first off-the-shelf aortic branch device approved in the United States and the only device currently approved by the FDA for the endovascular treatment of common iliac artery aneurysms or aortoiliac aneurysms.

The iliac artery is located in the pelvis, aortoiliac disease is a blockage of the main artery leading into the abdomen. An aneurysm is a bulge or enlarged area of a blood vessel, if the bulge ruptures it can cause internal bleeding.

Gores device is a complete, fully engineered system. The device is used in conjunction with another Gore device to isolate the artery from blood flow and preserve blood flow in the surrounding arteries, leading to fewer surgical complications.

Flagstaff JCPenney receives companys Founders Award

JCPenney at Flagstaff Mall was recently honored with the JCPenney Founders Award  the companys highest distinction for excellence. Only 102 of approximately 1,000 stores, six out of 52 districts and three out of 13 supply chain facilities received the award. The Founders Award is presented to teams across the organization that excel in the areas of financial performance, customer and client service, and business expertise.

Im proud of our team of dedicated associates who are committed to delivering excellent service and an engaging store environment that compels customers to return time and time again, said Hillary Goitia.

Catholic Charities Flagstaff office relocates

Catholic Charities Community Services has moved from its old location on Switzer Canyon Drive, to a larger office at 2101 N. Fourth St. The move is effective immediately.

The move strategically places us near other social service program offices, also located on Fourth Street, says Flagstaff Office Manager Judy Weisz.

According to Catholic Charities, the move will minimize extensive bus travel for those using its services and the services of other nearby agencies such as Arizona Department of Child Safety, Coconino Community Services, and North Country HealthCare.

The increased office size will also accommodate more staff, and possible future Catholic Charities programs or expansion of existing programs.

We purchased this building opposed to our former leased office, so we control our destiny now, says Jim Robbins, Sr. Director of IT. This office allows us to expand our footprint as service needs require.

Catholic Charities Flagstaff offices main phone number will remain the same  (928) 774-9125  as will all email addresses. A ribbon cutting ceremony will be scheduled for April to celebrate the move.

For more information about Catholic Charities new Flagstaff office and its programs, contact Flagstaff Office Manager Judy Weisz at (928) 774-9125, Ext. 53005, and at jweisz@cc-az.org.
The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital will on Monday, March 21, 2016, reopen its three surgical clinics which were shut down in February this year.

The three clinics under the Department of Surgery, that is the Urology Clinic, General Surgery Clinic and Neurosurgery Clinic were shut down to allow for rehabilitation work to be completed in some of the theaters and recovery wards to improve the quality of care.
According to her, the allegations are unfounded, adding that the ICC has commissioned preliminary examinations in countries such as Georgia, Afghanistan, Columbia, Ukraine and Iraq detainees abuses by UK forces.

The ICC prosecutor said prosecuting persons responsible for crimes in Africa is key for the continent's success and growth.

To the extent that investigating and prosecuting mass atrocities will deter war making and commission of such destabilising crimes, certainly then criminal justice at the national or international level can play an important role in Africans economic growth and prosperity, she underscored.

The ICC has often tried high profile persons, with majority being African leaders, including former presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast.

Fatou Bensouda however assured that the ICC will apply its provisions without fear or favour, and will continue to be independent, impartial and fair.

She further urged African countries to address the myriad of challenges the continent is being faced with.

On his part, the Deputy Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine urged Fatou Bensouda to deal with perception that the court is being bias in its prosecution.
According to him, "A ticking youth bulge requires that we speed up the process of economic growth in order that we can provide decent jobs for the large number of young people graduating from our schools."

President John Mahama addressing the Scottish Parliament as part of his four-day official visit to that country said, "Africa is an emerging continent with a fast growing population. We are therefore a continent in a hurry. A ticking youth bulge requires that we speed up the process of economic growth in order that we can provide decent jobs for the large number of young people graduating from our schools. Accelerated economic growth, expansion of manufacturing and agriculture will guarantee jobs and stop the risky flow of young Africans across the Mediterranean in search of new opportunities in Europe."
His warning follows attacks in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast last week, which killed several people and destroyed properties.

According to him, the National Security Council has assessed the threat that terrorists pose to Ghana.

The National Security Council of Ghana on Wednesday issued a warning on a possible terror attack, asking Ghanaians to be wary and security conscious.

Security experts said public places including hotels, restaurants, malls and other public places that attract a lot of foreigners are prone to attacks.

This has raised fear and panic among Ghanaians who believe their lives are at risk.

Suspected terrorists last Sunday shot and killed 19 people at a beach side resort in Ivory Coast.

President John Mahama addressing Ghanaians living in Scotland as part of his four-day official visit to Scotland said, "Increasingly, the threat of terrorism is an issue that we need to pay attention to. We had a national Security Council meeting few days ago, just before I left to come here, and we are assessing the threat, the threat that terrorism poses to our sub-region."

Read more: UK warns its citizens in Ghana to be vigilant

"The countries around Lake Chad have been battling with Boko Haram for some time now and then recently as a result of the destabilization in North Africa, a lot of weapons and arms have infiltrated into the Sahelean area. Its become a bit of lawless area so Northern Mali, Southern Algeria, Southern Libya and that whole Sahelean belt has become a very problematic area and we are beginning to see the results stretching far down as West Africa. You know what happened in Bamako, two months later it occurred in Burkina Faso and just last weekend it happened in Abidjan."
I6 people died in that attack and several others were injured. This followed another attack at the Splendid hotel in Burkina Faso in January which claimed 29 lives.

More and more people are worried about the proximity of the attacks to Ghana. This fear has been heightened after the National Security Council warned of a credible threat of terrorism in Ghana and other West African Countries.

One of the places where people of different nationalities converge is the mall. Al- Shabab in 2014 attacked a Kenyan mall killing dozens of people from different countries.
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The responsibility goes with one person; the leader of the land. President John Dramani Mahama, he takes all credit, he takes all the blame, and this is one important huge error... he is the one we must hold accountable...he is the one who appointed all ministers who served or had anything to do with the Independence Day celebration...he is the one who appointed the staff at the Flagstaff House who supervised this work, Dr Nduom said in a statement.

The official brochure distributed to the Kenyan President and his colleague from Guinea Bissau and their wives, members of the Diplomatic Corps, and many other senior dignitaries from Ghana, was froth with so many mistakes.

The errors included the wrongful designation of Uhuru Kenyatta as Ghanas President to errors in grammar and spelling.

Many Ghanaians expressed anger at the incident, adding that it is an embarrassment and a dent on the country's image.

Acting Director of the Information Service Department (ISD), Francis Kwarteng Arthur was subsequently removed from office, after he admitted giving the go ahead for the brochures to be distributed during the anniversary in spite of the errors.

However, Dr. Nduom argues that the removal of the Acting Director of ISD was rather unfortunate.

When an organisation is not about leadership, when an organisation is not about accountability and taking responsibility for leadership, that is what happens. It sacrifices the little people and leaves those who really have power, who have authority to sit there and continue to do the things that take the organisation backwards, he added.

Meanwhile, President John Mahama has described as unfortunate errors that were detected in the brochures for Ghana's 59th Independence Day anniversary celebration.
The new regulation C.I 91 matured after going through the twenty-one sitting days in Parliament as required by law. It was laid before Parliament on Friday, February 12, 2016.

Read more:

The new C.I. therefore provides for the grounds for qualifications for registration of every citizen of Ghana of eighteen years and above and of sound mind the right to vote and be registered as a voter for the purposes of public elections and referenda.

Under the new C.I. 91, a person who applies for registration as a voter shall provide as evidence of identification either;

(a) A passport

(b) A drivers license

(c) A national identification card or

(d) An existing voter identification card

The National Health Insurance card as a form of identification has been omitted from C.I. 91 following the Supreme Courts ruling in the case of Abu Ramadan & Another v. the Electoral Commission.

The Regulation which indicates that a person needs to have one Voters' Registration Identification Guarantee Form, as evidence of identification if that person is unable to produce any of the required forms of identification for registration as captured in C.I. 72 was maintained in the new C.I. 92.

A registered voter shall however, not guarantee the identity of more than five persons and is required to indicate the relationship the guarantor has with the applicant as well as solemnly swear or affirm that the applicant is qualified to register as a voter.

However, Parliaments subsidiary legislation "committee was divided on the basis of the guarantee and the number of applicants one person can guarantee," the committee's report has stated.
Peg Bradford lost a grandmother to colon cancer, and knew her family was right when they nagged her to get checked. But she dreaded the unpleasant prep required for a colonoscopy and the slim possibility that her colon would be punctured during the procedure.

I was a scaredy cat. I didnt want to deal with it, Bradford said. I built my own fears up and put it off.

In December, shortly after turning 50, her South Jersey gastroenterologist discovered four polyps, fleshy growths sprouting from the walls of the colon that sometimes turn cancerous. He could remove only three. The last, a little over the diameter of a dime, was tucked in her cecum, the most distant portion of the bowel. She would need to see a specialist in Philadelphia for a second colonoscopy.

I never expected this to happen, said Bradford, who runs a Facebook group, Steps to Good Health, that has more than 20,000 members. I was a wreck.

Biopsies showed that all four polyps were benign, and she recovered without any problems. Bradford believes a colonoscopy was the right choice for her.

But colonoscopy  the most common and costly form of screening for colorectal cancer  isnt the only test available. Its often called the gold standard, and generally gets more publicity in March, the month designated for colon cancer awareness.

Even so, some public health officials say it shouldnt be the preferred option. In Canada last month, an independent task force came out against routine screening colonoscopies.

In the United States, several cancer experts said more Americans likely would get screened if their doctors offered them options.

The most commonly suggested alternative: a simple take-at-home stool test that may suffice for healthy people who have no family history of the disease and arent suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.

If done annually, fecal immunochemical tests (FIT) have a strong track record for detecting hidden blood in the stool, an early sign of malignancy. A FIT doesnt require any inconvenient, uncomfortable preparation, anesthesia, or even a visit to a doctors office. The completed test can be mailed to a lab. If it comes back positive  about 5 percent do  a colonoscopy is recommended to investigate further.

We havent done a good job telling people that there are two good, viable screening processes, said Marcus Plescia, former director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Theres colonoscopy and fecal testing, and each one is a good approach.

Last year, about 133,000 Americans were diagnosed with colorectal cancer. An estimated 50,000 died.

Early detection can prevent most deaths attributable to the disease, which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among men and women combined in the U.S. The American Cancer Society strongly recommends screening for everyone between age 50 and 75. For patients such as Bradford with a family history of the disease, the ACS recommends screening starting at age 40.

In addition to colonoscopy and FIT, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suggests a third option, the rarely performed sigmoidoscopy, every 10 years with a FIT test.

There is no empiric data to suggest that any of the recommended strategies provide a greater net benefit, the independent group of experts stated in a draft of new guidelines released in 2015.

Most doctors agree that the best method is the one that gets done.

Any form of colorectal screening thats been approved is reasonable, said Mitchell Conn, a gastroenterologist at Thomas Jefferson University. But someone who already has symptoms needs to have a more thorough procedure to evaluate the colon.

Outside of the U.S., the fecal test is preferred. Last month, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care came out strongly against colonoscopy for routine screening, citing the level of uncertainty over [colonoscopys] effectiveness and harms.

The statement riled the Ontario Association of Gastroenterologists. Colonoscopy is probably the best colon cancer screening test, the group retorted. Its just not proven yet.

Four randomized controlled trials are underway, one in the U.S. by the Veterans Administration, but results arent expected for several years. The USPSTF commissioned a review using existing observational data, which found all three strategies were effective and provided similar benefits.

While the jury is out, colonoscopy, as gastroenterologists are quick to point out, has its advantages. For starters, a patient needs only one every 10 years, unless polyps are found. The test, in which a thin, flexible tube is used to inspect the colon while the patient is under anesthesia, can spot most of the polyps that emerge from the colon wall or rectum, and remove them on the spot. Most will never become cancerous, but theres no way to know which will and which wont.

The procedure got a big public boost 16 years ago when TV journalist Katie Couric underwent one after her husband died of colon cancer. Still, a third of American adults have never had any kind of screening.

A campaign called 80 by 2018 aims to get 80 percent of adults screened during the next two years. The initiative is sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the CDC, and the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable.

As Bradfords story shows, anxiety is one reason that people avoid testing.

For some its the ick factor; for others, its true fear, said Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer at the American Cancer Society. One patient asked, Why are you sticking something where the sun dont shine when youre feeling perfectly fine?
According to her Counsel, such constitutional matters should be left with the Supreme Court to interpret.

Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle Nii Armah Ashitey and Nii John Coleman are challenging the legitimacy of Dr Zanetor Rawlings to contest for a parliamentary seat under the 1992 constitution.

According to them, "A declaration that the Dr Zanetor Rawlings election as a parliamentary Candidate elect for the Klottey-Korley Constituency is null and void and is of no effect as same violates the constitution of the NDC and the rules governing the conduct of the 2016 parliamentary primaries."

The two filed a suit at an Accra High Court against the Parliamentary candidate for the area Dr Zanetor Rawlings, and the Electoral Commission, challenging her eligibility to contest the 2016 general elections.

But Nii John Coleman, one of the plaintiffs in the case has withdrawn from the case.

According to him, upon advise from some elders of the NDC, he has withdrawn from the case.

See more: Court throws out suit against Zanetor Rawlings
He said the two parties since 1992 have dominated the Ghanaian politics and presided over corruption and economic instability in their regimes dont have the moral right to seek re-election.

Read more: Nana Addo dares Mahama to debate

The Ghanaian political system has remained among the most stable in Africa.

The last presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2012 returned incumbent President John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) against main opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) and provided a seat majority for the NDC in parliament.

The economic situation will largely determine election prospects for the 2016 elections. It is predicted to be a tight race between incumbent Mahama and Akufo-Addo.

In a Facebook post on Friday, March 19, 2016, Dr Nduom said, "2016 is NOT a two horse race. It is NOT between NDC and NPP. It is NOT between Akufo-Addo and Mahama. That may have been before dumsor, monoccocal meningitis, IMF squeeze, wanton use of our tax money to fund a personal campaign, killer taxes, unending internal division in NPP, concentration on winning an election with no policy alternatives, etc., etc. Not any longer!"

According to him, "The PPP's message of change, to elect MMDCEs, implementation of FCUBE, using state resources to support local entrepreneurs, separation of Ministry of Justice from the Office of Attorney-General, incorruptible leadership and job creation is catching on. The people like the PPP's coalition idea of using the best people to solve Ghana's problems. The youth are excited. The progressives are taking one village at a time."

"Are you a believer? Change is possible!," he added.
Here are British Airways' top five suggestions for the sweet-toothed traveller:

1. Birmingham, United Kingdom

The renowned Cadbury World is located in Birmingham. This chocolate centre can be reached by train from London Euston in a couple of hours. Visitors going through the different zones of the visitor centre can learn about the UKs iconic confectionery brand and the history of chocolate making.

2. London, United Kingdom

For those looking for treats available in London, Paul A Young has been named as Britains best chocolatier, serving rich truffles and brownies in his boutique shop located in Soho.

The luxury hotel One Aldwych, offers a special Charlie and the Chocolate Factory inspired afternoon tea, including chocolate caramel milk, homemade candy floss and cocoa bean financier.

For chocoholics, Choccywoccydoodah is the ultimate treat. It is an art and design focused chocolatier based in the trendy coastal city of Brighton and the quirky area of Soho in central London. It specialises in creating bespoke chocolate sculptures and gifts including hand-made chocolate eggs with fillings of praline and caramel.

3. Brussels, Belgium

British Airways has flights from London Heathrow directly to the heart of Belgium. The capital city Brussels, is renowned for its gourmet chocolate shops located along the quaint cobbled streets.

For chocolate connoisseurs, the Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate offers a great opportunity to see how different chocolates are made and enjoy tasty samples throughout the experience.

4. Paris, France

Paris is home to many master chocolatiers, making this an ideal place for travellers on the hunt for premium chocolates.

In particular Saint-Germain-des-Pres is known for its artisanal shops serving a vast selection of chocolate creations including truffles, pralines, chocolate-coated candied fruit or delicate macarons. Visit one of the many cafes and take a moment to experience a luxurious Parisian chocolat chaud (hot drinking chocolate).

5. Geneva, Switzerland

Regarded as one of the countrys national treasures, Switzerlands chocolate is known around the world for its high quality. The city of Geneva is a picturesque place to visit and taste traditional Swiss chocolates.

Auer is one of the oldest confectionary shops, dating back to 1939 - try its signature Amandes Princesses, which are roasted almonds covered in chocolate.
The Minister said though business in this time of adversity will not be easy, but companies who embrace new technologies and business strategies are likely to survive.

I think anybody who wants to survive in this climate today will need to put on the hat of thinking. It is not business as usual, but people are going to survive. The nice thing about adversity is that you get to make huge successes also. Companies that are ready to embrace new technologies, strategies and new ways of doing things are going to survive.

Kachikwu further added that oil-producing countries and oil/gas sector are cutting costs and ensuring efficient management of proceeds from crude oil productions and sale.

Using Nigeria as an example, the Minister said the Federal Government has put strategies in place to get oil companies function full time.

It is not going to be for too long. Nigeria, for example, has put its strategies around getting the oil companies back to full time work. And we are still looking at alternative funding sources; we are looking at diverging more into our gas products to complement our oil production. New ideas on how to survive and how to multiply the sort of income that is available to you are key to survive. I think Nigerian companies are very resilient, they will survive.

There is a sudden realisation that not only do we need to come together to cut our costs to see how to survive in this unhealthy petroleum climate, but also that countries will need to do a whole lot more in terms of how they utilise the proceeds of production going forward.

In a related news, Kachikwu recently stated that within the next four years, Nigeria would begin to export refined petrol and petrochemical products.
Ibinabo was sentenced to five years in prison by a Lagos High Court for reckless driving which resulted in the death of a staff, Giwa Suraj of a Lagos state hospital in 2006.

Ibinabo for the past few weeks has dominated the headlines following the dismissal of her appeal against the sentence.

Popular Nollywood director and critic, Charles Novia on Thursday, March 18 shared an eyewitness account of the accident that happened in February 2006.

The anonymous witness who goes by the name, De Gaulle claims to have been present at the scene of the accident and narrated how Ibinabo wasnt responsible for the doctors death.

Here are five things he said about the accident below:

1. "That evening, what happened was that the Doctors car was coming from the Victoria Island axis of the first Lekki Roundabout which leads into the Lekki Phase One Estate, while another SUV which was being driven by Ibinabo was coming out from the estate, if I remember correctly. I cannot tell who was speeding or what but we heard a loud crash and then I think the doctors car somersaulted while the other car driven by Ibinabo was flung a few metres to the other side."

2. "It was early evening. There was still the last trace of evening light. It might have been just before seven oclock or after seven. But it wasnt late."

3. "What got my attention was the special number plates on the car which read  DANIEL WILSON a popular musician in the nineties in Nigeria."

4. "At that point, the man was very much alive. I swear he was alive and groaning but he was alive. His arm was crushed or underpinned by the impact of the car and I still think that it was the inexperience of the area boys and bystanders in trying to pull the man out of the car, which killed him faster."
Many music insiders say the rise and success of Psquare within the last decade is because of Jude Okoyes plotting behind the scenes and bold approach.

Tales have been told about how Jude Okoye is a no-nonsense man who does not suffer fools gladly. With his orchestration Psquare is a brand name. He is shrewd and has gone one-on-one with brand managers, CEOs and politicians in making Psquare a top brand.

Some of his critics say he is a bit high handed and rude but you can't argue with facts. Jude Okoye has made Peter Okoye and Paul Okoye multimillionaires. He too is very rich.

In the Okoye family Jude was the first with musical ambitions. In the city of Jos he was a rapper, and in 1995 he released his debut album which contained the local hit track 'Mother she wrote' delivered in Hausa. He later abandoned music but his brothers had already started following his footsteps.

Jude Okoye started supporting his brothers any way he could and after the release of their first album he began managing them. The rest is history.

The empire which Jude Okoye has painstakingly built over a decade is on the verge of collapse as internal turmoil is threatening to do away with his legacy.

In an exclusive interview with NET, Psquare's first manager Bayo Odusami popularly known as Howie T said that Peter Okoye told him that Jude Okoye is the problem with the group.

Read: Jude Okoye shares cute photo of his daughter

"He told me that in a normal setting, a manager is supposed to be their employee and not the other way round, but Jude always uses his influence as their elder brother to boss over them. He also said managers collect between 15  25 % of an artistes income but in their case they share everything equally and hes not happy with that sharing formula" Bayo Odusami told NET. Peter Okoye also said that most times his songs are not picked by Jude and Paul.

These statements echoes Peter Okoye's rants last month demanding for Jude Okoye to step down as the group's manager on Twitter. This move from Peter started the current drama with Psquare which sees him now performing solo as Mr. P.

Yesterday night (Thursday, March 17, 2016) Jude Okoye announced that he is no longer the manager of Psquare. "Please i stopped being Psquares management for over a month now (for the 4th time). Let me be at PEACE. Thank you" he tweeted. With this latest statement it now seems that Psquare is over. Since 2012 the group dominated pop music and culture in Nigeria. After many best selling albums the Okoye brothers have called it quits.

What led to the end of Psquare though? Is it true that Jude Okoye's high handedness led to the breakup of the group? There is little evidence that suggests that this is true but however in an interview with Vanguard in 2011 Jude Okoye revealed the inner workings of the Psquare brand.

Read: Cynthia Morgan says she is not pregnant for Jude Okoye

"...P-Square rules the world but I own the world. So, Im the boss. I push them out because they are the brand, while I own and run the brand" said Jude Okoye in the interview.

The manager who also works with Cynthia Morgan also spoke about how they agree on ideas and what happens whenever there is a fight.

"Its normal to argue in order for a good result to be reached. Whenever one of us brings any idea, hell have to either win the other two or one to his side before we can adopt such idea. If you couldnt win anyone then, the idea would go straight into the dustbin. But whenever the two of them start their argument, I always give them room to argue till theyre satisfied. But whenever their argument doesnt favour any of them then, I could come in and whoever I see reasons with wins" said the manager.

In 2013 in an exclusive interview with Rhodies World Jude Okoye revealed how decides what the group does. "For instance, when they come up with ideas, they will need support from anyone of us before execution. But as for me, I dont need to seek their suggestion. I would tell them straight that this is what we are doing. I dont need to get their opinion because before I come up with that opinion, I must have thought about it and reasoned well. They are the artistes. I see them and the audience, but they see only the fans. I am in-and-out. I know what people want more than they do."

From these quotes we can deduce that Jude Okoye had more than a managerial role in the set up. He was the leader and the boss of the operation. So where along the line did Peter Okoye feel that he had enough of his brother?

The first crack in the wall of the Psquare empire came in 2014 when we heard out of the blues that Psquare had split up. They patched things up and released their sixth album ''. Two years later the arguments came back up and now we are here.
In a statement by the director of Miss Universe Puerto Rico, Desire Lowry, on March 17, the beauty queen's bad attitude towards the media got her what she deserved. "I saw the damage that she was doing and the damage that she was doing to the organization, Desiree told press men announcing that Caride would be the first to ever be stripped of her crown before the pageant!

"I wanted the earth to swallow me, Desiree went on after explaining that during an interview with a local paper, the beauty queen didnt want to take photos, saying, I just do not like cameras.

Kristhielee posted a long message on her Facebook page apologizing (originally in Spanish, translated):

""Greetings to all,

"As was well expressed in the letter sent on Monday: "There is no such thing as a bad day, just we had a bad time  and we chose to take it with us all day

"Beauty queens are not exempt from having a bad day and on Sunday March 13 fell to me, perhaps between personal situations that you may have as a human being and mortal in addition to my many commitments as Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2016 let my feelings antepusieran my work.

"In recent days I went through countless personal situations and yet fulfilled the commitments stipulated in my work schedule with responsibility and commitment as always characterized me. Like Sunday I shared with those present, I take pictures and anime event not as some media have established.

"I want to express my sincere apologies to each of my fans first of all who have supported me from the first moment, my team and the organization of . Never was my intension to feel bad, injure or damage the image of those who have helped me to be where I am today.

"Err it is human, is also courageous to acknowledge mistakes and want to remain an example of a real woman, with purpose that stays with my head held high against all odds that past life; Boricua extolling the beauty and in turn accept failure. My teaching experience will serve for other girls and the organization of the event.

"With dignity I accept to surrender my belt as an ambassador for our island opinion of the organization and its director , without agreeing with the decision, but always carry the memory of that night of November 12 where I won the title and all experiences and beautiful memories that I take to have been Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2016.

"I love you so much -Kristhielee Caride (Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2016)"
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!
PHOENIX  Ignoring a last-minute plea from cities, Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Thursday that will financially penalize those that do not fall in line with state law.

SB 1487, which takes effect later this year, requires the state treasurer to withhold revenue sharing dollars from any city or county once the attorney general concludes their local laws or policies are contrary to state statutes.

Thursdays action was not a surprise, with Ducey having threatened to take such action on his own during his State of the State address in January.

As Gov. Ducey has made clear, for Arizona to be competitive, we cant have a patchwork of different laws across the state, said gubernatorial spokeswoman Annie Dockendorff. This legislation ensures everyone is playing by the same rules.

Duceys action comes just hours after three top officials from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns urged the governor to veto the measure.

This bill is heavy-handed, intrusive and minimizes the important role of local elected officials, wrote Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell, Jay Tibshraeny of Chandler and Mark Nexsen of Lake Havasu City.

The three mayors said local officials, like those at the state level, take an oath to uphold the state constitution and statutes.

Yet this bill second-guesses their deliberations and decisions, prosecutes them in a likely unconstitutional manner, and punishes them without the benefit of due process, they wrote.

That issue goes to the way the system would work under the new law.

It allows any legislator to demand the attorney general to investigate any ordinance, regulation, order or other official action by a community to see if it violates state statutes or the constitution.

If the attorney general does find a conflict, the local community is given 30 days to resolve the violation. And if that does not happen to the satisfaction of the attorney general, he or she tells the treasurer to withhold all state revenue sharing dollars from that community and redistribute it to everyone else.

But if the legality of the local measure is unclear, the law requires the attorney general to file a complaint with the state Supreme Court which has to give that case priority over all other cases. And if the community decides to fight, it has to past a bond equal to the amount of shared revenues it has received in the prior six months.

What possible hubris could drive one single legislator to think he or she has more wisdom that the local elected officials who have been chosen by the voters to govern their communities? the mayors wrote to Ducey. What happened to the principle of presumption of innocence in our legal system?

Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said theres nothing improper about the process the legislation sets up.

This is dealing with the state making decisions about the allocation of state shared revenues, he said. We are putting in place a process to decide that allocation.
The accident occurred around 2 PM on the day. A large crowd of sympathizers rushed to the scene to assist security agents in taking the victims to nearest hospitals.

According to Punch, 10 of the passengers in the bus, including its driver, died on the spot while others sustained varying degrees of injuries.

An eyewitness, Ayobami Adedeji, said The scene of a fatal accident around the Four Square camp, Ajebo, Lagos Ibadan Expressway, Ogun State, was nauseating. The commuter bus collided with the truck while driving against the traffic. No fewer than 10 persons died. Please, avoid that route, there is gridlock.

The accident was blamed on the bus driver, who was said to have went off the road.

The Head of Operations, FRSC, Ogun State Command, Deputy Corps Commander, Divis Ogiamiem, said the accident was caused by wrongful overtaking by the driver of the commercial bus at a section of the road where there was a traffic diversion.

He said, The cause of the crash was wrongful overtaking and loss of control by the driver of the Mazda bus. He was travelling from Ibadan to Lagos; it was in that process that the driver rammed the bus into an oncoming Iveco truck, travelling to Ibadan.

Ten people died, while others were injured. The accident occurred around 2.10pm today (Wednesday).
Abdullahi, a driver, confessed that he wore the uniform which he bought for N5, 000, from an army officer friend, Haruna Ali, to act as escort for long distance drivers so as to make ends meet.

We met at Agege on January 17 and he handed the cloth to me to keep for his younger brother whom he said passed out in 2014 but has not got uniform.

I am not air force personnel; I am a driver; my route is Kano to Lagos, Mile 2 to Kaduna and vice versa. I used to drive my brothers bus but he sold it and travelled abroad for greener pasture.

I have a family to feed; I was thinking on how to get money when I consulted Haruna and he advised me to use the air force uniform to fend for myself. I started wearing the uniform which I bought for N5, 000, to be escorting vehicles from Kaduna to Lagos.

They used to pay me N 3,000 for each vehicle I escort. But on February 2, some air force personnel saw me wearing the uniform and arrested me and later transferred me to police.
The victims were burnt to death when the jilted lover poured petrol in the shack which his ex shared with other members of her family and set it on fire on Monday, March 8, 2016.

The 49-year-old suspect, who is in police custody committed the heinous act after his girlfriend, Mammy Mwale, the mother of three of the victims, ended their relationship.

An eyewitness said the suspect went into the house with a bottle full of petrol and started pouring it on her and Mammy Mwale.

"They began to fight, Mammy pushed him outside but he overpowered her. He then ran into the house and poured petrol all over, got out and ran away, and before we could think we saw a blazing fire," said Emily amidst tears.

"He has done a horrible thing, he loved Mammy too much. I do not like what he has done, he told me that he was going to kill everyone in that family. I want the law to punish him"
His wife, Nono Orji, who is a medical doctor, on Thursday, March 17, 2016, told the story on her Facebook page. She accused the law enforcement officers of attempting to poison her husband.

Narrating on Facebook, she said, The Nigerian Police in Dolphin Estate, Ikoyi just arrested an innocent 30-year-old man called Ugo Madugba for an offence of marriage.

Marriage has become a crime in Nigeria according to Dolphin police station in Ikoyi.

Mr. Ugo got married to Dr. Nono a 28-year-old medical Doctor.

Her father has been very distraught about it and has used the police to threaten the young couple to the extent of arresting all those who acted as witnesses to the marriage who are now in custody.

He has been denied access to his family and friends and information reaching us has it that his lawyer was also denied access to him.

There is a belief that a plan to poison ugo is being hatched. Please, forward this message to as many people as possible lets save Ugos life.

In another post, she mentioned that her parents, who are clearly not satisfied with her choice in Ugo, wants her to marry another man.

They claimed that Ugo forcefully lured her into the marriage by abducting and hypnotising her.
Nono had immediately took to her Facebook page to narrate the story of how her husband got to be arrested on the orders of her parents.

She said, Marriage has become a crime in Nigeria according to Dolphin police station in Ikoyi.

Mr. Ugo got married to Dr. Nono a 28-year-old medical Doctor.

Her father has been very distraught about it and has used the police to threaten the young couple to the extent of arresting all those who acted as witnesses to the marriage who are now in custody."

Nonos cry evidently received the attention of the right authority, as the police boss soon gave the order for her husband to be released.

According to Punch, Ugo confirmed the news of his release when he said, I have been released and I am very grateful.

Reports has it that Nonos parents are of the belief that their daughter was hypnotised and forced into marriage by her husband.
She was represented by the Wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo.

Mrs Buhari, who is the Grand Patron of the rebirth said that the need for the National Rebirth had become necessary as the country was being faced with some challenges.

She said the rebirth would bring about society free of corruption, nepotism and greed among other vices.

"The new Nigeria will make the country great as well as bring hope and prosperity to the country as a whole and to Africa in general.

"It will bring joy to us and generation after generation. Indeed, we will not rest until every Nigerian can enjoy equal opportunities to their dreams, pursue and achieve greatness in various field of their endeavours as people.

"The project will remind us that there is a drop and depth of greatness in every Nigerian. We are not yet there until all hands are on deck, we will achieve the desired change we all desire.

She said that all African countries were looking unto Nigeria for positive change, adding that If we change, thel continent would also change for good.

She said the present administration would continue to fight vices that hinder the development of the country.

Mrs Buhari said youths were the agents of change in any nation as they constituted the largest part of population of the country.

"I am happy, youths are ready for change mantra of the country and It is now left for them to actualise it.''

She commended the project team led by Cabinet X Africa Initiative, 37 artistes from each state and other stakeholders for their contribution to actualize the rebirth.

Speaking at the event, the National Coordinator of the Nigeria Rebirth Project, Mr Isaac Balami, said the project was an initiative of patriotic Nigerians who were passionate about a new Nigeria.

"The past and present challenges of our nation need to be confronted by the rebirthing of a new Nigeria to enable the countrys future reshaped.

Balami said the art symbolised the renewed commitment to national building as well as strengthening the potentials among the citizens to make the country great.

He said the rebirth was a new ideological framework that would "transform and strengthen our homes, offices, schools, institutions as well as enhancing our economic, socio-political, security and international outlook''.
PHOENIX  Invoking the name of a murdered convenience store clerk, a House panel voted Thursday to deny parole, probation or any type of early release to felons who were in this country illegally when they committed their crime.

Arizona law already allows judges to consider various factors in determining how long a sentence to impose. And one of those is the immigration status of the offender.

SB 1377 spells out if that is the case, a judge must impose at least the presumptive sentence for the crime. That denies the person any chance of arguing there are reasons for the court to be more lenient.

More to the point, the legislation requires that full sentence to be served.

The 5-3 vote came after testimony from Steve Ronnebeck.

His son, Grant, was working the graveyard shift at a Mesa convenience store in January 2015 when he was shot, apparently for not giving someone his cigarettes fast enough.

According to police, the man arrested was in the country illegally, had been convicted of burglary in 2012 and was placed on probation. A judge had ordered immigration officials notified of his conviction.

But the elder Ronnebeck said the man who was captured actually had been out on a $10,000 immigration bond for more than 470 days.

The vote came over objections from several Democrats who said this was improperly targeting those in the country illegally. But Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said it is reasonable policy to consider someones immigration status as a factor, just as the law allows a judge to consider prior crimes someone has committed.
Buhari gave the commendation on Thursday in Abuja at the public presentation of a book titled: The New Dawn Nigeria, written by a group of youths under the canopy of Flex Digest Concept, a print media organisation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the book was in honour of the change mantra of President Muhammudu Buhari.

Representing the wife of the President, Mrs Pauline Tallen, a former Deputy Governor of Plateau State, called on the youths to take their education seriously as it is their passport to the future.

"She therefore, commends the authors of this book and she prays that all of us join hands together as true change agents to help Mr President succeed in the vision for a new Nigeria.

"Mr. President is not a magician, he cannot change Nigeria alone. Mr President and his ministers are not magicians but each one of us must participate in making this change possible.

"How can we make this change possible by doing the right thing at the right time, by having the fear of God in all that we do.

"As mother of the nation she called on youths to take their studies very seriously because education is the greatest assets and passport any parent or any society can give its citizens.

"We should therefore prepare for tomorrow by doing the right things and by making sure we fight the ills in our society.

Buhari also commended the NYSC members for obeying the call to serve their county as part of their contribution to national development.

Through your service to this nation, you will acclimatize yourselves with what is happening in various parts of the country.

In his remarks the Project Coordinator, Flex Digest, Mr Kangamma Uregati, said that the change mantra of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration inspired her to write the book.

"What actually brought about this book is our belief in the change mantra of President Muhammad Buhari.

"We actually believe that he is the man, who has come to transform this nation and we have been trying to put this in place since he assumed office.

"We are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that with Buhari there will be transformation in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

"This book focuses on the new dawn in Nigeria; it portrays the coming of transformation; so, it is good morning to Nigeria.
The call is contained in a communique issued at the end of the 6th African Petroleum Congress and Exhibition on Thursday in Abuja.

It said that congress recommended the control and limit of ineffective diplomatic procedures, including permits and process.

Other recommendations included implementation of anti corruption initiatives and ensuring transparency, better management of production elements and integration of core upstream and downstream activities.

It further recommended establishing of linkages and other economies to be more resilient in shocks such as the current one witnessed in the sector.

The document stated that sincerity of purpose and being consistent would attract and retain partnerships.

It said congress also recommended investment on human capital development to foster security among APPA members and promote local content and community development activities.

It added that innovative sharing among member countries should be encouraged to safeguard social development projects.

"Gas modernisation and flaring programmes should be implemented to project the environment and mitigate climate change.

" There should be clarity on roles of powers of ministers and regulatory agencies to reduce bottlenecks in the system."

It further recommended regulatory certainty, clarity and flexibility for changes overtime to reflect circumstances.
Kanu did not commit any crime by calling for self-determination and he should be freed, the ex-militant said, according to the Daily Sun.

It is never a crime to call for self-determination, thus, he should be freed. Biafrans have to put away their differences and make sure he comes out. When I was in detention, Igbo came together to bring me out. Nnamdi has done tremendously well and has shown resoluteness in the Biafra struggle. Our goal is our independence and the good of our people.

IPOB should extend their campaign to every region in Biafraland and not just Igboland. The Biafra gospel should be preached everywhere and people should be told why they should fearlessly join in this movement. It is our collective responsibilities that will make Biafra restoration a success.

The Biafra struggle is for everyone and no one can do it all alone, thus, everyone should do away with differences and come together to make sure Kanu is freed and Biafra is restored. Leadership should not be our interest now; everyone should focus on our goal, which is the restoration of the sovereign state of Biafra.

Any Biafran who wants to deny the fact that Kanu catalysed this quest for Biafra independence is lying to himself; it is an obvious truth. This is not time to nurse grudges against one another so that our enemies will not take advantage of it and then use it against us. I urge every Biafran to be strong and also call for the release of our brother, Kanu, he said.

Kanu has been in detention since his arrest in October 2015 and pro-Biafra supporters have held several protests to demand his release.

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Arase said I can confirm that by Friday March 18, the logistics procured and personnel mobilised for the first phase of the deployment will be launched. Following the outcome of the last roundtable, the police had heightened the deployment process of personnel in the region.

The police IG made this disclosure at a meeting on the stabilisation of security in the North-East, organised by the police force in conjunction with the British embassy.

He added that The successes so far recorded can best be consolidated with sincere and workable plans expected to be the outcome of this roundtable.

Arase also warned hoodlums and politicians against violenceduring the upcoming National Assembly rerun elections, slated for March 19, 2016 in Rivers state.
This was disclosed via a statement released by army spokesperson, Colonel Sani Usman.

It reads:

Troops of 81 Battalion and 251 Task Force Battalion of 25 Task Force Brigade on Wednesday engaged in hot pursuit of remnants of Boko Haram terrorists in Kumala.

This followed an earlier incident in which suspected Boko Haram terrorists ambushed fighting patrol elements of 25 Task Force Brigade. After clearing the ambush, the troops exploited further off Damboa road from Kumala.

During the pursuit, the troops traced the axis of withdrawal of the terrorists and discovered that the terrorist vehicle mounted with an Anti-Aircraft Gun tasted a bit of the Boko Haram terrorists evil intents as it ran into an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) buried by them.

The vehicle was shredded into pieces by the IED while 2 of the Boko Haram terrorists died in the process. The troops recovered 1 General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), 2 AK-47 Assault Rifles as well as one Boko Haram terrorists' flag, 6 primed IEDs, Anti-Aircraft Gun links and rounds of ammunition. Other recoveries include 43 rounds of 7.62mm (NATO) ammunition and a mobile telephone handset.

This incident of the terrorists group falling victims of its evil plans against the troops, the wrath of God has been aroused by the retributive justice against the devilish Boko Haram terrorists.

------------------------------------------------
Mr. President shared his positive outlook with attendees at the opening of the International Islamic Conference on Peace and Nation Building in Abuja.

He also said Poverty breeds disaffection, which in turn leads to crime and lawlessness including confrontation against the State. To checkmate this, we must work hard to lift our economy, engage our youth and rebuild infrastructure.

We can only achieve these with the full cooperation of all Nigerians and under a stable polity. We are determined to do this and we shall not be deterred.

Professor Ben Nwabueze recently said President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the intellectual capacity to govern Nigeria.
Buhari made the call at International Islamic Conference on Peace and Nation Building organised by Jamaatul Izalatil Bidah WaIqamatis Sunnah (JIBWIS), in conjunction with the Muslim World League, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, at YarAdua Centre, Abuja.

He stated that the call had become imperative in view of the fact that Nigeria had suffered many years of official neglect and corruption leading to the common mans untold hardship.

He assured that his administration would do everything possible to safeguard lives and property of all citizens and also to ensure even development across the country.

The President urged the leaders to intensify efforts to send out the real teachings of their religion to counter the diabolical ideology that motivates the insurgent elements.

He also called on them to encourage their followers ``to be more tolerant of each other and recognise the rights of others as they want others to recognise their rights to worship and live freely.

According to him, Islam does not permit lawlessness and it frowns at extremism even in normal acts of worship.

He said the emergence of any group advocating the contrary was, therefore, irreligious and unacceptable.

"Religious leaders must intensify their efforts to send out the real teachings of their religion in order to counter the diabolical ideology that motivates the insurgent elements.

"I call on all religious, community and political leaders to mobilise their followers against corruption and crimes.

"They should also encourage them to be more tolerant of each other; and recognise the rights of others as they want others to recognise their rights to worship and live freely.
We must produce what we eat. We dont have unlimited resources to continue the importation of food items that can be produced locally, Buhari said.

Fortunately, some Nigerians have shown foresight by building factories that process agricultural products within the country. They have created a value chain that boosts employment, protects our foreign reserves and safeguards the economy from external shocks.

We will do all that we can to encourage others to join in the effort to achieve national self-sufficiency in food production, Buhari added.

The President also assured that his government would encourage Nigerian farmers to adopt modern, technology-driven methods of farming.

---------------------------------------------------
Our rules of engagement during security operations touch on the observation of human rights at all times, he said.

You must behave professionally, protect lives and uphold the dignity of humans during all your operations. If you apply all the rules of engagement and still have cause to open fire as a last resort, then you will be protected by the Constitution.

We will however not tolerate or protect anyone who in the course of any operation violates such provisions of the constitution, he added.

Amnesty International has repeatedly accused the Nigerian Army of violating human rights while carrying out its war against terrorist sect, Boko Haram.

----------------------------------------------
Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Thursday that forbids state and local governments from doing business with firms that won't do business in Israel.

HB 2617 specifically says public agencies cannot enter into contracts with any company unless the deal including "written certification that the company is not currently engaged in, and agrees for the duration of the contract to not engage in, a boycott of Israel.'' It also requires the state treasurer and pension systems to sell off holdings in such companies.

The measure is aimed at companies that support want to pressure the Israeli government to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Gubernatorial press aide Annie Dockendorff said her boss wants no part of that.

"The governor has been vocal, unwavering and unapologetic about Arizona's commitment to stand with Israel, an important trade partner and strong ally to our state and nation,'' she said. "If there are entities out there who seek to weaken the economic and national security of the only flourishing democracy in the Middle East, they will not be doing business with Arizona.''

Photo radar

Gov. Doug Ducey will have to decide whether to remove the last two speed cameras on state highways.

On a 16-14 margin the Senate on Thursday approved SB 1241 which bans local governments from putting photo enforcement onto any state-maintained road. There are only two sets of cameras left: one on U.S. 60, better known as Grand Avenue, in El Mirage, and the other on State Route 260 in Star Valley.

Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, said the automatic nature of photo enforcement makes it unfair. She cited the testimony of a woman who talked of her citation on Grand Avenue who said she feared she was about to be rear-ended.

"She had to speed up and, right then, flash,'' said Lesko. The senator said if there had been a police officer on the scene, her constituent could have explained the situation and perhaps escaped the ticket.

Sen. Steve Pierce, R-Prescott, opposed the measure. He said the two companies that operate these machines -- Redflex Traffic Systems and American Traffic Solutions -- are good for the state's economy because they have employees and pay taxes.

But Senate President Andy Biggs said his concern is the lack of due process when someone wants to contest the ticket.

"You can't confront your accuser because you have no idea who your accuser is,'' he said.

The legislation does not affect speed and red light cameras operated by local governments on their own roads.

Public records

Without debate the state House gave preliminary approval Thursday to legislation designed to let public officials and agencies deny requests for records.

State law requires public records be open to inspection by any person during normal business hours. SB 1282 permits a request to be denied if it is ``unduly burdensome or harassing.''

The legislation, which requires a final House vote before going to the governor, also allows a public official to require someone making a request to identify the records with ``reasonable particularity.'' That is designed to preclude ``fishing expeditions."

Guns in bars

Former police officers will be entitled to bring their weapons into bars under the terms of legislation given preliminary Senate approval on Thursday.

Current law limits that right to police officers or a member of a sheriff's volunteer posse while on duty. HB 2030 adds retired peace officers who have been certified as being firearms proficient.

A separate 2009 law permits those who have a concealed-carry permit to have their sidearms with them if there is not a ``no guns'' sign at the door and they agree not to drink.

The voice vote came over the objections of Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson.

``Frankly, I think that we've discovered that whenever alcohol mixes with anything ... it's never a good formula,'' he said.

Batteries

Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Thursday removing any caps on what consumers can be charged in deposits for their car, truck and boat batteries.

State law requires battery sellers to accept used batteries, a move designed to keep them out of landfills. But if the buyer does not have a used battery, the law requires the seller to charge a deposit.

That deposit was capped at $5 until 2010 when it went to $15; HB 2132 removes any limits.

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The explosion was as a result of a suicide attack believed to be orchestrated by Boko Haram and carried out by two female bombers who had been disguised as men.

In reaction to the attack, Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai said that it was not unexpected.

What happened today is not unexpected because these people are struggling to survive and these are the last remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists, Buratai said in Benin Cityduring a visit to the headquarters of the armys 4 Brigade.

Hours later, after the casualty figure had risen to 24, Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole said that Boko Haram had become like a dead snake that would still continue to wriggle its body.

Yes, Boko Haram is still there, but obviously there is no doubt it no longer has that capacity to harass us, Oshiomhole said on Thursday, March 17, while receiving Buratai at the Edo Government House.

I think whatever they do now is like a dead snake, it might still continue to wriggle its body, but its dead. It is only with time that the teeth will be removed, the governor added.

Its amazing that government officials dont realize how insensitive it is to speak as if the lives of the 24 people who were killed by Boko Haram in the Maiduguri blast dont matter.

If General Buratai knew that the sect would keep carrying out bombings, why didnt he take measures to protect the citizens? If the attack was expected, why wasnt it stopped?

How can Oshiomhole, in good conscience, compare the deaths of 24 people to the wriggling of a dying snake?

Nevertheless, Oshiomhole and Buratais comments show that they are only following the steps of their leader, President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari recently said that Boko Haram is no longer a threat to Nigeria and based his claims of technical victoryagainst the sect on the fact that the terrorists could no longer hold territory in Nigeria, a claim which has been countered by the commander of the U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM), David Rodriguez.

It seems that the president and his men havent realized that they can only claim victory against Boko Haram when the sect can no longer kill with ease and impunity.

Yes, the Nigerian military is winning the war against terror, but there can be no boasting until citizens lives have been effectively secured against the sect and the terrors it unleashes.

It would do good for Buhari to remember that one of the reasons why his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan is no longer president, is because he was insensitive to the plight of Boko Haram victims.
Pulseearlier reported that an army major and two other soldiers were ambushed and killed in the state, but Lazarus only confirmed the major's death and one soldier.

He said they were killed after an exchange of gunfire with suspected sea pirates in Abonema, Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of the state.

At about 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 17, troops on patrol in Abonema, Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers, had a fierce encounter with a group of unknown gunmen suspected to be sea pirates.

Our men displayed extraordinary gallantry, but unfortunately, an officer and a soldier who sustained various degrees of injury during the encounter, lost their lives," Lazarus told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

We are currently in pursuit of the criminals and we will surely apprehend them, he added.
Paul Hezekiah, a final year student of computer engineering, was allegedly shot at close range by a DSS official, during a raid on a market known as GSM Plaza, where mobile phones are sold.

His corpse was reportedly dumped in a van and taken away by the DSS.

Speaking on the development, the Plateau state police commissioner, Mr. Adekunle Oladunjoye said he is surprised that the DSS has not handed the officer over to his team for questioning.

Oladunjoye said The case was reported at the A Division and we had expected DSS to hand the suspect over to the police since it became a public knowledge. But I have asked the CID to formally write to DSS to release the suspect to us for questioning.

The police commissioner also said his men will write an official letter to the DSS requesting that the suspect be handed over for questioning.
For today, March 18 2016:

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Senate okays National Assemblys takeover of Kogi AssemblyThis decision was taken following the adoption of an earlier resolution by the House of Representatives which urged the National Assembly to rescue the Kogi House of Assembly from its present political crisis that has prevented it from performing its legislative responsibilities to the state. READ MORE

National Assembly shifts budget passage to next weekIn the face of growing uncertainty over the fate of the 2016 budget proposal, the National Assembly has again raised a fresh hope that the appropriation bill may be passed next week. READ MORE

Court bars army from Rivers pollsAhead of tomorrows rerun national and state legislative polls, a Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has restrained the military from deploying its troops to conduct, monitor and supervise the election. READ MORE______________________________________

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

Ahead of re-run polls: Fear, unease as Rivers violence claims 2 soldiersP-HARCOURTAhead of tomorrows federal and state legislative elections in Rivers State, tension reached feverish pitch, yesterday, after an Army Major and another soldier were killed in the latest burst of violence. READ MORE

Oil price slump: Nigerian companiesll survive  KachikwuABUJA  Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, yesterday, allayed fears that the volatility in the price of crude oil in the international market would plunge oil and gas companies and financial institutions in the country into bankruptcy. READ MORE

Ekiti accuses DSS of killing detained lawmakerAdo-EkitiThe alleged invasion of the State House of Assembly by operatives of the Department of State Services, DSS, assumed a new dimension yesterday, as the government of Ekiti State disclosed that one of the detained lawmakers, Hon Afolabi Akanni has died in the agencys custody. READ MORE______________________________________

THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

Tension, killings in Rivers ahead of rerunTension heightened in Rivers State on Thursday after a Major in the Nigerian Army and two other soldiers were killed during a shootout with a group of gunmen. READ MORE

We operate patients with lamps, torchlight  UITH doctorsThe immediate past president of the Association of Resident Doctors, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital branch, Dr. Oyinlola Oluwagbemiga and his successor, Dr. Ade Faponle, on Wednesday said that due to epileptic power supply in the hospital, doctors have had to use lamps, torchlight and phone lights to treat patients. READ MORE

Detained Ekiti lawmaker debunks rumour of his deathA member of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Mr. Afolabi Akanni, has debunked the rumour making the rounds in his state that he had died in the custody of the Department of State Services on Thursday. READ MORE______________________________________

BUSINESS DAY NEWSPAPER

PwC report reveals growth potential for retail market in AfricaEmerging sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya are top choice for retail market expansion, despite decline in commodity prices, dwindling revenues and weak currencies. This is based on a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world largest professional services firm, which shows maximum growth potentials for retail and consumer businesses in 10 SSA READ MORE

Nigeria loses N2trn to gas flaring in seven yearsLack of political will to effect the policy on gas flaring for the past seven years may have cost the Nigerian economy N2.027 trillion, BusinessDay analysis has revealed. The flaring cost for the country is an average of N289.6 billion annually according to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), and government has shifted the deadlines READ MORE
Oshiomhole said Yes, Boko Haram has not exactly disappeared, but there is no doubt that they themselves will in their own way appreciate that things have changed, that the Nigerian side is better. They no longer have that audacity, that impunity to move freely without fear.

The Edo Governor also said We in Edo State appreciate the leadership that you are providing for the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigerian Army in particular. We watched you on television and we saw a very senior officer meeting his officers and men right in the battle field, sharing the dust, the sun and all the deprivations, the sort of thing you sometimes see in foreign countries. I think that you are leading by example.

Meanwhile the COAS recently revealed that Sambisa forest, the supposed stronghold of Boko Haram, is as big as Enugu State.

If it was expected, then the question now, is: Was there anything done to avert it?
This is contained in a statement by Amb. Kema Chikwe, the partys National Women Leader on Friday in Abuja.

Chikwe said it was important to revisit the bill, especially in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"This regressive action ironically occurred at a critical time when the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) conference is currently holding in New York, USA, she said.

She commended the male senators, who made positive contributions in support of the bill, adding that the female senators fought hard but lost the battle.

"Women constitute more than 50 per cent of the population of the country; unfortunately, they are only a minute minority in both the National and State Houses of Assembly.

"It is therefore no surprise that the bill was thrown out.

"The bill was about humanity and not about women. I therefore plead with the Senate to revisit this bill, Chikwe said.

She said that the implication of throwing out the bill was that the incidents of rape, domestic violence, maternal mortality and poverty which had been ravaging the country would continue unchallenged.

"The dismissal of that bill essentially undermines the contributions Nigerian women are making towards our national development, she said.

The women leader said that the bill was not just about women but centred on the survival of the family system in Nigeria.

She was optimistic that if passed, the greatest beneficiaries of the bill would have been the men folk "who are undoubtedly the heads of families.

She added that Nigerian women had proved capacity to lead and follow in national development.

"Nigerian women are very conscious of positive Nigerian cultures and tradition.
The Cable reports that the state got N6.23 million as against the the N56 million it received in September 2015.

The Governor said back in 2015; Money coming from the Federation Account has dipped seriously and our hope for survival is in our hands; what our forefathers lived on was agriculture."

For September, our state got N55.8 million. The money we received cannot pay for the power supply by Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) that we use at the state Secretariat monthly.

According to the accountant-general of the federation, Osun state received a gross statutory allocation of N1.677 billion for February, which was slightly above the allocation for Ekiti, Ebonyi, Kwara and Bayelsa.

Osun also got N19.418 million and N726.1 million from the exchange rate gain and value added tax, resulting in a total gross amount of N2.423 billion for the month.

The total allocation for Osun was shown to be higher thanNasarawa, Kwara, Gombe, Ekiti and Ebonyi.

According to The Cable, the removal of the N70.989 million, N945.881 million and N1.400 billion in external debt, Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO), and other debts, the state was left with a net allocation of N6.23 million.

And with a wage bill of over N2.6 billion, the net allocation of N6.23 million would hardly foot the stae's bills, giving its meagre internally generated revenue (IGR).

Every other state of the federation had a minimum net allocation of N1 billion.

Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Kwara, Gombe, Nasarawa, had a net allocation of N2.984 billion, N2.167 billion, N1.377 billion, N1.815 billion, N2.300 billion, N2.169 billion respectively.

With a wage bill of N2.6 billion, Ekiti, like Osun, led by Ayodele Fayose, may also have problems meeting its wage obligations.
Whatever problem we may have in Nigeria at this or any other time, this country is sustained by the fact that we are indeed a very special people. We have been described as the happiest people on earth, we have also described ourselves as resilient, gifted and determined, and in one report, Nigerians are said to have the strongest shock absorber against some of the deadliest diseases in the world. If anyone doubted this last point, well, recall that we won the battle over Ebola virus, and polio.

The more you look at it, the more it seems as if there is something in the Nigerian DNA that defies defeat, that automatically deletes any virus that can result in system shut down, there is that X-factor in our affairs that rises when hope seems lost, and life seems tragic. Somehow, the Nigerian spirit regenerates, recreates and reinvents itself, turns failure into possibilities, pessimism into new expectations, and tomorrow into an anchor for renewal.

We are at such a crossroad, right now. But in the midst of the despair, the listlessness, the anxiety, the what-happened-to-us and what-the hell-is-going-on, you cant miss the fact that the average Nigerian has not lost his bounce. The biggest tragedies that can hobble other nations happen here and we just shrug them off.

Boko Haram alone has claimed thousands of lives. Hun hun. Herdsmen have killed men and women in their hundreds. Hun hun. More lives have been lost to vehicle accidents on our poorly made, badly maintained roads. Well, hun hun. Many fingers have been caught in the national cookie jar. Ha. What is this? Who dunnit? But, o ma se o. hun hun.

The national leaky bucket has a thousand holes. Ha, no country can live with this? Still, hen hun hun. We voted and there were promises of a new spirit of the age. But that spirit is yet to manifest. So? Nothing good comes easy, therefore. No miracles in the new agenda. So, ni igba yen wa n ko? So, life goes on. Whatever life throws at the average Nigerian, he protests, he complains, but he accommodates it. It is the reason why nobody will throw stones because power supply is at the worst level in years.

It is the reason why workers who have not been paid for months after months will still see the same Governor who is responsible for their misery, after collecting Federal money to help them, and has refused to deliver and they will still scream: My Excellency, sir. When workers go on strike, someone calls them together, says something nice, provides something nice and everything falls nicely in place. The late Chief MKO Abiola was quoted saying eto ni gbogbo e, that is anything in Nigeria can be arranged nicely.

The June 12 debacle sadly could not be arranged nicely. It cost the Chief of native wisdom and martyr of Nigerian democracy his life, but many lessons have been learnt. And one key lesson is that in this country, the people are determined to live no matter what.

They can grumble as they wish about the public space but Nigerians are not ready to give up their will to live, their right to live and their understanding of how to live. And if you put your neck on the line on their behalf, you will be shocked that you will the subject of memes and whats app jokes. The people laugh at martyrs and heroes because they see no reason why anyone should commit suicide, defending Nigeria, when there is so much life to be enjoyed.

Nigeria is probably the global headquarters of enjoyment. The way the ordinary man has complained in recent times, about political change and the socio-cultural changes it has brought, you would think Nigerians are in serious trouble. But that is not the case.

The foreign exchange market has gone into a crazy overdrive impoverishing the whole nation. Parents whose children are schooling abroad are afraid that they may no longer be able to pay fees. The manufacturing sector is abusing the Minister of Finance-whats-that-her-name-again? and where-did-she-learn-finance-public-policy-and-economics, but I beg, look around, more businesses are actually springing up and all those foreign investors who are supposedly monitoring the Nigerian market are actually clinging to this market.

Why do you think MTN wants to remain in Nigeria till death do them part? Why do you think all those foreign countries want President Buhari to visit? The banks have retrenched a lot of staff but the same banks have started recruiting again. In this country, what you see is not what you get. There is problem with foreign exchange but activities at the ports have not ceased. Wait till September, youd be shocked the number of Nigerian children heading towards Europe, North America and other parts of Africa in pursuit of expensive, forex-backed education.

I beg, leave matter. And if you dont want to leave it go to the nearest fuel station where many Nigerians are queuing up for fuel with power generating sets and jerry cans. The people are going through the hardship but they are laughing at their leaders.

You think you can mess us up, na lie. If you people like, sell fuel for N150, we go survive. They stay in front of that fuel station and they review Nigerias history and lament the choices they have made, but their spirit remains strong. That is what makes them Nigerian. Go to the vendors stand. The crowd of poor people who cannot afford to buy a newspaper copy, have all the same listened to the news and the only place where they can compete as pundits is that roadside corner, where sometimes one drunken idiot loses control behind the wheels and sheds human blood, wasting those who have gathered not to buy any newspaper but to debate Nigeria.

This special crowd knows it all. You dont want to get involved with them. They will remind you that a Ph.D holder is actually a real idiot, and that nobody needs certificates of any type to be a Nigerian, and well they add too, that if you ever worked in government, then you are a confirmed idiot, and a professional trickster.

Nigerians are so inventive, they find every way of beating bad news, bad experience, or anything that tries to defeat them. Everyone says there is no money in town, they claim things have gone from bad to worse but the parties have not stooped. Go to any of the joints around Lagos, nothing has been spoiled. Isi ewu, nkwobi, asun, sawa, orisirisi, point and kill have all defied the Forex market.

Yes, the price of staple commodities has risen, but that has not stopped the people from throwing lavish wedding parties. Nor has it stopped anybody from marrying three times when once is enough: our people do traditional wedding  valid, they go to the registry: valid, they rush to church- valid: rather than marry once, they do it thrice all within a week. Nor has the austerity in town stopped anybody from burying the dead as if the more money is thrown at the grave, the likeliest the possibility of the dead suddenly becoming a Lazarus of the 21st century.

Is there poverty in town? You answer that question based on the evidence of your eyes. What I have seen is that Nigerians are still living as if there is too much money in the country. Take a look at the garments Nigerians wear every week. We certainly dont look like electricity is a problem or that money is in short supply. Soon it will be another Ojude oba among the Ijebus, for example. You go and check them out.

As a teacher at Ogun State University in those days, (I served later as member of the Governing Council), we used to go from one party to the other, guzzling free food and quaffing free drinks. Today, those lavish parties have not ceased. Nobody eats like that in Europe or North America. When you go to all the old joints, in Agarawu in Lagos or Tarmac, nothing has changed either. The music still flows, the swag is on.

Elsewhere, new buildings are springing up; new cars are being washed, additional wives are being acquired. Leave matter, I beg. Nigeria will survive, and these same people who are complaining about change, youd be shocked, theyd still vote for their stomachs in 2019.

And that is why Nigeria is one country that beats all the textbook theories. We are just something else. There is more in the social arena that defines who we are, than in the theoretical arena. The same people who are complaining that they have not seen change are actually hoping for more. They are not ready to adjust. They are not ready to make sacrifices.

If they have an opportunity to be close to government in any way, they will jump at it. The corruption that we talk about is not just in government corridors, it is in society, but the one inside society is so difficult to trap because it is amorphous and inchoate in so many respects. Invariably, the snake feeds on itself: mobius strip.

What we are left with is the image of the people laughing at government and themselves. Have you taken time out to check what happens on social media? Anybody who ever ventured into governance is easy game. The people design caricatures and mock them.

Nigeria produces more memes and graphics than any other country in Africa not necessarily because of the events that happen here but because of the peoples consciousness, and if I may add, private greed. In that other world, political change is ridiculed, poverty is deplored, GEJ is becoming a saint and PMB a villain, but the people are still having fun, and blaming Nigeria and the politicians.

I tell you, the problem with Nigeria is not the politicians but the people themselves. We are very special people, but we dont really know what we want, and because we are like that, we confuse the politicians and the nation. But for as long as we can wear those impressive attires and throw those parties and dance to old music and pay our private bills, we see no reason to care enough.
What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie.

With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Starring: Morena Baccarin, Gina Carano, Ryan Reynolds

Synopsis: Gifted with accelerated healing powers and a twisted sense of humor, mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) adopts the alter ego Deadpool and hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:00am, 5:30pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:20PM, 2:30PM, 4:40PM, 6:50PM, 9:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:45PM, 9:10PM

Starring: Olga Kurylenko, James Purefoy, Morgan Freeman

Synopsis: Alex, a mysterious thief, is pulled in by her former partner for one last heist. She quickly finds it was never just about the diamonds. A brutal murder sparks a cat and mouse chase between Alex and a master assassin. Now she must uncover the lies behind the heist and discover the secrets behind the men who have made her a target.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 4:10PM

Starring: Stella Damasus, Joseph Benjamin, Beverly Naya.

Synopsis: She is a Medical Doctor by day and member of the "lonely hearts club" by night. Never been married and aware that her biological clock is ticking, Vivienne is desperate to find a man...

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 6:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:10PM, 2:10PM, 6:50PM

Friday: 10:30AM, 12:40PM, 2:50PM, 5:00PM, 7:15PM

Saturday - Thursday: 2:50PM, 5:00PM

Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gaddot.

Synopsis: Fearing the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the man of steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs. With Batman and Superman fighting each other, a new threat, Doomsday, is created by Lex Luthor. It's up to Superman and Batman to set aside their differences along with Wonder Woman to stop Lex Luthor and Doomsday from destroying Metropolis.

Showing:

Thursday: 7:10PM, 9:20PM

Thursday: 6:00PM,8:00PM

Thursday: 6:00pm, 7:45pm

Thursday: 7:20 pm, 8:10 pm

Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller

Starring: Dakore Akande, Ireti Doyle, Dakore Egbuson

Synopsis: FIFTY captures a few pivotal, days in the lives of four Nigeria women at the pinnacle of their careers. Meet Tola, Elizabeth, Maria and Kate four friends forced at midlife to take inventory.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 4:05pm

Starring: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart,Tika Sumpter, Glen Powell

Synopsis: 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

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 6:05PM.

Starring: Alison Brie, Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson

Synopsis: 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

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 4:20PM

Starring: Donnie Yen, Lynn Hung, Jin Zhang, Mike Tyson.

Synopsis: When a band of brutal gangsters led by a crooked property developer make a play to take over the city, Master Ip is forced to take a stand.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 11:45am, 1:45pm, 6:40pm, 8:45pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:30AM, 1:30PM, 3:30PM, 6:20PM

Friday- Sunday: 10:20AM, 2:30PM, 9:20PM

Monday - Thursday: 10:20AM, 7:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:20PM,7:00PM,8:50PM

Fri & Mon - Thu: 3:05 pm, 5:10 pm

Starring: Olivia Munn, Penelope Cruz, Christine Taylor, Kristen Wiig

Synopsis: Derek and Hansel are modelling again when an opposing company attempts to take them out from the business.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 2:10pm, 8:00pm

Friday - Thursday: 4:10PM, 8:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:45AM, 2:50PM

Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 5:05PM.

Friday - Thursday: 12:15 pm, 4:40 pm

Starring: Gina Carano, Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Synopsis: A father is without the means to pay for his daughter's medical treatment. As a last resort, he partners with a greedy co-worker to rob a casino. When things go awry they're forced to hijack a city bus

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 9:15pm

Friday - Thursday: 5:25PM

Starring: Caroline Danjuma, Nse Ikpe Etim, Jim Iyke

Synopsis: A successful stylist, Kaylah Lawal (Nse Ikpe Etim) is out late one night and ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. She manages to escape being attacked by members of a secret society out on rampage

Friday - Thursday: 10:00am

Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman

Synopsis: In London for the Prime Minister's funeral, Mike Banning discovers a plot to assassinate all the attending world leaders.

Friday - Thursday: 11:55am, 3:50pm, 6:05pm, 8:25pm

Friday - Thursday: 5:00PM,7:15PM

Friday - Thursday: 1:00 pm, 3:05 pm, 5:15 pm, 7:00 pm, 7:25 pm, 9:35 pm, 11:45 pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 1:20PM, 2:00PM, 3:20PM, 4:00PM, 5:20PM, 6:00PM, 7:20PM, 8:00PM, 9:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:10PM, 5:10PM, 9:20PM

Genre: Animation

Starring:Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba

Synopsis: TIn a city of anthropomorphic animals, a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:40 am

Friday - Thursday: 10:15am, 4:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:20AM, 1:00PM.

Friday - Thursday: 11:40AM, 1:50PM, 4:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:25PM

Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure

Starring: Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman

Synopsis: Continuing his "legendary adventures of awesomeness", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home.

Showing:

Fri & Mon - Thu: 1:00 pm

Sat & Sun: 1:00 pm, 3:05 pm, 5:10 pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:40am, 1:30pm, 3:20pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 2:20PM, 6:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:30AM, 2:35PM, 6:40PM

Genre: Romance

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Zoe Kravitz

Synopsis: After the earth-shattering revelations of Insurgent, Tris must escape with Four beyond the wall that encircles Chicago to finally discover the shocking truth of what lies behind it.

Showing:

Fri & Sat: 2:10 pm, 4:40 pm, 7:10 pm, 7:25 pm, 9:40 pm, 9:55 pm, 11:20 pm

Sun - Wed: 2:10 pm, 4:40 pm, 7:10 pm, 7:25 pm, 9:40 pm, 9:55 pm

Thu: 2:10 pm, 4:40 pm, 7:00 pm, 9:30 pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:55am, 1:20pm, 2:20pm, 3:40pm, 6:15pm, 7:00pm, 8:45pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:10PM, 2:30PM, 4:50PM, 6:10PM, 7:10PM, 8:30PM, 9:30PM

Friday - Wednesday: 12:40PM, 4:45PM, 9:20PM

Thursday: 12:40PM, 4:45PM

Genre: Romance

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd

Synopsis: A little girl lives in a very grown-up world with her mother, who tries to prepare her for it. Her neighbor, the Aviator, introduces the girl to an extraordinary world where anything is possible, the world of the Little Prince.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 2:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 4:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 11:20AM, 2:00PM.

Genre: Romance

Starring: Liz Benson, Wale Ojo, Vimbai Mutinhiri, IK Ogbonna, Adunni Ade, Enyinna Nwigwe, Mary Lazarus, Michael Godson, Chinonso Young, Bolanle Ninalowo

Synopsis: People make several life decisions only for "The Wrong Reasons," and for every wrong or desperate decisions we make ,drastic price to pay or a huge lesson to learn. Love and sacrifices in relationships is key, but can all these make wrong decisions right?

Showing:

Friday - Saturday: 2:20pm

Genre: Romance

Starring:John Krasinski, Pablo Schreiber, James Badge Dale

Synopsis: As an American ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya, a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:45PM

Saturday - Thursday: 8:50PM

Friday - Thursday: 9:05PM

Genre:

Starring:Brenton Thwaites, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler

Synopsis: Mortal hero Bek teams with the god Horus in an alliance against Set, the merciless god of darkness who has usurped Egypt's throne, plunging the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict.

Showing:

Fri - Wed: 11:35 am, 9:05 pm

Thu: 11:35 am

Friday - Thursday: 4:35pm, 8:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 6:55PM,9:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 11:20AM, 1:40PM, 4:10PM, 5:30PM, 6:40PM, 8:10PM, 9:10PM

Friday - Wednesday: 2:20PM, 7:00PM, 8:30PM

Thursday: 2:20PM, 8:30PM

Genre:

Starring:Joseph Fiennes, Tom Felton, Peter Firth

Synopsis: MFollows the epic Biblical story of the Resurrection, as told through the eyes of a non-believer. Clavius, a powerful Roman Military Tribune, and his aide Lucius.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 3:00PM

Genre:

Starring:Stephen Dorff, Eddie Griffin, Bill Billions .

Synopsis: Melvin, a reluctant Superhero, lives only for crime, women and drugs - until he realises that the only way he will ever get to see his estranged son is to go straight and fulfil his potential as a crime fighter.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:00pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:45PM, 9:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:10PM, 7:30PM, 9:15PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:20AM, 7:10PM

Genre:

Starring: Priyanka Chopra, Prakash Jha, Manav Kaul .

Synopsis: A newly appointed Senior Inspector finds herself against very powerful goons and having people from her own department against her.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 4:05PM

Sunday: 2:15PM

Genre: Crime

Starring:O.C Ukeje, Victor Olaotan, Femi Jacobs, Anthony Monjaro, Enyinna Nwigwe and Chigul.

Synopsis: In a community where the rights of the poor and vulnerable are trampled on, where natural resources are stolen and witnesses are silenced, it takes a very brave man to stand up for what is just and true. Michael (O.C Ukeje) is that man and as he wades through incriminating evidence of the nations biggest organisations, he finds an unwitting helper in Harida (Uru Eke) and together, they try to overcome insurmountable odds with the arsenal of information at their disposal.

Showing:

Fri - Wed: 2:25 pm, 6:50 pm

Thu: 2:25 pm

Friday - Sunday: 5:00PM

Monday - Thursday: 12:45PM, 5:00PM

Genre:

Starring:Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, Martin Henderson

Synopsis: A young girl suffering from a rare digestive disorder finds herself miraculously cured after surviving a terrible accident.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:20pm, 4:35pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 2:10PM, 6:00PM, 8:40PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:30AM,2:35PM,7:10PM
He said the politicians are at their best when it comes to scheming and actualizing their goals by hook or crook.

According to Daily Post, Jega stated this on Wednesday, March 16, at Chatham House in London during an interactive session after delivering a lecture titled: "Challenges of Modernising Election Processes: the Nigerian Experience."

When I was vice-chancellor, I thought students were the most difficult to deal with, he said, adding that he found out Nigerian politicians are the most difficult when he assumed office at INEC.

Recounting his experience at INEC, he said he made frantic efforts to carry politicians along by keeping them in the loop about activities and initiatives of the electoral body.

He said but the same people who approved the plans would suddenly make a U turn, or accuse the electoral body of trying to favour rival parties if things did not go their way.

Explaining further, the professor made an example of the Goodluck Jonathan administration regarding the voters' cards.

He said the immediate past administration and the seventh National Assembly approved funds for smart card readers and permanent voters cards after being convinced that the usage would enable credible elections. But when it dawned on them that they would not be able to manipulate elections as they did in the past, they strongly opposed the initiatives.

Jega attributed the success of the 2015 general elections to the adoption of technology in both the planning, management and conduct of the elections; expressing that transparent and credible elections have come to stay in Nigeria.
The government had yesterday, March 17, announced that the lawmaker had died in the custody of the Department of State Service (DSS), but the claim was quickly dismissed by the security agency by presenting Akanni to the press alive.

While speaking at a press conference today, March 18, Lere Olayinka, the spokesman for Governor Ayodele Fayose said Akanni's continued detention after a court had ordered his release is the height of executive rascality and open display of contempt for the rule of law

Did Hon. Akanni plot coup or is he leading insurgents to warrant his detention without trial? Olayinka queried.

He continued: We wish to reiterate that the state government addressed the press yesterday, based on the information available to it; and since the DSS was not talking to anyone concerning the status of Hon Afolabi Akanni and others in its custody, the government had no option than to bring the disturbing information to the public domain and also call for calm among residents of the state.

From the pictures of Hon. Akanni that we saw on television and published in the newspapers, it is without doubt that he is terribly sick and in need of urgent medical attention, and the disturbing information about his death could have been informed by his critical state of health. Hon. Akanni even told journalists that he slumped twice yesterday and that he was refused access to medication.

Evidently and as even reported in the newspapers today, the Hon. Akanni paraded before the press by the DSS yesterday was very sick. The press reported that he could not stand on his feet and we wish to ask the DSS whether it actually wants him (Akanni) to die!

If truly the DSS has facts and evidences that Hon. Akanni committed offence of security breach, why not charge him to court and prosecute him with the facts and evidences before the service? Or is the DSS waiting for Hon. Akanni to supply evidences with which he will be prosecuted?

If the DSS is claiming that Hon. Akanni is being held for committing serious security breach, why was the State Commissioner for Finance, Chief Toyin Ojo invited by the DSS? What is the correlation between Ecological Fund, claim of Federal Government refund to Ekiti State on construction of federal roads and State Security?

For clarity, Chief Toyin Ojo was asked by the DSS investigators how much was refunded to Ekiti State by the federal government on federal roads constructed/rehabilitated by the State government and how ecological fund released to the State was spent. He was also asked how Governor Ayodele Fayose election was funded. How are these issues related to the security of Nigeria? What is the business of the DSS with the finances of Ekiti State?

Also, former Special Assistant to the governor on Internally General Revenue, Ropo Ogunjobi is being kept in the DSS custody since March 4. Did he also commit serious security breach or he is just being held to extract information as to the finances of Ekiti State in furtherance to the mandate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) gladiators in the State, who are working on what they called the 2006 Template?

Did Secretary to the State Government, Dr (Mrs) Dupe Alade, Chief of Staff; Chief Dipo Anisulowo, Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice; Owoseni Ajayi, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs; Kola Kolade, Commissioner for Works; Kayode Osho, Special Adviser on Political Matters; Alhaji Demola Bello and other officials of the State government already listed for arrest and indefinite detention also commit serious security breach?

The DSS has claimed that Akanni was arrested over a serious security breach. The also claimed that it did not receive any court order to release the lawmaker.
This is coming on the heels of the alleged invasion of the state House of Assembly by men of the Department of State Services (DSS).

Alade said it is glaring that the act was aimed at intimidating Governor Ayo Fayose, who she said has been a vocal critic of the government.

The SSG also claimed that she has been receiving calls from an alleged DSS operative, Paul Okafor, asking her to report to the agencys office for her own good.

Alade also said  it is hoped that democracy and the rule of law will be allowed to thrive in Ekiti State and Nigeria as a whole. All attempts to truncate democracy in Ekiti State will be resisted by all means.

 It is quite unfortunate that the federal government has kept mute over this illegality. People now discuss in hush tones that DSS officials are in the state to arrest and bundle more legislators and some executive members, the SSG inclusive

She said I have no skeleton in my cupboard, but for them to be embarrassing me with phone calls, I will not accept that

we know all these are being done to Governor Fayose and those who are close to him because of his critical stance on the federal government and we are yet to see a constitution in Nigeria that makes speaking ones mind on national issues a crime, Alade said.

Meanwhile, the People's Democratic Party (PDP) confirmed via Twitter that one of the Ekiti State lawmakers, Afolabi Akanni, who allegedly died in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS), is alive.
You will recall that the Nigerian Senate refused to pass the bill which was sponsored by Senator Biodun Olujimi on March 15, 2016.

Senate President, Bukola Saraki said the bill was rejected by some Senators because they disagreed with it along the lines of religion and tradition.

Reacting to the development, Senator Stella Oduah slammed her colleagues, saying Women have wonderful innate skills and we must provide enabling environment for growth and full development of their potentials.

Adding that It is also no longer news that women are the bedrock of governance and should be allowed equal opportunities to represent the true meaning of their existence.

undefinedand Stella Damasus are among notable Nigerian celebrities that criticised the Senate for throwing the bill out.

However, Senator Saraki has advised Nigerian women to re-introduce the gender equality bill.

Do you think it will see the light of day, this time around?
The defendant allegedly failed to sell and remit money for jewelries she collected from a shop on credit on the agreement that she will sell and return the proceeds.

A signed affidavit revealed that Hauwa usually collected jewelries from one Shuaibu, an attendant in Malam Mohammed's shop at Monday Market, Maiduguri to sell and remit the proceeds.

But when there was delay in remitting the money of the last batch she collected, Mohammed allegedly used policemen from the anti-robbery unit to arrest and detain her from February 5 until around March 10 when the court summon was served on them.

Though the affidavit said Hauwa collected jewelries of N2 million from the shop, Ahmad deposed that the police insisted during the over one month Hauwa stayed in custody that she must refund N13 million.

Hauwa was said to have made statement to the police that she gave part of the money to Zarami that made the police to arrest him, impound his Honda car and asked him to report back the next day but refused to return to the station leaving his car there.

Justice Alkali Wakkil directed the police to produce in court, Hauwa and the Honda car on March 10 but the police released Hauwa to report to the court and refused to either be in court to answer the charges against them or release the car to the court.
Let me inform you that at the University of Ibadan, we do not tell students what to think. You have to learn to think for yourselves. Our teaching is designed to produce intellectual self-reliance-to teach you how to learn and how to take charge of your thinking. We encourage you to be independent in your judgment and critical in your analysis. We work to help you develop these skills here at UI, and we hope you will retain them for life. They will continue to serve you as you experience a world that is constantly and rapidly changing. I, therefore, want to charge you not to restrict yourselves to your field of study alone so as to profit maximally from the numerous activities that will be presented to you throughout the duration of your course in the university.
The students had appealed to the institution to reverse its decision concerning the suspended association,and remove the official, who is considered rather unfair.

In a bid to get attention, they took their protest to the Students Affairs Office, carrying placards with bold expressions of their dissatisfaction.

Eventually, they received the attention of one of the University top officers, who happens to be the Dean of Division of Student Affairs, Professor Gabriel Babawale.

He assured them that a congress would be called to resolve the challenges facing the group in the university.

He said, The university is supportive of MSSN. Your grievances have been received and we are going to call a congress latest next week Thursday. Hold me responsible if it does not.
The distraught father wrote that his beloved 21-year-old daughter Shilan had rejected an arranged marriage and in order to avenge the insult to relatives, she had paid with her life.

He said that his Kurdish family had fled Iraq heading to Germany when she was just three years old, and he said she had grown up as a self-confident young woman with German citizenship, studying property management at college.

Posting the images he added: "It is with the deepest sense of loss and pain that I announced the loss of my daughter. She died in a pool of her own blood, as a victim of a treacherous trail and tradition. "

Ghazi said that his two brothers, identified as Numan H and Hassan H tried to force a union between Shilan and her cousin Sefin, but she had refused.

Ghazi said he had left his brother looking after his family while he worked on a project in Iraq.
Obama will however make the journey down to Windsor with his entourage, making sure he does not give a pro-EU sermon over lunch after the row about the Queen supporting Brexit.

The US President has been advised by supporters of Britain's exit from the EU to stay away from the affairs of the nation, and let them decide their fate.

A group of British politicians had said in an address, With so much at stake, it is imperative that the question of exiting the European Union is not one answered by foreign politicians or outside interests, but rather by the British people who must ultimately live with change or the status quo,

This is a chance for the British people to choose the path of their country,

Interfering in our debate over national sovereignty would be an unfortunate milestone at the end of your term as President.
I just watched a powerful and effective anti-Trump ad. It was simple, but compelling nonetheless. Adding no disapproving preface and no judgemental epilogue, and pulling no punches, the ad simply cited words and quotes Donald Trump himself had used against women; it referred to his calling them bimbos, dog, fat pig, and other derogatory obscenities. See the ad here.

The content holds true, and, hence, holds Trump accountable, so instead of calling Trump a mysogynist, or at least a person who thinks little of women in general, the ad incriminates him of this characteristic. Better yet, instead of taking aim at his bizarre hairdo cum combover, his facetious smile, or his obnoxious nature, the advertisement zooms in on actual words.

This got me thinking of the state Egyptians are in. Day in and day out we face new incidents, and immediately everyone has an opinion taking the name calling and the rabid stream of insults too far, sometimes farther than the incident itself.

Standard media is the main perpetrator in this, but social media is a culprit, too. Show hosts begin programs by zooming in on the events aka the crises of the day, critiquing each. In the process they open Pandoras box, fuelling responses on social media and queries amidst the general public.

With every story, or crisis, call it what you wish, we are pitted against one another, and fairness and objectivity get lost. Ballistic is the best way to describe the general reaction to all events. Giulio Regenis death begets Mona Seifs call to Italians to avoid Egypt. Azza El-Hennawys outburst leads to her resignation. El Zinds slip of a tongue causes his resignation, too. Even President El Sisis call to donate each morning is met with harsh criticism and disapproval despite the endorsement of Egyptians. And between each action and its counteraction an endless stream of chatter dumbfounds us.

In all these cases the reactions are often libellous, at other times misleading or unexplainable, but most of all the responses call for further validation from the original source or from yet another group altogether. Strangely enough, we are the ones to blame for turning events into crises.

In any case, the truth is what backs ones view whether one is the original sayer or the reactionary one. And that is why the anti-Trump ad is so effective.

Here is what I suggest we should do to avoid falling into the ineffective ranting trap.

Avoid name calling: it doesnt pay. Dont call someone a racist, a traitor, or a dimwit unless you are sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he indeed is. Better yet, prove he is by referencing his own words or footage he was involved in as in the anti-Trump ad.

Avoid physical attributes as a means to belittle from your opponent. Considering someone scrawny, obese, bald, soft-spoken, a donkey, or a sheep for that matter, does not construe much or prove your point of view. Besides, for all you know, this sheep can be very shrewd in effecting change. Though it still did not dampen Trumps blazing success, his mocking a reporter with a disability aggravated many decent Americans. The same occurred when Tamer Amin, on El Hayat Channel fat-shamed Azza El-Hennawy. I advise Essam el-Amir, the head of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) first to place a scale outside Maspiro studios a 150 kg-presenter cannot appear on the screen." Such outbursts create more harm than good and are always met with disdain from the public.

Wait it out before responding, reposting, or retweeting. Much of what is out there is fake, made up, or photoshopped.

Be wary of photos. Today, many a time, photos lie. Also check locations and dates to make sure that the story reflects the incident it speaks about, and not an earlier one. Anyone can post a photo from a protest from two years back and tell us that it occurred yesterday. Now, footage doesn't lie. This is why it remains a thorn in the side of the person involved and is often referred to to smear that person again and again.

Be logical in your attempt to rebuttal; utilize reasoning and rational thinking versus flaring up unsoundly. Ask yourself if you dislike what was said because it goes against your beliefs and way of thinking or for its own demerits.

Listendid you get that one? Listen. Your adversary may have some merit in the opinion he flags. Remaining adamant to ones point of view makes you stagnant and unable to move forward.

Assume everything you see, watch, or read is unauthentic unless it comes from a very reliable source. Too much garbage inundates our lives, and we are the ones to blame if we consider everything we are exposed to true.

Running off at the mouth is our weakest point. In the bigger picture, it obliterates truths, perpetrates hatred, and severs society ties.
Militants, three of whom were later killed, burst onto the beach in the town of Grand Bassam, 40 km (25 miles) from the commercial capital Abidjan, on Sunday, gunning down swimmers and sunbathers before storming into several hotels.

The attack was a heavy blow for a West African state that has recovered from more than a decade of political turmoil and a 2011 civil war to become one of the world's best performing economies - with annual growth averaging around 9 percent.

Ouattara won re-election by a landslide in October, pledging to attract foreign investment to the largest economy in French-speaking West Africa, also the world's top cocoa producer.

The government said following the meeting that the death toll from the attack had increased by one to 19.

Eleven Ivorians, including three special forces soldiers, died. Four French citizens were killed and other foreign victims included citizens of Germany, Lebanon, Macedonia and Nigeria.

The government had earlier stated there were victims from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Mali; however, that was later found to be untrue after the identities of the dead were verified.

Another 24 injured people were still in hospital on Wednesday, a government spokesman said.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group's North African branch, claimed the attack and said it was revenge for a French offensive against Islamist militants in the Sahel region.

Grand Bassam is a popular weekend retreat only a short drive from Abidjan, a cosmopolitan regional economic hub with a population of around five million.

The attack came just as the Ivorian government was seeking to revitalise a once lucrative international tourism industry that was shattered by the crisis years.

After visiting the beach in Grand Bassam and laying a wreath in memory of the dead, Ouattara sought to reassure those employed in local tourism.
"The European Union remains committed to fully implementing its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures," the European Council, which represents EU governments, said in a statement. "The EU calls again on UN member states to consider similar non-recognition measures."

The United States, Europe, Japan and other major economies including Australia and Canada have imposed sanctions on Russia over Crimea, but others including China and Brazil have avoided direct criticism of Russia.

The European Union imposed its Crimea sanctions in July 2014 and then tightened them in December 2014, banning EU citizens from buying or financing companies in Crimea, whose annexation has prompted the worst East-West stand-off since the Cold War.

NATO and the EU are concerned by Russia's military build-up in Crimea, which they say is part a Russian strategy to set up defensive zones of influence, so-called anti-access area denial, with surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-ship missiles.
Lawrence and McConnell had planned to display the coin at shows across the country and then sell it through an auction house, which estimated it would bring up to $2 million.

The pair turned it over to the Mint and relinquished all claims to ownership as part of a settlement, Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said in a statement.

The settlement "vindicates the government's position that items made at U.S. Mint facilities but not lawfully issued ... remain government property and are not souvenirs that government employees can merely remove and pass down to their heirs," Duffy said. She did not disclose further terms of the settlement.

The aluminum cent was proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1973, at a time when copper prices had increased dramatically, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Mint made about 1.6 million of the aluminum coins and distributed them to Congress in anticipation of approval. When lawmakers rejected it, the Mint reclaimed the aluminum cents and destroyed almost all of them, leaving one to the Smithsonian in Washington, where it remains.
In a joint statement signed by 102 humanitarian organisations to mark the fifth anniversary of the conflict's beginning, aid agencies urged all warring parties that humanitarian access must "include access to all people in need by whatever routes necessary".

The statement, signed by the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, Oxfam and others, noted "encouraging signs of progress" in Syria, with the cessation of hostilities, allowing humanitarian agencies to "rush more food and other relief to communities desperate for help".

But access has to go beyond a temporary lifting of sieges and checkpoints, they said.

All humanitarian aid, including medical supplies, medical staff and aid workers should be given full access to all civilians in need. There was also an urgent need for a national immunization campaign for children, the agencies said.

"These are practical actions that would mean the difference between life and death," the agencies said.

"All parties to the conflict can agree on them, now. And in doing so, they can take another step to peace," they said.

More than 11 million Syrians from a population of nearly 23 million have been forced from their homes during the five-year conflict, including 4.8 million who have fled the country.

Kevin Jenkins, president of World Vision International, said there are 13.5 million people in Syria in need of assistance including six million children and many in hard to reach areas.

Benedict Dempsey, director of policy and advocacy for Mercy Corps Europe, said the call for unfettered humanitarian access to Syria is "not new", adding that four U.N. Security Council resolutions called for this.
A policeman shot a policewoman in the Dikmen neighbourhood, near military and government buildings, the Hurriyet newspaper said, without giving details. A government official confirmed one person had been shot by police but said it was "for certain" not an attack involving militants.

In an unrelated incident, a man shot his brother and sister-in-law before shooting himself, Hurriyet said.

Ankara is jittery after a group affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, killed 37 people on Sunday in a suicide car-bomb attack in the city centre.

Diplomatic missions have warned staff and citizens to avoid public transport and crowded places, particularly on and around March 21, when Kurds celebrate the Newroz New Year festival.
Death Valley National Park is set to celebrate a pair of events next month, with one being out of this world.

Death Valley National Park is set to celebrate a pair of events next month, with one being out of this world.

Death Valley is hosting the Celestial Centennial Mars Fest, April 8 through April 10 and all are invited to attend this free night-sky and outer-space festival celebrating Death Valleys connection to the cosmos and the centennial of the National Park Service.

The event is set to include talks, field trips, programs, stargazing, and expositions with scientists, park rangers, and astronomy experts.

Death Valley National Park is proud to team up with NASA, SETI Institute, Mars Science Laboratory, and many others to showcase the amazing work being done, said Mike Reynolds, superintendent.

Death Valley is a great place to bring all of this together for the public to see.

In addition to being the lowest, driest and hottest point in the United States, being away from bright city lights, Death Valley offers some of the best stargazing in the country. The International Dark-Sky Association has designated Death Valley National Park as a Gold Tier Dark Sky Park, which is the highest rating of darkness.

Reynolds explained that most tourists cant believe what they can see in the sky at night in the middle of the desert.

Visitors to the park are often amazed by the amount of stars they can see here, he said. Some people have never seen the Milky Way before visiting Death Valley.

The Mars-like terrain of Death Valley has also helped researchers gain a better knowledge of the solar system.

Death Valley is one of several National Park Service sites that have been frequently used as analog sites to test theories and equipment before employing them in space. This years edition of the Celestial Centennial plays off previous years Mars Fest events, as National Park Service staff and visitors look beyond the red planet and contemplate our place in the cosmos.

Most activities will be based at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, beginning with the evening of April 8, when astronomer and night-sky advocate Tyler Nordgren will give a keynote address, followed by a live taping of Planetary Radio with Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society and astronomer Jill Tarter, former director of the SETI Institute.

The park will host day and night family-friendly events on April 9, including festival expositions, stories, demonstrations, and night sky viewings.

Talks and field trips will run throughout the day. Field trips and speakers will continue until mid-afternoon on April 10.

All Celestial Centennial events are free, open to the public, and do not require registration. The schedule for talks, presentations, and field trips is available now and can be accessed by visiting www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/celestial-centennial.

For more information, contact Alexandra Rothermel via email at Alexandra_Rothermel@nps.gov or call 760-786-3277.
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The owners of a Pahrump business are preparing to put on an awe-inspiring Sept. 11 observance later this year.

The owners of a Pahrump business are preparing to put on an awe-inspiring Sept. 11 observance later this year.

George and Cindi Vroenen of G.I. USA want the community to participate in breaking the Guinness Book of World Records, by having residents assemble in the parking lot while holding glow sticks in tribute to the twin towers.

Cindi Vroenen said the event will be a solemn observance to those who lost their lives in the terror attack, which took place 15 years ago.

She envisions participants standing shoulder to shoulder, in columns, while holding the glow sticks aloft.

The idea was the result of a brainstorming session between she and her husband, and Pahrump Valley High Schools JROTC instructor, Lt. Col. Patrick Nary.

She noted, to her knowledge, the attempt will be a first for Americans.

Many things have been erected out of glow sticks in the Guinness Book of World Records and I believe the record right now is 2,800. We are shooting for three to 4,000 glow sticks.

Attorney Glen Lernerslaw office offered to donate the glow sticks.

Vroenen noted that shes hoping other area businesses and organizations will participate.

Because this is such a massive undertaking, we need to start organizing this early, she said. Down the center, it will say, never forget in the glow sticks. The amount of people holding the glow sticks will determine whether we break the record.

Along with the attempt, Vroenen said there will be prayer vigils.

I dont expect this event to take more than half an hour from start to finish, she said. Its going to be a tough one because its a Sunday night. Its not like we can move it, because its 9/11. We also hope kids and teenagers will take part in this. Its hard to believe that its been 15 years since that tragic day. I think all of us remember exactly where we were on 9/11/2001.

As native New Yorkers, the Vroenens noted there are several first responders now residing in the Pahrump Valley.

Local resident Ken Braun was one of the 9/11 first responders, she said. Rich Flanagan from Nye County Station 51 was also a New York Fire Department 9/11 first responder. We have a number of first responders living in town who were in New York when 9/11 occurred.

Vroenen is now reaching out to businesses and organizations who may want to take part in the attempt.

She said several business owners have already offered to contribute.

Kathy Weill at Allstate Insurance will be supplying sandwich trays from Port of Subs, she said. Smoke Shop Express will be supplying dessert trays from Port of Subs. Everything that is purchased by the centers tenants for this function, will be matched tray for tray by Darlene at Port of Subs. All of the refreshments are free to those who participate.

Gaining entry into the Guinness Book of World Records is not an easy feat in terms of accomplishment and cost, as the application process is expensive.

The last time we checked, it was $900, which is the lower end, she said. If we wanted to have a Guinness Book of World Records official come out to observe, thats more than $8,000.

In the days leading up to the event, Vroenen said she plans to contact area news outlets for coverage.

Additionally, Vroenen said even though the observance will serve as a time for reflection, there will be several offerings for some of the attendees.

Everyone who helps make history will get a free raffle ticket and be eligible, she said, There will be no fundraising at this function. There will be a couple of speakers for this solemn event, Pastor Ron Fairbairn will be here as well and conducting a prayer.

For additional information on the event, contact Vroenen at 775 513-7777.

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes
Beatty High freshman Summer Taylor will represent Nye County in the Nevada Poetry Out Loud state finals in Reno on Saturday.

Beatty High freshman Summer Taylor will represent Nye County in the Nevada Poetry Out Loud state finals in Reno on Saturday.

The quiet Taylor said she entered the competition because, I thought it would be kind of cool.

She says she likes poetry, particularly rhymes. She does not care for poetry that does not rhyme.

Teacher Marybeth Aragon helped Taylor choose poems for the competition in which students recite memorized poetry before an audience. The poems have to meet minimum length requirements, which adds to the challenge of memorization.

For the state competition, Taylor will be reciting The Childrens Hour, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats and Auto-Lullaby, by Franz Wright.

Taylor will join 11 other high school students from across the state at the 11th annual event from noon to 3 p.m. at KNPB Channel 5 Public Broadcastings studios, 1670 N. Virginia St., in Reno. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited, so attendees should plan to arrive early.

The state champion will represent Nevada at the National Poetry Out Loud competition in Washington, D.C., May 2-4.

Susan Boskoff, executive director of Nevada Arts Council, said more than 2,750 students participated in this years event.

They continue to select more complex and demanding poems to explore, memorize and ultimately own, said Boskoff in a statement. We anticipate a very competitive and inspiring state final.

Renos Poet Laureate, Gailmarie Pahmeier, is serving as the master of ceremonies. Judges include Bruce Isaacson, Clark County poet laureate; Vogue Robinson, Las Vegas poet and educator; Larry Ollivier, Reno poet and educator; NV Energy government strategy executive Linda Bissett; and Vicky Meissner, Humboldt County School District educator.

The Poetry Out Loud State Champion earns $1,000, wins $1,000 for his or her school to support literary programs, and travels with a chaperone to Washington, D.C. to compete for $50,000 in scholarships and school prizes at the National Poetry Out Loud Finals, held May 2-4.

Second and third place finishers at the state finals each receive $500 and $500 for their schools to support literary programs.

Poetry Out Loud is a program of the Nevada Arts Council, presented in partnership with National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
BEATTY  Town residents have recently been up in arms following news that the shop program at Beatty High School would be shut down when longtime teacher Jim Benshoof retires at the end of the year.

BEATTY  Town residents have recently been up in arms following news that the shop program at Beatty High School would be shut down when longtime teacher Jim Benshoof retires at the end of the year.

Initial indications were that the school district would not be filling his position. That is no longer the case.

I talked with (Nye County School District) superintendent (Dale) Norton about the program and how important it was to the kids, and he agreed, Beatty principal Gary Flood said. He told me to go ahead and give it my best shot. I really appreciate him giving me the chance to fill the position.

But the program is still in some jeopardy, but not because of a budget cut.

Flood knows it is not going to be easy to get a shop teacher because of a national teacher shortage and the difficulty of finding teachers willing to teach in a remote, rural location, particularly specialty teachers.

He noted the difficulty he had filling the position last year after music teacher Dale Lerbakken retired. Several people showed interest, then didnt show up, or showed up and then backed out. One lasted a few weeks, but left after finding he had allergies in the desert.

Benshoof has been the shop teacher at Beatty High School for 30 years. He recalls that when he first arrived there was very little to work with.

There were just a few old tools, and I had to scrounge for metal for the kids to weld, Benshoof said. (Former custodian) Dave Hannigan helped with that.

He also scrounged up some small engines for beginning students to work on. We still have one small engine I found at the dump, and it has probably been rebuilt a hundred times. We even got it running. A lot of people in the community helped with the program.

Over the years Benshoof built a very successful program, teaching auto shop, welding, drafting, and a little bit of wood shop. Beatty High students have done very well in skills competition. Two years in a row students qualified for national competitions in both auto shop and welding. This year Abbygaille Paniaqui won a gold medal and Matthew Reetz a bronze in regional competition.

The training many students received in the program started them on their careers, mainly as automotive technicians or welders.

Benshoof has also been very involved in the community and served for several years as chief of the volunteer fire department.

He says family was a big factor in his decision to retire this year. His parents, who live in Wyoming, are quite elderly, and theyve been asking for us to get closer.

Even though the Benshoofs will be spending time in Wyoming, he thinks they will probably keep their house in Beatty. He says his wife, Leona, who retired after 36 years teaching in Nevada, does not like the snow.
Nye County officials project a $1.5 million budget shortfall for fiscal year 2017, down from the $2.4 million that was announced in February.

Nye County officials project a $1.5 million budget shortfall for fiscal year 2017, down from the $2.4 million that was announced in February.

The hole in the next years budget was caused by the lack of net mining proceeds from Round Mountain, officials said.

Nye County Manager Pam Webster said the projected shortfall was decidedly better than we looked at before.

As you can see, the hole in the FY 17 revenue projection is the net proceeds because that is the year we dont receive any income for that, Webster said.

In 2016, Nye County will not receive anything for the net mining proceeds tax that refers to the fee imposed by the state on minerals that are sold, similar to sales tax.

By comparison, the county received $1.87 million in net mining proceeds for the fiscal year 2016. The same proceeds were $2.2 million in 2015, higher than normal because of the combination of normal production income and the audit that was done by the Nevada Department of Taxation at Round Mountain Gold.

By doing this with zero net proceeds in FY 17, achieving a balanced budget, you will be able to use net proceeds in the future, not rely on them, Webster told commissioners.

According to the Nye County fiscal year 2017 general fund budget review, revenues total $31.2 million, while expenditures stand at $32.7 million. Webster attributed the increase in the next years expenditures to an anticipated increase in health insurance premiums, maintenance agreements and a couple of other reasons.

The current ending fund balance is exclusive of the committed ending fund balance that the county recently took action on, Webster said.

The final revenue projection from the state of Nevada will be available on March 25. Nye County commissioners said they will present the data at the first meeting in April.

Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com
Valley Electric Association, Inc. held its first of six district meetings Tuesday evening, aimed at informing members of the cooperative of the past years accomplishments as well as looking toward the future.

Valley Electric Association, Inc. held its first of six district meetings Tuesday evening, aimed at informing members of the cooperative of the past years accomplishments as well as looking toward the future.

The past achievements were touched on briefly, but the upcoming projects served as the bulk of the presentation.

Speaking to VEA members of District 1 at the Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Casino, Chief Executive Officer Tom Husted broke the news that the co-op was tentatively planning an accelerated rate hike July 1, instead of the January 2017 date.

Here we are, six months before we said we were going to do that, saying weve got to pull the trigger now, Husted said. We need to move forward with a small rate adjustment this year. Single digit.

The crowd didnt react much to the news of the first rate adjustment from VEA in six years, except when Husted made an error saying it would be a six-digit increase. When he corrected himself and explained it was a single-digit one, the crowd seemed at ease and shared a laugh with the CEO.

The rate hike is going to be no more than 9.99 percent, according to Husted, and is tied to the cost of doing business over the last six years. Projects like solar, broadband, Creech Air Force Base and the Nevada National Security Site were all mentioned as contributing factors.

VEA has commissioned a cost-of-service study by Black and Veatch, an independent third party, to evaluate VEAs services over the five rate classifications.

They look at our expenses and our revenues and our sales and where all those come from and take a look at what our rates are in those particular classes, Husted said. Then they will present us with a rate adjustment we need in order to make these goals That will apply X amount to this rate class, X amount to that rate class and X amount to this rate class.

The study will be complete in the next 30-60 days and the board of directors will not consider a rate increase until after reviewing the study.

Another major point of the meeting was VEAs subsidiary Valley Communication Association and the pending launch of broadband service in the valley.

VCA is ready to launch a wireless-based service to offer their Internet service as soon as possible while the full fiber-optic build-out is complete in town.

Sometimes Pahrump is not the most patient community, Husted said. We need to flood the valley with wireless (Internet) like theyve never seen.

With a dozen sites placed around town, VCA will utilize WiMax service to give members up to 25 Mbps Internet speeds for $49.95 and when their area is set for the fiber-optic broadband service, all they have to do is plug into the service and for the same price as their wireless Internet their speed will double, with the lowest offered speed of up to 50 Mbps.

Husted hopes offering the initial wireless service first will allow for the engineering team to be able to finish installing the fiber-optic wire system in a timely and precise manner to provide the highest quality of service once complete.

Husted explained that having reliable, fast Internet speeds will benefit the community in an assortment of ways.

Businesses will want to come here (because of the Internet), he said. We have already been contacted by very large companies, some of those have databricks, big data centers, that are looking for areas such as our valley where they can put in a data center where they have high-speed capabilities.

By continuing to add new services and infrastructure, that means that VEA needs more employees to handle such ventures.

That also allows us to diversify our workforce and bring more people on, Husted said. Thirty new positions now, and 30 right behind those. So you take a company that was down at one time to 80-something people and now were looking at 160.

The 80-acre community solar plant is also forging ahead, which will offer more than just the power benefits that come with a renewable energy project.

One of the things thats really exciting about this is that its not a normal solar field, Husted said. When we do deliver the output to you, it will be through virtual net metering. It will be just like its on your roof, we will apply it to your account at a cost less than what youre paying now.

The design of the solar project is also unique as it is being built to create as little environmental impact on the area as possible.

Half of the solar site is built under normal standards, Husted said. The other half we tagged up with entities such as Fish and Wildlife to say, if you could build this what adjustments would you make?

With their help, VEA built it to accommodate the tortoises in the area, by building doors that the animals can go in and out of.

Also, to help cut down on bird incidents that many solar sites see, which end up injuring and even killing birds on numerous occasions, VEA designed the site on different levels in order to take away the illusion that the solar panels are water, which is the cause of the majority of avian incidents.

The solar site will also have an educational component to it as everyone from elementary to college-age students can utilize the site to learn various aspects of solar energy and the surrounding area.

We then get to tag up with people like UNR, UNLV, because students are going to be studying this also, Husted said. Theres an academic achievement here also. Not only for students coming from the universities, but local students also.

The solar site should be complete sometime this summer and the on-site learning center will be part of that.

We can bring groups in and go over the details of the solar field, Husted said. Its a great educational opportunity for our students.

Another project on the horizon for VEA is a transmission project titled the Delany Colorado River Transmission Project. The project involves a transmission line that will run from California to Phoenix, Arizona.

DCR Transmission LLC won the bid to construct the transmission line. They are going to build it and VEA is going to be brought in to operate, maintain and manage the site.

Im jazzed about this one because this is new money coming in, Husted said.

The transmission site should be complete in four years and VEA will run the project locally.

Beginning in 2020, under contract we will operate, maintain and manage a 500,000-volt transmission line between California and Phoenix, Husted said. Guess where were going to get that from? Right here in Pahrump through high-speed communications.

If the transmission line needs any service, VEA will use hired contractors in the area of the project.

Husted said that the project will bring in about $500,000 annually, that will go straight to VEAs bottom line.

The same company wants to purchase VEAs transmission system, but then hire the co-op to continue to manage and operate the system.

Not only then will we get the reliability not only do we get to control the quality of that, but we get to guarantee ourselves to the best of our abilities to hold those rates.

Husted explained that deal would provide long-term rate stability, and on the heels of the pending rate increase this year, the selling of the transmission line could result in a rate decrease.

We dont have the burden of the ownership of that, but we get all the benefits of using it, the reliability, the jobs and economic development activities.

Other projects were spoken about by Husted as well, including the campus expansion at VEAs headquarters in town, the addition of a Las Vegas business center for the co-op to strengthen ties with key government and political figures, smart farming utilizing wireless Internet and cyber security.

Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.
With their win, Pahrump Valley has clinched a playoff spot in the 3A southern regional tournament. The Trojans need just one more win or a tie by Equipo Academy to lock up the No. 1 seed in the Mountain League.
One of the nation's most draconian set of marijuana laws might finally crumble if Gov. Bruce Rauner and General Assembly Democrats can shake off months of gridlock and actually get something done.

The state Senate, earlier this month, revived legislation that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Rauner vetoed an earlier version last year, requesting reductions to the allowable amount of weed for the would-be minor violation. The now-tweaked bill could be one small victory in a never-ending legislative session that's otherwise made Illinois a foundering laughing stock.

The research is clear. Pot laws send otherwise harmless users to local jails. Differential reinforcement makes criminals out of a disproportionate number of young, black men. Those laws are too often weapons employed by law enforcement to target people when other charges might not stick. In 2010, a massive 98 percent of pot arrests in Illinois were for simple possession, says analysis at Roosevelt Universitys Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy. African-Americans were 7.6 times more likely to get picked up for possession in Illinois, they found. Simple marijuana arrests were a whopping 150 times more likely in one Chicago neighborhood than in a primarily white one.

There's a social justice issue for sure. But, as displayed by the rare bipartisan consensus in Congress, there's a fiscal element to the hopeless War on Drugs.

Chicago police officers spent upward of 30,000 man-hours enforcing misdemeanor-level drug laws in 2013, researchers concluded.

All those hours enforcing outdated, racially charged marijuana laws don't come cheap. Wage, overtime, health insurance -- taxpayers foot the bill for each and every police officer. Same goes for courts, jails and parole offices. Chicago alone spent somewhere up to $100 million enforcing these community-killing regulations in 2013. That figure explodes statewide. Treating possession of small amounts of pot similarly to a speeding ticket would bring nearly $3 million into Chicago's coffers.

Marijuana decriminalization is just another step toward outright legalization, dissenters say. It's just another move toward weed-slinging shops in shopping centers throughout the state. And that might be true. But, polls show, society has rejected the outdated, harsh and, frankly, politically motivated drug laws that defined much of American jurisprudence in the latter half of the 20th century.

Lawmakers promised to clean up particularly drug-riddled communities. Instead, entire populations were sent to jail, branded a criminal upon release and trapped in a poverty-breeding loop of unpayable fines leading to another incarceration.

We agree the jury is still out on the social experiments in Colorado and Washington state. Legislatures throughout the country are watching closely as those states bring in billions in revenue thanks to legalization. Experts are also eyeing the legal implications of pot legalization.

But there's one undeniable truth: The drug laws of the past century target the poor who can't afford a vigorous defense. They haven't stopped the creep of heroin, meth and crack-cocaine. And the total legislative failure annually costs American taxpayers billions.

Illinois could be the next state to back away from the senseless drug war that elevated incarceration over treatment. The right-minded legislation should breeze through the Senate. The House should pass it immediately, when Speaker Mike Madigan opts to again force his underlings to work. And Rauner should sign the bill as soon as it hits his desk.

Such progress would be welcome respite from the do-nothing gridlock that plagues Springfield.
Retired colonel of Russian General Staff gets 16 years in prison for murder

MOSCOW, March 18 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko)  The Moscow City Court on Friday sentenced retired colonel of Russian General Staff Alexander Banov to 16 years in a penal colony for ordering the murder of an entrepreneur, RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom.

Banov was also ordered to pay 4.6 million rubles ($65,700) in moral damages to the suffering parties. His accomplice, Azamat Aliev, born in Uzbekistan, was sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony and was ordered to pay 73,700 rubles ($1,052) in moral damages.

Both men were found guilty by a jury trial on Friday.

According to investigators, Banov hired a group of self-employed taxi drivers to murder the co-founder of the Moscow firm Milking, Olga Medvedeva. She was killed in June 2010. Lawyers representing the retired colonel claim that Banov is not connected to the murder and is a victim of conspiracy.

Aliev is connected to a criminal group consisting of Uzbekistan natives who were robbing women under the guise of taxi drivers. Some of the gangs members have been sentenced to long prison terms or life imprisonment.
Criminal case launched over assault on Russian regional lawmaker

MOSCOW, March 18 (RAPSI)  A criminal case was launched by police over an assault on a lawmaker of the Kaliningrad Regional Duma, Igor Rudnikov, RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

On Thursday, around 4pm, unknown assailant who was carrying a knife attacked Rudnikov in the center of Kaliningrad and stabbed his victim three times. Perpetrator and his potential accomplices fled the scene shortly.

Lawmaker was hospitalized, he is currently under guard, and there is no immediate danger to his life. Police is conducting searches around the city, hoping to find the criminals.

Igor Rudnikov is a member of the permanent committee on international and inter-regional relations, security and the rule of law of the Kaliningrad Regional Duma. In 1998 and 2002, he ran for mayor of Kaliningrad. Rudnikov is the founder of the "New wheels newspaper." The lawmaker was attacked before, in 1998, when he was hit with a metal pipe to the head.
A woman who lived under a false name for three years in Corvallis while on the lam from felony charges out of Oklahoma will be saying goodbye to Ravalli County soon.

Terri Renee Gordineer, 45, pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges Thursday in Ravalli County District Court as part of a plea bargain agreement that dropped several felony counts.

Gordineer was sentenced to 180 days of jail and a $2,500 fine to be paid to the drug fund. She has already served 188 days.

Ravalli County Deputy Attorney Thorin Geist said Gordineer will soon be transported back to Oklahoma where she faces felony charges of bail jumping, assault and battery with a deadly weapon, possession of methamphetamine, writing bogus checks, possession of a firearm after conviction of a felony and grand larceny.

Gordineer used the name Lisa Denise Tracy while she lived in Ravalli County.

She came to the attention of local law enforcement last September after a couple of men appeared at the residence where she was staying. They told the owner of the home that they were from the FBI.

It was determined later the men were not FBI agents.

Gordineer was staying at the home under the pretext that she was hiding from her abusive ex-husband. After the men appeared, the homeowner used the Internet to determine the woman was actually Gordineer, a convicted felon who had fled from Oklahoma with her 4-year-old daughter.

After Gordineers arrest, the homeowner was packing her belongings and discovered pills from three different medications the homeowner had a prescription for and which Gordineer did not. The drug charges were dismissed.

Gordineer was later charged with embezzling money from her employer, Barnings Chiropractic between December 2013 and June 2015. Those charges were dismissed.

On Thursday, Gordineer pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of obstructing a peace officer, theft and displaying a license plate assigned to another vehicle.
Beatrice State Developmental Center welcomed a new administrator this week.

It was announced in February that Megan Gumbel was selected from 12 finalists vying for the position.

In her first week on the job, Gumbel, who is new to Nebraska as well as BSDC, said the first thing that struck her about the area was the people.

When I got to BSDC everyone was so welcoming, but also very eager to let me know how much they cared about the people supported, she explained. The great thing about BSDC is the history. Theres such a rich history here and people want to share and have a lot of pride in what they do. Im struck by the level of kindness, care and commitment.

Gumbel previously served as the northeast regional director overseeing Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio for Bethesda Lutheran Communities in Fort Wayne, Ind.

She was also the executive director at MDC Goldenrod, where for three years she had direct oversight of the Medicaid-based not for profit supporting adults and children with disabilities. Shes held several positions in nine years at Indiana MENTOR, a leading home-and community-based human services provider.

Gumbel said assisting those with disabilities is more than a job to her, but a way of life shes been accustomed to since a young age.

I grew up in the field, she said. My mom was a special needs teacher. I grew up around people with special needs or abilities. I never really knew there was anything different.

Gumbel earned her bachelors degree from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., and her masters degree in Business Administration from Indiana Wesleyan in Indianapolis. She was co-chairman of the Community Supports Committee and member of Industry Infrastructure Committee of the Indiana Association of Rehab Facilities Inc. (INARF). Gumbel was also a member of the CEO roundtable at Elkhart County Community Foundation and a graduate of Values Based Leadership for Mennonite Health Services.

Gumbel said shes been impressed with the personal level of care BSDC staff provide, and how workers help the residents achieve goals, a desire she plans to continue.

Theres nothing greater than learning, but theres also nothing greater than seeing people achieve and to see a staff when they teach an individual or affect that persons life, she said.

The state-run home for people with disabilities currently houses around 115 residents and employs more than 550.

The center has been without an administrator since last February.

Courtney Miller, director of the Nebraska Department of Heath and Human Services Division of Developmental Disabilities, said Gumbel will be an asset to BSDC and the area.

Things have been going great, Miller said. Im just super excited to be a part of the process. Its such an exciting time with the Department of Health and Human Services. Im excited to have the division of developmental disabilities have our team coming together.
The Tecumseh State Correctional Institution has a new warden.

Longtime corrections employee and administrator Brad Hansen will begin his new role at the Tecumseh prison on Monday. Hansen replaces Brian Gage, who resigned.

Corrections Director Scott Frakes has a clear and deliberate vision to transform this agency, said department Communications Director Andrew Nystrom.

Based on that vision, he decided there was a need to make a change in leadership at (Tecumseh), Nystrom said. Subsequently, Mr. Gage decided to resign.

Frakes decision was not in response to any particular incident or event, he said, but rather on the need to move the Tecumseh prison forward.

The leadership change follows high-profile disturbances at the prison, beginning with a May 10 riot that caused extensive damage and left two inmates dead. Last week, three corrections officers were assaulted.

In November, in connection with the 2015 riot, state and local prosecutors filed assault and terroristic-threat charges against five inmates, three of whom were already serving time for assaulting prison guards.

Frakes said in a news release that corrections leaders are held to a high standard, occupying a unique position of trust and responsibility.

A warden ... has a key role in shaping morale, good order and discipline within their facilities, he said. I have full confidence in Brads judgment and ability to lead TSCI.

Hansen began his career with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services in 1977 as a corrections officer in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. He later became a unit administrator.

He developed the departments emergency preparedness initiative, the criminal investigator and K-9 programs and was instrumental in creating the departments special teams. He has become the agency expert in organizational development, team building, training and leadership.

Hansens leadership skills and vision uniquely qualify him to create the healing environment from which both TSCI staff and inmates will benefit, Frakes said.

Eight months ago, the department launched a study across 13 agency locations, including administration and prisons, to address a culture of fear that has been attributed to the agency.

Several months ago, the states inspector general for corrections, Doug Koebernick, did his own informal survey and said Tecumseh employees are the unhappiest among Nebraska prison workers. Some of those workers who responded to the survey said they felt unsafe at work, didnt feel they could discuss concerns with supervisors, and that they either didnt know what direction the department was heading or that it was headed in a negative direction.

Sen. Dan Watermeier of Syracuse, whose district includes Tecumseh, has visited the prison a number of times to talk with correctional officers and managers. He agrees with Frakes that one of the major issues in the prisons is the culture.

That is going to be a big deal to change that, Watermeier said.
Nebraska agricultural land values dropped by about 4 percent on average during the past year, according to preliminary survey results released Thursday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Its the second consecutive year UNLs Farm Real Estate Market Survey has shown a decline in the average price of land statewide and it comes as producers are struggling with tight margins due to low crop and livestock prices.

News of the decline comes as state legislators are discussing property tax reform aimed at farm and ranch landowners. The Legislatures Revenue Committee on Wednesday voted unanimously for a proposal that would boost property tax credits for agricultural land to offset the local property taxes of farmers and ranchers. The legislation also would impose new budget restrictions on community colleges, which rely partially on property taxes. A public hearing on the proposal has been set for 2 p.m. on March 24.

Preliminary results of the university survey show average statewide land values at $3,135 per acre as of Feb. 1, which compared to $3,250 a year prior and $3,416 in 2014.

How much the price of land dropped varied greatly from region to region, ranging from a 1 percent decline in northeast and eastern Nebraska to a precipitous 10 percent plummet in the south-central part of the state, the report says.

Rates of decline also varied depending on land use, with the greatest being a 17 percent drop for hayland. After the drought of 2012, when pastures dried up, cattle producers were willing to bid up the price of hayland in response to demand.

Ample rain in recent years has helped Nebraska grazing land recover. As hay prices dropped in late 2015 and early 2016, so has the willingness of producers to bid on the land that produces it, the surveys authors said.

The survey found some of the highest rates of decline for hayland were in major cow-calf producing regions in northwest and north-central Nebraska.

Gravity-irrigated and center pivot-irrigated cropland reported the next highest rates of decline, about 6 and 4 percent respectively across Nebraska.

Dryland without potential for future irrigation or tillable grazing land showed small price increases on average. The report notes that dryland is cheaper than irrigated land requiring less debt and may be more appealing for those interested in buying land.

Rental rates for dryland and irrigated cropland declined 5 to 10 percent across the state. Rental rates dropped further in western Nebraska compared to the eastern regions of the state. Declines were greater for regions that had record rent levels in 2015.

Rental rates for grazing land has followed the trend in cattle prices in receding from record highs reached in 2014.

Rental rates for Nebraska cropland peaked in 2014 and for grazing land in 2015, the survey says.

Survey respondents included real estate salespeople and brokers, appraisers, bankers and mortgage experts.
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The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, who visited recently the Tindouf camps and Algiers, in an attempt to restart talks on the Sahara conflict, has allegedly been victim of Algerian and Polisario leaders.

This is anyways the conclusion deemed most plausible by many diplomats and political analysts in the UN corridors and New York lobbies. They cannot find other explanations for Ban Ki-moons diplomatic blunders and incidents he created between the UN and Morocco.

For these analysts, it is not excluded that Bank Ki-Moon has been convinced, in one way or another, by Algerian leaders to uphold the Polisarios separatist positions, through using the word occupation to describe the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara and bringing up the self-determination referendum option, while the final status of the disputed territory has not yet been defined by the UN and the UN has never recognized the so-called Sahrawi Republic SADR.

Some analysts believe that Moroccans have been somehow hasty when they directed their anger at the UN and its Secretary General, instead of attacking their real enemy, namely the Algerian regime. Actually Algerian rulers and their media do not miss any opportunity and do not skimp on providing financial and human resources to make life difficult for their Moroccan neighbor and stubbornly reject any political settlement attempt of the Western Sahara issue.

The oligarchy holding power in Algiers does want the Sahara litigation to drag on to weaken neighboring Morocco, on the one hand, and to distract the Algerian public opinions attention from the institutional and social crisis engulfing the country, with an ailing President who refuses to cede power, on the other, explain the analysts.

The analysts believe that Moroccans should avoid escalation with the United Nations and rather focus on their main opponent, the Algerian regime which holds the key of the Sahara conflict settlement. At the end of the day, without Algerias support, the Polisario Front will eventually disintegrate and fall apart in a second.
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Trojans race to 46-7 win over Ellsworth in prep for postseason

If Southeast of Saline wins in the first round, it will host the second round game as well. The Trojans fell to Andale last season in the playoffs.
Presidential race

Governor's race

Treasurer's race

Congressional chaos

RALEIGH Full disclosure: I don't have a "favorite" candidate in the current presidential contest. The contender most intriguing to me got out of the race about the time it started. (His initials are "Scott Walker.")And for a host of reasons - temperament, experience, ignorance of basic civics, business failures, and character, for starters - articulated by others better than I could, I have no plans to board the Trump Train.On Facebook Tuesday, I posted: "This day feels a lot like the one in 1996, when it became obvious that Bob Dole was the inevitable Republican nominee. Except I feel a lot more than 20 years older. And Bob Dole was an honorable man."With that said, let me share a few somewhat serious (and not-as-serious) observations about the primary season, and several prospects for the coming months.During Trump's Tuesday victory speech , he lavished praise on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. The media reported it as a Trump pivot to show he can unify the Republican Party for the general election, but I wonder how his fans in the populist talk radio/cable news/political world - who called McConnell and Ryan Republicans In Name Only - will defend to their audiences The Donald and his new BFFs?Trump's "self-financed" campaign actually has been underwritten by the media, and that soon will change. The New York Times reports that mediaQuant, a firm that puts a cash value on the amount of media coverage candidates receive, says Trump already has benefited from $2 billion in "free" media, or five times as much as John McCain spent on his entire 2008 campaign. The free coverage will start dwindling as primaries become less frequent, so Trump will have to spend his own money or rely on donors (and he said he would not do that).How much money does Trump have? He's refused to release his tax returns, leading 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to claim Trump is cash-poor. Despite Trump's claim that he made $362 million last year, an analysis in Fortune suggests his income may have been closer to $150 million - and to self-finance his campaign, he must spend cash or borrow against liquid assets, not real estate or "brand names."If indeed Trump can raise only a couple hundred million for the primary and general elections, he may have to abandon his pledge not to take money from political action committees, angering supporters. Without that money, however, he might not make it out of Cleveland with the GOP nomination against a better-funded, better-organized Cruz campaign. We should learn late this summer, or perhaps this fall, if Trump's wealth is little more than numbers on pieces of paper ... and not the spendable kind.Democrats who think the governor's race is Roy Cooper's to lose might reflect on how he opened Tuesday's primary victory speech. After introducing his family and thanking his supporters, the attorney general's first ploy was to join at the hip (rhetorically) Trump and Gov. Pat McCrory. This was Cooper's first chance to speak, without filters, to potential voters statewide ... and he handed McCrory a campaign talking point.The governor always has been comfortable playing the role of independent negotiator, someone above petty partisanship, representing the general interests of all North Carolinians rather than some Capital City Cabal. (That's his argument, though your views of it may differ.)He consistently says that the "Carolina Comeback" he championed has taken hold despite Washington politicians and regulators, members of his own party in the General Assembly on occasion - and the actions of one Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina, who has refused to participate in a series of legal challenges to federal regulations.McCrory can and probably will argue that no matter who is elected president, he'll be "fighting for us." And he'll have a largely positive record to defend.McCrory was a better candidate in 2012 than he was in 2008, and he may be an even better candidate this year. Cooper may stumble in the early phases of this general election race. He hasn't faced a competitive campaign since 2000, when he (arguably) stole the election from Republican attorney Dan Boyce by running (again arguably) illegal and defamatory ads against Boyce, his father Gene, and their law partners. A lawsuit against Cooper and his campaign committee bounced around in court for more than a decade, and in 2014 Cooper finally issued an apology to the Boyces and their partners and paid a settlement Cooper will face potentially challenging engagements with voters and the media regularly over the next seven months. It's an atmosphere he hasn't encountered as attorney general, and how well he shakes off any rust will suggest how he will do in a race that will draw national scrutiny.There may be hope of one edifying election contest, however: the race for state treasurer. Incumbent Janet Cowell is not seeking re-election, and the major party contenders are impressive. Democrat Dan Blue III , an attorney and former investment banker, and Republican Dale Folwell, a former state lawmaker and state Employment Security Division chief, are smart, knowledgeable, and well-versed in the intricacies of public finance. They understand the potential risks to taxpayers and public employees of a woefully underfunded State Health Plan. Folwell also makes a solid argument that the public pension plan is much less solvent than conventional measures show.They'll have different priorities and policy prescriptions, but their contest will be among the most important this fall for the long-term fiscal health of the state.The smart money says the congressional primary will not take place June 7. The congressional district map passed last month by the General Assembly and sent to a three-judge U.S. District Court panel eliminated race as a factor in the drawing of districts and instead focused on the partisan goal of giving Republicans the best chance of maintaining a 10-3 advantage in the state's U.S. House delegation. Problem is, the panel throwing out the 2011 map that relied "too heavily" on race (in the court's view) suggested that a map drawn purely to enhance partisanship could violate federal law as well.The three-judge panel is reviewing legal documents. It may let the map stand for the current election cycle, but since the judges threw out the last congressional map after candidates had filed for Tuesday's primary and thousands of absentee ballots had been cast, this panel may have no qualms about interfering with ongoing elections. The judges could toss the new map, and unless their ruling is overturned on appeal, the court may draw our districts - meaning, a new filing period, new ballots, and a congressional primary that will take place closer to Labor Day than Memorial Day.Enjoy your summer!
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It has been far too many years since the Woke theology interlaced its canons within the fabric of the Indoctrination Realm, so it is nigh time to ask: Does this Representative Republic continue, as a functioning society of a self-governed people, by contending with the unusual, self absorbed dictates of the Woke, and their vast array of Victimhood scenarios?

Yes, the Religion of Woke must continue; there are so many groups of underprivileged, underserved, a direct result of unrelenting Inequity; they deserve everything.

No; the Woke fools must be toppled from their self-anointed pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now.
Since Ypsilanti's SPUR Studios closed abruptly last year , Ypsi filmmaker Donald Harrison has been just one of many local artists seeking an affordable new workspace."I think for somebody who does independent work it's just psychologically healthy to go somewhere outside of your house to work," Harrison says. "I like the idea of being in proximity to other people who are motivated and creativeI don't need, necessarily, to collaborate with anybody there. But that potential and that possibility and just the social aspect of it is appealing to me."For Harrison and others, that search has been somewhat frustrating. Space of any kind in Ann Arbor is increasingly expensive, and new Ypsilanti office space aimed at creatives has yet to arise in SPUR's place. But a new project spearheaded by two key players in the Ypsilanti community could change that. Blogger Mark Maynard and Wurst Bar co-owner Jesse Kranyak are in the process of purchasing a 9,000-square-foot Ypsilanti building with the intention of renovating part of it as creative office space under the name Landline Creative Labs The building at 209 Pearl St. originally housed Bell Telephone Company offices (which prompted the Landline name), and later apartments. Its interior was damaged by a fire in 2014 and it's been largely vacant since then. With the exception of Frank D's barbershop, which has remained in operation on the first floor, the building's interior is still in bad shape. Garbage is scattered around, utility infrastructure is badly damaged and there are only bare, charred wooden studs where walls stood.But it's easy to see where small apartments, or telephone company offices, once wereand easy to see how, with some renovation work, cozy studio spaces could arise as well. Maynard and Kranyak saw that potential in the building, so they submitted a letter of intent last year to purchase it from current owner Hedger Breed. Maynard says he wants to focus on renting studio space to graphic designers, web designers, videographers and potentially other kinds of artists, rather than the tech startups that predominate in Ann Arbor. Three prospective artist tenants, including Harrison, have already expressed interest in studio space at Landline."We keep trying to lure startups here," Maynard says. "Why not focus on what we have, which is the creatives, and do it really well? ThenI do think startups will follow."The Landline project came about after almost five years of on-and-off searching by both Maynard and Kranyak. The two explored multiple buildings throughout Ypsi, including a run-down church and the former Savoy/Club Divine building downtown. But the burned-out building on Pearl was the first they found that struck a balance between affordability, ample square footage and structural soundness."Foundation-wise, it's probably the only building we've been through without a wet basement," Kranyak says. "We've been through buildings in Ypsi that have rivers basically running through them."Though the two have considered a diverse assortment of buildings, Kranyak says the plan for their prospective space was always roughly the same: a combination of low-cost studio space, living space and retail operations. The duo's plan for Landline is to first renovate the second floor to provide nine studio spaces whose rent would start at $150 per month. The second floor would also include an apartment for Kranyak, and the duo hope to later add two more studios and a restaurant and/or bar on the first floor (the barbershop would continue as is). Kranyak says he initially pushed to convert the space into all residential lofts, but Maynard convinced him otherwise."It doesn't really help Ypsi out too much to have maybe six more residents come in," Kranyak says. "But if you have nine office spaces with younger professionals in here, it really changes the energy of downtown. It brings it up a little bit."The two partners became friends shortly after Kranyak, an EMU alumnus, moved back to Ypsi in 2011 to open the Wurst Bar. They bonded over a shared passion for the Ypsi community, and the mutual admiration between them is obvious. Maynard expresses respect for Kranyak's management skills, and Kranyak for Maynard's community influence. Kranyak says he expects Maynard will handle the marketing end of the project while Kranyak focuses on the construction end."My back is going, so I'm too old," Maynard says. "I'll sit and take pictures of him and blog about it. 'Look what Jesse's doing today!'"There are still plenty of hurdles to clear before local creatives can start moving into Landline. Maynard and Kranyak are awaiting an appraisal of the property in order to get final approval on their financing. They're also seeking an Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Act (OPRA) tax incentive from the city of Ypsilanti, which would freeze property taxes on the building for up to 12 years. As long as both of those go through, Maynard says rehabilitation of the property could begin as soon as the end of this month. He estimates he and Kranyak would immediately put $200,000 into renovating the second floor of the property, with later first-floor renovations costing an additional $250,000."We're raising the value of this property by at least $400,000, closer to $500,000," Maynard says. "That's a good thing for the city, so hopefully they see the point."Maynard describes Landline as the latest step in an ongoing transition towards general rejuvenation in Ypsi, partly driven by a growing concentration of creative talent. He says Ypsi's Shadow Art Fair (which he cofounded) and popular First Fridays "art walk" events are key indicators that creative talent is on the rise in Ypsi, and non-residents are willing to come into town to engage with it."A lot of it is beyond our control," Maynard says. "It's not because of what we did. It's just because Ann Arbor is so fucked in terms of affordability thatartists are moving here. And now that the schools are getting a little better, I think it's primed to really take off."So what happens when it does? Maynard expresses some concerns about gentrification further down the line. He jokes that he hopes Ypsi won't draw attention from the likes of Reza Rahmani, who has recently earned Ann Arborites' ire for scooping up downtown real estate and replacing several long-running local businesses with chains . But Maynard says the key is to lead by example, to develop Landline as both a resource and inspiration for Ypsi newcomers."There are people who know something good is happening here and something interesting is happening," Maynard says. "It's just a matter of time before it gets out. You just hope you can do it gracefully."
Healthcare and manufacturing are two sectors where Sterling Heights-based software company Aqaba Technologies sees opportunities to bring client companies into the 21st century."They're very under-developed," says Ramsey Sweis, founder and president of Aqaba Technologies How under-developed? Sweis describes some of them as having websites designed a decade ago and others without any Web presence at all. Mobile technology is more of an abstract concept to them than a business practice. When Aqaba Technologies brings companies on as customers, its first goal is to teach them why and how technology can help their business."It's like going from a beeper to a smartphone," Sweis says.He points out that while an increased use of technology might not always help with the day-to-day operations of a manufacturer, it does help in less tangible ways. For instance, an increased web presence helps build credibility with future customers. Use of mobile technology helps attract new talent.Aqaba Technologies also recently picked up a certification in mobile app development from Proscape. That and becoming a Google Certified Partner a couple years ago has helped it gain credibility when comes to convincing its clients to adopt mobile technology."That's something that we are focusing hard on," Sweis says. "We have always built apps but never had certification before."All of this has allowed Aqaba Technologies to grow its revenue by 30 percent over the last year. It also hired three people, expanding its staff to nine employees and an intern.Source: Ramsey Sweis, founder & president of Aqaba TechnologiesWriter: Jon Zemke
Zingerman's is moving forward on plans to build out a special events venue in downtown Ann Arbor called The Greyline.The 5,000-square-foot space will occupy the first floor of the new Marriott Residence Inn at the corner of Huron and Ashley streets and serve as headquarters for Zingerman's growing catering services."It's going to be gorgeous," says Grace Singleton, managing partner of Zingerman's Delicatessen . "With the old bus depot facade and glass turret and all of the glass facing the sidewalk."There has been a significant demand for Zingerman's to cater its culinary creations for years. Zingerman's Delicatessen, which operates the catering service, took over the old Eve restaurant in Kerrytown in 2011 to help meet the catering demand with better service."We cater all over southeast Michigan," Singleton says, adding that equals a lot of schlepping stuff everywhere. "We realized we could do a better job of it we had our own space."Zingerman's catering doubled its business by its second year and then doubled it again by its third year. That meant it needed to find a bigger, more centralized space. The new Marriott Residence Inns commercial space proved too good of an opportunity to pass up to create The Greyline.The Zingerman's team plans to make The Greyline a versatile urban venue available for private events, meetings, and training sessions operated exclusively by Zingerman's Catering and Events. It will have its own street entrance to the building, and it will also have access to the venue from the lobby of the hotel. About two thirds of its square footage will be utilized for events."The size is perfect for what we need," Singleton says. "It will have a large, full kitchen that will allow us to cook very specific menus for this space, things that are currently too much of a challenge to do at an offsite event."Source: Grace Singleton, managing partner of Zingermans DelicatessenWriter: Jon Zemke
HealthCure is a startup looking for funding, but not one desperate to land it. The Ann Arbor-based healthcare firm, which also has an office in Detroit, is on the precipice of landing a Series A investment later this spring."We are very close," says Mark Arizmendi, CEO of HealthCure Arizmendi expects that round to amount to $2 million in seed capital. That money will help fund the firm's expansion across the Midwest later this year. HealthCure has already secured a couple of customers, giving it some breathing room on the funding front."We made a profit in 2015," Arizmendi says. "We are not falling over ourselves to make a bad deal."HealthCure platform helps hospitals reduce the risk of healthcare-associated infections. Its software team works with the staff of medical centers to find places where infections can be prevented, and helps the institution meet Affordable Care Act benchmarks.The 6-year-old company is looking to land customers through its pilot programs, a strategy that worked with Oakwood Healthcare System last year. HealthCure is currently working on another pilot program it is optimistic about, and aims to land another 3-4 customers in 2016."We want to focus on the upper Midwest right now," Arizmendi says. "We want to be in our natural constituency to start."This past year, HealthCure hired one person in customer relations. It now has a staff of 10 employees and is already preparing to accommodate its expected growth."As soon as that pilot is finished we will be hiring," Arizmendi says.Source: Mark Arizmendi, CEO of HealthCureWriter: Jon Zemke
 "How many times should a state be able to try to execute someone without running afoul of the Constitution?" | Main | Judge Richard Posner takes notable shots at "the legal profession in all three of its major branches" 

March 18, 2016

Making the (Trumpian?) case for winning the drug war via full legalization

This cover story of the April 2016 issue of Harper's magazine is authored by Dan Baum and is headlined "Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs." And, as I mean to suggest via the headline of this post, this article may be channeling what GOP Prez candidate front-runner Donald Trump really thinks about how to improve modern drug policy in the US. (Recall that I had this post on my marijuana reform blog, way back when Trump first announced his serious run for the Oval Office last summer, which highlights that Trump not all that long ago had once suggested full legalization would be the only way to "win" the drug war.) Here are is an except from the first part of the lengthy Harper's piece:

Nixons invention of the war on drugs as a political tool was cynical, but every president since  Democrat and Republican alike  has found it equally useful for one reason or another. Meanwhile, the growing cost of the drug war is now impossible to ignore: billions of dollars wasted, bloodshed in Latin America and on the streets of our own cities, and millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that doesnt end at the prison gate; one of every eight black men has been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. As long ago as 1949, H. L. Mencken identified in Americans the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy, an astute articulation of our weirdly Puritan need to criminalize peoples inclination to adjust how they feel. The desire for altered states of consciousness creates a market, and in suppressing that market we have created a class of genuine bad guys  pushers, gangbangers, smugglers, killers. Addiction is a hideous condition, but its rare. Most of what we hate and fear about drugs  the violence, the overdoses, the criminality  derives from prohibition, not drugs. And there will be no victory in this war either; even the Drug Enforcement Administration concedes that the drugs it fights are becoming cheaper and more easily available. Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to change course. Experiments in alternatives to harsh prohibition are already under way both in this country and abroad. Twenty-three states, as well as the District of Columbia, allow medical marijuana, and four  Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska  along with D.C., have legalized pot altogether. Several more states, including Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada, will likely vote in November whether to follow suit. Portugal has decriminalized not only marijuana but cocaine and heroin, as well as all other drugs. In Vermont, heroin addicts can avoid jail by committing to state-funded treatment. Canada began a pilot program in Vancouver in 2014 to allow doctors to prescribe pharmaceutical-quality heroin to addicts, Switzerland has a similar program, and the Home Affairs Committee of Britains House of Commons has recommended that the United Kingdom do likewise. Last July, Chile began a legislative process to legalize both medicinal and recreational marijuana use and allow households to grow as many as six plants. After telling the BBC in December that if you fight a war for forty years and dont win, you have to sit down and think about other things to do that might be more effective, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos legalized medical marijuana by decree. In November, the Mexican Supreme Court elevated the debate to a new plane by ruling that the prohibition of marijuana consumption violated the Mexican Constitution by interfering with the personal sphere, the right to dignity, and the right to personal autonomy. The Supreme Court of Brazil is considering a similar argument. Depending on how the issue is framed, legalization of all drugs can appeal to conservatives, who are instinctively suspicious of bloated budgets, excess government authority, and intrusions on individual liberty, as well as to liberals, who are horrified at police overreach, the brutalization of Latin America, and the criminalization of entire generations of black men. It will take some courage to move the conversation beyond marijuana to ending all drug prohibitions, but it will take less, I suspect, than most politicians believe. Its already politically permissible to criticize mandatory minimums, mass marijuana-possession arrests, police militarization, and other excesses of the drug war; even former attorney general Eric Holder and Michael Botticelli, the new drug czar  a recovering alcoholic  do so. Few in public life appear eager to defend the status quo.

A few prior related posts:

March 18, 2016 at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Comments

We sure didn't get much reform from George H W "Halcyon" Bush, Bill "Nose like a vacuum cleaner" Clinton, George W "Drinking dual" Bush, and Barack "Choom gang" Obama.

Maybe a teetotaler is what we need to get some rational policy.

Posted by: Boffin | Mar 18, 2016 12:38:28 PM

The problem now is we've got so many damn people with their finger in the pie!

On the "Baptist" side there's DEA, FBI, police, prosecutors, defense attys, jailers, probation officers, drug rehabbers, addiction specialists, and on and on and on. Perhaps a million or more Pillars of the Community making their living (and a good one) from the drug market.

On the "Bootlegger" side are not just the dealers big and small, but the gangs, protection rackets, money laundering fronts, corrupt officials, and at some point the major banks.

So much money and so many people on the take--whether legit or not. I'd ask any drug warrior seeing these words to look at the breathtaking scale of waste and graft and consider whether this cost is worth it for a purer society.

Posted by: Boffin | Mar 18, 2016 12:51:40 PM

Suicide should be painless. Legalize heroin. Sell large doses in a single bound. There are too many humans on Earth. Let em be happy and let em die when they want to go.

Posted by: Liberty1st | Mar 18, 2016 1:28:49 PM

He used to be pro-choice too.

He's running for office now. Insert the usual cynical stuff and how that changes things.

Posted by: Joe | Mar 18, 2016 2:20:55 PM

For once I am in complete agreement with Liberty1st ; make it as cheap and easy as possible for those with the inclination to do away with themselves.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Mar 19, 2016 2:15:19 AM

You all may have nailed it. With so many benefiting on both sides of the law, one might ghink its better to just let them run wild, romper room.

I doubt the day will ever come. Politicians appear uncaring and cuth, if they legalize it all.

Alcohol is inexpensive and we have a serious problem with that and its not near as addictive as drugs, at least for most. Look at the Revenue it generates for for the legal beagles and rehab facilities. Holy smolly. Watch the show moonshiners a few times, I like it, but look at the conditions and slop they throw together. Whew.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Mar 19, 2016 8:48:09 AM

If suicide should be protected, I think better ways should be available then heroin which I'd assume is a rather risk/imperfect way to die, including as a matter of pain.

Note that "decriminalized" etc. is not necessarily "full legalization" and realistically, at least early on, this is a matter of stages. This is so when even talk of legalization of marijuana leads people to say 'well, you want to legalization everything right?' And, you have two sides in effect agreeing. One side positively (it's the only principled way!), the other side negatively (if you want pot, you must mean everything & that makes you a nut).

Posted by: Joe | Mar 19, 2016 9:57:57 AM

As someone knows little about this I wonder whether the legalizations that are taking place are really anything out of the ordinary. At all times in history there may be legalizations and bans taking place at various countries-can you find examples today of countries banning more drugs or cracking down on drugs? Is the slowdown in the drug war really a global phenomenon?

Posted by: random | Mar 19, 2016 10:58:54 AM

Before these substances were illegal, they were all available over the counter. Housewives who used cocaine could buy a coke or an over the counter medication. They did not have to rob a carry out.

Those who have a propensity for addiction represent a small portion of the population - perhaps 10%. We have all taken heroin derivatives during our lives when we needed pain medication following surgery or an accident etc. The vast majority of the population does not become addicted - when we no longer need it we don't take it.

Of course we should legalize the substance and should only concentrate on treating that small % of the population that becomes addicted with a medical model. If we remove drugs and addiction from law enforcement and the criminal justice system we'll save billions and also have a more productive and prosperous country.

Posted by: beth | Mar 19, 2016 3:18:57 PM

This article, like nearly all articles, pro or con, on this issue, only discusses one side of the problem. There is never any discussion of what is on the other side of the equal sign.

The discussion is always about the flow of drugs North but never about the flow of dollars South. The dollars we send South have enabled criminals to corrupt their local and national governments, to kill police, government officials, and journalists with near impunity, and to create large geographical areas where the national governments are unable to exercise any sovereignty.

And of course there is a comprehensive effort to stanch the flow of drugs North, but virtually no effort to stanch the flow of dollars South. Why is that?

Posted by: Fred | Mar 20, 2016 9:37:13 AM

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In addition to criminal charges brought against them earlier this month by District Attorney George Gascon, San Francisco Sheriff's deputies who allegedly led forced Fight Club-like matches between inmates, engaging in patterns of abuse against them, will face a civil lawsuit from those inmates. All the inmates are currently out on bail.

Plaintiff's Ricardo Palikiko Garcia, Stanley Harris, and Keith Dwayne Richardson sued several Deputies yesterday according to the Chronicle, alleging that the Department and its then leader Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi violated their constitutional rights by intentionally inflicting emotional distress and cruel and unusual punishment upon them.

The deputies named in the criminal case are Scott Neu, Clifford Chiba, and Eugene Jones, and they've all pleaded not guilty. Neu, the alleged ringleader of the action in the county jail on the seventh floor of the Hall of Justice, has since been fired by the Sheriff's office and has a storied history of alleged abuses including sexual acts of violence against inmates. Those deputies are again named in the lawsuit brought by the inmates, now with the addition of Deputy Evan Staehely.

Inmates Garcia and Harris say they were forced to bruise and bloody one another twice as deputies watched and laid their bets, while refusal to do combat would cost them privileges. Garcia, much smaller than Harris, left the ersatz ring with injured ribs, and at one point, he says, lost consciousness.

In another instance, plaintiff Richardson, who is black, claims Neu attempted to make him fight a white man by employing racial slurs. The inmates also allege that Neu would make them gamble for food and television privileges. Reporting the conditions would lead to beatings, inmates say deputies threatened. The situation left Public Defender Jeff Adachi to describe deputies' actions as like [something] out of Game of Thrones.

Between brawls, Neu would allegedly force Harris to do push-ups, sometimes as many as 200 in an hour, ribbing him that he was "training his prize fighter."

Previously: Sheriff's Deputies Who Allegedly Forced Inmates To Fight Plead Not Guilty

Public Defender: SF Jail Inmates Are Made To Fight While Sheriff's Deputies Bet On Them


Are coyote attacks on the rise in San Francisco? While Animal Care and Control has yet to confirm that assertion, District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee says they're spiking, and he wants city agencies to explain what they're going to do about it.

It's true that our urban coyotes have made headlines lately  from multiple attacks in Stern Grove (at least one of which was fatal) to what residents say are unprecedented numbers of the animals roaming the Haight, the Panhandle, and Pacific Heights.

As recently as Saturday, NBC Bay Area reports, Didi, a small mixed-breed dog was killed by a coyote while in his Balboa Terrace front yard.

"We really loved this dog," Didi's guardian, Jeff Macki, told NBC.

"She was the friendliest, most loving dog."

It was back in December, following the Stern Grove attacks, that Yee requested a hearing on SF's coyote situation  but the wheels of government grind slowly, and it's not until Thursday, March 24, that the Supes' Government Audit and Oversight Committee will call upon "the Department of Animal Care and Control, the Recreation and Park Department, and the Presidio Trust" to explain their plan to manage "the impact of coyotes in neighborhoods citywide," the meeting agenda states.

So far, it appears that ACC's main strategy is the posting of signs in areas where attacks have occurred, like near Didi's death. It's unclear what else city agencies can do, for as ACC spokesperson Deb Campbell told us back in 2014, "Relocation is illegal under CA State law. It is also inhumane. Lethal removal is ineffective and unethical since another coyote will simply take its place, often within weeks."

Well, "They've got to do something," Macki told NBC.

"We have a problem at Bernal Heights, Ingleside Terrace and Stern Grove. Something has got to be done. Our animals are in danger."

Hence Thursday's meeting, which NBC says is expected to be attended by a number of SF's dog-loving public.

"What's our city plan when people are getting nervous about it? Wait for something bad to happen? I'm not willing to do that," Yee said.

Thursday's meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. in SF's City Hall's Legislative Chamber (Room 250). The public is welcome to attend.

Previously: How Much Of A Threat Are San Francisco's Coyotes?

Coyote Attacks Another Small Dog In Stern Grove, Big Dog Saves It 'Like Rin Tin Tin'

Wild Coyotes Now Roaming Haight, Panhandle
Known for its downtown office buildings from the towering 50 California to the Market Square/Twitter building, real estate investors the Shorenstein Organization received Planning Commission approval yesterday afternoon for their first residential project: 12 stories of development comprising 304 units on Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue in a complex with an outcropping (and main address) at 1066 Market Street. The current site is a surface parking lot.





The project, Socketsite observes, would meet but not exceed the legal 12 percent affordability requirement, with 36 below-market-rate units. Those units must be made affordable to households earning 55 percent of the area median income, which is about $56,000 for families of four and $40,000 for individuals.



Arquitectonica / Arquitectonica

That's made the development a controversial one, the Chronicle writes. Twelve percent affordable is simply not enough for any new development in the city at this point, headmaster Michael Anderer of De Marillac Academy (a nearby school for local families, many of whom earn less than 30 percent of the area median income) told the paper.

As Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. planning manager Alexandra Goldman put it, Existing Tenderloin residents must share in the benefits... We cant support a project with so few affordable units.

Not all are opposed: Notably, Tenderloin Housing Clinic executive director Randy Shaw thinks that the new development is unlikely to attract the gentry." The area hasn't been met with the Ellis Act Evictions and gentrification experienced by so much of San Francisco. In fact, as Shaw points out, the area has had just one new market-rate housing project in seven years.



via Google

Shorenstein purchased the property in the '60s as parking space for the Golden Gate Theatre, which the family-owned organization also possesses. Plans at 1066 Market call for an underground garage for 102 cars and 304 bikes. On the ground floor, plans indicate 4,500 square feet of retail space. Meanwhile, plans to built a 13-story building of 186 units next door at the temporary food market the Hall (1028 Market) are moving forward.



via Google

While 1066 Market was met with 5-to-2 approval, the project will likely be appealed to the Board of Supervisors. Also at issue is trailing legislation that could add more affordable units: Voters will see a ballot proposition boosting below-market-rate unit requirement from 12 to 25 percent. (And, not far from here but also in Jane Kim's District 6 at Mission and 5th, the 5M project won approval by reaching 40 percent affordability, though not all of it on site.) "We are willing to wait it out and let the government tell us where we need to be." Shorenstein's managing director Meg Spriggs told the Chronicle.This will be the first project that the Shorenstein family has ever developed for residential, and they intend to hold onto it forever."

Related: Here's The Condo Building Coming To The Corner Of Market And Church
SIOUX CITY | Woodbury County recently recorded its first case of mumps in six years.

Siouxland District Health Department deputy director Tyler Brock said he couldn't provided any details about the case.

More than 290 cases of mumps have been reported in Johnson County, Iowa, since July 12. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, the cases are primarily occurring in undergraduate students at the University of Iowa. Another 224 cases of mumps have been reported in other areas of the state.

"There's been a fair amount of mumps across the state," Brock said. "We're not surprised that we've gotten a case when they've had so much of it on the other side of the state."

He said Siouxland District Health Department has assisted eastern Iowa county health departments with mumps cases involving college students who are residents of Woodbury County.

"Most of the time they've been classified as residents of those counties, just because they were most likely infected at school and they live there 8 to 9 months out of the year," he said.

Mumps is a highly contagious disease that is spread through the air by droplets of saliva or mucus from the nose, mouth or throat of an infected person. The disease, which causes fever, swollen and tender salivary glands and headache, is typically preventable through vaccination.

Iowa experienced a mumps epidemic in March 2006, when 219 mumps cases were reported. A small outbreak of nine cases occurred in Northwest Iowa in May 2010. Those cases mainly involved students at Dordt College in Sioux Center.
President Obamas dramatic grab for Article I legislative power has become the undercover coup of the century. As a result of this blatant disregard for the Constitution, we now have a government run by unelected bureaucrats making public policy without any connection to the actual public the policy affects.

As chair of the newly minted House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Executive Overreach, I am ready to expose the grave threat a unitary executive poses to our liberty and to the Constitution.

On Tuesday, the task force held its second hearing, "Executive Overreach in Domestic Affairs Part I  Health Care and Immigration," to examine two of the most disastrous examples of executive overreach in which President Obama has brazenly declared. He has repeatedly squandered his own promises to implement Obamacare and he has taken it upon himself to abrogate the nations immigration laws.

The Center for Immigration Studies just released data that confirms my longtime warning of the rancorous consequences this disregard for the rule of law would have on our nation. This study found 121 illegal immigrants caught and then released by the Obama administration between 2010 and 2014 were later charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes. Two of those immigrants had even been convicted of homicides before and, yet, they were still released. These illegal immigrants who have been freed by order of the president and who kill at will have also been charged with a total of 464 other crimes.

We have reached a dire point in the immigration debate as a result of the presidents direct actions. His hunger for power and abuse of the system is more than a simple lapse in judgement or a difference in political opinion. Politics aside, Americans have lost their lives at the hands of illegal immigrants  criminals who had been caught, convicted and then released.

It is clear that an unaccountable government is both a recipe for the loss of individual freedom and the enemy of good policy. But this issue is by no means isolated to one party. Presidents from both sides of the aisle have taken advantage of the power given to them by the people. President Obama is not the first leader to aggressively expand the power of the presidency in defiance of the Constitution and at the expense of the voters. However, a cursory glance at his executive legislating is staggering.

In the interest of time the list is abbreviated, but just one president has dramatically changed broad swaths of law in immigration, the Internet, energy and health care. Even scarier is that President Obama has arrogantly declared he is not finished. Despite losing governorships, statehouses and the House and Senate at the federal level, President Obama continues to defy the national will.

This is why a Task Force on Executive Overreach is critical. While courts are already ruling against the presidents unconstitutional moves, that is not sufficient. For the future of the Republic, Congress must reassert its Article I authority. This task force began by reviewing the original intent of the Founding Fathers for the legislative branch to be the active hub of legislative policy, not the executive branch.

All committee task forces can be authorized for six months at a time. The goal at the conclusion of this task force is to have produced a final report cataloging the erosion of Article I and outlining the best processes for future Congresses to reclaim legislative power back from the executive branch. We look to accomplish this through legislative proposals during this committee process.

Fundamentally, the Founders understood from experience the danger of blurred lines of power ultimately being vested in one individual. Their solution was to separate legislative and executive authority and tie the lawmakers closely to the electorate with regular elections. Right now, we are clearly drifting far away from that sound structure and returning to the tyranny that the Founders fought to defeat. We will never have a government of, by and for the people while presidents legislate from the Oval Office by pen and phone.

This task force is the first step to restoring Article I and the peoples rightful place as governments primary power.

Steve King represents the 4th District of Iowa in the United States House of Representatives.
Did you know that your business website is a lot like your car? Its true.

We depend on our cars for many things. Its really hard to get around town without one. Running errands, meeting clients, rushing delivery items to the Post Office just in the nick of time: as a business owner, how are you going to do these things without a car?

You could do it  but it would be tough. Thats why we make regular, ongoing investments to keep our cars in good working order. We fill the gas tank. We check the oil. We go to the mechanic for tune-ups as needed.

Now think about your business website. Were very dependent on our business websites. In many cases, your website is the primary point of contact for new and returning customers. Sales, customer service, and brand building  it all happens on your business website.

Yet many business owners dont do any maintenance or monitoring of their website. In fact, they hardly engage with their website at all once it is launched. This is the equivalent of getting your new car from the dealership, driving away, and never once visiting a gas station or mechanic.

How long do you think that car will last under those conditions? If you dont want your business website to stall out or break down, you need to take charge of the situation and start monitoring your website. Heres what you need to look for:

Weekly Website Reviews

Spot Check: Give your website a quick visual inspection. Does everything look right? Are images and videos behaving as you expect them to? Click on a few links throughout your site  different ones every week!  to see if they take you where you want to go.

Any problems you find, you can let your tech team know about for a quick fix.

Read Google Webmaster Report: Every business owner should be signed up for Google Webmaster. This free program provides you with valuable information. The application offers some great insight including a report on any broken links on your website, information about the last time Google indexed your website, etc. Important for effective SEO.

You can also see if there are any viruses on your site.

Review Your Google Analytics: Google Analytic reports tell you many things. Youll be able to see how much traffic your website gets and where the traffic is coming from. This is great if youre tracking the impact of a new marketing initiative. How long do visitors stay on your website? What your bounce rate? A bounce rate measures how many visitors come, view a single webpage, and then leave your site.

Bear in mind that if you have a popular blog, for example, your bounce rate might be high and thats totally okay.

Monthly Website Reviews

Test Forms: Data collection forms, such as the one used to request a consultation, send feedback or sign-up newsletter subscribers should be tested regularly to make sure theyre still working.

Try testing your forms using different email addresses and from different devices and Web browsers.

Shopping Cart Test: If you have any type of shopping cart on your site, run a complete test order every month to make sure your shopping cart system is operating seamlessly. Review your shipping and taxes on the order and pay attention to each screen and the receipts you receive. This is the shopping experience your customers are having.

You want to make sure its a good one. If you identify any problems, you need to let your web development team know right away.

Review Dynamic Content: Compare the dynamic content youve added to your website (blogs, podcasts, videos, new merchandise) with the numbers youve seen during your weekly Google Analytics review. Is the content delivering the results youd like to see in terms of traffic, stickiness, and conversion?

If not, adjustments may be in order.

Speed Tests: How quickly does your website load? How quickly do individual pages come up? A sudden change in the rate of load speed indicates that something may be wrong, and it may be related to how dynamic elements are coded or changes in the web host server.

Quarterly Website Reviews

Is It Time for an Upgrade? Open source Content Management Systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are continually improving their platforms. They make changes to their codes so sites built with their technology are more secure, more virus-resistant, and load faster.

Generally, there will be a message alerting you that an upgrade is available in the dashboard area of your website. If you see this message, its time to let your web developer know.

Dont try to do the update yourself. Hitting that Upgrade Now button can totally wreck any custom coding or third party plug-ins you may have on your site.

Review User Names & Passwords: Internal security is important. Do you have the user name and passwords for all accounts associated with your website? Accounts may include Google accounts for Analytics, Webmaster or Adwords; shopping cart passwords for tools like PayPal or Authorize.net; and website control through FTP, C-Panel or web hosting accounts.

For security purposes, passwords should be changed routinely  and always if youve let go of an employee who previously had this access and permission.

As a business owner you are ultimately responsible for your website. If you have an in-house team this list is a great way to start implementing a process to pay better attention to one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. If you have an external team you may want to request a cost for this level of monitoring.

The fact is that the Web changes, and upgrades to Web browsers or operating systems can cause changes. Even good old fashion human error can occur when editing a site.

If you pay close attention to your website you can catch things before they cause any loss of business.
Snapchat recently revealed it had been hit by a major phishing scheme targeting different companies payroll and personnel departments. The photo sharing and messaging service said its payroll department had been tricked by a fraudulent email impersonating its CEO, Evan Spiegel, which led to the release of employee W-2 tax forms to unauthorized persons.

Phishing schemes have become the bane of the modern Internet age. Companies  big and small  are frequently duped by fraudsters using spoofing emails, a situation that highlights the need for people to be more vigilant to avoid the headaches that typically follow a data breach or identity theft.

The Los Angeles-based Snapchat did not specify how many employee W-2 tax forms it released, but is said it was managing the situation.

When something like this happens, all you can do is own up to your mistake, take care of the people affected, and learn from what went wrong, the company said.

Snapchat isnt the only company to have recently fallen victim to scammers who send fraudulent emails disguised as requests from the company CEO, asking for copies of worker W-2s. Several other major companies have, unfortunately, been tricked in a similar manner.

On Feb. 24, a few days before Snapchat publicly announced it had been hit by the data security incident, Central Concrete Supply Co., based in San Jose, Calif., announced it had also fallen victim to the scammers. The San Jose, Calif. company said in a memo (PDF) that a third party posing as another person convinced one of its employees to provide copies of 2015 W-2 forms via e-mail.

Similarly, Seagate Technology was tricked into relinquishing tax documents last year, which exposed its workers incomes, Social Security numbers and addresses. The disk-drive maker acknowledged surrendering the W-2s for all of its current and former employees who worked at the company.

The affected companies have all notified federal authorities about the phishing attacks, and Snapchat and Seagate have said they are offering affected workers two years of free credit monitoring.

When Phishing Attacks Commonly Occur

Phishing attacks commonly happen during holidays and around other important times like tax season. The attacks prey on peoples routines, exploiting human gullibility rather than weaknesses in computer or Internet security, explains Fatih Orhan, director of technology at security firm Comodo.

And, sadly, the phishing attacks are becoming increasingly effective precisely because they are now relying on the powers of persuasion instead of a dubious email link or attachment that might raise suspicion, says Ed Jennings, chief operating officer at email security company Mimecast.

Its just like someone who convinces you to hand over $20 on the street, Jennings adds.

Its unclear how many small businesses and large firms have been taken in by the W-2 tax scam, but hundreds of companies appear to have been targeted, according to Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4, a Florida company that trains employers to detect and avoid such scams.

The attacks have been so widespread that, on March 1, the IRS posted a press release to alert HR, accountants and payroll professionals of the phishing scheme.

Although the IRS did not disclose how many companies had reported being duped by the targeted phishing scammers, the agency said the spoofing emails have so far claimed several victims.

The IRS also added that it has seen a 400 percent increase in phishing and computer malware incidents this tax-filing season. Its premature to provide numbers at this point, but even one company being fooled by these criminals is too many, the IRS said in a statement.

As cases of phishing persist, it is important that business execs, employees and payroll specialists are aware of the scams and stay alert so that companies arent taken in. Employees should also get adequate training to question why a CEO would need to see individual worker W-2s in the first place.

If your CEO appears to be emailing you for a list of company employees, check it out before you respond. Everyone has a responsibility to remain diligent about confirming the identity of people requesting personal information about employees, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in the press release.

Hopefully, this phishing alert comes to you early enough before scammers pretending to be someone they are not catch you flat-footed and leave you scrambling to respond to a serious data breach.
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
Senior Prom Celebrates 25th Anniversary



On Friday, March 11, Charles County senior citizens and teens from area high schools enjoyed dinner and then danced the night away to big band music at the 25th anniversary of the Charles County Senior Prom. The highlight of the evening was the crowning of the prom king and queen, M., Buck Proctor and Ms. Denise Legree. The event was hosted by the Greater Waldorf Jaycees.



Davis Named One of Top 100 Maryland Women for Third Time



Inducted into the "Circle of Excellence"



Charles County Commissioner Vice President Debra M. Davis, Esq. (District 2) has been named one of the Top 100 Women in the state of Maryland by The Daily Record for the third time. The Daily Record's Top 100 Women spotlights Maryland women who make a difference through leadership, community service, and mentoring.



"I am proud to stand with women leaders driving positive change in their communities and throughout the state," said Davis.



She is recognized as one of fifteen women in the state for the 2016 Top 100 Women's special honor, the Circle of Excellence, for sustained commitment to professional achievement and leadership.



Davis is a local practicing attorney, and currently serving her second term on the Charles County Board of Commissioners. She serves on several statewide, regional, and local boards. She is currently the chair of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland and the Local Government Insurance Trust. She is past-president of the Prince George's County Bar Association, an organization of more than 1,200 lawyers and judges who live and/or practice law in Prince George's County. She is past president and a member of the J. Franklyn Bourne Bar Association, and a member of the American Bar Association, Maryland State Bar Association, Prince George's County Bar Association, Salome A. Howard Bar Association, and Zonta International of Charles County.



"I am glad Commissioner Davis' leadership and service to our community has not gone unnoticed, and I congratulate her on this prestigious recognition," said Commissioner President Peter F. Murphy.



Davis spearheaded several initiatives including: the Charles County intern program; the county's civility code; the Western Charles County Business Roundtable; and the Charles County 2020 Vision program, a comprehensive, long-term plan to address poverty in rural areas.



Davis will be honored at an awards reception on Monday, April 18 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.



County Administrator Announces Organizational Changes



County Administrator Michael D. Mallinoff today announced organizational changes to improve overall county government operations and services to residents. In the coming weeks, a new county departmentthe Department of Recreation, Parks, and Tourismwill be created. Several changes will also occur in the Departments of Public Works, Planning and Growth Management, and Community Services.



"This reorganization brings similar county government functions together by realigning existing divisions and creating a new department. The changes will greatly improve efficiency and interaction, and bring Charles County Government's structure in line with other jurisdictions of similar size and service scope," said Mallinoff. "After touring the county and meeting with the Commissioners, department directors, and staff, and reviewing other county government structures, it was determined that reorganization would be the best way to structure our staff and skills to meet the short- and long-range goals the Commissioners have established for our community. These changes set the foundation for a more effective and efficient county government now and in years to come."



New Department of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism



The Recreation Division, Parks and Grounds Division, and the Tourism Office will move from their current departments to form a newly created county departmentthe Department of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism. Eileen Minnick, currently director of the Department of Community Services, will serve as director of the new department. Sam Drury will continue to head the Recreation Division. Recruiting for a chief of Tourism and chief of Parks and Grounds is currently underway. A new director will be hired to oversee the Department of Community Services, consisting of: Aging and Senior Programs Division, Housing Division, Vision 2020 Program, Local Management Board, and the Child Care Center.



"Charles County has been unique in having Recreation, Parks, and Tourism located within separate departments. The development of the new Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Department will bring together, under one roof, three dynamic divisions. This perfect pairing will formulate great synergies and teamwork. I am extremely honored to lead this new team of exceptional staff forward as we continue to provide increased opportunities for residents and visitors to our county," said Minnick.



Capital Services Moving to Public Works



The Capital Services Division will move from the Department of Planning and Growth Management to the Department of Public Works. Capital Services will be one of three major areas within Public Works, along with Utilities and Public Facilities. John Stevens will remain chief of Capital Services.



"This change will allow more sharing of resources to efficiently meet the growing needs of the county and improve staff's ability to work together as a team in resolving common project issues," said Public Works Director Bill Shreve.



Transportation Moving to Planning and Growth Management



The Transportation and Community Programs Division within the Department of Community Services will be restructured. Transportation, which provides general public transit through VanGO, will move from Community Services to the Department of Planning and Growth Management. This change will allow for better coordination of public transit services alongside long-range transportation projects. Jeffry Barnett will remain chief of Transportation.



"Sound transportation planning benefits from integration of the planning function with the delivery of transportation services. This change will help Charles County better coordinate these roles and deliver services," said Peter Aluotto, director of Planning and Growth Management.



"I am excited about the operational and structural changes we are implementing to better serve Charles County residents. Realigning similar functions into a new structure will enhance collaboration within county government and makes good business sense," said Commissioner President Peter Murphy.



The Department of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism, and the Department of Community Services will both be located at the county building at 8190 Port Tobacco Road in Port Tobacco. The Transportation Division will move to the County Government Building at 200 Baltimore Street in La Plata. The Capital Services Division will move to the Audie Lane complex located in La Plata off Radio Station Road.



Annual Caregivers' Conference Scheduled for April 22



The 24th Annual Southern Maryland Caregivers' Conference is being held Friday, April 22, 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., at the Richard R. Clark Senior Center (1210 Charles St, La Plata). This one-day event is designed for the family caregiver to gain knowledge and skills in caring for older people.



The $30 conference fee includes a continental breakfast, lunch, conference materials, exposure to service providers in the exhibition area, and the opportunity to attend professionally presented educational sessions on the following topics:



 Planning for caregiving



 Understanding Medicare, Medicaid and the costs of long term care



 Community based services



 Activities for persons with dementia



 Stress Management



 End of life decision making



 Hospice



 Palliative Care



 Medication Management



 Oral Health and the older adult



 Safe caregiving at home



 Diabetes Management



 Treating Depression



 Mental health first aid for the older adult



 Keeping fit and caregiving



The conference is sponsored by the Charles County Department of Community Services, Aging and Senior Programs Division, and the Geriatrics and Gerontology Education and Research Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.



Pre-registration and payment is required by Friday, April 8. For additional information or to register, contact Cindy Olmsted, Long-Term Care Coordinator at 301-934-0128 or OlmstedC@CharlesCountyMd.gov. Those citizens with special needs please contact the Maryland Relay Service at 711, or Relay Service TDD: 800-735-2258.
Great Mills Pool to Reopen March 19



The Great Mills Swimming Pool will reopen for normal operation on Saturday, March 19.



Recreation and Parks wishes to thank the public for its patience while mechanical repairs were being made. The pool has a new water heater installed. In the next 24 hours, the water temperature will be brought back to an appropriate level for public use.



For more information or questions please contact Recreation & Parks at 301-475-4200, ext. *1800.



Skunk in Loveville Neighborhood Tests Positive for Rabies



The St. Mary's County Health Department is reporting a skunk in the Loveville area has tested positive for rabies. Test results were confirmed by the State's laboratory at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in Baltimore. It has been reported that a dog of unknown ownership had contact with the affected skunk. No description of the dog is available.



Pet owners in the Loveville area are advised to examine their animals for bites, scratches or wounds of unknown origin and report suspect injuries to St. Mary's County Animal Control at 301-475-8018. Residents are asked to report any animal exposures involving humans to the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office at 301-475-8008.



Rabies is a preventable viral disease, most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal. The health department investigates reports of animal bites and, based on the outcome of the investigation, refers the affected person(s) to the hospital's emergency department or to their primary health care provider for treatment and vaccination.



For more information about rabies and the rabies vaccination clinics, visit the health department's website at www.smchd.org.



St. Mary's County Economic Development to Partner with The Patuxent Partnership and Chamber of Commerce for April 5 Event



Brown Bag discussion to focus on importance of Education and Economic Development



Perhaps no one understands the important relationship between education and economic development more than University System of Maryland (USM) Chancellor, Robert Caret, and Maryland Secretary of Commerce, Mike Gill. They have known one another for many years and have seen first-hand how education affects economic development. Both have worked with community leaders, educators and elected officials to make this connection. Simply stated, you cannot have economic growth and development without education.



The Patuxent Partnership, in collaboration with the St. Mary's County Department of Economic Development and the St. Mary's County Chamber of Commerce, will host Chancellor Caret and Secretary Gill during a "Brown Bag," Tuesday, April 5, beginning at noon, at the Bay District Volunteer Fire Department Social Hall in Lexington Park.



This is an opportunity for the business community, the Navy and our academic institutions to learn, discuss and consider how the critical connection between education and economic development will help Southern Maryland grow and diversify its economy. With support from programs such as cyber security at the College of Southern Maryland, physics at St. Mary's College of Maryland and mechanical and electrical engineering taught locally by the University of Maryland, College Park. What will it mean for our economy in the next 10 years?



Maryland consistently ranks as the top state in the nation in terms of technically skilled workers and its highly educated workforce. This highly skilled labor pool is due to having one of the nation's top-rated public school systems and more than 55 accredited institutions of higher learning in the state. USM, with its 11 campuses, including its College Park flagship campus, is nationally ranked for its business entrepreneurship, engineering and information technology and cybersecurity curricula. It is a renowned research institution, as well.



There is no cost to attend this program. Advance registration is requested. To register, please visit www.paxpartnership.org.



The Patuxent Partnership works with government, industry and academia on initiatives in science and technology, hosts programs of interest to NAVAIR and the broader DoD community, and supports workforce development including education initiatives and professional development. Visit www.paxpartnership.org or call 301-866-1739.



Transforming Military Veterans into Successful Business Owners



Project Opportunity, a free entrepreneurship class for veterans, is returning to the Southern Maryland Region this spring, thanks to a partnership with the St. Mary's County Office of Economic Development, the Calvert County Department of Economic Development, the Southern Region Small Business Development Center, and the Southern Maryland Job Source.



Project Opportunity is a 10-week intensive course that offers training, outreach services, technical assistance and financing opportunities to veterans who are considering starting a business or expanding their current small business. Coursework covers everything from fine tuning a business plan to locating resources and launching a business.



"The partnerships formed to put this year's class together and the enthusiasm of these partners speaks extremely well for the community's commitment to veterans in Southern Maryland," stated Joe Giordano, founder of Project Opportunity. He's excited to provide a third session of Project Opportunity to the Southern Maryland veteran population. "I look forward to continuing this partnership and, hopefully, to be able to offer this training on an annual basis," Additional financial support has been provided by Rollout Systems, American Legion Post # 82, Facchina, and AMEWAS.



Giordano, a retired U.S. Army Master Sergeant, started Project Opportunity on the Eastern Shore in 2010. Since then Giordano and his team have successfully worked with over 150 veterans.



A Project Opportunity orientation session will be held on March 22, 2016 in the Russell Conference Room of the Carter Staff Office Building, 23110 Leonard Hall Drive in Leonardtown. The session begins at 6:30 p.m. Space is limited and interested veterans should visit the Project Opportunity website at www.project-opportunity.com to register.
The Special Education Department of Calvert County Public Schools (CCPS) and the Special Education Citizens' Advisory Council (SECAC) will host the annual Transition Fair on Tuesday, April 19, 2016. The event will take place at Huntingtown High School from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.The Transition Fair provides information and assistance to students with disabilities and their families to prepare them for the transitions from elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and-the most significant area of focus-from high school to post-secondary life, including independent living, employment and college. Families may choose from among several break-out sessions and talk to representatives from adult service providers, advocacy groups and other agencies.Christina Harris, Director of Special Education, said, "We all experienced challenges when we transitioned from elementary to middle school, then from middle school to high school, and then again when we moved from high school to college or the world of work. Imagine how these challenges are multiplied if you have any difficulties with language, learning or social skills! The SECAC/Special Education Transition Fair helps to prepare our students and families to better anticipate and overcome these life changes. It's like a one-stop shop to help families access a variety of resources available in and around the Calvert County area."Families are asked to RSVP to parentconnections@calvertnet.k12.md.us or call 410-535-7387 and notify staff if they will need child care during the event.CCPS offers additional transition supports for high school students in partnership with the College of Southern Maryland. In April, rising juniors and seniors with disabilities have the opportunity to travel to the Prince Frederick campus for the annual "Try College for a Day." Students visit classes and experience a day as a college student. In June, these students and their families are invited to visit the Prince Frederick campus for the Southern Maryland/Tri-County Transition Expo, another opportunity to learn about resources for the transition from high school to adult living.At the March 10, 2016 meeting, the Board of Education of Calvert County Public Schools approved two calendar adjustments. The Board of Education Meeting scheduled for March 24, 2016 is cancelled. The Board reserved March 31 as a possible meeting should they need to meet to modify the budget. April 26, 2016 (Primary Election Day) will be a professional development day for staff. This day will replace the February 10 professional development day that became an instructional day as a result of closures for inclement weather.The Carson Scholars Fund is pleased to announce that four students in Calvert County Public Schools have been named first-time Carson Scholars in 2016. In addition, eleven students are repeat winners.The first-time winners are: Kristen Almuete, Grade 11, Calvert High; Koy Greenwell, Grade 6, Windy Hill Middle; Nevaeh Martin, Grade 6, St. Leonard Elementary; and Hayley Spicknall, Grade 4, Barstow Elementary.The repeat winners are: Chyrissa DeSantis, Grade 6, Plum Point Middle; Alayna Eyman, Grade 5, Calvert Elementary; Alexandra Knudson, Grade 10, Huntingtown High; Morgan Lennon, Grade 10, Huntingtown High; Rachael Meador, Grade 12, Northern High; Michael Metler, Grade 12, Northern High; Natalie Reardon, Grade 10, Calvert High; Tory Ridgeway, Grade 7, Windy Hill Middle; Daniel Waldheim, Grade 10, Patuxent High; Ashley Whicher, Grade 7, Southern Middle; and Kyle Wojciechowski, Grade 6, Southern Middle.Each year, the Carson Scholars Fund recognizes a select group of high achieving students in grades 411 who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and humanitarian qualities. Students receive a $1,000 college scholarship award and the honor of being named a Carson Scholar.Nationwide, 625 students have been named Carson Scholars in 2016, the 20th anniversary of the organization. In addition, 841 students have renewed their Carson Scholar status. These recognized winners have maintained high academic standards and a strong commitment to their communities. This year represents both the largest grant of new scholarships and the largest group of recognized scholars in the history of the program.
Calvert County Commissioner Pat Nutter provides opening remarks during the grand opening of the Harriet Elizabeth Brown Interim Community Center. (Photo: Calvert Co. Government)

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

(March 18, 2016)Prince Frederick's new community center, bearing the name of Calvert County's favorite daughter Harriet Elizabeth Brown, opened March 1 to applause and speeches from her descendants, community leaders and government officials.Brown was a teacher in Calvert County in the 1930s when she successfully fought a landmark legal battle for equal pay for African-American teachers with the help of her attorney Thurgood Marshall. Learn more about Brown and her profound impact on history at the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame.The center is located at 901 Dares Beach Road. Amenities include a game room with a pool table and foosball table, a computer lab, two dance and fitness center rooms and a large multipurpose room. Center hours are Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. For more information, call Calvert County Parks and Recreation at 410-535-1600, ext. 2649.
The experiences, ideas, and perspectives of the African-American community contribute to the vitality and success of the American experience.

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Every February we celebrate National African-American History Month in the United States  a time to reflect on the enormous hardships faced by generations of African-Americans, but also an opportunity to celebrate their enormous contributions to the success of our nation. The United States would not be the country it is today without the strength, determination, faith, creativity and drive of its African-American countrymen. The experiences, ideas, and perspectives of the African-American community contribute to the vitality and success of the American experience.

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In the early 20th century, most African-Americans lived in the rural American South. Facing entrenched racism, segregation, and economic marginalization, over 6 million people migrated north in search of a better life. Like the millions of Europeans who emigrated from Slovakia and Central Europe, African-Americans found better economic opportunities in cities like Chicago, New York and Detroit, where World War I had caused labor shortages. African-Americans joined side by side with European immigrants to work in steel mills, on railroads, in meatpacking plants, and in the automobile industry, turning America into the greatest industrial power on the planet.

At the same time, African-Americans brought with them their music and art, their food, their style of worship, and their sense of community, and in the process re-shaped Americas own identity and its vision of itself. Today if we think about many elements of American popular culture, they have their roots in African-American culture.

Rock and Roll music grew out of the Blues of the deep south, with world-famous musicians such as Elvis Presley being inspired by unheralded men such as Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters. Today hip-hop and Rhythm and Blues dominate the airwaves. Contemporary fashion has been significantly influenced by African-Americans urban experience, while many of todays most popular comedians, actors and entertainers have African roots.

In spite of all these successes and contributions, we, as a nation, still struggle every day to overcome racism and intolerance. We are continually reminded both of how far we have come in accepting and integrating our African-American countrymen, but also of how far we yet to go. However, as the poet and author James Baldwin once wrote, Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

From Chuck Berry to Beyonce Knowles, from Ralph Ellison to Toni Morrison, and from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Barack Obama, African-Americans have left an indelible mark on the American experience. This month, we celebrate their contributions to our country and to the world, and hope the experience of their community can serve as an example for societies everywhere. As President Obama has said, we must remain actively focused on ensuring equal opportunity, openness, and inclusiveness. No matter who someone is, what someone looks like, or where someone comes from, they deserve the same opportunity to thrive. As the President said, Where you start should not determine where you end up.

By Liam Wasley, Charge d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Slovakia
Even the scientific community is not clear about why we should have any sociologists and political scientists at all when we are missing turners and braziers.

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THE WAY the world media bid farewell to Umberto Eco, showed us little Slovaks burdened with the hate towards people educated in humanities, what intellectuals and artists are good for.

That does not mean that every teacher, writer, and graphic designer will have the right for the same kind of ovations after death, nor that we are all equally talented. But it does paint a certain comprehensible picture of what the mission of an educated person is and what the humanities are about.

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Intelligentsia and parasites

At the time when Nobel Prize laureates were saying goodbye to the Italian lover of comics, occult literature, blasphemist, pamphletist, and author of a postmodern novel that raises its own reader, Slovakia was shaking with a new wave of hatred towards teachers.

As I was reading the obscenities and primitivisms that were addressed to them, accusations that theyve got three months of holidays, that they are doing nothing, that they teach four hours a day, that they should go work in a factory to see what real work is like; I remembered once again (like I did during the strike of medical doctors) the testimonies from the 1950s about humiliation of those who were educated, and the times when intellectuals were divided into the working intelligentsia and the parasites.

The emancipation of the inhabitants of the onetime upper Hungary started thanks to poets, theologians, writers, and we like to label ourselves the country of Proglas and the Word, which we decorate with some ethnic-magical qualities in the chauvinist pathos. Despite that, in reality we are unable to understand and appreciate the creative activity and mission of humanities.

At best we consider them a romantic pendant of a so-called real, exact science, which measures, calculates, renders, and researches; at worst a way for lazy people to be able to pretend theyre working.

Part of the public does not connect things like literary research, or art exhibitions, with work, but rather with some more or less well-made excuse of those who despite uranium mines in Jachymov, concentration camps, and gulags, continue suffering from a mental disorder that makes them believe their lack of exact thinking and their doubts are a full-fledged activity for adult people.

Eco was exceptional

It is hard to understand the self-confidence that the fools display when commenting on the experimental broadcasting of radio Devin, or an exhibition of conceptual art. Who could say they havent heard people utter in an art gallery that my daughter could have done that as well or in the theatre about an actress she looks like a whore, we should have gone to see something else.

On the day when even the big Slovak dailies ran the pictures of the heretic semiotic on their front pages, I almost felt ashamed.

A photograph of a writer on the front page is a hard-to-understand provocation in a country where art gets no considerable attention; where important shows, compositions, and books emerge not thanks to, but despite the atmosphere in the society; where a regional governor dares to label a public theatre performance pervert; where programmes about art are doomed to be broadcast only after 10 pm (with the exception of public-service radio and television), because it is only logical that lazy intellectuals do not work during the day and can thus wait till night for the performing part of the population to finish watching their demented TV series.

In truth, Eco was not just any intellectual hated by the local pub in Klenovec; he was a professor, thats something like a medical doctor, he liked the booze, he liked eating and drinking, he was, how to put it, our man. He simply did well, unlike that snob Visconti, in mingling with us; now and then he seemed like a well-meaning old fellow who gives a free merry-go-round ride to you and your girlfriend at the fair.

There was no mannerism, as we imagine it, in him, he simply wasnt an affected queer that we see at exhibition openings and fashion shows. As a specialist on meaning and symbols, Eco managed to navigate through all strata of the Italian society.

And now for that unfortunate thing. Where did we get it from, who taught us to hate the educated people so much, to call them impractical, barely in their right mind, unable to work even as a warehouseman in a Chinese heroin warehouse therefore forced to be occupied with transitive verbs in English poetry in the second half of the 17th century?

What on earth is that job that those people do, what do they do when they come to their office, to their research institute for researching words and languages, or design, or lace, or Flemish art, or the influence of porn on lowering the nuclear tension in the world?

And weve got the answers. The internet raff know that these losers belong to gas chambers, to factories, to jail  because theyre frauds like Toufar, or drug addicts like Baudelaire, even though they dont know him, but if they happened to read him by chance, they would say that even their turtle could write such nonsense as well.

Hate and mistrust

At higher levels, hate turns into mistrust. The dispute over the character of the research at the Slovak Academy of Sciences has for years circled around the question of how to turn humanities into something that could be used, for instance, in the automotive industry. They could for instance proofread the manuals for the installation of a ski rack on a car roof; or, in case they harbour more creative ambitions, they could even create funny bumper stickers.

Even the scientific community is not clear about why we should have any sociologists and political scientists at all when we are missing turners and braziers.

It could look like a class war for money, but Slovakia is too small for us to be able to afford cultivating hate towards educated people. Thanks to them this country exists, they invented it in the past, they filled it with certain content, they attempted to make it exceptional, even though they terribly failed to do the latter.

There is nothing we need now and in the future more than humanities. Thanks to them we understand why we are here of all places, why we do what we do, what the generations before us were doing, how we will or wont be able to keep up their work, how much we are able to move our abstract thinking further than the idea of sex with the girl next door.

Developing humanities-style thinking and our cognitive abilities is the best testimony about the state of the society. Thanks to poets we know how Greeks and Vikings and Romans and Slavs lived; thanks to literature we know about the development of ethics, morals, and mainly language.

The lack of ability to appreciate the work of educated people is the underestimated despicable quality of Slovakia that holds us back more than the lack or the excess of capital and investments.

Michal Havran is a theologian, editor-in-chief of jetotak.sk. This opinion piece was first published in the Sme daily on March 3.
Coalition government is in fact the default state for Slovakia. The problem for Mr Fico, and indeed everyone else, is that this time the numbers barely add up: the simple arithmetic of 2006 has become the advanced calculus of 2016.

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FOR those of you who were not paying attention on March 5, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the finest electoral train wreck of recent memory. The following survivors are still picking up the pieces...

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Smer (49 seats). The party of certainties, whose four years in sole charge of the country revealed its iron discipline and intellectual vacuity, lost a third of its support, but remains the largest party. After warning of a zlepenec (hodge-podge) government, that is precisely what it will lead. Despite its ugly appeals to chauvinism and the imminent supposed dangers of migration, barely a peep on that subject has been heard since the ballots closed.

SaS (21) and OLaNO-NOVA (19). Now in theory, these parties are separate. But since the former spawned the latter, we shall group them together. Each has a prima donna-ish leader (OLaNO-NOVA has two!), multiple internal factions, and a record of trouble-making and ill-discipline which would make any coalition involving either (or, heaven forbid, both) of them very tricky to hold together. SaS leader Richard Suliks quixotic decision to vote down his own government in 2011 set the scene for Smers victory in 2012, and still rankles with many on the right.

#Siet (10). Talking of prima donnas, even the unshakeable self-confidence of leader Radoslav Prochazka took a visible battering on election night after the 92(!) journalists accredited to the partys HQ began to realise that there would be no victory speech, or even an appearance from the leader. After barely scraping into parliament, this collection of rebranded Christian Democrats will, ironically, need every bit of Mr Prochazkas messiah-complex to achieve relevance.

Slovak National Party (15). Responsible for a series of outrageous scandals in ministries that it controlled in the 1990s and again in 2006-10. A long record of repellent anti-Roma and anti-Hungarian slurs? Check. But never fear, it has now been anointed a normal party by Smer leader Robert Fico. It would have to try quite hard to stay out of government, but unfortunately wont.

Most-Hid (11). Bela Bugars Hungarian-Slovak party is still mostly Hungarian, but could not, even at the third attempt, hoover up the 4+ percent of votes that went again to its nemesis, the Hungarian Community Party (SMK), which remains outside parliament. As the ethnic-Hungarian vote is the most reliable thing in Slovak politics, this is a major problem for Most-Hid. Can it survive the electoral poison of working with Smer, let alone the SNS?

Kotleba  Peoples Party Our Slovakia (14). Honestly, words fail me. Except to note that it is telling how many of Mr Kotlebas supporters were unwilling to admit their intentions before the election.

Note to Robert Well protect you Fico: if youre the kind of voter that thinks we should really start building walls and camps, then who you gonna call? The social democrats? I dont think so.

We Are Family  Boris Kollar (11). Now, voting for not-very-neo-Nazis might make sense to people who go for men in uniform. But who exactly does Boris appeal to? Scarf-wearers? There must be a lot of them (172,860, to be precise). Since the election, the tabloids have been full of photos of the oligarch carousing with a notorious Bratislava mafioso (currently incarcerated). A former squeeze, now an MP, has been dubbed the black widow: Boris is almost unique among her lovers in not having been murdered or imprisoned. There is almost certainly more of this to come.

Among the casualties were the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), which had been in parliament since 1990 but fell just 1,600 votes short of winning seats. It must be cursing Mr Sulik: it would have retained the health ministry were it not for his antics in 2011, and might perhaps have kept more of its elderly supporters alive long enough to vote in this election.

The demise of the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU), once the intellectual powerhouse of Slovak politics, was pitiful. When the first official results were released on election night, with just over 10 percent of precincts reporting, the party had recorded a grand total of 3 votes in the whole of Nitra Region (population: approx. 700,000), until recently one of its power-bases.

In June 2006, a headline in The Slovak Spectator, following that years election, announced: No easy equations in coalition math.

As it turned out, Robert Fico quickly cut a deal with a populist former prime minister and the nationalists, weathered a flurry of criticism from social democrats elsewhere in Europe, and entered government for the first time.

Coalition government is in fact the default state for Slovakia. The problem for Mr Fico, and indeed everyone else, is that this time the numbers barely add up: the simple arithmetic of 2006 has become the advanced calculus of 2016. The compromises required to govern this time will be even more unattractive.
Heineken Slovensko gets top Via Bona award for big firms

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HEINEKEN Slovensko, a division of the global brewing giant, says its wants to be the most ecological brewery in Slovakia by 2020, an aim that helped the company win the Via Bona award from the Pontis Foundation in the Responsible Large Corporation category.

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Based in Hurbanovo (Nitra Region), Heineken Slovensko officials say they focus on six crucial areas: the protection of water resources, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, the use of local sustainable sources, the support of responsible beer drinking, the development of its employees, the protection of their health and safety, and the development of local communities.

Green technologies preferred

In past years we have invested more than 10 million into green technologies, Heineken spokeswoman Hana Simkova said.

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Read also: Pontis awards responsible firms Read more

One of the gases which emerge during beer production is carbon dioxide. To reduce its presence in the atmosphere, the company installed a device to collect it and to use it when saturating the beer during its packing.

In addition, the company has its own sewage water treatment plant and the biogas produced during the treatment process is then used for producing electricity.

Heineken also tries to collaborate with local suppliers. Of together 1,200 suppliers, 1,000 come from Slovakia.

Friendly to the environment

The company also tries to motivate its suppliers to use environmentally friendly vehicles, by applying the so-called green rules in 2015 that gives priority to logistic firms using more ecologic vehicles.

Additionally, it tries to reduce the mileage of not fully loaded vehicles, and emissions. To do so, it uses the services of combined truck-train-truck transport to import beers from the Netherlands.

Every employee in Heineken has his or her own personal development plan and possesses all information about salary conditions, Simkova said. This means they do not know only their wage and wage class, but also the maximum amount of variable wage component, wage range and basic information about wage hike.

The protection of health and safety of our employees is extremely important for us, she said. Thus we devote more attention to this topic via communication and training.

Volunteering activities

The brewery tries to behave responsibly also towards communities. It regularly attends the biggest volunteering event in Slovakia, Our Town.

Moreover, it launched a grant programme titled We are at home here, through which it helps improve Hurbanovo. The aim of the programme, prepared in cooperation with Nitra Community Foundation and local authority, is to support the public activities of the towns inhabitants. The company allocated 29,700 for 10 projects last year.

In addition, Heineken focuses on the environment via the Peace beyond the town project, with which it protects and refines green areas in towns across Slovakia.

People at Heineken are also aware of the negative consequences of drinking beer, including health, social and economic problems, and thus spread information about why it is important to be careful, Simkova said.

Moreover, when promoting its products, the company observes ethical rules which are often tougher than the law. It, for example, does not place its advertisements close to kindergartens, schools and medical facilities. Moreover, it uses only actors older than 25 years of age, and does not broadcast the ads during programmes for children.

By Viktoria Botosova and Radka Minarechova
PARIS-French Association of Friends of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (AARASD) called on Monday in Paris Morocco to "urgently" engage in negotiation with the Polisario Front, "instead of invective and blackmail."

The AARASD said in a letter that the King of Morocco Mohamed VI "should reasonably consider the deadlock his country reached," adding that "after 40 years, Morocco, mainly its kings Hassan II and Mohamed VI, persists in imposing to international community the fact that Western Sahara is part of Morocco."

The AARASD recalled that the African Union (AU) firmly militates in favour of the decolonization of Western Sahara () and the Court of Justice of the European Union denounced in December the EU-Morocco trade agreement on agricultural and fishery products as it includes occupied Western Sahara.

Besides, the association evoked the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's visit to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf and the liberated territories of Western Sahara (Bir Lahlou) to show that after this visit, "the international community does no more listen to Makhzen."

"After losing the tolerated status of administrating power, Morocco is clearly designed as an occupying power" that benefits from "the support of France."
Shahid El Hafed (Refugee Camps), 6 March 2016 (SPS) - The Sahrawi coordinator at the United Nations Mission for Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) Mohammed Kheddad said Friday, in Shahid El Hafed, that the Sahrawi people hope that the negotiations for the settlement of the conflict in Western Sahara will be relaunched before the end of Ban Ki-moons term as UN secretary general.

In a press briefing after the meeting of the Sahrawi officials with the United nations Secretary General, on a tour to the region, Kheddad affirmed that the Sahrawi people can no longer wait and hope the relaunch of negotiations with the Moroccan side before the end of Bans terms as UN secretary general.

He underlined that the Sahrawi side remains committed to supporting UNs efforts for the resolution of the conflict in Western Sahara, hoping that UN secretary generals visit to the region will be a positive turning point for the Sahrawi cause.

Ban Ki-moon, who arrived Saturday in the Sahrawi refugee camps, started his tour across the region from Nouakchott. (SPS)

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Algiers , March 18, 2016 (SPS) -The United Nations Secretary General's Ban ki-moon's visit to the Sahrawi occupied territories and the Sahrawi refugee camps, that revealed "the direct and open" between Morocco and the international community, and Morocco's attempts" to shirk away its commitments part of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991, the Sahrawi Foreign Ministry Mohamed Salem Ould Salek affirmed Wednesday.

The Sahrawi FM stated that Ban ki-Moon's recent visit to the region "reveals confrontation between Morocco and the international community, because of the illegal Moroccan occupation of some parties of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic's territories, its attempts to shirk away its commitments part of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991," the Sahrawi FM stressed at a conference held at the Embassy of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in Algiers.

"Morocco seeks to undermine the UN resolution plan for the self-determination referendum. Therefore, it is isolated regionally, continentally and internationally," affirmed the Sahrawi official, adding that "Morocco's attempts to undermine the efforts of the international community for decolonization of the last colony in Africa and its rejection to conform to the peace agreement inked with the Sahrawi party and the international legality, tainted it with the status of the Apartheid system in South Africa."

Some powers "immorally support" occupation

The "direct and open confrontation" between the Moroccan occupier and the international community are the result of Morocco's attempts to undermine the self-determination referendum in Western Sahara. France, permanent member of the Security Council, "immorally supports" Morocco, he recalled.

"Morocco benefits from shameful and irresponsible indulgence of Spain, widely recognized as an administrating power of Western Sahara, in accordance with the UN charter and provisions of the judicial notice of the UN in 2002," Ould Salek stated.

This position of France and Spain has undermined the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, established by the UN to hold the self-determination referendum, six months after the entry into force of the ceasefire agreement, in accordance with the provisions of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991," Ould Salek stated.SPS

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ALGIERS-The United Nations Secretary General's Ban ki-moon's visit to the Sahrawi occupied territories and the Sahrawi refugee camps, that revealed "the direct and open" between Morocco and the international community, and Morocco's attempts" to shirk away its commitments part of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991, the Sahrawi Foreign Ministry Mohamed Salem Ould Salek affirmed Wednesday.

The Sahrawi FM stated that Ban ki-Moon's recent visit to the region "reveals confrontation between Morocco and the international community, because of the illegal Moroccan occupation of some parties of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic's territories, its attempts to shirk away its commitments part of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991," the Sahrawi FM stressed at a conference held at the Embassy of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in Algiers.

"Morocco seeks to undermine the UN resolution plan for the self-determination referendum. Therefore, it is isolated regionally, continentally and internationally," affirmed the Sahrawi official, adding that "Morocco's attempts to undermine the efforts of the international community for decolonization of the last colony in Africa and its rejection to conform to the peace agreement inked with the Sahrawi party and the international legality, tainted it with the status of the Apartheid system in South Africa."

Some powers "immorally support" occupation

The "direct and open confrontation" between the Moroccan occupier and the international community are the result of Morocco's attempts to undermine the self-determination referendum in Western Sahara. France, permanent member of the Security Council, "immorally supports" Morocco, he recalled.

"Morocco benefits from shameful and irresponsible indulgence of Spain, widely recognized as an administrating power of Western Sahara, in accordance with the UN charter and provisions of the judicial notice of the UN in 2002," Ould Salek stated.

This position of France and Spain has undermined the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, established by the UN to hold the self-determination referendum, six months after the entry into force of the ceasefire agreement, in accordance with the provisions of the UN-AU resolution plan of 1991," Ould Salek stated.
He noted the wide-ranging nature of the sanctions is well thought out, but unless they "gain access" to North Koreas inner circle, the sanctions will be meaningless.

"The government in Pyongyang has been able to survive and it still holds the allegiance of its key cadres,"

Above all else, Pyongyang still retained the power of fear over its people, Winnie added.

"The people and elites are fearful of revolting as they know that the regime will ruthlessly target their families too," he pointed out.

However, the new sanctions, if successfully enforced, could prove significant in slowing or blocking North Koreas efforts to acquire advanced technology from the outside world needed to continue its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile development programs, Winnie noted.

"The sanctions will stop North Koreas ability to advance work on their long range missiles. The sanctions follow the pattern set by the United Nations Security Council. They imposed some of the toughest sanctions in decades on the Pyongyang regime."

But the US government would have to swallow its pride and be ready to compromise with Moscow, Beijing and Brussels in developing an effective global partnership to make the sanctions credible, Winnie urged.

"The aim here is that everyone is in the same place. The United States cannot go it alone on enforcement. You have to work with the European Union and China. International cooperation is essential. You have got to sever their ability to engage with other countries."

The record of sanctions imposed on North Korea in recent decades suggested that even energetically-enforced and punitive measures were unlikely to seriously threaten a well-established regime, University of Northern Ohio Assistant Professor of History Robert Waters told Sputnik.

"My conclusion is that sanctions work against our friends. Against our enemies? Not so well," he said. "North Korea hardly notices since Kim and his crew live in isolation from their people: A large and a half-starved people are easier to control."

Against well-established regimes with strong coercive internal security services, the impact of sanctions was likely to remain marginal, Waters concluded.
Former US diplomat James George Jatras warned that unilateral penalties imposed in an executive order signed by President Barack Obama could prove counterproductive.

"It evidently doesnt occur to anyone in the Obama administration that North Korea needs to stop being our problem and should be the regional concern, primarily of China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, with the US playing a secondary and supportive role," he observed.

Jatras explained that the sanctions strategy, regardless of being expanded to affect different sectors and entities to weaken and punish North Korea, has always backfired in the past and only resulted in strengthening the regimes against which they were targeted.

"A North Korean collapse [is] presumably the intended goal of the sanctions, though that never seems to work: Look at Cuba, Iraq, Iran [and] Russia," he said.

Coupled with US military build-ups and exercises on the Korean peninsula, sanctions have only driven Pyongyang into even more hardline positions and alarmed China to increase support for a North Korean regime it otherwise distrusted, Jatras, a former adviser for Republican leaders in the US Senate, explained.

"In the event of a North Korean collapse a reunification of the peninsula under a Seoul government allied with the United States means, for China, the prospect of American troops on the Yalu. That outcome is one Beijing will never permit to occur," he pointed out.

China sided with the United States by voting for the UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea earlier this month. But when the US followed with additional sanctions of its own on Wednesday, China immediately criticized the United States for acting unilaterally.

The UN sanctions will require international inspectors to certify that all ships entering and leaving North Korean ports to be certified free of weapons. The US sanctions go further, allowing for all individuals who do business with North Korea to be blacklisted  a step that effectively ends access to the international banking system.

Kuo noted that the United States has consistently sought Chinas help in persuading its longtime ally to soften its threatening posture, with minimal success. As North Koreas main source of food and oil, China has plenty of leverage over North Korea, he said.

"The issue is not in terms of economics or logistics. Its about politics," Kuo explained. "Does China actually want to exercise their influence? Right now thats highly unlikely."

"Nothing thus far has significantly changed Chinese incentives on its North Korea policy. From China's perspective, Kuo said, they prefer to have a stable government in Pyongyang, even if it is a nuclear power."

Moves to penalize North Korea followed a February 7 ballistic missile launch and a January 6 nuclear test.
Situated in waters disputed between China, Taiwan, and the Philippines, Scarborough Shoal is now being seen by US government officials as the next potential site for increased Chinese activity in the South China Sea.

Admiral John Richardson, the US Navys chief of naval operations, reportedly expressed concern saying that there is increased Chinese surface ship activity near Scarborough Shoal.

Richardson said he didnt know if Chinese activity at the shoal had anything to do with the pending decision at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in Philippines v. China, a case filed by Manila that has asked the international court to rule on Chinas excessive maritime claims in the South China Sea, The Diplomat reported.
In June, the Federal Reserve is expected to hike borrowing costs higher, meaning potential chaos in Wall Streets shares trading. The banks might want to be well-prepared for another round of monetary tightening.

In a similar manner, Bank of America said Friday its board of directors agreed to buy back some $800 mln worth of the banks own stock, resulting in BofA shares gaining 3.6%. The broader bank sector index KBW added 2.43%.

During the past year before Friday, JPMorgan had lost 11% its stock value, BofA had suffered a 20% decline. That said, bank shares are now way cheaper than at any moment during the past several years, meaning now is also the right moment to overcome some excessive dilution in bank stocks, consolidating assets under a stricter corporate control. Shares dilution typically means a greater market volatility, and the banks, once bitten this January in the bloodbath of red, are twice shy before the Feds June rate hike.

Meanwhile, the US market regulators did not object the biggest US banks returning money to shareholders, although such massive buyback deals are usually subject to thorough scrutiny. Excessive concentration of shares is a potentially destabilizing factor to the markets, as a sudden voluntary sell-off may capsize the entire banking sector at once.

"There is a flexibility on the part of the regulators to listen to capital requests when things turn out better than expected," Charles Peabody of the New York-based Portales Partners LLC said.

The buyback deals, aside of improving Wall Street performance, are also an indication that despite the shrinking revenues, the banks still have enough capital to finance such ambitious ventures, effectively boosting market confidence of the entire financial sector. The Q1 earnings results will be a disappointment, so corporations are getting prepared.
After the Fukushima accident the experts said to the local people that it was safe and that the radiation leak was less than 100 millisieverts and that it would do no harm to the citizens. But it now seems that the experts may have underestimated the damage.

Parents were very concerned about the impact of radiation on childrens health, but could not talk openly about their concerns, leading to a stressful situation.

In October 2015, Toshihide Tsuda, professor of Okayama University, speaking to foreign correspondents in Tokyo held a press conference regarding the growth of thyroid cancer in children in Fukushima Prefecture and how the disease was related to radiation as a result of the nuclear accident.

According to Ban, the government does not recognize the link between these two phenomena. After all, it is very inconvenient for Japan's energy policy. The Japanese government, during the rule of the Democratic Party, spoke against increasing nuclear power but the situation changed with the advent of LDPJ, who took the decision to increase the nuclear power in the country.

In April 2014, the government of Japan approved a method to increase the production of nuclear energy in total by 20-22% by 2030, indicating intention to return to the policy of conservation of nuclear energy as it was previously.

Ban also mentioned that this is happening against the fact that 80% of the population supports the desertion of nuclear power plants altogether.

Only the government and nuclear industrialists are promoting nuclear power development. Right now we are seeing a distorted situation where the political reality does not reflect the public opinion.

However, implementation of the Basic Energy Development Plan is already facing certain difficulties, as was evidenced by the issuance of a temporary decision to stop the Takahama nuclear power plant on March 9. According to Hideyuki Ban, the energy development plan is likely to be revised in the next year.
A group of NGOs has discovered that French banking giants BNP Paribas, BPCE Group, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole and Credit Mutuel-CIC have all made extensive use of tax havens to channel a third of their profits through states with beneficial tax systems.

The group  Oxfam France, CCFD-Terre Solidaire, and Secours Catholique-Caritas  found that banks in France are relying heavily on tax havens to increase their profits, according to a study based on new data that for the first time allows a proper analysis of the role that tax havens play in European business.

The five banks investigated in the new study disclosed having 16 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands alone  with no staff  from which they still declare US$35 (45) million in profits.
MADRID (Sputnik)  A two-day European Council summit on migration opened in Brussels on Thursday. EU leaders are expected to reach an agreement on the EU-Turkey action plan that envisions a one-for-one exchange of undocumented migrants for approved refugees later on Friday.

"Things are better now than in the beginning," Rajoy told reporters, as broadcast by the European Commissions audiovisual services website. "And there will be no mass deportations, which would have contravened international law. Moreover, there will be an individual approach [taken] to people who apply for asylum."

Rajoy added that no final decision had been reached yet on the deal with Turkey.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Greece's Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis visited on Friday a refugee camp in the town of Idomeni near the border with Macedonia and compared the living conditions there to those in the Dachau concentration camp, operated by the Nazis in Germany during World War II.

"I do not hesitate to say that this is a modern Dachau," Kouroumplis told journalists, adding that the refugees there are suffering as a result of some European countries' decisions to close their borders.

Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. Many of them take the West Balkan route, which crosses Greece, using the county as an entry point into the bloc from which they travel onward to wealthier EU states where they intend to apply for asylum.
In her comments on Monday Merkel pointed out that Germans believed no appropriate and satisfactory solution to the refugee crisis had been found yet, and this had a very great impact on the vote.

However, Kai Arzheimer, professor of German politics and political sociology at the University of Mainz, has quite a positive stance to the issue, arguing that Merkel still has good chances to be reelected in 2017.

"I am pretty sure that she will run for another turn. If she was going to step down, she would have done so by now," Arzheimer said. "I think she has excellent chances to be re-elected," the expert added.
Stephenson said that he has not been dismissed from the university where he worked and that yesterday he gave lessons to his students via Skype.

He spoke about the peace petition that some 2,000 academics in Turkey signed because there was a peace process. It represented a great hope for Turkey and for that we have to thank people on all sides including people in the present government who are prepared to sit down at the table and seek an end to arm struggle and return to democratic politics.

The academic spoke about how this peace process was sadly abandoned and this signing of the peace process by the academics was an effort to return to that process.

It was treated as support of terrorism and that is quite wrong. Things that are being said now are quite wrong.

He further spoke about his life in Turkey and how despite the tension in the country he felt committed to Turkey, its people and his students.

Talking about the current statements of Erdogan, Stephenson said, This is a return to the ideas that were prevalent in Turkey in the 90s or 80s. I think they would now change the law, the definition of terrorism to include any form of expression of some idea which might be a common idea within an organization which is deemed to be a terrorist organization. This would definitely cut off debate in Turkey and make it much much more difficult to return to the path of peaceful political struggle rather than arm struggle which is now dominating the agenda on both sides and which is not a solution.

He further spoke about the steps he is taking to go back to Turkey. I will take this to the highest level to try and get this decision reversed. My legal struggle to return to Turkey is an expression of peace that I would continue to work for.
There are a lot of approaches and a lot of scientists are racking their brains over this. There is a bottom-up approach, when people attempt, step by step, to reproduce the structure of the brain, starting with neurons. I personally take a different line. It is essential to understand the fundamental principles that underlie our thinking and look for ways to convert them into specific models, even in neural networks.

I would describe this approach as both bottom-up and top-down at the same time. What is required is a combination of different approaches (functional, neural, symbolic and logical)  neither the highest, nor the lowest level approach, and there is a gap in between. We have theories describing human thinking on a high level  psychology, cognitive modeling, etc. There are models describing brain function on a lower, neuron, level. However, so far scientists have had little success dovetailing the two. Still, this is where a scientific breakthrough should be expected.

Since when has mankind been looking for systems similar to its own?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: The idea emerged since mankind emerged. Ancient philosophers always speculated about ways to understand and model a human being. However, the term "artificial intelligence" appeared in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference where a human intellect model development program was formulated.

Scientists planned to make this breakthrough soon, replacing man with machine in many areas of intellectual activity. This did not happen. It proved hard going. What seemed difficult turned out to be easy, and vice versa. The problem has still not been solved. It's all talk and no action, and people begin to think that the idea of artificial intelligence has discredited itself, moving into science fiction. Nevertheless, the fact is that we really are coming closer to this point. Today, we are already on the verge

Why does the computer need a human-thought equivalent in the first place?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: Artificial intelligence will make man's life easy, taking on a lot of functions. Let me give an example. In its time, the computer replaced the calculating machine, drawing board and musical instrument; the smartphone replaced the photo camera, voice recorder, computer and even pocket flashlight  all in one.

Now we should expect new software that will replace Photoshop, Word and all other applications, the only difference being that it will be able to understand exactly what you need. You will communicate with your computer or smartphone as you would with a person. That is, you will have mutual understanding with it not as with a tool but as with a partner and assistant. It will understand your emotions and goals, as well as the situation in the outside world. It is a kind of singularity, where all functionalities converge at one point, and this gives you a complete set of options.

How can a complicated biochemical process involving 100 billion neurons be reproduced artificially?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: This is the specific of our approach. We try to understand and reproduce the principles of information processing in the human brain, assuming that it is unnecessary to reproduce all neurons and ion channels to do so.

Let's take the hippocampus (the brain section responsible for memory). Its perception of space is based on a large population of neurons. If they are positioned on a certain plane according to certain rules, their aggregate activity will be focused on a single point with the coordinates X and Y. The question is: Do we have to reproduce millions of neurons, tens of thousands of connections between each of them and hundreds of thousands of millions of ion channels just to represent two numbers? There are more effective ways of doing this.

Needless to say, neural networks can solve certain problems with maximum efficiency. But do they have to be made biologically realistic? Is it necessary to make them identical to the human brain? I'm sure that existing computers, their parameters in terms of speed and memory volume, are already sufficient for creating humanoid intelligence. We simply do not know exactly how to do this yet. The problem is not related to hardware.

What about a flash genius? Creative urge? Insight? Will hardware ever be capable of this?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: As John von Neumann said, "If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that." If you can define precisely what "insight" is, then a John von Neumann will come forward who will write an algorithm based on this definition and give the world an "insightful" machine.

Imagine that tomorrow a computer will appear that you'll communicate with by phone via terminal. You will not know exactly who is sitting at the other end  man or machine. Supposing, after talking to it, you will say that it is a genius, and then it turns out that it was a computer. What will you do about that?

By the way, our international youth school for Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA), which will take place at NRNU MEPhI on April 21-24, will be attended by Professor Antonio Chella of the University of Palermo, the maker of the dancing robot Robodanza, which has a brilliant sense of human movements.

What are your scientific ambitions for the next few years? What is your vision of the more distant future?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: I can't look 100 years ahead. By that time, possibly, a quantum computer will appear and life will exist in different dimensions  in the direct and figurative sense of the word.

Within the next year and a half we at the NRNU MEPhI plan to create an intellectual agent, Virtual Actor, which will have both an emotional and a narrative intellect. It will understand the context of what is going on, as well as the unfolding scenarios. Based on this, it will make plans and set targets. One of its abilities is to be an actor, a virtual robot playing the role of a particular person.

Are you close to creating it?

Prof. Alexei Samsonovich: Yes, we are, in theory and in understanding the principles of its creation, but it will take time to put this into reality. So far, we plan to create this agent in a simplified form  as a computer game. A virtual agent and a real person control the figures on a computer screen, interacting with each other, thus building social rapport based on emotionally charged actions. They can attack, welcome, give way, help move a stone, and so on. Any action has an emotional connotation, as a result of which certain relations develop, such as trust, subordination, leadership, etc. If a person in the virtual world is unable to tell man from machine, this goes to show that we have reached a human level, albeit in a limited sense.
"We have had many protests in the last few days with the protesters decrying corruption, but there is also a lot of misreporting and attempts to inflate these protests," said Chandretti. "In my opinion, the facts of the case are fabricated to create this situation, the protests are mostly by the wealthy elites, and even though the workers are not happy, they are not joining the protests."

Escobar agrees, suggesting that there is rampant corruption in Brazilian politics, but that the investigation should be looking at opposition leaders instead. "Yes, it is a corruption scandal because a corollary of the historic exploitation of Brazil is that the elites are extremely corrupt and practically the whole Brazilian Congress is corrupt and it goes across political parties."

What is the political climate in Brazil?

"Everything in Brazilian politics traces back to slavery," explained Escobar. "Remember Brazil was the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery."
Talking about whether it is possible to destroy these weapons, Bretton-Gordon said, If the coalition and the Russian military can find it than it will be relatively easy to destroy it with precision weapons.

As we have seen only two weeks ago, al-Alsari who was the head of the Islamic State chemical weapons program was captured by US Special Forces and almost a year ago the previous head of Daesh was killed in a drone strike, so if you have the intelligence on where these places are and where these people are then they can be taken out.

He further spoke about how according to him Daeshs use of chemical weapons is the matter of last resort as the major offensive to push them out of Mosul begins. I think their use of chemical weapons is the last ditched effort to save them. I do think we will see quite a lot of that in the next coming weeks and months particularly in the South from where Daesh is being pushed out of Mosul.

He also spoke about the refugees in Europe and how the jihadists can infiltrate the migrants and sneak into Europe and even into Russia.

There are jihadists amongst those traveling to Europe and from a Russian perspective the Chechens who are some of the jihadists within Daesh would no doubt be thinking of exporting it to Russia. So not only do the UK and the US need to be on their guard but Russia which has porous borders is also on the target list. I am sure the security forces in Russia are keeping a close eye on this to ensure they can predict anything coming from Chechen jihadists, the analyst said.

He further spoke about how in the Middle East the chemical weapons are primarily used as psychological warfare against the public and how these terrorists inflict fear in people.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans policy against Kurds, both in Turkey and abroad, is genocide and total extermination, a member of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), Farkhat Patiev, said Friday.

In our opinion, Erdogan's policy is genocide and total extermination of the [Kurdish] people, both in Turkey and abroad," Patiev said at the Rossiya Segodnya press center in Moscow.

Relations between Ankara and the Kurds, who comprise some 25 percent of the country's population, have been progressively worsening. Ankara has been carrying out a campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which seeks to create a Kurdish state in parts of Turkey and Iraq, since the summer of 2015 following a deadly suicide attack in Suruc. Ankara considers PKK to be a terrorist organization.
RT correspondent William Whiteman was among the first journalist to visit the area of the military operation. In an interview with Lenta.ru Whiteman told about the brutality of Turkish troops and atrocities of Ankara-backed Syrian extremists.

Whiteman said that he could not simply come to Turkey as a journalist of a Russian broadcaster. He had to pretend to be working for a Western media outlet to enter Turkey.

The journalist also said that currently Turkish police are very suspicious toward Russian journalists.
She further said, Secondly, you can see that Syria has become much calmer. I go around in the neighborhood of Homs even in the evening. We must trust the leadership of Syria and Russia.

According to a Lieutenant who was asked to share his views on Russias recent decision, he said, Our army has been at war for five years. Yes, we are tired, but the enemies are tired as well. We are ready to fight on. Russia has been very helpful. But this is our war. I am sure that if the Turks or Saudis attack us, Russia will not leave us. Our friendship was built over centuries.

Russia came to the rescue at a very difficult time for Syria. That has brought Syria closer to the end of the war, but I would really like to see Russian planes fly until the last terrorist is dead, an elderly owner of an antique shop said.

The President of Russia once again surprised the world. Yes, we were shocked, but I am sure that the United States, Turkey, and others were very confused and this happened right before the start of negotiations in Geneva. The aircraft can be returned at any time but reaching an agreement must happen as soon as possible, the owner of a small barbershop stated.

The turning point in the war against Daesh is planned in Palmyra. The liberation of the ancient city will open the possibility to transfer troops to the point of blockade at Deir ez-Zor. It will help organize the attack on the so-called capital of terrorists, Raqqa.

After Russia showed its strength, dozens of groups, of course, agreed to a truce. No one wants to die, but now the war is in the north of Aleppo and Idlib against Jabhat al-Nusra and in the northeast against Daesh. Gradually a clear front line is emerging.

The residents of Damascus understand that talks about the end of war are still premature. Although after the beginning of the ceasefire, missiles fly much less and the security continues to inspect all vehicles at numerous checkpoints.

Earlier this year, terrorists were able to carry out a series of major terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 200 civilians. However, stabilization of the situation as a result of the ceasefire is encouraging and gives hope to Syrians to believe that peace is not far off.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  Late on Thursday night, EU leaders agreed on a joint proposal on migration to be presented to the Turkish prime minister on Friday morning.

Davutoglu will attend a breakfast meeting on Friday, the second day of the EU leaders summit currently underway in Brussels.

"We are not talking about weeks here, but this has to be done very quickly and what's absolutely indispensable is that once you have this return from the Greek islands to Turkey only a few days have to lapse until this resettlement process will be initiated, the Turkish Prime Minister [Ahmet Davutoglu] pressed this upon me," Merkel said.
"There is monitoring of the ceasefire; a fairly large number of drones  over 70  are being used for this purpose, as a means of intelligence gathering, including electronic intelligence and from satellites in space," Yakovenko writes.

Russia is keeping an eye on the situation in Syria and is ready to take serious measures if necessary.

Summing up the results of the Russian operation in Syria on March 17, President Putin remarked that Russia's military forces could be re-deployed "in literally a few hours" in Syria if such a need arises.

"If needed, Russia can boost its air group in the region in literally a few hours to a size corresponding with the situation and use the whole arsenal of our opportunities. We would not like to do that as military escalation is not our choice, that's why we rely on the common sense of all parties, on the commitment of the [Damascus] authorities and the opposition to the peace process," the Russian President stressed.

"Of course, we will continue to support the Syrian legitimate government. It will be financial aid, arms supplies, military training It will be intelligence support, aid in the planning of operations, as well as direct support  the use of the Russian Aerospace Forces," Vladimir Putin added.

Russia's message is clear: it is committed to the ongoing peace process and will put effort into averting any escalation of violence in the region.
I see Russias aerial campaign of the past five months in Syria as the ultimate example of the use of the so-called smart force," he said, adding that it had come after months of Western inactivity and lip service paid to the need to root out the scourge of terrorism.

To this Konstantin Kostin added that Russia had helped kick-start the process of a political settlement in Syria.

Speaking of regional security, we now have everything we need to move towards a lasting peace in Syria, especially now that they are going to hold elections there about a month from now, he said.

When asked about the way the decision to withdraw the Russian Air Force units from Syria could reflect on Russias relations with the West, Konstantin Kostin said that it spoke volumes about the open-hearted nature of Moscows policy.

Russia has always said that our ultimate goal is to fight terrorists and ensure a political solution to the Syrian crisis, Kostin noted, adding that the order to bring the Russian military contingent back home coincided with the start of the much-awaited process of a political settlement of the five-year-old civil war in Syria.

On March 14 President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to start withdrawing Russias main forces in Syria, saying that the military campaign had largely achieved its objectives.
No progress has also been made over the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West after the Crimean referendum.

Nevertheless, Moscow has gained significant political advantages after Crimea reunited with Russia.

"The move prevented Western alliances from further expanding to territories which have traditionally been crucial to Russian national security," Sergei Karaganov from Russias Higher School of Economics told Lenta.ru.

According to him, after Crimeas reunification Moscow ended the discussion on Ukraines admission to NATO and showed it is ready to protect its national interests.

What is more, many Western politicians have repeatedly stressed that the referendum in Crimea was legitimate because it let Crimean people exercise their right to self-determination.

In an interview with RT, French politician Yvan Blot underscored that there is still a contradiction in international law between two norms  inviolability of borders and the right to self-determination.

"Crimean people voted for reunification with Russia. They exercised their right to self-determination. We should respect their choice," Blot pointed out.

Despite numerous international tensions, Crimea has emerged as an extremely popular tourist destination. According to Russian ticket search website Aviasales, in summer 2014 the number of airline tickets to Simferopol jumped several times.
With little fanfare and almost no news media attention, some of the same radical groups involved in shutting down Donald Trumps Chicago rally last week are plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month, Aaron Klein wrote in an article.

During a Republican debate in Las Vegas in December 2015, Kai Newkirk, the founder of Democracy Spring, interrupted the event by yelling the American people deserve free and fair elections, not billionaire auctions, and now Breitbart is responding.

Kleins connection between Democracy Spring and Trump is based on Newkirks previous solo protest and the event having the endorsement of MoveOn.org, who helped to organize the protest in Chicago that caused the GOP frontrunner to cancel his appearance last week.

The organization focuses on many issues however, not just the former reality television star, and this upcoming protest is aimed at Congress.

Another website, called Patriot News, wrote todays Black Lives Matter and the other fringe radicals taking part in the Democracy Spring plan to use violence to promote their agenda, though there are no calls for violence by any of the participants or organizers, as the website has firm rules laid out against violence by those engaging in protest.

We will use no violence, verbal or physical, toward any person.

We will maintain an attitude of openness and respect toward all we encounter in our actions.

We will not destroy or damage any property.

We will carry no weapons or any means of physical defense, including shields.

We will not wear masks or otherwise conceal our faces or identities.

We will exercise personal and collective responsibility to ensure that all participants adhere to this agreement.

A website called Wrong Planet wrote of the nonpartisan event, if you think the Right won't fight back, think again.

Peter James Callahan, the Democracy Spring Communications Director, asserts there is no truth to the claims of the right-wing media. He noted that the goals of Democracy Spring parallel much of Trump's campaign rhetoric about big money.

"Democracy Spring is not a response to Donald Trump. It is a response to the corruption of big money in our politics and the erosion of voting rights and ballot access that many Americans now face and which disproportionately hits people of color, students, and low-income Americans, Callahan told Sputnik.
Another indication that the trends are reversing for AIPAC is a sea change in public opinion among American Jews toward Israel. Israel, as a culture presenting itself as an exponent of Jewish interests around the world, has lost points by openly suppressing Palestinians and occupying Arab lands in the West Bank.

The fact is that Israel has an extremely right wing government since 2009, Blumenthal asserted. Its taken an adversely religious, messianic overtone. Its seeking to impose a kind of McCarthyism campaign of censorship on campuses across the country and across the West.

The fundamentalist position is anathema for the liberal Jewish mind and mentality prevailing among the Jewish community in the US, he said, citing polls indicating that the US Jewish population is turning away from the current Israeli administration.

Most young Jews dont see Israel as a country committed to peace, dont support Benjamin Netanyahu and dont think hes serious about a two-state solution, he said. The Israeli lobby is losing its bipartisan support and its losing Jewish grassroots. Liberal Jews overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders  and you see the same amount among young Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. This is AIPACs nightmare.
Double millionaire and world champion Maven, North America's top older trotting mare of 2013, has been officially retired.

According to trainer Jimmy Takter the seven-year-old trotting mare was attempting to return from a suspensory injury, which she suffered in August while in Sweden.

We did a scan on her (right hind) leg and it looked like its too high risk to get her where she could compete at the level she was, Takter said. It was tough, but the owners decided to breed her instead.



Maven's connections (including trainer Jonas Czernyson) receive the O'Brien Award for Older Trotting Mare of the Year in 2013 Maven's connections (including trainer Jonas Czernyson) receive the O'Brien Award for Older Trotting Mare of the Year in 2013

Maven won 29 of 52 races in North America, earning just over $2-million in purses, before spending 2015 in Europe. She won 10 of 14 races in 2013, including a world-record 1:51.4 triumph in the Miss Versatility final at the Delaware County Fair in Ohio, on her way to being named the Dan Patch and OBrien award winner for best older female trotter.

Her time in the Miss Versatility is the fastest trotted race mile on a half-mile track in harness racing history.

Other top career wins for Maven included the 2012 and 2013 Breeders Crown, the 2013 Armbro Flight, the 2012 Moni Maker, 2014 Muscle Hill, and 2012 American-National. She finished second in the 2012 Elegantimage and 2014 Breeders Crown.

Last year, Maven won two of 15 races in Europe and earned $244,465 in U.S. dollars. One of her victories, in a Mares Open at Kalmar, Sweden, was in a track-record performance. She finished second by a neck to Robert Bi in the Group 1 Copenhagen Cup and was second to Timoko in the Group 1 Grand Criterium de Vitesse at Cagnes-sur-Mer. She also finished second in her Elitlopp elimination and seventh in the final.

Maven was trained by Jonas Czernyson from age two to October of the five-year-old season and was owned by Bill Donovan until November 2014, when she was sold to Herb Liverman. She is currently owned by Liverman, John Fielding, and Joyce McClelland. Takter took over the training of Maven in November 2014.

A daughter of Glidemaster-M Stewart, Maven was purchased as a yearling for $37,000 under the name Bella Topona at the 2010 Lexington Selected Sale. She is a three-quarter sister to 2003 New Jersey Sire Stakes champion Glide About and a half-sister to multiple-stakes-winner Lanson. Her family also includes stakes-winners Furman and Egyptian Gentleman.

Shes getting up in age, said Takter, who added the plan is to breed Maven to Ontario stallion Kadabra. We have to give her a chance to show herself as a broodmare now.

This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.
Contact: Lou Ann Sabatier, 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative , 703-216-2941, lsabatier@21wilberforce.org WASHINGTON, March 18, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Former Congressman Frank R. Wolf, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative (21CWI), stated, "The United States stands with millions in Iraq and Syria who have experienced the most brutal reality imaginable  genocide."At a press briefing this morning, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement declaring that the Islamic State is "responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. [The Islamic State] is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does."The statement follows a vote Monday in the House of Representatives passing H. Con. Res. 75decrying the ISIS genocide against Christians and other religious minoritiesand H. Con. Res. 121calling for a Syrian War Crimes Tribunal.21CWI President Randel Everett noted, "Frank Wolf's leadership has been an invaluable asset to the only two instances in which an active situation has been declared genocide, first in Darfur in 2004 and now in Iraq and Syria." Everett further stated, "We extend our deepest appreciation to Secretary Kerry, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom David Saperstein, Special Envoy Knox Thames as well as to Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA)."In February 2015, 21CWI released "Edge of Extinction," a seminal report describing the genocidal actions of the Islamic State following a fact-finding trip to the frontlines of the engagement with the Islamic State. 21CWI were lead authors for widely signed International Religious Freedom Roundtable letters in October 2015 and February 2016 and advocated within Congress, the State Department, the Administration and across multiple religious denominations and numerous grassroots activists for a declaration of genocide. Through the Ruth Project, 21CWI continues to support an education initiative that helps Syrian refugee children in Lebanon who have fled, in part, the violence of the Islamic State.21CWI is a non-profit human rights organization working to empower a global movement to advance religious freedom as a universal right through advocacy, capacity building and technology. For additional statements or media appearances or more information contact Lou Ann Sabatier at lsabatier@21wilberforce.org , 703-216-2941, visit 21wilberforce.org , 21Wilberforce on Facebook and Twitter.
One incumbent is running in the five-candidate race for two open seats.
BALTIMORE  Each Thursday, Dr. Walter Ehrlich can be found along busy 41st Street in Roland Park, surrounded by signs protesting excessive war and expressing concerns about climate change. The 100-year-old regularly talks with family on Skype, sends emails and recently learned to use the Uber transportation app.

Ehrlich is among a record number of centenarians in the United States. The number of Americans who celebrated 100 years or more of life increased more than 43 percent from 2000 to nearly 72,200 in 2014, the latest year for which data is available, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Studies have shown common factors  such as Ehrlichs active lifestyle and ability to connect with the modern world  may increase a persons chances of such a long life.

Many centenarians come from families who live a long time, indicating that there is a genetic component, research shows. Living a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise, balanced meals and no smoking also can increase the odds of a long life, studies have found.

Health experts say other factors in the rise of the number of 100-year-olds include safer workplaces  people arent working in as many dangerous jobs  and medical advancements against once-deadly infections and other illnesses. One of the most significant factors is that fewer people are dying from heart disease  the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S.

Jeremy Barron, medical director of the geriatric medicine outpatient office at Johns Hopkins, said treatment has improved so much that cancer is expected to eventually surpass heart disease as the leading killer of older people.

The trend also has consequences. An aging population puts added pressure on families, the health care system and other parts of society. Researchers and geriatrics specialists are working to better understand this impact.

Having so many people grow too old at one time is entirely new to us, and we have a lot of learning left to do, said Renee S. Fredericksen, a specialist on aging who sits on the executive council of AARP Maryland.

About 1,800 Maryland residents are 100 or older, according to the Maryland Centenarians Committee Inc., which tracks that population using Social Security data. The group has held a celebration for centenarians every May since 1993.

The group also has asked these senior citizens about the keys to a long life. The responses varied: Some attributed their longevity to spirituality, while others said they remained single and avoided the stresses of marriage and raising children. Some ate healthfully, and others said they drank a glass of wine every day.

The graying of America has spurred the growth of industries to meet their needs. Senior travel groups and housing communities cater to the elderly, and health care providers are tailoring services for them. This summer, St. Agnes Hospital became the second in the state to open a separate emergency room catering to seniors. Holy Cross in Silver Spring opened what was considered the nations first senior emergency care center in 2008.

The health conditions of centenarians also vary; some need extensive care and suffer from chronic conditions, while others live independently in their own homes or in retirement communities.

I think the longevity explosion we are having is a double-edge sword, said Carmel Roques, president and CEO of Keswick Multi-Care Center community for seniors. We do everything we can to prolong peoples lives. But it also has a downside, which is lots and lots of older adults with chronic illnesses.

Some of these people end up in nursing homes, but others wind up under the care of relatives, including sons and daughters who also are themselves elderly and dealing with declining health.

We now have people in their 70s and 80s taking care of parents, Fredericksen said. It can be hard on families.

For the most part, the older we become, the more intense the need for care in our daily lives becomes  from help getting dressed, cleaning, eating and managing our finances, Fredericksen said. We slow down, we become frail, and medical incidents happen more frequently at an older age than a younger age.

Some older people must learn to live on their own as the years stretch on, which can lead to isolation and mental health problems, specialists on aging said.

The hardest thing for most of them is that so many of the people who were in their lives are dead, said Odessa D. Dorkins, the founder of the Maryland Centenarians Committee Inc. It can be very lonesome for them to outlive their friends, outlive their family and outlive their spouse.

At Roland Park Place retirement community, where Ehrlich and five other centenarians live, the staff tries to provide residents social interactions and the ability to make new friends and dont feel lonely or isolated, said Becki Bees, director of marketing for the facility.

Barron, of Johns Hopkins, said getting seniors more involved could benefit society as well.

There are a lot of older people who would like to be engaged in the community and giving back in terms of working, volunteering or mentoring, Barron said. I think there is a lot of opportunity for older people to help society that we are not taking advantage of. When older people are involved in meaningful activity, it improves their quality of life.

Ehrlich, a Czechoslovakian-born veteran who was wounded as a soldier and tank driver during World War II, half-jokes that he probably should have died many times before.

The retired medical doctor and physiologist says he has been lucky, but he recognizes he is slowing down. He wears hearing aids and has to keep his legs propped up because of circulation problems. He suffers from macular degeneration and carries around a magnifying glass to read. A special machine magnifies the print of the several newspapers he reads each day.

Recently, he lost his second wife, who was 83.

Ehrlich said there are still many things he enjoys about life. He follows politics and looks forward to a mayoral debate that will be held at Roland Park Place soon. He goes to the theater and never misses his weekly protest. On his 100th birthday, he didnt want a big party. Instead, his three children came over to spend time with him.

Ehrlich said he doesnt mind aging, as long as I can enjoy life and see my children.

Jack Slaughter, 102 and also a resident of Roland Park Place, said he doesnt want to be a burden to his three children. His wife of 74 years died two years ago, and he has had to adjust to living by himself.

The Navy veteran and former real estate agent has outlived many of his friends. There are only three people alive from his Naval Academy class. He doesnt think theyll have a reunion.

He spends a lot of time on the computer and still cooks for himself  his specialty is fried eggs. He used to walk a couple of miles a day but now goes about a half-mile a day using a walker.

But his health is good. The only medication he takes is a diuretic for swelling in his legs.

I think Im doing OK for an old man, he said.
ATOP HAGER MOUNTAIN, Ore.  There is something about splitting wood on the top of a mountain during winter and carrying the logs into a lookout cabin for the evenings fire that feels perfectly removed from the modern era.

No electricity, running water or flushing toilet are here. No cell phone service or Internet connection or passable road can be found.

There is only a glowing sunset across a horizon dotted with the Cascade Range volcanoes to the west and the sweep of high desert to the east, viewed from a 14-by-14-foot glass house where Im sipping tea and preparing a dinner of pesto, pasta and chicken.

For the past three years, Ive been on a quest to spend a night at each of Oregons mountaintop lookouts, and this night its Hager Mountain Lookout.

One of four lookouts open for rental during winter, Hager Mountain is remote, difficult to reach and a journey back in time.

For water, you melt snow. For warmth, you make a fire. For epic views, just look up from your bed.

In late February, I headed southeast to this little-known mountain on the edge of Oregons desert, near the unincorporated town of Silver Lake and northeast of Klamath Falls.

The trip is not easy. You must climb 4 miles and 2,200 feet  while carrying a pack with all your food and gear  to the top of the 7,188-foot mountain.

Yet the challenge is part of the appeal.

It was a hard haul up the trail, but the boys endured it with positive attitudes, wrote Phil Avery and Dan Frye, a pair of fathers who stayed at the lookout with their 8- and 10-year-old sons in February and wrote down their experiences in a journal at the cabin.

We made snow forts and sledded down the ranger road while at the lookout. Overall, it was a great father and son bonding experience. I hope we have more weekends like this that the boys will cherish and pass to their kids.

Planning, journey and climb

The biggest hurdle to spending a night at Hager Mountain Lookout isnt actually the steep climb  but rather just reserving a night.

Despite its remote location, the lookout is popular, and getting a night requires logging onto Recreation.Gov six months in advance to claim the dates you want.

I reserved a night in late February and hit the road early, beginning a drive that takes about four and a half hours from Salem.

The drive takes you over Santiam Pass, through Central Oregon and southeast of La Pine on whats known as the Oregon Outback Scenic Byway.

The byway showcases a sagebrush landscape home to ancient volcanoes, alkaline lakes and rocks inscribed with petroglyphs from Native Americans thousands of years old.

In Silver Lake, I turned south and headed into Fremont-Winema National Forest.

From the road, Hager Mountain is impossible to miss. A silicic lava dome that rises high above everything else in sight  it looks similar to Black Butte near Sisters  Hager Mountain was formed some 5.9 million years ago from basalt lava flows.

I parked at Hager Mountain Trailhead and stepped into the cool, sunny morning. There wasnt much snow at the trailhead (about 5,100 feet), so I strapped my snowshoes onto a pack filled with water, food and extra clothing and began the climb.

The first part features old-growth ponderosa pine forest. These bright-orange trees, cracked with black veins, are a sure way of knowing youre on the east side of the Cascades.

The first view of the lookout came after a mile, and it was a bit disheartening. It was way off in the distance, at a summit that seemed far away.

After about 1.5 miles, I reached deep snow and put on my snowshoes. From here, blue diamonds marked the route through the forest.

In the final 2 miles, the route broke out of the forest into open, grassy plains around the mountains summit.

Views to the west took in numerous Cascade Range peaks. Mount McLoughlin, Bailey, Thielsen, Crater Lake, Diamond Peak and the Three Sisters were all visible at different points.

The final push is the most difficult, straight up the mountain in places and along steep ridgelines at other moments.

Finally, as my legs began contemplating rebellion, I reached Hager Mountain Lookout, stepped inside and flopped on the bed.

Night in the sky

My favorite part of staying at a mountaintop lookout is the small chores.

That might sound odd, but theres a simple pleasure in splitting wood, washing dishes and melting snow for water while a panoramic view spreads out below your feet.

I would have loved to work a season at a lookout, and doing the chores gives you the illusion of making that dream come true, if only for a moment.

The lookout, which is staffed during the summer by the Forest Service, is well-stocked. There are three bunks, a stove, fireplace, propane-power lights and a random assortment of foods. There was a refrigerator as well, but it didnt appear to be working.

The most striking thing about the view from Hager Mountain Lookout is the contrast between Cascadian and high desert geography.

A forest of green trees rolls eastward from the Cascades before stopping dead at the beginning of the high desert, where a rolling brown landscape of buttes, mesas and canyons extends to the horizon.

The evening sunset was beautiful  bright yellows, pinks and finally red lighting up the stringy clouds on the western horizon.

After the sunset, theres not much to do except read and enjoy the rich canopy of stars overhead, including the streak of the Milky Way.

After stargazing, I spent some time reading notes left by past visitors. It gives you a sense of the people whove come before, the kindred spirits who seek out remote cabins on mountaintops.

The people before me were a group of four with pretty interesting nicknames  Mama Buttons, A-Rod, Big-E and Dillweed. A-Rod was just about to have his first child. Their favorite activity was sledding down the steep mountainsides and hurting themselves.

Sledding optimal  but ramp at road base gave the ribs a rough time, they wrote.

Some entries spoke of the weather.

Endured three straight days of wind warnings! Great times! wrote S & M.

The magic of being disconnected from the modern world works differently for each person who visits Hager Mountain Lookout.

For some, its a way to disconnect from the modern world. For others, its a way to connect with their children and inspire the next generation of outdoors lovers.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife will no longer release hatchery steelhead in the Grays River to help preserve the wild steelhead population near the mouth of the Columbia River.

That may increase fishing pressure elsewhere, as anglers wont be allowed to keep any steelhead they hook in the Grays.

The Chinook River, which flows into the Columbia 15 miles farther downstream, also will be off-limits to the release of hatchery steelhead now that WDFW has designated the Grays/Chinook wild steelhead population the states newest wild fish gene bank.

That designation, announced Wednesday, is part of a statewide policy to protect self-sustaining populations of wild steelhead by reducing the risk to them posed by hatchery fish, Cindy Le Fleur, WDFW regional fish manager, said in a news release.

This is the last of four gene banks currently planned for wild steelhead in the lower Columbia River Basin, Le Fleur said. The department remains committed to producing hatchery fish for harvest, but we also need to protect wild steelhead against interbreeding, disease, and competition from hatchery fish.

Since 2014, the department has also established wild steelhead gene banks on the East Fork Lewis River, the Wind River and the North Fork Toutle/Green River. Picking the North Fork Toutle/Green over the Coweeman River drew opposition from anglers, too.

WDFW first identified wild steelhead gene banks as a recovery strategy in the Statewide Steelhead Management Plan, adopted by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission in 2008.

In 2015, a 16-member citizen work group advised against siting a gene bank on the Elochoman River and Skamokawa Creek, but didnt reach a consensus on a final option for that area. However, about 85 percent of the comments later received from the public supported the Grays/Chinook option, Le Fleur said.

Le Fleur said WDFWs decision on where to established a gene bank near the mouth of the Columbia River came down to a choice between the Grays/Chinook rivers, or an area including Mill, Abernathy and Germany creeks, which are several miles west of Longview.

Those rivers have a number of advantages over the three streams, including a higher abundance of wild steelhead and more spawning habitat, she said.

However, the Grays also provides far more fishing opportunity than Mill/Abernathy/Germany. In 2010-11, anglers reported catching 705 winter steelhead on the Grays River, more than double the 310 caught in Mill/Abernathy/Germany. And the Grays is more of a draw for anglers coming from outside the area, according to fishermen who attended a January meeting about the process in Cathlamet.

At that meeting, anglers also predicted that making the Grays a gene bank would shift fishing to the already crowded Naselle River.

In recent years, WDFW has raised an average of 140,000 winter steelhead smolts at the Grays River Hatchery from broodstock collected at Beaver Creek on the Elochoman River. About 40,000 of those smolts were released into the Grays River, while the rest were transported to the Elochoman and Coweeman rivers for release.

This year, however, the number of steelhead smolts raised at the Grays River Hatchery was severely reduced by the effects of last summers drought. Le Fleur said 130,000 juvenile steelhead died last July as a result of high water temperatures, low water levels and Ichthyophthirus, the deadly fish disease known as ich.

In mid-March, the 10,000 smolts that survived will be transported to the Elochoman River, where they will be acclimated then released in mid-April, Le Fleur said.

Survival rates at some other hatcheries in the region were actually higher than expected, which help to offset the losses at Grays River, she said. Even so, total production for the area is about 80 percent of the goal, and we plan to reduce our releases by an average of 20 percent at six sites this spring.

Those sites include the Washougal, Elochoman, Coweeman and Kalama rivers, as well as Salmon Creek and Rock Creek.

Despite the gene bank designation, hatchery managers plan to continue producing 140,000 winter steelhead smolts per year at the Grays River Hatchery  for the time being  or at the Beaver Creek facility. WDFW will also continue to produce coho and chum salmon at Grays River until it closes.

WDFW plans to close the Grays River hatchery because sediment in the river chronically clogs the outfall, though the agency hasnt announced a date for the closure.
The Cowlitz Indian Tribes bid to build a $510 million mega-casino will again be tested this week as their case heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Observers say the outcome could have ripple effects across the nation, especially for tribes trying to establish a reservation or gain federal recognition.

Its really a big case because of the fact that, with the way the arguments are going, this is the first one to challenge  how to implement these land trusts after a landmark 2009 case, said Robert Anderson, a Native American law professor at the University of Washington.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Interior placed 156 acres of property between Ridgefield and La Center into a trust for the tribe, in effect creating a reservation. The tribe has already made headway with building the casino even while the legal battle is ongoing.

In an attempt to block the casino from being built, opponents including Clark County, Citizens Against Reservation Shopping and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde  sued Secretary Sally Jewell, head of the U.S. Department of Interior. In December 2014, U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein sided with Jewell. Opponents appealed the decision last February.

Oral arguments will be heard Friday morning in front of a panel of judges.

At issue is not only whether the tribe can build a casino, but whether it can have a reservation there in the first place.

Five amicus briefs have been filed in the case, one from the city of La Center, and four briefs from tribes on the East Coast, the South, Washington and Oregon that have some stake it the outcome of the case. Hundreds of pages of legal briefings have been filed in this complex case, but here are a few key arguments.:

Opponents argue that Cowlitz Tribes aboriginal territory is well outside of where the government established the trust. And they point to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling  Carcieri v. Salazar  which says the government can only take land into trust for tribes that were recognized and under federal jurisdiction in 1934 (the Cowlitz Indians werent formally recognized until 2002).

Opponents also claim the tribe doesnt have significant historical connections to the land there, so it is not eligible to construct a casino under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

None of the evidence put forward by the Secretary meets that requirement, wrote attorneys Citizens Against Reservation Shopping wrote, in their arguments filed in January. Their presence on Chelatchie Prairie one day in 1856 doesnt meet the standard. Nor does a single battle in 1815. Speculation that Cowlitz Indians may well have manned the boats between the Cowlitz River and Fort Vancouver is similarly insufficient, they claim.

They also say Jewell erred in refusing to consider the questions (of) the Tribes suspiciously rapid growth after it received federal recognition in 2002.

Attorneys for the Cowlitz Tribe, writing in support of Jewell, slammed the Clark County plaintiffs for their attacks on the membership, which they said is their right to determine.

Clark County and its card room allies cannot strip the tribe of that right simply because they do not want an Indian reservation in their neighborhood, attorneys wrote in a December briefing.

The Cowlitz originally occupied 2.4 million acres encompassing an area from north Clark County to Mount Rainier, and west almost to Willapa Bay. Attorneys wrote that there voluminous evidence of Cowlitzs historical ties to land near the parcel of trust. They wrote that the Grand Ronde Tribes objections stem from wanting to limit competition for their Oregon casino, which is about 85 miles away.

 its zeal to shield itself from competition, Grande Ronde would deny Cowlitz the most fundamental attribute of self-determination  a reservation, Cowlitz attorneys wrote.

Whats next?

If the opponents prevail, it could force the federal government to take the land out of trust, which Anderson said is it extremely rare, if not nonexistent.

If the opponents fail, they could then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The opponents seem to have the money and desire to go after this thing, Anderson said. They spent huge amounts of money, time and effort already.

Separately, Clark County has filed an injunction to stop the casino construction while the case is pending. So far, that hasnt happened. In the meantime, the tribe has said that this summer it will begin hiring employees for its new casino, which is slated to open in 2017.

Note: This story has been updated. Judge Merrick Garland, President Obamas nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was previously reported as being included in the panel of judges but he was removed from the panel list earlier in week.
tech2 News Staff

Soon after rolling out its surprise Android N preview, the Google is ready with its first update for the pre-release build.

So, a Nexus device owner enrolled in the company's Android Beta Program will start receiving an over-the-air update. The update is roughly around 26MB. Besides the OTA, the update is also available in the form of downloadable images.

The new update is said to be coming as build number NCP56W for the Nexus 5X and 6P, build number NCP56X for the Nexus 9, and build number NCP56R for the Nexus Player. You will find the updated images for download here. Going by the reports, there are many bugs that need to be fixed, but the company hasn't specified any particular changes.

However, Android Developer Advocate Ian Lake writes in a Google+ post that the update will address some performance issues. Meanwhile, the guessing game for the next Android iteration continues. However, by now, we know, Googles team is referring it to as New York Cheesecake internally.

Some of the highlights of the Android N are split-screening multitasking, spruced up notifications such as Direct Reply, Quick settings, reduced RAM usage and more. Take a look at some of the key features here.
tech2 News Staff

There's a new twist in the Apple-FBI fight with a NYT report claiming that Apple engineers may rather quit than complying to FBI orders over iPhone encryption. The report states that even if the company loses the court fight and employees are forced to follow FBI orders for breaking down the iPhone, they may choose to simply stop working or even give off their high paying jobs altogether.

According to the report, that claims to have spoken to dozens of Apple employees, internal discussions are revolving around taking the said steps. The employees interviewed are said to be current or former employees related to Apple's mobile products and security team.

This could mean, if FBI wins the case, Apple may be forced to crackdown the iPhone. "If enough of the company's employees participate in the action (mentioned above), it could make the FBI's goal nearly impossible to achieve," points out TheVerge.

Apples big standoff with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone belonging to a terrorist has been hitting headlines for sometime now. For those living under the rock, Apple chief Tim Cook has refused a court order that wants the company to break into the iPhone owned by San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook. Farook, along with his wife Tashfeen Malik, were responsible for killing 14 people on December 2 last year.

So, doesnt Apple want to help nab a terrorist by opening a single requested iPhone? Well, it does want to help, but opening one unit means creating a backdoor for future requests that may follow and eventually compromising on user privacy, believes Tim Cook.

"They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone. Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation, Cook had written in a letter.
tech2 News Staff

The US government has inadvertently revealed that the target of their attack on Lavabit was, as everyone expected, Edward Snowden, reports Wired. The NSA whistleblower has sought asylum in Russia since he revealed the NSA's misuse of power and the extent of their surveillance program in 2013.

Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit was, under "threat of contempt and jail time", prevented from talking about the case. However, when recently asked by Levison's lawyers to publish the details of the case again, the FBI left in one small detailthe email ID of the person being targeted, Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com. Anyone with an interest in the case already suspected that Snowden was the target of the FBI's investigation, but documents now finally confirm those suspicions.

Lavabit got dragged into the case when it was discovered that Snowden was a subscriber to Lavabit's secure, encrypted email services. At the time, Lavabit offered secure email services to over 410,000 subscribers and the federal agents, in a quest to track down Snowden, repeatedly bombarded Lavabit with requests for access to the company's private encryption keys.

Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit, took to the media to recount the whole ordeal and to outline the immense pressure that the FBI placed the company under. Dragging the company to court multiple times, the FBI did their best to force Levison's hand, going so far as to "permanently deny" him justice, as he puts it.

If that wasn't enough, not only was he legally obliged to keep his mouth shut about the details of the case, even his lawyers were only afforded limited access to relevant case data. When asked by the court to present the relevant information, the FBI presented heavily redacted documents that hid their actual target and a great deal more information that they claimed would "harm their case."

What the FBI was asking for was unfettered access to data on all of Lavabit's customer data, not just Snowden's. This directly infringed on customers' privacy. As Levison puts it, the requirement for all that data is a technological limitation, given the nature of encrypted communication. As a man of principle however, Levision felt that he couldn't stand by and let the government just walk over people's privacy at will and made the decision to shut down his company rather than become "complicit in crimes against the American people."
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Sending a message to millions of Android users that their devices are vulnerable to virus attack, a team of researchers has successfully exploited the Android-based "Stagefright" bug and remotely hacked a smartphone.

Israeli software research company NorthBit claimed it had "properly" exploited the Android bug that was originally described as the "worst ever discovered", Wired.co.uk reported.

The exploitation, called "Metaphor", also has a video that shows the exploit being run on a Nexus 5 smartphone. NorthBit said it had also successfully tested the exploit on a LG G3, HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S5 devices.

The exploit could be altered by those wanting to cause more damage. "Approximately 36 percent of the 1.4 billion active Android phones and tablets run Android 5 or 5.1 and devices lacking the latest updates would be vulnerable," NorthBit co-founder Gil Dabah was quoted as saying.

"Our research managed to get it [the attack] to the level of production grade, meaning that everyone - both the bad guys and good guys, or governments - could use our research in order to facilitate it in the wild," Dabah added.

Reportedly, the hack is able to execute remote code on Android devices and could possibly affect up to 95 percent of Android devices.

The researchers said they have been able to create an exploit that can be used against Stagefright on Android 2.2, 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1. Other versions are not affected. The company's research paper says it is built on work from Google itself.

Google released a patch for the bug and promised regular security updates for Android phones following the publication of Stagefright's details.

Stagefright is a software library, written in C++ (computer language), that is built inside the Android operating system.

Google released a patch for the bug and promised regular security updates for Android phones following the publication of Stagefright's details.

According to a report by Cheetah Mobile, a China-based mobile tools provider, India ranks two on the list of countries having malware-affected Android smartphones due to an extensive use of third-party apps.

"The number of Android viruses, especially Root Trojans, rose sharply with a growth rate of 22 percent infecting a total of 11,170,960 devices in India in 2015," the report said.

The report, which focused on virus infections in Android devices all over the world, said the number of Android viruses exceeded 9.5 million in 2015, which is larger than twice the total number in the past three years. The number stood at 2.8 million in 2014.

"Stagefright" is the collective name for a group of software bugs that affect Android operating system, allowing an attacker to perform arbitrary operations on the victim device through remote code execution.

A Trojan Horse or Trojan is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software. Trojans can be employed by cyber-thieves and hackers trying to gain access to users' systems.

IANS
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Virtual reality and 3D printing are among top technologies showcased by thousands of IT companies attending this year's technology show CeBIT in the northern German city of Hanover.

Here are some eye-catching gadgets from the annual fair:

Quidditch on a broomstick

Harry Potter fans dying to get a taste of what playing Quidditch on a flying broomstick feels like can climb on a plastic lookalike and put on a pair of virtual reality glasses and earphones offered by LocomotionVR.

The German company offers encounters with "dragons, unicorns and magic owls" through its virtual reality technology.

Users can imagine scenarios that "do not exist, which are yet to exist or no longer exist," it said.

Belt-tightening, literally

A group of students from the University of Applied Sciences at Osnabrueck have created a belt called Bob that helps its user save money.

Linked to a smartphone, the belt tightens itself when the user spends money using his or her mobile phone.

To avoid leaving spendthrifts out of breath, Bob stretches back to its original breadth after delivering its message.

Red-light ping-pong

For pedestrians who get fidgety while waiting for the green light, German company Urban Invention has replaced crosswalk signal buttons with touchscreens that offer a modern version of the videogame hit Pong.

The opponent: the pedestrian on the other side of the road.

Print your own toys

Can't find new toys to keep your child entertained? How about letting little ones have fun creating one themselves?

TinkerToys offers software allowing a child to make his or her toy, before printing it out with a 3D printer.

Not satisfied with the final product? The bioplastic material is easily recyclable.

Air quality arbitrator

Too hot? Too humid? Too dusty? Airboxlab created Foobot - a gadget it described as a "good-air guru" - to help the user determine the finer details of air quality - from CO2 levels to optimal temperatures.

The device sends the measurements directly to a smartphone.

AFP
Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 4 last year and it has taken quite a while for it to make it to the Indian shores. Launched officially in India in January 2016, the Surface Pro 4 is Microsofts fourth generation 2-in-1 device, which, although a tablet with a snap on keyboard, is renowned as a laptop-first product. While India did not get the top of the line Surface Pro variant, it is at least better than not having any option at all. So is this the 2-in-1 to go for? Let us take a look.

Build and Design: 8/10

The Surface Pro 3 was a good product and Microsoft hasnt tweaked much with the overall design philosophy, which makes sense. If it aint broke, why fix it? Having said that, the Surface Pro 4 is thinner and lighter than the Surface Pro 3. It measures around 8.5mm thick as opposed to the 9.1mm on the Surface Pro 3. Even with the heft, the Surface Pro 4 weighs around 766 grams whereas the Surface Pro 3 weighed close to 800 grams.

Looking around the tablet, the Surface Pro 4 has a magnetic connector at the base where you get to attach the Surface Type keyboard cover. On the left hand side at the top you have the 3.5mm audio jack, the volume rocker and power standby buttons are present on the top and it takes some time getting used to operating them blindly. There were occasions when we accidentally pressed the power/standby button when we wanted to increase the volume. Along the right hand side you have the mini-DisplayPort, a single USB 3.0 port followed by a power port towards the base. All along the Surface Pro 4, you will find vents for cooling.

The rear of the Surface Pro 4 is made of silver metal with the Windows logo right in the centre. The kickstand mechanism on the Surface Pro 4 is quite sturdy and the hinge can stretch back almost all the way. Once placed in a particular position, the kickstand stays steady and will require pressure being applied from both ends for the kickstand to move. The attention to detail on the hinge is worthy of praise.

Surface Type Cover and Surface Pen

This is one area where there has been sufficient improvement. The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Type Cover Keyboard feels a lot more spacious thanks to the chiclet keyboard, unlike the closely spaced keys on the previous generation Surface Type cover. The keys on the Surface Type keyboard have a lot more travel and it actually feels like you are typing on a regular keyboard on a laptop, its that good. Getting used to the keyboard and typing fast takes just a couple of hours. It adds just a 4.54mm thickness to the Pro 4. It also comes in as many as five colours and it is backwards compatible with the Surface Pro 3

Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the trackpad, making it much larger than the one on the Surface Pro 3s Surface Type keyboard. The rectangular trackpad also covers gestures such as two finger scrolling, pinch to zoom and so on. It is a single slab of plastic and has a nice soft click. The palm rest area around the Surface Pro 4 Type cover is made of grippy material.

However, there were two things we did not like about the Type cover:

1. When you close the Type cover, there is no magnetic mechanism on the edge opposite the hinge to hold the keyboard in place. If you are holding the Surface Pro 4 by the connector edge, many times you will notice the keypad portion falling off.

2. When attached to the hinge, you can either have the cover flat or at a slight angle. While on the table that may not be a problem, but the kickstand tends to bury itself in your skin if you are trying to work by placing the Surface Pro 4 on your lap. Lappability is not a strong aspect of the Surface Pro 4, unless you are alright with the vibrating keypad as you play the part of the keyboard warrior.

The Surface Pen actually looks like a pen complete with a clip on design on the top half, which lets you carry the pen easily inside your pockets too. The Surface Pen comes in four colours and we got the elegant, silver coloured model. It provides a good grip and the top of it has a button to which you can assign some gestures. By default, a single click opens up Microsoft OneNote and a double click takes a screenshot, it can also function as an eraser and so on. One side of the Surface Pen is flat and this comes with a magnetic strip, which lets you attach the Surface Pen sturdily to one edge of the Pro 4, so there are less chances of losing it.

It weighs around 20 grams and it connects to the Surface Pro 4 via Bluetooth 4.0. The palm rejection with the Surface Pen is great, but we felt that the Pen was a bit slower in terms of response. It never gave us the feeling that one gets when writing on a paper, something we experienced with the Galaxy Note 5s stylus or even the Apple Pencil. Not that it's terribly unresponsive, but the writing does not flow as well as we would have liked to see. It does come with pressure sensitive tips which you can take advantage of while drawing. There are different pen tips as well that can be bought separately. Also, the Surface Pen is great only if you are going to use it on illustrations or drawings - so thats a really niche use case scenario. If you just want to take notes, then the keyboard is good enough.

The sad part is that the both the Surface Type cover and the Surface Pen are accessories that need to be purchased separately. Microsoft could have certainly bundled in the Surface Type Keyboard cover at least.

Display: 8/10

Another area which is a sheer pleasure to work with is the display of the Surface Pro 4. The 12.3-inch IPS LCD PixelSense display has a high resolution 2736 x 1824 pixel resolution with a 3:2 aspect ratio. This works out to a pixel density of around 267 ppi. This is very sharp and there was barely any noticeable pixellation. Sure, there are applications that are not optimised for this resolution, but that is more of a developer issue than of the device display.

The colours appear vibrant without appearing too saturated, as in the case of AMOLED displays. The contrast levels are good enough to enjoy a movie or two on your Surface Pro 4. While the glass is certainly reflective, you can adjust the kickstand to a point where you can get rid of reflections. This is a major advantage that the Surface Pro 4 offers over the fixed Origami cover of the Apple iPad Pro.

Features: 8.5/10

The Surface Pro 4 comes in multiple variants depending on the processor, RAM and storage configuration you select. We reviewed the base model that is selling in India, which houses the 6th generation Intel Core i5 6300U and is a dual-core, hyper-threaded part clocked at 2.5GHz. It comes with an Intel HD 520 graphics solution. The processor is paired with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD storage.

It runs Windows 10 Pro operating system. In terms of connectivity you get Wi-fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, microSD card slot, one USB 3.0 slot, a mini Display port and so on. We liked the fact that the power adapter has a USB port for charging your devices such as phones, thereby keeping the USB port on the Pro 4 free.

Software: 7/10

Since the Surface Pro 4 is a Microsoft product, it naturally runs the latest Windows 10 Pro operating system. There isnt any pre-loaded bloatware on the Surface Pro 4 which is great. So you do not have to spend time deleting unwanted software. Getting the hang of Windows 10 Pro does not take much time if you are a Windows user, but there are certainly setup issues which irritate even the most seasoned of Windows users.

Windows Hello is the feature that certainly stands out. It basically lets you login to your Pro 4 using facial recognition technology which can be enabled after you have set a PIN to login. Once set, the logging in using Hello is near instantaneous. It did not have any issue with bearded faces as well. And since it uses IR for the scanning part, it works in lowly lit rooms as well. Just to test the security, we tried testing it with still photographs, and the Surface Pro 4 did not unlock.

Now, we know that Microsoft designs products keeping primarily its fans and loyal userbase in mind. But simple things such as setting up Cortana or the Surface Pen, for instance, involve hunting on Microsoft forums and website. Now a geek will have no issues with that, but if you think from an elderly or business user's perspective, it's an exercise in frustration getting it to work. Something as simple as a wizard to set up Cortana or the Surface Pen, the backup passcodes and so on would certainly have helped.

There were a couple of instances when the Surface Pro 4 just refused to turn on. And when we finally did get the display working, the Windows Hello function threw up an error saying that there were too many sign-in attempts - and we were locked out. This may seem like a learning curve exercise, but Microsoft certainly needs to make things a bit easier for its newer converts. Also considering that the Surface Pro 4 has launched in India after such a delay, these software glitches surely shouldve been taken care of.

The Surface Pro 4 display is touch sensitive, but we noticed that unless you're using it in tablet mode, it's not really optimised for touch. Using it as a regular laptop, the icons become too tiny for you to be interacting with the tablet using touch. In fact, the trackpad is so good that you will not feel the need to use touch at all. You can of course change the scaling to your preference. But we noticed that when we detached the keyboard from the tablet, it did not get into the tablet mode by default. We had to actively change it to tablet mode from the Action centre.

Palm rejection, which means not registering the touch associated with the palm touch, when using the Surface pen was quite good. We did not face any issues while using the Surface Pen to write down notes or while drawing.

Performance: 8/10

When you talk of a tablet, the only thing that comes to mind is media consumption. There are very few tablets out there which are as good with productivity related tasks outside of the Microsoft Surface Pro series. The Surface Pro 4 carries on that trend thanks to its desktop like configs and a full blown Windows 10 Pro OS. Add in the Surface Type Cover and you have a proper mid-range laptop at your disposal.

Office related tasks such as working on word, excel and editing photos with Lightroom are tasks the Surface Pro 4 performs without breaking into a sweat. It's a great device for multi-tasking and we did not face any lag or slowdown, no matter how many applications or Chrome tabs we had open. The Pro 4 just gets the work done. It's great for sitting back and watching movies as well, with the speakers on board being loud enough to fill up a room with sound.

Gaming is certainly not a strong area, understandably, but we could manage to get playable frame rates for maximum settings at full HD resolutions for Counter Strike: GO and Team Fortress 2. But you may want to have the Surface Type cover flat on the table while playing lest you damage it.

The only problem area, as mentioned earlier, is the OS itself which clearly needs some optimisation. From a purely performance perspective, the Surface Pro 4 offers a much better experience than the iOS sporting Apple iPad Pro.

Battery Life: 7/10

The Surface Pro 4 easily lasts an entire workday. We used it as our daily driver at work and that involves a lot of mailing, watching YouTube, streaming audio, working on office documents and some photo editing work. The Pro 4 would easily manage the 8-10 hour work days with some 10-15% charge to spare. The PC Mark 8 gave an on screen time close to 3 hours.

Verdict and Price in India

So should you buy it or not? That is the ultimate question, we have to say that it's not such an easy decision to make as the pricing starts from Rs 89,900 - and that's just for the tablet portion. The Surface Type keyboard cover and Surface Pen need to be bought separately at Rs 12,499 and Rs 8,896 respectively. If you drop the Surface Pen, the Surface Pro 4 along with the type cover still costs over Rs 1 lakh, a big sum by any means. You could get more powerful laptops in that price range, not to mention a MacBook Pro Retina (2015) display as well.

Between the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and an Apple iPad Pro, the Pro 4 certainly offers a better value proposition if you are looking at a productivity-heavy device. The iPad Pro is just a larger iPad, and certainly has a limited appeal when it comes to productivity - unless you are a sketch artist or illustrator that is.

The Windows 10 Pro OS certainly will take some time getting used to and the initial setup will require some patience from users. With constant updates, it should improve over time, but you just need to realise that the OS isnt without flaws out of the box.

The Surface Pro 4 is certainly a laptop replacement, but the pricing as compared to the features on offer is certainly on the higher side. If you can overcome that, it is a device well worth the investment. Existing Surface Pro 3 users needn't upgrade, but could certainly get the new Surface Type Keyboard cover. If you feel the Pro 4 is out of your budget range, but you need a device like it, then the Surface Pro 3 has recently got a price drop and it now begins selling from Rs 58,990 onwards.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.
Cuba wont discuss political reforms with US

AFP, Washington :

Barack Obama touches down in Havana on Sunday to cap a long-unimaginable rapprochement with Cuba and burnish a presidential legacy dulled by Middle East quagmires and partisan sniping.

As Air Force One rolls to a stop, Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge arrived on a battleship in 1928, before the discovery of penicillin or invention of the ballpoint pen.

With wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia in tow, Obama will tour Old Havana, sit down with Raul Castro -- although not his brother Fidel -- and speak directly to Cubans who have been inculcated in a lifetime of propaganda against imperialist Yankees.

By making the high-profile hop across the 90 mile (150 kilometer) Straits of Florida, he will also want to dispense with tired stereotypes which Americans have of Cuba.

Obama's strategy of pursuing economic engagement in the hope that political reforms follow depends on Americans booking holidays, trading goods and making Cuban contacts.

Yet many Americans still see Cuba as president John F. Kennedy's "imprisoned island," synonymous with conflagration, communism and repression.

Obama came to power seeking to unfreeze that time warp and complete the rapprochement Kennedy sought with revolutionary Cuba before he was cut down in Dallas. Obama has sometimes found more joy negotiating with enemies than with America's long-time allies -- as was the case with his landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

His strategic step back from the Middle East -- which he believes has been too prominent in America's foreign policy for too long -- has irked the likes of Saudi Arabia.

Havana report adds: Political and economic reforms in communist Cuba will be a no-go area during talks between Cuban leader Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama, the foreign minister said in Havana Thursday.

"In our relations with the United States, the carrying out of internal changes in Cuba are absolutely off the negotiating table," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in televised remarks three days before Obama arrives.
Unconcerned attitude of respondent to petitioners interest ought to be deprecated

High Court Division :

(Special Original Jurisdiction)

Md Ashfaqul Islam J

Kashefa Hussain J

Amirul Islam (Md) ...........Petitioner

vs

The Commissioner of Customs, Chittagong ............ Respondents

Judgment

May 18th, 2015.

Constitution of Bangladesh, 1972

Article 102

Customs Act (IV of 1969)

Section 193

Tendency of the respondent to be wholly indifferent and unconcerned regarding the monetary loss being caused to the petitioner due to their whimsical conduct may not be encouraged in any manner and ought to be deprecated. . ..... (9)

Mohammad Jamal Hossain, Advocate-For the Petitioner.

Israt Jahan, DAG with Shuchira Hossain, and Dipayan Saha, AAGs-For the Respondents.

Judgment

Kashefa Hossain J : This Rule was issued at the instance of the petitioner, Mohammad Amirul Islam, who is the proprietor of M/ s Reliance Trade International calling upon the respondents to Show Cause as to why he should not be directed to refund the excess payment with interest to the petitioner following the judgment and order dated 9-1-2014 passed by the learned Customs, Excise and VAT Appellate Tribunal, Dhaka in Customs Appeal under Nathi No. CEVT /Case (Cus)-943/2011 affirming the judgment and order No. 121 of 2011 dated 10-10-2011 passed by the Review Committee in Nathi No. 5th (9)(125-Sulka (PSI) SGS/ Appeal/ Chatta/2011/ 3335 directing the respondent to assess the goods imported by the petitioner as per value declared in Invoice and to refund the excess payment made by him in connection with L/C No. 108111010174 dated 20-6-2011. Invoice No. 2011/2404/EXP dated 4-7-2011, CRF No. SG/11/596353 dated 14-7-2011 and Bill of Entry No. C-95551 dated 25-7-2011,

2. The petitioner is a businessman by profession doing tailoring business. The respondent is the Commissioner of Customs, Chittagong Customs House, Chittagong.

3. The facts relevant for disposal of the rule in short is that the petitioner opened an irrevocable L/C being No. 108111010174 dated 20-6- 2011 in favour of the United Agencies Pvt. Ltd in Singapore (hereinafter referred as goods in question) for an amount of US$ 1,29,270.41 through the Al-Arafah Islami Bank Ltd. New Elephant Road Branch, Dhaka for importing mixed fabrics-readymade shirts, pants (trousers) and T-shirts of Indian origin under HS Code No. 5407.92.00. Accordingly the petitioner imported the goods in question through Invoice No. 2011/ 2404/ EXP dated 4-7-2011 and the Invoice Value of the goods in question was in total US$ 1,29,124.03 and prior to the shipment of the goods in question, on 1-7-2011 Bangladesh government nominated pre-shipment Inspection (PSI) agency namely SGS inspected the goods physically and on 14-7-2011 issued a Clean Report of Findings (CRF) being No. SG/l 1/596535 determining the CIF value of the goods in question in total US$ 2,88,068.31 which was more than 123.09% higher of Invoice value and the said PSI agency most illegally, arbitrarily, fictitiously, violating the provisions of GATT /WTO Customs Valuation and Valuation Rules 2000 determined the value of the goods in question in total US$ 2,88,068.31 instead of Invoice and database value of the goods in question amounting to total US $ 1,29,124.03 following the 'Fall-back Method' as per Rule 9 without exhausting the earlier applicable rules of Valuation Rule 2000.

4. After arrival of the goods in question, the petitioner requested the respondent several time to correct the valuation made by SGS (PSI) agent but the respondent did not take any steps, and, thereafter, on 18-8-2011, the petitioner through his C &F agent filed an application to the respondent in protest of the excess valuation made by the PSI agency and to release the goods in question considering port demurrage and quality of the goods in question. Instead of correction of the value the respondent claimed Taka 2,80,21,868.04 by way of customs duty and other charges which is about 3/4 times higher than the actual duties by accomplishing the customization of the goods in question in the light of their assessment notice dated 25-8-2011. The petitioner to avoid the gradually increased' port demurrage and damage of the quality of the goods in question was bound to have released the goods paying Taka 2,80,21,868.04 as customs duty and other charges as demanded by the respondent. Subsequently on 19-9-2011 as per provision of section 193 of the Customs Act,1968, the petitioner filed Review before the Review Committee against the said excess valuation made by the PSI agency and after hearing the Review application the Review Committee by its order dated 10-1-2011 directed the respondent to assess the goods in question as per invoice value declaring that the valuation made by the SGS was illegal.

5. Thereafter, on 31-10-2011 the petitioner filed an application before the respondent to comply the order of Review Committee. After receiving the said application the respondent on 22-11-2011 filed a Customs Appeal challenging the order passed by the Review. Committee and served a notice to the petitioner to appear in the said appeal. After, hearing both the parties, the learned Tribunal was pleased to dismiss the appeal by its judgment and order dated 9-1-2014 passed in Customs Appeal under Nathi No. wmBwfwU/KBm (Kvm)-943/2011 affirming the order No. 121 of 2011 dated 10-10-2011 passed by the Review Committee. Hence further on 24-6-2014 the petitioner again filed an application to respondent to refund the excess payment following the judgment and order passed by the Appellate Tribunal as well as the order of Review Committee. But even after receiving the above application neither the respondent ever replied nor preferred any appeal against the Judgment and order dated 9-1-2014 passed by the learned Tribunal dismissing the Appeal filed by the Respondent. Thereafter, the petitioner on several occasions requested and reminded the respondent to comply with the order of the learned Tribunal as well as the order of the Review Committee in connection with the goods in question, but the respondent failed to do so: As a result a huge amount of money' of the petitioner is lying with the respondent since 25-8-2011 for which the petitioner has been paying a substantial amount of interest to the concerned bank against his loan 'and the same is increasing day by day.

6. Mr Mohammad Jamal Hossain, the learned Advocate appeared for the petitioner. However no affidavit-in-opposition was filed on behalf of the respondent.

7. Learned Advocate Mr Mohammad Jamal Hossain on behalf of the petitioner submits that in spite of rejection and dismissal of the Customs Appeal made by the respondent affirming the decision of the Review Committee the respondent is arbitrarily sitting upon it remaining passive on the matter and in spite of repeated requests and reminders by the petitioner the respondent have not complied with the same and did not do the needful. The learned Advocate further assails that the respondent by his inaction and by not refunding the excess payment in favour of the petitioner the respondent has interfered with the petitioner's statutory rights under the Customs Act, 1969 and has violated his fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution. He stresses upon the orders given by the CEVT Tribunal affirming the earlier order of the Review Committee and which he submits ought to be complied with by the respondent in accordance with the provisions of law and thus the Rule should be made Absolute.

(To be continued)

8. We have gone through the Writ Petition and other materials on record including the respective orders and judgment passed by review Committee and Customs, Excise and VAT Appellate Tribunal, Dhaka (hereinafter called as CEVT Tribunal), wherefrom, it transpires that in pursuant of the order of the Review committee in favour of the petitioner, the respondent preferred an Appeal before the CEVT Tribunal, and which appears ex-facie from the record was dismissed and it is revealed upon scrutiny and upon our queries to the respondent that no Customs Appeal was preferred before this Division by the respondent following the judgment of the CEVT Tribunal. Our considered finding is that since no Customs Appeal was ever filed by the respondent and which he could have filed within the statutory period under the law, consequently the judgment dated 9-1-2014 passed by the CEVT Tribunal affirming the earlier order dated 10-10-2011 passed by the Review Committee stands as it is remaining in force.

9. We find strange that the respondent for whatsoever the reasons best known to them neither filed any appeal against the judgment of the CEVT Tribunal nor have they complied with the order of the said Tribunal by way of refunding the excess payment to the petitioner. We find is a violation of the statutory laws and is in violation of the fundamental rights of the petitioner. This inaction and passivity of the respondent ought to be deprecated. The respondent if at all felt aggrieved could have preferred Appeal within the statutory period under the Customs Act, 1969. This did not do. Neither did he comply with the Order passed by the CEVT Tribunal. These kind of attitude is not at all acceptable. By this complete inaction, he is depriving the petitioner of his lawful right to get back the excess amount. The respondent has committed a flagrant violation of law by holding back the amount due to the petitioner and for which a huge loss is being incurred having to pay a considerable amount to the bank by way of interest. This tendency of the respondent the wholly indifferent and unconcerned regarding the monetary loss being caused to the petitioner due to their whimsical conduct may not be encouraged in any manner and ought to be deprecated. So they cannot believe according to their own pleasure or whims and by doing as they are, they have acted in complete violation of the statutory provisions of the relevant laws and have violated the provisions of fundamental rights embodied in the constitution. Therefore, the respondent is under the mandatory provision of law bound to refund the excess payment made by the petitioner as per the order of the CEVT Tribunal.

10. That being the position and taking all the facts and circumstances in to consideration, we are of the view that this Rule merits substance and ought to be made absolute.

11. In the result, the Rule is made Absolute without any Order as to costs and the respondent is hereby directed to implement the Order under Nathi No. CEVT I Case (Cus)-943/2011 dated 9-1-2014 passed by the Customs, Excise and VAT Appellate Tribunal, Dhaka affirming the Judgment and Order No. 121 of 2011 dated 10-10-2011 passed by the Review Committee to refund the excess amount of customs duties and other taxes deposited by the petitioner at the time of release of the goods under L/C No. 108111010174 dated 20-6-2011, Invoice No. 2011/2404/EXP dated 4-7-2011, CRF No. SG/ 11/536535 dated 14-7-2011 and Bill of Entry No. C-95551 dated 25-7-2011 after making proper assessment of the imported goods within 2(two) weeks from the date of receipt of this Judgment positively.

Let a copy of this judgment be forwarded to Parties the concerned authorities at once.
Bangabandhus birth anniv observed

CCC Mayor AJM Nasir Uddin and former mayor and Chittagong City Awami League President Alhaj ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury cutting cake on the 97th birth anniversary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on Thursday.

Chittagong Bureau :The 97th birthday of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day-2016 observed here on Thursday as elsewhere in the district with a call to follow his ideology and to implement his unfinished tasks. The Day was celebrated with fresh call for grooming up the future generations with the ideals of the great leader so that they could turn themselves into worthy citizens of the country. District administration, different political parties, educational institutions and socio-cultural organizations celebrated the day through daylong elaborate programmes. The programmes included children rally, placing of wreath at the portrait of Bangabandhu, cultural function, discussion, essay competition, drawing competition and poetry recitation. As part of the government program, the district administration and Bangladesh Shishu Academy also arranged a daylong programme including competitions on painting, handwriting, essay and extempore speech for children paying rich tribute to the Father of the Nation at District Shilpakola Academy. Chittagong Divisional Commissioner Ruhul Amin, Deputy Commissioner Mezbah Uddin, and leaders of different cultural organisations placed wreath at the portrait of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Shilpakola Academy. Later, a large number of children and adolescent rally started from Shilpokala academy premises that ended at Shishu Academy after parading different important city streets. Huge number of people including schoolboys and girls with colourful dresses joined the rally. Earlier, a discussion meeting on the life and works of Bangabandhu and children gathering was held at Shishu Academy premises this noon. Deputy Commissioner Mezban Uddin, presided over the function while divisional Commissioner Mohammad Ruhul Amin addressed the function as the chief guest. Chittagong Metropolitan police commissioner Abdul Jalil Mondol along with Deputy Inspector General of police, Chittagong Range Shafiqul Islam and high police officials paid rich tributes by placing wreath at the portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at city's Dampara police lines field .Local units of Bangladesh Awami League and its front organisations also celebrated the day through a daylong programme. The programme included hoisting of national and party flags, garlanding portraits of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and four other national leaders and holding discussions. Chittagong City Unit of Awami League (AL) organized a children and adolescent rally in front of central Shaheed Minar this morning. A large number of children from different parts of the city wearing colourful dress gathered in front of Shaheed Minar and took part in the rally. Leaders of Chittagong city AL paid tributes to the architect of the nation by placing wreath at the portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at city's Darul Fazal Market party office. Former city mayor and President of Chittagong city AL Mohiuddin Chowdhury presided over and addressed the discussion at Shaheed Minar premises, organized by city AL. General Secretary of city Awami League and city Mayor AZM Nasir Uddin, AL leaders M A Rashid, Badiul Alam and Advocate Iftekher Saimul addressed the function. The speakers said if the children learn the proper history of Bangladesh, they would be worthy citizens of the country in future. Chittagong north and south district units of AL also arranged separate children rallies and discussions. Apart from this, separate discussions were held at all educational institutions in the city and district under the auspices of respective authorities. Bangladesh Chhatra League units of all educational institutions in the city including Chittagong University, Chittagong Medical College, Chittagong University of Engineering Technology (CUET), Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University also hold discussions on the life and works of Bangabandhu.
China columnist Jia 'goes missing' en route to HK

BBC Online :

A Beijing-based columnist has gone missing while on his way to Hong Kong, his lawyer has told the BBC.

No-one has had contact with Jia Jia since Tuesday night when he was set to board his flight. His wife has reported him missing.

He is said to have warned an editor friend about

publishing an anonymous letter calling for President Xi Jinping's resignation. The letter appeared on a state-linked site but was swiftly taken down.

It is unclear who authored the letter, which had the byline "loyal Communist Party supporters". Mr Jia had reportedly insisted he had no connection to the letter.

The incident appears to be the latest in a string of high-profile censorship incidents, amid a ramp-up of state campaigns aimed at burnishing Mr Xi's image. Mr Jia, who is in his 30s, is known for writing commentaries for the online news portal Tencent. He was due to fly from Beijing to Hong Kong on Tuesday when he became uncontactable. The newspaper Apple Daily quoted Mr Jia's wife as saying she last spoke to him at 20:00 local time on Tuesday, and he told her he was about to board the plane to Hong Kong.
Refugee conditions in Greece deteriorating

AFP :Hollywood star and UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie turned the spotlight of celebrity Wednesday onto the plight of thousands of refugees crowded in camps in Greece.After visiting a makeshift camp in the port of Piraeus, Jolie said the refugees were stuck in a "deteriorating humanitarian situation" and needed help. The 40-year-old actress, dressed in a black T-shirt and trousers, spent around 30 minutes at the port, speaking to UN staff and refugees coming to Piraeus from the islands facing Turkey. Some 4,000 people are packed in terminals and tents there. They are just a fraction of the number of people who are stranded in Greece after the so-called migrant trail, heading from the Balkans up to northern Europe, was closed off by national border controls.Surrounded by a throng of media, Jolie had difficulty in reaching her car through the crowd but kept her composure as photographers and camera crews jostled for position and refugee children struggled to stay upright. "Watch the kids," she told her security detail.As she left, dozens of refugees chanted "Skopje, open the borders" in a reference to Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) who last week barred passage to all war and poverty exiles, a policy followed by other Balkan states. Jolie will also be in Greece on Thursday, but her program has not been announced and it's unclear whether she will travel to the north of the country, where conditions are worse."I look forward to meeting authorities, partners and volunteers working on the ground to improve conditions and ensure the vulnerable are protected," she said in a statement about her trip."I hope the presence of Angelina Jolie will do something to help open the border," said Bichal, a 23-year-old Syrian woman from Aleppo." "I've been in Greece for a month and Im still waiting to cross the border and go to Germany," she told AFP.Jolie subsequently drove to the camp of Eleonas in Athens which currently houses some 700 people awaiting relocation, visiting families in prefabricated homes. She then met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who told her there were "30,000 people trapped in the Greek mainland because of unilateral actions by the countries on the Balkan route."Overall there are over 43,000 people in the Greek mainland and on the islands. On Monday, some 1,500 refugees walked out of the Greek frontier camp of Idomeni, where over 14,000 people are languishing in squalid conditions, and tried to walk into FYROM through an unfenced part of the border.They were stopped by troops and returned to Greece a day later, some of them claiming to have been mistreated by FYROM border guards.
Highlights lithographs by artists influenced by the California art scene from the 1970s to the present.

Albuquerque, NM  Tamarind invites the local community to come do a little California Dreaming. Tamarinds annual guest-curated exhibition, California Dreaming opens on Friday, March 11 with a public reception from 5  7 p.m. The exhibition will be in the gallery through April 29, open to the public, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.  5 p.m., or during special hours, 5 p.m.  7 p.m. on Friday, April 1.

California Dreaming, guest-curated by Christina Rosenberger, highlights lithographs by artists influenced by the California art scene from the 1970s to the present.

Christina Rosenberger received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she studied the materials and techniques of modern and contemporary artists. Her work bridges the disciplines of art history, conservation and conservation science. Rosenberger served as Research Coordinator for the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums and taught modern art at the University of New Mexico. Her book, Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin, is forthcoming from the University of California Press in spring 2016.

Tamarind Institute is an internationally recognized fine art lithography workshop affiliated with the College of Fine Arts of the University of New Mexico. Tamarind is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of lithography through education, research, exhibitions, and artist residencies, and is credited with expanding the accessibility to and popularity of printmaking among contemporary artists around the world. Tamarind frequently sponsors programs with diverse populations, locally and internationally, benefitting University, Albuquerque, and New Mexico constituencies. For more information, call 505-277-3901, or email tamarind@unm.edu.
Foreign students decreasing in DU

Abir Rayhan :

Foreign students are losing their interest to get enrolled into the Dhaka University (DU) due to accommodation problem, information and communication deficiency and absence of scholarship facilities.

Once, foreign students had obsession to study in this university- Oxford of the Eastern.

Even few years ago a significant number of foreign students got themselves admitted into the varsity, but now admission of foreign students has come almost to zero. This year two foreign students only got themselves admitted into the University, while four students in 2014-2015.

Information hazardness, university ranking decrease and residential and linguistic problems contributed to the fall of number of foreign students. Moreover, Dhaka University does not provide

any scholarship to foreign students.

Professor Syed Anower Hossain told The New Nation that semester system had totally destroyed our education system. There is no way to take more classes than twenty two or twenty five at the end of a semester.

Our academic system has collapsed and the university is lagging behind in the international university ranking. The foreign students do not get international standard of education here, quality campus environment, seats in halls, scholarship and other facilities. So they are losing interest in DU.

If we want to admit foreign students more, then firstly we have to ensure quality education for the students.

According to the Office of the hostel, 46 foreign students were admitted into the Dhaka University only in the last sixteen years. Most of the admitted students studied at the Faculty of Pharmacy and affiliated medical colleges. Most of them came from SAARC-Member countries.

A few years ago, many Palestinian students came to DU. But their numbers are decreasing day by day.

Satya Narayon Chowdhury, a DU student from Nepal, said, I am a residential student of Sir P.J. Hartog International Hall. The hall has enough rooms for foreign students, but most of those are occupied by others.

The environment of the campus is not properly safe for us. Everyday, procession, rally and some other political activities happen on the campus which is not suitable for foreign students. The teachers give lecture in Bengali language. But most of the foreign students cannot understand class lectures because they do not understand bengali.

Sir P.J. Hartog International Hall houses foreign students. Currently 120 foreign students live in this Hall. 18 of them are studying at Dhaka University and rests are studying in the colleges affiliated to the university. The maximum numbers of students are studying at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, among the affiliated colleges.

There are totally one hundred and twenty-two rooms in this Hall. Of them, foreign students live in sixty rooms while rests are occupied by teachers and officers.

An official said, before 2008 many foreign students were admitted to DU. But now the rate of foreign students admission is few. He said, our website is not updated. When, foreign students visit our website, they do not get proper information about DU admission system. We provide the application form in website received from the Education Ministry. Sadly before admission, they do not know where they will stay. DU Vice-Chancellor Dr AAMS Arefine Siddique said we cannot arrange proper facilities for the foreign students. Because the annual budget of the University is not enough to provide them more facilities. In the past, a lot of students came from Thailand and Malaysia. In these countries, educational institutes developed tremendously. As such students of these countries do not come to our university. We will develop our website as soon as possible. About the language problem of students, the VC said if any student tells me about the language problem or to his department chairman. I will take step to remove his problem.

The teachers will be asked to vacate the International Hall and we will try to provide more facilities for the foreign students.


BNP's national council today

Aims to stage a political comeback

Ehsanul Haque Jasim :

The BNP is set to hold its sixth national council session today (Saturday) with the slogan "Corruption and misrule will surely come to an end, Bangladesh will be of Democracy."

The council session will be held in the city's Institution of Engineers' Bangladesh (IEB). The party on Thursday got permission to use a portion

of Suhrawardy Uddyan, adjacent to the council venue. BNP on Friday thanked the authorities for allowing the Suhrawardy Uddyan to hold the council. BNP Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed in a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan central office said, "We were worried that the IEB was not enough to accommodate the participants. We sought permission for three venues, including Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC), but the government did not allow us. Finally we are allowed to use the portion of the Suhrawardy Uddyan. We are grateful to the authorities."

"The BNP men and the people are excited about the council which is being held after a gap of six years. The party will emerge stronger after the council and contribute to establishing a democratic government," Rizvi Ahmed said.

A BNP leader said that the BNP aims to rejuvenate its leaders and activists through the council to intensify the anti-government movement demanding introduction of non-party government system to hold general election. He also said that BNP chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia might announce people-friendly programmes to meet the demand.

BNP's councillors and representatives were already in Dhaka and have been collecting their cards from the party's Nayapaltan office. All preparations are almost complete for the council session. About 3,000 councillor cards and about 8,000 delegate cards have been distributed among the party leaders across the county, Nayapaltan party office sources said.

Khaleda Zia is scheduled to inaugurate the council at 10:00am. The main council session will begin at 3:00pm.

BNP has invited leaders of ruling and opposition political parties at both home and abroad to the council session. The party has invited ruling Awami League Chief and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to attend the council. BNP's International Affairs Secretary Dr Asaduzzaman Ripon, also member of council preparatory sub-committee for international affairs, said foreign politicians and foreign diplomats in Dhaka have also been invited to the council.

According to him, Labour Party MP of Britain Simon Danczuk, former member of the European Parliament and British Liberal Democrat politician Phil Bennion and some other foreign leaders have already arrived in Dhaka on invitation from the BNP to join its council.

Dr Ripon also said that many of the foreign politicians, especially from India, China, Myanmar and Nepal, said they would not be able to attend the council due to lack of time.

The BNP is likely to bring major changes to its constitution and include more youths into leadership. The number of vice-chairmen, advisers and secretaries' post may be increased, while some new faces may come in the standing committee, the party's highest policy making body, sources said.

The standing committee meeting on Thursday night approved some amendments to the party constitution. The amendments include increasing the posts of vice-chairman from 17 to 35 and creating some new posts of secretaries and assistant secretaries. A subject-wise advisory committee will be introduced. The amendments will be placed in the council for approval.

Khaleda Zia is doing her homework for forming the party's new national executive committee, taking current and previous lists of the party's national executive committee and former party MPs, said a BNP leader close to the party high command.

BNP standing committee member Goyeshwar Chandra Roy said that the council session would bring in dynamic leadership and create a craze to intensify the current movement for democracy.

Although the council will be held to elect the National Executive Committee of the party for a three-year term, the party's new leadership is going to be elected without voting. Many leaders and activists are upset, as they think that they will get selected central leadership through the national council, party insiders said.

As per constitution of the BNP, the central committee will be formed with maximum 351 members while the party chief reserves the right to change the number. The number cannot be raised by more than 10 per cent. A 19-member standing committee will also be formed through the council. As per the party's constitution, BNP chairperson and senior vice-chairman will have to be elected through direct voting. But, Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman have been elected unopposed, as none contested against them. The party men think that the election to other important posts of the BNP is also going to take place in the same manner.
Philrem to return P10m to BD

Staff Reporter :

The foreign exchange remittance company that converted into pesos the $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh Central Bank on Thursday apologized to the Bangladesh ambassador in Manila and offered to return all proceeds it made from the transaction.

Speaking before the Senate blue ribbon committee, Philrem Services Inc. president Salud Bautista said her firm would issue a check in the name of the government of Bangladesh representing her company's earnings from the deal, reports Philippine Daily Inquirer.

"We are sorry," Bautista said, adding Philrem did not know the funds were stolen from Bangladesh.

She said the firm would immediately write a cheque for P10,474,654 and turn it over to Bangladeshi representatives.

Earlier during the Senate hearing, Maia Deguito, branch manager of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) which is at the center of the money-laundering scandal, said Kim Wong had referred to her the supposed holders of the four fictitious accounts, who received part

of the money stolen from Bangladesh Bank.

Deguito also linked RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan to Wong. Wong is among those being investigated by the Senate in the laundering of $81 million but he skipped the hearing because his lawyer said he had been out of the country since March 4 for medical treatment.

After she testified in a closed-door session, Deguito answered some of the questions from Senators during the resumption of the public hearing.

Asked by Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile how the four bank accounts were created at the RCBC branch on Jupiter Street in Makati City, Dequito said the four were "referred accounts."

She described Wong as a friend of Tan.

Deguito said she has known Wong for six years now, having met him when she was then working with Export Bank in 2009 "through client friends."

"He (Wong) wanted to help me in the marketing budget for the bank," she said in reply to the question why Wong referred the account holders to him.

Deguito said she met Wong through "common client friends" and identified Jason Go as one of them.

Tan said Wong was buying cars from Go, the car dealer who earlier was identified at the hearing as the one who recommended Deguito to RCBC.

RCBC lawyer Macel Fernandez-Estavillo said Go was a "valued client of the bank."

"I met Wong through Jason Go. Jason Go has been helping me in getting clients for whatever bank I am assigned," Deguito said.

Deguito said Wong became a client of hers when she was working for East West Bank.

Asked about his association with Wong after Deguito claimed that the RCBC President was a friend of Wong, Tan said Deguito "seems to know him better."

"I have no business (with him)," Tan said, noting that he met Wong in 2002 because he was a restaurant owner. But Tan said he had not seen Wong in 12 or 14 years.

Asked whether he was a member of the so-called Thursday Club that included Go and Wong, Tan said he was not part of the group. On questioning by the blue ribbon committee chair, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, Deguito said she attended the birthday party of Go in the last quarter of 2014 and in attendance were Tan and Wong, among others.

"Wong and Tan walked together and Mr. Tan told me to take care of that guy (Wong)," Deguito said.

Deguito also said Tan invited her to join RCBC when she resigned from East West Bank in 2013.

Tan said he did not remember attending Go's birthday party as Deguito had said.

"I never invited her to join (RCBC) . She is portraying herself as someone special and that I brought her in. That did not happen," Tan said of Deguito, this time on her claim he invited her to join the bank.

Wong will return to the Philippines to appear before the Senate blue ribbon committee, according to his lawyer.

"In the letter, he expressed willingness to appear before the committee on March 20 onwards," Wong's lawyer Macel Fernandez told the committee.

Fernandez said his client, a Filipino citizen, would address the allegations against him when he appears before the committee. Wong left the country on March 4 to undergo a medical treatment in Singapore, his lawyer said.

Guingona set the next hearing on March 29 at 1:30 p.m.

Asked if Wong would be available at such time, Fernandez said: "He will be available but it depends on the outcome of the medical treatment."
RMG worker missing for five days

Staff Reporter :

A garment worker had gone missing for five days from Sreepur of Ashulia in Dhaka district.

The victim has been identified as Ashiq, 17, operator of Anzeer Apparel Sweater Factory, hailing from Pabna district.

Mohsinul Quader, Officer-in-Charge (OC) Ashulia

Police Station, said, "Ashiq was going to his office from their rental house in Sreepur on Sunday morning. But he did not come back after office hour. The switch of his phone is still off."

A general diary has been filed with the police station in this connection, the police official said. "We are trying to trace him soon, the OC said.
The overlooked challenge of development

Ann Hudock :

When I began my development career in Sierra Leone working with women's cooperatives, I was struck by the struggles women faced on every front. Ranging from legal access to land down to being able to access to their own vegetable plots, every aspect of their lives seemed riddled with challenges and barriers. According to local custom, women couldn't even be in the fields when they were menstruating as they were considered "unclean."

When the war started in 1991, women were the ones who were left behind to protect their families and find livelihoods as best they could. They were at the forefront of the peace movement; their bravery and voices are credited with ending the war by pushing negotiators to reach a peace deal in 2002.

But when reconstruction took place, women were sidelined. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 offers much to celebrate in terms of how women contribute to peace negotiations. Where we have a long way to go is in their engagement and even leadership of reconstruction.

The biggest failure of the international development community is its inability to put women at the center of postwar economic reconstruction.

While some countries like Rwanda did better at incorporating women into post-conflict assistance, there is work to be done before this approach is truly mainstreamed. This goes beyond putting gender lenses on post-conflict assessments or consultations with women's groups as macroeconomic frameworks are developed.

What's needed are fundamental revisions to the way in which assistance gets shaped and delivered. Women need to become the architects of their own solutions post-conflict, building from the resiliency they demonstrated during the war and even capitalizing on new roles and opportunities that might open up to them when the social order is upended.

To succeed in this ambition we need to do three things:

First, instead of reconstructing the old order post-conflict, we need to build on the platform of new opportunities that women have created. Unless and until we design post-conflict assistance strategies that protect, preserve and deepen the economic spaces that women carve out organically during conflict, we will be rebuilding on a faulty foundation.

Second, we need to invest in research that tells us what happens for women during war in terms of livelihoods they create and what opportunities open up to them when men are less present to fill these same jobs. We also need to know more about what cultural shifts take place, what gender boundaries blur or disappear for women, and - significantly - what effect that has on their economic enterprise.

Women's economic activities during conflict are often in the informal sector and involve self-employment rather than wage earning. For example, in Sierra Leone, men actively recruited women into breadwinning roles so that men were free to fight and the women were able to fund them.

Finally, economic empowerment for women post-conflict requires more than economic engagement. Women need access to land and land rights, political representation, savings, leadership training, and psychosocial support. There are important roles here for the private sector, post-war reconstruction generally and women's economic empowerment specifically.

Given the informal nature of women's economic participation, we know very little about what allows them to parlay the roles and opportunities that open up to them in conflict and war, and to leverage these for longer-term economic advancement.

(Dr. Ann Hudock serves as the senior vice president for international programs at Plan International USA).
Sea-level rise : A growing threat to coastal belts

Bahauddin Foizee :

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world due to climate change. Besides its major problems of poverty and illiteracy, Bangladesh's vulnerability to climate change is very alarming. The overall economic development of the country has been troubled to a considerable extent by the adverse affects of climate change.

Among the major impacts of the climate change - particularly of the global warming - the increasing rise in sea-level every year has been the most alarming one so far, with the possibility of submerging 6-8% of 'flood-prone' Bangladesh under water by 2030 (a prediction made in 2007 by the UK Department for International Development). The major cause behind the rise in sea-level is the rapid melting of ice of different regions, mostly of the south and north poles.

Melting of ice, without any doubt, causes the sea-levels to rise. The effects of the continuation of the rise in sea-levels are deep. It would submerge under water many areas around the globe, especially the coastal ones; and perhaps it will not take decades for the coastlines to change.

The rise in sea-levels has been causing more floods, especially during storms. Higher sea-levels have increased the size of the flow of water that the super-storms generally bring into inland from the ocean. Some short term impacts of rise in sea-level (especially due to polar ice melting) are regularly experienced these days by many victims around the globe. The Tsunami is an ideal example of what sort of disaster the rise in sea-level, caused by melting of polar ice, could lead us upto. North Pole or Arctic region, which is one of the two heaviest ice-covered regions in the globe, is warming faster than other areas across the globe. In this region, temperature has increased over the decades by an alarming rate compared to the rest of the globe, and it seems that temperature in this region will continue to increase if measures are not taken to reduce this increasing trend. The warming atmosphere, along with a changed weather-pattern, is causing Arctic ice to melt at such alarming rapidity that a greater portion of Arctic ice will be gone in next two decades, and an ice-free Arctic summer could be experienced by next four decades, as claimed by the experts in this field. The ice of the region is already reduced by as much as 50% compared to the 1950s. The impacts of declining ice-cover in the Arctic are far-reaching, from species endangerment to the weakening of global ocean circulation, to massive 'rise in sea-levels'.

The other of the two heaviest ice-covered regions in the globe is the South Pole or Antarctic region. Thousands of tourists and researchers visit the region, especially the Antarctic Peninsula, every year. More scientists, more tourists, more research stations, more countries hunting for minerals and other resources, and greater access to the region in general are making the region increasingly warmer. Moreover, an increase in visitors means more boats/ships, other external materials brought by them, more carbon dioxide and so on. Therefore, the disturbances to the region's fragile environment are ever increasing with these pollutions. The carbon emissions in the far away human inhabited areas are also contributing to the increasing warming of the Antarctic region. The warming, in turn, is causing the sea level to rise in an unprecedented rapidity.

Melting of polar ice is scary for many reasons, and the scariest is the rise in sea-level, as mentioned earlier. In long run, the coastline and coastal cities will be lost. But in the short term, it will cause more damage through floods and powerful storms that might bring water into inland with them, causing devastation like that of the Tsunami. With flat and low-lying landscape, the whole coastal area of Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to such floods and storms. Almost one-fourth of the total population of Bangladesh live in the coastal areas, where majority of the population are affected, directly or indirectly, by coastal floods or tidal flows, salinity, tropical cyclones, erosion of river-bank etc. With the rise of sea-level "even by a metre", Bangladesh could lose a substantial percentage of its total landmass under the sea water, turning millions of inhabitants living in the coastal areas of Bangladesh into climate refugees.

Moreover, the freshwater sources in the coastal areas of Bangladesh face deep intrusion of saline water from the Bay of Bengal during the dry season. The melting of polar ice in its gradual process will only deteriorate the existing situation to a great extent. German scholars from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warned that if incentives of the global warming, especially the carbon emissions in the atmosphere, are not reduced immediately worldwide, a series of unstoppable events will be triggered, causing dramatic rise in sea-levels and the total annihilation of coastal cities inhabited by millions of people. This speculation ofcourse does not exclude coastal areas of Bangladesh. While this is a comparatively long term impact of global warming, or of melting of polar ice to be precise, Bangladesh is likely to experience more 'immediate' adverse impacts of global warming, as mentioned earlier. Agriculture, industry, school, hospitals, roads, bridges, livelihoods, marine resources, forestry, biodiversity, human health and other utility services will suffer severely.

All in all, earth's temperatures are rising, the ocean water is warming, polar ice is melting, and sea levels are going up. It is high time for Bangladesh to start working on real solutions alongwith other most affected countries. Bangladesh must start addressing these above mentioned concerns with utmost urgency in the global platforms.
Banks must adopt EMV credit cards to protect deposits

NEWS report, in a national daily on Friday said that around 10 million bank clients in Bangladesh who use ATM cards or plastic money known as Visa or Master cards are potential victims of fraudsters. The task is easy because such cards use magnetic stripe, which is vulnerable to skimming devices and can copy cardholders' information to create duplicate ATM and credit cards for stealing. It appears that the warning has come at a right time when cyber theft and such other electronic transfer related stealing have created a highly volatile situation in the country. The recent breaking of ATM booths of several banks in the capital and the latest bank heist in which hackers have removed over US$ 101 million from Bangladesh Bank's account with Federal Reserves in New York only showed the ominous sign of greater danger that await the country's banking system. There is no doubt a new threat to safety of customers deposit in banks is running high over every other risks now causing tension to bank clients and bank management as to how to make the electronic banking system foolproof. As per the report, Bangladesh Bank was pressing commercial banks to convert the magnetic stripe cards into chip cards, which is also known as EMV cards. Banks were asked at least four times to bring the change since September 2013, but only two banks have so far implemented it. What is surprising is that even Bangladesh Bank itself has failed so far to install safety standard that led to the recent bank heist. Many wonder why magnetic stripe is vulnerable. This is because the backside of magnetic card stores the cardholder's account information that can be easily copied. Most fraudulent practice originate at different shops where buyers use their cards at some point of time. One foreign bank recently received 40 reports of misuse of credit cards by fraudsters in one boutique in a city shop. City Bank alone had to reimburse its clients around Tk 3 crore for misuse of their cards. It is an easy practice. When cashier punch the credit card at the cash registers, customer's personal data were also secretly copied and stored and it can be easily used later to make fraudulent purchases cloning the information to a new card for theft. .Thieves were poor in the past but educated men equipped with latest cyber technology have turned overnight stealing into billion dollars business. It is the bad side of the cyber technology and the entire world is fighting to save their system. Our banking system must also do its best to install safety standard to protect clients, otherwise many clients in banks may lose their entire deposit as hackers are relentlessly at work to make illegal fortune.
2 BRAC officials abducted in Afghanistan

Staff Reporter :Two Bangladeshi BRAC officials in Afghanistan were abducted by unidentified gunmen from Kunduz city of Afghanistan on Thursday.The victims are: Haji Shawkat, 50, Chief Engineer, and Md Sirajul Islam Sumon, 37, Chief Accountant of BRAC. Both hailed from Pabna district.Mahbubul Alam Kabir, Senior Media Manager of BRAC, said, "When BRAC officials were going from Kunduz to Baghlan, their vehicle was intercepted by armed men around 4:00pm on Thursday (Afghan local time)."Later, the armed miscreants released one of the three officials as he is an Afghan."We have informed the foreign ministry about the abduction," Mahbubul said.He also said that, local police in Afghanistan were trying to trace the abducted officials.BRAC has been working in Afghanistan since 2002. Setting up around 400 offices in the country's 34 provinces, the NGO is providing education, healthcare, training, and development tools to the citizens of the war-hit country.
Gas pipeline explosion at high-rise: 25 injured

Negligence of Titas Gas alleged

All apartments on the south side of the six storied building were mostly damaged in the fire caused by leaking Titas Gas line at Banani area leaving 20 injured in the early of Friday.

Sagar Biswas :At least 25 people were injured when a devastating fire broke out due to leakage in the gas pipeline at a multi-storey building in the city's Banani area in the small hours of Friday. All the injured were tenants of the flats housed in the building. They were injured while trying to come out of the building for safety. Of them, three have been admitted to a Gulshan hospital with burn injuries.Police and local residents have said that the incident occurred due to negligence of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited. The Titas authorities did not pay any heed, though local residents complained about the pipe leakage a few days back."Nobody was killed in the fire. We have rescued all the residents of the building. The injured were sent to a Gulshan hospital," Director [Operations] of Fire Service and Civil Defence Major Shakil Newaz said.The Fire Service Director said that they have launched an intensive investigation to know whether the explosion and fire were originated from gas line leakage. "We have formed a three-member committee to conduct the investigation," he said. According to eyewitnesses, the fire broke out on the fourth floor of the six-storey building 'Milestone' at holding no: 9, road no: 23, Banani residential area under Banani Police Station at around 2:00am. After a big blast, the fire quickly spread throughout the building in the twinkling of an eye. Some walls of the rooms in third and fourth floors broke down due to huge impact of the explosion. At the same time, doors and window-glasses of the adjacent buildings were blown up following the massive explosion, the witnesses said.There are 20 flats in the building. The garage is situated in the ground floor. The residents of the flats were asleep at that time. They wake up due to sound of the big blast. The panic-stricken residents at first took shelter on the rooftop. Being informed, 15 firefighting units of Fire Service and Civil Defence rushed to the spot and brought the fire under control after a hectic effort for about two hours. Later, the Fire Fighters brought some 25 residents outside of the building defying the flames spread from the third to the sixth floor. None was permitted to enter the house till the time of filing the report yesterday evening."The residents of the building are restricted to enter their houses as we are still not sure enough whether the building is safe for residing or not," Rafiqul Islam, Assistant Commissioner, Dhaka Metropolitan Police [Gulshan Zone], said. Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation Annisul Huq expressed severe discontent over the situation while visiting the spot yesterday. "I'm trying to get the real story. If necessary, I'll call Managing Director of Titas Gas. If they have any fault, legal action will be taken against Titas authorities after an investigation," the DNCC Mayor said.Apart from supervising the fire-fighting effort, the Mayor also joined hand with the rescue operation. He tried to communicate with the trapped residents using a hand-held mike from the roof of a nearby building. He also went inside the building after the blaze was doused.Meanwhile, the owners of the building Shamshul Alam and his sister Nayer Rahman alleged that they had lodged complaint to Titas authorities about three days ago about the leakage in the pipeline. They [owners] requested the Titas Gas officials for three times [in morning, evening and 10:52pm on Friday] to repair the leakage. In the last time, the officials of Titas Gas said they could repair the leakage if the owners of the building employ some labourers. But the explosion occurred in the night.Owners of the building, living there since 2010, further said that they would file compensation suit against Titas Gas and Transmission Company Limited.Echoing the same, the local residents said that digging works of Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority [DWASA] were going on in the area since last week. The locals saw bubbles in the water, which were supposed to be created from the leakage in the gas pipe line. But the Titas authorities did not pay any attention, the locals alleged.When contacted, Director [Operation] of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited HM Ali Ashraf told The New Nation, "We have taken departmental action against the person, who had asked the building owners to engage labourers for leakage repairing."Explaining the reason behind the blast, he said, "After preliminary investigation, we have found that the gas had made a way upward the building through an adjacent sewerage pipe. The DWASA never informed us about the pipeline leakage during the digging."In the meanwhile, the incidents of gas pipeline explosions have alarmingly increased in the recent days allegedly due to negligence of Titas authorities. Four members of a family had died following a gas explosion in their rented house inside a seven-storey building in the city's Uttara on February 26.Besides, two children, who were burnt in gas pipe explosion at a residential house in Uttara on February 26, succumbed to their injuries on February 27 at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital intensive care unit. Three others were also injured in the same blast. In another incident, seven people including six of a family were injured in a fire that broke out due to gas line explosion at a house in the city's Senpara area on September 27 last year.
The Downtown Orangeburg Revitalization Association is seeking a new executive director as Jennifer Hoesing prepares to move to South Dakota.

This is a great opportunity for our family to return to our Midwestern roots, which have been tugging for some time, Hoesing said by way of social media.

We will miss our wonderful friends and the opportunities weve had in Orangeburg but are very excited about this new adventure. Please hold us in prayer as we navigate the transition, she said.

Hoesing leaves DORA today. She became DORAs executive director Jan. 1, 2013 following the retirement of Bernice Tribble, who held the position for 16 years.

She has been hired as the executive director of the Stockyards Ag Experience in Sioux Falls. The SAE is a nonprofit museum which aims to highlight the legacy of agriculture.

Hoesing moved to Orangeburg from Tallahassee, Fla. in August 2012 when her husband, Peter, received an assistant professorship at Claflin University.

Hoesings husband and their two children will finish the school year in Orangeburg before moving to South Dakota.

After the move, we will be situated very close to family, Hoesing said. Being in Orangeburg has illustrated for me just how important tight-knit family relationships are.

Hoesing said she will miss the people of Orangeburg.

I have loved serving as DORAs director, Hoesing said. The work is interesting and no two days are ever alike.

DORAs executive committee has conducted a search for a new executive director with the help of Main Street South Carolina.

The application process for the position closed March 7. About 14 applications have been received both from local individuals and those outside of Orangeburg. Slightly over half have come in from outside the state, DORA President Jeanna Reynolds said.

DORA hopes to hire a new director within six weeks, Reynolds said.

In the interim, Reynolds and the DORA board will oversee the associations operations until a new executive director is hired.

Jennifer was not born or raised here but when she was hired as DORA director, she hit the ground running, DORA past President Jeffrey Fender said. It will be hard to replace someone that gave so much time and effort to make downtown Orangeburg a better place.

Fender was on the search committee that hired Hoesing three years ago.

I call her a personal friend and also Orangeburg can call her a friend, Fender said. It would be too many items to list of the things she did as the DORA director. Overall, she had a vision of what downtown Orangeburg can be and set all our eyes looking to the future.

Prior to coming to Orangeburg, Hoesing worked in the Florida Department of States division of cultural affairs as an arts consultant. Hoesing was also director of education at LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts and managing director of the Boys Choir of Tallahassee.

Hoesing said shes seen progress since she joined DORA three years ago.

Our Main Street approach recognizes that progress is incremental and we celebrate the successes along the way as DORA has since 1993, she said.

Hoesing expressed her appreciation for her time in Orangeburg, describing her departure as bittersweet.

Ive had great opportunities professionally, to meet new friends and people who care deeply about this community, Hoesing said. I have enjoyed building relationships with downtown stakeholders and advancing our mutual goals to see downtown progress.

Hoesings departure comes a little over a year after DORA released a 157-page Downtown Vision Plan/Charrette Report about goals and plans for the future of Orangeburg.

Hoesing said the vision plan lays out a bright future for Orangeburg.

Its all about what this community collectively wants to be, with great recommendations about how we can get there, Hoesing said.

Since the vision plan was released, DORA has worked to show downtowns possibilities through the Surcee Pop Up concept shop.

DORA also started the Downtown Farmers Market on Memorial Plaza and the Paint a Good Word collaboration.

We have done this all while continuing the great activities the community has come to expect from DORA, like the Street Dance on the Square and Taste of Orangeburg, Hoesing said.

Hoesing said she is confident the vision plan will be carried forth under new DORA leadership.

The model has seen lots of success all across South Carolina and the county more broadly, she said. The vision plan and recommendations create a road map for short-, medium- and long-term goals all the way to 2022.

But she said DORA cannot do it alone.

The (Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce) is working on small business recruitment and customer service training. The city has its hugely successful facade grant program, Hoesing said. The County of Orangeburg continues to have an interest in what we are doing downtown, too. Thats just to name a few examples.

DORA certainly isnt in it alone. No matter where you live in Orangeburg, we all benefit from a thriving downtown.
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Azerbaijans State Maritime Administration and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea signed two memorandums of understanding, the administrations press service reported March 17.

Memorandum of Cooperation between the State Maritime Administration of Azerbaijan and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea and Memorandum of Understanding on mutual recognition of certificates (diplomas) issued on the basis of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, 1978 were signed March 17.

The memorandums were signed by the chief of the State Maritime Administration Gudrat Gurbanov and the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries of South Korea Kim Young-suk within the framework of the Azerbaijani delegations visit to South Korea.

It is expected that the signed documents will give impetus to development of relations between Azerbaijan and the Republic of Korea in the spheres of maritime transport, trade and cooperation, said the message.
The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $34.3 million to two local banks through the auction held by Azerbaijans Central Bank (CBA) March 18, SOFAZ said March 18.

SOFAZ offered $100 million for sale through the auction, and will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016.

The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZs transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at 7.615 billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

As of January 1, 2016, SOFAZ assets reduced by 9.5 percent compared to 2014 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $33.57 billion.
/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan and Malaysia opened direct cargo flight service, as Azerbaijans freight air carrier Silk Way West Airlines signed an agreement with Malaysia Airlines Cargo MAB Kargo Sdn Bhd.

The agreement envisages the mutual use of the aircraft fleet and the expansion of aviation route networks in different regions of the world.



Weekly flights are planned for every Thursday and Sunday. Thus, the capital of Malaysia has become seventh regular direction of Silk Way in Asia, which flies to 19 countries across the world.



Addressing the signing ceremony, Executive Director of MAB Kargo Ahmad Luqman Mohd Azmi informed about the benefits of cooperation.

We have an extensive network in Asia and the company Silk Way West will be able to join us to expand our horizons as we are serving both Asian and Australian markets by our Airbus A330-200F freighters. A company Silk Way West, with its young fleet of freighters Boeing 747-800, in turn, will provide us the opportunity to enter the western direction, suggesting, at least fifteen destinations in Europe, North and South America, he said.

The agreement also provides flights from/to Kuala Lumpur and Amsterdam twice a week with a stopover at Azerbaijans Heydar Aliyev International Airport.



Silk Way West Airlines is a part of the Silk Way group of companies, which also includes 23 companies operating in the aviation industry, and operates since 2012.



The company offers regular flights to various regions of the world including Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America, using the Heydar Aliyev International Airport as a transit hub.

Currently the airlines has eight Boeing aircrafts including two 767-300 freighters, three 747-400 freighters and three 747-8 freighters.



This year SilkWay will replenish its airline fleet by two more B747-8F aircraft, after which the airline fleet will expand to seven aircraft. Delivery of the two new aircraft will enable the airline to expand its route network.
/By Azernews/

By Nazrin Gadimova

Azerbaijan is studying opportunities of alternative Internet channels to prevent its mass re-disconnection.

Elmir Valizade, Deputy Minister of Communications and High Technologies announced about this while talking to local media on March 17.

The country has already done a lot of work in this direction, according to Valizade.

Azerbaijan has lost nearly all of its internet connection due to technical issues on November 16, 2015. The problem occurred since a fire broke out in the lines connected to the DATA-center of Delta Telecom, Azerbaijans primary provider.

The backup system at the DATA-center failed to become operational, as there was a problem in the power supply of the company. Internet outage for several hours affected the functioning of some organizations in the country. Given that numerous operations are performed using the Internet, sudden interruptions can be catastrophic in terms of work of various structures.

Valizade stressed that the ministry came to the conclusion based on studying the above mentioned situation.

Now, certain questions are being examined in order to provide an alternative to Internet channels, as well as ensure stability and high quality of the provided services, he said.

Slow Internet connection in Azerbaijan is linked with the failures in communication lines in about half of cases, believes Araz Aliyev, deputy head of the State Service for Antimonopoly Policy and Consumer Rights Protection under the Economy Ministry.

The service together with the Communications Ministry has recently created a working group, which was engaged in checking the speed of the Internet in the country and revealed the problems in the internet connections.

Following the monitoring, Internet service providers have acted appropriately and most of the problems were solved, according to Aliyev.

Today, the field of ICT, including the Internet, is a rapidly developing area in Azerbaijan. The state pays special attention to this sphere, which is a priority for the economic development of the country.

Currently, some 75 percent of the population uses the Internet in Azerbaijan. Broadband Internet penetration among the population stands at 62 percent. For these indicators, Azerbaijan is twice ahead of the world average.

The volume of incoming Internet traffic in Azerbaijan reaches 190 gigabits, according to Delta Telecom. The largest volume of Internet traffic delivered to the end user accounts for the BakinterNet state Internet provider (over 33 percent) as of 2015.




/By Azernews/

By Laman Ismayilova

A presentation ceremony of documentary film "Colonel" shot by studio "Salname" of the Azerbaijani Culture and Tourism Ministry was held in Warsaw on March 14.

The director of the film is Tahir Aliyev, author of the idea is Azerbaijani Ambassador to Poland Hasan Hasanov, screenwriter Ramil Alakbarov, operator Faiq Kerimov, composer Azer Hajialasgarli, producer Nazim Huseynov.

Filming was carried out in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Poland.

Addressing the ceremony, deputy director of the museum Jolanta Dambek spoke about Azerbaijani soldier Veli bek Jedigar, fighting in both World War I and World War II.

In a short time, the Azerbaijani servicemen reached a high official position. His life was full of bright and interesting events.

Museum Director Leszek Cheli said that Veli Bek Yadigar left a bright trace in military history of Poland.

The books of prominent Azerbaijani soldier are valuable sources for historians.

Leszek also stressed that the Museum owns personal belongings of the colonel.

Tahir Aliyev, for his part, said that he was glad that the premiere of the movie took place in Warsaw, in one of the centers of world cinematography.

Then, Aliyev thanked the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism, "Salname" studio and the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Warsaw for their contributions to the project.

Later, the film's director was awarded the commemorative medal of the embassy.

Veli bek Jedigar was a soldier of the Imperial Russian Army and officer of both the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, Polish Army, in the Second Polish Republic and the Home Army. He served in different armed forces from 1916 until 1946, fighting in both World War One and World War Two.

Jedigar was born in 1897 in the real estate of Tekeli, Tiflis Governorate in a noble Azerbaijani family.

After graduating a private gymnasium in Tiflis, he briefly studied at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, but changed his mind and joined Tiflis Cadet Corps, in 1916.

Following the Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan, Veli bek Jedigar continued fighting against the Bolshevik invaders until March 1921, when he left his homeland, and via Turkey and Romania left for Poland.

November 1922 he was officially accepted into the Polish Army, with the rank of the cavalry officer. He completed with distinction the Higher War School in Warsaw, and as a qualified officer, was sent to Baranowicze (Belarus) Cavalry Brigade.

Azerbaijani soldier was respected by the Home Army authorities, and as a personal friend of the Polish military leader, General Tadeusz Bor- Komorowski, was responsible for cavalry training.

Veli bek Jedigar died of heart attack in Buenos Aires, on December 13, 1971. His ashes were buried at Warsaws Muslim Tatar Cemetery.
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree March 17 on measures to create a free trade zone type special economic area in the Alat township of Bakus Garadagh district.

The zone will also include the territory of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port.

The decree has been signed in order to ensure the sustainable economic development, increase the competitiveness, strengthen Azerbaijans position as a logistics and transport center and to create a multi-vector transport infrastructure in the country.

The Economy Ministry and Baku International Sea Trade Port closed joint-stock company have been tasked to present proposals and relevant information to Azerbaijans president about the creation of the free trade zone within a month.

Moreover, the abovementioned structures have been tasked to attract an international consultant and improve the law on special economic zones, present proposals to Azerbaijans president on the economic feasibility of the free trade zone, a concept for its development, infrastructure and management, as well as on types of business activity to be carried out in the zone, and their features.

/By Trend/
Azerbaijan`s Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov has met Guenther Baechler, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the Southern Caucasus.





The sides exchanged views on the priorities of Germany in the capacity of Acting OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and the current state and prospects for future development of relations between Azerbaijan and OSCE.





Elmar Mammadyarov highlighted the negotiations process over the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, underlined that as a main goal Armenia pursues deliberate policy to inflict damage to the negotiations process with provocative actions, to maintain the current status-quo, which is based on occupation and aggression and to conduct annexation of Azerbaijans occupied territories.





He mentioned that bringing the technical issue such as the investigation of incidents intentionally into the agenda, is one of Armenias attempts to divert the attention from the resolution of the conflict.





He added the technical issue such as the investigation of incidents could be considered as part of the process envisaging the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.





Elmar Mammadyarov emphasized the importance of the contribution of all Minsk Group Member States to the settlement of the conflict and holding meetings of the Minsk Group with the participation of all Member States.





Guenther Baechler expressed his gratitude for the comprehensive information. Briefing about the priorities of current OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, he noted that they pay particular attention for the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict which constitutes the main threat for the regional peace and security.




Azerbaijan-OSCE relations have been discussed as deputy chairwoman of the Milli Majlis Bahar Muradova met with Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus Gunther Bachler.





"Azerbaijan is ready to cooperate with the OSCE in all areas, particularly economy, security and human rights. Our country made serious contributions to this organization in these fields," she said.





She stressed the importance of Bachler`s visit to Azerbaijan in developing relations with the OSCE and Germany. Muradova said: "Cooperation with all bodies of the OSCE is a priority for us. We have always tried to prove our commitment to the OSCE values.





Touching upon the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Milli Majlis chairwoman said Armenia was trying keep the status quo. Of course, we don`t think that Germany will achieve full resolution of the problem over one year of its chairmanship. But we believe you will do your utmost to ensure the settlement of the problem, she added.





Special Representative Bachler highlighted key priorities of the OSCE during Germany`s chairmanship.




Azerbaijan`s first lady, president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva has met with spouses of the heads of diplomatic missions in Baku on the eve of Novruz holiday.

Mehriban Aliyeva said she was delighted to meet with spouses of the heads of diplomatic missions accredited in Azerbaijan.





Wife of the Pakistani Ambassador, Chairperson of the Organization Spouses of Heads of Diplomatic Missions Asima Qaiser highlighted the activity of the organization. Asima Qaiser spoke about the projects implemented under the leadership of president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva.





She hailed the first lady`s activity as excellent. The spouse of the Pakistani Ambassador thanked Azerbaijan`s first lady and proposed holding such meetings on a regular basis.





First lady Mehriban Aliyeva said the heads of diplomatic missions and their spouses contributed to the strengthening of relations among countries. She said this meeting is a good opportunity for discussing cooperation prospects.





Spouse of the Dutch Ambassador Ursula Cehner provided an insight into the charity projects of the organization.





The president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation stressed the importance of expanding work on this front. The first lady said she was ready to support the projects of the Organization of Spouses of Heads of Diplomatic Missions.





They then had a joint tea party.





The spouses of heads of diplomatic missions were presented with Novruz gifts.




/By Azernews/

By Nazrin Gadimova

A chauvinism movement seems to proper Armenia as anti-Russian language hysterics gains momentum in the country.

After the CSTO Councils meeting in Yerevan the Armenian officials expressed their dissatisfaction with speeches made in Russian without interpretation in the state language.

Given that the Russian is the official language of the CSTO, all these statements seem to be extremely ridiculous and absurd. Moreover, in order to allow Armenian nationalists to unburden their hearts, numerous reports have emphasized that the event will be held in Russian.

The state officials sharply criticized Eduard Sharmazanov, deputy chair of the parliament, who represented Armenia at the above-mentioned meeting for making his speeches in Russian. In response to criticism, Sharmazanov stressed that the CSTO events differ from bilateral meetings.

However, Sharmazanovs excuses did not satisfy stubborn Armenian officials.

Tevan Poghosyan, a member of Heritage faction, could not hide his nationalist stance, demanding to insist upon the simultaneous translation into Armenian, while the Armenian MPs were obliged to make statements in Armenian during the meeting.

Armenia is mono-ethnic country where chauvinism and nationalism transmitted from mother's milk.

Armenian intolerance is well known far beyond its borders. Even Russia, its great-power ally, which have repeatedly faced with the Armenian harassment.

Fighting use of Russian language has intensified in Armenia, even gaining an aggressive tone with each passing year. Opponents to use of the Russian, apparently, believe that getting rid of the Russian language will help them to get free from dependence on the big brother.

The Russian language was not treated very well in this country even during the Soviet period. It is not surprising that after the collapse in 1991, Armenia began crusade against the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia.

After some time, Moscow has brought these nationalists back to earth. Thus, in 2002, immediately after official meetings, Armenia was forced to open Russian-speaking school sectors.

However, these classes seemed to pose a hazard to national identity of the 'great' nation, pushing Armenians to forbid their children to study in the Russian-speaking schools.

What is interesting is tolerant Armenia with a population of 2.9 million people is home to only 5,000 ethnic Russians and this figure is greatly exaggerated.

In 2014, Armenia and Russia witnessed a row that took place during the meeting of the Armenian-Russian parliamentary friendship club. Dmitry Kiselyov, director general of the Russia Today news agency, accused Armenia of suppressing the Russian culture.

"There are no Russian schools in Yerevan, Russian culture is secondary and this is too dangerous," Kiselyov stressed.

These statements provoked a strong reaction of the Armenian establishment  everyone was trying to accuse him of unfair treatment with Armenia.

Now similar accusations rained on Sharmazanov, who dared to speak Russian at the meeting of the CSTO Council.

It is noteworthy that no other member of the CSTO than Armenia holds such a disaffection with regard to the Russian language. Noteworthy, all of these countries are more developed and economically stronger than Armenia, which is dramatically concerned on preservation of national identity.




In order the resolutions of the international structures connected with settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been implemented, serious pressure has to be put upon Armenia, and it is necessary to use sanctions against it.

This was stated at the meeting of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Chairman of the State Committee on Affairs of Refugees and IDPs Ali Hasanov with the delegation headed by the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, Gunther Bachler.

Reminding regular meetings and wide exchange of views with OSCE Representatives on the questions connected with the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister expressed confidence that the discussions would yield positive results. Noting the high level of relations between OSCE and Azerbaijan, Ali Hasanov told that along with this organization, resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were adopted also by the UN Security Council and other international structures. Unfortunately, all these resolutions remain on paper. We hope that requirements of these resolutions will be fulfilled. But if to pay attention to the processes happening today in the world, one can think that settlement of this conflict will take away a lot of time, he stressed.

Having expressed satisfaction in connection with his visit to Baku, Gunther Bachler noted that Azerbaijan, more than twenty years being in the condition of the conflict, holding long-term negotiations on its solution, has passed very difficult distance.





He informed that the purpose of his visit to Azerbaijan consists in detailed studying of the processes happening in the region, carrying out mutual exchange of views. Gunther Bachler expressed confidence that active cooperation of OSCE with the country would make positive contribution to settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.





Attending the meeting, Germany's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Heidrun Tempel informed about completion of his diplomatic activity, emphasized that she was satisfied with work in Azerbaijan. She expressed gratitude to the government of Azerbaijan for effective cooperation.





Azerbaijans Deputy Prime Minister wished the ambassador success in his further diplomatic activity.




/By Azernews/

By Nazrin Gadimova

Azerbaijan is ready to continue cooperation with Russia in the military sphere.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov made a statement in his interview to Russian media on the eve of his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrovs visit to Baku.

Mammadyarov believes that information on existing unresolved financial issues between Baku and Moscow does not correspond to the reality.

We pay for everything in accordance with the contracts, the minister stressed. There are problems with the performance  the armament, which arrives in Azerbaijan, must comply with the technical parameters fixed in the contracts. Dmitry Rogozin arrived in Baku to understand the problems associated with these parameters, and he was given full explanations. No questions left.

The transactions go on in accordance with schedule, but it is necessary to correct the technical parameters of a few particular types of weapons, Mammadyarov stressed.

This, according to Dmitry Rogozin, will be done in the near future. In general, our cooperation with Russia in the military-technical sphere is successfully developing based on commercial principles and on the basis of mutually beneficial cooperation, the foreign minister said.

Mammadyarov also highlighted on the note of protest that was sent to Moscow on February 24.

Mammadyarov said the document demanded from Russia to give guarantees on the non-use of the military equipment sold to Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani territories, as well as along the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.

Azerbaijan has voiced its concerns over Russia's approval of a $200 million loan to Armenia for the purchase of Russian-made military equipment. At the same time, Russia, which enjoys much influence on Armenia, is considered a key party in brokering a lasting solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor in 1988.

Russia is a co-chairing country of the OSCE Minsk Group, engaged in a peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict that has destabilized the region for two decades.

There is a rule of the end-consumer in such supplies. If Armenia is the end-consumer, then the issue would not go beyond the framework of bilateral relations between Moscow and Yerevan. However, when the weapons are placed on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, it is a different matter, Azerbaijans foreign minister stressed.

With regard to the upcoming visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Mammadyarov said that the parties will discuss the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Meanwhile, we plan to focus on prospects of the North-South transport corridor - the idea of connecting railways of the Northern European countries, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and further Pakistan and India, he concluded.

Russia is the main trading partner of Azerbaijan in the CIS. It also ranks first among the countries importing goods from Azerbaijan. Today, more than 600 companies with Russian capital operate in the country. Russian investments in the countrys economy have recently amounted to more than $1.8 billion. The leading Azerbaijani companies successfully operate in the regions of the Russian Federation. Direct Azerbaijani investments in the Russian economy have amounted to more than $1 billion for the last 10 years.
/By Azernews/

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are working out several issues for signing of certain documents as part of laying the Caspian segment of the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway project.

This was stated by Elmir Velizade, Azerbaijan's Deputy Communications and High Technologies Minister on March 17.

He told Trend that earlier, the agreement on construction of the underwater segment of the TASIM project was achieved at the level of communication administrations of the two countries.

Over the past several years, Azerbaijan has pioneered a number of important initiatives in ICT sector that have undoubtedly contributed to unlocking the regions huge potential to meet its development aspirations. TASIM is one of such projects.

The TASIM project with an initial cost of $100 million envisions creating a major transit link from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. The line will connect major centers of data exchange in Europe and Asia together, stretching through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and Germany. A reserve North transit line will pass through Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

TASIM will be implemented in two stages. The project is expected to come on stream at a cost of $100 million. The length of TASIM will stretch over 11,000 kilometers and its initial network bandwidth will reach 2 Tbit/s.

Today, Azerbaijan is looking for ways to attract new members to TASIM. The country is eying primarily the countries of Eurasia from Western Europe to Eastern Asia.

Iran has already expressed readiness to cooperate with Azerbaijan on the TASIM project. China, the world's second largest economy, also attaches significant importance to the project.
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on measures to improve governance in the social protection of population March 18.

Under the decree, the State Social Protection Fund has been included into the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population of Azerbaijan.

From now on, the Fund will be called the State Social Protection Fund at the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population.

The decrees objectives are to implement a uniform state policy and efficient governance in the social protection, to implement an integrated approach to meet the populations social needs using modern information technologies, and to provide organization of pensions and other social payments in line with the single window principle.
A major terrorist attack has been prevented in Turkeys Tunceli province, Sabah newspaper reported March 18.

During the special operation in the province, the police found 650 kg of explosives.

The terrorist attack was planned by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorist group, said the newspaper citing the countrys law enforcement bodies.

Turkish police have recently warned that PKK plans to commit a series of terror attacks in the countrys large cities from March 20 to March 30.

A car bomb exploded in Ankara on March 13, near a crowded bus stop. The explosion killed as many as 37 people, 125 more got injured.







Preliminary reports said the two suicide bombers, one male and one female triggered the explosive device, while in the car. According to reports, the mentioned car was hijacked Feb. 10 in the Turkish south-eastern province of Sanliurfa.
Turkmenistan and the Czech Republic discussed the expansion of cooperation and the possibility of partnership in the fuel and energy industry, transportation and communications sectors, read a Turkmen government message, released March 18.

These discussions took place during a meeting with the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, Jan Hamacek, at the parliament of Turkmenistan.

Trade and economic partnership, cooperation in industry, agriculture, pharmaceutical sector, high technologies, use of alternative energy sources and investment activity were named the promising areas of cooperation between the two countries.

Turkmenistan is one of the main partners of the EU in the sphere of energy security. Delivery of gas from the Caspian region to the EU will allow diversifying the supply sources.

/By Trend/




/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

Daylight saving time was cancelled and now residents of Azerbaijan do not have to wind their clocks forward or backward.

Following the cancel of biannual time changes in the country, experts recommended to make changes in working hours.

The country was expected to switch to summer time by setting the clocks one hour forward at 04:00am on March 27, Sunday. On March 17, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to cancel the practice after recommendations of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences.

ANAS Economic Institute head Pasha Tanriverdi suggests to define the beginning of the working day at 08.30 a.m. and the end at 05.30 p.m., instead of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively.

To determine the working time its necessary to take into account the "day-night" symmetry for the daylight, according to the scientist.

If to choose the right time in the region, the sun must be at the zenith at 12:00, he said.

The scientist also stressed that switching to winter and summer time is not relevant in regions close to the equator, where the minimum level of daylight is less than working time.

He emphasized that this practice is applicable to countries in multiple time zones, citing Russia, which is located in nine time zones, as an example. But in February 2001, Russia refused to move to winter time.

In Azerbaijan, even in December, when the daylight hours are less, it lasts at least nine hours. This means that the daylight saving regime is irrelevant for Azerbaijan. Also, the amount of savings that were spent on electricity is not so significant, the scientist explained.



Spokesman of the State Committee for Standardization, Metrology and Patent Fazil Talibli also supported the idea that moving clocks has no positive impact on the countrys economy, but on the contrary it created certain social, psychological and health issues.

He told Trend that the time conversion is beneficial for big countries, as these countries fully use solar energy, thus saving electrical energy.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Azerbaijan presented instructions and additional resources for the countrys residents to help them adapt to the new calculation of time and turn off automatic transition to the daylight saving time.

The software users can easily change the time on their devices from March 27, following the instructions, which can be found at the linkhttps://www.facebook.com/MS.Azerbaijan/posts/934269559974722
Al Faisaliah Hotel, a premium five-star property in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has welcomed Marco Syrbe as its new director of food and beverage (F&B).



A German national, Syrbe is expected to bring his European flair for fine dining as well as his international expertise in restaurant operations to the groups outlets.



In Syrbes most recent role, he lead the F&B team at The St. Regis Doha, overseeing its extensive operations, including 6,000 sq m of event space and 12 outlets, which comprise the award winning Astor Grill and Two Gordon Ramsay restaurants.



His hotel career to date has seen him work with leading luxury brands such as Fairmont, Raffles and Viceroy in destinations including Singapore, Qatar, Maldives and his native Germany.



Commenting on the new appointment, Alexander Blair, general manager, Al Faisaliah Hotel & Hotel Al Khozama said: We are extremely pleased to be welcoming Marco to the Al Faisaliah team. His experience working with high profile international partners including Gordon Ramsey, and Al Sultan Brahaim will support our commitment to bringing exclusive dining experiences to our guests. The addition only strengthens our current offering and we look forward to hearing his fresh ideas and unveiling some new promotions and experiences to the diners of Riyadh very soon. - TradeArabia News Service
Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Terry Collins, a former Ohio prisons director who oversaw more than 30 executions and then became an anti-death penalty advocate in retirement, died Thursday of a heart attack, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction confirmed. Collins, of Chillicothe, was 63.

Collins was named state prisons superintendent in 2006, after nearly three decades with the agency. Among his experiences was taking over as warden at the maximum-security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville immediately after the 1993 prison riot that left nine inmates and a guard dead.

"I'm not afraid of a challenge. I try to work as hard as I can," Collins told The Associated Press the year he was promoted.

Current prisons director Gary Mohr called Collins "a solid person and professional who cared deeply about our agency and understood the importance of having a balance between his career and family."

Collins defended Ohio's execution procedures as director, including the 2009 botched execution of inmate Romell Broom, stopped after two hours when executioners could not access his veins.

At the time, Collins said the episode "absolutely, positively" did not shake his faith in the state's lethal-injection procedure.

After his 2010 retirement, Collins actively opposed capital punishment, participating in numerous events with Ohioans to Stop Executions, the state's largest anti-death penalty group. He had been scheduled as keynote speaker at an anti-death penalty event at the Ohio Statehouse next month.

Collins told the AP last fall he was concerned about the stress executions placed on prison employees and on victims' family members, who often waited decades for justice. Collins also had concerns about the fairness of death sentences and the possibility of an innocent person being put to death.

"We have the greatest justice system in the world, but it too can make a mistake," he said. "If we make a mistake with the death sentence, there's no correcting it."

Collins' concern went beyond abolishing the death penalty to wanting to see broader prison and criminal justice reform, said Abraham Bonowitz, a spokesman for Ohioans to Stop Executions.

Ohio's prison population reached a record high in 2007 under Collins' watch, and he pushed sentencing reforms in the state Legislature to help alleviate the problem and save money.

Ohio named a facility on the grounds of the Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe after Collins in 2014. The Terry Collins Reentry Center brought together education programs, treatment and other services to help inmates better reintegrate into society.

Collins lived with his grandfather in rural Hillsboro before heading off to college to become an accountant. He fell into the corrections program at Morehead State University in Kentucky and took to it. He became a warden and prison psychologist.

___

This story has been updated to correct that Collins was Lucasville warden immediately after the riot.

___

Associated Press Writer Ann Sanner contributed to this report.
Arizona is in a great position to take advantage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, thanks to its high degree of integration with Mexico and its location near the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, said a top Mexican official.

Kenneth Smith Ramos, head of the Trade and NAFTA Office of the Ministry of the Economy of Mexico, in Washington, D.C., visited Southern Arizona this week, speaking at the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas summit in Tubac and at the Consulate of Mexico in Tucson.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership  a trade deal involving the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam  would generate access to markets in a region of the world that will grow the most over the next 15 years, Smith Ramos said in Tucson.

The great beneficiaries of that access to Asia will be the western states of the United States, Mexico and Canada, he said.

While the United States already has agreements with some of the TPP participants, the deal would give preferential market access to Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam.

In 2014, Arizona exported $663 million to Japan, $349 million to Malaysia and $43 million to Vietnam, numbers that should see a rise if the deal is approved, officials said.

Although the agreement has been strongly supported by the Obama administration, its approval by Congress is not assured.

With the presidential primary bringing attacks to international trade from both Democrat and Republican candidates, Smith Ramos said, proponents must do a better job explaining the benefits of trade as well as addressing the negative impacts of a global economy.

We are shooting at the wrong enemy. In this era of economic uncertainty, you want to find a clear culprit as to what is going on, but when you look at the facts it is hard to make the case that either the U.S. or Mexico would be better off if we did not have NAFTA, he said.

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada came into effect in 1994, Arizonas exports to Mexico have increased by almost 400 percent, with more than 100,000 jobs in the state depending on trade with Mexico, officials said.

In all, about 6 million jobs in the United States depend on trade with Mexico, which stands at $236 billion in American goods, Smith Ramos said.

Still, it would be naive to just quote numbers and what is happening on the ground and not recognize the negative feeling surrounding international trade, he said.

The root of it has to do less with trade, he said, then with the drastic technological changes that have taken place in the last 15 years in the world economy and led to changes in many industries.

As certain regions gain high-tech jobs, others have lost traditional manufacturing positions, and the adjustment is not necessarily as quick as would be required for communities to recover, Smith Ramos said.

Both the United States and Mexico should continue working on providing opportunities when there are impacts of trade, such as worker retraining programs and a safety net for certain kinds of jobs, and by making it clear that economic opportunity increases by working together, he said.

The feeling is that I lost my job because of a trade agreement, but when you look at the data, its not quite true, Smith Ramos said. Where have most of the manufacturing jobs that have left the U.S. not to come back gone? They have gone to the one country where the U.S. does not have a free trade agreement.

It is precisely China that officials are trying to work with, he said, to bring it into the rules of international trade and perhaps at some point into the TPP.

In the meantime, the NAFTA countries should continue to integrate and develop their already impressive supply chains in order to be the most competitive region in the world, officials said, adding that Southern Arizona is ready.

We are ready to build on our success with a bigger footprint with our partners in Mexico, said Dennis Minano, chairman of Sun Corridor Inc., Southern Arizonas main economic development agency.

To leverage the incredible assets we have, to demonstrate to the world that the Southern Arizona-Sonora region is a binational, world class center of integrated research, manufacturing and supply chain strength, he said.
Tucson Arena holds 9.275 people.

Tucson Music Hall holds just shy of 2,300.

And on Friday, March 18, both could be full as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders holds a rally in the arena and Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs the popular choral work "Carmina Burana" in the Music Hall.

And that means anyone attending either event is facing a parking nightmare like we haven't seen in a long time.

Add into that all the folks attending the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival at the much smaller Leo Rich Theatre  seats just over 500  and you've got the makings for a colossal traffic jam.

Which means you need to consider your options now before you head downtown.

Here's a few ideas:

 Park and walk: There are several downtown garages that aren't next door to the Tucson Convention Center campus. They will likely get pretty full pretty early, so timing is key. Park early, grab a bite to eat then walk over to the arena/music hall/Leo Rich.

 Grab a cab or Uber: If you find yourself parking in nomad's land, blocks or even miles from the venues, hitch a ride in. That alleviates the parking nightmare.
One of the best gifts that Jim and Elise Lomas found when they tackled the clutter that had taken command of their house was a small slip of paper they didnt even know they still had.

Today, it sits prominently under glass on a desk in an orderly home office where the Oro Valley couple can see it every day.

To Daddy, From Nancy, it says in a childs handwriting with as many hearts and Xs and Os as their daughter could fit on the page.

If not for the decision to get a professional to help them organize the home, the note and another homemade card made by their daughter  now an adult  might never have been seen again, maybe caught up in a purge or maybe never to surface again among the clutter.

The point had been reached in September to get an outsider to help, and the process began when the Lomases hired a professional organizer, Jennifer Phelps, owner of Ms. Fix-It Home Solutions.

We couldnt find anything, Elise said, prompting the couple to look for help with reorganizing the home they have lived in since 1999.

To see the current order in the Lomas home makes it difficult to picture the disarray they described before Phelps was called in.

Elise opens her walk-in closet today and her hanging clothes are in order by color and style, shorts and pants, blouses and dresses, outfits with sleeves and without sleeves. Dresser drawers are in order with shirts and socks neatly folded. Sheets are in a drawer in a spare bedroom and they have only as many as they use.

A little more than six months ago, Elise said, laundry was piled throughout the house and they just couldnt catch up.

My house was never cluttered like that, she said.

Phelps, who is president of Tucson Professional Organizers, a local trade group, said its not unusual for someone, like the Lomas couple, to suddenly be caught up in a situation where their home gets cluttered to the point of literally not being able to dig out. She said a traumatic event can trigger a situation, and in the Lomas case, she said, it appears it was the death of Elises parents 10 years ago.

Suddenly, the Lomases, who both are home living on disability, had to deal with all of her parents possessions, a large amount of which they took into their 1,600-square-foot home, and most of which didnt fit. Two bedrooms and the garage became holding areas for much of what the couple took in, which crowded the rest of the house.

While were not talking about a big problem like hoarding or anything, Phelps said, it is a fact that often an event has occurred in someones life or in a familys situation that has caused them to get behind, and theyre just not quite able to get themselves back to normal without some assistance.

While each situation can be unique, there are some basic principles to reorganizing that help someone tackle what can seem like an insurmountable situation, she said.

Rule No. 1, Phelps said: Dont organize junk.

The first step is to remove the things that are easy to remove without too much thought, Phelps said. There are things that have no emotional attachment that can go away without any real emotional effort.

But even though theres a realization that stuff has to go, Jim said, its still not easy to actually do it.

It is a little difficult, Jim said. You have to make a decision to say, Yes, we have to get rid of certain things. It comes during the process. At the beginning of the process its not as easy to say.

For Elise, parting with her parents possessions was doubly difficult in that all of it had some emotional attachment. In her mind, she said, there was no junk.

When my mother and father passed away it was overwhelming to me and there were certain things I just couldnt part with, she said. But I had to give it away. I had to part with it. It was very difficult. It was beautiful, beautiful stuff.

Phelps said a technique that helps with that particular decision process is to donate items to organizations near and dear to the heart.

In the Lomas case, Jim said they donated excess office supplies to schools they support. Clothing went to the Gospel Rescue Mission, to local womens and childrens centers, the Golden Goose Thrift Shop in Catalina, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and to organizations that support Vietnam veterans.

They also sold a lot of their stuff, Jim said, first making use of their neighborhoods twice-a-year garage sale that brought in plenty of lookers and buyers. They also sold items online, as Jim once had a small business that sold items on eBay.

We had a big garage sale, Jim said. That was actually the first project  going through and finding everything we would want to sell in a garage sale. And what we didnt sell, we donated.

Phelps said that at the beginning of the organizing process, its important to find a place to make an immediate impact, even if its the space that doesnt appear to be the obvious starting point. A homeowner may think a certain room is the root of the clutter, when actually its another space that is causing the clutter in that space.

Sometimes you have to come at it from a different angle than the homeowner to really clear the logjam and get things moving, Phelps said. You have to figure out whats the linchpin. A homeowner might say I really need this particular room done. But I might see that something else has to be done first to get that done.

Really its based on what is going to get the homeowner feeling more at ease in the shortest amount of time. You just have to create space to work in because often theres really no room to sort stuff. So you have to create spaces where you can separate things out. Sometimes things get more topsy-turvy when youre pulling things out and categorizing.

One of the biggest accomplishments in the effort, the Lomases said, is that they now have a guest bedroom in their former ultimate junk room. It was a room, Elise said, where she had to crawl over the bed to get from one side of the room to the other because there was no room to walk.

The room now has two tidy dressers, one where they keep their bedding neatly folded, the other for Jims clothes. Now the focus is to keep it orderly, which the couple said is a lot less work than trying to sort through clutter to find an important document or piece of clothing.

Its a new lifestyle, Jim said. Some days when youre getting older you dont want to have to do as much. Simplifying things was a real plus so we try to keep it up. 
TUCSON, Ariz.  Authorities are searching for a convicted sex offender from Tucson who's facing additional charges and is reported to be on the run.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office says 35-year-old Chad Andrew Berkley is accused of downloading child pornography and storing images on Google accounts and his cellphone.

They say Berkley faces sexual exploitation of a child charges.

Law-enforcement agencies across Arizona have been unable to locate Berkley since he failed to appear for his scheduled court appearance in Pima County on Jan. 26.

His last registered address is in Tucson.

The AG's Office indicted Berkley in August 2015 on 12 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

He had been released on a $10,000 bond.

Authorities say Berkley pleaded guilty to a sexual offense involving a child in 2005.
Three former Tucson police officers and a former member of the Sahuarita Police Department are facing sanctions by the state agency that regulates law enforcement officers.

On Wednesday, the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board voted to initiate proceedings against ex-Tucson Police officers Nathaniel Luttrell, Arick Martino and Reza Vafaie, said board spokeswoman, Sandy Sierra.

The board can choose to revoke or suspend their peace officer certifications, which allow them to practice law enforcement in Arizona.

Luttrell was fired last July after internal affairs found that he been in contact with women associated with the long-running prostitution ring By Spanish, AZPOST documents show.

He initially appealed his termination, but reached a settlement with the city in September. He withdrew his appeal and his disposition was changed to resigned in lieu of termination, the Star reported.

During the investigation into the business, detectives found Luttrells phone number in two phones belonging to the suspected operators of By Spanish, the documents said.

Luttrell told investigators he was looking at the website out of boredom, and although he made an appointment, never went because he thought it felt shady.

Officer Luttrell had little recollection of the websites, however he was able to specifically recall the ads and how the addresses were only listed as cross streets, the document says. He was also able to recall the name and photograph of the masseuse, Ms. C, whom he scheduled his appointment with over two years ago, after claiming hed only viewed the ad for a few minutes.

During a polygraph, he admitted to thinking when he made the appointments that he might get sex. He also was deceptive in the polygraph, when saying that hed never visited an illegal massage parlor for sexual intercourse, according to the documents.

In December, Luttrell told the AZPOST that he wanted to voluntarily relinquish his certification, but never responded to paperwork, voicemails and follow-up letters from the board, the documents say.

Excessive force case

Martino resigned from the TPD in January for an incident involving excessive force that occurred last summer.

On July 20, six officers, including Martino, responded to a disturbance in which the suspect resisted arrest. The man was placed face down on the ground, with his hands cuffed behind his back and his legs restrained, AZPOST documents say.

Still very agitated, the man struck his head against a nearby plastic trash can, after which Martino called the man a jackass and dropped from a standing position onto the upper back of Mr. J with both knees, which Mr. J was still restrained.

Two of the officers nearby immediately pushed Martino away from the suspect, according to the documents.

Martino told internal affairs detectives he used that amount of force because the suspect was attempting to self-mutilate, but interviews with other officers and body camera footage show no evidence of Martinos claims, the documents say.

Investigators determined that because Martino called the man a derogatory name before applying force, that showed the intent to insult or provoke a restrained suspect.

Recruit dismissed

Vafaie was hired by Tucson police Sept. 21 and dismissed from the academy three days later, when staff learned that he had lied on his application.

In 2008, Vafaie applied to TPD and listed multiple uses of cocaine, opium and steroids, all within the last two years, AZPOST documents say. The day after he applied, TPDs background unit recommended he be permanently disqualified, and he was sent a letter to that effect.

After Vafaie had been hired and started the academy in September 2015, a TPD audit discovered that his previous application had been misfiled and the disqualification not discovered.

To compound the issue, the AZPOST Statement of Personal History and Application for Certification he filled out (in June 2015) did not list any illegal drug use.

In its subsequent investigation, AZPOST learned he also failed to disclose on some of his multiple TPD applications that he had applied previously. He passed the background interview, but never mentioned his 2008 disqualification. The discrepancy was discovered later, according to the documents.

Sahuarita investigation

Former Sahuarita police Officer Samuel Long came to an agreement with the board Wednesday accepting a three-year suspension of his certification, valid until April 2018, Sierra said.

Long was terminated in July 2015, after an investigation by Sahuarita police determined he had conducted an unauthorized undercover operation, AZPOST documents say.

Investigators learned that in 2014, Long used his personal cell phone and email to respond to a Craigslist advertisement for Party and Play, according to the documents.

Using the name Rob, Long exchanged sexually graphic emails with a man referred to as Mr. A for more than two weeks, eventually setting up an in-person meeting with Mr. A bringing drugs to party, the documents say.

On Nov. 11, 2014, while Long was on duty, he went to Sahuarita Lake Park, where he had arranged to meet Mr. A.

After the park closed, Long saw Mr. A throw litter out of his car, at which point Long requested a different officer come stop Mr. As car for trespassing and littering, the documents say.

When the car was searched, the officer discovered meth and Mr. A was charged with two felonies.

After this event, Mr. A emailed (Long) and asked if he was Rob, the documents say.

Long disposed of the cell phone hed used to communicate with Mr. A, and closed the associated email account. Mr. As attorney discovered the arrest had resulted from an independent operation that wasnt authorized by Sahuarita police, the documents say.

(Long) did not tell any other officers of his plan, never advised prosecutors, and did not write any reports about his contacts with Mr. A or about his investigation.

The charges against Mr. A were dismissed, and Long was fired from the department. Investigators were able to prove actions including neglect of duty, failure to preserve evidence, undertaking an investigation without permission and failure to write a complete report, documents say.
The number of African-American children removed from their homes in Arizona has increased nearly 10 percent in the last two years, now accounting for nearly 30 out of every 1,000 children statewide.

This is absolutely something that were concerned about, said Katherine Guffey, the chief quality improvement officer for Arizonas Department of Child Safety.

At the end of September 2015, there were 18,619 children in out-of-home care statewide, a Department of Child Safety Oversight Committee report shows, and 2,791, or 15 percent, were African-American children.

Many factors could be contributing to this trend, Guffey said. It could be a combination of the effects of poverty and impoverished communities not having access to services, she said.

About 62 percent of African-American children in Arizona were living in low-income households in 2013, data from Columbia Universitys National Center for Children in Poverty shows. In comparison, 33 percent of Caucasian children were from low-income families.

Over-representation of African-American children in foster care is not limited to Arizona, but some states are making progress in addressing it, said Jerry Milner, vice president for child welfare practices with the Center for the Support of Families.

With the number of Arizona children in out-of-home care rising to 19,000, the increase in minority children in foster care is a likely outgrowth, he said.

We know, of course, that African-American families and kids are also over-represented among families that live in poverty, and kids who are coming from very poor situations are probably going to be more likely to end up in the child welfare system, he said.

Arizonas population is about 6.7 million, U.S. Census Bureau data shows, and about 315,000 residents are African-Americans.

Its a major concern, said Charles Fanniel, Arizona president for the NAACP.

All kids, regardless of ethnicity, need stable, loving homes.

Fanniel said much of the NAACPs national focus recently has been on the excessive use of force against unarmed African-American men, but he said they need to look at this issue more now.

Single parent homes are one of the biggest challenges, said Donna Liggins, the longtime president of Tucsons NAACP, who retired from that post in 2014.

In some cases, she said, African-American parents lack the resources needed to help them succeed and raise their children. In some cases, they need parenting classes or, more often, access to decent child care.

If theres really abuse, of course you need to stop that, but in many cases its simply that the mother has no resources, she said.

States that have made improvements typically focus on identifying why a certain race is over-represented  such as lack of access to child care or unemployment.

Policies need to focus on identifying what their needs are, what their supports are and then get them connected to the agencies that can help them, Milner said.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will each hold rallies at the Tucson Convention Center in last-minute attempts to reach voters before Arizonans vote Tuesday in a presidential preference election.

Democrat Sanders will hold a public rally Friday evening, March 18, at the Tucson Convention Center downtown.

Republican front-runner Trump will hold a 2 p.m. rally Saturday, March 19, at the Convention Center, city officials confirmed late Thursday night. Ticket information was not immediately available.

Meanwhile, GOP candidate Ted Cruz will tour the border around Douglas Friday, March 18, with Arizona House Speaker David Gowan.

Two former presidential candidates, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina, will be part of the border tour Friday with Cruz. The border tour will not have any public events, although Cruz will meet with reporters at a Douglas ranch in the afternoon.

Cruz is also holding a rally at a Phoenix Christian college earlier in the day, and Trump will hold a Saturday morning rally in Fountain Hills in the Phoenix area.

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio had not announced any Tucson or Southern Arizona visits as of Thursday evening.

The Sanders campaign is asking those interested in his event to RSVP with the campaign, saying the rally is first come, first served. He is set to take the stage at 7:30 p.m., but people are encouraged to show up early.

When Sanders visited Tucson last October, some 11,000 supporters overwhelmed Reid Park and lined up beyond the barriers of the amphitheater.

For security reasons, the campaign is asking the public to not bring bags, limiting it to small personal items like keys and cell phones. Sharp objects, chairs, things that can be used as weapons and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security.

Go to http://bit.ly/1R24Fgq to RSVP for the Sanders rally.
Bernie Sanders has wrapped up his hour-long campaign speech before a crowd of more than 5,000 tonight at the Tucson Convention Center, telling them: "Now is that moment when we look around us and say we can do much, much better."

Taking the stage shortly after 7:30 p.m., Sanders began by saying he thinks he can defeat fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Arizona's presidential preference election on Tuesday.

He launched into his regular themes, saying his campaign is supported by working families, not by Wall Street.

Sanders joked he is willing to release all of the speeches he gave to Wall Street  "zero"  as he pushes Clinton to release transcripts of her speeches. He said her SuperPac has taken millions from Wall Street.

Many in the crowd booed at any mention of Clinton.

Democracy is not about billionaires buying elections, Sanders said, vowing to overturn the Citizens United court ruling.

Sanders says he is proud of his support from younger votes, and jokingly tells them not to trust anyone under 30.

Sanders warned of a "rigged economy" and said this generation will have a worse standard of living than their parents.

He railed against the Walton family that owns Walmart to get their workers off of welfare and pay them a living wage.

On the topic of student debt, he asked: "Why are we punishing people for what we want them to do?"

Student debt levels are a crisis, he said, and says he would allow the refinancing of that debt at the lowest rates possible.

He said there are "cowardly" state legislatures and governors trying to suppress the vote.

"We should make it easier to participate in the election process, not harder," he said, urging a large voter turnout Tuesday to help him win.

Focusing on what he calls a broken criminal justice system, he said he will invest in jobs and education rather than jails.

"I think we are tired of seeing unarmed people being shot," Sanders went on, saying we need to demilitarize local police departments.

"One out of five people who go to a doctor and get a prescription, can't afford to get it filled  that's crazy," he said, turning to health care issues.

"Health care is a right, not a privilege," he said.

Talking next about energy issues, Sanders railed against energy companies and said Arizona should lead the U.S. in solar. He will push for "greener" solutions, he said.

Lamenting the failure to protect the residents of Flint, Michigan, from lead-tainted water, he suggested a public works program to rebuild the U.S.

Before Sanders took the stage, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva introduced him, getting the crowd to boo at his mention of Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, told the crowd Trump "will bring hate to Tucson." Trump will hold a rally at the Tucson Convention Center at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Later in the night, Grijalva urged any protesters at Trump's rally here Saturday to use restraint.

Clinton has not scheduled a Tucson visit in advance of Tuesday's election, but former President Bill Clinton will campaign in Tucson Sunday on her behalf.

"This campaign as far from over, my friends," Grijalva, an early endorser of Sanders, also told the Tucson audience.

Sanders' fans started arriving early this afternoon, long before the doors opened.

American Idol finalist Crystal Bowersox warmed up the crowd, singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Citing time constraints, Sanders cancelled all planned media interviews tonight in Tucson.

A gathering of anime fans called Con Nichiwa  also at the TCC  is resulting in an eclectic mix of people in downtown Tucson this evening. The TCC also is where the Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs the popular choral work "Carmina Burana" in the Music Hall tonight.

The Sanders rally was first-come, first-served  as will be his rally in Phoenix on Saturday, March 19, where doors will open at 5 p.m. at Arizona State Fairgrounds, Agriculture Center, 1826 W McDowell Road. The candidate spoke earlier this week to about 7,000 people at the Phoenix Convention Center. Sanders also campaigned in Flagstaff this week.

When Sanders visited Tucson last October, some 11,000 supporters overwhelmed Reid Park and lined up beyond the barriers of the amphitheater.

Follow tonight's event live below:
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign will make a stop here in Tucson on Sunday, with Bill Clinton set to headline the event.

The event will be held at Sunnyside High School. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. Click here to RSVP.

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, her husband Mark Kelly, former Rep. Ron Barber, and civil-rights activist Dolores Huerta will join Clinton.

The Democratic front-runner is among several presidential candidates visiting Arizona in advance of Tuesday's presidential preference election in the state.

Democrat Bernie Sanders will hold a Tucson Convention Center rally tonight and Republican Ted Cruz will tour the border area at Douglas this afternoon, but does not plan any public events there.

Republican front runner Donald Trump will hold an event on Saturday afternoon at the TCC, although ticket information has not been made public.

Stay tuned for updates.
Donald Trump will hold a rally Saturday at the Tucson Convention Center, city officials said late Thursday.

Doors open at noon, three hours before Trump is set to speak. To RSVP, go to TrumpTucson.Eventbrite.com

The Republican front-runner is among several presidential candidates visiting Arizona in advance of Tuesday's presidential preference election in the state.

Democrat Bernie Sanders will hold a Tucson Convention Center rally tonight; to reserve tickets, see go to bit.ly/1R24Fgq.

Republican Ted Cruz will tour the border area at Douglas this afternoon, but does not plan any public events there.
The 16th annual Cesar E. Chavez Day march and rally is planned for Saturday, March 19.

The event commemorates what would have been the labor and immigrant-rights activists 89th birthday.

Participants in the event are asked to meet at Pueblo High School, 3500 S. 12th Ave., at 8:30 a.m. Saturday.

Participants will then march to Rudy Garcia Park, at 5001 S. Nogales Highway, near South Sixth Avenue and East Irvington Road.

Festivities planned at the park to honor Chavez include music, food, art and public speakers.

Also this year, 300 students from Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) will be in Tucson for an annual conference and plan to join the march.

Since Chavezs death more than 20 years ago, California, Texas and Colorado have already established state holidays in his honor. In Arizona, jurisdictions including Tempe, Phoenix, South Tucson and Pima County also celebrate Cesar E. Chavez Day.
OPINION: "While it is important to take on cutting edge programs for an institution, Best Practices would dictate a thorough analysis of the costs of a new program versus the proven effectiveness of that new program. After all, these are taxpayer funds we are dealing with," writes Nick Pierson, candidate for the Pima Community College Governing Board.
PHOENIX  Invoking the name of a murdered convenience store clerk, a House panel voted Thursday to deny parole, probation or any type of early release to felons who were in this country illegally when they committed their crime.

Arizona law already allows judges to consider various factors in determining how long a sentence to impose. And one of those is the immigration status of the offender.

SB 1377 spells out if that is the case, a judge must impose at least the presumptive sentence for the crime. That denies the person any chance of arguing there are reasons for the court to be more lenient.

That means the legislation requires that full sentence to be served.

The 5-3 vote came after testimony from Steve Ronnebeck.

His son, Grant, was working the graveyard shift at a Mesa convenience store in January 2015 when he was shot, apparently for not giving someone his cigarettes fast enough.

According to police, the man arrested was in the country illegally, had been convicted of burglary in 2012 and was placed on probation. A judge had ordered immigration officials notified of his conviction.

But the elder Ronnebeck said the man who was captured actually had been out on a $10,000 immigration bond for more than 470 days.

The vote came over objections from several Democrats who said this was improperly targeting those in the country illegally. But Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said it is reasonable policy to consider someones immigration status as a factor, just as the law allows a judge to consider prior crimes someone has committed.

People who are here illegally are already breaking the law, he said.

Illegal is a crime, echoed Rep. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City.

Rep. Stefanie Mach, D-Tucson, conceded that crossing the border illegally is a crime. But she said that if courts are forced to look to outside factors in determining sentencing and eligibility for release, they should be limited to something nefarious.

She said that means something that shows there is a tendency of someone to be violent or is likely to reoffend. Simply being in the country illegally, Mach said, does not fit that definition.

But Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, said foes of the bill have thrown out every single possible red herring to say why a persons legal status should not matter. He said these range from the costs of keeping people in prison to questions of race.

And Finchem said the state would not need legislation like this if the federal government would only to its limited job of securing the borders.
PHOENIX  Ignoring a last-minute plea from cities, Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Thursday that will financially penalize those that do not fall in line with state law.

SB 1487, which takes effect later this year, requires the state treasurer to withhold revenue sharing dollars from any city or county once the attorney general concludes their local laws or policies are contrary to state statutes.

Thursdays action was not a surprise, with Ducey having threatened to take such action on his own during his State of the State address in January.

As Gov. Ducey has made clear, for Arizona to be competitive, we cant have a patchwork of different laws across the state, said gubernatorial spokeswoman Annie Dockendorff. This legislation ensures everyone is playing by the same rules.

Duceys action comes just hours after three top officials from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns urged the governor to veto the measure.

This bill is heavy-handed, intrusive and minimizes the important role of local elected officials, wrote Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell, Jay Tibshraeny of Chandler and Mark Nexsen of Lake Havasu City.

The three mayors said local officials, like those at the state level, take an oath to uphold the state constitution and statutes.

Yet this bill second-guesses their deliberations and decisions, prosecutes them in a likely unconstitutional manner, and punishes them without the benefit of due process, they wrote.

That issue goes to the way the system would work under the new law.

It allows any legislator to demand the attorney general to investigate any ordinance, regulation, order or other official action by a community to see if it violates state statutes or the constitution.

If the attorney general does find a conflict, the local community is given 30 days to resolve the violation.

And if that does not happen to the satisfaction of the attorney general, he or she would tell the treasurer to withhold all state revenue sharing dollars from that community and redistribute it to everyone else.

But if the legality of the local measure is unclear, the law requires the attorney general to file a complaint with the state Supreme Court, which has to give that case priority over all other cases.

And if the community decides to fight, it has to past a bond equal to the amount of shared revenues it has received in the prior six months.

What possible hubris could drive one single legislator to think he or she has more wisdom than the local elected officials who have been chosen by the voters to govern their communities? the mayors wrote to Ducey. What happened to the principle of presumption of innocence in our legal system?

Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said theres nothing improper about the process the legislation sets up.
PHOENIX  Saying theyre protecting legitimate businesses, state legislators voted Thursday to block cities from banning pet stores from selling animals they get from commercial breeders.

The 6-3 vote came after everyone who testified said they were opposed to the kind of puppy mills that mistreat animals.

But proponents of SB 1248 argued that the label does not apply to all breeders. And they said an across-the-board ban is improper.

The most immediate effect of the measure if it becomes law would be to void existing ordinances in Phoenix and Tempe. It also would permanently sideline a proposal by Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik to adopt a similar ordinance. And it would block other cities and towns from even considering similar measures.

The legislation would not leave pet sales totally unregulated.

SB 1248 would make it illegal for dealers to obtain or sell any animal obtained from anyone not licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Also forbidden would be selling dogs and cats from breeders who have been cited for certain violations by USDA inspectors.

But Queen Creek resident Leslie Knott told members of the House Committee on Agriculture, Water and Lands thats hardly a standard that guarantees animals are raised in a humane way.

The USDA allows for dogs to be kept in cages that are not bigger than 6 inches in any direction (beyond the size of the animal) for their entire lives, never to see the light of day, touch the ground, to receive human kindness, solely for the purpose of breeding to make money, she said. Knott urged lawmakers not to overturn local ordinances.

The people have spoken, she said. They have decided they do not wish to make money in this way, on the backs of these breeding dogs.

But Rep. Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said it is appropriate for the Legislature to step in and set a single standard for pet sales, if for no other reason than customers from one city where a practice is banned can simply go to another city where it is not. Anyway, Fann said, it is the role of lawmakers to fix a problem with measures like this.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

Srinagar: Demanding strict implementation of ban on display of tobacco advertisements at the point of sale, Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) on Thursday asked the Jammu and Kashmir Police to take strict action against those involved in violation of the ban.

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The Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Srinagar had issued an order in February this year in compliance with Section 5 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act (COTPA), 2003, directing the senior officials in the police department to remove all the illegal tobacco advertisements at points of sale in the Srinagar, Budgam, Ganderbal, Leh and Kargil districts of J&K, within fifteen days of the issuance of the order.

The order also directed the officials to take necessary legal action in the matter as per the relevant legal provisions against the distributors of tobacco products who are involved in distributing the advertisements among the retailers.

Interestingly, the copy of the order was also marked to Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone including SSP Budgam, SP Leh, SP Ganderbal and SP Kargil for similar necessary action in their respective jurisdictions.

However, despite the order, the tobacco advertisements are still being displayed rampantly at point of sale across Srinagar and no action has been taken yet in removing these advertisement boards. This order needs to be implemented and fully complied in five districts of Kashmir region, said VHAI spokesperson, Shafat Kira.

Notably, the Supreme Court has already issued directions to all the State Governments to rigorously implement the rules restricting tobacco advertisements at the Point of Sale.

Complying with the Supreme Court directions the district administration of Anantnag has already initiated a drive against display of tobacco advertisements at point of sale promoting cigarette and other tobacco products in the main towns across many districts in South Kashmir.

The VHA spokesperson while terming the hike on excise duty on tobacco products in the annual budget presented by the Union Finance Minister on March 1, 2016 as meagre, which is benefitting the tobacco industry, he said, There was a meagre 10%-15% hike on excise duty on chewing tobacco products. In fact, this time around, there is zero change in the Basic Excise Duty component and the change as proposed is effected only on the Additional Excise Duty, also known as Health Cess. There has been no proposal to simplify the complex cigarette tax structure that is only helping the industry in India. And by not making any increases on bidi taxes, the government is forgoing a wonderful opportunity to help the cause of public health in the country, Kira said.

While pegging the GDP growth at 7% to 7.75% in its economic survey, affecting a mere tax increase of 10% on cigarettes is tantamount to making tobacco products more affordable. The public health community in India has never seen a budget this bad for tobacco control in the past five years. The FM seems to have provided a panacea for increasing tobacco industrys profits. The proposals in the budget are a one-shot prescription to make tobacco products more affordable and boost the industry profits. Tobacco industry will be upbeat about the new budget that was presented in the parliament today, the spokesperson added.
A fault in the frontal lobe and cerebral cortexmay be the cause of auditory and visual hallucinations, without the need for the use of substances. At least in Australia, such hallucinations affects on average one in every 20 people, showing flaws in their perception of reality by all the senses, although visual and hearing are the most common.

This is what was announced by the specialist of the Queensland Brain Institute, John McGrath, who explained that sometimes something goes wrong in the frontal-cortex lobe relationship, and the failure of perception or hallucination is generated, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) .

What is hallucination

In the last century were blamed hallucinations schizophrenia, but in the last two years we have taken a turn to our work, he said.Now we try to understand if there are different forms of hallucinations, or indeed one that comes in various aspects.Lack of sleep, stress, grief and shock processes can make a person more likely to suffer hallucinations person.

He noted that when all goes well, the frontal lobe is the command and controls the whole brain, but situations such as these, reduce their efficiency and when you can create hallucination.He explained that when all goes well, the frontal lobe of the brain controls the whole, but in situations such as these, reduce their efficiency and when you can create hallucination.

In the last century hallucinations schizophrenia were struck, but in the last two years we have taken a turn to our work, he said.

This type of hallucinations affects on average one in every 20 people in Australia, who show flaws in their perception of reality by all the senses, although visual and hearing are the most common.The specialist said that now trying to understand if there are different forms of hallucinations, or is actually one that comes in various aspects. He also noted that the lack of sleep, stress, grief and shock processes can make a person more likely to suffer hallucinations person.
4G spending hits China Mobile Updated: 2016-03-18 08:00 By Ma Si(China Daily)

A China Mobile Ltd employee at a branch in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province.[SI WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY]

China Mobile Ltd, the world's top mobile telecom carrier by subscribers, said on Thursday its net profit declined 0.6 percent last year, as hefty investments in 4G networks and mounting competition dragged down profitability.

The company said in a filing that net profit for 2015 fell to 108.5 billion yuan ($16.7 billion), lower than the 112.8 billion yuan average of analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Its revenue rose 2.6 percent to 668.3 billion yuan, but revenue derived from data services exceeded those from voice calls and text for the first time, as customers increasingly favor Internet-based messaging services such as Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat.

Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, said: "4G will be the top priority for 2016. We will try to expand our edge in 4G to further boost data service's role in generating revenues."

The carrier's shares dropped 2.08 percent to HK$84.55 ($10.9) in Hong Kong on Thursday

The news came a day after smaller rival China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd announced its net profit fell 12 percent to 10.56 billion yuan in 2015, the first decline since 2010. The two companies are in a fierce race to win 4G users.

Xiang Ligang, founder of the telecom industry website cctime.com, said China's telecom carriers are under mounting financial pressure.

"Data services are playing an increasingly greater role in generating revenues. But the government has requested telecom carriers to cut charges for Internet services."

Telecom carriers rolled out plans that allow users to carry over unused data capacity from one month to the next in response to government request for lower mobile phone tariffs.

"Offering the best 4G services is the only way for telecom carriers to boost their profits in the next three to five year," Xiang said.

As of December 2015, China Mobile had 1.1 million 4G base stations and its 4G subscribers exceeded 300 million, more than China Unicom and China Telecom Corp Ltd combined.

But the two smaller rivals are catching up. China Unicom and China Telecom inked a deal in October to share 4G resources and jointly construct 4G base stations.

Peter Liu, research director at Internet consultancy Gartner Inc, said the cooperation is already having an impact as the two companies witnessed a surge in 4G subscribers in January.

"But I remain cautious as to whether they can narrow the gap with China Mobile. It will depend on how deeply they can partner with each other. After all, it is never easy to have two former enemies in one boat."

Reuters contributed to this story.
Life changer: We are, therefore WeChat Updated: 2016-03-19 01:28 (China Daily USA)

Shayne Rochfort is an Australian who lives in Thailand, but the companion he relies on daily to survive socially and professionally is neither Australian nor Thai; it is Chinese  the phenomenally successful messaging app WeChat.

Rochfort, who has lived in the Thai city of Chiang Mai for six years, started using the app in 2013 and said he has more than 2,000 contacts listed on it.

He is just one of 650 million monthly active WeChat users worldwide who have seen the transformation of what started as little more than a handy piece of software to help friends stay in touch into an indispensable tool now used to do all manner of commercial transactions and that has joined the arsenal of weapons that companies deploy to help their businesses grow.

Rochfort said WeChat has been invaluable in promoting his travel book China to Chiang Mai, whose Chinese version will be on sale in China soon. I often use the People Nearby function (of WeChat), to meet travelers in Chiang Mai, he said. When they add me (to their list of contacts) I usually send out the food section of my book and a one-day trip planner, so people know how to get around Chiang Mai.

WeChat also allows users to chat with one another either by audio or video, and Rochfort said he has found the apps ability to translate text into other languages, including Thai, a great help and a valuable learning aid.

With WeChat, which was launched in 2011, users  as long as they have an Internet connection  can display pictures, video and written material that they think contacts may find interesting.

They can book taxis, buy bonds, shop, order food and almost anything else and pay for all these things by linking the WeChat account to a bank account. Accounts can be set up by individuals or corporate entities.

The first research report about WeChat, issued by its owner Tencent late last year, said that Internet use of WeChat generated 95.2 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in revenue; and 11 billion yuan worth of daily consumption items were bought.

The newspaper USA Today said recently that WhatsApp, a popular communication app in the West, now has 900 million monthly active users; Twitter has a little more than 300 million monthly active users; and Instagram, the photo and video sharing app that Facebook owns, also has about 300 million.

Mobile Messaging Apps: Global User Forecast, a report by eMarketer, a digital industry research firm, said more than 1.4 billion consumers worldwide were expected to use a mobile messaging app last year, and it forecast that the number would grow to 2 billion by 2018.

A recent Forbes article forecasts that the number of average monthly users of WhatsApp would rise to nearly 1.3 billion by the end of 2020. It also estimated that WhatsApps average revenue per user would be about $4 by 2020, which could yield revenue of about $5 billion in 2020.

WeChat has a far wider range of functions than an instant messaging app and it differs from Twitter and Facebook, whose content can be made available to very large audiences, in that communications are usually restricted to individuals who know one another. Exceptions to this are its People Nearby and Shake functions that allow users to make contact with strangers.

Charles-Edouard Bouee, global CEO of the consulting firm Roland Berger, said that WeChat brings together the features found in other apps. WeChat is like WhatsApp, Skype, Instagram and Facebook all in one, with an included payment option and a service that allows for real-time localization and finding friends nearby. In my view, the developers of WeChat have managed to combine the strengths and services of various different apps all in one. This is what I call flat to fast, a flat recombination of existing techniques into a very powerful tool.

Kirk Wilson, executive director of the China-British Business Council (China), said that almost all British government departments and companies have WeChat official accounts, and almost all senior executives of British companies in China have personal WeChat accounts. The council has more than 900 members companies in China, of which about 70 percent are British companies, and 20 percent are Chinese.

Chinese WeChat is very good for the final consumers in terms of convenience; it is very convenient that you can do all the applications with the wallet, all kinds of things.

restricted

Stefan Sack, founder and chief executive of the Hong Kong consulting company SinEuSyn, said: WeChat is so present in Chinese consumers hands that it is impossible not to use it as a company. Even in business-to-business the notification of events, products, fairs, etc is something everyone needs to do now.

He often uses the WeChat Moments to let others know about work events and social happenings, and to encourage exchanges, he said.

However, WeChats ease of use does have at least one downside, and that is that staff are prone unwittingly to pass on company information that is commercially sensitive, and they need to be educated in this regard, he said. Ease of use also means that sometimes the quality of information disseminated is not of the standard that it ideally should be, he said.

Tommy Tang, a project manager with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, said the app offers various kinds of commercial functions for companies, such as opening WeChat shops. The forwarding of products or information on WeChat Moments can be highly influential with mouth-to-mouth promotion, he said.

The one-time release of an advertisement in the WeChat Moments section can cost millions of yuan. A company in Shanghai has built a third-party platform named Weimob that offers marketing and promotional services to companies based on WeChat.

WeChats commercialization forms are quite different to those of others and are very flexible for companies, Tang said. They can do things that are very simple and things that are very complex. The use of WeChat for promotions is a must for companies. It is the most active social media platform in China, and companies can tailor advertising and promotional campaigns on WeChat in accordance with their strengths and needs.

Lyu Ronghui, a researcher with iResearch Consulting Group, said WeChat is one of the most important promotional platforms for companies that want to advertise and to engage in brand building. It is not just a matter of promoting its brands, but more importantly of reaching individuals so that they form positive relationships with brands and in turn influence buying decisions.

But WeChat is still limited in the way it carries advertisements and promotional activities, she said.

Companies are certainly keen to promote their goods and services through WeChat a lot more, but that would have an impact on the WeChat user experience, and there is a reluctance by WeChats owners to allow that to happen. But they do want to find ways to help companies build promotional channels.

The emergence and success of WeChat has come on the back of the growth of the mobile Internet.

This has also resulted in changes in the way people socialize and in the way companies promote their products and services. As the mobile Internet has made hand-held devices, one of the chief tools that people use in dealing with others, including businesses, individuals have begun to demand transitions that are faster and more fun, and companies have begun to demand closer relationships with consumers and greater efficiency.

Eco-system

Ren Chao, a researcher with the Internet consultancy Analysys International in Beijing, said that the important thing for big Internet companies is building an eco-system, and WeChat is building that based on the mobile Internet. WeChat is likely to be replaced only when hand-held devices are supplanted by other kinds of electronic terminals such as glasses and watches, and even unmanned aerial vehicle, he said.

WeChat, like Facebook, needs to pay a lot of attention to the user experience, he said, and as long as it innovates it will continue to be popular.

WeChats overseas market has expanded greatly since 2011, and it now has more than 200 million users outside China. Nevertheless, China remains by far and away the apps most important sphere of activity.

In Africa, Tencent has teamed up with Naspers, the continents largest media company, to introduce WeChat, and it is estimated to have about 6 million registered users in South Africa already, the Financial Times reported recently.

WeChat is also widely used by university students learning Chinese and business people developing ties with their Chinese partners.

Markets

The eMarketer report said that WeChat ranked among the top three messaging apps last year in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Malaysia. It tends to be popular in countries with a sizeable Chinese population, but has gone mainstream only in a handful of markets outside China. WhatsApp was listed among the top three messaging apps in 34 countries, and it ranked No 1 in 26 countries.

The report said that a popular chat app in one country may not even be on the radar in another. The qualities that make a chat app popular in a location  cultural nuances, country-specific features and app capabilities and word-of-mouth marketing  do not always translate to the global stage, which has made it difficult for some apps to expand beyond their home country or region.

WeChat hasnt done much good strategic marketing overseas yet, but its strength is about making good products, so it will make its efforts to expand the market, Ren said.

Kirk at the China-British Business Council said WeChat is like 10 companies together, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. In developing countries, many companies may be able to work with WeChat, but in developed countries, people would probably prefer to have individual apps for different functions, rather than one comprehensive platform.

The good thing about WeChat is that you have everything on one platform, but it could also be a bad thing for Tencent to go abroad. I think they will struggle in Europe and the United States, because people like their individual apps and have a lot of choices. So they need to work out a way to be much more flexible and let other companies participate in the ecosystem. But there are similar markets in which people would like it very much, such as India and Mexico.

WeChat has been mostly developed based on Chinese users habits, and if they want to expand overseas, it has to be tailor-made for overseas users. But for companies or brands that want to come to China, they need this platform.

Contact the writers at chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn and suqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
Classy ink art spread on the block Updated: 2016-03-18 08:12 By Ming Liu(China Daily)

Liu Wei's Flowers is among the contemporary ink art works that will be under the hammer of Sothe-by's Hong Kong auction on April 4.[Photo provided to China Daily]

On April 4, Sotheby's Hong Kong will host the sale of 83 works from a genre that's rooted in Chinese classical painting and is gaining ground with international collectors.

A significant collection of contemporary ink art is to go under the hammerwith many works crossing the auction block for the first time.

On April 4, Sotheby's Hong Kong will host the sale of 83 works of contemporary ink art, a genre that's rooted in classical Chinese painting and is gaining ground with international collectors.

The works have already been shown in London, Beijing and Shanghai. They're currently displayed in New York, and will head to Taipei next.

The art is part of the Origo Collection, a US-based private foundation.

This is the first time that a single-owner collection of contemporary ink art has come to auction.

The category of contemporary ink art is relatively new for Sotheby's and the media, says Katherine Don, the auction house's head of contemporary ink art.

"But it's actually not a new medium for artists and specifically in China," she says.

The Origo Collection, founded a decade ago, aims to broaden the genre's definition, a mission that's evident in the sale's breadth of names and styles.

There is ink-on-paper orsilk pieces by some of the biggest artists working today, alongside more experimental creations, featuring mixed-media collages and video art.

"We see the Origo collection as a very significant survey of that diversity," says Don.

Among the more traditional artists whose work is in the collection is Li Huayi.

He says that Chinese painting "tranquilizes you and makes you feel everything has calmed down".

That sentiment shines through in his work, Autumn Mountains, which is up for sale for an estimated HK$2.5 million-4 million ($320,000$520,000).

Meanwhile Liu Dan, who's among the most respected artists working in the genre todayand whose works have been exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Bostonhas two works in the sale.

Poppy and Yu Yuan Stone (HK$2.5 million-4 million each) are impressive in their 2-meter scale and highlight the artist's masterful execution.

The works feature Liu's signature calligraphy down the sidean ode to the classical form that Tai Xiangzhou also employs in his Wondrous Peaks and Multitudinous Gully (HK$150,000-250,000).
Station looks beyond anti-piracy mission Updated: 2016-03-18 08:08 By Zhou Bo(China Daily USA)

China would not have thought of establishing a logistic supply station in Djibouti were it not for fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. As the country contributing the largest force to the counter-piracy mission, China has had at least three ships in the Gulf of Aden at any given time since 2009. So far 65 ships from the People's Liberation Army Navy's 22 task forces have been deployed on counter-piracy missions, and they have escorted more than 6,100 ships, half of them foreign vessels.

These achievements have been made under stringent conditions, however. Since the PLA Navy vessels have no supply or maintenance stations overseas, they have to carry huge amounts of food and spare parts, prompting some Chinese Navy personnel to say the spare parts are more than enough to assemble a helicopter on board.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been largely curbed thanks to joint international efforts which includes, but is not limited to, military operations. But nobody can safely conclude piracy is no longer a threat.

The piracy threat at sea has its roots on land. Although a federal government is now in place in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, its control over the country remains miserably weak. A Western analyst has said, almost sarcastically, that the Somali government's control is restricted only to the airport and the presidential palace. And the United Nation has repeatedly warned piracy could stage a comeback if the political situation in Somalia remains unstable and the problem of high unemployment unsolved.

Therefore, the counter-piracy mission is likely to continue, though under a more flexible arrangement. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union have even publicly discussed discontinuing their counter-piracy missions by the end of 2016 but promised to maintain some kind of presence off the coast of Somalia if necessary. Every year about 1,600 Chinese vessels pass through the Gulf of Aden, and more ships carrying oil for China are likely to sail to through the Strait of Hormuz. The security of sea lanes cannot be more critical for China, which relies on maritime transport for up to 90 percent of its foreign trade.

Militarily, Djibouti's advantage lies in its location, deep water ports and friendly attitude toward foreign troops. Djibouti is strategically located - at the entrance from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. It oversees the Bab al-Mandeb (or the Mandeb Strait), one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. And the waters in the Port of Djibouti are deep enough for an aircraft carrier like France's Charles de Gaulle to dock. Moreover, the Djibouti government welcomes the presence of American, French, Japanese and Chinese troops on its soil.

Djibouti not only occupies a vantage point in the fight against piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa. It is also a gateway for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid and disaster relief in Africa and the Middle East, two missions that are increasingly becoming part of the PLA's overseas operations. At present 2,787 Chinese peacekeepers are deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, South Sudan, Sudan, Mali and Lebanon. A standby PLA force of 8,000 troops is being built. The PLA has also taken part in quite a few humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations along the rim of the Indian Ocean and other parts of Africa, from evacuating foreign citizens from war-torn Yemen to fighting the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In the long run, Djibouti could serve as a PLA station for regional capacity building. One of the ways China is helping global governance is by strengthening regional institutions such as the African Union. Beijing has also announced a $100-million free military aid for the AU to help establish the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis.

The PLA's logistic support station can therefore serve more than counter-piracy missions. It could be a milestone in China's support for stabilizing Africa and the Middle East where China's greater role in regional security is more than welcome.

The author is an honorary fellow at the Center of China-American Defense Relations, Academy of Military Science.

(China Daily USA 03/18/2016 page7)
Baoku offers super vault Updated: 2016-03-19 02:22 (China Daily USA)

The Baoku Treasury, Chinas largest underground vault has sold out 3,200 of first batch of 10,000 limited safes within one week after its opening on March 6. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

As one component of the Guanfu Baoku project, the Baoku Treasury, Chinas largest underground vault that has 30,000 private safe boxes, has gotten a warm welcome from local residents since its official opening in early March.

Within the first week, more than 3,200 of the first lot of 10,000 limited safe boxes  priced from $10,000 for 15 years  have been snatched up by customers rushing in from the city and other regions of the country.

We chose the world-class building to contain the worlds largest private safe vault to help local residents store their treasured collections of artwork and artifacts within the best facilities, said Liu Feiguo, founder and CEO of Baoku China, which oversees the Baoku project.

The 7,000-square-meter facility, which is located five levels beneath the Shanghai Tower, is equipped with security systems that are even more sophisticated than bank vaults, as well as hi-tech environmental controls that ensure precious art is stored under optimal conditions.

The Shanghai Tower, which stands at 2,073 feet high, is currently considered the tallest building in the country. Together with the Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center, the trio of high-rises anchors the citys iconic Lujiazui area in Pudong district.

Most of the customers for the Baoku vault are local residents who have art collections and are looking for secure places to store them under the best possible conditions.

The rental market for safe boxes has been heating up in the past five years in Shanghai as many of the safe boxes offered by banks are inadequate for the kind of art and antiques wealthier people are collecting.

The yearly cost for renting a safe-deposit box in a bank starts at around 300 yuan ($50) and they are used mostly by local residents to store their valuables in more secure facilities than their homes, said Meng Yan, a bank clerk in Shanghai.

The pricier Baoku Treasury features high-standard equipment specially designed to protect those treasured collections. The purchase of Baoku safe boxes also includes free-entry to the Guanfu Museum and privileges on certain cultural-related activities.

With the Guanfu Museum and Baoku Art Centre, located on the 37th floor, the project aims to create an innovative art space offering visitors a combination of private collections from the Baoku Treasury and exhibitions from the Shanghai Guanfu Museum and Baoku Art Centre.

The combination will offer more benefits and public service products to everyday people, not just professional collectors, in order to further develop Chinas cultural service sector, said Ma Weidu, the founder of the Shanghai Guanfu Museum, which has five exhibition halls containing more than 500 artifacts such as ceramics, gold pieces, antique furniture, Buddha statues and textiles.
WeWork starts operations in Shanghai Updated: 2016-03-18 06:03 By Niu Yuein New York(China Daily USA)

WeWork, the office space startup whose valuation has been put at $16 billion, has opened operations in Shanghai, its first location in China where the co-working rental space is crowded with other companies.

"In Shanghai, consumers needed us, so we went there," Fred Lu, the newly recruited general manager for Shanghai told China Daily. "We have confidence in the Chinese market." Lu previously worked for GE Co, Microsoft and Baidu in China.

WeWorkis in Shanghai's busy downtown district of Jing'an, where it leased an office building for renting space.

Outside of China, the company's individual renting packages start at $45 a day for a desk to $450 a month. Lu said the company's pricing in China will be set after marketing strategies are finalized.

Jennifer Skyler, public communications director at WeWork's New York headquarters, said the operation in China is focusingon finding staff knowledgeable about the Chinese co-working market.

WeWork recently raised $430 million from Chinese investors in a fundraising that values the office space startup at $16 billion and will help it expand into Asia.Lenovo, the Chinese-owned multinational personal-computer company, was the leading Chinese investor.

For WeWork, there is an abundance of Chinese competitorsin the world of flexible workspace, with more than 1,600 startup incubators in China offering space as well as such services as consultations with lawyers, accountants and business consultants from top firms.

They include 36Kr, Regus, XNode, URWORK and People Squared, one of Shanghai's oldest co-working spaces, which opened in 2010.

36Kr is a leading entrepreneur incubator whose investors include Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma and investment firm Innovation Works. Kaifu Li is the founder and CEO of Innovation Works. He was the vice-president at Google Engineering and president of Google Chinese Operations.

WeWork was founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. According to the company, it achieved profitability one month after launching. In 2015, WeWork's income surpassed $400 million and was called the networking unicorn in the US entrepreneurial industry.

In February 2014, WeWork's investors valued the company at $1.5 billion.With its latest fundraising, its valuation had jumped to $16 billion, making WeWork, on paper, the world's sixth most valuable company, FastCompany magazine reported this week.

The magazine said WeWork now has 80 co-working spaces in 23 cities around the globe, and its 50,000 space-sharing members range from startups to big companies like pharmaceutical company Merck & Co, and American Express.

In the US, WeWork emphasizes Western office culture, including craft beer, arcade games and an annual camping retreat.

Wang Shengjiang, founder of New Space, a small-scale Chinese co-working company in Beijing, said he believed WeWork accepted Chinese investments to make connections with enterprising entrepreneurs.

Liu Xiaoyu, business analyst at 36Kr, said the success of WeWork's business model comes from the two founders' experiencein the real estate business in the US.

"They selected good locations for their business, and they were innovative enough to integrate the concept of public business zones in hotels into the shared office business," Liu said.

Liu said that the challenge for all incubators is how to make maximum use of their acquired space, from arranging different business zones within the office to interior decoration.

Zhong Shu, CEO of 36Kr, said WeWork faces many challenges to expand in China.

"For Chinese real estate business, the cost of capital accounts for 2 to 3 percent of the total cost, while the sale and rental ratio ranges from 8 to 9 percent,"Zhong said, "But in the US, it is the other way around."

Long Yifan in New York contributed to the story.
Scientists noted for cooperation Updated: 2016-03-18 11:35 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily USA)

Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, presented a medal and a certificate of appreciation to Dr. Walter Ian Lipkin on Thursday evening at the Consulate General, thanking him for his contribution to China's scientific development. Lipkin, director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, recently received China's top honor for foreign scientists. Hezi JIang / China Daily

China has made innovation a top priority for the second half of the decade. In New York, a dozen top American scientists reflected the crucial role US-China cooperation has played and will continue to play in making it happen.

Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, held a dinner gala on Thursday to honor those who have made outstanding contributions to scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries.

Dr Walter Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, was among the 11 guests that received medals and certificates of appreciation at the event.

Lipkin was recently awarded China's top science honor for foreign scientists, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, presided by President Xi Jinping.

He helped China contain the SARS epidemic of 2003, and developed the institutional infrastructure needed to ensure that China would have the resources required to detect and more rapidly respond to emerging infectious threats.

"I have done work in many places, but I will say that China has a very special place in my heart," Lipkin told China Daily. "The Chinese people have always been very generous and very warm to me."

Lipkin said China's science and technology have come a long way since he first went there in 2003.

"When China had a problem with SARS in 2003, people from around the world went to China to help. More recently, with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, China actually sent people to help with Ebola," he said.

"It has gone from a country that needed assistance from other scientists to the point now where those scientists have so much expertise that they can go out and help other countries. It's a huge difference."

Zhang said science and technology have always been one of China's most effective drivers of change. The National Science and Technology Conference in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution was the "first buzz of spring heralding in the great transformation of China".

Nowadays, while the Chinese economy is switching to the new normal, Zhang said the country will work harder on fostering a better environment for innovation.

"We will make sure science and technology are more deeply embedded into the economy," said Zhang. "China will open up even further to the world and draw on the strengths of advanced science and technology in other countries. This has opened up a huge market and presents enormous opportunities for the international businesses and scientists from all countries."

Lipkin is hoping to build a lab in China to continuously generate research.

"This is not the end of the wonderful friendship I have with the Chinese people," he said.

hezijiang@chinadailyuwa.com
James Chao honored by education trust Updated: 2016-03-18 11:35 By Dong Leshuo in Washington(China Daily USA)

James S.C. Chao, founder of the Foremost Maritime Corp, was honored at the inaugural Asians in America Leadership & Achievement Awards by the US-China Education Trust (USCET) in Washington on Thursday.

Former Labor secretary Elaine L. Chao accepted the award on behalf of her father.

"My father is a very generous, positive and optimistic person. It is reflective of his personality and philosophy that as he advanced, he never forgot his roots and always tried to help others," Elaine Chao said.

James Chao grew up in Jiading District outside Shanghai. He moved to the United States in 1958, settling in New York City, where his wife, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, and children rejoined him in 1961.

In 1964, after receiving his MBA from St. John's University, he founded Foremost Group, a shipping, trading and finance enterprise where he remains chairman.

"My parents are people of faith and modesty. They never set out to make money. They started out wanting only to build a better life for themselves and their family, to be good citizens of whatever community they belonged, and to be contributing members of society. Their company reflected their values: service, reliability, and integrity," Elaine Chao said.

"Their education gave them the foundation to successfully face the historic changes swirling around them - such as being forced to leave their land of birth, relocating to a new place, and moving again to America. Their education gave them the tools with which to learn, adapt and succeed in each new place," she said.

The Chao family foundation is funding construction of the Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Center at the Harvard Business School. It is opening in June and will be the first building named after a person of Chinese descent and the first building named after a woman on campus.

A scholarship fund has also been established to provide financial assistance to outstanding students with special emphasis on students of Chinese descent.

Last October, the Chao family returned to Anhui province, the mother's home province, and Jiading to dedicate a number of kindergartens for the rural children.

The USCET, founded by Julia Bloch, former US ambassador to Nepal, is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting US-China relations through education and exchange.

Madhavan "MR" Rangaswami, founder of the Sand Hill Group, was also honored with the award.

leshuodong@chinadailyusa.com
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner holds a copy of Chinese Enterprises in the United States, published by China Daily. May Zhou / China Daily

Mayor of 4th largest city in US has plans to visit China, as his predecessors have

Sylvester Turner would like you to know that he still enjoys being mayor of his hometown of Houston.

After 26 years in the Texas Legislature, Turner was elected mayor of the US' fourth-largest city last December.

"It has been over two months since I became the mayor of Houston, I want you know that I still like the job. It's not 9 to 5. It's not Monday to Friday. It's literally seven days a week, but it's a great city. It has been an awesome experience," Turner said at a recent luncheon hosted by the Asian Chamber of Commerce.

Born in 1954 in Houston as the sixth of nine children, Turner, 61, was raised by his father, a commercial painter, and his mother, a maid at the old Rice Hotel. He grew up with his big family in a two-bedroom house. His father had to cut grass with his sons over the weekend to make ends meet.

When Turner was 13, he lost his father to cancer and his mother became the primary breadwinner. Having not finished high school herself, Turner's mother ensured that her children got an education and inspired them to do their best.

"My mom always told me: You keep doing what you are doing; tomorrow will be a better day," Turner said.

Turner attended what at the time were segregated neighborhood public schools until integration arrived in Houston. He was transferred to Klein High School, and after a rocky start, was eventually accepted by his fellow students. Turner was later elected president of the student body and graduated as valedictorian.

Turner graduated magna cum laude with a degree in political science from the University of Houston. He continued his studies at Harvard Law School, where upon graduation he briefly worked as as an associate at a major Houston law firm before founding his own firm, Barnes & Turner, in 1983.

The next year, Turner made his first attempt at public office but did not win a seat on the Harris County Commission. Four years later, in 1988, he was elected a Texas state representative. His primary focus as a Democratic state legislator was public education, healthcare, consumer protection and criminal justice.

As Houston's new mayor, Turner said that his priorities are "to make us safe, build the infrastructure for business and people, including good streets and a good transit system, take care of the finances of the city, and go beyond the fundamentals".

Turner already had created a buzz in the city by seeing that potholes plaguing Houston streets were speedily fixed, as he promised in his mayoral campaign.

As of March 3, Turner said that the city repaired more than 12,500 potholes since Jan 11. A smartphone app and a dedicated website were created to deal with the road problems. Turner said that 95 percent of the time, the city crew fixed potholes reported by citizens by the next day, a fact verified by an independent study by Rice University.

Turner indicated that it was time to turn to more serious and address long-term infrastructure issues as well as the city budget, plan for the upcoming Super Bowl, and make appointments to various public boards.

As a native Houstonian, Turner considers diversity a major plus for the city: "Houston is a welcoming city embracing all the cultures, ethnicities and nationalities. We are a world-class international city striving to an ever-more global future. We are the most diversified city in the nation. When you come to Houston, you can travel the globe, you can go from Asia, to Latin America, to Africa, all well within the confines of Houston."

Turner said China's significance is not lost on him.

"We always say Houston is a world-class international city, and we can't really say that without including China right in the middle of the equation," Turner said.

For nearly 20 years, every mayor of Houston from Lee Brown to Bill White to Annise Parker, has led trade delegations to China to entice Chinese investors, and Turner is sure he will do the same.

"I have not been to China, but I look forward to going there," he said. "China is our second leading trading partner only after Mexico; we have a large Chinese population in the city with well over 100,000, and we have the Chinese Consulate General here, and if I am not mistaken, this was the first in the country going back to 1979. We want to explore as many business opportunities with China as possible," Turner continued.

Houston has a close economic and cultural relationship with China. According to data provided by the mayor's office, more than 900 Houston companies reported ties with China.

Houston companies have set up more than 100 subsidiaries throughout China. Conversely, dozens of Chinese companies have operations in Houston, including the three major Chinese oil companies.

Trade volume has been steadily increasing since 2010, to $16.6 billion in 2014. Houston and Shenzhen established a sister-city relationship in 1986. Under former mayor Parker, Houston formed a partnership with Shanghai.

In Turner's view, the local Chinese community can contribute much to the strengthening of ties between Houston and China. The mayor went to the Shandong Fellowship Association's Lunar New Year celebration, which was attended by more than 1,000 people in February.

"I talked to a Chinese businessman there. His company was looking to do more business in Houston and Louisiana. I encouraged them to take a look at Houston," Turner said.

Turner said the Chinese community has added a great deal to Houston. "When you look at science and technology, the Chinese community is very helpful. The city enjoys many Chinese restaurants.

"The Chinese community has a strong banking business. Houston has benefited in so many ways from the presence of the Chinese community. That's why we are a cultural city," he said.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com
West is best for some Chinese students Updated: 2016-03-18 11:03 By Chang Jun(China Daily USA)

A traditional Tibetan wedding ceremony was held in Shangri-La city, Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Yunnan province, on Sunday. provided to china daily

Emily Chen's experiences at a private boarding school in the US have had nothing but positive results. It has been the opposite for some other young Chinese children attending American middle schools, spurring negative headlines and creating a stereotype

of 'rich, idle and reckless Chinese teenagers', Chang Jun reports in San Francisco.

W hen three years ago Herald Chen decided to send his only daughter Emily to the United States for high school, he was hopeful that his 15-year-old could regain enthusiasm for learning and be happy.

It turned out to be a decision that both parents and child could not be happier about. After attending the Grier School in central Pennsylvania as an international boarding student, Emily this spring has received acceptances to two colleges, the University of California, Davis and Penn State University.

"I used to hate school and homework in China," said Emily, who added that she didn't get much attention from teachers because she struggled in class. "But here at Grier I have all these fond memories about learning and motivation and have benefited much from interacting with peers from all over the world."

A physician and renowned expert in late-stage cancer research and treatment in China, Chen said investing in his daughter's education yields ample rewards. "I'm not positive that she could be admitted to the same American universities if receiving education in China," he said. "She simply did not have a chance to pass the college entrance examination."

Although China in recent years started gradually transforming its education system, its framework and foundational concepts are often criticized as being narrowly focused on students' academic performance instead of wholesome character-building and leadership development. Schools are rated by enrollment percentage and students' scores, clusters of parents send children to afterschool enrichment programs, and heavy loads of homework and worksheet devour extracurricular activities.

'Nightmare-like year'

"I still can't forget the nightmare-like years when we had to shuffle Emily back and forth between school and afterschool training institutions," said Chen. "My wife kept pushing Emily to study harder and would lose her temper at her progress. None of us was happy."

When Emily decided to attend middle school in the US and in 2013 enrolled at Grier in Birmingham, about 250 miles west of Philadelphia, the entire family breathed a sigh of relief. Different teaching methods, different learning approaches and expectations from the school have prompted Emily to be independent and self-advocating.

"My experiences at the school led me to take leaps of faith in myself and encourage me to believe I could make great things happen," Emily said.

The Chen family story is not an exception. According to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the number of Chinese K-12 students soared to 34,578 this year and accounts for almost half of international students attending American high schools and primary schools. The youngest, as indicated in records, is only 10.

In 2010, there were 8,857 Chinese students attending US K-12 schools, according to data collected by the Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP).

Eva Liu, a marketing professional in Silicon Valley, along with several of her entrepreneurial friends, designed a website http://waijule.com/ and app that helps Chinese parents locate the best public and private K-12 schools in the United States.

"We feel that sending young children to American boarding schools will continue," said Liu. "The increase shows no sign of abating in the near future due to the sheer size of China's population and the rise of a wealthy class buoyed by years of economic growth."

After regularly answering inquiries from China about good schools, homes located in good school districts, and other resources in the US, Liu launched her website and app, which focus on high-quality K-12 school systems and services.

"They are gaining popularity among parents of interest," said Liu. "Chinese parents understand what values the American education will generate, and they are getting it."

For example, some Chinese families will buy houses in upscale towns with strong public schools.

"Our website collects all this information for Chinese families," said Liu, adding that her clients are mostly affluent Chinese with only one child.

At Grier, Chen and other Chinese students make up almost half the population of about 300 at the private boarding and day school. The school's administration set up a publicity office in China several years ago to welcome Chinese students to offset declining domestic enrollment and funding.

"Fifty thousand dollars a year including tuition and boarding fees is not a small number," Emily said. "I understand my parents pin high hopes on me."

Young troublemakers

Young Chinese children attending American middle schools have become a common scene across the nation, and the nickname "parachute kids" has been given to the special group by the US media and public.

In recent years, some of them had made a lot of negative headlines, creating a stereotype of "rich, idle and reckless Chinese teenagers".

In November 2012, 19-year-old Xu Yichun studying at the South Puget Sound Community College in Seattle, was driving his newly purchased Mercedes-Benz C350 with four other students on their way back to the apartment from grocery shopping. Xu did not stop at a stop sign and broadsided a car driving towards him, causing the death of the other driver and injuries to four local residents. Xu's mother afterwards posted a $2 million bail to get her son released. Prosecutors were worried that the foreign student would jump bail but nonetheless allowed the release. Xu was deported in 2014 and is barred from returning to the US for 10 years, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Seattle.

On Feb 17, three 19-year-old students from China who had been studying at a private school in southern California were sentenced to multiple years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping and assaulting two Chinese classmates last March. Yunyao "Helen" Zhai was sentenced to 13 years; Yuhan "Coco" Yang got 10 years; and Xinlei "John" Zhang got six years. Zhai, the ringleader in the case, apologized for her actions in a letter read to the court. "I hope they (the victims) do not carry the wounds from what I did for the rest of their lives," she wrote.

'Wakeup call'

The three were charged with assaulting an 18-year-old classmate by kidnapping her and taking her to a park where she was stripped, beaten, punched, kicked, spat on, burned with cigarettes and forced to eat her own hair during a five-hour assault.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas C. Falls said at an earlier hearing in the case that it reminded him of Lord of the Flies, William Golding's 1954 novel about boys stranded on a deserted island without adult supervision who become bloodthirsty and savage enough to kill each other.

"This is a wakeup call for the 'parachute kid syndrome,'" said Yuhan Yang, in a statement read to the court by her attorney. "Parents in China are well-meaning and send their kids thousands of miles away with no supervision and too much freedom. That is a formula for disaster."

The case has attracted widespread attention in China, heightening concerns among parents with children studying abroad. Some observers blame the bad news on the children's psychological immaturity, their ignorance of local laws and codes of conduct or their ingrained waywardness and disrespect for parents and teachers.

Whatever the root cause, members of this group of Chinese international students have been behind too many tragedies.

As sending young children to the US for school becomes more and more fashionable in China, wealthy parents should think carefully about one question before they rush to follow the fad: Is your child really ready to live in a foreign country and assimilate to a completely unfamiliar culture without proper supervision and hands-on guidance?

In her statement, Zhai said living so far from her parents affected her in many ways. "They sent me to the US for a better life and a fuller education," she said. "Along with that came a lot of freedom, in fact too much freedom. Here, I became lonely and lost. I didn't tell my parents because I didn't want them to worry about me."

"I'm sure they suffer loneliness," Rayford Fountain, Yang's attorney, said of parachute children. "So they bond with other kids in the small Chinese circles with no supervision, no one to turn to for assistance. So these things can get out of control."

Xinlei "John" Zhang's father said he deeply regretted sending his son to the US at such an early age. "This was a wrong decision we made several years ago and now it's a tragedy for the whole family," he said, adding that he had spent $400,000 on legal fees and travel back and forth for hearings. "Chinese parents who want to send their young children abroad should learn a lesson from our case," he told the media on Feb 17.
In the planned Chinese remake of The Devil Wears Prada, which actress will icily detail the fashion history of cerulean blue?

Beijing-based Desen International Media, according to the Hollywood Reporter, will produce a version of the popular 2006 comedy that starred Meryl Streep as the imperious editor of the fashion magazine Runway and Anne Hathaway as an indifferent intern.

Streep, in the role of Miranda Priestly, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and also was nominated for an Oscar.

The Chinese cast, however, won't be clickety-clacketing on stiletto heels around Manhattan. Instead, they will be navigating the glass towers of Shanghai, where the remake will be set.

The original The Devil Wears Prada was released in China in February 2007, eight months after it opened in the United States. The film was a smash hit in major Chinese cities, with corporations conducting screenings for Women's Day parties on March 8, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The Chinese-language version of the original 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, in which the Streep character was widely interpreted to be based on Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, also became a bestseller. The book is available on Amazon in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Desen, founded by film producer Ann An in 2006, did not say if it has secured the movie rights to the book.

China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television has approved the film project.

"Terrific film. It's the kind of story that could work very well in China," said Robert Cain, a Los Angeles writer and producer and publisher of ChinaFilmBiz, a blog focused on China's movie industry.

"The audience there is a very strong, young female audience and there have been a lot of movies made and distributed very successfully" for female moviegoers, Cain told China Daily.

"Desen has had a lot of success in the past" with films geared toward women, said Cain, who has consulted for clients such as CCTV, Shanghai Media Group and China Film Group.

The movie would do well if it follows the success of the 2013 smash Tiny Times, which has pretty much the same story line.

"The film's main thread (is) the efforts of fumbling girl-next-door Lin Xiao (Mini Yang) ... settling into her job at a fashion magazine and acclimatizing herself to the glamorous, high-octane world of haute couture," was how the Hollywood Reporter described it.

The film, which generated a flurry of sequels, told the story of four fashionable college girls in Shanghai, which the Los Angeles Times described as "The Devil Wears Prada meets Sex and the City (minus the sex)".

The movie was based on a series of novels by Guo Jingming, who also directed it. The picture opened a surprising gulf in public opinion, with fans embracing its celebration of the good life as others decried it as materialistic.

"Materialism is something we face every day now, and it is not dirty," Guo told China Daily in 2013. "Our film audiences are much younger than before. They live with materialism."

China Daily's Raymond Zhou was one of the film's critics.

"When I first criticized Tiny Times, tens of thousands of Guo Jingming's fans swarmed to my micro blog, leaving all kinds of nasty  but often childishly laughable  words," Zhou wrote early this year. "Guo  had won a base of some 10-20 million loyalists through his fiction, most of whom are teenage girls. His public response to my criticism essentially started a call to action.

"I was only one of hundreds of critics who lambasted his film, yet I was turned into a symbol of acerbic criticism since he responded to only mine, thus elevating me out of mass oblivion' in the words of some Guo devotees."

But the film also won support from state media.

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global Times, complimented Guo's mastery of "subtle emotions".

"I believe [Guo] is a superman who can decipher many types of delight and sorrow," he wrote on Weibo.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com
Obama's unilateral sanctions opposed Updated: 2016-03-18 08:06 By Zhang Yunbi(China Daily)

Foreign Ministry calls for avoiding 'any move' on the DPRK issue that would increase tension

Beijing has said any unilateral sanctions must not hurt China's interests after Washington imposed additional sanctions on Pyongyang because of its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

China always opposes any unilateral sanctions and "any move to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula is opposed", Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in Beijing on Thursday.

US President Barack Obama imposed the new sanctions on Wednesday.

His executive order freezes any property in the United States of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and prohibits exports of goods from the US to the DPRK, Reuters reported.

"All the relevant parties, it is hoped, will exercise restraint, remain calm and avoid any provocative words or actions," Lu added.

The Republic of Korea Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the country's top envoy for the stalled Six-Party Talks will visit China on Friday to discuss issues regarding the DPRK.

Meanwhile, the ROK and the US are conducting joint military drills, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, from March 7 until April 30, reported to be the largest ever.

Pyongyang said on Wednesday that Washington and Seoul are pushing the situation to the point of explosion through the provocation posed by the drills.

A statement issued on Wednesday by the DPRK through the official Korean Central News Agency said the drills amount to "a provocation to the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK and an open declaration of a war against it".

Shi Yongming, an Asia-Pacific studies researcher at the China Institute of International Relations, said Washington and Seoul "have paid too much attention to sanctions, and they proposed few offerings for politically settling the nuclear issue".

Zhang Liangui, an expert in Korean studies at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said Washington and Seoul "are now determined to push Pyongyang to the brink (with all their measures) and finish the whole issue once and for all".

The unilateral sanctions imposed by the US, the ROK and Japan are coordinated with one another, Zhang added.

Kim Hong-kyun, chief ROK envoy for the six-way dialogue to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, will visit China on Friday to meet with Wu Dawei, China's special representative on Korean Peninsula affairs, ROK Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuk told a news briefing.

It will be the first meeting between them since Kim was named in late February as special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs to represent Seoul at the Six-Party Talks.

The talks, which involve the DPRK, China, the ROK, the US, Russia and Japan, have been stalled since 2008.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/18/2016 page3)
James Chao honored by education trust Updated: 2016-03-18 11:11 By DONG LESHUO in Washington(chinadaily.com.cn)

James S.C. Chao, founder of the Foremost Maritime Corp, was honored at the inaugural Asians in America Leadership & Achievement Awards by the US-China Education Trust (USCET) in Washington on Thursday.

The US-China Educatiion Trust held its inagural Asians in America Leadership & Acheivement Awards gala in Washington on Thursday. From left are award recipient Madhavan MR Rangaswami, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur; Elaine Chao, former US Labor secretary, whose father, industrialist James Chao, received an award; US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, married to Elaine Chao; and Julia Chang Bloch, ex-US ambassador and USCET presdient. CHARLENE CAI / CHINA DAILY

Former Labor secretary Elaine L. Chao accepted the award on behalf of her father.

"My father is a very generous, positive and optimistic person. It is reflective of his personality and philosophy that as he advanced, he never forgot his roots and always tried to help others," Elaine Chao said.

James Chao grew up in Jiading District outside Shanghai. He moved to the United States in 1958, settling in New York City, where his wife, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, and children rejoined him in 1961.

In 1964, after receiving his MBA from St. John's University, he founded Foremost Group, a shipping, trading and finance enterprise where he remains chairman.

"My parents are people of faith and modesty. They never set out to make money. They started out wanting only to build a better life for themselves and their family, to be good citizens of whatever community they belonged, and to be contributing members of society. Their company reflected their values: service, reliability, and integrity," Elaine Chao said.

"Their education gave them the foundation to successfully face the historic changes swirling around them  such as being forced to leave their land of birth, relocating to a new place, and moving again to America. Their education gave them the tools with which to learn, adapt and succeed in each new place," she said.

The Chao family foundation is funding construction of the Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Center at the Harvard Business School. It is opening in June and will be the first building named after a person of Chinese descent and the first building named after a woman on campus.

A scholarship fund has also been established to provide financial assistance to outstanding students with special emphasis on students of Chinese descent.

Last October, the Chao family returned to Anhui province, the mother's home province, and Jiading to dedicate a number of kindergartens for the rural children.

The USCET, founded by Julia Bloch, former US ambassador to Nepal, is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting US-China relations through education and exchange.

Madhavan "MR" Rangaswami, founder of the Sand Hill Group, was also honored with the award.
Scientists honored for US-Sino cooperation Updated: 2016-03-18 11:11 By HEZI JIANG in New York(chinadaily.com.cn)

China has made innovation a top priority for the second half of the decade. In New York, a dozen top American scientists reflected the crucial role US-China cooperation has played and will continue to play in making it happen.

Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, presented a medal and a certificate of appreciation to Dr. Walter Ian Lipkin on Thursday evening at the Consulate General, thanking him for his contribution to China's scientific development. Lipkin, director of the Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, recently received China's top honor for foreign scientists. hezi jiang / china daily

Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York,held a dinner gala on Thursday to honor those who have made outstanding contributions to scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries.

Dr Walter Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, was among the 11 guests that received medals and certificates of appreciation at the event.

Lipkin was recently awarded China's top science honor for foreign scientists, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, presided by President Xi Jinping.

He helped China contain the SARS epidemic of 2003, and developed the institutional infrastructure needed to ensure that China would have the resources required to detect and more rapidly respond to emerging infectious threats.

"I have done work in many places, but I will say that China has a very special place in my heart," Lipkin told China Daily. "The Chinese people have always been very generous and very warm to me."

Lipkin said China's science and technology have come a long way since he first went there in 2003.

"When China hada problem with SARS in 2003, people from around the world went to China to help. More recently, with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, China actually sent people to help with Ebola," he said.

Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, presented a medal and a certificate of appreciation to Dr. Henry Lee on Thursday evening at the Consulate General, thanking him for his contribution to the US-China cooperation in science and technology. Eleven American scientists received the award. hezi jiang / china daily

"It has gone from a country that needed assistance from other scientists to the point now where those scientists have so much expertise that they can go out and help other countries. It's a huge difference."

Zhang said science and technology have always been one of China's most effective drivers of change. The National Science and Technology Conference in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution was the "first buzz of spring heraldingin the great transformation of China".

Nowadays, while the Chinese economy is switching to the new normal, Zhang said the country will work harder on fostering a better environment for innovation.

"We will make sure science and technology are more deeply embedded into the economy," said Zhang. "China will open up even further to the world and draw on the strengths of advanced science and technology in other countries. This has opened up a huge market and presents enormous opportunities for the international businesses and scientists from all countries."

Lipkin is hoping to build a lab in China to continuously generate research.

"This is not the end of the wonderful friendship I have with the Chinese people," he said.

The ten other recipients of the award are: Chen-Ning Yang, Leoh Ming Pei, Shing-Tung Yau, Burrell Clark Burchfiel, Henry Lee, David Heath, Kuo-Kuang Hsu, Howard Milstein, PonisserilSomasundaran and Cato Laurencin.
Vietnamese expert hails China's water discharge in Mekong River cooperative move Updated: 2016-03-18 17:00 (Xinhua)

HANOI -- The fact that China discharges water in Mekong River is a cooperative move, said an Vietnamese expert on water resources on Friday.

Pham Hong Giang, President of Vietnam National Committee on Large Dams and Water Resources Development, former Deputy Minister of Vietnam's Agriculture and Rural Development, made the remark in an interview with Xinhua by phone.

"China's releasing water in Mekong River is a cooperative move," Giang said.

The Jinghong Hydropower Station in southwest China's Yunan Province has begun discharging 2,000 cubic meters of water on a daily basis, until April 10, Chinese Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei said Wednesday.

"The distance from Jinghong Hydropower Station to Vietnam's Mekong River Delta is very long," the Vietnamese expert introduced, adding that there are many dry areas in need of water on the way to Vietnam's Mekong River Delta.

"When water can reach Vietnam's Mekong River Delta, the effectiveness of alleviating drought will be partially limited," Giang said.

Mekong River originates in China and runs through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is known as Lancang in the Chinese stretch.

Since late 2015, countries along the Mekong River have been suffering droughts of varying degrees due to the impact of the El Nino phenomenon. The situation has worsened recently and threatened people's livelihood in the region.
A life shadowed and shaped by ancient warriors Updated: 2016-03-19 00:52 By Yan dongjie(China Daily USA)

Daniel Krause with one of his works at the exhibition in Beijing. PHOTOS BY YAN DONGJIE / CHINA DAILY

For Daniel Krause, China's Terracotta Warriors are not only one of the world's greatest pieces of art, they also embody his greatest attachment to the country.

The American artist has made dozens of bronze sculptures of ancient Chinese soldiers that were inspired by the Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, but they couldn't be any more different to the originals. All have their torso and body parts rearranged, some with arms under their feet, some with gaping spaces where their hearts should be.

Explaining this bold artistic stroke, Krause said: "When people look at history from specific perspectives, they understand it in ways that are very different from the original idea, and that's the artistic side I see."

Everything around him influences his sculptures, he said. His imagination never stops running, and it interacts with everything in the world, he said.

Even as he stands facing you his mind is wandering around the room, creating shapes and improvising with the surrounding architectural forms.

He expresses his understanding of China through sculpture, he said, and presents that to people from all over the world as an introduction to the country.

He can lay some claim to being an ideal person to do that, having spent more than half of his life in China.

He was raised in Chicago and graduated from the University of California, San Diego, before arriving in China in 1987 aged 23 to take up a graduate degree and spent the next 23 years or so in Guangdong province, eventually moving to Beijing in 2011.

"I wanted to go to the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts for a master's degree in sculpture  when I first arrived, but ended up enrolling in a graduate program at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, because I preferred the warmer weather there."
I read all about the Gender Equality bill in Nigeria and how it died at the second reading on the second floor, and I was disappointed, but not surprised. I mean, were talking about Nigeria  our beloved country that still doesnt think a womans body actually belongs to her. Single or married, every man has the right to tap current when they see you, especially when its in a public place like the market. Its an unspoken rule.

I was going to write about it, and I had so much to say on the issue, but I was weak. The thought of everything I wanted to say made me weak. Why would such a bill die sef? Do men not want their wives, sisters, and daughters to live in a world where they are not discriminated against based on their gender? Even if they dont want their wives to do well, do they also not want their daughters to do well?

Then I came across this video yesterday and suddenly, it all began to make sense again. In the video below, a woman asks some pastors what she should do about her husband who smokes, drinks, has no job, and beats her.

The first pastor who responds starts by asking what the victim does to her husband to constantly make him beat her because we, women, our mouth is too much, and perhaps, the man is down on his luck and she keeps using her mouth to bring him further down. She also adds that her husband used to beat her up, but that she was the architect of her own beating because her husband was a military man who was used to giving orders. The second pastor goes on and on about Michelle Obama, talking about how Michelle said her marriage to Barack became difficult when he started running for office.

There is a certain comfort for me  because it helps me sleep better at night  when a man is the one perpetuating these wicked thoughts and actions against women because when its a woman whos holding another woman down, I just dont understand it. When a man does it, I can say that he is not a woman, that he does not understand, and that he just needs to be educated. How do I justify it when its a woman doing it?

The average Nigerian woman does not worry about her future father in-law, but she worries about her future mother in-law because its the woman who gives the woman hell. The first Pastor that answered the question said her husband was in the military and that he used to beat her up. She acknowledges that it was an abusive relationship, but she follows it up by saying that it was her fault because of her mouth.

I want to be angry, but I have to remember that this woman cannot give what she does not have. She advice she has given the battered woman is based on what she thinks is the norm, what she herself went through, and what she has been taught to believe all her life. She does not know that a man beating his wife is actually not a man, and that there are men who do not beat their wives. She thinks that because her husband is a military man, he should also be a militant at home. A man should be a husband and a father at home, not whatever job he holds outside.

The second Pastor ranted on and on insignificantly about Michelle Obama. She said something about how Michelle Obama said her marriage became difficult when her husband started running for office. This Pastor went on to tell how Michelle had to look within herself and decide what she really needed and how she could get it from someone other than Obama, and she was able to delicate. Was she implying that the battered woman should decide if it was important to her to not be killed by her husbands hands?

This is why the Gender Equality bill died. Its because some of our women do not even know that they are suffering. They dont know they are being given the shorter end of the stick because they have a vagina between their legs. And some of the ones who do know like it just the way it is because they think it is how its supposed to be.

In Nigeria, we have a way of confusing Gods words for our cultural beliefs. I have already been reminded on Facebook that these women are Pastors, so my words are touching Gods anointed. People forget that pastors are men mortals with titles, that they are not without sin. It is Jesus that we should look to, not man  no matter the fancy title he adds to the beginning of his name. Pastor. Apostle. Priest. Bishop. Prophet. All words.

This is why the Gender Equality bill did not pass in Nigeria. If women cannot recognize domestic violence and gender inequality, then how can we convince a room full of men to see it? How? It starts with us.
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"TPP would help attract more foreign investors to Viet Nam for setting up their production chains, enable the nation to become a part of their manufacturing and supply chain base, and help Vietnamese firms become part of the chains" Khanh said.  Photo VNA

HCM CITY (VNS)  The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement would bring opportunities for Viet Nam, but they would not by themselves turn into benefits or market strength, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh has said.

On the sidelines of the second Viet Nam International Advertising Equipment and Technology Exhibition, or VietAd 2016, which opened at Ha Noi Exhibition Centre yesterday, local experts spoke about benefits and challenges for local companies in advertising industry when the TPP comes into effect. Nguyen Thanh ao, general secretary of the HCM City Advertising Association (HAA), said that the TPP agreement would bring opportunities for the northern advertising firms to exchange and study new technology in this field. Nguyen Tien Thanh, manager of ASEAN Import-export and Technology JSC told Viet Nam News that now domestic ad firms have more opportunity to work with local and foreign companies. Currently, 80 per cent of equipment and products were imported from China and Japan. In the near future, they planned to import equipment from other advanced countries. Thanh said the company hoped the TPP agreement would help importers get more incentives on import tariffs. According to industry insiders, Viet Nams advertising industry is still young compared with other countries in the area in terms of creativity and equipment, but 90 per cent of equipment is imported currently. The Viet Nam Advertising Association reports the advertising industrys annual revenue is estimated at around US$1 billion. -- VNS

It would depend much on how Viet Nam takes advantage of the pact and copes with related problems, and only with appropriate efforts would the country be able to achieve its potential and overcome challenges, Khanh, who was the head of Viet Nams TPP negotiation delegation, said.

Speaking at the TTP Dialogue  Envisioned growth opportunities for businesses in Viet Nam conference yesterday, he said the TPP would facilitate trade with and investment in the 12 countries involved in the pact, who account for 40 per cent of the worlds GDP.

It would help attract more foreign investors to Viet Nam for setting up their production chains, enable the nation to become a part of their manufacturing and supply chain base, and help Vietnamese firms become part of the chains, he said.

Besides investment and trade commitments, the new generation free trade agreement requires much higher standards of international compliance, including creating a fair and non-discriminatory business environment, which would help create a sound trade and investment environment in the country, he said.

Tran ac Sinh, chairman of the HCM Stock Exchange, said the TPP is expected to benefit the bourse as companies, including in the supporting industries, take advantage of trade benefits.

Portfolio investment from abroad would also increase sharply, creating a momentum for market growth, he said.

Khanh said: Several studies have found that the TPP would create huge economic opportunities for Viet Nam, but these researches were based on the premise with other conditions remaining stable.

If the world economy suddenly faces difficulty, our economy will be affected.

Opportunities cannot by themselves turn into benefits; it depends on the efforts made by all: the more you prepare, the more successful you will be.

Besides, opportunities always go hand in hand with challenges due to fierce competition, and businesses need to be courageous to compete and should take the initiative to innovate to improve their competitiveness, he said.

Businesses should not compete only on price, but also quality and prestige.

He urged Vietnamese firms to focus on improving their management and adopt modern marketing methods.

To enjoy the benefits of TPP, Vietnamese goods would have to comply with regulations on origins, quality, and others, he said.

For instance, the yarn-forward rule in the garment and textile sector could be a challenge in the short term, but in the long term it would help the domestic industry develop a complete supply chain, he said.

In the last two years investment in the fibre and yarn making has shot up, equalling the entire previous investment, he said.

Nguyen Cong Ai, deputy general director of KPMG, said, A number of Taiwanese and South Korean investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars in Viet Nams textile and dyeing sectors.

Local companies have also stepped up investment in the sectors, he said, adding they have done extensive studies to thoroughly understand the yarn-forward rule to capitalise on opportunities to boost exports to markets like the US and Japan when the TPP comes into effect, he said.

The seminar was organised by the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with KPMG and HOSE.  VNS
Singing for charity: Capri Everitt sings the Vietnamese national anthem with children of the SOS Childrens Village in a Nang yesterday. Photo tuoitre.vn

A NANG  The youngest Youth Ambassador of SOS Childrens Village, 11-year old Capri Everitt from Vancouver, Canada, raised her pure, innocent voice to sing the Vietnamese national anthem at SOS Childrens Village in a Nang yesterday.

Capri loves to help children less fortunate than herself. She is touring of 80 countries to sing 80 national anthems in 41 different languages to raise US$1 million for SOS Childrens Village  a charity which provides homes worldwide for children who have been orphaned, abandoned, or affected by war and poverty.

In a short clip featured on the website aroundtheworldin80anthems.com, the angel-hearted girl said she decided to act when she discovered that 18 million orphaned children face death, due to disease and malnutrition.

"I wanted to use my voice to help children get clean water and food," she said.

The idea of traveling to 80 countries was inspired by the classic novel Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne.

But this is not just about visiting countries. This is about bringing children together through the common language of music, her website aroundtheworldin80anthems.com explains.

Why does Capri sing national anthems everywhere she goes?

Many children may not know famous pop songs, but they know their own national anthem. So Capri sings local national anthems with children in their own language, and children everywhere sing with her. She hopes that her work will inspire children of the world to use their talents to help make a better world for people everywhere.

In Viet Nam, her nine-year-old brother Bowen Everitt and children of the SOS Childrens Village in a Nang accompanied her in singing the Vietnamese national anthem..

Tonight, she will participate in a cultural exchange programme with children from SOS a Nang Village and 100 university students at Chau A Park from 6pm to 8pm.

A similar programme will be held tomorrow at Bien ong Park.

On November 20, 2015, Capri began her incredible journey at UNICEFs Universal Childrens Day celebrations in Ottawa, together with her mom, dad, and younger brother. Then she travelled through countries in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, South America, Oceania, and Eastern Asia. In each country, she invites as many local children as possible to join her.

Viet Nam is her 30th country. After leaving this country on March 20, Capri will continue her mission in other Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, before heading to the Southern Asia region to sing in Sri Lanka and India.

Her journey will also extend to South Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. She is scheduled to complete her 80-country global mission in mid-August.

To learn more about Capris journey, or to make a donation, visit her website at https://aroundtheworldin80anthems.com.  VNS
Culinary experts: French Ambassador Jean Noel Poirier and chefs participating in the Gout de France event pose for a photo at a press conference in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNS Photo Thuy Hang

HA NOI  Michelin star chef Raphael Le Mancq has flown in from Haute-Savoie, France, with goodies in his luggage to share the taste of France with people in Viet Nam at the Gout de France (Good France) on Monday night.

A global event to celebrate French gastronomy, Gout de France is organised according to the foundation of 3 Michelin star chef Alain Ducasse and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development (France) Laurent Fabius.

On Monday, a thousand chefs in 150 countries and five continents will prepare a French meal at the same time to celebrate the excellence, diversity and modernity of French gastronomy.

In Ha Noi, celebrated chef Le Mancq, together with more than 20 other talented chefs, will present a French cuisine menu specially created for the event for one night only.

Ha Noi seems to dominate the event with the participation of 14 chefs from the top French restaurants in the city, such as French Grill in the JW Marriott Hotel, Le Beaulieu in the Hotel Sofitel Legend Metropole, Cafe Lautrec in the Hotel de lOpera, La Cheminee in the Pullman Ha Noi Hotel, Cafe du Lac at Intercontinental Ha Noi Westlake, La Table du Chef and Journey to the East.

While Hue and a Nang have one chef each representing the cities at the event, the ancient port city of Hoi An has two participants from Annam restaurant in the Victoria Hotel, and Faifo restaurant from the Royal Hoi An Hotel.

The gastronomy event will also showcase six other Vietnamese and French chefs in HCM City. They are the kitchens conductors of Social Club in Hotel des Arts, LOlivier in Sofitel Plaza Saigon, Annamite, Bistro Song Vie, Cobalt and Le Bordeaux.

Most of the chefs will present a special menu showcasing Frances specialties such as beef, oyster, foie gras, scallops and cheese. Connoisseurs can also taste the Bourgogne snail, which is offered by the Maison Vie restaurant in Ha Noi.

French Ambassador to Viet Nam Jean Noel Poirier said the Gout de France last year witnessed great success with the participation of over 100,000 foodies from more than 1,300 restaurants (of which 85 per cent are located outside of France) and 150 French Embassies on five continents.

In Viet Nam, Gout de France has created a significant influence as the number of chefs and restaurants joining the event has increased this year, he said.

The Embassy on Monday night will also host a French dinner with high school and university students.

As the cost for a French dinner may be beyond the budget of a student, we do open this dinner to young people, expecting they will have a nice experience to learn about France and its cuisine, he said.

In Viet Nam, the cost of a Gout de France dinner ranges from VN800,000 to 3.6 million.  VNS
Dear Readers,

Last week Viet Nam News asked you to share your thoughts with us on whether or not authorities should demolish illegally-built villas. People talk a lot about the dozens of illegal, unlicensed villas on the outskirts of Ha Noi  Ba Vi District. Such villas cost billions of ong. Readers responses fell into two categories: those who agree with destroying unlicensed villas; and those who suggest using the villas for public purposes.

Here are some of your comments:

Pham Hien Anh, Vietnamese, Ha Noi

The villas were built illegally, without authorisation. They should be demolished to deter both their creators and future violators. Saying that demolishment is a waste is just an excuse for wrongdoing. When the creators of these villas built them illegally in Ba Vi District, they accepted the risk: they might gain much from the villas or lose them

Now that the violations have been discovered, if these illegal villas are kept or used, its like accepting wrongdoing. Others might take advantage of such back door acceptance to do similar illegal things.

For example, there used to be illegal construction and building in Ha Noi, including building more floors than permitted or encroaching on public space. Owners of such places just paid fines and continued to use the buildings. It was a bad policy. In the short term, the policy saved money for violators. But in the long term, it failed to deter other violators, and illegal construction continued. At that time, authorities said that they could not address the problem.

So, in my opinion, strict punishment is needed in this case. The creators of such villas -- and all relevant State agencies and officials -- must take responsibility for the violations. Dozens of villas are not easily hidden. Local authorites must have known of them as soon as illegal construction started. Authorities failed to prevent the work early on. So they must be punished accordingly.

Luong Hong Khanh, Vietnamese, a Nang

I live in a Nang, where there are two well-known illegally built villas at Hai Van Pass. One of these villas belongs to an officer; the other one belongs to a businessman. The local government asked both men to demolish these illegal villas a long time ago.

But the businessman just kept appealing to authorities and agencies for permission keep his illegal villa. At the end of last year, a Nang administration finally decided to raze everything, after getting Government approval. But they still have not finished the planned demolition. So local people are very confused.

In my opinion, the Government should destroy all illegally-built structures, regardless of how expensive they were to build. Related managerial agencies should also be fined an appropriate penalty for allowing such building violations to happen. There is no alternative solution for this problem, other than demolition.

Rhiannon Shannon, Ha Noi

I used to be a town planner. Its called compulsory demolition. Authorities make offenders pay for the demolition, too.

Elena Rapowez, Ha Noi

In my country, the Government would nationalise the property and do with it as they please.

Andrew Burden, Canadian, Ha Noi

Who authorized construction of the Ba Vi villas? And where is the survey plan? Which government land man authorized this construction? Someone has to be punished.

Rather than destroy perfectly well built villas -- or forcing a rich guy to pay a fine he can easily afford -- why not confiscate the villas and reclassify them as public property? Let charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) use them to train and retrain convicts, and for the poor, the elderly and any other group in need.

Quynh Nhung, Vietnamese, Prague

Maybe the Government should fine the owners of the illegal villas, then re-design the villas to make them suitable for poor and disadvantaged people. This would deter violators, plus not allow the villas to go to waste.

The punishment for the violators needs to be strict, so that they will not commit such violations again.

Thuy Duong, Vietnamese, Moscow

Demolition is the best choice. Wrongdoing deserves punishment. Other countries also demolish illegally-constructed buildings to ensure that people obey building regulations. In February, more than 100 kiosks and shopping centres near the Russian capitals metro stations were destroyed, following the city governments decision to remove structures built without formal planning permission.  VNS
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Le Hai Binh.  Photo vietq.vn

HA NOI (VNS)  Viet Nam resolutely rejects and strongly protests Chinas actions, and demands that China does not repeat similar actions, respects Viet Nams sovereignty and international law, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Le Hai Binh spoke at the ministrys press conference yesterday.

His statement was to respond to a series of Chinas recent activities such as sending a 10,000-tonne vessel carrying 300 tourists to Oc Hoa island in Hoang Sa (Paracel) Archipelago as well as building an airport with a 3,500m airstrip and occupying a cluster of islands named An Vinh in the Archipelago.

These activities not only go against the common understanding of the two countries high-level leaders, the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related issues, and adversely affect bilateral relations, but also seriously violates international law and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) signed in 2002 between ASEAN and China, and complicates the situation and escalates tensions in the East Sea, Binh said.

We hope China would make realistic contributions to the promotion of Viet Nam and Chinas co-operation and relationships as well as maintain peace and stability in the East Sea, he said.

Answering a question related to fishermen, particularly those in the central region, reporting on attacks by Chinese vessels, Binh stressed that Viet Nam demands China to immediately stop these inhuman actions, investigate and strictly punish the Chinese functional forces behaviors, compensate for losses of Vietnamese fishermen and prevent the repetition of similar actions.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) also provided information related to a request for assistance that was submitted to the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan by a number of Vietnamese workers living there, who reported harmful working and living conditions.

After receiving the request, the Labour Management Board of the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan immediately contacted representatives of the company and requested a review of the use of workers and their accommodation fees, which were higher than they should have been.

The board also asked the company to work with the embassy to conduct inspections on labourers working conditions and hold talks with representatives of the workers regarding the parties benefits and rights in line with Japanese law.

If the Japanese employers do not accept the request, the embassy will ask local Japanese authorities to get involved, he said.

Regarding the information of three fishing boats with 42 Vietnamese fishermen on board being arrested by Malaysia, the spokesperson said that MoFA instructed the Vietnamese Embassy in Malaysia to work closely with local authorities to verify the information and take actions to protect the legitimate rights of the fishermen.  VNS
HA NOI (VNS)  Yesterday the Presidium of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front held the 2nd Consultative Conference in the capital city to choose candidates to stand for the 14th National Assembly.

Bui Thi Thanh, Vice President of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front Central Committee said a total of 198 candidates were assigned to central government agencies.

But only 197 candidates have been nominated. 19 of the candidates are Polibureau members, and 76 are Party Central Committee members, Thanh said.

Provincial Fatherland Front Chapters from provinces of Ha Giang, Lai Chau, Binh Thuan, Lang Son, Hai Duong, Phu Yen, An Giang, Hai Phong, Binh Duong, Hau Giang and others also held their 2nd Consultative Conferences yesterday to select candidates to stand for the 14th NA and their Provincial Peoples Councils in the coming five year term (2016-2021).

ong Nai Province: 23 nominated candidates were selected to stand for the 14th National Assembly. 147 nominated candidates were selected for the Provincial Peoples Council, plus one self-nominated candidate.

Tra Vinh Province: nine candidates were selected to stand for the 14th National Assembly. 88 candidates were selected to stand for the Provincial Peoples Council.

Ba Ria  Vung Tau Province: 10 candidates were nominated to stand for the 14th NA, one of them was self-nominated. 90 candidates were nominated to stand for the Provincial Peoples Council for the 2016-2021 term.

Ninh Thuan Province: 12 candidates were nominated to stand for the 14th NA. Two of the 12 candidates were nominated by the Central Government.

Other provinces like Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Binh Thuan, Lai Chau, Hai Phong, Binh Duong, Lang Son, Hai Duong, Phu Yen, An Giang and Hau Giang have also completed their 2nd consultative meetings to nominated candidates to stand for the 14th NA and Provincial Peoples Councils for the 2016-2021 term.

There will be one more consultative conference to finalise candidates stand for the 14th NA and Provincial Peoples Councils.

On May 22nd all voters will go to the polls to elect their representatives in the National Assembly, the Provincial Peoples Council, and the Communal or Ward Peoples Councils.

City approves all 90 applicants

At a conference held yesterday, HCM Citys Election Council approved all 90 candidates in the running for election to the 14th National Assembly.

They include inh La Thang, Politburo member and Secretary of the city Party Committee, and Nguyen Thi Quyet Tam, deputy secretary of the committee and chairwoman of the city Peoples Council.

There are also 48 self-nominated candidates, 44 who are not Communist Party members and 22 who are aged below 40.

According to Tran Tan Ngoi, HCM City vice president of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front, the remaining 42 candidates have been nominated by various organisations.

The city will send 30 deputies to the National Assembly.

The candidates will be further vetted before the next consultative conference scheduled for next month.

The Election Council also approved 203 candidates contesting for seats in the city Peoples Council.

They include 25 self-nominated candidates, 40 aged below 35 and 52 non-Party members. The elections to the NA and Peoples Councils for 2016-21 will be held on May 22, a Sunday as prescribed by the law.  VNS
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visits Huu Dinh commune  the only new-style rural area in Chau Thanh district  and inspected the salinity situation in Giong Trom commune, which recently lost 90 percent of harvest-ready rice acreage.  Photo vtv

BEN TRE (VNS)  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong asked the southern province of Ben Tre to adopt short and long term plans to tackle saltwater intrusion while inspecting local measures to tackle the ongoing disaster yesterday.

Ben Tre has lost 19,000ha of winter-spring rice crop, over 500ha of vegetables, nearly 5,800ha of fruits, and 475ha of aquaculture to salinity, becoming one of the Vietnamese localities hardest hit by saltwater intrusion.

Over 88,200 households with 353,000 people lack fresh water. Those living in three coastal districts are most afflicted. As many as 162 out of 164 communes and precincts are affected by the lack of fresh water.

To minimise losses, the Party leader called for switching to drought-resistant plants and animals. He hailed the provincial Party Committee for improving local well-being within the region, partly by developing a set of specific remedial actions.The upgraded socio-economic and technical infrastructure has resulted in a 7.3 per cent economic growth increase per year, with the rate of poor households falling to 5.5 per cent.

Ben Tre should remove any business obstacles which may arise, improve the business climate, develop tourism, and tap marine-based economic potential, the Party leader suggested. Lauding the province for its thorough preparations for the upcoming election of deputies to the National Assembly and Peoples Councils for 2016-2020, the Party leader expressed hopes that elections will be held in a democratic and lawful manner.

The Party chief also urged that a Resolution on Party building adopted by the 11th Party Central Committees fourth plenum be consistently implemented. He emphasised that personnel work is of special significance.

Earlier, he visited Huu Dinh commune  the only new-style rural area in Chau Thanh district  and inspected the salinity situation in Giong Trom commune, which recently lost 90 percent of harvest-ready rice acreage. During his trip, he also visited a coconut processing plant and invoked heroic Vietnamese mothers.  VNS
The Chief Judge of the Peoples Supreme Court Truong Hoa Binh.  Photo congly.com.vn

HA NOI (VNS)  Integration and justice harmonisation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are the biggest concerns for member nations, according to the Chief Judge of the Peoples Supreme Court Truong Hoa Binh.

Binh made the comment during a seminar in Ha Noi yesterday on the nations integration into ASEAN, which was hosted by the Supreme Court.

The establishment of the ASEAN Community marked a big step for nations that are in the process of broadening their economic integration, Binh said.

But along with these opportunities, ASEAN members would also face several challenges including legal and justice-related issues, he added.

With differences in economies, politics, societies and legal systems among the ASEAN members, regional integration and justice harmonisation in the community has brought several challenges in ensuring national interests on the basic of co-operation and unity to reach a common voice, he said.

Justice harmonisation would also ensure that disputes are immediately solved for the interests of related individuals and organisations, he added. In addition, justice harmonisation helped members legal and justice systems come closer to a common bottom line so as to minimise disputes on civil procedural work.

In the seminar, legal experts shared experiences on theory and practical issues related to justice harmonisation and expressed the need for justice harmonisation among member countries.

The participating judges also discussed favourable conditions and difficulties in justice harmonisation for investment fields as well as the need for co-operation among countries courts.

Participants agreed that justice harmonisation requires each country to actively contribute to establish a common legal framework aiming to reduce legal differences and obstacles.

During the process of legal integration and justice harmonisation, the role of courts is very important, experts said.

In recent years, the Vietnamese court has made strong improvements to the process such as proposing that the National Assembly adjust or supplement laws and legal regulations to fit international standards.

The seminar was held in preparation for the fourth conference of ASEAN Chief Judges, which will be held in April in HCM City.

The conference, an annual event for ASEAN chiefs and senior judges, is a venue for participants to share experiences and promote co-operation on legal issues.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ha Noi Department of Construction has demanded that local authorities in Soc Son District promptly demolish four newly-built brick kilns, which were found to be operating illegally by local press, and re-examine the total number of brick kilns in the district.

Previously, Vietnamplus reported that tens of brick kilns kept operating in Soc Son District, despite an order from the municipal authority to cease operations in late 2013. Their operations polluted the environment and affected local peoples health and production.

Many of the kilns were operating without construction permits. Some even expanded their kilns to yield higher profits.

At the meeting with the districts Peoples Committee on Tuesday, Vo Nguyen Phong, deputy director of the department, required the committee to cut power and water supply to these illegal brick kilns and suspended their operations.

The committee was asked to work with the owners of four kilns to dismantle their construction projects within the month.

Of the four kilns, two have been operating in uc Hoa and Bac Phu communes, and the rest were under construction.

Phong also asked the committee to revise regulations on the number of brick kilns upgraded from craft kilns. It must also clarify the land management and financial obligations, such as taxes and environmental fees for the brick kilns in the province. For craft kilns, Phong required the committee to quickly dismantle them according to the citys decision in late 2013.

o Minh Tuan, vice chairman of the districts Peoples Committee, said that craft brick kilns kept reappearing in Lam Son, Bac Son and Bac Phu communes, although owners were instructed to demolish them many times.

He said the committee would re-examine the inspection of these kilns and clarify the responsibilities of those charged with the task.

Figures from the districts authority show that 57 brick kilns were operating in the district.  VNS
HA NOI  The Peoples Court of Ha Noi yesterday opened a trial to indict seven Chinese defendants on charges of illegal money transfers between Viet Nam and China.

Wang Hui, 28, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. The six remaining defendants, aged 22-32, were sentenced to 14 months and 12 days in prison each.

According to the indictment, in the beginning of 2014, Wang was allegedly hired by a Chinese man called Joe, who remains unknown, to go to Viet Nam and manage a network of illegal yuan cash transfers from bank accounts registered in China.

She came to Viet Nam in February 2014 and hired six Chinese people to help her operate the network.

She also employed and trained 39 Vietnamese people to transfer the money through the internet.

In February 2015, the police searched and arrested the seven individuals at Minh Ngoc Company, where they carried out illegal money transfers involving 1,400 bank accounts.

Headed by Wang, the company had made hundreds of thousands of transactions involving more than VN800 billion ($3.5 million), with a daily average of 600 transactions.  VNS
Tranquil: Tourists ride boats to discover Van Long Natural Reserve which houses many caves with beautiful grottoes.

By Minh Thu

The rowers cleave the water leading our wooden boat to graze along the river. Rowing between mountains, we suddenly heard whooping, chattering sounds. There they are. Delacours langurs are looming in the leaves above us.

How lucky we are.

The langurs with white trousers, as local people call them, are a critically endangered animal on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Many people flock to Van Long Nature Reserve, an area of 2,600ha comprised of a lagoon surrounded by mountains and forests. They come to see one of the rarest and most endangered primates in the world, but only a few lucky tourists get the chance to see them, according to Nguyen Thi Ly, our boat-woman.

After leading us to visit some caves and enjoy the spectacular view of Van Long Nature Reserve in the morning, she suggested that we row along another route to find the langurs. They are not easy to spot, but the chances are higher in the afternoon. This time, our experienced boat-woman was right.

Our one-day trip to Van Long Nature Reserve, which is 80km from Ha Noi, was well worth while and unforgettable.

Set amid glorious limestone pinnacles, this tranquil reserves reedy wetlands are popular with bird-watchers. Among the bird species that have been spotted here are the rare black-faced spoonbill, the cotton pygmy goose and the white-browed crake.

The water is transparent and we can see straight down to water plants and algae at the bottom. The mountains are reflected endlessly in the water, creating a picturesque landscape and a rich ecological system. Its not hard to understand why the film crew for Kong: Skull Island selected Van Long Nature Reserve as one of several sites to shoot the film in Viet Nam .

Director Jordan Vogt Robert visited the site and was immediately and totally charmed. He decided to shoot the blockbuster movie at the Van Long Nature Reserve in the northern province of Ninh Binh, as well as at the nearby Trang An Complex and Tam Coc  Bich ong site.

A tourist from Ipswich , England who gave his name as Treens, said Van Long is a great place to visit, and a must-see if you are interested in the critically endangered Delacours Langur. He talked about his boat trip to see the langurs.

The boat sat close to the waterline unladen, and by the time two large Westerners and one small Vietnamese had boarded, the water was literally 1cm from the lip of the boat. No-one seemed overly concerned though, and off they went onto the lake. They were the only tourists on site at the time.

The day was very misty and it was really atmospheric out on the lake with the limestone hills rising up in the background. After half an hour we caught sight of what we had hoped to see - a group of Delacours Langurs come down to the lakeside to drink.

We watched them and took photographs for 15 minutes before heading back to the landing stage, he said.

Van Long Nature Reserve is a legendary land and has amazingly beautiful scenery for tourism, while at the same time, it contains the largest mangrove nature reserve in the northern delta.

Along with Trang An Complex and Tam Coc-Bich ong National Park in the province, Van Long Nature Reserve is considered an overland equivalent of Ha Long Bay, with imposing cliffs and mountains and vast lakes that form stunning scenes.

In my opinion, each location has its own attraction. At the Van Long Nature Reserve, its the rich ecosystem. Rowing the boat for over two hours to explore the site and visit the caves, we saw many birds.

A sightseeing trip by boat costs VN75,000 (nearly US$3.5) per adult. Tourists should take the tour early in the morning to see nature at dawn, or late in the afternoon to admire the breathtaking view of flocks of storks returning to their nests at sunset.

Van Long has 33 caves of different sizes, but only some of them are open to tourists. The caves are named after the beautiful grottoes that can be found inside, such as Fish, Tortoise, Book Box, Stone Table and Fairy.

On the way to enter the caves, tourists can see Meo Cao (Cat Scratching) Mountain, which displays natural formations that make it look like a giant cat scratched upon its slopes centuries ago.

The site is a place where tourists can find peace in a tranquil atmosphere. Although opened for tourism in 1998, its still as primitive as it ever was. There are no vendors or shops around, so the touristy vibe is missing. It remains an attractive destination for local and foreign visitors.  VNS

See through: A tourist enjoys swimming in the transparent waters of Van Long Lagoon.
Ha Long Bay is among four destinations in Viet Nam nominated for a list of the 100 most attractive destinations in the world by the Viet Nam Record Organization.

The Viet Nam Record Organization (VietKings) has nominated four special destinations for a list of the 100 most attractive destinations in the world.

They include Ha Long Bay in Quang Ninh Province, Trang An-Bai inh tourist complex in Ninh Binh Province, Son oong, the worlds largest cave in Quang Binh Province, and the Cu Chi Tunnels in HCM City

Vietkings will present documents to the World Alliance Records for consideration. The General Council of the World Alliance Records will meet in New Delhi in September to approve the list of the top 100 attractive destinations.
Paris is beginning to acknowledge the possibility that India might not buy the Rafale fighter because of sharp differences over the price, and New Delhis insistence on enforceable guarantees regarding the fighters delivery, performance and availability.



A senior French official with a close view of the on-going negotiations between New Delhi and Paris for 36 Rafale fighters told Business Standard on condition of anonymity: If some people in the MoD (the ministry of defence) do not want to allow the to go through, so be it. We are currently building it for Egypt and Qatar, and we could have another customer in Malaysia.

Read more from our special coverage on "RAFALE DEAL"

Underlining the irritation at repeated US offers to set up an assembly line in India to build the American F-16 Super Viper, the French official taunted: If you dont want the Rafale, go ahead and build the F-16 here. You can build it in India and supply it to Pakistan also.He was referring to Washingtons announcement last month of the sale to Pakistan of eight advanced Block 50/52 F-16 fighters for $699 million. Simultaneously, a senior Lockheed Martin official had publicly offered to move our [F-16] production line from the US to India.Reminded that France, too, was supplying submarines to both India and Pakistan (DCNS is building six Scorpene submarines with Mazagon Dock, after earlier selling Pakistan three advanced Agosta-90B submarines with air independent propulsion), he retorted, That is different. Pakistan is getting a different submarine from what we are providing to India.The official dismissed the notion that an Indian order was critical for Dassault to break-even in the Rafale project, in which tens of billion euros have been spent on developing the fighter and establishing a production line. The official claimed, The Rafale project is commercially viable based on the numbers that the French military requires, even if there is not a single export order.In fact, defence budget cuts have forced the French military to slash Rafale orders from over 300 originally planned to only 180 ordered so far. That is a small order, given that the Eurofighter Typhoon has over 700 aircraft on order; while more than 4,500 F-16s have been built over the years.On New Delhis demands for sovereign guarantees from the French government, or a bank guarantee from Dassault, to cover the possibility of delivery or performance shortfalls in the Rafale, the official declared the two countries would soon sign an inter-governmental agreement (IGA), which would function as a sovereign guarantee.The government of France is standing behind the sale. Surely, India is not asking for a bank guarantee when it has the word of the French government? asked the official.When it was pointed out that the IGA would only outline a supply agreement in broad terms, without detailed binding clauses and penalties, the official responded that the IGA was a strategic agreement between Paris and New Delhi, and that a phrase here or a sentence there would make no difference.In 1917, when the United States abandoned its isolationism and sent a division of troops to France to fight in World War I, it was not because there was some document with a clause that required them to fight. It was because of a common strategic aim. New Delhi and Paris must have a common strategic aim on the Rafale.French officials argue that if Dassault is required to provide a bank guarantee against possible shortfalls in delivery and performance, India should cover that cost, which is normally three-four per cent of the guarantee amount.Meanwhile, the Cost Negotiation Committee on the Rafale has made little headway in bridging the gap between the French demand and Indian counter-offer, which are believed to be around euro 12 billion and euro 9 billion, respectively. Issues of liability are further complicating the likelihood of a deal soon.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while visiting Paris last April, had requested for 36 Rafales, after a breakdown in negotiations for a much larger order for 126 Rafales. The Indian Air Force had chosen the Rafale on January 31, 2012, after an exhaustive evaluation of six fighter aircraft.
Zelenskys diplomacy masterclass outpacing dour, grey Putin in battle for hearts and minds When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year, there was no room for jokes or play acting, and Zelensky needed to step up. He did.

Megyn Kelly fires up at Meghan Markle over her deceptive nature Sky News Australia contributor Megyn Kelly has slammed Meghan Markle over her "abject dishonesty" after the Duchess of Sussex took a swipe at Deal or No Deal in her latest podcast episode which featured Paris Hilton.

Boris Johnsons dad tight-lipped on sons potential return Speculation has begun on who could replace Liz Truss in the wake of her resignation, with her predecessor Boris Johnson expected to stand for the Conservative leadership again.
DES MOINES  House Republicans are moving forward on extending the school infrastructure sales tax for 20 years, but without Gov. Terry Branstads proposal to wed it to funding for water quality initiatives.

Based on discussions hes had with legislators and others, Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, said Thursday, there does not seem to be widespread support to take money from SAVE to address water quality at this point. Thats why theyve been separated.

SAVE is the Secure an Advanced Vision for Education, formerly known as the statewide school infrastructure sales and services tax.

In his January Condition of the State speech, Gov. Terry Branstad proposed extending SAVE until 2049. He would divert SAVE revenue in excess of $10 million a year to addressing statewide water-quality issues. Through 2049, schools would get $20.7 billion for infrastructure otherwise funded by property taxes and $4.7 billion would be channeled into water quality improvements.

Windschitl, who chaired a House Ways and Means subcommittee meeting on a group of SAVE-water quality bills, said he doesnt see that happening. I dont think there is support in the subcommittee from either side to incorporate the two ideas, he said.

Windschitl did lay out the skeleton of a bill to increase the percentage of SAVE revenue going directly to property tax relief from 2.1 percent  $9.5 million a year  to 7 percent or $31.5 million annually.

Property owners now pay an average of $13.76 per $1,000 of taxable valuation to support schools. Windschitls goal is to provide more property tax relief and greater equity.

Reaction from subcommittee members and the public was muted. Representatives of school boards, administrators and teachers agreed there were some pluses, but werent convinced Windschitls approach would increase equity between property-rich districts and those that have a smaller property tax base to support schools.

Ted Stopulos of the Governors Office said it remains Branstads position that SAVE should be tapped for water quality funding, but indicated the governor is open to considering otherrevenue sources.

Windschitl also is looking for a way to fund water quality improvements.
It's ultra-rare for a large group of A-list actors to come together to make a movie together without it devolving into a giant pissing contest that ultimately ruins (or at least greatly diminishes) the end result. Sure, there have been a few Oscar-nominated ensemble casts with a collective ego so large that it could have its own movie (Heat, anyone?), but, by and large, the most star-studded casts also tend to have the most difficulty living up to the hype (there's also the possibility that the director called in a few hundred favours to supplant a terrible script, as was the case with the staggering amount of star power in Movie 43). And that's why it's always such a pleasant surprise to watch a film and notice a whole hoard of well-known, well-respected actors show up on screen one after another and not immediately be disappointed or underwhelmed by their collective output. How do they manage to pull it off? Typically, it's about finding professionals with the right attitude, who are able to embrace being part of a collective without needing to outshine everyone else, although you could go the route assemble a cast of up-and-comers who won't become stratospherically famous until after the film is released, making it look jam-packed with stars in retrospect with none of the fuss. The examples here are a bit of both. Some of the movies featured a bunch of unknowns who went on to become Hollywood heavyweights, while some dutifully managed to wrangle a bunch of mega-stars together without imploding. The one commonality? None of these movies get the credit they deserve, star power or not.
13. FOUR Characters Die

It's getting into Serious Season now: mere weeks remain before the release of Captain America: Civil War, and the currency of information relating to the film is at its peak value. The new trailer provided the perfect opportunity for a lot more speculation, and while there's probably not a lot left in Marvel's marketing tank (aside perhaps from the inevitable TV spots that hopefully won't reveal too much), this is usually the point where rumours run most rampant. And in the case of Civil War, there are a vast number of unanswered questions feeding the rumour mill: who dies? Who switches sides? What role will Spider-man play? And what about unexpected character appearances? With just a month left until Marvel's biggest characters, this is the last chance to endlessly pour over the biggest rumours of the past few weeks dedicated to Civil War. All that remains now is to wait for the big show to kick off, but while you do, here's a final look at the latest biggest rumours and theories the Internet has spawned. Beware, obviously there are significant potential spoilers from here on... According to now notorious rumour-mongers That Hashtag Show , not only will Captain America will die, but he'll also be joined on the fatality list by War Machine, Scarlet Witch and Falcon. Way to decimate the New Avengers team.3/10 Paul Fieg has said that we shouldn't expect the MCU to be taking a wildly dark turn, so four deaths would be a pretty major stretch of that assurance. And the idea that Rhodey will die, after his "death" being shown in the trailer is clearly hogwash. But then this is Civil War and four casualties in a major war isn't exactly a big body count. Thinning the herd of more minor characters would be a major statement of intent.
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If youre looking to try out an online casino, there are several things that will help you make a decision. Heres what you should look for when choosing an online casino

 Are they regulated? A lot of the larger ones have licenses issued by the authorities in their respective regions, so its worth checking this first.

 Do they offer games from different software providers? Some casinos just use one software provider and limit your selection. This is fine if you like playing those types of games but you may want to check other casinos as well.

 What does their payout percentage look like? The payout rate refers to how much money you can expect to win after every bet. A high payout rate means youll be able to play more often without having to worry about losing all your money. Its also important to know the minimum and maximum bets allowed on each game. If youre going to play roulette, for example, then you probably dont want a casino with a minimum bet of less than $2.50 or even lower than that.

The players used to play the game slot online in the land based casinos in the past time. But now with time after the invention of the online casinos players play the game slot online. Online platform provide the players with the convenience in playing and even better winning. Even after keeping a good percentage of the profits, they distribute good funds to players.

 How many games do they offer? There are lots of different types of games to choose from. Roulette, blackjack and poker are some of the most popular options, but you might find slots, video pokers, video bingo and others as well. You can usually filter these games down to only show the ones that interest you best, so make sure that your list isnt too long!

 Is there a bonus offer? Many online casinos offer free bonuses as part of their welcome package  which includes new players being awarded 100% up to $10 instantly, for example. These offers are great but not everyone has access to them all the time (and some require you to deposit real money). If youd prefer to avoid paying a fee, some casinos offer no-deposit bonuses where you can get a certain amount of funds before you need to put any actual money into the account. These are usually offered alongside welcome bonuses, so make sure you read both parts of the terms and conditions carefully before signing up.

 Does it offer live dealer games? Live dealers are much preferred by many over regular virtual versions, so it pays to check this option out too. Most online casinos now offer live dealer games in addition to their regular offerings, allowing you to experience the thrill of the real thing without needing to leave home.

Now that youve got an idea of what to look for when choosing an online casino, heres some tips for making the right choice

It really comes down to personal preference. No two people are exactly alike, so everyone has an opinion on what they like and dislike about each casino. That said, here are some things to consider in order to narrow down your choices

 Popularity. Check out reviews, forums and Facebook pages to see what other people think of the casino. Also, ask around at work or friends houses who they would recommend to you. You could always take a look at the casinos website too, to see what kind of information they provide about themselves.

 Reputation. Find out what the general public thinks about the casino. Check out any customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Amazon and Google Play to find out more. As far as gaming goes, you can also check out the Better Business Bureau to see whether there have been any complaints against the casino.

 Security. Make sure the casino uses SSL encryption to secure its transactions, meaning that your private data stays safe during transactions. Other than that, look for security seals on the site itself and verify that theyre legitimate. You can also check out the casinos privacy policy to see how they handle confidential information.

 Payment methods. Its good to have multiple payment options available, especially if you plan to play frequently. Its also nice to find a casino that accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. If youre worried about safety, you can always opt for a credit card or PayPal instead.

With all those criteria in mind, heres our top picks

Betway:

Betway is a relatively new UK casino offering online gambling to residents of the United Kingdom and European Union. They offer hundreds of games across both land based and digital platforms, with plenty of top software providers like Net Entertainment, Microgaming and Yggdrasil Gaming Network. With a generous welcome offer that gives players 100% up to 100, you really cant go wrong with Betway.

Coral Casino:

Coral Casino is operated by the same company that runs the famous Caribbean casino, Grand Reef. Like many casinos, Coral Casino offers a wide variety of games, including plenty of video slots and table games. New players can benefit from a huge 100% match bonus up to 1000, while existing customers enjoy 25% cash back on deposits made within 48 hours of opening an account.

Ladbrokes Casino:

Ladbrokes Casino is owned by the same company as the famous bookmaker that started life in 1921. With more than 500 games from leading software providers such as Amaya, NetEnt and Microgaming, you wont be disappointed by the quality of the games here. New players get a 200% match bonus up to 500, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

Paddy Power Casino:

Paddy Power is another Irish-owned casino that operates throughout Europe. Not only does Paddy Power Casino offer traditional casino games like blackjack, roulette and slots, but it also provides a full range of sports betting, including football, tennis, boxing and horse racing. New players can receive a massive 100% match bonus up to 200, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

William Hill Casino:

William Hill Casino is one of the biggest names in the industry, operating in Europe, Asia and North America. Founded in 1984, this online casino has more than 400 games to choose from, including slots and table games, with a wide array of software providers like WagerLogic, Big Time Gaming and Rival.

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If youre interested in trying out an online casino but arent quite ready to commit to one, why not try out one of the many no deposit casinos weve reviewed? You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit.
Canl Bahis siteleri sektoru son derece onu ack ve farkl ozelliklere sahip bir sektordur. Elbette bahis secenekleri arasnda yuksek kazanc getiren alan kuskusuz canl bahistir. Peki, canl bahis nedir?

Canl Bahis Nedir?

Canl bahis adndan da anlaslacag gibi devam eden musabakaya bahis yapmaktr. Bu bahis musabaka devam ederken de yaplabilir olmasdr. Basta futbol olmak uzere voleybol, tenis, hentbol, basketbol, buz hokeyi ve masa tenisi gibi spor organizasyonlarna canl bahisler yaplabilmektedir. Canl bahis siteleri bu oyunlarn hepsine yuksek oranlara bahis yapmanza imkan tanr. En fazla tercih edilen futbol canl bahisleri diger alanlara gore daha fazla on plandadr. Siteden siteye degisen sartlar ve uygulama esaslar soz konusu olsa da kurallar sabittir.

Canl bahisi populer klan ve heyecan katan en onemli ozellikle musabakann basladg ana dek bahis yapabilmedir. Canl bahis icerisinde yer alan secenekler kazanma sansnz da dogrudan arttrmaktadr. Ilk korneri kim kullanr, ilk tac, gol, sar kart, krmz kart gibi futbol musabakas icerisinde olabilecek hemen hemen her seye bahis yaplabilmektedir. Normal bahisegore de son derece yuksek oranda olmas avantajl yonlerini ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim dogru secenek ksa surede kazancl ckmanza etki edecektir.

Strateji ve dogru analizle 90 dakika gibi bir surede anaparanzkatlayabilirsiniz. Tabi bunu basarabilmek icin mutlaka musabakaya dair ayrntlar iyi degerlendirmek gerekir. Soz konusu musabakann detaylarn inceleyip, cezal, sakat oyuncu veya performans dusen takm oyunu gibi detaylar bilmek canl bahiste kazanc belirleyen onemli unsurdur. Guvenilir Canl bahis hem heyecanl zaman gecirmeyi hem de musabakalar takip ederken para kazanmay saglamaktadr.

Canl Bahis Nasl Oynanr?

Bahislerinizi guvenilir sitelerden gerceklestirdiginiz zaman herhangi bir sekilde para cekme de sorun yasamazsnz. Guvenilir bahis siteleri tespit edip sonrasnda da uyelik islemlerini tamamlamanz gerekmektedir. Belirlenen uyelik sartlarn yerine getirip hesabnza da paray aktardktan sonra bahis islemlerini sorunsuz yapabilirsiniz. Peki, canl bahis nasl oynanr?

Oncelikle bahis konusunda mutlaka dogru site arastrmas yapmalsnz. Yapacagnz arastrma neticesinde buldugunuz site uzerinden canl bahisislemlerini gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Bunun icin uye olup, hesaba para atp, canl bahis bolumune girmelisiniz. Sonrasnda dahil olmak istediginiz musabakann saatini ogrenip, gerekli analizleri yapmalsnz. Tahminlerinizi belirledikten sonra karsnza ckacak olan bahis sayfasndan istediginiz hamleyi yapmalsnz. Bahis tutarn belirledikten sonra musabaka baslayacaktr.

Canl bahis diger normal bahis esaslarna gore farkllklar icermektedir. Bunlardan en onemlisi musabakann gidisatna gore islem yapabilir olmaktr.Ayrca musabakann 2. Yarsna gore hamle yapp ayr bir bahisin soz konusu olmas da ciddi avantajdr. Dogru hamle ile sizde istediginiz bahisi yapp kazanc elde edebilirsiniz. Nitekim canl olarak yapacagnz bahis icin mac oncesi raporlara gore hareket etmek onemlidir. Cunku takmlarn durumlarn analiz etmek tahmin gucunu arttracaktr. Misal tamnn en iyi oyuncusu sakat ya da kart cezals ise takmn performansnda dusus yasanacaktr. Buna ek olarak takmn deplasman performans ile evinde ki performans ayr olacaktr. Burada da takmn musabakay nerede yaptgna bakmak gerekir. Bu ayrntlar da iyice analiz ettikten sonra bahsinizi yapp kazanmann keyfini yasayabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri

Son derece yuksek getiriye sahip bahis sektoru uzun zamandr faaliyet gostermektedir. Cok ciddi rakamlarn soz konusu oldugu bu sektor zamanla sanal ortamlara donusmustur. Elbette guvenli ve bir o kadar da avantajl olan bu siteler cok yonlu frsatlar sunmaktadrlar. Canl iddaa siteleri gerek yeni uyelere gerekse de hali hazrdaki uyelerine bolca bonus frsatlar vermektedir. Yatracagnz tutara gore belirlenen bonuslar site icerisinde rahat hareket etmenizi de saglayacaktr.

Canl bahis sitelerini kullanmadan once mutlaka guvenli olup olmadgna goz atmalsnz. Zira baz kullanclar guvenli olmayan sitelerden yaptklar islemlerden dolay magdur olmaktadrlar. Nitekim guvenli ve sorunsuz hizmet sunan yurt ds site tercih etmek en dogru secenektir. Sektorde uzun yllar faaliyet gosteren siteleri tercih edebilirsiniz. Bu alanda yer alan yabanc siteler musteri memnuniyetine onem vermektedir. Oncelik site kullanclarn sorunsuz sekilde bahislerini yapabilir olmasn saglamaktr. Bahis sitelerinde amac hem daha fazla kullancya hizmet vermek hem de sektorde emin admlarla ilerlemek onceliklidir. Dogru site tercihi ile sizde canl bahislerinizi sorun yasamadan gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Sizler icin hazrlams oldugumuz canl bahis siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

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Sralams oldugumuz bu siteler sektorde basarl islere imza atms sitelerdedir. Canl bahis konusunda beklentileri karslayacak olan bu siteler sizlere kolaylk sunmaktadrlar. Bol bonuslu secenekle de sizlere farkl bahis yonlerini sunacaklardr. Sistemsel etki icerisinde her zaman etkin sonuc alabilmek icin surekli olarak faaliyet icerisindedirler.

Canl Bahis Taktikleri

Bahis sektorunun en fazla dikkat edilmesi gereken hususu dogru taktik ve dogru tahmindir. Elbette dogru tahmini yapabilmek icin analizi cok iyi yapmak gerekir. Canl bahis taktikleri arasnda ilk sra analiz gelmektedir. Analiz yapamadgnz zaman basarl tahminlerde bulunmanz pek de mumkun degildir. Cunku bahiste onemli olan konu musabakann analizini cok iyi yaplmas gerektigidir. Canl bahisin ozelliklerini iyi bilmek ve nasl bir hamle yapacagnz bilmek gerekir. Ozellikle riskli maclarda yaplacak degerlendirmeler cok daha onemlidir.

Canl bahis yapacaklarn takip edecegi degerler takmlarn durumlar ile alakal olmaldr. Performans uzerine kurulu bahis sisteminde takm degerlendirmesine iyi bakmak gerekir. Iki takmn son 5 macta nasl bir sonuc ortaya koyduguna bakarak hareket etmek onemlidir. Ayrca hangi takm evinde daha iyi performans sergiliyor diye de ayrca bakmak gerekir.

Analizlerle alakal puan durumlarna da goz atmak cok onemlidir. Puan degerlendirmesinde oncelikle takmlarn ihtiyaclar ile dogru orantl hareket etmek gerekir. Cunku olusturulan performans takmn da durumunu ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim istenilen sonucu elde edebilmek icin tum ayrntlar bilmek gerekir. Takm ici duzenden tutunda da takmn son durumuna kadar her ayrnt onemlidir. Iki takmn birbirleri arasnda ki sonuclar da incelemek gerekir. Burada dikkat edilecek detaylarn basnda maclarda kac gol oldugu ve gollerin hangi dakikalarda atldgdr. Cekismeli gecen musabakalarda bazen goller ilk yarda daha fazla olurken baz maclarda da ikinci yarda daha cok gol olmustur. Iki takm arasnda ki maclarda gollerin cogunlugu ilk yarda geliyorsa buna gore bahis yapabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Bonuslar ve Kampanyalar

Bahis yapanlar veya yapmay dusununler sitelerin sunmus olduklar frsatlar merak etmektedirler. Cunku siteler daha fazla kullancya erismek icin her donem kampanyalar duzenleyerek kullanc odakl hamleler yapmaktadrlar. Canl bahis bonuslar ve kampanyalar oldukca populer olup, siteler bu konuda adeta birbirleri ile yarsmaktadrlar. Birbirinden farkl ozelliklere sahip olan kampanyalar size frsatlar sunmaktadr. Daha cok kazanma ihtimalinizi arttran bu bonuslar daha cesur olmanza da dogrudan etki edecektir. Nitekim bonuslar sitelerin cekiciligini ve avantajlarn arttrmaktadr. En cok kazandran canl bahis siteleri bedava bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin http://www.milano2018.com/canli-bahis-siteleri-2022/ linkinden yardm alabilirsiniz.

Hos geldin bonusu ile baslayan ve sonrasnda para yatrdkca bonus veren cok sayda site bulunmaktadr. Canl bahis bonusu veren siteler yeni uyelere sunduklar frsatlar farkl kampanyalarla mevcut uyelerine de sunmaktadrlar. Hali hazrda siteyi kullananlarn da bonus frsatlarndan yararlanmalar icin donemsel kampanyalar olusturmaktadrlar. Boylece baska sitelere gidisler olmayacag gibi site de daha keyifli zaman gecirmek mumkun klnmaktadr. Bu tur eklentiler yapan sitelerde musteri memnuniyeti daha fazladr.

Bahis siteleri ozellik ve uygulama bakmndan farkllklar bunyelerinde bulundurmaktadrlar. Verilen bonuslarn olusturulmas ve kullanclar aktarlmasnda yatrlan para miktarlar belirleyici olmaktadr. 1.000 TL yatran bir kullanc yuzde 20 bonus frsat olan bir kampanyadan 200 TL bonus kazanabilmektedir. Yatracag tutar 10.000 TL oldugunda bu bonustutar 2.000 TL olabilmektedir. Gerceklesen ve uygulanan esaslar tamamen donemsel olarak yaplan kampanyalarla alakaldr. Iyi Canl bahis siteleri bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin sitelerin vermis oldugu oranlar takip edebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Yatrma

Online Canl bahis yapacaklarn merak ettigi konulardan bir digeri de para yatrma islemleridir. Oldukca onemli olan bu konuda hata yapmamak cok onemlidir. Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemi sanlann aksine son derece basittir. Oldukca basit ve uygulama esas dogru etki olusturan bu yapda sizde islemi rahatca tamamlayabilirsiniz. Para yatrma konusunda su yolu izleyebilirsiniz.

Guvendiginiz ve herhangi bir sekilde aklnzda soru isareti kalmayan bahis sitesine uye olmanz gerekmektedir. Uyelik islemini sorunsuz sekilde tamamladktan sonra para yatrma islemine gecebilirsiniz.

Kullanacagnz siteye uye olduktan sonra karsnza kullanc ad ve sifresini gireceginiz yer gelecektir. Buraya giris yaptktan sonra site icerisine islemlere devam edebilirsiniz.

Sitede yer alan para yatrma sekmesine tklayp sonrasnda karsnza gelen sayfay inceleyebilirsiniz. Para yatrma bolumunde yer alan ksma ne kadar para yatracagnz yazp devam tusuna basmalsnz.

Yatrmak istediginiz tutar girip sonrasnda da devam tusuna bastktan sonra karsnza kart bilgilerinizi gireceginiz sayfa gelecektir. Kredi kart kullanarak para gondermek isteyenlerin tercih ettigi bu sayfa tum bilgiler girilip islem onaylanmaldr.

Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemini gerceklestirmek icin hesaba havale secenegini de kullanabilirsiniz. Site icerisinde musteri hizmetleri ile iletisime gecerek banka hesap numaralarn ogrenebilirsiniz. Belirtilen IBAN numarasna istediginiz tutar havale edebilirsiniz. Havale ederken acklama ksmna yazlacak bilgilere dikkat etmelisiniz.

Kredi kart veya banka havalesi ile gerceklesen para yatrma islemi sonucunda site hesabnzdan bakiyenize bakabilirsiniz. Bakiyenize gore dilediginiz sekilde bahislerinizi gerceklestirebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Cekme

Canl bahiste dogru hamleler ve dogru tahminler sonucunda kazandgnz bedeli geri almak isteyebilirsiniz. Kazanclarnz istediginiz banka hesabnza cekebilmek icin uymanz gereken kurallar soz konusudur. Oncelikle bahis sitelerinden para cekebilmeniz icin uye olurken dogru bilgi paylasmnda bulunmanz gerektigidir. Cunku canl bahis sitelerinden para cekme islemi icin kullanc hesab ile talep edilen banka hesap bilgilerinin ortusmesi gerekir. Yani uye olurken verilen bilgi ile banka hesab kime ait ise o bilgiler ayn olmaldr. Bu uygulama sitenin hem kullancsn hem de kendisini guvene alma politikasdr. Ayrca frsatclarn onune gecerek yeni bir uye olusumunun da onune gecmek amac gutmektedir. Uye olan kisi farkl para cekilme talebi verilen hesap farkl oldugunda para cekme islemi gerceklesmeyecektir.

Bahisleriniz sonucunda kazanc elde edebilir ve bu kazancnz da hakknz olarak almak isteyebilirsiniz. Burada son derece basit uygulama soz konusu olurken siteler aras farkl gorunumler soz konusu olabilir. Fakat yine de tum sitelerde uyenin site icerisinde para cekme bolumune girmesi yeterlidir. Burada cekilecek olan tutarn belirlenmesi ve hesap numarasnn girilmesi ile birlikte islem onay gerekecektir. Para cekme taleplerinde sizden gerekli bilgiler istenmekte ve havale islemi istenilen bilgiler esliginde yurutulmektedir. Dogru bilgi paylasmak sorunsuz para cekebilmeniz en onemli kuraldr. Istenilen bilgiler girildikten sonra site sorumlular gerekli kontrolleri yapp herhangi bir sorun yoksa ksa surede hesabnza gerekli paray aktaracaklardr.

Canl Bahis Sitelerinden Para Cekmek Icin Istenen Belgeler

Bahis sitelerine uye olduktan sonra baz kullanclar para cekme taleplerinin karslanmadg konusunda sikayetlerde bulunmuslardr. Bu sikayetlersektorde uzun zamandr bulunan guvenilir bahis siteleri de yer almaktadr. Fakat sikayetlerin dayanaklarna bakldgnda ise islerin tamamen farkl oldugu gorulmektedir. Yasanan bu durum kullanclarn hatal bilgi girmesi ve uyelik bilgileri ile banka bilgilerinin uyusmamas ile dogru orantldr. Birde canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler eksik ya da hatal olarak sunulmus olabilir. Ortaya ckan karsklar neticesinde para cekme talebinde bulunan kisi istedigini alamadg icin sikayetci olmaktadr. Oysa ki istenilen bilgiler dogru ve istenilen evraklar eksiksiz sunulsa para cekme islemi sorunsuz olacak.

Sitelerin para cekme konusunda dikkatli hareket etmesi hilelerin ve illegal faaliyetlerin onune gecmek adnadr. Cunku baz kullanclar farkl bilgiler vererek ikinci hesap acabilmektedirler. Bazen de bilincsizce hatal bilgi girilebilmektedir. Hatal islemlerin cozumu konusunda islem yaptgnz sitenin musteri temsilcileri ile gorusebilirsiniz. Talepleriniz dogrultusunda para cekme islemlerinde ki sorunlar giderilecektir. Canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler listesi su sekildedir;

Kullanc bilgileri ile banka bilgilerini karslastrmak icin kimlik fotokopisi

Banka hesap bilgileri

Ikametgah ve kisiye ait herhangi bir fatura.

Kacak Iddaa

Turkiyede dogrudan bahis yapmak icin resmi kanallar kullanlabilmektedir. Fakat tercih edilen ve oran olarak cok daha fazla frsatlar sunan kacar iddaasiteleri bulunmaktadr. Bu siteler kanunlara aykr sekilde yaplmakta olup, yasal bir dayanag yoktur. Elbette bu sitelerin kurulus merkezi Turkiye olmayp, ds ulkelerdedir ve faaliyetler belirlenen siteler uzerinden yaplmaktadr. Kacak Iddaa oldukca riskli olup, cok dikkatli olunmas gerekir.

Kacak Bahis

Kanunlar cercevesinde istediginiz gibi bahis yapamayabilirsiniz. Bahis yapabilmek icin ya kanuni olarak sorun olmayan ulke dsnda ki kumarhanelere gitmeniz veya kacak bahis sitelerinden islem yapabilirsiniz. Zira bu durum tehlikeli olsa da cok sayda site guvenli sekilde bu alanda hizmet vermektedir. Kacak bahiste oldukca fazla secenek bulunurken yuksek oranda kazanc sunuyor olmas da ragbeti arttryor.

Illegal Bahis

Bahisin bircok alanda yasak oldugu Turkiyede bu alanda cok sayda yabanc merkezli siteler hizmet vermektedir. Illegal bahis sektorunde faaliyet gosteren siteler guvenli hizmet anlays ile kullanclarna frsatlar sunmaktadr. Yurt ds merkezli bu siteler sorunsuz sekilde hizmetlerini surdururken bulunduklar ulkelerde kanunlara uygun sekildedir. Elbette faaliyet noktasnda bulunduklar ulkelerde sorun teskil etmese de Turkiyede faaliyet gostermeleri kanunin yasaklanmstr.

Yasads Bahis

Gerek olusturulan etkenler gerekse de ortaya konulan riskler yasads bahis de oldukca tehlikelidir. Kanunlarn mudahil olduklar bu alanlar da hem kullanclar hem de populer bahis yaptranlar tum riskleri goze almaktadrlar. Fakat yasaklardan uzak sekilde guvenli hizmet sunan siteler de bulunmaktadr. Takipler neticesinde kapatlan sitelerin muhakkak alternatifleri kurularak yollarna devam etmektedirler.

Canl Iddaa Siteleri Nelerdir?

Dunya genelinde kabul gormus cok sayda guvenli hizmet veren populer bahis siteleri bulunmaktadr. Elbette bu siteler dunyann bircok ulkesinde faaliyet gosterse de Turkiyede yasaktr. Sektorde yer alan cok sayda legal iddaa siteleri bulunmaktadr. Herhangi bir kanunsuzlugun olmadg bu sitelerden hzl ve guvenli islem yaplabilmektedir. Tabi bu sitelerde uygulanan oranlar yasal olmayan sitelere gore daha dusuktur. Illegal sitelerin tercih edilme sebeplerinin en onemli etkeni de olusturulan oranlardr. Peki, Iddaa siteleri nelerdir? Faaliyetleri ve uygulama esaslar nelerdir?

Turkiyede faaliyet gosteren yasal iddaa siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

Iddaa

Bilyoner

Tuttur

Birebin

Oley

Nesine

Misli

Iddaa

2004 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslayan Iddaa Spor toto tarafndan kurulmus olup, ilk etapta bayilik seklinde calsmaya baslamstr. Elbette zamanla gelisen teknolojiye ayak uydurarak internet uzerinde de populer bahis severlerin hizmetine sunulmustur. Kuruldugu donemde devletin resmi kurumu olarak faaliyet gosterirken gelinen yeni donemde ozellestirilmistir.

Bilyoner

Turkiyede faaliyetine 2006 ylnda baslayan Bilyoner ilk ozel yasal bahis sitesi olma ozelligine sahiptir. Guvenilir bahis siteleri Turkiyede bunlardr. Ksa surede populer olan site halen faaliyetlerini sorunsuz sekilde surdurmektedir.

Tuttur

Ksa surede adndan bahsettirmeyi basaran Tuttur 2009 ylnda faaliyetlere baslamstr. Guvenilir bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almstr. Gunumuze dek bircok alanda populer bahis yapanlara frsatlar sunarken avantajlar ile de begeni toplamstr.

Birebin

Kullanc odakl calsmalar surdurse de 2011 ylnda sektore giren Birebindiger sitelere gore daha az ragbet gormektedir. Bahis oynamak ise bu sitede oldukca kolaydr. Elbette farkl yaklasmlara sahip olmasndan dolay ilerleyen sureclerde adndan sklkla bahsettirecek gibi gorunuyor.

Oley

2009 ylnda Dogus yayn gruplarnn istiraki olarak kurulmus olup yasal olarak herhangi bir sorunu olmayan sitelerdendir. Bahis siteleri arasnda hzl cks yapms bir sitedir. Oley yapms oldugu yenilikler ile kullanclarn da dikkatini ksa surede cekmeyi basarmstr.

Nesine

Birbirini takip eden surecte Nesine de yine 2006 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslamstr. Yasal bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almay basaran firma ksa surede sevilen ve ragbet goren bir site olmustur.

Misli

2009 ylnda sektore cok hzl giris yapan Misli cok sayda reklam filmi ile on plana ckmay basarmstr. Internet uzerinden hem yasal hem de sorunsuz hizmet veren bahis sitelerinden bir tanesi olmustur.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Kayt ve Uyelik Islemleri

Her zaman populerligini koruyan ve surekli gelisim gosteren canl bahis gun gectikce daha da gucleniyor. Bahis oynamak icin ise sitelere uye olunmas gerekir. Yuksek getirisi ve begeni toplayan faaliyetleri ile cok sayda site bu alanda faaliyet gostermektedir. Elbette sorunsuz sekilde uye olmanz ve faaliyetler gostermeniz de oldukca kolaydr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri dakikalar icerisinde gerceklestirilecek yapya sahiptir.

Uye olacagnz siteyi belirledikten sonra siteye girmeniz gerekmektedir. Girdiginiz sitenin ana sayfasnda uye ol ya da kayt ol bolumu bulunacaktr. Siteler arasnda degiskenlik gosteren bu alanda temel unsurlar bulunmaktadr. Elbette farkllklar olsa da temelinde benzer bilgiler uye olmak isteyen kisilerden talep edilmektedir.

Uye ol bolumune tkladktan sonra karsnza uyelik bilgi formu ckacaktr. Bu formda sizin kim oldugunuzu ogrenmek ve sitenin guvenligini saglamak adna islemler yaplmaktadr. Uyelik formunda yer alan ad soyad bolumunu eksiksiz ve dogru sekilde doldurmalsnz. Sizden bu formda istenen bilgilerin tamamn girmeniz istenecektir. Istenen bilgiler mutlaka dogru ve eksiksiz sekilde olmaldr. Eksik veya hatal bilgi uyelik islemlerinde sorun teskil edebilir. Yine de yanls bilgi girisine ragmen uyelik islemleri tamamlanabilir. Fakat boyle bir yol izleyenler sonrasnda buyuk skntlarla karslasabilirler. Bu skntlarn basnda da para cekme islemlerinde yasanan sorunlardr.

Uyelik islemleri dikkatli ve ozenle doldurulmas gereken yapdadr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri gerceklestirilirken verilen bilgiler site yonetimi tarafndan muhafaza edilmektedir. Herhangi bir sekilde 3. Sahslarla paylaslmas gibi bir durum soz konusu degildir. Bu faaliyetleri surduren sitelerin guven unsurlar arasnda bu nokta onceliklidir.

Bahis sitelerine uye olurken hatal bilgi paylasmnda bulunmak size faydadan cok zarar verecektir. Diyelim ki bilgileri hatal girdiniz ve uyelik onayland. Uyelik tamamlandktan sonra siteye para yatrdnz ve kazanc elde ettiniz. Kazancnz sonrasnda hesabnza almak istediginizde karsnza banka bilgileri bolumu gelecektir. Para cekme talebi gerceklestikten sonra site uyelik bilgileri ile banka hesap bilgileri ortusmez ise paranz alamazsnz. Boyle bir durumla karslasmamak adna bu hususa ayrca dikkat etmelisiniz.
Mar 18, 2016 | By Benedict

Doctors have successfully performed surgery on a nine-month-old baby suffering from a severe congenital heart defect. A 3D printed surgical model was used to guide the surgery, the first instance of such a procedure within the Jilin Province of Northeast China.

The successful surgery, carried out on March 11 and assisted by a 3D printed model heart, represents another important milestone in the gradual expansion of 3D printing technology within the medical world. Less than a year ago, China witnessed its first batch of successful 3D printing-assisted heart surgeries, first in the Jiangsu Province in July, closely followed by another 3D printed heart model and surgery in the Anhui Province. Both events made headlines in national and international news. This latest surgery was similarly successful but, taking place in North Korea-bordering Jilin, further demonstrates that the technology is permeating through new regions of the worlds most populous country.

The patient, a nine-month-old boy who weighed just 5.6kg before surgery, was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect (CHD) shortly after birth, when doctors noticed that he was experiencing shortness of breath. Worryingly for the boys family, the problems turned out to be even more severe than first thought. "The defect was very rare and complicated," said Zhang Xueqin, the surgeon responsible for operating on the child and director of the pediatric cardiac surgery center at the People's Hospital of Jilin.

After being taken to hospital, it transpired that the infant was suffering from total pulmonary venous anomalous drainage, meaning all four of his pulmonary veins were out of position. Furthermore, the youngster was found to have a defect of the atrial septum, the dividing wall that prevents blood from flowing between the two atria of the heart. With such severe problems to contend with, the medical team had a real task on their hands to keep the child alive.

Actioncoupled with the services of a 3D printerwas required immediately. Being so young and small, the boy could not be subjected to several traditional surgical approaches, so doctors decided that 3D printing, which had demonstrated its efficacy in a handful of similar cases in China, would be utilized to create a full-sized 3D printed model of the boys heart. The medical team used Materialise's Mimics software to convert MRI scan data into a 3D printable model.

According to Zhang, the 3D printed heart made all the difference. With the model, we were able to know precisely where and how we should cut, and how big the incision should be," said Zhang. "And with such a thorough plan, we spent only half the time we had expected to complete the surgery.

Whilst the young patient, now recovering in a general ward, could go on to lead a long and healthy life, Zhang warned that the boy is one of the lucky ones. If treatment had been delayed, the patient would have had an alarming 20% chance of surviving beyond his first birthday. In light of this, the heart surgeon has encouraged more hospitals in China to adopt 3D printing technology to ensure that more young lives can be saved.

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Mar 18, 2016 | By Benedict

Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the international humanitarian NGO, has been using 3D printing and virtual reality technology to design hospitals. The organization believes that 3D models will provide a more complete picture of planned developments for project partners such as local ministries of health.

Unless you were a fan of EAs inexplicably popular PC game Theme Hospital during the late 90s, youve probably never walked down the corridors of a virtual hospital. However, for reasons far more important than gaming, workers at MSF are starting to do just that. The NGO, which works in around 70 countries across the globe to deliver aid and urgent medical care, has been using both 3D printing and virtual reality technology to bring its hospital blueprints to life, enabling both hospital designers and representatives of the recipient areas to set foot in new buildings before a single brick has been placed.

Being at the forefront of international aid, MSF is consistently seeking ways to implement new and emergent technologies in order to better deliver its vital medical facilities. With both 3D printing and virtual reality on the rise, it seemed appropriate for the NGO to assess ways in which the two technologies could be utilized to benefit its future projects. The idea of this project was really to see how we can make use of 3D printing technologies and virtual reality to help MSF better design our hospitals, said Elvina Motard, MSF Technical Team Leader.

To complete the proof of concept, Motard and her team worked with 3D design experts to transform the original plans for an existing hospitalone built in Cantahay, the Philippines, after Typhoon Haiyan struck the area in 2013into a digital 3D model. This model was then 3D printed to create a physical scale model of the hospital, complete with removable rooftops and movable people and equipment. Simultaneously, the digital 3D model was developed into a virtual reality experience within a game enginenot so unlike Theme Hospital after allwhere users can walk through the digital hospital using a VR headset and handheld controller.

Such technologies will undoubtedly make discussions more efficient, more vivid and more graphic, said Jean Pletinckx, MSF Director of Logistics. They will allow people to really see themselves inside our future hospital and this will improve hospital design as well as training and briefings. It will also allow our partners, like local ministries of health, to better understand what we can provide and better feedback on our suggestions.

In just 4 months, MSF and its consultants were able to turn the original hospital plans into both a 3D printed model and a fully navigable virtual reality world. Whats more, future projects could be completed in an even shorter timeframe, since several aspects of the proof of concept will be reusable for similar projects. MSF hopes that, in the near future, 3D models will be drawn up for planned hospitals, which can then be sent digitally anywhere in the world to all parties concerned. This will allow multiple individuals to give feedback on the design, which can be used to refine the hospital until fit for purpose.

Although the 3D printed model of the Cantahav hospital contains 3D printed medical staff and patients, the virtual hospital only shows the architectural structure of the building and the stationary objects within, such as hospital beds, furniture, and equipment. However, with further development, the virtual reality model could be supplemented with representations of human activity: As the project develops further, it will be possible to create a dynamic environment, simulating patient and staff movements explained Pletinckx. We are at a stage now where our staff will really be able to feel or see what they will face in the field before they leave and indeed, even before the structure is built. There is no doubt that this is the way we will work in the future.

MSF was established in France in 1971. Last year, over 30,000 medical, logistical, and sanitation workers, all under the guidance of the organization, provided medical aid in more than 70 countries.

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Mar 18, 2016 | By Benedict

Orbital ATK, a NASA commercial provider, will launch its fifth mission to the International Space Station on March 22, bringing with it a second generation portable onboard 3D printerthe Additive Manufacturing Facilityamongst 7,500 lbs of scientific apparatus.

It gives us endless pleasure to know that there are 3D printers up in space. Since November 2014, the International Space Station has been home to a fully operational 3D printer, with which astronauts have been able to 3D print small replacement parts, tools, and such like using files emailed to them from Earth. Now, as Orbital prepares to send its fifth mission to the ISS, that floating additive manufacturing workspace is about to get an upgrade.

When Orbitals Cygnus spacecraft takes flight at 23:05 EDT on Tuesday, it will be packing 7,500 lbs of essential equipment, including vehicle hardware, crew supplies, instruments and experiments, andmost excitinglyan all new 3D printing facility. The second generation Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), developed by space 3D printing authority Made in Space, will be capable of producing parts out of a wide variety of thermopolymers including engineered plastics, and will replace the history-making machine delivered to the space station in 2014.

Despite its ostensible portability, the new AMF 3D printer measures roughly twice the size of its predecessor. Like the first generation 3D printer, it will enable crew members to make on-demand repairs and maintenance with newly printed components and tools. The new 3D printer, which will be installed in an EXPRESS Rack mid-deck locker, is able to extrude molten plastic in zero-gravity situations, and has been designed in a modular fashion so that it can be easily upgraded and serviced when necessary.

According to its developers, the new 3D printer will be relied upon for much more serious tasks than its predecessor. The printer thats already up there is basically a prototypeit was just meant to see if the process will work, says Brad Kohlenberg of Made In Space. The second printer will be able to print with multiple materials, has about eight times the print volume, and can print faster with higher resolution.

The second generation AMF 3D printer could be the last of its kind to reach the ISS, having been designed to last the entire lifetime of the space station. Made in Space does, however, anticipate making small hardware and software updates to the facility.

Once the Orbital Cygnus spacecraft delivers the 3D printer and its other important cargo to the ISS, it will proceed to the next, somewhat unusual part of its mission. As part of NASA's Saffire-1 experiment, a 3 feet x 1 foot length of material aboard the Cygnus will be set on fire, to observe how fires spread in spacea phenomenon largely unfamiliar to NASA and other aerospace organizations across the world.

"Understanding fire in space has been the focus of many experiments over the years," said Gary Ruff, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center. [Although] small, centimeter-sized fires have been lit in space before, to really understand fire, you've got to look at a more realistic size.

The fire will be monitored with temperature, oxygen, and carbon dioxide sensors. This equipment will record data about the spreading fire whilst cameras film the proceedings. The fire will burn for around 20 minutes, before the remnants of the Cygnus are released into the Earths atmosphere to disintegrate.

Should Cygnus be unable to launch at the designated hour come Tuesday, it will instead depart at 22:40 on Wednesday, March 23. NASA TV will document the launch regardless of its timing.

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Mar 18, 2016 | By Kira

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have created a low-cost 3D printed waterproof drone that can stay submerged in salt water for up to two months and launch into the air on command when needed. Known as the Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System, or CRACUNS, this amphibious UAV can be used in high-risk intelligence gathering missions and is being further developed to be able to go back and forth between aerial and underwater environments.

Developed for use by the NAVY, the CRACUNS (a cheeky reference to the legendary Kraken sea monster) is a first-of-its-kind submersible UAV that can either be mounted to a submarine or fixed to an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), where it remains unseen yet ready-for-action. When needed, it uncouples from its base, floats to the surface, and can then take off into the skies.

In order to develop such a machine, researchers at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, needed to design a drone that could both survive and operate at significant underwater depths without structural metal parts or machined surfaces, which would quickly succumb to corrosion. They thus turned to advanced additive manufacturing technology, provided by the fabrication experts at the Research and Exploratory Development Department. They designed a lightweight, submersible, composite airframe from custom 3D printed parts.

The most sensitive electric components were then sealed in a dry pressure vessel. Components that need to remain exposed, such as the four electric motors, were coated with a cheap and commercially available protective coating. In lab tests, the CRACUNS was left submerged in salt water for as long as two months without showing any signs of corrosion and was still able to fly just fine.

According to the APL team, the CRACUNS enables new capabilities not possible with existing UAV or UUV platforms. Its ability to operate in harsh shore environments, as well as its payload flexibility, enables a wide array of potential missions.

Furthermore, because of its 3D printed parts and use of off-the-shelf coating, the CRACUNS waterproof drone is quite cheap to produce, and could be produced in large numbers or used as a disposable tool during high-risk operations. For non-military use, the CRACUNS could also serve research institutions as a low-cost drone to monitor the seas.

CRACUNS successfully demonstrated a new way of thinking about the fabrication and use of unmanned systems, said APLs Rich Hooks, an aerospace and mechanical engineer who developed the novel additive manufacturing techniques used on CRACUNS.

The CRACUNS 3D printed waterproof drone is still in its prototype stage, however it already shows great promise. Currently, it can only launch from underwater into the skies, however the APL teams next step is to further improve its structure and find a way of allowing the CRACUNS re-enter the water after its aerial mission is complete.

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yuval bahir wrote at 3/19/2016 8:30:28 AM:looks good, very smart way to achieve goal




Mar 18, 2016 | By Alec

A more diverse market is always good for the consumer, and in that respect European businesses and research institutes will be happy to learn that 3D printer manufacturer InssTek has just announced an export deal for the European market. The deal follows the CE certification of the DMT 3D Metal Printer MX-4 back in January, which denotes that the technology meets all of the requirements set by the EUs Directives of Council in regards to safety, health, environment and consumer protection. An import deal was the logical consequence of that certification. The developer of the excellent DMT metal 3D printers is well-known in Asian high quality 3D printing circles, and are hoping that this move will pave the way to European (and ultimately US) businesses as well.

This means that the European market, where just a handful of metal 3D printer models are currently available, is about to get an alternative option. The company expects it will be a precedent that will lead to a similar 3D printer export deal with the United States as well. InssTek, of course, is the premier metal 3D printing business in South Korea and firmly tied to the nations manufacturing industry. The companys CEO Sun Doo-Hoon is the son-in-law of South Koreas large conglomerate Hyundai Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo. CEO Sun is married to the chairmans eldest daughter Chung Sung-yi, who is also an advisor at Hyundai-affiliated advertisement agency Innocean Worldwide Inc.

In the Korean market, it is becoming hard to avoid InssTek when it comes to metal 3D printing. Earlier in the year, they opened a huge new research institute in the Daedeok Science Complex, just across from the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials. With a total area of 4772.8m2 and featuring extensive facilities, the company announced that they would be working on various 3D printing products there. We will push ahead with technical exchange with companies located in Daedeok Science Complex where high tech businesses are concentrated by taking relocation of its office building an opportunity actively, the institutes director Seo Jeong Hoon said of the new center.

The company also works with the Korean government on various military applications, including the use of 3D printing to repair fighter jets, and even the production of jet engine parts. In the Korean market, they also provide various manufacturing, repair and remodeling services using their DMT metal 3D printer technology.

But it is also a company that has been working hard on increasing their international footprint, and this latest EU deal can be seen in that light. Previously, they have also set up a software collaboration with Materialise, for their InssTek Build Processor 3D printing software solution, which enables their signature DMT 3D printing technology to be operated more easily. The software enables a user to correct and edit 3D design more easily and prepare build platform and data and operate printers efficiently which helps a user make efficient use of time and invest more time in part design, they said of the collaboration.

That should do a lot to make the DMT metal 3D printers more appealing to European clients, though its an appealing technology already. [DMT metal 3D printing] melts commercially available metal powders using high power laser and shapes complex metal structures with the aid of 3D CAD file. It is one of the latest 3D metal printing technologies and is classified according to ASTM standard in the category of `Directed Energy Deposition, the company says of the tech. In contrast to Power Bed Fusion technologies, DMT instead uses commercially available industrial metal powders to keep prices down as much as possible. The powder flows constantly and is completely melted through laser beam and rapid solidified again. The microscopic metal structure is thus 100% tight and not different from conventionally produced metal parts or has in some cases even better mechanical properties, they add.

But like other metal 3D printing solutions, it can manufacture geometries impossible with traditional options, and is already frequently used in automotive, medical, aerospace and defense industries. The company says that their metal molds, for instance, can be equipped with highly complex internal structures featuring sensors and cooling channels. Joints used in surgery, for instance, are also possible. The structures manufactured by the DMT 3D printers have been confirmed to have equal or superior metallurgical and mechanical properties compared to wrought ones, even without post heat treatment, they argue. They further argue that their machines can be used to repair existing metal products without diminishing the original quality, or even for reverse engineering existing parts.

Whats more, the company also already has a wide range of products available, that are suitable for different companies and products. The entry-level MX-250 DMT 3D printer features a build space of just 250 X 250 X 250 mm and is perfect for small-sized objects, but the larger MX-450 (450 X 450 X 350mm) and MX-1000 (1,000 X 800 X 650 mm) offer very different possibilities. They even have the MPC DMT 3D printer, which is purposefully designed for the coating of orthopedic implants, while the largest MX-Grand features a truly massive build space of 2,000 X 1,000 X 1,000 mm (in 3 axis mode), or even 4,000 X 1,000 X 1,000 mm (as 3 axis machine).

In short, it seems that InssTek has both the technology, product range and experience to become an important player in the European metal 3D printing market.

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Mar 18, 2016 | By Alec

Warfare has undergone a very strange development over the past century. The Third Reich was destroyed in just a year after D-Day in 1944  so why can it take a decade to pacify weak, divided countries with all of the Wests modern military might? While multiple factors are in play, one of them is that weapons have become far more accessible. In part via smuggling, but DIY weapons are far easier to build in 2016 than they were in 1944. Thats why the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now calling on the ingenuity of hobbyists to submit their plans for DIY weapons, built with accessible electronics, chemicals and 3D printed parts, to enable the US to better prepare against terrorist threats.

Its a strange situation when you think about it. A few decades ago, governments had an almost complete monopoly on weapons, aside from the occasional hunting rifle. But now, the average garage or kitchen cabinet contains enough materials to seriously attack people. The Boston bombers used a pressure cooker filled with nails, while Iraqi and Afghani insurgents are specialized in hiding bombs in trash, such as empty soda cans (the single deadliest weapon used against US forces in both conflicts). For decades, U.S. national security was ensured in large part by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the transportation, construction, agricultural and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components, which resourceful adversaries can modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated security threats, DARPA explains on their website.

That is, in a nutshell, the problem behind this new DARPA plan. They are hoping to enlist the inventors eye to assess how seemingly harmless technologies can become security threats. To combat those problems, they are launching the Improv program, and are calling on experts from every field and every walk of life to look at the worlds bustling technology marketplace to find out how benign technologies and appliances can become serious threats. Its not about building new weapons that can be used by soldiers, but about getting in the head of potential attackers. DARPAs mission is to create strategic surprise, and the agency primarily does so by pursuing radically innovative and even seemingly impossible technologies, said program manager John Main on the DARPA website. Improv is being launched in recognition that strategic surprise can also come from more familiar technologies, adapted and applied in novel ways.

As part of Improv, specialists are asked to look at, convert and combine just about every commonly available product. Off-the-shelf electronics, 3D printed parts, and even open-source code that can attack military technologies. If that Arduino can control your 3D printed cosplay accessory, it can also control a bomb, essentially. DARPA is also inviting just about everyone, from engineers, biologists, information technologists and others to show how easily-accessed hardware, software, processes and methods might be used to create products or systems that could pose a future threat.

While it might seem a bit strange to ask civilians to think about bomb technology, Main further argued it fits in their mindset. DARPA often looks at the world from the point of view of our potential adversaries to predict what they might do with available technology, he argued said. Historically we did this by pulling together a small group of technical experts, but the easy availability in todays world of an enormous range of powerful technologies means that any group of experts only covers a small slice of the available possibilities.

But you can also get something out of it (aside from a background check). DARPA will assess all ideas and offer varying levels of development support. Funds will be made available for some projects, for a short feasibility-study phase. Speed is also crucial, with working prototypes needing to be realistic within just 90 days. If performance warrants, DARPA may advance the relevant capabilities in separate follow-on efforts, they add. But of course, everything must stay within the bounds of local, state, and federal laws. This isnt a build-your-own-bomb free-for-all. If DARPA is interested in your concept, they can offer up to $40,000 for ideas and up to $70,000 for additional funding. Up to $20,000 more in prize money is also available.

Its an unusual program, but probably a necessary one. 3D printing and all-purpose making is becoming a significant, popular and affordable hobby filled with knowledge and ingenuity. It would be naive to think that it will solely be used for non-violent purposes, so DARPA is probably correct in pre-empting security risks. If youve been thinking about 3D printed explosives or that drones can become dangerous bomb-carrying contraptions, this might be the program for you. They are also hosting a webcast for proposers on Tuesday, March 29, and Wednesday, March 30. Abstracts are due on April 13. Just dont be surprised if your name ends up in a certain database.

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Mar 18, 2016 | By Alec

Fablabs (or Fab Labs), makerspaces and other forms of communal 3D printing hotspots: theyre at the very core of the 3D printing community and industry, and have provided a platform to countless of makers around the world already. As a tribute to those crucial community hubs, French voice artist Gilles Azzaro has now captured the core intentions of Fablab founder Neil Gershenfeld in an amazing 3D printing project: a 3D printed installation that is a physical representation of Gershenfelds voice as he gives the definition of Fablabs. The meaningful tribute has just been exhibited at the Toulouse FabLab ARTILECT, and the maker hopes it can tour the world.

Fablabs, of course, started way back as a project at the beginning of the 21rst century by Neil Gershenfeld, with the intention of showing how technology can feed grassroots development. With backing from MIT (where Gershenfeld is a professor and director of their Center for Bits and Atoms) and the National Science Foundation, that initial 2001 lab has since grown into 565 official Fablabs throughout the world, while also inspiring several non-official labs with the same principles.

Neil Gershenfeld

Those labs have been flourishing throughout the world, and this tribute actually grew out of the Salle des Machines expansion to the ARTILECT lab in Toulouse. For that expansion, Azzaro was asked to create a 3D printed work of art that could be unveiled during the inauguration ceremony. Incidentally, he was one of the founding members behind ARTILECT.

Gilles Azzaro, of course, is an expert voice artist (he calls himself a Sculpteur de Voix) whose work principally involves the three-dimensional materialization of voices and their audio reproduction. Using cutting edge technologies he reveals the forms of the invisible, transforming and magnifying them into truly amazing lunar-like landscapes. Azzaro previously applied his 3D printed voice specialism to a speech by President Obama, for the artwork Barack OBAMA - Next Industrial Revolution, which he presented at the White House on 18 June 2014. Last year, he also revealed 3D printed pendants holding a message of hope for mankind.

While those projects were stunning, this follow-up What is Fablab? is probably far more meaningful for Fablab users. Consisting of a 21-second recording in 3D printed plastic, it features a synchronized laser beam that scans the reliefs of the vocal print to accurately the exact location of every sound and nuance in the speech. For the recording, Gershenfeld gave his definition of Fablabs: FabLabs are a global network of local labs that are democratizing access to digital fabrications allowing anyone to make almost anything. With the technical goal of FabLabs making FabLabs, together they are asking and answering how we will live, learn, work and play in a world where data can become things and things can become data.

As the artist explained, the choice for Gershenfeld was an easy one to make. As a frequent beneficiary of Fablab principles, he felt a need to materialize the voice of the man who made it all possible. Fortunately, he had already met Gershenfeld at the White House, and found him very keen to contribute. In keeping with Fablab principles, the sculpture was 3D printed with the help of the Toulouse community, using a desktop 3D printer. The sculpture was huge at 180 by 16 by 16 centimeter), and weighs 5 kg.

If youre interested in seeing the amazing installation, it will be on display at the Toulouse FABLAB FESTIVAL from 5 to 8 May 2016, after which it might go on world tour. Azzaro hopes to take it past as many Fablabs in the world, so everyone can get close to the core principles behind their community. As an ideal final resting place, Azzaro is already considering MIT. To gather funds for such a gargantuan journey, the artist is already looking at Kickstarter options. Now that would be a truly remarkable and meaningful project to support.

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From Nature:

Vladimir Nabokov's influence on Russian and English literature and language is assured. Many people also know of the novelist's lifelong passion for butterflies. But his notable contributions to the science of lepidopterology and to general biology are only beginning to be widely known. Nabokov was no amateur entomologist. He served for six years as curator of the butterfly collection at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and published a dozen papers on taxonomy  the description and classification of organisms  that remain important. His observations on butterfly morphology have stimulated breakthrough research in evolutionary biology. Several of his original biogeographic hypotheses have been confirmed in the past few years. Fine Lines, a collection edited by Stephen Blackwell and Kurt Johnson, explains the importance of Nabokov's scientific work and traces its influence on his novels.

The decision to open the book with the drawings is a masterstroke. They illustrate one of the most important aspects of Nabokov's creativity  his tremendous attention to details, described with scrupulous precision. In his novels, he seamlessly marshals minutiae  impressions, passing fancies, ideas  to create a universe strongly rooted in observation. The particular or apparently trivial was, for him, always worth probing. In his entomological studies, he analysed fine, nearly invisible, dots on the wings of New and Old World butterflies to hint at what may have happened on Earth millions of years ago.

More here.


Appointment of Acting CFO

Sydney, Mar 17, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Traditional Therapy Clinics Limited ( ASX:TTC ) advises that Mr Zhonghan (John) Wu has resigned as its Chief Financial Officer, effective 17 March 2016 and that the Board has accepted his resignation.



Non-executive Director and Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee, Mr Glen Lees, will assume the role of Acting Chief Financial Officer from today, until a replacement CFO can be found.



Mr Lees, a chartered accountant, is currently the CFO (and part owner) of Casual Dining Concepts, which owns and operates the Bondi Pizza chain of casual dining restaurants. He has held CFO roles in the Oporto business and has owned and operated a successful franchised business in the automotive industry. Glen has also worked for Coopers Lybrand in the Audit division and Horwath's in the Business Recovery & Insolvency Division.



Chairman, Andrew Sneddon said, "We thank Glen, who has a wealth of experience, for stepping into the role of Acting CFO. Glen will be supported by the Group Financial Controller based in Chongqing, China and the Board will commence a recruitment process for a new Chief Financial Officer shortly".



Both I and Jeff Fisher, will also make ourselves available to provide support to the business until a replacement CFO is found".





About Traditional Therapy Clinics Ltd





Traditional Therapy Clinics Limited (ASX:TTC) is a franchisor and the owner of one of the largest chains (by number of clinics) of traditional therapeutic health and wellness clinics in China. It currently has 343 franchised clinics and 35 owned clinics in operation. It is a well established business with a strong growth profile, employing a repeatable and scalable business model.

TTC has a highly recognised and respected brand, having received the prestigious Chinese Well-Known Trademark designation from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. It operates within a strongly regulated industry sector of significant scale, which offers opportunity for further growth.

TTC is an ASX listed company employing around 1,000 staff across 27 of the 33 administrative divisions in China. More information is available at https://www.ttc-ltd.com/
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
Following a multi-agency pitch, Carat India has won the media mandate of Pfizer Magnum business division. Pfizer followed a rigorous process to select a media partner that understands the brand vision and aligns with its core values to manage the media investments in a complex and growing market such as India. The key parameters that helped Carat win the business are an integrated communication approach, along with innovative ideas that will enhance the brand image.



Carat starts this wonderful relationship through a PAN India launch of Gelusil sachet campaign. This campaign brings to the fore a humorous element depicted by Javed Jafri as the brand ambassador. This campaign will see all forms of media being explored - traditional media, digital, out-of-home and an interesting storytelling format in the form of co-creating content to engage the audience.



Commenting on the win, Kartik Iyer, MD Carat India said, We are delighted that Pfizer found value in the unique approaches we presented on the tasks we were briefed on. Its an absolute honour to have been selected as their partner and by creating integrated engaging solutions we look forward to partnering the team in taking the various brands of Pfizer from strength to strength in India.



Himanka Das, Senior Vice President  West, Carat India added, We are delighted to handle a portfolio of heritage brands such as Gelusil and Becosules that will push us to take the brand conversations to the next level through innovative path breaking approaches both traditionally and digitally. Our vision is to redefine media strategy to deliver gold-standard approach when it comes to the clients' businesses through media and communications. This is a tremendous opportunity for us to leverage our strengths in consumer insights through our proprietary tool CCS to deliver cutting edge integrated media strategy in a digitally convergent world.



Pfizer India is a major player in the OTC category having made a remarkable name. It has been extremely innovative in recruiting new consumers and appealing to a relatively younger consumer segment to widen the consumer base.



The companys flagship antacid brand Gelusil has launched a 10 ml sachet. Gelusil in sachets will help the company to attract new markets and reach out to consumers at lower price points. Currently Gelusil is sold in two dosage forms  liquid and tablets but soon will be sold both in 10 ml sachets.



There are many more opportunities in this segment waiting to be unleashed through creativity and innovation.
The Goafest Creative Abbys 2016 has witnessed exponential growth in entries this year. Held over a three-day celebratory event in Goa, the Creative Abbys has witnessed a 25 per cent increase in entries over last year, reiterating the increasing popularity and repute of the awards where the entire fraternity comes together to celebrate success.

The Abbys has witnessed several firsts this year, like the introduction of new categories such as Special Abby (Gender Sensitive) and Young Abby. TV films that are based on gender sensitivity can be entered in the Special Abby. Young Abby is the response to a long felt need of the industry to reward young creative below the age of 30 who respond to a brief. Two winning Young Creatives will be flown to Cannes as part of Goafest Abbys commitment to the young.

Adding further depth to the awards and broad-basing the participation opportunity is the further addition of new sub-categories in the Design vertical as well.

Presented by The Advertising Club and Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), the Goafest Abbys 2016 will once again see the entire advertising and marketing community join the celebrations in Goa from April 7 to 9 at The Grand Hyatt, Bambolim, North Goa.
The India Today Group,has appointed Nonita Kalra as Editor of the iconic Harpers Bazaar India magazine, effective March 15.

A graduate from St. Stephens College, Delhi, Nonita started her career as a Trainee Journalist with India Today. She went on to become the Editor-in-Chief of ELLE India for nearly 13 years where she influenced fashion, beauty and lifestyle; her ideas and her initiatives shaped careers and launched trends. Nonita has held prestigious consultancy assignments with Godrej Consumer Products and, most recently, with FDCI. With over two decades of experience in print media and television, Nonita has worked with Business World, UTV, BiTV, and Man's World.



Sanjay Thapar, CEO, Living Media India  Hearst Joint Venture, said, I am happy to welcome Nonita to Harpers Bazaar. Shes highly regarded in the fashion industry. Her intellect and passion will surely help the Brand reach greater heights.

Nonita who was also a regular columnist of The Indian Express, Economic Times, Forbes Life, and our own DailyO stated, Harper's Bazaar is an iconic brand and the India edition is a particularly vibrant one, given its informed voice on fashion. I am really excited to be part of such an incredible story.


Gustavo Martinez, CEO, J. Walter Thompson, has put in his papers after being slapped with a lawsuit for sexist and racist slur. A statement issued by WPP, JWTs parent company, said, By mutual agreement, Martinez has resigned in the best interest of the J. Walter Thompson Company.

Meanwhile, Tamara Ingram, currently Chief Client Team Officer at WPP, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of J. Walter Thompson Company, replacing Martinez with immediate effect.

In 2015, Ingram was named WPPs Chief Client Team Officer, overseeing the Groups 45 global account teams, representing one-third of the Groups $20 billion of revenues with over 38,000 employees working on these clients. Prior to that, Ingram was President and Chief Executive Officer of Team P&G, a position she held since 2007. She joined WPPs wholly-owned data investment division, Kantar, in 2003.

George Rogers succeeds Ingram as WPPs Chief Client Team Officer with immediate effect, in addition to his current duties as WPPs Global Business Development Director.

As reported earlier, JWT Chief Communications Officer Erin Johnson had filed a lawsuit in New York on March 10 accusing Martinez of making multiple racist and sexist slurs, among other things.
ACC commander addresses RPA health to Senate Armed Services Committee

Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the commander of Air Combat Command, addressed plans to improve the health of the Air Force remotely piloted aircraft enterprise March 16 during a hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committees Airland subcommittee in Washington, D.C.



The purpose of the hearing was to receive testimony on Air Force RPAs and Army unmanned aerial vehicles as part of the committees review of the 2017 defense budget.



Joining Carlisle as witnesses were Gen. David G. Perkins, the Army Training and Doctrine Command commanding general, and Brenda S. Farrell, the director of defense capabilities and management, Government Accountability Office.



As the lead command for the Combat Air Force, ACC is responsible for organizing, training, equipping, and employing Air Force RPAs from U.S. bases.



Combatant commanders heavily rely on the RPA enterprise, specifically the MQ-1 (Predator) and MQ-9 (Reaper), Carlisle said.



Currently, RPA aircraft fly 60 combat lines daily with each line lasting upward of 22 hours. In comparison, as of 2006 the Air Force only flew 12 combat lines. There are currently 15 bases with RPA units with which 13 have a combat mission.



Today we have almost 8,000 Airmen solely dedicated to the MQ-1 and MQ-9 mission. Over 1,400 of this 8,000 are Guard and Reserve personnel dedicated to the MQ-1 and MQ-9 mission, Carlisle said. Seventy-seven percent of our four cockpits are dedicated to flying combat lines every single day. The other 23 percent are dedicated to sustaining combat capacity though formal training and test.



Carlisle said that another particularly unique aspect to the RPA enterprise is the fact they conduct combat sorties from their home station.



Due to these demands, the enterprise has adopted a grinding schedule to support combatant commanders.



Their regular work days are 10 hours long. They fly for six days straight, conduct nonflying duties for one day, and then receive two days off, Carlisle said. Instead of a seven day week, they work a nine-day week and their two days off are not guaranteed to coincide with a weekend.



According to Carlisle, the first step needed to ease the tension on the field is to increase the number of RPA crews by increasing the number of training graduates. It is estimated that 384 members will graduate the initial training course next year, surpassing previous years by 200 or more.



Increasing the instructors available to train our pipeline students will decrease the number available to fly combat lines, Carlisle said. This delicate balance is challenging but achievable thanks to the secretary of defenses authorization to decrease our daily combat lines from 65 to 60. This slight reduction has allowed the Air Force to begin the process of righting our training pipeline and continuation training requirements by reinvesting those pilots into the schoolhouse.



Along with reduced number of daily lines being accomplished, a revised focus on the training pipeline for RPA pilots not only shortens the time required for completion, but also eases the strain on other flying communities.



RPA pilots were originally pulled from other aerial platforms such as fighters, bombers, airlift and special operations. Currently, only one-third of the force are career RPA pilots while two-thirds come from manned flying communities.



The goal according to Carlisle is for the community to be 90 percent manned by career RPA pilots; however, the biggest challenge the Air Force faces in achieving that goal is retention.



When an RPA Airman separates, we do not just lose a body in the cockpit. We lose their expertise and experience too, Carlisle said. While on paper, personnel may be a one-for-one swap that populates spreadsheets, their experience is incalculable and irreplaceable.



Currently, RPA pilot authorizations are manned at roughly 80 percent, which leaves the force over 200 pilots short.



The surge that our RPA enterprise has experienced in recent history is now no longer a surge, but the new normal. It has become routine, and is taxing our Airmen and our RPA enterprise beyond their limits. Sustained high operations tempo and the corresponding high levels of stress is negatively impacting the RPA enterprise, Carlisle said. It is robbing our Airmen of the quality of life necessary to withstand grueling schedules and maintain a healthy force. This leaves many of our Airmen with just one option: to separate; a decision they have chosen at an extremely high rate.



In late 2015, ACC initiated a Culture and Process Improvement Program for the MQ-1 and MQ-9 enterprise, with the goals of providing relief to highly stressed crews and constructing a sustainable plan for the future. The field-influenced program conducted 1,195 in-person interviews and 1,164 electronic surveys with RPA Airmen and their families, casting light on the individual issues they experience.



We are evaluating base services to meet the personal and family requirements of our RPA Airmen, and we are also taking a further look at other quality of life initiatives, compensation, and developmental opportunities, Carlisle said. We are committed to investing resources to meet our sustained requirement of 361 MQ-9s and 271 cockpits.



With plans in place to address the current challenges and expand the enterprise, one thing is clear. Continual support of American military operations around the world is a must, a point driven home in the hearing by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cottons remarks on the importance of RPA operations to U.S. national security.



Maybe our society should pay them the respect they deserve then honor their service and not attach any stigma to what they do since they are keeping us safe in our beds at night, Cotton said.
Cope Tiger 2016 enhances capabilities through teamwork

Readiness and continued development of multilateral interoperability remains a key priority for Indo-Asia-Pacific partners participating in the 22nd year of exercise Cope Tiger, a joint multilateral field training exercise that began March 7 at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base.



During the two-week exercise, more than 1,200 combined service members and civilians from the U.S., Thailand and Republic of Singapore aim to enhance cooperative relationships and improve procedures in airpower.



Cope Tiger 16 is a great experience for our Airmen, building upon the exercises 22 year history, to deepen relationships with two key Indo-Asia-Pacific partner nations and to reinforce our combined airpower interoperability, said Lt. Col. Jack Arthaud, the exercise director for the U.S. Air Force. The flying exercise not only builds (U.S. Air Force) capabilities, but also (Royal Thai Air Force) and (Republic of Singapore Air Force) capabilities by reinforcing common training standards and team work.



Arthaud explained that by participating in exercises with multilateral military forces, the U.S. demonstrates its commitment to peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Cope Tiger bolsters U.S. Pacific Commands theater security cooperation and enhances allied interoperability as the three partner countries train side by side.



The ability for us to work together as a team just to put this exercise together is an amazing accomplishment, said Col. Sim Pengshin, the exercise director from the Republic of Singapore Air Force. To then have us fly, conduct mission planning, brief and debrief, as well as work through the problems together, is the best way to strengthen our relationships, and I feel that it improves our readiness and processes.



There are multiple types of training conducted during Cope Tiger 16, including: mission planning, airborne air control, in-flight air refueling, air-to-air employment including basic fighter maneuvers, electronic warfare, airlift, and close air support.



The exercise increases the capability and experience of the pilots and gives the aeronautical staff an opportunity to learn from our counterparts, said Group Capt. Manoon Rukitna, the exercise director for the Royal Thai Air Force. I am confident that Cope Tiger 16 will enable the participants to increase combat readiness from the intensive training.



A trilateral Link 16 network is new to this years exercise providing a significant increased capability for the Royal Thai Air Force. Link 16 is fundamental to interoperability because it increases mission effectiveness by raising the situational awareness of all the forces on the network facilitating improved team work and safety.



(U.S. Air Force) Link 16 experts worked closely with both (Royal Thai Air Force) and (Republic of Singapore Air Force) technical experts to ensure that we would have success (with Link 16 data link network) on the first day of the exercise, Arthaud said. This is a huge leap in technical capabilities that enhances our effectiveness and partnership.



Over 220 U.S. personnel are participating in Cope Tiger 16 along with approximately 1,000 service members from the Thai and Singaporean militaries. The exercise involves a combined total of 87 aircraft and 48 air defense assets from the U.S. Air Force, Royal Thai Air Force, and the Republic of Singapore Air Force. The 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base, Japan, provided 12 F-15 Eagles and one E-3B Sentry (AWACS) to participating in Cope Tiger 16.
Bowman talks Niagara on Capitol Hill

The commander and members of the 914th Airlift Wing met with Congressional leadership on Capitol Hill, March 15.



Col. Brian S. Bowman, along with Chief Master Sgt. Clinton J. Ronan, 914th AW command chief, and Senior Airman Darian Baines, a material management journeyman, visited as part of the Air Force Reserve Commanders' Capitol Hill Visit Program, which is designed to build long-term, face-to-face relationships with members of Congress and their staffs.



"More than 75 percent of the men and women assigned to the 914th are represented by the senators and congressmen that we've met with," Bowman said. "It's important for my members to know that their voices are being heard and they are being taken care of."



The program also serves as an opportunity to discuss U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserve issues affecting Western New York and the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. Although this was an eventful experience, it gave Bowman and the group the opportunity to talk to several high-ranking government officials.



The Niagara team met with Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Congressman Chris Collins, Congressman Brian Higgins and Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. With many key decision makers all in one room, the experience was exciting for Baines, the youngest member of this trip.



"It was an excellent experience," said Baines, of her first visit to the District of Columbia. "It was interesting to see what happens behind the curtains. I'm looking forward to seeing what the outcome will be."



"In an ever-changing climate, working side by side with our representatives has never been more important," said Bowman. "The relationships that we are continuing to foster will ensure a current, qualified, and mission-ready Air Force."


RSS Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale who said that homosexuality should not be considered a criminal offence on Friday clarified that though homosexuality should not be considered as crime but gay marriages should be prohibited as it is institutionalization of Homosexuality.

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case. Gay marriage is Institutionalization of homosexuality. It should be prohibited, he wrote on twitter.

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case.

To a question on whether homosexuality is a crime as considered under Article 377 IPC, RSS Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale on Thursday said, I dont think homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society.

He said, Sexual preferences are private and personal. Why should RSS express its views in a public forum? RSS has no view on that. It is for people to have their way. Personal preference of sex is not discussed in RSS and we dont even want to discuss that.

Activists have challenged a Supreme Court ruling upholding the colonial-era Section 377 that says gay sex is a crime that can lead to 10 years in jail.

Political parties tread cautiously on the subject though individual politicians have supported the cause of gay rights activists.

Section 377 of Indian Penal Code terms homosexuality as unnatural and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. Going by the global trends in this regard, there have been demands within the country to decriminalise homosexuality.
The United Nations on Friday decried the carnage caused by recent air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, saying the alliance was responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict.

Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra`ad Al Hussein said in a statement, expressing outrage at one of the deadliest air strikes on a market this week.

Since the Saudi-led coalition began its air campaign in Yemen a year ago, the UN rights office said it had tallied just under 9,000 civilian casualties in the conflict, including 3,218 killed.

It condemned the repeated failure of the coalition forces to take effective actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, and to publish transparent, independent investigations into those that have already occurred.

Zeid decried that coalition air strikes have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties, and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities.

Despite plenty of international demarches, these awful incidents continue to occur with unacceptable regularity, he said, warning that we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition.

Zeid voiced particular alarm at two air strikes on a market this week in northern Yemen`s rebel-held Hajja province.

The United Nations on Thursday put the death toll from those strikes at 119, and Zeid`s office said Friday 106 of those killed in the crowded market were civilians, including 24 children.

The carnage caused by two air strikes on the Al Khamees market  was one of the deadliest incidents since the start of the conflict a year ago, Zeid said.

Meanwhile, his staff on the ground could find no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack, besides a small checkpoint 250 metres away, the statement said.

That attack came just weeks after a similar incident, in which air strikes on February 27 on a market in a northeastern district of Sanaa killed at least 39 civilians, including nine children.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened on March 26 last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after Huthi rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Zeid lamented the failure of the two sides to agree a peace deal, but welcomed a comment from a coalition spokesman to this week indicating the alliance was nearing the end of major combat in Yemen.

I urge both sides to swallow their pride and bring this conflict to a halt, Zeid said.
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the publication of the photos of governor, chief minister and the ministers of the department concerned in government advertisements.

The top courts order comes after, the Centre and some states including poll-bound West Bengal and Tamil Nadu had sought revision of the SC verdict barring publication of leaders photos in advertisements except those of President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India, saying that it infringed fundamental rights and federal structure.

The apex court bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi allowed the publication of photos of governor, chief minister and ministers of departments concerned while modifying their earlier order by which the court had permitted photos of president, prime minister and CJI only in the government ads.

The Centre had on October 27 last year joined hands with several state governments in seeking review of the Supreme Courts landmark judgement on the issue.

On May 13, 2015 the apex court had passed a slew of directions including the order asking the Centre to constitute a three- member committee consisting of persons with unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality to regulate the issue of public advertisements.
Unrelenting in its attack on AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan for refusing to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai, the Shiv Sena said he has been let off with a soft punishment and demanded his permanent suspension from the state assembly and disqualification from contesting the polls.

Waris Pathan has been temporarily suspended from the Assembly but his crime is so grave that he should be permanently suspended and disqualified from contesting elections. He was awarded a soft punishment, the Sena said in an edit in party mouthpiece Saamana.

It also sought to know why people from the minority community did not come forward in support of Rajya Sabha member Javed Akhtar when he spoke in support of the slogan.

Time has come for Muslims to decide if they will support Javed Akhtar or Asaduddin Owaisi, it said.

Pathan, representing Byculla in South Mumbai, was on Wednesday suspended from Maharashtra Assembly for rest of the ongoing budget session, for refusing to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai with legislators cutting across party lines pressing for action against him.
The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef that China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said.

The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.

Richardson told the United States was weighing responses to such a move.

He said the U.S. military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay.

I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. Thats an area of concern  a next possible area of reclamation, he said.

Richardson said it was unclear if the activity near the reef, which China seized in 2012, was related to the pending arbitration decision.

He said Chinas pursuit of South China Sea territory, which has included massive land reclamation to create artificial islands elsewhere in the Spratlys, threatened to reverse decades of open access and introduce new rules that required countries to obtain permission before transiting those waters.

He said that was a worry given that 30 percent of the world`s trade passes through the region.

Asked whether China could respond to the ruling by the court of arbitration in The Hague by declaring an air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did farther north in the East China Sea in 2013, Richardson said: Its definitely a concern.

We will just have to see what happens, he said. We think about contingencies and  responses.

Richardson said the United States planned to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation exercises within 12 nautical miles of disputed South China Sea geographical features to underscore its concerns about keeping sea lanes in the region open.
4) reactions in more distant relatives require looking at genetic biomarkers or polymorphisms that have been associated with vaccine reactions, because documenting a 4th cousin once removed had an untoward vaccine reaction is likely to be challenged at some point.

1) a child who has already had a serious vaccine reaction - NOW SOME GROUPS, such as Kaiser, have essentially made this the only qualifier for a medical exemption - a near death level vaccine reaction, but that is not the law, and the wording of the law was just quoted.

It is my opinion that the medical exemption and the reasons thereof be documented sooner rather than later.

" t he physical condition of the child is such, or medical circumstances relating to the child are such, that immunization is not considered safe, indicating the specific nature and probable duration of the medical condition or circumstances including, but not limited to, family history, for which the physician does not recommend immunization . . ."

The new California law leaves it up to the medical judgment of a licensed physician to determine if a child qualifies for a medical exemption

Me: Dr. Stoller, you are currently providing medical exemptions (MEs) from vaccinations for children. How do you determine who's susceptible for a vaccine reaction?

I recently talked with Dr. Stoller about the medical exemptions he's writing for children in his practice. The information he provided should be of interest to many California parents concerned about a one-size-fits-every-child vaccine schedule.

San Francisco physician Dr. Ken Stoller has long been an advocate for vaccine safety. He was an outspoken critic of SB277, the California law passed last year that eliminated personal exemptions from vaccinations mandated for school attendance in that state.

6) Children in families where a family member has a neurological or even psychiatric disease may qualify depending on what that is and if there is any association with untoward reactions to vaccines.

7) Children with a documented polymorphismsm that have been associated with untoward vaccine reactions, such as the MTHFR gene, could qualify for a medical exemption.

8) Having antibody titers to any or all of the required vaccines that demonstrate immunity should, according to the law that SB 277 amended, be good enough to comply with California requirements, but at each grade-span those titers will need to be re-measured to prove they are still present. Having titers proves immunity (although that isn't always the case) and the vaccine requirement is met (until the next grade-span).

Me: Is this expensive for parents?

Dr. Stoller: The question is how expensive is it to have a child disabled by an untoward vaccine reaction? But I do require each child complete the 23 and Me genomic test, which is currently $199, which is a very good deal for all the information one can access from the raw data. That is the only real financial burden I place on a child's family beyond my normal consultation charges for two 30 minute visits, which is what it normally takes to do an Adverse Event Risk Assessment.

Me: Are you worried that the government might not accept the exemptions you're providing?

Dr. Stoller: I am just following the letter of the law, and right now the "government" is the nice lady at the school admissions window.

Me: Do you hope more doctors will get involved with genetic testing and issue Adverse Event Risk assessment evaluations like you're do?

Dr. Stoller: Adversonomics is a new field in medicine that is science and evidence based. I would hope that all physicians would use objective measures and sound science to determine what to do and how to treat their patients. However today that is not the case, sadly. Look at the horrible situation with Lyme disease.... a real infectious disease pandemic that is ignored.

Me: What is your response to critics who say that you're using your position to get around the law and you're putting children and the community at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases?

Dr. Stoller: You should be asking is was it against the California Political Fair Practice Act for a legislator to author and lobby and vote for a law that would personally enrich him. To mix his business with government business. Dr. Pan is a pediatrician and by getting rid of the Personal Belief Exemption, he began driving more and more children to get vaccinated and that only enriches pediatric practices either directly or indirectly.



What I am doing, evaluating children for Adverse Event risk is consistent with the law that was passed and will soon go into effect.

Now, Compulsory Vaccination, as in school exclusions have been found constitutional. But at the same time compulsory government assistance should be available for children injured by vaccines, and compulsory compensation should be made available to families who lose a child who dies after being vaccinated. What price would be fair? I will start with $50 million be given to each family who loses a child from a vaccine reaction.... others might think that is too low.

Again....

The exact language of relating to the medical exemption reads as follows:

"120370. (a) If the parent or guardian files with the governing authority a written statement by a licensed physician to the effect that the physical condition of the child is such, or medical circumstances relating to the child are such, that immunization is not considered safe, indicating the specific nature and probable duration of the medical condition or circumstances, including, but not limited to, family medical history, for which the physician does not recommend immunization, that child shall be exempt from the requirements of Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 120325, but excluding Section 120380) and Sections 120400, 120405, 120410, and 120415 to the extent indicated by the physicians statement."

So, a medical exemption based upon the family history or individual medical condition(s) where it is decided that vaccine "is not considered safe" is also very broad. What is safe when there is nothing to compare "safe" to? The use of the word "circumstances" again seems quite broad and "considered safe" would seem to encompass traditional informed consent doctrine, but parents are not given true informed consent.

Since there is no safety data on the vaccine schedule, that is, there have been no safety studies looking at any issues related to giving multiple vaccines at once, over time, repeated boosters of combined vaccine, etc. how does a physician determine what is safe... safe compared to what?

The US Supreme Court has already stated that vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe" - and unsafe is fairly unambiguous.

Since there is not even minimal data to determine if the vaccine schedule is safe would that alone be enough to justify an exemption?

It should be, because essentially not only does this raise scientific/medical questions (the lack of safety data in a law that makes "safe" the determining factor for medical exemptions), but other issues, because there are no other approved FDA regulated pharmaceutical interventions are permitted that have no safety data behind them. Without baseline safety data... who or what is to determine what safe means? SB 277 has clearly given that determination to the individual physician.

When the Supreme Court states vaccines are unavoidably unsafe, can a physician then take it upon themselves to say they are safe or specifically they are safe for their patient without Informed Consent? This safety issue quandary can only be addressed by Informed Consent. Remember, the Supreme Court has opined that vaccines are not considered safe when they said vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe."

Informed Consent means you and yours have an option to decline consent. California has no problem with that but your child can't go to school or stay in school once they hit a grade span without a medical exemption - an exemption that (again) makes safety the key determining factor. Therefore, just based on the safety issue alone, every child in the state of California would be eligible for a medical exemption based on the way the law is now written.

Having said that, if you want a medical exemption for your child the general safety concern alone probably won't stand up to scrutiny without objective measures or a predisposed family history to back it up or both.

If the new law based on SB277 is properly implemented, there should be as many or more medical exemptions as there were PBE or religious exemptions, assuming health professionals feel they were really free to exercise their medical judgment. However they do not feel free even if they say they feel free.



What physicians say is that this vaccine, or that vaccine - heck the entire schedule, has been approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC as being safe. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no scientific data on the overall risk of the schedule [baseline data on chronic health of unvaccinated vs vaccinate] for purposes of comparison. What physicans should be telling families is, "So, even though I can legally prescribe this vaccine, or the entire schedule, I must also tell you that the risks are unknown, the schedule is experimental, and you may wish to decline on ethical reasons."

That is what should be taking place in doctor's offices, but it is not, and ethics have nothing to do with the way medicine is being practiced today.... ethics are an elusive ideal.

Critics don't know the law, that don't understand the law, and they certainly don't know what is in vaccines or how they work or don't work.

If critics knew the science they would know that many vaccines actually spread the communicable diseases they are supposed to be supposedly preventing. The pertussis vaccine, for example, turns it recipients into pertussis factories for several weeks. Recipients of live virus vaccines will shed those viruses for who knows how long. There was a situation where a man was shedding polio form a vaccine for over 30 years.

Show me the science and I will show you that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe and do not do what most people think they do. And they do far more than what most people could imagine in the worse nightmares.

Past coverage on Dr. Stoller:

2015

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.

2013

2008

2007
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Conspiracy theorists alike have long suspected that there might be ninth planet in our Solar System, far out beyond the orbit of Pluto.

'Planet X' community has occasionally suggested that this distant ninth world is currently on a devastating collision course with our own planet. But actual scientists are interested in the idea too, mainly because of the need to explain anomalies in the orbits of extremely far-off objects in the Kuiper Belt, the vast and mysterious disc of rock, ice and comets that extends beyond the orbit of Neptune.





Most recently Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Chad Trujillo, from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, argued in a 2014 paper and subsequent research that several small objects, including 2012 VP113 and a 500-1,000 km across rock called V774104, exhibit a strange discrepancy in their orbits. Specifically, there is a strange gap between their closest approach to the Sun and the time when they pass through the 'plane' of the Solar System. This discrepancy could have several causes -- other researchers have argued it might be the result of 'stellar nurseries' near to our Solar System, or an object pulled out of orbit from its star and into the outer reaches of our own -- but a large, dark planet, estranged but still at home around our sun, was considered a more likely cause.





Now a team at the California Institute of Technology believe they have found clear evidence of that giant , icy world -- our Sun's ninth -- orbiting at an almost unimaginably vast distance.







The paper, published by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown -- the latter of whom, in a neat twist, was one of the researchers primarily responsible for demoting Pluto to a dwarf planet in 2006 -- in the Astronomical Journal, describes this world as being five to 10 times as massive as Earth and around two to four times as wide. That scale is not closely matched by any existing world, but would make the planet the fifth largest in the Solar System, closest in mass to Uranus.





The existence of almost-planets in the belt is nothing new on its own -- Pluto was long regarded as a 'Planet X' itself, before it was discovered, finally, in 1930 (and until its demotion to a dwarf planet in 2006). Makemake and Haumea are two further dwarf planets that lie in the belt, while Eris is more massive even than Pluto and usually orbits the Sun from a much greater distance. But all of these objects are orders of magnitude smaller than Planet Nine.





The orbit of Planet Nine is extreme, never coming closer than 30.5 kilometres from the Sun, which is five times further than the average orbit of Pluto. The world would be extremely cold and dark -- which is why no one has ever taken a direct picture of it. Indeed, so controversial is the planet that Batygin and Brown initially launched their investigation to prove Planet Nine did not exist, and disprove the 2014 paper by Sheppard and Trujillo. But after building on research by other astronomers, Brown and Batygin found their computer model of the object's orbits only worked if Planet Nine existed; the "clustering" of the objects was only possible if a ninth planet was affecting their orbits, twisting them by up to 90 degrees and keeping them from coming as close as expected to the Sun.





"It's almost like having six hands on a clock all moving at different rates, and when you happen to look up, they're all in exactly the same place," Brown said in a statement. "Basically it shouldn't happen randomly."





"Shouldnt something like that be hard to miss?" Brown told Scientific American. "Yes, you would think so. This a case where we had our noses buried in the data, never stepping back and looking at the Solar System from above. I couldnt believe I'd never noticed this before. It's ridiculous."





Brown and Batygin said they had considered the possibility that instead of a planet, an object had formed more recently in the belt comprised of comets and rocky balls clumped together. On review that appears to be impossible, because the belt does not contain enough mass. A planet roughly five times as massive as Earth, however, formed along with the rest of the Solar System, perfectly fits the model, and explains other strange phenomena discovered in the belt in recent decades.





"Continued analysis of both distant and highly inclined outer Solar System objects provides the opportunity for testing our hypothesis as well as further constraining the orbital elements and mass of the distant planet," the paper says.












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Washington: In what can be called as completely bizarre, a former US Air Force radar trafficking operator claims she was abducted and raped by reptile aliens on the moon several times in 1980.

Niara Terela Isley, 60, made this claim that she had been kidnapped by reptile aliens when she was 25, around 8 to 10 times.

She said that after going through hypnosis, she remembered being taken by a 'humanoid with a tail' to a secret base on the far side of the moon.There she was raped repeatedly by the aliens and made to work under the supervision of other 'grey aliens'.

Ms Isley, a mum-of-one who now lives in Colorado, said: "At night I wasn't allowed to sleep and was passed around for more sex.

"I was scared. I knew I had to get back to my daughter so I was pretty compliant. I just didn't want to do anything that would get me killed."

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Hillary Clintons presidential campaign manager, John Podesta, is an advocate for the release of government files regarding UFOs. Over the past few months he has tweeted about his interests. However, many suspected his comments were made in jest. Podesta was recently asked about his UFO interests on KLAS 8 News Now and whether he has discussed the topic with Clinton, and says he is still very interested in the declassification of UFO documents.

Podesta was interview by KLAS political reporter Steve Sebelius, and the interview was featured in a story on the KLAS website co-written by KLAS reporter George Knapp.

In the story, KLAS wrote: Several U.S. presidents are on the record, talking about the UFO mystery. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan say they had UFO sightings of their own, but the current presidential campaign might be the first in which UFO disclosure has been championed by a major party candidate.

When asked about his interests in UFOs and whether he has discussed the issue with Clinton, Podesta answered, Ive talked to Hillary about that. Its a little bit of a cause of mine, which is, people really want to know what the government knows, and there are still classified files that could be declassified.

In an interview with The Conway Daily Sun in December, 2015, she was asked about UFOs and referred to Podestas interests in the topics.

According to The Conway Daily Sun, Clinton said, [Podesta] has made me personally pledge we are going to get the information out. One way or another. Maybe we could have, like, a task force to go to Area 51.

Many news outlets, such as CNN, assumed Clinton made those comments in jest. However, Podestas comments to KLAS demonstrated to them that he takes the topic very seriously.

I think Ive convinced her that we need an effort to kind of go look at that and declassify as much as we can, so that people have their legitimate questions answered, he said. More attention and more discussion about unexplained aerial phenomena can happen without people who are in public life, who are serious about this, being ridiculed.

To the surprise of many, Podesta has not shied away from the topic of UFOs as the manger of Clintons campaign. In fact, upon leaving his last position as an adviser for President Obama, he tweeted that his biggest failure in 2014 was once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files.

In September of 2015, he then tweeted what has been interpreted by some as a challenge for reporters to bring up the topic of aliens with his candidate. After an interview by actress and writer Len Dunham, Podesta tweeted: Great interview, @lenadunham. But Lena, ask her about aliens next time!! #TheTruthIsOutThere http://hrc.io/1jusxfk cc: @HillaryClinton

Thus far, The Conway Daily Sun seems to have been the only one to take up Podestas challenge.

In response to their UFO story on Clinton, Podesta tweeted: Just in time for the X-Files revival. #TheTruthIsOutThere.

Podestas reputation as a UFO buff and X-Files fan goes back to his position as former President Bill Clintons Chief of Staff. He served in that position from 1998 until 2001. It is rumored that he had an X-Files themed birthday party at the White House.

However, perhaps his most shocking UFO related exploit was an appearance at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. in 2002 in which he called for the release of classified UFO documents.

Podesta told the press: It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old, and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon.

The topic of UFOs is still a taboo topic in most mainstream circles. Many believe that Dennis Kucinichs presidential campaign was severely damaged when he was asked in a presidential debate in 2007 about a UFO sighting he had witnessed. So it seems counter-intuitive that a presidential campaign manager would be pushing the topic.

In the KLAS interview, Podesta told Sebelius, I come in for my fair share of people asking questions about whether I am off my rocker, but Ive been a long-time advocate of declassification of records.

Bernie Sanders campaign has been UFO free. According to KLAS, when asked about UFOs, Sanders has said he is far more interested in issues that are pressing for most Americans.

The interview can be seen on the KLAS website here: http://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/i-team-clinton-aide-seeks-ufo-files



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New Delhi: For years, scientists have refused to reveal the truth behind unexplained UFO mysteries. This has baffled us and speculations about whether the extraterrestrial life really exists or not just gets murkier day by day.

According to reports, the UK government is all set to release shocking evidence of alien contact, when 18 classified files will be released in March 2016.

However, the British government also stated that they may not make these files public as they contain 'sensitive material'.

It has been claimed by former government employees that at least two of these files contain clear evidence of UFO landings and alien contact.

The UK government had in 2005, admitted to conduct a thorough 30-year long scientific study into UFOs, after years of denial.

It looks like much of their material is related to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the implications of alien contact.

MUST READ

Meanwhile, the US president Barack Obama is assumed to be having a clear idea about the UFO phenomenon, but like his predecesors, he fails to reveal the secret documents pertaining to the alien.

But now, experts are of the view that this may change before March this year, amidst reports of the UK planning to reveal some shocking revelations about the UFO.

The US space agency NASA, has been accused of hiding the extraterrestrial life although it is aware of the alien activity.

Even as scientists suspect extraterrestrial life to exist, there is no unambiguous evidence for its existence so far.

The point here is - Will they or won't they now reveal the truth? Let's hope for the best as we keep our fingers crossed for the big event.

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WASHINGTON, March 18, 2016  USDA announced Friday over $272 million will be given to rural communities adjacent to national forests to help run schools, repair roads and enhance forest health.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS), administered by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), was originally passed in 2000 and was most recently reauthorized for two years in April 2015. Before 2000, many of rural communities supported by this act depended on receiving 25 percent of timber sale revenues from nearby national forests to pay for schools and other critical town infrastructure.

When logging on national forests became highly controversial in the 1990s and lawsuits brought against USFS became more common, timber sales on national forests fell, directly affecting those communities ability to fund public services.

SRS replaced revenue sharing with guaranteed levels of payments  not tied to timber sales  creating more consistent support on which rural areas could rely.

The Secure Rural Schools program has allowed USDA to work directly with community leaders to meet rural communities unique education, transportation, and conservation needs, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a release. This support is part of the Administrations ongoing commitment help rural communities remain self-sustaining and prosperous.

USFS Chief Tom Tidwell said he was extremely pleased that the Forest Service is once again participating in this essential program.

As weve seen repeatedly in past years, the Secure Rural Schools program not only provides funding for schools and roads, but also provides funding for conservation projects recommended by the collaborative Resource Advisory Committees, Tidwell said.

Read about other USDA news such as this. Sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription for the latest ag and rural policy news.





Portions of the funding will go out to 41 states and Puerto Rico based on several factors, including the number of acres considered national forest within an eligible county and how many counties within a state elected to share in SRS payments. Last year, SRS provided $285 million to rural communities.

This year, about $27 million of the $272 million will be used to complete conservation projects on federal lands led by local resource advisory committees. In addition, some of the funding will be used to implement Firewise Communities plans that help small and rural municipalities fight wildfires, and later do restoration, on national forests.

#30

For more new, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
Armenians, Assyrians Praise John Kerry for Calling Actions By ISIS Genocide

After months of pressure from lawmakers, clergy and some Southern California-based organizations, Secretary of State John Kerry used the word genocide Thursday to describe atrocities committed by the Islamic State not only toward Yazidis, but also on Christians and other ethnic minorities who live in the Middle East. Kerry's announcement likely won't affect policy, lawmakers said. But by calling the Islamic State's actions a genocide against Christians symbolizes a change within the Obama administration, members of Southern California's Armenian and Assyrian organizations noted. In December, there was concern that the State Department had planned to announce that genocide only applied to acts committed against the Yazidis, a Kurdish speaking people of Northern Iraq who practice a monotheistic religion. They were targeted by members of ISIS beginning in 2014. Men were killed while young women were kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. The Knights of Columbus, the Armenian National Committee of America and nearly 30 ?other bishops and groups agreed in a letter to Kerry last year that the Yazidis endured great suffering. But they also urged the Obama administration to consider the beheadings, forced conversions, deportations, and destruction of churches by ISIS against the ancient Christian people of Iraq and Syria as genocide. "My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that, in my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims," said Kerry, using the Arabic word for ISIS. "Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions -- in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities." Kerry's announcement came three days after the House of Representatives unanimously voted to support a nonbinding resolution that calls the actions of ISIS a genocide against Christians and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria. Several California lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, backed the resolution and said it gives the United States leverage to hold ISIS accountable if it came time to accuse its leaders of crimes against humanity. The congressman's San Fernando Valley district includes a large Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac and Armenian diaspora community. "While the resolution itself doesn't outline what military actions to take, I think it serves to justify we need to take the gloves off," Sherman said earlier this week. Kerry's announcement may also encourage passage of another resolution that calls on President Obama to encourage Turkey's acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide which took place beginning in 1915 and resulting in nearly 1.5 million deaths among them alone, said Nora Hovsepian, chairwoman of the Glendale-based Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region. Many Armenians who survived later settled in towns in Syria, where ISIS recently destroyed their churches and forced them to leave. More than 160,000 Armenians and their supporters marched through Hollywood last year to mark the centennial start of the genocide and to call for global recognition. Another rally to demand reparations will be held on April 24 in front of the Turkish Consulate. "We believe this is a new day in terms of speaking truth of what is happening in the region," Hovsepian said. "We believe the next logical step would be passage of H.R. 154. I think Kerry's announcement should give wind to the sails of the resolution because it's along the same lines. Armenians were persecuted by the Ottoman Turks. Genocide was committed against us. Now the same thing is happening again." Members of A Demand for Action, a group founded in 2014 to raise awareness and create a safe haven in Iraq for indigenous people and minorities, said they were pleased with Kerry's statement but will press lawmakers to hold the perpetrators accountable. "We are thanking every organization, every person that shed light of this genocide," said Nuri Kino, a Swedish Assyrian author and journalist who founded A Demand For Action. "It's a joint effort. This shows that grassroots movements works." Ramond Takhsh, president of the North Hollywood-based Assyrian American Association Southern California, called Kerry's announcement an important step forward for his people. "We have been witnessing our brothers and sisters being kidnapped, killed, or forced to leave in Iraq and Syria due to their religious and ethnic identity", Takhsh said in a statement. "We are pleased that the U.S. Government is finally taking action to label this tragedy as it should, which is a genocide".
Iraqi-Americans Applaud Genocide Label By U.S. on ISIS

Iraqi-Americans applauded the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that what ISIS has done is genocide, hoping it will be the start of serious action to defeat the militant group and save Iraq's minorities. Today, they plan to meet in Sterling Heights and West Bloomfield with the State Department official in charge of religious freedom issues who's visiting metro Detroit to discuss the plight of Iraqi groups persecuted by ISIS. After years of lobbying by Iraqi-American Christians and others, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday: "Daesh (acronym for ISIS) is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians and Shia Muslims." "The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians, Yezidis because they are Yezidis, Shia because they are Shia," Kerry said. "This is the message it conveys to children under its control. Its entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology. " The designation on Thursday was not accompanied by any policy changes, and it's unclear how it may affect future U.S. actions, but supporters of it hope it can bring attention that could lead to more aggressive measures. Iraqi Christians have faced increased persecution since the Iraq war began in 2003, as religious extremists gained power and sought to drive them out. They've been patiently waiting for the U.S. to drive out and defeat ISIS. Since 2003, the number of Christians in Iraq has plummeted from 1.4 million to 200,000, said Auday Arabo, a West Bloomfield attorney who's spokesman for the Chaldean Church for the eastern half of the U.S. "We're very thankful that the administration used that designation" of genocide, Arabo said. "We only wish it had been done earlier. ... Hopefully, this will make more people aware of the atrocities." Metro Detroit's biggest immigrant population is from Iraq, a sizable percentage of them Christians, known as Chaldeans, Assyrians or Syriacs. Since ISIS came to power in Iraq two years ago, they've been pushing the U.S. government to label their actions as genocide, a label the U.S. has not used since 2004, when they applied it to actions in Darfur, Sudan, by the Sudanese government. U.S. officials reportedly were reluctant initially to use the word "genocide" because it could require various legal obligations to help the victims. On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously, 393-0, to label ISIS actions as genocide, putting pressure on the U.S. to act. "We are jubilant" at the U.S. government's genocide label, said Joseph Kassab, founder and president of the Iraqi Christians Advocacy and Empowerment Institute in West Bloomfield. "This is exactly what we're looking for. This is going to change the whole ball game." Kassab has been lobbying U.S. officials for years about the plight of Iraqi Christians. Many Chaldeans (Iraqi Catholics) in metro Detroit such as Kassab have roots in Tel Keif in the Ninveveh Plain region near Mosul, an area of Iraq currently under the control of ISIS. Some in metro Detroit have had family members driven out or killed in Iraq, their ancestral homes and churches destroyed. They see themselves as the indigenous people of Iraq, stretching back thousands of years to the Babylonian civilization. "Tel Keif is now a ghost town" cleansed of Christians, Kassab said. "ISIS is in the business of destruction of terror. They're killing and destroying everything they see as un-Islamic by the sharia." On Friday, Kassab and other Iraqi-American leaders are to meet at his institute with Knox Thames, the U.S. State Department's special adviser for religious minorities in the Middle East and south and central Asia. The meeting will include leaders with minority groups such as Iraqi Christians, Yezidis and Mandeans. Thames is also to visit the Chaldean Community Foundation in Sterling Heights, where he will meet with Chaldean leaders and U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, R-Michigan. "We welcome this long-awaited declaration," said Martin Manna, head of the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce in metro Detroit. "I am hopeful it will lead to the protection of the Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac and Yezidi communities in Iraq and Syria, and the much-needed aid that is lacking." Kassab and Manna said that the U.S. needs to do more to protect and give aid to Iraq's minorities. They also said that Iraq's government needs to ensure that non-Muslims are equally protected under the law and provide them safety. Manna said they will propose to Thames that the U.S. help create safe passages for minorities in Nineveh Plain, pressure the Iraqi government to do more, create long-term housing, guarantee the rights of minorities under the Iraqi and Kurdish constitutions and create a safe zone for Christians in Iraq. Kerry's announcement also was welcomed by Iraqi-American Muslims in metro Detroit. In addition to Yezidis and Christians, Kerry's genocide designation applied to Shias, which ISIS has targeted often, labeling them as apostates from Islam. Kerry added that ISIS targets other groups as well, saying it is "responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds and other minorities." Imam Husham Al-Husainty, head of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, said he hopes that the designation can help lead to defeating ISIS and other terror groups in Iraq. "We are thankful to God" that the U.S. made this genocide designation, Al-Husainy said. "This is a step towards humanity, to see officials concerned about human rights and justice." Imam Al-Husainy said that Shias have been the biggest victims of ISIS, in terms of numbers killed. "We sacrificed so many of our people against ISIS," said Al-Husainy, who is Shia and has family members in Iraq. "We are on the battlefield in Iraq. We expect the West to help support us." "I'm so thankful we are on the same side, fighting for God and truth. ... We should unite to fight terrorism and evil."
March 18, 2016

CAIRO  George Isaac is an Egyptian history professor who called for change as the leader of the Kefaya movement. This was the first movement to oppose dynastic succession in pre-2011 Egypt amid widespread reports that former President Hosni Mubarak planned to pass the reins of leadership to his eldest son Gamal.

Isaac is also a leader of the Democratic Current Coalition and a member of the National Council for Human Rights. Isaac spoke to Al-Monitor about the human rights situation in Egypt, expressing his dissatisfaction that the councils work has been subjected to restrictions and the Interior Ministry is delaying visit permits to prison. He called for the restructuring of the police agency and said that the council had received reports on 280 cases of forced disappearances, and police replied that 80 cases are either in prison or dead. As for the rest of the cases, the council has not received any response thus far. The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: How would you assess your current experience with the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights [NCHR]?

Isaac: When we first started work at the NCHR, we were very active and our idea on human rights was not only focused on people being incarcerated in prisons  something that generally comes to mind. Rather we were also concerned with economic and social rights. This is why several conferences on the social service law, health and housing were held. We have expanded the work of the NCHR to include many fields. Honestly, in the beginning, we did not have access to prisons and there was not any cooperation with us. Unfortunately, there are current restrictions on the councils work. The evidence is that we asked for permission to visit the prison in Mina on Jan. 25, but we got permission on March 1. We have also asked to visit the police stations [where detainees are sometimes held], because they are 10 times worse than the prisons. However our request has yet to be answered.

Al-Monitor: Does the NCHR have a role in monitoring police performance?

Isaac: We have tried to improve the police performance, and we agreed with the Interior Ministry on internal regulations for prisons, under which each inmate shall be informed of his rights and duties. We are facing a real problem when it comes to treatment in prisons. Prisons turn into heaven on earth when [a delegation from] the NCHR comes for a visit. Yet once we leave, the abuse is back. This is evidenced by Aqrab prison. In front of this prison we met a lady who had been trying for three days to visit her husband, yet was unable to obtain a permit. However she was allowed to visit her husband and bring him blankets and food, something she could not do before, after we met with her. As soon as we leave, things go back as they were previously. Dr. Manar Tantawi, the wife of journalist Hisham Gaafar, arrived at the prison at 6:30 a.m., but the prison administration gave her back her ID at 2 p.m. and asked her to leave because the visit was canceled. Had I not interfered personally and spoke to [journalists] Diaa Rashwan and Amr Shobaki [she would not have been able to see him]. The question is, what are the reasons behind this inhumane conduct?

Al-Monitor: Every time we hear about police violations, calls emerge for a restructuring of the police agency. What is your take on calls for structural reforms of the police force?

Isaac: Internal restructuring is necessary, because the whole system needs to be reformed  whether were talking about the policemen or officers. Police leaders themselves need to be re-evaluated. They get angry every time we make this call, claiming these are Muslim Brotherhood calls. The same old culture is still prevailing within the police: the arrest and torture of suspects in order to obtain confessions and refer them to the judiciary. This system will lead to nothing except helping aggravate the situation. Perhaps the talk police transgressions is the main reason behind the lack of justice. Policemen have protested more than once, without being sanctioned, at a time when any protester could be sentenced to five years in prison for demonstrating. The police can be easily restructured, and the best proof is what happened in Romania.

Al-Monitor: What are the most important laws the NCHR will present to the parliament?

Isaac: We will be submitting the anti-terrorism law, which raised a lot of controversy. We are trying not to sacrifice freedoms at the expense of the fight against terrorism. This is in addition to the anti-discrimination law, torture prevention law and the law on civil society organizations.

Al-Monitor: How would you rate President [Abdel Fattah al-]Sisis handling of human rights issues?

Isaac: Sisi has reiterated that human rights are not only limited to the political and civil rights, but also include social and economic rights. Yet some people within the state do not want to hear this talk and continue to obstruct the situation. Sisi needs to take that into account, because the situation has become serious.

Al-Monitor: Will you possibly raise the slogan of the Kefaya Movement in the face of Sisi?

Isaac: I will make that decision once his four years are over.

Al-Monitor: How has the NCHR dealt with the issue of forced disappearances?

Isaac: This goes beyond the idea of someone just disappearing, this is forced disappearance, where accused persons are being arrested outside the boundaries of law and disappear for a period of time depending on the course of the national security forces investigation with them. This is when their parents report them as missing. Therefore, the law should be applied upon the arrest of any accused person. According to the law, 24 hours after the arrest the detained person has the right to a lawyer and his or her case should be presented to the public prosecution.

We have prepared a seven-page form based on international standards for the parents of a missing person to fill and to be sent to the Ministry of Interior. We have received complaints about 210 cases of forced disappearance, while the Ministry of Interior responded with regard to 80 cases only of [people who are declared] dead and of prisoners, and the rest have yet to be dealt with.

During this week, the final report on forced disappearance will come out and will include many surprises. However, we cannot make any condemnation as we serve as a supervisory body only. Our job is to state what is happening and report to the president, the prime minister, the minister of interior and they take action.

Al-Monitor: Do you consider resigning from the NCHR?

Isaac: Many spoke to me about resignation, but there are more people in need of me as I have been receiving endless calls on my cellphone from oppressed people, and abandoning them would be immoral.

Al-Monitor: Do you agree with the states assessment that the Brotherhood (and its supporters) have taken advantage of human rights issues to harm the image of the state?

Isaac: The Muslim Brotherhood has made great exaggerations in this issue. For instance, the wife of [Muslim Brotherhood member] Mohamed Betlagy said on one of the talk shows that there were 1,800 cases of forced disappearance, which is an exaggeration. She also mentioned that there were 40,000 prisoners, which is an exaggeration as well. We are calling upon the Ministry of Interior to exercise transparency in revealing information, away from renunciation statements, which will not work. Denying forced disappearances and mistreatment inside prisons will open the door to such exaggerated claims.

Al-Monitor: And how do you see calls to amend the constitution?

Isaac: We have created a body to activate the Constitution in order to face the calls to amend it, but this has yet to be implemented. The Constitution is not sacred, but implementing it means revealing its shortfalls and thus the need to find solutions for reform. My question to those calling for the amendment of the Constitution is: Whose interests are you serving with these demands? Whom are you fooling? Have they read the article on withdrawing confidence from the president and understood its mechanism?

Al-Monitor: Amid reports of rising rates of sexual harassment, how is the NCHR dealing with the issue of womens rights in particular?

Isaac: Womens rights are linked to changing the culture of society. The first step down this path does not lie in tighter security measures but in education at school, where children ought to be raised on good manners, as well as improving the quality of education.

Al-Monitor: What do you think about accusations made against youth activists from the January 25 Revolution, i.e., that they are involved in treason and collaboration?

Isaac: Those who have anything against them, let them file reports to the Attorney General. However, there are dozens of questions marks hanging over plenty of issues. For instance, Esraa Abdel Fattah was banned from traveling and she does not know until now what is the charge against her. The president said that there are many oppressed in prisons but has yet to give instructions on what actions to take.
March 17, 2016

CAIRO  Saudi Arabia announced on Feb. 8 that the kingdom, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was prepared to send ground troops to Syria to fight alongside the US-led international coalition. This fanned a spark of diplomatic disagreement between Cairo and Riyadh.

Suddenly, without stating any clear justifications or setting another date, Egypts Prime Minister Sharif Ismail canceled his Feb. 10 visit to Saudi Arabia. The visit had been scheduled to finalize the Egyptian-Saudi Coordination Council's agreement to make 30 billion riyals ($8 billion) in investments in Egypt, as pledged by Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in December. The agreement included filling Egypt's oil needs for five years and supporting Saudi vessel traffic in the Suez Canal. The aid package came after the countries discussed developing military cooperation and the establishment of a joint Arab force.

An Egyptian government official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The Egyptian-Saudi Coordination Council meeting was postponed as a result of the failure to reach a final consensus on the nature of the projects presented by Cairo and the proposed financial value to implement these projects.

The official said the meeting hasn't been rescheduled yet, "but intensive contacts are underway to speed up agreement on investment projects before the end of March 2016." Egypt hopes to reach an agreement when Salman visits Cairo on April 4, he said.

Cairo aims to secure its petroleum needs for five years with soft loans, an estimated quantity of 700,000 tons [5 million barrels] per year, he said. The government is also banking on a new Saudi investment in the capital administrative projects, the reclamation of 1.5 million acres, and in the real estate and tourism sectors.

According to observers, the Saudi aid is now governed by several parameters related to the volatile regional situation in Yemen and Syria on the one hand and the drop in oil prices on the other.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry announced Feb. 16 that the Saudi and UAE decision to send ground troops into Syria does not fall within the scope of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, the 34-member coalition Saudi Arabia launched in December. He confirmed Egypt's support for a political, not military, solution in Syria.

Both Egyptian and Saudi officials deny their disagreement will affect the strong relations between the countries. But the facts seem to indicate otherwise.

Saudi Arabia is extremely sensitive to any political position that does not match its vision on regional issues. This is reflected by the kingdom halting its planned $4 billion in aid to the Lebanese army and security forces, apparently because Lebanon disagreed with Saudi Arabia's stance on Hezbollah.

It seems Cairo still links its participation in any Arab military alliances to obtaining financial aid to improve its situation back home. This position governed Egypt's decision to become a major player in the Gulf War during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak. According to International Monetary Fund estimates, Egypt obtained at the time $100 billion worth of Gulf aid, $10 billion of which was provided by Saudi Arabia  not to mention the Saudis' participation in canceling the nation's foreign debts.

Cairo had sent indirect letters throughout 2015 threatening to object to external military interventions. In an April speech, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said, The Egyptian army is only for Egypt. In the same month, Egyptian security forces authorized a protest in front of the Saudi Embassy in Cairo denouncing the Saudi intervention in Yemen. Egypt also received a delegation representing former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The kingdom thus excluded Egypt from the dialogue with the Yemeni factions before the Geneva negotiations in June.

On the Egyptian and Saudi military coordination, Khaled Okasha, a retired Egyptian military general and chairman of the National Center for Security Studies, told Al-Monitor, Different visions among allies are normal and acceptable, and the disagreement may be resolved through the constantly open channels between Cairo and Riyadh.

Okasha said, The Saudi-Egyptian dispute over ground intervention in Syria does not necessarily apply to other military coordination issues." He noted that Sisi attended the recent conclusion of the Northern Thunder military maneuvers in Saudi Arabia, which confirms the continuation of military cooperation regardless of "divergent visions and positions regarding the Syrian issue.

Observers believe Saudi Arabia's policies of coordination and alliance with Egypt primarily aim to revive the region's Sunni coalition in the face of Iran, Saudi Arabias No. 1 political enemy. Cairo hampers this objective, however, in light of the Egyptian-Turkish dispute.

Okasha added, Egypt still has a fixed position toward Turkey, but this hostility may be broken if Turkey makes good initiatives. In politics there are no permanent or perpetual enemies.

Questions remain on the table about the extent to which Saudi Arabia will use the support and aid pressure card against Egypt in return for Cairo adopting clear and explicit positions in line with the kingdoms vision, especially with regard to the military solution of the Yemeni and Syrian crises, as well as Iranian interference in the region. Salman's agenda during his upcoming visit to Cairo early next month may bring answers to these questions.
March 18, 2016

BAGHDAD  Although the political blocs in the Iraqi Parliament agreed to pass the general amnesty draft law, voting on it has been delayed since the beginning of the current parliaments term in 2014.

This delay reflects the concerns of competing political parties in the Iraqi Parliament, as some believe the draft law would lead to the release of terrorists or criminals, while others want their jailed leaders and comrades to be freed.

Salim Shawk, a member of the parliamentarian legal committee, told Al-Monitor that the draft law was sent to Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri on March 10, and awaits being put to a vote. The main point of dispute is the inclusion of prisoners convicted under Article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, Shawki said.

Article 4 of the 2005 Anti-Terrorism Law No. 13 states:

Anyone who committed, as a main perpetrator or a participant, any of the terrorist acts stated in Article 2 and 3 of this law shall be sentenced to death. A person who incites, plans, finances or assists terrorists to commit the crimes stated in this law shall face the same penalty as the main perpetrator.

Anyone who intentionally covers up any terrorist act or harbors a terrorist with the purpose of concealment shall be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Shawki said that the Sunni Union of Nationalist Forces insisted on including all detainees under the amnesty draft law, even those convicted under Article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law who were reported by an ordinary citizen or by a secret agent from the security services.

He added, It was agreed to include all those detained as per Article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law in the retrial decision under the supervision of three judges. As for the prisoners who claim they confessed under torture, they can be retried if it was proven they were tortured, as per the recent amnesty draft law. The law is trying to release the people who are not a threat to Iraqi society and to be fair to those who were treated unjustly.

The Al-Ahrar bloc has been asking to include prisoners from the Sadrist Movements followers in the amnesty draft law, as they are militants against the US occupation.

Shawk said, Whoever thinks he was jailed due to this accusation will be retried by a jury to prove that.

The amnesty draft law that was published on July 6, 2015, demanded the exclusion of crimes stated in the Iraqi Criminal Courts law and in the Anti-Terrorism Law, as well as crimes that threaten the states security at home and abroad. The perpetrators of crimes involving the use or sale of weapon silencers as well as abduction, human trafficking, drugs, rape, homosexuality, smuggling of antiquities, money laundering and currency fraud will not be acquitted.

Opinions vary widely on who should be included in the draft law. Sadrist Al-Ahrar bloc member Abdul Aziz al-Zalimi told Ayn al-Iraq news agency Feb. 14 that his bloc demanded the inclusion of the militants against the occupation under the amnesty draft law.

Member of parliament Nahida al-Dayni, with the Sunni Union of Nationalist Forces, told Al-Mada on Feb. 26 that her bloc called for including all prisoners jailed under the Anti-Terrorism Law in the retrial decision. She said, There are 8,000 detainees who have not been prosecuted due to the absence of plaintiffs. Those cases should be reviewed by the new committee and the prisoners released immediately.

Al-Ahrar bloc parliamentarian Zeinab al-Sahlani explained to Al-Monitor why her bloc insists on passing the amnesty draft law quickly. She said, Thousands of Sadrist followers were arrested because of their resistance to the US occupation. Members of other Iraqi factions were also arrested on the same grounds, and we ask that they all be released under the amnesty law.

Sahlani added, It is a shame to arrest citizens for wanting to liberate their country. The other reason why our bloc wants the amnesty draft law to pass is to give a chance for national reconciliation by releasing those who were arrested due to secret agents informing on them during the sectarian strife. We want to give a chance at a new life to those who committed crimes out of poverty and need  those accused of stealing small amounts of money or taking bribes that do not significantly affect public money.

Sahlani described the last draft of the amnesty law as satisfactory because it forbids  through its special judicial committee  the release of people who were responsible for killing Iraqis.

However, she did express some concerns, saying, The 2008 amnesty law scenario would be repeated, as it also stipulated the formation of a judicial committee to examine the amnesty conditions, but the committee did not complete its work.

It is noteworthy that some political parties, such as Al-Ahrar bloc, believes the 2008 amnesty law contributed to the release of terrorists.

Local and international organizations and figures criticized the Iraqi judiciary and accused it of bias and favoritism in dealing with the prisoners and of abusing its power to serve the political agendas of some parties.

Implementing laws, including the amnesty law, under the Iraqi judiciarys supervision has become a problematic issue, as some conflicting political parties in Iraq do not trust the judiciary. Sahlani told Al-Monitor that Iraqi prisons accommodate more than 250,000 prisoners. The judiciary cannot address this huge number of cases within a short period of time without intervention or objection from one political party or another. The political controversy will probably persist even if the amnesty draft law is approved.
March 17, 2016

Lawmakers of both parties applauded Secretary of State John Kerry's March 17 determination that the Islamic State (IS) is committing genocide.

Now they're demanding he do something about it.

"It would be travesty if we were to mistakenly take solace in this designation, if the designation did not then yield some sort of action," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a statement after returning to Congress following his withdrawal from the presidential race. "It is time for US assistance to be better targeted to help these persecuted communities and to ensure that they are not lost in the human chaos left in the wake of Syrias devastation and Iraqs instability."

Kerry made the announcement at the State Department, in keeping with a congressional mandate despite earlier warnings that he would blow the deadline. Some sources expected the State Department to limit its finding of genocide to Yazidis, but Kerry also included Christians and Shiite Muslims in his determination against the terrorist group, also known as Daesh.

"My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that, in my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims," Kerry said. "Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities."

The State Department, however, has made it clear that the finding doesn't create any legal obligations for further action. And Kerry's own determination was preceded by a lengthy recap of US military actions against the Islamic State, suggesting that the Obama administration may resist immediate pressure to do more.

"Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States," spokesman Mark Toner said this week. "However, we have joined with the international community in recognizing the importance of protecting populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, war crimes."

Business as usual won't cut it with House lawmakers, who voted 393-0 March 14 on a resolution denouncing the actions of IS as genocide. They all want something to be done, but don't agree on what that should be.

The House vote may have "nudged" Kerry to act, said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., but now the ball is in the hands of administration officials who favor enhanced military action against oil tankers, electricity grids and other potential targets.

"I think the administration listens more to the secretary of state than to Congress," Sherman told Al-Monitor. "The word genocide is the one word that most galvanizes the individuals inside the administration to take military action. As a matter of fact, I believe that it is that one word that swayed the administration to go after [Moammar] Gadhafi [in Libya]."

That's exactly the worry for a small minority of members.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, joined the vote on the genocide resolution but later expressed misgivings because a section blaming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for fueling the violence was added in. She also joined two other House members in voting against an accompanying resolution calling for the creation of an international tribunal to go after Assad and other alleged perpetrators of war crimes in Syria.

"The reality is that the language added to this resolution  is really aimed at justifying the overthrow of Assad  the result of which would be a complete assault and elimination of the Christians and other religious minorities in Syria," Gabbard said in a statement. "The reality is that if the Assad government is overthrown tomorrow, every Christian, every Yazidi, and every other religious minority and ethnic minority in Syria will be in greater danger than ever before from [IS], al-Qaeda, and others who are slaughtering them."

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the author of the war crimes resolution, made clear that he will continue to push for legal action against Assad. He believes Assad is fueling the sectarian resentment that empowers IS and other radical groups, and that defeating them will require his removal and the prosecution of human rights violators on all sides of the conflict.

"There are a number of options," he told Al-Monitor. "But immediately, we should get an international tribunal."

Most lawmakers are clearly focused on IS for now, however.

Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee panel on the Middle East, said he hopes the genocide finding will finally prompt congressional action on a new war authorization.

"I hope that there's an opportunity to debate an authorization to use military force, something that we should have debated months ago," Deutch told Al-Monitor. "Now that we've identified what's happening, we need to make sure that we have the debate about the proper way to stop it."

Many members on both sides of the aisle want to see a stepped-up military campaign, said House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. But they can't force US President Barack Obama to act if he doesn't want to.

"A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle in our committee have been pushing the administration to do more against [IS]. Does this announcement change that? I don't know that it does," Thornberry told Al-Monitor. "The president is still commander in chief; he's got to make the decisions to allow for greater effort."

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., agreed there's no indication that Kerry's announcement would prompt the creation of a US-protected safe zone in Syria, for example.

"I think the reservations the president has against going forward with that aren't likely to be overcome by this," he said. "I think the biggest impact of the genocide declaration will be on the external nations and their efforts to redouble protections for vulnerable populations."

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif, the only Assyrian-American in Congress and an original co-sponsor of the genocide bill, said one of the countries that must do more is Iraq. Some advocates of the legislation have called for the creation of a Christian safe-zone in Ninevah province, but Eshoo has stopped short of that.
March 16, 2016

BEIRUT  After a five-year absence that he spent in France and Saudi Arabia, former Future Movement head and Prime Minister Saad Hariri returned to Lebanon in February for a ceremony commemorating the 11th anniversary of Rafik Hariris assassination on Feb. 14. He then announced that he will stay in Beirut.

In January 2011, 11 ministers  a third of Hariris Cabinet  resigned, leaving a caretaker government under Article 69 of the Lebanese Constitution. The article stipulates that the government shall be considered resigned if it loses more than a third of its members specified in the decree of its formation.

The resignation included 10 opposition ministers, including the ministers of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement and the Change and Reform Movement, in addition to Adnan Sayyed Hussein, a minister aligned with then-President Michel Suleiman. The resignation came as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was preparing to issue an indictment implicating Hezbollah in Hariris assassination.

Making the situation worse, Hariri rejected a call for an emergency Cabinet session to discuss the expected indictment while awaiting the outcome of Saudi-Syrian monitoring of the dispute between the March 8 Coalition, which demanded that the government stop cooperating with the tribunal, and the March 14 Coalition, which supports the investigation.

After Hariri left Lebanon, the Future Movement reported he had received threats. Since then, Hariri has visited Lebanon only twice: the recent trip to commemorate his fathers assassination, and one in August 2014.

Several Lebanese media reports linked Hariris visit to different issues, including the extensive financial crisis he is facing. The French Le Point reported the 56,000 employees of his construction firm, Saudi Oger, haven't been paid for months.

Other reports speculated that Saudi Arabia abandoned him because, occupied with its own financial crisis, the kingdom couldn't afford to bankroll his business as well. Still other reports implied his return reflects a Saudi decision to confront Hezbollah via Hariri, as the key Sunni leader. Yet no one seems to rule out that problems within the Future Movement might have necessitated his return, in an attempt to restore Sunni leadership.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Future Movement parliament member Ammar Houri said, The security risks that prompted Hariri to leave Lebanon still exist. Yet the constitutional, political, security and economic risks have, altogether, formed the key motive for his return.

Houri refused to link Hariri's return to the rumored Saudi financial crisis. He said, Raising this issue from this perspective is not objective. Some crises were resolved and others are approaching a solution. Besides, the talk about a Saudi financial crisis is no more than [a rumor], because Saudi Arabia has enough [financial] reserves to last for decades.

Houri did not deny that the March 14 Coalition must be reunited. "The coalitions parties have differences, but the coalitions situation remains better than that of the March 8 Coalition, he said, adding that he doesn't even remember the last time the opponents met.

He added, Hariri is still No. 1 in command of the Sunni street, and there is almost an absence of a No. 2 in command. Houri did not dwell on the differences within the Future Movement, particularly with resigned Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi. He limited the cause of the disagreement with Rifi to the decision to resign.

Moreover, Houri said he doesn't believe the speculation that Hariri returned to spearhead a confrontation with Hezbollah for Saudi Arabia. He said, Hezbollah alone bears the responsibility for the Gulf and Arab campaign labeling it as a terrorist organization. It is the one that started the attack on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states two years ago.

Based on that position, Houri rejected the idea that the Saudi decision to cancel the grant was designed to sanction Lebanon and its military. He said that Hezbollah alone is to blame.

However, Change and Reform bloc parliament member Hikmat Dib told Al-Monitor, There are no prospects for Hariri in Saudi Arabia, which is clearly going through a severe economic crisis. The Saudi decision to halt the grant to the Lebanese army is only a way to secure liquidity, particularly since Hariri is harmed the most by the halt of the Saudi grant. Hariri is so closely linked with Saudi Arabia in the minds of the Lebanese that the loss of the grant is seen as a failure on his part.

Dib concluded, "The objectives of Hariris return are the presidential elections and formation of a new Cabinet that he will be heading, which will save him politically and economically. He noted that Hariris access to the post of prime minister is linked to Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh gaining the presidential post  which explains Hariris nomination of Franjieh for the presidency.

He added, The Future Movement is going through a crisis due to lack of funding and liquidity, which became clear when Hariri toured a number of Lebanese areas and attended meetings that he collaborated on with his political opponents, such as former Minister Abdel Rahim Murad. Dib added that in his view, Hariris return was inevitable."

Dib and Houri rejected the idea that Saudi Arabia placed the Future Movement in a direct confrontation with Hezbollah through Hariris return. Dib said, Saudi Arabia is not on good terms with Hezbollah, but had it been really interested in confronting it, it would not have canceled its grant to the army, particularly since it was based on the idea of strengthening and providing weapons to the army in the face of Hezbollah.

According to Dib, the Lebanese-Saudi crisis is due to the change brought about by the Saudi leadership, which is not close to Hariri. It moved in new directions concerning its ties with Lebanese Sunni figures by hosting some of their opponents. He added, Hariri means nothing to the Saudis on the political level. Besides, they are not interested in Lebanons card to the extent that some may think.

Lebanon does not seem to be approaching a radical change anytime soon, particularly since the latest session that tried to elect a president, on March 2, was just as unsuccessful as the dozens of previous attempts.

Will Hariri's return lead to a breakthrough at the presidential level, through Franjieh, in the face of the Christian understanding between the largest two parties, the Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea and the Free Patriotic Movement led by Michel Aoun? Or is filling the presidential vacuum dependent on a wider regional solution?
March 18, 2016

TELL ABYAD, Syria  The Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionaries' Brigades), affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is one of the factions that has continued to wage war against the Islamic State (IS). In an interview with Al-Monitor, the brigades commander, known by the nom de guerre Abu Issa, said that his brigade had joined the Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and Christian factions, as part of a strategy to combat the terrorism of IS and other extremist organizations. He also said the brigade's war against the Syrian regime continues unabated and emphasized that Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa remains committed to the Syrian revolution, as evidenced by its continuing to raise the Syrian revolutionary flag.

Abu Issa sat for an interview with Al-Monitor on Feb. 10 at one of his headquarters in the Tell Abyad countryside in Raqqa province and continued the conversation by phone in March.

Al-Monitor: As part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, what role does Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa play in liberating the Syrian part of upper Mesopotamia and maybe Raqqa in the future? Will you play a pivotal part in operations, or will your participation be limited to being part of a military alliance, as was the case in Kobani?

Abu Issa: Since their establishment in October 2015, we have comprised an integral part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which aim to gain control of most of the Syrian part of upper Mesopotamia [which includes Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah]. Each military faction therein plays a part in combating IS, and our part is equal to any other faction of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Our latest campaign, which led to the successful capture of the Tishrin Dam, in Raqqas countryside, gave us control over a strategic crossroads that cut off access between IS-controlled Raqqa and Manbij, in Aleppos countryside. In parallel, a campaign was launched in Hasakahs southern countryside, where the towns of al-Hawl and al-Shaddadi were liberated. All these battles took place with the coordination and participation of all Syrian Democratic Forces factions, each of which was positioned in predetermined locations, extending from Hasakah province through Raqqa province, all the way to Aleppos countryside. We currently control approximately 25 square kilometers of land between the western edge of Tell Abyad and northern Raqqa, all of which is on the direct front line with IS.

Syria's northern regions have witnessed some of the heaviest fighting against IS. Click the picture above to view photos of the aftermath of IS battles and capture of towns.

All member factions play a role in the military strategy of the Syrian Democratic Forces, for we all agree that these forces will form the nucleus of a future army for a democratic Syria. Moreover, each faction will play a role in its own home area, because it would be illogical that we, who hail from Raqqa, march on to take control of areas in Hasakah province, with an overwhelming Kurdish majority, for example, and our ultimate goal is to hand over the administration of each region to its own inhabitants.

Al-Monitor: In November, news spread that Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa had withdrawn from the Syrian Democratic Forces as a result of a dispute about the formation of a tribal army in Raqqas countryside, but you later reconsidered and went back on your decision. Why?

Abu Issa: There was a minor disagreement pertaining to some individual mistakes committed by both sides. The issue was resolved, and everything is back to normal. The main reason behind our withdrawal was the formation of the tribal army, which became a hindrance to our efforts due to a lack of equipment and the poor support that it received. The formation of that army required financial support, weapons, ammunition and vehicles, which were never adequately made available.

The purpose of forming the tribal army was to make it clear to the world that the tribes stood against IS, particularly in light of the latters constant claims and statements that the tribes had pledged it allegiance. As a result, the formation of the tribal army was a reply to [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi and his organizations lies. It also was a political message of reassurance to the inhabitants of Raqqa and the world that the tribes stood against IS.

Al-Monitor: Many of the Syrian armed opposition factions in the region were defeated by IS, which has controlled Raqqa since 2013. How has Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa endured when others have failed? Could you tell us about your experiences against IS and the factors that aided the latter in taking control of Raqqa.

Abu Issa: Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa is part of the Syrian revolution and participated in operations against the Syrian regime from the start. In June 2012, we initiated the armed revolution against the regime, and in September of that same year, we, and other factions, succeeded in liberating the towns of Tell Abyad and Suluk, as well as the Raqqa prison and the governorate in the city. But, a dispute ensued between three groups for control over the governorate, namely, Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa, Ahrar al-Sham [Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant] and other factions that espouse IS ideologies.

In January 2013, a decisive battle took place in Raqqa to prevent it from falling into the hands of IS. We, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra agreed to join forces and fight IS, but we were betrayed by Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, both of which fled the battlefield on the fourth day of combat. Left alone, Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa was unable to defeat IS as the battle raged on for 14 days. When we pulled out of Raqqa, our control encompassed approximately 40% of the provinces countryside, but a shortage of weapons and ammunition forced us to withdraw from the city toward Sireen, in Aleppos countryside.

Subsequent to seizing Raqqa, IS took control of Tell Abyad after battles with Ahrar al-Sham and then continued on to overrun the town of Tabaqa. As a result, our situation became precarious, due to the fact that the most strategic points in the province had fallen to IS. Had it not been for the betrayal of the two other factions, Raqqa would now be governed by its people and not by IS. It should be said though that our alliance with Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra was not that strong and was solely aimed at defending Raqqa from IS grasp and ideology.

At that time, around 35 IS militants defected and joined our ranks when they realized that IS intentions did not serve the interests of the Syrian people. One of those defectors, who goes by the name of Abu Assad, told us that they defected when they found out that IS was coordinating with the regime as well as killing, torturing and kidnapping civilians.

Afterwards, we tried to eliminate one of IS commanders, Abu Omar al-Shishani, in the 11-day-long battle of Sireen, but we suffered great casualties, with over 40 dead and 60 wounded, forcing us to retreat toward Kobani.

As for our endurance in the fight against IS, it is attributable to our level of organization and strength, for many of the weaker factions fell victim to IS.

Al-Monitor: As part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, is Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa receiving adequate support in preparation for the battle to liberate Raqqa? Can you tell us about the level of support that you are receiving?

Abu Issa: The establishment of the Syrian Democratic Forces was predicated on them receiving adequate support to combat IS and terrorism. But, the truth of the matter is that the world has let us down in this fight and failed to provide us with enough support. Even American support was lax, with very few shipments sent to the Syrian Democratic Forces. Of course, I cannot deny the role played by the international coalitions air forces, which flew sorties in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces. But, a lot of the talk about support is untrue, and we have seen no serious efforts to support the liberation of Raqqa. We would have been informed if any entities wanted to offer support, and liberation would have been led by Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa. Our complement of arms right now consists of weapons seized from IS, but these weapons are not enough to liberate Raqqa and its countryside.

With proper support, Raqqa would be delivered from the grip of IS. Our ranks include a lot of men, and many of the provinces inhabitants will rise to liberate their homeland. But, what use are men without weapons? We also lack vehicles, which is greatly degrading our abilities. Sufficient support to the Syrian Democratic Forces will also help liberate Raqqa, Hasakah, Aleppos countryside and Deir ez-Zor, and by sufficient support we mean advanced and effective long-range weapons, such as TOWs and Konkurs.

I would like to point out here that without international support, we will not be able to soldier on in our fight against IS until liberating Raqqa. Should we continue with these feeble capabilities and weaponry, we might fall prey to IS, and we refuse to be easy targets.

Al-Monitor: Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa continues to raise the flag of the Syrian revolution, despite the fact that after you joined the Syrian Democratic Forces, some FSA factions and other activists accused you of belonging or being subservient to the Kurdish People's Protection Units [YPG]. Also, you are being accused of helping the Kurds attain their dream of autonomous rule or attempted secession from Syria. How do you respond?

Abu Issa: Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa is part of the Syrian revolution, and we are one of the factions that continues to raise the flag of the Syrian revolution, because we remained faithful to our principles and believe that hundreds of thousands of Syrians lost their lives for this flag. The rhetoric that you mentioned and the accusations against the Kurds are due to the fact that Kurdish troops make up part of the Syrian Democratic Forces. It should be noted here that each Syrian region has its own specificities and tensions. Some express reservations about the YPG, which they accuse of wanting to partition Syria or other similar plans, which is absolutely untrue. There are no such aspirations, and since the formation of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a plan was adopted by all factions to work together and do away with these barriers and misconceptions. Today we ask people to judge this experiment based on the realities on the ground and not hearsay alone.

Like others before us, we heard a lot about the intention of the Democratic Union Party [PYD] or the YPG to secede or partition the country and collaborate with the Syrian regime. But, throughout my relationship with the YPG and us fighting side by side against IS in Kobani, I never noticed any intent to secede. Also, we must not forget that many Kurdish factions with close ties to the YPG fought against the regime in Aleppos countryside.

In addition, I must point out that Hasakah province has its specificities and suffers from Kurdish-Arab tensions seeded by the Syrian regime. The truth of the matter is that most of the provinces Arab inhabitants remain loyal to the regime, and disaster would have ensued between the parties had the rhetoric about partitioning and secession proven to be true. In that context, the Democratic Autonomous Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces have succeeded in establishing true conviviality between all components of society, as proven by the fact that the regime no longer has a presence in the area, except in a few security strongholds in the cities of Qamishli and Hasakah.

Following the liberation of Tell Abyad, a civilian administrative tribal council was formed to include all components of society there. I can affirm in this regard that the countrys fate will be decided by the Syrians who respect the rights of all, including the rights of Kurds, who themselves have long been oppressed by the regime. We shall respect the will of the Syrian people, even if they agree to federalism or some other form of governance.

Al-Monitor: Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa is represented in the FSA, but military officers, politicians and Syrian activists have accused your partner, the Syrian Democratic Forces, of fighting against the FSA in Aleppos countryside and of displacing the Arab population there. How do you respond to these accusations?

Abu Issa: Let me reiterate that each area has its own specificities and sources of tension. This revolution has engendered a lot of rhetoric, but we assert that as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, we will never allow any confrontation against a faction that backs the Syrian revolution. Neither the Syrian Democratic Forces nor Kurdish troops intend to confront factions belonging to the FSA, for our aim is to combat IS and terrorism.

Here, we must clarify which factions are actually considered to be part of the FSA. It is unreasonable to characterize any clashes between Syrian Democratic Forces and this faction or that as representing a conflict with the FSA or an attack upon it. Lately, Jaish al-Thuwar, which is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, agreed with certain military factions in Aleppos countryside [Ahrar al-Sham] not to conduct operations against each other and clearly stated that their common enemy was IS. Yet, this does not mean that we will not confront Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist factions as well!

Concerning the issue of Kurds displacing Arabs, we also heard such stories, but never saw any proof of it. In our military alliance with the YPG, and our political presence within the Syrian Democratic Council, which includes the PYD, we never noticed anything related to displacement or a desire to fight the FSA. In May 2015, I told the press that Arabs were never displaced from Tell Abyad, although there were some villages whose IS-affiliated inhabitants left and did not return. Even here, in this village that we control, there are families who have not returned because members of it continue to follow IS and are fighting in the latters ranks in Raqqa.

Al-Monitor: Politically, you are part of the Haytham Manna-led Syrian Democratic Council, which includes the PYD, itself accused of collaborating with the regime and Russia, which is accused of shelling Syrian cities. How do you explain that?

Abu Issa: Our stance vis-a-vis Russia is clear, and we will never accept Russian support here at a time when Russia is killing Syrians elsewhere. A political entente perhaps exists between the PYD and Russia, but militarily, there is no cooperation between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Russia.
March 17, 2016

"They want you to change as they don't really care about you, they don't accept anyone who isn't like them  And you, do you care about yourself?" These are the opening words of the song "God willing" by Kalkidan, an Israeli rapper of Ethiopian origin. The song is about the identity crisis he experienced when he was required to change his name, "great promise" in Amharic, for a Hebrew name fit for Israel. "Your name meant a warrior  not an inferior. Do you want to become a part of the melting pot? Dude, that's nothing but a lot of hot air."

He goes on, "Maybe you should take a few seconds to think of a Hebrew name. Avraham, Yitzhak or Yaacov, a common name or a biblical one ... at the age of three rap was a drug. Today it's a weapon."

The recently published book "Listening to Black: Black Music and Identity Among Young Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel" analyzes the role of African-American music in shaping the identity of Israelis of Ethiopian origin. It offers some far-reaching conclusions. "The establishment sought to lead youths in the Ethiopian-Israeli community through a socialization process that would ultimately imbue them with the national Israeli-Jewish spirit, leaving but a tinge of their traditional Jewish-Ethiopian identity," writes author David Ratner. "Considering this, it is striking that many young Israelis of Ethiopian origin have chosen the hip-hop culture as a major source of identification. And one may wonder why."

In the Israeli music scene, where the local version of pop-rock  and in recent years, MidEastern pop, too  set the tone, the hip-hop trend may signify an identity crisis and a refusal to integrate into Israeli society. Ratner argues otherwise. "This culture" of hip-hop "serves as a symbolic resource on which they draw to mobilize the forces of resistance, creativity and political relevance of the global black diaspora, evolved over the past 150 years," Ratner writes.

Ratner has interviewed dozens of young Israelis from the Ethiopian community and, as he explains in his book, most of them not only strongly connect to what he lumps together as "black music," but have no taste for Israeli rock and actually loathe Middle Eastern music. Surprisingly, they perceive the Middle Eastern genre as the music of oppressors. The way they see it, Sephardic Jews (of Middle Eastern origin, who themselves suffered from discrimination) are the rulers of the country, since they dominate the neighborhoods settled by immigrants from Ethiopia. "They are on top here ... they have power in the country," a boy named Mengistu says in the book, explaining why he dislikes Israelis of Moroccan descent.

"It's easy for us to get fired up about hip-hop  it's the music, the sounds and the message that do it," Ethiopian-Israeli hip-hop artist Reuven "Taderos" Aargau explained to Al-Monitor. Aargau, a member of the musical duo "Axum," went on, "There are clubs that play nothing but black music. No trance, no Middle Eastern, no rock music." He said that as a boy, he used to be "in the Tupac [Shakur] camp, because of the movement he led, and the views he voiced against racism and the hard time blacks had in society. I identified with it."

Rapper Tupac stands out in Ratner's book as the most influential artist in shaping the identity of youths of Ethiopian origin in Israel thanks to his unwavering social stance against racism. Mengistu is quoted as saying that Tupac "strengthens me, giving me the power to carry on."

Amos Harel, the military analyst of Haaretz daily, told Al-Monitor, "It's amazing. One of the leaders of the Ethiopian protest [in 2015] said in an interview that you wouldn't find a home in the Ethiopian community where teens live without a poster of Tupac decorating the walls." Harel, who also covers the local black music scene for the newspaper, addresses the role of black music in shaping the identity of soldiers of Ethiopian origin in his 2013 book, "Let Every Hebrew Mother Know: The New Face of the IDF." Incidentally, the book cover features an IDF officer of Ethiopian origin named Ilak Sahalu, who has eventually become known as a member of "Strong Black Coffee," a highly successful hip-hop duo, one of the top rated in Israel.

"You could ask, what has Tupac to do with all that?" Harel said. "After all, he died in 1996 in Los Angeles. But his hip-hop is a crucial element in their identity. It's quite different from a light-skinned native Israeli listening to hip-hop music just for fun."

"Hip-hop as a trendy musical genre is not how [Israelis of Ethiopian origin] normally experience it," Ratner told Al-Monitor. "They say: Faced with racism, let's take black music as an empowering, inspiring source of strength that gives us the power to carry on." He added, "Israeli youths of Ethiopian origin create an imagined geography  a space of black identity associated with the global black diaspora. It is an empowering experience for them, contrasted with that of the disadvantaged black in white Israeli society, which views them judgmentally."

This is why young Israeli-Ethiopians blend Jamaican, African and American elements in their music, irrespective of the differences. This musical genre's derivation from what they see as the international black nation gives these young people a stable sense of identity, Ratner argued.

Harel, for his part, noted that his impression from speaking with Ethiopian community members was that "they live within the Israel-Ethiopia-US triangle, which reflects a certain detachment, a kind of defiance  I'm from here, but I'm unlike you." Ratner insisted in his conversation with Al-Monitor that it isn't the disinclination to integrate into Israeli society that is behind it. Rather, he maintains that rap allows them "to decipher what's going on in Israel with the tools they acquired from African-Americans who went through similar experiences in the US, and [at the same time,] to fight for their place here."

According to Ratner, this music allows these Israeli-Ethiopian youth "to be 'black' in a 'white' society. It's something that no other musical genre offers them. Through the music, they can relate to a large and proud population that has shown resourcefulness and creativity on the political, cultural and economic levels. The starting point is Israel, and [their] hip-hop has its origins in their experiences in Israeli society. It allows them to establish a strong identity and to cope with the challenges they face in Israeli society."

This explanation is aptly reflected by Taderos, who said, "In my songs I try to bring another point of view, another solution, to create something new, to rise above it all. My messages are essentially social; they deal with the way we relate to each other in our familiar circles, and with the way we treat strangers on the street. Right from the start I had a vision: that Ethiopians shall become a force in society and that we ourselves will be among the first to accomplish it, serving as a model to be followed." For him, hip-hop is a tool for improving Israeli society rather than for going up against it.
March 18, 2016

On March 17, German journalist Hasnain Kazim, Der Spiegels correspondent based in Istanbul, had to leave the country as his press card was not renewed. Kazim reportedly waited three months for the renewal.

While the grim situation of the Turkish media is well-documented and frequently discussed, foreign journalists sustain heavy blows as well. Foreign journalists who do not have Turkish citizenship must obtain a residency permit and a press card to report from Turkey. Both have to be renewed periodically.

There have been high profile cases such as the three Vice News journalists who were arrested for allegedly supporting a terror organization in August 2015. One of them was kept in custody for four months. Over the last few years, several foreign journalists have been deported from Turkey. There are still quite a few foreign journalists reporting from Turkey who are facing various challenges on a regular basis.

Indeed, the press rules for foreign journalists who are accredited have not changed, but Ankara has decided to enforce them more diligently. One senior bureaucrat told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, In times when national security threats are growing exponentially, we have to be vigilant and procedures [for accreditation and residency permits] take time.

Al-Monitor interviewed 13 foreign journalists, the majority of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

All of those interviewed have experienced the process of acquiring and renewing residency permits and press cards in Turkey. Most of them are still in Turkey, though a few have left for other countries. No one interviewed has been deported or faced any criminal charges in Turkey, and they have all served in different countries prior to arriving in the country. Many of them have a basic understanding of Turkish, while a few are proficient. All concurred that the renewal of press cards is becoming increasingly more difficult. One journalist described the hurdles he faced as a nail-biting angst turning into depression while waiting. While the interviews were conducted individually, one theme came up over and over again, namely that despite all hardship we face, we know local journalists face far more, so we cannot complain.

A male journalist from Europe who has lived in Ankara for the last five years told Al-Monitor, In the beginning, the toughest challenge was to survive the amount of food I was forced to eat because of the Turkish hospitality. In 2012 and 2013, the situation changed drastically and more and more often I had to cover street demonstrations and violent protests. Until that time the biggest danger I faced was being trampled by wrestling camels. After that it became normal to deal with tear gas, water cannons, plastic bullets and stones hurled by protesters. Nowadays, the biggest challenge is to be able to report in an environment where self-censorship is a constant danger and whoever disagrees with what you write or objects to the photos you take thinks you are against them. It is also very hard to obtain interviews, especially from ordinary people who seem to be afraid of talking with a foreigner.

A male reporter from North America who has been reporting from Istanbul for the last four years said, Writing about Turkish politics is becoming increasingly a dangerous occupation. Several government officials who agree to talk demand they would like to preview the piece prior to publication. One MHP [Nationalist Action Party] official asked me to kill a piece because it included a section on the HDP [Peoples' Democratic Party]. He said his name could not appear in the international press with the names of the terrorists. There are plenty of capricious examples that turn proper reporting into an impasse.

A female European journalist who has been based in Istanbul for several years told Al-Monitor, As a female freelance journalist, there have been some limitations in working alone, particularly in conservative areas where men do not want to be seen talking to a strange woman. I take care to interview women to get their voices heard, whatever their social or political standing. In terms of how I'm perceived in Turkey, I think much of the abuse I receive on social media for my articles and opinions are particularly geared toward my gender  threats of rape, for example. I've become relatively used to it  it is part of the job.

A male reporter from North America who has been reporting from Istanbul for the last two years said, It's also very hard getting comments from the government or from the main political parties, especially the AKP [Justice and Development Party] or MHP. The CHP [Republican People's Party] is only a bit better, though the HDP has an absolutely incredible public relations apparatus. You can get the cellphone numbers of members of parliament in minutes. There is an increasingly sophisticated government propaganda apparatus  directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP  and they often point their guns at anyone even nominally critical of the AKP or [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. Sometimes they are nice  always looking for gullible foreigners to convert to the cause, but they can also be incredibly vicious.

He added, This might just be a coincidence, but it seems like certain sources, namely academics, are a bit less likely to talk lately, which, if true, means the government has successfully accomplished its goal of silencing some of its most credible critics. More generally, the political situation has gotten much, much worse, and most of my Turkish and Kurdish friends have either been further radicalized or have simply given up and withdrawn from politics and following the news. There's a great feeling of helplessness. It's an exciting life for a journalist, but it's also just incredibly sad and often seemingly hopeless.

So is there no way to survive as a foreign journalist in Turkey? There are at least two ways: First, if you are a foreign journalist reporting critical news about another country but Turkey, then life as an outspoken journalist could be a possibility. Second is the centuries' old strategy of if you cant beat them, join them. Indeed, this may prove to be a financially shrewd decision in the coming months as Turkey grows desperate for positive international press coverage and is ready to pay for it.
Marvin Clemons

Terminal Station was such an iconic Birmingham building that it is an oft-mourned loss, even 45 years after its demolition. A replica of the station's "Welcome to the Magic City" sign now marks the entrance of the soon-to-open Rotary Trail in downtown Birmingham--an ode to train station's history. A new book likewise pays homage to the building itself.

Marvin Clemons' life-long interest in trains has culminated in "Great Temple of Travel: A Pictorial History of Birmingham Terminal Station, 1909-1969." It's the former Birmingham Post-Herald reporter's second book about train history; Clemons cowrote his first, "Birmingham Rails: The Last Golden Era," (2007) with Lyle Key.

"Great Temple of Travel" covers 109 years of history, which includes Birmingham's founding and early days. The hardback book is full of photos and illustrations that accompany the history of railroad travel in the city.

We spoke to Clemons to learn more about his process. Read on for that Q-and-A and an excerpt from the book. Clemons has several book signings scheduled in the coming months. Find a complete schedule and information on how to order the book, $49, at templeoftravel.net.

DETAILS

"Great Temple of Travel: A Pictorial History of Birmingham Terminal Station, 1909-1969" by Marvin Clemons, $49

Signings:

Saturday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Smokey City Train Show, Helena First Baptist Church

March 26, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum Gift Shop, Calera

April 16, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Coosa Valley Train Show, Gadsden Convention Center

April 23, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Alabama Book Festival, Alabama Old Town, Montgomery

April 30, 2 p.m.

Leeds Historic Depot, Leeds

What do you read when you're in the middle of a writing project? Does that differ in any way from your normal reading habits?

Since my writing is largely historical requiring detailed research, I happily distract myself with any reading material at hand, typically periodicals or other railroad writing. My daily reading habit includes Zen philosophy for maintaining a healthy mental outlook, and to help keep me focused and on task.

How did (or did) your newspaper experience influence your writing process for this and your first book?

Sid Thomas, my editor at the Post-Herald, taught me that a well-developed lead, or "hook," was critical to drawing reader attention to the story. Next, the story should evolve with a natural progression from beginning to end, without adding unnecessary detail or superfluous commentary. Those few easy to remember, though difficult to achieve editorial principles, guide my writing efforts.

What is your favorite still-standing Birmingham building?

Although not the most architecturally appealing of Birmingham buildings, for reasons of pure nostalgia I would have to say the former Bank for Savings Building, now known as Two North Twentieth, at 20th Street and Morris Avenue. The building is located on the site of Birmingham's first railroad hotel and passenger station, the Relay House, which then became the site of Union Station, Birmingham's first dedicated passenger depot. And for the railfan, the building offers great views of the passing trains on Birmingham's busiest rail route along the Railroad Reservation.

What was your favorite childhood book?

It would be a tie between "The Little Engine That Could" and "The Little Red Caboose." Today it would have to be "Thomas the Tank Engine," which has won a whole generation of kids over to trains. I was also fascinated by the stories and artwork in the Collier's Junior Classics, which really opened up my childhood imagination. Even today, I can't imagine a finer introduction to literature for young people.

Have you started or do you have ideas for your next project? What will it be?

I like to switch gears between writing and other creative projects, and am usually working on two or three ideas concurrently. My next production will be a multimedia DVD featuring vintage movies and images of Birmingham railroads. I'm also preparing a re-release of "Birmingham Rails," my first self-published railroad book co-authored with Lyle Key, in digital format. The limited print edition sold out in just 10 months, even before many realized it had been published. The book was later honored by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society with its prestigious George Hilton Book Award, and won an Award of Excellence from the Printing Industry Association of the South.

Magic City sign goes up as Rotary Trail opening nears

AN EXCERPT

Clemons writes about the series of events leading up to the decision to demolish Terminal Station for the proposed construction of a new Social Security regional service center, and the aftermath of the cancelled project:

--

As sometimes happens with even the best of business proposals, another downtown location won out for the Social Security Administration's service center, and the Terminal Station property was not developed as planned.

In light of that fact, many observers felt then, as many still do, that the Terminal Company was premature in its decision to remove the station. But from the facts as presented, few if any would disagree that, at the time of its removal, the building had long passed its useful life as a railroad station serving trains and passengers that no longer existed, and which would never return. Having already absorbed millions of dollars in losses from years of operating money-losing passenger trains, it's understandable that the railroads attempted to salvage what value they could from their depressed property.

As for the station's preservation, no group or organization was able to secure the necessary funds at the 11th hour to save the building, let alone pay for the land it occupied. It seems reasonable to assume that anyone with serious intentions of saving the station would have long before recognized its eventual fate and attempted to line up the necessary political, civic, and business support for a redevelopment proposal, well in advance of the railroad's decision to abandon it.

Facts and reasonable assumptions aside, nothing can compensate for the loss of such an architectural masterpiece and iconic symbol as Terminal Station, or lessen the regret felt by those who, in hindsight, may have been able to help preserve the station as a historical site or other attraction.

In her 2004 book entitled Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build A Brighter Future, Suzanna Morse quotes former Birmingham Mayor George Seibels regarding the circumstances surrounding the station's fate.

"We just didn't have enough information to try to coordinate the various interests that would have had to come together to save it," she quoted Seibels. "The great shame is that Birmingham lost one of its most glorious landmarks to an ill-conceived proposition. It's certainly the most unpopular razing of any structure in the city's history, and although it probably took another ten or fifteen years after we lost the Terminal Station, we now seem to put a great deal more thought into what a particular building or landmark means to the fabric of the community. There's no more just knocking things down," the mayor concluded.

Indeed, if any good has come from the loss of Terminal Station, it has been a heightened awareness by politicians, businessmen, and civic groups of the value of historic preservation to the community. Also, in fairness to the few who tried, albeit too late to win political and business support for saving the station, at the time there were few financial incentives available for historic preservation. It wasn't until 1977, nearly a decade later, that the federal government began to provide grants, tax breaks, and other inducements to encourage preservation and restoration of historically significant structures.

...As a case in point, since the loss of Terminal Station, Birmingham has gone on to save and restore a number of landmark buildings that helped to define the community. The historic Sloss Furnace, the city's second blast furnace built in 1882 and located within sight of Terminal Station, received National Historic Landmark designation in 1981 and opened its gates in September 1983 as a museum underwritten by the City of Birmingham.

After a close brush with destruction, the historic Alabama Theatre, with its majestic Wurlitzer theatre organ, has become a popular venue for the performing arts. The theatre and its historic organ were added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on February 15, 1977 and to the National Register of Historic Places on November 13, 1979.

Recognition of Terminal Station's importance has extended well beyond the local community. In 2014, the Birmingham News and its digital media counterpart, AL.com, reported that Terminal Station had been included in a list of "nine of the most beautiful buildings ever torn down." Published by Gizmodo, an international design and technology blog, the list included New York City's iconic Pennsylvania Station, described as "the demolition that united concerned citizens and architects to create the movement that we, today, know as historic preservation." As any railroad historian will tell you, placing Birmingham's Terminal Station on par with Penn Station is a significant tribute to the building once hailed the "great temple of travel."

Reprinted with permission from Marvin Clemons
The Rev. Lone Broussard, a Unitarian minister who officiated seven same-sex weddings on one day when gay marriage became legal in Alabama, is retiring.

"I remember with amazement the joy of all the couples who came," Broussard said. "I remember doing more weddings in a day than I've ever done in my life."

Broussard will preach her last sermon on Sunday, March 20, at 10:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham, 4300 Hampton Heights Drive.

Broussard, 69, has celebrated more than 150 same-sex unions in her ministry career.

On Feb. 9, 2015, gay couples gathered in Linn Park in Birmingham after a court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in Alabama for the first time. While Broussard conducted seven weddings, her ministerial intern, Gail Stratton, did eight that day. That's 15 weddings by the Unitarian team that day.

"It was something to celebrate," Broussard said. "I've done same-sex marriages my entire ministry. That's right and wonderful. They didn't have to jump through legal hoops."

Broussard is moving to San Diego, where her son lives. Her husband, Bruce Broussard, died in 2012.

She said she'll miss the city and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham.

"I will miss the congregation a great deal," Broussard said. "I wish they weren't such a well-kept secret."

The church has about 200 members on roll and has average attendance of about 100 on Sundays.

"We are a faith that is perfect for this time, when we have to learn to live together and be one community," Broussard said.

"I'll miss the tenacity and courage of the congregation," she said. "They don't always do the easy thing."

As for Alabama, she hopes the state will "Let go of the past. Stop trying to turn things back."

Unitarians have long embraced civil rights and were on the front lines of marches in Selma in 1965.

"This church stood up for things when you could get killed for it," Broussard said.

Unitarians have also made a strong stand for gay rights and same-sex marriage, she said.

"We knew we were on the right side of history," Broussard said. "We tend to march ahead in many ways."
An Attalla man was arrested Thursday after authorities say they discovered 95 grams of methamphetamine at his residence.

Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit Commander Randall Johnson said Roy Claude Farlow Jr., 56, of Attalla, has been charged with trafficking in methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Johnson said agents received information that "a large quantity of drugs" had been delivered to an address on Whispering Pines Road in Attalla. Agents then found approximately 95 grams of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia at the residence.

Farlow was taken the Etowah County Detention Center and released on $51,000 bond. This case remains open and additional arrests are expected, Johnson said.

Agents with the Alabama National Guard Counterdrug Program and the FBI North Alabama Safe Streets Task Force participated in the arrest.

If you have any questions, please contact Commander Randall
A College Park, Ga. man was killed in a two-vehicle accident this afternoon near the Etowah County line at Southside.

Etowah County Coroner Michael Head said the 29-year-old driver of a truck was killed in an accident that occurred at 12:27 p.m. on Alabama 77 near Louise Avenue.

Head said the wreck involved a Honda Accord and an 18-wheeler heading north on Alabama 77. The truck slid down the highway, touching guardrails on both sides, until it came to a rest, he said. It took approximately 90 minutes to extract the truck's driver.

The victim's name has not yet been released, pending notification of his family. The driver of the Honda was taken to the hospital, Southside police said.

The cause of the accident is under investigation by Southside police and Alabama State Troopers.

This post was modified at 5:09 p.m. March 18 to add new information.
Syrian activist Jad Bantha came back to Damascus after a long period of living abroad. He wanted to participate in the revolution and started attending protests. One day, after doing so in early 2011, he was taken from his home, in front of his parents, by security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. He told them not to worry.

The first week I was just being held, but when I refused to give them information about my friends they started torturing me, humiliating me, the 32-year-old Syrian, who doesnt want his real name published told Al Jazeera.

They hanged me from my hands at the ceiling for eight days. My feet were swollen and I couldnt feel them anymore. I was afraid they needed to be amputated.

In those two months of detention, Jad said he was tortured in several ways. Sometimes, when he asked for water, intelligence officers took him water boarding. According to him, this method of torture includes electricity and water, and it was the most painful method of them all.

I felt broken and didnt care about my life anymore. I thought I would die in prison, he said during an interview over skype from Damascus.

But he didnt. After a few weeks, Jad was released. But instead of leaving the country, he started working as a human right researcher.

My hands were tied

Unfortunately, history repeated itself on November 2, 2013, when he was captured again by government forces while taking pictures on the Harasta highway, the road to Homs.

I got wounded during clashes between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the troops of Assad. When I woke up, I found myself in a military base. My hands were tied and my feet shackled, Jad said.

Two weeks later, he got released when the FSA took over the military base. However, he said the Syrian regime detained his parents on December 22 to punish him for escaping earlier.

They want me to turn myself in. Now, I dont know where my parents are and what I should do, he concluded.

In Syria, it is not hard to find victims of unlawful detention and torture. Syrian activists and other citizens have vanished into secret detention as part of a widespread campaign of terror against the civilian population by the Syrian government, independent UN investigators said. Some are being released, but others are nowhere to be found.

When I was working in a refugee camp in Barzeh, in Damascus, one of my colleagues was captured at a military checkpoint in August, 2012. We havent heard anything from him since, 24-year-old woman Afraa Salem, who doesnt want her real name to be published, told Al Jazeera during an interview in Amman, Jordan.

Humanitarian workers are also victims of frequent attacks against the civilian population, Afraa said. After her colleague was abducted, she heard from several people that the mukhabarat, Syrias secret service, was asking questions about her. In late 2012, Afraa packed her bags and left Syria for good. Now she lives in a neighbouring country.

If you get arrested, there is a pretty good chance you will never see daylight again, she said.

Afraa remembers the 13-year-old boy who used to sell cigarettes on the streets of Damascus, just to make a living during the war. I used to see that kid every day, until the police arrested him. They tortured him so severely that he had to recover in the hospital for weeks. Rebel fighters have also been accused of torturing detainees.

Hard to give answers

Simon Schorno from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) handles allegations of arrest, working to research and clarify what has happened to the individuals concerned. Representatives in the country visit those detained or arrested as quickly as possible, in order to ensure that the conditions in which detainees are held comply with the national and international standards. The information is then reported back to the family.

But to be honest, documenting is the only thing we can do now. The Syrian authorities dont allow us to visit prisoners and they hardly give us any answers about individual cases, Simon told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from Damascus.

According to ICRC, tens of thousands of Syrians are missing, most likely detained. Those numbers include activists, opposition fighters, journalists, civilians and humanitarian workers. Most of the detainees have been men, but women and children have not been spared. Syrians spread pictures of their missing beloved ones on Twitter and Facebook, hoping that somebody has information about their situation.

Noura al Jizawi, a human rights activist, for example, was abducted by Syrian security forces on March 28, 2012 as she went to a transit depot. Al Jizawi has been held at an unknown location where her lawyers and family have been unable to talk or see her.

The survivors of enforced disappearances consistently described torture as being part their detention. Twenty-year-old Hadi Tammas was studying in Latakia when armed men entered his dorm and arrested all the students inside.

It wasnt even the torture itself that broke him. The sounds of other prisoners who were tortured were much worse, he said. They screamed non-stop and begged for their lives, Rifaie Tammas, the brother of Hadi, told Al Jazeera in an interview via skype.

Hadi was in detention for 24 hours, but was tortured non-stop, his brother said. They hold his head in a bowl of water, until he almost suffocated. Later, they tied his hands and feet and started pulling his limbs in different directions, trying to dislocate them.

Shocking abuses

After his release, Hadi quitted his study and joined the Free Syrian Army. He died during a battle, just like his father and uncle.

When the regime won back Qusair in the summer, they arrested dozens of civilians, even old men, for no reason. I stopped counting the numbers of missing people, because there are so many, Rifaie said.

Qusair is a city in western Syria, 35 kilometres away from Homs, and is strategic both for the government and for rebels who held it for over a year. It was the scene of some of the fiercest combat in the almost three-year-old conflict.

Although the victims hardly talk about rape during their detention, several cases have been reported since the Syrian uprising. According to Afraa this also is a common tactic to silence the opposition, just like other forms of torture.

My male friend, who was arrested several times, was raped by guards during his detention, and I know some girls who got raped as well. But the problem in Syria is that you hardly hear victims talking about it. They feel ashamed and think its their fault, especially men, Afraa told Al Jazeera.

Most witnesses have identified Syrian intelligence officers, soldiers and pro-government militias as the ones who detain, torture and rape civilians, but the UN said that some armed groups in northern Syria, like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also abduct people.

In a separate report, London-based Amnesty International said armed groups were perpetrating a shocking catalogue of abuses in secret jails across northern Syria, including torture, flogging and killings after summary trials.
A year after a mob burned Farkhunda Malikzada to death in Kabul, Afghan women say the fight for justice will go on.

Kabul, Afghanistan  A monument has been inaugurated in memory of Farkhunda Malikzada in front of the Kabul River, where her body was set on fire by a crazed mob a year ago, in March 2015.

On the day of her death, Farkhunda was falsely accused of burning the Quran. The 27-year-old was then attacked and killed by a mob of mostly men who beat her, set her body on fire and then threw it into the Kabul River.

Mass protests were held after her death and some of her attackers were tried and sentenced. However, those attackers initially sentenced to death had their sentences overturned or shortened, while others were set free.

The Solidarity Party of Afghanistan organised a commemoration event on March 17, nearly one year after the killing. Hundreds of Afghans gathered to declare their intention to fight for justice.

The Shaheed Farkhunda monument will stand as a testimonial to the pledge of those who have vowed to fight relentlessly against the ignominy of ignorance, bigotry, misogyny and obscurantism, the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan said in a statement.

Al Jazeera spoke to some of those attending the commemoration.

Selia Ghafar  This country is hell for women

Once again, Afghanistans government has shown the world that this country is hell for women.

We knew Afghanistans judicial system, law and order would never work in favour of women in Afghanistan, and we were proven right after all the accused in Farkhundas case were not punished.

I dont trust the government any more. We are on our own.

Hameeda Wardak  We are all Farkhunda

I came down here to the memorial to express that we all are Farkhunda and we want justice.

But I know our government will fail once again to do anything for women. Farkhunda is not the first one and wont be the last one.

We will keep fighting for our rights and protect women. We will also make sure innocent women whove faced brutal deaths like Farkhunda get justice.

Mina Nasr  Our future is dark

Women are living with fear in Afghanistan.

I am seeing many women have come down today to support justice for Farkhunda. This should continue as we all know, with this kind of government, law and order, our future is dark.

We should all stand united.

Belqis Roshan  Women dont feel safe here

We are hearing about how women are treated in Afghanistan every day.

Some are being stoned to death, others are being raped and silenced, many are killed who are nothing but innocent.

The government is doing nothing about it. I dont feel safe here, women dont feel safe here.

We are powerless, thanks to our government.

Sadeqa  I see Farkhunda in my daughter

Today, I am here because I see Farkhunda in my daughter.

Every day, when I look at my daughter, I think, if it was her, what would I do?

Would I have been able to save her? No. This thought always scares me. It could be my daughter any day.

This has to stop.

Farkhunda was beaten and burned alive for something she never did. Where is our justice system? Who do we rely on?

I want Farkhundas killers to be killed the exact same way she was killed. Dragged on the road, beaten and burnt alive.

Taranoom Sayedi  She is a reminder for us to keep fighting for our rights

Ive been crying all day today thinking of how helpless we all are.

It has been a year now and nothing is being done to serve justice to Farkhunda and her family.

Her mother is living in hope every day, hope of getting justice.

Farkhunda will not be forgotten.

She is a reminder for us of how brutal our people can be when treating women. She is a reminder for us to keep fighting for our rights.
Following the defeat of Anita Alvarez in Cook County, we ask if protest movements will translate into electoral power.

In 1969, Illinois Cook County states attorney Edward Hanrahan orchestrated what amounted to a police assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two leaders of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Hanrahan (who was later indicted for obstruction of justice, and acquitted) triggered an electoral revolt in the black community that booted him from office and sparked an independent black political movement, culminating in the election of Harold Washington, Chicagos first black mayor.

Many analysts look to that episode when searching for historical analogies for the recent defeat of two-term Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez, who lost to Kim Foxx, a black woman who was formerly her assistant.

Alvarez was the target of vigorous protests that condemned her for waiting 400 days before announcing murder charges against a Chicago police officer who fired 16 bullets into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, as he walked unarmed in the middle of a Chicago street in October 2014.

Foxxs successful campaign focused heavily on that complaint.

Whats more, Alvarez charged the officer with murder only after it was announced that a police dash-cam video depicting the shooting would be released to the public. The damning video features Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke firing at the unarmed teenager who was walking away from him. Officer Van Dyke continued pumping bullets into McDonald even after his body had fallen.

The case attracted national, and even global attention, and provoked a political crisis for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, forcing the resignation of several municipal officials, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

Perhaps more importantly, it galvanised a vibrant activist community of students, newly energised street activists and protest-hardened veterans that has since become an influential player in a growing number of city issues.

When Alvarez refused demands for her resignation, those emerging activist networks went to work for Foxxs campaign. So, in many ways, Alvarezs defeat is an echo of Hanrahans rejection at the ballot box.

Will Black Lives Matter affect the election?

Now, many black activists want to extend the analogy, hoping to parlay the outrage at Alvarez into an electoral movement, as did the Hanrahan revolt. Those questions are particularly relevant now as analysts assess the effects of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on electoral activity.

The BLM is more or less three-years-old, having coalesced following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of an unarmed, black 17-year-old named Trayvon Martin. The group expanded and gained national notice after the 2014 deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

Since the start of this 2016 election cycle, BLM protesters have gained media prominence by confronting presidential candidates and demanding they address issues of criminal justice reform and racist policing.

The group has attracted some criticism for disrupting the campaigns of candidates who are more likely to be sympathetic. But those incidents have proven to be boons both for the BLM movement and the candidates themselves, at least the Democrats.

The BLM confrontation with Sanders, for example, required the Vermont senator to focus on his civil rights record and begin tailoring his message more to a black audience. As a secular, democratic socialist from an overwhelmingly white state, Sanders never had that angle of vision. And, although Sanders still labours hard to attract black votes, his openness to the movements challenge has improved his image within the black activist community.

READ MORE: Can Bernie Sanders win the African American vote?

Similarly, the movement has forced Hillary Clinton to confront some questionable policies of the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton. Until being challenged by BLM members, Clinton boasted about his tenure (1993-2001), which featured a significant increase in the good fortunes of black Americans (home ownership and employment increased). But BLM protesters forced Clinton to address the explosive growth in the prison population which also occurred during his presidency, largely because of the harsh law enforcement policies he signed into law.

Those disruptive acts have attracted media attention and altered the campaign spiels of the Democratic candidates, but critics question whether those techniques have weightier and more substantial implications.

The election of Kim Foxx in the Democratic primary for Cook County States Attorney (tantamount to election in Democrat-heavy Cook County) is a tangible result.

Trumps racism  wont go down in Chicago

We worked hard to get Kim Foxx elected, said Jedidiah Brown, the founder of a group called the Young Leaders Alliance. In fact, one of the most encouraging things of this campaign was how many young black people got involved in the process.

Although his group is not officially connected to BLM, it, like many other organisations that emerged in the wake of controversy about police shootings, share the same spirit and adopt similar tactics.

The 29-year-old Brown perhaps is best known as the young black man captured on video storming the stage at the cancelled Trump rally in Chicago on March 11. This act has become a symbol of Chicagos audacious activist energy, and his motivations make explicit the connection between these protest movements and electoral politics.

We just wanted to make it clear that the racism and hate that Trump and his followers spew wont go down in Chicago, he said.

The young people disrupting Trumps racist rallies are the same young people who demand justice for the shooting of Laquan McDonald and Rekia Boyd [an unarmed black woman also killed by a bullet from a Chicago cop], Brown told me.

What you see here in Chicago is a swelling of consciousness among young people. This is no joke or no one-time fling. They are ready to get deeply involved in the political structure and theyre very serious about change.

OPINION: Racism in the US  the melting pot is boiling

Growing support and an energised electorate

Brown said that in the days since he stormed the Trump stage, he has received a blizzard of support from international sources. Weve been so overwhelmed by groups from across the world that weve decided to make some formal connections.

The movement also seems to have had some success in Cleveland Ohios Cuyahoga County, where prosecuting attorney Timothy McGinty was defeated by Michael OMalley, a former deputy country prosecutor.

McGinty led the contentious grand jury inquiry into the fatal police shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was shot by police in November 2014 while playing with a toy gun in a park.

The election of Foxx, a newcomer with a slight resume, in Cook County illustrates the potential of an energised electorate and gives hope to those who insist the spirit of BLM will manifest in electoral power.

I look at the electoral energy that gave us Kim Foxx and I see the possibility of another Harold Washington in Chicagos future, said Robert Starks, a retired professor of political science and one of the activists who led the fight to elect Washington.

Critics, however, remain unconvinced.
Israel supporters condemn painting at York University, but student centre says keeping it up protects freedom of speech.

Toronto, Canada  A low, steady hum of voices consumes the York University student centre as people make their way to classes. Few bother to look up at the row of paintings lining the walls.

There, hanging above the entrance, is the picture that captured headlines earlier this year in what has come to symbolise the latest chapter in Torontos debate over the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

This year, when the controversy stirred up and people were saying how it was a symbol of anti-Semitism, I was shocked, said Rawan Habib, 19, a second-year sociology student and member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University. The group that describes itself as the Palestine-solidarity movement at the university and believes Israel is an apartheid state [that] resembles South African apartheid.

I was genuinely hurt because, to me, [the painting] was a symbol of Palestinian resistance. It was a symbol of Palestinian identity, Habib said, adding that she believes the reason the painting, and the group, is seen as anti-Semitic is because were not able to have these discussions; were not able to break down the misconception that criticism [of Israel] is criticism of a religion.

They have nothing to do with one another, she added.

The object of contention is a student painting entitled Palestinian Roots depicting a young man with a keffiyeh-style scarf, embellished with a Palestinian flag. Above the flag is the outline of pre-1948 Palestine. The young mans hands are crossed behind his back, stones visible in them. He watches as a bulldozer approaches an olive tree in the foreground. The words justice and peace are written in different languages below the painting.

My inspiration for this piece is the ongoing issue in Palestine where illegal settlement expansions have become common, the artist, former York business student Ahmad Al Abid, wrote in a post explaining the piece. These expansions come at the expense of uprooting century-old olive trees, trees intertwined with the roots of the Palestinian people, he wrote. The artist did not respond to a request from Al Jazeera for comment.

Hate propaganda?

The issue came to a head in late January, when Canadian film producer Paul Bronfman gave the university an ultimatum: take the painting down, or he would pull thousands of dollars in yearly film production donations from the school.

I think if they really cared about the issues of hate propaganda and anti-Semitism they would do the right thing and take the mural down, Bronfman wrote in a post shared by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC), a Toronto-based group that publicly complained about the piece in September.

We are sorry that this piece makes some people feel uncomfortable, but its important to identify that although the artwork may be provocative, it falls within the principles of free speech, Gayle McFadden, chair of the student centre at York University, told Al Jazeera.

It wont be taken down. It was, along with 28 other pieces, just recently adopted into the student centres permanent collection, so its staying up, McFadden said.

Avi Benlolo, the FSWC director, told Al Jazeera in an email that the painting is a propaganda piece that is a symbol of the ongoing campaign targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students at York.

Jewish and pro-Israel students are shouted down at every step, faced bias in the student newspaper and by student leadership. [They] face threats and intimidation and are afraid to wear symbols of their faith on campus, Benlolo added.

Meanwhile, Robert Lantos, another prominent Canadian film producer, accused York University of going from an academic institution into an incubator of hate and violence against the Jewish people.

In an open letter posted on the FSWC website, Lantos called on Mamdouh Shoukri, president and vice chancellor at York University, to take the painting down. Sweep Jew hatred to the gutter, where it belongs, Lantos had written.

Janice Walls, the universitys director of media relations, said authority over the painting falls to the York University student centre, which is a separate entity from the university.

It is clear that the subject of the artwork is offensive to some individuals and groups, particularly Jewish members of our community, Walls said, adding that the university requested that the student centre executive would establish procedures for hearing and resolving complaints from students about their shared space.

The school will also establish a presidents advisory committee on inclusion to look at ways to encourage inclusive debates, she said.

Curbing freedom of speech

Many of the students and faculty at York view this issue through the lens of free speech.

John Greyson, a York University film professor, was one of 100 current and former faculty members who signed a statement in support of freedom of expression at the university in light of the controversy over the painting.

READ MORE: Canada jumps on the ani-BDS bandwagon

We have a long tradition of free speech, a long tradition of activism in support of Palestine, and a long tradition of Jewish and non-Jewish students and faculty arguing around human rights, Greyson told Al Jazeera. They dont seem to like that, so these are techniques for trying to shut down dialogue, trying to shut down debate.

Theres continually the will to silence on the part of people who dont like any form of criticism of Israel to happen.

Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, even waded into the issue, applauding students and faculty for standing up to [Bronfmans] bullying tactics.

Happily, York University students and faculty members seem to recognise that protest is OK, and that freedom of speech is a fundamental right and not for sale to the likes of you, Waters had written in an open letter to the university.

Pressure on Palestine organising

The Palestinian Roots painting was one of more than two dozen pieces chosen by a jury in 2013 to highlight student artists, McFadden explained.

Habib, the sociology student, said the painting controversy highlights the pressure Palestine solidarity activists are under on university campuses.

Theyre trying to incite fear in the hope that it will stop us, that it will hinder our success, that it will make us think that maybe this is becoming too dangerous, [and] maybe we should stop, she said.

But the attacks only make organisers want to do more, she added.

York will host four events from March 21-24 during Israeli Apartheid Week, a series of lectures, film screenings and other events that bring attention to Israels treatment of the Palestinians. The annual event first began in Toronto in 2005.

People keep coming out; people do want to know more, Habib said. Because the [Israeli] occupation continues to exist, people continue to want to resist.
Palestinian American Farouk Shami is an associate who says Donald Trump would make a great president.

An earlier version of this story said that Farouk Shami came to the US in 1986 with $75. This was incorrect. He came to the US in 1965 with $71.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may have angered many Muslims when he said that he would ban Muslim immigration to the United States, but a close Muslim business associate, Palestinian American Farouk Shami, says he suspects Trump would moderate his views if he were to become president.

Shami emigrated to the US from a village near Ramallah, Palestine, with only $71 in his pocket in 1965, and went on to build one of the nations largest manufacturers of haircare products, Farouk Systems. His products have been featured on Trumps television shows and Shami says that he first met the property mogul when he sponsored Miss Teen USA, Miss USA and Miss Universe in 2003.

But, last year, Farouk withdrew sponsorship of Trumps Miss Universe pageants and Celebrity Apprentice over the candidates comments about Mexican immigrants.

Now, however, he says he hopes to reconnect with Trump.

As Trump becomes the Republican candidate, I plan to connect with him and donate to his campaign and try to get him Muslim votes, Shami told Al Jazeera.

If we do that, he will be open for us and soften his talks about immigrants and Muslims.

READ MORE: American Muslims speak out

Shami described Trumps comments about Mexicans and Muslims as only campaign talk.

[What he says] is unconstitutional and he knows that, added Shami, who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for governor of Texas in 2010.

[The] USA is a country of immigrants and he knows that first-hand.

Media in [the] USA have been marketing anti-Islam for a long time, and much more since 9/11.

Shami said that he believes Trump has tapped into that sentiment among those who have been brainwashed to oppose Islam and immigration, but also believes he has support from those who are tired of typical politicians.

Despite this, he added: In my personal opinion, Trump does not believe in what he said.

SABA AHMED: Urging US Muslims to vote Republican

I am proud of my Muslim religion of love and peace, but at the same time I respect everyones faith, Shami said, addressing those who have questioned or criticised his Muslim faith.

In America, we are equal in front of God and the law, regardless of our faith, our colour or our origins. Politics is separate and has nothing to do with [religion]. That is how it should be.

Shami said he is also a friend of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of Trumps most critical rivals, but that he disagrees with Cruz all the way, particularly on the issue of Israel and Palestine.

Shami believes that Trump, if elected president, would favour a more balanced US approach to negotiations between the two and said he is encouraged by Trumps claims that he would be neutral.





Trump is a businessman and understands that a good deal is a fair deal, he said.

He will be a more honest broker than previous presidents who tried and failed because they need Israeli support in Congress and [the] Senate as well as financial Jewish support and votes.

Trump can do without that.

Overall, he said, he is optimistic. Trump can be an honest broker in the Palestinian-Israel peace process. No other candidates have the guts to be as honest as Trump, we hope.

But Shami is opposed to Trumps plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Walls dont work unless you want to take peoples land, as Israel did in Palestine. We need to build bridges, not walls. We need to build industries and manufacturing on the border for Americans and Mexicans as well.

Trump is a businessman, so he is a planner and he planned all his comments to get peoples anger out by supporting him, Shami added.

I am not surprised in the tone of the campaign. It brought out what many people think of their politicians.

Trump seemingly also has faith in Shami, at least as far as his hair is concerned  reportedly using Farouk Systems CHI Helmet Head hairspray.
Doha, Qatar  The urgent need to protect journalists  and the future of their profession  will be the focus of two events in Doha this week.

The International Press Institute is holding its 65th annual gathering under the banner,  Safety and Professionalism in A Dangerous World , from March 19 to 21. The IPI was founded in 1950 to campaign for press freedom, and its members are active in more than 120 countries.

The Future of News and News Organisations will be the subject of the 3rd World Media Summit gathering from March 20 to 21. The World Media Summit was founded by the Chinese news agency Xinhua in 2008 as a forum to discuss cooperation between media institutions. Beijing hosted the first Summit in 2009, and Moscow hosted the second summit in 2012.

Each year, journalists across the world are attacked for doing their work. Many are imprisoned; some are killed.

In the first few months of 2016, at least six have died in the line of duty, according to figures from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Last year, at least 71 reporters were killed and 199 were imprisoned. For four years in a row, Syria has topped the list of most dangerous countries to be working in the media.

Continuing conflicts, censorship and acts of violence threaten the lives of journalists, and the perpetrators of killings, violence and intimidation often enjoy impunity.

QUIZ: What are the dangers facing journalists globally?

As countries differ in their responses to media freedom violations, the call for a unanimous, global response has intensified.

In May 2015, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling on members to create a safe environment in law and practice for media professionals.

Both of the conferences being held in Doha in the forthcoming days will discuss potential mechanisms to enforce protection. Al Jazeera Media Network is the official host of both events.

Press freedom advocates and journalists share their views on the state of their profession in 2016.

Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive, Index on Censorship

Journalists  and a free press  are fundamental to democracy because they enable the flow of facts that allow people to gain accurate information about a situation. Journalists protection is becoming increasingly important because, more and more, governments are using legislation intended to be used to target violent extremism and terrorism as a mechanism simply to silence anyone who is critical of the government.

International law does not provide many explicit carve-outs to protect journalists. However, journalists are protected by the same rights as any other civilians under the Geneva Conventions. The international community can help by ensuring it abides by these protocols, and, additionally, by ensuring that countries desist from using terror legislation to target journalists as we have seen happening in Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere.

Media organisations have a high degree of responsibility towards all the journalists they employ  whether they are on staff or not  and we are encouraged that some international organisations are now signing up to a global set of principles to protect the freelance journalists they employ. It is good that more focus is being placed on journalist safety: the reports to our Mapping Media Freedom project, which monitors media freedom violations in Europe and neighbouring countries, shows that violence against journalists is a growing problem in this region alone. The real question though  as ever  is whether governments and media organisations make good on any commitments for improving the situation.

Sherif Mansour, MENA programme coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists

Egyptian journalists face unprecedented threats in current day Egypt . Egypt is one off the worst jailers of journalists worldwide. The country was holding at least 23 journalists behind bars because of their work in December, second only to China. Most are kept in prolonged trials under national security and anti-terrorism charges. Since January 1, four people have been sentenced for publishing false news, five others were referred to trial, and two others were detained.

The Egyptian government needs to stop its crackdown on independent voices and respect dissent. This can take the form of public comments, reversing the press vilification campaign, and legal amendments to take back laws and amendments that were heavily used to restrict the press, including the anti-terrorism law and the anti-protest laws.

Egyptian civil society, including the Journalist Syndicate, and press freedom advocates, needs to stay vigilant.

Finally, the international community, including donor agencies, and foreign governments, need to keep press freedom on the agenda while discussing any investment opportunities or financial aid packages with Egyptian officials.

WATCH: Egypts media  revolution and reality

As an Egyptian human rights and press freedom advocate, it pains me to see the rapid and massive deterioration in the Egyptian media. It also pains me how misinformed and blind-sided many of the people in Egypt are about the reality of the situation inside the country.

After a small opening in 2011-2012, we had an unprecedented number of outlets which presented diverse opinions and carried national debates  Now, it is exactly the opposite. Most media is tightly controlled, with one voice. Most of the content is sensational. And most importantly, there are no real discussions or debates about important national interest issues, including fighting terrorism and economic solutions, let alone the human rights crisis.

Martin Schibbye, editor-in-chief, Blank Spot Project

Schibbye was arrested in Ethiopia in 2011 and sentenced to 11 years in jail for aiding a rebel group after entering the country with fighters from the Ogaden National Liberation Front. He was released in 2012.

I think were facing a hunting season on journalists and its only getting worse  One reason is that you have terrorist or rebel groups, they all have Twitter accounts or YouTube channels, and you have countries that have their own state propaganda. Every neutral observer, every objective journalist becomes a threat to all parts in todays conflicts. That situation is new. We are facing the greatest challenge ever for reporting.

On top of this, theres a new threat on the horizon which is the criminalisation of journalism in many countries.

In Ethiopia, I spent 14 months in jail for doing my job. The state suddenly decides that this kind of journalism is not allowed.

This development where the so-called war on terror has become a war on journalists in many countries.

Spending time in prison, of course, leaves a scar. The last thing the other prisoners told me is, Please, tell the world what you have seen. And Ive been trying to keep that promise ever since.

The worst fear I had in prison myself was being forgotten, and I know how important it is to keep campaigning and advocating. For the imprisoned journalist, its really more important than food and water to have people campaigning for you and highlighting press freedom.

OPINION: Exceptions to the democratic rule

Its on a political level now. Journalists are doing everything they can to stay safe. Were taking courses, were doing everything we can to protect ourselves and our sources. But it doesnt help, really, all the way. It needs to be addressed on the highest political level. I think it needs to be turned into a war crime to attack a journalist.

I think if the Geneva Conventions had been written today, the role of the journalist would have been more protected. Were not protected the way Red Cross workers or diplomats are, and I think we ought to be.

I think it should be a war crime to attack a colleague. I think politicians really need to raise the stakes when it comes to attacks on our colleagues.

Ramy Alasheq, editor of Abwab, a paper for refugees by refugees in Germany

I was imprisoned because I participated in a demonstration in 2011. The same day I left prison in Damascus, I wrote a story about what happened to me in jail. The militias with the Syrian regime tried to kill me because of my writing. They always try to attack people who are against the regime. When I was getting out of my car, they threw rocks at me. I had to force myself into hiding for over nine months and I was eventually forced to leave Syria.

A lot of people have been to prison in Syria and been hidden. Our friend Rami Jarrah was arrested in Turkey, and he had been covering the Russian bombing campaign in Syria. Journalists and activists are often taken hostage in the war. Everywhere there are journalists there are problems, and they are just on a mission to prove the truth.

I started Abwab in a similar vein. We are providing true stories of the Arab community here, from within Germany. We are giving necessary, important information to newcomers  how to deal with a new life in Germany.

Its always important to protect journalists; without media and journalism we wont have any information about the truth. Warlords want to fight anyone who is filming, trying to show the world what is going on.

READ MORE: Refugees in Germany launch newspaper for fellow newcomers

Its necessary to have an organisation, something to officially protect journalists around the world. Now, there is nothing like this. There should be a global response to providing safety.

The murder mystery of Elvis Ordaniza

The story of a reporter killed last month in the Philippines is indicative of the challenges facing the protection of journalists.

Elvis Ordanizas family could not comment on record for security reasons.

It was past sunset on Tuesday, February 16, in the coastal town of Pitogo facing Moro Gulf, in the southern island of Mindanao. The town had a power cut so it was darker than usual. But it was time for Elvis Ordaniza, 49, to prepare dinner for his family. He stepped out to gather firewood. Elvis never made it back to the kitchen.

Two unidentified men barged into his home. One of them shot him twice in the chest with a .45-calibre pistol. Elviss family rushed him to the nearest clinic, where he was pronounced dead.

A source told Al Jazeera that he was targeted because of his work as a local radio reporter in the nearby city of Pagadian. The same source said that at least one police officer saw the suspects as they made their escape. The witness even reportedly claimed that the suspects were wearing uniform, although he stopped short of identifying them as government authorities.

Elvis was the first journalist to be killed in the Philippines this year. But since 2010, the start of President Benigno Aquinos term, 31 journalists have been killed. Aquino has been accused of turning a blind eye when it comes to journalists being murdered.

In August of last year, three journalists were killed in southern Philippines in two weeks. In Ozamis, four attackers killed radio commentator Cosme Maestrada as he walked in the city. He survived a previous attempt in November 2011.

A week earlier, a publisher and a radio announcer were killed just outside their homes. In 2009, 32 journalists were among 58 people killed in a politically motivated attack in Mindanao. That incident was the worlds deadliest single attack on journalists. More than six years on, the case remains in court and none of the suspects has been successfully prosecuted.

In Elviss case, investigators could only speculate about the motive. Some reports said it could be linked to his previous work as a communist fighter. Others said it was because of an expose he wrote about illegal drugs and gambling. Still, other reports said the muder could have been politically motivated as Elvis was linked to local politicians in the Zamboanga del Norte province.

Following his death, the National Union of Journalists for the Philippines demanded that authorities fulfil their duty of giving those who were killed justice.

The group said: Whatever the reason for Ordanizas murder, one thing remains constant  it is governments continued failure to prevent such killings and solve past cases (only a handful of killers have ever been convicted, none of them a mastermind) that emboldens those who would silence critical media.

Interviews by Mohamed Hashem , Ted Regencia and Anealla Safdar . Interactive by Alaa Batayneh .
Who will win and what difference does it make for the world at large?

Despite the fact that the majority of US citizens dislike both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump after their respective victories in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois, the Democratic and Republican frontrunners are now poised to combat their way into the White House.

Who will win and what difference does it make for the world at large?

It is of course easy to criticise Donald Trump and his openly flirting with racism and bigotry on his way to perhaps a radical transformation of US politics on a proto-fascist blueprint. But scarcely anyone has done it as eloquently and pointedly as the New Yorker editor David Remnick.

In a recent piece, Remnick laid bare the unsurpassed moral degeneracy that has paved the way for the rise of Donald Trump on the Republican platform.





Trump, Remnick declared succinctly, is the beneficiary of a long process of Republican intellectual decadence.

Paul Ryan denounces Trump but not the Tea Party rhetoric that propelled his own political ascent.

John McCain holds Trump in contempt, but selected as his running mate Sarah Palin, the Know-Nothing of Wasilla, one of Trumps most vivid forerunners and supporters.

Mitt Romney last week righteously slammed Trump as a phony and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trumps endorsement and praised his extraordinary understanding of economics.

Prospect of a liberal imperialism

This is all urgent and necessary to articulate and emphasise. But is the terror that the world at large faces with the consequences of this US election limited to a Trump presidency? Is the prospect of a corrupt liberal imperialism of Hillary Clinton not equally imminent, not identically dangerous?

READ MORE: Donald Trump prompts Americans to look north

Does Bernie Sanders have any prospect of upsetting this political prospect and moral impediment? His chances are getting slimmer after each primary.

Come next November, whatever US citizens choose, save the slim chance of a democratic socialist with less of a Cowboy diplomacy in his record than his rivals, they will place the world at large in harms way facing an existential threat. by

Come next November, whatever US citizens choose, save the slim chance of a democratic socialist with less of a Cowboy diplomacy in his record than his rivals, they will place the world at large in harms way facing an existential threat.

People around the world, always at the mercy of the predatory power of US imperialism, watch the US presidential elections partially amused by the depth of its corruption and partially frightened by the prospect of either a Clinton or a Trump presidency.

Which one will drop more bombs, command a larger fleet of deadly drones, prepare a longer kill list, give more weapons to Israel to kill more Palestinians, sell more of the same to rich Arab potentates to drop on poor Arab states, build more torture chambers on the Guantanamo model?

The fanciful US liberals are wont to joke that if Trump is elected they move to Canada. Where are the people around the world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Syria, Palestine, and Libya in particular, to go in case of either a Clinton or Trump presidency? Canada?

Racist supremacist or liberal feminists

US voters will get to choose which kind of imperialism the world would be at the mercy of: a racist, bigoted proto-fascist monstrosity led by the Neo-Nazi and KKK favourite Donald Trump, or an astonishingly corrupt corporate lackey liberal bourgeois feminist favourite of Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright like Hillary Clinton.

The liberal Democrat side of US imperialism has no less soul-searching to do as, led by US President Obama, they are asking the conservative Republicans to do.

What is the shape of the world almost eight years after a liberal democratic presidency? Every atrocity Bush carried out before him, Obama consolidated into legalised institutions.

Bush began the war in Afghanistan; Obama expanded its domain into Pakistan and exacerbated the condition of strengthening the Taliban.

Bush began the war in Iraq; Obama left it in ruins and his dilly-dallying on Syria helped the rise of the murderous Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) on his watch.

Bush began the practice of torturing in subterranean dungeons such as Guantanamo Bay; months from the end of his second term, Obama failed to fulfill his campaign promise to close it.

Bush began the drone attacks; Obama perfected them to a deadly art and was dubbed the drone president for credible, independent attempts to determine how many civilians the Obama administration has killed arrived at numbers in the hundreds or low thousands.

READ MORE: Donald Trump is the real deal

We never heard of a kill list during the Bush era, Obama devised and implemented it.

Obamas approval rating

They say with the prospect of a Trump presidency, Obamas approval rating has gone up in the US.

But try to explain that to Palestinian mothers at the mercy of Israeli drone attacks in Gaza, or to Afghan and Pakistani parents of the victims of his own drone attacks, or to the Libyan victims of NATO bombing, or consider the US constitutional and Geneva Convention implications of Guantanamo.

US voters may run from the prospect of a Trump presidency over their homeland to opt for the empty promises of a Clinton presidency. But where can the world at large hide when her bombs start falling on Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Yemenis, and more?

At least the US citizens can make a calculated risk as to which one of these two candidates can do better for them, or at least do least damage. But people around the world at the mercy of this US election have no such choice. They are those proverbial sitting ducks, waiting and wondering at the mercy of which kind of violent militarism they have to measure the terms of their survival.

Far from the sites of the initial primaries and their crescendo in the November election, innocent men and women, children and their parents are counting the days before they find out if white supremacists or liberal feminists will soon determine the kind of imperialism that gets to bomb their home and habitat.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Al-Qaedas Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the rocket attack at the gas facility in southern Algeria.

An Algerian gas plant jointly operated by foreign energy giants came under attack on Friday with rocket-propelled grenades, Algerian officials have said.

The Army scuttled this attempted terrorist attack and immediately surrounded the zone, the ministry said in a statement.

There were no reports of casualties or injuries from attack on the In Salah Gas asset, which is run by Statoil, BP and Sonatrach, the Algerian state-run gas company.

Al-Qaedas North Africa branch Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack.

The statement said the attack took place with surface-to-surface mid-range missile and comes in the context of the groups war on the interests of the crusaders everywhere. The group also said the attack was an attempt to stop the bleeding theft of Muslims gas and oil.

Norway-based Statoil said in a statement that the facility, located some 1,200 kilometres south of Algiers in the Sahara Desert, was hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance at approximately 6am local time (07:00 GMT).

The oil and gas company said it had been in touch with its three employees at the site, who were safe and not injured.

Army reinforcements have been sent to the area from other regions, local security officials said.

In January 2013, a band of al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters attacked the Ain Amenas complex in southern Algeria.

After a four-day standoff, the Algerian army moved in. At least 37 hostages, mostly foreign workers, were killed in the attack.
Despite his controversial past, David Keyes is taking over as Netanyahus foreign media adviser and spokesman.

Jerusalem  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the appointment of a new foreign media adviser and spokesman this week, the latest in a series of moves viewed as snubs to the Obama White House.

US-born David Keyes replaces Mark Regev, who became familiar to English-language audiences as the voice of the Netanyahu government during Israels repeated attacks on Gaza. Regev will be Israels new ambassador to the UK.

Keyes, aged 32, has been plucked from his current position as executive director of Advancing Human Rights, a New York-based lobby group he founded in 2010. He also heads a web operation known as Cyberdissidents, which claims to connect political dissidents around the world.

READ MORE: Warnings of strife as Israeli PM embarks on US visit

Keyes took Israeli citizenship nearly a decade ago, and then served as a spokesperson in the Israeli army. Netanyahus office said Keyes would start in his new role very soon. Rumours of the appointment had been circulating since January.

Keyes steps in as Netanyahus foreign media adviser at a time when Israeli officials have been accused of conducting a witch hunt against both the foreign press corps in Israel and Israeli social media activists.

Like Keyes, Israel claims to support human rights around the world, but when it comes to Palestinians' rights, Israel is a serial offender. by Moussa Rimawi, director of Mada, a Palestinian centre for media freedom

Palestinian human rights groups, meanwhile, have highlighted Keyess failure, despite styling himself a supporter of human rights activism, to challenge Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights. Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including hundreds being held on secret charges.

His appointment is also likely to heighten tensions with Washington, given his high-profile campaigning to undermine the White Houses foreign policy efforts to end a long-running standoff with Iran.

Keyes is best-known for a series of publicity stunts he staged in 2014 in Vienna, during key negotiations between Washington and Iran over the latters nuclear energy programme.

He published videos of himself admonishing  or what he called punking  Iranian diplomats in the streets of the Austrian capital over Tehrans human rights record. He also held a mock press conference denouncing Iran in a hotel lobby, next to someone dressed in an ayatollah outfit.

Last July, as the White House prepared to sign an agreement with Iran, Keyes published an article on the Daily Beast website in which he declared his goal had been to cause as much trouble as possible for the negotiators.

Netanyahu was a vocal opponent of the talks, and controversially bypassed the White House to speak directly to the US Congress last spring in a last-ditch attempt to pressure legislators to scupper the deal. An agreement was signed a short time later.

Many of the online videos of Keyess stunts have been taken down over the past two months, in an indication of apparent concern by Israel that his appointment might be viewed adversely by the White House.

Yossi Alper, a former adviser to Ehud Barak, one of Netanyahus predecessors, said Israeli moves such as Keyess appointment were now a staple feature of US-Israeli relations mired in permanent crisis.

Netanyahu appears confident that he can weather any storm with Obama, Alper told Al Jazeera. The view seems to be that there is only so much more damage that can be done in the remaining nine months of this presidency.

Keyes is close to Ron Dermer, Israels envoy to Washington and a close ally of Netanyahus. Dermer was widely blamed for bringing ties between Israel and the Obama administration to a new low by arranging Netanyahus address to Congress. Dermer reportedly suggested Keyes for the new post.

The appointment follows Netanyahus surprise announcement last November that Ran Baratz was to be appointed his new head of public diplomacy. The decision was put on hold after White House officials, including Vice-President Joe Biden, strenuously objected.

Last year Baratz accused President Obama of anti-semitism on social media, in the run-up to his signing the agreement with Iran.

In a further unprecedented move this month, Netanyahu angered the White House by declining an invitation from Obama to meet in Washington. Israeli officials reportedly took two weeks even to acknowledge the invitation.

The rebuff was seen in Israel as a bold move to raise the stakes in Israels negotiations with the US to increase its military aid annually from $3bn to $5bn.

READ MORE: US sued over donations for illegal Israeli settlements

One of Keyess first tests will be how he develops relations between the Israeli government and the foreign press corps, which have turned increasingly sour.

Last month, the Israeli governments press office threatened to revoke the accreditation of foreign correspondents if their reporting was deemed negligent.

Days later, the Foreign Press Association, which represents foreign journalists in Israel, accused Israeli officials of conducting a witch hunt after a parliamentary committee demanded that it attend a meeting to justify its members recent reporting.

At around the same time, the Washington Posts bureau chief, William Booth, was briefly detained by Israeli police while interviewing Palestinians in Jerusalems Old City. The police accused Booth of incitement and helping to promote Palestinian propaganda.



In another sign of a media crackdown, Israels military censor announced last month that she would require for the first time that Israeli bloggers and social media activists submit posts for review ahead of publication. Israeli TV and press are already required to do so.

Moussa Rimawi, director of Mada, a Palestinian centre for media freedom based in Ramallah, said Keyes personified Israeli double standards on human rights.

Like Keyes, Israel claims to support human rights around the world, but when it comes to Palestinians rights, Israel is a serial offender, he told Al Jazeera. The reality is that Palestinians, including our media organisations, face daily harassment, intimidation and violence.

Rimawi noted that in recent months, Israel had closed three Palestinian radio stations, as well as shutting down last week a TV channel, Palestine Today, and Transmedia, a company that provides links to satellite networks.

He added that there were numerous cases of Palestinians being arrested for their social media posts.

After military service, Keyes worked for the Shalem Institute in Jerusalem, in a role coordinating democracy programmes that was funded by Sheldon Adelson, a US casino magnate. Adelson also underwrites a free Israeli daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, that has been widely criticised for serving as a mouthpiece for the Netanyahu government.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has described Keyes wider online activism as designed to empower opposition movements and regime opponents in the Middle East.

Critics, however, have argued that his organisation has endangered such activists by publicising their names and faces without their permission.
PM Fayez al-Sarraj says new security plan will allow unity government to move to Libyan capital from Tunis.

Libyas UN-backed unity government will move to Tripoli from neighbouring Tunisia within a few days, its prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj has said in a TV interview.

The government was formed under a UN-mediated peace deal in a bid to end the political chaos and conflict that has beset the country since the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi five years ago.

It is supposed to replace the two rival administrations  one based in the capital Tripoli, the other in the eastern city of Tobruk  that have been battling each other for more than a year.

In a pre-recorded interview with Jordan-based Libya HD channel, Sarraj said on Thursday that a security plan agreed with police and military forces in Tripoli, as well as some armed groups, would allow the UN-backed Presidential Council and the government it nominated to move from Tunis to Tripoli.

We, the government of national accord, will be in the capital Tripoli soon ... within a few days by Fayez al-Sarraj, prime minister of UN-backed government

We, the government of national accord, will be in the capital Tripoli soon  within a few days, Sarraj, who also heads the Presidential Council, said.

The armed groups will remain in their camps until an agreement is found with them about whether their members will be integrated and young people absorbed within certain programmes according the security plan, he added.

Yet, the unity government has faced opposition from hardliners on both sides of Libyas political divide  and the prime minister of the government based in Tripoli this week warned it not to move there.

We say it has no place among us, Khalifa Ghweil said in a statement, adding that the unity government was imposed from the outside and his administration would never let in a leadership installed by the UN.

It remains unclear whether some of the many armed groups present in the capital will fight to prevent the unity government from operating there.

The eastern parliament, which received international recognition, has repeatedly failed to vote to approve the unity government, though a majority of its members signed a statement of support last month.

International push

Western powers have been pushing hard for the new government to start work, hoping that it will be able to tackle an expanding threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, both by drawing together Libyan armed factions and by requesting international help.

READ MORE: How serious is the ISIL threat in Libya?

Sarraj said the Council saw a need to take advantage of the international momentum around Libya, though it was up to Libyans to determine their needs.

If the international community provides assistance I do not think the Libyans would reject that, but within the rules and standards, and according to what Libyans want, he said.

Direct intervention is unacceptable, and we have sent that message clearly.

ISIL has used the security vacuum in Libya to establish a foothold in the North African country, taking control of the city of Sirte and staging attacks on civilian and military targets, as well as against oil facilities.

Libyans must come together and unite to confront the danger of Daesh (ISIL), Sarraj said, referring to the group by its Arabic acronym.

He also noted some of the challenges his government would face, including the reintegration of parallel versions of the National Oil Corporation and the Central Bank, as well as tackling a rapidly deteriorating financial situation.

The government is coming to serve the citizen, he said. Our slogan is reconciliation and reconstruction among Libyans.
North Korea has fired two medium-range ballistic missiles into the sea, US and South Korean officials have said.

South Koreas military said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the countrys southwest at 5:55am on Friday (20:55 GMT on Thursday) and flew 800km before crashing off into the East Sea, also known as Sea of Japan.

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off radar early into its flight.

READ MORE: North Korea threatens nuclear strike

Both missiles are believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

If confirmed, it would mark North Koreas first test of a medium-range missile, capable of reaching Japan, since 2014  the Rodong missile has an estimated maximum range of around 1,300km.

Defiant gesture

The launches came amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after the North rejected UN Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in March in response to a nuclear test conducted in January.

New US sanctions on Pyongyang were also issued on Wednesday aiming to expand North Koreas blockade by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the Norths economy.

Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, Japan, said the test firing was clearly a defiant gesture by Pyongyang.

[They] say, well we are not going to back down and we are going to continue with our quest to become a nuclear weapons power,' Kingston told Al Jazeera.

What weve discovered over the last 20 years is that theres not really any combination of sticks and carrots that seems to deter them from that quest, so it looks like were still at an impasse and its really hard to see a bright road ahead.

International reaction

The US State Department said in a statement it was closely monitoring the situation and urged North Korea to refrain from any actions that could further raise tensions.

OPINION: What we know about Kim Jong-un

South Korea also condemned the Norths move, calling it a direct challenge to the UN Security Council and the international community, while Japan lodged a protest through its embassy in Beijing.





Japan strongly demands North Korea to exercise self-restraint and will take all necessary measures, such as warning and surveillance activity, to be able to respond to any situations, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament.

Al Jazeeras Rob McBride, reporting from Hong Kong, said the move was also likely to get a strong response from Beijing, North Koreas main diplomatic ally.

There is increasing alarm in China in what they see as the growing instability on the Korean peninsula and also frustration of their waning influence over North Korea in trying to pull them back from carrying out these kinds of tests, McBride said.

For the international community, if they were wondering whether the latest sanctions imposed on North Korea were going to get them to change their ways, now they seem to have their answer, he added.

Military drills

North Korea often fires missiles at periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programmes.

READ MORE: South Korea and US forces storm mock North Korea beach

Last week, Pyongyang fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong-un ordered more nuclear weapons tests and missile tests to improve attack capability.

The North has also reacted angrily to annual joint military drills by US and South Korean troops that began on March 7, calling the exercises nuclear war moves and threatening to wipe out its enemies.
Dutch far-right leader back in court for vowing he will make sure fewer Moroccans will live in the Netherlands.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch right-wing politician who was acquitted five years ago of making anti-Islam remarks, is going on trial in the Netherlands again for allegedly inciting hatred against the countrys Moroccan minority.

The case on Friday comes as Wilders and other populist politicians  including Donald Trump in the United States and Marine le Pen in France  have stepped up calls for a ban on Muslim immigration.

State prosecutors say Wilders asked a crowd of supporters in March 2014 whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, triggering the chant: Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!  to which a smiling Wilders responded: Well take care of that.

The lawmaker faces one charge of discrimination and a second for inciting hatred of Moroccans, who make up about 2 percent of the population of roughly 17 million.

Dutch politician Wilders sued over fewer Moroccans vow

In addition to the fewer comment, Wilders referred to Moroccans as scum in a television broadcast. He may go to jail for as long as a year and could be fined a maximum of 7,400 euros ($8,400).

Wilders, whose decade-old Freedom Party holds a commanding lead in Dutch popular opinion polls but has never been in power, denies any wrongdoing.

On my way to court in police escort. No one will silence me. No terrorist, no prime minister and no court either.

On my way to court in police escort. No one will silence me. No terrorist, no prime minister and no court either.  Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) March 18, 2016

Wilders has lived under 24-hour protection since the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, who  like Wilders  made films criticising Islam.

In a previous case, Wilders was acquitted in 2011 after calling for a towel-head tax and equating the Koran with Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf. He had said at the time that Muslim criminals should be stripped of their Dutch nationality and deported.

Judges concluded that Wilders remarks may have been rude, but he was let off because they targeted a religion, not a race.

That is the difference now, prosecution spokeswoman Ilse de Heer said.

Targeting specific race

Fridays prosecution is different because his remarks targeted a specific race, which is considered a crime.

Wilders had called on Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Deputy Prime Lodewijk Asscher to be interrogated in court, but the judge rejected that, according to the Dutch daily newspaper AD.

The AD also reported that two of Wilders witness experts pulled out for fear for their safety or of being drawn into his camp.

The hearing at a high-security courtroom next to Amsterdams Schiphol Airport is frequently used for cases involving organised crime.

In France in December, Le Pen was acquitted of charges of inciting hatred against French Muslims for comparing Muslims praying in the street to the German occupation of France during World War Two.
New York state resident sentenced by district court to 22-and-a-half years in prison for trying to recruit fighters.

A New York state resident was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison for trying to recruit fighters to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), the longest prison term handed out yet to an American convicted of supporting the group.

Mufid Elfgeeh, a 32-year-old pizza shop owner of Rochester, New York, was sentenced in a Western District court on Thursday after the districts attorney, William Hochul, called Elfgeeh one of the first ISIL recruiters ever captured.

Convictions for ISIL-related activity by US citizens have become more frequent in recent months as more than 80 such cases brought by US prosecutors since 2013 work their way through federal courts.

Although Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in December only to trying to recruit two individuals to join ISIL, he was also originally charged with trying to kill US service members and unlawfully possessing firearms and silencers.

From 2013, the FBI paid two informants to help investigate Elfgeeh, according to court records.

The informants recorded conversations in which Elfgeeh talked about wanting to kill members of the US military and Shia Muslims in New York. One of the informants eventually sold Elfgeeh firearms and ammunition.

Elfgeeh tried to send the two individuals to Syria to fight on behalf of ISIL, buying them a laptop computer, a high-definition camera, an expedited passport and other travel documents, according to his plea agreement.

He used Facebook and WhatsApp to activate a network of ISIL sympathisers in Turkey, Syria and Yemen who could facilitate their trip, the plea agreement said.

During the same months, Elfgeeh also helped the alleged commander of a Syrian rebel battalion to contact ISILs leadership so that the battalion could join the larger group, prosecutors said.

Honcho said Elfgeeh fell for ISILs propaganda.

They try to create this false narrative that everyone is in favour of them, Honchul said.

According to Honchul, in court Elfgeeh said: I used to be one of them and I was wrong. ISIL is a terrible group.
Tunis  An attendant points to the bullet-scarred wall of the large Carthage Room inside Tunisias Bardo Museum. Another bullet hole marks a nearby glass case, displaying a statue from the second century AD.

We see the traces every day, so its hard not to think about it, attendant Lasad Bouali said.

Indeed, these remnants of violence are now inextricably linked to the Bardo Museum, which has decided to leave intact most traces of the deadly attack that occurred here one year ago.

Its part of the museums history, chief curator and director Mocef Ben Moussa told Al Jazeera.

On the morning of March 18, 2015, two young Tunisians, who had trained in a Libyan camp, took tourists hostage in the museum. Three hours later, security forces ended the armed siege by killing both gunmen. Twenty-one foreign tourists and one police officer were killed.

READ MORE: Tunisias tourism struggling one month after massacre

The museum, housed in an Ottoman palace with one of the largest collections of Roman mosaics, will host a memorial ceremony on Friday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the deadly violence.

Our message is that we are still here, Ben Moussa said.

But for the museums 160 workers, including security guards, attendants and ticket sellers, the trauma caused by the shooting has not become any easier in the intervening months.

Bouali, 44, remembers seeing the gunmen casually walk into the museum with AK47 assault rifles hanging off their shoulders. He hid with a Spanish couple in the sarcophagi room, and only emerged 22 hours later  hours after police had secured the premises, as no one initially found the trio to tell them it was safe.

Especially when Im alone, I hear the sounds of the shooting again echoing to where I was sitting under the stairs, Bouali told Al Jazeera.

While the Ministry of Health offered counselling to the museums employees, only a few have made use of it.

Another museum attendant, who did not provide his name for fear of losing his job, said he did not sleep for two months after the shooting.

Whenever we hear of an attack somewhere else, it all comes back again, the attendant said.

Attendant Ala Eddine Hamdi said he felt angry that no one ever thanked him for safeguarding and providing first aid to a group of tourists during the attack. He also expressed frustration over having worked at the museum without a formal contract for more than three years, earning only 167 Tunisian dinars ($80) each month.

Every day, I am reminded of the pools of blood and lifeless bodies, Hamdi, 23, told Al Jazeera.

On the day of the attack, only one police officer was on guard at the fence that encloses the museum grounds. The gunmen were able to walk in with their weapons hidden under their clothes.

That officer was accused of collaborating with the attackers and spent four months in prison before being released. After analysing his mobile phone and some video recordings, they found he was innocent, a police officer who guards the area between the museum and the parliament next door told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity. He said the security situation has improved, but is still lacking.

The Bardo Museums head of security told Al Jazeera that the museum uses metal detectors, and security personnel search each visitors bag and car. But on a couple of recent days when Al Jazeera visited the museum, the X-ray machine for scanning bags and the metal detector at the buildings entrance were turned off, and security guards were not conducting pat-down searches.

The head of security said the metal detector had been turned off because a pregnant woman entered the museum. But employees at the museum shop said that the X-ray machine had not been working for months, and that most of the cameras in the museum were also non-operational.

They used to wait in long queues in front of the door. It's so quiet these days. We are now happy to see anybody here. by Lasad Bouali, museum attendant

Ben Moussa said he believed a new metal detector would be installed soon, noting this was the responsibility of the interior ministry, but he declined to comment further on the employees remarks about other equipment not working. He noted that if terrorists wanted to attack the museum, they always find a way.

Tunisias interior ministry did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

VIDEO: Tunisia museum attackers family speaks out

Meanwhile, tourism has not returned to the Bardo Museum since the attack  or to Tunisia more generally, with tourism revenues dropping by about a third in 2015.

The museum itself hosted about 60,000 visitors in the year after the attack, Ben Moussa said, but that is only about 10 percent of the total number of visitors that would have come 10 years ago. Before the attack, 90 percent of the visitors were foreigners, but that is now down to around 50 percent, he said.

The Bardo shooting, coupled with a second attack on tourists three months later on a beach near Sousse, have had a catastrophic impact on Tunisias economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism. Around 400,000 Tunisians work in the tourism industry, according to the countrys tourism ministry, while many others earn a living indirectly from tourism, such as farmers who sell produce to hotels.

Many countries have advised their citizens against holidaying in Tunisia, and thousands of local people have lost their jobs, with hundreds of hotels shutting their doors. The museums employees, however, still hold out hope that visitor numbers will rise again.

They used to wait in long queues in front of the door, Bouali said. Its so quiet these days. We are now happy to see anybody here.
Former army ruler, who faces treason charges, allowed to leave country for medical reasons after lifting of travel ban.

Pakistans former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has left the country to receive medical treatment in Dubai.

Musharrafs departure on Friday came a day after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him following an order by Pakistans Supreme Court.

Pakistani media showed images of Musharraf leaving his home in a heavily guarded convoy for the airport in Karachi. He entered the airport through a gate reserved for staff and left for Dubai on an Emirates flight.

I am a commando and I love my homeland, Musharraf told reporters at the airport. I will come back in a few weeks or months.

Minister of the Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Thursday the former ruler was being allowed to travel for treatment after a commitment from his lawyers that he would return in four to six weeks to face the charges against him.

Musharraf needed to see a doctor in Dubai about back problems that had put him in hospital several times in previous months, his lawyer Faisal Chaudhry said.

Self-imposed exile and return

Musharraf came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and stood down nine years later when threatened with impeachment.

He returned to Pakistan in March 2013 after nearly four years of self-imposed exile to contest elections.

OPINION: The problem with Pakistans foreign policy

Musharraf was acquitted earlier this year of the murder of a separatist leader in 2006.

He still faces, however, at least four other charges, including treason for suspending the constitution in 2007.

Another important case involving Musharraf is the murder of former two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in 2007.

He denies the charges.
Controversial agreement means that any refugees arriving on Greek shores from Sunday would be sent back to Turkey.

Turkey and the European Union have reached a controversial deal European leaders hope will stop the flow of refugees to the continent in return for political and financial concessions for Ankara.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU President Donald Tusk confirmed the agreement, which will come into force on Sunday, at a press conference in Brussels after three rounds of talks.

Refugees, migrants, asylum seekers who are arriving in Greece, on the islands or the mainland  will find themselves subject to processing and then, in due course, they will be sent back to Turkey, Al Jazeeras Neave Barker reported from the Belgian capital.

READ MORE: The dark side of the EU-Turkey refugee deal

The accord aims to close the main route by which a million people have poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before marching north to Germany and Sweden.

But deep doubts remain about whether it is legal or workable, a point acknowledged even by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been the key driving force behind the agreement.

I have no illusions that what we agreed today will be accompanied by further setbacks. There are big legal challenges that we must now overcome, Merkel said after the 28 EU leaders concluded the deal with Davutoglu.

Leaders of the bloc had agreed on Thursday on a common plan under which Turkey would be given financial and political concessions in return for taking back all refugees who reached Greek islands off its coast.

Under the agreement, Ankara would take back all refugees and others, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea. In return, the EU would take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.

Stop the deal

Just as the deal was clinched, Turkey said it had intercepted hundreds of people trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Its a historic day today because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU, Davutoglu said at the press conference.

Today we realised that Turkey and EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future.

READ MORE: We need to be smarter about helping Syrian refugees

Discussions between EU leaders on Thursday revealed considerable doubts among the Europeans themselves over whether a deal could be made either legal in international law, or workable.

Much of the debate, Merkel said, had focused on ensuring that a plan that has outraged human rights groups could ensure that those returned to Turkey, a country with a patchy and worsening record on the matter, would have rights to asylum protected.

An agreement with Turkey cannot be a blank cheque, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned, echoing many colleagues who face complaints that Europe is selling out to anti-refugees nationalists at home by outsourcing its problems to the Turks.

Outside the summit, rights group Amnesty International placed a large screen in the middle of Brussels European quarter proclaiming: Dont trade refugees. Stop the deal.

A major sticking point in the negotiations was Turkeys four-decade-old dispute with EU member Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades insisted there could be no opening of new chapters in Turkeys EU membership talks until Ankara allows Cypriot traffic to its sea and airports  a result of a refusal to recognise the Cypriot state.

OPINION: Is refugee issue a new membership criteria?

After EU leaders told Tusk where they could give ground and where they had red lines, Anastasiades said he was ready to veto a deal if necessary.

There is anger in Nicosia at Merkel for appearing to make Davutoglu an offer last week without having consulted Cyprus at a time when talks on reunification with the Turkish-backed north of the island are at a delicately hopeful stage.

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, made it clear that Cypriot interests must be respected.

Within a year, more than a million people have arrived in Europe fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, often referred to as Europes most wanted man, arrested in Belgian swoop.

Salah Abdeslam, the most wanted suspect for the Paris attacks, has been arrested in a shootout with heavily-armed police in the Belgian capital after eluding capture for months.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and French President Francois Hollande confirmed the arrest on Friday at a press conference in Brussels.

They are far more numerous than we thought. by French President Francois Hollande

It was a success against terrorism, said Michel, as he congratulated the security forces who carried out the raid.

READ MORE: Hollande calls Paris attacks an act of war

Frances Hollande said police were confronted with armed resistance from the suspects during the raid, adding that the fight against terrorism was far from over.

Though this arrest was an important step, it is not the final result. There will be further arrests. We know the network is extensive in Belgium, France and other countries, he said.

What we need to do is arrest all of those who allowed, organised and facilitated these attacks [in Paris]. We have realised, without going into details, they are far more numerous than we thought.

Hollande added that he had no doubt that the [French] judicial authorities will request an extradition.

The four-month manhunt for 26-year-old Abdeslam came to an end in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek with the suspect shot in the leg, according to Ahmed El Khannous, the neighbourhoods deputy mayor.

Four other people, including members of a family who harboured Abdeslam, were also arrested, said Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt. He confirmed that Abdeslam was lightly injured during the raid and had been transferred to hospital.

READ MORE: A message from Molenbeek: We are not terrorists

Footage showed heavily-armed police dragging a man whose face was covered by a white hood into the street and bundling him into the back of a waiting unmarked car. It was not clear from the pictures if the man was Abdeslam.

Fingerprints found

Earlier, the Belgian federal prosecutors office said Abdeslams fingerprints had been found in a separate raid this week.

Who is Salah Abdeslam? Born in Brussels, Salah Abdeslam is a 26-year-old French national and the brother of 31-year-old Brahim Abdeslam who blew himself up on November 13 in the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant. He was at one point suspected of having joined his older sibling in targeting restaurants and bars during the Paris attacks, but his exact role in the violence has yet to be determined. Investigators know that he was in Paris and believe that he at the very least offered logistical support to the attackers. They are considering whether he planned to carry out his own attack, but backed out. After four months on the run, he was arrested in Belgium on March 18.

His prints were discovered in an apartment in the neighbourhood of Forest, in south Brussels, after that raid on Tuesday.

Local media said the evidence showed it was more than likely that Abdeslam was one of two people who escaped the operation, in which one gunman was shot dead by a police sniper.

The suspect killed was named as 35-year-old Algerian, Mohamed Belkaid.

Investigators said that, when they later entered the flat, they found a book on Salafism and a Kalashnikov rifle next to Belkaids body.

They also discovered a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in the flat, as well as a large amount of ammunition. No explosives were found, the prosecutor said.

Abdeslam, a French national, was born in Brussels and once lived in the city.

READ MORE: Youre in the bar, then there are dead people

Police believe that he was directly involved in the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded, as armed men and suicide bombers targeted the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and bars.

He is suspected of renting the car that delivered attackers to the Bataclan concert hall where more than 80 people were killed.

He fled the city after the attacks, which were claimed by ISIL. Hours later, he was stopped and questioned by police at the French-Belgian border before he was allowed through.

Several of the suspected attackers had links to neighbouring Belgium.

Abdeslams older brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves during the rampage. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later.
Staffan de Mistura positive about talks, but opposition says the government not serious about political transition.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria has said that peace talks are progressing calmly, though the opposition said it wants a more high-level negotiating team than the one the government is currently fielding.

The good news is that I believe the proximity talks have clearly contributed to keeping the talks going with no walk outs, no excessive rhetoric, some discussions but no break downs, the UNs Staffan de Mistura said, referring to a method of talks in which the opposing sides do not meet each other face-to-face.

I am still obviously detecting large distances but that is why we have talks and negotiations, he told journalists after meeting both sides in Geneva on Friday.

But Salem al-Muslet, a spokesman for the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) opposition bloc, told Al Jazeera that the governments chief negotiator at the talks, Bashar al-Jaafari, was not fit for the job.

Other members of the HNC said he was engaged in delaying tactics and was not serious about debating any agreement that involved a political transition.

Jaafari doesnt have a decision there, Muslet said. We need a higher rank team  a team that can make a decision right here in Geneva because we can make a decision on behalf of our people.

Earlier on Friday, Basma Kodmani, an opposition negotiator and HNC member, said the opposition intended to stick with the negotiations for now.

SYRIA WAR: Speaking out on sadistic government jails

We will wage the political fight until we reach the goals of our revolution, she said. Our hope is that on the 6th anniversary of the revolution next year we would move on to the reconstruction phase and a democratic Syrian state.





Useful and constructive

Jaafari, who is also the Syrian ambassador to the UN, said on Friday that his meeting with de Mistura was useful, constructive and that practical steps were discussed to help open the door to more dialogue.

We believe that adopting the principles we called the basic elements will lead to a serious intra-Syrian dialogue that helps in building the future of our country.

These principles will open the door for a serious Syrian-Syrian dialogue led by Syria without foreign interference or preconditions, Jaafari said.

Fighting in Syria has slowed since a fragile cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by the US and Russia came into force almost two weeks ago. But a peace deal and full ceasefire remain elusive.

READ MORE: Hoping for a Syria peace deal, five years on

The major sticking point is the fate of President Bashar al-Assad, who Western and Gulf Arab governments say must go at the end of a transition period envisioned under a roadmap hammered out in Vienna last year by major powers.

In Syria on Friday, at least 17 people, including eight children, were killed and 20 people wounded in suspected government air strikes in Raqqa province, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently , a website that reports on life in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levants (ISIL, also known as ISIS) self-proclaimed capital, said the strikes had targeted residential areas in Raqqa city.

The Syrian war has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced almost half the countrys pre-war population of 23 million.

Additonal reporting by Whitney Hurst in Geneva.
Torture has become normalised and routine with governments facilitating its practice according to the Amnesty report.

The use of torture is widespread 30 years after the United Nations adopted a convention outlawing the practice, Amnesty International has said.

At least 44 percent of more than 21,000 people from 21 countries surveyed by the London-based rights group for its new report released on Monday, said that they would not feel safe from torture if arrested in their home country.

The report titled Torture in 2014  30 Years of Broken Promises read: Although governments have prohibited this dehumanising practice in law and have recognised global disgust at its existence, many of them are carrying out torture or facilitating it in practice.

Three decades from the convention and more than 65 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights torture is not just alive and well. It is flourishing, according to the report.

Amnesty said 155 countries have ratified the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture but many governments were still betraying their responsibility with at least 79 countries continuing to engage in the outlawed practice in 2014.

Its almost become normalised, its become routine, Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty told reporters at the launch of the Stop Torture campaign in London. The campaign focuses on Mexico, the Philippines, Morocco and Western Sahara, Nigeria and Uzbekistan.

Shetty also spoke of the cruelty of inmates in the United States being held in solitary confinement with no light, of stoning and flogging in the Middle East and of the stubborn failure of European nations to investigate allegations of complicity in torture.

Since the so-called war against terrorism, the use of torture, particularly in the United States and their sphere of influence has got so much more normalised as part of national security expectations, he said.

Fact of life

The survey showed that the concern about torture is highest in Brazil and Mexico and lowest in Australia and Britain.

Support for torture ranged widely across nations, from 74 percent in China and India, to just 12 percent in Greece and 15 percent in Argentina, the Amnesty survey conducted by GlobeScan found.

The report described police brutality in Asia, where torture is a fact of life, and pointed out that more than 30 countries in Africa have yet to make such abuse punishable by law.

Amnesty said it had received reports of torture being used in more 140 countries and the report gave examples from countries ranging from Nigeria to Mexico and Ukraine.

The NGO called on governments to prevent torture by providing medical and legal access for prisoners and better inspection of detention centres. It also wants an end to the impunity that exists in many places, urging independent investigations of allegations of torture.

The group notes how the UN Convention made torturers international outlaws and prompted governments worldwide to denounce the practice. But it warns that in reality many are endorsing or at least failing to tackle the issue head-on.

Governments have broken their promises, and because of these broken promises millions of people have suffered terribly, said Shetty.
Lucas Sanders thought his passion for acting would end after he graduated high school.

This week, Sanders joined a UF acting group in the glow of a lava lamp, set in front of a stage on the Plaza of the Americas.

Sanders joined Shakespeare in the Park in September, when the group started practicing for Twelfth Night, which premiered Thursday night.

As he donned skinny jeans, a beanie, a plaid flannel and a shirt that read Got Pizza? his passion for acting lived on.

Despite his responsibilities in the UF Honors Program, two engineering clubs and everyday classes, Sanders makes time to act.

Ive done theater since middle school. Ive done musicals, acting class  I knew that I wasnt going to be able to pursue it professionally or anything, Sanders said. Its just because I enjoy it.

  

Andres Leiva Kyle Clavier, a 22-year-old UF environmental engineering senior, claps during Shakespeare in the Parks first performance of 2016. This year, the club is performing the Shakespearean comedy Twelfth Night.

Sanders was born in Luxembourg on Sept. 7, 1996.

His family traveled stateside when Sanders was two, following his dads consulting job to Chicago.

The price of living rose throughout the next 13 years, and Sanders relocated once again  this time to St. Augustine.

It was really difficult, because my whole family was ready for a move and I dont know that I was, Sanders said.

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Life restarted at Allen D. Nease High School, where Sanders soon met new friends and joined the theater program.

Though he didnt relocate every other year like others do, Sanders said, the move to Florida took its toll.

That one move was a life-altering thing for me, he said. Just being in a new place and starting from square one with who I knew, who I could talk to, he said.

  

While auditions for Twelfth Night started in September, Alison Sigalow started preparing almost a year ago.

Sigalow, a 20-year-old UF elementary education junior and one of the shows directors, said she has never missed a rehearsal.

Im in charge of props, costumes, the stage  most of it, she said.

Forty-two people auditioned this year, Sigalow said, and only 15 were cast.

Sanders is the only freshman in the show.

He said the group started rehearsing the moment Sigalow assigned roles, and their efforts became more intense as the debut approached.

To the cast, its all worth it.

The show gets better each time we do it, Sanders said.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the cast and directors practiced on the Plaza of the Americas every night from 5 p.m. until up to 10 p.m.

They first set up a large white curtain between two trees. Along with the lava lamp on stage right, the directors aligned candles in Mason jars, creating an area where their story could unfold.

Its been amazing, Sigalow said Monday. The cast has worked so, so hard and everyone has brought so much to the table that I just cant wait for it all to come together this weekend.

Before rehearsing the two-hour script, including gestures and inflection, the actors walked in circles and projected lines from the show to warm up.

Even in his favorite place, Sanders said he felt the responsibilities of school creeping into his mind.

I got really involved my first year, and I can feel like the crushing weight of it, you know? Sanders said.

Sanders said he can bear the weight.

Its crunch time.

  

Twelfth Night is Abigail Hummels last show with Shakespeare in the Park.

Hummel, a 21-year-old UF biology senior and the groups president, said acting with her peers completed the college experience.

Its been the one thing that Ive stuck with the entire time, she said. Ive made some of my closest friends through Shakespeare in the Park, and Ive had some incredible opportunities to perform.

She said the group is a family, and that everyone is happy to see it grow.

Its a friendly, loving, supportive environment, so if you have any interest in acting at all, we love newcomers, Hummel said.

Sanders said he remembers meeting the group members as a freshman and how quickly they became some of his closest friends.

I found it really accepting, Sanders said. I didnt feel like the odd one out for not being a theatre major, he said.

His journey began at UF Preview, where someone mentioned a student-run club that performed Shakespearean shows once a year.

He emailed the club sponsor in Fall, and his audition soon followed.

I went to auditions, got the part and that was it, he said.

The move from Chicago to St. Augustine prepared Sanders for the transition to UF, and theater only made his experience easier.

It was something that Ive always really enjoyed. I love watching it, and I love bringing it to life when I can, Sanders said.

  

Andres Leiva Lucas Sanders, middle top, puts his hand in a huddle before Shakespeare in the Parks first performance. Sanders portrayed the character of Fabian in Shakespeares Twelfth Night to an audience of about 30 on Thursday night.

Rain soaked the groups stage Thursday, but the show went on.

They relocated the backdrop and stage to the Library West breezeway, later lying down blue tarps for the audience to sit on.

About 30 people and a dog named Lily watched from the audience as Sanders and his castmates performed the comedy.

Rain fell from each side of the stage.

President Hummel said Amanda Bynes movie Shes the Man is based on Twelfth Night, in which Hummel played the main character, Viola, on Thursday.

She is a rich, collegiate donors daughter who gets shipwrecked in Illyria and has to disguise herself as a man and join a frat in order to preserve herself in the new school, she said.

Knowing their audience, Shakespeare in the Park adjusted the shows theme to make it more college-oriented.

As Hummels character disguised herself among a group of men in togas, four others played beer pong in the background.

Before the show started, Sanders sat on the ground and read the lines of his character, Fabian.

I definitely always try to find a little bit of myself in whatever character Im doing, he said. I think Fabian is like, a little sassy, a little sidekick-y  those are all things I can do well.

A few minutes before the opening scene, the group huddled together behind the curtain. Sanders said he was excited to see their work come together.

I dont get nervous, I get better, he said, laughing.

Sigalow channeled her excitement and encouraged the cast.

My heart is beating so fast right now, she said. You guys have earned this. You deserve this.

The actors then bounced from side to side and said One, two, three, Shakespeare!

Twelfth Night runs through the weekend, with performances Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.

As his freshman year comes to a close, Sanders said he has no regrets about his time with Shakespeare in the Park. He plans on doing it again next year.

Sanders said he originally planned to focus on his major and graduate in the quickest way possible.

Can someone be happy while tackling 18-credit semesters and outside responsibilities? Maybe, Sanders said, but there are other options.

I had never thought that in college you could continue to do things you love.

Contact Molly Donovan at mdonovan@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @Mollyidonovan.

Lucas Sanders, a 19-year-old UF computer engineering freshman, performs a selected scene from Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing, as Benedick alongside Sarah Emily Hall, a 20-year-old UF psychology sophomore, as Beatrice on the Library West Breezeway on Thursday evening.
Police arrested former UF athlete Dedric Antoine Dukes on Thursday morning after they said he repeatedly assaulted, kidnapped and threatened his girlfriend with a gun over the course of four months.

In November, about a month after they started dating, the woman confronted Dukes, 24, when she thought he was cheating, according to a police report. He then punched her in the face, knocking her glasses loose and leaving a red mark on her face, according to a police report.

In January, as Dukes left his girlfriends home, she told him it was time to break up. Dukes then pushed back through the door and knocked her over, according to the report.

Dukes hit the woman as she lay on the ground. He then forced her into his car and drove to his apartment, hitting her along the way, according to the report.

The woman later took pictures of her swollen and injured face, according to the report.

About a month later, the woman questioned Dukes about a suspicious text message, according to the report. He responded by punching her in the back of the head.

Dukes later accused his girlfriend of stealing an expensive necklace, which she denied. Not convinced, Dukes brandished a semi-automatic handgun, aimed at her and demanded his necklace back, according to the report.

He then forced her into the trunk of his car, where she remained for several minutes, according to the report.

He eventually let his girlfriend out, forced her to sit in the car and drove her to a remote, swampy area near a pier, where he again threatened her with the gun and demanded the necklace, according to the report.

His girlfriend, to pacify Dukes, said she could pay him back if they drove to her bank in Jacksonville, according to the report.

After Dukes drove the woman to get her own car, he followed her to Jacksonville. They stopped for gas in Waldo, where Dukes argued with the woman before he punched through her cars window, according to the report.

Dukes violated an injunction filed by his girlfriend when police found a gun case and ammunition in his apartment Thursday, according to the report.

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Police arrested Dukes on charges of aggravated assault, battery, the display of a firearm during a felony, contempt of court and two charges of kidnapping.

Police took Dukes to the Alachua County Jail, where, as of press time, he remains with no bond.

Dukes won five national titles and earned 17 All-America honors while competing with the Florida track and field team from 2012-2015, primarily competing in sprint events and relay events.

He was part of the schools record-setting 4x100- and 4x400-meter relay teams and also owns the second-fastest indoor and outdoor 200-meter dash times in school history at 20.34 seconds and 19.97 seconds, respectively.

Contact Martin Vassolo at mvassolo@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @martindvassolo.
Three blackberries were worth 30 whips.

That was the price of hunger for Bryant E. Middleton.

He was 14.

It was a typical punishment for students in Florida School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, most recently known as Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

My thought at that point and time was My God, what have I gotten myself into? Middleton, now 70, said as he recalled his time spent at the school.

At a school intended to provide an education to juvenile delinquents, Middleton became a survivor as his classmates went missing and suffered abuse at the hands of state workers.

Yet even as Marianna residents and state officials deny the horror in their backyard, Senate Bill 708 sits on Gov. Rick Scotts desk  a bill that would offer the courtesy of burial to the families of the lost boys.

But for Middleton, now a resident of Gainesville, the city where he found safety, no amount of money can erase the years of abuse.

They stole our hope. They took away our dignity. They frightened us every single day, he said. These werent convicts. These were children. And they allowed it to happen.

  

Middletons smart mouth got him sent to the Florida School for Boys.

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When his mother put him before a judge to scare him, he said he didnt want to go home.

The judge leaned across his desk and told him: "Boy, I got just the place for you.

His mothers two beauty shops in his Miami hometown werent enough to keep Middleton from going to bed hungry. He preferred the youth center he was first sent to.

Instead, he got Marianna.

When he got to the school, he signed his name in careful letters. Bryant Middleton.

Middletons three blackberries sent him to the White House, the building where boys were severely punished.

But not all boys who were sent to the White House came out alive. The screams of children who begged for their mothers and God were drowned out by a large fan, he said.

Middleton feared he wouldnt come out of the White House.

He was forced to lay face-down on a blood-stained pillow on a thin mattress and told to grip the frames metal railing.

The mattress had stains of vomit, pee and tears.

Bryant laid down, not knowing what was about to happen.

He remembers the sound of the paddle hissing through the air before the searing pain.

And he remembers Arthur G. Dozier, who would later become the superintendent and the school would be renamed after him, as he slapped his hand against the wall with every strike.

The only thing he said was: Another. Another. Another.

  

Isabel Bonnet Pictured are printed photos of former state workers at the reform school for boys in Marianna, Florida, most recently known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

Middleton left Dozier little after a year, and the memories and the scars kept him fighting long after for the boys he left behind.

He coped with the nightmares by running behind enemy lines in Vietnam. He needed to prove to himself that he could protect himself and never feel helpless again. As a soldier, he earned two purple hearts, countless scars and five bullet wounds.

But no matter how far he ran, his past found him  a past he never shared with anyone.

It wasnt until his wife was reading an article in the Northwest Florida Daily News that the horrid memories of his childhood came back.

Have you ever heard of a place called Marianna? She asked before handing him the paper.

His hands trembled as he took it from her and began to read.

Once he told her about his time at Marianna, she was angry that something like this could happen in Florida. She encouraged him to speak up.

If you can fight, you need to, she told him. If you saw someone being beaten in the street, you couldnt just stand there. You have to do something.

Middleton became one of the few who took a public stance against the state.

He became a liaison between lawyers and the survivors of the school.

The bill, drawn up by Sen. Arthenia L. Joyner, D-Tampa, addresses the victims of the school in Marianna. It addresses the reports of abuse, the nearly 100 deaths that occurred at the school and the investigation by the University of South Florida, which found 55 burial sites with 51 bodies. The bill also sets a task force that will decide where a memorial will go to honor the students of the school.

It sets aside $500,000 of the state budget, up to $7,500 for families to properly lay their children to rest.

Money cant fix the schools 111 years of neglect, abuse, violence and betrayal, but its a small step toward closure for the families who never saw their boys come home.

Gov. Rick Scott has until the end of the month to make a decision about the bill.

The bill acknowledges the crimes that shouldnt have occurred in the first place, said former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez.

He serves as a senior policy adviser for the law firm Holland & Knight, which is representing the White House Boys against the state.

Were trying to bring attention to what happened at Dozier, he said.

Middleton doesnt think its enough, but its a start.

He still cries when he thinks of his days at Marianna.

The only thing were asking for is a little bit of justice. Were not asking for a hand out, were asking for accountability, he said.

Bryant E. Middleton, 70. They stole our hope. They took away our dignity. They frightened us every single day, he said. These werent convicts. These were children. And they allowed it to happen.

Pictured is Middleton, second from left, while he was serving in the U.S. Army. During his 22-year tenure, he earned two Purple Heart medals.
The Republican Party has failed to stop Trump.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in our own primary, in which Floridas Republican senator (and arguably the most moderate candidate) got so utterly obliterated by Trump that he quit his campaign. Marco Rubio was the GOPs golden boy; this time last year, he was considered the obvious choice for the nomination. He gave up five months before the convention in July.

With each passing day, Trump edges closer to victory at the Republican convention, making that gala the likely deathbed of the GOP as we know it. The party has two choices: nominate a neo-fascist monster voters elected, or broker the convention, saving the face of that tattered, shameful organization at the cost of voter outrage and reprisal. Elite, influential conservatives are already preparing an attempt to run a third-party true conservative should Trump win the nomination. The latter option would at the very least give the GOP the dignity that comes with self-sacrifice, if it could do anything other than briefly slow Trump down. Though I crave these outcomes, I struggle to see it as anything other than cowardice on part of the Republican Party. This thing is their fault.

For years, the party functioned as an apparatus to preserve corporate power by tricking working-class whites into voting against their own economic interests, appealing to traditional social values  and to the white-supremacist tendencies among them. Formed under Nixons cynical Southern Strategy, the GOP coalition seemed unshakeable for generations.

Unfortunately for them, this coincided with decades of disastrous economic policies that decimated the working-class white communities on which they depended on for votes. These people are pissed  and rightly so. But years of GOP indoctrination did its work. The angry, underemployed masses dont identify business elites as the cause of their suffering. Instead, they understand themselves in relation to sexier, more tangible problems: ISIS, Black Lives Matters war on cops, drug addiction and illegal immigration.

Once we understand this, we can easily see why Trump is so appealing. His campaign is founded on his reputation as a doer: a go-getter wholl sort out immigration and destroy ISIS and Black Lives Matter in a jiffy. No more uncertainty; no more chaos. Mr. Trump will bring things back to the way they once were. Oh yeah, and hell get Mexico to pay for that wall.

Trumpism is nothing but a rebellion fueled by the very same vile Fox News and other GOP-propaganda arms pumped into the hearts and minds of voters for decades. They converted economic depression into ethnic resentment and didnt care a damn about Trumpism until it washed up on their doorstep; they cant be counted on to stop it. Blocking his nomination is nothing other than an attempt to save face before Nixons coalition deteriorates completely, leaving the party to implode.

Trump encourages violence; Trump has a volunteer militia; He has threatened riots if he doesnt win the nomination; His followers support ethnic cleansing. They are violent. Some are literal Nazis. Even if he loses in November, well have to deal with them and their backlash. How?

Not with the armchair liberalism of proud Democrats. John Oliver is funny, but Make Donald Drumpf Again wont succeed at anything other than making liberals feel better about themselves. Thatll last as long as theres any humor left to be squeezed out of the Trump phenomenon  I have a feeling itll run dry soon. Smugness, condescension and mocking Wal-Mart shoppers isnt anti-Fascism.

What will work, then? Hell if I know. I wanted to praise the anti-Trump protests in Chicago, but then folks pointed out Trump deliberately chose the setting of a diverse college campus hoping to inspire such a protest, proving to his supporters that they really are embattled by far-left activists. It seems to be working in his favor. Its an awful mess.

All I do is hope for a boring ending to this story.

Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.

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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

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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]
Upon its creation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was organized to operate with as little oversight as possible. The bureau is technically under the Federal Reserve, but that provides the CFPB with a budget that is a fixed percentage of the Fed's operating expenses. This effectively keeps the CFPB from having to appear before Congress for any funding oversight. But more to the point, its organizational structure has the entire bureau reporting to a single director, presumably to help the CFPB avoid the delays and compromises inherent in organizations led by a commission.

The single-director structure of the CFPB has been contested in Washington from day one. Testifying before Congress in 2011, the agency's architect, Elizabeth Warren, said, "The work facing the new bureau is very challenging; additional restrictions would undermine the consumer bureau before it even begins its work of protecting American families." She claimed at the time that some of the CFPB's tasks were seemingly insurmountable, and the agency would therefore be hindered if decisions had to go through a committee rather than a single person.

But switching to a commission structure would arguably give the work the agency is doing longer-lasting effect. Rules drafted by the agency under the guidance of a commission would be bipartisan and therefore not a target to be torn down after a change in power. The CFPB was created under a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Congress, and CFPB Director Richard Cordray was appointed by the same president. When Cordray's term is up, if Republicans are in power a director with sharply different views and priorities could be nominated. And if the bureau's current single-director structure stands, that new director could undo whatever progress has been made thus far.

A single-director structure is also contrary to how regulatory agencies are typically run. The Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Consumer Product Safety Commission all have bipartisan leadership; the latter was even the model for Warren when she devised of the CFPB.

A clear example of the effect of unchecked power for a CFPB director can be seen in the agency's action against PHH Corp. related to alleged mortgage kickbacks. An administrative law judge  in the agency's Office of Administrative Adjudication  had ruled that PHH violated provisions of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, but limited those violations to a certain set of kickbacks. But Cordray determined that the administrative law judge's ruling was incorrect, resulting in a broader enforcement action. The ALJ had levied a $6.4 million fine, but the CFPB increased the penalty to $109 million.

The Office of Administrative Adjudication is only equipped to issue a recommended decision, which any party has the right to contest prior to the director either adopting the recommendation or overruling it. This leaves the ultimate adjudication of a matter solely to the director. PHH is now appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Proponents of a commission structure for the CFPB believe the PHH matter would have been handled differently if there were more checks on the director's authority.

Republicans in Congress are not waiting for a change in administration to try to reform the CFPB's leadership structure. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on financial institutions, is sponsoring a bill to have the CFPB overseen by a commission made up of five members who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The members of the commission would serve staggered terms, which initially would be established by the president.

Even if one bought into the argument that the CFPB needed to be created as single-director organization to overcome the herculean task of centralizing the regulatory and enforcement responsibilities of all consumer financial laws, that task is now all but completed and therefore the benefits of having the bureau report to a commission far exceed any drawbacks. The delays and compromises inherent in a regulatory body may not be a bad thing. It may be exactly what the CFPB needs to create a long-lasting bureau that is reasonably handling its duties.

Craig Nazzaro is of counsel in Baker Donelson's Atlanta office and is a member of the Consumer Finance Litigation and Compliance Group. Before joining Baker Donelson, he was a vice president and assistant general counsel with JPMorgan Chase. He can be reached at cnazzaro@bakerdonelson.com.
Financial services companies and others are building up their defenses against mounting cyberattacks, but they need to sharpen their focus on where systems connect.

It's critical that businesses and organizations that move or store personal data invest in the proper hardware and software, and assure they work together securely, Lyn McDermid, chief information security officer for the Federal Reserve, said Thursday during the Women in Finance and Technology Symposium in Washington.

"We have created, in every institution, very complex environments," McDermid said. "Technology has grown up rather haphazardly in many of our organizations."

Understanding the company environment and having good documentation and processes in place will go a long way toward monitoring all of a network's interfaces, she added.

"Where I think we are at the greatest risk is in the seams, not in the actual hardware and software, but where it all connects," McDermid said, citing application interfaces and gateways as components of those seams.

And it is not difficult for criminals to sneak in through those seams.

Even though major data breaches and nation-sponsored cyberattacks garner much public attention, a majority of successful attacks are accomplished at a low-to-moderate difficulty range for criminals, said Ellen Richey, vice chairman of risk and public policy for Visa Inc.

"We are making it way too easy; you don't have to be an expert to cyberattack or get into systems in this world today," Richey said. "Why? It's primarily because of the human factor."

Employees training and awareness of security trends, and keeping the topic in the forefront around the clock, are key to successfully thwarting attacks, Richey said.

"It sounds obvious, but people just aren't doing it," she added. "A company sending out fake phishing emails to its employees all sounds kind of hokey, but it is really important."

Visa deploys fake emails to employees as part of its own education process, and monitors how many mistakenly open them. "If you click on it, you get a picture of a bomb going off," Richey said. "And if you get that, you get sent to training."

Establishing stronger business processes related to security "may not be sexy and not technical," but it's crucial in fighting attacks on networks, Richey said. "These breaches are happening because of failures in business processes and basic access controls."

In the payments sector, Visa continues to push EMV chip technology for guarding sensitive data in physical stores, and tokenization for data in storage or transmitted through mobile devices, Richey said.

The panelists addressed the topic of third-party vendor access weaknesses, which has been cited as the cause of the Target breach in 2013 and the Home Depot breach in 2014. And this month American Express informed some of its cardholders that their card credentials might have been accessed through a breach occurring through network entry from access of a third party that services various merchants.

Maria Filipakis, executive deputy superintendent of capital markets for the New York State Department of Financial Services, said her agency conducted a survey of banks and insurance companies to assess vulnerabilities in policies and data networks.

The survey found that there's "a true challenge in a continuing reliance on third-party service providers," Filipakis said. "Often, these third-party service providers have access to sensitive data that the companies and financial firms have, and have entry into their internal system."

The findings helped those banks and companies engage in more discussion about how to address that problem, while heightening awareness of cybersecurity regulations and requirements, Filipakis said.

At its most basic level, security starts with every person at an institution or company  and every piece of wireless technology those people bring to the workplace, said Leslie Ireland, assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis for the Treasury Department.

"We may have a tendency to think about this as it relates to our work station," Ireland said. "In fact, cybersecurity is important because of your smartphone, your BlackBerry, your tablet and frankly any device you have that has a Bluetooth connection."

Even workers who wear a Fitbit to work may bring in some vulnerabilities they wouldn't expect, Ireland said. "Fitbits represent a cyber challenge in today's world," Ireland added. "We need to think very holistically about that."

It's difficult to spend so much time and money on security technology and processes when none of the defensive barriers can stop a criminal who has somehow made it through the "front door" of a system via a network's regular user, Ireland said. Cybercriminals steal users' credentials most often through email phishing.

In addition, the "insider" threat remains a major problem for networks as employees, former employees or contractors often have system access they can use to intentionally or unintentionally cause harm, Ireland said.

This week the Treasury Department learned that the Central Bank of Bangladesh had millions of dollars illegally withdrawn by someone who had bank credentials. "Those credentials could have been obtained through phishing or from an insider, we just don't know at this point, but it illustrates the real threat," Ireland added.

Government and state regulators have to agree on standards to follow in protecting data from cybercriminals, said Sarah Bloom Raskin, deputy secretary of the Treasury.

"One thing we do not want to see emerge is the development of multiple sets of standards and multiple sets of guidances or, certainly, regulations," Raskin said. "That would create a lot of uncertainties and unnecessary pause."


C&F Financial in West Point, Va., has named Jason Long chief financial officer of the company and its Citizens and Farmers Bank subsidiary.

Long succeeded Thomas Cherry as CFO of the $1.4 million-asset bank and C&F Financial. Cherry will remain president of both, the company said Wednesday.

Long joined the bank in October 2014 as a first vice president after 12 years at the accounting firm Yount, Hyde, Barbour.

C&F Bank has 25 branches in eastern Virginia and offers investment services through its C&F Wealth Management subsidiary.


Banks change top executives all the time, but it's rare that one leaves for another venture and simultaneously gets recruited to the board of the bank he or she is leaving.

But that is what is happening at United Bancshares in Columbus Grove, Ohio, the $608 million-asset company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Anthony Eramo on Tuesday resigned as senior vice president and chief financial officer at United to "pursue another opportunity that will allow him geographic mobility," the filing said. However, Eramo was immediately appointed as a director of its bank unit, The Union Bank Co.

"He is expected to provide guidance from his nearly three decades of banking experience," the filing said. "The resignation was not due to any dispute or disagreement with the company or the bank on any matter relating to operations, policies, practices or accounting principles."

Daniel Lucke was named interim CFO starting April 1. Lucke has been controller since June, and he will keep that job and fill in as financial chief until the board finds a permanent CFO, the filing said. Lucke has 24 years of professional experience in various roles and is a certified public accountant.


Charles Gifford is stepping down from Bank of America's board after serving as a director for more than a decade.

Gifford, 73, will retire after the Charlotte, N.C., company's April 27 annual meeting, according to a proxy statement. Thomas Woods, a former vice chairman and chief risk officer at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce identified by a third-party search firm, has been selected by the $2.14 trillion-asset B of A to fill Gifford's seat.

Gifford was chief executive of FleetBoston when the Boston company sold itself to B of A in 2004. He was briefly Bank of America's chairman after the sale. Brian Moynihan, B of A's chairman and CEO, worked for Gifford when they were both at FleetBoston.

Gifford held a number of leadership roles at the FleetBoston predecessor BankBoston during his more than 50-year banking career.

Paul Davis contributed to this report.


When the Supreme Court ruled in the 2010 Citizens United case that political action committees -- as well as unions -- could be organized and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for a particular policy or political candidate, it was widely believed -- and still is believed by some living in the past -- that the average person would no longer have a voice, that millionaires and billionaires would seize control of the U.S. government, and by consequence the American way of life.

It turns out that big money does not control politics anymore.

Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964 true social and political navigation depend upon anticipating the consequences of innovation. Social media were first used effectively by Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign. But he used it as an extension of existing methods of communicating with the electorate. His campaign organization compiled lists of millions of potential voters and contacted them with what may be characterized as political advertisements; political messages. He used Facebook as an advertising medium.

Before social media the technology of mass communication was owned and controlled by a few wealthy newspapers, TV corporations, and radio conglomerates. These were the channels through which messages were transmitted to the public. They were expensive, and those who controlled it controlled the amount of words or space that were purchased, or time as in TV and radio ads. The value of these media channels then were in the circulation numbers of newspaper; or how many people watched on TV ad or heard ads on radio. These different channels of communication were jealously controlled. A history of this was written by David Halberstam.

So when Citizens United enabled huge political PACs to operate in campaigns, these PACs and the politicians who use them felt that the door was wide open for them to control the messages. They would be provided with the tens of millions of dollars required to take out ads on radio and TV, and thereby carefully control what the electorate heard.

But Facebook and more recently Twitter changed all that. Anyone can open an account on these social media sites for free. So Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders can give their versions of events at any time. And anyone with a Twitter or Facebook account can connect to the politicians accounts and follow what they have to say for free. They dont have to buy a paper or watch a TV ad.

Social media have created an explosion of not only press freedom but free access to tens of millions of members of the voting public. Candidates can directly communicate with their potential voters. They dont have to kowtow to any political party. The main effect of this is that political candidates have achieved two historic goals: they dont need the approval of one of the two parties, and they dont need tens of millions of dollars in a campaign war chest to finance their own ads.

This change, from big money campaigns to social media campaigns, has taken place so rapidly that newspaper and TV political pundits failed to grasp it. It didnt fit their old paradigm what works in political campaigns and what doesnt. There is also a strong factor of cognitive dissonance: they have to deny that social media are stronger than themselves. This is because they make a lot of money from political advertising and the last thing they want political candidates to realize is that they dont have to buy ads on their networks to get elected.

The interesting thing about this is that unlike campaign messaging which often escapes hard financial analysis, it is possible to compare the results of social media messaging to money spent on traditional campaign advertising. Trump was quick to point out that in the state of Florida millions were spent on negative ads against him, and these millions failed to influence voters.

But it must also be said that Trump did achieve a lot of free coverage on traditional television. Not through paid advertisements but their coverage of his boisterous antics and sometimes offensive use of language. Trump was shrewd enough to understand, and act on, the marketing strategy that reality has taken over ideology on TV coverage. And he used the medias thirst for entertaining, startling events to cover his campaign speeches. So Trump used both the new social media and the old television and radio media to his advantage.

And he did this all without the traditional media knowing what was going on, they failed to catch on to his approach, to appreciate the effectiveness of his tactics.

Bernie Sanders is also using social media but in a way more consistent with tried and true Democratic campaign tactics: the organization of rallies, protests, and demonstrations designed to get media attention. The Democrats greatest achievement in using social media as an organizing channel was the March 11 anti-Trump demonstration. But it must be mentioned that a major reason that demonstration worked was that Trump was appearing at a large university, located in a major city, which had thousands of students living nearby and to which thousands of others had access on public transportation and major highways.

The effects of this implementation to social media, combined with Trumps teasing of traditional media, are dramatic. Jeb Bush spent over 30 times as much money per voter as Donald Trump in New Hampshire and had a very poor showing. In fact, Jeb Bush spent $150 million on an overall political campaign that may be characterized as a complete failure. Bush was financed by a PAC, Right to Rise, the sort of PAC that was enabled by Citizens United. Bernie Sanders started with very little money compared to Clintons PAC money, but received tens of millions through internet donations.

In the final analysis, the critical factor in Trumps success was that Trumps campaign tone worked, and it worked because he had a sense of what the voters were feeling. He had a sense of the reality the voters were experiencing; that the government was oppressing them with high taxes, had made promises they didnt keep, and sent their jobs overseas through trade agreements made without the voters best interests in mind.

The point is, Trump used both traditional TV and radio through his understanding of their need for attention-getting theatrics, and social media as a channel for directing communicating with potential voters.

Citizens United was seen as a revolutionary ruling because it enabled small groups of people with huge amounts of capital to control, it was expected, access to message channels. But with the introduction of Facebook and Twitter on the Internet, messaging is no longer under the control of a few. Social media has freed the First Amendment to be used by everyone. But more importantly, it provides everyone access to everyone else without cost. This has nullified the influence of money and the PACs that were considered a threat to the electoral process.

And Trump, along with Bernie Sanders, put this all together in the 2016 campaign.
When the gayest of gay ladies  the New York Times  starts clutching pearls over a "mortifying" Republican debate, it's a bon-bon of hypocrisy too delicious not to be nibbled. The Times (whose slogan should be "All the sodomy that's fit to print") is actually disturbed because somewhere, somehow, Republicans are having fun. There's none so moralistic as those who are helping to destroy the most advanced moral code in history.

On March 10, 2016 Sarah Lyall published the puritanical puffery entitled, "The Parent-Child Discussion That So Many Dread: Donald Trump." One of the pervasive fallacies of post-Judeo-Christian child-rearing is that "discussion" is better for children than teaching moral absolutes and how to rise, sometimes fall, and rise again in moral truth. In fact, discussion is basically useless. The emphasis on yakking is a domestic variation on the magical conversation fantasy, that a conversation flecked with glimmering mots justes can solve any problem in the world. Of course, it can't. But it is an adaptive fallacy. For example, the magical conversation delusion helps lefties deny that they lack the courage to risk their dear corporeality defending their nation.

Mrs. Lyall's piece about the dread discussion of The Donald opens in the cozy living room of parents Gary Goyette and Andrea Todd, who watched the March 3 debate with their 10-year-old son, Tommy. At the exchange between Trump and Rubio, wherein the frontrunner reassured voters that there was "no problem" with a certain part of his anatomy, a horrified Gary said, "'Tommy, you've got to leave  you've got to get out of here.' And Tommy actually got up and ran out of the room."

As they say in Queens..."Puh-leeze, gimme a break."

Among television, computer, and videogames, the average 10-year-old spends hours every day in screen time. Thanks to the decimation of God-based morality, a movement spearheaded in the pages of the Times, little Tommy has been exposed from birth to hundreds of thousands of explicit words and images far more dehumanizing than anything Donald Trump might say. It would indeed be dreadful to tell Tommy about even a smattering of the anti-natural and anti-moral philosophy epitomized by the Times. Little Tommy lives in California, where May 22 is Harvey Milk Day for California schoolchildren. A parent-child discussion about Harvey Milk's treatment of underage boys might reasonably send Tommy running from the room.

Richard Klin of Stone Ridge, New York is quoted as saying of his eleven-year-old daughter, "I had this impulse to lock her away in an enchanted land where Donald Trump doesn't exist, but you can't." The Times is a staunch promoter of anti-natural initiatives such as Planned Parenthood and homosexual adoption. Does Planned Parenthood kill babies and sell their body parts in the enchanted land? Do gay men purchase babies there? If young Miss Klin is of a philosophical turn of mind, which the children of Stone Ridge, New York are known to be, she and her dad may discuss the differences between slavery for labor and slavery to meet emotional needs. Being imaginative, they might note that both kinds of servitude necessitate the radical separation of the captive person from his authentic, natural identity.

According to the article, government schools in wealthy communities continue to brainwash students into left-wing politics while ignoring the realities that confront many Americans. Kathy Maher, a teacher in Newton, Massachusetts, tells her students to think of Donald Trump as "the crazy old uncle who just says whatever he wants." Another protectress, she saves students from knowing that most Americans less privileged than their parents cannot find good jobs, and how that destroys lives and communities. Whatever he does if elected, Donald Trump is focusing on restoring a great nation  not with socialist handouts, but with the opportunity for lawful citizens to work in an economically level playing field. Students in Newton are not encouraged to consider that that may be why Trump is the front-runner, and not because he is a bully.

Speaking of bullying, the Times is the pinnacle of anti-Christian bullying. Piquant examples include the 6/29/2015 image of Pope Benedict XVI made of condoms, shortly after their 5/28/16 publication of Christ's mother layered in excrement surrounded by pornography. These execrations occurred shortly after the Times declined to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoon images of Mohammed. Times executive editor Dean Baquet wrote: "Was it hard to deny our readers these images? Yes, but we still have standards and they involve not running offensive materials." Trump Derangement Syndrome, left-wing variety, is the frenzied sticking of forks into the last fair-haired, flagrantly heterosexual, sufficiently Protestant candidate left standing in America.

If the Times has its way, there will soon be American toddlers on Georgia-Pacific tracks dressed up for their big photo ops, as in Europe. Lyall reports a Facebook conversation in the family of Jon Michaud of Maplewood, N.J. Mr. Michaud is white, and his wife is described as Dominican. There is no information about whether any members of the Michaud family are illegal aliens. The article is pure backhand to the forehead, race-baiting melodrama.

"So if Donald Trump becomes president, he's going to bring racism back," he said his 8-year-old had told him. "That means Marcus, Mommy and I will be separated from you because we have darker skin than you do, right?"

(The left insists that racism never left, except to make the point that Republicans are going to bring it back). Setting aside the implausible literary prowess of this 8-year-old, at this point the evil Trump meme is built, and the Michaud family is dropped from Lyall's article like hot fried plantain. Has the child been told the truth? Nobody is going to take you away because your skin appears different from your daddy's. Do you know what it is to tell a lie? Many people are in America because they told a lie. They have stolen America just like stealing candy from a store. People have to stop stealing America or there will be no America left for anyone. Love has nothing to do with color; your family is yours to love forever.

There is a beautiful way to tell if discussion is revealing the truth about things. The truth never crushes the heart. The truth about every person brings hope, confidence, and possibility. Truth is God's nickname on the job site. The truth may disappoint temporarily, but it cannot discourage permanently. If Donald Trump is an honorable American, that truth will unfold to the benefit of all. The discovery of who he is will be attained through honesty with ourselves.

Here is a good way to talk to children about the problems of open borders and the ideas of Trump. Take the child to the front door of your house or apartment. Show him the lock and say, "We have to keep this door locked because only people we have invited can come into our house. If all the people outside could come in here whenever they wanted, it wouldn't be a good place to live anymore. People who love America are going to build a strong wall like this wall and a big door like this one. Then friends can come over, and we can also have America for a long, long time."
Israels Defense Minister Moshe Yaalons trip to Washington D.C. this week has come at a most volatile moment in the Middle East. As the Syrian civil war continues to spiral out of control, Iran and its proxies remain hell-bent on exerting hegemony in the region. Before meeting with his U.S. counterpart Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter later on in the day, Yaalon spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Monday morning.

First of all I am here to discuss the cooperation between the United States and Israel regarding defense, began the defense minister. We do enjoy a superb relationship when it comes to the defense establishment -- with the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense, personally between Ash Carter and myself; the armed forces on both sides; the intelligence agencies -- [all] for the benefit of our two countries, he added.

Yaalon, born Moshe Smilansky in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Haim, served as a reservist and participated in the liberation of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. He soon returned to active service, and commanded units in the Paratroopers Brigade as well as the Sayeret Matkal, Israels most elite Special Forces unit. In 2002, Yaalon was promoted to serve as the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff. He was instrumental in leading the fight against Palestinian terrorism during the Second Intifada. At the time, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, the largest-scale operation into the West Bank since the Six-Day War. The mission was to identify and to remove key actors within the various terror groups, and to disturb their line of production from financing to recruitment. The IDF soon apprehended the terrorists and gathered meaningful intelligence.

When pressed by moderator Aaron David Miller, who serves as Vice President for New Initiatives and a Distinguished Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, as to whether severe disagreements persist between the U.S. and Israels objectives in the region, Yaalon said: Of course [Israel has] certain worries regarding the future, mainly because of the Iranian deal. We believe Iran is more confident, and [freer] to act in the region -- with more money, as a result of the sanctions relief -- to finance Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen Our relationship between the U.S. and [ourselves] is characterized by open channels; sharing technologies. When it comes to challenges, we might have differences We have differences of what should have been -- or what should be -- done in Syria. We worry that this rogue nation of Iran [perceives itself] as a central party in order to solve problems in the Middle East.

Yaalon underscored that Iran has continued to exploit its deal with the West to gain Shia hegemony in the region. He pointed to specific terror attacks in the past months, which were perpetrated by Irans proxies.

Yaalon also chided President Barack Obama for mishandling attempts to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel. He faulted the president for not holding Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accountable for his role in the breakdown of peace talks. When [Abbas] closed the door in front of both Secretary John Kerry in February 2014 and President Obama in March 2014, he wasnt blamed. Why? Hes too weak to be accountable, Yaalon said. The most important value that is missing in the Middle East is accountability. When [Abbas] closed the door in front of President Obama, he should have been blamed. He should be accountable.

Later on Monday, Yaalon met with Secretary of Defense Carter, in which the two discussed the pending defense package to Israel for the coming decade. Carter and Ya'alon "agreed upon an expansion of cooperation in the cyber sphere, out of an intent to improve cyber defenses in both countries," said Ya'alons spokesman, as reported in The Jerusalem Post. "Relations with the US are a cornerstone of our national security, and Secretary of Defense Carter is a true friend. I was pleased to discover a great understanding for our security needs in light of the changing reality in the region," said the defense minister.

Yaalon visit to the U.S. coincided with urgent consultations at the United Nations, which also addressed continued Iranian violations. The consultations were delivered Monday to discuss Irans recent ballistic missile launches, which the United States condemns as dangerous, destabilizing and provocative, stated U.S. ambassador Samantha Power. Given the multiple, interrelated conflicts in the Middle East, such launches  accompanied by strident and militaristic rhetoric  undermine prospects for peace. The United States was particularly troubled by reports that Iranian military leaders have claimed these missiles are designed to be a direct threat to Israel. We condemn such threats against one of our closest allies and another UN Member State, she added.

Russia, which this week stated its surprising plans to remove military personnel from Syria, argued that the Iranian tests did not violate the resolution adopted by the Security Council after the Iran nuclear deal was signed. Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had seen no such proof that the missiles could carry nuclear weapons. Churkin concluded that this did not represent a violation of the resolution.

The Council needs to take its responsibility and Russia seems to be lawyering its way to look for reasons not to act rather than stepping up and being prepared to shoulder our collective responsibility, responded Ambassador Power when speaking to reporters at the UN.

The perilous situation in the region comes just after a Palestinian terrorist fatally stabbed 28-year-old American Taylor Force in Tel Aviv-Yafo. The ex-combat veteran and an MBA student at Vanderbilt University, Force was remembered at a memorial service at Ben Gurion Airport before his body was returned home. Deputy U.S. Ambassador William Grant and former Knesset Member Dov Lipman, as well as some U.S. military officers and Forces friends, attended the ceremony.

He was a perfect example of a U.S. army officer, eulogized his friend David Simpkins. He was humble, optimistic, hardworking and he genuinely loved everyone regardless of their race, religion and creed.

Force, a 2009 graduate of West Point, had been part of a group of 28 students and faculty who traveled to Israel to learn about global entrepreneurship through meetings with start-up companies.

Jared Feldschreiber is a prolific writer and journalist who oft-times writes on security and diplomacy matters. Follow him on Twitter @jmoshe80
Every couple years, proponents for legalizing MDMA -- the main ingredient in the recreational drug ecstasy -- pop up in the media.

During 2012, the chief medical officer for the Canadian province of British Columbia told reporters that MDMA is safe in pure form, and advocated full legalization.

Just last year, an emergency medicine specialist and clinical toxicologist in New Zealand also called for MDMA legalization, claiming that the drug was not associated with violence.

On the contrary, there is substantial evidence in the peer-reviewed literature that MDMA is associated with aggressive behavior and violence.

Writing in the journal Violence and Victims, researchers from Georgia State University and Emory University reported the following findings:

[C]linical studies have established a link between aggression and ecstasy (3,4-methylenedioxymeth-amphetamine [MDMA])... Studies that compare the levels of aggressive behavior between ecstasy users and nonusers find that those who have used ecstasy report significantly greater levels of aggression and hostility. This finding holds even for those who have abstained from ecstasy use for an extended period of time... virtually every recent study sampling users from the current ecstasy drug culture clearly establishes a positive relationship between ecstasy use and aggression... Our results clearly suggest that those with a higher prevalence of lifetime ecstasy use exhibit higher levels of aggressive and violent behavior. The more ecstasy one has used in his or her lifetime, the greater variety of violent acts he or she commits. The odds of committing more types of violent acts in the past year increases almost linearly with the number of ecstasy pills ever used.

Another study discusses a case of acute paranoid psychosis in a patient who took MDMA (Ecstasy), became violent and was prosecuted by law. After the repeated intake of MDMA, the second psychotic episode occurred. Further research out of Germany found that even typical recreational doses of ecstasy are sufficient to cause neurotoxicity in humans.

From an article in the Journal of Substance Abuse, a group of Italian researchers came to the following conclusions about MDMA:

Our findings evidence increased levels of outward-directed aggressiveness in Ecstasy users: Aggressive responses to provocation were higher in the subjects exposed to MDMA than those of healthy subjects who have never used Ecstasy, during the entire laboratory procedure. In comparison with our data obtained with the same experimental paradigm in methadone patients, the subjects included in the present study who have taken Ecstasy showed during the first session even more aggressiveness than heroin addicts. These results are in agreement with the reports demonstrating more impulsiveness and hostility in heavy Ecstasy users and with our previous psychometric measures that evidenced high levels of aggressiveness three weeks after MDMA discontinuation.

Finally, a study published last year by researchers from Saint Louis University, the University of Texas, Iowa State University, and the University of Michigan -- which conducted the largest ever investigation on MDMA and crime -- yielded the following insights into the risks from this drug:

This study [assessed] the association between MDMA use and violent and non-violent antisocial behavior while controlling for sociodemographic variables, lifetime psychiatric, alcohol and drug use disorders, and family history of antisocial behavior... MDMA users were still at significantly greater odds of engaging in violent and nonviolent crime than non-MDMA users... These findings support prior research that indicated that MDMA is associated with aggression... Although MDMA use is substantially less than that of alcohol and other substances found to be associated with violence, it nevertheless is a contributor to the drugs-violence public health nexus.

Consequently, we have plenty of evidence showing linkages between MDMA use and violent behavior -- and this data needs to stay front-and-center in the public discussion over possible legalization of the drug.
At a press conference yesterday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said he would not run for re-election to the Senate, nor would he run for governor in 2018. He also scotched any notion that he would accept the vice presidential nomination from any candidate.

Wall Street Journal:

Florida bars candidates from running for two offices at once, and Mr. Rubio in starting his presidential campaign was effectively giving up his Senate seat. But the official registration deadline in Florida isnt until June 24, allowing Mr. Rubio an opening into the race. The race for his seat is already crowded, with six contenders who have raised more than $13 million total. Mr. Rubios spotty attendance record in the Senate was an issue in the presidential campaign, and could have resurfaced in a re-election bid. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Rubio showed no interest in staying on the campaign trail, either. Asked whether he would consider being Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs vice presidential running mate, were he to clinch the nomination, Mr. Rubio responded, Im not going to be anybodys vice president. Im not interested in being vice president. He also said he was not planning to run for governor of Florida. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, is term-limited and cannot run for re-election in 2018. Mr. Rubio also offered some parting shots at front-runner Donald Trump, saying he hoped Republicans would coalesce around one of the two remaining Trump alternativesMr. Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Hopefully theres time to still prevent a Trump nomination, which I think would fracture the party and be damaging to the conservative movement, he said.

I think Rubio made a mistake in announcing his near term political plans so soon after a bruising, emotional, and hard fought campaign. He probably should have kept his options open, at least on a Senate run. By June, it may be that the Republicans are desperate to keep that Florida Senate seat and Rubio may offer the best chance in that regard.

And he could have easily said that 2018 was too far away to think about today. The point being, an experienced politician never closes the door entirely, The world turns, circumstances change, politics becomes more fluid. Of course, Rubio could change his mind, but at a cost to his credibility.

In essence, the press conference revealed Rubio's weakness as a national candidate; too young, too inexperienced to succeed. No one doubts he is a charistmatic, talented politician who has demonstrated some admirable attributes on the campaign trail. But there is no substitute for experience and Rubio needs to continue to learn the political game if he is going to re-emerge as a national figure.
When PC imperatives collide, something has to give. And in Sweden tomorrow, what will give is the anti-energy neo-primitivism of Earth Hour during which progressives are supposed to demonstrate their concern (or something) about global warming, environmental despoliation, (or something) by living as our stone age predecessors did  without artificial light (even candles, I guess).

There are actually two other PC imperatives -- themselves in conflict  that are causing Earth Hour to be discarded like some non-recyclable plastic bottle. One of these is the imperative for Western countries to welcome (and support) unlimited numbers of migrants from less fortunate lands (in practice, especially those dominated by Islam). The other imperative is rape prevention, which in more progressive locales includes the expression of any heterosexual attraction on the part of males. Thus, as Speisa.com reports:

On basis of the large number of immigrant-related sexual attacks recently, against women in Ostersund, the municipality will keep the street lights lit during the "Earth Hour" on Saturday.



"Earth Hour" in Sweden is between 20:30-21:30, on March 19, when it's pitch black this time of year.



- Earth Hour is a good and important event, but this year we choose to have the street lights lit in view of what has happened. We want everyone to feel safe, says councilor Ann-Sofie Andersson, to SVT Nyheter Jamtland.



Only in recent weeks, police have received 14 reports of women and girls who have been persecuted or harassed in Ostersund, but many incidents are believed to have been unreported

You can have your neo-primitivism, or your anti-rape campaign, or your Muslim immigrant flow, but you cant have them all at once.
When The Bell Curve, a dispassionate and rigorously scholarly study of intelligence and class structure, written by the late Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, was published in 1994, outrage from the politically correct was immediate. I will never forget reading a copy of it shortly after publication on an airliner set to depart San Francisco for New York when a passenger boarding the plane sneered at me, Why are you reading that sh*t? as he passed by my seat.

This book was, in other words, forbidden knowledge and the taboo was being enforced by random affluent progressives, because among other topics, it discussed the indisputable fact that IQ varies in statistically significant degree by race, and it examined the various explanations for why that might be the case. The position of my fellow passenger and almost the entire left-leaning segment of the public and the chattering class was that such questions must not even be asked.

Genuine critics of the book had their say, as well, in the normal scholarly fashion, and the book emerged pretty well unscathed. Murray was able to respond fully to his critics, and on balance, the findings of the book have been upheld, and reinforced by further research (see below).

But for the progressive class, the sin of examining forbidden questions that could cast doubt on their shibboleths can never be forgiven. And the punishment extends to the creation of knowledge of untruths about the book so widely disseminated that a university president (the custodian of a community of knowledge seekers) casually passes them on  even while seeming to stand for the integrity of honest vetting of ideas.

Which brings us to Tim Sands, the president of Virginia Tech, a reputable state-supported university that invited Charles Murray to lecture there, only to experience the same sort of pressure I encountered on an airliner 20 some years ago. In an Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community, Murray responds to the politically motivated educated ignorance that Sands offered in his defense:

Since President Sands has just published an open letter making a serious allegation against me, it seems appropriate to respond. The allegation: Dr. Murray is well known for his controversial and largely discredited work linking measures of intelligence to heredity, and specifically to race and ethnicity  a flawed socioeconomic theory that has been used by some to justify fascism, racism and eugenics. Let me make an allegation of my own. President Sands is unfamiliar either with the actual content of The Bell Curve  the book I wrote with Richard J. Herrnstein to which he alludes  or with the state of knowledge in psychometrics.

Murray proceeds to refute Sandss slurs with detailed examination of the scholarly work on his book, nearly all of which has validated the actual findings of it  which are not at all what critics like Sands assume they are. I highly recommend the body of the letter for anyone who wishes to know something about IQ and heritability.

But the larger point is that Sands should either apologize for his careless words or resign, because they stand for the antithesis of what a university ought to be about. Forbidding scholarly inquiry on political grounds or passing on lies intended to do so has absolutely no place in a university, especially a state-sponsored one.
As big as the Android N news has been over the last week or two, there is one story which Android N has not managed to drown out just yet. Encryption. What started with a simple no from Apple, has turned into a fully fledged heated debate across the tech industry, the political spectrum and just about everywhere in-between. What has been even more apparent within the tech industry specifically, is the divisiveness of this topic. While the encryption debate has seemingly united competing companies like Apple and Google, smartphone owners seem far less cohesive in their view. Which is interesting as it is essentially their data that is up for grabs. Especially, Android device owners.

It is no secret that Android is not as safe as iOS. While both companies have pushed forward recently with full encryption on the latest versions of the respective operating systems, the difference lies in the updating process for each. Apple is always keen to get as many i-related devices up and running on their latest iOS version as quickly as possible and this has resulted in most iPhones now running the latest version of iOS. A move which is not mirrored in the Android world. The topic of fragmentation has long been debated among Android users and without wanting to beat a dead horse here, the issue is raising its ugly head once more. As the later versions of Android are where encryption has really taken off, the result of this is the sheer majority of Android devices are not running an encrypted version of Android. In fact, according to a report out of WSJ this week, the difference with encryption lying around the 95-percent level for Apples devices, which compares to less than 10-percent of all the Android devices currently in circulation. And here is where the issue for Google and Android lies. Not to mention, the importance of finding a way to rectify the fragmentation issue as well. Earlier this week, we discussed whether Google had released Android N too early and many responded with a clear no, it is not too early  with the logic being that the sooner updates arrives for Android, the better. However, With Android N arriving while Marshmallow is only at the 2.3-percent adoption level and Lollipop only for the first time taking over KitKat, all Android N is going to do is confuse the matter of fragmentation further.

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More to the point though, is the fragmentation of the operating system is only one side of the fragmentation puzzle. There is also the fact that Android is so fragmented with manufacturers too. The be together. not the same mantra that Android has now adopted is a clever one and certainly does bring forward the idea of what Android is all about. The variance on offer and the ability to not only choose your manufacturer, but also choose your model and choose your color and even to some extent, choose your operating system version. While in contrast, Apple is essentially be together and all the same. A point which was so very poetically summed up in one of the most recent promo videos from Google.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhJIFC8xkY

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While it is true that all of those middle-c keys sound the same, in the real world, they all also represent the same level of security and encryption that Apple has managed to achieve. Having a standardized operating system for all of their devices, being in control of the manufacturing process and not having to negotiate their operating system in anyway has meant that even now, when encryption is a selling point for all companies, Apple can stand tall and say our devices are protected. By all means Google can stand with Apple and echo their sentiment and reiterate how important encryption is and why devices need to be encrypted and the sanctity of encryption in general. Although, Google will be standing there saying this while virtually all of their devices remain unencrypted and unprotected. And there is not exactly a lot Google can actually do about this.

Google can look to enforce Android device manufacturers to employ encryption on their devices, but the only leverage Google has is the use of their Google suite of apps. Which in truth is a leverage Google does not want to be applying too heavily. Android is free to anyone who wants it and that is its appeal. While most smartphone manufacturers are happy to conform to Googles standards, it is in Googles interest that they do. If manufacturers chose not to abide and were effectively banished from the Google ecosystem, they would still be able to use Android in any way they wanted just the same. In fact, banishing manufacturers would only hurt Google in the long run, as a lot of their revenues come from the Google suite of apps and not the free use of Android. Not to mention, we are already seeing and hearing some companies (you know who) claiming they want to free Android from Google, so it is always likely there will be another suite of apps waiting in the wings for banished manufacturers to include. Therefore, Googles ability to control manufacturers is not infinite, there is a limit and while we are always talking about the latest and greatest smartphones, it is the lower and mid-range devices that could prove to be the most problematic.

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This non-flagship category is big business in certain regions of the world (in all regions in reality. as affordable devices are driving all markets now) and the issue with low to mid-range devices, is that they are limited in performance and subsequently, their ability to deal with aspects like encryption. At least, not without performance being further impaired. As these are already slower devices and are already aggressively priced, how much benefit is there for manufacturers to want to include elements like encryption on them? Aspects which might not only affect performance of already performance-limited devices, but aspects which would likely make affordable devices, more costly to produce in the first place. It is these devices that could prove to be the downfall for any you must instructions set out by Google.

Now some of the Android community will instantly draw on this as a prime example of why everyone should buy Nexus and not opt for carrier or non-Nexus handsets. After all, all Nexus devices tend to get the updates at the same time and therefore, the element of being able to control aspects like encryption or whatever else arises in the future, is doable if everyone owned a Nexus. And that is a logical argument. However, if that was the case and everyone interested in Android did go out and buy the new Nexus, then would this not fly in the face of be together, not the same. Wouldnt Android just be another version of Apple then? And it is this line of thinking which inherently raises the fundamental issue with Android  it is by nature not able to offer such across the board protection. It is the essence of Android that continually makes it so vulnerable.

So here is the interesting food for thought to take home. While the Android community seems divided on whether tech companies should be helping law enforcement in gaining access to encrypted smartphones, for now, it is a topic which largely does not concern the majority of them. By any means of measurement, the majority of Android devices are not protected and are devices that would not particularly need Googles help to access. This could all change in the future, however with the issue of fragmentation seemingly becoming even more concerning with the now even earlier releases of future versions of Android, the ability for Google to widely roll out any security measure, encryption or otherwise, will remain an issue for them and by association, for all of us.
Spring break is nearly upon us, and some may have already had spring break. This is the time where many college kids will travel and have some fun right after mid-terms and before the second half of the semester gets under way. There are some great apps available to help you get the most out of Spring break and keep up with your travel plans as well.

Duolingo

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If youre planning on heading out of the country, Duolingo is a great app to check out. It helps you learn another language in your free time. And who couldnt do without learning another language? Duolingo includes learning of a few different languages like Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian and many others.

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TripAdvisor

Want to make the most out of your trip? TripAdvisor is a good app to download as well. Not only does it help you find the best and cheapest hotels, but it can also be your own personal tour guide. Guiding you to the top spots in the city that youre visiting for the week, not to mention some great sightseeing as well.

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Yahoo Weather

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Need to check the weather while youre away? Yahoo Weather is another one to check out. Yahoo Weather is one of our favorite weather apps, as it can show you the weather by the hour and up to the next 10 days in most locations. It will also give you a notification if its about to rain or snow. Making it easier to make sure youre plans arent ruined.

Spotify

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Whether youre flying, driving or taking a train to your destination for Spring Break, Spotify is a great app to take along too. Spotify allows you to download music to be played offline. So you can jam out without needing an internet connection. That way you arent too bored on the way to Cancun or wherever you are headed.

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Google Play Music

Like Spotify, Google Play Music also allows you to download music to play offline. Google Play Music also has a slew of radio stations that are available to play  of course these need a WiFi connection to be used. Google Play Music is also already installed on your smartphone, so youll just need to login to get started. Making things pretty easy.

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TripIt

One of the best apps for keeping track of all of your itinerary information for your spring break trip, or really any trip. TripIt, like Google Now, will scan your email to find emails about your trip. It will then bring that information into the app so that your flight information, hotel reservation and car rental are all in one spot. Making things really convenient while you are traveling.

Kayak

It might be a bit late to look for flights for Spring Break, but who knows you may get lucky and find something. Using Kayak is the best way to find a flight as well. Kayak searches all of the major airlines, and will also give you insight on whether the prices will drop before your trip and give you the best time to book your flight to get it for the cheapest price.

Gogobot

Need some help finding the good spots in the city youre in for Spring Break? Gogobot is a great app to check out, you can think of it as your own personal travel guide. Itll show you the best restaurants, attractions, hotels and so much more, that are nearby you. Making your trip that much more fun.

Airbnb

Again, it may be a bit late to look for a place to stay during Spring Break, but Airbnb always has some great places available. While they may not be as nice as a hotel room, they are definitely much cheaper than a hotel, especially in Manhattan. Airbnb allows people to rent out their place to strangers, essentially, for a few days and even weeks at a time in some cases. Its a good way to find a place at a cheap price.

Fly Delta

If you are flying Delta for Spring Break to Cancun, maybe Mexico or even Florida, youll definitely want the Fly Delta app. This app is a must have, as it gives you up-to-the-minute information on your flights as well as letting you know quickly when its been delayed (it also allows you to rebook from within the app) and so much more. Fly Delta allows customers to check in using the app as well as get their boarding pass. So no longer will you need that paper boarding pass. Making life much easier when traveling.
Every year the Mobile World Congress introduces us to some seriously-good new smartphones, and last months show was no different to previous years, except this year we had both LG and Samsung show off their latest and greatest. Previously, Mobile World Congress has been Samsungs show to steal, but LG and the new G5 tried hard to steal some of the limelight this year. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are now available to purchase all over the world right now, but the G5 is still making its way to the market. While a number of the larger North American carriers have come forward with pre-order dates as well as promotions, the global launch has now been set for March 31st.

According to media from South Korea, the global launch of LGs latest in their G-series will launch worldwide come March 31st. This matches up with previous announcements from a number of carriers with pre-orders starting round about now. Weve already heard that LG will be heading out a second battery pack to customers in the United States, similar to the promotion they ran with last years LG G4. What promotions LG will be running depends on where you are in the World, with the United States getting a free battery, some markets getting a free Cam Plus module and this latest report suggesting at least one-third off of the Bang & Olufsen audio module.

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Elsewhere, rumors are appearing that Best Buy will be running a special offer on the $799 LG G5 for just $99.99 on a two-year activation on either Sprint or Verizon, down from the usual $199.99 contract price. AT&T and Verizon are also rumored to be launching their pre-orders for the LG G5 any day now, so those eyeballing the latest from LG will have a lot of choices before long. Nevertheless, the G5 is launching hot on the heels of Samsungs Galaxy S7 duo, and were sure the South Korean giants will be going at it throughout much of the rest of the year with these flagships. More information on different regions and their particular promotions will no doubt keep on coming in, so be sure to keep checking back.
Google Maps has been getting some pretty decent new additions recently, as Google added user edit notifications back at the end of February and although not technically present within the app as a usable feature just yet, Google may be preparing to add the ability for saving routes for offline use in a future update to the application. Although not new, one of Google Maps useful features is the ability to set markers for your favorite locations, in addition to places like home and work, and as of today, Google has made it possible to customize those markers with the use of a collection of fun stickers.

While the new stickers dont necessarily serve any functional purpose, they do make things a little more fun and they do allow people to customize the look and feel of their saved locations and marked places within Maps, which is essentially the reasoning behind Googles decision to add the option in. Aside from home or work locations, Google reiterates that you can label pretty much any location within Maps that you want, including the gym, your kids school, your favorite restaurant, the music shop, a bookstore, and so on. Once the places are labeled and saved in the places section within Maps, you can pick and choose from the different marker stickers and add it to that location.

From the looks of the image there are about 24 different stickers to select, including stickers that look like regular homes of different styles, but Google has also added in some more unusual stickers to use like a pirate ship, a dragon, a treehouse, a shoe house, a submarine, a tipi, a lighthouse, an igloo, a bus, and even a couch. With all of those to choose from and even a few more, there should be stickers to suit everyones tastes, and theres no reason Google cant end up adding in more stickers over time, although there is no indication that Google plans to do so. Google doesnt state any sort of time frame for the stickers showing up in the web app or the Android app, so they may or may not show up for users currently.
For a company that does not show much innovation in its final products, if this new patent comes to fruition, it could really be the Next Big Thing. Samsung had a hit with the Galaxy Note series  one which nobody yet has equaled  and then dual curved display edge design, while cool and sexy, has not proved to be practical. Samsung is searching for that next form factor that nobody else has, and the foldable display may just be their ticket to increased sales. Many people want a big screen when viewing their display, but they want a smaller form factor when carrying it around.

Samsung routinely floods the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) with many different designs for flexible displays but never make it on an actual device. Samsungs answer to the LG G Flex line was the Galaxy Round with a curved display that was sold only briefly in South Korea. Samsung has experimented with bendable or foldable phones, a display that could roll up and even dual-displays  however, this latest patent uses their rollable display concept, but in a more traditional looking smartphone. The display is normally smaller, but the user can extend the display when the content is such that a larger area is called upon by pulling out the existing displaysee the illustration below. When tucked away, the device size is acceptable for carrying in your pocket, but by grasping the edge (marked 221) and pulling, the display (marked 223) would unroll out of the area marked 211, to a larger display that would be used while interacting with the device. When you are done, simply push and the display will retract back into the device, put it in your pocket and away you go  now that is innovative.

The problem with most patents is we never get to see the final design out on the market for sale, but this is one that makes a lot of sense. Samsung, and other display manufacturers, already have working displays that can roll up, so it is not a large leap to see that type of display inside this case, so to speak. This way the consumer gets the best of both worlds  that smaller form factor that is easy to carry around and the large display we all quietly crave.
(ANSA) - Vatican City, March 18 - Pope Francis may be going to Armenia, Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Friday.

"A trip by the pope to Armenia is being assessed," he said, adding that the most likely period was "the second half of June".

"There is not yet a finalised programme not certain dates," said Lombardi.

Armenian sources had said the pope would be coming from June 22 to 26. The visit would come a year after Francis termed the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians a genocide, angering Turkey.

Francis sparked a diplomatic incident with Ankara when he celebrated an Armenian-rite Mass marking the 100th anniversary of the slaughter and termed it the "first genocide of the 20th Century." Turkey immediately recalled its ambassador in protest and accused the pope of spreading hatred.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 18 - European countries, including Italy, must prepare for a possible mosquito-borne Zika virus contagion, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a risk assessment report out Friday.

The risk of transmission of the virus - which has been linked to severe birth defects such as microcephaly as well as neurological problems - will increase as mosquitoes become active with the warm weather, the WHO report said. "While the Aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquito) is the primary vector, the Aedes albopictus (tiger mosquito) - which is present in 20 European countries - can also transmit the virus and remains a potential vector," the report said.

Aedes aegypti is present on the Portuguese island of Madeira and on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea. The Aedes albopictus lives in Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the Vatican City. The WHO recommends a four-pronged prevention approach: pest control, keeping tabs on the virus via an early warning system, swift lab confirmations of possible infections, and alerting the public - especially pregnant women - as to the risk.

The organization last month said pregnant Zika victims who choose to terminate should be granted access to safe abortions. Women living in countries where access to abortion is limited should be granted appropriate information on the options available, including emergency, short-term, long-term and permanent contraceptives, the organization added.

Most of the women in countries affected by the Zika outbreak will have healthy children and it is safe for women to breastfeed if they have been infected, the WHO added.

The WHO has declared an international health emergency over the virus, which has spread rapidly in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean.


(ANSA) - Brussels, March 17 - Italy has proposed an EU civil service for young people between the ages of 18 and 25 in the education, health, environment, culture and migrant reception sectors.

The initiative, entitled "Odysseus" was presented by Premier Matteo Renzi at the launch of the "Volta" think tank.

It would involve a competition for 250 positions for young people to take part in voluntary civil service activities over a period of 6-12 months, with a particular focus on the migration crisis.

Odysseus would aim to go beyond the current system of transnational cooperation towards a system run directly by EU institutions. "It's about creating a common conscience, because investing in education and in volunteering means investing in the future," Renzi said at the inauguration of Volta.

"Voluntary European service is the first step towards a longer term approach," he said.


(ANSA) - Brussels, March 18 - Paris terror attack suspected ringleader Salah Abdeslam was arrested Friday after being shot and wounded in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, local media said.

He was said to have been arrested with a wounded accomplice.

Abdeslam was one of two people who evaded arrest during a shootout at an apartment in the Brussels suburb of Forest Tuesday. One Islamist gunman was reportedly shot dead by a police sniper at the scene. Fingerprints and DNA belonging to the fugitive, who has been on the run since the 13 November attacks that killed 130 people, were reportedly discovered by Belgian officers during Tuesday's raid.

Belgian prosecutors on Friday confirmed his fingerprints were found at the apartment in the Forest area of the city.

The 26-year-old Brussels-born Frenchman, is believed to have played a key logistical role in the attacks on the French capital. His older brother Brahim was a suicide bomber.


Algeria: local press reports attack on gas plant foiled Jihadists on run, no casualties, Algerie Focus site says

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 18 - The Algerian army foiled an attack Friday by Al Qaeda terrorists who fired three mortar shells at dawn at a gas plant at the Algerian town of Krechba but failed to enter the complex, the independent website Algerie-Focus reported. The terrorists have not yet been captured and there were no casualties, the site said.



The attack happened a short time after 6 a.m. local time against the plant managed by British Petroleum, Statoil and the Algerian company Sonatrach, Algerie-Focus said.



The mortar shells were fired at the installations where hundreds of people work, including many foreigners.



According to the report the Algerian army reacted quickly, beating back the jihadists and preventing them penetrating inside the plant.



The hunt for the terrorists by the army continues, according to the report. (ANSAmed).




Renzi satisfied at EU-Turkey migrant deal Ankara wins concessions on aid, accession process

(By Stefania Fumo).



(ANSAmed) - Rome, March 18 - Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said after an EU-Turkey summit that a bilateral deal on migrants signed Friday respects "the requisites we gave ourselves... now we need to ensure it works as best as it can". "It respects the parameters we - and not only we - had set: there is an explicit reference to human rights, freedom of the press, and the founding values of Europe". "If we manage to save even just one child thanks to this accord, we will have done our duty," the Italian premier said of the accord, which was widely condemned by humanitarian organizations including the UNHCR refugee agency, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Save the Children.



Under the deal migrants who have reached Greece illegally will be sent back to Turkey, and there will be an acceleration in giving Ankara a first tranche of three billion euros, as well as the opening of a negotiating chapter on the budget for Turkey's accession to the EU. The accord aims to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey from Greece. For each Syrian illegal sent back, the EU would agree to take in a Syrian refugee from Turkey. The deal also reportedly earmarks another three billion euros for Ankara and lifts visa requirements for Turkish citizens from June.



Renzi pointed out that the deal signed today "refers explicitly to Libya and Africa". "To those who ask us to help them in their home countries, we say the road is one of international cooperation. Now the point is to translate words into actions," said Renzi, adding he is satisfied with the deal's "comprehensive approach". "I hope relocations (of refugees from Turkey to Europe) will take place - but...I won't believe it until I see it," the premier added. "In any case I see more awareness of the fact that we're facing a large-scale problem," he added.



Turkey's joining the EU will take time, Renzi said. "The process of Turkey's entering the EU is very, very complex," Renzi said. "Today it was decided to take a step forward, but the road will be neither easy nor short". Renzi added that "for the record - compared to social media historians - in the past, both the right and the left, both (ex-premiers Silvio) Berlusconi and (Romano) Prodi were in favor of (Turkey's) entry...Those against were the Germans and most of all the French, who blocked that process when - to put it diplomatically - Turkey was far less beset by attacks and terrorist threats than it is today". (ANSAmed).




Libya: Group close to Fajr Libya, 'Long war' on Sarraj After premier announces he shortly will be in Tripoli

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 18 - "We will wage a long war against anyone who tries to let the government of national unity into Tripoli". This was the threat made by a Libyan group close to Fajr Libya, the radical coalition in power in Tripoli, "the founding commanders of the crisis cell of revolutionaries in Libya," hours after Libyan premier Fayez Sarraj announced that "within a few days" he will move to Tripoli.



The threat was reported by the website akherakhbaronline.com, adding that the group pledged to annihilate anyone who tries to protect the presidential Council of the government of national understanding, which it called a "group of traitors".(ANSAmed)
ROME - The Algerian army foiled an attack Friday by Al Qaeda terrorists who fired three mortar shells at dawn at a gas plant at the Algerian town of Krechba but failed to enter the complex, the independent website Algerie-Focus reported. The terrorists have not yet been captured and there were no casualties, the site said.



The attack happened a short time after 6 a.m. local time against the plant managed by British Petroleum, Statoil and the Algerian company Sonatrach, Algerie-Focus said.



The mortar shells were fired at the installations where hundreds of people work, including many foreigners.



According to the report the Algerian army reacted quickly, beating back the jihadists and preventing them penetrating inside the plant.



The hunt for the terrorists by the army continues, according to the report.


(by Francesco Cerri) MADRID, (ANSAmed) MARCH 18 - For admirers of the 'Caudillo' it is an affront, for the children of the victims of the dictatorship almost a vendetta, for the lovers of Spanish artistic heritage a nightmare.



Forty one years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco his Canto del Pico castle, in the Sierra near Madrid, today is abandoned and in ruins, the doors and windows smashed.



For 35 years the castle, built in 1920 by the third Count de las Almenas on a high rock, was the dictator's hideaway refuge near Madrid where he spent his week-ends with his family.



The intelligence services also asked him to move into the unbreachable Canto del Pico every time they feared an attack on his life.



The castle was declared a listed building of cultural Interest in 1930. The first owner, the Count de las Almenas, a refined collector, had removed artistic and architectural features of great value from palaces, castles and monasteries from many parts of the country - columns, Gothic capitals, an entire 14th century cloister from a Cistercian monastery - to enrich it. In 1936 at the start of the civil war set off by the coup staged by Franco, the castle was requisitioned as headquarters of the Republican army at the battle of Brunete. Dying of depression after the death of his son, killed in the civil war, the count left in his will in 1940 the Canto del Pico to Franco who had become head of state.



When the dictator died the castle passed to his grand-daughter Maria del Mar Martinez-Bordiu, who sold it in 1988 to a company that wanted to transform it into a luxury hotel. But years passed and nothing happened. In the 1980s, left without a caretaker and uninhabited, the castle was vandalised. The precious collections of the count and Franco were stolen.



Its precious architectural features were stolen or sold.



Roman capitals disappeared as well as books, sculptures and furniture. In 1988, a fire destroyed the roof and badly damaged the structure of the building. Since then, ABC wrote, the Castle appeared like a dark 'ghost ancgored to the Torrelodones rock, at the foot of which now there is the A-6 Madrid-La Coruna motorway.



The castle has been put on the Red List of cultural heritage to be saved, so far without much success.


TUNIS - A mosaic portrait of Tunisian police dog Akil is next to the mosaic portraits of the 22 people killed (four of them Italians) in the attack on the Bardo Museum a year ago.



Akil, the wolf dog with the dog brigade of the Tunisian Anti-terrorism Brigade, died at age 1 1\2 during the security forces operation at the museum and was hailed as a hero.



"The special forces left the museum at the end of the operation, taking away the dead dog to the applause of the crowd," one reads in the chronicles of a year ago.



Four El Jem mosaic laboratories worked on the "Tous Bardo, tous pour la Tunisie" project under the artistic coordination of Nacer Bouslah. The mosaic of Akil measures 50 X 30 cm and will be placed next to a large block of mosaics, measuring 11 x 2.5 Metres, where the portraits of the 22 people killed (including four Italians) in the massacre.



The Bardo houses the richest collection of Roman mosaics in the world. (ANSAmed)
ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 18 - These are the main events scheduled in the Euro-mediterranean area for today: BRUSSELS - EU, European Council with Jean-Claude Juncker and Commissioner Johannes Hahn on the agreement with Ankara on the migrants and refugees issue (also March 18).



TIRANA - Visit by European Commissioner for immigration Dimitris Avramopoulos who meets the highest state officials to discuss immigration and terrorism.



TUNIS - Mission of a delegation of Italian regions for institutional meetings aimed at selecting the best ways with which the regional system can contribute to supporting the democratic process and the economic development of Tunisia.



PARIS - Book salon with window on Algeria, guest city Costantine (to March 20).



(ANSAmed).




(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 18 - The Libyan government of national unity will move to Tripoli "within a few days," Libyan Premier designate Faiez Serraj was quoted as saying Friday.



Serraj, according to a report in the Libya Herald, said that a security plan has been drawn up with the police and some militias in the capital, without saying which ones.



The rival government currently installed in Tripoli indicated recently that it will never give up its powers to the Serraj executive, which it calls a government "imposed from outside that Libyans never will accept". (ANSAmed).


(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MARCH 18 - The agreement between the EU and Turkey envisages that starting March 20 all migrants who arrived illegally in Greece will be sent back to Turkey. The start of these operations was one of four knots that were most debated.



Among the crucial points also are the legal concerns related to repatriations, which in the document one deals with specifying that the returns will be carried out in line with international and EU laws, and that there will be no collective expulsions.



The proposal envisages relaunching EU-Turkey operations, to make preparatory work for the opening of new negotiating chapters and to open the negotiating chapter on accession 33 (regarding the budget).



On the question of money, it is aimed to accelerate the spending of the first three billion for the refugees, with joint definition by Brussels and Ankara of projects to finance.



At the end of the expenditure of the first three billion, three billion more requested by Ankara should be allocated.
(By Stefania Fumo).

ROME - Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said after an EU-Turkey summit that a bilateral deal on migrants signed Friday respects "the requisites we gave ourselves... now we need to ensure it works as best as it can". "It respects the parameters we - and not only we - had set: there is an explicit reference to human rights, freedom of the press, and the founding values of Europe". "If we manage to save even just one child thanks to this accord, we will have done our duty," the Italian premier said of the accord, which was widely condemned by humanitarian organizations including the UNHCR refugee agency, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Save the Children.



Under the deal migrants who have reached Greece illegally will be sent back to Turkey, and there will be an acceleration in giving Ankara a first tranche of three billion euros, as well as the opening of a negotiating chapter on the budget for Turkey's accession to the EU. The accord aims to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey from Greece. For each Syrian illegal sent back, the EU would agree to take in a Syrian refugee from Turkey. The deal also reportedly earmarks another three billion euros for Ankara and lifts visa requirements for Turkish citizens from June.



Renzi pointed out that the deal signed today "refers explicitly to Libya and Africa". "To those who ask us to help them in their home countries, we say the road is one of international cooperation. Now the point is to translate words into actions," said Renzi, adding he is satisfied with the deal's "comprehensive approach". "I hope relocations (of refugees from Turkey to Europe) will take place - but...I won't believe it until I see it," the premier added. "In any case I see more awareness of the fact that we're facing a large-scale problem," he added.



Turkey's joining the EU will take time, Renzi said. "The process of Turkey's entering the EU is very, very complex," Renzi said. "Today it was decided to take a step forward, but the road will be neither easy nor short". Renzi added that "for the record - compared to social media historians - in the past, both the right and the left, both (ex-premiers Silvio) Berlusconi and (Romano) Prodi were in favor of (Turkey's) entry...Those against were the Germans and most of all the French, who blocked that process when - to put it diplomatically - Turkey was far less beset by attacks and terrorist threats than it is today".
UNHCR slams EU-Turkey migrant deal, places refugees at risk' Another step to inhumanity which violates int'l law, says Oxfam

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 18 - The UNHCR refugee agency said Friday today's EU-Turkey deal on migrants and asylum seekers places them at risk and fails to protect their right. "This a humanitarian refugee crisis," Carlotta Sami from UNHCR Italy told RAI News 24 public broadcaster. "This accord must set up a series of guarantees on the specific rights of refugees both in Greece and in Turkey, and it does not. The refugees need protection, not to be sent back. We fear the agreement on relocations will only affect a small number of people and could place non-Syrian nationals at risk". She added that right now in Greece and Turkey, refugee rights are not being protected. "Greece still lacks adequate reception (facilities)...and rapid processing of asylum requests," Sami said.



Doctors Without Borders humanitarian organization on Friday called "shameful" the deal. "Once more, the accord with Turkey demonstrates how European leaders have completely lost touch with reality," said Doctors Without Borders Italy President Loris De Filippi. "Its cynicism is clear: for every Syrian who, after risking his or her life at sea, will be rejected by Greece, another Syrian will get the chance to reach Europe from Turkey. Applying this revolving doors principle reduces people to numbers, denying them humanitarian treatment and the right to seek protection in Europe. It's high time European governments began facing reality, and by opening safe and legal ways, offered a responsible, unified, humane and dignified response to the unstoppable claim for protection and assistance on the part of people fleeing desperate situations". Oxfam human rights organization on Friday also slammed the deal. "The accord... violates international and European Union law, trading human beings for political concessions," said Oxfam Italy Director Elisa Bacciotti. "(It) is another step towards the abyss of inhumanity - moreover one disguised with withering hypocrisy, as a tool to combat human trafficking. European border control cannot be paid with human lives". "We call on the EU to (set up) safe and legal humanitarian corridors" for asylum seekers, Bacciotti said. "Member States must take refugees in, according to their quota. One cannot put a cap on this fundamental responsibility. You cannot stop migration, only manage it as well as possible, and the Europe that comes out of this umpteenth summit is dramatically far from this approach".



"We are extremely disappointed," Valerio Neri from Save the Children said. "We must protect people, not borders. This accord will only create more uncertainties for the thousands of refugees stuck in the mud, the cold and the damp, and who are waiting for news from today's summit in Brussels summit... EU leaders should concentrate on their commitments on relocations, and create safe and legal channels for entry into the European Union". (ANSAmed).




There is a particularly meaningful piece among all the positive news stories arising in the last few months about the Catalan economy: after eight years in the red, Seat has begun to turn a profit again.

Yesterday chairman Luca de Meo presented Seats accounts for 2015, which speak volumes: from a 67.7m loss in 2014, Seat went on to earn 6m in 2015, a trend which if the car maker stays the course is excellent news for Catalonias automotive industry, particularly when you consider its capacity, for instance, to create skilled jobs (as opposed to the tertiary sector).

Besides, yesterday Seat reported that next year its Martorell plant will manufacture a small-sized all-road vehicle which is guaranteed to keep the facility busy, as the trade unions had requested. De Meo aimed to send an optimistic message (This is only the start, he said) and reminded everyone that Seat will roll out four new models in the next 18 months.

It should be noted that the total revenue of Catalonias automotive sector amounts to 14bn (10 per cent of the industrial total), accounts for 25 per cent of the sector in Spain and provides 100,000 jobs, including indirect employment. Seats plants mean big business for the automotive auxiliary industry and the company believes that their new SUV will mean even more contracts for local suppliers, as they already specialise in small vehicles, such as the Ibiza. This is a unique feature of Catalonia where 38 per cent of such companies are based, which accounts for 41 per cent of Spains entire auxiliary industry output.

In addition to having a productive workforce and mature trade unions which are equally able to negotiate better working conditions, as well as side with management and accept sacrifices when necessary, it is also the existence of this cluster that affords Barcelona its top spot as an automotive innovation and research hub. All in all, it is obvious that the sector has made the most of the recession to do what was needed and, far from suffering the massive offshoring of production facilities that some had forecast a few years ago, Catalonias industrial culture still holds its market value and is a treasure to be preserved.
All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter.
by Sonam Shaikh

A young Indian woman, Sonam Shaikh, chose to convert to Christianity after attending Christmas Mass. Remember that moment, she said Everything fascinated me". After that initial thunderbolt that filled her heart with joy, she took on the path of Initiation, which she describes in her journey toward baptism.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  Born to a Muslim father and a Hindu mother who had to convert to Islam to marry him, Sonam Shaikh never imagined that listening to Gospel at the midnight Mass would be the first step towards embracing Christianity.

The young Indian woman was born in Kolkata on 20 May 1989. She spent her childhood in Nepal, where her father had moved for work, and returned to India in 1996. She graduated in Commerce and holds a postgraduate diploma in Hospitality and Aviation.

The turning point in her life came in 2011 when a co-worker invited her to attend Mass on Christmas Eve. Until then, she had never been in a church, but at that point, she felt something inside her, and I immediately began to Love this powerful God.

What follows is Sonams story. She is currently completing the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).

During my professional career, I met a young Catholic man, who invited me to Christmas Midnight Mass in 2011. Being a Muslim, during twenty-two years of my life, I had never ever visited a Catholic Church before, nor had I ever been to Mass and I knew nothing about Christianity.

I readily accepted his invitation to the Christmas Midnight Mass as a social and cultural event. Everything fascinated me. Just being present at the Mass was a wonderful and magical experience. The long entrance processions with the vestments of the priests, the altar servers, filled me with awe.

I was not prepared for this grandeur. As the Mass progressed, the priest came up and began to read (from what I later came to know was the Gospel) the narrative of the Birth of Christ. This was like a thunderbolt, listening to the Virgin conceiving by the Holy Spirit, the Angels singing, the God being born.

This was beyond imagination. This God was so powerful, that everything moved at His Word. The power of God stirred within me an intense desire to know Him, and I immediately began to Love this powerful God. It was an experience etched in my memory, the first step towards embracing Christianity. Thus, my desire to follow this faith began and that is how I came here, to the RCIA* programme.

The RCIA programme was very useful and positive experience. Although I thought they would only teach us prayers and reading the Bible (the word of God), it wasnt only that.

I believed that my love for Christ and journey with him is a private experience. However, through the RCIA programme, I realised that this experience also needs to be shared with others.

My reverence for the Lord has grown deeper and stronger. Reading the word of God and having a conversation with him have become a very important part in my life.

The commitment, endurance and support of entire RCIA team also matured my love for the faith. These people selflessly serve to give us the good news.

Here are a few of the experiences I had during my journey in RCIA programme:

The first Retreat of my Life

Where I came to know how much Jesus loved us and still love us. He was humiliated, he suffered, and he shed every drop of blood to redeem the whole world. I learnt to be more forgiving, more compassionate, and to be able to share my experiences.

I am closer to God and to my family, friends, neighbours and everyone else. My faith grew stronger in God and Gods path for me and for others. So many graces, so much to be thankful for. I see and hear differently because of my readings and pondering of the Scriptures and life with God within me.

Thank you RCIA team for making this retreat such a meaningful experience.

Rite of acceptance

This is the first ritual performed in the Church followed by Mass. We were gradually introduced to various aspects of Catholic beliefs and practices. I came to realise and to admit what God has meant to me and that the relationship with him had deepen and strengthen me.

When I was standing in front of the altar for the first time, it felt like the most awesome pleasure that a human is capable of experiencing. I was filled with joy as we were introduced to the Parish, received blessings from the Father and all of them praying for us.

Rite of Election

The Rite of Election is the stage before receiving the Sacraments of initiation (Baptism, holy Eucharist and Confirmation).

The Rite of Election closes the period of the Catechumenate. This rite coincides with the first Sunday of Lent in the presence of Bishop. He inscribed our names in the Book of the Elect.

Receiving the blessing from Bishop was one of the proudest moments of my life.

Now we Catechumen are proud to be called Elect or illuminandi (those who will be enlightened). It is now the beginning of the period of purification and enlightenment as an Elect. I was looking forward for the three scrutinies that will be held on the third, fourth and fifth Sunday of Lent.

As I draw closer to the celebration of Easter (eager to be baptised and receive the blood and body of Christ), I pray for myself and everybody to be faithful and loyal to our Lord.

The most heart touching moment and experience during this journey was the washing of the feet.

The whole act suggest that we should be proud of who we are and what we have. But we should always be humble and meek. We should give up our ego, pride and selfishness.

I was speechless by the end and my eyes were filled with tears because this was the most humble feeling I had ever experienced.

Even, we candidates were blessed to wash our animators feet and this was a sense of satisfaction and changed our vision towards others.

This resembles the Love and Care for others.

I pray that after our Baptism, May we remain loyal and committed to Christ, our Lord.

All to Jesus I surrender,

All to Him I freely give.

(Nirmala Carvalho contributed to this article)
The superior of the Aden community has entrusted to a sister the dramatic story of the assault on the nursing home for the elderly and disabled. The sisters were killed because of their "fidelity" to their mission, by being found ready "to welcome their Spouse. A blood sacrifice in the hope that it will bring about "shoots of peace for the Middle East and help stop Isis". The signed letter (PDF).

Aden (AsiaNews) - "Because of their loyalty, they found themselves in the right place at the right time, ready to welcome their Spouse." With these words, Sister Rio described the sacrifice of the Missionary sisters of Charity massacred in Aden, Yemen, on March 4 for "religious reasons". The nun recorded the dramatic testimony of Sister Sally, Superior of the home for the elderly and disabled attacked by the militants of the Islamic State (IS). The sole survivor, Sister Sally entrusted the story, the violence of the militias, of the attack to Sister Sister Rio.

The story was transcribed at a later date by a third nun, Sister Adriana, who published the text (which we publish below) and sent it out to the various religious communities in the United States.

In recent days, Msgr. Edward Rice, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, quoted several passages of the dramatic story of Sister Rio, praising the sacrifice made by the nuns for their faith and their service to others. A service that reflects the charism of the founder of the order, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Here, below, the dramatic story of the morning of the attack, recorded by the Missionaries of Charity and published by the National Catholic Register:

Sisters had Mass, breakfast as usual. As usual, Father stays back in chapel to say prayers, then to fix things around the compound. At 8:00am, the said apostolate prayer and all five went to home. At 8:30am: ISIS dressed in blue came in, killed the guard and driver.

5 young Ethiopian men (Christian) began running to tell the sisters ISIS was here to kill them. They were killed one by one. They tied them to trees, shot them in the head and smashed their heads.

The sisters ran 2 by 2 in different directions, as they have mens and ladies home. 4 working women were screaming, Dont kill the sisters! Dont kill the sisters! One was the cook for 15 years. They killed them as well.

They caught Sr. Judith and Sr. Reginette first, tied them up, shot them in the head and smashed their heads. When the sisters ran in different directions, the Superior ran to the convent to try to warn Father Tom.

They caught Sr. Anselm and Sr. Marguerite, tied them, shot them in the head and smashed their heads in the sand.

Meanwhile, the Superior could not get to the convent. It is not clear how many ISIS men were there.

She saw all the sisters and helpers killed. The ISIS men were already getting to the convent so she went into the refridgerator room, since the door was open. These ISIS men were everywhere, searching for her, as they knew there were 5. At least three times they came into the fridgerator room. She did not hide, but remained standing behind the door  they never saw her. This is miraculous.

Meanwhile, at the convent, Father had heard the screaming and consumed all the Hosts. He had no time to consume the large Host, so he threw the oil out of the sanctuary lamp and dissolved it in the water.

A neighbor saw them put Father Tom in their car. They did not find any trace of Father anywhere. All the religious articles were smashed and destroyed  Our Lady, crucifix, altar, tabernacle, lectionary stand  even their prayer books and Bibles.

At 10:00 or 10:15am: The ISIS men finished and left.

Sr. Sally came to get the bodies of the sisters. She got them all. She went to the patients to each one individually to see if they were OK. All were OK. Not one was hurt.

The son of the woman who was the cook (who was killed) was calling her on her cellphone. Since she was not answering, he called the police, and he went with the police there and found this great massacre. The police and the son arrived at about 10:30am.

The police tried to take Sr. Sally out of there  she refused to leave the people who were crying, Dont leave us; stay with us. But the police forced her to go with them because the ISIS knew there were 5 sisters, and they were convinced they will not stop until they kill her too. So finally she had to leave. She took one set of clothes and the sisters bodies, and the police brought them to an international hospital called Doctors Without Borders for protection. As there was not enough room in the mortuary of that hospital for the sisters bodies, the police brought their bodies to a bigger hospital mortuary.

Sr. Sally told Sr. Rio she is so sad because she is alone and did not die with her sisters. Sr. Rio told her God wanted a witness and told her, Who would have found the sisters bodies and who would ever tell us what happened? God wants us to know.

Pope Francis had his secretary contact the Yemen Secretary of State very often  about once a week to check up on the sisters and reassure them of his closeness. Today, the Popes secretary sent the message: I thank them  Little M.C. martyrs. He said he is offering the 40-hour First Friday devotion for them.

Sr. Sally told Sr. Rio that Fr. Tom tells them every day, Let us be ready for martyrdom.

Sr. Judith  they were trying so hard to take her for senior course, but they were not able to get her out.

Sr. Reginette  they were trying to send her for junior course but could not get her out.

God wanted them there.

Aden is rich city  a port city. Aden wanted to be its own state, so they got ISIS in to help them fight against Yemen. So ISIS won for Aden. That was the war last year, with all the bombing. They won, so that is over, but ISIS wont leave. They want to take over and exterminate any Christian presence. They did not kill the sisters in the war because they had no political reason to waste time on them. But now, they are the only Christian presence, and ISIS wants to get rid of all Christianity. So they are real martyrs  died because they are Christians. They could have died so many times in the war, but God wanted it to be clear they are martyrs for the faith.

Sr. Rio said Sr. Sally is fully surrendered. The police are trying to get her out because they will just keep after her until they kill her. She is fully surrendered and told Sr. Rio  whatever God wants. She said the other Muslims are so respectful of them. She said to pray that their blood will be the seeds for peace in the Middle East and to stop the ISIS.

She said that if they kidnapped Father Tom most probably they will wait 2 days, then ask in exchange for Father Tom either money or the release of their members held in prison.

Sr. Rio said they were so faithful  ISIS knew exactly when they leave and when to break in. And because of their faithfulness, they were in the right place at the right time and were ready when the Bridegroom came.

Sr. Adriana said she thinks the crushing of the heads has some evil connection with She will crush head of the serpent, some kind of mockery or evil meaning.

The sisters correct names:

Sister M. Sally, MC (Superior)

Sister M. Anselm, MC (Bihar)

Sister M. Marguerite, MC (Rwanda)

Sister M. Judith, MC (Kenya)

Sister M. Reginette, MC (Rwanda)
Relationship Expectations

Trending News: The Science Against High Standards

Why Is This Important?

Because maybe everybody just needs to chill with all these expectations.

Long Story Short

Some argue its good to have high expectations in a relationship and risk disappointment, rather than settle with low standards. But when it comes to what we expect from our partner, we have to be realistic or else face the fallout, new research has found.

Long Story

Youd be lying if you said you had no expectations of your partner whatsoever. Whether its hoping they never commit murder, or just wanting them to be able to make you the perfect cup of tea, we all have standards we expect our other half to reach.

Yet, the burning question is whether its good for a relationship to have these expectations.

A new study by the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin has answered just this, and found that we expect a lot from relationships, especially in terms of hoping our partners make us feel happy and confident. And this is OK as long as the relationship is a strong one.

Professor of psychology at Florida State University, James McNulty studied the relationships of 135 newlyweds in Tennessee. He asked them questions about their expectations every six-months for four years.

The participants were asked how satisfied they were in their relationship, and if they expected their partner to meet their needs for self esteem.

McNulty found that, for those who were happily living in marital bliss, high standards were linked to happier relationships. For the rockier relationships, however, having these high standards was more likely to leave the participants looking for a divorce lawyer.

Ultimately, spouses appear to be best off to the extent that they ask of their marriages as much as, but not more than, their marriages are able to give them," McNulty said.

"Other people demand too little from their marriages. Their marriage is a potential source of personal fulfillment that they are not exploiting," he said, proving once and for all that the world of love is a minefield.

"Each marriage is different; people differ in their compatibility, their skills, and the external stressors they face. All of these play an important role in determining how successful a marriage will be and thus how much people should demand from it.

RELATED: 9 Things To Expect In The First Year Of Marriage

So, only have high standards if you know you and your partner can meet them. This depends on how much they have going on in their life, and how well they can cope. Otherwise you could be in for trouble.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Does this mean we have to give up on being made the perfect cup of tea?

Disrupt Your Feed

So the busier you are, the less should be expected of you to have a happy relationship. Did someone say overtime?

Drop This Fact

The study also found that couples who directly addressed problems with each other tended to have happier relationships, compared to those who were passive aggressive with each other.
Giving DLA Piper the ability to scale up and down in response to demand and giving a wider range of career opportunities to staff and alumni, the firm will now offer services undertaken by a flexible lawyer pool (created and managed by Lawyers On Demand and AdventBalance).The announcement follows the partnership between the firms UK arm and Lawyers On Demand, announced back in November.There's only a few good international providers like this, we've got first mover advantage, DLA Piper global co-chief executive Simon Levine told the Australian Financial Review.If you don't tie up with one of them then you have to grow your own.Levine told the AFR that the move wouldnt reduce the number of lawyers required by DLA Piper but rather open a whole new work stream.He said the firm will be looking to extend the offering to Continental Europe.Our collaboration with DLA Piper has exceeded all our expectations and we are delighted, though not surprised, to be going global so soon after the UK launch, said Lawyers On Demand co-founder Jonathan Brenner.DLA Pipers passionate commitment to innovation shines through everything that it does and, together, we have been a real force for change in the legal industry.Todays news comes hot on the heels of LODs ground-breaking merger with AdventBalance, and clearly demonstrates the enormous potential of the deal. Weve taken New Law global and, in doing so, have created the perfect storm. Watch this space for more to come.The announcement marks the first step of the roll out of the Lawyers On Demand flexible solution offering outside of the UK.
hello,I have 8.5 years of experience as Electrical Engineer and I have got my skilled assessed as Engineering technologist by Engineer Australia.My agent is telling me try to get 60+ points using Proficient English test 20 points rather then showing work experience as this would make the case harder. she is telling me that I would need to get my work experience assessed by Engineer Australia to demonstrate that I have worked as Engineer for 8+ years.I though that something you fill out as part of your application for formal Visa, by demonstrating your work experience. Why would Engineer Australia assess if I have enough work experience to get the 15 points.I have the following documents to demonstrate work experience:1. Payslips2. Current Employer reference letter3. I could get HMRC to send me tax history letterAny advise
The new crossover will be based on the popular Duster's platform; will be aimed at emerging markets and could get five- and seven-seat variants.

Renault has released a first teaser image of its new Kaptur crossover which is based on the design and style of the slightly smaller Captur sold in Europe. As seen in the spy photo, Renault has started testing the new model (Codename: HHA) and what's evident is that the new model comes with a slightly longer wheelbase. This points to greater space on the inside and enough room for a third row of seats that are very popular in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia and India. The European-spec Renault Captur measures 4.12 metres in length, but the new Kaptur is expected to be go over 4.4 metres. In comparison, the Duster SUV measures 4.3 metres.

However, according to company sources, the model headed to India won't be badged "Kaptur". The new crossover will be positioned above the Duster in our market. Although based on the Duster, it will look more like a stylish version of the five-seat Captur, both inside and out. This, however, could be a bit challenging, as the Captur is based on a more expensive platform. But Renault has proved its ability to transform the interiors of budget cars like the Kwid, so this should be a feasible task with some clever selection of materials and accessories.

The new Renault crossover is likely to use underpinnings from Renault and Dacia's M-Zero platform which is slightly longer and is created especially for longer models like the Lodgy that need to be built on a tight budget. This model will come with a slightly more powerful 1.5-litre diesel engine, while transmission choices could include five- and six-speed manuals and a six-speed AMT Easy-R single-clutch automatic. An AWD version, with the independent rear suspension from the Duster 4X4, is also likely to be on the cards.

This new crossover is expected to first arrive in Brazil, the market it is being primarily developed for. Its arrival in India could follow soon after.


SUV

I was a huge Debbie Downer about Maserati's supposed revival so far and had a "I told you so" moment when they had to slow production of the Ghibli and Quattroporte. But even I know that the Levante is a good thing. You see, themarket has plenty of other hot, powerful and very expensive models. But all of them are about the same, so there's a huge pent-up demand for a non-German model.It doesn't get any more non-German than the Levante, which will arrive in New York next week to make its North American debut. At the same time, the Italians have slapped a 2017 model year on it and will begin selling a few in April.The base sticker will be $72,000 before destination. That part hasn't been cleared out yet, but we could see somewhere around $1,300 on top of whatever premium the dealership forces you to pay. What are you getting? A 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 engine tuned by Ferrari that makes 345 horsepower, as well as standard all-wheel drive and an 8-speed automatic gearbox.If you want more power, which you probably do, there's also a 424 hp version of the same V6 engine on the Levante S. For now, that's about it, as Maserati won't bring any diesels over the pond and development of the V8 model hasn't even been approved yet.If we look at the Porsche Cayenne range, we see that the Maserati might have a few problems. A Cayenne S with a 420 hp twin-turbo V6 is just $74,800. It's a little old, but it's also got a solid reputation having been around for over a decade.All Levante models sold in the States will come with air suspension and Maserati's new Skyhook adaptive damper system. In total, there are four selectable drive modes available: Normal, I.C.E., sport, and off-road. Among the most interesting features, we'd mention the HomeLink garage door opener and, of course, the red leather seats.
SUV

AWD

CVT

Curiously enough, C-HR stands for Compact and High Ride, yet the C-HR is neither of those. The Jeep Cherokee is a compact crossover, dearest Toyota. As for ride height, is it necessary for me point the self-explanatory out? Thank you.Even the chief engineer of the C-HR, Hiro Koba, agrees in some measure with my rant, explaining that the manufacturers focus was on creating a fantastic urban driving car. If youre calling a jacked-up Toyota Prius that, let it be. Underpinned by the same platform as the Prius, the C-HR is the first hybrid offering in its segment.However, theres a mystery that goes beyond the 1.8 hybrid powertrain. That is whether Toyota will give the C-HR the E-Four AWD system available on the Japan-spec Prius . Word on the street is the all-wheel-drive Prius wont arrive in the U.S. because Toyota hasnt tested the model in cold conditions, but never say never. On a side note, a little birdy told mewill be available for the model that employs a 2.0 four-cylinder engine and aMy gut is telling me that the C-HR is a front-wheel-drive affair and thats alright with me. Care to guess what Toyota thinks about the C-HR? I kid you not, but Toyota labeled the subcompact hybrid crossover as the perfect vehicle for, the young urban creatives who inspired the design. Oh Toyota, why are you so hipster?In Europe, the Toyota C-HR will be offered with three powertrain specifications. The range-topping model is the aforementioned 1.8 hybrid. At the entry-level end of the spectrum, the C-HR is motivated by a 115 horsepower 1.2-liter turbo-4. The mid-ranger engine option is a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter. The latter engine is expected to be offered in the U.S. as well. In terms of transmission, the Euro-spec Toyota C-HR can be equipped with either a 6-speed manual or a CVT.
I hope Henry Ford would be proud of me, declared Dirk in the opening scene of the vid below, a 4-minute clip I urge you to watch after reading this story. When the couple began their trip in the summer of 2012, they left their home in The Netherlands to cover 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) in 180 days to Cape Town in South Africa. Yup, the Model T survived the first leg.Its amazing when you think that a car which is over a century old can withstand the harshness of unpaved roads, dust, and extreme heat. For the second leg of their trip around the world, Dirk and Trudy Regter visited the U.S. and Canada in 2013, crossing 22 states and traveling 17,000 miles (27,358 kilometers) in 180 days. Amazingly, the Ford Model T suffered two small-time failures during the second leg: a flat tire and a broken alternator.For the third leg of their world tour, the Regters and their wood spoke-wheeled ticked off 16,000 miles (25,749 kilometers) through South America. Again, in 180 days. Other than the adventure itself, the other main reason why two middle-aged human beings would travel so many miles in a Model T is to collect money for orphan children. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Dirk, Trudy, and their T are doing it for the kids.Heres where the story gets gloomy. When they returned to Europe in 2014, during a trip to Belgium, the Tin Lizzie was hit by a truck. The impact took its toll on the front and rear axles, among other components, but Dirk and his wife miraculously escaped with the most minor of injuries. The thing is, now that the Model T is a wreck, they cant continue their trip nor raise money for orphan children who need their help.If youre willing to get involved, you can support Dirk and Trudy by making a donation on their website. Once the car is fixed and in running condition, the couple will continue their tour and charity. The final stints of the trip total 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers) and include New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and India, as well as crossing the Himalayas to China, Mongolia and back to Edam, The Netherlands.
HP

The Centenario was caught on camera while exiting Geneva's Palexpo complex, which hosted the auto show, and getting inside a truck. While we've all seen the Sant'Agata Bolognese machine live or through media, the trick here is the soundtrack of the clip, which gives us a decent taste of the beast's V12 voice.As it usually happens during such runs, those asked to play the delivery driver role know they have to refrain themselves from letting the cold engines of the cars show their true feelings and emotions. However, the guy handling the Centenario couldn't resist the temptation to dip his toes into the throttle a little bit, as you'll notice in the clip.The 770Centenario might have a naturally aspirated tech side that serves as a reminder we don't all have to go turbo nowadays, but its appearance is nothing less than an opinion splitter.However, we are far from worried about the fate of Lambo's top model. The Italian automaker is expected to build 20 units of the Centenario, as well as an additional 20 units of the yet unrevealed Roadster version. Well, all of them have already found owners.After all, the best way of celebrating Ferruccio Lamborghini's hundredth anniversary is to buy the car that was built with this particular purpose in mind, right?We'll remind you 2016 also counts as the 50th anniversary of the Lamborghini Miura, so the Centenario might not be the last Lamborghini dream we get to see this year.P.S.: Those of you who want to get the full Centenario aural treatment will have to wait for the first cars to be delivered. We're ready to bet the fresh owners won't lose time and take their new toys out where car spotters are waiting for them.
The latest example of this comes from the recent Galveston Car Show in Texas, where a Ford Mustang crashed into an unsuspecting Honda Civic, whose driver wasn't even attending the event, while trying to make a special entry.The owner of the Mustang GT was willing to turn right in order to reach the location of the meet, but he failed to notice an oncoming Civic, crashing right into the Honda. While the Ford's driver only fueled Mustang stereotypes (you expect people to judge when they see a Golden 'Stang and this is why they sometimes do), he wasn't alone in his wrong-side-of-the-law affair.In fact, the driver of a Hummer H1 tried to block traffic coming the other way, playing the policeman role and signaling the cars behind him in an attempt to get them to the car show. In a ridiculous move, the Mustang guy followed his signal without checking if the road was clear himself.The impact was a violent one, with one person being injured, while both cars sustained serious damage - we won't throw spoilers at you, so we'll let the footage show which one of the two came out better after the accident.While the Mustang driver was reportedly charged on the scene, we don't know if legal action is being taken against the man who blocked the road with his Hummer. What we do know, though, is that this accident could've been easily avoided. In fact, there were plenty of other vehicles that came before the Hummer moment, which managed to enter the event normally, without causing any kind of stir.
FWD

TDI

While there are some people who say the Q2 is pointless, it's also going to become a huge volume car and a gateway into Audi's crossover range. Like it and you may consider a Q5 when the baby arrives later on.As far as we are aware, production of the Q2 has not yet started and neither are full details available, especially regarding price. But if you are a big enough fan of the quattro brand and are considering buying such a vehicle, there's one way to catch a quick glimpse before everybody else. A red Q2 has just arrived at Audi Forum Neckarsulm and will stay there until May 24.We found quite a few new tech facts about the Q2 since it was shown in Geneva. As you know, the basic engine is a 1.0-liter similar to what you find in the VW Up!, but fitted with a turbocharger. With a manual and, it's the lightest of the bunch, yet still tips the scales at 1,205 kilograms, about the same as a fully equipped A1.Together with the 116 PS 1.6-liter, it's the slowest model offered, as both versions take 10.7 seconds to reach 100 km/h and have a top speed of 190 km/h. The fastest Q2 has a 2.0 TFSI rated at 190 PS and will do 100 km/h in 6.8 seconds, but the equally powerful and more frugal 2.0 TDI takes a respectable 7.0 seconds.There are going to be several equipment lines and configuration options. Some will look tougher and more off-roady, others will appeal to urban folks. While the MINI Clubman has a funky interior designed with the compass tool, this is a lot more sober. However, even the people who wear clothes made from recycled newspapers should be able to appreciate a digital dashboard.
And it's not like having these very expensive and exclusivist exotics burn to the ground did anything to hurt sales either. However, when one of its electric sedans burst into flames earlier this year in Norway, Tesla launched an investigation of its own, parallel to the one carried out by the Norwegian authorities.Initially, Tesla had to admit it pretty much had no clue about what had caused the fire. That was mostly due to the state the Model S was in after the flames died out, since the firemen chose not to intervene fearing complications caused by the hi-voltage Li-ion battery. That meant that the investigators had to work with little more than a pile of ash.Yesterday, though, Tesla announced that its investigation confirmed the initial hypothesis issued by the Accident Investigation Board of Norway, which claimed the fire most likely originated from inside the car. More to the point, the official explanation says that a short-circuit in the car's distribution box was to blame. Here is the whole text, released by the company's communication manager in Norway (and translated into English):In January, it was an isolated incident where a Model S caught fire while using a Supercharger. The cause was a short-circuit in the distribution box in the car. Superchargers were turned off immediately when the short-circuit was discovered. No one was injured in the fire. Our investigation confirmed that this was an isolated incident, but due to the damage to the car, we could not definitely identify the exact cause of the short-circuit.Tesla insists that using the chargers - home or remote - is completely safe. According to Teslarati , the company quotes over 2.5 million successful Supercharger operations, so even mathematically speaking there's a very slim chance of something like this ever happening again. Not being the type to take chances, though, Tesla will update the software package of the Model S to increase security while charging. This will include a diagnostic protocol that will inhibit the charging process if it detects a potential short-circuit. The new software will be automatically installed with the next update.
(l to r) Mike Browning, Tom Webb, Tom Kontos, and Jeannie Chiaromonte. Photo by Chris Wolski.

Five remarketing industry professionals received top honors at the Conference of Automotive Remarketing (CAR) with the awarding of the 2016 Consignor of the Year, Remarketer of the Year, Industry Leadership Award, and the Ed Bobit Icon awards.

The awards were presented during the show on March 16 and 17 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Bob Graham, retired vice president of remarketing for ARI, was awarded the Industry Leadership Award by Bobit Business Media.

(l) Bob Graham, photo by Chris Wolski.

Graham was humbled by the award and included in the ranks of previous recipients.

"As part of IARA, I got a voice and platform to be involved in key industry moments," Graham said.

The award recognized Graham for his leadership as past president of the International Automotive Remarketers Alliance (IARA) and his contribution to the remarketing industry.

"The Industry Leadership Award was created to recognize an individual who has demonstrated the ability to work collaboratively with a wide cross-section of industry participants by leading initiatives for the betterment of the remarketing industry," said Mike Antich, CAR conference chairman. "The award is not an annual award, but one that we bestowed, as justified, to an individual who has demonstrated exemplary leadership achievements in the remarketing industry."

This year, Levi McCoy, director of remarketing for LeasePlan USA, was named the 2016 Consignor of the Year. The award is sponsored by Bobit Business Media, publisher of Automotive Fleet and the Vehicle Remarketing Reporter.

(l) Levi McCoy, photo by Chris Wolski.

"This is a very special moment for me and LeasePlan USA," McCoy said. "Our company is very involved with the industry and we will continue to be involved. It's a very exciting industry to be a part of."

The winner is selected by remarketing industry professionals, recognizing industry leaders who have:

Implemented and encouraged the use of best practices.

Created, embraced, and implemented industry innovations.

Moved the industry forward with professionalism and the highest standards.

Willingly shared expertise and skills to advance the industry.

Participated in industry associations and groups.

Served as mentors and/or role models in developing the next generation of remarketing professionals.

Lynn Weaver, general manager of Americas Auto Auction Harrisburg, was named the 2016 Remarketer of the Year.

(l) Lynn Weaver, photo by Chris Wolski.

Weaver recounted his 40 plus years in the industry and the first conference that was held in conjunction with the independent auction group.

"There are many changes in the industry, but it's really all about the people that you meet and that you work with," said Weaver.

The Remarketer of the Year award recognizes an individual in the remarketing industry for his or her outstanding efforts in encouraging the use of best practices and embracing innovations while moving the industry forward with professionalism and the highest standards. Also, the recipient actively shares expertise and skills to advance the industry, participates in industry associations and groups, and serves as a mentor or role model in developing the next generation of remarketing professionals.

On March 16, the Ed Bobit Industry Icon award was presented to Tom Webb, chief economist for Cox Automotive, and Tom Kontos, EVP and chief economist for ADESA. They were recognized for their contributions to the industry, their analyses of market conditions, price reporting and forecasting.

On hand to present the winners with their awards were NAAA's president Mike Browning, NAAA CEO Frank Hackett, Tony Long (IARA) and CAR president Jeannie Chiaromonte.

The Ed Bobit Industry Icon award was created in honor of the late Ed Bobit, who was the posthumous inaugural winner in 2015.
The Experimental Aircraft Associations Kermit Weeks Hangar is just down the road from the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. While the museum is the public face of EAA, the Weeks Hangar is where the action is. In the most basic sense, its a maintenance and restoration facility. But thats a bit like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. Its big of course, enough to comfortably work on EAAs B-17 and Ford Tri-Motor. Its well equipped, too: everything youd need to fully restore almost any airplane of any vintage. On the day we visited, a 1917 Standard J-1 was next to a 2012 Cessna Skycatcher. But the space and the tools dont make a shop a shop; its all about the crew.

No matter what the challenge, the crew at the Weeks Hanger keeps the EAA fleet flying, and that constantly means coming up with unusual solutions to vexing problems. The case of EAAs 1929 Ford Tri-Motor is a good example. As with most airplanes that are 80 years old, the supply of spare parts, especially original factory parts, can be a serious problem.

Quick flashback: About twenty years ago the passenger seats in the Tri-Motor were facing the end of their useful life. By the time the 90s rolled around, many of the seat frames had been broken and repaired, sometimes more than once. The time had come to replace them.

The Tri-Motor seat structure epitomizes the ingeniousness of Fords industrial-age engineering: a set of lightweight, albeit complex, aluminum stampings optimized for production. I am doubtful the Tri-Motors designers anticipated any to survive into the 21st century, let alone bear the brunt of an ever-widening (i.e., fatter) 21st-century populace.

Replacing a Tri-Motor Seat

The simplest fix was not an option: new original seats dont exist. They had no choice but to make replacements, and that required the blessing of the FAA. They were approved to make replacements only after submitting a design sample for testing and approval under a 337 Major Alteration form.

According to John Hopkins, who manages the EAA Weeks Hangar, A 337 Major Alteration approval is a field approval process. This is a one-time, one-airplane approval.

According to Hopkins, getting a 337 approval is no easy feat. Not only does the design have to meet the original manufacturers specifications, they have to meet modern requirements as well. Luckily, Ford had all the original testing records from 1929 on file and made them available to EAA.

The 337 approval was granted in large part to Bauken Noack, who faithfully replicated the Tri-Motor seat by replacing the original stamped aluminum and rivet construction with a much more robust welded 4130 tubular structure. Noack has been around the EAA so long he had to admit he doesnt remember ever having an official title. Hopkins told us, As you walk through our museum and on our convention grounds, there are few areas that his influence has not touched. So I have to give him multiple titles: museum display designee, fabrication specialist, aircraft builder.

Flash forward to today: There are a handful of Tri-Motors still flying besides the EAAs. All of them have or are starting to have the same seat problems. The owners and operators of these aircraft are working with the EAA crew at the Weeks Hangar to solve the problem. But since multiple aircraft are involved, the fix is outside the scope of a 337 Major Alteration approval.

According to Hopkins, What we are doing now is one step further; we are applying for a Parts Manufacture Approval, more commonly known in the industry as a PMA approval.

With the PMA-approval, it means our seats meet the safety standards. This allows them to be installed as direct replacements for original Tri-Motor seats without additional approvals or inspections.

Although EAA is not in the business of manufacturing, they will be, for the purposes of this project, the de facto manufacturer of several dozen Tri-Motor replacement seats.

In the Shop with Bauken Noak

Since production is limited to a few dozen, not hundreds or thousands, and the EAA machine shop is not equipped with production machinery, the tooling and jigs Noack created for the project are designed accordingly. One thing that really stands out when we followed Noack around the shop as he explained each jig and process was how important it was to remain as faithful as possible to the original Ford Tri-Motor seat shape. Although the underlying structure is completely different (welded steel tubing versus stamped aluminum), with the upholstery in place, all details, including the curve and angle of the backrest, the scoop and taper of the seat, and splay of the legs, are identical to the original.

Its always exciting to get out and visit different shops, meet people and see how other folks do things. No two shops are the same, and I always learn something about something! I was most impressed with their versatility and ability to fabricate whatevers necessary. Whether its a seat for a Tri-Motor or a mount to store a B-17 prop in the rafters, they just do it. The shop is indeed well equipped, but other than a couple of really large bending and shearing machines, the rest of the tools (lathe, mill, bandsaw, etc.) could be found in any well-equipped garage or hangar shop. As I mentioned earlier, tools dont make the shop, the crew makes the shop. And the Weeks crew makes a heck of a shop!

Bob Hadley is the R&D manager for a California-based consumer products company. He holds a Sport Pilot certificate and owns the VW-powered Victory Stanley Fun-Kist.

This article originally appeared in the March 2014 issue ofKitplanesmagzine.

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18 March 2016 17:01 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

OSCE urges the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to strictly observe the ceasefire on the eve of Novruz and Easter holidays.

Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office made a statement after monitoring the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of his mandate on March 17.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly suffered from insidious and provocative activities of Armenia on the eve of holidays. On New Year day, Armenian troops breach ceasefire over 125 times.

"I received information from both sides on recent developments on the border, and listened to their concerns, Kasprzyk said. Both sides highlighted the proximity of villages to the front lines, and that civilians have suffered greatly from ceasefire violations as a particular concern.

He further wished the people of the region all the best on the occasions of the upcoming holidays.

In light of the upcoming Novruz Bayram and Easter holidays, I call on the sides to strictly adhere to the ceasefire and to avoid any action on the line of contact or on the border that could lead to an increase in tensions, Kasprzyk concluded.

For more than two decades Armenia and Azerbaijan are in a state of war following Yerevans aggression, ethnic cleansing policy and illegal territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenia keeps under occupation over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions that it seized in a brutal war in the early 1990s.

Despite a fragile ceasefire agreement signed in 1994, Armenia keeps violating armistice with Azerbaijan.

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Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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18 March 2016 15:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Prince El Hassan bin Talal and Sundeep Waslekar

This years World Water Day, on March 22, provides an opportunity to highlight what in many countries has become a grim reality: The availability of fresh water is increasingly a defining strategic factor in regional and global affairs. Unless water resources are managed with extraordinary care, the consequences could be devastating.

Last year, the United Nations World Water Development Report once again highlighted how the growing gap between supply and demand could create conflict. The World Economic Forum has ranked water crises as the most worrying global threat, more dangerous than terrorist attacks or financial meltdowns, and more likely to occur than the use of weapons of mass destruction. And research by the Strategic Foresight Group has shown the importance of wise management: Countries engaged in the joint stewardship of water resources are exceedingly unlikely to go to war.

The Middle East serves as a tragic example of what can happen when regional cooperation is lacking. Iraq, Syria, and Turkey have fought over every cubic meter of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. All have lost as a result. Non-state actors control important parts of the two river basins. And water shortages have aggravated the regions refugee crisis (itself the apotheosis of poor governance).

The bitterest part of the tragedy is that it could have been avoided. In 2010, at the West Asia-North Africa Forum in Amman, we proposed the creation of circles of cooperation, which would have institutionalized collaboration among Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey on water and environmental issues. A similar arrangement would have helped manage environmental resources shared by Jordan, Israel, and Palestine.

If a supranational organization had been created, it could have introduced joint strategies to manage drought, coordinate crop patterns, develop common standards to monitor river flows, and implement investment plans to create livelihoods and develop water-treatment technologies.

Other regions have done exactly that. Countries sharing rivers in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America have recognized that national interests and regional stability can be mutually reinforcing if human needs are given priority over chauvinism.

Last fall, the international community adopted the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, which promise to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Part of this pledge is a commitment to expand international cooperation.

Those in charge of implementing this commitment must bear in mind that water cooperation is not merely about signing treaties and holding meetings. It also entails jointly planning infrastructure projects, managing floods and droughts, developing an integrated strategy to combat climate change, ensuring the quality of water courses, and holding regular summits to negotiate tradeoffs between water and other public goods.

The Water Cooperation Quotient, a measure of collaboration created by the Strategic Foresight Group, can help countries sharing river basins and lakes monitor the intensity of their cooperation. Out of 263 shared river basins, only a quarter benefit from properly functioning collaborative organizations. It is crucial that such organizations be extended to cover every shared river basin in the world by the SDGs target year, 2030.

For poor people in the developing world, such transboundary cooperation generates significant dividends. When countries agree on the construction and management of critical infrastructure, there are no delays. Costs are saved. Benefits are shared in an optimum way. If all developing countries with shared river basins embraced transboundary cooperation, their GDP growth easily could rise by a percentage point.

The international community should encourage countries to embrace such cooperation by creating financial instruments that make concessional and preferential funds available. A global Marshall Plan for shared river basins might at first seem like an expensive proposition; but the cost of inaction  consider the threat to Europe alone posed by massive refugee inflows  easily could be several orders of magnitude higher.

Likewise, the international community should act promptly to save critical water infrastructure from acts of violence and terrorism. Many rivers, including the Tigris and the Euphrates, have been and continue to be cradles of human civilization. The UN should consider creating special peacekeeping forces to protect them.

Finally, international law should be designed to prevent, not just resolve, conflicts. In particular, a robust global treaty is needed to regulate emissions into bodies of water. Today, most disagreements over water concern the quantity parties are to receive. In the future, conflicts will increasingly be about water quality, as irrigation practices, industrialization, and urbanization contribute to rising pollution levels.

World Water Day is the ideal occasion to launch a new agenda for water wisdom. But every day must be a day when we work together to manage one of the planets most important resources.

Copyright: Project Syndicate:Managing the Politics of Water

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17 March 2016 19:43 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree March 17 on measures to create a free trade zone type special economic area in the Alat township of Bakus Garadagh district, Azertac state news agency reported.

The zone will also include the territory of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port.

The decree has been signed in order to ensure the sustainable economic development, increase the competitiveness, strengthen Azerbaijans position as a logistics and transport center and to create a multi-vector transport infrastructure in the country.

The Economy Ministry and Baku International Sea Trade Port closed joint-stock company have been tasked to present proposals and relevant information to Azerbaijans president about the creation of the free trade zone within a month.

Moreover, the abovementioned structures have been tasked to attract an international consultant and improve the law on special economic zones, present proposals to Azerbaijans president on the economic feasibility of the free trade zone, a concept for its development, infrastructure and management, as well as on types of business activity to be carried out in the zone, and their features.

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18 March 2016 10:22 (UTC+04:00)

On the eve of the New Iranian Year (starting March 21), Tehrans envoy to Baku, Mohsen Pak Ayeen has hailed the improvement of ties between the neighboring states.



Pak Ayeen said that the improvement of ties between Tehran and Baku indicates the strong political will of the presidents of Iran and Azerbaijan for the expansion of bilateral ties, the embassys press office said.



Relations between Tehran and Baku have significantly improved and both countries have been benefited from the expansion of ties in the current Iranian year.



Speaking about benefits that Tehran and Baku have reaped over the current Iranian year, he said the friendly ties between Tehran and Baku is considered as a symbol of win-win diplomacy.



He said that great efforts made by the officials from both countries during numerous visits to Tehran and Baku have led to clinching about 20 documents on cooperation.



The envoy added that many experts suggest that President Ilham Aliyevs recent visit to Iran shows the strengthened will of the presidents of both countries to expand bilateral ties.



Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev concluded his visit to Iran in late February, which took place on the invitation of Irans President Hassan Rouhani. The high-level official visit resulted in conclusion of documents covering various areas of cooperation between Tehran and Baku.



Pak Ayeen described a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between Iran and Azerbaijan for completing the North-South corridor and connecting the railways of Iran and Azerbaijan as the most important joint project between the two neighboring countries.



Synchronizing the electricity networks of Iran and Russia through Azerbaijan and a project for constructing a power plant were among the significant developments in the ties, the ambassador added.



Further speaking about close ties between Tehran and Baku he added that, Shahin Mustafayev, Azerbaijans economy minister, led the second major economic delegation that arrived in Tehran following the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic in January.



Mohsen Pak Ayeen touched upon cooperation between the border services of Iran and Azerbaijan hailing the high level of security along the borders of the two neighboring countries.



He also praised efforts made by Irans Consul General in Nakhchivan Mansour Airom aimed at improving ties.

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18 March 2016 11:28 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The international organizations, including the OSCE and the EU welcomed the release of 148 individuals serving jail terms in Azerbaijan following a pardon decree issued by President Ilham Aliyev.

President Aliyev signed the next pardoning order on March 17 to free 148 people, including 16 foreign nationals.

I welcome this ethical decision by President Aliyev to release such a wide range of people, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva said in her statement released on March 17. We will continue to encourage Azerbaijan to fulfill its OSCE commitments and I look forward to future constructive dialogue and progress.

Portugese MP, Chairperson of the OSCE PA Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions Isabel Santos is also among the supporters of the decision.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini also welcomed the pardon decree.

"Today, the President of Azerbaijan has pardoned 148 people, including representatives of political parties, NGOs and journalists, to mark the Novruz holiday", she said in her statement placed on the EU website.

The United States welcomes the positive step by the Government of Azerbaijan to release a large number of prisoners, said the statement of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, posted on the website of US State Department.



"We look forward to working with Azerbaijan on additional positive steps", he said.

Under the order, 137 imprisoned people are exempted from serving the remainder of their sentences, six are exempted from serving the remainder of corrective labor, and five are exempted from fine penalties. The order came into force from the date of its signing.

Azerbaijan's MP Fazil Agamali stated that the signing of the pardoning decree by the President on the eve of Novruz Holiday is commendable.

Parliamentary Committee Chairman Siyavush Novruzov, in turn, emphasized that the degree signed by the President is a continuation of the policy of humanism.

The pardoning decree is an evidence of solidarity, democracy and legal state in Azerbaijan, believes MP Bakhtiyar Aliyev.

This order is a kind of message to the society encouraging people to be united and to refrain from committing crimes, he said.

This decision is brought joy to hundreds of families, stressed MP Agil Abbas.

Pardoned people are those who have committed crimes, and have already served part of the sentence. The decree of pardon is a great joy for them and for their families, the MP said.



The Penitentiary Service of the Justice Ministry has already started the execution of the pardoning decree.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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18 March 2016 11:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Azerbaijan and the Organization for Security and Co- operation in Europe (OSCE) exchange views on the current state and prospects for developing the relations, as Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the Southern Caucasus, Guenther Baechler visits Baku for high-level talks.

During the meeting with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, the parties discussed Germany's priorities as the current chair of the OSCE, as well as exchanged views over the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

Mammadyarov stated that Armenia intends inflict damage to the negotiating process through the various provocative attempts, maintain the status quo, which is based on occupation and aggression and to annex Azerbaijani territories.

The country-aggressor puts on the agenda an issue of investigation of incidents on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops and thus tries to divert attention from the negotiating process, the foreign minister added.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

The OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for over 20 years, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict.

Mammadyarov further emphasized the importance of the contribution of all Minsk Group Member States to the settlement of the conflict, including holding meetings with the participation of all members.

Guenther Baechler, in turn, noted that Germany pays particular attention to the settlement of the long lasting conflict that constitutes the main threat for the regional peace and security.

The OSCE Minsk Group, which was established back in 1994, 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.

During the Baku visit, Baechler also met deputy chair of the Azerbaijani Parliament and head of countrys delegation to the OSCE PA.

Addressing the meeting, Bahar Muradova said that Azerbaijan is ready to cooperate with the OSCE in all areas, particularly in such spheres as economy, security and human rights.

Our country made serious contribution to this organization in these fields," she added.

Stressing the importance of Baechlers Baku visit in terms of developing relations between the sides, Muradova said that cooperation with all bodies of the OSCE is a priority for the country, adding that we have always tried to prove our commitment to the OSCE values.

Touching upon the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Muradova said Armenia is trying to keep the status quo.

Of course, we do not think that within a year of its activity Germany will reach the absolute solution to this issue. However, we believe that you will take steps to address this issue. Azerbaijan has been living with this problem for many years and is committed to its solution, she emphasized.

Baechler, in turn, highlighted key priorities of the OSCE during Germanys presidency, adding that it is necessary to conduct a serious analysis and study to resolve the conflict.

As it took over the rotating OSCE Chairmanship in 2016, Germany 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.

Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier asserted that his country will make the best use of the OSCEs current negotiating formats and mechanisms in resolving the conflicts.

In order the resolutions of the international structures connected with settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been implemented, serious pressure has to be put upon Armenia, and it is necessary to use sanctions against it.

This was stated at the meeting of the Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the State Committee on Affairs of Refugees and IDPs Ali Hasanov with the delegation headed by Baechler.

Reminding regular meetings and wide exchange of views with OSCE Representatives on the questions connected with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Hasanov expressed confidence that the discussions would yield positive results.

Unfortunately, all these resolutions remain on paper. We hope that requirements of these resolutions will be fulfilled. But if to pay attention to the processes happening today in the world, one can think that settlement of this conflict will take away a lot of time, he stressed.

Having expressed satisfaction in connection with his visit to Baku, Gunther Bachler noted that Azerbaijan, more than twenty years being in the condition of the conflict, holding long-term negotiations on its solution, has passed very difficult distance. He informed that the purpose of his visit to Azerbaijan consists in detailed studying of the processes happening in the region, carrying out mutual exchange of views.

Gunther Bachler expressed confidence that active cooperation of OSCE with the country would make positive contribution to settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

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Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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18 March 2016 15:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Azerbaijan is ready to continue cooperation with Russia in the military sphere.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov made a statement in his interview to Russian media on the eve of his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrovs visit to Baku.

Mammadyarov believes that information on existing unresolved financial issues between Baku and Moscow does not correspond to the reality.

We pay for everything in accordance with the contracts, the minister stressed. There are problems with the performance  the armament, which arrives in Azerbaijan, must comply with the technical parameters fixed in the contracts. Dmitry Rogozin arrived in Baku to understand the problems associated with these parameters, and he was given full explanations. No questions left.

The transactions go on in accordance with schedule, but it is necessary to correct the technical parameters of a few particular types of weapons, Mammadyarov stressed.

This, according to Dmitry Rogozin, will be done in the near future. In general, our cooperation with Russia in the military-technical sphere is successfully developing based on commercial principles and on the basis of mutually beneficial cooperation, the foreign minister said.

Mammadyarov also highlighted on the note of protest that was sent to Moscow on February 24.

Mammadyarov said the document demanded from Russia to give guarantees on the non-use of the military equipment sold to Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani territories, as well as along the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.

Azerbaijan has voiced its concerns over Russia's approval of a $200 million loan to Armenia for the purchase of Russian-made military equipment. At the same time, Russia, which enjoys much influence on Armenia, is considered a key party in brokering a lasting solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor in 1988.

Russia is a co-chairing country of the OSCE Minsk Group, engaged in a peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict that has destabilized the region for two decades.

There is a rule of the end-consumer in such supplies. If Armenia is the end-consumer, then the issue would not go beyond the framework of bilateral relations between Moscow and Yerevan. However, when the weapons are placed on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, it is a different matter, Azerbaijans foreign minister stressed.

With regard to the upcoming visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Mammadyarov said that the parties will discuss the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Meanwhile, we plan to focus on prospects of the North-South transport corridor - the idea of connecting railways of the Northern European countries, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and further Pakistan and India, he concluded.

Russia is the main trading partner of Azerbaijan in the CIS. It also ranks first among the countries importing goods from Azerbaijan. Today, more than 600 companies with Russian capital operate in the country. Russian investments in the countrys economy have recently amounted to more than $1.8 billion. The leading Azerbaijani companies successfully operate in the regions of the Russian Federation. Direct Azerbaijani investments in the Russian economy have amounted to more than $1 billion for the last 10 years.

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Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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18 March 2016 15:13 (UTC+04:00)

A U.S. delegation led by Hopper T. Smith, land component commander of the U.S. Oklahoma Army National Guard, is on a visit to Baku to discuss military cooperation.

During the meeting held at Azerbaijans Defense Ministry, the parties exchanged views on strengthening of the cooperation in the sphere of the regional security, as well as discussed prospects for coordination of joint actions with the U.S. and NATO structure.

The guests have reviewed the staff and the specifics of combat duty, as well as the command post and military air assets.

After watching test flights performed by MIG-29 warplanes, the U.S. delegation expressed content with the conditions created for combat at the airbase.

Later, the guests visited the Main Clinic Hospital of the Armed Forces, met with the hospitals leadership and medical staff. The U.S. delegation was informed about the hospitals history and activities.

The guests were acquainted with the modern equipment, and operational units. In accordance with the cultural program, the U.S. delegation then visited the Museum of Azerbaijan Military History.

Azerbaijan leaves behind the CIS and regional countries to take its place among the first 70 strongest militaries of the world, according to the US-based Global Firepower survey center. The survey center has ranked the Azerbaijani army as 64 of 126 in the list of world's strongest armies with a GFP Power Index rating of 1.5221.

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18 March 2016 17:52 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan's Parliament held an extraordinary session on March 18, during which the members of the countrys supreme legislative body discussed amendments to the law On Physical Protection of the Nuclear Material, as well as a bill on amendments to the Criminal Code.

The MPs adopted amendments to the Criminal Code, which envisions ban of beer wholesale for cash in Azerbaijan.

In accordance with the amendments, along with the tobacco, the wholesale price of the beer will be paid only through bank or through payment cards.

Thus, excluding retail sale of beer and tobacco products, a fine in the amount from 1,000 manats ($626) to 2,000 manats ($1,252), or correctional labor for up to one year, or imprisonment for up to one year is envisaged for the sale of a large batch of products (goods) for cash subject to labeling with excise stamps, or for purchase of a large batch of such products (goods) for cash with the purpose of their sale.

Later, Parliaments Deputy Chairman Ziyafat Asgarov proposed to ratify the amendments to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

The Convention was signed in March, 1980. It is the only international legally binding undertaking in the area of physical protection of nuclear material. The document establishes measures related to the prevention, detection and punishment of offenses relating to nuclear material.

A Diplomatic Conference in July 2005 was convened to amend the Convention and strengthen its provisions. The amended Convention makes it legally binding for states parties to protect nuclear facilities and material in peaceful domestic use, storage as well as transport.

It also provides for expanded cooperation between and among States regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences.

The amendments will take effect once they have been ratified by two-thirds of the States Parties of the Convention.

In his remarks, MP Azay Guliyev reminded that the U.S. will host the international nuclear summit in coming days.

"As you know, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is invited to this summit by U.S. President Barack Obama. I think that ratification of the amendments to this Convention will be our country's contribution to this summit," he added.

After discussions, MPs approved the amendments to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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18 March 2016 12:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

The World Intellectual Property Organization has expressed readiness to share its experience and achievements with Azerbaijan.

Dimitar Gantchev, the Acting Director of the Creative Industries Division in the WIPO, said at the conference titled "Making a living in the creative industries: Creativity and national development" in Baku on March 17 that the WIPO and the Copyright Agency of Azerbaijan have established close cooperation. Azerbaijan is a member of the WIPO since 1995.

"Azerbaijan enjoys great achievements in the field of industry, which is related to copyright. We are ready and willing to share international experience that will be of interest to Azerbaijan, to share the achievements, as well as to discuss how to continue works in this regard, what projects to work over, how to help Azerbaijan in the field of creative industries," he noted.

Later, Kamran Imanov, Chairman of Azerbaijan's Copyright Agency told journalists that Azerbaijan is developing a state program in the field of increasing the share of the creative industry in the GDP in 2016-2018.

He said the Agency regularly conducts researches in connection with the creative industry and determines its share in the GDP based on the methodology agreed with the WIPO.

"Studies show that if in 2001 the share of the creative industry in Azerbaijan's GDP amounted to 1.1 percent, now it has increased to five percent, or by 13 times in absolute terms. This is an indication of large growth, and it is at the level of developed countries," he added.

The Copyright Agency has already submitted to the Cabinet Ministers a project on approval of the draft rules for calculating the proportion of the creative industry in the GDP.

"This document is expected to be approved in a short term. Furthermore, a state program on increasing the share of the creative industry in the GDP of Azerbaijan covering 2016-2018 is being developed as well," Imanov stated.

Developing creative industry based on copyright is expected to contribute to the emergence of new jobs and give impetus to economic growth.

Earlier, the Copyright Agency reported that the share of the creative industry based on copyright and related rights in Azerbaijans GDP increased by five percent in 2003-2014, which corresponds to the world average.

During this period, the volume of production of the creative industry in the country has increased from 220.5 million manats ($136.94 million) to 2.974 billion manats ($1.847 billion).

The volume of the main production areas of intellectual rights increased by 11.6 times from 153.3 million manats ($95.21 million) up to 1.786 billion manats ($1.109 billion).

Fighting piracy

Kamran Imanov also stated that the level of piracy significantly reduced in the country in the past 10 years as the country has strengthened measures towards fighting piracy.

"Over the past 10 years, the level of piracy in the field of book publishing decreased by 31 percent, while in the market of audio and video products - by 25 percent and in the field of software - by 11 percent," Imanov said adding that since 1996, the Copyright Agency has registered 10,391 works of art, 6,646 authors and copyright holders.

In early 2016, the Property Rights Alliance included Azerbaijan in its annual International Property Rights Index. Azerbaijan entered this years survey, covering 129 countries, on the 103rd place.

The Copyright Agency reported that the piracy rate component is still high in Azerbaijan, which reduces the overall rate for the country to 2.8 points. In this context, the fight against piracy, primarily computer piracy, continues to be an urgent problem.

The overall level of 2.8 points means that Azerbaijan is the leader among the South Caucasus countries.

Azerbaijan is now on route to increase sales of licensed software, which will inevitably lead to changes in consumer behavior. The Center for Intellectual Property Rights under the Azerbaijan's Copyright Agency regulates the issuance of control marks for the objects subject to copyright.

The fight against piracy in the software industry is expected to truly influence the business environment in the future. These measures are expected to be tightened in 2016.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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18 March 2016 13:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Taleh Ziyadov, Director General of the Baku International Sea Trade Port has revealed plans regarding Azerbaijan's transportation sector at a joint event with American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan (AmCham) on March 17.

Ziyadov, talking to reporters on the sidelines of the event, said that the territory of the Baku International Sea Trade Port located in the Alat settlement, 40 miles south of Baku, can be expanded in the future.

Also, the construction of the Ro-Ro terminal in the territory of the port will be completed by the end of 2016.

"Currently, the second stage of the first phase [of construction of the terminal] is underway. The inauguration of the Ro-Ro terminal is of significant importance, as currently half the cargo arrives in the port in Alat, and the other half - in the Baku port in the boundaries of the city. But by late 2016, we will pass all of this traffic through the new port. In general, the first phase will be completed before the end of 2017," he said.

The construction of the Baku International Sea Trade Port started in November 2010.

The funds directed to the implementation of all three phases of the port construction are expected to hit 870 million manats ($544.74 million). The first and the main phase of construction is estimated at 540 million manats ($338.1 million), while the second and the first phases - 150 million manats ($939,200) and 180 million manats ($112.7 million), respectively.

The estimated transshipment volume for the new port complex is up to 10 million tons of cargo and 40,000 TEU containers at the first stage, up to 17 million tons of cargo and 150,000 TEU containers at the second stage, and up to 25 million tons of cargo, and 1 million TEU containers at the third stage of the project.

Ziyadov went on to add that the Baku International Sea Trade Port expects the volume of cargo transshipment to amount to 6 million tons in 2016.

"As you know, due to economic crisis, trade turnover dropped significantly last year. But if the volume of cargo transshipment amounted to 3 million tons in 2015, this year we expect it to increase to 6 million tons," he stated.

Last year, passenger transportation by sea between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan rose by 10 percent compared to 2014, Ziyadov noted, adding that this increase was achieved thanks to Turkmenistans using the Ro-Ro ships for passenger transportation.

The Ro-Ro ships, purchased by Turkmenistan, are at the same time used for passenger transportation, he said. They can carry nearly 200 passengers. I think these two systems [passenger and freight transportation] will complement each other.

Ziyadov voiced hope that the passenger transportation between the two countries will continue to grow.

No need for new airport in Baku

Touching upon the possibility of construction of an airport near the Baku International Sea Trade Port, Ziyadov said that currently, this issue is not relevant.

We already have an airport [Heydar Aliyev International Airport] with a remarkable logistics center, he said at the event. Our aim is to ensure good integration of our port with this logistics center.

Ziyadov also noted that if subsequently the volume of freight traffic increases and the need for another airport arises, this issue could be considered.

The Heydar Aliyev International Airport is one of five international airports of Azerbaijan.

Zeynalov also informed that a free trade zone can be established in the 100-115 hectare territory of the Baku sea trade port.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
18 March 2016 14:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

President Ilham Aliyev's decree on creation of a free trade zone type special economic area in the Alat settlement of Bakus Garadagh district represents a milestone of Azerbaijan's policy to strengthen the country's position as a regional logistics and transportation hub.

President Aliyev signed a decree on March 17 on measures to establish a special economic area in the Alat settlement, which will also include the territory of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port.

The decree has been signed for ensuring sustainable economic development, increasing the competitiveness and creating a multi-vector transport infrastructure in Azerbaijan.

Once established, the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will bring huge revenues to Azerbaijan's state budget. The profitability of FTZ has many examples in the world; FTZ in Hong Kong or in Dubai turned both cities into a center of attraction for investors from all around the world, and paved the way for inflow of huge funds to the countries.

The establishment of FTZ will also bring a large amount of foreign investment in Azerbaijan, as well as open the country's doors to new investors. As Taleh Ziyadov, Director General of the Baku International Sea Trade Port said this free trade zone will attract up to $1 billion just in the first few years.

This will become possible thanks to the special tax and customs policy, which will be pursued in the territory of the FTZ. The privileges can cover the income tax, VAT, tax of profit and property tax.

FTZ residents engaged in business activities will pay taxes at a rate of 2 percent of turnover (funds earned from offered goods and services) in accordance with the countrys legislation. The residents will pay customs payments for excise goods imported to the country in accordance with the Azerbaijani legislation.

Not only residents, but also Azerbaijani consumers will benefit from the establishment of the FTZ as the range of goods produced in the country will be expanded.

Growth of rivalry and absence of duties will lead to a reduction in price of certain products. Rivalry will also force local producers to improve the quality of products.

FTZ needs to have a modern infrastructure, which usually brings more benefits than tax privileges. It also requires large capital investments in the modernization of roads, railways and ports, which is currently being done in Azerbaijan.

The Ro-Ro terminal is of significant importance for the FTZ, and Ziyadov said that the Ro-Ro terminal in the territory of the Baku sea trade port will be inaugurated by late 2016, while the first phase of construction of the port will be completed before the end of 2017.

It is also planned to increase the speed of movement of trains in the territory of Azerbaijan to 80-120 kilometers per hour in two years.

All the above-mentioned measures will contribute to increase of attention of global carriers operating between China, India and Europe to Azerbaijan.

There are too much works ahead to be done, the completion of which will eventually bring more revenues and investments to Azerbaijan and turn the Baku FTZ into the largest logistics and commercial center at the crossroads of east-west and north-south.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
18 March 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A presentation ceremony of documentary film "Colonel" shot by studio "Salname" of the Azerbaijani Culture and Tourism Ministry was held in Warsaw on March 14.

The director of the film is Tahir Aliyev, author of the idea is Azerbaijani Ambassador to Poland Hasan Hasanov, screenwriter Ramil Alakbarov, operator Faiq Kerimov, composer Azer Hajialasgarli, producer Nazim Huseynov.

Filming was carried out in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Poland.

Addressing the ceremony, deputy director of the museum Jolanta Dambek spoke about Azerbaijani soldier Veli bek Jedigar, fighting in both World War I and World War II.

In a short time, the Azerbaijani servicemen reached a high official position. His life was full of bright and interesting events.

Museum Director Leszek Cheli said that Veli Bek Yadigar left a bright trace in military history of Poland.

The books of prominent Azerbaijani soldier are valuable sources for historians.

Leszek also stressed that the Museum owns personal belongings of the colonel.

Tahir Aliyev, for his part, said that he was glad that the premiere of the movie took place in Warsaw, in one of the centers of world cinematography.

Then, Aliyev thanked the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism, "Salname" studio and the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Warsaw for their contributions to the project.

Later, the film's director was awarded the commemorative medal of the embassy.

Veli bek Jedigar was a soldier of the Imperial Russian Army and officer of both the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, Polish Army, in the Second Polish Republic and the Home Army. He served in different armed forces from 1916 until 1946, fighting in both World War One and World War Two.

Jedigar was born in 1897 in the real estate of Tekeli, Tiflis Governorate in a noble Azerbaijani family.

After graduating a private gymnasium in Tiflis, he briefly studied at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, but changed his mind and joined Tiflis Cadet Corps, in 1916.

Following the Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan, Veli bek Jedigar continued fighting against the Bolshevik invaders until March 1921, when he left his homeland, and via Turkey and Romania left for Poland.

November 1922 he was officially accepted into the Polish Army, with the rank of the cavalry officer. He completed with distinction the Higher War School in Warsaw, and as a qualified officer, was sent to Baranowicze (Belarus) Cavalry Brigade.

Azerbaijani soldier was respected by the Home Army authorities, and as a personal friend of the Polish military leader, General Tadeusz Bor- Komorowski, was responsible for cavalry training.

Veli bek Jedigar died of heart attack in Buenos Aires, on December 13, 1971. His ashes were buried at Warsaws Muslim Tatar Cemetery.

---

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18 March 2016 11:20 (UTC+04:00)

The Southern Gas Corridor projects (SGC) net financial needs for operations and capex will be close to $8.4 billion in 2016-2019, the international ratings agency Fitch Ratings reported on March 17.



Fitch expects SGC to tap debt capital markets for funding in the medium term, while bonds and loans could be supplemented by state capital injections should offered market terms be unacceptable, according to the message.



Fitch Ratings has assigned CJSC Southern Gas Corridor's (SGC) senior unsecured Eurobonds a 'BB+(EXP)' expected foreign currency long-term rating.



The bond's final rating is contingent on the receipt of final documentation conforming to that held and confirmation of the final amount and tenor of the notes, said the message.



The rating reflects Fitch's expectation that Azerbaijan will honour the unconditional, unsubordinated and irrevocable guarantee provided to noteholders in a full and timely manner. As a result, Fitch views the notes as credit-linked to the sovereign. The notes' rating is aligned with the rating of Azerbaijan and factors in SGC's state ownership, close financial integration with the government and strategic importance of its projects to country's development.



In Fitch's view, projects under SGC's development carry strategic importance for Azerbaijan's long-term macroeconomic stability, while the most of the gas is already contracted until 2045 by buyers from the EU and Turkey, according to the message.



Fitch considers Azerbaijan's control over SGC's operations as strong and views government support previously provided to SGC as a supportive rating factor, said the message.



Earlier, the Azerbaijani government held road shows of bonds for the SGC in the world's major financial centers - London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.



Depending on market conditions, the SGC's bond offering under the state guarantee is forecasted at the level of $1 billion.



Floatation is provided for the financing of Shah Deniz-2 and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) projects and Trans Anatolian (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic (TAP) pipelines.



Citibank, UniCredit and J.P. Morgan are the authorized companies on floatation of bonds. Lazard Freres SAS company, in turn, acts as a financial advisor of the Azerbaijani side.



The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Georgia and Turkey.

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18 March 2016 12:33 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR exported about 320 million cubic meters of gas to Georgia since the beginning of 2016, a source in SOCAR told Trend.

In average, nearly 5.3 million cubic meters of gas per day has been exported to Georgia since the beginning of the year, which is almost 50 percent more than in 2015, said the source.

Over 70 million cubic meters of gas has been exported to Iran since the beginning of 2016 with a daily volume of 1.2 million cubic meters of gas, according to the source.

SOCAR exported 1.36 billion cubic meters of gas to Georgia in 2015.

Azerbaijan exports gas to Georgia via a pipeline linking the two countries in the Azerbaijani district of Gazakh.

This pipeline can pump about three billion cubic meters of gas a year.

Deliveries to Iran are carried out in order to provide gas to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (NAR), located in the blockade because of the occupation of Azerbaijani lands 20 percent by Armenia.

About 287 million cubic meters of gas was delivered from Azerbaijan to Iran in 2015 for the needs of NAR.

Azerbaijan and Iran are connected with the Gazi-Magomed-Astara-Bind-Biand gas pipeline, 1,474.5-kilometers long, and also 296.5 kilometers in the Azerbaijans territory. This route is a branch of the Gazakh-Astara-Iran pipeline commissioned in 1971. Three compressor stations - Gazi-Magomed, Aghdash and Gazakh - were built.

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18 March 2016 17:25 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Russian Alpari Companys Analytical Department expects oil prices on the global crude markets to reach $50-$60 a barrel by early summer 2016.

Department director Alexander Razuvayev told Trend that this price can be achieved if oil producing countries decide to freeze oil production at the level of January 11, 2016.

From 2010 until mid-2014, world oil prices had been fairly stable at the level of $110. However, the world crude market has recorded a sharp decrease since mid 2014, which negatively affected economies of oil producing countries.

Oil was sold at above $100 per barrel in June 2014, but an oversupply of oil due to the export of U.S. shale oil to the market and weaker demand following a slowdown in economic growth in China and Europe sent prices sharply lower in the second half of the year.

To recover from a supply glut, several OPEC and non-OPEC countries - Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Venezuela held talks on the current oil market situation in the Qatari capital of Doha and agreed to freeze the oil output at January 11 level if other countries follows the deal.

To date, around 15 OPEC and non-OPEC producers, accounting for about 73 percent of global oil output, are supporting this initiative.

OPEC oil baskets price stood at $36.36 per barrel on March 17, or $1.86 more than on March 16.

The OPEC and non-OPEC countries are expected to hold another meeting in mid-April in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the possibility of freezing oil output.

However, at a time when the world oil market is grappling with a global supply glut Iran announced that it is ready to increase exports by 500,000 barrels per day, and is likely to realize this goal to win back its shares in the world market.

Razuvayev, commenting on the issue of increasing duties on oil by Russia, said that this step is a usual procedure.

The duty on oil export from Russia will increase by $15.4 to $54.9 per ton starting from April 1 (compared to $39.5 per ton in March), the Russian Finance Ministry reported earlier.

The ministry also said the average price for Urals crude oil for the monitoring period from February 15 to March 14, 2016 amounted to $33.38 per barrel, or $243.7 per ton.

The increase of duties on oil by Russia is a normal procedure, Razuvayev said. Duties depend on oil prices, pegging to oil prices is common practice.

He also said that this measure will not lead to higher prices for gasoline in Russia, adding that this is a simple replenishment of budget.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
18 March 2016 15:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are working out several issues for signing of certain documents as part of laying the Caspian segment of the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway project.

This was stated by Elmir Velizade, Azerbaijan's Deputy Communications and High Technologies Minister on March 17.

He told Trend that earlier, the agreement on construction of the underwater segment of the TASIM project was achieved at the level of communication administrations of the two countries.

Over the past several years, Azerbaijan has pioneered a number of important initiatives in ICT sector that have undoubtedly contributed to unlocking the regions huge potential to meet its development aspirations. TASIM is one of such projects.

The TASIM project with an initial cost of $100 million envisions creating a major transit link from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. The line will connect major centers of data exchange in Europe and Asia together, stretching through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and Germany. A reserve North transit line will pass through Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

TASIM will be implemented in two stages. The project is expected to come on stream at a cost of $100 million. The length of TASIM will stretch over 11,000 kilometers and its initial network bandwidth will reach 2 Tbit/s.

Today, Azerbaijan is looking for ways to attract new members to TASIM. The country is eying primarily the countries of Eurasia from Western Europe to Eastern Asia.

Iran has already expressed readiness to cooperate with Azerbaijan on the TASIM project. China, the world's second largest economy, also attaches significant importance to the project.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
18 March 2016 10:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

We love the spring season, when holiday lights, Novruz decorations, colorfully wrapped presents and flavor of sweets overtake downtowns around the country. Its the time for a Novruz getaway, or maybe visiting relatives, preparing for baking cookies, and, of course, taking in local festivities.

Novruz, being a family holiday, is celebrated on March 20-21, and before the actual day of the holiday, people celebrate the four last pre-holiday Tuesdays. They are told to be celebrated as a good-bye to the Old year and a welcoming of the upcoming New Year.

Traditionally Novruz is marked in Azerbaijan with the annual festival, Maidan Bazaar set up near the Gosha Gala Gates for several days. Here, Baku residents and guests enjoy many interesting events, including the performance of wrestlers - Pehlevans , rope-walkers and magicians, as well as artists of the children's theater.

The event also features souvenirs and products of national craftsmanship and decorative arts.

During the festivities, the visitors will enjoy mugham and classical music pieces, national songs of different nations, modern pop and jazz music. Besides, the participants will be able to cook national sweets or wave carpets.

Speaking about the festival, Deputy Culture Minister Adalat Valiyev stressed that Novruz holiday is celebrated at the state level for many years.

This years festivities will start from March 19 in the Baku Boulevard, he said adding that concerts organized in the area of the Clock Tower will begin at 11:00 and last till 19:45. Also, the Ministry of Agriculture will organize three-day fair here .

The Culture Ministry invites everyone to take part in Novruz Spring Festival.

Noruz holiday is rich with ancient traditions and games. 'Khidir Ilyas' (the symbol of fertility and blossom), 'Kos-Kosa' an entertaining game (symbolises the incoming of spring) and fortunetelling are among them. The important Novruz symbols are khoncha (a tray with sweets, nuts fruits and dyed eggs on) and samani( green shoots from wheat seeds).

The holiday was given the status of an official holiday in Azerbaijan by a presidential decree dated 13 March 1990. In 2009, Novruz was included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and since then, March 21 was declared the International Day of Novruz.

---

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       3.0 (      -       -         ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com
'Semana Santa Protegida' to Distribute 50,000 Condoms

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico - SETAC 'Tu Centro Comunitario,' the AIDS Healthcare Foundation Mexico and COESIDA Jalisco, in collaboration with CAPASITS and COMUSIDA are once again reaching out to Puerto Vallarta residents and visitors with their 2016 Semana Santa Protegida campaign.

The campaign's objective is to promote the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases through self-protection, and to spread the word that it is every individual's responsibility to protect themselves.





From 11 am to 6 pm on March 24 and 25th, Semana Santa Protegida booths will be set up on the Holiday Inn and Las Glorias Beaches, the Municipal Building in the Main Plaza of downtown Puerto Vallarta and at Plaza Lazaro Cardenas, where volunteers will be distributing information on the HIV virus and other sexually transmitted diseases, giving away free condoms and lubricants, and performing free rapid tests for HIV and syphilis.

In the evenings, the "Night Brigade" will hit the nightclubs and bars on the Malecon and in the Romantic Zone to distribute condoms and coupons for free and confidential HIV testing that can be used at the SETAC Community Center, located at Constitucion #427 and the corner of Manuel M. Dieguez on Vallarta's South Side, or in the offices of the other organizations that perform these tests.

The 2016 Semana Santa Protegida campaign aims to prevent HIV infections and other sexually transmitted diseases by distributing 50,000 condoms over the Easter holidays, and to detect people with HIV and Syphilis so that advice and counseling to prevent infections can be provided.

This community effort involves staff and volunteers from the various participating agencies, but more help is needed. If you would like to volunteer, call SETAC at (322) 224-1974 or send an email to contacto(at)setac.com.mx.

Starting Today, You Can Be a Hero





In their ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of HIV, the SETAC Community Center encourages the Puerto Vallarta community to join their 'Give Milk, Give Life' campaign, which helps HIV positive mothers feed their young children without the risk of infecting them with the virus.

If you would like to help SETAC make a difference in a child's life, all you have to do is to purchase some Nido Kinder, Nan Nan 2 and 3 baby formula (powdered milk) and drop it off at the SETAC Community Center, located at Constitucion #427 and the corner of Manuel Dieguez on the South side of Puerto Vallarta.

Those who are not in Puerto Vallarta but want to help can make a cash donation via GoFundMe.com. No amount of help is too small, so please consider making a donation.

The purpose of the SETAC Community Center, located at Constitucion #427 and the corner of Manuel Dieguez on the South side of Puerto Vallarta, is to provide essential services to the community, including physical and mental health treatment, referrals, and education in an atmosphere of safety, free from discrimination. For more information, contact Ismael Mendoza at (322) 224-1974 or contacto(at)setac.com.mx.
Selling a home isnt hard if youve got the right guidance and approach. Here we break down the process to sell your housefrom deciding if you really should sell, to finding a real estate agent wholl be your partner through it all, to pricing your home and negotiating offers.
Heres how the rule of 55 can help you take an early distribution from your 401(k) or 403(b).

5 min read
A jury has sided with Hulk Hogan in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media and awarded the former professional wrestler $115 million in damages.

The jury deliberated for about six hours before reaching its decision around 7 p.m. Friday.

Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, released the following statement after the jury's decision: "Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from this jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve the case. I want to thank our lawyers for their outstanding work and am confident that we would have prevailed at trial if we had been allowed to present the full case to the jury. That's why we feel very positive about the appeal that we have already begun preparing, as we expect to win this case ultimately."

The Boellea team released the following statement after the jury's decision: "We're exceptionally happy with the verdict. We think it represents a statement as to the public's disgust with the invasion of privacy disguised as journalism. The verdict says no more."

Just before the jury reached its verdict, Gawker released a treasure trove of documents revealing an investigation by the FBI. The documents included heavily redacted papers and handwritten notes that alluded to the fact that Hogan knew he was being recorded and that the camera was in plain view.

The jury wasn't given access to those documents.

Hogan's defense in the case was that he didn't know his privacy was violated.

Lawyers for both Gawker and Hogan gave their closing arguments Friday morning, and then the jury made up of two men and four women began deliberating around 1 p.m.



Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for invasion of privacy after the website posted a portion of a sex video showing him with the wife of his former best friend, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.



The video at the center of the case was never played for the jury during the two-week-long trial, something Gawker's attorney, Michael Sullivan, pointed out to the jurors.



"Now ask yourself, Why did they not show you that video?" Sullivan said. "The video that is the reason that we are all here because that video does not show all that much. Nine seconds of sexual activity. Dark, grainy video. That's it."



Hogan's attorney, Kenneth Turkel, said he didn't want anybody to see the video and pointed his finger back at Gawker.



"Why didn't the guy who's protecting the First Amendment play the video they're so proud of in court?" Turkel said. "They're the ones who say free information and everybody find out."



Hogan said he had no idea his former best friend, Bubba, had set up a camera in his bedroom that was hidden behind a motion detector.



But, Sullivan asked the jury if the entire case could be a publicity stunt between Bubba and Hogan.



Judge Pamela Campbell ruled Bubba didn't have to testify in the case.



Turkel said Gawker should have never published a third-party video that shows a private moment.



"Reasonable people in a civilized society don't take secretly recorded sex tapes from a private bedroom and send them out to the world," Turkel said.



Gawker said Hogan talked publicly about his sex life, claiming it was fair game for journalists and that First Amendment right to free speech could be eroded.



"We will become a nation where powerful celebrities, politicians and public figures will use our courts to punish people for saying things that they frankly do not like," Sullivan said.

Jurors will report back to court Monday to decide punitive damages.


Hundreds of people gathered at St. Timothy's Catholic Church Friday to say goodbye to Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy John Robert Kotfila Jr. -- the deputy who was killed by a wrong-way driver Saturday.



"John and Terry, you raised an incredible son," Master Deputy Gary Herman, Jr, said to Kotfila's parents during the funeral. "One that touched more lives than you'll ever know."



Deputy Kotfila died Saturday March 12. The 30-year-old deputy was driving eastbound on the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway early Saturday morning when he collided with a wrong-way driver.

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Sarah Geren, who was driving on the Expressway at the same time, said Kotfila swerved in front of her just moments before he crashed into the wrong-way driver.



He saved my life, Geren told reporters Monday. If this deputy had not made a split-second decision to pull around me, that would have been me dying. Not only did he save my life, but he saved my boyfriends life as well.



Kotfila was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where he later died. The wrong-way driver, Erik McBeth, died at the accident scene.



Michael Kotfila, the deputy's brother, said he was devastated when he found out that his brother had died -- but took comfort knowing his brother saved a life.



"I didn't think there was a day that I could be more proud of him," Michael Kotfila said. "To find out that he gave up his life to save someone else's, it's amazing."



Deputy Kotfila came from a long-line of law enforcement officers. His father, John Robert Kotfila Sr, is a sergeant with the Massachusetts State Police. Members of various law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts came to the funeral to show their support.



Sheriff Jim Cummings, from Barnstable County in Massachusetts, once worked with the deputy's father.



"This really hit home for us," Sheriff Cummings told reporters before the service. "The officers and deputies out there are putting their lives on the line day after day."



Kotfila's sister, Katelyn, said her brother was always a protector.



"When I was with him, I never worried about anything," she said. "He always made me feel safe."



Deputy Kotfila was an organ donor. His sister said his eye tissue will help someone regain their vision.



"He's protecting people, even after his death," she said.



Kotfila will be buried in Massachusetts.
Free water safety classes for children will be held next week at four Pinellas County YMCAs.

The free water safety classes are for children between the ages of 3 and 12 and who either don't know how to swim or are beginning swimmers. The children who attend the classes will learn basic swimming skills to keep them safe and build their confidence in the water.

Drowning is the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children between the ages of 1 and 14, and according to the Florida Department of Health, Florida loses more children under the age of 5 to drowning than any other state.

The numbers are even higher for black children, who are three times more likely to drown than white children. The disparity is partly due to the lack of swimming experience, YMCA officials say.

The programs will take place between March 21 and March 25. Classes will be held at the following Ys:

Clearwater YMCA, 1005 S. Highland Ave., Clearwater

Greater Ridgecrest YMCA, 1801 119th St. N, Largo

Greater Palm Harbor, 1600 16th St., Palm Harbor

North Pinellas YMCA, 4559 Village Center Dr., Palm Harbor

Pre-registration is required. Click here to register online.


The Air Force Combat Ammunition Center (AFCOMAC) celebrated its 30th Anniversary during a ceremony here March 18, 2016.

The 9th Munitions Squadron administers the AFCOMAC training program. Thirty years ago, the course was developed to provide the Air Force munitions community advanced combat training in mass munitions planning and production techniques.

Munitions maintenance enlisted personnel from Senior Airman to Chief Master Sgt. and company grade officers attend the Combat Ammunition Planning and Production course, said Lt. Col. Frank Vega, 9th MUNS commander. High ranking operations and maintenance officers attend the Senior Officer Orientation course. Both courses enable attendees the opportunity to experience a simulated deployed combat environment.

In the mid-1980s, Pentagon officials realized there was a shortage of experienced munitions personnel and manning would not meet the necessary requirements for operational readiness. Hence AFCOMAC was created in 1986. To this date there have been more than 15,700 munitions troops trained at AFCOMAC.

Throughout the past 30 years we have developed more experienced bomb makers which enables munitions requests to be built more accurately and efficiently, said Tech. Sgt. Carlie Weidner, 9th MUNS combat advisor. With the draw down from Vietnam a lot of experienced munitions troops transitioned out of the Air Force. AFCOMAC is a tremendous place for the munitions career field for munitions troops to obtain valuable experience.

Each year combat advisors lead and instruct eight CAPP courses with 70 students in attendance. During the course, a four-day intensive practical exercise known as IRON FLAG ensues. During IRON FLAG, the students assemble live munitions in a realistic, bare-base scenario.

Every class moves 325,000 pounds of net explosive weight. This is the largest explosive operation in the Department of Defense, said Tech. Sgt. James Herzog, 9th MUNS combat advisor. Since its inception AFCOMAC has yet to experience an explosive mishap. Our safety record is nearly perfect outside of a few minor injuries.

According to Vega, whos first day of attendance at AFCOMAC as a 2nd Lieutenant for the course was Sep. 11, 2001, AFCOMAC will continue to evolve and apply lessons learned in the field of operations.

We have refined the curriculum and adopted new procedures acquired from lessons learned down range, he said. The training has become more realistic to accomplish the demands of the air-tasking order increasing the combat capability in defense of our great nation.

For the majority of AFCOMACs 30 years of existence the students who have graduated from the courses have participated in various operations including OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM and OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM.

This 30th Anniversary means a whole lot, not only to the munitions community, but for the Air Force, the Department of Defense, our allies and coalition partners. This combat capability will continue for years to come, Vega said.
Thank the two owners of this Palm Springs house for this marvel of a time capsule. The first homeowners decorated it, and the second set intentionally kept it as-is.

Except for the kitchen, this three-bedroom, 3,350-square-foot California residence has remained untouched since it was built in 1969. The current homeowners upgraded the kitchen but left the rest of the character-filled interior in its original condition.

"The original owner was a builder, Milton Seidner, who built a few homes in the Twin Palms neighborhood," listing agent Lucio Bernal says. "The home was sold to my client's parents in 1994 after his passing. My clients' parents lived in the home until they passed recently."

SEE ALSO: Nancy and Ronald Reagan's former California property for sale

The unique dwelling has drawn the attention of people from all over the world because of its bold vintage appeal.

"(The) home has been viewed by hundreds in the past month, both online and in person and the general (consensus) is, 'Keep it the way it is because it looks like a museum,'" Bernal says. "Some comments range from 'life-changing' to 'I remember that color as a kid.'"

Everything is custom, from the magenta- and rose-colored canopy bed in a bedroom, to the symmetric semi-circle couches that flank an over-sized coffee table in the living room. The wood-paneled den has a wet bar with a mirror backsplash. The home's swimming pool can be admired from several rooms in the house, including the royal blue master suite.

MORE VINTAGE HOMES: John Lautner house featured in 'The Big Lebowski' donated to Los Angeles museum

The most fascinating detail in this colorful home is, arguably, the bath tub surrounded by hot-pink carpet.

Also intriguing is the condition of the textiles and finishes that haven't faded or become distressed.

"That goes to show that quality stands the test of time," Bernal boasts.

This Palm Springs, Calif., home is listed at $850,000. Bernal and Benjamin "Chip" Romero at Berkshire Hathaway have the listing.
Tucked into the scenic Hill Country woods is the "Trois Estate at Enchanted Rock," now listed for sale at $15 million. That's down from the $15.9 million it was selling for around this time last year.

The Fredericksburg estate has been operating as a bed and breakfast that's gained great acclaim from a number of travel sites.
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Phoenix, the mythical bird that rose from the ashes, is the new name for a dog whose time at Port Arthur Animal Control was drawing to an end.

The Humane Society of Southeast Texas, whose shelter was devastated by fire late Tuesday, killing perhaps as many as 74 dogs, picked up Phoenix on Thursday.

"She's going into foster care," said Virginia Jordan, a shelter volunteer, who tossed a tennis ball in an enclosure with the springy puppy with white teeth and eager, neck-licking tongue.

The next step is adoption, once Phoenix is spayed and inoculated.

How to help Donations to the Humane Society of Southeast Texas may be made: On the organization's website.

GoFundMe More information available on facebook.com/petsforpeople. See More Collapse

She represents a lively little hope for the Humane Society, shocked and shattered by its devastating loss.

Carrie May, shelter manager, was a whirl of activity on Thursday morning after sleeping a few fitful hours after nonstop reaction to the fire's aftermath.

"The response of the community has wowed me," she said.

A PODS container, donated by Michele Byrd, held the sum of the Humane Society's remaining worldly goods, much of it donations by Southeast Texans sharing in the grief.

Miranda Dishman also donated a Morgan wooden shed.

What the shelter needs now is a temporary home, like warehouse space with a concrete floor, plumbing, electricity and air conditioning, May said.

Without the Humane Society, area city-operated animal control shelters will fill up quickly, she said. It's puppy and kitten season and the need only grows.

May was downcast on Thursday. In addition to losing her four-legged charges, she said the Humane Society is unable to help - as it normally does during a catastrophe - those communities on the Sabine River that are underwater.

Additionally, for the last two years, the Human Society has reached out to area city shelters, like Port Arthur's, that normally keep a stray dog or cat for at least five days before euthanizing them.

"We have a 98 percent success rate in placing them," she said. "The only ones that were put down were the ones who were sick."

Instead of providing help, the Humane Society is sorely in need of the community's help, May said.

In this case, it means money. The shelter can't use any of the food or cleaning products that it normally asks the community to donate.

"We're not housing animals now. I don't know what the future holds," May said.

May said she got a call from a shelter manager in Manchester, England, on Thursday who consoled and counseled her.

The Manchester shelter suffered a similar devastation in September 2014 when a fire killed almost 60 of its dogs.

"He told me it would take 12 to 18 months to recover and he said the volunteers would need counseling," she said.

May also asked for a counseling "donation" on top of the Humane Society's other priority needs.

"Moving forward?" she said. "We don't know."

She and her board of directors will meet weekly to decide a course of action.

The Humane Society received a donation of land at Major Drive and Texas 105 two years ago. At 10 a.m. today, the shelter's insurance adjuster will assess the building, which reeked Thursday of wet ash. Volunteers occasionally would dart inside to retrieve something, but put on particle masks first. A volunteer coughed loudly and long after one such foray.

For now, the Houston Humane Society is standing by to help provide shelter in a pinch as well as the Houston ASPCA and another shelter called Citizens Animal Protection Service, or CAPS.

The fire at the 2050 Spindletop Ave. shelter likely sparked from smoldering laundry lint in a dryer. The animals died from smoke inhalation.

One dog who made it out, Princess, is drinking water now and is still getting treatments, including oxygen, May said.

Another dog, named Snoozy, who was retrieved from a hoarder home in Liberty County last year, also was fostered out before the fire.

Char Char, the shelter's resident cat, was outdoors when the fire ignited and ran for cover, May said. Char Char, whose former owner didn't realize Char Char was a boy and named him Charlotte, also suffered from signs of smoke inhalation, but was drinking water and stayed close to people on Thursday.

All of the shelter's other cats, whose cages were in the front room of the shelter, survived.

"Our focus is to get back operational and help animals," May said. "We'll get through this."

See photos of the damage after the fire in the gallery above. (Warning: Graphic photos)

DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday requested a presidential disaster declaration, which would allow for federal aid in a region inundated by a record flooding along the Sabine River.

The flooding has destroyed hundreds of homes, displaced thousands of residents and caused the ongoing closure of Interstate 10 at the Texas-Louisiana state line.
AmSurg's Columbus (Ohio) Surgery Center celebrated its 20th anniversary, according to AmSurg.

Here are three highlights:

1. AmSurg Partners Robin Beran, MD, Richard Orlando, MD, and now retired Robert A. Bruce, MD, all celebrated the ASC, which they founded 20 years ago.

2. Columbus Eye Surgery Center is a single-specialty ophthalmology center.

3. "It was our intent from the beginning to offer every surgical subspecialty in ophthalmology and we were the first in the Midwest to do outpatient retinal surgery, something that is now the standard of care," Dr. Orlando said.

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Here are six gastroenterologists who recently made headlines.

The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America honored Paul Lebovitz, MD, a gastroenterologist with Allegheny Health Network.

William M. Lee, MD, will lead a study investigating the ability of the BreathID Methacetin Breath Test to predict patient outcome in cases of acute liver failure.

Ajay Jain, MD, received a grant from the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

Physician's Money Digest featured gastroenterologist Brian Hudes, MD, discussing his success as an entrepreneur.

Gastroenterologist Gregory D. Mackay, MD, launched a campaign to represent District 54 in the Florida House.

Florida Hospital Physician Group in Tampa added Allen P. Chudzinski, MD, FACS, to its physician team.
Hospitals across the nation are facing a myriad of financial challenges, including underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid and more than $144 billion of new reimbursement cuts since 2010.

These financial challenges combined with other issues, such as declining patient volumes, have caused more than 60 rural hospitals to close over the past five years.

Below are eight hospitals closures Becker's Hospital Review has covered so far this year.

1. McNairy Regional Hospital in Selmer, Tenn., part of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Tennova Healthcare, will close May 18.

2. SoutheastHEALTH in Cape Girardeau, Mo., closed Southeast Health Center of Reynolds County and its related clinics March 11.

3. Saddleback Memorial  San Clemente (Calif.) hospital announced it will close May 31.

4. Sayre (Okla.) Memorial Hospital abruptly closed Feb. 1.

5. Williamsburg Regional Hospital in Kingstree, S.C., shut down in February after severe flooding last October rendered the majority of the hospital unusable. The hospital said it hopes to put a fully functional modular facility in place, but that had not been completed as of March 10.

6. Cleveland Clinic's 108-year-old Lakewood (Ohio) Hospital closed in February.

7. St. Mary's Hospital in Streator, Ill., closed in early January.

8. St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare closed 126-bed Parkland Health Center  Weber Road in Farmington, Mo., in January.

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Chicago-based Presence Health will layoff 250 employees during the next three months and leave another 450 jobs unfilled this year, according to Chicago Tribune.



The news comes just days after Presence reported a $186 million operating loss in 2015.



In addition to layoffs, the health system plans to leave vacant 450 jobs that are expected to become available this year through attrition. The total reduction of 700 positions will save Presence an estimated $50 million by the end of 2016.



In an interview with the Tribune Wednesday, Presence CEO Michael Englehart largely blamed out-dated and inefficient collections practices for the system's deteriorating financial health.



Mr. Englehart said job cuts will be contained to corporate and support areas, rather than healthcare staff, according to the Tribune.



The 700 position reduction represents 3.5 percent of the health system's 20,000-person workforce.

Mr. Englehart has brought in hospital consulting experts to help get the system back on track financially.



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Newman Regional Health, a critical access hospital in Emporia, Kan., will lose its Medicare funding April 5, according to The Emporia Gazette.

Julie Brookhart, public affairs specialist for CMS' Kansas City Regional Office, told The Emporia Gazette that CMS discovered Jan. 5 Newman Regional had violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

Regarding the violation, Ms. Brookhart said, "The critical access hospital failed to arrange an appropriate transfer for a patient with an emergency medical condition that was not stable."

Newman Regional was placed on the 90-day Medicare termination track as a result of the EMTALA violation, and the hospital subsequently submitted an action plan to address the issue.

If CMS determines the hospital is fully compliant with Medicare regulations before its April 5 termination date, the hospital may be permitted to continue billing for Medicare services, according to the report.

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SoutheastHEALTH in Cape Girardeau, Mo., is rebounding from a financial spiral after closing one of its rural hospitals this month and implementing initiatives to improve the financial position of its two remaining rural facilities.

In early February, the health system announced plans to close Southeast Health Center of Reynolds County in Ellington, Mo., and its related clinics. The hospital ceased operations March 11, according to the Southeast Missourian.

SoutheastHEALTH President and CEO Kenneth Bateman said closing the hospital was a difficult decision. However, he said the financial strength of the entire system would be compromised if it continued to absorb the hospital's losses.

The system acquired Southeast Health Center of Reynolds County in 2013. In its three years of ownership, the system absorbed more than $17 million in operating losses. Before it closed, there were fewer than two beds on average filled at the hospital each day.

Southeast Health Center of Reynolds County wasn't the only SoutheastHEALTH facility that struggled financially, as the system's two other rural hospitals have also lost money. The health system has implemented initiatives to stem losses at those facilities, including asking for a half-a-cent sales tax to support its hospital in Ripley County and relocating certain services offered at its hospital in Stoddard County.

The changes taking place throughout SoutheastHEALTH are having a positive impact on its bottom line. In 2014, the system reported a $60 million net loss. In 2015, the system recorded a $489,000 profit. Mr. Bateman told the Southeast Missourian the system has a budgeted $1.2 million profit for 2016.

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GE Healthcare ($GE) launched its hand-held ultrasound, Vscan Access, last May at a World Health Organization meeting in Switzerland.

Now, the technology is in the process of becoming more widely available and incorporated into routine pregnancy care.

The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) is backing a small pilot study of the hand-held scanners to identify breech babies before the onset of labor to better avoid cesarean sections. Even more aggressively, GE alongside the U.S. and Nigerian governments are investing $20 million via the company's Healthymagination Mother and Child Initiative in using the Vscan device in prenatal screenings in Nigeria to identify at-risk pregnancies.

The NHS pilot test is slated for the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) in the East of England. The hospital delivers about 6,000 babies a year, including about 150 full-term breech babies. The NHS is providing 25 of the hand-held Vscan scanners, and 190 midwives at the hospital are being trained to use them. There will be one in every delivery room, with two in the antenatal ward and the midwife-led birthing unit.
After an extensive nationwide search for a new CEO, the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital found its next chief executive just 20 miles away at San Mateo (Calif.) Medical Center.

Beginning in late April, Susan Ehrlich, MD, who has served as CEO of SMMC since 2009, will take the helm at Zuckerberg San Francisco General, the city's only trauma center and safety-net hospital. There, Dr. Ehrlich will lead a staff of 5,400, manage a budget of $1.1 billion, and oversee the hospital's move into a new seismically safe, nine-story tower.

It's not surprising Dr. Ehrlich was the fit for the job. She has nearly 14 years of clinical and leadership experience from her tenure at SMMC, where she also served as CMO, vice president and medical director. She is also uniquely embedded in the San Francisco community from a public health and policy perspective. She served with the city's department of public health as Budget and Planning Director and in addition to her medical degree, holds a graduate degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

We checked in with Dr. Ehrlich to see how she was preparing for the transition. Here, she reflects on her experiences at SMMC and how they will inform her newest undertaking.

Question: How would you describe your leadership style?

Dr. Susan Ehrlich: I really believe my job as a leader is to ensure my team has the support they need to provide excellent patient care and that they can all work together effectively as a team to accomplish the goals of the organization.

One of the most important things I do as a leader myself is to care for patients. I am a very devoted primary care provider for older adults and I plan to provide patient care at Zuckerberg San Francisco General as well. There are a lot of important reasons I do this. One is just for my own professional growth and job satisfaction, but it also really helps me know the organization from the ground up and work in an entirely different way with the medical staff and the entire team.

Q: About how much of your time is devoted to patient care versus your duties as CEO?

SE: Well, it varies. Here at San Mateo it's officially 12 percent of my time. I'm in clinic every Monday morning and every other Wednesday afternoon, but it varies from week to week, depending on what's going on with the patients and my other duties.

Q: Do you think you will carry a lot of those patients over to San Francisco General?

SE: No, sadly I am in the process of saying goodbye to my patients, which is one of the hardest things about leaving here, because I have taken care of many of those people for the entire time I've been here  13.5 years.

Q: What do you consider your biggest accomplishment at San Mateo Medical Center?

SE: I have to identify two things. One is that we have  since I became the CEO here in 2009  embedded lean tools in the organization to create a patient-focused, data-driven community of problem solvers. This is how we do improvements in the organization and I am very proud of that.

The other thing is that early in my tenure here I was asked to lead the development of the Ron Robinson Senior Care Center. I opened that clinic  it's where I still practice today  and it's an incredibly unique resource for older adults in the community. We serve about 3,000 people as a patient centered medical home for adults over the age of 60. It's a thriving clinic that provides a great service and I am really proud of that.

Q: What brings you to your new position at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital?

SE: There are many things that draw me there. There's a fabulous team of people there who are devoted to providing the highest quality of patient-centered care. It's an opportunity to join a world class group of physicians  the University of California, San Francisco physicians and Zuckerberg San Francisco General. It's reconnecting with many people I worked with at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and many faculty who taught me when I was in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. And it's an opportunity to serve the community where I have lived for many years.

Q: What will be your main focus when you start your new role?

SE: The main focus will be moving into our new tower in the month of May. That's going to be a big focus of attention that will likely take up most of my time. Following that the hospital will start the process of implementing an enterprise-wide EHR. Both of those things are giant undertakings.

Q: You have a significant background in health policy and public health. What do you see as the most pressing public health issue in San Francisco?

SE: San Francisco is really distinguished in the sense it cares deeply about serving all of its citizens and that compassion has led to near universal access, first with Healthy San Francisco and then with the Affordable Care Act. Now that access is ensured financially for everyone in the community, we need to really eliminate disparities in health access and outcomes for the whole population. As a community provider for everyone no matter their insurance, that's a very important role for us, especially in such a diverse community.

Q: How do those issues factor into your long- and short-term goals at Zuckerberg San Francisco General?

SE: Eliminating disparities is really a long-term goal, so that is something we will be working on for many years. But in the short-term, we are really focused everyday on providing the highest quality service, the safest care, the best patient experience and the most efficient care for everybody who walks in the door.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

SE: I amhonored to take on this new role. Zuckerberg San Francisco General is an incredible community resource and I am deeply honored to join the team there.

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It's no secret that there's a lack of diversity in the medical world. But where does that problem stem from, and how deep does it run? A recent Vice article gave some insight.

Here are seven things to know about the U.S.'s minority physician problem, according to Vice.

1. Between 2013 and 2016, approximately 60.1 percent of new medical school students were white, while 7.5 percent were African American, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Only 22 percent were Asian, and 9.8 percent were Hispanic.

2. As early as third grade, minority students begin to lag behind on standardized test scores, according to Marc Nivet, EdD, chief diversity officer of the AAMC. Economically disadvantaged school systems prevent these students from academic success. "We don't have enough minority students taking the right classes early on to make successful applicants to any health professional school," Dr. Nivet said, according to the report.

3. Once in college, many minority students don't receive the advice and counseling they need to pursue medical school. Oftentimes, minority students pursue their undergraduate education at historically minority-heavy schools. Unfortunately, not all of these colleges have proper advisors for pre-med students. In addition, medical school recruiters don't always visit historically black universities, according to Dr. Nivet.

"Medical school is an incredible burden," said Damon Tweedy, MD, author of the memoir Black Man in a White Coat, according to the report. "That's where someone like a recruiter could talk about various options for financial aid, invite students to at least apply and waive the application fees. All these things make it more accessible."

4. African American students often receive lower scores on the MCAT, according to the AAMC. From 2013 through 2016, 2,460 students  43 percent of whom were African American  earned the lowest MCAT scores. Around 221 students earned top scores, but only 11 percent were African American.

The AAMC's finding is likely due to disadvantaged school systems and lack of counseling during undergraduate years. Still, Dr. Nivet emphasized that MCAT scores aren't the be-all end-all. "A whole bunch of white kids have lower MCAT scores," he said.

5. Fewer African American males applied to medical school in 2014 than in 1978, according to the AAMC. In 1978, 1,410 black males applied to medical schools. In 2014, the number shrank to 1,337. The statistic is cited in the organization's report, "Altering the Course: Black Males in Medicine."

6. Racial discrepancies don't stop after the application process. Between 2013 and 2016, 45.2 percent of white applicants were accepted to medical school, according to the AAMC. Approximately 44.3 percent of Hispanic applicants and 42.1 percent of Asian applicants were also accepted, but only 36.2 percent of African American applicants were accepted.

7. Lack of racial diversity in medicine causes problems between physicians and patients. A 2015 study published in MedPage Today found African American patients with lupus "were more likely to perceive racial bias and suffer as a result of it," according to the report. In addition, a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found racial biases and stereotyping resulted in off-putting experiences for African Americans.
In its final season, "Downton Abbey" captured audiences by exploring a healthcare phenomenon set in rural England 100 years ago  and one still playing out across America today.

The phenomenon is hospital consolidation, and historical period drama "Downton Abbey" tackled it with the same gusto with which it took on the deterioration of class hierarchies, the emergence of the women's liberation movement and many other social issues over six critically acclaimed TV seasons.

At the beginning of the 20th century, hospitals in both England and America were much different places than they are today. They offered basic nursing services to keep patients as comfortable as possible and not much more. These institutions were most typically standalone facilities largely underwritten by local philanthropists.

During this period, modern medicine began to take hold. Sophisticated organizations, often associated with universities and generally in urban areas, began to adopt new 'technologies' like operating rooms, pathology, electrocardiograms, X-rays and others. These advances changed the nature of hospitals and healthcare. Hospitals shifted from warehouses for recovery, and often decline, to early examples of what hospitals became in the late 20th century.

In the same way "Downton Abbey" had asked questions like, "Why is Mr. Carson, the head butler, so eager to perpetuate class roles?" and, "How would Lord Crawley, the conservative patriarch, react to his daughter's liberal political activities?" the show asks:

"Why would a local community reject modern medicine?"

Over the course of "Downton Abbey's" final season, we learn the answer. There is a cost associated with modernizing the local hospital, and it is not primarily economic. The cost is control.

Modernizing the hospital requires the clinical and scale resources of a partner. To capture those benefits, the town's parochial elites, who built the hospital and have overseen its delivery of nursing care for years, would need to cede some of their absolute control over the endeavor. As Maggie Smith's character states, "less control ... is what I consider my duty to resist."

Efficiency, access to treatments, medical staff advancements and other scale benefits are seen as acceptable casualties relative to "diminishing [the board's] own importance." To overcome this resistance to change, "Downton Abbey's" proponents of progress work to frame the argument and place the healthcare of the community above the personal, societal and historic concerns of the few. Maggie Smith's character's group on the hospital board is content exerting its "control" to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, that status quo places the healthcare of their community at risk.

To counter this, those that recognize the benefits of medical advancement work to reframe the debate. They question whether "local control" should be the goal, or whether the board has a broader mandate than self-perpetuation. This cohort says the primary question is which system is more likely to deliver modern treatment to the local population  not which system is more likely to maintain their historic positions.

The reason "Downton Abbey" enjoyed so much popular success is that the issues the show confronted are as applicable today as they were 100 years ago. The choices today are not between nursing-only facilities and hospitals with X-rays, but the tension between control and scale is very definitely still relevant.

From the Roaring Twenties to the 2010s

We have dedicated our careers to advising hospital boards on transactions. We spend our time in hospital boardrooms across the country addressing the exact issue confronted by "Downton Abbey"  how can hospital boards best meet the healthcare needs of their communities and support the institutions to which they have donated so much time and energy?

Our clients, like the board portrayed on "Downton Abbey," are concerned with how change will impact their communities. They recognize that without scale, things important to them like quality, consistency, outcomes and efficiency can be more than just expensive  they can be illusory.

If the tension 100 years ago was between standalone nursing beds and facilities with X-rays and ORs, the tension today is between standalone hospitals and small systems struggling to make the shift from fee-for-service to population health and organizations with the infrastructure in place to keep patients out of the hospital by driving quality, efficiency and consistency.

What strikes us 4,000 miles away and a century after the "Downton Abbey" story is how human these struggles are. Today's nonprofit hospital boards, typically consisting of very well-meaning volunteers, face the same existential question that their counterparts on "Downton Abbey" and community boards faced after the turn of the last century: How do we best adapt to changing times to ensure the highest quality, most efficient care for the communities we serve?

What we have learned in our work across the country is what "Downton Abbey" so deftly demonstrated in its final season: These decisions are best made through thoughtful spirited debate that is grounded in actionable information and alternatives.

Rex Burgdorfer and Jordan Shields are Vice Presidents at Juniper Advisory, a specialized, independent investment banking firm focused exclusively on providing community hospitals and health systems with advice related to partnerships, affiliations, joint ventures, and a range of M&A strategies. They can be reached at rburgdorfer@juniperadvisory.com and jshields@juniperadvisory.com.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
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A decision could be due soon on whether struggling plane maker Bombardier gets another $1bn (700m) aid package from Canada.

The aerospace giant, which employs more than 5,000 people in Northern Ireland, is seeking a second bailout, this time from Canada's federal government.

It's already had a $1bn (700m) bailout from the Quebec regional government.

The firm has also received more than 70m from Invest NI since 2002.

But now it has been reported Canada's government has finished studying a request from Bombardier, and is due to make an announcement on whether to go ahead with the bailout, within weeks.

It needs the cash to help with its CSeries passenger jets - of which the wings and bodies are made in Belfast - which are long-delayed and over-budget.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Bloomberg Television that the CSeries was a "fabulous" plane.

Last month, Bombardier revealed it was axing more than 1,000 jobs in Belfast in yet another hammer blow to Northern Ireland manufacturing.

The east Belfast-based plane-maker is slashing a fifth of its entire workforce here in what's been described as a "devastating blow".

Asked whether there was any concern Belfast's workforce could get left behind, with Canada's focus on its own staff if there is a further bail-out, Bombardier Belfast's vice-president Michael Ryan said: "No. We are a source of competitive advantage to them. Being in the UK is a source of competitive advantage to them."

Mr Ryan previously told the Belfast Telegraph he could not rule out additional job losses in the coming years.

"No. I would be a fool to try and do that," he said.

Bombardier said it was "taking steps to optimise" its workforce and "must adjust its workforce levels downwards by around 580 this year". A further 500 jobs are expected to go next year.

At one stage, Bombardier employed more than 8,000 staff in Northern Ireland, but that number has fluctuated over the past 15 years.

Mr Ryan said the losses were partly down to a slowing in demand, particularly for business aircraft.

The job losses are due to be spread across the shop floor, administration, technical and management.

The production of wings for the CSeries is Northern Ireland's biggest-ever inward investment programme, worth 520m.

Last year, it was revealed Bombardier's east Belfast operation was trying to cut costs by a fifth over the next two years.

Staff rejected a pay freeze for the workforce and plans to extend the working week to 37 hours.
Confidence among small firms in Northern Ireland and the UK has dropped "significantly" and is at its lowest level for three years, according to a new report

Confidence among small firms in Northern Ireland and the UK has dropped "significantly" and is at its lowest level for three years, according to a new report.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the slump was most noticeable in London and the east of England, but companies in Scotland and Northern Ireland were the least confident.

Uncertainty about the strength of the UK and global economy was blamed for the fall in confidence, although pensions auto-enrolment and next month's national living wage hike also caused widespread concern.

Sandra Dexter, FSB vice-chairwoman, said: "Small business confidence has clearly faltered, which is why the welcome small business focus in the Budget is so important. We need a renewed push for growth and productivity, with policy makers delivering a sustained package of support for ambitious small firms.

"The Budget also included a number of important measures to help smaller businesses, particularly changes to business rates, which will see many small businesses taken out of paying rates altogether.

"Delivering on tax simplification measures will be vital, as will be pressing ahead with new investment in much-needed infrastructure. Taken together, these measures should help boost confidence and help small firms grow and succeed," she added.
Outside of the Hotel Esperanto in Cannes

Belfast City Council has forked out 60,000 of ratepayers' money to send seven representatives to a global trade show on the French Riviera.

They are involved in a joint public/private sector trade mission to Cannes for MIPIM - one of the world's biggest property expos - in a bid to attract major investors to the city.

The seven, part of a 50-strong delegation, are staying at the two-star Hotel Esperanto in the resort town for five nights.

The rest of the funding for the trip came from the 30 local businesses involved.

It is the first time Belfast has sent a delegation to the expo since the banking crisis.

Those participating include McAleer and Rushe, as well as other major local developers.

The aim of the trip is to attract 1 billion of investment to Belfast over the next five years and the creation of 30,000 jobs.

A spokeswoman for City Hall said it planned 15 events over the five days and will heavily promote the province's 12.5% corporation tax rate, which comes into effect in two years.

Speaking ahead of the trip Jackie Henry, a senior partner at Deloitte, said: "I think that we are clear and realistic.

"It's a great platform and a busy platform.

"This is the year to take Belfast out.

"There are 2,000 investors and developers out there.

"We would like a harder pipeline of investment.

"Realistically, it's about those relationships."

Ms Henry was asked whether she thought the trip was a good way to spend public money.

She replied: "The interesting thing is that two-thirds is being funded by business and the private sector.

"The private sector is doing the heavy lifting on this one, and we are happy to do that."

Belfast City Council chief executive Suzanne Wylie was equally positive.

She said: "Belfast's reputation as a leading hub for foreign direct investment and technology, alongside our world-class pool of talent, our low rate of corporation tax from April 2018 and a wealth of other opportunities for international investors, means that the city's attractiveness as a place to invest is only going to grow.

"We believe that a target of 1bn of investment and the creation of tens of thousands of jobs is within our reach.

"We can transform the city and move it on to a new level to be competitive on a global stage.

"The council is committed to its partnership with the private sector to make this work.

We want to encourage, facilitate and deliver.

"We want to play our part in transforming this city to put it where it deserves to be."
Work is due to start later this year on redeveloping a former Belfast linen warehouse into a new hotel and 15-storey office building.

And elsewhere, property developer Paddy Kearney is planning to develop a series of huge office buildings across the city over the next few years.

That's to help meet a severe shortage of top-end office space in Belfast.

Mr Kearney's Kilmona Holdings will build two large buildings in a new development called Lanyon Central at East Bridge Street, made up of 12-storeys with 235,000 sq ft of floor space.

And he is also developing the 10-storey Chichester House on Chichester Street, which will include 70,000 sq ft of office space and 10,000 sq ft of retail.

He recently purchased a tranche of buildings in the city, including the Ten Square hotel just behind City Hall.

It was also revealed at the MIPIM property event in Cannes, that Co Tyrone's McAleer & Rushe will begin work on its 15-storey development at the old Ewarts Warehouse on Bedford Street.

That will provide additional grade A office space for the city, and is also to include the restoration of the old building itself, which is listed, including alteration, refurbishment and an extension.

Plans for a 70-bedroom hotel have also been in the works.

The existing sandstone building, which has lain empty for two decades, was designed by James Hamilton, also the architect of the Waring Street Ulster Bank, now the Merchant Hotel.

Expand Close An artists impression of how the rear of the new development might look / Facebook

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The latest major commercial property developments were revealed during a joint public and private sector trip to MIPIM in Cannes, one of the world's largest property shows.

Last year a report from Invest NI warned Northern Ireland could lose out on attracting crucial foreign direct investment (FDI) due to a lack of prime office space.

It had suggested it intervenes in the market here to help "stimulate the development of new grade A office accommodation".

And at the MIPIM event this week, it was revealed a Belfast landlord has landed their first rental level of 20 per sq ft.

Insurance giant Allstate has signed up to take on 9 Lanyon Place until 2018. The building is owned by Kilmona Holdings.

The MIPIM trip is the first time Belfast has made the visit since the property crash, and it includes some of Northern Ireland's biggest developers, such as Lagan Construction.

Those behind the trip are ambitiously aiming to attract 1bn worth of investment to Belfast over the next five years, which they say can add 30,000 new jobs.

And also at the event, the chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, Richard Williams, said he's "well on track" to double the size of the film and television sector here over the course of the next few years.
Confidence among small firms has dropped "significantly" and is at its lowest level for three years, a new report has warned.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the slump was most noticeable in London and the East of England, although firms in Scotland and Northern Ireland were the least confident.

Uncertainty about the strength of the UK and global economy was blamed for the fall in confidence, although pensions auto-enrolment and next month's national living wage were also causing concerns.

Sandra Dexter, FSB vice-chairman, said: "Small business confidence has clearly faltered, which is why the welcome small business focus in the Budget is so important. We need a renewed push for growth and productivity - with policy makers delivering a sustained package of support for ambitious small firms.

"The Budget included a number of important measures to help smaller businesses, particularly changes to business rates, which will see many small businesses taken out of paying rates altogether.

"Delivering on tax simplification measures will be vital - as will be pressing ahead with new investment in much-needed infrastructure. Taken together, these measures should help to boost confidence and help small firms to grow and succeed."

The report was published ahead of the FSB's national conference in Glasgow, due to be addressed by Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson.
The Co-op has insisted there will be no empty shelves in its stores in Northern Ireland next week when more than 700 delivery drivers across the UK go on a two-day strike.

Drivers in Carrickfergus will be among the Unite union members on a 48-hour strike from midnight on Monday in a dispute over transferring drivers to haulier Eddie Stobart Ltd (ESL).

The union claims deliveries of fresh produce including milk, fruit and vegetables, could be severely hit by the strike, which will be accompanied by a continuous work to rule.

Unite says the dispute centres on the decision by the Co-op group to transfer 87 Coventry-based drivers to ESL, sparking an overwhelming vote for strike action by drivers across the UK concerned about the implications of future outsourcing of their jobs on pay and employment conditions.

It says the majority of the Coventry drivers are considering taking a severance package as they are concerned about how they would be treated if they were transferred to ESL.

Unite said it had become embroiled in a long-running dispute with Tesco when its Doncaster operation transferred 184 workers to ESL and the drivers were issued with a termination of employment notice with no prospect of re-employment.

The union said it is due to hold talks with the Co-op management under the auspices of the conciliation service, Acas, today and it wants the talks to investigate the list of suggestions made by the Coventry shop stewards to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Unite national officer for retail distribution, Adrian Jones, said: "Our Coventry members are caught between a rock and a hard place.

"They are angry that the so-called ethical Co-op has betrayed their years of dedicated service, but have no wish to work for ESL, an employer that has a very poor reputation in the way it treats its staff. They are prepared to wash their hands of both these two tainted organisations, unless other options can be agreed.

"The 48-hour strike will be felt by Co-op customers across the UK. The Co-op has the delivery of fresh produce, such as milk and fruit and veg, as a top business priority in the battle for supermarket sales. This will be severely disrupted with the knock-on impact for its reputation with customers."

The Co-op driver members striking are based at Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland; Castlewood, north Derbyshire; Chester-Le-Street, County Durham; Coventry; Inverness; Newhouse, Lanarkshire; Plymouth and Thurrock in Essex.

A Co-op spokesperson said:"Product availability will be unaffected by the proposed strike and we are in talks with the union at Acas tomorrow to resolve the matter."

A spokesman for ESL said: "Eddie Stobart is pleased to be working with the Co-op."
A Co Derry man on benefits allegedly ran a small drugs empire with a 200,000 turnover from his bedroom as an experiment, the High Court heard today.

Richard Sinclair arranged deals on the dark web and oversaw a distribution system involving couriers unwittingly delivering MDMA and other substances without ever leaving his home, a judge was told.

Police investigating an operation where some consignments were posted inside jigsaw puzzles also allegedly discovered hundreds of thousands of pounds going into a gambling account.

With Sinclair said to have made full admissions, he was seeking bail to spend time with his elderly grandmother before facing what his lawyer described as inevitable imprisonment.

His application was refused, however, due to the risk of re-offending.

The 33-year-old was arrested after police seized ecstasy pills, herbal cannabis and diazepam tablets worth an estimated 100,000 during separate raids at his home on Cranagh Road, Coleraine and a co-accused's address in east Belfast last August.

Sinclair faces charges of conspiracy to supply and possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply, and transferring criminal property.

Prosecution counsel said police who raided his home discovered him in a bedroom destroying evidence on an encrypted memory stick.

Hundreds of drugs transactions were said to be displayed on a nearby computer when officers entered.

Customer names, email and delivery addresses, types of drugs, quantities, purchases and sales believed to be in excess of 204,000 were retrieved, the court heard.

Two sealed packages addressed to his co-accused contained DVD boxes with 1,500 in cash in each.

Other three parcels had 60g of suspected MDMA powder.

As those searches were being carried out police were alerted to a parcel addressed to Sinclair being left at a courier depot in Belfast.

It contained two jigsaw puzzles with a total of 3,000 MDMA and other psychedelic pills with a potential street value of 40,000, according to the prosecution barrister.

She said the racket involved online buying and selling drugs via the dark net, dispatching them to customers in the post, and using the electronic bitcoin currency.

The court heard claims that Sinclair planned to start selling up to 1,000 ecstasy tablets a week to a select list of around a dozen customers.

Examination of his bank account revealed more than 287,000 had been paid in over the previous three years, with 236,000 going out to a bookmaker's betting account.

"At the time of his arrest he was in receipt of benefits and a carer's allowance (for his grandmother)," the prosecutor added.

Michael Boyd, defending, said Sinclair has accepted that he faces a lengthy prison sentence for what he described as "running a small drugs empire".

"He admitted everything to police, he didn't remain silent or invent some cock and bull story," the barrister said.

"This started off as some sort of experiment and somehow (developed) to the extent that he was receiving significant sums of money for running this operation from a family bedroom in Coleraine, never venturing outside or interacting face to face with anyone."

But refusing the application, Mr Justice Stephens said: "The applicant, whilst on benefits, (allegedly) ran a sophisticated, computer-based operation as a drugs wholesaler with complete disregard for the pain and damage done to individuals and families."
The families of two Belfast teenagers are becoming increasingly concerned after they went missing on Tuesday night.

Louis Thompson and Ebony Briggs, both 14, who have been in a relationship for six months, went missing after Louis walked Ebony to a bus stop near his home in east Belfast on Tuesday night.

Louis' granny, Ruth, said the family are sick with worry and appealed for the youngsters to contact a family member.

"I'm going out of my head with worry," she said.

"On Tuesday Ebony called to see Louis who was at his mother's home. She is staying in a care home for a few weeks and had to be back by 10pm.

"At 9.20pm she was getting ready to leave and Louis said he would walk her to the bus stop but we haven't heard from them since."

Ruth said there had been sightings of the pair on Tuesday night and that police considered them high risk.

The young couple had stayed out overnight before, but had come back the next morning.

"I know Ebony was quite upset during the day as she doesn't like the care home," Ruth said.

"We have looked everywhere for her, we have looked in Belvoir Wood, Victoria Park and in the Village and in Ballysillan. We have been all over town. We have run out of places we can even think of.

"It's been absolute hell, we are in and out of the house. I've had no sleep worrying about them.

"His mum is worried sick and is in bits - it's her eldest son. We just want them home or if someone sees them to let us know.

"We can't cook, we can't eat or sleep, we can't do anything because it's on our minds all the time."

Ebony's brother, Dylan Briggs, told the Belfast Telegraph that she contacted family members on Wednesday but refused to say where she was.

He said: "I spoke to her last week as I knew she was in foster care and wanted to see how she was keeping. She said everything was OK. But then I was told she was missing.

"I've been sending her messages on Facebook because she had asked if she could get a shower at my aunt's house on Wednesday night."

He said the family was growing increasingly worried.

"I don't want anything happening to her," he added. "I am devastated she is missing - as her big brother I should be looking out for her."
First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness announce a 6m investment by Stanford University spin-out HighWire Press Inc. The Northern Ireland leaders are joined by Dan Filby, CEO of HighWire, Amy Mosher of HighWire, and Invest NIs Alastair Hamilton

The annual St Patrick's week trip to the US by the First and Deputy First Ministers ended yesterday in California with the announcement of a 6m investment, creating 74 jobs in Belfast.

HighWire Press Inc, a digital publishing company, is setting up a technical team in the city.

Well-known in the academic sector, HighWire is a spin-out from Stanford University and specialises in scientific and scholarly journals, books and reference works.

Almost 1m of public money is going towards the investment, including 739,220 from Invest NI towards job creation, and 222,000 from the Department of Employment and Learning, which is setting up pre-employment training academies to prepare staff for jobs at HighWire.

Employment Minister Stephen Farry flew out to meet the company at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in January to discuss the support package for training initiatives.

Dan Filby, chief executive of HighWire, said: "We are very excited about Belfast.

"As well as providing us with a dedicated technology development centre, it will also provide us with a focal point on which to build our continued presence in Europe.

"An outstanding, abundant talent pool was our highest priority when evaluating expansion locations."

First Minister Arlene Foster said that the announcement was "a great boost to Belfast's reputation as number one in Europe for new software development projects".

And Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness added: "HighWire choosing to locate in the north of Ireland signals the potential of our existing and future IT professionals.

"The 74 new jobs created will contribute 3m in annual salaries to our local economy. With an average salary of 34,000, they will provide a wide range of opportunities for software developers, quality assurance, professional services and support engineers."

Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness yesterday ended a four-day, coast-to-coast quest for investment, which started in New York on Monday at a breakfast with business leaders.

Their key message has centred on the planned cut in corporation tax to 12.5% in 2018, and there has been a particular focus on the financial and digital technology sectors.

They were at the centre of the multi-billion dollar US tech industry yesterday as guests of honour at the Irish Technology Leaders Group lunch in Silicon Valley.
Award-winning actor James Nesbitt has said Belfast should be top of the list of any visionary civic, economic and business leader looking for great places to invest.

Nesbitt was speaking via video message to an audience of global investors attending the MIPIM investment event in Cannes.

Belfast City Council said the city's popularity was reflected in the high turn-out of property and development investors who visited its stand this week and attended a St Patrick's Day celebration, during which they heard Nesbitt's heartfelt promotion. The actor said: "I am a great believer in the role of cities in developing local, regional, national and global economies and I couldn't be more supportive of Belfast and its investment initiative.

"Belfast, of course, is a great city of talent and now is the time to reveal that talent to the rest of the world and display the true greatness of the city. As Chancellor of Ulster University, I am particular proud of the development of the new city centre Ulster University Belfast Campus and its role in acting as a catalyst for so many other major developments in the city."

He added: "With an abundance of highly educated and committed graduates and a hugely experienced and skilled workforce, it would really be an opportunity missed for visionary civic, economic and business leaders not to consider Belfast as a great place for investment.

Nesbitt also paid tribute to "the passion, the tenacity, the warmth and the hospitality of the people of this great city".
Prison officer Adrian Ismay died after being injured in a bomb attack in Belfast (Department of Justice/PA)

A second post-mortem examination is to be carried out on a prison officer after lawyers for a man accused of the dissident republican murder questioned the cause of death, a court has heard.

Solicitors representing Christopher Alphonsos Robinson have also asked for a review of the medical care given to Adrian Ismay in the 11 days between him suffering serious leg injuries when a bomb exploded under his van, and having a fatal heart attack.

Mr Ismay, a 52-year-old father of three, died on Tuesday when a blood clot triggered cardiac failure.

He had been released from hospital in the wake of the blast in east Belfast on March 4 and had reportedly been making good progress.

A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack.

Robinson, 45, had originally been charged with attempted murder prior to Mr Ismay's death.

That charge was changed to murder on the basis of a post-mortem report. He is also facing a charge of possession of an explosive with the intention to endanger life.

The accused appeared at Belfast Magistrates' Court on Friday to face the substituted charge.

A police detective, who told the district judge he could connect Robinson with the charge, outlined the preliminary post-mortem findings to the court.

"Mr Ismay died from pulmonary embolism due to deep vein thrombosis following explosion injuries to the legs," he said.

Robinson's solicitor, Padraig O Muirigh, asked the officer if the cause of death could be described as a clot.

"That would be correct," he replied.

Mr O Muirigh told judge Austin Kennedy that his request for a second post-mortem examination has been approved by the coroner.

He said it would be performed by Glasgow University pathologist Dr Marjorie Turner either later on Friday or on Monday.

The solicitor said he also wanted a review of Mr Ismay's care both in hospital and as an outpatient.

"There are issues in regard to causation," he said.

The first post-mortem examination was carried out by Professor Jack Crane, Northern Ireland's former state pathologist.

Robinson, from Aspen Park in Dunmurry, west Belfast, sat impassively throughout the hearing.

At the outset he refused to stand when requested to do so by the judge. He also failed to respond when asked if he understood the charge facing him.

While a number of supporters had jeered when Robinson initially appeared in court on Saturday, there was no repeat of those scenes on Friday, as the public gallery was almost empty. A number of armed police officers watched proceedings from the rear of courtroom 10.

Robinson was remanded back into custody. He will appear in court again, via video-link from prison, on April 1.
With his Community Rescue Service (CRS) colleagues showing off the sonar gear they procured through fundraising

Adrian Ismay with Joe Murphy, the father of Joby Murphy who died after falling into the River Lagan

The father of a man who died after falling into the River Lagan has said murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay was with him right to the end as he searched for his son.

Joe Murphy told the Belfast Telegraph he would never forget the support Mr Ismay had given him after his son, Joby, disappeared.

"I just couldn't believe the news when I heard it because I thought he was getting better," Mr Murphy said.

"You just remembered him because he was a big man and always had a smile on his face."

Mr Ismay died of a heart attack on Tuesday after a booby trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. As well as being a prison officer, he was a volunteer for Community Rescue Service (CRS) in Belfast, while he also once volunteered with St John Ambulance.

When Joby disappeared in January 2012 after attending a Snow Patrol concert, the police search was called off after a week. But Mr Ismay and CRS volunteers worked with Mr Murphy for a month until Joby's body was found.

"They came and they stayed with us every single day and evening," Mr Murphy said.

"Adrian was there right to the end when we got him. It was just a great thing for us because when the police gave up - they thought he had gone with the tide - we didn't.

"Adrian and (rescue worker) Sean McCarry didn't believe that. It was them that got search and rescue up. Only for them we would never have got Joby. That's a fact."

Mr Ismay helped to arrange for CRS to borrow sonar equipment, which proved vital in the search.

Following the recovery, Joe campaigned to raise money for a dedicated sonar system for Northern Ireland, something Mr Ismay was also dedicated to. He attended fundraising events and was there at the Hilton Hotel, where Joby worked, when the device was officially unveiled in 2012. "I don't know how he had the energy to do his work and then when he was finished come down to us," said Mr Murphy.

"Me and my son (Martin) would go down for the searches all weekend.

"Adrian would be there. One of the last pictures we have is us standing beside Adrian. I know they were out with the sonar on the Lagan two weeks ago and helped find another person.

"The waiting for families is a terrible time. After 31 days I was actually going mad. We called them guardian angels. For that to happen to Adrian beggars belief."

On Wednesday, members of the CRS posted their condolences to Mr Ismay's family online.

"Adrian was someone who devoted his time to the service of others across all of our communities as a volunteer in many areas for most of his life," they wrote.

"Adrian was a valued member of our organisation and his loss had a profound effect on all of the CRS family. Adrian worked tirelessly to support everyone inside and outside of our organisation and will be remembered as a colleague, trainer, manager, searcher and much more, but most of all as a friend."

In a blog post, one of Mr Ismay's CRS colleagues wrote an emotional personal tribute.

"I'm not ashamed to say that I cried when I heard of the attack on his life and I did the same yesterday," the rescue volunteer wrote. "He was a gentle giant of a man and it was a privilege to have known him as a friend.

"Adrian was an incredible character, was always so caring and thoughtful and he would always go out of his way to help whoever he could.

"He had time for absolutely everybody and always showed an interest in everyone he came across. If I turn out to be half the person that Adrian was, then I will have done very well at life." Staff from Hydebank Wood Prisoner Officers Association also paid tribute to their colleague.

"Sincere sympathies to the Ismay family circle on the passing of our friend and colleague Adrian," they wrote.

Another obituary read: "Adrian. Esteemed friend and colleague will be forever remembered and greatly missed.

"Deepest sympathy to Sharon, daughters and family circle. From all at the Prison Service College. Lest we forget."

It is understood that Mr Ismay's funeral will be held early next week.
The situation was brought under control at around 4.30am. March 2016. Picture: BBC

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker 17/03/2016

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Revellers in the Holylands on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holyland on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

A female paramedic required hospital treatment after she was kicked in the stomach by a 19-year-old man she was treating during the St Patrick's Day celebrations in Belfast.

It happened in the Bank Street area of Belfast city centre on Thursday night.

The 19-year-old became aggressive - spitting and kicking out at the crews.

He was put in an ambulance where he kicked the woman in the stomach.

She was taken to the Ulster Hospital and is now believed to be recovering from her injuries.

John McPoland of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, speaking to the BBC, condemned the attack.

He said: "Something really has to be done to make sure the ambulance service is given the respect it deserves.

"We absolutely condemn the actions of this individual because the paramedic was there just to provide him with help."

Eleven arrests were made in and around the city centre and the Holylands area of south Belfast where large crowds of revellers had gathered.

In the early hours of Thursday morning there was a drunken crowd of around 300 on the streets.

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 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 Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 Thousands enjoy the open air concert at Custom House Square. St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 Brian McFadden entertains the Thousands in the open air concert at Custom House Square. St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 Thousands enjoy the open air concert at Custom House Square. St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Charlie Bradley (9), Courtney Dempsey (8), Nellie-Rose Bradley (4), Stephen Dempsey (9) and Ruairi Bradley (7).  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Nuala and Brendan Loughran with Reilly.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Cloughfin Pipe Band.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Cloughfin Pipe Band.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Cora (4) and Ruby (2) Harmon.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Little Connloadh Mahoney (2).  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Claire Kearns wishing everyone a very Happy St Patrick's Day.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Emma (8) and Katie (9) McDonnell.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Lord Mayor Arder Carson.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye  Thursday 17th March 2016 St Patrick's Day celebrations take place across Northern Ireland. Thousands of people are attending St Patrick's Day parades and festivities in towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The Belfast parade departed from city hall at noon and is making its way to Custom House Square for a free concert. Cloughfin Pipe Band.  Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Pacemaker press 17/03/2016 The Annual St Patricks day parade makes it's way through Belfast City centre on route to Custom house square. St Patricks day or "The feast of St Patrick" is held on the 17th of March which is thought to be the date St Patrick died. It is a celebration of christianity in Ireland. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press / Facebook

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Whatsapp PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/3/2016 Thousands enjoy the open air concert at Custom House Square. St Patrick's day celebrations in Belfast city centre this afternoon. Thousands lined the route from Belfast City Hall to Custom House Square where an open air concert will take place.

A police officer was injured after a bottle was thrown.

Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said in a statement: "An ambulance crew was assaulted last night by a patient whom they had been called to treat in Bank Street, Belfast. The patient became aggressive and spat at both crew members before kicking out at them.

"Despite this violent behaviour against them, the crew continued to care for the patient taking him to the Royal Victoria Hospital for treatment.

"The female member of the crew was letter assessed for abdominal pain and was admitted to a ward at 5am this morning. She was discharged at 11am and is recovering at home.

"NIAS condemns in the strongest possible terms this assault on our staff and hope that assault charges are pressed against this individual resulting in a sentence that will send a message that attacks on ambulance crews will no longer be tolerated. NIAS staff dedicate themselves to caring for the sick and injured in our society and at times do so at great risk to their personal safety.

"In return, they ask for nothing more than a degree of respect and the space in which to do their job."
The situation was brought under control at around 4.30am. March 2016. Picture: BBC

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker 17/03/2016

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Revellers in the Holylands on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holyland on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

The PSNI have rejected claims made by a former police officer that they "pick and chose" what laws to enforce in order to avoid a political or violent blacklash.

It comes after a former officer claimed senior cops ordered a blind eye be turned on people drinking in the streets and urinating up walls during times large crowds gather.

Mark, from Banbridge, was speaking on the Stephen Nolan Show on Friday morning in the wake of St Patrick's Day disturbances in the Holylands area of Belfast.

He claimed that officers "took a step back" when crowds of people had gathered and engaged in anti-social behaviour.

He said: "[The trouble] is not just happening on St Patrick's Day, it is happening every Friday and Saturday night, every 11, 12, 13 July, every Halloween.

"As a former police officer I can tell you I was told by senior officers not to take drink off people, not to tackle people urinating in public - as there may be political fall out.

"Around the July holidays you are told to to leave them be - sit back and let them get on with it."

Police, he said, were afraid their actions could affect relationships in the community or spark rioting.

He added: "I was told they had good relationships with political representatives and community representatives and didn't want those to fail, so told to take a step back."

Mark recalled an incident when a group of bandsman were urinating against a wall of an elderly woman's home.

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 Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holyland on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Revellers in the Holylands on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph ) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph A naked man is pictured wearing a Tricolour in the Holylands. Picture: BBC reporter Claire Graham @JournoClaire Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press Around 300 people gathered in the Holylands. March 2016. Picture: BBC People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker 17/03/2016 The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press The situation was brought under control at around 4.30am. March 2016. Picture: BBC / Facebook

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Whatsapp Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holyland on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

"I was taking their details in preparation of a report and I wasn't told, I was ordered, to step back and leave them be," he said.

"The look on the elderly woman's face as police walked away from a crowd of people urinating on her wall.

"And before people say I'm attacking one side or the other or Orangemen, this is every single weekend.

"In order to avoid trouble police are being told to take a step back or think about what you are doing first of all."

He added: "I am not trying to be down on any group, if we are going to have a policy, then enact it all year round.

"Doesn't matter who they are, or where they are, enforce the policy equally throughout the year.

"People might be stunned by it - but there will be an awful lot of people not so stunned."

In response Superintendent Darrin Jones refuted the claims and said they were "absolutely not the case".

He said: "It is absolutely not the case that police pick and choose when and where to act, whether thats in relation to the consumption of alcohol in a public place, disorder or any other illegal activity. Where criminal offences are being committed police will act in an appropriate and proportionate manner.

"A significant police operation was in place to help ensure the St Patricks Day festivities across Belfast passed off in a largely peaceful fashion and, with the exception of a few, most people who attended the city centre parade, or who celebrated independently, did so in a good natured and respectful fashion.

"Police made a total of 11 arrests in and around the city centre and Holyland areas yesterday for a range of public order offences including disorderly behaviour, resisting arrest and assault on police.

"As each of the people arrested may soon be about to find out - what may initially have seemed like fooling about can sometimes get out of hand and end up in a criminal record which can affect travel, education and employment opportunities in the future."

He continued: "In south Belfast, we worked alongside representatives from both Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster, the Belfast Met, local schools and volunteer organisations, who proactively encouraged students and young people to stay off the streets of the Holyland on St Patricks Day. We carried out joint enforcement patrols with Belfast City Councils Antisocial Behaviour Officers and seized a significant amount alcohol from people drinking in streets and other public areas across the city.

"While there was no repeat of the disgraceful levels of violence and behaviour that we saw in the Holyland on Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday, into the afternoon and evening there were numerous reports of anti-social, nuisance behaviour as well as sporadic instances of scuffles and fights among various groups of revellers, across the city.

"A clean-up operation will obviously take place today and, in due course, police along with partner agencies will review all of the planning for St Patricks Day and its associated events and will take away whatever learning there is to improve the experience in future for residents and visitors alike."
Mr Ismay, a 52-year-old father of three children, died from a heart attack on Tuesday, eleven days after he sustained serious injuries in an under-van bomb blast claimed by renegade group the New IRA

A public vigil has been organised for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay.

Trade unionists have called on people to attend the event at Belfast City Hall next week to demonstrate their opposition to the dissident republican killing.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) said the silent vigil would also provide an opportunity to show solidarity with Mr Ismay's family and other prison officers in Northern Ireland.

Similar rallies have been held in the wake of past dissident murders.

Mr Ismay, a 52-year-old father of three children, died from a heart attack on Tuesday, eleven days after he sustained serious injuries in an under-van bomb blast claimed by renegade group the New IRA.

The vigil will take place outside Belfast City Hall at 1pm on Tuesday next week.

Peter Bunting, assistant general secretary of the ICTU, said: "All workers across the communities that make up Northern Ireland must unite to ensure that our peace process will not be derailed.

"Those behind this murder must be faced down with a public display of the unity of the people of Northern Ireland.

"We urge all employers in both the public and private sectors to facilitate, if possible, their workers to attend the rally."
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has claimed his party colleague Martin Ferris was "held for several hours" by the authorities at Boston Airport.

Mr Ferris, a TD for Kerry and a convicted IRA gunrunner, is believed to have been stopped and questioned by immigration officials on Wednesday after arriving in the city to participate in events to mark St Patrick's Day.

The claim was made after Mr Adams himself launched a blistering attack on officials after he was denied access to an event in the White House this week.

While party colleagues Mary Lou McDonald and Martin McGuinness passed security checks at an event hosted by President Barack Obama, Mr Adams left after being made wait 90 minutes.

Sinn Fein has now alleged that its representatives have been subjected to "additional security procedures and delays" by the US authorities.

In a statement, Mr Adams said a review is now required.

"The constant additional security processes and delays which Sinn Fein representatives are regularly subject to has long been a cause of concern. We have raised it privately in the past," Mr Adams said.

"Yesterday my colleague Martin Ferris was delayed getting on his flight to Boston and when he eventually arrived on a later flight he was held for several hours.

"In the course of my meeting with the State Department on Wednesday, during which they apologised for the White House situation, I urged the administration to review their approach to Sinn Fein representatives visiting the USA and to fulfil the commitment of the Clinton administration 20 years ago to normalise relations between the US administration and Sinn Fein."

Efforts to contact Mr Ferris proved unsuccessful last night, but a Sinn Fein spokesman said he was held up by immigration officials.
The Prince of Wales expressed "despair at the pointless cruelty" in the world as he made a speech on reconciliation, referencing his beloved uncle Lord Mountbatten.

Charles gave the speech at a reception hosted by the speaker of the Serbian parliament, Maja Gojkovic. It was held to celebrate British women on the Serbian front line in World War One.

Speaking on St Patrick's Day, the Prince spoke about the 1979 killing of Lord Mountbatten, who died when the IRA blew up his boat off Mullaghmore. Nicholas Knatchbull, the earl's 14-year-old grandson, and his friend Paul Maxwell, a schoolboy from Enniskillen, were also killed.

Charles said: "In 1979 my dearly loved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, died in a bomb attack, along with his grandson and others. I feel I have at least some understanding of the heartrending anguish that so many families in this region have experienced through the loss of loved ones.

"But after many years of reflection and despair at the pointless cruelty and destruction we witness around the world, my own conclusion is this: that only reconciliation offers the assurance that our children and grandchildren will not suffer the same agonies.

"In Ireland, the lives of people in both parts of the island and of both communities have been changed immeasurably for the better by the peace agreement signed in 1998. It is my hope that the countries of the western Balkans will be similarly changed by your quest for enduring peace.

"It requires courage; a courage we must all try to summon from the depth of our souls, however great the pain. There is so much to build on here. You have the most wonderful traditions of hospitality and religious tolerance."

Last May Charles made a poignant pilgrimage to the picturesque harbour village where his great uncle was murdered by the IRA, and the prince was warmly greeted as he arrived in Mullaghmore, Co Sligo.

Ahead of the evening reception in Serbia, the prince and Duchess of Cornwall made a number of stops, beginning the day at a cultural market in Novi Sad.

Crowds gathered in the square to see the royal couple and cheered and applauded as Charles and Camilla walked through, occasionally stopping to shake hands.

They also visited the Matica Srpska gallery where the prince turned his hand to art restoration. He was shown the gallery's conservation studio, which is currently working on the Iconostasis of the Serbian Church in Budapest and, on being shown one of the pieces in the process of being cleaned, he was invited to have a go.

He picked up a tool and began gently scraping at the surface, saying: "This is very exciting. It's amazing. You have to be careful."

After enjoying himself for a short time, he laughed and said "I'd better not do too much" before putting the implement down.

During the afternoon the Prince visited the Kovilj Monastery, where he was met by its abbot, Father Isihije Hesychios. At the monastery Charles took some time to speak to addicts who have used the monastery's rehabilitation programme.

The project is free and aims to encourage the cessation of drug use by taking participants away from an addictive environment and encouraging recovery through manual labour and community service.

After hearing from some of the service users, Charles was shown where the monastery makes candles and brandy.

He tried a number of different types of the spirit, describing the plum brandy as "special".
The Duchess of Cambridge broke with 115 years of tradition yesterday by staying at home with her children, leaving her husband to hand out shamrocks to troops during a St Patricks Day parade.

Usually, a female member of the Royal Family presents the Irish Guards with their traditional honour, but Kate (34) was at home in Norfolk with Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

Instead, the Duke, who is Colonel of the regiment, led the parade at Hounslow Cavalry Barracks in west London.

Although the soldiers were disappointed that the Duchess was unable to attend, Company Sergeant Major Carl Laverty said that they were conscious she has family commitments, adding the lads were ecstatic to have their Colonel, dressed in an Irish Guards frock coat and wearing a ceremonial sword, there instead.

The Duke spoke with John Patrick Keneally, whose wife, Maryam, was wearing his fathers Victoria Cross medal.

He talked to us about my father, John said. We talked about my fathers service in Tunisia during World War Two.

William also spoke with Army cadets attending the parade, including 16-year-old Lance Sergeant Alex Hullme, of Crosby, Liverpool.

He was very pleased to hear that Ive signed up to join the Irish Guards, Alex said.
The row had the potential to threaten the Apache attack helicopter squad's frontline capabilities in Afghanistan, it was claimed

The Army lost some of its most experienced helicopter pilots over a wage error that led the Ministry of Defence to demand they returned thousands of pounds in overpay, according to newly released documents.

Defence chiefs were urged to drop their bid to recover the wages after 15 attack helicopter pilots resigned over the issue that saw servicemen face paying back a total of 829,000.

The Army raised concerns that the loss of experienced pilots and instructors risked not only impacting morale, but had the potential to threaten the Apache attack helicopter squad's frontline capabilities in Afghanistan.

Around 200 attack helicopter pilots and instructors, around a quarter now retired, received overpayments of up to 30,000 each and faced action to recover the money despite officials accepting it was taken "in good faith".

Despite worries over the impact of attempting to recover the debt, the process to recoup the overpay has continued.

A June 2014 letter to MoD officials said the Army was "firmly of the view" that the debts were written off due to "compelling" operational reasons, including the fact that the cost of replacing just one pilot far exceeded the total debt.

It warned that there had been an increase in the number of pilots leaving since debts were placed on their accounts, "with 15 pilots directly citing the incorrect payment as the deciding factor in their decision to leave the Army".

At the time the document was written it took four years to train an attack helicopter pilot at a cost of 3.5 million. The cost of training an instructor was 8.5 million.

The Army said a decision to recover the pay must also be considered against the "significant risks" that losing experienced air crew and senior instructors "would cause to air safety and the longer term costs of training replacements".

It also warned: "The loss of one more Apache qualified helicopter instructor from the operational training pipeline will reduce the trained pilot output to below the level required to maintain frontline crewing ratios."

Senior Army figures were also concerned that they could lose their best and brightest pilots and instructors to the commercial sector.

The rules that governed how pilots' pay was calculated were branded "complicated and contradictory" in the documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

They added that administrators had "inconsistently interpreted" the policy over a period of "many years", with some confusion over the system arising as far back as 2002.

An Army spokeswoman said the process to recover the overpay was continuing and each pilot's debt was being considered "on a case-by-case basis", and was not aware of any resignations linked to the debt occurring since 2014.

She said: " We have apologised and explained the circumstances of the overpayments to all of those affected. In accordance with standard Government practice, arrangements have been made to revert their pay to the correct levels and all affected personnel are now receiving the correct pay.

"The overpayment of salary has resulted in an amount of debt owed by individual personnel."
Donald Tusk is set to put Europe's terms for an agreement to Turkey

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flow of people to Greece will hit smugglers hard and send a "clear message" to dissuade would-be migrants to Europe.

The deal calls for Turkey to take back people who make the crossing illegally starting on Sunday.

Ms Merkel said that means that "anyone who sets out on this dangerous route not only risks his life but also has no prospect of success".

She said European leaders "hope that, with this, irregular migration will end in a short time".

Ms Merkel said of the deal: "The upshot of today is that Europe will manage to survive this difficult test, with all 28 (EU) members and together with Turkey."
After a four-month manhunt, police have captured the top fugitive in last year's deadly Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighbourhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and is suspected of driving a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings.

He and four other suspects were detained in a raid in Molenbeek, including three members of a family who allegedly sheltered him. Abdeslam was shot in the leg, officials said.

Helmeted police with riot shields cordoned off the area, and two explosions were heard.

France's BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured.

The Islamic extremist attackers killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on November 13 in Paris, in the country's deadliest attacks in decades.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel called Friday's arrests a success in the "fight against terrorism".

He said he spoke to President Barack Obama about the arrest, and the White House said US officials have been in close touch with French and Belgian officials about the investigation into the Paris attacks.

French president Francois Hollande congratulated the Belgian government for an operation that lasted several weeks. He warned that the investigation is not over and said authorities would continue to pursue anyone involved in financing or organising the attacks.

Two other people believed to be linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Belgian police forces stand guard in a street during a police action in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016. A police operation was underway on March 18, in the Brussels area home to key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam whose fingerprints were found in an apartment raided this week, the federal prosecutor's office said. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Special operations police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP Police evacuate a woman and a small child during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP Special operations police speak to each other during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP Special operations police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP Special operations police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP Policemen block a road during a police operation in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016, as part of the investigation into the Paris November attacks. The main suspect in the jihadist attacks on Paris in November, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in a raid in Brussels on March 18, French police sources said. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Policemen block a road during a police operation in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016, as part of the investigation into the Paris November attacks. The main suspect in the jihadist attacks on Paris in November, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in a raid in Brussels on March 18, French police sources said. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Policemen block a road during a police operation in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016, as part of the investigation into the Paris November attacks. The main suspect in the jihadist attacks on Paris in November, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in a raid in Brussels on March 18, French police sources said. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Special operations police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt) AP A policeman stand guards near the scene of a police raid in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016, as part of the investigation into the Paris November attacks. The main suspect in the jihadist attacks on Paris in November, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in a raid in Brussels on March 18, French police sources said. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Belgian policemen stand guard in a street during a police action in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016. A police operation was underway on March 18, in the Brussels area home to key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam whose fingerprints were found in an apartment raided this week, the federal prosecutor's office said. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Police officers guard an entrance of a school during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium, Friday March 18, 2016. Police have descended in force to search a residence in the Molenbeek, and Belgian media reported gunshots had been fired. RTBF French-language TV reported late Friday afternoon that two people had been wounded, and that one might be Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Belgian police forces stand guard in a street during a police action in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, on March 18, 2016. A police operation was underway on March 18, in the Brussels area home to key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam whose fingerprints were found in an apartment raided this week, the federal prosecutor's office said. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

The capture of Abdeslam came after Belgian authorities said they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighbourhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam - Mohamed Belkaid - was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors said. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months" in the apartment.

Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of the attacks, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area on Thursday.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, had not been found.

At one point during Friday's police operation, a phalanx of officers in camouflage, masks and riot helmets marched through the neighbourhood with guns and automatic weapons drawn, escorting people out of buildings.

Abdeslam's exact role in the attacks is not clear. The car he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he had apparently used were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest - or fleeing in fear.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation. They were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But on Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.
Easter is early this year, meaning there will be a long run-up to the summer. What will make it even longer, for some anyway, is the sheer amount of politics - local and national - to be endured in the meantime.

There are, as you'll not need to be reminded, two political events standing in the way of you and your summer holiday: the Stormont election and the EU membership referendum. Both will generate much heat and less light; of that we can all be sure.

The next election to the Northern Ireland Assembly is on Thursday May 5. And then there is the EU Referendum, also known as #EuroRef on social media, on June 23.

Much is at stake in the latter, so expect the squabbling to reach fever pitch in June.

Belfast Telegraph readers, never shy about sharing their views, have been writing in various forums to express their support or dissatisfaction about various Europe-related topics.

Ivor Armstrong emailed Letters to the Editor to complain about the coverage of the EuroRef: "As a frequent reader of your paper, I am disappointed that your coverage to date of the EU referendum has not been balanced, but very biased to the "stay-in" side. Surely all of the media needs to give equal coverage to both sides? For example, rarely does it mention that the UK pays in some 18bn per year to the EU, but only gets out some 9bn."

It is, of course, early days, but currently I see no evidence of undue Belfast Telegraph bias against the Brexit side.

If there was, the paper would not, for example, have published a thunderous missive from reader Harry Stephenson, that ended by stating that Turkey was metaphorically "blackmailing" the EU over migrants.

"Ironically, this debacle of EU government is what Messrs Cameron & Co want the people of Britain to vote to remain in," he wrote.

"It displays an arrogance beyond belief and incredulity if they think the people of Britain are that stupid."

It may well be that someone will produce a ruler and 'prove' that the Remain side has had more column centimetres than its opponents so far.

That is possible. But both arguments have been given adequate space in print and online.

Even if the Telegraph's coverage did become unbalanced, this is not in itself a breach of the rules as there is no requirement for "equal coverage", contrary to what many may believe. Clause 1 (iv) of the Editor's Code of Practice permits the Press to be partisan, although it must "distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact".

Other clauses require editors not to publish "inaccurate, misleading or distorted" information or images, including headlines not supported by the text, the latter being the crux of the Queen's current complaint against The Sun.

This will be a key case for IPSO, the new Press watchdog. On the evidence currently available it seems to me the paper is on a sticky wicket as the Queen's views were reportedly expressed long before the referendum was called.

Meanwhile, some grammatical errors are, for some reason, more toe-curling than others. Especially if they are on the front page.

The abuse of the word 'seen' seems particularly prevalent on these shores, so thanks to Fiona McNeill for taking the time to upbraid us on the difference between past tense and past participle in this sentence from an article about Lord Molyneaux: "Jeffrey Donaldson MP, a friend of the peer, said he never seen them together."

It should, of course, have read, "he never saw them together". Apologies.
The situation was brought under control at around 4.30am. March 2016. Picture: BBC

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker 17/03/2016

The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

PACEMAKER BELFAST 17/03/2016 A Police Presence in the Hollands area of Belfast, Celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Police were attacked with bottles in Agincourt Avenue as a crowd of about 300 people gathered in the area. The disturbances lasted for over two hours, ending at about 04:30 GMT. Police said they went to the area after a crowd was reported to be blocking the road and throwing missiles at homes and cars. Vehicles parked along the street were damaged during the trouble. One police officer said some people in the crowd had been singing "pro-IRA songs". Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Scenes in the Holylands on St Patricks day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Revellers in the Holylands on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast , UK - March 17, Pictured is The scenes in the Holyland on St Patrick's day on March 17, 2016 Belfast, Northern Ireland ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph )

When is a riot not a riot? The rowdyism in the Holylands by students and their friends is widely discussed in the media and social media as something different from the rioting that was part of the Troubles. And indeed it is.

It is not orchestrated and it is not focused on any political demand. The students just want to enjoy themselves.

Their sheer inability to grasp that they are a menace to their neighbours and that the police have a legitimate need to control them is simply just a mark of their immaturity and their ignorance.

It can probably be safely assumed that they do not really want to fight the police - that they would rather they stayed away and let them rampage merrily about the streets of south Belfast.

But does that mean that this whole ugly business has no place in the story of sectarianism and violence?

Some who clearly do not think so are the loyalists who phoned the Nolan Show yesterday morning.

Their gripe is that when loyalists party around their bonfires in July, they are damned in the media as both sectarian and stupid.

Let a loyalist make the case that a bit of drunken roistering in the street, with flags and chanting, is part of his culture, and there will be plenty of commentators quick to ask what kind of culture that is and what entitles it to respect.

From their perspective, hordes of young nationalists dressed in green, waving tricolours, shouting support for the IRA and chucking bottles at the police is at least on a par with rowdy loyalist celebration.

St Patrick's Day and the Eleventh Night have evolved together into ethnic chest-beating carnivals of a similar type. Yet they are not seen that way.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A naked man is pictured wearing a Tricolour in the Holylands. Picture: BBC reporter Claire Graham @JournoClaire Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press Around 300 people gathered in the Holylands. March 2016. Picture: BBC People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker 17/03/2016 The morning after the night before. People in the Holylands celebrating Saint Patricks day.One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Picture Matt Bohill Pacemaker Clean up at the Holylands area of Belfast on Thursday Morning, One police officer has been injured and three people have been arrested after disturbances in the Holyland area of south Belfast. Photo Pacemaker Press The situation was brought under control at around 4.30am. March 2016. Picture: BBC / Facebook

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Whatsapp A naked man is pictured wearing a Tricolour in the Holylands. Picture: BBC reporter Claire Graham @JournoClaire

The violence in the Holylands was classed by some as "recreational rioting", treated as a kind of high jinks that just went a little too far. But are they missing the obvious?

Some of the students, who were interviewed in the streets yesterday, made the same comparison with the Eleventh Night themselves.

Like the loyalists, they argued that they get more criticism than the other.

That's familiar. They are learning the art of whataboutery.

These students don't look like battle-hardened rioters. They are naive and playful, but they are playing a dangerous game.

Bringing huge numbers onto the streets and getting drunk and confronting the police creates the circumstances in which violence can escalate and people can get badly hurt and worse.

And, as for them not being political; of course not. They haven't any serious thoughts about anything, by the looks of them.

But this is their way of saying that they are Irish and they are now part of a row with loyalists who believe that they are being spared the sort of derision that is piled on them.

Expect the loud behaviour of these silly students to rebound for months now through a hundred media discussions on parades, flags, bonfires and sectarian antics in public spaces.

And expect them not even to understand why.
Important legislation - the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB) - is to become law soon. The IPB is the Government's answer to the mass surveillance of communications exposed by Edward Snowden. Everyone agrees the current legislation needs replacing.

The Government wants to bring together the powers available to law enforcement agencies to obtain communications and data about communications in one place and make these powers and safeguards understandable.

Sadly, these aims are not being met. Three parliamentary select committees have been critical of the Bill's lack of clarity, the reach of surveillance, gaps in safeguards and oversight, and a failure to set out which approach would be taken to universal privacy protections of normal communications.

Concerns were also raised about the protection of journalists' sources, lawyers' legal privilege and parliamentarians' confidentiality of communications. The Government, in response, has made limited changes.

Critics have included the UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy, who concluded that disproportionate measures, such as bulk surveillance contemplated in the Bill, should be outlawed rather than legitimised.

The UK approach contrasts with the US, which last year banned bulk data collection. The Bill requires web and phone companies to store records of websites visited by everyone for 12 months.

The authorisation of interceptions does not require reasonable suspicion to justify interception and there is no need to demonstrate criminal involvement.

Moreover, public authorities can go to a judicial commissioner to obtain an order to access journalists' sources without telling the broadcasting authority or its lawyers that it is doing so.

The use of surveillance should be proportionate and justifiable with safeguards and oversight. The legislation proposed goes way beyond this. Everyone who makes a telephone call, sends an email or uses Facebook will be affected.

There should be an informed public debate. However, the Bill will be passed before that debate has meaningfully started.

Les Allamby is chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
This handout picture taken and provided by Facebook on March 18, 2016, shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (front R, grey shirt) running past Tiananmen Gate, the entrance to the Forbidden City, in Beijing. FACEBOOK/AFP/Getty Images

A photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging in Beijing's notorious smog has prompted a torrent of mockery on Chinese social media.

Mr Zuckerberg is a favourite personality among the Chinese public, despite Facebook being banned in the country alongside other overseas social media platforms.

He has also become somewhat notorious for persistent, yet so far futile, efforts to woo leaders enforcing China's strict online censorship.

The young tech tycoon is in Beijing to attend an economic forum over the weekend, when some of the world's business and finances leaders will rub shoulders with senior Chinese politicians.

Mr Zuckerberg posted the photo to his Facebook page of him and five others running through Tiananmen Square with the famous gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace in the background. None wore the air-filtering face masks that are ubiquitous in Beijing and other Chinese cities.

At the time the photo was taken, Beijing's air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organisation. Health experts urge people to avoid any outdoor activities on such heavily polluted days.

Chinese residents wondered whether Mr Zuckerberg's jog was yet another gesture aimed at pleasing the Chinese authorities who claim they are gradually winning the battle against air pollution.

Previous efforts include Zuckerberg's telling China's top Internet official on a visit to Facebook's California headquarters in 2014 that he was engrossed in Chinese President Xi Jinping's collected speeches.

The same year he famously engaged his audience in halting Chinese at a forum at prestigious Tsinghua University while avoiding mention of the government ban on Facebook.

"Kissing up?" commented Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist, who reposted Mr Zuckerberg's running photo and added a graphic of Beijing's air quality readings from Friday morning.

Expand Close A computer screen displays the social media posting by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook in Beijing, China, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp A computer screen displays the social media posting by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook in Beijing, China, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Others noted that Mr Zuckerberg's run took him through the square where hundreds of thousands of Chinese students gathered in the spring of 1989 to demand democracy.

The movement ended in the early hours of June 4 after troops and tanks crushed all resistance, killing hundreds, possibly thousands of protesters.
The highly anticipated Paramount Pictures/MGM motion picture Ben-Hur is hitting theaters nationwide late this summer. Based on the Lew Wallaces timeless novel, Ben-Hur looks to be action-packed but elevated by Christian themes of justice, liberty, forgiveness and grace. Make sure to catch Ben-Hur in theaters on August 12th, 2016. Watch the official trailer here!

The film tells the classic story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), an officer in the Roman army. Stripped of his title and separated from his family and the woman he loves (Nazanin Boniadi), Judah is forced into slavery and despair. After years at sea, a breathtaking turn of events sends Judah on an epic journey back to his homeland to seek revenge, where a chance encounter with Jesus of Nazareth (Rodrigo Santoro) transforms his life and leads him to discover grace, mercy and ultimately, redemption.
Two Bangladeshi men were abducted Thursday while traveling from Kunduz, shown here on Oct. 15, 2015, to Baghlan province in Afghanistan.

The fate of two Bangladeshi NGO workers in Afghanistan remained unknown on Friday, a day after gunmen abducted them in Kunduz province, said officials with the organization.

Hazi Shawkat, 50, and Md. Sirajul Islam Khan (Sumon), 38, both employees of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), were whisked away at gunpoint as they drove from Kunduz to Baghlan province on Thursday afternoon, family members and BRAC officials said.

The pairs abduction is the seventh kidnapping of Bangladeshis working for BRAC in Afghanistan since 2007. Three of the hostages were killed in the earlier cases.

We do not know whether he will come back. Please help us get his release, Sumons cousin, Md. Abdul Khaleque Khan, told BenarNews on Friday, saying that news of the abduction sickened the entire family.

Shawkat is from the Kishoreganj district, in central Bangladesh, and Sumon is from the Pabna district, in the countrys northwest.

BRAC  the worlds largest NGO with overseas branches in the United States, Africa and Asia  has been working in war-wracked Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban-led regime in 2002.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction, BRAC Communications Director Ronnie Mirza told BenarNews.

None contacted [us] for ransom or to make other demands, Mirza said, adding that his organization had notified police and the foreign ministry about the incident.

Kunduz is a stronghold for Taliban militants. The Taliban and other militant groups oppose NGOs and womens education.

BRAC employs 1.15 million people and offers education and health programs to more than 5.64 million people in Afghanistan through more than 400 local offices, according to the NGOs website.

Risky assignment

Sumon has been working for BRAC for about 10 years and married a graduate student, Lata Khatun, two years ago, according to his cousin.

He came to Bangladesh in the middle of January this year and left for Afghanistan on Feb. 15. Sumon and Lata planned to have babies after he finish his assignment in Afghanistan, Md. Abdul Khaleque Khan said.

BRAC officials said employees understood the risks of working in Afghanistan. The NGO offers extra pay for those staffers who take on assignments there.

In September 2007, gunmen abducted BRAC employee Nurul Islam and released him 83 days later. Bangladesh newspapers reported he was released following a ransom payment. Another BRAC employee was killed that year.

The next year, two more BRAC employees were abducted and released after 10 days.

In 2010, militants killed a BRAC engineer and abducted six of his colleagues. The abducted employees were later released.

And four years ago, gunmen stormed a BRAC office in Afghanistan, killing worker Mohammad Mohiuddin.

Secret contact with Afghan militants

In many cases, the local Afghan employees maintain secret contact with the militants when they have disagreements with the Bangladeshi staff. Bangladeshi staff are their targets for collecting ransom, a BRAC employee who had been abducted told BenarNews on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Bangladeshi State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam told BenarNews that the foreign ministry learned about the abduction through press reports.

We cannot do anything today as Friday is a holiday. Besides, we have no resident mission in Afghanistan. We need time to find out ways to get their release, he said.
Almost a month has passed since Nurya Ayu has received any orders for her food business, forcing her to live off her meager savings.

Nurya, who is known as Nur, belongs to a community of 300 transvestites who live in the Central Javanese city of Yogyakarta.

Until Feb. 24, she studied at Al Fatah, Indonesias only pesantren  or Islamic school  for transvestites, but she said her catering business has suffered since the school was forced to close on that day because of opposition from a hardline Muslim group, the Islamic Jihadist Front (FJI).

We are transvestites, but we also have a religion and a right to exercise our religion safely and comfortably, Nur, who used to cook for the students at the school, told BenarNews.

Nur (pictured below) still lives with three other transvestites in a house that served as a venue for the pesantren, until the schools closure. She feels uncomfortable with worshipping at other mosques in the area because she is afraid about how other people might react, said Nur, who first recognized that she was a transvestite in 1982, when she was 14 years old.

The schools closure has occurred amid a growing wave of homophobia and hostility toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation.

Al Fatah closed soon after the nations most influential clerical body, the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI), issued a fatwa stating that it is a crime for people to engage in same-sex, bisexual or transgender activities.

Homosexuality is not outlawed in Indonesia  except in Aceh province, where Sharia law is enforced. Last year, the council issued another fatwa saying that people who engaged in vile or deviant acts should face the death penalty.

In February, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu further stoked anti-LGBT sentiment by telling Tempo magazine that gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people were a proxy threat to national security.

[LGBT is dangerous, our enemies are invisible, the minister told Tempo.

One-of-a-kind school

Al Fatah was founded in 2008 in another part of Yogyakarta by another transgender Muslim, Maryani, who ran the school out of her rented house.

About 42 transgender people who lived in Yogyakarta came every Monday and Thursday to take classes about Islam. Unlike a traditional pesantren, which is a boarding school, most of the students at Al Fatah students went home after classes.

Maryani died in 2014. The school stopped until Shinta Ratri took over the pesantren and relocated it to her house on the other side of town.

But the classes became less frequent, and Shintra eventually limited them to once a week on Sundays.

The activities would start before 3 p.m., followed by Asr, the afternoon prayer. A Quran lesson and a short letter reading session led to Maghrib, the after-sunset prayer. That was followed by Dhikr, the silent recital of prayers, until the time for evening prayers which continued with dinner. The evenings would end with members telling each other about their experiences.

We use this [sharing] to find solutions to questions and problems we face, Shinta, who is a transvestite, told BenarNews.

A special place

Shinta said she decided to take over the school because she realized that transvestites were confused about Muslim worship practices, which call for the segregation of the sexes during prayer services.

Her goal was to create a special space that would offer guidance about Islam to members of marginalized groups, such as trans-genders and people with disabilities. She consulted with at least 10 Islamic scholars.

I was not just looking for support or votes in favor, but also was eager to learn from those who disagree, she said.

Seeking a new  and safe  venue

Although the pesantren has closed and its religious activities and classes have stopped, Shinta is trying to find a new venue for housing the school.

What Im looking for is not only a place, but also security for me and my friends because a lot of them are traumatized, Shinta said.

She could not understand why the surrounding community in her neighborhood decided to close the pesantren, because relations with the neighbors had been good, she said.

But Jati Bayubroto, the leader of Banguntapan sub-district, said that many residents had complained about the existence of the transgender pesantren over the last year, and complaints had intensified in recent months.

People still cannot accept that such a community was gathered there, Jati told BenarNews.
The Malaysian city of Johor Bahru is seen from the Singaporean side of a border crossing along the Johor-Singapore Causeway, Nov. 26, 2013.

Singapore announced Friday that it would step up security measures across the prosperous island-state in response to a rising threat from the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Southeast Asia.

Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, in unveiling the measures, said multi-ethnic Singapore had to prevent IS supporters and other radicals groups in neighboring and predominantly Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia from infiltrating its territory.

The threat of a terror attack here is at the highest level in recent times, much more so than after 9/11 and the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah members, he said, referring to JI, a Southeast Asian group linked to al-Qaeda.

He said IS posed a qualitatively different and much more dangerous threat than al-Qaeda ever did in the region.

Singaporean officials previously said that the city-state was a target of militants because it hosts multinational corporations and is a regional financial center.

Just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, Singaporean authorities arrested several suspected militants and foiled an attempt to carry out bomb attacks on U.S. and other foreign targets in the city-state.

There are multiple layers of threats in this region  complex, interwoven, fusing religion with domestic political grievances, ranging from Myanmar to Indonesia, Shamugam said at a ministry forum.

And we are in the middle, an oasis of calm, and a prime target for all.

He said Singapore would impose enhanced security checks at its borders  particularly its very busy border with Malaysia  increased vigilance at Changi International Airport and government buildings.

He said 10,000 closed-circuit cameras would be set up at public housing estates and multi-story garages to stave off the threat.

We have several possible Molenbeeks around us, the minister said, alluding to neighboring countries and a district of the Belgian capital Brussels, which was home to militants involved in IS-claimed attacks in Paris that killed 130 in November.

As many as 145 million out of 200 million people who enter Singapore annually by land, sea and air pass through two checkpoints on the Malaysian border, Shanmugam noted.

It is no longer a question of whether an attack will take place, but really, when an attack is going to take place in Singapore, and we have to be prepared for that, he added.

Even though Singapore has been well equipped and prepared to deal with terror threats till now, the nature of the threat has changed, and we have to evolve some new tactics based on what we saw in Paris and Jakarta, Shanmugam told reporters separately on Friday, referring to a terrorist attack in downtown Jakarta on Jan. 14 that left eight dead, including four suspected assailants.

Multi-pronged threat

He said in his speech that Singapore faced threats from home-grown radicals in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as from Southeast Asians who have returned from or are coming home from combat tours with IS in the Middle East.

As many as 1,000 people from Southeast Asia  mainly Indonesians and Malaysians who are willing to die  have travelled to Syria or Iraq to join IS and some of them have joined the ranks of Katibah Nusantara, an IS combat unit led by Southeast Asians and made up exclusively of Malay-speaking fighters, he said.

Southeast Asians in Syria and Iraq also have been encouraging supporters of IS in their home region to mount terror plots in Southeast Asia, Shanmugam said.

The situation is more challenging in Indonesia because, in addition to home-grown radicals and those returning from abroad, Indonesia has weak anti-terror laws and authorities there this year are set to release 150 people convicted on terror-related charges who have not yet been de-radicalized, according to the minister.

He cited the example of how Singapore had previously detained four Indonesians who were passing through the city-state while in transit to Syria. Singapore deported the four, but Indonesian authorities had to release them because they lacked legal grounds to hold them.

Clean skins

In Malaysia, authorities last year foiled seven terror plots and arrested more than 100 people with suspected links to IS. The suspects included government officials such as commandos, police officers and civil servants, Shanmugam said.

In Malaysia, there is also a substantial threat posed by clean skins, people with no criminal records and not under the scrutiny of security agencies, according to the minister.

They come together through social media. In April 2015, Malaysia arrested 12 militants, all clean skins. If they wanted to travel, they could get past many immigration counters undetected.

The move to introduce new security measures came two days after the Home Ministry announced that four men had been arrested and detained under Singapores Internal Security Act (ISA) on suspicion that they planned to fight in conflicts in Yemen and Syria. The law allows Singapore to hold suspects without trial or monitor and restrict their movements.
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Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspected Paris terrorist, was arrested during a police raid in Molenbeek, Brussels, as confirmed by fingerprint comparison. Officials confirmed that the raid was linked to the Paris attacks that killed 130 on Nov 13th.

Earlier today, officials confirmed that samples of Salah Abdeslam's DNA were collected on a glass found in the Forest apartment raided on March 15th by Belgian police. Abdeslam, 26, is considered a primary suspect in the Paris attacks and has been on the loose since Nov 13th.

Salah Abdeslam is said to be wounded. When arrested by the police, he did not resist.
Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspected Paris attackers, is officially linked to the apartment raided on March 15th by Belgian and French police squads in Forest, near Brussels. Samples of his DNA were collected on a glass found in the said apartment, as confirmed by Belgian officials.

Abdeslam, 26, is a Brussels-born French citizen. He has been on the loose since the Paris attacks. He is thought to have taken part in the planning of the mass shootings that killed 130 people on November 13th.

Officials refused to confirm or deny whether Salah Abdeslam was in the apartment during the raid.


For Immediate Release, March 18, 2016 Contact: Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org Landmark Acidization Study Finds Oil Companies Using Dozens of

Hazardous Chemicals in California Wells LOS ANGELES Oil companies use dozens of extremely hazardous chemicals to acidize wells in California, raising water contamination and public-safety concerns, according to a new study in the Journal of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry. California oil fileld photo  2015 www.drewbirdphoto.com. This photo is available for media use. The University of California-Los Angeles study, which has national significance because it seems to be the first ever to examine the toxicity of acidization chemicals, finds that almost 200 different chemicals have been used in the process, which is frequently employed in urban areas of Los Angeles County. Researchers at UCLAs Institute of the Environment and Sustainability found that at least 28 of these substances are F-graded hazardous chemicals  carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins, developmental toxins, endocrine disruptors or high acute toxicity chemicals. Hydrofluoric acid, for example, is acutely toxic, and exposure to fumes or very short-term contact with its liquid form can cause severe burns. This disturbing study is a wake-up call to every Californian living near an oil well, said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. The oil industrys use of cancer-causing chemicals to acidize near homes and schools is an unacceptable threat to public health. State oil officials dont regulate this dangerous practice, and we need strong action to protect our water and air from contamination risks. Acidizing is one of the most widely used processes for stimulating oil and gas wells, according to the American Petroleum Institute, but this appears to be the first scientific study ever to closely examine the toxicity of chemicals used in the process. California is the only state requiring public disclosure of acidizing chemicals, and that disclosure only began recently. Researchers found more than 600 instances of acidizing in South and Central California from 2013 to 2015. Well records maintained by the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources show that many acidized wells in California are within a few hundred feet of homes. The study notes that acidizing chemicals can make up as much as 18 percent of the fluid used in these procedures. Each acidization, researchers note, can use as much as hundreds of thousands of pounds of some chemicals. In the case of highly toxic substances like hydrofluoric acid, large volumes could threaten public safety. Transport and storage of such large quantities of HF prior to use are serious concerns, researchers note. Chemicals used in acidization threaten water supplies in many ways, the study says. Oil wastewater is routinely dumped into unlined pits in the Central Valley, and considerable quantities of this fluid have been injected into disposal wells operating in protected aquifers. Spills can also contaminate water. Over a recent five-year period, the study notes, 423 surface spills at oil and gas fields in California released nearly 2.8 million gallons of wastewater, or an average of 6,500 gallons per incident. 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.
The Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) has donated educational equipment worth R313,000 to the top eight schools in the proximity of Cape Town International Airport. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) identified the eight schools, as secondary schools that have shown an improvement in their Grade 12 pass rates.

From L-R: Dr Heini Brand Metro North Director WCED, Mario Jansen Principal of Hindle High, Mark Maclean AGM CTIA, Engelbrecht Teacher at Hindle High and Deidre Davids Communications and Brand Manager CTIA.

The grant will provide the schools with interactive whiteboards, devices that have largely replaced traditional whiteboards in many modern schools. An interactive white board acts as a large display that projects a computer desktop onto the board's surface, so users control the computer using a pen, finger or stylus.

Schools benefitting

The eight performing schools (ranked by Grade 12 pass rate percentages for 2015) that will benefit from the donation are:

Hindle Secondary - Principal Jansen (from 95% in 2014 to 98.5% in 2015)

Elsies River Secondary - Principal Brydon (from 88.8% in 2014 to 96.6% in 2015)

Perseverance Secondary - Principal Talemarkes (93.3%)

Beauvallon Secondary - Principal Lawn (93%)

Florida Secondary - Principal Evertse (from 85.6% in 2014 to 90.9% in 2015)

Cravenby Secondary - Principal Singh (from 75.4.8% in 2014 to 83.5% in 2015)

John Ramsey Secondary - Principal Ramawoothar (76.4%)

Bishop Lavis Secondary - Principal Sonn (69.5%)



Over the past 10 years, Cape Town International Airport has donated R18.1 million towards such community projects near the airport. Through this initiative, the schools receive interactive white boards, educational software and training for teachers. In the past four years, 31 interactive white boards have been donated valued at close to R1 million.

Speaking at the 2016 handover event at Hindle Secondary, Mark Maclean, the assistant GM of Cape Town International Airport said, Business at Cape Town International Airport is not only about airports and operations  it is also about giving back to our communities. The upliftment of the airports immediate surrounding communities is important to us and in achieving this, we have to ensure that whatever support we give leads to self-reliance and sustainable projects which benefit the people living in these communities.

He added that the other educational support contributions from the Cape Town International Airport include the Hoofweg Learning and Resource Centre, a partnership with the Western Cape Education Department and AfriSam.

This e-learning Centre at the Hoofweg Primary School in Wesbank (Delft) was a first of its kind in the Western Cape, made possible by an initial donation of R1.6 million towards this project. The centre includes a library, computer lab and training facility, accessible to three other schools in the vicinity too.

As a company we see the potential that education brings and by investing in it, we not only set individuals up for success, but we strengthen communities to become relevant and sustainable, he concluded.
PRETORIA: South Africa is taking part in the 60th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which is currently underway at the UN headquarters in New York.

A number South African women Ministers are participating in the CSW, including Minister of Small Business Development Lindiwe Zulu, Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant, Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, as well as Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Susan Shabangu.

2016 is a critical year for the UN CSW as it marks the 69th anniversary since its formation in February 1947. It is also an important year for South Africa because it marks three important milestones, including the 20th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 40th anniversary of the Soweto Youth Uprising, as well as the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Womens March.

CSW60, which is taking place from 14 - 24 March 2016, has been convened under the theme "Womens empowerment and the link to sustainable development".

The session is shaped by the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action; the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (General Assembly resolution 69/313); and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Assembly resolution 70/1).

About CSW60

CSW60 is attended by representatives of UN member states, UN entities and UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)-accredited NGOs.

The CSW programme is divided into two distinct but inter-related sessions, namely: the high level ministerial segment or formal CSW session, and the NGO Forum, which is in the main informal session.

The high level ministerial segment will dedicate time to identifying priorities for future action to realise gender equality, the empowerment of women and the human rights of women and girls.

Ministers will participate in various panels where the following will be tackled: strengthening normative, legal and policy frameworks; enhancing national institutional arrangements; fostering enabling environments for financing gender equality and womens empowerment; strengthening womens leadership and supporting womens civil society organisations, and strengthening gender-responsive data collection, follow-up and review, monitoring and accountability processes.
Come 1994, many South Africans assumed that the official end of apartheid meant "job done - we are a democracy." But despite an excellent constitution and world-class public institutions, the country looks increasingly dysfunctional.

So if a great constitution and carefully designed public institutions dont make a democracy, what was left out? I believe that, crucially, civil society was not retooled for freedom. Two concepts drawn from education research may hold a possible solution to this shortcoming: first, the idea that knowledge is socially constructed and, second, the notion that self-efficacy is a significant factor in ability.

Issues of agency

In an authoritarian state, there are a limited number of levers of power. Control of those levers is centralised. Ordinary citizens cannot easily fix societal wrongs, nor safely organise themselves into groups that arent sanctioned by the state.

In a democracy, though, ordinary citizens should have access to lesser levers that work to their personal or, in small groups, collective benefit. The workings of government are open to ordinary citizens. They can attend public meetings and access government policies and documents. This is particularly valuable at a local government level, where officials who control the processes that affect ordinary peoples lives are close to hand and should  in theory  be easy to reach.

But such levers are not familiar to most citizens in a country like South Africa, which has a strong culture of protest. This culture does not recognise that there are other levers of power besides those held by leaders in high places. At my own university, Ive asked protesting students how the institutions management could do better. Their response? Dont ask me. We have highly paid leaders who should be solving these problems.

This suggests that change can only be achieved by supplication. Whether this is polite but possibly ineffectual or expressed with extreme anger, such supplication starts from the same place: the view that an individual or small groups of individuals lack agency. One of the biggest drawbacks of this approach is its short-term nature. An example from my own small town: in 2014, 3,000 residents signed a petition calling on the owners (government rail monopoly Transnet) to save the historic railway station from being dismantled by looters. The municipality and the provincial heritage authority had failed to act on earlier complaints.

That is an instance of supplication  asking or trying to order the authorities to fix things. The property was fenced off, security guards installed and the worst of the damage was repaired. But it was just a quick fix: residents were not empowered in any way. They have been excluded from planning the future use of the station site. They do not have the leverage to demand such inclusion unless they start another petition campaign.

This illustrates how problem solving has stalled in South Africa. The government is trying to take on too much and failing. Many transitional societies run into the same problem: there is too much to do and government becomes bogged down. With a more activist civil society, the weight of doing everything can be lifted from government so it can focus on bigger problems.

But how can these alternatives be introduced to South Africans?

Can we learn from education?

The idea that knowledge is socially constructed deviates from the earlier view of education theory that was more cognitive. In the social construction view, knowledge is not just about what you know, but also about how you interact with others and what you are.

What is missing in South Africa is the knowledge of what it means to be a citizen of a free, democratic society. That is not just about knowing that one is a citizen, but knowing how one should behave and interact with others. A social discourse is part of that knowing: when we enter a situation where we are unhappy with how others perform, how do we interact with them? How do you react when someone criticises the way you perform? These are not trivial questions in a multicultural country.

Self-efficacy is the perception that individuals are able to control events that influence their lives. In education, that sort of belief leads to better educational outcomes. It confers a kind of self-belief that you will be able to solve a hard problem.

This idea fits well with what Black Consciousness leader and activist Steve Biko called psychological liberation, which calls on oppressed people to liberate themselves from the externally imposed idea that theyre incapable and so should be looking for external salvation.

These ideas apply equally well in understanding how to reconfigure a failing society.

What is normal?

In a dysfunctional society, the norm becomes doing what is actually antisocial. In a place like South Africa that has never been normal in the sense of a free, open society where individuals have agency, there is no norm on which to build. Antisocial behaviours become the new normal when the shackles are loosed. There are some who believe that a return to an authoritarian society is the answer. Its not.

Instead I propose drawing on those two ideas from education theory to build a functioning civil society in which the normal involves behaving in a socially aware manner, rather than doing what you like.

Many levers for democracy

I am not dismissing protest as a tool, but merely arguing that it is not the only tool. Stopping at protest implies that a society is not really democratic because treating supplication to the powerful as the only option for change implies that power relations cannot shift.

Ultimately a society can only work if the levers of power are effectively wielded. In an authoritarian system, that means the levers are centralised and tightly held. In a democracy, they are distributed and loosely held. For a genuine free democracy to work, citizens need to learn what it means to live free. A large part of that involves grasping the levers of power at their disposal.


New research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) highlights the need for a step change in the relationship between marketers and their internal insights teams.

The Future of Insights project, developed in partnership with the WFAs insights partner, BrainJuicer, reveals a huge opportunity for insights transformation and for insights leaders to become drivers of brand growth.

Based on responses from more than 300 senior marketers and insights leaders across 94 of the worlds largest brand owners, representing a total annual marketing spend of US$75bn, it shows how many marketers and insights team are not getting the best out of each other. The results are being presented today at the WFAs Global Marketer Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Though half of the insights leaders surveyed feel positive about their role, 16% expressed negative sentiments about their function citing frustrations relating to too few resources, too many silos and seeing hard work getting wasted, poorly packaged and ultimately ignored.

33% of senior marketers reported that they were happy with their insights function but almost a quarter were negative. Senior marketers who were negatively predisposed reported that methodologies are too traditional, insights derived too obvious and difficult to action, and a perceived lack of passion and real business understanding amongst insights professionals.

However, this is far from the case for all companies. The report reveals that 50% of insights leaders and senior marketers see insights teams as efficient, expert, trusted advisors and educators, who build on ideas and push recommendations.

In these companies, insights and marketing are more likely to work in physical proximity, with a 15-point increase in positive sentiment in companies where this is the case.

Critically, The Future of Insights finds that senior marketers and insights leaders share a common aspiration to turn insights into an internal consultancy that delivers challenging, business-centric views and helps develop a strategic roadmap to achieve that.

For many companies, achieving this insights nirvana requires three practical steps:

1. Closer integration between insights and marketing teams, both physically and organisationally; 2. Broader adoption of new methodologies that create commercial advantage, and a spirit of open-minded exploration and experimentation around those which show promise but whose commercial value is not yet proven; 3. Seizing the opportunity to challenge stale-thinking using the most up-to-date findings of marketing science about communications, branding, and consumer decision-making.

On both sides there is a clear mandate for new methods based on behavioural science and behavioural data, as well as recognition that methods that scrutinise, explain and ultimately influence real behaviour have the ability to deliver commercial advantage.

However while the two groups agree that new behavioural techniques such as ethnography, behavioural science, behavioural data and storytelling are worthy of further effort, marketers are significantly more in favour of biometrics, media monitoring and data analytics.

Insights teams tend to be much more sceptical, particularly where functions such as the social media war room or data analytics are separate. The solution is to develop a programme of experimentation, supported by rapid uptake of methods that prove their worth.

The full report can be downloaded here: www.wfanet.org/futureofinsights.
More than 160 countries are represented at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Colombia, and with South Africa hosting the GEC in 2017 for the very first time on the African continent, it is signaling to the global investment community that South Africa is open for business and ready to lead the entrepreneurial revolution on the African continent.

The annual Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC 2016) kicked-off in Medellin, Colombia on 14 March 2017. The GEC is the largest gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, innovators and government ministers from around the world. The congress brings together more than 6500 delegates from 160 countries. The theme for this years congress was The Business of Next, and the theme speaks to improving the entrepreneurial ecosystem towards adapting to changes in the business environment, innovative solutions and investments.

Ambassador to Venezuela, Her Excellency Ambassador Thaninga Shope-Linney, who is representing Minister Lindiwe Zulu, as well as the Member of Mayoral Committee: Department of Economic Development Councillor Ruby Mathang from the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) received the GEC torch and flag from Jonathan Ortmans, president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN).

MMC Mathang articulated that The globalisation of entrepreneurship has brought an explosion of programs, startup communities and investment opportunities into a new field. We are here in Colombia, as South Africa, to inform the global entrepreneurship network that Johannesburg is here to collaborate and share world class best practices.

The GEC will grace the African continent for the first time at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, from the 13-17 March 2017.

The business sector, education and government leaders have been eager champions, but they need more sophisticated tools, programs and research to help them direct their attention and funds to areas with the greatest impact on future economic growth and trends. The GEC helps address these needs by identifying effective initiatives  in all types of economies, across the macro or micro level; advanced or emerging  that positively impact entrepreneurial eco-systems around the world.

Speaking during the transition ceremony, Ortmans, said: GEC 2017 is just one example of the Global Entrepreneurship Networks commitment to helping the next generation of African entrepreneurs start and scale - rebranding the continent and permanently shifting perceptions around the world. We look forward to coming to South Africa.

The successful GEC bid has been a collaborative partnership between SEA Africa, the Department of Small Business Development, City of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, ABSA and Transnet. The South African delegation in Colombia have hosted 50 key global stakeholders in Medellin to present the roadmap to the GEC 2017 South Africa.

South Africas Minister for Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu, speaking from Pretoria stated that Participating in global community strengthens the SME sector through understanding how different entrepreneurial ecosystems operate, learn best practices and how tools may be used to improve domestic markets. Given the constraints faced by the South African economy a significant boost in SME sector is required to address the current low growth projections and high unemployment especially amongst the youth. The GEC will provide insight on best practices, which we will localise, for the South African market. I am further encouraged that South Africas delegation will also use the opportunity to spark networks and create strategic conversations with global investors in preparation for Africas GEC in 2017.

The Local Organising Committee will lead efforts to engage other entrepreneurial organisations across the continent including the different provinces in South Africa to establish avenues for collaboration.

The Executive Head of SEA Africa Kizito Okechukwu added that: The GEC will help sustain the momentum of the entrepreneurial revolution currently underway globally and is accelerating in South Africa and the rest of the African continent. Together, with our partners, we emphasise the importance of private-public sector involvement and civil society for social investments, skills transfer, access to markets and collaboration with smaller businesses to achieve the expected economic development impact that is desired by all Africans.

A range of programmes and activities will be held leading up to GEC 2017. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to explore the opportunities within the various platforms.




The Ugandan Social Media Awards (SMAs) will be hosted at the Kampala Serena Hotel on 30 March 2016, awarding the best and most relevant individuals and organisations that harness social media for purposes of entertainment, change, sharing of ideas and creating communities online.

The Awards are the brainchild of BluFlamingo, a digital marketing agency on the forefront of the digital revolution in Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. This year, the organisation has invited key speakers to provide valuable insight and commentary into digital trends. This includes representatives from Facebook, Google and Hootsuite that will address topics such as cross platform monetisation, new advertising strategies and more.

Neil Pursey, CEO of Webgrowth Academy, an online digital marketing academy based in South Africa, joins this years list of industry leaders. Together with Online Marketing Certified Professional, Webgrowth is on a mission to digitise Africa, with education and training at the core of its philosophy.

From what weve seen, Africa is in the midst of a digital boom and Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda are leading the pack. From basic computer literacy skills, to more advanced ICT training, education is going to be key in harnessing the potential that digital has to offer, says Pursey, who will be discussing the benefits of upskilling, the T-shaped marketer, as well as other digital marketing trends at this year's awards.

Partnership to extend East Africa training

His participation at the Ugandan Social Media Awards marks the beginning of a partnership between Webgrowth Academy and BluFlamingo, with the joint vision of better training and equipping East Africas digitally inclined in the area of digital marketing.

Africa has been leading the mobile-phone boom, recently topping over 400 million subscribers with a market now larger than that of North America. The UN International Telecommunications Union has lauded Africa in leading the global shift to mobile phones. The extensive use of mobile phones across Africa has catalysed a spike in the use of the mobile phone as first screen to access the internet - another trend with Africa at its forefront.

Nigeria currently has the most internet users with over 92.7 million users online - that is over 51% of the population. Relative to the size of the population however, Kenya leads with 69.9 % internet penetration, with Morocco following closely behind at 60.6 %.

Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder of Opera (one of the most popular internet browsers for mobile phones), said, Triple-digit growth rates are routine across the continent. The widespread availability of mobile phones means that the mobile Web can reach tens of millions more than the wired Web. This has had an enormous effect on social media usage within Africa.

Recent studies have shown that Facebook has almost 20 million users in Nigeria and Kenya alone - with the majority of them accessing the site from their mobile phones. Additionally, 2015 saw Nigerias 15 million monthly active users all making use of mobile phones to share and like content online. Similarly, Kenya saw 95 % of its active Facebook users doing so through their mobile phones. Facebook reported that its African active user population grew by 20% (thats over 100 million users) from September 2014 to June of 2015.
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Slovak neo-Nazi regional governor wants to sue actors for "slandering the nation"

18. 3. 2016

cas cteni < 1 minuta





Marian Kotleba, the Slovak neo-Nazi regional governor and since the general election of 6th March 2016 also an MP of the Slovak parliament, is planning to sue the Jan Chalupka Theatre for staging an anti-war play "The Blacksmiths" by the Serbian author Milos Nikolic. In Kotleba's view, the anti-war play contains impermissible vulgar expressions and "slanders the nation, race and convictions".

When the play was recently performed in Kotleba's presence in Brezno, Slovakia, Kotleba ordered that it should be discontinued in the middle of the performance.

Marian Kotleba's neo-fascist "Peoples Party-Our Slovakia" (LSNS) won 8% of the vote and 14 seats in the parliament during the general election in Slovakia on 6th March 2016.

Source in Czech

HERE

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Czech viewers decide to boycott Game of Thrones because its actors have expressed solidarity with refugees

18. 3. 2016

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Actors from the TV series Game of Thrones have expressed their solidarity with refugees. As a result, some Czech viewers have attacked the Czech Facebook page of the TV series with insults and have threatened to boycott the TV series. Some Czech fans of the TV series are angry that HBO has shared a video in which the actors starring in the TV series call on the public to support the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees.

HBO has reacted by saying that it will remove the vulgar comments of the Czech viewers from its Facebook page, adding that it respects the views of the Czech citizens who have decided to boycott the TV series. HBO has recommended to them that they should view some documentaries about the Arab Spring and about the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo biweekly.

Source in Czech HERE

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Czech Home Secretary: It is not the duty of the state to provide objective information about the refugee issue

18. 3. 2016

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Czech journalists are afraid to present refugees in a positive light

Czech social democratic Home Secretary Milan Chovanec and the Green Party Chairperson Matej Stropnicky discussed the distorted image of refugees in the Czech media.

Masaryk University in Brno has produced a media analysis which warns that the Czech media almost never feature individual human refugee stories and almost always present the refugees as a threat. Czech TV stations report activities in support of the refugees only in a minimal number of news stories (Czech public service TV in 4,6 per cent of the cases, commercial Nova TV only in 3 per cent of the cases). They almost never interview migration experts (they have featured them in 1 per cent of the cases on both stations). They almost never analyse the causes of the refugee crisis and report on the situation in the countries from which the refugees are escaping. When referring to the refugees, the Czech media often use expressions such as "flood", "tsunami", "hunting them down". The Czech media primarily refer to the refugees as a security threat and primarily report security measures directed against them.

In a recent debate on Czech public service TV, the Green Party Chairperson Matej Stropnicky criticised the Czech Social Democratic Home Secretary Milan Chovanec for failing to provide objective information about the refugee problem to the Czech public.

Chovanec replied that it was not the role of the government to provide such information. In his view, this is the role of the media.

However, Vaclav Moravec, the well-known Czech presenter of a regular Czech TV political debating programme pointed out that Czech journalists are afraid of presenting refugees in a positive light because they would become the target of hate of the extremists.

Source in Czech HERE

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The TNLA Information Department said that the Burma Army launched four airstrikes on 6 March, four on 8 March and three on 10 March, all involved the use of fighter jets. Fighting also broke out on other days.

There was also an alleged airstrike on the hill where the TNLAs command base is located in Kyaukme District.

The TNLA Information Officer Tar Pan Hla said that the Burma Army had sent thousands of troops to reinforce their seven Light Infantry Divisions (LIDs), seven Military Operation Commands (MOCs) and Regional Operations Commands (ROCs) in northern Shan State and that they had subsequently launched offensives against the TNLA.

According to residents in the area of the fighting both sides have suffered many casualties.

On 24 February the Ministry of Defence made an announcement in the Myanmar Alin newspaper. It said that the Burma Army intends to remove armed groups that harm public interests, in accordance with a decision made by the Shan State Hluttaw (parliament) and the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Parliament) on 17 February.

Since the 24 February announcement the Burma Army has been launching many offensives with large numbers of troops in northern Shan State.

There has also been daily fighting in Namhkan, Mangtong, Kyaukme, Namhsan, Kutkai, and Muse townships.

The fighting has bought hardship and suffering to thousands of people who live in the areas where fighting has occurred.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
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A man who participated in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon was arrested yesterday under somewhat bizarre circumstances.

Texas native Scott A. Willingham apparently wanted to be arrested and, to that end, he threatened to shoot federal officers and was apprehend in Mount Vernon, Oregon.

[Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter] said that during the arraignment, Willingham said he wanted to be jailed in Grant County to await arrest by federal authorities for his role in the occupation. A Grant County sheriff's deputy arrested Willingham at a motel after Willingham said that if he wasn't jailed Wednesday, he would "start shooting federal law enforcement officers" the next morning, Carpenter said. Willingham had a semi-automatic rifle with 230 rounds of .308-caliber ammunition at the time of his arrest, Carpenter said.

Why would Willingham specifically request to be jailed in Grant County?

The short answer is paranoia. The long answer is more complicated.

As you may recall, several members of the Bundy militia left the wildlife refuge during the occupation and visited Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer who was sympathetic to their cause. Sheriff Palmer reportedly even asked the men to autograph his pocket copy of the Constitution.

Yesterday's report from the Oregonian does not explicitly spell out Willingham's motivation for asking to be arrested, but it certainly appears that Willingham believed federal authorities intended to kill him and that the Grant County Sheriff's office would protect him.

Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer is currently under investigation by state authorities for his cooperation with the Bundy militia. Willingham has been charged by local authorities with unlawful use of a weapon and disorderly conduct. Federal charges have not yet been filed against Willingham but, in that event, the number of individuals connected to the Bundy family facing federal charges will increase to 35.

In related news, Ryan Bundy has decided to represent himself at trial. That should be a hoot.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Assume Deer Dead) has agreed to meet with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland because he has met with similar figures in the past.

"If I can meet with a dictator in Uganda, I can surely meet with a decent person in America," Grassley said Thursday.

He added that it's a "pretty hard to say no" to an hour-long meeting with Garland.

"I want to make it clear that the message we told him on the phone yesterday -- I will tell him face-to-face," Grassley.
Senator Orin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, speaks during a Senate Finance Committee markup session on health care revision in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009. Baucus will seek to make insurance more affordable for low-income people and may scale back a proposed tax on high-end health plans to win support for an overhaul of the system. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Orrin Hatch Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON  Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on Thursday called for Democrats and the administration to be more transparent and realistic, after proposing "unworkable" solutions to Puerto Rico's crisis as Congress continues to work toward bipartisan legislation for the commonwealth.

Hatch made his comments during a lengthy speech on the floor of the Senate following several proposals from Senate Democrats earlier in the week that would give Puerto Rico and its public authorities the ability to restructure their roughly $70 billion of debt, institute an oversight board, and improve federal tax and healthcare treatment for the island.

His comments may not bode well for the development of bipartisan legislation that would provide relief for Puerto Rico.

"The latest group of bills introduced by Democrats includes a number of repackaged ideas from last year, including unscored and unsound proposals to allocate funds and direct aid as well as a renewed effort to grant unprecedented debt resolution authority for Puerto Rico," Hatch said.

He added that any congressional solution must be done "in a manner that is fiscally responsible with an eye toward righting the irresponsible course taken by the government of Puerto Rico."

Democrats in Congress and the administration, led by the Treasury Department, have not made clear how much their proposals, like broadening Puerto Rico's access to the federal Medicaid program, would cost the federal government or how they would offset those costs in legislation, he said.

Hatch also attacked Democrats for incorrectly saying their restructuring ideas or bills would simply be an extension of federal Chapter 9 bankruptcy law, which allows a state's public authorities to restructure their debts.

"In reality, their proposal would create, for lack of a better word, a Super Chapter 9 specifically for Puerto Rico and grant the territory unprecedented authority to restructure its debt," he said.

A bill from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., that was introduced on Monday would also elevate Puerto Rico's pension obligations to be senior secured debt, which presumably means they would have priority over the commonwealth's constitutionally backed general obligation debt since pension obligations are neither secured nor debt unless he's referring to pension bonds. Hatch said that proposal was "irresponsible" and instead called for "at least some action to improve public pension reporting and transparency" instead of allowing complete restructuring that would cause costs to go up because of "bad and imprudent actors."

If both Republicans and Democrats are going to come to a consensus, Hatch said several things must happen, starting with serious attempts at consensual debt negotiations between Puerto Rico's government and its creditors. He also wanted to make clear that Republicans do not have any interest in helping "vultures" or "speculators" trying to make fast money from Puerto Rico debt, apparently referring to hedge funds. Individuals who have invested their retirement funds in Puerto Rico debt should not be given those labels, he said.

If Democrats are serious about putting forward "practical and fiscally responsible legislation," Hatch said, they should show more interest in a bill that he and Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced last year. The three senators lead the Senate committees with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico.

Their legislation would not give any restructuring authority but instead would establish an authority that could issue bonds and provide up to $3 billion in resources, taken from unallocated Affordable Care Act funds, to help Puerto Rico stabilize its budget and debt. The bill also calls for a number of studies, including on the commonwealth's pension plans and liabilities and the commonwealth's healthcare treatment by the federal government. Additionally, it would provide assistance to the island in improving its accounting and disclosure practices given the opacity of the commonwealth's current financial situation.

While there are many proposals for the commonwealth currently floating in Congress, observers expect the House Natural Resources Committee to come out with a bipartisan proposal before a March 31 deadline House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., imposed late last year. Discussions for that proposal have centered on some type of restructuring paired with a federal oversight authority.

Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla, who has been actively lobbying Congress for some type of restructuring authority, said in a press call earlier on Thursday that any legislation should also impose a stay on litigation over Puerto Rico's debt.

The commonwealth has two major payments looming in May and July. Garcia Padilla and others have said that without a congressional solution by that time, Puerto Rico will default on much of its debt.
Freelance journalist Sonny Serite who was arrested yesterday and spent a night in a police cell has been charged with receiving stolen property.

This is contrary to Section 317 (2) for the Penal Code 08:02 of the Laws of Botswana. Serite who appeared briefly in court today is charged together with Abueng Sebola- a records officer at the Office of the President (OP). Particulars of the offence are that on March 16th, 2016 at the OP in Gaborone, the first accused person, Sebola, being a person employed in the Public Service, stole an official file containing official documents in respect of Tsaone Nkarabeng. The documents are said to have come into Sebolas possession by virtue of his employment. Serite on the other hand is accused of receiving stolen property. Particulars of his offence are that on March 17th 2016 at or near the OP in Gaborone Serite received from Sebola an official file containing official documents in respect of Nkarabang knowingly or having reason to believe that same official file was unlawfully obtained or stolen.




PANAJI (PTI): Backed by over a six-decade long legacy in India, French Defence firm Thales is all set to participate in the ninth edition of the upcoming Defence Expo in Goa.



"Thales will showcase a wide range of systems and equipment designed to meet today's critical needs of the armed forces at its booth," the company said.



The company said it will put at display its latest works in missile technologies, radars and support system during the Defexpo.



"We have had a fruitful association with India since 1953 and over the years have secured the confidence of the Indian armed forces, the government and the industry," said Antoine Caput, Vice President and Country Director, India, Thales.



"Make in India is a core element of our strategy for India and in this regard Defexpo provides us with a great platform to connect with all stakeholders and present our flagship capabilities," Caput said, according to a press release.



Thales offers its comprehensive tools to India's land forces. These include interoperable land forces systems for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), vehicles and command posts; optronics, communications and identification means for soldiers; vehicles and tools for vehicle support in all types of missions; weapons systems and munitions, etc.



"Thales will be displaying a variety of such vehicle solutions and soldier modernisation systems at its booth in Def Expo," the company said.



In the field of Naval defence, Thales's sensors, systems and communication solutions are built around the latest, fully proven technologies.



"The group has a strong global reputation and expertise in systems integration, commitment to partnership with local industries, and a proven track record of working with shipyards all over the world. The Thales booth will showcase its capabilities in undersea sonars and radars," the release said.



In Air defence, the company offers armed forces worldwide a fully integrated air defence capability, from radars and C2 centres through to effectors and their respective fire control systems.



The firm's advanced air defence offering is an integrated set of solutions designed to ensure timely decision-making and effective responses for the protection of military forces, key assets and citizens.



Defence Expo-2016 will showcase India's premiere Land, Naval and Internal Homeland Security Systems from 28-31 March at Betul, Naqueri Quitol in Quepem Taluka of South Goa.






NEW DELHI (PTI): European aviation major Airbus says India will require 1,600 planes, including 1,230 narrow body aircraft, valued at US$ 224 billion in the next 20 years as the country logs the fastest growth globally coupled with an expected 8.4 per cent per year growth in passenger traffic during this period.



At present, among the two major global aircraft makers, US-based Boeing Co. being the other one, Airbus is the market leader in India in terms of single-aisle planes.



According to Airbus' latest global Market Forecast for the 20 years between 2015 and 2034, India will require over 1,600 new passenger and freighter aircraft -- valued at US$ 224 billion -- to help meet growth in demand.



These will include 1,230 new single-aisle aircraft and 380 wide-body passenger and freighter aircraft, the company said, adding that by 2035, the number of Indian cities with over one million monthly air passengers would have more than tripled.



"The growth is significantly better in India. Today we have 210 aircraft in service with seven Indian carriers.



Another over 500 more planes are to be delivered to the airlines in India in the coming years. That gives us over 70 per cent market share excluding Kingfisher (now defunct) orders," Airbus Vice President for marketing for Asia Consumer Affairs, V Joost Van Der Heijden said in New Delhi on Wednesday.



On the status of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines order, the official said, "We have already reduced (the number of Kingfisher's order) in last year's order book. We will continue to do so as we go along."



Air traffic in India is set to grow at 8.4 per cent per year over the next 20 years, well above the world average of 4.6 per cent, Airbus said, adding that domestic traffic will grow more quickly, at 9.3 per cent, making India the world's leading emerging aviation market.



"Aviation in India has a bright future. As India's industrial might grows along with it comes economic development, wealth generation and a rise in the number of regular and first-time flyers. Airbus offers the most comprehensive aircraft product range from 100 to over 600 passengers to serve the Indian public and this growing demand," said Kiran Rao, Airbus EVP Marketing and Strategy.



According to Airbus, today some 56 per cent of in-service fleet operated by most of the Indian carriers are Airbus aircraft, including the latest engine technology, fuel-efficient A320 neo.



Significantly, budget airline IndiGo recently inducted its first such aircraft in its fleet.



Preference for Airbus aircraft was further consolidated in 2015 with 250 new firm orders, lifting market share of orders and the in-service fleet to over 70 per cent, it said.






NEW DELHI (PTI): Indian Air Force will demonstrate its combat and firepower, including Akash Missile, for the first time, in the desert of Pokhran on Friday.



The entire event, which would be attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will showcase more than 22 types of platforms and weapons systems.



Frontline fighter aircraft including Sukhoi 30, Mirage 2000, Jaguar, MiG-29, attack helicopters, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) and high tech AWACS would display their potential during the show.



Light Combat Aircraft 'Tejas' and LCH would also be a part of the airpower display.



Transport aircraft like the An-32, Embraer, IL-76, IL-78 and C-130J would participate in all their glory while medium lift helicopters (Mi-17, Mi-171V, Mi-17V5) and attack helicopters(Mi-25, Mi-35) would also showcase their capabilities.



"The primary objective of this exercise is to demonstrate IAF's capability to safeguard our national interests," an IAF statement said.



During the exercise, IAF would also project its transformational state-of-the-art combat potential for meeting challenges be it from the air, land or sea.



The event comprises six packages depicting six themes in which more than 180 fighters, transport aircraft and helicopters are participating.



First on the show would be a flypast showing IAF's journey over eight decades, with the aircraft of yester years like Tiger Moth flying along with the latest acquisitions of the IAF.



The flypast by a mixed formation comprising MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and the mighty Su-30, would represent the transformation of IAF over the decades.



Next package would comprise net-enabling operations of the aircraft. This would be followed by a synchronised weapon delivery demonstration comprising precision based bombing at simulated targets by Mirage-2000, Su-30, MiG-27 and Jaguar.



IAF would showcase its multi-layered air defence operations. It will comprise fly-past by flight refuelling aircraft, IL-78 FRA along with two Su-30 aircraft which will demonstrate the ability to extend on-station endurance and strategic reach of fighter aircraft. This phase would also include surface-to-air guided weapons like IGLA shoulder-fired missile system and the OSA-AK missiles striking down airborne targets.



Capability demonstration of the indigenously developed 'Tejas' aircraft to deliver laser-guided bomb and fire an air-to-air missile and the capability of the indigenous Light Combat Helicopter to carry out rocket firing would be carried out for the first time.






KOLKATA (PTI): US and India would engage in a dialogue in Delhi this summer covering a host of issues ranging from trade and investment to space cooperation, Consulate General of US in Kolkata, Craig Hall said.



"In Delhi this summer, both the US and India will have a dialogue on various issues. The date has not been fixed yet.



The meet will be deliberated among 80 different working groups and task forces," Hall said at the Kolkata Press Club on Wednesday.



Hall said US and India had started the strategic dialogue engaging the foreign ministries of the two countries in 2010.



"The ambit has now been extended to a commercial dialogue involving the two commerce ministries. US has this kind of dialogue with very few countries, including China. This shows India is important from the US' viewpoint," Hall said.



He said issues relating to trade and investment, military relations, education, health and space cooperation would be deliberated upon.



Regarding military cooperation, the US envoy said both the countries were working together in the production of jet engines and designing of a new aircraft carrier.



The bilateral trade target had been set at US$ 500 billion from US$ 105 billion in 2014, he said.



Hall added that India could be a great influence in countries like Myanmar and Thailand because of its large democracy.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rural Westman could be relatively uneventful come election day minus two bellwether constituencies in the north, according to political scientist Chris Adams.

All of southern Manitoba outside of Winnipeg is vulnerable to be totally blue this time around, said Adams, who is the rector at St. Pauls College, University of Manitoba.

The area, in which we transition from the grain belt into the Canadian Shield, has historically, at least going back to the days of Duff Roblin, been the line where swing seats can be found.

Darcy Scheller

Adams said the two seats to watch in the lead-up to the April 19 vote will be Dauphin and Swan River.

In Dauphin, Stan Struthers held the seat for the NDP since 1995. Struthers announced earlier this year that he wouldnt seek re-election. A long-serving MLA, Struthers was one of five ministers who resigned his post due to concerns over Premier Greg Selingers leadership.

Adams said not having an established candidate who was in the public eye cutting ribbons and kissing babies will hurt the NDPs chances of retaining the seat.

Stepping up in Struthers place is Darcy Scheller. She will face Progressive Conservative candidate Brad Michaleski and Green party candidate Kate Storey.

Scheller, who has worked in the area with Pratts Wholesale for 27 years, said she hopes to build on Struthers legacy in the constituency.

(We) need to carry that MRI across the finish line, Scheller said, adding that health care, daycare and education are issues shes hearing on the campaign trail.

Senior housing is another concern she hopes to address.

We need more, said the business development manager for Pratts northern Manitoba stores.

There are long waiting lists for them, so were going to put more money into that.

In contrast, Michaleski, a grain and oilseed farmer near Dauphin, said voters are concerned that NDP waste is threatening front-line services.

Michaleski, who has lived in the area his whole life, said access to health care is an important issue.

Its part of the fabric of the community, Michaleski said. People just dont feel like the rural voice is getting through to Selingers government and I want to improve on that.

In Swan River, incumbent NDP candidate Ron Kostyshyn, who also held the agriculture portfolio, is expected to be in tough against Tory Rick Wowchuk.

Green Dan Soprovich is the only other candidate on the ballot.

Dauphin and Swan River are the only two constituencies in rural Westman the NDP have candidates in, according to the Elections Manitoba website. Other candidates have been nominated, according to the parties websites, but didnt show up as official candidates as of yesterday afternoon.

Adams said when voters go to the polls, there are three main considerations they take into account: the party, the leader and the candidate.

Brad Michaleski

Not running a full slate of candidates, regardless of their chances, could impact neighbouring constituencies.

The NDP really wants to have a full slate of candidates, and it would be an embarrassment if they didnt have anybody in those constituencies, Adams said.

In Spruce Woods, longtime Tory MLA Cliff Cullen is the only candidate to register from the big three parties  NDP, PC and Liberal. Independent candidate Malcolm McKellar is also registered.

The same is true in Agassiz, where Progressive Conservative Eileen Clarke is being challenged by Green party candidate Robert Smith and independent candidate Damian Dempsey.

In Arthur-Virden, PC Doyle Piwniuk won the seat in a byelection in 2014 and is joined on the ballot by independent candidate Frank Godon.

In Riding Mountain, PC Greg Nesbitt and Liberal Jordan Fleury are registered.

Nesbitt said health care and taxes are dominating the conversations hes having on doorsteps with prospective voters.

In his constituency, Nesbitt said finding doctors has been a challenge at hospitals such as Shoal Lake and Hamiota.

People are disappointed with the NDP government and there is no confidence in them anymore, said Nesbitt, who is a local newspaper publisher.

People dont seem to trust them after all the promises that theyve made and backed away from.

 ctweed@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @CharlesTweed
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CALGARY - Alberta Food Banks says it has received its largest-ever donation as the worst economic downturn in decades causes demand to soar.

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This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CRANBROOK, B.C.  Sixty habituated mule deer are reacquainting themselves with the backcountry after being moved out of four southeastern British Columbia communities.

The problem deer were caught in Kimberley, Cranbrook, Invermere and Elkford and relocated as part of project to save, rather than cull them.

Twenty-nine of the deer were fitted with tracking collars.

There was one deer that was predated by a cougar fairly early on in the project, said senior wildlife biologist Ian Adams, whose employer, Vast Resources Solutions, monitors data from the collars.

We recovered that collar and managed to put it out on a second deer from Elkford, he said.

Details from the collars showed no deer had yet returned to urban areas, where their unpredictable behaviour could endanger humans and pets.

Theres a few individuals that have shown broader movements, which suggests a bit of wandering, trying to figure out where they are and whats next for them, said Adams.

For the most part, theyve been doing fairly well. They dont appear to have moved onto any private lands and hopefully theyll stay out of trouble.

The project will determine if translocation is a humane solution to reducing habituated deer populations that have plaugued many B.C. communities and prompted culls on Vancouver Island and across southern and southeastern parts of the province. (CHBZ)
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman who was stabbed with a kitchen knife 26 times has been released from hospital following treatment that included the insertion of a tube into her chest.

A few more details about the stabbing came to light on Thursday during a bail hearing for a man charged in connection with the incident.

Crown attorney Grant Hughes said the victim described feeling defenceless as the man took part in the attack by pushing her into the woman with the knife.

She indicated that she knew she was being stabbed as her skin felt wet, she started to get weak, Hughes said.

It was shortly after midnight on Sunday that a woman and her boyfriend assaulted the victim, Hughes said in outlining the following allegations.

During a bail hearing for a co-accused earlier in the week, court was told that the woman was set up.

Its alleged that the woman who stabbed her  believing the victim was having an affair with her boyfriend  had arranged to meet the victim through Facebook.

On Thursday, Hughes added the victim believed she was actually meeting the other womans boyfriend and suspected nothing because, in her words, they had a thing for each other.

At the hospital, the girlfriend confronted the victim and there was a fight, Hughes said. The attacker took a kitchen knife out of the front pocket of her sweater and stabbed the victim 26 times in her head, face, back, chest and arms.

Hughes said the victim told police that the boyfriend had initially told the stabber to stop when the fight began, but he then pushed her into the woman with the knife.

However, the victim managed to get the blade away from her attacker and hospital security arrived to help.

While security was helping the wounded woman, who was losing feeling in her back, the stabber and her boyfriend fled.

The 22-year-old victim was admitted to hospital in stable condition and, while there, wrote a statement for police in which she noted that doctors inserted a tube in her chest.

No medical reports are available yet, Hughes said, but the tube was used to drain the cavity around the womans lungs.

The procedure is used to treat a collapsed lung, or to treat bleeding around the lung following trauma.

Meanwhile, police tracked down the man and woman believed responsible. The man was found with a machete hidden under his clothing, and a fold-up knife in his front hoodie pocket.

Neither of those was the weapon used in the attack, Hughes said. The knife used in the stabbing hasnt been found.

Both suspects were reportedly drunk at the time of the assault.

Colton Darnell Tacan, 25, is charged with aggravated assault, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and carrying a concealed weapon.

A judge released him on bail on Thursday, and hell appear in court next on April 11.

Tie-Anna Justine Ross, 21, is also charged with aggravated assault and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

She has also been released on bail and will appear in court on the same date as Tacan.

On Thursday, a Prairie Mountain Health spokesperson said the victim has been released from hospital.

 ihitchen@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @IanHitchen
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VICTORIA  A deadline in the approval process for a proposed $36 billion liquefied natural gas project planned for British Columbias northern coast is now being called premature as federal officials review a glut of new documents.

Statements from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna say its likely too early to expect an answer for the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG plant at Lelu Island near Prince Rupert by the March 22 deadline.

But the prospect of another delay for the project billed as the largest private-sector investment in B.C. history is starting to wear thin on local residents who have been waiting almost three years for an answer.

Ive been dealing with this since the first day they came to Port Edward and thats been a few years, Port Edward Mayor Dave MacDonald said Friday.

He said the community of 600 people, about 15 kilometres north of Prince Rupert, would be located within spitting distance from the plant and residents have been waiting on promises of jobs, new roads and bridges.

The sooner we get a decision of yes or no, the better we all are, said MacDonald.

B.C.s Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman said he expects the decision will be referred to the federal cabinet next month. He said the project has huge economic potential for the Canadian economy.

All in, its $36 billion. Thats about two points of the entire gross domestic product of the country. Its probably 7,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and another 3,000 and 4,000 on the pipeline.

The March 22 date is when McKenna can make an environmental approval decision herself or refer the plan to cabinet, but both the minister and the environmental assessment agency are signalling more work needs to be done to consider the potential greenhouse gas emissions connected to the development.

On March 4th the proponent provided significant new information to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency regarding the project, said McKenna in a statement. That information must be analysed and included in the final environmental assessment report that will be provided to the minister.

The statement said because of the analysis of the new information it would be premature at this point to speculate on whether the minister will refer this to cabinet.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency issued a draft report last month concluding the plant could be built without major environmental impacts. However its now reviewing 34,000 public comments on the review, 11,000 pages of technical data and the new information provided by Pacific NorthWest LNG.

This information must be analysed and included in the final Environmental Assessment Report that will be provided to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change; it is therefore premature at this point to speculate on when the Minister will issue a decision, said an agency statement.

The new information from Pacific NorthWest LNG, which is backed by Malaysian-owned energy giant Petronas, contains estimates of total greenhouse gas emissions from the project, including upstream emission estimates from pipelines and gas extraction.

This request, though broader in scope than past assessments for LNG facilities by the government of Canada, was not unexpected and was responded to in a comprehensive manner, said the companys spokesman Spencer Sproule in a statement.

The March 4 letter to CEAA states Pacific NorthWest LNG estimates GHG emissions from upstream sources supporting the project at build out was less than five million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide.

Premier Christy Clark said she told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month the LNG project has the potential to reduce GHG emissions in Asia.

I talked to him about how LNG will be the biggest contribution Canada makes to global climate change if we can help displace coal in China, she said.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard continued on Friday to distance himself from the previous Liberal government a day after the arrest of ex-deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau.

Normandeau was one of seven people arrested by the provinces anti-corruption unit in an alleged scheme that saw political financing and gifts exchanged for lucrative government contracts.

Couillard said the rules surrounding political party financing have completely changed since Normandeaus time in public life.

There are always things to improve, notably in party financing, weve seen it, but now were moving forward, Couillard said.

Although he would not comment directly on Normandeaus arrest, he said it would be wrong to cast suspicion on members of his team who worked alongside her.

I will say that its very bad to do any attempt of establishing any kind of direct or indirect guilt by association, he said.

Normandeau, 48, served as a Liberal member of the legislature from 1998 to 2011.

During that time she served as a cabinet minister in various portfolios, including municipal affairs, natural resources and Canadian intergovernmental affairs. She served as deputy premier under Charest from 2007 to 2011.

Couillard was a member of the legislature and a cabinet minister under then-premier Jean Charest between 2003 and 2008 before quitting politics. He became Liberal leader in 2013 and premier in 2014.

Normandeau will face charges of fraud, conspiracy, corruption and breach of trust.

Maxime Roy, a lawyer for Normandeau, has said she intends to plead not guilty. The case returns to court April 20.

In the wake of the arrests, Couillards opponents have insisted he take more responsibility for what happened under the last Liberal government.

Parti Quebecois Leader Pierre Karl Peladeau said Friday that associations have developed between engineering firms and the political world and that a cleanup is necessary.

Others pointed out the premier and several members of his team were in office before the Liberal party abandoned a policy of asking each minister to provide $100,000 a year in fundraising.

The party has since capped donations at $100 per person per year and brought in internal protocols to deal with raising money.

Couillard defended his team Friday, saying they were in politics to serve society and the common good.

He said he has not received any information about the ongoing investigation because the anti-corruption unit is independent.

Im not aware at all of what is going on in terms of inquiries, investigations, and it has to be that way, he said.

And if anyone has any doubts about the independence of the process, I think its hard today to have any doubts of that kind.
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MONTREAL - The head of France's right-wing Front national party is kicking off a week-long tour of Quebec and the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

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This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  A new study suggests that homeless youth who keep pets have lower levels of depression than their counterparts who are without a dog, cat, or even rat by their side.

The study from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph found that homeless youth with pets were three times less likely to be depressed, less likely to engage in potentially harmful behaviours like hard drug use and more likely to open up to veterinarians about their personal challenges.

The study looked at 198 street youth in four cities  Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, and Hamilton  who were in shelters and drop-in centres. Among the studys participants, 100 didnt have pets and 98 did.

The results match a similar study from California and studies on the benefits of pet ownership on the health of seniors who live alone, for instance.

The findings from the Canadian study, the first of its kind to look at the benefits of pet ownership on homeless youth in the country, were published Thursday in the journal Anthrozoos.

Lead author Michelle Lem said the findings should be a wake-up call to social services that often dont allow homeless people to bring their pets inside places like emergency shelters. Homeless pet owners often refuse to give up their animals in order to access a bed.

She says that has the effect of creating a further barrier for street youth because it is often through shelters that homeless youth access services like addiction counselling.

A lot of social services think also that many of the youth probably shouldnt have pets because they cant access services with pets, said Lem, founder and director of Community Veterinary Outreach, a volunteer group that provides veterinary services to homeless people in cities like Toronto, Guelph and Ottawa.

They cant access shelters, they cant access some addictions treatment, they cant go into hospitalization, so they (pets) are barriers to accessing services.

What were trying to show is, yeah, they are barriers, but they also have some very positive impacts.

Lem said Canadians often dont understand why a teenager, for instance, becomes homeless. They are usually on the street because of toxic environments at home, trauma or abuse, or harsh judgments from their family for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, she said.

When they have pets theyre judged even more harshly often: How can you have a pet when you cant take care of yourself?

She spoke of one young man who talked about how he at one time was repeatedly arrested before he got a dog. He hadnt been arrested during the two years he owned his dog, she said.

Another homeless youth from Montreal who was part of a gang told Lem that people would see a better side of him when the dog was around.

These pets are their only friends, the only way that theyve experienced unconditional love without judgment. These pets have saved their lives in many cases, Lem said.

By asking them to give up their pets to access the shelter, what youre doing as a social service provider is saying, I dont understand your relationship and often it pushes people away.

Lem said she hopes the results of the study encourage more social agencies to allow homeless people to keep their pets in with them.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Spring is here(ish) and that means that down east, the maple syrup farmers from Ontario to Nova Scotia are tapping trees to turn liquid gold sap into heavenly maple syrup.

After living in Quebec for brief stints over the years, I try to avoid faux-syrups like Aunt Jemimas and table syrup when having pancakes, crepes or waffles. Once youve had tire sur neige (maple syrup taffy on snow ice-pops), you will never go back to the generic corn syrup pancake syrups ever again!

The folks over at Lake of Bays Brewing out of Muskoka, Ont., have just introduced their Spring Maple Belgian Blonde Ale, a Belgian-style pale ale brewed with maple syrup sourced by the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association.

I find Lake of Bays beers  including their staples such as the Crosswinds Pale Ale and Spark House Red Ale, as well as their seasonal selections such as their 10 Point IPA  are simply average, nothing special. But theyre still a better alternative than the insane amount of Labatt/Molson products on the shelves today.

Lake of Bays Spring Maple Belgian Blonde Ale tops out at 7.0 per cent ABV, which, in my opinion, is pretty average alcohol content for a Belgian-style pale ale before being classified as a Belgian strong pale ale.

The appearance of the Spring Maple is a clear golden, yet caramel body with a hint of haze, minimal amount of carbonation and just a hint of foam on the side of the glass.

The aroma is intriguing me a bit. The very first thing Im getting is a bit of a rich nutty aroma thats reminiscent of a high-quality peanut butter sandwich. The maple notes are somewhat sweet, more of a woody scent and a moderate sweet maple scent  although not as mapley as I expected. Theres also a hint of caramel maltiness.

The taste is giving off that peanut butter sandwich flavour again but as it warms up, Im beginning to notice those flavours mellow out and turn into a dark maple syrup sweetness. The maple syrup isnt overpowering or even as syrupy as many maple syrup focused beers out there.

The beer is fairly sweet and reminiscent of what a Belgian pale ale should taste like, with notes of bubble gum, rich bready yeast, a bit of a boozy burn and a hint of pepper.

One thing I am finding is the Belgian yeasts are clashing a bit with the maple syrup, which is why it had that peanut butter vibe to it  but who knows?

Im not someone who goes by the book when it comes to beer styles, so while a Belgian-style pale ale with maple syrup doesnt really make much sense, its certainly a great tribute to the French-Canadian voyageur traditions of yesteryear that led to the popularity of cabane a sucres (sugar shacks). So cheers to that!

I like that this pale ales maple flavours become more noticeable as it warms up, but I just cant get over the peanut butter notes. However, as someone who loves Belgian pale ales and maple syrup, its a nice brew thats not overpowering to the palate, easy to drink and would be best savoured with a tourtiere or poutine.

You can find Lake of Bays Spring Maple Belgian Blonde Ale at the Brandon Corral Centre and 10th and Victoria Liquor Mart locations for $9.95 per 750 ml bottle.

Lastly, since were on the topic of maple syrup, the annual Manitoba Maple Syrup Festival takes place on April 9 in McCreary.

For more information check out their website at mbmaplesyrupfest.ca.

 Pint Rating: 4 pints out of 5

Cody Lobreau is a Canadian beer blogger who reviews every beer he can get his hands on as he believes that he should try every beer twice to get an understanding if its truly good or bad.

 BeerCrank.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 18/03/2016 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You have to admire a man of principle, even if that principle seems a little counterintuitive.

On the second day of the election campaign yesterday, Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister reiterated a promise he has been making for several months now  that any government wishing to make major changes to income, business or retail taxes would have to get Manitobans to vote on any proposed hikes.

On Thursday at the Manitoba Legislative Building, Pallister promised that he would essentially bring back legislation introduced by the former Gary Filmon government in the 1990s that required a referendum be held before the government of the day could raise these taxes.

It was legislation that the NDP government sidestepped in 2013, when it raised the PST by a single percentage point and excused the government from Filmons legislation, much to the howls of protest of the Opposition Tories. Many Manitobans, too, were rightfully angry that Premier Greg Selinger broke a promise he made during the 2011 election campaign that he would not raise the PST.

It was dishonest on Selingers part, and makes Manitobans  even once-loyal NDP supporters  question any campaign promise that he will make this time around. Because in this election, the issue of trust will be front and center.

But Mr. Pallisters response to the NDPs legislative two-step is and has been problematic in two ways. As we noted on this page two years ago, we believe the Progressive Conservatives were right to challenge the NDP over the PST increase, but not in a court of law.

In the course of his political posturing on the topic, Pallister took the questionable step of bringing the issue to court and demanded the province reverse the tax hike in the stated belief that Canadians had a constitutional right to a referendum.

But in the Court of Queens Bench the Tory legal action was summarily dismissed, once again proving the notion of parliamentary supremacy  the intrinsic democratic principle that a government should not attempt to restrict the actions of a future government.

Thus, on the surface of Mr. Pallisters promise yesterday, it appears to be nothing more than a populist appeal to voters who are already inclined to vote PC anyway  red meat for the Tory masses.

But for a moment, lets assume that his concern for the taxpayer and his stated belief that Manitobans should have a right to make these tax decisions. And lets also assume that his government would hold true to this principle  not a very big leap of faith, of course. This will require, then, that Pallister and his party come through with another campaign promise that was made last January  a government that would be more accountable to the people and generally more transparent with how it spends money and awards government contracts.

It included everything from penalizing politicians who break Manitobas election laws, ending public subsidies for political parties and releasing to the public the amount of severance pay given to political staff, to providing new powers to the conflict-of-interest commissioner to investigate MLAs suspected of using their office for anything other than government business.

Our goal is to become the Canadian leader in open government by the end of our first term, Pallister told the CBC at the time.

Its a high-minded promise that harkens back to similar promises of openness and transparency made by a certain federal Conservative party leader back in the death throes of the Liberal dynasty under Paul Martin. In our conversations with Pallister, however, its clear he means to do it.

But the problem with this ideal is that is also opens the door to other questions of governance. If Manitobans have a right to decide whether their taxes go up, what about where a bridge is built, or if a provincial government invests tens of millions of dollars into Winnipegs downtown? Should voters in the rest of the province have a say in where tax dollars are spent? What companies are awarded government contracts? Whether MLAs get a pay raise? The list is endless, and also pointless.

Because we already appoint governments to act responsibly with legislative powers. We call them elections. And when we can no longer trust those governments, we need to toss them out.
Irish retailer Avoca will create 80 jobs through the opening of a new store in Dunboyne, County Meath.

The move marks the first expansion of the company following its acquisition by Aramark in December of last year.
By Roisin Burke

A Franciscan monk broke into dance in honour of St Patricks Day yesterday which was filmed and put on YouTube.

In the short clip Brother John Ahern, reportedly from Boston, wishes his congregation a happy St Patricks Day before stepping onto a wooden panel, laid out especially for the occasion and wowing the crowds with some impressive Irish dancing skills.

The monk had some serious jig jives to show off to his audience and he wasnt shy about showing them off.

A fine straight back, no movement in the arms and a haughty look on his face, the man had it off to a tee.

We wonder how long he had been waiting to put his amazing dancing skills to good use.

At least a year we reckon.
A Laois barman who said he wasn't sure if he raped a woman because he was so drunk has been jailed for five years.

The 23-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the victim's identity, raped the sleeping woman while another person was in the room, Dublin Central Criminal Court heard. He then said thank you and left.

He pleaded guilty to the rape of the woman in the county in January 2013.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy imposed a seven-year sentence with the final two years suspended. He also handed down a two year post-release supervision order and ordered the man be registered as a sex offender.

Remy Farrell SC, prosecuting, told the court that several people were at a house in the early hours of the morning drinking and watching television. The accused was sitting beside the woman and kept putting his hand on her leg, but she wasn't interested and moved it away.

At 7am some of the group went upstairs to bed, while three people, including the rapist and victim, went to sleep on the sofas downstairs.

The woman later woke up to find the man on top of her raping her. She tried to push him off and said stop two or three times while he kept telling her to shush.

She eventually pushed him off and he got up, said thank you and left. The woman later told gardai she was nearly sure the other man in the room saw the rape. She said she mouthed help me to him several times.

This other man drove her home after the incident. He told gardai he was awake at the time but didn't know if the man and woman were having sex. He said he thought he heard her say stop but assumed this was because she was worried he would hear them.

He said after a while he said stop because he was embarrassed. He was later asked by a friend if a rape had occurred and he said no because he believed the victim would have shouted out if she was being attacked.

The following month the rapist was arrested. He admitted having sex but said he did not know if it was consensual because he was so drunk. He said he had been on the drink for several days prior.

Defence counsel Paul Green SC said his client was very remorseful and was now off alcohol. He said it was horrendous and frightening that the accused felt he was entitled to take advantage of the woman but submitted he was on an absolute binge at the time.
A 45-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a prison officer in the North.

Christopher Alphonsos Robinson had previously been charged with attempting to murder Adrian Ismay in a dissident republican bomb attack in Belfast earlier this month.

The charge was changed to murder in the wake of the 52-year-old's death on Tuesday.

The long-serving prison officer, a father of three, suffered a heart attack, and a post- mortem examination confirmed the cardiac failure was linked to the injuries he suffered when a device exploded underneath his van in east Belfast on March 4.

Robinson, from Aspen Park in Dunmurry, west Belfast, was remanded in custody last Saturday after appearing before a district judge charged with attempted murder.

He is due at the same court later on Friday to face the murder charge.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Detective Chief Inspector Richard Campbell said: "Following liaison with the Public Prosecution Service, the 45-year-old male previously charged with attempted murder in relation to the death of prison officer Adrian Ismay has now been charged with murder and will appear before Belfast Magistrates' Court later this morning."

A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the peace process, claimed to have carried out the bombing.

Police have warned there could be more attacks ahead of this month's centenary of the Easter Rising.
Glasgow Warriors 12 Leinster 6

Glasgow Warriors secured an important 12-6 win over Leinster which moves them above Edinburgh in the Guinness Pro12 table and strengthens their hopes of a play-off place.

Leinster, particularly guilty of errors, missed out on the opportunity to leapfrog Connacht at the top of the table but closed in on them with a losing bonus point.

Both sides displayed effort but little inspiration with the occasional line break coming to nothing.

Garry Ringrose kicks ahead of Peter Murchie of Glasgow Warriors at Scotstoun Stadium. Photo: Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE

Glasgow's stand off Rory Clegg, newly returned from a spell in France with Oyonnax, was their hero kicking two penalties in each half. Isa Nacewa kept Leinster in touch with his two first-half penalties.

Glasgow kicked off on an improved Scotstoun surface after the mid-winter postponements, but it was the visitors who took the lead with a penalty in just the third minute from Nacewa.

In the 14th minute a penalty from Glasgow's Clegg, after a Leinster kick out on the full had given them position, brought equality.

Three minutes later Clegg eased Glasgow ahead with his second penalty success.

The half consisted of long periods where each side in turn had prolonged periods of possession with little ground gained.

Bad night for @leinsterrugby but a cracking shot of Peter Dooley peeping out of a maul! #GLAvLEIN pic.twitter.com/b834PLOfRa  sportsfile (@sportsfile) March 18, 2016

However a bright kick and take on the left wing by Leinster's Dave Kearney should have brought a try when an overlap was created on the right. However stand-off Cathal Marsh passed behind his troops and into touch.

Leinster soon did equalise with a penalty from Nacewa, but the winger went from hero to zero as he closed the half by missing a straightforward penalty chance, so the teams went in with the score tied at 6-6.

Glasgow restarted with vigour, trapping Leinster in their 22, with Clegg easing them back into the lead with a 50th minute penalty which he extended seven minutes later with his fourth success.

The quality of play then again fell away with neither line under serious pressure as defences ruled.

Then, with five minutes left, a long penalty allowed Leinster to establish themselves in the home 22 and the chance to win the match. But they were repulsed until Peadar Timmins was penalised for side entry.
The British Horseracing Authority is planning a full assessment after the deaths of seven horses over the four days of the Cheltenham Festival.

Long Dog became the sixth fatality after he broke down in between obstacles in the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle on the final day of the meeting, while Jonjo O'Neill's Montdragon was pulled up in the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys' Hurdle and later collapsed and died.

Long Dog was the second horse trainer Willie Mullins and owner Rich Ricci lost during the week after Pont Alexandre was injured in a fall in the National Hunt Chase on Tuesday.

The Govaness and Rezorbi also suffered fatal injuries on the opening day of the meeting, while it was confirmed on Thursday morning that No More Heroes had been put down after damaging a tendon in the RSA Chase on Wednesday.

The death of Niceonefrankie after a late fall in the Brown Advisory & Merriebelle Stable Plate took the tally to five on Thursday.

Quincy Des Pictons was also injured in that race and taken to a veterinary hospital for further treatment.

Trainer Alan Jones said: "As far as I know he's comfortable. There's no negative news anyway."

Jenny Hall, chief veterinary officer of the BHA, highlighted that four of the fatal injuries, including Long Dog and Montdragon, were not caused by a fall at a fence or hurdle.

She said: "First and foremost our thoughts today are with the connections of Long Dog and Montdragon, in particular all of the staff who will have loved and cared for the horses during their lives.

"It is notable that four of the fatal injuries incurred this week were not related to a fall over a hurdle or fence. Horses are at risk of serious injury throughout their lives, regardless of the type of equestrian activity they participate in, even when turned out in a field, exercising at home or, in the case of thoroughbreds, doing what they were bred to do, namely racing on the track.

"It is not possible to eradicate risk completely from any activity in which horses are involved.

"A recent study by Liverpool University found that 62 per cent of 'traumatic injuries' (ranging from grazes to fractures) suffered by a sample leisure and competition horses occurred when turned out in the field, compared to only 13 per cent during ridden exercise. Meanwhile the fatality rate on British racecourses continues to decrease, it has reduced by a third in the last 20 years to 0.18% of all runners in 2015, the lowest on record, and 0.39 per cent for Jump racing.

"We will work with Cheltenham to assess all of the incidents that took place this week. We have a good relationship with the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare, and, as always, we will work with them to ensure we continue we do all we can to make racing as safe as possible."

Speaking earlier in the week, RSPCA equine consultant David Muir admitted the deaths were "deeply concerning" but was keen to assess each case individually, rather than make a knee-jerk reaction to the incidents.

He said: "Obviously the deaths are deeply concerning to us, but we need to consider each fatality individually before making an informed comment.

"I look at the fatalities once the meeting is over and the first thing I do is satisfy myself that the course was prepared in the right manner and from there we look at the issues relating to each death."
Police have descended in force to search a residence in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, and Belgian media are reporting gunshots have been fired.

Update 6.30pm: Two explosions have been heard in a Brussels neighbourhood where police are searching for an additional suspect.

BREAKING: 2 explosions heard in Brussels neighborhood where police are searching for additional suspect.  The Associated Press (@AP) March 18, 2016

Update 6pm: The deputy mayor of the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek says that Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam was shot in the leg and detained by police.

Update 5.25pm: Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large, according to police.

Abdeslam was among several attackers who targeted cafes, a rock concert and a stadium in Paris' deadliest attacks in decades, which killed 130 people.

Update 5pm: There are reports the most wanted fugitive from November's Paris terror attacks has been "caught alive" after being wounded in a shoot out in Brussels.

Salah Abdeslam is believed to have been injured during a major police operation in the Molenbeek suburb of the city.

Salah Abdeslam

Earlier: RTBF French-language TV reported that two people had been wounded.

The raids come after Belgian authorities said that fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighbourhood belonged to the main fugitive from the November 13 Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam.

As events unfolded, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel rushed out of a European Union summit, and was expected to be joined at Belgian government offices by Interior Minister Jan Jambon, RTBF said.

French president Francois Hollande said the ongoing operation in Brussels is linked to the Paris attacks in November.

Mr Hollande told reporters in Brussels that he would not give details on the "operation that is underway".

He confirmed that the person being sought was linked to the Paris attacks, but that any speculation over the fate of the individual would run counter to efforts "to stop or neutralise this individual".

Molenbeek Mayor Francois Schepmans confirmed two people were injured in the operation, which she said are continuing, but she could not confirm Belgian media reports that Salah Abdeslam - the main fugitive from the Paris attacks - was one of two people hurt.
Greece looks set to start sending migrants back to Turkey from the beginning of next week after a proposed "one in, one out" scheme apparently won the approval of EU leaders in Brussels.

Under the scheme drawn up by European Council president Donald Tusk and Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, any migrant arriving in Greece after March 20 would be given a swift individual interview to determine whether they will be allowed to remain or sent back to Turkey.

After less than an hour of discussions, the prime ministers of Finland and the Czech Republic tweeted from inside the European Council negotiations to announce that the 28 leaders had given their approval to the arrangement.

Mr Tusk's spokesman said that the agreement made clear that any removals would have to be "in full compliance with international and EU law" and that there would be no "collective expulsions".

He added: "The cut-off date is March 20 - that is on Sunday. All migrants arriving after that cut-off date will be returned after individual assessment."

Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

The spokesman said the new arrangements would come into force at the end of Sunday, so the first migrants facing return would be those crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands on Monday morning.

The new deal marks the conclusion of months of intensive diplomatic effort to secure Turkish assistance with a migrant crisis which saw more than one million people enter Europe last year - the majority of them via Greece.

The EU will accept one Syrian refugee for resettlement from camps in Turkey for each irregular migrant returned to the country, in a move which is intended to break the business model of people-smugglers by dissuading migrants from attempting the sea crossing.

The agreement addresses Turkish concerns about the slow delivery of 3bn promised by the EU last November, by including a commitment to identify within the coming week a list of projects which will receive funding. A further three billion euros are being made available after the initial tranche of support runs out.

The EU has also agreed to "re-energise" its relations with Turkey by accelerating talks on eventual accession to the EU, which began in 2005 but have long been stalled.

As the 28 EU leaders met behind closed doors in Brussels, Finnish PM Juha Sipila sent a message by Twitter to declare "Turkey agreement was approved", while the Czech Republic's Bohuslav Sobotka said: "The agreement with Turkey approved. All illegal immigrants arriving in Greece from Turkey starting from March 20 return back!"

The deal is also understood to promise visa liberalisation for Turkey's 75 million inhabitants, who could be granted visa-free access to the EU's Schengen borderless zone from this summer.

Earlier in the day, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scathing about the reluctance of EU nations to take in refugees from Syria, saying: "At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves."

As the summit agenda was extended to allow protracted talks with Mr Davutoglu, David Cameron chaired a meeting of leaders from Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Malta, as well as High Representative on Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, to discuss the threat of a renewed surge of migrants attempting the Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy over the summer.

The British Prime Minister wants the EU to open talks with the newly established government of national accord in Libya to expand its anti-trafficking operation into the North African state's territorial waters.

At present, EU ships - including one Royal Navy vessel - are able to intercept migrant boats in international seas, but Mr Cameron believes that taking action closer to the Libyan coastline will improve its chances of turning boats back and deterring migrants from setting off at all.

Some 1.2 million migrants arrived in Europe over the course of last year, and while the bulk of them took the shorter sea route from Turkey to the Greek islands, more than 150,000 attempted the more dangerous crossing from Libya. Mr Cameron said the EU must not "take its eye off the ball" in the central Mediterranean because of the focus on Turkey.
After a four-month manhunt, police have captured the top fugitive in last year's deadly Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighbourhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and is suspected of driving a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings.

He and four other suspects were detained in a raid in Molenbeek, including three members of a family who allegedly sheltered him. Abdeslam was shot in the leg, officials said.

Helmeted police with riot shields cordoned off the area, and two explosions were heard.

France's BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured.

The Islamic extremist attackers killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on November 13 in Paris, in the country's deadliest attacks in decades.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel called Friday's arrests a success in the "fight against terrorism".

He said he spoke to President Barack Obama about the arrest, and the White House said US officials have been in close touch with French and Belgian officials about the investigation into the Paris attacks.

French president Francois Hollande congratulated the Belgian government for an operation that lasted several weeks. He warned that the investigation is not over and said authorities would continue to pursue anyone involved in financing or organising the attacks.

Two other people believed to be linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

The capture of Abdeslam came after Belgian authorities said they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighbourhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam - Mohamed Belkaid - was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors said. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months" in the apartment.

Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of the attacks, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area on Thursday.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, had not been found.

At one point during Friday's police operation, a phalanx of officers in camouflage, masks and riot helmets marched through the neighbourhood with guns and automatic weapons drawn, escorting people out of buildings.

Abdeslam's exact role in the attacks is not clear. The car he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he had apparently used were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest - or fleeing in fear.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation. They were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But on Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.
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World War II veteran Leonard Bence survived a remarkable 30 night-time missions in the iconic Lancaster bomber aircraft flying from northern England on bombing raids over mainly Germany but once as far as Norway.

"The Germans had submarine pens in Norway. That was a very long trip, one of the longest of the war. About 12 hours. We had to study our fuel consumption otherwise we wouldn't have got back," he said.

Ex-Flying Officer Leonard Bence, 94, of Burra, in South Australia, with the G for George Avro Lancaster B1 exhibit at the Australian War Memorial. Mr Bence flew 30 missions in Lancasters during World War II. Credit:Steve Burton

Was there much left in the tank when they did get back?

"I don't know. I didn't check it," he said, laconically.
The spokesman said that area would be upgraded to include a public gym, a health and wellbeing retail precinct and residential space. The developers were well aware "the heritage assets on the Manuka Oval site are of immense significance to the Manuka community which is why our proposal is committed to preserving and, in many cases, enhancing, these assets". While the plans were still being formed, the spokesman could not rule out that some of the established trees in the area could be lost to the development. "This proposal seeks to keep as much of the existing tree-scape in tact as possible, particularly those heritage-listed trees. Several trees on the site have come to the end of their lives and, as a result, extensive space has been allocated in this proposal for the planting of new trees to renew the original landscape scheme and recognise the historic plantings of the site. We will have as minimal impact on the trees as we can and ensure there is space to replant and that landscaping is enhanced." A spokesman for the ACT government reiterated that, as an unsolicited bid, the development had not yet been approved.

He also noted that the 2004 heritage listing of the Manuka Pool included "associated landscaped grounds comprising spacious lawns, trees and vegetated boundary fencing" which were "intrinsic to the heritage significance of the place". "Any proposed work would need to be consistent with the existing registration documents and any Heritage Guidelines and Conservation Management Plans for each place - in the case of Manuka Oval, a key conservation objective is for the perimeter plantings to be maintained and enhanced." The ACT government has also indicated it will uphold heritage listing protections for buildings within the Manuka Arts precinct, warning the developers the historic buildings would need to be incorporated into any new development. The $800 million plan includes upgrading the oval and funding it through the wider redevelopment surrounding the oval which will include 1000 apartments up to seven-storeys high, commercial and retail space, and carparks. For Poppy's dad, the need to develop Canberra should not cost it its heritage.

"As a fairly young and small city we just don't have that many places of genuine heritage value, so you would think we would move heaven and earth to protect the special places we do have and, quite frankly, I can't think of a more beautiful place in Canberra than this pool," Andrew Henderson said. He did not agree with any land being handed over for a health hub and was extremely concerned about the impact of units looking down onto the pool and grounds. Similarly, Tuggeranong writer Michael Weaver makes the 20-minute journey each week to Manuka Pool because of its atmosphere. "It is the best outdoor pool in Canberra  it has an atmosphere which is unique and I feel an extra sense of enjoyment while swimming there." Mr Weaver said the government should ensure the full Manuka Pool footprint and privacy was protected.

"I see it as a threat to the pool's character and heritage. We need to listen to what residents and the users who love this area have to say about it before we proceed any further down the redevelopment path." Kingston and Barton Residents Group spokeswoman Rebecca Scouller said the Canberra community would rally to protect its "heritage gem". "Do we want to surround the pool with the colosseum-like, 1000 apartment proposal by GWS and Grocon? She noted that parking near the pool would become nearly impossible. "Manuka pool is part of Canberra's heritage heart. It is there for the benefit of all Canberrans, let's not ruin it for the sake of an apartment block." Loading
Missing 72-year-old man Claus Plohberger has been found safe and well.

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ACT Policing said Mr Plohberger's family reported him missing on February 12, and authorities had been looking for him since.

Claus Plohberger

"Police would like to thank Queensland Police, New South Wales Police, members of the public and the media for their assistance in locating Claus," it said in a statement.
Owners Luke Cox and Brad Scott have expanded their games store Three D6 in Greenway to build a pub in the unit next door.

Welcome to the Loaded Dice, a new pub for Canberra's gamers and geeks  where you can grab a beer and a trio of sliders while playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Tucked away in a corner of Tuggeranong is an old-fashioned tavern straight out of a medieval fantasy game.

And they crowdfunded the expansion on Kickstarter, raising more than $30,000 from keen Canberra gamers to build the Loaded Dice.

"The thing that people were asking for was, hey when are you going to put a bar in?" Mr Scott said. "The most requested thing [on our Facebook page] was a liquor license."

Mr Scott said he was inspired by another games store in California, which also crowdfunded an expansion and built a cafe for gamers on the side. "I can't claim originality, I stole [the idea] but we put a bar in rather than a cafe because we're Australian."

Slip through a door at the back of Three D6's gaming hall and you'll enter a little old fashioned wood-paneled pub with tall booths upholstered in green, hanging lamps along the bar, and a (faux) wood-burning hearth in the corner.

You can select a board game or card game from the library lining the walls and sip a local Zierholz beer or Jolly Miller cider as you plot your next turn in a fantasy RPG or throw down in a game of Pokemon.
Sydney Airport has revealed a 12.7 per cent surge in international traffic in February thanks to a strong rise in visitors from countries including China, Korea and the United States, as well as outbound growth from Australia.

"This strong result was driven by seat capacity growth, earlier Lunar New Year celebrations and the leap year," chief executive Kerrie Mather said.

Both domestic and international traffic grew strongly at Sydney Airport in February. Credit:Brendon Thorne

"The international 12-month rolling performance is now 6.1 per cent and significantly above our historical long-term trend."

The 12.7 per cent growth rate surpassed the 11.3 per cent rise in passenger numbers at rival Melbourne Airport in February, even though Sydney Airport has a higher base. UBS analyst Simon Mitchell said Sydney Airport's international traffic growth was the highest since mid-2010.
The national capital needs a strong Asian market strategy, the Canberra Business Chamber says.

In the chamber's Destination 2030 report setting out its vision for the ACT, the business group said Canberra needed to attract more than half a million international visitors a year.

A new plan for Canberra wants a greater focus on international relationships. Credit:Graham Tidy

The chamber wanted Canberra to become a freight hub, with an increasing number of exports sent out of the territory.

The report called for a new agency to be created  an office for investment and business  to market the Canberra region and attract investment and trade.
Shopping centres are reaping the benefits of having more specialty shops and less focus on department stores, which has seen turnover reach the $1 billion mark, says Shopping Centre News.

The journal, seen as the industry bellwether, says in its annual Big Guns survey, that this year shows three centres exceeding the $1 billion mark, Chadstone, Westfield Sydney and Westfield Bondi Junction.

Crowds at Chadstone Shopping Centre, which is performing strongly. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Seven out of the Top 10 centres exceed the $900-million mark.

Michael Lloyd, SCN's publisher, predicts that by 2020, all Top 10 Big Guns will have a moving annual turnover (MAT) over the $1 billion and within 10 years, he says, the $2-billion mark will have been cracked.
You wouldn't be alone in thinking The Sound Of Music is a tired old girl.

It's the kind of show that gets wheeled out every few years to make producers a bit of cash as audiences seeking some nostalgia flock to the theatre and wish they were seeing Julie Andrews.

Cameron Daddo and Amy Lehpamer in The Sound of Music.

And to be honest, that is what I thought Australian producer John Frost was doing when he reinflated The Sound of Music marquee and sent her off around the country.

Instead he has strapped on the defibrillator, shot some adrenaline in her arm and made everything old seem new again.
Conservative South Australian senator Cory Bernardi has accused "lefty totalitarians" of cowardice after his office was ransacked and staff threatened.

On Friday morning, a group of protesters stormed his office in the Adelaide suburb of Kent Town over the Coalition senator's stance against the Safe Schools program.

A Channel 9 crew captured the protest, and the damage that ensued.
A "completely innocent" husband and father was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at two brothers on a suburban street during a dispute about one of their girlfriends, police said.

A police manhunt is under way for Matthew Russell, 28, who is understood to have opened fire at the men on Matthew Avenue, Heckenberg, in Sydney's south-west about 6.30pm on Friday.

Father and husband Qusay Al Mhanawi was the innocent victim of a suburban street shooting.

Mr Russell allegedly fired his handgun in the direction of the two brothers but the bullet missed, striking Qusay Al Mhanawi as he sat in his car outside his home.

He is understood to have just arrived home from work and was sitting in his car finishing a telephone conversation before going inside.
Two thieves have staged a jewel heist in broad daylight in Sydney's CBD before speeding off in a Porsche.

Armed with what is believed to be a hammer, one man threatened staff at a jewellery store on the corner of King and Pitt streets before making off with cash, jewels and watches about 4.45pm on Thursday, police said.

He then fled to a waiting blue Porsche Coupe get-away car, which crashed into another vehicle as it sped through Surry Hills.

Police released CCTV footage on Friday showing the thief running into the store wearing a yellow hi-vis vest over a grey hoodie, holding what appears to be a hammer and a bag.
The people of Brisbane will have no respite from waving election campaigners and annoying jingles, with both major parties vowing an all-out assault in the final days of the Brisbane City Council election campaign.

At duelling media conferences held at 10.30am on Thursday, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said candidates and volunteers would be out in force for the next 48 hours, taking it up to the morning of election day.

Labor lord mayoral candidate Rod Harding meanwhile promised a 72-hour blitz, which would see it last until Sunday morning, well after polls close at 6pm Saturday.

Addressing his troops at Mt Coot-tha on Thursday, Cr Quirk said it was time to bring the campaign home.
There are at least 26 individual pieces of metal in the dome above City Hall's main auditorium.

LNP supporters tend to hold their chins in their hands during debates, while ALP supporters are more inclined to cross their arms.

On repeat: Candidates Rod Harding (left), encumbent Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and Ben Pennings. Credit:Bradley Kanaris

The spiral binding on notepads is the perfect place to store a pen, I wonder if they were designed like that.

I wonder if Barack Obama ever went to City Hall and what he thought of the dome above the main auditorium, I think he would have liked it.
The dragon boat community, family and friends have been left shocked after Dragons Abreast paddler Carol Waitohi's body was found at Currumbin Creek on Friday morning.

The 50-year-old had been practising with her dragon boat club, whose members include a mix of breast cancer survivors and supporters, at Currumbin Creek waterway on Thursday evening when she fell from the back of the boat.

After an extensive water and air search, Ms Waitohi's body was found in the waterway on Friday morning.

The experienced paddler was operating as sweep, standing at the back of the boat holding a long oar directing the movement of the boat when she fell into the water.
A man has fallen from a balcony and a woman has suffered from a suspected overdose at a Gold Coast resort on Friday.

Paramedics were called to Rays Resort on Marine Parade at Southport after a man in his 40s fell from a balcony on the second floor.

A man has fallen from a balcony and a woman has suffered from a suspected overdose at a Gold Coast resort.

Upon arrival, paramedics discovered a woman in her 20s who had suffered from a suspected overdose inside the apartment.

The woman was rushed to Gold Coast University Hospital in a serious but stable condition.
A woman who jumped into a Gold Coast canal, allegedly to avoid police, is in custody following a traffic crash that uncovered drug paraphernalia in one of the vehicles.

Just before 9am on Friday four vehicles collided with each other on Bermuda Street near the Monaco Street Bridge.

Police attended the traffic crash scene at Broadbeach Waters on Friday. Credit:Nine News Gold Coast

When police arrived on scene, a woman and two men involved in the crash attempted to flee.

The woman resisted arrest and jumped into a nearby canal, police said.
As the 12-month mark approaches since two Perth prospectors vanished in a remote part of the state's Goldfields, police have classified the mystery as 'suspicious'.

Raymond and Jennie Kehlet were last seen on March 22.

The whereabouts of Jennie Kehlet remains a mystery two years after she disappeared.

A month later, Mr Kehlet's body was found in a disused mine shaft about two kilometres north of the couple's camp near Tabletop, south of Sandstone.

His wife remains missing.
The driver of a hearse got the shock of her life when police breathalysed her with a coffin in the car coming back from a funeral in Rockingham on Thursday.

Debbie Christie, from Chipper Funerals Rockingham, said she was driving along Ennis Road around 2pm, when police randomly breath tested her after officers told her to pull over.

The hearse was pulled over for a random breath test in Rockingham on Thursday. File pic

WAtoday got wind of the story after a caller with the pseudonym "dead drunk", rang into Radio 6PR's Rumour File.

Ms Christie said officers looked a little red-faced when they realised it was a hearse.
A Perth chemist priding itself on multilingual and mental health services has been named Australia's best pharmacy.

Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley presented Pharmacy 777 Nollamara with the award on Thursday at the Australian Pharmacy Professional conference on the Gold Coast.

This tiny pharmacy is surrounded by big discount chains but beat them all to win a national award.

The team, which flew over for the ceremony, knew it had won its category but not the overall prize so enjoyed a "very proud moment", owner Swarup "Sam" Afsar told Radio 6PR.

The tiny 77-square-metre chemist was surrounded by eight others, three of which were discount warehouses, and had worked to establish its points of difference.
West Australian serial killer Catherine Birnie has again been denied parole.

Birnie, 64, and her late partner David Birnie raped, stabbed, strangled and clubbed to death four victims in their Willagee house, in Perth's southern suburbs, in 1986.

The Willagee home of serial killers David and Catherine Birnie.

They were caught when a fifth intended victim escaped after they abducted her at knifepoint.

- AAP
Airbus Group University Partner Programme Meeting



The Airbus Group University Partner Programme is a strategic initiative launched to foster long-term collaboration with selected universities and engineering schools world-wide in areas of mutual interest. The University of Bristol is one of the 21 Airbus worldwide partner universities from 11 countries and was represented at the recent meeting held in Singapore by Prof Ian Lane, one our Airbus Ambassadors and Prof Jonathan Cooper who holds the Airbus Sir George White Chair of Aerospace Engineering.

The event involved a number of presentations and workshops aimed at updating, reviewing and planning ahead for future activities in the Partner Programme. Other activities involved a panel review of how to inspire innovation and also an exchange on the experiences of the Airbus Ambassadors. The interaction between the University of Bristol and the Airbus site at Filton was noted as being a good example of how a successful collaboration should be run. Technical visits were also held at the National University of Singapore, Airbus Helicopters and the Singapore Airshow.
Friday Night Football: Scores, stats, recaps from Week 9

With only two more weeks left in the regular season, teams are fighting for postseason posititioning...or just for a chance to make the playoffs.
Thats more like it! After a nap-inducing episode last week, Greys Anatomy was back on track with Odd Man Out, directed by Kevin McKidd (Owen Hunt) and guest-starring both Casey Wilson andwait for itRita Moreno. Did Arizona save quadruplets? Did April tell Jackson about her pregnancy? Did Meredith call back hottie oncologist Dr. Will Thorpe? Read on for all the scoop!

Resident Scramble

Remember the early days of GA when Meredith and Cristina got in trouble for only working in one specialty area (Meredith in Neuro with Derek and Cristina in Cardio with Burke)? That concept was revisited this week as Richard realized that Stephanie worked almost exclusively with Amelia (Neuro), Penny with Meredith (!) (General) (who would have believed it?), Jo with Callie (Ortho), and Ben with Jackson (Plastics). Webber promptly ordered the residents to randomly pick the name of an attending from a bowl. The results? Jo with Meredith. Penny with Amelia. Ben and Andrew with Arizona in Fetal Medicine. And, hilariously, Stephanie (who is so not a Peds person) in Pediatrics with Karev and puppies (dont ask). (Related Aside: I was reminded of the day Cristina spent in Peds with Arizona. His name is Mister Bear. He eats children. Hee.)

Greys Anatomy Recap: Callies Team Reports for Miracle Duty >>>

Its Personal (Parts One and Two)

Part One: Meredith and Jo

Kudos to Meredith. She has not only gotten past the fact that Penny was part of the medical team that failed to save Dereks life, shes taken Penny under her wing and become her mentor. So when Jo is put on Merediths service, things dont go well. First, Mers all discombobulated because she and Blake have developed a shorthand, so working with another resident requires extra steps and effort. More importantly, however, Meredith treats Jo really badly (I say this as someone who is not a fan of Jo) and doesnt even seem to realize it, even when Jo (who goes too far, in my opinion) calls her on it. Not until after Callie and Maggie weigh in on Merediths behavior does she see the truth and apologize to the resident.

Part Two: Amelia and Penny

So remember what I said about Meredith getting over the whole Penny thing? Amelia  in full raging cyclone mode  was horrible to Penny, even when Nathan tried (with the vantage point of a neutral third party) to reason with her. Even when Penny made a good catch and performed well under pressure, Amelia was unrelenting. Finally, however, their patient needed surgery stat and Amelias go-to-resident, Stephanie, was otherwise occupied. To her credit, Amelia let Penny operate and discovered that Blake is assured and level-headed with microscope hands. In short, shes the best resident Amelias ever seen. Shes a born neurosurgeon. Shepherd must teach her. Did not see that coming.

Will You Go Out With Me?

When she wasnt dealing with Jo, Meredith spent the episode ignoring Wills voice mails and text messages. Callie and Maggie implored her to respond to the poor man. Meredith maintained that if she returns his calls he will ask her out and then shell have to turn him down, so its best to do nothing. Will wasnt having it. Figuring out it would be harder for Meredith to turn him down in person, he showed up at the hospital. What will Meredith say? We have to wait a week to find out. (Rats!!!)

Casting Bits: Once Upon a Time Casts Two New Villains, A Doctor Might Leave Greys Anatomy and More >>>

News Roundup

* Arizona saved the lives of premature quadruplets (adorable mom played by Casey Wilson)

*Owen and Amelia canceled their date after her patient died, but he took her for puppy therapy

*Rita Moreno rocked the house as a woman estranged from her husband who had been having an affair for eleven years and apparently been a jerk for thirty three. After a brain injury, however, he experienced a complete regression to a state of mind when he loved her and they had been happy together. She had hope that he would stay that way and she would get to love him again. And then he died. Of course he did.

* Nicole Herman (Arizonas mentor in Fetal Medicine) was mentioned. YAY!

* Two observations: Was there a vibe between Nathan and Amelia? Is trouble brewing for Ben and Miranda? Related Aside: Ben may have found a specialty in Fetal Medicine.

*April still kept the news of her pregnancy from Jackson, despite Alex and Arizona encouraging her to tell him before he found out from someone else. In the last scene Jackson did find out from someone else: Arizona! Well meaning? Yes. The right thing to do? Absolutely not. But maybe thats just me.

MEMORABLE QUOTES AND MOMENTS

Richard (to the residents): You have a short time to learn here, people, and youve snuggled up to your specialties like a warm, comfy bed. I am your alarm clock.

Callie (about Merediths phone love life): You need to get that ringer turned on fast.

Meredith: My ringer is fine.

Meredith (to Jo): Youre just not Blake!

Jo (to Meredith): Get your own boyfriend! (Oh no she didnt!)

Maggie (about Will and Meredith): Hes called how many times now?

Callie: Oh God, just give me the phone. Ill send him a nice blow-off text.

Maggie: Oooh! Not a text. Shes not a monster.

Meredith: I like Wilson.

Maggie: Do you?

Arizona: Karev, are you trying to give me a compliment?

Alex: Im saying no one else could have done what you did.

(*Okay, seriously, I love the Robbins/Karev mentorship thing. #TeamPeds)

Meredith (to Jo): Youre right. I am hard on you. Alex hasnt had it easy. Everyone hes ever been with has run away (Izzie) or stolen his job (hah! Lucy!) or gone crazy (Ava/Rebecca) or broken his heart. None of them stick. And he doesnt deserve to take another hit. But the point is, I am sorry for squashing you like a bug or whatever it is that I do. And, for the record, Wilson, I am rooting for you to stick.

April (resisting getting tests on this new baby and refusing to tell Jackson about the baby just yet): Im hanging on to every last shred of faith that it will be okay.

Amelia (about Nathan to Owen): Riggs was great. I can see why you liked him.

Amelia (on Penny): Shes a natural neurosurgeon. And now I have to teach her. I owe it to her to teach her.

Will (to Meredith): See, right about now youre thinking Im some kind of stalker. Ive called and Ive texted. Because I wanted to see you again. I thought Id ask you out but I cant do that unless you call me back. I thought Id show up here and ask you. That way, if you wanted to turn me down, youd have to do it in person. Looking at my very nice face makes it harder to say no. Dr. Grey, would you like to go out with me?

Greys Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8pm on ABC.

(photo courtesy of ABC)
Noted Shakespeare scholar discusses importance of the First Folio

Lectures at both UB and downtown public library part of Buffalo Bard 400

I saw this as an opportunity to showcase some of the riches in Buffalo at a moment of renaissance for the city. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford and one of the worlds leading authorities on Shakespeares First Folio, opens the University at Buffalos Humanities Institute conference Object and Adaptation: The Worlds of Shakespeare and Cervantes with two talks on March 28.

Smith will discuss the cultural, historical and literary significance of the First Folio with the lecture From the Barbican to Buffalo: Why Shakespeares First Folio Matters. Smith will speak first at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Librarys Central branch, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, N.Y. at 12:00 p.m. and then deliver the same lecture later in Capen 107 on the UB North Campus at 3:30 p.m.

The visit  presented by UBs Humanities Institute, the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education, and numerous other unit sponsors  is part of the year-long public humanities collaboration, Buffalo Bard 2016, 400 Years since Shakespeare, commemorating Shakespeares life and work with performances, tours and exhibits.

We would not have half of Shakespeares plays if it werent for the First Folio, says Barbara Bono, an associate professor in the UB Department of English and UBs representative to the Folger Institute, the scholarly branch of the Folger Shakespeare Library. That includes plays such as Macbeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.

Its one of the most important books in the world, she says.

And Buffalo owns two of them, each housed in the special collections of the institutions where Smith will be delivering her lectures  and each will be on display during that time.

A number of Shakespeares plays, but not all of them, were published during his lifetime in quarto editions, four-folded pamphlets which provided eight book pages for text. But plays in this period were written for performance. If they were published at all it was an afterthought, according to Bono.

But the English playwright and poet Ben Jonson disagreed with the ephemeral nature of the genre. He led the way by publishing his own plays in a folio in 1616.

Bono says that established the precedent and two members of Shakespeares company published the Shakespeare folio in 1623, seven years after the Bards death.

What would the literary tradition be like without the First Folio? asks Bono. What would our knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare be like if that book had not been published?

Thats why the book is so valuable, she says. But its also in a certain way priceless as an artifact of literary history.

Knowing it was a big year for Shakespeare programming and that the Folger was sending out 18 their First Folios on tour around the United States, Bono spoke with librarians where Buffalos copies are held.

I saw this as an opportunity to showcase some of the riches in Buffalo at a moment of renaissance for the city, says Bono. Its a chance to talk about our treasures, including the rare book treasures that form the core of whole collections of rare books at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and the University Libraries.

As the celebration unfolds locally, the Folger, which owns 82 of the 233 extant First Folios, is presenting a traveling exhibit that will bring copies of the book to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The Folger is using the First Folio tour to do more expansive programming, but Id like to flatter myself that were doing as much in Buffalo as anywhere else, says Bono. We have the goods and we have the cooperation of cultural agencies and educational institutions and the right scale of community.

Bono highlights the k-12 Shakespeare birthday celebrations on April 23rd; Shakespeare Comes to the 716 which for seven years has presented a performance program for at-risk kids; and the several local high schools producing Shakespeare plays. And this summer Shakespeare in Delaware Park, the nations second largest free Shakespeare Festival, will celebrate its 41st season on a brand-new stage.

On the academic end, the Shakespeareans I have coming are without a doubt among the best in the world, she says. There are 13 coming during the course of the year that are extremely noteworthy. The full schedule is on our website.

A complete events schedule is available online.

This all begins with the treasure of the First Folios and the community-wide effort thats going into this celebration, says Bono. These are not just rare books; they are living, breathing artifacts and a driver of cultural literacy.

Its a good moment, she says.
Exploring an evolving mythology

Scholars@Hallwalls lecture looks at how and why myths begin and change

This is about how we mythologize; how we make myths; and how and why we change them. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  What if Pandora, the first human woman in Greek mythology, had never open the jar that released evil into the world?

Wait a minute.

Pandora opened a box, not a jar. Who says, Pandoras jar? But it actually was jar. At some point, an element of that myth became something else.

The story changed, and Marla Segol, an associate professor in the departments of Jewish Thought and Transnational Studies, will discuss how and why mythology changes in the next Scholars@Hallwalls lecture on April 1 at 4 p.m. at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave. in Buffalo. Presented by the universitys Humanities Institute, all Scholars@Hallwalls events are free and open to the public.

The timing of Marlas talk couldnt be better, given that this is the inaugural semester of UBs new Department of Jewish Thought, says Erik Seeman, director of the Humanities Institute. Marla is one of six members of the department, and her expertise in medieval history and her facility in numerous ancient and modern languages make her a crucial member of this impressive new center of Jewish scholarship.

Segol says shell be looking at the myths that are used to integrate the Greek medical microcosm into the Jewish sacred narrative.

But this is also a talk about how our stories change.

Sometimes the explanation is simple. In Pandoras case, a mistranslation accounts for the jar becoming a box. But Segols talk explores a more complex evolution that begins with the ancient Greek model that associated every part of the cosmos with a part of the human body.

The Greeks and other ancient civilizations based much of their medicine on four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, the bodily fluids that influenced health. The fluids in turn were related to the cosmic elements of air, water, fire and earth.

Hippocrates and Galen both believed that the humors were taken from a vast storehouse of elements out in the world, says Segol. Theyre with you when youre alive and they return to their source upon death.

The world is made out of the same thing as humanity, according the late antique medical microcosm.

The ancients also believed that creation was a divine work. But why did God decide to get busy after being a non-creating deity?

A lot of Jewish mystical literature (Kabbalah) describes that process, says Segol. Many of these mystical narratives use Greek models of emanation that were reinterpreted in late antiquity to come into accord with monotheism.

They used that narrative to understand the transition to a creating God.

The group of 10 emanations are collectively called sefirot, a word with roots meaning, to tell, story, sapphire and number. Each of the emanations were part of the divine personality that emanated out into the universe and were ultimately mapped onto different parts of the human body.

Early interpreters believed the human body looked like the divine body, says Segol. There were those who thought it should be qualified, but the belief was there.

So the human body is a microcosm for the divine and the human body is a microcosm for the cosmos, according to the Greek model, says Segol. Kabbalah brings those two models together.

Thats the Adam Kadmon, the primordial man, according to Segol.

Thats the story Im going to be telling.

But in addition to telling that story, Segol says shell also be talking about storytelling.

This is about how we mythologize; how we make myths; and how and why we change them.

Segol says the Greeks told these stories to uncouple medicine from religion, to get away from divine causality.

Its a process that is still happening today.

We tell a story to answer a question, or at least engage it, she says. Among other things, myths address contradictions and one of the ways they address contradiction is by telling more stories.
Bordentown exhibit showcases items belonging to Napoleon's brother

The Bordentown Historical society is gaining international attention for its Joseph Bonaparte exhibit, former King of Spain and brother of Napoleon.
A band of musicians with a passion for gypsy jazz and swing music will be entertaining an audience near Burnham-On-Sea on Saturday night (March 19th).

The Schmoozenbergs will be performing at 7.30pm at Mark Village Hall with tickets on sale by calling 01278 641370, priced at 12 for adults and 6 for children.

Back for a second season wowing audiences in Somerset village halls, and recreating the swinging sound of Paris in the 1930s and 40s, The Schmoozenbergs bring you irresistible rhythms and lyrical melodies, and their bouncy, happy music will put a smile on everyones faces, Delphine Jones from organisers Take Art told Burnham-On-Sea.com.

With Sam Stennett and Tom Brydon Smith on two duelling guitars, violinist Alex Taylor and Ron Phelan on double bass, The Schmoozenbergs add their very own little bit of special sauce to make the perfect ingredients for a hip swinging, foot tapping, heart warming sound. Cest magnifique!
EDF Energy will be grilled by a group of MPs next week over the controversial Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant near Burnham-On-Sea.

EDFs chief executive Vincent de Rivaz, and managing director of new nuclear build Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, are due to appear before the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee on Wednesday March 23rd.

It comes as French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron promised fresh financing for the troubled 18bn project on Thursday.

EDF has been forced to defend Hinkley after its chief financial officer Thomas Piquemal resigned over the huge costs. It subsequently sent a letter to employees reiterating confidence that the project will go ahead.

The hearing will give EDF Energy an opportunity to answer the committees questions on the investment plans for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C, it said in a statement.

Angus MacNeil, committee Chairman, added: The government is counting on new nuclear to supply a significant proportion of the UKs demand for low-carbon baseload power in future.

The focus right now is on Hinkley Point C but there are other important projects in the pipeline. Serious questions are being raised about the cost and viability of the Hinkley project and the value for money for taxpayers.

If it gets the final go-ahead, Hinkley will be the worlds most expensive nuclear energy project ever. It is scheduled to begin generating in 2025, and is expected to provide seven per cent of the UKs electricity needs.
Somerset Trading Standards Service is warning car buyers in the Burnham-On-Sea area to be extra cautious when buying vehicles online after a local scam was uncovered this week.

Several consumers have contacted Trading Standards after not receiving the vehicles they had paid for, which had been advertised online, supposedly by a company with an address in Burnham-On-Sea.

The trader claimed to be based in Burnham, and had all the hallmarks of a legitimate dealer, including an address and telephone number listed on their website.

The trader also appeared to be a limited company with two directors listed, both living in Somerset.

The vehicles were said to be in various parts of the country and were attractively priced, and the trader would deliver them to the consumers.

The cars described either didnt exist or had been previously sold by legitimate traders.

The investigation revealed that the scam company was a front for what appears to be an organised criminal gang.

Purchasers paid for vehicles by bank transfer, but they did not arrive and all attempts to contact the trader by letter or telephone failed.

All contact was by e-mail and complaints garnered no response.

Devon and Somerset Trading Standards successfully traced where customers payments were going to reveal who opened the accounts and where.

Evidence was obtained that criminals had set up a number of bank accounts in the centre of London to receive the funds from their victims.

The evidence was then passed to The Metropolitan Police and Action Fraud Network.

Further investigation revealed that scams of this type are widespread and significant numbers of buyers throughout the country are being defrauded in this way.

Councillor David Hall, deputy leader of Somerset County Council, told Burnham-On-Sea.com: Scams of this kind are becoming increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated.

I would urge potential car buyers to be careful when buying vehicles online.

Many websites and adverts look very professional and it can be difficult to tell these apart from the genuine article.

Often in these types of scam the fraudsters will claim to be local and consumers should try to see the car for themselves before purchase.

By following a few simple rules including using a credit card which will give you better protection against shopping fraud, and using a trader who has signed up to a local member of the Buy With Confidence scheme, consumers can better protect themselves.

If you think you are the victim of car fraud, contact the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 03454 04 05 06 or visit https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/
There are two stories that lay claim to the origin of Bharat. One, referred to by Swami Vivekananda during his lecture tour to the United States, is from the Vishnu Purana. Vivekanand's Bharat was the son of King Rishabh, descendent of Swayambhuva Manu, and was known for his ability to detach himself from worldly pleasures. When he grew old, he set his son on the throne and left to spend his last days in the jungle.

In the forest, one day, a pregnant deer was drinking from a stream when the roar of a lion so startled her that she leapt up in fright, jumped right across to the other shore and died. Mid-flight, she delivered and the king-turned-sage rushed forward to pluck the fawn out of the air. He took it home and nursed it like a child, developing a deep attachment to the animal, thus breaking his own code of monkish detachment. The king was reborn as a deer, but gifted with complete memory of his previous life. That life over, he was born as the youngest child of a rich Brahmin.

Once again, he kept attachments at bay. He refused to speak even, his brothers thought him a fool and treated him poorly; their wives treated him even worse. One day, after a particularly cruel session at home, he sat in the shade of a banyan tree when a king came by on his palanquin. His men, tiring of their burden, quickly appropriated his shoulders. Unhappy with the pace and balance of his carriers, the king insulted Bharat. At that point, the king-deer-palanquin-bearer finally broke his silence to deliver a deeply philosophical lecture on the nature of kingly souls. A chastised king sought his blessings, which Bharat gave and disappeared forever.

There is another Bharat; one with whom many of us are familiar. He is the son of Shakuntala and Dushyant - a young boy who played with lions and grew up to be an invincible conqueror. In the Mahabharata, in Kalidasa's versions and in modern-day Amar Chitra Kathas, it is this king who gave the nation its name.

Bharat Mata was born during the independence movement, a recent addition to the pantheon. Now, the nation had become a bejewelled mother goddess with a lion by her side. In a typically Indian way, an old myth was fused with a modern metaphor. The mother/devi iconography came from Prithvi (earth), the goddess of bounty who served King Prithu, the first sovereign. Prithvi, the story goes, fled the kingdom. When the king gave chase, she gave in, agreeing to follow his command. Bharat Mata, for the nationalist movement, was a goddess held captive by the British. Her people had to reclaim her, like Prithu had done, but more Ram-like, by defeating the demon that abducted her.

But this is the stuff of catchy sloganeering and opportunism. There is another Bharat imagined in its ancient stories. Travel anywhere in India and it is easy to find a cave where the Pandavas rested, a rock that Ram touched, a stream beside which Sita sat and a hut in which a pir baba stayed. In the country's collective imagination, physical geography seamlessly melds into an imaginary one, sewn together with strands from multiple myths, folklore and songs. Kashi, for example, is not the only city that bestows spiritual liberation. With Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Kanchi, Ujjain and Dwarka, it forms a seven-stringed necklace of holy cities that are also known as mokshadayakas. Also, there are many Kashis. There is a gupt Kashi in the hills and one in the south too. Diana Eck (India: A Sacred Geography, 2012) says this landscape "not only connects places to the lore of gods, heroes and saints, but it connects places to one another through local, regional and trans-regional practices of pilgrimage." This is the glue that courses through the veins of the country, giving it its famed unity in diversity.
The other day the academic head (a foreigner who has been in India for a larger part of his working life) of one of the new private universities in the country told me this: most Indian schools - be they government, private or elite schools in the metros - fail to give their students real . He said that they manage to make them literate, in some cases even articulate, but they fail to educate them.

On further prodding, he explained that in his view - and in the view of a cross-section of students that he has met - school experience leaves students cold and they want to somehow get it over with. At no stage is a student encouraged to develop further curiosity in a subject and those who do stumble upon their passion or interest do so more by chance than design.

The British, in his view, had left us with a system that suited them - designed to train and produce "peons, clerks, office boys and secretaries"; followers (ji hazoor, as he put it) instead of leaders of any kind. That's why the system discouraged original thinking and encouraged blind acceptance of facts, beliefs, values and long-held notions. The fact that many Indians rose above this was because they were inherently bright and driven; the system did them very little good but it didn't do them any harm either. Bright kids in, bright kids out.

Further, he argued that even the way the English language was taught was molding the students into low-level occupations where they used their knowledge of the subject to express their thoughts at a very basic, simple level. He had students in his university who have scored 94 and 96 on 100 in English but could not put a paragraph together lucidly. He also has a student who had scored 70 on 100 who thought and wrote like a "dream". When he asked the boy why he had performed so badly in the board examination when he was evidently at a higher literary plane in every other way, the boy said that he had made the mistake of writing in his own words.

Following this, I happened to spend three hours one day with the former vice-principal of Delhi Public School, a lady who is now retired after 28 years in service. She says that at the level of Class XI, the schools encourage students to write and compose essays - and some of them write beautifully - but the moment the student crosses over into Class XII, they are told to stop all this creative work. We tell them, "That's great; fantastic work. A plus from me; C plus from the board". Students are asked to never choose questions where there are two sides to the coin (too risky; you will lose marks, they are told). They are repeatedly told to stick to questions that require facts and avoid anything that may have more than one interpretation.

A few years ago, she said, the CBSE board introduced something called HOTS (higher order thinking skills and 20 per cent of the total marks are allotted to this). But she says that a certain predictability has crept into this too and the students (backed by teachers) have found a way to crack this as well - so whether the students actually have the HOTS is impossible to say.

Finally, two days ago, I met someone - in connection with another piece I am working on - who has been educated in India (Shri Ram College of Commerce, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad) who runs a private firm in Gurgaon. When I spoke of how sad it was - and such a drain on the country's foreign exchange - because so many students were leaving India to study overseas, he disagreed completely. He said that despite being at the best institutes, he never felt he got real . If as a country, we have to pay this price for our students - even if a handful - to get real education, he said it was worth it. It would open their minds and thoughts and expose them to stuff they have never been exposed to through the Indian schooling system.

The three examples I illustrate here are all people who are part of the system, have watched the Indian space for years and are mostly in agreement with one another. Yet, despite this collective realisation, we are still where we were when the British exited this country. What does this say for us? I leave you with this thought.

anjulibhargava@gmail.com
In the winemaking areas of the northern hemisphere, mainly Europe and North America, spring is when the wines produced from grapes harvested in the previous September-October period are ready, and when the wine-marketing machinery gets going to showcase what has been produced and they take orders for the year from buyers.

So, the March-June period sees a slew of wine fairs in Europe. At the fairs, one can sample wines produced not only in the host country but all over the world - and everyone who is anyone in the wine world heads there. The principal fairs and tasting events in 2016 are:

Read more from our special coverage on "THE WINE CLUB" A toast to SulaFest

Yes, you just missed this one this year. ProWein has grown to become the largest trade fair for wines, with 6,000 exhibitors from 50 countries spread over 67 square kilometres of space that attracted 53,000 visitors in 2015. The majority of stalls are for wine, while beer, wine production machinery and German foods are also on display. It is also the first major wine fair in Europe, which gives it a special cachet.

The Bordeaux en primeur week (April 5-7): This is one event where you have to be invited to be able to attend it. It involves the top Bordeaux chateaux, offering a taste of wines still lying in barrels to potential buyers and experts - well in advance of the wines that would be actually released 12 to 24 months later. This generates publicity for the wines and provides the wineries the much-needed cash flow to help finance the next year's operations. As may be expected, the number of visitors is much less. The hospitality levels are much more luxuriant, with many chateaux hosting extravagant dinners at their estates for their guests.

Vinitaly, Verona (April 10-13): Well, of course, Italians must have their own wine fair, and Vinitaly has it all. In 2015, there were more than 4,000 exhibitors and operators from 140 countries. The event, held over 88 square kilometres, saw 150,000 visitors (including 2,600 journalists) from around the world. Most exhibitors are wine companies, but there are also people who exhibit olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and wine machinery and accessories. And, although technically this is a trade fair, a fairly large number of consumers buy tickets (^80 a day and ^120 for four days) to sample the wines on display. A wine competition preceeds the fair, where some 3,000 samples are tasted and scored by panels of experts over the course of a week.

The London Wine Fair (May 3-5): A shadow of its former self when it included spirits, this fair now caters largely to trade in the United Kingdom: in 2015, there were 670 exhibitors, catering to about 11,000 visitors, and unless you don't have much to do in the UK, you can give it a miss.

Vinexpo, Bordeaux: The fair is held every alternate year in France and the Far East. Vinexpo Hong Kong 2016 is on May 24-26 and Vinexpo Tokyo on November 15-16. The 2015 fair in Bordeaux (held on June 14-18) was large: it saw 2,350 exhibitors from 42 countries and nearly 50,000 visitors from 150 countries. The largest number of exhibitors were from France, while the United States was named "the country of honour" as a bow towards the world's largest wine market. Vinexpo Bordeaux 2017 is scheduled for June 18-21.

For all the European wine fairs, check out their websites on how to visit and book your tickets early.

Wines I've been drinking: Food Lovers, to my mind, is the best food-centric magazine in India. Its owner (he prefers "managing editor"), Kripal Amanna, has singularly brought chefs and their culinary creations out of the shadows and into the limelight, at least in Bengaluru. The "Grand Food & Wine Showcase", organised recently at The Oberoi, Bengaluru, featured one dish each from 10 leading fine-dining restaurants in the city - and, of course, 10 wines. My favourite: the Dominio del Plata BenMarco Malbec 2009 from Argentina. It is complex and fruity, with a jammy, full-bodied taste, soft tannins and a terrific finish. Rated 89 points by Wine Spectator, it is a steal at Rs 3,566.

Alok Chandra is a Bengaluru-based wine consultant
For a glimpse of what teenagers are into these days, all you have to do is visit Abbot Kinney Boulevard in the Venice neighbourhood of Los Angeles. On weekend nights, the half-mile shopping drag is packed with style-conscious kids who traipse past coffee shops, ice cream parlours and boutiques, often while taking selfies.

Yet one of the most popular destinations for these teenagers is a white, single-story building with big pink letters on the roof that spell " ." The store sells vinyl records, and the kids who gather there are often in awe.

"I'd say half of the teens who hang out in my store have never seen a record player before," said Nick Alt, the founder of . "They will walk up to the turntable, and they have no concept where to put the needle." But once they figure out that the needle goes into the outermost groove, those smartphone-toting teenagers are hooked.

Whenever a new technology comes out, we often believe it will make an older technology obsolete. As a reporter who has been covering technology for The New York Times for more than a decade, I've made such proclamations, saying that the iPad would kill the Kindle (I later realised the error of my ways, and now own both), that eBooks would be the death of print (I later reversed myself, several times), and that driverless cars will make driving passe and allow us to nap in the front seat (this has yet to be disproved).

But what I've come to realise is that while the new thing gets people excited, the old thing often doesn't go away. And if it does, it takes a very long time to meet its demise.

Just look at film cameras. You would think they have been vanquished from the planet, but millions of people still use them. In 2012, more than 35 million rolls of camera film were sold, compared with 20 million the year before.

And while Polaroid has filed for bankruptcy (twice) in the age of digital cameras, the company is making a resurgence (again). One of Polaroid's largest growing demographics, surprisingly, is teenagers who want a tangible photo but also don't want to wait. (Polaroid has also become the go-to camera for people who take nude photos and fear that their phones could be hacked.)



Other types of physical media have also held on.

More than 571 million print books were sold in the United States in 2014. About 55 million newspapers still land on doorsteps every morning. As for those vinyl records, 13 million LPs were sold in 2014, the highest count in 25 years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. (Records are also one of the few growth areas for the beleaguered industry.)



So why does old tech survive and, in some cases, undergo a revival? For some consumers, it's about familiarity (like newspapers and print books), while for others, it's about nostalgia (like record players and film cameras).

For example, tens of millions of Americans still own a landline; millions of USB thumb drives are still being used, even though you can store anything in the cloud free; and people still use and buy tens of millions of flip phones every year, including such notables as Mayor Bill de Blasio, Anna Wintour, Warren Buffett, Iggy Pop and Rihanna. Pagers also never completely died.



2016 The New York Times
Triumph Motorcycles has launched the new Bonneville Street Twin in Mumbai at Rs. 7,21,710.

Launched at the 2016 Auto Expo in February, the Street Twin has a tubular steel cradle with a telescopic fork suspension at the front and twin shocks with adjustable preload at the rear. The bike measures 2,090 mm in length, 785 mm in width and 1,114 mm in height. It has a wheelbase measuring 1,439 mm, a dry weight of 198 kg and a fuel tank capacity of 12 litres. Powering the Street Twin is an all-new 900cc 'high torque' 8-valve, liquid-cooled, fuel-injected, parallel twin engine that produces 54 BHP @ 5,900 rpm and 80 Nm of torque @ 3,230 rpm. The engine is mated to a 5-speed gearbox. Stopping power comes from a single 310 mm disc brake at the front and a single 255 mm disc brake at the rear.

The Street Twin is also equipped with a USB charging socket and an LCD multi-functional instrument cluster with an analogue speedometer, gear position indicator, fuel gauge, distance to empty indicator, service indicator, clock, trip computer, scroll button on handlebars, fuel consumption display and traction control status display. The bike can also support indicators for tyre pressure monitoring system and heated grips (available as an optional extra).

Safety features and rider assistance systems include ABS, Traction Control, slip assist clutch and ride-by-wire. The Street Twin is available in five colour schemes - Cranberry Red with tank and wheel stripes, Aluminium Silver with tank and wheel stripes, Matt Black, Jet Black and Phantom Black. Styling details include black alloy wheels, fuel tank with decals and chrome filler cap, clear lens turn indicators, LED tail lamp, upswept brushed stainless steel silencers and black mudguards. What's more, owners can get their Bonneville Street Twins customised with more than 150 new accessories on offer by Triumph. Additionally, the company is providing three kits to use as a starting point for riders to design their own Street Twin custom, or to have these fitted as a complete set. These kits include a Scrambler kit, Brat Tracker kit and an Urban kit.

Source : BS Motoring
The government has banned as many as 1,670 drug brands, estimated total annual sales of Rs 3,728 crore, an analysis by IMS Health shows. These brands are part of the 344 fixed drug combinations which were banned by the government last week, triggering protests and legal action by pharma industry.

The companies likely to be most affected are Pfizer, Abbott and Macleods Pharma. While only six brands by Pfizer have been banned, their sales were as much as Rs 424 crore between February 2015 and February 2016. Abbott saw 36 of its brands banned which had annual sales of Rs 400 crore in the same period. Similarly, 30 brands by Macleods Pharma, with annual sales of Rs 400 crore, have been banned.

The government banned 344 fixed drug combinations (FDCs) on March 10, after an expert panel had found that these drugs lacked therapeutic justification and posed various health risks. Pfizer is likely to take a massive hit as its popular cough syrups - Corex and Corex-DX - are among the banned brands. These two brands had combined annual sales of Rs 423 crore.

Macleods Pharma's much sought skin cream Panderm+ has also been banned. This cream itself was bringing Rs 228.2 crore to the company in annual sales.

Abbott's three major cough syrups - Phensedyl, Tixylix and Tossex - which had annual sales of Rs 290 crore, were banned by the government. The company's in-demand anti-diabetic drugs Tribet, Semi-Tribet and Triobimet were also banned by the government. These three brands are the same FDC - Glimepiride+, Pioglitazone+ and Metformin - having a total sales of Rs 50 crore annually.

Mankind Pharma's 32 brands have been banned which had annual sales of Rs 234 crore. The biggest hit may come from the banning of its popular cough syrup Codistar which alone had annual sales of Rs 33 crore.

IMS Health, a global information and technology services company, didn't analyse 129 molecules - out of total 344 - as it doesn't track them in the Indian pharmaceutical market. Zydus Cadila's 49 brands have been banned. The company would not be taking any major hit as sales of these brands are quite small. Sun Pharma - India's largest pharmaceutical company - has got its 28 brands banned which had a total annual sales of just Rs 95.7 crore.

Lupin's anti-diabetic drug Gluconorm -PG, which had sales of Rs 46.5 crore, has also been banned. This brand's FDC name is Glimepiride + Pioglitazone + Metformin. This FDC - which is sold by more than 85 companies under different brand names - had total sales of Rs 525 crore annually.

Chlopheniramine Maleate + Codeine, which had annual sales of Rs 700 crore and is sold by almost 60 companies in the country, has also been banned. Apart from Pfizer and Abott, which are selling this FDC as Corex and Phensedyl, other major companies selling it are Mankind, Franco Indian and Dr Reddy's Labs.

GlaxoSmithKline's four brands which have been banned are - Crocin Cold and Flu, Piriton-CS, Dilo-DX and Piriton Expect. These four drugs had annual sales of Rs 58 crore.
DCM Shriram Limited, a publicly listed company, has said it will raise $60 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC). The funds raised will support company's capex to the tune of $122 million in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.The proposed project includes regular maintenance, capital expenditure would be spread across its various manufacturing facilities in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.According to IFC's disclosure, company's brownfield expansion includes technology improvement of existing cogen power plant in Ajbapur Sugar factory in Uttar Pradesh leading to higher power generation to the extent of 16.4 Mw, expansion of its chlor-alkali facility located in Bharuch, Gujarat from 450 tpd to 915 tpd capacity and routine annual maintenance capex across its four sugar plants in Uttar Pradesh, its Chemical Complex in Kota (Rajasthan) and its existing chlor-alkali plant in Bharuch.

The company is also planning to take up modernisation of technology of its existing chlor-alkali facility located in Bharuch, Gujarat and Kota, Rajasthan and expansion of captive power plant by 55 Mw to support expansion of chlor-alkali capacity.

Total capital expenditure for the above brownfield expansion is estimated to be $122 million.

The proposed IFC investment consists of an A-loan of up to $60 million, with the rest funded through loans from other banks / financial institutions and internal accruals.

DCM Shriram Limited is owned by three Shriram brothers - Ajay S Shriram, Vikram S Shriram and Ajit S Shriram, who have a 63.9 per cent shareholding in the Company.

DCM Shriram Limited has two main business lines including agribusiness (fertilizer, seeds - including international operations under 100 per cent subsidiaries, sugar and trading of agricultural inputs), and Chloro Vinyl (caustic soda, chlorine, carbide and polyvinyl chloride or PVC). The company as presence in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. It also has other smaller businesses such as Fenesta Building Solutions (value-added PVC products) and cement to complement its main products and a joint venture with Axiall Inc. for PVC Compounding.

The Project supports the expansion of the chlorine and caustic soda as chemicals, which find downstream uses such as manufacture of aluminium, paper, detergents, agro-chemicals, pharmaceuticals and water purification.
The governments recent ban on 344 fixed dose combinations (FDCs) and short-listing around 600 more FDCs to be banned, coupled with the double impact of linking drug prices to wholesale price index (WPI) and bringing a larger number of medicines under price control, could wipe out 12 per cent of the pharmaceutical sectors turnover. This means, nearly Rs 12,000 crore of the total turnover of Rs 1 lakh crore would be eroded.

FDCs are a combination of two or more drugs in a single pill. While the idea is to benefit the patient in terms of faster recovery, many experts feel some therapeutic groups, when clubbed together, might lead to drug resistance. Some also says doses should be customised for individual patients and should not come in fixed doses.

The ban on 344 FDCs would straight away wipe out Rs 3,049 crore, according to AIOCD-AWACS, the market research wing of All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD).

However, the pharma sector feels the impact would be to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore. D G Shah, secretary-general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), an umbrella body of domestic drug makers, said: The Kokate committee, which examined 6,000 FDCs, found 963 to be 'irrational'. The already banned 344 are from that list, and there are more to go. He added the combined impact of banning 963 FDCs would be at least Rs 10,000 crore.

Coming to the WPI part, the annual change in WPI works out as (-) 2.7105 per cent during calendar year 2015 over the corresponding period in 2014. The government fixes the ceiling price of medicines under price control based on the WPI. However, since the WPI is negative this year, companies would have to bring down the prices of the drugs under price control by 2.7 per cent. According to an AIOCD-AWACS analysis, its impact would be Rs 534 crore.

However, the impact might be more than what is estimated at the moment. Shah said: The WPI notification has said all those companies which are selling below the ceiling price set by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority would also have reduce their prices by 2.7 per cent. This would affect around 5,000 companies, including SMEs.
Taking a cue from the Delhi governments announcement on app-based bus services, Corporation (NMRC) might introduce app-based buses in Noida and Greater Noida, which will allow users to know the number of seats and the closest bus available, among other things.



NMRC has awarded the contract for this to Pune-based MP Group, an integrated bus service provider, to ply 105 buses in 13 routes between Noida and Greater Noida.



Confirming the development, Abhishek Pathak, chairman and managing director of MP Group told Business Standard: The total cost of buses, depot and office setup would be the tune of Rs 120 crore, which will be funded through debt. Were also looking for strategic alliance and equity. NMRC might go ahead with app and other technical advancements in the buses. These buses will be high-tech AC buses fitted with GPS (global positioning system) and also disabled-friendly.



These buses are true low floor buses which will be beneficial for all type of commuters as of all these are disable friendly buses and eco-friendly which will be running on CNG, ITeS ready buses.

In the past couple of months, app-based bus service firms Shuttl and Mojo have also started bus operations independently in Gurgaon, Delhi and Noida. Shuttl also runs its services exclusively through its app. These developments are expected to address Delhi national capital regions traffic woes to some extent and bring relief to the capitals commuters.

After Noida, the company is eyeing to commence operations in Surat and nagpur. He added,"We are in process of filling up the current tenders for Surat & Nagpur and also we would be filling up the upcoming tenders in few months for Delhi.

MP Group also plans to bid for Delhi Transport Corporations plan to have 1,500 electric, hybrid or CNG buses. Also, The company is planning to explore the middle east regions as well through the collaboration with foreign partners.

In 2015-16, the group turnover would be around 275-280 crore and in 2016-17, they are projecting around 450-500 crore.

On being asked about how the private operations are different from government run transport undertaking she added, "Quick decision making, bringing in the best global practices of working in the organization based on terms of technology and talent, working based on timelines and strategies planned as per the work. Focusing more on towards the sustainability. These things stands apart the private sector."



With operations pan-India since 1981, the company manages a fleet of self-owned buses for staff transportation across Pune and Mumbai. The company is headquartered in Pune with a corporate office in Mumbai and branch offices at Bengaluru, Goa, Delhi and Ahmedabad.

It intends to launch international branch offices along with increasing the strength of the existing fleet of buses.
App-based taxi service company claims its newest category Micro is gaining significant traction in the market, helping it ward off an attack from larger global rival Uber in India. Within three weeks of launching the service, the Bengaluru-based firm says that the category has seen as many rides as all rides put together in the previous three years.



Launched as a pilot in Bengaluru, Micro offers customers rides at Rs 6 per km with a minimum fare of Rs 50. This matches fares offered by TaxiForSure's (a rival Ola acquired for close to $200 million) hatchback category which is also on offer on Ola's app.

"There was a need for air conditioned car comfort at more affordable costs with for instance say a car like the Datsun Go. These compact cars at micro prices caters to a segment that does not use cars at this moment," said Raghuvesh Sarup, chief marketing officer and category head at Ola.

By separating subcompact and regular hatchbacks on its platform, Ola has been able to quickly scale Ola Micro to seven cities - Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune. Customers will have on offer rides in cars like Datsun's GO, Suzuki's WagonR and Hyundai's EON when they ride with Ola Micro, compared to slightly larger vehicles in Mini.The launch of its newest category comes at a time when Ola is warding off an attack from Uber, which recently claimed that its operation in India would be larger than its local rival within a month. Ola too hit back, stating that in three weeks, its Micro category sees over 50 per cent of the total number of rides Uber does on any given day."In three weeks, we have put up a category (Ola Micro) which is already 50 per cent of all of Uber's daily bookings in the country. The rate at which Micro is growing, it will be larger than their entire brand within a month," added Sarup.

While Ola Micro might eat into some of the other categories on the company's platform, by virtue of minimum fares and comfort levels, Ola believes that each will have its share of takers. Autorickshaws due to their low minimum fare are best suited for short trips, while a user of Ola Mini would want the comfort of a slightly larger car and Ola Prime would be for people who want to travel in luxury.

Sarup said that he sees customers using Ola Micro for their daily commute because of how economical it is, but would opt for a larger Ola Mini or even Ola Prime sedan when going out with their families over the weekend. Moreover, gauging the success of the category, the company will look to introduce Ola Micro in all cities where it sees good demand from in the near future.
In one of the biggest retail property deals in recent years, Singapore government-owned $100-billion sovereign fund GIC bought 50 per cent stake in Viviana Mall in Thane, on the outskirts of Mumbai, for over Rs 1,000 crore, said an executive aware of the development.

The deal values the mall at around Rs 2,000 crore.

While the deal is done, GIC is yet to make the payment, said the executive. Both GIC and Sheth Corp have been in talks for the past six months and recently agreed on the valuation, the executive said.

Earlier, investors such as Xander and Blackstone looked into buying the mall, but developer Sheth Corp did not agree to outright sale, a source said.

"GIC is expected to hold the property and not go for a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) as they have perpetual capital. Investors such as Blackstone have third-party funds which need to find an exit after some time," said the executive who did not want to be quoted.

Emails sent to Sheth Corp and GIC did not get any response.

GIC is one of the world's biggest investors, with over $100 billion in assets in over 40 countries. It is also one of the top 10 real estate investors in the world. Last year, GIC bought 40 per cent interest in five US malls as part of deals involving $5.4 billion worth of real estate.

"Viviana is doing very good business and it is a good buy for GIC, since the mall will ensure steady rental income for it," the executive said.

On Thursday, DLF, the country's largest developer, said it had sold its shopping mall in Saket in Delhi to its subsidiary for Rs 904 crore as part of its strategy to consolidate and monetise non-core assets.

"Many global investors are looking to buy good mall properties. It will help them build portfolio in the country and help mall developers to consolidate their projects," said Susil Dungarwal, founder of Beyond Squarefeet Advisory, a mall management company.

Late last year, Blackstone, the US-based private-equity firm, acquired two retail assets of Gurgaon-based developer Alpha G in Amritsar and Ahmedabad for around Rs 800 crore.

Viviana has gross leasable area of one million square feet (sq ft) and one of the biggest malls in the country. It has brands such as Shoppers Stop, Forever 21, Zara, Marks & Spencer. It boasts a multiplex with 14 screens, 19 large and mini anchors and 150 iStores.

According to experts, it is 100 per cent occupied when most malls have a vacancy of 20 per cent. Average rents in the mall are around Rs 150 per sq ft.

Deep inroads by e-commerce and long gestation periods are increasingly forcing developers of new malls to put their projects up for sale. According to consultants, around a dozen malls are on the block in the country.

For instance, L&T Realty, an arm of construction and engineering major Larsen & Toubro, recently sold its two million sq ft project, including a mall and a hotel, in Chandigarh to the Carnival group for Rs 1,785 crore.

L&T Realty is also trying to sell its upcoming mall in Navi Mumbai's Seawoods. The company was in talks with investors such as Blackstone and GIC, sources said. "It was our strategic decision not to run malls and hotels. We are in talks with investors to sell the Seawoods mall but nothing has been finalised," Shrikant Joshi, chief executive of L&T Realty, told this newspaper recently.

"Developers ask why they need to hold an asset for long before returns accrue. The construction business has a short gestation period," said Balaji Raghavan, head of the real estate practice at the IIFL Group, said recently.

A mall or a hotel has a gestation of seven to eight years while residential real estate has a gestation of three to four years.
App-based taxi hailing service Uber has restarted its bike taxi pilot in country by pivoting it to a bike-pooling service where individuals will be able to share rides with other commuters. Uber says it would not earn money from the service during the pilot period and would share data on customer usage with the government to justify its utility to decongest roads.

Earlier this week, the company had shut the service in Bengaluru following a ban issued by the Karnataka government after deeming all bike taxi services illegal. The authorities blamed Uber for not complying with the ban, leading to around 80 motorcycles of rider partners being seized.

India's motor vehicle act does not have a provision for yellow boards on two wheelers, which is required to operate a taxi service. Uber has navigated the need to procure additional permits for aggregating bike taxis by operating it on a cost-only model. The company will not charge any commission until the period of the pilot lasts.

"To clarify, the uberMOTO service was launched to operate at cost only - effectively encouraging bikers to share the cost of a ride and eliminating the need for additional permits.

Uber will also not charge any service fee for the period of this pilot," said the company in a blog post.

Aimed at helping decongest the city's roads and provide quick transportation options to customers, Uber and Ola had launched their bike taxi services in Bengaluru on March 4. Following the ban, the Karnataka government said that it would consider providing licenses to aggregators for bike taxis on a case-by-case basis, provided they have the right permits.

While rival services such as Ola and Ridingo have shut their services and are awaiting for further directions from the authorities, Uber is relaunching its service. The Karnataka government however still maintains that it will not allow Uber to play bikes on roads without first getting approval from the Road Transport Authority (RTA).

"Even if they're not making money or they are doing it for charity, they have to have a permit. We are in the process of framing laws for taxi aggregators in the state. If they approach the RTA and get the necessary permits, we can even think about framing similar laws around bike taxis," said Ramegowda, Karnataka's commissioner for transport and road safety told Business Standard. In its blog post, Uber says that it will prepare a report with the key findings on the viability of bike taxis on Bengaluru's roads. The report would focus on how such a service would reduce congestion, cut travel time and help last mile connectivity, helping push the company's agenda for allowing bike taxi services in the state and country.
Even as the workers' union got recognised at Tata Motors Sanand plant and talks continued between the two parties due to the mediation by the state labour department, the Sanand industrial estate is in for some action on Saturday as workers along with representatives of farmer associations and trade unions plan to take out a rally.

Around 400 workers, representatives of 22 trade unions, farmers from nearby villages and farmers associations would congregate at Gate No 2 of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation industrial estate at Sanand, opposite the Chharodi railway station. While labour department officials said workers did not have permission to take out the rally, workers said they were trying to get permission from the police.

Around 1,000 people are expected to be a part of the demonstration. Ashok Panjabi, a labour rights activist and senior Congress leader, is also likely to be present. On Thursday, the labour department had approved a workers union named Bharatiya Kamdar Ekta Sangh Sanand (BKSS). This union has representation from 450 permanent workers of the company.

Representatives of the union and Tata Motors officials met at the deputy labour commissioner (DLC)s office on Friday.

However, no resolution was reached. Tata Motors stated: The meeting concluded with the understanding the Workmen Committee will file on Saturday the authorisation that shows at least 70 per cent of the striking workmen authorised this committee for future negotiations, with a meeting planned for next week (Monday).



However, Umesh Rathod, secretary of BKSS, alleged the company was trying to buy time and divert attention from the main issue - suspension of workers. One of our demands has been met, that of forming a union. The other demand, which is the main demand, is still unmet. We are willing to call off the strike and join back if the suspended workers are re-instated.



M S Patel, assistant labour commissioner of Ahmedabad, sounded hopeful that a final resolution would be reached at the Monday meeting.

Around 400 permanent workers have been on strike since February 22 at Tata Motors Sanand plant demanding that 28 suspended workers be re-instated.
At a time when the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been vilified endlessly for being hotbed of "anti-national" activities and a drain on the taxpayers' money, its sociology department has been ranked among top 100 across the world by a prestigious international ranking agency.

In its report released earlier this week, the UK-based QS World University Rankings has rated JNU's Centre for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS) 51st, up by 7 ranks compared with last year. The Centre was founded by Yogendra Singh in 1971 and has had several illustrious academicians as its faculty, including Professors T K Oommen, Dipankar Gupta, Nandu Ram and Anand Kumar. Incidentally, JNU students' union vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora did her Master of Arts from the Centre.

"This ranking is based on various credentials - the quality of knowledge produced, interventions made, and students doing research or placed in universities in India and across the world. The current faculty also has a unique representational character, drawn from different social backgrounds," Professor Vivek Kumar, who specialises in sociology of marginalised sections, said. In February, the venue in Gwalior where Kumar was to deliver a speech on B R Ambedkar was attacked by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists.

The CSSS has a 22-member faculty, which includes Susan Visvanathan, Avijit Pathak, Tanweer Fazal, Edward Agapito Rodrigues, Arshad Alam, Surinder Singh Jodhka, Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, Maitrayee Chaudhuri and Tiplut Nongbri. Each semester, the centre takes in 80 to 85 students. As many as two thirds of its 40 to 45 M Phil students go on to work on their doctoral dissertations.

The CSSS has done pioneering research in subaltern, Dalit and tribal studies, social movements and madarsa education. Oommen was the first academician to study social movements from a sociological point of view, with students heading to Naxalbari to study the Naxal movement and in later years to Jharkhand to make sense of the tribal assertion. "The Centre has done seminal work in these fields, although not always recognised within the academia," Kumar, who has been a pioneer in highlighting Ambedkar's role as a nation-builder beyond being a Dalit icon, said. The Centre also houses a Chair in the name of Dr B R Ambedkar sponsored by the Ministry of Social Justice, Government of India which supports and conducts activities relating to the intellectual contributions of Ambedkar and provides scholarships for research to students from Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes.

The ranking comes in the wake of a sustained campaign to vilify JNU since a protest on February 9, where some participants had allegedly raised "anti-national" slogans. Some of the video recordings of the protest that went viral on social media were later found to be doctored by the Delhi government probe. However, it led to the arrest of JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar and attacks on journalists when the student leader was produced in a local court in Delhi. Two of Kumar's fellow students - Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya - are still in jail on charges of sedition. There have been demands by elements affiliated to the Sangh Parivar to shut down JNU. Many in responsible positions have even gone on to allege that the university is a waste of taxpayers' money as it doesn't produce "enough doctoral dissertations".

Last week, President Pranab Mukherjee had conferred JNU with the award for excellence in research and innovation. President Mukherjee had presented the award to the Molecular Parasitology Group of JNU for its pioneering work in the area of molecular parasitology, especially anti-malaria, leishmaniasis and amoebiasis.

The QS World University Rankings for 2015-16 which were released earlier this week take into account research quality, graduate employment, student-staff ratios, teaching standards and the number of international students while rating nearly 800 universities from all over the world. The biggest single factor in the QS rankings is academic reputation. This is calculated by surveying more than 60,000 academics around the world about their opinion on the merits of institutions other than their own.
The Indian government has quietly taken US non-profit off its watch list, The Hindu newspaper reported on Friday.

The move comes only days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the US to meet with President Barack Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington later this month.

The Home Ministry has already issued orders to take the Foundation off the so-called prior permission list. What this means is that banks will no longer have to seek permission from the Finance Ministry before processing foreign fund flows from the US-based Foundation to any Indian bank account. The Finance Ministry, the newspaper reported, has already written to the Reserve Bank of India on March 16 to remove the non-profit from the watch list.

Based on a report by the Gujarat government last year, the Ministry had put on the watch list, citing  security.

According to the Gujarat government report, the non-profit funded the anti-India activities of Citizens for Justice and Peace and Sabrang Trust run by activist Teesta Setalvad who has been fighting the government on behalf of minority community victims of the 2002 communal riots in that state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state at the time.

in 2015 complied with the governments condition to register itself under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) which allows it to receive foreign funding, the newspaper said, since until then it had been registered as an NGO or any other body.

It was finally registered as a branch office by the Reserve Bank of India in December 2015.
Praising Islam for its message of peace and harmony, Prime Minister on Thursday said none of Allahs 99 names stands for violence and asserted the fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion and the two should be de-linked.

Addressing the first World Sufi Forum, he said, This is an extraordinary event of great importance to the world, at a critical time for humanity. At a time when the dark shadow of violence is becoming longer, you are the noor, or the light of hope. When young laughter is silenced by guns on the streets, you are the voice that heals.

The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion. It cannot be. It is a struggle between the values of humanism and the forces of inhumanity. It is not a conflict to be fought only through military, intelligence or diplomatic means. It is also a battle that must be won through the strength of our values and the real message of religions. As I have said before, we must reject any link between terrorism and religion. Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious, he said.

Terming Sufism, a spiritual quest that traces its origin from the Holy Prophet and the fundamental values of Islam, which literally means peace, Modi said, And, it reminds us that when we think of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence, and that the first two names denote compassionate and merciful. Allah is Rahman and Raheem. Earlier, Modi was welcomed with the chant of Bharat Mata Ki Jai at the forum convened by the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board, to discuss the role of Sufism in countering rising global terror.

Modis message came at a time when his government has been facing Opposition flak on the issue of communalism and amid a raging debate on nationalism.

The four-day event, beginning on Thursday is being attended by over 200 delegates, including foreign delegates from 20 countries.

Spiritual leaders, scholars, academicians and theologists from Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, the UK, the US, Canada and Pakistan, among other countries, are coming for the event.

During his around 30-minute speech, Modi quoted a number of Sufi scholars to drive home the message of unity of mankind preached by all religions.

"When the spiritual love of Sufism, not the violent force of terrorism, flows across the border, this region will be the paradise on earth that Amir Khusrau spoke about... Terrorism divides and destroys us.

"Indeed, when terrorism and extremism have become the most destructive force of our times, the message of Sufism has global relevance," he said.

Noting that every year over 100 billion dollars are spent on securing the world from terrorism, he said that the money should have been spent on building lives of the poor instead.

In an oblique reference to Pakistan, which has often been accused of harbouring terrorists, Modi said,"there are forces and groups that are instruments of state policy and design.

There are others recruited to the cause in misguided belief."



In the backdrop of youths from many countries having joined the ISIS with radicalisation happening through Internet, Modi said while there are some who are trained in organised camps, "there are those who find their inspiration in the border less world of cyber space".

"Terrorism uses diverse motivations and causes, none of which can be justified. Terrorists distort a religion whose cause they profess to support.

"They kill and destroy more in their own land and among their own people than they do elsewhere. And, they are putting entire regions to peril and making the world more insecure and violent," he said.

He said that advance the message of Sufism that stands for the principles of Islam and the highest human values is a task that states, societies, sages, scholars and families must pursue.

Noting that the message of Sufism is not just confined to combating terrorism, the Prime Minister spoke of the "rich diversity" of India stressing that the values of harmony, welfare, compassion and love for human beings are the foundation of a just society.

He said this is the principle behind his idea of 'Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikaas'.

"And, these values are important to preserve and nurture diversity in our societies. Diversity is a basic reality of Nature and source of richness of a society; and, it should not be a cause of discord.

"We need just not constitutional provisions or legal safeguards, but also social values to build an inclusive and peaceful society, in which everyone belongs, secure about his rights and confident of her future," he said.

Speaking on the challenge of violence, the Prime Minister underlined the need to remember the teaching of Holy Quran that if anyone slew one innocent person, it would be as if he slew a whole people and if anyone saved one life, it would be as if he saved a whole people. He also underlined the message of non-violence propagated by Lord Buddha and Mahavira.

"In many parts of the world, there is uncertainty about the future, and how to deal with it as nations and societies.

These are precisely the times that the world is most vulnerable to violence and conflicts," he said.

The Prime Minister stressed that the global community to be must be more vigilant than ever before and counter the forces of darkness with the radiant light of human values.

In his speech, he quoted profusely from the Bible and the Quran apart from Hindu scriptures and referred to Sufi saints and scholars including Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti, Persian Sufi poet Saadi Jalaluddin Rumi to drive home the message of unity.

Modi also hailed India as "land that is a timeless fountain of peace, and an ancient source of traditions and faiths, which has received and nurtured religions from the world" and its people "with an abiding belief in Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the World is one family".

Modi compared the existence of varies communities in the



country with strings of a sitar in which they together create melody.

"Like the strings of sitar that each produces a note, but come together to create a beautiful melody. This is the spirit of India. This is the strength of our nation. All our people, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, the micro-minority of Parsis, believers, non-believers, are an integral part of India," he said.

Alluding to the Partition, the Prime Minister said, "at the dawn of Independence some chose to go away and, I believe, it also had to do with colonial politics of that time."



He underlined that leaders like Maulana Azad, and important spiritual leaders such as Maulana Hussain Madani, and millions and millions of ordinary citizens rejected the idea of division on the basis of religion.

The Prime Minister gave the credit to "every member of every faith in our diverse and yet united nation" for India moving forward in all spheres.

On the spread of terror, he said in this digital century, the reach of terror is growing and its toll is rising every year.

"Since the beginning of this century, tens of thousands of families have lost their loved ones in thousands of terrorist incidents globally. Last year alone, I am talking about 2015, over 90 countries experienced terrorist attacks.

"Parents in 100 countries live with the daily pain of their children lost to the battlefields of Syria. And, in a globally mobile world, one incident can claim citizens of many nations," he said.

He said terrorism is a "daily threat" from the centres of conflict in West Asia to calm cities in distant countries and in remote villages of Africa to the towns in our own region.

"Each day brings us terrible news and horrifying images of schools turned into graveyards of innocence, of prayer gatherings turned into funeral processions, of call to prayer or Azaan drowned by the sound of explosion, of blood on the beach, massacres in malls and smouldering cars on streets, of thriving cities ruined and priceless heritage destroyed, and of parents bearing coffins, entire communities dislocated, millions displaced, and refugees caught between fire and stormy seas," the Prime Minister said.

Modi said the conference should send a message to the world of "a melody of harmony and humanity, the embrace of diversity, the spirit of oneness, of service with compassion and generosity, a resolve against terrorism, a rejection of extremism and, a determination to advance peace".
At least two farmers from each of the 6,000-odd blocks in the country will participate in the three-day mega kisan mela to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.

The fair, with which the Modi government is trying to reach out to the farmers battered by two consecutive droughts and a record drop in product prices, will also see participation from a host of private input providers, scientists, researchers, marketing and finance executives, etc.

The nine technical sessions to be held during the mela would be telecast live. The technical sessions will include interaction on new crop insurance scheme, horticulture and fisheries, marketing, livestock, and processing and value addition. At the event, Modi will also give away 'Krishi Karman Awards' to states and progressive farmers who have made outstanding contribution in the field of . He will also visit the theme pavilion and address farmers.

Krishi Karman Awards would be given away to eight states - Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Meghalaya, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal - for 2014-15. The commendation awards would be given to three states - Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa.

In a related development, after the recent rain and hailstorm, Punjab has shown interest in adopting the Prime Ministers new crop insurance scheme. Initially, Punjab government was not keen to adopt Fasal Bima Yojana and Weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) as the state's production variability was low due to assured irrigation.

After seeing the damage due to recent unseasonal rains and hailstorm, Punjab has expressed its desire to implement PMFBY and WBCIS for crops having high production variability, particularly cotton and major crops, in the areas bordering Rajasthan, PTI quoted a senior agriculture ministry official as saying.

The state government will meet on March 23 at Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana to explore the possibilities of implementing PMFBY and WBCIS. Even senior officials from the Union agriculture ministry would be present in the meeting, the official added. Unseasonal rains and hailstorm in the past few days in some parts of Punjab have affected wheat and other rabi crops. It is estimated that five-seven per cent of wheat crop has been affected and the government is still assessing the extent of loss.
The country's capital is in the vortex of a water war between Haryana and Punjab, thanks to the city chief minister's political ambitions.

In addition, there is the problem of a renewed agitation by Jats in Haryana, if the state's legislative assembly does not announce quotas in jobs and education for the community by the end of this month. Their earlier stir for this included blocking the Munak Canal that brings water to Delhi, causing a serious shortage.

Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of Delhi, told reporters: Doing politics over water is not good; people from Punjab and Haryana are also our own. Everyone should get water.



Unfortunately, Delhi might get hit for his not keeping to that please-all path. In the tussle between Punjab and Haryana on the Sutlej-Yamuna link canal, Kejriwal has supported Punjab's case. In retaliation, the government in Haryana has threatened to stop water supply, telling him to find and build an alternative to the Munak Canal.

The Jats have threatened a statewide stir from April 3, if not given reservations via legislation by March 31. In their earlier agitation, 30 people died, apart from stoppage of water to Delhi. That the renewed stir is a credible threat was clear as Union home minister Rajnath Singh consulted Haryana CM Manohar Lal on how water, rail and road connectivity could be secured if the Jats refused to be placated. On Thursday, Prime Minister Modi had called both Singh and Lal and told them he did not want to see a repetition of the February agitation.

The state government has promised that Jats will either be included in the list of backward classes or relevant amendments will be introduced in consultation with the Centre. The Haryana government is in a bind as the state cannot cross the 50 per cent cap on reservation and cannot include Jats in the existing BC category. Preparing for escalation, the state government on Friday blocked internet services in Rohtak district and truncated mobile telephone services. Rohtak was the epicentre of the February violence.

Rajnath Singhs junior minister, Kiren Rijiju, said the Centre was ready to provide paramilitary forces if Haryana needed these.

As for the water sharing dispute, scuffles broke out outside the Punjab and Haryana legislative assemblies, both located in Chandigarh, as MLAs of each tried to enter the other to protest each others stance. In Moga, Punjab's deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, said he was ready to "make any sacrifice" rather than allow a "single drop of water" to flow out of the state. Punjab has repeatedly said it will not allow the Sutlej-Yamuna canal to be built, regardless of what the Supreme Court says.
Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar on Friday proposed a tax on two- and three-wheelers for personal use while tabling the states Budget for 2016-17 with an estimated revenue deficit of Rs 3,644 crore.

At present, such vehicles are taxed at seven per cent. The minister proposed an eight per cent tax for vehicles up to 99 cc, nine per cent for 100-299 cc and 10 per cent for 300 cc and above. However, he proposed that the tax on vehicles in the name of companies, undertakings and on imported vehicles be levied at twice the respective rates.

Presenting the second Budget of the BJP-led government at a time when the state is reeling from a severe drought, Mungantiwar projected revenue mobilisation of Rs 2,20,810 crore against revenue expenditure of Rs 2,24,454 crore.

BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS Revenue receipt estimated at Rs 2,20,810 cr, expenditure at Rs 2,24,454 cr for 2016-17



Annual Plan size at Rs 56,997 cr



New tax proposals of Rs 301 cr, sugarcane purchase tax of Rs 710 cr exempted for factories complying with export obligation



Tax on petrol and diesel, which was imposed from October 1, 2015, to continue for another year



Mobile handsets purchased locally and sold in the course of inter-state trade to be eligible for set-off to the extent of the liability under the Central Sales Tax Act on their sales



Proposed tax on two- and three-wheelers based on engine capacity

Mungantiwar said the revenue deficit, which was estimated at Rs 3,757 crore by the end of 2015-16, had been revised to Rs 9,209 crore largely due to expenses incurred on drought relief in over 15,000 villages. He has proposed an allocation of Rs 25,000 crore for the farm sector after output declined 2.7 per cent against a target of six per cent growth.

For the irrigation sector, the minister proposed an allocation of Rs 7,850 crore against Rs 7,272 crore in 2015-16.

To make up for the revenue deficit, he pushed for new tax proposals of Rs 301 crore but he waived the sugarcane purchase tax of Rs 710 crore. The minister refrained from imposing tax on e-commerce on the lines of competing states and thereby indicated that the government was serious to promote the Digital India initiative.

He also proposed an amnesty scheme under the Industrial Policy 2013 for closed and un-revivable units.

He announced an amnesty scheme for professional tax enrollment holders with a provision that tax liability and penalty be restricted to the previous three years.

Further, according to a sales tax amnesty scheme, the interest and penalty for dues up to March 31, 2005, subject to full tax payment will be waived and for disputed dues from April 1, 2005, and March 31, 2012, subject to full payment and 25 per cent interest payment under the VAT Act, the balance dues will be waived.

Mungantiwar proposed exemption of VAT on warping and sizing of yarn for promoting the textile industry, increase in the turnover limit for composition to retailers under the Maharashtra VAT Act to Rs 1 crore from Rs 50 lakh, exemption of VAT on mammography machines used for detection of breast cancer, reduction in VAT on sterile water for injections to 5.5 per cent from 12.5 per cent and exemption of VAT on retrofit kits for vehicles for the physically handicapped.
Continuing its thrust on farm sector, the Odisha government in its fourth agriculture Budget, proposed a start-up fund for promotion of entrepreneurship in agri-business, agro-based industries and enterprises.

"The state government would launch an agri start-up programme to complement the efforts put in for promotion of agri-entrepreneurship in the state under the capital investment and farm modernisation programmes. Unemployed graduates in agriculture and allied sectors will be motivated to start agro-based enterprises", finance minister Pradip Amat said in his Budget speech.

With an outlay of Rs 13181.89 crore, 21 per cent higher over previous financial year, the Budget focuses on crop diversification from paddy to other cereals like maize and millets, pulses, oilseeds and other high value crops.

It has been planned to provide irrigation to one million hectares (ha) of cultivable land for a period of five years (2014-19), including 257,000 ha in 2016-17. The agriculture Budget has earmarked Rs 100 crore for construction of godowns under the Warehousing Infrastructure Fund of Nabard.

For drought affected farmers, the Budget offers an interest subvention of Rs 227.38 crore over a period of three years for conversion of short-term loan to medium term loan in the aftermath of the drought.

It has also been proposed to provide Rs 435.48 crore towards interest subvention to the farmers through the banks and primary agriculture cooperative societies. Farmers availing crop loan of up to Rs 50,000 will have to pay only one per cent interest on timely repayment.

The Budget provides Rs 800 crore as state share of the premium for the existing National Agriculture Insurance Scheme. Besides, Rs 300 crore has been earmarked under the recently launched Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.
The Prime Ministers Jan Suraksha insurance schemes have seen a number of claim rejections owing to fraudulent claims. Data show that out of the 25,398 claims filed with insurance companies, 800 were rejected for fraud.

Launched in May 2015, the Jan Suraksha schemes, which include Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Suraksha Bima Yojana, extend the benefits of life and general insurance to policyholders. There is also a pension scheme called Atal Pension Yojana that is part of the Jan Suraksha schemes.

According to insurance officials, fraudulent claims include policies being bought for dead people or for conditions that are pre-existent leading to death.

People in rural areas are not aware that proper documents are required to process claims, said an official with a large life insurer. Hence, they are taking the help of agents, some of whom are fraudsters who make use of the policy and take the claims.



The plans have a cover of Rs 2 lakh each, with a premium of only Rs 12 a year for accident insurance and Rs 330 for the life product. Not all insurance companies in the private sector have become a part of this scheme because the cover cost is low though servicing costs are high. It does not get business sense in the current premium rates, said a senior official of a private life insurance company. Insurance companies have said that while these schemes have enabled them to get business volumes owing to low premiums, pricing might not be sustainable in the long run. And, if premiums are increased, renewals might be a concern.

There are also concerns about the renewal rates since there have been cases of people not even knowing that their account has been debited for the policy. Since the premium is low and some policyholders may not even have realised that their account has been debited, these policies might not be renewed in the next financial year, said the head of underwriting at a mid-size private insurer.

Only some bank branches would handle claims, unlike in the case of other policies for which any branch can be approached. A public sector bank official said banks would have to keep some personnel ready to take care of claims.

As on March 16, a total of 29.5 million policies have been sold under the Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and 93.9 million policies have been sold under Suraksha Bima Yojana. Here, State Bank of India leads in selling the most number of policies in both life cover and accident insurance cover. From the next financial year, when the policy are renewed, there might be a revision in premiums based on claims data, said a senior executive with a life insurer.

PLUGGING LOOPHOLES
There has been reports published in some newspapers quoting that ECI to deploy Special Team for the first time in West Bengal, which is misinterpretative and misrepresentative of the fact and instructions issued by the Commission. The Commission has been sending teams to different States during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections based on the need in consultation with the Chief Electoral Officers of the State. .

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Election Commission of India has decided to send five Special teams to assist CEO West Bengal and the Commission in assessing the preparedness of the electoral machinery at the grass root level. The visit of such teams will be for period as determined by ECI in consultation with Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal and see the performance of ECI direction at grass root level by Official machinery. .

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At District level, the teams will interact closely with the District Magistrates/ District Election Officers and the Superintendents of Police .

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The Special Teams will take inputs from the CEO, West Bengal beforehand district wise and make a visit to the districts. On their return, they will give their feedback to the CEO and to the Commission. The Special Teams are being sent in batches to Assam and West Bengal. The other teams will also visit to other poll going states in the near future. .

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The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh chaired a high-level coordination meeting here today for the upcoming Global Bamboo Summit to be held in Indore next month. Dr. Jitendra Singh said that efforts must be made towards greater economic viability and social application/use of bamboo. Any project cannot succeed without these two elements, he added. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said that start-ups should be encouraged in this area and the economic stakes need to be generated for the success of the summit. He also suggested that such Bamboo summits should also be organized at the regional level e.g. in Mizoram. This will provide an identity to these states, he added. He also said that sustained efforts should be made for the long-term viability of these initiatives. He offered his full cooperation in the upcoming summit. He said that states from North East will participate in the summit by sending their delegates, artisans and setting up stalls in the summit. .

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The three-day Global Bamboo Summit will be held in Indore, Madhya Pradesh beginning April 8, 2016. It is being organized by Madhya Pradesh Government with National Bamboo Mission, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India and Indian Federation of Green Energy (IFGE). The summit aims at discussing and exchanging opinions about the challenges faced by different stakeholders, discussing policy framework and importance of Bamboo in economic and social development and to promote the enterprise development in this sector. Different sessions to be held in the summit will focus on Make in India with bamboo, mainstreaming bamboo in Government programmes, promoting of R&D for appropriate technology, streamlining policy and legal framework and bamboo as a change agent in poverty alleviation, employment generation and climate change. .

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Officials at the meeting discussed the statutory provisions regarding bamboo such as classifying Bamboo as a timber or a grass under the acts. This is proving to be major hurdles towards commercial exploitation of bamboo and as a result of ambiguity the inter-State transport and trade in bamboo is also hampered. They also emphasized that efforts need to be made in the direction of processing of bamboo for industrial use. They mentioned that North East has around 40% area under bamboo cultivation and Arunachal Pradesh is the leading state in it. They said that keeping in view the importance of bamboo for the north eastern economy, the summit should aim at discussing various issues pertaining to the commercial use of bamboo. .

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Shri Naveen Verma, Secretary, Ministry of DoNER and Resident Commissioners of North-Eastern States attended the meeting. Officers of NITI Aayog, North Eastern Council, IFGE and Ministry of Agriculture were also present on the occasion. .

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Mr. Anil Kumar Singh Gayan, Minister of Health and Quality of Life, Republic of Mauritius called on the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare ShriJagatPrakashNadda, here today. .

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Both sides acknowledged the traditionally close and friendly relations between the two countries. Health Minister of Mauritius recalled that the majority of the people in Mauritius have their ancestral roots in India. .

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Both sides discussed various bilateral issues on health cooperation. Mauritius have requested for Indias help in recruitment of Doctors, upgradation of JawaharLal Nehru Hospital, mutual recognition of medical degrees,assistance in upgrading medical education facilities, scholarships for trainings in Specialty Hospitals, setting up a State-of-the-Art Cancer Unit and assistance in procurement of medical equipment. India has assured of all possible help.During the meeting it was decided for constitution of a Joint Working Group by Mauritius under the Memorandum of Understanding on health cooperation, signed with Mauritius in 2013 so that specific details with road map could be worked out in the Joint Working Group meetings. .

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The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has accelerated its efforts on coordinating with States to achieve an open-defecation free status for all districts in the country. This is a part of the Ministrys activities under the Swachh Bharat Mission, a flagship programme of the Honble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi. Through the programme, the government is aiming to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by October 2nd, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. .

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Under this accelerated effort, the Minister of State, Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry, Shri Ram Kripal Yadav, launched the Water Week in Mohali, Punjab earlier this week. On the occasion, the Minister praised the work being done by Punjab State Government with peoples involvement in ensuring an Open Defecation Free (ODF) Punjab. The Minister praised the State government for ensuring that its efforts were reaching the actual beneficiaries on the ground in a transparent manner. The Minister especially lauded the involvement of school children in the efforts 11 lakh school children across 13000 schools have been reached out to in Punjab alone, and made Swachhta Doots. Shri SS Rakhra, Minister of Rural Development and Panchayat, Punjab Government, was also present at the event. .

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In the third edition of a series of meetings that the Ministry is holding with State Governments to support implementation in the field, the Secretary, Shri Parameswaran Iyer, today met the Chief Minister of Telangana and Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in Hyderabad. The Ministry also reached out to District Collectors of the two States via video conferencing to understand issues on the ground and to discover how the Union Government can help the States achieve the goal of an ODF India by 2019. .

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The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Shri N Chandrababu Naidu, appreciated the Union Government's step of reaching out to support the States and expressed his governments commitment to making at least 3 districts in Andhra Pradesh ODF by the end of the year. He also said that he was keen to push for bulk water supply in the State. The Chief Secretary of Telangana, Dr Rajiv Sharma, in another meeting, also assured the Secretary of Telanganas commitment to have 3 ODF districts by the end of the year. The Secretary lauded this resolve of both States and assured the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and Chief Secretary of Telangana of the Ministrys support in making this happen. .

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The senior officers and District Collectors of the two States held a vibrant and participative discussion with the Ministry, and shared ground level initiatives undertaken by them to realize the vision of the Swachh Bharat Mission. They also shared issues like dysfunctional toilets, delayed transfer of funds, and raised the need for capacity building support from the Centre. The Ministry took serious note of these issues and assured the Collectors that they will receive full support from the Centre in resolving them on high priority. .

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The Secretary emphasized at the meeting that while the government provides an incentive of Rs 12,000 for each toilet constructed by a BPL family, Swachh Bharat Mission is not just about construction of toilets. It is about making our villages and toilets open-defecation free, he said, for which we need to trigger behaviour change in the people. He shared that, to this end, the Ministry is looking to develop a Coalition of Partners", including participation from the public sector, private sector, and developmental agencies, to provide broad-based capacity building support to the States. He also emphasized that the district is a critical unit of action in this programme, and encouraged the District Collectors to lead the programme proactively to ensure success. At present 10 districts in India are ODF and the idea is to scale up this number through the leadership of Collectors, he said, encouraging them to integrate Swachh Bharat Mission with other developmental programmes of the government. .

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It was also agreed that the focus of the programme should be reoriented more towards collective behaviour change. To this effect, it was also suggested that the Gram Panchayats and Self Help Groups at the village level should be more actively involved. It was also agreed that Andhra Pradesh and Telangana .

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Prior to this, over the past 2 weeks, meetings were also held with the State Governments of Gujarat and Bihar at the Chief minister and Chief Secretary level, and the Ministry received an extremely positive response from both the States as the issues of water and sanitation are priority areas for both the States, and critical components of their service delivery at the rural level. .

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YSK
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Shri Kiren Rijiju has said that guarding the countrys open and porous borders is the most challenging assignment. Addressing the 19th Assistant Commandants Passing Out Parade at the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) Academy at Srinagar, Uttarakhand today, he said the SSB personnel are ably handling this difficult task on the borders with Nepal and Bhutan by being vigilant and at the same time conducting themselves with peace and affection. .

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On the occasion Shri Rijiju released the SSB magazine Alaknanda and presented trophies and the sword of honour to the graduating cadets. He also inspected the Parade and took the salute of the marching contingent. Eighteen cadets were inducted into the force as Officers. .

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Shri Rijiju was accompanied by the Director General, SSB, Smt. Archana Ramasundaram. .

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Railway Womens Welfare Central Organisation is the apex body of the chain of womens welfare organisations spread over all Indian Railways engaged in the task of welfare of railwaymen and their families through various need-based socio/welfare activities. .

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The organization started its activities in 1962 after Indo-China War, and while the primary concern of the Organisation is the welfare of Railway employees and their families, it has always risen to the call of the society and the nation- be it environmental awareness, family welfare drives, disturbances on the borders or the natural calamities. It is one of the fore-runner voluntary Organisations in the country today. .

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RWWCO also honours the services of selected women employees of Group-C & Group-D for their outstanding services. The purpose was to boost up the morale of those women, who show exemplary dedication, integrity and courage in discharge of their duties and who also work quietly in any other social field viz. Hospital, School, Sports, Blood Donation, Family Welfare Programme, Scouts & Guides etc. This year 30 such women employees were felicitated in a function held at National Rail Museum Auditorium, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi on 14th March, 2016. During the function, Shri A.K.Mital, Chairman, Railway Board, as Chief Guest, distributed merit certificates & cash awards to outstanding women employees in the presence of Smt. Rashmi Mital, President/RWWCO and Railway Board Members and senior officers from rail fraternity. .

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Later, a play named Court Martial written by Swadesh Deepak was presented by Asmita Theatre. Shri Arvind Gaur is the Director of this theatre and is known is known for his contemporary and thought-provoking plays. .

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(Photograph is also available at PIB website pib.nic.in)
The parent company of The is planning to cut 250 jobs, including 100 in the newsroom, as it attempts to balance the books within three years, the newspaper reported on Thursday.

Editor-in-chief Katharine Viner and chief executive David Pemsel sent a joint email to staff saying that the "volatile media environment" had led to an "urgent need for radical action", but that they hoped the redundancies would all be voluntary. Operating losses amounted to 58.6 million ($84.8 million, euro 75.0 million) in the year to the end of March 2015, according to the online report.

A spokeswoman for News and Media confirmed that the company was consulting on proposals "to reduce our UK headcount" but declined to give numbers.

She said there were "no plans" to close The Guardian's sister Sunday newspaper, The Observer.

"In January we unveiled our strategy to address the balance of costs and revenues across Media Group, targeting new revenue streams and a 20 per cent overall reduction in our current cost base, with an aim to break even at an operating level by 2018/19," the spokeswoman said.

"Today we have shared with colleagues a series of proposals, which include plans to reduce our UK headcount.

These proposals form the basis of a consultation process, which begins today."



The proposal is to cut the UK workforce by 18 per cent, or 310 jobs, according to theguardian.com report.

About 60 positions remain unfilled, so the company is hoping to cut 100 jobs from the 725-strong editorial workforce and 150 from commercial and support departments.

The Guardian also employs 210 people in its US and Australian operations, who will be unaffected. The consultation is due to last for eight weeks. The news comes at a turbulent time for newspapers, as they struggle to adapt to falling advertising revenues.

Next week The Independent will print its last edition and become a digital only newspaper, after paid circulation slumped to about 40,000.

As well as the job cuts, The Guardian has given up on plans to turn a former train depot in London's King's Cross area, the Midland Goods Shed, into an events space.
A morning run can be the perfect way to overcome jet lag, but usually not when it's through the choking haze of auto exhaust and industrial discharge.

In a Friday morning post, Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his arrival in Beijing with a blithe message about what must have been a dizzying jog through the centre of China's capital, which has been suffering from a weeklong bout of hazardous air pollution.

"It's great to be back in Beijing! I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven," . Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, likely using a virtual private network to get around the Chinese government Internet filters, which block his site.

In a photo accompanying the post, made about 10:30 am, Zuckerberg smiles alongside several running companions in front of the famous portrait of Mao Zedong that overlooks Tiananmen Square. At 9 am an air-quality monitor at the United States Embassy in Beijing calculated the level of PM2.5, ultrafine particles that damage respiration, at 305 micrograms per cubic meter. That level is deemed "hazardous" under American air-quality standards.

The colour of the sky was the sort of grey hue that indicates a bad pollution day. The faint smell of something burning hung in the air. Many children on buses, or scooting to school with their parents or nannies, wore face masks. In homes and offices, air purifiers were cranked up to the highest setting.

The background for the photo of Zuckerberg's run, directly in front of the Forbidden City at the centre of Beijing, is normally public-relations friendly. But by ignoring the air quality, Zuckerberg inadvertently stirred an online debate about China's major air pollution problems.

During the past two years, Zuckerberg has made several high-profile trips to China and has done little to stifle conjecture about his ambitions to bring Facebook to the country. During a visit by China's Internet czar, Lu Wei, to Facebook's campus in the United States in 2014, Zuckerberg showed off a copy of a collection of speeches and propaganda directives by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

Zuckerberg has also been public with his personal project of learning Mandarin. In two recent trips to Beijing, Zuckerberg has spoken Chinese, the first time in an informal chat at China's Tsinghua University and the second time in a more formal speech about his plans for Facebook.

On Facebook, responses to Zuckerberg's run ran the gamut from mocking to genuinely concerned about his health.

One user, Christina Tan, sought to warn Zuckerberg: "Mark, don't u see the air pollution? Stop running outside! Beijing is my home, but I'm not recommending you run outside."



Although some noted he should have worn a face mask, joked about his ability to access Facebook despite the Chinese government's cracking down on ways to get around the so-called Great Firewall, which keeps Chinese users cordoned off from the wider internet.

simply took umbrage with where the photo was staged, at the heart of Tiananmen Square.

"The floor you stepped has been covered by blood from students who fought for democracy. But, enjoy your running in China, Mark. :)," wrote a user named Cao Yuzhou.

Within China, news of Zuckerberg's run was quickly picked up by the tech media. On China's Weibo, the microblogging service, Chinese users were as sarcastic as those on Facebook.

One named Bpxue wrote, "He climbed over the Great Fire Wall to breathe in smog. He's trying too hard!"



Another wrote, "Shoot, he is running without a face mask, no wonder it's called fei si bu ke," a reference to a sarcastic nickname for Facebook in China that roughly translates to "must die" or "doomed."



2016 The New York Times News Service
has rallied 17% to Rs 260 on the BSE after the company announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the branded rice business of Hindustan Unilever (HUL).

The acquisition includes the acquisition of Brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana which have been in business for some decades, LT Foods, owner of Daawat, said in a statement.

The acquisition will strengthen our position in the middle eastern market, as it gives of Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain UAE and Kuwait in addition to strengthening our existing presence in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait," it added.

The company said the total cost of the acquisition is Rs 25 crore which is subject to closing adjustments and Competition Commission of India approval. The said acquisition will be funded by debt and internal accruals.

At 10:42 AM, the stock was up 12% at Rs 250 on the BSE. The trading volumes on the counter multiple-folds with a combined 347,836 shares changed hands on the BSE and NSE.

HUL on the other hand was down 1% at Rs 842 after hitting low of Rs 839 on the BSE.
A Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has given a report after examining issues raised by a whistle-blower on the algorithmic and high frequency trading systems of the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

The report is critical of some aspects of the systems. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, chairman of the TAC and a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, said: "We have done what we needed to. You have to check with Sebi."



An e-mail seeking comments, sent to the Sebi spokesperson on Thursday, did not elicit a response.

A second person directly involved described the report as "hard hitting." He said it was with the Sebi chairman. An NSE spokesperson did not offer any comment.
New Delhi, 18 (ANI): Story: India's food and hospitality sector is poised for a huge growth. The Indian food market is expected to touch 482 billion USD by 2020, whereas the hospitality sector is considered a major attraction for FDI with the compound annual growth rate of 14 percent.

The 31st edition of the International Food and Hospitality Fair, AAHAR 2016, was recently organized at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.

The fair assumed significance, since in the recent Budget, the government gave special focus to the farm sector and decided to allow up to 100 percent FDI in marketing of food items produced and manufactured locally.

Over 800 exhibitors, along with new and young entrepreneurs, took part in the mega 5-day long exhibition.

Opening new avenues of investment for global investors, the fair featured the Government of India's famed initiatives like start-up India, Skill India, Make In India and many others.

CHENOY, participant from Hyderabad, said "This Make In India concept is the initiative that we taken this time after PM Modi started this campaign a year back. We thought we should also take the initiative and then we finally we come out with this masterpiece. This is a lion which is made out of only chocolate and nothing else is used in this. We have used around 70kg of chocolate just to promote make in India concept."

In order to promote food processing industries, the Government of India took several initiatives to exploit the potential of domestic and international market for processed food products. Some of the major initiatives include inauguration of the first of its kind Rs. 136 crore mega international food park at Dabwala Kalan in Punjab, in the Budget 2015-16, a corpus of Rs. 2,000 crore (300 million USD) was created under Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to provide cheaper credit to food processing industry.

In the AAHAR fair, 2016, as many as 70 overseas participants from 17 countries showcased food products, beverages, ingredients and much more.

Participant from Poland added, "We are looking for customers. We would like to promote our technology and products in the territory of India and we know that India is rapidly growing and we will use both India possibility and development both. We would like to sell products for Indian customers."

The mega food and hospitality fair attracted top businessmen, industrialists and organisations from the food processing and hospitality sector.

GAJANAN, participant from Indore, said: "I had heard of this trade fair before and this is the first time that I have participated here. Though, it is the first date but the public response is very good and we hope in the coming days the response will be better. I believe that small scale companies should participate in such fairs as this is a very good opportunity for them."

AARTI GUPTA, further said, "It is a very good place for food industry people to come over here and explore".

India has location advantage as it is geographically close to key export destinations like Middle East and South East Asia.

Moreover, greater momentum from the top echelons of the government and improvements in product and packaging quality, along with private sector participation, pave the way for India's growth story.
Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that India is a land of diversity in terms of language, social practices, dialects and culture, adding community radio can be a powerful tool to revive culture and languages that are dying.

Jaitley, who inaugurated the sixth Community Radio Sammelan here, said the community radio can also be useful in promoting health and education.

He said radio, which is one of the oldest broadcasting mediums, has to be encouraged as it reaches easily to the larger section of the society.

The Union Minister further said 191 community radio stations are currently working and more than 400 new stations have been permitted.

He said the growth of community radio will be visible in the next few months.

Speaking on the occasion, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore said community radio can play a vital role to empower the people and to inform them about the government's plans and policies.

He said the government is doing everything to promote community radio across the country.

The conference will bring together community radio operators, policy makers, ministries, departments, international bodies like UNICEF and UNESCO and other stakeholders for exchange of ideas and cross learning.

The meet will also hold talks on community radio movement in the country and its role in setting the agenda for discourse on development at the local level.

The three-day conference will also discuss on issues such as role of community radios in good governance and community learning and promoting livelihoods, water conservation, financial inclusion and literacy.
Honeywell Automation India Limited announced appointment of Suresh Senapaty as its Additional Director (Non-Executive, Independent), and Chairman of Board of Directors.

Suresh will be responsible for contributing to HAIL's overall strategy and to provide counsel on corporate governance, business, and financial matters. He succeeds Surendra. L. Rao, who served as member of the Board of Directors of HAIL since January 2002.

"Suresh's global and local experience will provide the right financial vision for a company like HAIL, which brings both global technology expertise, and local capabilities to address the unique needs of Indian customers," said Managing Director HAIL Vikas Chadha.

"We are also grateful to Rao for his contribution to HAIL over the last 14 years. He leaves behind a legacy of strong governance and values at the company," added Chadha.

Suresh has proven industry experience spanning more than three decades in finance, governance, and strategy. He has held leadership and board positions at several Wipro companies, having previously led its finance function across its information technology, consumer care, infrastructure engineering, and healthcare businesses.

Commenting on his appointment, Suresh said, "Honeywell technologies help solve some of the world's toughest challenges in energy efficiency, safety, security, and productivity. Honeywell is also equally local, with many decades of service in India. I am excited to be part of this company and look forward to see the grow in India."

HAIL is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE), and offers integrated industrial process automation and control solution for oil and gas and other industries; environmental and energy solutions; building solutions; and sensing and productivity solutions for homes, and industrial and commercial facilities; global manufacturing; and global services.
After the alleged exes filed legal lawsuits against each other, Hrithik Roshan for the first time opened up about the feud and released an official statement, which, as per Kangana Ranaut's lawyer, is just to grab media's attention.

Claiming that the issue has been hyped up in public and the general people are not aware about the complete truth, the 42-year-old actor broke his silence on the matter through his official statement.

The 'Bang Bang' star's statement claimed that out of respect for everyone involved, he followed the legal path to resolve the matter in question so as to keep it private.

He also addressed the cyber crime in regard to the faux e-mail id that used his name, saying that he filed a complaint against the same in 2014 and reactivated it in 2016, adding that he has no connection with the id.

Meanwhile, Kangana's lawyer Rizwan Siddique claimed that the actor gave out his statement just to get public sympathy, adding that he cannot wash his hands off the matter now after having criminally threatened his client and having intimidated her, without any provocation.

The drama started when Hrithik filed a defamation law suit against the 'Queen' star over her 'silly exes' comment she passed in an interview with Pinkvilla. Few days ago Kangana filed a counter suit against Hrithik.

Recently, one of Kangana's unnamed friend gave an interview to Mumbai Mirror and revealed how Hrithik was after Kangana and proposed to her in Paris and then parted his ways with the actress.

Hrithik also alleged that during the outdoor shoot of 'Krrish 3,' Kangana, in a drunken stupor, created a scene in front of him and her sister Rangoli and even claimed that she is suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, but Kangana denied the claims.
New Delhi, Mar.18 (ANI): India will be sending two observers to oversee and report on the March 20 snap parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan.

In an interview to ANI on Friday, Kazakhstan's Ambassador to India Bulat Sarsenbayev said elections would be held to elect members of the Senate (Upper Chamber) and the Mazhilis (Lower Chamber), as well as for members of the Maslikhat or local municipalities.

Hailing India's long-term support to Kazakhstan and the expanding bilateral relationship between the two countries in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to his country in July last year, Ambassador Sarsenbayev said New Delhi has agreed to send Mrs. Saleema Singh, Chief Election Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh and Inderveer Singh, Editor of the Business Central Asia as international election observers for the March 20 polls.

"This election is a very important event for the people of Kazakhstan. Kazakh citizens living in Delhi will also come to vote at the embassy. This election is important for both political as well as economic reasons. We were scheduled to hold the elections in autumn (November -December 2016), but our government and our president (Nursultan Nazarbayev) came to a view that holding two elections towards the end of the year would be very expensive and an economic drain," Ambassador Sarsenbayev told ANI.

The Kazakh envoy further revealed that the parliamentary elections being held this time is unique in the sense that they would be party-based rather than people-based i.e. six political parties would publish the list of their contesting candidates and the vote would be cast for these candidates.

He said that the 98 directly-elected members of the Mazhilis would be elected from a single nation-wide constituency via proportional representation with a seven percent electoral threshold. He said the seats would be allocated using the largest remainder method, and added that if the parties have equal largest remainders, the party that registered first would be awarded the parliament seat. He further said that if only one party crosses the threshold, the party with the second highest number of votes would be awarded at least two seats.

Ambassador Sarsenbayev said that the Assembly of People, a body selected by the president, elects a further nine members.

The Kazakh envoy revealed that about 10,825 candidates would be contesting for seats in the Maslikhats (local legislatures), and all of them were busy making last minute appeals to voters across the nation.

He said that the six parties vying for the 98 Mazhilis seats were the President Nursultan Nazarbayev-led Nur Otan Party, which was a dominant presence till the dissolution of the Mazhilis on January 20, 2016; the right-centrist and pro-business Ak Zhol Democratic Party; the Communist People's Party; the left of centre agrarian-based Auyl Party; the National Social Democratic Party (NSDP) and the centrist Birlik (Unity) party.

Apart from the two Indian observers, he informed that the Central Election Commission of Kazakhstan has announced 813 other registered international observers to satisfy global opinion about the elections being held in a democratic, transparent, free and fair manner. He added that the foreign ministry of Kazakhstan has accredited 140 foreign reporters to cover the upcoming vote.

"As an ambassador, this is an important event for Kazakhstan as we are electing a parliament for five years. Our president announced five institutional reforms (1) formation of a modern, professional and independent public service (2) Strengthening rule of law, reforming property rights, improving conditions for entrepreneurial activity and protecting contractual obligations (3) Diversified industrialisation and economic growth (4) Further strengthening a common Kazakhstan identity based on citizenship and equal rights and (5) Transparency and accountability of the state. Kazakhstan is a presidential republic going in for democratic reforms, and is aiming for more powers for the parliament and the government. This is part of the overall move towards the democratisation of Kazakhstan," Sarsenbayev said.

With President Nazarbayev making it very clear that Kazakhstan faces a difficult time in the coming months and years, the campaign for what has been a low-key election, kicked off formally on February 20 this. It has provided the opportunity for a public debate on the direction the country will take and the priorities that it sets for itself for the future and the decisions and policies that it introduces to achieve them.

Kazakhstan's commitment to international monitoring can be gauged by the fact that the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has already put in place a core 40-strong team and will be joined by observers from the Council of Europe, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and several interested countries. Each of them will be given the help needed to see for themselves how the elections are conducted.

Preliminary results will be announced two to three days after the elections.
Russia believes there are still no substantial reasons to justify President Vladimir Putin's visit to Islamabad.

Russian Ambassador Alexey Dedov, who was delivering a lecture on Pak-Russia relations at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), said the visit should have some substance.

"As soon as the substance is ready, we can discuss the visit," Dawn quoted Alexey as saying.

The Russian envoy defined the substance as 'signing of documents' for cooperation, 'preparation of plans' for expanding ties and 'declarations'.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was then hastily dispatched to Islamabad to explain the cancellation.

It was speculated that Putin could visit Pakistan for performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the project after Russia agreed to invest in the two billion dollars North-South gas pipeline project for carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Karachi to Lahore.

Putin had planned a visit to Islamabad in October 2012 for attending a quadrilateral summit between Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, but cancelled it at the eleventh hour.

The Russian Ambassador said that the upcoming SCO meeting in Tashkent would provide a good opportunity for a meeting between Putin and Pakistan Prime Miniter Nawaz Sharif.

The two leaders last met on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Ufa in July 2015.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) is expected to put up a massive show of strength by organising a congregation on its 32nd foundation day.

The preparations for the public gathering this evening are underway, which is the first major party event after former party leader Mustafa Kamal came back to the country earlier this month along with another disgruntled leader Anis Kaimkhani.

The duo formed a political party, which so far includes mostly sidelined leaders of the MQM.

Party spokesperson Aminul Haque said thousands of chairs have been placed at Jinnah ground, which is adjacent to party headquarters Nine Zero, adding a 60 by 20 stage has been setup as the event is expected to draw large crowd, reports Dawn.

MQM supremo Altaf Hussain will be addressing the crowd via video link, dispelling rumours circulating about his ill-health, Haque added.

MQM dissident Anis Kaimkhani had on Friday called for an end to differences between Urdu-speakers and Sindhis while emphasizing on unity in the province.
North Korea has fired two medium-range ballistic missiles into the sea, US and South Korean officials said.

They said the missile, launched off the east coast, flew about 800km (500 miles) and fell into the water.

North Korea has not commented on the reports yet.

South Korea's military said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the country's southwest at 5:55 a.m. on Friday and flew 800 km before crashing off into the East Sea, also known as Sea of Japan, reports AL JAZEERA.

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off the radar early into its flight.

Both missiles are believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

United States President Barack Obama earlier imposed new sanctions on Pyongyang after its recent 'illicit' nuclear test and satellite launch.

The launches came amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea rejected the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions imposed earlier in March in response to a nuclear test conducted in January.

The January 6 nuclear test and February 7 satellite launch were violations of existing UN sanctions.

With a maximum range of 1,300 km, the Rodong would have the capability to reach all of South Korea and parts of Japan.

Moreover, North Korea has threatened to launch a 'pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice' against the US and South Korea.

Last week, Pyongyang fired two short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong-un ordered more nuclear weapons tests and missile tests to improve attack capability.

The US State Department said that it was closely monitoring the situation and urged North Korea to refrain from any actions which could 'further raise tensions'.

South Korea also condemned North Korea's move, calling it a direct challenge to the UN Security Council and the international community, while Japan lodged a protest through its embassy in Beijing.
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that North Korea has launched a ballistic missile off the east coast of the Korean peninsula.

According to CNN, the South Korean military said it was closely tracking and monitoring the situation and maintaining a readiness posture for any North Korean provocation.

The development comes a week after North Korea fired two missiles from North Hwanghae province, south of Pyongyang, toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned North Korea's actions and called on the country "to exercise self-restraint" adding that Japan would take "precautionary measures," including surveillance.
Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Sher Bahadur Deuba, the newly-elected Nepali Congress (NC) president, held a meeting at the former's residence in Baluwatar on Friday.

Prime Minister Oli congratulated Deuba and extended his best wishes for his successful tenure, read a press statement issued by PM Oli's press advisor Pramod Dahal, reports The Himalayan Times.

The Prime Minister also apprised Deuba about the agenda of his upcoming visit to China, the statement read.
Pakistan's High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, on Friday expressed his disappointment after five of his colleagues were denied travel permission by New Delhi for tomorrow's World Twenty20 match between the arch-rivals here but admitted that he was looking forward to the forthcoming game.

"I am very glad to be here but obviously somewhat sad that my colleagues, who wanted to come to India, couldn't come. But in any case, we are looking forward to an exciting match," said Basit upon his arrival in Kolkata on the eve of the mouth-watering clash.

Basit was also seen satisfied with security arrangements for the high-octane clash and expressed hope that the two countries would be able to ease their strained relations through the match.

"So far, there are no issues. Let's hope everything goes alright and we are looking forward to a great match tomorrow. This match is all about creating goodwill and let's hope that the two countries will be able to build on this," he added.

MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup had yesterday said that India had granted travel permission for 19 Pakistan High Commission officials and was prepared to consider more such requests.

The Indian Government had on Tuesday denied travel permits to five Pakistani officials, who wanted to visit Kolkata to watch the match, hinting that they are working for Pakistan's spy agency ISI.

The bickering over the issue escalated yesterday when Islamabad termed India's statement that it has allowed 19 mission officials as 'misleading'.

The Shahid Afridi-led team arrived in India last Saturday after the venue for the much-anticipated clash was shifted from Dharamsala to Kolkata due to security concerns.
The Punjab Assembly on Friday unanimously passed a resolution on the disputed issue of Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, stating that it would not be allowed to be constructed at any cost.

"The House has passed a resolution this morning in which all the political parties of the state have unanimously resolved that circumstances being what they are, the SYL cannot be built. They cannot allow it to be built in defiance of the rights of the state over its river waters," Harcharan Singh Bains, Advisor to Punjab Chief Minister said.

"The case before the Supreme Court (challenging government of India's power to distribute water between the states) must be decided before SYL can even be talked about," he added.

In a setback to Punjab, the apex court had Thursday directed maintenance of status quo on land meant for after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

The apex court in its interim order also appointed Union Home Secretary and Punjab's Chief Secretary and Director-General of Police (DGP) as the 'joint receiver' of land and other property meant for the canal till the next date of hearing on March 31, 2016.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had Thursday said that the state has no water to share, adding that the water crisis has occurred because the Riparian Act was not followed in the case of Punjab.

Badal's comment came a day after the Government of Haryana returned a cheque for Rs.191.75 crores to the Punjab Government following its refusal to accept poll-bound Punjab's push to pass a bill to return the land acquired for the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal.

In an attempt to prevent its neighbouring states from getting share from Punjab's river waters, the state assembly unanimously passed a bill against the construction of SYL canal, providing transfer of proprietary rights back to the land owners free of cost.
Following the threat of another upheaval by the Jat community over reservation, the Haryana government will hold talks with Jat leaders in Chandigarh today.

According to reports, the leaders will meet Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police, and till then will not resume the agitation.

Various Jat organisations had, on Monday, threatened to resume their quota agitation if the Haryana government does not meet their demand by yesterday.

Security has already been beefed up in the state. State Home Secretary said, the administration has called 100 companies of paramilitary forces to tackle any untoward situation.

Centre has also rushed 3,000 personnel of paramilitary forces to guard the Munak canal which supplies water to the capital as it was breached during the Jat agitation recently.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghursh Samiti President said, the state government must bring a Bill in the ongoing Assembly session to ensure reservation for Jats.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has assured that the government will table the bill in the House soon.

Earlier, at a press conference in Chandigarh, State Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said, the government is working on the bill.

When asked about the expiry of ultimatum, he said that the district administration has been given power to register cases under Security Act against the miscreants. He warned that arson will not be tolerated.Last month, the jat agitation had claimed 30 lives.

Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's aide Prof. Virender Singh, who was booked for sedition, criminal conspiracy and inciting violence during the agitation, was arrested yesterday. Rohtak Police said, Singh will be produced before a court and his custodial interrogation will be sought.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday reviewed the country's external and internal security situation during a meeting with the top military leaders here.

Sources, however, said that the meeting also addressed the controversial departure of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

The military brass appreciated the role played by the Prime Minister and federal ministers for removing the former military dictator's name from the Exit Control List.

"I personally pardoned Musharraf," Sharif was quoted by the Express Tribuneas saying during the meeting.

The meeting was officially convened to discuss the recent bus attack in Peshawar and the progress in the ongoing Operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said that the government was removing General (Retd.) Musharraf's name from the Exit Control List (ECL) under the Supreme Court's directives.
Transgender rights activist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi on Friday welcomed the RSS' support of de-criminalising homosexual relationships and said the statement made by RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale in this regard is very positive.

"I am glad that the joint general secretary of the RSS has made such statement and that too openly. I welcome his statement, which is very positive," Tripathi told ANI.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave yesterday, Hosabale, while replying to a question on whether homosexuality should remain a criminal offence under Article 377 of the IPC, said he doesn't think that homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society.

"Sexual preferences are private and personal. Why should RSS express its views in a public forum? RSS has no view on that. It is for people to have their way. Personal preference of sex is not discussed in RSS and we don't even want to discuss that," he said.

Section 377 of Indian Penal Code terms homosexuality as unnatural and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.

In a much-needed reprieve to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community, the Supreme Court had earlier in February referred the matter to a five-judge bench for further hearing on a curative petition challenging its earlier order.
Efforts are underway in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor area to rescue two leopards, which have fell into a well.

The forest department officials have reached the spot and have taken control of the situation, as villagers have started flocking the well to have a glimpse of the trapped leopards.

"We heard noises and came. When we saw it (leopard) was making noises inside the well. Then many people came started peeping into the well," said one of the villagers.
Hindustan Unilever fell 0.38% to Rs 846.10 at 9:17 IST on BSE, with the stock sliding at the onset of the trading session after the company said it has signed an agreement for the sale of its rice exports business to a group company of LT Foods.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Shares of LT Foods were up 7.3% at Rs 239.70.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 89.54 points or 0.36% at 24,766.91.

On BSE, so far 1,686 Hindustan Unilever (HUL) shares exchanged hands as against average daily volume of 1.94 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock hit a high of Rs 851 and a low of Rs 843 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 950.40 on 13 April 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 765.35 on 27 January 2016.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 216.39 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

HUL announced that it has signed an agreement for the sale of its rice exports business carried out primarily under the brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana to LT Foods Middle East DMCC, a group company of LT Foods. HUL's decision to divest is in line with its strategy to exit non-core businesses, while continuing to drive its growth agenda in the core packaged foods business. The deal envisages transfer of the brands and inventory for a consideration of Rs 25 crore, subject to adjustments on closing. The transaction is subject to fulfillment of certain conditions and the parties will work together to complete this over the next few months, HUL said. HUL will continue to manage the business until the completion of the transaction, it added.

HUL's net profit declined 22.4% to Rs 971.40 crore on 3.2% growth in net sales to Rs 7822.86 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014.

HUL is a leading fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company.

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Hindustan Unilever (HUL) announced that it has signed an agreement for the sale of its rice exports business carried out primarily under the brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana to LT Foods Middle East DMCC, a group company of LT Foods. HUL's decision to divest is in line with its strategy to exit non-core businesses, while continuing to drive its growth agenda in the core packaged foods business. The deal envisages transfer of the brands and inventory for a consideration of Rs 25 crore, subject to adjustments on closing. The transaction is subject to fulfillment of certain conditions and the parties will work together to complete this over the next few months, HUL said. HUL will continue to manage the business until the completion of the transaction, it added. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

MOIL said that the state government of Madhya Pradesh has granted mining lease over 48.974 hectare in village Lugma, Tehsil Paraswada of Balaghat District in Madhya Pradesh in favour of the company. The lease has been executed and registered by the company, MOIL said. This area falls under Ukwa mine of the company. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFCL) said that it proposes to issue 250 secured non-convertible redeemable debentures with a face value of Rs 10 lakh each aggregating to Rs 25 crore on private placement basis. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Crompton Greaves (CG) said it won an order of $35 million (Rs 236 crore approximately) from PT PLN (Persero), the state-owned electricity company of Indonesia, to manufacture and install 28 power transformers ranging from 83.3 mega-volt ampere (MVA) to 167 MVA and rated voltage 500 kilovolt (kV)/150 kV. CG's power transformers will be installed across PT PLN's transmission network, spread over multiple substations and power plants in the Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan provinces of Indonesia. The delivery period is scheduled between May 2016 and March 2017. The power transformers will be manufactured in CG's manufacturing facility in Indonesia. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Religare Enterprises said that meeting of investment and borrowing committee of board of directors of company is scheduled to be held on 22 March 2016 to consider and approve the raising of funds through issue of non-convertible debentures (NCD) on private placement basis. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Oil India said that Moody's Investor Service has confirmed credit rating of 'Baa2' to the company's senior unsecured regular bond/debenture. The outlook is stable. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Dhanuka Agritech said it has received a licence to manufacture insecticides from Joint Director of Agriculture (Plant & Protection), Rajasthan. Insecticides will be manufactured at the company's unit situated at Keshwana, Kotputli (Jaipur), Rajasthan. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

Hinduja Foundries said that the finance committee of the board of directors of the company has decided opening the global depository receipts (GDR) issue on 18 March 2016. Further, a meeting of the finance committee of the board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on 21 March 2016, to consider and determine the issue price of the GDRs offering. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 17 March 2016.

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Seeking a thorough review of India's trade -opening agreements like FTAs and PTAs, ASSOCHAM has said the country's exports in 2016-17, would be reversing back to near about the level of 2010-11, making it imperative for the government to come out with a fresh strategy to stem continuous fall in exports.

With a 16-18 per cent contraction, exports will aggregate around USD 260 billion, a level quite close to USD 251 billion attained in 2010-11. This is the lowest since the exports broke the USD 300 billion-mark for the first time in 2011-12 with USD 306 billion, the ASSOCHAM said.

Dropping for the 15th month in a row, cumulative value of exports for the period April-February 2015-16 was USD 238.42 billion as against USD 286.30 billion registering a negative growth of 16.73 per cent.

How severe is the situation can be gauged from a possibility that it would take another few years, maybe not before 2017-18, before we retrieve the export levels achieved 2011-12. That would be a seven-year reversal, ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat said, impressing on the government that while the external sector would remain challenging, new game plan including review of the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Preferential trade Agreements (PTAs) should be devised.

India has signed many trade pacts, more for geo-political reasons rather than commercial reasons. One case is the South Asian Free Trade Agreement, which has not resulted in any significant export gains. India's trade deficit has widened with the ASEAN. Further, most of India's preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are shallow in terms of product coverage.

For example, the India-Mercosur PTA doesn't include textiles and apparel items, which face prohibitive import duties of up to 35 per cent.

India's pharmaceutical exports have not benefited from tariff reductions under the India-Japan CEPA, mainly because it's too cumbersome to deal with Japan's drug regulator. Japan allows the duty free import of apparel from India only if all of the raw materials used are of either Indian or Japanese origin, with an exception of 7 percent content by weight that can be sourced from third countries. No surprise, the utilization of India's PTAs for export promotion remains very low.

India's trade pacts have exacerbated inverted duty structure - high import duties on raw materials and intermediates, and lower duties on finished goods - that discourage the production and export of value-added items. Thus, apparel can be imported into India duty free while its raw material -manmade fibres attract an import duty of 10 percent. That makes little sense. Similarly, finished products such as laptops or cell phones can be imported more cheaply than all their parts (imported) separately because of duty inversion.

Despite all attempts at diversification, India's merchandise exports have a narrow base, with the top 20 categories accounting for four-fifth of the total exports. Even in top export categories like textiles, India is exporting low value commodities such as cotton yarn or apparel rather than technical textiles.

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A special NIA court has set free 10 Iranians and a Pakistani national who were detained in July last year by the Coast Guard and Kerala Police off the coast of Alappuzha.

The 11 men were on board Iranian dhow "Barooki" when they were intercepted by the Coast Guard and state police following intelligence inputs.

The 12th man on board was the captain of the dhow, an Iranian national called Abdul Majid Balouch, who has been charged by the NIA court with a minor violation of marine laws.

Balouch will have to spend some more time in Kakkanad Jail near here, where the 12 men have been lodged. His case will be heard on March 28.

An official of the Kakkanad Jail on Friday said they were waiting for the court order.

"All of them are in high spirits since last evening (Thursday) after they heard that they have been set free. Now, as and when the court order comes to us, these 11 people will be free within 30 minutes," said the jail official who did not wish to be identified.

After their dhow was seized, the men were first taken to a court near Vizhinjam near the state capital, which sent them to judicial custody.

The case was soon handed over to the National Investigation Authority (NIA), after some documents was recovered from the dhow that suggested a Pakistani connection.

On Thursday the NIA court exonerated all of them except the captain of the dhow, who will have to spend some more time in jail as he has been charged under sections relating to violation of marine laws.

"Since these people are foreign nationals, they will be handed over to their embassy officials who will make arrangements for their onward journey," said the jail official.
At least 12 people were killed on the spot on Friday when a private bus collided with a truck in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, a senior police officer said.

Another 17 people were injured in the accident near Singhana, Superintendent of Police Rajesh Hingankar said. The bus driver was among those killed.

The bus was moving from Kukshi to Dhamnod when it collided with an oncoming truck.
Embark on a new vision for India-Indonesia relations in the 2015-2025 decade, a boy's plight to fulfil his father's last wish, a girl's journey from being a tomboy to a reluctant woman in progress; a love story of two opposites that ends on a bittersweet and poignant note. Check out the weekend book fare that the IANS bookshelf offers.

1. Book: Masala Bumbu; Edited by Gurjit Singh; Publisher: Berita Satu; Pages: 229; Price: Not Specified

Written by Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Gurjit Singh, the book is a labour of love on how the relationship between two countries can be intensified.

Published to mark last year's 'Sahabat India' festival, it serves as the platform for a broader agenda for future cooperation and intensification of the the India-Indonesia relationship.

2. Book: Daddy's Boy; Author: Shandana Minhas; Publisher: HarperCollins; Pages: 219; Price: Rs. 499

Asfandyar Ikram, the protagonist had no idea of his father Anis Nabi's existence till the day he learns of his death. He arrives in Karachi for the last rites and discovers his father had some last wishes but which are kept secret by the deceased's three friends.

Instead, a mysterious woman arrives to distract him. Will Asfandyar be able to uncover his father's wishes? Read to know!

3. Book: The Spectacular Miss; Author: Sonia Bahl; Publisher: FingerPrints; Pages: 234; Price: Rs. 250

Eight-year-old Nira had only one over-powering wish - to be a boy. She steps into her brother's clothes and becomes the gang leader of neighbourhood boys.

Her family shapes her personality and a poignant relationship with her brother's best friend shapes her life. The book compiles a hilarious journey of Nira, her growing up as a tomboy and turning into a reluctant woman in progress,

4. Book: You Are the Best Wife; Author: Ajay K Pandey; Publusher: Srishti Publishers; Pages: 240 Price: Rs. 175

Ajay and Bhavna are people with contradictory ideologies who fall in love. While Ajay believes in living for self, Bhavna teaches him to live for others. But destiny has other plans for them.

Based on a true story, the book conveys the heart-warming story of Ajay and Bhavna, how Bhavna's last words became a strength for Ajay who lives to fulfil his promise of love.
Leading aircraft maker Airbus on Friday announced that it is establishing a world-class pilot and maintenance training centre in the National Capital Region of Delhi, to support the county's need for new Airbus pilots.

Staffed by Airbus trainers, the new pilot training centre will have the capacity to train over 8,000 pilots and 2,000 maintenance engineers over 10 years from 2018 onwards. The company expects this to accelerate the pace of training to help match the A320neo deliveries to India.

The centre will be fully owned by Airbus Group India with training to be delivered by Airbus' specialised training instructors. The centre will be built in a modular concept in order to accommodate four A320 full-flight simulators, with potential to expand, the company said in a statement released during India Aviation 2016, the country's largest civil aviation event currently underway here.

Airbus has shortlisted suitable sites near the airport area of Delhi, and will soon work towards finalising the agreements for land, construction and simulator installation in 2017.

Airbus operates similar centres in the Americas, Europe and Asia covering Airbus' range of aircraft. The India centre will join this existing network and will welcome its customer pilots and engineers in 2018.

Airbus has been providing maintenance training from its existing centre in Bangalore since 2007, and has so far trained over 2,750 maintenance engineers.

According to Airbus' latest global market forecast, India requires over 1,600 passenger and freighter aircraft in the next 20 years to 2034, with an accompanying demand for new pilots and maintenance engineers.

"This investment in a training centre is a key strategic Airbus initiative in line with the country's skill India programme launched in 2015 by the Indian government to develop a wide range of advanced competencies. Airbus is committed to offering the best-in-class training skills comparable anywhere worldwide," said the statement.

"Our new training centre underscores Airbus' long term vision to equip pilots and engineers with superior flying and maintenance skills to operate and maintain contemporary and next-generation Airbus aircraft to be delivered to the airlines of India," said Kiran Rao, Airbus' EVP Strategy and Marketing.

"On an average, one Airbus aircraft per week is expected to be delivered to Indian carriers over the next 10 years. The need for top quality training will be perpetual," said Srinivasan Dwarakanath, president of Airbus Division in India.
A court hearing the bail plea of former Delhi University professor S.A.R. Geelani, arrested on sedition charges, was on Friday told Delhi Police that the allegations against him are grievous.

Additional Sessions Judge Deepak Garg will continue hearing the plea on Saturday.

Geelani, arrested after police registered a case against him for organising a meeting at Press Club on February 9 to mark the death anniversary of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, had moved a fresh bail application before the court on Wednesday.

In his application, he said he was in judicial c ustody since February 16 and no fruitful purpose would be served by keeping him in custody further. He also said that he had co-operated in the investigation and there was no evidence against him.

An earlier bail plea of Geelani, who is in judicial custody till March 30, was rejected by a magistrate on February 19. Police alleged that anti-national slogans were raised by a section of Kashmiri students at the event.
An Australian court on Friday sentenced three people to a maximum 15 months in prison in the country's first criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation.

Former midwife Kubra Magennis, 72, and the mother of the victims, whose name was not revealed, were convicted in November of mutilating two sisters in separate procedures during religious ceremonies at homes in Wollongong and Sydney's north-west between 2009 and 2012, ABC reported.

The girls were about seven at the time.

A third offender, senior community leader Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, was found guilty of acting as an accessory after the fact by directing community members to lie to police about the practice.

He was also sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.

The procedure, known as "khatna", involves nicking or cutting a girl's clitoris in the presence of several female elders and is considered a rite of passage by some members of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.

Supreme Court Judge Justice Peter Johnson said these kinds of cases were "difficult to prosecute" because of their "unusual and novel circumstances".

He said the mother of the two girls requested that the former nurse and midwife carry out the procedure.

All three offenders will be assessed for their suitability for home detention.
Some baby monkeys develop faster than others in the same population, and this is best explained by the threat of infanticide they face from adult males, says a study.

"Infanticide occurs in many animals, including carnivores like lions and bears, rodents like mice, and in primates," said lead researcher Iulia Badescu from University of Toronto.

"Typically, an adult male kills an infant sired by another male so that he can mate with the mother and sire his own infants with her," Badescu noted.

In this study that appeared online in the journal Animal Behaviour, the researchers looked at infant development in wild ursine colobus monkeys.

Black-and-white colobus includes several species of medium-sized monkeys found throughout equatorial Africa.

They have black bodies with white hair that sometimes forms a bushy white beard and sideburns, or can extend down the back like a 'cape' and down the tail.

Colobus babies are born pure white and their coat colour changes to grey after a few weeks before turning black-and-white between two and five months.

The researchers were intrigued by the fact that infants varied in the age at which their coats became grey, and then black and white.

They also realised that these colour transitions were helpful to track the development of the infants, in a non-intrusive fashion.

Earlier research at the study site, Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary in Ghana, established that some scenarios are more likely to lead to infanticide by males. Groups with multiple males, for example, have more instances of infanticide.

The team observed nine groups of ursine colobus monkeys in the wild over a period of eight years (2007 to 2014).

"We found that infants facing a greater risk of infanticide developed faster than infants facing lesser risk," Pascale Sicotte, professor at University of Calgary in Canada, explained.
Bangladesh needs active support from the Indian government to curb activities of inimical elements and hostile outfits active in the country, Bangladesh Liberation War Affairs Minister A.K.M. Mozammel Haque has said.

"The Bangladesh government and its people still require all-out support and help from the Indian government and its people to deal with the actions of inimical elements and hostile outfits active in the country," Haque said while addressing a book release programme here on Thursday night.

"The forces which do not want independent Bangladesh are still active in various conspiracies against the Awami League-led government. They are hatching diverse violent activities to disturb peace and development of Bangladesh," the visiting minister said.

He said: "The anti-liberation forces were active for 30 years even after independent Bangladesh emerged in 1971. The former Bangladesh governments headed by former presidents Ziaur Rahman and H.M. Ershad and former prime minister Khaleda Zia nurtured the anti-liberation forces for 30 years."

The minister said Dhaka would remain ever grateful to India for providing food and shelter to one crore hapless Bangladeshis, giving arms training and supplying arms and ammunition to the "Mukti Joddhas" (freedom fighters) to fight against the Pakistani forces in the 1971 Liberation War.

He said Bangladesh would remain grateful to the Indian soldiers who fought and sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Bangladesh.

"Our government has already decided to hold commemorative ceremonies in eight places in India to honour the martyrs. We have also decided to offer financial support to the families of those slain Indian Army men," Haque added.

Haque, along with Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, released two books written on founder of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, popularly known as "Bangabandhu".

Renowned Indian writer and researcher Debabrata Deb wrote the two books on the life, works and leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose 97th birthday was also celebrated here on Thursday.
The two-day BJP national executive beginning on Saturday will discuss the current political scenario, including the debate on "nationalism", while special focus is expected for the party's preparations in four major states going to the polls in April-May.

The meeting, the first since Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah assumed office for a full three-year term earlier this year, will begin with his speech and will culminate with an address by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Of the poll-bound states, BJP has high stakes in Assam where it is making a serious bid to come to power. It is also seeking to improve its performance in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The party is expected to comment in its political resolution on AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi's refusal to say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai".

"The political resolution will include the recent incidents of JNU and the issue of Owaisi's refusal to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' among others," a BJP leader told IANS.

BJP and some opposition parties including Congress have sparred over the central government's actions concerning the Jawaharlal University and Hyderabad University.

BJP had attacked Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over his visit to JNU following arrest of its student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition over alleged anti-India slogans raised at an event to mark the hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Gandhi had hit back, saying he does not need lessons in nationalism from BJP.

The national executive will have a special session to discuss party's preparations in Uttar Pradesh, which will go to the polls in 2017.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to speak on the budget and highlight its key features for dissemination among people. The party will also adopt an economic resolution.

"The budget presented is pro-poor and pro-village. So all the members would be asked to take this budget to common people," a party leader said.
The largest nuclear security centre in the Asia-Pacific region, which was financed by China and the US, started operations here on Friday.

The centre, constructed by the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) and the US Department of Energy, is capable of training about 2,000 nuclear-security staff for China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region every year, said CAEA chair Xu Dazhe.

Construction of the centre, which is the largest nuclear programme to have direct Chinese and US government investment, began in December 2013.
China has urged North Korea to comply with the UN resolutions and stop any action that might escalate tension on the Korean peninsula, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

The official made the remarks when asked to comment on North Korea firing of what South Korea's military assessed as a Rodong ballistic missile, Xinhua news agency reported.
Milan, March 18 (IANS/AKI) Police arrested an Egyptian in Italy's Milan city for allegedly attacking his wife in front of their daughter for giving him a lukewarm welcome, a daily reported on Friday.

The 52-year-old faces assault charges for allegedly attacking his wife at the family's apartment for failing to "welcome him warmly" after he returned home from a trip to Egypt.

Police called to the apartment found the women curled up on the floor with slight injuries. The couple's 22-year-old daughter was interviewed by police as a witness to the assault, according to Il Messaggero.

The Egyptian's wife refused to be taken to hospital and told police she and her husband had a stormy relationship. They run a travel agency together and he frequently went to Egypt leaving her to run the business single-handed, she said.

--IANS/AKI

mr/
At least eight people were on Friday killed in a gunfight between a militant group and security forces in the south Philippine province of Sulu, official said.

Seven members of Abu Sayyaf militant group and a government soldier were killed in the clash, Xinhua reported.

As many as 16 soldiers and six militants were also injured in the fight, the official added.
A migration deal between the European Union and Turkey was adopted here on Friday during a summit between the two sides' leaders, according to media reports.

The quadrilateral meeting between European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu began early Friday, Xinhua reported.

Later, all the EU leaders joined the negotiations with Davutoglu.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel wrote on his Twitter account late Thursday that the EU members reached an agreement on a common stance, and Tusk would present it to Davutoglu later on Friday for his endorsement.
Film: "Eye In The Sky"; Director: Gavin Hood; Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman and Barkhad Abdi; Rating: ***

"Eye in the Sky" is an engrossing and provocative thriller that reveals; bureaucratic red-tapism and the moral dilemmas of those indulging in military warfare. It also explores the farce regarding the price of winning the propaganda war.

It dwells on the multi-nation efforts to fight terrorism, especially between the British, the US and Kenyan governments, who constantly calculate the risks and benefits of their respective military actions.

While the film is about drone warfare and its perils, what keeps you riveted to the screen is the urgency of decision-making and the dilly-dallying, non-commital and passing-the-buck attitude of the politicians.

This is a race-against-time film that shows how the scales of decision-making waver.

Colonel Katherine Powell, a hardcore British military officer in charge of Egret, an operation to capture a radicalised English woman Susan Danford and her husband Abdullah Al-Hady, is tipped that the duo would be in suburban Nairobi to meet some Al-Shabaab terrorist, who she has been pursuing for years.

But when the moment of capture arrives, Colonel Powell's plans abruptly change when the technologically-advanced spy camera -- a cyborg beetle -- reveals the devious plans of the terrorists. How she icily manipulates her way -- from "operation to capture" to "order to kill" situation -- forms the crux of the tale.

Helen Mirren as Colonel Powell, and often referred to as 'Mom' by her juniors, is at her fiery best. This is probably one of her best roles till date.

Alan Rickman as General Benson initially sounds buffoonish when he resignedly discusses dolls, but gradually he plays the sympathetic, caught-in-between note to perfection.

Aaron Paul as Steve Watts, the drone pilot based in Las Vegas, responsible for shooting, is sensitive yet over-dramatic. His moral and psychic toll on pilots who engage in long-range warfare, killing people from a safe distance, seems false and pretentious.

Barkhad Abdi who had earlier featured in "Captain Phillips" leaves a compelling impression, playing a Somalian undercover agent with elan.

While the entire film pivots on an emotional note, it is Aisha Takow as the little girl Alia Mo'allim, who steals your heart. Her demeanour and the innocence in her eyes is what sets her apart.

In putting the whole legality of war against one singular military action, director Gavin Hood and scriptwriter Guy Hibbert successfully create a war movie that seems at once essential and distinctly individual.

But, while the motive is to capture the terrorist, the script does not show any preparedness regarding the same and also the absence of the Kenyan government's representative shows how lopsided the script is.

Visually, the film is compelling with Johnny Breedt's production designs, Mickey Kirsten's special effects and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos's camera work, which include the spy camera footage which are put together by Megan Gill's razor-sharp edits.

Overall, the film, though tense, has a notably playful flavour.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the government was "prepared" for the upcoming visit of a special investigation team from Pakistan to probe the Pathankot terror attack but the modalities were yet to be worked upon.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function here, Singh skirted a direct reply on whether the visiting Joint Investigation Team would be given access to the strategic India Air Force (IAF) base, saying: "We are prepared."

Terrorists, believed to be from Pakistan, attacked the IAF base in Punjab's Pathankot town on January 2, leaving seven security personnel dead. Security forces eliminated the six terrorists.

The home minister on Friday indicated that detailed modalities would be worked out by the officials from the home ministry and external affairs ministry after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj returns from Nepal where she is attending a Saarc ministerial meeting.

After a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Swaraj had said in Pokhara (Nepal) on Thursday that the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan would arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward the probe into the Pathankot attack.
The government has sought a report from the Indian embassy in Beijing regarding an Indian national who was detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

"I have asked for a report from our embassy in China," External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted on Friday.

She was responding to a tweet which said that an Indian businessman who was working in Shenzhen with a resident permit and a business licence was taken by police on Tuesday.

"Wife has been released after questioning but my friend is detained with a notice of 30 days," the tweet said.

The tweet also said that the businessman's wife was alone in Shenzhen and the Chinese authorities were not allowing her to contact him.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Friday blamed the 13th Finance Commission and increased salaries of state government employees for the high debt burden of the hill state.

Replying to the budget debate in the assembly, the chief minister said the high debt was mainly due to a sharp reduction in revenue deficit grants given by the 13th Finance Commission during 2013-14 and 2014-15, coupled with the increased salary burden.

The revenue deficit grant of Rs.2,232 crore for first year (2010-11) was reduced sharply to Rs.406 crore in the last year (2014-15) of the Finance Commission's duration, he said.

The opposition BJP, including former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, said the per capita debt of the state stood at Rs.47,284 and debt and gross state domestic product (GSDP) ratio 39 percent compared with 21 percent at the national level.

Virbhadra Singh said there was overestimation in the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission on account of share in central taxes for 2013-14 and 2014-15.

"Actual receipts during these two years was less by Rs.528 crore compared with the amount estimated by the Finance Commission."

He said that despite limited resources, Himachal succeeded in bringing down the debt to GSDP ratio to 34.8 percent in 2014-15 as against the target of 40.1 percent fixed by the Finance Commission.

Further, he said, the state government raised all market loans only after obtaining the Centre's approval.

"We are aware that increasing debt liability is a matter of concern which requires special attention," said the chief minister who also holds the finance portfolio.

Also citing the low tax base as one of the reasons for high debt, the chief minister said the state had been making efforts to increase the tax revenue through efficient tax collection.

The state's tax revenue from its own resources was Rs.4,626 crore in 2012-13, which increased to Rs.6,341 crore in 2015-16 and was likely to increase to Rs.7,469 crore in the next fiscal.

On the Bharatiya Janata Party's apprehensions over the use of solar/electric fencing to protect crops from wild animals, Virbhadra Singh said the electric shock from such fences would not be fatal for either animals or humans.

Not satisfied with the government's reply on alleged procurement of LED bulbs at higher rates, the BJP staged a walkout from the assembly.

The Himachal government has distributed 51 lakh bulbs among the consumers.

The cost of Rs.100 per bulb was realised on cash payment and Rs.105 on equated monthly instalments.

The assembly's budget session commenced on February 25. It was adjourned for a week's break on Friday. The house will reassemble on March 28 for the remaining nine of the 25 sittings.
Global IT company Cisco's chairman John Chambers on Friday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an official statement said.

"During the meeting, he explained to the prime minister the elements of Cisco's Country Digitization Acceleration Programme, and how it is aligned to the prime minister's vision and initiatives," the statement said.

Modi discussed the possibilities of cooperation in the area of cyber security, it added.

Modi emphasized the benefits of Cisco's initiative in areas of long distance education. He also said that digital technology had been useful in eliminating leakages in subsidy.
Kitchenware company Masterful Ltd has decided to enter the growing Indian and South American markets and also board the e-commerce train, said a senior official.

"We are looking at entering the Indian and South American markets. Barring China and India, markets are stagnating in other countries," Noordin A. Ebrahim, director of Masterful Ltd, told IANS.

Ebrahim came to Hong Kong in 1950 from India at the age of 19 to join the family business.

"Our family has had a trading business in Hong Kong since 1842, importing yarn, cotton and exporting goods made here and Chinese pulses," Ebrahim said.

In 1988, he promoted Masterful to deal in houseware and kitchenware. Some years ago, the company started marketing the products under its own brand Master Chef.

The products of the company, which boasts a turnover of $55 million, have a small presence in India through imports from Dubai, Ebrahim said.

Masterful has started the process of getting into the e-commerce platform.

"We get our items from China and India to our design specifications and export to markets like Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other countries," he said.

"The Indian manufacturers have a good domestic market and hence they are not much bothered about the international market. The Indian companies are not keen on improving their product packaging to the international standards," Ebrahim said.

According to him, the safe route to Chinese markets for Indian companies would be to set up base in Hong Kong.

"In China, there are two kinds of manufacturers ... those who shifted base from here to China and the originally China-based manufacturers," Ebrahim said.

The Chinese-based manufacturers have improved their quality to much higher levels now as compared to earlier years but have yet to reach the quality standards of manufacturers who shifted base from Hong Kong, he added.

Ebrahim is of the view that China would not do anything to shake the confidence of the Hong Kong business community and would like to see that peace continued to prevail in the former British colony.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan visited Hong Kong at the invitation of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. He can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will step up relief operations in Afghanistan to address the needs of war-affected communities, ICRC president Peter Maurer said on Friday.

"There are more displaced people, more war-wounded, more disabled people. Humanitarian concerns are growing, yet international attention is dwindling. It seems that the more the Afghan people suffer, the less attention there is on them," Xinhua quoted Maurer as saying.

The international humanitarian organisation will increase its budget for Afghanistan by 10 percent this year, according to Maurer.

"We have increased our budget for Afghanistan for 2016, recognising the scale of the problem. We will explore the possibilities of further expanding our activities, including the evacuation of wounded people," he said.

Maurer arrived in Kabul on Monday. He met Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah besides making field trips to provinces to meet displaced people and detainees, the ICRC said.

Maurer expressed concerns over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country.

"Every indicator shows that the humanitarian situation is in a downward spiral," he said while drawing attention to the recent increase in attacks on health facilities in Afghanistan.

Violence has been on the rise since the drawdown of the US and NATO forces over the past two years as the Afghan security forces struggle against a surge in attacks by Taliban and other anti-government fighters.

More than 3,540 civilians were killed and over 7,450 injured across the country last year, according to a report released by the UN mission in the country last month.

The ICRC has had a permanent presence in Afghanistan since 1987. It is the aid agency's largest operation in the world in terms of staff numbers.
Mauritius Health Minister Anil Kumar Singh Gayan on Friday called on his Indian counterpart J.P. Nadda here and discussed various bilateral issues of health cooperation.

During the meeting, Mauritius requested for India's help in recruitment of doctors, upgradation of Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, mutual recognition of medical degrees, assistance in upgrading medical education facilities, scholarships and setting up a state of the art cancer unit.

India has assured of all possible help, according to an official release.

During the meeting a decision was taken for constitution of a Joint Working Group under the MoU on health cooperation, the release said.
Tripoli, March 18 (IANS/AKI) The Islamic State has threatened Libya's premier-designate Fayez al-Sarraj after he announced that the UN-backed national unity government will move to Tripoli from Tunis "within the next few days".

"Our war against it (Libya's newly appointed national unity government) is the same war as that against the previous governments," a masked IS militant stated in a video posted to Internet.

"This apostate government won't live in security but will provide us the opportunity to burn the ground beneath the feet of the apostates and their masters," the militant added.

He also warned of a "new Iraq" should world powers intervene military in Libya, where the IS has exploited the turmoil and expanded since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Also on Friday, the 'Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room' armed group announced a "long-term" war against the UN-backed unity government, the al-Wasat reported.

The militia, founded by the Tripoli parliament's Islamist-leaning speaker Nouri Abusahmain, vowed to "crush" supporters of the Sarraj's government, calling them a "mass of spies".

Since 2014, Libya has had two rival parliaments and governments, an Islamist-leaning one based in Tripoli and the internationally recognised one based in the eastern city of Tobruk, each backed by various militias.

The internationally-recognised eastern parliament has repeatedly failed to vote to approve the unity government, but a majority of its members signed a statement of support last month.

--IANS/AKI

mr/
The Japanese government on Friday issued an interception order in anticipation of North Korea's repeated firing of missiles.

Sources said the order was issued to the Self-Defence Forces to shoot down any incoming ballistic missile or debris, public broadcaster NHK reported.

North Korea fired two mid-range ballistic missiles earlier on Friday.

The North's state media reported on Tuesday that the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, gave the order to prepare soon for nuclear warhead explosion tests and test firings of several kinds of ballistic missiles.

The Self-Defence Forces are considering sending Aegis destroyers fitted with sophisticated radar to patrol waters around Japan, as well as deploying surface-to-air PAC3 interceptor missile systems.
Barcelona-born artist Antoni Muntadas takes a peek into the intense and conflict-ridden relations between Japan, South Korea and China with Asian Protocols, his exhibition that opens on Saturday in Tokyo aiming to spark a debate on self-censorship.

"It interests me that relations among the three countries is based on a series of similarities and differences, but also a string of conflicts, which I wanted to explore," Muntadas told Efe on Friday, while finishing off preparations for the exhibition, to be on view till April 17 at 3,331 art centre of Tokyo.

Approaching the reality of Japan, South Korea and China "as an outsider", the winner of the 2009 Velazquez Prize for Plastic Arts, aims to point out what unites and separates them, from a conceptual and multidisciplinary perspective, which includes video-art, photography, text, and objects such as books or print media clippings.

"Blackboard Dialog," one of the installations, examines 40 concepts, including family, gender, marriage, fashion and the army from the point of view of the Japanese, the Chinese and the South Koreans.

In an enormous hall, lined with blackboards and written-on with chalk, the visitor can read about the meaning of, for example, human rights in these countries, similar in that "the discourses of hatred have become a serious problem for society, especially those disseminated through the internet."

The difference, however, lies in who the victims of these hate discourses are -- for the Japanese, it is the South Korean residents in Japan, for South Koreans, it is women, and for the Chinese, it is sexual minorities.

"An exhibition is always a device in the anthropological sense in that it has to be activated, it is not born solely to be seen and celebrated," said Muntadas, who wants his exhibition to trigger a debate between the three communities, who share historically tense relations.

The New York-based artist will also exhibit several textbooks from the three countries, currently being taught in schools, differing in their treatment of conflicts related to Japanese imperialism or the disputed archipelagos between Japan and China or those between Japan and South Korea.

Muntadas has also included a photographic journey through Chinese localities in Japan and South Korea, Korean strongholds in Tokyo and Seoul, and those of the Japanese living in Beijing and Seoul.

"I am not trying to impose or explain anything, but just trying to launch a series of questions to initiate a debate in countries where there is a certain censorship or self-censorship concerning these subjects," explained the Catalan artist, who believes his mission as an artist is that of a catalyst.

The exhibition is part of a project that has already toured Seoul in 2014 and is expected to show in Beijing in 2018.
Jewellery shops in Tamil Nadu have started functioning but there is no internal division within the industry and the indefinite strike against excise duty on products will continue till the government listens, said senior official of a trade association.

"Except in Tamil Nadu, the trade is on strike in other southern states like Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In south, there are large players," All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) director Ashok Minawala told IANS.

GJF zonal committee member Jayantilal Challani told IANS that the industry in Tamil Nadu is in a different league.

"They are operating in a corporate set up with big showrooms wherethe overheads are high and has to be met," said Challani, who is also president of the Madras Jewellers and Diamond Merchants Association.

He said the industry in north is strongly againt the central government's decision to impose excise duty.

The gems and jewellery industry is on indefinite strike since March 2 in protest against the central government's decision to inpose excise duty.

However both the officials stress that there is no internal division in GJF on the issue of big shops doing business in Tamil Nadu.

Jewellery shops in Tamil Nadu are operating since Thursday afternoon.

According to Minawala, the industry has lost around Rs.20,000 crore of business due to the strike.

"The strike will continue till the government discusses the issue with us and take suitable action. We have made several suggestions on the issue," he said.

Minawala said the strike will affect the exports and also bigger players with chain of showrooms would start feeling the pinch when the supplies dry out.
Film: "Kapoor & Sons"; Director: Shakun Batra; Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Siddharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Alia Bhatt, Ratna Pathak Shah and Rajat Kapoor; Rating: ****

"Kapoor & Sons" is a saga of a dysfunctional family, which makes you laugh and cry with its members, as you become an intrinsic part of their lives. It is a complete family entertainer with a universal appeal.

Arjun (Siddharth Malhotra) and Rahul (Fawad Khan) are two siblings based in New Jersey and London respectively and arrive at Coonoor to visit their ailing grandfather (Rishi Kapoor) who lives with their parents Harsh (Rajat Kapoor) and Sunita (Ratna Pathak Shah). Their complicated relationships, replete with misunderstandings, accusations, lies and yet, bound by love, form the crux of this film.

Clearly, the film is on a dysfunctional family, and some realistic elements interwoven in its narrative add to its effectiveness in being relatable to the audience.

Writer-director Shakun Batra can take a bow for his astute handling of a simple story, with a complicated plot owing to the complex lives of the characters. His dealing of human emotions along with the treatment of the subject is what makes the film stand apart.

The characters are etched to perfection, their lives almost unfolding before our eyes in the two hours. The screenplay is taut and full of unexpected twists which keep you riveted to the screen, never letting your interest wane.

Performance-wise, "Kapoor & Sons" is impressive too.

Siddharth Malhotra as the "runner up" or "second best" of the two brothers, portrays his angst and resentment, in an understated manner. He is every inch the son who tries hard to prove his worth to his parents to make them proud.

Playing his love interest, is Alia Bhatt as Tia Malik, a Mumbai-based girl who is an orphan and misses having a family. As always, she renders a zesty performance with oodles of spontaneity and panache and is equally the heart stealer in emotional scenes. She lights up the screen with her joie de vivre.

Fawad Khan as the successful novelist and older sibling essays Rahul with restraint and yet, has his moments when he lets his guard down, if only to express his anger, disappointment and hurt.

Ratna Pathak Shah plays the complex mother and wife with aplomb. Whether it is unintentionally hurting her son or accusing her husband of an affair, her display of emotions, though, a bit theatrical and dramatic, is a treat to watch.

Rajat Kapoor plays the underdog to perfection, constantly under scrutiny by his wife, being taunted for his failed business attempts and relationship with his former bank colleague Anu.

Rishi Kapoor, of course as the doyen of the family, is an absolute delight in his genial avatar, complete with a new get up. His childlike innocence, playful nature and being one with his young grandsons whether smoking or watching a drenched Mandakini in a film, are a few of the myriad moments, which audiences will relish. The contrast in his performance stands out in the scene after an unexpected tragedy in his family.

As far as the music is concerned, Amaal Mallik's work is melodious, appropriate, but incidental, never for a moment seeming forced. "Kar gayi chull" is fun and peppy and equally apt is the soulful "Saathi re", which sums up the mood of the situation.

The cinematography, is in keeping with the film and Coonnor is beautifully captured in all its elements.

Overall, "Kapoor & Sons" reflects William Blake's poem "Joy and woe are woven fine" and is definitely bound to make you emotional.
Kashmir is an integral part of India and so Indians can discuss the issues pertaining to Kashmiris at any forum, JNU Students Union president said on Friday.

Speaking at the India Today conclave, said: "There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues."

Kanhaiya Kumar, who was charged with sedition, denied supporting Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru, who was hanged for his role in the terror attack on the Indian parliament, but said he opposed capital punishment.

"Our protest (on February 9) was against capital punishment, not in support of Afzal," he said, adding that even if an ABVP activist was given capital punishment, he would oppose it.

"The JNU culture promotes debate and discussion. It is not our culture to stop people from speaking or putting forth their point of view, even if we do not agree with it," he added.

Asked why he did not stop people from raising anti-India slogans at the JNU campus on February 9, he said neither he or nor his All India Students Federation (AISF) supported anti-India slogans or Kashmir's secession.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi to focus on governance rather than "snooping on opponents".

"Prime minister should concentrate on governance, which is suffering badly under NDA, rather than snooping on opponents," Kejriwal tweeted.

Kejriwal alleged that officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had interrogated Delhi government officials about him.

"Can the prime minister explain this? CBI reports directly to him. What does the PM want?" Kejriwal asked.

He said if Modi wants any information regarding him (Kejriwal), he should set up a team for it.

"PM wants info about me? Let PM set up a team. I will come and answer all their questions. I have nothing to hide," he said.
A Delhi court on Friday granted six months interim bail to JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested on charges of sedition.

Both have been asked to furnish a bail bond of Rs.25,000 each.

The court also asked the two Jawaharlal Nehru University students not to leave Delhi without the court's permission.



The two students have been held on charges of sedition after they were accused of organising a public event at Jawaharlal Nehru University where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

Earlier this week, a Delhi court had extended their judicial custody by 14 days.While Khalid had initially gone into hiding, he later resurfaced on campus and surrendered to Delhi Police.Earlier, JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar had also been arrested on sedition charges; he was later also released on interim bail.
A court here on Friday granted six months interim bail to JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested on charges of sedition.

Both have been asked to furnish a personal bond of Rs. 25,000 with one surety of the like amount respectively.

Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh also asked the two Jawaharlal Nehru University students not to leave Delhi without the court's permission and to make themselves available before the investigating officer as and when required for the purpose of the probe.

Both had sought bail on the ground of "parity ", saying that JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was also arrested on the same charge, was already granted interim bail by the Delhi High Court.

Granting six month interim bail to them on parity with Kanhaiya Kumar, the court noted that there was no previous criminal record against them and "nothing has been brought on record which could indicate that they are likely to abscond from jurisdiction of the court".

"No submission has been made (by police) to the effect that both the applicants Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya have been involved previously in any criminal case. No record has been placed by the state regarding any such past conduct of both these persons.

"Although the allegations levelled against Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya are per se serious in nature, but as claimed by police themselves, the video footage of the incident has been sent to the forensic science laboratory. Its analysis and final report will certainty take some time," it added.

The court in its order further added: "At the outset, it is to be kept in mind that co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar has been granted bail by the high court."

Delhi Police had opposed the bail plea saying their case was different from that of Kanhaiya Kumar as they were the organisers of a controversial event on the varsity campus on February 9 where anti-national slogans were raised. Both the students surrendered before police last month.

A case was registered against Khalid and Bhattacharya at the Vasant Kunj police station in south Delhi, soon after Kanhaiya was arrested on the same charges on February 12.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has disclosed the names of ministers who will be either removed or reshuffled in a parliamentary vote of confidence on April 4, according to his letter issued on Friday.

According to the letter, Hor Namhong, at his request, will be terminated from his position as the minister of foreign affairs, but he is still holding the position of a deputy prime minister, Xinhua news agency reported.

Current minister of posts and telecoms Prak Sokhonn will be appointed as the minister of foreign affairs, while transport minister Tram Ivtek will become the minister of posts and telecoms.

Commerce minister Sun Chanthol will be appointed as transport minister, as commerce secretary of state Pan Sorasak will be appointed as commerce minister.

Water resources and meteorology secretary of state Veng Sakhon will become the minister of agriculture, replacing Ouk Rabun who will be appointed as the minister of rural development.

Also, Keat Chhon will be terminated from his position as the permanent deputy prime minister at his request.

Hun Sen said on Thursday that the cabinet reshuffle aimed to increase work efficiency.

"April 4 is the day for voting to change the composition of the Royal Government, which aims to increase work efficiency," he said.

The fifth term government was established in September 2013.

Its cabinet comprised one prime minister, nine deputy prime ministers, 15 senior ministers, 13 ministers attached to the prime minister, 27 ministers and hundreds of secretary of states and undersecretary of states.
Renowned lawyer and activist Amal Clooney on Friday asserted that minority voice should always be protected in a society advocating a free speech.

"The minority voice is the one you should always protect a society that advocates a free speech. Countries must allow criticism of its rulers, governments and religion," Clooney said addressing a session at India

Today Conclave.

"Locking up a dissenter will not stifle dissent. In fact it will fester it further. For India. using sedition law against students would be a step in the wrong direction," she added.

Clooney added that sedition is an anachronistic crime but it is unfortunate if a country starts using it more actively.

"I hope we could have a healthy debate on the freedom of speech in India since it is well placed for such discussion," Clooney said insisting free speech is not only a human right but also an essence of being human.

Clooney is a British-Lebanese lawyer, who has fought the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his fight against extradition. She has also represented the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy who was jailed during the Arab Spring for expressing dissent against the then Egyptian government. She is married to popular Hollywood actor George Clooney.
Researchers have discovered a new species of pale-gold coloured frog in the cloud forests of the high Andes in Colombia.

Its name, Pristimantis dorado, commemorates both its colour (dorado means 'golden' in Spanish) and El Dorado, a mythical city of gold eagerly sought for centuries by Spanish conquistadores in South America.

"The Spaniards assumed Colombia's wealth was its gold, but today we understand that the real riches of the country lie in its biodiversity," said one of the researchers Andrew Crawford from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in panama.

The new species was found calling from bushes along a roadside at about 8,700 feet elevation near Chingaza National Park, roughly10 miles east of Bogota, Colombia's capital and largest city.

Its discovery so close to a metropolitan area of nearly 10 million inhabitants illustrates how much of the planet's biodiversity remains to be discovered.

"With this new species, Colombia now hosts 800 species of amphibians, second only to Brazil in total diversity," Crawford said.

The findings were described in the journal Amphibia-Reptilia.

The extraordinarily diverse group to which the new species belongs, Pristimantis, includes 465 recognised species, 205 of them from Colombia.

At seven-tenths of an inch long, the new species is among the smaller species in the group. The largest species grow to be two inches in length, the researchers said.

Males of many frog species advertise for females with distinctive calls produced by vocal sacs or vocal slits.

Oddly, although the new species lacks these structures, males are still able to produce calls consisting of an irregularly pulsed series of clicks, the study pointed out.
The space environment around Pluto and its moons appears to be clean as an instrument riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft found only a handful of dust grains, the building blocks of planets, when it whipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles per hour last July, a study says.

Data downloaded and analysed by the New Horizons team indicated the space environment around Pluto and its moons contained only about six dust particles per cubic mile, Fran Bagenal, who leads the New Horizons Particles and Plasma Team.

"The bottom line is that space is mostly empty," said Bagenal, professor at University of Colorado Boulder, said.

"Any debris created when Pluto's moons were captured or created during impacts has long since been removed by planetary processes," Bagenal explained.

Studying the microscopic dust grains can give researchers clues about how the solar system was formed billions of years ago and how it works today, providing information on planets, moons and comets, Bagenal noted.

The findings were published in the journal Science.

Launched in 2006, the New Horizons mission was designed to help planetary scientists better understand the icy world at the edge of our solar system, including Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

A vast region thought to span more than a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit, the Kuiper Belt is believed to harbour at least 70,000 objects more than 60 miles in diameter and contain samples of ancient material created during the solar system's violent formation some 4.5 billion years ago.

The dust counter riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was designed by a group of 20 University of Colorado Boulder students.

It is a thin film resting on a honeycombed aluminium structure the size of a cake pan mounted on the spacecraft's exterior.

A small electronic box functions as the instrument's "brain" to assess each individual dust particle that strikes the detector, allowing the students to infer the mass of each particle.

New Horizons is travelling at a mind-blowing 750,000 miles a day. Images from closest approach were taken from roughly 7,700 miles above Pluto's surface. The spacecraft, about the size of a baby grand piano, carries six other instruments.

The next and final target of New Horizons is a 30-mile-in diameter Kuiper Belt object named 2014 MU69, which the spacecraft is expected to pass in January 2019.
New Zealand won their second consecutive match of the World Twenty20 after beating Australia by eight runs in a group phase clash here on Friday.

New Zealand sored 142/8 after winning the toss and taking first strike and then restricted their opponents to 134/9 at the HPCA Stadium. The Kiwis beat hosts India in their opening game by 47 runs.

Fast bowler Mitchell McClenaghan was the star of their neat bowling performance, taking 3/17 and derailed Australia's innings.

New Zealand picked up wickets regularly to restrict Australia from gaining enough momentum.

They needed 19 runs from the last over, bowled by Corey Anderson and then 12 from the last three balls but came up short.

Earlier, Australia recovered from a Martin Guptill (39) blitz to restrict New Zealand to 142/8.

Guptill belted 39 runs as the Kiwis powered to 58 in six overs.

But a collapse, losing three wickets for 15 runs, jolted their charge.

Guptill, skipper Kane Williamson (24) and Corey Anderson (3) all were caught in the deep while attempting big shots.

Glenn Maxwell (2/18) claimed two wickets in the slump. All-rounder James Faulkner also contributed with identical bowling figures.

The wickets kept tumbling, including two run-outs in the final over, as New Zealand's run-rate continued to drop.

Colin Munro steadied in his own style, switch-hitting throughout a knock of 23.

But Munro also handed over his wicket meekly.

Veteran batsman Ross Taylor managed only 11.

Brief scores: New Zealand 142/8 (Martin Guptill 39, Glenn Maxwell 2/18);

Australia 134/9 (Usman Khawaja 38, Mitchell McClenaghan 3/17)
North Korea on Friday launched a new ballistic missile which flew some 800 km before falling into the sea, followed by another missile which may have exploded mid-air, South Korean military officials said.

The North Korean People's Army fired the missile into the East Sea at 5.55 am from Sukchun, north of Pyongyang, according to Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The South Korean defence ministry spokesperson told EFE news that it appeared to be a Rodong (single stage, mobile liquid propellant medium range ballistic missile) with a range of 1,300 km.

He also revealed that roughly 22 minutes after the first launch, what appeared to be the second missile was fired from the same area but disappeared from the radar at an altitude of 17 km. It is believed to have exploded in the air, the spokesperson added.

The launch occurred amid high tension on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang conducted the fourth underground nuclear test on January 6 and launched a satellite aboard a rocket on February 7, actions which prompted sanctions from the UN Security Council.

On March 10, the North Korean military launched two short-range missiles which flew some 500 km. One week prior to the incident, the country catapulted six short-range missiles which flew between 100-150 km each.
The Arabian Sea, cradling a diversity of marine habitats including coral reefs, is witnessing acidification of its surface waters, a consequence of excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, say Indian scientists.

Using remote sensing, researchers collected and analysed data spanning ten years with the focus on five parameters that directly correlate with carbon condition of the ocean surface. The idea was to monitor the status of two important regions of the Indian Ocean: the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

"One of the parameters is particulate inorganic carbon (PIC). We noted a decreasing trend of PIC over the last decade, which is linked to the decrease in abundance of phytoplanktons, microscopic organisms that form the base of the food chain in aquatic ecosystems," Sugata Hazra, professor, School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, told IANS.

"This might be due to over-accumulation of carbon dioxide," said Abhra Chanda, of the varsity's School of Oceanographic Studies and one of the authors of the study.

Published in Current Science in February, the comparative study involves experts from the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services and the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.

Arabian Sea, encompassing the northwestern sector of the Indian Ocean, covers a total area of around 3,862,000 sq. km. It is enclosed in the north by Iran and Pakistan, to the west by the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and to the east by the Indian Peninsula. The study area spans 3,471,000 sq. km.

The world's oceans are alkaline, with a pH factor a little over 7. Anything below that number makes the water less alkaline and more acidic. Pure water is neither alkaline nor acidic.

"In this study we have also taken into account the Andaman Sea lying adjacent to Bay of Bengal," said Chanda. Oceans act as a huge carbon sink and absorb at least a quarter of the carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil and gas. As carbon dioxide dissolves, the sea water becomes acidic.

And even though the water bodies are immense, ocean acidification can have a significant impact on marine life - especially the ones that build their skeletons and shells from calcium - over the years, scientists warn.

"When the water becomes acidic, calcium carbonate coatings secreted by the phytoplanktons breaks down. As the water gets more corrosive, the shells tend to dissolve more readily and the formation of shells is also affected," noted Chanda, describing the two major impacts on these tiny organisms.

Apart from PIC, the other criteria analysed by the researchers were chlorophyll-a, sea-surface temperature (SST), particulate organic carbon (POC) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).

Recently, a joint study conducted by scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune and the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Goa revealed rapidly decreasing presence of marine phytoplankton (an alarming decrease at the rate of 20 percent over the last six decades) in the western Indian Ocean.

The report also warns that the Indian Ocean may be reduced to an ecological desert, given the levels of ocean warming. According to K. Venkataraman, former Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) director, coastal and marine ecosystems in India provide a number of important services to support life and enhance well-being.

"The (suspicion of) ocean acidification (by the researcher organisations in India), in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal will devastate one of the most pristine, most fertile regions, the Indian Ocean," he told IANS.

(Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in)
Pakistan exports at least 2,700 tonnes of gypsum to India daily through the Wagah border crossing, the National Assembly was informed on Friday.

Minister for Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan said that since July 2015, Pakistan exports Gypsum to India in 'crushed loose form' with value up to $22 dollars per tonne, Radio Pakistan reported.

He also said that the major reason behind the decline in Pakistan's exports was a massive reduction in world commodities price.

Another reason was major recession in international markets and slowdown in China which resulted in decrease in demand, Khan said.

The Minister said the main focus of the trade policy was on value-addition.
Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission chairperson Sima Samar on Friday said Pakistan must know that the problem caused by it in Afghanistan will also reach them.

"I believe that our neighbour (Pakistan) should realise that problems that it is causing in Afghanistan is not going to stay within our boundaries. It would reach them," Samar, who was here to participate in an international conference on child and youth, told IANS.

"As soon as they realise this and take action against enemies of human rights, the world will have a positive change," she said.

"When you (Pakistan) are training bad people against a country, you will be trapped," she added.

Hopeful of a peaceful region and reminiscing the Afghanistan "that once was", she said that only with regional cooperation and peace, could social and economic stability reach Afghanistan within next 20 years.

"If everything goes well, including the social, economical and political situation in the region, we may achieve prosperous Afghanistan sooner than 20 years," she said.

Holding poverty, inequality and disorientation against the people as a major cause of terrorism, Samar said terrorists are also people like us, subjected to circumstances.

"Those who are killing themselves and involve in terrorist activities are also people like us. But what put them in that situation has reasons and conditions. I think poverty, inequality and lack of job opportunities for youth is major reason of terrorism. Where would they go? Either they are used by group of people to brainwash and make them supporter of the government or by the extremists," she said.

Advocating an over overall policy revision for south Asian countries, in terms of quality education and social services, Samar also cited the discrimination against the girl child in the region.

"If I had a choice, maybe I would have not born a girl," she said while recalling Farkhunda, a 27-year-old Afghan woman who was lynched by a mob on March 19 last year in Kabul over rumours of blasphemy.

"There are programmes for education and awareness but due to insecurity, majority of budget goes to military and its training. But my argument is that army and police should be there t protect people's right and if not then why should we have them?"
YSR Congress Party legislator R.K. Roja was not allowed to attend Andhra Pradesh assembly on Friday even as the state government filed a petition in Hyderabad High Court, challenging the single judge's interim order, staying her suspension.

A day after the high court granted stay on the assembly proceedings for Roja's suspension from the house for one year, she came to the assembly but marshals stopped her from entering the house.

Roja said she had a copy of a court order, staying her suspension and the wanted marshals to show if they have any written orders from the speaker not to allow her.

The government's action triggered strong protest from the lone opposition party, whose legislators staged at sit-in at Mahatma Gandhi statue in the assembly premises

A delegation of YSR Congress leaders led by party president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy later went to Raj Bhavan to meet Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and complain against the government's attitude.

The leader of opposition said the government had no respect for judiciary as Roja was not allowed to attend the session, despite the court revoking her suspension.

Terming the government's action as contempt of court, Jagan, as the leader is popularly known, said they would file contempt of court petition in the high court. He said his party would continue its protest till Roja is allowed to attend the session.

The YSRCP members decided to attend assembly session on Saturday in black dress as a mark of protest over the government's action in not allowing Roja to attend the session.

The actress-turned-politician, who represents Nagari constituency in Chittoor district, was suspended from the assembly during the winter session for one year for allegedly using "abusive" language against members of ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) including Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

On a petition by Roja, challenging her suspension, Justice Ramalingeswara Rao of High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, had Thursday stayed the operation of the orders of her suspension.

However, the TDP government decided not to implement the order and challenge it before the division bench. It filed a petition on Friday before the division bench, headed by the chief justice. The appeal will come up for hearing on Monday.

In the assembly, Speaker K. Sivaprasad Rao announced that the house will debate the court order in Roja's case. He said the copies of the court order will be circulated to all members and suggested that they go through it. He said the discussion on the issue will be taken up on Monday.

Legislative Affairs Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu hailed the speaker's decision, while Social Welfare Minister Kishore Babu said the speaker has the right to protect the dignity of the house.

He told reporters that there are precedents of speaker suspending members for longer periods, noting Congress legislators were suspended from Haryana assembly for six months while six DMK members were suspended from Tamil Nadu assembly for one year.
Actor Russell Crowe, who piled on weight for his film "The Nice Guys", has now lost around 23 kg for his next role.

"I was (121.5 kg) the first week of August last year. I did a movie called 'The Nice Guys', so I wanted to be the physical juxtaposition of Ryan Gosling," Crowe said on a radio show on Thursday, reports aceshowbiz.com.

"I'm clawing my way back from that, so I'm about (98 kg) at the moment," he added.

Back in 2000, the Oscar-winning actor showed off a ripped physique for his role in "Gladiator". He had to eat six to eight protein-heavy meals a day to bulk up at that time. Just a year before, he was required to lose weight fast to prepare for the role of Big Tobacco exec Jeffrey Wigand in 1999's "The Insider".

In "The Nice Guys", Crowe is playing private eye Jackson Healy who lives in the 1970s.

Directed by Shane Black, "The Nice Guys" will release in US on May 20 this year.
Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit, who arrived here on Friday, expressed disappointment that his colleagues couldn't visit the city to watch Saturday's high-voltage India-Pakistan World Twenty20 clash.

"I am very glad to be here but obviously somewhat sad that my colleagues, who wanted to come to Kolkata, couldn't come," Basit said at the NSC Bose International Airport.

"But in any case, we are looking forward to an exciting match," he said.

The high-octane match has been mired in controversy.

India on Tuesday did not allow five Pakistani diplomats to watch the match, because they were seen as having links with "Inter-Services Intelligence organisations". Further, Pakistan capatain Shahid Afridi's comments on "getting more love in India" added another dimension to the debate.

Asked on the security concerns and the Afridi matter, Basit said: "So far, there are no issues. Let's hope everything goes alright and we are looking forward to a great match tomorrow.

"That (Afridi comment) is behind us. This match is all about creating goodwill and let's hope that the two countries will be able to build on this."
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the publication of the of governor, chief minister and the ministers of the department concerned in government advertisements.

The apex court bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi allowed the publication of of governor, chief minister and ministers of departments concerned while modifying their earlier order by which the court had permitted of president, prime minister and Chief Justice of India only in the government ads.

The centre and the states of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka had moved the court seeking the review of its earlier order, contending that it was contrary to the federal structure of the country.
The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the central government on a plea seeking establishment of the hospitals in every state and union territory for exclusive treatment and care of AIDS patients.

A bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan issued notice on a PIL by senior counsel Parmanand Katara who had also sought establishment of AIDS testing and treatment clinic in every district in the country.

The notice has also been issued to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which as the advocate said, could provide resources and expertise in setting up such hospitals.

Seeking setting up of at least one hospital in every state and union territory at par with the All India Institute of Medical Science for the exclusive treatment of HIV positive and AIDS patients, Katara has also sought establishment of AIDS testing and treatment clinics in every district level jail as well as central jails.

Addressing the court on his PIL, he sought to justify his plea, telling the court that due to ignorance and stigma attached to them, AIDS patients suffer a lot of discrimination in their treatment and care.

He told the court that even doctors treat them as untouchables and don't give them treatment.
The Supreme Court on Friday said that it would examine whether a law graduate has to undergo an examination either before or after enrolment as an advocate under the existing lawe, as a condition to practice law.

Framing three questions for consideration by the constitution bench on Friday, a bench of Chief Justice T.S.Thakur, Justice R. Banumathi and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit said the five judges' constitution bench would also consider whether an advocate have to undergo a training as a condition precedent for his enrolment under the Advocate Act, 1961.

Framing the question for reference to the constitution bench, the court said one was whether there be pre-enrolment training for a law graduate before being enrolled to practise, and then should there be a pre-enrolment test before enrolment under the act to practice law.

The court said that if the larger bench answers these in the negative, then it would address the question whether there should be a post enrolment test before an advocate could actually start practising.

The issue that has been raised is whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) in exercise of its rule making powers under section 49(1)(ah) of the Advocate Act could frame rules that conflict with the provisions of the act providing for their enrolment and practice.

The court decided to refer the matter to a constitution bench while addressing the question whether right to practice law in any court in India could be regulated, monitored or conditioned by the BCI by exercising its rule making powers under section 49(1)(ah) after enrolment of an advocate under section 24.

Section 49 spells out BCI's powers to make rules for discharging its functions under the act and section 24 provides for the persons who may be admitted as advocates on a State roll.

Sub-section (ah) of the section 49 says that BCI will provide for "the conditions subject to which an advocate shall have the right to practise and the circumstances under which a person shall be deemed to practise as an advocate in a court".
Sri Lanka will have 10,000 environment-friendly villages throughout the country by 2020 in its aim to fight global warming, a minister said here on Friday.

Media Minister Gayantha Karunathilleke said that on a proposal made by President Maithripala Sirisena, the Sri Lankan cabinet had agreed to sign the 'Paris Agreement' on climate change and had agreed to minimise the emission of greenhouse gases and to formulate laws to establish a commission relating to climate change, Xinhua reported.

"Sri Lanka is to implement the 'Green Environmental Beautiful Sri Lanka' programme during the period 2016 to 2020," Karunathilleke said.

"Sri Lanka is to launch 10,000 environment-friendly villages (Green Smart Villages) throughout the country in collaboration with community organisations."

A cabinet paper said that global warmth was on the increase due to excessive burning of the fossil fuel, industrialisation, urbanisation, denuding of forests cover, and environmental pollution.

It has been forecast that the global warmth will increase by about four degree Celsius by the end of this century and the environmental disasters that would take place due to the increase of global warmth would adversely affect the sustenance of the humans.

As per the conclusions made at the 21st session of the UN Framework Convention held in Paris, France on Environmental disaster (UNFCCC) from November 30 till December 11 last year, by the year 2100 it was agreed to take all possible measures to maintain the global warmth level at least at 1.5 degree Celsius and to prevent it increasing beyond two degree Celsius.

Sri Lanka has also agreed to contribute to the decisions taken at this summit.
The sting operation in West Bengal has in more ways than one caught Trinamool Congress on the wrong foot as party leaders are in "two minds" about taking legal course against the news portal that carried out the purported sting operation.

The sting showed some party leaders receiving money as bribe.

After posturing initially that the video footage in circulation showing party leaders and sitting MPs receiving currency notes as "manufactured", a section of leaders has briefed party supremo Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata that to "prove the charges as malicious and motivated in a court of law will be a herculean task".

"A section of party leaders are in two minds. There is a growing sentiment that the legal course can only add to the agony of the party," a Trinamool Congress leader told IANS here requesting anonymity.

"Things may turn difficult once court takes cognizance of the charges and order either a judicial probe or an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)," the leader added.

The legal course was earlier considered seriously by the party leadership. Former railway minister Mukul Roy, a close confidant of Mamata, had said that the video footage that went viral on TV news channels and social networking were "manufactured".

Roy had even threatened to move court.

"But once the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress moved Calcutta High Court separately seeking a CBI probe, the party's think tank has developed cold feet about going to court," party sources said.

"Even the Saradha scam earlier that hit Trinamool credibility went out of control once the court ordered CBI investigation," they added.

A number of party MPs including two former ministers have taken objection to the manner their colleague Saugata Roy reacted to the sting operation charges in the Lok Sabha.

"Protesting and questioning Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's ruling when she ordered a probe by the Ethics Committee was unnecessary. Saugata, himself shown receiving currency, should have either kept mum in the house or taken a high moral ground and said our party is not scared of any probe," said another leader adding: "That would have been politically more sound a decision."

Two party leaders Dinesh Trivedi and Sugata Bose have already expressed their reservation on how the party has reacted initially to the sting operation charges.

The 15-member ethics panel of Lok Sabha headed by Bharatiya Janata Party veteran L.K. Advani has been asked to conduct its "examination, investigation and report" into the issue by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Five Trinamool members from the Lok Sabha -- Saugata Roy, Sultan Ahmad, Suvendu Adhikari, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasun Banerjee -- and one from the Rajya Sabha, Mukul Roy, are shown allegedly accepting bribes in the sting operation.

Incidentally, Saugata Roy is the younger brother of a key BJP leader from West Bengal Tatagatha Roy, who is now Tripura governor.

"Saugata Roy is a senior party parliamentarian and knows the parliamentary decorum well. He should have instead supported a probe by the house panel itself. On the contrary he questioned on the first day under which rule Congress, Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPI-M) and BJP MPs were raising the issue in Lok Sabha," the party source said.

The party leaders also remained divided on the stance taken by their Rajya Sabha floor leader Deren O'Brien when he said foreign money was pumped in from Dubai for the sting operation.

"Even in such a case, we should have preferred if not order a probe at the state government level itself," the party source added.
Thai hoteliers in major tourist destinations are preparing measures to deal with serious drought this summer, the media reported on Friday.

Members of the Thai Hotels Association (THA) are running water-saving campaigns after being warned that this year's drought will be the worst in a decade, The Bangkok Post.

"We have asked for cooperation from our member hotels to help save water," said THA president Surapong Techaruvichit.

Many hotels, particularly big ones, have their own water reserves and some have already bought water.

In Phuket - one of most visited places in the country, the THA reported that hotels have enough water reserves for use until June.

According to the Public Works Department, hotel guests use an average of 350 litres of water per day. Normally, people consume 180-200 litres per day.

Saving water in Thailand has become a major issue after warnings that many provinces are expected to run out of water for household consumption and other essential use.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused European countries of backing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) outlawed by Turkey.

The president criticised Belgium for allowing PKK supporters to pitch tents behind the European Council building in Brussels prior to a summit between the European Union and Turkey, Xinhua reported.

"This is called surrendering to terrorism," he said, warning that there is no reason to believe that a bomb that exploded in Ankara will not explode in Brussels.

"Despite this clear reality, European countries are paying no attention, as if dancing in a minefield," the Turkish leader said.

"You can never know when you are stepping on a mine, but it is clear that this is an inevitable end."

A car laden with explosives exploded on Sunday at the heart of Ankara, killing 37 people. The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a radical Kurdish group linked to PKK, has claimed responsibility.

Turkish security forces have been fighting against PKK militants in the country's southeast since July last year, where the group is seeking to establish an autonomous region.

The PKK has been listed as a terrorist group as well by the EU and the US.

The EU-Turkey summit was aiming to flesh out a deal seeking to stem the flow of migrants into European countries via Turkey.
Two separatist guerrillas were killed on Friday in an ongoing gunfight between security forces and rebels in north Kashmir's Kupwara district, police said.

"Security forces surrounded a house in Beigh Mohalla (Rajward Bala) area in Kupwara district today (Friday) morning," a senior police officer told IANS here.

When the security forces approached the house where militants were hiding, they came under heavy automatic gunfire.

"The militant firing was retaliated by the security forces, triggering an encounter in which two militants have been killed so far. Firing exchanges are still going on in the area."
Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara would not be of the highest saliency in South Block had Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi not indulged in some high wire diplomacy involving all three.

The issue has popped up again because the Royal Palace in Rabat and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have locked horns over Western Sahara, where a movement for self determination has for decades been led by a Left inclined group called Polisario. The Secretary General is now endorsing a "referendum" for Western Sahara, something that Morocco was able to thwart with US support for over 40 years. That the US aversion for "self determination" in the disputed territory is weakening should be a matter of some interest in New Delhi.

Spanish dictator General Franco's death in 1975 caused two claimants, Morocco and the Polisario Liberation movement, to make a bid for what had thus far been Spanish Sahara.

After Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Euro communism in Italy and France, the Cold War was going badly for the US. So, Washington dug its heels in support of Rabat's claims. Algeria, a staunch ally of Moscow, allowed the Polisario to set up its headquarters in Tindouf, southern Algeria.

When Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, his Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari promptly escorted him to Moscow in May 1985 to meet new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. To restore balance, Rajiv Gandhi was off to Washington, within a fortnight of the Moscow visit, to remain in President Ronald Reagan's favour.

On the way he stopped over at Algiers to meet President Chadli Bendjedid, who enlisted the young prime minister's support for the Liberation movement he so aggressively backed.

Polisario delegations were promptly invited into his chambers in Algiers. Decision to recognize the Saharwi Arab Republic was more or less taken but an announcement would be made only after the delegates returned home.

That no Indian had ever set eyes on the "Republic" New Delhi had so abruptly set its heart on gave this reporter an opportunity to fill in the gap. Tindouf was a sprawling city in tents, neatly arranged along streets and boulevards in the midst of handsome sand dunes. Military, police, civil administration and health services had all been trained and supervised by Cubans.

Little wonder Washington would not budge from its stout support for Rabat. UN Special Representatives for Western Sahara were such favourites of the Washington establishment as Sahibzada Yaqoub Khan, the former Pakistan Foreign Minister.

Chastened by an audience with Reagan, when the delegation returned home, an anxious Bhandari called the ambassador in Algiers, K.V. Rajan, and asked him to hold his horses on the Polisario recognition issue. There had been a change of heart.

The ambassador threw up his hands. Bendjedid had already kissed him on both his cheeks with fulsome Arab affection for his effective diplomacy. Meanwhile, the Polisario had lost no time in renting suitable property for an embassy.

To recognize and de-recognize an entity in a matter of weeks or months would have been awkward. But His Majesty Mohammad V was hopping mad in Rabat. Former foreign secretary M.K. Rasgotra, who knew the King, was dispatched as special envoy to mollify the Rabat palace. A mollified King would also placate the Reagan White House where ambassador K. Shankar Bajpai had exceptional access.

By way of a brief digression, the Reagan-Bajpai combination was to cause an even more dramatic policy reversal after Rajiv Gandhi, in some haste, asked Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat to lead a delegation of foreign ministers from four non-aligned nations, who were holding a session in New Delhi, to Tripoli to commiserate with Muammar Qadaffi, whose baby daughter had been killed in the US bombardment of Tripoli and Benghazi in April, 1986. It all seemed in order. But by the time Bhagat returned, the Prime Minister had been persuaded by Bajpai's cohorts to correct his course. Bali Ram Bhagat was summarily sacked.

Let me, after this digression, revert to the saga of Western Sahara. What was to be done with the Polisari embassy? The ministry of external affairs had little time for it. Since its budgets were meagre, even the professional embassy free-loaders steered clear. Embassies in the Soviet camp remained steadfastly supportive. But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990-91, the Polisario embassy was orphaned. It was left to Jaswant Singh, the external affairs minister in the BJP-led government, to wind up their shop in 2000.

New Delhi generally gets goosebumps at terms like "self determination", but so long as the US was determinedly opposed to the Polisario, there were no apparent risks.

In recent years, the US has reset its global compasses. In his latest interview with the Atlantic magazine, President Barack Obama has talked of American inability to be everywhere. This is the background to Ban Ki-moon's change of stance on the disputed territory.

(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)
The Congress-led Uttarakhand government plunged into political uncertainty late Friday as nine of its legislators joined ranks with the principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Harish Rawat-led government ended up with a red face as it got merely 32 votes in favour against the 36 required for the Finance Bill to be passed.

The political upheaval began with the falling of the Finance Bill in the state assembly.

Clearly the ruling party rebels, led by agriculture minister Harak Singh Rawat, walked over to the BJP camp.

Earlier, speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal declared the Bill as passed which led to further furore.

Harak Singh Rawat who was the top contender for the chief minister's post -- but the party high command chose Harish Rawat over him -- later resigned from the state cabinet.

After the sudden turn of events, the BJP's 27 legislators along with the nine Congress rebels went to the Raj Bhavan and met governor K.K. Paul and sought dismissal of the state Congress government.

Senior BJP leaders from New Delhi also rushed to the hill state to take stock of the situation.

Sources, however, told IANS that the BJP would not stake claim to form the government and instead would prefer central rule in the face of the imminent fall of the Harish Rawat government.

"We have numbers on our side but would not like to make a government at this juncture, more so as state assembly polls are less than a year from now" a senior leader told IANS.

-- Indo-Asian News Service

md/ahm/bg
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah on Friday asked PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti to explain what was wrong with the agenda of alliance her late father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had authored a year ago before forming the PDP-BJP ruling alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.

"Mehbooba's father negotiated the agenda of alliance (with the BJP). So she (Mehbooba) must tell us what was wrong with it," Abdullah tweeted, pointing out that Sayeed had ruled the state for "10 months with this agenda".

"If all she wanted was the agenda of alliance, that was a roadmap with a six-year implementation period. So what was the problem with (the) timeframe?"

Abdullah's tweets, criticizing the Peoples Democratic Party chief, came after PDP's talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir apparently hit the dead end in New Delhi.

Ram Madhav, the BJP leader in charge of Jammu and Kashmir, said his party was not ready to accept PDP's conditions for forming a coalition government again. Some PDP leaders said that the alliance between the two ideologically different parties was almost over.

Abdullah lashed out at Mehbooba Mufti and said her demands were vague and had tripped her.

"It seems she didn't know what she wanted from the centre and got tripped up because her demands were too vague and her response too erratic."

The National Conference leader said the PDP chief would now act as if Prime Minister Narendra Modi had let the state down.

"Watch how Mehbooba Mufti will now try and claim that her party wasn't asking for anything new and how the PM has let down J&K."

Jammu and Kashmir has been under Governor's Rule following the death of Chief Minister Sayeed in January.

Mehbooba Mufti, who emerged as a unanimous choice of her party to replace her father, sought fresh concessions from the central government to continue with the alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.
Manoj is deeply unhappy over the Rs 4,000 dished out by the (AoL) for acquiring his 1.5 bigha of land along the Yamuna for the World Culture Festival. His lost crops alone were worth Rs 50,000, he moans, not counting his efforts to grow vegetables in an ecologically-disturbed area.

Manoj, who hails from Badaun district in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, had sowed bitter gourd in two bigha  of which he lost 1.5 bigha  and gourd in two more bigha. Five bigha makes an acre. The land he lost was close to a main road.

"They came with road rollers, yellow soil, debris and police and started paving the roads. We had no information. First, they threw debris and soil over our plantation and then ran the road roller. Our labour of months was wiped out," Manoj told IANS.

Read more from our special coverage on "ART OF LIVING"

The 1.5 bigha he lost would have yielded bitter gourd by the month end.

"They gave me Rs 4,000 as compensation. That is nothing. The seeds I sowed for bitter gourd were worth Rs 25,000 a kilo. The labour for ploughing cost Rs 400 a day. Manure and irrigation cost more," he said.

Santosh Kumar, also from Badaun, and Dayaram from near Varanasi are also crying over their crop loss.

The AoL says it will make up whatever losses anyone has incurred. The Green Tribunal asked it to pay Rs 5 crore as an initial sum so as to compensate the damage caused to the river area.

Most farmers who cultivate along the winding Yamuna, at an annual cost of Rs 6,000-15,000 a bigha paid to Delhi-based landlords, are from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh.

Legally, the land doesn't belong to the landlords. It vests with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the UP Irrigation Department.

But the legal ownership is of little consequence to the landless farmers who grow vegetables on the floodplains, providing them a source of living.

"We arrived here some 15 years back and have cultivated since then. At times, the produce is so meagre that it is hard to pay back the lease amount to the landlords," said Santosh Kumari, also from Uttar Pradesh.

The farmers live in around 3,000 hutments on the Yamuna Khadar. The vegetables they grow include tomato, peas, onion, gourd and bitter gourd, spinach, cauliflower and radish  which are sold in nearby areas.

They say most of them lost large chunks of their crop to the bulldozing by the administration to level a part of the floodplains to carve out a road for the three-day AoL event that ended on March 13.

"Some farmers who protested got the compensation but not all. The roads from one of the entry gates of the event damaged the fields completely. We will have to start from scratch. It would require ploughing and removing stones and granules," said Dayaram, who too is from near Varanasi and has been cultivating near the Yamuna for 20 years.

"They widened the six feet road into 30 feet. They used road rollers to level the land," complained another farmer who did not give his name.

The fear of the DDA taking their land away and razing their hutments, of untimely rains and low productivity adds to the insecurity of the farmers.

Some farmers say a total of 1,800 bigha is cultivated along the Yamuna.

"The DDA seized 400-500 acres in 1989 but after we protested returned around 600 bigha... farmers kept cultivating," said Chaman Singh, one of those who rents out the land.

The DDA says all farming in the floodplains is illegal and that the former owners of land have been compensated.

"The land belongs to DDA and the UP Irrigation Department. It had been acquired long back," a DDA official told IANS. As far as the government is concerned, legally there are no farmers in the area.

The reality is different.
boss John Cryan has a point: new "contingent convertible" bank bonds are rotten products. Regulators are to clarify when banks will be permitted to pay coupons on CoCos to investors - and when they will not. Yet, unless there is also standardisation of when they convert from debt to equity, these instruments will remain prone to death spirals.

CoCos, which convert from bonds into equity when a bank's capital ratio falls to a prescribed level, are currently the subject of market jitters. A CoCo issued by fell to 70 per cent of par value on February 9. Part of this was a recent ruling by the European Banking Authority that specific bank-by-bank capital demands - known as Pillar 2, would play a bigger role in preventing lenders from paying their coupons.

The panic wasn't helped by opacity around different jurisdictional treatments. Lenders currently pay dividends, bonuses and CoCo coupons from reserves - but some European national regulators are stricter than others. It's also unclear whether any of these payouts are subordinated to each other.

More transparency would stabilise a market in which many portfolio managers rely on regular payouts to sustain performance. European politicians want banks to have more leeway. One way to do this might be through a softening of Pillar 2 requirements.

The bonds have another flaw: the point of conversion. The least harmful CoCos convert when the issuer's common equity Tier 1 ratio falls to a very low threshold, at about five per cent. But, some trigger at seven per cent or more. With some banks currently only a touch above 10 per cent, the danger is that panicked investors may bring conversion increasingly close by, for example, buying insurance on the debt portion of their investment in the form of credit default swaps, a key barometer of a bank's health.

Bank bosses could just refrain from issuing any more CoCos - the approach Cryan is taking. And regulators could mandate low-trigger levels only for new issues. Along with the more pressing need to enhance coupon clarity, this should help investors better price the outstanding euro 90 billion worth of bonds.

Deutsche Bank's CoCo recovered to 87 per cent of par value on March 14 following signs that the authorities were getting to grips with the problem. But, they've since fallen back to 82 per cent. CoCos difficult start to the year isn't over.
"The moral brigade, the sort that is out policing on Valentine's Day, must be a regular here," I tell our daughter as we stroll down the main street of Delhi's Hauz Khas Village. She is as surprised by my question as I am by her reply. "No, senas of that kind leave this place alone."



The main street is really a narrow lane which can barely be negotiated by two rows of residents' cars. (Those of visitors are parked outside the barrier marking the entrance to the village.) Plus, should there be a delivery van headed for one of the innumerable restaurants the village abounds in, there is barely space for people to walk by.
The furore over Vijay Mallya flying off to London, where Lalit Modi had already escaped, recalls a conversation in Singapore with an Indian holding forth on India's moral superiority over China. "We are governed by the rule of law," he boasted, to which a Chinese-Singaporean asked quietly, "Who makes laws in India?" In the silence that followed, the Chinese-Singaporean pushed on, "Who enforces those laws?"



Who indeed! To suggest anyone other than an honest-to-goodness desi who won't any longer expose his knobby knees, bow legs and spindly calves in baggy shorts would be seditious, anti-national and unpatriotic. It would be as objectionable as chanting "Jai Hind!" instead of "Bharat Mata ki Jai!" Or the ultimate anti-Indian crime of demanding "azaadi" from fear, superstition and discrimination. It would be worse than protesting that a licence to spy and snoop cannot masquerade as a Money Bill to circumvent parliamentary objections. Indeed, protest is seditious, anti-national, unpatriotic and anti-Indian unless it's against something seditious, anti-national, unpatriotic and anti-Indian like beef, Valentine's Day or church service.
India's capital was on edge as differences between Haryana and Punjab over water-sharing threatened to spill over into Delhi and Jats warned of a resumption of their stir if their demand for reservation was not met by 31 March. Although it is poll-bound Punjab and Haryana that are scrapping about the construction of the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, Delhi has been drawn into the battle because Chief Minister whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is a serious contestant in the Punjab polls due January 2017, has thrown his lot entirely with Punjab in the water-sharing argument the two states have been having for severaldecades.

In retaliation Haryana is promising to punish Delhi and is threatening to withdraw water. Added to this is the ongoing agitation by Jats who want reservation in government jobs and educational institutions. They have threatened a statewide stir. In the last round 30 people died and protestors prevented the flow of water to Delhi which bound by Haryana on three sides.

That the renewed stir is a serious and credible threat was clear as Home Minister Rajnath Singhconsulted Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on how water, rail and road connectivity could be secured if the Jats refused to be placated. On Thursday, Prime Minister Modi had called both Singh and Khattar and told them he did not want to see a repetition of the February agitation.

A symbolic protest is already on in Jat Bhawan, Rohtak and leaders of the movement told reporters in Chandigarh they were keeping the option of a wider protest open as the government dithers inbringing the Jat reservation bill in the current assembly session.

The government has promised that Jats will either be included in the list of backward classes; or relevant amendments will be introduced in consultation with Central Government. The Haryana government is in a bind as the state cannot cross the 50% cap on reservation and cannot include Jats in the existing BC category.

The government has told the community it will bring the legislation before 31March. Inpreparation of possible escalation, the state government today blocked internet services in Haryana's Rohtak district as a precautionary measure and truncated mobile services.

Rohtak was the epicentre of the February violence. Minister of state Kiren Rijiju said the Centre was ready to provide paramilitary forces if Haryana needed them. The inter-state water sharing dispute between Haryana and Punjab meanwhile showed no indication of receding.

Matters came to a head on Thursday when scuffles brokeout outside the Punjab and Haryana Legislative assemblies (both located in Chandigarh) as MLAs of one state tried to storm the assembly of the other to protest each other's stance on water. Arguments between Haryana and Delhi were loud and fractious as Haryana ministers including Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu dared to "get your own canal constructed for carrying Delhi's share of water with your efforts".

"The Delhi Chief Minister should keep in view the interests of the people of Delhi as Delhi wasgetting water through Haryana" he told reporters. On the other hand, DeputyChief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal told the media in Moga that he was ready to"make any sacrifice" rather than allow a "single drop ofwater" to flow out of the state.
MP Assembly today passed censure motion against Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen for his remarks that he would not chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai (long live Mother India).

Before a heated debate could lead a ruckus in Assembly, the speaker of the House Sitasharan Sharma rose to announce the passing of Censure Motion against the AIMIM leader.

Main opposition Congress member Jitu Patwari moved the motion and condemned Owaisi during Zero Hour of the ongoing Budget session. Jitu Patwari referred first prime minster of India, Jawahar Lal Nehru and recalled that the great leader had immense respect for Mother India. The MLA further said Nehru in his book Discovery of India touched upon rich and diversified cultural legacy of India.

MP Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi saying that such type of anti-national mentality is being noticed since last one-and a-half year.

Mishra said also condemned the people behind raising slogan Pakistan Zindabad and those supporting parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

He said that even the anti-national acts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus too should be condemned along with Owaisi.

MP Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress.

The speaker meanwhile intervened to end the debate and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members of ruling BJP and Congress.

On March 13, Owaisi had said he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' comments that came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahib," Owaisi had said, at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra.

"I won't utter that (slogan) even if you put a knife to my throat," Owaisi said, amid loud applause by the crowd, "Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai."



Bhagwat, on March 3 had said, "Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India)."
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will launch a 10-day campaign on the birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar (April 14) to reclaim its Dalit support base.

The twin objectives of the Dalit Chetna Yatra will be to spread awareness about the Narendra Modi governments various schemes for Dalits and to counter the oppositions campaign in the wake of the suicide of Dalit doctoral student Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won 40 of the 84 seats reserved for scheduled castes. Its Dalit leaders have conveyed to the party leadership that the controversy after the Hyderabad suicide had led to an adverse impact. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has also asked the BJP to reach out to the community.

This outreach plan was finalised at a meeting of the partys Dalit MPs on Wednesday evening. RSS senior Krishna Gopal and BJPs general secretary (organisation) Ramlal attended. Gopal is looking after RSS-BJP coordination for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. The Dalit vote had significantly contributed to the partys spectacular performance in UP in the 2014 elections.

Party head Amit Shah is likely to recast his team to include more Dalit faces after the BJPs national executive meeting over the weekend. Currently, there isnt a single Dalit in Shahs team of 39 and only one in the partys list of 10 spokespersons.

The Chetana Yatra will have BJP leaders go to Dalit localities and the party will also organise camps. Prime Minister Modi will address a rally in Uttar Pradesh on April 14. On March 21, he will lay the foundation stone for an auditorium to be constructed at 25, Alipur Road, in Delhi  the house where Ambedkar had passed away.

At the meeting, BJPs SC Morcha chief Dushyant Gautam said while Vemulas suicide was unfortunate, the research scholar was part of protests against the hanging of 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Yakub Memon. He said no Dalit could ever support anti-national activities.

Participants also stressed that the party needed to counter Jawaharlal Nehru University students union leader Kanhaiya Kumars claims that the government at the Centre was anti-poor. The sense was that Kanhaiyas speeches have struck a chord since he himself comes from a poor family. We need to tell people that it isnt the NDA government in power for the past two years but the Congress governments that have been responsible for the level of poverty we see even after 67 years of independence, a party leader said.

The party has also decided that the PM will address a maximum of eight rallies in West Bengal. This is in some contrast to Modi having addressed over 30 in the Bihar elections of last year. Bengal has a six-phase poll.
The Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate working in tribal areas, has compiled a vision document that it will present to top Union ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Monday to spread awareness about issues confronting the countrys tribal population.

In the past two years, VKA has vocally disagreed with the policies of the Narendra Modi government more than once. It had opposed amendments proposed to the Land Bill of 2013. It is now bracing to protest the increasing privatisation and commercialisation of education, which it believes is against the interests of the tribal people.

However, VKA, prodded by the RSS, hopes to first reach out to the topmost leaders of the government as well as the BJP to correct their scant awareness of issues confronting tribals. The vision document will be released in Delhi on Monday in the presence of BJP president Amit Shah, RSS number two Suresh Bhaiyaji Joshi, rural development minister Chaudhary Birender Singh, tribal affairs minister Jual Oram, environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar and minister of state for development of northeastern states Jitender Singh.

Sources in VKA said the document was the result of three-year-long consultations. It presents a review of the Constitution and legal framework for the welfare of tribals, non-implementation of constitutional provisions and legislation related to tribal areas, land alienation among tribals, etc.

The document has recommended that governors of states become protectors of Scheduled Tribes in their respective states, and that separate janjati, or tribal cells, be set up in their offices manned by people drawn from a specially trained janjati cadre of officials. It has also demanded that displacement of tribals from their traditional lands be minimised and demanded the implementation of Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and the Forest Rights Act.

There is important political subtext to the exercise, which comes in the wake of a similar effort by the Sangh Parivar to reach out to the Dalits. Apart from 84 seats in the Lok Sabha reserved for Scheduled Castes, there are 47 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Of these 131 seats, the BJP had won 66 in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections  the best performance ever by a party on reserved seats since 1991.

VKA, if it helps those in the party and government understand tribal issues better, would not only enable programmes and policies that are more attuned to the welfare of the tribals, but also help BJP consolidate its sway on these seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

WHAT IS VANAVASI KALYAN ASHRAM

RSS affiliate founded in 1952 to work in tribal areas



Objective is to eliminate the chasm between the Hindu community and its tribal brethren; also tries to wean away tribals from the influence of Christianity



Claims to have centres in 323 districts (of a total of 634 districts in India) with tribal population



Runs 4,500 schools in tribal areas, 223 hostels for 12,000 students, medical camps in 3,500 tribal villages



2,500 women self-help groups

Source: Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram
One of four people arrested this week amid fears they were planning an attack in France had been under house arrest and was convicted two years ago of planning to join extremists in Syria, an official said today.

Youssef Ettaoujar, 28, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was convicted in 2014 along with two others.

He finished serving his sentence in October and was under house arrest as part of France's state of emergency, in place since the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130, the judicial official said, on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.

Authorities have until Sunday to free or charge any or all of the four.

Ettaoujar's companion is among the four arrested in Paris and a northern suburb. It was unclear whether she is the mother of his daughter, Jihad so named "because Jihad means effort," Ettaoujar said at his 2014 trial.

The trial was notable because it was the first in France of potential jihadi fighters in Syria when French youth were heading at an alarming rate to the battlefields of the Islamic State group.

Ettaoujar was considered the leader among the three arrested in 2012 at a French airport as they prepared to board a plane for Turkey, the leading route to neighboring Syria. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, referring to Ettaoujar without naming him, said Wednesday night that "he might commit violent actions in France."



"This individual may have been in contact with individuals in Syria belonging to the Islamic State."



At his trial, Ettaoujar denied he planned to fight in Syria, claiming his mission was humanitarian. Ettaoujar was given a five-year prison term with one year suspended for "criminal association with intent to commit terrorist acts.
At least 16 civilians, among them eight children, were killed today in air strikes on the northern Syrian city of Raqa by unidentified planes, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five women were also among the dead in Raqa, the main Syrian bastion of the Islamic State jihadist group.

"The death toll could rise as there are around 40 wounded and missing people," the Observatory said.

The Britain-based Observatory typically identifies aircraft by flight patterns and munitions used.

However, it said today's strikes could have been carried out "by either the Syrian regime, the Russians, or the coalition led by Washington," referring to the US-led effort to strike IS in Syria and Iraq.

But Aamaq, a self-styled agency linked to IS, said strikes by Russian warplanes had left 17 people dead in Raqa today.

On Monday, Moscow announced it would withdraw the bulk of its air force from Syria after a nearly six-month air war in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

It warned that it would continue targeting "terrorist groups".

Russia's military said today it was still conducting about two dozen combat sorties per day to back a government offensive to retake the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria from IS.
Nearly 40 per cent of doctors disagreed with the government's move to ban 344 fixed dose combination drugs, a survey said.

EMediNexus, a healthcare advocacy platform, surveyed a total of 4,892 doctors to understand their sentiments as they are "directly affected" by the Health Ministry's ban.

The ministry on March 14 banned altogether 344 fixed dose combinations, including cough syrups compositions, saying they involve "risk" to humans and safer alternatives were available.

Around 80 per cent of the doctors were found to prescribe drugs from the list of 344 drugs before the ban, the survey said.

Codeine and Nimesulide combinations were the main exceptions to the ban that doctors felt should have been made, amongst a vast list of other combinations, it said.

Doctors and pharmaceutical manufacturers are the main stakeholders directly impacted by drug bans, but doctors themselves are responsible for the dispensing of medicines to the population, the survey said.

"As a healthcare advocacy platform, it was important to conduct this survey to understand the sentiments of doctors who are directly affected by the ban. The results were that 60 per cent of the doctors supported the ban while 40 per cent found it an unnecessary move," Amit Sharma and Nilesh Aggarwal, co-Founders eMediNexus, said in a joint statement.

The 344 banned drugs include the fixed dose combination of Chlopheniramine Maleate and Codeine syrup sold under the popular cough syrup brand Corex.

Following the government ban, pharmaceutical major Pfizer has discontinued manufacture and sale of Corex with immediate effect.

Fixed dose combination drugs are combinations of two or more active drugs in a single dose form.
State-run morgues in Goa have 58 unclaimed bodies which are yet to be disposed of as their identity could not be ascertained, state Deputy Chief Minister Francis D'Souza informed the Legislative Assembly here.

"There are a total of 58 unidentified bodies at Goa Medical College (GMC),T B Hospital in Margao, North Goa District Hospital, Mapusa, and Sub District Hospital in Ponda," D'Souza, who also holds Health portfolio, told the ongoing assembly session.

In a written reply tabled by St Cruz constituency legislator Atanasio Monserratte, D'Souza has said the bodies are of those people with no claimants. They are brought to GMC hospital by Police or 108 ambulances (emergency ambulance service) in an unconscious state.

"The people are found at bus stand, road side with limited or no information. Hence, whatever limited information that is available with GMC authorities is sent to the Police.

"Within the limited information, it becomes difficult to verify name and address and in confirming of that there are relatives..In time bound manner. It causes delay in issue of No Objection Certificate for disposal," he said.

"The disposal of dead bodies at Sub District Hospital is under process while those at T B Hospital and North Goa district hospital, Mapusa, are recently referred to police stations concerned," D'Souza said.

He apprised that mortuary at the T B hospital is fully functional. Another morgue at Hospicio Hospital in Margao is not operational and is under process of being scrapped. Currently, only post morterm facility is available there.

A new mortuary is proposed in New South Goa district hospital, which is under construction.
A 66-year-old retired bank employee from Vashi in Navi Mumbai, was sentenced to life imprisonment by district court here for killing his wife.

Thane Additional Sessions Judge V V Bambarde yesterday awarded the sentence to Jagmohan Thakur who had killed his 62-year-old wife with a hammer in 2013 after she refused to return to his native place in Himachal Pradesh.

The judge refereed to the circumstantial evidence and the deposition of witnesses which corroborated the incident and held the accused, an ex-employee of PNB, guilty of the charges under section 302 (murder) of the IPC.

The judge held that the prosecution has proved the case beyond reasonable doubt.

The prosecution examined as many as 11 witnesses including the son of the accused.

In his submission before the court, Additional Public Prosecutor Sanjay Londhe said the couple--Jagmohan and his wife Asha 62 (then)-- a retired school teacher lived with their son and daughter-in-law in Vashi.

It was on October 7, 2013, around 7.30 AM, the domestic help noticed that the room of Asha and Jagmohan was bolted from outside. When she told son Tushar and his wife Kirti about it, they opened the door to see Asha lying in a pool of blood. She was rushed to a hospital but she was declared brought dead.

After murdering her, the accused had changed his clothes and bolted the door from outside and left. The police recovered the hammer and his blood-stained clothes from the scene of the offence.

It was also submitted that the accused was under tremendous strain as the bank he worked with had initiated a departmental inquiry against him.

He wanted to commit suicide around six months ago by jumping in front of a train. His family found the suicide note and managed to stop him from taking the extreme step.

The accused wanted to return to their native place in Himachal Pradesh. But his wife declined and they had a fight over it on the fateful night after which the accused attacked her with a hammer and killed her, the court was told.
Philippine troops battled about 100 Muslim militants today in fierce fighting that killed seven gunmen and a soldier and wounded a top militant commander long wanted by both the Philippines and its US ally, a Filipino general said.

Another 16 soldiers and five militants were hurt in the clash that erupted when troops approached rebels from the Abu Sayyaf group in a jungle off Patikul town in predominantly Muslim Sulu province, said Brig. Gen. Allan Arrojado.

Among them was one-armed rebel commander Radulan Sahiron, who led the Abu Sayyaf faction, Arrojado said.

The US government has offered $1 million for any information leading to the capture and prosecution of Sahiron, one of the original Abu Sayyaf commanders who has endured years of fighting and has been blamed for several bomb attacks and kidnappings.

It was not immediately clear if the militants were with captives, including two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipino woman who were abducted last year in a marina on southern Samal Island. The kidnapped victims were believed to be held in Sulu.

In a recent video posted on a Facebook account linked to the militants, they threatened to kill the hostages unless a huge ransom was paid by April 8. The Philippine military said the government's no-ransom policy remains and security forces would continue efforts to secure the safe release of the captives.

The Abu Sayyaf is one of several Muslim rebel groups in the predominantly Catholic nation's south. The main rebel group has agreed to peace in exchange for autonomy.
Betting big on Indian aviation market, European aircraft maker Airbus today said it will set up a state-of-the-art pilot and maintenance training centre in the country with an initial investment of USD 40 million.

The facility will come up in the National Capital Region (NCR) and would be in line with Skill India initiative of the Indian Government, said Srinivasan Dwarakanath, President of Airbus Division, India.

Airbus, which expects Indian market to grow at twice the rate of the worldwide aviation market, said the work on the training centre will commence from 2017 and it will churn out around 8,000 Airbus pilots and 2,000 maintenance engineers in the next 10 years, beginning 2018.

The centre will be fully owned by Airbus Group India with training to be delivered by Airbus' specialised training instructors. The centre will be built in a modular concept in order to accommodate four A320 full-flight simulators, with potential to expand.

According to Airbus' latest global market forecast, India requires over 1,600 passenger and freighter aircraft in the next 20 years to 2034, with an accompanying demand for new pilots and maintenance engineers.

"On an average, one Airbus aircraft per week is expected to be delivered to Indian carriers over the next 10 years. The need for top quality training will be perpetual," Dwarakanath said.

This investment in a training centre is a key strategic Airbus initiative in line with the country's 'Skill India' programme launched last year by the Indian government to develop a wide range of advanced competencies.

Airbus said it is committed to offering the best-in-class training skills comparable anywhere worldwide.

"Our new training centre underscores Airbus' long-term vision to equip pilots and engineers with superior flying and maintenance skills to operate and maintain contemporary and next-generation Airbus aircraft to be delivered to the airlines of India," said Kiran Rao, Airbus' EVP Strategy and Marketing.

The new centre will accelerate the pace of training to help match the A320neo deliveries to India, Airbus said.

Airbus has been providing maintenance training from its existing centre in Bangalore since 2007, and has so far trained over 2,750 maintenance engineers.
The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraq's north earlier this week said he made "a bad decision" joining IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters.

Khweis said in the interview aired late last night that he met an Iraqi woman with ties to IS in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul. There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee.

"I didn't agree with their ideology," he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. "I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul."



Khweis said a friend helped him escape Mosul to nearby Tal Afar. From there he said he walked toward Kurdish troops. "I wanted to go to the Kurdish side," he said, "because I know they are good with the Americans."



The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from IS militants late last year. In the past year IS fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq. Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation.

Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling IS have told The Associated Press that they are seeing an increase in the number of IS members surrendering following recent territorial losses. As the militants lose territory, US officials predict there will be more desertions.

"I wasn't thinking straight," Khweis said. "My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad," he said, adding that he doesn't believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam.

The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other extremist groups.

An earlier estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a think tank at King's College London, said IS fighters include 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans.
An AMU professor today pitched for for restoration of the "minority" tag of the varsity, saying "those who play games" are making the matter complex.

"Those who play games are making the matter complex. The minority character of the university should continue. Otherwise people there, who built it, will be depressed," Saghir Afraheim, a professor attached to AMU's Urdu department, said without naming anyone, on the sidelines of first World Sufi Forum here.

The issue of restoration of minority character of AMU is pending with the Supreme Court, but what has triggered off the protests is the Centre's recent decision to reverse the UPA government's stand of supporting the varsity on this issue.

On January 11, Attorney Journal Mukul Rohatagi had told the court that the NDA government did not support the idea of a state-funded minority institution in a secular state, sparking off a controversy.

AMU Vice Chancellor Zameer Uddin Shah had earlier this month met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sought the NDA governments support in restoring the varsitys minority status.

Shah today called on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and discussed issues pertaining to education.

Afraheim, who presented a paper on 'Sufism is River of Humanity' during today's event, also rued over declining number of Urdu-speaking people and blamed "some sections" for impressing upon people that the language belonged only to Muslims.

"Muslims came from different parts of the world and they blended themselves in this land and followed Ganges-Yamuna culture. Urdu is an Indian language," he said and called for efforts to ensure that "our language flourishes".

Afraheim also observed that increasing number of parents and children are preferring English medium of instruction over Indian languages.
Social activist and Gandhian Anna Hazare will launch an initiative in four districts of Tamil Nadu on March 26 to restore Noyyal river, the lifeline of Kongu region to its pristine glory.

The 160-km long river was once fed by 34 streams all through the year thus making it a perennial river but with the passage of time, neglect and mismanagement have almost led to its disappearance from the landscape, Vanitha Mohan, Executive Trustee of Siruthuli, one of the four NGOs involved in the project, told reporters here today.

Siruthuli has formed Noyyal River Restoration Federation (NORFED) for the purpose.

Vanitha attributed the reasons for such a pathetic situation of the river to encroachments, silting up and conversion of streams into cart tracks, thereby preventing water from the adjoining hill reaching the river.

She further said Hazare would be in the city to launch their initiative.

NORFED, which include NGOs of Jeeva Nadh Noyyal from Tirupur, Oliru Erodu from Erode and Noyyal Kappom from Karur, has come up with the project for the holistic restoration, development and maintenance of the river, C R Swaminathan, its Chairman said.

Noyyal originates in the Western Ghats and flows through the districts of Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and Karur to join the Cauvery near Kodumudi at a village called Noyyal.
Andhra Pradesh government is pursuing with the Centre the possibility of making Visakhapatnam a part of the 'Silk Route' proposed by China, State Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said today.

Replying to the general discussion on the state Budget for 2016-17 in the Legislative Assembly, the finance Minister said AP in general and Visakhapatnam in particular could serve as a gateway to East Asia.

"China has proposed a Silk Route to Europe. It will benefit us immensely if Visakhapatnam is made part of that route. We are actively pursuing the issue with the Centre," Yanamala said.

He recalled that Amaravati was once the gateway to east Asia when Buddhist culture flourished in the region.

"We realised this during our recent visit to the London museum. Now that Amaravati will be the capital of Andhra Pradesh, it can again become the gateway as the government is developing the Machilipatnam port close by," Yanamala said.

"We are focusing on port-led development. Three-four new ports are being developed in the state in addition to the existing major ports at Visakhapatnam and Krishnapatnam. A coastal corridor is being developed between Visakhapatnam and Chennai. All this holds immense potential for the growth of AP," the minister added.
The Army today provided relief to the more than 300 people stranded on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, after it was closed for vehicular traffic for the second consecutive day today.

"To provide succor to the stranded passengers, Rashtriya Rifles Battalion under Delta Force located at Nachlana mobilised resources to provide meals and other facilities to them," Defence spokesman (officiating) S N Acharya said.

A column of Delta Force of almost 100 troops reached the landslide area and rescued almost 30 families stranded on the highway and took them to the nearest Rashtriya Rifles camp.

"Over 100 males, 30 females and 30 children were evacuated to the and sheltered at the nearest RR camp," Acharya said.

He said that over 250passengerswere also provided meals, drinking water and emergency medical aid.

"Over 200 sets of blankets, sleeping bags and balaclavas have been provided to the evacuated passengers," he said.

Acharya said another column provided relief to more than 200 stranded passengers in areas of Tathar and Gund and evacuated them to nearest Rashtriya Rifles camp.

"Delta Force is providing relief to as many stranded passengers as possible, especially elders, ladies and children in the camps nearby. The relief shall continue till the time road opens," he said.

(REOPENS DES12)



Replying to a question, Lt Gen Dua said there were reports of some boys having joined militant ranks, but their exact number could not be ascertained due to the unrest.

"Police have been carrying out raids and making arrests due to which some boys have gone into hiding. So it is difficult to put a specific number to how many of them have joined the terror groups.

"Some boys have gone across (the LoC), I do concede that. There are some misguided youths and we hope to bring them back into the mainstream. The unrest is only affecting the poor," he added.

The Army officer said the weapon snatching from security forces by militants was a cause of concern.

Asked about the September 18 Uri attack in which 19 soldiers were killed, he said the Army has learnt lessons and implemented improvements after the incident.

Lt Gen Dua said soldiers equivalent to two brigades, in addition to CRPF personnel, have been inducted for maintaining law and order in the Valley.

The purpose of these additional army units has been to calm things down. Since these units have come up around Eid, things have actually calmed down in south Kashmir. You will very soon see peace and quiet in the Valley again, he said.
The largest nuclear security centre in the Asia-Pacific region, jointly financed by China and the US to train personnel of countries in the region on protection and control of nuclear materials, opened here today.

The centre, constructed by the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) and the US Department of Energy, is able to train about 2,000 nuclear-security staff for China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region every year, CAEA chair Xu Dazhe said.

Construction of the centre, which is the largest nuclear programme to have direct the Chinese and US investment, began in December 2013.

Top Chinese, US and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) officials attended today's the event.

China and the US agreed to establish a nuclear security centre at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in 2010.

Under the agreement, the centre, which is located in Fangshan District, Beijing, is run and administered by China, while the US is responsible for providing nuclear-security equipment.

According to the CAEA, the site will become a centre for international exchanges and cooperation on nuclear security, the demonstration of advanced technology, testing and analysing.

Commenting on its significance, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang said it was constructed one year ahead of schedule and demonstrated close cooperation between China and US.

China is committed to enhance nuclear security and promote international cooperation, he said at a media briefing here.

Earlier President Xi Jinping said the centre will be developed as the largest and the most advanced in the nuclear field.

The centre is a significant achievement in China-US nuclear security cooperation, and will boost cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and the world, Wang Yiren, deputy director of the CAEA said.

It will also promote the peaceful use of nuclear power, Wang, who is also deputy head of the China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence said.

The two countries have also cooperated in other nuclear security areas such as low-enriched reactors, security of radioactive sources and radiation detection by customs authorities, according to Wang.

The centre came as China is massively expanding its nuclear reactor network.

China currently has 30 operational nuclear power generating units, with a total installed capacity of 28.31 GW. It also has 24 units with a total installed capacity of 26.72 GW under construction, ranking first in the world.

As planned, China's installed nuclear power capacity will reach 58 GW with an additional 30 GW under construction by 2020.

"Construction projects for six to eight new generators are expected to begin each year from 2016 to 2020," Wang said.

He also said China was mulling building of offshore floating nuclear power stations.
The sale of major Australian state-owned infrastructure to private foreign investors will face tougher scrutiny under new rules announced today, after a deal involving a Chinese company last year drew criticism.

The new rules will apply from March 31 and ensure that sales of critical infrastructure to private foreign investors will be subject to a formal review by Australia's foreign investment advisory body.

Under previous rules, the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) was only required to assess the sale of such infrastructure to foreign state-owned enterprises.

The rules cover major assets such as airports, ports, public transport infrastructure, and electricity, gas, water and sewerage systems, while existing and proposed roads, railways, telecommunications infrastructure and nuclear facilities could also be reviewed by the body.

"While we welcome foreign investment in Australia it is imperative that critical infrastructure sales are scrutinised to ensure any potential national security risks can be addressed," Treasurer Scott Morrison said.

The new rules follow the granting in 2015 of a 99-year lease for the Port of Darwin to China's Landbridge Group.

United States President Barack Obama, whose Marines rotate through Darwin, reportedly chided Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over that deal, with the Australian Financial Review quoting him as saying: "Let us know next time".

Canberra defended the decision which had been made in consultation with Australia's Department of Defence, but a review of the rules followed.

"Foreign investment is an important source of capital to build the infrastructure that Australia needs and the government recognises that this investment can provide access to funds to restore and enhance ageing infrastructure networks and assets," Morrison said today.

"But the government recognises this investment should occur on our terms, must be appropriately scrutinised and not be contrary to the national interest."



Under pressure over the seemingly increasing foreign ownership of farmland, the government is already in the process of compiling a register of agricultural land owned by foreigners.

It has also lowered the threshold for screening proposed foreign purchases of agricultural land to Aus$15 million.
The laundering through the Philippines of USD 81 million stolen by hackers from a US Federal Reserve account is adding to pressures on the Southeast Asian country to fix loopholes in its financial regime.

It also highlights a potential pitfall in global anti-money laundering efforts, which in the case of the Philippines has focused more on vanquishing terrorist financing than on preventing misuse of the financial system by banks and casinos.

The disclosure of the theft from an account of the Bangladesh central bank at the New York Fed, has given such issues fresh traction, with a front-runner for the May presidential election, Senator Grace Poe calling for a change to the Philippines' stringent bank secrecy law.

"The trend now in the world is having bank disclosures, not bank secrecy," Poe told reporters earlier this week. "This is to prevent also the funneling of money down to terroristic activities, drug cartels, etc. We should be one with the international community in preventing such activities."



Sergio Osmena III, chairman of the Philippine Senate's committee on Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies, said yesterday he is preparing to propose amendments to the anti-money laundering law.

He wants gaming, and possibly real estate brokers and art dealers, to be subject to the money laundering law and wants bank secrecy laws to be relaxed.

"I know we're going to have to weaken that now because we're out of alignment with the rest of the world," he told ABS-CBN television. "It's very embarrassing to us, very embarrassing to our country."



"We're trying to establish ourselves as the money laundering capital ... I don't think we want that to happen," he said, calling the country's casinos a money trail "black hole."



The Philippines' anti-money laundering agency says it has sought help from the Federal Bureau of Investigations in the case.

Bankers in the Philippines evidently knew something was amiss weeks before the Bangladesh Bank announced the theft.

Yesterday, the Philippine Senate held a second hearing into how the stolen funds were transmitted to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then sent to casino operators, who are not subject to the country's anti-money laundering law.

During the televised hearing, Romualdo Agarrado, the bank branch's customer service manager, testified that on February 5, when the funds were transmitted to the accounts, he saw a bank messenger and another bank officer load 20 million pesos (USD 428,000) in a paper bag into the car of the bank's branch manager, Maia Santos-Deguito. He said she drove off with the money.

Officials allege the money was withdrawn from a bogus account set up under the name of a local businessman, William So Go, who denies any involvement in the transfers.
A Bangladeshi cyber security expert has gone missing, his family said today, days after he said officials at the central bank bore some responsibility for an 81 million theft from its foreign exchange account.

Hackers stole the money from the Bangladesh Bank's account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 5 and managed to transfer it electronically to accounts in the Philippines.

IT expert Tanvir Hassan Zoha, who said he was helping the government investigate the crime, told a local TV station last week that "apathy" over security at Bangladesh Bank had contributed to the audacious theft.

Zoha has not been seen since Wednesday night when he was picked up on his way home from work in the capital Dhaka, his wife Kamrun Nahar said, citing a friend who was with him.

"Several men in plainclothes stopped their auto-rickshaw and put them in two different vehicles. Later they dropped Yamir (Zoha's friend) on a road blindfolded but took Zoha with them," Nahar told AFP.

"We've not heard anything from him since then," the wife said, saying police had not filed a case on her husband's disappearance.

The heist has hugely embarrassed the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and raised alarm over the security of the country's foreign exchange reserves of over $27 billion.

The central bank governor and his two deputies lost their jobs following the theft and the government has been scrambling to contain the damage from the spiralling scandal.

Zoha, 34, told Ekattor TV station on March 11 that "the database administrator of the (Bangladesh Bank) server cannot avoid responsibility for such hacking".

The government committee probing the case had "noticed apathy about the security system (of the server)" he said.

Authorities have denied that Zoha was working with them on investigating the case.

Police have yet to make any comment on Zoha's disappearance.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters yesterday that it was possible Zoha could have been picked up by law enforcers in the course of the investigation, but said he had no information.

A source told AFP that Zoha worked with Bangladesh police probing the murder case of an Italian aid worker who was shot dead allegedly by the Islamist militants in Dhaka last year.
Britain's Serious Fraud Office today said it had issued European arrest warrants for five bankers currently living in France and Germany over alleged manipulation of the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor.

"The arrest warrants were applied for these five individuals and they were granted," an SFO spokeswoman told AFP.

The five include four former Deutsche Bank employees -- Andreas Hauschild, Joerg Vogt, Ardalan Gharagozlou and Kai-Uwe Kappauf -- as well as former Societe Generale employee Stephane Esper.

Esper's lawyer, Francois de Casto, said his client would be contesting the warrant in France.

A preliminary hearing was held at a London court in January in a case that is due to go to trial in September next year. The five did not attend.

Six other bankers appeared at the January hearing, charged with conspiracy to defraud in relation to alleged manipulation of the Euribor between 2005 and 2009.

The Euribor is the eurozone equivalent of the daily London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, which was found to have been manipulated.

It is alleged that collusion to manipulate the Euribor rate occurred between employees of Deutsche Bank, British lender Barclays and French giant Societe Generale to profit the accused and their employers.
The Rs 70-crore IPO of Bharat Wire Ropes was subscribed 40 per cent on the first day of the issue today.

The initial public offering (IPO) received bids for 69,78,300 shares against the total issue size of 1,75,00,000 shares, data available with the BSE till 1700 hours showed.

The category for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) was subscribed 38 per cent while non-institutional investors saw 72 per cent subscription.

The retail investor portion was subscribed 27 per cent.

The Maharashtra-based specialty wire ropes manufacturer has fixed the price band at Rs 40-45 for the IPO.

The bidding for the shares will conclude on March 22.

As per draft papers, the company is aiming to raise Rs 70 crore through the issue.

The proceeds will be utilised for setting up a manufacturing plant at Chalisgaon in Maharashtra and for other general corporate purposes.

The issue is being managed by Intensive Fiscal Services and BOB Capital Markets. The equity shares of the company are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE.

Since the beginning of 2016, three firms -- Quick Heal Technologies, TeamLease Services and Precision Camshafts -- have come out with their IPOs.

Besides, the public offer of Healthcare Global Enterprises (HCG) is under way while that of Infibeam will open on March 21.
Police Friday arrested BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi, accused of assaulting a police 'Shaktiman' during a protest march in New Delhi recently which led to amputation of one of its hind legs.

IG Garhwal range Sanjay Gunjyal said the MLA from Mussoorie was arrested from outside a hotel in Patel Nagar area on the basis of an FIR lodged against him and his associates at Nehru Colony police station here in connection with the assault on the police on March 14.

The official said Joshi was being interrogated. He, however, refused to disclose where the MLA has been taken.

Reacting sharply to the development, BJP lodged a protest with Governor K K Paul and alleged it was "abduction" of its MLA.

"The manner in which Joshi was picked up from outside a hotel suggests he was abducted. Those who picked him up were in plain clothes and it is not clear whether they were police personnel or goondas," Leader of Opposition in Uttarakhand Assembly Ajay Bhatt said.

Bhatt said he had called on Governor K K Paul to register his protest against the manner in which the party legislator was picked up.

The action against Joshi comes a day after the arrest of another party worker Pramod Bora from Haldwani in Nainital district yesterday.

Dehradun SSP Sadanand Date said Bora along with Joshi was responsible for precipitating the fall of the during the protest March on March 14 which caused grievous injuries to one of its hind legs.

Meanwhile, the injured horse whose fractured hind leg had to be amputated late last night by a team of doctors at the police lines can now stand with the help of an artificial leg.

However, doctors attending on Shaktiman said it will have to be seen whether the prop is strong enough to support the horse which weighs four quintals.

Surgeon from Mumbai Feroze Khambatta, who led a team of doctors that operated on the horse, said he had performed eight similar operations in Nepal and Bhutan but on horses which weighed only two quintals.

As Shaktiman weighs four quintals it is not clear for how long he can stand and move with an artificial leg.

He is constantly under the watch of doctors and over two dozen police personnel at the police lines.

Shaktiman is a well trained horse and part of Uttarakhand Mounted Police for years. Chief Minister Harish Rawat also expressed concern over the horse's condition. The BJP has been demanding withdrawal of cases lodged against its workers including Joshi, asserting that they were being framed at the behest of the state government to cow down the opposition.

Shaktiman had undergone first surgery on March 15 but the doctors attending on him decided to go for amputation when his condition worsened two days later.

Meanwhile, Pradesh BJP spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan alleged that the horse's condition had worsened as attempts were made to make it stand up just a day after the first surgery was performed on March 15.

"How can you expect a horse which sustained multiple injuries in its leg to stand on its feet just a day after surgery? It was a deliberate act to worsen the condition of the horse," he alleged.
The BJP National Executive will meet here for two days starting tomorrow ahead of assembly polls in five states and amid rising temperatures over issues like nationalism and quota agitations in some states ruled by the party.

Top party brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and senior leaders and ministers, will participate in the deliberations in which political and economic resolutions will be adopted, sources said.

The "pro-poor and pro-village" budget will be at the centre of the economic resolution, they said.

Shah will deliver the inaugural speech while Modi will deliver the valedictory address.

Sources added that the "disinformation" campaign by Congress to "defame" the government, the Ishrat Jahan and JNU rows besides the budget features will be the key issues on the agenda.

"The opposition, especially Congress, has been exposed in the last 20 months over a host of issues, be it returning of awards by a section of intelligentsia or JNU row where it chose to side with anti-national forces. These will come up for discussion," a party leader said.

Elections to five state assemblies in April-May will be part of the deliberations during which Uttar Pradesh, which will go to the polls early next year and where BJP's stakes are high, may also figure.

The need to inform the masses about the "pro-poor and pro-village" aspects of the budget will be stressed upon at the meeting, party sources said, adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be the main speaker on the issue.

The party's office-bearers will first meet and the much-larger Executive will go into a huddle in the afternoon.

The event will provide the party yet another opportunity to project its hardline nationalist credentials in the wake of the JNU row.

All top party leaders, including Shah, had hit out at Congress, particularly its vice president Rahul Gandhi, over the issue at a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha convention recently.

"We believe that the issue has highlighted Congress' increasing ideological hollowness and that it can take up any cause in its desperation to target the government," sources said.

The recent revelations in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case will also provide ammunition to the party to attack Congress.
Government bonds (G-Secs) slipped on selling pressure from banks and corporates.

However, the overnight call money rates ended lower at the money market due to subdued demand from borrowing banks amid ample liquidity in the banking system.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2029 fell to Rs 99.0275 from Rs 99.0775 previously, while its yield edged up by 7.71 from 7.70 per cent.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2026 declined to Rs 100.46 from Rs 100.52, while its yield inched-up by 7.52 per cent from 7.51 per cent.

The 8.27 per cent government security maturing in 2020 eased to Rs 102.31 from Rs 102.45, while its yield gained by 7.61 per cent to 7.58 per cent.

The 7.88 percent government security maturing in 2030, the 7.72 per cent government security maturing in 2025 and the 7.68 per cent government security maturing in 2023 were also quoted lower to Rs 100.04, Rs 100.00 and Rs 99.55, respectively.

The overnight call money rates finished lower by 6.00 percent from yesterday's level of 6.25 per cent. It resumed higher at 6.60 per cent and moved in a range of 6.60 and 6.00 percent. The 3-day call money rate ended at 6.15 percent. It moved in a range of 7.40 and 6.15 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), purchased securities worth Rs 75.73 billion in 17-bids at the 3-day repo operations at a fixed rate of 6.75 per cent as on today.

It sold securities worth Rs 256.66 billion from 56-bids at the 1 day overnight reverse repo auction at a fixed rate of 5.75 per cent as on March 17.
Lawyers for mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik called today for the Norwegian state to be found guilty of "inhuman" treatment, at the close of his lawsuit over his solitary confinement.

Representatives for the state have insisted that the rightwing extremist, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, must be kept in isolation because he is dangerous.

"The plaintiff is not, nor has he ever been, subjected to inhuman treatment," argued Adele Matheson Mestad from the office of the general attorney.

Norway's most infamous inmate is serving a maximum 21-year sentence -- which can be extended if he is still considered dangerous -- for killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then murdering another 69, mostly teenagers, in a rampage at a Labour Youth camp.

His shooting spree on the island of Utoya lasted over an hour, as he methodically stalked and killed up-and-coming leaders of Labour, Norway's dominant political party, which he blamed for the rise of multiculturalism in the Nordic country.

He finished off many of his young victims with a bullet to the head.

Since his arrest on the day of the attacks, Breivik has been held apart from other prisoners and his contacts with the outside world, including visits and correspondence, have been strictly controlled.

Stressing his client's almost five years in isolation, Breivik's lawyer Oystein Storrvik accused the state of breaching two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and guaranteeing respect for "correspondence".

"The crimes my client was accused of are irrelevant," he told the court.

As expected, the killer used the four-day proceedings as a platform to grandstand his extremist views.

After making a Hitler-style salute on the first day, he claimed he was now a Nazi who had renounced violence and even compared himself to Nelson Mandela.

Storrvik told the court his client was "in a vulnerable state of mind," a remark to which Breivik, clad in a dark suit and shaven head, did not react.

"This is not a broken man suffering from problems caused by his isolation that we see, this is the same narcissistic, ideologically disturbed" man convicted in 2012, Mestad countered.

While Utoya survivors and families of the dead admitted it was difficult to see the mass murderer complaining about his prison life, they insisted he should be granted the same rights as other inmates, in the name of the law.
The Chhattisgarh Assembly today passed a non-official resolution urging the Centre to ensure that the maximum submergence level of Indira Sagar Polavaramdam, being built across Godavari River inAndhra Pradesh, does not exceed 150 feet.

Marwahi MLA Amit Jogi proposed the resolution.

The dam is coming up on the border of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. Jogi said an increase in its height will submerge several tribal-dominated villages in Konta region of Chhattisgarh.

Chhattisgarh Water Resources Minister Brijmohan Agrawal had earlier assured that the state government would safeguard the interests of people of Chhattisgarh, Jogi said.

Jogi also accused the BJP government of giving step-motherly treatment to Bastar.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ajay Chandrakar said earlier that as the Polavaram issue had already been discussed in the House, it may not be taken up for discussion again.

But the Speaker rejected the Minister's request.

MLAs from Bastar region supported the resolution.

Chandrakar said the Chhattisgarh Government had already filed a civil suit in the Supreme Court, apart from the writ petition filed by Chhattisgarh State Environment Conservation Board with regard to the project.

The issue should not be politicised, he said, and said the resolution should be passed unanimously.

After discussion, the non-official resolution was passed unanimously in the House.
Cameroon has condemned 89 suspected Boko Haram operatives to death for "terrorism" since the start of 2015, a judicial source said today.

The sentences come after Cameroon adopted a controversial anti-terror law in December 2014 allowing capital punishment for those found guilty of carrying out terror attacks or complicity in terrorism.

Those convicted were mostly arrested on Cameroon's border with Nigeria, the birthplace of the extremist group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Cameroon already had the death penalty for murder, but there have been no executions since the mid-1980s.

Almost 850 people suspected of links to Boko Haram are being held in prison in Maroua, capital of the far north of Cameroon.

They include Nigerians and Chadians as well as Cameroonians, according to regional newspaper L'Oeil du Sahel.

Boko Haram violence has left at least 17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes since 2009.

And nearly 1,200 people have been killed since the Nigerian fighters took their offensive into Cameroon in 2013, according to government figures.

In recent years, Boko Haram fighters slipped back and forth across the frontier, often using Cameroon's remote north as a rear base, acquiring arms, vehicles and supplies there.

But since late November, the Cameroon army has carried out operations in several border areas aimed at weakening the Nigerian jihadists.

As a result, the insurgents turned away from direct confrontation with the military in favour of suicide attacks, increasingly carried out by women and girls.
Friday arrested a Rajasthan- based Chartered Accountant (CA) and a real estate agent in connection with its probe into the Rs 1,000 crore Syndicate Bank fraud case.

The CA, identified as Bharat Bamb, was questioned at the agency headquarters in New Delhi Thursday while Shankar Khandelwal, the real estate agent, was grilled at the agency's Jaipur office, official sources said, adding that both were placed under arrest today.

Both the accused were produced before a designated judge in Jaipur and were remanded in the agency's custody for seven days.

officials have claimed they recovered Rs 67 lakh in cash and three hard disks from one of Bamb's employees, identified as Mahendra.

It is alleged that four businessmen managed to open 386 accounts in three branches of Syndicate Bank in Rajasthan in connivance with five of its executives and defrauded it of Rs 1,000 crore using fake cheques, letters of credit and LIC policies.

All the accused in the case allegedly connived with almost all the employees of the bank's three branches -- two in Jaipur and one in Udaipur -- and created a layer of fake transactions involving a shell amount of Rs 18,000 crore. However, the fraud amount is only Rs 1,000 crore, they said.

The sources said the accused resorted to discounting of fake cheques and bills against fake Letters of Credit and arranging over-draft limit against non-existent LIC policies.

The scam, which allegedly ran through 2011 to 2016, continued unabated as 386 bank accounts were opened in the three branches by escaping audits and throwing to the wind all KYC formalities, they said.

The transactions of fake cheques ranged from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 5 crore with the maximum number of cheques in the range of Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 4 crore, they said.

Explaining the modus operandi, the sources said these people allegedly deposited fake cheques and got discounted cash on them (for example, for the face value of a Rs 100 cheque, they got Rs 90 in cash immediately).
The Centre is unlikely to intervene in the ongoing dispute between Punjab and Haryana on sharing of water through Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal anytime soon saying the Governor has adequate Constitutional options to resolve the issue.

Kaptan Singh Solanki, who is officiating as Governor of both Haryana and Punjab, has adequate Constitutional provision to resolve the crisis, Union Home Ministry officials said.

The Governor can sit indefinitely over the Bill passed by the Punjab Assembly to de-notify the land acquired for the SYL and its restoration back to the farmers or send the legislation to the President.

"Punjab has to obey the Supreme Court order as it has no option else it amounts to breakdown of Constitution. However, whatever Punjab is doing looks like political posturing ahead of the next year's Assembly elections," a senior Home Ministry official said.

If Punjab refuse to comply with the Supreme Court order to maintain status quo on land meant for the canal, it "will amount to breakdown of Constitution leading to imposition of President's rule," the official said.

Officials also discounted the possibility of any violence on the issue as there are enough Central forces stationed in both Punjab and Haryana to deal with any situation arising out of the dispute.

The SYL-canal row today hotted up with Punjab Assembly unanimously passing a resolution against its construction saying the state does not have water to share with Haryana, which accused Punjab of "crossing all limits" and decided to approach the Centre and Supreme Court.

The development came a day after Supreme Court directed status quo on land meant for SYL canal after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

The standoff over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal yesterday saw MLAs of opposition INLD in Haryana and Congress in Punjab attempting to storm each other's Assemblies as the dispute threatened to embroil Delhi whose Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal opposed construction of the canal.

The Punjab Cabinet had on Tuesday decided to dispatch a cheque for Rs 191.75 crore back to Haryana which had sent towards construction of the SYL canal.

Noting that Haryana government has shown strong resentment over Punjab's "unconstitutional" move on SYL canal issue, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar yesterday said his government has returned the cheque for Rs 191.75 crore "in original" to Punjab.
The Chinese Daily will pay USD 7.8 million to settle a decade-old lawsuit that claimed it cheated more than 200 workers out of overtime pay, it was announced today.

The 2004 lawsuit said that the nation's largest-circulating Chinese-language paper forced reporters, sales and production staff and even delivery drivers to work long hours and six-day weeks without overtime pay, meals or rest breaks. The lawsuit said the paper also denied workers proper vacation pay.

The Chinese Daily has a readership of about 120,000 and is based in Monterey Park, an eastern Los Angeles suburb with a large Asian-American population that swelled in the 1980s with an influx of immigrants from Taiwan.

The paper is one of several that serve a large and diverse Asian population throughout the San Gabriel Valley that also includes immigrants from China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The class-action federal lawsuit was closely followed by Chinese living at home and abroad. It made its way to the US Supreme Court, which sent it back to an appeals court in 2011.

Both sides reached a settlement last year. But it was only approved last month by a judge, who must still approve the distribution of the money.

The USD 7.8 million includes interest and penalties for violations of labor law.

Checks are expected to start going out next week, said Randy Renick, an attorney for the workers. The employees will receive anywhere from about USD 10,000 to USD 100,000 depending on their jobs, how long they were employed by the newspaper and how much overtime they chalked up, Renick said. The average amount is about USD 19,000, he said.

"My feeling is pretty mixed. It came so late. This lawsuit last for more than 12 years," said Lynn Wang, who worked for the paper for 18 years.

She was fired in 2005 after giving a deposition for the lawsuit. "They terminated me as an example to other workers, make everybody scared," she said.

Wang said she and other reporters often worked 13 to 17 hours at a stretch. "Taiwan has an election, all the reporters have to stay up all night because of the time difference, and no overtime," she said.

After a long day, she also might be called in again. "They say you're on duty all the time. They can call you to do a story anytime. If I finish my work, if there's a shooting or a fire somewhere, they call me," Wang said.

Employees also had to attend late-night staff meetings that lasted until 1 a.M., she said.

Many workers were recent immigrants who didn't know their employment rights, Wang said.
John Chambers, Chairman of US tech giant Cisco, today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the firm's role in various government initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India and cyber security issues.

"During the meeting, he explained to Prime Minister the elements of Cisco's Country Digitisation Acceleration Programme, and how it is aligned to the PM's vision and initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India, Start Up India, Smart Cities and Cyber Security initiatives," an official statement said.

Appreciating the initiatives taken by Cisco, Modi emphasised benefits of technology in areas like long distance education and in eliminating leakages in subsidy.

He also discussed possibilities of cooperation in the area of cyber security, the statement said.

The USD 143-billion firm has over 10,000 people in India. It is also setting up a manufacturing base in Pune to locally make products to "support the Digital India vision" and aims to eventually make it an export hub.

Cisco invests about USD 1.7 billion every year in India. During December quarter, Cisco saw its global revenues grow by 2 per cent to USD 11.8 billion (excluding SP Video CPE Business for all periods), helped by growth in markets like India (23 per cent).

Its India business has continued to grow at a steady pace over the last seven quarters.

Yesterday, Cisco signed an agreement with Andhra Pradesh government to be a part of India's first state-wide broadband project, 'AP Fiber-Net' here. Under the project, 15 Mbps broadband connection will be provided at Rs 149 per month to households and 100 Mbps connection for offices at Rs 999 per month.

Electrical poles will be used to lay overhead fiber net cable instead of underground cable to save on the cost.

Cisco is also setting up an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam to foster regional innovation and will enable partners and startups to build solutions around IoE and engage in rapid prototyping.

In addition, Cisco will also invest in an advanced Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in the Institute of Digital Technology (IDT), Tirupati to focus on cyber security, smart city and manufacturing solutions.

The centre will help train graduate engineers in advanced digital technologies and solutions and equip them with skill sets required for the digital era.

Besides, the company will also sponsor and collaborate with Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on a 12-month research program to identify and explore the possibility of developing and customising digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh.

(REOPEN FES66)



Cisco has invested USD 1.4 billion in India since 2005, along with USD 100 million invested towards innovation in country digitisation and USD 280 million in funding/acquiring companies in India. It has also announced its intent to manufacture in India.

The company, which is engaged with over 10 Indian state governments on digitisation projects, has six innovation labs and three Centres of Excellence in the country.

The labs and CoEs in India are working in areas like smart cities, Internet of Everything (IoE), cybersecurity and next gen digital technologies.
In a major relief to various states including poll-bound West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam, the Supreme Court today modified its earlier order and allowed photographs of Chief Ministers, Governors and ministers to be carried in public advertisments.

The court, in its verdict last year, had held that only President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India can feature in government advertisments, a decision which was later challenged by Centre and seven states.

"The exception carved out in paragraph 23 of ...Judgment dated May 13, 2015 permitting publication of the photographs of the President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of the country, subject to the said authorities themselves deciding the question, is now extended to the Governors and the Chief Ministers of the States," a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

The bench also comprising Justice P C Ghose said, "In lieu of the photograph of the Prime Minister, the photograph of the Departmental (Cabinet) Minister/Minister In-charge of the concerned Ministry may be published, if so desired."



It said that similarly in the states, the photograph of the cabinet minister or minister in-charge in lieu of the photograph of the CM could be published, if so desired.

The bench, however, clarified that all other directions in the judgment of May, 2015 shall continue to "remain in force".

The verdict came on pleas by Centre and seven states including Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chattisgarh which had sought review of the May 13, 2015 verdict of the apex court, saying it infringed fundamental rights and federal structure.

Earlier, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, had strongly favoured review of the verdict on various grounds including that if Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in the advertisements then the same right should be available to his cabinet colleagues as the PM is the "first among the equals".

He had also contended that if only Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in government advertisements then it can be said that it would promote "personality cult" which has been described as "an anti-thesis of democracy" by this court only.

The AG had also said that the Chief Ministers and their cabinet colleagues too should be allowed to feature in advertisements.

The Centre, while seeking review, had earlier said that



Article 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Indian Constitution empowers the state and the citizens to "give and receive" information and it cannot be curtailed and regulated by the courts.

Other ministers and the Chief Ministers are also answerable to public and they cannot remain "faceless", he had said, adding that the apex court verdict has dealt with print advertisements only in the time where electronic and social media are also there.

The Centre had on October 27 last year joined hands with several state governments in seeking review of the Supreme Court's judgement on the issue.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing NGO Common Cause which had filed the original PIL on review petitions moved by the states, had told the bench that certain state governments were violating the apex court's orders.

On May 13, 2015, the apex court had passed a slew of directions including the order asking Centre to constitute a three-member committee "consisting of persons with unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality" to regulate the issue of public advertisements.
Colombia will no longer participate in proceedings at the International Court of Justice in a long-running dispute with Nicaragua over a Caribbean archipelago.

President Juan Manuel Santos announced the decision yesterday after the court based in The Hague, Netherlands, rejected Colombia's assertion that it had no jurisdiction to determine maritime boundaries between the two countries.

Santos said the border dispute should be resolved only through direct negotiations with Nicaragua.

The United Nations' highest court in 2012 affirmed Colombian sovereignty over the San Andres archipelago, but ruled that some waters around the islands belong to Nicaragua.

The decision outraged Colombia.

Nicaragua filed a complaint at the court a year later accusing Colombia of breaching its obligation not to violate Nicaragua's maritime zones as set out in the 2012 ruling.

Nicaragua's representative at the Hague, Carlos Arguello, called the court's ruling "a total victory for Nicaragua" and noted the ruling doesn't decide territorial issues, but does open the way for arguments. He suggested Nicaragua would push ahead with proceedings before the court.

"This now means the court will start examining the underlying issues," said Arguello, adding "if this process follows its normal course, it could take a couple more years, easily.
Accusing the BJP led NDA government of showing "utter contempt" of Rajya Sabha for taking the money bill route to pass the Aadhar bill, the Congress today indicated that the matter could be challenged by "others" in the courts.

"This is a very dangerous trend. The Government has taken this to bypass the Rajya Sabha. This is an assault on the Rajya Sabha. The Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are two equal wheels of the same chariot of Indian democracy, if one of the wheel does not run, it will hamper democracy," Congress Spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said here.

Insisting that a series of conditions are specified in Article 110 and that Article 110 uses the word "only" if those conditions are prevalent can a bill be declared a Money Bill, Ramesh said that the Aadhaar Bill, which was passed as a money bill "ignored five recommendations made by the Rajya Sabha had many other provisions.

"It had many other provisions and most constitutional experts have given the view that the Aadhaar Bill is not a Money Bill. While the prerogative of declaring a bill as a Money Bill or not is that of the Speaker and the Speaker's decision is final but the recommendation to the Speaker to consider making it a Money Bill is that of the Government.

"It is the government that decides whether it is a Money Bill or not and the Speaker only certifies it as Money Bill," Ramesh said.

"The two examples that the Finance Minister gave, that they were declared Money Bills in the past, were wrong. They were not Money Bills. The Juvenile Justice Bill of 1986 and the African Development Bank Bill of 1983 which the Finance Minister used to justify the Aadhaar Bill being the Money Bill, turned down to be completely erroneous and false," he said.

To repeated questions on whether Congress will challenge the passage of Aadhar bill as Money bill in Supreme Court, Ramesh evaded a direct reply saying "we have not heard the last on the Money Bill issue. I don't think that you have heard the last on the Money Bill debate. The Money Bill debate will continue."



He said there is a petition already before a five judge bench of the Supreme Court which has not yet given its final verdict.

"So, I am sure, there will be others who will take this issue but as far as we are concerned, we go by the Article 110. The Speaker's decision is final. The Speaker has declared it is a Money Bill, it came as Money Bill, it was discussed as Money Bill, it was recommended as a Money Bill and finally passed as Money Bill and we cannot undo the history.

(REOPENS DEL 87)



Asked whether there is a clash between the Speaker's view on Aadhar bill being a money bill and that of the Congress, Ramesh merely said, "we still believe and we have adequate grounds to believe that it is not a Money Bill but the chapter, as far as we are concerned, is a closed chapter. But it is not a closed chapter in a democracy. There are substantive provisions which are completely a separate issue."



Ramesh insisted that the issue is not only about Aadhar but in the larger context of Money Bills



"This is in larger context of the assault on the Rajya Sabha," he said.

The former minister said that that purpose of this government is clear they want to "totally neglect" Rajya Sabha in legislative business.

Claiming that whenever any bill goes through a Standing Committee or Select Committee, it comes out as a better version, which was seen also in the case of real estate bill.

"Now, Standing Committee is far away, even the possibility of sending a bill to Select Committee is here with the introduction of this Money Bill trend. Congress strongly opposes this strategy



Ramesh also found it "astonishing" that the government was "bypassing" Rajya Sabha even as a number of its senior ministers including Leader of House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and former Defence Minister A K Antony are members of the same House.

"Health Minister JP Nadda, Communication Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are all members of the Rajya Sabha.

"So, without the Rajya Sabha, these people would not be in the Parliament, they would not be Ministers. I think what the Government has shown is utter contempt and utter disregard for Rajya Sabha which derives its powers from the Constitution of India even as it celebrates the anniversary of the architect of the Indian constitution B R Ambedkar," he said.
Assam Congress today asked the Election Commission to withdraw Election Expenditure Observer Raghavendra Singh from the state for allegedly acting in a "partisan" and "high-handed" manner against a particular political party.

"Singh, accompanied by CRPF and police personnel had surrounded the residence of senior Congress Minister Rakibul Hussain on March 16 without any prior intimation or notice," APCC Chief Anjan Dutta said in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

He alleged Singh had stopped the vehicle of Hussain, who was accompanied by his wife and son, when they were coming out of their residence, refused to divulge his identity and forcefully conducted search of the minister's personal vehicle and accompanying security escort vehicles.

Later, Singh allowed Hussain and his family members to leave but he along with his team raided and searched the minister's residence in the absence of any member of the family or third party independent witness which is "absolutely illegal and not permissible under the existing procedure of law," Dutta said.

The APCC chief also alleged the vehicle in which Singh came had the registration number of a stolen vehicle with an FIR registered with the Basistha police station here.

"The use of such a vehicle by a responsible officer of the Election Commission casts doubt on the search and detention operation of a Cabinet Minister and his family members. It indicates the operation is devoid of credibility and leads to ill motive, bias and illegal action," he added.

It is pertinent to mention that Hussain has not yet filed his nomination and the action taken by the Election Expenditure Observer is absolutely uncalled for and "seems to be malafide and is definitely designed through him by vested interests," Dutta said in his letter.

The Congress leader alleged that the presence of an officer like Singh was "detrimental to the interest of conducting a free, fair and peaceful election" and he should be called back and his services as Election Expenditure Observer must be withdrawn with immediate effect.
With Punjab and Haryana at loggerheads over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal issue, Congress today asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to convene an emergency meeting of the chief ministers of the two states to find a solution.

"The matter is very sensitive. The Prime Minister and the Home Minister cannot keep quiet. The Centre cannot shut its eyes and ears. The Prime Minister should call an urgent meeting of the chief ministers before things turn for the worse," senior party spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters.

He said India is a Constitutional democracy and the country's highest court has passed an order.

Sharma's remarks came close on the heels of the SYL canal row hotting up with Punjab Assembly unanimously passing a resolution against its construction saying the state does not have water to share with Haryana.

Haryana has accused Punjab of "crossing all limits" and decided to approach the Centre and the Supreme Court.

The development came a day after the Supreme Court directed status quo on land meant for Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

(Reopens DEL42)



Meanwhile, former Haryana chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda today demanded resignation of all MLAs and MPs and accused the state government of becoming a "mute spectator" on the SYL canal issue.

"The Manohar Lal Khattar government has become a mute spectator on the issue with Punjab denying Haryana's share of the river water," he said.
Nearly 110 cow protection activists were rounded up from various parts of Saurashtra region amid a Gujarat bandh call given by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti' in support of their demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata".

The bandh got a mixed response in Rajkot district and some parts of Saurashtra. However, the shutdown did not have much pull outside Saurashtra region.

In Rajkot city, most of the shops located in the main market in Dharmendra Road area were closed in the morning hours, while shops and offices remained unaffected.

The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti exempted educational institutes and health care services from the bandh. Nearly 15 persons protesting at Trikaun baugh area were detained by the police in Rajkot.

"We detained 15 persons who were protesting at Trikaun Baugh area. There was a report of road blockade. Barring this, the bandh was observed in a peaceful manner," Pradhyuman Nagar Police Inspector Manish Nakum said.

The Rajkot City Police had made adequate security measures by deploying 800 policemen and four companies of State Reserve Police (SRP).

Some 60 cow protection activists were taken into custody in Morbi town of Rajkot district town, 'A' division Police Inspector N K Vyas said.

"Nearly 35 persons were rounded up in Manavadar town of Porbandar district as they blocked the road and disrupted traffic," Manavadar PSI S V Gojiya said.

As many as eight cow right activists had yesterday consumed pesticide at District Collector's office premises here after which they were all rushed to the civil hospital.

One of them, identified as Hindabhai Vambadiya, died at the civil hospital. Two of the seven-- Dinesh Loriya (42) and Raghuvirsinh Jadeja (27)-- are in a critical condition.

The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti had called for the bandh while Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) had extended their support to it.

The activists also submitted a memorandum to the city mamlatdar Pragyesh Jani demanding that cow should be announced as "Rashtra Mata" and protection for cow protectors.

The activist also demanded compensation for the family members of Hindabhai as he had sacrificed his life for cow protection.
Ace cinematographer PC Sreeram says he does not consider Hollywood as his competition because filmmakers there are only churning out sci-fi, fantasy and superhero films.

"I don't consider Hollywood as my competition. I think they should consider us competition as the world is neutralised on digital technology," Sreeram told PTI.

The southern cinematographer, who has filmed acclaimed sci-fi "I", said these days producers in the West are mostly coming out with computer-graphic oriented or fantasy films while the scenario is changing in India.

"If you see at films from London, I think the projection is so bad. Before it was not like that. I think the 'maya' of Hollywood is gone. They are making CG oriented and fantasy films," he said.

"Mostly they (Hollywood filmmakers) make films on Superman, Batman and that is why they are shifting to TV series like 'Game of Thrones', 'House of Cards' etc. I think one just can't show fantasy films... You have to make films that are different. Hollywood filmmaker Clint Eastwood did a brilliant job in 'Flags of Our Fathers'," he said.

With the success of Indian big ticket film like "Bahubali", the 60-year-old artist said, "Things have been changing in a big way. India has seen unbelievable growth. Today Indian cinema is seen all over the world. The market is growing."



One of the sought after cinematographers in South, Sreeram has mostly worked with noted director Mani Ratnam, but says he is a huge fan of Hindi cinema.

"I have grown up watching films of Hrishikesh Mukerjee, Shyam Benegal to Rajkumar Hirani. I get a lot of offers (from Hindi filmmakers). I can't accept all. I have the privilege of choice, which I did not have earlier," he said.

His next Hindi film as a cinematographer is R Balki's "Ki and Ka", with whom he had earlier teamed up for Amitabh Bachchan's "Shamitabh".
Political and economic reforms in communist Cuba will be a no-go area during talks between Cuban leader Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama, the foreign minister has said in Havana.

"In our relations with the United States, the carrying out of internal changes in Cuba are absolutely off the negotiating table," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said yesterday in televised remarks three days before Obama arrives.

Obama will be the first serving US president to visit Cuba since 1928, capping his historic policy of ending a bitter standoff that has endured since the 1959 ousting by Fidel Castro of the US-backed government of Fulgencio Batista.

Although both sides are embracing Obama's visit as an opportunity to bury the hatchet, Rodriguez made clear that Cuba will not listen to Washington's often repeated demands for more democracy and a freer economy.

"No one can pretend that Cuba should renounce a single principle in order to advance the normalization of relations between both countries," the minister said.

Rodriguez said there remain "major differences" between Cuba and the United States in areas of "political systems, democracy, human rights, the application and interpretation of international law.
Eminent Dalit scholar, Kanwal Bharti, who had backed IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal in her face-off with Uttar Pradesh government in 2013, has been selected for a literary award by Delhi-based Hindi Academy.

Bharti, a Dalit author from Rampur, would be given the Special Contribution on Earth Award for penning books related to Dalits and their problems on March 26 along with a cash prize of one lakh rupee in the national capital, Jeet Ram Bhatt, Secretary, Hindi Academy said in a letter dated March 17.

He was arrested for his facebook post targeting senior Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan following the suspension of Nagpal who had cracked down on illegal sand mining in Ghaziabad.

In his Facebook post, Bharti had written that it is the 'will and wish' of the urban development minister Azam Khan which prevails and not the law of the land.

Bharti was later arrested on the complaint of Azam Khan's aide who accused him of making derogatory remarks against the Minister.

Bharti has written more than 20 books on the Dalit community and their problems while remaining affiliated with 'Ambedkar Movement' and attacked fundamentalism.

His book "Why Dr Ambedkar adopted Buddhism" became immensely popular while Urdu translation of his another book "God Bhrama and Soul" was published in Britain by Ambedkar Memorial Committee.

Bharti also worked for years as Associate Editor of a Hindi weekly 'Rampur Shahkari Yuga'.
The family of the Dalit youth, who was brutally murdered in front of his wife at Udumalpet recently, has received a letter reportedly threatening them of dire consequences, police said.

The hand written letter, though not legible, reportedly contained abusive language, naming caste and also threatened them of dire consequences, they said.

The letter was handed over to Kumaralingam police station.

The dalit youth Shankar and his wife Kausalya were attacked by a gang with sickles in full public view on March 13 in nearby Tirupur district, resulting in the former's death.

Police said investigation will begin after going through the letter.
Two persons were today found hung from a tree at Jhabbar in Latehar district, triggering violence that left a Sub-Divisional Officer and six policemen injured, the police said here.

Agitated by the killing of a 32-year-old man and a teenager by unknown assailants and then hanging them from a tree in the village under Balumath police station limits, villagers blocked the road near the police station with the bodies, the police said.

When the police went to take the bodies for post mortem, the protestors hurled stones at them, injuring civil SDO Kameshwar Narayan, Assistant Sub-Inspector of Balumath police station Shyamdev Mishra and four other policemen, Superintendent of Police Anup Birtheray told reporters.

The police used batons and fired in the air to bring the situation under control, he said.

The stones were hurled even after a peace meeting following the incident, according to the police.

The police, quoting the villagers, said the two persons had left their homes with animals for Tutilawa village in the neighbouring Chatra district for the annual animal fair when the incident happened.
Democrat strategists and supporters of presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton have decided to launch an "orchestrated" campaign against potential Republican rival Donald Trump, even as the controversial billionaire is facing a revolt from his own party leadership.

22 liberal groups have united behind a campaign to stop the 69-year-old real estate magnate with a plan that includes anti-Trump demonstrations, possibly including protests at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland, and marches in major cities.

"Donald Trump's candidacy is a threat to the America we love, and we must respond to him and what he is stoking as such - with a nonviolent movement grounded in love and community that ensures that he never comes anywhere near the White House, and perhaps even more importantly, makes clear to every other politician and every person in the United States that racist demagoguery is a dead-end political strategy that most Americans reject," the groups said in an open joint letter.

The groups also include several Indian-Americans - Deepak Bhargava, Centre for Community Change Action; Sarita Gupta from Jobs With Justice, and Miya Yoshitani from APEN Action.

"We are calling for a massive nonviolent mobilisation of working people, students, immigrants, children of immigrants, great-great-grandchildren of immigrants, people of colour and white people, the unemployed and under-employed, people of faith, retirees, veterans, women, and men - anyone who opposes bigotry and hate and loves freedom and justice - to stand up to Trump's bullying and bigotry," the letter said.

"So far, Trump has bounced around the country speaking to people in these stadium rallies, and we haven't seen massive marches outside the rallies," Ben Wikler, Washington director for Moveon.Org, said.

Wikler is leading the coalition and backs Senator Bernie Sanders, the sole Democratic presidential rival of Clinton.

The Trump Campaign, however, asserted that such a move would backfire, citing the fate of Republican candidates who had attacked Trump.

"What you find with Donald Trump is he's a counter- puncher. Someone punches him and he punches back, and he punches back much harder. That's what the Republican field has come to realise," Corey Lewandowski, the Trump campaign manager, said.

Both Clinton and Trump are leading their respective parties in delegate count and are most likely headed for a face-off in the November 8 presidential elections.

Top Republican leadership, its backers and its major fund



raisers yesterday ganged up against the party's presidential front-runner Trump - who has suddenly caught the imagination of the party's mass base in less than nine months of joining politics - with the sole objective of preventing him to be its presidential nominee.

The anti-Trump campaign has grown to an extent that party leaders and fund raisers are willing to go to any extent to ensure the reality TV star does not get Republican nomination for the elections.

After the last Tuesday's primary, wherein he won in three States and is leading in another where official results are yet to be declared, Trump has best chance to get the Republican nomination as he is way ahead of his other two rivals - Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich - in delegate count.

With 673 delegates, Trump needs to win about half of the rest of delegates in contention, Cruz needs to bag 80 per cent of them and Kasich has an impossible target of 114 percent of the total delegates yet to be won.

However, at separate meetings in Washington DC and in Florida, a group of top Republican conservatives and funders resolved that they would stop Trump from becoming their nominee.

"He (Trump) shouldn't be president of the United States," Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist told reporters after the meeting of some two dozens of these leaders.

"Not only is he not conservative, he's also just not a good face for the country," said Hillyer, spokesman of the group.

"We encourage all former Republican candidates not currently supporting Trump to unite against him and encourage all candidates to hold their delegates on the first ballot," the group said in a statement, as there was indication that Cruz is now the new poster boy for the establishment.

"Cruz is the best alternative for Trump," Senator Lindsay Graham told CNN in an interview.

The Senator was once a vocal opponent of Cruz.

"The consensus was that we need a unity ticket of some sort and we'll let the candidates work out who the unity ticket is," Hillyer said after the meeting.

"Obviously, more conservatives seem to prefer Cruz to Kasich, and Cruz has more delegates right now, so if you do the math, it's probably more likely to be Cruz-Kasich," he said.

Meanwhile, writing for The Washington Post, eminent columnist Fareed Zakaria said having described Trump as an unacceptable, unconservative, dangerous demagogue, the party establishment appears to be making its peace with the man who keeps winning primaries.
The ruling Telugu Desam Party today prevented the entry of YSR Congress MLA R K Roja into the Andhra Pradesh Assembly even as the aggrieved member obtained an interim order from the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad against her suspension from the House.

The YSRC first staged a protest sit-in on the Assembly premises and then drove to the Raj Bhavan to submit a petition to the Governor against Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao for violating the court order.

The Legislative Affairs Department, meanwhile, filed a petition before the Division Bench of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad against the single judge's interim order.

Inside the House, the Speaker announced that he has received an order of the High Court on Roja's suspension issue.

"It was the House that unanimously decided to place the member under suspension for a year. Now that the High Court issued an order on the matter, I am placing it before the House. It is for the House to discuss and take a decision on the issue," the Speaker said.

He got the court order copies circulated to all members "to study and discuss the issue on Monday".

The YSRC boycotted the Assembly proceedings today in protest against the denial of entry to Roja.

Roja, YSRC MLA from Nagari in Chittoor district, was suspended from the Assembly for a year, during the winter session in December last, for using unparliamentary and abusive language against certain members of the TDP, including Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

Roja then filed a writ petition challenging the House's decision.

Justice A Ramalingeswara Rao of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad issued an interim order yesterday saying "this court came to the prima facie conclusion that motion carried out was contrary to Rule 340 of the Rules of House.

"Hence, there shall be an interim suspension of the motion to suspend the petitioner (Roja) carried out on December 18, 2015 by the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, pending disposal of the writ petition," it said.

The judge also noted that the order was "not an endorsement of the conduct of the petitioner" in the House nor against the authority of the Hon'ble Speaker to take action against the erring member.

Earlier in the day, Roja came to the Assembly along with



her party colleagues but was prevented from stepping inside.

She picked up an argument with Assembly Chief Marshal Ganesh even as Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy entered the scene.

Jagan asked the Chief Marshal why he was preventing Roja from entering the Assembly despite the High Court order.

The Chief Marshal merely said "there are instructions" but could not specify who issued the instructions and what they were.

The YSRC chief argued with the Chief Marshal over this but to no avail.

Jagan then led his party MLAs on a sit-in protest near the inner gate of the Assembly even as the House went on with its business.

YSRC members in the Legislative Council staged a walkout on the issue and all the party legislators then drove to the Raj Bhavan.

As the Governor was not present, the YSRC delegation handed submitted a letter at the Raj Bhavan.

Jagan said in the letter that they were approaching the Governor "as the Constitution head of our state" to do "justice to us by directing the Speaker to respect the court order."



The YSRC Legislature Party later met at the residence of Jagan and decided to protest on the issue in the Assembly tomorrow. The YSRC members have decided to attend the House wearing black robes.
Aviation regulator DGCA will soon ask its American and European counterparts to bar an Oslo workshop from providing maintenance to a critical component in the landing gear of Boeing 737s that has led some flights to undertake emergency landings in India.

Apart from the two regulators FAA and EASA, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) would also ask Boeing to issue a global advisory pertaining to ST Aerospace's workshop in Oslo, Norway, a senior DGCA official said today.

The decision comes after the DGCA found problems in the 'trunnion pin', which is part of landing gear of an aircraft, during two separate incidents involving Jet Airways planes.

On both occasions, the watchdog detected "chicken wire mesh like cracks" in the trunnion pins of two Boeing 737 planes. The latest incident happened on March 3 at the Mumbai airport while the first one took place on April 13 at Khajuraho.

In both the cases, the planes had to make emergency landings due to problems with these pins, which take the entire load of the aircraft at the time of landing.

Prior to these incidents, the pins were sent for servicing to the Oslo facility, the official said.

DGCA would soon be writing to FAA and EASA requesting them to withdraw the approval given to the Oslo workshop, he said, adding that the regulator would also ask Boeing to issue a worldwide advisory to airlines using 737s to check trunnion pins in case they have been serviced at the Oslo workshop.

This would be the first time that such a communication pertaining to an aircraft component is going to be sent.

DGCA was also actively involved in global investigations into the lithium battery leak that had grounded the Dreamliner aircraft fleet the world over, including in India.

According to the official, the cracks could have happened on account of "uncontrolled" heating of the pins at the time of the overhaul.

ST Aerospace carries out maintenance works for aircraft parts and its Oslo facility are approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

The official said Jet Airways had informed DGCA the pins, which were damaged during two incidents, were sent for servicing at the Oslo facility.

In India, three carriers -- Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Air India Express -- operates Boeing 737s.

After detecting the continued problem, DGCA has already advised the carriers about the ST Aerospace's Oslo workshop.

While Air India Express has said it has not sent the pins to this particular facility, SpiceJet has said such pins were sent to ST Aerospace facility in Singapore.
Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra says the whole debate on the need to chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" to show one's love for the country is artificial as patriotism is something which is defined by work and not by mere sloganeering.

He, however, says he is not siding with All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi, who recently sparked a controversy when he said he will not chant "Bharat Mata ki Jai".

Veteran actor Anupam Kher had slammed Owaisi, saying the slogan is the only definition of nationalism but Mishra finds the whole debate artificial.

"Patriotism for me is when people put their ideas into the work. Your love for your country is only in your work," Mishra told PTI in an interview here.

"We all should love our country. I don't know what's the fuss about 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan. That's Anupam Kher's view (if he feels the slogan should be the only definition of nationalism). I have chanted that slogan a lot of times, if you say it at a correct place, I will say it.

"I even say 'Hindustan zindabad'. I think this whole thing is quite artificial. I am not siding with Owaisi because he is a strict man of beliefs and I come from campus and hence I am a man of experimentation," he added.

Owaisi's remark came after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

Mishra believes while celebrities are becoming aware and vocal about their political beliefs, they don't put that into their work.

"The overall atmosphere right now is that people are getting aware but I am disappointed that people in the film industry don't show these things in their work. They just speak.

"Films must reflect what we speak. Like Hansal's (Mehta) work reflects in a sense what he speaks. I think the young directors have that," the "Hazaroen Khwaishein Aisi" director said.

When asked about the JNU incident, where students were arrested on sedition charges for allegedly raising anti-India slogans, he said, "University is a place of debates, imaginations and experimentations.
A government doctor was today arrested by the police on the charge of trying to outrage the modesty of a woman in Karimnagar district.

Sub-inspector S Ravinder said that Dr Vasantha Rao, Senior Public Health Officer at Choppadandi mandal headquarters, allegedly tried to outrage the modesty of a staff nurse on March 14.

He was arrested under section 354 of the IPC today and sent in judicial custody by a local court.
Terming the decision to ban 344 fixed dose combination medicines as "arbitrary and unfair", pharma industry has said it feels let down by the government.

"The industry feels let down. We feel we were not given a fair chance. The government's order to ban 344 FDCs enblock is arbitrary and unfair," Indian drug manufacturers' association (IDMA) President S V Veerramani told reporters.

The products worth Rs 5,000 crore have been banned for manufacture, distribution and sale with immediate effect causing hardship to manufacturers and patients, he added.

In a gazette notification on March 10, the government had banned 344 FDCs including ban on manufacture, sale and distribution of fixed does combination of chlopheniramine maleate plus codiene syrup which is used in the cough syrups.

When being asked what in his opinion is the way forward, Veeramani said: "We are meeting the government and will ask them to reconsider the ban. It will impact the Make in India campaign."



This is also not in the public interest as the patients will be denied useful FDCs, he added.

"The amount of time, money and environmental impact in destroying these procedures will be huge," Federation of Pharma Entrepreneurs (FOPE) Chairman R C Juneja said.

There was no proper discussion with the industry before the ban, he added.

Several companies have approached Delhi High Court, which has granted interim stay on the government decision.
Delhi High Court today stayed the the ban on some fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs of Glaxo SmithKline, Wockhardt and Laboratories Griffon but said action against their sale could be taken in the absence of valid sale and marketing licence.

The drugs which were subject matter of today's plea are Aceproxyvon, Viscodyne and Viscodyne-D of Wockhardt, Crocin Cold and Flu Max of Glaxo and Grilinctus syrup of Griffon.

Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw passed the order after the government said the three companies had obtained licence from state licensing authorities for their FDC medicines, which was contrary to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and Rules.

The high court said the government was free to take action against sale of these medicines under any other law available to it if there was no valid licence for their sale and marketing.

Central government standing counsel Amit Mahajan said the companies ought to have obtained licence from the licensing authority, which is the Drugs Controller General of India, as defined under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules and not the state licensing authorities.

The government lawyer also said since these companies had obtained licence for these medicines from state authorities, they were not entitled to any interim order as was passed in favour of 22 companies in the last four days.

Even Wockhardt and Glaxo had got relief of the stay order yesterday with regard to other FDC drugs they were selling.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Griffon, contended that the government's March 10 notification banning sale of some FDC drugs was not concerned about whether the medicine was marketed or sold without valid licence.

Even otherwise, any permission, as claimed by the government, was not required to be obtained, he contended.

The court also issued notice to the government on the companies' pleas challenging the notification and listed the petitions for hearing on March 21.

The high court had yesterday granted interim relief to 14



healthcare majors, including Cipla, Lupin, Wockhardt, Glaxosmithkline and Mankind Pharma, by staying till March 21 the ban imposed by the government on sale of some of their FDC drugs.

Apart from these five, the companies which got relief were Dr Reddy's, Laborate Pharmaceuticals, Alkem Laboratories, Ajanta Pharma, Khandelwal Laboratories Pvt Ltd, Micro Lab Ltd, FDC Ltd, Coral Laboratories Ltd and Eris Lifesciences Pvt Ltd.

The court had earlier passed the same order in the pleas filed by eight others, including Pfizer, Procter and Gamble (P&G), Glenmark and Reckitt Benckiser.

Till date, the interim stay order of the high court is being enjoyed by 22 companies which also include Abbott Healthcare, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Piramal Enterprises and Macleods Pharmaceuticals.

Some of the well-known medicines on which the ban on sale has been lifted include Pfizer's Corex cough syrup, Glaxo's Piriton expectorant, P&G's Vicks Action 500 extra, Reckitt's D'Cold, Piramal's Saridon, Glenmark's Ascoril and Alex cough syrups, Abbott's Phensedyl cough syrup and Alembic's Glycodin cough syrup.

The 22 healthcare companies have sought quashing of the government's March 10 notification banning over 300 FDC drugs, including cough syrup compositions on the ground that they involve "risk" to humans and safer alternatives were available.

The companies have contended that the decision was taken by the government without issuing them a show-cause notice or granting them a hearing.

They have alleged that the notification was silent on the aspect as to which expert committee was appointed by Health Ministry to examine safety and deficiency of the FDCs.

As per the notification, "On the basis of recommendations of an expert committee, the central government is satisfied that it is necessary and expedient in public interest to regulate by way of prohibition of manufacture for sale, sale and distribution for human use of said drugs in the country.

(Reopens LGD7)



Later in the day, the court passed the same order as in the case of Wockhardt, Griffon and Glaxo, in the petitions filed by Centaur Pharmaceuticals, Geno Pharmaceuticals, Lupin, Mankind Pharma, Unichem Laboratories, Shreya Life Sciences and Glenmark with regard to some of their FDC drugs as they too had obtained licence for manufacture or distribution or marketing and sale from state authorities.

However, in the petitions of Microlab, Alembic Pharmaceuticals and Systopic Laboratories, the court confined its order to staying effect of the notification against these companies' banned FDC drugs as they had obtained licence from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).

The court also said no coercive steps would be taken against these companies in connection with their FDC drugs which were subject matter of their plea.

This order was also passed in some petitions filed by Geno where it has licence from DCGI for distribution of some FDC drugs.

All the companies have challenged the Centre's March 10 notification and these matters would be taken up by the court on March 21.
Far-right anti-immigrant Dutch MP Geert Wilders appeared before a top security court today for a hearing ahead of his high-profile trial later this year on charges of incitement to hatred.

On his way to the tribunal, Wilders tweeted: "On my way to the courthouse. Nobody will silence me. No terrorist, no prime minister and no court."



The case against Wilders centres on comments by the populist politician, famous for his trademark peroxide blond hair, at a March 2014 local election rally.

He asked supporters whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?"



When the crowd shouted back "Fewer! Fewer!" a smiling Wilders answered: "We're going to organise that."



The remark triggered 6,400 complaints from across the Netherlands, and Wilders even faced criticism from within his Party for Freedom (PVV).

"You are here as a suspect in a criminal case. You are not required to say anything or answer any questions," Judge Hendrik Steenhuis told him as the hearing started.

Dressed in a blue suit, Wilders appeared relaxed, getting out his phone to take a picture of the photographers jostling to take his picture.

"Racism and hatred towards foreigners is in direct contravention of the freedoms we have in a democratic society," prosecutor Wouter Bos told the court.

"The prosecution believes that you insulted Moroccans as a group and committed incitement to hate speech," he added, saying that while "freedom of speech is a fundamental principle .... (it) is not an absolute."



Outside the heavily-fortified court complex, a handful of supporters, waving Dutch flags and scarfs, gathered early today watched by dozens of police and gendarmes.

Security forces lined the road to the high-security complex, a few kilometres (miles) outside Schiphol Airport.

Some supporters wore pink hats depicting a cartoon pig, seen as an apparent insult to Islam and Muslims.

The influx of refugees into The Netherlands has polarised Dutch society, with Wilder's party tapping into popular discontent and currently topping opinion polls.

Wilders has denounced the decision to prosecute him as "incomprehensible," telling AFP in a recent interview that he was referring to a "criminal element" among Moroccans and not to the group as a whole.

Today's hearing has been called to examine where the investigations stand ahead of the full trial due to start on October 31.

If found guilty, Wilders could face up to two years in jail or a fine of more than 20,000 euros, according to Dutch penal laws.
The Election Commission today withdrew an Expenditure Observer from poll-bound Assam for "transgression of jurisdiction" by raiding a state minister's residence to seize alleged illegal money.

The Commission said here the search and seizure operation at the residence of Assam Agriculture Minister Rockybul Hussain was carried out independently by the Income Tax Department under the provisions of the Income Tax Act on receipt of intelligence from an independent agency.

It said the Expenditure Observer (Raghvendra Singh, an IRS officer) deployed by the Commission had activated the flying squad as a part of follow up action, following the information received from the Income Tax department.

"In the present case, the Expenditure Observer has transgressed his jurisdiction by reaching at the spot himself and acted against the instructions of the Election Commission. The Commission does not authorise any of its observers to carry out any such enforcement activities by himself/ herself...The Commission has viewed this lapse by Expenditure Observer seriously and has withdrawn him from constituency forthwith and instructed the controlling authority to initiate suitable departmental action against him," the Commission said in a statement.

The observers on receiving such information are required to pass on the same to enforcement agencies for appropriate actions and continue monitoring as laid down in the Manual of EC, the poll watchdog said.

All observers have been directed to perform their actions within the prescribed framework as laid down by ECI manual, it said.
Facing flak from environmentalists over the Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's mega event on Yamuna flood plains, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar today said his Ministry will assess the post event cleaning process of the area in the coming days.

"It is not that for first time in the world that a programme of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has taken place on flood plains of river, it is not that. Many such programmes happen but there is cleanliness there is no environmental loss there. When NGT had asked us, we had given an affidavit to NGT. We said that as per present laws, for such programmes, environmental clearance is not required.

"We had also said that our three-member team had gone there. How the disposal (of waste) will be done and what needs to be done after the programme, how to do it, we had told the NGT. This work (of cleaning) will go on for some time now. After that we will definitely see," Javadekar said.

Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's mega event was mired in controversy for allegedly violating green norms.

The event here has been embroiled in controversy after environmentalists alleged that its preparations have damaged the ecology of Yamuna flood plains and demanded that it be stopped.

The NGT had imposed a fine of Rs five crore on AOL as environmental compensation while clearing the decks for its three-day cultural extravaganza.

Javadekar said innovation is required to strengthen the



economy and create new jobs.

"But how innovations will happen? The seeds of higher learning are the basis for good innovations and research," he said.

Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi's approach to higher learning, he said Modi is "committed to improving higher learning centres and convert them into centres of excellence and centres for innovation and research."



He talked about the Centre's 'Uchchatar Avishkar Yojana' (UAY) that aims at better industry-academia interaction.

"Now industry has given their customised requirements and IIT faculty and students will work out those ideas and come out with solution. More than 100 ideas are being worked out, more than Rs 260 crore have been earmarked for that," he said.

He said the government is laying special emphasis on start-ups, incubation centres and appealing to Indian talent based abroad to come back and innovate under the Centre's 'Make In India' programme.

"When PM says 'Make in India', he says come and innovate. He is calling back innovators, Indian minds and talent, come here, innovate here, we will provide all facilities," he said.

Javadekar said the country now has a global research interactive network in which students will be provided scholarship and opportunity to work with top-end foreign laboratories and again come back to India and continue with their research.

He said higher educational entities are being provided finances with thrust on improving research infrastructure in the next three years so that Indian talent can be retained.

"They will get money, research facilities and freedom. So when (PM) says Make in India, he is asking come, innovate, and also asking investors to come innovate," he said.
African carrier Ethiopian Airlines will start an additional daily flight from the national capital to Addis Ababa, taking the total number of departures from the country to 28 per week.

Besides, the airline is looking to start operations from Chennai or Bengaluru in the near future, a senior official said today.

At present, the carrier operates two daily flights from Mumbai and one from the national capital.

All the flights fly to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

"We have great interest in India. We will be launching our second frequency from Delhi in the coming summer season, that is end of March.

"This will make the total frequency to 28 (per week), 14 each from Mumbai and Delhi," Ethiopian Airlines Regional Director (India Sub-Continent) Tadesse Tilahun told reporters here.

The airline has seen over 77 per cent load factor -- an indicator of seat occupancy -- on its Delhi flight and also improved demand.

According to Tilahun, there are plans to also fly from South India and is looking at starting operations from Chennai or Bengaluru.

As part of celebrating 30 years since starting operations from Delhi, the carrier would also be providing discounted fares to East African countries and buy one get one offer on tickets till May 31 as well as give additional three per cent commission to travel agents.
The European Union has said it will give its 28 member states the option of completely removing a tax on tampons which feminists had denounced as unfair.

EU leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels yesterday welcomed plans by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to include proposals for increased member state flexibility to reduce value added tax.

The proposals "would provide the option to member states of VAT zero rating for sanitary products," the leaders said in early conclusions of the summit.

It was not immediately clear how long it would take for the proposed change to come into force.

The move comes following pressure from British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is seeking to ward off a damaging parliamentary rebellion on the issue ahead of a closely-fought referendum on British membership of the EU on June 23.

Eurosceptic and feminist MPs had teamed up to threaten to back a rebel amendment on the issue to the government's Finance Bill next week.

Feminists have long argued that the five percent tax on tampons in Britain -- the lowest allowed by the EU -- is unfair, while eurosceptics resented the bloc's role in setting the rate.

Cameron's government has faced pressure over the issue for months.

In November last year, finance minister George Osborne announced ministers would give millions of pounds raised from the tampon tax to women's charities, including those tackling domestic violence.

This came after over 300,000 people signed a petition saying that no tax should be charged on tampons and sanitary towels.

The issue has also caused anger in other countries. In France, lawmakers voted in December to reduce the tax rate on sanitary products from 20 percent to 5.5 percent.
European Union and Turkish leaders were locked in tense negotiations today as the EU seeks to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey and ease the pressure from a human emergency that is increasingly dividing the bloc.

But making a tough early stand, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara's prime concern was the fate of almost 3 million Syrian refugees on its territory. At the same time, Davutoglu was looking for unprecedented concessions to bring the EU's eastern neighbor closer to the bloc.

"For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining, but values," he told reporters, staking out the same moral ground that the EU has claimed throughout the crisis.

Davutoglu said he hoped that beyond helping the refugees, the deal would also "deepen EU-Turkey relations" with the approval of unprecedented access to Europe for Turkish nationals and the speeding-up of bogged-down EU membership talks.

With more than 1 million migrants having arrived in Europe in a year, EU leaders are desperate to clinch a deal with Turkey and heal deep rifts within the 28-member bloc while relieving the pressure on Greece, which has borne the brunt of arrivals.

In the Idomeni camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, Muhammad Hassan, a Syrian from the devastated city of Aleppo, was looking for relief from the talks in Brussels and wondered why a continent of 500 million people could not deal with the situation.

"Europe have only 1 million" migrants, Hassan said. "How come it's difficult?" he asked, comparing the EU to Lebanon, a nation of 5.9 million. "If a small country takes 3 million refugees and didn't talk, how about Europe? It's not difficult."



The conditions in Greece and the Idomeni camp were called intolerable by the Greek government today. Interior minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis compared the crowded tent city to a Nazi concentration camp, blaming the suffering on some European countries' closed border policies.

During a visit to Idomeni Friday, Kouroumplis said the situation was a result of the "logic of closed borders" by countries that refused to accept refugees.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe's prosperous heartland. Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organised shelters.

The EU-Turkey plan would essentially outsource Europe's biggest refugee emergency in decades to Turkey, despite concerns about its subpar asylum system and human rights abuses.

Under it, the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don't qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every Syrian returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, for a target figure of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.
EU leaders and Turkey's prime minister approved a controversial deal to curb the huge flow of asylum seekers to Europe, with all migrants arriving in Greece from Sunday to be sent back.

Today's deal makes Turkey Europe's bulwark against its biggest migration crisis since World War II, but comes at a heavy price and amid criticism from rights groups.

"Now unanimous agreement between all EU HoSG (Heads of State or Government) and Turkey's PM on EU-Turkey Statement," EU president Tusk tweeted after talks in Brussels with Ahmet Davutoglu.

Davutoglu smiled and waved on his way into a final meeting with his counterparts to shake hands on the hard-won deal.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka confirmed separately the plans for migrants arriving from Sunday on the Greek islands.

"Deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey as of March 20 will be returned!" Sobotka wrote on Twitter.

More than 1.2 million migrants have come to Europe since January 2015, and around 4,000 drowned last year while trying trying to reach Europe by sea.

Turkey won an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to USD 6.8 billion and visa-free travel by June.

In return Turkey agreed to take back all new irregular migrants coming to Greece, the main entry point to Europe.

Under the terms of the plan, the EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian readmitted to Turkey from Greece. The move is meant to discourage them from risking their lives in often rickety and overcrowded boats operated by smugglers.

The deal still faces doubts about how to implement such a huge scheme, not least due to the still often-tense relations between Ankara and Brussels.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted several EU states for taking only a "handful of refugees" in contrast to the nearly three million Turkey has admitted, most of them fleeing the Syrian war.

Erdogan also accused the Europeans of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels allegedly linked to the group.

"European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield," he said.

Critics have said the mass expulsion planned under the EU-Turkey deal could infringe international law on the treatment of asylum seekers.
A former BSF personnel, working as a private security guard at the filling plant of a petroleum company, was shot dead allegedly by some unidentified assailants near Gayatri Vihar here, police said today.

Durga Das (55), employed by a private agency at the filling plant of Hindustan Petroleum Company limited here, was on his way home last night when he was shot, Superintendent of Police (Rural) Rakesh Pandey said.

The people nearby took him to the hospital where he was declared dead, the SP said.

Preliminary investigation revealed that Das had some altercation with the agency contractor a few days ago, Pandey said, adding police recovered a country-made pistol from the spot.

An FIR has been registered against unknown assailants and the body has been sent for post-mortem, the SP added.
Drug major Merck Ltd today said it is exploring all options to counter the ban on its two cough syrups, Cosome Expectorant and Cosome LCD, manufacturing and sales of which have stopped.

"We are exploring all our options to deal with these prohibitory orders," Merck said in a filing to BSE.

The company's two drugs, Cosome Expectorant and Cosome LCD, have been banned from manufacturing and sale, courtesy government notification dated March 10, 2016, it added.

"The company has immediately stopped the manufacturing and sale of these drugs," Merck said.

These dugs were manufactured by the company after having requisite licence from the state FDA. The drugs are having well established efficacy and safety profile over the years in Indian markets, it added.

In a gazette notification on March 10, the government had banned manufacturing, sale and distribution of 344 fixed dose combination drugs.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today hailed his government's budget as "progressive" given the challenges before the state, while the Opposition parties slammed it as "directionless, just "a jugglery of numbers" and lacking in focus.

"Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar has presented a very progressive Budget keeping in mind the financial crisis and challenges facing the state. The budget gives a new direction to agriculture and rural development," he said.

The Gross State Domestic Product is expected to grow by 8 per cent during 2015-16 compared to 5.8 per cent in 2014 -15, an indication of good planning and honest efforts despite the adverse conditions, Fadnavis said.

Besides, substantial allocations have been made for agriculture, rural development and infrastructure projects in the BJP-led Government's second Budget, he said.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition in Assembly and Congress member Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil said the State budget is full of "empty promises". "The Budget is not in tune with the existing financial situation."



"In his Budget speech Mungantiwar said 'tasveer badal dunga, takdeer badal dunga' (I shall change the picture and destiny). But the reality is that under this government, people's life has become miserable, especially in drought-hit areas," Vikhe Patil said.

"We don't think farmers will get the Rs 25,000 crore promised in the Budget," Leader of Opposition in Council Dhananjay Munde of NCP said.

"This is just a jugglery of numbers. Its neither rural nor urban-oriented budget," Munde said.

Munde, however, welcomed the provision of Rs 5 crore in the Budget for building an auditorium in memory of late NCP leader R R Patil, who also served as Deputy Chief Minister.

Former Finance Minister and senior NCP MLA Jayant Patil dubbed the Budget as "directionless". The farmers, farm labourers, entrepreneurs and other sections of society have been cheated by this Budget," he said.
Campaigners delivered fake missiles to Downing Street today to protest Britain's continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia despite concerns they are being used against civilians in Yemen.

Amnesty International activists wearing white mechanics' boiler suits delivered five replicas of the 1.8-metre-long Paveway-IV weapons used by British-supplied Saudi jets outside Prime Minister David Cameron's office.

"Ministers need to stop burying their heads in the sand and immediately suspend arms sales for the Saudi war machine," said Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen.

The Saudi-led coalition began bombing Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in March 2015 to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, in a campaign that UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein today said had killed 3,218 civilians.

The British government concedes that UK-supplied defence equipment has been used in the campaign but says it has "one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world".

It says it has raised allegations of civilian targeting with the kingdom, but refused a call by parliament's international development committee last month to suspend exports until the matter can be properly investigated.

Under Britain's arms export criteria, licences cannot be granted if there is "a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law".

The government approved nearly USD 4.3 billion and USD 3.8 billion of arms licences for exports to Saudi Arabia in the six months to January, according to the international development committee.

Amnesty said that Britain during 2015 transferred 58 combat aircraft and 2,400 Paveway-IV missiles to the kingdom.

"It is absolutely shocking that the UK is still selling billions of pounds' worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia even as the civilian casualties have mounted and mounted in Yemen," Allen added.

A second parliamentary committee, on arms export controls, last week launched an inquiry into the use of British manufactured arms in Yemen, and will hold its first evidence session next week.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade is also pursuing legal action against the government in a bid to suspend exports.
A 50-year-old farmer was killed when he was attacked by a tiger in Sunahra Bhood village of Mailani range under south Kheri area, police said today.

The incident occurred last night when the farmer Tarsem Dinghy went to take a round of his field.

He was taken to the hospital where he was declared brought dead.
The corrupt Governments of the past and the present are squarely responsible for the farmers' suicides, president of Marathi Sahitiya Sammelan (literary meet) Shreepal Sabnis has said.

Sabnis was in the city yesterday after attending two-day Phule-Ambedkari Krishi Sahitya Sammelan organised under the auspices of Lokjagruti Munch, Ghatanji Panchayat Samiti and Shantidoot Buddhavihar Samiti at village Manusdari in Ghatanji tehsil of the district.

In a scathing attack on the Maharashtra government, Sabnis asked why only two villages were included in the drought-hit list when the the entire Yavatmal district was under the grip of drought.

"The farmers are born in debt, live in debt and die in debt," he said, adding there is no end to their plight. "It is a blot on the civilised society as the hand that produces food for the masses is now forced to commit suicide," he said.

"We need a society without exploitation. It is possible only if the corruption in the high places is annihilated permanently," he observed, and added that politicians were amassing unaccounted wealth "for their 100 future generations".

Had there been no corruption, water from the dams would have reached the farmers, he said.

Agriculture sector should be nationalised and promoted through co-operation, Sabnis said.

Asked about making use of Marathi mandatory, Sabnis said he favoured it but there were practical difficulties such as translation of English terminology.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today held a meeting with top officials of food processing, commerce and industry ministries to work out the modalities for allowing 100 per cent FDI in marketing and processing of foods products.

After the finalisation of the details on the subject, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) will prepare a Cabinet note for approval, an official said.

DIPP is expected to hold a stakeholder meeting on the issue on Monday.

Besides Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the other officials, including Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia and DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek, attended the meet.

With a view to benefiting farmers and reducing wastage of fruits and vegetables, the government in the Budget proposed allowing 100 per cent foreign direct investment in marketing and processing of food products.

In his Budget speech, Jaitley had said the move would benefit farmers, give an impetus to the food processing industry and create vast employment opportunities.

During April-December 2015, FDI into the country grew by 40 per cent to USD 29.44 billion.
A Finnish court has given an Iraqi man a 16-month suspended sentence in a rare war crime case where the defendant was found guilty of degrading a deceased enemy soldier.

The Pirkanmaa District Court in Tampere said today the 29-year-old former member of an Iraqi paramilitary unit had posted pictures of himself and a decapitated head of an alleged Islamic State militant on his open Facebook page.

During the one-day trial, the court called the defendant's actions degrading and humiliating, adding the victim was easily recognisable.

The man had arrived to Finland in 2015 possibly to seek asylum and was detained in November pending investigation.

On Tuesday, another trial in Finland opens against an Iraqi man suspected of war crimes in Iraq.
Belgian police have arrested five people in counter-terror raids in Brussels, including Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam and the family who sheltered him, prosecutors said.

"A total of five people were arrested following three raids this afternoon," Thierry Werts, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office, told a press conference yesterday.

Special federal police forces arrested Abdeslam, who has been on the run since the deadly November 13 attacks, wounding him lightly in the leg during an afternoon raid in the capital's gritty immigrant neighbourhood of Molenbeek.

"He was taken to the hospital for treatment," Werts said.

The police also shot and slightly wounded another man at the same address and took him to hospital.

Another three people, all members of the same family who sheltered Abdeslam, were also arrested and will be interviewed by investigators, Werts said.

At an earlier joint press conference, French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel reported that Abdeslam and two other people had been arrested in the raids.

Earlier this week, Belgian and French police raided an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels, shooting dead a 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Werts said police were trying to determine whether Abdeslam and the other man arrested with him were the two who fled the raid in Forest. "It's a theory," he added.
Amid rising rural distress following two consecutive years of drought, the Centre is keen to kick-start 23 major irrigation projects and will begin releasing the committed Rs 20,000-crore funds from April itself.

The commitment was given by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while presiding over the board meeting of the rural-focussed developmental finance institution National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), its Chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala told PTI.

With rising incidents of farmer suicides and elections in five key states by the middle of the year, the Budget nearly doubled farm sector allocation to Rs 44,485 crore in FY17 and raised credit target to a record Rs 9 trillion, from Rs 8.5 trillion in FY16.

Nearly half of the higher budget allocation is directed at irrigation. The government has announced a long-term irrigation fund with a corpus of Rs 20,000 crore, under which it plans to fund construction of 23 large irrigation projects.

The larger objective is to double the income of farmers, Jaitley had said in the Budget.

"The government has already identified these 23 projects. What is left is the execution details. The minister said the government will begin releasing irrigation funds in April itself," Bhanwala told PTI.

He said the minister has asked him to help secure farmers' income by increasing the focus on irrigation, helping them diversify into dairying and widening crop insurance coverage.

"To double their income, farmers need to diversify into non-farming areas like dairy-farming," Bhanwala said, quoting the minister.

At present the crop insurance coverage is only 25 per cent and according to Jaitley, to achieve the goal of doubling farmers' income by FY22, this will also have to be at least doubled.

The Nabard chief also said Jaitley emphasised on reviving rural demand which has fallen since the past few years.

Bhanwala said Jaitley will launch the new Fasal Bima Yojana (crop insurance scheme) on March 22 in the city, where the CMDs of all public sector banks and general insurers, apart from heads of RRBs, will be present.

The Budget has also provided Rs 5,500 crore for crop insurance scheme, Rs 815 crore to promote dairy and allied sector and Rs 500 crore to boost pulses output.

The government plans to mop-up part of the funds required through the 0.5 per cent Krishi Kalyan Cess on service tax.
China today praised Gambia's move to resume diplomatic relations with it as a "historic moment", a day after the western African country snapped ties with Beijing's arch-rival Taiwan.

China and Gambia renewed their diplomatic relations yesterday after the small African country turned its back on Taiwan and recognised only one China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye signed a joint communique to resume diplomatic relations.

Wang dubbed the development as a "historic moment" for the two nations.

The Gambian government recognises that there is only one China, that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and that Taiwan is part of China, the joint communique said.

Gambia leaders said the resumption of ties was in the interests of all Gambians, so they made this right decision, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a briefing here.

Lu also said Gambia could avail itself of China's big investments in India.

The two countries established formal diplomatic links in 1974 but China suspended the relations in 1995 when Gambia resumed diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Gambia severed ties with Taiwan in 2013.

The timing of Gambia's joining China was seen as diplomatic victory for Beijing over Taiwan's new leader Tsai Ing-wen who toed a hardline stand against China, reviving old tensions between the two estranged states.

In its editorial today, the ruling Communist Party of China's newspaper Global Times warned Tsai's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) against "provoking the mainland," but said the diplomatic truce was still held.

The DPP headed by Tsai "should avoid provoking the mainland by desinicisation, or it might trigger an all-out confrontation with the mainland", it said.

Last year, during the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, President Xi Jinpingoutlined a raft of measures to strengthen China-Africa ties and announced 10 major plans to boost bilateral win-win cooperation.

Gambia had automatically become a member of the FOCAC, Lu said.
The US government landed its second conviction of someone charged with supporting the Islamic State terrorist group after an Arizona man was found guilty of charges that he plotted last spring's attack at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, an American-born Muslim convert, was accused of providing the guns used at the May 3 event in suburban Dallas and hosting two Islamic State followers at his home to discuss the upcoming attack. He also was found guilty of providing support to the Islamic State.

The verdict yesterday marked the second time a person was tried in the US on charges related to the terrorist group. A trial in New York ended a week ago with a guilty verdict against a US military veteran charged with attempting to join Islamic State.

Federal authorities said Kareem's conviction demonstrates their commitment to combating terrorism.

Assistant US Attorney General John Carlin, head of the US Justice Department's national security division, said the agency "will continue to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who conspire with others to support foreign terrorist organizations and to commit acts of violence."



Kareem, who faces a maximum prison term of 45 years, was scheduled to be sentenced on June 27.
The introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an important reform which will lead India into next rapid phase of economic growth, said former chairman of 13th Finance Commission Vijay Kelkar.

"The most important reform will be which will bring this country as one market. Launching of has taken us into next very rapid phase of growth," Kelkar, a noted economist, said at a Skoch summit here.

The major central and state taxes will get subsumed into which will reduce the multiplicity of taxes, bringing down the compliance cost. With GST, the burden of Central sales tax will also be phased out.

Currently, the GST Bill is stuck in Rajya Sabha.

"Now we are undertaking third generation reforms which are more difficult including land, labour and capital. They are difficult ones. These are absolutely essential to take this economy on the next growth trajectory," he said.

Kelkar also stressed on reforms in education sector to become a knowledge economy.

"If we really want to be a knowledge economy then we have to reform the education sector. Unless we reform our higher education, India will miss the boat in terms of new knowledge economy," he said.

In a recent presentation of education sector to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, NITI Aayog has suggested to build 10-20 world class institutions with academic autonomy and to create funds to provide annual project-based grants for research to potential institutes of excellence.

Kelkar further said: "The 1991 reforms were essentially driven by crisis the country was facing. The crisis in terms of balance of payments. We did not have enough foreign exchange to meet our requirements. That triggered the reforms programme."



He described the second wave of reforms launched by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as consensus-driven reforms.

These reforms centred around important sectors including telecom, civil aviation and roads, which paid in terms of accelerated growth rate.

"No government went back on earlier government's reforms which accumulated further. Thus, India got accelerated growth decade-after-decade post 1991 reforms," he said.
A wealthy Indian family in South Africa, accused of having improper business links with President Jacob Zuma, today hit back at the "xenophobic and hate speech" targeting them, saying they were being blamed for the country's "every calamity and misfortune".

The Gupta family laid bare their business dealings in a two-page advertisement in their newspaper The New Age under the headline "Gupta family: The Inconvenient Truth".

"We have been quiet until now but given the recent xenophobic and hate speech directed towards us, now is the time to set the record straight," news24 online quoted the family as having said in the advertisement.

"As the global economic slowdown began to bite, the family became the scapegoat for every calamity and misfortune that South Africa has faced," said the Guptas, who were born in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

"Our interaction with the current president began in 2000, which was long before he became president," they said.

"It is absurd to suggest that we benefit from government business when only less than one per cent of the (family's) business is with the South African government."



The family's reaction came two days after Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas in a public statement said the Guptas had last year offered him the top cabinet position, shortly before Zuma sacked the respected Nhlanhla Nene in December.

Nene's firing was a shock that triggered collapse of the currency rand and in massive withdrawal of foreign investment. The family has been accused of wielding influence over Zuma.

The ruling African National Congress, which led the struggle to end apartheid, today began a three-day meet of its national executive where the scandal is likely to dominate.

The ANC has warned that the country risks becoming a "mafia state" if corruption is not tackled.

The Gupta brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh, who built up an array of companies with interests in computers, mining, media and engineering, after moving to South Africa in the early 1990s, have denied the allegations, saying they are the victims of a plot.

Yesterday, Zuma told Parliament that only he could appoint ministers and their deputies.

In the advert today, the family expalined in point-form how Atul Gupta arrived in South Africa in 1993, and that by 2000 the whole family had settled there, the report said.

They claimed that the "ground reality" has been that in the 10 years that they have applied for 100 different mining licences, none were successful, it said.
The Gujarat High Court today issued a notice to the state Government on the bail petition of the Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, arrested in a sedition case.

Justice A J Desai asked the Government to file its reply and kept the next hearing on April 7.

Before issuing the notice, the court inquired about the status of the petition filed by Hardik in the Supreme Court seeking to quash the case against him.

Hardik's lawyer Zubin Bharda said the next hearing in apex court was scheduled in the first week of April.

On March 11, Hardik approached the High Court after the sessions court rejected his bail application, filed after the city police's crime branch submitted a charge sheet in the case in January.

The petition contends that sedition is a colonial law enacted by the British to suppress the voice of freedom fighters and it had been invoked wrongfully against the Patel leader who was only fighting for his community.

It also says that the police have failed to link Hardik's intercepted telephonic conversations with his associates with the violence during the agitation in August last year.

Sessions court rejected his bail plea observing that he might repeat the offence.

Hardik and five others have been accused of inciting violence to mount pressure on the government for accepting the demand of reservations for the Patel community.

Hardik is at present lodged at Lajpore jail in Surat district, where another sedition case has been filed against him.
The Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) has appointed 16 relationship managers to convert MoUs signed during the 'Happening Haryana Global Investors' Summit-2016' into projects by handholding investors and ensuring their implementation.

This was disclosed by Haryana Industries Minister Captain Abhimanyu today, who was replying to a Calling Attention Notice in the Budget Session of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha here today.

He said the Haryana Enterprises Promotion Bill-2016 had already been prepared and would be placed on the table of the House very shortly.

There is a provision in the Act to provide simplification of regulatory framework and assist promoters for speedy implementation of industrial and other projects in the state by providing single point time-bound clearances required for setting up of enterprises under one roof.

For projects with investment more than Rs 10 crore and involving CLU cases of more than one acre land will be cleared by the Empowered Executive Committee under PSCM.

Projects with investment up to Rs 10 crore and CLU cases up to one acre in conforming zones will be cleared by District Level Clearance Committee headed by a Deputy Commissioner.

The Executive Empowered Committee will also review the implementation of MoUs in its meeting periodically. Land would be made available from the developed land bank. The HSIIDC had also started the system of Online Geo-referenced Display to provide information to investors regarding vacant land in industrial estates.

The minister said that to propel the state to the next level of growth trajectory, the state came out with a path-breaking 'Enterprises Promotion Policy-2015' (EPP) in August 2015.

This policy envisions GDP growing at a rate higher than 8 per cent, an investment of Rs 1 lakh crore and employment generation for four lakh persons by positioning Haryana as a pre-eminent investment destination.

According to the minister, immediately after the announcement of the new Enterprises Promotion Policy-2015, visits were undertaken to the US and Canada in August 2015 for marketing Haryana as an ideal investment destination and for highlighting facilitations and incentives.

Capt Abhimanyu added, "Happening Haryana had the benefit of central Cabinet Ministers, including Manohar Parrikar, Piyush Goel and Kalraj Mishra, personally chairing all our technical sessions."



Ambassadors and High Commissioners of 12 partner countries from China, Czech Republic, Japan, Spain, UK, Mauritius, Malawi, New Zealand, Peru, South Korea, Tunisia and Canada attended the summit, besides participation by delegations from nearly 15 countries.

"More than 3,000 delegates attended the summit, which included 160 foreign delegates. In spite of the disturbances that took place in February 2016, the overwhelming participation in the event only reinforced the faith reposed by investors in the state Government," he added.
The Allahabad High Court today dismissed a petition challenging the appointment of educationist Aniruddh Singh Yadav as Chairman of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission.

A division bench, comprising Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Raghavendra Kumar, dismissed the petition filed by one Jiledar Singh of Fatehpur district, observing that the petitioner had not placed on record "any material or reason to show why the court's intervention was needed in the matter".

Hailing from Aligarh, Yadav was the principal of a college in Badaun prior to his appointment to the constitutional post on March 11.

The post had fallen vacant following the dismissal of Anil Yadav following a court order dated October 14, 2015 wherein his appointment had been declared as illegal.

Subsequent to Yadav's removal, UPPSC member Sunil Kumar Jain had been appointed as the acting Chairman of the panel for the period until the appointment of a full-time Chairman.
The Madras High Court today came to the rescue of a Muslim woman by staying the order of a lower court in Periyakulam which upheld the "triple talaq" sent by her husband through telegram in 2009.

Hearing the petition by Nazeema, whose husband Mydeen Batcha divorced her via telegram, Justice R Mahadevan directed the husband to file his counter in three weeks.

Nazeema submitted that she married Batcha in 2007 when 35 sovereigns of gold and Rs 40,000 was provided as dowry.

However, her husband and in-laws tortured her and demanded more dowry, she alleged.

She further submitted that she had lodged a complaint with the all-women police station against her husband and his family for illegally detaining her, criminally intimidating her and also under Dowry Prohibition Act.

Even as a case was pending in the Judicial Magistrate's court, her husband offered to lead a peaceful matrimonial life.

Believing his words, she withdrew the complaint, she stated. However, after the withdrawal of the complaint, he divorced her by sending talaq by telegram on July 16, 2009.

When she moved the sub-court, it ruled that the talaq was null and void. But the Additional District Court Judge of Periyakulam allowed the appeal filed by her husband and upheld the talaq last year.

The issue should be discussed before the elders and there were procedures to be followed after that. Sending talaq by telegram was against the Muslim Marriage Act, her counsel contended.
Pakistan government's decision to declare Diwali, Holi and Easter as holidays for Hindus and Christians appears to be an attempt to steer the country towards a "more moderate ideological direction", a leading daily said today.

Lauding the decision, an editorial in 'The Nation' titled "standing by our minorities" said it was a "very small" measure which should only serve as a start for the government to "reverse the economic imbalance created due to marginalisation faced ever since the partition."



"Christian and Hindu minorities in Pakistan should be congratulated for finally being handed closed holidays for Diwali, Holi and Easter," the editorial said.

"While this measure is a very small one, it goes a long way in telling the minorities that the state will no longer exclude them as it once did," it said.

The write-up said that apart from deserved holidays, greater access to "healthcare and education, more jobs and a more tolerant society is what the minorities really need".

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has been making headlines lately over what seems to be a conviction to steer the country towards "a more moderate ideological direction," it said.

"Whether this new-found inclination towards making moderate policies is a genuine attempt to counter extremism and enable the protection of minorities as a consequence or a means to satisfy western countries remains to be seen," it added.

Noting that the persecution of minorities begins when they are treated as second-class citizens and denied basic rights such as the freedom to practice their religion, it said that denying religious holidays to them further affirms that Pakistan is actively participating in their subjugation.

"Historically, the subcontinent was once the melting pot for all cultures and faiths, and it is time Pakistan started to emulate that as well," it said.

Pakistan's parliament adopted a resolution to declare Holi, Diwali and Easter festivals as public holidays for minorities on Tuesday.

Hindu lawmaker Ramesh Kumar Vankwani of PML-N had moved the resolution that said the "government should take steps to declare Holi, Diwali and Easter as closed holidays for minorities".
The Supreme Court today asked the government to state the criteria for granting compensation to dog bite victims, especially when someone bitten dies.

"Which forum should the victim go to seek compensation in the dog bite cases, especially in case of death? What are the criteria for grant of such compensation from Chief Minister Relief Fund," a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra asked.

The bench's observation came during the hearing of a petition filed by one Jos Sebastian whose wife, a MNREGA worker, was killed after she was bit by a stray dog.

Advocate V K Biju, appearing for the petitioner, sought a direction to the concerned authorities for grant of appropriate compensation to the victim.

The bench, also comprising Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, posted the matter for further hearing on April 5.

The apex court, had on March 9, asked states and civic bodies to take steps to sterilise and vaccinate nuisance- causing stray dogs under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Senior advocate Dushyanat Dave, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, had said that balance needs to be created as there were instances of death due to dog bites.

Dave had said he was yet to come across where animal-loving NGOs have come forward to help victims of dog bites and hence, the need of the hour is to strike a balance.

The apex court is hearing a batch of appeals, including those filed by Animal Welfare Board and dog lovers, against the decisions of some high courts including the Bombay High Court and Kerala High Court to allow municipal authorities to deal with the stray dogs menace.

Earlier, the court had said the local authorities have a "sacrosanct duty to provide sufficient number of dog pounds, including animal kennels/shelters" which may be managed by the animal welfare organisations.

Animal Welfare Board of India, in its plea, has sought that the central law, which mandates birth control of street dogs through strict implementation of the Animal Birth Control Dogs Rules, be followed.

The apex court had earlier declined to pass an interim order to stay culling of stray dogs by Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation on a PIL by advocate Anupam Tripathi, saying the killing of dangerous dogs and those inflicted with rabies should be guided by the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001.
After their spat made headlines, both Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan today said there is a need for a closure to the matter which has turned "ugly".

"It has all gone ugly. Their (from Hrithik's side) statement is subdued... He (Hrithik) is deviating from the matter. We are waiting for their next move. But we want the matter to end soon," Kangana's lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee told PTI.

Hrithik and his lawyer Dipesh Mehta seemed to have extended an olive branch.

"We would just request the police to speed up the matter (with regard to fake email account in Hrithik's name). We hope it will end soon," Mehta told PTI.

Both Hrithik and Kangana are out of Mumbai and are busy with their work commitments.

The "Queen" actress is busy shooting in Arunachal Pradesh for "Rangoon" that stars Shahid Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan in the lead. The "Krrish 3" star is also busy shooting for an ad film abroad.

"Kangana has not done anything wrong. She is a strong girl. She is cut off from all this as she is busy with work. She is getting stressed out and wants to move on," a source said.

Last evening, the 42-year-old actor finally decided to break his silence on the matter. He insists that email address (hroshan@email.Com) said to be his did not belong to him. Without naming Kangana, he said he has no connection with her.

While Kangana Ranaut's lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee retaliated, terming Hrithik's statement "an effort to get public sympathy".
The husband of



internationally-renowned concert pianist Natalia Strelchenko who strangled her on their second wedding anniversary was today found guilty of her murder.

John Martin, 48, a Norwegian double bass player, was convicted of killing 38-year-old Russian-born pianist Strelchenko at their home in Manchester, northwest England, on August 30 last year.

Martin had denied the murder or manslaughter of his wife, who used the stage name Strelle, but accepted he "must be the man behind it".

He was cleared of the attempted murder of a male youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Martin will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on Monday.

A friend who was staying with the couple at the time said Martin flew at Strelchenko "like an animal", throwing them both down the stairs before repeatedly punching his wife, saying "I want to kill her".

Martin said he had no recollection of the killing, having drunk cider on the night and mistakenly taken diazepam for around six weeks in place of his anti-depression medication.

When police arrived, Martin repeatedly said: "kill me, kill me please, I have nothing to live for, I do not deserve to live".

Strelchenko died in hospital. She had 76 injuries including 45 marks on her head and neck.

Her jawbone was snapped in half. Parts of her skull were severely fractured.

Strelchenko studied at the prestigious St Petersburg State Conservatory and made her debut aged 12 with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra.

She had performed at New York's Carnegie Hall.

"She was extremely talented with much life ahead of her," the pianist's family said in a statement.

"We cannot express how devastated we are that her life has been stolen from her.

"We can try to repair our heartache although no matter how long the sentence is, it will not bring Natalia back or make our loss any easier.
Sanjay Dutt may have walked out of jail last month after being in and out for the past 23 years but the Bollywood star says the feeling of freedom is yet to sink in.

The 56-year-old actor, who was convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, served a 42-month sentence at Pune's Yerwada jail.

He was released on February 25, 103 days ahead of his prison term.

"I was in solitary confinement. It will take a bit longer for me to feel free. The feeling of freedom is yet to sink in. I have been in and out of jail for the last 23 years. There were so many restrictions, permissions to be take. I am getting used to live life like a free man. The feeling is yet to hit me.

"They imprison you mentally more than physically. They tell you what to do and what not do in prison," Dutt said at the India Today Conclave.

He said contrary to people's perception he did not receive any special treatment during his jail term and was given the same food to eat and same clothes as any other inmate.

"I did not get any VIP treatment. In fact I was treated worse than normal inmates as everyone thought I was getting special treatment. The worse thing about jail was the food, it was terrible and not edible at all."



The "Munnabhai" star said the sentence and the imprisonment always haunted him and his family. He assured that he loves his country and is a patriot.

"It has haunted me all these years. It has haunted my family and especially my father. I am a patriot, my family is a patriot. I cannot think of harming my country. It did affect me a lot. But I thank people that they didn't lose their faith in me and believed in me," he said.

The actor said his father actor-politician Sunil Dutt, believed in him and before he passed away he had told him that he was proud of his son.

"I don't think I let my father down. He knew I was not a terrorist. Before he died he told me that he was proud of me."



Dutt said other than the day the weapons were found in his house, he has no regrets about anything as he has learnt the valuable lesson of not being brash.

"I don't have any regrets. I have learnt a lot in these years. It has taught me not to be brash. I have learnt to respect the law about our country and also have learnt about it. I think every citizen should know about the law of the country. But yes I do regret the day those weapons came into my house."



The actor also opened up about his drug problem which he said began after the death of his mother, actress Nargis Dutt.

"I am quite a shy person in real life. I got into the habit of drugs after my mother died and then it became chronic. I have done every drug there is.

"My dad didn't understand what was wrong with me, he is from Punjab. But then one day I couldn't handle anymore and my dad took me to hospital. From there I went to a rehab in the US. And it has been 40 years since that incident and I haven't looked back," he said.

Dutt said he does not need drugs anymore as he gets his



adrenaline rush from his work now.

Talking about the underworld, he said everybody in Bollywood during that time was getting involved with the underworld in some way or the other. He said in his case it was more of a compulsion than a choice.

"In those times everyone from Bollywood was involved with the underworld. Everyone was getting calls, threats. I got the weapon from a producer not from the underworld," he said.

Dutt said that the dark part of his life is over and he had left his part back in the Pune jail. "I have come out to begin a new life."



He said it has been a hard road to freedom and had a piece of advice to give.

"Don't take freedom for granted. People should value it. Because I know what it truly means in all these years of my life. Freedom is more important than anything in life."



When asked if he would get into politics like his father, he said he will stay away from it and his main focus is on his family and his work.

Dutt said he wants to help jail reforms and people with drug abuse past. "I want to do something for them," he said.
A spectacular display of the Indian Air Force's combat and firepower capabilities began today in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister Manohar Parrikar at the firing range here in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer district.

More than 180 fighter jets, transport aircraft and helicopters are participating in 'Exercise Iron Fist', which comprises of six different themes which showcase the operational capabilities of the IAF.

Homegrown Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas will be an attraction at the exercise, where India will display its firepower to demonstrate its state-of-the-art capabilities in meeting challenges be it from air, land or sea.

The dignitaries were welcomed by Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and other senior officers. Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh and Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje were also present.

All the frontline fighters in IAFs inventory, including the Su-30 MKI, will participate in the exercise close to the Indo-Pak border. The IAF had demonstrated its day-dusk-night operational capabilities during Iron Fist 2013.

The exercise will showcase the journey of the IAFs transformation over the years and cover its glorious history while presenting its lethal side.
India today assured Mauritius of all possible help in the health sector including upgrading its medical education facilities, setting up of a state of the art cancer unit and procurement of medical equipments.

Both the countries also decided to constitute a Joint Working Group (JWG) on health cooperation after Minister of Health and Quality of Life, Mauritius, Anil Kumar Singh Gayan held a bilateral meeting with Union Health Minister J P Nadda here today.

"Mauritius have requested for India's help in recruitment of doctors, upgradation of Jawahar Lal Nehru Hospital, mutual recognition of medical degrees, assistance in upgrading medical education facilities, scholarships for trainings in speciality hospitals...

"...Setting up a state-of-the-art cancer unit and assistance in procurement of medical equipment. India has assured of all possible help," an official statement said.

During the meeting it was decided to constitute a JWG by Mauritius under the Memorandum of Understanding on health cooperation which was signed in 2013 so that specific details with road map could be worked out.

Both sides acknowledged the traditionally close and friendly relations between the two countries while Nadda said that the majority of the people in Mauritius have their ancestral roots in India.

Earlier in the day, Gayan, accompanied by his country's High Commissioner Jagdishwar Goburdhun visited AIIMS here and also held wide ranging discussions with AIIMS acting Director G K Rath.

"Rath indicated that AIIMS, subject to due approvals of the Union Health Ministry and the External Affairs Ministry would be happy to collaborate with the apex medical institutions of Mauritius with the objective of improving the standards of post graduate and medical education.

"Such a collaboration could be in the form of observerships of Mauritius doctors to AIIMS," Rath said according to an official statement.

During the interaction, Gayan identified the problem areas in medical care in Mauritius and highlighted that there was an acute shortage of surgeons in cardiology, neurosurgery, paediatric surgery, radiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, oncology and hospital management.

Gayan said that AIIMs has contributed in the past to development of medical sciences in Mauritius through medical education, research and patient care.

Rath also said that the Pan African E-Health Network is operational in Mauritius through the SSRN Hospital and live surgeries and several consultation procedures can be taken up under the Pan African E-Health Network.
An Indian-American software executive, investor and philanthropist has been felicitated in the US with the inaugural Asians in America Award in recognition of his efforts to strengthen Indo-US ties.

Silicon Valley-based Madhavan Rangaswami and a Chinese-origin Philanthropist, shipping magnate Dr James S C Chao were honoured by the US China Education Trust yesterday for their efforts to strengthen ties between US-China-India trilateral relationship.

In his acceptance speech Rangaswami underlined on the need of "giving back" to the society, which he said is the most gratifying thing in life.

"Giving back is where I enjoy the most," he said, adding that the other thing is to connect people without expecting anything back. The small but powerful Indian-American community can collectively achieve a lot."



Founder of Indiaspora, Rangaswami had organised the first Indian-American presidential ball in January 2013 before the second swearing of the US President Barack Obama.

He and his team have started preparation for the second Indian-American ball for the next president which is set for January 18, 2017, said community leader and philanthropist Frank Islam in his introductory remarks.

In 1997, Rangaswami co-founded the Sand Hill Group based in Silicon Valley. Sand Hill was one of the earliest software "angel investing" firms.

Because of his success there, Forbes has recognised him on its "Midas" list of investors.

In 2007, he established a new venture called Corporate Eco-Forum a by-invitation only membership organisation for Global 500 companies that demonstrate a serious commitment to the environment as a business strategy.

Today, the Forum has 70 members.
All charges have been dropped against an Indian- American journalist, who was arrested last week while covering Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's election rally in Chicago which was called off due to unprecedented protests, his network said.

Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police in a statement said they have dropped all charges against CBS reporter Sopan Deb, who is assigned to cover Trump's presidential campaign.

"While this incident was very dynamic and troopers and officers were forced to make split-second decisions in the interest of public safety of demonstrators and police officers, we have collectively decided to drop the administrative charges in this case.

"This decision was made after a methodical review of the physical evidence including video and interviewing both troopers and police officers involved in the incident," CBS reported, citing the statement.

Last week while covering an election rally of Trump in Chicago, which was marred by violence, Deb was handcuffed and briefly detained by the Chicago Police. The White House had condemned the incident.

"A police officer, at least one police officer, maybe multiple, pulled me down from the back of my hoodie and threw me to the ground and bashed my face into the street and then this police officer put his boot to my neck and cuffed me.

"I am continuously identifying myself as press, I said, 'I have credentials, I can show you I have credentials,' but they are not listening to me," Deb said, adding that he was then taken to a police van and driven to the station, where he was charged with resisting arrest.

"Eventually they put me into the back of this police van along with the man that was bloodied and another gentleman.

"And we are in pitch black, in essence. I was in handcuffs for you know maybe an hour before the police van took me to the station processed me, they cuffed me again at the station and where the police officers told me I was charged with resisting arrest," Deb said.

Deb, who has been covering Trump's presidential campaign from his announcement in New York last year, said there have been protests going on in his rallies for months and months and months.

"However, there has definitely been a recent uptick; I have certainly never seen anything like last night. That was unprecedented," he said.
The Islamic State group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

"The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members" of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in fighting near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

"Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area," Aamaq claimed.

Aamaq also published a video, showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass. A packet of bandages was filmed with instructions written in Russian.

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the "Pearl of the Desert", last May, sending shock waves across the world.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that Russian advisors were present near Palmyra, but could not confirm whether any Russian forces had been killed there in recent days.

President Vladimir Putin, Assad's main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russia's armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike jihadist targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

Russia's defence ministry did not reply to an AFP request for information on the jihadist claim.

"Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged," Putin said Thursday, adding that "fierce fighting" was raging near Palmyra.

He also named four Russians killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched a military intervention in Syria on September 30, including a military advisor.

Previously, the defence ministry's official toll had been three, excluding a soldier who committed suicide.
The quota agitation by Jats in Haryana was today put off till April 3 with the community leaders agreeing to give the state government time to get a reservation bill passed during the ongoing Assembly session that ends on March 31.

Announcement in this regard was made by All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti President Yashpal Malik here after the Jat leaders held talks with Haryana Chief Secretary and DGP here.

"We have given time to Haryana government to bring and pass the Jat reservation Bill by March 31 (when the ongoing Budget session ends)," Malik told reporters here today.

"If the government does not pass the reservation Bill by March 31, then we shall chalk out our next course of action in our meeting on April 3 to be held in Delhi," he said.

Replying to questions, he said "there will be no agitation till April 3."



He appealed to other leaders of Jat community also not to hold any agitation or protest in the state till April 3.

Haryana government had already assured the Jat leaders that it will bring the bill to provide for reservation to Jats and four other communities in the state during the current session of the Assembly.

Malik expressed satisfaction over the discussion held with the officials of Haryana government to chalk out a "workable solution".

"We are fully satisfied with the talks at today's meetingand would appeal to the people not to resort to any protest," Malik said.

"During the meeting, we were assured on behalf of Haryana



CM that Bill will be passed in the ongoing budget session in the state," the Jat leader said.

However, he said the Jat leaders were not shown any draft of the Bill which they want to check.

He said Jats want reservation in BC (Backward Class) category and that the community is getting ready for agitation for quota in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir.

On the issue of withdrawal of the cases, Malik said they were assured that if any false cases was registered against Jats, they would be withdrawn.

"We were also assured that we can file complaint against any officer for his role duirng Jat agitation to SSP or DC," he said.

"The main talking point in this meeting was reservation and under which category we want it... Other than this, we had 4 to 5 very important demands, like all arrests taking place in Jhajjar, Sonipat and whole of Haryana should be stopped, proper investigation should be held and local people should be part of it."



When the last agitation got over, the government had promised to pay Rs 10 lakh for family and kin of the dead.

"We asked the government to do what they promised. We want unity and brotherhood among the youth of the state, khaps, and all 36 castes and groups and want to maintain peace and calm in the state," Malik said.

(Reopen DEL41)



Chief Secretary D S Dhesi, while giving details of the meeting, said Jat leaders have assured the government that till the state assembly is in session they will not resort to any type of agitation or protest.

He said the Committee headed by him to review Jat reservation has already submitted its report to the state government.

"The matter is under the consideration of the state government after which the Council of Ministers will decide on the format of the Jat reservation bill," he said.

"We assured them that every suggestion of theirs will be considered and the final decision (on the Jat reservation bill) lies on the Council of Ministers and the state assembly," the Chief Secretary said.

He said they sought the views of the Jat delegation which will be considered while finalizing the bill.

If need be another round of discussions can be held with the Jat leaders before the finalization of the bill, he said.

Dhesi said the delegation was told that their suggestion for inclusion of Jat reservation in Schedule 9 if the total reservation exceeds the 50 per cent limit would also be considered.

Malik had suggested that if the reservation exceeds more than the 50 per cent the Schedule 9 route can be adopted for which the Centre would have to make necessary amendments in the Parliament.

Malik said they gave a seven-point memorandum to the



Chief Secretary D S Dhesi and Director General of Police (DGP) Yashpal Malik.

"The government has assured to consult us again during the drafting of the bill and before its presentation in the state assembly for its passage," he said.

Six of the seven points included quota for Jats, action against officers who did excesses on protestors; Jats quota be in the same list in the state and at the Centre; no arrest of any protestor without any proof against him and no harassment to any Jat; adequate compensation to the victims; review of false cases and their cancellation.

He said that the seventh point - formation of a committee at the Centre - had already been accepted with the formation of the committee headed by Union Minister M Venkaih Naidu.

Malik said the officials assured them of review of all cases registered against Jats and cencellation of false cases.

He said the government asked them to give complaints against officers, who indulged in excesses to the Parkash Singh-led SIT or to local district civil and police officials.

He said that Jats already enjoyed reservation in eight states which he did not detail. "Our next target will be to get reservation for Jats in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir," he added.

He said that a private member had submitted a bill for providing reservation to the Jats at the Centre. The central government should adopt this bill for passage in the Parliament, Malik said.

The Backward Class quota is bifurcated in two categories BC-A and BC-B having 16 and 11 per cent reservation respectively.

Malik said that the state could either give Jats reservation in BC-B category or include it in the Schedule 9 which would have to be passed by the Centre.

The community had earlier demanded 10 per cent reservation for Jats.

(Reopen DEL63)



To a question at media interaction, the DGP said the 29 companies of Central Para Military Forces which had come here from outside would stay for some more time. "They will remain in Haryana," he said.

Singhal said he had assured the Jats, who expressed apprehension of arrest of innocent Jats, that no innocent would be arrested or harassed.

"If any false case has been filed, an inquiry will be held and steps initiated for the cancellation of the case in the court," he assured the Jat leaders.

He said they suggested to the Jat leaders that they could form a committee of 21 members in each of the district which could receive complaints of false cases against members of the Jat community.

"The details should be given to the local Deputy Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) after which we will act and satisfy the Jat leaders," the DGP said.

The DGP said they told the delegation that those who indulged in arson and violence did not belong to one community. "We sought their support in identifying such elements to which they agreed," Singhal said.

On their complaint of wrong arrests, the DGP said, "We assured them that if any person has been wrongly arrested, we will probe and get the person discharged if he was innocent."



Regarding complaint of the Jat leaders about excesses committed by police and civil officers, Singhal said, "We asked Jats to cooperate with the Parkash Singh Committee (in giving information about excesses by officers). If not to the Committee they can give the details to us."



The DGP said "we assured the delegation that no innocent would be harassed or arrested. Action will be taken only against those who indulged in arson and violence besides conspiracy to which they agreed.
Several Jewish religious leaders have said they would boycott Donald Trump when he addresses a major pro-Israeli conference here on Monday, as they accused the Republican presidential front-runner of "sowing seeds of hatred".

With several groups organising boycotts, Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, who are leading a protest campaign 'Come Together Against Hate', said their objective is to voice their displeasure and do not want to disrupt the meeting.

"Our goal is not to disrupt the proceedings or to offend any of our fellow conference attendees. Our hope is to shine a moral light on the darkness that has enveloped Mr Trump's campaign," they said in a statement ahead of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday night.

"Upon hearing that Donald Trump along with other presidential candidates will be speaking at AIPAC Policy Conference, we come together as Rabbis, Cantors, Jewish Professionals and members of the Jewish community to repudiate the ugliness that Mr Trump espouses.

"At every turn, Mr Trump has chosen to take the low road, sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic," said Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which represents the largest Jewish denomination in America.

"His campaign has been replete with naked appeals to bigotry, especially against Hispanics and Muslims. Previous comments he has made - and not disavowed - have been offensive to women, people of colour, and other groups. In recent days, increasingly, he appears to have gone out of his way to encourage violence at his campaign events," it said.

URJ alleged that Trump's extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric reminds "us that our own ancestors' access to American shores of freedom and promise were once blocked, with deadly consequences."



"When he speaks hatefully of Mexicans or Muslims, for example, we recall a time when anti-Semitism put Jews at deathly danger, even in the US. We cannot remain silent, for we have been commanded to "remember the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt," URJ said.
Jihadists launched a rocket attack today on an Algerian gas plant jointly operated by foreign companies, three years after a deadly hostage crisis at another facility in the Sahara desert.

It was the most serious such attack since the 2013 assault, when Islamist militants stormed a complex in Algeria's remote east and began a four-day siege that left dozens dead.

There were no reports of casualties in the attack, companies and workers at the site said.

"This morning, at approximately 06:00 local time, the In Salah gas asset in Krechba was hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance," Norwegian oil and gas firm Statoil said in a statement.

Britain's BP, which along with Algerian company Sonatrach also operates the plant 1,300 kilometres south of Algiers, said no employees were hurt.

"There are no reports of any injuries to personnel at the site and the Central Processing Facility (CPF) has been shut down as a safety precaution," it said.

A plant employee who did not wish to be named told AFP that the site is surrounded by a security fence and soldiers are permanently on guard.

"The rockets seem to have been fired from very far away," he said.

Military personnel mobilised soon after the rocket fire to prevent the jihadists gaining access to the facility, the employee added.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack and Algerian authorities could not provide further details.

In 2013 a four-day siege and two rescue attempts by the Algerian army at a gas facility at In Amenas resulted in the deaths of 38 hostages, all but one of them foreigners.

That site is also jointly run by Sonatrach, BP and Statoil.

A group allied with Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that attack, which prompted a widespread security review in the North African country, heavily reliant on income from gas exports.

The head of Algeria's army last week called for increased vigilance following what he termed an "unprecedented deterioration" in security.

Algeria has been on guard against jihadist attacks such as those experienced by its neighbours Libya and Tunisia, with local press reporting the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers along its vast desert borders.

On Monday, a security source said a militant leader who had joined the Islamic State group was killed during an army operation west of Algiers.

A brutal civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists killed 200,000 people.
Pro Kabbadi League players of U Mumba team, including captain Anup Kumar, set the ramp on fire as they showed off men's attires at Amazon Indian Fashion Week Autumn-Winter 2016.

The last show of day three was nothing less than a finale, with ace designers like Rohit Gandhi-Rahul Khanna, Abhishek Gupta, Ashish N Soni, Varun Bahl, Troy Costa, Rajesh Pratap Singh, JJ Valaya and Rohit Bal, coming together to put up a dashing closure.

Full of fun, frolic and girls cheering up loud, the all-men show was based on monochrome theme with all the designers showcasing four to five creations each.

The sportstars walked the ramp for Mumbai-based designer Troy Costa, who was welcomed with a round of applause.

"My collection is all about Italy. There they have gladiators. So I thought why not bring our kabbadi players to the ramp, who can easily be the gladiators of this era. They were hesitant about the idea of walking the ramp, but they have done a fantastic job," Troy said.

Anup and his team members, who were nervous initially, walked the ramp just after ten minutes of practice.

"It was a great experience. Going directly to the ramp from mud field is something we will cherish. We are happy that we are making kabbadi proud through this," Anup said.

The outfits mainly formal were dominated by the presence of suits, tuxedos with Valaya giving in the flavor of Indian royal man through his velvet bandhgalas as well as kurta and Aligarhi bottom with Jodhpuri jacket.

Soni's unconventional suits with Kolhapuris earned a lot of praise.

Bahl presented the man, who is confident wearing floral patterns. What caught the eye were the floral motifs embellished white sweatshirts.

While Abhishek's men were prim and proper, Bal presented a gothic side of his designs with models donning Gothic castle prints and sporting smudged eyes.

Bal said from the reaction they got, it makes them think about having a complete men's wear fashion week.

The show was nothing less than a party with all the designers enjoying to the core.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today hit out at the opposition Congress for "not working" in the interest of the state and doing "nothing" to resolve the long-pending SYL canal issue.

Khattar was replying to the Governor's address in the Haryana Assembly here today.

"Congress always says it works for the betterment of people. But in reality, Congress can never work in the interest of the people. It was a pre-planned strategy of the members of Congress to remain outside the House during the budget session as they knew that the SYL canal issue was to be discussed in the House," Khattar said.

Congress remained in power in Haryana as well as at the Centre for 10 years but did "nothing" to resolve the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue, he said.

"We raised the issue in the Supreme Court. As a result of our concerted efforts, the Supreme Court has started hearing the issue. We have put forth the state's view point in successive four hearings and are again going to vigorously present the same in the fifth hearing scheduled to be held on March 30," he said.

Khattar said that he had also convened an all-party meeting on the SYL canal and Jat reservation issues but Congress "boycotted the meeting on the pretext" that no personal invitation was sent to them. "Congress should have attended the meeting in the interest of the state," he said.

The Haryana CM said that an all-party delegation, barring Congress, later met Punjab Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki and urged him not to sign this "unconstitutional" Bill passed by Punjab Assembly.

Congress members remained absent from the House today despite Assembly Speaker revoking suspension of 11 members out of the 14 MLAs yesterday.

Khattar also said the alleged role of Congress workers in



Jat reservation issue has also come forth as "their senior leader Virender Singh and some others have been arrested and action shall be taken against the defaulters."



On the issue of being called a "Pakistani", he said "I am also a person other than the Chief Minister. Such kind of bad acts personally hurts. I will describe the person who promotes such things as an evil."



On the issue of farmers, Khattar said "the present government is giving utmost importance to safeguard the interest of peasants. In case of crop damage due to natural calamity like hailstorm, the state government had disbursed highest ever compensation among affected farmers in a record one month's period."



The government had announced Rs 967 crore compensation to farmers whose cotton crops were damaged due to whitefly in the last Kharif season and will be disbursed soon.

He said that farmers whose crops were damaged will get relief for five acres only.

The central government had launched 'Pradhanmantri Fasal Bima Yojana' under which full compensation for crop loss would be provided by insurance companies, he said.

There was a heated exchange of words between opposition INLD and treasury benches members when Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala tried to put forward queries on farmers' issues to Khattar during his reply.

Haryana Speaker Kanwar Pal intervened and asked INLD members not to disrupt Khattar's address.

Referring to the issue of water and development of Mewat district, the Chief Minister said the state is struggling for its legitimate share of Ravi-Beas water through SYL canal which will benefit entire southern Haryana including Mewat.

Similarly, Deen Dayal Awas Yojana-Housing for all and KMP



Expressway will also benefit the people of Mewat, the Haryana CM said.

Referring to 'Happening Haryana Global Investors Summit', he said "as the government jobs are limited, we have to make private arrangements to check unemployment in the state."



"It is a matter of great satisfaction that 39 of the total MoUs, involving investment of Rs 1,28,000 crore, signed during the Summit are for the districts not falling in the national capital region. While 10 per cent MoUs have been exchanged for manufacturing sector, Rs 1,06,000 crore MoUs are for real estate sector," Khattar said.
Actor Larry Drake best known for playing Benny on "LA Law," died at his home here. He was 66.

The of two time Emmy-winning actor was found dead in his Hollywood home on Thursday, reported People magazine.

"He was such a nice man and a great actor," Drake's agent Mike Eisenstadt said.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Drake made his name playing law clerk Benny Stulwicz on "LA Law" from 1987 to 1994.

He won two best supporting actor Emmys (in 1988 and 1989) and received a third nomination (in 1990) for his groundbreaking portrayal of a man with mental disabilities.

Drake also appeared in Sam Raimi's "Darkman," in Rowan Atkinson's "Bean," and as a series regular in the sci-fi series "Prey."



He reprised the role of Benny in the 2002 "LA Law" movie and provided the voice of Pops on Johnny Bravo.

Drake also starred as the homicidal physician of the title in the 1992 horror movie "Dr Giggles."



The actor had most recently appeared in the 2009 horror film "Dead Air," directed by and starring Corbin Bernsen.
A lawyer at Delhi's Rohini court today tried to set himself on fire inside a courtroom apparently upset over not being alloted a chamber inside the complex.

Other lawyers in the court rushed to his rescue and took off his robes which was on fire. He was rushed to a hospital for first aid and soon discharged.

Police rushed to the spot after receiving information around 11 AM of a lawyer having poured kerosene over himself in court number 216 at the Rohini court.

Ravinder Dabas, is believed to be upset over not being alloted a chamber inside the court complex for a long time, a police official said.

The police later registered a case of attempted suicide against him, the official said.

"We also talked to senior members of the bar association in the court who told us that chambers are alloted under a certain protocol and the decisions are taken by a bench of district judges.

"The allotment takes place entirely on the ground of seniority, experience and one's tenure as a practising lawyer in the court," the official added.
The looming threat of renewed quota agitation by Jats in Haryana was averted today with the community leaders announcing that no protest will be held till April 3 if the state government gets the reservation bill passed in Assembly during the ongoing session that ends on March 31.

The announcement was made by All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti President Yashpal Malik here after talks with Haryana Chief Secretary D S Dhesi and DGP Yashpal Singhal, easing the situation in the state which was on the edge because of the threat of agitation in view of widespread violence during the first phase of the stir last month.

"We have given time to Haryana government to bring and pass the Jat reservation Bill by March 31 (when the ongoing Budget session ends)," Malik told reporters here.

"If the government does not pass the reservation Bill by March 31, then we shall chalk out our next course of action in our meeting on April 3 to be held in Delhi," he said.

Replying to questions, he said "there will be no strike or agitation before April 3... I appeal to other brethren of the community also not to take any decision about agitation or strike in the state till April 3."



He asserted, "the bill has to be brought in this session and passed. Our people should be involved in its drafting...If the bill is not passed, then will decide the next course of action on April 3."



Malik expressed satisfaction over the talks held with the officials of Haryana government to chalk out a "workable solution".

Prior to the meeting, the state was bracing for the renewed agitation as per the threat issued by the Jat leaders. The government had imposed prohibitory orders and suspended mobile internet services at many places as paramilitary forces along with police maintained tight vigil.

Jats want reservation in BC (Backward Class) category and that the community is getting ready for agitation for quota in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir, Malik said.

"During the meeting, we were assured on behalf of Haryana CM that Bill will be passed in the ongoing budget session in the state," the Jat leader said.

However, he said the Jat leaders were not shown any draft of the Bill which they want to check.

On the issue of withdrawal of the cases, Malik said they were assured that if any false cases was registered against Jats, they would be withdrawn.

"We were also assured that we can file complaint against any officer for his role duirng Jat agitation to SSP or DC," he said.

"The main talking point in this meeting was reservation and under which category we want it... Other than this, we had 4 to 5 very important demands, like all arrests taking place in Jhajjar, Sonipat and whole of Haryana should be stopped, proper investigation should be held and local people should be part of it."



When the last agitation got over, the government had promised to pay Rs 10 lakh for family and kin of the dead.

"We asked the government to do what they promised. We want unity and brotherhood among the youth of the state, khaps, and all 36 castes and groups and want to maintain peace and calm in the state," Malik said.
Shares of LT Foods surged over 16 per cent today as Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has signed an agreement with the company for sale of its rice export business for a consideration of Rs 25 crore.

The stock of LT Foods soared 16.29 per cent to Rs 259.80 on BSE.

At NSE, it zoomed 15.9 per cent to Rs 259.40.

On the other hand, shares of HUL fell 1.26 per cent to Rs 838.55 on BSE.

"...It (HUL) has signed an agreement for the sale of its rice exports business carried out primarily under the brands 'Gold Seal Indus Valley' and 'Rozana', to LT Foods Middle East DMCC, a group company of LT Foods Limited (owner of 'Daawat')," the company said in a BSE filing yesterday.

HUL said the deal envisages transfer of the brands and inventory for a consideration of Rs 25 crore, subject to adjustments on closing.

"HUL's decision to divest is in line with its strategy to exit non-core businesses, while continuing to drive its growth agenda in the core packaged foods business," it added.
A Spanish court today slapped a spokeswoman for Madrid's city council with a fine of 4,320 euros (USD 4,868) for taking her top off in a chapel during a protest in 2011 when she was still a university student.

The court found Rita Maestre, 27, a Podemos councillor and former student of the far-left party's leader Pablo Iglesias, guilty of "infringing on freedom of conscience and religious convictions" for bursting into the chapel with some 50 others at Madrid's Complutense University.

The protesters said they were demonstrating against what they consider to be the Roman Catholic Church's "antidemocratic and chauvinistic" positions.

The protest had sparked an outcry, leading to discontent from right-wing politicians and the Church, and it turned Maestre into a favourite target of Spanish conservatives.

A left-wing coalition including Podemos has governed Madrid city hall since June 2015, after over two decades of rule by the conservative Popular Party which is in power at the national level.

Public prosecutors had asked for Maestre to be sentenced to a year in jail, the maximum penalty allowed under Spanish law for the crime.

Maestre insisted during her court appearance last month that it was a peaceful, legitimate demonstration.

"If it offended someone, I have no problems in apologising," she said, adding she had already said sorry to the archbishop of Madrid.

Iglesias, who was politics professor at the university at the time, defended Maestre today saying she "defended secularism and women's rights".
Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar today presented in the state Assembly the budget for 2016-17 with an estimated revenue deficit of Rs 3,644 crore.

The budget, which has an outlay of Rs 25,000 crore for the agriculture sector, is "dedicated to our farmers and a decision has been taken to observe the financial year 2016-17 as Shetakari Swabhiman Varsh (farmers pride year)," the minister said.

He projected a revenue mobilisation of Rs 2,20,810 crore against a revenue expenditure of Rs 2,24,454 crore.

New tax proposals of Rs 301 crore are expected to make up for the revenue deficit. Sugarcane purchase tax of Rs 710 crore has been waived.

Mungantiwar has refrained from imposing tax on e-commerce.

To promote Make In India and Make In Maharashtra, the Finance Minister has proposed incentives worth Rs 1,000 crore to promote investments in the underdeveloped Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.

He has proposed allocation of Rs 784 crore for new power generation projects, Rs 301 crore for new sub stations and Rs 450 crore for the promotion of new and renewable power projects in the state.

"The farmer of this state is the backbone of the rural economy. Self-dependent farmers and prosperous villages constitute the foundation of Make in India, he said.

"Not only the survival but also the prosperity of our farmers is undoubtedly essential for strengthening and empowering our State's economy," Mungantiwar said.
The Madras High Court today held that excluding married daughters and siblings of those who succumb in motor accidents from claiming compensation for the death would be against the object of the Motor Vehicles Act.

Dismissing an appeal filed by an insurance company challenging the order of a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal in Kumbakonam to grant compensation to a married sister of a deceased person, Justices S Manikumar and R Mahadevan said "marriage of a kin could not be a reason to deny compensation".

"That is what various Supreme Court decisions and Motor



Vehicles Act-1939 and Workmen's Compensation Act say", the judges said.

The Workmen's Act listed the "dependants" who were entitled to claim compensation under that legislation and it did not confer a statutory right on a married daughter.

However, the 1939 Act stated "all legal representatives



of the deceased were entitled to claim compensation", the judges said.

The judges noted that there was a distinction between being dependent on the income of the deceased and receiving a contribution from the deceased, either monetarily or through the services rendered by the deceased to the members of the family, and the same was a decisive factor in computing the compensation.

If the intention of the framers of the Motor Vehicles Act



was to restrict the payment of compensation only to the dependants, the word "dependant" as defined in Section 2(d) of the Workmen's Compensation Act would have been incorporated in Motor Vehicles Act also, the Bench said.

Besides the quantum of compensation or loss of contribution was not determined on the basis of monetary loss alone. It was determined on the basis of invaluable and gratuitous services rendered by the mother or the wife as the case may be.

The married daughter may not be totally dependent on the



income of the deceased mother for her survival or living, but still, there can be a monetary assistance, during the lifetime of the deceased.

A mother can also continuously render her valuable service to her married daughter, the judges said.

In the case of a daughter, her father, mother or brother



can continue to help her monetarily depending upon the need or out of love and affection. Contribution either by means of service or income or both could determine the quantum of compensation, they added.
One active member of the militant outfit Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) has been arrested by a team of Manipur police, a press release said today.

Identified as Benjamin Kamei @ Kamei (40) was nabbed from Yurembam Kabui Khul in Imphal West district on Wednesday, the release said adding that the militant was allegedly involved in extortion in Noney and Bishnupur areas.

Police also said investigations had revealed Kamei was involved in transporting arms, ammunitions and explosives in different parts of both hill and valley districts.

Meanwhile, another team of the state police including women personnel arrested an active cadre of the proscribed outfit KCP (Mangal) from Kodompokpi Mamang Leikai yesterday in Imphal West district.

The cadre Konjengbam (O) Nirmala Devi (49) was allegedly involved in serving demand letters to government offices and had collected large amount of money from various institutions, both government and private, the press statement said.
Modalities for the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan, probing the terror attack in Pathankot airbase, will be worked out once they arrive in India, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said today.

"I have come to know through media that the Pakistan team is coming. We are fully prepared," he said on the sidelines of a function here.

Asked whether the Pakistan team will be given access to the strategic airbase, the Home Minister said modalities will be worked out once they arrive in India.

"Let's wait for Sushmaji (Sushma Swaraj) to be back," he said.

After a meeting with her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, External Affairs Minister Swaraj had said in Pokhara (Nepal) yesterday that the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan will arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward its probe into the Pathankot terror attack.

Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said yesterday that India will allow a Pakistan probe team to visit wherever necessary in connection with the probe into the terror attack on Pathankot airbase.

Six Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad, had attacked the airbase on January 2 in which seven security personnel were killed.

In the gun-battle, all the six terrorists were also killed.
More empowered women in the public and political space will ensure "less arms and less wars" as they are "natural" peacemakers, participants at the World Sufi Forum said today.

"War, if you see, is 99.9 per cent a man thing. For me, peace has to do with female presence and female empowerment. The more you have women in public roles and politics, (you will have) less arms, less wars," said Canada-based Afra Jalabi, vice-chair of Syrian NGO 'The Day After'.

She said the world wars "destroyed" European countries and a similar crisis was raging in Syria now.

"That was the Europe run by men. Now you can see even defence ministers in the European Union who are women and that's the transition from the era of war to the era of unity," she said.

Indian author Sadia Dehlvi seconded Afra and lauded some of the scholars at the four-day forum for talking about including women "in leadership and other areas".

Pakistan's Sumbal Iftikar said women "naturally" are peacemakers.

"In Pakistan, women are taking up that role. There are doctors, teachers and engineers. We had a woman prime minister. So, I think women can be brilliant if you give them leadership," she said.

Nimah Nawwab, from Saudi Arabia, said although the number of women personnel in the fight against war and terrorism is not discouraging, "they have not been given a platform".

"I am not calling for platform, it's up to us to see how it evolves. If we push matters, there is going to be a backlash, as we have seen it in many Middle-Eastern countries. It has to happen gradually... But the need is to build an environment (to make it happen)," she said.
Police in China have arrested a mother-daughter duo for illegal vaccine sales worth more than USD 88 million in 18 provinces.

Since 2011, the suspects purchased 25 types of vaccines from more than 100 pharmaceutical salesmen, both licensed and unlicensed, and sold them to illegal agents or even local disease control and prevention centers at high prices, said the Jinan Public Security Bureau in Shandong Province.

Though produced by qualified manufacturers, the quality of the vaccines was questionable as they were not transported in approved conditions.

Such vaccines have potential side-effects and can even cause disability or death, state-run Xinhua agency reported.
AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi faced more heat today for his remark that he won't chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' with Madhya Pradesh Assembly unanimously passing a censure motion against him while a PIL seeking legal action was filed before the Bombay High Court.

Congress member Jitu Patwari brought the censure motion slamming Owaisi during the Zero Hour of the budget session of the MP Assembly underway in Bhopal.

State Legislative Affairs Minister and BJP leader Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi, saying that such display of anti-national mentality is being noticed since the last one-and-a-half years.

He said that India has loved and respected both "Ram and Rahim" equally, and slammed people sympathising with divisive forces.

Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava also rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress.

But Speaker Sitasaran Sharma sensing a tussle between the treasury and opposition Congress, got up and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against the AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members including Congress' Patwari and Hardeep Singh Dang.

The Public Interest Litigation(PIL) filed by Pune-based social activist Hemant Patil urged the Bombay High Court to take legal action against both Owaisi and AIMIM MLA Warris Pathan for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The PIL urged the court to order an inquiry into the speeches made by the duo in the recent past in which they had allegedly showed dishonour to motherland by such remarks.

The petition contended that the speeches made by them amounted to spreading communal disharmony and hurting national integrity and unity of the country.

Such remarks are anti-national and have the tendency to break the social fabric of the society and divide the people on the basis of religion and parochial issues, said Patil, who is heading an NGO "Bharat against Corruption."



The petition also demanded a ban on AIMIM saying that remarks made by the duo amounted to violation of People's Representative Act and were against the basic principles of the Constitution.

It further sought a direction to the Maharashtra government, Director General of Police and Secretary of Home Department to call for the records in respect of speeches delivered by Owaisi at a public rally in Latur and Pathan's utterances in the state legislative assembly that they would not say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai".

The petition alleged that Owaisi and his partymen are continuously engaged in delivering speeches which spread communalism and endanger national integration.

"Such fissiparous tendencies to divide people on the basis of religion or regionalism threaten to break the unity of the country where people of different faiths are living together."



Unrelenting in its attack on Pathan, the Shiv Sena said that he has been let off with a "soft" punishment and wanted him to be permanently suspended from the state assembly and disqualified from contesting the polls.
North Korea today fired what appeared to be a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un ordered further nuclear warhead and missile tests, South Korea's defence ministry said.

A ministry spokesman said the missile was launched from Sukchon in the country's southwest at 5:55 am (local time) and flew 800 kilometres into the East Sea, also called the Sea of Japan.

He did not confirm the type of missile, but South Korea's Yonhap agency cited military sources as saying it was a Rodong missile, a scaled-up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres.

Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean peninsula since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The UN Security Council responded earlier this month by imposing its toughest sanctions on North Korea to date.

US President Barack Obama signed an order on Wednesday implementing the UN sanctions, as well as a series of unilateral US sanctions adopted by Congress.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, North Korean President Kim Jong-Un announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of "several kinds" of ballistic rockets would be carried out "in a short time".

Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.

A Rodong test would be more provocative, given its greater range which makes it capable of hitting most of Japan.

The last Rodong test was in March 2014, when two of the missiles were fired into the East Sea.

While North Korea is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, its ability to deliver them accurately to a chosen target on the tip of a ballistic missile has been a subject of heated debate.

There are numerous question marks over the North's weapons delivery systems, with many experts believing it is still years from developing a working inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could strike the continental United States.
North Korea has released CCTV images showing American student Otto Warmbier removing a political banner from a wall in a hotel - a "crime" that saw him sentenced to 15 years hard labour.

The brief CCTV clip, taken in a staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, was submitted as evidence during Warmbier's trial on Wednesday.

The US has accused the North of using Warmbier as a political pawn and condemned the sentence as way out of proportion to what amounted to little more than a misdemeanour.

The grainy, black-and-white footage showed the 21-year-old student from the University of Virginia removing the metre- long, mounted poster from the wall and laying it on the ground.

The banner carried a slogan in bold white lettering on a red background. Part of the banner was blanked out at the trial, but it appeared to read: "Let us strongly arm ourselves with Kim Jong-il's patriotism."



The CCTV images, released late yesterday, did not show exactly what Warmbier did after taking it down, and it was unclear if he attempted to take the poster out of the country.

Warmbier was arrested at the airport as he was leaving the country with a tour group on January 2.

Four days later, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and experts say the resulting surge in military tensions and the adoption of tough new UN sanctions were probably behind the harsh sentence.

In the past, North Korea has used the detention of US citizens to obtain high-profile visits from the likes of former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in order to secure their release.
North Korea test fired what appeared to be two medium-range ballistic missiles today, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un promised a series of nuclear warhead tests and missile launches.

Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean peninsula since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

US defence officials said they had tracked two launches -- both believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

The Rodong is a scaled-up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres.

South Korean military officials said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the country's southwest at 5:55 am (local time) and flew 800 kilometres before splashing down into the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off radar early into its flight, the officials said.

Today's launches came a day after US President Barack Obama signed an order implementing tough sanctions adopted earlier this month against North Korea by the UN Security Council.

For the past two weeks, Pyongyang has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, Kim announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of "several kinds" of ballistic missiles would be carried out "in a short time".

Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.

A Rodong test is more provocative, given its greater range, which makes it capable of hitting most of Japan.

The last Rodong test was in March 2014, when two of the missiles were fired into the East Sea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he had ordered his government to investigate today's launch, and confirm the safety of shipping in the splashdown zone.

The US State Department issued a statement calling on Pyongyang to refrain from any actions that could "further raise tensions".
The Nagaland Assembly today passed the Nagaland Backward Tribes Commission Bill 2016 to establish a commission for backward tribes in the State to safeguard their rights.

The Commission would focus on the six backward tribes of Eastern Nagaland - Chang, Khimaniungan, Konyak, Phom, Sangtam and Yimchungru belonging to Longleng, Kiphire, Mon and Tuensang districts.

The bill, which was presented yesterday by the Chief Minister Zeliang, was today passed by voice vote.

In the statement of objects and reasons, Zeliang said that the Bill was necessary with a view to establish an effective mechanism for safeguarding the rights of backward tribes of Nagaland with regard to implementation of policy of reservation of posts for them and to make recommendations on development, education, employment and health aspects of the backward tribes is considered.

The State Government by notification would constitute a body, called Nagaland Backward Tribes Commission to study and make recommendations on educational, employment and health aspects pertaining to them.

Clarifying the queries of Members of the House, the Chief Minister said that the Bill was based on the memorandum submitted to the Government by Eastern Naga Students' Federation, as they had expressed that many government departments were not implementing the 25 per cent reservation of government job granted to the people of the four districts.

However, he also said that the Commission would also look into the problems of other backward tribes in the state.
A Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) of the Indian Navy on a surveillance mission off the Kerala coast was made to crash into the sea today after it suffered engine failure.

A Navy release here tonight said the RPA experienced engine failure on a routine surveillance mission off Kerala coast.

"The RPA was thereafter ditched into the sea in a controlled manner to ensure no damage to lives or property," it said.

It further said a search was launched immediately and parts of the aircraft, including the engine, have been recovered.

"A board of inquiry is being ordered," the Navy said.
A lawmaker of the Nepal's ruling UCPN-Maoist party has been arrested after bullets were found from his bank locker, police said.

Lharkyal Lama was arrested on Sunday and sent to five day judicial custody after 14 rounds of bullets were found from his bank locker during a raid conducted by theCommission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).

Former minister of state Lama was produced again before the District Administration Office today seeking extension of his remand as investigation was still underway, said Senior Superintendent of Police Bikram Singh Thapa, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu.

Lama's remand was today extended by three more days, Thapa said.

The bullets were found from his locker in Durbarmarga- based Nepal Investment Bank locker, according to the police.

The CIAA had been investigating into a money laundering case against Lama, who was forced to resign from the then Jhala Nath Khanal-led government in 2011 following allegations that he held Indian passport and Tibetan refugee card besides Nepalese citizenship certificates in two different names.

The CIAA, the anti-graft body, had handed over Lama to the Metropolitan Police Circle, Durbarmarga for investigation.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today hinted that the final clearance to the new procurement policy is likely to be given by March 21.

"I think we need to be patient. We would rather have a good document slow and steady then a bad document in haste... But, to all those concerned about what is going to happen to our vision of Make in India in this sector, let me tell that our policy is on the runway and it will soon take off to greater heights," he said.

Addressing a gathering at the opening of the three-day technical festival of IIT Roorkee - Cognizance 2016 - the minister, striking a confident note, said that "nuclear and other sanctions imposed on India ended up helping out in creating its own technology".

Without naming previous regimes, Parrikar said things are taking time to change since it's difficult to "shake off" decades of "inertia".

"Our new defence procurement policy not only aims to incentivise and promote indigenous production but also cut the red tape and remove bureaucratic hurdles, which have delayed plans in the past," he said.

"What this vision gives to stakeholders is an ecosystem for innovation and development... The new DPP will of course expedite business and make defence a modern sector. The modalities have all been worked out and the final clearance to the draft should be given by March 21 and by month end it will be notified," Parrikar said.

During the 'Make in India Week' programme in Mumbai last month, the defence minister had said the new policy would come into effect from April 2.

"The DPP will have a new category of indigenously designed, developed and manufactured (IDMM) as the most preferred category for procurements, which aims to boost domestic private and small-scale industry," he had said, adding, the NDA government seeks to make the defence market "more lucrative" for the Indian industry.

Parrikar, an IIT-Bombay alumnus, exhorted the crowd of aspiring engineers at the sprawling IIT-Roorkee campus to value "knowledge over degree" and think out of the box.

"Your director mentioned the three legs on which an idea or an institution stands - theory, practical and innovation.

"But there is the fourth leg and that is the ecosystem to allow that innovation and development and we seek to provide that kind of ecosystem," he said.

Emphasising the 'Make in India; policy, the defence



minister said implementing the policy means, "cutting off certain imports" where Indian players are developing products, so as to not harm our own interest.

"Yes, we do have some difficulties in our sector. While we are doing good in missile technologies we are importing a lot of fighter planes, and therefore the new DPP will give priority to products indigenously designed, developed and manufactured (IDMM) provided they are selected through procedures that are well-established," he said.

"Also, there are other issues like with the GFR (General Finance Rules). I am going to talk to (Finance Minister) Arun Jaitley, it has to be slightly modified," he added.

"But, it is not just red tape that we seek to tide over with our new policy but also relook some of our old policies," he said.

"So, for instance the clause of fast track, as mentioned in previous policy made us believe that it was only for war time, which isn't. They can be used during peacetime, for special purpose," the defence minister said.

Citing examples of home-grown LCA Tejas and Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) Parrikar said the he expected to play state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited a greater role in realising the Make in India vision.

Parrikar and other experts from the field later participated in a panel discussion on the theme of Make in India in defence sector.

HAL Chairman and Managing Director T Suvarna Raju said, the Make in India vision provides the right kind of ecosystem for making our scope more focused.

"We have 29 products, 15 indigenous types and 14 licence types, and with this new vision, our LCA Tejas and LCH only will take us closer to our goals," Raju said.
Scientists have discovered a new species of pale-gold coloured frog from the cloud forests of Andes in Colombia.

Its name, Pristimantis dorado, commemorates both its colour (dorado means "golden" in Spanish) and El Dorado, a mythical city of gold eagerly sought for centuries by Spanish conquistadores in South America.

"The Spaniards assumed Colombia's wealth was its gold, but today we understand that the real riches of the country lie in its biodiversity," said Andrew Crawford, a research associate at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and faculty member at the Universidad de Los Andes.

The extraordinarily diverse group to which the new species belongs, Pristimantis, includes 465 recognised species, 205 of them from Colombia.

The mountainous terrain of the Andes probably led to the evolution of so many different ground-dwelling frogs, in which the eggs develop directly into tiny baby frogs without going through a tadpole phase.

At seven-tenths of an inch long, the species is among the smaller species in the group. The largest species grow to be 2 inches in length.

Males of many frog species advertise for females with distinctive calls produced by vocal sacs or vocal slits.

Oddly, although the new species lacks these structures, males are still able to produce calls consisting of an irregularly pulsed series of clicks.

The new species was found calling from bushes along a roadside at about 8,700 feet elevation near Chingaza National Park, roughly 16 km east of Bogota, Colombia's capital.

Its discovery so close to a metropolitan area of nearly 10 million inhabitants illustrates how much of the planet's biodiversity remains to be discovered.

"With this new species, Colombia now hosts 800 species of amphibians, second only to Brazil in total diversity," said Crawford.

"Every year there are increasing numbers of new species of amphibians discovered and described. At this point we still can't even estimate what the final diversity of amphibians will be," he said.
A special court here on Friday set free 10 Iranians and a Pakistani after the investigating agency submitted a chargesheet giving a clean chit to the men arrested from an Iranian dhow intercepted off Kerala coast last year.

Pronouncing the verdict in the case, the court, however, said the captain of the ship has been charged with a "minor offence" and he may have to remain in jail for some more time.

The Special Court Judge, K M Balachandran, informed the 11 crew members that they will be given proper travel documents by the .

All the 12 accused are currently lodged at the Kakkanad district jail.

An order in the case related to the captain is likely to be given in two weeks, the court indicated and posted the case for hearing on March 28.

The Court has directed the Foreigner Regional Registration Office to take over 11 crew members of the vessel for initiating procedures of their deportation.

Meanwhile, NIA sources said the agency has contacted Iranian embassy and Pakistan High Commission to facilitate the deportation of the crew.

In its chargesheet, the NIA, which conducted a detailed and scientific probe into the case, had stated that the crew members had no links either with any terror outfit or international drug mafia.

"The captain of the vessel has been charged with violating the Maritime Zones of India (Regulation of Fishing by Foreign Vessels) Act-1981. It is an Act to provide for the regulation of fishing by foreign vessels in certain maritime zones of India. No other crew has been charge-sheeted in the case," the NIA sources have said.

The chargesheet was filed before the special NIA court here on March 14.

The Iranian dhow "Barooki" was intercepted by the coast guard and state police following intelligence inputs in July last year off the coast of Alappuzha and brought to Vizhinjam.

The crew members were detained by the coast guard and police which recovered a satellite communication set and a Pakistani identity card from the vessel.

The case was later handed over to the NIA and a team of the agency and scientists of Geological Survey of India had conducted a mission onboard a research vessel 'RV Samudra Ratnakar' off Kerala coast to recover objects allegedly dropped in the deep sea from the dhow.
Taking umbrage over Opposition's "frequent walkout" from the House ahead of the government's reply on financial agenda and not pressing cut motion, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today urged the Speaker to declare the motion moved by them as infructuous.

"The opposition members resort to walkout from the House ahead of the government's reply on financial agenda and end up not pressing the cut motion they move upon introduction of budgetary demands by respective departments...It is not a good thing," he said drawing Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary's attention towards empty opposition benches



"Why should not the cut motion be rejected by the House and declared infructuous if the opposition members are not present to press with it," Kumar asked.

"The Chair should consider declaring the cut motion not pressed by the opposition members as infructuous," the Chief Minister said and urged the Speaker to forward his suggestion to the rules committee of the House for consideration.

Chaudhary agreed to forward the latter's suggestions to the rules committee.

The Chief Minister's interjection came after the Speaker called out BJP member Vijay Kumar Sinha to press ahead with his cut motion on the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries department's budgetary demand of Rs 544.19 crore for 2016-17.

But Sinha was found absent from the house as the BJP-led Opposition staged a walkout as soon as the department's minister Awadesh Kumar Singh stood up to reply to the debate.

The Animal Husbandry and Fisheries department's budgetary demand was later passed by voice vote.

Singh said Bihar State Milk Co-Operative Federation Ltd (COMFED) has proposed to issue licenses to 1,966 liquor shops to sell dairy products in place of country-made liquor.

As many as 306 liquor shops have entered into oral agreement with the COMFED to sell dairy products at their outlets from April one next in place of liquor, he said.

The Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister announced a proposal to set up a veterinary university in the Patna Veterinary College campus at Sheikhpura here.

He also announced 24-hour medical services for cattle.
No new taxes were proposed in Tripura's budget for 2016-17 presented by state Finance Minister Tapan Chakraborty today.

The total revenue receipt of the state was pegged at Rs 15,057.98 crore and total expenditure at Rs 15,246.52 crore, leaving a deficit of Rs 188.54 crore.

Chakraborty said the deficit would be recovered by improving tax collections and taking austerity measures in government expenditure.

In his budget speech, the minister said the state has 8,132 localities, of which 6,995 were connected to all-weather roads.

He said the state capital had been put on the broad-gauge rail map of the country recently and it was expected that from next month, super-fast trains would connect the state with the rest of the country.

The state government has handed over 75.726 acres of land to the Airport Authority of India for upgradation of the Agartala airport.

Tripura is going to be the third international internet gateway of the country after Mumbai and Chennai as Bangladesh will extend 10 gigabit bandwith through the Bay of Bengal at Cox's Bazar in the neighbouring country, the minister said.

Chakraborty said the state will improve its power production and has completed construction of 400 kv transmission line from Suryamaninagar here to South Comilla in Bangladesh for transportation of 100 MW power from Tripura.

He said the state has improved its healthcare system, drinking water supply and created infrastructure in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council Area (TTAADC).

The area is home to tribals who constitute one-third of the state's population.
Pictures of Union Ministers, Chief Ministers, Governors and State Ministers can now appear in government advertisements with the Supreme Court today modifying its earlier order and allowing their publication.

The verdict came on pleas by Centre and states including poll-bound West Bengal and Tamil Nadu which had sought review of the Supreme Court judgement barring publication of leaders' photos in advertisements except those of the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India, saying it infringed fundamental rights and federal structure.

"We review our judgement by which we have allowed the publication of pictures of the President of India and Prime Minister in the government advertisements. Now we allow the publication of pictures of Union Ministers of concerned departments, Chief Ministers, Governors and State Ministers of the concerned departments.

"Rest of the conditions and exceptions will remain as it is," a bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and P C Ghose said.

The apex court had on March 9 reserved its verdict on the review pleas in which it was submitted that besides Prime Minister, pictures of central ministers, chief ministers and others state ministers be allowed to be carried in public advertisements.

The court had earlier barred publication of photos of leaders in government advertisements except those of the President, PM and the CJI.

Earlier, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, had strongly favoured review of the verdict on various grounds including that if Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in the advertisements then the same right should be available to his cabinet colleagues as the PM is the "first among the equals".

The AG had also said that the Chief Ministers and their cabinet colleagues too should be allowed to feature in advertisements.

Besides Centre, states of Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chattisgarh had also sought review of the May 13, 2015 verdict of the apex court.

The Centre, while seeking review, had earlier said that



Article 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Indian Constitution empowers the state and the citizens to "give and receive" information and it cannot be curtailed and regulated by the courts.

The Attorney General had said if only Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in government advertisements then it can be said that it would promote "personality cult" which has been described as "an anti-thesis of democracy" by this court only.

Other ministers and the Chief Ministers are also answerable to public and they cannot remain "faceless", he had said, adding that the apex court verdict has dealt with print advertisements only in the time where electronic and social media are also there.

The Centre had on October 27 last year joined hands with several state governments in seeking review of the Supreme Court's landmark judgement on the issue.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing NGO Common Cause which had filed the original PIL on review petitions filed by the states, had told the bench that certain state governments were violating the apex court's orders.

On May 13, 2015 the apex court had passed a slew of directions including the order asking Centre to constitute a three-member committee "consisting of persons with unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality" to regulate the issue of public advertisements.
US President Barack Obama has privately asked the top Democratic donors to support front- runner Hillary Clinton, now that it is increasingly becoming clear she would be the party's nominee for the presidential elections, according to a media report.

Obama made the "unusually candid remarks" during a top Democratic fund raiser in Austin, Texas last week, The New York Times reported.

"Mr. Obama chose his words carefully, and did not explicitly call on Mr. Sanders to quit the race, according to those in the room," it said.

Clinton's sole primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders is now lagging behind in delegate count to be the party's nominee for the November 8 presidential elections while the Democrat frontrunner had a clear sweep of the March 15 primaries in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri.

"Those in attendance said in interviews that they took his comments as a signal to Mr. Sanders that perpetuating his campaign, which is now an uphill climb, could only help the Republicans recapture the White House," the daily reported yesterday, adding that a White House official confirmed Obama's remarks.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged Obama's comments.

"President Obama made a case that would be familiar to all of you, which is that as Democrats move through this competitive primary process, we need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic president is dependent on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee," Earnest told reporters at his daily conference.

However, Earnest said Obama "did not indicate or specify a preference in the race".
Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has questioned the "secrecy" around the meeting between PDP president Mehbooba Mufti and BJP chief Amit Shah over government formation in the state.

"Why the secrecy this time around? Last time she met with flowers and shawls being exchanged," Omar wrote on Twitter.

Mehbooba met Shah yesterday as intense efforts began to form a government in Jammu and Kashmir, which is under Governor's Rule since January 8 following death of incumbent Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed a day earlier.

On the announcement regarding vacation of land under Army use, Omar suggested that Governor N N Vohra had "converted political decision into administrative one".

"Gov Vohra's decisions regarding vacation of land by army convert a political decision into an administrative one, thus denying Mehbooba/PDP credit.

"The same has happened with the flood relief which flowed after Gov Vohra took charge but was missing during late Mufti Sayeed's rule," he added.
Supplementation of EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids, the kind found in fish, has been linked to the reduction in major depressive disorder (MDD), scientists say.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), depression is a major cause of disease burden worldwide, affecting an estimated 350 million people, researchers said.

A new analysis supports the link between intake of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) omega-3 fatty acids, the kind found in fish, and reduction in MDD, they said.

"This new meta-analysis nuances earlier research on the importance of long chain omega-3s in MDD," said the study's lead author Dr RJT Mocking, from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The meta-analysis includes 13 studies with 1,233 participants and, according to researchers, showed a benefit for EPA and DHA comparable to effects reported in meta-analyses of antidepressants.

The effect was greater in studies supplementing higher doses of EPA and performed in patients already on antidepressants.

According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, in 2014, an estimated 15.7 million adults aged 18 or older in the US had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
A suspected drug peddler was arrested today with over 1,800 narcotic capsules in his possession in Panama chowk area here, police said.

"A special checkpoint was put up at Panama chowk and a scooter-borne youth was signalled to stop, but after seeing the police he tried to flee from the spot. He was apprehended at a shortly after," SSP Jammu Sunil Gupta said.

Over 1,800 capsules of a sedative were recovered from his possession, he said.

Ajay Dogra has been supplying drugs to local youth for quite some time, police said.

"A case under various sections of the RPC and the NDPS Act has been registered against the accused at Police Station Gandhi Nagar", the SSP said.
As many as 123 Goa government officials have fraudulently availed benefits under Dayanand Social Security Scheme (DSS) since 2012, State Social Welfare Minister Mahadev Naik told the ongoing Legislative Assembly.

The scheme is meant to provide benefit to senior citizens, widows and physically challenged people who are provided with a monthly remuneration by the government.

As per records tabled in the House, a total of 123 government servants, including many women, were found taking benefits of the flagship scheme.

Naik said show cause notices have been issued to the employees concerened and the amount is being recovered along with 8% interest on principal amount received under the scheme.

He said the financial assistance was immediately stopped after the was brought to the notice.

According to the list beneficiaries as furnished by Naik, one of them has availed Rs 1.2 lakh.

Another employees has earned up to Rs 1.1 lakh while many up to Rs 2,000.
Congress today took potshots at Modi government, alleging a "communication gap between South Block and North Block" and expressed "sympathy" with Home Minister Rajnath Singh over his comments that he has come to know through media that Joint Investigation Team (JIT)from Pakistan is coming to India to probe Pathankot attack.

"What is surprising in it. The biggest communication gap is not between Islamabad and Delhi. The biggest communication gap is between South Block and North Block. There is a hotline between Delhi and Islamabad but there is no hotline between South Block and North Block," party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh told reporters here.

Ramesh said that when the Naga accord happened, the then Home Secretary was also not aware that it was going to happen.

"What can I do. I want to express my sympathies with Rajnath Singh," Ramesh said.

He was reacting to Singh's remarks that he has come to know through media that the Pakistan team is coming. Congress had previously also attacked Modi government latching on to reports that the concerned ministries were not taken in loop during key decisions related to them.

The JIT will arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward its probe into the Pathankot terror, it was announced yesterday.

Asked whether the Pakistan team will be given access to the strategic airbase, the Home Minister said modalities will be worked out once they arrive in India.

"Let's wait for Sushmaji (Sushma Swaraj) to be back," he said.

The main opposition party saw "lack of coordination" in the government ahead of the arrival of the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan.

Senior party spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have ensured coordination by convening a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security before External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Pokhara in Nepal for the SAARC Foreign Ministers Meeting.

The announcement had come after Swaraj's 20-minute meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz,in Pokhara yesterday.

"There is no coordination in this Cabinet", he said adding that the Defence Minister, the Home Minister and his Minister of state are speaking in differnt voices on the issue.

He was reacting to reports quoting the Home Minister that he had come to know through media that the Pakistan JIT is coming. "Home Minister is not aware of the JIT. His Minister of state is. Defence Minister is saying a different thing".

Seeking to know government's roadmap on Pakistan, Sharma said that the Congress was not opposed to engagement with Islamabad. He, however, said that Pakistan had not fulfilled its commitments in the wake of the 26/11 terror attack.

He wondered as to what understanding has been reached during the meeting of NSAs of India and Pakistan in Bangkok that convinced the Prime Minister to go to Lahore.
Pakistan will host the 19th SAARC Summit from November 9-10 here for which invitations have been extended to the leaders of the member nations, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The foreign ministers of the regional grouping finalised the date in their council held in Pokhara in Nepal yesterday.

Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the SAARC ministerial meeting in Pokhara and handed over the invitation for Modi from Nawaz Sharif to attend the summit.

"The Adviser handed over formal invitation letters from the Prime Minister of Pakistan, addressed to the Head of States/Governments of the SAARC Member States for the 19th SAARC Summit to be held on 9-10 November 2016 in Islamabad," the Foreign Office said in a statement today.

Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to attend the SAARC summit in Pakistan since 2004 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee attended the summit and held talks with then President Pervez Musharraf.
Police found fingerprints of Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslem in a Brussels apartment raided earlier in the week, Belgian prosecutors said today.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in (the Brussels district of) Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, refusing to add further details.
Investigators found the fingerprints of a Paris attacks suspect who has been on the run since November in a Brussels apartment they raided this week, a Belgian prosecutor said today.

Two people escaped from the dwelling in the Forest neighbourhood of Brussels, but Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it wasn't yet known if Salah Abdeslam, 26, was one of them. He also said it hasn't been established how old the fingerprints were, or how long Abdeslam spent in the apartment on the Rue Du Dries.

Abdeslam fled Paris after the November 13 gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people at a theatre, the national stadium and cafes. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

Police who raided the Brussels apartment Tuesday found the banner of the Islamic State extremist group as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

A man was shot dead by a police sniper there as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Mohamed Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

Police who went to search the apartment "were not expecting a violent armed reaction," Prime Minister Charles Michel said.

Four officers, including a French policewoman, were slightly wounded when they were shot at as they opened the door.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the Paris attacks, and though he is the target of an international manhunt, has not been seen since.

In January, Belgian authorities said one of his fingerprints was found alongside homemade suicide bomb belts at an apartment in another area of Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said it wasn't known whether he had been at the address in the Schaerbeek district before or after the Paris attacks, or how long he had spent there.
A PDS dealer was shot dead by suspected People's Liberation Front of India activists near Junadih in Simdega district, the police today said.

A resident of Bongera Bazartoli, the dealer Rameshwar Singh was shot dead by Mahesh Singh-led PLFI squad last night, Superintendent of Police, Rajiv Ranjan Singh said.

He said that a group of five ultras carrying firearms told Singh's family members that they had been sent by the police to enquire about the Naxals.

On being told that Rameshwar was away at a weekly market, they immediately left for the place and found Rameshwar there. The ultras then forcibly took him away and shot him dead, the SP said.

The SP further said the ultras had assaulted the dealer about a month ago, but no complaint had been registered in this regard with the police.
A plea was today filed in Delhi High Court seeking stay on the release of the upcoming movie 'Santa Banta Pvt Ltd' on April 22, on the grounds that it "misrepresented" the Sikh community.

A bench headed by Chief Justice G Rohini fixed March 23 for consideration of the PIL which has alleged that the movie was "projecting the personality of Sikh community in defamatory and denigrating manner" and could cause "disturbance".

The plea by Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee said if the movie was allowed to be released the "reputation of Sikh community will be immensely affected, causing irreparable loss to the Sikh community all over the world".

The cast comprises of Boman Irani, Vir Das, Lisa Haydon, Neha Dhupia and veteran actors like Johnny Lever, Sanjay Mishra, Vijayraaz and Ayub Khan.

'Santa Banta Pvt Ltd' is a suspense comedy film directed by Akashdeep Sabir and produced by Viacom 18 which will distribute the film along with Cinetek Telefilms.

While seeking cancellation of the movie's certification given under Cinematography Act, the petitioner also sought interim stay on the advertisements of the movie.

"It is projecting the personality of Sikh community in defamatory and denigrating manner which may cause disturbance due to the misrepresentation of the community by the film industry (Bollywood)," the plea added.
Launching a tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said he should focus on governance, which is "suffering" under NDA, rather than "snooping" on opponents.

Kejriwal also attacked the CBI alleging that its officers are directing Delhi government officials on awarding contracts to companies.

Kejriwal took on Modi over reports that the premier investigative agency is questioning officials of the city administration in a case against Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar.

"PM should concentrate on governance, which is suffering badly under NDA, rather than snooping on opponents," said one of Kejriwal's tweets.

The AAP chief dared Modi to form a "team" if the latter wants information about him. Kejriwal said that he will make himself available to any such team for being questioned.

"Can the Prime Minister explain this? CBI reports directly to him. What does PM want? PM wants info about me? Let PM set up a team. I will come and answer all their questions. I have nothing to hide.

"CBI is instructing Delhi government officers over the phone on which company should be given contracts and which ones should not be," Kejriwal said in a series of tweets.

The agency had earlier firmly refuted Kejriwal's allegation that it did not follow proper procedure for summoning his officials.

Rubbishing his claim that the officials were called for questioning over phone, CBI sources had said all necessary formalities were done through correspondence.

CBI sources said the questioning of personal staff of the Chief Minister's Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar by the agency was approved by Kejriwal himself as mentioned in a written correspondence from the Delhi Secretariat yesterday.
President Pranab Mukherjee will visit Jammu and Kashmir in September to be the chief guest for a function at the Central University in Kashmir.

The vice chancellor of the Central University Kashmir, Prof Mehraj-ud-Din, met Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra today and informed him that the President has given consent to be the chief guest at their convocation ceremony which is scheduled to be held in September, an official spokesman said.

The vice chancellor briefed the Governor about the academic issues and the present status of infrastructure development of the university, he said.
: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul today appointed 15 parliamentary secretaries to assist him in the smooth functioning of the government.

Pul administered the oath and secrecy of office to the new parliamentary secretaries in a simple function at the Banquet Hall here in the presence of deputy chief ministers Kameng Dolo and Chowna Mein, Assembly Speaker Wangki Lowang, MLAs and civil and police officers.

P D Sona and Tirong Aboh could not take the oath as they were out of station.

Among the appointed parliamentary secretaries, two were independent MLAs.
The SYL-canal row today hotted up with Punjab Assembly unanimously passing a resolution against its construction saying the state does not have water to share with Haryana, which accused Punjab of "crossing all limits" and decided to approach the Centre and Supreme Court.

The development came a day after Supreme Court directed status quo on land meant for Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, who is Leader of the House, moved a resolution in the Assembly saying that his state is facing "crisis of water" and does not have even one drop to share with others.

"In view of this neither was there ever a need to construct SYL canal then, nor it is there now," the 88-year-old, five-time Chief Minister told the House.

The House unanimously resolved that it will not allow the SYL canal to be constructed.

Congress leader Charanjit Singh Channi, who is Leader of the Opposition, and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Mohan Mittal from the BJP endorsed Badal's view.

Channi said that Congress has and will always stand at the forefront to protect the interests of people of Punjab. "Mr Badal, we are all with you on this issue," he said.

Mittal, a senior BJP leader, said it is SAD-BJP Government which has always stood up for the interest of Punjab. He said the state is facing shortage of water and there is no need to construct SYL.

His remarks came even as the BJP government in Haryana hit out at the Punjab government, saying it has crossed all limits and doesn't have faith in country's judicial system.

Haryana Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar said the Punjab Assembly's resolution against the construction of SYL canal in Punjab for carrying Haryana's share of Ravi Beas was "unfortunate".

He said the assembly passed the resolution despite SC yesterday directed to maintain status quo.

"I feel Punjab government has crossed all its limits and doesn't have faith in country's judicial system. It has become judge on its own," Dhankar told reporters.

"This move of the Punjab assembly was to deprive Haryana of its rightful share in river water," he said.

"This is highhanded approach of Punjab," he said, adding Haryana will bring this issue to the notice of the Centre and the Supreme Court.

"We believe in the judicial system," Dhankar said.

The standoff over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal yesterday saw MLAs of opposition INLD in Haryana and Congress in Punjab attempting to storm each other's Assemblies as the dispute threatened to embroil Delhi whose Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal opposed construction of the canal.

Attacking Kejriwal, Dhankar had, in a letter said Haryana will not be able to deliver "your share of water to Delhi since you have stood against the interests of farmers and people of Haryana" and asked him to get "your own canal constructed for carrying Delhi's share of water with your efforts".
The Punjab government today announced compensation to pea growers who suffered losses due to inferior seeds supplied by National Seed Corporation.

The state cabinet in its meeting today also approved amendment in the 'Punjab Package Deal Properties (Disposal) Act, 1976' to secure the interest of those farmers who have been in continuous cultivating possession of evacuee land since Kharif 2000.

A spokesperson of Chief Minister's Office said that the amendment, which would be applicable retrospectively, would not only benefit those who were in unauthorised continuous possession of evacuee land but would also safeguard 9,234 occupants in 15 districts who were allotted this land under old policy issued on dated September 26, 2007.

"A large number of farmers would be immensely benefited under this decision," he said.

In a big reprieve to pea cultivators, the Cabinet approved to release a sum of Rs 1.56 crore as compensation to farmers in lieu of loss suffered by them due to inferior seeds by the National Seed Corporation (NSC).

"This decision would benefit as many as 937 pea cultivators of the state, who had incurred huge loss due to supply of 73020 kg of spurious pea seed by NSC, after revealed in a special survey conducted by the Revenue Department," he said.

As per report 1,625.85 acres of pea crop has been perished due to supply of sub standard pea seeds, he said.

The Cabinet also decided to give approval for conversion of 'The Punjab Development of Trade, Commerce and Industries (Validation) Ordinance, 2015' into an Act by tabling a Bill during the ongoing Budget session of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha.

The Ordinance envisages for imposing tax on goods brought in the state to be kept in a fund for developing industrial estates, focal points and industrial clusters, providing financial aids, grants, incentives and subsidies to financial, industrial and commercial units, he said.

The rate of tax and the goods on which such tax was to be imposed would be specified by the government from time to time, he added.

REOPENS DES 14



It was also decided to establish Employment Bureaus,



manned by specialist and professionals, in all districts to tackle unemployment by carrying out surveys of both educated and the uneducated unemployed in the state and preparing annual district employment plans with clear targets.

Repeal of the Punjab Lokpal Act, revisiting of the citizens' services delivery process by the Department of Governance Reforms, and establishment of Unified Service Delivery Centres are some of the major decisions taken by the cabinet with the aim of uplifting the quality of public service in the state.

The cabinet decided that all subsidies, pensions, and other pro-poor schemes such as 'Ashirwad' and 'Atta Dal' would be better targeted towards genuine beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfers, wherever possible.

The Department of Personnel would be directed to submit a complete proposal to regularise all ad hoc and contractual employees recruited through transparent systems and procedures, said the spokesperson, adding the cabinet also decided to ban recruitment of contractual staff against the regular sanctioned posts in various government departments.

Another important cabinet decision relates to reforms and upgradation of educational institutions, with free connectivity to be provided in all government schools and colleges, for which the government will tie up with telecom companies to provide free Wi-Fi service to such institutions.

Students in government schools will be given free transportation facility and textbooks.

At least one degree college will be established in each sub-division of the state.

Establishment of an Employment Commission, setting up of an Expenditure Reforms Commission, setting up of military training academies and Sainik Schools, and sweeping health reforms will also be taken up by the government on priority.

The cabinet further decided to extend the state's reservation policy to contractual and outsourced appointments.

Enhancement of the job reservation quota as promised in the manifesto, along with housing and other benefits for SCs/STs and OBCs, are other major decisions of the cabinet which also decided on a special package for border areas, to be worked out by the Department of Planning for notification within 30 days.

The government will also initiate immediate steps to provide jobs to the unemployed as provisioned for in the manifesto, while the Department of Youth Affairs will take measures to give smart phones to the youth who had registered themselves under the "Captain Smart Connect scheme".

To set up special courts for cases related to NRIs, serving soldiers, drug peddling and narcotics, the Department of Home and Justice would put up a final proposal in consultation with the Punjab and Haryana High Court for the approval of the Chief Minister.

Other important manifesto promises on which the government will work on priority basis include simplification of procedure for getting retirement benefits, establishment of a grievances redressal mechanism, and a National Institute for Promotion and Development of Punjabi Language.

Besides, constitution of an Ex-Servicemen (ESM) Cell under the chief minister's control, appointment of Guardians of Governance and launch of 'Sasti Roti' community kitchens to be run by the district Red Cross societies, are among some of the Cabinet decisions.
With crops been affected due to recent unseasonal rains, Punjab government is considering adopting the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

Initially, Punjab government was not too keen to adopt PMFBY and Weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) as the state's production variability was very low due to assured irrigation.

Farmers were also not encouraged to take crop insurance as they could save their crops during drought through additional irrigation. Even the state government has been providing electricity subsidy to farmers for this purpose.

"After seeing the damage due to recent unseasonal rains and hailstorm, Punjab has expressed its desire to implement PMFBY and WBCIS for crops which have very high production variability, particularly cotton and major crops, in the areas bordering Rajasthan," a senior Agriculture Ministry official told PTI.

The state government will meet on March 23 at Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana to explore the possibilities of implementing PMFBY and WBCIS. Even senior officials from the Union Agriculture Ministry would be present in the meeting, the official added.

Unseasonal rains and hailstorm in the last few days in some parts of Punjab have affected wheat and other rabi crops. It is estimated that 5-7 per cent wheat crop has been affected and the government is still assessing the extent of loss.

To protect farmers from vagaries of monsoon, the central government came out with the new crop insurance scheme, which will come into force from April 1 for kharif crops.

Under the scheme, farmers premium has been kept lower between 1.5 and 2 per cent for foodgrains and oilseeds crops, and up to 5 per cent for horticultural and cotton crops.

The government is targeting to increase the insurance coverage to 50 per cent of the total crop area of 194.40 million hectares from the existing level of about 25-27 per cent crop area. The expenditure is expected to be around Rs 9,500 crore.

In PMFBY, there will not be a cap on the premium and reduction of the sum insured. Besides, 25 per cent of the likely claim will be settled directly on farmers account and there will be one insurance company for the entire state as well as farm level assessment of loss for localised risks and post harvest loss.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today described the resolution passed by Punjab assembly against construction of SYL canal as "gross violation" of the orders of the Supreme Court.

Khattar, who was replying to the Governor's address in Haryana assembly here, was referring to the resolution passed unanimously by Punjab assembly today, stating that they would not allow construction of Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal at any cost. The resolution also stated that neither there was ever any need to construct the SYL Canal nor it is today.

The Chief Minister was referring to this issue as the Supreme Court has ordered status quo on the issue of SYL Canal.

He said the state government would present its view point in the Supreme Court along with the resolution passed by Punjab assembly.

The Chief Minister, while talking to the media after the session today, said "it appeared that the issue now raised by Punjab aimed at gaining mileage during ensuing elections."



However, he said the issue belonged to Haryana and not to Punjab as the Presidential reference had been pending for the last several years and Haryana government had pleaded for its early hearing.

"As the Supreme Court accepted the request of Haryana, the nervousness of Punjab was revealed. Now, it is between the Supreme Court and Punjab government and Haryana has no role in it," he said.

He said the Supreme Court has taken up the issue and in case the Punjab does so, as its today's resolution states, the Supreme Court would take its cognizance.

The CM assured the House that Haryana would do everything possible to get its share of Ravi-Beas waters through SYL canal.

He said that SYL canal is a lifeline for farmers of Haryana and BJP has always been serious on this issue and six of its MLAs had resigned nine months before the elections, he said.

Khattar said the present state government did not sit idle on the issue of SYL canal and met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi and convened a meeting of MLAs and MPs of Haryana.

Taking a dig at Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Khattar said the move to pass a Bill to de-notify farmers land acquired for construction of SYL canal could also be an excuse of Badal to "leave" the government in the midst due to "fear" of upcoming assembly elections so that he might contest the polls from outside.

Earlier, Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala sought to pass a resolution in the House to condemn today's act of Punjab Assembly.
Vladimir Putin has no immediate plan to visit Pakistan as there were not enough "substance" for a trip, the first by a Russian President, the country's envoy here has said.

"The problem is that usually the purpose of the visit is not participation in ceremonies. The visit should have some substance," Russian Ambassador Alexey Dedov said at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), a leading think-tank, where he was delivering a lecture on Pak-Russia relations yesterday.

"As soon as the substance is ready, we can discuss the visit," Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.

Dedov defined the substance as "signing of documents" for cooperation, "preparation of plans" for expanding ties and "declarations".

No Russian or even Soviet president has ever visited Pakistan. Putin had planned a visit to Islamabad in October 2012 for attending a quadrilateral summit between Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, but cancelled it at the eleventh hour.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was then hastily dispatched to Islamabad to explain the cancellation.

Lately, there were renewed talk of Putin visiting Islamabad after Russia agreed to invest in the USD 2 billion North-South gas pipeline project for carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Karachi to Lahore.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had invited Putin to inaugurate the pipeline.

The ambassador rued the "unrealised potential" of the ties, but noted that Pakistan was "seen (in Russia) as an important and reliable partner with whom relations could be developed".

He cited the geostrategic position of Pakistan and challenges and interests shared by the two countries as the motivation for Moscow to work for better and stronger bilateral relations.

Reports say Russia and Pakistan are also close to resolving a longstanding economic dispute that led to freezing of Russian assets worth USD 120 million in Pakistan.

A draft agreement has been initialled and a final accord is likely soon.

In a landmark defence deal, Russia last year agreed to sell Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan.
President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea today as Russia marked two years since annexing the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in a move that dramatically damaged its ties with the West.

The Kremlin strongman stopped over on the island of Tuzla to oversee progress on a USD 3 billion bridge project connecting Russia to Crimea, a key link that Moscow hopes will further bind it to the isolated region.

Putin said the bridge's construction -- which he called a "historical mission" -- should be completed by December 2018, and that the first direct link to the mainland was essential for bolstering Crimea's struggling economy.

The Russian leader also said an undersea power cable that could reduce the peninsula's electricity dependence on Kiev could become fully operational in May, a pressing concern after blasts severed power lines from Ukraine last year and left much of Crimea in the dark.

In an address broadcast on national television, Putin congratulated Russians on the annexation's second anniversary and said the bridge between Crimea and Russia would be "yet another symbol of our unity".

"We will confidently move forward together, and only forward," he said.

Meanwhile, state-sponsored concerts and public festivities took place across Russia to commemorate the March 2014 takeover that Moscow insists followed a referendum in which Crimea residents voted overwhelmingly to swap countries.

In Moscow, thousands gathered just off Red Square for a concert featuring pro-Kremlin pop stars including 78-year-old crooner Joseph Kobzon, who was blacklisted by the EU last year after he performed for rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Spectators waved large Russian flags and released balloons as they faced a giant stage set up outside the Russian capital's iconic St Basil's Cathedral.

The annexation of Crimea boosted Putin's popularity with state media going into overdrive over a move to reclaim a region many see as Moscow's rightful property.

A survey published last month by the independent Levada Centre showed 83 per cent of Russians support Moscow's takeover of Crimea, which was transferred to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

Ahead of the annexation, Putin sent in thousands of special forces to take control of army bases and government institutions across Crimea after the ouster of a pro-Russian leader by protesters in Kiev.

Ukraine and the West insist the takeover -- which has not been recognised internationally -- was an illegal landgrab and that the vote to join Russia was a Kremlin-organised farce.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today appealed the corporate world to assist the families of martyrs of police and paramilitary forces, especially in educating their children.

"I appeal to the corporate world to join hands in assisting the families of police, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and defence personnel who laid down their lives for the nation," he said.

The Union Minister distributed about 300 scholarship cheques to the school going children of CAPFs personnel who sacrificed their lives on duty.

The scholarships were sponsored by S D Shibulal, co-founder and former CEO of Infosys under the banner of Sarojini Damodaran Foundation, which identified students in need of financial assistance during schooling.

"No help could be better than that of education or 'Vidyadan' as it is 'Mahadan' and it will help these children perform better in their lives," said an emotional Singh.

He noted it was not an obligation but everyone's duty to assist the families of the jawans who left no stone unturned for the security of the country.

As part of the programme, the Home Ministry had identified 295 children (229 children of martyrs of CRPF personnel, 33 of BSF, 11 of CISF, 3 of ITBP, 5 of SSB and 14 of Assam Rifles) from different CAPF' families and decided on the scholarships in consultation with the Foundation.

An amount of Rs 6,000 per annum will be given for students from 1st to 4th standards, Rs 9,000 per annum for 5th to 7th standard and Rs 12,000 per annum for 8th to 12th standard.

The Foundation has agreed to continue the scholarships in subsequent years and will be extended to needy children for their higher studies in due course.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has raised with Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala the issue of attack on an worker allegedly by CPI(M) workers in Kannur in the poll-bound state.

"I have spoken to the Kerala Home Minister. He has assured me that he will take proper action," he told reporters here.

The Union home minister was replying to a question on the alleged attack on and BJP workers in Kerala in the recent past.

An worker, EK Biju, carrying primary class students to school in an autorickshaw was pulled out and brutally attacked with lethal weapons on March 8 allegedly by CPI(M) workers in Kannur district of Kerala.

BJP has alleged that hundreds of party workers have become victims of political killings in Kannur over the years.
Beleaugered Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, whose Congress government plunged into a crisis tonight with nine party MLAs revolting against his leadership, tonight claimed he has "full majority" and warned of disciplinary action against the rebels.

"We have full majority. All our members are in tact. The figures being touted (about our government's strengh being reduced) are totally wrong," he told reporters here.

He said if some Congress MLAs, "being lured" by BJP, are today making any claim, the party would take cognizance of it and "whatever action is taken within the party in such cases will be taken."



Rawat said the party will find out who the rebel Congress MLAs are and "so far, only one face has come to the fore."



A three-member BJP delegation, comprising former chief minister and MP Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, BJP in-charge of Uttarakhand Shyam Jaju and general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya met Governor K K Paul tonight and said the Harish Rawat government was in a minority and sought its dismissal.

According to Raj Bhavan sources, BJP staked claim to form the government with the support of the rebel Congress MLAs.
A faceoff at the Republican Party's nominating convention between camps for and against Donald Trump appears to be a real possibility, the speaker of the House of Representatives has suggested.

"Nothing has changed other than the perception that this is more likely to become an open convention than we thought before," said Paul Ryan yesterday, who as chairman of the convention is tasked with maintaining order during the July gathering.

"We're getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality, and therefore those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that," he said at his weekly press briefing in Washington.

A contested or brokered convention means none of the Republican presidential hopefuls has the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination outright, and the party's nominee will have to be chosen through voting at the July 18 to 21 convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Trump is leading the race for delegates, but challengers Ted Cruz and John Kasich are hoping to secure enough delegates in the state nominating contests still remaining to prevent him from winning the nomination outright.

The last contested convention was in 1976.

The lack of a clear nominee going into the convention this summer will put Ryan in the middle of what will likely be heated battles.

"My goal is to be dispassionate and to be Switzerland -- to be neutral and dispassionate, and to make sure that the rule of law prevails," he said, admitting he needs to study up on the convention rules.

The position of chairman of the Republican National Convention is typically a ceremonial role but it will be a key position at a contested convention.

Ryan yesterday also dismissed questions on whether he would accept the nomination if there is a deadlock.

"It's not going to be me. It should be somebody running for president," he said.
The Republican party is headed for an open convention that could see a faceoff between rival camps to pick a presidential nominee, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said, suggesting frontrunner Donald Trump might not get the required delegates by the July gathering.

"This is more likely to become an open convention than we thought before," said Ryan, who is also the chairman of the convention to be held in Cleveland in July, yesterday.

At this convention, Republican party's 2,472 delegates elected from across the country through primaries and caucuses nominate their presidential candidate with a majority vote.

As of now, controversial real-estate tycoon Donald Trump has the most (673) delegates. He is followed by Senator Ted Cruz (411) and Ohio Governor John Kasich (143).

To cross the half-way mark, Trump needs to win a little over 50 per cent of the delegates left in contention, while the figure climbs up to 80 per cent for Cruz and an impossible 114 per cent for Kasich.

Political pundits say there is a possibility of Trump not reaching the halfway mark, as a result of which the nominee would be elected at the convention - a rare development in the party. The last contested convention was in 1976.

Such a convention is called "open" or "brokered" or "contested" convention as after the first round of voting the delegates are open to vote for any candidate.

Many also fear horse-trading during the convention.

"We are getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality, and therefore those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that," Ryan said.

"I will have to obviously bone up on all the rules and all of those things," he said.

"My goal is to be dispassionate and to be Switzerland -- to be neutral and dispassionate, and to make sure that the rule of law prevails, and to make sure that the delegates make their decision however the rules require them to do that. I will acquaint myself with these things at the right time," Ryan said.

However, the Trump campaign thinks they would be able to get through the necessary number of delegates before the convention and as such there would be no need of a contested convention.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, hoped there is unlikely to be a brokered convention.

"I would tell you is that if someone gets the majority of delegates, of bound delegates before the convention, they're going to be the nominee. There's no doubt about that," Priebus told Fox .
In a new twist in noted south Indian actor Kalabhavan Mani's death, a highly dangerous insecticide has been found in his viscera samples.

Mani's samples had been sent to the Regional Chemical Examiner's Laboratory at Kakkanad in Kochi for testing after his death on March 6 and the report came out today.

The 'very dangerous' insecticide 'Chlorpyrifos' was found in the samples, Joint Chemical Examiner, K Muralidharan Nair, told PTI.

Methyl and Ethyl alcohol contents were also found in the actor's samples, he said.

45-year-old Kalabhavan Mani, known for his award-winning performance in 'Vasantiyum Lakshmiyum Pinne Njanum', was undergoing treatment for liver and kidney diseases at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) for some time when he died.

Police had registered a case of unnatural death after AIMS doctors told police that traces of methyl alcohol was found in his blood.

Meanwhile, the actor's widow Nimme told reporters "we have doubts in his death."



Some people are being questioned by police.

She rubbished reports that there were some family problems.

"There were no family problems. You can ask anyone. There were no issues between us", she told reporters.

Asked if the actor had any enemies, she replied in the negative. Since some of his friends had gathered at the outhouse 'Padi', they would have encouraged him to have liquor, she said.

"Mani chettan will not commit suicide. He had all the luxury now," she said about the actor, who had risen to great heights in South Indian films from humble beginnings.

Mani's younger brother RLV Ramakrishnan, said there were awaiting the chemical lab reports and would file a complaint after that.

Police had yesterday questioned a TV anchor and some close aide of the late actor who were with him shortly before his death.
The Railway Ministry is planning to use the premises of Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) here as temporary campus for the country's first Railway University, local BJP MP Ranjan Bhatt said.

A special officer, appointed by the Railway Ministry, recently met state Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasma in Gandhinagar and received the government's nod to utilise the MSU campus for a temporary period, she said.

B.Tech and M.Tech courses will be offered in this university and all efforts are on to start it in June this year, Bhatt said, adding the special officer also discussed the proposal with Vice Chancellor of MSU, Professor Parimal Vyas.

The MP along with city mayor, Bharat Dangar, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on March 16 to discuss the prospects of opening the university here.

"We held a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and later with Railway minister Suresh Prabhu. Both of them evinced interest in opening the university in Vadodara," she told PTI.

In Rail Budget 2016-17, it was announced that a full-fledged Railway University will soon be set up in Gujarat.
Fast food giant Domino's will test a robot to deliver pizzas in New Zealand, which could become the world's first country to use the machine that keeps food hot and drinks cold in its waterproof body while delivering in a 20-km radius, media reports said today.

The hi-tech, autonomous driver-less unit named DRU (Domino's Robotic Unit) was developed in Australia. The New Zealand government has backed the ambitious project.

It is just one-metre tall and equipped with separate compartments to keep pizzas hot and drinks cold while travelling on the footpath "at a safe speed" from the store to the customer's door, Stuff.Co.Nz reported.

The battery-powered robots use on-board sensors to avoid obstacles and can deliver pizzas within a 20-kilometre radius of a store and return in one charge, the company said.

The robot is able to select the best path en route to its destination, with on-board sensors allowing it to see and avoid obstacles along the way, the fast food chain said.

The robots will not replace the pizza delivery drivers as many customers would still want the "human-to-human experience", the company said.

Domino's New Zealand General Manager Scott Bush said the robot had been in development "for the best part of 12 months" as part of the company's focus on technology and innovation.

He said tests in controlled environments on Brisbane streets had gone well, although DRU required "a little bit of" human control at points.

The company was aware of the risk of theft and vandalism and was looking into security alarms to protect against interference, Bush said.

He said that the controlled testing of the robot could begin in New Zealand within months, while the company looks to build more "brothers" of DRU.

However, it would take at least two to three years before customers could get the pizzas delivered by the robot.

Transport Minister Simon Bridges said there were "no particular legal blockages" to trialling driver-less technology on the country's roads, but the authorities needed to ensure any trials met safety requirements and other regulations.
Rockets struck an Algerian gas plant run by foreign energy giants in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda, three years after a deadly hostage crisis at another facility in the country.

There were no casualties reported in the attack yesterday on the plant operated by Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Algerian company Sonatrach.

It was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on its Telegram channel in a message saying that it comes within its "war on the interest of the Crusaders in every place," according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Yesterday's attack was the most serious since other Al-Qaeda-linked militants stormed a complex in Algeria's remote east in 2013 and began a four-day siege that left dozens dead.

The defence ministry said two homemade rockets crashed near a guard post of a Sonatrach facility in Krechba, 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) south of Algiers, without causing casualties or damage.

"The rapid reaction of the army detachment tasked with protecting the site foiled this attempted terrorist attack," it said in an online statement, without elaborating.

Statoil said the gas asset was hit by "explosive munitions fired from a distance" in the early morning attack.

A processing facility was shut down "as a safety precaution", BP said.

A plant employee who did not wish to be named told AFP that the site is surrounded by a security fence and soldiers are permanently on guard.

"The rockets seem to have been fired from very far away," he said.

Military personnel mobilised soon after the rocket fire to prevent the attackers gaining access to the facility, the employee added.

Algeria's official agency APS said "two terrorists fired homemade rockets on the gas plant in Krechba," using Algeria's official term for Islamist militants.

A manhunt was launched to find the attackers, it said.

Algeria, a member of the OPEC oil cartel, is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas, with revenue from fossil fuels accounting for 95 per cent of its exports.

It has an estimated 16 billion cubic metres of conventional gas and 20 million cubic metres of non-conventional gas, according to Sonatrach figures.
A Singapore-based non-profit organisation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Tamil Nadu Government to launch a 3-year project aimed at enhancing maternal and child health services in thestate.

The project seeks to address gaps in healthcare practice to tackle the maternal and infant mortality in parts of Tamil Nadu likeTrichy and Chengalpattu, said Singapore International Foundation (SIF) Senior Manager Volunteer Cooperation Programmes Division Elaine Ng.

"We have recently signed the MoU...We have started initial activities already, we will roll out the full programme very soon...," she said.

The foundation is also in talks with government of Karnataka for a similar project in the state, she added.

The project is designed to engage and share knowledge with the Health and Family Welfare Department of Tamil Nadu, the hospitals and primary health centers, to upgrade the antenatal and maternal child health services in the government healthcare institutes.

Also, enhancing management of obstetric and neonatal emergencies; enhancing specific management and leadership skills and practices to support clinical outcomes such as QC (quality control) framework, HR management and continued medical education for healthcare workers, are part of project, they said.

The project aims to train more than 600 health care professionals, senior health nurses and midwives from at more than 25 institutions and primary health care centers in Tamil Nadu.

The SIF team from Singapore comprising of Obstetricians, Neonatologists, Anesthetists, ICU Nurses, Midwives and Hospital Manager, QC Hospital Managers and Medical Leaders from the Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) and KK Women's and Children's Hospital will conduct workshops, dialogue sessions and training over 20 visits.

Its programmes are aimed at bringing people together to share ideas, skills and experiences in areas such as healthcare, education, environment, arts and culture and livelihood business to enrich lives.

This year, SIF marks 21 years of collaboration with India. It has carried out projects in India in areas including education, healthcare,information technology and vocational training.

The range of SIF projects in India include in-field volunteer placement, specialist volunteer teams, conducting skills training workshops, business and artist exchanges, social entrepreneurship mentorship and youth development projects.
Shekhar Tolani, Founder-Director of Sahib Reality, has bagged an award for "Professional Excellence in Real Estate" instituted by 'Accommodation Times'.

The award, comprising a trophy and citation, was presented to Tolani on March 15 at the national awards ceremony of 'Accommodation Times', said a release here today.

The function marked the 30th anniversary of 'Accommodation Times', a publication on the real estate industry.

"Believing in the idea of localising global expertise and adhering to best practices in Real Estate, the heads of various departments at Sahib Reality have created a team of professionals with an in-depth knowledge of realty market and expertise in developing innovative ideas," said Tolani while replying to the felicitation.
Two-time champion, Saina Nehwal and HS Prannoy progressed to the quarter-finals after registering straight-game victories in women's singles and men's singles events respectively at the USD 120,000 Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament, here.

The Olympic bronze medallist saw off Kristina Gavnholt, world number 41 from Czech Republic, 21-18 21-17 in a 34-minute pre-quarterfinal contest last night. The Indian will next take on seventh seed Japanese Sayaka Sato.

Prannoy, seeded 13th, also prevailed over 2010 Commonwealth Games silver medallist Rajiv Ouseph of England, seeded sixth, 21-13 21-18 to set up a clash with 16th seed Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk of Thailand.

Sixth seed PV Sindhu, who also reached the quarterfinals, will meet China's He Bingjiao next.

(REOPENS FGN 18)



However, India still qualified for the knockout stage as they are placed second behind Japan in Group D after winning against Australia and Germany.

The top two teams in each group make it to the knockout stage and there will be another draw for the quarter-finals.

The men's team had yet another forgettable day as it proved no match for Indonesia, who dominated the tie to leave India clueless.

World No. 21 Ajay Jayaram could not get across Christie Jonatan, ranked 19th, losing 14-21 12-21 in a 37-minute battle in the first singles.

Manu Attri and Akshay Dewalkar then joined hands and took the court in the first doubles but lost 18-21 17-21 to Angga Pratama and Ricky Karanda Suwardi in just 28 minutes.

A lot was expected from B Sai Praneeth and the Indian did give his everything but could not prevent a 21-18 11-21 15-21 loss to Ginting Anthony in a 56-minute clash as Indonesia took an unassailable 3-0 lead.

In the second doubles, Sumeeth Reddy B and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy were brushed aside by Gideon Markus Fernaldi and Hendra Setiawan 9-21 18-21 and then Sourabh Varma's fight ended with a 10-21 22-20 13-21 loss to Ihsan Maulana Mustofa as Indonesia completed a 5-0 drubbing.
Sandalwood weighing 934 kg and worth Rs 28 lakh has been seized in a raid at Dhaboti village in Sujalpur tehsil of the district, police said.

"On a tip off, we raided the residence of Shabir and seized Rs 28 lakh-worth sandalwood logs last night. The accused escaped taking advantage of the darkness," district superintendent of police Anil Sharma said.
Senior RSS leader V Nagaraj today said the Sangh believed in the leadership of Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara than his predecessor K J George, in bringing to justice the activists of PFI and KDF, whom he blamed for the murder of an RSS worker in Mysuru.

"We believe in the leadership of the current Home Minister Parameshwara than his predecessor (George). We hopehe will bring to justice the activists of PFI and KDF who are suspected to have killed the RSS worker," Nagaraj, Kshetreeya Sanghachalak of the RSS for Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh andTelangana, told reporters here.

Nagaraj blamed George for releasing the activists of Popular Front of India and Karnataka Democratic Front during his term as the Home Minister, which instilled no-fear in themto carry out criminal activities in anticipation of the government coming to their rescue.

RSS worker Raju was murdered by unidentified assailants in Mysuru on March 13. His death forced BJP and VHP workers stage protest.

On VHP and Bajrang Dal's opposition to mentioning the name of DeputyCommissioner AB Ibrahim in the invitation card of afunction of Mahalingeshwara temple near Mangaluru, Nagarajsaid the religion of a bureaucrat was being unnecessarily dragged into the issue, which is related to the traditions of the temple.

"The religion of the bureaucrat is being dragged into the whole issue of temple traditions.

The temple is following its own traditions and as per traditions, nobody's name is included on invitation card, but it has been included for now for the first time by the muzrai department.

The government needs to address the issue as towhy the name of the bureaucrat was included in the invitation card," he said.

The issue has snowballed into a controversy with Rightwing groups threatening to call a bandh if the bureaucrat'sname was not dropped.

He declined to comment to a query on senior RSS Leader DattatreyaHosabale's remarks on homosexuality.

Hosabale had commented that homosexuality was a "socially immoral act" which needed to be treated as a psychological case and demanded a ban on gay marriages, while making a series of tweets clarifying it shouldn't be glorified.
The Supreme Court today framed three issues for consideration by its Constitution Bench in deciding the challenge to the All India Bar Exam (AIBE), which has been made mandatory for granting advocacy licence.

"Let it go to five-judge Constitution Bench for authoritative pronouncement," a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit said.

The three questions to be considered by the constitution bench are firstly, whether Bar Council of India (BCI) can prescribe a pre-enrolment training in terms of the BCI (Training) Rules, 1995 as framed under Section 24 (3)(d) of the Advocates Act, 1961.

Secondly, whether a pre-enrolment exam can be prescribed by BCI as a condition precedent for enrolment and, thirdly, if these two questions are answered in the negative, then whether a post-enrolment exam can be validly prescribed.

The Bench said the questions are of considerable importance and all cases relating to the challenge to the AIBE stand transferred to the Constitution Bench.

"We are of the view that the questions call for determination by the Constitution Bench and need to be answered by the Constitution Bench. We, therefore transfer it to the larger bench," it said.

The questions were framed after taking suggestions of the parties and senior advocate K K Venugopal, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter.

During the previous hearings, the bench had said "We want to settle this controversy regarding pre-enrolment training and post-enrolment exam. If an amendment to the Act is needed, we will recommend that."



The bench was hearing a batch of petitions seeking quashing of a 2010 notification by which lawyers must clear the AIBE to get an advocacy licence.

The court, during the earlier hearings, had observed that legal profession is "crying for reforms" and lawyers cannot be allowed to a have a "free ride as the administration of justice is a key area".

The apex court had not stayed the upcoming AIBE, saying



it was not "averse" to it and would examine whether it was permissible under the Advocates Act.

"The system is crying for reforms...There are over two million lawyers in the courts. Which means, we have enough lawyers and the future inclusion must be on merits," it had said, adding, "the profession is not something where you can have a free ride".

The plea, seeking quashing of BCI's notification on AIBE, alleged that it takes away the statutory right given to an eligible person to practice law.

The Advocates Act provides that a law graduate can practice law and introduction of AIBE is not mandated under the law, the plea said.

The BCI conducts AIBE, which has been made mandatory, to examine an advocate's capability to practice the legal profession.

The apex court had also observed that right to practice law is a fundamental right for an LL.B degree holder and introduction of the examination by BCI for granting advocacy license "negates" the very right.

The BCI had claimed that the AIBE assesses skills at a basic level and is intended to set a minimum benchmark for admission to the practice of law.

"It (AIBE) addresses a candidate's analytical abilities and understanding basic knowledge of law," the bar body had said.

The notification bringing the AIBE into force was passed by the Legal Education Committee and the members of the Bar Council of India in meetings held on April 10 and 30, 2010.
BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi was today arrested andsent to 14-day judicial custody by a court here for allegedly assaulting and causing injuries to police horse 'Shaktiman' during a protest march which led to amputation of one of its hind legs.

IG Garhwal range Sanjay Gunjyal said Joshi was arrested from outside a hotel in Patel Nagar area on the basis of an FIR lodged against him and his associates at Nehru Colony police station here in connection with the assault on the horse on March 14.

The Mussoorie MLA was later produced in the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vikasnagar Laxman Singh who sent him to 14 days' judicial remand, SSP Sadanad Date said, adding that Joshi has been taken to Suddhowala prison.

The action against Joshi comes a day after the arrest of another party worker Pramod Bora from Haldwani in Nainital district.

Date said Bora along with Joshi was responsible for precipitating the fall of the police horse during the protest march which caused multiple fractures in its left hind leg.

Shaktiman's injured leg had to be amputated by a team of doctors yesterday to save him from infection. He can now stand with the help of a prosthetic leg, the SSP said.

However, doctors attending on Shaktiman said it will have to be seen whether the prop is strong enough to support the horse which weighs around 400 kgs.

Expert veterinary doctor from Mumbai Feroze Khambatta, who led a team of doctors to amputate Shaktiman's leg, said he had performed eight similar operations in Nepal and Bhutan but those horses weighed around 200 kgs.

As Shaktiman weighs 400 kgs it is not clear for how long he can stand and move with an artificial leg, he said, adding the horse is under constant watch of doctors and over two dozen police personnel at the police lines.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and state BJPpresident Ajay Bhatt condemned the way Joshi had been arrested.

He also sought Governor K K Paul's intervention into the matter as the MLA had been arrested without taking permission of Uttarakhand Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal when the House is in session.
There is a shortage of staff in government health institutions in Himachal Pradesh as 6,169 out of 18,919 sanctioned posts are lying vacant, Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur today told the assembly.

Replying to a question, Thakur said the government was trying to fill the vacancies and had appointed 772 doctors but 146 out of them went for further studies.

Walk-in interviews would be held every Tuesday to meet this shortage, he added.

The previous BJP government opened the health institutions without creating the posts of medical and paramedical staff, he alleged.

The process to fill 381 posts of staff nurses and 399 female health workers is underway but about 1,000 posts of male health workers are vacant, Thakur said.
Shareholders of telecom operator Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), which runs the MTS brand, today approved the merger of the company with Reliance Communications in a meeting convened by the Rajasthan High Court.

"SSTL shareholders have approved the merger scheme with RCom at the meeting today," a source privy to the development told PTI.

When contacted, an SSTL spokesperson said the meeting in Jaipur was convened by the high court to seek approval of the SSTL shareholders to merge the company with Reliance Communications.

"As per initial indications, members of the company have duly approved the merger process through voting by way of poll at the meeting and through e-voting. However, a formal declaration can only be made after all the ballot votes have been counted," the spokesperson said.

Queried further, the spokesman said the result of the meeting will be announced on March 21.

Earlier this month, shareholders of RCom too had approved the merger scheme.

The RCom-SSTL merger deal has already been cleared by the Competition Commission of India and Sebi. Now, it needs to be cleared by the Rajasthan High Court and the Bombay High Court.

Once approval from these courts comes by, RCom will approach the Department of Telecom for final paperwork.

The deal between RCom and SSTL is valued at around USD 690 million (Rs 4,500 crore) and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016.

SSTL will hold about 10 per cent stake in the new entity and pay off its existing debt before completing the deal.

While the two companies did not divulge financial details of the deal, an industry source said SSTL's equity stake has been valued at USD 290-300 million at current prices.

While SSTL will pay off its existing USD 500 million debt, RCom will assume the liability to pay the government instalments for SSTL spectrum amounting to Rs 392 crore per annum for the next 10 years.

Russian tycoon Vladimir Evtushenkov-controlled AFK Sistema currently holds 56.68 per cent stake in SSTL while the Russian government owns 17.14 per cent. The Shyam Group has 23.98 per cent and the rest is owned by small investors.

The deal will make RCom the largest holder of the 800/850 MHz band for wireless 4G services and help it not just compete with present players but consolidate its position ahead of commercial launch of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio.
The situation in ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq is "dangerous" as the dreaded terror group is committing genocide targetting religious minorities there, the US has said, indicating it will ramp up its operation in the region.

"What's happening in Iraq and in Syria is deeply troubling. We do see this extremist organisation targeting religious minorities. In their propaganda they're featuring evidence of trying to wipe out these religious minorities," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.

US President Barack Obama has talked on a number of occasions about how this is deeply troubling and is an affront to every person of faith, he said.

"That is why the President has ordered military action against ISIL in Iraq and in Syria. In some cases, there have been military actions that have been ordered specifically to protect religious minorities," he said.

"There certainly is the example of Mount Sinjar, which we have cited here frequently that there were Yazidis who were trapped in it. ISIL fighters had them cornered, and those ISIL fighters were vowing to slaughter them," he said, using a different acronym for the Islamic State.

This designation is significant, Earnest said.

"It reflects the gravity of the situation there. And it's one that continues to attract the attention not just of the United States, but it's also why the United States has been able to build a strong moral case against ISIL, and build a substantial international coalition," he added.

The US has taken steps to try to protect religious minorities in that region of the world from being the victims of violence at the hands of ISIL, he asserted.

"What it essentially indicates is that the United States will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate genocide," Earnest said.

"There obviously is evidence that has been collected, and we'll make sure that that evidence is preserved, and we'll assist in the effort, collecting and analysing additional evidence of atrocities to support that investigation. But that's the next step in the process, and the United States will be supportive of it," he said while responding to a question.

Earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry said ISIS is committing genocide in the areas under its control.

"In my judgement, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self- proclamation, by ideology, and by actions - in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities," Kerry told reporters.

The ongoing conflict and lack of access to key areas has made it impossible to develop a fully detailed and comprehensive picture of all that Daesh is doing and all that it has done, he said.
The situation in ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq is "dangerous" as the dreaded terror group is committing genocide there, the US has said indicating that it will ramp up its operation in the region.

"What's happening in Iraq and in Syria is deeply troubling. We do see this extremist organization targeting religious minorities. In their propaganda they're featuring evidence of trying to wipe out these religious minorities," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.

US President Barack Obama, has talked on a number of occasions about how this is deeply troubling and is an affront to every person of faith, he said.

"That is why the President has ordered military action against ISIL in Iraq and in Syria. In some cases, there have been military actions that have been ordered specifically to protect religious minorities," he said.

"There certainly is the example of Mount Sinjar, which we have cited here frequently that there were Yazidis who were trapped in it. ISIL fighters had them cornered, and those ISIL fighters were vowing to slaughter them," he said.

Earlier in the morning US Secretary of State John Kerry announced ISIL is committing genocide in the areas under its control.

"In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions - in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities," Kerry told reporters.

The ongoing conflict and lack of access to key areas has made it impossible to develop a fully detailed and comprehensive picture of all that Daesh is doing and all that it has done, he said.

"We have not been able to compile a complete record. I think that's obvious on its face; we don't have access to everywhere. But over the past months, we have conducted a review of the vast amount of information gathered by the State Department, by our intelligence community, by outside groups. And my conclusion is based on that information and on the nature of the acts reported," Kerry said.

This designation is significant, Earnest said. "It reflects the gravity of the situation there. And it's one that continues to attract the attention not just of the United States, but it's also why the United States has been able to build a strong moral case against ISIL, and build a substantial international coalition," he added.

The US has taken steps to try to protect religious minorities in that region of the world from being the victims of violence at the hands of ISIL, he asserted.

"What it essentially indicates is that the United States will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate genocide," Earnest said.

"There obviously is evidence that has been collected, and we'll make sure that that evidence is preserved, and we'll assist in the effort, collecting and analyzing additional evidence of atrocities to support that investigation. But that's the next step in the process, and the United States will be supportive of it," he said while responding to a question.
The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly today unanimously passed a censure motion against AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi for his recent remarks that he won't chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

Congress member Jitu Patwari brought the censure motion slamming Owaisi during the Zero Hour of the budget session of the MP Assembly underway here.

Even as he condemned the AIMIM leader for his comments, Patwari recalled that the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharalal Nehru had immense respect for the country.

He said that Nehru in his book 'Discovery of India' mentions his love for the country and touched upon the rich and diversified cultures describing it as 'Mother India.'



He said that his party is against all sort of fundamental mentalities - be it of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and any other religion.

MP Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi saying that such type of anti-national mentality is being noticed since last one and an half year.

He said that India has loved and respected both "Ram and Rahim" equally, and blasted people sympathising with divisive forces.

Mishra also hit out at people behind the sloganeering of "Pakistan Zindabad" and supporting Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

He said that even the anti-national acts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus too should be condemned along with Owaisi.

MP Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress.

But Speaker Sitasaran Sharma sensing a tussle between the treasury and opposition Congress, got up and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members including Congress' Patwari and Hardeep Singh Dang.

On March 13, Owaisi had said he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' comments that came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," Owaisi had said, at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra.

"I won't utter that (slogan) even if you put a knife to my throat," Owaisi said, amid loud applause by the crowd.

"Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai," he had said.

Bhagwat, on March 3 had said, "Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India)."



"It should be real, spontaneous and part of all-round development of the youth," the RSS chief had said.
The ongoing Naga political dialogue was between the Centre and NSCN(IM) and the state government does not have a direct role except that of a facilitator, Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang said today.

He said the government would countinue to be a facilitator to the talks and the final agreement that may follow.

Reminding the 60-member Assembly of the "truly significant point of time that government is passing through without an opposition," Zeliang said "the unique development is more the result of a mutual understanding among the members of the need to come together in one mind and one accord, and move single mindedly for a resolution of the long standing Naga political issue."



Replying to the observations made by the members as part of the discussion on his budget speech presented to the House yesterday, Zeliang today said as facilitator of the Naga peace process, the government has met other Naga political groups on March 9.

"We have no intention or desire to undermine the efforts of any group. We only desire that the broad-based consultation process will encompass all the political groups," he said.

Zeliang also appealed to all people of the state to join hearts and minds, and remove all differences in a spirit of forgive and forget.

"We have all been working for a solution to the Naga political issue for so many years, and it would not be fair to waste this wonderful opportunity after it has reached our doorsteps," the CM said while referring to the signing of Framework Agreement between the Centre and NSCN(IM) on August 3 last year.

(Reopens CAL3)



Zeliang also called upon Naga people not to make speculations on the outcome of the ongoing talks between NSCN(IM) and the Centre as it would be "risky as well as dangerous without knowing the real inside story."



Speculations can be endless and unproductive and does not help us in anyway, he said, adding that none of us can tell with certainty at this juncture what is going to be put in place.

But, Zeliang said "we are all looking forward to a peaceful and lasting solution that will encompass all the Naga political groups, an agreement that is honourable and acceptable to all."



The CM also reiterated that any settlement or solution should be inclusive. "We therefore, press the Interlocutor to consult all the Naga political groups before the modalities are finalised," he said.

The Government is not only saying that all political groups should come forward, but have manifested our seriousness by sending tribal leaders to meet S S Khaplang to convey the desire of the House and the people that all Naga political groups should come together for a final solution.

Zeliang also clarified that coming together of the 60 members of the House was with a purpose, that is, for an early solution to the Naga problem and not as a result of duress or any form of compulsion. He called upon the members not to be influenced by any kind of wrong speculations without proof or evidence.

"I am sure that if an alternative arrangement is made, it would be done in the form of Constitutional amendment, which will be placed before the Parliament for thorough debate and discussions," Zeliang added.

Minister for School Education Yitachu, Minister for Rural Development and REPA C L John, Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism C Apok Jamir, Parliamentary Secretary for Jail and Science and Technology Hukavi Zhimomi and MLA Pohwang Konyak took part in the general discussion.
Scholars today made a strong pitch for strengthening Sufism and "changing the perception" about Islam globally by spreading the faith effectively.

Speaking at the first World Sufi Forum organised by All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), speakers from various parts of the world underscored the need to tackle terrorism, which has cast negative perceptions on the Muslim community.

"We can see the effects of terrorism on Muslim community. In a recent survey, majority of Canadians expressed negative opinion about Islam. This is because what continues to happen in parts of the world. The Forum is doing a good job and hopefully we will come up with an action plan. We can meet the challenge (of terrorism) with Sufism," Canada-based scholar Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdul Razaq said.

Razaq pitched for renewing efforts to bring Sufism to mainstream of Muslim community to tackle terrorism and suggested involving more women in the process of spreading peace.

Syed Shamimuddin Munami of India seconded Razaq and stressed on the need to fight terrorism "without funds and on the back of character and values".

AIUMB president Syed Mohammed Ashraf Kichhouchhwi said followers of Ganges-Yamuna culture should strive to "export" inherited values of Sufism to the world where terrorism is bred.

Syed Asad Ali Shah Abualai from Pakistan, said Sufism can play a big role in improving New Delhi-Islamabad ties even as he blamed "some foreign forces" for the strained relationships between the two countries over the years.

He noted that militant elements were present "not only in Islam, but all religions" and sought to condemn that.

US-based Sufi scholar Kabir Helminski said in order to



tackle terrorism, it is necessary to understand the causes of how and by whom wars are "engineered and created" and who will benefit from the same.

"Of course, we need to understand what is actual Islam and its teachings. What is being taught in the name of Islam is distorted and corrupt version and almost opposite of Islam," he rued.

Helminski also sought to admonish Muslim clerics who termed music and dance as "haram" (against Islamic law), saying joy and celebrations are "natural response" to God's love and generosity and a way of the heart to experience "divine reality".

Meanwhile, the AIUMB maintained that the event was "apolitical" and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited to inaugurate the event as "head of the State".

"The forum is in the national interest," AIUMB president said.

The second day of the four-day event was addressed also by scholars like Tolegen Mukhamjanov (Kazakhstan) and Damir Hazrat Mukhetdinov (Russia) and ex-vice president of UN's NGO committee on disarmament among others.

Inaugurated by Modi yesterday, the World Sufi Forum is being attended by Sufi scholars from 22 countries.

The event will culminate in a mass congregation on Sunday with over one lakh people expected to attend the same, its organisers claimed.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today left this Nepalese resort town after attending the SAARC Ministerial meeting on sidelines of which she held the first bilateral talks with her Pakistani counterpart after the Pathankot terror attack and discussed the issue.

After wrapping up her three-day visit, Swaraj left Pokhara on an Mi17 chopper for Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh from where she will head to Delhi on a special flight.

She yesterday announced that a Pakistani Joint Investigation Team will arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward its probe into the Pathankot terror attack.

The assault figured very high in the over 20-minute meeting between Swaraj and Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, the first political-level engagement between the two sides after the January 2 terror strike on the key air force base.

Swaraj also accepted Pakistan's invitation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Islamabad for the SAARC Summit to be held on November 9-10 this year.

She also pitched for unleashing the "collective strength" of SAARC while underlining the need for a South Asian Economic Union with greater connectivity and forward movement on pending agreements on rail and motor vehicles.
Russian warplanes today flew in support of Syrian government troops in an offensive to recapture the historic town of Palmyra from the hands of the Islamic State group, which has damaged many of the town's world-famous archaeological sites.

Activists who monitor the Syrian conflict reported intense airstrikes in Palmyra and its suburbs. In Moscow, a Russian Defense Ministry official confirmed his country's warplanes in Syria were flying in support of the Syrian offensive to try to retake Palmyra.

Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi said Russian aircraft based in Syria were conducting 20-25 sorties a day in support of the Palmyra offensive, even though Russia this week drew down its military presence in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial pullout of Russian aircraft and forces this week, in support of the Geneva peace talks that are currently underway in Switzerland between representatives of the Syrian government and the Western-backed opposition.

Those UN-brokered talks, aimed at finding a way to resolve the five-year civil war, entered their fifth day today.

If the Syrian army and its allies capture the historic town in the central province of Homs, it will be a major victory against IS militants in Syria.

Warplanes conducted more than a dozen airstrikes since today morning, according to two activist groups, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees.

The Observatory said troops were slowly advancing toward Palmyra, adding that both sides are bringing in reinforcements. It said there were casualties on both sides but did not give any figures.

Syrian troops and their allies have been on the offensive in the area since last week and on Tuesday captured "Hill 900," which is the highest point near Palmyra and overlooks the town.

Palmyra, home to famed Roman ruins, has been under the firm control of IS since the extremists captured it in May last year.

In October, The Associated Press obtained a video that showed the main structure of 2,000- year-old iconic Arch of Triumph in Palmyra has been destroyed. Activists have said that IS extremists blew up the arch.

IS also destroyed the Temple of Bel and the smaller Baalshamin temple last August. The Islamic State group considers such relics promote idolatry.

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recalled some of Russia's warplanes from Syria earlier this week, said Moscow will keep enough forces there to continue the fight against the Islamic State group, the Nusra Front and other extremist organizations.
The BJP government today presented a



revenue deficit budget even as it made a substantial allocation of Rs 25,000 crore for various schemes to boost agricultural sector.

Following are the highlights of Budget 2016-17 presented by Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.

1. Year 2016 to be observed as "Shetkari Swabhiman Varsha" (Year of Farmers Self-respect).

2. Emphasis on dry land farming for drought relief.

3. Accelerated development of infrastructure, removal of disparity, development of urban areas and generation of employment opportunities for youth.

4. A provision of Rs 1,855 crore for Crop Insurance Scheme.

5. Substantially higher provision of Rs 2,000 crore for farm ponds, wells and electric pump installation.

6. Planning for renovation of 6,862 ex-Malgujari tanks in the Naxal affected districts of northern Vidarbha.

7. "Palak Mantri Pandhan Rasta Yojana" and "Palak Mantri Earth Moving Machine Kharadi Yojana" launched. Repair works of Pandhan Rasta will be allotted to rural youth.

8. Outlay of Rs 110 crore to make available crop loan with concessional rate of interest to farmers.

9. Outlay of Rs 80 crore to boost the production of oil seeds and pulses crop under National Agriculture Development Scheme.

10. New scheme launched to provide subsidy up to 25% or maximum Rs 50 lakh to set up agriculture processing units.

11. Outlay of Rs 60 crore for new scheme called "Pandit Dindayal Upadhyay Krishi Margdarshan Yojana".

12. New government horticulture college at Jalgaon.

13. Outlay of Rs 10 crore for two new veterinary colleges at Jalgaon and Akola.

15. Decision to implement new scheme called "Krishi Gurukul Yojana" for advanced agriculture training of farmers through role model farmers.

16. An agriculture festival to be organised in every district to create awareness among farmers.

17. Organic Farming Research & Training Centres in 4 agriculture universities proposed.

18. Automated weather centres at 2065 revenue blocks proposed for accurate weather forecasting.

19. Dairy development projects under Integrated Agriculture Development Programme



20. Rs 100 crore projects involving manufacturing company of farmers to be set up in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

21. Provision of Rs 51.13 crore to set up Intensive Poultry Development Unit in 14 districts.

22. For rearing of cattle, modernisation of "Valu Mata Sangopan Kendra".

23. New scheme called "Govardhan Gowansh Raksha Kendra"



launched to implement the programme of rearing non-lactating and unproductive cattle breed in 34 rural districts with NGO participation.

24. Outlay of Rs 30 crore for jetty construction at various places in five coastal districts; outlay of 15 crore for renovation of Sasoon Dock in Mumbai.

25. Provision of Rs 7,850 crore for irrigation projects.

26. Substantial outlay of Rs 2,078 crore for various seven irrigation projects included in "Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana".

27. Water literacy and water awareness creation in society, permanent water centre at Yashada, Pune & sub-centres at Aurangabad Amravati, Chandrapur.

28. Outlay of Rs 500 crore for upgradation of roads and new road connectivity under "Chief Minister Rural Road Scheme".

29. "Smart Village Scheme" proposed to provide incentive for development.

30. Outlay of Rs 500 crore proposed. Government to undertake ambitious "Chief Minister Rural Drinking Water Supply in rural and remote places.

31. New scheme called "Balasaheb Thakare Smruti Matoshree Gram Panchayat & Mahila Sakshamikarna Mission" for accelerating rural development.

32. "Sumati tai Sukhalikar Udyogini Mahila Sakshamikarna" scheme to provide loan at zero interest to women SHGs. An outlay of Rs 10 crore.

33. Outlay of Rs 784 crore for electricity generation projects.

34. New 240 sub-units to upgrade electricity distribution system.

35. Outlay of Rs 456 crore for addition in capacity of non-conventional energy sources. To promote new industries in Vidarbha & Marathwada through subsidising energy rate.

36. Employment generation of 11,23,000 under new industry policy.
Security forces have apprehended three NDFB(S) cadres during an operation in Assam's Chirang district, a defence spokesperson said here today.

Acting on specific intelligence input, a joint team of Army and police launched an operation last night and nabbed the three militants and recovered some arms and ammunitions from their possession.

The militants were allegedly involved in extortion and unlawful activities for the banned outfit.

Both the army and police have stepped up area domination to curtail unlawful activities of various insurgent groups in the wake of upcoming Assembly polls in the state, the spokesperson added.
China plans to make its troubled border provinces Xinjiang and Tibet major business hubs for seamless trading with Europe and South Asia as it moves ahead with the mega Silk Road project to boost its global influence.

The 13th Five-Year Plan approved this week at the National People's Congress outlines China's ambition to make Xinjiang an important gateway to the West, Tibet to South Asia, Yunnan Province to Southeast Asia, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an international passage to the ASEAN -- which include Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand.

Xinjiang, bordering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and several Central Asian states, has been on the boil for years over ethnic tension between Uyghur Muslims and majority Han settlers from mainland China.

The province in the last few years has also witnessed violent attacks allegedly carried out by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), prompting the Chinese government to deploy large number of troops to quell the turmoil.

Tibet too has witnessed tension over incidents of self- immolation, protests calling for the return of the Dalai Lama from India. Overseas Tibetan groups say over 130 incidents of self-immolations have taken place in the region.

While Xinjiang is expected to become the hub for both the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through the PoK and the Silk Road projects to connect with Europe, Tibet is likely to play a major role in connecting China to South Asia, including India via Nepal.

India has adopted a mixed approach to the Chinese initiatives. Though it has backed the Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar (BCIM) corridor, India has so far stayed clear of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) owing to concerns over its strategic implications in the Indian Ocean.

India has also opposed the CPEC as it is being built through the disputed parts of the PoK.

Tian Yun, director of China Society of Macroeconomics - a research centre, told state-run Global Times that many places along the border are transportation junctions and could become platforms to promote "Made in China" to neighbouring nations.

The 13th Plan states that China will continue to promote Belt and Road Initiative by building the China-Mongolia- Russia, China-Central Asia-West Asia, China-Indochina Peninsula, China-Pakistan and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridors, as well as the new Eurasian Land Bridge.

The plan listed Xinjiang as a key region for the Belt and Road initiative, the official name for the Silk Road.

Beside Xinjiang, Yunnan and Guangxi also play an important role in China's cooperation with Southeast Asia countries, Tian said.

Xi said more than 100 countries and global organisations



have participated in China's Belt and Road Initiative, and more than 20 countries have worked with China in production capacity cooperation in such areas as railway construction and nuclear power.

He urged the implementation of the projects to ensure that the countries involved have "a sense of gain."



Xi stressed that more specific Belt and Road policies should be worked out and major support should be focused on strategic projects including facilities cooperation, energy resource use and core technology research and development.

Domestic enterprises are encouraged to invest in countries along the Belt and Road and countries along the routes are welcome to do business in China, Xi said.

The export of China's production and construction capacity could support the Belt and Road countries to push forward industrialisation and will help to stabilise the world economy, state-run China Daily quoted him as saying.

The Silk Road Economic Belt is a land-based route from China through Central Asia and Russia to Europe.

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is a strategic route through the Strait of Malacca to India, the Middle East and East Africa.

In a bid to promote OBOR, Xi has made state visits to a number of countries, including the Czech Republic, Serbia, Poland and Uzbekistan this year.

More than 30 countries and international organisations have signed agreements and memorandums of understanding with China on jointly implementing the Belt and Road strategy, the report said.

As part of the Belt and Road projects, freight trains have made more than 2,000 trips from China to Europe and back on 39 rail lines, it said.
Two Central Reserve Police Force



(CRPF) jawans were injuredtoday in separate incidents in Chhattisgarh's naxal-hit Dantewada district, police said.

A CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) jawan was injured when a pressure bomb, laid by Naxals, blasted in Badegurra forests of Kuwakonda police station limits early this morning, Dantewada Superintendent of Police Kamlochan Kashyap, told PTI.

A composite squad of CRPF, its elite unit CoBRA and district forces were patrolling inside the forests of Kuwakonda.

As soon as they reached Badegurra, a jawan stepped over a pressure IED connection, triggering the blast, the SP said. He belonged to CoBRA's 206th battalion.

In another incident, a CRPF jawan sustained injuries after he was shot with an arrow by Naxals in Chikpal forest under Katekalyan police station limits late last night, the SP said.

A joint team of CRPF, Special Task Force (STF) and district force had launched an anti-naxal operation in the Katekalyan region, located around 450 kms away from here, during which they unearthed a 5 kg IED planted by Naxals.

On their way back, a jawan was hit by an arrow shot by a group of Naxals who fled into the forests when security forces launched retaliatory attack, he said, adding, the two jawans were rushed to Dantewada for treatment, he added.
Two Indians in the US have been charged with allegedly smuggling people from India into America and could face up to 20 years of imprisonment.

Nilesh Kumar Patel, 41, and Harsad Mehta, 66, appeared in federal court yesterday and have been charged with one count of conspiracy to bring in and harbor aliens and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

Patel and Mehta were arrested on October 21 last year upon their arrival at the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and the duo remain detained pending the outcome of the charges.

According to federal prosecutors, beginning in April 2014, an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a smuggler began meeting with Patel and Mehta in Bangkok, Thailand.

Patel and Mehta stated that they were involved in the smuggling business and had multiple Indian nationals that they were intending to smuggle into the United States.

Both of them agreed to transport the Indians from India to Thailand, at which point the undercover law enforcement officer would presumably use his contacts to smuggle the Indians into the United States via commercial airline flights.

Patel and Mehta agreed to wire a USD10,000 down payment for each individual to be smuggled into the US and to pay a balance of tens of thousands of dollars for each individual once the foreign nationals arrived in the country, federal prosecutors alleged.

In total, Patel and Mehta arranged for six Indian nationals to be brought to Thailand for smuggling into the US via Newark Liberty International Airport on three occasions.

The conspiracy to bring in and harbor aliens charge carries a maximum potential sentence of 10 years in prison. The money laundering conspiracy charge carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison.
The Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen for one year has caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, the UN rights chief said today, warning international crimes may have been committed.

During its campaign against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen there have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.

Rights groups have also raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the Huthi rebels, but United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the coalition bore the greatest responsibility.

"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes," Zeid said in a statement.

"We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition."



His office said it had tallied just under 9,000 civilian casualties, including 3,218 killed, since the coalition on March 26 last year intervened to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

The Huthis are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Zeid voiced particular alarm at two air strikes on a market this week in northern Yemen's rebel-held Hajja province.

The UN children's agency yesterday put the death toll from those strikes at 119, and Zeid's office said today that 106 of those killed in the crowded market were civilians, including 24 children.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded an investigation into the incident, one of the deadliest yet in the war.

During an exclusive interview on Wednesday the coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP the strikes targeted "a militia gathering", the term he uses to describe Huthis.

Assiri said an independent panel was being formed nationally to examine charges of possible abuses against civilians in the war.

The alliance says it does not aim at civilians, and that targeting is verified many times to ensure non-combatants will not be killed.

Zeid's office condemned "the repeated failure of the coalition forces to take effective actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, and to publish transparent, independent investigations into those that have already occurred.
The UN Security Council has expressed concern over an escalating row with Morocco over Western Sahara, but did not ask Rabat to drop plans to impose a drastic cut in staff at the UN mission in the disputed territory.

Morocco has ordered 84 staffers from MINURSO to leave in the coming days, a move the United Nations says will cripple the mission that was set up in 1991 after a ceasefire was reached.

"The council has expressed serious concerns," Angolan Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins, who holds this month's council presidency, told reporters after a closed-door meeting yesterday.

"We have decided that we should all look bilaterally at continuing our engagement to make sure that the situation is stabilized when it comes to the work of that mission, mandated by the Security Council," he said.

There was no appeal to Morocco to reverse its decision, nor was there any expression of support for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who has been locked in a public dispute with Rabat.

During a recent trip to North Africa, Ban angered Rabat when he used the word "occupation" to describe the status of Western Sahara.

The UN chief then angrily accused Rabat of staging protests directed against him during which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators carried banners denouncing Ban's "lack of neutrality."



In response, Morocco decided to cut $3 million in funding for the UN mission and expel the MINURSO staff, decisions Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar said were "irreversible."



During his briefing to the council, the UN's top political affairs official, Jeffrey Feltman, asked the 15 members to back a UN request to scrap or ease the punitive measures against MINURSO, UN diplomats said.

Morocco's decision to remove 84 people from the 500-strong MINURSO was described as a crippling blow to the mission, affecting drivers, technicians and communications experts.

"It hits the mission across the board," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, describing the decision as unprecedented and in violation of Morocco's agreement with the United Nations as host country.

Feltman told the council that the military force cannot operate without the civilian component and called for the "unified support" of the 15 members of the panel, UN diplomats said.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since the 1991 ceasefire ending a war that broke out when Morocco deployed its military in the former Spanish territory in 1975.
The US-China ties will be "complex" as there remain areas of concern including in the disputed South China Sea, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said as he underlined American military's presence in the region and its role in upholding the rules-based navigation system.

"It is clear that the US-China relationship will be complex as we continue to balance our competition and cooperation," Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He said there are opportunities to improve understanding and reduce risks with China. "We've agreed to four confidence- building agreements, including one meant to prevent dangerous air-to-air encounters. But there remain areas of concern."



The top Pentagon official said the US and virtually all nations in the region were deeply concerned about the pace and scope of land-reclamation in the South China Sea, the prospect of further militarisation, as well as the potential for these to increase the risk of conflict among claimant states.

China claims most of the South China Sea, but Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have rival claims.

The US has decades-old military presence in the region and it has been been instrumental in upholding the rules-based international system and laid the foundation for peace and security in the region, Carter said about the sea lane through which more than USD5 trillion in global trade passes annually.

"Our interest is in maintaining freedom of navigation and overflight, full and unimpeded lawful commerce, and that disputes are resolved peacefully," Carter said.

He said the US also expects China to uphold President Xi Jinping's pledge not to pursue militarisation in the Spratly Islands. "We are closely watching the long-term, comprehensive military modernisation program that China, as well as other countries, continues to pursue."



While there is no question that the US retains a decisive military edge in the Asia-Pacific, China is investing in capabilities to counter third-party -- including the US -- intervention during a crisis or conflict, he said.

These capabilities include ballistic and cruise missiles of increasingly greater range and accuracy, counter-space and offensive cyber capabilities, and electronic warfare systems.

Testifying at the same committee, Gen Joseph F Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said China's expanding presence in Asia increase the "possibility of miscalculation."



"China is also seeking to improve the joint capability of its armed forces to project power -- enhancing its ability to fight and win a high-intensity regional conflict," he said.

"China is also investing in land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles, counter-space weapons, cyber, improved capabilities in nuclear deterrence and long-range conventional strike, advanced fighter aircraft, integrated air defences, undersea warfare, and command and control capabilities."



Dunford said China's use of computer network attacks in a conflict with the US could seriously limit access to cyberspace and degrade deployment and sustainment of forces.

"By pursuing a diverse and capable range of offensive space control and counter-space capabilities, China is also working to diminish US space dominance," he said.
An American man was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison after trying to recruit FBI informants to the Islamic State group in Syria.

Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, from Rochester in upstate New York, pleaded guilty in December to attempting to provide material support to the extremists and was described by prosecutors as "one of the first" IS recruiters captured in the United States.

Prosecutors yesterday said Elfgeeh spread IS propaganda on social media, sought funds for extremists and attempted to recruit and send two individuals -- both of whom were cooperating with the FBI -- to Syria to fight with IS.

He was sentenced on the same day that US Secretary of State John Kerry said the IS group's slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites amounts to genocide.

"While we are confident that keeping Mr Elfgeeh in prison for the next two decades will keep us safer, there continues to exist a pervasive, persistent and ever-changing terrorism threat," said Adam Cohen, FBI chief in Buffalo, New York.

"This threat remains among the highest priorities for the FBI and the intelligence community."



Prosecutors said he sent IS propaganda videos to one would-be fighter, arranged for an English-speaking contact in Iraq to communicate with that person via Facebook and paid USD40 to help the individual obtain a passport.

Elfgeeh also bought the pair of FBI informants a laptop and a camera to take to Syria, offered them tips on how to travel without being detected and arranged for a contact overseas to coordinate the logistics of the trip.

Prosecutors say Elfgeeh sent USD600 to a third person in Yemen also destined to help them travel to Syria to join the IS group.
The US military says one of its helicopters crashed in southern Afghanistan, adding that the cause was unknown and there were no casualties.

In a statement, US Army Col Michael Lawhorn said today the helicopter made a "hard landing" in Helmand, but gave no details on timing or location.

He says all personnel have been recovered and an investigation is underway.

The Taliban claimed they shot down the chopper.

Helmand, a Taliban stronghold, has been the focus of intense military activity in recent months as the insurgents fight for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes.

The US-NATO mission has 12,900 troops in Afghanistan mandated to train and assist their Afghan counterparts.

The US also has 3,000 troops engaged in counter-terrorism operations against the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.
A senior US official has come out strongly against major powers in East Asia pursuing nuclear reprocessing that nonproliferation experts warn could lead to spiraling quantities of weapons-usable material in a tense region.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman yesterday told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel "has little if any economic justification" and raises concerns about nuclear security and nonproliferation.

The administration appears to be elevating its public expressions of concern over plans by Japan and China to produce plutonium for energy generation a technology that South Korea also aspires to have.

Countryman heads the State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. His unusually critical comments come as President Barack Obama prepares to host more than 50 world leaders for a nuclear security summit in Washington at the end of this month.

The committee's chairman, Republican Senator Bob Corker, accused the Obama administration of encouraging reprocessing despite the concern over proliferation.

Corker pointed to the renegotiation a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with China last year that allows the reprocessing of fuel from US-designed reactors for nonmilitary purposes. It is similar to the arrangement the US has with close ally Japan.

The US has deferred a decision on giving similar consent to another close ally, South Korea, but has not ruled it out. "We're not calling for a plutonium time-out like we could have done," Corker told the hearing.

Countryman denied that the administration has encouraged reprocessing. He said China, which unlike Japan and South Korea has nuclear weapons, already had the capability to reprocess on its own.

"I would be very happy to see all countries get out of the plutonium reprocessing business," Countryman said. Japan began building a major reprocessing plant with French state-owned company Areva in the early 1990s. The project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns, and in November, its opening was postponed until 2018 to allow for more safety upgrades and inspections.

China, meanwhile, has been negotiating with Areva for a plant on a similar scale.
A group of US Republican senators have unveiled legislation that requires the Obama administration to impose stricter sanctions on every sector of Iran's economy that supports the country's ballistic missile program.

The bill, introduced by Senator Kelly Ayotte is a reflection of longstanding exasperation among Republican lawmakers who've complained that President Barack Obama has failed to properly punish Tehran for repeatedly defying a UN ballistic missile test ban.

Ayotte and other Republicans said senior US military officials are in favor of tougher sanctions. Both Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Army General Joseph Votel, Obama's choice to be the next US commander for the Middle East, have told the Senate Armed Services Committee in the last week that harder hitting sanctions are necessary.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard test-fired two ballistic missiles on March 9 and US officials said the launches were in defiance of the UN resolution, which calls for Tehran not to launch any ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

But Iran's UN Mission said in a statement that the country "has never sought to acquire nuclear weapons and never will in the future." It said the missile tests "were part of ongoing efforts of its armed forces to strengthen its legitimate defense capabilities ... Against security threats."



The administration in January announced sanctions against Tehran for missile firings in late 2015, but Republicans called those measures tepid and weak.

Ayotte's legislation is supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, which suggests the bill could be taken up quickly. Republicans remain frustrated after they were unable to scuttle the international accord to check Iran's nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief.

"Tough words alone will not deter the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism from continuing to develop its ballistic missile program," Ayotte said.

The legislation requires new sanctions against persons who knowingly aid Iran's missile program and against entities controlled or owned in part by Iran's primary ballistic missile organizations.

The bill also would mandate a broad reach by requiring the president to issue sanctions on entire sectors of Iran's economy found to be directly or indirectly supporting Iran's missile program.
The voters of Landhai village in this district have decided to boycott the coming assembly elections protesting the shifting of the polling booth from their locality to a place four kms away.

Local village head Thangavelu said the polling booth was shifted to Karungulam in 2011 and since then the residents had been fighting to get it back but to no avail.

As a mark of protest, the village panchayat had decided to boycott the elections, he said.

There were 963 voters in Landhai and they would not vote in the May 16 elections, he added.
A 40-year-old man wanted in at least 20 criminal cases, involving murder, robbery and thrashing public officials, across Delhi-NCR, Western UP and Haryana was arrested from Jamia Nagar area here, police said today.

Acting on a tip off, the Special Cell of Delhi Police apprehended Faizan yesterday. On interrogation, Faizan revealed that he had earlier spent seven years in Meerut jail for murder, DCP (Special Cell) Pramod Singh Kushwah said.

He was earlier booked under Goonda Act and Gangster Act in Uttar Pradesh. His siblings, one of whom was killed in an encounter, are also involved in several criminal cases. One of his brothers is currently lodged in Tihar Jail in connection with a murder which he allegedly committed at Old Delhi's Daryaganj area around 16 years ago, police added.
A wanted terrorist involved in attacks on security forces in 2009 was arrested today during a search operation by police in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar.

The terrorist identified as Adnan was arrested by Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) during an operation in Shor Bazar area of Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said.

The arrested terrorist was wanted to the law enforcement agencies for attacks on security forces in 2009.

He was shifted to an undisclosed location for further interrogation.
The West Bengal government has extended support to the proposed footwear park in the state by offering 130 acres of land for the project, industry body Council of Leather Exports said today.

"The West Bengal government has agreed to support the project by offering 130 acres of land at Bantala leather complex. The footwear park will attract an investment of Rs 1,000 crore," Council of Leather Exports chairman Ramesh Juneja said here.

"The state government has directed the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority to construct the new effluent treatment plant and revamp the drainage system to felicitate the footwear complex. It will cost around Rs 100 crore," he said.

He said that the government wants leather sector business in state to increase five times to Rs 50,000 crore in the next five years.

"Bengal once held an important place in footwear industry clocking about 18 per cent share in exports. Now it has become nil," Juneja said.

Beside, footwear park andother leather goods park would also be constructed and 110 acres in Bantala will be allotted by the government, he added.

In 2014-15, Indian leather sector exports was at USD 6.5 billion. "Till December exports was USD 4.4 billion but till March exports could remain at USD 5.5-6 billion," the chairman said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Leather Products Association leather B2B show at Milan mela was inaugurated today which will go on till March 20.
The White House has called on the Turkish government to respect democratic values, amid allegations of a fresh press crackdown.

"We urge Turkish authorities to ensure their actions uphold the universal democratic values enshrined in Turkey's constitution, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press," said spokesman Josh Earnest yesterday.

The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been accused of authoritarianism and muzzling critical media as well as lawmakers, academics, lawyers and non-government groups.

Turkish police early this month seized control of the top-selling Zaman, which opposes Erdogan, drawing international condemnation.

"The United States continues to be troubled by the Turkish government's use of appointed trustees to shut down or interfere with the editorial operations of media outlets that are sometimes critical of the government," Earnest said.

"We call on the Turkish government to ensure full respect for due process and equal treatment under the law, and in a democratic society, critical opinions should be encouraged, not silenced."



Yesterday, Turkey stood accused once more of violating press freedoms, this time by the German weekly Der Spiegel, which said it has been forced to withdraw its Istanbul correspondent.

A diplomatic source told AFP the Turkish government was also refusing press cards to eight of some 20 German journalists based in the country, meaning they would likely also have to leave.
Congress today sought to corner BJP on the suicide by a cow protection activist seeking 'Rashtra Mata' (mother of nation) status to the animal, saying the party will support the government if it goes ahead with such move.

However, the BJP remained more or less elusive while refusing to give any commitment to the demand raised by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti'.

Samiti activist Hindabhai Vambadiya (35) allegedly consumed pesticide outside Rajkot Collector office yesterday and died later in civil hospital.

He was part of the group of eight men who attempted suicide outside the collectorate seeking 'Rashtra Mata' status to cow and beef ban across country.

The issue reverberated in the Legislative Assembly today.

Senior Congressman and the Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela said that his party supports the demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata (mother of nation)".

"BJP should do introspection as to why someone gave his life. Cow is our mother and the BJP government must declare it as our national mother. If government agrees to do that, the Congress will support that move," Vaghela told reporters.

During the Assembly proceedings earlier in the day, Vaghela asked Speaker Ganpat Vasava to allow discussion in zero hour on the issue after question hour ended.

Vaghela told the Speaker that it was a matter of serious concern that someone has ended his life demanding the 'Rashtra Mata' status for cow.

Vaghela said the BJP is more touchy about the cow "as the saffron party uses cow as a mean to secure votes".

However, Vasava rejected his demand, saying there is no tradition of zero-hour in Gujarat Assembly, following which Vaghela and the Congress MLAs staged a symbolic walkout.

After they returned, Health Minister Nitin Patel launched an attack on the Congress, saying the party has no right to speak about cow "as their leaders once supported those who eat beef".

"A Congress MLA in Kerala even hosted a beef party in the past," he alleged.

Senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil hit back at BJP, claiming that people believed in the BJP's pre-poll claims that BJP will declare cow as national animal after coming to power at the Centre.

"BJP claims to be a party of 'Gau-Bhakts (cow worshippers). You only promised to do everything possible to protect cows ahead of polls. You only promised to declare it as Rashtra Mata. Since BJP has not done that, a person ended his life after consuming poison in Rajkot" alleged Gohil.

Responding to Gohil, Law Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja said that BJP is a party with a strong conviction and all the party workers believe in protecting cows at any cost.

The Samiti has called for Gujarat bandh today on the issue.
A woman Naxal carrying a reward of Rs 4 lakh on her head today surrendered before police along with another cadre.

Gemmeli Bando (26) alias Kamala alias Rasso and Vanthala Saalu (19) alias Balaiah, who carried a reward of Rs 1 lakh on his head, turned themselves in before Koya Praveen, Superintendent of Police (Visakhapatnam Rural), citing ill-health, officials said.

Praveen said Kamala is a native of Toomulova area under Koyyuru Police Station limits whereas Balaiah is a resident of Chukkagoyyi area, both in Visakhapatnam district.

Kamala joined the Maoist rank as an armed militia member of Galikonda area committee in 2007. Later, she became a member of Kalimela and Malkangiri area committees and was also associated with Jana Natya Mandali, the cultural wing of the Naxals, the police officer said.

Kamla, who carried a reward of Rs 4 lakh on her head, had been involved in three offences - exchanges of fire with policemen and murder of two police informers near Diguva Golluru in May 2014, he said.

She has been suffering from gynaecological problems for the past few months and hence wanted to quit the armed movement, police said.

Kamala left the movement a few months ago without informing her seniors and decided to surrender.

Balaiah joined the insurgents at a very young age as a member of its armed militia in Galikonda area. Balaiah was also involved in a few offences and in arranging logistics, Praveen said.

He got disillusioned with the rebels' ideology and decided to give himself up to the police, he added.
Gold traders and jewellers, whose pan-India strike continued for the 17th day today, said they would not call off their indefinite strike till the government rolls back one per cent excise duty, but expressed willingness to pay tax in some other form.

"We will continue this strike indefinitely as we have no other recourse. If we open our shops, we have to comply with the excise tax, which we will bring back inspector raj and 90 per cent of the industry will be affected," All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) Director Ashok Minawala told reporters here.

He said, the industry is not tax shy as they pay huge duty of around Rs 30,000 crore every year.

"We are ready to pay the tax, which the government wants to generate through the excise, in some other alternate format," he added.

He said, the intention of Finance Minister may be good, but it (excise duty imposition) is not notified, and also the procedure to amend the Excise Act accordingly is not initiated. Therefore, the excise field officers will have the liberty to visit shops, with powers to seize goods and arrest.

"In the era of ease doing business, these controls need to be done away with. Hence, the assurance of the Finance Minister is not acceptable by the industry," he said.

Minawala further said the statement by the Finance Minister that the imposition of excise duty is essential to comply with GST is misleading as there are over 300 items that are not under excise and VAT and still will be able to migrate into GST.

"It is not necessary to bring jewellery industry into the Excise Duty Act to migrate to GST," he pointed out.

In the year 2005 and 2012, the government had realised that excise duty is impractical for the gems and jewellery industry, which employs 4.5 million skilled workers, and rolled back the proposal.

"We are sure that this government, which was in opposition understood our plight then," he said.

Most jewellery shops and establishments in the country have been on strike since March 2 after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget announced one per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery.

Over 358 associations affiliated with GJF, consisting of over three lakh manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers and artisans related to the trade are on strike.

The size of the gems and jewellery industry has grown to 3.15 lakh crore and contributes 3.5 per cent to the GDP even as it is still an unorganised sector.

The government receives revenue of around Rs 31,000 crore by way of Import Duty, VAT, and LBT apart from income tax from the dealers, Minawala said.
The filling work of SYL Canal in parts of Patiala, Rupnagar and Fatehgarh Sahib district was stopped today following Supreme Court Order of status quo.

The filling work that was started on Wednesday has been stopped in all the villages alongwith the SYL canal and all the earth moving Machinery including JCBs machines had been moved from the spot, officials said.

Administration had taken strong step in the wake of court orders and the farmers stopped the work of the filling of SYL canal, the officials said.
Yale will become the first university member of a private-public partnership coalition to strengthen carbon pricing policies through development of a network for sharing best practices.

The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), launched by World Bank (WB) President Jim Yong Kim and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the Climate Summit in Paris, includes over 90 business and more than 20 governments including Germany, France, Mexico, Chile, Ethiopia and Morocco.

The announcement of Yale joining the coalition was made earlier this week in Mumbai during the World Bank's Corporate Carbon Pricing Leadership Workshop.

"Universities have a critical role to play in offering leadership, teaching and research expertise to help develop effective climate change solutions," Yale University President Peter Salvoes said.

He said CPLC's network gives Yale the opportunity to work with and learn from companies and governments engaged in similar carbon-pricing efforts.

Since November last year, a pilot project has been underway on the Yale campus to test how carbon pricing can inform and guide energy conservation at Yale and beyond.

"As we seek to accelerate the transition towards a low- carbon world, Yale's practical lessons in designing and putting in place an internal carbon pricing programme are an inspiration to companies that want to take action to climate- proof their business models," Principal Climate Policy Officer at the International Finance Corporation and WB Tom Kerr said.

Jennifer Milikowsky and Ryan Laemel, recent Yale students who work on Yale's Carbon Charge Project, gave presentations about the project at the Mumbai workshop and at the India Climate Policy and Business Conclave in New Delhi on March 15.

Laemel said it was an honour to work with Indian officials, the World Bank and member companies of the CPLC to share Yale's carbon charge pilot project.

"The lessons we are learning are an important extension of our efforts on campus. The CPLC's network will be an invaluable resource as we continue to test and develop the concept," Laemel said.
High drama was witnessed on the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly premises here today as Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy entered into an argument with security staff which denied entry to YSR Congress MLA R K Roja citing the Speaker's order.

The YSRC legislators staged a sit-in demanding that Roja, who was suspended for a year during the winter session of the AP Assembly in December last year, be permitted to enter the Assembly in accordance with the interim order issued by High Court Justice A Ramalingeswara Rao here yesterday.

Assembly Chief Marshal Ganesh, however, told the YSRC leaders that Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao directed them not to allow Roja into the House.

Jagan then entered into a verbal duel demanding that the Chief Marshal show the Speaker's order and displayed the order of the High Court judge.

Roja tried to enter the Assembly through Gate 2 along with her lawyer but the police prevented them.

Jagan then tried to take the lawyer inside in his car but he too was blocked saying lawyers were not permitted.

"I have my right to take anybody inside. They can come to my chamber. I will send my pass," Jagan told the police officials.

The opposition MLAs then staged a sit-in on the Assembly premises protesting the Speaker's decision to prevent Roja's entry into the House.

"This amounts to contempt of the court," they said.

The single judge of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad issued an interim order yesterday suspending the proceedings of the Assembly wherein Roja was suspended from the House for a year for using unparliamentary and abusive language against certain ruling TDP members, including Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, during the winter session in December last.

The state government has said the single judge's order will be challenged before a division bench of the High Court.
A photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging today morning in downtown Beijing's notorious smog has prompted a torrent of amusing comments and some mockery on Chinese social media.

Zuckerberg is a favorite personality among the Chinese public, despite Facebook being banned in the country alongside other overseas social media platforms.

He's also become somewhat notorious for persistent yet so far futile efforts to woo leaders enforcing China's strict online censorship.

The young tech tycoon is in Beijing to attend an economic forum over the weekend, when some of the world's business and finances leaders will rub shoulders with senior Chinese politicians.

Zuckerberg posted the photo to his Facebook page of him and five others running through Tiananmen Square with the famous gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace in the background. None wore the air-filtering face masks that are ubiquitous in Beijing and other Chinese cities.

At the time the photo was taken, Beijing's air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

Health experts urge people to avoid any outdoor activities on such heavily polluted days.

Chinese residents wondered aloud whether Zuckerberg's jog was yet another gesture aimed at pleasing the Chinese authorities who claim they are gradually winning the battle against air pollution.

Previous efforts include Zuckerberg's telling China's top Internet official on a visit to Facebook's California headquarters in 2014 that he was engrossed in Chinese President Xi Jinping's collected speeches.

The same year he famously engaged his audience in halting Chinese at a forum at prestigious Tsinghua University while avoiding mention of the government ban on Facebook.

"Kissing up?" commented Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist, who reposted Zuckerberg's running photo and added a graphic of Beijing's air quality readings from today morning.

Journalist and avid runner Peng Yuanwen joked that Zuckerberg's lungs had single-handedly filtered Beijing's smog after the city's air quality noticeably improved by early afternoon.

"The human-flesh smog vacuum is better when it's American-made," teased Peng, playing on a joke among Beijing residents that they filter the city's air with their lungs by inhaling harmful particles.

Others noted that Zuckerberg's run took him through the square where hundreds of thousands of Chinese students gathered in the spring of 1989 to demand democracy. The movement ended in the early hours of June 4 after troops and tanks crushed all resistance, killing hundreds, possibly thousands of protesters.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc will invest over $100 million in India to support the country's ambitious plan to connect thousands of its villages to the internet and create jobs, Executive Chairman John Chambers said on Friday.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a series of initiatives under the 'Digital India,' 'Skill India,' and 'Startup India' schemes to connect millions of Indians to the Internet, create more tech jobs and move more services online.

Chambers said the company will work with federal and provincial governments in India to launch incubation centers for entrepreneurs and training students.

Cisco will invest $40 million of the total planned investment into funding early and mid-stage startups.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Anand Basu)
Many countries have not yet introduced laws allowing regulators to write down bank's debts to avoid taxpayer bailouts and prevent them being "too big to fail", the world's top financial watchdog warned on Friday.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which can "name and shame" those which do not yet comply with its rules, said member countries that do not yet have these laws include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and Chinese territory Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The FSB, which is chaired by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, is tasked with coordinating financial regulation for the Group of 20 economies (G20). Membership of the G20 includes a commitment to implement rules it has agreed.

In a review of how G20 countries have implemented rules to avoid a repeat of government bailouts of lenders as during the 2007-09 financial crisis, it said few of its members have introduced the so-called bail-in tool.

This gives regulators powers to write down a bank's bonds to top up capital and keep core parts of a bank functioning, such as customer deposits and payments.

"Only the European Union member states, Switzerland and the United States are currently able to achieve a creditor-financed resolution to support continuity of critical functions," it said.

The bulk of the world's 30 globally systemic banks, such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Citi and BNP Paribas, are in these jurisdictions.

Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, who chairs an FSB committee on implementing rules, said the reforms on resolving or winding down failing banks are a critical component of addressing the too-big-to-fail problem, where governments have no option but to bail them out because of the knock-on damage that would be caused if they did not.

"Substantial work remains to put in place a full set of resolution powers and recovery and resolution planning requirements," added Fernando Restoy, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain and chair of the team who carried out the review.

The task force said countries that have not fully implemented the rules on dealing with failing banks should say by December what actions they have taken or intend to take.
Three hours east of New Delhi, in the village of Piplera, recently married Abhilekh Swami has stopped to refuel his first automobile, a Hyundai hatchback, at an Indian Oil filling station.

Late model SUVs and Mercedes also ply the potholed roads and dusty lanes of the small gathering of dwellings in Uttar Pradesh.

"Earlier I used to hire a taxi for taking my wife and old parents for long distance travel. Now we travel in our car," said Swami, 28, an accountant with a private company.

Swami said he is averaging about 2,000 kilometres a month in the vehicle he bought last August, mostly for commuting to work, shopping and visiting relatives.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians, spurred by cheap credit and rising incomes, are buying cars each month to free themselves from creaky, unreliable public transport.

This is expected to help push India ahead of China as the demand growth leader, with its total fuel consumption rising by a tenth to a record in the fiscal year-to-date.

Underpinned by annual economic growth of 7-8%, India's fuel demand is seen as a key oil price support over 2016-2017, eating into a supply overhang that has pulled down global crude as much as 70% since mid-2014.

India has already pipped Japan as the world's third-largest oil consumer. By 2040, India will have more than doubled its current oil use to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the International Agency (IEA), about on par with China's consumption last year.

This roar of motor - as well as power and household - fuel use means some refineries initially planned for exports, such as the 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery on India's east coast, have been flipped to serve domestic oil demand.

"When we conceived Paradip we were hoping to export gasoline, but now the products will be for meeting local demand," said Sanjiv Singh, head of refineries at Indian Oil Corp.

Reflecting India's rising importance as a buyer, Igor Sechin, chief executive of the world's biggest listed oil company Rosneft, was in New Delhi this week to sign several deals with Indian companies such as IOC, Oil India Ltd and Bharat PetroResources Ltd.

FUEL GOES BOOM

Over April-February - the first 11 months of India's current fiscal year - fuel demand rose 10% to about 170 million tonnes (4 million bpd), according to a report this week by the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).

For the next fiscal year through March 2017, the PPAC has forecast fuel demand growth at 7.3%.

"India's push to Make-in-India, reforms in mining, and improvements in infrastructure like better roads, airports and job creation will help increase fuel consumption in the country," said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Economics.

India plans to spend 970 billion rupees ($14 billion) in 2016-2017 on expanding and improving the country's road network, which at 4.7 million km is already vying with China as the world's second-longest after the United States, although highways make up less than 2% of that figure.

A 23.55% increase in the salaries, allowances and pensions of millions of government employees later this year is also expected to shore up consumer spending, boosting purchases of cars and motorcycles.

Sales of passenger cars and utility vehicles in India are expected to grow by as much as 12% in the next fiscal year, up from an estimated 6% this year.

That translates to around 230,000 new passenger vehicles hitting the roads each month.

The main impact has been on gasoline demand, which the PPAC expects to grow to 24.2 million tonnes (560,000 bpd) by next year, up more than 12% from 21.5 million tonnes estimated for this fiscal year.

"Gasoline demand has been growing in double digits and we expect this to continue as it depends on sales of two-wheelers and cars," said Indian Oil Corp's Singh.

Other fuels are seeing growth as well, and for similar reasons.

To meet rising demand, state refiners are planning a 1.2 million bpd plant on the country's west coast, adding to current overall capacity of 4.6 million bpd, although a fixed timeline has not been set.

In east Delhi, at one of India's busiest motor fuel pumps, owner Ajay Bansal said demand was soaring.

"There is a growing demand for new and second hand cars. Now second hand cars are very cheap," he said. "That's an attraction to first-time buyers."
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices were in steady in volatile trading on Friday after hitting 2016 peaks, but were on track to multi-week gains on expectations of a production freeze by major exporters and stronger U.S. fuel demand.

Strength in world equity markets, which were up for a fifth straight week, had also boosted oil earlier. Shares of U.S. energy companies traded near 3-1/2 month highs on Wall Street.

Brent crude was up 1 cent at $41.55 a barrel by 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 GMT), rising $1 earlier to a 2016 high of $42.54. It was on track to a 3 percent gain on the week, its fourth straight weekly rise.

U.S. crude was down 15 cents at $40.05. It had also gained $1 earlier to a new year high of $41.20. For the week, it was on track to rise 4 percent, up for a fifth week in a row.

"It's been a big week for oil, so it's logical for short term bulls to take some profit before the weekend," said Pete Donovan, broker at Liquidity Energy in New York.

Oil has surged about 50 percent from 12-year lows after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) floated the idea of a production freeze two months ago, boosting Brent from about $27 and U.S. crude from around $26.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC producers led by Russia will meet in Qatar on April 17 to further the initiative that could result in the first global oil supply deal in 15 years.

U.S. crude inventories hit a fifth straight week of record highs last week but the build of 1.3 million barrels was less than half of forecasts. Gasoline demand, meanwhile, jumped 6.4 percent over the past four weeks from a year ago.

The market is looking out for the U.S. oil rig count due around 1:00 p.m. from oil services firm Baker Hughes to see if energy firms cut drilling activity again this week. The oil rig count has fallen the past 12 weeks while total oil and gas rigs were the fewest since at least 1940.

(Additional reporting by Simon Falush in LONDON; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
(Reuters) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc, the operator of Sheraton and Westin hotels, said on Friday it planned to accept a raised buyout offer from a group led by China's Anbang Insurance and scrap its deal with Marriott International Inc.

A succcessful deal would bolster Anbang's reputation as one of China's top corporate acquirers and would follow its purchase of New York's iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel last year.

It would also be the biggest acquisition of a U.S. company by a China-based investor.

Anbang's new offer raises the value of Starwood to $13.16 billion from $12.82 billion, based on shares outstanding as of Feb. 19. Marriott had offered $12.2 billion for Starwood.

Anbang has also agreed to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc for around $6.5 billion, a person briefed on the matter told last week.

Strategic Hotels' properties include the Four Seasons Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Westin St. Francis on Union Square in San Francisco and the beach-front Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Orange County, California.

Marriott, which has until March 28 to counter Anbang's offer, said it was considering its options.

The Anbang-led group, which includes private equity firms J.C. Flowers & Co and Primavera Capital Ltd, has raised its cash offer for Starwood to $78.00 per share from $76.00, Starwood said on Friday.

Starwood's shares were up 4.6 percent at $79.90 in early trading.

Starwood shareholders will also receive stock in Interval Leisure Group Inc, which is buying Starwood's vacation ownership business for about $5.67 per Starwood share.

(Reporting by Arunima Banerjee and Sayantani Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Ted Kerr)
The operator of Sheraton and Westin hotels said the Chinese insurer's offer beat Marriott's previously agreed cash and stock offer by nearly 15 percent, and that it planned to scrap the proposed deal with the rival hotel chain.

Anbang has been on a U.S. hotel buying spree as Chinese insurers rush to acquire cash-generating assets as they struggle to keep up with the policy liabilities of the country's ageing population. U.S. assets are also seen as a good hedge against weakness in the Chinese yuan currency.

The Anbang-led consortium - which also includes private equity firms J.C. Flowers & Co from the United States and Primavera Capital from China - has bid $78 per share in cash, or $13.16 billion overall, based on shares outstanding as of Feb. 19. Anbang's bid is binding and fully financed, Starwood said.

At Thursday's close, Marriott's bid for Starwood was worth $68.06 per share, or around $11.5 billion overall.

Starwood will have to pay a $400 million breakup fee to Marriott if it walks away from their deal. Starwood's shares were up 5 percent at $80.20 in afternoon trading, their highest level since November.

Marriott, which has until March 28 to counter Anbang's offer, said it was considering its options.

Dan Wasiolek, a hotel industry analyst at Morningstar, said Marriott could still counter with a higher offer.

"Marriott can increase their offer because they have the balance sheet flexibility," he said, suggesting the larger rival hotel company could sweeten its offer by $700 million in cash.

If Anbang's offer is successful, it would boost the company's reputation as one of China's top corporate acquirers, adding Starwood to its stable with its nearly 1,300 hotels in about 100 countries. Starwood brings with it several well-regarded hotel brands as well as a loyal business customer base.

The offer follows Anbang's $6.5 billion deal struck last week for Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc and its $2 billion purchase of New York's iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel last year.

John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson & Co, Starwood's largest shareholder, welcomed Anbang's sweetened offer, saying it "better reflects the value of Starwood." He called the Chinese company a "proven, sophisticated buyer of related assets."

Beijing-based Anbang's bid for Starwood epitomizes its meteoric rise since it was founded in 2014 with an initial focus on car insurance.

Thanks to a spate of dealmaking at home and abroad, privately held Anbang now manages more than 1.9 trillion yuan ($292.3 billion) in assets, according to its website. Its chairman Wu Xiaohui married the granddaughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

REGULATORY REVIEW

A deal with Anbang would likely face a review by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel that reviews deals to ensure they do not harm national security.

A CFIUS probe would take around 10 weeks and would focus on the proximity of Starwood's several hundred U.S. hotels to critical facilities and the protection of customers' privacy, such as credit card data and information that passes through hotel Wi-Fi, said a source close to the deal.

Anbang won approval to buy the Waldorf Astoria last year and to buy annuities and life insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life just this week, giving it confidence that it can also win approval for the Starwood deal, the source said.

In 2012, CFIUS ordered the purchase of a wind farm in Oregon to be reversed because it was too close to a naval base.

Stephen Heifetz, a partner with law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP, said this was unlikely in this case.

"I'd be surprised if there were any deal-killer for a large multi-property location," he said, although he warned that the companies might have to make some concessions to get the deal through.

Other CFIUS experts have said previously that U.S. regulators might be concerned about a Starwood property, the W Hotel in downtown Washington, which overlooks the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House.

The U.S. government would also likely reconsider allowing some government officials to stay in the chain's hotels, said Michael Wessel, a commissioner on Congress's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"Anbang may have to requalify the chain for coverage under federal travel regulations," he said. "If any individual properties posed a problem, one of the mitigation strategies could either be the sale of problem assets to another chain or potentially to limit reimbursement for government employees on government business at those properties."

In either deal, Starwood shareholders will also receive stock in Interval Leisure Group Inc , which is buying Starwood's vacation ownership business for about $5.67 per Starwood share.

Lazard and Citigroup Global Markets Inc are financial advisers to Starwood and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP is its legal counsel. PJT Partners Inc is Anbang's financial adviser, while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is its legal counsel.

(Reporting by Arunima Banerjee and Sayantani Ghosh in Bengaluru, Michael Erman and Jeffrey Dastin in New York and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Kirti Pandey, Ted Kerr and Bill Rigby)
(Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors investigating allegations of bribery by Wal-Mart Stores Inc across the globe have found little evidence of corrupt practices in China, Bloomberg reported.

Investigators interviewing former executives and others associated with the company's Chinese operations over the past few months have been hindered by Chinese laws that prevent disclosure of certain information outside the country, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors may choose to bring only civil penalties imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rather than criminal charges, the report said. (http://bloom.bg/1Mrx7mj)

The U.S. Department of Justice has been conducting a years-long investigation into potential misconduct by Wal-Mart in some overseas markets, including China, Brazil, India and Mexico.

The probe found few major offenses in Mexico, but has unearthed evidence of possible misconduct in Brazil, the Wall Street Journal reported in November.

The investigation could be completed by the end of the year, Bloomberg said.

Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Hitt said in a statement emailed to that the company was fully cooperating with the government but could not comment further on the process.

(Reporting by Abhijith G in Bengaluru and Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
Gamesa India enters Sri Lankan solar power market with maiden order

Under this contract, awarded by Laugfs Power Limited, Gamesa will provide complete turnkey EPC solutions for the 20 MW photovoltaic solar plant in Hambantota province, Sri Lanka

Under this contract, awarded by Laugfs Power Limited, Gamesa will provide complete turnkey EPC solutions for the 20 MW photovoltaic solar plant in Hambantota province, Sri Lanka

Gamesa India has won a new solar order from Laugfs Power Limited in Sri Lanka for delivering 20 MW of solar power in Baruthankanda Village of Hambantota Province, Sri Lanka. Under this contract, Gamesa will provide complete turnkey EPC solutions that include engineering & design, supply of Gamesa Electric inverters, erection and commissioning of the 20 MW photovoltaic solar plants. The plant will commence operation by October 2016.



Ramesh Kymal, chairman and managing director, Gamesa India, said, We are already a leading wind player in Sri Lanka and this solar order has further elevated us to a complete renewable energy player in the country. Sri Lanka has a strong focus towards increasing the share of renewable energy in the countrys energy mix. The Sri Lankan Government is taking encouraging steps towards propelling clean energy. Having established our market leadership in the wind sector in the country, we look forward to contributing significantly towards harnessing solar power as well.



W K H Wegapitiya, chairman, Laugfs Power, said, We are glad to be associated with Gamesa, a leading renewable energy company having a proven track record of delivering turnkey solutions. Through this partnership, we will contribute positively to the countrys growing energy needs.



K V Sajay, executive vice president, solar business unit, Gamesa India, said, We are happy to introduce our solar solutions in Sri Lanka, backed by our strong support system in India. Given the demand for renewable energy in the country, we are looking to increase roll out of our solar ambitions in the coming years.



Gamesa offers solar EPC solutions for MW scale solar projects, distributed generation solar projects and rural/micro-grid projects besides continuing to expand its inverter solutions.

BS B2B Bureau
Editors note: Features and show times are subject to change without notice. Carmike Cinemas in Billings (Shiloh 14 and Wynnsong 10) also offers a movie line at 255-7676 and real-time updates are available online at fandango.com. Vue and Brew has a movie line at 633-4438, and info can also be found at vueandbrew.com.

Arriving this week

'CREATIVE CONTROL'

Genre/rating: Drama-thriller. R.

Art House Cinema & Pub: 3:45, 8:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Wednesday, Thursday. (Additional 12:30 p.m. matinee Sunday).

Synopsis: David (Benjamin Dickinson) is an advertising executive developing a high-profile marketing campaign for a new generation of Augmented Reality glasses. Feeling stuck in his relationship with yoga teacher Juliette (Nora Zehetner), he envies the charmed life of his best friend, fashion photographer Wim (Dan Gill) and his entrancing girlfriend, Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen). So, he uses the glasses to develop a life-like avatar of Sophie. When fantasy begins to blur with reality and passions begin escalate, things get increasingly out of hand.

'THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT  PART 1'

Genre/rating: Fantasy. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: IMAX showings: 1, 4, 7, 10 p.m. daily. Big D showings: 8 p.m. daily. Other showings: Noon, 3, 6, 9 p.m. daily.

Wynnsong 10: 1, 4:05, 7:05, 9:55 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Tris (Shailene Woodley) must escape with Four (Theo James) beyond the Wall that encircles Chicago to finally discover the shocking truth of what lies beyond it.

'MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN'

Genre/rating: Faith-based drama. PG.

Shiloh 14: Noon, 2:45, 5:30, 8:15 p.m. daily.

Vue and Brew: Show times TBD; information at 633-4438, vueandbrew.com.

Wynnsong 10: 1:45, 4:30, 7:15, 9:55 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: When 10-year-old Anna (Kylie Rogers) is stricken with a rare, incurable disease, her family  especially her fierce mother, Christy (Jennifer Garner)  rallies around her, though the girl's prognosis is grim. But after Anna suffers another traumatic event  a fall from a tree that nearly kills her  doctors find that the disease has disappeared completely from her body. Now the grateful family must come to grips with another unexpected challenge and Anna becomes the center of a media circus.

Special showings

Shiloh 14: "The Ten Commandments," classic biblical epic from 1956 starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, 2 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Wednesday. "Easter Mysteries  Last days of Christ," musical theater, 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Also playing

'THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY'

Genre/rating: Action-comedy. R.

Shiloh 14: 4, 10 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen), a sweet but dimwitted English football hooligan, reunites with his long-lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong), a deadly MI6 agent, to prevent a massive global terror attack and prove that behind every great spy is an embarrassing sibling.

'DEADPOOL'

Genre/rating: Action-fantasy.

Shiloh 14: 1, 4, 7, 9:50 p.m. daily.

Wynnsong 10: 1:10, 4, 7, 9:40 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: A former Special Forces operative named Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) becomes a mercenary after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor  and adopting the alter ego Deadpool, he hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.

'EDDIE THE EAGLE'

Genre/rating: Biographical drama-comedy. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: 12:10, 2:50, 5:30, 8:10 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: With the help of a rebellious coach Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), an unlikely but courageous British ski jumper named Michael "Eddie" Edwards (Taron Egerton) takes on the establishment and wins the hearts of sports fans around the world by making an improbable and historic showing at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

'GODS OF EGYPT'

Genre/rating: Fantasy. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: 2-D showings: 1, 7 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Set (Gerard Butler), the merciless god of darkness, has usurped Egypts throne, plunging the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict. With only a handful of heroic rebels opposing Sets savage rule, Bek (Brenton Thwaites), a bold and defiant mortal, enlists the aid of powerful god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in an unlikely alliance against the evil overlord.

'HOW TO BE SINGLE'

Genre/rating: Comedy-romance. R.

Shiloh 14: 1, 7 p.m. daily. (No 1 p.m. showing Sunday, no 7 p.m. showing Tuesday or Wednesday).

Synopsis: New York City is full of lonely hearts seeking the right match, and what Alice, Robin, Lucy, Meg, Tom and David all have in common is the need to learn how to be single in a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love. Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson lead the cast.

'LONDON HAS FALLEN'

Genre/rating: Action-adventure. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: 12:20, 2:55, 5:30, 8:05 p.m. daily.

Wynnsong 10: 1:30, 4:10, 7:15, 9:45 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: After the British Prime Minister passes away, his funeral becomes a target of a terrorist organization to destroy some of the worlds most powerful leaders, devastate the British capital, and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. The only hope of stopping it rests on the shoulders of the President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart) and his formidable Secret Service head (Gerard Butler), and an English MI-6 agent (Charlotte Riley) who rightly trusts no one.

'RACE'

Genre/rating: Drama. PG-13.

Wynnsong 10: 1:30, 4:40, 7:50 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: In his quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history, Jesse Owens (Stephan James), is thrust onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy. Co-starring Jason Sudeikis and Carice van Houten.

'THE REVENANT'

Genre/rating: Action-adventure. R.

Shiloh 14: 1, 4:30, 8 p.m. daily.

Wynnsong 10: 1, 4:30, 8 p.m., daily.

Synopsis: In an expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. In a quest to survive, Glass endures unimaginable grief as well as the betrayal of his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Glass must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption.

'RISEN'

Genre/rating: Drama. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: 12:10, 2:50, 5:30, 8:10 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: In order to disprove rumors of a risen Messiah and prevent an uprising in Jerusalem, Clavius (Joseph Feinnes), a powerful Roman Military Tribune, is tasked by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in the weeks following the crucifixion.

'10 CLOVERFIELD LANE'

Genre/rating: Thriller. PG-13.

Shiloh 14: 12:10, 2:50, 5:30, 8:10 p.m. daily.

Vue and Brew: Show times TBD; information at 633-4438, vueandbrew.com.

Wynnsong 10: 1:25, 4:25, 7:15, 9:50 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Waking up from a car accident, a young woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds herself in the basement of Howard (John Goodman), a man who says he's saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside world uninhabitable.

'WHERE TO INVADE NEXT'

Genre/rating: Documentary. R.

Art House Cinema & Pub: 6 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday. (Additional 1:15 p.m. matinee Saturday, 2:45 p.m. matinee Sunday).

Description: Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore ("Roger & Me," "Bowling for Columbine," "Fahrenheit 9/11") tells the Pentagon to stand down he will do the invading for America from now on. Discretely shot in several countries and under the radar of the global media, Moore has made a searing cinematic work that is both up-to-the-minute and timeless.

'WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT'

Genre/rating: Comedy. R.

Shiloh 14: 1, 4, 7, 9:45 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Tina Fey portrays a journalist whose experiences in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan include some unusual goings-on. The supporting cast includes Margot Robbie, Billy Bob Thorton, Martin Freeman and Alfred Molina.

'THE WITCH'

Genre/rating: Horror. R.

Shiloh 14: 4, 10 p.m. daily. (No 4 p.m. showing Sunday, no 10 p.m. showing Tuesday or Wednesday).

Synopsis: English farmer William (Ralph Ineson) leaves his colonial plantation in 1630, relocating his wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie) and five children to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest in New England. Strange and unsettling things begin to happen almost immediately  animals turn malevolent, crops fail, and one child disappears as another becomes seemingly possessed by an evil spirit. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) of witchcraft, charges she adamantly denies. As circumstances grow more treacherous, each family member's faith, loyalty and love become tested.

'THE YOUNG MESSIAH'

Genre/rating: Faith-based drama. PG-13.

Wynnsong 10: 1:10, 4:05, 7, 9:45 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: At age 7, Jesus (Adam Greaves-Neal) and his family depart Egypt to return home to Nazareth. Told from his childhood perspective, it follows young Jesus as he grows into his religious identity. The supporting cast includes Sean Bean, David Bradley, Jonathan Bailey and Sara Lazzaro.

'ZOOTOPIA'

Genre/rating: Animation-comedy. PG.

Shiloh 14: Big-D showings (in 2-D): Noon, 2:40, 5:20 p.m. daily. Other 2-D showings: 12:10, 2:50, 5:30, 8:10 p.m. daily.

Vue and Brew: Show times TBD; information at 633-4438, vueandbrew.com.

Wynnsong 10: 3-D showings: 1:10, 4:10, 6:50, 9:30 p.m. daily. 2-D showings: 1, 4, 6:45, 9:25 p.m. daily.

Synopsis: Zootopia is a city like no other, a melting pot where animals from every environment live together. But when optimistic Officer Judy Hopps arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isnt so easy. Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with a fast-talking fox, Nick Wilde.
It has been announced this week that Andrews Lane Theatre is for sale. CBRE have been instructed to dispose of the iconic theatre in Dublin 2.



The property enjoys a high volume of pedestrian traffic and provides a vital link from Dame Street to the bustling areas of Wicklow Street/Exchequer Street. The immediate area benefits from a host of bars, coffee shops and restaurants and is close to many of the citys colleges and infrastructure links.

Furthermore, the property is located close to Trinity College, Dail Eireann and to a host of tourist attractions including Dublin Castle.



CBRE is quoting in excess of 3.1 million for the entire property and expects the landmark building to attract a variety of bidders including owner occupiers and developers due to its favorable zoning and pivotal location in Dublin city centre.



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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European Union antitrust regulators have asked Ireland to provide further details on the country's tax deal with Apple before deciding whether this constitutes illegal state aid to the iPhone maker.

The European Commission, which has been investigating the Apple deal for more than two years, said on Wednesday that Irish authorities had not responded fully to an earlier query.

"Ireland did not reply in full to the Commission's last request for information, which is why the Commission has sent a reminder to Ireland to request the missing data," Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said in a statement.

"Furthermore, the Commission has requested clarifications to follow up on some of the replies sent by Ireland," he said.

The Irish finance department said it has provided a detailed response, saying an EU ruling was not imminent.

"There is simply no question that the Irish authorities sought to give the company in question any kind of special tax deal," a finance department spokesman said.

The EU competition enforcer in 2014 accused Ireland of swerving international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from revenue collectors in return for maintaining jobs.

Apple's vice-president of its European operations, Cathy Kearney, told a European Parliament hearing on Tuesday that the company had paid every cent of its taxes in Ireland.

Starbucks, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, AB InBev, BP and BASF are among companies facing millions of euros in back taxes after the European Commission ruled against their tax deals. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Deloitte have today launched their 2016 Top Technology Talent Competition.



The initiative seeks ideas from college students at all levels across Ireland on how digital services, technology and marketing can solve a business problem.

The students with the top submissions will be invited to present their idea to a judging panel of technology industry experts.

The winner will receive a trip to one of the Deloitte Digital studios in Europe, in addition to a six week summer internship in Deloitte Ireland. They will also gain invaluable insight into the Deloitte culture, as well as receiving dedicated mentorship on how to progress their idea.

This will enable the winner to further develop their idea if they so choose, or to gain valuable technology and business experience with the consulting team at Deloitte. The closing date for entries is 4th April 2016. Group and individual submissions are possible.

Partner in Technology Consulting at Deloitte, Peter Kearney says, "On a daily basis the Consulting team at Deloitte work with clients on how technological and digital advancements can be used to improve their businesses  be it to create efficiencies, improve customer experience, develop new service offerings, or embrace digital disruption. We live in a smarter, more connected world now, so looking at issues such as digital or technical transformation is at the top of the agenda."

He added, "This competition encourages students to develop ideas that do just that  how technology, digital and marketing can solve a business problem, or create a business opportunity. Through the internship and trip to the Deloitte Digital Studio, the winner will get the opportunity to experience how we utilise cutting-edge technology advancements in a very real way to support businesses, or indeed further progress their idea as a business in itself."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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It was announced today that Avoca is to create 80 jobs with the opening of its largest store yet in Dunboyne, Co. Meath. This will bring total employment in Avoca to more than 900 employees.



Avoca is one of Irelands most popular destination retailers, famous for its cafes, food halls, fashion and artisan craft products. Three million euro million is being invested in the new store which will opens in the Autumn.

This comes just two months after Avoca was acquistioned by Aramark.

Managing Director of Avoca, Simon Pratt today commented, "This is our 12th store and our largest and most ambitious to date. Were investing more than 3 million to create a gorgeous experience for our customers and the fit out will be to the highest standards. The location is superb and will attract consumers from West Dublin, Meath, Kildare and beyond, looking to enjoy the Avoca experience."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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ConnectIreland are celebrating this week after they won the coveted Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Development category at the prestigious World Media Awards in London on Wednesday.



The World Media Awards were awarded to demonstrate the effectiveness of cross platform, cross border, content-driven advertising. Organised by the World Media Group, with an independent Jury, the Awards celebrate bold and creative strategies for engaging with international, influential audiences.



The category that ConnectIreland won is awarded to recognise effective best practice in targeting the difficult to reach investor and business audience, to promote investment and trade for your city, region or nation anywhere around the world.



ConnectIreland CEO, Joanna Murphy commented, "The judges were very taken by the results we have achieved together on such a small budget. They commended the ingenuity and the drive of Irish people right across the globe who forged connections abroad and asked the question  have you considered Ireland as a hub for international expansion."

She added, "Being selected as an award winner along with massive, global brands augurs well for everyone who works with ConnectIreland on behalf of Ireland and gives our initiative exposure amid a captive, influential audience of our global peers."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Oneview Healthcare Plc, an Irish Healthcare Software Company, have announced this week that they will complete their initial public offering of securities and list on the Australian Securities Exchange.

It is hoped this will help to fund aggressive growth of its digital platform that is revolutionising patient care in Australia, the USA and the Middle East.



Overview Healthcare has global aspirations and plans to use its initial public offering and listing on the ASX as a springboard to roll-out new technology in international markets. The move was originally supported through investment from Enterprise Ireland.



The company marked its listing on the ASX with a bell ringing ceremony at the ASX yesterday which was attended by the Irish Ambassador to Australia, Mr Noel White and the Irish Consul General, Ms Jane Connolly.



CEO of Enterprise Ireland, Julie Sinnamon said, "A key focus of Enterprise Ireland is to support Irish companies to scale in international markets. Enterprise Ireland has been working with Oneview since 2008 and I warmly congratulate them on this exciting and historic occasion."

She added, "As one of the leading global providers of patient engagement solutions for healthcare facilities, Oneview is a fantastic example of the type of innovative Irish companies that are making a real impact in global markets. I wish Oneview every success as they continue to grow and expand in international markets."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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As Business World came back into the office after St Patricks Day we only needed to look at the roads and public transport to realise there were a lot of people taking the long weekend! A quick straw poll among the team and it became obvious that many partners, friends, colleagues and school kids are on holidays.

Some businesses face a very positive financial situation on the back of Paddys day;

 Biggest trading day for some businesses  pubs, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc.

 Large marketing / advertising spend in the run up  trickle-down effect to many businesses, including Business World!

 Brewers / caterers massively increased trade, before, during and after

 Tourism sectors  hotels / hostels, tours, museums, car hire etc. boosted significantly before, during and after.

 Certified Public Accountants Ireland estimate that 140,000 people visit Ireland on St Patricks day

Government support

The Irish Government has pushed a diverse mix of St Patricks Day events to boost key industries such as tourism, food and culture.

Tourism Irelands 2016 Global Greening initiative has increased in recent years. The concept behind global greening is turning sites around the world a shade of green to celebrate our national day. New sites taking part in 2016 include 7 World Trade Center at Ground Zero in New York, Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Yas Viceroy Hotel in Abu Dhabi and the Nelson Mandela statue in Johannesburg.

They are joined by some old favourites which have gone green in previous years  including the Colosseum in Rome, the Sacre Cur basilica in Paris, the Great Wall of China, Niagara Falls and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

Bord Bia also got in on the act. As the world prepares to celebrate St. Patricks Day and all things Irish this week, Bord Bia will maximize the opportunity to promote Irish food and drink to a global audience.

From Abu Dhabi to Zagreb, through its network of international offices, Bord Bia is coordinating over 100 promotional activities and events aimed at consumers, retailers, trade and foodservice operators. Irish food and drink exports reach over 175 countries around the world and were worth 10.8 billion in 2015.

Business World

So clearly depending on which sector your business operates in is key to how much you enjoy St Patricks Day! At Business World we support a broad range of clients, so we know how much holidays and celebrations can affect business both positively and negatively.

Here at Business World we have a strong mix of news journalists, blog writers and SEO specialists who create content that is interesting, informative, and bespoke to your business needs. This can include tailoring your content to support events, such as St Patricks day, throughout the year.

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CASPER  A local man is facing felony charges for stealing multiple snowmobiles and trailers, according to a Casper police report.

James William Smith, 44, is charged with two counts of grand larceny. He is listed as homeless on the police report.

Smith allegedly stole a trailer carrying two snowmobiles from a location on West 20th Street, the report states. When Smith was arrested by police on an unrelated warrant last month, his girlfriend drove the trailer to a friends home in the county.

When interviewed by police, Desaray Alcorn said she knew the snowmobiles had been stolen, according to the report. She is charged with wrongful taking of property and conspiracy to commit grand larceny.

During the police interview, Alcorn admitted to helping Smith steal another trailer, the report states. She said they had driven that trailer to the same location in the county.

All the stolen property was returned to its owners.

Smith had been released from jail prior to police interviewing Alcorn, according to the report. Police later discovered Smith was incarcerated in Riverton and issued a warrant for him. The report does not state why Smith was being held in Riverton.
It was announced today that the UCD College of Business has made 10 additional faculty appointments for the academic year 2015-2016 following consistently high admissions this year.

The UCD Business School have a student body in Dublin now exceeding 3,340 for the 2015-2016 academic year.



Furthermore, UCD Smurfit School has created an Entrepreneur-in-Residence position, a role that has been filled by Majella Murphy and are hosting a new Proudly Made in Africa Fellow in Business and Development, Dr. Penelope Muzanenhamo.



The Dean of UCD Business, Professor Ciaran O hogartaigh today commented, "The creation of an Entrepreneur-in-Residence position and the appointment of a Proudly Made in Africa Fellow also reflect our desire to constantly evolve the student offering to prepare our future graduates for the world of business."

He added, "These new roles will provide opportunities to both challenge and support our student body and expose them more to an entrepreneurial mindset while also broadening horizons and ensuring they have a deeper understanding of Africas key role in international business."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Heineken is likely to ask Vijay Mallya, who owes creditor banks more than $1 billion, to step down from the board of United Breweries, India's largest brewer, three people with direct knowledge of the plan told Reuters.

They said such a move would likely be a prelude to the Dutch drinks firm raising its stake in the maker of Kingfisher beer to above 50%, betting on a small but fast-growing beer market.

Heineken acquired a 37.5% stake in United Breweries in 2008 through its takeover of Scottish & Newcastle and has since increased its holding to 42.4%. With Mallya distracted by debts from a collapsed airline venture, this could be a timely grab by Heineken in a market that is growing much faster than the global average.

Two-thirds of Indians don't drink alcohol, often for religious or cultural reasons, but rapid urbanization and a rising middle class are changing consumer habits. India accounts for 13% of world beer consumption, and annual volume growth is expected to outpace the global average, and major markets like China, through 2019, according to ratings agency Moody's.

The sources said Heineken was considering asking Mallya to step down from the United Breweries board he chairs. Alternatively, it could call a shareholder meeting to vote on his ouster from a company his father built into a family empire.

The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A Heineken spokesman declined to comment on any move to tighten control over the Indian joint venture, but said India remains an "exciting opportunity" for growth given its demographics and strong economic fundamentals.

Mallya and a spokesman for UB Group did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Banks, regulators and investigators in India have turned up the heat on Mallya, who inherited United Breweries at the age of 28 and led it on an ambitious expansion.

Creaking under mountains of bad debt banks themselves are under pressure from the government to chase up high profile cases like Mallya, whose Kingfisher Airlines collapsed in 2013 leaving unpaid wages and angry creditors.

Mallya has already been forced to give up control over United Spirits, part of his UB Group, to Diageo , which now owns about 55 percent of the company. He stepped down from the board last month, receiving a $75 million pay off. On Thursday, creditors auctioning off Kingfisher Airlines' Mumbai headquarters did not receive a single bid, according to a banker with direct knowledge of the process.

Mallya left India early this month - as banks sought a court order to confiscate his passport - and has not disclosed his whereabouts, but he has used his Twitter account to say he is not an "absconder" and would comply with Indian law.

The collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and the vast unpaid bank dues are a high-profile illustration of India's ineffective bankruptcy and debt recovery processes, and highlight the often close ties between politics and business.

A member of India's upper house of parliament, Mallya is known as the "King of Good Times" for his party lifestyle. He is often described as India's answer to British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

Mallya borrowed heavily to expand his airline's network, but a series of missteps, including the ill-conceived acquisition of a rival, saw the carrier grounded, some former senior staff said. They said Mallya micro-managed operations - from the selection of routes to the design of baggage tags - with no previous experience in the aviation industry.

"Unlike what he did in his liquor business, which is run by people who have the expertise, he got personally involved in the airline business .... a very, very wrong decision," said Sanjay Bahadur, who worked at the airline as a corporate affairs executive dealing with the government and regulators.

Mallya has blamed the airline's collapse on macro-economic factors and previous government policies. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are in for a rough ride if recent Russian national security documents and speeches genuinely represent the Kremlins worldview. Not only do these texts veto their membership in NATO, but they exclude mutually profitable partnerships for these countries with the European Union and other Western institutions, constrain their domestic development, and encourage the suppression of civil liberties by warning of fictitious Western plots to change their regimes under the guise of democracy promotion and human rights.

BACKGROUND: On December 31, Russias President Vladimir Putin signed a new National Security Strategy (NSS) that blames the U.S. and its allies for building regional orders in Europe and East Asia that deny the principle of equal and indivisible security, excluding Russia and other non-Western powers from the U.S.-led regional alliance networks. The NSS reaffirms Russias international mission to balance U.S. hegemony and secure a multi-polar world that preserves geopolitical balance, the authority of the United Nations, and traditional views on national sovereignty. The NSS sees the Russian regime under direct threat since Moscow has placed itself in Washingtons crosshairs for resisting U.S. efforts to dominate the world.

Alleged Western efforts to overthrow foreign governments, such as regimes friendly to Moscow, are seen as a major problem. The text claims that the U.S. and its allies are employing massive financial assets, their domination of the international information order, internationally servile NGOs, and locally obedient partners to subvert foreign governments under the guise of democracy promotion and anti-terrorism. Whereas the West accuses Moscow of Russian hybrid warfare tactics, the NSS uses reverse imagery to warn that, the struggle for influence in the international arena involves the whole range of political  economic, and information instruments as well as military power and clandestine warfaremandating a comprehensive defense by Russia and its allies against this onslaught.

In his annual review of Russian diplomacy on January 26, 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the media that, while Moscow wanted to improve relations with the Georgian people, the criminal mistakes of former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili forced Moscow to detach Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Tbilisis control, which is the main source of bilateral tensions. Lavrov further asserted that Moscow was concerned by reports that ISIS is setting up its cells not only in Afghanistan and some Central Asian countries, but also in the Pankisi Gorge  trying to get through all the cracks and gaps. No one will be safe unless we fight them together.

Lavrov also reaffirmed the Russian world concept as not just some Russian invention not a project, but an objective reality. Lavrov complained that NATO was misleading people into thinking that Russian leaders would use force to protect ethnic Russians all over the world to justify NATOs military buildup along Russias periphery. Simultaneously, he insisted that Moscow would maintain contact and communication channels with these people to see how we can help them, above all to ensure that they are able to use their language, have mass media available in their native language, so that they can get together and hold various events to help preserve their culture and identity, ensuring their rights as citizens of the state where they live  rights that would not be infringed upon and be based on generally recognized norms of international law.

IMPLICATIONS: Russian leaders also warn Eurasian countries against developing defense ties with NATO, especially joining the alliance or supporting its missile defense projects, constructing socioeconomic ties with the European Union or other Western regional economic structures, and backing Western sanctions or other measures against Russia. Instead, they affirm Moscows determination to build its Eurasian Economic Union and partner with China and other non-Western states in establishing a new institutional framework that would embrace Central Asia and the Caucasus in an eastward orientation. Lavrov explained that Russia should do everything we can not to depend on the whims of a particular group of countries, above all, our Western partners.

Russian leaders caution their counterparts in Central Asia and the Caucasus that Western governments are seeking to overthrow legitimate political authorities with color revolutions, by backing local groups and individuals who, under the banner of promoting civil liberties, are seeking to undermine their regimes and replace them with U.S. puppets. They hold the West responsible for the anti-constitutional coup in Kyiv that overthrew the constitutional system and created enduring enmity among Ukrainians and insecurity for their neighbors. The complaint that the West has transformed Ukraine into a long-term source of European instability adjacent to Russia implies that Moscow will do whatever it can to avert similar developments in other Eurasian border regions.

Another line of thought found in the current Russian discourse is to limit Western ideas in local media, including through suppression of the Internet, by warning of how foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists misuse information flows to weaken national unity and stir up ethnic and religious hatred. If leaders in Central Asia and the Caucasus suppress media freedoms, they will further alienate their countries from Western partners and have fewer alternatives to deepening ties with the Eurasian autocracies.

Despite professing concern about the proliferation of conventional and unconventional weapons, the Strategys claim that the U.S. is erecting biological weapons facilities along Russias periphery could prove self-defeating if it results in more restrictions on the local governments cooperation with Western disease control and WMD interdiction programs. These biosafety and biosecurity programs inevitable involve joint training and local capacity building. For example, in March 2011, Georgia opened a new U.S.-funded biological research facility, the Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research, near Tbilisi that aims to advance public and animal health by detecting infectious diseases and epidemiological surveillance.

European governments have been developing better countermeasures against Russian influence over time, and Moscow has minimal influence over most countries in Africa, the Western Hemisphere, and even Asia. However, Russias Eurasian neighbors have less effective defenses against Russian policies they oppose due to their geographic proximity, economic and cultural interdependencies, and other links with Moscow.

Importantly, many of their citizens share the Russian governments worldview due to the ubiquity of the Russian media and other forms of ideological influence. The Gallup Polling Organizations 2014 survey of former Soviet Union (FSU) countries found that most of the respondents  except for those in Moldova, Azerbaijan, Estonia, and especially Georgia  agreed that Russian Federation media sources covering the situation in Ukraine and Crimea were reliable. Only a small percentage of the respondents used Western media and those who used both generally trusted Russian media more than Western media, except in Georgia. Only in Georgia and Estonia was distrust of Russian Federation media sources common and only Georgians saw Western media as more reliable than Russian media and consumed more Western than Russian media. Regarding Russian policies in Ukraine, the more highly educated respondents, who used Western as well as Russian Federation media, were more likely to express support for Crimeas joining Russia than the average respondents, even in the Baltics and Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova  all countries where support for the Crimea occupation was small.

CONCLUSIONS: Of course, the question remains whether Putin and other Russian leaders, who can comment intelligently on international affairs when prompted, genuinely believe these bizarre claims about Western goals, motives, and even capacity for influencing events in Eurasia. However, even if they are simply propounding instrumentally useful distortions as part of their information operations, whatever their private beliefs, they may find it useful or necessary to pursue policies that accord with the agreed doctrine. One wild card is how the newly elevated Russian nationalism seen in recent Russian government discourse could affect Russian ties in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The language is instrumentally useful for the Kremlin in rallying nationalist sentiment behind its policies, but the mobilization of Russian ethnic nationalism will complicate Moscows relations with former Soviet republics fearful of Russian irredentism or vulnerable to Moscow-backed ethnic strife.

AUTHORS BIO: Dr. Richard Weitz is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute.

Image Attribution: img.rt.com, accessed on March 9, 2016
B, double E, double R, U-N.

Now, the beer run is more than a Todd Snider song lyric; it is literal.

The House of Rock will hold a free fun run celebrating National Beer Day on April 7. After running three to four miles around downtown, runners will head to the bar to do 16-ounce curls, as one of the event ringleaders calls drinking pints of beer.

Appropriately, the idea for the run came about at a bar over some beers.

"One day I was joking around," said Clent Mericle, who leads a regular Monday night fun run downtown. "I think it was around National Doughnut Day. I said, 'Well, there's probably a beer day too.'"

A Google search revealed that to be the case, and the event took shape. Mericle will lead runners around downtown for approximately 30-40 minutes at a 10 minute per mile pace. The House of Rock will offer specials of $2.50 for domestic beer or $3.50 for imports. The Scarecrow People band will play.

While the purpose of the event is celebratory, it has some serious history. National Beer Day commemorates the Cullen-Harrison Act that Franklin D. Roosevelt signed in 1933, ending prohibition of the sale of beer and wine. Legend has it that beer drinkers reveled in streets and taverns when the Act took effect April 7.

House of Rock embraces beer as well. In the last several years the bar has evolved from selling mostly lagers to offering a variety of 85 or more craft beers at any given time. Casey Lain, the House of Rock's owner, has rebuilt the back bar and revamped the menu. The kitchen has gained a reputation for tasty pizza and other treats.

House of Rock has also grown into a supporter of local running, opening its space to several of the area's popular 5Ks and sponsoring Beach to Bay teams. Hosting runs has been good for business and also good for the community, Lain said.

"I love doing stuff that's a little out of the box, a little different," Lain said. "Those events are active, healthy, and have brought people into the heart of downtown."

Alissa Mejia's column focuses on running and fitness. Contact her at freestylesail@gmail.com.

IF YOU GO

What: National Beer Day Fun Run

When: 6 p.m. April 7

Where: House of Rock, 511 Starr St.

Cost: The run is free, with no registration required. Beer will be available afterward for purchase.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wings of Wellness 5K run: 8 a.m. Saturday, 401 E. Travis St., Falfurrias.

Arise-N-Run 5K & 2-mile walk: 11 a.m. March 26, 3115 Ocean Drive.

Turtle Trot & Shorebird Shuffle 5K: 9 a.m. April 2, Texas Sealife Center, 14225 South Padre Island Drive.

Details and registration available via www.corpusroadrunners.com.
Contributed photo The Port Aransas Art Center is seeking artist interested in selling art during its 11th annual ArtFest in May.

SHARE Contributed photo The Port Aransas Art Center is seeking artist interested in selling art during its 11th annual ArtFest in May.

By Esther Hackleman, Esther.M.Hackleman@caller.com

Interested in selling or browsing local artwork but aren't sure where, the 11th annual ArtFest in Port Aransas could be the answer.

The Port Aransas Art Center will partner with host, Port Aransas Chamber of Commerce, to bring attention to the original works of fine arts and the crafting skills of Coastal Bend artists.

"We're still a young ArtFest, and we continue to grow every year," said Executive Director Mary Rose.

This year, there will be space in the park for at least 60 booths, featuring artwork ranging from paintings to decorative and functional pottery, handmade metal and wire works, mosaics, jewelry, photography and more.

"We hope in the future as we go along we'll be able to attract more artists from throughout the area and continue to make it an even more exciting event," Rose said.

In addition to the displays of artwork and talent, the festival will include live music and food vendors.

The deadline to submit an application to sell artwork is April 1.

Twitter: @Caller_Esther

IF YOU GO

What: ArtFest

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 14 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 15

Where: Robert's Point Park, Port Street, Port Aransas

Cost: $150 registration fee for artists; event is free to attend, but art prices vary

Information: www.portaransasartcenter.org

ART MUSEUM OF SOUTH TEXAS

'EXPLORING THE LAND: LANDSCAPES ...'

What: The exhibit explores how depictions of American landscapes have evolved during more than 200 years of art, including the variety of style and social influences.

When: Through April 26

Where: 1902 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Information: 361-825-3500

ART CENTER OF CORPUS CHRISTI

'Dr. David Tripp'

What: The Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi's Coastal Studies inaugural artist in residence will be David Tripp at the Art Center of Corpus Christi. The artist will host a reception, open house and market night.

When: Through March 26

Where: 100 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Information: 361-884-6406

'Visionarios 2016 Youth Art'

What: The 15th annual "Visionarios Youth Art" exhibit showcases the work of artists from first to 12th grades representing concepts of science, technology, engineering and math through art. The exhibit is sponsored by Flint Hills Resources and the Art Museum of South Texas.

When: Through March 20

Where: 1902 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Information: 361-825-3500

K SPACE CONTEMPORARY

'Kitsch Show'

What: The juried exhibition will host a variety of art that is a collection of works that are tacky, overdone and melodramatic until they are cool. There will be an opening reception during ArtWalk from 5:30-9 p.m. Friday.

When: Through April 1

Where: Main Gallery, K Space Contemporary, 415 Starr St.

Information: 361-887-6834

'3SUM'

What: Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi alumni Catrina Phillips, Eugene Soliz and Mayra Zamora will showcase their recent colorful and dramatic drawings, paintings and sculptures.

When: Through March 26

Where: Hot Spot Gallery, K Space Contemporary, 415 Starr St.

Information: 361-887-6834

JOSEPH A. CAIN MEMORIAL ART GALLERY

Drawing and Small Sculpture Show

What: Celebrating 50 years, Del Mar College's annual National Drawing and Small Sculpture Show attracts works from some of the most creative contemporary American artists from across the United States. Each year, a guest juror of national stature judges the annual show with internationally known book art sculptor Brian Dettmer serving as the 2016 juror.

When: Through May 6

Where: Joseph A. Cain Memorial Art Gallery, Fine Arts Center, 101 Baldwin Blvd.

Information: 361-698-1216

COASTAL BEND COLLEGE

'Oblivious'

What: The Coastal Bend College will host the photography and prints of Coastal Bend alumni's "Carol Lee" exhibit with the "Oblivious" exhibit.

When: Through April 7

Where: Simon Michael Art Gallery, Frank Jostes Visual Arts Building

Information: 361-358-8615

Beeville Art Museum

'Paintings from the Nave'

What: A collection of 40 paintings by Royston Nave, the namesake of the Nave Museum, will be on display showcasing the works of the La Grange native.

When: Through April 30

Where: 401 E. Fannin St., Beeville

Information: 361-358-8615

JOHN E. CONNER MUSEUM

'A Celebration of Quilts ...'

What: "A Celebration of Quilts 2016: A Heritage of Texas Quilts" showcases the hours of design and creativity stitched into the 36 quilts featured.

When: Through March 19

Where: John E. Conner Museum, 905 W. Santa Gertrudis St., Kingsville

Information: 361-593-2810

ROCKPORT CENTER FOR THE ARTS

'Rising Eyes of Texas'

What: The Rockport Center for the Arts will host the work of 33 emerging undergraduate and graduate students representing 16 Texas universities during the 9th annual Rising Eyes of Texas exhibit.

When: Through April 2

Where: Rockport Center for the Arts, 902 Navigation Circle

Information: www.risingeyesoftexas.com
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By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

A 26-year-old man died early Thursday after he fell asleep at the wheel on U.S. Highway 77, Department of Public Safety officials said.

About 1:15 a.m. Sterling Eugene Siverand, 26, and his girlfriend, both of Houston, were heading north on U.S. Highway 77 about a mile south of Sarita, Trooper Nathan Brandley said.

Siverand was driving a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe when he fell asleep and drifted off the road way and into the center median, Brandley said. Siverand then drove back into the northbound lane, went off the right shoulder and his car overturned.

Brandley said Siverand, who wasn't wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the driver side of the car and died at the scene. Siverand's girlfriend was taken to Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial and is expected to survive. She was wearing a seat belt, he said.

Twitter: @CalleNatalia
Live updates: Follow Donald Trump rally coverage in Robstown, Texas

Donald Trump is expected to speak in support of GOP candidates during the Texas rally at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Nueces County
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It's Women's History Month and every year around this time, I receive an email that a male colleague sends to all his female co-workers and friends marking the occasion. The messages are unfailingly celebratory of women as great mothers, friends, partners, etc.

It's a nice thing to do, but it is also indicative of the fact that we've lost sight of the purpose of Women's History Month, which should be about remembering, honoring and supporting the variety of social justice struggles in which women are involved.

In short, we need to remember and support female activists more.

Take as an example the origin of International Women's Day, which happens during Women's History Month. It is in fact a remembrance of the struggles of female workers in the U.S. It was first observed by the Socialist Party of America in honor of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, one of the largest labor unions in the United States and one of the first to have a primarily female membership. It played a key role in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. Subsequent celebrations of the day in Europe were held to build support for women's right to vote, to hold public office and to work. It was also used to march for peace and protest war during the two world wars.

At the outset then, the occasion was used to support women's activism on behalf of gender equality, but also their protest continuing problems such as labor discrimination and militarism. Those struggles were not without risk, as the female activists at the forefront of struggles for equal suffrage for white women and African American women fighting against lynching in the U.S. knew too well. Their efforts were often met with violence and repression.

It is true to this day. This year has become a sad reminder of the risks and dangers that female activists around the world face as they struggle to make it a better place. For example, Honduran human rights activist Berta Caceres, a leading voice in indigenous and environmental struggles in her country, was murdered recently in her home a day before what would have been her 45th birthday. Caceres, who was a member of the Lenca indigenous people and a co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, received the world's leading environmental award, the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for her opposition to one of Central America's biggest hydropower projects. Her work was dangerous. As an activist in the country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, Caceres received multiple death threats, but she would not stop her work.

Caceres' example hits close to home for me as a fellow Central American, and because I was lucky enough to meet her and be inspired by her. We all need to honor the activism of women like her. We need to remember and support all the struggles in which women are involved.

This Women's History Month, we don't just want poems about how fabulous women are, or celebrations of historical firsts. Instead, we need to learn about and support female activists of the past and present. We need to find new and better ways to honor their struggles by supporting the causes for which they dedicated their lives.

Teachers can teach their students about brave anti-lynching activists such as Ida B. Wells, or the suffragettes who staged hunger strikes to gain the vote for white women in the U.S. Parents can watch films about female activists, such as "Iron Jawed Angels," with their children, or take them to vote, or to a protest the poisoning of drinking water, or to a march against police violence. We need to make sure Women's History Month is not just about the past, but also the present of women's activism.

Juliet Hooker is a core faculty member in the Center for Women's and Gender Studies and an associate professor of government and African and African Diaspora studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of "Race and the Politics of Solidarity" and is a Public Voices Fellow.
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Alvin T. Reagan, CPA EA

IRS scammers employ new tactics

Scammers pretending to be aggressive IRS agents are nothing new, but they're taking a new approach. The IRS reports the scammers are calling as IRS employees that claim to have your tax return, and just need to verify a few details (such as Social Security numbers, bank card or credit card numbers, etc.) to process the return. The IRS does not call out of the blue, neither to verify personal information nor to threaten taxpayers into making payments or face police action.
A term bandied a lot around the agency circles of late is design thinking. For some creative agencies, design thinking has been seen as a solution and a way to expand their services, opening up doors to technology creation among other things. At the heart of this notion, though, is that design thinking is more holistic and takes into consideration brand problems that advertising cant.

With the help of companies such as Apple, design thinking  also sometimes called human-centred design  has been popularised and broadly taken as combining product, service and business in design. At its best, design thinking can help brands fight stagnation and create new value through purposefully designed products, services and marketing initiatives created with end users and market dynamics in mind. But even as its under the spotlight, it is a discipline that is seldom clearly understood.

When comparing it to advertising, Jonathan Ng, creative partner at Nurun Singapore, a Publicis Groupe design consultancy, says design thinking shapes much more than just a brand message. He also describes the practice as complex and difficult to understand for most outside the industry.

Put simply, though, design thinking is a process that follows a series of phases  such as, discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution  that are used to reach a desired outcome. This results in a well-tested prototype for a product, service or platform. The scope of design thinking is huge and its applications broad.

A design thinking chart from Ideo. Most others follow a similar process. In reality, the design thinking cycle is often repeated and the prototype iterated many times until a desirable outcome is reached. In a sense, design thinking looks more like scientists working in a lab than an ad agency churning out a campaign through a well-oiled production line.

Our timelines are long, says Joanne Theseira, general manager at Nurun Singapore. It can range from 40 days to months before we reach a prototype, because we are testing it and testing it.

While there are variations in the process and how it is conveyed graphically among different design agencies, such as Ideo, Frog Design and Fjord, Ng says that the foundations are the same. If the process is managed well, either type of agency is capable of delivering an effective solution, he explains. However, a good agency partner should do more than just deliver a solution on paper. They have to bring it to life, test it, make it, test it again and market it effectively.

The question in Asia-Pacific is whether clients are ready to make such an investment.

As it turns out, ad agencies arent the only ones investing in design thinking in the region. Consulting firms are, too. According to Olof Schybergson, CEO and founder of Fjord, Asia has been on the companys roadmap for over six years, even prior to its acquisition by Accenture and its integration with Accenture Interactive.

Inaki Amate, head of Fjord Hong Kong, believes that the time to launch in the region is now ripe.

Locally theres an interest in how design can transform business, says Amate, who launched Fjords first regional office in Hong Kong late last year. Most clients have heard about design thinking, but here in Hong Kong there isnt anyone to show them what it means for their business.

Amate, who has launched Fjord offices in other markets, including Spain and Turkey, observes that many local companies in China are wondering what else they can do to catch up with innovative companies in the east of China.

In early March, PwC also launched a design thinking offering in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, following the acquistion of Hong Kong creative agency, Fluid.

Watch Campaign's Design Thinking in Asia, episode 1.

At the same time, many Chinese brands want to go global. They know how the local market works in China but still struggle to understand why theyre not successful in a market like Brazil, he says.

Compared with the size of Greater Chinas economy, Schybergson highlights that the number of local Chinese brands that have become successful globally is relatively low. But that will change in the next 10 years, and we want to be a part of that, he says.

When it comes to the paradigm of design thinking, however, Asias business culture presents certain challenges. Amate explains that clients in Asia want to see immediate results and tangible outcomes, but the early phases of design thinking dont necessarily provide for that. For one, Chinese culture tends to be impatient and very pragmatic, says Amate. That you need to spend time understanding the customer, create prototypes and run trials that you will later tear down is something we need to educate the market about.

The key will be to show design thinking drastically increases the chance of success compared with when you just go to market or create a new product without using design thinking.

Dealing with marketing departments  advertising agencies traditional entry point into a company  can also be an issue. Theseira says Nurun often starts out working with the chief marketing officer, but the department kind of disappears later in the process due to the scope of design thinking.

We often have to stop the marketer [mid-research] and say, while we understand the problem as they see it, we have to suggest that it goes even deeper, says Theseira.

From there, the design teams at Nurun will move on to work with the customer experience folks, R&D, the CEO, key decision makers and teams in distribution.

Its difficult for marketers to reframe the problem, says Theseira. With design thinking, they have to. It goes beyond the problems faced in marketing. Even if it is impacting marketing.

BIG IDEAS

Design thinking is still in its infancy in Asia-Pacific

Joanne Theseira, GM, Nurun Singapore

Clients know about the process of design thinking but find it hard to embark on a process because they dont have a clear idea of what the final deliverables might be.

However, if clients are open for it and the right stakeholders are involved, they will find opportunities and solutions that can transform their business or customer experience.

The greatest challenge for agencies in this space is recruiting talent. There is a need to change the mindset of hires that join from advertising and marketing.

The talent in advertising agencies are incredibly creative, but they have also been trained for many years to find solutions as quickly as possible. Design thinking takes a little more time than that. It demands that you interrogate, contemplate and identify underlying issues and problems that affect the clients business, and then pay careful attention to the users needs. Its not as simple as running a focus group.

However, its this analytical rigour that makes the design thinking process so rewarding for both agencies and clients.

Agencies are not yet fully set up for design thinking, as their core business and billing model is mostly still centred on headcount and scope. The partnership required in product, service or design innovation isnt structured quite the same way. It requires its own model, one that is beneficial to both agencies and clients and may sometimes include things like intellectual property rights.

Finally, in a world of design thinking, roles dont matter so much as the process, which is incredibly collaborative. Everyone is focused on the same outcome to eventually arrive at a user- or human-centric solution. Compared with the functions within an ad agency, the main difference with design thinking lies in the output of each role. For example, a strategist will need to lead the team in identifying a problem through empathy. A creative director will need to turn the problem into a solution that is both emotional and functional for our users. A service or product designer will need to bridge barriers for users so that they start to adopt the solution.

BIG IDEAS

Transformational work requires design thinking

Aden Hepburn, managing director, executive creative director, VML

Clients are facing new challenges, particularly in relation to the role of digital and the opportunity for it to transform not only how they advertise but also how they run their entire organisation. These problems are complex in nature and require a greater level of systematic thinking, customer-centric design and rapid prototyping.

For VML, it has been a natural evolution really. As a digital creative, content and technology agency, we find ourselves somewhere between an ad agency, design firm and tech shop.

Design thinking will continue to form a fundamental part of our approach to helping solve our clients problems.

Design thinking has provided a robust approach for understanding humans; how they think and behave, their emotions needs and desires, to then defining future visions through experimentation, prototyping, testing, production, and implementation.

When you break it down the ad industry is more similar to the design industry than you may think. Were both required to understand our audience, we both imagine a future for our clients and their customers, and we both experiment and test concepts before producing and deploying them to market.

In the past ad agencies have been focused on crafting messages and creative ideas to build interest, desire and loyalty towards our clients products and services. Design firms on the other hand have focused on designing superior tools or utilities that solve a problem or fulfill a latent need or desire. These products, services and ecosystems may or may not have a digital component.

As ad agencies and digital agencies increasingly tackle more complex and transformational client problems, they will continue to adopt design thinking methods. The best already do.

Our view: Design thinking is yet another approach agencies are embracing to move beyond marketing solutions. But is a process enough? Or do agencies need a complete culture change?
BUTTE  Lets just start out by saying Butte is unique. Whether your ethnicity is Irish, Serbian, Native American, Croatian, Cornish, French, Italian, Mexican, Norwegian, Finnish, or any of the dozens more, Butte residents wear their heritage like a badge of honor.

Laurie Rossberg and Sheila Cutler are no different.

The two women have a lot in common. Career teachers, both women are tall and blonde. Their physical attributes are so similar that through the years, they have been mistaken for sisters. And, get this  their youngest siblings each bear the name, Colleen.

Thats not where the similarities end, however. Rossberg and Cutler, who call each other Sis, share the same maiden name, Sullivan, and both women are fiercely proud of the Sullivan name and their Irish ancestry. It is their badge of honor.

Ever since I can remember, the name Sullivan defined who I was, said Rossberg, whose nickname is Sull. She explained that throughout her childhood and even now, the same questions were always asked  Which Sullivan are you? Rossberg, whose father was a twin, would quickly reply, Im Pat and Daves daughter. That led to a half a dozen more questions about her familys history, until finally the person was satisfied with which Dave was her dad.

Cutler had similar problems. Her 42-year-old father, Francis, passed away unexpectedly while the family was living in California and one year later, in 1966, Cutlers mom, Caryl, brought Cutler and her siblings, Kate, Tom and Colleen back to Butte. The questions started as soon as the family settled. Cutler was asked, with alarming frequency, Which Sullivan are you? She quickly decided to make her answer short and sweet. Father Bud Sullivan is my uncle she would say. No more explanation was needed. Their response was always the same  Oh, youre that Sullivan.

To get in the festive mood, Cutler puts out her Irish decorations and wears green from early March all the way through to St. Patricks Day. The real festivities, however, start with her birthday, which is March 14. The parade and a trip to the Elks is also on her must do list. Its tradition, Cutler said.

Rossberg leads up to the festivities by decorating her home, inside and out. She is, by her own admission, a bit fanatical about it. She came by it honestly. The tradition was instilled by her parents and passed on to her and her four siblings, Mary Pat, Dave, Julie and Colleen. During the days prior to the parade, Rossberg and her mother, Pat (Shea) Sullivan, who is 89, hit the many Irish events being held around town. On March 17, a variety of family members can be found at the parade, rain, snow or shine. Its tradition, Rossberg said.

Cutler made a brief visit to Ireland just last year and hopes to return. While on the plane, she thought of her ancestors and the sacrifices they made to start a new life in Butte. I appreciate them so much more, she said.

Rossberg has never been to her ancestral home, but she and her husband Gerry, plan a visit next year. She wants to know more about her Irish heritage, partly because, through the years, various Sullivans from other parts of the country have contacted her mother while working on their family trees. Without fail, they met a new relative.

One other thing Rossberg and Cutler have in common  despite their Irish roots, neither woman is too fond of corned beef and cabbage. Rossberg will only eat corned beef if its in a Reuben sandwich, and cabbage  well, forget that. Cutler, on the other hand, would just as soon have a Johns pork chop sandwich.
The WPP-owned media agency won the account following a three-week evaluation period by the telco, which involved the execution of real-life campaigns in order to compare digital performance and capabilities across agencies.

In a statement, Junaid Muhammad, Digis head of eBusiness, welcomed the agency to its roster: We look forward to working with Mindshare Malaysia in driving our business ahead of our competition to realize Digis ambition of becoming our customers favourite partner in digital life.

The win, which covers the full suite of digital services, comes within three months of Mindshare being appointed the partner for traditional media and, the agency added, comes on the back of pitching a proprietary dynamic marketing framework for Digi, which is a part of global telco giant Telenor.

Varun Channa, managing director of Mindshare Malaysia, said that the win adds to the agencys winning streak in paid, owned and earned digital assignments over the past few months.

Most notably, the agency won Nippon Paints digital business in February, after being awarded the media account in January.

For the fast-moving telco industry, digital plays the most pivotal role in achieving their business goals, and so we are privileged to have been selected by Digi as their digital partner, he added.
A week after J. Walter Thompsons Gustavo Martinez was hit with a bombshell discrimination lawsuit, WPP has announced that the CEO has resigned and is being replaced by WPP chief client team officer Tamara Ingram.

"By mutual agreement, Martinez has resigned in the best interest of the J. Walter Thompson Company," WPP announced.

Ingram has held the role of chief client team officer at WPP since 2015 and has been overseeing the holding companys 45 global account teams, representing one-third of WPPs $20 billion in revenue and more than 38,000 employees working on those accounts.

Prior to the chief client team officer role, Ingram was president and chief executive officer of Team P&G, a position she held since 2007.

Ingrams WPP tenure dates back to 2003, when she joined WPP data investment division Kantar. Following WPPs acquisition of Grey Global Group in 2005, Ingram was named group chief executive officer of Grey UK, where she also led the agencys global P&G business.

Before Grey, Ingram was chief executive officer of McCann Worldgroup in London. She began her career at Saatchi & Saatchi in 1985 as a temp and rose to chief executive officer of the agencys London office, before leaving for McCann Worldgroup.

See also: WPP tells court not to allow 'rape joke' video

George Rogers, global business development director at WPP, succeeds Ingram as chief client team officer, adding those duties to his existing role.

Rogers has been leading business development for the holding company since 2011. He joined WPP in 2005 when he was named chief executive officer of Team Detroit. He joined WPP from Mullen, where he was executive vice president.

The trouble for Martinez began last Thursday, when JWT chief communications officer Erin Johnson filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan alleging that he repeatedly made racist and sexist comments that rendered it "impossible for her to do her job." Martinez complained about "fucking Jews" and called black people "monkeys" in front of employees. He also made repeated rape jokes focused on Johnson and other female staffers, the suit says.



Tamara Ingram

"Come here so I can rape you in the bathroom," Martinez allegedly said before grabbing Johnsons neck and laughing. In another incident described in the suit, he allegedly told employees he would avoid the "black monkeys" and "apes" at airport customs because they "dont know how to use computers."

Johnson is seeking unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.

Martinez vehemently denied the accusations when the suit was filed, and WPP quickly sent a memo to agency executives saying the holding company was investigating the matter. "WPPs lawyers have been conducting an enquiry into previous correspondence on these matters since February 25 and have found nothing, as yet, to substantiate these charges," it said.

Though nobody at JWT or WPP came forward publicly to corroborate Johnsons claims, evidence against Martinez began to mount. Acknowledging he was the reporter in the lawsuit whom Martinez told Westchester had "too many Jews," Campaign US editor-in-chief Douglas Quenqua wrote a column detailing the interaction.

On Sunday, a lawyer for Johnson told Campaign US that Martinez appeared on tape in 2015 joking to top agency executives about fears he would be "raped" but "not in a good way" by African American hotel guests in Miami  an incident referred to in the 28-page lawsuit. On Monday, Johnsons lawyers confirmed that they were in possession of email messages that Johnson sent to the firms chief talent officer, Laura Agostini, requesting that he be given sensitive training. Those emails were mentioned in the lawsuit.

Johnson, who has been with the WPP agency since 2005, remains with the company, but has been placed on administrative leave, according to sources. She referred calls to her lawyers.

Martinez joined JWT in 2014 as global president and future successor to CEO Bob Jeffrey, who had held the role since 2004. Martinez assumed the top job in January 2015.

Though he kept a low profile in the press his first year as CEO, Martinez was busy behind the scenes restructuring the network and stabilizing its New York flagship. He oversaw the formation of Colloquial, a global content-generation shop, and Mirum, a single digital brand formed through the combination of 11 digital shops within the JWT network.

In October, Martinez made Brent Choi, chief creative and integration officer for Canada, responsible for the New York office as well. Choi replaced Adam Kerj, who had stepped in to take over the New York duties when North American CCO Jeff Benjamin departed less than a year earlier, in August 2014.

In February, Martinez said global CCO Matt Eastwood would effectively assume the North American CCO role. "We are covered," he said. "Matt Eastwood by now is covering this job because he's based, the majority of the time, in New York."

"Now with Brent Choi in New York, I can breathe," he added. "I can be honest with you. I think I have the right leadership here." He blamed the previous creative turnover on "some wrong decisions on casting."

"Maybe you can have one of the most creative guys in the world, but if you're asking him to be a manager, the guy's going to fail," he said.

In July, JWT was named lead global agency for Kellogs Special K cereal. Sources also say it had recently won creative duties for Boxed, a digital big box store poised to challenge Costco and B.J.s, though the status of that relationship is unknown.

"In this year, I was able to create all the bricks to build up the wall of J. Walter Thompson company," he said in the February interview. "Now I feel that I can knock the door of clients with a very complete and much more structured kind of offer to freely deliver what is my mission."

An economist by traininghe holds a bachelors and a Ph.D. in economics from the Universitat de Barcelona, and was a Professor of Marketing and Economics in Spain's School of Economics  Martinez first joined the advertising industry in 1993 as manager of the Strategic Consulting department at PWC.

Martinez spent 10 years at Ogilvy & Mather in multiple senior management positions, including global director of brand management, global new business director and COO of Ogilvy Latina, among others. After Ogilvy, Martinez worked as president of Europe and Asiaat McCann Worldgroup.

He was born in Buenos Aires but divided his time growing up between Spain and Canada. He is said to speak fluent Spanish, English, Italian, German and Portuguese.

"Over the past few years Gustavo and I have cultivated a relationship of mutual admiration and respect," said Jeffrey in a statement when Martinez was hired. "He is passionate about the business, devoted to clients and understands that the key asset of the business is the caring, nurturing and understanding of its people. Gustavo Martinez is the future of JWT."
| BY Ricki Green |

AJF Partnership Sydney has announce the hire of new creative director, Christopher Johnson.

Johnson joins from Havas, where he was instrumental in creating some of the agencys most renowned work including, Durex Fundawear, Virgin Game of Phones and #mealforameal, Buy the Sky for the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Reckitt Benckisers Harpic Toilet Confessions  all being awarded at Cannes.

Says Adam Rose, executive creative director / founding partner of AJF Partnership Sydney: Were thrilled to have someone of CJs calibre join us and were very excited about what he will bring to the agency and our clients. Not only is he extremely talented, but hes also a top quality individual with a positive attitude.

Says Johnson: Im stoked to be joining the guys at AJF in Sydney. Adam and Digby are very well respected in the industry and Im very much looking forward to helping them with the next phase of the business.

Johnson brings with him 19 years experience in the communications industry during which he has worked at most of the top agencies in Australasia including M&C Saatchi, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB, JWT and Havas Worldwide. In addition to Cannes, he has been awarded at D&AD, One Show, Clio, Adfest, Spikes, New York Festivals, LIAA, AWARD and ADMA.
| BY Ricki Green |

Saturday was World Day Against Cyber Censorship and in a unique partnership Amnesty International and AdBlock combined to deliver 156,789,119 impressions of messages by prominent privacy and free speech advocates Edward Snowden, Ai Wei Wei, and Pussy Riot in a campaign conceptualized and brokered by advertising agency Colenso BBDO.

Amnesty International experienced its highest ever daily web traffic.

For 24 hours AdBlock served banners with messages from these three influential individuals where they would normally remove banners altogether. During this period its estimated that over 50 million internet users were reached with these thought provoking messages speaking out against the dangers of cyber censorship.

At the heart of ad block usage is the users desire to tailor their online experience, but for many people around the world, their online experiences are tailored by what their governments are willing to let them see. This made this channel the perfect way to share quotes and information from Snowden, Ai Wei Wei, and Pussy Riot, who are heavily censored themselves, to be broadcast across the internet whilst creatively bypassing a number of current censorship restrictions.

Gabriel Cubbage, CEO of AdBlock, explained why Adblock got behind this campaign.

Says Cubbage: People use Adblock for a number of reasons but ultimately no one except you has the right to control what shows up on your screen, or who has access to the contents of your hard drive. Not the websites, not the advertisers, not the ad blockers. And not your government, either.

This is a view, which is shared by Salil Shetty, international secretary general at Amnesty International.

Says Shetty: Some states are engaged in Orwellian levels of surveillance, particularly targeting the lives and work of the people who defend our human rights  lawyers, journalists and peaceful activists. This continuing development of new methods of repression in reaction to increased connectivity is a major threat to our freedom of expression.

Started by Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, the day raises awareness of censorship of online freedom of expression. During the day long campaign hundreds of thousands people had visited the Amnesty International site and viewed the full content, with the majority of these clicks coming from Russia, one of the most censored countries in the world.

As well as that, it generated massive global media coverage in multiple markets that are usually censored by their own governments, including China, and the campaign has been reported about in highly influential publications including The Guardian, ABC news, Fortune and Billboard.

And most importantly, the truth found its way in front of tens of millions of people across the world.

Says Shetty: The world was too lax about the impact of the Internet on privacy and free speech. We now need a radically new approach to protecting online rights, before the next wave of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence.

Said Neville Doyle, digital planning director at Colenso BBDO: World Day Against Cyber Censorship is enormously important, and something we are very proud to be involved with. We wanted to help support this day and draw attention to it by doing something innovative that would get the world talking about what cyber freedom really means in 2016. With Amnesty International experiencing record levels of web traffic as a result of this campaign this is something we feel we have achieved.

Colenso BBDO hopes that by using creative, previously unexplored ways of freeing information, they can help bring attention to what is becoming a major threat to freedom of expression.

From here Amnesty International calls on the world to get behind its latest campaign Connection Denied, with the aim to stop cyber-censors in one of the worlds most repressed countries, North Korea.

Read Gabriel Cubbages full article here.

Client: Jane Clancey, Amnesty International, UK.

Partner: Gabriel Cubbage, CEO, AdBlock.

Agency: Colenso BBDO, Auckland, New Zealand.
| BY Ricki Green |

Curious director Zia Mandviwalla has directed Fedexs new documentary campaign for BBDO Guerrero.

The branded film introduces Birdie, a successful Hong Kong businessman, the owner of Hersheys Caffettiera that distributes coffee machines and supplies throughout Asia, Hercules Coffee Lab training centre and Hazel & Hershey, the most well known specialty coffee shop in Hong Kong.

The job given to Mandviwalla, though, was to find the interesting character behind the businessman for her branded film for Fedex. Fedex global documentary campaign depended on Mandviwalla making Birdies story inspirational to the owners of small and medium-sized businesses.

Characterisation is one of her most notable skills. Mandviwallas story, Night Shift, of an airport cleaner brought in the greater share of her seventeen international film awards and was selected to compete for the Palme DOr at the 2012 Cannes International Film Festival against nine other international competitors.

David Guerrero, creative chairman of BBDO Guerrero had a lot riding of Mandviwallas ability to create beautifully observed, insightful films. Fedex has been one of his agencys major clients for nearly a decade whose work had helped it become the first Philippine agency to be ranked in the Gunn Reports top 50 and Philippines Agency of the Year by Campaign, Kidlat and 4As.

Says Guerrero: Happy to work with Zia and Curious over an extended period on the documentary style film that aimed to reach small business and start ups in the region. She was able to build a real rapport with our subjects and, with a tight-knit and nimble team, we were able to get a lot done in a short space of time. I would also praise Curious production support as highly responsive and adaptable to the real-world pressures we encountered over the course of the production. I think both client and agency teams were very pleased with the outcome.

Says Mandviwalla: It is rare you get to work on a campaign like this where you have the chance to work with real people, get under their skin, get into their lives and find out what makes them tick.

But getting into peoples lives means squeezing into tight spaces and we often had to shoot with just the cameraman and myself, getting into the backs of cars, squeezing into their kitchens and distracting their kids while we interviewed them. Nothing could have been more gratifying. We were so grateful for the generosity and understanding of the agency, who were so patient while we shot and gave us the trust and freedom to get some moments of real gold. Together we worked as a team to put the edits together, as all good documentary is crafted in the edit suite. Most of all we had a really trusting client who let us head out into the world and capture these snippets of everyday peoples lives. It was a unique, exceptional experience and I look forward to doing some more.

Mandviwalla has also directed commercials with Curious for NZTA with Clemenger BBDO NZ, Google Android with R/GA, Vodafone with cummins&partners, Rebel Sport with Ogilvy & Mather NZ, NZ Pork with Ogilvy & Mather, NZBCF with Colenso, Sky with DDB and NZ Navy with Saatchi & Saatchi.

View her work here: http://www.curiousfilm.com/directors/zia-mandviwalla.

Agency: BBDO Guerrero Phillippines

Chairman CCO: David Guerrero

Creative Director: Rachel Yulo

Art Director: Liz Castaneda

Group Account Director: Karen Go

Senior Account Manager: Liezl Villamor

Agency: BBDO HK

Regional Acc Director: Michael Bantigue

Associate Acc Director: Raje Hiranand

Account Executive: Marie Tsoi

Production Philippines  Just Add Water Productions, Inc

Agency Producer: Jing Abellera

Agency Producer: Ino Magno

Production: Curious Film

Director: Zia Mandviwalla

Producer: Daniel Higgins

Cinematographer Ryan Alexander Lloyd

Post: Curious Film

Editor: Alex OShaughnessy

Grade: Pete Richie

Online: Leon Woods

Music Composer: Jonny Higgins
| BY Lynchy |

Following recent events, Tamara Ingram, currently Chief Client Team Officer at WPP, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of J. Walter Thompson Company, replacing Gustavo Martinez (left), who has resigned, with immediate effect.

The announcement comes a week after Erin Johnson, the agencys chief communications officer, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court alleging Martinez had made constant sexist and racist slurs over a period of time.

In 2015, Ingram was named WPPs Chief Client Team Officer, overseeing the Groups 45 global account teams, representing one-third of the Groups $20 billion of revenues with over 38,000 employees working on these clients. Prior to that, Ingram was President and Chief Executive Officer of Team P&G, a position she held since 2007. She joined WPPs wholly-owned data investment division, Kantar, in 2003.

Ingram (left) brings extensive advertising agency experience to J. Walter Thompson. Following WPPs acquisition of Grey Global Group in 2005, she joined that agency as Grey UKs Group Chief Executive Officer. There, she was also global leader on the P&G account. Before that, Ingram served as Chief Executive Officer of McCann Worldgroup in London. She began her career at Saatchi & Saatchi in 1985 as a temp, rising to Chief Executive of the London office, before leaving for McCann Worldgroup.

George Rogers succeeds Ingram as WPPs Chief Client Team Officer with immediate effect, in addition to his current duties as WPPs Global Business Development Director.
| BY Ricki Green |

M&C Saatchi Group, through LIDA (its CRM agency), has acquired a majority stake in MCD Partners, a digital customer experience agency. The offering will be led by MCD Partners co-founders Ian Magnani, John Caruso, and Wasim Choudhury.

The acquisition marks another key milestone in the M&C Saatchi Groups plan to take the LIDA offering to key global markets, starting with the launch of LIDA Australia in 2014.

Says Matthew Heath (left), chairman and head of strategy for LIDA: Rather than just find a clone of LIDA in the US, we chose MCD Partners as their digital customer experience skills are a perfect partner for our own roots in CRM. We are hugely excited about using this opportunity not only to grow into the US market, but also to enhance our talent and client capabilities in the UK and beyond.

Says Christine Gardner, MD, LIDA Australia: MCD Partners is a stellar addition to the LIDA network. This adds even more firepower to our local offering. Our expansion into the US gives us the ability to offer clients our collective expertise.

LIDA, Campaign UKs 2013 and 2014 Customer Engagement Agency of the Year, and Emmy Award-winning MCD Partners share a strong background of industry leadership and digital innovation. The acquisition brings together their complementary areas of expertise, resulting in a full suite of offerings from omnichannel advanced data analytics and CRM to user experience design and creative digital marketing.

Together, LIDA and MCD Partners collective capabilities, technologies, and platforms including their proprietary in-house Data Room and Insight Labswill inform design processes and engagement strategies, giving a more complete view of the consumer and helping to bring clients even closer to their customers.

Says Magnani: LIDA is an ideal partner for us, with our corresponding strengths, locations, and cultures. We value and respect each others unique identities, which we felt was crucial. Were thrilled to share our combined expertise with one another and with our clients, as we continue to grow and evolve in our new partnership.

LIDA specialises in CRM, data strategy and analytics, and direct marketing, deepening customer connections for global and local clients including O2, Boots, IKEA, National Trust, CBA, Lexus, IAG.

MCD Partners specialises in user experience design, digital marketing, and website/mobile/app development, with an established roster of clients and long-time partners including Discover Financial Services, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, and TIAA CREF. MCD Partners is comprised of 120 digital and technology experts in New York and Chicago, and will continue to operate as MCD Partners for the foreseeable future. LIDA is comprised of 230 digital and direct marketing experts in London and Sydney.
| BY Ricki Green |

Matterhorn Sydney has launched a new marketing campaign for Advil Liquid Capsules, which highlights that Advil works fast on pain and is absorbed 2x faster versus pain relief brands such as standard Nurofen.

The campaign comprises of a new TVC and a 360 degree Virtual Reality experience that lets people experience the benefits of Advil Liquid Capsules first hand.

Matt Kemsley (co-founder of Matterhorn) said: Driving home the speed credentials of Advil Liquid capsules in a modern, state of the art way is the key objective of this campaign. Plus having permission to avoid cliched lifestlye moments provided us with the perfect opportunity to create a high-tech, futuristic world that showcases this exciting, scientifically advanced brand.

Garry Horner (co-founder of Matterhorn): The simple reality of marketing today is that having a beautiful TV commercial is crucial, but its only half the battle. Engaging with customers and retailers in both the grocery and pharmacy sectors is equally important. This is where the Advil VR experience comes in. It gives the Advil Sales team an invaluable tool to ensure the brand is front of mind for customers and pharmacists at the most crucial part of the shoppers journey when theyve got their wallets in their hands.

Cutting Edge created the 3d commercial and VR experience for Matterhorn led by Cutting Edge director and VFX supervisor Simon Maddison.

Maddison said: Working with a Client and Agency with such foresight and trust in the team has been a real pleasure. The TVC lent itself perfectly to virtual reality; the viewer is the rider, racing through a fully CG world, smashing through pain crystals as the environment constantly builds and moves around you.

The complexity of the Advil VR experience is not something Ive seen before; a virtual environment of over 3,500 frames of liquid, moving mountains made up of two million fully reflective blocks and crystal simulations in stunning 4K. Theres nowhere to hide in VR  you cant cheat the landscape with camera angles; it all has to be beautiful. VR offers clients the ability to immerse their consumers inside their vision in a way thats never been done before, and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of this technology.

Says Kemsley: Working with Simon Maddison and the team at Cutting Edge has been a fantastic experience and from the treatment to the production they have over delivered with their creativity and effort. At every stage their suggestions and ideas have made the concept stronger.

Says Jalene Tiu, brand manager  Advil, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Australia: Were enormously proud of this campaign. It takes Advil to a new and refreshing creative direction. The TVC is single-minded and highly engaging across our campaigns multiple touch points. And the VR experience is a first for Pfizer as well and helps bring the TVC to life in a whole new different level. This is an excellent step forward for Advil.

Jalene Tiu. Brand Manager  Advil, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Australia

Chevaun Fenton. Marketing Director Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Australia/New Zealand

Agency: Matterhorn

Creative Team: Matt Kemsley & Garry Horner

TV Production: PlayFilms

Music, SFX and Audio: We love Jam

Post-Production: Cutting Edge

Director: Simon Maddison

Executive Producer: Samantha Daley

Head of VFX Production: Simone Barker

VR Supervisor: Simon Maddison

VR Producer: Lara Allen

VR Lead: var Bjarnason

Production Company: Carnival Productions
"This was really challenging for him [Tega] and also for me because I didn't understand what was happening and why my child wasn't fitting in to the education system," she said.
What did Secretary Kerry say about Islamic State and genocide?

In a speech on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the U.S. has determined that the actions of Islamic State (aka ISIS) against Christians and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria constitutes an act of genocide.

My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that, in my judgment, Daesh [Islamic State] is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities. [] We know that Daeshs actions are animated by an extreme and intolerant ideology that castigates Yezidis as, quote, pagans and devil-worshippers, and we know that Daesh has threatened Christians by saying that it will, quote, conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. [] The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia. This is the message it conveys to children under its control. Its entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology. There is no question in my mind that if Daesh succeeded in establishing its so-called caliphate, it would seek to destroy what remains of ethnic and religious mosaic once thriving in the region.

Why does Secretary Kerry refer to Islamic State as Daesh?

Daesh is a loose acronym of the Arabic for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham).

According to France 24, the term was first used in April 2013 by Arabic and Iranian media that were hostile to the jihadist movement and wanted to send the message that the group is neither truly Islamic nor a state. Daesh became a name commonly used by the enemies of the IS group, and was later adopted by the governments of France and the UK.

Why was the announcement made today?



As part of the 2015 omnibus government spending bill (which passed in December), Congress included a resolution requiring the Obama administration to say whether Islamic State was committing genocide.

Just yesterday a State Department spokesman said theyd miss Congresss deadline and that Secretary Kerry was taking a measured approach and that his decision would come soon.

What was the related measure Congress voted on this week?

On Monday the House of Representatives unanimously voted (393  0) on a non-binding sense of Congress resolution labeling the crimes of Islamic State against Christians and other minority religious and ethnic groups in Syria and Iraq to be genocide.

As the Washington Post notes, the last time the House voted for such a resolution was in 2004, when it said genocide was being committed in Darfur.

What exactly constitutes genocide?

The term genocide was coined in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin from the rooted words genos (Greek for family, tribe, or race) and cide (Latin for killing). Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1941, drafted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a resolution that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

(a) Killing its members;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

What is the basis for calling Islamic States actions genocide?

Numerous non-governmental organizations have documented the atrocities committed by Islamic State. For example, in a letter sent to Secretary Kerry on Tuesday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty outlined a number of ways that ISs actions constitutes genocide, including genocidal intent:

Daesh has not tried to hide its genocidal intent. Rather, Daesh uses the idea of a holy war against other religions as a means to recruit new members. Daesh has singled out Christians and Christianity in both its statements and its acts. In Dabiq, for example, Daesh threatened to attack the Vaticanthe seat of the largest Christian grouping. Those who have encountered Daesh, both scholars and soldiers, have declared that the group is intent on wiping out Christians in Iraq and the Middle East. Victims of Daesh also confirm that they were singled out for attack simply because of their faith.

Will this change U.S. policy toward Islamic State?

Probably not. Secretary Kerry did not say how this designation will affect future policy. As he said in his speech,

I want to be clear. I am neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury with respect to the allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing by specific persons. Ultimately, the full facts must be brought to light by an independent investigation and through formal legal determination made by a competent court or tribunal. But the United States will strongly support efforts to collect, document, preserve, and analyze the evidence of atrocities, and we will do all we can to see that the perpetrators are held accountable.

The U.S. would likely have aided in those efforts even if it wasnt officially called genocide. However, as Greg Stanton, president of the group Genocide Watch, told theWashington Post, the use of the genocide designation by the U.S. could help bring ISIS members to the International Criminal Court. Lets say ISIS wouldnt be impressed, says Stanton. But it could galvanize the world. And I dont mean just military action. I think we need a concerted effort to get Muslim countries especially to confront ISIS theologically and ideologically.
A royal commission with the writ to investigate and prosecute MPs, senators, party apparatchiks and political donors is long overdue. Why we think it disgraceful that a building company is stood over by thugs but tolerate relatively poor entrants to parliament retiring rich is beyond my comprehension. The salaries our pollies are on (frontbenchers excepted) are relatively modest, yet many seem to retire in very comfortable circumstances indeed. And yet we don't question it. Let us by all means end corruption in unions and industry  but don't stop there! Look also at politics and, perhaps most important, big business. Corruption is not the province solely of the blue collar sector.
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Three college students who first met while attending a Catholic high school in Florida have launched a scholarship fund to help others experience faithful Catholic education at a Newman Guide college. As we went off to different colleges, we kept in touch and found time to catch up whenever we returned []
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New Delhi/Mumbai: Seeking admission into IITs for the academic year 2016-2017 may prove costly for students, as IIT approved 200% fee hike in annual tuition fees, up from Rs 90,000 to Rs 3 lakh for undergraduate students.

However, the final decision on the hike should require approval from HRD minister Smriti Irani.

The Standing Committee of IIT Council (SCIC), which met on Thursday, analysed the average cost per student and had come out with a suggestion that 60% should be collected from students.

A panel, comprised the directors of the Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Hyderabad IITs, had prepared a draft - 'Roadmap to Financial Autonomy of IITs', in consultation with the HRD and finance ministries, in which it recommended the hike. Thus, the panel had stated, would be enough to cover costs incurred by way of salaries and maintenance.

Speaking to TOI, SCIC chairman Ashok Misra said, "On an average, it costs a bit over Rs 5 lakh a year to educate one student at an IIT. But while we approve the increase in fees, we also want to assure students that there will be scholarships and loans and the IIT gates will be open to all, irrespective of their means".

However, ministry has not given the nod to the proposal, and made it clear that various aspects should be taken into consideration before approving the fee hike.

The committee has also recommended that the every student will be offered interest-free educational loans under the Vidyalakshmi scheme.

The proposed new entrance examination, conducted by a National Authority of Test (NAT), designed to screen IIT aspirants, would be held from 2017 onwards, is the another key recommendation made in the meeting.

Also Read: Admissions
FINAO Solutions of Huntsville has been selected to provide state-of-the-art radiology workflow solutions and managed services to Chattanooga-based Tennessee Interventional and Imaging Associates.



"We have a hard working team of radiologists who provide 24/7 care for our patients," said Kelli Besh, Tennessee Interventional and Imaging Associates' CEO. "We selected FINAO to enhance our capabilities with their excellent workflow solutions and equally efficient 24/7 support. Combining the expertise of our highly trained radiologists with the FINAO work force will undoubtedly result in the highest quality care available for our patients."



Added FINAO Solutions CEO Gene Cathey, "We are very excited TIIA has selected FINAO to enhance their practice's radiology workflow. TIIA is an excellent group of doctors and we look forward to helping them continue their excellent patient care."



The TIIA team consists of 20 highly trained, board certified interventional and diagnostic radiologists with specialties in interventional, body, muscular-skeletal, neuro, nuclear, pediatrics, vascular and women's imaging. Providing 24/7 service at seven convenient locations, TIIA is the exclusive radiology team for Erlanger Health System and provides high-quality, patient-focused care to all of their greater Chattanooga locations including; Erlanger Baroness (Downtown/Medical Mall), Erlanger Women's East, Erlanger East, Erlanger North, Erlanger Bledsoe, Erlanger South and Erlanger Sequatchie Valley.



FINAO is a Value-Added Reseller for many best of breed products in the radiology industry. FINAO provides many of these solutions in a hosted environment. These products combined with FINAO's unparalleled expertise in radiology workflow and technology, ensure true, use-able solutions. FINAO services include technical expertise with 24/7 support.



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 U.S. Visa Service Site Erases Israel | Main | LA Times Obscures Judith Butler's Anti-Zionism 

March 15, 2016

Contested Sahara Versus Occupied West BankMedia Myopia



Whats the difference between contested? and occupied? territories? Often apparently not the territories themselves but whos contesting them.

From Kashmir to Crimea, Nagorno-Karabakh to Taiwan, countries and movements contest dozens of disputed territories, from tiny to large. Except for one involving Jews and their state. In that case, major news media coverage almost always defaults from "contested" to "occupied." The latest example:

Up to 1 million Moroccans marched through their capital on Sunday to protest the U.N. secretary-generals remarks about the contested [emphasis added] territory of Western Sahara,? Associated Press reported (U.N. chiefs remarks spur massive protest,? Washington Post news brief, online Mar. 13, 2016, in print March 14 [third item down, here]).

The brief added that Morocco considers the vast mineral-rich Western Sahara its southern provinces and took offense when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the word occupation [emphasis added] after a visit this month to refugee camps for the regions native Sahrawis in southern Algeria.?

Of course, virtually all major news media refer virtually always to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as occupied if not Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory." Rareand correctreferences to contested? or disputed? eastern Jerusalem do appear.

In fact, as the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), the cornerstone of all subsequent successful Arab-Israeli negotiations, made clear, the West Banks legal status wasand remainsdisputed. This will be so until a final Arab-Israeli peace agreement that resolves, among other things, Jewish and Arab contested claims in the area. (See, for example, Washington Post Corrects on West Bank Palestinian Land,? CAMERA, Sept. 7, 2014 here.)

U.N. Secretary General Ban obsessively and mistakenly lectures Israelis about occupied Palestinian territory? on which it builds illegal? Jewish settlements. CAMERA has spotlighted this, as in Ban Ki-moon Wrong About Israeli Settlements,? CAMERA, Mar. 15, 2013, Washington Times, March 9.

AP and The Washington Post cover Western Sahara as contested territory.? Theyand other mediashould do likewise regarding the West Bank. Considering Israels predominant position under the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, Article 6 and U.N. Charter, Chapter 12, Article 80 among other international provisions, not to mention the Jewish peoples more than 3,000-year-old ties to the territories, it's indisputably the least they could do.



Posted by ER at March 15, 2016 04:41 PM

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Suzuki has confirmed six new models including a lightweight Honda Jazz rival and a new city car for the next three years.



Suzuki UKs sales and marketing boss, Dale Wyatt, said that the carmaker will launch six all-new cars by 2017. Thats quite a lot compared to Suzukis current European lineup which includes the Alto, Splash, Swift, SX4, SX4 S-Cross, Jimny and Vitara.

The plan is to introduce two new cars in each of the A, B and C segments over the next three years. One will be a more rational, sensible car, while the other will be something more emotional, Wyatt told Auto Express.

Two of the upcoming cars are already known: the recently-unveiled Vitara SUV (pictured) and the Celerio city car, both scheduled to debut in 2015. But what models does Suzuki prepare for 2016 and 2017?

Wyatt says the first to arrive will be another hatchback that will complement the Swift. It will be a car that will answer all the reasons not to buy a Swift, which means it will be a more practical model aimed to rival mini MPVs like the Honda Jazz. The car will be very comfortable, raised up a bit and not as dynamically wired as the Swift, while weighing 90 kg less than the Swift. The model is likely to debut at the 2015 Geneva Auto Show and will go on sale in early 2016.

The second model to arrive in 2016 will be a sister car to the Celerio that will feature a more daring design and will focus less on interior space. Described by Wyatt as an A-segment funky car, the new model is said to create a new segment when it debuts at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show before going on sale in late 2016.

The last two models to arrive will be the next-generation Swift supermini which will be even sportier, and possibly an all-new Jimny.

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Audi of America has decided to scrap the optional 2-litre diesel engine for the redesigned 2017 A4 sedan. Gee, we wonder why



Volkswagens subsidiaries are suffering the aftermath of the German companys freak-diesel scandal, although Audi of America President Scott Keogh told Autonews that the decision was made in the last six months, reflecting the lower-demand for diesel-engine variants.

According to the Audi official, pulling the plug on diesel variants was not the result of VWs ongoing negotiations with U.S. regulators about its 2.0-litre engines. The marketplace speaks, we listen to the marketplace, and the marketplace told us, Go with SUVs, Keogh said.

Nevertheless, Audis 2.0-litre mills are manufactured by Volkswagen, and the latter currently has an embargo on selling new diesel models in the U.S, especially after the companys proposed fix regarding these powerplants was rejected by federal regulators.

So, until Volkswagen will receive the certification from EPA that its engines comply to U.S. emission regulations, sales will remain on hold. Still, Keogh maintains that even so, the A4 wont probably make itself available in a diesel variant:

We will get the cars certified and we would have brought [the A4 diesel] if there was enough demand. Every decision is a blend of a lot of things but I think the predominant thing is there was not significant market demand for the TDI sedans we had in the marketplace, A3, A6, A7 A8.

According to Audi, In the first six months of last year, diesel models accounted for roughly 6 to 8 percent of Audis A6, A7 and A8 sedans.

Audi is currently in discussions with Environmental Protection Agency regarding its 3.0-litre V6, used in its larger sedans and crossovers.

PHOTO GALLERY
Images of Jeeps new Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk have hit the web, just ahead of an official release at the New York Auto Show next Wednesday. And to answer your first question, no, it doesnt appear to get the Hellcat supercharged V8.



The pictures that appeared over at Jalopnik, show the full extent of visual enhancements the Trailhawk receives over the regular Grand Cherokee, with a desert backdrop.

The Trailhawk name is also used on Cherokee and Renegade variants, signifying more butch styling and more off-road prowess than their normal counterparts, consisting of raised ride height, off-road oriented tires and other visual enhancements including blackouts and red appointments.

While official details are yet to be released, we can see the GC Trailhawk features Goodyear tyres with dark-accented five spoke rims, thicker wheelarch flares and front bumper featuring red tow hooks, black bonnet panel, Trackhawk badging and red stitching inside. Although quite subtle, they go quite a long way to giving the GC a more aggressive appearance.

Were still holding out for the 707hp, Hellcat-powered version, promised by the big man himself- Sergio Marchionne at this years Detroit Motor Show, which expected to become the worlds fastest SUV.

In the meantime this is a pretty nice entree before the main course. We will bring you more details as they come to hand.

By Mitchell Jones

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VW Groups Spanish brand last year returned to profitability for the first time since 2008, posting an after-tax six million euros profit.



The results were today,with the company also announcing a turnover of 8.3 billion euros, 11 percent more than the previous year.

This was Seats best ever result and double the revenue posted in 2009. On average, the it has increased earnings per vehicle by 3.5 percent, while investments and R&D costs totaled 586 million euros, 28 percent more than 2014.

Progress in 2015 was twofold  not only did we obtain a positive result for the first time since 2008, but we achieved it during a year of major challenges, said Luca de Meo, President of the SEAT Executive Committee. We are implementing the right strategy that enables us to face the challenge of sustaining long-term profitability with optimism.

Seat is currently launching the Ateca, the first SUV in its history. It made its first appearance at the Geneva Motor Show and is expected to assist the brand into maintaining its momentum in the market.

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Hyundai plans to export the Creta to 92 markets in all. At present, the SUV is being exported to only a few countries due to its huge demand in the Indian market itself.

The Creta's launch created a huge excitement amongst buyers in India and the sales of the car shot up within no time. Similar is the case overseas as the Creta has a good demand from the Middle East, Africa and South America. Other countries that have reported a good demand include Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Panama, Oman, UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The Hyundai Creta's huge success in India helped the carmaker to close record sales in 2015 and the same is being projected for this year. The mid-sized SUV has received over one lakh bookings till date and is going on achieving new sales milestones.

Hyundai has taken account of this demand and plan to cater to it in a phased manner. The manufacturer has ramped up the production of the Creta at their plant in Chennai. In the past, Hyundai has done the same to meet the huge demand. Initially, only 6,500 units of the Creta were produced a month, which were increased to 7,500 units. By June this year, the carmaker plans to produce 13,000 Cretas a month, out of which, 10,000 units will be for the domestic market.

As of now, Hyundai is almost on the verge of running its Chennai facility to its full capacity. It has been facing this capacity crunch and might have to soon expand the current facility or look for a new location to set up a new plant. We hope the manufacturer doesn't have to cut down on the production of the other Hyundai models to make space for the Creta. Hopefully, with a solution in place soon, the waiting period will reduce and interested buyers will have to wait a little less to get the delivery of their Creta.
Photo: Carmen Weld

Three lawsuits have recently been filed against Crystal Mountain Resort, two years after a terrifying chairlift crash in 2014 that closed the mountain indefinitely.

On March 1, 2014, a cable from the chairlift reportedly came loose, sending two chairs careening into a tower before crashing to the ground. Four people were injured in the accident.

Three of those injured worked at the mountain, including two members of the ski patrol and one ski instructor. The fourth person injured was a 45-year-old who was taking lessons.

At the time of the incident, Castanet was informed one ski patroller suffered some broken ribs, a broken clavicle and damage to the vertebrae in her back.

Her husband, the other ski patrol member, sustained bruising on his lower limbs, but no broken bones.

The 16-year-old ski instructor broke his arm in the fall.

Another 15 people were on the lift at the time of the incident, however, no other significant injuries were reported.

On Jan. 6, 2016, a ski-patroller at the time of the incident, Kevin Gourlay of Kelowna, filed a civil claim against Crystal Mountain claiming he was a passenger in a chair that crashed to the ground during the chairlift crash on March 1, 2014.

Gourlay's civil claim alleges he suffered personal injuries as a result, including injuries to his feet, ankles, legs and ongoing chronic pain.

All of which injuries have caused and continue to cause the plaintiff pain, suffering, discomfort, loss of enjoyment of life, permanent physical disability, past wage loss and future earnings, reads the court document.

On Feb. 3, 2016, his wife and fellow ski-patroller at the time, Maegan Harvey of Kelowna, filed a civil claim against Crystal Mountain claiming she was a passenger in a chair that crashed to the ground during the chairlift crash on March 1, 2014.

Like Gourlay's, Harvey's civil claim alleges she suffered significant personal injuries as a result of the crash including injuries to her chest wall, back and legs, as well fractured ribs and scapula among other listed injuries.

All of which injuries have caused and continue to cause the plaintiff pain, suffering, discomfort, loss of enjoyment of life, permanent physical disability, past wage loss and future earnings, repeats Harvey's civil claim document.

Finally on Feb. 24, 2016, West Kelowna resident and ski hill guest at the time, Lawrence Waldenberger, filed a civil claim against Crystal Mountain claiming he was a passenger in a chair that crashed to the ground during the chairlift crash on March 1, 2014.

Similar in wording to Gourlay's and Harvey's civil, Waldenberger's civil claim alleges he suffered significant personal injuries as a result of the crash including traumatic brain injury, loss of consciousness, concussion, post-traumatic-stress disorder, multiple broken ribs and irritability.

As a result of the Incident, the plaintiff has had to rely on family members and others for providing services to and for his benefit beyond what they would have normally provided but for the incident.

All three plaintiffs are suing for unspecified compensation including general damages, special damages, loss of income (past and prospective) and future care costs, among others.

All three claims contain similar wording and allege Crystal Mountain was negligent in ensuring their safety.

The incident was caused by or contributed to by the negligence and breach of duty of care of the Defendants and their employees, servants and/or agents, reads all three claims.

The claims go on to allege Crystal Mountain failed to ensure the Blue Chairlift was well maintained and safe for resort guests.

Failing to have any or any reasonable system in place to properly inspect the Blue Chairlift, the counterweight and the area beneath the counterweight to effect necessary and replacements of fault equipment, reads part of the civil claims legal basis.

As it stands, Crystal Mountain has filed responses to both the Gourlay and Harvey civil claims  denying both claims.

In response to the whole of the Notice of Civil Claim, Crystal Mountain denies that the Incident was caused or contributed to in any manner by the negligence of Crystal Mountain and further denies that it was in breach of any statutory or other duty of care owed to the Plaintiff, reads both filed responses.

Crystal Mountain states that if the Plaintiff sustained any injury, loss, damage or expense as a result of the Incident, or at all, which is not admitted but specifically denied, then such injury, loss, damage or expense was not caused or contributed to in any manner by the negligence or breach of any duty or case on the part of Crystal Mountain or its employees.

The mountain has not yet filed a response to the Waldenberger claim.
Photo: Contributed

In the wind-blown sands of a narrow, crescent-shaped island off the coast of Nova Scotia, a Coke bottle from 1962 was found resting next a prescription bottle from 1861.

The juxtaposition is telling of Sable Island's unique and challenging characteristics, said Parks Canada archeologist Charles Burke.

Burke said wind erosion has entombed many artifacts and structures on the sandy island  a National Park Reserve  and has scoured clean thousands of others, leaving them in plain sight.

"Usually an archeologist has to dig to get information. In this case, there's no digging required. All the artifacts are scattered on the surface," said Burke. "It was completely unlike anything I've done in 40 years of archeology."

Burke conducted the island's first-ever systematic archeological survey in August 2015 and will share his findings on Tuesday during a lecture for the Nova Scotia Archeological Society.

The island, which sits roughly 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax in the Atlantic Ocean, was once inhabited by life-saving crews who rescued and recovered ship wrecks during the mid-19th to mid-20th century.

More than 350 vessels have been wrecked due to the rough seas, fog and submerged sandbars surrounding the island, earning it the title Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Evidence of those early occupants  everything from pots, pans and toiletries to stoves, bathtubs and horseshoes  are sprinkled around the 42-kilometre long island, said Burke.

But new evidence uncovered during the survey reveals that humans lived on the island as early as the mid-1700s, said Burke.

"That's a 100-year period  1750 to 1850  for which we have no knowledge currently as to why there was a structure there or people living in that area," said Burke. "This is new information and it's going to require additional research."

The island, known for its population of feral horses, is essentially a giant sandbar. Burke said the artifacts he found were once buried beneath the sand, but wind erosion has brought them to the surface.

Burke said that presents a challenge, as normally archeologists can date items by how deep they are buried in the ground. He said the wind also acts as a "sand blaster," which has removed many identifying markings or labels from items.

"The difference at Sable is that there has been no human disturbance. There have been no machinery or shovels moving things around. The wind is the primary culprit and it has removed all the strata so now we have the old and new side-by-side," said Burke.

"This is a unique aspect of Sable Island and frankly it's a real challenge to make sense of it."

He said more research will need to be done to find out about the artifacts and paint a broader picture of the history of Sable Island.

The wind is also to blame for destroying some of the island's structures. A house near the location of the eastern life-saving station that was still standing in the early 1960s is now a pile of splintered wood, said Burke.

But the wind is also responsible for preserving structures. Another two-storey house is currently intact and completely buried in sand, he said.

"You don't have any opportunity to record the house because you can't see it anymore. It's now a sand dune," said Burke, adding he often had to wear goggles during his survey to protect his eyes from blowing sand.

"We've already established through mapping and air photos where the house is located, so we can at least now be prepared for when the wind erosion begins to expose that house again."

Burke said the data collected will allow Parks Canada to map areas that were occupied by humans and establish monitoring protocols to measure the impact of wind erosion and site exposure.
Photo: CTV

The B.C. Liberal Party's executive board has unanimously decided to reappoint a woman facing criminal charges in Ontario.

Laura Miller will resume her position as executive director in a show of confidence from the board, according to a statement released by party president Sharon White.

Miller was charged in December alongside another aide to former premier Dalton McGuinty in connection with the deletion of government documents related to two cancelled gas plants.

White says Miller stepped down to organize her defence against the three-year-old charges and has been working with lawyers to mount a vigorous and successful case.

Also in the statement, Premier Christy Clark says she supports the decision reached by the executive and calls it the fair and right approach that respects the court process.

Miller and David Livingston, who were deputy and chief of staff respectively, face charges of breach of trust and mischief and their case is now working its way through the courts.
Photo: CTV

A British Columbia man convicted in the Air India bombing deaths of 331 people has been denied his request to participate in political matters.

"Your associations with others of a similar mindset were directly risk-related and led to the murders of many innocent people," the Parole Board of Canada said in a ruling against Inderjit Singh Reyat.

The board said in its decision released Thursday that it considered comments by Reyat's lawyer about his client's rights under the charter to participate in political issues.

Reyat became eligible for statutory release in January after serving two-thirds of his nine-year sentence for perjury for lying at the trial of two other men charged in Canada's worst mass murder 30 years ago.

The board also imposed a second condition for Reyat not to associate with anyone involved in political or criminal activity or extremist views.

Patrick Storey, regional spokesman for the parole board, said Reyat could consider the condition for him not to get politically involved as being too broad.

"That could be construed, I suppose, as not to associate with anyone involved in political activity, which means he couldn't talk to his municipal councillor or an MP or a (member of the legislature) as any Canadian citizen would be able to do."

Storey said the conditions will be in place for the duration of Reyat's statutory release and that he could appeal the decision or take his case to the Federal Court if a new review is not ordered.

The Crown said the terrorist attack against state-owned Air India was prompted by British Columbia-based Sikh extremists' revenge against the Indian government for ordering the army to raid Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984.

Two baggage handlers were killed at Tokyo's Narita airport on June 23, 1985, when a suitcase exploded before it was loaded onto an Air India plane. That was the same day another suitcase bomb aboard an Air India plane exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing 329 people.

The Crown maintained the bomb-laden suitcases were loaded onto flights at Vancouver International Airport before one suitcase was transferred to an Air India plane in Toronto then headed to Montreal to pick up more passengers on its way to Delhi via London.

Reyat had previously pleaded guilty to reduced charges of helping to make the bombs at his home in Duncan, B.C., and spent five years in prison.

Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajiab Singh Bagri were both acquitted of mass murder and conspiracy in March 2005.
Residents of the North Okanagan packed Coldstream council chambers Thursday afternoon to view concept plans for the Okanagan Rail Trail, stretching from Coldstream through Lake Country to Kelowna.

I'm all for it, said one woman. This is the most exciting thing that's come to the Okanagan in years.

Members of an inter-jurisdictional development team, representing all the communities who bought the rail trail for $22 million, were on hand to explain the planning and design process.

This is all about public feedback, said Rick Fairbairn, chair of the North Okanagan Regional District board. What I've heard about is the possibility of future development, not only from a commercial standpoint, but what it will mean for tourism in our community.

Most people, however, seemed to be focused on walking or biking the almost 50 kilometres of trail.

Everywhere you bike here, there are hills and cars. I can hardly wait, said one person viewing the plans.

The line will be handed over to the new owners once CN Rail finishes taking out ties and spikes that still litter the ground. CN has until early 2017 to complete the work.

Feedback from four public sessions is to be incorporated into plans that are expected to go before councils and boards next month. The estimated cost of the project should also be in that package.

If accepted, it will be up to the public and community groups to pay for the trail's development.

(The interjurisdictional team) is willing to design it, but we have to pay for it, said Brad Clements of the Okangan Rail Trail group. We're just going to be a voice of the trail, informing people that if we want the trail, we all need to reach into our pockets and raise the money to do so.

The intention is to develop the corridor in phases, with the initial phase being construction of a gravel trail with road crossings, signage and barriers to provide a basic level of safe and accessible use by pedestrians and cyclists.
Photo: CTV

A Maple Ridge mother is distraught after her four-year-old son was stuck by a discarded needle.

Melissa Cook says her son, Kesler, accidentally pricked himself with a discarded hypodermic needle outside their apartment building.

She screamed in horror when she turned to see him holding the needle.

"My heart-dropped," she told CTV. "I instantly grabbed the needle from him."

When Cook inspected Kesler's hand, she saw it had broken the skin and rushed him to hospital, where he was tested for HIV, hepatitis and other infections.

The boy will have to be tested every three months for the next year before the family can be sure that he didn't contract any diseases from the needle.

"My worst fear is that for this little four year old's life could be drastically changed," she said.

"I bawled my eyes out. I actually broke down. I was crying."

Cook said it's not uncommon to see discarded needles in her neighbourhood, two blocks from downtown Maple Ridge.

Mayor Nicole Read says she'd like to see the agency that hands out needles to drug users do more to keep dirty needles off the street.

"I expect that there should be accountability on Fraser Health's part to make sure that there is a robust cleanup program in place and I think anything less than that is unacceptable, Read told CTV.

Fraser Health says it maps locations where discarded needles are found to target recovery and disposal efforts.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Contributed

A new study suggests that homeless youth who keep pets have lower levels of depression than their counterparts who are without a dog, cat, or even rat by their side.

The study from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph found that homeless youth with pets were three times less likely to be depressed, less likely to engage in potentially harmful behaviours like hard drug use and more likely to open up to veterinarians about their personal challenges.

The study looked at 198 street youth in four cities  Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, and Hamilton  who were in shelters and drop-in centres. Among the study's participants, 100 didn't have pets and 98 did.

The results match a similar study from California and studies on the benefits of pet ownership on the health of seniors who live alone, for instance.

The findings from the Canadian study, the first of its kind to look at the benefits of pet ownership on homeless youth in the country, were published Thursday in the journal Anthrozoos.

Lead author Michelle Lem said the findings should be a wake-up call to social services that often don't allow homeless people to bring their pets inside places like emergency shelters. Homeless pet owners often refuse to give up their animals in order to access a bed.

She says that has the effect of creating a further barrier for street youth because it is often through shelters that homeless youth access services like addiction counselling.

"A lot of social services think also that many of the youth probably shouldn't have pets because they can't access services with pets," said Lem, founder and director of Community Veterinary Outreach, a volunteer group that provides veterinary services to homeless people in cities like Toronto, Guelph and Ottawa.

"They can't access shelters, they can't access some addictions treatment, they can't go into hospitalization, so they (pets) are barriers to accessing services.

"What we're trying to show is, yeah, they are barriers, but they also have some very positive impacts."

Lem said Canadians often don't understand why a teenager, for instance, becomes homeless. They are usually on the street because of toxic environments at home, trauma or abuse, or harsh judgments from their family for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, she said.

"When they have pets they're judged even more harshly often: 'How can you have a pet when you can't take care of yourself''?"

She spoke of one young man who talked about how he at one time was repeatedly arrested before he got a dog. He hadn't been arrested during the two years he owned his dog, she said.

Another homeless youth from Montreal who was part of a gang told Lem that "people would see a better side" of him when the dog was around.

"These pets are their only friends, the only way that they've experienced unconditional love without judgment. These pets have saved their lives in many cases," Lem said.

"By asking them to give up their pets to access the shelter, what you're doing as a social service provider is saying, 'I don't understand your relationship' and often it pushes people away."

Lem said she hopes the results of the study encourage more social agencies to allow homeless people to keep their pets in with them.
Photo: Kate Bouey

UPDATE: 4:30 P.M.

Coldstream fire chief Dave Sturgeon said a crew doused the flames of a fully-involved car fire on Highway 97 near Okanagan College Thursday night.

"The driver pulled over because something weird was going on with the car. He looked under the hood and flames broke out," said Sturgeon.

No other vehicle was involved in the incident, and Sturgeon would not speculate on the cause of the fire. He said ICBC would investigate the matter.

"The car is a write-off," said Sturgeon.

A car fire closed Highway 97 just outside of Vernon overnight.

The incident happened shortly before 9 p.m., near the Kal Lake lookout and Okanagan College and apparently involved one vehicle catching fire. No other details are immediately available.

The highway was closed south to Crystal Waters Road, DriveBC reports. Northbound lanes were reduced to single-lane, alternating traffic.

The closure was lifted by 9:42 p.m.

Coldstream firefighters, RCMP and BC Ambulance paramedics responded to the incident.

Castanet will provide more details as they become available.

Send your news, photos and video to [email protected]
Re: Homeless rousted from Leon

My suggestion is that every man, woman, and child in Kelowna put in 600 dollars. That's approximately $60,000,000.

This should be enough to build 400 units for these people to live. When 400 more people come here for free housing, we all put in 600 more, and when your 18 year old says "I'm moving out" into free housing, we can kick in more.

But everyone has to pay, no getting out of it. Already only about half the population pays 100 percent of the taxes. I believe that's why about half the responses to stories like these have people either fed up and want them kicked out of town, or they want "the government to pay to fix it". I think the problem is not enough people pay in in the first place. It makes it to easy to sit back and demand more when you don't contribute, but that's another issue.

Let's put these people into housing for 6 months. This should be enough time for them to get a head start, then they can start paying in and be self sufficient. Once they move out we can sell the apartments and use the money for a tax break for those that kicked in.

This is just a suggestion. I know it's not a very good one, but it's better that just saying its the cities responsibility. After all, we are the city.

Brad Airey
Photo: Contributed - RDCO

Dont panic if you see smoke coming from Glen Canyon Regional Park.

A controlled burn is taking place today in the West Kelowna park, with fire crews taking advantage of good air quality and venting conditions.

Crews will be getting rid of fire hazard debris collected as part of a 15-hectare cleanup to prevent future wildfires north of the Gellatly Road parking lot.

The Regional District of Central Okanagan expects more burning to take place throughout the spring, as conditions allow, in the Rose Valley Regional Park, off Pettman and Bowes Road.

Controlled burns may temporarily close certain trails, and park users are asked to watch for signs.
Photo: Contributed

By Stephen Fuhr

When I was running to be the member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country, I welcomed the opportunity to share ideas and points of view on what makes a good government.

Since Election Day, the willingness of constituents to continue to reach out to share opinions has been invaluable to learning the job. To date, more than 1,000 constituents and organizations have made contact on everything from the resettlement of Syrian refugees, physician-assisted dying, and the combat mission to fight ISIS, to the need for more funding for multiple sclerosis, and a health-care system that addresses the needs of an aging population.

How the government spends taxpayers dollars is also important to constituents.

In the lead up to the our governments first federal budget, which will be tabled on March 22, many of you participated in the pre-budget consultation process and provided me with suggestions which found their way into our Kelowna-Lake Country budget priorities submission to Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

Input also comes from constituents who visit Ottawa on behalf of local organizations.

Just recently, Prof. Deborah Buszard and her team from the University of British Columbia Okanagan met with me in Ottawa and shared an exciting proposal that will solidify Kelowna-Lake Countrys reputation as one of the fastest growing innovation hubs in Canada.

Glen Lucas and Fred Steele of the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association also came to Ottawa, where I was able to arrange a meeting with the parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture so the BCFGA could advocate for the next suite of agricultural programs that will support our fruit growers.

I was also pleased to welcome Chief Byron Louis from the Okanagan Indian Band and to make representation on the bands behalf to see what can be done to expedite the cleanup of thousands of acres of valuable land littered with explosives left behind from former military training exercises.

Though there is much to do in the House of Commons, including chairing the Standing Committee on Defence, I spend a large block of time connecting with my cabinet colleagues for help on local files.

Weve had some early successes, thanks to our governments willingness to help our riding. We managed to stay the deportation of Carlos Vargas, father of three, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, and to get assurance from the minister of veterans affairs to reopen the local Veterans Office.

Back in the riding, ongoing meetings discussing the local economy with our local chambers of commerce, our mayors and MLAs have been and remain vital to addressing local infrastructure requirements, important discussions on the amalgamation of our water districts, and other priorities like the Okanagan rail corridor.

And two government funding announcements to help the community were certainly welcome: one in conjunction with the Central Okanagan Foundation and the Community Advisory Board in support of the communitys first Housing First initiative; the second in support of the Okanagan Basin Water Board, to help us better understand the water needs in a region known for its water challenges.

I want to thank all those who have taken the time to share their concerns and views. For those who need help with the federal government, my staff and I are here to help in any way we can. You can reach us by phone at 250-470-5075, by email at [email protected] , and walk-ins are welcome at my constituency office at 102-1420 St. Paul St.

Though the learning curve these past few months has been steep, it is a great privilege to have the opportunity to serve you as your member of Parliament.

Stephen Fuhr is MP for Kelowna-Lake Country.
1916 Commemoration Day, 15/03/2016

On Tuesday, March 15th, Our school celebrated the raising of our Irish Flag which was presented to us in October. We held many events to celebrate this great day of commemoration. We started the day with our Flag Raising Ceremony. Next on our agenda was a commemoration ceremony in our school hall. This celebrated the events of Easter 1916 through drama, poetry and song. Next on our agenda was our annual Ceili. Following this we had a tree planting ceremony. Our day concluded with the lowering of our National Flag.Our notice boards have all been decorated with our 1916 projects and with our lovely St. Patrick's Day art.

Here are some images which capture the excitement of the day.

Flag Raising Ceremony

Commemoration Ceremony

Ceili

Tree Planting Ceremony

Our Projects
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
Glenwood PE to acquire Lafarge Halla

ICR Newsroom By 18 March 2016

South Koreas Glenwood Private Equity (PE) has inked a deal to acquire Lafarge Halla Cement Corp. from LafargeHolcim Ltd. for about KRW630bn (US$542m), said the company Thursday.



LafargeHolcim said it expects to close the sale of Lafarge Halla, Koreas fifth-largest cement producer, in the 2Q16, subject to final approvals.



The sale follows several other ownership changes in the South Korean cement market as producers battle with slack cement demand resulting in some companies relying on banks to become their major shareholders after they failed to repay their debts. The trend is now swinging to purchases by private equity companies who are taking ownership from the creditors.



In August 2015 Sampyo Cement and KBD Private Equity bought a 55 per cent stake in Tongyang Cement & Energy, Korea;s fourth largest cement manufacturer for KRW290bn after the company had been in receivership since December 2013.



December 2015 then saw Korean private equity firm Hahn & Co buy 46.14 per cent of Ssangyopng Cement Industrial for US$683m after Ssangyongs bank creditors led by Korea Development Bank sold its shares. Hahn previously acquired Daehan Cement in a bankruptcy court-overseen process in 2012.



Hyundai Cement is considered to be the next company to be bought as it fell into receivership in 2010 after also being unable to repay its debts. In 2014 Hana Bank, KDB, Korea Exchange Bank, and Woori Investment & Securities took major shares in the business.



Koreas cement industry has recently been hit by allegations of price-fixing too. In January, the countrys Fair Trade Commission reportedly fined six manufacturers KRW199.4bn (US$167.7m) for fixing the price of cement, which rose by 43 per cnet to W66,000/t in April, 2012 from KRW46,000/t in March, 2011. The companies fined were Ssangyong, Tongyang Cement & Energy, Hanil Cement, Sungshin Cement, Hyundai Cement and Asia Cement.



LafargeHolcims decision to sell its Korean unit is part of a broader group strategy to divest CHF3.5bn of assets. In its annual report, in which it reported a fourth-quarter loss of CHF2.86bn, the company said it had so far reached about one-third of this eventual goal.

Published under
Fitch: West China Cement's weaker operating results outweighed by Anhui Conch's takeover

18 March 2016

Fitch Ratings believes West China Cement Ltd's weaker operations  as reflected in the 2015 results  is outweighed by its pending takeover by Anhui Conch Cement Company Limited (Conch, A-/Stable).

Fitch's Rating Watch Positive on WCC is driven by the potential further integration between Conch and WCC, which will be resolved once the transaction is completed. WCC's performance in 2015 was a reflection of the weak cement market throughout the year. Its EBITDA margin narrowed to 26.6 per cent in 2015 from 27.8 per cent in 2014, caused by a lower average selling price (ASP) and production volume, which have declined by nine and three per cent to CNY200/t and 17Mt, respectively. The ASP of Shaanxi province-wide cement declined by eight per cent, and production volume was down by four per cent. WCC's market share in Shaanxi has remained unchanged.



Fitch expects WCC's ASP and volume to remain flat in 2016 due to the market weakness, but for the EBITDA margin to improve slightly due to cost-synergies deriving from the integration with Conch. The rating's agency estimates that WCC's FFO net leverage increased to 4.2x in 2015 from 3.5x in 2014 - caused by lower profitability, high capex and longer cash cycle. WCC spent CNY767m in acquiring Yaowangshan Cement (a cement plant in Shaanxi) in November 2015. In addition, the company's cash cycle has extended from -6 days to 18 days, due to longer inventory and receivable days, which increased working-capital requirements.

WCC's credit profile in 2016 will be driven more by its pending acquisition by Conch, Fitch writes. Conch acquired 16.67 per cent of WCC for HKD1.5bn (CNY 1.2bn) in June 2015, and became WCC's second-largest shareholder. After that, Conch increased its shareholding to 21.2 per cent, and has placed two non-executive directors on WCC's board. Conch announced in December 2015 that it would increase its ownership to 51.6 per cent by injecting four of its plants in Shaanxi into WCC. Once the acquisition is complete, Conch will have to make a mandatory unconditional cash offer for the remaining WCC shares. The acquisition was approved by the shareholders in January 2016, but still pending regulatory approval.

Once Conch injects its four plants in Shaanxi into WCC, WCC's market share will improve to 40-50 per cent, well above the second-place operator Jidong Cement, which had a 23 per cent market share in 2015. "This will significantly improve WCC's pricing power even in a depressed demand environment.," Fitch notes. It believes the stronger business profile compensates for the structurally weaker demand for cement in the long term.

Published under
Tokyo Cement recommences clinker imports from Japan

18 March 2016

Sri-Lanka based Tokyo Cement Group has recommenced clinker imports from Japan for the exclusive use in its NIPPON-PRO cement.



Dashantha Udawatte, Group Marketing Manager at Tokyo Cement told Lanka Business Online: We at Tokyo Cement having identified the demand for a high performance cement tied up with a leading Japanese manufacturer to import clinker with high specifications. Tokyo Cement recently launched the NIPPON-PRO brand to meet the demand of Class 1 contractors who have undertaken challenging construction projects that are part of the government's initiative to stimulate economic growth in the country.



Director of Research & Development at Tokyo Cement, Dr. MGMU Ismail said: Using Japanese clinker in the manufacturing process ensures that NIPPON-PRO will be able to meet the high technical specifications recommended for high-rise structures such as, the ability for temperature control required in bulk concreting and suitability for use in high strength concrete grades over 80.

Published under
News flash: The cost of college just keeps increasing, and listed tuition at public universities often is far lower than their private counterparts.

But sticker shock can be vastly misleading. In many cases, attending the private colleges and universities in Michigan is just as affordable - or more so - than big state schools.



That's because there's the listed tuition and then there's the actual cost - or net tuition. There's often a huge difference between the two.



Students at these independent institutions receive far more financial aid, on average. At Michigan's 15 top private colleges and universities, more than 93 percent receive aid, bringing the cost of a priceless education within reach.



What's more, the percentage of students who graduate from Michigan's top 15 private colleges and universities in four years is nearly double that of public institutions.



That extra year gives graduates a head start on careers -- and saves them tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and earnings over peers at public schools who increasingly need five or even six years to graduate.



Like everything else in college searches, a little research goes a long way.



The first step is to determine average financial aid packages at schools, then subtract that from listed tuition costs. Then, fill out what's known as a FAFSA, a Free Application for Federal Student Aid.



That provides information used by the federal government to determine your family's expected contribution. No matter where you go, the amount remains the same and is used by schools to determine your financial aid.



Let's examine a case study of a first-time freshman attending Adrian College.



The listed price for one year, including tuition, fees, room and board, is $43,830.



The student worked hard, earned a 3.5 GPA in high school and 28 on the ACT. But her parents only make $40,000 per year.



Out of luck? Hardly.



With that income, the student's Expected Family Contribution is zero. She also likely qualifies for an Adrian College Trustee Scholarship of $18,000 per year, renewable for four years.



The student also would be eligible for aid -- a $5,775 federal Pell grant, a $1,830 Michigan tuition grant, and student loans totaling about $5,500. Add in a work study job that pays $1,500 a year, and Adrian kicks in another $5,100 in a need-based grant.



Now all of a sudden, college looks a lot more affordable.



The sticker price is $4,000 more than her parents make all year.



The actual price: $2,125, thanks to a total financial aid package of $41,705.



That doesn't include scores of scholarships available through groups, colleges and organizations such as the Michigan College Alliance (MCA), a group that represents 15 independent colleges and universities.



Since 1949, MCA has awarded more than 5,000 scholarships totaling $70 million. Current scholarships include those sponsored by Amway, Chrysler, Gordon Food Service, Grand Hotel, UPS and more.



Michigan's independents know college is daunting, but they're committed to making exceptional education affordable and erasing the sticker shock.



Learn more at wearetheindependents.com.
Dennis Ball has been a lot of different things in his 64 years.

He did brief tours in law school and divinity school. He's worked in sales, marketing and publishing. And he's lived in at least two time zones.

The one thing he hasn't done? That'd be getting elected President of the United States.

But there's still time.

And that's how Ball found himself in Harrisburg this week, plunked down at a table at Litttle Amp's coffee shop on the corner of State and Second Streets, his campaign lit spread before him and a hopeful smile flashed at those who passed by.

All by himself, one town, one vote at a time, Ball's running to be the Next Leader of the Free World.

It is, he says, a role thrust upon him.

"I didn't ever really want to do this," Ball, a burly man, who speaks quickly and loudly said. "People are hurting and angry. They want solutions. The [mainstream] candidates can talk a big game, but I know how to deliver."

But first, the Illinois resident has to get on the Pennsylvania ballot, which, thanks to some of the most repressive election laws in the country is a punishingly difficult task.

Ball needs 22,000 signatures (plus a bunch more to withstand the inevitable legal challenge) to put himself and his embryonic American Party of America in front of Keystone State voters this fall.

"He ought to be glad that it's this year because you use the last year's percentage. It's 2 percent of the vote cast for the highest vote-getter and last year was an off-year election," with truly anemic turnout, veteran Franklin & Marshall College political analyst Terry Madonna said.

In even-numbered years, with high voter turnout, third-party hopefuls have had to obtain as many as 50,000 to 60,000 signatures to get onto the ballot, Madonna added.

For that, you can thank Pennsylvania's deeply entrenched Republican and Democratic parties.

"We make it incredibly difficult for third-party candidates. The history goes back to when the two parties were willing to fight elections between themselves. And not third parties. This wasn't by chance," Madonna said.

And Ball is doing it by himself, with practically no campaign infrastructure. His van, with campaign signs taped to the sides, is parked out on Second Street.

He has no elected experience. In 2007, he ran for, but didn't win a seat on the Surprise, Ariz. City Council, where he then lived. For Ball this isn't an impediment, rather it's a qualification.

"I didn't win, but I did bring attention to fundamental issues there," he said.

So if Donald Trump is the Nickelback of 2016 (awful, yet hugely and inexplicably popular with a massive number of voters) and Hillary Clinton is the Fleetwood Mac (still touring, more out of inertia than purpose, after all these years), then Ball is the plucky bar band hoping for a big break.

His platform would be familar to anyone on the rightward side of the political spectrum. Ball self-identifies as a Goldwater-conservative and it shows.

He's opposed to abortion and gay marriage; favors a strong national defense and an interventionist foreign policy, and he's no fan of the "banksters" that he says are running roughshod over the economy.

So he says that makes him sympathetic to fellow independent Bernie Sanders and his message of economic populism.

"When you have the billionaire class making major profits and they're not willing to share, that's a problem," he said.

His "Ball Doctrine" contained in two paperbacks he grabs at every opportunity, will provide the way forward for the country.

And he's confident that he'd be able to work with a deeply partisan Congress that would likely regard him as neither fish nor fowl.

"On my first day as President of the United States, I will host a roundtable with members of government, industry, labor and the banksters," he said. "They will have to answer to me. I will get proposals and I will present them to the states."

It's all too "Dave" (the 1993 movie starring Kevin Kline as a commonsense and accidental president) for words.

Ball says he wants a "kitchen" cabinet that will work with Congress. And he believes Americans will rally behind him because "I've got the right stuff."

A couple of times in the conversation, Ball claims that he's a direct descendant of President George Washington.

Considering what's he's up against, traveling the country, alone, undertaking a herculean task that demolishes even the most towering of egos, a little bravado (or delusion) can't possibly hurt.

A little while later, he's out in the street and climbing into his van. Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, beckon.

"America needs the Ball Doctrine," he says.
XBlaze Code: Embryo by developer Arc System Works and publisher Aksys GamesPC Review written by Pierre-Yves.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I am absolutely terrible at fighting games which is why I was intrigued when Arc System Works announced that they were making a Visual Novel in the BlazBlue universe. Always having had interesting stories and characters between this and the older running series of Guilty Gear, being able to experience the narrative elements without having to literally fight for it was a treat in and of itself.

XBlaze Code: Embryo follows the story for a sixteen year old male by the name of Touya Kagari around one-hundred and fifty years prior to the first entry of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Ill be honest in the fact that this is the first Visual Novel that Ive ever had my hands on so it was quite an interesting experience. Essentially flowing like anime episodes between the sub chapters each with their own highlights and climaxes, the hands off approach was definitely something new in which was hard to think at times that I was not watching something but still required to have my hands on a controller as it could be important.

One thing that was immediately noticeable is that the upscale from the Vitas screen is not as smooth as it could have been. Unfortunately having moved up from the much smaller screen has left enough jagged lines at times to get in the way of what could have been an otherwise visually smooth experience. These issues lie in more than than simply the visual presentation of the characters but also in the subtitled text making it hard to read along at times. This wouldnt be an issue for those fluent however as they wouldnt need to read unless they of course wanted to. Because the text is formatted in the same fashion across the board, the menus that are provided for articles and character bios later on are in the same boat. This held true from reasonable small screens all the way up to ridiculously sized ones such as a projectors. The bonus however is that the increase in size never made things worse, just a lot more apparent.

While not being visually the most incredible because of the upscaling, the voice acting while being purely Japanese with no dubbed versions was amazing. The tones that the characters carried easily conveyed emotions that suited each situation regardless of the gravity. Every voice is unique offering a stellar audible experience as there was never any questioning who was who or how pissed off they may be. Combining these voices with the great soundtrack that permeates the background and everything came together amazingly in which nothing in this respect ever felt out of place.

Code: Embryo is more than simply watching scenes play out however. There are many times in which you, the player, can pause a scene in order to view more details about introduced characters or possibly news articles that have been sent to what is known as your TOi. The TOi which is basically a smart phone, has algorithms that will basically Google search anything of interest to you as long as they fall within your personal preferences parameters and load them up in chronological order. Reading these or not is very much your choice but it can add more to how the experience plays out as a character may have something more to interject on a subject as theyve read it in an article and now contain that knowledge. Sometimes these are small little extras but its worth checking now and then to make sure that nothing is being passed up on as the articles will become archived when no longer relevant to the current time in the story.

The story itself is very well paced and never feels rushed. Unlike a good anime however, as thats really the only basis I have for comparison as this is much more than a manga, there are no restrictions to time slots. This can sometimes lead to occasions in which you could expect something to end, yet it doesnt because it has no need to follow that particular ruleset allowing for a much more engrossing scene. Characters personalities are easy to define through the use of stereotypes though they arent purely confined by said ruleset making them more than two dimensional from a personality point of view as theres much more to them than being a tsundere. This in itself only helps to enhance the overall package over the many hours that encompass this story.
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Celebrate the arrival of spring with poetry at Star Line Books on Tuesday, March 29, from 6-7 p.m. Star Line Books is at 1467 Market St.

Seven regional authors will be at the independent bookstore for a reading and signing. Several will have copies of their books available for purchase, including three books released this year.

Helga Kidder is a native of Germany's Black Forest region and lives in Chattanooga with her husband and dog. She was awarded an MFA from Vermont College. She is co-founder of the Chattanooga Writers Guild and leads one of their poetry groups. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, and more recently will be published in Amore: A collection of love poems, Broad River Review, and was a finalist for the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. She has three collections of poetry, Wild Plums, Luckier than the Stars, and her recently released Blackberry Winter.

John C. Mannone has work in Inscape Literary Journal, Windhover, Artemis, 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, Southern Poetry Anthology (NC), Still, Town Creek Poetry and others. Author of two literary collectionsincluding Disabled Monsters (The Linnets Wings Press, 2015)hes poetry editor for Silver Blade and Abyss & Apex. His work was nominated three times for the Pushcart. He is a professor of physics in east Tennessee. Visit The Art of Poetry: http://jcmannone.wordpress.com

Bruce Majors grew up in east Tennessee, graduated from TTU, and worked as a quality assurance engineer for TVA until his retirement. A lifelong writer, Mr. Majors has published poems in literary magazines, including Clapboard House, River Poets Journal, Poetry South, Pirenes Fountain, Number One, Ontologica, Wordgathering, The Distillery, NCPS, Abyss & Apex, and several others. Other poems are forthcoming in from various journals in 2016. His full length book, The Fields of Owl Roost, was named finalist in the 2005 Indie Excellence Book Awards. Mr. Majors has published two Chapbooks, Small Patches of Light, 2014, and his latest volume just out, Last Flight of Angels, 2016, both published by Finishing Line Press. He co-edited an anthology, Southern Light, Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets. Mr. Majors is a member of the Chattanooga and Knoxville Writers Guilds.

Finn Bille is an active public poet, having read at a variety of venues, mostly in Chattanooga, but also in Denmark, where the International Peoples College published his chapbook, Waking Dreams, in 1986. He published his book, Rites of the Earth, in 1994, and in 2011, Fire Poems. Also in 2011 his poetry was included in Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets. Mr. Finns poetry has also been included in several local anthologies. He is currently working on a collection of immigration poems titled The KIngs Coin, and, with KBBallentine and John C. Mannone, on the their how-to book of poetry revision.

KB Ballentine received her MFA in Poetry from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She has participated in writing academies in both America and Britain and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in English. She currently teaches high school theatre and creative writing and adjuncts for two local colleges. She has also conducted writing workshops throughout the United States. The 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award winner, Ms. Ballentines third collection What Comes of Waiting was published in 2013. Her work also appears in River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-first Century (2015) and Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee (2013). Also published in many print and online journals, KB has two collections of poetry: Fragments of Light (2009) and Gathering Stones (2008), published by Celtic Cat Publishing. In 2011, two anthologies published her work: Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets and A Tapestry of Voices.

A finalist for the 2006 Joy Harjo Poetry Award and a 2007 finalist for the Ruth Stone Prize in Poetry, Ms. Ballentine also received the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund Award in 2006 and 2007.

Mia Hansford is a poet, teacher and artist who lives in Chattanooga. She studied at Parsons School of Design and Teaching English Literature from Eastern Kentucky University. Ms. Hansford has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Public Theater, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and other venues in New York, Kentucky and Tennessee. Her poetry can be found in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and in the liner notes of Matt Shipp's recent album "Our Lady of the Flowers", as well as various small magazines dating back to nearly the Stone Age. Ms. Hansford is a current participant in the Full Circle Teaching Artists Program supported by CoPAC. She is working on a series of drawings and paintings of utilitarian objects, and on a collection of poems -"The Light of Certain Places."

Ray Zimmerman will serve as master of ceremonies. Mr. Zimmerman is the author of First Days, Finishing Line Press, and Executive Editor of Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets, Ford, Falcon, and McNeil. He serves as producer of the Little Owl Music and Arts Festival, at Audubon Acres. Hehas performed at numerous venues, including The Camp House, Barking Legs Theatre, The Southern Festival of Books (Nashville), Solstice Story Telling of the Joseph Campbell Mythological Round Table (Chattanooga), and the Beatnik Poetry Readings of the Trenton Arts Council (Trenton, Georgia).
The Chattanooga Area Food Bank in partnership with the Bright School, distributed a gallon of fresh milk to 225 East Side Elementary School students at risk of hunger. The gallon of milk was in addition to the regular 30 pounds of food each child receives monthly at the Food Banks East Side Elementary School mobile pantry.

Milk is one of the items most sought after by Food Bank clients, yet there is a shortage at the Food Bank as, due to its perishable nature, it is rarely donated. Recognizing the need in our community for nutrientrich milk, the Bright School donated $900 to be used for milk distribution at East Side Elementary School and through other Food Bank programs.

We started this partnership with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank so our students would become more aware of the needs in our community," said Head of School O.J. Morgan. "Working with the food bank puts a face on the problem of hunger and the constant need people have for food. Our students can see they have full pantries and refrigerators at home and understand that some people do not."

There are over 67,000 kids in the Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia region who dont know where their next meal will come from. The hope is that this school mobile pantry at East Side

Elementary and the Food Banks partnership with the Bright School will serve as a replicable model for future school mobile pantries.

If 10,000 people gave a penny every day, it would build up, said fifth grader Stewart Hartman. It makes me think I could feed a whole family.

Over the past year, the Bright School contributed to hunger relief efforts in the region by way of their partnership with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. Students, faculty and staff members volunteered time in November sorting food in the Food Bank warehouse. And over the past year, the Bright School led food drives that brought in enough food for the Food Bank to distribute over 1,600 meals throughout the community.

Our school mobile pantries at East Side Elementary have been a phenomenal success thanks in large part to the schools committed faculty and staff, notes Christa Mannarino, Chattanooga Area Food Bank interim president. We are extremely grateful for the support of the Bright School, allowing us to provide a gallon of highly-desired fresh milk to students and their families.

The Food Bank, in partnership with the faculty and administration of East Side Elementary, provides monthly mobile pantries at East Side Elementary all school year long. At each event, the Food Bank distributes 7,500 pounds of foodthe equivalent of 6,250 meals to hungry students and their families.
According to officials at Erlanger Health System, the overall health of Sequatchie County residents has improved dramatically in Tennessees county health rankings since they opened the Sequatchie County Emergency Center in July 2014 and focused on population health with community-based health programs. Today, Sequatchie County ranks 63rd in overall health out of 95 counties, up from 74th in 2015 and 91st in 2014.



After the 2010 closure of the countys only hospital, Sequatchie Countys health rankings sank to 91st out of 95 Tennessee counties.

With no access to local healthcare services, the rural communitys 15,000 residents simply postponed or avoided making the 35-mile trip to Chattanooga for routine healthcare.But delayed care often resulted in acute emergencies requiring hospitalizations. By 2013, residents were twice as likely as residents of neighboring counties to be hospitalized."To make matters worse, the countys economy tanked after the hospital closed, and the rural community saw increases in unemployment, crime, and alcohol and drug abuse," officials said. "Moreover, elected officials faced a losing battle in luring new businesses to the area without the ability to offer local healthcare services. In 2013, elected officials in Sequatchie County approached Erlanger, the nations 7th largest public health system, about bringing health services to the community."After months of planning and negotiations, Erlanger developed a program, approved by the Center for Medicare Services and the State of Tennessee, that called for the opening of a 24/7 emergency facility in Dunlap, Tn., as an extension of Erlanger Bledsoe Hospital, a critical access hospital located 22 miles from the community in Pikeville, Tn., and plans for community-based health initiatives.In developing the program, we concentrated our efforts on the most effective ways to improve the health of the community, said Joseph M. Winick, FACHE, Erlanger senior vice president of Planning, Analytics & Business Development. Opening the emergency facility was only the first step to bring focus to the needs of community residents.Erlangers plan to revitalize the health of county residents included partnering with independent physicians, the health department, and others who serve the rural area to improve community health. Having a healthy community can curb the use of emergency medical services and help to reduce the cost of care, said Stephanie Boynton, CEO of Erlanger Bledsoe Hospital.After an investment of $250,000 each from the county and the U.S. Appalachian Regional Commission, Erlanger opened the Sequatchie County Emergency Center in July 2014.

"The facility immediately fulfilled a need in the community," officials said.

Within 10 hours of opening its doors, the center had treated 13 patients with medical emergencies, and one of those was flown by Life Force, Erlangers air ambulance service, to Erlangers main campus in Chattanooga.



Today, healthcare challenges and collaborative solutions are discussed during quarterly roundtable meetings with elected officials. Local practitioners volunteer to speak about important health topics at the county commission meetings as part of Erlangers Health Notes, a program to promote awareness of community health issues. Erlanger specialists also meet with area practitioners to assure that specialty care is available and accessible.



The Health Service and Development Agency for the State of Tennessee noted the Erlanger-Sequatchie County partnership is one of the most innovative programs ever developed in delivering healthcare to rural communities.

Erlanger is working with the Southeast Area Development District to replicate the program in other rural counties, and has been asked to offer guidance to other states and counties on the development of similar programs.


Deployment of a large tarp, which is used to capture gases with the LLNL Smart Sampler as they rise to the surface and collect underneath.

The diagram illustrates gas distribution as it leaks from the chimney of a nuclear test cavity for two different gases: Xenon-133 and Argon-37. Both of these gases have often been referred to as "smoking guns" for detecting clandestine underground explosions. These gases also percolate to the surface where they can be detected during an inspection and are occasionally released into the atmosphere where they can be detected by the International Monitoring System.

Through experiments and computer models of gas releases, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have simulated signatures of gases from underground nuclear explosions (UNEs) that may be carried by winds far from the detonation.

The work will help international inspectors locate and identify a clandestine UNE site within a 1,000 square kilometer search area during an on-site inspection that could be carried out under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Jordan recently hosted such a simulated inspection, the Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14), sponsored by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) and involving more than 40 countries, which tested some aspects of noble gas signature detection.

In addition, the technique can potentially help interpret noble gas (radioactive xenon isotopes) signals captured in the atmosphere following UNEs such as the North Korean test that occurred in January.

The research also led to the development of the LLNL Smart Sampler, which was originally designed as a research instrument to automatically capture gases reaching the surface in remote locations following release of gas tracers underground. During its IFE14 exercise, the CTBTO deployed three of these samplers, which were designed and built by Lab engineers Steven Hunter and David Ruddle at LLNL.

The work combines novel field experiments involving injection of gas tracers using four large compressors into an old nuclear explosion cavity and sophisticated numerical simulations that employ a new method for tracking different parent/daughter isotopes produced in the detonation cavity. The simulations use the results of the field experiment as a basis for probing the isotopic evolution and gas transport processes of a UNE.

The team, made up of scientists from LLNL and National Security Technologies (NSTec), partially reproduced the subsurface conditions following a UNE responsible for the migration of explosion gases to the surface where they can be detected locally at a test site. Such results can provide inspectors with a better idea of what to expect when they are in the inspection area searching for a suspected UNE. With LLNL computer models using information from the tracer experiment, the team was able to track the evolution of gases in the explosion cavity, which may be detected downwind thousands of kilometers away. This actually occurred after the third North Korean UNE in 2013.

"The work is novel in part because of how we did it by injecting gases into an old UNE cavity and then using computer models informed by the experiment to extend our understanding of how xenon gas evolves following the UNE," said Charles Carrigan, LLNL geoscientist.

Using computer models developed by LLNL physicist Yunwei Sun, the team showed that including thermally driven migration of telltale gases from the explosion cavity or chimney may substantially shorten their arrival times at the surface when compared to migration of gases caused only by atmospheric pressure fluctuations or barometric pumping. Previous research has focused on barometric pumping as the primary subsurface gas migration mechanism.

"From monitoring gases coming to the surface during the course of our pressurized field experiment, we also found that background radon gas levels were anomalously high (10 to 15 times normal) at the surface over the explosion cavity," Carrigan said.

The research indicates that the weak subsurface pressurization mimicking the thermal drive following the explosion enhanced the amount of radon that was captured. This suggests that radon anomalies could be potential indicators of hidden or clandestine UNEs that are otherwise difficult to detect during an on-site inspection.

Additionally, the simulations showed that the explosion cavity or chimney behaves something like a leaky chemical reactor or pressure cooker. The gases migrating away from the cooker change the overall chemical makeup (isotopic ratios) of the gases left behind in the cooker or reactor, which continues to make new gases. The team modeled the evolution of these gases out to several months following a UNE.

"The 2013 UNE carried out in North Korea has allowed us some validation of our model of explosion-gas evolution," Carrigan said. "We find that the gases detected almost two months afterward in Russia are best matched by our evolutionary model for the mixture of different xenon isotopes when we assume a range of yields that is consistent with seismic estimates, less than 10 kilotons, for that event. This is a cool result as no one has suggested that isotopic ratios should depend on nuclear yield."
A group of scientists from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and from the Moscow State University has developed a fundamentally new type of memory cell based on superconductors - this type of memory will be able to work hundreds of times faster than the types of memory devices commonly used today.

"With the operational function that we have proposed in these memory cells, there will be no need for time-consuming magnetization and demagnetization processes. This means that read and write operations will take only a few hundred picoseconds, depending on the materials and the geometry of the particular system, while conventional methods take hundreds or thousands of times longer than this," said the corresponding author of the study, Alexander Golubov, the Head of MIPT's Laboratory of Quantum Topological Phenomena in Superconducting Systems.

Golubov and his colleagues have proposed creating basic memory cells based on quantum effects in "sandwiches" of a superconductor - dielectric (or other insulating material) - superconductor, which were predicted in the 1960s by the British physicist Brian Josephson. The electrons in these "sandwiches" (they are called "Josephson junctions") are able to tunnel from one layer of a superconductor to another, passing through the dielectric like balls passing through a perforated wall.

Today, Josephson junctions are used both in quantum devices and conventional devices. For example, superconducting qubits are used to build the D-wave quantum system, which is capable of finding the minima of complex functions using the quantum annealing algorithm. There are also ultra-fast analogue-to-digital converters, devices to detect consecutive events, and other systems that do not require fast access to large amounts of memory. There have also been attempts to use the Josephson Effect to create ordinary processors. An experimental processor of this type was created in Japan in the late 1980s. In 2014, the research agency IAPRA resumed its attempts to create a prototype of a superconducting computer.

Josephson junctions with ferromagnets used as the middle of the "sandwich" are currently of greatest practical interest. In memory elements that are based on ferromagnets the information is encoded in the direction of the magnetic field vector in the ferromagnet. However, there are two fundamental flaws with this process: firstly, the low density of the "packaging" of the memory elements - additional chains need to be added to provide extra charge for the cells when reading or writing data, and secondly the magnetization vector cannot be changed quickly, which limits the writing speed.

The group of physicists from MIPT and MSU proposed encoding the data in Josephson cells in the value of the superconducting current. By studying the superconductor-normal metal/ferromagnet-superconductor-insulator-superconductor junctions, the scientists discovered that in certain longitudinal and transverse dimensions the layers of the system may have two energy minima, meaning they are in one of two different states. These two minima can be used to record data - zeros and ones.

In order to switch the system from "zero" to "one" and back again, the scientists have suggested using injection currents flowing through one of the layers of the superconductor. They propose to read the status using the current that flows through the whole structure. These operations can be performed hundreds of times faster than measuring the magnetization or magnetization reversal of a ferromagnet.

"In addition, our method requires only one ferromagnetic layer, which means that it can be adapted to so-called single flux quantum logic circuits, and this means that there will be no need to create an entirely new architecture for a processor. A computer based on single flux quantum logic can have a clock speed of hundreds of gigahertz, and its power consumption will be dozens of times lower," said Golubov.
Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle arrives at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis on Nov. 19, 2015. (Michael Conroy / AP)

INDIANAPOLIS  A girl whose attorney says she's one of the victims in the sex crimes case that led to former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle being sentenced to more than 15 years in prison is suing the disgraced Indiana man and a former associate, seeking at least $300,000 in damages.

The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Indianapolis names Fogle and the former head of his anti-obesity charity, Russell Taylor. Taylor's wife is also a defendant in the suit, which seeks at least $150,000 in damages each from her husband and Fogle.

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Fogle has paid restitution to his victims, but they can still sue him and seek additional money.

Prosecutors who charged Fogle and Taylor last year said Taylor used cameras hidden in the Indianapolis-area homes where he lived to secretly film 12 minors and shared some of the images with Fogle. The pornography was produced over a four-year period.

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Fogle encouraged Taylor to continue filming children, who were recorded as they were nude, changing clothes or engaged in other activities while visiting Taylor's homes, prosecutors said.

The Indiana girl who's suing was among those filmed and has suffered "significant emotional trauma," her attorney, M. Michael Stephenson, said in an email Thursday.

The suit alleges Fogle and Taylor inflicted emotional distress on the girl and invaded her privacy. It says she "suffered severe, traumatic and permanent injuries and mental anguish."

The suit accuses Taylor and his wife, Angela Taylor, of negligent supervision, and all three defendants of negligence.

"Defendants breached their duty of care and were negligent in that they were aware that minor guests of the Taylor residence were being secretly filmed," the suit states.

Fogle's attorney, Ron Elberger, said in an email Thursday that he and his client "have no idea who the plaintiff is as it's not disclosed, nor is the parent's name." He declined further comment.

Taylor's attorney did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

Fogle, 38, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison in November after pleading guilty to one count of distributing and receiving child pornography and one count of traveling out of state to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a child.

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He admitted paying for sex at New York City hotels with two girls who were 16 or 17 years old and receiving some child pornography produced by Taylor.

Fogle has appealed his sentence, arguing that a federal judge abused her authority by imposing a sentence three years longer than the maximum term prosecutors had agreed to seek.

Besides the prison time, he paid a total of $1.4 million in restitution to 14 victims, as required by his plea agreement. Each received $100,000.

Taylor, 44, was sentenced to 27 years in prison in December after pleading guilty to 12 counts of child exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography.

Associated Press
"A lot of the homes on the Gold Coast that come on the market need massive amounts of work, and what's great about this one is that because she's so good at understanding residential, Randy came in here and turned this from sort of a home that felt kind of old and old-fashioned, and she made it light and fresh and transitional," said listing agent Jennifer Ames of Coldwell Banker. "She changed it to how people live today and that's so important, because the buyers of today are younger people. They're not our grandparents, and they want cool stuff. This mansion has elements of new construction and it's in a world-class location. You could never buy a double lot in the middle of the Gold Coast. It's almost like a country estate in the city."
Hillary Clinton will never-never, ever-be confused with a natural performer on a debate stage, at a rally, or in front of a camera.

Even in the context of politicians, she's not much of a thespian. President Barack Obama could comfortably banter with Zach Galifianakis on Between Two Ferns, Donald Trump acquitted himself just fine in a Saturday Night Live Drake parody video, and Al Gore hosted a full SNL and even anchored an extremely clever sketch in which he pretended to interview potential veep choices like an episode of The Bachelor.

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It's hard to imagine Hillary pulling off any of those sketches. We've had 30 years of her in the public arena, and she's never once had a memorable off-the-cuff pop culture moment. It's just not in her skill set.

But she does have one advantage that will work for her in this presidential campaign: This is the best time to be a woman in comedy in decades, maybe (probably) ever. Clinton is likely to become the first major-party female presidential nominee of our times, and she happens to be running when women are ruling comedy. It shouldn't be a surprise that they are on her side.

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On Wednesday night, Clinton made her long-awaited cameo on Comedy Central's Broad City. Now, if you haven't been watching Broad City, now in its third season, it is your loss: It's one of the funniest, most revolutionary shows on television, starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson as stoner best friends in New York, but that description doesn't come close to doing it justice.

The greatness of Broad City is its distinct and unmistakable sensibility, one that often seems an explicit rebuke to every asshole male comedian who ever stood in Glazer's and Jacobson's way. It's a show about two women, but it's really about women, in a way that the Wall Street Journal called "Sneak Attack Feminism." The sneak attacks have already found their way into the campaign. A scene in which a man stops them to say, "You girls are so pretty, you should smile"-and they respond in the most perfect way possible-was widely circulated after Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough encouraged Clinton to "smile" on stage during her victory speech on Tuesday.

But the show never revels in it: It's too busy being anarchic and hilarious. It doesn't have time for your think pieces.

Into this world steps Clinton, who, in the setup for the show, visits her offices in Brooklyn when Ilana and Abbi are there. (The conceit of the episode is that the slacker Ilana thinks an invitation to volunteer for the candidate is a full-time job offer.) Clinton doesn't have to do much in the sketch, because she doesn't have to: Ilana and Abbi know what they're doing, and they're able to set her up and work off her all on their own.

This culminates in a legitimately funny bit where Clinton sets up an Air Dancer in the office, a perfect surreal little moment that gives Clinton a moment of actual surprise, ending with a sweet up-with-women punctuation mark. It's subtle, but it's of a piece with the show.

The scene requires very little heavy lifting from Clinton. She doesn't have to deadpan anything, or dance, or be wacky. She just has to be herself. There are professionals there to take care of the rest. That these are extremely talented, confident women who have their own critically acclaimed Comedy Central show has nothing to do with Clinton, but it's still not something that existed 10 years ago, and that benefits her now.

You also saw this on Clinton's SNL appearance late last year, when Kate McKinnon, an avid Clinton supporter (and about to break through in a huge way in the new Ghostbusters movie), essentially picks up Clinton and carries her through a whole sketch. She even massages out a halfway decent Trump impression from Clinton.

Other ascendant female comedians who have endorsed Clinton and helped her out have included Ellen DeGeneres, Amy Poehler, and Amy Schumer, who may in fact be more powerful than all of them right now and, one suspects, has something big planned if this turns out to be a Clinton-Trump matchup.

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Clinton will never be a comedic dynamo. But she doesn't have to be. There's never been a better time to have the brightest minds in comedy all on your side. Because right now: They're all women. And they're all for Clinton. Broad City is just the start. Look out.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced his next chapter: Hes joined the Emerson Collective, where he will be focusing on disconnected youth between the ages of 17 and 24 in his native Chicago, including high school dropouts and those with criminal records.

Duncans official title will be managing partner for the Palo Alto, Calif.,-based philanthropy and advocacy organization, which is led up by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The Emerson Collective works on education redesign, immigration overhaul, and other social policies.

The Emerson Collective is also home to Russlyn Ali, who headed up the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights during Duncans first term as education secretary. Shes now managing director for education. And Jamie Fasteau, a former top aide for Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who served as both chairman and ranking member of the House education committee, is there too, as a director of policy for education.

Duncans initial goal, according to the organizations website, will be to provide job opportunities for young people and to help at-risk kids transition to the workplace.

A young person growing up in Chicago ought to be able to chart a clear road map toward a bright future, Duncan said in a statement. But for too many inner-city kids, the path is marred by poverty, violence, broken social networks and schools that cant keep up with the challenges in tough neighborhoods. The violence is a symptom of hopelessness and our priority is to give young people hope by getting them jobs.
Photos posted to Robert Zwolinski's Facebook account show what he said is the aftermath of an attack by a man and woman he confronted after he saw them plastering signs for his opponent for a state House seat at his campaign office March 6, 2016. Bradley Fichter and Jessica Soto, both 26, are charged with aggravated battery in the attack.

Politics in Chicago frequently is a rough-and-tumble affair but rarely does a campaign literally draw blood.

That's what happened in the primary campaign, when an altercation turned violent, resulting in the firing of a staple gun to the face, a broken nose, stitches and a grab of the groin, Cook County prosecutors say.

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The squabble started when the incumbent's daughter and her boyfriend drew the attention of her mother's challenger by stapling campaign posters outside his campaign headquarters and ended with the challenger's face streaked with blood and a gash on the forehead, authorities say.

Three days after state Rep. Cynthia Soto, D-Chicago, soundly defeated Robert Zwolinski in the primary for the state's 4th District, Soto's daughter, Jessica, and her boyfriend stood before a Cook County judge Friday to face felony charges in connection with the scuffle.

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Prosecutors accused Jessica Soto and Bradley Fichter, both 26, of attacking Zwolinski on March 6 outside his campaign headquarters in the 800 block of North Ashland Avenue. Soto and Fichter were stapling pro-Cynthia Soto campaign posters to a nearby building when Zwolinski and his girlfriend drove past, jumped out of his car and approached the pair. An argument ensued.

What happened next is in dispute. Prosecutors said Fichter punched Zwolinski in the eye, striking him multiple times. Soto joined in, punching Zwolinski in the ribs and knocking him to the ground, they said. Fichter got on top of the politician, continuing to punch and choke him, they said.

Soto then "squeezed his genital area," used a staple gun on Zwolinski's face and smashed an empty beer bottle on his nose, prosecutors said. Zwolinski suffered a broken nose and black eye and needed six stitches from the attack, according to prosecutors.

The next day, Zwolinski posted a picture of himself on Twitter with a bloody gash on his forehead and his nose purple and swollen.

"Politics is a contact sport. Apparently that's literally the case," he wrote.

Frank Avila, Jessica Soto's lawyer, disputed the charges against his client, saying Zwolinski started the scuffle by tearing down the campaign posters, pushing Fichter and telling them to stop putting up the signs. His client acted in self-defense, he said.

Avila called the charges "sour grapes," claiming Zwolinski had connections with the state's attorney's office and that the charges were filed only because of his election loss.

"These charges are way exaggerated," Avila told reporters after the bond hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. "If he's going around saying a girl's beating him up, that's sad too. Maybe it's good he lost the race."

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Jessica Soto, of the 1500 block of West Ohio Street, and Fichter, of the 4700 block of North Kewanee Avenue, were each charged with three felony counts of aggravated battery, according to Chicago police. Fichter also was charged with a felony count of disorderly conduct for filing a false report with police.

Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil pressed lawyers for specifics about the incident and expressed dismay that a political campaign had ended up violent.

"I'm really sad at how this whole election process is going," the judge said, emphasizing that Soto and Fichter appeared to be within their rights when they were tacking the campaign posters up along the street.

As the lawyers argued at the bench about who started the fight, Kuriakos Ciesil shook her head.

"It's really sad this is going on," she said. "It's an embarrassment to our entire country."

Bond was set at $25,000 for each, and both were ordered to have no contact with Zwolinski and his girlfriend or go near the campaign office or their homes.

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Cynthia Soto, who did not attend the court hearing, routed Zwolinski in Tuesday's Democratic primary, garnering nearly 80 percent of the vote. The 4th District includes the Bucktown, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, West Town, Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village neighborhoods.

Zwolinski did not respond Friday to interview requests from the Tribune. But after the charges were filed, he thanked police and the state's attorney's office for their investigation.

"Sadly, these facts came out after the election," he said then. "The real victims are the citizens of the 4th District."

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A spokesman for Secretary of State Jesse White said Jessica Soto has worked as an executive assistant in the driver's services department since August 2013 and was expected to submit a letter of resignation by the end of Friday.

The spokesman, David Druker, said Soto was recommended for the $35,532-a-year position by her mother. It was a Rutan-exempt position, meaning political support or affiliation was allowed when considering who to hire for the job, Druker said.

Avila insisted that Zwolinski provoked the attack. He also told the judge that Zwolinski is the one who should be facing charges.

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"Taking down somebody's sign and ripping it down is destruction of property," Avila said.

He later said Jessica Soto did not even participate in the altercation, saying that witnesses misidentified her in a police lineup.

Chicago Tribune's Kim Geiger contributed.

poconnell@tribpub.com
A construction worker died Thursday after falling 53 floors from a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles.

Witnesses reported the man fell at 12:08 p.m. from the Wilshire Grand, a hotel under construction that, when completed, will be the West Coast's tallest building, said Officer Liliana Preciado, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

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According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, an adult male was pronounced dead at the scene near 624 S. Figueroa St.

The man's body apparently struck the back of a car that was traveling on the street, and a woman inside the vehicle was being examined by medical personnel.

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"She is not injured," LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said. "She is scared."

Times staff photographer Mel Melcon was at the building on assignment when he said he heard a loud thump and saw the man's body. The man's body was lying off the driver's side of the car, he said.

"It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building," Melcon said.

The dead man had been working on the tower's 53rd floor, which does not yet have windows. However, the floor is outfitted with an 8-foot-high "integrity fence" -- a metal barrier intended to keep construction workers, building materials and tools from falling out of the tower.

A construction worker who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity said that he was on the ground when he and others heard a loud noise and ran to find a man's body by a blood-spattered car.

"We asked the driver: 'Did you run this man over?' She said no. That's when I knew he had fallen off the building," the worker said.

The worker said he returned to the building to help evacuate construction employees and discovered a hard hat lying on the 53rd floor. The helmet bore the dead man's employee number, he said.

The dead man has not been publicly identified, although a spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA described him as "an electrician from ASSI." Workers have been told that the job site will be shut down for two days for an OSHA investigation.

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Although laborers at the site are required to wear tethering harnesses, no such safety device could be seen on the man's body, or a hard hat in the vicinity of where he fell, according to witnesses.

At a news conference held at the worksite, police and construction officials said the man had worked on the construction site for just two days.

"We extend our condolences to the family," said Chris Martin, the chief executive of Martin Project Management, which is involved in the construction of the massive building.

Asked if there was any electrical work the man could have been doing so close to the edge of the building, Martin said there wasn't.

Sgt. Barry Montgomery, an LAPD spokesman, described the man's death as a "tragic workplace accident."

Neither Montgomery nor Martin would comment on whether the worker was wearing a safety harness. Martin did say that barricades have been erected at the building's highest levels to make sure no workers go near the edge of the structure.

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Reached by telephone Thursday, Michael Willey, owner of Irvine-based ASSI Security, said the firm had been notified of the employee's death. He said the company was not yet prepared to give a statement.

Rick Smegelski, a tower crane operator, said he heard the news over the radio. Turner Construction Co., which manages the construction site, brought everyone down from the tower and shut the job down.

Foremen were asked to conduct head counts, getting names and numbers of everyone on the site. The process took about an hour, said Dave Snodgrass, an operator of a man-lift, a special construction elevator.

As of last week, there were about 850 workers on the site. Until now, no one had suffered serious injury at the site, according to officials.

On Thursday afternoon, police had shut down traffic at Wilshire Boulevard and 7th, Figueroa and Flower streets.

A white tent was erected in the middle of Wilshire at the foot of the hotel, next to a white car stopped in the middle of the roadway with a passenger door open. At least a dozen men in hard hats and orange safety vests could be seen milling around the area.

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Salvador Contreras, who works at a nearby valet stand on Figueroa, said he heard a very loud sound, "like when you drop a big piece of metal on concrete," and ran around the corner to see the man's body.

"Immediately I knew someone fell," Contreras said.

Maurice Lopez works outside at the nearby Bonaventure and said he has watched the Wilshire Grand rise since ground was broken on the project. He said he was disgusted to hear that someone working on the project had died.

"That's crazy. Usually when you walk by here, you see the guys up here attached to something. Now I'm gonna feel sick walking by here," said Lopez, 50, of Los Angeles.

The 1,100-foot Wilshire Grand Center  including a 100-plus-foot spire  a $1.2-billion, mixed-use office/hotel project in the Financial District, is to be completed next year, probably in the spring.

Developed by Korean Air, the tapered, glass-walled skyscraper will be topped by a domed "sky lobby" with views of the city. It will reach 30 feet higher than San Francisco's Salesforce Tower and become what developers say is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Currently, that title goes to the U.S. Bank building in downtown L.A.

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News of the man's death was discouraging for many of the workers, who have been on site for almost three years and recently celebrated the tower's "topping out." They have come to think of the job as safe. "It's tragic," one told a reporter.

Many had worked in Las Vegas in the 2000s and have memories of the deaths that occurred during a construction boom that saw 12 workers die in 18 months. This recent death brings up bad memories, they said.

A statement issued by Turner Construction on Thursday said that counselors would be available to help workers through "this very difficult situation."

"We were deeply saddened to learn that we have lost a member of the team building the Wilshire Grand Center," the statement said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the worker's family. On any given day, there are 1,000 men and women working on this project. The entire team working on this project is committed to the safety of all of our workers, and we will do everything we can to understand what happened here today and prevent it from happening again."

Staff photographer Mel Melcon contributed to this report.
This undated file photo released by French Police shows 26-year old Salah Abdeslam, who was wanted by police in connection with terror attacks in Paris. (Uncredited / AP)

Police, prosecutors, friends, families and acquaintances have unveiled details about the men who carried out the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. Altogether, authorities say that three teams participated in the bloody assault. Here is a look at what we know about the suspects:

 SALAH ABDESLAM, 26

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Abdeslam's brother blew himself up outside the cafe Comptoir Voltaire. His own exact role that night is unknown. The Paris prosecutor said he is believed to have dropped off the stadium bombers, abandoned his car in northern Paris and then shed a suicide vest in southern Paris.

Hours after he was linked to the attacks, Abdeslam and two travelers were stopped in their car near the border between France and Belgium but were set free. Salah's other brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, said all three siblings grew up in Belgium and seemingly were content with life in the West. "We are an open-minded family. We never had any problem with justice," he said.

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Abdeslam was captured Friday in Molenbeek, where he grew up.

CAFE ATTACKERS

A group of gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on bars and restaurants, driving through central Paris in a black getaway car. They included:

 ABDELHAMID ABAAOUD, 28

Belgian-born Abaaoud has been identified as the architect of the Paris attacks and is believed to have been among the squad of gunmen who attacked bars and restaurants that night.

He was also suspected of involvement in several thwarted attacks this year, including an attempted attack on a high-speed train from Belgium to Paris when three Americans tackled a heavily armed man and one on a church in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif. His ties to many of the attackers date to his days in the Moleenbeek neighborhood of Brussels where he grew up. He bragged that he was able to slip in and out of Europe undetected.

Abaaoud died during a Nov. 18 police raid on an apartment near the Stade de France.

 BRAHIM ABDESLAM, 31

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Abdeslam, the older brother of Salah Abdeslam, blew himself up outside the cafe and is also believed to have been part of the team that attacked bars and restaurants.

His former lawyer, Olivier Martins, said Abdeslam had done a short prison term in Belgium for stealing identity cards. A judge freed him after a month in 2010 because he was believed to have turned his life around. Abdeslam's restaurant was ordered shut down on Nov. 4 because of drug dealing.

"In my opinion, he was someone who was very, very fragile and very easily influenced," the lawyer said.

 CHAKIB AKROUH, 25

Akrouh, a Belgian Moroccan, was identified thanks to DNA provided from his mother. He died along with Abaaoud in the Nov. 18 police raid in Saint-Denis. Belgian media reported that he, like so many of the others, had ties to the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels.

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BATACLAN KILLERS

Three French nationals have been identified as targeting concert-goers at the Bataclan music venue. Two of them blew themselves up and one was shot by police. They were:

 ISMAEL OMAR MOSTEFAI, 29

Police say Mostefai blew himself up at the theater. Tall, quiet and conservatively dressed, Mostefai appears to have aroused little suspicion at the housing block he shared with his family in the French cathedral city of Chartres or at the nearby Anoussra Mosque. Arnauld Froissart, a 34-year-old bank employee who lives in the area, said Mostefai was "very discreet" and his family was "very nice."

 SAMY AMIMOUR, 28

The Frenchman, a former public bus driver, was charged in a terrorism investigation in 2012. He had been placed under judicial supervision but dropped off the radar and was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

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Amimour's father traveled to Islamic State-held territory in June 2014 in an effort to convince his son to leave Syria but was rebuffed, according to Le Monde newspaper. "He was with another guy, who never left us alone," the father said.

 FOUED MOHAMED-AGGAD, 23

Mohamed-Aggad was among a group of about a dozen young men who left the eastern city of Strasbourg for Syria at the end of 2013. His brother and six others returned and are now facing terrorism charges. But Mohamed-Aggad remained with the Islamic State group, telling his family he expected to carry out a suicide bombing in Iraq, according to his brother's lawyer.

Mohamed-Aggad's mother received a text message in English saying her son had died Nov. 13, said the lawyer, Francoise Cotta. The mother submitted a DNA sample allowing investigators to determine her son was the third Bataclan attacker.

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STADIUM KILLERS

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Authorities say three suicide bombers had intended to attack the Stade de France, but they were unable to get into the stadium and killed just one bystander when they detonated their vests nearby. Only one of the thee has been fully identified:

 BILAL HADFI, 20

Hadfi, a French citizen who lived in Belgium, was identified as one of the three stadium bombers and the youngest of the attackers. "I am afraid of getting an SMS," his mother told the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique 10 days before the attacks. She said her son went to Syria in February without informing his family. "He knew it was a trip without a return," she said.

 The other two suicide attackers had Syrian passports believed to be fake. One was identified in the document as Ahmad al-Mohammad and described as a 25-year-old from the rebel-held Syrian city Idlib. Greece said the two men passed through their border in October. More than a week after the attacks, authorities posted a photo of the man on Twitter as part of a public appeal to help identify him.

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ACCOMPLICES

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 MOHAMED ABRINI, 30

Abrini, a petty criminal from the Molenbeek neighborhood, was spotted twice with Salah Abdeslam in the days before the attacks. He has not been seen since and is being sought as a suspect.

 SAMIR BOUZID and SOUFIANE KAYAL

Two men using fake ID's with these names were stopped Sept. 9 driving with Salah Abdeslam from Budapest. Kayal was also named as the renter of a house searched on Nov. 26. Bouzid's fake ID card was used to wire 750 euros ($815) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen on Nov. 17, the day she met up with her cousin Abbaoud and found him a place to stay. Police in Belgium say Mohamed Belkaid, who was shot to death this week by a police sniper and may have been holed up with Abdeslam in the apartment where he died, is "most probably" the person who used the Bouzid ID.

 HASNA AIT BOULAHCEN, 26

Authorities say Aitboulahcen, Abaaoud's cousin on their mothers' side, died in the police raid on the apartment where Abaaoud was holed up. Born in the Paris suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne, Aitboulahcen was under surveillance because her name came up in a drug-trafficking case, but her ties to Abbaoud initially came as a surprise.

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Associated Press
Every St. Patrick's Day, a line would form outside Augie's Restaurant in Andersonville as its founder and co-owner, Greek immigrant Augustino Georgopoulos, churned out once-a-year Irish specials.

"For a Greek, he made a great corned beef and cabbage," said his daughter, Katherine Anagnostopoulos.

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For 53 years, even as the neighborhood around Augie's turned trendy and competition grew, the mom-and-pop restaurant remained a local institution with a solid following that spanned generations

"Augie was fun and funny, a nice man in every way," said Kathy Cromwell, whose family owns the nearby Swedish Bakery in Andersonville. "I started going to his restaurant as a little girl, and my father and him would have lunch together."

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Georgopoulos, 86, of Glenview, who closed his restaurant in 2007, died of natural causes Feb. 27 at Glenbrook Hospital.

Born and raised in Kollines, Greece, near Tripoli, Georgopoulos had just an eighth-grade education and a few odd jobs under his belt when he joined the Greek merchant marine and traveled to ports around the world.

"He visited countries like India, where he felt so sorry for the people living there in such filth and crowded conditions," his daughter said.

Georgopoulos came to the United States in 1950, eventually settling in Chicago.

"He remembered being in a taxi on Lake Shore Drive and gazing out over the lake and thinking, 'I'm never leaving this country,'" his daughter said.

Georgopoulos worked as a waiter in North Side restaurants, saving his money with dreams of someday owning his own place. During that time he met his future wife, Florence "Flo," an actuary, and the two were married in 1952.

In 1954, after his wife left her job, the couple opened their restaurant at 5347 N. Clark St.

"Six days a week he was up and out and at the restaurant by 3:30 a.m. to meet with his food purveyors and prepare the menu," his daughter said. "He used to say, 'When I die, I'll get sleep!'"

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It wasn't long before the restaurant, with its folksy charm and meals that tasted home-cooked, won over its customers. Georgopoulos cooked only with the freshest of ingredients and was famous for his gravies and cream of chicken soup.

He often greeted customers at the door with a handshake and treated his younger clientele to a piece of candy or a small toy from the treasure chest at the front of the store after they finished their meal.

"We couldn't get out the door without Augie giving my children a handful of suckers," said longtime customer Russell Leander. "There was just something about being there and in his presence that felt like such a comfort zone."

In August 2007, Augie's closed its doors. At the time it was the longest-running business in Andersonville operated by the same owner.

"Everyone is really happy for Augie, that he finally gets time to rest," Ellen Shepard, director of the local chamber of commerce at the time, told the Tribune. "But it's very sad the establishment is leaving. It's a real loss of a community gathering place. It's hard to imagine Andersonville without Augie."

On the day the restaurant closed, after a mostly tearful exchange with dozens of loyal customers, Georgopoulos flipped the sign on the door to "closed," dimmed the lights and gathered for one last meal with his family, followed by dancing to some of his favorite Greek music.

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"I feel like our kids lost a beloved uncle and my wife and I have lost a beloved friend," Leander said. "We'll never stop missing him."

In addition to his wife and daughter, Georgopoulos is survived by a son, Nicholas; a brother, Peter; a sister, Dina Demos; and three granddaughters.

Services were held.

Giangrasse Kates is a freelance reporter.
Audience members hold up signs supporting Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Boca Raton, Fla., on March 13. (Paul Sancya / AP)

There is no end to the cluelessness of those who are doing whatever they can to "stop" Donald Trump. Now the blabbering seems to be centering on stopping him at the Republican convention in Cleveland.

It's a dramatic battle plan. Get past the first ballot and then stick someone else in there who is more acceptable.

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Here is a reality check on those thoughts.

If you succeed and do, indeed, stop Trump, prepare to kiss about 40 percent of your voting base goodbye, especially the ones who have been angry about orders from Washington for a decade now.

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I pulled that 40 percent from the clear blue sky. It could actually be bigger than that. The hierarchy's definition of acceptable obviously doesn't work for much of the Republican primary electorate.

Any way you measure it, it spells a Republican loss to whomever the Democrats nominate.

It doesn't matter who that Democrat is.

Why?

It's a process.

Picking a presidential candidate involves moving through a series of gates that lead to choosing convention delegates. It starts with a withering scrutiny expressed in various primary elections. Ask Marco Rubio about that. Wet kisses from the hierarchy landed upon him at one point, and then, he couldn't get a date with anyone and dropped out, again with a speech that seemed just a little too long for such a big loser.

The same holds true for the rest of them.

The Republicans inside the Beltway once believed they had the greatest collection of candidates ever, a thought that evaporated the minute Trump, like a velociraptor that had been hiding in waiting in some dark, abandoned casino basement, emerged and started eating them alive.

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Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, read the whole list at one time and think about what their departure meant.

None of them could roll up enough support to stop a man with no real organization, not much of a staff, borrowed money from his own bank account, no government experience, indescribable hair and an attitude that is so New York it makes you wince.

That guy's freakin' winning, to put it politely.

But here is the reality.

If the Republican hierarchy keeps pushing the idea that Trump is not a legitimate candidate, it risks having its whole castle go collapsing into a heap. There would be an angry mob out front with torches and pitchforks wearing "Make America Great Again" hats.

And the throngs would be right.

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How dare the hierarchy try to undermine so openly the will of the people. Generally, hierarchies do things like this behind closed doors, where they can chuckle and clap and cheer and not embarrass themselves or put anything at risk.

They would do whatever the Koch brothers or any of the other bankrollers wanted, the people be damned.

But now we are in a world of transparency, perhaps unintentionally. The man rolls up votes in bigger batches than anyone else. That is how you define "victor" in a primary campaign, the person with the most votes wins.

Building a 10-foot-high wall around Cleveland isn't going to change that. All it would do is keep out the people who are at the very heart of the Republican electorate, those voters out in the country who are so angry at the "system" they would turn to an arrogant, vulgar billionaire with a steaming baaaaditude instead of the usual collection of GOP candidates.

Look at where the leadership is standing.

It can turn its affections toward Ted Cruz, who has said many, many times that he doesn't want them, or it can turn its affections to John Kasich, who, so far, is president only of Ohio.

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Hillary Clinton, with all her blemishes and Band-Aids and her now skinny, rambling campaigner husband who won't shut up, is looking better and better, even for Republicans.

I think the hierarchy knows that, which is why it is acting so blindly against its own interests.

Charles M. Madigan is a professor at Roosevelt University.
The Afterschool Alliance . The League of American Orchestras . The National Science Teachers Association . Wica Agli . Those are just a few of the education advocates and other organizations asking Congress to beef up funding for the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, which are part of Title IV of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Through ESSA, a variety of federal programs dealing with student health and safety, arts education, school counseling, and other issues were rolled into a big block grant for districts. ESSA authorizes about $1.5 billion a year in federal spending for these academic support and enrichment grants. But President Barack Obamas fiscal 2017 budget proposal only seeks $500 million for the block grant.

A week ago, members of Congress expressed frustration to John B. King Jr., who is now secretary of education. They said Obamas budget shortchanged the block grant. King responded that the presidents budget actually represented an increase for the programs that were rolled into the block grant, and that in any case, opportunities for new spending in the budget were limited.

Now a lengthy list of organizations, including 75 national and regional organizations of various kinds, are sending members of the relevant House and Senate appropriations subcommittees a very similar message to the one lawmakers gave King. They say:

We believe that the Presidents FY17 budget request is grossly inadequate. Specifically, the Presidents budget proposes to fund this program at $500 million, which is less than one-third the authorized funding level to which Congress and the President agreed less than 3 months ago. This would have devastating consequences in all schools districts.

The groups go on to say that Obamas funding proposals for the block grant will not allow states and districts to make meaningful investments in a range of programs that, when combined, improve conditions for learning and help students receive a well-rounded education. And schools would be forced into making unhelpful tradeoffs, they argue, by picking between school counseling services and Advanced Placement courses, for example.

Whats more, like the lawmakers, the groups are unhappy that the administration wants to distribute the money for the block grant competitively. Earlier this month at the hearing, members of Congress said that goes against what they wanted in ESSA. The lawmakers say they want the money to go out by formula.

Other notable groups to sign on to the March 17 letter include ASCD, the College Board, and the STEM Education Coalition.

Below you can read the full Senate version of the letter, which was sent to Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., the lawmakers who oversee the Senate committee that deals with education spending:

Title IV Group Sign-On Letter__Senate

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
A New York City program will put dispensers in the bathrooms of 25 public schools, which will give out free tampons and pads to students.

The program is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Education and members of the New York City Council. It should be fully operational by the end of March.

The dispensers are expected to be installed at 25 middle and high schools in the Bronx and Queens . About 11,600 girls stand to benefit from the program, which will cost about $160,000.

The initiative is based on a small pilot conducted last year at the High School for Arts and Business, in Queens. Attendance increased slightly from 90 percent to 92.4 percent during the pilot, and girls were less likely to ask to be excused from class during the school day, according to the councilwoman who supported the pilot, Julissa Ferreras-Copeland. (The program was reported earlier this week in the New York Daily News .)

Every young person should have their essential needs met in order to do well in school, Ferreras-Copeland said in a press release on the program.

Feminine hygiene products are as essential as toilet paper, helping women prevent health risks and fulfill their daily activities uninterrupted by nature, she added. Providing young women with pads and tampons in schools will help them stay focused on their learning and sends a message about value and respect for their bodies. No young woman should face losing class time because she is too embarrassed to ask for, cant afford, or simply cannot access feminine hygiene products.

There is an increasing movement to promote and recognize the importance of menstrual hygiene and menstrual education. Menstruation is often stigmatized, and in many parts of the world, it is a major barrier to girls education , with girls missing school for long stretches of time. The sanitation issues that make school attendance difficult for girls across the globe have also been highlighted in First lady Michelle Obamas Let Girls Learn initiative .

Ferreras-Copeland said the initiative grew out of her observance that girls were skipping their afterschool classes or were embarrassed to ask for pads at an afterschool program she ran in Queens.

The education departments deputy chancellor, Elizabeth Rose, praised the program, which will also include menstrual education in health classes and other informational posters.

Having easy access to feminine care products is essential to ensuring that girls in our schools have the supports they need to focus on learning and feel comfortable during classes, Rose said. This pilot marks a major step in providing additional resources to students in need.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, vice president of development at NYUs Brennan Center for Justice, said it was a groundbreaking program that would combat period shame.

The country is paying attention to menstrual equity, especially as activists fight the tampon tax, she said. It is exciting to see other cities follow New Yorks lead, including Chicago, Madison, WI and Columbus, OH. Teens shouldnt have to miss school or class because they cant afford tampons or pads. Rather, they should be given every chance to succeed in school. This is one way to help make that happen.
A Plainfield woman has been charged with posting nude photos of a female acquaintance on social media websites without her permission, Riverside police said.

Stephanie Kaczmarek, 38, of the 15900 block of South Arbor Drive, was charged Wednesday with nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images, a felony, according to a news release from the Riverside Police Department.

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According to police Chief Tom Weitzel, Kaczmarek and the alleged victim had been friends since grade school but their friendship had soured over "former dating partner issues."

Weitzel said authorities were able to apply a new state statute aimed at offenders who disseminate nonconsensual sexual images through websites or emails.

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The alleged victim, a 34-year-old from Riverside, told police March 5 that numerous photos of her had been posted by an acquaintance on websites, including Snapchat and Facebook, without her permission. According to police, the photos showed the woman naked from the waist up.

The Riverside woman provided police with a telephone voice message left at her residence that said, "There are a million more like this out in the public."

For about two weeks, Riverside investigators who were trained in the recovery of electronic evidence were able to build a case and also confirmed that photos were still being depicted on websites and being sent in emails to several other people, including family members of the alleged victim.

Weitzel was unable to say how Kaczmarek allegedly acquired the photos and said the investigation was ongoing.

The chief said Riverside detectives had recently attended training in Texas to develop skills on the recovery of electronic evidence. The Police Department also purchased special software to help with those investigations.
After learning about the poor in Nicaragua during a class at Glen Oaks elementary school in Hickory Hills, fifth-grader Mohammad Hassan wanted to do something to help.

So, the Hickory Hills 10-year-old boy started a T-shirt drive to raise money to help get school supplies for young impoverished Nicaraguan students. After getting the green light from Principal Gaylyn Pollard, Hassan decided to help Amped for Education, started in 2009 by Jeff Pluta, a teacher who had taught in Massachusetts, Texas, and New Hampshire. That group seeks to expand educational opportunities for Nicaraguan children and youth throughout the world.

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"[The class] inspired me to help people who are less fortunate than I am and are in need of an education," Hassan said.

Hassan gets help for his project from classmates and fifth grade teachers, Rebecca Rea and Jessica Roubik at the school at 9045 S. 88th Ave. in Hickory Hills. Hassan's T-shirt displays the logo Amped for Education and a globe for the world to symbolize people in need of education. There also is text stating, " Educate the Future."

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"Mohammad's true passion for education and the way he is able to so clearly articulate his thoughts at such a young age is what really makes him a unique student," Rea said. "He truly wants a make a difference in the world. We have been very lucky to have him as a student."

Hassan and his classmates helped raise nearly $500 from T-shirt sales and donations, with 120 T-shirts sold as of March 8. All funds raised will be used to buy classroom supplies and to support teachers who are volunteering to work in Nicaragua.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

"We helped them throughout the planning and implementation of the entire fundraiser," Roubik said. "We set deadlines for when things needed to happen. We worked closely with our principal who oversaw the fundraiser. We truly enjoyed working with these boys through this process."

Rea said: "We have not had other students attempt a project like this. As teachers, it is wonderful to see your students wanting to make a difference in the world. We hope to have students who would like to do something like this again in the future."

Hassan, who was born in Egypt and immigrated with his family to the United States eight years ago, said his family supported his T-shirt drive.

"My dad is my role model," said Hussan about his father, Gamal Hussan. "I want to be just like him when I grow up. He was a doctor in Saudi Arabia, but when he came to the U.S. he wasn't able to be a doctor so he drives a taxi while going to school to become a doctor."

He said he would like to continue working to help underprivileged youth next year when he arrives at Conrady Junior High School in Hickory Hills.

"I hope to raise money for a cause every year," Hassan said. "I'd like this to get bigger and bigger. . ."

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Kelly White is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
By Daarel Burnette II. Cross-posted from the State EdWatch blog .

At a time when the state faces an estimated $2 billion deficit, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told legislators Monday that he wants to limit voucher use to students zoned to failing schools and limit the expansion of the states charter schools.

In a wide-ranging speech on the opening of the state legislatures regular session focused heavily on budget cuts, Edwards said the state must limit the use of vouchers to only those students attending schools that receive a D or F on the states report card. Currently, students from low-income families that attend schools that received a C, D or F grade on the states report card are eligible to participate in the program.

Voucher programs must conform to their intended purpose, and that is to provide a choice to parents whose kids are trapped in failing schools, Edwards said. This will allow us to better focus voucher resources on children in truly failing schools. We must do this without eroding resources from our traditional public schools, which must continue to improve to educate our children.

Edwards also said he wants to allow school districts that get an A or B on the states report card to decide whether or not to approve a charter school.

The state is suffering from the impact of tax cuts made under former Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, coupled with the fall in oil prices . In a special session earlier this month, the legislature made $900 million in midyear cuts and passed a series of tax increases.

The states education department, which approves charter schools in New Orleans and oversees the states voucher system, is expected to undergo severe cuts. In the earlier special session, the Louisiana House proposed to cut 85 percent of the departments budget, though that measure was later dropped.

State Superintendent John White said at the time that cuts of such magnitude would effectively shutter his department. Hes expected in the coming weeks to tell legislatures how he would make more cuts this summer.

Contact Sarah Tully at stully@epe.org .

Follow @ParentAndPublic for the latest news on schools and parental involvement.

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A Waukegan man has been charged in connection with the crash-and-grab burglary of a Waukegan gas station this month, police said.

Marshall Devalle, 28, of the 600 block of North Avenue in Waukegan, has been charged with felony burglary and criminal damage to property related to the burglary of a Marathon gas station at 901 Glen Flora Ave., police said. Officials said other charges are likely pending.

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Waukegan police Cmdr. Joe Florip said Devalle is also considered a suspect in the Saturday theft of a pizza truck in Chicago that led to a police chase through Lake County. Chicago police could not confirm Devalle's alleged involvement.

On March 9, a stolen vehicle crashed into the gas station about 3:30 a.m. and activated an alarm. Cigarettes, liquor and cash were stolen in the robbery, according to the Waukegan Police Department.

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While the vehicle and the burglars were gone by the time police arrived, a surveillance video showed four people exiting the vehicle and stealing from the business, police said. Three suspects in the burglary remain at large, officials said.

On Tuesday, detectives from the Waukegan Police Department's criminal investigations division obtained an arrest warrant for Devalle.

Early Wednesday, Devalle was spotted driving north on Route 41 through Highland Park, Florip said. A pursuit was initiated, and Devalle was taken into custody by the Lake Forest and Lake Bluff police departments after he crashed into a ditch, Florip said.

The vehicle Devalle allegedly crashed was reported stolen out of Waukegan.

Devalle appeared in Lake County Bond Court on Thursday afternoon, where Judge Christen Bishop set his bail at $75,000. He was remanded to Lake County Jail with a Tuesday court date.

In the theft of a pizza truck from Chicago, the truck was found in the 600 block of North Avenue in Waukegan. The Chicago Police Department is leading the investigation into that case.

Officer Bari Lemmon, a Chicago police spokeswoman, said the pizza delivery truck was stolen around 1 p.m. in the 800 block of West 63rd Street in Chicago and was later recovered in Waukegan.

A manager at Papa T's Italiano restaurant said the delivery driver loaded about 40 small pizzas into the truck, then came back inside to get sodas. While the driver was inside, somebody stole the truck.

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Once in Lake County, the stolen truck traveled north on U.S. Route 41 with a Chicago police helicopter above, said Detective Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County sheriff's office.

He said the pursuit went through Lake Forest, Park City and North Chicago, among other cities.

North Chicago police Deputy Chief Richard Wilson said officers were preparing to assist in the chase, but it went through the city too quickly.

At the time of his arrest, Devalle was also wanted on an Illinois Department of Corrections parole violation warrant, Florip said.

jrnewton@tribpub.com

Twitter @jimnewton5
With the recent news about the rejection of a parent-trigger petition in Los Angeles , I was curious about what other states are considering new laws to give parents a route to greater power over their childrens schools.

As it turns out, not many this year.

Josh Cunningham, a senior education policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures , checked on whether state legislatures are advancing new parent trigger laws this year for me. He found out that lawmakers in four statesIowa, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Pennsylvaniahave introduced bills to create parent-trigger laws. But no action has been taken.

Colorado House of Representatives members tried to add a parent-trigger amendment to a bill on another issue, but it failed, Cunningham said in an email.

Now, just six states have parent-trigger laws. It used to be seven.

I no longer count Connecticut because its law doesnt involve any sort of parent petition and the school governance councils created under their law often struggle to find enough parents wiling to serve on the council to give the parents a majority, Cunningham wrote.

The parent-trigger concept was popular, initially. In 2010, California was the first state to pass a law that allows parents to collect signatures to transform low-performing schools, such as by turning them into charter schools or changing the administration.

In 2013, 20 states were considering parent-trigger laws, but that dropped to 13 the following year . The number has declined since then, and no new laws have passed since 2012.

California remains the only state where the law has been used. Parents in most schools where parent trigger campaigns have been attempted have struggled to make changes. See snapshots of all of the parent-trigger campaigns as of last year .

Just this month, Desert Trails, the first California school to successfully become a charter under the parent-trigger law , switched its oversight to the San Bernardino County Board of Education. Its original district, Adelanto Elementary School District, refused to renew the schools charter.

Also, the Los Angeles Unified School District rejected a petition by the 20th Street Elementary School to become a charter school under the parent-trigger law. Parent leaders are considering legal action, according to a March 15 story by Sonali Kohli of the Los Angeles Times .

Related story: After Divisive Start, Use of Parent Trigger Law Matures.

Contact Sarah Tully at stully@epe.org .

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A KidsMatter Job Fair will be held again at North Central College in Naperville from 5 to 7:30 p.m. March 22 . (David Sharos, Naperville Sun)

The Illinois Regional College Fair will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday, March 21 at North Central College's Residence Hall/Recreation Center, 440 S. Brainard St., Naperville.

Representatives from more than 200 colleges and universities and the armed services will be on hand to meet with junior and sophomore high school students and their families.

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For more information, call the college's office of admission at (630) 637-5800 or go to www.northcentralcollege.edu/admission/illinois-regional-fair.

Seasonal, part-time job fair for teens

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Kids Matter will host its annual student job fair from 5 to 7:30 p.m. March 22 in the North Central College Residence Hall/Recreation Center, 440 S. Brainard St., Naperville.

The job fair is free and helps those between the age 15 to 23 to find local part-time and seasonal jobs.

More than 50 local businesses offering in excess of 2,000 jobs will be available. The event is supported in part by the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce.

Each student who attends the fair will receive a booklet featuring the different job opportunities as well as with tips for landing a job. The fair will also feature a mock interview station, resume help and internship opportunities.

For more information, call (630) 527-6562 or go to www.kidsmatter2us.org.

Resource fair for female vets

The Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs is celebrating the achievements of women veterans in a resource fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 24 at the Judd Kendall VFW Post 3873, 908 Jackson Ave., Naperville.

Lt. Col. Sheila Perry will be the keynote speaker.

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Resources will be available for the veterans, including veteran employment specialists, entrepreneurship resources, benefits assistance, resume reviews and state hiring opportunities.

Park board changes meeting time

The start time for the Naperville Park District board's regularly scheduled second meeting of each month has been moved from 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. effective with the March 24 meeting. The meetings will continue to be held at the south maintenance facility, 3415 Book Road.

The park board of commissioners meets the second and fourth Thursdays of the month, with the first meeting taking place at the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle St. The first meeting of the month is broadcast live on Naperville Community Television.

Starting March 24, the second monthly meeting will be videotaped and posted on the park district's website. It will not be broadcast live.

Young Artists Showcase submissions due

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April 11 is the deadline to submit artwork to the 2016 Young Artists Showcase competition.

The Naperville Sister Cities Commission is using the event to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Sister Cities International, with this year's theme being "Peace through People." Artwork is to show how people-to-people exchanges and citizen diplomacy build community peace, according to a news release from the city of Naperville.

Naperville residents and students between the ages of 13 and 18 who are enrolled in Naperville Community Unit School District 203, Indian Prairie School District 204, Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School, All Saints Catholic Academy or St. Raphael Catholic School can submit artwork. Submissions should be dropped off at the Mayor's Office in the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle St.

All submitted artwork will be displayed at an awards ceremony to be held at 7 p.m. April 15 at the Naperville Art League, 508 N. Center St. A finalist and semi-finalist will receive awards, and the finalist will have his or her artwork submitted to Sister Cities International in Washington, D.C.
A new Naperville sales tax that went into effect Jan. 1 will be countered by a property tax abatement approved by the Naperville City Council this week. (Mike Mantucca / Naperville Sun)

Naperville property owners will receive an average $41 break on this year's tax bill after city council members Tuesday made good on their promise to cut property taxes in exchange for approving a new sales tax.

"There were some naysayers who questioned whether the council would follow through on this agreement," Mayor Steve Chirico said at Tuesday's meeting. "The council is doing what we said, doing what we promised we'd do."

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The $2 million property tax abatement was a compromise reached last September when the council was debating how much sales tax it wanted to impose. Council members were divided between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent, and settled on the higher amount with the promise that property taxes would be reduced.

Naperville has the ability to assess its own sales tax because it is a home rule city. Home rule powers, awarded to all municipalities with populations that exceed 25,000 or if approved by voters, grant the authority to enact local sales tax, incur debt and regulate businesses beyond standard state limitations.

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The increase approved essentially adds a tax of one-half cent to every dollar spent on goods and services in town.

Councilman Kevin Coyne initially did not agree with the new sales tax, but said Tuesday he ultimately supported it because of the accompanying property tax cut.

Without that compromise, "I know it would have been hard for me to get on board," Coyne said.

The sales tax went into effect Jan. 1, and is expected to generate about $8 million in new city revenue annually. That money will be used to pay down debt and rebuild the city's cash reserves.

A sunset clause that was part of the tax increase requires the council to review it in two years to determine if it's been "sufficiently effective."

The new sales tax was passed at the same time as a major hike in garbage collection fees, which passed the full cost of collection on to residents. The price jumped $2 to $12.35 per household per month and is expected to save the city $5 million annually, according to Sun reports.

While some nearby cities are declining to cut property taxes, citing an uncertain Illinois budget and undependable state funds, Chirico said Tuesday's property tax abatement was the correct decision for Naperville.

"If the state changes the rules, then we'll have to take another look at this," Chirico said. For now, though, "it's the right move."

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gbookwalter@tribpub.com

Twitter: @GenevieveBook
User Upload Caption: Volunteers Hannah Payton, 13, and Makenna Hutchinson, 14, both of Westville, distribute eggs for the next hunt during Burns Harbors annual Easter egg hunt. (Donna Rowland / Post-Tribune)

Christian Grunder, 5, of Portage found 18 eggs during the Burns Harbor Parks Department's recent Easter egg hunt, eight of which he collected himself. The significance of that detail didn't escape his parents or relatives who were there to cheer him on.

Christian, who suffers from spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, isn't able to take part in the normal Easter egg hunts that many children do. That's why Burns Harbor's first-ever Special Needs Easter Egg Hunt struck a chord.

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"It was absolutely perfect," said his mother, Lori Grunder, adding that they found out about it through Christian's school, the Special Education Learning Facility in Valparaiso.

Cheering Christian on in his egg pursuit were his sister, Angel Bernal, also of Portage; his uncle Mark Grunder of Lake Station and his grandparents, Laurie and Arnold Guajardo, also of Lake Station.

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Kim Burns, director of the Burns Harbor Parks Department, said 48 children with special needs showed up to hunt for eggs, making up about 15 percent of the nearly 400 total children in attendance for all the egg hunts.

Also loving the ability to collect eggs was Gage Taylor, 4, of Valparaiso, who was assisted by his mother and father Melissa and Robert Taylor. Taylor has spinal muscular atrophy, according to his mother, and also needs a wheelchair to get around.

Burton said the idea for the first-ever hunt came after she was contacted by a parent, asking if their special needs child could attend the general egg hunt.

"After saying 'of course,' I started researching and planning an egg hunt for those children with special needs," Burton said..

"Children in wheelchairs had a doll-sized rod with magnet on a string and their eggs had magnets in them, so they were able to pick up eggs. The vision-impaired had (large) containers filled with Easter grass and eggs, and they were able to feel through the grass to find eggs. The autistic children we had inside of our building so they could have a quiet environment to hunt in."

Planners prepared 2,000 toy-filled eggs for the event, including more than 150 gold eggs, which earned their collectors special prizes such as stuffed rabbits. Burton said live rabbits from the Liberty Sunsetters 4-H group were also on hand to interact with the children.

Volunteers ages 9 and up helped Burns with setting up and monitoring the event. Two of them, Hannah Payton, 13, and Makenna Hutchinson, 14, both of Westville, helped with the visually-impaired hunt. They also kept busy with distributing the eggs for other hunts later on.

"The response was overwhelmingly positive," Burns said. "We had so many parents thank us and state that this was the first time their child has been able to go on an egg hunt. I am so pleased the Burns Harbor Park was able to offer this event. It was heart-filling."

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For those who might have missed the special-needs hunt this year, though, there will be another one next year in Burns Harbor.

"We plan to make this annual," Burns said.

Donna Rowland is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to a crowd gathered at the Phoenix Convention Center during a campaign rally on March 15, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Ralph Freso / Getty Images)

Will Hillary Clinton stop by a Northwest Indiana bar for another shot with Democratic Party leaders? Will Donald Trump shake hands at a local burger joint?

Maybe.

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With an often contentious presidential race in which delegate counts expect to still be up for grabs before party conventions this summer, party leaders and political science professors at Valparaiso University and Indiana University Northwest said candidates might find it worth their while to swing through the area.

Indiana's primary matters this year, something that wasn't true before 2008, said Jennifer Hora, an associate professor in political science at VU.

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"Prior to 2008, you can't put a date on when Indiana's primary mattered," she said, adding that before that, the presidential bids were typically sealed up before the state's primary rolled around the first Tuesday in May.

Historically speaking, before 1972 a party's candidate was never determined before the party conventions because the majority of caucuses were closed and the handful of primaries did not carry enough delegates to secure a front-runner, said Marie Eisenstein, associate professor of political science at IUN. As the parties changed the way candidates were selected, opening up more caucuses to voters through the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the candidates were always selected by the Super Tuesday primaries in March.

This year, as in the 2008 primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the presence of strong, polarizing candidates pulling in a good percentage of votes throughout the primary season has extended the nomination process. In 2008, Clinton edged Obama in the primary, getting 38 of the state's 72 pledged delegate votes. Locally, Obama claimed Lake County, while Clinton won in Porter County.

"The more states getting to weigh in translates to more citizens getting to weigh in on who the party's standard bearer will be," Eisenstein said.

After 2008, Hora and Eisenstein said, Republicans changed how delegates are allocated because they thought the contest between Obama and Clinton drove votes to Obama, after a lengthy primary season kept Obama's name in the media through June and gave him an advantage in that year's general election.

Each party and each state allocates their presidential delegates differently, Hora said, but the changes made in recent years make it likely that neither party's presidential candidates will have a lock on the number of delegates they need for their party's nomination before Indiana's primary.

In fact, Hora said, it's possible Trump won't have the majority number of delegates he needs going into the Republican Party's convention in Cleveland, which could make for a contested convention.

"It's been a long time since a convention has drawn excitement or attention," she said.

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Sheriff John Buncich, chair of Lake County's Democratic Central Committee, said Indiana will play a major role in this presidential election and an appearance by the party's current front-runner, Clinton, would do a lot toward energizing the local electorate.

"We are a Democratic stronghold in Indiana. I think they are going to have to pay attention to what we have this year," Buncich said.

Turning out the vote in Lake County will be important to both the national and state tickets. The party needs to capitalize on motivating the voters here to go out to the polls as they did during the 2008 election season, and a visit from a presidential contender would go a long way. Buncich said both Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, from Vermont, are strong candidates, but he expects Clinton to wind up the party's choice.

"Sanders has support," Buncich said. "I've been getting feedback from a lot of our younger voters showing some enthusiasm for his campaign and what he has to say. That's going on across the country with the message he's delivering. Both Clinton and Sanders are good, strong candidates."

Porter County's party leaders would welcome a presidential candidate who wants to stop by and meet with voters.

"It is kind of a repeat of 2008," said Democratic Party Chair Jeffrey Chidester, who added that Obama held a rally in South Bend that year before stopping at Schoop's in Portage on his way back to his home in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.

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If Clinton doesn't have committed delegates, Indiana's primary will come into play, he said, adding he is in contact with party leaders at the state level about potential candidate visits but the primary is still too far off.

"Candidates are going to look at this very seriously, about coming here," he said.

Buncich said Lake County party leaders already have started making contact with the current front-runner's campaign in hopes of bringing Clinton back to Lake County, where in 2008 she tossed back a shot at Bronko's Pizza in Crown Point with supporters including Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott and Crown Point Mayor David Uran.

"We've already been putting our efforts toward getting Hillary Clinton here," Buncich said. "Having somebody on the national ticket (come through Lake County) will mean a lot to our campaign."

Chidester also expects the presidential race to increase voter turnout, which is typically very low for the primary. In 2008, primary turnout for the county was just over 41 percent, almost double what it was in 2012, according to online election returns.

Porter County Republican Party Chairman Michael Simpson said he's actively been lobbying state party officials to have one of his party's candidates come through the county. He can't remember the last time a Republican presidential candidate made such a visit.

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"I've pretty much offered everybody the opportunity to come here. I'm not shy," he said, adding the county party does not make endorsements. "I find them all fascinating."

Dan Dernulc, chair of Lake County's Republican Party, said over the years there have been a number of prominent candidates who have come to the party's events and he would like to see some of the candidates come to the party's Lincoln Day dinner April 9.

"We will reach out to whoever is left to see if they want to come," Dernulc said. "We would offer time for them to speak at our function."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has come through the region and four years ago 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney attended a local fundraiser.

"We are always open to any of them, any of the candidates willing to come," Dernulc said. While Lake County is largely considered a Democratic stronghold, people often do not realize just how many Republican voters there are, he said.

"We are the second largest Republican block of voters in the state," he said.

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Dernulc said the local party stays neutral in the primary, doing whatever it can to turn out voters. The party will throw its support behind the candidate who wins the nomination.

"I really think that Indiana will serve as hopefully a leading player in this decision," Dernulc said.

Simpson would like the party's constituents to hear what the candidates have to say on tariffs and steel dumping, given concerns about job loss at the steel mills. Sometimes, he thinks Northwest Indiana gets overlooked.

"It's a service to all the constituents, whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton come through, or Donald Trump or John Kasich," he said. "Our neighbors in Northwest Indiana deserve the chance to see everybody, even if they don't vote for them."

Eisenstein said she does expect to see at least one presidential contender from each of the parties make their way through Northwest Indiana before the May 3 primary. Since Lake County is the second most populous area in the state and the state usually swings Republican in the General Election  with the exception of Obama in 2008  she said she would be surprised if a Republican candidate did not make an appearance.

"From that standpoint, you would want to make sure you cultivate good will here," she said.

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Amy Lavalley and Carrie Napoleon are freelance reporters for the Post-Tribune.

Keeping count:

Republicans

To secure the Republican nomination, a candidate must claim 1,237 delegates.

Current delegate count as of March 25:

Donald Trump, 739

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Ted Cruz, 456

John Kasich, 143

Delegates remaining leading up to Indiana's primary:

April 1, North Dakota 28

April 5, Wisconsin 42

April 19, New York 95

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April 26, Connecticut, 28; Delaware, 16; Maryland, 38; Pennsylvania, 71; Rhode Island, 19

May 3, Indiana 57

If Donald Trump were to win every delegate leading into Indiana he would have only have 1,076 delegates, 161 short of the 1,237 needed to win making Indiana's delegates significant.

Democrats

To secure the Democratic nomination, 2,382 delegates are needed.

Tally through March 25:

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Hillary Clinton: 1,223 delegates and 467 superdelegates won for a total of 1,690

Bernie Sanders: 920 delegates and 26 superdelegates won for a total of 946

Delegates available leading up to Indiana's primary with superdelegates in parentheses:

March 26: Alaska, 16 (4); Hawaii, 25 (9); Washington, 101 (17)

April 5: Wisconsin, 86 (10)

April 9: Wyoming, 14 (4)

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April 19: New York, 247 (44)

April 26: Maryland, 95 (23); Connecticut, 55 (15); Delaware, 21 (10); Pennsylvania, 189 (21); Rhode Island, 24 (9)

May 3: Indiana, 83 (9)

There are 873 regular delegates and 166 superdelegates leading into Indiana. Hillary Clinton would need 692 total delegates to secure the nomination.

Source: RealClearPolitics.com
Attorney Stephen "Sam" Scheele, 45, and his client David Potchen, 54, leave a review hearing for Potchen's case to be dismissed at the Lake County Government Center Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Crown Point, Ind. (Armando L. Sanchez, Chicago Tribune)

David Potchen did something most defendants never get to do  he shook the hand of the judge who gave him a second chance to get his life on track.

The handshake at the bench came Thursday after Lake Superior Court Judge Clarence Murray heard glowing reports on Potchen's progress since his release a year ago from the Lake County Jail. Then, he faced years in prison for a Merrillville bank robbery.

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"This case is a reminder to all of us of the power that we have and the charge that we have to deal with people who come into these courtrooms," Murray said. "We are literally changing lives. Potchen's case makes it all worthwhile. So many people helped in getting the results that we got, the court, prosecutor, defense attorney, newspaper. Everything came together for good. The system, for all its flaws or perceived flaws, really does work."

Defense attorney Stephen Scheele agreed. "In the end, what makes it super exceptional is just David," he said. "Not everybody has been able to succeed with the second chance they are given."

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Potchen thanked everyone involved in helping him get his life back. While his 2014 robbery case was dismissed, Potchen still must report to probation for the earlier robbery, for which he was sentenced to 25 years. Potchen's probation officer told Murray that Potchen is always early for his appointments and has consistently been focused and determined to succeed.

After the hearing, Potchen said he had one thing on his mind: "I wanted to get out of there and get back to work."

A year ago, though, work wasn't on Potchen's mind. Spending years in prison was part of his plan.

"My mindset was to go back (to prison)," Potchen said. "I didn't plan for it to work out like it did. The judge just kick-started it. I knew I had the skills. I just couldn't get my foot in the door. They'd see the felony and put my paper aside."

Prosecutors agreed a year ago to withhold prosecuting Potchen in a 2014 robbery of a Merrillville bank after Potchen told Murray he wanted to plead guilty to a robbery charge in exchange for the maximum sentence. At the time, Potchen was hungry, homeless and unemployed after being laid off from a welding job. In prison, Potchen decided, he knew he could work and would have a place to live.

He took his last copy of his resume, wrote a holdup note on the back at the Merrillville bank and waited for police to show up on June 5, 2014.

At that hearing, Murray looked into the gallery and told Potchen there was a newspaper reporter present who might write a story about Potchen's circumstances. "I hope to God someone reads about this and offers some help to you," Murray said at the time. "You're not a throwaway, Mr. Potchen. You have value, sir. I'm always optimistic and hopeful that there are still good people out there who believe freedom is important."

Once the story appeared in the Post-Tribune, "Phone calls began coming in," Scheele said.

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In a matter of weeks, Potchen had a landed a welding job at a family-owned trucking business in Illinois and was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Schererville.

"I'm not only welding, but I'm doing mechanical work, too," Potchen said. He recently renewed his apartment lease. He bought an inflatable raft and trolling motor to fish with a friend at Willow Slough Fish and Wildlife Area. He's also working on building up his credit.

Duane, the company operations manager who asked that his last name not be used, had nothing but good to say about Potchen, a skilled welder who earned a raise after six months on the job.

"He's doing great. He's doing wonderful," Duane said. "Looking back a year later, we've been blessed to have him with us. He's part of the family now. He's not Dave, the ex-convict, but Dave, part of the company."

Ruth Ann Krause is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
At a meeting of entrepreneurs in London on March 15, 2016, Chairman of Heng An Standard Life Sir Gerry Grimstone expressed his confidence in Chinas long-term plans leading up to 2021; spoke about how Chinas opening up has long been favourable for businesses; and the outlook for UK-China relations if the UK were to leave the EU in June.

Those at the highest levels of the Chinese government have just finished their annual meetings, the Two Sessions, in which policies for the next year are set forth. This years meetings also set out targets for China in the next five years as part of the countrys systematic forward planning.

Sir Gerry Grimstone gives the media an audience ahead of his speech giving at an entrepreneurs' event organized by the 48 Group. [Photo by Wang Zhiyong/China.org.cn]

An over-arching aim extending up to 2021 is to make China a moderately-prosperous society, though this is an aim which will require many coordinated policies to complete. One of the key subjects is reforming state-owned enterprisesa difficult task that will require policy to address the resulting unemployment and re-education of workers in certain industries.

Grimstone expressed how relatively tough the journey would be to reform China, saying that the economic reforms in China are "much more difficult" and "much more complicated" than similar reforms in the UK during the 1980s that Grimstone helped to coordinate.

Grimstone well knows how to manage reforms of state-owned companies. He aided Thatchers government in the UKs 1980s reforms, and has previously been very involved in educating Chinese politicians on how it was done.

Change of leaders in Western democracies make long-term plans hard to achieve, but China has the political and economic environment to succeed.

"I think the political system in China means it is much easier for government to experiment," Grimstone told China.org.cn, pointing to the ability of China to readily make a "U-turn" when plans do not go in the right direction. The Chinese government has the power to see through the reforms that do work and do drive towards the goal of a moderately prosperous society.

Asked whether Chinas continued opening up reforms were making it any better for foreign companies to do business in China, Grimstone said that it has been easy for a long time, giving Heng An Standard Life as an example.

Heng An is the China-based operation of Standard Life. It works in partnership with an arm of the Tianjin government and has experienced success with a workforce of 5,000 employees spread throughout China.

Grimstone also stressed that Chinas GDP targets and results were not necessarily a good gauge of business success. "A huge amount of intellect is wasted on whether a smidgeon of increase or decrease in the GDP figures is a portent of huge prosperity or great disaster for the global economy," Grimstone told the audience. "I tend to look through short term data and focus on the real economy where for example our own sales are growing at 20 percent a year."

How the UK leaving the European Union would affect the relationship between China and the UK was another matter of discussion that was on many peoples tongues.

The UK people are set to vote in June on whether the country should stay in the European Union. Meanwhile, during the Two Sessions, the Chinese government said that it aims to push forward the establishment of free trade agreements with numerous countries and regions, including the European Union.

Would the UK leaving the EU affect trade with China, or have an effect on the two countries' strong ties following President Xis state visit in October 2015?

Grimstone is already on record as saying that a Brexit (British exit from Europe) would be damaging. Speaking from an economic point of view, there will be uncertainty and resulting delays of investment in to the UK leading up to the referendum, and another two years of uncertainty after the referendum, should the UK leave the EU.

How this will effect trade from China is not clear, but it should not affect investment in to the UK.
Reams have been written lately about incorporating measures of students non-cognitive and social-emotional skills into high-stakes accountability systems.

The key questions: How can states broaden their definition of school success in a way that brings meaningful changes for students? And how can they avoid creating unintended consequences?

The nations new education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, requires states to use at least one indicatorlike measures of student engagement or access to advanced coursework alongside more traditional academic measures in tracking schools success. And some have suggested using measures of students social-emotional and non-cognitive skills, like social awareness and growth mindset, as that extra indicator.

But, for many researchers, the concerns swirling around that idea are more significant than the enthusiasm. Those ideas have surfaced again recently in coverage of the California CORE districts, which incorporated measurements of social-emotional skills into their federal accountability system . As I wrote in December:

Researchers ... have warned that those measures should not be used for school accountability because they are subject to biases and flawed responses. For example, in some schools in other states, students who've been taught about issues like self-control rate themselves lower than their peers because they have a greater awareness of what those concepts mean. Currently, 'perfectly unbiased, unfakeable, and error-free measures are an ideal, not a reality,' researchers Angela Duckworth and David Yeager said in a May essay published in Educational Researcher that detailed an array of flaws with current measures."

But what if researchers can prove that those measures are valid and reliable? Would that be enough to quell concerns? Maybe not.

As Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Martin West writes in an essay for the Brookings Institution, even well-tested measures that avoid problems like reference bias present many unknowns when used for high stakes purposes. One of those unknowns: What will schools that score low on non-cognitive indicators do to move the needle? Will it be effective? Will it create unintended consequences?

West evaluated the CORE districts social-emotional measures and found that they did correlate with school success in many areas. (You can learn more about how CORE developed its social-emotional measures in this blog post.) But there are still unknowns, West writes:

In sum, our preliminary analysis of the data from CORE's field test provides a broadly encouraging view of the potential for self-reports of social-emotional skills as an input into its system for evaluating school performance. That said, the view it provides is also quite limited. It says nothing about how self-report measures of social-emotional skills would perform in a high-stakes settingor even with the very modest weight that will be attached to them this year within CORE. Nor can we say anything about how CORE's focus on social-emotional learning will alter teacher practice and, ultimately, student achievement. The results presented above are best thought of as a baseline for future analysis of these issuesand many more.

The potential for broader state accountability systems under the new federal law creates a learning opportunity, West writes:

One reason researchers don't have much to say about these questions currently is that the No Child Left Behind Act effectively required all fifty states to adopt a common approach to the design of school accountability systems. Fifteen years later, we know a lot about the strengths of this approach and even more about its weaknessesbut next to nothing about those of potential alternatives. The recently enacted Every Student Succeeds Act provides both opportunity and incentive for experimentation. What is important is that we learn from what happens next. We need to let evidence speak."

Related reading:

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The first lung to be transported between two Chinese cities following a change in civil aviation rules to prioritize donated organs was successfully transplanted into a patient in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, on Wednesday afternoon.

Liu Dong, a doctor on the organ transport team, said the service provided by airlines "has significantly improved" in comparison to previous organ transport experiences.

"Now we don't need to explain too much at the airport about transporting donated human organs," said Liu. "The team went through the security checks more smoothly. The airport even arranged for a car to take us to the plane."

He said the team arrived at the airport at about 6:40 am. and arrived in Wuxi four hours later. The surgery concluded successfully at 6:20 pm.

On Feb 25, the Civil Aviation Administration of China informed airlines and airports that they must improve the services offered to people with disabilities and those falling ill on flights. They were also told to guarantee transportation of donated organs.

"We used to be required to explain about the organs to airport security in great detail," Liu said. "Sometimes the team was refused permission to board flights."

One week before the administration issued the new regulation, a lung that was donated in Dalian, Liaoning Province, that was required in Wuxi was turned back by an airline.

"Our medical workers were worried every time we negotiated with the airlines and the airports," said Chen Jingyu, who heads the world's fifth-largest lung transplant center, which is in Wuxi People's Hospital.

"Without an official donated organ transportation system, many factors might influence the transportation and cause the final transplant surgery to fail," Chen said. "Many times, we had to call our friends working at the airports for help, but we could not rely on their help all of the time."

He asked for the establishment of an official emergency transportation system for donated organs during last year's annual sessions of the top legislature and political advisory body and urged cooperation from airlines, railways and highways.

Chen said a significant number of China's donated lungs had gone to waste because of transportation problems and the narrow window of time in which the organs remain viable. Lungs must be used within 12 hours and the surgery usually takes five hours.

In China, patients typically wait for two or three years before receiving a lung transplant. Many have died while waiting.

"With the administration's regulation, the airlines and airports are now aware of donated organ transports," said Liu. "We don't need to worry about the transport procedures as we did before, which will benefit the patients greatly."
A Virgin Atlantic passenger plane flies in the sky in this undated file photo. [Photo / Web]

A Chinese woman told China.org.cn about her horrifying experience as the victim of an alleged "racist" attack on a Virgin Atlantic flight. The British airline said they are investigating the incident.

The woman, who only revealed her surname as "Yu" out of concern for possible retaliation by the airline, said that on March 1, while on board Virgin flight VS250, she was insulted by a Caucasian male passenger and that her complaints were subsequently ignored by flight attendants. She posted her claim on the Internet, and the post went viral on Chinese social media.

"It was the first time I've experienced racism for being Chinese," she said, mentioning that she was alone at the time and returning to Shanghai after a trip to the U.K.. "I did nothing to that white man. But he came directly towards me from his seat and said, 'You f*cking Chinese pig! Get the f*ck out of here!'" Yu said the man looked like he was in his 50's.

Ms. Yu couldn't believe her ears, but the man repeated the words and acted as if he might physically assault her. Due to the repetitive verbal abuse, other passengers got involved. "One British man and his Chinese wife tried to stop him, but he threatened them also," Yu said.

To her surprise, a male flight attendant also threatened her. "The attendant whispered to the man who'd abused me then walked up to me and scolded me, asking me not to fight with the man and to respect other passengers, otherwise he would remove me from the plane." Yu said that when she later asked for the attendant's name, she was told it was Nathan Smith. However, she believes it may be a false name.

Yu tried to explain the situation, but the male attendant wouldn't listen to her. She said the attendant later came back and told her that the abusive passenger had claimed to be "mentally unstable," and that he would put the man in another seat further away from her. However, half an hour passed, and the man was still there in his original seat. "A Chinese attendant then advised me not to mention the seat change again, because Smith, their superior attendant, has ordered them to remove me from the plane if I mentioned the incident again."

Throughout the entire 11-hour flight from London to Shanghai, Yu was upset and frightened. "No flight attendants came forward to apologize to me or explain to me why an aggressive and self-declared 'mentally unstable' man can do whatever he wants," she said.

Louise Holding, a public specialist from the press office of Virgin Atlantic, issued a statement to China.org.cn, saying, "We are aware of the concern around the alleged incident on flight VS250, and would like to reassure customers that we do not tolerate abuse on board our services. We are a multinational company with zero tolerance of racism, and the safety and well-being of customers is always our priority. We will continue to talk directly to the customer concerned to ensure this is resolved."

In an email sent by Sarah Middleton, customer relations advisor of Virgin Atlantic Airways, to Yu, the Virgin Atlantic representative explained that "while the cabin crew does their best to be vigilant, unfortunately they cannot predict every unexpected behaviour that a customer may exhibit."

The email added, "I really am so sorry that you felt the crew placed blame on you as I am sure that this would never have been their intention. They are trained to act to appease any situation that may be getting out of hand and the onboard manager could clearly see that you were extremely distressed."

For Yu, the experience was terrible enough for her to stop using the airline. "I want a public apology and want more people to pay attention to racism. I swear I will never board any Virgin flight in my life."

By Friday, over 5 million users had read about the issue on the Chinese microblog site Weibo.com.
A researcher checks the conditions of rats used for laboratory tests at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing. [Photo/China Daily]

China is expected to adopt its first national standard on laboratory animal welfare and ethics by the end of the year. This will mark a major legislative breakthrough for the protection of animals used in research and testing by the pharmaceutical and other industries.

The draft, which is available for public opinion until Sunday, is expected to greatly improve the welfare of laboratory animals in China, according to Sun Deming, chairman of the Welfare and Ethics Committee of the Chinese Association for Laboratory Animal Sciences.

"Although all users of laboratory animals are required to conduct welfare and ethics reviews, they adopt different standards, and some are too lax," Sun said.

Qin Chuan, the association's president, said the lack of legislation has become a bottleneck for the development of China's multibillion-yuan biological and pharmaceutical industries and other industries related to the use of laboratory animals.

The new standard, which aims to minimize the use of animals and also their pain, integrates the latest concepts and requirements for the ethical treatment of lab animals, Sun said.

It has been recognized by leading experts at home and abroad, Sun said during the two-day Sino-British Third International Seminar on Laboratory Animal Welfare and Ethics.

The conference in Hefei, Anhui Province, which was co-hosted by the association and the British government, ended on Thursday.

"We drew on experiences and lessons in the legislation of laboratory animal welfare from other countries, such as the UK, when drafting the standard," Sun said. "If carried out, it will be of epoch-making significance for China's laboratory animal welfare and ethics."

The draft includes requirements for the production, transportation and use of laboratory animals, including qualifications for personnel, animal-raising facilities and the use of animals in testing.

About 20 million laboratory animals, mainly mice, are used annually for testing in China, according to Yue Bingfei, director of the Laboratory Animal Monitoring Center at the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control. Sun said that although China is a major producer and user of laboratory animals, there is hardly any legislation on their welfare, and no specific government department supervises animal welfare.

In one recent case, Xi'an Medical University in Shaanxi Province suspended surgeries on animals in December after it was found that some dogs had been abused and their carcasses mishandled during research.

An anonymous microblog that posted photos of more than 10 dogs bleeding on the roof of a university building went viral, drawing criticism and concern.

Qin said the lack of welfare and ethics standards affects the health of laboratory animals, which in turn affects the results of scientific experiments and the quality of products.

She said it also leads to some Chinese academic achievements being rejected by leading international institutions and also prevents some Chinese products, such as cosmetics, from being sold in international markets.

Mark Prescott, head of research management and communications at independent scientific organization NC3Rs in the UK, said promoting animal welfare in China can help Chinese scientists to collaborate internationally. It will also benefit companies, as they can produce products safely and efficiently and market them better.

China is making progress in promoting the welfare of laboratory animals.

Lin Qingbin, an engineer at the Drug and Cosmetics Registration Management Department at the China Food and Drug Administration, said domestic producers, for example, have been allowed to market commonly used items, such as shampoos and perfumes, without animal testing since 2014.

But according to scientists, China is weak in the research of alternative methods to using laboratory animals, making the abandonment of animal testing impossible in the near future.

More than 300,000 people are employed in industries that use animals for testing.
The South African government has not yet made a decision on legalizing trade in rhino horn, Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said on Thursday.

She was responding to reports that South Africa has decided to propose the legislation of the rhino horn trade to 17th Conference of Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES CoP17), which will take place in Johannesburg in September.

The minister said the cabinet appointed a Committee of Enquiry in 2015 to investigate, amongst other matters, the feasibility of a legal rhino horn trade.

The committee, she said, conducted public hearings and listened to the views expressed by those who needed to be heard and contribute to the processes towards decision-making.

The committee's report and recommendations were considered by the inter-governmental Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), which made further recommendations to the Inter-Ministerial Committee established by the cabinet to provide guidance on this matter, Molewa said.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee met on March 8, and recommendations for consideration by cabinet have been formulated and will be considered in due course, she said.

"As is clear from the above, the process has not been concluded," she said, adding that the South African government will provide a report on the final cabinet decision once the process has been concluded.

South Africa, which is home to about 90 percent of the world's rhino population, imposed a moratorium in 2009 on rhino horn trading to curb poaching.

Last year, South Africa lost 1,175 rhinos to poaching.

Opponents to the ban say illegal poaching has increased since the moratorium was enacted in 2009, and argue throwing out the moratorium will discourage poaching.
Tanzanian authorities said on Thursday that plans were afoot to launch a new anti-poaching campaign that will mainly rely on intelligence.

"The new anti-poaching drive will depend on the use of intelligence than haphazard military crackdown that has negative implications," the east African nation's Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources and Tourism Ministry, Gaudence Milanzi, told a meeting of tourism stakeholders in Arusha.

Tanzania launched an anti-poaching operation in October 2013 called Operation Tokomeza but the operation was suspended a month later following reports of human rights violations.

The operation was launched by former President Jakaya Kikwete and it involved the police, the army and members of the militia.

"Unlike the previous controversial anti poaching crusade that was dominated by significant claims of torture of civilians, extortion and murder, the new drive will be intelligence oriented, with relatively no military activities involved," said Milanzi.

He said the new operation will involve formation of a wildlife crime and intelligence unit.

"We have begun the intensification of security at our border posts where we have deployed staff and sniffer dogs on the ground," said the retired army general.

Poaching has led to massive drop in elephant populations in Tanzania, with a 2014 elephant census report showing that the population of elephants in the country was 43,330, a decline from 109,051 in 2009, which was equivalent to a decline of 60.3 percent.
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The rate of loss of Africa's forest cover is alarming, a Ghanaian minister has observed, and called for urgent efforts to restore lost forests.

Nii Osah Mills, Ghana's Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, made this call during the International Working Conference on Landscape Restoration that opened on Thursday.

The three-day meeting was organized by Form Ghana and Nyenrode Business University, Netherlands.

According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 13 million hectares of forests are lost every year globally, with Africa being one of the continents with the highest losses, losing an estimated 3.4 million hectares yearly.

"This alarming rate of deforestation calls for an urgent step to address the drivers of deforestation and to restore degraded forest landscapes through the creation of new forests," the minister urged.

Through collaborations between the public and private sectors, the minister said 180,000 hectares of forest plantations had been established nationwide in Ghana.

Ghana, the minister said, would also issue its first Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license by the end of this year.

"Restoration is a strategy that yields multiple benefits in water, energy, forest, food, and finance, economy, and Climate Change Resilience," said Sean DeWitt of the World Resource Institute.

DeWitt noted that Africa had the greatest land area for landscape restoration opportunities.
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Russia said Thursday that it is against new U.S. unilateral sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"We do not recognize unilateral pressure. We proceed from the legitimacy of the UN Security Council and the fact that its sanctions are collective decision of the international community, with the aim of improving the situation and overcoming the crisis on the Korean Peninsula," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by the Tass news agency as saying.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Wednesday to impose new sanctions on the DPRK.

The White House said the "robust new sanctions" are part of U.S. response to the DPRK's Jan. 6 nuclear test and Feb. 7 ballistic missile launch.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Thursday that China has always opposed any unilateral sanctions by any country.

Considering the sensitive and complex situation on the Korean Peninsula, China opposes any moves that may further escalate tensions, Lu added.

The UN Security Council on March 2 unanimously adopted Resolution 2270, which introduced the toughest sanctions against the DPRK to curb the country's nuclear and missile programs. On March 8, South Korea unveiled a package of new unilateral sanctions against the DPRK.
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) holds talks with his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall Gaye in Beijing, capital of China, March 17, 2016. [Xinhua]

China has resumed diplomatic relations with Gambia after Foreign Minister Wang Yi signed a joint communique with his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye in Beijing yesterday.

"The People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of The Gambia...have agreed and decided to resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level as of the date of the signing of this Joint Communique," the communique says.

The two countries also agreed to exchange ambassadors and, in accordance with the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, provide necessary assistance for the establishment of embassies and the performance of their respective duties on a reciprocal basis, it says.

According to the communique, the Chinese government supports the Gambian government in its efforts to safeguard national sovereignty and develop the economy.

The Gambian government recognizes that there is only one China in the world and that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, it says.

The Gambian government undertakes not to establish any official relations or engage in any official contact with Taiwan, it says.

The Chinese government appreciates this position of the Gambian government, it says.

"The time of the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Gambia was determined through consultation between the two sides," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Thursday.

The resumption of diplomatic ties is not directed against anyone, he said, reiterating China's adherence to the one-China policy and peaceful development of cross-Strait relations remains unchanged.

There is only one China in the world, and both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China, he said, adding that China's sovereignty and territorial integrity will not be divided.

Asked if China had provided enormous aid to Gambia to resume ties, Lu said the resumption of diplomatic relations is based on mutual respect, trust and benefit and on an equal footing.

"China will discuss friendly and reciprocal cooperation with Gambia following the resumption of ties," Lu said.

"The Chinese people have always held friendly sentiments toward the Gambian people," said Wang, adding that the resumption of the ambassadorial relations reflects common aspirations and are in the fundamental interests of both nations.

Wang stressed that the one-China policy is a political precondition and foundation for China to establish and develop diplomatic relations with other countries.

"We believe that the Gambian government will strictly adhere to the one-China policy and support China's undertakings for peaceful reunification," Wang said.

Wang said China stands ready to enhance mutual trust, expand cooperation and increase people-to-people exchanges with Gambia and will support the African country's efforts to play a bigger role in international and regional affairs.

MacDouall-Gaye said the resumption of diplomatic relations between Gambia and China is a milestone in bilateral relations.

The Gambian government and people will firmly adhere to the one-China policy, support the peaceful reunification of China and the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, she said.

Gambia is willing to be China's good friend and partner on the basis of mutual respect for each other's sovereignty, said MacDouall-Gaye.

She said Gambia highly appreciates China's long-term assistance and cooperation with Africa.

Gambia is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in such areas as agriculture, infrastructure, investment, manufacturing, people-to-people exchanges, processing, tourism and trade, she said.

Gambia will actively take part in cooperation within the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), she added.

On Thursday afternoon, Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao also met with MacDouall-Gaye at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Li hoped the two sides will push forward friendly, win-win cooperation.

The two countries established formal diplomatic links in 1974, but China suspended relations in 1995 when Gambia resumed so-called "diplomatic" ties with Taiwan. Gambia severed ties with Taiwan in 2013.
Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the expansion of the states three-year-old master teacher program. The program is open to middle and high school teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields with at least four years of teaching experience and high marks on the states evaluation system .

Those teachers get an annual $15,000 stipend for four years to work with fellow teachers, especially pre-service and early career teachers, to improve their craft. Master teachers also get additional professional development through partnerships with either nearby State University of New York campuses or the non-profit Math for America.

Cuomo, who has had a contentious relationship with the states teachers, says the program is key to keeping the best teachers in the classroom :

We created the Master Teacher Program to attract our best and brightest teachers to the classroom and strengthen the quality of our schools in communities across this state. By expanding this program we are giving more talented professionals in STEM education the opportunity to develop their careers and help lay the foundation for a world-class workforce. I encourage all of New York's outstanding educators in these fields to apply to the Master Teachers program today."

The consummate advocate of the program, Cuomo started his 2015 State of the State address by introducing Stacey Miller , a Master Teacher, which identifies, literally the best teachers across the state of New York.

But while many union leaderssuch as Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association have embraced the idea of master teachers, Cuomos plan hasnt won him any affection from the New York State United Teachers.

Last year, Andrew Pallotta, executive vice president of the union testified against the further expansion of the program, calling it just another merit-pay ploy . His concerns were rooted in the fact that the teacher-evaluation system, which NYSUT dislikes, were used to select eligible teachers.

Research has shown that merit pay promotes competition among teachers and destroys cooperative efforts to reach common educational goals. Any system that creates a competitive, rather than collaborative, school climate raises real concerns. Career ladders, however, would be an appropriate use of these funds. Extra pay for other assignments, such as mentoring new educators or working on advanced degrees and professional development should be negotiated with teachers through local collective bargaining."

Pallotta didnt detail the how teachers in a career-ladder system would ideally be identified for higher pay and more responsibilities.

In an opinion piece for this site in January, Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who advocates for American school systems to embrace the master teacher models of Shanghai and Singapore, discussed what Eskelsen Garcia believes are important features of career ladd ers :
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The satellite Kwangmyongsong-4 is launched by a rocket in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on Feb. 7. [Xinhua]

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) fired a medium-range ballistic missile into east waters on Friday, South Koreas Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted as saying that the missile was launched around 5:55 a.m. local time (2055 Thursday GMT) from the western area of Sukcheon.

The missile, fired from a mobile launcher, flew about 800 km before falling off the DPRK's east coast. In consideration of the flying distance, it was believed to have been a Rodong ballistic missile.

It was the first time in about two years since Mar. 26, 2014 that Pyongyang fired the Rodong missile, which has a maximum range of about 1,300 km and can target the entire South Korean territory and major cities in Japan.

The missile launch came in an apparent show of force and anger at the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States and the tougher-than-ever sanctions on the DPRK.

Pyongyang fired off two short-range ballistic missiles, estimated to have been Scud missiles, on Mar. 10, three days after the joint U.S.-South Korea annual war games kicked off.

The Key Resolve command post exercise is set to end on Friday, but the Foal Eagle field training exercise is scheduled to last until Apr. 30.
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Chinese Ambassador to Ghana Sun Baohong on Thursday officially opened a specialized China-Africa Desk at the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to promote the gathering and dissemination of news on both China and Africa.

The desk will focus on trade between China and Africa, international relations, industry and all other fields of endeavor that will go to promote the traditional friendship between the two sides in the spirit of a win-win partnership.

Sun said there were too many good stories in China-Ghana and China-Africa relations that were worthy of survey and publicity, stressing the need for the two sides to step up efforts to report and offer coverage on those issues.

"I firmly believe that the establishment of China-Africa Desk at GNA will call on more people to walk in the direction of promoting friendship and understanding, and the path will become wider and wider," she said.

Bernard Otabil, General Manager of the GNA, said China was a beacon of hope; hope as to how we can in the south-south cooperation exploit the things that the Chinese had been able to do.

He said the GNA, established in 1957 by Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, wanted to hold back its place as "the news agency that promotes fairness, credibility and also equity".

Enimil Ashong, Board Member of the GNA, said the China-Africa Desk was a desk for the future.

"We are in capable hands of people who love us," he said.

The GNA has played a very significant role in the development of the media landscape not only in Ghana but also across the continent.
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European Union (EU) leaders reached agreement on the migrant crisis to present to Turkey, said Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettle late Thursday.

European Council President Donald Tusk would present it to the Turkish prime minister Friday morning, according to Bettel on Twitter.

Moreover, a press conference that was to be attended by Tusk and European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, was cancelled.

"Working dinner finished. No press conference tonight," Tusk's spokesperson Preben Aamann tweeted early Friday morning.

The EU leaders first discussed the state of the European economy on Thursday as they gathered here for a two-day summit. But whether an EU-Turkey migrant deal may be reached or not unsurprisingly attracted the most attention.

Ankara on March 7 presented to Brussels new proposals to tackle the migrant crisis, asking for extra financial aid, speed-up of its EU membership negotiation process and a more liberalized visa scheme in exchange.

The EU delayed the decision until the summit.
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Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday that his country has lodged protest to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its ballistic missile firing earlier this morning, saying the move violated UN Security Council resolutions.

The Defense Ministry said that the DPRK fired a missile into the Sea of Japan at around 5:54 a.m. local time Friday, adding that there are no reports on damage and casualties in Japanese territories.

Japan convened its national security council immediately after the missile firing and instructed relevant government ministries to work with South Korea and United States to collect and analyze information related to the firing.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demanded the DPRK exercise self-restraint, according to local report.

The DPRK fired several short-range or medium-range missiles after the UN Security Council earlier this month adopted a new resolution including imposing sanctions over DPRK's nuclear and rocket tests.

Japan also unilaterally imposed new sanctions and revived some lifted restriction on the DPRK over its first hydrogen bomb test and rocket launch earlier this year.
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U.S. President Barack Obama will be received in Cuba with the respect and consideration he deserves as a head of state, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Thursday.

The minister told a press conference that Obama's visit "will be an important occasion to take new steps which, in the next few months, will improve bilateral relations, on the basis of respect and equality."

With the conference broadcast live on Cuban television, Rodriguez announced that during the historic visit from Sunday to Tuesday, Obama will visit the historic center of the central and the Havana Cathedral, and will also attend a high-level business meeting on potential cooperation between the two countries.

On the final day of Obama's visit, according to Rodriguez, the U.S. leader will make an address at the Alicia Alonso Grand Theater of Havana.

The address, which is expected to be carried live on Cuba's national television, will provide an opportunity for Obama to "communicate directly with the Cuban people," Rodriguez added.

"We hope that, during these days, Obama will better understand our country and interact with civil society organizations," Rodriguez said.

In Washington, Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice said the U.S. president will also meet his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro during the three-day trip.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to refrain from actions that could raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang's new missile launch.

"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," Kerry said in a statement on Thursday.

He said that the United States is closely monitoring the situation on the peninsula.

The DPRK fired a medium-range ballistic missile into its eastern waters earlier on Thursday, Yonhap news agency reported.

The missile was fired from a mobile launcher and flew about 800 km before falling into the sea. It is believed to have been a Rodong ballistic missile given the flying distance.

"The United States remains steadfast in its commitments to the defense of its allies, including the Republic of Korea and Japan," Kerry said, "We will continue to coordinate closely with our allies and partners in the region."

The missile launch was seen as a show of force and anger at the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States and the tougher-than-ever sanctions on the DPRK.

South Korea and the United States kicked off their largest-ever annual war games on March 7, which are scheduled to run through April 30, involving some 17,000 U.S. troops and about 300,000 South Korean soldiers.
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As Cuba's capital Havana gets a facelift in anticipation of U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to the island next week, ordinary Cubans are wondering how the trip will affect them.

This is the first visit by a U.S. president in nearly 90 years, which could mark the beginning of a new and potentially more prosperous era for Cuba.

But given the two countries' history of conflict and past longstanding U.S. dominance over Latin America in general, and over Cuba in particular, Cubans view the visit as a thaw in relations but with cautious optimism.

"Obama's visit can help open the door to new cooperation agreements between the two governments and once for all end the 50 years of hostility from Washington toward our country," Raul Pelallo, who works at a local factory, told Xinhua.

Relations between the two nations soured after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the subsequent nationalization of private companies by the government, many of which were owned by Americans.

Washington then imposed a trade embargo on Cuba, which has been intensified over the past half century, in an attempt to sow discontent in the Caribbean country and topple its government.

In December 2014, Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro announced their agreement to restore diplomatic ties.

In justifying his decision to an astounded U.S. and international audience, Obama acknowledged the "failed policy" toward Cuba only served to entrench the government and to cast Washington as a global bully, tirelessly tormenting smaller nations because it could.

The decision was universally welcomed by Cuba and the international community, but does not in itself go far enough, as Cuban officials have consistently pointed out.

"Most of Cubans believe that on this trip, Obama should commit to lifting the embargo before he finishes his term. He has the moral obligation to do so," said Vladimir Ferrer, a college professor.

But Obama says the decision is up to Congress, even though he hopes his visit could speed up diplomatic reconciliation to a large extent, so the relations between the two countries can continue to be normalized even after he leaves office next year, whether his successor is a Democrat or a Republican.

For some Cubans, Washington's new policy of engagement does not signal a change big enough to counteract the fact that the United States sees the socialist system of Cuba as a threat to its way of life.

"We will welcome President Obama with respect. But we should not be too optimistic about U.S. investments in our country, because if that happens we will once again be dominated by them," said Alfredo Aroche, a retired military officer.

Obama will visit Cuba from Sunday to Tuesday, during which he will visit the historic center of the capital and the Havana Cathedral, attend a high-level business meeting on potential cooperation between the two countries, and make an address at the Alicia Alonso Grand Theater of Havana.
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China urged the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to comply with UN resolutions and stop any action that might escalate the tension on the Korean Peninsula, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

Lu Kang made the remarks when asked to comment on the DPRK firing of what the Republic of Korea's military assessed as a Rodong ballistic missile on Friday morning.

The UN Security Council resolutions have clear provisions relating to the DPRK's ballistic missile launch, Lu said at a regular news briefing.

The Security Council adopted a resolution earlier this month to curb the DPRK's nuclear and missile program following its nuclear test and satellite launch.

"We hope all parties can exercise prudence and work together to maintain regional peace and stability," Lu said.
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Seven members of the terrorist Abu Sayyaf and a government soldier were killed in a fierce firefight in south Philippine province of Sulu on Friday morning, said military officials.

Alan Arrojado, commander of the military's Joint Task Group Sulu, said the fighting also resulted in the wounding of 16 soldiers and six members of the terrorist group, including senior leader Radullan Sahiron.

He said the encounter happened at 9:15 a.m. in Patikul town when the troops under the 10th Infantry Battalion on combat mission clashed with around 100 Abu Sayyaf militants. The firefight lasted until 10:40 a.m..

Arrojado believed that the number of the Abu Sayyaf casualties could be more as the fighting soldiers were supported by heavy artillery.

He said the Abu Sayyaf group withdrew dragging undetermined number of its casualties based on the account of the pursuing troops in the ground.

Felimon Tan Jr., spokesman of the military's area unit command in Western Mindanao, said military combat helicopters were deployed and airlifted all the wounded and lone government fatality.

"Pursuit operations continued against the Abu Sayyaf group in the ground," Tan said.

According to Tan, military battalions near the area of encounter were directed to maneuver for blocking operation against the fleeing Abu Sayyaf group.
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A Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Friday said Gambia proposed that diplomatic ties with China be restored, and there were no preconditions attached.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye signed a joint communique on Thursday to resume diplomatic relations, Wang dubbed it a "historic moment" for the two nations.

The Gambia leaders said the resumption of ties was in the interests of all Gambians, so they made this right decision, spokesperson Lu Kang told a daily news briefing.

The two countries established formal diplomatic links in 1974 but China suspended the relations in 1995 when Gambia resumed diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Gambia severed ties with Taiwan in 2013.

The Gambian government recognizes that there is only one China, that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and that Taiwan is part of China, the joint communique says.

Lu said the resumption of the diplomatic relations is in the fundamental interests of the two nations and their people.

Last year, during the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, President Xi Jinping outlined a raft of measures to strengthen China-Africa ties and announced 10 major plans to boost bilateral win-win cooperation.

At present, China and African countries are fully implementing the consensus reached during the summit, Lu said, noting that Gambia had automatically become a member of the FOCAC.

Lu said that both countries will explore mutually beneficial cooperation in various areas, including agriculture and fishing, processing and manufacturing, facilitation of investment and trade, infrastructure building, human resources development, and people-to-people exchanges.
Selling a Gun to a Family Member: Is It Legal?

Until fairly recently, there were few laws regulating the private sale of guns. Known as the "gun show loophole," secondary sales and gun sales between private parties, such as at gun shows, were not subject to federal and state laws requiring background checks and record-keeping.

But both states and the federal government are cracking down on private gun sales, and in some cases requiring any gun sale to through licensed dealers. Does that apply if you're just trying to sell a gun to a family member?

The States

Depending on where you live and who is doing the selling and buying state laws regulating private gun sales can vary. States are just about split when it comes to the issue of whether background checks are required when the seller is not a licensed firearm dealer. Twenty states, including California, Colorado, New York, and Oregon, have restrictions on private gun sales, in some cases requiring the seller to arrange for a background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

In New Jersey, buyers of rifles and shotguns must have a valid Firearms Purchaser Identification Card (FPIC), which requires state and federal background checks. Washington mandates that all private firearms transfers be done through a federally licensed firearms dealer, who will perform a background check. Most states have exceptions for transfers between family members, but these exceptions usually only cover rifles and shotguns and may not apply if one family member is purchasing a gun from another.

The Feds

President Obama's executive action on gun control may also apply to private sales within the family. Specifically, if you're in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. So if you've sold guns before, you may need to obtain a license and perform a background check to sell a gun to a family member.

There is no minimum number of firearms purchased or sold that triggers the federal licensing requirement. But even a few transactions can be enough to establish that a person is "engaged in the business." And just because you don't own a gun shop doesn't mean the law won't apply to you -- you can be engaged in the business of dealing in firearms no matter where firearm transactions are conducted.

If you've got more questions about the legality of gun sales, whether to family members or others, an experienced criminal attorney licensed in your state should be able to help.

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California Supreme Court Cuts State Bar Exam to Two Days

Lawyer-hopefuls can now rejoice: California's Supreme Court has conferred its approval for the State Bar of California's shortening of the bar exam from three days to two. Lucky examiners will get to try out the new test in July of 2017.

We lawyers here at FindLaw would probably be lying if we didn't admit some envy for law students who will dodge California's storied 3-day bar exam. For as long as anyone can remember, the three day exam has been prompting divorce, causing heart attacks, and more. Thankfully, that's almost all in the past now.

Back in the Old Days

Lawyer have to go through a series of trials (get it?) before they get to call themselves lawyers. After getting out of college, they have to spend months preparing for the dreaded LSAT. After fretting this way and that over which schools rejected or accepted them, they must trudge through school. Finally, they spend yet another half-year to a year studying for some bar exam. And if its the California bar exam, that preparation can turn into a nightmarish, almost dreamlike theatre.

The California bar exam has word-of-mouth status of being the hardest bar exam in the country, though reasonable minds disagree. The bar exam format that exists currently (for a limited time, it seems) takes place on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Day one consists of three essay questions and a Performance Test (PT). Day two consists of 200 questions from the dreaded MBE. Day three's format mirrors day one.

Newer and Shorter

The shortening of the bar exam has actually been in the works for some time now. It had previously been approved by the State Bar of California's examiners and Board of Trustees, but ultimate say rested with the California Supreme Court. Now that approval is official, California can no longer claim to have the nation's longest bar exam.

The new two-day format features five essays and one PT on the first day. On the Second day, the candidates can look forward to 200 MBE questions.

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BRUSSELS - European experts said China's lower growth target is a good sign as it reflects reality and that although China faces a number of urgent economic problems, it has shown the capacity to deal with major policy challenges.

China's economic growth target has been set at 6.5 percent to 7 percent in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of at least 6.5 percent through 2020, Premier Li Keqiang said recently when presenting the government's work report to an annual parliamentary session.

"The lower growth target is a good sign as it reflects reality. Moreover, given that it applies to a longer period it means that growth could gently decelerate until 2020," Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), said in an interview with Xinhua.

"Whether the target of 6.5 percent to 7 percent can be reached will depend largely on domestic developments in China, because the current external environment in developed economies like the United States, the EU and Japan is not good," said Duncan Freeman, senior research fellow at the Brussels Academy for China and European Studies.

Freeman said the traditional drivers of the economy are no longer playing the same role as they did in the past, so success in maintaining growth in China will depend on whether new drivers of growth can be found.

The Chinese economy has stepped into a transition period. As part of its economic restructuring, China announced to initially cut some 1.8 million jobs in the steel and carbon sectors in mainly state-owned companies.

Freeman said the reduction of jobs in the steel and coal sectors reflected what was already happening as demand falls and overcapacity increases in these and other heavy industrial sectors.

Some of the lost growth and jobs can be replaced in new sectors like renewable energy which are growing very rapidly but a key challenge in the transfer of workers from the old to new sectors will be whether they can gain new skills through investment in retraining, Freeman added.

Freeman's view was echoed by Gros. "Getting rid of over-capacity is always difficult. It is good that the problem has been recognized, but it will not be easily solved," Gros said.

It took Europe 20 years to deal with its own overcapacity problem in the same sectors during the 1970s and 80s.

China faces significant external risks as the United States, EU and Japan will have difficulty in sustaining growth.

"But there is little that China can do by itself to diminish the risk of policy failure in other major economies, although greater policy coordination on a global level will help deal with the problems of sustaining growth," Freeman said.

China also must deal with domestic risks, and the financial system remains one of the major challenges. However, Freeman believes China has greater policy scope to take action in the domestic arena, and should continue pushing forward with reform in the financial sector to ensure that problems are dealt with.

"Though China faces a number of urgent economic problems, in the past it has shown the capacity to deal with major policy challenges," Freeman added.

Freeman said this would depend on China's continuing commitment to reform to push through the necessary changes to sustain the ongoing economic transition.

"Although these challenges are huge, China still has policy space to continue the path of reform, and there are significant potential gains if reform is sustained," he said.

Gros pointed out that the service sector, especially those connected with web-based services could be the new driver of Chinese economy.

"This is one area where China might have an advantage of the 'old' industrialized countries, which often have old, established companies which resist change," Gros said.
Los Angeles Okays $30M Gang Injunction Enforcement Lawsuit Settlement

Los Angeles City Council officials this week unanimously agreed to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from enforcement of anti-gang injunctions that restricting the movements and associations of innocent city residents. At the center of the deal is a $30 million dollar settlement that will fund job training for gang members, among other projects.

The deal is seen as a positive compromise by both sides, according to the Los Angeles Times, funding initiatives for positive change without risking putting money in the hands of gang members. But the settlement has not yet been approved by a judge, so the class action isn't over quite yet.

Secret Memo

The LA Times writes that it obtained a confidential memo from the City Attorney's office, urging City Council members to approve the settlement. Let's take a peek at what it was that convinced them to try to close this case.

Reportedly, LA City Attorney Mike Feuer encouraged the settlement for a number of reasons. He publicly called the deal "an opportunity for the city to grapple with one of its most important problems in a constructive way."

The chief attorney's deputies emphasized in the memo that the settlement would establish clear rules for enforcing injunctions. This would lessen the possibility of future suits, presumably, and similar future settlements.

Another key reason to approve the deal was apparently to avoid the possibility of a jury verdict that would have put money in the wrong hands. "The city must resolve this litigation," the memo said. "The settlement creates opportunities for gang members to obtain basic job skills ... that can turn their lives around, and does so without giving any direct payments to [them]."

Freedom of Movement

Christian Rodriguez was named in the class action lawsuit on behalf of 5,700 residents of neighborhoods included in the illegal curfews. Like Rodriguez, many were arrested and otherwise negatively affected by the enforcement of curfews and other restrictions that had already been found unconstitutional.

"Because I was wrongly labeled as a gang member, I couldn't even be outside helping my mom with the groceries at night," Rodriguez said in a statement. "I got involved in this case to help others who like me who did nothing wrong but unjustly live in constant fear of doing something that might be perceived by a member of LAPD as a violation. I want my 2-year-old daughter to grow up without that fear."

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A man walks past the logo of Toshiba Corp in Tokyo.[Photo/Agencies]

Chinese leading home appliances manufacturer Midea Group Co Ltd said on Thursday it is buying Japanese electronic giant Toshiba Corp's white goods business.

The two companies jointly announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding on Toshiba's sale to Midea of a majority interest in its home appliance business. Japan's Nikkei reported on Tuesday that the sale will be worth more than $1 billion.

A definitive agreement is expected to be finalized by the end of this month, with the two companies negotiating details, Guangdong-based Midea said in a statement on Thursday.

Upon completion of the transaction, Toshiba's home appliances business will continue to develop, manufacture and market white goods, such as refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other small domestic appliances under the Toshiba brand name, according to Thursday's statement.

Midea said acquiring Toshiba's white goods business is a key step in its globalization, and the transaction will further promote Midea to be a leader in the Asian and global white goods market and enhance its global competitive capacity.

In the past 20 years, Toshiba and Midea have built a strong relationship in a number of areas, including compressors, small domestic appliances and inverters. The proposed transaction is expected to further enhance the collaboration of the two companies.

Toshiba reported a loss due to accounting fraud last year.

It announced a rebuilding initiative last year, which includes the potential reorganization of its home appliances business, and stepped up its transformation into fields such as elevators, intelligent buildings and nuclear power.

Established in 1968, Midea had a total revenue of $23 billion in 2014, and is seeking acquisition targets as part of its global expansion plan, said Yuan Liqun, vice-president of Midea Group.

The company is seeking deals that can help it improve its technology, brand and global distribution channels.

Zhang Yanbin, assistant director of All View Cloud, a Beijing-based consultancy specializing in home appliances, told China Daily: "Midea hopes to improve its manufacturing capacity by means of acquiring Toshiba, learn about Toshiba's expertise in refinement of manufacturing, and step up its expansion in the global market."

Zhang added that Midea could gain an upper hand in global competition due to the acquisition, and the company and his competitor Haier Group will strengthen their dominant positions in global white goods business through overseas acquisitions.

In January, Haier agreed to buy General Electric's home appliances business for $5.4 billion in cash.

Midea had a 17.1 percent global market share in 2015, followed by Qingdao-based Haier with 7.9 percent, London-based market-research firm Euromonitor International data show.

The rise of homegrown Chinese home appliances makers has hurt Japanese electronics giants badly, pushing the latter into B2B areas, such as construction, nuclear power, housing and automobiles.
Model cargo ships on display at the Baltic Exchange in the City of London.[Photo/Agencies]

State-run conglomerate China Merchants Group has made an informal bid to buy London's Baltic Exchange, becoming the latest contender for the business that has been the hub of the global shipping market for centuries, two anonymous sources said.

They said the approach was made by the group's subsidiary China Merchants Securities Co.

"They are the latest (suitor) and certainly, with such a massive group, it shows how this is heating up," one source said.

An acquisition of the Baltic, which was founded in 1744, would give the Chinese conglomerate ownership of the industry's benchmark indexeswhich could be further commercializedand greater access to the multi-billion-dollar freight derivatives market.

It is the latest Chinese company to look at shipping and commodities targets in Europe, aiming to take advantage of a market downturn that has pushed down valuations of some firms.

China Merchants Securities, which is listed in Shanghai, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A spokesman for China Merchants Group, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said on Wednesday he was not aware of any bid for the Baltic Exchange, adding if there was a bid it would be processed by one of the group's units, which are listed in various locations such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

A Baltic spokesman said the exchange "to date hasn't commented on the identity of anyone involved in the process and declined to comment on whether or not the Baltic is in discussion with CMG".

On Feb 26 the privately held Baltic Exchange confirmed it had received a number of "exploratory approaches" after the Singapore Exchange Ltd revealed it was seeking to buy the business.

Both statements came a day after reports that the Baltic had held talks with SGX and other potential buyers including CME Group, ICE and Platts.

In October, sources said the London Metal Exchange, itself bought by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd in 2012 for $2.2 billion, had made an approach to buy the Baltic.

Clearing houses and exchanges are all looking for a way to distinguish themselves at a time of growing regulatory scrutiny and weak commodities markets. Buying the Baltic would allow any of those entities to diversify their activities into freight.

China Merchants Group is among the country's biggest conglomerates, with interests spanning ports, shipping and financial services.

In December, Chinese authorities approved its acquisition of State-run logistics group Sinotrans and CSC Holdings Co, part of efforts by Beijing to make sprawling government-controlled firms more efficient as economic growth slows.

That deal placed China Merchants' estimated assets, worth 624 billion yuan ($96 billion) and Sinotrans and CSC assets (109 billion yuan) under one roof.

The two sources said China Merchants Securities was willing to pay a premium above other bidders to acquire the Baltic.

Separate sources had previously estimated the deal could be worth about 84 million pounds ($118 million).

Other Chinese firms looking at targets in Europe include China COSCO Shipping Corp Ltd, last month named by Greece as the preferred bidder for its biggest port, Piraeus.

Since then, COSCO has merged with fellow State firm China Shipping Group to create one of the world's biggest commercial shipping companies, China COSCO Shipping Corp.
CHONGQING - Chinese cola brand Tianfu, the country's top-selling soft drink in the 1980s, formally returned to shop shelves on Thursday after being absent for nearly two decades.

The reincarnated cola, with the slogan "not just a familiar taste," comes in bottles and cans.

"From the establishment of the brand to national popularity, to the disappearance after a joint venture (with Pepsi), the changes of Tianfu have coincided with twists and turns of my life," said Li Peiquan, 78, former general manger of Tianfu Cola, at the relaunch ceremony on Thursday in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing.

Tianfu still uses a traditional herbal recipe to produce the healthy drink, said Qian Huang, the new general manger. The goal for this year is to sell 200,000 tons.

"We are first aiming for the domestic market but interested parties from overseas already contacted us to take Tianfu Cola abroad," he said. "Chongqing, where the factory is, has railways stretching to Europe, so our cola could easily sell there," said Qian.

Other nostalgia products, including chocolate champagne, fruit juice and vegetable protein drinks, will also hit the market soon, he said.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the Chongqing company had a strangle hold of 70 percent of China's soft drink market. The cola was also sold in Russia and America. In 1994, the company entered a joint venture with Pepsi, which was not successful. By 2005, Tianfu Cola's market share had plummeted to 1 percent.

Many other smaller soft drink brands suffered a similar fate as the country opened up economically in the 1980s and 1990s. Qian attributed the failure to cutting Tianfu production to make way for Pepsi.

In 2006, the company sold its stake in the joint venture to Pepsi, but Pepsi refused to return Tianfu's right of production.

In 2010, Tianfu took Pepsi to court accusing the US firm of stealing the secret recipe for its beverage. The court ordered Pepsi to return the formula and technical secrets, but rejected Tianfu's request for 1 million yuan ($150,000) compensation.

Tianfu regained its trademark in 2013 and started trial production in 2014.

"It is not only a familiar taste, but also a memory of childhood," said Xu Li, a loyal Tianfu Cola fan, present at the ceremony.
KATHMANDU - Nepal has regarded China's Belt and Road Initiative as a milestone to turn promising South Asia into a developed region in the world.

Addressing a seminar on "South Asia China Cooperation under One Belt One Road Initiative" held here on Thursday, Nepal spoke highly of the Chinese initiative which will create immense economic opportunities for the region.

"China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative will connect Asia and Europe, creating more opportunities in trade, investment and infrastructure development in our region", Nepalese Minister for Industry Som Prasad Pandey said while addressing the seminar.

The minister further said that the economic belt would take the whole Asia into a new height by exploring development.

He was of the view that Nepal will become a transit country between two giant economies China and India through this initiative.

Addressing the seminar, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Wu Chuntai said China and South Asia having a population of over 3 billion is a region of opportunity.

"Our region is a land of opportunity. We should seize this golden opportunity for more peace and development," the Ambassador said.

The one-day seminar was organized by the Nepal China Executive Council by bringing the experts from countries including China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal together.

Various scholars attending the seminar highlighted on the prospects of the Chinese initiative that would invite immense opportunities for common development and prosperity in the region.

Nepal agreed to become a part of the Silk Road Economic Belt in December, 2014.

Meanwhile, the Organization for South Asian regional Friendship and Cooperation with China (OSARFCC) handed over its secretariat from Sri Lanka to Nepal in the sidelines of the seminar. OSARFCC was established in 2011 with the support of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries".
CHANGCHUN - Liu Ruiguo is ladling flour into a sack in a grocery store in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin province.

"I often buy Russian flour," Liu said, surrounded by a cornucopia of Russian commodities. "The noodles and dumplings made with it have a better texture."

In northeast China, Russian imports have been all the rage, since a freight train connected the region with Europe last year.

The Changchun-Manzhouli-Europe International Rail Freight Line has transported cargo worth more than 35 million euros since August, and in return the trains have brought novel, cheap goods like vodka, tiramisu and wild Siberian honey.

In a Russian store in Changchun a bottle of vodka costs only 45 yuan ($6.9), while tiramisu made five days ago costs only 30 yuan. Some items like flour are even cheaper than their Chinese counterparts.

On Thursday, a Russian company set up shop in a bonded zone in Changchun. The company, wholly Russian owned, mainly imports chocolate, candy and honey from Russia, while purchasing Chinese agricultural products for export.

The Chinese government is encouraging this kind of trade in the region, having recently approved a bonded zone in Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia. Covering more than 3 square km in Xiangfang district of provincial capital Harbin, the zone is designed for customs clearance, bonded processing, bonded logistics and trade services, said an official with Harbin Business Bureau on Thursday.

"The zone will be good for economic cooperation and trade with Russia, and particularly in machinery, biomedicine and food," said the official.
BEIJING - A think tank dedicated to the study of the Belt and Road Initiative has been established in Beijing.

The research center is under the administration of the General Office of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The co-founders include China Development Bank, Tsinghua University, and the Silk Road Fund.

The center will play a role in strategic research, making suggestions for policy-making, talent training, public opinion guiding and public diplomacy, according to the center.

A launch meeting for the center was held on Thursday in Beijing.

An alliance of think tanks related to the Belt and Road Initiative was formed in Beijing last year.
Hainan Airlines, the fourth largest carrier in China, launched its 2016 global recruitment on Thursday and said it plans to recruit 300 foreign flight attendants this year.

The carrier also expects to increase the percentage of foreign flight attendants to 30 percent in the next three years.

"The recruitment of foreign flight attendants results from the carrier's expansion in the international market," said Wang Qindong, general manager of Hainan Airlines' human resource and administrative department.

Wang said the carrier will receive 25 new airplanes and open 14 new international routes in 2016, which demand more flight attendants, especially foreigners.

In 2015, Hainan Airlines recruited over 600 foreign flight attendants from nine countries, including the UK, US, Italy and Russia.
Hunan Corun New Energy Co, which supplies batteries for Toyota Motor Corp's China-made hybrids, expects a sixfold jump in the number of vehicles it will equip next year with its own gasoline-electric systems as more automakers embrace the technology to meet a deadline for lowering fuel consumption.

Four Chinese assemblers, including Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co, Haima Automobile Group Co and Chongqing Changan Automobile Co, have agreed to buy the company's hybrid powertrains for as many as 30,000 vehicles in 2017, Corun Chairman Zhong Faping said. Corun likely swung to a profit last year as demand for its battery components rose from customers such as Toyota.

China has excluded hybrids from the subsidies doled out to electric-car buyers and plug-in autos as part of its strategy to reduce tailpipe emissions and dependence on imported oil. The government also requires automakers to lower the average fuel consumption of their vehicles to 5 liters per 100 kilometers by 2020, from the current 6.9 liters per 100 km.

"We didn't really enjoy any carrots the government offers to the industry," Zhong said last week in Beijing, where he was attending the annual session of the National People's Congress. "But it's the stick the government has been waving that has helped us."

Zhong, who founded Corun in 1998 after he quit his job as a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said he has been proposing to the government to put hybrids on an equal footing with plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars for the past 14 years in his role as a deputy to the NPC.

While the government has yet to respond to the calls, Tianjin and Guangzhou have become the first cities to let buyers of new hybrids enter lotteries usually restricted to plug-in cars. That has given Toyota an opportunity to woo buyers for its locally produced Corolla and Levin hybrids.

"China's NEV subsidy policies are actively promoting battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles," said Zheng Hu, a Beijing-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, referring to new-energy vehicles. Supporting conventional hybrids is the "missing piece" of the policy, he said.

Corun shares have declined 25 percent this year in Shanghai trading, but it has won a contract to supply Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd's Emgrand cars with 5,000 of its hybrid systems, which it said can cut fuel consumption by more than 35 percent.

Zhong estimated Corun posted a profit of at least 5 million yuan ($771,600) last year. Earnings for 2015 have not been announced. The company gets more than half its revenue making battery components and posted operating losses in each of the three years through 2014.

"The most difficult time is behind us," he said.
Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Leung Chun-ying addresses the swearing-in ceremony of the fourth-term government of the HKSAR, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in Hong Kong, July 1, 2012. [Photo/Xinhuanet]

Leung Chun-ying, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, recently reiterated that it is common sense that Hong Kong is part of China and will remain so in the future.

Leung was responding to an article advocating Hong Kong's "independence" in the latest issue of Undergrad, the official publication of the Hong Kong University Students' Union earlier this month.

What he said is a simple truth.

The article advocating "independence" is part of a publicity campaign aimed at confusing the public over the SAR's constitutional status beyond 2047, when the promise that "Hong Kong's capitalist system and way of life will remain unchanged for 50 years" will supposedly expire. The writer talks as if the sovereign rule over Hong Kong will be up for grabs at the stroke of midnight on July 1, 2047.

Nothing can be more delusional than that.

But echoing the article's point of view, the Civic Party in Hong Kong also embraces the notion of "self determination" in its manifesto, which was recently updated on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. The party is best known for misinterpreting the Basic Law to justify its attempts to obstruct the lawful administration of the Hong Kong SAR government over the years.

The Civic Party is very supportive of the HKUSU, especially the union's opinions that serve its political agenda, such as turning Hong Kong into an independent political entity. Such delusional rhetoric has found an audience among some of the younger generation. But it may ruin the lives of those young people who are misled by it.

Disguised as "localism" advocates, some people are spreading the myth that Hong Kong can do just fine on its own, politically as well as economically, while their real intention is to confuse the public over Hong Kong's constitutional status so that people will support their attempt to destroy Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability.

The truth is that maintaining the current constitutional status is the best way for Hong Kong to remain the free economy and prosperous trade hub it is today.

The central government has reiterated time and again, most recently during the two annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee that concluded earlier this week in Beijing, that it will do everything in its power to ensure the SAR's long-term prosperity and stability according to the nation's Constitution and the principle of "One Country, Two Systems".
Booming economy, improved job prospects mean growing number envision better future

A student attends the 2015 China Education Expo in Beijing, Oct 25, 2015. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

Both the number of Chinese students heading overseas to study and the number of those returning to China after finishing their studies abroad have increased in comparison with the year before, the Ministry of Education said on Tuesday.

According to statistics released on the ministry's website, a total of 523,700 Chinese students went overseas to study in 2015, marking a 14 percent year-on-year rise. Meanwhile, 409,100 students returned from overseas study last year, up 12 percent on 2014.

Another notable trend, the ministry said, is that the ratio of those going abroad and those coming back has narrowed from 3.15 students going overseas in 2006 for every one that returned, to 1.28 for each returnee in 2015.

Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of EOL, China's largest online education portal, said the trend started to become obvious a few years ago, when the Chinese economy took off and the economic gap between China and other developed countries began to shrink.

Decades ago, very few Chinese people came back after finishing their studies overseas because they saw developed countries as "heaven", he said.

"But with the booming Chinese economy, domestic conditions have improved and there is a stronger need for talent. Not to mention the Chinese government has brought in a series of preferential policies to attract people back," Chen said. "In addition, a rapidly developing economy and a lot of emerging industries usually create more jobs and other opportunities and this is also a factor that adds to students' willingness to come back."

Zheng Tianying, CEO of the University and College Admissions System, a company that provides services to overseas students hoping to attend a Chinese college or university, said Chinese students' perspective about overseas study has also been changing.

"Studying abroad, which used to be a rare, life-changing opportunity for very few Chinese students and their families, has become a common practice that is enjoyed by many students from China in recent years," Zheng said. "More students are just heading overseas for a while to experience it or to broaden their vision and then they are coming back."

Between 1978 and 2015, more than 4 million Chinese people went overseas to study. Of those, 2.22 million have returned, the ministry said.
Top 5 Medical Malpractice Questions

We go to doctors, surgeons, and other medical professionals to feel better. But it doesnt always work out that way. While some injuries and illnesses are beyond a doctors ability to heal, there are times when hospitals, clinics, or their staff misdiagnose or mistreat a patient.

In that case, you may be considering a medical malpractice lawsuit. Here are five questions, and answers, that can help:

The classic case that most people think of as medical malpractice is a botched or wrong-site surgery, where a surgeon is sued for operating on a body part he or she shouldn't. But malpractice liability can extend to staff who make errors in medical treatment as well. Nurses, most of whom handle enormous responsibilities and caseloads admirably, can also be legally liable for causing additional harm to their patients.

And medical malpractice doesn't just apply to physical injuries or ailments. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals also owe their patients a duty of care, and can be liable for failing to diagnose a mental illness, failing to properly treat a diagnosed illness, or failing to report a threat posed by a patient.

Not all harm comes from mistakes in diagnosis or physical treatment. Doctors can also injure patients by prescribing the wrong medication, prescribing the wrong dosage, or failing to anticipate possible drug interactions. (You may even be able to sue a doctor for prescribing the wrong medical marijuana.) And pharmacists could also be liable if they negligently dispense medications.

If a bad trip to the doctor requires future, hopefully better, trips to the doctor, those expenses could be included in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Damages for personal injury lawsuits can not only compensate you for past injuries, but for the future costs of treating those injuries. (Although you may want to see a different doctor this time)

There are time limits for every injury lawsuit, and the limits on medical malpractice claims can be some of the shortest. Known as a statute of limitations, these laws set the deadline after which you cannot file a lawsuit. Statutes of limitation vary by state, and for medical malpractice claims can be as short as two years.

If you've been harmed by a medical professional's failure to diagnose, misdiagnosis, or mistreatment, you should contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible.

Related Resources:
"Zhuangzhuang", left, and "Meimei", the mascots of Beijing's Palace Museum, are seen on display during the Museums and Relevant Products and Technologies Exposition in Xiamen city, East China's Fujian province on Nov 23, 2014. [Photo/IC]

Beijing's Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, announced on Wednesday that its sales of souvenirs in 2015 surpassed 1 billion yuan ($154 million).

The number was released by museum director Shan Jixiang during his presentation in Hong Kong. According to Shan, the museum has developed 6,754 kinds of cultural souvenir.

"We have to know what people really need in terms of cultural consumption before we design these products," Shan said.

"And museums can find resources from their collections to express their own culture."

The Forbidden City, the world's biggest palace complex, was China's royal palace from 1420 to the end of the monarchy in early 1912.

The museum opened a shop on commerce website taobao.com in 2008, but its sales remained lukewarm for years until 2014 when myriad eye-catching products caught the public's attention.

Products like animated emperor figurines and earphones in the shape of pearl necklaces that high-ranking officials wore became best-sellers.

In 2013, the museum began to promote the products with historical stories on the WeChat social networking app. Shan said new media is a key channel for museums to get closer to people's daily lives.

"In the past, most products we sold were replicas of cultural relics," the director said. "But they can be of good taste and interesting at the same time."

During Shan's visit to Hong Kong, an anonymous businessman filled the 80 million yuan ($12.3 million) shortfall in the museum's renovation project for the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the residence of eight emperors, Hong Kong-based newspaper Ming Pao reported.

The project, which is scheduled to wind up in 2020, will cost 220 million yuan and has attracted 140 million yuan in donations from several tycoons.

"No matter how the Palace Museum develops, it will continue to be a museum rather than a commercial institution," Shan said.
Almas Pulat (center) and his colleagues at Wemily, a fast-food restaurant brand in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. [Photo by Zhao Yong/China Daily]

Idea merges modern fast-food chain and a traditional Uygur delicacy

Almas Pulat's restaurant in Urumqi offers a rare combination: it is a modern, stylized fast-food outlet that features a traditional Uygur delicacy, a mutton pilaf known as zhuafan.

Within a year of opening the restaurant, called Wemily, Almas added a second eatery. And that's just the beginning. The 29-year-old, US-educated entrepreneur intends to develop the brand into a modernized fast-food chain, a McDonald's of traditional Uygur delicacy.

"It is not just the zhuafan we make. It is heritage and embracing our traditional ethnic cuisine," Almas said. "My goal is that someday, in countries other than China, you might be able to order a bowl of zhuafan."

In Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, zhuafan is a staple dish that blends steamed rice, mutton, carrots, onions and, sometimes, dried fruits. It is popular among local ethnic groups, and increasingly, among others.

Almas grew up watching his father, Hushur Pulat, prepare the pilaf, develop the recipe and build the family's Mayflower brand into a successful business. His father owns the locally popular Mayflower chain, which has three restaurants and more than 100 employees. The star product, zhuafan, is so loved that "Mayflower" became as synonymous with zhuafan as "Starbucks is to coffee", Almas said.

Still, it took Almas a few years to realize that he could build a business from the family recipe, although he studied entrepreneurship during his four years at college in the United States.

In 2007, as a sophomore at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Almas joined an exchange program to the US. He was impressed by his US counterparts.

"They learned comprehensively in class and they enjoyed life cheerfully after class," Almas recalled.

Coming back, he spent a summer improving his English and a few months later, he enrolled in the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he spent four years.

"The experience of studying in the United States helps me a lot in my entrepreneurship," Almas said.
The first lung to be transported between two Chinese cities following a change in civil aviation rules to prioritize donated organs was successfully transplanted into a patient in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, on Wednesday afternoon.

Liu Dong, a doctor on the organ transport team, said the service provided by airlines "has significantly improved" in comparison to previous organ transport experiences.

"Now we don't need to explain too much at the airport about transporting donated human organs," said Liu. "The team went through the security checks more smoothly. The airport even arranged for a car to take us to the plane."

He said the team arrived at the airport at about 6:40 am. and arrived in Wuxi four hours later. The surgery concluded successfully at 6:20 pm.

On Feb 25, the Civil Aviation Administration of China informed airlines and airports that they must improve the services offered to people with disabilities and those falling ill on flights. They were also told to guarantee transportation of donated organs.

"We used to be required to explain about the organs to airport security in great detail," Liu said. "Sometimes the team was refused permission to board flights."

One week before the administration issued the new regulation, a lung that was donated in Dalian, Liaoning province, that was required in Wuxi was turned back by an airline.

"Our medial workers were worried every time we negotiated with the airlines and the airports," said Chen Jingyu, who heads the world's fifth-largest lung transplant center, which is in Wuxi People's Hospital.

"Without an official donated organ transportation system, many factors might influence the transportation and cause the final transplant surgery to fail," Chen said. "Many times, we had to call our friends working at the airports for help, but we could not rely on their help all of the time."

He asked for the establishment of an official emergency transportation system for donated organs during last year's annual sessions of the top legislature and political advisory body and urged cooperation from airlines, railways and highways.

Chen said a significant number of China's donated lungs had gone to waste because of transportation problems and the narrow window of time in which the organs remain viable. Lungs must be used within 12 hours and the surgery usually takes five hours.

In China, patients typically wait for two or three years before receiving a lung transplant. Many have died while waiting.

"With the administration's regulation, the airlines and airports are now aware of donated organ transports," said Liu. "We don't need to worry about the transport procedures as we did before, which will benefit the patients greatly."
Report in science journal Nature finds nation's contribution to global warming was overstated

China is responsible for a far smaller share of global warming than previously thought, according to new evidence published in the science journal Nature on Thursday.

The study, the first comprehensive assessment of the country's total climate change contribution since the preindustrial era, was done by a group of researchers from Peking University.

It is generally accepted that China now contributes more than 26 percent of the world's total CO2, the study said, yet the country's relative contribution to global warming has remained surprisingly stable - at 8-12 percent - over the past 150 years.

"If we want to know how much a country's total emissions would influence the climate, we have to take all known climate forces into account, which includes well mixed greenhouse gases, short-lived atmospheric climate forces and land-use change," said Li Bengang, a professor at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences of Peking University and one of the authors of the study.

To understand China's total contribution to climate change, the research team established complex mathematical models to calculate the country's global radiative force-which refers to the difference between solar energy absorbed and that which is radiated back into space - between 1750 and 2010.

They found that despite a recent abrupt increase in China's contribution to world CO2 emissions, the country only contributed to 10 percent of global warming.

"Pollutant emissions and climate change do not have a linear relationship, because there are complex, dynamic processes between the emitting and radiation effect. Some pollutants have a warming effect while others have a cooling effect, and they interact with each other to generate a combined effect to the atmosphere," said LI.

"As a result, we have to use radiative forcing to evaluate a country's relative contribution to global climate change." The study also suggested that China's goal of improving air quality could actually increase its contribution to global warming.

"Air pollution is a serious problem damaging people's health in China. But measures to reduce emissions of air pollutants may, at the same time, affect Earth's climate by weakening the cooling effect," Li said.

Radiative forcing is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as referring to the extent that a factor alters the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system, relative to preindustrial conditions before 1750. Positive radiative forcing leads to surface warming, whereas negative radiative forcing leads to surface cooling.

Examples of factors causing positive radiative forcing include well-mixed greenhouse gases, tropospheric ozone and black carbon aerosols, while negative radiative forcing comes from land-use change that increases its reflectivity, stratospheric ozone; the effect of ozone precursors on methane; and sulfate, nitrate and particulate organic matter aerosols.

An anonymous peer reviewer for Nature described the researchers' conclusions as "scientifically very interesting and also very important politically".

Another said the study was relevant to the wider community because "knowledge of a country's contribution to pollutant emissions, concentrations and resulting global climate forcing is important for both scientific and policy applications".
An archaeologist examines sections of unearthed ancient flood-control dams in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Wu Huang/for China Daily

Archaeologists have unearthed ancient flood-control dams, a series of sophisticated barriers constructed 4,700 to 5,100 years ago that mark the oldest water management system ever found in China.

The discovery among Hangzhou's Liangzhu relics was announced to the public on Tuesday by the Zhejiang Provincial Archaeological Research Institute.

"It reveals complex planning and construction skills and may create a new horizon for studies on ancient Chinese civilization," said Yu Bing, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage.

Though a section of a dam was found in the 1990s, a major excavation from July to January unearthed 11 dams. The scientific team included archaeologists from the Zhejiang institute, Nanjing University and Shandong University.

The dams are from a period 1,000 years earlier than the time of Yu the Great, a legendry ruler of ancient China famed for flood control. No physical evidence of Yu's work has ever been confirmed.

Liu Bin, director of the institute, said the dams were found within a 100-square-kilometer area, with the longest surviving section running 6.5 kilometers.

"Its scale is bigger than any contemporary counterparts overseas, according to current knowledge. In ancient Egypt, there was a 4,000-year-old relic, but it included only one dam," Liu said.

Follow-up studies are continuing.

"It is not enough to get a panorama that relies only on field research of its layout and appearance," Liu said.

"For example, in-depth research on intersecting surfaces collected from two dams is ongoing. It will decode specific piling methods. And information about people's daily lives, which is hidden in the sediment, will be analyzed."

Liangzhu relics, first found in 1936, provide evidence of a sophisticated civilization lasting from 3300 BC to 2000 BC. The area is best known for its abundant jade.

"The world's water-management relics from roughly the same period of history that have been unearthed are mostly in arid areas such as ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia," Yu said. "But Liangzhu is on a humid southern bank of the Yangtze River, which is an unprecedented example."

However, there are still many unsolved puzzles.

"The age of the dams is basically indisputable now, but their function is still being debated among scholars," said Luan Fengshi, a professor from Shandong University.

"Basically, we don't believe it is likely that they were used for irrigation," Luan said. "Details of their construction and abandonment are yet to be confirmed."

Xu Xiaomin in Shanghai contributed to this story.
Li Shengli, a professor at China Agriculture University and director of the Sino-Dutch Dairy Development Center, meets the press in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Chinese dairy industry needs the "spirit of the craftsman" and to train more professionals to safeguard food safety and provide better products, a leading dairy expert said.

Li Shengli, a professor at China Agriculture University and director of Sino-Dutch Dairy Development Center, met with the press recently in Beijing. He said that the Chinese dairy industry has improved a lot after dairy scandals in 2008, and "the biggest challenge the industry faces today is the shortage of qualified labor".

Professional training has been introduced to industry insiders, from academic researchers and managerial personnel at dairy plants to farm workers, by international cooperation platforms, such as the Beijing-based Sino-Dutch Dairy Development Center.

"Nearly 200 cow breeding and farm management professionals have been trained in the center since its founding in 2013," Li said.

The Sino-Dutch Dairy Development Center is an initiative of China Agriculture University, Wageningen University and Research Center, also known as the "Silicon Valley" for the food industry, and Netherlands-based Royal FrieslandCampina, one of the world's largest dairy companies.

It works to improve the quality and safety of the Chinese dairy chain by taking in the Netherlands' advanced technology, experience and ideas.

"A total of 30 registered 'Cow Signals' masters, the first patch of such professionals in China, also graduated from the center, " said Li. Learning "Cow Signals" aims to improve the health and welfare of cows.

Atze Schaap, Director Dairy Development FrieslandCampina, speaks at a press conference in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The center develops some pragmatic courses, which are held at a farm base in the Shunyi district of Beijing. Teachers are experts coming from China Agriculture University, Wageningen University and Research Center and some world-class companies in the dairy field.

"Learners combine book knowledge with actual practice," said Li. "It is an improvement for the whole industry."

"We want to share the Netherlands' dairy knowledge and experience with our Chinese peers", said Atze Schaap, Director Dairy Development FrieslandCampina, adding that it is helpful to the safety of China's dairy products.

Founded in 1871, FrieslandCampina had 19,244 dairy farms in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium by 2014, and more than 140 years of experience of cooperative entrepreneurship.

FrieslandCampina plays an important role in providing food for hundreds of millions of people all over the world. It controls the entire milk production chain from milk to end product - from grass to glass. This guarantees the safety, quality and sustainability of the products.

Demonstrating the Netherlands' best practices from grass to glass, the Sino-Dutch Dairy Development Center organizes five to six field trips to the Netherlands each year for Chinese dairy professionals.
More consumers are buying overseas goods online through haitao purchasing services.

"I started using haitao about four years ago, mainly for baby products and milk formula for my daughter, and for handbags for myself. I trust the quality and safety of these products."

Liu Yuanqi, high school teacher in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province

"I occasionally use haitao for cosmetics, for some brands that I can't find here. They are also cheaper. But fake goods and higher delivery costs are concerns."

Wang Yizhu, postgraduate student in Changchun, Jilin province

"My haitao experience started when I bought a German-made safety seat for half of the price of those in stores at home."

Gao Yun, journalist in Zhengzhou, Henan province

"I do one-third of my shopping with haitao services. But I've received goods from Japan or the US with 'made in China' labels."

Yin Bincheng, accountant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province

Compiled by China Daily
The clock is ticking down on Hong Kong's venerable television broadcaster ATV.

On April 1, the city's first free-to-air broadcaster will "go to black", after nearly 60 years in the business.

Reportedly HK$2 billion ($258 million) in debt, the ailing broadcaster ran out of cash. ATV isn't alone, the slow demise of free-to-air broadcasters is a global issue.

Most of my work as a journalist has been in television news; starting with the grind of city council, the public school board, the police beat, gotcha questions to politicians and business types, white-knuckle airplane rides through the mountains, and all fueled by the evil temper of an assignment editor who was a poor loser. After local news, I moved on, working for four different networks, covering world events on three continents. By the time I reached the level of national news producer, it was pretty clear to me, television news had had its day.

Before I got my first job in television, I was required to become a qualified filmmaker, so I could produce the kind of visual stories that would grab the audience. It took time and money. Television revenues were falling. There were too many other options, the audience was split and production costs were going up.

Television news had become a clearinghouse for talking heads, and generic "wallpaper" video, that simply plastered vaguely representative pictures over a voice.

ATV in Hong Kong ran afoul of local government when it started failing its mandate to provide local news. I find it a little ironic, since I could write a thesis on the shortcomings of television news.

It's not just television news, however, that's caving in, it's the whole business. What started with audience fragmentation, from too many choices of what to watch on television, was swept up in a tidal wave with the coming of smartphones.

Young people - especially the critical consumer group aged between 18 and 34 - don't watch much television. They prefer smartphones and other streaming devices, and this isn't just in Hong Kong. Free-to-air television is a fading start.

In the US, television viewing peaked in 2010 and has dropped every year since. In the UK, Tony Hall, director-general of the BBC, said last year that "young people ... are the most ready to move to online viewing" ... 25 percent (among 16 to 24-year-olds) and over the next few years, that is expected to reach 40 percent. In Australia, viewership dropped 6 percent between 2014 and '15. The global consulting company Accenture, in an April, 2015 study of 24,000 consumers in 24 countries, including China, reported that "nearly all age brackets reported double-digit declines in TV viewing globally".

I don't watch television and don't miss it. All the factors that add up to declining revenues, translating to lower quality programming, creating a snowball effect of falling audiences, have given us the era or Reality TV: cheap, low-budget programming that reminds me of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose inhabitants were kept docile and left free to pursue all that was mindless and trivial.
BEIJING -- The largest nuclear security center in the Asia-Pacific region, which was financed by China and the United States, opened Friday in Beijing, according to authorities.

The center, constructed by the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) and the U.S. Department of Energy, has the capacity to train about 2,000 nuclear security staff from China and other Asia-Pacific nations each year, said CAEA director Xu Dazhe.

The center is the largest nuclear program to receive direct Chinese and U.S. government funding. Construction began in December 2013.

According to the CAEA, the site will become a center for international exchanges and cooperation on nuclear security, the demonstration of advanced technology, testing and analyzing.

The center is a significant achievement in China-U.S. nuclear security cooperation, and will boost cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and the world, said Wang Yiren, deputy director of the CAEA.

It will also promote the peaceful use of nuclear power, added Wang, who is also deputy head of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence.

China and the United States agreed to establish a nuclear security center at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in 2010.

Under the agreement, the center, which is located in Fangshan District, Beijing, is run and administered by China, while the United States is responsible for providing nuclear-security equipment.

The two nations have also cooperated in other nuclear security areas such as low-enriched reactors, security of radioactive sources and radiation detection by customs authorities, according to Wang.

The Chinese mainland has 30 operational nuclear power generating units, with a total installed capacity of 28.31 GW. It also has 24 units with a total installed capacity of 26.72 GW under construction, ranking first in the world.

As planned, the nation's installed nuclear power capacity will reach 58 GW with an additional 30 GW under construction by 2020.

"Construction projects for six to eight new generators are expected to begin each year from 2016 to 2020," Wang said.

He also said China was mulling building of offshore floating nuclear power stations.

Earlier in January, the central government published a nuclear white paper detailing policies and measures relating to nuclear emergency preparedness and highlighting a "rational, coordinated and balanced" approach to nuclear security.

The document assured the world that China had "the most advanced technology and most stringent standards" to ensure safe and efficient development of nuclear power.
Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan province, will hold the 2016 International Forum of Tourist City Mayors from May 24 to 26, announced vice governor Zhang Guangzhi of Henan at a press conference on Friday.

It was in 2008, with the support of the National Tourism Administration, that Zhengzhou started holding the biennial forum. So far, mayors from 216 cities in 45 countries have participated in the forum.

According to Zhang, they have sent invitations to 158 mayors from around the world this year, of which 41 have already confirmed their participation at the forum while another 24 agree to send deputies.

This year's theme will be "cultural and ecological tourism", with the topics ranging from how to promote tourism through the cultural influence of a city to how to exploit tourism resources through financial means.

Yang Fuping, vice mayor of the hosting Zhengzhou city, said Zhengzhou's tourism sector kept an annual growth rate of 10.5 percent during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2010-15) and its total revenue derived from tourism increased from 50.9 billion yuan ($7.9 billion) to 92.7 billion yuan.

And Henan will make use of the opportunity to accelerate infrastructure construction and show the world a more open image, said Guo Junfeng, deputy director of foreign affairs of Henan.

"Being located in the central zone of the country, Henan has disadvantages in linking overseas, but we have been accelerating high-speed railway construction and promoting trade with global economies", he told China Daily. "We will show the whole world our openness and confidence."

A 5-day exhibition of local tourism sites will be staged following the forum.
The Tri-State Freethinkers are raising funds to place billboards around Kentucky's creationist theme park. They want folks to know that the Noah's Ark story is one of genocide, and incest, and may not be appropriate for their children.

Famously, there is a 510 foot representation of Noah's Ark at the theme park. Tri-State Freethinkers would like to put up a bunch of these billboards.

This Newsweek article details how Ken Ham and religious group Answers in Genesis have used Kentucky's laws, and courts, to wrangle citizens into paying for a Christian theme park. I can not even begin to understand the complexity. Here is a sample:



Last month, I flew to Kentucky to meet Ham and tour the ark site and AiG's design studio. The arkwhich is still being built at the end of a very long, carefully guarded dirt road with a sign marked "Danger Keep out"is hidden from public scrutiny, and for good reason. In order to incentivize building there, Williamstown declared the ark site and the surrounding 1.25 miles a tax increment financing (TIF) district, which is a fancy way of saying that over the next 30 years, 75 percent of sales and real estate taxes generated within the area will go back to fund Ark Encounter. There's also an employment tax for workers in the district, but more on that shortly.



Ham didn't stand up when an assistant shuffled me into his office one Friday afternoon. He has railed against the media time and time again for, he says, falsely claiming that taxpayer money is going toward building the ark. When he speaks, he does so slowly, his words even and calculated. "No Kentucky taxpayer money is going to build the Ark Encounter," he tells me. Several times.



Ham is telling the truth, but it's a literal interpretation of the truth. The money used to build Ark Encounter came from donations of almost $30 million, plus $62 million in high-risk, unrated municipal bonds backed by the project's future revenues. If Ark Encounter never makes significant profits (and bond documents warn that it may not), neither the city nor AiG is on the hook for the bond money. However, according to Mike Zovath, chief actions officer for AiG and Ark Encounter, the millions in tax dollars that will be rebated through the formation of the aforementioned TIF district could go toward repaying the bonds and funding future attractions. What neither of them mentioned in conversations with me or in their many blog posts on the subject is that, as part of the TIF agreement, employees working within the TIF district will be subject to a 2 percent employment tax on gross wages for the next 30 years. In other words, $2 out of every $100 earned by people working at or around the park will go directly to paying off the attraction. So while tax dollars might not actually have been used to build the ark, a boatload that would otherwise go back into the community will instead be used to pay off Ark Encounter's debt.

Help the Tri-State Freethinkers here.
Business opportunities, better living conditions are seen as key attractions on Chinese mainland

Foreigners take part in an activity to celebrate the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival in Shanghai, Feb 20, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

Major cities on the Chinese mainland are attracting a growing number of immigrants from around the world, although the rate is still very low compared with major international metropolises such as Singapore, Sydney and New York.

Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, said the number of people born in foreign countries who are working and living in Beijing had increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2013 and now account for about 0.5 percent of its total population.

"The figures are similar in Shanghai and Guangzhou," Wang said on Thursday during the presentation of the World Migration Report 2015 in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.

The population of immigrants in major international cities ranges from around 20 percent to more than 80 percent, according to the International Organization for Migration. In Sydney, London and New York, for example, immigrants account for more than one-third of the population.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore ranked highest in the percentage of immigrants, with 34.7 percent of the labor force and 38 percent of the country's permanent resident population.

Wang said major cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dongguan, Guangdong province, will continue to attract a growing number of foreign talent and immigrants in the years to come.

In addition to vast business opportunities and improved living conditions, many Chinese cities have introduced preferential policies and rewards to lure foreign experts and technicians to settle there, Wang said.

"The mainland cities that are undergoing urbanization drives need to attract foreign talent to help support their economic growth," he added.

The government issued a document in February to lower the threshold for Chinese green cards, or permanent residence permits, making more foreigners in different industries eligible to apply and in a simpler way.

Jill Helke, director of international cooperation and partnership at the International Organization for Migration, said economic development and globalization mean new economic centers and developing countries are attracting more immigrants.

"The immigrants have contributed to the economic construction, social and cultural development in local cities," Helke said.

Gao Xiang, spokesman for the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, said: "Compared with before, the contribution of foreign talents' work in China has been recognized significantly.

"This shows the importance we attach to talent and helps to build Chinese attractiveness to global talent."

Wang urged the government to establish a special immigration department to help handle the influx of immigrants. Currently, immigration affairs on the mainland are managed by the Ministry of Public Security.
Xu Dazhe, head of the China Atomic Energy Authority, greets Ernest Moniz, US secretary of energy, at a ceremony in Beijing on Friday. Wei Xiaohao / China Daily

The Center of Excellence on Nuclear Security, a joint effort by China and the United States, started operation on Friday and will soon begin to train technical and security professionals from China and abroad.

The center was built by the China Atomic Energy Authority and the US Department of Energy. It is considered one of the world's best training and exchange programs for nuclear security personnel in terms of size, equipment and technological capability, according to a statement by the Chinese agency.

Construction of the center, originally proposed in April 2010 by then-President Hu Jintao during the Washington Nuclear Security Summit, began in October 2013. China is responsible for the facility's management and operations, while the US provides equipment to be used in technical analysis, tests and personnel training.

Located in the Changyang Science and Technology Park in the southwestern outskirts of Beijing, the center will conduct international exchanges and cooperation on nuclear security, nuclear material control and export management.

It will also provide services such as training and tests, the China Atomic Energy Authority said.

The center is capable of training about 2,000 nuclear security personnel each year. The trainees will mainly be from China and other countries in Asia and the Pacific region.

China, which began building its first nuclear power station in 1985, has 30 reactors in operation with an installed capacity of 28.3 gigawatts. Twenty-four more are under construction, according to the authority.

Liu Yongde, spokesman for the CAEA, said that China and the US have been cooperating on nuclear security since the 1980s.

"In addition to the nuclear security center, the collaboration has also resulted in the better protection and management of radioactive sources used by Chinese companies and improved law enforcement on smuggling of radioactive materials," he said.

Xu Dazhe, head of the CAEA, said China is very serious about making good use of nuclear power, adding that the Chinese government is also committed to improving nuclear security.
A hit South Korean TV drama about a gun-toting soldier saving lives in a distant land has won over Thailand's prime minister, who called on Thursday for citizens to watch the show.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the former army chief, came to power in a 2014 coup and has often portrayed himself as an officer duty-bound to save Thailand from years of political chaos. He has even written two pop songs and commissioned a series of short films to spread his patriotic message.

Now he is urging Thais to watch Descendants of the Sun, a drama that is winning over many viewers in South Korea, China, Japan and beyond.
Pictures taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a director of Terra, while shooting the documentary[Photo provided to China Daily]

It's not the first time that luxury has been aligned with environmental causes, but probably the first time through a visual and emotional feast.

Swiss luxury watchmaker Omega recently held in Beijing a special screening of the documentary Terra, in collaboration with GoodPlanet Foundation, a Paris-based NGO that supports sustainability.

The 90-minute movie traces the natural history of the Earth and human beings, shedding light on how human activities have affected the planet and other living species.

Michael Pitiot, who directed the movie with renowned photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, attended the screening.

Pitiot says that he hopes Terra will raise the public's environmental awareness and encourage people to take responsibility to protect the Earth.

"The film is not about something that is far from us. It is about us, our history and the connection between humans and nature. As things are a little bad, we all need to be committed to the change," he says.

The movie took two years to make and features more than 20 countries including the rain forest in Venezuela, Botswana, Russia and China.

The director also worked with Li Gang, a renowned Chinese photographer who is best known for his shots of horses in the snow the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Pitiot recalls that they had to shoot with helicopters in Siberia. When in the rain forest in Venezuela, they set up a camp and stayed there for a week for the light to improve.

Aside from overall consideration for all living species, Pitiot calls for more awareness about small animals and plants.
Liu Guangcui runs a steelyard shop in Xiaomiao township in Hefei. The woman continues to practice the traditional craft of making the balances, which she learned from her father, despite shrinking demand for handmade steelyards.[Photo provided to China Daily]

With modern tools to measure weight widely available these days, craftspeople around the world are struggling to keep handmade steelyards from dying out.

Liu Guangcui, who inherited tools and techniques from her father more than two decades ago, is among the few Chinese makers of steelyards.

On a recent visit to her shop in Hefei city, capital of East China's Anhui province, Liu is seen setting dozens of scale markings on a straight beam made of mahogany. Once the beam is ready, she assembles the hook and sleeves made of copper. The entire process could take her days.

"To make a traditional Chinese steelyard, everything should be finished by hand," says Liu, 48.

The steelyard Liu is working on can weigh things up to 20 kilograms and takes about 48 hours to finish. The larger ones with weighing capacity of 150 kilograms or so take even longer.

Liu's shop, located in rural Xiaomiao township in Hefei's Shushan district, is popular among residents because "it seems buyers here don't have many choices", she says.

Her father had been engaged in the business since the 1950s.

"During my father's time, private businesses weren't permitted, so he would often travel to villages and make steelyards at buyers' homes," she says.

After the economy opened up in the late 1970s, the demand for steelyards increased sharply. Many more private businesses and street vendors got into the trade.
Mapo doufu, a signature dish of Sichuan cuisine. A new Chinese-language app claims it has the world's largest Chinese cuisine recipe database.[Photo provided to China Daily]

When Chinese tourists visit a Chinese restaurant abroad, they are often astonished to find that the food "from their homeland" does not taste like home food at all.

Chinese restaurants overseas have long lacked genuine flavor and both the money and time to send their chefs for training in China, but a new online platform offers a chance to turn things around.

Easteat, a major cuisine magazine in China, launched its mobile device app last week to promote international influence of Chinese cuisine, or as magazine head Liu Guangwei says, "to share culinary artists' experiences around the globe".

"Our magazines are now also released in other countries, but the channel is not efficient enough to interact with chefs of Chinese restaurants," Liu says.

According to Liu, there are now more than 300,000 Chinese restaurants in over 150 countries or regions outside of China. The first Cantonese eatery appeared in the 1850s' United States.

"However, many founders of these restaurants originally started their business to make ends meet. They usually came from other industries and were not well-nurtured chefs."

Liu also frets that those chefs do not follow a master-apprentice system like in China, which limits the passing down of traditional techniques, and Chinese culinary schools abroad are few and far between.

The new Chinese-language app combines WeChat and several websites, and its developer, Hou Wenyong, claims it has the world's largest Chinese cuisine recipe database and Chinese restaurant management models. An interactive forum allows chefs to hone their skills through discussions.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Tianfu had a strangle hold of 70 percent of China's soft drink market. The cola was also sold in Russia and America.[Photo/official weibo account of China Tianfu Cola]

Chinese cola brand Tianfu, the country's top-selling soft drink in the 1980s, formally returned to shop shelves on Thursday after being absent for nearly two decades.

The reincarnated cola, with the slogan "not just a familiar taste,"comes in bottles and cans.

"From the establishment of the brand to national popularity, to the disappearance after a joint venture (with Pepsi), the changes of Tianfu have coincided with twists and turns of my life," said Li Peiquan, 78, former general manger of Tianfu Cola, at the relaunch ceremony on Thursday in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing.

Tianfu still uses a traditional herbal recipe to produce the healthy drink, said Qian Huang, the new general manger. The goal for this year is to sell 200,000 tonnes.

"We are first aiming for the domestic market but interested parties from overseas already contacted us to take Tianfu Cola abroad," he said. "Chongqing, where the factory is, has railways stretching to Europe, so our cola could easily sell there," said Qian.

Other nostalgia products, including chocolate champagne, fruit juice and vegetable protein drinks, will also hit the market soon, he said.
[Photo provided to China Daily]

BEIJING

Chinese sugar in a bottle

Rum made in China? Who knew?

Not surprisingly, Badr Benjelloun did, but even the affable owner of Cuju Moroccan Bistro and RummeryBeijing's high priest of rum"searched and begged" for months to put together 12 varieties made in the Middle Kingdom for a tasting. Most came from the sugar-cane rich Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, though Yunnan province and even sugarless Beijing delivered intriguing samples for the tasting. While some were quickly voted most likely to succeed when mixed with Coke, others had intriguing potential straight up, including three of Benjelloun's own infusions and distillations from Seawolf (Beijing), The Hump Saca (Yunnan) and the vanilla-tinged San Barts (Guangxi). Many are available at Cuju, where Benjelloun will host future Wednesday-night rum tastings from other regions. Up next: Asia beyond China.

28 Xiguan Hutong, Dongsibeidajie, Dongcheng district; 010-6407-9782.
Lessons from Singapore are relevant to Mong Kok riots Updated: 2016-03-18 08:07 By Ronald Ng(HK Edition)

There has been much penetrating feedback from Asia over Hong Kong's Chinese New Year riot in Mong Kok, with most observers condemning the anti-government rampage. Several friends of mine in Singapore who are National Service policemen agreed that the policeman firing his pistol into the air to deter the crowd from attacking his fallen comrade did the right thing. But some added that had the incident happened in the US, they doubted whether police there would have had the same self-restraint and not shot at the crowd. It was also shameful that bricks were thrown at our policemen, plus rubbish bins and tires being burnt.

That said, let us now ask: Why has the conduct of some Hong Kong youths deteriorated to this deplorable extent? Further, is there any way the constant confrontation between the young people and police of Hong Kong could be ameliorated?

Perhaps a few lessons could be learnt from Singapore.

Two riots remain firmly etched in the minds of older Singaporeans - the Maria Hertogh riots of 1950 and the Hock Lee bus riots of 1955. Lee Kuan Yew was not yet prime minister but it was what he observed during these riots that germinated in his mind a number of important guiding policies when his government came into power. From the Maria Hertogh riot he realized the importance of religious and racial harmony, and that the republic's people had to be sensitive to the religions and ethnicities of fellow citizens. The Hock Lee bus riots planted in his mind the importance of citizens owning their own homes. He observed that when fresh rioting began, people immediately rushed down from their apartments onto the streets and brought their bicycles up to their flats in order to protect them. This taught Lee the important lesson that people will do everything to protect their own property. If a person owned a home, he would protect it. If he had a mortgage, he would try to stay employed so as not to lose his home. From these simple observations bloomed the Housing and Development Board, which was responsible for building affordable housing for the people. Consequently around 80 percent of Singapore's families now own their own homes.

The principle is very simple. If I don't own anything, what do I have to lose?

In parenthesis, might I suggest a project for social scientists? Of the students involved in the Mong Kok riot, how many university students were involved and what was the breakdown in their faculties? If my theory is correct, I would expect very few medical students, students in law, architecture, accountancy and engineering were involved. All have very clear professional paths to follow, and are fairly certain they have reasonable chance of getting employment with living wages. This is a testable hypothesis.

Now to the second point. Some years ago a boy in Singapore was jailed and ordered to be given three strokes of the cane for an offense for which he was found guilty. (We are not going to discuss the ethics of using the cane as a form of punishment here.) However, while in prison, he was given six strokes instead of three. His family sued the government for compensation of S$1 million ($737,400) per extra stroke, totaling three S$3million. Clearly, the Prison Authority was in the wrong, and for the government not to pay up as demanded would set a precedent and arguably create an uproar over a serious injustice. The case went to mediation and a confidential settlement was reached. All that is known of that case now is that the family is satisfied, and has been compensated, but no one knows the exact details.

Returning to Hong Kong's "Occupy" protests of September 2014, videos showing alleged police brutality were seen. This incident must be addressed properly. On the one hand, police officers who have served the government and people conscientiously for years are implicated; on the other hand, members of the public seem to have been treated unfairly. Could this issue be resolved by mediation rather than by a court trial? As a mediator myself, I have learnt that in a trial there are winners and losers, and often, even the winner could be a loser in another sense, whereas in mediation one can strive for a win-win solution.

Singapore now has a scheme where mediators are called in to settle some of the lesser complaints previously dealt with by magistrates. This avoids lengthy trials and legal costs. Hong Kong has a well established mediation body. Perhaps they could be invited to help?

(HK Edition 03/18/2016 page11)
A new Internet challenge  to show how slender your figure is by touching your belly button by reaching behind your back and around your waist  has taken China by storm.

Popular among young females online, the craze has already led thousands of people to post selfies on the web, including Chinese celebrities like Yang Mi, Huo Siyan and Zhang Jiani and even men with beer bellies.

The "belly button challenge" has received 170 million hits as of Thursday since its launch on Wednesday, and the hashtag translated as "reaching your belly button from behind to show you have a good figure" is among the top three trending topics on Weibo, China's Twitter.

"It's just showing off of their slim figures, as well as an expression of competitiveness and insecurity," said Shao Yu, a Chinese Weibo user, told China Daily.

"Especially when the challenge is supported by US scientists, and now they are authenticated by the US scientific community as being in good shape."

According to Weibo, the challenge originated from research by US scientists suggesting women who could achieve the challenge are of good figure. The referenced research, however, is nowhere identified.

In addition to women's tiny waists, a photo uploaded by a male blogger touching his beer belly from behind his back has also lit up the blogosphere.

As of this writing, his post had been forwarded more than 8,612 times and gotten 2,420 comments since June 9 when he posted the selfie on his Weibo account.

Whether being able to touch your bellybutton from behind proves you are in good shape has caused some debate and experts say don't despair if you come nowhere near reaching your bellybutton.

"Being able to complete the challenge does not necessarily mean you have a fit body," said Zhang Shitian, a fitness instructor at a gym in Beijing who is obviously fit enough yet still unable to touch his own bellybutton from behind.

"It requires a slim figure, small waist, long arms, as well as good flexibility," said Zhang, "and those who work out regularly with six-packs would fail it too."

"A good figure and the ability to touch your bellybutton from behind do not have too much correlation," he added. "You have to work out regularly and scientifically to stay in good shape."

Many girls who can complete the challenge are too slim and are not of a healthy shape and figure at all, he said. The bellybutton challenge might be confusing a healthy shape with being thin as a rail.

Some experts also suggest that China's new bellybutton trend might lead to  or at least promote  eating disorders.

Wang Shuo, a private tutor at a gym in Shanghai, agreed.

"For many Chinese, the way to stay slim is to eat less or not at all and many worry going to the gym might gain them muscle," he said.

"The pictures are fun to see but they can also reinforce the idea that being overly slim is the only standard of beauty for girls."

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn
A Barbie doll at an exhibition at Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.[Photo/ Agencies]

For decades, Barbie has encouraged girls to reach for the stars, showing them through her endless reinventions that anything is possible.

Now the girl who beat Neil Armstrong to the moon has brought a lifetime of fine outfits and accessories to Paris to show them off to the world at the city's Musee des Arts Decoratifs.

Though in many ways Barbie has lived a charmed life, she has also been dogged by controversynotably because girls could never hope to grow into her impossibly slender body shape.

Magazine covers from the 1960s down the decades are juxtaposed with the Barbie of the day, showing how closely she has been in step with each passing fad.

"Barbie was a mirror of her time," says the exhibit's curator, Anne Monier, adding that the show offers a "cultural timeline" through the countless iterations of the iconic American miss.

It is not Barbie's first trip to Francein 1984 she toured the country aboard a high-speed train, wearing fashions by leading Paris fashion houses, including Yves Saint Laurent.

That tour was the brainchild of jewelry designer BillyBoy, a muse of pop artist Andy Warhol who boasted the largest collection of Barbie dolls in the world20,000 of them.

The Paris exhibit, which opened on March 10, contains no fewer than 700 Barbie dolls, the all-time best-selling product of US toymaker Mattel, dating back to 1959.

While it seems she cannot hold down a job for long, Barbie has built up an impressive CV, dabbling variously as a flight attendant, surgeon and police officer.

On one outing as an astronaut, Barbie stepped on the moon even before Neil Armstrongat least in the Universe according to Mattel.

The leggy blonde has even run for president no fewer than four times, maintaining her sunny disposition despite never reaching the Oval Office.

And while smashing gender stereotypes in the world of work, Barbie's ultra-feminine persona is never in doubt when it is time for play, whether for a day at the beach, an afternoon at the gym or an evening out in a designer gown.

But beneath the veneer of glamorous go-getter lurks an ambiguous figure combining girl power with sex object, and one with a body shape that is literally unattainable: to-scale models have proven that her legs and feet would be unable to hold her up.

But this year Mattel has addressed the body issue head-on, rolling out three new silhouettes: "tall", "petite" and "curvy".

"Now can we stop talking about my body?" was the headline on a Time magazine cover highlighting the new lines.

The choices also include no fewer than 27 skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 types of hair.

The show runs until Sept 18.
Fredmund Malik has been a witness toand an adviser ofthe evolution of the management of Chinese government and companies. The Austrian expert conducts training programs for Chinese executives in St. Gallen, Switzerland.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese management styles are evolving to tackle complexity and change, says Austrian guru Fredmund Malik.

After more than a decade of collaboration, Fredmund Malik, an Austrian management guru, has found advocates of his style increasing in China.

In recent years, he has often advised Chinese officials on how to improve governance.

During a visit to the country in February, Malik was invited to a Beijing seminar attended by Premier Li Keqiang.

Malik gave a speech there and presented his book, StrategyNavigation System for the New Complexity World, to the premier.

He was also invited by officials to give his opinion on the draft of the government's work report for 2016, which was delivered by the premier during the annual two sessions of China's top legislative and national advisory bodies.

"It's quite decent work to invest my time. That's important for this country, and it's a duty with great responsibility attached," says Malik, who gave his suggestions on issues including complexity in modern times and how to make China more innovative and entrepreneurial.

Born in Austria, Malik now lives in Switzerlandhe's the founder and chairman of Malik Management Center, a management consultancy in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

His expertise is in analyzing and designing management systems.

"One can only understand the situation by looking at the whole picture, like a symphony orchestra should combine all instruments to reach harmony," Malik tells China Daily.

As one of the most recognized experts in management science globally, Malik is the author of numerous books on management theory, general management, strategy and human-resource development.

Besides studying theories, he has gained practical experience by working as a management consultant, educator, entrepreneur and member of several supervisory groups.
A mother and daughter from Shandong province have allegedly sold vaccines worth 570 million yuan ($88 million) illegally since 2010 in China, posing severe health risks to users, police said on Friday.

It is believed to be the largest case of its kind in China in terms of the amount of money involved, according to media reports.

The police in Jinan, the provincial capital, confirmed an earlier report by the Paper, a Chinese news organization based in Shanghai, that the two suspects allegedly sold vaccines that were not properly refrigerated, as required by national standards, in 18 provinces and regions across the country.

The police said they have started to trace possible victims.

Prosecutors are preparing to charge both the mother and her daughter with engaging in illegal trading.

The mother, surnamed Pang, age 47, is a former doctor from Heze in Shandong. She was given a three-year suspended prison sentence with five years probation for the illegal trading of vaccines in 2009, the police said.

Vaccines are required to be refrigerated between 2 C and 8 C. However, Pang reportedly stored the vaccines in her home at temperatures of more than 14 C, where she piled up more than 100 packages of vaccines with a total of more than 20,000 doses. The vaccines were for 25 diseases including meningitis, poliomyelitis and rabies, according to the Paper.

Hao Yonggang, a police officer investigating the case, told the Paper that Pang and her daughter allegedly sold the vaccines obtained from producers to some disease control and prevention departments illegally, since the two had no license for conducting such business.

The fact that they are suspected of doing it for so long exposes flaws in the supervision system of the countrys vaccine industry, he said.

Contact the writers at shanjuan@chinadaily.com.cn
US President Barack Obama delivers a statement on Iran at the White House in Washington, January 17, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The latest cover story in The Atlantic written by Jeffrey Goldberg is quite telling of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy.

In the article, The Obama Doctrine, Goldberg reveals that the US leader has little interest in the Middle East, which he sees as quite bleak. That, surprisingly, also includes Saudi Arabia, a US ally in the region and the largest buyer of US weapons.

Talking on CBS' Face the Nation on Monday, Goldberg described Libya as Obama's Iraq. The United States and its NATO allies pursued regime change there by abusing a 2011 UN Security Council resolution.

Asia has been viewed by Obama as the most promising region. Based on his many interviews with Obama, Goldberg said Obama has made a "pivot to Asia" a paramount priority and he believes US economic future lies in Asia.

According to Goldberg, Obama has been focused on rebuilding the sometimes-threadbare ties between the US and its Asian treaty partners, and he is perpetually on the hunt for opportunities to draw other Asian nations into the US' orbit.

The article gave substance to the suspicion that the US has been trying to profit from the maritime territorial disputes between China and some of its neighbors and is seeking to drive a wedge between them.

This is manifested in Obama's approach to Vietnam. And Obama administration officials repeatedly hinted to Goldberg that Vietnam may one day host a permanent US military presence.

As to what country Obama considers the greatest challenge to the US in the coming decades, Obama said "in terms of traditional great-state relations, I do believe that the relationship between the United States and China is going to be the most critical".He said that one possibility is a China that is on a peaceful rise, which will share with the US the burden and responsibility of maintaining the international order, while the flip side is "not only do we see the potential for conflict with China, but we will find ourselves having more difficulty dealing with these other challenges that are going to come".
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in front of a display of Trump water, wine and steaks as he talks about the results of the Michigan, Mississippi and other primary elections during a news conference held at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, March 8, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has been drawing the support of many US citizens with his unique and exaggerative style. The billionaire businessman, whose latest wins were in Florida, North Carolina and Illinois primaries, has brought increased attention to the US presidential campaign because of his unusual (shocking to many) style of speaking.

Democracy is a value in which the US has always taken pride. The value of democracy, no matter its nature, lies in its contribution to social well-being. But Trump's campaign in the Republican nomination race has sparked media discussions of a different kind: on whether he symbolizes the defeat or the victory of US democracy. What Trump has divided is not only the united front of the Republican Party but also public opinion in the US.

That Trump's outspoken ways have endeared him to many in the US is, to a large extent, a result of public disappointment with US-style democracy. An increasing number of US citizens are realizing that behind the democracy rhetoric is mainly a glib mouth. For example, as one of the most eloquent US presidents, the promise of "reform and hope" Barack Obama made to voters during the presidential election campaign raised the expectations of people. But a series of problems in the economic, financial and healthcare fields have left them disappointed despite the US making some economic recovery.

Public disappointment is a cyclical occurrence in the US presidential elections. It also evolves into new expectations when a new face appears in the White House. So one could say many US voters are supporting Trump because they feel disappointed with the other candidates, as well as the incumbent president. The cautious manner of speaking public figures use to ensure no mistakes in times of "political correctness" has not only become politicians' dominant creed, it has also bred public disappointment and boredom. Perhaps that's why the outspoken and abnormal style Trump uses is like a breath of fresh air for them.
Yuan Xinqiang continues to wait for his missing Vietnamese 'bride' in Nanliyue village, Handan, North China's Hebei province, Dec 11. [Photo/CFP]

The "left-over" men in rural areas who remain unmarried in their 30s, will only find a partner when their livelihoods improve, said Gao Chunfang, president of a hospital in Jinan, East China's Shandong province and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee. Rednet.cn said on Thursday:

Like it or not, whether an adult male in remote and underdeveloped regions can get married largely depends on his financial status. In other words, a man who can afford a traditionally extravagant wedding, which often involves a costly dowry for his would-be bride, is more likely to get married in rural China than those who cannot.

In fact, that most "left-over" men are unable to get a wife in their 30s even 40s, has a lot to do with their financial situation, not any physical defects. It will take more than basic infrastructure, such as roads and clean water, to help them start a family.

True, many once-inward looking villages have managed to gain access to the Internet and e-commerce, but that does not make a difference in the lives of the local bachelors. The younger males may pointlessly spend their time chatting online or playing cards, while the older ones may prefer to stay under everyone's radar and keep quiet as usual.

Some rural women tend to judge a potential partner not only by his appearance, height, and wealth, but also his skills and whether he has the ambition to further improve his life (and thus theirs). That explains why some rural men with academic degrees are less popular as partners than those able to make a living through their practical skills.

Yet, for many rural men accumulating personal wealth can take time. That an increasing number of them crave more money so they can get married, to some extent, is good news to the country's ongoing targeted poverty-alleviation campaign.

Traditionally, bachelors in the countryside are unlikely to leave home until they get married or have children, which makes them a long-term and reliable labor resource that can contribute to local growth if properly assisted.
I didn't expect "electric cooker" to become a buzzword at the two sessions this year, given that "toilet seat" aroused heated discussions with Premier Li Keqiang at last year's event.

Perhaps it's because Chinese tourists to Japan haven't stopped their shopping spree.

It made news headlines during Spring Festival holiday last year that Chinese tourists flew several thousand kilometers to buy Japanese brand toilet seats and electric rice cookers.

The phenomenon is embarrassing to Chinese companies. As Dong Mingzhu, president of Gree Electric Appliances Inc and a deputy to the National People's Congress, put it: "There is no excuse, with so many manufacturers in China, for not making a good electric cooker."

Gree released a new model electric cooker using inductive heat technology on Tuesday and conducted a blind taste test, inviting about 100 guests to compare rice made in its cooker with that produced by foreign branded appliances.

Lei Jun, an NPC deputy and CEO of Xiaomi Corp, also brought up the same topic in his speech to the delegation from Guangdong province.

"At first I thought Chinese people had blind faith in the quality of foreign products. But later I discovered, after research, that Japanese makers do have a technological edge," Lei said. "While Chinese models can cook rice thoroughly, Japanese models can cook rice beautifully, making the rice dance."

According to the Ministry of Commerce, Chinese tourists spent about 1.2 trillion yuan ($185 billion) overseas in 2015.

Lei said the reason behind Chinese shopping sprees overseas is that the quality of many products made in China fails to meet the expectations of consumers with greater spending power.

"As China's economy develops, Chinese people's spending power has been greatly elevated. However, we are oversupplying shoddy goods now, and there is a critical shortage of refined goods that Chinese consumers need," he said.

"To keep consumers home, Chinese manufacturers need to improve the design and quality of their products and increase efficiency to offer great buys," he added.

Providing a solution, Premier Li noted "the spirit of craftsmanship" in his Government Work Report to top legislators and advisers on March 5.

He said the country will encourage enterprises to foster a spirit of striving for the best, so that more high-quality products will be made.

It was the first time the spirit of craftsmanship was mentioned in a work report, although in recent years it has often been heard from the lips of manufacturers in Guangdong province, the country's manufacturing base and foreign trade hub. Yuan Liqun, an NPC deputy and vice-president of Midea Group, mentioned it during an interview the day before.

The household goods giant, based in Foshan, Guangdong, introduced a high-end IH rice cooker in Japan in April last year, challenging Japanese competitors in their own country.

Yuan said that to find the best water-to-rice proportion, an R & D technician spent one year cooking a total of 2 metric tons of rice, enough to feed a family of four for eight years.

Nine types of rice were tested and a different cooking mode designed for each, Yuan said.

"The manufacturing industry should advocate the spirit of craftsmanship," she said. "Only when we are willing to endure the loneliness of burying ourselves in the taskto work out the best design and production modelscan we make products that are widely praised by consumers."

I have worked as a correspondent in Guangdong for four years and written a lot about the manufacturing sector there. I have seen modern factories that wowed me with robots like Transformers and showrooms filled with patent certificates.

But I'm so happy to have heard about the electric cooker that showcases Chinese manufacturers' pursuit of craftsmanship.

There may be a long way to go for made-in-China products to earn a new image in the world, but we're on our way.

Contact the writer at xujingxi@chinadaily.com.cn
Foreign Ministry calls for avoiding 'any move' on the DPRK issue that would increase tension

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea launches a long range rocket launched into the air in this file still image taken from KRT video footage, released by Yonhap on February 7, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Beijing has said any unilateral sanctions must not hurt China's interests after Washington imposed additional sanctions on Pyongyang because of its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

China always opposes any unilateral sanctions and "any move to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula is opposed", Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in Beijing on Thursday.

US President Barack Obama imposed the new sanctions on Wednesday.

His executive order freezes any property in the United States of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and prohibits exports of goods from the US to the DPRK, Reuters reported.

"All the relevant parties, it is hoped, will exercise restraint, remain calm and avoid any provocative words or actions," Lu added.

The Republic of Korea Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the country's top envoy for the stalled Six-Party Talks will visit China on Friday to discuss issues regarding the DPRK.

Meanwhile, the ROK and the US are conducting joint military drills, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, from March 7 until April 30, reported to be the largest ever.

Pyongyang said on Wednesday that Washington and Seoul are pushing the situation to the point of explosion through the provocation posed by the drills.
SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday fired a medium-range ballistic missile into east waters, Yonhap news agency reported.

People at a railroad station in Seoul watch a news report after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced that it had conducted its first hydrogen bomb test. [Photo/Agencies]

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted as saying that the missile was launched around 5:55 a.m. local time (2055 Thursday GMT) from the western area of Sukcheon.The missile, fired from a mobile launcher, flew about 800 km before falling off the DPRK's east coast. In consideration of the flying distance, it was believed to have been a Rodong ballistic missile.It was the first time in about two years since March 26, 2014 that Pyongyang fired the Rodong missile, which can target the entire South Korean territory and major cities in Japan as it has a maximum range of about 1,300 km.The missile launch came in an apparent show of force and anger at the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States and the tougher-than-ever sanctions on the DPRK.Pyongyang fired off two short-range ballistic missiles, estimated to have been Scud missiles, on March 10, three days after the joint U.S.-South Korea annual war games kicked off.The Key Resolve command post exercise is set to end on Friday, but the Foal Eagle field training exercise is scheduled to last until April 30.
China and the United States are strengthening nuclear security cooperation ahead of the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Washington later this month.

Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli and US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz met in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Wednesday to exchange views on deepening cooperation in nuclear security, energy and climate change.

Zhang, also a member of the Politburo standing committee, hopes that both sides will increase practical cooperation in civilian nuclear energy, power grid construction, clean energy and low-carbon cities.

His message was echoed by Moniz, who praised the progress made by the two countries in their cooperation on climate change, energy, nuclear security and other fields, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.

Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday morning, Thomas Countryman, assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, said Moniz is leading a US delegation to the opening of China's Nuclear Security Center of Excellence (COE) on Friday.

The center, being established based on a bilateral agreement, will serve as an important domestic nuclear security training resource for China's growing nuclear complex, Countryman told lawmakers in a hearing reviewing the Obama administration's nuclear agenda.

"Beyond China, in concert with other COEs in the region, it will provide a forum to train relevant personnel across Asia in nuclear-security best practices," he said.

To promote ongoing cooperation on nuclear security, the US and China have initiated an annual bilateral Nuclear Security Dialogue, the first of which was held in February, according to Countryman.

Moniz's trip to China came less than two weeks before the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Washington. Leaders from more than 50 countries and four international organizations, including President Xi Jinping, are expected to attend the summit on March 31 and April 1.

Vladimir Putin, president of major world nuclear power Russia, will not participate in the summit, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced in January. The past three Nuclear Security Summits were held respectively in Washington in 2010, Seoul in 2012 and in The Hague in 2014.

Science magazine on Thursday quoted Moniz as saying in Beijing that the US and China share an interest in preventing global smuggling of nuclear materials and have taken tangible steps to work together to fight the threat.

"My discussions up till now have certainly reinforced the importance of these relationships and the shared interest in extending them going forward," Moniz said.

The magazine described the new COE near Beijing as a jointly funded collection of labs, test sites and training facilities partly based on US installations.

It said the new center seeks to detect the smuggling of materials that can either be used in nuclear weapons or dirty bombs. "Controlling these materials, whether going out or coming in, is clearly important," Moniz was quoted as saying.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
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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.
Migrants wade across a river near the Greek-Macedonian border, west of the the village of Idomeni, Greece, March 14, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

BRUSSELS - European Union leaders will try to convince Turkey's prime minister to help end Europe's migration crisis in return for financial and political concessions but they remain unsure if Friday's Brussels summit can clinch a deal.

"Tomorrow's negotiations with Turkey won't be very easy," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who devised the outlines of the plan with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, after EU leaders agreed a common stance on Thursday.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters that Davutoglu would press the EU to open up new areas of negotiation on its long-stalled bid to join the bloc, despite a veto threat by Cyprus.

"We're on the right track but we're not there yet," French President Francois Hollande told reporters after the first day of talks in Brussels. "I can't guarantee you a happy ending."

Even if they can overcome possible Turkish objections, Thursday's EU discussions revealed considerable doubts among the Europeans themselves over whether a deal could be made either legal in international law, or workable.

Over dinner, leaders gave EU negotiators a mandate to conclude an accord with Turkey by which it would take back all migrants who reach Greek islands off its coast. In return the EU would take in Syrian refugees direct from Turkey, increase aid for Syrians there, speed Ankara's EU membership process and a scheme to let Turks visit Europe without visas.

Much of the debate, Merkel said, focused on ensuring that a plan that has outraged human rights agencies could ensure that those returned to Turkey, a country with a patchy and worsening record on the matter, would have rights to asylum protected.

"An agreement with Turkey cannot be a blank cheque," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned, echoing many colleagues who face complaints that Europe is selling out to anti-immigrant nationalists at home by outsourcing its problems to the Turks.

Outside the summit, rights group Amnesty International had planted a large screen in the middle of Brussels' European quarter proclaiming "Don't trade refugees. Stop the deal."

Summit chairman Donald Tusk will open negotiations with Davutoglu at 8:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) to prepare for a lunch meeting at which all 28 EU national leaders aim to wrap up a deal with the Turkish premier.

A major problem is Turkey's four-decade-old dispute with EU member Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades insisted there could be no opening of new "chapters" in Turkey's EU membership talks until Ankara allows Cypriot traffic to its sea and airports - a result of a refusal to recognise the Cypriot state.

After EU leaders told Tusk where they could give ground and where they had "red lines", Anastasiades he was ready to veto a deal if necessary.

There is anger in Nicosia at Merkel for appearing to make Davutoglu an offer last week without having consulted Cyprus at a time when talks on reunification with the Turkish-backed north of the island are at a delicately hopeful stage. Tusk, a former Polish premier, made clear Cypriot interests must be respected.

But Turkey is impatient with what it has called Cypriot "caprice" and a Turkish official in Brussels with Davutoglu said: "The EU has to see the big picture ... We think there are many steps to be taken for the opening of those (accession) chapters. And that is still our expectation."
PHNOM PENH - Ahead of the inaugural Lancang-Mekong Cooperation leaders'meeting scheduled to open next week in China, scholars in Cambodia are saying the summit will provide a "golden opportunity" for leaders to enhance cooperation toward building a region of shared prosperity and common destiny.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is due to meet with the leaders from the Mekong River countries -- Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam -- on March 23 in Sanya city in south China's Hainan province, and attend the Boao Forum for Asia on March 24.

Joseph Matthews, director of the Phnom Penh-based ASEAN Education Center, said the forthcoming summit would be a"golden opportunity"for the leaders to work toward boosting cooperation in economy, security and infrastructure development in the region.

"The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism is in compliance with ASEAN Economic Community integration, so it will push further economic development in the sub-region," he told Xinhua.

He said all the six countries are naturally, economically, socially and geopolitically interdependent on each other one way or another, so cooperation and collaboration between and among partners are inevitable.

"I believe that this is the first and biggest sub-regional forum based on cooperation and common interest in the world today," he said.

Meanwhile, the Indian-born expert also hailed China's active role in supporting infrastructure development in the Mekong River countries.

"Under the Maritime Silk Road Initiative, China has been working and funding initiatives to connect the region through rail, road, sea and air ways," he said.

"Without infrastructure development and connectivity, economic development in the region will be just a dream or fantasy."

Mey Kalyan, senior adviser of Cambodia's Supreme National Economic Council, said Lancang and Mekong sound like two rivers, but in fact, it is only one river basin, and the people of all six countries drink water from the same source.

"It is extremely important to have an effective mechanism to manage this river basin," he said.

"So far, management of this basin has been too patchy and divided based on each country's interest, so it needs to be upgraded to meet a common interest."

Kalyan said Cambodia will definitely benefit from this cooperation because most of Cambodia's territory is in the Mekong basin, so the country's destiny is inextricably linked to the health and wealth of the Mekong.

"An effective mechanism to manage the river will benefit Cambodia in every aspect, particularly agriculture, fishery, transport, environment, water use, and tourism,"he said."An unhealthy Mekong will make it difficult for Cambodia to survive."

Chheang Vannarith, chairman of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies, said the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism is an important sub-regional cooperation, which will contribute to regional connectivity and socio-economic integration.

"Under this mechanism, Cambodia will gain access to development assistance, trade and investment opportunities, tourism promotion and human resources development," he said.

The expert said the key challenges for the Lancang-Mekong cooperation are economic inequality, environmental degradation, food-water-energy security nexus, climate change and natural disasters.
A Shanghai university has created two dual degree programs in partnership with the IE Business School in Spain to promote an education in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, known as ACEM, said the MBA dual degree program and Master in International Business-Master in Management dual degree program will allow students to obtain degrees from both top-ranked institutions.

Students will gain an advanced understanding of Chinese and European business perspectives and will spend one year in Shanghai and one year in Madrid.

"Both schools have long been emphasizing and promoting the education of innovation and entrepreneurship. Combining the strengths and competitive advantages of both schools, the new partnership will allow students to grow into business leaders with global perspectives by absorbing the essences of both Western and Eastern business philosophy," ACEM dean Zhou Lin said.

ACEM is among the first business schools in China to launch an entrepreneurship education that integrates theory, competition and practice.

As early as in 2002, the school started an MBA Entrepreneurship Competition, and the now prominent contest attracts top business school students. In the past three years, ACEM's MBA Entrepreneurship Fund has invested more than 11 million yuan ($1.7 million) in 37 startup projects.

Contact the writer at @chinadaily.com.cn
China will offer green industrial capacities to engage the countries along One Belt and One Road routes to realize better connectivity in Asia, Europe and Africa, according to participants at a seminar organized by France's NEOMA Business School and China Daily on Thursday in Paris. [Photo by Tan Qiuying/chinadaily.com.cn]

European businesses and academics are confident that China will offer green industrial capacities to engage countries along One Belt and One Road routes to realize better connectivity in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Their confidence was expressed at the China's New Silk Road Initiative conference on March 17 in Paris, which was jointly organized by China Daily and NEOMA Business School in France.

More than 150 participants attended the event and among them are representatives from Confucius institutes, Chinese and European business representatives from Bank of China, BYD, Huawei and EDF electricity.

Zhang Haiyan, director of NEOMA Business School-Confucius Institute for Business, said there had been rising interest in its potential contribution to the economic and industrial development in Asia and Europe after the announcement of China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

But concerns have also been expressed about its environmental feasibility and consequences, which have been more and more perceived as key issues in the implementation of the New Silk Road initiative, especially in the context of rising concern about the climate change.

"This is the background why we cooperate with China Daily to organize this event. But from the discussions we held, we found that China is keen on promoting green cooperation and realizing green development with other countries along the silk road," said Zhang.

And in its domestic agenda, China has become stricter in implementing energy and environmental standards in the coming five years.

Tu Jianjun, China program manager of the Intentional Energy Agency, said China's carbon intensity cut has been increased during 2016-2020 period compared with 2011-15 period, which indicated the determination of the Chinese government to curb pollution.

He said in 2040 China may own the largest renewable energy industry globally.

"China's serious energy sector reform is a prerequisite to tap China's full potential on clean energy development. The country's transition to a more diversified and a much less energy intensive model for growth re-shapes global energy market and help global climate agenda," Tu said.

Tu's opinion was echoed by French expert Serge Degallaix, General Director of Foundation Prospective and Innovation. He said that the 13th Five Year plan is a continuation of the 12th Five Year Plan.

"We welcome the new approach, we are in the situation where things are changing but going to the right direction, we think there are new fields of opportunists for business between the two countries," he said.

"We are in favour of China's investment because we need capital. Our feeling is the attitude of the Chinese investors have changed , but from the French side there is still fear of Chinese investors taking everything from the French," he added, "so we have built some institutions jointly held by the two sides, it's a way to converge interest, not only in favor of one side."

To contact the reporter: fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
Virgin Atlantic said it had investigated an altercation on board one of its flights to Shanghai from London on March 1, and added that it "deeply regretted" the unpleasant experience one of its passengers had.

Chinese social media said a Chinese female passenger, on the Virgin flight VS250 on March 1, 2016, alleged she was insulted by a Caucasian male passenger and subsequently allegedly ignored by a flight attendant. The story went viral on social media in China.

By late Friday Beijing time, over 24.6 million users had read about the issue on the Chinese social media site Weibo, which is similar to a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook.

Today Carly O'Donnell, International communications manager for Virgin Atlantic, said their investigations showed there was an altercation between two customers on board the flight, and both passengers became "upset and distressed."

"Our cabin crew did their best to resolve the situation for all customers, including the female customer and her male companion."

"We would like to reiterate that Virgin Atlantic takes a zero tolerance approach to racism," she said in an emailed statement.

"We deeply regret the unpleasant experience our customer had on this flight."

O'Donnell said Virgin Atlantic was aware of the considerable interest in the matter on Chinese social media networks, and airline founder Richard Branson tweeted, in both Mandarin and English, that he was "Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight V250. We do not tolerate abuse and Virgin Atlantic are investigating."

To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com


(Photo : Getty Images) A university paper called for the UN to recognize Hong Kong as an independent nation.

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A senior Chinese official rebuffed a recent article in a university paper calling for the United Nations to recognize Hong Kong as a sovereign country by 2047.



The Undergrad, the student magazine of the University of Hong Kong, insisted that the UN should recognize the city as a separate country with a democratic government and complete with its own constitution by 2047.



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The article titled "Out 2047" was published online last week. It said that under the Basic Law which took effect during the Hong Kong handover in 1997, it guarantees the 'one country, two systems' principle for 50 years.



"It's impossible. How could Hong Kong be independent?" said Qiao Xiaoyang, head of China's parliamentary law committee, in an interview with Beijing reporters.



Basic Law



The Basic Law, which serves as Hong Kong's mini-constitution, protects the rights of the citizens and guarantees the one country, two systems for 50 years.



Thousands of pro-democracy groups and students took to the streets for a month in 2014 in Hong Kong demanding the government to give them the freedom to choose their own leaders in the 2017 elections.



The demonstrations were thwarted by the Hong Kong police and China refused to give in to the groups' demands.



Violations



The article also criticized the Hong Kong government for violating the rights of its citizens enshrined in their constitution and failing to protect its identity and heritage. It added that the government failed to secure the rights of the people of Hong Kong.



The university article also lambasted the government for being a 'puppet' of the mainland.


(Photo : Chung Sung-Jun / Staff / Getty Images) US President Obama implemented the sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday after the latter's nuclear weapon testing.

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China announced on Thursday that they are against the sanctions the United States imposed on North Korea, saying that it could worsen the ongoing international tension.



The unilateral isolation sanctions against North Korea was placed by US President Barack Obama on Wednesday after a series of deliberations and meetings with allied countries. The agreement isolates North Korea and its leaders after their recent testing of nuclear war weapons which was seen as dangerous and provocative by the United States and its allies.



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The sanctions came after North Korea conducted nuclear tests on January 6, 2016 and February 7,2016. One of the rockets is said to carry a banned missile technology.



During a press conference in China on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang was asked if China was worried about the secondary sanctions that includes the freezing of assets of anyone or any country that will break the isolation sanction that was placed against North Korea.



"First, as I have said many times before China opposes to any isolation sanction placed against any country and not just North Korea, with regards to the secondary sanction, it is something that we are studying and looking further into," Kang said.



"We already also clearly expressed many times during meetings with the relevant country that any so-called unilateral sanction imposed against them by any country does not affect or harm our reasonable interests," Kang added.



China is widely known as the one of the few allies of North Korea but has also widely expressed that it is against the latter's nuclear testing. It also expressed its hopes what North Korea be a nuclear free country soon.



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Tagschina news, North Korea, China and North Korea, asia news, North Korea testing nuclear weapons, north korea nuclear weapons
(Photo : twitter.com/Brian Wagner) The capsized boat was intercepted on Monday just a little off the coast of Puerto Madryn which is about 1460 kilometers south of capital Buenos Aires. The people on the boat reportedly ignored the Navy's warning and even tried to ram an Argentinian Naval vessel.

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China has called for an investigation against Argentina after the Argentinian Navy said that they used gunfire to sink a Chinese flagged boat named 'Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010' that was illegally fishing in international waters.



The statement released by the Argentinian Navy said that the capsized boat was intercepted on Monday just a little off the coast of Puerto Madryn which is about 1460 kilometers south of capital Buenos Aires. The people on the boat reportedly ignored the Navy's warning and even tried to ram an Argentinian Naval vessel.



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"The vessel was hailed over the radio and both visual and audio signals were sent to make contact with the boat. However, instead of responding to the repeated calls they instead turned off their fishing lights and proceeded to flee towards international waters. The ship then proceeded to perform maneuvers that were designed to force a collision with the nearby coastguard who were then ordered to shoot parts of the vessel which made it sink."



Meanwhile, in Beijing, spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry Lu Kang sad in a statement that the boat was found fishing in the Argentine waters and was chased around for several hours before the Argentine navy fired on the boat.



Four Chinese nationals on the boat were arrested while 28 other Chinese nationals that were aboard the ship were dramatically rescued by another nearby Chinese vessel.



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TagsArgentina, Chinese News, Boats, Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010, illegal fishing, international waters, Argentina-China relations, China foreign affairs
(Photo : Getty Images.) Gambia's latest move can trigger off diplomatic rivalry between China and Taiwan, which could lead to both rival countries poaching each other's allies, a practice both nations have been following for many decades now.

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Beijing announced on Thursday that it has resumed diplomatic ties with Gambia, ending the decade-old diplomatic hostility between the African nation mainland China.



China had severed diplomatic ties with Gambia in 1995 following the latter's decision to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation.



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Gambia's latest move can trigger off diplomatic rivalry between China and Taiwan, which could lead to both rival countries poaching each other's allies, a practice both nations have been following for many decades now.



"From here on, China and Gambia's relations have turned over a new leaf," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.



"The early resumption of ties accords with the basic interests of both countries and conforms to the trend of the times and general trend of the development of China-Africa friendship and cooperation," Wang added.



In response, Gambia's Foreign Minister Macdouall-Gaye said Gambia supports "the national reunification, peaceful reunification" of China and Taiwan, signaling African nation's support for the "One China" principle.



Taiwan reacted sharply to the rapprochement between China and Gambia. Taiwan's President elect Tsai Ing-wen's party Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that Taiwan must not let this kind of incident happen again, adding that it hopes China and Taiwan will not engage in "target competition."



Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou, who will leave his office on May, termed China's action as "highly inappropriate."



Gambia was among the few nations in the world to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state. The African nation, with barely 2 million population, is one of the poorest countries in African continent.



China's renewed attempt to win over Taiwan's allies has been perceived as a response targeted towards Taiwan's President elect Tsai Ing-wen, who is widely hailed as a pro independent leader. After Tsai Ing-wen's landside victory in January, Beijing has been issuing warnings to Taiwan that "any secessionist movement by Taiwan will be thwarted."



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TagsGambia, china, Taiwan, China and Tiwan, China and Gambia, Taiwan independence
(Photo : Getty Images.) Juwai will use the fund to hire talents across the world to bolster its global presence.

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Juwai.com, a property search engine that helps Chinese buyers to buy overseas real estate properties, is planning to go public at the Australian stock market by end of this year.



"The listing is important for our growth," Juwai's CEO Charles Pittar said in an interview in Tokyo on Friday.



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Pittar said that the firm plans to raise funds from institutional investors and strategic partners before selling shares to retail investors in public by end of this year or in early 2017. However, he did not give any details about size of the IPO.



Juwai will use the fund to hire talents across the world to bolster its global presence.



Buoyed by their increasing wealth, large numbers of Chinese buyers have been buying overseas properties, boosting real estate prices across the world including Sydney, New York, and Tokyo. According to Knight Frank LLPs, outbound real estate investment more than doubled from $15 billion in 2014 to $35 billion in 2015.



Juwai has been at the forefront of the boom in outbound real estate investment. Starting in 2011, the startup has played an instrumental role in connecting Chinese buyers with reputed overseas brokers through 2.5 million listings on its website. According to the company, Juwai.com attracts 2 million unique visitors per month.



While the boom in outbound real estate market has so far helped Juwai to chart an impressive growth so far, but experts say that outlook for 2016 remains unpredictable.



Meanwhile, Juwai is close to announcing a partnership with a Japanese firm in coming weeks, which Pittar did not comment on.



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IMB baptisms hit their lowest level since 1969 18 March, 2016 by Will Hall/Baptist Message , |

ALEXANDRIA, La. (Christian Examiner)  Overseas baptisms for 2015 dropped to 54,762 from the 190,957 reported for 2014, according to information submitted by the International Mission Board in response to a request by the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. Likewise, the number of new churches fell from 13,824 to 3,842 over the same one-year period.

The baptism figure represents the lowest level reported in 46 years.

A note explaining the declines states the decrease is "due to one large CPM no longer reported" (CPM refers to "church planting movement"). Since 2009, the IMB has changed data gathering procedures to "no longer include reports from partner conventions and unions," but to report information about "work related to IMB personnel only," according to annotations in the SBC Annual.

A table provided by IMB, in item 22 of 25 replies to "Ministry Inquiries," shows an even larger four-year downturn. Baptisms fell by 211,689 since 2012 and the number of new churches declined 20,231 during the same time frame.

For perspective about the drop to 54,762 annual baptisms, according to data in SBC Annuals and information posted on the IMB's website, the 50,003 baptisms for 1969 were achieved with 2,371 missionaries deployed on the field while the baptisms tallied in 2015 were accomplished with 4,707 personnel under appointment.

The information being reported for 2015 represents work done in 2014 during the transition of IMB leadership from Tom Elliff, who had led Southern Baptists' largest evangelism entity since March 2011, to David Platt, who was elected in August 2014 to replace Elliff.

Meanwhile, the numbers for work accomplished in 2015 and 2016 likely will be impacted by the terminations of a reported 1,132 personnel as part of a plan launched in August 2015 to reduce the total number of IMB personnel "by at least 600." The process will not finalize until nearly the end of April 2016.

The Baptist Message discovered the information about the fallen numbers of overseas baptisms and new churches while reviewing materials IMB supplied to the SBC Executive Committee's request for information.

In advance of its Feb. 22-23 meeting, the SBC Executive Committee sent a data call to all ten entities, including itself, which receive funding through the Cooperative Program. It also queried LifeWay Christian Resources and GuideStone Financial Resources; and, the Council of Seminary Presidents provided comparative data.

The information from all of these SBC entities was posted online and an email was dispatched Feb. 19 to an electronic mailing list with a link, www.sbc.net/cp/ministryreports, to the main web page.

During this same time frame, the IMB released a press report Feb. 24, "Thanks to Southern Baptists, IMB in 'much healthier financial position,'" which included six paragraphs of general information about the organizational "reset" that has fundamentally reformed the structure of Southern Baptists' missionary forces by targeting missionaries at least 50 years old with a minimum of 5 years of field experience and dropped the number of IMB people in the field to 3,817, the lowest total since 1993.

However, as of the time of publication of this article, IMB has not yet issued a press release addressing the negative trend in baptisms and new churches discussed in the SBC Executive Committee materials.
Kerry, in surprise move, meets deadline for ISIS genocide ruling 18 March, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner)  One day after a US State Department spokesman said Secretary of State John Kerry would miss the March 17 deadline imposed by Congress for deciding whether or not to declare the Islamic State guilty of genocide, Kerry made an abrupt about face and publicly condemned ISIS for the mass killing of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities.

In an early morning address, Kerry referred to ISIS by the term "Daesh"  an acronym for the Arabic name of the Islamic State. Daesh is, however, also a play on words. In Arabic it sounds very much like the derogatory word for "bigot" or "one who imposes his will over another."

Kerry said the United States had been combating ISIS since its rise in 2014, when it began to seize territory in Iraq and Syria. In September 2014, he said, President Obama assembled a coalition of 66 nations to help contain the movement and, where possible, reverse it. He claimed the US and its partners have pushed the militants out of 40 percent of the territory they once controlled in Iraq and 20 percent of what they controlled in Syria. He also said the U.S. is working to stop the spread of the radical group.

Kerry then said his purpose was to assert that, in his judgment, "Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities."

The sudden act of recognizing the genocidal program of the Islamic State comes as a radical departure from the Obama administration's policy of delay.

Earlier in March, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the president wasn't ready to call the actions of ISIS genocide because he wanted to sift through the rigorous legal requirements for the crimes. Even Kerry himself said he wasn't certain that the actions of the Islamic State met the legal definition of genocide.

Things changed, however, when the House of Representatives voted unanimously (393-0) March 14 to designate ISIS as a purveyor of genocide. Now, Kerry and the State Department are doing the same, citing the group's abuse of Yazidis, Shia and moderate Sunni Muslims, and Christians.

"We know that in Mosul, Qaraqosh, and elsewhere, Daesh has executed Christians solely because of their faith; that it executed 49 Coptic and Ethiopian Christians in Libya; and that it has also forced Christian women and girls into sexual slavery," Kerry said.

"We know that in areas under its control, Daesh has made a systematic effort to destroy the cultural heritage of ancient communities  destroying Armenian, Syrian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches; blowing up monasteries and the tombs of prophets; desecrating cemeteries; and in Palmyra, even beheading the 83-year-old scholar who had spent a lifetime preserving antiquities there."

"We know that Daesh's actions are animated by an extreme and intolerant ideology that castigates Yazidis as, quote, "pagans" and "devil-worshippers," and we know that Daesh has threatened Christians by saying that it will, quote, "conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women."

Kerry said ISIS "kills Christians because they are Christians, Yazidis because they are Yazidis, Shia because they are Shia."

As Secretary of State, Kerry said his role is "neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury" with respect the allegations of genocide, but he said the United States supports efforts to collect and analyze evidence of atrocities committed by the group, which he said has "self-declared itself genocidal." He added that the US must reaffirm the rights of all ethnic, religious and cultural groups targeted for destruction and reject bigotry and discrimination  "those things that facilitated its rise in the first place."

Naming the crimes of ISIS genocide, however, will not stop the militant group's march across the Middle East.

Kerry said unity among the countries opposing ISIS, the determination to act against genocide and ethnic cleansing, and the desire to defeat hatred "must be pronounced among decent people all across the globe."

While that is true, the State Department has been slow on the uptake of the mantle of defender against genocide. On Feb. 4, 2016, the European Union's parliament made the determination that ISIS had undertaken a program of genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Late in January, the EU's Parliamentary Assembly Council also passed a resolution that called on parliament to refer openly to ISIS's rampage as what it was  genocidal.

With the EU and the US both designating the terror group as genocidal, the United Nations may also act soon. The UN must refer any action of genocide to the International Criminal Court, which will set up a tribunal to deal with any criminals captured and tried. However, because the US and EU recommend ISIS be designated as committing genocide does not mean the UN will follow through.

In the aftermath of the Kosovo war in 1998-1999, the UN court ruled that Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of violence against ethnic Albanians was a war crime, but not purposeful genocide. The crimes, the court said, did not meet all of the legal requirements for the designation.
A religious freedom bill that says pastors cannot be forced to preside over same-sex marriages, and can hire or fire employees on the basis of their religious beliefs, was passed by the Georgia General Assembly on March 16. The bill, which is being criticized by opponents as too discriminatory, now moves to the state's Republican governor Nathan Deal.

The "Free Exercise Protection Act," which also known as the "Religious Liberty Bill," has to be signed by Deal to be made into a law. The governor had earlier said that he will not be signing any bill that could be interpreted as discriminatory.

The bill made it into the assembly after over two years of lobbying by Georgia Baptist Convention.

The religious liberty bill was amended several times on the floor, as opponents felt it was too restrictive.

The version that finally passed the assembly says that pastors cannot be compelled to participate in same-sex weddings, and churches, and affiliated organizations. Faith-based organizations cannot be required to hire or retain individuals who do not share their sincerely held religious beliefs, the bill also states.

The bill goes on to mandate that no faith organization can be made to rent, lease, or grant permission for property to groups whom they object to.

The Georgia assembly has made additions to the language used in Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to allow the government to step over individual religious liberty only in extraordinary circumstances and by least restrictive means.

America's largest LGBT-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), said that the bill will prove to be detrimental to non-discrimination ordinances, and with time the discrimination could extend to hospitals and job market.

"The decision by the legislature today was to make an egregious and discriminatory bill even worse," the HRC said in a statement.

"It's appalling that anti-equality extremists in the legislature are trying to ignore the will of the people of Georgia," it read.

Mike Griffin of Georgia Baptist Convention, who also lobbied for the bill, welcomed its passage in the assembly. According to him, the bill still fell short of mandating all the measures their organization wanted, but he said that it advanced protections in First Amendment Right to religious freedom.

Many large organizations such as Google, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Delta Airlines have expressed their opposition to the bill.

California tech firm Salesforce, which has made huge investments in Georgia, and other local business and LGBT groups are putting pressure on Deal to veto the bill.
European Union leaders will meet with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davtoglu to strike a deal on refugee crisis this week, which will allow Greece to send the migrants to Turkey, according to media reports.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, will mediate a resolution with Davutoglu in a meeting at Brussels, Belgium, where other state leaders will also be present.

The European leaders have already negotiated among themselves on what incentives to pass on to Turkey if it agrees to cooperate with the Union to quell the crisis, but talks with Turkey might prove to be an uphill endeavor for the EU.

"I am cautiously optimistic, but frankly speaking, more cautious than optimistic," Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said.

After arriving in Brussels, Davtoglu did not talk about the core points of the deal, but suggested that Ankara wanted European leaders to expedite the process of joining EU.

"For us, for Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining but an issue of values -- humanitarian values as well as European values," Prime Minister Davtoglu told reporters.

"Of course, the EU and Turkey, we have the same goal, the same objective -- to help Syrian refugees especially -- and also to have a future in our continent, in a bright manner," he added. "All these events show how Turkey's relationship with the EU and Turkish membership is important not only for Turkey and EU but for all international issues."

The EU, however, wants to focus on the resources Turkey will need to house the migrants till they qualify for settlement in the bloc.

"We need to put all our efforts into achieving an agreement with Turkey. These will be negotiations that will certainly be anything but easy," Merkel was quoted as saying by The New York Times.

She said that some legal and logistical challenges in the deal will have to be overcome, which will provide a guideline on how Turkey can assimilate illegal migrants to Europe. The deal states that for every Syrian refugee who will be sent back to Turkey, EU would accept one in return to be settled in Western Europe.

Merkel also said that the discussions on migrants will also consider the human rights situation in Turkey, and its violent treatment of the Kurds.

"It ... goes without saying that we stress to Turkey, for example, the importance of freedom of the press (and) the freedom of the Kurds," she said. "As important as the necessary fight against the PKK's terror is, [Turkey must take a measured] approach ... for all Kurds."

PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane), or Kurdistan Workers' Party, is a separatist organization in Turkey, which is fighting the Turkish state to form a Kurdish nation.

Humanitarian groups have expressed concern over the EU plan of sending the refugees back, which could violate international law on refugees.

"Many refugee and human rights organizations have also indicated that there is a serious legal issue with the proposed one-for-one automatic return of all persons arriving irregularly in the EU from Turkey without an investigation into their international protection needs," said Elspeth Guild, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the refugee situation has worsened in Greece which is the entry point of migrants into the EU. Macedonia has closed its borders to Greece, blocking the northern route for refugees to move further up from Greece, where they live in unhygienic and cramped settings.

The EU leaders have acknowledged the risk of violation of international law on migration in the deal, and plan to make the return journeys to Turkey supervised by United Nations, and have also agreed to process each asylum application individually.
North Korea fired two ballistic missiles off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, one of which flew 500 miles before falling into the sea, and the other one was detected at an 11 miles altitude by a radar before it disappeared.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that it was keeping a close watch on the situation, and were in a state of high alert in case of further provocations from the North.

Yonhap News Agency of the South said that the projectiles are probably Rodong medium-range ballistic missiles.

The missiles were launched from Sukchon county, north of Pyongyang, near the west coast, but flew across the country towards the east coast around 6 am on Friday morning, according to statement released by South's joint chief of staff.

Tensions rose sharply in the Korean peninsula, after the North conducted nuclear tests earlier this year. Following the tests, the US imposed strict sanctions on the country, including ban of US exports and investment in North Korea.

Last month, the South also indicated its displeasure with North by closing the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North, which was a historic industrial venture shared by the two countries.

The North did not take lightly the South's move to close the complex, and proceeded to liquidate South Korean companies in the North, which the South called a "provocative action."

The US and South Korea are to conduct a joint annual military drill this month, which is not viewed favorably by the North.

The country has always opposed the drill, but this year due to already heightened tensions, the North Korean government has threatened a "pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice" against the US and the South.

North Korea's ballistic missile launch drew criticism from other international leaders.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang called on North Korea to follow the resolutions set out by the United Nations and to avoid taking any actions that would increase tensions in the Korean peninsula.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticized the missile launch, and said that Tokyo will work together with the US and South to monitor the situation.
With the lilt characteristic of a Southern megachurch pastor, Bob Roberts Jr. introduced the most significant Muslim statement on religious freedom in 1,400 years.

I am a Texan, an evangelical, and a Baptist, the NorthWood Church leader told the crowd of more than 250 leading Muslim clerics from around the world. You have made my job to build bridges so much easier. You have gathered to call people to change. He drew hearty applause.

The Marrakesh Declaration, launched in Morocco this January, is a clear English-Arabic condemnation of terrorism and a pledge to better promote religious liberty.

It is a very promising initiative. You could even say it is groundbreaking, said Medhat Sabry, the Anglican Communions dean for Morocco and one of several non-Muslim observers (alongside Roberts) to the declarations signing. But it is way too early to tell.

This is becausefrom Cairo to Amman to Nazareth to Baghdadthe news caused barely a ripple in Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa, whom the document is meant to comfort. Some Arab Christians saw a headline in the local news. Others didnt hear of it at all.

One who did was Andrea Zaki, president of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches. He joined Sabry in praising the declaration.

At a moment of radicalization, this is a moderate voice, he said, noting the legal reference to UN declarations in both language versions.

But to be honest, the situation is beyond a document. They should develop a mechanism to make sure it is widely spread.

Until it is, Robertswith degrees from Southwestern Baptist and Fuller seminariesand his Virginia-based ...

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Months before our wedding, my fiance started a toy-manufacturing business to create jobs in Honduras. We moved to Tegucigalpa as husband and wife in 2010, starting our life together in a country with the worlds highest murder rate.

Needless to say, we skipped the honeymoon phase. In addition to the shock of a new country, language, and culture, I faced the violent reality of life in Hondurass capital. Rates of robbery, rape, and murder climbed to levels unimaginable in Los Angeles, where we lived prior to our move.

Since 2010, the company has taken off, and weve settled into life in Central America. But the transition was never easy for me. I tried different jobs and ministry roles, unable to find the right fit. We struggled to conceive, and doctors in both Honduras and the States couldnt discern why we were infertile.

Last summer, we stopped treatments to give my body and heart a break. And then, in August, I got pregnant.

We decided years ago that if we ever conceived, we would stay in Tegucigalpa for the birth. Despite the political upheaval and health scares, including outbreaks of mosquito-borne viruses like dengue and chikungunya, we believed this is where God had called us. When we first heard of the Zika virus spreading through Honduras and other parts of Central America in early 2016about halfway through my pregnancywe determined not to waver.

But Zika quickly proved different. In addition to symptoms like fever, rash, and joint pain, the virus is believed to pose severe threats to unborn children though researchers are still investigating the link. Pregnant women who contract Zika risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly, a defect that causes abnormal head and brain ...

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Nearly four years after refugees from Pakistan began showing up at evangelical churches in Thailand, church members were overwhelmed. What started as a handful of families asking for money at Bangkok services had become hundreds.

Today, nearly 10,000 Pakistani refugees are living in Thailand. An estimated half of them are Christians fleeing persecution like the Easter Sunday bombing in Lahore.

It is easy and inexpensive (compared with neighboring countries) for Pakistanis to obtain 30-day tourist visas to Thailand. Further, the majority Buddhist nation has lost more than 6,000 people to Islamist extremism since 2004. This leads Pakistani Christians fleeing persecution to believe the country will be sympathetic to their plight, says Jeffrey Imm, an advocate for such refugees. [Jubilee Campaign offers an in-depth report.]

Even so, after the tourist visa expires, Thailand considers all refugees to be illegal immigrants. Most left Pakistan not knowing that Thailand has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, a treaty that protects refugees rights. Without legal status, many families fear that they will be arrested and forced to endure harsh conditions in immigration detention centers until theyre bailed out, can pay for a return flight, or are resettled.

Their plight has become increasingly public. In February, the BBC released a one-hour documentary highlighting Thailands treatment of Pakistani refugees. Since its release, the situation has only worsened for migrants, states the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA). It claims that Thai officials blocked two dozen humanitarians seeking to visit and provide food for refugees in detention centers earlier this month, and that family members are now ...

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On a recent trip to Israel, a group of US evangelical leaders listened to both Israeli and Palestinian voices. The Israelis grumbled that their story is not being heard in the United States, while the Palestinians complained that US media dont present any story but that of the Israelis. It brought home the oft-repeated truth that conflicts are not only about justice but also, and perhaps more important, about competing narratives. The takeaways for the US context were obvious. We experience daily clashing narratives from Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, whites, mainliners, evangelicals, pro-choicers, pro-lifers, gays, straights, men, women, elites, the poorto name a few.

Take two competing narratives in urban neighborhoods. To oversimplify: In much of the black community, the arc of the story centers on white policemen racially targeting young black men, harassing, beating, and killing without consequence. Yet law enforcement officials tell the story of facing tremendous pressures as they seek to keep the peace in neighborhoods caught in drug and gang wars.

Our narratives have various purposes. In an insightful blog post, John Hagel, co-chair of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, says, As human beings, we resist atomization and fragmentation; we yearn to connect and build on the efforts of others. We also seek meaning, purpose, and identity . . . something that narratives, and little else, are exquisitely designed to provide. In other words, narratives define the conflict, name the antagonists, and spell out the resolution.

Narratives are, of course, biased. They rarely lie about the facts, but they are selective in their use of them. In the larger American race narrative, whites can wax ...

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In June 2015, in the wake of Dylann Roofs murderous rampage at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, legislators gathered to debate removing the Confederate flag from the state capitol. Meanwhile, Bree Newsome, a young African American woman, was taking the matter into her own hands, scaling the flagpole and snatching the flag herself. Though she was promptly arrested, her action attracted media attention, and many hailed it as a victory for racial justice.

Newsome had been arrested two years earlier for protesting North Carolinas voter ID law. As such, she was anything but reticent about her motives. Ordered by police to come down, she replied, In the name of Jesus, this flag has to come down. You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today. As officers handcuffed her and led her away, she recited Psalm 23.

As the Confederate flag controversy died down, another controversy was heating up in rural Rowan County, Kentucky. Another woman of unbending Christian convictionalbeit very different politicsquickly gained notoriety for her own defiant stand. Kim Davis, the county clerk, ceased issuing marriage licenses after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. Davis, a recent convert, framed her refusal as a defense of her religious freedom. Jailed briefly for contempt of court, she continued fighting several legal actions launched against her, styling herself a soldier for Christ.

But where Newsome was celebrated for her courage, Davis was mostly scorned as a religious fanatic and a bigot. Although a handful of conservative Christian politicians and activists rallied ...

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Years ago, Christianity Today ran a cartoon depicting Francis Schaeffer at the Pearly Gates. Looking through the Book of Life, Peter says, Lets see . . . Schaeffer, Dr. Francis. I think Thomas Aquinas would like to have a word with you.

The medieval Catholic theologian wasnt the only Christian luminary to find himself repeatedly in Schaeffers crosshairs. Sren Kierkegaard was another popular target. Who can forget Schaeffers charge that the melancholy Danes notion of the leap of faith accelerated Western civilizations escape from reason and plunged us into the line of despair? Due to this and similar caricatures, evangelicals have often viewed Kierkegaard with suspicion.

Fortunately, Mark Tietjens Kierkegaard: A Christian Missionary to Christians (IVP Academic) should help set the record straight, not least on what Kierkegaard meant by the concept of leap. Many Christian scholars have lauded Kierkegaard as an orthodox ally. But Tietjen, chaplain at the Stony Brook School in New York, goes further. Writing for those who dont know philosophical and theological jargon, he shows how Kierkegaards body of work bears witness to the fact that nominal Christianity is no Christianity at all.

To clear away the debris, Tietjen first gives an overview of Kierkegaards life and thought. Tucked away in this defense of Kierkegaards theological credentials is a fine explanation of why Christians shouldnt be suspicious of philosophy. The resulting picture is that of a rigorous Christian thinker faithfully working in the Reformed Lutheran tradition: a rightful heir to Luther at his best, ...

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Several faith leaders were asked to write brief comments about the future of Roe. I was glad to see that I was not the only person asked who sees life as beginning at conception and who is ready to see Roe overturned.
Bill Gothards former ministry has lost its seal of approval from the leading group that sets the standards for evangelical ministries.

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) terminated the membership of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) last Friday, citing failure to comply with its governance standard.

ECFA requires member organizations to have a board of at least five people (mostly independents) that pray, chart long-range strategy, and identify potential conflicts of interest, among examples of other duties.

When a ministry encounters failureor even worse, scandalits difficulties can almost always be traced to a breakdown in governance, states ECFAs explanation of Standard 2. For this reason, ECFA places much emphasis on strong, effective governance.

ECFA declined to specify to CT how IBLP failed to meet its governance standard. IBLP did not respond to CTs request for comment by ...

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home Life Chinese Christians gather in Beijing for Jesus celebration despite government crackdown

Chinese Christians driven by passion for Jesus Christ have gathered in Beijing for a celebration of their faith and a special worship service.

Christians in Beijing organized a vibrant worship service where they prayed together for China's government leaders. They sang worship songs and asked the Holy Spirit to let their officials understand the importance of religious freedom in shaping their country, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).

In an interview with CBN News China, one of the worship leaders in Beijing gathering and explained that their country is in a critical situation. For this reason, she said Christians need to pray for their government leaders.

"We need to pray for our leaders. They need to understand faith is all we need," the worship leader said. "Believing in Jesus is good for us and the nation. I know God is listening to our prayers all the time."

Aside from that, the attendees of the assembly were emboldened to pray for one another. Some of the Christians also invited non-believes to join the gathering, saying they need to bring the message of Christ to more Chinese.

The Beijing gathering comes amid reports of the government's ongoing crackdown on Christian churches. In the province of Zhejiang, the government has removed and burned down crosses from around 2,000 churches, American religious activist organization China Aid says.

The crackdown has been going on for almost two years already. Those who have opposed the cross removal campaign have been imprisoned and charged with disturbance of social order, CBS News reports.

An entire church was destroyed when the crackdown first started. The government explained that the demolition was carried out because the church violated China's "building codes," the report relays.

In February, Christian lawyer Zhang Kai appeared on state TV expressing his regret over his support for Christians opposing the cross removal campaign.

Despite the crackdown on Christianity, more worship services like the one in Beijing will be held in different locations in China this year. Chinese Christians have said they will continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will work in the hearts of more unbelievers and the national leaders.
home World UK Christian magistrate fired for opposing gay adoption will now sue Justice Minister

LONDON - A UK Christian magistrate, Richard Page, is suing the Justice Minister after he was fired over his comments on adoption by gay parents.

Christian magistrate Richard Page said a child would be better off if brought up by a mother and father rather than a gay couple. After Justice Minister Michael Gove sacked him over his comments, he accused the latter of "pandering to the new political orthodoxy," according to the Express.

Speaking to BBC in an interview in March 2015, Page explained that it was his responsibility as a magistrate to determine the best situation for the child. For him, growing up with a father and a mother would be better for the child.

"My responsibility as a magistrate, as I saw it, was to do what I considered best for the child," Page told BBC last year. "And my feeling was therefore that it would be better if it was a man and woman who were the adopted parents."

Page added that he is not homophobic, but he was just speaking out according to his Christian belief. For him, homosexual activity and sex outside of marriage is wrong, the report relays.

In addition, Page said there is not enough evidence to show that a child who grows up in the care of a gay couple will have the same holistic benefits as the child who grows up with a mother and father.

However, the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office found his comments "biased and prejudiced" against the gay couple seeking to adopt the child, a spokesman for the office said. His comments caused him to be removed from the bench after serving for 15 years, Christian Today reports.

Page, on the other hand, worried over the consequence of his comments on the gay adopters, especially because it involves his Christian views. He said it has become difficult for Christians to express their views because of the fear of being ostracized from the community. Page then vowed to challenge the office's decision.

Meanwhile, Page's lawyers from the Christian Legal Centre released a statement calling the decision to sack their client as "modern day madness."
home World US finally labels ISIS atrocities as 'genocide' against Christians and minorities in Middle East

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has finally declared that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians in the Middle East.

On Thursday, John Kerry made the genocide declaration after being pressured by various rights groups and lawmakers. The U.S. Secretary of State released a statement saying ISIS is committing genocide against Christians and other minority groups in the Middle East, according to Fox News.

"In my judgment, Daeshis responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims," Kerry said on Thursday.

In addition, Kerry encouraged others to join the efforts to hold ISIS accountable for the violent acts. He also said an independent investigation and a tribunal should be launched as part of those efforts.

The statement comes in the wake of a House resolution condemning the acts committed by the militant group as genocide. Kerry's decision is a surprising move, considering that just a day before, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner announced that Kerry would not decide on the matter before the Mar. 17 deadline for the genocide declaration.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-California) applauded Kerry's decision, saying it was the right move for the U.S. Secretary of State. He also called on President Barack Obama to step up actions to ultimately destroy the terrorist group, blasting the government's "paralysis" in fighting ISIS, the report relays.

The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians earlier released a report listing down more than 1,100 Christians in Iraq allegedly killed by the radical Islamist group since 2003. The report also narrates how some of the people were kidnapped, raped, driven away from their homes, and sold as slaves.

The Obama administration has been debating on whether the atrocities really constitute genocide. Now that John Kerry has made the genocide declaration, advocates say the U.S. ought to take additional action against ISIS.
A new biopic is being made about Mary Magdalene

A biopic of Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus and witness to his crucifixion and resurrection, has been scheduled for release in 2017.

The biblical character was first depicted on film in 1912 in an American film called From the Manger to the Cross, filmed on location in Palestine, and has been portrayed in multiple films since. However, this new biopic is the first to focus on the life of Mary herself.

The as-yet untitled film hopes to explore more fully the mysterious character of the woman who first witnessed Jesus' resurrection.

"Mary Magdalene is a strong character, who was so unique in her time, and her story will give audiences a chance to experience the cultural turbulence, human passions, and devotional beliefs that set in motion so much of modern history," Peter Kujawski and Robert Walak of Universal Pictures International Productions told Deadline.

It will be produced by Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, the pair behind The King's Speech, and directed by Garth Davis.

"We are thrilled to partner with Iain and Emile at See-Saw on this project, who have a track record for developing compelling material with a focus on quality. We're certain that Garth's artistic vision will deliver an incredibly powerful new perspective on one of the world's most well-known origin stories," Kujawski and Walak added.

Mary Magdalene is one of the most intriguing and talked about biblical characters. During the Middle Ages, she took on the identity of a repentant prostitute, despite there being no suggestion of this in the Gospels. She has also been rumoured to be Jesus' wife, another reputation unsupported in the canon. However, she was a close follower of Jesus  mentioned at least 12 times in the Gospels, more than most apostles  and is considered, by many, as one of the heroines of the faith.
British Baptists urged not to host gay weddings

The Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) has urged its member churches to refrain from conducting same sex marriages.

The Union's Council meeting this week discussed the issue of same-sex marriage in the light of the 2013 legislation making such marriages legal.

A previous response to the change in the law, in May 2014, affirmed "the traditionally accepted Biblical understanding of Christian marriage, as a union between a man and a woman". However, it also said that "we also recognise the freedom of a minister to respond to the wishes of their church, where their conscience permits, without breach of disciplinary guidelines"  implicitly allowing ministers to conduct same-sex marriages if they wish.

The statement from this week's Council meeting "positively re-affirms and commends to our churches our Union's historic Biblical understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and calls them to live in the light of it". It stresses that this understanding has "shaped the rules for accredited Baptist ministers regarding sexuality and the ministry and our rules continue to remain unchanged".

However, it also references the Union's 'Declaration of Principle', which says each local church can make its own decisions "under the guidance of the Holy Spirit".

The statement says the Council "recognises areas of genuine and deep disagreement", concluding: "In the light of this, recognising the costs involved and after careful and prayerful reflection and listening, we humbly urge churches who are considering conducting same-sex marriages to refrain from doing so out of mutual respect. At the same time, we also humbly urge all churches to remain committed to our Union out of mutual respect; trusting that the one who unites us is stronger than what divides us."

The statement from this week's Council effectively re-emphasizes the conservative position of the Union as a whole, acknowledging that most Baptist churches would not wish to conduct same-sex marriages. However, while it urges churches not to breach the consensus, it implicitly acknowledges it cannot prevent them doing so.

In her letter introducing the statement, BUGB general secretary Rev Lynn Green said: "I am aware that many will welcome this statement and I am also acutely aware that for some it will be the cause of great pain and concern."

She said some Baptists "believe that their response to the authority of Christ as revealed in Scripture and discerned in the gathered community, is a desire to be able to offer marriage to those with same sex attraction".

"At Council we recognised that our deeply held convictions over this issue are a source of pain for others and we believe that we need to bear with each other in Christ-like humility, love and grace as we journey on together," she added.

A few Baptist churches have registered for same-sex marriages, among them Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church in London. Its minister Rev Dr Ruth Gouldbourne told Christian Today: "We recognise the request being made and take seriously our commitment to the Union."

Baptist minister Rev Steve Chalke, who has written and spoken of his support for same-sex marriage, told Christian Today the Oasis Church he pastors had conducted one same-sex blessing but had refrained from conducting others after a request from the Union. After the 2014 statement had confirmed that each church was free to discern the mind of Christ itself, however, the church has pursued the process of registration.

He said: "Walking together in unity is never the same as walking together in uniformity. If unity is based on uniformity it is a very weak form of unity."

He said Baptist ecclesiology, which permits a wide degree of autonomy to the local church, allowed every Baptist congregation to be a "prayerful response to the local community".

"We are working out what it means to serve and follow Christ here," he said.

The issue is potentially divisive to the Union, most of whose churches are theologically conservative. One regional body, the West of England Baptist Association, attempted to stop churches registering for same-sex marriages by warning them that their trustee bodies would not give permission for them to do so. However, while the Union is not in a position to forbid churches to register for same-sex marriages, its recent statement arguably goes as far as it can in backing the conservative position.
Burma: Christian charities urge freedom for religious minorites

The Burmese government have been urged to repeal laws which hinder religious freedom by a coalition of groups at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC).

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a religious freedom charity, signed a joint statement alongside the Jubilee Campaign, a charity for persecuted Christians, which called for the government to promote freedom for all religious groups.

The statement came as Burma went through its universal periodic review (UPR). Under the UPR process every member country has its human rights record reviewed. However the Burmese government has not accepted all of the recommendations and CSW says many of the rejected suggestions "carry utmost importance" for religious freedom.

On top of that 35 of the rejected proposals relate to the rights of the Muslim Rohingya, a persecuted minority in Burma.

At a side event at the UN HRC, a panel of activists which included Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, a Catholic leader in Burma, spoke on the importance of religious freedom.

Bo said: "Whatever the perspectives  and there are, within my country, a variety of perspectives  about the origin of the Rohingya people, there cannot be doubt that those who have lived in Myanmar for generations have a right to be regarded as citizens, and that all of them deserve to be treated humanely and in accordance with international human rights."

On Tuesday Burma's first civilian president for 70 years was nominated, ending decades of totalitarian military rule.

Benedict Rogers, CSW's East Asia team leader said: "This is an exciting and yet a critical time in Burma. The country faces at long last the arrival of a democratically elected government, and yet the military retain a very key role in the governance of the nation.

"There is at long last a realistic hope of change, and yet many challenges still remain. Religious intolerance and ethnic conflict are two of the major challenges for the country," said Rogers.

"We hope that the new government will find ways to promote unity in diversity, equal rights for all, a federal solution for the ethnic conflict, action to address hate speech and prevent discrimination, and policies to promote inter-religious harmony, freedom of religion or belief, and peace."
Catholic Church loses legal battle for ownership of Cordoba's mosque-cathedral

The Catholic Church has lost a legal battle to claim legal ownership over a mosque-cathedral in Cordorba, Spain.

Local authorities have declared "religious consecration is not the way to acquire property," thus undermining the Catholic Church's claim on the site, which has been subject to a long-term dispute of ownership.

The building lies on a site which has been under ownership of both Muslims and Catholics in its history.

The site was originally a Catholic Basilica built by the Visigoths. However, when Muslims conquered Spain in 711, the church was divided into Christian and Muslim halves, until 784, when the Christian half was purchased by Emir 'Abd al-Rahman I. He demolished the entire structure, building the Grand mosque in 784 on the same site. Since 1236, the former mosque has been a cathedral, having been given to the local Bishop Fernando III when the city fell to Christians.

The local council has declared, despite the Catholic Church's protestations, that the building does not belong to the church  or any other organisation.

The building, which has been a Unesco world heritage site "of exceptional universal value" since 1984, cannot be owned by anyone.

In 2006, the Catholic Church paid 30 euros to register ownership of what they referred to as the cathedral-mosque (although the approved name by the government is the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba). However, the report, written by the city council's secretary general Valeriano Lavela, said that it did not have any legal basis and cannot confer ownership.

Instead, the site's true owners "are each and every citizen of the world from whatever epoch and regardless of people, nature, culture or race".

Currently Catholic mass is held in the mosque-cathedral, but Muslim prayer is banned, despite persistent lobbying.
Christian couple Marius and Ruth Bodnariu pray and fast for return of 5 children

The Christian couple who had their five children removed by Norway's child protection services are undertaking a 40-day fast as they wait to hear whether their children will be returned to their custody.

Marius and Ruth Bodnariu have released a statement confirming they were in court this week to urge the authorities to allow their children to return home.

"We are at the end of the Court procedures that took place on March 14 and 15. We are grateful to all of you for fasting and praying and for your support!" the statement said.

"We await the decision of the Court with the knowledge that we've done everything humanly possible, understanding that all things are in God's hands and trusting His good plans for our lives!

"We continue to pray and fast as scheduled for 40 days before April 16!"

The Bodnarius said they expect a decision to be made in the next few weeks, possibly during the first week of April.

Marius Bodnariu is a Romanian married to Ruth, a Norwegian. Formerly members of the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church in Bucharest, they moved to Norway 10 years ago to start a family there and live in Naustdal on the west coast. Their children, two daughters and three sons, were removed in November 2015 on suspicion of parental child abuse and religious indoctrination after one of the daughters told her headteacher that Marius and Ruth spanked the children as a disciplinary measure.

Corporal punishment is illegal in Norway, and schools are obliged to report it.

Peter Costea, a Texas-based Romanian lawyer monitoring the case, has previously said he did not believe the family's Pentecostal faith was a factor in the children's removal. However he last month revealed newly obtained records that he said showed the authorities were concerned the Bodnarius had "their own faith and way of upbringing when it comes to religion".

"They plainly state that Barnevernet [Norway's child welfare services] 'is worried that this is a way of upbringing which is justified by the Bible'," Costea, president of the Alliance for Romania's Families, said.

"The documents also mention that the children were 'brought up to respect God and their parents' values.' Barnevernet interpreted this as a possible conflict between the children's assumed inability to live up to their parents' value expectations and faith and that the parents' religion could create an 'inner conflict' in the children and a stressful family environment. Religion is bad for children, Barnevernet's minutes seem to say, and too much religion is lawful justification for snatching children away from their parents."

The case has gained worldwide attention, and a petition calling on the Bodnarius to be reunited with their children, who are currently in foster care, has gained almost 60,000 signatures.
Christianity invented human rights. Secularists need to remember that

The UK government seems to suggest every few months that it's going to get rid of the Human Rights Act. So far it remains on the statute books. Plans to replace it with a British Bill of Rights never seem to get off the drawing board, but maybe the outcome of the EU Referendum will change that.

Into this uncertain environment, a new book has been published which examines the Judeo-Christian basis of human rights and suggests a religious basis should be maintained for any future Bill of Rights. The book  Religious Approaches To Human Rights, by Martin Davie  was published this month.

It has drawn the anger of the National Secular Society in a blog on its website, penned by NSS executive director, Keith Porteous Wood. In it he offers a sort-of review of the book as well as reporting on the launch event in Parliament.

According to the introduction he, "Offers a critical review of a new book that claims Human Rights owe their existence to religion  when the greatest modern threat to Human Rights comes from organised religion."

Upon this obvious non sequitur, he bases his whole review (and I might add, much of the approach of the NSS). The argument seems to be that because some religiously inspired regimes around the world are horribly repressive, then human rights can't possibly have had a religious background in the first place. Not only is this philosophically incoherent, it's historically inaccurate  it's an indisputable fact that the concept of human rights developed in a Christian context.

Firstly, let's deal with Porteous Wood's opposition to the repression and violence which is commonplace in certain religious regimes around the world. On this, he and I are of one mind. He highlights Saudi Arabia as one of the most depraved regimes in history (as I've written about here) and there is no doubt that the extreme Salafist form of Sunni Islam promoted by the country's leading religious authorities is to blame (it also inspires ISIS).

I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with the NSS and anyone else who opposes the UK government's support for Saudi Arabia and its horrific regime. But does Porteous Wood really believe it's credible to equate any group which is 'religious' with the bloodthirsty theocrats of Saudi Arabia??

However bad the Saudis are (or the Iranians, or any other repressive religious regime) though, that tells us nothing about the development of human rights. 'Human rights' as a concept is a relatively recent invention, but it has been built on centuries of development in European thought from the Church Fathers, through medieval philosophy, through the Enlightenment and into the 21st century.

While not all those debating the development of human rights would have described themselves as Christians (Spinoza, Thomas Paine...), they were working in a distinctly Christian environment. The ground had been laid by Aristotle, via Thomas Aquinas.

Porteous Wood seemingly rejects this. He says, "Natural rights" (whatever they are, I suspect natural in the eyes of the beholder)." In one fell swoop, he dismisses centuries of argument and debate and defenestrates the philosophy of giants like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius. But no matter, because Porteous Wood and the NSS don't seem especially interested in where human rights come from  merely that they want to assert that they are 'a good thing'.

This is naive. The NSS says it exists to, "Uphold the universality of individual Human Rights." That's admirable, but human rights were not created ex-nihilo by the European Convention or the Universal Declaration. They have a basis in the Judeo-Christian worldview. Nick Spencer from Theos has demonstrated how equality and toleration (two key concepts in the foundation of human rights) come from the English Bible.

If human rights don't have a religious basis  as the NSS seems to want to argue  then where do they come from? We need to be told how a secular campaign group seeks to persuade the rest of us that human rights are inherently good. They must do more than merely give examples of bad religious regimes from around the world. Indeed, Christians are only too aware of the systematic denial of human rights  as the most persecuted minority in many parts of the globe (something which, in fairness, the NSS does mention).

It isn't that there can't be a secularist basis for human rights (although I struggle to see how the inherent dignity and therefore rights of each human are grounded on a purely atheistic basis) it's just that Porteous Wood utterly fails to make a coherent case for it. There are some vague allusions to secularism being neutral and fair to all  something which just isn't true.

To spend a blog saying how dreadful various religious crimes have been doesn't get us anywhere. Many secularist regimes have been beyond gruesome  Pol Pot's Cambodia, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China to name but three. Yet it would be unfair for me to suggest these represent secularism. Instead I'd like to have a grown-up conversation about how, in a pluralist society like the UK or the USA, we can talk about human rights, their origin, our obligations to each other and more  while acknowledging that we are products of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Without it, human rights are not axiomatic.

The Church has, of course, abused its power over the centuries. There are dreadful religiously motivated regimes around the world. No one doubts these facts. Yet to suggest that because of them, we should deny where human rights comes from in the first place, is overkill. Let's have a proper conversation about how we live together as religious and non-religious people in a plural society, rather than tarring all people of faith with the Saudi brush. It's boring, banal and doesn't get us anywhere.
Franklin Graham urges Christians to vote for 'least heathen' candidate

As the Presidential race heats up, evangelist Franklin Graham has urged Christians to vote, even if it means they have to decide which is the "least heathen" candidate.

In an interview with CBN News, Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, said: "There is a left movement within the evangelical community that are telling people, 'If so-and-so wins or this person wins don't vote.' I'm just saying, I don't care who wins and who's out there, you have to vote."

He continued: "And I'm not going to tell people who to vote for, I'm not going to do that  let God tell you who to vote for.

"You may have to hold your nose, you may have to decide which is the least heathen of the two heathen."

Graham is currently undertaking a 50-State tour of the US with the aim of encouraging Christians to pray, get involved in politics and vote for "candidates who support biblical values".

The Decision America Tour involves prayer rallies in each state, and has drawn crowds of thousands. On Tuesday, around 5,000 turned out to hear Graham speak in Denver.

Ahead of the tour, Graham said: "I want to stand on capitol steps and lead this nation state by state in praying for America.

"We'll be praying for our leaders and praying that God would give us politicians who will stand for biblical values. I want to challenge Christians to get involved in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and all others to make a difference; to get engaged at every level and to vote.

"The Bible calls us to be salt and light in this world  it's time we got off the sidelines and got involved in actively working and praying to stop the moral decline of this great nation."

He has denied that he has a political motive, however, and in December announced that he was leaving the Republican Party.

"This 50-state tour is not for the Republican Party," Graham said. "I'm as disappointed in them as I am the Democrats."
How British Baptists have sort of allowed gay marriages, but still aren't all that keen on the idea

Several years ago I asked a key figure in the Baptist Union of Great Britain if the question of same-sex partnerships  no one had thought of marriage then  would ever be discussed by the Union. "Over my dead body," he responded cheerfully, having accurately foreseen the world of pain which any such debate would create.

Now, the Government action in driving through same-sex marriage legislation has forced the question up its agenda, and a statement at the Union's annual Assembly outlined, in highly traditionalist language, its current thinking:

"We affirm the traditionally accepted Biblical understanding of Christian marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, as the continuing foundation of belief in our Baptist churches."

However, it also appeared to allow accredited Baptist ministers to conduct a same-sex ceremony, should they wish to. This was previously understood to be forbidden, but now: "Upholding the liberty of a local church to determine its own mind on this matter, in accordance with our Declaration of Principle," the statement read, "we also recognise the freedom of a minister to respond to the wishes of their church, where their conscience permits, without breach of disciplinary guidelines." In practice, the Union's ability  and its willingness  to discipline its ministers over this has never been entirely clear, as witnessed by the fact that Steve Chalke was able to conduct a same-sex blessing in 2012 without apparent consequences.

This was sufficient for Premier Radio to run a story headlined "Baptist Union to allow gay marriage ceremonies". A lengthy and startlingly sharp rebuttal from the Union followed almost immediately, including words like "misleading", "inaccuracies" and "misrepresentation". The statement was subsequently removed from the Union's website and Premier  which arguably had a bit more of a case than the Union were prepared to allow  issued a revised and rather more nuanced story.

The Union-Premier spat is one thing, though it is perhaps worth pointing out that before a radical downsizing of the Union's communications department, the potential for misunderstandings in such a sensitive area would probably have been spotted in advance. However, the really interesting thing isn't what its statement tells us about British Baptist views on same-sex marriage, but what it says about Christian unity.

The Baptist Union is an overwhelmingly evangelical and theologically conservative denomination, but it hasn't chosen to make a policy statement on same-sex marriage (it could have done this by allowing or forcing a vote).

The Union is just that, a Union. It has no central authority as Anglicans or Methodists do, and respect for theological differences is essential to its being.

So, in keeping with its structure, it made a mature and thoughtful call for mutual respect. It expressed the position of the vast majority of its churches (that is, the traditional understanding of marriage as between a man and a woman) but declined to stigmatise those who disagree.

Of course, there are unresolved tensions in all this. Ministers are in principle allowed to conduct a same-sex marriage for someone else, but would be guilty of "conduct unbecoming" if they did it themselves. (The absurd situation might arise where a Baptist minister wanted to marry someone of the same gender in a service conducted by another Baptist minister; one would be disciplined, the other not. Seriously, it's bound to happen.)

At the moment the contradiction lies in the fact that ministers are accountable to two parties  the local church they lead, and the wider Union. The Union requires behaviour of its ministers that their churches may not. That's a very difficult knot to unravel, but the direction of the Union's travel seems to be in the direction of returning ultimate accountability to the local church.

There are, of course, dangers in this course, not least in the questions it raises about the point of a Baptist denomination at all. Nevertheless: a key Baptist Declaration of Principle is that "our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and that each church has liberty, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to interpret and administer his laws". So what is being done at present, or not done, about same-sex marriage, is arguably very principled and very Baptist. We do not all agree, but we trust those with whom we disagree and we remain sisters and brothers.

Same-sex marriage has split Christian opinion. In many ways it has shown us at our worst. We have let it stand for everything that we dislike about an increasingly secular and libertarian society and made it the litmus test of heresy and orthodoxy  or at least, of evangelicalism and non-evangelicalism. Far too many of us, if we're honest, can't really claim to have made every effort to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace" (Ephesians 4.3). Sometimes it looks more as though we're spoiling for a fight.

I hope the churches in my Baptist denomination live up to the tremendous responsibility they've been given. What God has joined together, let no one separate.

Rev Mark Woods is former editor of The Baptist Times.
ISIS ignored cries of 'Don't kill the sisters' before murdering Yemen nuns

An eyewitness account has emerged describing the terror faced by the four nuns from Mother Teresa's order murdered by Islamic State in Yemen on March 4.

A fifth nun, Sister Sally, who escaped after she hid in a refrigerator, wrote a memo to another member of the order, Sister Rio, about the 90 minutes of terror, in which a further 12 people were also slain.

The memo, obtained by news site Crux, reports that on that Friday, the sisters had said Mass and had breakfast as usual. At 8am the priest said the apostolate prayer and all five nuns went to the home where about 80 elderly and disabled people live.

Shortly after, terrorists from Islamic State, dressed in blue, entered the premises and began killing, starting with the guard. Five young Ethiopian Christian men ran to tell the sisters that Islamic State was there to kill them. The men were caught, tied to trees, shot in the head and then had their heads smashed in.

The sisters ran for their lives, and four other women who worked there shouted: "Don't kill the sisters! Don't kill the sisters!" These four women were murdered as well. One had been the cook for 15 years.

Sister Sally ran to the convent to try to warn Salesian priest Fr Uzhunnalil, who is still missing after being kidnapped by the terrorists. Instead of fleeing, he ran to the chapel and consumed all the consecrated hosts so the terrorists could not defile them. After capturing the priest, they went on a destructive anti-Christian hate-filled rampage, destroying every other religious item, including the tabernacle, altar, crucifix and an image of the Virgin Mary.

Two of the murdered sisters were from Rwanda, one was from India and one from Kenya.

The attack provoked outrage around the world, and the pope and his staff in Rome are among those who have prayed for those involved, with their concerns going viral on social media.

Yemen is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula and is currently gripped by civil war.

More than 6,000 people have been killed and 28,500 people injured, according to the United Nations.

Mother Teresa, Accompany Your Martyr Daughters in Heaven,' Pope Prays at Angelus https://t.co/r4iw50nVk2 pic.twitter.com/4TwzxHu5lb  Zenit English (@zenitenglish) March 6, 2016

The Missionaries of Charity was founded in 1950 by Mother Teresa, who is to be made a saint this autumn.

The Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia has said the murdered nuns were all serving the poor, whatever their religion, and saw this as their duty.

Pope Francis has described them as "martyrs of today who gave their blood for the Church."
Jewish groups set to boycott Trump for inciting violence and hatred

Several groups of rabbis are planning to boycott Donald Trump's speech at a major pro-Israel meeting in Washington on Monday, accusing the GOP front runner of inciting hatred.

The group of rabbis will boycott Trump's scheduled appearance at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel policy gathering of the year.

Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, the organisers of "Come Together Against Hate", a play on the conference's theme "Come Together" emphasised that the demonstration was aimed specifically at Trump, not AIPAC as a whole.

"This is not about policies, this is not about parties, this is about one particular person, Donald Trump, who has encouraged and incited violence at his campaign rallies," said Paskin, a rabbi in Florida, who has organised 300 Jewish people to protest on Monday.

"We are against the hatred, the incitement of hatred, the ugliness that has engulfed this political season."

Come Together Against Hate are set to either boycott the speech entirely or walk out silently when Trump is introduced, assembling outside the building to study love and decency in Jewish scripture.

"We're hoping thousands of people will join us in that protest," Paskin said. "We're going to be providing the antidote, we believe, to what Donald Trump is espousing."

An AIPAC spokesperson told CNN that the group has a "longstanding policy" of inviting all the active presidential candidates to its conference during the election season, refusing to comment directly on the planned protest.

The Jewish population has more widely condemned Trump during his election campaign.

"At every turn, Mr Trump has chosen to take the low road, sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic," said the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents the largest Jewish denomination in America in a statement.

Although not naming Trump explicitly, the American Jewish Committee alluded to the dangers of "presidential campaign violence", saying:

"We do not draw analogies to the rise of communism and fascism lightly, but both of those tyrannical movements rose to power replacing democratically elected governments, by virtue of threats of, or actual, violence against their opponents."
Most German Lutherans don't believe Jesus is their Saviour

Only 38 per cent of German Lutherans believe 'Jesus is their saviour', according to a study undertaken for the German evangelical news agency Idea.

According to the Evangelical Focus news service, the poll asked both unbelievers and believers from different traditions about their views of Jesus. Around 40 per cent of all Germans believe 'Jesus is the Son of God', with 70 per cent of free evangelical churchgoers responding in the affirmative; 56 per cent of Roman Catholics said they believed it. Among Lutherans, the figure was 54 per cent.

Among those who do not subscribe to any faith, 45 per cent said Jesus was God's Son.

The question about whether 'Jesus is our Saviour' elicited the most surprising responses, however. Lutherans and Roman Catholics both produced the same proportion answering in the affirmative, at only 38 per cent, while only 60 per cent of free evangelical churchgoers affirmed it.

The study also shows the effect of decades of atheist propaganda in the east of the country. Before reunification, East Germany was a communist state and it has been described as "the most godless place on earth". According to the Idea survey, while most than half of those in the west of the country  52 per cent  believe Jesus was a real person, only 36 per cent in the east believe he was real.

It also found that 43 per cent of those who vote for the ruling Christian Democrats identify as Christians while the anti-immigration and right-wing AfD party has only 23 per cent Christians.
Osborne faces second defeat as Christian Tories join rebellion on disability cuts

George Osborne risks another parliamentary defeat only a week after the government lost a vote over plans to liberalise Sunday trading laws.

Plans to change payments to disabled people face a growing backlash from some Conservative MPs, including a number of Christians.

David Burrowes, the MP for Enfield Southgate who led the Tory rebellion on Sunday trading, told Christian Today the government needs to "rethink its plan".

"Conservatives have a good record in supporting the disabled which is at risk if we press ahead with this unfair cut to PIP," he said.

He told Christian Today the measure was a "quick fix to the gap in public finances" and urged the government to spend more time on "long term reform on disability benefits".

The changes would cut the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for disabled people by 1.3 billion over the next five years. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated 370,000 people would lose an average of 3,500 a year. The payment reduction would particularly affect those who need aides help to dress and go to the toilet.

Burrowes was at pains to praise the government's welfare reforms and economic strategy in an article for the Guardian but said he was "yet to be convinced" about the proposed cuts.

"It is hard to maintain the claim of fairness when 'aids and appliances' to help disabled people go to the toilet and get up in the morning are to be downgraded while, for example, comparatively wealthy individuals are to receive a cut in capital gains tax."

Burrowes joins a chorus of Conservative MPs who have expressed concern about the measures.

Andrew Percy, Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole said the government was hitting "exactly the wrong people" with cuts and Johnny Mercer, Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View also tweeted his opposition.

Last day in Washington. Trying to get detail on the budget yesterday. Concerned by proposed changes to PIP. Not sure right direction.  Johnny Mercer MP (@JohnnyMercerMP) March 17, 2016

We must look after our most vulnerable at every turn. No doubt welfare spend still too high, but for those who really need it,it is lifeline  Johnny Mercer MP (@JohnnyMercerMP) March 17, 2016

The level of anger was made clear after Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for mayor of London, was asked to step down as patron of his local Richmond AID disability charity. Kit Malthouse was also told to resign as patron of MS Society and James Cleverly as patron of Advocacy for All.

Nicky Morgan, the education secretary who is also a Christian, raised hopes of a government climbdown after she said on BBC Question Time the plans were a "suggestion" and "under consultation".

However on Friday morning a source close to work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said her remarks don't "tally with what we and Downing Street are saying", according to the BBC.

Morgan didn't "seem to understand" the proposals, said the source.

A number of Christian charities wrote to the minister for disabled people and urged him to change the plans. The letter, seen by Christian Today, warned "damage the health and wellbeing" of up to 600,000 people.

Founder of Compassionate Britain Tanya Marlow, one of the signatories, told Christian Today: "In 2010, David Cameron promised compassion, and yet he keeps targeting cuts at the most vulnerable in our society.

"Government cuts have already affected disabled people nine times more than the average person and severely disabled people 19 times more. Now they want to introduce a back-door cut to a vital disability benefit."
Persecution of Christians spreading in India; Hindu radicals enjoying immunity, humanitarian groups say

Attacks against Christians in India are increasing alarmingly this year, with about 30 incidents of religiously motivated violence reported in just two months, according to humanitarian groups.

The International Christian Concern (ICC) said at least 26 documented incidents spread across the subcontinent have been culled since Jan. 1. Hindu nationalists are leading the campaign of persecution and attacks on Christians, Fox News reported.

Such persecution cases used to be limited to a particular region or issue. However, the violence has now become more widespread with Hindu radicals enjoying immunity for their actions, ICC said.

"They are wolves in sheep's clothing," Jeff King, president of the ICC told Fox News. "There has been an increase in attacks because these nationalists feel emboldened with [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi in power."

"The government, which came into power with the election of Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has strong Hindu nationalist ties. As a result, radical Hinduism, which was already present under the previous government, has increased steadily,'' David Curry, CEO of Open Doors USA also told Fox News.

Curry said since 2014 there has been a significant rise in attacks on Christians and Christian communities by radical Hindu forces.

ICC lamented that Indian police usually take no action against the aggressors. One case was when a mob of over 30 radicals "attacked, beat, and dragged" a Catholic priest and three church officials from their car in the village of Ettimadai in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu last Jan. 29.

The men tried to escape from the mob but failed. Police did not intervene, resulting in the hospitalisation of the four men, said the report.

Two weeks earlier, a local pastor and members of his congregation in the Nizamabad district of Telangana state were "savagely beaten" by a mob of 40 Hindu radicals after they allegedly tried to convert Hindus to Christianity.

The attack, which occurred during a Christian prayer gathering, resulted in the hospitalisation of six persons, including a four-year-old girl whose leg was broken, according to locals.

"It was a very scary scene," Pastor Nitin Kumar said. "They tore my cassock and I received blows, punches, [and] kicks from all directions as I was their prime target. [Our] Bibles were snatched from us and were tore and trampled. [Other] believers ran to all directions as they were chased by the mob."

Last Sunday, a Pentecostal church in the Chhattisgarh state was also attacked during prayer services by a mob believed to have been a part of the militant Hindu Bajrang Dal organisation.

Despite the growing atrocities, the administration of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP has yet to publicly condemn the attacks, the humanitarian groups said.

They criticised the Indian government for its refusal to speak out against the atrocities, adding that its silence has encourage radical Hindus to step up their attacks against Christians.

To stop the wave of extreme nationalism, the ICC has brought its campaign to Washington following the rash of outbreaks. Eight U.S. senators and 26 members of Congress have sent a bipartisan letter to Modi requesting that he strongly and publicly condemn the acts of persecution.

But India's leader has yet to respond, according to news reports.
US churchgoing in decline as young people leave the faith

Religion in the United States is in decline, according to new research from University College London (UCL) and Duke University in the US.

America has long been thought to be the exception to the rule that religion is in decline in the Western world because of its relatively high levels of churchgoing.

However, the study by David Voas and Mark Chavez published in the American Journal of Sociology shows a drop in the number of Americans who claim religious affiliations, attend church regularly and believe in God. Furthermore, it says younger people are increasingly irreligious: "...this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West: each successive cohort is less religious than the preceding one. America is not an exception."

The study examined US data from the General Social Survey, which is conducted every two years, and compared it with similarly broad data from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The results show that people have slowly become less religious over time.

The study found 68 per cent of Americans aged 65 and over said they had no doubt God existed, compared to 45 per cent of young adults, aged 18-30. While 41 per cent of people 70 and older said they attend church services at least once a month, only 18 per cent of people 60 and below do so.

Prof Voas said: "These declines aren't happening fast, but the signs are now unmistakable. It has become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades, and the decline is driven by the same dynamic of generational change that has driven religious decline across the developed world."

Prof Chavez said: "The US decline has been so gradual that until recently scientists haven't had enough data to be sure the trend was real. The US has long been considered an exception to the modern claim that religion is declining, but if you look at the trajectory, and the generational dynamic that is producing the trajectory, we may not be an exception after all."
Classic Week throughlines: From Simon Bolivars pistols to a painting of the Madonna

We trace the remarkable connections between a gift from one revolutionary to another, a bust of Napoleon and a painting once thought to be by Leonardo da Vinci

Gilbert Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), embodied the idealistic zeal of his time, becoming a key figure in both the American and French Revolutions, and then a link between George Washington, father of the United States, and Simon Bolivar, liberator of Latin America.

At the request of the Washington family, on 13 October 1825 Lafayette sent to Bolivar a portrait of the President, a lock of Washingtons hair and a gold medal with his likeness. It was likely at this time that Lafayette sent this pair of French silver-mounted flintlock pistols, made by Nicolas-Noel Boutet of Versailles, as his personal gift to the younger revolutionary  who perhaps he saw as carrying on the torch he had, by then, put down. Nearly 30 years earlier, Lafayette had returned to France after fighting in the American Revolutionary War. Having been appointed commander-in-chief of the National Guard, his reputation later fell, and when the radical faction put out a warrant for his arrest in 1792, he fled over the border to the Austrian Netherlands where he was captured. After five years of captivity, a mixture of diplomacy, the press, and personal appeals from his many sympathisers on both sides of the Atlantic led to Lafayettes release, negotiated by a victorious young general named Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1801, at the age of 32, Napoleon was approaching the apex of his extraordinary career when sculptor Joseph Chinard (1756-1813) created this portrait bust. The sitter had just returned a hero from his campaigns in Egypt, and had engineered a coup establishing himself as First Consul of the Republic.

Open a larger version of this image Tinted plaster bust of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul by Joseph Chinard (Lyon 1756-1813), 1801. Estimate: $30,000-50,000. This lot is offered in the Revolution sale on 13 April at Christies New York

These successes, and those preceding them, are emblazoned across Bonapartes chest. His sash is inscribed with the names of his various victorious battles, while his back collar reads VOILA LE FRUIT DE SON GENIE (This is the fruit of his genius). On 15 July 1801, Napoleon signed the Concordat, an agreement with Pope Pius VII which restored the Catholic Churchs religious privileges while keeping the lands seized by the Revolution. Taking an active part in the negotiations was a cleric by the name of  Joseph Fesch, who was Napoleons uncle. Fesch would be made a cardinal and later French ambassador to Rome, where he built a reputation as one of the greatest art collectors of the period. The Madonna of the Violets, originally attributed to Bernardino Luini, was one of the greatly admired paintings in his collection.
Rice University will use a $16.5 million donation to add two entrepreneurship courses and a grant, with the goal of encouraging students to pursue their start-up endeavors.

The university announced Thursday that Frank Liu and his family donated $16.5 million through their philanthropic foundation to launch the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

"By providing hands-on opportunities to learn entrepreneurship through Lilie's innovative courses and programs, we hope to attract talented and driven students and equip them with the necessary resources to lead innovation both on Rice's campus and across the city of Houston and the state of Texas," Liu, who graduated from Rice in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, said in a news release.

Liu is the founder of Lovett Homes, InTown Homes and Lovett Commercial. He has developed residential, retail and commercial real estate in Houston for more than 35 years.

"As a successful Rice alumnus and entrepreneur, Frank understands the potential impact of the entrepreneurship program at Rice, in Houston and Texas, and the generous support of the Frank and Cindy Liu Family Foundation gives Rice students every opportunity to realize their ambitions," Rice President David Leebron said in a news release.

Lilie will be led by Abby Larson, the director of undergraduate education and research for the Rice Entrepreneurship Initiative. Two new courses will be launched through Lilie, according to the news release.

The E-teams Entrepreneurship Experience course, open to all undergraduates, will focus on one project sourced from a Houston startup. Working in teams, students will meet with instructors and entrepreneurship mentors, set progress goals and present their projects to a panel of reviewers that includes the startup from which the project originated.

And the Lilie Venture Challenge will bring the startup accelerator experience, which is usually a summer project, into the academic year. Students will compete in a business plan competition, and funding prizes will be awarded to the most promising teams.

Available to the incoming Rice Class of 2020 will be the Lilie New Entrepreneurs Grant for freshmen to fund compelling early stage business ideas and attract entrepreneurial students to Rice.
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Ryle Smith was an alternate for RodeoHouston.

Then another tie-down roper withdrew with an injury, and Smith was called up for his second trip here.

Now he's heading to the finals with a semifinal victory under his belt buckle.

The California native emerged from a star-studded semi, winning the round in 8.1 seconds on the last run Thursday at NRG Stadium.

"I was excited," Smith said about getting here.

"I was so happy I got to come here because I love this rodeo. And then my wife told me coming over here, 'Every time something like this happens, you do really well, so maybe it's a good sign,' and she's right."

Smith didn't survive his super series last year.

He finished second this time, sending him to a 10-man semi with six-time world champ Cody Ohl, 2004 world champ Monty Lewis, and former Houston winners Adam Gray (2012) and Ryan Jarrett (2015).

But Gray broke the barrier, and the calves for Lewis, Jarrett and Hunter Herrin kicked free, opening the door for Smith.

"When you ride in the box knowing all you have to do is lay up and you're going on, it's a relief," Smith said. "Some guys want to be backed against the wall, but if I just have to go lay up, it plays in my favor."

Bareback rider Mason Clements is another alternate.

When he received the call to come to Houston, he couldn't say yes fast enough.

He barely made the semis his first trip, finishing fourth in his super series, but he's flying into the final.

The Utah native won his semi with an 84-point ride on War Window.

"This is huge," Clements said. "I've got to rise to the occasion now. I've got to show everybody at RodeoHouston what I'm capable of."

Cole Davison, a Sam Houston State graduate, is heading to the finals for the first time in his second appearance.

Davison and Rhen Richard won in team roping in 6.4 seconds.

"It gets us one step closer to winning it, and in our profession ($50,000) is a lot of money," Davison said.

Brothers Cody and Heith DeMoss, both former Houston saddle bronc champs, are moving on, Cody with an 86 and the win and Heith (82) in fourth.

Ty Erickson (4.4) won in steer wrestling, Lisa Lockhart (14.01) in barrel racing and Trevor Kastner (84) in bull riding.

Jason McDaniel is a freelance writer.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said Friday that he expects to lay off 40 city employees and eliminate 54 vacant positions as he seeks to close a budget shortfall of as much as $160 million, his first public estimate of the personnel reductions required to balance Houston's books.

Turner did not specify which departments would bear the brunt of the cuts, but said he would not lay off police officers or civilians working in the Houston Police Department. He added that he would be resistant to trimming the parks or library departments.
Dear Abby:

One of my close friends may be "ghosting" me. "Sarah" and I have known each other since middle school. We went to high school together and roomed together during our freshman year of college. We both transferred to different schools after that freshman year, but we made it a point to keep in touch. I was the first person she came out to. I helped her move into her new apartment the summer before grad school. In general, I think I've been a good friend to her.

Last summer, we both moved back to our hometown - she for med school and I for a new job. I was excited that after five years we were living in the same city again. I have reached out to her on multiple occasions, but my texts and calls usually go unanswered. When I do get a response, it's typically, "Sorry! I'm just too swamped!"

I don't doubt that med school is incredibly difficult, and I completely understand that that's where her focus should be, but over the holidays I reached out once again and was given the same answer. I know she made time to see another friend - her best, who ranks higher than I do in the "who to see" list. It still hurt.

Am I being too sensitive? Too self-centered? I'm worried that this is Sarah's way of breaking ties with me and I'm just not taking the hint. An outsider's point of view would really help, even if it's a harsh truth.

Left Hanging in Miami

Dear Left Hanging:

When people are in med school, they must carefully organize their time because the curriculum is demanding. Things that are not essential are often postponed, and that includes social relationships.

As you said, you and Sarah are not as close as Sarah and her best friend are. While it may sting, look at it as a mature adult and don't let it drag you down. If Sarah says she's "swamped," have faith that when she's under less pressure, there will be time to re-establish the friendship.

Dear Abby:

My husband does not seem to be able to "hit the toilet," if you know what I mean. I am tired of wiping up the bottom of the toilet seat and the floor. We have talked about this and he always says he's sorry and promises to be more careful. Today I told him that I am no longer cleaning up the toilet seat or the floor. He misses, he cleans.

What advice do you have to solve this problem?

Better Things to Do

Dear Better Things:

Keep a roll of paper towels or an extra roll of toilet paper on top of the toilet. When you see your husband's aim has been sloppy, call him in and have him mop up his mess. If that doesn't get him to pay more attention, and there is a second bathroom in your home, have him use the other one until he is housebroken.

DearAbby.comDear AbbyP.O. Box 69440Los Angeles, CA 90069Universal Press Syndicate
The city of Friendswood is accepting applications for positions on its summer day camp and swimming pool staff and in the administrative services department. For information and to apply, visit www.friendswood.com.

Friendswood kicks off planning for July 4th

The Friendswood Fourth of July Steering Committee and the city of Friendswood are accepting applications for participation in this year's Independence Day celebration.

The celebration will begin at 10 a.m. with the Grand Parade on Friendswood Drive and conclude at Stevenson Park. Visit www.ci.friendswood.tx.us/July-4th-Celebration for details.

Pearland groups work on sculpture trail

The Pearland Convention & Visitors Bureau, Pearland Arts League and Pearland Alliance for Arts & Culture have issued a call for artists and sponsors for a public sculpture trail.

Pear-Scape, upon completion, will feature 4-foot-tall fiberglass pears painted by local artists and positioned throughout the city. Keep Pearland Beautiful will plant a variety of trees to accompany the sculptures.

Visit www.visitpearland.com/pearscape or call 713-436-5595 for details.

Great Decisions looks at climate change

Rice University engineering associate professor Daniel Cohan will discuss climate change as part of Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church's 2016 Great Decisions series, 7 p.m. March 29 at 17503 El Camino Real.

Cohen's research specializes in the development of photochemical models and their application to air quality management, uncertainty analysis, energy policy and health impact studies.

Contact Bob Handy, bobhandy@comcast.net for information.

League City church offers VBS

League City Church of Christ welcomes children age 4 through fifth grade for its free vacation bible school, 9 a.m. to noon June 20-23 at 1801 E. Main.

Visit www.lccofc.org or call 281-332-1015 to register.
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Representatives from SpringHill Suites by Marriott's Chasewood Park location recently donated art supplies to Bleyl Middle School.

General manager Nicholas Albers and other SpringHill Suites staff presented the school's art teachers with a rolling art kit featuring paint swatches, paper, colored pencils, Sharpie markers, Elmer's glue and other supplies.

Albers said the supplies were a result of the hotel's fundraising efforts from August through September 2015, which generated approximately $500 worth of supplies.

Cypress Falls, Anthony win Olympiad titles

Students from Cypress Falls High School and Anthony Middle School won first place in their respective district Science Olympiad competitions Feb. 13 at Cypress Woods High School.

The teams will move on to regional Science Olympiad competitions, which will determine teams that advance to Texas Science Olympiad, April 22-23 at Texas A&M University. For information, visit outreach.science.tamu.edu/scienceolympiad.php.

Aragon seventh-grader wins spelling bee

Aragon Middle School seventh-grade student Gabriel Bolanos won first place in the 20th round of the annual Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District Middle School Spelling Bee Feb. 16 by correctly spelling "bivouac."

Truitt Middle School seventh-grader Asha Lamba was the runner-up. Bolanos and Lamba will compete in the Houston Public Media Spelling Bee, scheduled to be televised live on Houston Public Media (channel 8) from the University of Houston at 2 p.m. April 2.

For information, visit www.houstonpublicmedia.org/education/spelling-bee.

CFISD names Student of the Week

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District has chosen Jowell Elementary School second-grader Dakota Marak, 7, as its Student of the Week.

Marak is a Jaguar Leader and honor roll student who enjoys conducting experiments in science class.

Council prepares students for future

The Cy-Fair Cradle to Career Council, consisting of staff members from Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District and Lone Star College-CyFair, continues to implement initiatives to prepare students for life after high school.

The council is a branch of the state's P-16 Council, authorized by the Texas Legislature in 2005 as an initiative for making students college and career ready.

Programs such as JA Inspire, held at the Berry Center Feb. 8-10, expose Cy-Fair eighth-graders to college and career information, opportunities to meet with industry leaders in a variety of fields as well as breakout sessions for various areas of interest.

The College Awareness & Readiness Education program supports Cy-Fair seniors transitioning to Lone Star College after graduation.

For information, email CyFairCARE@LoneStar.edu or AdvancedAcademics@cfisd.net.

Labay students perform in musical

When the PBS special "The Art of the Love Song" debuts in March, three Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District middle school students will be in the mix.

The newest television special from Annie Moses Band features an orchestra and choir made up of young musicians, including Labay Middle School eighth-graders Mary Lillard, Lindsey Ford and Kinley Parrish.

Dosey Doe's Music Cafe in Conroe will host a live performance March 18. Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ52P4f3LFg to see a trailer.

Student leaders donate water at conference

About 550 Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District students used their annual leadership conference Feb. 13 as an opportunity to give back to Americans in need.

Amid a day of educational sessions at the Berry Center, the session "#FlintMatters" was a collaborative community service project in which members of Young Men for Positive Action, Young Ladies for Positive Action and Hispanic Organization for Leaders of America donated water bottles for residents in Flint, Michigan. The city's water supply has faced a lead contamination crisis that began in April 2014.

The donated water filled a 17-foot truck and was delivered to the Houston Food Bank, which will transport the water to Flint. The donations amounted to 6,065 pounds of water, Houston Food Bank volunteer production lead Kimberli Wright said.
Fort Bend County area MW Cleaners are serving as drop-off sites for this year's MW Cares Prom Dress Drive, benefiting the Giving Gown Foundation.

MW Cleaners throughout greater Houston are accepting donations of prom dresses and accessories through the end of March.

Local MW Cleaners are located at 4675 Texas 6 in Sugar Land and 2201 S. Mason Road; 2711 Cinco Ranch Blvd., Suite 1600; and 2731 FM 1463, Suite 100, in Katy. Visit www.mwcleaners.com for store hours.

MW Cleaners will clean donated dresses for free and deliver them to the foundation, a nonprofit community service organization that collects donations of new and like-new formal gowns and accessories and provides them free to high school girls who would otherwise be unable to afford to go to prom.

This is the second year MW Cleaners has held the donation drive to benefit the Giving Gown Foundation. Last year, nearly 500 gowns were donated.

Because donations kept coming in, Mike Nesbit, president of MW Cleaners, decided to accept gowns all year long and collected and cleaned an additional 840 gowns.

These gowns - along with the gowns that will be collected during the current drive - will be donated to the Giving Gown Foundation, which will provide prom dresses and accessories to area high school girls during Boutique Days April 7-9.

During the three-day event, each girl will be greeted with a personal shopper and choose a prom gown, shoes and accessories, have their gown altered on-site, attend a self-esteem seminar, have a boutique lunch and take home a swag bag containing hygiene and beauty products.

During last year's Boutique Days, 1,223 girls were served by 400 volunteers. For this year's event, all 1,500 registration slots were filled in a matter of days, according to the Giving Gown organization.

"These young ladies are being taught that, in this world, there are people that care, that there are people who love you and want to help you move forward," Nesbit said. "Boutique Day not only is a great representation of that, but it also teaches them about self-esteem. We want to be part of that investment into these young ladies' future."

Formal wear is important but so are matching accessories such as handbags, jewelry, formal shoes, wraps and other items, said Cassie Miller, co-director of the Giving Gown Foundation, in a news release.

"One of my favorite things about Boutique Day is the transformation that we see in our princesses," Miller said. "When they arrive, they are often quiet and reserved, but they leave bursting with joy. Throughout their time with us, they are shown unconditional love and kindness. We uplift them and teach them that they are beautiful and special just as they are."

While all gown donations are appreciated, Miller said the greatest needs are for gowns in sizes 16-36. Members of the public wishing to donate gowns and accessories may bring them to any of the company's 37 Houston-area locations.

To learn more, visit www.givinggown.org, email contact@givinggown.org or call 713-304-7725.
The Conservancy of Music inspires local music students to achieve more with the Musical Ladder System.

Practice is not the most fun word known to humankind, and it's definitely not a favorite activity of music students. The Conservatory of Music, however, has helped to solve that age-old problem by being the first school in Katy to license the Musical Ladder System, said Michael Guevara, co-manager with Berta Guevara.

Similar to karate belt tests, every 90 days or so students have a test with their private music instructor. When they pass their test, they receive color-coded wristbands with the name of the level they passed. They also receive a certificate and, at some levels, a trophy.

The system has been a great help to inspire their students, Michael Guevara said.

"All too often, children find the activity of practicing dry and mundane, which in many instances leads to reduced time spent with their instrument.

"With the introduction of the Musical Ladder System, we find that the students are more motivated to practice, as they know that their efforts will be rewarded," said Michael Guevara.

The conservancy has two locations: 23922 Cinco Village Center, No. 220 and North Katy, 3719 N. Fry Road, No. N2.

For more information about The Conservatory of Music and Musical Ladder System visit www.facebook.com/The-Conservancy-of-Music-112409858814999/ or call 832-437-4511 or 832-321-3382.

First Service Credit Union reports growth

First Service Credit Union posted gains in net income and loans in 2015, with an increase in total assets and solid member growth.

The Houston-based credit union, with three branches located in the Katy area, reported $8 million in net income for 2015, a 43.7 percent increase over its 2014 total of $5.6 million. Total income was up 31 percent, from $30.6 million to $40.2 million.

The credit union also grew its membership during 2015 by 9.3 percent, ending the year with 57,104 members, compared with 52,232 members at the end of 2014. Deposit growth was up 12 percent.

"The year of 2015 was an excellent year for First Service Credit Union and our members," said Dave Bleazard, president. "All the key indicators were very strong, particularly our loan growth, income and net income. We are making great progress toward our growth goal."

The credit union also launched its Discovery Youth Accounts, a new banking program aimed at children from birth to age 18, with increasing levels of account features as the children grow and become more financially responsible.

Other highlights included the introduction of chip-enabled debit and credit cards for members, promising greater security and reduced risk of card fraud. The credit union also paid a year-end patronage dividend, giving back to members a portion of the credit union's net income, based on how many financial products each individual used in 2015.

For more information: www.fscu.com.

Community health center opens

West Houston Community Health Center recently celebrated the ribbon cutting on its location at 19333 Clay Road in Katy.

The center provides adult medicine as well as pediatric and laboratory services.

In adult services, the goal is to provide healthcare that focuses on prevention and early identification of common medical problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and heart disease, according to a news release.

The clinic provides well-check-ups and diagnoses and treats common illnesses in children.

Laboratory services include screening for common conditions such as high cholesterol, diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, anemia and hormone imbalances. Pregnancy testing and genetic screenings are available.

Visit www.sbchc.net and click on West Houston Clinic or call 713-462-6555.
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What we all fear is happening: Robots are taking over.

Domino's announced today it's testing a pizza deliveryman robot in New Zealand with a four-wheeled, short and squat droid who looks like a cross between a Wall-E and an R2D2. At the same time, Carl's Jr. CEO Andy Pudzer told Business Insider this week he wants to build a fully-automated restaurant.

What's more, Google is in the news today for sending a letter to U.S. transportation officials saying it should be legal to market and sell self-driving cars if they can pass standardized federal safety tests. Once this all gets sorted out, Uber, Lyft and taxi car drivers will be out of jobs.

A robot is any machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions and typically programmable by a computerand we're increasingly seeing these high-tech machines replacing jobs once performed by humans. At the airport ticket counter, at the grocery store checkout line and at the bridge tool booth, we're less frequently looking a human in the eye when we hand over our money. Instead, we're dealing with a computer.

Related story: Domino's now makes deliveries via military robot

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., in February, Professor Moshe Vardi said robots will take over most jobs in 30 years, the British Telegraph reported.

"We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task," said Vardi, a professor in computational engineering at Rice University.

He added: "Robots are doing more and more jobs that people used to do. Pharmacists, prison guards, boning chicken, bartending, more and more jobs we're able to mechanize them."

The high-tech world is even finding ways to use computers to do jobs that seem as if they'd require a human mind. The LA Times uses what's known as QuakeBot to quickly write and publish news about recent earthquakes.

Businesses are turning to robots because they can save money. Carl's Jr.'s Pudzer said he's investing in the automated restaurants because minimum wages continue to go up across the country.

"With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," he told Business Insider. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants."

But as technology advances and swallows up an increasing number of jobs, some question whether the bottom line should only be about money. What about the loss of jobs? And the overall loss of human connection? Research shows that people benefit from social interactions and can happen at the grocery store, at the bank, at the library when there's an actual person behind the counter or at the cash register.

At the Advancement of Science conference Professor Vardi posted a profound question:

"Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?"

In the gallery above, we highlight some super-high-tech robots replacing jobs and highlight those jobs that are most likely to disappear in the future.
One of the 10 most wanted fugitives in Texas was handed over to authorities this week at the U.S.-Mexico border. Omar Cruz, 31, was wanted on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child younger than 14, and alleged forgery of a financial instrument in Amarillo, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

CHECK THIS OUT: Police search for gang member on Houston's 'Most Wanted' list

U.S. Marshals and investigators with the DPS were able to track Cruz to Matamoros, Mexico after receiving a tip. Mexican authorities turned Cruz over to the Marshals at the Laredo Port of Entry on March 15.

He was booked into the Webb County Jail and is expected to be extradited to Potter County. A reward of up to $7,500 will be paid out by authorities. Cruz, who was added to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitive list in late 2014, was apprehended as the result of a tip that was placed through Texas Crime Stoppers.
The statistical trends facing organized religion in America increasingly have been daunting, with almost 23 percent of participants in a 2014 Pew Research Center study identifying as atheists, agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. Now, reports Religion News Service, a new study published in the American Journal of Sociology adds evidence of the nation's growing secularization.

The study by Duke University professor Mark Chaves and University College London professor David Voas found that while 94 percent of Americans born before 1935 claim religious affiliation, only 71 percent of those born after 1975 did so.

The Pew American religious landscape survey found that the number of so-called "Nones" totaled about 56 million in 2014 -- up more than 20 million in just seven years.

The Chaves-Voas study found number of Americans who never have attended a church service doubled to 26 percent between 1990 and 2014.

Additionally, the new study reported that while 68 percent of those 65 or older expressed no doubt in God's existence, just 45 percent of those ages 18-30 did so.

You can read the full RNS report about the new study here.

Voas told the news service the secularization is apparent "everywhere."

"Even in electoral politics, where it is no longer essential for a presidential candidate to be religious," Voas said, alluding to nominally Christian Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, a secular Jew.

A Houston Chronicle story contrasted the roles Nones and evangelical Christians are playing in American politics. You can read it here.

"No matter which one you look at, they all look the same -- the trends are heading in the same direction," Chaves told RNS, calling evidence for a decline in American religiosity "incontrovertible."
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The discovery of skeletal remains in a field in south Houston could mean investigators discovered the final resting place of a Galveston teenager who disappeared almost two decades ago, or it could signal the start of an entirely new homicide investigation.

It all depends on the forensics, Houston police said Friday as searchers continued carefully excavating a scrubby horse pasture along East Orem near Hobby Airport.

"Right now, we have no clue who this person is," said Richard Martinez, a detective with the Houston Police Department's homicide division.

Harris County medical examiners will analyze the remains, police said, and should be able to say if they are that of Jessica Cain, 17, who vanished without a trace on Aug. 17, 1997, while driving home after a high school musical cast party at a restaurant in Clear Lake.

Only her truck, with her purse locked inside, was ever found, on the shoulder of Interstate 45 on the route to her Tiki Island home.

But, Martinez said, the spot where the remains were discovered is "basically the same area" where convicted kidnapper William Lewis Reece, 54, was recently seen in the company of law enforcement officers.

After weeks of searching the field, about 2:30 p.m. Friday a backhoe operator at the site signaled the discovery of the apparent remains. An anthropologist and other analysts with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences were called to the scene.

"Right now, they're in the process of recovering those remains," Martinez said. "There is enough there to know that it's a body."

He said the remains were found at least four feet below the surface.

Heavy thunderstorms blew through the area while investigators continued the excavation.

"If it rains too hard and fills up with water, you have to let it subside and then start over," Martinez said.

The cause of death and the identity won't be known until after a forensics examination. Martinez said there appeared to be enough to make a DNA confirmation.

"If it is not Jessica Cain, we have to find out who it is," he said.

The investigation will become a Houston police case regardless of the identity because the remains were discovered within their jurisdiction. But Martinez said the department will work with other law enforcement agencies if it does turn out to be Jessica Cain.

Police said Reece was not at the site on Friday. He was serving a 60-year prison sentence for a 1998 aggravated kidnapping when police in mid-February brought him in shackles to Galveston County for interviews. Since then, Reece had been seen pacing the pasture, seeming to point out the spots where the searchers should focus.

He also is identified by police as the prime suspect in the August 1997 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Laura Smither, who vanished from her Friendswood neighborhood while jogging.

Houston police could not estimate how long it would take for medical examiners to determine the identity of the skeletal remains.

Chronicle reporter St. John Barned-Smith contributed to this report.
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When Scott Kelly returned to Earth earlier this month, he had accumulated more hours in space than any other American astronaut - a record that will soon be broken.

Veteran astronaut Jeff Williams, 58, is set to launch to the International Space Station Friday afternoon for a six-month stay. When he returns in September, he will have amassed 534 days in space, edging out Kelly by two weeks. Williams was the back-up astronaut for the almost one-year mission to the space station recently completed by Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.

This will be Williams' fourth trip to space and his third six-month stint aboard the International Space Station, which wasn't fully assembled the last time Williams was there in 2010.

Joining Williams on Friday's flight aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket are cosmonauts Alexey Ovchenin and Oleg Skripochka. The crew has been in Kazakhstan for several weeks prepping for the launch.

"I'm very confident my crew members are prepared and ready to go and I'm confident we're going to have a great mission," Williams recently told NASA TV.

The trio will only have a few days before the Cygnus space freighter arrives at the space station, delivering almost 7,500 pounds of research gear, spacewalk hardware and crew supplies.

While there, Williams and his colleagues will take part in hundreds of on-going experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science. Williams has said he was most looking forward to some of the experiments designed to test the effects of space travel on the human body.

Space enthusiasts will be able to follow along Williams' pursuits via social media, as the Wisconsin native has proven himself to be an adept communicator via social media. In fact, Williams was the first NASA astronaut to communicate from space with social media followers during his 2010 mission to the space station, according to NASA. You can follow Williams on Twitter at @Astro_Jeff or on Facebook.

The launch is scheduled for 4:26 p.m. CST and will be broadcast on NASA TV. That coverage is set to begin at 3:30 p.m.
This morning at Houston's medical schools, future doctors learned where they're going to spend their next several years.

At the annual Match Day ceremony, medical students decked out in their Sunday best were given their residency assignments in a celebratory event that plays out at the same time at schools all across the country.
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday denounced GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's assertions that his supporters would riot if he won the primary vote and lost in a contested convention.

Ryan also acknowledged that that scenario  where the primary vote fails to yield a winner, leaving delegates to re-vote at the party's July convention  "is more likely...than we thought before."

RELATED: Donald Trump predicts 'riots' if GOP convention picks alternate nominee

Amid a similar sentiment growing in political circles, Trump told CNN Wednesday that if he arrived to the convention with the most committed delegates and left without the nomination, "I think you'd have riots. I think you'd have riots."

His comments came as news reports say groups of powerful Republicans are gathering with plans to block Trump's increasingly likely claim to the party's nomination. A contested convention, most experts say, is the last remaining hope for party figures anxious not to see Trump at their helm.

If no candidate wins a majority of the 2,472 GOP delegates after a first round of voting, then many will be free to vote as they like  not as they were delegated to vote  on a second ballot. Virtually all would be unbound by a third ballot. That raises the possibility that Trump's plurality of delegates turn away from him and elect an alternate nominee.

RELATED: Growing chance of contested GOP convention puts added focus on delegates

But Ryan, who will chair the convention, recently pushed back hard against any notion that he could be in the running for the party's presidential nominee. He went on to condemn Trump's rhetoric.

"Nobody should say such things, in my opinion," he said at a news conference in response to a question about Trump's comment. "Because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable."
A 53-year-old Houston police officer was arrested in Montgomery County last week and charged with felony indecency.

Court records show the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office filed the charges on March 9 against veteran officer Donald J. Harford.

He was arrested the following day, and his bond was set at $30,000, according to Lieutenant Brady Fitzgerald, adding that Harford posted bond the same day.

Shanna Redwine, a Montgomery County assistant district attorney, said Harford had been charged with "indecency with a child by contact," a second-degree felony. If convicted of the charge, Harford could face between two and 20 years in prison.

Investigators with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office learned of the alleged abuse after the victim, a teenage girl, told a friend and an adult about it, according to the complaint filed by the district attorney's office.

The victim made claims of being molested two times, according to the complaint, which stated that she later recanted.

Nicole Deborde, Harford's private attorney, said her client was "100 percent innocent," accusing prosecutors of pursuing a case built on circumstantial evidence that she said wouldn't hold up in court, and that the alleged victim had ultimately recanted her claim of being abused.

When interviewed by investigators, Harford denied the allegations of abuse, according to the arrest complaint.

"I'm astounded they elected to file charges," Deborde said.

Harford has worked for the Houston Police Department for 33 years. He was last assigned to the Robbery Division, according to Jodi Silva, a department spokeswoman.Silva said Harford has been relieved of duty since July and remains under internal investigation.

"We don't make comments on the allegations," she said.

Harford's next court appearance is set for March 30, according to an official with the Montgomery County District Clerk's Office.

Houston Police Officers' Union President Ray Hunt declined to comment on the case because the alleged incident did not involve police matters.
BOSTON (WCVB-TV) The family of a Boston Latin School student met with the headmaster to discuss an incident involving a teacher's use of a racial slur.

Destinee Wornum, a 16-year-old 11th grade student at Boston Latin, said the incident happened during a 10th grade English class discussion on the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She says a white teacher used the n-word, leaving her stunned.

"She said what's up my (racial slur) and I was blank-faced," said Destinee Wornum. "She asked me how I felt and I said 'Honestly, I would probably be suspended because I wanted to get up and hit you."

Destinee Wornum's mother was shocked that the teacher used the n-word and is asking for an apology and that teacher be fired. The headmaster agrees that the use of the word was unacceptable, but said the school can't do anything.

"She said the school can't do anything, it has to go to the equity board," said Rosalind Wornum. "I was like 'Really?'"

Boston Public Schools released a statement on the issue saying it is committed to a safe environment for students. "The Office of Equity is committed to investigating any incident of racism or bias it receives," read the statement. They said the Office of Equity has reached out to the family to gain permission to speak with their child

Destinee Wornum's story is another example of the racial insensitivity students at the prestigious school have expressed in recent months.

Students say the English teacher accused of using the n-word has a history of making students feel uncomfortable.

"She told my friend her whole future is ruined because she didn't do one assignment," said one student."

"She has no respect," said Destinee Wornum. "She should know better.

Story originally published on WCVB.com
PITTSBURGH (WTAE-TV) T-station assault victim Kevin Lockett was already unhappy about plea deals that saw four of the five men charged in the attack on him avoid prison time. Now he's troubled that the District Attorney's Office submitted, and the court approved, $55.71 in restitution the defendants are to pay toward Lockett's medical bills -- a figure that the victim says falls short.

"That was only a couple bills that was lying on the table, That wasn't all the bills. And I told them that and they rushed this to come in," Lockett said.

Judge Jeffrey Manning had previously postponed the hearing until Wednesday, after Lockett was unable to provide the bills during a previous court date. The figure approved was only pennies over $11 per defendant. Locket says his unreimbursed medical bills are much more.

"It's in the thousands. Me an my family, we've been paying, and paying and paying," Lockett said.

District Attorney's Office spokesman Mike Manko told Pittsburgh's Action News 4 that Assistant District Attorney Julie Capone told Judge Jeffrey Manning during Wednesday's hearing that "Mr. Lockett provided us with documentation showing that his out-of-pocket expenses to this point totaled $55.71. That money was returned to Mr. Lockett this morning by agreement of all parties."

Manko said Lockett was advised during the hearing that any other expenses for which he seeks reimbursement would have to be pursued through civil action, and Locket informed the prosecutor and the court that he understood.

"As such, I am unable to comment on any other expenses incurred by Mr. Lockett, since we have no further documentation," Manko said.

"I have to retrieve them. I've been in several different hospitals, so I've got to retrieve them from the hospital. I can't just make them, you know, appear," Lockett told Pittsburgh's Action News 4.

Lockett suffers from headaches and blurred vision and faces reconstructive surgeries to recover from the beating, which also included being thrown onto the T-tracks.

"That ($55.71) is not at all accurate. So I don't know what's going on there. I'm going to have to talk to an attorney about all that," Lockett said. He said wasn't given enough time or any help by the prosecution in putting together his medical records for the court.

Lockett said he has been contacted by some attorneys but has not yet hired one to handle a civil suit. He said following the hearing that he was tired and wanted to focus on his medical care.

Lockett was the victim in what prosecutors charged was a racially motivated attack in a Port Authority T subway station. He had previously expressed disappointment over plea deals that will keep all put one of the five people charged in the case out of prison. The May 30, 2015 attack was captured on security camera video at the Wood Street station. It shows defendant Ryan Kyle throwing the victim onto the subway tracks and punching him up to nine times after Lockett managed to get back up onto the platform. Prosecutors said Kyle used racial slurs during and after the attack.

"There's no punishment, the way they would look at if five black guys jumped one white guy. Nobody would be going home. Nobody would get 100 hours of community service," Lockett said last month.

Despite undergoing four expensive reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage from assault, Lockett said he still has impaired vision and faces more medical care and therapy ahead.

In a plea deal for dropping attempted homicide charges, defendant Kyle, 22, admitted to aggravated assault ethnic intimidation, and other charges. Kyle has been jailed since Manning revoked his $25,000 bond. Kyle will remain jail awaiting sentencing on May 16 and is the only defendant who could face prison time --3 to 6 years -- under sentencing guidelines.

But under plea deals, others in the group of men -- who did not touch the victim as Kyle did -- will get probation after pleading "no contest" and no time behind bars. They are Matthew LaPlace, 23, Ken Gault, 22, David Depretis, 21, and Christopher LaPlace, 23. They were also sentenced to 100 hours of community service in a minority community or in a form that would benefit a minority community.

The incident followed a Kenny Chesney concert at Heinz Field.

The Center for Victims is a nonprofit group that provides advocates assigned to crime victims through referrals by the court. Because of confidentiality, The Center could not confirm or deny whether it had one of its advocate work with Lockett, and was not able to discuss the details of his case. Patrice El-Wagaa, director of sexual assault and victim witness services at the Center for Victims, provided the following statement to Pittsburgh's Action News 4:

"There are several ways in which a victim may recoup expenses encountered during a victimization:

1. Restitution that is ordered by the court. Usually the victim has to produce receipts or some other documentation that shows the out of pocket expenses. Center for Victims Advocates will help victims determine the types of documentation that the court will accept and alert the prosecutor that restitution should be ordered. However, victims often incur expenses long after the court proceedings are concluded - so the amount ordered may not reflect actual long-term expenses. Many victims feel that when an offender pays restitution, her or she is taking a first step toward holding themselves accountable for their actions and beginning to repair the harm they caused.

2. By filing a claim through PA's Victims Compensation Assistance Program (Center for Victims will help the victim file a claim directly to Harrisburg). There is a wide variety of types of expenses that are reimbursable under Victims Compensation - including (but not limited to) medical bills, loss of earnings, funeral/burial expenses, etc. However, Victims Compensation is a payer of last resort so applicable insurances must be used first, the victim usually has to pay the bill first and wait to get reimbursed - and Victims Compensation does not pay for personal property loss unless it is a medical device (for example, a victim is assaulted and their eyeglasses are broken during the assault - the cost of getting new glasses may be reimbursed). There are additional eligibility rules that apply in order to qualify. Our advocates encourage victims to apply for victims compensation when applicable because we know that many offenders (both juvenile and adults) don't have either the resources or willingness to pay restitution. However, we always ask the prosecutor to ask the court to order restitution in the event the compensation claim is denied, or for the offender to reimburse the Victims Compensation Fund (the fund is not limitless).

3. Civil recourse - Neither restitution, nor Victims Compensation will pay for pain and suffering. Victims always have the option of filing a civil suit - however, there is a statute of limitations regarding this option."

Story originally published on WTAE.com


Joining an elite circle that includes presidents and other political titans, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn accepted the 2016 "Texan of the Year" award on Friday from the 50th Texas Legislative Conference.

The 3rd-term Republican vowed to continue challenging Obama administration policies, and without declaring his preference between GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Texas' junior Sen. Ted Cruz, Cornyn said he'll support the eventual nominee.

Addressing about 500 conferees including elected officials, legislative staff and lobbyists, Cornyn didn't dwell on presidential politics but described legislative battles that "the media might have missed since it didn't involve Donald Trump." He recapped attempts to shape policies in transportation, energy, education, criminal justice and environmental regulation.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, described Cornyn as "an unshakeable advocate for Texas values - individual liberty, fiscal discipline, free markets and a strong national defense  But what makes John Cornyn such an effective senator is he didn't go to Washington to fight battles and to climb the ladder. He's there to get things done for Texas."

Accepting the honor, Cornyn said, "I consider this award to be not actually for anything I've done, but perhaps as a little friendly encouragement to keep on fighting the good fight in Washington, D.C."

Speaking to reporters, Cornyn poured on the criticism of the Obama administration.

"The current president has shown himself to be somewhat allergic to working with Congress and so he's decided to try to go it alone through executive orders and regulations, which frequently are struck down by the courts," Cornyn said.

"I've been at this long enough to realize that if you want to be effective you're going to have to work with those across the aisle who share a desire to make progress - and it's more than just about giving speeches and voting 'no,' " Cornyn said.

Cornyn, 64, a San Antonio native and graduate of Trinity University and St. Mary's University School of Law, served as a Bexar County district judge, Texas Supreme Court justice and Texas attorney general before election to the Senate in 2002. Voted to a third six-year term in 2014, Cornyn, now of Austin, benefits from his growing capital tenure, a congressional colleague said.

"John Cornyn is an effective, thoughtful, responsible and respected senator, not just in Texas but throughout the United States," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, a House member since 1987.

"We are fortunate to have him in a leadership position - he's No. 2 in the Republican leadership in the Senate. I expect him someday to be the Senate majority leader," Smith said.
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AUSTIN -- Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas' No. 2 Republican officeholder, on Friday threatened to lead a floor fight at the GOP national convention this summer if party bosses try to orchestrate their choice of a nominee over the will of primary voters.

In a midday interview with Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto, Patrick said such manipulation would deny millions of voters who have cast ballots in Republican primaries their voice, especially if no current candidate gets the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination by the convention.

RELATED: Growing chance of contested GOP convention puts added focus on delegates

Patrick, who is GOP hopeful Ted Cruz' Texas chairman, will be a delegate at the convention in Cincinnati. He pledged to continue to push for Cruz' selection as the nominee.

But if the party establishment that has been pushing back against Manhattan billionaire Donald Trump and, to a lesser degree, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, were to try to manipulate the selection of their nominee, Patrick warned the result could scuttle Republican chances of winning the November election.

"Talk is escalating among some in our party suggesting there may be ways to ignore the will of the people in selecting the Republican presidential nominee and instead inject new candidates into the process," Patrick said on the nationally televised show, noting that GOP voters have chosen Trump and Cruz as the "only two candidates (that) have a legitimate path to the nomination.

"I will draw a line in the sand on this issue and stand up for the voice of the people at the convention," Patrick said. "The idea that party bosses would try to undermine the will of the people, and ignore the people's choice, is outrageous and is precisely why these candidates have attracted the majority of voters' support throughout the primary process.

"People are disgusted with those Washington elites who anoint themselves the power brokers on all things in our country. As conservatives, we believe it is the people who are the power brokers. The Washington cartel will not prevail."

Patrick became the highest ranking officeholder to oppose what appears to be a growing move among some top Republican officials to block Trump from securing the GOP nomination. They have argued he is too divisive and un-presidential, even though he has won a majority of GOP primaries nationwide so far and holds the most delegates.

The comments by Patrick, with deep grassroots ties in Republican and tea party circles,echoes a growing pushback of the Republican Party establishment's efforts against Trump, even though many of those officials are conservatives like Patrick.

Patrick told Cavuto that if the Republican establishment were allowed to install their own candidate as the nominee, that Trump and Cruz supporters would "lose all confidence" in the GOP  an ominous turn for GOP hopes of winning the November general election.

Patrick implored party leaders to "stop the talk of another person. It's Ted or Donald period."

"If it's anyone other than them, yes, it's going to be more than ticked off," he said. "I think you'll be seeing the end of the party."

"At that point, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats prevail," Patrick said.

"I invite other principled conservative leaders, both in Texas and across the nation, to reject parliamentary sabotage and other half-baked strategies and join with me in fighting to make sure the will of Republican primary voters is upheld in our convention this summer."

Republican National Committee officials had no immediate response to Patrick's comments. But they have previously pledged to let the convention delegates decide who the GOP nominee will be, even if that is Trump.

Rising chatter of potentially chaotic convention got a huge boost this week when former House Speaker John Boehner said he'd support current Speaker Paul Ryan for the Republican presidential nomination.

RELATED: Ryan on presidential speculation: 'Knock it off'

Ryan flatly rejected the notion, but Boehner's comment validated many observers' impressions that party leaders, disdainful of both Trump and Cruz, may introduce a new candidate at the GOP convention in July.
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Taxpayers might have paid for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to fly to Oklahoma for a controversial medical procedure called a Jesus Shot. The injection -- invented by a doctor who's a convicted felon -- claims to take away all pain for life.

CHRONICLE INVESTIGATES: Why did Ag Commish Sid Miller go to Oklahoma?

This is the latest controversy for the first-term agriculture commissioner and former rodeo cowboy. The conservative commissioner overturned a ban on deep fryers in Texas public schools, suggested on Facebook that the United States needed to nuke the Muslim World and gave out $410,000 in bonuses during his first nine months in office.

Miller said he flew to Oklahoma City to meet with lawmakers in February 2015. But the Houston Chronicles Brian Rosenthal spoke with officials who cast doubt on Millers explanation for the trip, saying they never invited him and only met briefly. Budget records show that Miller billed taxpayers at least $1,200 for flights and a rental car in February 2015. The Chronicle investigation shows Miller could have broken the law on that trip.

OTHER CONTROVERSIES: Sid Miller implies the U.S. should drop a bomb on the 'Muslim World'

If he didnt go to Oklahoma to meet with lawmakers, then why did Miller make the trip? Thats where the story takes an even weirder twist. He might have received a $300 injection called The Jesus Shot during his stay to cure chronic pain brought on by his time as a rodeo cowboy.

John Michael Lonergan, the creator of the shot, moved to Oklahoma from Ohio after losing his medical license following a felony tax evasion conviction, records state. Miller admitted to getting the show. However, he did not say when the procedure occurred and denied traveling to Oklahoma for a doctor's appointment. '

After the Chronicle raised questions about the trip, Miller agreed to reimburse the state for the trip.

See the gallery above for a look at Sid Miller's biggest controversies during his short time in office.
AUSTIN -- A lawsuit challenging the fees being paid to special prosecutors handling the criminal case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was dismissed Thursday.

In a one-page order issued Thursday, Dallas County Court at Law Judge Mark Greenberg determined that his court had no jurisdiction on the issue.

Jeffory Blackard, a Collin County landowner, sued Collin County commissioners, the county auditor and the three Houston attorneys who were appointed to prosecute Paxton on several felony charges alleging that he violated state securities laws.

Blackard sought to block the county from continuing to pay the $300 per hour fees to special prosecutors.

Paxton was indicted in August 2015 on two counts of securities fraud and one count of failure to register as a securities agent, for transactions stemming from actions in 2011 and 2012 while he was a member of the state Legislature representing Collin County.

Paxton has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

During a hearing last week, attorneys for the defendants argued that the civil case was the wrong venue to challenge any future payments.

Blackard's attorney Edward Greim told reporters Thursday he plans to appeal the ruling.

Houston attorney Brian Wice, one of the three special prosecutors, said he was "gratified, but not surprised, that Judge Greenberg saw Mr. Blackard's frivolous lawsuit as a backdoor attempt to derail our investigation and prosecution of Mr. Paxton."

Collin County commissioners have openly criticized the court-ordered cost of the Paxton prosecution, which totaled more than $254,000 between April and December 2015. No trial date has been set.

County Judge Keith Self, in an online post on Saturday, had renewed his call for the special prosecutors to resign to allow another district attorney from the region could be assigned to the case.

Collin County District Greg Willis, a close friend and one-time business associate, had earlier withdrawn from the case.
Peste 300 de liceene s-au inscris in Startup School si sunt gata sa invete bazele antreprenoriatului tehnologic. Vezi cum a fost la evenimentul de lansare a programului national de educatie antreprenoriala
Editors Note: This post was produced as part of a graduate course on media writing and storytelling taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review.

The stakes are high for immigration coverage. The Supreme Court is slated to rule this year on President Barack Obamas executive actions, which could grant millions of unauthorized immigrants reprieve from deportation and the ability to apply for work permits. The political battle to succeed him, meanwhile, has been largely driven on the Republican side by Donald Trumps calls for mass deportations and a more restricted border.

Level-headed reporting and analysis are all the more important with so much on the line. And three common narratives pose a particular threat to that coverage, often obscuringrather than illuminatinga highly complex issue.

Framing unauthorized immigration as Mexican-specific

Media attention toward unauthorized immigration has long been trained on the southern border, partly in response to the millions of Mexicans who entered the United States in recent decades. But the trend line in recent years has pointed away from Mexico. Singular focus on that country serves to exclude millions of stakeholders from coverage.

Source: Pew Research Center

While it is true that those of Mexican origin account for more than half of the unauthorized population in the United States, more Mexicans are actually leaving the country than entering it. This outflow contrasts starkly with growing inflows from Asian and African countries, including India, China and Ethiopia, to name a few prominent examples.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

Some journalists produce important work that takes these shifts into account, shedding light on the diversity and demographic changes of unauthorized immigration. Yet the dominant narrative continues to frame the topic as Mexican-specific. Such tunnel vision is a detriment to understanding the issue in its entirety.

Casting Trump as a focal point

Unauthorized immigration has been the central issue of the GOP frontrunners campaign. But journalists natural attraction toward Trumpthe man is a ratings machinehas often led them to frame stories around clashes between the real estate mogul and Mexico.

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After Trump declared that Mexico is sending rapists and drug dealers over the southern border, news organizations responded with rebuttals from hard-working immigrants and analyses illustrating no correlation between immigrants and violent crime. Trump replied to this reporting by reiterating that he will not only build a wall along the border, but will make Mexico pay for it. Journalists further escalated tensions by asking former Mexican presidents to comment on Trumps wall. He responded in kind, and so on.

It is in Trumps interest to perpetuate such confrontations. And journalists, seizing on made-for-TV conflicts, have helped facilitate them. This back-and-forth between Trump and Mexico ultimately robs audiences of valuable information about the topic.

Pushing back on politicians is, of course, a key part of journalists collective role. When coverage revolves around such tension, however, it only serves to stoke existing flames. Journalists should correct the record and move on. More time and energy should be directed toward providing a more nuanced understanding of the unauthorized population.

Failing to contextualize individual narratives

A compelling story often requires a strong protagonist. Devoid of context, however, even powerful profiles of unauthorized immigrants can leave audiences with a myopic view.

This MSNBC feature, for instance, depicts a hard-working man who is devoted to his family. But it fails to address the root causes of his situation, leaving the moving portrait incomplete.

There is a kneejerk tendency to choose the most obvious active party, to focus solely on the perceived perpetrator, without any effort to understand the [broader] factors, says Roberto Suro, co-editor of Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue.

That practice is by no means unique to immigration coverage. But the issues intricate web of causes and effects makes the gravitation toward individual narratives potentially more dangerous. Ultimately, Suro says, this perpetuates the idea that the power of immigrants to determine outcomes is equal or of even greater than the socioeconomic milieu in which they operate.

In contrast, Luke Mogelsons recent piece on an Honduran deportee weaves together all of the forces shaping the mans life: the protagonists relationships with his family and employer; U.S.-backed civil wars in Central America in the 1980s; the proliferation of street gangs in Los Angeles; and his subsequent deportation to Honduras. Taken together, these elements provide readers with a fuller picture of one immigrants life and, in turn, of unauthorized immigration as a whole.

This is difficult and expensive to do, of courseMogelsons piece ran around 8,000 words. But his measured approach outlines best practices for fitting individuals within broader trends, which is especially important given the nature of debate over unauthorized immigration.

The best defense when covering a realm that is so very polarized and politicized is trying to report on the larger context in which each story plays out, Nina Bernstein, a New York Times reporter who covered immigration for five years, writes in an email. That may have to do with the conditions migrants left, the businesses hiring them [or] the history of national policy toward immigration.

A tilt toward more measured coverage could potentially help push the national conversation on this issue forward or, at the very least, minimize tropes often seen in this sharply divided debate.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Julia Barajas is a student in a course on media writing and storytelling, taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review.
Editors Note: This post was produced as part of a graduate course on media writing and storytelling taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review.

In July 2013, police collected hundreds of pages of threats directed at Caroline Criado-Perez, a British journalist who had been running a campaign to get women depicted on British banknotes. People tweeted that the freelancer and activist needed to learn [her] place as a woman in this world, and that women that talk too much need to get raped.

There were threats to mutilate my genitals, threats to slit my throat, to bomb my house, to pistol-whip me and burn me alive, she wrote in a recent report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Over a four-day period, the barrage of online threats against Criado-Perez, delivered mostly via Twitter, filled 300 printed pages. Then someone posted a physical address linked to her online. I felt hunted, she wrote. I felt terrified.

According to data collected by the British think tank Demos, women journalists are three times more likely to be on the receiving end of online abuse than their male colleagues. A 2014 report by the International Womens Media Foundation (IWMF) and International News Safety Institute (INSI) found that of the threats and harassment reported by female journalists in their survey, more than a quarter occurred online.

Findings like these, corroborated by womens personal stories, prompted the February OSCE report, which focuses on countering online abuse against female journalists. Dunja Mijatovic, representative on freedom of the media for OSCE, called such abuse a threat to free speech and outlined institutional changes meant to combat it.

I am lucky that I only get a few death or rape threats a month. go ahead & let that sink in for a minute, that I view that AS LUCKY.  Kelly Hills (@rocza) August 19, 2014

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Were seeing rape threats, death threats against professionals because of stories where theyre revealing corruption in their societies, Mijatovic tells CJR. Its not only about them being critical journalists. Its also about them being female. Now were producing tools and advice for government[s] on how to deal with this.

Among advocates and journalists, there is little agreement on the best way to deal with online abuse, which Mijatovic called a social phenomenon. There is even confusion over how to define it; the overwhelming sentiment is you know it when you see it. And no onenot the law, social media platforms, or newsroomsseems prepared to stop it.

Theres rarely a week that goes by without someone on Twitter commenting on my body, calling me fat, saying that Im a dumb bitch, that theyre going to do something lewd sexually to me, says Emma Gray, Executive Womens Editor for The Huffington Post. She half-jokingly describes the Twitter mute function (which removes an accounts notifications and tweets from your timeline without notifying the user) as her best friend.

Some female journalists accept a low level of online abuse as an occupational hazard. Gray resists writing off harassment as a condition of being a female reporter; nonetheless, even she admits shes developed a thick skin in response to the barrage of comments.

The right to be on Twitter without being annoyed by a dude with 43 followers and a red pepper avatar @tatan_OUT  Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) October 16, 2015

Online abuse of women journalists is a very narrow slice of a much larger issue. Though the internet was once considered by some The Great Equalizer, it has also been a place for misogyny to advance. For most women, if theyre subject to revenge porn or stalking or sustained sexual harassment online, its usually [coming from] someone they know, says Soraya Chemaly, a freelance journalist and activist who helped launch a Womens Media Center project to raise awareness and provide resources for women being abused online.

Services such as TrollBusters and ReputationDefender have popped up to handle abuse and its consequences from within the digital realm, but social media platforms have acknowledged that their efforts to protect users have fallen short. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote in a leaked internal memo to his staff last year: We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and weve sucked at it for years.

Twitter has since enhanced its block feature, increased the number of abuse reports reviewed, grown its safety team, and banned revenge porn. Our rules are designed to allow our users to create and share a wide variety of content in an environment that is safe and secure for our users, a Twitter spokesperson told CJR in a statement. Twitter continues to update its rules, which already prohibit violent threats and hateful conduct, based on user input and suggestions from a group of organizations including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and Take Back the Tech.

These changes are a step in the right direction, but they leave plenty of loopholes, as Bloomberg News and Businessweek reporter Dune Lawrence wrote recently. When she complained to Twitter about a user who was trolling her, the service told her he wasnt violating Twitters rules, and suggested she block his tweets. When she sent more examples of abuse, Twitter suspended his account, Lawrence writes, but [h]e was back in less than three weeks.

Newsrooms are also beginning to take a more active role in dealing with online abuse. TrollBusters founder Michelle Ferrier has started offering online safety training to a handful of news outlets. The Washington Post regularly reports on online abuse and strives to proactively address it when it affects employees. The safety of our journalists is paramount and all actual threats, whether they are via email, social, phone or mail, are taken seriously, Post Deputy Managing Editor Tracy Grant told CJR in a statement. Editors at the highest level are involved in any discussion around an actual threat to a reporter and we bring in additional resources, including legal and technical, as the situation demands.

Legal resources, in particular, are a source of contention. Mijatovic and the OSCE advocate for more government and law enforcement intervention in online abuse; at the same time, they dont want to stifle freedom of expression. Its a difficult tightrope to walk.

Dr. Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, explains that the OSCE and other advocates arent suggesting new laws be made. In many cases laws against stalking, violent threats and harassment already exist and simply need to be interpreted for the online space, she wrote in the OSCE report. Dr. Sejal Parmar, a law professor at Central European University, added in her own section of the report that given the range in severity of abusive statements, [] threats to life or physical integrity, including rape threats, should be prioritised for prosecution.

As a result of the online abuse Criado-Perez suffered in 2013, she temporarily deleted her Twitter account. Two people, one man and one woman, were convicted of improper use of a communications network because of threats made against Criado-Perez. Now back online, her Twitter bio reads Please send all hate mail to your mum.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Laura Thompson is a Columbia Journalism School student who reports on criminal justice and immigration. Follow her on Twitter @laura__thomp.
Cyber risk is just one of the factors impacting errors and omissions claims, according to panelists at the American Bar Associations annual Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Sections Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee.

Because of a convergence of new risks facing professionals today, including technology and media liability, explained James Rhyner, vice president, global specialty E & O product manager, Chubb & Son in Warren N.J., insurers are taking a broader risk view. New modular policies start off with base of E & O coverage and include other coverages tailored to a particular professionals business.

Darin McMullen, a shareholder with Anderson Kill in Philadelphia, described two different groups of policyholders. The first group prefers the modular approach and typically over insures their business and the second, smaller group looks at particular coverages, like cyber, and questions whether it is really needed. The second group is not mindful of insurance coverage gaps that could exist and as a result could be considered pennywise, pound foolish, he said.

Its an educational process about what the risks truly are, Rhyner said. Professional service providers that sustain a cyber loss need to be cognizant of what their E&O policy covers. For example, he explained that first party expenses arent covered under E & O or commercial general liability policies.

There is limited cyber coverage under an E&O policy, said Kristine Tejano Rickard, who has experience working in claims and underwriting and is currently general counsel for Indiana-based Fuzion Analytics, Inc. Professionals should be asking questions as to what extent cyber is covered because the coverage they have might not be suited to their business.

Michael Early, assistant general counsel with the Chicago Underwriting Group for Old Republic, who prefaced his thoughts by noting that the opinions voiced by the panel during the February meeting dont necessarily reflect those of their employers, said that professionals would likely see better coverage and pricing if they purchased cyber coverage as a standalone policy as opposed to an endorsement.

Because cyber is a newer exposure, professionals still need to get their arms around it and stay on top of the business risk, said Rhyner. In addition, he explained that it isnt when youll be attacked by cyber, but how prepared you are and what steps you plan to take to mitigate it. He said hes often met with professionals who have no incident response plan in place.

To effectively manage the risk, its also important that others in a business know what is offered by the companys cyber policy, Rickard said.

Another area of increasing risk are social engineering fraud claims, said Rickard. An example is when an escrow agent holds funds on a home sale, waiting for final confirmation that the transaction closed, he or she then receives an email with wiring instructions, which looks legitimate but isnt, asking that funds be transferred to a separate account.

These types of incidents are becoming much more sophisticated, she said. Once a system is infiltrated, hackers will wait and watch, becoming comfortable with language used in email communications in order to articulate instructions the way the parties would normally communicate. This type of loss isnt covered under computer fraud and despite the fact that it is a security breach as defined in a cyber policy, it wouldnt be considered a cyber claim because it isnt considered protected information under the policy.

Besides evolving risks, the E & O market has had several carriers come and go, Rhyner said. There are unique, far ranging challenges to these consolidations, like the one between Chubb and Ace, he said. As an example, there were seven carriers that either retrenched or pulled out of the lawyers professional marketplace recently. This leads to higher rates and less choices for professionals seeking coverage, he said.

According to Early, these changes affect claims and coverage claims are on the uptick. Loyalty to the customer may be questioned as they exit marketplace, Early said.

In addition, carriers may be quicker to decide there is no coverage and quicker to litigate the issue, McMullen said. This may be a result of a reduced concern about losing business through a coverage dispute because of the decision to exit that line of business.
alk to anyone at a fire department that depends on volunteers, and youre likely to hear that its harder to get and keep new ones. And the ones already manning the stations arent getting any younger.

Its also a problem that can hit your pocketbook if the fire rating in your community changes.

Getting new volunteers is an issue for a number of reasons _ people are less willing to part with shrinking free time; requirements to become a volunteer have become greater; and some employers might not be so willing to accommodate potential volunteers.

Its a national problem, and fire chiefs around Central Louisiana see it, too.

Its just like everybody else, said Olla Volunteer Fire Department Chief Joe Thompson, who also works a full-time job. You have your full-time job, your family, and its getting harder and harder to get people in to where theyll come to classes and get certified.

Knowing that 69 percent of the nations fire service is comprised of volunteers, the National Volunteer Fire Council decided to act. The council received a FEMA grant to start a national recruitment campaign.

According to Kimberly Quiros, chief of communications for the council in Maryland, volunteerism is going down, yet calls are tripling. The age of existing firefighters is up, she told The Town Talk.

The campaign was created to raise awareness among the public, to let them know about the needs of departments.

Quiros said volunteer firefighters save an estimated $140 billion annually. She said time is a huge issue in the lack of recruits. It takes more time to get the proper training and certifications now than it did a few decades ago, something Ruby-Kolin Fire Department Chief Mike Paulk can confirm.

Paulk said it can take someone a year to complete firefighter certifications. A volunteer can get quickly certified for medical runs, and departments have seen those calls skyrocket.

But to become certified as a firefighter, people must take a course of more than 200 hours with classroom instruction and practical training.

Chief Thompson in Olla demonstrated some of what his firefighters must do. He thumbed through a thick book that contained information on businesses in the area, packed with floor plans, emergency contacts, information on nearby hydrants, sprinkler systems and more. All of that information must be kept current and updated by firefighters annually.

Firefighters have to be trained on their equipment and the different types of fire vehicles. Its a whole lot different jumping in those big trucks than it is a pickup, said Thompson.

Quiros said many rural areas have been hit hard by the migration of young people to urban areas.

You dont have as much of a pool left for volunteers, she said.

Britt Bolen, chief of the Holiday Village Fire Department, remembers when the department was all volunteers. But those days are gone, and the department now is a combination of paid and volunteer firefighters.

In Woodworth, officials have taken a unique approach to the problem. The Woodworth Fire Department is a combination department, said Chief Buddy Guffey. Right now, he has about 24 volunteers and five full-time employees, including one clerical employee.

Generally, if you get a third of those to show up to a call, youve done something, he said.

But the department is able to count on six others, all certified firefighters and emergency medical technicians  the entire Woodworth Police Department.

Every police officer carries their firefighter gear, a foam fire extinguisher and an automated external defibrillator, in their patrol units. Chief James Gonzales said officers usually are on the scene of a call first. Since theyre trained firefighters, they are able to assess a situation upon arrival and alert firefighters en route about what situation theyre about to face.

Woodworth has a Class 4 fire rating. Ratings go from Class 1, the lowest, to Class 10, the highest and more expensive for homeowners. At least one area outside of the towns limits isnt covered by fire district. Butler estimates that residents of that area, who have a Class 10 rating, pay as much as $6,000 to $7,000 annually for fire insurance.

Departments always are seeking improvements to make so their ratings can be lowered. Chief Bolen noted that Holiday Village recently went from a Class 5 to a Class 4 after a push by him and the departments board of directors in 2015.

That means people who live in the Holiday Village district will pay less for their fire insurance. And Bolen called that a tremendous good for the community.

Ruby-Kolin also is a Class 4, and Chief Paulk said it was close to a Class 3 during the districts last review.

Olla Chief Thompson and Butler both discussed using events like high school demonstrations or junior firefighter programs as a way to reel in younger volunteers. Paulk did have a potential volunteer fill out paper work this week, even as he admitted that most of his volunteers have served the district for years.

The district is trying to attract new volunteers, though, hosting a Public Safety Awareness Day on April 9. The event, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 1217 Palmer Chapel Road, both will showcase what the firefighters do and advertise opportunities with the department.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Jared Fogle: Former Subway Spokesman Beaten by Fellow Inmate in Prison Brawl

Jared Fogle, who is serving a 15-year sentence for child porn and sex crime charges, was attacked and left bloodied by a fellow inmate in the prison yard on Jan. 29.

According to documents obtained by TMZ, another inmate confronted the 38-year-old in a yard at the Federal Correctional Institute in Englewood, Colorado before unloading a barrage of punches."

Documents report that [Steven] Nigg, whos in for a weapons charge, left Fogle with a bloody nose, swollen face and scratches on his neck.

The 60-year-old man, who walked away from the fight with a small cut to his left hand, was placed in solitary confinement. The man's family told TMZ they're not surprised he attacked Fogle because he had been angry about the amount of child sex predators in the low-security facility.

After rising to fame by losing 200 pounds, in part by eating Subway sandwiches, Fogle is serving 15.8 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges and having sex with minors. Fogle will also be subjected to lifetime supervised release following the completion of his sentence.

For most of my adult life, Ive been in the spotlight, trying to be a role model.  I became dependent on alcohol, pornography and prostitutes, he told the court at the time. "Not a day will go by when I don't think about what I did to (the victims)," according to the Star's report. "I so regret that I let so many of you down."

A raid on his Indianapolis home led him to plead guilty to one count each of travelling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and distribution and receipt of child pornography.

Reports: Disgraced Subway pitchman Jared Fogle beaten in Colorado prison https://t.co/xyiYstGEpn pic.twitter.com/BP9ryOsDvf  USA TODAY (@USATODAY) March 17, 2016

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsJared Fogle, Subway
Joan of Arcs Landmark The Gap Album, 16 Years Later

Joan of Arc, ca. 2000 (Photo : Andy Mueller/The Quiet Life, exclusively provided from photographer's archives)

Joan of Arc, ca. 2000 (Photo : Andy Mueller/The Quiet Life, exclusively provided from photographer's archives)

Nearly 16 years since its release, experimental indie outfit Joan of Arc's album The Gap stands the test of time. The band perfected their progressive merging of acoustic instruments with then-burgeoning advancements in recording technology, resulting in their magnum opus.

Frontman and songwriter Tim Kinsella along with his younger brother, drummer Mike, cut their musical teeth as teenagers playing in revered post-hardcore unit Cap'n Jazz. Upon maturation, the Chicago quintet went their separate ways, leaving the elder Kinsella to devise his ultimate iteration as autonomous kingpin of more esoteric, experimental works. Both Kinsella brothers would perform in the new band, but the project was to be Tim's expressive apparatus, and he remains the only permanent member.

Christened 'Joan of Arc,' Tim Kinsella's contemporary vehicle spent the latter part of the '90s releasing three albums of eclectic college rock, rounding off the decade with Live in Chicago, 1999 (which is not actually a live album). Live in Chicago revealed the group's forte as an avant-garde juggernaut, hinting at their imminent crowning achievement with eccentrically maudlin indie meeting seismically-spliced percussion and jazzy navel-gazing.

Released fall 2000 on the Jade Tree label, The Gap announces its understated grandeur with the swelling stop-start repetition of opening track, "(You) [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] As (I) [You] Can." From there, the band envelops the listener with their tour de force of organic experimentalism laced with sputtering rhythms, subdued electronics, orchestral flourishes and what sounds like a boxful of broken glass being emptied onto the floor.

Its 10 songs often flowing in and out each other, the album beguiles the Compact Disc format on which it was originally issued. Some track indexes on the CD and digital release start in the middle of an already-in-progress composition, making it unclear if the intended song title applies to the selection before or after the cut. Though this quirk is obviously less apparent on its vinyl release, it endures as just one of the many idiosyncrasies that make The Gap so endearing.

Rocketing technical improvement in those budding days of computer-based digital multitrack recording helped Joan of Arc achieve the album's excessive ends. Firmly applying the idea of the studio as an instrument, Kinsella explained to Exlaim! magazine how those then-recent technological advancements encouraged the group in tiring all of its possibilities:

"The Gap is the record it is specifically because of the shift in technology with recording. There was a shift, a blowing open of the mind. Like, 'Oh my god, you can actually make the songs on this.' And if you can make the songs on this, what isn't possible? So we just went into that record all in agreement that we were going to find our capacity for acknowledging the medium itself. We were going to work that to exhaustion."

The turn-of-the-21st-Century epic also features instrumentalists Ryan Hembrey on upright bass and Julie Pomerleau on viola and violin, lending the album a classical air that lifts selections like "Me and America (or) The United Colors of the Gap" to effervescent heights. Somehow termed "emo" on release, The Gap defies easy genre classification and creates an experimental nook all its own.

When listening to the record, it's easy to understand why legend persists that some songs on the album contained up to 100 tracks during recording. Reminiscing on the period to The A.V. Club, Kinsella recalled that the group's insular aesthetic drove them to electronically modify or alter nearly every sound they recorded:

"With something like The Gap, we were like, 'Let's smoke a ton of pot and not leave this apartment.' We each had a computer set up, and we tweaked every measure of every instrument in a different way."

Joan of Arc never quite reached the crest of The Gap again -- it's the high-water mark of their expansive catalog. After a supporting tour and follow-up EP of Gap outtakes (2001's How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More?), the group took an extended break, as if the significance of the record deserved a sabbatical. They reconvened in 2003 and have released a dozen albums and collaborations since. The Kinsellas also released two albums with former Cap'n Jazz members as Owls.

Joan of Arc, ca. 2000 (Photo : Andy Mueller/The Quiet Life, exclusively provided from his archives)

Joan of Arc is currently touring Japan in commemoration of their 20th anniversary as a band.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsJoan of Arc, The Gap, Tim Kinsella, Mike Kinsella
Karina Canellakis to Step Down as Assistant Conductor of Dallas Symphony

Members of the DSO play at the Montblanc opening of the Dallas Boutique with The Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Montblanc Boutique at North Park Center on October 20, 2010 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo : Peter Larsen/Getty Images For Montblanc)

A most unfortunate announcement, Karina Canellakis, assistant conductor to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, will leave the company after two seasons. With her contract expiring at the end of this term, Canellakis doesn't appear to be renewing her tenure.

Canellakis is a supreme talent. When she took the podium, her skills were received by those watching from their seats. In a review of her leadership by Mark Swed in the L.A. Times, he writes:

"Karina Canellakis' debut with the orchestra was over the weekend. I heard her at UCLA's Royce Hall Sunday night. In the old days, when cigar-chomping autocrats ran orchestras and couldn't care less about boards or committees, they simply signed as they saw fit. Canellakis is an astonishing musician. If this were the old days, she would already have a contract.

"But she is also the model of a modern musician, one that would never have existed in the conventional old days."

She has also helped out her company in other ways. Once, when music director Jaap van Zweden was absent from his post, Ms. Canellakis stepped up at the last minute to save the performance.

In another write up, Canellakis was also described as:

"On closer inspection, perhaps the mysterious elements of the East - anywhere East of Vienna, that is - provide the clue. Although it might not have been conductor Karina Canellakis intention to focus on tunes and rhythms borrowed from the East in the works, her meticulous attention to the score brought out the best individual characteristics of each, and created a mood for an evening worthy of an Arabian feast."

Along with her talents, also, she has demonstrated her musicianship in smaller concerts by the DSO, performances in dealing with smaller-scale "Remix concerts."

So it's with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to a most exuberant conductor. Her next venture should be even greater than the last.

Check out a performance of Canellakis below.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsKarina Canellakis, Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Lin-Manuel Miranda Discuss Puerto Rico Debt Crisis with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew

Lin-Manuel doesnt play a U.S. Treasury Secretary on Broadway, but he also meets with the current one. The Hamilton creator and star recently met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about the Puerto Rico debt crisis.

Recently, Lin-Manuel Miranda sat down with Jack Lew where they discussed the relief for Puerto Rican debt crisis as Miranda pointed out in a tweet:

Also had a great talk w @USTreasury about Puerto Rico's economy.

It is a high priority. Now we wait for Congress. History has [Eyes] on you.



Miranda also spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the issue:

Its a solvable, fixable crisis. We have a humanitarian crisis on our hands.

Jack Lew isnt the only person that Miranda was meeting with about the issues as he pointed out in another tweet:

I'm meeting with Dems & Repubs in Congress to address the financial/humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

Cuban American former Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio also spoke about the issue during a recently CNN debate. Watch the video below for his comments and be sure to weigh in with your own in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsLIn-Manuel Miranda, Discuss, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico Debt Crisis, U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew
Akron police 4

Akron police arrested a man on suspicion of growing marijuana at his home.

(File photo)

AKRON, Ohio -- Police seized 51 marijuana plants from the basement of a home of a 60-year-old man charged with running a grow-operation.

Anthony Powers is charged with four fifth-degree felony charges of growing, possessing, selling marijuana and possessing criminal tools.

A confidential informant told Akron drug detectives that Powers was growing marijuana in the basement of his home in the 1600 block of Tondawanda Avenue.

The informant also said Powers sold the drug. Detectives gave the informant money and watched him walk into Powers' home and walk out with marijuana.

Detectives raided Powers home on Wednesday and found 23 large marijuana plants and 31 smaller plants, according to court records.

Akron police also reported finding $841, 25 prescription painkillers, digital drug scale and marijuana growing equipment in the home.

Powers's criminal history includes being sentenced in 1995 to serve between 15 and 25 years for aggravated robbery and grand theft.
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron criminal defense attorney will spend a year on a court-supervised drug treatment program that could eventually erase his criminal conviction for trading legal services for steroids.

Thomas Bauer Jr., 48, pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempted drug possession, attempted drug trafficking and drug possession. Those charges, however, will be erased from his permanent record if he completes the drug program.

Summit County Judge Tom Parker also ordered that Bauer spend 100 hours speaking to attorneys' continuing education courses and at high schools.

Bauer was arrested after an undercover Summit County Sheriff investigation.

An informant working with the task force told investigators Bauer was trading legal services for anabolic steroids. The informant met with Bauer Nov. 25 in the parking lot of Subway in the 2300 block of South Main Street.

The informant, who was wired with audio and visual recording equipment, handed Bauer a box that contained 3,000 doses of fake anabolic steroids, according to sheriff's deputies.

Bauer and the informant talked briefly about the steroids. Task force officers watched the exchange and took Bauer into custody.

Investigators searched Bauer's home and found vials and bags of suspected anabolic steroids.

Bauer declined comment after. Bauer's attorney, James Burdon of the Akron law firm Burdon and Merlitti, did not return a message seeking comment.

Bauer is a fixture at the area's courts defending people in an array of crimes, including murders.

The case could lead to sanctions against Bauer's law license, prosecutors said.
Twinsburg police

Twinsburg police said more charges could be filed against a teen accused of posting nude photos of Twinsburg High School girls online.

(File photo)

TWINSBURG, Ohio -- A 17-year-old Twinsburg High School student confessed to posting 17 nude photos of classmates on Tumblr after he read about the police investigation online.

The teen is charged with nine criminal charges related to child-porn in Summit County Juvenile Court. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was placed on house arrest until his case is finished.

More charges could be filed against the teen after police and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation search his personal cellphone and computer, according to court records. The boy turned over items shortly after he turned himself in to police.

Twinsburg police said they found dozens more nude photos of teen girls on the boy's phone and computer. Prosecutors have not asked for his case to be transferred to adult court.

The boy approached a police officer assigned to Twinsburg High School the day after he read cleveland.com's Feb. 7 post about the criminal investigation into the case, according to court records.

He admitted to the officer that he created the website in 2014 as a freshman. He also told investigators he was the site's only operator.

Different people sent the photos to his iPhone. He uploaded to the photos to the Tumblr blog he titled "tburgnudez" with the headline "Only Girlz," court records say.

The teen also included the message: "This tumblr blog is a page where people from twinsburg, Ohio can look, see, and save twinsburg girl nudez. Twinsburg has a lot of sexy people but it's really rare to get there nudez if they send some out. Here is an ez way to et them without trading or buying them from someone. Please enjoy what I have worked so hard to make and expose. Thank you for your support. NUDE ON!!"

A school official reported the blog to the school's resource officer on Jan. 27. The police launched an investigation and arrested the boy on March 9, shortly after receiving records on the blog released by Tumblr.
BEREA, Ohio - St. Adalbert Catholic Parish in Berea worked hard over the past month to gain the title of the best nonprofit fish fry in Greater Cleveland.

Cleveland.com's "Best of" team will be on site at St. Adalbert today beginning at 4:30 p.m. to check out what makes their fish fry so special. Their fish fry runs 4:30-7:30.

Follow us on Twitter on Friday for live coverage: @Ida_in_Cle, @ReporterBrendaC, @KristenDavisCLE and @CLE_davidp1.

Watch a live video, which is embedded just below in this post.

LIVE on #Periscope: See action at Northeast Ohio's BEST fish fry as voted by @clevelanddotcom readers. We're at St. https://t.co/pVsF8PcHvc  Kristen Davis (@KristenDavisCLE) March 18, 2016

Then, check back Monday for a story, photos and video of the fish fry visit.

The Berea church had to beat out six other nonprofits on the West side over a two-week voting period in the regional round, and then it had to face off against three other regional finalists before claiming the title when voting concluded Thursday. Plus, St. Adalbert had to keep up with its Friday fish frys, serving more than 800 meals, 1,600 pounds of fish, and 2,500 pierogies each week!

Now it's official. What started with a lengthy list of 36 tasty fish frys nominated by readers and chosen after research has finally been whittled down to one winner. Thanks to the thousands of people who voted in regionals and finals polls.

St. Adalbert edged St. Mel of Cleveland, 29.63 percent to 28.69 percent. St. Barnabas of Northfield Center was third (23.3), followed by Chagrin Falls' Church of the Holy Angels (18.38).

St. Adalbert started serving its fish frys in 1995 and has grown its operations significantly since then. The tradition is a family affair, with several generations filling out the workforce that makes the popular fish frys possible.

The menu includes all-you-can-eat cod, cabbage and noodles, pierogies, cole slaw, and more, and prices range from $6 for kids to $12 for adults. There is also a bake sale table run by students at the church's school.

Although the food is delicious and organizers make sure nobody leaves hungry, it's really the family atmosphere that keeps lots of people coming back week after week, and year after year.

"The food is so good and you get so much of it, but we like to come and socialize and just have fun," fish fry attendee Pat Fulkerson told cleveland.com reporter Brenda Cain last week. "It's just family here, whether you are related or not."

Here are the results of the finals poll:
BRUNSWICK, Ohio --- Leaders from the city of Brunswick and Brunswick Hills and Hinckley townships touched on several varied issues - from two apartment fires in the city within the past week, to a failed public safety levy in the Hills, to the construction of a new fire station in Hinckley - as part of a combined state of the city and state of the townships address at Mapleside Farms March 16.

Throughout, Brunswick City Manager Anthony Bales, Brunswick Hills Township Trustee Michael Esber and Hinckley Township Trustee Dave Sambor focused on the future of their respective communities, in spite of some recent setbacks.

Brunswick Hills

"We don't know what we are going to do, but will do what we have to," Esber said of the March 15 failure of the township police department's 2.5 mill operating levy. This marked the second time in four months that voters rejected a Brunswick Hills Police Department levy.

Esber said he and his fellow trustees will begin the discussion of what to do next at the next trustee meeting, at 7 p.m. March 22 at the township hall, 1918 Pearl Road.

"We will be getting together a focus group and talking to the (Medina County) Sheriff and the city (of Brunswick) and looking at alternate ideas," Esber said. "And we will also be looking at putting it back on the ballot in November."

Apart from the police department funding issues, Esber said, the township purchased two new fire trucks last year and is looking at the possibility of buying a new ambulance in 2016.

The township will also be "re-doing Foskett road with Medina Township," Esber said, an announcement that drew some cheers from the audience.

He added that trustees will also be looking at the possibility of working with Brunswick for its rubbish collection, as the Hills similarly did for police and fire dispatching services.

"We are constantly working to see how we can save money and serve this community," Esber said.

Brunswick

Bales said infrastructure remains the "number one" issue facing the city.

"However," he added. "We have made significant progress in recent years, which was evident in 2015."

Bales noted that the city completed $3.7 million worth of road repairs, funded largely through state and federal grants.

"Maybe more importantly, 2015 also included the first year of the concrete and asphalt repair program for neighborhood streets that is funded through the 10-year road levy, thanks to the residents of Brunswick," he said.

Bales said more than $19 million is earmarked for road improvements in 2016, with the majority of funding again coming from state, federal and county sources.

Among these projects are the $12 million North Carpenter Road reconstruction from State Route 303 to Boston Road, which will actually see shovels in the ground by 2017; the $2.5 million Interstate 71 and SR 303 slip ramp project, completely funding by the state of Ohio's "Ramp Clear' program; a $1.4 million resurfacing of West 130th Street from State Route 3 to Boson Road, for which the city has already set aside $177,000 to cover its estimated local share of the county project; and the final phase of the $1.2 million Hadcock Road reconstruction, $599,000 of which is being funded through an Ohio Public Works Commission grant.

Bales also touched on the $350,000 worth of storm water improvements throughout the city planned for 2016; the hiring of the city's new service director, Paul Barnett; and the reorganization of the city's community and economic development department, including the hiring of director Grant Aungst and the $22 million in commercial construction and $12 million in new home construction investment in the city.

Bales said he expects the same level of activity to continue this year, with 140 homes in the building or planning stages and a number of commercial projects in the works, including Danbury Senior Living, the Wallhouse Hotel, and Brunswick Lake apartments - all there on city-owned land in Brunswick Town Center.

Finances - in particular capital and infrastructure improvement needs - will continue to be the city's most "pressing issue" in coming years, the city manager said.

"Overall, Brunswick is in good fiscal shape," Bales said, pointing out several local and national recognitions given to the city's police, fire, parks and finance departments - one from an organization called CreditDonkey.com, which rated Brunswick as one the 20 safest cities in Ohio with a population over 10,000.

"I just wish some of these places had different names," Bales quipped.

Hinckley

The theme of combining resources to save money continued with Sambor.

"We are proud of how our fire and police have worked together with mutual aid, and we have done the same with some road projects - through combined bids with the county," Sambor said. "We are doing well with our finances, but that doesn't mean won't continue to look for ways to save."

Sambor said the township is looking into outsourcing some of its road paving work, adding that roadway striping - a first for some areas of the township - will also be seen, to improve traffic safety.

Sambor said a recent review of Hinckley's 10 year plan found that more senior housing, in "smaller, denser units" is needed and wanted by residents, and he gave a brief update on the township's new state-of-the-art fire station complex on Ridge Road.

Construction costs on the new station - which has been in the works since 2013 - were kept relatively low, Sambor said, due in part to "hundreds of hours" of volunteer time given. The station was completed for $1.5 million.

But even for a community that is "doing well" with its finances, Sambor said Hinckley must continue to be fiscally prudent, balancing annual receipts with municipal services.

"What happens when more people want to live in a community is, you begin to have more needs," he said.
Airbnb screen shot

Airbnb will begin collecting and remitting Cuyahoga County's 5.5 percent lodging tax on April 1, under the first such tax-collection agreement in Ohio.

(Website screenshot)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga County is grabbing its slice of the sharing economy.

On April 1, the county will become the first place in Ohio to apply local lodging taxes to Airbnb stays. In a Friday morning email to local hosts, the home-sharing service said it has agreed to collect taxes from travelers and turn the money over to the county - adopting the same rules that hotels follow and implementing a program that's spreading across the nation.

Cuyahoga County might be an early adopter, but other Buckeye State communities are sure to follow suit. Legislation pending before Cleveland City Council would legalize, limit and tax short-term lodging in residential districts. Bookings on Airbnb and similar services are a hot topic here because of the Republican National Convention, which will bring more than 50,000 people to downtown Cleveland in July.

Globally, 30 cities, counties, states and countries have struck tax-collection deals with Airbnb, the biggest player in the business. In Cuyahoga County, the booking service will collect a 5.5 percent occupancy tax. Guests, not hosts, will pay that tax.

"Airbnb represents part of the new economy," Armond Budish, the Cuyahoga County executive, said in a written statement. "It is very important for the county to stay abreast of new technology and new sources of revenue so that we can continue to support our residents and municipalities."

Between March 1, 2015 and March 1 of this year, more than 16,200 people stayed at Airbnb listings in Cuyahoga County. There were 575 listings across the county, so the market isn't huge. But it's growing. Visits were up 193 percent during that 12-month period, when compared with a year before. And local hosts collectively made $2.3 million, Airbnb said.

On $2.3 million, a 5.5 percent lodging tax would come to $115,000.

"With the Republican National Convention in Cleveland just around the corner, this agreement ensures the entire community can benefit from local people opening their homes to visitors from across the country," Michael O'Neil, the Midwestern regional public policy director for Airbnb, said in an emailed statement.

Technically, Cuyahoga County's lodging tax already applied to rentals booked through Airbnb, HomeAway, FlipKey and other house-sharing websites. Even a single-room, short-term rental fits the county's definition of a hotel. But officials had no mechanism for tracking such rentals and ensuring that guests paid the occupancy tax and hosts passed the money along.

County bed-tax revenues flow to local municipalities, the convention and visitors bureau and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.

Airbnb's agreement with the county doesn't impact other home-sharing services. So the county might have to pursue separate deals with the company's competitors.

And the county program doesn't involve city-level lodging taxes.

Airbnb has been talking to Cleveland about collecting and remitting the city's 3 percent transient-occupancy tax, for example. If Cleveland City Council signs off, Airbnb would collect that tax on top of the county's 5.5 percent.

Local Airbnb hosts seem open to the tax, which doesn't come out of their pockets. But they're opposed to Cleveland's efforts to limit rentals.

The proposed legislation, crafted by Mayor Frank Jackson's administration, would cap a host's ability to rent at 91 days per year. Each stay would be limited to 30 days. And the city wants to implement residency requirements to make it harder for investors to buy up homes and list them on Airbnb.

Philadelphia took similar steps to regulate and tax short-term rentals in the run-up to Pope Francis' visit last year. Hosts in that city, where the Democratic National Convention will take place in July, can rent out their spare bedrooms, houses, condos, houseboats or other digs for up to 180 days each year.

"We continue to have productive conversations with the city," Christopher Nulty, an Airbnb spokesman, said of Cleveland, "and we're eager to work with them on creating home-sharing rules for Cleveland, especially ahead of this summer's Republican National Convention."
Ohio Unemployment rate

Ohio's unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in February, which was unchanged from January.

(Associated Press file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio's unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in February, with the state gaining 12,400 jobs, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reported Friday.

The increase in employment was a big improvement over January, when Ohio lost 10,100 jobs, a revision released Friday shows. Revisions are routinely done as more information becomes available. Initially, it was reported that Ohio had gained 100 jobs in January.

"For the first two months in 2016, Ohio only gained 2,300 jobs," said George Zeller of Cleveland, an economic research analyst. "Ohio's job growth rate in February 2016 was 1.56 percent. The national average was 1.91 percent. This is the 39th consecutive month Ohio's job growth rate has been below the national average.

Hannah Halbert, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, which tracks the state's labor force trends, agrees.

"What appears to be a big gain is actually pretty hollow," she wrote in an email. "Taken together, January and February did little to move Ohio ahead. We still trail the national average in terms of job growth and we've barely recovered the number of jobs we had in December 2007, when the recession began."

The state's jobless rate remained unchanged from January. In February 2015, Ohio's unemployment rate was 5.5 percent.

Sectors gaining jobs included: trade, transportation, and utilities, where employment was up by 5,800; educational and health services, which saw an increase of 4,300 jobs and financial activities, which added 3,900 jobs.

Sectors losing jobs included: manufacturing, where employment was down by 2,300; leisure and hospitality, where employment was down 2,200 and other services, which lost 1,200 jobs.

"All of the jobs gained in trade were in retail trade, which are very low-wage jobs," Zeller said. "Manufacturing lost jobs, and we have continued a huge loss in fracking employment. The quality of the jobs created in 2016 in Ohio has been poor."

Fracking is part of the mining and logging sector, which lost 400 jobs in February. Zeller noted the sector had lost 20,800 jobs since February 2015.

"This was the largest contributor to Ohio's weak year-over-year job growth," he said.

Despite concerns about job growth, Halbert said there was some promising news.

"Today's report suggests Ohio got a boost in its labor force in February, adding back 34,000 people," she wrote. "Most of those entering the labor force also entered employment (28,000). The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9 percent. This is welcome news as Ohio has struggled with big labor force losses. The state labor force has shrunk by 3.7 percent (220,000) since the start of the last recession."

As is routine, Ohio's unemployment rate for February was released two weeks after the U.S. jobs report.

In February, the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, which was unchanged from January. The nation gained 242,000 jobs.

By design, the monthly U.S. jobs report contains more information about the labor force than those produced by most states, including Ohio.

Here are some details from the U.S. jobs report for February:

Gender: The jobless rate for women was 4.5 percent, down from 4.9 percent a year earlier. The unemployment rate for men, also 4.5 percent, was down from 5.2 percent a year earlier.

Race:

African Americans - The jobless rate for African Americans was 8.8 percent, down from 10.3 percent in February 2015.

Asians - The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.8 percent, down from 4.0 percent a year earlier.

Hispanics - The jobless rate for Hispanics was 5.4 percent, down from 6.7 percent in February 2015

Whites - The white unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, down from 4.7 percent a year earlier.

Long-term unemployed - About 2.2 million people in February were unemployed for at least 27 weeks, a number that had seen little movement since June.

Employment-population ratio - The proportion of the nation's working-age population that was employed in February was 59.8 percent, up from 59.3 percent a year earlier.

Discouraged workers - The U.S. had 599,000 discouraged workers in February, down from 732,000 in February 2015. These unemployed workers who have given up searching for employment because they believe there are no jobs for them.
Horseshoe Cleveland Casino celebrates 2nd anniversary

Slot machine gamblers at Horseshoe Cleveland Casino can bet as much as they want. But a Massachusetts casino will offer an option of setting a betting limit.

(Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio is not considering new technology that allows gamblers to track and limit how much they bet on slot machines.

But the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on Thursday agreed to implement the "Play My Way" system at Plainridge Park, a harness racing and slot facility near Foxborough. It is the first casino in the state.

The system, the first in the U.S., will allow gamblers with reward cards to set a budget for a day, week or month. They will receive notifications when they have spent 50 percent, 75 percent and 100 percent, according to the Associated Press.

They will never be stopped from betting. When they hit their limit, an onscreen prompt will ask if they want to stop or keep playing.

The system will be in place at the end of May. The state may add it to other casinos as they open.

The Ohio Casino Control Commission is not currently looking at the system, spokeswoman Jessica Franks said in an email.

"Our understanding is that there isn't much consensus yet on whether or not such a system is helpful in preventing problem gambling," she wrote. "That said, we do want to ensure that anyone who believes they may have a gambling problem is able to get help - as such, we require all of Ohio's casinos to create and maintain responsible gaming plans."

All casinos offer a voluntary exclusion program for individuals who want to ban themselves from the casinos.

The American Gaming Association, a casino industry trade group, has voiced concerns about the technology, suggesting it hasn't proved effective at casinos in Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and other countries where they've been tried over the years, the Associated Press said.
CH police car.jpg

Cleveland Heights police are investigating the robbery of a US Bank branch.

(file photo)

Robbery, Lee Road: At 9:20 am. March 12, a man, described as in his late 40s, robbed the US Bank, 2211 Lee Road.

The man showed no weapon and did not threaten that he had one. He put a backpack on the counter and told the teller, "Put the money in the bag."

Police are investigating.

Theft, Mayfield Road: At 9:15 a.m. March 10, a man was seen stealing a can of beer from the store at the BP gas station, 2801 Mayfield Road.

Police found the man, 32, walking on Eddington Road with the open can of beer. The man was cited for open container and told not to return to the store.

Breaking and entering, Mayfield Road: At about 1:40 a.m. March 10, someone entered the Motorcars First Choice Building, 2888 Mayfield Road, by removing a portion of boards that covered a back window.

Police viewed the surveillance tape and saw that a male wearing a hooded sweatshirt did damage to a car, then found a fob key and tried to determine which car it would start, without success. The burglar then used the automatic door opener to leave the garage, setting off an alarm.

Theft, Lee Road: On March 10, a woman went to Zagara's, 1940 Lee Road, to pick up a birthday cake she ordered four days earlier. The woman had left a $20 deposit on March 6.

A man who was with the woman stood in line holding the cake, apparently waiting to pay the $50 still owed on the item. The man then stepped out of the line and left the store without paying. As a clerk went to question the man, the woman stopped the clerk and distracted him by asking him a question about bus passes.

Police later phoned the woman, who had left a phone number with her deposit. The woman was agitated and told the officer that she couldn't come back to the store with payment because she was busy getting her hair done. The woman still owes money to the store.

Vehicle theft, South Taylor Road: At 1 a.m. March 11, someone stole the car of a Pizza Hut employee. The car was parked in front of the store, its engine running.

A surveillance video showed a man, possibly in his early 20s, walking past and around the car before getting in and speeding off.

Gun fired, Northvale Boulevard: A man was driving his car at 10 p.m. March 11 and speaking on his cell phone with his girlfriend. As he spoke, he attempted to remove a loaded magazine from his handgun and accidentally shot himself in the heel of his foot.

The man managed to pick up his girlfriend on Euclid Avenue at Taylor Road, then drive to the East Cleveland police station. East Cleveland police had the man transferred to University Hospital where he met with Cleveland Heights police officers.

The gun was found not to be a stolen weapon, but police are investigating the matter. The man was cited for discharging a firearm within city limits.

Breaking and entering, Euclid Heights Boulevard: A man went to a house he owns on the morning of March 12. The house is vacant and undergoing repairs.

The man found the home's lockbox missing. He left and came back the next morning. At that time, he noticed that copper pipes had been stolen from inside the home.

Theft, Lee Road:

On March 12, the store manager of CVS Pharmacy, 2160 Lee Road, watched as a man broke into a display case, took out five bottles of cologne worth $228, concealed the bottles, and then left the store. Armed with a description of the suspect, police found him a short distance away.

The suspect, 40, was found to have a warrant issued in Shaker Heights for his arrest. Police also found on the suspect's person a bag of marijuana.

Theft from auto, Mayfield Road: On the afternoon of March 13, a woman left her purse on the front seat of her locked car as she went inside Helen's Game Time bar, 3962 Mayfield Road. When she left the bar, she found that someone had smashed a window and took her purse. In the purse was the woman's checkbook.

Burglary, Whitby Road: On the evening of March 13, someone forced open a front window on a home and gained entry. The people who live in the house were gone for a little more than two hours, giving the burglar time to act.

Stolen were an iPad, PlayStation, 36-inch television, shoes and more. Police believe the burglar or burglars left the home through the front door.
Alickas.jpg

Jonida (left) and Denisa Alicka, both of Rocky River, are charged with participating in a drug conspiracy. A judge on Friday ordered them held until their case is completed.

(FBI)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Citing "unexplained wealth and no legitimate source of income," a federal magistrate judge on Friday ordered two Rocky River sisters charged with trafficking club drugs to remain jailed while awaiting trial.

Magistrate Judge Nancy Vecchiarelli called the case against Jonida and Denisa Alicka "strong" and said that the sisters, while maybe not the masterminds of a much larger drug operation, were willing participants.

The judge's decision came after Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Corts illustrated the sisters' lavish lifestyle, which included living in upscale west-suburban apartments, taking expensive trips to Miami and Los Angeles and driving luxury sedans. He described their lifestyle as "extravagant."

Jonida Alicka, 28, and Denisa Alicka, 26, were arrested Tuesday after state and federal agents raided their apartments.

FBI Special Agent David Gardner testified Friday that both women were part of a conspiracy that brought at least 44 pounds of MDMA and marijuana from Canada to the Cleveland area. The MDMA sold for an average of about $20,000 a pound.

State and federal authorities have been investigating since September and used several cooperating witnesses who recorded phone calls, wore wires and bought drugs, according to a criminal complaint and Gardner's testimony.

They are charged along with Rinald Turhani, Denisa Alicka's boyfriend and a Detroit-area trucking business owner, and Leka Konini.

All four are in custody.

The hearing was to determine whether there was probable cause for the case to proceed and whether they should be held while their case is pending. Despite arguments from the attorneys of both sisters, Vecchiarelli said yes to both questions, and their case will now head to a grand jury.

Each defendants faces at least 10 years in prison if convicted.

The Alicka sisters, who were born in Albania and came to the United States in 2000, were clad Friday in blue jail jumpsuits. Their mother, father and sister were in the viewing gallery. Stephen Vozar, Jonida Alicka's boyfriend and a convicted cocaine trafficker, was also present.

Jonida Alicka stared toward the floor for most of the hearing. Their expressions rarely changed as Corts and Gardner detailed the allegations.

Jonida Alicka worked one day a week as a reserve officer for the Linndale Police Department. Gardner said she conducted several drug deals during her shifts while wearing her police uniform. She was fired after her arrest.

The Alicka sisters and their co-defendants threatened and intimidated the people whom they sold drugs to, Gardner said. He described one instance where Turhani beat a person over an outstanding debt. Turhani punched the dealer in the face so hard that a tooth went through his lip.

Both women lived a well-to-do lifestyle and were able to take last-minute flights at inflated prices, even though they had no jobs. Gardner said that Denisa Alicka's monthly rent for her apartment in the Brighton Chase complex on Center Ridge Road was $1,235 a month.

Denisa Alicka also drove a Mercedes Benz and recently had cosmetic surgery, Corts said.

Turhani, Konini and Denisa Alicka were arrested in December after police in Los Angeles caught Konini carrying a bag with nearly 20 pounds of MDMA, Gardner said. State prosecutors there dropped the charges after the FBI told them that it was still investigating. Vecchiarelli said that she was concerned that the drug dealing did not stop after their arrests.

The sisters also tried last year to smuggle Jonida Alicka's then-boyfriend Fabian Mihaj over the Canadian border after Mihaj absconded from federal supervision, Corts said. While they didn't go through with it, Mihaj was able to gain access to the country and is believed to be in Toronto.

Mihaj is believed to be a target in the investigation.
beers

We offer an update on proposed legislation to raise the alcohol limit on beer made or sold in Ohio.

(Dave Andersen, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Like an old car you love but don't want to scrap just yet, the legislation that would increase the limit on alcohol in beer sold or made in Ohio appears stalled, yet again - but it's not dead.

House Bill 68 would raise the limit on alcohol in beer from 12 percent to 21 percent. It would allow brewers within the state to craft certain ales that might inch beyond the 12-percent ceiling, as well as allow breweries to bring in styles of beers that go a bit past 12 percent.

It has bi-partisan support in the legislature as well as backing from brewers, from Paul Benner at Platform Beer Co. in Cleveland to Fred Karm at Hoppin' Frog Brewery in Akron as well as the Ohio Craft Brewers Association. The bill's limited opposition appears relegated to MillerCoors, which voiced official, albeit not very vociferous, arguments last year.

But its biggest foe again is time. When a general assembly's term runs out, legislation is scrapped and - if support remains - it must start from scratch. Primary sponsor of the alcohol-ceiling limit bill, in its third incarnation, is Rep. Dan Ramos, D-Lorain.

"It's sort of stopped," Ramos said. "I spoke with chairman Brown, and he wanted to shake the trees and see where the opposition is, but it's stopped."

Tim Brown, R-Bowling Green, is chairman of the House Government Accountability and Oversight committee.

Ramos said it is difficult to gauge the bill's future.

"It's really hard to tell," he said. "This seems to be directly in the wheelhouse of not just our governor and our speaker to be in favor, but the Republican Party since (Ronald) Reagan: Eliminating unnecessary burdens on small businesses. This (the limit) would appear to be an unnecessary burden on small businesses - and large ones, for that matter."

West Virginia is the only border state to Ohio that also has a limit. That means folks living in Cincinnati, Toledo, Youngstown or other parts can travel easily across state lines, if they want certain styles they cannot buy here.

"After the (spring) break, I'm going to try to talk to him (Brown) and see if there is more info the committee needs or if there is a halt from on high, if someone doesn't like it.

After Easter I'd like to start up again on this and see if we have a chance to move through. But every day that passes makes it more difficult. If it takes 18 months to get through the house it can't take 18 months to get through the senate."

Ramos - who first introduced the bill in 2011 - sees it as a business bill that concerns jobs. As for the on-the-record opposition, "MillerCoors and InBev could follow this law, too. There's no limit (on what they can produce)."

Trenton, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, is home to one of MillerCoors' eight U.S. breweries. It produces Miller Lite, Coors Light, Miller High Life and Third Shift. The latter, an amber lager, contains the highest alcohol level of the bunch, a moderate 5.3 percent.

In its opposition testimony last year, MillerCoors said raising the limit could "confuse" residents who have come to expect a lower alcohol percentage in beer and considers it a "beverage of moderation."

MillerCoors officials did not return a call for comment on this story.

For the majority of beer drinkers who prefer mass-produced brews like Budweiser, Bud Light and MillerCoors products, the bill's outcome probably holds limited interest. But for fans of craft beer, a growing segment of the industry, it has a more direct effect. Imperial Stouts, Double India Pale Ales and Barleywines are among the styles that can wind up topping 12 percent, as can barrel-aged beers.

For comparison's sake, a common range of alcohol percentage in red wine is 12.5 to 14.5 percent. The alcohol-percentage limit regarding wine in Ohio is 21 percent.
Concert Pianist Daughters Slain

In this June 9, 2013 file photo, Vadym Kholodenko of Ukraine performs a concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra during finals in the 14th Van Cliburn international piano competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say the two daughters of Kholodenko have been found slain in their Texas home and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds. Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday, March 18, 2016 that Kholodenko is cooperating with investigators and that no one has been arrested in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika and 1-year-old Michela. (Ron T. Ennis/ The Fort Worth Star-Telegram,via AP Photo, File)

(Ron T. Ennis)

DALLAS (AP) -- An internationally renowned concert pianist arrived at his estranged wife's home in Texas to pick up their two daughters and found the girls slain in their beds, police said Friday. Authorities say their Russian mother, who had suffered knife wounds, faces a mental health exam.

Vadym Kholodenko stopped Thursday morning at the suburban Fort Worth home where he formerly lived to pick up Nika, 5, and 1-year-old Michela, Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said. The Ukrainian-born musician found his wife, Sofya Tsygankova, in an "extreme state of distress" and discovered the dead girls. The pianist then called 911, police said.

Kholodenko, who won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth in 2013, is not a suspect and is cooperating with police, Babcock said. Police said no suspects were being sought in the deaths of the girls or the stabbing of Tsygankova, who was recovering Friday at a Fort Worth hospital.

Babcock, when asked, declined to say whether police believe the stab wounds were self-inflicted. Tsygankova was being held on a mental health evaluation, Babcock said. Asked if she was a suspect in the girls' deaths, he declined to say.

"We are still looking at all avenues," he said, but added that authorities don't believe there's any immediate risk to others in the area.

Autopsy results were pending on the children, who had no visible trauma, police said. Tsygankova's wounds were from a knife, said Babcock. He declined to say whether a knife was recovered at the home.

Kholodenko and his family moved to Fort Worth in 2014 after he won the $50,000-prize Cliburn competition, which resulted in Kholodenko touring and playing with major orchestras.

"The Cliburn family is mourning the loss of the precious Kholodenko girls. We are heartbroken and offer our prayers to Vadym and all affected by this overwhelming tragedy," said Maggie Estes, a spokeswoman for the Cliburn competition.

Hospital officials declined on Friday to release a condition on Tsygankova, who was born in Russia.

The couple had married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November, according to Tarrant County court records. Babcock said police had responded twice in 2014 to disturbance calls at the suburban Fort Worth residence but would not disclose details on the nature of the visits. Kholodenko routinely picked up the children from the home in the mornings, Babcock said.

Kholodenko and his wife told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2014 that the decision to move from Moscow to the U.S. was a combination of spontaneity and medical problems with Nika's skin.

"Nobody could help us with this problem, and we had a very hard time with her," Tsygankova told the newspaper. "We wanted to be together, with Vadym, to be a family, and for us, maybe it was the only choice for us to come here."

She told the newspaper she hoped to improve her English so she could teach kids in Fort Worth.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is named for the celebrated classical pianist and held every four years in Fort Worth. Cliburn died in 2013. Pianists audition around the world for the Cliburn competition, and finalists are picked to perform in Fort Worth. Kholodenko was among 30 finalists from 12 countries in 2013.

Kholodenko had been scheduled to perform this weekend with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Another soloist, Alessio Bax, was replacing him, the orchestra said.



DIANA HEIDGERD, Associated Press

PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press
HealthSpan inks partnership with Lake Health

A rendering shows Lake Health's TriPoint Medical Center in Concord. The facility opened in 2009 and is now open to HealthSpan members who can book appointments following the insurer's agreement to expand access to medical services East of Cleveland.

HealthSpan has struck an agreement with Lake Health Inc. to provide medical services to communities east of Cleveland where many of the insurer's medical offices are due to close at the end of the month.

The agreement allows HealthSpan members to immediately make appointments at all Lake Health facilities and with more than 250 physicians who work for the health system in Northeast Ohio.

Some residents in Lake County had voiced concerns about preserving access to care after HealthSpan announced late last year that it was disbanding its physicians group on March 31.

A spokesman for HealthSpan, which is ceasing operations at the end of the year due to poor financial performance, said the agreement with Lake Health had been in the works for some time.

"We knew that there was a void in Lake County and we're very pleased to be able to make this announcement," HealthSpan spokesman Chuck Heald said Friday.

The company's members can access a list of Lake Health physicians in its network at healthspan.org/findaprovider. More than half of the contracted physicians have already been added to the online search tool, and about 100 more will be added over the next few weeks, HealthSpan said.

All HealthSpan subscribers in Lake and Geauga counties have been mailed a letter about the network change. Lake Health operates TriPoint Medical Center in Concord and West Medical Center in Willoughby. It has about a dozen other physicians offices and facilities in Chardon, Madison, Painesville and other communities.

Meanwhile, HealthSpan is seeking to transition its members to Medical Mutual, which has agreed to acquire the 105,000 members who carry its group and individual policies.
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Lakewood City Center has been sold to a Cincinnati company for $12.3 million.

(Bruce Geiselman, special to cleveland.com)

LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- Lakewood City Center, a 67,000-square-foot shopping center at the intersection of Detroit Avenue and Warren Road, sold March 10 for $12.3 million to a Cincinnati-based company, according to Cuyahoga County property records.

Anchor tenants include Marc's, Pet Supplies Plus and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The buyer is Lakewood (Ohio) Station LLC, according to the county Fiscal Officer's website. The company is a subsidiary of a real estate investment trust affiliated with Phillips Edison & Company, based in Cincinnati, according to federal Securities and Exchange Commission documents.

The seller of the property was Lakewood Associates, which is an affiliate of The Coral Investment Company in Cleveland.

Lakewood city officials said they have not received any plans from the new owners.

"It is our understanding that they plan to continue operating the property as a retail center with the current tenants," city Planning and Development Director Dru Siley wrote in an email to a reporter.

Phillips Edison & Company's website says the company for more than a decade has invested in grocery-anchored shopping centers.

"This singular devotion has resulted in a national footprint of more than 280 retail properties and a proven track record of optimizing retail property value with our complete operating platform," according to the website.

Officials with Phillips Edison & Company could not be reached for comment.

Peter Rubin, president and CEO of The Coral Company, which developed and managed the property, declined comment.

A copy of the deed transfer, filed with the county, appears at the bottom of this story.

Follow cleveland.com on Facebook and @LWOhio on Twitter.
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Lyndhurst City Council passed a 2016 budget at $15.94 million.

(Jeff Piorkowski/special to cleveland.com)

LYNDHURST, Ohio -- The city of Lyndhurst budget for 2016, which City Council passed March 7, calls for it to spend more than the city takes in.

But, Mayor Patrick Ward, who as a councilman headed council's Finance Committee, said a cash carryover from last year will pay for the difference.

It is estimated the city will take in $13.95 million in revenues this year, and spend from its general fund $15.94 million, a difference of just under $2 million.

Ward said that estimates of expenditures are always made conservatively, meaning the projected amount isn't necessarily spent.

The city carried over $3.39 million from 2015 to 2016.

Ward said he looks for the city to spend less than the $15.94 million projected for 2016, a figure that is 10.4 percent greater than was actually spent in 2015. Last year's actual expenditures totaled $14.43 million.

"The city's in a good financial position," Ward said. "I wouldn't say great, but we're in good financial position.

"We're still being very cautious, very conservative in what we do," he said.

Speaking about projected expenditures and why they can be above what is actually spent, Ward explained that the city fully funds several line items within its budget to assure money is there, if needed. Many times, he said, that money is not needed and is carried over to the following year.

"We fully fund line items, such as health insurance," Ward said. "So if at any time an employee who opted out (of the city plan) wants to opt back in, which hardly ever happens, we have the funds there for that possibility."

The budget also includes $5.2 million in capital expenditures, with about $1.5 million of that amount going towards repairing roads and sidewalks.

Last year, the city spent $4.2 million on capital improvements.

In other news from Lyndhurst's March 7 council meeting:

-- Lyndhurst residents are now in the process of receiving in their mailboxes the first edition of "Lyndhurst Life."

The city-issued magazine is meant to update residents about events in Lyndhurst, and includes such things as features on local businesses.

"For our first run, it was awesome," Ward said. "There are businesses that want to be included in the next one."

The magazine will be delivered three times per year. The next issue this year will be delivered in August.

Ward said the August issue will feature details about Lyndhurst Homes Days, held in early September, and that the following issue will have news about the city's centennial, coming in 2017.

-- Council passed legislation to modify city code pertaining to fences. In the future, any six-foot fence installed in the side or back yard of residences must be a board-on-board fence with spaces to allow sunlight to shine through.

Chain link fences, at four feet in height, are also still permitted.

Councilman David Frey, who serves on the Planning Commission, said the amendment was made to clarify what the commission had always intended for fences.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Since 2004, Linde DeCarlo of Willoughby has taken 13 puppies into her home and nurtured them, taught them basic skills, transported them to-and-from their veterinarian appointments, all in preparation for the next stage of the puppies' lives.

DeCarlo is a volunteer "puppy trainer" for the organization Leader Dogs for the Blind. Founded in 1939 by three Detroit-area Lions Club members, Leader Dogs provides guide dogs to people who are blind or visually impaired. Thanks to donations, volunteer puppy trainers such as DeCarlo, and those who volunteer in other capacities, the dogs are free to the recipients.

"Becoming a working Leader Dog is perhaps the most difficult career a service dog could achieve," said DeCarlo. "Complete training takes almost two years, and it begins with puppy raisers who provide the foundation."

Training begins when the puppy is about seven weeks old, and the pup lives with its raiser for about one year. During that time the puppy trainer is responsible for the pooch's collars and leashes, crates, veterinary care, food, toys and more. Any dog owner knows that those expenses can take a serious bite out of one's budget.

To fund her work, DeCarlo and supporters host their annual "Pasta for Puppies" all-you-can-eat pasta dinner. This year the dinner is 5 to 9 p.m. Monday, April 4, at the American-Croation Lodge, 34900 Lakeshore Blvd., Eastlake. Advance tickets ($15) are recommended, but walk-ins are welcome. For tickets call 440-951-2468 or email LeaderDogPuppies@gmail.com.

According to the Leader Dogs for the Blind website, leaderdog.org, breeds brought into the program are strictly Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds or Labrador/Golden crosses. The organization provides the puppies, a majority of which come from its own breeding colony.

The time that it takes to place a puppy with a new puppy trainer depends on the volume of puppy trainer applicants and the number of puppies available. Generally, the wait is six months for Labradors; nine months for Golden Retrievers or crossbreeds, and more than a year for German Shepherds.

Having raised or owned a puppy in the past is not a requirement to become a puppy trainer. The most important trait of puppy trainers is the dedication to provide daily care and consistency in the puppy's training. Puppy trainer applicants who are accepted receive a manual and instructional DVD, as well as puppy counselor.

To learn more about becoming a Leader Dog puppy trainer, go to leaderdog.org/volunteers/about-puppy-raising/puppy-raisers-FAQ.

Lake Humane Society's overcrowding dilemma: In 12 days nearly 70 neglected animals from three hoarding cases have come under the care of the Lake Humane Society in Mentor, according to Agent Leanne Pike. In total: 48 cats and kittens, 14 dogs and puppies, three birds, two ferrets and a guinea pig. "As with most hoarding situations, these pets were living in deplorable conditions, many suffering from illness and more extreme medical conditions," said Pike. "LHS has nearly doubled its population in two weeks." Anyone interested in making a donation can go to lakehumane.org or call 440-951-6122,

Easter tips: The Cleveland Animal Protective League passes along these ASPCA tips for keeping pets safe over Easter weekend:

Keep chocolates out of reach. Chocolates can cause serious harm to pets.

Clean up plastic Easter grass. The grass can get lodged in your pet's throat or digestive track, causing it to choke or vomit.

Be aware of plants. Some bulbs can cause gastrointestinal upset. Cat owners should avoid lilies, which can cause severe toxicosis and acute kidney injury.

Beware of plant fertilizer. Many fertilizers may contain herbicides or insecticides, which can cause muscle stiffness or soreness after eating, or in the worst cases tremors and seizures.

Low-cost sterilization in Greater Cleveland: Valley Save-A-Pet is extending its $40 spay/neuter program through the end of March. Cat or dog owners should call 440-232-2287 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Feral cat caretakers should call on Monday only.

Cat fundraiser in Cleveland: Lucky Paws Fundraiser, 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 19, Nautica Cafe at the FirstEnergy Powerhouse, 2000 Sycamore St. Tickets, $25, at luckypawsrescue.org/Fundraiser.html, 216-556-0811, or at the door.

Pet adoptions in Westlake: Cleveland APL dog and cat adoptions, Parent /Student Wellness Fair, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, Westlake High School, 27830 Hilliard Blvd.

Pet fundraiser in Brooklyn: Betty's Birthday Party/Voices in the Dark fundraiser, 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 26, Dina's Pizza and Pub, 5701 Memphis Ave. Tickets ($25, $35 at the door) include all-you-can eat (including vegan and vegetarian options) and all you can drink. Betty is a dog that was in bad shape when she was rescued three years ago and became the impetus for Voices in the Dark. For tickets, go to voicesinthedarkanimalrescue.weebly.com/bettys-birthday-party, or call 844-586-4237.

TNR seminar in Akron: One of A Kind Pet Rescue Trap-Neuter-Return Seminar, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, March 26, 1929 West Market St. Expert feral cat trapper Toby Franks of will demonstrate how to help feral cats by implementing the TNR program. The seminar is free and open to the public but donations to the One of a Kind Feral Fund are appreciated.

Farm animal rescue in Akron: Happy Trails Farm Animal Sanctuary's "A Night of Hope and Inspiration," 5 p.m. Saturday, April 2, at Todaro's Party Center, 1820 Akron Peninsula Road. This is the rescue's biggest fundraiser of the year. Animal-friendly (vegan) hors d'oeuvres by Todaro's master chefs; Chinese raffle with 100 prizes; silent auction; mystery grab bags and more. Tickets ($60, $100 to attend the VIP reception from 4 to 5 p.m., can be purchased online at happytrailsfarm.org or by calling 330-296-5914.
Raise your standing and your salary

Westend61 | Getty Images

The job market has been steadily improving, but you might not be able to tell by . Average wages have grown at a sluggish pace of about 2.25 percent over the past two years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. That's slower than the average wage growth over the past two decades. But whether you get a raise is not about skills, talent or the number of years on the job, said Cynthia Shapiro, author of "Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Knowand What to Do About Them." "It's about how they emotionally feel about you, and that is squarely within your power by your behavioral choices every day." Employers tend to favor, financially and otherwise, the people they like, regardless of whether they're the best or most productive workers. "More often than not, your attitude and behavior form an unconscious bias in the manager's mind when making pay decisions," said Kim Seeling Smith, founder of human resources training and consulting firm Ignite Global. "So of course your behavior as an employee is going to factor into [pay]."

How can you boost your standing, and salary, at work? Start by changing the following behaviors.  By Stacy Rapacon, special to CNBC.com



You're negative

Jamie Grill | Getty Images

At work, sad sacks can suck the life out of a good team, and bosses know it. "Attitude weighs on everything, and salary is just one part of it," said Shapiro. "It determines your job security, your relationship with the boss, whether you get the best assignments and whether you're the first to get laid off." While negativity can hold you back in your career, positivity can give you a boost. Shapiro recommends publicly vocalizing what you like about your company and talking openly about your team's accomplishments. Be a voice of optimism and support, and you're bound to find yourself in the good graces of the higher ups, she said. "Cheerleaders do get paid more." If you're feeling down at work, instead of complaining, Shapiro suggests remembering why you chose the job in the first place and making a list of all the company's good qualities. "Sometimes all you need is to reconnect with what you loved about it," she said. "If you cannot think of anything  then it's time to go. You're not going to be successful there no matter what you do."

You raise problems without offering solutions

Thomas Barwick | Getty Images

While it may be good to note what's not working, simply pointing it out is not enough  and may just be creating more work for your boss and co-workers, which surely would not be appreciated. To get ahead, go the extra mile and figure out how to fix a situation, Seeling Smith said. "Coming with solutions instead of problems is one of the principle behaviors that can move you from being a problem child to a critical person who your manager relies on," she said. "People who are solutions-oriented rather than problem-oriented more often than not will be recognized."

You forgo new opportunities

Woman raising hand in class Jetta Productions | Getty Images

Skipping out on extra work or new assignments might get you through the work day faster, but it can really slow down your career. Whether it's taking on more responsibilities while a colleague is on vacation or maternity leave or stepping up to a new project, Seeling Smith suggests volunteering to help with whatever extra work you can handle. Not only will doing so build up your experience and provide you with learning opportunities, having done more work than required will also be the perfect argument for why you deserve a raise.

You don't support your boss

Ezra Bailey | Getty Images

You may have your own priorities at work, but helping your boss with her priorities should be at the top of your to-do list. For example, you might think taking care of your biggest client is the most important part of your job, but if your employer is focused on bringing in new business, shifting your priorities to support hers is a smart move, Shapiro said. Find out three things your boss truly cares about and make them your top three priorities each day, she said. If you can give your boss that kind of support, the law of reciprocity should draw her to supporting you in kind. "If you want loyalty, support and rewards, you give it first," Shapiro said. "We are just psychologically inclined to even the scales and give you something in return."

You ignore your colleagues

Thomas Barwick | Getty Images

Again, supporting the people above you encourages them to lift you up. And lending a hand to those around you or who are just starting out can also give you a boost, said Seeling Smith. It shows that you have initiative, leadership skills and are able to work well with others. "Helping or mentoring co-workers and colleagues is certainly looked upon favorably," she said.

You require hand-holding

Business people holding hands Brand New Images | Getty Images

Of course you should seek out guidance when necessary, but being too needy can create extra work for your manager and make you seem more like a burden than an asset. Be sure to prove you can work independently and be "relied upon to do work, on time, with little fuss or muss," said Seeling Smith. "Once you have direction and you know how to complete a task or project or how to accomplish the goals that have been set, do it well, do it on time and do it consistently."

You vent on social media

Sigrid Olsson | Photo Alto | Getty Images

All your positivity and productivity at work can be undone with a single bad Facebook post. You always need to be mindful of what you're saying online and in public because you never know who might be watching and listening. Even if you think your privacy settings are tight, you're better off airing any frustrations you have privately and offline. "You can't be a team player and someone the company trusts and values at work, and then go get on Facebook and bash your employer," said Shapiro. "Today, everything is all connected, and you have to manage your image. You are always representing your company, and the higher you go, the more that's the case."

You deviate from company culture

Compassionate Eye Foundation | Getty Images
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TransCanada , the company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, said on Thursday it will buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $10.2 billion, creating one of North America's largest regulated natural gas transmission businesses. The deal, valued at $13 billion including debt, comes months after U.S. President Barack Obama blocked the cross-border Keystone XL crude pipeline. His decision was a victory for environmentalists and a blow to TransCanada after a seven-year battle for approval. TransCanada will offer $25.50 per share in cash for each Columbia Pipeline share, an 8.5 percent premium to the stock's Thursday close. Columbia Pipeline shares rose about 5 percent in extended trading, while TransCanada's U.S.-listed shares were down more than 8 percent.



Russ Gerling, CEO of TransCanada. Justin Solomon | CNBC

Columbia Pipeline owns and operates about 15,000 miles of natural gas pipelines, connecting the U.S. Gulf Coast to the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast United States, home to some of the country's most prolific shale gas plays. That pipeline system will link up with TransCanada's existing assets to create a 5,700-mile network spanning the continent. "This acquisition represents a rare opportunity to invest in an extensive competitively positioned growing network of regulated natural gas pipeline and storage assets in the Marcellus and Utica regions of the United States," TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling said on a conference call.
Bank of America on Friday said its board of directors has authorized increasing its common stock repurchase plan by up to $800 million.

The new stock repurchase authorization is in addition to the bank's $4 billion share repurchase plan announced on March 11, 2015.

The financial giant said the buyback authorization is designed to offset share count dilution from equity incentive compensation awarded to its retirement-eligible employees.

Bank of America said the proposed repurchases are not connected to the company's 2016 capital analysis and review submission.
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Some Democratic Party supporters could end up voting for GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, if he ends up battling against Hillary Clinton for the White House, one expert has told CNBC. "Trump's an outsider but he's been very, very successful," Dominic Dyer, fellow at networking organization The British American Project and Council, told CNBC Friday. "Yes this campaign's been based on fear and prejudice to a degree, but (Trump) has gone in right on those trade issues, the issues that really worry a lot of working class Americans about the fact that they're working harder for less today. That resonates with the Bernie Sanders campaign as well." "If you look at the swing states  like Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania  these issues of trade and issues of Americans working harder to stand still in the last eight years really resonates with voters." "And I have no doubt, that some of the grand swell of support that's gone to Bernie Sanders could move over to Trump and I don't think we should underestimate the impact of that," Dyer said, adding that he believed this trend was already emerging.

While it's yet to be decided whether Clinton or Sanders will become the Democrats chosen nominee, if Clinton is selected, Dyer believes it's going to be "difficult" for her to move all the Sanders supporters into her camp.

"She's part of that American political establishment that people are extremely suspicious of," said Dyer, adding that the FBI investigation into Clinton and the private email server could be potentially "quite damaging" to her campaign because of trust issues.

On Thursday, conservative leaders met privately in Washington to discuss a way of stopping the billionaire businessman Trump from obtaining the presidential nomination, according to the Associated Press. Dyer however believes that it would be extremely difficult to stop Trump's political path. "I think Trump's run for the presidency has gone from unthinkable to almost inevitable in the last six months and I think this is a shock-wave going through the Republican Party but also the media establishment in the United States."

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Getty Images: Rhona Wise/AFP | Mychal Watts/WireImage

Meanwhile, a fellow expert on the matter provided an alternate case for Trump's political future. In order to obtain the Republican nomination, Trump or a fellow candidate needs to secure at least 1,237 delegates. While analysts remain skeptical on whether Trump could achieve this majority, one expert believes it's possible Trump could go independent if he's denied the nomination on the first round at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. "If Donald Trump gets to the convention and is denied the nomination on the first round of balloting it's entirely possible  knowing Donald Trump  that he could take his hair, his ego, his billions of dollars and stage a walkout," Dr. James Boys, political historian, author and U.S. policy expert, told CNBC Friday.



"(Trump could) say 'I signed up to play by the rules, I'm the most popular candidate, I've come up short just slightly but everybody knows it should be me. I'm firing the Republican Party and I'm going to run on my own'. If that happens he splits the vote on the right," Boys said. If Trump decided to run as an independent candidate, Boys estimated Trump could seize at least 30 percent of the Republican Party voters. "If you split the vote on the right like that, you guarantee a Democratic Party victory, which is exactly what happened in 1992, when Bill Clinton won of course."
Brazil's former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (L) walks with President Dilma Rousseff as he is sworn in as the new chief of staff in the Planalto Palace on March 17, 2016 in Brasilia, Brazil. Igo Estrela | Getty Images

Amid its worst recession in 25 years, Brazil is also facing its worst political crisis in decades. CNBC takes a look at what is happening with the South American giant.





Petrobras scandal

Both former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and president Dilma Rousseff, who Lula appointed as his successor in 2010, are under scrutiny along with key figures in their Workers' Party government. The investigation  known as Operation Car Wash or "Operacao Lava Jato"  is looking into a massive corruption scandal at Brazil's state-run oil company, Petrobras.

After Lula was briefly detained last week over accusations of money laundering and concealing ownership of a beachfront condo -- a charge he denies, according to Reuters -- moves were made this week to accelerate his appointment back into government.





Chief of staff appointment

It was announced on Wednesday that Lula would take a position in Rousseff's government as her chief of staff, a position she once held during his presidency. Many critics of the government saw Lula's appointment as an attempt to protect the former premier from prosecution for money laundering. Cabinet members cannot be investigated, charged or imprisoned unless authorized by the Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press. The announcement was met with enormous protests across 22 of Brazil's 26 states. On Thursday, two judges issued an injunction saying this appointment could impede the money-laundering investigation into the former premier. Despite this, Lula was sworn into office late Thursday.



The phone call

A transcript published by the national media on Wednesday details a phone conversation between Lula and Rousseff that was allegedly taped by Brazilian Federal Police. In it, Rousseff says that her main goal in inviting Lula to join the cabinet is to try to avoid his detention. Judge Sergio Moro, the federal judge who is leading the corruption probe at the state-run oil company Petrobras, is allegedly behind the transcript leak.

At Lula's swearing-in ceremony, Rousseff accused Moro of violating the constitution and acting in a partisan manner, reported the Associated Press. Lula's appointment now makes him immune from Moro's prosecution.





Impeachment

Calls for Rousseff's impeachment have centered on allegations, unrelated to Petrobras, that she broke budget rules intentionally to boost spending as she campaigned for re-election in 2014. A 65-member impeachment committee of the lower house will now formally begin studying whether there are sufficient grounds to remove her, reported Reuters However, it's not that simple. "It's a presidential regime not a parliamentary regime. So for the president to go down, it just takes a lot," Daniel Tenengauzer, Head of Global FX & EM Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said to CNBC.

Rousseff will have 10 sessions in congress to present her defense, Jimena Blanco, Head of Americas at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC Friday.

Starting Monday, the "clock is now ticking," for Rousseff, said Blanco.





The economy

The International Monetary Fund forecasts Brazil's economy will shrink by 3.5 percent this year, following a 3.8 percent contraction in 2015 - a slap in the face for a country until recently hailed as a shining example of a prosperous South American economy. Business is suffering, said Tenengauzer. "There is nothing going on in Brazil right now. No one is taking a decision given the uncertainty," he told CNBC. Brazil was recently handed a two-notch downgrade by U.S. ratings agency Moody's, the third agency to strip the country of its investment-grade rating.

"My main concern with the economy right now is people are avoiding taxes as much as they can because they don't believe in the regime so the fiscal story is deteriorating by the minute here and that's a huge concern so we should expect downgrades going forward," Tenengauzer said to CNBC.

However, Brazil's stocks were buoyed Friday by the prospect of a political change in leadership.







What next

"The government focus today (Friday) will be to secure the lifting of injunction so that Lula can practise as minister," Blanco told CNBC. However, it's unclear that if the injunction is lifted, another could come through different courts, she added. If Brazil's political party survives, Lula has not ruled out re-running for president in 2018.

"At the end of the day, we need clean elections in Brazil," said Tenengauzer, although he echoed the sceptic sentiment of many Brazilians that this would actually happen.




Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Tiffany  The luxury goods retailer earned an adjusted $1.46 per share for its latest quarter, with revenue also scoring a slight beat. Tiffany said it expects earnings growth to resume in the second half of the year.

Adobe Systems  The software company earnings an adjusted 66 cents per share for its latest quarter. That was 5 cents above estimates, while revenue was slightly above forecasts, as well. Adobe also gave upbeat guidance for the current quarter as digital media sales surge.

JPMorgan Chase  The bank increased its stock buyback program by $1.88 billion. That amount will be added to the $6.4 billion authorization put in place last summer.

Shutterfly  Shutterfly named Christopher North as president and chief executive officer, effective May 31. Interim CEO Phil Marineau will remain in place until that date. North comes to the online photo service from Amazon.com 's U.K. unit.

Columbia Pipeline Group  The company agreed to be bought by TransCanada for $10.2 billion. The deal for the Houston-based natural gas pipeline operator is worth $25.50 per share, compared to yesterday's close of $23.51.

Viacom  Viacom has gotten interest from about three dozen companies for a minority stake in its Paramount Pictures film studio, according to CEO Philippe Dauman. He made his comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Aeropostale  Aeropostale plans to seek strategic alternatives, after the teen apparel retailer said it could face liquidity problems after failing to solve a dispute with a major supplier. That news comes after the company reported a 13th consecutive quarterly loss.

Whole Foods Market  Whole Foods will replace fast-growing industry standard chickens with slower growing varieties. The natural foods grocer said the chickens will have better lives and yield better meat.

Lear  Lear is in talks with the United Auto Workers union to return jobs to Detroit from Mexico. The automotive supplier did not give details on the talks, but is said to be trying to get the union to agree to lower wages.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals  The battered drug stock is rebounding in premarket trading, although it is only making up for a fraction of the drop that sent it from Monday's close of $69.04 to a low this week of $29.52.

Las Vegas Sands , Wynn Resorts  The casino operators are seeing their stocks rise following Macquarie Research's upgrade of the Macau casino sector to neutral. That comes amid signs that the severe slump in Macau gambling is bottoming.

Shoe Carnival  The shoe retailer beat estimates on both the top and bottom lines, and registered its sixth straight quarter of same-store sales growth.
Facebook is a common household name, but there's still room to run for the social networking company, according to this analyst.



"Facebook, for example, has over 1.5 billion monthly users; in North America and Europe alone 300 million," Dan Chung, Fred Alger Management CEO, told CNBC. "That's three times the size of the Super Bowl."

For context, Nielsen Holdings N.V., the global information and measurement company, reported that Super Bowl 50 drew about 112 million television viewers; about 72 percent of Americans with television viewed the event.

The expert argues that Facebook holds over 20 percent of the time people spend on the Internet and its advertising revenue only represents between 8 to 10 percent of the total online advertisement.

"We think they're going to catch up," he said. "The biggest shift we see, which I think is very dangerous, is TV advertising."


After an eight-year saga, the former CEO of Porsche , Wendelin Wiedeking, has been acquitted of alleged market manipulation.

A court in Stuttgart also rejected the same charges against his ex-colleague and former CFO, Holger Haerter.

The two former executives both faced charges relating to Porsche's infamous attempt to take over Volkswagen (VW) in 2008.

Stuttgart regional court Judge Frank Maurer said Friday the court had come to a clear decision and a conviction would not have been "rationally justifiable".

"The board had no secret plan," he said.

At the time, Porsche's plan was to hoover up derivatives contracts to quietly build a stake in Volkswagen.

Some hedge funds had bet heavily against VW, as the auto industry slowed in the wake of the financial crisis.

But when details of Porsche's plot emerged, VW shares spiked from 200 euros to more than 1000 euros, briefly capitalizing VW as the most valuable car company in the world.

In turn, those hedge funds who had bet heavily against VW encountered heavy losses.

Friday's ruling in the criminal case will come as a blow to hedge funds that have instigated separate civil suits against Porsche.
That's where things could get very interesting, because the right third candidate running in November could send the election to Congress by winning as few as two states! But it's a lot trickier than it sounds, because that conservative or right-leaning ticket couldn't put itself on the ballot in all 50 states  especially in states where its presence would help Hillary Clinton win where Trump otherwise would have taken it one-on-one.

Get out your calculators and follow along with these two strategies with two different tickets:

Option 1: Go for wins only in Texas and Ohio with a Ted Cruz/John Kasich ticket.

This scenario would leave Clinton with 248 electoral votes,Trump with 234 and Cruz with 56 all short of the 270 needed to win. The Cruz/Kasich ticket would have to make sure it does not get on the ballot in leaning red states like North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri, just in case they swing one or two of them Clinton's way. But most importantly, this ticket would need to do absolutely no campaigning in Florida. If she wins Florida, almost no scenario leaves Clinton with fewer than the magic 270 number.
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OGDEN, Utah  Bystanders shield their eyes from the swirling grit kicked up by the bright green and yellow helicopter. Its landing was captured by a news crew here to record the opening of new maintenance facility for Air Medical Resource Group, the country's third-largest provider of air medical services, and the latest firm to open shop in this city. "We could see that they wanted us here and it made a difference to us," President Joseph Hunt said when asked why his company chose Ogden.

Wielding giant scissors and surrounded by seven members of Ogden's Chamber of Commerce, Hunt cuts a ceremonial ribbon to mark the opening of the facility. The seven are a subset of the chamber called the "Spikers," whose job it is to welcome industry  industry Ogden's been working hard to recruit for the last 16 years.

A scene showing 25th Street in Ogden, Utah. Mandicoleman.com | Getty Images

Ogden has brought in new businesses, including online retailer Wayfair , Northrop Grumman and the 3-D printing company White Clouds. That was achieved through careful planning of projects funded by tax increment financing and a willingness to go the extra mile for any business considering setting down roots in this city 40 miles north of Salt Lake.

"We had no parking, so went back to them and said, 'We need a whole section of parking for our people,' so they found a whole section of parking and leased it to us," said Hunt. "Then we saw some asphalt that they had used and we asked if we could take that asphalt and they said 'yes.'"

"They may seem like little things but those add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars that are costs we don't have to turn out because they put out a little extra effort to help us out," he said.

The payoff for Ogden, 15 jobs at the facility paying more than $55,000 a year, and a new addition to the city's aerospace industry, one of the three pillars of its economy, along with advanced material firms and outdoor recreation companies.

"Everything we work on is based on two goals: improving income level and improving our tax base," said Tom Christopolus, Ogden's director of community and economic development. Ogden has been working on remaking itself for the last 16 years, continuously tweaking its "Renaissance Plan," which was developed after the city was chosen to host the downhill ski events for the 2002 Olympics. "Things had gotten to the point where the town was so significantly blighted that no one wanted to live here, and then no one wanted to work here," said Christopolus, describing Ogden in the late '90s. "So people started to ask what some of the options were."

One option was selling the city's natural beauty during the Olympics. Ogden butts up against the Wasatch Mountains to the east, and has two rivers running through the city.

"Those events we brought in specifically highlighted our rivers and our trails and our mountains and everything else," said Mayor Mike Caldwell, who at the time was working on the Olympics initiative. "And it really did show the best of of what at that point was a pretty tired community."

So Ogden began selling its lifestyle, and its low cost of doing business to any firm that would listen.

"When we first started we would recruit anyone we could get," said Christopolus. "We wanted to build that economic base."

It was an economic base that was shrinking. Once a railroad hub, Ogden is where the Union and Pacific Railroads were linked in the latter part of the 1800s, but its population started to slide in the 1950s when people began to abandon rail travel for autos and planes.



Data from the Census Bureau show its population fell by more than 23 percent from 1950 to 1990, from 83,319 to 63,909.

So while the city was surrounded by natural beauty, it knew it had to do something to improve its physical appearance. When its revitalization plan began, the city had numerous abandoned and run down buildings and its infrastructure was in need of repair.

To fund improvement projects, it began using tax incremental financing, or TIFs. This is when taxing entities, like schools that reside in the district where the venture is taking place, agree to give up any incremental tax from increased property values for a set period of time. The new revenue is then plowed back into the district to pay for things like fixing roads, tearing down structures or putting in trails. All of this is done with the aim of making the area more attractive to business.





It is a strategy that requires a lot of cooperation from a number of different parties.

"We try to center on one particular goal, which is community improvement," said Christopolus, an Ogden native who left in the '80s but returned nine years ago. "If we're all focused on that goal, the school district benefits, the county benefits, we benefit."

Currently there are over 20 of these TIF-funded projects happening in Ogden, among them the Ogden Business Exchange. It is being built at the site of the city's former livestock exchange. It will be home of some of the city's 30 outdoor recreation companies.





ENVE Composites, a maker of high end bicycle parts, is an anchor tenant. The Business Exchange is being sold as a "lifestyle park" where resident firms can test their products on nearby trails and bike paths. It's expected 400 jobs will be based there.

The Business Exchange is similar to one of Ogden's first projects, when it took over a military depot that was shuttered in 1995 and turned the 1,000 acre parcel into a business park. Over 6,000 people work at The Business Depot's more than 100 companies, including Hershey's and the online insurer Esurance.

Professor Michael Vaughan, who teaches economics at Ogden's Weber State University, said the city has managed its renewal in a smart way.





"Instead of trying to go out and hit a home run and bring in the employer that would bring 10,000 jobs to the area, they've hit a lot of singles and doubles," he said. Ogden now boasts it has the narrowest wealth gap of any major metropolitan area, according to the Census bureau. Still, its median income of $40,937 is below the national average, even as it has climbed 20 percent since 2000.

The city also bears plenty of scars from its troubled past. Mixed in with new housing projects are homes badly in need of a paint and new roofs. Plenty of buildings stand empty, and 23 percent of its residents live below the poverty line.





A ribbon-cutting ceremony at AMRG's new aircraft maintenance facility at Ogden-Hinckley Airport. Jodi Gralnick | CNBC

Nevertheless its earned accolades like being named one of the "Best Cities to Raise a Family" by Forbes (in 2014), and being tapped by Brookings as one of "2015's Best Cities for Advanced Industries."


One of Iran's main shipping companies resumed trading with the West this week after six years, but the Islamic country is still far from being reaccepted by the international community, warns an expert. The Azargoun, which belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and can carry 2,500 standard shipping containers, arrived in Hamburg earlier this week. It marked the reopening of the European Container Line between Iran and Europe, which was suspended in 2010 due to sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe.

A crane loads a shipping container onto a truck at Shahid Rajaee port, some 20 kms west of Gulf port city of Bandar Abbas on February 21, 2016. Behrouz Mehri | AFP | Getty Images

Despite the resumption of trade and shipping following the agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, economic relations between Iran and the West are still far from normal. "We are still pretty far away from full normalization," Torbjorn Soltvedt, head of MENA at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, to CNBC via phone. "What we are seeing is the start of the reintegration of Iran back into the global economy to some extent. But at the same time, you are not really seeing any sort of great influx of investment into Iran yet." Soltvedt said Verisk Maplecroft does not expect a mass influx of investment into Iran in the short term because of risks in the country and the remains of the sanctions regime.
Free bacon and bicycle repairs: Are these the top benefits employees are looking for? Possibly not, but they are among the quirkier ones on offer, according to a survey by Glassdoor. The employment review website singled out 20 companies that offered unusual perks and benefits to U.K. employees in a media release published on Friday. CNBC takes a look at the benefits highlighted by Glassdoor, as well as others on offer in Britain.



Ryan J. Lane | Getty Images

Free food  and beer

Tech companies feature heavily in Glassdoor's list and free food is a bit of a theme. Google offers a range of cuisines at its London office, but Jive Software goes one further, offering "Bacon Thursday" and "Hot Food Friday." Jive's U.K. employees, who are based at a tech campus in Reading, to the west of London, also get beers on tap. In the same vein, Auto Trader UK, a digital vehicle marketplace, has a wine club offering discounted bottles to employees' doors each month. Employees at Skyscanner, a flight comparison search engine, get discounts at the local pub and beauty salon, according to Glassdoor.



Villa in Italy

TransferWise, a money transfer startup, takes staff away on an annual all-expenses paid holiday  perhaps a little like Taylor Swift, who took 125 crew members on holiday to Hamilton Island, Australia as a reward after her "1989" tour. Opus Professional Services, meanwhile, offers a villa in Italy that employees can use for free whenever they like. And if they work hard, rewards include trip to Las Vegas, Miami and the Monaco Grand Prix, according to the recruitment specialist's website. Meanwhile, accommodation crowd-sharing website, Airbnb, offers staff $2,000 in travel vouchers. The John Lewis Partnership, an employee-owned firm operating department stores and supermarkets, offers subsidized holidays at hotels and caravans it owns in the U.K., to places like the Lake District and Brownsea Island in Dorset. Partnership employees also get 50 percent subsidies on tickets to the theater, opera, concerts, exhibitions and museums, up to a maximum amount a year.



Unlimited holiday

The idea of unlimited holiday came to the fore when California-headquartered Netflix said it would not fix a maximum numbers of days that employees could take off, nor track their holidays. Richard Branson, the high-profile British boss of Virgin, subsequently announced in 2014 that his employees would be allowed to take unlimited holiday each year. Visualsoft, an e-commerce services firm, offers unmonitored flexitime as well as unlimited holiday, Glassdoor said.



Necker Island and Richard Branson (inset) Ken Gillham | Getty Images; David Orrell | CNBC

Bicycle repairs
Money is becoming increasingly hard to come by for the tech sector in San Francisco, which may actually be good news for some.

Aaron Peskin, an elected member of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, is standing up to big tech companies and calling on them to be part of the conversation on soaring costs of living and community issues.

A one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco now goes for $3,500 per month, making it the highest in the country.

"It's not rooting against the hometown team, but bringing that team in and having them be part of the solution," Peskin said on CNBC's "Power Lunch". "These billion-dollar companies need to do their fair-share."
Bumblebees chunk light tuna can food. Geri Lavrov | Getty Images

Several recalls were announced this week, including a widespread canned tuna recall involving Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea. The latest list includes: Bumble Bee canned tuna Items recalled: The company is recalling select UPC codes of three types of its tuna, including 5 oz. Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Water, 5 oz. Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Oil, and four pack of 5 oz. Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Water. Why: The canned tuna may be contaminated with spoiled organism or pathogens as a result of a change in the regular commercial sterilization process. Consuming the product could lead to life-threatening illness. More details: The recall includes a total of 31,579 cases, which were produced in February 2016 and distributed nationally. Consumers are advised to discard the tuna. For more information about the recall or refunds, consumers may contact Bumble Bee's Consumer Affairs team. Read about the full recall here.

Chicken of the Sea canned tuna Items recalled: Tri-Union Seafoods issued a voluntary recall of Chicken of the Sea brand 5 oz. canned Chunk Light Tuna in Oil and 5 oz. canned Chunk Light Tuna in Water. Why: Similar to the Bumble Bee recall, the product may have been undercooked as the result of an equipment malfunction. The tuna may contain spoiled organisms or pathogens, which may result in life-threatening illness. More details: The recall includes a total of 2,745 cases, the equivalent of 107,280 cans of tuna. The cans were sold nationwide between February 10 and March 16, 2016. The UPC code is 0 4800000195 5 and the "best if used by date" reads 2/10/19. Consumers can return the product to the store where they bought it for a full refund. No illnesses have been reported to date. Read more about the recall here.

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Ashland Food Co-Op's Organic Raw Macadamia Nuts Items recalled: The company is recalling its Organic Raw Macadamia nuts sold in random weight bags and packaged in clear cellophane bags. Why: The macadamia nuts may been contaminated with salmonella, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections. More details: The macadamia nuts were sold at the retail store in Oregon only. Consumers who have purchased the product between January 5 and February 4 should not eat the nuts and return them to Ashland's Food Co-op for a full refund. No illnesses have been reported to date. Read more about the recall here.



Texas Star Nut & Food Co.'s Natural Pistachio Kernels and products containing pistachio kernels Items recalled: The company is expanding a previous recall issued March 10, 2016 to include additional products, such as Nature's Eats Survival Mix, Southern Grove's Go Raw, and Fresh Choice's Survivor Mix. Why: The products may be contaminated with salmonella, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections. More details: Consumers who have purchased one of the products are advised to return it to the retail location to receive a refund. The listed products were distributed to nationwide between August 13, 2015 and February 24, 2016. No illnesses have been reported to date. Read more about the recall here.

Arrow International Intra-Aortic Balloon Catheter Kits and Percutaneous Insertion Kits Items recalled: The company issued a recall of several device models of its Intra-Aortic Balloon Catheter Kits and Percutaneous Insertion Kits. Why: The kits are used for patients with weak hearts or insufficient blood flow. The device is inserted through the femoral artery into the aorta. During insertion, one part may separate from the other, causing significant bleeding. More details: The Food and Drug Administration has received 13 medical device reports detailing serious adverse health effects. One death has been connected to the recalled product. Arrow International sent an "Urgent: Medical Device Recall" letter, instructing health care professionals to discontinue use of the devices. Read more about the recall here.

GE Lighting high-intensity LED replacement lamps Items recalled: GE Lighting issued a recall of its high-intensity LED lamps. Why: The company has received four reports of the lamp separating from the lamp base, posing an impact hazard. More details: The lights are designed for use in lighting fixtures for warehouses, schools, and gymnasiums. The lights were sold at authorized dealers and electrical distributors nationwide from September 2014 through December 2015. The cost was between $250 and $300. Consumers are instructed to contact the company for a free repair kit and installation guide. No injuries have been reported. Read more about the recall here.

Ikea Gothem lamps Items recalled: The Swedish company is recalling all three models of Gothem lamps, including two table lamps and one floor lamp. Why: The lamps are being recalled due to some of the cables being damaged during manufacturing. The damaged cables expose the metal body of the lamp, posing a potential shock hazard. More details: The lamps were sold in the U.S. and online between October 2015 and February 2016. The lamps can be returned to any Ikea store for a full refund. Read more about the recall here.



Back view of Maserati Ghibli. Marco Destefanis | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images
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When Detroit went bankrupt in 2013, investors were shocked to learn that the city had promised pensions worth billions more than anyone knew  creating a financial pileup that ultimately meant big, unexpected losses for Detroit's bondholders. Now, researchers at Citigroup say the groundwork has been laid for similar conflicts across the developed world: Governments have promised much more than they can most likely pay to current and future retirees, without revealing the disparity to investors who bought government bonds and whose investments could be at risk.

Twenty countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have promised their retirees a total $78 trillion, much of it unfunded, according to the Citigroup report.

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That is close to twice the $44 trillion total national debt of those 20 countries, and the pension obligations are "not on government balance sheets," Citigroup said.



Protestors rally in front of the U.S. Courthouse in Detroit, October 28, 2013. Getty Images

"Total global government debt may be three times as large as people currently think it is," the researchers warned, after gathering as much information as they could about various government pension plans and adjusting the amounts where necessary, to permit fair comparisons with bond debt. Getting each country's unstated pension obligations down on paper, along with the sovereign debt, showed that some countries have almost certainly promised more than they can deliver.

"If you owed student loans of $44,000, and the bank called you up and said, 'actually you owe $134,000,' you'd fall off your chair," said Charles E. F. Millard, head of pension relations at Citigroup. "That's what this is."

He said he did not expect all the overextended governments to experience sudden head-on collisions between bondholders and pensioners the way Detroit did. Instead, he said many of those countries  as well as many American states, cities, school districts and other jurisdictions  would keep struggling along, cutting more and more services, raising taxes and wondering where all the money was going.

"It's not going to be, for most cities and states, some enormous collision or explosion," he said. "It's going to be 10 fewer cops, or three fewer teachers and 'Let's fix the bridge three years from now.' "



One of the report's recommendations was that governments start disclosing the amounts promised to retirees, "so that everyone can see them." Government officials are in many cases loath to do that because they believe it will harm their credit ratings, driving up borrowing costs. And the unions that represent public workers believe calls for full disclosure mask a broad anti-labor campaign to cut benefits.

The disclosure issue has grown increasingly contentious in Washington. Republican members of Congress are planning to introduce a bill in the next few days that would require states and local governments to measure their pension obligations using the method now universally used to price municipal bonds. States and cities currently report their pension obligations as calculated by actuaries, and actuarial numbers can greatly distort economic reality.

It was actuarial numbers in Detroit, for instance, that obscured the value of that city's pension promises before the bankruptcy.

States have long argued that as constitutional sovereigns, they cannot be forced to meet any federal pension disclosure requirements. Republican lawmakers are generally sympathetic to states' rights issues, but they are also worried about being asked to bail out troubled pension systems in places like Illinois and Puerto Rico.

Since the tax-exempt treatment of municipal bonds is, in fact, a federal subsidy, they have written the bill to require full, market-based pension disclosure only in connection with tax-exempt borrowing. If states and cities remain unwilling to reveal their pension obligations, they could still borrow  but they could not market their bonds as tax-exempt. Senate Republicans introduced a similar disclosure measure late last year as part of a package to help Puerto Rico through a huge debt crisis. The island appears not to have nearly enough money to pay both its bond debt and its retirees' pensions, but up-to-date information about its pension system does not exist in the public domain.

For years there have been frequent reports of pension systems rife with pay-to-play deals, improper payouts, overly risky investment strategies and other problems. But the Citigroup researchers looked beyond such scandals and depicted the worldwide accumulation of giant, invisible pension obligations as a matter of simple demographics. Most developed countries had baby booms after World War II, and their populations are now aging and enjoying significant gains in health and longevity. When the boomers first joined the work force, they provided a big supply of labor to support what was then a much smaller population of retirees drawing pensions. Those favorable demographics made it seem that government pension systems could operate forever with minimal funding  or in many cases, no funding at all.


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Apple is widely expected to unveil a new 4-inch iPhone, a new 9.7-inch iPad, new Apple Watch bands and some software updates at an event Monday at its Cupertino, California, headquarters. The new, smaller phone  likely called the iPhone 5SE  is expected to be the headline release of the event.

Monday's affair is smaller in scale than most of the company's product launches, and analysts consider it secondary to a much bigger debut expected later in the year. "We expect the March event to be largely incremental as the bigger announcements, particularly the redesigned iPhone 7, are expected to come in the September event," said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

The phone likely to be introduced Monday will replace the iPhone 5S and feature a similar look to the 6 and 6S models, with many of the same components as the 6S, said Munster. He has a "buy" rating on the stock and a $172 price target. This will be the first time Apple has released an iPhone on two separate occasions in the same year. The 5SE will likely have metal casing, multiple colors, a 12-megapixel camera, A9 processor, Apple Pay support and Touch ID, said analysts.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani said he expects the 5SE to have a modest financial impact of 2 to 4 percent this fiscal year, with $5.5 billion in sales out of a total of $230 billion in fiscal 2016.

The iPhone 5se

Daryanani estimates that there are 35 million iPhones in the marketplace with 4-inch displays that are at least 3 years old. Many of these iPhone users may simply prefer a smaller screen size, so with the 5SE Apple is giving them a new option, versus risking that they switch to Android, he said. Daryanani has an "outperform" rating on the stock and a $130 price target.



Investor sentiment is split around the 5SE, said analysts. Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang believes that investors are not excited about this new iPhone. "We are also bearish on iPhone 5SE model," he said. Comparable pricing means targeted users will not have enough incentive to buy the iPhone 5SE instead of iPhone 6, he said. Zhang expects Apple to produce 15 million iPhone 5SEs this year. On the other hand, Nomura analyst Jeffrey Kvaal believes the iPhone 5SE has attracted disproportionate attention from investors. iPhone SE, among other products, may prove to be a mild positive but not a major inflection point, Kvaal said. He has a "buy" rating on the stock and $135 price target.

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Daryanani expects the event to be an incrementally positive catalyst for Apple.

"We think the replacement cycle for iPhones has stretched to 27 months versus 23 months (two years ago)," said Daryanani. "Strategies like iPhone upgrade program and iPhone 5SE are levers to shrink the replacement cycle and make the product more accessible to the price-conscious segment of the marketplace."

Expectations on pricing vary widely. Zhang projects the 5SE to be priced at $350, Munster expects pricing to start at $450, Kvaal believes the new device will cost between $400 and $500, and Daryanani speculates that it may be as high as $549. "We anticipate that the price of the iPhone 5SE will be similar to second-hand iPhone 6S in the large emerging markets," said Kvaal.

Analysts agree that the new iPhone is likely aimed at emerging markets. "Overall, we expect the new device may result in some incremental sales and possibly cannibalize some iPhone 6 (midtier) sales, but mostly just replace the current low-end unit sales," said Munster. "As a result, we do not expect the smaller device to result in meaningful changes to our thinking of a 3 percent year-over-year decline in iPhone sales for calendar year 2016," he said.

The 9.7 inch iPad

The new iPad is expected to incorporate some of the features of the iPad Pro, including a Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil stylus compatibility as well as updated core components, said analysts. Those updated internal components are likely to include the processor, camera, speakers and battery.

The iPad accounts for just 10 percent of total sales, so it's far less important than the iPhone, said Daryanani. That said, there is the potential that Apple can expand its share in the enterprise, especially with its IBM and Cisco partnerships, he said. Munster expects iPad sales to decline 14 percent in calendar 2016.

The Apple Watch

The message on Apple's invitation  "Let us loop you in"  may be a tip toward new Apple Watch bands, said Munster. The company is not expected to unveil any updates to the device itself, as many analysts had previously expected. Instead, Apple will likely show off new band colors and styles.

Of course, the Apple Watch is still a very small part of the company's business. Daryanani expects Apple to sell 10 million Apple Watches in calendar 2016. Those sales will account for some $4 billion in sales, around 2 percent of Apple's total sales revenue.

Apple vs. the F.B.I. Getty Images (L) | AP (R)
Over the past year, President Obama has positioned the United States as a good faith partner for Cuba, reopening the U.S. Embassy in Havana and promoting trade and tourism, among other watershed actions. His policies reflect a shift in U.S. perceptions of Cuba, with most Americans  including a majority of Cuban Americans  now favoring normalized relations. According to a recent Florida International University poll, 68 percent of Cuban Americans favor re-establishing diplomatic relations, with even greater numbers among the younger generation. American businesses also want better relations with Cuba, as I saw first-hand during my recent trip there, where I encountered dozens of American businessmen, including a delegation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all interested in exploring more opportunities with Cuba.

Regrettably, despite President Obama's efforts, President Castro has shown no signs of relaxing his repressive policies on human rights, transparency or economic freedom. His intractable stance is rumored to be the reason that Secretary Kerry canceled his trip. In fact, President Castro has repeatedly slammed the United States for maintaining the embargo, including during his first speech to the United Nations last September, even though he knows that his refusal to introduce real reforms means that the chances of lifting the embargo are extremely slim.
President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba on Sunday could be a game changer for U.S. agribusiness to recapture lost market share. Other industries like tourism also stand to benefit from warmer ties with the island nation. "Cuba is not going to just come calling to the United States because we're interested in having a normalized relation," said Paul Johnson, co-chair of the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, a group of about 120 agricultural organizations and businesses seeking to promote trade ties between the two countries. "They have existing partners with other countries from around the world that they have been doing business for a long time. They won't give those up lightly. We need to compete." Currently, Cuba imports around 80 percent of its food, representing a market opportunity of approximately $2 billion annually. The value of U.S. exports was around $700 million in 2008 after several hurricanes impacted Cuba, and last year total sales fell below $200 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Foreign Trade program.

Cuban fruit and vegetable sellers push a handcart of avocados for sale in downtown Havana, Cuba. Machado Noa | LightRocket | Getty Images

The U.S. ag share of the Cuban market peaked at 42 percent in 2009 and by 2014 was down to only 16 percent, according to U.S. government data. The fall in U.S. share is due to credit restrictions imposed on U.S. exporters. Current U.S. law bars American exporters from offering terms of credit, so food or ag products sold to Cuba must be bought on a cash-in-advance basis or through third-party guarantees from foreign banks. "We certainly have a logistical advantage  I mean we're right here and not a very long sail from ports in Florida or all over the Gulf," said David Salmonsen, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "There certainly is potential for selling more ag and food products to Cuba. But we really don't have the trade relationships we'd like, especially direct banking relationships so you can offer letters of credit which is the way trade is normally done." The U.S. once was the leading supplier of bulk commodities, such as rice, wheat and corn, to Cuba. Today, Vietnam is Cuba's largest rice supplier and wheat comes primarily from Canada and the EU. Argentina and Brazil are the largest suppliers of corn to Cuba. In fact, most of Cuba's large ag trading partners, including Canada and France, have provided export credits over the years to Cuba's Alimport, the agency that oversees most food and agribusiness deals. "Business has really dried up from the U.S. because of the credit issue," said Johnson, the ag coalition co-chair who also is president of Chicago Foods International, a U.S. food distributor focused on exporting to the Cuba market. The Chicago businessman said he plans to be in Cuba for Obama's visit.

U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba could reach $1.2 billion annually if financial restrictions and other barriers are eased, according to Texas A&M University economist Parr Rosson, who provided the estimate in testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee last year. Experts also see opportunity down the road for Cuba to ship its own agricultural products to the U.S., including honey, coffee, organic sugar and cigars. The U.S. embassy in Havana reopened in July, and four months later, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack led a trade mission to Cuba. At a conference last month, Vilsack mentioned Cuba, saying that the U.S. should be "dominating" the pork market there but obviously we're not since Canada and to a lesser extent the EU are Cuba's primary pork suppliers. Vilsack is part of a Cabinet delegation traveling to Havana with Obama  the first sitting U.S. president in almost 90 years to visit Cuba. "Throughout history, agriculture has served as a bridge to foster cooperation, and I have no doubt that agriculture will continue to play a powerful role as we expand our relationship with the Cuban people in the coming years," Vilsack said in a statement. In 2014, poultry, meat and related products were nearly half of U.S. ag exports to Cuba, and soybean-related products was another 35 percent of the total in dollar terms. That year Cuba was the eighth-largest export market for U.S. poultry. Still, Cuba represents a relatively tiny market for major pork and poultry producers when compared with Asian markets. "It's a very small country when you think of only 11 million (people)," said Julie Maschhoff, a vice president for Maschhoffs LLC, a family-owned swine production operation based in Carlyle, Illinois. "Our company produces enough pork for 18 million people, so Cuba is not a huge export opportunity. It is more important for free trade to be re-established so Cubans can enjoy a better standard of living." Maschhoff, who visited Cuba last year in a trade mission with a group of businesses, said the current "quality of food in Cuba is disastrous. The chicken and pork that we tasted at some of the best restaurants would never be acceptable to American consumers." She added, "We tasted watermelon that looked lovely in color but had absolutely no flavor because the seeds had been used over and over and over. There had been no new genetic introductions and very little fertilizer. Their food supply has not only dwindled, but it's gone down in quality at the same time."
PHOTO CREDIT: Le Moyne College

SYRACUSE, N.Y.  Le Moyne College has chosen a member of its board of trustees to serve as the schools next provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Father Joseph Marina will begin his duties on Aug. 1.

Marina also previously served as associate provost and interim chair of the department of education at Le Moyne, the school said in a news release posted to its website on Wednesday.

Marina served in that role from 2007 to 2009, the school said in an email response to a BJNN inquiry.

His previous work with Le Moyne also included service on the schools academic-affairs committee.

Marina replaces Thomas Brockelman, who has served as interim provost since 2014, according to Le Moyne.

Dr. Marina brings to Le Moyne a strong and impressive array of academic experiences and credentials, and Im particularly excited by his ability to convey the enduring importance of a liberal-arts education, highlighted in our college core curriculum, at a time when some have challenged its value and relevance, Linda LeMura, president of Le Moyne College, said in the news release. The breadth and depth of his background are extraordinary; he has spent time as an administrator, teacher, trustee and student at institutions that are among the strongest liberal arts traditions in this country, including Boston College, Providence College, Fordham University, St. John's University and Le Moyne College. His versatility, Jesuit training, eloquence and knowledge of Le Moyne will benefit the college significantly, particularly in the areas of admissions and fundraising. Further, his tone and temperament will help advance collaborative governance at Le Moyne.

Marina was sought by four other Jesuit universities and was missioned to Le Moyne after a thorough discernment process with his superiors, Le Mura added.

In addition to serving on Le Moynes board of trustees, Marina also serves in a similar capacity for Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver. He previously served on the boards of trustees of both Canisius College in Buffalo and Xavier High School in New York City, according to Le Moyne.

Additional background

For the past three years, Marina has served as pastor at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York City.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 2004 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2012, according to Le Moyne College.

The Society of Jesus is a Roman Catholic order of priests whose members are known as Jesuits, according to the Jesuits website.

Marina also earned his doctorate in administration and supervision from Fordham University. He also holds three masters degrees.

Marinas previous academic experience also includes serving as the dean of the School of Continuing Education at Providence College; assistant dean for the College of Science and Mathematics at Montclair State University, and assistant dean for Metropolitan College at St. John's University, Le Moyne said.

Besides his administrative duties, Marina also taught as a special lecturer in religious studies at Providence and as a mathematics instructor of St. Johns.

I am honored to have been selected as provost at Le Moyne College, an institution that I truly love, Marina said in the Le Moyne news release. I have devoted my professional life to the organizational improvement of schools, the advancement of teaching and learning, and the personal success of students, faculty, and staff. My experience, particularly by serving in various trusteeships, has helped me stay current with many of the opportunities, trends, and challenges in higher education today. In addition, my work as a Jesuit has added a profound dimension to my role as an educator.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
PHOTO CREDIT: Travis Masons LinkedIn page

SYRACUSE, N.Y.  A Syracuse University (SU) graduate who works at X, formerly Google[x], will be the keynote speaker for the upcoming 2016 annual meeting of CenterState CEO.

Travis Mason, who works in policy and government relations for X, will address the gathering at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter on April 6.

Mason is also a graduate of SUs Maxwell School of Citizenship in Public Affairs. He attended SU between 2002 and 2006, according to his LinkedIn page.

The theme of this years meeting is Disrupt: Challenge the Status Quo, CenterState CEO said in a news release issued Wednesday.

In any industry, change and risk are constants, Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO said in the organizations news release.

To succeed, its not enough to keep pace with change  dynamic businesses must stay a step of ahead of the competition and embrace forward-looking disruption to remain viable and relevant, said Simpson. The innovations taking place at X to advance next generation technologies embody disruptive thinking, and we are excited to have one of our regions very own graduates returning to inspire our audience to think big about how intentional disruption can positively impact their own industries.

Like area businesses, communities also have much to gain from disruptive strategies, Simpson contends.

This is an exciting time for our region as we look to capitalize on the unprecedented investment brought forth by the Upstate Revitalization Initiative, and position ourselves as a leader in groundbreaking industries such as unmanned systems. Yet we also recognize that we have profound community challenges before us, driving the necessity of change and putting us in a unique position to constructively disrupt the status quo. In doing so, we can chart a path toward a stronger future, he added.

Syracusebased CenterState CEO is the regions primary economic-development organization, representing 2,000 companies of all sizes in a 12-county region.

About Mason

In addition to his undergraduate degree from SU, Mason also earned his masters degree in public policy from the University of Michigan. He has also studied at Princeton Universitys Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government, CenterState CEO said.

The CenterState CEO news release describes Mason as a classically trained musician and student of innovation.

For the last five years, he has focused on the Googles work in autonomous technology, renewable energy, and health sciences.

From self-driving cars to airborne wind turbines, Mason works with engineers, regulators, and industry leaders to tackle some of the worlds most challenging problems through innovation, CenterState CEO said.

Before joining Google, Mason worked at Booz Allen Hamilton on government technology products for senior leaders at the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and State.

McLean, Virginiabased Booz Allen Hamilton is a firm that provides management and technology consulting and engineering services, according to its LinkedIn page.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
Boone County high school football regular-season superlatives in 2022

Here are some of our superlatives for Boone County football players at the end of the regular season.
Audrey Mefford, center, enjoys lunch with friends Thursday at Casablanca Restaurant on Madison Avenue, where merchants are trying to stimulate business west of Overton Square.

(Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal

For a price that reflects the time we live in  $20.16  visitors to 32 Madison Avenue businesses on Tuesday and Wednesday will be able buy two-for-one meals, products or services like an hour of an architects time, tours of Ardent Studio, hot yoga for two, glasses frames, 30 minutes of public relations advice or even a nail trim or anal gland expression for the dog.

The Meet Me Along Madison promotion is a creation of the Madison Avenue Business Association to drum up more business.

But even without such schemes, Madison Avenue street life has begun blossoming farther west of the rejuvenated Overton Square.

I think its growing stronger and stronger, said Jed McQuown, the business associations president and the owner of Communication Associates.

He gives partial credit to the bike lanes and on-street parking that started slowing traffic about five years ago.

While Overton Squares lively hub of restaurants, theater and retail fills the east end of Madison, new investment is extending toward the Medical District and Downtown.

I think things are starting to move farther west and not feel like they have to be anchored to the corner of Cooper and Madison, McQuown said.

The venerable Hueys, for example, stands four blocks away from the Square, yet the avenues energy has grown strong enough at its intersection with Tucker that the tavern just punched out extra windows in part so diners can engage more with the street and patio.

We just thought maybe it would open up some more of the lighting and open up more of the restaurant, said Ashley Griffin, Hueys marketing and events coordinator. Be able to look out more on the businesses of Madison.

Maybe to interact more with people on the patio; everybody wants to be on the patio nowadays... And for people on the outside and the inside to be more together, Griffin said.

Casablanca restaurant, west of Hueys another five blocks, built wood decks on two sides of its building when it opened near the corner of Madison and Belvedere about six months ago.

Most of the lunchtime diners on Thursday asked server Ali Zahir for a patio table.

You mix in Mother Nature, it always has an effect on any business, Zahir said. When people are sitting outside and (have) the different views, when a beautiful wind is coming inside and you open all the windows, it really makes people feel great.

The business association started with 15 members in July 2012. Businesses along the avenue had just engaged in battle with others and among themselves over whether to reduce the traffic lanes from four to two to make room for bike lanes and on-street parking.

The city decided to create the bike lanes and parallel parking, which slowed traffic considerably.

The businesses organized to see that other street improvements were made either by the city, the association or individual businesses. Progress has included the painting of utility poles, repair of sidewalks, and removal of litter.

Our goals remain the same, said McQuown, who has been association president three years. To keep the street safe and clean and report back to the city on what needs to happen and change.

Sidewalk repair has been an emphasis. Businesses are required to maintain sidewalks fronting their buildings. Hueys recent renovation, for example, including rebuilding its sidewalk fronting Madison.

The association also just placed five new trash cans along the street. Clean Memphis empties the cans weekly.

The street still has weak spots where parking lots are next to sidewalks or buildings need renovating, McQuown said.

"I'd love to see more gaps filled in,'' he said, "where more of the street is walkable and walking from Cooper to Cleveland is not out of the question.

"No one is going to walk that far (now). But in the future as more things crop up, you could park in the center and walk from one end to the other and see businesses and eat.''

For more about the association and the promotion next week, visit madisonismidtown.com.


By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

Memphis police have arrested a suspect in connection with the deadly shooting of a 51-year-old Navy veteran killed at his home during a robbery earlier this month.

Jeremiah Futrell, 20, has been charged with first-degree murder in the perpetration of theft in the shooting death of Albert Farmer.

Farmer was found dead on March 2 inside his Whitehaven home in the 800 block of West Holmes Road.

Investigators said evidence collected from the scene and stolen items from the victim's home led police to Futrell who was arrested Friday morning.

According to the arrest affidavit, Futrell told police that he and another man went to the victim's home with the intent of "trying to hit a lick'' by robbing the victim.

He told police that as he and the man were about to leave the home, they were confronted by the victim, who was shot multiple times.

The suspects stole one of the victim's vehicles and then went back to the home before his body was discovered and stole another vehicle and several other items from the home that they sold and split the profits, according to the affidavit.

Futrell will be in court Monday on the charge.
Smoke and fire pour from what appears to be an industrial building on Deadrick Avenue. (Daniel Connolly/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE March 18, 2016 - A hazardous materials fire burns at a commercial building in the 2200 block of Deadrick Friday afternoon. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal) March 18, 2016 - Memphis Fire on the scene of a hazardous materials fire at a commercial building in the 2200 block of Deadrick Friday afternoon. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

A chemical flowing from a storage tank caught fire at a biofuels plant in a Memphis neighborhood Friday, creating a big blaze that caused employees to flee, prompted a nearby school to keep children indoors and forced some firefighters to go through decontamination procedures.

No injuries were reported in the fire at the Agrileum plant on Deadrick Avenue, near the intersection of Lamar and Airways in South Memphis.

The company's website says it produces biodiesel from vegetable oil, animal fats and processed used cooking oil. The person listed on Agrileum's website as company president, Brandon Sheley, said he'd retired at the end of 2015 and didn't have information on the fire. He declined to provide contact information for current company leaders.

The fire was reported shortly before 2 p.m., fire department spokesman Lt. Wayne Cooke said. Employees evacuated and the fire department checked nearby houses to make sure residents left, too. Students at nearby Magnolia Elementary School were ordered to remain indoors temporarily and parents were briefly told not to pick up their children.

The chemical that caught fire was methanol, which is used in the process of making biodiesel, Cooke said. The flammable liquid somehow escaped a 2,500-gallon tank and began burning on the floor.

Cooke said the material is "toxic if inhaled or if it gets on the skin it can potentially cause burns." Firefighters who were exposed to the methanol had to go through decontamination procedures, he said.

He said the fire was located behind several tanks and difficult to access, which meant it took a long time to control: about one hour, 20 minutes.

During that time, smoke and flame poured out of what appeared to be an industrial building. A police officer ordered reporters and onlookers on Deadrick to move back to Airways.

The smoke changed colors, ranging from thin and brown, to white like a cumulus cloud, and black like a thundercloud. More emergency vehicles arrived, including a trailer marked Hazardous Materials Decon Trailer.

One person who lives close to the plant is Darrell Harris, 27. Shortly before 4 p.m., he was waiting near Airways for permission to go back to his house, along with his wife, mother-in-law and his 3-year-old son, Devin, who grabbed onto his dad's hand and swung from it.

Harris said the family had moved into the house last year and didn't realize they were near something potentially hazardous. "It's kind of weird. ... For a minute we didn't even know they was making gas right there." He said a total of six children live in the home along with him and his wife.

A total of 37 pieces of fire and rescue equipment responded, and Airways was temporarily blocked to prevent vehicles from running over a fat yellow fire hose that stretched across the street.

Cooke said Friday evening that the fire department would stay on the scene for cleanup.
Tate withdraws support from bill

By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  State Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris of Memphis has asked the state attorney general for an advisory opinion on the constitutionality of the municipal de-annexation bill, now scheduled for a Senate floor vote on Monday.

Also Thursday, Sen. Reginald Tate, D-Memphis, formally withdrew his support for the de-annexation bill, citing substantial changes to it since he signed on as the bill's only Democratic co-sponsor. Tate had told reporters Wednesday he probably would vote against the bill as a result of those changes.

Tate said he supported the original bill filed last year because it applied to a few recently annexed communities including Southwind, where he lives, and Windyke in Shelby County. But it was amended in the House to include areas annexed as far back as 1998.

"I understand the concerns of my constituents in District 33 who want the right to have their voices heard by referendum, but I must take into consideration the implications the newly amended legislation would have on Memphis and Shelby County as a whole," Tate said. "After giving it much thought, I cannot support the bill in its current form."

Harris, the Senate Democratic leader, said in a letter to Attorney General Herbert Slatery on Thursday that language in the bill and comments made by its sponsors during Monday's House debate "suggests that the purpose of the bill is retribution against the City of Memphis" and the four other cities which the bill allows citizens to de-annex themselves from: Knoxville, Chattanooga, Kingsport and Cornersville.

Harris, a University of Memphis law professor, cited the portion of the bill that attempts to justify why it limits de-annexation to those five cities: because the Legislature "finds the citizens (of those cities) have experienced the most egregious forms of annexation and have no other reasonable course to redress their grievance other than to petition for a vote" to de-annex themselves from their cities.

The Tennessee Constitution requires most bills to generally apply statewide unless the Legislature finds some legally valid purpose to limit their application, which occurs frequently. During the House debate, the House sponsor, Rep. Mike Carter, opposed a Memphis lawmaker's attempt to delete the "most egregious" phrase from the bill by arguing that without it, the bill is "patently unconstitutional."

Harris said in the letter that Memphis' annexations have been upheld in the courts as legal under the provisions of Tennessee law in effect at the time. "In light of these facts, I would respectfully ask that your office ... respond to the following question: Is it lawful and constitutional to approve a law that takes arguably punitive action against the City of Memphis and a handful of other communities on the basis of retribution, some claim of misconduct, or other claim of egregious behavior related to the city's lawful action?"

Harris did not ask specifically whether a bill that limits a new process for de-annexation to five cities, for whatever reason, is constitutional.

Slatery's spokesman could not be reached for comment but opinions often take weeks to prepare. If an opinion isn't issued by Monday afternoon, opponents are likely to ask to delay a vote on the bill until it is.
A blighted property located at 2869 Nathan in Binghampton. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Linda A. Moore of The Commercial Appeal

There are 13,000 structures and vacant lots in Memphis that qualify as blighted, according to an estimate by local anti-blight advocacy group Neighborhood Preservation Inc.

Among them are thousands abandoned houses that become havens for criminals as well as multistory apartment buildings where children sometimes play.

Thursday marked a new era in blight eradication with the official unveiling of the Memphis Neighborhood Blight Elimination Charter, a document that will serve as a guide for greater Memphis in the ongoing fight to purge the city blight.

Dozens of public, private, civic and business leaders contributed to its creation, work that was coordinated by NPI and its leader Steve Barlow and lauded during Thursday's Memphis Blight Elimination Summit.

The charter's vision statement notes that "Every neighborhood in Memphis and in Shelby County has the right to be free from the negative impacts and influences caused by vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties."

There is a human factor to blight, said Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, the keynote speaker at the summit.

"These people deserve to live in a clean, safe neighborhood," Strickland said. "That's why the work is so important to all of us."

Even with the charter in place and the collaborated efforts underway, the widespread growth of blight took time and clearing the city of blight will take time as well.

"It takes unified work, measuring results and holding people accountable," Strickland said. "And it's going to take years to succeed."

Blighted properties cost communities money in uncollected taxes and depressed property values for occupied properties nearby, said county trustee David Lenoir.

A Cleveland, Ohio study estimated the decrease in property value at about 10 percent for occupied properties within 5,000 feet of blighted ones.

Most of the 4,500 properties in the Shelby County Land Bank are in Memphis, said county Mayor Mark Luttrell, who realized during his time as county sheriff that blight impacts every aspect of life for those who live nearby.

Shelby County government will commit as part of the fiscal 2017 budget an additional $1 million toward blight elimination, Luttrell said.

The coordinators of the blight elimination charter were assisted by national experts Kermit Lind, clinical professor of law emeritus at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University and Joe Schilling, senior research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.

Memphis, they said, is among those cities leading the nation in its coordinated effort to fight blight.

The summit included breakout sessions with environmental court Judge Larry Potter, Memphis City Beautiful executive director Eldra White, Memphis code enforcement officials and on the city's nonprofit land bank.

Going forward, the charter has set up the framework and a Blight Elimination Coordinating Team has already begun to develop and execute an action plan, Barlow said.

Although there is the charter, the coordinating team and the committed will of political leaders, government can't do it all, he said.

Citizens, neighborhood groups and businesses must do their part to turn around their own communities.

"It's not just that the government won't. It can't possibly fix this. It's huge," Barlow said. "It's just too big of a problem for any one entity, any one government, any one anyone to fix."
Republican Sen. Randy McNally, seated, looks at proposed redistricting maps in the Senate chamber in Nashville, on Friday, Jan. 13, 2012.(AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)

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By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  State Sen. Randy McNally of Oak Ridge confirmed Friday that he's running to succeed Sen. Ron Ramsey as Senate speaker and lieutenant governor next year.

Ramsey announced Wednesday he won't run for re-election to the Senate this year. The selection of the next speaker  only the third since 1971  will take place first within the Senate Republican Caucus after the November legislative elections.

Given the GOP's Senate supermajority  currently 28-5 over Democrats  whoever wins the caucus's nomination is virtually certain to be elected speaker by the full Senate when the next General Assembly opens its two-year run next January.

If a majority of fellow Republicans elect him, McNally would be the first speaker of either legislative chamber from the Knoxville area in modern Tennessee history. His 5th senatorial district covers all of Anderson and Loudon counties, a strip of Knox County along the entire Knox-Anderson border and a substantial wedge of North Knoxville.

Geography plays a much smaller role than it did when rural West Tennessee Democrats controlled the Legislature from the 1970s through most of the first decade of the 2000s. Instead, Republicans will likely consider McNally's seniority and loyalty.

He's the longest-serving current member of the Legislature  elected to the House in 1978, then the Senate in 1986 where's he's midway through his eighth four-year term. He's been chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee since Ramsey wrested the speakership from Democrat John Wilder in 2007 and appointed McNally its chairman.

McNally said he wants to continue Ramsey's legacy. "Anybody following Ron Ramsey, it's going to be difficult," McNally said Friday. "I'm planning on running for speaker. I had to think long and hard and I did talk with Speaker Ramsey and I have talked with every member of the caucus.

"I want to make sure that the transition would be smooth and that we continue what he's done over the last 10 years  in being fair to and valuing and maximizing the potential of all members of the senate, keeping the state in good fiscal condition, keeping taxes low, doing what we can to promote jobs in Tennessee. A big part of that is having a great educational system," he said.

McNally is one of five Republicans likely considering running and one of them, Sen. Bo Watson, R-Chattanooga, told NashvillePost.com that he'll back McNally.

Watson is vice chairman of the finance committee and would be in line to replace McNally as chairman if McMally moves up to speaker.

Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, said it's too early to say whether he's running. Other potential candidates are GOP Caucus Chairman Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro and Commerce Committee Chairman Jack Johnson, R-Franklin.

The speaker is elected every two years. McNally, 72, said he'll evaluate whether to run for another four-year Senate term in 2018 and if he does, that would likely be his last. If his career plays out that way, he could serve up to six years as speaker, then free up the coveted second-ranking post in state government.

It would be the shortest tenure for a speaker in nearly 50 years: Wilder was speaker for a record 36 years; Ramsey for 10. Before Wilder, no Senate speaker served more than six years and most served only two.
Civil rights pioneer Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks, right, and wife Frances Hooks, left, are celebrated during a ceremony renaming the Central Library on Poplar in his honor in October 2005. (Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal files)

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By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

Through their estate, notable Memphians and civil rights leaders Ben and Frances Hooks donated $273,000 to the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change on Friday.

The institute was founded by Benjamin Hooks and the Department of Political Science and College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis in 1996 and serves to teach, study and resolve civil rights issues.

"Their financial gift to the Hooks Institute symbolizes their never-ending support, not just to this university ... but to the welfare of all," David Rudd, university president, said.

Hooks Institute director Daphene McFerren said the donation will be used for future programs.

Frances Hooks died in January. Ben Hooks died in 2010.

Ben Hooks was the first African-American commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission and later served as executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992.

Frances Hooks began her 24-year career as an educator in Memphis but later served as secretary and adviser to her husband, whom she called "the Catch of Memphis." She was co-founder of Women in the NAACP (WIN), a program which addresses civil rights issues affecting women and children.

"Educators, authors, leaders and community organizers have been to the institute," said Patricia Hooks Gray, their daughter. "They have given their knowledge, they have given their advice, and they have given solutions to solve problems within the communities. Now we know that those things cost money, and that's why were here today, to get a gift that was left by them for the institute...I believe that the gift will bring about social change."
SHARE The Commercial Appeal files A 1,400 pound mass of cut crystal inched its way ceiling-ward on March 18, 1952, as Bellevue Baptist Church continued preparations for moving into its $1,200,000 sanctuary on April 27. The 24-foot-long chandelier  one of the 12 largest in the nation  contains 9,000 cut crystal pieces. The new building is just north of the church at 40 North Bellevue.

March 18

25 years ago: 1991

Restaurateur Herb Goldstein expects his Chernobyl Burger  a burger with chili  to be a hot item during the "Catherine the Great" exhibition. And he won't be surprised if menus for his catered parties lean toward the stroganoff. Either way, Goldstein, president of Public Eye Catering Co., foresees at least $500,000 in food sales during the five-month exhibition of Russian artifacts at Memphis Cook Convention Center. His restaurant at the exhibition hall and catering operation is one of dozens of businesses that will benefit from the city's Wonders Series exhibition, from carpet layers to electricians to the more subtle benefits that Delta Air Lines and Federal Express Corp. predict for investments as sponsors.

50 years ago: 1966

They were supposed to have been cubs. They weren't, unless they grew pretty fast on the boat. No matter. The important thing is they are three of the finest looking polar bears you'll ever see. And Overton Park Zoo has them. "Their coloring is great. Their teeth look good, and they're in splendid shape. I feel just great about the whole thing," Zoo director Robert H. Mattlin said yesterday. Dutch animal dealer Frans Van den Brink sold the Zoo the bears for 50 per cent off their total value ($3,500) to replace the three bear cubs that died soon after arrival last summer.

75 years ago: 1941

DETROIT  Hank Greenberg, Detroit Tigers' slugging outfielder, who received the "most valuable player award" last year, has been classified 1A and may be in the Army before the 1941 season is more than a few days old.

100 years ago: 1916

In the Sheriff Reichman ouster suit, counsel for Mr. Reichman objected to everything which could throw any light on the defendant's motives for not enforcing the law.

125 years ago: 1891

Commissioner Pettit was seen yesterday gravely inspecting a big hole in Jefferson Street, evidence that he has already taken a deep interest in the little things which go to make up the big leaks in an administration like this.
The Boxmasters, featuring Billy Bob Thornton, are expected to perform in Bartlett on Aug. 27

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By Clay Bailey of The Commercial Appeal

Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters are scheduled to perform at the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center in August as part of the suburban facility's 2016-17 season.

The contract for the Aug. 27 performance is on Tuesday night's Board of Mayor and Aldermen consent agenda. Mayor Keith McDonald has already signed the agreement, but it needs board approval.

The show is part of the theater's Legend Series, where BPACC brings in a big-name artist or two as a draw for season subscribers, who will have first shot at tickets for the show. Jason Sykes, BPACC director, said any tickets available after subscriber priorities probably will not be available for the general public until August.

The theater has 350 seats. The contract shows tickets at $45, with sponsors covering the balance of the $20,000 contract.

Sykes said he will announce a second artist in the Legends Series later. Negotiations with that performer are not final.

Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters has gained attention because of Thornton's reputation as an actor, but "his real passion is with music," Sykes said.

According to the group's website, the Boxmasters are "an American roots-rock band of seasoned musicians whose sound is rich in rhythm and story." Formed in 2007, the group has released four albums, the latest -- "Somewhere Down the Road" -- was released last April.
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By Stephen Bush, Special to Viewpoint

We all believe in the idea of justice. But too often, we think of justice as an outcome  an arrest, a conviction, a sentence.

When that doesn't happen, we can feel that justice has not been served. But real justice isn't about outcome. It's about process.

It's about a defense and prosecution, equally zealous, working to protect the integrity and fairness of our criminal justice systems. In our community and in our country, justice is still a radical idea  but one worth striving for, because from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore, Maryland, we've seen the outcry when the integrity and fairness of the criminal justice system are compromised.

In Memphis, we have been struggling with the idea of justice for a long time. It was certainly a radical idea in 1917 when Memphian and Tennessee state Sen. Samuel O. Bates introduced legislation that created the first public defender office east of the Mississippi River, and only the third in the nation, right here in Shelby County.

Nearly 50 years later, Memphis native Abe Fortas stepped before the U. S. Supreme Court and argued that you cannot have a fair trial unless the defendant has an attorney. The court unanimously agreed, and on March 18, 1963, declared the right to counsel fundamental to fairness.

This watershed decision in Gideon v. Wainwright led to the establishment of public defense systems across the country.

Today is the anniversary of that decision, and we celebrate those who struggle to keep its promise that every person facing loss of liberty has the right to an attorney.

The lawyers and other professionals who provide that zealous defense in Shelby County will step forward 40,000 times this year to fight for our clients. I recognize that many in the justice system face a shortage of resources in this time of mass incarceration, but today I honor those dedicated to the often thankless work of public defense.

We got it right here nearly 100 years ago when visionary leaders embraced the radical idea that people facing incarceration in Shelby County deserved the help of an attorney, regardless of ability to pay  and they got it right decades before the U.S. Supreme Court demanded the same for all Americans.

Abe Fortas got it right, too, and may have said it best. In 1967, by then an associate Supreme Court justice, he wrote in Kent v. U.S.: "The right to counsel is not a formality. It is not a grudging gesture to ritualistic requirement. It is the essence of justice."

Today, across the country, public defenders and their supporters will celebrate the Gideon decision and honor this service that is the essence of justice. We will hold events in offices and communities and will share on social media with the hashtag #PublicDefenseDay.

We have worked together with many of our colleagues across the country to plan this, because for too long those working in public defense have done so in the shadows. Just as our clients often live on the margins of society, the work of our lawyers, investigators and professionals is usually hidden and unappreciated.

Celebrate Public Defense Day with us. Know that you have some of the finest lawyers in the country fighting each day for justice, right here at the law offices of the Shelby County Public Defender.

Be proud this community pioneered this right. Today and each day, we ask you to stand beside our public defenders. As we begin our second century of public defense, we challenge you to work with us to make the idea of justice  not quite so radical.

Stephen Bush is the Shelby County Public Defender. See a video about how public defense started in Memphis at DefendShelbyCo.org.
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By Carl Leubsdorf

Sometimes, the confluence of events provides a significant insight into the future. That's happening this week in Florida and in Cuba, the communist-run island nation just 90 miles off its southeast coast.

Starting Sunday, President Barack Obama will be the first American president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge. Obama will press the diplomatic initiative he launched in 2014 with an eye to keeping Republicans from reversing it if they win the presidential election.

Even before Obama's arrival, Tuesday's Florida Republican primary gave his Cuba opening a significant boost. It did so by rejecting home state presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, the 44-year-old Cuban-American senator who took a hard line against renewed relations. This included blocking Senate confirmation of the experienced diplomat Obama chose as U.S. ambassador to Cuba.

The Florida winner was Donald Trump, the only remaining GOP candidate to back Obama's decision last September to reverse a dead-end, 50-year policy and re-establish ties with Cuba. Trump waffled somewhat in last week's debate, saying he didn't really agree with Obama. But he also said something "should take place" after 50 years, adding, "I want a much better deal to be made."

Trump's GOP rivals opposed Obama's initiative. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Rubio's fellow Cuban-American, said flatly he would reverse Obama's course and again break relations with Cuba. Rubio said he wouldn't extend diplomatic ties until Cuba has free elections, freedom of the press and stops jailing dissidents. Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he won't encourage more American businesses to set up shop in Cuba, a principal aspect of Obama's initiative.

The results showed that, once again, non-politician Trump had a better sense of the electorate than his elected rivals. Though exit polls showed Rubio won strong support from his fellow Cuban-Americans, he ran only even with Trump among other Hispanics and poorly with other voters.

For years, Miami's Cuban-American population was the center of resistance to a U.S.-Cuban rapprochement, but that attitude has changed in recent years. Younger Cuban-Americans don't share the hard-line attitudes of the refugees who came to the United States after Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, ousted Cuba's right-wing dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

Polls in 2014 by Miami's Florida International University and in 2015 by Bendixen & Amandi International showed a solid majority of Cuban-Americans supported restoring diplomatic relations and a slight majority even favored ending the embargo, margins that were even higher among younger Cuban-Americans. Obama carried the Cuban-American vote in 2012.

Indeed, the surprising thing may not be that Obama acted to open up Cuba to American businesses and tourists but that it took so long.

Many expected former President Bill Clinton to take that step after his 1996 re-election, in which he carried Florida. But any chance ended when the Cuban Air Force shot down two planes from a Miami-based humanitarian group.

After 2000, some Texas business figures thought President George W. Bush favored opening Cuba to American businesses. But crucial support in his disputed victory in Florida from anti-Castro Cuban-Americans and the influence of his brother, then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, precluded it.

After the 2014 mid-term elections, Obama took advantage of his increased freedom as a second-term president to re-establish diplomatic relations, expand tourist access and encourage American companies that have long eyed the potential of the Cuban market.

Earlier this week, the administration took further steps to ease barriers to business investment and tourist travel to Cuba. News reports indicate the administration will allow Starwood to operate hotels there and AT&T to complete a roaming agreement with Cuba's state-run telecommunications company.

In addition, three major American publishers and trade groups have petitioned the White House to end the embargo on books and other educational materials.

Besides continuing Republican resistance, among its candidates and in Congress, the principal sour note accompanying Obama's action is the Cuban government's failure to ease restrictions on dissidents, improve the dire human rights climate and allow free elections.

But the administration believes an increasing influx of American businesses and tourists  visits by Americans rose 77 percent last year  will inevitably force the regime's liberalization, just as it happened a generation ago in once communist-dominated Eastern Europe.

Ironically, the premise of Rubio's presidential campaign was that he represented the future, that "yesterday is over and we're never going back." But this week in Cuba, Obama is the future and Rubio the past.

Carl Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Contact him at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.
Millions of Android devices are at risk yet again after researchers found a new way to exploit an older vulnerability that was previously patched by Google.

NorthBit, based in Herzliya, Israel, published a paper outlining Metaphor, a nickname for a new weakness they found in Stagefright, Android's mediaserver and multimedia library.

The attack is effective against devices running Android versions 2.2 through 4.0 and 5.0 and 5.1, NorthBit said.

The company said its attack works best on Google's Nexus 5 with stock ROM, and with some modifications for HTC's One, LG's G3 and Samsung's S5.

The attack is an extension of other ones developed for CVE-2015-3864, a remote code execution vulnerability which has been patched twice by Google.

The security company Zimperium found the original Stagefright flaws in early 2015, which affected millions of devices. Google has since had to repeatedly issue patches and fixes for problems in Stagefright that researchers continue to find.

Zuk Avraham, CTO and founder of Zimperium, said via email his company withheld publishing a second exploit it developed for Stagefright due to the risk it posed and the large number of devices that could still be affected.

But NorthBit's research paper "provides enough details for professional hacking groups to complete a fully working and reliable exploit," he said.

NorthBit published a video of a successful attack, which requires a bit of social engineering. The victim has to be tricked into clicking on a link and then staying on that Web page for some time while the exploit runs. It can take between a few seconds to up to two minutes for the exploit to finish its work.

In the video, the victim, who is using a Nexus 6, opens a link leading to cat photos, while NorthBit shows the exploit churning away.

On Android versions 5.0 and 5.1, the exploit will bypass ASLR (address space layout randomization), a defense intended to make exploitation more difficult.

NorthBit estimated about 235,000,000 Android devices run versions 5.0 and 5.1, and about 40,000,000 devices run some 2.x version of Android without ASLR.

"Looking at these numbers, it's hard to comprehend how many devices are potentially vulnerable," NorthBit wrote.

Partly in response to danger posed by Stagefright, Google said in August it would move to a monthly patching schedule and work closer with major Android vendors to ensure more prompt patching.

Google will likely quickly issue a patch, wrote Chris Eng, vice president of research with Veracode, in an email. But the distribution of Stagefright patches has been spotty.

"Patching application vulnerabilities is especially challenging for the Android community with the number of different manufactures and carriers charged with the responsibility of issuing patches to devices," Eng said.

Google could not be immediately reached for comment.

Steve Ragan of CSO contributed to this report.
23 May 2022

- Understand the French healthcare system, how you access it and how you are reimbursed - Useful if you are new to the French healthcare system or want a more in-depth understanding - Reader question and answer section Aimed at non-French nationals living here, the guide gives an overview of what you are (and are not) covered for. There is also information for second-home owners and regular visitors.
This weeks scare story is a rarity, in that its author has had the decency to recognise that it was nonsense.

As Iain Dale recounted this morning, when faced with the fact that the EUs importance as a destination for UK exports has been falling as the Eurozone stagnates, Anna Soubry then predicted that Leaving the EU would seem exports fall to almost absolutely zero. That is of course completely untrue  plenty of non-EU countries sell to EU customers under all sorts of different trade terms, even under basic WTO rules.

Its to Soubrys credit that she has conceded that her warning was wrong. But it also says a lot about the pro-EU campaigns state of mind. When presented with facts, their response is increasingly divorced from reality. It isnt an indication of a campaign in good health.
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

My LBC colleague Steve Allen has apparently been broadcasting his wonderment at the fact that I have snapped up Ken Clarkes memoirs for the eye watering sum of 430,000. Except I havent. And I wouldnt.

Dont get me wrong, Id love to publish Ken Clarke, and I am sure he will write a fantastic book. But any publisher who pays 430,000 for a political memoir is off their effing rocker. In this case, its Macmillan. The last publisher to do that was Bloomsbury, which paid around 330,000 for David Blunketts diaries  and they were so idiotic that the deal didnt even include newspaper serial rights! There are some bloody stupid people in publishing nowadays. Blunketts book sold a mere 5,000 copies. Do the maths yourself and you can work out the loss they made.

Macmillan will do the same. The top rate for a newspaper serialisation, unless youre a former Prime Minister, is around the 150,000 mark, so Macmillan have got to make 270,000 from books and rights sales. I dont see that this book has any foreign rights potential at all so, just to break even, the book will need to sell around 150,000 copies.

Not. Going. To. Happen. The deal was hatched by the same agent that Boris Johnson retains, Natasha Fairweather. She apparently got him 500,000 for his desperately average book on Churchill. Sadly, Biteback was offered neither. These sort of advances belong in the 1990s. Publishing has changed a lot since then, although there are clearly one or two people who continue to play the literary agents game.

If I was on the board of Macmillan Id be calling in the commissioning editor and reading him the riot act. And maybe producing a P45. Ken Clarke is a great get  but not at that price. What is the point of commissioning a book when there is a one per cent chance it will make a profit? The worlds gone mad. Still, having said that, I cant wait to read it.

         

So, according to Anna Soubry on Any Questions, if we leave the EU, trade will drop to zero. In case you think I am misquoting here, heres the exchange with Kate Hoey:

Soubry: 44% of our exports which is 290 billion goes into the EU.

Hoey: That has gone down by 10% in the last 8 years.

Soubry: But Kate it will go down to almost absolutely zero if we come out of the EU.

Well, on Budget day I interviewed Anna and asked her if thats what she really believes. Credit to her  she fessed up that it was a ridiculous thing to say and that she had made an error. She sounded quite embarrassed about it. Glad that she did the right thing and didnt try to bluster her way out of it.

          

Lord Ashcrofts 70th birthday party on Saturday night was quite an event. I did wonder how many (and which) politicians would have the balls to attend, following the Prime Ministers displeasure with the Ashcroft/Oakeshott biography of him, Call Me Dave.

Im sure Downing Street has, by now, compiled their little list of those who will be punished in the next reshuffle, but I am not going to help them by naming names here. I asked one Minister if he realised that Number Ten would find out, and this usually totally loyal minister replied that he couldnt give a toss. Is Number Ten losing the fear factor?

Rory Bremner was a superb compere for the evening. Hes really perfected his impressions of both Nigel Farage (who was there) and Boris Johnson. Interestingly Boris and Theresa May were both on prime tables: Boris more so than Theresa. He even had Miss World sitting next to him. There was no sign of the Prime Minister, though. Obviously he had a subsequent engagement. He missed out on being serenaded by Michael Buble.

         

And so to the Budget. I had thought it would be quite a boring Budget, with George Osborne on the back foot, but how wrong I was. There were lots of eyecatching initiatives, and dull it certainly wasnt.

However, the elephant in the room for me was the appalling record of the forecasts that are trotted out on these occasions. Of course economic forecasting isnt an easy game, but youd like to think the OBR might get it right more often than they get it wrong. Even their forecasts from the Autumn statement at the end of November look way off.

This means that the economy has been growing more slowly than expected and has left a big black hole in the Chancellors figures. Osborne rather glossed over that, although he did have the good grace to admit that the debt to GDP ratio would rise this year  unfortunate for a chancellor who has always trumpeted his fiscal rules.

A lot of commentators saw this budget through the prism of a future leadership contest. Im not sure this budget changed much at all. I think most Tory MPs were rather impressed by many of the more eyecatching measures, with the possible exception of the Sugar Levy and also his invocation (after a mere 9 minutes) of Project Fear.

         

On Wednedays Newsnight, Robert Chote of the OBR made an astonishing admission. He said that it had done no economic forecasting for what would happen if Britain left the EU.

Seeing as the referendum looks 50-50 at the moment, Id have thought that this is a major mistake and an abrogation of its responsibilities. If it is true that the Treasury are doing no planning at all, you do have to wonder at that.

If the OBR has done no planning, how can the Chancellor at the same time invoke them in his argument that there would be a protracted period of uncertainty? I think we deserve an answer to that.
Alongside the looming rebellion over disability benefits, theres another battle under way in the Budget debate  this time over the EUs tax on tampons.

Following anger over the issue last Autumn, an alliance of Eurosceptic and feminist MPs, led by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, have tabled an amendment proposing that the Government remove VAT from womens sanitary products.

The Government has tried to head off a rebellion by seeking at the European Council for a VAT exemption to be granted. Theyre evidently hoping that they can turn the attack back on Eurosceptics by demonstrating their much-heralded influence at the top table by doing so.

Unfortunately, the EU never works that quickly  and the very fact ministers must go cap in hand to the EU to beg permission rather highlights the problem with giving up powers to Brussels. As a result, their success is rather limited  apparently that there is general agreement that the EU Commission should bring forward proposals to change the policy, though there is no sign of when that might happen or how long it might take to implement. If it takes all this effort just to get one relatively small change agreed in principle, then what hope is there of the EU ever changing its ways on larger policy issues?

The amendment, therefore, is still tabled. Apparently some Government sources now suggest that Conservative MPs are being rather disloyal in urging their colleagues to vote against the Budget. The would-be rebels counter that they are doing no such thing, and are simply seeking to amend the Chancellors proposals.

I expect the next response from Downing Street will be that what the amendment proposes would be illegal under EU law  in effect, Parliament demanding that the Government breach our international agreements. The problem is that the rebel amendment simply seeks to support what the Government itself says it wants to be able to do.

No doubt therell be more back and forth on the topic before the amendment comes up on Tuesday.
Christian Concern is unhappy about the appointment of David Isaac, formerly the Chair of Stonewall, as the new Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. At one level, its complaint is about Isaac himself. At another, it is about the way in which the Commission itself works and the legislation which it champions is framed.

Christian Concern says that Isaacs record suggests that he will privilege one strand of the Commissions work, namely its duty to treat sexual orientation as a protected characteristic, above another, its duty to treat religion as a protected characteristic. It claims that Nicky Morgan has not only conceded this point in her explanation for appointing him, but has made it a central part of her reasoning for so doing. Under [his] chairmanship, she wrote, the charity successfully lobbied to secure major legislative change, including the abolition of Section 28, the introduction of civil partnerships and gay marriage. He was personally involved in the development of Stonewalls strategy, lobbying parliamentarians and other opinion formers.

But Christian Concerns complaint turns out to be not so much about Isaac as the equalities legislation itself. In a nutshell, this outlines the rights of protected groups but does not address the question of how competing interests are to be balanced when conflicts arise. The Commission and others have therefore, it claims, placed the sexual orientation strand higher up the rights queue than the religion strand, thereby creating a hierarchy of rights that Parliament did not intend when passing the equalities legislation.

Some will agree with Christian Concern about Isaacs appointment and the Commissions workings and some will not. But either way, it is right on one point as a simple matter of fact: the equalities legislation avoids spelling out what is to happen if one strand clashes with another, and the courts are being left to pick up the pieces. If voters want the sexual orientation strand to have priority over the religion strand  or vice-versa for that matter  that is a matter which Parliament should debate and decide. The legislation needs an overhaul.

This in turn raises the question of what form of equalities legislation a Conservative Government believes that Britain should have. The lack of debate about the matter on the centre-right is astonishing, given how central the idea of equality is to political debate in Britain, the importance of the issues involved, and how deeply it affects the electoral fortunes of the Conservative Party. We all support equality before the law, or should. But thereafter, the concept becomes more slippery, since one version of it can clash with another.

For example, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are incompatible, for obvious reasons. The centre-right has usually championed the former and always opposed the latter  which is scarcely suprising, since the latter would be socialism, more or less  though I believe that Tories should oppose inequalities of outcome when they are unjustly achieved. This is the point that Michael Gove was making in his attack on the undeserving richthose who sit on each others remuneration committees and who rig the rules of the free market in their favour.

There is also equality of respect. But whatever your view, there is a big political point here. Discussion about equality of opportunity has a way of being elided into one about equality of outcome  an ambiguity that New Labour rode when it set the tone for much of what has happened. At a time when the mass middle class in the west faces a threat to its living standards, this is perilous for the Conservative Party  especially when it is perceived by many voters as being dominated not only by people who went to private schools in general but to one in particular, namely Eton.

At any rate, the centre-right needs, for reasons both of principle and practice, to revisit the discussion on equality and strip it back to its essentials. Essentially, the debate about equality is, or should be, one about justice. One should not be denied access to housing or work, for example, if one is a member of an ethnic group or gay or Muslim, and so on. So promoting equality can be another way of promoting opportunity  a concept that is probably less contested (though far from easy to realise) and certainly less problematic for the centre-right, where it is also present in its latest form, aspiration. Were the equalities legislation to be revisisted by Parliament, as it should be, it would follow that the Equality and Human Rights Commission should be, too.

What people need is less a quango filling gaps that Parliament has left it, focused largely on the mandate to challenge discrimination and to protect and promote human rights, than one with clearer instructions from Parliament and a mission to champion opportunity  or, as it is sometimes called, social mobility (though see Peter Franklins reservations about the concept).

If instead a Conservative Government leaves the courts and a commission to mediate legislation about equalities, Tory MPs and others cannot complain if the consequence is an Equalities Blob, with Ministers making appointments that they know will please it. Morgan has had a change of heart on same-sex marriage. But note in passing that, under current conditions, it would be impossible for her to do her job as Equalities Minister had she not.
Dr Saibal Jana Arrested In Chhattisgarh

By Countercurrents.org

18 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Dr Saibal Jana, chief physician of Shaheed Hospital at Dalli Rajhara, Chhattisgarh has been arrested. He was picked up late at night by Chhattisgarh police. The hospital was founded Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha led by Late Shankar Guha Niyogi and run by money collected from the workers of the area. Dr. Jena's arrest comes close on the heels of the acid attack on Soni Sori and harrassment of her relatives.

Dr.Saibal Jana was arrested in a case related to the police firing on agitating workers of the Bhilai Industrial Area on 1 July, 1992. Dr Jana was, on that day, among the team of doctors providing medical assistance to trade union activists of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha who were injured. We believe that Dr Janas arrest in this case, after a gap of 24 years, is motivated by sheer vendetta against him by BJP led Raman Singh government, that has an ideological hatred of anyone who stands up for the democratic rights of workers, farmers and ordinary Indian citizens.

Dr Jana has served the people of Chhattisgarh selflessly for over three decades and deserves to be given a national award for his service to humanity. Instead the BJP government in Chhattisgarh is persecuting him, which is a matter of shame for all those who believe in the rule of law, fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution and even basic human decency. All cases against Dr Jana should be withdrawn and he should be released with an apology.

Sign this petition demanding the release of Dr. Jana

The arrest of Dr Jana comes after a series of attack on democratic organisations, activists and journalists in the state. On 20th February, Soni Sori was attacked with an acid like substance.

The Jagdalpur Legal Aid group (Jaglag), currently consisting of lawyers Shalini Gera and Isha Khandelwal were also hounded out of Jagdalpur on the 20th night, an hour before Soni Sori was attacked. Their landlord was picked up and detained in the police station and under threat asked them to vacate their house and office. Jaglag has been providing legal aid to adivasi prisoners under trial in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh since 2013. For the past year and a half, both lawyers were being hounded by the local police. They have been faced with thinly veiled threats at press conferences insinuating that the police are closely monitoring NGOs providing "legal aid to Naxalites". Their clients have been informed that the police are about to arrest them for Naxalite activities. Visiting journalists and researchers have been told that they are a "Naxalite front. The local Bar Association, clearly prompted by the police, took out a resolution on October 3rd 2015 prohibiting them from practicing in the local courts. On their complaint, the State Bar Council of Chhattisgarh passed an interim order allowing them to practice again.

Bela Bhatia, an independent researcher, living in Bastar has similarly been working with Soni Sori and Jaglag on documenting and filing cases of human rights violations and peoples livelihoods. She has also been collecting information on the systematic use of violence by armed personnel and security forces. Bela Bhatia has also been threatened and her landlord is being found for questioning. Ex-Salwa Judum members, under the banner of Samajik Ekta Manch and groups such as the Naxal Pedit Sangharsh Samiti have threatened her along with Jaglag and Soni Sori.

Malini Subramanium, an independent journalist, reporting on issues in Chhattisgarh including the closing down of schools, women and children, brutal violence by security forces against the adivasis, fake encounters and surrenders in the Bastar. The domestic worker in Malinis house was called and kept in the police station till late at night to terrorize her into implicating the journalist of being Naxalite. Her landlord was similarly threatened by the police into asking her to vacate the house. Malini, fearing for the safety of those who have always stood by her, left Jagdalpur on 19thFebruary.




Bulldozing Public Hearing On Bhadradri Thermal Power Plant

Press Release

18 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The Human Rights Forum (HRF) takes strong exception to the manner in which the environmental public hearing was held on 17th March for the proposed 1080 MW Bhadradri Thermal Power Plant near Manuguru in Khammam district. The Telangana government has sought to, and managed to, bulldoze the public hearing by whatever means.

Both the HRF Khammam district president D Adinarayana and district general secretary K Venkatanarsaiahwere taken into preventive detention by the district police this morning. The police told them that they had instructions from above to do this. Evidently, the governmentsintention was to prevent HRF functionaries from participating in the public hearing. This is shameful and highly objectionable. Over the past few days, in several villages of Pinapaka and Manugurumandals, the police have created an atmosphere of fear among those who might have misgivings about the desirability of the project.



On Thursday, local people were selectively allowed entry into the public hearing arena near Sitarampuram village and the whole area was teeming with police.A public hearing is part of an environmental process where people are given a chance to render suggestions, proffer opinion and raise objections about the concerned project. It must be held in a free, fair and transparent mannerand not by intimidating people and preventing some of them from even participating. This defeats the very purpose of public consultation and reduces the hearing to a meaningless exercise. Clearly, the public hearing process has been vitiated in this case and cannot be construed as a genuine public consultation.

In fact, this is a project that is mired in serious illegalities. In open contempt of environmental law, the project proponents -- theTelangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited (TSGENCO) --had taken up construction activity for the thermal plant last year without the mandatory statutory clearances. The HRF brought this to the notice of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) which ordered that all construction activity be stopped. The project proponent, however, disregarded this order and in open contempt went ahead with the construction. Subsequently, a site inspection this January 9 by officials of the Chennai Regional Office of the Ministryof Environment and Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) confirmed the illegal worksbeing undertaken. It stated that the project proponent was going ahead with the construction activities without obtaining prior environmental clearance from the MoEF&CC and consent for establishment from the State PCB.

Commencing construction without mandatory clearances is a criminal offence under Section 15, Section 21 and Section 44 of Environmental Protection Act, Air Act and Water Act respectively. The TSGENCO has to be made liable in accordance with the above statutory norms. By not taking this mandatory criminal action against TSGENCO and allowing it to further continue with the process of obtaining the environmental clearance in actuality amounts to violation of the above laws by the MoEF itself.

Moreover, in villages of Pinapaka and Manugurumandalsthat are likely to be impacted by the project, the local people have no proper access to information related to the project which is an essential pre-requisite to a public hearing. Unless and until the issues which are relevant for the environmental clearance of the project are made public in a form intelligible and accessible to the people likely to be affected one way or other by the project, a public hearing will be a mere formality, even a farce.

The Environmental Impact Assessment Study (EIA report) in English which runs into 702 pages has not been made available in Telugu in a comprehensive form to the local people. A mere summary of 12 pages in Telugu cannot do full justice and will not be sufficient for the people to understand the environmental impact and take an intelligent stand in the matter. In the normal course, a Telugu translation of the full EIA report should have been made available to each village, and officials of the Revenue Department as well as the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB) made themselves available to the people to explain matters to them and clear their doubts. Only then can a meaningful public hearing be held. None of this has happened. Even the EIA report as it stands does not reflect the full reality of the environmental impact.

We demand that the MoEF&CCintervene and stop this farce. The plant should be delisted by the Ministry and criminal proceedings must be initiated under the Environmental Protection Act against concerned officials for the brazen illegalities committed.



VS Krishna

(HRF general secretary, TS&AP)

S Jeevan Kumar

(HRF president, TS&AP)






Printer Friendly Version 'Bharat Mata' of RSS Is Not Our Democratic-Secular India By Shamsul Islam 18 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org Photo Credit: Indialocation.in The Hindutva camp led by RSS despite its anti-national, anti-egalitarian and de-humanized world view and ideological commitments survives and thrives due to idiotic and devoid of common sense statements of characters like the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader from Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi. RSS knows it very well that Hindutva flag-bearers betrayed glorious freedom struggle against the British rule and its credentials about loyalty to a democratic-secular Indian polity are highly questionable. They keep on trying to raise issues like singing of Vande Mataram song which RSS or Hindu Maha Sabha led by Hindutva icon, Savarkar never sang against the British rule. Recently Mohan Bhagwat, RSS chief has come out with another issue to remain a contender for nationalist tag. While speaking at RSS headquarter, Resham Bagh, Nagpur in the 3rd week of March he declared: Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India). It should be real, spontaneous and part of all-round development of the youth.[i]Bhagwat while demanding chanting of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' also stated that this was necessitated as some forces are telling the youth not to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai.



Asaduddin Owaisi, true to his and AIMIMs historic role in keeping Hindutva organization like RSS/Shiv Sena in news and help them in their polarizing game instead of challenging their credentials about loyalty to our democratic-secular polity in a speech at Latur, Maharashtra, reacted by declaring, he will not chant Bharat Mata ki Jai even if a knife is put to his throat,[ii]prompting Shiv Sena and other Hindutva organizations to tell him on Monday that he should go to Pakistan. Though he raised a pertinent question that nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai but instead of challenging the Hindutva credentials of commitment to a democratic-secular Indian polity, he had fallen into the Hindutva trap. It is true that RSS inimical to present India has been adding more and more conditions for Indian nationality. It was not long ago that beef eating was made a condition for denying Indian nationality. Owaisis genuine reaction should have been to demand proof from RSS about its loyalty towards a democratic-secular India but he chose to be as illogical as Bhagwat and,in fact, facilitated RSS in turning a debate between Hindutva and secular India into a Hindu vs. Muslim issue. It is as true as the sun light that Bharat Mata of RSS is not which came into being on August 15, 1947. Bharat Mata ki Jai in fact, is the slogan with which RSS oath (pratigya) ends. It is mandatory for all members of RSS to take this oath once a year. It is to be noted that in the functioning of RSS this oath apart from prayer (prarthana) are the two texts which express total commitment to the building and nurturing a Hindu Rashtra (nation). As we will see in the following original texts of both, Motherland is referred as Land of Hindus and it is for building a Hindu Rashtra that RSS members have girded up our loins. Moreover, one becomes a member of RSS to achieve all round greatness of Bharatvarsha by fostering the growth of my sacred Hindu religion, Hindu society, and Hindu culture. Prayer: Affectionate Motherland, I eternally bow to you/O Land of Hindus, you have reared me in comfort/O Sacred Land, the Great Creator of Good, may this body of mine be dedicated to you/I again and again bow before You/O God Almighty, we the integral part of the Hindu Rashtra salute you in reverence/For Your cause have we girded up our loins/Give us Your Blessings for its accomplishment.[iii] Oath: Before the all powerful God and my ancestors, I most solemnly take this oath, that I become a member of the RSS in order to achieve all round greatness of Bharatvarsha by fostering the growth of my sacred Hindu religion, Hindu society, and Hindu culture. I shall perform the work of the Sangh honestly, disinterestedly, with my heart and soul, and I shall adhere to this goal all my life. Bharat Mata Ki Jai.[iv] Thus according to RSS sacred documents all members are committed not to a democratic-secular Indian polity created by the Constituent Assembly but building a Hindu Rashtra like Muslim Rashtra of Pakistan. RSS has always been steadfast in its opposition to India which came into being on August 15, 1947. When Indians were celebrating Independence of a democratic-secular nation, it was RSS which denigrated it and all other symbols defining it. Just a day before the Independence of India, the English organ of the RSS, Organizer (August 14, 1947) openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words: "The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country." The same issue of Organizer went on to reject in totality, a composite and democratic India using following harsh words in an editorial, Whither India: Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation [] the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations. Democracy and egalitarianism are the two important pillars of Indian polity. Both have always been on the firing line of the RSS. The RSS Guru Golwalkar, the most prominent ideologue and 2nd supremo of the RSS decreed as early as 1940 to abandon democracy. Guru Golwalkar while addressing the 1350 top level cadres of the RSS at its headquarters at Nagpur in 1940 declared: The RSS inspired by one flag, one leader and one ideology is lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land.[v] This slogan of one flag, one leader and one ideology was directly borrowed from the programmes of the Nazi and Fascist Parties of Europe. RSS and other Hindutva organization make no mistake in equating Hinduism with Casteism. They oppose an egalitarian India which promises to provide social, political and economic equality and discard Casteism. For them Manusmriti which decrees lower Castes and women a sub-human life should be the constitution of Hindu Rashtra and not the democratic-secular Constitution. When Indian Constituent Assembly adopted a democratic-Secular Constitution under the guidance of Dr. BR Ambedkar. VD Savarkar as an icon of Hindutva politics declared: Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worship-able after Vedas for our Hindu Nation and which from ancient times has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This book for centuries has codified the spiritual and divine march of our nation. Even today the rules which are followed by crores of Hindus in their lives and practice are based on Manusmriti. Today Manusmriti is Hindu Law.[vi] The democratic-secular Indian Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949, RSS English organ, Organizer in an editorial on November 30, 1949, complained: But in our constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manus Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing. Opposition by the RSS to an egalitarian Constitution of India was the outcome of its eternal belief in Casteism. Golwalkar as 2nd supremo of RSS declared that Casteism was synonymous with Hindu nation. According to him, the Hindu people are none else but: "the Virat Purusha, the Almighty manifesting himself [according to purusha sukta] sun and moon are his eyes, the stars and the skies are created from his nabhi [navel] and Brahmin is the head, Kshatriya the hands, Vaishya the thighs and Shudra the feet. This means that the people who have this fourfold arrangement, i.e., the Hindu People, is [sic] our God. This supreme vision of Godhead is the very core of our concept of nation and has permeated our thinking and given rise to various unique concepts of our cultural heritage.[Italics as in the original][vii] It is to be noted that according to Manusmriti (chapter 1 and verse 91), One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudras, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes.[viii] It is unfortunate that our ignorance (specially the ignorance of the parliamentary parties opposed to Hindutva) about the anti-national, anti-egalitarian and dehumanised ideological moorings of the RSS has provided RSS and its supporters enough space to confuse the nationalist and patriotic Indian discourse. An organization which is fully committed to overthrow a democratic-secular polity is allowed to rule India. It presents the most lethal danger to our nation and unless patriotic Indians rise up to unmask and challenge its criminal designs we will not need any foreign criminal gang to undo India. Hindutva organizations are surely working over-time to fulfil this unholy task but patriotic people of India, loyal to a democratic-secular polity and with sound knowledge of the nefarious designs of RSS will not let them succeed. Shamsul Islam is a former professor of Delhi University

Email: notoinjustice@gmail.com



For some of S. Islam's writings in English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi& Gujarati see the following link: http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam

Facebook: Shams Shamsul

Twitter: @shamsforjustice Notes [i]The Indian Express, March 3, 2016. [ii]http://www.thehindu.com/news/i-wont-say-bharat-mata-ki-jai-owaisi-to-bhagwat/article8352064.ece [iii] RSS, Shakha Darshikha, Gyan Ganga, Jaipur, 1997, p. 1. [iv]Ibid, p. 66. [v]MS Golwalkar, Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi), Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, nd, vol. I, p. 11. [vi]VD Savarkar, 'Women in Manusmriti' in Savarkar Samagar (collection of Savarkar's writings in Hindi), vol. 4, Prabhat, Delhi, p. 416. [vii] MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, pp. 36-37. [viii] This selection of Manu Code is from F. Max Muller, Laws of Manu (Delhi: LP Publications, 1996; first published in 1886).







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North Korea Punished For Helping To Liberate Africa

Text and Photos By Andre Vltchek

18 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org

DPRK free public housing - is it what the West hates about DPRK

Soon, most likely, there will be new brutal sanctions imposed against North Korea.And there will be massive provocative military exercises held, involving the US and South Korean (ROK). In brief, it is all business as usual: the West continues to tortureDPRK; it is provoking it, isolating, demonizing and dehumanizing it, making sure that it wouldnt function normally, let alone thrive.

The submissive Western public keeps obediently swallowing all the shameless lies it is being served by its mainstream media. It is not really surprising; people of Europe and North America already stopped questioning official dogmas long time ago.

North Korea (DPRK) is depicted as some insane, starving, subnormal and underdeveloped hermit state, whose leaders are constantly boozing and whoring, murdering each other, and building some primitive but lethal nukes, in order to destroy the world.

Those of us who are familiar with DPRK know that all this is one bundle of fat, shameless lies. Pyongyang is an elegant, well functioning city with great public housing, excellent public transportation, public places and recreational facilities, theatres, sport facilities and green areas. And despite those monstrous sanctions, the countryside is much more prosperous than what one sees in the desperate Western client states like Indonesia and Philippines.

At least there is something; there have at least been a few decent reportsthat have been written about those grotesque lies and the Western propaganda.

But the essential question remains: Why is the West so obsessed with demonizing North Korea?

North Korean military traffic controller in Namibia

And the answer is simple: Like Cuba, North Korea dared to step onthe toes of Western colonialism and imperialism. Sacrificing its sons and daughters, it helped to liberate many African countries, and it provided assistance to the most progressive forces on the most plundered and devastated continent.

This is one thing that the West never forgives. It lives offthe unbridled plunder of all continents; it essentially thrives by lootingits colonies. Those countries that assisted the liberation struggles, those nations that fought for freedom of the colonized world  Soviet Union/Russia, China, Cuba and the DPRK  were designated by Western ideologues as the most dangerous and evil places on Earth.

In Europe and North America,conditioned masses (they have been actually profiting from the colonialism and neo-colonialism for decades and centuries), arestubbornly refusing to comprehend thismain reason why the Empire has made the people of North Korea suffer so terribly for years and decades.

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North Korean country road

My comrade, MwandawiroMghanga, Chairperson of SDP and also a Member of the Executive Committee of Africa Left Networking Forum (ALNEF) based in Dakar Senegal, wrote for this essay:

The Social Democratic Party of Kenya (SDP) condemns the unjustified sanctions against North Korea (DPRK) instigated by imperialism led by the United States of America. We are aware that imperialism has never stopped its cold and hot war against DPRK that through one of the greatest patriotic, heroic and revolutionary anti-colonial and anti-imperialist national liberation armed struggles succeeded in winning true independence in the northern half of Korea. When it invaded North Korea, US imperialism like Japanese colonialism earlier, suffered one of the most humiliating military defeats it will never forget in its reactionary history. We also know that the US and the West hates DPRK with venom for refusing to be a puppet of imperialism like South Korea. A dirty false propaganda war is waged against DPRK for refusing the capitalist and neo-colonial path of slavery, under-development and exploitation of person by person and instead choosing the path of development for freedom and humanity, socialism.

We in Africa will not accept to be cheated by imperialists who have always been part and parcel of our problems. Imperialism is not and has never been a friend of Africa but its enemy. African patriots and revolutionaries will never allow imperialism to tell us who our friends are. For we know whom our friends are! And North Korea has always been Africas true friend. When the whole of the African continent was under Western colonialism, Korea under the revolutionary leadership of comrade Kim Il Sung was fighting Japanese colonialism and showing solidarity with Africa at the same time. After DPRK, in the name of socialist internationalism increased its moral, military and other material support to African countries in their struggle for liberation from colonialism, imperialism and apartheid. Immediately after independence from colonialism in the 1960s, thousands of Africans, including Kenyans, received free higher, technical and specialised education in the DPRK. DPRK not only offered arms, finance and other material solidarity to Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Mozambique in the war against apartheid and imperialism, but it also actually sent internationalist revolutionaries to Africa to fight side by side with Africans for Africa. DPRK fought with Egypt and Africa during the 1967 war against the brutal Zionist regime of Israel supported by the Western countries. Today DPRK is together with African countries in the demand for a new just international order. In this DPRK is blamed by imperialism and imperialist puppet regimes for being in the forefront and showing by its own example that a new just international order cannot be but anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, it must be socialist.



North Korean internationalism is legendary, just as Cuban internationalism is. And this is the least that we can do right now, when the country is facing new tremendous and brutal challenges  to recall how much it gave to the world; how much it had already sacrificed for the sake of humanity!

I spoke to people in Windhoek, who with tears in their eyes recalled North Koreas struggleagainst (South African) apartheid-supported regimes in both Namibia and Angola. Naturally, South African apartheid used to enjoy the full support of the West. To repay that favor, South African troops joined the fight against North Korea and China during the Korean War.

As mentioned by MwandawiroMghanga, North Korea fought against Israel,its pilots flew Egyptian fighter planes in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. DPRK took part in the liberation struggle in Angola and it fought in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Lesotho, and Namibia and in the Seychelles. It provided assistance to the African National Congress and its epic struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid. In the past, it had aidedthe then progressive African nations, including Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Tanzania.

Arthur Tewungwa, Ugandan opposition politician from the Uganda Peoples Congress Party (UPC) compares the involvement of the DPRK and the West in his country and the African Great Lakes region:

Uganda benefited from its relationship with North Korea in the 1980s when it helped the government to fight against the Museveni rebels who were supported by the US and UK. Morally, compared to the DPRK, the latter two have no leg to stand on with all the bloodshed they triggered in the Great Lakes Region."

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Border at Panmunjom from DPRK side

Has North Korea been fully abandoned, left to its fate? Has it been betrayed?

Christopher Black, a prominent international lawyer based in Toronto, Canada:

...The fact that the US, as part of the SC is imposing sanctions on a country it is threatening is hypocritical and unjust. That the Russians and Chinese have joined the US in this, instead of calling for sanctions against the US for its threats against the DPRK and its new military exercises, which are a clear and present danger to the DPRK, is shameful. If the Russians and Chinese are sincere why dont they insist that the US draw down its forces there so the DPRK feels less threatened and take steps to guarantee the security of the DPRK? They do not explain their actions but their actions make them collaborators with the USA against the DPRK.

The situation is bleak, but most likely not fatal; not fatal yet.

Jeff J Brown, a leading China expert based in Beijing, does not hide his optimism when it comes to the Sino-Russian relationship with the DPRK:

There is not a lot that North Korea does in the international arena, that Baba Beijing does not have its hand in. They are two fraternal communist countries and 65 years ago, the Chinese spilled a lot of blood and treasure to save North Korea from the West. Mao Zedongs son died on the Korean War battlefield, fighting against Yankee imperialism. There are two million ethnic Koreans living along the border with North Korea and another half a million Northerners living and working in China. Koreans are a recognized minority in China. No other country in the world understands North Korea like China does. This closeness is emblematic of their common border, the Yalu River, which is so shallow, you can wade across it. They also share boundaries with another key ally, Russia. China is North Koreas very, very big brother and protector. Frankly, vis-a-vis the upcoming UNSC sanctions against North Korea, I think the West is getting played like a drum, and it is the drum that gets the crap pounded out of it.



Of course both China and Russia have their long land borders with North Korea -roads and railroads inter-connecting all three countries. According to my sources in Moscow and Beijing, it is highly unlikely that the two closest allies of the DPRK would ever go along with the new sanctions, whether they are officially supporting them, or not.

But the logic used by Christopher Black is absolutely correct: it is the West that should be suffering from the toughest sanctions imaginable, not DPRK.

It is the West, not North Korea, which has murdered one billion human beings, throughout history. It is the West that colonized, plundered, raped and enslaved people in all corners of the planet. What moral mandate does it have to propose and impose sanctions against anyone?

We are living in a twisted, truly perverse world, where mass murderers act as judges, and actually get away with it.

North Korea spilled blood for the liberation of Africa. It showed true solidarity with robbed, tortured people, with those whom Franz Fanon used to call the Wretched of the Earth. That is why, according to perverse logic (which has roots in the Western religious and cultural fundamentalism), it has to be punished, humiliated, and even possiblywipe off the face of the earth.

Not because it did something objectively bad, but because the objectivity lost its meaning. Terms good and bad are now determined by only one criterion: good is all that serves the interests of the Western Empire, bad is what challenges its global dictatorship.

If you save the village that had been designated by the Empire as a place to be raped and pillaged, you will be punished in the most sadistic and brutal manner. North Korea did exactly that. Except that it did not save just one village, but it helped to liberateanentire continent!

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Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: Exposing Lies Of The Empire and Fighting Against Western Imperialism.Discussion with Noam Chomsky:On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania - a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: Indonesia  The Archipelago of Fear. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or hisTwitter.



Originally published by NEO.




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Onsite Occupational Health and Safety, Inc. in Princeton, Indiana, is again a finalist for CivilianJobs.com's "Most Valuable Employers for Military" Award.

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Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., left, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, finish their meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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By David Savage, Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON  Judge Merrick Garland may well be the most moderate Supreme Court nominee anyone could expect from a Democratic president, but he's also a justice who could create the first liberal majority on the high court in more than 40 years.

That explains why President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats and liberal activists are convinced Garland, a superbly qualified judge with a cautious, centrist record, deserves a hearing and a confirmation vote.

And it's why Republicans and conservative activists are just as fiercely determined to block him.

One vote can make an enormous difference on a court that frequently splits 5-4 on important social questions. If the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative, is replaced by a moderate-to-liberal Justice Garland, the court would tip to the left on several key issues, like abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gun control, campaign spending, immigration and environmental protection.

Legal analysts are now dissecting Garland's past opinions as a federal judge since 1997 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, looking for clues about his views and judicial philosophy. It's been a frustrating experience, partly because the D.C. Circuit focuses more on dense regulatory questions than hot-button cultural issues.

Garland's moderate views, preference for narrowly crafted rulings and tendency to defer to regulatory agencies and the executive branch _ under both Republican and Democratic administrations _ point to a reluctance to engage in the kind of judicial activism that has been condemned, at different times, by both liberals and conservatives.

In 2003, for example, Garland joined a 3-0 opinion at the D.C. Circuit that sided with the George W. Bush administration in blocking Guantanamo Bay detainees from using civil courts to challenge their detention. That ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court. He also deferred to the Obama administration by often siding with the Environmental Protection Agency when its rules were challenged.

"He's worked in the government, and he tends to think the people there are doing their best and working in good faith," said Georgetown law professor Irving Gornstein. "It doesn't mean he will blindly follow them, but he doesn't assume the worst and think these people are bending the law for political reasons."

"Judicial restraint" was once the watchword of conservatives, particularly when Republicans held the White House and they didn't want interference from the courts. Today, with a Democratic president, it is liberals calling for federal judges to uphold the administration's actions, from immigration to environmental protection. Conservatives, meanwhile, prefer judges who will restrict the powers of the executive branch, at least as long as Obama is in office.

The Supreme Court's conservatives, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., have increasingly pressed to restrain federal agencies and their regulations on issues including the environment and immigration. But Garland's appointment could put the brakes on that move. Such a switch would be particularly significant for environmental protection.

Garland "is almost always deferential to agency interpretations of statutes," UCLA law professor Ann Carlson wrote Monday, adding that his record "at least suggests he is likely to uphold the president's signature climate initiative, the Clean Power Plan."

Just four days before his death, Scalia joined a 5-4 order siding with coal-producing states and putting the Clean Power Plan rules on hold while a legal challenge plays out in the D.C. Circuit this year, and presumably in the Supreme Court next year.

A major environmental case decided last year highlights the difference between Scalia and Garland. In 1990, Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act and told environmental regulators to restrict hazardous air pollutants where it was "appropriate and necessary" to protect the public's health. It took two decades to implement, but in 2012 the EPA under Obama adopted rules to limit emissions of mercury and other air toxins from power plants, stressing the danger to children and pregnant women.

The coal producers and several Republican-led states sued, arguing the rules were too costly. Garland joined with another Democratic appointee to uphold the regulations, over the dissent of a Republican. The Supreme Court took up an appeal, and Scalia spoke for a 5-4 majority to block the rules in June in the case of Michigan vs. EPA.

The pending battle over immigration is another major test of regulatory power. At issue is whether Obama has the authority to temporarily suspend deportation and to offer work permits to several million otherwise law-abiding immigrants who have been working and living illegally in this country. Obama's lawyers say federal law and past Supreme Court decisions give executive officials leeway to decide who should be deported, while lawyers for Texas and 25 other Republican-led states disagree.

The Texas case will be argued in April before the eight justices. But looking forward, the ninth justice will be in a position to decide whether the next president has broad power, or a limited authority, when it comes to immigration.

One area where Garland may lean to the right is in cases involving terrorism and national security. He worked as a prosecutor and as a top Justice Department attorney at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing and the arrest of Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber who had repeatedly sent homemade bombs through the mail.

Just as Garland respects the work of environmental regulators, friends say he also respected the teams of FBI agents who pursued the Unabomber and other domestic terrorists.

Looking ahead, the high court may also be called upon to decide matters of privacy versus security, such as the current dispute between Apple and the FBI over data encryption on smartphones. A Justice Garland may bring a special perspective to such cases.

"I think his experience with terrorism would be very important if he were on the court," said Washington lawyer Andrew Pincus.
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By Bruce Vielmetti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

An 18-year-old Rhinelander area girl pleaded guilty Friday to killing her mother and stepfather at their rural home a year ago, a crime that shocked and mystified the community.

New court records provide some explanation: Ashlee Martinson had witnessed and endured years of abuse and neglect from the victims and her mother's prior boyfriend and was about to take her own life when her stepfather began pounding on her bedroom door.

Martinson entered the pleas to reduced counts of second degree intentional homicide and withdrew her prior plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Each is punishable by up to 40 years in prison and 20 years of extended supervision.

Prosecutors are expected to seek 20 years prison on each count, while the defense will argue for eight years of prison and 30 years of supervised release. Martinson's sentencing was set for June 17.

She had originally been charged with two counts of first degree intentional homicide, which carry mandatory life sentences upon conviction.

Prosecutors agreed that second degree intentional homicide was appropriate because they were convinced that Martinson "acted under the influence of adequate provocation" and suffered a "complete loss of self control."

Martinson, who had just turned 17 at the time, was arrested in Indiana the night of March 8, 2015, with her boyfriend, Ryan D. Sisco, 22. She was charged with killing Jennifer Ayers, 40, and her husband, Thomas H. Ayers, 37.

In addition to the homicides, Martinson was charged with three counts of false imprisonment. Authorities say she put three other girls  ages 9, 8 and 2  in a room with juice and crackers, and then tied the door shut.

Those charges were dismissed.

By the morning of March 8, a Sunday, the girls had somehow escaped the room or found a phone at the home and started to call 911. After a few dropped calls, authorities were able to respond to the house at 1625 Highway C in Piehl.

They rescued the girls and quickly put out a national bulletin for Martinson and Sisco, who were stopped hours later near Lebanon, Ind.

Friends said Martinson's stepfather did not approve of her dating Sisco.

The plea agreement revealed that on her birthday, Martinson had texted Sisco that she feared Thomas Ayers would kill her mother, that she hated them both and wanted to kill her stepfather.

The next day, after reading her Facebook page, the victims confronted Martinson about Sisco, took her keys and phone and forbade contact with Sisco. She sneaked away to a friend's house but was caught quickly by Thomas Ayers and brought home, where she ran up to her room after grabbing one of the many loaded guns he kept in the house.

When he then came angrily to her door, she shot him with a shotgun, once in the chest and second time in the head, "to ensure he was dead and could not hurt her."

When her mother ran up the stairs, Martinson said, she sought her comfort for what she had just done, but instead her mother grabbed a knife and attacked her for shooting Thomas Ayers.

In the ensuing struggle, Martinson stabbed her mother 30 times.

Martinson's mother had met Thomas Ayers over the Internet in 2010 then left Kansas in 2011 with her daughter to join Ayers in North Dakota, where he was working in the oil industry.

The couple moved to Wisconsin in the summer of 2014 with Martinson, two of Ayers' daughters from a prior marriage, and their own child.

Jennifer Ayers' former boss, friend and mentor in Kansas said Jennifer was not a bad parent and Ashlee was not a tormented child when they moved away.

But the new court records show Jennifer Ayers, who herself had been serially sexually abused by her father, endured extreme abuse from Martinson's father and, after she divorced him when Martinson was 6, a live-in boyfriend had sexually abused Martinson before he eventually was sent to prison.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  The district's delayed response to an official accused of having sexual encounters with students has prompted Indianapolis Public Schools to strengthen its procedures for handling reports of suspected child abuse or neglect.

Superintendent Lewis Ferebee told the Indianapolis Star (http://indy.st/1RqLxEG ) on Thursday that school officials are now required to report any allegations of abuse or neglect to the district's police department. School officials were previously required to report such allegations to the Indiana Department of Child Services.

The policy change is the result of problems with the district's handling of child sex abuse allegations against a former counselor.

Shana Taylor is accused of engaging in sexual conduct with one student in multiple locations, including the school, between October and February. The encounters began when the student was 16 and continued after he turned 17, according to the Marion County prosecutor's office.

Taylor also is accused of having a sexual encounter with a second student who was 16 at the time.

Court records and interviews indicate that at least six district officials, including Ferebee, learned of the allegations as early as Feb. 17, but no one reported the allegations until Feb. 23.

Ferebee said he didn't report it himself because he didn't have "relevant facts about the allegation."

"I did not have age, name, text messages, photos, anything that was associated with this claim," he said. "So I just want to be clear about that. If I had that type of information, obviously I would have an obligation there. But I did not have that information."

Earlier this month, Ferebee said the district would "aggressively" pursue disciplinary action against school employees who failed to immediately report the allegations against Taylor. The school board hasn't taken any action against those employees because it's waiting from recommendations from Ferebee, according to board president Mary Ann Sullivan.

On Thursday, Ferebee said some employees are involved in disciplinary action, but he didn't share any additional information.

Sullivan declined to comment on whether the board would pursue disciplinary action against Ferebee.
SHARE Toby A. Hinterscher Brenden L. Schell

By Len Wells of the Courier and Press

Two Mount Carmel, Illinois, teens accused of robbing a convenience store in Grayville, Ill. last January with a bow and arrow will be tried as adults.

Brenden L. Schell and Toby A. Hinterscher were 17 years old when they allegedly robbed the Casey's General Store in Grayville on Jan. 17. Police say the two were armed with a compound bow and arrow and threatened the convenience store clerk during the alleged robbery.

The two reportedly made off with a reported $254 in cash, police say.

The two have since turned 18 and were formally charged Friday in Edwards County Circuit Court as adults. Both teens face a class-X felony charge of armed robbery and a class-3 felony of intimidation.

Edwards County State's Attorney Michael Valentine said the suspects are being held in the White County jail at Carmi under $200,000 bond each.

If convicted of the class-X felony, each suspect faces between 6-30 years in prison. If convicted of the class-3 celony, each suspect faces a possible prison sentence of 2-10 years.
The Nestor family in the ruins of their home in Griffin, Ind., after the tornado on March 18, 1925.

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By Ryan Reynolds of the Courier and Press

Today marks the 91st anniversary of the "Tri-State Tornado," a storm that ripped through parts of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing hundreds of people and devastating lives and properties.

The tornado, which formed at 1:30 p.m. on March 18, 1925 in the Ozark Foothills town of Ellington, Missouri, would carve a path 219 miles long, killing 695 and injuring more than 2,000 others.

Map of the tornado's path.

The hardest hit areas were in Southern Illinois. In Murphysboro, 234 people were killed. Another 69 were killed in DeSoto, and 148 died in West Frankfort.

The tornado crossed the Wabash River into Indiana later in the afternoon. The first Hoosier town hit was Griffin. The next day's edition of the Evansville Courier described what was left of the town as a "mass of smoldering ruins" and that "every building in the town was wrecked."

Next day's front page of The Evansville Courier



The storm was on the ground for three hours and 30 minutes.

It remains the deadliest tornado to hit the United States.
JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Brittany Furman with USI's Dental Hygiene Clinic performs an oral cancer screening for Jason Martin during the 8th annual Vanderburgh Homeless Connect at Old National Events Plaza in Evansville Thursday. Oral cancer screening was offered for the the first time during this year's event.

SHARE JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Kathy McVaigh from St. Mary's offers free pairs of socks to Jeff Jones during the 8th annual Vanderburgh Homeless Connect at Old National Events Plaza in Evansville Thursday. About 250 volunteers helped about 900 guests during the annual event.

By Zach Evans of the Courier and Press

While waiting for his free lunch and free haircut Thursday, Terry Gilchrist talked about his typical day.

Wake up. Go to a First Avenue church for breakfast. Head to the Evansville Rescue Mission for lunch. Then to Central Library to look for jobs on the Internet or watch videos until close. Some nights he stays with friends at a trailer without electricity.

"I made it rough on my own  ain't nobody's fault," he said while eating at the 8th annual Vanderburgh Homeless Connect at Old National Events Plaza Thursday.

A military veteran who served from 1979-1983 in Germany, Gilchrist's inability to secure dependable work and housing stems from his prison record and age, he said.

"I've got two strikes against me. I'm trying to overcome, but it's hard, man."

The 56-year-old pleaded guilty to felony forgery and fraud charges for stealing and cashing checks from his ex-employer after he was fired in 2008.

Beyond the free meal and getting his head shaved for free, Gilchrist wasn't interested in the other almost 100 free services and organizations  from free dental checkups to help signing up for government programs  on Thursday.

"I've been through the whole rigmarole. It's too much for me to go through just for nothing. So I get what I know I can get out of here," he said.

Gilchrist is not alone.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were 48,000 homeless veterans  only 10 percent women  in January 2015. About 18,000 of those lived on the streets.

In Indiana, HUD reports there are 790 homeless veterans. About 8 percent of homeless veterans are considered "unsheltered."

There are approximately 462 homeless people in Evansville, according to local advocacy groups.

The National Veterans Memorial out of Buckskin was on-site to help veterans in need. Homeless Connect is not limited to the homeless  other than verifying veteran statuses, there were no financial conditions to attend.

Jim Henager and volunteers gave out free bottles of water and Gatorade, shirts, MREs and information about the Buckskin veterans food bank.

Henager said many combat veterans have trouble securing jobs and socializing because of post-traumatic stress disorder.

After getting some free items and speaking with Henager, George Grooms said he came to see what different programs they have for veterans at Homeless Connect.

Those included several organizations, such as the Evansville Vet Center, Supportive Services for Veteran Families and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Grooms, 54, isn't homeless but said he lives with his mom.

"If it weren't for her, I'd be living in the street," he said.

He served in the Navy from 1979 through the early '80s.

Grooms think veterans' socioeconomic abilities are stunted by the military.

"I don't think the government do good enough when vets get out as far as preparing them for another job or get them ready to be on their own feet," he said.
A sign on the campus of the University of Southern Indiana announces an upcoming visit by former Sen. Richard Lugar and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton.

SHARE DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press ds41012lugar6 U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar speaks with the Courier & Press Editorial Board in the newspaper's Triangle Room Tuesday afternoon.

By Tim Ethridge

Given the current political tone, Linda Bennett wasn't surprised that she wasn't surprised.

The University of Southern Indiana's president was on the home page of thelugarcenter.org and clicked on a link to the Bipartisan Index. There, she selected the rankings for the 2015 session of the U.S. Senate.

Ranked 98th and last on the list: Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont). Ranked 97th and next-to-last, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). So the men who, at the moment, are running second in their respective races for the presidential nominations have been the least likely to work in a nonpartisan fashion.

While former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) doesn't claim that his Washington-based Lugar Center has a perfect formula on bipartisanship, it is a telling statistic that the men who conceivably could lead their parties in the 2016 elections were the least willing to see the other side's view.

That also reaffirmed USI's decision to bring author Os Guinness to campus two months ago to discuss "Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity," and to bring Lugar and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana) to campus this Wednesday to discuss "Civility in American Politics."

The discussion, moderated by Bennett, is free and open to the public. It will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday  doors open at 5:30 p.m. for open seating  in Carter Hall at USI. Bennett stresses that the conversation is for all who would like to participate.

"Our campus truly reflects the values of the greater community," she said in an interview in her office on Friday. "Some see civility as being nice, of being polite, of our mothers telling us not to talk about religion or politics.

"We need to talk about critical issues. We need to articulate the reasons for our beliefs. But we need to do that without shouting and name-calling. Too often we see ideas being shouted down, rather than discussed."

This, she noted, and the Lugar Center's research confirmed, happens on all sides of the political spectrum. But she feels there is a majority in the middle ground who believe that, by working together rather than against one another, elected officials would be more effective.

"I'm an old political scientist  I taught American politics for a long time  and even as I taught I was struck that text books were expansive about our rights but made no mention of our obligations," Bennett said. "It's the classic notion of Civitas, from the Roman notion of the rights and the obligations of citizenship. There are rights, and we've seen the evolution of rights, and it's continuing, but they're protected only as long as we fulfill our obligations as citizens.

" ... I think there are voices that are rising, given the temperament of our times, to say, 'there's got to be a better way.'"

If you're curious, among Tri-State lawmakers on the Bipartisan Index, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) ranked second, Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) third, Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) 51st and Dan Coats (R-Indiana) 75th. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) were excluded from the list.
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David Woods

Evansville

I am appalled that the Board of Park Commissioners voted to charge a fee to enter Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve and walk the trails. This is reminiscent of when the city started charging $20 to enter the Freedom Festival, which was a main contributor the festival's failure.

Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve and walking trails has always been free to the public. It is a place where residents can get away from their urban lives and into nature. I recall when I was much younger church picnics at Wesselman Park, with the walking trails as being one of our main activities. I guess that will no longer be the case. The Nature Preserve director stated that the new fees will help the preserve with operating costs as it expands its offerings in the revamped nature center. I am curious what these new offering will be and if you are now charging an entrance fee, will all those offerings be free?

Any new offerings or programs of the nature center should be self-funding, the trails should be free. How can you start charging fees to enter the park and then allude to the opening of the new $1.6 million Nature Center on March 28. I for one will not be in attendance and I will no longer support the Nature Center if there is an entrance fee.

There is still time, the Parks commissioners can reconsider their decision. If the commissioners and city are going down this path, let me make some other suggestions. Charge a toll to use the new foot bridge that crosses the Lloyd Expressway from the State Hospital Grounds to Wesselman Park. Let's plan to charge a fee to use the new bike path to be built along North Main. Why not fence off the riverfront walking area and charge an entrance fee to see the river? Consideration should also be given to charging an entrance fee to the proposed Roberts Park as well.

I guess one other question I have for the commissioners, is when are they going to replace the water slide that was taken down in 2014 at Hartke Pool?
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Ajilon has started work as the systems integrator for a major Sydney infrastructure project.

The company is helping Sydney Trains on its $276 million Rail Operations Centre, which will ensure all facets of the train network are controlled from a single location.

The network control facility is designed to boost service through improved disruption management, communications and coordination across the network.

Ajilon managing director Ger Doyle said the company was looking forward to working with Sydney Trains on the project, which is scheduled to open in 2018.

Our key focus at Ajilon is to put the customer at the heart of what we do and we look forward to helping Sydney Trains create a highly coordinated system that is customer-centric at its core, he said.

According to Ajilon, this latest win helps drive Ajilons east coast expansion, which has also included projects for NSW Health, Water NSW, Transport NSW, Hutchinson Ports Australia and Telstra.

Sydney Trains chief executive Howard Collins said earlier this month that the organisations performance has been held back by outdated technology and having to respond manually to incidents.

At the moment we manage the trains and tracks, respond to incidents, communicate with customers and monitor their safety from different locations and in different ways, he said.

One example is that during an incident, there are multiple phone calls made between the person reporting the incident, the person who controls the trains, another party in charge of fixing the fault and the response team in the field.

Ajilon is an Australia-wide company with more than 1,100 consultants.
Digital Realty will build a new $89 million data centre facility, after revealing it secured 1.9 hectares next to to its existing two Melbourne centres.

The global data centre operator, which counts cloud providers like IBM SoftLayer and Rackspace amongst its Australian customers, plans to start work on a 5.7 mega Watt facility once customer demand for leases reaches a commercial tipping point and is ready to spill over from its existing multi-tenanted site next door in Melbournes Deer Park.

The company bought the land last year, and expects the full build, including land costs, to be around US$68 million (A$89 million). A construction date for the new facility is yet to be finalised.

Spread across four pods, the building itself will create 102,000 square feet (9476 square metres) worth of new floor space,

Sister publication iTnews understands no clients have signed up to lease space in the future facility as yet.

Nevertheless, Digital Realty expects existing enterprise tenants and cloud provider customers will move in as their capacity demand grows.

The Deer Park site is also home to the NAB single-tenant data centre run by Digital Realty.

The data centre operator has another two facilities in Sydney, with plenty of vacant land nearby ready to house a third facility if required.

In total, Digital Realty has 2.3 million square metres of data centre floor space globally.

The Victorian government seized on the announcement as a win for the states knowledge industries. Officials said the build of the facility will create 450 construction jobs, and the data centre itself will employ 35 workers in permanent positions.

Trade Minister Philip Dalidakis boasted that Victoria already hosts a quarter of Australias data centres.

This investment by Digital Realty strengthens Victorias growing reputation as a leader in data security and cyber security excellence, he said.

The demand for data centre space will only continue to grow as more companies move towards the cloud and look to outsource IT infrastructure, Digital Realtys Asia-Pacific managing director Edward Higase said.
Components & Peripherals News

Ingram Micro Aims To Boost Unified Communications And Collaboration With NetXUSA Acquisition

Jimmy Sheridan

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Ingram Micro Inc. has acquired unified communications and collaboration distributor NetXUSA Inc., Ingram said Thursday, aiming to boost its portfolio of IP communications products to strengthen its UCC business -- a wise move, one Ingram partner said.

"It's a good move for them," said David DeCamillis, vice president of sales and marketing at Platte River Networks, a Denver-based Ingram Micro partner. "It makes sense. The market is demanding it and dictating it."

Jeff Yelton, the Irvine, Calif.-based distributor's director of specialty technologies, said in a statement to CRN that the acquisition will bring Ingram unparalleled provisioning capabilities and a new set of solutions, as well as access to new vendor partners and customers.

[Related: Ingram Micro Exec: Proposed Chinese Ownership Won't Hurt Our U.S. Federal Business]

"For NetXUSA, we will help broaden and lengthen the company's reach through cross-selling opportunities from our expansive portfolio and leverage our economies of scale to enhance and grow their business operations," Yelton said.

Details of the deal were not released.

This acquisition comes one month after Chinese logistics firm Tianjin Tianhai said it will be acquiring Ingram for $6 billion, folding the $46 billion distributor into the $29 billion HNA Group, expanding Ingram's geographic reach and adding more capabilities for the distributor around high-value IT solutions, mobility life cycle services, cloud, and commerce and fulfillment solutions.

The NetXUSA acquisition was no surprise, DeCamillis said, as Ingram has been building on its telecom and VoIP portfolio in recent years.

Telecom and VoIP are growing in importance for managed service providers like Platte River Networks, which have to meet greater demands for connectivity, bandwidth and cloud solutions from customers, DeCamillis said. The acquisition of NetXUSA shows that Ingram Micro recognizes that need in the marketplace and is investing to help its partners fill the void for customers, he said.

According to a statement by Ingram Micro CEO Alain Monie, Ingram will gain immediate access to a new telecom service provider customer set, and will look to leverage those relationships throughout the distributor's entire global organization.

The South Carolina-based UCC distributor will be adding nearly 100 people to Yelton's Advanced Solutions group, keeping the name NetXUSA as an Ingram Micro company.

NetXUSA supports 1,200 customers in the United States, including more than 300 independent telecommunications service providers and 800-plus resellers.

Following the close of the deal, NetXUSA's management team and associates are expected to remain in their current positions within the company. NetXUSA will operate as an integrated division of Ingram Micro and is expected to contribute more than $125 million in annual revenue, according to a statement from the company.

Sarah Kuranda contributed to this report.
The Week Ending March 18

Topping this week's roundup of companies that had a rough week is Microsoft, which came under fire for its efforts, perceived by some as overly aggressive, to get customers to upgrade to Windows 10.

Also making the list were PC makers who were hit by a bummer of a market forecast for 2016 sales; Pure Storage, which a jury ruled was in violation of an EMC patent; Apple iOS device users who learned of a new malware threat; and Capgemini for having the highest amount of debt among publicly traded solution providers.

Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves -- or just had good luck -- check out this week's Five Companies That Came To Win roundup.
At Bayer, we believe human ingenuity can shape the future of agriculture. For more than 150 years, weve used science and imagination to advance health and nutrition. And together, we can achieve so much more.

Whats possible begins with what we can imagine.

Were committed to a world where biodiversity thrives in harmony with humankind. Where hunger and climate change are terms relegated to history books. Where farms are more sustainable, with plants that are more adaptive and resilient, to help improve life for families and communities. In short, where agriculture is part of the solution. As a new leader in agriculture, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to grasp this moment. To continue moving humanity forward by tirelessly shaping whats possible.
Enterprises are trying to learn as much as they can about the threats their organizations face and how well (or not) they may be defended against them. This is one of the reasons why the threat intelligence security services spending market is set, according to market research firm IDC, to reach $1.4 billion in 2018, up from $905 million in 2014.

As colleague Tony Bradley wrote in his post Cyber threat intelligence is crucial for effective defense, not all threats are created equally, and not all threats would have the same impact on an organization if they were successful. Its important for companies to be aware of all potential threats, but threat intelligence goes a step further and allows those companies to dedicate security resources to strengthen defenses where necessary to strengthen the security posture against the attacks that are most likely to actually occur, Bradley wrote.

Good threat intelligence is comprehensible and actionable. Having good situational awareness on your enterprise controls, as well as comprehending the past actions, abilities, and motives of likely attackers. This kind of awareness will help you to know what data to protect and how and it can also help your organization to best guide its security investments. This will help security analysts response teams more effectively prioritize to security alerts and security event notifications.
A pair of research reports on cloud storage behaviors reiterates what has been an enduring and entirely unnecessary reality about data storage: The greatest threat to your store is not outside hackers, it's your own staff.

The first comes from survey conducted by Ipswitch File Transfer, a maker of secure file transfer and data monitoring software. It asked 555 IT professionals across the globe about their file sharing habits and found that while 76 percent of IT professionals say it is important to be able to securely transfer files, 61 percent use unsecured file-sharing clouds.

It also found 32 percent of IT professionals dont have a file transfer policy in place, 25 percent plan to establish one, and another 25 percent said their company has a file transfer policy, but the enforcement is inconsistent.

Twenty-one percent reported they might have had a data breach in the past but they were not entirely sure, while 38 percent said their processes to identify and mitigate risks are inefficient.

Another survey by document management and digital imaging firm Crown Records Management and Censuswide, released on Clean Out Your Computer Day (February 8), found that 55 percent of IT decision makers in companies with more than 200 employees do not have a policy in place for email data retention, 58 percent do not audit their paper-based data regularly, 60 percent dont practice regular reviews of files stored in the cloud or on-premises, and 64 percent do not filter what goes into the cloud.

Topping it all off, 76 percent dont have a system helping them to differentiate between data which must and should not be retained.

"What this points out is something that's been around a long time, and cloud storage is just the latest place it shows up. People are running full out and often dont take the time and do discovery and inventory to make sure things are more in order to adhering to the policies," says Jean Bozman, vice president and principal analyst of Hurwitz & Associates.

[Related: Top 7 storage certifications for IT pros]

We live in the now so we're just trying to do the best we can now, she added. "But having looked at disaster recovery and high availability, it's very important to take that pause, whether its over a holiday weekend of whatever and just document what you have," she adds.

Paul Castiglione, senior product marketing manager of Ipswitch, says a lot of cloud file sharing services are adding security features to cover for bad behavior, which is increasingly necessary.

"If we were all perfect individuals, there wouldn't be errors. But stats also show that in companies with data loss, one-third of the incidents was due to human error, one-third to process and network errors and one-third to malicious activity. So two-thirds of data loss is stuff I can control inside my network. Sure, I want to train my employees so they dont make dumb mistakes but also provide the technology to make it impossible for them to make a mistake," Castiglione says.

He adds that while training is a critical aspect of compliance, automation should be in place so they can't do anything wrong in relation to file transfers and exchanges between on-premises and the cloud. Many customers he's encountered dont allow manual file transfer at all.

"It may seem shocking but in the moving of secure data, it's typically to support an established business process of some kind," he said. "If I automate it, that will reduce human error, improve efficiencies, help employees with efficiency and not allow them to send a file to the wrong FTP server in Russia," said Castiglione.

Failures of policy and attention

Richard Stiles, vice president of product development with cloud storage provider StoAmigo, faults the vendors for letting the lawyers dictate the policies. "In most cases, what ends up happening is an attorney will write the policy for the protection of the vendor or cloud vendor and the client suffers because these policies are written to protect the vendor. They list things like how they are not responsible for down time, not responsible for data loss, and so on," he says.

He also says most cloud storage companies take a hands-off approach when it comes to storage. "Let's say I upload something to my cloud storage. That vendor that is selling me storage doesnt part care what I'm putting in that server, all they care about is how much space I'm taking. There is no monitoring of the quality of the upload or download and no guarantee of checking for corruption between sender and receiver," he says.

And that especially goes for cleaning up your old data stores. Don't expect your provider to do that for you, nor should you want it to. "I can't imagine a client being ok with a third-party poring through their digital content in the cloud for them. Anyone who cares enough to back it up on cloud storage will have some expectation of privacy for the content," Stiles says.

Cloud storage providers don't get involved in data management, so once it gets to the storage repository, it sits. The host is not in the loop on the management of the data once it gets there because, quite frankly, the data is none of its business. So storage management, including deduplication and removal of old data, is your responsibility, not your provider.

[Related: Is DevOps good or bad for security?]

"It all starts with the company," Stiles says. "They have to determine the value of the data. For some companies, the data is not that important, while for others, it's their life blood. People who use Facebook dont care about their digital content. But if you are an attorney or a photographer, managing content is your life blood. So it all starts with the client."

Is automation the answer?

Castiglione advocates automation to reduce human error, and says that there must be specific features and functions. For starters, any automation services or software should insure they have visibility to the file level, not just the folder level, and know who has accessed the files down to the file level. Also, make sure there is access control to insure their provider offers proper access control.

That said, he says cloud storage providers have lots of room for improvement. "Most of the file share vendors came from a place of offering simple to use consumer collaboration tools, not from a place of protecting the file and access. So it's a totally different mindset," Castiglione says.

Read your contract carefully. "My advice for anyone is read the terms and conditions. See what will they hold themselves responsible for and what is your responsibility for your data. That tells you what recourses you have," he says.

"Some cloud storage companies do a good job on educating their clients on what to do and how to do it. Others not so much. You'll see free services with a lot of free storage but you get what you pay for. There may not be a lot of support on the back end," Stiles adds.

And Bozman says make the time to look over what you have. "Schedule some time to look, or if your people are running full out, hire some additional headcount to help with that kind of thing. If they are all supporting production it's hard to stop and take a look. We run very lean and mean in it today. The ratio of people to devices is very high," she says.

This story, "IT is getting cloud storage security all wrong" was originally published by CIO .
Automotive students from Emmett OBrien High School in Ansonia, Conn., were awarded over $30,000 in scholarships from Universal Technical Institute for earning second place in two automotive technology skills competitions, the Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association (CARA) statewide Automotive Technology Challenge at Crowley Ford in Plainville, Conn., and the Top Tech Challenge hosted at the UTI campus in Norwood, Mass.

UTI admissions representative Michael Balthazrr presented senior automotive technology students Jeffrey Berger of Oxford and Jesse Cavallaro-Dahn of Southbury each with an $8,000 UTI scholarship award during a ceremony held at Emmett OBrien high school on March 4th for their second place finish at the CARA Automotive Technology Challenge in February. The scholarships can be used at any of the twelve UTI campuses across the United States.

The team from Emmett OBrien was one of six high school teams whose results from a written examination qualified them to compete in the statewide competition. During the competition, the students diagnosed and repaired a number of pre-assigned problems in a car within an allotted amount of time.

"I am really proud of these guys. Placing second in the state in this hands-on technical competition is a huge accomplishment. They are top students and its wonderful to see the success theyve achieved," Ignacio Vega, Emmett O'Brien automotive instructor and department head, said.

In addition to awarding the student scholarships, Balthazrr presented Vega with a $1,500 Snap-On tool voucher for the schools automotive program that Berger and junior Jared Saunderson of Trumbull earned for their second-place finish at the Top Tech Challenge automotive skills competition hosted at the UTI-Norwood campus in January. Berger and Saunderson each won a $7,500 UTI scholarship award for their teams performance at the competition.

The Top Tech Challenge event brought together over 30 teams from high schools across New England to test their knowledge of automotive tools, systems and repair procedures.

Berger plans to use his UTI scholarship awards to attend the Automotive and Diesel & Industrial Technology program at the UTI campus in Norwood, Mass.

"The purpose of auto skills competitions like the Top Tech Challenge and the CARA Skills Competition is to showcase the technical knowledge and skills obtained through vocational training at the high school level. Its a perfect way for students to apply what they have learned in the classroom and shop to real-world situations. Emmett OBrien students have always competed at a very high level in these auto skills competitions, which is a testament to the support and guidance of their instructor Ignacio Vega and the quality of his automotive program," Balthazrr said.

The U.S. Department of Labors Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that the automotive repair and maintenance industry is expected to add 237,500 new jobs and have a 30-percent growth rate through 2020.

Each year, UTI sponsors and makes available approximately $12 million in tuition scholarships and participates in numerous high school competition programs across the country.
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A former pharmaceutical company executive bribed Veterans Affairs Department doctors in Washington state and elsewhere, paying VA employees thousands of dollars to promote his employer's products, federal prosecutors say.

Prosecutors claim Advanced BioHealing Inc. executive Todd Clawson and others paid kickbacks to VA podiatrists and clinicians who promoted the companys product, a biologic wound dressing. Clawson has been charged with bribery and health care fraud.

Writing the court, federal prosecutors in Tacoma said Clawson, his coworkers at Advanced BioHealing and VA physicians conspired to defraud the United States by impeding and impairing the governmental functions of the VA, including those intended to regulate the ethical practice of physicians working for the VA.

Advanced BioHealing, a decade-old Westport, Connecticut company, produces a living skin equivalent dressing meant to treat diabetes-related foot sores. The firm was awarded a large federal contract for the product  Dermagraft  in late 2008 shortly after Clawson went to work there.

According to charging papers, Clawson served as director of the Advanced BioHealing division selling to the federal government. As such, he managed a team of 35 salespersons and was primarily concerned with selling the bioengineered bandages to the VA.

Advanced BioHealing Inc. made waves in 2011 when an Irish pharmaceutical concern, Shire Plc., bought the company for $750 million. It had been slated to go public the day after the sale went through.

The sale was a near total bust for Shire. It sold Advanced BioHealing in 2014 to Massachusetts-based Organogenesis after recording a $650 million loss on the venture. The fraud allegations do not extend beyond August 2012, when Clawson left the firm.

Clawson and others are alleged to have paid to fly a Phoenix VA doctor to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for a days-long fishing trip in August 2010. According to charging papers, Clawson also plied a VA doctor with Def Leppard tickets in 2011.

Prosecutors say doctors were taken fishing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, wined and dined in Los Vegas and flown around the country to promote Dermagraft. At least three VA doctors are said to have been flown to Seattle in 2010 to promote the bandages.

Writing the court, federal prosecutors said Clawson and others concocted seemingly legitimate reasons to pay thousands of dollars to VA doctors who promoted Dermagraft to their colleagues. Doctors were paid as much as $3,000 to attend speaking engagements at dinners paid for by Advanced BioHealing and attended by other VA staff.

These events usually took place at a restaurant where the company, and in some instances the VA speaker, would solicit VA personnel to attend, the company would pay for their meals, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Reese Jennings said in court papers.

The speaking engagements were held off VA property outside of work hours, Jennings continued, but Advanced BioHealing lured VA physicians and clinicians to attend by supplying all invited guests with free meals at expensive restaurants.

Advanced BioHealing paid VA doctors $1,500 a day to allow sales reps to accompany them as they treated veterans at VA facilities, according to charging papers. Doctors were paid $3,000 to provide sales training to Advanced BioHealing staff, the prosecutors continued, and $2,000 to serve on an advisory board.

Clawson and his colleagues are alleged to have paid doctors in Washington, California, Arizona, Ohio, Texas and Georgia.

Clawson was charged by information Thursday with conspiracy to commit criminal conflicts of interest, bribery and health care fraud. He has also been charged with one count of health care fraud.

Clawson is expected to appear Monday morning for an initial appearance at U.S. District Court in Tacoma. He has not been jailed.
WASHINGTON  The dispute between Apple and the FBI over getting around iPhone encryption rests on the legal foundation of the All Writs Act, a vaguely worded statute passed way back in 1789.

So it should come as no surprise that Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., among others, feels its time for Congress to take another look-see.

These are very difficult issues, the balancing of one kind of security against another, said Himes, who as the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence cybersecurity and NSA subcommittee will have a major say in any legislative solution. One thing is clear: The line between privacy and national security should be determined by Congress, not by a judge.

The FBI already has cited the 1789 All Writs Act in obtaining a federal magistrates ruling last month that Apple should assist agents in defeating encryption of the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tafsheen Malik, opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., last December, killing 14 and wounding 22.

The mass shooting was widely viewed as terrorist-inspired, but agents have few clues as to Farooks motivation without access to his iPhone.

The magistrate who issued the order to Apple will consider the computer giants objections when the parties face off again in court on Tuesday. The case ultimately could go all the way to the Supreme Court for what may become the major privacy decision so far this century.

A Pandoras Box

The governments right to conduct searches pursuant to the Constitutions Fourth Amendment is not an issue in this case. And Apple is technically capable of writing a program that would enable the FBI to bypass the access code and break into Farooks phone.

What is at issue is whether government can compel a private entity to do so. The language of the All Writs Act allows courts to issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions. That translates as courts can compel individuals and entities to help it achieve lawful objectives  like carrying out evidence searches.

Himes and a privacy expert in Connecticut, Daniel Klau, agree the Apple-FBI dispute is the tip of an iceberg that encompasses the overarching conflict between privacy embedded in smartphone encryption, and law enforcement access to potentially critical information in criminal and national security investigations.

This is a Pandoras Box problem, a you cant put toothpaste back in the tube problem, said Klau, a lawyer in Hartford who teaches at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Some say this is about one phone only, but in fact its about all phones, and whether protections overall should be weakened because of law enforcement needs in one particular case.

Himes said he is more sympathetic to Apple than the FBI, but recognizes the ultimate necessity of balancing interests. Either way, its not just a matter of government intrusion into personal privacy.

I unequivocally oppose back doors, he said. Its partly for privacy reasons but also for national security reasons. If a back door exists, the Chinese, Russians, Iran, North Korea and al-Qaeda will exploit it.

Privacy protections are important in any society, but they are indispensable in nations like China under one-party rule, Klau said.

Im not overplaying things when I say encryption promotes free speech and freedom of association, which our society values and countries like China do not, he said. Technology can play a tremendous role in helping build democracy in countries with oppressive regimes, and thats something we should support.

Unpickable locks

Apples letter to its customers in the wake of last months judicial order uses words like chilling and overreach to describe the governments action.

If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyones device to capture their data, the letter stated. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phones microphone or camera without your knowledge.

The FBI, in response, said in one of its briefs that Apples defense is motivated by its concerns for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.

Whichever way the courts or Congress go, the conflict undergirding the Apple case may prove temporary.

We are literally a matter of months away before all devices and apps have locks that are impossible to pick, said Himes. No question Apple can do what FBI wants, but I promise you the next version will not be able to be picked. In my opinion, thats the story not told.

But law enforcement need not throw up its hands and give up, Himes said.

It poses challenges, but not unsolvable ones, he said, pointing out law enforcement can still capture metadata, a log of what numbers a particular cell phone has called.

Theres an awful lot the intelligence world can do, he said. It represents an unprecedented challenge, but like it or not, thats where we are.

dan@hearstdc.com
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HAMDEN  A high school freshman from Bridgeport has found a scientific justification for playing video games.

Playing the games before taking tests will actually raise scores by as much as 57 percent, according to Steven Siveyer, a student at Fairchild Wheeler Information Technology High School. The 15-year-old Monroe residents science project involved classmates, control groups -- and a test he devised himself.

Now when my mom tells me to stop playing video games, I proved her wrong, Siveyer told judges Thursday at the Connecticut Science & Engineering Fair.

Siveyer, a finalist on his first time competing in the fair, theorizes that playing video games helps stimulate the brain in a positive way. Next, he wants to see if the types of games or the length of playing time impacts learning.

Now in its 68th year, the Connecticut Science & Engineering Fair this week involved more than 700 middle and high school students from 130 schools across the state. They all converged on the Quinnipiac University campus.

This year also saw Trumbull High School attend, with Julie Hyland, a 16-year-old sophomore, representing the district. Hyland is looking for a way to accelerate the decomposition of Styrofoam in the most eco-friendly way possible.

She found that the fragrant citrus oil from orange rinds might do the trick.

I just have a passion for the environment," Hyland said.

A number of projects this year focused on creating a green environment.

Facundo Cremel, a Bridgeport Military Academy sophomore, looked at building an engine that can run on water.

Others on health.

Pierre Tilus and Imani Lopez, eighth graders from Park City Prep Charter School in Bridgeport, studied nut-free energy bars and found they really do work.

Winners of the science fair will be announced on Saturday.

lclambeck@ctpost.com; @lclambeck
Connecticut State Police

State Police are warning residents that warmer weather brings an increase in the number of car thefts.

Often, windows are left open, doors are unlocked and even keys are left in the ignition.
MILFORD  A Milford woman has filed a lawsuit claiming that she had to undergo two surgeries on the same day after a surgeon-in-training operated on the wrong body part and then lied about why a second operation was needed.

Deborah Craven, 60, was admitted to Yale-New Haven Hospital on May 18, 2015, to undergo removal of a painful and potentially cancerous lesion found on one of her ribs, said her attorney, Joel T. Faxon.

Craven was under the care of Dr. Anthony Kim, an attending physician, and his thoracic surgery trainee and fellow, Dr. Ricardo Quarrie, a recent graduate of Ohio State University School of Medicines residency program in general surgery. Quarrie was added to the team for training purposes without Cravens knowledge, her lawyer said.

Rradiologists had properly marked the site where the lesion was located by placing metallic coils into Cravens 8th rib and injecting a marking dye into her skin, Faxon said in a prepared statement.

Craven then underwent the procedure where the wrong rib was removed and, upon awakening, was in immediate pain that persisted into the night, the lawyer wrote. Hospital staff ordered an X-ray that revealed the metal markers were still in place in Cravens rib and that the surgery had been performed on the 7th rib, rather than the 8th, despite it being redundantly marked and identified by radiology.

After realizing a substantial portion of the wrong rib had been removed, Quarrie tried to cover up the mistake by stating that not enough rib had been removed and that an immediate repeat surgery was required, the lawsuit alleges.

The fact that the surgical team operated on the wrong rib despite a clear indication of the proper site is, of course, negligent, Faxon said. But the fact that a cardio-thoracic surgeon in training would make the outrageous claim that not enough rib had been taken really takes this to another level of culpability.

The lawyer said Craven would not have sued if she hadnt been lied to.

As the old adage goes, the cover up is worse than the crime, her lawyer said. The surgical team at Yale has yet to take responsibility for its wrongdoing, so now it will be up to a New Haven jury to hold them accountable.

Yale-New Haven Hospital spokesman Mark DAntonio, however, said the hospital has acknowledged the error and reported it to the state Department of Public Health.

Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical Group are committed to providing the safest and highest quality of care possible, DAntonio said. However, even in the best organizations medical errors may occur. When they do, our goal is to acknowledge them, learn from them, and ensure that we minimize any chance that they ever occur again.

With respect to the case of Ms. Craven, DAntonio said, we recognized that an error was made, we informed and apologized to the patient, and we immediately reported it to the Department of Public Health.
HARTFORD  If youre feeling good about getting money back from the Department of Revenue Services, you might not like the mail that may soon arrive saying the state screwed up and you owe them some cash.

Late Friday afternoon, DRS Commissioner Kevin B. Sullivan admitted that a miscalculation in the agency may have resulted in 120,000 filers receiving excessive refunds totaling as much as $12 million. Single filers were not affected by the error.

A Republican leader blamed the mistake on dysfunctional Democrats.

Late Thursday, DRS discovered that certain information provided to some resident income taxpayers claiming property tax credits was in error, he said in a statement. The error does not affect single filers claiming a property tax credit, but does affect some other filers claiming the credit. As a result, about 7 percent or approximately 120,000 of all resident income tax returns processed to date may have resulted in a higher credit to their tax liability.

During the 2015 legislative session, lawmakers approved a reduction in the property tax credit.

This year the DRS will process 1.6 million resident state income returns, and while this affects a relatively small number of income taxpayers, I apologize for our error and the inconvenience to those taxpayers, Sullivan said, adding that letters will soon be in the mail notifying of underpayments.

Those who already received a refund will be given the option of making repayment now or as an offset when filing for the next tax year, also without penalties, he said. Those whose returns were not processed prior to March 17th will either receive a reduced refund or notice of additional tax to be paid.

Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, in an early evening statement Friday, said that hurried legislation passed by majority Democrats seems to be the genesis of the error.

The confusing fiscal policies passed by the Democrats in rushed budget packages in the middle of the night are apparently not only confusing to the public, theyre confusing to the governors own tax agency, Fasano said. This is an embarrassment that shows Connecticut government in a state of disorder and chaos. Sadly, this is not the only example of a dysfunctional state under Democrat leadership. Look at DMV. Look at the Department of Children & Families. This will be an unfortunate, unexpected hit on thousands of families across our state.

kdixon@ctpost.com
Cuba and Finland sign agreement on Cuban debt

Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, Vice-president of the Council of Ministers, received Pirkko Hamalainen, Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Finland.

During the meeting, held on Thursday, the two parties had a fruitful exchange on the positive state of bilateral relations and prospects for their development.

They agreed that the implementation of the treatment of the Cuban debt, as agreed in the context of negotiations held with the Ad-Hoc Group of the Paris Club is an important contribution to the development of economic, commercial and financial relations between the two countries.

source: www.cibercuba.com




Cuba remove penalty on US dollar conversions

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez addressed the international and local media Thursday at 15:00 hours local Cuba time, and announced at a news conference broadcast live on Cuban television the elimination of the of 10% penalty applied to the US dollar. "I want to announce you that the Cuban government has decided to remove the 10% penalty that applies today to the US dollar," he said.

The announcement, made two days before the new package of regulations implemented by the US government that includes the use of dollars by Cubans, constitutes a new step for the advancement of the island, its economy and domestic economies.

Rodriguez said the country will do away with a 10 percent penalty on dollars exchanged at banks and money-exchange centers in Cuba if new U.S. measures allowing Cuba access to the international banking system prove to work.

The measure would make it much easier for U.S. visitors to Cuba to change dollars during their trip.

Rodriguez told reporters Thursday that Cuba will try to make a series of international financial transactions in coming days. If they work, it will get rid of the 10 percent penalty.

source: www.cibercuba.com
Somerset jury finds two of three defendants guilty of murder

Now in its fifth day of testimony and seventh day overall, the double murder trial taking place in Somerset County is now over. The jury decided.
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Austin Anderson University of Memphis student senate was one vote shy of passing a controversial anti-gun bill.

University of Memphis student senate was one vote shy of passing a controversial anti-gun bill Thursday.

A The bill attempted to speak on behalf of the U of M student body by saying athat the students do not support Guns on Campus Bill.a

A The Guns on Campus Bill is working its way through the Tennessee legislature. If passed, it will allow employees of any state college or university to carry a concealed gun on campus provided they also had a Tennessee gun permit.

Some members of U of Mas student government responded by writing a bill against the Tennessee bill. Student government does not have the power to stop the Tennessee legislature, but they hoped to show that university students did not want the Guns on Campus Bill to pass.

Student senators Birjush Kumar and Kenny Faulk were behind the proposed student bill that served as a protest against the state governmentas bill.

aPolice are the ones who are assigned to protect, so if they are failing, we need to solve that problem,a Kumar said. aIf you are looking for a solution, you need to get to the root cause and fix that.a

But when the opposition bill hit student senate, only seven senators voted in favor of the bill, one vote short of meeting a majority. Four senators voted in against and four abstained.

A Kumar, co-sponsor of the bill, left before voting began, so it is possible that the bill could have passed.A

A Even though the student bill nearly passed, this was a victory for Students for Concealed Carry, said Stuart M. Dedmon, 22, U of M student and state director of the organization.

A aWe are a non-partisan group, but we know that most people on campus tend to lean left, which means they donat necessarily support concealed carry,a Dedmon said. aI consider this a victory.aA

A Before the student bill was voted on in senate, Dedmon spoke to SGA about the goals of Students for Concealed Carry. He said students and faculty that have a carry permits do not pose a threat to college campuses.

A aThere are actually nine states that have already passed this, and in all of those states there have been absolutely no issues as far as a spike in crime,a he said.

A During the 2015 legislative session, Texas' legislature passed the bill, making it the most recent of the nine states that permit guns on campus. The legislation will take effect in August 2016.

A aWe believe students who have their permit and are allowed to carry and conceal in other parts of the state should be able to do the same on campus and have the same level of protection like those other states.a

A Many of the student senators present discussed the pros and the cons of the proposed bill before voting.

A Ashley Courtney, a sophomore senator, said she is for the state bill passing and thinks all students and faculty would benefit from it.

A aAs a woman, I feel like when Iam walking in the parking lot and someone is trying to attack me I canat be like aOh hold on donat rob me, let me call police services first,aa she said. aI would feel a lot safer knowing I could reach in my bag and have a weapon.a

A Because the proposed student bill did not pass with a majority vote, it will likely be brought up again on March 25, the last student senate meeting of the semester.
The University of Memphis is likely to split from the Tennessee Board of Regents and form its own governing body. Soon, however the student representative on this new board may not have voting privilege. Rudd said he could bring up the issue of the student member having voting privileges. I have one voice and one vote, he said. I am happy to raise that issue and explore it.

BAILEY CLARK The University of Memphis is likely to split from the Tennessee Board of Regents and form its own governing body. Soon, however the student representative on this new board may not have voting privilege. Rudd said he could bring up the issue of the student member having voting privileges. I have one voice and one vote, he said. I am happy to raise that issue and explore it.

Student and staff members will likely not get a voting seat in the University of Memphisa new governing board.

These are the most recent developments in the FOCUS Act, a state bill that will dissolve the Tennessee Board of Regents and allow the U of M to self-govern.

The soon-to-be created U of M governing board would have sweeping powers such as the ability to raise or lower tuition and employee pay without state approval.A

The Tennessee legislatureA rejected a proposal that would have given staff members a representative in the soon-to-be created U of M board.

Student government will also likely not get a voice in the new governing board either. While the FOCUS Act allows for a student to be a member, the state legislatureA rejected amendments that would have allowed the student to vote on the new board.

The student senate voted Thursday to make the U of M student president a voting member of the board.

However, student government does not have the power to create a voting seat or appoint anyone on the new board.

Faculty, however, will get a voting seat on the new board.

Even though the Tennessee legislatureA turned down staff and student requests, M. David Rudd, U of M president, said that the new governing board will continue to be molded even after it is created. A

aPlease recognize that we will continue to discuss and address the student and staff requests after our new governing board is in place,a Rudd said in an email to U of M students and employees Thursday.

In a follow up email, the university president said that while the new board is being formed a temporary task force will afacilitate the move to an independent governing board,a Rudd said.

Melanie Murry, U of M legal counsel, and David Zettergren, vice president for business and finance, are the heads of this taskforce.

aIn the coming weeks, Iall be reaching out to the faculty and staff senates, along with the Student Government Association, to discuss possible members,a Rudd said in the second email. aMy office will be scheduling a continuing series of breakfast meetings with each of these groups to review issues, concerns and ideas for shaping the best pathway forward. Please donat hesitate to share your thoughts.a

However, the appointments concern some including Ronald Patterson, a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning mechanic at the U of M.

aIf we are moving to a self governing establishment, shouldn't the entire community on campus elect these officials?a Patterson said in an email to Rudd and every

Patterson said he didnat want to stir commotion, but that he was aconcerned with how this move will benefit the campus as a whole. I love this campus and Have for most of my life being born and raised here but as many of my fellow employees may agree to, we are quiet worried about the future of this great university,a he said in the email.

Rudd said he agreed to Patterson in an email response.

aThe purpose of these meetings is to explore how best to do that very thing, identify representation for the transition task force,a Rudd said.

The university also set up a special FOCUS Act page on their website.
The Queen refuses to come to London to meet President Barack Obama next month.

Instead, accompanied by his security circus, hell trundle to Windsor in his bomb-proof, seven-ton limo for lunch.

Hes due to stand alongside the PM and urge Britain to stay in the EU.

But hed be well advised not to give a pro-EU sermon over lunch after the row about the Queen supporting Brexit, says my source.

The Queen, pictured, is refusing to return to London to meet US President Barack Obama, who instead has to travel to Windsor for lunch, where if he is wise, will not raise the issue of remaining in the EU

Princess Anne will be at Cheltenham today to present the Gold Cup, sprinkling royal stardust on the festivals incontinent punters.

Unlike Ascot, where the Gold Cup was renamed to honour the Queens 90th birthday, this royal milestone is ignored in Cheltenham, in what is temporarily known as Chavshire.

Is Jeremy Corbyn trying harder?

For Budget day, he wore a sober jacket, tightened his tie and gave a well-received-by-comrades response to the Chancellors speech.

Now a bigger test looms.

Will he join the PM and walk into the Lords on May 18 to hear the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament?

His past practice was skulking in the Commons with fellow Leftie Dennis Skinner.

Elizabeth Hurley, pictured with Sean Bean commented about the fond memories of filming the hit TV show Sharpe in 1994

Elizabeth Hurley, 50, tweets: Just found 20-year-old pic of me and Sean Bean in [the 1994 ITV series] Sharpe. Fond memories.

Rough diamond Bean, 56, has said that he recalls seeing Elizabeth Hurleys t**s while filming.

Leader of the Commons Chris Graylings denigration of his shadow, Labours Chris Captain Underpants Bryant, continues.

Now he ridicules Bryants ambition to become Speaker, sneering: You do actually have to be popular and respected across the House.

Really? Theyre not adjectives often applied to the incumbent, John Bercow.

Magician Paul Daniels, who has died aged 77, gave an interview to a Daily Mirror reporter when the paper was owned by pension-looting crook and ex-Labour MP Robert Maxwell, telling him: Im a good magician but Im not a great one.

If I was, I could make that fat f**k Maxwell disappear!

Danielss widow, Debbie, is mocked unkindly about being asked on TV by Mrs Merton, aka Caroline Aherne:

So, Debbie, what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?

Few remember her good-natured reply: When I married Paul in 1988 he wasnt one.

Chancellor George Osborne deserves credit for agreeing to be interviewed by Radio 4s inimitable John Humphrys, 72, a day after the Budget.

Humphrys began by remarking: Youre not very good at keeping your promises and keeping your targets, are you?

Goading floundering Osborne, he remarked: I suppose what Im asking really is, Whats a bloke got to do in your job to get the sack?

Shoot George! Now!

Chancellor George Osborne, pictured at St Benedict's Catholic Primary School in Garforth, yesterday had earlier appeared on BBC Radio 4 with John Humphrys who mercilessly goaded the chancellor

Dame Sian Phillips, 82, says marrying Lawrence of Arabia star Peter OToole brought her acting career to a halt, complaining in The Stage: I kept working, but in a much lower key than I would otherwise have done.

Maybe, but didnt she enjoy huge, career-enhancing publicity after marrying OToole in 1959?
Japanese mask has been compared to various horror films

A Japanese face mask with a Winnie the Pooh design has terrified the internet with many users comparing it to something out of a horror movie.

A photograph of the face pack, meant to beautify skin, was posted by Twitter user @beeeeeerrrrrry after she had been hoping for a relaxing treatment.

However the single-use nourishing sheet mask, inspired by the cute honey-obsessed creation of AA Milne, is transformed into something much more scary over the contours of the human face.

Japanese Twitter user @beeeeeerrrrrry had been hoping to enjoy some relaxing 'me time' using a Winnie the Pooh printed sheet mask, above. She was horrified when her calming beauty treatment took a sinister turn

Sheet masks are a recent beauty craze and have become especially popular in Japan for keeping your face smooth and nourished. Printed versions come in a variety of designs including pandas, tigers and lambs

And since the image was re-posted on sharing website Reddit, many users have shared their own selfies - and the internet has responded with horror.

The imaged has attracted 160 comments on a page dedicated to badly-designed products, most of which refer to the scary quality of the mask.

A user called Ppchromatics said: 'These masks are amazing. They make your skin super soft and scare you family all within on the span of 20 minutes.'

Another, LCS_Pros_Hate_Me said: 'She looks as if she's about to go on a purge', referring to the film of the same name.

Photos of people using a Japanese face mask with a Winnie the Pooh design have sparked comparisons with horror films including The Purge and Silence Of The Lambs

AA Milne's much-loved, honey-obsessed bear is transformed into something much more scary over the contours of the human face. But the internet has responded with horror to the mask

In the 2013 horror, a family is set upon by a gang clad in terrifying masks, sanctioned by the government to carry out murder.

Another user, Sqlut, clearly would not take any chances if they were confronted with this creature in the street: '10/10 would stab in the chest.'

Two of the comments took inspiration from classic horror Silence Of The Lambs, in which a psychopath, who fails to qualify for gender reassignment surgery due to his mental state, creates a his own wearable 'woman suit' out of the skin of overweight women.

In one famous scene Buffalo Bill forces a woman imprisoned in a hole to rub lotion onto her skin, which he lowers down to her in a bucket.

Reddit users gave their verdict on the Japanese beauty treatments, with many commenting on the scary nature of the mask

A user called Ppchromatics said: 'These masks are amazing. They make your skin super soft and scare you family all within on the span of 20 minutes'

Slyduban wrote: Imagine all the misunderstood serials killers trying to moisturise. That's why he wanted the lotion in the bucket.'

Meanwhile Hazzman wrote: 'It puts the honey on it's skin or else it gets the bees again.'

Sheet masks are a recent beauty craze that hailed from Korea and are now popular in Japan for keeping skin smooth and nourished.

Printed versions, such as the Winnie the Pooh design, are available in many other quirky designs including pandas, tigers and lambs.

The masks are hard to find in the UK but can be purchased internationally via Amazon for around $16 US or 12, not including delivery fees.
Hes never been a gambling man, but Rowan Atkinson feels hes taking one of the biggest risks of his career with his first significant TV role since he appeared as bumbling Inspector Raymond Fowler in BBC sitcom The Thin Blue Line 20 years ago.

Later this month hell star as contemplative, pipe-smoking French detective Jules Maigret in the first of two feature-length ITV dramas, and for a man who made his name with the slapstick and silliness of Mr Bean and Blackadder its way out of his comfort zone.

A friend of mine warned me Id be playing someone much closer to myself than anyone Id ever played before, says Rowan, still dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, white shirt and dark blue tie with ruby spots on as he takes a break between scenes on the set in Budapest, Hungary, which is doubling for 1950s Paris where the dramas are set.

Rowan Atkinson stars as contemplative, pipe-smoking French detective Jules Maigret

It worried me because Maigret isnt the kind of exaggerated character Mr Bean or Blackadder is, hes more like me and Ive never wanted to play someone like myself. I dont want to do that, and I could fall flat on my face.

One of the aspects of the character I found most challenging was his sheer ordinariness. He doesnt like opera, he doesnt have skeletons in his cupboard, he doesnt have a French accent [none of the characters in the two films do], he doesnt walk with a limp. But the thing I thought I could do was his thoughtfulness, his ruminative, quite compassionate side.

ROWANS NOT THE FIRST BRITISH MAIGRET Maigret is one of the worlds most popular TV and movie detectives, with 33 actors having played him before Rowan Atkinson. Brit Charles Laughton was the first English-language Maigret in the 1949 film The Man On The Eiffel Tower, but Rupert Davies (above) is most famous in the part, making 52 episodes for the BBC between 1960-63. He became a household name, commanding 10,000 for a Dubonnet commercial at the height of his fame. Although typecast by the role, Davies at least had the satisfaction of having his versions dubbed and shown on French TV, and he even won approval from Georges Simenon himself, who described Davies as my perfect Maigret. Richard Harris played Maigret on ITV in 1988, while Michael Gambon gave us his version, also on ITV, in 1992 and 1993. Advertisement

'Hes not an egotist, hes not a performer, hes not an eccentric or a weirdo, hes just a very ordinary guy doing an unusual job in a very interesting time in the Paris of the 1950s, not long after the Nazi occupation when there was still a lot of lawlessness and racketeering in the city. But I felt I could probably portray a lot of the aspects of him that did exist, particularly that quietness. I think Im quite good at not doing very much on screen.

Maigret appeared in 75 novels by Belgian author Georges Simenon between 1931 and 1972, and in the first of these two new adaptations, Maigret Sets A Trap, the taciturn sleuth is under enormous pressure to make an arrest after four women are killed in quick succession, seemingly by the same man, during the sweltering summer of 1955.

In the second, Maigrets Dead Man, to be seen later this year, Maigret plunges into the Parisian underworld in order to track down a killer. Both were filmed in Budapest  some scenes were to be shot in Paris but that plan was shelved after the terrorist attacks last November. Budapest was the perfect substitute for Paris, says producer Jeremy Gwilt. It looks more like Paris in the 1950s than Paris does now.

At least Maigrets most defining characteristic, the obligatory pipe smoking, came naturally to Rowan. He puffed on one himself while at university in Newcastle in the 1970s, where he gained a degree in electrical engineering before going on to get an MSc at Oxford. Im not proud of it, he says a little sheepishly.

But at least it meant I vaguely knew what to do when it came to lighting up as Maigret. Although I cant say the experience was that pleasant. In theory the herbal tobacco we used is healthier but when youre smoking a lot during a scene it sort of burns the back of your mouth, whereas real tobacco is kinder... and it stays alight for longer too. But the pipe smoking is something Maigret does, a character trait, something I could cling on to.

Rowan, 61, admits to thinking long and hard about taking on the role and, at one point, even turned it down.

ITV had a script and it interested me a little bit but I wasnt sure I was capable of playing the character. Then a year later, when they might have found somebody else, I was re-offered the part and I decided to accept.

Rowan pictured as Maigret with Lucy Cohu who plays his wife Madame Maigret

'But that doesnt mean I didnt still have doubts. You have to believe you can play a role as well as anybody can, and during the first two weeks of filming I didnt think I could play the part as well as I wanted to. I wasnt delivering lines in a satisfactory way. I just couldnt find my feet with the character. It was a worrying time, but if it were going to be a hideous disaster I think Id have got a sense of it by now.

One thing that sets Maigret apart from many other fictional detectives is that hes in a happy marriage, with Madame Maigret here played by Lucy Cohu, who appeared as Alec Hardys ex-wife Tess Henchard in the second series of Broadchurch.

The relationship is relatively undeveloped in the books, but generally its what you might call very old-fashioned, says Rowan. Its very calm, not overly demonstrative, very loving and genuine. I think Maigret appreciates that, in contrast to the traumatic nature of his work. Weve tried to develop the character of Madame Maigret, shes more present in our stories than she is in the books.

GLOBAL MR BEAN MANIA Rowan Atkinson was constantly recognised while filming Maigret  thanks to his international fame as Mr Bean (left). When he arrived at Budapest airport for the first time there was a bit of a scrum with 15 microphones being pointed in his direction, says producer Jeremy Gwilt. Everyone was very respectful but there was a huge amount of interest. Rowan says hes quite used to it. Thats the weird thing about the global outreach of Mr Bean, there arent many countries in the world that havent been infected. Im recognised as much for him in the Philippines as I am in Wolverhampton. Advertisement

Rowans always been twitchy about giving away too much about his own private life in interviews, yet much has been revealed in the media anyway. His 24-year marriage to former BBC make-up artist Sunetra, with whom he has a son Ben, 22, and daughter Lily, 20, ended in divorce last year.

He now shares his 4 million property in London with 32-year-old actress girlfriend Louise Ford. He also made headlines when he crashed his McLaren F1 supercar a few years ago, and reveals that he had to temporarily give up his passion for fast cars while filming Maigret in case he did himself an injury and jeopardised the shoot.

Insurance requirements meant I couldnt race at the Goodwood Revival festival for example, although I did rather hope I might get to drive as Maigret, admits Rowan. We used some wonderful French cars, primarily a splendid Citroen Traction Avant Light 15 with a new gearbox, a new engine and fresh upholstery, which was bought especially for the production. It would have been interesting to drive it, but Maigret was always chauffeured.

'I did suggest we ring the changes and put Maigret behind the wheel, but John Simenon, the son of Georges and one of the executive producers, wasnt keen. He said Maigret devotees would be upset at the character doing something he doesnt do in the books, so Maigret remains a passenger.

And that wasnt the only time John Simenon, who manages all contracts in relation to his fathers work, stepped in when he thought ITV was threatening to play fast and loose with Maigrets image.

Whats most important is to respect the general characteristics of Maigret, explains John. Hes been around since the 30s and been read by millions of people, so you cant play around too much with the character. For example, in some of the early scripts for this version Maigret was using his gun a lot. But that wasnt going to happen on screen because in the entire 75 stories he probably only shoots seven or eight times.

And if this project had been mooted ten years ago, when we couldnt have characters smoking on screen, we simply couldnt have made the films because smoking a pipe is what Maigret does and it would have killed the whole thing for him not to be doing it. Im not a prison guard, but I can step in and veto things. I try and make people understand why it has to be a certain way.

Rowan reckons there may be changes if Maigret is going to solve more cases with him in the role. For one thing hes very self-contained, he says. I might want to let him off the leash, let him out a bit, if we do more. And at the moment Im not entirely sure I do want to do more. Admittedly not many comic actors apart from David Jason have played TV detectives but its still a very well-ploughed furrow. So lets see what the viewers think when they see Sets A Trap and take it from there.

Maigret is on Easter Sunday, 27 March, at 8pm on ITV.
A mother has told of the stigma, struggle and pain of being a teenage mother after getting pregnant when she was 15 and revealed how people used to mistake her for her daughter's sister or babysitter.

Describing her journey from pregnant teenager in denial to proud mother of a 19-year-old college student, Jessie Gill, 35, described how her own experiences shaped her relationship with her daughter.

The holistic nurse and writer from New Jersey said she has built a strong friendship with Hayley's father but that they fell out of love within the first year of being parents.

Young mom: Jessie Gill, 35, pictured above with daughter Hayley soon after she was born, has described the stigma, struggle and pain of being a teenage mother after becoming pregnant aged 15

Jessie, who went to a Catholic school and grew up with sex being viewed by many as a total taboo, said she has no regrets but called for better education on the subject in homes and schools to open up the conversation around it - and prevent other young women from suffering the same treatment she experienced as a teen.

The proud mother became pregnant aged 15 as a Catholic schoolgirl after the condom broke during sex with her then boyfriend towards the end of her sophomore year.

During junior year she started missing periods but it was not until she noticed her breasts had started growing that she thought she might be pregnant.

Jessie said she still remembers the feeling of disbelief she felt after seeing the positive pregnancy test when she visited a pro-life clinic that was offering free tests.

She told FEMAIL: 'I was in shock the moment that I saw it and it's funny because I can picture (it). You know those moments that freeze in your mind.

'I can picture looking at the pregnancy test. I just kind of felt in denial.

'It's funny because the volunteer said "I can't really tell you for sure that you're pregnant, you have to go to a doctor" and even though I knew, I thought "maybe there's a chance..."'

She did not tell her parents until rumors started to spread and she started getting calls warning her about 'the dangers of abortion'.

One night, a mother of a girl at her school, as well as a group of girls from her youth group, and their leader turned up in her front yard at 2am, woke her up and 'preached' at her and vowed to stop her if she had an abortion.

'The group preached,' Jessie explained. 'They said rumors of an impending abortion flourished among the youth group.

'They vowed to stop me. I was infuriated! I hadn't decided to have an abortion but their insolence made me want to schedule one. It was none of their damn business.

'I'd like to believe they had pure intentions, but I think they craved the drama.

Lookalikes: Jessie, from New Jersey, pictured above (left) with Hayley (right), says people used to think she was her daughter's sister or babysitter when she was younger

'One of the mothers associated with the youth group said, "God spoke to me and told me I was supposed to come here tonight and tell your parents that you are pregnant,"' she told Cosmopolitan.

After the last episode, she told her parents. Although they were shocked she said they were supportive and allowed her to make her own decision.

'My parents and my daughter's father and his parents, we would be lost without them,' she told FEMAIL. 'They help us so much. We're all still so close...

'I really can't imagine life without all of them. Women do it, men do it, rarely, as single mothers.

'I like to imagine if I was in that position I would have the strength to do it alone, I can't imagine it though.'

Jessie is still good friends with Hayley's father - who came to childbirth class with her and was there with his mother and her mother for the 23 hour labor - but their romantic relationship ended before her first birthday.

She said as teen parents they were subjected to prejudice.

'My daughter arrived two weeks early after 23 hours of labor.

'When my doctor walked in, she turned to my boyfriend and joked, "We don't pick fathers up off the floor, especially not when they're only boyfriends,"' Jessie wrote in Cosmopolitan.

'I was able to deliver vaginally, and I didn't even have an epidural. I'm not sure how I tolerated it, but my mom, my boyfriend, and my boyfriend's mom were by my side.

'Throughout all of this, I realized that pregnant teenagers are absolutely judged. I endured countless double-takes and wide-eyed stares.

'The day after giving birth my mind and body were ravaged, and I felt like a burden on the world.

'I was lucky to have had an unwavering support system. Still, it was difficult. I can't imagine what life is like for girls who are forced into motherhood or embrace it alone.'

Jessie, who has since been married and divorced to another man and has an eight-year-old son called JD, told FEMAIL that falling out of love with Hayley's father 'was a process'.

She said: 'Every teenager when they break up with somebody or are in a relationship it's very melodramatic.

'So add that intensity of a teenage feeling on top of 'this is my child's family and this relationship's not working out', there's so many expectations, you feel like such a failure.'

Now they are close friends and have formed a 'unique relationship'.

Three generations: Jessie, pictured with Hayley as a baby and her mother Mary, said she cannot imagine raising her daughter without the support of her parents and her daughter's father and his family

She said: 'He's a really good guy, he's a really great friend. For anything our daughter needed, for anything I needed.

'When I got divorced he was there. It was a really unique friendship we built, growing up together and raising our baby.'

She has been with her current partner, who has a son from a previous relationship, for over five years and they all live together.

She said while her daughter was growing up Jessie often got mistaken for her sister or her babysitter which meant Hayley was aware from a young age that their situation was unusual.

'I was always very upfront with her...

'Everybody thought I was her sister, babysitter wherever we went so from that she knew what people would say because they would say "are you her sister?"

"No, I'm her mom", "how old are you?" I was always very open.

'I was a teem mom, it was hard and she knew we were very fortunate with the support system we had,' she said.

Jessie said having her daughter when she was still a teenager had a 'huge impact' on how she approached talking about sex which she said was a taboo subject when she was growing up and a pupil at a Catholic school.

She said: 'It's had a huge impact on my communication with her. It was actually a hush hush topic when I was growing up.

'I was in a Catholic school my whole life and my parents were cool but they were embarrassed to talk about it.

'With my daughter I was really open about all the body parts and she knows she can come to me with questions and she does. Sometimes too much.

'Growing up it was a taboo topic but with my daughter I said if you have any questions about sex, just come and ask me.'

Ecstatic: Jessie, pictured above with Hayley at high school graduation, says her 'incredible' daughter has made her feel proud of their journey

When she was growing up Jessie said she would ask her friends about sex rather than her parents.

Hayley started at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in September and comes home during holidays.

Jessie said she is immensely proud of her daughter who got a scholarship to study at the college where she is a double major in bio-medical engineering and electrical engineering.

'She's the most brilliant person I've ever met,' she said. But admitted it was a wrench when she left home to start college.

She added: 'She's so motivated, I wish it could be bottled and sold.'

Jessie said going back to school to study when Hayley was in middle school was 'scary' and 'tough' but helped set a good example for her daughter.

'Looking at my daughter now and seeing how incredible she is it's like a validation of saying "you know what, I did ok. I'm proud of what I did, what she did"' Jessie Gill, 35

She said: 'It was scary, I didn't know if I was going to do it at all. My daughter was much older when I went back to be a nurse, she was in middle school.

'I think that had a big impact on her, an adult going to pursue a goal, but it was tough.'

Jessie said she has no regrets about having a child so young because of the woman Hayley has grown into.

'Looking at my daughter now and seeing how incredible she is it's like a validation of saying "you know what, I did ok. I'm proud of what I did, what she did",' she said.

'It's easy for me to say these things, my story, because it turned out beautiful.'

But she said attitudes to sex 'need to change', adding: 'Sex needs to be something people have a conversation about.

'That's part of the reason, not just teen pregnancy, I was lucky, I got pregnant, some people end up with AIDS, something that can hurt them.

'It's because of a lack of education, awareness, people need to talk about it.'

She added: 'It absolutely needs to be talked about at home as well, that's essential. But moving the subject into schools makes it more of a conversation rather than going into a bedroom and having the birds and the bees talk.'

Although she does not regret any of her decisions, Jessie would have mixed feelings if her own daughter were to get pregnant as a teenager.

She said: 'Like most parents I want my children to have a better life than I had, I want them to have more opportunities, more success and more happiness.

'In that way I'm so familiar with struggle and pain of being a young mom so in that I wouldn't want that for her.
One woman is recounting the panic she felt when she felt after fooling around with a cute guy and realizing afterward that she could no longer find the tampon inside of her.

In an essay for Elite Daily, Alexia LaFata, 22, wrote that she was attending college in Boston when, one night, she hooked up with a classmate who she was really into.

Though she was on her period, she wasn't about to let a little menstrual issue get in the way of having fun with her crush  even though it ended up sending her to the hospital, where a doctor had to dig around inside her to pull out her lost tampon.

Ouch! Alexia LaFata, 22, was fooling around with a crush while she had her period  and his fingers pushed the tampon far up inside of her

Oops: When she couldn't find the tampon, she started to worry less that she would develop Toxic Shock Syndrome, and more that it had slipped out in her crush's bed

The drama started to unfold the morning after her ill-fated hook-up. The night before, Alexia had put in a tampon at around 9 p.m. before heading to her crush's place, where the two got a bit hot and heavy but didn't have sex.

In her own bathroom the next morning, she was attempting to pull out her tampon when she realized that she couldn't find it. At first, she wasn't too worried, and just adjusted her position and dug around further.

'Ive accidentally left tampons in for a long time before. Hell, Ive even hooked up with guys with a tampon in before.

'This was just another day in the life of a girl who likes boys and also gets a period,' she said. 'But then I didnt feel a string.'

She called for her roommate Chantal, a pre-med student she hoped would have some professional insight. Chantal urged her to keep trying, leaving Alexia in tears as she 'poked and jabbed around' for ten minutes. She even tried doing so with a handheld mirror.

Then, her roommate asked if she was absolutely sure the tampon was still in there  which suddenly made Alexia have some doubts.

For a few moments, she was less worried that the tampon was lodged somewhere high up inside of her, and more panicked that it had slipped out and was now hidden somewhere in the sheets of her crush's bed.

Panicky moment: Her roommate, a pre-med student, ended up going with her to the hospital

She didn't feel like she could text him and ask, since the romance was still new and exciting  and requesting that he rummage for a used tampon in his bed wouldn't exactly be a turn-on.

Instead, she screwed up her nerve and decided to go to the hospital.

Waiting for the doctor, Alexia started worrying again about the tampon that might still be inside her, and the possibility that she could develop Toxic Shock Syndrome.

'Every woman has been afraid of TSS since she first learned what a period was. But if he didnt find a tampon inside of me, that meant it was definitely, no doubt, in my crushs bed,' she explained.

To her, fear of the second scenario was much worse  and, half-jokingly, she reasoned that she 'rather have TSS' than have have her crush 'never, ever want to see me again' after discovering the bloody mess in his sheets.

Finally, the male doctor, whom Alexia estimated to be in his mid-30s, walked into the exam room and asked her why she was there.

'I started rambling, in one giant, self-conscious breath: "Well, I put in a tampon last night at, like, 9 pm? And then I hooked up with this guy, and I guess he was going really hard with his fingers, so now I think he shoved it really far up in my vagina because I tried to get it out but I cant. I cant even see it. So it could REALLY be in there."'

Thanks for the help! After removing the tampon, the doctor told her that she never would have gotten it out on her own

What a pain! The hospital visit ended up costing $900, which she said totally wasn't worth it (file photo used)

Ever the professional, the doctor simply told her to take her pants off. Once she was dressed in a paper gown, she pulled herself up onto the table, spread her legs, and waited for the MD to get to work.

He started pushing her inner thighs apart, looking inside of her for the lost sanitary product. After a few minutes, he stuck his gloved hands inside of her, pulled, and took out the offending 'mummified tampon'.

'It looked exactly like I pictured: a dead rabbits foot,' Alexia wrote. She asked him how high up inside of her it had been.

'Oh, you were never going to get that yourself,' he said. 'It was all the way at your cervix, and the string was pretty tightly wrapped around the cotton. You must have been going at it really vigorously.'

After advising her to watch out for symptoms of TSS, he let her go. It wasn't until a week later when she received the bill that she learned that the whole ordeal has cost her $900  a price she said certainly wasn't worth it, especially since she didn't even orgasm during the hook-up.
A miniature horse delighted sick children New York after making a surprise appearance at a hospital.

The therapy horse, called Honor, who measures 32 inches tall and is just ten months old, visited Kravis Children's Hospital at Mount Sinai in New York City.

The colt was led through the hospital corridors and in to meet children, while those too sick to meet the horse were invited to call in or text with questions for his trainer when the horse appeared on hospital television.

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Neigh! Therapy horse Honor, pictured above, pays surprise visit to sick children at Kravis Children's Hospital, Mount Sinai, in New York City

Jorge Garcia-Bengochea, co-founder of Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses, said the horses make a huge impact on sick children.

Horses from the nonprofit charity visit more than 45,000 children and adults per year in hospitals, assisted living programs, hospices and families who have experienced traumatic events.

Jorge told Reuters: 'They are herd animals, so they are very intuitive of what other horses are doing, needing. And they treat people that same way. They sense different emotions, different feelings that children have.

'Children have been through very traumatic situations and they've shut down. Just being around the animal, they get animated, they start talking and they actually sometimes tell the horse things that they haven't told other people.'

Obedient: The 10-month-old colt, pictured above with his handler and hospital staff, provided a welcome distraction to sick children

Centre of attention: The 32-inch-tall horse, pictured in the playroom, also made an appearance on hospital television for children who were too sick to meet him in person

Maria Benitez, 19, who is being treated as an outpatient at the hospital, broke into a smile when Honor trotted into the playroom.

She said horses are her favorite animals but commenting on Honor's size, she said: 'He's smaller'.

Dr. Lisa Satlin, system chair of pediatrics for Mount Sinai Health System, said such visits help to take children's minds off their illnesses.

'This is what the kids need. They do need these activities to take their minds off why theyre here,' she told CBS2

'Theyre sick, they dont feel well. Theyre not with their friends. Theyre here in the hospital being poked and prodded.'

Comfort: Miniature horses have also been used to help trauma victims after tragedies such as the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012

Miniature horses have been used to provide comfort to trauma victims after tragedies such as the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, the tornadoes that hit Oklahoma in 2013 and last year's Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting.

They are also used to to help the families of police officers who have died in the line of duty.

Diane Rode, head of the child creative arts therapy unit at the hospital, said horses can provide an important link to the outside world.

She told Reuters: 'When you're in the hospital, you're dealing with pain, anxiety, isolation, and it's easy to get stuck in that.
In January, Kim Tucci, 26, gave birth to quintuplets - one boy and four girls - at just 30 weeks.

The Perth-based mother, who has a nine-year-old son from a previous marriage and two daughters with her husband Vaughn, welcomed the five new children to her growing brood after a challenging pregnancy.

But fortunately for Mrs Tucci and her beau, they have a host of eager volunteers on standby willing to help out with their soon-to-be frantic household.

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Proud mother: In January, Kim Tucci, 26, gave birth to quintuplets - one boy and four girls - at just 30 weeks pregnant

New trial: Perth and Districts Multiple Births Association recently decided to trial a community support program where people can volunteer to help the couple care for their children

Perth and Districts Multiple Births Association recently decided to trial a community support program where people can volunteer to help the couple care for their children.

According to WA Today, up to 150 volunteers will rotate through a 'support roster' to help the mother-of-eight and her husband with an estimated '50 nappy changes and 40 bottle feeds each day.'

The association's volunteer support program coordinator, Krista Bingham, told the paper that the program would be solely centred around Mrs Tucci and that a roster would be organised to help cover 'pretty much the whole day.'

Not alone: Up to 150 volunteers will rotate through a 'support roster' to help the mother-of-eight and her husband with an estimated '50 nappy changes and 40 bottle feeds each day'

Big thanks: In February, Mrs Tucci shared her thanks for ongoing support on her blog

'The volunteers will be doing stuff like helping to feed babies, changing nappies, helping with washing bottles and preparing feeds and changing linen and washing baby clothes and all those sort of tasks,' Ms Bingham said.

'They'll also help with cuddling the babies which is really important because multiple birth babies need cuddles just as much as single babies do.'

Many of the volunteers have twins or triplets themselves and others are grandparents, teachers, midwives, nurses and other professionals - each one sharing a love for babies.

One female volunteer has already shared her excitement for the job on Facebook.

Challenging pregnancy: Mrs Tucci shared pregnancy updates throughout her journey online

'I am so excited to share that I have been accepted to volunteer to help out Kim Tucci and her family including her 5 newborn beautiful quintuplets known as Surprised by 5,' she wrote.

'This is such an amazing experience that I was so happy to apply for. I cant wait to meet your family Kim and help you in anyway i can.'

A flyer for the program said the association was looking for 'volunteers who have some experience of babies to provide hands-on help supporting the parents to care for their babies.'

'Volunteers will assist with feeding, changing and settling babies, washing and preparing bottles, making up cots, reading to older siblings, and hanging out and folding washing.'

It also said that all volunteers would be required to attend a 'four hour workshop' and hold a Working with Children Check.

Experience needed: A flyer for the program said the association was looking for 'volunteers who have some experience of babies to provide hands-on help supporting the parents to care for their babies'

Volunteers would ideally be able to work three to six hours per week, although are able to choose their own hours.

In February, Mrs Tucci shared her thanks for ongoing support on her blog Surprised by Five and earlier posed for a series of stunning photos taken by Erin Elizabeth who featured them on her Facebook page.

'The last few weeks have been frantic. However, I have been lucky enough to have an array of people behind me pushing me through. I can't say thank you enough for all the love and support everybody has given me and my family,' she wrote.

'The hospital is doing an amazing job keeping all the babies safe and infection free. We have decided to not share photos yet as it's the only thing our family has until they get to meet the babies.
The Duchess of Cambridge wowed locals this morning as she donned her favourite Missoni coat to open a new shop for East Anglia Children's Hospices, a charity for which she is a patron.

Kate, 34, was seen charming the locals and chatting to schoolchildren as she arrived at the story in Holt, Norfolk - and it seemed some couldn't contain their excitement, as one girl was seen grinning with delight when she spotted her.

The Duchess was wrapped up in a blue tweed Missoni coat which she has worn on at least three previous occasions, including the wedding of friends Lucy Meade and Charlie Budgett in 2014.

The Duchess of Cambridge donned her favourite Missoni coat to open a new shop for East Anglia Children's Hospices in Holt Norfolk today

How do I look? Kate tries on a hat for size as she takes a look around the EACH charity shop

The Duchess makes people laugh as she puts on the blue hat that matches her outfit

The royal cuts the ribbon to officially open the store before taking a look inside

A gift for Prince George? Kate picks up a Fireman Sam book as she browses the store

The takes a look around the shop which supports families and cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk

A schoolgirl, left, looks delighted as the Duchess makes an appearance at a new charity shop in Norfolk

The Duchess was seen chatting to children as she arrived for the charity engagement on Friday morning

The Duchess was also spotted in the same coat - from Missoni's 2010 collection - during a trip to the East Midlands as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee tour and for a visit to Fortnum and Mason in 2012.

She is said to have snapped up the coat for a bargain price during a trip to Bicester Village.

On Friday morning, she paired the coat with a pair of blue courts and a navy clutch bag, with her hair worn down in loose curls.

Kate has been a Royal Patron of EACH since January 2012, and her first public speaking engagement, earlier that year, was for for the opening of the Treehouse, a children's hospice opened by the charity.

She was in Norfolk today to mark the official opening of the charity's latest shop - one of 21 in total - by cutting a ribbon with the help of two families who receive care and support from the charity.

And after spending time chatting to locals and charity workers, Kate's arms were laden with bunches of flowers and posies.

Kate bends down to take a bouquet of flowers presented to her by a young girl

The Duchess takes the pretty flowers which match the colour of her well-wisher's outfit

The Royal wave: Kate waves to crowds as she makes a typically stylish entrance in Holt, Norfolk

Kate was back on duty today after pulling out of an annual St. Patrick's Day tradition prompted a backlash

Kate, who has been a patron of EACH since January 2012, was there to mark the official opening ceremony by cutting a ribbon with the help of two families who receive care and support from the charity

Flower girl: The Duchess is handed a posy of daffodils, left, and a bunch of pink flowers, right, by locals

A local support worker overheard Kate telling a wheelchair-bound girl: 'Next time I'll take William with me'

Bumper day: After chatting to charity workers and locals, the Duchess of Cambridges is laden with flowers

Kate pauses to speak to a wheelchair bound woman as crowds gather to see her at the quiet Norfolk town

According to EACHs website, the Duchess was due to receive a tour of the shop while meeting staff, families and supporters including several volunteers.

The Eastern Daily Press reported that Kate enjoyed her visit so much, she promised to bring her husband, Prince William along next time.

Local support worker Helen Jacobs-McGee heard Kate telling a wheelchair-bound girl: 'Next time I'll take William with me.'

Tracy Rennie, EACH Director of Care said: 'We are delighted The Duchess of Cambridge will be taking the time to help us celebrate the opening of our new shop in the beautiful town of Holt.

'Were really looking forward to becoming an integral part of the towns thriving and friendly community, and are confident local residents will help us make the shop a great success.'

Earlier this year, it emerged that the Queen would be handing over her 64-year role as patron of the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club to tennis-loving Kate.

Kate received a tour of the new shop while meeting staff, families and supporters including several volunteers

Kate makes a stylist entrance, before being given a tour of EACH's most recent charity shop in Norfolk

Excited schoolchildren wave flags to greet the Duchess as she arrives at the charity shop

Devoted: Kate, 34, has been a Royal Patron of children's charity EACH since January 2012

Effortless style: Kate wore her hair in loose waves with minimal make-up for the charity shop opening

She is patron to 12 organisations, including SportsAid and the Scouts Association.

This week, the Duchess's decision to break a 115-year-old tradition by pulling out of presenting the Irish Guards with their traditional St Patrick's Day shamrock sparked an online backlash.

Members of the public expressed anger at Kate's decision to return to her home of Anmer Hall in Norfolk following a series of engagements in London in order to spend time with Prince George, aged two, and Princess Charlotte, who is 10-months-old.

The Duchess accepts a bunch of posies from a group of schoolchildren who came down to say hello

Kate paired her Missoni coat with a pair of blue courts, accessorised with a clutch, as she posed for photos

The mother-of-two reveals her slim legs as she bends over to chat to the happy pupils

Kate smiles and waves during the royal engagement in the county she now calls home

Made their day: The delighted pupils smile and wave their homemade flags for the royal visit

On Wednesday, many took to social media to slam the decision, with one saying sarcastically: 'Well she has done it for the last four years - she probably needs a rest!'

Another said: 'I feel disappointed - if the Royals start breaking with good traditions then I'm not sure what they're there for.'

The Duchess' decision, which came despite her carrying out the duty for the last four years, broke tradition as the role has been completed by female royals since Queen Alexandra in 1901.
The Duchess of Cornwall looked ready for spring in a pale blue jacket and matching shift dress as she attended a reception at the President's Palace in Montenegro.

Camilla, 68, was all smiles in her elegant outfit, matched with tan heels and a coordinated clutch as she walked past a guard of honour to mark their arrival.

The Duchess and the Prince of Wales, 67, met President of Montenegro Vujanovic and Svetlana Vujanovic in Cetinje on day five of their tour of the Balkans.

Camilla was all smiles in her elegant outfit, matched with tan heels and a coordinated clutch as she walked past a guard of honour at the President's Palace, with President Vujanovic's wife Svetlana Vujanovic

The Duchess of Cornwall looked ready for spring in a pale-blue coat, as Prince Charles shook President Vujanovic's hand, right his wife Svetlana Vujanovic

The Duchess chose a collarless coat for the occasion and accessorised her pastel number with a pearl necklace with jewel detailing.

Camilla and the president's wife Svetlana Vujanovic seemed to get on famously as they walked past the armed guard and appeared to share a joke.

The Duchess' bright and breezy outfit was contrasted by Svetlana's fashion choice of a leather jacket cinched with a waist belt and navy midi dress.

The royals will begin their visit today in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica.

After the reception, the couple will tour a cultural heritage festival in Cetinje, the country's old royal capital, where agriculture minister Petar Ivanovic will discuss the importance of the sustainability of agricultural development in Montenegro.

Among the exhibitions are a winery, olive growers and honey makers, as well as a traditional dance troupe whose routine includes a human pyramid.

The Prince of Wales walks past the armed guard with the Montenegro president with his wife and Camilla behind

Charles surveyed the guard of honour as he walked up to the President's Palace in Cetinj

After the reception, the couple will tour a cultural heritage festival in Cetinje, the country's old royal capital

The Duchess' bright and breezy outfit was contrasted by Svetlana's fashion choice of a leather jacket cinched with a waist belt and navy midi dress

After the reception, the royals will visit a cultural festival where exhibitions include a winery, olive growers and honey makers, as well as a traditional dance troupe whose routine includes a human pyramid

Charles will take part in bilateral meetings with prime minister Milo Djukanovic and the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament, Ranko Krivokapic, pictured with president Filip Vujanovic

After a tour of Vladim Dom, the old Montenegrin parliament building, the Duchess of Cornwall will visit a music academy at the University of Montenegro and a Unicef fostering project.

Charles will take part in bilateral meetings with prime minister Milo Djukanovic and the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament, Ranko Krivokapic.

There will follow a meeting with HM Revenue and Customs and Montenegrin law enforcement officials.

After a briefing on bilateral co-operation between the UK and Montenegrin customs authorities, Charles will present Montenegrin officials with specialist customs equipment on behalf of the British Government.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visit an Arts and Craft fair in Cetinje

Among the exhibitions at the cultural heritage festival were a traditional dance troupe whose routine includes a human pyramid, pictured Charles asks the troupe questions

After the festival, Charles will take part in bilateral meetings with prime minister Milo Djukanovic and the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament, Ranko Krivokapic

Camilla and Charles chatted with members of a Montenegran folk dance ensemble

The dancers perform their routine as Charles and Camilla, right, watch the colourful troupe

Camilla and Charles clap the dancers along with the delighted audience

The Duchess and the Prince of Wales pose withe the dance troupe who wore colourful and traditional dress

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Montenegran President Filip Vujanovic, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Montengeran First Lady Svetlana Vujanovic emerge from the Presidential Palace

The Prince of Wales, President Vujanovic, the Duchess of Cornwall, and Svetlana Vujanovic at the President's Palace

Charles tries a bite at the cultural festival in his slate-grey suit as Camilla looks intrigued

Camilla walks in the town with her current biographer Penny Junor, right, with a hilly landscape behind her

Camilla listens to an accordion student play at the University of Montenegro Music Academy

The Duchess thoughtfully listens to a violin and accordion performance during her visit

Students perform for the Duchess during her visit to the University of Montenegro Music Academy

Camilla claps the students after their special performance during her visit

Camilla smiles to parents as she pats a young girl, wearing a pale-pink coat, on the head

Camilla shakes hands with a young boy in a red jacket and speaks to locals

Camilla grins at one young woman as a boy takes a picture of the royal walking down a red carpet

Camilla chats with children at the UNICEF centre as the children get creative

Sofia, 10, reads a thank you letter to the Duchess and Camilla appears touched

Actor Nicholas Lyndhurst joined Camilla at the UNICEF centre as she spoke to the children

A joint initiative between UK and Montenegrin officials to tackle cigarette smuggling and the movement of other illicit goods has been hailed as a major success.

From there the Prince will attend a young leadership reception hosted by the British ambassador, before flying to Pristina, Kosovo.

Yesterday, the Duchess of Cornwall and Charles enjoyed an action-packed day in Serbia on the fourth stage of their Balkan tour including a visit to a bee museum and a dinner to honour British nurses.

Camilla had a chance to admire women in elaborate traditional outfits made of carefully embroidered lace, flower-print fabric, loops of pearls and show-stopping head-dresses laden with strands of beads.

The Duchess of Cornwall, 68, met women in traditional Serbian dress outside of the bee museum she visited in Novi Sad

The Prince of Wales and Camilla also attended a reception to celebrate British nurses who served on the frontline with the Serbian army during the First World War

Camilla chose a deep purple jacket with a sequin collar and dress at last night's official reception and she paired her outfit with hoop earrings and opaque tights to keep out the cold.

While Charles chose a pin-striped suit and pale pink tie for the occasion.

Ahead of the evening reception on their final day in the country, the Prince and Duchess made a number of stops, beginning the day at a cultural market in Novi Sad.

Crowds gathered in the square to see the royal couple - some taking to windows to catch a glimpse - and cheered and applauded as Charles and Camilla walked through, occasionally stopping to shake hands and exchange a few words.

Camilla met two women in bright traditional dress both wearing unusual headdresses after she visited a bee museum in Belgrade

Camilla got hands on to inspect the intricate headdress which was decorated with beads and florals

A woman in traditional costume shakes Camilla's hand as she learns about the decorative costumes women traditionally wore

They also visited the Matica Srpska gallery where the Prince turned his hand to art restoration.

He was shown the gallery's conservation studio, which is currently working on the Iconostasis of the Serbian Church in Budapest, and, on being shown one of the pieces in the process of being cleaned, he was invited to have a go.

He picked up a tool and began gently scraping at the surface, saying: 'This is very exciting. It's amazing. You have to be careful.

After enjoying himself for a short time, he laughed and said 'I'd better not do too much', before putting the implement down.

The Duchess of Cornwall studies an unusual bee hive shaped as a church, at the Bee Museum

Camilla tries out sesame honey produced at the bee museum from a terracotta pot, the Duchess chose a navy coat and dragonfly brooch for the outing

The Duchess of Cornwall looks at red and black knitted socks in a traditional design at a market in Novi Sad

Camilla, pictured at the market square, grins to the market stall holder as she looks at the array of candles and ornaments

The Duchess met locals and took a closer look at a young baby in a padded blue babygro

Together with the Hungarian government, the gallery is restoring 54 different icons from the Iconostasis which were painted in the 19th century by Arsenije Todorovic.

They represent one of the most valuable inherited artefacts of Serbian culture. When restoration is complete in 2017, the icons will be returned to Hungary.

During the day, the royals learned about the country in a cultural event featuring dancing and crafts.

They were treated to a performance by members of the Triorca Orchestra - a project that encourages children from Serbia, Britain and Germany to come together using the international language of music.

Charles and Camilla are also set to view two stalls displaying artwork created by children with disabilities.

Camilla admired the British food selection produced at the Bee Museum with plenty of Union Jacks on display

Camilla sat in on a class for young children learning to speak English, at the Matica Srpska Gallery

The Prince of Wales sampled cognac with monks made at the 700-year-old Kovilj Monastery in Novi Sad

Members of a crowd get out their phones for a snap of Prince Charles and he poses for pictures

Camilla chats with young musicians from an orchestra performing for the couple

The Prince visited Kovilj Monastery where he learned about the rehabilitation programme it runs, and was invited to taste some of the products it makes.

He also went to the Kovilj marshes to see a special nature reserve.

The Duchess visited a beekeeping museum and winery, and met women wearing traditional dress, with one wearing a wide hat decorated with beading and pom poms, with a traditional red floral dress worn over a crocheted shirt, while another woman sported a large floral headress full of colourful blooms and a green fringed poncho.

Camilla then visited the Food is Great festival in Sremskl Karlovcl.

To conclude the visit, they met Dushan Marinkovic, whose grandmother Margaret Curry Polemis and aunts Rina Marinkovic and Mary Lorbek provided care to war orphans and refugees from Serbia in Greece during the First World War.

The royal couple unveiled a plaque in memory of Ms Polemis and her daughters.

The royals listen to a chamber orchestra perform on a market square with Camilla choosing knee-high boots and wrapped up in a woven coat

The Prince of Wales talks with citizens of Novi Sad and jokingly waves a finger

The prince spots something which piques his interest as the couple walk across the squar




She attributes her good looks to her mom, who won a won a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract but never perused acting

Sophia has been talking about how she's aged well and people still remark on her sex symbol status

She is promoting An Evening with Sophia Loren, a retrospective of her life that's hitting several venues in the US

The Oscar winner reflected on her life in a new interview with the Today show's Al Roker

Sophia Loren knows she looks good  and she's never sick of hearing it, either.

The 81-year-old sex symbol and silver screen icon has been promoting An Evening with Sophia Loren, a retrospective of her life that's hitting several venues in the US, and sat down with the Today show to talk about her career, her family, and  of course  her legendary beauty.

When asked by Al Roker if she ever tires of being told how gorgeous she is, Sophia simply said 'no', and 'never', adding with a laugh: 'It's nice to hear it.'

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Looking back: Sophia Loren, 81, is promoting a live show about her life called An Evening with Sophia Loren

Bring on the compliments! Speaking to Al Roker on the Today show, she said she never tires of hearing that she is beautiful

Sophia also pressed Al on whether he was a fan of hers, smiling and saying 'good' when he replied in the affirmative.

Earlier this week, the actress spoke to W Magazine about her never-fading good looks, saying: I look very well. I look fantastic. Im laughing, but everybody says so. Everybody says so! Sometimes I dont believe them anymore, but they are very convincing.'

Of course, people have been telling Sophia this for most of her life, ever since she started starring in several movies a year in the early '50s. But though the star is happy to take a compliment, she told Al that she wouldn't exactly say she's perfect.

'[Beauty is] not even perfection. It's something that comes from inside. I felt quite unique. I was not beautiful in the sense, like, [a] doll. I've never been like [that],' she said.

Diva: The star also quizzed Al on whether he was a fan; when he said he was, she replied: 'good'

Love: Sophia said she 'lives for' her family, and talked about how beautiful her kids looked as young children

Big family: The proud grandma also remarked on how beautiful her grandchildren (pictured) are

Hot! This week, Sophia said that filming this striptease scene was one of her most fun on-set memories

Sophia also touched on some of the subjects she'll address in her show, which will be playing in Las Vegas, Chicago, Dallas, Connecticut, New Jersey, and a few locations in Florida through April 1.

On being driven in her career, she said: 'I knew how to get what I wanted. Sometimes you suffer, but sometimes it happens.'

As for what she's been most proud of, the actress  who was quite prolific in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and starred in 11 films in 1954 alone  thinks it's too tough to narrow down.

'It's very difficult [to say what I'm most proud of],' she said. 'I'm sure that whatever I did in the beginning, and how my life is now, is the right thing for me. What I really wanted was to do things in the right way and not be mistaken.

'I'm happy. I live a wonderful life.'

One thing that certainly makes her swell with pride, though, is her family. Looking at pictures of her children when they were young, she remarked in Italian how beautiful they were  and she feels the same about her grandkids.

'I live for my family. I have the most beautiful grandchildren that I've ever seen in my life,' she said.

Feeling good! The Italian Oscar winner (pictured in October 2015) once said that women don't just become sex symbols  they have to be born that way

Beauty queen: Last year, she starred in a campaign for a shade of Dolce & Gabanna lipstick named after her

While the octogenarian actress' tour is taking a look back at her long life, she's not really done working. Though she's not making movies at the same rate she used to, she certainly keeps busy enough.

In September, in honor of her 80th birthday, Sophia starred in a glamorous Dolce & Gabanna lipstick campaign, having a new shade of red named after her  Sophia Loren N1, a limited-edition color that sold for $37.

'Sophia Loren N1 is our way of saying, "Thank you, Sophia!"' the designers, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, said at the time. '"Thank you for [your] beauty, thank you for being a world favorite, thank you for being an icon of the big screen and of Italian beauty."

'She has been a constant source of inspiration for us and today we celebrate her with the gift of her very own lipstick.'

She's got fans: Sophia (pictured in 1960) is often called one of the sexist women to ever live

Prolific: The star (pictured in 1953) made several movies a year in the '50s, '60s, and '70s

Happy to take it off: She said performing this strip tease scene for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in 1963 was a lot of fun because he co-star would scream as she removed clothing

In January, she starred in a second campaign for the Italian designers, this time for the their new Dolce Rosa Excelsa fragrance.

And she's continued to nab roles, though she admits they've shifted direction over the years.

'Actually, when I was 20, I didnt think that one day I would live to 80, but you do. You think, "My god, all this time went by? I cant believe it." Of course, the roles change  you cannot at my age do the story of a woman of 30 or 40 years old. Its impossible,' she told W.

Being so in-demand, it's no big shock that Sophia's not too fussed about getting older  though she attributes the fact that she's remained a stunner for so long to good genes.

'Its because, I think, of my mother,' she said of her ability to age well, and gracefully. 'She was the most beautiful woman in the world when I was born. She looked exactly like Greta Garbo, and she won a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contest to get a contract, but my grandmother didnt want to let her go to America because she said it was too far away.'

Sophia clearly inherited her mom's good looks, which explains why she once was able to proclaim so confidently: 'You have to be born a sex symbol.

Long career: 1960's Two Women and 1993's Grumpy Old Men were also favorites for Sophia (pictured in 1957)

Good genes: The screen siren (center, in the 1960s) attributes her good looks to her mother, who she said looked like Greta Garbo as a young woman (right)

Living in the moment: Sofia (pictured in 1959) admitted that when she was younger, she never thought she'd live to age 80

Never retire: She has continued to work into old age, scoring roles in the '80s (pictured), '90s, and today

'You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old.'

Speaking to W, the star also reflected on her past, naming the times she had the most fun on set. She loved working with Jack Lemmon in 1993's Grumpy Old Men, director Vittorio De Sica on Two Women in 1960, and Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni  for whom she did a strip tease in 1963's Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

She said she had such a great time because Marcello would scream whenever she took off and article of clothing, and it would made the whole crew laugh.

As for her favorite actresses, Sophia favors another iconic star who's had plenty of years in the business: 66-year-old Meryl Streep
A motorcyclist who narrowly escaped with his life after a head-on crash has got married in the hospital that saved him.

Just under one month since the horrific accident in which he lost his left leg and almost lost his left arm, Patrick Morris, 35, from Hampton, Virginia, married fiance Annie Wilhite, 27, yesterday on St Patrick's Day.

The couple, who fell in love after meeting nearly four years ago, tied the knot in VCU Medical Center hospital in Richmond, Virginia, in the hospital chapel.

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Married couple: Patrick Morris, 35, from Hampton, Virginia, pictured right with Annie Wilhite, 27, pictured left at their wedding yesterday at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, the hospital that saved his life

Wedding band: Patrick, pictured left putting a ring on Annie, right, during the ceremony at the hospital chapel, nearly died in a head-on crash with a car while driving his motorcycle

Love: The couple, pictured above, have been together for nearly four years

Patrick, a materials worker on Newport News shipyard, has been confined to the hospital ever since the crash on February 20 in which he was rushed to hospital by helicopter after also shattering his pelvis, shoulder, ribs and sternum.

He was driving westbound on his motorbike, a Harley-Davidson Low Rider, when he was hit almost head-on by an oncoming car that swerved into his lane.

Yesterday Annie arrived at the hospital in a wedding dress and a floral headdress.

Describing the moment she got the call to say that Patrick was in a crash.

She drove an hour-and-a-half to get to the hospital and arrived just in time before Patrick went into surgery.

She said Patrick told her before he went in for his operation that he 'couldn't wait' to marry her.

'I was the lucky one who got there in time to see him right before his first surgery.

Bad news: On the day of the crash, February 20, Annie, pictured left on her wedding day with Patrick, right, got a call to tell her that Patrick was in a crash

LIfe-changing: Patrick, pictured entering the chapel in a wheelchair on his wedding day, had to be airlifted by helicopter to the hospital and had his left leg amputated at the scene

'He was awake and alert, talking to me. He was comforting me instead of the other way around, telling me it would be OK, its just a temporary setback and he couldn't wait to marry me and how much he loved me.

'I got to see him for about 90 seconds in the elevator, gave him a kiss and then he went to surgery for 12 hours,' she told CBS6 News.

Patrick added: 'I don't remember anything, but I imagine it was pretty important [to see Annie before surgery].'

According to the Virgina State Police report, Sakiese Wade of Williamsburg was not injured and was charged with reckless driving, proof of insurance required at a crash, no registration card in his possession and no seatbelt.

It states that Patrick had a 'traumatic amputation of his leg at the scene, as well as other extensive injuries'.

A GoFundMe page dedicated to Patrick to help with medical costs has already raised nearly $9,000.

Conscious: Annie, pictured above with patrick during the wedding ceremony, got to hospital just in time to see Patrick before he went into theater for 12 hours
Pinching food off other people's plates is a risky business. Taking so much as a chip is asking for trouble.

But in his BBC2 documentary series Tribes, Predators and Me, film-maker Gordon Buchanan takes the danger to an extreme, flying to Africa to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert... and learn how to steal a lion's dinner.

The tiny community  just 10 women, seven men and six children, living in a circle of huts around a campfire  practice an incredible survival skill that is thousands of years old: they stalk lions and, after the pride brings down a zebra or an antelope, drive the big cats away to feast on the meat themselves.

Gordon, with (L-R) Xao Qam, Xaashe and Qamme waiting for a kudu antelope to approach the Bushmen's ambush as he meets the Lion People of the Kalahari

Gordon with Ngala crocodile hunter, Samuel, just before searching for crocodiles with bare hands near Swagup, Sepik River, Papua New Guinea

But before the Bushmen take the 43-year-old Glaswegian on his first expedition, they impress on him the golden rule of lion-hunting: 'Don't run, or they will catch you and eat you.'

An experienced wildlife cameraman, Gordon has spent months on end living in remote jungles and wildernesses, winning the trust of dangerous animals such as gorillas and wolves for his 'Family And Me' series. This time, though, he is discovering how ancient tribes have lived since prehistoric tribes, immersing himself in their cultures.

And on his first night in the Kalahari, he makes a basic Westerner's mistake which almost ends in disaster. Exhausted from his flight, he beds down on a heap of skins in a hut and sleeps till morning  unaware that Bushmen can rarely afford the luxury of uninterrupted kip.

During the night, the fire burns low and a lion walks straight through the camp. The hunters are horrified to see its tracks in the dust next morning, and don't spare Gordon's feelings as they scold him. Bushmen rarely mince their words: looking him up and down, they decide he's a pretty poor specimen. 'He's very big and fat,' remarks one, 'we are small and thin.'

The Bushmen are much more respectful towards lions. They never point at one, believing that this is rude. Instead, when they see a big cat they gesture at it with their thumbs.

On the trail of the lion pride, they constantly check the wind direction by crouching and letting a fine trickle of sand through their fingers, watching to see which way it blows. They soon find the body of a cheetah, disembowelled by its bigger cousin  not for food, but as a rival.

A couple of hours later, the tribe discovers a lioness feeding on a freshly slain kudu (a large antelope with spiral horns). Shouting and waving their arms, they chase the big cat away, for long enough to butcher the carcass and remove one of the haunches, which they carry off.

Waorani warriors (L-R) Penti, Bai and Tepea show Gordon the tame tapir that visits their homes in Bameno, Ecuado

But they don't take the whole kill: it's important to leave enough for the lions, who in turn will abandon scraps for the hyenas, wild dogs and vultures.

This is not the closest encounter Gordon shares with a deadly animal in the series. In the Amazon rainforest of Equador, living with the last of the Waorani Indians, he helps haul a colossal anaconda out of the water to hold it aloft, in an ancient religious ritual.

The Waorani believe they were created by the green anaconda, the biggest snake in the world, and that by catching it with their bare hands, they can imbibe some of its strength. Gordon had come to the jungle specifically to take part in this ceremony, though he admits that until the last moment he couldn't imagine how it would happen.

Brothers Bai and Penti took him hunting, and spotted the snake sleeping in a river inlet. Only its nostrils were protruding from the water, but it was plain from the size of the head that this was a gigantic creature.

'I thought they'd want to look for a smaller one,' the film-maker says, 'but they reached down and started hauling it up. The snake wasn't thrashing about or trying to escape  it was so huge that it feared nothing. The biggest anaconda on record was about 28 feet, and this one looked even bigger.

'We were all very aware that it could crush us like twigs. The brothers had lost two close relatives to anacondas, simply dragged under water and never seen again. And yet I can understand why the Wairani feel compelled to do this ritual. The snake is sheer, solid strength, all muscle and power, and after you've held it you feel transformed by the experience. I wouldn't want to do it again, though!'

Gordon with a tribe who ritually catch and the release a green anaconda

The Wairani were eager for him to film their way of life, because indigenous tribes are fighting for survival in the Amazon. Drug cartels, loggers and urban expansion all threaten their existence.

Some anthropologists worry these traditional lifestyles are also under threat from encroaching Western culture, such as mobile phones and mass produced clothing. Gordon is less concerned about this, and sees it as superficial: 'We love the idea of people being untarnished but the world is no longer like that,' he says.

'You can't keep the western world out. The tribesmen wear western clothes, which took me aback at first, but within a day I realised the clothes weren't important because their knowledge mattered so much more. When you see someone with a mobile hunting with poison darts, it puts things in perspective. They are not museum pieces, but their culture is intact.'

On one rainforest hunting trip, 50-year-old Bai killed a Colobus monkey with a blowpipe. Instead of falling to the ground, the body got caught in the branches, 120ft up.

Gordon assumed the Indians would leave it, but food is never wasted in the Amazon, no matter how far out of reach. Shinning up a vine and then hauling himself out on the precarious branches, Bai was able to throw down the meat before clambering back to the ground.

Plainly delighted with his death-defying prowess, Bai clapped Gordon on the shoulder. 'Now you see how we hunt,' he bragged. 'Can you bring ladies for me?'
Chef Tom Kerridge knows exactly how terrifying the steely gaze of Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood can be  hes experienced it himself.

Toms pub might have two Michelin stars but when he found himself dishing up dessert for Paul on stage at the BBC Good Food Show last autumn, he was beside himself with fear.

It was one of those terrifying moments where you think, Oh my God! Paul Hollywood is eating my dessert in front of 3,000 people. Please say you like it, Paul... Tom recalls. Whatever level youre at, you want to impress him. Thankfully Paul said, I dont like it... I love it!

Bake Off: Creme De La Creme sees top pastry chefs pitted against one another. Pictured: Host Tom Kerridge with Paul Hollywood

But if you think Pauls high standards on the nations favourite programme are intimidating, wait until you see the trio of judges for the new spin-off show Bake Off: Creme De La Creme. Tom, who hosts the series which pits 15 teams of three professional pastry chefs against each other, admits, I really dont think weve seen judging this tough.

Creme De La Creme is Bake Off, but not as we know it. The white tent has been replaced with Grade I-listed Welbeck Abbey, set on a 15,000-acre estate in Sherwood Forest. Its an incredible setting, says Tom. Its filmed in the old library. We have three kitchens professionally set up in this stunning room. Its an electric atmosphere.

Tom says that the shows judges are even scarier than Paul and Mary

The team set-up replicates real professional kitchens where a head pastry chef oversees specialised colleagues. We recruited at head chef level and let them choose their own people from top hotels, restaurants, pastry shops, the armed forces and development kitchens, explains Tom.

Each week for the first five weeks, three teams compete, with the best going through to the semi-finals, plus one best runner-up. The six teams left compete in two semi-finals, with the two winners and best runner-up going in to the final. As the series progresses the weaker teams will be filtered out, says Tom, and the cream will rise to the top  the creme de la creme. By the time we get to the final... well, its just jaw-dropping.

So what exactly are they baking? The Signature, Technical and Showstopper challenges familiar from Bake Off dont make the transition either. This time there are two tests each week. Firstly its Miniatures  mouthwatering treats youd have with afternoon tea. Theyll have three hours to make 36 each of three types of pastry, says Tom.

Thats 108 pastries. The second challenge asks them to create a Showpiece. The sort of amazing stuff you have at banquets or in the middle of Harrods Food Hall. The twist is that they must reinvent a popular dessert, so for example in week one apple pie and custard gets a makeover  and the results can be unexpected. They break it down, says Tom. Theyll ask themselves where apples come from, or whats in a custard? Then rebuild it into their own vision.

And then comes the really scary bit  the judging. The terrifying trio are Benoit Blin, Cherish Finden and Claire Clark, three of the finest pastry chefs in the country. Benoit is chef patissier at Raymond Blancs Le Manoir aux QuatSaisons and probably the top man in the UK on sugar-work, says Tom.

Hes a charming Frenchman and a pastry god. Cherish is executive pastry chef at Londons Langham Hotel. Her afternoon teas are some of the finest in the country; theyre like art. And Claire has worked in or run pastry kitchens everywhere from The Ritz and Claridges to the House Of Commons. Shes one of the best pastry chefs weve ever produced, with an MBE to prove it. They are all at the top of their field.

Executive producer Richard Bowron explains why the judges are so tough. If viewers think Paul Hollywoods mean, theyre going to have to recalibrate, he laughs. But the judges arent mean for the sake of it. Pastrys about precision. They needed a rigid scoring system  theres no subjective view. Its almost like marking gymnastics. Theyre looking at so many criteria.

Each week for the first five weeks, three teams compete, with the best going through to the semi-finals, plus one best runner-up. The six teams left compete in two semi-finals, with the two winners and best runner-up going in to the final

Tom says the filming became emotional at times. I know what its like on a show like this after taking part in The Great British Menu. I know the pressures theyre under, theres no hiding place. The chefs take part in competitions anyway, but when theyve never been on TV before and there are suddenly six cameras filming them and they have those three judges to impress... well, the pressures massive.

As for the disasters Bake Offs become famous for, even professional chefs are not immune. There were a number of occasions where a team failed to deliver or had something collapse, reveals Tom. The teams might say, Were going to have this layer, that layer, plus this and this. Then they get to the last half hour and its, Ditch that, and that, and that... Its about time management. When they go wrong its because theyre trying to push themselves to the limit.

Being a Bake Off fan, Tom didnt hesitate to say yes when he was asked to host Creme De La Creme. I absolutely love Bake Off, he says. Its phenomenal  the best cookery show for a long, long time. It ticks all the boxes. Its food people understand, food people love. Mel and Sue and Paul and Mary are lovely and the same in real life as they are on TV. And you really buy into the characters of the bakers, you believe in them and follow the ups and downs of their journey.

Was he not just a bit nervous though? Yes, its nerve-racking, he admits, but this isnt Bake Off. Of course therell be comparisons made, and without the original Bake Off we wouldnt be doing this. But the judges are different, the competitors are different, my role is different. Its a completely new show, but with Bake Offs DNA. I couldnt wait to do it.

Tom, whose Marlow pub The Hand & Flowers has those two Michelin stars, is at the top of his game with a growing army of celebrity fans. Zoe Ball tweeted me her dinner the other night! he laughs. His star looks set to soar still further with Creme De La Creme, but he doesnt think anything can top his coolest career moment so far.

In 2014 I won Chef of the Year at the GQ Men of the Year Awards, he recalls. I was in a room with Samuel L Jackson, Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop, Ringo Starr, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. I was thinking, What on earth am I doing here?

'At the end we were about to leave when I got a tap on the shoulder. It was Ronnie Wood. He said, I love what you do Tom, keep cooking, yeah, its rocknroll... I said to my wife Beth, We can go home now because a Rolling Stone knows who I am. It doesnt get better than that!
Only 50 will be available at Sake

What will you be asking the Easter Bunny to bring this year?

High-end restaurant Sake Double Bay in Sydney, believes it has made the ultimate Easter egg dessert. The contemporary Japanese eatery has created a 'dragon egg' that takes three days to make and is dusted with gold.

For the Easter long weekend the restaurant, which has the dragon egg on their regular menu, is sending 50 of the desserts to the three other Sake restaurants in Brisbane, Melbourne and The Rocks in Sydney.

What will the Easter bunny bring you?: Sake Double Bay has created the ultimate Easter treat- the 'Dragon Egg'

Eggs-cellent: The dessert is filled with seven different components, including chocolate mousse, passionfruit caramel and chocolate soil

The 50 eggs will only be available as part of the Chef's Signature Menu, which costs $110 per person.

The dessert takes three days to make, with two or three chefs working on each one in the 'chocolate room' at Sake Double Bay.

On the first day, the chefs make the chocolate shells by carefully tempering the chocolate and creating the egg. On the second day, the seven different components for inside the egg are made, all requiring different techniques and ingredients.

On the third day the egg is assembled and sealed with a chocolate glaze, and is ready to be served.

Time consuming: The egg takes two to three chefs three days to make from start to finish

The luxurious dessert consists of a dark chocolate egg shell served on top of passionfruit ice cream.

It is filled with toasted chocolate crumble, edible chocolate soil and passionate yoghurt chips, as well as chocolate mousse, passionfruit curd, and mango caramel.

When it comes time to eat, liquid nitrogen is poured over the egg, allowing it to be cracked open with a spoon.

Limited edition: 50 of the eggs will be available over the Easter long weekend at Sake resturants in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne

Refreshed: Executive chef Wayne Brown says that the restuarant changes up the flavours of the egg based on the season

Executive Chef at Sake Double Bay, and creator of the Dragon Egg, Wayne Brown told Daily Mail Australia that the egg is very popular at the Double Bay restaurant.

The team also changes the flavours regularly. Currently for the warmer weather the egg has passionate components, and next they're changing it up and using winter cherry.

At Sake Double Bay each egg costs $20 and is part of their regular dessert menu all year around.

Fantastic or flop?: FEMAIL road tested the egg to see if the three days of work are worth the end result
The size of a mans penis plays a huge role in his self esteem.

Having a small member can proliferate feelings of being less masculine or appealing to the opposite sex.

And so, men blighted by a smaller manhood may abstain from sexual encounters  or shy away from the locker rooms at the gym.

These feelings of inadequacy can lead to depression, problems with intimacy and potentially even suicidal thoughts.

However, a Beverly Hills urologist, Dr James Elist, has developed a revolutionary penile enhancement procedure that offers new hope to men with small penises.

A silicone implant is inserted into the penis during the $13,000 (9,000) procedure  instantly increasing the length and girth by approximately two inches.

Dr Elist told Daily Mail Online that patients have the option of choosing between three implant sizes for the procedure: Large, extra large and double extra large.

The surgeon explained: Nobody wants to have a small or medium one.

Scroll down for video

Dr James Elist, a urologist in Beverly Hills, has developed a breakthrough penile implant (pictured) - made of soft silicone - that increases the length and girth of a man's member by approximately two inches

Dr Elist has been working as an urologist for more than 35 years.

He has always had an interest in mens sexual dysfunction  and even garnered notoriety as the first doctor to link cigarette smoking with impotence.

If men see the sign on cigarettes that say smoking can cause impotency, they can blame it on me, he said.

For decades, the doctor was one of many who performed an operation on men with erectile dysfunction, in which a prosthesis was inserted into the arteries of the penis.

The procedure was designed to allow blood to properly flow through the arteries, so that a man could achieve an erection.

Dr Elist explained: I noticed after insertion of the implant, between a year or two, most men were complaining that the size of their penis shrunk.

They did have an erection, but the girth and length of the penis decreased.

In 2002, the doctor discovered a solution for the shrinking problem.

At the time, there were many penile enhancement treatments available  but none were effective.

Fat injections were previously used to increase the girth, but Dr Elist told Daily Mail Online that fat is absorbed after five or six months.

He said: It gives the patients total deformity, because it was forming lumps and bumps under the penis.

Furthermore, foreign tissue transplants and even gel fillers  which are commonly used on the face to decrease wrinkles  proved to be ineffective as well.

Thats why Dr Elist came up with the idea of implanting a soft silicone sheath under the penis.

Dr Elist (pictured) developed the implant after noticing men who underwent surgery for erectile dysfunction were reporting that their penises 'shrunk' after the procedure. Since fat injections and gel fillers were ineffective in increasing the size of the penis, he decided to take the matter into his own hands

The penis implant is available in three sizes - large, extra large and double extra large - and is inserted during a $13,000 (9,000) procedure. It boosts both the girth and the length of the penis

This is similar to breast implants  but a breast implant is a bag filled with silicone gel or in some cases saline, the urologist explained.

My implant is different; its not filled with anything.

The material is very soft silicone with the shape of the penis  which covers the penis for 270 degrees around and the whole length of the penis.

The doctor patented his invention in 2002  and began performing operations to insert the implants in 2004.

This is similar to breast implants  but a breast implant is a bag filled with silicone gel or in some cases saline. My implant is different; its not filled with anything Dr James Elist

Since then, he has tinkered with the design, shape, techniques and even the surgery procedure.

Dr Elist said: Now at this point in time, we have the perfect product: Something that Im really very happy and even proud to present to the community.

The implant is inserted through a small incision of an inch to an inch-and-a-half in the groin.

During the short procedure, the patient is under local anesthesia, unable to feel anything that is happening.

The doctor inserts the implant through the skin of the groin, until it gets under the skin of the penis.

Immediately after the procedure, a mans penis will have expanded between 1.5 and 2.5 inches, Dr Elist said.

He said: For most of the patients after surgery, the length of the penis and the girth of the penis are very similar.

However, whether the doctor inserts a large, extra large or double extra large implant is partially up to the patient  but also dependent upon the mans skin.

Some patients, unfortunately, are born with tight skin  or when they had the circumcision, a lot of skin was removed, so they dont have enough skin, Dr Elist said.

So for them we start with large.

The implant (pictured) spans the length of the penis, and also wraps 270 degrees around the member. It is inserted through a small incision made above the groin

The implant is put under the skin of the penis, and immediately increases its size. Dr Elist said that the implant is designed to last a man's entire life - but upwards of 15 per cent of his patients choose to have a second procedure to increase their size even more

But for patients with good skin the doctor generally begins with an extra large implant.

The implant is designed to last for the mans entire life.

However, the doctor noted, 10 to 15 per cent of the doctors patients opt to upgrade after the procedure.

In those instances, the doctor uses the double extra large implant.

We did a study of 400 of our patients retrospectively, and we noticed that the self-confidence of patients has increased significantly Dr Elist

Recovery from the procedure doesnt take too long, he said.

The men are able to go back to their daily activities and routine the following day.

However, it is vital that men abstain from sexual activities  including masturbation and oral sex  for four to six weeks afterwards.

Dr Elist said: That is very important, unfortunately, some of our patients did not follow the instructions and we had some problems.

The skin is thin at that point, so it can get infected and youd have to remove it.

The surgeon has become renowned around the world for his work in penile enhancement.

Patients fly from all over to seek his help  even as far away as Moscow and Brazil.

Currently, he performs two of the implantation procedures each day.

Dr Elist told Daily Mail Online that the vast majority of his patients see a huge improvement in their self confidence after undergoing the operation.

We did a study of 400 of our patients retrospectively, and we noticed that the self-confidence of patients has increased significantly, he said.
A mother has released shocking images of her daughter's burns after she squeezed behind a radiator while playing.

Two-year-old Bella Davey-Lawrence was airlifted from her home in Axminster, Devon, to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children after suffering the burns in January.

There, doctors bandaged her and broke the news that she will have to wear pressure garments 24 hours a day for two years in a bid to reduce her scars.

Bella and her brother Curtis, 9, and sister Rebecca, 3, were staying at their father's house when the horrific incident occurred.

Recalling the moment she found out about her daughter's injuries, Bella's mother, Natasha Davey said: 'January 10 is a date that will never leave me.

'I woke up to 10 missed calls saying Bella had been burned and I needed to get to the house.'

Bella Davey-Lawrence, two, suffered excruciating burns after squeezing behind a radiator while playing

The toddler a (in hospital) will have to wear pressure garments 24 hours a day for two years to reduce scarring

By the time she arrived there were four paramedics looking after her daughter.

'Bella was in a towel so I didn't get see her burns - I actually had no idea what had happened and there was no time to ask.'

I woke up to 10 missed calls saying Bella had been burned and I needed to get to the house Natasha Davey

The pair were flown to the burns unit at the Bristol hospital. There, doctors assessed her burns and tried to piece together what had happened.

It emerged there had been a leak in the girls' bedroom and their father had been using a plug-in radiator to dry the room out.

'It was at the foot of the bed, and there was a gap between the bed and radiator that Bella had got in to,' said Ms Davey, 31.

'My ex was in the kitchen and the girls' bedroom door was closed so he didn't know what was happening until he heard screaming.

'We have no idea what happened in the bedroom - whether she fell off her bed and landed in the gap or climbed down and then got burnt.'

Bella suffered terrible nightmares during her eight-day stay in hospital, often waking up in tears

Medics performed a skin graft, taking skin from her thigh to cover the wounds (pictured before treatment)

The devastating outcome was that Bella sustained second degree burns spanning 10 per cent of her body - including her back, buttocks, elbows and left calf.

Medics performed a skin graft, taking skin from her thigh to cover the wounds.

But while she was recovering physically, Bella suffered terrible nightmares during her eight-day stay in hospital, often waking up in tears.

She complains sometimes that the burns hurt, but otherwise she's doing well and is now back at playgroup

She is now free of bandages but must wear a medical plaster on her buttocks.

'She complains sometimes that the burns hurt, but otherwise she's doing well and is now back at playgroup,' Ms Davey said.

As a thank you for the support the family received, Miss Davey has set up a Go Fund Me page to fundraise for the hospital that saved her daughter.

She said: 'As an adult, it was hard being on the children's' burns ward. I saw children not as bad as Bella - but also some a lot worse.

'The screaming you hear from some of the children is horrific - how the doctors and nurses go in every day and cope is beyond me.

'They looked after Bella and I, and now I want to give something back to say thank you.'
Each time an adult uses cocaine, their risk of stroke increases six-fold, experts warn.

Scientists compared younger victims - including those in their 30s and 40s - of a first stroke, and found that using cocaine in the 24 hours before the event raised the risk substantially.

Moreover, the risk of stroke increased eight-fold when the drug was smoked in a 'crack form'.

Study author Dr Steven Kittner, of the University of Maryland, told Reuters: 'Among other factors, we know that cocaine causes rapid increase in blood pressure and can also cause cardiac problems that can lead to stroke.'

Scientists revealed that adults who use cocaine (pictured) are six times as likely to suffer a stroke as those who don't use the drug - and that smoking cocaine in a 'crack form' increases the risk eight-fold

A team of scientists analyzed data from a study, which spanned 1992 to 2008.

They identified more than 1,000 cases of ischemic stroke in people between the ages of 15 and 49 in the Baltimore and Washington, DC, area.

Ischemic stroke is the most common form of stroke, and occurs because of a blockage of a blood vessel in or leading to the brain - typically by a blood clot.

Nearly 10 to 20 young people per 100,000 of the population suffer an ischemic stroke.

The risk for such a stroke is much higher for African Americans than for Caucasians.

The scientists compared those stroke cases to 1,152 similar people who didn't have a stroke.

The team asked study participants whether they even abused drugs, pills or medication.

They found that the stroke victims were more likely to be tobacco smokers - and to have a history of high blood pressure and diabetes.

However, history of cocaine use was similar in both groups.

Twenty-eight per cent of stroke victims reported using the drug in their lifetime - as opposed to 26 per cent of the comparison group.

The scientists noted in the journal Stroke, a history of cocaine use wasn't linked to the increased stroke risk.

Instead, people who said they used cocaine the day before their stroke were over six times as likely to have suffered a stroke as those who reported never using cocaine.

Even when the scientists adjusted for tobacco smoking and alcohol use, that figure did not change.

Cocaine causes rapid increase in blood pressure and can also cause cardiac problems that can lead to stroke, experts revealed. Pictured here, a MRI of a stroke

Of the participants, 26 people reported using cocaine with 24 hours of their stroke.

Additionally, 14 said they used it within six hours of the event.

Dr Kittner said that the study doesn't 'prove' causation - but it presents strong evidence that using cocaine does cause stroke.

The study's findings are important for clinical practice, according to Dr. Antonio Siniscalci of Annunziata Hospital in Cosenza, Italy, who was not part of the new study.

Dr Siniscalci told Reuters that smoking crack, in particular, seems to be associated with stroke - while cocaine hydrochlorine mainly causes bleeding of the brain.

He said: 'It is reasonable to screen young patients, particularly men, for drug use when they present with cryptogenic stroke.'

Dr Kittner added: 'Unfortunately, this is not likely to be a deterrent for addicted users or even for most considering first use.
A model died from a rare stomach haemorrhage just hours after she felt unwell, an inquest has heard.

Linzie Mumbi Ngarari, 22, died at home on June 29 last year, less than seven hours after waking with severe stomach pains and sickness.

The student, who took part in the Face of Kenya competition in 2013, was told by a paramedic from the 111 service that she was suffering from a stomach bug.

But Birmingham Coroner Emma Brown said there had been a 'missed opportunity' to send an ambulance because of an error by an emergency call handler.

The court heard how her worried mother Jane had called for the ambulance at 5.15pm, but was directed to the 111 phone service.

Linzie Mumbi Ngarari, 22, who took part in the Face of Kenya competition in 2013, died at home last June

It emerged during the hearing that the 999 call operator had misheard an answer to one of the key questions, which meant an ambulance was not sent.

Instead of paramedics arriving with half-an-hour, the system said Miss Ngarari should be directed towards the 111 service.

There, her mother spoke to a paramedic who told her that her daughter - a third year mechanical engineering student at Birmingham City University - was suffering from a stomach bug.

It meant that an ambulance was not sent for a second time.

Both of the calls, which included Miss Ngarari moaning in pain as she spoke to operators, were played in court.

An ambulance was only sent to the family home after a further 999 call after 11pm when her mother found her unconscious and unresponsive.

Despite CPR attempts by her mother and paramedics who arrived within five minutes, she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Consultant Pathologist Jerrard Langham told the inquest that Miss Ngarari died as a result of a spontaneous haemorrhage in her stomach.

'This is a very uncommon event,' he added.

'We do see it in some traumas like car accidents and in ectopic pregnancies, but there was no obvious cause in this case.'

Mr Langham said it was unlikely Miss Ngarari would have been saved even if she had been taken to hospital because of the short time between her first symptoms and her death.

Miss Ngarari said her daughter had attended a yoga class on the Sunday morning as normal, describing her as 'completely fit and healthy'.

Jason Wiles, head of patient safety with West Midlands Ambulance Service, told the court that he had been appointed to review the case.

He said six recommendations have been made, including extra training for call handlers around probing more during questioning and continuing to question until clear answers are given.

There had also been changes to the way pain is assessed and details of the case had been shared nationally.
BLUE by Danielle Steel

BLUE

by Danielle Steel

(Bantam Press 18.99)

I didnt love the last Steel I reviewed, but I did enjoy this.

Ginny is a former TV news reporter who gave up her career and glamorous LA lifestyle when her husband and young son died tragically in a accident.

Broken by a toxic combination of grief and guilt, Ginny moves to New York and takes a dangerous job in human rights, working in refugee camps in some of the worlds worst trouble spots.

Just as a suicidal Ginny contemplates jumping into the East River, she meets a young homeless boy called Blue.

As their relationship develops and Ginny learns the devastating truth about Blues horrific childhood and the reasons why he now lives on the streets, she decides to help him. In the process of supporting Blue she also begins to rebuild herself and her own life.

This is a thoughtful examination of how focusing on others can help the helper more than they realise.

It is emotional and gripping and I was left in no doubt as to the reasons behind Steels multi-million sales around the world.

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPY EVER AFTER by Jenny Colgan

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPY EVER AFTER

by Jenny Colgan

(Sphere 7.99)

Nina loves everything about her job at the Birmingham library. However, when its turned into a modern multimedia complex with no new role suitable for either her literary or people skills, Nina is forced to reassess her career and her life.

Passionate about readers and reading, she still wants to be involved in a community. She travels to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands to look at an ancient van and slowly begins to visualise a new way of living and working.

Its not long before she is making money driving her bookshop bus around the rural area and enjoying a blossoming fantasy romance with a soulful Latvian train driver.

This isnt my sort of thing. I found it predictable, but if youre a fan of Colgans gentle, non-demanding novels, then Im sure youll love it.

JUST HAVENT MET YOU YET by Cate Woods

JUST HAVENT MET YOU YET

by Cate Woods

(Quercus 7.99)

From the outside, Percys life looks great. Shes got a lovely flat and a fabulous gang of mates. But when her perfect-on-paper boyfriend asks her to sell up and move in with him, she is forced to confront her deepest feelings about her relationship and her life.

An encounter with a mysterious woman who works for Eros Tech, a futuristic dating agency, brings things to a head, and Percy soon adds confusion over her sexuality to the mix.

Her mother and some friends are horrified when she breaks up with Mr Perfect, while others are encouraging.

After a slew of embarrassing romantic disasters and the belated realisation that she is 100 per cent straight, Percy resigns herself to a lonely life on the single shelf . . .
THE LIVING by Anjali Joseph

THE LIVING

by Anjali Joseph

(Fourth Estate 12.99)

Single mother Claire, 35, lives with her teenage son in Norwich where she works on the floor of a shoe factory.

Sixtysomething Arun, a grandfather and former alcoholic, lives with his wife in a small Indian town and makes hand-sewn chappals (a type of sandal).

Neither character is aware of the other, nor do they meet, yet as this fine and beautiful novel progresses we notice the echoes, not least the sense each has of having somehow become invisible.

It takes great skill to evoke lives that are adrift without infecting the reader with lassitude. Joseph, however, inhabits both her protagonists so fully that her unshowy but pitch-perfect prose carries an almost electric charge.

Make no mistake, The Living isnt a book in which nothing happens - theres sex, death, a wedding and a funeral. Its funny, too. But what makes it so special is the way Joseph gives as much weight to the unwitnessed and unremarkable parts of our existence, and to the lives we live in our heads, as to what might be regarded as lifes plot points.

This is the award-winning Josephs third novel and its restraint, precision and assurance confirm that she is a rare talent.

FAITH AND BEAUTY by Jane Thynne

FAITH AND BEAUTY

by Jane Thynne

(Simon & Schuster 7.99)

This is the fourth outing for Thynnes Clara Vine, an Anglo-German actress spying for Britain in Thirties Berlin, but those unfamiliar with Claras previous exploits will soon find themselves up to speed. Faith And Beauty opens in 1939, deep in the heart of the timeless Grunewald, where the girls of the titular society (which actually existed) are honing their shooting skills.

These blonde-haired, blue-eyed maidens are the brides-to-be of the Third Reichs elite, which means the brutal murder of one of their number is a matter of national interest.

Meanwhile, Clara has just been cast as the lead in Leni Riefenstahls new film, but even that role is eclipsed by her mission: to discover the truth about a rumoured and game-changing Nazi-Soviet pact.

With a clutch of romantic complications thickening the plot, the pace is sprightly throughout. Thynnes extensive research is breezily deployed, and enjoyable digressions cover everything from the etymology of glamour to the origins of Prussian blue.
CHEATS AND DECEITS

by Martin Stevens

(OUP 22.99)

Survival of the fittest? Forget it. Success in the wild comes down to whos got the dirtiest tricks.

Biologist Martin Stevens has devoted his professional life to studying natures great pretenders; creatures that have craftily evolved to deceive and cheat.

Take Laniocera hypopyrra. The chicks of this Amazonian bird look like nothing so much as hairy orange caterpillars; they even move in a caterpillar-like, side-to-side way. Given that the insects the chicks resemble are toxic to predators, theirs is a highly effective way of not ending up on the menu.

Author Stevens charts the animal kingdom's evolutionary arms race. Survival of the fittest? Forget it. Success in the wild comes down to whos got the dirtiest tricks. Monkey's red faces, above, help to attract mates

No less sneaky are blister beetles which, upon hatching, congregate on plant stems to form small, dark blobs. To passing male bees, however, these insect masses can appear like a mate.

When the hopeful bee stops to take a closer look, the beetles seize their chance, climbing on to his back and then the back of any real female with whom he has his way.

At this point, writes Stevens, the beetles sinister intentions become clear. The female bee takes the blister beetles with her when she returns to her nest, whereupon they tuck into a banquet of nectar, pollen - and the unlucky bees own eggs.

Cuckoos are infamous cheats, but they cant always pull the wool. In Australia, the Horsfields bronze-cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of birds called superb fairy-wrens. But the fairy-wren, despite its ethereal name, has developed a frankly astonishing trick of its own.

CHEATS AND DECEITS by Martin Stevens

The parent fairy-wren sings a special song to its unhatched chicks while they are still in the egg, a song that acts as a password. The cuckoo, however, lays its eggs after the fairy-wren, meaning that its chicks miss out on learning this crucial tune.

When the cuckoo hatches, Stevens explains, it fails to sing the right tune and the parents feed it less, leaving the cuckoo to die.

Then there are the tactics of the Australian crab spider. Lurking among the petals of a daisy, this arachnid appears to us to be perfectly camouflaged. But to the eyes of its insect prey, which can pick up UV light and colours, it glows like a beacon. Why would it expose itself like this?

Honeybees are attracted to UV signals and find the intensity of the spiders display irresistible.

As Stevens explains, this ploy is known as sensory exploitation: one creature cannily capitalising on anothers innate preference. And it happens throughout the natural world.

Many primates have a preference for the colour red - including humans. We experience what Stevens coyly terms an enhancement in mate attraction when the colour is present.

Its not entirely clear why this is so, but it probably has to do with our ancestors need to spot ripe red fruit against dark leaves. Hence the red faces of some monkeys and macaques (pictured above) - females are predisposed to find them attractive.
THE MAKING OF INDIA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BRITISH ENTERPRISE

by Kartar Lalvani

(Bloomsbury 25)

Before you read this review, it's important that we get a couple of things straight. The first is that Kartar Lalvani is himself Indian. The second is that, as far as I can tell, he is not mad.

The reason both these things are so important is that for more than half a century scarcely anybody - let alone an Indian - has dared suggest that British rule in India was anything other than an utter disaster.

In his preface, Lalvani notes sadly that he's been living in England for more than 50 years and in that time 'I have not encountered a single native Brit who has stated any form of belief that the British benefited India'.

Author Lalvani has lived in England for more than 50 years. He argues against the idea that Britain looted India

Received wisdom - carefully nurtured by generations of Lefty academics - holds that Britain, the wicked colonial oppressor, sucked the wealth out of India, crushing the poor Indians under their boot heels at the same time.

As the founder of Vitabiotics, 'Britain's most successful vitamin company', Dr Lalvani is presumably a very busy man.

Yet he feels so strongly that British rule in India has been unfairly vilified that he's produced a scrupulously researched examination of its achievements.

O ne of the main charges against the British is that they looted India of many of its assets.

Nonsense, insists Lalvani. If anyone looted India, it was the Persians - by the time the British arrived, the country's coffers were almost empty.

If anyone looted India, it was the Persians - by the time the British arrived, the country's coffers were almost empty

But surely India has always been dogged by the most appalling poverty? Isn't that also a legacy of British rule? Not according to Lalvani. As he points out, it's now almost 70 years since the British left India and the poverty is almost as bad as it's ever been.

If there is a villain to be fingered here - someone responsible for keeping India bumping along the bottom - it's not a representative of British rule.

Instead, we should be pointing accusingly at none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister who is generally reckoned to be the father of the nation.

It was Nehru who cravenly sucked up to Stalin - a far greater brute than any Brit.

'As a result, India's pace of industrial growth was seriously stunted, depriving the country of precious financial development funds from the U.S. and European nations.'

Lalvani is only limbering up, though. It isn't until he gets into what the British did for India's infrastructure that he really hits his stride.

Not only did the British give India a legal system, an efficient police force, an apolitical army and a smooth running - if astonishingly bureaucratic - civil service, but just look at the concrete benefits they provided.

Let's start with roads. In 1836, work began to construct a highway between Calcutta and Lahore - that's 1,423 miles.

When it was finally completed almost 30 years later 'wheeled carriages could roll across the land' for the first time.

23m The number of people who travel on Indian railways every day. Advertisement

Not only that, trees had been planted every 60 ft along the way 'to provide beautification and much-needed shade to travellers'.

And then, of course, there were the railways. In a section entitled Awe-Inspiring Railways Statistics, Lalvani lists how India's railway network came to cover the map. He's right; the statistics really are awe-inspiring.

In 1853, there were a mere 21 miles of railway in India. Ten years later, there were 2,512. Jump forward 20 years, and that figure has gone up to 10,000 miles, and another 20 years later to 26,378.

The British built more railways in India than America, France, Germany and other European colonialists built in all their colonies. And in order to do so, they had to build bridges - lots and lots of bridges. At this point it's worth recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote: 'There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation.

'By it, we can readily measure a people's progress.'

In fact, the British had been building bridges in India long before the railways came along.

In 1811, the first iron bridge in British India was built across the Gomti River at Lucknow - the design was based on a bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland.

W hen it was shipped to India, it became the largest single structure ever exported from Britain.

It consisting of 2,627 pieces, of which just 19 arrived broken.

THE MAKING OF INDIA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BRITISH ENTERPRISE by Kartar Lalvani

To build the Simla railway that led from the plains up to the cooler hill country, the track had to climb almost 500 ft - requiring the construction of 103 tunnels. And this for a railway that was a mere 60 miles long.

In the late 1700s, the British decided to construct a mint in Calcutta. Behind a colonnaded facade inspired by the Temple of Minerva in Athens, steam-driven machines stamped out 200,000 coins every eight hours.

A few years later they built another equally grand mint in Bombay. When an Indian engineer at the Bombay mint came to London in the 1840s, he took one look at the Royal Mint and pronounced it to be 'much inferior'.

Inevitably, a history like this is going to be on the selective side. For instance, there's barely any mention of a thoroughly discreditable episode such as the opium trade, while the Indian Mutiny also passes in a convenient blur. But even so, it's still hard - indeed almost impossible - not to be struck by how much the British sought to improve India.

Of course, their ideas of what constituted improvements were very British ones, yet many of the institutions they introduced are still functioning pretty well today.

And when the time eventually came for the British to leave India in 1947, power was relinquished with 'for the most part good grace and mutual respect' - unlike a lot of other countries one could mention.

After reading a book as bracingly controversial as this, you may find yourself in need of some refreshment - a cup of tea, perhaps.

As you are waiting for the kettle to boil, you could reflect on how it was the British who introduced tea to India, turning the country into the biggest tea producer in the world in little more than a century.

And from there you might go on to chalk up a few other achievements: the introduction of coffee, sugar, fresh drinking water, public toilets...

Doubtless there will be those who dismiss Dr Lalvani as the worst kind of imperialist lackey.
Chhota Rajans health is deteriorating, and the medical facilities available in Tihar Jail can do little to aid his condition, it has been claimed.

The gangsters poor medical state has left the jail authorities in a fix. They have moved an application before a Delhi court seeking permission to get him treatment in one of the well-equipped hospitals of the Capital.

The application was moved on March 15 before Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar.

Gangster Chhota Rajan's health is deteriorating and the medical facilities available in Tihar Jail are not adequate for his needs, jail authorities have warned

In the application, the authorities mentioned that Chhota Rajan is in urgent need of dialysis and the in-house medical facilities are not enough to handle his flailing health. Rajan wants to be treated in a hospital.

The 55-year-old is battling his way through multiple medical conditions, including diabetes, heart problems and kidney failure.

Rajan reportedly has a history of kidney problems and has been in poor health for quite some time. Both his kidneys have failed and he is on constant dialysis.

The matter was fixed for hearing on March 17, but since the CBI is yet to file its reply on the application, the court has fixed the matter for hearing on March 30.

Chhota Rajan, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was sent to the high-security Tihar Prison on November 19 last year. He was nabbed as soon as he reached Bali from Australia.

Rajan, once a close aide of Dawood, was brought into the country to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion, and drug smuggling

The underworld don was being closely monitored by the police before he was arrested. It was the Australian authorities who identified him after their system alerted them about the lookout notice. They in turn informed the Indonesian Police. Chhota Rajan was handcuffed at the airport itself.

Rajan, once a close aide of Dawood, was brought into the country to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion, and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai.

For security reasons, Chhota Rajan has been produced before the courts through video conferencing from Tihar, after he moved an application fearing threats to his life if he was taken to Mumbai.

He applied to a special court requesting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take him in custody in all the cases registered against him by various law enforcement agencies.

A Delhi court had then directed the CBI to urge the Maharashtra government to arrange the trial of the J Dey murder case through video-conferencing from Tihar Jail.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah says he is not on good terms with the Congress and its leadership.

They might be on good terms with me, but as far as I know I am not, he said.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave, the BJP president reacted sharply to Asaduddin Owaisis reservations to raising Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogans.

Shah said the slogan had its origins in an era of the Indian national movement.

BJP President Amit Shah had harsh words for the Congress's first family - and anyone raising slogans against Afzal Guru's hanging

Shah had barbed words in response to the February 9 event held on the JNU campus. Those raising slogans against the hanging of Afzal Guru are anti-national. There is no confusion about it. I am not inspired by the United States of America, he said.

The BJP president said it does not matter who raised pro- Afzal Guru slogans at the event last month, but the very fact that an event of that nature was held was anti-national.

He did not have any qualms about Rahul Gandhi attending the students protest in JNU, but certainly had misgivings about the slogans raised therein.

Since the government has come to power we have not had a single incident in which the freedom of expression was suppressed, he said.

Shah asked India Today TV Managing Editor Rahul Kanwal at the conclave: What happened on February 9? Was it Indias Independence Day or Republic Day? What had happened on that day? .

When he was told it was the day Guru was hanged following his conviction in the Parliament attack case, Shah said: "The very fact that an event of that nature was organised in JNU is anti-national."

We can tolerate any statement against BJP leaders or the government, but not against the country," he said as the conversation on JNU segued into the larger debate on patriotism exemplified by the controversy over the Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogan.

I agree that the debate over that slogan is meaningless, but I must underline that the slogan is older than the BJP or even RSS. It is unfortunate that so many years after Independence, we are still debating a nationalist slogan, Shah said.

When asked whether AIMIM chief and MP Asaduddin Owaisi was also anti-national, Shah said he is not, but added that he will try to make such people understand nationalism.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently remarked that the young generation should be taught to praise Mother India. In protest, Owaisi said he cannot be forced to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai to prove his patriotism.
When spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar announced that 3.5 million people were about to descend on the banks of Yamuna to celebrate culture as part of the 35th Art of Living anniversary, I knew I could look forward to endless traffic jams.

That, however, turned out to be the least of our problems, given that the project has far-reaching ramifications for the environment.

First, the heavy construction activity taken up to set up the worlds largest stage spanning about 2.83 hectares has led to potentially irreversible damage to the ecologically-sensitive tract of land flanked by the Delhi-Noida Toll Bridge on one side, and the Yamuna on the other.

PM Narendra Modi and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar during the World Culture Festival

While the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had issued direct orders regarding the revitalisation and conservation of the Yamuna, the festivals construction activity clearly violated the NGTs orders.

Destruction

The indiscriminate destruction of the natural ecosystem that existed on the floodplains across 60 hectares on the western side of the river has led to a major imbalance in the fragile ecosystem.

Weeds and trees were dug up to create a flat tract of land for construction and, as a result, several migratory birds and other marine life were displaced from the area, with some even killed.

The pontoon bridges, mobile toilets, and parking sites have left a fairly large impact on the Yamuna plain.

As we have seen in Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and most recently in Chennai, where the natural environment was tampered with and the vegetation endemic to the area was indiscriminately removed, the consequences were quite devastating.

The removal of plant life always hinders the capacity of the floodplain to contain the river during the flood time.

While the scale of destruction witnessed in these states has been catastrophic, we do not know the full effects of the damage done to the Yamuna floodplain, and only time will tell.

Besides, one cannot take a risk given that the area around it is quite heavily populated and the Toll Bridge runs past it.

Moreover, Sri Sri himself had gone on record several times stating that we should be preserving the sacred rivers of our country, and hence his casual attitude to this issue came as a shock to many, including some of his followers.

However, voices of dissent have a way of getting drowned out and the festival took place irrespective of the protests and warnings.

Festival

Despite all the red flags raised, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were both soft peddling on the matter because the festival was hosted by a spiritual guru whose following was formidable.

While Modi endorsed the festival by his attendance, Kejriwal was seen holding out an olive branch after the National Green Tribunal slapped the Art of Living guru with a Rs 5 crore fine, which he initially refused to pay.

Perhaps the environmental threat posed by this festival is not eminent enough for them to take hard measures, but if one were to go by reports submitted by green organisations such as Down to Earth and the NGT, it is a fact that the biodiversity of the Yamuna and other river areas in the country is under serious threat.

We need to treat the matter seriously, or our country might well be on the edge of natural disaster.

No doubt, Kejriwal has urged the guru to be part of the rejuvenation project - and perhaps cajoling tactics may work better than fines, but it is imperative that action is taken to clean the floodplain of all the debris left in the aftermath of the festival.

Dedicated projects now need to be undertaken to renew the flora and fauna of the area before the next monsoon.

Environment

The festival is just a microcosm of what is done to the environment in the name of culture and religion across the nation; whether it is the dumping of toxic non-biodegradable statues in the river during visarjan (procession) or the plastic bags containing flowers that are ritually dumped in the rivers during puja.

There is a reason why the idols and lamps were made of clay in the past, and flowers were placed within vessels made of leaves - they are all biodegradable and do not cause any harm to the environment.

Our forefathers clearly knew how to tread the delicate balance of man and environment, and we need to follow their example. Banning plastic in religious festivals is one way out.

All citizens across India need to take responsibility for their actions.

While controlling the indiscriminate building that greedy builders undertake in environmentally-sensitive areas may be hard for the average citizen to do, planting a tree or shrubs on the Yamuna banks is not difficult.
See more news from India at www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome

Jat leaders have been invited by the state government for talks

The state has refused to drop the criminal cases registered against Jats

Thirty people were killed during agitation over the Jat reservation

Singh was charged with sedition after an audio clip of him

Professor Virender Singh is facing sedition charges for allegedly provoking supporters during the Jat stir in February

Professor Virender Singh, the political adviser to former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has surrendered himself to the Rohtak Superintendent of Police (SP), after sedition charges were raised against him.

Singh is accused of allegedly provoking supporters during the Jat stir back in February.

About 30 people were killed during the week-long Jat agitation in Haryana.

Singh came under fire after the audio clip of his 1.30 minute-long telephone conversation with one Maan Singh Dalal of Jhajjar district was put online on February 21.

In the audio clip, Singh is allegedly heard directing Dalal to commit arson in the Bahadurgarh area, and also suggests that he maintains a distance from INLD leaders.

Following his surrender, Singh claimed that he has done nothing wrong.

An attempt was made to malign my image and that of former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. I will come out clean from the judicial process, and I have full faith in it, he claimed.

Singh appeared before a local court, which sent him to two days of police custody.

We had given him time till February 28 to surrender. Despite that he had been on the run till now. He came to my office to surrender and we took him into custody and produced him before a local civil court, Rohtak SP Shashank Anand said.

Anand added that the other accused, Man Singh Dalal, is still on the run and that all possible attempts are being made to apprehend him.

Meanwhile, the Haryana government is gearing up for future unrest as the 72-hour ultimatum given by Jat leaders to drop cases registered against protesters and provide reservation to the community, ended on Thursday.

Refusing to drop the criminal cases registered against Jats, the state government has invited Jat leaders for talks and asked them for help in preparing the Bill.

About 30 people were killed and properties worth crores were destroyed in the Jat agitation in February

Jat Reservation Bill was being drafted after all considerations and discussions with stakeholders. This Bill may be introduced in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha during the ongoing Budget Session, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar said.

Nobody will be allowed to take the law in their hands. We have made it clear that cases registered against the people involved in criminal activities during the protests will not be dropped as investigations are ongoing, Captain Abhimanyu said.

Around 3,000 paramilitary forces have been deployed in Haryana to keep the peace.

Close to 300 security personnel have been sent to guard the Munak canal, which was damaged by protesters last month causing a huge water crisis across Delhi for several days.

Sources said the police may resort to preventative arrests of Jat leaders. The state government has already delegated power to deputy commissioners under the NSA to arrest people engaged in inimical activities.

Jhajjar district magistrate Anita Yadav said that they would book agitators under national security law (Rasuka) if they are found guilty of arson, damaging property, or being involved in violence.
Like most two-year-olds, Mira likes going to school and playing with other children.

On good days, she also enjoys singing and dancing. But at present, her priorities are rather different.

Mira is fighting blood cancer, and waiting for a helping hand from a stem cell donor who could help her beat the disease - and save her life.

Mira has been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid leukemia, for which she needs stem cell transplant

Mira was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), and in early October 2015, her treatment began with four rounds of chemotherapy.

A family member remembers that the little girl wanted desperately to go back to school during her treatment, and wondered why she was spending less time there than in hospital.

She did manage to go back to school, but only for a month.

The disease returned, and Mira had to be re-admitted to hospital in February 2016.

The only way to beat this deadly illness once and for all is through a stem cell transplant, and Mira now needs someone who matches her biological profile to step forward to help.

DATRI, a non-profit organisation and a blood stem cell donors registry, has been aggressively organising a donor drive for Mira in all the metros.

The probability of finding a match from the same ethnicity is higher, says Raghu Rajagopal, Co-founder and CEO, DATRI.

To find a matching donor is the toughest part of this battle.

Though parents are usually seen as half-match donors, getting a full-match stem cell donor is always the best option.

There are over five million registered donors in the registry around the world, mainly the US and Europe. But these are mostly Caucasians. There are very few Indians in this registry. So the chances to find a full-match donor are less than one per cent, says Yadav.

He adds that unlike in the West, there are no government-funded public registries in India, which adds an extra element of agony to cancer treatment.

The donor drive in Delhi, which is probably Mira's last chance to find a match, is going to be held at Bal Bharati Public School, Parwana Road, Pitampura, between 8.30am and 1pm on 19 March.
Heineken is considering asking Vijay Mallya to step down from the Board - or alternatively, it could call a shareholder meeting to vote on his ouster

Heineken is likely to ask Vijay Mallya to step down from the board of United Breweries (UB), three people with direct knowledge of the plan told news agency Reuters on Thursday.

The news comes as the tycoon asked to be given until April to appear personally before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the IDBI bank loan default case.

The sources further said that such a move by Heineken would likely be a prelude to the Dutch drinks firm raising its stake in the maker of Kingfisher beer to above 50 per cent, betting on a small but fast-growing beer market.

Heineken acquired a 37.5-per cent stake in UB in 2008 through its takeover of Scottish & Newcastle, and has since increased its holding to 42.4 per cent.

The sources said Heineken is considering asking Mallya to step down from the Board - or alternatively, it could call a shareholder meeting to vote on his ouster from a company his father built into a family empire.

The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A Heineken spokesman declined to comment on any move to tighten control over the Indian joint venture, but said that India remains an exciting opportunity for growth given its demographics and strong economic fundamentals.

Mallya and a spokesman for UB Group did not respond to emails.

ED sources said that the agency may accept Mallyas plea and give him time to present himself probably in the first half of April.

Officials said the beleaguered businessman informed the EDs investigating officer through email that he would not be able to keep Fridays date and sought time till April.

Meanwhile, the auction for Kingfisher House in Mumbai turned out to be a damp squib, with no bidders coming forward due to litigation fears and a high reserve price of Rs 150 crore.

The 17-member bank consortium will now meet on March 19 to discuss the future course of action to review the reasons for the failure of the auction, sources said.

CBI seeks help of four countries in Mallya probe

By Press Trust of India

Expanding its probe, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is looking into about six lakh banking transactions, over 60 per cent of them made to foreign countries, related to more than Rs 7,000 crore banks loan default case involving liquor baron Vijay Mallya.

The CBI is following substantive leads of money trail to four nations in the case, official sources said on Thursday refusing to divulge the name of the countries as it might affect the probe.

Officials of 17 banks which gave loan to Kingfisher Airlines (now defunct) and the UB Group, promoted by Mallya, are also under the agencys scanner for their alleged involvement in the case, they said.

None of the banks has so far reported fraud to the CBI, in this case despite being approached by the agency.

The CBI had in 2012 and 2014 approached IDBI Bank, which has allegedly sanctioned Rs 900 crore loan in violation of norms, to report the default.

Similarly, Union Bank of India was also approached early this year by the CBI to report the alleged fraud.
Bollywood actor Anupam Kher said he wanted the focus to shift from kranti (revolution) to deshbhakti (patriotism)

Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, while addressing a gathering of students on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, said he wanted the focus to shift from kranti (revolution) to deshbhakti (patriotism).

Kher, who has voiced criticism against JNU students in the wake of the sedition row, questioned how one who speaks ill of the country could be celebrated as if he was an Olympic medal winner.

Kher was speaking ahead of the screening of his movie Buddha In A Traffic Jam in the university  which is at the centre of a nationwide debate over nationalism after a controversial event on February 9  on Friday.

He was earlier caught in controversy after he alleged the university authorities had denied permission to screen the film.

He is out on bail, he hasnt come back with a medal from Olympics that he should be accorded such huge welcome. One who talks ill of the country, how can he be celebrated as hero? Has he got an Olympic medal? He is out on bail. He is not Sachin, Saina or Hanumanthappa, Kher said without naming JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

I want the focus to be shifted back from kranti (revolution) to deshbhakti (patriotism), said Kher amid chants of Bharat Mata Ki Jai from some of the students inside the JNU campus.

He said that he comes from a poor family but my question is what did you contribute to remove their poverty? My fathers salary was `90 when I got my first scholarship of Rs 200 and I had sent Rs 110 to my family. What did you do? Kher asked in his address to JNU students.

The screening of Khers film went on amid shouting of slogans by Left-affiliated groups who gave him a thumbs down. Last week, Kher had claimed that the JNU authorities had refused to give permission to screen his film. The university had rubbished the actors statement.
It's raining gifts for the legislators in Bihar.

Different government departments in the state have begun giving away presents  ranging from microwave ovens to suitcases  to them one after another as a token of appreciation of their work as peoples representatives in the House.

On Friday, it was the turn of the education department to distribute mircrowave ovens worth Rs 30 lakh to the members of both Houses of the state legislature.

Various government departments are giving gifts to MLAs as a token of appreciation for their good work in the House

The tradition of giving away token gifts to the legislators had started many years ago.

Earlier, each legislator used to receive dairies, watches or briefcases as token gifts every year during the Budget Session.

But now, they are getting much more useful consumer durable items.

Education Minister Ashok Kumar Choudhary said the tradition of giving gifts had been going on for several years.

"This time we have gifted microwave ovens to them to help them heat up their food, he said.

Choudhary said the legislators had been getting dairies, bags, watches, etc in the past but now they were being given useful items.

The minister said certain profitable institutions under the education department had been giving gifts to the legislators.

Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav said there was nothing wrong if the legislators received some small gifts.

He said that legislators were not crorepatis in a poor state.
The deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir continued with the BJP refusing to come under the pressure tactics of its coalition partner Peoples Democratic Party.

The saffron party made it clear that the government cannot be formed in the state on the basis of conditions.

On Friday, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, partys pointsman in the state, went on record to say that the stalemate that existed earlier continued and conditions cannot be the basis for government formation.

The deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir continued with the BJP refusing to come under the pressure tactics of its coalition partner Peoples Democratic Party. Pictured are PDP President Mehbooba Mufti and BJP President Amit Shah

There is no progress. As far as we are concerned there is no change in conditions that existed when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed sahab was the chief minister. The only change is that Mufti saheb is no longer there and it was for PDP to appoint a new leader and carry on, he said.

Replying to questions on the meeting between Mehbooba Mufti and Amit Shah, Madhav said there is no change in the party stand.

We have told them that a new government should be formed on the basis on conditions that existed earlier.

The PDP with 27 MLAs and BJP with 25 members had formed an alliance on March 1 last year with Sayeed as the chief minister.

Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state.

Mehbooba has been in Delhi for last couple of weeks and had met BJP chief Shah on Thursday.

The meeting went on for about half an hour and sources claimed that she put forward new demands, including return of at least two power projects to Jammu and Kashmir from the National Hydro-electric Power Corporation (NHPC), two smart cities for the state  Jammu and Srinagar, vacation of land under Army occupation apart from a few others. Sources said that Shah listened to her demands but did not react.

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav said the stalemate continued

He said he would talk on the matter after consulting with other senior leaders and government. Asked about the new demands put forward by the PDP chief, Madhav on Friday said in clear terms that whatever fresh has to be done will be taken up after government formation.

The first thing is that no new demand is acceptable to us and the second thing is that if there are new demands then it can be taken up once a new government takes over. A state government always has a right to make demands to the Centre. A government cannot be formed on the basis of conditions, he said.

When asked if a new government will be formed, he said, I cannot say because the stalemate that existed earlier continues.

Governors rule was imposed in the state on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her fathers death. Invoking late Mufti Sayeed, Madhav said he did not have any demand as the chief minister and did not ask for anything more.

Unfortunately, he passed away. Where Mufti sahab left, we should move ahead from there, he said.
Iranians in India will have to cautiously celebrate their New Year as the government has issued an alert regarding a possible terror strike on the occasion.

The government has issued an alert to the police of various cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Goa, etc.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Iranian tourists in India are vulnerable to serious threats as elements which are commonly hostile to India and Iran may try to sabotage tourist destinations which are commonly visited by Iranians.

Iranians in India will have to cautiously celebrate their New Year as the government has issued an alert regarding a possible terror strike on the occasion

According to a senior government official, security has been beefed up and the police of various states have been asked to stay on high alert keeping the Iranian New Year, or Nowruz as it is known, in mind.

Iranians across the world celebrate their New Year on March 21. It is expected that Iranian nationals will gather at various tourist destinations across the country and keeping this in mind, cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Bengaluru, Pune, Mysore, etc are on high alert.

Security agencies have tightened vigil at various places, including the Capital, to prevent any untoward incident, a senior police officer said. The home ministry, in a letter, has also advised security to be beefed up.

Delhi will also have places where Iranian nationals are expected to gather and celebrate their New Year. Security of various places in the Capital, including famous markets, has also been beefed up.

Nowruz marks the beginning of the Persian spring festival and is celebrated on March 21 every year. This year, due to threats from various terror organisations, the alert has been issued. We have deployed personnel at famous places in Delhi and quick response teams also have been deployed at many locations, a senior Delhi Police officer said.

Recently, the Capital was put on high alert after intelligence agencies said around 10 militants, belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed had sneaked into Gujarat with an intention to carry out attacks around Maha Shivratri.

Authorities had rushed four teams of the National Security Guard (NSG) to Gujarat and were also forced to cancel the celebrations at the famous Somanth Temple, where hundreds of pilgrims were expected to gather.

In Delhi, security personnel fanned out across crowded markets like Sarojini Nagar and Lajpat Nagar, put up barricades to check vehicles at various locations and frisked visitors at popular temples keeping in view the escalated terror threat.

Recently, security forces claim to have killed three Pakistani terrorists.

Working on the intelligence that Pakistan National Security Adviser Naseer Janjua shared with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval about the possibility of 10 terrorists infiltrating India from Pakistan, security agencies launched a nationwide manhunt and succeeded in tracking down three of them.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend a meeting with BJP top brass

The BJP national executive will meet for two days starting Saturday ahead of Assembly polls in five states and amid rising temperatures over issues like nationalism and quota agitations in some states ruled by the party.

Top party brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and senior leaders, will participate in the deliberations in which political and economic resolutions will be adopted, sources said.

The disinformation campaign by Congress to defame the government, the Ishrat Jahan case and JNU row besides the Budget features will be the key issues on the agenda, sources said.

Change in panel

The sensational sexual harassment case against Madhya Pradesh High Court judge S K Gangele took a new twist with Vice-President Hamid Ansari re-constituting the panel for an investigation into the grounds on which his removal has been sought by 58 Members of Rajya Sabha.

As per the new notification, Justice Rohinton Nariman of the Supreme Court will head the panel. Another SC judge Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who was heading the panel, recused himself from it last week.

A former Additional District and Sessions Judge has accused Justice Gangele of sexually abusing her.

Venkaiahs jibe

'Bharat Mata Ki Jai has become a buzzing topic these days, said Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu

'Bharat Mata Ki Jai has become a buzzing topic these days.

Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu mentioned this on Friday saying, The government is committed to bring in reforms to transform the nation and benefit every section, including those who have objections with Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

PM Narendra Modi is keen to transform India. That is why I say reform, perform and transform. Modi wants to transform nation (with reforms). Nation means all Indians, including those who have problems with Bharat Mata Ki Jai also, he said on the sidelines of an event.

CM meets Prabhu

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday met Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and discussed various issues, ranging from focusing on more utilisation of Ring Rail to constructions of Railways overbridge and underpasses in the national Capital.

In the meeting, the issue of rehabilitations of jhuggi dwellers currently living on railway land was also discussed between both the leaders. Kejriwal was accompanied by Delhi PWD Minister Satyendar Jain and Transport Minister Gopal Rai.

Rajnaths plea

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh appealed to the corporate world to assist families of martyrs of police and paramilitary forces, especially in educating their children.

I appeal to the corporate world to join hands in assisting the families of police, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and defence personnel who laid down their lives for the nation, he said.
Human rights activist and lawyer Amal Clooney spoke eloquently about freedom of speech

He came, she saw, she conquered.

Human rights activist and lawyer Amal Clooney did just that at the India Today Conclave 2016 when she talked fiercely and eloquently about freedom of speech and the shrinking liberal space across the world.

Since 2010, there has been rise in assault on freedom of speech across the world  from Pakistan, which has witnessed most number of blasphemy cases, to Turkey whose government has seized Zamaan, the countrys largest daily, thus marking the end of democracy.

With freedom of speech being the topic of discussion, the JNU episode was bound to come up.

And it did. When asked whether she would consider representing the JNU students charged with sedition, Clooney said, This is a completely hypothetical situation. Its not happening here at all, is it? In any case, as my past cases show, Im not one to shy away from controversy.

When probed further, she answered, There has been no tradition of charging people on sedition in the country. And whats happening now, with students who are protesting at campuses, is a step in the wrong direction.

Clooney took the argument further when she said sedition is archaic.

Its anachronistic. There should be no place for sedition in democracy. Line should not be drawn between freedom of speech and secession but between freedom of speech and inciting violence. There can be debates about changing governments and changing territories as long as they dont call for violence.

Clooney also put her weight behind Indias claim for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. She also hoped that young Indians would make free speech their cause.

While enumerating three highprofile cases she has fought to safeguard freedom of speech, including the one of former Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed, who was charged with terror but later let off after Clooney won his case at the UN, she said: There are three Rs responsible for the crackdown on freedom of speech in todays world  royalty, rulers and religion. The state needs to understand that stifling criticism can have serious repercussions.

Today, I see a lot of state squashing dissent by sending innocent men and women to prison.

What they dont realise is, she added, is by doing so they are providing them with a platform and making martyrs out of them.

Although the session was essentially about human rights and the crisis it was facing, Clooneys personal life did find mention in the talks.

Both of us (she and her husband George Clooney) waited for a long time to make the ultimate plunge and get married. Even at our wedding, on both sides there were people who thought that we would never get married, said the lawyer, whose clients include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, about her supportive husband who is a Hollywood superstar.

Clooney also took questions on the upcoming US presidential elections, especially in the wake of the rise of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has caused quite a ripples with his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant statements.

I read his anti-Muslim quotes. I just couldnt believe what he said. He said they a lot. Is Trump talking about Muslims who are part of the US army, those who are victims of extremist attacks?

She added, If it turns out to be Trump versus Hillary in the end, I'm hoping for the result to show the election of the first female president of the US.

Interestingly, Clooney is supposed to host a series of fundraisers for Hillary Clinton next month.

Former beauty queen and political candidate Gul Panag says women being sidelined from Indo-Pakistan peace process

For actor and politician Gul Panag, who grew up in an army family, it was easy to see Pakistan as an adversary.

But her perspective changed during her college years. Our history divides us but it also unites us. There is much more to Pakistan, the perspective of people from across the borders needs to change, said Panag at the India Today Conclave 2016.

As I grew a little older and studied history, I came to know that we share a lot in common. Talking about women empowerment with Pakistani activist and journalist Reham Khan, Gul said the gender issue holds back both the countries from becoming developed nations.

'Why it is expected from a woman to blend in the shadows of her husband?' asked Reham Khan (left). Seated next to her is Gul Panag

Women are the biggest losers in conflict. But when it comes to decision making in the peace process, they are not given a voice, Gul said. According to Reham Khan, there is a need to give more platforms to women to voice their opinions. She also said women should not allow the stereotypes to cloud their decision in life.

Why it is expected from a woman to blend in the shadows of her husband, said the 43-year-old. Reham further added that gender equality begins at home.

I am incredibly proud of my 21-year-old son. Everytime he interacts with a woman, I am filled with deep pride. He is so well mannered, something which comes naturally to him, she shared. Reham said women should not let stereotypes cloud their decisions.

I have always stressed that I will not be the stereotypical first lady I never married him for the status the man had. In Pakistan, situations are still very different. We may appear to be very modern but our thoughts are stereotypical where you are not listening to the female voice at all, she said.

Both Panag and Reham said it is time both countries put behind the past and look at the future.

The world is evolving. India & Pakistan is evolving so its time we work towards the social and economic development of the two states, Gul said, We must not burden our generations, born after the last war with Pakistan, with a baggage of animosity.

Panag also spoke about how it is not very difficult to keep one's personal life private if one wishes to. Even media respects the fact that we like to keep our personal life private. If you are in showbiz in India then your personal life is under scrutiny but if you want to keep it private, you can, Gul said.

Married for five years, she added that her husband has mastered the art of blending into the shadows. Rishi stood by my side all through my campaign for Lok Sabha elections, said Gul, who fought the 2014 polls on a ticket from the Aam Aadmi Party.

Young unicorns says the fact that they are women is incidental

By Mail Today Reporter

The young women unicorns (founders of start-ups valued at $1 billion or more) at the Indian Today Conclave 2016 on Thursday made it very clear that the fact that they were women was only incidental and they would like to be seen as entrepreneurs in their own right and their skill sets be taken seriously.

Asked about the most difficult phase of their career, Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and CEO, Mad Street Den, shot back, This question would not have come up if all of us sitting here were men. You must treat women as experts in their field.

Aardra Chandra Mouli, co-founder of Trivandrum-based startup Aeka Biochemicals, which is less than two years old, strongly backed the view that being a woman has nothing to do with a particular skill.

(From left) Suchi Mukherjee, Radhika Aggarwal, Ashwini Asokan and Aardra Chandra Mouli at the India Today Conclave 2016

The fact that we are women is just incidental and nothing to do with our entrepreneurial ability, she said.

Elaborating the point further, she quipped it is like a person having curly hair or straight hair which has no bearing on his or her ability.

Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder of e-tailer ShopClues.com, said it is time we send the message that we hate questions being asked of us about work-life balance and how we manage home with our work.

The session on The Pitch is Perfect When Women are the Unicorns took off on a humourous note with Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant saying the young unicorns had 90 seconds to convince an investor to pump $350,000 into their business.

The participants did not disappoint as each one of them rattled off a brief account of their respective start-ups and the bright future ahead.

Ashwini Asokan whose Mad Street Den produces machines with artificial intelligence to power e-commerce companies said the products were being made with more human-like characterstics to identify colour, style and pattern of clothes.

Mouli, a bio-technologist, said her start-up was the first fully-woman-owned biotech company in Kerala and perhaps India as well.

The company provides products for organic farming so that people get chemical-free food.

Suchi Mukherjees LimeRoad.com helps market fashion and lifestyle products of micro sellers.

Her company has emerged as one of the largest exporters in Southeast Asia and brought on board artisans from remote villages.

It is the only start-up business that made money from day one, Suchi said.

Of course, there will be some failures but if the business strategy is right, the accumulated learning experience shows that profits will come in, Mukherjee said.

Radhika Aggarwal is gung ho over e-commerce venture and says it is the market leader in Tier I and II cities.
122,000 sale price is almost the same as a Porsche 911 Turbo - which would you buy?

The Peel P50 might be dinky in size, puny in terms of power and paltry on passenger and luggage space, but its definitely big in one department  price.

One of the 1960s three-wheeled micro machines fetched an astounding $176,000 when it sold at auction in Florida at the weekend  more than 60,000 times its original value.

With just 26 other original P50s  the smallest production car of all time - remaining in existence, it means 25 others are currently in ownership of pocket-sized cars with a wallet-busting value.

Pocket size, not pocket change: The Peel P50 sold on Saturday has set a new record for the diminutive three-wheeler - the smallest mass production car in history

Those who are fans of the Top Gear series might recognise the Peel P50.

Thats because its the car Jeremy Clarkson used to drive though BBC offices during an episode in 2008 and became the inspiration for the sacked hosts own model, the P45  a satirical take on the future of urban motoring.

But while Jezzas comical concoction might have been big on giggles, this genuine P50 is massive in value.

One of just 47 original cars to make it off the production line at Peels Isle of Man factory, this ultra-rare 1964 version sold at an RM Sothebys Florida event on Saturday in what was deemed a hotly contested bidfest.

Raising the equivalent of around 122,000, it cost the winning bidder almost the same as a brand-spanking new Porsche 911 Turbo.

But with just 26 known to be in existence today, the new owner now has their hands on a vehicle thats infinitely more exclusive than the German sportscar.

A buyer at a US auction paid $176K for the Peel P50, which is the equivalent of around 122,000

Little in luxuries: You won't find a more sparse interior than this one

Jeremy Clarkson comically used the car to drive around the BBC office and even attend a spoof meeting

And its not just the availability of the Peel P50 thats titchy: at just 134cm long and 99cm wide it's the most minuscule of all mass-production motors on record.

Even the wheel count is on the small side with three in total measuring 4.1 inches wrapped in donut-size tyres.

All the power generated by the two-stroke 49cc moped engine is sent to the single rear wheel, though thankfully the horsepower output is a more pony like at a meagre 4.5hp that's capable of a fairly pedestrian 38mph.

The P50 weighs about the same as an average household washing machine

The pram-like 4.1 inch wheels have donut-size tyres to match

The P50 does come with a single roof-mounted window wiper and just the one wing mirror

With a molded fiberglass cabin enclosing a single beach-chair-like seat for one with no additional passenger or luggage space, its not like the moped engine has much weight shift.

In fact, the heaviest thing about the P50 will be the driver  at just 59kg it tips the scales at the same weight as an average washing machine.

Thats probably a good thing, because the three-speed manual transmission has no reverse gear, meaning you have to use a grab handle at the back to lift the car up and spin it round in tight spaces - the owner will need to park it somewhere secure to prevent thieves picking it up and running away with it.

With no reverse gear, you have to lift the Peel P50 if you want to go backwards

Definitely not a car you'd want to have a crash in: There's little to nothing inside the Peel P50 - not even enough room for a bag of groceries

The P50 was the inspiration for Jezza's P45, the car he designed for urban motoring in the future

But while it might not be able to go backwards its value has certainly gone skywards. Priced at 199 in 1964, the P50 has soared 61,207 times in value in half a century.

Speaking after the sale, RM Sothebys Amy Christie said the car caused quite a scene when it appeared in front of the onlooking audience.

It was the final lot of the day and drove onto the stage to great applause from the audience, she said.

It eventually sold for a remarkable $176,000 against a pre-sale estimate of between $75,000 and $100,000.

This represents a world record price for a Peel P50 sold at auction.

This isn't the sight many motorists will see overtaking them, especially as the engine packs just 4.5hp and means a top speed of 38mph

Dwarfed: The Peel P50 looks vulnerably small compared to a double-decker bus in Central London

Even the pedals to operate the P50 are tiny
The long goodbye for Sir Andrew Witty  he intends to step down from GlaxoSmithKline this time next year  does not come as an enormous surprise.

The writing has been on the wall since the quietly effective Sir Philip Hampton, lately of RBS, was chosen as chairman in 2014.

The principal job of a chairman is to remove under-performing chief executives, and in Hamptons case he has also decided to defenestrate a cadre of non-executives too.

That may well prove important in the post-Witty era as questions about whether GSK has grown willy-nilly in too many directions are bound to arise.

Long goodbye: Sir Andrew Witty intends to step down from GlaxoSmithKline this time next year

Investment guru Neil Woodford advocates splitting GSK into four separate companies.

The verdict on the Witty era is distinctly mixed. One hoped he might end the culture of fat cat pay in the boardroom which derailed the previous regime of JP Garnier.

But as Witty took home 6.6million last year and will have accumulated vast options over his long period as a GSK insider, that is one reform that hasnt really happened.

Similarly, Witty was committed to cleaning up GSKs reputation after it was caught up in a series of scandals in the US over the aggressive way it marketed its key drugs through doctors. It eventually paid a whopping fine of $3billion (2.1billion) in July 2012.

The ethical clean-up was short lived and GSK became bogged down in a similar dispute with the Chinese authorities. It suffered the added burden of the arrest of a key official Mark Reilly and the emergence of a salacious video.

In the UK it was involved in a prolonged tax dispute with HMRC and is still under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office over a series of alleged bribery offences.

Very little of this can be directly laid at Wittys door, but much of it did occur on his watch. More telling for investors (who include this writer) has been the disappointing share price performance, which on some measures has lagged the rest of the pharma industry by 64 per cent over the Witty era.

That does not mean he has been a write-off. After a relatively fallow period the company does have one of the best pipelines of newly approved drugs, is the leading vaccination company in the world and has skilfully moved its consumer division into a better place.

The radical solution to release shareholder value would be break-up of some kind, hiving off the consumer products division, with old favourites such as Horlicks, the HIV drugs and vaccines. That would be a mistake.

Witty decluttered the company when it did an assets swap with Novartis, exchanging some of its cancer drugs for the Swiss firms vaccines operations.

Being a life sciences conglomerate, which can insulate itself from the long drug discovery cycle with other lines of activity, is a good place to be.

Hopefully the new chief executive, preferably from inside, will take that on board.

As for 51-year-old Witty, expect a second career, possibly in the public sector or NGO world where he has been making some waves.

Iron resolve

The second post-Budget boardroom shake-up is rather different.

Veteran mining executive Sam Walsh was parachuted into Rio Tinto as chief executive at the moment that the commodity super cycle was unravelling.

He was better than that and began deleveraging the company and cutting costs long before competitors such as Anglo-American, Glencore et al realised there was an existential problem.

The result has been that Rio, while punished by the market, has done a great deal better than some competitors despite heavy reliance on the subsiding Chinese marketplace.

At the age of 66, the Aussie is stepping aside and making room for 44-year-old French successor Jean-Sebastien Jacques having done much of the heavy lifting.

After taking an axe to costs, Walsh embarked on an iron ore price war thinking he could force some competitors out the market. It had the opposite effect of forcing rivals into making tough decisions and forging new marketing alliances.

That is one bit of the inheritance which Jacques may feel like scrapping when he takes the driving seat in July.

Tuning out

Could there be a lesson for Ofcom and the BBC here?

CBS, the $24billion granddaddy of American broadcasters, is exploring the splits by selling its 117 radio stations across the US.

It is being hit by a decline in advertising (not a problem for the Beeb) and the Balkanisation of music listening as a result of streaming services such as Spotify and Apple.

Think of the savings for licence payers if wireless stations, with the exception of Radio 4, the home of Today and the Archers, were hived off.
I have invested in tracker funds in the past but now find that I am increasingly reading about ETFs.

What is the difference between the two and does the choice of where to invest just come down to personal preference?

The whole world in your hands: An ETF can give you exposure to more global markets

Marc Shoffman, of This is Money, replies: Trackers and exchange traded funds fall under the category of passive investment, typically grouped together as index funds.

This means there are no fund managers involved, which should mean lower costs.

Instead, the funds follow a set index, which could be a major stock market or constructed to deliver a basket of assets that fit a certain bill.

Like trackers, exchange traded funds aim to mimic the performance of a particular market or index, such as the FTSE 100 and their value is determined by whether or not the index rises or falls.

But ETFs differ in that they are traded in the same way as individual stocks, on an exchange such as the London Stock Exchange and can be bought and sold through brokers.

By comparison, a tracker is set up like a fund, which builds a portfolio reflecting a particular index, so you would just buy units of the product.

Trackers may be cheaper to buy and sell compared with ETFs if you can find a platform that doesn't charge for fund dealing. But ETFs may incur a share dealing charge.

One of the main attractions of ETFs over traditional trackers or active funds is that they are priced continuously throughout the day, whereas conventional funds are priced just once a day and you do not know what the price will be before you buy or sell.

ETFs are therefore ideal for investors who want to profit from short-term movements. You can buy ETFs that track exotic markets such as Brazil, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, and even Korea  areas that historically have been difficult for small investors to gain access to.

Ultimately, the choice of whether to opt for a tracker fund or an ETF is purely personal. You need to weigh the more up-to-date pricing, flexibility, extra investing options and potentially slightly lower annual costs of ETFs against the potentially higher costs of buying and selling them over tracker funds.

There is no need to just hold ETFs or tracker funds in your portfolio, you may decide a mix of both is best.

Follow the herd: ETFs typically have stronger tracking performance than index trackers

We asked Ian Peacock, head of IG, which is offering commission-free ETF trading on its DIY investing platform Isa until the end of April, why ETFs are proving increasingly popular.

He said: 'There are of course a number of forces that are causing disruption to the investment management industry:

'1) Cost  Using a traditional advisor and actively managed production costs substantially more than passively managed products.

'2) Performance - In 2014, 85% of US large cap equity managers failed to beat their benchmarks. This has driven exponential grown in passive instruments such as ETFs.

'3) Technology  With the emergence of the younger generation of technology savvy investors there has been a rise of robo-advisers that focus on online platforms and customisation to meet demand.

'4) Regulation  The 2013 RDR in the UK led to increased transparency on fees of investing in funds.

'Instead investors are after a low cost, diversified and transparent way to invest their money in financial markets. Exchange-traded funds are vehicles which are well suited to these factors.

'They offer a diversified and low cost way to gain exposure to a basket of related assets in a single product. The expense ratio of investing in ETFs is on average far lower than the average fund. Furthermore the performance of active funds is increasingly being called into question.

'Popular ETFs on the IG platform tend to be the ones tracking popular indices or commodities. The most popular ETF since we launched a stockbroking platform is iShares FTSE 100 UCITS ETF Inc.

'This ETF tracks the FTSE 100 giving targeted exposure to the 100 largest UK stocks giving the investor direct investment into blue-chip companies representative of sector leaders in UK. With a very low total expense ratio of just 0.07% its popularity is unsurprising.

'Another example of a popular ETF is the ETFS WTI Crude Oil which is designed to enable investors to gain an exposure to a total return investment in crude oil by tracking the Bloomberg Crude Oil Subindex.'

Some professional investors and investing services now build portfolios using ETFs, one example is Nutmeg. We asked the company to explain why it chooses ETFs over tracker funds.

Shaun Port, chief investment officer of Nutmeg, told This is Money: 'For us, the primary advantage in ETFs versus tracker funds is three fold: performance, choice, and flexibility.

'In our experience, ETFs typically have stronger tracking performance than index trackers. This can partly be driven by management fee, but there are other underlying drivers of higher costs (and thus poorer performance) within index trackers.

'The first of these is the constant re-balancing that needs to take place in the portfolio to accommodate inflows and outflows.

'As asset allocators the more strategies we have at our disposal to implement our views, the better.'
A 2.5billion investment drive has begun after the firm behind Britains first potash mine in 40 years unveiled its plans.

AIM-listed Sirius Minerals has published a study into the mine that will create a huge underground network of tunnels underneath the beauty spot of the North York Moors National Park.

It now hopes to raise the 2.5billion it needs with investors and banks to begin work on the project, following a four-year planning battle.

Sirius plans to mine 10million tons of polyhalite a year  a potassium-rich mineral used as fertiliser for food crops.

AIM-listed Sirius Minerals has published a study into the mine that will create a huge underground network of tunnels underneath the beauty spot of the North York Moors National Park

The development, south of Whitby, will include a 23-mile tunnel to transport the polyhalite to a deepwater port at Bran Sands in Redcar.

The mineral will then be processed close to the former steelworks at Redcar on Teeside.

The project is welcomed in an area which has suffered major job losses from steelworks closures.

Production is expected to start in 2021 and it could create up to 2,500 jobs, including those during the construction phase. Sirius chief executive Chris Fraser hopes around 80 per cent of the jobs will be filled by people from the neighbouring area.

The project has won the backing of many local people and around 300 farmers and landowners are set to benefit from royalties once the project gets under way.

About 5,000 local people have bought shares in Sirius.

However, objections from environmental groups, including the RSPB, have been raised about the potential damage to the area the mine could cause.

The mine is expected to last for 50 years and Sirius said it could continue production for more than 100 years. The area is said to contain the worlds largest and highest grade deposit of polyhalite.

Fraser said major contractors are lining up ready to be involved in the project.

But critics of the scheme are concerned about how it will be funded and the actual demand for this particular type of fertiliser.

However Fraser said the discussions the company had already had with potential customers had given him confidence.

A view of the Vale of Mowbray and Vale of York from Sutton Bank, North York Moors National Park, England. Environmental groups have been raised about the potential damage to the area the mine could cause

He added: We can see the opportunity of unmet demand around the world. Population growth and the rise of the middle classes around the world drives demand for food production that requires fertiliser.

However its shares fell 6.5p to 16.25p amid concerns about the costs of the huge project.

The first phase is expected to cost more than 1.1billion and the second will be more than 1.3billion.

There will be a two-stage funding round and analyst Yuen Low at Shore Capital said: Sirius remains very well-funded for a company at this stage with 25million of cash on its balance sheet.

Fraser added: The business that is created from this project will sit as a world leader in the fertiliser industry, based here in the UK.

It is expected to have a low operating cost structure, high margins and a very long asset life in one of the most business-friendly, stable and dynamic economies in the world.
Terry Smith, who runs the 5.3billion Fundsmith Equity fund, is suing Barclays

One of Britain's most prolific fund managers is suing Barclays bank after it took almost three years to move money from an account.

Terry Smith, who runs the 5.3billion Fundsmith Equity fund, has accused the bank of failing to transfer hundreds of thousands of pounds into his fund so he missed out on more than doubling his money.

Smith, who was chief executive at broker Tullett Prebon, is suing Barclays for 220,000 for negligence after he asked for 330,000 to be transferred from his Aethelflaed Investment fund to the Fundsmith Equity in September 17, 2012.

He contacted the bank again five days later on September 23 when the transfer had not been carried out.

Smith says that on the date he wanted to transfer the money in 2012 a unit of the fund was worth 1.28.

By July 2015, the cost of one unit in the fund had risen to 2.13  an increase of 166 per cent. Smith claims that would have equated to a profit of 219,049 had the transaction been carried out.

Barclays, which is fighting the claim, denies any negligence or causing any financial loss.

It says that while Smith did email  in messages titled 'Ground Control to Major Tom'  he had sent them to incorrect individuals, and that it also told Smith it was unable to act on emailed instructions for payments.

The bank asked him to send a letter with the instructions, which it received on October 5. But Barclays says it was then concerned that the signature on the letter was not correct.

Barclays then asked Smith to visit a branch with identification to make the transfer, which he did not do.

A spokesman for Smith said: 'To say that the service the claimant and Terry received from Barclays Bank was atrocious is an understatement.

'Aethelflaed is compelled to pursue this action and looks forward to hearing the court's decision.'

A Barclays spokesman said: 'We cannot comment on a matter which is currently in litigation, save to confirm that we will be vigorously defending this case.'
Target: Sainsburys and South Africas Steinhoff both appear keen to buy Argos-owner Home Retail

The bid battle for Argos-owner Home Retail Group could rumble on for weeks more after the Takeover Panel issued an update creating a Mexican stand-off situation for suitors.

Rivals Sainsburys and South Africas Steinhoff were set the same deadline of 5pm today to make a firm intention of an offer or walk away.

However yesterday an announcement revealed that if one of the potential bidders confirms its offer, the other will be automatically granted a 53-day extension.

The bidder that moves first could, therefore, be at a disadvantage.
Samsonite, the worlds largest luggage maker, credited strong sales in China for boosting full-year profits.

The firm, which recently bought luxury rival Tumi and is led by former Treasury economist Tim Parker, posted a 6.1 per cent increase in net profit to 136million on sales of 1.6billion.

Net sales in China increased by 13 per cent but Parker warned that stores were losing out to online businesses.
The embattled boss of GlaxoSmithKline is to step down next year after nearly a decade in charge  sparking speculation the drugs giant could be broken up.

Sir Andrew Witty, who joined the company as a management trainee in 1985 and rose up the ranks to become chief executive in 2008, will leave at the end of March 2017.

The 51-year-old was paid a total of 6.7million last year, up from 3.9million in 2014, and is in line for a pension of up to 735,000 a year. He owns Glaxo shares worth 14.7million.

Wittys future has been in doubt for some time amid flagging sales and profits and questions over his focus on consumer health products such as headache pills and toothpaste.

Sir Andrew Witty, who joined the company as a management trainee in 1985 and rose up the ranks to become chief executive in 2008, will leave at the end of March 2017

Investors, including star fund manager Neil Woodford, have argued the company should focus on developing and selling drugs.

The London arm of Och-Ziff Capital Management, the activist hedge fund headquartered in New York, had also called for a management shake-up as the company struggles to deal with the decline of its blockbuster asthma drug Advair.

Wittys reputation was tarnished by a damaging bribery scandal in China that landed Glaxo with a record 320million fine in 2014.

The arrival of Sir Philip Hampton as chairman in May last year was seen as a sign that Wittys reign could be coming to an end and the board soon kicked off the search for a successor.

Announcing his impending departure yesterday, Witty hailed a very special company and added: By next year, I will have been chief executive for nearly ten years and I believe this will be the right time for a new leader to take over.

Hampton praised Witty for his tremendous dedication over more than three decades of service and leadership to GSK and the industry.

Glaxo shares, which have risen just 23 per cent in the eight years Witty has been chief executive, slipped 12.5p to 1399.5p yesterday.

Woodford said that he has a strong preference for an outsider to take over from Witty rather than an internal candidate.

He has argued that Glaxo should be split into four separate companies. In essence, Witty is running four FTSE 100 companies, and hes not doing a very good job in my view, Woodford recently said.

Witty oversaw the 14billion deal with Novartis last year to raise Glaxos exposure to consumer healthcare where it has brands including Sensodyne, Day & Night Nurse, Horlicks and Panadol.

He has conceded in the past that spinning off the division could be an option but has argued that this should not happen in the near term.

We are only one year in, he said last month, and as we have laid out very clearly, we think it is a three year journey.

Those comments came as Glaxo reported a 4 per cent rise in annual turnover to 23.9billion last year. Profits jumped from 3billion in 2014 to 10.5billion in 2015 despite a loss of 416million in the final quarter.

At the time, Witty pinned the companys hopes on a number of new products. Glaxo now expects 11 key new products to deliver sales of 6billion by 2018  two years earlier than previously forecast.

Helal Miah, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, said: Given the length of time before his departure, the company should be in no rush to find a replacement.
A 40 per cent slump in recent days is a worrying marker in the demise of Gulf Keystone Petroleum. The Kurdistan-based oil firm was very much in focus for investors this week.

Gulf Keystones future was cast into doubt as its results statement for 2015 brought forward concerns over future bond repayments and highlighted a more pressing need for capital investment at the Shaikan field.

The company warned that Shaikans output may start to decline later this year if a new investment programme - estimated between $71million to $88million - isnt funded and approved.

Concerns: Gulf Keystones future was cast into doubt as its results statement for 2015 brought forward concerns over future bond repayments

It will need to refinance or repay $575million of bonds by October 2017. And, it has now conceded that a rescue via a corporate transaction isnt likely in the short term because of low oil prices and the political uncertainties in northern Iraq and surrounding areas.

With a low of just 7.4p on Friday, the price is worlds away from the 150p seen in the weeks leading up to the shares promotion to the London Stock Exchange Main Marking back in March 2014.

Elsewhere, GW Pharmaceuticals - an AIM stock now worth 1.1billion - was the junior exchanges highlight as it soared around 140 per cent, on Monday, following success with a late stage drug trial.

A Phase 3 trial for a potential treatment for a type of childhood epilepsy showed a significantly reduced frequency of seizures.

The drug, called Epidiolex, contains a liquid formulation of cannabidiol (or CBD) which is an extract of cannabis plants.

If all goes to plan, it could be the first drug of its kind to be approved by the US Food & Drugs Administration, and could potentially open the door to other cannabis-based medicines.

GW, a heavily weighted constituent in the FTSE AIM 100, was a big factor in the small cap benchmarks 2.6 per cent rise which saw it close Mondays session at 3,364. Standing at 3,319 this morning the AIM 100 had managed to hold much of the early gains.

GW Pharmaceuticals' Epidiolex contains a liquid formulation of cannabidiol, which is an extract of marijuana

Embedded computer specialist Concurrent Technologies was one of Fridays notable riser, as it gained 7 per cent after revealing positive first quarter sales.

Cello, a health and consumer marketing group, was boosted as it announced higher profits and promised a 10 per cent increase in its dividend.

Enterprise software group Sopheon jumped as much as 40 per cent after turning a profit in 2015 and highlighting fourteen new customer signings.

Alaska shale oil driller 88 Energy made strong gains after declaring a successful conclusion to its first phase of work at Project Icewine, where the next steps will be to plan a horizontal well suited to fracking and production testing.

Firestone Diamonds was a keen riser on Wednesday as it lifted the lid on a second half with substantial development at the Liqhobong project, in Lesotho, where it says it is still on budget and on target to achieve first production later this year.

Video editing software specialist Forbidden Technologies, meanwhile, rose about 50 per cent as its Forscene product was added to Microsofts Azure cloud computing marketplace.

Resolution to a debt dispute had Eastern Europe property group Kimberly Enterprises rallying over 200 per cent.

Trinidad oil firm Trinity Exploration & Production was a notable faller early in the week, losing about 40 per cent, after it conceded that a previously agreed asset sale had fallen through.

A profit warning sent Cambridge Cognition spiralling, down 20 per cent.

Elsewhere, big data group WANdisco disappointed with its full-year trading update.

African airline Fastjet continues to experience boardroom turbulence, amid an escalation a dispute with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. His EasyGroup vehicle owns 12.9 per cent of the company.

Fastjet today responded to an open-letter penned by EasyGroup, which had criticised the airlines decision to stop publishing monthly passenger numbers and demanded more detailed cashflow forecasts.

Earlier this week, chief executive Ed Winter and another director, Krista Bates, stood down from the board after easyGroup called a general meeting to remove them.
Sainsbury's has snapped up Argos owner Home Retail Group in a deal worth 1.4billion that it hopes will push it ahead of rivals Tesco, John Lewis and Amazon UK.

Under British takeover rules Sainsbury's had until 5pm to make a firm offer for Home Retail. Earlier this afternoon rival South African bidder Steinhoff International pulled out of its pursuit, which had threatened to derail the Sainsbury's bid.

It marks the end of a four-month battle for Argos, with Sainsbury's anticipating 160million of cost savings as part of the deal.

Supermarket Sainsbury's has won its four-month battle to buy Argos owner Home Retail Group after agreeing a 1.2 billion deal for the general goods retailer

Sainsbury's cash and shares offer values each Home Retail share at 173.2 pence and was on the same terms as an earlier, though not formal, proposal.

Home Retail shareholders are also eligible for a 27.8p conditional special dividend, depending on when the offer becomes unconditional, which will lift the value of the deal to 1.4 billion.

Sainsbury's chairman David Tyler said: 'The UK grocery retail industry is undergoing a period of intense change in customer shopping behaviour and in the competitive environment.

'This combination with HRG presents an opportunity to accelerate our strategy, delivering compelling revenue and cost synergies.

'We will create a multi-product, multi-channel proposition with fast delivery networks that we believe will be very attractive to the customers of both businesses.'

It has been a busy start to the year for Home Retail - in January the group sold its other key business, the DIY chain Homebase, to Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers for 340million.

Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe has previously stated that combining Argos would create the UK's 'food and non-food retailer of choice', with 2,000 stores.

Sainsbury's wants to create a 'food and non-food retailer of choice', with the retailer hoping that the draw of Argos with its 'click and collect' service will bring in more grocery shoppers to its supermarkets.

Last year, Sainsbury's trialed a number of Argos counters in some of its supermarkets across the UK.

Sainsbury's said it also wants to bolster its financial services operations and offer a 'wider range of customer-centric services', including credit cards, loans and insurance.

Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe has previously stated that combining Argos would create the UK's 'food and non-food retailer of choice', with 2,000 stores

Analysts believe Argos would be a natural acquisition for Sainsbury's, as it would allow its e-commerce business to compete with Amazon, which offers one-hour delivery across many parts of the UK.

Around 40 per cent of Argos's leases expire by 2020, which would also enable Sainsbury's to shut around 200 Argos shops and incorporate them within its stores, providing a 'one-stop shop' for customers.

Shares in Home Retail Group fell steeply this afternoon to stand more than 10 per cent down.

However it has seen its shares soar by about 80 per cent after news of a possible Sainsbury's bid first emerged at the start of the year.

Separately, Steinhoff said that it had offered 673million for Darty, Europe's third biggest electrical goods retailer.
Controversial nuclear power plant Hinkley Point looks set to go ahead after the French Government agreed to give EDF the funding it needs for the 18billion project.

Frances economy minister Emmanuel Macron announced that a final decision on financing for the delayed plant in Somerset would be made in May.

It came as the companys UK boss, Vincent de Rivaz, has been called to appear before the Energy and Climate Change Committee on Wednesday over the future of Hinkley.
Frankie Lonies Regent Bridge Bar on Aberdeens harbour side is the only pub on the street. Just before Christmas the last remaining publican neighbour, The Crown & Anchor, shut its door for the final time. It had been on Regent Quay for more than 100 years.

Close by, The East Neuk Bar, which had been on King Street for 111 years, has called last orders for the final time.

The harbour side was once lined with pubs, bustling with dockers and oil workers with wads of cash. But while the collapse of the oil price has led to cheaper petrol for millions across the country, in the granite city it has only brought woe.

Frankie Lonie took over Regent Bridge Bar from his father. Both were originally dockers when Aberdeen had a booming ship industry.

He explains: I am the last man standing. If my bar isnt busy then no one is. The cuts have been brutal. He reels off a list of people who have been affected by the crisis in the North Sea oil industry.

Lonie cuts a smart figure in pristine white shirt, cufflinks and black waistcoat, his watch and jewellery look expensive  reminders of the wealth of Aberdeen past.

Now you are more likely to spot a Rolex in the window of a pawn broker than on the wrist of an oil worker.

Lonie says: I have friends that have left the oil industry and are now postmen or delivery drivers. Theyve gone from earning more than 200 a day in the oil industry to earning about 200 a week as a van driver.

The story Lonie tells, as he puffs on a cigar outside his pub, highlights the very human toll taken by plunging oil prices  and why the City has been crying out for tax breaks. And in the Budget on Wednesday, they got it  a 1billion shot in the arm to encourage investment.

Just four years ago the Government reaped tax revenues from the North Sea oil industry of 11.3billion but this has collapsed to 2.2billion last year and zero this year. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast this week the industry will cost the Government 1.1billion next year and 1billion by 2018.

The price of oil has fallen by around 70 per cent since the recent high of $115 a barrel in summer 2014. It has sent the industry close to collapse, according to Robin Allan, chairman of the independent explorers association Brindex.

More than 65,000 jobs  both direct and indirect  have already been lost from the North Sea oil sector. Some say the number could reach as much as 400,000. Wages are said to have shrunk by nearly a third. Those who have managed to keep their job on an oil rig have had shore leave drastically cut.

As the oil industry shrinks, all the services in the city that have grown on the back of the oil boom feel the pain too.

Ian Aitken, 70, has been a taxi driver for 25 years and says things have got bad in the past 18 months. It is very quiet. Business used to be very busy, driving between all the hotels. Now every day an oil company is cutting jobs.

I went into the taxi trade in 1990. There have been ups and downs but I never thought it would be as bad as this.

At the peak of the oil boom the city was heaving. People couldnt spend their money fast enough. The city centre still has the trappings of a middle-class boom.

Boom time: Aberdeen's docks pictured in 2008 when surging oil prices were bringing great wealth to the city and its harbour was the busiest in Britain

Well-known upmarket brands including Radley, Jojo Maman Bebe and Michael Kors are still open. Most are empty. One car dealership said that last year it was taking back as many as 400 leased cars during some months.

A ccording to the latest LJ Forecaster Scottish Intercity Report, hotel occupancy has collapsed below 50 per cent for the first time on record. Rooms in Aberdeen were only 46.5 per cent full in January and revenue per available room fell to a new low of 32.89.

Hotels are offering bigger deals to tempt people to stay and, although the tourist industry might not be as affected, the number of businesses taking rooms has collapsed.

It is now that much cheaper to hang-out at upmarket establishments such as The Dutch Mill, The Albyn, Malmaison, The Chester Hotel and The Marcliffe Hotel & Spa in the city.

However one Aberdeen resident said: It is about time the hotels started lowering their prices. It had got ridiculous. They were pricing out tourists as it was only big corporations that could afford it.

In one antiques centre a former oil worker has had to take a job after being unable to find work in her former profession.

She says: I worked in industry for 30 years. I have never seen it as bad as this. I was depressed for a long while. I went to the job centre and I have never been so humiliated in my life. I was looking for a job but I was just told to take benefits.

She says the industry is culling everyone over 50  wiping out all the people with experience.

The latest jobs figures reveal the claimant count in Aberdeen has soared by 69pc over the year and by more than 90 per cent across Aberdeenshire.

Collapsing property prices is another tell-tale sign that all is not well in the city. House prices have been falling for the past 18 months in contrast to the rest of Scotland. Hometrack says property prices have fallen more than 4 per cent over the past year.

Faisal Choudhry, director of Scottish residential research at property firm Savills, says that following seven years of phenomenal growth in the city, houses prices are reversing.

The average house price is around 186,000 in the city but there are plenty of 1million-plus pads in the area.

But news of a rise in food bank use in Aberdeen reveals it is not just belt tightening by the rich.

C harity Instant Neighbour has appealed for help for its food distribution centre and has 100 people on its waiting list for food parcels.

Aberdeen councillor Graham Dickson says: Poverty has always been an issue here but before it was masked by others prosperity. The difference between rich and poor has always been stark.

He says the city is pulling together to deal with the crisis. He explains: There is a real determination to ensure the areas future prosperity.

Crisis: Just four years ago the Government reaped tax revenues from the North Sea oil industry of 11.3bn but this has collapsed to 2.2bn last year and will be zero this year

Aberdeen needs to continue to diversify. We have renewable industry, the food and drink manufacturing industry and tourism. There is lots of opportunity. But we need to be smart at how we deal with the current situation.

But now with new investment promised, and a recent increase in oil prices, there is hope.

Aberdeens history proves it can adapt. It has been a trading port for hundreds of years and the shipbuilding and fishing industry secured its prosperity.

By the time the shipbuilding industry was waning, the discovery of black gold became its saviour. The first major discovery in the British North Sea was in 1970, and by 1975 oil was being piped.

Executives in the oil industry do not believe it will return to the way it was.

Chris Wheaton, oil and gas expert and fund manager at Allianz Global Investors, said: The North sea must become more streamlined, cheaper and more efficient. If it can change, the industry is not dead.

If it does not change, it will struggle to survive. Employment and wages are going down and they will have to stay down. We are not all the way through the process. The industry must make sure costs are kept down.

Sir Ian Wood, an oil industry veteran and former chief executive of the Wood Group, who has advised the UK Government on the industry, welcomed the support announced in the Budget, but warned: The oil and gas industry will recover. But not to anywhere near the strength of before.
The Air Force said it has identified the remains of more service members who died when a military transport plane slammed into an Alaska mountain near a glacier more than six decades ago.

Since wreckage from the 1952 crash was rediscovered four years ago by an Alaska Army National Guard helicopter crew, 31 of the 52 victims aboard the C-124 Globemaster have been recovered and identified.

The latest victims identified were Airmen 2nd Class Thomas Condon and Conrad Sprague, according to a March 7 Air Force announcement.

U.S. Marines Capt David Gooch with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is pictured last June walking past an aircraft wheel assembly resting on the ice surface of Colony Glacier in Alaska

The Douglas C-124C Globemaster II was the largest transport aircraft when it was introduced into service in 1950

An Alaska Army National Guard helicopter crew flying over the area spotted the debris about 50 miles northeast of Anchorage four years ago.

The wreckage had been found soon after the crash but later became buried in snow and forgotten as it became part of the glacier.

Recovery efforts have been undertaken at Colony Glacier, near Mount Gannett, during the warmer weather of the past four summers.

The work has involved searchers wearing safety gear and ice cleats as they painstakingly scour the frozen dirt and ice to see if the melting glacier has given up any more of its dead.

Of the people identified, 25 were members of the Air Force.

Another four were in the Army and one each in the Navy and the Marines, said Christin Michaud, a spokeswoman with the Air Force mortuary affairs operations.

Recovery efforts will continue - indefinitely if need be, according to officials.

The goal is to recover as many remains as possible before the relatively fast-moving glacier, advancing a couple hundred meters a year, deposits the aircraft wreckage in nearby Inner Lake George.

In this June 10, 2015 photo, people stand near a temporary shelter set up on Colony Glacier in Alaska. The Air Force said it has identified more remains of service members who died when a military transport plane slammed into the Alaska mountain six decades ago, killing all 52 people aboard

'There will be a search until this glacier disappears into the lake, until nothing is left there,' Air Force Capt. Anastasia Wasem said.

'We never give up on our fallen service members until we physically can't anymore.'

The Globemaster was heading from McChord Air Force Base in Washington state to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage when it disappeared November 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members.
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Ruthless people smugglers are exploiting horrific conditions on the Macedonian border to charge up to 2,100 for a taxi straight to the heart of Europe, MailOnline has been told.

The traffickers have set up in a dilapidated petrol station to take migrants stranded at the waterlogged Idomeni camp - and promise to take them straight to Germany.

But the gang, some reportedly from Pakistan and who can speak Greek, are taking advantage of the desperate conditions by raising prices by 125 per cent in the last 12 months  with child tickets now costing 1,000 (1,200), according to migrants trapped in Greece.

Camping out: The gangs of people smugglers have set up in a dilapidated petrol station opposite this one. It is close to Idomeni, the squalid camp on the Greece-Macedonia border which has become waterlogged

Trafficking den: The people smugglers have set up shop in this petrol station near the border camp, subtly seeking out clients and carrying out cash deals under the table

Makeshift canteen: MailOnline met some of the migrants, who sit around in the canteen all day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes

Squalid: Thousands of migrants are waiting in the Idomeni camp on the Greece-Macedonian border, which has recently become waterlogged. Many pay people traffickers to get them to safety in the heart of Europe

They claim they can get adults and children safely to Germany in three days, Afghan refugees said, but often reportedly fail to deliver on their promises.

They are desperate to move on to the next stage of their journey, and the more misery they have, the richer the smugglers get Christos, petrol station owner

Last year, the going rate was about 1,000 (1,200) per person, according to migrants who have been in Greece for a year.

The hike comes amid reports that smugglers are advertising new routes into Europe through Italy for those stranded in Greece and charging them 2,000 per journey, according to La Republicca.

The smugglers use the petrol station, along with a hotel over the road, as their base of operations. Although it is just a few minutes from Idomeni, the authorities do not often visit because their attention is focussed on the camp itself. Among the migrants, however, it is an open secret.

At the petrol station, which has become the hub of illegal migration in the area, hundreds of migrants from countries like Somalia, Gambia and Pakistan  who know they will not be granted asylum  sit around all day in a makeshift canteen, drinking coffee and smoking.

When MailOnline visited, the pumps were still functioning at the front of the station, but business was painfully slow. The canteen behind the forecourt, however, was packed with migrants and appeared to be doing a roaring trade.

Migrants, who were camping out in the nearby fields and abandoned buildings, were making use of the rudimentary facilities on offer at the petrol station. In the bathroom, a group of South Asians was even providing barber services.

Outside, a Gambian who did not wish to give his name was sitting painfully on a rusty chair. He had attempted to cross the border under cover of darkness three nights in a row, and was beaten by police on the third occasion.

His leg, he said, was badly bruised, and may even be broken. 'I have used up all my money getting this far,' he said. 'I can't go back now.'

Biding their time: The petrol station has become the hub of illegal migration in the area and hundreds of migrants spend their days there

Waiting: Migrants sit around a table at the petrol station where they were making use of the rudimentary facilities. While business was slow, the canteen behind the forecourt, however, was packed with people

Among the scores of migrants milling around the petrol station were the human traffickers, the petrol station owner said, who were subtly seeking out clients and carrying out cash deals under the table.

I could point out which of these guys are the leaders, but Im not going to, the owner, Christos, told MailOnline.

He claimed: Now that the border is closed, there are a lot of people who have spent a lot of money in getting this far. They are desperate to move on to the next stage of their journey, and the more misery they have, the richer the smugglers get.

According to a group of Afghan refugees who have tried unsuccessfully several times to cross the border, there are a number of routes that migrants use to enter Macedonia.

These either involve night time marches through the mountains  with sheer drops and dangerous paths  and wading through a succession of canals, which have strong currents when it rains.

Earlier this week, three migrants, including a pregnant woman, drowned during a mass attempt to ford a swollen canal after a leaflet was distributed by unknown anarchist activists.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, branded the anarchists' actions 'criminal'.

Camped out: Thousands of migrants are trapped at the Idomeni migrant camp in Greece after the border with Macedonia was closed

Risk: Many of the migrants have remained in the squalid camp because Macedonian police and soldiers have stepped up their patrols

Extra security: Macedonian police and soldiers have drafted in teams of dogs to hunt down the migrants trying to cross the border

Staying positive: Even if migrants are able to sneak across the border into Macedonia, their journeys have only just begun

Exploitation: The people traffickers are taking advantage of the increasing difficult conditions at Idomeni to increase the cost of getting to western Europe by 125 per cent

Macedonian police and soldiers have stepped up their patrols since the border was closed, and have drafted in teams of dogs to hunt down the migrants, they told MailOnline.

Many migrants refugees have stories of mistreatment at the hands of the police and the army, and often have the bruises to prove it.

But once the border has been successfully crossed, the journey has only just begun. Macedonian police are vigilant all along the route to Skopje, the capital, and members of the public are often willing to report sightings of migrants.

We sold our family home and my grandmothers family home to make money for the journey, he said. Now we have no money left and we are relying on food from the NGOs Omid Mehrshad, 20

According to migrants waiting at the petrol station, Pakistani smuggling gangs, who have an intimate knowledge of the border region, offer to guide them across the mountains.

Then they pack refugees into cramped taxis, 12 per vehicle, and attempt to get them to Germany, with strict instructions about how to behave if stopped by police.

It was claimed that the migrants are beaten for the slightest disobedience, and there is no guarantee of success.

The migrants also claimed that many end up disappearing and being sold into human trafficking gangs, who use them for slavery or sex.

When approached, the suspected people smugglers claimed not to speak English, though they seemed to understand the questions.

Outside the petrol station, Omid Mehrshad, 20, a refugee from Herat in Afghanistan, a city under threat from the Taliban, told MailOnline he had tried twice to cross illegally to Macedonia with six young members of his family, but had been caught by police on both occasions.

But, he said, he refused to give money to the Pakistani people smugglers.

We sold our family home and my grandmothers family home to make money for the journey, he said. Now we have no money left and we are relying on food from the NGOs.

We are totally exhausted. But we will keep trying to cross the border after we have recovered.

Sleeping rough: Migrants are spending each night in sleeping bags on the floor of a local hotel. A family of 11 camping out there includes two children, one baby and a pregnant woman

Empty buildings: Migrants trying to avoid the appalling conditions in Idomeni camp have begun sleeping in abandoned buildings nearby

Shelter: This dilapidated hotel near the camp may not look like much, but migrants are sleeping here in an attempt to stave off the cold

Dirty: Men, women and children are living in these horrific conditions in abandoned buildings in Idomeni on the Greece-Macedonia border

Staying warm: Black stains in the corner of each room is evidence of the number of indoor fires that have been kindled in the buildings

Eleven family members are spending each night in sleeping bags on the floor of a local hotel, including two children, one baby and a pregnant woman.

The Pakistani gangs are both good and bad, he said. They seem good when they meet you because they try to get your money. Then as soon as you are in the mountains, they turn bad and start shouting at you, beating you and forcing you to march.

A few hundred yards down the road from the petrol station, on the edge of a forest about a mile from the Macedonian border, an abandoned building has been occupied by migrants.

These men  most of who have spent thousands of Euros coming to Greece via arduous journeys through Iran and Turkey and many of whom are from Pakistan  know that they will not be recognised as refugees, and are likely to be eventually deported. For them, now it is all or nothing.

The last time I tried to cross into Macedonia was five days ago. I was caught by the Macedonian police and they nearly broke my arm Pakistani Adnan Hassan, 27

The last time I tried to cross into Macedonia was five days ago, said Pakistani Adnan Hassan, 27, peeling a banana that he had received from two local Greeks who regularly hand them out from their car window.

I was caught by the Macedonian police and they nearly broke my arm. He pulled up his coat to reveal his swollen elbow. I would pay the human traffickers if they could, but I have run out of money.

All of the windows of the building were smashed in an altercation with a group of Syrians, and black stains in the corner of each room is evidence of the number of indoor fires that have been kindled there.

Some migrants had pitched tents inside the building in an effort to stave off the cold, while others had built nests of duvets and sleeping bags.

This is the human trafficking area, said Mr Hassan. All the Syrians are inside the Idomeni camp, and we are here trying to cross the border every night and getting caught by police.

He concluded with the question that is on the lips of every migrant on the Macedonian border, particularly in light of the Brussels summit: Do you know when they will let us through again?

Abuse: Many migrants refugees have stories of mistreatment at the hands of the police and the army, and often have bruises to prove it

Shut: The closure of the border has resulted in thousands of migrants becoming effectively stuck at the camp just metres from Macedonia
A Massachusetts police officer has been placed on administrative leave for posting an image of a mushroom cloud with a reference to Islam.

Medford Officer Jason Montalbano apologized on Wednesday, saying he thought the image was meant to support action against the Islamic State group and that he did not intend to demean Muslims.

He had shared an image on his Facebook page on January 9 of a mushroom cloud with text referencing the atomic bomb dropped on Japan during World War II.

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Massachusetts police officer Jason Montalbano (pictured on Wednesday) has been placed on administrative leave for posting an image of a mushroom cloud with a reference to Islam

He had shared an image on his Facebook page on January 9 (pictured) of a mushroom cloud with text referencing the atomic bomb dropped on Japan during World War II

The post said: 'Japan has been at peace with the USA since September 2, 1945. It's time we made peace with Islam.'

The text references the date when Japan surrendered less than a month after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On Monday, Montalbano's Facebook profile had been taken down.

Lt. Paul Covino said the department takes the situation seriously and will take whatever action is necessary to correct it.

Mayor Stephanie Burke said police officers should be held to a higher standard when using social media.

'Conduct unbecoming is conduct unbecoming. I think they have to conduct themselves in a way that's much higher than an average citizen,' Burke said, according to Wicked Local.

'They're not supposed to incite,' she added. 'They're supposed to calm things down.'

Meanwhile Montalbano's attorney has called the whole situation a misunderstanding.

He apologized on Wednesday, saying he thought the image was meant to support action against the Islamic State group and that he did not intend to demean Muslims

The text in the post references the September 2, 1945 date when Japan surrendered less than a month after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (pictured) and Nagasaki

'If you look at his record with the city of Medford Police Department you will find no evidence whatsoever of any hostility or discrimination against Muslims or any other religious or ethnic group,' Attorney Alan McDonald said, according to CBS Boston.

Montalbano, who has been an officer with the force for 18 years with a reportedly spotless record, said he had seen the post on someone else's Facebook page.

'When I first saw the post on another site, I took it as targeting ISIS,' Montalbano explained on Wednesday.

'In retrospect, I understand that the reference to Islam was inappropriately over-broad, and offensive to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. I did not intend to demean Islam or Muslims in general.'

Montalbano (pictured right) has been an officer with the force for 18 years with a reportedly spotless record

The image had originated from the Facebook page of retired U.S. Marine and member of the National Rifle Association's Board of Directors, Steve Reichert, according to Wicked Local.

After news broke that Mantalbano had come under fire, Reichert shared his thoughts in a Facebook post: 'What the f**k, I would expect nothing less from the PC nazi's in Ma.

'Since when does taking an oath to uphold and protect the US Constitution limit a police officers 1st amendment rights?

'I need your support folks- let the PD know how jacked up their actions against a patriotic officer are.'

Fellow officers said Montalbano's actions were out of character as they were adamant he did not have biases towards anyone, and noted he was the first to help anyone, CBS Boston reported.

The police department is reviewing the post to determine if an internal investigation is warranted.

In January 2014, the Medford Police Department instituted a social media policy however it mostly covers material that could jeopardize investigations if shared publicly, Wicked Local reported.

Medford Police Chief Leo A Sacco Jr said he does not monitor officers' social media activity.
Thousands of tigers are dying in wretched conditions on farms masquerading as wildlife parks to feed a booming multi-million dollar business in China for wine made with their bones, a MailOnline investigation reveals.

Newly-wealthy Chinese customers who cling to the traditional belief that tiger bone wine makes you stronger and peps up your sex life are paying up to 400 a bottle and driving a phenomenal growth in tiger farming.

Sold as a health tonic and aphrodisiac in bottles shaped as tigers, the wine is surging in popularity with online sales and a tacit government acceptance of the trade making it easier than ever to order for the dinner tables of the country's growing rich elite.

Starving: This emaciated creature is one of thousands of tigers being bred on overcrowded 'farms' in China, which open their doors to the public as tourist attractions. Unsurprisingly, they are not popular

Craze: In fact, the farm owners don't care if the animals starve to death - they are just interested in the doomed tigers' bones (pictured) which they turn into wine and sell for as much as 400 a bottle

Tiger bones are steeped in rice wine for up to eight years and then bottled with a mixture of Chinese herbs and snake extract to produce a sickly-sweet 38 per cent proof brown liquor that tastes like a mixture of cough medicine and cheap brandy.

Disturbingly, our investigation found, China's thirst for the illicit product is so great that existing tiger farms are expanding and breeding more animals while neighbouring countries including Laos and Vietnam are setting up new farms to feed demand.

We breached tight security to get rare pictures and video of emaciated tigers at a wildlife park in Guilin, southwest China, which attracts barely any visitors but now has an incredible 1,800 tigers  making it the largest captive collection of tigers in the world.

Here, we found row after row of tigers in shabby enclosures  some waist-deep in weeds  at the rundown Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain where the tiger population has nearly doubled in the past decade despite only drawing a handful of daily paying visitors.

Employees and residents told us the park will soon be sold by tycoon owner Zhou Weisen to make way for homes and the tigers moved to a new site five miles away which is three times the size to cope with the rocketing tiger population.

When the tigers of Xiongsen die, either of old age, illness or fights with other tigers, they are taken to a factory deep in Zhou's hometown, a rural backwater 250 miles from Guilin called Pingnan, where their skeletons are steeped in huge vats of rice wine for up to eight years.

Despite an international ban on breeding tigers for their parts, tiger bone wine is openly sold in a shop attached to a five-star hotel belonging to Zhou where we were offered a 500ml bottle of tiger bone wine enhanced with tiger penis for 418.

Cruel: This is despite the fact breeding tigers for their parts is illegal. A MailOnline investigation reveals the full horror of what goes - where starving animals fight over scraps of food in rusted cages

Demand: And the number of these horrific farms is on the increase as demand for the expensive drink, thought to make men more fertile, grows with the expansion of China's middle classes

Caged: Tiger in solitary enclosure in Xiongsen Tiger Park in Guilin, officially a wildlife conservation centre

Solitary: This tiger is held in a cage on its own at the park where animals are expected to perform for paying visitors

Industry: There are now an estimated 6,000 captive tigers in China  more than twice the population left in the wild worldwide. There are fears the number could very soon rise to 10,000

Inside the hotel, diners are offered menus with a range of tiger wine on offer to accompany meals with Zhou's face featuring on some bottles. Here, the price of a 500ml bottle of six-year-old tiger wine from the nearby factory costs the equivalent of 150.

Each dead tiger can produce wine with a retail value of hundreds of thousands of pounds  and that is before the animal's skin, teeth, whiskers and other bodily parts so valued in traditional medicine are disposed of.

There are so many of them [tigers] here now it's hard to feed them all and there isn't enough food to go around. Staff member

Although carefully labelled as a tonic drink with no mention of its tiger ingredients, the wine is ostentatiously presented in tiger-shaped bottles and staff at both the shop and restaurant assured us it was made with genuine tiger bone from the Xiongsen park.

There are now an estimated 6,000 captive tigers in China  more than twice the population left in the wild worldwide  and wildlife experts say the evidence collected by Mail Online highlights the need for urgent steps to rein in the rampant business.

'The huge number of tigers you found in Guilin means immediate action is needed to stop the tigers breeding,' said the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

'If breeding isn't stopped immediately the population is going to get bigger and bigger and we will have 10,000 captive tigers in China. This problem is just going to become even more immense and uncontrollable.'

MailOnline went to the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain in Guilin after hearing it was moving to a new location which will allow it to breed tigers in even greater numbers despite fierce controversy over its practices.

Breeding tigers for body parts is banned under the international wildlife conservation treaty CITES to which China is a signatory  but the Chinese government has granted an exemption to breeders of captive-bred tigers who argue their farms reduce poaching of wild tigers.

There is no suggestion Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain is doing anything illegal.

Value: Each dead tiger can produce wine with a retail value of hundreds of thousands of pounds  and that is before the animal's skin, teeth, whiskers and other bodily parts are disposed of for traditional medicine

Protection: The Chinese government claims farms like these are actually good for the tiger population, as it prevents poachers killing them in the wild - something which conservation groups strongly disagree with

Factory: The tigers will end up somewhere like this after they die, the 'Xiongsen Wine Company' where their bones are soaked in rice wine for eight years and sold for big profits

Remote: The Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Village is in the south-west of China, in a town called Guilin

Conservation groups fiercely dispute the claim, saying that by driving demand tiger farms encourage poaching in countries like India where the cost of a tiger killed in the wild is far lower than the price of raising a captive tiger.

Xiongsen is China's biggest tiger park followed by the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin in the far north of the country which has more than 1,000 tigers and also produces officially-sanctioned tiger bone wine.

There are so many of them here now it's hard to feed them all and there isn't enough food to go around. Xiongsen guard

Even China's own state TV has attacked the Xiongsen park for its treatment of animals in a 2014 news report and visitor numbers have plummeted with just three other paying guests on our first visit and around 30 two days later on Saturday.

We were sternly warned not to take pictures or video when we arrived and security guards closely shadowed us throughout our visits, allowing us only brief opportunities to film and photograph the tigers when guards were looking away.

When we asked about the painfully thin condition of some of the animals, one guard shook his head and told us: 'There are so many of them here now it's hard to feed them all and there isn't enough food to go around.'

At afternoon feeding time, a shockingly emaciated tiger  the bones from its back and hind legs protruding sharply beneath its fur  tried to eat one or two chunks of pork thrown into its enclosure before being chased away by healthier tigers.

Out of sight of the public areas of the park, we found row upon row of rusting cages, engulfed with weeds and with the wire fencing of the cages looking worryingly worn, in which tigers were kept in ones and twos. (PIX)

Vats: After being soaked the bones are bottled with a mixture of Chinese herbs and snake extract to produce a sickly-sweet 38 per cent proof brown liquor that tastes like a mixture of cough medicine and cheap brandy

Marketing: They are then sold on in bottles like this - which doesn't specifically say it is tiger wine, calling itself 'bone protecting papaya wine'. The tigers in the picture suggest a far happier life than they have had

The wine is then sold in tiger-shaped containers - just so there is no confusion over what is inside. This shop also sells bear wine, made from the bones and a lot cheaper, at just 107 a bottle

Despite the pitifully low visitor numbers which has led to the entrance fee being halved to just 4.30, a daily circus performance still goes ahead in a rundown circular auditorium in the centre of the park with crumbling masonry and broken plastic seats.

Here, a small group of tigers are forced to do tricks including jumping through hoops and standing on an inflatable ball to the command of a ringmaster in a gaudy purple suit who beats the animals with a metal rod if they misbehave.

The half-hearted 30-minute performance is completed with miserable-looking chained monkeys and bears riding bicycles and playing with hula-hoops, and a goat made to walk a high wire with a baby monkey clinging to its back.

This has nothing to do with conservation. They are basically factories like any other industry and the main objective is profit. EIA wildlife campaigner Shruti Suresh

As well as its 1,800-plus tigers, the park has 400 endangered Asiatic Bears, known as moon bears. At the hotel shop in Pingnan, we found wine containing bear bone as well as tiger bone on sale with a bottle of mixed tiger and bear bone wine on sale for 107.

Behind the counter, boxes of tiger wine were piled almost to the ceiling ready to be shipped to customers across China. 'Tiger wine from Xiongsen is the best in China and a lot of our business comes over the internet now,' the shop assistant told us proudly.

Xiongsen's tiger wine has its own page on Alibaba, China and the world's biggest online trading site, where buyers are given an assurance that the products they buy are genuine tiger bone products from the Guilin park.

After being briefed on our findings, EIA wildlife campaigner Shruti Suresh said it supported her organisation's belief that the tiger bone wine trade was growing at an alarming pace.

'It seems predominantly the market is high-end luxury market catering to big hotels, big banquets. It is a luxury product. If it is available online you can order it from anywhere and see if it makes it to you without being seized on the way,' she said.

'It is interesting that the Xiongsen park is so overgrown and that there are so few people there because often the argument facilities like this put forward is that it has a conservation impact or that it raises awareness about wild tigers.

'But this has nothing to do with conservation. They are basically factories like any other industry and the main objective is profit.

'It is clear from your experiences in Guilin that the trade is probably the biggest reason these tigers exist rather than for any other purpose.'

The EIA has uncovered evidence that tiger farms are being set up in neighbouring countries to feed rising demand in China, including a farm with 500 tigers in Laos in a special economic zone near its border with China.

'We found a tiger breeding facility in that zone which was planning to expand its operations primarily to manufacture tiger bone wine on a commercial scale for export to China,' she said.

TIGER WINE TASTE TEST: A MIXTURE OF 'COUGH MEDICINE AND METAXA' Imagine the nauseating sensation when you swallow a mouthful from one of those bottles of Raki, Grappa or Ouzo you bought on holiday and then left untouched in the back of your drink cabinet at home: Now multiple that sensation by 10. That will give you a rough idea of just how bad tiger bone wine tastes. It is like a mixture of cough medicine and three-star Metaxa and the moment it passes your lips, you can sense the thumping hangover this foul liquid will leave in its wake. Vile: A customer tastes tiger wine during the investigation and was disgusted with it - describing the drink as a mix between cough medicine and three-star Metaxa The main difference is that while that bottle of Ouzo or Raki will cost you a few leftover Euros at the airport departure lounge, this stuff will set you back up to 400  and might just get your arrested at customs for smuggling illicit wildlife products. The other crucial difference, if you believe in Chinese traditional medicine, is that this evil-smelling concoction will cure rheumatism and back pain and give you the strength and the sexual prowess of a tiger. I bought a 500 ml bottle of year-old tiger bone wine made from the skeleton of a Xiongsen tiger and drank it that evening in a Guilin restaurant with my friend and colleague Mr Jiang, a retired academic. The most (or rather only) appealing aspect of it was the bottle  in the shape of a benign, Disney-fied cuddly tiger: One that was a world away from the tormented, starving wretches we saw pacing up and down cages inside the park. Lift off the tiger's head and beneath is a plastic screw stopper uncorks the wine which is surprisingly thick and brown in texture. We poured it into thimble-sized glasses which, as custom dictates, must be downed in one go. I had expected a pure liquid but, reading the label, Mr Jiang explained it was mixed with a combination of Chinese herbs and even had some snake in it, giving it a dark brown colour. 'Snake poison kills any bad things inside your body,' he told me in a tone intended to reassure. Powerful: The 'evil-smelling concoction will cure rheumatism and back pain and give you the strength and the sexual prowess of a tiger', according to traditional Chinese medicine The first glass is undoubtedly the worst. While at 38 per cent proof not as strong as many liquors, its sweetness and thick texture is hard to stomach. Like any bad holiday drink, however, it mysteriously improves in quality with each glass. 'Of course the medical claims made about it are total nonsense,' Mr Jiang declared with lofty superiority as he raised his glass for a fifth toast. 'But there are 1.3 billion people in China and if only half of us believe it, it makes for exceptionally good business.' I woke the next morning like a tiger with a sore head, in possession of a roaring hangover and a collection of previously unknown bodily aches. The wine's supposed curative qualities appeared to have worked in reverse for me. Mr Jiang, however, who took the remains of the bottle home with him, had turned from cynic to believer. 'I felt very sprightly when I get home and my wife was very happy,' he told me in an excited phone call. 'Maybe there is something to what they say after all ' Advertisement

Ms Suresh called for an immediate halt to tiger breeding in places like the Xiongsen park. 'Tigers do breed at a high rate and the number in China could triple in no time if action is not taken quickly to stop the breeding.

'If China is serious about tiger conservation, they could invite a group of technical experts from conservation, animal rescue and welfare organisations to assist the government with a policy to phase-out commercial facilities that keep or breed tigers.'
An 85-year-old man has died after being stung about 200 times by a swarm of bees in South Texas.

Willacy County authorities said Juvenito Gonzales was cutting grass in Raymondville on Tuesday afternoon when he was fatally stung by the bees.

Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said the noise of the tractor likely stirred up the bees.

The elderly man died at the scene and investigators later found a beehive in a nearby stack of tires.

Raymondville is about 50 miles north of the Mexico border.

A Willacy County Sheriff's Office dispatcher was not able to provide Daily Mail Online with additional information on Thursday night.
More than two decades after she reported her 5-year-old son missing from a carnival in New Jersey, a woman investigators say they long considered a suspect is on trial for his murder - the boy's mother, Michelle Lodzinski.

A former baby sitter and the boy's cousin testified Thursday that she is certain that a blanket found near the remains of a 5-year-old New Jersey boy nearly 25 years ago came from his house.

Danielle Gerding testified that she saw the blanket in Timothy Wiltsey's home when she babysat for him.

The blanket is a key piece of evidence in the prosecution's murder case against Timothy's mother, Lodzinski.

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Case: Michelle Lodzinski (above) is on trial for the murder of her son Timothy 25 years ago

Evidence: The boy's former babysitter and cousin Danielle Gerding testified on Thursday that a blanket found near his body was from his home 9above)

Tetsimomny: Gerding (above in court) also described Lodzinski as 'calm' when she first reported she had lost her son

Lodzinski's lawyer said in his opening statement Wednesday that she was a loving mother and that there's no evidence linking her to Timothy's death.

Lodzinski has said he vanished while they were at a carnival in Sayreville, New Jersey, in 1991.

'She said she turned her back to get soda and he was missing,' said Gerding, who was at the carnival that day.

'She appeared calm, almost shocked.'

After telling the carnival disc jockey that Timothy was wearing a red T-shirt and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sneakers, Gerding said, she spent hours searching for the boy.

'We went near the lakes, into the woods. I recall hearing geese and thinking it was Timmy crying. We didn't find Timmy,' she said.

Lodzinski, 48, who was living in Port St. Lucie, Florida, when she was arrested, had told police she lost track of her son at the carnival, then changed her story several times, saying variously that two men or a woman and two men with a young girl abducted Timothy.

Investigators at the time said her story changed as police questioned her.

Tragedy: The 5-year-old's body was found a year after he went missing while at a carnival with his mother in New Jersey

The boy's skeletal remains were found in April 1992 in a marshy area in nearby Edison, about 10 miles from where he was reported missing and near where Lodzinski worked..

Alan Rockoff, the Middlesex County prosecutor when Timothy disappeared, said prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to charge her previously.

'We didn't have sufficient evidence at the time to pull the trigger,' said Rockoff.

'There was no direct smoking gun here. ... Hopefully now, there's a possibility of closure. Justice works slowly, but works surely.'

A man who identified himself as Lodzinski's father said in 2014 that the family believes Lodzinski is innocent.

'We went through the same thing 20 years ago,' Edward Lodzinski said at his home in Florida.

'As far as I'm concerned, she's innocent.'

Lodzinski was living with two sons, now ages 13 and 17, at the time of her 2014 arrest,

Though Lodzinski was considered a suspect from early on, it was that rekindled when authorities took a closer look at a reference in the case to an anonymous caller.

In a transcript of grand jury testimony that was attached to a defense filing, an investigator described how an anonymous caller said he had information about the case.

The tip wound up referring to a boy named Tommy, but it spurred a Middlesex County investigator to revisit the case file and, eventually, to interview the niece about the blanket.

'The evidence will show it was his mother, Michelle Lodzinski. The very person who brought him into the world took him out of it,' assistant county prosecutor Christie Bevacqua said in her opening statement.

However, defense lawyer Gerald Krovatin told jurors that Lodzinski was a loving mother and that no one has ever found any evidence that links her to the boy's death.

'There is probably nothing more horrible to contemplate than the death of a child, any child, especially your child,' Krovatin said.
A Yazidi woman sold as a sex-slave eight times by an ISIS jihadi says she was put on parade like she was being picked out in a 'car showroom'.

Khalida, 20, was kidnapped and taken to Raqqa where she was put on display in a 'meat market' where women are purchased for as little as a mobile phone, or simply given away as 'gifts'.

The most beautiful women are put into a separate 'VIP' room where leaders can take their time choosing their favourite three or four girls each.

Khalida was bought by an old man with a white beard and kept in a small room where he raped her - and then beaten by his wife for 'tempting' her husband.

But it was only the beginning of the horror: she went on to endure months of daily abuse, torture and brutality at the hands as she was bought and sold by eight men.

The quiet, slight-framed, woman tried to kill herself many times to end her terrible ordeal and even tattooed her fathers name onto her arm so her body could be identified after her death.

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Unconcious: Khalida was raped up to three times a day and was left unconscious after she was gang raped

Torture: The 20-year-old was abused and tortured for the 16 months she was held as an ISIS slave in Raqqa

The courageous young woman - who was held for 16 months, finally won her freedom after she convinced her slave master to sell her back to her family for $24,000.

Now she bravely breaks her silence to tell the world of her people's desperate plight.

Khalida told MailOnline: They did everything to me. But I want people to know what happened to me so that the world understands how the Yazidi people have suffered.

Her ordeal began in August 2014 when her family were denounced as unbelievers by former neighbours as they tried to flee their hometown of Sinjar after it had been overrun by ISIS fighters.

Khalida told MailOnline: Our neighbours, who are Muslims, said they would protect us, but when we were stopped at a checkpoint one of them pointed us out to the foreign [ISIS] fighters and said we were Yazidi. And we were all taken. There were 36 of us.

The family were separated by sex. To this day Khalida does not know what happened to the men  her father, her uncles, some of her brothers.

Desperate: Khalida and her cousin were raped by the Syrian man who 'bought' them - he was known as Abu Qalla. His wife beat them and they were forced to take contraception

Suicide: Khalida tried to commit suicide on multiple occasions, and tattooed her father's name on her arm to ensure her body could be identified if she succeeded, but she survived each attempt

The women were separated again  married and unmarried. Put with the single women Khalida and her cousins were taken to a big hall. An ISIS fighter took their photographs.

Among 800 other young Yazidi women terrified Khalida was taken by bus to the ISIS capital Raqqa, passing through her destroyed town on the way.

She said: I saw dead bodies  children, women and men  along the roadside. My eyes were scarred by what I saw and I had to hold my nose against the stench.

In Raqqa the women were put on parade in a big room, which Khalida describes like a car show room of girls.

She told MailOnline: We were put on display. Men came in and looked at us like objects. It was like a car showroom. Women were bought for cash  as little as $20, or exchanged for things like mobile phones, or given away as gifts.

The most beautiful women were put into a special room. Then five top ISIS leaders  emirs  came to choose girls. They took away three or four girls each.

I was very afraid. I didnt know what would happen to me  raped, murdered?

Khalida and her cousin were bought by an old man with a long white beard, a Syrian known as Abu Qalla, who took them to the home he shared with his wife and children.

Locked into a room for two weeks the terrified young women could hear the family through the wall but knew nothing about the horrendous abuse they were to suffer.

Then one day the Abu Qalla raped Khalidas cousin in front of her. His wife later beat the girls, accusing them of tempting her husband and branding the pair as infidels.

The wife said: You are Yazidi. You deserve what you get.

Over the following year and four months Khalida, who stands just 4ft 11in tall, has a small button nose, rosy cheeks, downy skin, and an engaging lisp, endured the most degrading sexual and physical abuse.

Escape: She tried to escape three times but at each attempt the families she asked for help sent her back to ISIS

Infidel: She said the families told her she was an infidel, and refused her pleas when she offered them money

Kidnapped: She was seized at a checkpoint when her family tried to flee her hometown in August 2014 when ISIS attacked, but said she was revealed as Yazidi by her Muslim neighbours who betrayed them to ISIS

Raped up to three times a day her slave master or gang-raped by groups of ISIS fighters, this quiet young woman was bought and sold by eight different men  each more brutal, callous and perverted than the last.

She told MailOnline she was force-fed contraceptive pills and once taken to hospital for a contraceptive injection after she was rendered unconscious by one particularly brutal gang rape.

They [ISIS] did not want me get pregnant, especially if there was more than one man because they would not know who the father of the baby was, she said.

During her 16-month ordeal Khalida escaped three times, seeking sanctuary at the homes of three Arab families and appealing to them to contact her family.

But each time she was denounced to ISIS and returned to her brutal slave master.

I told them, help me, get me out of here and my family will give you anything you want, name your price, Khalida said.

But they said: You are Yazidi, an infidel, we refuse to help you.

Khalida tried to kill herself many times, in an attempt to free herself from the terrible abuse she was suffering.

She tattooed her fathers name on her arm so her body could identify her body after her death.

She told MailOnline: I tried to kill myself many times. I covered myself in water and put my hand on electric cables but I always survived.

I asked God to kill me. I thought it was better to die than to live as a sex slave with what they were doing to me, every day.

Release: Her last 'slave master' finally agreed to sell her back to her brother for $24,000 (16,500)

Freedom: She was finally taken to Mosul, near the front lines, where she had to walk for five hours to safety

Brave: Now she is free, Khalida has promised to learn to read and write and is determined to live her life

However she survived.

Ultimately Khalida threw herself upon the mercy of her final slave master, and appealed to him to free her from the misery ISIS had condemned her to.

Her last captor, a Syrian man, finally agreed to release her  and forced her to barter for her freedom. He judged her family must pay $30,000 [20,000] even though they were poor and homeless.

I begged him and kissed his feet begging for him to contact my family, Khalida told MailOnline.

I told him I had been enslaved for over a year and had heard nothing about my family. I begged him every day for two months.

Finally he let me call my brother Faisal. He told him he would sell me for $30,000.

I told him my family were poor and had nothing, that they had abandoned their home.

I had to barter for my life. Finally he agreed to sell me.'

Exodus: Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis were forced to walk for miles without food or water when ISIS attacked Sinjar and surrounding villages in August 2014. They killed the men and took hundreds of women captive

Future: Yazidis are forbidden to marry  or have sexual relations - outside of their community but Yazidi leaders are working hard to ensure their women are able to reintegrate to society

I was taken to a village near the front line near Mosul. I had to walk for five hours and I called to the Peshmerga fighters.

Talking by torch-light in a cold, unfinished flat, in Duhok, northern Iraq, this brave young woman has vowed not to let her 16-month ordeal define her life.

She told MailOnline: Before the war I had a happy life. I lived with my family, helping my mother around the house with the cooking and the cleaning.

Now my dream is to be able to read and write, because I was not able to go to school when I was young.

When I was out there [in captivity] I was blind. When I was being moved around there many signs, road signs, if I had have been able to read them I might have been able to have escaped earlier.

Traditionally Yazidi women are forbidden to marry  or have sexual relations - outside of their community, or even their caste, and are expelled if they do so.

However the Yazidi spiritual leader, Baba Sheikh Khurto Hajji Ismail, made a declaration supporting the 800 women abducted and sexually abused by ISIS, to ensure they were allowed back into their tight-knit community.

The Baba Sheikh wrote a letter supporting women like Khalida, to make sure they were not expelled or shunned from their community, said Dr Saeed Dakhil Saeed, president of the Sinjar Foundation, which supports Yazidi victims of sexual violence and other kidnapped refugees.
A doctor who killed her sexually abusive husband is appealing her manslaughter conviction to avoid being deported from Australia after serving her sentence.

In February Chamari Liyanage was acquitted of murder, but convicted of the manslaughter of her husband Dinendra Athukoral in at their home in Geraldton, Western Australia in June 2014.

On Monday Liyanage's lawyer George Giudice launched an appeal against the conviction over concerns she could be deported to Sri Lanka when her sentence is over, according to the West Australian.

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Chamari Liyanage is appealing her manslaughter conviction amid fears she could be deported to Sri Lanka when her sentence is served

Mr Giudie said he hoped the appeal would lead to her being acquitted of manslaughter and therefore eliminate the possibility of his client - who is not an Australian citizen - being deported.

'I can't see any reason they would have to deport her if she was acquitted and if they did we would certainly be opposing it,' he said.

A petition started by a friend of Liyanage was also launched this week calling for the Immigration Minister not to deport her.

Despite being sentenced to four years Liyanage could be released from prison as early as June taking into consideration time already served and the fact she is eligible for parole.

Chamari Liyanage (left) was acquitted of murder, but convicted of the manslaughter of her husband Dinendra Athukoral (right)

A petition started by a friend of Liyanage was also launched this week calling for the Immigration Minister not to deport her

During the trial a colleague of both Liyanage and her husband Mr Athukoral - Dr Barbara Jarrad - visited the accused behind bars.

Ms Jarrad told the court Liyanage asked her to apologise to paramedics for her because 'they shouldn't have had to see that.'

Liyanage has been described as 'kind', 'compassionate' and as an 'enthusiastic doctor' in court, while her husband has been described as 'non-communicative' by his colleague Ms Jarrad.

Members of the emergency services who attended the said the mallet was on the bed, and the walls splashed with blood when they arrived.

Earlier in the trial the Supreme Court heard Dr Athukorala would pressure his wife, who was also a doctor, into engaging in sexual activities and intimidated her into starting relationships with other women, the ABC reported.
US military personnel involved in a devastating airstrike on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan last year have or will be punished, officials have confirmed.

The bombing in Kunduz, in the north of the country, in October, 2015 left 42 people - including medical staff, patients and children - dead.

After carrying out an investigation, the US military blamed human error for the airstrike, which was condemned at the time by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and human rights groups.

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US military personnel who were closely involved in a devastating airstrike on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan (pictured) have or will be punished it has been confirmed

The bombing in Kunduz, in the north of the country, in October, 2015 left 42 people - including medical staff, patients and children - dead

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for US Central Command, said yesterday: 'I can tell you that those individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties and were referred for administrative action.'

More than 10 military personnel face administrative action, another official said.

He said this can range from 'negative counseling', or being told not to do something again, to a letter of reprimand, which generally blocks further promotion. Removal of command is also a possibility.

Next week, the Pentagon is due to publish a version of its report on the attack. It will be redacted to remove classified material.

Doctors Without Borders has appealed in vain for an international investigation of the airstrike which largely devastated the hospital (pictured)

President Barack Obama has apologized for the Kunduz attack and the Pentagon has said it will pay compensation to the families of those killed.

Doctors Without Borders has appealed in vain for an international investigation of the airstrike and branded the bombing a war crime.

The strike came five days after Taliban fighters captured Kunduz in a complex attack, which was their biggest military victory since being ousted in the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

It exposed a worrying lack of coordination between the branches of Afghan security, who are being trained by NATO.

They regained control of much of the city after three days of fighting and with the help of US air power.

But the battle underlined how Afghan and American security interests remain intertwined nearly a year after NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan officially ended.
Gwyneth Jones, 24, works in a cafe despite having a modern languages degree from Cambridge

Thousands of graduates and other well-educated people are stuck in jobs for which they are over-qualified, official statistics have revealed.

About one in six workers are accepting employment in call centres and coffee shops because they cant find work suited to their skills.

The Office for National Statistics found that the UK has the fifth highest level of skills mismatch out of 24 countries studied.

Experts warned that British universities are producing graduates faster than businesses can create jobs for them.

The problem is a partial legacy of Labours 1999 pledge to send half of all school-leavers to university, which critics at the time said was a mistake.

Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, yesterday said the policy had been flawed.

He added: The phenomenon of increases in graduation not matching the increase in skilled jobs exists broadly in the OECD [group of 34 leading economies], but is a particular problem in the UK. That is part of the legacy of having a 50 per cent target.

The key point is that we need to ensure there are high-quality alternatives to university, including apprenticeships, so people can have a meaningful choice.

Employers are increasingly demanding degree-level applicants to help with the screening process rather than because the qualifications are necessary for the job, previous studies have revealed. This can backfire, however, as it leads to high turnover due to low levels of engagement and job satisfaction.

The ONS research found more than 16 per cent of employees are over-educated for their jobs, up from 15 per cent at the height of the financial crisis in 2009. About 15 per cent are under-educated for their employment, down slightly from six years ago.

Gwyneth Jones, 24, said she applied for 192 jobs after university, but the only one she heard back from was for an unpaid internship.

Despite having a modern languages degree from Cambridge and a masters in international relations from Birmingham University, Miss Jones has been forced to work in a cafe just to make ends meet.

She pays 610 a month to rent her box room in Bethnal Green, East London, and walks for an hour to work to save money.

Miss Jones, who works six days a week, split between the expenses-only research internship and work at the cafe, said: Its really, really hard. I feel like if Id just done a standard grad scheme in finance, law or consulting, Id be so much better off.

Dr John Philpott, director of The Jobs Economist, said: It is clear from these estimates that the UK is under-using a lot of talent. While such a waste of valuable skill was understandable during the recession, the general upward trend toward increased over-education since 2012 is worrying.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: Figures continue to show that graduates enjoy a significant pay premium over those who finish education at A-level, while new employer-designed apprenticeships are ensuring young people get the skills they need to get on.
She is also fighting to get states to ban gay conversion therapy

Now she has written a book, revealing the dangers of the 'therapy'

At one point she attempted suicide 'as a 16th birthday present to herself'

Coming out can be a frightening time for any teenager, but for Alex Cooper the fallout was unimaginable - she was taken from her parents' home and put in the 'care' of a sadistic couple who tortured for eight months in order to 'make her straight'.

It was in 2009 that Cooper, then just 15 years old, announced to her Mormon parents that she was gay - something their church teaches is immoral.

Fearing for her soul, they sent her away from the family home in California to Utah, where she would undergo 'gay conversion therapy' with Mormon couple Tiana and Johnny Siale. And that's when her agony began.

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Suffering: Alex Cooper (pictured) came out as gay to her Mormon parents at 15. They sent her to a couple who abused her mentally and physically in order to 'cure' her. Now 21, she has turned her experiences into a book

Reforming: Cooper, who was beaten and made to carry rocks for hours, and attempted suicide once, is now trying to get states such as Utah to ban so-called 'gay conversion therapy'

Video Courtesy KUTV

'They were total strangers,' Alex said, according to Religion News. 'My parents just signed over custody to them in front of me. And I knew that my parents had never met these people before.'

Writing in her new book, Saving Alex, Cooper - now 21 - says that the couple, neither of whom had any therapy qualifications, made her carry around a backpack full of rocks for 18 hours a day, supposedly to symbolize 'the burden she was carrying by choosing to be gay.'

In the book - extracts from which Cooper read out to KUTV - she recalls one time in which they made her stand while wearing the heavy backpack for so long that she lost track of time.

As she tried 'to manage the pain by shifting my weight from foot to foot,' the couple told her: 'Your family doesn't want you. God has no place for people like you in His plan.'

She tried unsuccessfully to escape multiple times, and attempted suicide once, as 'a sixteenth birthday present' - only leading to further punishment.

'I came to my feet in front of him,' Cooper wrote. 'He made a fist and punched me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I doubled over and choked for breath.'

The couple also called her abusive names like 'dyke.'

Visitors to the Siales' home saw the abuse she was undergoing but neither them nor the wider community made any movement to stop it, Publishers Weekly wrote.

Eventually, KUTV reported, she was allowed to go to school, where she made friends with other gay teens, who told her to contact Salt Lake attorney Paul C. Burke.

Burke, who says he was 'floored' by her story, helped her land a court ruling allowing her to live as an openly gay teen - and now the duo are battling to get states to outlaw gay conversion therapy.

'It's like sending you to therapy to change your eye color,' Cooper told KUTV.

'It's not going to work. What it's going to do is damage you.'

Help: Cooper hopes her book (right), which reveals her awful experiences undergoing 'therapy' for being gay and her subsequent escape, will persuade people not to use the services of supposed 'therapists'

She is also calling out to religious communities to be more tolerant.

'No one should be beaten, or be told that God doesnt want them, or be sent to dangerous so-called "conversion therapy" because they are gay,' she wrote in the book.

'No family should feel they have to choose between their faith and their child.'

Cooper, who is no longer a Mormon, says she holds no ill will against her parents, and that her mother recently apologized for what she'd put her through.

'They thought they were doing the best thing for me,' Cooper said to KUTV. 'I think that's what a lot of parents are under the impression of, that they're doing the best thing for their child.'

And she told Publishers Weekly that she didn't press charges against the couple who abused her.

'As long as I was sitting in a courtroom looking at them I couldnt move on with my life,' she said, 'and thats what I needed to do,'

Eric Hawkins, a spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told the channel: 'The Church denounces any therapy that subjects an individual to abusive practices.

'We hope those who experience the complex realities of same-sex attraction find compassion and understanding from family members, professional counselors and church members.'

Saving Alex is available in stores now.
North Korea has fired a ballistic missile into the sea just days after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the isolated state over its nuclear tests.

South Korean military said the 'medium-range' Rodong missile (also known as Nodong) flew around 500 miles off its east coast.

The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula with North leader Kim Jong-un remaining defiant in the face of the UN Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January.

South Korean military said the 'medium-range' Rodong missile (also known as Nodong) flew around 500 miles off its east coast. Pictured is North Korea parading its Rondong missiles in 2010

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile into the sea just days after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the isolated state over nuclear tests. Pictured is leader Kim Jong-un

New U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang were issued on Wednesday aiming to expand U.S. blockade against the isolated state by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the North's economy. Pictured is a U.S. Marines aircraft during a joint-exercise with South Korea's military on Saturday

The missile was launched from an area near the west coast, north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsular and into the sea off the east coast early today, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

North Korea last test fired medium-range missiles in 2014.

The North fired two short-range missiles last week into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong Un ordered more nuclear weapons test and missile tests to improve attack capability.

North Korea often fires missiles at periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programme.

New U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang were issued on Wednesday aiming to expand U.S. blockade against the isolated state by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the North's economy.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7 in defiance of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions.

American Otto Warmbier, 21, was sentenced for subversion after stealing the poster, which he said was requested by a member of his church group

This is the moment American student Otto Warmbier, 21, earned himself 15 years of hard labor in a North Korean labor camp after removing a propaganda poster from the staff area of his Pyongyang hotel

On Wednesday, North Korea's supreme court sentenced a visiting American student to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against the state, a punishment Washington condemned as politically motivated.

Otto Warmbier, 21, was sentenced for subversion after stealing the poster, which he said was requested by a member of his church group.

Partially-censored images purporting to show the banner have now been released by North Korea's state news agency, along with CCTV which North Korea says shows the moment Warmbier removed it from the wall.

Warmbier was charged with subversion after removing the poster which reads 'Let's arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong Il patriotism'. Banners bearing the names of North Korea's former leaders are highly revered

Warmbier was charged with trying to steal a banner featuring the name of Kim Jong-il, the state's former leader. The banner reads: 'Let's arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong-il patriotism!'

The phrase 'Kim Jong-il patriotism' was used to glorify the late leader after his 2011 death. The slogan was described by successor Kim Jong-un, as the 'crystallization of socialist patriotism'.

Images and references to North Korea's leaders, who are treated with almost god-like status in propaganda, are sacrosanct.
Eli Edwards said they need answers 'one way or another' to get closure

Son said his family were struggling to come to terms with di

The estranged husband of missing school teacher Sharon Edwards is now a suspect in her disappearance.

Ms Edwards, 55, from Grafton, NSW, was last seen leaving a pub in the town in March, 14, 2015.

Her car was left parked in her driveway and the clothes she had been wearing were thrown in the washing basket in her bedroom.

New South Wales police confirmed Ms Edwards estranged husband, John, is now a suspect. At the time of her disappearance, police searched his home in Lawrence, as well as the home the couple owned together in Grafton.

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Sharon Edwards, 55, was last seen between 10pm and 11pm on Saturday, March 14 in Grafton, NSW

Pictured from left: Her son Zac, husband John, son Eli, Ms Edwards and her third son Josh

Police are pursuing information that Ms Edwards' car was seen in Lawrence just hours after she left the Grafton pub.

Detective Inspector Darren Jameson revealed the new details and appealed for more information.

We've now seen 12 months go by without any contact between Sharon Edwards and her friends and her family, he said.

This is an ongoing investigation where we need to seek further information from the community to assist us.

We know that she was a much-loved mother, grandmother and friend to many in the Grafton area.

No charges have yet been laid and no-one has been arrested in relation to the teacher's disappearance.

Last year the family of Ms Edwards shared their heartbreak over her disappearance.

Ms Edwards' youngest son, Josh Edwards, also thanked the community for their continuing support of the Edwards family.

'The last year has been very tough on our family but the people of Grafton have been very good to us; showing us how much they, too, love mum,' Josh said.

'Not only did we have friends and family helping look for her, we had people from across the community offering to help out in any way they could.

'A year is a long time without any contact and any answers. Its heartbreaking for all of us  we miss her so much.'

In April last year her other son, Eli Edwards, told Daily Mail Australia his family was struggling to come to terms with his mother's disappearance.

The worst part is not knowing anything, its such a mystery, he said.

My old mans taking it pretty hard and I guess we are all just going through stages.

The family made an emotional appeal for information last year after police said it was a homicide investigation

Sharon Edwards, 54, posted a smiling image of herself in front of a sunrise on the morning she disappeared

There was no sign of forced entry at her Grafton home on the NSW north coast and it has left her family with many unanswered questions.

Ms Edwards, a 55-year-old teacher, was last seen between 10pm and 11pm on March 14 after spending the afternoon with close friends at the nearby Good Intent Hotel.

Her wallet and handbag are missing but she has not accessed any of her bank or social media accounts.

We cant think of anyone that would want to do anything to hurt her. We dont have any theories, he said.

'I want her to be found, one way or another.

'We just need an outcome, at least that way we can all have some closure, he added.

It was first noticed Ms Edwards was missing when she failed to show up for a class she was due to teach

Mr Edwards said he and his fiance sometimes worked weekends and his mother was due to come to Brisbane to help care for his young daughter.

She wouldn't miss that for the world, Mr Edwards explained.

The 'dedicated' primary school teacher did not turn up to work at Coutts Crossing Public School on March 16 and her estranged husband reported her missing the next day.

On the morning she disappeared, Ms Edwards posted a smiling image of herself posing in front of a sunrise.

In the week following her disappearance, police divers searched searched the Clarence River.

Police also forensically examined three properties Ms Edwards and her husband own together, one in Grafton and two, including a vacant block, in nearby Lawrence.

Anyone with information regarding Ms Edwards' disappearance should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Police forensically examined three properties - one in Grafton and two, including a vacant block, in nearby Lawrence shortly after her disappearance

The 55-year-old was last seen between 10pm and 11pm on Saturday, March 14, after spending the afternoon with close friends at the Good Intent Hotel in Grafton on the north coast

The 'dedicated' primary school teacher didn't turn up to work at Coutts Crossing Public School but never showed up
The billionaire heiress to the McCain food empire is applying for an annulment from her symphony orchestra head husband.

Eleanor McCain claims Toronto Symphony Orchestra president Jeff Melanson tricked her into marriage as a way to escape sexual harassment allegations.

The 46-year-old has now asked for a split from Melanson, describing him as a ruthless manipulator who drank during the working day, gave jobs to his lovers, and had affairs with a number of women.

She has applied for an annulment with a 34-page application filled with allegations, according to the Toronto Star, to make it so the marriage never existed.

McCain's late father, Wallace, found McCain foods limited and built up a net worth of around $3.55billion.

Eleanor McCain claims Toronto Symphony Orchestra president Jeff Melanson tricked her into marriage as a way to escape sexual harassment allegations. Now she has applied for an annulment

Before his death in 2011, from pancreatic cancer, he was ranked by Forbes as the 13th wealthiest Canadian and 512th in the world.

In a statement on Twitter Melanson called the allegations 'inaccurate and undignified' and 'untrue and hurtful.'

His full post read: 'The claims against me are inaccurate and undignified. I am saddened that Ms. McCain has chosen to say such things and in this way, but even more disappointed as these statements are untrue and hurtful to myself and my loved ones. My lawyers will reply through the appropriate channels.'

According to her application, his 'aggressive courtship' began with a coffee date on December 16, 2013.

She claims he then showered her with texts declaring his 'undying love,' and brought up marriage three weeks into dating.

He claimed he was close to her wealthy father, but, according to her claims, they had rarely spent time together and Melanson was actually terrified of dealing with him.

The 46-year-old (left) has asked for a split from Melanson, describing him as a ruthless manipulator who drank during the working day, gave jobs to his lovers, and had affairs with a number of women.

She has applied for an annulment with a 34-page application filled with allegations to make it so the marriage never existed

The couple married on April 26, 2014. They had a public ceremony on November 22/.

Just two months later, Melanson 'abruptly' ended the marriage via email.

McCain claims he hasn't spoken to her since.

According to McCain's application, as seen by the Star, it wasn't the first time Melanson 'manipulated and used people by pretending they were his 'best friend' or the 'love of his life... then 'discarded them with no remorse.'

Among the other claims was that Melanson never said that he cheated on his previous wife

There were also allegations Melanson frequented Ashley Madison during the marriage under the user name 'Sarastro2012,' a reference to Mozart's The Magic Flute.

McCain's late father, Wallace, found McCain foods limited and built up a net worth of around $3.55billion

Toronto family law specialist Steven Benmor told the Star the decision by McCain makes sense because there is so much money at stake, but insists it is a reach.

The filing seen by the Star states that upon becoming president in January 2012 and while still married, he immediately created a position for a woman and pursued her 'relentlessly.'

Once they 'consummated their relationship' during a Banff Centre trip to Australia in October, McCain's document alleges, he broke off the relationship, and by the following September, she was terminated. When the woman subsequently announced her intention to sue, Melanson 'felt that his days (there) were numbered.'

Annulments are usually granted on a capacity basis. For example a judge may approve an application if one of the parties was too young or mentally unfit to get married.

Melanson's ex-wife Jennifer Snowdon denied the claims about their marriage.

'There was no infidelity in our marriage,' she told the Star, before adding that Melanson was 'a good person' and a 'kind and generous man.'

Before his death in 2011, from pancreatic cancer, he was ranked by Forbes as the 13th wealthiest Canadian and 512th in the world. He is pictured with daughter McCain who is in line to invest some of his riches

'He's a flawed human being. He's not perfect. But I think this is horrible what's happening to him, and I think Eleanor is sad and hurt and angry. But he doesn't deserve being trashed like this in the press,' she said.

'Jeff and I got married very young. We grew apart. We separated amicably. We are doing our best to co-parent our children together the best that we can.'

The Banf Centre, a leading cultural and arts organization where Melanson was allegedly accused of sexual harassment, said in a statement to the Star: 'Firstly, we can confirm that no formal complaints were made to The Banff Centre on the issue of sexual harassment.

'Secondly, as mentioned in the Globe, there was a settlement that was reached with a former employee that was to the satisfaction of both parties.'
Ex-cabinet minister said In campaigners were struggling to find 'simple phrases' that would resonate with voters

The Labour head of the In campaign last night admitted he is worried about losing the referendum.

Ex-Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson said they were struggling to find the simple phrases which would resonate with voters.

He added: I think its going to be a tough battle.

Ex-cabinet minister Alan Johnson said the In campaign was struggling to find the simple phrases which would resonate with voters

In an interview with Parliaments House magazine, Mr Johnson also revealed that ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown is poised to make a major intervention in the campaign.

This will be seen as an acknowledgement that the Remain camp believes it is in trouble.

Mr Brown was brought out by the Better Together campaign when there were fears it was on the brink of losing

Mr Johnson said: We cant find the simple phrases. I have faith in the British people that theyre going to be looking for more than soundbites and a bit of patriotic posturing.

Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said earlier this week that the 'mood' in Britain is to leave

He added: Gordon Brown is going to make a major intervention in the campaign.

'Gordons the man who kept us out of the single currency more than anyone else, so we want to deploy him somewhere in the UK rather than just in Scotland.

'We think that powerful intervention from a Chancellor who kept us out the single currency would be really good.'

Earlier this week, shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said the EU is remote, arrogant and anti-democratic and the mood in Britain is to leave.

Addressing students at Cambridge University, the In campaigner said: If I was to lay money on it now, tonight, I would bet that Brexit is going to win, and I dont like saying that, but I feel that from talking to people in my own constituency.

He added: The mood is not to stay in.
David Duke believes Donald Trump is helping improve Adolf Hitler's reputation in history.

The former KKK leader, who endorsed the Republican frontrunner last month, said the comparisons between the mogul and the Nazi dictator are good for the tyrant.

He also compared Trump's vision for America with the fascist's desires for building the Third Reich.

On his radio program on Tuesday, Duke said: 'They might be rehabilitating that fellow with the mustache back there in Germany, because I saw a commercial against Donald Trump, a really vicious commercial.

David Duke believes Donald Trump is helping improve Adolf Hitler's reputation in history

The commercial, Duke said, compared 'what Donald Trump said about preserving America and making America great again to Hitler in Germany preserving Germany and making Germany great again and free again.'

According to the New York Daily News, he added that they are not 'beholden to these Communists on one side, politically who were trying to destroy their land and their freedom, and the Jewish capitalists on the other, who were ripping off the nation through the banking system.'

Last month, Duke said during his broadcasting slot that he's not formally endorsing Trump, but he gave him the equivalent of an endorsement when he said 'supportive of his candidacy' and told his listeners to vote for the billionaire.

'Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage,' the white nationalist said, according to Buzzfeed.

The former KKK leader, who endorsed the Republican frontrunner last month, said the comparisons between the mogul and the Nazi dictator are good for the tyrant

Trump then took 48 hours to disavow Duke's support, prompting a backlash from his army of critics.

Duke is a felon and once ran for president himself as a Democrat, in 1988. That same year he switched his party affiliation to Republican and went on to win a Louisiana House seat in a special election.

He ran for president again in 1992 as a Republican but gained almost no traction in the primaries.

From 1974-1980 he was a part of the KKK.

Duke says he left because he couldn't persuade members not to do 'stupid or violent things. Instead, he formed his own pride organization - the National Association for the Advancement of White People.

Last month, Duke said during his broadcasting slot that he's not formally endorsing Trump, but he gave him the equivalent of an endorsement when he said 'supportive of his candidacy' and told his listeners to vote for the billionaire. From 1974-1980 he was a part of the KKK




The American-born ISIS fighter who was captured by Kurdish forces said that he was 'not thinking straight' when he left the U.S. to join the terrorist group.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, turned himself in to Iraqi Kurdish forces near the town of Sinjar, which is located west of Mosul, on Monday after spending several months fighting with ISIS. Sinjar was retaken by Iraqi forces from ISIS militants late last year.

In an interview with Kurdistan24, Khweis explained that he left his hometown in mid-December to travel through Europe and eventually to Turkey.

Once there he said that he met an Iraqi girl from Mosul, and then they traveled to Syria and arrived in Mosul by mid-January.

'I made a bad decision to go... to Mosul,' Khweis told Kurdistan24.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis (above), the American-born ISIS fighter who was captured by Kurdish forces on Monday, said that he was 'not thinking straight' when he left the U.S. to join the terrorist group

Khweis, 26, turned himself in to Iraqi Kurdish forces near the town of Sinjar, which is located west of Mosul, on Monday after spending several months fighting with ISIS

'At the time I made the decision, I was not thinking straight.

'On the way there I regretted, and I wanted to go back home after things didn't work out and saw myself living in such an environment.'

He explained that his parents moved to the U.S. decades ago from the Palestinian territories and that he attended mosques 'not that frequent(ly)' before leaving home.

Though he admitted that he regretted joining ISIS, he did not elaborate on why he went in the first place.

'I stayed there about a month, and I found it very, very hard to live there. I decided to return back home,' Khweis told Kurdistan24.

'My message to the American people is that life in Mosul is really very bad. The people who control Mosul don't represent a religion.

Though he admitted that he regretted joining ISIS, he did not elaborate on why he went in the first place. He is pictured above being captured near Sinjar

Khweis (left), whose driver's license (right) states he is from Alexandria, Virginia, is believed to be the first American fighting for ISIS to surrender in the field

Daesh does not represent a religion,' he said, using another acronym for ISIS. 'I don't see them as good Muslims.'

According to CBS News, the Department of Justice is planning to file charges against Khweis, though it's unclear when he will return to the U.S.

He could provide a 'treasure trove' of information about how the bloodthirsty jihadist group operates.

U.S. officials are extremely interested in interviewing Khweis, who is believed to be the first American fighting with the group to have ever surrendered in the field.

Seamus Hughes, a former U.S. National Counterterrorism Center official, told NBC News he would be an 'intelligence goldmine'.

'He could provide a window into the ISIS command structure. Who does he report to? What does his daily routine look like? And the most important thing - how did he get there?'

Jamal Khweis, who identified himself as the father of the 26-year-old man fighting with ISIS, responds to news crews gathered outside a home in Alexandria, Virginia on Monday

Major General Feisal Helkani, of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, claimed Khweis was 'lurking near the peshmerga lines' since Sunday night, and his troops had first tried to shoot him, assuming he was a suicide bomber.

Helkani said he was carrying with him a large amount of cash, three cell phones and three forms of identification, including a U.S. driving license registered to Virginia.

In grainy cell phone footage, also posted on social media shortly after the surrender, the man is seen surrounded by Iraqi Kurdish troops and confirming that he is from the United States and that he is Palestinian.

In response to an interrogator's question, he says he was in the city of Mosul, which is under ISIS control.

After the driver's license was released, reporters showed up outside of the Fairfax County address listed on the license where they encountered an agitated man claiming to be the fighter's father, Jamal Khweis.

One reporter for WUSA even claimed that Jamal Khweis hit a camerawoman.

Media visited the site of the address listed on the license, where they encountered an agitated man claiming to be the fighter's father, Jamal Khweis

Witnesses said that Jamal Khweis became angry when one reporter asked him about his son, and he then told them it was unfair to hold him accountable for his adult son's actions.

'He's 26. Almost 27. He's a grown man, just like you,' he reportedly told a journalist.

In a video of the confrontation, Jamal Khweis shouts, 'this is the wrong information. I'm telling you', while a younger man tries to shoo the horde of media away.

'Tell us the right answers,' a cameraman says.
Migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe should be towed back to where they came from, David Cameron told EU leaders last night.

The Prime Minister called for a dramatic escalation in efforts to stem the human tide, including the use of warships to halt migrant boats so they can be taken back to Turkey and Libya.

He urged EU leaders to copy the example of Australia, whose policy of towing migrant boats hundreds of miles back to where they came from has led to a collapse in numbers.

Peril: Migrants on an overcrowded dinghy off Lesbos. Mr Cameron tabled the proposal at an EU summit in Brussels last night where leaders fought over how to stem the flow of migrants across the Aegean

Mr Cameron said the tough new approach was needed to break the business model of people-smugglers exploiting thousands of migrants dreaming of a better life in the EU.

But the idea would be fraught with legal and political difficulties.

Under the proposal, Nato forces in the Aegean could tow boatloads of migrants back to Turkey, where the vessels would be destroyed.

In the western Mediterranean, an EU naval force would play a similar role intercepting migrant boats in Libyan waters so they could be towed back by Libyas coastguard.

The move would be a significant shift in the military mission.

At present, EU and Nato forces can intercept migrant boats, but then take them to Italy or Greece, where they become the responsibility of the EU.

A British Government source said: We should be looking at returning people to where they set off from. We want the Nato mission to do more with the Turks so that the boats are sent back.

Asked whether a similar policy could be implemented in Libya, the source replied: If we were working with the Libyan coastguard, that is the type of thing we would be looking to do.

The move would involve EU warships, including HMS Enterprise, operating in sight of the coast of Libya, where Islamic State terrorists control swathes of territory.

Return: Under the plans EU and NATO warships would return the boats back to Turkey or Libya, working with the Libyan and Turkish coastguards. Above, Cameron visits Libya after the revolution in September 2011

Assets: Government sources said the Prime Minister was also prepared to send helicopters to help

Government sources said last night Mr Cameron was prepared to send other assets such as helicopters to help patrol the Libyan coast.

Mr Cameron tabled the proposal at an EU summit in Brussels last night, which was dominated by infighting over how to stem the flow of migrants across the Aegean.

Government sources acknowledged that agreement on the deal was likely to take some months.

European Council president Donald Tusk was battling to save a deal with Turkey that would allow the return of migrants in exchange for a string of concessions.

Under the complex arrangement, Turkey would accept back all future migrants who cross the Aegean to Greece. In return, the EU would accept an equal number of Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey.

But Turkey is also demanding 4.7billion in aid, visa-free travel to the Schengen area for its citizens and fast-tracked membership of the EU in return for helping seal its border with Europe.

Legal experts say the deal would break EU and international laws requiring countries to examine the circumstances of each asylum seeker before deporting them.

Mr Cameron warned EU leaders last night the deal would work only if Greece was provided with resources to individually process the thousands of migrants arriving each week from Turkey.

EU border chiefs have warned Europe faces an influx of a million migrants this year  similar to the number who travelled last year.

But the EUs foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has privately suggested the volatile situation in Libya could produce an extra 450,000 potential candidates for migration to Europe.
Business secretary Sajid Javid (pictured)

Sajid Javid was accused last night by fellow MPs of 'having something to hide' after he appeared to evade questions about a 'Houdini' investment scheme used by bankers to avoid tax.

In an ill-tempered television interview, the Business Secretary was asked six times whether he was aware of a multi-million-pound scam concocted when he was a high-flying employee of Deutsche Bank.

He repeatedly dodged the question, insisting only that he had never 'benefited' from such a scheme.

Finally, he admitted that all employees at Deutsche Bank were aware of the bonus schemes but said he had never evaded tax.

His refusal to give any further details has infuriated members of the influential public accounts and Treasury committees which last night demanded proper answers.

Mr Javid was a senior investment banker at Deutsche Bank in 2004 while it channelled bonuses through the Cayman Islands.

But the tactic has come back to haunt him more than a decade later, with the UK Supreme Court ordering Deutsche Bank and UBS to pay back 135million.

Referring to the famous escapologist, one judge said the two banks were guilty of using the 'most sophisticated attempts of the Houdini taxpayer to escape the manacles of tax.'

Mr Javid's team has insisted he never benefited from the scheme  but refuse to deny allegations that he was a member.

On Channel 4 News on Wednesday, he was finally questioned in person about the scheme.

Presenter Jon Snow asked Mr Javid, 46, six times whether he knew his former employer was avoiding taxes and whether he evaded them himself.

In an interview with Channel 4's Jon Snow, Javid (pictured) finally admitted that all employees at Deutsche Bank were aware of the bonus schemes but said he had never evaded tax

After giving several vague answers, Mr Javid eventually claimed it was common knowledge across Deutsche Bank that the scheme existed.

HOW MINISTER AVOIDED QUESTIONS Jon Snow: Can you be certain you had no hand ever in evading British taxes whilst you were at Deutsche Bank and did you evade them yourself? Sajid Javid: I've never evaded taxes and I never would. But what I can be certain of... JS: Did you understand that the system was evading British taxes?  not that you were benefiting but you were in a process that was evading taxes. SJ: What I've said on this is that, I've never benefited from such a scheme, I've always paid my taxes  everything that's due... JS: I asked you did you know this was going on and were you part of it going on? SJ: I wouldn't know the details of that scheme. It's not the kind of scheme I would spend time creating or putting together or marketing... JS: But you had nothing to do with it? That's what I'm asking yes or no? SJ: But if you're asking me did I benefit from the scheme, I did not benefit from the scheme... JS: So you knew nothing about it? SJ: I'm saying JS: Yes or no, did you know anything about it? SJ: I did everyone at Deutsche Bank knew about all the schemes that are offered to all employees at that time. I was an employee at the time but I didn't benefit from the scheme. Advertisement

He said: 'I did  everyone at Deutsche Bank knew about all the schemes that are offered to all employees at that time. I was an employee at the time but I didn't benefit from the scheme.'

In fact, the bonus scheme is said to have only been available to an exclusive club of Deutsche's most senior bankers, including Mr Javid  who is reported to have been on a package of up to 3million a year.

Top bankers are said to have been approached in late 2003 about whether they wanted to take part in the scheme  which exploited a quirk in the tax system designed to encourage share ownership.

Around 300 signed up, with some paid bonuses worth over 2million via a company which was set up in the notorious tax haven of the Cayman Islands.

Last night furious MPs demanded answers and said Mr Javid must come clean or resign his post.

Caroline Flint, a Labour member of the cross-party public accounts committee, said: 'If Sajid Javid hoped to end the speculation with this interview, he failed spectacularly. With every day that goes by, the unanswered questions mount up.

'The Prime Minister cannot go on with a Business Secretary who appears reluctant to come clean. This issue needs clear, honest answers  not evasion.'

John Mann, one of the Treasury committee's Labour members, said: 'Mr Javid needs to come in front of the Treasury committee.

'His refusal to answer straightforward questions raises huge issues about his probity and brings into question his position in government.
Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, from Rochester, New York was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison

An American man was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison on Thursday after trying to recruit FBI informants to the Islamic State group in Syria.

Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, from Rochester in upstate New York, pleaded guilty in December to attempting to provide material support to the extremists and was described by prosecutors as 'one of the first' IS recruiters captured in the United States.

Prosecutors said Elfgeeh spread IS propaganda on social media, sought funds for extremists and attempted to recruit and send two individuals - both of whom were cooperating with the FBI - to Syria to fight with IS.

He was sentenced on the same day that US Secretary of State John Kerry said the IS group's slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites amounts to genocide.

'While we are confident that keeping Mr Elfgeeh in prison for the next two decades will keep us safer, there continues to exist a pervasive, persistent and ever-changing terrorism threat,' said Adam Cohen, FBI chief in Buffalo, New York.

'This threat remains among the highest priorities for the FBI and the intelligence community.'

The naturalized US citizen, who moved to the United States from Yemen in 1998, used Twitter, WhatsApp and 23 different Facebook accounts to declare his support for violent jihad and pledge allegiance to ISIS.

Elfgeeh, who ran Mojoe's Famous Pizza and Chicken (pictured) in Rochester, New York. Pictured above, firefighters check for hot spots in the vacant apartment above the former MoJoe's eatery

Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in December to attempting to provide material support to the extremists and was described by prosecutors as 'one of the first' IS recruiters captured in the United States

Elfgeeh, who ran Mojoe's Famous Pizza and Chicken in Rochester, New York, until his arrest in 2014, bought two handguns and silencers that he planned to use to kill returning US soldiers.

Prosecutors said he sent IS propaganda videos to one would-be fighter, arranged for an English-speaking contact in Iraq to communicate with that person via Facebook and paid $240 to help the individual obtain a passport.

Elfgeeh also bought the pair of FBI informants a laptop and a camera to take to Syria, offered them tips on how to travel without being detected and arranged for a contact overseas to coordinate the logistics of the trip.

Prosecutors say Elfgeeh sent $600 to a third person in Yemen also destined to help them travel to Syria to join the IS group.

Authorities said he had plotted to send three men to a 'welcoming camp' in Syria for jihadist education and training.

Two of the recruits were FBI informants, of which one had been encouraged by the terrorist sympathizer to join fighting overseas in 2013.
Caroline Barlow, 56, sued her employer for not paying her minimum wage. She spent so much unpaid time travelling between clients that it pushed her wage down (posed by models)

The cost of home visits to elderly and disabled people could soar after an agency was sued for not paying a carer the minimum wage, experts warned.

Firms could have to pay out millions to care staff who were not paid an hourly rate when travelling between appointments, effectively reducing their wages below minimum levels.

It follows an-out-of-court settlement for 1,250 paid by care provider MiHomecare to carer Caroline Barlow after she sued claiming she was not paid for travel time.

Miss Barlow, 56, claimed her work involved visiting patients in Devon, including in rural areas with up to 38 miles between homes, but she was only paid mileage costs.

Jasmine Patel from law firm Leigh Day, which represented the mother of two, said travel was a necessary part of her job and she should have been paid for it.

She added: We believe there are potentially thousands more care workers, working for MiHomecare, and other care providers, who are being paid less than the national minimum wage and we would urge them to come forward.

This case shows carers will not take being underpaid sitting down and will challenge it. The fact is there is a need for carers in this country and they need to be paid properly.

Leigh Day has spoken to a number of other carers, and is considering bringing a group action against MiHomecare or other care agencies.

The latest case follows one in 2014 where an unnamed homecare provider was forced to compensate around 3,000 staff for unpaid travel time.

Figures from the Resolution Foundation thinktank suggest travel times means around 160,000 care workers are being paid less than the minimum wage, missing out on an average of 815 each a year.

Last night, experts warned the latest case could pave the way for further action, which would pile pressure onto the creaking care system when care providers are already facing extra costs from the introduction of the National Living Wage next month.

Stephen Lowe, of Age UK, said: This is something which will grow and grow. A lot of care providers could be faced with similar actions from carers who have been underpaid.

There could be widespread impact on the care industry and that would obviously jeopardise the viability of some providers.

He warned there was a risk care agencies would cut costs by squeezing more appointments into an hour, cutting the amount of face-to-face time carers spend with the elderly and disabled.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said: When someone is working they must be paid for their time. It doesnt matter whether they are driving to the house of the next person they look after or administering care, they are at work.

Laura Gardiner, of the Resolution Foundation, added: There is no excuse for employers underpaying the minimum wage and the government is right to clamp down on this illegal wage theft.

MiHomecare, part of outsourcing group Mitie, said after a review in 2015 it had corrected pay rates and reimbursed workers where necessary.

A spokesman said: When this came up a year ago we said that if our carers pay was wrong we would correct it and this is exactly what we have done.

They dismissed as nonsense the suggestion the firm could face a class action and said the firm worked closely with HM Revenue and Customs to ensure the interpretation of minimum wage legislation is correct.
ITV News At Ten anchorman Tom Bradby (pictured)

Two of the biggest beasts in TV news have locked horns over Prince William's exclusive ITV interview on rhino poaching this week.

Tuesday night's world-exclusive from work-shy Wills on his United For Wildlife foundation was a trophy for ITV Evening News anchor Mark Austin, who secured the scoop thanks to a behind-the-scenes charm offensive.

But it seems ITV News At Ten anchorman Tom Bradby  who was granted the first interview with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after their engagement in 2010  felt Austin's coup rained on his royal parade.

Indeed, Bradby's telegenic nose was so out of joint I'm told the 'friend of the royals' asked ITN bosses to limit the airtime given to his rival's royal exclusive when the package was discussed at an internal planning meeting.

According to an ITN insider, Bradby suggested the Duke of Cambridge interview, which ran for six minutes on Austin's 6.30pm bulletin, should be cut to just three minutes when the footage was reprised on his News At Ten show the same night.

But ITV News bosses over-ruled his petition, and Austin's interview received almost the same prime-time exposure on News At Ten, shortened only slightly to five minutes.

ITV News declined to comment, but it has downplayed any rivalry between the pair after Bradby, previously ITV's political editor, replaced Austin on the flagship News At Ten show in October.

Austin was shunted to the less prestigious earlier bulletin, prompting reports of colleagues drawing up battlelines to support 'Team Tom' or 'Team Mark'.

But Bradby is hardly an endangered species. Since he took over the News At Ten slot, the housewives' favourite has gained the show half-a-million viewers. It's a jungle out there.

Sir Geoffrey Howe's memorial service will not be at Westminster Abbey.

It is being held instead at St Margaret's Church, in the grounds of the abbey, on May 3. This may be surprising, given he was Deputy Prime Minister and arguably the most influential post-war Chancellor.

The Beeb cleared its TV schedules for a Michael Cockerell obituary of Denis Healey, the former Labour Chancellor, who passed away days before Howe, but no such honour was accorded to the Tory Chancellor. Perhaps history will judge him more kindly.

Sir Geoffrey Howe's (centre) memorial service will not be at Westminster Abbey

Sam's lesson for sister who posted pic of Dave

Is Samantha Cameron having a pop at her sister, Emily Sheffield? 'In the digital age, everything is so on show,' the PM's wife told the New York Observer this week.

'You need to have some more private moments or records that are just for you, not for everyone else to read. With social media, I don't think you want to bare your soul completely.'

'In the digital age, everything is so on show,' Samantha Cameron (right)told the New York Observer this week

In 2013, Emily posted on Instagram this photo (pictured) of her brother-in-law David Cameron taking a nap on a four-poster bed next to his ministerial red box

You can hardly blame Mrs Cameron. In 2013, Emily, the deputy editor of British Vogue, admitted to being an 'idiot' after posting on Instagram this photo of her brother-in-law taking a nap on a four-poster bed next to his ministerial red box.

He had just jetted in from Russia for the wedding of Sam Cam's half-sister Alice. Emily said she only intended to share it with a handful of family and friends.

Dame Judi Dench's acting career has had an excellent run.

Alas, the same cannot be said of her racehorse, As De Mee, which limped home in second to last place in the 1.30 at Cheltenham yesterday.

Dench bought a stake in the novice nag after a lunch with the tycoon Andy Stewart, who won the encounter in a charity auction. Judging by As De Mee's lacklustre form, with not a single win in his last seven races, Dench's lunch has proved rather an expensive date.
Labour's 24-hour drinking policy made crime an all-night problem and failed to boost trade, a major report has found.

Allowing alcohol to be served around the clock has sucked up police resources and led to a seismic shift in drinking patterns, health experts and police say.

The authors warn today that the laws also allowed businesses to trample over the interests of communities.

Labour's 24-hour drinking policy has done nothing to help the pub trade but has fueled crime, file photograph

Tony Blair wanted to encourage a European-style cafe culture by scrapping the 11pm closing time, file photo

The rules were brought in by Tony Blair in 2005, supposedly to create a European cafe culture and end issues caused by a rush at 11pm pub closing time.

The Mail repeatedly warned of the potential problems as part of the Say No To 24-Hour Drinking campaign, highlighting that the laws would fuel violence and late-night hospital admissions.

Todays damning report by the Institute of Alcohol Studies confirms that the policy has failed.

It says that later opening times have not raised revenues, but simply spread income for bars and pubs over a longer period.

Crime and disorder have increased in the early hours, requiring more officers to work all night. The report comes after figures revealed in December that drinking-specific hospital admissions had risen 64 per cent since the licensing laws were relaxed.

Lead author Jon Foster said: While the Licensing Act clarified the way licensing works, it has also caused significant problems, increasing the demand on police in the small hours and giving councils no effective way to limit the high concentrations of venues which are so often associated with crime and disorder.

Over the last ten years business interests have too often won out over local communities. Very late closing times suck up police resources and mean that there are less officers available to do community police work during the rest of the week.

Local councils could help themselves more by paying closer attention to the Act and case law in order to use licensing more assertively, but there is also a need for the Government to better support councils against challenge from the licensed trade.

Tony Hogg, police and crime commissioner for Cornwall, said: The relaxation of licensing hours ten years ago has contributed to a seismic shift in drinking behaviours. Alongside the later opening of venues we have seen the growth of the phenomenon of pre-loading.

People are increasingly entering our town centres much later at night and often having already consumed large amounts of alcohol at home. This can make them particularly vulnerable and places significant pressures on policing and on wider support networks like street pastors. The report, based on interviews with 70 licensing officers, police officers, health experts and councillors, recommends set opening hours for off licences and increasing licensing fees so councils have more power to tackle issues.

It suggests giving licensing boards the power to refuse applications on public health grounds.

Tony Page, of the Local Government Association, said rejecting licences for health reasons would reduce NHS costs.
George Osbornes Budget came under attack from financial experts last night, with one saying that if he were the Chancellor he would not be able to sleep at night.

Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, gave him only a 50/50 chance of fulfilling his pledge to get Britain back in the black by the end of this Parliament in 2020.

Mr Johnson added that Britain should be ready for genuinely big tax rises. In an unremittingly bleak assessment he also said that, based on forecasts in the Budget, wage growth was too slow and living standards would fall.

Paul Johnson (pictured), head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, gave Chancellor George Osborne only a 50/50 chance of fulfilling his pledge to get Britain back in the black by the end of this Parliament in 2020

The attack came a day after Mr Osborne had admitted a 56billion deterioration in the nations finances.

At the same time, the Chancellor was facing a growing revolt on disability benefit cuts.

At least 20 Tory MPs are threatening to oppose reductions in the Personal Independence Payment made to the disabled.

The cuts to PIP are due to save the Chancellor 4.4billion by 2020  but will lead to 640,000 people losing an average of 3,500 each.

Tory MPs said the plan was toxic and they would oppose it. Ministers were last night sent out to defend the cuts, which they insist are fair, and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith wrote to all Conservative MPs to urge them to back the changes.

The attack came a day after Mr Osborne had admitted a 56billion deterioration in the nations finances

BACKLASH ON CASH FOR DISABLED By Tamara Cohen, Political Correspondent for the Daily Mail The Chancellor appeared to be in retreat yesterday over plans to slash disability benefits by 4.4billion over five years. A very significant number of Tory MPs have raised their concerns about his Budget proposals to cut support for up to 640,000 infirm people. The cuts to the personal independence payment (PIP), which helps sufferers with tasks such as dressing and using the bathroom, would save 590million next year and 1.2billion by 2020. The average loss per claimant would be 3,500 a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but could be considerably more in some cases. Andrew Percy, the Tory MP for Brigg and Goole, has led the rebellion by sending George Osborne a letter from several Tory MPs calling for a rethink. Mr Percy said: We said we were very concerned about proposals to change PIP. These changes are not defensible and shouldnt happen. They are wrong-headed and really hit the wrong people. It is fair to say the numbers on this who have expressed concern are very significant indeed. Yesterday, the Chancellor already appeared to be backing down over the policy which was slipped out in the small print of the Budget and would save 4.4billion over five years. We have got to make sure we have a system that works, he told BBC Breakfast. Im always happy to listen to proposals about how to improve on that but we have got to control our disability budget and make sure help goes to the people who need it most. Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith moved to reassure MPs that no-one currently on PIP will see any change until their next review, beginning in January 2017. He added: We must look after our most vulnerable at every turn. Advertisement

But Mr Osborne was already signalling he may have to rethink the plan  which would leave him with another huge hole in his finances. Also yesterday:

Eurosceptic MPs threatened a damaging rebellion over EU rules which forces the UK to impose VAT on tampons and solar panels.

It was estimated dozens of Tory MPs could oppose Mr Osbornes plan for a tax on sugary drinks.

Experts said the tax would not work anyway and would drive people to eat other sugary foods  or illicitly smuggle in drinks from overseas.

Following Wednesdays Budget the IFS said we should all be worried about the future as storm clouds gather over the economy.

The think-tank warned that the Chancellor is running out of wriggle room and gave him just a 50 per cent chance of balancing the books by 2020 as planned.

Mr Johnson said: It must be something that if I were the Chancellor would be keeping me awake at night now.

He said Mr Osborne could be forced to implement genuinely big tax rises and spending cuts to get Britain back into the black.

The Institute also shed light on another 9.9billion of cuts for 2020-21 hidden in the Budget documents  extending austerity into the next decade.

We are going to be worse off in the future than we thought we were going to be, said Mr Johnson.

The gloomy outlook means there will be little or no money for sweeteners for voters in the build-up to the next General Election in 2020, he added.

The warnings came a day after the independent Treasury watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility slashed its forecasts for economic growth over the next five years.

It now expects expansion of just 2 per cent this year and 2.2 per cent in 2017, having previously predicted 2.4 per cent and 2.5 per cent.

The OBR said the weaker outlook had blown a 56billion black hole in the Chancellors plans.
A Los Angeles electrician who fell 53 floors to his death on Friday while working on what will be the tallest building on the West Coast has been identified and officials are investigating whether or not it was a suicide.

The man, named as Joseph Sabbatino, 36, of Palmdale, was working on the unfinished, $1billion Wilshire Grand Center when he fell off the building at around noon, plummeting 800 feet and hitting the trunk of a car that was passing below.

Horrified witness James Armstrong III was walking to a nearby bank just after the fall when he saw police helping the driver. 'She was hysterical,' waving her hands in the air and holding her head, he said. But she did not seem to be hurt, Armstrong added.

Deadly fall: Joseph Sabbatino, 36, of Palmdale, was working on the unfinished, $1billion Wilshire Grand Center when he fell off the building at around noon, plummeting 800 feet and hitting the trunk of a car

Plummet: An electrician fell from the Wilshire Grand Tower in LA at noon on Thursday, falling 53 stories and 800 feet onto a passing car. He has not been named by police. Witnesses say he was not wearing a harness

The driver, who has not been identified, of the vehicle was taken to hospital for examination anyhow.

She is not injured,' LA Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart told The LA Times, 'She is scared.'

The car appeared to be undamaged, but a rear side panel was splattered with blood, officials said.

An autopsy for Sabbatino is pending. It has been revealed that he had taken off his hard hat and had not been wearing a safety harness because it wasn't required for the bottom floors he'd been working on, said Lisa Gritzner, spokeswoman for Turner Construction.

A statement from Turner Construction said employees do not believe that Sabbatino's death was work related.

Suicide? A statement from Turner Construction said employees do not believe that Sabbatino's death was work related. He is pictured here on social media with a female friend

Struck: The man's body, seen to the left of this picture under a sheet, struck this white car. The driver was not hurt, but was 'hysterical' when the incident occurred

'We have confirmed with (California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health and Los Angeles police) that the incident which occurred at the Wilshire Grand project site on March 17 was not work-related,' a statement issued by Turner Construction read.

Work was shut down Friday and counselors would be on hand for employees, the statement said.

The coroner is investigating the possibility of Thursday's death being a workplace accident, because it happened at a construction site, said Ed Winter, assistant chief Los Angeles County Coroner. But police and officials for Turner Construction, the main contractor on the unfinished 73-story Wilshire Grand Center, interviewed workers and said the fall appeared to be a suicide.

Winter said as far as he knew, there was no note.

Winter said the man, a new employee on his second day on the job, died instantly. The investigation will continue.

No protection: An autopsy for Sabbatino is pending. It has been revealed that he had taken off his hard hat and had not been wearing a safety harness at the time of his fall

Mystery: Sabbatino, who was a new employee on his second day on the job, died instantly. The investigation will continue. If it was a suicide, the coroner said that Sabbatino left no note

Mel Melcon, an LA Times photographer, was on assignment at the building when the death occurred, and told the paper that he saw the man's body lying 'off the driver's side of the car.'

'It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building,' he said.

'No one thought it was a body,' Melcon told his paper. 'We heard no screams.'

Chris Martin, CEO of Martin Project Management, which is supervising the construction, said there were barricades around the edge of the building and other safety measures in place.

All of the building's 891 workers had undergone training, Martin said.

'There's safety training for every worker on the job, and certain locations there's very specialized training. So these are all smart people,' Martin said. 'We had no injuries up to this date.'

When asked whether there might have been any electrical work that needed doing near the edge of the building, Martin said there wasn't.

The paper also reported that there was an eight-foot-high 'integrity fence' in place to keep workers and equipment from falling off the tower.

No tethering harness was seen on the man's body, although employees are required to wear one when working.

Workers: Construction workers gather at the base of the tower, which cost $1billion, and has been under construction for two years. This is the first fatality at the site, which had 850 workers on it as of last week

The view from the top: The builders shared this photo of the progress from above three weeks ago

A construction worker who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said that he saw the man's body, and initially thought the woman had run him over.

'We asked the driver: 'Did you run this man over?' She said no,' the worker said. 'Thats when I knew he had fallen off the building.'

He added that when he returned to the building he found a hard hat with the dead man's employee number on the 53rd floor.

Maurice Lopez, who works at the neighboring Bonaventure said he was saddened to hear that someone working on the building he watchd go up for years had died.

Thats crazy. Usually when you walk by here, you see the guys up there attached to something, Lopez, 50, of Los Angeles told the LA Times. Now Im gonna feel sick walking by here.

This is the first accident to happen at the location, the Times reported. There were around 850 workers on the site as of last week.

The Wilshire Grand Center is located on South Figueroa Street, at one of the busiest intersections in the city. The man's fall resulted in disruption to traffic flow.

Upon completion, the $1billion skycraper, which has been under construction for two years, will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It will reach a height of 73 stories and will be 1,100 feet tall, including a 100-foot spire.

It is expected to open early 2017.
The news makes me oddly emotional.

Cliff Michelmore, who has died aged 96, achieved a long, enjoyable career and happy marriage, and I met him to talk to only once  on a Press trip to Shetland when he was already quite old.

Yet I cant stop watching the few YouTube clips of his Fifties heyday, on the foggy black-and-white screens of my childhood. I find myself gently mourning a generation and the lost innocence of televisions early days.

The memories cluster mostly around Tonight, which from 1957 to 1965 filled the gap from 6pm to 7pm after the abolition of the Toddlers Truce (unthinkable now, this had been a total shutdown of television to enable parents to get their children to bed).

Tonight: Cliff Michelmore, who has died aged 96, achieved a long, enjoyable career and happy marriage

The Tonight programme was an instant national institution at a time when ITV was in its infancy. At its peak it had an audience of 20 million and its frontman Cliff Michelmore was the most recognisable face in the land.

His catchphrase, though he would have balked at the very expression, was the sign-off: And the next Tonight will be tomorrow night!

Every suppertime the jaunty signature tune faded away and there was Michelmore, chubbily round-faced, balding, in black-rimmed specs and a tweed jacket, the anchor in a studio that made no attempt to disguise the equipment.

Sometimes he was caught perching unselfconsciously on the edge of the desk, picking up a phone when bits of film went wrong, unflappable as he admitted: No idea whats going on, dont think anyone else has either.

The show was an unapologetic mish-mash: a current affairs calypso from Cy Grant, the Guyanese entertainer, items about anything from pretty debutantes to Viscount Montgomery, and reports from the UK and the world by a team of unstarry reporters.

The giants of that time are all gone: Alan Whicker with his moustache bristling with curiosity; Fyfe Robertson with a broad Scottish accent and spade-like beard; their fellow reporters Kenneth Allsop and Derek Hart. Michelmore was the last.

In studio interviews, Michelmores amiable demeanour covered a sharp, dry, challenging humour on topics serious and daft, from dogs doing tricks to the effects of nuclear fallout.

One young man, David Jones, was questioned in 1964 about his Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men. Later we knew that lad better as David Bowie. So there was a historic first for Cliff, which he laughed about years later.

Another was his avuncular, unsycophantic interview with the Prince of Wales days before his investiture.

He was middlebrow, Middle England, unruffled, with an air of taking others seriously, but not himself. I remember as a child the delight when the studio team covered a story about noise in Wales by singing a cod version of the Welsh anthem Men Of Harlech.

After Richard Dimbleby had been caught by a camera combing over his hair, they teased him with a shot of Cliff cutting his toenails.

But later it was Michelmore who spoke for the nations horror in 1966 at the Aberfan coal tip disaster, when 144 people, mostly children, died. I dont know how to begin, he said quietly.

Never in my life have I seen anything like this. I hope I shall never see anything like it again.

In studio interviews, Michelmores demeanour covered a sharp, dry, challenging humour on topics serious and daft, from dogs doing tricks to the effects of nuclear fallout. He and his contemporaries weren't celebrities

No drama, no self-importance: his familiar face drawn, he spoke of the roll call of children being called in the street, the quenched glimmers of hope. He had visible trouble holding himself together, but did it without embarrassment or theatricality: his round specs misting, his sorrow human. He was by then a father of a young son and daughter.

Michelmore and his contemporaries were not celebrities and would probably be offended to be called as such. They wore collars and ties, but not smart tailoring; it was fine to be bald and bespectacled.

They abandoned the earlier stiffnesses of Fifties television and Michelmore was a pioneer of that informal style.

There was no template to follow: my husband Paul Heiney, a longtime TV man, muses: Those guys wrote the rulebook. It hasnt changed. The idioms and presentation of current affairs today are what Tonight invented.

Michelmores generation had a satisfying unselfconsciousness. The nearest survivor we have is David Attenborough, seven years his junior.

He came to quiet fame from an ordinary middling background: born in 1919, he lost his father in infancy and couldnt afford the fees to the grammar school, then joined the RAF in 1935 and spent the war as ground crew

Today, weve seen so much TV that anyone starting is at risk of fancying themselves as a new Paxman, a new Dimbleby or a new Parkinson.

That Tonight team had no role models, but only pleasure at the new mediums opportunities and a determination to behave normally, ask the questions anyone would and listen to the answers.

So I watch the clips, fondly. Michelmore on election night 1966 reflecting on his two hours sleep, disturbed by a very noisy bird in Television Centre and concluding: Lets get back to where we were at whatever time it was we left you.

Or in 1970 when, live, he and we watched the Apollo 13 capsule splashdown, after an explosion was feared to have fatally damaged its heat shield.

The best thing we can do now is just to listen and hope, said Michelmore: calm, interested, reassuring.

Moments later, between live feeds from the site, the camera catches him wiping his glasses, knuckles in his mouth, perspiring. Those astronauts could have been dead and he had to be responsible for a calm, alert, decent response. It was he, too, who was live on air in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot.

He came to this quiet fame from an ordinary middling background: born in 1919, he lost his father in infancy and couldnt afford the fees to the grammar school.

He considered the Methodist ministry and farming, but in 1935 joined the RAF and spent the war as ground crew.

Work with British Forces Broadcasting as a squadron leader began his career where he hosted BBCs Two-Way Family Favourites here servicemen and families at home exchanged messages

Work with British Forces Broadcasting as a squadron leader proved to be the seed of his career. It was as the Hamburg host of the BBCs Two-Way Family Favourites, where servicemen and families at home exchanged messages, that he forged a friendship with Jean Metcalfe, presenter at the London end, who became his wife in 1950.

A brief first, wartime marriage to a nurse had ended in divorce.

TV work began in sport and on Panorama, but when the new Tonight needed someone less portentous than the legendary Richard Dimbleby, Michelmore found his tone and his metier.

After Tonight, he and his colleague Kenneth Allsop started the 24 Hours programme. Editor Derrick Amoore, later the creator of the current affairs show Nationwide, asked him to do a debate with a studio audience that Michelmore considered a bad idea.

He reportedly snapped I will not be associated with a third-rate Palladium show, and nearly left.

He did many other programmes, including a long stint on the travel show Holiday, worked in record company EMIs video division and was always a freelancer, seeming to relish the independence.

In a spoof obituary he wrote for himself, he confessed: He found criticism hard to accept and could be intolerant even when proved wrong. His temper was combustible, on a short fuse, but he would quickly forget the cause of his anger when it has passed . . .

Direct rather than subtle, he never claimed to be a patient man.

Those who knew him speak far more warmly.
Naughty wisecrack from Labours Chris Bryant regarding the sugar tax: Finally, the Chancellor has realised the dangers of Coke! If you dont get it, dont expect me to explain it (libel laws are worse than spring stinging nettles).

Mr Bryant often preaches hotly about the need for greater Press ethics. We must hope he has two sources for any allegation he wishes to make.

Chris Grayling, who as Leader of the Commons has the misfortune to be spry Mr Bryants opponent, did not react to the innuendo. Other Conservatives did, though, and roared with merriment. George Osborne is little loved.

Naughty wisecrack from Labours Chris Bryant (pictured) regarding the sugar tax: Finally, the Chancellor has realised the dangers of Coke! If you dont get it, dont expect me to explain it, writes Quentin Letts

Mr Grayling may have been showing statesmanlike discretion by ignoring the hilarity. Or perhaps he did not understand it. The dear old dobbin inhabits his own time zone, about five minutes behind the rest of the British mainland.

Mr Bryants weekly contribution to Business Questions has become a turn worthy of Julian Clary playing Buttons at the Birmingham Hippodrome. The spangly japes! The volume! Oooh, missus, he shouts.

Noting that Mr Osborne had missed his (economic) targets, Buttons Bryant sucked the wind through his cheeks and bawled: Es no William Tell, is e? The Budget had had more leaks/leeks than Wales and had been prey to more spin than a whirling dervish in a washing machine.

We needed percussion to give a little drum roll and cymbals-tinkle after each gag.

Mr Bryant has some fibre to him, too. He attacked anti-Semitism in political parties. This was bold, for the Labour Party has seen a spate of anti-Jewish remarks by certain Corbynites.

Mr Bryant said we should call out anti-Semitism wherever we find it and its proponents should be expelled from our political parties. He will not have won himself many friends among the Trots and Commies for saying this.

Westminster was abuzz with talk of Mr Osbornes staff officers promising to extract a tampon-tax concession from the European Commission

This day after the Budget, it was striking how much of the discussion touched on Brussels. From tampons to fish quotas to bees, Europe was everywhere. Fishing minister George Eustice, an Outer, showed the care of a piranhas dentist while discussing EU fishing policy.

Any hope among the Cameroons that the Budget would cauterise the Tories EU anguish seems in vain. Westminster was abuzz with talk of Mr Osbornes staff officers promising to extract a tampon-tax concession from the European Commission.

The tampon-tax campaign has been partly led by a Labour MP, Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury), but the person who has taken greater risks  just as Mr Bryant did on anti-Semitism  has been Tory backbencher Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed).

She signed a Budget amendment on yesterdays Order Paper  an unusual move for a Government supporter  and she alighted brilliantly on the nub of the matter.

She said: The people we elect should be responsible for setting the taxes in this country  not unelected EU judges and bureaucrats. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that there should be no taxation without representation, which is what we now have.

That, in two sentences, is the deadly case against the European Union. We may hear much more from Mrs Trevelyan in our politics, though she may have to wait until the Cameron-Osborne regime is over.

At Environment Questions Labours Rob Marris (Wolverhampton SW) complained about those horrible, non-biodegradable cups used by swanky coffee shops. Rory Stewart, environment minister, replied that they could well be the next thing to be taxed.

A man called Fysh asked about bees. This was Marcus Fysh, unshowy but industrious Tory MP for Yeovil. He was worried that big chemical firms were discreetly lobbying Brussels on pesticides. This could spell death to bees. Did it not show that the elites who run the EU were unaccountable?
The Federal government has released dozens of mostly scathing letters members of the public sent Tony Abbott after he brought back knights and dames two years ago.

Mr Abbott's office was bombarded with correspondence after he decided to re-introduce the Imperial honours on March 25, 2014 - nearly three decades after they were abolished.

But the deluge of criticism did not trigger alarm bells for Mr Abbott, who knighted Prince Philip nearly a year later, sparking an immense backlash.

In one of the batch of 38 letters - released this month by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Freedom of Information Laws - a member of the public from Western Australia wrote: 'Seriously? Are you kidding? I mean seriously, are you kidding?

'Rarely have I been so embarrassed to be Australian. C'mon Tony.'

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Tony Abbott's decision to reintroduce knights and dames triggered a deluge of critical letters

'Seriously': This West Australian correspondent said he had never been so embarrassed to be an Australian

'Ludicrous': A postcard sent to 'PM Tony Abbott, Canberra' urged him to consult the texts of philosophers

'Ashamed to be Australian': A lifetime Liberal voter from Belair, South Australia, expresses their displeasure

After a lifetime of sending letters to prime ministers, this was the first this writer sent in disappointment

'Move with the times': A writer from Barwon Heads, Victoria, said he wanted Australia returned to the 1950s

'I am incredulous': This writer advised the prime minister to change the title

Another letter-writer from Yarra Glen, Victoria said: 'I have written to every Prime Minister of Australia since Sir Robert Menzies (a personal friend of my parents) and all of these letters have been of congratulations.

'This letter is one of disappointment and bewilderment. To bring back honours is un-Australian and exceedingly old fashioned'.

A 'lifetime Liberal voter' from Belair, South Australia said: 'I am absolutely shocked and totally dismayed by your priorities in government'.

'Appalling to know that snobbery comes before compassion.... For the first time in my life I am ASHAMED to be Australian.'

Even those who confessed to be Abbott supporters said they did not understand the prime minister's decision.

'I was absolutely disgusted to hear Turnbull mocking you in relation to the Knights and Dames issue,' said one writer from Maryborough, Queensland.

'I personally cannot fathom why you went down this path, as it only takes the focus off the important issues, and gives your enemies and rivals a hammer to bash you with'.

Another correspondent from Melbourne said he or she agreed with a lot of things Mr Abbott was doing but was left exasperated by the Knights and Dames issue.

'I am just an average middle class person, who voted for your team at the last election, but I have to say bringing this back is a bit nutty, and a silly idea,' the writer said.

A supporter from Sunshine, New South Wales, said: 'All my family of nine and grandchildren think the world of you, but please don't make a laughing stock of yourself by bringing in Knights and Dames'.

'We think the world of you - don't make a laughing stock of yourself': Supporters despaired at the decision

This Melbourne writer expressed sympathy for Mr Abbott - but still thought it a 'bit nutty' an idea

This correspondent suggested Mr Abbott consult a bit more with his colleagues in the future

Another writer expressed concern Mr Abbott was not seeking advice from enough sources

There were some supportive voices in the prime minister's inbox, though, including from the Australian Monarchist League.

The organisation described Mr Abbott's announcement as 'prudent': 'Whilst I have not been an advocate of a blanket restoration of knighthoods, as many would go to Republicans, I applaud you on your wisdom in announcing that your intention is that they will go to eminent and distinguished citizens who have accepted public office rather than sought it.'

A Sydney University student from Rose Bay gushed over the decision. 'When you announced that you would be reinstating knighthoods and damehoods into the Australian Honours system, I was overjoyed with the news'.

'I cannot thank you enough for making this bold, yet controversial move which I believe is only fitting given Australia's intimate and inseparable ties with Britain, which we share many of the same cultural, religious, symbolic, legal and governing institutions with'.

One of few supporters: The Australian Monarchist League said his Knights and Dames plan was 'prudent'

A Sydney University student from Rose Bay in the city's eastern suburbs said it was a 'bold move'

Mr Abbott's decision to later knight Prince Philip was widely pilloried and led to a collapse in the polls.

Not long after, backbench Liberal MPs Luke Simpkins and Don Randall launched a leadership challenge.

His eventual successor, Malcolm Turnbull, abolished the Knights and Dames honours upon taking office last September.

Peter Cosgrove (left) and Quentin Bryce (right), present and past governors-general, were appointed Knight and Dame respectively
The estranged wife of Lava Records founder Jason Flom claims that she can't afford groceries and is dead broke following their six-year divorce battle that is still looming.

Jason Flom's divorce trial from his wife, Wendy, ended a year ago in Manhattan Supreme Court, but she is still awaiting a settlement decision, as he is reportedly worth $100 million.

He is personally responsible for launching such acts as Kid Rock, Lorde and Katy Perry.

'She is behind on her maintenance at the San Remo [apartment building], her parking garage, the baby sitter . . . she can't afford groceries,' one of Wendy's friends reportedly told the New York Post.

Jason Flom's divorce trial from his wife, Wendy, ended a year ago in Manhattan Supreme Court, but she is still awaiting a settlement decision. According to the Post, she claims that she can't afford groceries and is dead broke. They are pictured above together in 2008

Wendy claims that Jason, the son of legendary Skadden Arps mergers-and-acquisitions maestro Joe Flom, has not given her money for child support, as they have a 16-year-old son and 21-year-old daughter together. Above Jason Flom is pictured with Russell Simmons in 2014

The former couple, who was married for 20 years before splitting in 2010, has a 21-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son together.

According to the Post, Wendy claims that Jason, the son of Skadden Arps mergers-and-acquisitions maestro Joe Flom, has not given her money for child support.

'He's cut off all her access to funds. He's starving her out,' Wendy's lawyer, Dana Stutman, told the Post.

Stutman claims that Jason flies in private planes to Aspen, Colorado, purchased a Bentley last year and has $13 million in trust, the Post reported.

Wendy's lawyer, Dana Stutman, said that Jason flies in private planes to Aspen, Colorado, purchased a Bentley last year and has $13 million in trust. Flom is personally responsible for launching such acts as Kid Rock, Lorde and Katy Perry

However, Flom lost millions of dollars when he invested with Ronnie Gilley who is now serving a six year and eight months federal prison sentence for pleading guilty to offering bribes to Alabama legislators to legalize gambling in the state.

'Jason maintains that Wendy is responsible for half the loss,' Wendy's friend told the Post.

The music mogul, who is on the board of directors of the Innocence Project, told the Post, 'everybody in this process would like to get it done' seemingly referencing the divorce.

He is scheduled to moderate 'A Conversation on Justice' next month at the Beacon Theatre in New York City that will feature two appellate lawyers from 'making a Murderer'.

In addition, he has served as Chairman and CEO at Atlantic Records, Virgin Records and Capitol Music Group. Wendy is also a former Atlantic Records executive herself.
Protesters angry at Liberal senator Cory Bernardi's calls to scrap the controversial Safe Schools program have trashed his office in Adelaide, calling him 'Australia's Trump'.

Slogans including 'no to homophobia', 'shame' and 'f*** Bernardi' were scrawled on and around his office in suburban Kent Town as the protest grew out of hand on Friday.

The South Australian conservative senator is fiercely opposed to the schools program, which aims to reduce bullying of gay and lesbian students.

Cory Bernardi's office was trashed by protesters angry at his opposition to the Safe Schools program

Protesters unfurled banners on the fence outside his electoral office

Video footage and photos from the protest show a raucous crowd unfurling banners on the fence outside his electoral office before part of it is knocked down.

Inside, chairs and tables were overturned and papers strewn across the floor.

Mr Bernadi called the protesters 'dumb and violent.'

'Lefty totalitarians have trashed my office and threatened my staff because their agenda has been exposed. What a bunch of cowards,' he said on Twitter.

Cory Bernardi's outspoken comments about the Safe Schools have made him unpopular with LGBTIQ activists

Mr Bernadi took to Twitter to admonish the protesters who he called a 'bunch of cowards'

He said he was grateful his team was safe, but was bullish about his opposition to the Safe Schools program.

'Gutless actions like this will never stop me speaking the truth.'

This isn't the first time Mr Bernadi has been targeted by LGBTIQ activists since he and right-wing Coalition MPs successfully lobbied Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for a review of the program last month.

The protesters knocked over part of the fence after they unfurled banners in support of Safe Schools

Protesters scrawled slogans like 'transphobia kills' around Cory Bernadi's Kent Town office

A web domain was bought in his name and turned into a gay pride site not long after Turnbull announced a review.

The site featured a gay pride flag fluttering in the wind and a tag saying 'Compassion lives here', which is a play on the Bernadi's 'common sense lives here' label stamped on his official website.

On Tuesday, University of Western Australia Emeritus Professor Bill Louden, who was commissioned to lead the review into the $8 million Safe Schools program, briefed about 30 Coalition MPs and senators.

A Twitter user posted this photo with a caption that said Cory Bernadi's office had been 'trashed'

Cory Bernadi has been at the forefront of opposition to the Safe Schools program, claiming its inappropriate for children and 'indoctrinated' them

Critics of the program panned it as insufficient, but on Friday afternoon Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced the program would be modified.

'We will be requiring the lesson areas in which Professor Louden found there was content that was not suitable for all children to be removed,' he was quoted as saying by the ABC.

'That includes in particular some of the role playing activities that there has been much public criticism about.'

Cory Bernadi thanked police who arrived at the scene to help contain protesters

Cory Bernadi, a fierce opponent to gay marriage, was called Australia's Trump by the protesters

Some of the changes included restricting the program to high schools only, removing links to external websites that weren't state or federally funded services, and removing some of the gender-diversity role playing activities.

Mr Bernardi, who is against same-sex marriage, has previously said the Safe Schools program was inappropriate for young children, and that kids were being 'indoctrinated in Marxist cultural relativism'.

Mr Christensen has likened the program to 'grooming work that a sexual predator might undertake.'

Another slogan written by protesters outside Cory Bernadi's office read: 'Stop homophobia'
Lines about the state's natural beauty will be incorporated instead

The new version will omit entire stanzas that reference the Civil War

It was written as a poem in 1861 but only made the state's song in 1939

After 77 years of gore-flecked streets, beaming blades and calls to kill the 'vandal' and 'tyrant' Abraham Lincoln, the official state song of Maryland may be approaching its final days, as the state's legislature voted Thursday to amend its lyrics, which began as a Civil War-era battle hymn.

Originally written by James Ryder Randall at the start of the Civil War in 1861, the lyrics to Maryland, My Maryland were sung by Confederate soldiers as a call to arms against the Union.

However, it was only in 1939 that Maryland set the words to the tune of 'O Christmas Tree' and adopted the result - complete with lines about not bending to Lincoln's control - as its state song.

Revision: Maryland's Senate (Maryland State House pictured left) voted Thursday to amend the state song to remove strong pro-Confederate sentiment. The lyrics were written by James Ryder Randall (right) in 1861

Frederick County Democratic Senator Ron Young, who sponsored the bill, says that the song no longer reflects Maryland's values, The Washington Times reported.

'Its not an inspiring poem,' he said. 'It might be inspiring in the sense of calling for overthrow of the government or tyranny. It doesnt represent all of Maryland.

'Hopefully, it doesnt represent much of Maryland today.

But Republican Senator Robert Cassilly of Harford County said that to change the lyrics would be to erase from history people who felt deeply about their principles.

'Our song celebrates the courage of people who are willing to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Maryland, My Maryland is a fighting song, he said.

'Tyrant': The song refers to Abraham Lincoln as a 'tyrant,' and also makes reference to 'Northern scum.' The motion was passed 38-8 to replace the lyrics with ones about Maryland's natural beauty

'Its a cry against tyranny and oppression. Its a wake-up call to people who will sit complacently and allow others to lead the charge.'

Nevertheless, the bill - which would keep most of the original lyrics but replace the lines about Lincoln and 'Northern scum' when the song is used in official situations - passed 38-8.

New lyrics will be taken from an 1894 poem by John White, also called Maryland, My Maryland, which focus on the state's areas of natural beauty.

Randall's version will remain the state's 'historical state song,' but will not be used in official situations.

The original poem, which was written after one of Randall's friends was killed by Unionist soldiers during riots in Baltimore, begins by announcing 'The despot's heel is on thy shore' and tells the listener to 'Avenge the patriotic gore/That flecked the streets of Baltimore.'

It goes on to describe Lincoln as a 'tyrant' and unionists as 'Northern scum' and includes the line '"Sic semper" is the proud refrain' - a reference to John Wilkes Booth's cry of 'Sic semper tyrannis' (death to tyrants) after shooting Lincoln.

The song's appropriateness has been debated before - most recently in 2009 and 2001 - but this is the closest that the state has come to actually changing the song.

It comes after last year's decision by South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from its state capitol.

The proposal will now move up to the House of Delegates for consideration.

Battle hymn: The song was sung by Confederate forces in battles such as Antietam (pictured), which took place in Maryland and was the bloodiest single-day battle in US history, with 22,717 dead, wounded or missing
A contested American presidential nominating convention is one of those things that's taught in civics classes but never seems to actually happen.

It's the equivalent of a tie in the Electoral College that forces Congress to choose the president. Or the simultaneous and catastrophic death of most of the executive branch, thrusting the Secretary of Agriculture into the Oval Office.

There are rules for these things. In binders on a shelf somewhere. Gathering dust.

Now the speaker of the House of Representatives, himself third in the presidential line of succession, says he can no longer ignore the possibility that no Republican White House hopeful will arrive at the July convention with enough delegates to win the party's presidential nomination.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan takes questions from reporters at a weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. His role as chairman at the RNC won't be merely ceremonial if there's a floor fight over the presidential nomination

US Republican Presidential candidates (L-R) Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich pose for a photo at start of the Republican Presidential Debate in Detroit on March 3

So the sort of free-for-all that we haven't seen since Gerald Ford bested Ronald Reagan in a 1976 floor fight, could turn Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena into a historic landmark.

As if the 2016 race, with its Summer of Trump, hasn't already had enough turmoil.

Donald Trump, the GOP's billionaire front-runner, is ether comfortably on-pace to collect 1,237 convention delegates in the state-by-state primary process or woefully behind in his quest, depending on which pundit is staring down the barrel of a TV camera at any point in time.

That's been the case for weeks, even before Ohio Gov. John Kasich denied him the Buckeye State's 66 delegates with a surprise win on Tuesday.

But buzz is brewing in Washington, and Speaker Paul Ryan says he's boning up on his party's nominating convention rules.

Ryan will serve as the convention's chairman  in a normal year, a cause for photos and souvenir drink coasters.

Ryan will serve as the convention's chairman  in a normal year, a cause for photos and souvenir drink coasters

But if Trump fails to lock down the nomination before he gets to Cleveland  neither Kasich nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stands a chance to do it  the GOP's internal gears will start creaking and groaning.

'Nothing has changed other than the perception that this is more likely to be an open convention than we thought before,' Ryan told reporters on Thursday.

'Were getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality and that those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that.'

Ryan said in February that his role as chairman would be 'ceremonial.' A month earlier he called the idea of a contested convention 'ridiculous.'

But on Thursday he was talking turkey about how to keep the four-day event pointed toward a practical finish line.

'My goal is to be dispassionate and to be Switzerland,' he said, invoking the ultimate D.C. metaphor for neutrality.

Ryan pledged to 'make sure the rule of law prevails and make sure that the delegates make their decision however the rules require them to do that.'

Donald Trump, the GOP's billionaire front-runner is pictured on March 5, 2016, at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. He may arrive at the Cleveland convention without enough 'pledged' delegates to claim the nomination

He has been careful to point out that he has no designs on the presidency himself, even though it's possible the GOP could plug the name of anyone into the process if Trump doesn't prevail on the first ballot  even someone who didn't run in any state-level primary or caucus.

'It's not going to be me,' Ryan insisted. 'It should be someone running for president.'

Most delegates who will arrive in northeastern Ohio for the high-stakes July event are 'bound' by party rules  and, in some cases, by state laws  to initially support the candidate to whom they are assigned.

But if a first ballot doesn't produce a majority-winning victor, nearly all of them will become 'free agents.'

In some states, Trump's team has been permitted to choose the people who will attend the convention and cast those votes. Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will himself be one of those delegates from his native New Hampshire.

Republican presidential candidate and Ohio governor John Kasich holds a town hall meeting Wednesday at Villanova University on the day after his win in his home state

But in most places, party bosses and grandees and elected officials are tapped to become conventioneers and told whom they must support.

Those who aren't Trump fans will break off from his camp for second or third ballots, or however many it takes to anoint a winner.

In the era before the modern primary system, this wasn't entirely rare.

President Abraham Lincoln became the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 1860, but it took three rounds of voting to get him there.

President Woodrow Wilson needed 46 convention ballots to capture the 1912 Democratic nomination. Eight years later, President Warren Harding clinched the Republican nod on the 10th ballot.

And in 1924 the Democrats put their faithful through the ordeal of 103 separate roll calls before picking John W. Davis as their nominee.

There are seemingly endless maneuvers Republican elites could employ to keep a combative Donald Trump from leading their presidential ticket.

One proposal floated Thursday morning in a hush-hush meeting of influential conservatives was encouraging Cruz and Kasich to join forces, and their delegates, in a 'unity' ticket big enough to stop Trump.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz is accompanied by his wife Heidi and daughter Caroline as he speaks about the primary election results in Florida, Ohio and Illinois during a campaign rally in Houston, Texas March 15, 2016

But The Donald has signaled that he intends to salt away all the delegates he needs long before the convention begins, likening his plan to a prizefighter's knockout that takes control of a match away from its referees.

That could be tough, but it's not impossible.

Trump needs to prevail in Tuesday's Arizona winner-take-all primary, and keep Cruz from winning more than 50 percent of the vote in Utah on the same day, denying the Texan a similar sweep there.

That, combined with victories in the four remaining winner-take-all states  all of which favor Trump  would put him on the right glide path.

At that point he would need to win about 43 per cent of the remaining delegates, all in states that award them proportionately, following voting percentages.

Trump has won 45 percent of the available delegates to date, doing it largely in four- and five-man contests.

With Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's exit on Tuesday night following Trump's searing victory in the Sunshine State, that task becomes easier as the pie is carved into fewer pieces.

However it turns out, Ryan  the mild-mannered Wisconsin native who was the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 2012  will be in the eye of the storm come convention time.

He met Thursday night with some of the GOP's deepest-pocketed donors in swanky Palm Beach, Florida. Some were open to a Trump victory while others have spent millions to try to derail him.

Among the topics discussed, according to Politico, was the possibility of staging a convention fight.




Heather Cole (left), the ex-wife of Bubba Clem (right) insisted that Cole and Hulk Hogan be recorded, according to a police report, despite testifying that she had no idea she was being filmed

The woman who had sex with Hulk Hogan on video claimed in a taped deposition for the $100million Gawker trial she had no idea their encounter was being filmed, but last year she told Tampa, Florida, cops that she knew she was being recorded.

Heather Cole, the ex-wife of radio personality Bubba 'The Love Sponge' Clem, 'stated that [Bubba the Love Sponge Clem] insisted on it being videoed', Tampa cops wrote in a November report.

The report surfaced after the jury in the Hulk Hogan civil trial on Wednesday saw Cole, 41, testify in a 2015 deposition that she was very upset that her then-husband had recorded the encounter.

But the November report tells a different story.

'I asked Cole if [Hogan] knew he was being recorded, and she said no,' the report reads, according to the New York Post. 'I told Cole that in the videos it appears as though she is positioning [Hogan] for the camera.

'She said she did that because that is what Bubba wanted. Cole said Bubba could be very controlling.'

In taped testimony on Wednesday, Cole said she and Clem had an open marriage and that though she had participated in X-rated recordings with other men during their relationship, she had no idea she and Hogan were being filmed while having sex.

In the deposition, Cole said she and Hogan had sex at least three times: once in a hotel, once at his house and once at the house she shared with Clem.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, is suing Gawker Media for $100 million for posting the edited video. He contends the video violated his privacy.

Cole said that Clem showed her the 30-minute sex video several weeks after one encounter with Hogan at their home.

The November police report from Tampa, Florida, surfaced after the jury in the Hulk Hogan civil trial (pictured) on Wednesday saw Cole, 41, testify in a 2015 deposition that she was very upset that her then-husband had recorded the encounter

'I immediately asked for it to stop,' she said in a soft voice. 'I don't remember a specific conversation. I do remember feeling very upset.'

she added that to her knowledge, the other encounters with Hogan weren't filmed and that she didn't leak the video to Gawker - and doesn't know who did.

She also added that in her opinion, Hogan is someone who likes publicity.

Cole's statements were reported with Tampa police officers when Clem filed a report in 2014 that he received a tweet including a photo of another sex tape he had recorded of his wife.

He took the tweet as a 'personal threat' because several explicit videos had been stolen from him, including one of Cole and Hogan.

Jurors on Thursday in Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, listened to taped depositions of the former wrestler, who said Clem blamed the explicit video on Cole after a still from the footage ended up on gossip site The Dirty.

Heather Cole testified in a prerecorded deposition (pictured) for the Gawker trial that she had no idea her encounter with Hulk Hogan was being filmed

'To the best of my recollection, when I asked Bubba, he said Heather must have put a camera up there,' Hogan testified in the March 2014 deposition.

Gawker Media founder Nick Denton testified that the website decided to post the Hogan sex video because 'it showed Hogan as a person' and that the editorial team at Gawker deemed the minute, 41-second video newsworthy.

On Tuesday, Denton said that he did not see the video before his editor, AJ Daulerio, posted it on the Gawker site in 2012.

As founder of the media company, Denton said he was not involved in the day-to-day decisions of the editorial process.

The civil case is being held in St. Petersburg. This is the second week of testimony.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, a Florida appellate court ordered that a number of sealed records be released in the case. Judge Pamela Campbell in 2015 ordered the records sealed. It's unclear which records will be unsealed.
Briefcases and satchels have more traditionally been claimed as tax-deductible

However, women will likely have to keep records that they're used for work

The tax office says women can claim some handbags as a work expense and that they are tax-deductible - sometimes.

In order to be eligible to claim a handbag as a work expense, women will need to prove the bag was used for carrying more than just personal items, possibly by keeping a logbook.

Accountants are trying to clarify how women can claim deductions after assistant tax commissioner Graham Whyte said people 'can claim a deduction for assets that are predominantly used for work purposes, such as bags and satchels used to carry work papers or electronic devices', News.com.au reported.

Women who carry laptops, mobile phones and notepads are able to claim a handbag used for work as a work expense (stock image)

While a handbag can be claimed as a work expense, it had to be proved to be predominantly used to transport relevant work items to work (stock image)

Mr Whyte also said: 'It is the use of the item rather than its description that is relevant.'

PricewaterhouseCoopers' Paul Brassil said it would be wise for women to log their use of any handbag they wished to claim as a deduction for about three months, in case the ATO conducts an audit.

The cost, size and profession of the claimant were all factors the ATO would likely consider when conducting assessments, News.com.au reported.

Those wishing to claim on handbags should keep in mind a few guidelines, Financy reported.

The ATO position on handbags is a little known one compared to its stance on briefcases and satchels (stock image)

Professional women are able to claim handbags as a work expense, like briefcases and satchels (stock image)

Accountants said handbags less than $300 could have the full amount claimed in one financial year, but over that, the item would have to be depreciated.

Whitehead Dingley and Betar partner and chartered accountant Kate Hills said for bags over that, they needed to be depreciated and claimed over a number of years.

Receipts also had to be kept for five years from purchase or last depreciation claim.

She also pointed out that buying a bag worth $2000 or more was likely to attract the attention of auditors.

Mr Brassil also advised against the tradition of shopping for work-related expense in June to make last-minute end-of-year tax claims, Financy reported.

With the likely logbook requirement, it would mean a claimant wouldn't have a record of the handbag being used for work.

He recommended buying in at least March for a three-month record of use.

Despite handbags being tax-deductible, anyone claiming them as such would likely have to keep a three-month record to prove they were used for work (stock image)

Accountants also had some advice for those who wanted to head out and buy a new handbag for work (stock image)

The Australian Financial Review earlier reported that a police officer named Ashley said she purchased a $500 handbag  one of her major work-related purchases  to take to work every day, including when she has to attend court hearings.

'When I'm going to court, I take a handbag and that's what's appropriate. It has the brief of evidence and something to write on. It still performs the same function and purpose as a man's briefcase,' she said.

Handbags should not be excluded purely for the fact that they can also be used during social outings, especially when she can claim sunglasses as an expense through her profession and use them on the weekends as well, Ashley said.

The tax law as it stood reflected the 'outdated assumption that business people will be men,' Workplace Gender Equality Agency Director Libby Lyons told the AFR.
Fair Work Ombudsman said several employees have asked for assistance

An employee said she received 20 calls a day of people asking for money

Mr Mohammad is accused of owing one employee $33,000

A restaurateur is accused of failing to pay his employees their wages

A restaurant manager who sits on a lavish throne, drives luxury cars and owns a penthouse apartment is allegedly withholding thousands of dollars from overworked staff members.

Jamal Mohammad, the operational general manager of the exclusive Waterfront Port restaurant in Melbourne, has been accused of living an extravagant lifestyle while his employees suffer.

Mr Mohammad, along with owner Marc Singh, are accused to owe a number of former employees as much as $33,000 in wages - while current staff are working up to 23 hour shifts, ACA reported.

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Jamal Mohammad along with his partner and owner of an exclusive restaurant in Melbourne are accused of failing to pay their employees

Kirsten Miller, a former events manager at the restaurant claims she is owed $11,000 in unpaid superannuation, annual leave entitlements and pay

Mr Mohammad is accused of choosing to live a lavish lifestyle rather than pay his employees

'I had constant phone calls, probably 20 a day, people begging for their money,' Kirsten Miller, a former events manager at the restaurant, told ACA.

'I had people come in crying because they can't feed their children, can't pay their rent. There's staff members having to move in with other staff'.

But Ms Miller, who was allegedly fired after 11 months, was also trying to recover in unpaid superannuation, annual leave entitlements and pay.

According to Mr Mohammad's former employees, their boss spent the money he owed on himself.

'[He bought] lavish items like cars, houses, ridiculous bottles of wine, ridiculous furniture. I think he bought a bed once for $30,000,' said Ms Miller.

Sally Hausler took over Ms Miller's job but only lasted three months and has since gone to the Fair Work Ombudsmen to claim the $800 she is still owed by her former employees.

'A lot of the staff are working 23 hours straight, quite often I did 12-13 hours straight,' Ms Hausler said.

Jamal Mohammad, the operational general manager of the exclusive Waterfront Port restaurant works in partnership with the owner Marc Singh

Mr Mohammad is accused of spending the money on his lifestyle purchasing a Mercedes and a penthouse

A former employee who managed a separate restaurant, Shanghai Fusion, claims he is owed $33,000 in wages

Mr Mohammad is accused of addressing the issue withemployees but continuously failing to pay them

The owners of the exclusive restaurant, on Station Pier in Port Melbourne, appeared to be taking advantage of their employees, some dating back since 2003.

Colin Wu, who was employed to run a separate restaurant, claims he is owed $33,000 in wages.

'He can talk and after a period of time that you don't get paid, "come, let's sit down, how much I owe you? Let's do a payment plan," and then from one payment to 15 payment plans and still nothing paid, you get zero,' said Mr Wu.

Former employee Prashant Sharma also claims that although his bosses addressed his issue they always failed to pay him the $4,000 in wages he is owed.

A spokesperson for Fair Work Ombudsman told Daily Mail Australia that a several people have lodged complaints.

I can confirm that several employees have lodged requests for assistance in relation to Waterfront Port Melbourne. Some have been resolved via mediation and others are still live matters, so it would be inappropriate to comment further.

Sally Hausler went to Fair Work Ombudsmen to lodging a requests for assistance for the $800 she was still owed by her former employees

Former employee Prashant Sharma also claims that his bosses failed to pay him the $4,000 in owed wages

The exclusive venue boasts about hosting big names including Kate Ceberano (right) and Richard Wilkins (left)
A judge has questioned how a man with an extensive history of violence and sexual assault was granted bail and able to savagely stab a schoolgirl to death.

Sean Christian Price, 32, was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder of 17-year-old Masa Vukotic in the Victorian Supreme Court on Friday.

Price pleaded guilty to rape, robbery, attempted theft and stabbing Ms Vutokic 49 times in the head, neck and body while she walked through a park near her Melbourne home last year.

But in handing down the verdict, Justice Lex Lasry lamented the 'catastrophic example of mismanagement' that allowed the convicted rapist to be living in the community.

Sean Christian Price, 32, has been jailed for life in the Victorian Supreme Court on Friday for stabbing 17-year-old teenager Masa Vukotic to death

'You should never have been left in a position where you could so easily commit these offences as you roamed around the metropolitan area of Melbourne unrestrained and unaccountable,' he said.

But for a successful appeal in the Victorian County Court for a series of violent assaults, Price wouldn't even have been in the community to carry out the murder.

The appeal saw his sentence slashed from three years to just 10 months, meaning he was released from prison in 2014 for a series of violent crimes against prison guards.

In handing down the verdict, Justice Lex Lasry questioned how Price had slipped through the cracks of the judicial system

Innocent victim: A post mortem found Price stabbed Ms Vukotic 49 times during the frenzied assault. Price told police he raped her because she was 'dressed like a yuppie'

At the time Price murdered Ms Vukotic, he was on bail for a number of charges involving attacks on prison officers

Ms Vukotic, an aspiring lawyer, was walking in a park near her Doncaster home when Price saw her

SEAN PRICE'S LIFE AND CRIMES 2002: Commits a number of indecent assaults - including the rape of a mother in broad daylight - over a period of two years. His seven victims are aged between 13 and 45 2004: Found guilty of 22 charges of rape, indecent assault and threats to kill. Sentenced to eight years and two months in hospital detention after found to have schizophrenia 2004: Placed on sex offenders list and sent to Thomas Embling Hospital (high security forensic mental health hospital) 2006: Punches Tony Abbott in face while he visits the hospital as then-Health Minister 2012: Destroys cars at Corella Place, a transitional facility for sex offenders 2013: Attacks and threatens prison officers. Spends roughly a year in Port Philip Prison 2014: Is released from prison after his sentence is cut from three years to 10 months 2015: Murders Masa Vukotic in public park. Two days later rapes a woman in a bookstore 2016: Is handed down a life jail sentence Advertisement

In 2004, a 20-year-old Price was found guilty of 22 charges of rape, indecent assault, and threats to kill.

His seven victims included a 13-year-old girl and a mother at home with her children.

After he was found to have schizophrenia and psychosis, Price was sentenced to eight years and two months in hospital detention.

In 2006, while a patient at Thomas Embling mental health hospital, he punched the visiting Health Minister Tony Abbott in the face.

Further charges of violence in 2012 put him on a 10-year supervision order.

In the following two years, numerous charges involving attacks on prison officers, on their cars, and threats to kill them led to further prison time of less than a year.

He was released on bail in October 2014.

In March 2015, he started his final horrific spree, first murdering Masa in Doncaster, then two days later robbing a man of his mobile phone in Sunshine, attempted to car-jack an elderly man, before raping a woman in a religious book store.

'She (Masa) started talking to a bird like... Snow White,' Price told police after his arrest.

'I was looking, looking and I just thought, f**k this, this is the moment. This one just ended up being the one, I just f***n' had to kill her, man.'

In 2006, while a patient at Thomas Embling mental health hospital, Price punched visiting then-Health Minister Tony Abbott in the face

'I just had to kill her man': Price pleaded guilty to the ruthless stabbing murder of Ms Vukotic

Justice Lasry said immediate prospects for any form of rehabilitation were 'bleak at best, if not non-existent'

In Supreme Court on Friday, Justice Lasry told Price that those in positions of power had 'failed to protect the community from the danger you clearly posed with tragic results,' the ABC reported.

'In a catastrophic example of mismanagement, whether on the part of corrections or parole, the decision was made to release you into the community and then the order ceased to have any protective event,' Justice Lasry said.

'There were many red flags to indicate that the risks of leaving you to your own devices were very significant and likely to involve violence, but nowhere near enough was done.'

Justice Lasry said rehabilitation was not a possibility for the near future.

'Your immediate prospects for any form of rehabilitation are bleak at best, if not non-existent,' he said.

'In the absence of appropriate treatment, you are now and will remain a significant danger to the community for the immediate future.'

Ms Vukotic's father stared down Price before he was led from the packed courtroom.

Price told police he chose to murder Ms Vukotic because she was 'dressed like a yuppie'

Ms Vukotic's schoolfriends were devastated when the news broke exactly one year and a day ago
Philanthropist: Barclays has been reviewing its anti-money laundering legislation processes relating to a number of its clients including Wafic Said, 76

A billionaire Syrian Tory donor has been told to pull his fortune out of Barclays and find a new bank.

Philanthropist Wafic Said, 76, may reportedly be forced to shut down his charity which funds Oxford Universitys business school unless he can secure new bankers.

It is understood that the bank has been reviewing its anti-money laundering legislation processes relating to a number of its clients including Mr Said, The Times newspaper reported.

The former arms dealers charity, The Said Foundation, has used Barclays for 20 years and counts Sir Michael Peat, former private secretary to the Prince of Wales and Lord Powell of Bayswater, Thatchers former adviser, among its trustees.

The charity also helps thousands of children from countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

Trustees are now said to be furious and concerned about the foundations future.

Barclays did not give an explanation and, in a letter, said that this was its final decision which could not be appealed, the newspaper reported.

The case is reminiscent of HSBC closing down the accounts of Londons Finsbury Park mosque in 2014.

Threatened? Mr Said may reportedly be forced to shut down his charity which funds Oxford Universitys business school (pictured) unless he can secure new bankers

Compared: The case is reminiscent of HSBC closing the accounts of Londons Finsbury Park mosque in 2014

In letters to the mosque and other Muslim charities, the bank said that providing services fell outside its risk appetite.

At the time, Khalid Oumar, one of the trustees of the mosque, told the BBC: The letters that have been sent and the letters that we received do not give any reason why the accounts were closed in the first place.

That has led us to believe that the only reason this has happened is because of an Islamophobic campaign targeting Muslim charities in the UK.

The businessman has now moved his familys personal accounts from Barclays but the charitys funds are still waiting for a new home after being handed the ultimatum in December, The Times reported.

On the Rich List: A keen philanthropist, Mr Said has made over 100million of charitable donations and, ironically, trained as a banker for UBS in London at the start of his career

London HQ: The move came after Barclays was fined 72million last November by the Financial Conduct Authority after the watchdog accused them of failing to carry out due diligence on high worth clients

The move came after Barclays was fined 72million last November by the Financial Conduct Authority after the watchdog accused them of failing to carry out due diligence on high worth clients.

ASSAD FAMILY FRIEND: WAFIC SAID Mr Said, who is ranked 59th on The Sunday Times Rich List, was a family friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has urged him to end the conflict in the country. A keen philanthropist, he has made more than 100million of charitable donations and, ironically, trained as a banker for UBS in London at the start of his career. Damascus-born Mr Said, who is the son of an eye surgeon, helped complete Britains biggest export detail after selling more than 40billion worth of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. It later emerged that the deal had allegedly been facilitated by corrupt payments but an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office was reportedly halted by Tony Blair. The Said Business School at Oxford University was established in the city in 1996, and Mr Said has so far given 70million to it. Advertisement

In a statement on the matter at the time, the FCA said: Barclays did not do so because it did not wish to inconvenience the clients.

Barclays was shamed over the 1.9billion deal which left Britain vulnerable to financial crime.

The High Street giant adopted a no-questions-asked policy to secure what one employee called the deal of the century, according to City watchdogs.

It was so top secret that documents were stashed in a specially bought safe and no records were stored on the banks computer systems.

Barclays was so desperate not to irritate its ultra high net worth clients that it did not bother to check where their money came from or if they were involved in financial crime or terrorism.

The complicated deal was carried out in 2011 to 2012 but Barclays failed to make proper checks until November 2014. Even then, it only acted after the watchdog intervened.

William Heard, a representative of Mr Saids business, Said Holdings, told The Times that Mr Saids eviction from the bank was part of a wholesale cull.

He added: Mr Said was extremely disappointed that... he is being treated in this irrational and irresponsible manner. Last night, Barclays declined to comment on the matter.

A University of Oxford spokesman told MailOnline today: The operation of the Said Business School is entirely secure. The School is an academic department of the University of Oxford and its funding is derived from numerous sources which include research funding and student fees.

The Said Foundation now provides charitable grants to support a range of initiatives to advance the Schools strategic objectives, including scholarships for students, awards for innovation in teaching, key School events and new approaches to career support for students.
Kareem, from Arizona, also charged with plotting to blow up Super Bowl

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 43, was also found guilty on a new charge of supporting ISIS

A man has been jailed for up to 45 years after plotting to blow up last year's Super Bowl and providing guns for an attack at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 43, was also found guilty on a new charge of supporting ISIS - only the second-ever time someone has been prosecuted on these grounds in the US.

Kareem, from Arizona, was accused of providing the guns used at the May 3 cartoon event in suburban Dallas and hosting two ISIS followers at his home to discuss the upcoming attack.

Federal authorities said Kareem's conviction demonstrates their commitment to combating terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General John Carlin, head of the U.S. Justice Department's national security division, said the agency 'will continue to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who conspire with others to support foreign terrorist organizations and to commit acts of violence.'

Kareem, who faces a maximum prison term of 45 years, was scheduled to be sentenced on June 27.

Kareem's attorney, Daniel Maynard, declined to comment after the verdict.

Prosecutors say Kareem, who grew up in a Baptist household and converted to Islam as an adult, also went target-shooting in the remote Arizona desert with two men killed in a police shootout outside the contest, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi.

A security officer was wounded in the attack, but no one else was injured.

It's unknown whether the attack was inspired by ISIS or carried out in response to an order from the terrorist group.

Authorities say Kareem, Simpson and Soofi had researched travel to the Middle East to join ISIS fighters.

Kareem testified that he had no knowledge beforehand that his friends were going to attack the contest featuring cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims.

He insisted that he didn't even know about the event until after Simpson and Soofi were killed.

Prosecutors said Kareem tried to carry out an insurance scam to fund a conspiracy to support ISIS and attempted to indoctrinate two teenage boys in his neighborhood on radical jihadism.

Simpson, 30, and Soofi, 34, were shot dead by police after shooting an unarmed security guard in the ankle during the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest

Kareem, from Arizona, was accused of providing the guns used at the May 3 cartoon event in suburban Dallas, held in the Curtis Culwell Center (pictured)

They also say Kareem, Simpson and Soofi initially wanted to blow up the Arizona stadium where the 2015 Super Bowl was held with pipe bombs, but when that plan failed, they set their sights on the cartoon contest.

Kareem told jurors he evicted Simpson from his home because he believed he was putting tracking devices in his car.

He also said he strongly disapproved of Simpson using Kareem's laptop to watch al-Qaida promotional materials.

Stefan Verdugo, one of Kareem's former roommates, testified that Kareem wanted to get revenge against people who portrayed the Prophet Muhammad in drawings and had inquired about the types of explosives that would be needed to blow up the stadium.

Defense attorneys attacked Verdugo's credibility by pointing out that he is in jail on a sex-trafficking charge.
Many of them will be former comrades of Prince Harry (pictured in 2012 in Afghanistan), who served two tours in Afghanistan, before he quit last June

The Ministry of Defence plans to claw back 830,000 from more than 200 Army helicopter pilots after an error led to them being overpaid.

The bonus blunder was made to some who flew Apache helicopters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Many of them will be former comrades of Prince Harry, who served two tours in Afghanistan, before he quit last June.

He is not affected by the blunder in any way, but some personnel may quit over the dispute.

Letters seen by MailOnline show that the Army was at loggerheads with the MoD as it ordered 201 personnel, 49 who have retired, to pay back up to 30,000 each.

The Army officials said it was 'firmly of the view' that overpayments should be written off due to 'compelling operational capability' and 'fairness' considerations.

But the MoD dismissed their request for the payments saying it would 'set a precedent that would be extremely difficult and costly to manage'.

The extra cash, which is called Recruiting and Retention Pay (RRP), was designed to keep staff in the Army - with some receiving up to 18.58 extra each day depending on their rank and role.

However, a Service Pay and Veterans Agency revealed the overpayment error.

One of the letters to Army pilots read: 'The outcome of these investigations was to establish that since 2007, 152 serving helicopter pilots and circa 49 retired pilots had received received overpayments of some 829,000 RRP.

'A decision to recover must be considered against the risk that it will precipitate increased outflow' of experienced pilots.

'There has already been an increase in voluntary outflow since the debts have been placed on individuals pay accounts, with 15 pilots directly citing the incorrect payment as the deciding factor in their decision to leave the Army.'

Major General Richard Nugee said the problem was having a 'demonstrable effect on morale' and there had been a 'clear increase' in resignations since the order was made.

And a source told the Daily Mirror: 'These pilots are being asked to pay back money through absolutely no fault of their own.

'It is very disappointing as they have served in the military, many on the frontline and at enormous risk.'

The bonus blunder was made to some who flew Apache helicopters (file photo) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya

Prince Harry wears his monocle gun sight as he sits in the front seat of his cockpit at the British controlled flight-line in Camp Bastion southern Afghanistan in December 2012

Any appeals to the payback will be done on a case by case basis. In January this year, serving pilots had their pay docked by four days per months, with officials reaching out to those who have retired (file photo)

An Army spokesman said: 'We can confirm that an overpayment of salary has been made to a number of Army aircrew personnel.

'We have apologised and explained the circumstances of the overpayments to all of those affected.

'In accordance with standard Government practice, arrangements have been made to revert their pay to the correct levels and all affected personnel are now receiving the correct pay.

'The overpayment of salary has resulted in an amount of debt owed by individual personnel.'
Proposed measures to deport migrants to Turkey in return for concessions

EU leaders meeting in Brussels to try to reach a migrant deal with Turkey

Refugees are living in a modern day equivalent of the Nazi concentration camp 'Dachau' in Greece, according to the country's interior minister.

Panagiotis Kouroublis said seeing the squalid Idomeni camp on the Greek border with Macedonia was so distressing it felt like receiving 'several blows to the stomach'.

His comments came as EU leaders were meeting in Brussels to try to reach a migrant deal with Turkey, which today attacked the bloc over the 'shameful conditions' refugees are facing while travelling across the continent.

Kouroublis said during a visit to the camp today: 'I do not hesitate to say that this is a modern-day Dachau, a result of the logic of closed borders.

'Like a concentration camp': A migrant woman and two children walk through the gate of a hangar where people have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni

Refugees are living in a modern day equivalent of the Nazi concentration camp 'Dachau', according to the Greek interior minister. A child refugee is pictured at the the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece

Turkey's leader has highlighted the 'shameful conditions' facing migrants making their way through the EU amid criticism of his own country's human rights record. Migrants are pictured camping on the Greece-Macedonia border

Panagiotis Kouroublis said seeing the squalid Idomeni camp (pictured) on the Greek border with Macedonia was so distressing it felt like receiving 'several blows to the stomach'

'Whoever comes here takes several blows to the stomach,' he added, pledging to boost policing and medical supervision in the area.

The Greek government said more than 46,000 refugees and migrants were blocked in the country because of a border shutdown by Macedonia and other Balkan states last week.

Around a third of them are massed in Idomeni, where a makeshift camp initially planned for 2,500 people now holds over 12,000 mostly from Syria and Iraq - and many of them children.

Recurring rains have turned the overflowing camp into a quagmire. Thousands sleep in tiny tents in muddy fields and ditches and queue for hours for food handouts by aid groups.

Dozens of children are suffering from colds and fevers and a private charity said it would donate 2,000 hepatitis vaccines after two such cases were recorded in Idomeni and the Athens port of Piraeus, where another 4,000 people are in another makeshift camp.

Refugees and migrants line up for a breakfast distribution at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece

The European Union has offered to pay Turkey up to 4.7billion in aid in return for accepting a deal to help ease the migrant crisis engulfing the 28-member bloc.

Refugees wait in line to receive food in the make-shift camp for refugees in Idomeni, north Greece, some metres from the borderline with Macedonia

The plan to outsource Europe's biggest refugee emergency in decades to Turkey has come amid concerns over the country's asylum system and human rights abuses

Refugee children play at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrant. Migrants are living in modern day equivalent of Nazi concentration camp 'Dachau'

On Thursday, a brawl broke out at the port between Syrians and Afghans during a food handout.

In a bid to avoid further overcrowding, hundreds of refugees who landed from the Greek islands at Piraeus on Friday were boarded on buses and sent to relocation camps near Ionnina, northwestern Greece.

Earlier today, Turkey's leader highlighted the 'shameful conditions' facing migrants making their way through the EU amid criticism of his own country's human rights record.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Europe should look at its own record on looking after refugees before telling Turkey what to do.

The European Union has offered to pay Turkey up to 4.7billion in aid in return for accepting a deal to help ease the migrant crisis engulfing the 28-member bloc.

But the plan to outsource Europe's biggest refugee emergency in decades to Turkey has come amid concerns over the country's asylum system and human rights abuses.

Migrants scramble for food being distributed from a pick up truck at the Idomeni refugee camp

Many of the thousands of migrants stranded at the border camp are saying they are awaiting the outcome of the EU summit currently being held in Brussels

Children sit on folding bunk beds outside a newly set tent, at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants in Greece

Ankara is today being asked to agree to the proposals, but as a summit got underway in Brussels today, Erdogan said: 'At a time when Turkey is hosting three million (migrants), those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves.'

In a speech broadcast live on television, Erdogan also said Europe was 'dancing in a minefield' by directly or indirectly supporting terror groups and that it was dishonest and insincere in its stance towards them.

Earlier the country's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the refugee issue was about 'humanitarian and European values' and not simply about 'bargaining'.

Davutoglu said this morning: 'For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining but an issue of values, humanitarian values as well as European values.'

He added: 'Of course the EU and Turkey have the same goal, the same objective to help Syrian refugees especially and also to have a new feature in our continents in a right manner. This is our purpose.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) shares a joke with David Cameron (centre), and French President Francois Hollande (right) during a meeting on the sidelines of the EU summit in Brussels

The three leaders talked during a break in proceedings at the Brussels negotiations this morning

President Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) said Europe should look at its own record on looking after refugees before telling Turkey what to do

'I am sure, I hope, we will be achieving our goal.'

Desperate to ease the pressure placed on European borders by more than a million migrant arrivals, the EU has turned to Turkey to help stem the flow of refugees into overburdened Greece.

The new arrangements could come into force from March 20 if they are agreed, a spokesman for European Council president Donald Tusk said today.

The EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece - who do not qualify for asylum - back to Turkey. And for every migrant returned, the EU will accept one Syrian refugee, for a total of up to 72,000.

In return, the EU will offer Turkey, home to 2.7million Syrian refugees, up to 4.7billion in aid, an easing of visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and faster EU membership talks.

The summit chairman, EU Council President Donald Tusk, will put Europe's terms to Mr Davutoglu this morning.

Turkey was accused of blackmailing Europe over the migrant crisis as EU leaders met to thrash out a deal to stop refugees reaching Greece (second to left, David Cameron with Angela Merkel)

Twenty eight European leaders met to forge a plan before they met Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu tomorrow

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (in red) said it was possible to overcome leaders' concerns over the legality of deporting migrants from their countries back to Turkey

David Cameron (pictured) today insisted Britain would not take in any more refugees as he arrived in Brussels for new talks on tackling the migrant crisis

Mr Cameron (right) said Britain had a clear policy on taking Syrian refugees directly from camps in the region rather than relocating people who have already reached Europe

After a year in which more than a million people fleeing war arrived in Turkey, EU nations are looking to Turkey to seal the coastline and stem the flow (right, Angela Merkel at the summit with European Parliament President Martin Schulz)

If he objects, the heads of state and government of the 28 EU nations will meet again to reconsider their position.

Tusk stressed that any agreement must fully comply with EU and international law but human rights groups and leading EU legislators have attacked the plan, saying it sacrifices the rights of migrants fleeing war and poverty.

The UN and rights groups have criticised the notion of mass returns to Turkey, which restricts Geneva Convention rights for refugees to Europeans.

'We believe that Turkey should lift all restrictions on Geneva,' U'N' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told Reuters.

Some diplomats in Brussels suggested a declaration from Turkey that it would treat everyone in line with the standards of the Geneva Convention would be enough, but Zeid disagreed.

BRITAIN WILL NOT TAKE ANY MORE MIGRANTS, SAYS CAMERON By Tim Sculthorpe, MailOnline Deputy Political Editor David Cameron today insisted Britain would not take in any more refugees as he arrived in Brussels for new talks on tackling the migrant crisis. EU leaders hope to finalise a new deal with Turkey over the next two days which will see illegal immigrants deported back to Turkey in return for Europe accepting genuine Syrian refugees. But the Prime Minister insisted he would not vote for any deal which led to more people coming to Britain. He highlighted the 'special status' he claimed to have negotiated for Britain at the last EU summit in February - the basis for his recommendation Britain stay in the EU at the referendum in June. David Cameron, pictured arriving at today's talks, said Britain would not take any more migrants or offer visa free access to Turks As he arrived at the talks today, Mr Cameron said: 'We ought to be clear here about Britian's special status in this organisation. 'Because we have kept our own border controls because we are out of Schengen we won't be offering visa-free access to Turks as part of this agreement - we maintain our own immigration policy.' Mr Cameron said Britain had a clear policy on taking Syrian refugees directly from camps in the region rather than relocating people who have already reached Europe. He told the waiting reporters: 'We have already said what we are going to do in terms of taking Syrian refugees to Britain and that's underway. 'We won't be taking more because of what is discussed here today. 'But if we can get an agreement that returns migrants from the Greek islands to Turkey that would be good progress.' Mr Cameron urged his fellow EU leaders to concentrate on breaking the 'business model' of the smugglers so there was no longer a link between getting into Europe illegally and being allowed to stay. The Prime Minister insisted he would not vote for any deal which led to more people coming to Britain Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu drew up the principles of the deal with German chancellor Angela Merkel before presenting it to the other 27 leaders of EU member states at a summit earlier this month. He will join them again in the hope of securing final agreement. Under the plan, Turkey would receive 3 billion euros (2.3bn) in additional funding by 2018, on top of 3 billion offered late last year The EU also said it would speed up a visa liberalisation process to allow 75 million Turks to visit the Schengen area without a visa by June. Talks on Turkey's long-stalled application to join the EU will be revived. Advertisement

'We would rather see that full protections are provided,' he said. 'There are many concerns we have about the human rights situation in (Turkey), we need to feel assured that the full protection is given to those who merit it.'

Zeid said for any deal to be in line with international law, it had to ensure each case was individually assessed, and he also warned that pushing asylum processing centres offshore could turn them into 'centres of abuse'.

He said Turkey, which now houses some 2.5 million people fleeing the conflict in neighbouring Syria, should also take proper care of people who do not satisfy the definition of a refugee but require protection, including children, the disabled, victims of trafficking or sexual abuse.

Zeid said he had received assurances on Tuesday from the EU's executive arm deputy head, Frans Timmermans, and the bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, that any final deal with Turkey would respect EU law.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was possible to overcome leaders' concerns over the legality of deporting migrants from their countries back to Turkey, in return for political and financial concessions to Ankara.

But Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel went as far as to accuse Turkey of blackmail, adding the country is 'asking for a lot'.

French President Francois Hollande (left) stressed that Turkey must meet the EU's strict criteria if it is to be granted visa free travel while Cameron (right) said Britain would not take in any more refugees

Tusk is expected to meet with Turkish leader Davutoglu late tonight to prepare for Friday's breakfast with EU leaders including Merkel (pictured)

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the package was 'very much on the edge of international law' and, if agreed, appeared too complicated to implement.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose country is struggling with a build up of tens of thousands of refugees stranded on its borders, said his country needed more help to care for migrants.

EU officials agreed that Greece also needed time to set up legal and administrative structures to carry out deportations.

Ankara's main objective - visa free travel for its citizens to Europe - will still depend on Turkey meeting a longer list of EU criteria.

The importance of meeting every one of the 72 conditions was stressed by French President Francois Hollande, whose voters are alarmed by the idea of 75million Turkish citizens' ability to travel freely to Europe.

Under the proposed plan, Turkey would take back all migrants who crossed from their shores to Greek islands.

The draft says the aim is to 'break the business model of the [people] smugglers' and offer migrants an alternative to putting their lives at risk.

It stresses the return is 'a temporary and extraordinary measure which is necessary to end the human suffering and restore public order'.

Diplomats said much will depend on how Davutoglu responds to a vague offer to open new 'chapters' of Turkey's negotiations to join the EU in the distant future.

Cyprus has long blocked some chapters over the port dispute. Tusk's draft said only that the EU would work with Turkey to 'prepare for a decision' on opening new accession chapters 'as soon as possible' - a hazy prospect Davutoglu may not accept.

Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu (right) said the refugee issue was about 'humanitarian and European values' and not simply about 'bargaining'

Around 46,000 refugees and migrants are currently stranded in Greece after several Balkan states shut their borders

Of these, around 14,000 are currently living in the squalid Idomeni (pictured) camp on the Greece-Macedonia border

To satisfy EU and international law, Greece and Turkey will have to modify domestic legislation so that Turkey is regarded as protecting asylum seekers in line with the Geneva Convention, even though Ankara limits its formal commitments to that treaty.

All migrants who reach Greece would have a right to put their case for asylum and to appeal against deportation.

Setting a start date for the scheme is tricky. Some want all those arriving on Greek beaches from Monday to be held for deportation, but Athens fears its systems will not be ready. Yet delay may trigger a rush to set sail before any deadline.

Meanwhile UN chief Ban Ki-moon says building barriers won't solve the migrant crisis in Europe.

The United Nations secretary-general told German daily Bild in an interview published Friday that 'building walls, discriminating against people or sending them back is no answer to the problem.'

Ban praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 'human political leadership' in dealing with the migrant crisis and urged other politicians to follow her example.

He declined to comment on speculation that Merkel might be nominated to succeed him in the top UN role when his second term ends on December 31.




Police are searching for the gunman who is on the loose

A woman related to the victim was heard threatening revenge at the scene

Police are continuing to search for the gunman

Mr Al Mhanawi lost control of his car hitting one of the pedestrians

The gunman fired at the pedestrians but instead hit the victim in his car

A man in a nearby vehicle was confronting two young pedestrians

Qusay Al Mhanawi, 46, was killed after being caught in crossfire

Police are looking for a gunman who killed a man sitting in his parked car while shooting at two male pedestrians.

Qusay Al Mhanawi, 46, was fatally shot on Matthew Avenue in Heckenberg, south-west of Sydney, just after 6.30pm on Friday.

The alleged shooter was in a nearby car confronting two male pedestrians when he fired the handgun but the rounds missed the two men aged in their early 20s, instead hitting the Mr Al Mhanawi who was sitting in his car.

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Qusay Al Mhanawi, 46, was shot in the head and killed in Heckenberg, south-west of Sydney

Mr Al Mhanawi was sitting in his vehicle when he was caught in crossfire on Friday evening

After he was shot Mr Al Mhanawi lost control of his vehicle and hit a pedestrian then crashed into a fence

Mr Al Mhanawi then lost control of his vehicle and hit one of the pedestrians, aged 20, who was involved in the altercation.

The pedestrian was treated by paramedics for a minor injury and is now in stable condition at Liverpool Hospital.

The other pedestrian, 25, is being spoken to by Green Valley police.

Mr Al Mhanawi, who lived on the street, was described by his family as a devoted family man that moved to Sydney from Iraq several years ago, 9News reported.

Police named a man they think can help them with their investigation on Saturday morning.

Police believe 28-year-old Matthew Russell (pictured) may be able to help them with their investigation

Matthew Russell, 28, was last seen driving a silver 2015 model Holden Commodore with NSW registration CB-62-ZS, in the vicinity of Matthew Avenue at the time of the shooting.

Police have urged anyone that sights Russel to call 000 immediately, but say people should not approach him.

Mr Al Mhanawi lived on Matthew Avenue in Heckenberg where the incident took place

Mr Al Mhanawi moved to Sydney from Iraq several years ago and his family have described him as a devoted family man

After the incident last night, heavily armed police, tactical operations officers and negotiators, surrounded a home at Eucumbene Crescent which they believed housed the gunman.

But after executing the warrant police did not find anyone inside the property.

Earlier in the evening, a distressed woman on the scene of the shooting was heard screaming: 'Your whole f***ing family is going to f***ing die. That better not be my f***ing kid.'

It is not clear whether the woman was a relative of the gunshot victim or the man hit by his car.

A witnesses who was present as the shooting occurred said he rushed to the aid of the injured man but failed to stem the blood which was gushing from his mouth - a result of the two shots in his chest and another in his head, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Police officers are still searching for the gunman

A woman was heard screaming in the middle of the street after the man was shot dead

Emergency services immediately covered the accident with a white sheet as they attended the scene

The public has been asked to avoid the area as the operation continues

A witness told Daily Mail Australia on Friday night the scene of the incident was very busy.

'There's a whole lot of police officers, forensics, the dog squad is also here.

'The car hasn't been moved yet, it's still covered and blocked from the public's view.'

Emergency services attended the scene and police cordoned surrounding streets.

Relatives of the victim were seen crying and distressed after the incident.

Detectives from Green Valley Local Area Command and State Crime Commands Homicide Squad are continuing their investigations.

Police entered a property they were surrounding in a nearby street that the gunman was believed to be holed up in but no one was found
Six members of a trafficking network that charged up to 6,000 to fly Iraqis to Italy was arrested as they prepared a plane for seven migrants.

Four children were due to take off on the flight when police arrested the gang of four Greek nationals and two Iraqis in western Greece yesterday.

The network has already successfully taken 12 groups of migrants from Iraq to Italy, and each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 and 7,500 euros (3,515-5,858), police said.

Six members of a trafficking network that charged up to 6,000 to fly Iraqis to Italy was arrested as they prepared a plane for seven migrants. Police seized a Piper plane (similar to the one pictured) in the raid

The network has already successfully taken 12 groups of migrants from Iraq to Italy, and each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 and 7,500 euros (3515-5858), police said

Officers also seized the Piper small aircraft, 34,430 euros (26,500) in cash, two cars, 700 grams of cannabis and shotgun cartridges during the raid in Messolonghi.

A police spokesman said: 'A criminal network was dismantled for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft.'

It is unclear how the migrants got to Greece but they had been driven to the west of the country from Athens by the smugglers, where the plane was due to depart from.

The migrant children were sent to a juvenile welfare centre, police said. It was not clear what happened to the adults.

It comes as Italy said there has been a spike in the number of migrants from Libya attempting the crossing. Pictured are refugees arriving in Messina following a rescue operation at sea by the Italian Coast Guard

The police identified the leader of the gang as one of the arrested Iraqis, and said they were continuing their investigation to find other accomplices.

The news comes as Italian officials said there had been a spike in migration due to the good weather, with ships picking up 3,100 migrants over the past three days, mainly from Lybia.

Authorities said 712 migrants were picked up yesterday alone, adding to the 2,400 that landed in the two previous days, all grouped in small, flimsy rubber dinghies.
A Muslim student and his friend were attacked by a man who allegedly chanted 'Trump, Trump, Trump' and shouted 'brown trash go home' in Kansas.

Khondoker Usama, an international student at Wichita State University, said the man targeted them because of the color of their skin.

The attacker reportedly made racial slurs to a black man outside a convenience store in the city before turning on the student and his friend, who wants to remain anonymous.

It is claimed the attacker repeatedly voiced his support for the Republican presidential hopeful and said Mr Trump would make America great again.

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Khondoker Usama, an international student at Wichita State University in Kansas, said the man targeted him and his friend because of the color of their skin

The unknown attacker stepped off his motorcycle and approached the two men in the gas station forecourt.

CCTV footage then shows Mr Usama's friend nudging the aggressor, who launched into a vicious assault on the victim, kicking and punching him in the forecourt until he fell to the ground.

The Wichita State student stands by his friend's actions and told Mediaite: 'My friend defended himself in this situation, as everyone would do.

'I believe that the video makes it clear we are the victims and the person was the attacker.'

Mr Usama insisted the attack was a hate crime and said: 'I would like to see that justice has been served and I would like to see that we as a community we stand united and we would move forward from this dent in our social life.'

Lt. James Espinoza, from Wichita Police Department, said: 'Obviously with this type of case we want to get down to the facts, making sure we have all parties information, and find out what actually happened out there.'

Mr Usama's friend is recovering from the attack and his wounds are said to be healing.

Video footage shows the attacker approaching the Wichita State student and his friend before he punched and kicked the victim
As many as 10 million dogs are killed for food annually in the country

the animal tries to escape the man uses a stick to pull him back

Anyone who can't stomach animal cruelty should look away now.

Horrifying footage from China has shown a farmer boiling a live dog in preparation for a village party.

The poor creature flounders in an enormous iron dish filled with steaming boiling water.

A man stands with a stick forcing the dog, believed to be a golden Labrador, back into the bubbling liquid in an awful display of cruelty and heartlessness.

Vile: Horrifying footage from China has shown a farmer boiling a live dog in preparation for a village party. The poor creature flounders in an enormous iron dish filled with steaming boiling water

Nasty tradition: A man stands with a stick forcing the dog, believed to be a golden Labrador, back into the bubbling liquid in an awful display of cruelty and heartlessness

Every time the dog is desperately tries to climb out the farmer pulls him back in.

Mercifully the clip ends before we see the eventual fate of the dog although it hardly takes many guesses to imagine.

In many northern Asian countries, dog hot pot is a well-loved dish.

The internet is understandably outraged. 'This makes me so mad because i cant do anything about it,' one writes.

However a few have suggested - perhaps naively, it is not known - whether the man was in fact giving the dog a tick and flea bath to kill off the blood-sucking insects.

But some try to see the funny side: 'Guess they got the wrong idea when they heard about the american 'hot dog'.'

As many as 10 million dogs are killed for food annually in China.

The majority of 'meat dogs' in the country are stolen pets and strays, according to an investigation published in 2015 by Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia.

Helpless: Every time the dog is desperately tries to climb out the farmer pulls him back in
A stunning model is believed to have burnt herself to death because she thought she was too old to find a job.

The charred remains of pretty blonde Irina Livshun, 31, were found at her apartment in the city of Almaty in southern Kazakhstan.

Alongside the corpse, police found a gas canister, which they believe she used to set herself alight.

Tragedy: The charred remains of pretty blonde model Irina Livshun, 31, were found at her apartment in the city of Almaty in southern Kazakhstan, with a gas canister beside it

Chasing a dream: The model, who originally came from the town of Jezkazgan in central Kazakhstan, had moved to the city when she was a teenager to pursue a career in modelling

The model, who originally came from the town of Jezkazgan in central Kazakhstan, had moved to the city when she was a teenager to pursue a career in modelling.

According to fiends she had been reasonably successful finding lucrative jobs with a number of fashion companies and achieving local fame.

One friend said: 'She was quite famous and took part in many fashion shows. But recently she had some troubles with her job.'

Local media reported that she began having financial troubles in November last year after her contracts began to dry up.

According to local reports, she also stopped meeting with friends.

Police spokesman Saltanat Azirbek added: 'Irina's relatives had told us she had been suffering from depression for a long time because she lost her job and was unemployed for several months.'

Big name: According to fiends she had been reasonably successful finding lucrative jobs with a number of fashion companies and achieving local fame

Tough times: Local media reported that she began having financial troubles in November last year after her contracts began to dry up. According to local reports, she also stopped meeting with friends

Sad day: Now the model's social media account on VKontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook) has been flooded with sympathy messages from friends and fans

The spokesman added: 'She had threatened to commit suicide many times before.'

Now the model's social media account on VKontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook) has been flooded with sympathy messages from friends and fans.

One, Artur Arturov, posted: 'It is such a pity, such a young girl. Rip!'

Another, Adil Amenkenov, wrote: 'Rest in peace! I did not know you, but sorry...'
Cows are seen as a gods to the 1.2 billion Hindu population in India

Four of eight-strong group were taken to hospital after drinking the poison

A Hindu activist has died from drinking pesticide after calling for the sacred animals to be given greater protection.

The cow worshipper or 'gau bhakt' consumed the poison during a group protest outside a government office in Rajkot, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, yesterday.

The cohort were protesting against the illegal slaughter of cows, which are considered sacred by India's 1.2 billion Hindu population.

A Hindu activist in India has died from drinking pesticide after calling for cows to be given greater protection

The activists want the cows to be given the special status of 'rashtra mata', meaning 'mother of the nation', in order to protect them being targeted for slaughter.

Four of the protesters, aged in their twenties and thirties, were moved to a private hospital after their condition deteriorated, police said.

Manish Nakum, a police inspector investigating the case, said: 'These men had come with bottles of poisonous substance and consumed a small portion in front of the collectors office.

'All were rushed to the government hospital where one of them, identified as Gabhru Bharwad, 40, died during treatment in the evening.'

It is not believed the men, who drank a mild pesticide used on cotton plants, intended to commit suicide.

Dhaval Pandya, who participated in the protest in Rajkot but did not drink pesticide, told reporters that cow slaughter was rampant in India.

The group, which carried out the protest in Rajkot, India (pictured on a map), want cows to be given the status of 'rashtra mata', meaning 'mother of the nation'

He said: 'To protect cows, which are holy to us like gods, we need to declare it as the mother of the nation.'

Around 27 members of the same group also tried to block roads in Rajkot, but were detained, police said.
Labour has taken a slender one point lead in the latest opinion poll despite the unpopularity of leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The narrow advantage in YouGov's latest survey was blamed on a fall in support for the Tories because of the bitter infighting over Europe in David Cameron's party.

But the lead will still come as a boost to Mr Corbyn who faces his first major election test as Labour leader within weeks as major polls are due in the devolved parliaments, London and councils across England.

The poll, the first since Wednesday's Budget, also revealed just 13 per cent of people think George Osborne's plans will leave the country better off, compared to 29 per cent who think the nation will be worse off. The biggest group, 41 per cent, think the Budget will make no overall change.

The YouGov poll indicated the narrowest of Labour leads but the results indicate a significant shift since the Tories won an unexpected majority at last year's general election

Mr Corbyn has been hit by a string of polls since his improbable Labour leadership win last year that suggest he is deeply unpopular with the country at large despite the enthusiasm of his own activists.

Earlier this week, an ICM poll suggested Labour had drawn level with the Conservatives - but even the firm itself said it was a 'rogue' result based on an oversampling of Labour voters.

The Tories have been comfortably ahead in all opinion polls since their surprise general election victory last year.

In the new survey, for The Times, Labour is on 34 per cent to the Conservatives' 33 per cent.

Ukip are back in third place on 16 per cent while the Liberal Democrats remain marooned in single figures on six per cent.

Explaining the Labour lead, Anthony Wells, YouGov's director, told The Times: 'It is reasonable to conclude that Euro squabbles are hurting the (Conservative's) image.'

On Monday, ICM dismissed suggestions from its own survey that Mr Corbyn's party was making progress.

In an extraordinary statement, the firm described the poll for the Guardian newspaper, as rather stunning, yet methodologically perturbing.

Like other pollsters, ICM is developing a new method for adjusting its findings to reflect likely turnout, following the industrys failure to foresee last years Tory election victory.

Labour MP Pat Glass said this week's Budget and the 'Tory euroshambles' had helped Labour to a one point lead over the Conservatives

ICM said this new method would have given the Conservatives a three-point lead if it had been applied to yesterdays poll.

It added: The word ''rogue'' is too often used in polling analysis, but in our view it is hard to believe this phone poll will escape such labelling.

Labour is facing grim results at May's elections.

The party is widely expected to lose control of the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff Bay - partly driven by a surge in support for Ukip, who could claim their first ever seats in Wales.

Setbacks are also expected in local elections in England as Labour attempts to defend good results achieved in 2012.

The party is in a tight battle for second place with the Conservatives at elections to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The SNP are far ahead and are expected to increase their majority.

London offers Mr Corbyn's best hope of a good result as Sadiq Khan leads Tory Zac Goldsmith in polling on the race for City Hall.
A far-right Dutch lawmaker who once compared the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kamf has appeared in front of a high security court over charges of inciting hatred.

Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party, faces one charge of discrimination and a second of inciting hatred of Moroccans, who make up about two percent of Holland's population.

He denies both charges and says the trial is politically motivated and that his comments are protected by his right to free speech.

Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party, faces one charge of discrimination and a second of inciting hatred of Moroccans

Wilders, with his trademark peroxide blonde hair, joked with reporters at the start of the hearing and listened calmly as prosecutors detailed the charges earlier today.

In the secure court room near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, lead prosecutor Wouter Bos said: 'Freedom of expression is not absolute, it is paired with obligations and responsibilities.

'The responsibility not to set groups of people against each other.

'Racism and hatred of foreigners constitute a direct violation of the basis of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.'

Wilders attracted the attention of prosecutors by repeatedly calling for 'fewer Moroccans' during election campaigning in 2014.

At one rally, he asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans, triggering the chant: 'Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!', to which a smiling Wilders responded: 'We'll take care of that.' In a television broadcast, he also called Moroccans 'scum'.

Wilders, whose decade-old Freedom Party holds a commanding lead in Dutch popular opinion polls but has never been in power, denies any wrongdoing.

'Nobody will silence me. Not about Moroccans either,' he tweeted last week. 'No terrorist threats ... no judge. Nobody.'

Wilders has lived under 24-hour protection since the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, who - like Wilders - made films criticising Islam.

Wilders, pictured, denies both charges and says the trial is politically motivated and that his comments are protected by his right to free speech.

The case against Wilders in 2011 centred on his calls for 'Muslim criminals' to be stripped of their Dutch nationality and deported, and his comparison of the Koran to Hitler's manifesto 'Mein Kampf'.

Wilders says he has no grudge against immigrants who accept Dutch laws and customs, and that he has never advocated violence.

Judges concluded then that Wilders' remarks might have been offensive, but acquitted him because the target was a religion, not a race.

'That is the difference now,' prosecution spokeswoman Ilse de Heer said.
A Pakistani migrant who has been arrested 11 times in one month trying to cross illegally from Greece into Macedonia has told MailOnline he now believes he made a mistake in leaving his homeland.

Determined Shahid Razan, 33, who has not seen his wife and one-year-old child since he left Pakistan two months ago, holds a masters degree in economics from the University of Greenwich in London and was working in Pakistan as a teacher.

His 11 attempts to cross from Greece into Macedonia have involved beatings, injuries and freezing conditions.

I miss my family too much and the conditions are too bad for me, he wept as he told MailOnline. I want to go back to Pakistan but I have run out of money so I am stuck here.

Mistakes: Shahid Razan's 11 attempts to cross from Greece into Macedonia have involved beatings, injuries and freezing conditions. He now can't afford to return to his wife and baby in Pakistan

Smuggling: MailOnline met Shahid Razan at a petrol station (opposite this one) near the Idomeni camp, the principal hub for migrants seeking to pass illegally across the Greece-Macedonia border

The terror threat from the Taliban in his hometown of Peshawar, northern Pakistan  scene of the school massacre in 2014  combined with his memories of the sweet taste of life in Britain when he was studying in London from 2012 to 2014, convinced him to make the treacherous journey.

I want to get to England and bring my family there to give them some security of life. Pakistani migrant Shahid Razan

I am trying to do a good thing from my family, he said, sitting on the steps of a petrol station near the Idomeni camp, the principal hub for migrants seeking to pass illegally across the border.

I want to get to England and bring my family there to give them some security of life, or I will get a job and send them money.

But I will try one more time because if I get into England I will really feel good.'

He went on: My family were too scared to leave the house in Peshawar. They have been threatened and beaten, and we have to pay the Taliban money to leave us alone.

His wife and child were left in the charge of his brother and father, who between them earn about 300 a month. He left them in January with savings of 3,500 in his pocket, and traveled over land across Iran and Turkey, and then by sea to Greece.

His money ran out two weeks ago, leaving him reliant on food handouts from the UN. I spent 3,500 to destroy my life here, he said. I am totally disheartened.

Regrets: Pakistani migrant Shahid Razan (left), who has been arrested 11 times in one month trying to cross illegally from Greece into Macedonia, believes he made a mistake in leaving his homeland. He is travelling with Ikram Ullah (right), 22, who decided to make the journey after his engagement to a local girl broke down and he became determined to seek a better future  even though his life was not in danger

Waiting: Shahid Razan spoke to MailOnline from the steps of a petrol station near the Idomeni camp, the principal hub for migrants seeking to pass illegally across the border

Trafficking den: People smugglers have set up shop in this petrol station near Idomeni border camp in Greece

Mr Razan is travelling with Ikram Ullah, 22, the son of an ISI intelligence officer from Lahore in Pakistan.

The IT specialist, who has a Masters degree in computing from the University of Sargodha in Punjab, Pakistan, decided to make the journey after his engagement to a local girl broke down and he became determined to seek a better future  even though his life was not in danger.

Lahore is perfectly safe, a precious place, he told MailOnline. It is as safe as London. There are beautiful things there that you wouldnt believe.

Why doesnt Britain like migrants? Why are there no camps in England? There should be camps for us in England Migrant Ikram Ullah

But I want to get knowledge from other nations and other cultures, and have a better standard of living. So I told my father I was going to Islamabad, and instead I came here.

Now that his father has found out what he has done, he said, he believes Ive ruined my life.

Mr Ullah has been in Greece for a year, and tried to find work before becoming convinced that his only hope lay in western Europe. He has tried four times to cross the border, and each time he has been arrested by Macedonian police.

I worked in Greece for five months picking oranges, he said. It was very, very hard work and at the end they only paid me 130. All I got was a mobile phone.

Eventually, the men say, they hope to make their way to Italy, where they believe its easy to gain asylum. Then they plan to travel to London.

Civilisation in the UK is good, said Mr Ullah. But David Cameron is not good to migrants.

Why doesnt Britain like migrants? Why are there no camps in England? There should be camps for us in England.

Squalid: Syrian refugees continue to live in the Idomeni camp in the hope that the borders will be reopened

Camping out: Thousands of migrants are now living in appalling conditions in Idomeni camp near the border

Mr Razan, however, is discouraged and wishes he could return home. He has family in Harrow, Middlesex, and he has been considering joining them ever since he studied in London from 2012 to 2014.

They lent him money for his journey, which he promised to pay back when he reached western Europe and received benefits.

But now that he is stuck in Greece, he has used up all of his money and cant borrow any more, meaning that he cannot even afford the return journey to Pakistan.

I will try to cross the border one last time and if I have bad luck again I will stay in Greece and try to get a job, he said.

Greece is a poor country and is in a lot of debt, so it is difficult for foreigners to get a good job here. And there is the language problem.

But at least I have security of life here. So if the police catch me again, I will apply for asylum here. I am too tired to cross the border any more.

He also worries that the pain of missing his family will be too great if he stays in Europe for longer than a year, especially as his elderly father has recently been admitted to hospital.

Mr Razan has only been beaten once by police while trying to cross into Macedonia.

The fifth time I tried, they treated me badly, he said. A group of us managed to get to the capital, Skopje, but we were caught and put on a train back to Greece.

When we were on the train, the police demanded that we give them 6 each, otherwise they would beat us.

I didnt have any money left, so they beat me with sticks.

No place for a child: Refugees queue for breakfast at the camp near the closed Greek-Macedonian border

Refugees: Thousands of migrants are trying to cross into Macedonia illegally now the border is closed

But his worst experience came with the people smugglers in Iran. They are like sea monsters, he said. They are killers. They snatch your money, beat you with sticks, punch you in the mouth. They pushed 15 people into one taxi and beat you if you took up too much space.

The worst moment was when we ended up with no food for several days. But all the time I thought about living like Queen Victoria in the UK.

There are two ways to make the dangerous journey across the border, he said. Either migrants take the mountain route, which involves many sheer drops and takes about eight hours on foot.

Or they take the lowlands route, which is criss-crossed with canals once inside Macedonia.

Mr Razan has tried to cross the mountains eight times, and taken the canal route on three occasions.

It is not too difficult to cross the border. It takes maybe three hours by walking, he told MailOnline.

But when you get into Macedonia, you have to wade through canals, and if it has been raining the water is too deep and the currents are powerful.

Yesterday it was the depth of a single-storey building and four people got washed away. I dont know what happened to them.

The previous night, he said, he hadnt been able to sleep for thinking about his family back in Pakistan and the arduous of the journey ahead.

Keeping positive: Smiling children jump on a muddy mattress in the camp on the Macedonian border

Staying warm: Afghan migrants warm their hands over a fire in the waterlogged Idomeni camp near the border

I have a tension headache and I have a big disturbance in my mind, he told MailOnline. Im worried about what my family are thinking about me. I think I really did the wrong thing but now its too late to go back.

These men are among thousands of migrants who are seeking to cross from Greece into Macedonia illegally now that the border between the two countries has been closed.
The female suicide bomber behind the Ankara blast that killed 37 people was in an all-girl terror cell, MailOnline can reveal.

Seher Cagla Demir blew herself up in the Turkish capital on Sunday causing death and carnage in the city centre.

Turkish media are reporting that Demir was helped by a second suicide bomber, identified by them as Ozgur Unsal, 26.

Demir, 24, a hotel and tourism management student, was already on the run from the Turkish security services at the time of the bombing.

Killer: Seher Cagla Demir killed 37 people when she detonated a suicide vest packed with nails in the middle of Turkey's capital Ankara on Sunday, March 13

Dead: Ozgur Unsal, 26, who the Turkish media have idenitifed as the second bomber

Terrorist: Demir was a members of the Kurdistan Free Hawks (TAK), and had trained in Syria where Kurdish separatist groups are known to have camps hidden in the mountains

Demir, identified by the Turkish Interior Ministry as a bomber, was a member of a five-strong, all-female gang of extremists who were on trial in Turkey for terror offences.

The women, which included three sisters, were charged with being members of an armed terrorist organisation and spreading terrorist propaganda.

But in 2013 when Demir jumped bail and fled the country to Syria, it is believed. The case is on-going and the last hearing with the remaining four women was in December.

The Turkish government said she spent time with YPJ, the Syrian Kurdish female militia in Rojava, Syria.

It is believed spent some time being trained at a military terror camp for the Kurdistan People's Party (PKK).

The PKK is a separatist movement considered a terrorist group by Turkey, which has led a campaign against the state for three decades.

She may have also gone to Qandil in Iraq, the mountainous borderlands of northern Iraq where the PKK has its headquarters.

Terror cell: Demir was already known to Turkish authorities, and was on trial for terror-related offences in 2013

Running: But the 24-year-old fled before a verdict could be reached, causing the trial of the all-female terror cell to collapse, and wasn't heard from until she blew herself up on Sunday

Rejected: Demir's brother has also pledged allegiance to Turkey, saying he 'liv

In Syria she joined the Kurdistan Free Hawks (TAK), a splinter group of PKK, which has claimed responsibility for Sundays attack.

In a statement, TAK said Demir had been fighting 'Turkeys massacre and denial of the Kurdish people' since 2013.

'On the evening of March 13, a suicide attack was carried out... in Ankara, the heart of the fascist Turkish republic,' the statement said.

Ashamed: Her family have refused to collect her remains, leaving her to be buried in a municipal graveyard

Demirs family, who live in Marmaraereglisi, a coastal town 70 miles from Istanbul have disowned her  and refused her remains to be buried.

Her father Cemil dismissed her beliefs, saying: 'I refuse to accept her funeral if she has been involved.

Cemil said he had gone to the police station to give a DNA sample so they could identify his daughter's remains.

Demir's older brother said he was proud to be Turkish added: 'For my motherland, my people, and the land under this flag, I'm ready to let my blood flow to the last drop.

'My condolences to those who died in this explosion in my capital, and I wish those who are injured a speedy recovery.

'I wish to God that this organization [PKK] and its supporters don't get another opportunity.

'God damn these people a thousand times who are trying to divide my country.'

Demir grew up Marmaraereglisi where she attended primary and high school.

Her family moved to Marmaraereglisi from Kars, in the north east near Armenia where one in five residents are Kurdish.

She is believed plotted the TAK attack in Syria and met up with Unsal in Ankara at the end of February.

The female suicide bomber is believed to have crossed into Turkey at the border at Rojava last month with a fake ID card.

Team: Demir and the second suicide bomber Ozgur Unsal met in Ankara last month and had carefully planned out their murderous attack, visiting the scene before putting the horrific plan into action

Murderous: Unsal's severed hand was found 300 metres from the scene, while Demir was said to be blown into hundreds of pieces. Unsal's family have said they will bury him

Distraught: A woman cries over the coffin of one of their victims during a commemoration ceremony

Grief: Relatives of Feyza Acisu one of the victims who was killed in an explosion weep over her coffin. TAK say the attack was a strike at the heart of 'fascist' Turkey

In Turkey she is said to have met a third man, named in the Turkish media as the ringleader. He is said to be behind the attack but was not killed in the massacre and is being hunted by the security services.

Demir and the ringleader stole a BMW and drove to Ankara where they met Unsal and carried out the bombing.

In Ankara, the three are said to have inspected the site to prepare for the attack.

Demir and Unsal, who lived with his mother in Ankara, were killed. Unsals hand was blown off and landed 300 metres from the scene.

His parents had separated and Unsal lived with his mother in Ankara.

His mother confirmed he died in the bombing. But said she believes he was used by Demir, and suggested he unwittingly took part in the attack. He was used as 'camouflage', she added.

'They infiltrated our family,' she told Haberturk. 'We haven't been told whether my son is a bomber or not. He's definitely not a bomber. He was lost because of his purity and clarity of heart.'

Unsal, who grew up in Zonguldak, near the Black Sea, had no known terror links.
Four people have been killed in two separate shootings in the Turkish capital Ankara today - just days after a bomb attack claimed 37 lives.

Officials in the city, which is still on edge following the deadly terror attack on Sunday, say militants were not involved in either of today's incidents.

A policeman shot a policewoman in the Dikmen neighbourhood, near military and government buildings, the Hurriyet newspaper said, without giving details.

Four people have been killed in two separate shootings in the Turkish capital Ankara today - just days after a bomb attack claimed 37 lives (pictured)

A government official confirmed one person had been shot by police but said it was 'for certain' not an attack involving militants.

In an unrelated incident, a man shot his brother and sister-in-law before shooting himself, Hurriyet said.

Ankara is jittery after a group affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, killed 37 people on Sunday in a suicide car-bomb attack in the city centre.

Diplomatic missions have warned staff and citizens to avoid public transport and crowded places, particularly on and around March 21, when Kurds celebrate the Newroz New Year festival.

The day has in the past seen violent clashes between pro-Kurdish demonstrators and the security forces.
Simon Danczuk has agreed to repay more than 11,000 in expenses after a watchdog found he claimed extra accommodation costs for two children who did not live with him.

And he will have to repay another 96.50 he wrongly claimed for parking charges after he left his car in Manchester while he extended a Parliamentary visit to Ghana with a week-long holiday to Spain.

Mr Danczuk exposed his breach of the parking expense rules with a tweet from his 'Spanish gaff'.

The Rochdale MP was reprimanded by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) today and ordered to pay back the cash.

Labour MP Simon Danczuk will repay 96.50 he wrongly claimed for parking charges after he left his car in Manchester while he extended a Parliamentary visit to Ghana with a week-long holiday to Spain. Mr Danczuk exposed his breach of the parking expense rules with a tweet from his 'Spanish gaff' (above).

Mr Danczuk continues to face a separate investigation by Labour, who suspended him from the party following revelations that he sent sexually-explicit texts to a 17-year-old girl who had contacted him for a job in his constituency office.

Parliamentary rules allow MPs a basic annual allowance of 20,600 for accommodation in London.

They can get an extra 2,425 per year for each dependent that stays with them.

In a statement, Mr Danczuk today said he had acted on what he 'believed at the time' to be allowed and hoped Ipsa would review the rules.

In his report, compliance officer Peter Davis said Mr Danczuk put in for the top-up cash over three years.

He said: 'The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the MP obtained an increase to his accommodation expenditure budget by claiming dependant uplifts for his two oldest children for a period of over three years, when, at no point were either of the children routinely resident.

'The compliance officer must also conclude that this was done knowing that there was no reasonable prospect of the children staying at the accommodation.'

Simon Danczuk has agreed to repay more than 11,000 in expense claims he made to cover the cost of his children living at his London home

He continued: 'Initially Mr Danczuk said that his oldest son had stayed with him in his London accommodation but he could not recall how often.

'However, when asked directly by the Compliance Officer if his older children ever stayed at his London accommodation, he replied 'no'.'

The MP argued that it was 'impractical' to amend the status of his contact with the children with Ipsa whenever it changed and move from larger to smaller flats as the amount he could claim varied.

'Mr Danczuk said that Ipsa's scheme required him to predict when his older children may or may not visit which was not possible,' the report said.

'However, I maintain that I continually wished for my oldest children to come and stay with me and I always thought that matters could be resolved to a point where they would come and stay.'

During the investigation into his parking expenses, Mr Danczuk argued it would have cost the taxpayer more for him to have travelled back to Manchester after the Ghana trip to collect the car before his holiday.

In a letter to Mr Davis he said: 'The alternative to leaving my car parked in Manchester for that week would have been to travel by train from London in order to move that vehicle.

'By doing so, I could have legitimately claimed up to 187.80 for the train journey. This represents a significantly greater expense to the taxpayer than 96.50 worth of parking.

'However, in order to save Ipsa money and make more effective use of my time I opted to fly directly from London and leave my car where it was. By choosing to do this, I have essentially paid for my own return travel to Rochdale.'

Mr Davis's report said: 'The MP has confirmed he claimed car parking charges between 26 July 2015 and 1 August 2015 while on holiday in Spain.

'Despite his protestations about the iniquity of the scheme, this is not an allowable expense and should not have been claimed.'

Mr Danczuk's 'selfie queen' ex wife Karen, pictured, lives with two of the MPs children in Rochdale

In a statement, Mr Danczuk today said: 'My accommodation claims were made according to what I believed at the time to be an accurate interpretation of Ipsa's guidelines.

'Regrettably, due to the vague wording of the rules, I inadvertently claimed 10% more than my annual living allowance, money which was paid directly to my landlord in London and not to me.

'I hold my hands up and admit that this was an error on my part.

'Many MPs have told me that they had interpreted the regulations in a similar way and I welcome the suggestion that the regulator is considering a review of the guidelines.'

The Rochdale backbencher has four children with his two ex-wives.

But two of them live with his ex-wife Sonia Rossington, who has publicly said in the past that he never sees them and has not done so for years.

Danczuk's 18-year old son George told the Rochdale Online website last month he stayed with his father in London just once, in February 2012.

'That's the only time I've stayed with him in London,' he said.

Mr Danczuk has faced protests and calls for him to resign as Rochdale MP after he hit the headlines repeatedly over his expenses and his personal life

His other two children, with his most recent ex-wife Karen, live with her in their former marital home in Rochdale.

Since 2011 he has claimed extra cash for at least some of them every year.

An MP can only claim for more than the basic allowance for accommodation if they have a dependent child.

Mr Danczuk successfully claimed 22,937, in 2012, 29,013.22, in 2013/14 27,581.46 and in 2014/15, 28,466.58.

According to Ipsa rules, the allowance is only available to MPs whose children are 'routinely' living with them and being cared for in London.
A law student has admitted murdering a 23-year-old teacher but won't tell her family why he did it.

Carl Langdell, 26, pleaded guilty to killing Katie Locke at Theobolds Park Hotel in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire.

But he's not telling his legal team why he murdered Katie 'who loved' her job, according to The Sun.

Ms Locke's family were at St Albans Crown Court to see Langdell, of Cheshunt, appear via a video link from Bedford prison.

Carl Langdell has admitted the murder of school teacher Katie Locke, who was strangled to death last year

Ms Locke, 23, who taught history and politics at Cardinal Pole School in Hackney, east London, was strangled to death last year. Her body was found on Christmas Eve.

Details of her relationship with her killer has yet to be established but it is believed they met for a date the day before Miss Locke died.

Friends of Miss Locke said they were not in a long-term relationship.

In a statement issued by Hertfordshire police at the time, her parents John and Jennifer Locke, said: 'There was not a bad bone in Katie's body.

'Katie worked hard and loved her job as a teacher. In what little spare time she had she enjoyed sports. We now feel like our future has been stolen from us.'

Langdell, who spent two months as an intern at The Independent newspaper last year, founded his own legal firm Langdell Legal Associates in August this year.

Ms Locke's body was found at a hotel in December last year. Her relationship with Langdell is unknown

Trainee lawyer Langdell was pictured with a number of famous figures online, including Boris Johnson

He is a business management graduate with a masters degree in journalism and media communications.

He posted dozens of pictures of himself online with celebrities and high-flyers, including Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Prosecutor Ann Evans told the court today: 'What needs to be established are the circumstances of Katie's death. There was a no comment interview with the police. '

Benjamin Aina QC, defending, said Langdell admitted deliberately and intentionally killing Katie in a hotel room.

He said his client had been seeking psychiatric help after being convicted of making threats to kill in Bristol. A psychiatric report is to be prepared on Langdell before sentence.

Judge Andrew Bright QC remanded Langdell in custody until he is sentenced on Thursday 21 April.
of forces from Syria on Monday

ISIS has claimed to have killed five Russian soldiers during fighting in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.

In a statement, the group also said it killed several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group and fighters belonging to the Syrian armed forces.

It claimed: 'The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members of the Syrian army.'

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ISIS has claimed to have killed five Russian soldiers during fighting in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria (file photo)

A website linked to ISIS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

It said: 'Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area.'

Aamaq also published a video, showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage shows equipment presumably captured, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass. A packet of bandages was also filmed with instructions written in Russian.

ISIS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the 'Pearl of the Desert', last May, sending shock waves across the world.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that Russian advisors were present near Palmyra, but could not confirm whether any Russian forces had been killed there in recent days.

Haul: Pictured, the equipment found by ISIS which included a rifle, ammunition and various other items

The video, posted on Aamaq, showed the body of a soldier and his equipment, including his helmet, pictured

President Vladimir Putin, Assad's main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russia's armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike jihadist targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

Speaking yesterdaty, Putin said: 'Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged, adding that 'fierce fighting' was raging near Palmyra.

ISIS seized Palmyra (pictured), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the 'Pearl of the Desert', last May, sending shock waves across the world

He also named four Russians killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched a military intervention in Syria on September 30, including a military advisor.
A New York socialite and her estranged trader husband are set for a battle in the British High Court over a multi-million dollar debt she claims he owes her.

Former model and ballerina-turned racehorse owner Sheila Rosenblum, and her assets trader husband Daniel Rosenblum, led an incredibly wealthy and glamorous lifestyle before they split in 2014.

They were described as a 'staple of high society', owning a $31million Manhattan apartment, described as being like 'something out of an F.Scott Fitzgerald story' as well as a sprawling estate in the Hamptons.

Sheila Rosenblum pictured at the Southampton home she once shared with estranged husband Daniel Rosenblum

Sheila Rosenblum, centre, with her estranged husband Daniel pictured at an event in 2002. She is now taking him to court in the UK

The couple have two children together. Here Ms Rosenblum is pictured with her daughter Kara

Their duplex penthouse on Park Avenue was also dubbed as a 'chateau in the sky... inspired by the luxuries of another era.'

However, the couple who have two children together, have now separated, and Mrs Rosenblum has lodged a claim in London's High Court.

Her lawyers have detailed how the couple waged a legal war in the US courts after Mr Rosenblum was ordered to pay her $5.5million (3.9million) after she sued him in November last year.

The claim also claims that over $5million (3.6million) of that 'debt' still 'remains unsatisfied'.

Mrs Rosenblum believes that her estranged husband has substantial assets within the UK including a business address in London Bridge Street in the City.

It is believed he made his fortune as part of the company ED&F Man, a specialist merchant of agricultural commodities such as sugar and coffee.

And now she is asking British judges to force her husband to pay up.

Mrs Rosenblum is now suing her ex-husband in the High Court in London over a multi-million pound debt she claims he owes her

Mrs Rosenblum has appeared in several US magazines where she was described as a 'socialite'.

In her early career, she was a successful model and ballerina training at the Royal Ballet School in London and working for Ford and Wilhelmina models.

She now runs Lady Sheila Stables, an all female thoroughbred race horse syndicate.

Her filly, La Verdad, won last year's top female sprinter crown and raked in over $1.4m in prize money.

She once told society magazine 25A that the sport was like ballet but on a horse.

She was born in Switzerland but moved to the US at the age of four, and was 31 when she married her husband. They have two teenage children.

However, Ms Rosenblum is no stranger to court battles. In 2010 she became embroiled in a protracted international dispute over the purchase of a horse.

Before they split, according to American reports, Mr Rosenblum had also been involved in a legal dispute relating to their $21million Park Avenue home.

Mrs Rosenblum's English lawyer, Jolyon Martin Connell, of Farrer & Co, states in the claim: 'On 18 November 2015 Ms Rosenblum obtained against Mr Rosenblum a judgement of the Supreme Court of the state of New York of the sum of $5,550,684.93.

'The New York Judgement was final and conclusive.

In her early career, Mrs Rosenblum was a successful model and ballerina training at the Royal Ballet School in London and working for Ford and Wilhelmina models

Mrs Rosenblum, left, pictured at an event in 2001 with the former wife of Donald Trump, Ivana, centre. She now runs Lady Sheila Stables, an all female thoroughbred race horse syndicate

'The New York judgement does not represent a penalty or fine or include any claim for unpaid taxes or include any element of punitive or multiple damages.

'Mr Rosenblum submitted to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the State of New York by participating voluntarily in those proceedings.

'Sums totaling $501,876.38 have been collected by Ms Rosenblum in partial satisfaction of the New York Judgement debt (but) the debt remains unsatisfied.

'Ms Rosenblum therefore claims a debt against her husband amounting to 3,589,377.94 as at January 22 2016, together with interest and costs.'
She is allowed to request parole every three years

Birnie completed her minimum sentence of 20 years in 2007

West Australian serial killer Catherine Birnie has again been denied parole.

Birnie, 64, and her late partner David Birnie raped, stabbed, strangled and clubbed to death four victims in their Willagee house, in Perth's southern suburbs, in 1986.

They were caught when a fifth intended victim escaped after they abducted her at knifepoint.

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The 64-year-old completed her minimum sentence of 20 years in 2007 and is now allowed to request parole every three

Attorney-General Michael Mischin said on Friday that he accepted the recommendation of the Prisoners Review Board.

'Appropriate notifications have been made through the Victim Notification Register,' he said.

Under law, Birnie's life sentence is reviewed every three years, so her next review will be in 2019.

David Birnie hanged himself in his protective custody Casuarina Prison cell in 2005.

She wasn't allowed to attend his funeral.

Birne was given a life sentence after she and her late partner David Birnie raped, stabbed, strangled and clubbed to death four victims in their Willagee house, in Perth's southern suburbs, in 1986

David Birnie hanged himself in his protective custody Casuarina Prison cell in 2005 but Catherine Birnie wasn't allowed to attend his funeral.

She was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum of 20 years.

After it expired in 2007, WA's attorney-general Jim McGinty said Birnie should never be released from jail, reported Perth Now.

But Perth's Queen Council Tom Percy constantly asks for her release saying she is a 'church mouse' and extening her sentence is 'pure revenge'.

However at the time of her crimes, former detective Paul Ferguson, who was the lead investigator of the case at the time said Birnie is the most evil person he has ever met.

'I honestly believe that woman has never given those victims one ounce of consideration, both the dead victims and the families of the victims,' said Mr Ferguson.

'She's an actor. The person I met is all for herself and she will do whatever is necessary'.
Con: Rachael Moultrie, left, was tricked by Darren McCue, right, who claimed to be an SAS veteran

A conman seduced a string of women by claiming he was a former SAS hero and even convinced his mother to help him support the elaborate lie.

Darren McCue, 43, convinced single mother Rachael Moultrie, 38, to get engaged to him by telling her about his eight-year military career as a paratrooper and Special Forces soldier.

He used the name 'Dan Mitchell' during their relationship, and lied to her that his daughter - who in fact did not exist - had died of a heroin overdose.

The couple booked a wedding venue and a honeymoon, while Ms Moultrie had bought herself a wedding dress and bridesmaid gowns for her daughters.

She trusted him and let his mother Kathleen, 69, who always called him by his fake name, move into her home in Cardiff.

But after Ms Moultrie found a pension slip addressed to Kath McCue, his mother's real name, she discovered he was a conman who had tricked a string of women already.

The jilted fiancee managed to track down McCue's former wife of 13 years who confirmed his real name and said that he had never been in the Army, and didn't have any children.

Ms Moultrie said: 'Looking back now I had niggles, but he always had an answer or explanation.

'I'm absolutely livid with him and how he could lie to me and my daughters for more than a year. But I'm more horrified with his mum. What kind of woman could do that to another mother?

Lies: McCue deceived several women, telling them he was a former soldier and using fake names

Con: He had a book of SAS photographs which he had annotated to make it appear that he was pictured in them

Dishonest: The notes written in the book made it look as if McCue knew those involved

'She backed up all his lies, called him a fake name, looked after my kids - who called her "Nanny Kath". When I found out, at first I was mortified. I'm ashamed to say now that I loved him.

'But now I want to speak out and warn other women about him and his mum. They are dangerous and people need to be protected.'

Ms Moultrie, who is divorced, met McCue on a dating website in October 2014, when she was recovering from ovarian cancer.

He introduced himself as a divorced tattoo artist with twin 19-year-old daughters who boasted about eating worms to survive in Borneo and jumping out of a plane using a broken parachute.

She invited him to spend Christmas with her daughters - aged 17, seven and six - but he cancelled on December 23, claiming his daughter 'Ellie' had died from a heroin overdose.

'It never occurred to me for a second that it would be a lie - what kind of sick man would like about that?', she said.

Waste: Ms Moultrie bought these bridesmaid dresses for her daughters to wear at her wedding

Devastated: The jilted bride spoke of her anger towards McCue and his mother who connived in the plot

Warning: Ms Moultrie, pictured left with McCue, made a poster to warn other women about the conman

A few months later, Ms Moultrie was introduced to McCue's mother, who called herself Kath Mitchell, and tried to verify his stories.

The pensioner - who called her son 'Dan' - talked solemnly about the death of her 'granddaughter', and didn't challenge his Army tales, Ms Moultrie claims.

'Never once did she slip,' she said. 'You would have to give her an Oscar for her performance. She even called him "Dan" in birthday cards.'

Last summer, the pair moved into Ms Moultrie's home and she gave the pensioner her master bedroom.

But five months later, Ms Moultrie's daughter found out that McCue had been using a dating website, and the mother kicked out her fiance and his mother.

When she found the pension slip addressed to 'Kath McCue', she tracked down McCue's ex-wife who told her the full truth.

Elaborate: The book had supposedly been annotated by McCue's former comrades as a gift to him

Fiction: The soldiers in the book were given made-up names by McCue as part of his trickery

Ms Moultrie then uncovered a trail of three other women from the Bristol area who were duped by the conman while he pretended to be a soldier.

When confronted, McCue admitted lying to all four women. His mother confessed to duping Ms Moultrie, but denied lying about her 'granddaughter' dying.

'Basically I told a load of lies - that was it,' McCue said. 'My mum told me every day to say something. [I didn't] because I'm a fool.'

Mrs McCue added: 'I didn't know from the beginning any of this. I didn't find out, oh, not for ages after. That's the God's honest truth.

'It had gone too far then. I had to do it. I didn't want to do it because it was horrible. We're sorry it all happened. We all are.'
Prison officer Adrian Ismay (pictured) was seriously injured in a Belfast car bomb attack and died later in hospital

A man has been charged with murder after the prison officer seriously injured in the car bomb attack died later in hospital.

Christopher Robinson, 45, from Belfast, has been charged with the murder of officer Adrian Ismay, 52, having previously been charged with attempted murder.

A dissident republican group, referred to as the new IRA, claimed responsibility for the attack in a predominately loyalist part of Belfast.

Mr Ismay was seriously hurt when a booby-trap device exploded under his van in the east of the city on Friday March 4.

He needed surgery for severe leg injuries but was released from hospital last week.

It is understood the father-of-three died from a heart attack after being rushed back to hospital on the morning of Tuesday March 15.

The attack happened in the Hillsborough Drive area, off Woodstock Road, in the east of the city, at around 7.10am.

Mr Ismay had only driven a short distance from his home when the device detonated as he went over a speed bump.

The man was a long-serving officer based at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast, who worked as a trainer for new recruits to the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

He had served for 28 years and was married with three grown up daughters.

The 'new IRA' claimed responsibility for the car bombing and said the officer had been targeted for training officers at Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn, County Antrim.

A spokesman told the BBC the officer was one of a number on a list of potential targets and the attack arose from a dispute over the treatment of dissident Republican inmates.

One NI Assembly member has claimed they are trying to return the country's high-security prison to conditions similar to the old Maze Prison, where republicans won a series of concessions and famously went on hunger strike.

Mr Ismay was driving through Belfast when the bomb exploded - it went off as he drove over a speed bump

The suspected republican attack was described as a 'sickening echo of the past' and Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster called it 'disgraceful and despicable'

Police were called at around 7.10am to the Woodstock Road area in the east of Belfast, a predominantly Unionist area after the bomb went off on Friday, March 4

The group claimed to have used the plastic explosive Semtex and a commercial detonator in the attack.

In the wake of the attack, Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris issued a stark warning that more attacks are planned as the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising approaches.

Mr Ismay is the second prison officer to be targeted by violent dissident republicans opposed to the peace process since 2012.
Puerto Rico's 2016 Miss Universe contestant has been stripped of her crown after revealing in an interview that she did not like having her picture taken.

Kristhielee Caride, 24, shocked competition officials when she told a Puerto Rican newspaper: 'I just do not like cameras'.

Desiree Lowry, the national director of Miss Universe Puerto Rico, said she wanted the earth to swallow her as she witnessed the controversial interview.

'I saw the damage that she was doing and the damage that she was doing to the organization,' Lowry said during a press conference on Thursday.

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Dethroned: Kristhielee Caride was replaced as Miss Universe Puerto Rico after saying she did not like having her photo taken in an interview with a local newspaper

Term: Caride, pictured, only had her crown for four months before pageant officials decided to replace her

'Miss Puerto Rico is a public figure and part of your job is to be in front of the camera.'

'You always have to put your best face forward. It's a given that we are going to be in front of cameras and that we have to answer all types of questions.'

Lowry said Caride told pageant officials that she was having a personal problem and that the incident would not happen again, but said the beauty queen never apologized.

She added that Caride, who won the crown four months ago, then canceled public appearances because of a doctor's appointment she said she could not reschedule.

Caride will no longer represent the US territory in the international beauty contest, which most recently crowned Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach.

The televised competition drew national headlines in December when host Steve Harvey incorrectly announced that Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez had won the crown, before admitting his mistake.

Lowry presented first runner-up Brenda Jimenez as Puerto Rico's new Miss Universe contestant at Thursday's press conference.

Caride, who was representing the municipality of Isabel, took to Facebook on Thursday to apologize to her fans and explain her interview, explaining that she had been having personal problems the last few days

Jimenez, who appeared wearing a tiara, said she still hasn't 'fully processed' the news.

The change marks the first time a Puerto Rico Miss Universe contestant has lost her crown before the pageant.

First runner-up Brenda Jimenez has been named Puerto Rico's new Miss Universe contestant

Caride, who was representing the municipality of Isabel, took to Facebook on Thursday to apologize to her fans and explain her interview.

'Beauty queens are not exempt from having a bad day,' she wrote in Spanish. 'I allowed my feelings to get in the way of my work.'

Caride explained she had been having personal problems in the past few days but that she continued to fulfill her commitments as Puerto Rico's Miss Universe contestant.

'I would like to express my most sincere apologies to each and every one of my fans first of all those who have supported me from the first moment, to my work team and the organisation of miss universe Puerto Rico,' she wrote.

'It was never my intention to make you feel bad, hurting or damaging the image of those who have helped me to be where I am today.'

'It is human to err, it is also courageous to recognize our errors and I want to continue being an example of a real woman with purpose that maintains their head held high before all adversity that happens in life.'

Caride wrote that she did not agree with the organization's decision but said she accepted it 'with dignity'.

'I will always remember that night of November 12,' she wrote. 'When I won the title, and all the experiences and lovely memories of having been Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2016.'

Caride was crowned in her second attempt, after finishing in the top 16 while representing Dorado in the Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2014 pageant.

The college graduate has a harrowing life story, including being kidnapped with her mother and sister and losing her family home on Christmas day.
This is the moment that an Al-Qaeda gunman shot dead a holiday maker who had made the fatal mistake of hiding under the bar as other guests fled.

CCTV footage shows Mohammed Tawfeeq duck behind the bar at the Etoile de Sud Hotel and hide underneath it after shots are fired and crowds of people run away in terror.

But moments later a militant brandishing an AK-47 is seen walking past him and slightly out of vision, followed by the sound of three loud shots.

Mohammed Tawfeeq had been in the swimming pool when the shooting started at the Etoile de Sud Hotel, but ran to the beach bar and ducked behind it as other guests fled

The militant can be seen coming through the empty bar, walking around the spot where Mr Tawfeeq was hiding and he can then be heard shooting three shots, which killed him

His wife, Celene Gelate, who was photographed with her husband on the beacg in a selfie taken that morning, was later forced to identify his body.

She said: 'He was shot in the mouth, the heart, and in the leg. I am lost now. Every single day we were together,' reports CNN.

Gelate had been sleeping in the hotel when she was woken up by gunfire and said her first thought was where her husband of nine years was.

She saw a graphic picture of her dead husband's body on social media before she was even told by police to identify him formally.

Celene Gelate and her husband Mohammed Tawfeeq take a selfie on the beach

The footage first shows the moment that gunfire breaks out, with staff at bar immediately freezing and looking around.

Seconds later, crowds of people can be seen fleeing from the bar, running in and out of the camera shot in terror.

But as they run away, Mr Tawfeeq, who had been in the swimming pool before, ran towards the bar and hid underneath it.

A militant in a red shirt is then seen walking towards the spot where he had hidden, through the now empty bar.

He steps out of the area being covered by CCTV and barely a second later, three loud bangs can be heard on the footage.

Mr Tawfeeq never emerged from underneath the bar after suffering fatal wounds from the gunshots.

His wife added: 'I blame the government, I blame the police, I blame the hotel. We were in a nice hotel and they didn't even have security. The police had to come all the way from Abidjan.'

The toll from a deadly attack in Ivory Coast by an Al-Qaeda affiliate rose to 19 on Wednesday, with the body of a young man shot in the head found on the beach.

State-run RTI television showed images of the body and quoted the person who had found it as saying it had been 'washed back by the waves'.

The footage shows the first moment that bar staff at Etoile de Sud Hotel here gunfire while working at the bar. Celene was asleep in her hotel room at the time

Other guests run away from the bar when they hear the gunfire, but Mr Tawfeeq run towards it from the swimming pool where he had been before

Mr Tawfeeq's wife Celene Gelate has watched the CCTV which shows him making the decision that cost him his life. She later had to identify his body

Citizens from Burkina Faso, Germany and France were among those killed when gunmen stormed three hotels and sprayed a beach with bullets at the Grand-Bassam beach resort, an unprecedented jihadist assault in Ivory Coast.

The sleepy town, with its pristine beaches and UNESCO-listed French colonial-era buildings, is packed with visitors on weekends from nearby Abidjan, Ivory Coast's main city and commercial capital.

A security source said it was possible that some corpses had been washed away from the beach following the assault.

Several witnesses had reported seeing the attackers firing on people bathing in the sea or swimming.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) said the shooting rampage was one of a series of operations 'targeting dens of espionage and conspiracies'.

It threatened France and its allies in the region, warning nations involved in the anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane and the 2013 French-led Operation Serval in Mali would 'receive a response'.

Moments later an Al-Qaeda militant can be seen wandering out of shot on the CCTV carrying an AK-47. Three shots can then be heard, which killed Mr Tawfeeq

It said that their 'criminal leaders' and interests would be targeted, according to the SITE group which monitors extremist groups.

Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, was France's star colony in Africa.

On Tuesday the visiting French foreign and interior ministers pledged to step up anti-terrorism cooperation in the region and deploy crack GIGN special operations troops specialising in counter-terrorism and hostage rescue missions.

France has a permanent military base in Ivory Coast under a deal with the country's founding president Felix Houphouet-Boigny.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said about 10 GIGN troops would be stationed in the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso and could even intervene if needed.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara meanwhile held a cabinet meeting in Grand-Bassam on Wednesday to show 'our unity and our strength,' adding: 'Ivory Coast will not be intimidated.'

He said he hoped the town's numerous hoteliers would resume business soon, adding: 'We will do everything possible so that normal life resumes.'




A former Chipotle employee has field a sexual harassment lawsuit against her managers saying they commented on the size of her breasts, touched her under her shirt and against her will, and acted inappropriately towards female customers.

Ariana Castaneda, who worked at Chipotle in Woodland Hills, California, says she was wrongfully terminated in February after nine months of working in a 'sexually charged atmosphere', NBC reported.

The lawsuit, published by NBC Los Angeles, names Chipotle as a defendant as well as general manager Pablo Aguilar, supervisor Ruben Hernandez and service managers Tommy Lee and Erick Morcillo.

The charges include harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, assault, battery, retaliation and wrongful termination.

Ariana Castaneda, who worked at Chipotle in Woodland Hills, California (pictured), says she was wrongfully terminated in February after nine months of working in a 'sexually charged atmosphere'

Castaneda, who worked at other Chipotle restaurants between December 2013 and May 2015, had been promoted from kitchen prep to kitchen lead.

She says Aguilar ordered her a uniform shirt that was 'several sizes too small so that it would be very tight-fitting', even though she had requested an extra-large shirt. The lawsuit says this was 'so it could accentuate her breasts'.

When Castaneda complained, court documents say, Aguilar asked her to try it on regardless and later asked: 'Is it because your tits are too big?'

She asked him to provide her with another shirt and he once again ordered a smaller size than what she had requested, the lawsuit says.

Aguilar and Hernandez made more comments regarding the size of her breasts and told other managers: 'Look it doesn't fit because her boobs are to big', court documents state.

Morcillo and Lee made similar comments about a previous Chipotle employee named Sabrina, calling her 'big boob Sabrina' and saying: 'Did you see Sabrina, the one with the big boobs' according to the lawsuit.

When women visited the restaurant wearing their workout clothes after a trip to the nearby gym, Aguilar would rush to the back office to look at their cleavage via overhead security cameras, Castaneda says.

Aguilar, Hernandez, Lee and Morcillo made sexual comments about female customers such as: 'Look at that ass', 'Check her out, she is f***able' and 'I'll bang that,' the lawsuit states.

Castaneda says general manager Pablo Aguilar would rush to the back office to get overhead views of female customers' cleavage when they walked in wearing workout clothes (file picture)

Hernandez would touch Castaneda's waist or back under her shirt after touching ice or another cold substance, court documents say. Castaneda says he tried to hug her forcibly, prompting her to ask: 'Can you please stop touching me' and 'This is my bubble, so please don't touch me.'

Aguilar and Hernandez also speculated on Castaneda's sex life with her husband Tim, asking her: 'You look tired, did Tim give you some last night?' and 'Were you giving your husband too much head?' after she coughed or complained about a sore throat, court documents say.

Morcillo, Hernandez and Aguilar also made fun of Castaneda for needing to urinate often as the result of a medical procedure, telling her: 'I'm gonna have to buy you diapers!' according to the lawsuit.

Castaneda also says Hernandez would yell: 'It's not my baby, is it?' whenever she rushed to the bathroom.

She fell while taking the trash out and hurt her left arm, left shoulder and lower back, court documents say. She told Aguilar, who didn't prepare an incident report according to the suit.

Castaneda says Morcillo questioned her injuries when she returned to work after one day off, asking whether she was really hurt or if she was being 'lazy' or 'bullshitting'.

Morcillo then told her off for not cutting jalapeno peppers and onions fast enough and for not helping with lifting heavy boxes, throwing out the trash and putting away supplies, court documents state.

He then took her to the office and asked her why she wasn't performing well enough, telling her that she wasn't really injured according to the suit.

Castaneda says she went home to rest and received a call from Aguilar, who told her they could discuss the situation later and that she would be suspended for the time being.

She never heard back and found out she had been terminated by checking her online Chipotle employee account, court documents say.

Castaneda says she suffered from emotional distress, mental and physical pain, loss of sleep, loss of appetite, anxiety, depression and shame as a result of the discrimination against her.

A Chipotle spokesman told NBC that the company didn't comment on pending legal action as per its policy.
A British librarian has raised more than a million pounds for a Kenyan community - after being knocked unconscious by a tree in the village then falling in love with the people who helped her.

Linda Greenland, from Bristol, has spent the last 17 years collecting cash for Timbwani near Mombasa and funded several projects including the construction of two schools for 900 children.

The 61-year-old first visited with her husband in 1997 when they decided to go there for a holiday - after nearly choosing Benidorm.

Bristol pensioner Linda Greenland is pictured in the poverty-stricken village of Timbwani near Mombasa, Kenya where she has raised over 1million to improve the community

During their stay she was sitting outside their hotel when she was hit by a falling palm branch and left unconscious.

She woke up in hospital to find that local children had left scraps of paper wishing her well - and villagers came to visit her for the next three weeks.

Ms Greenland recovered and was on the verge of going home when she contracted malaria - and spent three weeks fighting the disease.

During that time she formed such bonds with locals she decided to dedicate her life to helping the village escape poverty.

She came home and started the Maji Safi charity and, along with her husband Mike Radford, has since raised 1.2 million - building two schools and two nurseries.

Ms Greenland said: 'We never went abroad, but really needed a break. We even considered Benidorm for a while. That would have made the last 17 years a bit different.'

The couple, of Whitchurch, Bristol, ended up in the village of Timbwani, Mombasa, instead where they were struck by the levels of deprivation.

The village had a troubled past, with homes destroyed during violent clashes in 1997, and there were major problems with child prostitution and drugs.

Linda Greenland, from Bristol, has spent the last 17 years collecting cash for Timbwani near Mombasa and funded several projects including the construction of two schools for 900 children

A curious incident then kick-started the fundraising campaign.

Ms Greenland said: 'I was sitting outside the hotel on the last day of my holiday, and the wind was blowing towards me.

'But suddenly I was hit on the head by a palm branch, knocking me unconscious.

'When I came out they kept telling me God was in the tree and threw the branch just hard enough to make me stay long enough to see what was needed.'

She knew she wanted to help the children, and considered donating some books. But then she caught malaria, which made her think more about what she could do to help.

Ms Greenland said: 'I had plenty of time to think, and it made me realise that this was happening for a reason and I could help these people.

'In Kenya if you don't work you don't eat, and that kept going over and over in my mind in hospital.'

The former school librarian began raising funds with her husband back in her home and their efforts soon escalated into a fully fledged charity.

She added: 'I've never been very good at filling in forms, so we have never benefited from big organisations like Comic Relief or Sport Relief.

'We've just tried to visit the community in Kenya a couple of times each year - we always pay for our own travel costs.

The 61-year-old first visited with her husband in 1997 when they decided to go there for a holiday - after nearly choosing Benidorm. The pair are pictured in the village

'Then we would come back to Bristol and give talks to groups and churches about our experiences and how we were trying to help by building classrooms, funding teaching posts and generally working hard to try to improve the education of these kids.'

The charity has provided an education to 900 children that wouldn't have had one - and the village now has doctors, solicitors and teachers working there after being able to go to university.

But the pair fear over the charity's future as the UK is hit by recession - last year they raised only 50,000 compared with 120,000 in previous years.

She said: 'I'll be quite happy if we can stabilise our donations at 50,000.

'My big fear is that it will just keep on going down and down, and that would spell disaster for the work we do in Kenya.

'There has been a shift in recent years - a sort of "charity begins at home" mentality that wasn't there a few years ago, and that's really troubling for me. I think people have tired of Africa and their focus has shifted closer to home.

'More troubling still is that there has also been a noticeable backlash against giving money to Muslim communities in Africa - a very blinkered idea that all Muslims are potential terrorists.
A man has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for helping plot a house explosion that killed two people in 2012.

Bob Leonard, 57, received the sentence on Friday after being convicted of murder, arson and insurance fraud last month.

Prosecutors said surveillance video, witness testimony and DNA evidence proved he was involved in the plot with his half-brother and others to blow up a house in Richmond Hill, Indianapolis.

Leonard and his half-brother Mark provoked the explosion in the home of Mark's ex-girlfriend, Monserrate Shirley, hoping to collect $300,000 worth of insurance money. Shirley was also involved in the plot.

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Bob Leonard (left), 57, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday for conspiring to blow up a house with his half-brother Mark (right) and others in 2012 in Richmond Hill, Indianapolis. Mark was sentenced in August at 46 yers old and is currently serving two life sentences

Shirley's next-door neighbors, John Dion Longworth, 34, and his wife Jennifer, 36, died in a fire following the blast. More than 80 homes were destroyed or damaged.

Allen Superior Court Executive John McGauley said Leonard's life sentence came on the two murder counts.

Jurors convicted Leonard last month on all of the 51 counts he faced.

John Longworth, whose son died in the explosion, said last month Leonard's conviction was a relief but added: 'There's nothing for us to be happy about. It's all sad.'

'It closes one more piece in the tragedy. It helps with putting the nightmare behind us some,' he said.

The verdict came seven months after Leonard's half brother was convicted of being the mastermind behind the explosion on November 10, 2012. He was 46 years old at the time of his conviction and is currently serving two life sentences.

Shirley previously testified that Leonard was brought into the plot after a first attempt to burn down her house failed in October 2012.

Monserrate Shirley (pictured leaving a court hearing in January 2015), Mark's ex-girlfriend, owned the house that was blown-up and was involved in the plot. She has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit arson

Shirley's next-door neighbors, Jennifer Longworth (left), 36, and her husband John Dion, 34, died in a fire following the blast

Prosecutors said they planned to destroy the house by filling it with natural gas. A microwave apparently set to start on a timer sparked the blast.

Shirley told jurors that when she asked Leonard about the explosion that killed her next-door neighbors, he replied: 'Oh well, they died. You were in it. You talk, we talk.'

Prosecutors presented 16 days of testimony during Leonard's trial in Fort Wayne, where the proceedings were moved because of high publicity of the case in Indianapolis. The trial lasted more than a month.

Shirley, who testified against Leonard's half-brother as well, has pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. She faces 20 years to 50 years in prison when sentenced.

Her cooperation also led to charges against two alleged co-conspirators, Glenn Hults and Gary Thompson, who face a joint trial in June.

Thompson faces two counts of murder and 47 arson-related counts, while Hults faces a charge of conspiracy to commit arson.

Longworth said he was looking forward to the final trial in the case.

'They've really hurt our family,' he said. 'It's easier now to think of Dion and Jennifer, and smile sometimes because you remember something that they did. At family gatherings, we'll talk about things that they did and laugh.'

Residents described the confusion that followed the blast during Leonard's half-brother's trial in June last year.

One woman thought a vehicle had hit her house and an Army veteran said he had a flashback to Afghanistan.

Prosecutors said Leonard and his co-conspirators planned to destroy the house by filling it with natural gas. A microwave apparently set to start on a timer sparked the blast. More than 80 homes were destroyed or damaged as a result. Pictured, a house in Richmond Hills destroyed in the explosion

Shirley (center) has testified against Mark (left) and Bob Leonard (right) and faces a 20 years to 50 years in prison when sentenced. Her cooperation also led to charges against two alleged co-conspirators, Glenn Hults and Gary Thompson, who face a joint trial in June

Several people said it appeared to be snowing because of insulation falling from the sky. They all described extensive damage to homes  garage and entry doors broken, walls cracked, siding damaged and pictures knocked off walls.

'Initially just everyone on the street was in their driveways trying to figure out what had happened,' resident David Clager said.

Jurors got a glimpse of the chaos when prosecutors played a video resident Amy Clark took with her cellphone following the blast.

'It's so dark. Oh my God,' she said as she looked around. 'They can't get out. Oh my God! Look! There!' she said, as a burning home could be seen.

At the end of the brief video, Clark could be heard saying: 'What? How?'

Mark Hickson, a paramedic and firefighter with the Lawrence Fire Department who lives in Richmond Hill, spoke about rescuing a woman sitting in a chair buried up to her neck by debris in the living room of her burning house. He was able to free her and then tried to rescue the two children he was told were upstairs.

'I went upstairs but it was too hot for me to continue,' said Hickson. 'It started to burn your skin.'

Hickson said he didn't learn until the next day that the children got out safely before he arrived.

Walter Colbert said the explosion gave him a flashback to being deployed in Afghanistan when a bomb went off.

'I wasn't sure where I was,' he said before describing heading toward the explosion. 'It was eerily quiet and this big hole down where some houses used to be,' he said.

Cindy Glynn became emotional as she described how her 12-year-old son came running into her bedroom wide-eyed and frightened. She said her then-boyfriend, whom she has since married, ran down the street to see what had happened and came back saying they needed to get out 'because everything was going to blow.'
Jacquelyn Mitchard, the author who became a sensation with her novel The Deep End of the Ocean, has revealed that she has lost her multi-million dollar fortune after being ripped off by a con man.

'Everything, all the money is gone,' Mitchard says in an upcoming episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now.

The 64-year-old mother-of-nine was the first-ever selection of Oprah's Book Club after her book became an overnight bestseller in 1996, selling five million copies.

However Mitchard has sat down with Oprah to explain how she lost her entire fortune in 2009 after she mistakenly trusted a dodgy financial adviser, Trevor Gilson Cook, who defrauded more than 1,000 people out of at least $190 million.

'Everything, all the money is gone': Jacquelyn Mitchard, the author who became a sensation with her novel The Deep End of the Ocean, has revealed that she lost her multi-million dollar fortune to a shady financial adviser

Mitchard was the first author to appear on Oprah's Book Club. Now, 20 years later, she appears on Oprah: Where Are They Now, to reveal all her money is gone

Despite making millions as an author, Mitchard says she lost everything and eventually ended up applying for food stamps in order to feed her family.

Mitchard said that Cook emptied the account of her and her husband, Christopher Brent Sornberger.

Con man: Trevor Gilson Cook defrauded more than 1,000 people out of at least $190 million

As a result, the couple lost their home and the college fund they had saved for their nine children.

'Christmas came from Craigslist; Goodwill became our Macy's,' she wrote in 2011.

Mitchard now resides in Brewster, Massachusetts.

Cook pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of tax evasion for orchestrating a major Ponzi scheme, in which he placed client money into a Swiss brokerage firm called Crown Forex SA, even after he learned that the firm was careening toward bankruptcy, The Star Tribune reported.

In a plea agreement, Cook admitted that from January 2007 through July 2009 he defrauded at least 1,000 people by promising double-digit annual returns with no risk as part of a currency investment program.

Cook told clients that the deal relied on Islamic banks to forgo interest and ran his business out of the historic Van Dusen mansion in Minneapolis, drawing people in from all over the U.S.

In reality, however, he was using the money for his own purposes, including making payments to previous investors, paying off his gambling debts and buying property.

Part of that was spending about $13 million on land in Panama for a condominium tower and a hotel-casino project.

Office: Cook used the money he pilfered to buy the historic Van Dusen mansion in Minneapolis, which he used as an office to run his scheme out of

Upon his arrest, Cook had $35 million in frozen assets, including $27 million in offshore accounts, a BMW and two Lexus automobiles, a collection of expensive watches, a collection of Faberge eggs, and $670,000 in cash.

Whereas his many dubious clients, such as Mitchard, were penniless.

One of his clients was a 98-year-old blind woman, who Cook robbed of $40,000.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010. Cook is imprisoned at the federal correctional facility in Sandstone, Minnesota, and is scheduled for release in 2032.

As of August 2014, $8.1 million had been recovered and distributed to Cook's victims.

Oprah sits down with the Mitchard to discuss what happened to her, how it kept her from writing, and the ins and outs of her new book.

The episode with air at 10 p.m. on Saturday on OWN.

Jacquelyn Mitchard gives Two if by Sea Barnes & Noble book signing event located in New York City

Family time: Mitchard has nine children that she cherishes. Her five older children are with her first husband, who passed away. Mitchard later remarried and welcomed four more children

The Deep End of the Ocean broke records upon its release in June 1996.

The story is about a mother who struggles to cope with the unsolved kidnapping of her young son.

The woman is further torn apart when, years after the disappearance, the boy shows up at her doorstep, offering to mow her lawn.

Mitchard sold the rights to the book to be adapted to film, which was released in 1999 and starred Michelle Pfeiffer.

Following its overwhelming success, Mitchard revealed that the story of The Deep End of the Ocean actually came to her in a dream.

Her husband of 13 years had died and she was raising their five children by herself.

A newspaper columnist, she had published two non-fiction works before that, but had never tried her hand at fiction.

The Deep End of the Ocean was a surprise hit upon its release in 1996, and went on to be made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer in 1999

'She said was that it was one of the books in her life that was transformative': Oprah chose Mitchard's novel as the first for her now-exclusive and hugely influential book club

'I had a dream that was a story, and I wasn't a part of the story,' she told CNN in 1999.

'And it was the first time in my life I had ever had a dream that was such a complete narrative I wasn't a part of. And it just wouldn't leave me alone. And so when I was looking for something to take a huge risk on, after I was widowed five years ago, that was what I chose.'

Without much money or time, Mitchard went to an artist's colony and wrote the first 70 pages of the novel.

She then sent it to her agent and requested a $10,000 advance in order to finish the book.

However the agent recognized enormous potential in the book, and granted Mitchard an advance of $500,000.

The novel then became incredible popular - a rare feat for a first novel - which was only bolstered when Oprah came calling.

Jacquelyn Mitchard gives Two if by Sea Barnes & Noble book signing event located in New York City

'What she said was that it was one of the books in her life that was transformative for her, that made her understand family bonds, and the way that family bonds suffer and are remade in tragedy -better than 10 years of doing a talk show had helped her understand that. That's what she said,' Mitchard explained of Winfrey.

Mitchard has penned other books since, and has just released a new novel, Two If By Sea.

'This is a story about a man who finds a little boy, rescues him from a flood - and this man has lost everything he has ever believed in - and through raising this little kid, and starting to see that he is extraordinary and an ability to do something that is impossible, he recovers his own life, and his own belief in the powers of the universe,' she told Oprah.
A woman who fled Zimbabwe after her brother was killed by Robert Mugabe's brutal regime has been told she must leave the UK as she does not know enough about England and its language.

Yvonne Karusseit and her husband, Clive, abandoned their home in the troubled African country after growing increasingly fearful for their lives following the murder of Terry Ford.

Their father was British, their schooling was British and their relatives fought for Britain in the Boer War and Second World War, and they have now lived in England for five years.

Refused: Yvonne Karusseit and her husband, Clive, abandoned their home in the troubled African country after growing increasingly fearful for their lives following the murder of Terry Ford

Murdered: Yvonne's brother Terry Ford was a white farmer who had tended his land all his life, but after Mugabe's sister decided she wanted it. When he refused to hand over his home and livelihood, he was beaten and hacked before being shot in the head

Tragedy: The death of Terry in March 2002 made headlines across the world. A photograph showing his lifeless body with his loyal dog, Squeak, curled up against his body was flashed around the globe

Immigration bosses say they have taken the decision because the pair haven't given proof they are proficient in English and don't have sufficient knowledge of life in Britain.

Now they face the prospect of leaving their home and Yvonne's elderly mother to face an uncertain future in Zimbabwe.

Yvonne's brother Terry Ford was a white farmer who had tended his land all his life, but after Mugabe's sister decided she wanted it.

When he refused to hand over his home and livelihood, he was beaten and hacked before being shot in the head.

The death of Terry in March 2002 made headlines across the world. A photograph showing his lifeless body with his loyal dog, Squeak, curled up against his body was flashed around the globe.

The Karusseits fled to the UK with Yvonne's elderly mother Eileen Ford, believing they could face a similar fate.

Uncertainty: Yvonne (left) is a carer for her elderly mother Eileen (right) but he couple now face the prospect of leaving their home to face an uncertain future in Zimbabwe

Under threat: The couple from Melbourne, Derbyshire, do not know when they will be deported to Zimbabwe, where they have a genuine fear for their lives

Former bank fraud investigator Yvonne, 59, said: 'Terry stayed in Zimbabwe believing that Mugabe would never take the farms.

'My parents had been living with us in South Africa for many years as their pensions and Medical Aid had been stopped.

The fact that we grew up in Rhodesia and were brought up in the British way under British rule for many years means nothing Yvonne Karusseit

'My father, who is British, suffered a number of strokes after Terry's murder. We were finally able to get him back to the UK in November 2010. I have an ancestral visa, my husband has a spousal visa.

'My elderly mother, who I have been caring for many years, has been granted indefinite leave to remain.

'But yesterday my husband and I were informed that our applications for indefinite leave to remain in the UK had been declined as we had erroneously omitted taking an English test.

'We cannot appeal this decision. My elderly mother has dementia and other debilitating medical problems. With her dementia, she relies on me to do most things for her. There will be no family to take care of her if we are deported.

'The fact that we grew up in Rhodesia and were brought up in the British way under British rule for many years means nothing.

Help: Clive has also been told he is no longer allowed to work and they are not entitled to benefits so a friend has set up a fundraising page and a petition is calling for the decision to be overturned

'Now our only hope is to appeal to Theresa May to assist us in this matter. We have supported ourselves since arriving in the UK.'

The couple from Melbourne, Derbyshire, do not know when they will be deported to Zimbabwe, where they have a genuine fear for their lives.

And Clive, who is the sole breadwinner, has been told he is not allowed to work and they are not entitled to claim anything.

Their friend Anita Reilander has set up a fundraising page to help them make ends meet and a petition has been started to call for the decision to be overturned.

She said 'They have no idea how they are going to manage and survive.

'We are just lost for words and just cannot believe that people who have a right to live in the UK are being treated like this, absolutely appalling and disgusting.
Bernie Sanders says it would be 'absurd' to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination when so many large states are yet to vote.

'To suggest that we do not fight this out until the end, would be I think a very bad mistake,' Sanders told MSNBC.

Hailing the number of young people who have voted for him, Sanders said, they are the 'future of America, that is the future of the Democratic Party.' And by having a 'vigorous' primary season, he told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, it 'opens up the possibility of high voter turnout in November.'

Sanders sidestepped a news report detailing a private conversation President Barack Obama had with donors last Friday about the state of the race and the likelihood that Hillary Clinton will be the party's nominee.

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Bernie Sanders - seen above at a town hall event yesterday in Arizona - says it would be 'absurd' to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination when so many large states are yet to vote

Hailing the number of young people who have voted for him, Sanders said, they are the 'future of America, that is the future of the Democratic Party.' And by having a 'vigorous' primary season, he told MSNBC, it 'opens up the possibility of high voter turnout in November'

Obama more or less told donors that Sanders' time is nearly up in the presidential primary, and they'll soon have to line up behind Clinton.

Clinton struggles with 'authenticity', Obama reportedly said at the Austin, Texas, fundraising event but told donors that is not all-important to winning.

And while he did not explicitly call on Sanders to get out of the race, the president is said to have suggested that his continued candidacy could help Republicans.

The New York Times first reported the comments, backed up by three independent sources and a White House official who said they were true.

The president's spokesman denied yesterday that Obama endorsed Clinton. That's not what he said, Josh Earnest told reporters.

The senior administration official was unable to directly deny the story or tell the press exactly what Obama did say, though.

Earnest said he was in the the room when Obama delivered those remarks at an event the media was invited to join at the beginning, then escorted out of before the portion in dispute.

'President Obama made a case that would be familiar to all of you, which is that as Democrats move through this competitive primary process, we need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic president will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee and the president did not indicate or specify a preference in the race,' Earnest said.

President Barack Obama more or less told Democratic donors last Friday that Bernie Sanders' time is nearly up in the presidential primary, and they'll soon need to line up behind Hillary Clinton

Continuing, the White House official said, 'The president pointed out...that both of the Democrats who are running, because they have demonstrated an understanding and a commitment to building on the progress we've made thus far, would be far better presidents than anybody that's been put up on the Republican side.'

That is consistent with the case Obama has made publicly, Earnest stated.

And while Obama does have a preferred replacement - the president's cast a ballot in the Illinois Democratic primary this year - 'he has not indicated that preference.'

As the president has said before, he believes 'he will have an important responsibility in the summer and the fall once the nomination process has concluded in bringing the party together' after the 'vigorous debate' between its Oval Office contenders concludes.

'Which by the way, the president believes is really good for the party,' he said, as it will help the eventual nominee to sharpen his or her skills exercise the organizational 'muscle' of the Democratic Party.

He added, 'But once this process comes to a conclusion, everybody in the Democratic Party will understand the stakes....and given those stakes will need to unify behind the Democratic Party nominee to ensure that he or she can win in November.'

According to the New York Times' sources, Obama acknowledged that Clinton doesn't get people 'excited' like Sanders does. The White House admitted to the Times that Obama indeed said that.

The president also suggested he prefers Clinton, speaking highly of her, and said that while George W. Bush, a Texas native and his predecessor, had authenticity, he wasn't a very good president.

His spokesman wouldn't say yesterday during his regular briefing with reporters if that part of the article was true - that the president derided his former secretary of state's authenticity.

'I'm not gonna get into the president's private comments. I recognize there's some people who talk about those private comments,' he said. 'I'm not gonna do that from here.'

Clinton struggles with 'authenticity', Obama reportedly said at an Austin, Texas, fundraising event but told donors that is not all-important to winning. And while he did not say Sanders should get out of the race, the president is said to have suggested that his continued candidacy could help Republicans

Maddow tried to get a reaction to the president's comments out of Sanders during their interview later in the day, but he said, 'I don't want to speculate on what he said or what he didn't said.'

The U.S. senator noted the push back from White House, 'kind of indicating that he didn't say' exactly what was reported and moved on.

'The bottom line is that when only half of the American people have participated in the political process....I think it is absurd for anybody to suggest that those people not have a right to cast a vote,' he said.

Less than half of the pledged delegates in the Democratic race have been won, and the Sanders campaign said Wednesday that it still believes it can beat Clinton though it trails her significantly at present.

The senator will pick up speed as states along the West Coast vote, his advisers insisted.

Clinton has a lead of more than 300 pledged delegates, and she claims to have the support of 467 superdelegates that don't have to make a choice until the convention and could still change their mind and vote for Sanders.

Her campaign says their pledged delegate lead alone is nearly 'insurmountable' and soon she'll have the nomination locked down.

Sanders told MSNBC that with a low voter turnout in November 'somebody like a Trump can win.'

'High voter turnout, the Democratic candidate will win,' he said.' I think we have the issues, I think the American people are prepared to vote strongly against Trump, but we need to have a 50-state process...in which the American people can participate.'

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow tried to get a reaction to the president's comments out of Sanders during their interview later in the day, but he said, 'I don't want to speculate on what he said or what he didn't said'

The White House made a similar argument yesterday as it addressed the Times-generated, drop-out controversy.

'The president has noted that Senator Sanders deserves a lot of credit for the passion that he has inspired among Democrats all across the country,' Earnest said. 'Senator Sanders is talking about deeply held views and doing it in a way that deeply resonates with people.'

He said, 'That's a testament to his skills as a leader and as a politician and as somebody whose got his values in the right place.'

At the same time, Earnest said, 'The president's also talked about Secretary Clinton and her leadership abilities and the way that she has drawn her own passionate following the historic nature of her candidacy certainly has something to do with it.

'But so does he track record of fighting for the kinds of values and advancing the kinds of values that Democrats have long championed.'

As a general matter, his spokesman said, 'That's why the president feels especially fortunate to be in a party that can actually be proud of its presidential candidate.'

The not-so-subtle dig was directed at Republicans who have apologized for and distanced themselves from Donald Trump at one time or another.

'We find that Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. spend a lot of time doing that. And the truth is, they haven't done it enough,' Earnest said.

Directing the scrutiny toward Republicans and away from the president, the White House official said that even when GOP leaders do admit to disagreeing with Trump, 'They continue to insist they will support him.
Incredible images show one of the prime suspects behind the Paris terror attacks being wrestled to the ground by armed police following a raid on his Belgian hideout.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, was among the ISIS terror cell that massacred 130 at a rock concert, a football stadium and several cafes in November.

After evading French and Belgian authorities for four months, he was today arrested during a siege on his bolthole in the run down Molenbeek district of Brussels.

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Further footage showed Abdeslam (pictured, in a white hoodie) being dragged away from the scene by armed police officers

Separate footage showed Abdeslam (highlighted) trying to flee his hideout past dozens of armed police officers who shot and detained him

Gun shots and explosions were heard while white smoke was seen in the area as police moved in on Abdeslam, who had been on the run for 126 days

TV cameras captured a series of explosions (pictured) in the Molenbeek neighbourhood where Abdeslam was captured, after he had already been taken away

Footage showed Abdeslam, dressed in a white hooded sweatshirt, trying to run past dozens of police officers before he was shot in the leg.

He was one of five suspects, including three that helped hide him from the police, to be arrested today, a French prosecutor has confirmed. He said numerous weapons and ammunition were discovered inside the besieged building.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel hailed the arrests as a 'success in the fight against terrorism' but serious questions will be asked as to how Abdeslam evaded the authorities for so long.

He managed to evade capture for 126 days due to a series of blunders by the police, who have repeatedly raided the Brussels suburbs where he grew up.

Officers pulled him over on the night of the attacks on November 13, but released him because he was yet to be identified as a suspect.

Just 48 hours later, Belgian police failed to raid a house he was thought to be hiding because of a law prohibiting night time searches.

And on Tuesday, he escaped through a skylight as police stormed a flat in the Forest neighbourhood in Brussels where his fingerprints were later discovered.

Salah Abdeslam (left), one of the most wanted men in Europe, has been wounded and caught by police (right, an officer at the scene of the raid)

Abdeslam was one of five suspects, including three that helped hide him from the police, to be arrested today

Abdeslam managed to evade capture for 126 days due to a series of blunders by the police (pictured in Molenbeek today)

Police stand guard near a scene of a police operation in the Molenbeek after five suspects were arrested

Belgian police outside of Saint-Pierre hospital where Belgium media report fugitive terror suspect Salah Abdeslam could be kept by police

French President Francois Hollande (right, with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel) confirmed that Abdeslam and two other suspects, described as his accomplices, were arrested today

Michel held a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande who stressed the battle against extremism in western Europe is far from over.

We have to go on with our efforts because we are aware there are still connections that lead us to Syria, where the Daesh [ISIS] group wanted these attacks [in Paris] to be organised French President Francois Hollande

He said: 'It is not the final conclusion of this story because there have been arrests already and there will have to be more.

'We know the terrorists' network was widespread in Belgium, France, and other countries in Europe, too.

'Until we have arrested all of those who took part, organised and financed the network that carried out the abominable attacks in Paris, our fight will not be over.

'We have to go on with our efforts because we are aware there are still connections that lead us to Syria, where the Daesh [ISIS] group wanted these attacks to be organised.

'It is from Syria that a number of these actors of this atrocity [Paris attacks] started.'

Hollande confirmed he has asked for Belgium to extradite Abdeslam to his country, adding: I'm certain of the extradition procedures and I believe he [Abdeslam] should be interrogated and punished in France.'

Belgian security forces seal off an area during an anti-terror operation in the Molenbeek neighborhood tonight

Locals appear to be gesturing angrily at the police who sealed off a Molenbeek neighbourhood where Abdeslam was arrested

After the arrest, French President Francois Hollande stressed the battle against extremism in western Europe is far from over (pictured, police with dogs at the scene)

'We got him,' France's minister for asylum and migration Theo Francken triumphantly announced as a video of Abdeslam being dragged away by police emerged.

Police with riot shields cordoned off the area where Abdeslam was arrested and began evacuating locals earlier tonight. They are thought to have continued their operation following his capture.

TV cameras filmed a series of explosions and the sound of fresh gunfire in the area at around 6.20pm, more than two hours after the arrest, as police continued to search for suspects after Abdeslam war arrested.

After escaping another besieged flat on Tuesday, he was tracked to a home in Molenbeek this afternoon. Special forces are understood to have been monitoring the house for at least 48 hours.

It is understood grenades were used in the operation, which unfolded at about 4.30pm.

Gun shots and explosions were heard while white smoke was seen in the area as police moved in on Abdeslam, who had been on the run for 126 days.

Emergency services were quick to arrive at the scene which was shut down by officers wearing heavy riot gear.

Gun shots and explosions were heard while white smoke was seen in the area as police moved in on Abdeslam (officers at the scene during the operation)

The police operation in the run down Brussels suburb of Molenbeek continued after Abdeslam's arrest

Policemen and dogs block a road near the scene of a police raid in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels,

TV cameras filmed a series of explosions and the sound of fresh gunfire in the area at around 6.20pm

Police are continuing to search a nearby area for a third suspect who may have been wounded in today's raid

Abdeslam was wounded, and then retreated into a house in Molenbeek with two men. At least one of the other men is wounded, and one may be dead, said the source.

He and another wounded suspect were taken to the citys Saint Pierre Hospital which was last night sealed off behind a security perimeter.

A lawyer for the families of those who lost their lives in the Paris massacre have demanded that he is extradited to France immediately.

Mr Michel was seen rushing out of a European Council summit in Brussels as news of the raid broke.

EU leaders are meeting in the Belgian capital, just five miles from where the anti-terror operation was taking place in Molenbeek.

Francois Hollande, who is in Brussels for the EU summit, confirmed that today's police operation was linked to last November's attacks on Paris.

Despite Abdeslam's arrest, the police operation was continuing this evening and the army is on the scene, which is near two schools.

Masked policemen began evacuating locals after the siege on the extremist hideout in Molenbeek

Special operations police evacuate people from an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek

Locals in Molenbeek were led away from the scene of the siege as an operation to find a third suspect went on into the evening

Police officers guard an entrance of a school during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels

Salah Abdeslam was shot in the leg by police commandos and has been arrested in the district of Molenbeek (pictured) in the Belgian capital

Two men are still believed to be holed up in a building in the area and drones are being used as part of the police operation.

Fire engines and ambulances were seen driving into the gated complex, which remains under armed police guard, and a helicopter hovered overhead.

In addition to Abdeslam, the whereabouts of two Paris attack suspects remains unknown, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

The building is owned by the local municipality. The flat where he was arrested is believed to have been rented by the same person since 2009, according to RTBF.

Criminal lawyer Sven Mary is said to have accepted the role of defending Abdeslam.

He was contacted on Abdeslam's behalf as early as January this year, asking whether he would be willing to defend the terror suspect, it has been reported.

It came after the Belgian lawyer told daily newspaper Le Soir in late December: 'If Salah Abdeslam begged me tomorrow, I would accept the role of being his lawyer.'

Two men are still believed to be holed up in a building in the area and drones are being used as part of the police operation (pictured, police at the scene)

Belgian policemen stand guard in a street during a police action in the Molenbeek district of Brussels

Abdeslam's fingerprints were found at the scene of another police raid on a Brussels flat on Tuesday (pictured, police and emergency services at the siege today)

Emergency services were quick to arrive at the scene, which was shut down by officers wearing heavy riot gear

But the lawyer denied claims that he has already discussed the possibility with Abdeslam himself.

'I have been in contact with someone from his immediate surroundings,' the lawyer said, reported Belgian news site Standaard.

'I want to speak directly with Abdeslam. You must have some sort of contact with the ones you defend, there should be a mutual trust.'

This afternoon, the White House revealed that the US had been helping French and Belgian authorities to boost security since November's Paris attacks, and that this would continue.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House used its 'significant resources and significant capabilities' to assist the French and the Belgians.

He added: 'They have taken steps to try to safeguard their country. We're going to continue to stay in close touch with them on this.'

Salah's brother Brahim, who blew himself p in the November Paris attacks, was buried on Thursday in a Brussels cemetery.

A third man is thought to be holed up in a building in the area and drones are being used as part of the police operation

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium

Salah's brother Brahim, who died in the November Paris attacks which left 130 people dead, was buried Thursday in a Brussels cemetery

Referring to the police operation earlier this week, in which one Islamic gunman was shot dead by a police sniper, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF had said this morning: 'According to our information, it is more than likely that he is one of the two individuals who escaped during the shootout.'

It was not the first time Abdeslam had evaded police.

It is believed he stayed in Schaerbeek, Belgium, for some weeks following the attacks in the French capital before being tracked down by police today.

Eric Van der Sypt said the fugitive may have been at the property for 'days, weeks or months'.

Surveillance footage at a petrol station showed him returning by car to Belgium a day after the Paris attacks.

He also avoided capture when French police checked his papers shortly before he was listed as wanted. Authorities had been searching for him ever since.

Abdeslam was thought to have been the logistic coordinator who rented cars and equipped the gunmen and suicide bombers who targeted bars, restaurants and a music hall in Paris and may have taken part himself.

Police operation: The raid happened at this building which is close to two schools in Molenbeek, Brussels

Police secure an area during a police raid. Despite Abdeslam's arrest, the police operation was continuing this evening and the army is on the scene

Last month a source close to the French inquiry said no DNA from Abdeslam had been found on a suicide belt discovered in the French capital.

The explosive belt was found in a dustbin in the southern Parisian suburb of Montrouge on November 23.

Telephone data placed Abdeslam in the same area just after the attacks - but the lack of DNA on the belt suggested that he had not worn it.

Since mid-November, 11 people have been arrested and charged in Belgium in connection with the killings, with eight remaining in custody.

Meanwhile, it was revealed today that an Algerian killed during the anti-terror raid in Brussels earlier this week is on a list of ISIS fighters leaked last week.

The 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium, had volunteered to commit a suicide bomb attack, according to the Dutch speaking TV channel VRT.

Belgium's federal prosecutor declined to comment on the report.

Salah Abdeslam was shot in the leg by police commandos and has been captured alive in the district of Molenbeek in the Belgian capital

Raid: Abdeslam has now been wounded and captured in a fresh raid conducted by police this afternoon

Gun shots and explosions were heard while white smoke was seen in the area as police moved in on Abdeslam, who had been on the run for 126 days

Sky News last week claimed to have obtained documents containing the names of 22,000 members of ISIS.

According to the VRT report, Belkaid fought in Syria from April 19, 2014 alongside the ISIS jihadists. He went by the nom de guerre Abou Abdel Aziz al-Jazayri (the Algerian).

After his return from Syria, he is believed to have passed through Sweden, the TV channel added.

Belkaid was killed by a police sniper while trying to shoot at police during a chaotic gun battle on Tuesday in the quiet Forest district in southern Brussels.

Next to his body were found an IS flag, a Kalashnikov and a book on Salafism, an extreme form of Islam, investigators said.

Belkaid had been unknown to Belgian authorities except for a case of minor theft in 2014, authorities said.

How Salah Abdeslam became the world's most wanted man after Paris massacre - but escaped the clutches of police three times

Salah Abdeslam became the world's most wanted man after the Paris attacks in November last year.

The 26-year-old is a Belgian-born Morocco-Frenchman and grew up in the Belgian town of Molenbeek.

He worked for two years as a railway mechanic and in the family business including at a bar set up by his brother Brahim.

Salah Abdeslam and suspected accomplice, Hamza Attou, are seen at a petrol station on a motorway between Paris and Brussels, in Trith-Saint-Leger, France on November 14, 2015

Abeslam was reportedly childhood friends with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man dubbed as the 'Belgian' mastermind of the Paris attacks.

The pair spent time in jail for armed robbery and it is there that it is believed they became radicalised.

When his brother Brahim tried to travel to Syria, he was stopped and Abdeslam was questioned by police.

Belgian prosecutors later admitted they knew he had been radicalised but didn't flag them up as a security threat to France.

For his part in the attacks on Paris, which killed 130, Abdeslam is thought to have rented the cars, the attackers used to drive to the various locations to gun people down.

The November 13 attacks in Paris saw ISIS jihadists kill 130 people and injure 352 in a series of shootings and bombings in the French capital

Gunmen massacred 90 people when they opened fire in the Bataclan music theatre in Paris during a packed out concert

He was described as being the logistics manager and also organised hotels, flats and ammunition.

On the night if the attacks, he was caught on CCTV outside a cafe that was targeted.

His brother Brahim blew himself up outside the Comptoir Voltaire brasserie in the 11th arrondissement

Later, officers pulled over Abdelsam on Saturday morning on the A2 motorway between Paris and Brussels but checked his ID and let him go.

He was travelling with two other people, just hours after he abandoned a car containing three Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles on the outskirts of the French capital.

Salah Abdeslam became the world's most wanted man after the Paris attacks in November last year

Detectives soon realised their blunder when they discovered that Abdeslam had rented VW Polo abandoned near the scene of the massacre inside the Bataclan theatre.

However, by the time they alerted Belgian authorities the terror suspect had abandoned the car in Molenbeek, Brussels, an area known as the 'jihadi capital of Europe' and disappeared.

An international manhunt was launched.

In the days after the attacks, Belgian security forces staged several raids in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, where he lived, which has served as a haven for several jihadists in recent decades.

But there was no sign of him and he remained on the run for over four months.

It is believed he stayed in Schaerbeek, Belgium, for some weeks following the attacks in the French capital before being tracked down by police today

Eric Van der Sypt said the fugitive may have been at the property for 'days, weeks or months'.

Surveillance footage at a petrol station showed him returning by car to Belgium a day after the Paris attacks.
Full interview with De Castillo airs at 10pm Friday on ABC as part of 20/20 investigation

Mexican soap opera star Kate Del Castillo says she had sought a meeting with fugitive drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman hoping to make a movie about his life with Sean Penn, and she is still angry at the American actor over his role in the bizarre jungle escapade.

Del Castillo, 43, also suggested that El Chapo may have initially agreed to see her one-on-one while on the run from Mexican authorities because he had a crush on her.

The striking small-screen star made the revelations in an interview with Diane Sawyer featured in the latest installment of ABC's 20/20 investigation, airing Friday night at 10pm ET.

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Telling all: Kate Del Castillo sat down with Diane Sawyer to talk about her adventure in the Mexican jungle with Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and Sean Penn last fall

Bad romance: Del Castillo, who lives in Los Angeles, hinted to Sawyer that El Chapo may have had a crush on her

Del Castillo, best known for her role as the fictional drug trafficker Teresa Mendoza in the drama series 'Queen of the South,' tells Sawyer she is still 'a little bit angry' at Sean Penn for failing to follow through on their plan to make a film about the life of El Chapo.

'I think he was never interested in the movie,' she says in the interview.

Del Castillo, who lives in Los Angeles, and the award-winning Hollywood heavyweight secretly traveled to the Mexican jungle last October to meet with the notorious drug kingpin after his dramatic escape from a maximum-security prison.

Following the clandestine encounter, Penn published a 10,000-word article in Rolling Stone magazine, which was widely panned by critics, and even by the author himself who told CBS his piece had missed its mark.

De Castillo has previously asserted, most recently in a New Yorker article printed earlier this month, that she only became aware of Penn's intention to write a story about El Chapo when the actor mentioned it during their meeting with the kingpin.

On his part, the actor and director insisted that Del Castillo had known about his plan from the outset - a claim she dismissed as 'total and complete bulls***.'

'I'm hurt, but I'm angry at myself because I believe in people, and i didn't know Sean Penn,' Del Castillo tells Sawyer in the new 20/20 interview.

Speed fiend: Del Castillo, who races cars for charity, tells Sawyer in the interview, 'I like risk'

Moment of truth: The 43-year-old screen siren talked about the moment she confronted El Chapo about victims of drug violence, all the while knowing he could have her killed

Strange bedfellows: The meeting in the jungle in October came about three years after the start of an unlikely friendship between Kate Del Castillo (left) and the convicted drug lord (right) following a boozy tweet

Del Castillo said she is angry with actor Sean Penn, pictured shaking hands with El Chapo, for allegedly failing to tell her that his goal was to write an article about the druglord, not to make a film about his life

The meeting in the jungle came about three years after the start of an unlikely friendship between Kate Del Castillo and the convicted drug lord following a boozy tweet she sent back in 2012.

In the message, she told Guzman: 'Wouldn't it be cool if you started trafficking with the good? Come on senor, you would be the hero of heroes. Let's traffic with love.'

The tweet caught Guzman's attention, and the druglord had an attorney reach out to her to request a meeting, offering her the rights to his life story and eventually agreeing to meet with her face-to-face.

I like risk, Del Castillo, who races cars for charity, tells Sawyer in the interview while mounting a Ducati bike. I like to dare.

When asked about the source of this strange bond between herself and one of the most dangerous men in the world, Del Castillo reluctantly admitted that El Chapo may have had an infatuation for her.

'I don't think it was necessarily me, Kate Del Castillo. He was probably... had a crush on [TV character] Teresa Mendoza. We'll have to ask him. Maybe [he was] an admirer? I don't know. OK, maybe yes.

He said, she said: The actor and director (pictured with Kate in this Instagram image) insisted that Del Castillo had known about his plan from the outset - a claim she dismissed as 'total and complete bulls***'

The 43-year-old actress also describes the moment she mustered the courage to talk to El Chapo about acknowledging the victims of drug violence, all the while thinking she might be signing her own death warrant.

My heart started pounding, she recalls in the interview. I actually got the guts to tell him, I said, this is now or never, and if I don't say it right now, I might not have another opportunity, and if I say it, this might be my last words.

I said, Amigo, while we were walking, Amigo, just don't forget what I said on my tweet originally. You're a powerful man. You can do something good.

I was literally dying inside, and I thought if he gets mad. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I thought I was gonna faint.

Guzman, known as the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was captured on January 8 after a nearly six-month manhunt following his escape last July from a maximum security prison through a tunnel built under his cell. It was his second such escape from a penitentiary.

Mexican authorities have said they were investigating whether Guzman gave money to Del Castillo's tequila company. Officials have also sought to interrogate the actress, although they have said they consider her a witness not a suspect.

In an article published in the Mexican weekly news magazine Proceso on Sunday, Del Castillo denied that the capo had given money to her to make a movie about him, or to her company.

'I have never received money from Mr. Guzman,' she said.
All the adults in the child's household were tested for STDs and Wilson was the only one to come back positive for all three

The baby was tested for the diseases after a growth was discovered on her

David Wilson (pictured), 34, of Houston, Texas, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a 23-month-old toddler and infected them both with HIV, herpes and chlamydia

A registered sex offender was sentenced to life in prison for raping and infecting a 14-year-old girl and a 23-month-old toddler with HIV, chlamydia and herpes.

David Wilson, 34, of Houston, Texas, was found guilty of the teen girl's rape on Thursday.

Wilson claims he was 'in love' with the girl and still is.

The child told investigators she knew Wilson through a family member and they had sex multiple times.

She tested positive for HIV and herpes and she was pregnant with Wilson's baby.

In a court affidavit, she said that she and Wilson 'would park on a cul-de-sac near her school and have sex in his car. The last time, they had unprotected sex'.

Wilson was unapologetic about their relationship.

'I have never denied about us having a relationship.

'I am not sorry we were together, no, I am sorry the HIV came into the situation,' Wilson said in court.

During the trial, investigators brought up the other victim, a 23-month-old baby, who was living at Wilson's residence at the time.

It was discovered the infant was assaulted after doctors found a growth on her genitals and tested her for the STDs.

Doctors concluded the only way the toddler could have become infected was through sexual assault.

The four adults in the household were tested for the diseases - Wilson was the only one to come up positive for all three.

Wilson said he was 'in love' with the 14-year-old and still is. The girl said she was pregnant with his baby and that they had sex multiple times

Doctors performed reconstructive surgery on the toddler because of damage from infection.

Wilson said he also had intimate relations with several unidentified women, who may also be at risk.

He also had access to other juveniles.

Wilson was employed by fast food establishments in the Houston area

He was sent to prison for sexually assaulting another teenager in Harris County, Texas, in 2005 and was released in 2009.
A teenage blogger known online as Vampchick has pleaded guilty to stabbing her mother and shooting her stepfather in March last year.

Ashlee Martinson, 18, of Piehl, Wisconsin, previously argued insanity but has revised her plea in the death of her mother Jennifer Ayers, 40, and her mother's husband Thomas Ayers, 37.

The blogger, who was 17 at the time of the killings, is now pleading guilty to second-degree homicide.

The State of Wisconsin found they were caused 'under the influence of adequate provocation' as Martinson said her stepfather had abused her mentally and verbally, and was physically violent towards Martinson's mother and younger siblings, People wrote.

Ashlee Martinson (pictured in court last week), 18, has pleaded guilty in the killings of her mother Jennifer Ayers, 40, and her stepfather Thomas Ayers, 37, in March last year

Martinson said her stepfather Thomas Ayer (left) had abused her mother Jennifer (right) and her younger siblings, and that he subjected her to mental and verbal abuse

Experts who interviewed Martinson after the slayings found she had post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after several of her mother's previous boyfriends abused her physically and verbally.

One of them burnt her with a cigarette, beat her and raped her when she was nine years old, the new court filings say.

Martinson said she witnessed Ayers physically abuse her mother and her siblings, two stepsisters and a half-sister aged nine, eight and two at the time of the killings.

Ayers would push, smack and choke Martinson's mother and hold a gun to her head if he was displeased, the new court records state.

Martinson said she often heard her mother 'screaming and begging for her life'. She went to live with her father in 2013 but moved back with Ayers and her mother after her father slapped, shoved and kicked her on several occasions according to the documents.

Her father doesn't speak to her anymore and doesn't intend to get involved in the case, the records state.

Two of Martinson's siblings told officers Ayers would hit them with a belt so hard it almost caused blisters on their buttocks.

The blogger, pictured in a Facebook short, went by the name Vampchick online and wrote poetry that talked about killing people with knives

Ayers (pictured) had a criminal record with a history of domestic battery, assault, menacing and kidnapping. Martinson said he sometimes killed baby animals in front of her and her siblings

Martinson turned to her mother for comfort (pictured) after shooting her stepfather, but the mother tried to help her husband instead and, according to court documents, grabbed a knife and 'approached' her daughter. The teenager stabbed her more than 30 times

They said he once choked one of the family's dogs and threw it against a wall before shooting it and feeding it to a bear, People reported. Martinson said Ayers sometimes killed baby animals in front of her and her siblings, telling them to watch the reaction of the animals' parents.

Two of the younger children told police their mother sometimes hit them with a belt as well. One of them said she took care of her younger sister, regularly feeding her, bathing her and changing her diapers, as her mother didn't do it.

Martinson said Ayers, who had a criminal record with a history of domestic battery, assault, menacing and kidnapping, didn't abuse her physically or sexually.

But she said he had her under strict house rules that amounted to mental and verbal abuse, People reported.

Martinson says Ayers made her get up at 4am during the week and at 6am on weekends and gave her a list of chores, confiscated the money she earned at her job and only allowed her to go out once a week.

According to court records, he called her an 'ignorant b***h* and said she would 'fail in life and amount to nothing' a few days before the killings.

Ayers, a hunter, kept an arsenal of easily accessible guns and ammunition even though he was legally prohibited from possessing them, police said.

Martinson (left) locked her three younger siblings in a room when she shot her stepfather and stabbed her mother. She was later arrested after driving to Indiana with her boyfriend Ryan Sisco, 22 (right)

The State of Wisconsin found that Martinson, pictured made a previous plea via video link from jail with her lawyer, killed her stepfather and mother 'under the influence of adequate provocation'

Two days before killing Ayers and her mother, Martinson sent a Facebook message to her boyfriend Ryan Sisco, who was then 22, saying: 'I woke up this morning to my step dad beating my mom... I can't take [it] anymore, he's gonna kill her if she doesn't leave soon and I dont want to be around w[h]en that happens,' the court records state.

She added: 'I want to kill him so [expletive] bad, just take one of his guns and blow his [expletive] brains out.'

On the day of the killings, Martinson got into an argument with Ayers and her mother, who told her she wasn't allowed to communicate with Sisco anymore and confiscated her phone and her keys, according to the records.

Martinson left the house but said Ayers came to fetch her in his truck.

She took one of Ayers's loaded guns intending to kill herself, the court filings say. He banged on her door after telling her mother Martinson was probably doing 'something stupid'.

Martinson then 'considered whether Ayers should die rather than she', the court documents say. She shot him once in the neck and once in the neck to make sure he was dead and 'could not hurt her'.

When Martinson looked to her mother for comfort, the mother tried to help Ayers and yelled at her daughter instead, according to the filings.

Martinson's mother grabbed a knife and 'approached' her daughter, prompting Martinson to wrestle it from her and stab her more than 30 times with 'considerable force', the records state.

The teenager, pictured escorted to her initial court hearing, said Ayers gave her strict house rules, demanded that she wake up at 4am on weekdays and 6am on weekends, gave her lists of chores and confiscated the money she earned at her job

Her lawyers say she completely lost control at the time of the homicides, 'demonstrating anger, rage and exasperation as a person of ordinary intelligence and prudence under similar circumstances would have done'.

They will recommend a prison sentence of eight years and prosecutors will ask for 40 years as part of the plea deal.

Martinson previously faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Ayers's brother, Don Ayers, told People he disagrees with the plea deal.

'The day before the murders, she wrote on Facebook that she wanted to kill them,' he said. 'To me, that's premeditated. They should have left the charges at first-degree murder.'

'Thomas and Jennifer are being judged right now by what she is saying about them, but they aren't here to defend themselves because she killed them. I think she stretched the truth to save her own neck.'

Martinson's blog, on which she wrote under the pseudonym Vampchick, featured a poem called 'Unworthy' several days before the killings that spoke of the 'sweet horrors of blood that I thirst for'.

The blog, which featured writings and artwork that promised to 'bring life to the dead and your nightmares' is now defunct, though sections have been preserved online.

Martinson showered after the killings and then took her siblings in a room, tying a cord around the door to keep them inside, the Wausau Daily Herald reported.

None of the siblings were harmed.

A poem posted several days before the killings on Martinson's website referenced the 'sweet horrors of blood that I thirst for'

The introduction to Martinson's website, which is now offline, references insanity and says she will paint the streets red

Police arrived at the scene of the Ayers's house after Martinson's nine-year-old sibling left the room she was kept in and called 911

Martinson and Sisco are thought to have traveled more than 400 miles before being arrested outside of Indianapolis
Apple staff are discussing the possibility of mass walk-outs or absences if the company is ordered to hack into its own iPhone at the request of the FBI, it has been reported.

Around half a dozen current and former employees say engineers may quit their jobs or refuse to comply if a court orders the tech company to create a 'backdoor' in its security next week.

Insiders told the New York Times that anti-establishment feeling among staff, fostered by the company's founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, is strong enough to prompt such action.

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Apple engineers are believed to be discussing the possibility of mass resignations or absences if a court orders them to breach the security around the company's iPhone next week (CEO Tim Cook pictured)

Jean-Louis Gassee, a former engineer with Apple, said: 'Its an independent culture and a rebellious one. If the government tries to compel action from these engineers, good luck with that.'

The tech company has previously stated that it would take a team of between six and ten engineers around a month to build a new version of its software with weakened security, if it is told to do so.

But insiders tell the Post that the pool of candidates who have the experience and knowledge to work on such a team is relatively small, meaning that rebellion by only a handful of staff could cause the project major difficulties.

Without resigning, staff could take long-term leaves of absence or simply go sick, potentially delaying the software for months.

If mass resignations by engineers leave Apple unable to write the software, then the company could potentially wriggle out of any order altogether on the basis that it cannot comply

Joseph DeMarco, a former federal prosecutor, said: 'If - and this is a big if - every engineer at Apple who could write the code quit and, also a big if, Apple could demonstrate that this happened to the courts satisfaction, then Apple could not comply and would not have to.'

The FBI is seeking a court order that would force Apple to create a special version of its software allowing them access to the iPhone owned by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook.

Insiders say anti-establishment feeling among staff, fostered by co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, could spur staff into defying court order from the FBI

Apple is refusing the order on the basis that it would potentially compromise the security of hundreds of millions of customers and set a dangerous precedent for future cases. The case is due in court on March 22.

Yesterday Time magazine published a front-page interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook in which he defended his decision to push back, adding that the FBI had 'deeply offended' in Southern values.

Cook accused the agency of lying and acting unprofessionally in the way it had dealt with the issue, saying to him encryption is as important as the 'sun, the air and the water', while vowing to protect it.

He said: 'Do I like their tactics? No, I don't. I'm seeing the government apparatus in a way I've never seen it before.

'Do I like finding out from the press about it? No, I don't think it's professional. Do I like them talking about or lying about our intentions? No. I'm offended by it. Deeply offended by it.'

Apple has received broad support from the tech community for its stance including from Google, Facebook and Twitter.

In a surprise move, former NSA director Michael Hayden has also backed Apple and said that the backdoor to the iPhone would 'harm American safety'.
Bisexual soldier Hannah Heslop, who told a female colleague she would 'make her gay' before sexually assaulting her while she slept, has been jailed for seven years

A bisexual soldier who told a female colleague she would 'make her gay' before sexually assaulting her while she slept has been jailed for seven years.

Hannah Heslop, a former Lance Corporal, has also been dismissed from the army as it emerged she assaulted the woman after a night out.

The 25-year-old was told she had 'failed in her duty of care' after she accompanied the woman, who cannot be named, back to Normandy Barracks in Leconfield, East Yorkshire, March last year.

Heslop, who had been in the armed forces for more than nine years, was convicted of sexual assault by penetration after a three-day trial at Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire.

The court heard Heslop was 'clearly attracted' to the victim and 'hope for sexual activity' on the night on the incident.

The victim, who returned to barracks with Heslop, told the court she work up in pain to 'find the accused between her legs'.

Heslop, who alleged the pair had consensual sex, later boasted about the incident to colleagues - but claimed in court she was 'just showing off'.

Judge Advocate Alan Large told her today: 'In March last year you were part of a course at Leconfield, Yorkshire.

'You met the complainant and were sexually attracted to her. You and she went out and you made your attraction apparent to her and others. The complainant drank heavily, so did you.

'You both left together to return to camp. The board found that when you left at that stage you certainly hoped sexual activity might follow.

'You returned to the room, the board rejected your evidence that you had consensual sexual intercourse.'

Lieutenant Colonel David Phillips, prosecuting, read parts of two victim impact statements.

In the statements, the victim said she no longer felt comfortable going out without her boyfriend, had lost her confidence and had trouble sleeping.

She added: 'I find myself breaking into tears thinking about what happened. It doesn't matter if I'm in public or private I will just break into tears.

'These feelings and emotions of mine have all been a direct result of what LC Heslop did to me without my consent.'

In a second statement from the victim, taken earlier this year, she said: 'It has affected my work and might end up affecting my career because I do not like going out of the UK.

The 25-year-old former Lance Corporal has also been dismissed from the army as it emerged she assaulted the woman after a night out, Bulford Military Court heard

'I also do not tend to go out socialising any more. If I do, it is only when my boyfriend is with me. If I do, I end up feeling guilty the next day as if I am not allowed to enjoy myself.'

The court heard that Heslop joined the armed forces in January 2007 and has been a Lance Corporal since October 2012.

She has served in various countries including Sierre Leone during the country's recent Ebola crisis - a position she volunteered for.

Lieutenant Colonel Phillips said: 'She has a number of operational service medals. A medal for Cyprus, Afghanistan and for her service in West Africa.'

Christopher Hill, defending, said Heslop had been in foster care and her background and childhood was 'not good'.

The 25-year-old was told she had 'failed in her duty of care' after she accompanied the woman, who cannot be named, back to barracks (pictured) in March last year

He added: 'I do not attempt to minimise the offence, it is accepted that it is a serious matter.

'It is a tragedy really that what started as a happy social event ended the way it did. It is going to wreck the life of Lance Corporal Heslop. It is effectively going to destroy her.

'This is not simply someone who went out of their way to target a victim to get what they wanted, it is much more complicated than that.

'She took the view if I did not get a definite no it is a yes. That is the communication skills one probably learns on her mother's knee and she probably did not get that.

'She bitterly regrets whatever went on in that room and that she got herself into those circumstances.'
Nancy Reagan and her daughter Patti Davis had a troubled relationship, but there was still much love between the mother and daughter, as evidenced by a touching story the former first daughter has shared.

In an essay for TIME magazine, Patti Davis, 63, recalled how she once ran to her mother for help after keeping an affair with her high school English teacher a secret for two years.

In 1971, Davis was a 19-year-old college freshman at Northwestern University in Chicago, when she flew out to New York City to meet her mother (then first lady of California) who was staying at the luxe Waldorf Astoria hotel.

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Patti Davis says she was 19 years old in 1971 when she told her mother about her two-year affair with her high school English teacher. Then California Gov Ronald Reagan (left) pictured with his wife Nancy (second right) and their children Ronald Jr (second left) and Patti (right) in 1967

Patti Davis, 63, pictured above eulogizing her mother at her funeral on March 11 in Simi Valley, California

'I can see my mother now as if it just happened days ago, not decades,' Davis remembered. 'Her face, as I talked, was soft and tinged with tenderness.'

'I realized she already knew.'

I can see my mother as if it just happened days ago, not decades. Her face, as I talked, was soft and tinged with tenderness. I realized she already knew.

Mrs Reagan reportedly told her daughter that she had known about the relationship 'for a long time'.

Davis attended the Orme School, a boarding school in Arizona, and her parents had met her teacher on a visit there.

Mrs Reagan 'intuitively' figured it out, but decided not to confront her daughter about the relationship or tell her husband because she knew 'it would really upset him'.

'So for all that time, she'd kept her suspicions to herself, even from my father. She didn't want to upset him, but she also knew that she had to let me go through the pain and the drama. If she had interfered, it would have made things worse,' Davis said.

Mrs Reagan passed away on March 6 at the age of 94, and her daughter eulogized her at a public funeral for the former first lady.

In her essay for TIME, Davis says this memory of her mother is one that stands out as one of the rare times they were able to step 'outside our troubled history' to bond as mother and daughter.
President Barack Obama launched an offensive against Republican efforts to keep his Supreme Court Justice nominee Merrick Garland from the bench, calling their arguments not 'coherent and politics driven.

'We haven't seen a substantive argument against his jurisprudence. This is just raw politics. "We don't want somebody who's been nominated by a Democrat,' Obama said in an interview with NPR that aired this morning.

Senate Republicans are refusing to set up confirmation hearings for Garland, and they by and large are against holding a vote on his appointment.

For many, Garland, a consensus pick, is not the problem. They say the open seat on the high court should be left vacant until after this year's presidential election is over, which would allow the American people the opportunity to have a say in the process.

Obama tore down that logic in the NPR interview and again urged them to 'be fair' in their consideration of nominee.

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President Barack Obama launched an offensive against Republican efforts to keep his Supreme Court Justice nominee Merrick Garland from the bench, calling their arguments incoherent and politically motivated

Merrick Garland, above, made the rounds on Capitol Hill yesterday in a bid to pressure Senate Republicans into giving him a formal hearing and confirmation vote

Garland met with two Democrats, Patrick Leahy, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate's Judiciary Committee, above, and Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats

Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is calling on his colleagues to vote on Garland by Memorial Day

Garland made the rounds on Capitol Hill yesterday in a bid to pressure Senate Republicans into moving forward his nomination.

The appeals court judge met with two Democrats, Patrick Leahy, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats.

The Senate has now departed for a two-week Easter recess, but nine Republicans have indicated a willingness to meet with Garland when they return next month, including Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.

WHO IS OBAMA'S PICK? Merrick Brian Garland, 63, is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. President Bill Clinton nominated him to serve on that court in 1997. Garland's career highlight before becoming a judge was serving as a top prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and the trial of 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski. He was the government's chief lawyer during the McVeigh's case's preliminary hearings and supervised much of the wrangling over whether to seek the death penalty. A Harvard University valedictorian and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, Garland clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan after graduating from law school. He later served as special assistant to President Jimmy Carter's last attorney general before going into private practice and becoming a partner in the law firm of Arnold & Porter. Garland next was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1989 to 1992, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1993 to 1994. The Bethesda, Maryland native was on President Barack Obama's short-list of potential Supreme Court nominees when he chose Elena Kagan to fill a vacancy in 2010. Senate Republicans at the time considered him a potential 'consensus' pick they could rally around. Garland has been married to his wife, Lynn, since 1987. They have two daughters, Becky and Jessica, both of whom attended Yale University. Lynn Garland's grandfather was Samuel I. Rosenman, a New York Supreme Court justice and special counsel to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. During FDRs first 100 days in office, Rosenman was part of the famous 'brains trust' that developed the framework for what would become The New Deal. Advertisement

The sit-downs shouldn't be interpreted as a retreat, the Republicans say. They remain dedicated to holding up the nomination process until a new president takes office.

Obama is equally committed blowing holes in their blockade and held a call yesterday afternoon with progressive groups to talk strategy.

Top Democrats in the Senate - Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and others - held a press conference outside the Supreme Court to demand a 'fair confirmation process for Garland and that Republican senators 'do their job.'

They want the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on Garland and allow his nomination to be considered by the full Senate.

With a simple majority of senators behind him, Garland could join the court. Republicans make up 54 of 100 legislators in the upper chamber, though, and they've said since the vacancy opened up on Feb. 13 with the death of Antonin Scalia that they will not allow an appointment to go forward.

'Were in the middle of a major toxic presidential campaign and I dont want to see the Supreme Court dragged through the mud,' Orrin Hatch, the body's longest serving lawmaker, said Wednesday.

Hatch said in a Fox News appearance, 'I happen to like Judge Garland. I think hes a good person. But frankly thats not the issue. Its not about the person; its the system.'

Senator John Barrasso said the GOP will not budge.

'The decision has already been made,' Barrasso said on MSNBC.

Like Hatch, Barrasso argued that 'it's really not about the person, it's about the principle.'

Nine Senate seats turned over in 2014 from Democrat to Republican, he said. The country is moving in a different direction than it was when Obama was reelected in 2012.

The president can nominate whomever he wants, the Senate gets to decide, he said Thursday.

'And it's been decided,' he stated. 'A lame duck president shouldn't be making a lifetime appointment.'

Obama told NPR that's one of the 'most puzzling arguments' he's heard.

'The American people did decide, back in 2012 when they elected me president of the United States with sufficient electoral votes,' he said.

'And they also decided that the Republicans would be in the majority.They didn't say, "We're going to decide that you're in charge for three years, and then in the last year you all take a break."

'They said, "No, you're the president for four years, and Mr. McConnell, you're going to be the leader, because we've given you a majority in the Senate." '

'The bottom line is that there has not been a coherent argument presented. The real argument...is that they don't want a Democrat filling the seat, and they are worried and scared about their political base punishing them if they allow a Democrat to fill the seat,' Obama said.

A spokeswoman for Grassley on the Judiciary Committee said the Republican senator spoke to Garland on the phone Wednesday and reiterated the majority party's position.

Grassley told Garland an in-person meeting wouldn't change his mind but indicated he was open to one nonetheless. The White House said Thursday that Grassley's staff also agreed to a meeting on behalf of the senator

At least eight other Republicans have said they'd meet with him, too, according to The Hill.

Among them are Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mark Kirk if Illinois, both of whom are fighting for their political lives this year. Ohio's Rob Portman, Tennessee's Thad Cochran, Arizona's Jeff Flake, Missouri's Roy Blunt, Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe and Maine's Susan Collins have said they would, too.

Obama is equally committed blowing holes in their blockade and held a call yesterday afternoon with progressive groups to talk strategy. He's seen here on Wednesday with Vice President Biden and Garland outside the White House

Obama announced Wednesday from the Rose Garden of the White House that Garland, 63, is his pick to replace deceased conservative justice Antonin Scalia on the court

Democrats and the White House want the Republican-run Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on Garland and allow his nomination to be considered by the full Senate. He's seen here Wednesday with President Obama

'I feel I would want to explain my position to the nominee,' Ayotte said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he doesn't see the point in meeting with Garland as his nomination will never be taken up in the Senate.

Defending the decision in an op-ed published in USA Today, McConnell said, 'The American people deserve a voice in such a momentous decision.'

He cited what senators are calling the 'Biden Rule' and said the nomination should be left up to the next president.

'The American people may well elect a president who decides to renominate Judge Garland. The next president may also nominate someone very different.

'Either way, we can continue to work on legislative solutions, and the American people can continue the national conversation about the type of justice who should serve on the Supreme Court. '

As head of the Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden argued more than two decades ago that if a justice resigned, then-president George H.W. Bush should follow the practice of the 'majority of his predecessors' and not name a nominee until after that year's election.

And if he does, the Senate Judiciary Committee 'should seriously consider' waiting until after the campaign season is over, Biden, then a senator from Delaware said.

'Some will criticize such a decision and say that it was nothing more than an attempt to save a seat on the court in hopes that a Democrat will be permitted to fill it, but that would not be our intention,' Biden said in the June 1992 speech.

'It would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee, and essential to the process.'

Top Democrats in the Senate - Harry Reid, left, sunglasses, Chuck Schumer, podium, Elizabeth Warren, right in teal, and others - held a press conference Wednesday outside the Supreme Court to demand a 'fair confirmation process for Garland and that Republican senators 'do their job

As the fight over Obama's right to nominate someone to fill Scalia's seat waged on, Biden said his remarks were being mischaracterized and he is not opposed to filling a vacancy in an election year.'

'This is not an accurate description of my views on the subject.''

His speech happened months later in the election cycle, the White House says, while Scalia died in mid-February, nearly a year before Obama's term ends.

Obama told NPR, 'If you look at what Joe Biden actually said many years ago, he was saying if, hypothetically, there were to be a Supreme Court opening, then his advice to a president in his last year would be to not make the nomination unless he had consulted widely and arrived at a consensus candidate.

'Well, you know what? That's exactly what I've done. And so there's no contradiction between what I'm doing and what Joe Biden suggested a president in my circumstances should do.'

Obama said in the interview that he believes Garland is a 'consensus builder' and said he is of the opinion the 'court would benefit from that at the moment.'

'Judge Garland, if you look at his work on the D.C. Circuit, has been able to bring together conservatives, liberals and move them to find common ground. And I think that's a valuable quality that has been reinforced by the statements that were made by Republicans,' Obama said.

OPPOSING SIDES: Patrick Leahy, left, he ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee is butting heads with Chuck Grassley, right, the head of the committee. Grassley say says no way - Garland's never getting a hearing

FAMILY MAN: Garland , 63, is seen here with is wife Lynn, far right, and daughters Becca, left, and Jessica, center, in this undated handout from the White House

Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is calling on his colleagues to vote on Garland by Memorial Day.

'For more than 40 years, the Senate has held a confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominees on average 70 days after their formal nomination,' he said in a statement. 'The Senate should afford Chief Judge Garland the same process with a fair and public hearing in April, and the full Senate should vote on his confirmation by May 25.'

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough argued on the Today show this week that 'you cannot find a bad word said about Merrick Garland.'

The president did his job, 'we expect the Senate to now do its job,' he said.

'This is not rocket science here..all they need to do is do what the Constitution says, give him a hearing, give him a vote and let's fill that vacancy,' McDonough said.

Republicans hope they'll win November's election and earn the opportunity next year to replace Scalia with another conservative.

As CNN's Jake Tapper pointed out to Hatch, Hillary Clinton could win the general election, and Republicans may end up with a less favorable nominee than Garland, who is considered moderate by most standards.

'Thats the risk you take,' Hatch told him. 'On the other hand, do we want the process to be right, sophisticated, and good with a minimum amount of politics involved? Or do we want to just throw it into this cauldron of the presidential election?'




she was found dead after car plunged into Missisipi River

A mother-of-two was discovered dead in her car which had plunged into the Mississippi River.

Marya Christiansen, 23, was found in Wisconsin after going missing on Saturday.

Police have now called off the search for the woman who was found dead in Pierce County.

A white Dodge people carrier was pulled out of a backwater of the Mississippi River in the northern state where highway US 63 connects Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Marya Christiansen, 23, a mother-of-two from Wisconsin (left and right), had not been seen since 2.30am on Saturday when she left a friend's house following a night out before being found dead on Wednesday

The car was discovered around 5.40pm on Wednesday, reports Twin Cities.com.

It is believed it was found almost underneath a bridge. Pierce County sheriff's office said Marya's body was found after divers had gone down to the car.

She was reported missing on Sunday after failing to return home after a night out at a Red Wing bar with friends.

Marya had been last seen going home with her boyfriend Christopher Johnson, who lives in Hager City, around 10 miles away.

Relatives said Marya had never arrived home and had not been heard from since. Her car, a white 2006 Dodge Caravan, with licence plate 443 VPF, had also vanished.

Red Wing police, who were involved in search efforts, said Marya had not posted to social media or carried out any credit card transactions since she was last seen, the Star Tribune reports.

Marya (left, and right with boyfriend and father of her children Christopher Johnson) was driving from Red Wing Mississippi to her home in Wisconsin around 10 miles away when she vanished

Marya was driving a white 2006 Dodge Caravan (pictured) with licence plate 443 VPF when she vanished. Searches by police and relatives had not turned up any trace of her until Wednesday

Officers, family and friends, had scoured the area around where she had been last seen, including the Mississippi River, by air and boat but had uncovered no trace of her until Wednesday.

Family members say Marya headed out on Friday night for drinks with her girl friends at a bar in Mississippi, across the river from her home in Wisconsin.

Following those drinks, she headed back to a friend's house where she stayed until the early hours of Saturday before deciding to head home to see her boyfriend and father of her two children.

Family members had also set up a GoFundMe page in an attempt to raise funds to help in their search efforts.




Migrants arriving in Greece could be sent back to Turkey from Sunday after a proposed 'one in, one out' scheme won the approval of EU leaders in Brussels.

Any migrant arriving in Greece from March 20 will be given a swift individual interview to determine whether they will be allowed to remain or sent back to Turkey under the scheme from April 4.

After less than an hour of discussions, the prime ministers of Finland and the Czech Republic tweeted from inside the European Council negotiations to announce that the 28 leaders had given their approval to the arrangement, which gives Turkey significant con

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, David Cameron, centre, and French President Francois Hollande were all at the summit in Brussels today

But David Cameron faces a Tory backlash over the high price of the deal, which includes billions of pounds in aid and the fast-tracking of Turkeys application to join the EU.

It will also involve a controversial swap arrangement that, in return for those sent back from Greece to Turkey, will see the EU allow in an equal number of Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey  although Mr Cameron insisted none would come to Britain.

Even as they agreed the deal, Turkish officials said they had intercepted 3,000 migrants trying to make the crossing to the Greek island of Lesbos.

European Commission president Donald Tusk admitted it would be a Herculean task to get the returns scheme in place.

It will need 4,000 staff on the ground, at a cost of up to 235million.

But it is the plans to give Turkey access to the EUs Schengen zone that are likely to prove most controversial.

Turkish citizens will be given access to the zone from June, provided the country meets a number of conditions, including the introduction of biometric passports.

The deal is also understood to promise visa liberalisation for Turkey's 77 million inhabitants, who could be granted visa-free access to the EU's Schengen borderless zone - which does not include the UK - from this summer.

Under the scheme drawn up by European Council president Donald Tusk and Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu (pictured), any migrant arriving in Greece after March 20 would be given a swift individual interview to determine whether they will be allowed to remain or sent back to Turkey

Turkey's Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu (left) shakes hands with French President Francois Hollande (right) next to David Cameron (centre). The 28 EU leaders have given their approval to the deal with Turkey

Prime Minister David Cameron (left) and French President Francois Hollande (left) arrive at the talks today

The EU and Turkey also agreed to open a new 'chapter' in Turkey's long-stalled bid for membership of the EU - Chapter 33, on budgets - by July. It said preparations for other chapters would continue 'at an accelerated pace'.

Critics warned the deal would effectively create a visa-free travel zone stretching from Calais to the Syrian border. Tory MP Peter Bone said: This means that millions more people will be free to travel across Europe to Britains borders, where some will no doubt try to cross the Channel.

Speeding up Turkeys EU membership... is definitely not what the British people want. The public does not want to give free movement rights to 77million Turks to come to Britain.

And were giving the Turks more money  it is a triple whammy.

It is a disaster. And there is only guarantee that it does not happen, and that is to vote to leave the EU.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave said: The EU is creating a visa-free zone stretching from the English Channel to the Syrian border and has given Turkey the nod that it will be admitted as full member of the European Union.

That will be bad for Turkey, bad for people seeking refuge, and bad for Britain as the EU is an outdated and outmoded institution incapable of dealing with challenges of the 21st century. This shows just how risky it is to vote to remain in the EU.

Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope, a former Home Office minister, said: I genuinely hope that this agreement makes a difference but I fear by this autumn we will look back and realise it was a very costly error that turned Greece into a processing camp.

The deal offers Turkey up to 4.7billion in EU aid to help deal with refugees, of which Britain will contribute 500million. It also pledges to re-energise moves to let Turkey join the EU. Mr Cameron insisted it was a good deal for Britain, adding: For the first time in this crisis we have a plan that, if properly implemented, could make a difference.

BBC 'GUILTY OF PRO EU BIAS' BBCS Newsnight has been accused of institutional bias in the EU referendum coverage. An independent investigation looked at coverage on the flagship news programme and found its presenters interviewed twice as many supporters of remaining in the EU as those backing leave. In 25 feature items about the EU over the past two months, one-on-one exchanges were shown with 12 people advocating an in vote compared to just six backing Brexit, says the study by monitoring group News-Watch. Of all guests in 40 items, including in group discussions, there were 25 people backing remain and just 14 supporting leave. The BBC was recently praised for its balanced coverage of the debate but the study said Newsnight gave much greater prominence to backers of the EU. A BBC spokesman said the figures did not provide a representative picture, adding: The show provides impartial information about both sides of the argument. Advertisement

He said that we need to make it work in practice but it had the potential to smash the business model of the people-smuggling gangs, as migrants getting on a boat in Turkey would no longer have any chance of resettlement in the EU.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said that the agreement made a vote to leave the EU more likely in the referendum on June 23.

'Giving visa-free access to Turkey will mean increased numbers of people coming to Europe,' said Mr Farage 'And fast-tracking an unstable Turkey into EU membership is madness.

'I feel more confident than ever that Turkey in means Britain out.'

A spokesman for European Council president Donald Tusk said that the agreement made clear that any removals would have to be 'in full compliance with international and EU law' and that there would be no 'collective expulsions'.

He added: 'The cut-off date is March 20 - that is on Sunday. All migrants arriving after that cut-off date will be returned after individual assessment.'

The spokesman said the new arrangements would come into force at the end of Sunday, so the first migrants facing return would be those crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands on Monday morning.

In a statement responding to the deal, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said applicants in Greece should have 'the right to appeal before any readmission to Turkey'.

'Reception and other arrangements need to be readied in Turkey before anyone is returned from Greece. People determined to be needing international protection need to be able to enjoy asylum, without discrimination, in accordance with accepted international standards,' it said.

'How this plan is to be implemented is thus going to be crucial. Ultimately, the response must be about addressing the compelling needs of individuals fleeing war and persecution.'

Workers attach barbed wire to a border fence to prevent illegal crossings by migrants at the Bulgarian-Turkish border near the Bulgarian village of Shtit

A migrant child eats as others sit around a fire in a railway repairs hangar where people have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece

Mr Tusk's spokesman later confirmed that the EU leaders had agreed the conclusions and were entering talks with Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu to formally adopt the agreement, which was made 'unanimously'.

The new deal marks the conclusion of months of intensive diplomatic effort to secure Turkish assistance with a migrant crisis which saw more than one million people enter Europe last year - the majority of them via Greece.

The EU will accept one Syrian refugee for resettlement from camps in Turkey for each irregular migrant returned to the country, in a move which is intended to break the business model of people-smugglers by dissuading migrants from attempting the sea crossing.

The agreement addresses Turkish concerns about the slow delivery of three billion euros (2.3bn) promised by the EU last November, by including a commitment to identify within the coming week a list of projects which will receive funding.

A further three billion euros are being made available after the initial tranche of support runs out.

The EU has also agreed to 're-energise' its relations with Turkey by accelerating talks on eventual accession to the EU, which began in 2005 but have long been stalled.

As the 28 EU leaders met behind closed doors in Brussels, Finnish PM Juha Sipila sent a message by Twitter to declare 'Turkey agreement was approved', while the Czech Republic's Bohuslav Sobotka said: 'The agreement with Turkey approved. All illegal immigrants arriving in Greece from Turkey starting from March 20 return back!'

There were also talks over the threat of a renewed surge of migrants attempting the Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy over the summer.

Earlier in the day, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scathing about the reluctance of EU nations to take in refugees from Syria, saying: 'At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves.'

As the summit agenda was extended to allow protracted talks with Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu, David Cameron chaired a meeting of leaders from Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Malta, as well as High Representative on Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, to discuss the threat of a renewed surge of migrants attempting the Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy over the summer.

The Prime Minister wants the EU to open talks with the newly established government of national accord in Libya to expand its anti-trafficking operation into the North African state's territorial waters.

'Like a concentration camp': A migrant woman and two children walk through the gate of a hangar where people have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni

Turkey's leader has highlighted the 'shameful conditions' facing migrants making their way through the EU amid criticism of his own country's human rights record. Migrants are pictured camping on the Greece-Macedonia border

At present, EU ships - including one Royal Navy vessel - are able to intercept migrant boats in international seas, but Mr Cameron believes that taking action closer to the Libyan coastline will improve its chances of turning boats back and deterring migrants from setting off at all.

Some 1.2 million migrants arrived in Europe over the course of last year, and while the bulk of them took the shorter sea route from Turkey to the Greek islands, more than 150,000 attempted the more dangerous crossing from Libya.

Mr Cameron said the EU must not 'take its eye off the ball' in the central Mediterranean because of the focus on Turkey.

It comes as Bulgaria deployed extra police and troops on its border with Macedonia in a joint exercise aimed at tackling a migrant influx, the defence ministry announced today.

The two countries say they are preparing for every scenario as thousands of migrants remain blocked at Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonia border.

Panagiotis Kouroublis said seeing the squalid Idomeni camp (pictured) on the Greek border with Macedonia was so distressing it felt like receiving 'several blows to the stomach'

'We are seeking better coordination to tackle the migration crisis,' said Bulgarian Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev, who watched the exercises, involving troops and police, with his Macedonian counterpart.

It was the second such exercise, which aims at dissuading migrants and traffickers from attempting to enter Bulgaria from the southwest.

On March 5 Bulgaria deployed more than two hundred personnel to its southern border with Greece.

Bulgaria fears a large influx of migrants following the closure of the 'Balkans route' from Greece through Macedonia and Serbia.

An EU member which is not in the passport-free Schengen zone, Bulgaria has so far been largely spared the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II.

However, the country has recently seen increased pressure along its 275-kilometre (170-mile) border with Turkey, which allows the migrants to avoid the dangerous sea crossing to the Greek islands.

Sofia has erected a 95-km razor wire fence on its border with Turkey.

European leaders on Friday reached agreement with Turkey on a deal to curb the huge flow of asylum seekers to Europe, with all migrants arriving in Greece from Sunday to be sent back.

Friday's deal makes Turkey Europe's bulwark against its biggest migration crisis since World War II.

Last year some 30,000 migrants arrived in Bulgaria via Turkey with at least the same amount crossing the country clandestinely, according to estimates.

BREXIT COULD COST UK FAMILIES 6,000 A YEAR SAY LEFT-WING ACADEMICS British families would see their incomes fall by up to 6,500 a year if voters decide to leave the EU, say researchers at the London School of Economics. The study  condemned as scaremongering by Brexit compaigners  suggested that losing access to the single market would have a more damaging effect on the economy than a financial crash. Trade with other European countries would fall as tariffs make British goods more expensive, the universitys Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) said, leading to a fall in living standards. The study by the LSE, which has long been seen as a bastion of Left-wing politics, said even if the UK negotiated a Norway-style trade deal with the EU, British households would still see their incomes fall by 850. In the long run, reduced trade lowers productivity, it said. Factoring in these effects substantially increases the costs of Brexit to a loss of 6.3 per cent to 9.5 per cent of GDP (4,200 to 6,400 per household). This is a larger decline than the decline in UK GDP during the global financial crisis in 2008/09. CEP director Professor John Van Reenen said: Our work leaves little doubt that there is a serious cost for real wages and pensions from leaving the EU. But Leave campaigners insisted it was wrong to say that the UK would not be allowed to remain in the single market if we left the EU. Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliot said: These ridiculous claims lack credibility as they come from the same economic sages who said we would better off scrapping the pound. Back then we were also warned jobs and trade would be at risk if we didnt join the euro. 'Such claims were wrong then, and they are wrong now. .... WRONG, IT WOULD BOOST OUR ECONOMY SAYS INVESTMENT BOSS One of Britains most successful self-made entrepreneurs has said the unknown of leaving the EU could inspire the country and boost the economy. Pro-EU campaigners claim that a Brexit would be disastrous for the UK, hitting jobs, trade and foreign investment. But Peter Hargreaves, the billionaire co-founder of FTSE 100 investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said it would provide the UK with a fresh start and help to boost innovation. Quit: Richard Branson said the UK would be 'punished' by EU members if it quit the single market Speaking on Radio 4s Today programme, he said: Im firmly convinced that day  hopefully  we decide to leave, that little bit of insecurity, that little bit of unknown will be an absolute fillip to everyone. It will be a great incentive for us to go out and prove thats right. Mr Hargreaves, 69, said strong demand for goods made in the UK  from Rolls-Royce cars to Burberry trenchcoats  would enable the British government to strike quick and favourable trade deals with EU members. He added that concerns about the impact of the financial sector  particularly on the City of London  were overblown. Bankers would not want to move to Paris or Frankfurt because of the higher taxes and Londons attractiveness as a place to live, he said. But Sir Richard Branson warned yesterday that Britain would be punished by EU members if it decided to quit the single market. He said: I cant quite see why the EU are suddenly going to be nice to Britain if we leave. If I was in their shoes I would want to punish them. Advertisement

Leaving would set Britain free - top official by John Stevens Brussels Correspondent for The Daily Mail



Ministers could seize on an exit from the EU as a liberating chance for a revolutionary overhaul of British laws, a senior UK official has said.

A vote to leave could be used for the biggest shake-up of Whitehall ever seen, with unpopular EU laws ditched or rewritten in a sovereign British way, the official said.

Years of legislation on health, justice, agriculture and employment would be reworked from top to toe in a decade-long process, he suggested.

The civil service has previously been accused of scaremongering over the impact of a Brexit, with dossiers warning of the possibility of economic chaos should there be a vote to quit the EU.

Liberating: An anonymous senior UK official said an exit from the EU could be 'liberating' for law reform

Although there would be a period of turmoil, the senior official said, there would be an opportunity for a Eurosceptic-dominated government as the country unshackled itself from the corpse of the EU.

He anticipated that such a government would take over after a decision to leave, and that it would get the chance to scrap red tape such as the Working Time Directive that restricts how firms do business.

A Ministry of Trade would be set up in Whitehall to strike trade deals with countries around the world.

Speaking anonymously, the official said: Every area from agriculture to fisheries to financial services to energy to justice and home affairs  you would go through every area covered by the 35 areas covered by accession and have some process of de-accession, disentanglement,

In every area of public life and government life, I think people would want to go through with a fine-tooth comb and be asking the civil service: Now we are free to do what we want, what do you want to do with that freedom?

Red tape: The official said an exit would allow the government to scrap the Working Time Directive

He added: Every legislative programme for five or ten years would be dominated by re-regulating and re-legislating everything in a sovereign British way. Every part of Westminster would want to do that.

'We would not have unshackled ourselves from the corpse of the European Union in the area of employment regulation in order to replicate everything that we used to have from Brussels employment regulation  else what was the point?

The official said: On June 24 [the day after the referendum], we would be having a very lively debate about what do we want to use our new autonomy and sovereignty for, and which areas. Very crudely, I think about it as a trade-off between sovereignty, autonomy, ability to regulate, legislate in your own areas in your own fashion  Westminster free to do what it wants  and market access.
The lawyer representing Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people, claimed the crimes his client committed were 'irrelevant' in court proceedings held at Skien Prison, southern Norway, today.

Oystein Storrvik, who is representing Breivik in a lawsuit against the Norwegian state for an alleged breach of his human rights, told the court on the fourth and final day of the trial: 'The crimes my client was accused of are irrelevant.

'The person who is hated by everyone has only the law as his last chance to guarantee his fundamental rights,' he added.

He also asked the court to look beyond the 'popular perceptions' of the 37-year-old who is Norway's most infamous inmate, who is serving a maximum 21-year sentence, which can be extended if he is considered a danger to the public.

The lawyer representing Anders Breivik, pictured arriving at court today, claimed the crimes his client committed were 'irrelevant' in court proceedings held at Skien Prison

Oystein Storrvik, right, is representing Breivik, who murdered 77 people, in a lawsuit against the Norwegian state for an alleged breach of his human rights

In July 2011 he killed eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then murdered another 69, mostly teenagers, in a rampage at a Labour Youth camp.

His shooting spree on the island of Utoya lasted over an hour, as he methodically stalked and killed up-and-coming leaders of Labour, Norway's dominant political party, which he blamed for the rise of multiculturalism in the Nordic country.

He finished off many of his young victims, trapped on the small island with nowhere to flee but the surrounding waters, with a bullet to the head.

Since his arrest on the day of the attacks, he has been held apart from other prisoners and his contact with the outside world, including visits and correspondence, have been strictly controlled.

Norway prides itself on a humane prison system aimed more at rehabilitation than punishment.

Stressing his client's almost five years in isolation, Mr Storrvik accused the state of violating two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting 'inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' and guaranteeing respect for his 'correspondence'.

At the Skien Prison where he is held, Breivik has three cells at his disposal - one for living, one for studying and one for physical exercise.

He also has a TV with a DVD player, a games console, a computer without Internet access, and books and newspapers, according to authorities.

The Norwegian Attorney General has denied Breivik's claims, saying there is no evidence of the murderer suffering from the conditions under which he is being held at Skien (pictured)

Breivik, pictured making a Nazi salute on the first day of his trial, has an entire cellblock to himself at Skien prison, with three cells, access to a computer and a PlayStation, as well as a yard and permission to cook his own food

Hi complaints range from the trivial - cold coffee and microwaved frozens dinners, which he called 'worse than waterboarding' - to hundreds of strip-searches and headaches which he claims are caused by his solitary confinement.

The state's lawyers have argued the isolation is necessary because Breivik is 'extremely dangerous', and claim his conditions fall 'well within the limits of what is permitted' under the European convention.

All of the professionals - doctors, psychiatrists and prison staff - who have examined him in jail testified that they had observed no major change in his physical or mental state due to his prison conditions.

For security reasons, the four-day court proceedings were held in the gymnasium of the Skien Prison about 80 miles southwest of Oslo, where the killer is incarcerated.
Merkel was humiliated by right-wing parties in regional poles at weekend

Comes as ratings dived over same open-door policy Mr Ki-moon praised

Led German paper Bild to ask 'Is Merkel next

The head of the UN Ban Ki-moon today lavished praise on the German leader's open door policy leading to speculation she is being primed to be his successor.

Ban Ki-moon praised her 'human political leadership' in an interview with German newspaper Bild, which headlined the interview with: 'Will Merkel be the next Secretary General of the UN?'.

It has led to speculation that she will not stand for a fourth term as German ruler, particularly as her approval ratings at home have taken a dive because of the very policy Ban Ki-moon has praised.

Ban Ki-moon praised Angela Merkel's 'human political leadership' in an interview with German newspaper Bild, which headlined the interview with: 'Will Merkel be the next Secretary General of the U.N.?'

Anti-Merkel: The interview led to speculation that she will not stand for a fourth term as German ruler, particularly as her approval ratings at home have taken a dive thanks to the rise of right-wing activists

She was hammered in weekend polls by the hard-right Alternative for Germany party but refuses to alter her open door refugee policy which has sent her once unassailable popularity ratings plunging.

In regional elections this week, her Christian Democrats party was humiliated by the anti-immigrant AfD  Alternative for Germany  party, which was formed just three weeks previously.

Analysts said the regional poll  in which the party lost two out of three states  was a worst case scenario for the embattled chancellor ahead of a general election next year.

The role at the top of the UN would allow her to bow out gracefully from a country she dominated for over a decade while still leaving her with a formidable role on the world stage.

The role at the top of the UN would allow her to bow out gracefully while maintaining a formidable role on the world stage

And it would allow her to continue to push the open policy on immigration to Europe praised by the current UN head, but seemingly unpopular with the German electorate.

Ban Ki-moon declined to comment on speculation that Merkel might be nominated to succeed him in the top UN role when his second term ends on December 31.

The South Korean told German newspaper Bild that 'building walls, discriminating against people or sending them back is no answer to the problem.'

He also praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 'human political leadership' in dealing with the migrant crisis and urged other politicians to follow her example.

'She has all the qualifications to make an excellent general secretary,' said Jan Wouters, head of the Centre for Global Governance at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

'To my mind she will fill the post excellently.'

Thomas Biersteker, professor for International Security at the Graduate Institute in Genoa , Italy, concurred adding: 'She would be a towering candidate.'

But others are not so sure. Thorsten Benner of Berlin's Global Policy Institute said: 'it is a nice debate for journalists and observers but not to be taken too seriously. I don't think Angela Merkel would really be interested, although she is eminently qualified.'
Murder: John Martin, 48, strangled and beat to death his wife Natalia Strelchenko, 38, in a loss of temper at their home in Newton Heath, Manchester

The volatile husband of a world-renowned concert pianist was yesterday found guilty of her brutal murder as chilling details emerged of his violent past.

In a fit of rage, John Martin threw himself on Natalia Strelchenko 'like an animal' on their second wedding anniversary and battered her to death.

Jealous of her more successful career, Martin  a double bass player  pushed her down the stairs at home before strangling her and beating her with such force almost every bone in her skull was broken.

Just four weeks before the attack on August 30 last year he had sent her a text message saying: 'I can't live with you, I can't live without you.' As the troubled musician was convicted at Manchester Crown Court, details emerged of the terrifying warning signs that the couple's short but tempestuous relationship could end in tragedy.

Martin, 48, had been jailed in his home country of Norway for threatening to kill Miss Strelchenko before they married.

And police had been called many times to the home the couple later set up in Newton Heath, Manchester, following heated rows.

The Daily Mail has seen court papers from Norway which detail how a row erupted and Miss Strelchenko stormed off one night in Manchester. But she made it only as far as a bus stop when her 6ft husband found her, lifted her up and carried her home.

As the row continued, he forced her on to the bed and held his hand over her nose and mouth, telling her: 'You will not leave me. Now there is only one solution, first you die, then I die. I'll kill you.'

Ten days later, the couple were in Norway, where yet another row flared and ended with him restraining 5ft 3in Miss Strelchenko, telling her she would die.

Oslo District Court sentenced him to 90 days in prison on September 6, 2013  just one week after the reunited couple had got married.

Respected pianist: Miss Strelchenko was found with serious head and neck injuries after a witness described how Martin flew at her 'like an animal' before they fell down the stairs and he began punching at her

Their married life began with a simple civil affair in Norway, with just two witnesses including her sister Julia, who had warned her sibling against her choice of husband.

A photograph shows the petite bride in a knee-length 1950s style dress and an elaborate hat, her groom almost unrecognisable from the man who stood in the dock this week.

'They had a very complicated relationship,' said Arne-Peter Rognan, Miss Strelchenko's producer for 12 years.

'It was hard for her, from time to time, to be with him and the demons he had when he suffered with his depressions. He had psychological problems and the relationship was not working.'

Born in Russia, Miss Strelchenko was a child prodigy who was just eight years old when she told her parents she was going to become a concert pianist, and made her debut aged 12 with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.

Probe: A forensics officer at Miss Strelchenko's home in Newton Heath, Manchester, following the murder

Her first husband was international organist and conductor Vladimir Suzdalevich and they moved to Norway in 2003 but divorced in 2008.

She got together with Martin in 2011 after he left his ex-wife and two children behind in Norway to start a new life in Manchester with Miss Strelchenko.

THE 'MUCH LOVED' PIANIST WHO WILL 'NEVER BE FORGOTTEN' The family of Natalia Strelchenko said that the musician had been 'much loved' adding, 'we will never forget Natalia or the many memories she has given us.' Playing the piano from the age of eight, talented Miss Strelchenko went on to gain entry to the prestigious St Petersburg State Conservatory in Russia. The renowned solo pianist of international calibre was to make her debut at the age of 12 with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. She had performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and London's Wigmore Hall, winning praise from the classical music press. In a statement, her family said: 'She was extremely talented with much life ahead of her. She was taken from us in August in completely unnecessary circumstances. We cannot express how devastated we are that her life has been stolen from her.' Miss Strelchenko had also been artist in residence at Leeds College of Art and a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. She had moved to Manchester in 2009 following the breakdown of her first marriage three years earlier, before she began a relationship with John Martin who had trained at the Oslo Conservatoire. They played together in an orchestra and Martin was still married to his second wife when he began the relationship with divorcee Miss Strelchenko. The statement added: 'We miss Natalia every minute of every day. We can try to repair our heartache although no matter how long the sentence is, it will not bring Natalia back or make our loss any easier.' Advertisement

But she remained close friends with her first husband, and Mr Suzdalevich told the Mail: 'Natalia is, or should I say was, a very strong, outgoing woman.

'John was a totally different person, he was weak and had low self-esteem, which led to a very fragile situation between them.'

That fragility was illustrated in 2012, when Miss Strelchenko discovered she was pregnant. Martin's response was to disappear 'for weeks', said Mr Suzdalevich.

'At a time when you are supposed to be together and share the experience he got scared and could not cope,' he said.

Miss Strelchenko decided to have an abortion, but in a pattern that would become familiar the couple patched up their differences.

Mr Suzdalevich said: 'She threw him out of the house on a few occasions, but he always got permission to come back. She often told me, 'I cannot leave him, if I leave John he will lose everything and I cannot have that on my conscience'.'

While elfin-like Miss Strelchenko, 38, 'bewitched' audiences in Europe and America and had plans to organise a music festival for children, Martin's own career had largely stalled.

He flitted between orchestras, dabbled in artist management, but always travelled in Miss Strelchenko's wake.

Diagnosed with depression in 1995, he had attempted suicide and had been taking tranquillisers without prescription to try to moderate his black moods.

During the four-week trial, the court was told how he would rage about little things, such as Miss Strelchenko failing to do the housework or leaving her shoes on the floor.

A few weeks before her death, after an argument about dirty plates, he threw her out and as she packed her suitcase he placed the unwashed crockery in her case.

On their second wedding anniversary last year, police found Martin in an upstairs bedroom. He told them: 'Kill me, kill me'. He denied murder and manslaughter, claiming he could not remember what happened.
A young man was fatally stabbed as he tried to break up an argument near his family home.

Floral tributes flooded the pavement around the flat where Rory Anderson, 25, was attacked at around 1am on Saturday, outside a party in Northolt, west London.

The popular carpenter was rushed to hospital but died four days later on Wednesday.

Rory Anderson, 25, was fatally stabbed after he tried to break up an argument outside a house party near his family home in Northolt, west London, on Saturday

Hundreds of flowers along with candles, a portrait of Mr Anderson and a crucifix lay outside the scene today as the flat remained cordoned off by police

His father, Kelvin, said : 'Everyone knew him, and everyone loved him.'

'There are so many flowers and messages out there, and we've heard some amazing stories being told about him.

'At the moment I don't think we can say anything better than that. My wife is in a bad place at the moment so we son't be saying more.'

Tributes described Mr Anderson as a 'one of a kind' who had a 'heart of gold'.

One message read: 'You will be missed by everyone. You never deserved this..'

Another read: 'It's so sad to be writing this and to lay you flowers as you were taken from us so soon. Sleep right Roy. Jade.'

Floral tributes were laid in Mr Anderson's honour where he is believed to have been knifed at 1am on Saturday morning

Tributes described Rory as a 'one of a kind' who had a 'heart of gold' and who will 'be missed lots by many'

Other mourners also expressed their grief, as they wrote: 'Rory, you will be missed lots by many. Love you loads, Thomas and family.'

Another said: 'Rarely are people blessed to have someone like you in their lives. One of a kind and you will never be forgotten.

'No-one could ever replace you.'

And one tribute read: 'Rory, there are no words. Rest in peace my friend. Love Jen, Trev and Kiera.'

Paying tribute on Twitter, Francis Anthony wrote: 'Outpouring of grief and love is touching. Truly a man with a heart of gold. Rest in peace Rory Anderson.'

Murder squad police are now leading the investigation after a 21-year old-man who was arrested for causing grievous bodily harm was bailed.

Many mourners expressed their grief both by laying flowers and notes and posting tributes on social media

One tribute (above), read: 'It's so sad to be writing this and leaving you flowers as you were taken from us too soon'

Hundreds of flowers along with candles, a portrait of Mr Anderson and a crucifix lay outside the scene today as the flat remained cordoned off by police

A spokesman from Scotland Yard said: 'A murder investigation has been launched after a man was stabbed in Ealing.

'Police were called by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) shortly before 01:00hrs on Saturday, 12 March to reports of an assault at a residential address in Hotspur Road, Northolt.

'Officers attended. A 25-year-old man was taken by the LAS to a central London hospital suffering from stab injuries.

'He was pronounced dead on Wednesday, 16 March.

'Detectives from the Met's Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating and would like to hear from anyone who witnessed the assault or who has information that may assist the investigation.

'A 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. He has been bailed to a date in mid-April pending further enquiries.

'Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room on 020 8785 8244 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.'

The flat remained cordoned off today by police and officers have appealed for anyone with information to contact the incident room or Crimestoppers
Website Gawker has hinted it expects to lose a $100 million privacy case for showing a sex tape of Hulk Hogan.

In a statement issued as a jury deliberated in St Petersburg, Florida, the New York-based website said it had not had a fair trial.

The statement pointed out that the jury were not presented with all the facts and that they did not hear from a central figure in the case, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, the radio shock jock who had recorded the sex tape.

It showed Hogan - who sued under his real name Terry Bollea - having sex with Clem's then wife Heather. The jury has heard the sex was at Bubba the Love Sponge's suggestion.

Hogan is demanding $100 million in damages for what he says was an invasion of his privacy, as he did not know the sex was being recorded, and would not have consented to it being made public.

Gawker says he is a public figure and its decision to publish was protected by the First Amendment.

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Decision time: Hulk Hogan (in court today standing beside attorney Seema Ghatnekar) will find out shortly whether a jury in St Petersburg, Florida, backs him or Gawker in a privacy case over a sex tape of him and his best friend's wife

In the sights: Nick Denton (left), the founder of Gawker, and A.J. Daulerio, its former editor in chief (right), have given evidence to try to have Bollea's case rejected by the jury

Decision time: Judge Pamela Campbell will ask the jury to decide on the case shortly

Heather Cole (left), the ex-wife of Bubba the Love Sponge Clem (right) had sex with Hogan on tape. Hogan says it was private and should not have been published by Gawker

A Gawker spokesman said: 'As the trial concludes, were disappointed the jury was unable to see key evidence and hear testimony from the most important witness.

'So it may be necessary for the appeals court to resolve this case. Hulk Hogan's best friend Bubba the Love Sponge - who made the tape and offered up his wife in the first place - originally told his radio listeners that Hulk Hogan knew he was being taped.

'The jury was only able to hear a questionable version of events. Bubba should have been required to appear in court and explain what really happened. There is still more to the story.

'We expect the upcoming release of improperly sealed documents, important evidence that the jury should have been able to see, will begin revealing the true facts that the jury deserved to know about during deliberations.'

The intervention came after Gawker founder Nick Denton was accused of 'playing God with people's lives' during the closing arguments.

Lawyer Ken Turkel mercilessly mocked the British businessman as he told the jury the media chief was proud to ruin other people's lives.

He asked the jury to look at Hogan's face to see the toll the sex tape had had taken on the former pro-wrestler as he said he was seeking $50m in compensatory damages.

Punitive damages could add a further $50m and if awarded could put the Gawker site out of business.

Turkel said the Gawker site 'recklessly' turned Hogan's life upside down with a click on the computer.

'They love being rule breakers. They are proud of this and they don't adhere to the rules,' Turkel told the jury.

'What is disturbing about Gawker is not what they do, but how proud they are.'

Denton sat stony faced in the St Petersburg, Florida, courtroom as Hogan's lawyer ripped into Gawker for running excerpts of a secretly recorded sex tape.

His former editor AJ Daulerio, who posted the tape on the Gawker site in October 2012, sat alongside him and was also slammed by Turkel during the closing speech.

Hogan, who is using his real name Terry Bollea, has sued Gawker for up to $100m claiming he suffered severe emotional distress after they posted the sex tape.

The 62-year-old had no idea his sex romp with Heather Clem, the wife of his former best friend radio shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, was being recorded at her Florida home.

The tape was leaked anonymously to Gawker and while other media organizations talked about the tape the New York-based website were the only ones to run a one minute and 41 second clip.

Gawker has claimed they had the right to post the video under the freedom of speech afforded by the First Amendment.

Lawyers for Gawker said Hogan had previously talked about his sex life and that allowed them the right to post the tape.

They also showed a tape of him in a thong impersonating Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball, which he said he was not embarrassed by.

Turkel told the jury Gawker couldn't hide behind the First Amendment and that even as a celebrity Hogan was entitled to privacy.

He said they could have done the 'decent thing' and not invaded Hogan's privacy.

'They don't deserve the protection of the First Amendment,' said Turkel.

He accused Gawker staff of being a 'bunch of kids' who had little regard for the effect their posts had on people.

'This mocking of Mr Bollea. They had no idea he was at the lowest point of his life,' he said.

'Did they know the tape was secret? They spent days joking about it, mocking his anatomy hid character..

'Is this serious journalism to be protected by the First Amendment.'

Turkel said Gawker had even failed to call Hogan or his PR representative to ask for a comment before publishing the tape.

'They did not have the common decency to call one person involved,' he said.

Rival positions: Hogan's lawyer Kenneth Turkel (left) urged the jury to award the maximum damages while Michael Sullivan (right) for Gawker said they should put feelings about the website aside

Weeping: The jury was shown a deposition on Wednesday by Heather Clem, who wept as she recounted details of the sex tape becoming public. She was encouraged to have sex with Bollea / Hogan by her husband, Bubba the Love Sponge, with whom she had an open marriage

'They don't deserve the protection of the First Amendment.'

Turkel reserved most of his scorn for Denton and showed the jury clippings from interviews where he had said invasion of privacy was liberating.

'Gawker is a reflection of its owner,' he said. 'Who it is a good thing to invade people's privacy. It defines the whole reason he is here.'

Turkel said Daulerio was simply carrying out his boss's philosophy for the site when he published the sex tape.

'He is golden child,' he said.

The lawyer reminded the jury that Daulerio had testified under oath that he would run a sex tape of a child provided they were over the age of five.

Daulerio later clarified the remarks saying it was flippant but Terkel said it showed he 'did not care'.

Turkel said he had arrived at the $50m damages figure by estimating that people would pay $4.95 to view a sex tape and multiply that by the estimated 7m people who viewed the story.

He also added $15m that he claims Gawker made from selling advertising.

Gawker's lawyer Michael Sullivan told the jury in his closing argument they should watch the video of Hogan having sex on the tape as it was the one piece of evidence that had not been presented by the wrestler's legal team.

'He has avoided showing you the one video that is critical to this case,' said Sullivan. The trial continues.

Gawker's lawyer suggested to the jury that Hogan was aware he was being filmed when he had sex with Heather Clem.

Stripped off: The Hulk started slightly more dressed in the video (left) then was seen wearing a thong (right)

He asked if it was another 'celebrity sex scandal' that had been cooked up between Hogan and his friend Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.

'Was this a work between Bubba and Hulk Hogan,' he said.

'Was it a publicity stunt? Only two people know, Hulk Hogan and Bubba the Love Sponge. And Bubba is not here.'

He told the jury Hogan could be heard on the tape saying to Bubba 'is this being filmed?' before he had sex with Clem.

Sullivan also mocked Hogan's claims that he suffered severe emotional distress from Gawker running a short excerpt from the sex tape.

He reminded the jury that Hogan said he had sex with Clem at the lowest point in his life and added: 'He was so low he succumbed to the wiles of Heather Clem, three or four times.'

The lawyer said Hogan was so upset that he went on a media tour to talk about the sex tape.

He pointed out that when another website ran still photos from the tape he did not sue.

The jury listened as Mr Sullivan said Hogan happily talked about his sex life and said they would be hard pushed to find anyone other than a porn star who was so open about what they got up to in the bedroom.

Sullivan said as the sex tape was already being talked about Gawker had every right to show the short clip with their article.

Sullivan ended his closing speech by saying the Gawker legal team had a harder job in mounting the defense but added: 'Ultimately it is right.'

He asked the jury to put aside any negative feelings they had for Gawker and said even pornography and the Bubba the Love Sponge's radio show was protected under the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
A female high school student at a Washington DC private school - attended by many presidents' daughters - told police she was raped on campus by her ex-boyfriend, according to police.

The student at Sidwell Friends School reported that her classmate forced her to have sex on Wednesday, police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said.

Sidwell Friends is an exclusive Quaker school attended by the children of many of Washington's elite, including the two daughters of President Barack Obama.

A female student of the Sidwell Friends School in northwest, Washington claimed she was raped on campus by an ex-boyfriend

The Sidwell school is attended by the DC elite and costs nearly $38,000 a year for each students who attends

It was not clear where on the campus the alleged rape occurred.

The two students knew each other and had a previous sexual relationship, according to a police report.

The victim told police late Wednesday night that the rape occurred in the afternoon and evening hours, the report said.

The investigation is in the early stages, and police have not been provided with any physical evidence that a rape occurred, Sternbeck said.

The school has been attended by numerous daughters of presidents, including president Obama's daughters Sasha (left) and Maila (right)

President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton's daughter Chelsea (pictured) attended the school in 1997

The associate headmaster at Sidwell Friends, Ellis Turner, said in an email that the school is cooperating fully with the investigation and will not comment further, per school policy.

Located a few blocks north of the National Cathedral in upper northwest Washington, Sidwell Friends, where annual tuition is $37,750, has been described as the Harvard of Washington's private schools.

Obama's daughters, 17-year-old Malia and 14-year-old Sasha, were enrolled at Sidwell Friends when the family moved to Washington for Obama's inauguration in 2009.

Tricia Nixon (pictured), daughter of president Richard Nixon, attended the Sidwell Friends School in 1964

Obama, who leaves office in January, recently announced that the family would continue living in Washington at least until Sasha graduates.

The school zealously guards the first daughters' privacy. Chelsea Clinton and Tricia Nixon also graduated from Sidwell Friends.
but victims claim they are foreign

A Swedish town has refused to turn its street lights off for just an hour amid fears that women will fall victim to sex attacks.

Police in Ostersund have taken the measure to ban Earth Hour, a festival organised to raise awareness on climate change, after 14 separate reports of sex attacks in the area.

Victims have ranged from adult women to 10-year-old girls and perpetrators have managed to avoid capture.

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Police in Ostersund, pictured, have decided to cancel Earth Hour amid fears of sex attacks on women

Police have refused to give information on the appearance of the attackers but victims have reported characteristics to be of a foreign origin.

The decision to cancel Earth Hour, which involves lights being turned off around the world at the same time, was made in partnership with the local council and comes just weeks after police warned women to stay indoors at night.

Chief constable Stephen Jerand, told Sweden Television News: 'We think it's a very wise move and that the municipality made a good decision.

'Keeping the lights on creates security and is in line with our common efforts to increase security under current conditions'.

Social Democrat spokesman for the local council, Ann-Sofie Andersson added: 'Earth Hour is a good and important event, but this year we chose to have the street lights on in view of what has happened. We want everyone to feel safe'.

Among the disturbing list of cases being investigated by officers are the attempted rape of two ten year old girls at a bus stop, molestations, beatings and other attacks.

Ostersund, pictured during a previous Earth Hour event, has experienced a recent spate of sex attacks

It has also been reported that volunteers have joined police out on the street to help them with their night-time patrols.

Locals believe the attacks can be traced back to a 500-strong settlement of migrants just outside the town.
A former teacher told her partner she was sorry for what she was about to do before hurling their 15-week old son head-first to the ground.

The child suffered serious head injuries including skull fractures and permanent brain damage after the attack by Kim Clark, 34.

Maidstone Crown Court in Kent heard Clark had accused partner David Hamer of having an affair moments before she threw the child onto the floor.

Kim Clark, 34, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at Maidstone Crown Court, pictured, after admitting the attempted murder of her 15-week-old son, although she will be detained in hospital

She was jailed for 12 years at the court, but will be detained in hospital in Maidstone under the Mental Health Act and only sent to prison if she is considered well enough before the sentence expires.

Prosecutor Christopher Tehrani QC told the court Clark, a former secondary school teacher, said the couple argued in February 2015 after Clark accused Mr Hamer of having an affair.

He told the court she then raised the boys legs up to her shoulders before throwing him with significant force at their home near Ashford in Kent.

The court heard Clark then screamed the baby was dying and threatened to kill herself, before going to the kitchen and attempting to stab Mr Hamer, but only scratching him.

Mr Tehrani said she then raised a knife to her stomach but was disarmed by her former partner.

She phoned the emergency services and when the police arrived she tried to blame the childs injuries on Mr Hamer, the court was told.

The boy was taken to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and then transferred to Londons Kings College Hospital, where he underwent life-saving surgery.

His long-term prognosis is still unclear, but the court heard he had developed epileptic seizures and also had weakness in his left arm and leg.

According to Kent Online, Mr Justice Spencer, presiding, said: He [the child] had sustained terrible injuries. They were the sort which are encountered if a child falls from an upstairs window.

Sentencing, he added: You will be detained in hospital for as long as is necessary. If and when it is no longer necessary, and if your sentence of imprisonment has not expired, you will be transferred to prison.

The baby boy was rushed to William Harvey Hospital, pictured, in Ashford, Kent, with serious head injuries before being transferred to King's College Hospital in London where he underwent life-saving surgery

Once in prison, you will serve the remainder of the sentence.

The court heart she met Mr Hamer through a dating website in October 2013, before falling pregnant the following February.

Clark, who has a personality disorder, was said to have become jealous and suspicious of her partner, accusing him of having affairs with friends and colleagues and also making threats to kill herself.

Clark admitted attempted murder shortly before she was due to stand trial last month.

A court order banning identification of the child was also lifted by the judge.
Anne Frank hid with her family in Amsterdam, but died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945

The Anne Frank Foundation has criticised an 'escape bunker' tourist attraction where visitors are challenged to escape, based on the apartment where the diarist hid with her family from the Nazis.

Recently opened in the town of Valkenswaard, 87 miles south of Amsterdam, the so-called bunker has been branded insensitive and is said to give the impression that people could hide from the Nazis if they were smart enough.

The foundation, which manages the museum in the canal-side house that includes the Frank family's hidden apartment, said the apartment was one of the places where the Holocaust, or Shoah, played out.

It said: 'It shows very little empathy for survivors of the Shoah to use the annex as a backdrop for an escape room.'

The bunker 'creates the impression that hiding (from the Nazis) is an exciting game and if those hiding are smart enough they won't be caught,' the foundation added.

An impression the body called historically wrong.

Visitors to the 'escape bunker', which has been made to look like the apartment where the teenage Jewish diarist hid with her family during the Second World War, are locked in and have to escape within an hour using teamwork, creativity and 'out-of-the-box' thinking.

Thijs Verberne, the operator of the bunker, defended it in a telephone interview, calling the escape room 'an educational experience.'

Anne Frank became posthumously famous for the diary she kept while her family went into hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam in July 1942.

In August 1944, following a tip-off from an unknown person, the Franks were discovered, deported and initially sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Jewish teenager died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, shortly before it was liberated by Allied forces.
Ministers could seize on an exit from the European Union as a liberating chance for a revolutionary overhaul of British laws, senior officials believe.

Mandarins have privately advised that a leave vote could be used for the biggest shake-up of Whitehall ever seen with unpopular EU laws ditched or rewritten in a sovereign British way.

The civil service has been accused of scaremongering with dossiers warning of the possibility of economic chaos following Brexit.

But behind closed doors some top officials are optimistic about the opportunities as the country is 'unshackled itself from the corpse of the EU'.

Whitehall officials have privately claimed that a Brexit would allow Parliament to radically overhaul UK law with a 'revolutionary' period of change

Years of legislation on health, justice, agriculture and employment would be reworked from top to toe in a decade long process.

The Eurosceptic-dominated government, that it is anticipated would take over after a decision to leave, would get the chance to scrap red tape such as the Working Time Directive that restricts how firms do business.

A Ministry of Trade would be set up in Whitehall to strike trade deals with countries around the world.

Every area from agriculture to fisheries to financial services to energy to justice and home affairs  you would go through every area covered by the 35 areas covered by accession and have some process of de-accession, disentanglement, a senior UK official said.

In every area of public life and government life, I think people would want to go through with a fine-tooth comb and be asking the Civil Service: Now we are free to do what we want, what do you want to do with that freedom?

Every legislative programme for five or 10 years would be dominated by re-regulating and re-legislating everything in a sovereign British way.

Every part of Westminster would want to do that. We would not have unshackled ourselves from the corpse of the European Union in the area of employment regulation in order to replicate everything that we used to have from Brussels employment regulation - else what was the point?

David Cameron, pictured in Brussels today with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, second right, and Finland Prime Minister Juha Sipila, right, is campaigning to keep Britain in the EU

After ending its EU membership, some believe that Britain could initially shift to a trading arrangement similar to Norway before negotiating a more bespoke arrangement.

On June 24, we would be having a very lively debate about what do we want to use our new autonomy and sovereignty for, and which areas, said the official.

I suppose very crudely I think about it as a trade-off between sovereignty, autonomy, ability to regulate, legislate in your own areas in your own fashion, Westminster free to do what it wants - and market access.
A South Carolina teacher who says she was ousted from her job after a student accessed her cellphone and stole lewd photos of her is now planning to sue her former employer.

Leigh Anne Arthur, 33, was forced to resign from Union High School last month in the wake of the scandal surrounding the content of her phone.

I feel raw, violated, Arthur said. Its something that Im struggling with on a day-to-day basis.

The 16-year-old student who allegedly found the semi-nude photos of the teacher and then shared them among his friends was charged earlier this month as a juvenile with counts of computer crime and aggravated voyeurism.

Legal action: Ousted South Carolina teacher Leigh Anne Arthur is getting ready to file a lawsuit against Union County Schools District after she was forced to resign over racy photos a student found on her phone

However, Interim Union Public Schools Superintendent David Eubanks has pointed a finger of blame at Ms Arthur, claiming it was her fault her private photos were leaked because she left her class unattended during a four-minute break between periods.

Teachers have a very strong responsibility to supervise students at all times, Eubanks told ABC News. Our information indicates that she was not where she should have been at the time this took place.

Speaking to ABC News, Ms Arthur staunchly defended her actions and insisted that she did nothing wrong.

I left my phone. I did not knowingly leave my phone sitting on my desk, Arthur said. [I] didn't think that a student would do that.

The ousted educator is preparing to file a lawsuit against the school district seeking unspecified damages for defamation and breach of contract.

I want to be able to hold my head up and say, you know, I did all I can do to make sure that I'm getting my dignity back," Arthur said.

Arthur quit her job teaching mechanical and electrical engineering and computer programming in February, a week after a student, 16, took her phone and shared nude photos of her online

David Eubanks, interim superintendent of the Union Schools District, hit out at Arthur, accusing her of lying about the incident and saying she should have been supervising the class

Arthur said she was in the hallway greeting students as they entered class which the school requires (Union High School above)

In his previous remarks on the case, David Eubanks said there is evidence that Arthur allowed students to use her personal cell phone on a regular basis and routinely left the unlocked device on her desk for student use.

'Ms. Arthur has used the media to transmit false information obviously intended for the purpose of deflecting the incident totally to students. The evidence available, points to the extent of her false statements,' he said.

'Her failure to supervise her students along with allowing students routine access to her personal cell phone constitute an evident unfitness for Ms. Arthur to continue as a classroom teacher.

Arthur said she was in the hallway greeting students as they came in to the class, and has only ever let her nephew use her phone at school.

Officials said it's not clear how many people may have seen the social media postings of the photo.

Arthur has quit her job teaching mechanical and electrical engineering and computer programming at the school's vocational center.

Arthur, 33, told police on February 18 that while she stepped out of her classroom, a boy took her unlocked smartphone from her desk, opened the photos application and found a nude selfie she had taken for her husband as a Valentine's Day present.

Arthur also claimed the student involved, who she has identified but chose not to name, had a grudge against her, telling her 'your day of reckoning is coming' before sharing the pictures.

As of late Friday, more than 17,000 people have signed an online petition urging school district officials in the community in northwestern South Carolina to give Arthur her job back.

Rebuttal: Arthur (above) said she was in the hallway greeting students as they came in to the class, and has only ever let her nephew use her phone at school

More than 17,000 have signed the petition (above) which calls for Arthur to return to the Union County Career and Technology Center, saying she was forced out despite her privacy being invaded

School district officials have hit back, accusing Arthur of lying in her statements, saying students were routinely given unsupervised access to her cell phone

The voyeurism charge the 16-year-old suspect is facing makes it illegal, for the purpose of sexual gratification, to record or make a digital file of another person without his or her consent.

The computer crimes charge makes it illegal to take possession or deprive the owner of a computer of computer data.
Shocking crime: Cesar Gonzalez-Mugaburu, 60, a New York foster parent who cared for 140 boys over the course of 20 years, has been charged with sexually abusing at least seven children and a dog

A foster father from suburban New York who helped raise up to 140 boys over the past two decades has been charged with sexually abusing at least seven of them, as well as a dog.

Cesar Gonzalez-Mugaburu, 60, of Ridge, on Long Island, was ordered held on $1million bond Friday after being charged in a 17-count indictment with child endangerment and sexual misconduct.

He is accused of victimizing children as young as 8. He is also accused of having sex with a female dog in front of a child last September.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota told The Associated Press that Gonzalez-Mugaburu earned as much as $18,000 a month as a foster parent for the children. He cared for between six and eight children at a time since at least 1996, the prosecutor said.

He said prosecutors were only able to charge Gonzalez-Mugaburu with abusing seven children in the indictment unsealed Friday, because statute of limitations laws prevent filing charges involving other victims.

He said two boys came forward in January and reported the alleged abuse to a caseworker, who contacted police. Detectives then launched a wider investigation.

'We know there were other victims,' Spota said.

During a press conference held Friday following the suspect's indictment, Spota said Gonzalez-Mugaburu would strike the boys in his care, deny them meals and make them stand in the cold, reported CBS New York.

Authorities said the foster children were placed in his household by Brentwood, New York, non-profit St. Christopher Ottilie and the New York City Administration for Children Services.

'House of horrors': Officials say Gonzalez-Mugaburu would strike the boys in his care, deny them meals and make them stand in the cold outside his Ridge, New York, home (pictured)

Rose Anello, a spokeswoman for St. Christopher Ottilie, says the organization placed 71 children with Gonzalez-Mugaburu over the past 19 years.

'This investigation should expand well beyond the offender to those who helped to enable this offender to access potential victims,' said Laura Ahearn, a victims' rights advocate and executive director of Parents for Megan's Law, which tracks alleged sex offenders.

Spota said the investigation is ongoing, and will include how the alleged abuse went undetected for so long.

Gonzalez-Mugaburu had no prior arrests, prosecutors said; Spota said investigators also are trying to determine how the suspect was permitted to be a foster parent, because he said the man has no employment record.

'He claims to be self-employed,' Spota said.

Statements issued by both the ACS and the non-profit said they were cooperating with the ongoing investigation.
A woman who posted topless photos of herself on a restaurant boss's social media as part of a bizarre campaign of harassment told police she was being controlled by the 'illuminati'.

Evangelina Amirhom, 36, has been handed a lifelong restraining order after she sent death threats to businessman Steve Pineau, as well as cash, an iphone and a murder novel with menacing paragraphs underlined.

She told police that she was being 'mentally-controlled by the illuminati', a secret society founded in the 18th century, and that her mental health difficulties made her do 'naughty things', Teeside Crown Court heard yesterday.

Sentenced: Evangelina Amirhom, 36, was sentenced to a 12 month community order for posting topless pictures on a social media sites belonging to a Brighton based restaurant boss, his family and his girlfriend

She was sentenced to a 12 month community order and her life-long restraining order bans her from contacting Mr Pineau or his family, or entering East Sussex.

Amirhom was first given a restraining order four years ago after she made 20 to 30 calls a day to Mr Pineau's restaurant in Brighton. She also made false allegations against him.

But last November she breached the order and started posting things on Instagram and Facebook accounts belonging to the cafe owner, his girlfriend, business partner and the eaterie itself.

Death threats: Amirhom sent Mr Pineau the book Adirondak Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906, with 'menacing' passages underlined

Prosecutor David Crook told Judge Howard Crowson: 'The most notable effort was to place self-taken photographs revealing her naked breasts and some very sexually-detailed comments.

'He had to constantly monitor the social media sites to take down the distressing messages, and regular patrons would also inform him if anything new appeared.'

Amirhom sent packages containing a Christmas card with 200 cash, two painted canvasses, a small Santa toy, an iPhone 6 and the book Adirondak Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906.

After her arrest, she told police her mental health difficulties made her do 'naughty things' and said the least Mr Pineau deserved were 'cheeky posts'.

The reason for her obsession was not revealed in court, but she said she had been 'mentally-controlled by the illuminati and sent packages as instructed'.

Michele Turner said Amirhom was able to return from remand in prison to Webb House in Zetland Road, Middlesbrough, if she did not get a custodial sentence.

Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday how things went quiet for some time, but the trouble began again when Amirhom feared her treatment at the centre was going to change.

Prosecutor David Crook said she threatened to harm the man and members of his family, before he gave up the business and opened a new cafe on the south coast.
The daughter of an Illinois state representative has been arrested after she allegedly attacked her mother's opponent with a staple gun in front of his campaign office.

Jessica Soto, 26, faces three different aggravated battery charges, including with a deadly weapon, causing great bodily harm and in a public place.

Her boyfriend, 26-year-old Bradley Fichter, faces the same charges, as well as a felony count of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report about the altercation.

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Jessica Soto, 26, was arrested after she allegedly attacked Bob Zwolinski (pictured left with his injuries), who was running against her mother for a representative seat in the Illinois General Assembly, with a staple gun

Soto is the daughter of incumbent Rep. Cynthia Soto, who defeated Bob Zwolinski on Tuesday in a landslide election for her 4th District Illinois House seat.

Less than two weeks before the election, Zwolinski said he and his girlfriend were driving past his campaign office on their way home when they saw a man and woman stapling signs to the building.

Soto and her boyfriend Bradley Fichter, 26, (pictured) face three aggravated battery charges

'I went up to them and said "Come on guys, what are you doing? This is my office"', Zwolinski told ABC7 Chicago.

Zwolinski said the man then pushed his arm against him and the woman began to scream 'This isn't your territory'.

'Suddenly she pounces on my back and starts scratching and tearing at me, and before I know it all three of us are on the ground,' he said.

Zwolisnki said the woman hit an empty Coronoa bottle over his head and kicked him in the face before she shot the staple gun into his forehead.

He said the man and woman ran away as blood ran down his face.

Megan Dunworth, Zwolinski's girlfriend, said the woman then approached the car and opened the door, holding the staple gun to her head and threatening her.

Dunworth said the girl fled after a car honked. She then drove Zwolinski to the hospital, where he said he got six stitches for the staple wound and suffered a crack in his nose but no broken bones.

Zwolinski posted a photo of his bloodied face on his official Twitter account, writing: 'Politics is a contact sport. Apparently that's literally the case.'

Fichter was also hospitalized and filed a counter reporter against Zwolinksi for the March 6 incident.

Authorities said Fichter claimed Zwolinski attacked the pair first, ripping their signs down before he grabbing him, throwing him to the ground, and then repeatedly punching him in the mouth.

Soto is the daughter of incumbent Rep. Cynthia Soto (right), who defeated Bob Zwolinski on Tuesday in a landslide election for her 4th District Illinois House seat.

Frank Avila, the lawyer for both Soto and Fichter, confirmed on Friday that Soto is one of the representative's three daughters but claims she was not involved in the incident.

Avila earlier called the incident a 'media stunt' that involved Zwolinski and two unpaid volunteers from Soto's campaign that he refused to name because they were 'private people'.

'He initiated physical contact,' Avila said of Zwolinski. 'And they defended themselves...if he ended up getting the worst of it, that's on him.'

Avila also said he believed Zwolinski put a staple in his own head for publicity.

'I mean, he starts the fight, he doesn't get the better of the fight...for a faltering, losing campaign, that is a great stunt for him.'
abandoned in Wichita, with Gunner the dog still sitting in the back

A carjacker stole a 2013 Chevy truck with the dog in the backseat from parking lot of a

Gunner the Weimaraner was taken on an unexpected 80-miles journey when someone stole his owner's truck from the parking lot of a Kansas courthouse, with the pooch still in the backseat.

According to the Wichita Police Department, the incident took place on March 11 when Gunner's owner stopped by the courthouse in Emporia, Kansas, to renew his auto tags.

Gunner was sitting patiently in the backseat of the 2013 Chevy truck, awaiting his owner's return, when a carjacker jumped into the driver's seat and took off, unaware there was a large, grey dog in the back.

Guard dog he's not: Gunner the Weimaraner was reunited with his owner after a carjacker stole the Chevy truck he was in and took the pooch on an 81-mile ride from Emporia to Wichita, Kansas

The thief drove to Wichita and dumped the vehicle in the 500 block of North Topeka Avenue, located 81 miles from the spot where the truck had been stolen in Wichita.

When a local police officer tracked down the Chevy, he found Gunner, described in the police press release as a friendly dog,' still sitting in the backseat.

The abducted pooch spent the night in Wichita before being reunited with his owner in Emporia.

Police were able to identify the suspected carjacker and apprehended him a few days after the incident.

He has since been returned to Emporia to face theft charges.
Owen Labrie was cuffed and taken into custody for violating 5pm-to-8am curfew 8 times since being convicted of sexual

Owen Labrie was taken into custody today (pictured Friday) to begin serving a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old classmate

A New Hampshire prep school graduate who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old classmate was led from court in handcuffs on Friday, after he admitted violating his bail agreement by missing curfew.

Owen Labrie was sentenced to a year in jail by a judge in Merrimack County Superior Court - after authorities became aware he had been breaking his curfew by visiting his girlfriend at Harvard for brunch - among other activities.

Labrie was caught out when he bumped into a journalist on the train and told her about his life after being convicted.

After finding him in violation of the curfew, Judge Larry Smukler scolded the 20-year-old before having him taken into custody.

'There have been credibility issues throughout this trial.

'You are unlikely to abide by any conditions. I don't relax conditions because you can't comply with them.'

'Since that's the way you're going to consider these conditions I am making the finding and I think I'll leave it at that. So be it. 'Judge Smukler said Friday just before Labrie was led out of court in cuffs.

Labrie, 20, was stoic as he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom. His mother appeared to sob quietly.

Judge Smukler was the same judge that sentenced Labrie in the first place and warned him last October that he would be 'exceedingly foolish' to violate the terms.

He will now likely begin serving his sentence at Merrimack County Jail, where he will rub shoulders with drug dealers and domestic abusers.

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Labrie told a reporter for VICE News, who had been following his case, that he was having brunch with his girlfriend, a Harvard University student, which prompted officials to investigate if he was following curfew. He is seen here eyes closed, looking up, as the judge addressed him

His female attorney had been resting her hand supportively on his back as he stood to hear the judge tell him that conditions were not going to be relaxed because Labrie can't comply with any conditions. She told the judge her client was trying to avoid media attention while attending academic endeavors

Shamed: Labrie hung his head after the judge said he would be starting his one-year sentence immediately and a sheriff came over and cuffed him

The investigation was launched after Susan Zalkind, a reporter for Vice who covered Labrie's trial, wrote a story about seeing Labrie on a train from Boston to Cambridge.

In the article Zalkind said Labrie told her that he was visiting his girlfriend, a Harvard University student, and had taken her out to brunch.

He was supposed to be home between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. each night.

Labrie was in a rush to get home, Zalkind wrote on Twitter.

He talked to Zalkind about emotional 'ups and downs' and having his life 'torn apart' in the media. Labrie also said that his girlfriend had quietly supported him during the trial, according to the interview.

Labrie dropped his head back with his eyes closed as the verdict to have his bail revoked was read. He was taken into custody in Merrimack County.

'In 17 years I've never seen someone's bail violated for attempting to better oneself,' Labrie's lawyer, Jaye Rancourt, said outside court. 'I think he's still in shock.'

In court Friday, Rancourt acknowledged that her client 'tried, admittedly, to fly under the radar on three occasions.'

She said Labrie was sorry and did it to avoid media attention.

But prosecutor Catherine Ruffle said, based on interviews with the reporter and a ticket clerk at the bus line Labrie used, Labrie was going to Boston to visit a girlfriend.

The victim's father declined to comment on Friday's developments.

Labrie had been living with his mother in Tunbridge, Vermont, as he appealed his sentence and the requirement that he register as a sex offender.

Labrie's defense attorney Jaye Rancourt wrote that her client was meeting with his legal team and 'pursuing educational endeavors' when he broke his curfew.

'In his attempt to make productive use of his time and at the same time maintain some degree of privacy, he violated this court's order and for that he is sorry,' the lawyer stated in her written response to the prosecution's filing demanding the revocation of Labrie's bail.

Labrie's lawyer added that the spirit and purpose of the bail order has been followed.

The St Paul School graduate missed his curfew on January 28 and February 29 by catching a 5.20am bus to Boston to attend seminars for his online education courses, according to his attorney.

Labrie was then led out of the court room in handcuffs to begin serving his sentence. His lawyer says he's still in shock

He never turned around to face supporters or the media after the cuffs were on. The victim's father declined to comment on Friday's developments

He also violated the conditions of his bail twice in October, before his sentencing, and two more times in February for meetings with 'civil legal council.'

Labrie was 18 at the time of the 2014 encounter with the girl at St. Paul's School in Concord. He claims the two only dry humped and that the encounter was consensual. She maintains that he penetrated her with his finger, tongue and genitals despite her protests.

His DNA was later found on her underwear.

'What he did to me made me feel like I didn't belong on this planet like I would be better off dead,' the victim said in a prepared statement that aired before Labrie's sentencing.

He was ultimately found innocent on charges of felony sexual assault but guilty of sexual misconduct.

The judge said to Labrie at his sentencing; 'You are a very good liar.'

The convictions centered around the fact that he used a computer to contact his victim and the fact that he had engaged in sex with minor.

Labrie wore his same gray tweed jacket for the bail violation as he did last year when he was found guilty. He's seen here bail was revoked on October 292015

Labrie was building a chapel on his father's property before he was taken into custody for the curfew violation

'If he had merely called the 15-year-old on the telephone or spoken to her in person, there would be no additional crime,' his lawyers wrote in their appeal to the judge in hopes of having him not have to register as a sex offender.

'Yet because he prearranged the encounter through email and Facebook, he will be subjected to the scrutiny and humiliation of sex offender registration for the rest of his life.'

Jurors reached their verdict in the case after seven hours of deliberations in August and Labrie was seen sobbing in court as the guilty verdicts were read by the forewoman.

Prosecutors claimed he raped the 15-year-old as part of a practice at St. Paul's School known as Senior Salute in which seniors try to romance and have sex with underclassmen.

The prosecution also produced a number of Labrie's friends who testified that he told them the two did have sex.

Labrie - who was the sole defense witness in the case - said that he stopped short of sleeping with the girl because he did not want to have sex with her.

His victim had to leave the courtroom after becoming upset during his testimony, crying as Labrie began to read aloud emails the two exchanged.

As for the testimony of his friends, Labrie's lawyer said that his client had simply been bragging to the young men and embellishing his story.

Labrie stared down the victim and her family as he entered the courtroom the day the verdict was announced by jurors.

Prior to the incident with the victim he had dated her older sister.
A man who wheeled his unresponsive mother, 90, to withdraw $850 from the bank before reporting she was dead has been charged with criminal neglect and financial exploitation.

David Vanzo, 57, took his mother Caryl to a Wells Fargo branch in Plymouth, Minnesota, six hours before he reported her death on January 5, 2015.

He was arrested in California on Thursday, and is waiting to be extradited to Minnesota as he is accused of swindling his mother out of $260,000 and failing to take care of her.

David Vanzo (pictured left and right) has been charged with criminal neglect, attempted theft by swindle and financial exploitation. In January 2015, he wheeled his unresponsive mother, 90, into a bank to withdraw $850

There was a warrant out for Vanzo's arrest, and the Plymouth Police Department tracked him down to Pomona, California.

Vanzo is charged with criminal neglect, attempted theft by swindle, and two counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

Caryl was found lying on a urine-soaked mattress with feces and bed sores all over her body when her son reported her death in 2015.

It is unclear whether she had already died when he took her to the bank hours earlier.

Wells Fargo employees recalled seeing Caryl's feet dragging under the wheelchair.

A search warrant citing the employees says she 'did not move' and employees 'couldn't tell if she was breathing.'

A neighbor who saw them leave in the taxi also wondered if Caryl was dead.

'I don't know if she was unconscious, or not alive,' the neighbor told FOX 9.

After David dropped his mother off at home, he asked the cab driver to take him to a Buffalo Wild Wings, according to the criminal complaint.

When David called the police to announce that his mom was dead, they found Caryl in bed, wearing a robe and fur coat covered in feces and 'excruciating' sores.

According to the medical examiner, she suffered from malnutrition and dehydration.

Investigators found the home was filled with trash and smelled of urine and feces.

The 57-year-old, who was given power of attorney in 2012, is also accused of taking out a reverse mortgage of $118,000 in her name, and making significant withdrawals of $25,600 and $47,500 from her account.

It remains unclear whether she was already dead when he brought her to the bank. Vanzo then brought her back to the home and told the cab driver to take him to a fast food restaurant before he reported she was dead

According to the medical examiner, she suffered from malnutrition and dehydration. Authorities found her on a urine-soaked mattress with feces and bed sores all over her body

Vanzo reportedly spent the money on gambling and porn, while the arrest warrant said he visited a number of dating websites and online escort service sites.

KTLA reported investigators found pornographic material playing on the computer with the keyboard 'completely covered in thick layers of undetermined substances'.

Vanzo, who lived with his mother since 2007, previously denied that his mother was already dead when he took her to the bank and claims the $850 was from a joint account.
Sid Miller, the commissioner for agriculture for Texas, has been accused of using $1,200 of public money to fly to Oklahoma City for a 'Jesus shot'

A Texas official who traveled to Oklahoma City in order to get a 'Jesus shot' from a quack doctor to cure his chronic pain may have paid for the trip using taxpayer money.

Sid Miller, the commissioner for agriculture, is accused of spending $1,200 of public money to visit 'doctor' Mike Lonergan in Oklahoma City for the shot in February last year.

Miller, an outspoken Republican who previously courted controversy for an anti-Muslim Facebook post, says the shot cured him of chronic pain he was suffering as a result of rodeo riding.

Less than a month after taking office last year, public records show Miller traveled to Oklahoma City and charged taxpayers $1,120 for a flight and a hire car.

At the time, he claimed he was invited to the Sooner State by officials in order to discuss the challenges facing farmers across the two states.

Miller featured in a photograph, posted to the Texas Department of Agriculture Facebook page, alongside Oklahoma representatives Brian Renegar, Jerry McPeak, and Jerry Shoemake, and assistant commissioner Walt Roberts.

However, according to the Houston Chronicle, none of the officials in that image recall inviting Miller to the city, or scheduling a meeting while he was there.

Instead, most of them recall bumping into Miller as he passed through the hallway of their office building and stopping for an informal chat.

Just months after taking office last year, Miller flew to Oklahoma City and rented a hire car, claiming he was invited to meet with colleagues (pictured). But those men say they never invited him and only spoke briefly

However, one of the lawmakers pictured and an aide with close knowledge of the trip told the paper that Miller mentioned he was in the state to have a medical procedure.

Oklahoma City just happens to be the home of Lonergan, who claims to be a former military doctor who developed a formula called 'Jesus juice' used by special forces soldiers to cure pain.

Lonergan, who has served time for eight federal convictions of tax evasion and insurance fraud, offers the mixture to patients in the form of an injection at $300-per-shot.

Mike Lonergan, a felon who claims to be a former special forces doctor who created a shot that rids people of pain, also lives in Oklahoma City

According to local reports the injection contains a mixture of Dexamethasone, Kenalog and B12, which are legitimate medicines used to treat inflammation, though there is no medical evidence to support that claim that it can rid people of pain forever.

Miller admitted to getting one of the shots to treat his chronic pain last year, saying it had 'worked out great' for him, but insisted at the time that he had used his own money to pay for it.

Lonergan is the only doctor in American to be offering the shot, so Miller would have been forced to travel to Oklahoma City at some point to get it.

According to the Chronicle, Miller has now paid back the money he used for the trip 'out of an abundance of caution'.

Miller would neither confirm nor deny getting the shot on that trip, the paper reports. If Miller were proven to have used the trip for the medical procedure, it would almost certainly constitute fraud.

Miller has faced controversy in the past after sharing an image of a nuclear mushroom cloud on his Facebook page last year while suggesting that Muslims should be bombed.

The post says Japan has 'been at peace' with the U.S. since the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki, before adding that: 'It's time we made peace with the Muslim world.'

Miller took the image down, but refused to apologize, saying that another person with access to the page had shared it while refusing to name the person responsible.
The family of five-year-old girl left with partial blindness in one eye after visiting a water park in Perth are planning to sue the Western Australian Government.

Chelsea Fawcett developed a substantial eye infection after visiting the new BHP Billiton water park when it opened on January 29.

Her mother, Jannah Fawcett, said the family needed help to pay for medical bills now that her daughter was partially blind in one eye and may not get her normal sight back.

'They should have tested that water, and not opened it before they knew it was safe,' Ms Fawcett told Perth Now.

Chelsea Fawcett, 5, in hospital with an eye infection after visiting Elizabeth Quay's new water park in Perth

'It has been an awful experience with Chelsea in hospital and now she has to wear an eye patch and may never get her normal sight back.'

The water park was tested the day before it opened and a type of amoeba, known as naegleria fowleri, was found which instigated an emergency clean overnight.

WHAT IS NAEGLERIA? Naegleria infection is a rare and usually fatal brain infection caused by an amoeba commonly found in freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs. Exposure occurs during swimming or other water sports. The amoeba  called Naegleria fowleri  travels up the nose to the brain, where it causes severe damage. Most people who have naegleria infection die within a week. Millions of people are exposed to the amoeba that causes naegleria infection each year, but only a handful of them ever get sick from it. Health officials don't know why some people develop naegleria infection while others don't. Avoiding warm bodies of fresh water and wearing nose clips while in the water may help prevent such infections. Advertisement

But the park was not retested before it opened to the public and two weeks later, tests found the potentially harmful pseudomonas-type bacteria.

This comes after WA health minister Kim Hames said that testing should be done more frequently at the new water playground, where the bacterium has posed an infection risk.

Other children have also contracted rashes and irritated eyes, closing the park twice.

Ask any GP  treating this sort of infection isnt an uncommon event, but (with) government pools and government waterways, weve got to be absolutely strict, Dr Hames told Perth Now in February.

Law firm Slater and Gordon is calling on anyone else who developed health problems after visiting the park to seek legal advice.

It is believed the State Government has not yet received notice of any legal action.

Her Forrestfield mother, Jannah Fawcett, said she would be taking legal action against the State Government for her daughter

Chelsea has been left partially blind in one eye and may never get her normal sight back
At first glance, it seems like another Top Gear stunt gone horribly wrong. A bride, veil blowing in the wind and train cascading down the steps of St Pauls Cathedral, looks on as a Ford Mustang screeches past, doing handbrake turns in clouds of smoke before coming to a noisy stop.

It looked for all the world as if a society wedding had just been ruined by Top Gear star and former Friends actor Matt LeBlanc.

And yet, on reflection, something about it just didnt quite ring true. The brides dress looked a little cheap for a wedding at such a prestigious venue, and the wedding party not quite as horrified as one might expect to find their special occasion ruined by a film crew and race-car.

Bizarre: Matt LeBlanc appeared to crash a society wedding at St Paul's Cathedral, screeching past in a Ford Mustang and doing handbrake turns in clouds of smoke

The bizarre episode was quickly forgotten, though, as the next day Matt LeBlanc, with rally driver Ken Block at the wheel, sped along Whitehall in London and performed doughnuts  circular wheel spins  close to the Cenotaph war memorial, causing widespread outrage.

The whole wedding at St Pauls was, however, staged by actors  a fact confirmed by a spokesman for the Anglican cathedral.

Such fakery seems to mark a new approach by the Top Gear team  and raises questions of taste in performing the stunt in the shadow of one of Britains most iconic religious sites.

Top Gear is, of course, no stranger to causing offence. And yet it seems that the new series is lacking some of the va-va-voom of the original.

Indeed, the filming of the latest shows seems to bear out that mysterious truth about life: that once something starts going wrong, an awful momentum takes hold. One episode of bad luck seems to spark off another.

Such is the fate that appears to have befallen Top Gear following the replacement of Jeremy Clarkson with Chris Evans as host. Since filming for the new series began last year, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

Controversy: A public row broke out after a Top Gear car was pictured carrying out stunts near the Cenotaph

Near miss: This video still shows how a Ford Mustang carrying Matt LeBlanc drove close to the Cenotaph, while performing 'doughnuts'

The train of ill-fortune began when Evans went around the Top Gear track for the very first time and crashed the car  a brand-new Jaguar on loan to the show. Then last December the shows executive producer, Lisa Clark, quit amid reports of discord between her and Evans.

Script editor Tom Ford left at around the same time. A month later, Kim Shillinglaw, a senior BBC executive who had overseen Top Gears re-invention, joined the exodus.

Then in January, while filming in California, Evans was seen getting out of his car and apparently being sick on the side of the road.

Car sickness cant be helped, of course, but if youre the lead presenter of the worlds most successful motoring show, its potentially a problem. There were reports, too, that 49-year-old Evans was struggling to master the art of driving and speaking to camera at the same time.

Rumours of on-set conflict have rumbled on, plus mutterings about the spiralling budget.

The old Top Gear was in the business of offending people, but the team  Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond  by and large got away with their antics by coming across as cheeky schoolboys just having a laugh.

Stars: Top Gear hosts Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc pictured in the days after the Cenotaph controversy

Screeching: The car did a handbrake turn in the middle of Whitehall, throwing up a cloud of smoke

The Cenotaph stunt, however, which left a ring of scorch marks, was seen as very disrespectful.

All of this might ultimately be forgotten if the show is an obvious hit when it airs in May.

But according to one well-informed industry source, there is a palpable sense of panic at the BBC because the footage is lacking that elusive magic that the old Top Gear had.

The word is that when they looked at the footage, the energy and wit werent there, says the source. The show before was carefully scripted, but Chris wanted a bit more spontaneity. Sadly, it simply hasnt come off.

The key problem, says the source, is the brilliant but mercurial Evans himself. In the absence of an executive producer to take charge, no one has any control over him.

He is undoubtedly formidably talented, but talent needs direction  and Evans is effectively directing himself. On set, he calls all the shots and no one dares to stand up to him.

In the shows previous incarnation, Jeremy Clarksons not inconsiderable ego and volatile nature were kept under control by then executive producer, Andy Wilman. New executive producer Lisa Clark tried her best to do the same trick with Chris Evans  but failed.

Anger: Westminster City Council said the BBC had said they would only be driving down Whitehall and said the corporation will now have to pay for the clear-up costs

One BBC source says Evans, who has two young sons with his third wife Natasha Shishmanian, was given too much control from the outset.

They handed him a massive budget and said, Go and create your dream.

What they should be doing is putting in a producer with experience who would say, B***** off, Chris Evans  we know youre brilliant but we have got to protect the BBC.

Jeremy Clarkson might be forgiven if he is now basking in the warm glow of schadenfreude.

Like him or not, Clarkson had come to define Top Gear, which he began presenting in 1988. But his arrogance and politically incorrect antics made him unpopular with his BBC bosses. When he punched a Top Gear producer, Oisin Tymon, executives saw their opportunity and he was sacked last March.

In the June, it was announced that Evans was to replace Clarkson, and over the coming months, his sidekicks were announced  all of them experts in their field but their names largely unknown to those of us who arent motoring geeks.

These comprised Chris Harris, who has built up a following road-testing vehicles on YouTube, Eddie Jordan, BBC Sports F1 pundit, motoring journalist Rory Reid and Sabine Schmitz, a German racing driver. You might imagine that landing a job on Top Gear might be perceived as a big break. But apparently not.

Filming: The Top Gear team carried out another stunt with a Queen lookalike at Woolwich Barracks

This week, the Mail spoke briefly to Rory Reids mother, Paulette Sewell-Reid. When it was suggested that her son had a great new job on Top Gear she replied tartly: Its not, but never mind. She refused to elaborate.

The announcement last month that Friends actor Matt LeBlanc was to join the team seemed to indicate that Top Gears fortunes were changing for the better.

The Hollywood stars signing may be part of a strategy to capture a bigger slice of the American market. Filming in the capital over the past week has taken in some of Londons most famous landmarks  Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf and, of course, St Pauls and the Cenotaph.

After the Cenotaph incident, Chris Evans generously made a point of apologising profusely and seems uncharacteristically worried.

It is, of course, too early to write off the new show and Chris Evans. The man has a near genius for connecting with people. But even he must be praying that the curse of Top Gear is dispatched to the scrap heap  and sooner rather than later.

A BBC spokesman said: Chris Evans role as a creative lead on Top Gear is something we are proud of and excited about. To suggest the show is in difficulty is categorically untrue.
Google has yet to explain why the error occurred

No celebrity wants to be mistaken for someone else - especially when that other person is disgraced comedian Bill Cosby. But that's exactly what happened to Kevin Hart last week when a Google search for Cosby's net worth brought up his image.

'Oh @Google can you please take my picture off of "Bills Cosby's" net worth search,' Hart wrote on his Twitter account Thursday. 'Thanks in advance guys!!!! Appreciate ya.'

Just one minute later a fan responded with a screengrab from Google that did indeed show the 78-year-old actor's net worth - some $400million - and Hart's grinning face.

Mistaken: A search for 'Bill Cosby's net worth' brought up this correct information about the 78-year-old actor's career - and a very incorrect image of Kevin Hart

Tweet: Hart Tweeted Google about the mistake, bringing it to the attention of his fans

The first search result, a box with information from The Richest website, read, 'American musician, activist, author, actor, comedian, education and television producer Bill Cosby has an estimated net worth of $400 million.'

That information was accompanied by a headshot of 36-year-old comedian and actor Hart, whose credits include This is the End and the Ride Along movies. His net worth according to the site is $62million.

Bill Cosby, who was famous throughout the 1970s and 80s for his 'clean,' family-friendly stand-up acts, has faced a litany of accusations including rape, date rape and sexual battery from 60 women over the past few years.

So it's not surprising that Hart was quick to address the mistake.

However, Hart has expressed admiration for Cosby before, and has a large picture of the man, among other influential comedians, in his home. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in January last year, he said that he would not take the picture down.

'The picture serves a purpose for me. These were the men who built a legacy doing what they love to do, which is telling jokes.

'Right now, it's a lot of speculation. All I can do is just say my prayers, and my wishes go out to all of the women who are potentially involved.

'His personal life has nothing to do with me. I can't control it. I will never try. It doesn't stop me from being an admirer of his work. His work and his personal life are two separate things.'

Different worlds: Cosby (left), best known as a family-friendly comic of the 1970s and 80s, is currently facing charges of sexual assault. Hart (right) cites Cosby as an inspiration

Google had not responded to press inquiries at the time of writing, but a look at The Richest's page on Cosby reveals that same picture of Hart below Cosby's write-up, in a list of other notable comedians.

It is possible that the Google search engine had accidentally 'grabbed' the wrong image from Cosby's page when generating the result.

As of Friday, a search for 'Bill Cosby's net worth' brought up a generic search page, and no info-box from The Richest.
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A couple have spent three years driving more than 50,000 miles around the world in a century-old Ford.

Dirk and Trudy Regter bought the iconic Ford Model T in 1997 and, after retiring, decided they wanted an adventure.

So the grandparents got in the vintage motor, which is famous for being the world's first mass produced car, and set off on a global road trip.

In 2012, they travelled through Africa, racking up 15,000 miles in just six months, visiting the likes of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia before ending up in Cape Town.

Dirk and Trudy Regter spent three years travelling around the world in their antique Ford Model T raising almost 30,000 for charity

Despite its age, the Model T was able to Ford rivers, and cross deserts during its trip through Asia, Africa, America, Europe and Australia

Retired architect Dirk Regter from Holland, bought the iconic Ford Model T in 1997 and decided he wanted an adventure

Despite the tough roads, the Model T proved the perfect car for the epic tour, emerging from it with no problems,

The following year they visited Canada and the USA, home of the Model T, and this time managed to drive the Ford 17,000 miles.

Just like in Africa, the Model T demonstrated its reliability - only suffering a broken alternator and one flat tyre.

In 2014 Dirk and Trudy, from Holland, decided they would like see South America, driving the Model T a further 16,000 miles through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.

During this period the couple have raised almost 30,000 for SOS Children's villages International, a charity which helps orphans around the world.

The Model T has a three-litre petrol engine which develops around 20bhp, giving it a top speed of around 40mph.

Dirk and Trudy's Model T is entirely original apart from the tyres, which are slightly larger to improve the quality of the ride. The spokes on the wheels are wooden.

It was built in Canada and imported to Europe in 1997.

In 2012, they travelled through Africa, racking up 15,000 miles in just six months, visiting the likes of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia

In 2014 Dirk and Trudy, from Holland, decided they would like see South America, driving the Model T a further 16,000 miles through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.

Dirk had previously owned a 1923 Ford Model T and the later 1928 Model A having been inspired by his father and grandfather

The ancient car managed to cross the desert to visit Las Vegas in Nevada, despite not having modern facilities such as air conditioning

So far, Trudy Regter, pictured, and her husband Dirk have spent three years driving 50,000 miles across the world

Dirk, a retired architect, previously owned a 1923 Ford Model T and a 1928 Ford Model A, inheriting his passion for vintage Fords from his father and grandfather.

He said: 'My wife and me had the idea to make a long trip but couldn't make a decision to we said let's do the whole world.

'A lot of people said you are crazy, why do you do that? But it gets a lot of attention and we need the attention to raise money for orphaned children worldwide.

'On the border of South Africa and Botswana we met a farmer who had an old Ford Model T in the shed

'In Africa we had to weld a broken front wheel at the local blacksmith.

'I'm pretty handy, and a screwdriver, hammer, some duct tape, tie wraps and tensioning straps go a long way.'

In 2014 they returned to Europe but they were hit by a truck on the motorway in Belgium, wrecking the Model T.

They took 2015 off and will set off again this year - continuing their journey through New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and India, crossing the Himalayas to China, through Mongolia and back to the Netherlands via Central Europe.

The Ford Model T was the world's first mass produced car, with 15 million made around the world between 1908 and 1927.

The Ford Model T was the world's first mass produced car, with 15 million made around the world between 1908 and 1927

The car managed to make it all the way to the most southern point in South America in Ushauai

The car managed to cope with thousands of miles of unmetalled roads as it crossed into Peru

The unbelievable car was able to cross the Andes mountain range which would be a struggle for a modern four-wheel-drive car

The car was able to cross through rivers in Ethiopia completing a journey that would be a struggle for a more modern vehicle

While in Kenya, the car had to struggle under the hot African sun while crossing the arid countryside during their 50,000-mile-journey

In Botswana, the Model T encountered a large elephant who fortunately did not see the ancient car as a potential threat

In the Sudan, a man on a camel stopped to inspect the Model T as it drove through the desert on its adventure

In Tansania, the Model T, which has a top speed of 40 miles per hour required some urgent work after the front wheel fell off

Eventually finding a section road covered in tarmac, the couple were forced to halt briefly to allow some Sudanese camels to cross

In 2012, they travelled through Africa, racking up 15,000 miles in just six months, visiting the likes of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia before ending up in Cape Town

Driving a 100-year-old car does have its downsides, especially when it only has a flimsy canvas roof to keep out the elements

The car was incredibly reliable during its marathon 50,000-mile trip which brought it through Africa, Europe, America, Asia and Australia

While in America, the couple met up with renowned petrol head and former late night talk show host Jay Leno, pictured

In some parts of Africa, the bridges the couple used to cross rivers were less sturdy than their trusty Ford Model T, pictured

The car continued across continents, here passing into Colombia on its journey across South America

The car managed to make its way through the Grand Canyon while on its way across the United States of America

In Argentina, the car required some emergency surgery to the engine after the 3-litre lump developed a fault crossing the continent

But despite the odd mishap, the car, for most of its 50,000 mile trip was completely unstoppable, here driving through Peru

Yet, when the Dutch couple were in Belgium, their car was hit by a larger Land Rover from Holland causing it significant damage
After Hulk Hogan's victory against Gawker, the online news site will have to cough up an initial installment of $50million about a month from when the punitive damages are decided sometime next week.

The wrestler was awarded $115million in damages by a jury in Florida on Friday after the website posted a leaked sex video that showed him engaging in intercourse with his best friend's wife.

The jury awarded Hogan $55million for economic injuries and $60million for emotional distress.

E Online spoke with attorney Troy Slaten, not related to the case, who said that the punitive damages could literally be any amount.

Victory: Hulk Hogan speaks with a friend, possibly his attorney outside his home in Clearwater, Florida after being awarded $115 million in the Gawker sex tape case earlier in the day in this photo shared exclusively by Dailymail.com

Days ahead: Hulk Hogan may be given even more money in punitive damages to be decided next week. He is pictured here after his court case in a photo shared exclusively with Dailymail.com

Good news: Hulk Hogan won his lawsuit against Gawker on Friday, breaking down in tears after the jury read their verdict (above hugging his lawyer)

COULD THE HULK HOGAN CASE BE THE END OF GAWKER? Gawker will be expected to pay at least $50million while they appeal the Jury's $115million dollar verdict plus punitive damages to be decided next week. The $50million is due about a month from when the punitive damages are decided. Gawker had an annual net worth of $44million in 2014 which is less than the amount they are expected to set aside, according to Heavy.com. The yearly revenue makes Gawker worth at least $250million, according to Business Insider. That gave Gawker an operating profit of $6.5 million in 2014. According to Heavy, Gawker's revenue comes from a combination of traditional advertising and e-commerce. If Gawker cannot afford the bond, then they can still ask the courts to grant a stay or to lower the bond. The decision will be up to the court's discretion, according to Capital New York. In Preparation for the Hulk Hogan trail, Gawker sold a minorty stake in their company to Columbus Nova giving the technology company veto power over Gawker's decisions. The exact stake was not revealed because of the trial but Nova's managing director Jason Epstein now has a seat on Gawker's board of directors. A leaked internal memo showed that Gawker was trying to 'bulk up its war chest' in the days leading up to the defamation lawsuit. 'Its about putting Hogan behind us, and the future ahead of us,' Gawker founder Nick Denton told Fortune. Legal experts told Fortune the suit could substantially impact Gawker back when the company was forced to reckon with Hogan's lawsuit when it was just $100million. Advertisement

'It could be anything. God knows what it will be. I couldn't even start to speculate on that. Frankly I'm shocked at the $115 million dollar compensatory verdict for showing a video for nine seconds,' said Slaten.

Hogan broke down in tears in the courtroom as the foreman read the jury's verdict.

Gawker will appeal the case, but under Florida law will have to hand over at least $50million in monetary damages and if Hogan defeats their appeal they will hand over the rest of the money whenever the case is settled.

If Gawker cannot afford the bond, then they can still ask the courts to grant a stay or to lower the bond. The decision will be up to the court's discretion, according to Capital New York.

Gawker founder Nick Denton said outside the courthouse following the verdict; 'Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from this jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve the case.

'I want to thank our lawyers for their outstanding work and am confident that we would have prevailed at trial if we had been allowed to present the full case to the jury.

Big win: A jury of six in Florida awarded the wrestler $115million in damages

Rough day: Gawker's founder Nick Denton (right) and editor A.J. Daulerio (left) sat emotionless in the courtroom while the jury read out the verdict

Response: Hogan did not speak to reporters but did post on Twitter Friday evening (above)

HOW MUCH MUCH MONEY IS HULK HOGAN EXPECTED TO NET ? Without accounting for the punitive damages, if Hulk Hogan wins the case he is expected to pay around $46million is attorney fees and $2million in litigation fees which leaves him with $67million. After taxes Hogan would be left with around $30million or $40million, according to E Online. According to attorney Troy Slatten, that amount could be cut in half following Gawker's appeal. 'An Appeals court could easily decide the jury was wrong and cut the award in half. If they felt that no reasonable juror should have ruled that way. Cases get overturned on appeal all the time," Slaten told E Online, meaning the case could be settle with just $50million. Advertisement

'Thats why we feel very positive about the appeal that we have already begun preparing, as we expect to win this case ultimately.'

Hogan did not speak to reporters but did post on Twitter Friday evening, writing; 'Told ya I was gonna slam another giant HH.'

This was in reference to the opening statement his lawyer made, during which he stated that one of Hogan's greatest accomplishments in his life was when he bodyslammed Andre the Giant in 1987 at WrestleMania III.

This despite the fact that the match was completely choreographed ahead of time.

The six-person jury took just five hours to deliberate on Friday, and found in favor of Hogan on all counts.

Hogan and his team had only been asking for $100million in their lawsuit for invasion of his privacy.

Denton and editor A.J. Daulerio sat emotionless in the courtroom while the jury read out the verdict. The two men were both found personally liable in the case.

Gawker posted the two-minute video in 2012 after editing down a 30-minute version they received from an anonymous source that had been taped showing Hogan and Heather Cole engaging in intercourse in July of 2007.

Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, walks out of the courthouse on March 18, 2016

Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, said he did not know the encounter was caught on camera.

He also said during the trial he had his lawyers ask Gawker to take down the tape and told them they could still keep their copy about the contents, but they refused.

Then, after Hogan filed his lawsuit, a judge asked Gakwer to take down the video.

The site published an article soon after with the headline; 'A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won't.'

They wrote in the post; 'We publish all manner of stories here. Some are serious, some are frivolous, some are dumb. I am not going to make a case that the future of the Republic rises or falls on the ability of the general public to watch a video of Hulk Hogan f****** his friend's ex-wife.

'But the Constitution does unambiguously accord us the right to publish true things about public figures.

'And Campbell's order requiring us to take down not only a very brief, highly edited video excerpt from a 30-minute Hulk Hogan f******session but also a lengthy written account from someone who had watched the entirety of that f******, is risible and contemptuous of centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence.'

The video was eventually removed from the site.

Hogan out: Hulk Hogan exits the courtroom with his legal team on Friday after the verdict was announced by the jury

Denton said outside the courthouse; 'Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from this jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve the case'

Lawyers for the site had argued that the video was a legitimate news story covered by the First Amendment given how frequently Hogan talked about his sex life in the media.

Hogan and his lawyer's argued that he was doing this as a character, and using 'artistic liberty.'

Gawker's lawyers also said during the trial that they made no money off the video, as it ran without advertisements despite the fact that is was streamed millions of times after being posted on the site.

Experts for Hogan however argued that the site in general received a surge in traffic after posting the video.

Gawker made it clear they planned to appeal the case, and expected to lose, when they stated prior to the verdict being delivered that they did not receive a fair trial.

They pointed out that the man who made the video, Hogan's former best friend Bubba the Love Sponge, never testified in court.

Cole also did not testify, though a deposition she gave in 2015 played for jurors earlier this week.

In her deposition an emotional Cole said she had no idea that she was being taped while having sex with Hogan, a statement that contradicts claims she made to Tampa police and comments she made on one of the sex tapes.

There were three sex tapes of Cole and Hogan, and it was the second one that Gawker edited and published.

In the third tape, made at an unknown date, Cole and her husband acknowledge that the sex was filmed, with Cole telling her husband after Hogan leaves the bedroom; 'His dick hurt so f****** bad. You'll probably just see my face squirming. I just tried to get past the pain to enjoy it.'

She made this comment after her husband said he wanted to watch the tape. On that tape that two also talk about being able to blackmail Hogan with the tape because he repeatedly uses racial slurs while discussing his daughter Brooke's boyfriend.

The couple had an open marriage Cole testified in her deposition, and she admitted that her husband had previously taped her having sex with other men.

Cole said that her husband showed her the 30-minute sex video several weeks after one encounter with Hogan at their home.

'I immediately asked for it to stop,' she said in her deposition.

'I don't remember a specific conversation. I do remember feeling very upset.'

Open marriage: Hogan filmed the video with Heather Cole, the wife of his best friend Bubba the Love Sponge (above in 2009)

Hogan's lawyer Ken Turkel told the jury in hius closing statement that Gawker couldn't hide behind the First Amendment and that even as a celebrity Hogan was entitled to privacy.

He said they could have done the 'decent thing' and not invaded Hogan's privacy.

'They don't deserve the protection of the First Amendment,' said Turkel.

He accused Gawker staff of being a 'bunch of kids' who had little regard for the effect their posts had on people.

'This mocking of Mr Bollea. They had no idea he was at the lowest point of his life,' he said.

'Did they know the tape was secret? They spent days joking about it, mocking his anatomy hid character..

'Is this serious journalism to be protected by the First Amendment.'

Turkel said Gawker had even failed to call Hogan or his PR representative to ask for a comment before publishing the tape.

'They did not have the common decency to call one person involved,' he said.

'They don't deserve the protection of the First Amendment.'

Turkel reserved most of his scorn for Denton and showed the jury clippings from interviews where he had said invasion of privacy was liberating.

'Gawker is a reflection of its owner,' he said. 'Who it is a good thing to invade people's privacy. It defines the whole reason he is here.'

Turkel said Daulerio was simply carrying out his boss's philosophy for the site when he published the sex tape.

'He is golden child,' he said.

The lawyer reminded the jury that Daulerio had testified under oath that he would run a sex tape of a child provided they were over the age of five.

Daulerio later clarified the remarks saying it was flippant but Terkel said it showed he 'did not care'.

Turkel said he had arrived at the $50m damages figure by estimating that people would pay $4.95 to view a sex tape and multiply that by the estimated 7m people who viewed the story.

He also added $15m that he claims Gawker made from selling advertising.

Gawker's lawyer Michael Sullivan told the jury in his closing argument they should watch the video of Hogan having sex on the tape as it was the one piece of evidence that had not been presented by the wrestler's legal team.

'He has avoided showing you the one video that is critical to this case,' said Sullivan. The trial continues.

Gawker's lawyer suggested to the jury that Hogan was aware he was being filmed when he had sex with Cole.

He asked if it was another 'celebrity sex scandal' that had been cooked up between Hogan and his friend Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.

'Was this a work between Bubba and Hulk Hogan,' he said.

'Was it a publicity stunt? Only two people know, Hulk Hogan and Bubba the Love Sponge. And Bubba is not here.'

He told the jury Hogan could be heard on the tape saying to Bubba 'is this being filmed?' before he had sex with Clem.

Sullivan also mocked Hogan's claims that he suffered severe emotional distress from Gawker running a short excerpt from the sex tape.

He reminded the jury that Hogan said he had sex with Clem at the lowest point in his life and added: 'He was so low he succumbed to the wiles of Heather Clem, three or four times.'

The lawyer said Hogan was so upset that he went on a media tour to talk about the sex tape.

He pointed out that when another website ran still photos from the tape he did not sue.

The jury listened as Mr Sullivan said Hogan happily talked about his sex life and said they would be hard pushed to find anyone other than a porn star who was so open about what they got up to in the bedroom.

Sullivan said as the sex tape was already being talked about Gawker had every right to show the short clip with their article.

Sullivan ended his closing speech by saying the Gawker legal team had a harder job in mounting the defense but added: 'Ultimately it is right.'

He asked the jury to put aside any negative feelings they had for Gawker and said even pornography and the Bubba the Love Sponge's radio show was protected under the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Doctors say two foster children suffered starvation, malnutrition and had emaciated appearances, loose skin and visible ribs

The Yates were arrested on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal mistreatment last March

Lawsuit identifies nine employees, including DHS Director Clyde Saiki, Lois Day, as well as former foster parents John and Danielle Yates

DHS is facing a $60 million lawsuit that alleges executives and caseworkers ignored severe abuse two children were

The Department of Human Services in Oregon has fired two top officials as the agency is facing a $60 million lawsuit that alleges executives and caseworkers ignored two children who were suffering severe abuse at the hands of their foster parents for years.

Chief operating officer for the child welfare and self sufficiency programs Jerry Waybrant and Lois Day, the director of the child welfare program, were fired, KPTV reported.

The 'continuing concerns in leadership and direction' were cited by DHS in the firings of Waybrant and Day.

Until a permanent replacement is found, Deputy Director Reginald Richardson will serve as interim director and Waybrant's position at DHS will be discontinued.

In November 2015, Waybrant was removed as interim director of DHS.

Fired: Chief operating officer for the child welfare and self sufficiency programs Jerry Waybrant (left) and Lois Day (right), the director of the child welfare program, were fired by DHS. The 'continuing concerns in leadership and direction' were cited by DHS in their firings

In addition, a lawsuit filed Thursday in Multnomah County Circuit Court identifies nine employees, including DHS Director Clyde Saiki, Day, as well as former foster parents John and Danielle Yates, KPTV reported.

The Yates were arrested on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal mistreatment in March 2015.

Police said at the time, their foster children, a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, were not being provided with adequate food or medical care, KPTV reported.

DHS Director Clyde Saiki was named in the $60 million lawsuit filed against the agency Thursday

The lawsuit alleges that the children were 'chronically starved, isolated and physically abused'.

'DHS certifiers, caseworkers and their supervisors and managers ignored clear and repeated signs of child abuse that resulted in life, health and soul-threatening consequences to the children,' the lawsuit states.

In May 2012, DHS placed the children in the certified foster home that belonged to the Yates in Yamhill, Oregon. At the time, the couple already had two other foster children.

The lawsuit alleges that reports of neglect and abuse regarding the two previous children in the Yates home were being reported to DHS in March 2012.

In July 2012, the first two children were removed from the home by DHS, but the other two children involved in the lawsuit remained in their care.

The lawsuit states that DHS received numerous reports of abuse in the years that followed.

The children involved in the lawsuit were thin and small, suffered multiple injuries that the Yates said were from accidentally being hit with a door, getting bumped, or were sustained during swimming according to the lawsuit that cites DHS workers and law enforcement officials.

However, the lawsuit alleges that the cases involving the two children were constantly closed by DHS workers as being 'unfounded,' KPTV reported.

In addition, Danielle Yates told authorities that the two children's unhealthy appearance was due to them being born addicted to heroin, and other times claimed that they were born with fetal alcohol syndrome, the lawsuit alleges.

Former foster parents John and Danielle Yates were also named in the $60 million lawsuit against DHS. The Yates were arrested on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal mistreatment in March 2015

However, neither claim that she made was true, according to the lawsuit.

In December 2014, the children were finally turned over to their parental aunt and were taken to Randall Children's Hospital were doctors found many symptoms of chronic starvation and malnutrition.

The children had emaciated appearances, loose skin and visible ribs.

At the time, the young girl was found to weigh 30 pounds, which is how much she weighed two years earlier when she was placed in the Yates' home, the lawsuit states.

The young boy had only gained one pound in those two years living with the Yates, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit against the agency is seeking more than $60 million for the children.

No one would comment from DHS about the pending litigation.
Richard Branson sent out an apologetic tweet earlier today after a Chinese woman claimed she had been verbally assaulted by a fellow passenger on board a Virgin Atlantic flight bound for Shanghai.

The woman, who prefers to go by the name Liu Wei, claimed a white man had called her racist names, including 'you f****** Chinese pig', after she boarded flight VS250 from London Heathrow Airport on March 1.

Miss Liu also claims that cabin crew didn't help her but instead threatened to throw her off the flight.

Branson (pictured) sent the apologetic tweet after a Chinese passenger claimed she had an unpleasant experience on a Shanghai-London Virgin flight

Branson's tweets read 'really sorry to hear about an alleged incident' in both English and Simplified Chinese

Miss Liu described her experience in an angry post on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, on March 4.

The message later gained the attention of thousands of people and became a trending news topic on Chinese media, according to the People's Daily Online.

In the post, Miss Liu said that she had boarded the flight early and was approached by another passenger who was Caucasian and looked around 55 years old.

According to Miss Liu's post, as she was bending down to pick up her earphones, the man walked up to her, pointed and said: 'You f******g Chinese pig!!! Get the f**k out of here!'

She said the man started to hurl more abuse at her and raised his fist, so she decided to reach out to cabin crew for help.

Miss Liu said one of the cabin crew, whom she claimed is called Nathan Smith, came up to her and told her to stop arguing otherwise she would be thrown off the plane.

She also claimed she was later told that the man, who apparently swore at her, had a mental health issue.

The cabin crew allegedly promised they would moved him to other classes for fellow passengers safety, but it never happened.

And when Miss Liu asked again, she was told by a Chinese flight attendant not to pursue the matter further, according to her post.

She kept on writing: 'From London to Shanghai, the flight time is 11 hours, I as a woman sat on my seat feeling scared for 11 hours. I didn't sleep and kept checking the man on seat 64C to see if he would come to verbally attack me again.'

She then added: 'When all other passengers are fast asleep, my heart was filled with scare, anger, insult and the helplessness and frustration of being a Chinese.'

Her post had been reposted 35,633 time, 9,675 comments and 11,812 likes as of writing.

The woman, who calls herself Liu Wei, shared her story online grabbing the attention of thousands

She also posted a photo of her passport and boarding pass on China's Twitter-like site Weibo

Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group, has issued an apologetic message on his Twitter page for the alleged incident and said that Virgin Atlantic was investigating further.

The message read: 'Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight VS250. We do not tolerate abuse and @virginatlantic are investigating.'

Speaking to MailOnline, Liu Wei said: I do not know if Richard Branson actually replied himself but I am pleased that Virgin are concerned. '

She added: 'I was in England for over ten days travelling and my impression was fine, but after this incident I do not want to go back to that country.'

She says Virgin Atlantic said they would contact her today but so far she is still waiting for a follow up message.

As a result of the woman's story, Virgin Atlantic's social media accounts have been flooded with comments from people in China angry at the woman's treatment.

Many have vowed not to fly the company ever again.

Ziqi Ding wrote: 'I'm very disappointed for the unacceptable behaviour of your staff on Flight VS250. I can't imagine how racial discrimination happened on a well known global company.'

While Zephyr Li said: 'Don't want to say bad words here, but Virgin you definitely have to give an appropriate response!!! Learn to show some respect to your customers ok?'

Virgin Atlantic told MailOnline that the company deeply regret the unpleasant experience their customer had on this flight, and have fully investigated this incident.

The company said in a statement: 'We understand that there was an altercation between two customers on board the flight, which resulted in both individuals becoming upset and distressed.

'Upon noticing the argument, our cabin crew did their best to resolve the situation for all customers, including the female customer and her male companion.

'We would like to reiterate that Virgin Atlantic takes a zero tolerance approach to racism.'

Flight VS250 left from London Heathrow Airport bound for Shanghai Pudong International Airport on March 1
A loving grandfather in China has built his paralysed grandson exercise equipment to help him to fight muscular atrophy.

75-year-old Sun Peng and his wife from Hefei city have been helping to look after Sun Yiming since his mother abandoned him 20 years ago, shortly after he was born. They were pictured together on March 1, reports the Peoples Daily Online.

Yiming, 20, has cerebral palsy, his father sadly passed away in 2013. Ever since his father fell ill, Peng has encouraged him to keep moving with his handmade rehabilitation apparatus.

Specially made: Peng, 75, from Hefei in China has built his grandson exercise equipment to help his muscles

Strong bond: Since Yiming's father died in 2013 Peng has done whatever it takes to make his grandson happy

Loving: Sun Peng has hand-built exercise equipment for his grandson to help him fight muscular atrophy

Yiming was born in the summer of 1996, later on in life he was diagnosed with congenital cerebral palsy. His father worked in a coal mine but he had an accident and lost the use of his arm and leg. Yimings mother was never around to look after them so Peng stepped in.

Everyday he helps his grandson to keep moving. Yiming has finally learnt to eat and drink by himself, he is able to recognise words and poems, and can even ride a tricycle.

They move slowly taking each step at a time when they leave the house and try to accomplish travelling farther than they did the previous day whatever the weather.

Family: Yiming (centre) pictured with his grandfather Peng (left) and grandmother who are his soul carers

Practice makes perfect: No matter what the weather the pair exercise outside everyday to keep Yiming active

Peng is not only his carer he is also his teacher. He teaches Yiming literacy with a stack of cards he has put together.

He uses a specially made walking frame he built for Yiming with metal scaffolding polls soldered together and some wheels. There is a seat on the back of it for when his grandson is too tired he can sit down and relax.

They have a routine with an old upright car Peng used to build a special piece of equipment he puts at the end of the bed for Yiming to hoist himself up. The tightness can be adjusted accordingly to help him stand up straight.

Handmade: He built his grandson a three wheeled mobility scooter so Yiming can get around easily on his own

Teacher: As well as helping him through rehabilitation, Peng helps Yiming to read and write with cards he made

Heart-warming: Everyday without fail Peng helps his sick grandson to strengthen his muscles at home

Peng also made a personally designed a three wheeled pedal car with handrails like on a wheelchair.

Most of the materials used on Yimings equipment were found in a nearby scrapyard.

The rehabilitation process is long and sad for the two of them. Yimings legs need to be constantly straightened and he is always in a lot of pain.

Peng hopes his grandson will be fit enough to take care of himself in the future, as he knows he will not be around forever.

Inventive: Peng built a special piece of equipment he puts at the end of the bed for Yiming to hoist himself up
Three months ago, physicists at the world's largest particle accelerator found the first signs of a particle heavier than the Higgs boson.

Now, hints of this mysterious new particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has just got more convincing.

While it falls short of the accuracy needed to be able to announce a discovery, it does make the reading more statistically significant  and that has got scientists excited.

Unexplained by current models, the particle's existence might lead to the discovery of a whole new set of particles and possibly even a fifth fundamental force.

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Two of the detectors, ATLAS and CMS, were searching for new physics by counting particle decays that ended up in two photons, and found a potential new particle. If it turns out to be real, and not a blip, this would be a huge discovery. Two high-energy photons whose energy, shown in red, was measured in the CMS is illustrated

THE ELUSIVE PARTICLE Two of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider - ATLAS and CMS - were searching for new physics by counting particle decays that ended up in two photons. Measuring photons is a way of detecting new physics because photons are easy to detect and physicists know what to expect in terms of results from background events. When particles decay into photons, they release energy equivalent to their mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. The measurements saw photons with a combined energy of 750 GeV, making the potential particle six times heavier than the Higgs boson. If it turns out to be real, and not just a blip in the measurements, this would be a huge discovery. 'It would be something completely beyond the Standard Model, and the tip of an iceberg of a large new set of particles, if it exists!', the researchers said. Advertisement

In data produced last December at the LHC in Geneva, two separate measurements found what looked like a particle six times heavier than the Higgs boson.

If it turns out to be real, and not just a blip in the measurements, this would be a huge discovery.

'It would be something completely beyond the Standard Model, and the tip of an iceberg of a large new set of particles,' Professor John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Kings College London told MailOnline, 'if it exists!'

Two of the detectors, ATLAS and CMS, were searching for new physics by counting particle decays that ended up in two photons.

Measuring photons is a good method for detecting new physics because photons are easy to detect and physicists know what to expect in terms of results from background events.

They both separately saw photons with a combined energy of 750 GeV.

The excess of photons seen by the CMS experiment has become slightly more significant, due to a mew analysis reported today at a conference in La Thuile, Italy.

When particles decay into photons, they release energy equivalent to their mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

The data used in the latest CMS analysis is 23 per cent larger as it includes collisions from early in the LHC's run last year.

'The good news is, we now we have almost as much data as ATLAS,' says James Olsen, CMS physics coordinator and a physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Nature reports that the CMS team re-calibrated the full data set, which caused the statistical significance of the CMS bump to go up from 1.2 to 1.6 sigma.

When scientists talk about sigma levels, they are describing how far their observations are from where they might expeced.

A 1-sigma observation meaning that they would expect 32 per cent of future observation to be at least as far away as what they have seen.

ATLAS also had its data re-analysed and now sees a 1.9 sigma excess at 750 GeV, according to a report in the Guardian.

In December last year the two observations, in the ATLAS and CMS detectors, hinted at a new particle six times heavier than the Higgs boson. The LHC will start making more collisions next month, April 2016, and experts can expect confirmation or refutation in the summer

When particles decay into photons, they release energy equivalent to their mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. The measurements saw photons with a combined energy of 750 GeV, about six times heavier than the Higgs boson, something that has not been predicted by the current theory describing particle physics

While this is an improvement, it still falls short of physicists threshold for a discovery, which is 5 sigma, or a chance of around three in 10 million that the signal is a fluke.

This new particle, if it exists, has not been predicted by the Standard Model, so would open up physicists to a whole new unexplored world and could lead to the discovery of a new set of particles.

The Standard Model claims everything in the universe is made from the most basic building blocks called fundamental particles, that are governed by four forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear.

The forces work over different ranges and have different strengths.

This new particle, if it exists, would not fit into the description given by the Standard Model and so would lead to a whole new area of particle physics for them to explore.

Some have suggested it might even lead to the discovery of a fifth fundamental force.

'This is possible, but there must at least be a set of unknown particles to explain how this new particle decays, and probably how it is produced,' said Ellis.

This development is exciting because the Standard Model has left some questions unanswered for years, so scientists are keen to break free of it and find new theories.

It can't explain gravity, for example, because it is incompatible with our best explanation of how gravity works - general relativity, nor does it explain dark matter particles.

STANDARD MODEL OF PARTICLE PHYSICS AND WHY THE FIND IS SO EXCITING The Standard Model says everything in the universe is made from the most basic building blocks called fundamental particles, that are governed by four forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear. The Higgs boson, named after professor Higgs, shown, was discovered in 2012 and is an essential component of the Standard Model The forces work over different ranges and have different strengths. This new particle, if it exists, would not fit into the description given by the Standard Model and so would lead to a whole new area of particle physics. Some have suggested it might even lead to the discovery of a fifth fundamental force. This development is exciting because the Standard Model has left some questions unanswered for years, so scientists are keen to break free of it and find new theories. It can't explain gravity, for example, because it is incompatible with our best explanation of how gravity works - general relativity, nor does it explain dark matter particles. The quantum theory used to describe the small particles in the world, and the general theory of relativity used to describe the larger objects world, are also difficult to reconcile. Nobody has managed to make the two mathematically compatible in the context of the Standard Model. According to the Big Bang theory, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts at the start of the universe and so they should have annihilated each other totally in the first second or so of the universe's existence. This means the cosmos should be full of light and little else. But because it isn't there must have been a subtle difference in the physics of matter and anti-matter that has left the universe with a surplus of matter and that makes up the stars we see, the planet we live on and ourselves. But the observations seen so far are not enough to confirm the existence of a particle. Advertisement

The quantum theory used to describe the small particles in the world, and the general theory of relativity used to describe the larger objects world, are also difficult to reconcile.

Nobody has managed to make the two mathematically compatible in the context of the Standard Model.

According to the Big Bang theory, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts at the start of the universe and so they should have annihilated each other totally in the first second or so of the universe's existence.

This means the cosmos should be full of light and little else.

But because it isn't there must have been a subtle difference in the physics of matter and anti-matter that has left the universe with a surplus of matter and that makes up the stars we see, the planet we live on and ourselves.

The detectors saw photons with a combined energy of 750 GeV. When particles decay into photons they release energy equivalent to their mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. This means the particle that decayed into them would have been about six times heavier than the Higgs boson

But the observations seen so far are not enough to confirm the existence of a particle.

The CERN physicists need to make sure the observations were not just down to chance, so it comes down to collecting much more data and waiting to see if the particle is spotted again.

Some remain unconvinced.

'Indeed, I don't see yet statistically convincing bumps that would point to the existence of a new particle in the LHC data,' Professor Patrick Janot, working on the CMS detector at CERN told MailOnline.

The LHC will start making more collisions next month, and the results that might confirm or refute the existence of this particle will be available by summer.
Jesus' crucifixion is one of the most familiar images from Christianity and Good Friday - approaching next week - marks this iconic event.

But what was crucifixion, and why was Jesus killed that way?

Meredith Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield reveals that there are conflicting reports about whether Jesus was nailed or tied to the cross, and that the tales may be dictated by tradition in an article for The Conversation.

None of the Gospels in the New Testament mention whether Jesus was nailed or tied to the cross. However, the Gospel of John reports wounds in the risen Jesus's hands. It is this passage, perhaps, that has led to the overwhelming tradition that Jesus' hands and feet were nailed to the cross, rather than tied to it

Some early Gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, don't include the narrative of Jesus' crucifixion, choosing instead to focus on his teaching.

But Jesus' death by crucifixion is one of the things that all four canonical Gospels agree on.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all include the crucifixion event in their own slightly different ways.

None of the Gospels in the New Testament mention whether Jesus was nailed or tied to the cross. However, the Gospel of John reports wounds in the risen Jesus's hands.

WHAT WAS CRUCIFIXION? Crucifixion was a Roman method of punishment. Suspended from a large cross, a victim would eventually die from asphyxiation or exhaustion and it was long, drawn-out, and painful. The act was used to publicly humiliate slaves and criminals, as well as an execution method usually reserved for individuals of very low status or those whose crime was against the state. This is the reason given in the Gospels for Jesus' crucifixion As King of the Jews, Jesus challenged Roman imperial supremacy (Matt 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:1922). Crucifixion could be carried out in a number of ways. In Christian tradition, nailing the limbs to the wood of the cross is assumed, with debate centring on whether nails would pierce hands or the more structurally sound wrists. But Romans did not always nail crucifixion victims to their crosses, and instead sometimes tied them in place with rope. In fact, the only archaeological evidence for the practice of nailing crucifixion victims is an ankle bone from the tomb of Jehohanan, a man executed in the first century CE. Advertisement

It is this passage, perhaps, that has led to the overwhelming tradition that Jesus' hands and feet were nailed to the cross, rather than tied to it.

The Gospel of Peter, a non-canonical gospel from the first or second century CE, specifically describes in verse 21 how after Jesus had died, the nails were removed from his hands.

The Gospel of Peter also famously includes the cross itself as an active character in the Passion narrative.

In verses 41-42 the cross speaks, responding with its own voice to God: 'And they were hearing a voice from the heavens saying, 'Have you made proclamation to the fallen-asleep?' And an obeisance was heard from the cross, 'Yes.'

Tradition is clearly of paramount importance to this text.

Over the past few years, several people have claimed to have found the actual nails with which Jesus was crucified.

Each time, biblical scholars and archaeologists have rightly pointed out the assumptions and misinterpretations of evidence behind these claims.

Curiously, this fixation on the nails persists, despite the fact that the earliest gospels make no mention of Jesus being nailed to the cross.

It isn't surprising that Christians took a while to embrace the image of Christ on the cross, given that crucifixion was a humiliating way to die.

What is surprising is what the earliest image of the crucifixion turns out to be.

Rather than the devotional icons with which we are familiar - pictures that glorify Jesus' death - this earliest image appears to be some late second-century graffiti mocking Christians.

Called the Alexamenos Graffito, the image shows a figure with the head of a donkey on a cross with the words: 'Alexamenos worships his God.'

The Gospel of Peter, a non-canonical gospel from the first or second century CE, specifically describes in verse 21 how after Jesus had died, the nails were removed from his hands. The Gospel of Peter also famously includes the cross itself as an active character in the Passion narrative

The earliest image of the crucifixion is 2nd Century graffiti called the Alexamenos Graffito (illustrated). It shows a figure with the head of a donkey on a cross with the words: 'Alexamenos worships his God.' Rather than the devotional icons, pictures that glorify Jesus' death, this image appears to mock Christians

This was apparently a common accusation in antiquity, as Minucius Felix (Octavius 9.3; 28.7) and Tertullian (Apology 16.12) both attest.

Since the graffito was clearly not made by a Christian, this image suggests that non-Christians were familiar with some core elements of Christian belief as early as the second century.

Gemstones, some used for magical purposes, also provide some of our earliest depictions of the crucified Jesus.

This second or third century piece of carved jasper depicts a man on a cross surrounded by magic words.

Another very early image of the crucifixion is found carved into the face of a carnelian gemstone made into a ring.

Gemstones also provide some of our earliest depictions of the crucified Jesus. This second or third century piece of carved jasper depicts a man on a cross surrounded by 'magic' words

Another very early image of the crucifixion is found carved into the face of a carnelian gemstone made into a ring. Scholars think that the Constanza gemstone, as it is known, dates from the fourth century CE

BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERVENTION 'There but for the grace of God go I' - the phrase used to describe divine intervention when considering how things might have turned out for the worse - may hold more psychological weight for believers, a recent study found. Researchers looked at the concept of counterfactual thinking, which is when people explore other outcomes to life events which happened in the past. In the first of two studies, students wrote essays describing an important life event from their past. They found counterfactual thinking led to belief that outcomes didn't occur just by chance and that divine intervention played a role. A second study using 99 non-students confirmed the findings. Advertisement

Scholars think that the Constanza gemstone, as it is known, dates from the fourth century CE.

In this depiction, Jesus' hands do not appear to be nailed to the cross, since they fall naturally, as if he is tied at the wrists.

Since the evidence from antiquity doesn't provide a clear answer as to whether Jesus was nailed or tied to his cross, it's tradition that dictates this common depiction.

Those who have seen the film The Passion of the Christ will recall how much time the director, Mel Gibson, devoted just to the act of nailing Jesus onto the cross - almost five whole minutes.

Given the relative silence on the act of crucifixion in the Gospels, this stands out as a graphic expansion.

One of the only films that does not assume that crucifixion involved nails is Monty Python's Life of Brian, which shows multiple crucifixion victims, though not Jesus, tied to their crosses.

Eventually, Emperor Constantine put an end to crucifixion as a method of execution, not for ethical reasons, but out of respect for Jesus.

But in the end, it is the enduring image of the cross, and not the matter of whether nails or ropes were used, that most firmly evokes the death of Jesus in art and tradition.
For some people, they believe their IQ is something they are stuck with for life after it was set in stone at birth, while others are convinced their intelligence can be constantly improved.

Now it seems how you view your own intelligence may have a direct impact on your ability to fulfill your potential.

A new study has found that people who believe their IQ is fixed at birth tend to overestimate how bright they really are.

Believing your IQ is fixed may actually hold you back as it can lead you to overestimate your intelligence and causes you to focus on easier tasks to reinforce this view. Psychologists say teaching people that intelligence can be increased through out life may help people learn better (stock picture of an exam)

Intriguingly this may actually hold them back as they are then less likely to develop their own intellectual capacity.

Psychologists have found that people who believe their intelligence is fixed tend to focus on easier tasks and avoid spending time on more difficult challenges.

THE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE GENES Two clusters of genes have been found that are directly linked to human intelligence. Called M1 and M3, these 'gene networks' appear to determine how smart a person is by controlling their memory, attention, processing speed and reasoning. Crucially, the scientists have also discovered that these two networks - which each contain hundreds of genes - are likely to be under the control of master regulator switches. The researchers from Imperial College London are now keen to identify these switches and explore whether it might be feasible to manipulate them. The research is at a very early stage, but the scientists would ultimately like to investigate whether it is possible to use this knowledge of gene networks to boost cognitive function. The investigators analysed thousands of genes expressed in the human brain, and then combined these results with genetic information from healthy people who had undergone IQ tests. Remarkably, they found that some of the same genes that influence human intelligence in healthy people were also the same genes that cause impaired cognitive ability and epilepsy when mutated. Advertisement

This appears to help re-enforce their inflated view of their own intellectual abilities.

But by doing so they are also limiting their opportunity to fulfil their intellectual capacity.

Dr Joyce Ehrlinger, an expert on social cognition at Washington State University who led the study, and her colleagues said teaching people to believe their minds can be improved may help them learn more.

Writing in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, they said: 'Knowing what we don't yet know is critical for learning. Nonetheless, people typically overestimate their prowess.

'We demonstrated that a belief in intelligence as fixed promotes greater overconfidence than the opposite belief - that intelligence can be improved.

'Together, these studies provide intriguing new evidence that the overconfidence effect may be less universal than previously thought.

'Participants who endorse an entity theory accounted for the lion's share of that effect.

'Importantly, this also offers insight into a previously unknown contributor to overconfidence - a motivated pattern of attention allocation that encourages overconfident perceptions of performance.'

The researchers conducted a series of studies with a total of 251 university students who were asked whether they felt intelligence was fixed or if they could substantially change it.

They were also asked about how high they felt their intelligence was before being asked to complete a simple intelligence test and a general knowledge quiz.

The researchers found those who believed their intelligence was fixed tended to overestimate how smart they were.

Albert Einstein (pictured) is often quoted to have insisted the key to genius was the ability to recognise he did not know everything. The new study suggests that overconfidence in a person's intelligence can lead people to think they do not need to make efforts to learn more

These people were also less likely to spend time on the harder questions in the quiz, instead choosing to focus on the easier ones.

The findings appear to support the sentiments of geniuses like Albert Einstein who always insisted that the only thing that held people back was a lack of curiosity.

He is reputed to have once said that the difference between genius and stupidity is genius knows its limits because stupid people think they know everything.

The findings suggest that he may not have been far from the truth.

Dr Ehrlinger and her team said they hoped to use the findings to develop new ways of teaching in schools and at universities.

They said: 'We would expect that a tendency to allocate relatively more time toward easy tasks over difficult tasks could lead to a decrement in sustained learning over time.

'First, mastery requires time and attention directed specifically toward those aspects of a task that are more difficult.

'Thus, people's reluctance to focus attention on difficult aspects of a task may limit their ability to improve.
have studied condition to show how she may see scenes

Artist Concetta Antico (pictured) can see 100 times more colours than an average person

When most of us look at a daisy, we just see white and yellow, but an artist named Concetta Antico sees a veritable rainbow of colours in the flower.

As what's known as a tetrachromat, she can discern 100 times more hues than the average person thanks to extra receptors in her eyes to absorb colourful light.

Now, researchers studying the San Diego-based artist's abilities have found they may be aided by Ms Antico's artistic training.

And the research could help other tetrachromats see the world even more vibrantly with help.

The average person can see approximately one million colours, whereas tetrachromats have an extra cone class in their eyes for colour vision that dramatically increases their range up to a potential 99 million.

Cones are structures in the eye that are designed to absorb particular wavelengths of light and transmit them to the brain.

Most people have three types of cones, but tetrachromats like Ms Antico have four types.

While only a handful of human tetrachromats have been identified, one estimate claims the genetic mutation could affect up to 47 per cent of women of European descent.

The average person has three types of cones, which are tuned to wavelengths of red, green and blue, and tetrachromats' fourth types can vary.

The artist, who lives in San Diego, California, has more receptors in in her eyes to absorb colour, enabling her to see  and paint  the world around her in a different way to most people. One of her paintings is shown

It is thought that the condition is caused by mutations in the X chromosome, which make people to see more or less colour.

These mutations make men more likely to be colour blind and mean women are more likely to be tetrachromats if they have mutations on both X chromosomes.

To make the most of her ability to see more colours, Ms Antico paints bright, impressionistic pictures of animals and landscapes and also tries to teach other people to see the colours around them in a new way.

She said: 'Everyone has the potential to expand their ability to see colours the way I do.'

This image shows a painting by Ms Antico that shows her view of a scene (also shown) that looks predominantly green to non tetrachromats. The new study shows the extra colours she sees (b)

Now, a new study by scientists from the University of California, Irvine and the University of Nevada, Reno, have looked at Ms Antico's abilities as well as testing others' sensitivity to different luminescence levels, BBC Future reported.

Participants included an artist not known to have the genetic mutation as well as a tetrachromat who didn't paint or draw like Ms Antico.

The experts predicted Ms Antico's extra cone should be able to pick up more light, meaning she should be able to see more subtle changes in brightness of shades.

Led by Kimberly Jameson, the team was proved right and found Ms Antico was more sensitive than others with the 'rainbow vision' mutation, particularly when matching exact shades within reddish tones.

The average person has three types of cones in their eyes, which are tuned to wavelengths of red, green and blue, but tetrachromats have an extra type to enable them to see 100 times as many colours. This magnified image shows cones (green) and rods (yellow) in the eye, with the outer nuclear layer coloured purple

The researchers created computer simulations (shown b) showing parts of a scene (a) that are particularly vibrant to people with tetrachromacy

WHAT IS TETRACHROMACY? Tetrachromacy is the condition of possessing four independent channels for conveying colour information - which means four different types of cone cells in the eye. The average person has three types of cone cells, while a tetrachromat's retina contains four types of higher-intensity light receptors or cone cells with different absorption spectra. This means they can may see wavelengths beyond those of a typical human being's eyesight and may be able to distinguish colours that to a human appear to be identical. Lots of animals are tetrachromats, including birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and insects. For example, the humble goldfish has cone cells for red, green, blue and ultraviolet light. It is thought that it gives animals an advantage when spotting minute dust particles, food and the movements of prey or predators. Advertisement

She outperformed the non-artistic tetrachromat, leading the scientists to attribute her superiority in identifying precise colours to her artistic training.

'One possibility is that you need early training to capitalise on the signal,' Dr Jameson said.

They drew upon the results to reconstruct photos to show the way Ms Antico likely sees the world.

'These simulations provide informative visualisations, across a range of scenes, allowing a normal trichromat to note specific portions of scenes that a potential tetrachromat may uniquely experience,' the researchers wrote in the study.

They also suggest what portions of a scene a potential tetrachromat artist may be expected to paint in a uniquely artistic manner.

Ms Antico said: 'Now I have a whole new appreciation of what everybody else is not seeing.'

'It's very shocking to me.

'Even when I found out I had tetrachromacy, I didn't understand the extent of the differences in what I'm seeing and what regular folks are seeing.'

The University of California Irvine team also created an image-processing filter capable of drawing attention to parts of an image where Ms Antico saw extra colours.

To make the most of her ability to see more colours, Ms Antico paints bright, impressionistic pictures of animals (such as this tiger) and landscapes and also tries to teach other people to see the colours around them in a new way

While it could not help people without tetrachromatcy seen a rainbow effect, it could help tetrachromats make the best of their abilities, which could help them blossom as artists, for example.

The researchers presented their findings at the International Symposium on Electronic Imaging that took place recently in San Francisco.

Researchers at the university discovered Ms Antico possesses the genotype for tetrachromacy in 2012.

They said that differences in colour perception are hard to detect because they are small and tests are not designed for more than three pigments - blue, red and green.

Based on Ms Antico's genes, they think that her fourth cone absorbs wavelengths that are 'reddish-orangey-yellow' and are trying to explore whether this is how she sees things.

It was only in 2012 that Ms Antico was found to possess the genotype for tetrachromacy and she has been studied by the University of California Irvine since, while continuing to paint. Another one of her works is shown

They said that her art has allowed her to express her unusual vision and show people what it means to be a tetrachromat.

While scientists are studying the phenomenon to better understand how the brain works, Ms Antico has a more personal reason as to why she is involved in the research.

She has a 12-year-old daughter who is colour blind, likely because of her own genetic mutation.
Hyenas are better at scavenging while wolves are better hunters

The pairing works because both animals bring different things to the table

In a desert in southern Israel, an unlikely friendship is forming - and it's not unlike the story of the hyenas in the Lion King.

In the Disney classic, the hyenas teamed up with the scheming lion Scar because food was scarce.

A similar story is happening with hyenas in Israel, except in this case they are teaming up with wolves to help increase the success of their hunts.

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Researchers recently spotted a striped hyena (pictured) running with a pack of grey wolves in southern Israel. The hyena is normally a solitary creature but the researchers think the animal has teamed up with the wolves, normally their competition for prey, in order to improve their hunting skills

Times are tough in the Negev Desert, Israel. The conditions are particularly inhospitable in the extreme desert and food is scarce.

It is these desperate times that have driven solitary hyenas to pair up with other predators, such as grey wolves, to improve their search for food.

The two animals are normally in competition for food and would not work together.

Researchers spotted a striped hyena running with a pack of grey wolves.

Professor Vladimir Dinets from the University of Tennessee, and Beniamin Eligulashvili, an Israel-based zoologist, had the first clues to the unlikely friendship four years ago.

They spotted track marks from both the hyenas and wolves in the same place.

The pairing is reminiscent of the story of the hyenas in the Lion King. In the Disney classic, the hyenas teamed up with the scheming lion Scar because food was scarce. A similar story is happening with hyenas in Israel, except in this case they are teaming up with grey wolves

Times are tough in the Negev Desert, Israel (pictured). The conditions are particularly inhospitable in the extreme desert and food is scarce. It is these desperate times that are believed to have driven solitary hyenas to pair up with other predators

But because both the animals are generally not friendly towards other animals, they assumed the tracks had been put there at different times.

Hyenas fight epic battles with lions and African wild dogs, and take over kills that leopards and cheetahs have made. They kill domestic dogs in one-on-one fights.

Spotted hyenas are generally solitary, in contrast to the striped hyenas which live in groups.

Wolves are more direct predators. They're faster than the hyena and can bring down large animals

Meanwhile, wolves hunt and kill lynxes, coyotes and even dogs, their closest relatives.

But this time the zoologists saw it directly.

They think the unusual pairing works because both animals can bring different things to the table.

Wolves are more direct predators, are faster than the hyena and can bring down large animals.

The hyena is more of a scavenger, and is particularly good at scavenging human detritus.

It can smell rubbish from further away than the wolves can.

It is also a better digger than the wolves, and has jaws that can crack open discarded bones and tin cans.

This means that humans might have a hand in bringing predators together

Professor Dinets said humans can learn from the hyena-wolf partnership.

'Animal behavior is often more flexible than described in textbooks,' he said.

'When necessary, animals can abandon their usual strategies and learn something completely new and unexpected. It's a very useful skill for people, too.'

Both the grey wolf and the striped hyena are found in many geographic areas and overlap in many parts of Asia.

But the southern Negev is the most arid place where both species are known to occur.

The scientists don't know whether this is an isolated incident or whether they spotted two different packs with two different hyenas.

'The observations show that striped hyenas can closely associate with grey wolf packs, although the nature and duration of such association remain unknown,' the authors said.
From butterflies that look like owls, to birds that can mimic the calls of fierce predators, nature has evolved a range of deceptive behaviours.

Some animals use them for protection, others use them to find food, and the behaviour can even be used to help trick a potential mate.

Martin Stevens, an associate professor of sensory and evolutionary ecology at the University of Exeter has revealed some of nature's greatest cheats and liars in an article for The Conversation.

As the bolas spider (pictured) hunts, it releases an odour that precisely matches the chemical composition of female moth mating pheromones. The male moth is lured in, but instead of getting a mate, he gets eaten. Bolas spiders are just one of a plethora of animals and plants highly skilled at thriving through trickery and deception

As night closes in across Kentucky a small chubby spider makes a silk line between two plants. She then moves along her 'trapeze wire' and waits.

After a while a moth approaches within range, and the spider unleashes a swinging sticky ball, ensnaring the moth and pulling him in to be eaten.

The attacker is a bolas spider, and she hunts by releasing an odour that precisely matches the chemical composition of female moth mating pheromones.

The male moth is lured in, but instead of getting a mate, he gets eaten.

Bolas spiders are just one of a plethora of animals and plants which are highly skilled at thriving through trickery and deception.

One of the main uses of deception in nature is to secure food. The fork-tailed drongo (pictured) lurks around meerkats. It watches as a meerkat digs up a juicy beetle and then makes a false alarm call, which causes the meerkat to flee, allowing the bird to swoop down and claim the prey for itself

The Venus flytrap (pictured) produces smells that mimic food, luring in flies, and some pitcher plants have been shown to use attractive fluorescent glowing blue colours. These colourful signals work by exploiting 'preferences' that many animals have in their sensory systems to be drawn to conspicuous stimuli

THE CROSS-DRESSING BIRDS Many men will have found themselves in the 'friend zone' when attempting to get close to a member of the opposite sex, but one species of Eurasian wading bird uses this to its advantage. Certain male ruffs have been found to mimic females in order to get close to their love interest while avoiding the competition. They are able to hide from other males in the lek, so avoiding territorial aggression, and succeed by effectively stealing mates from the resident males. This so-called 'cross-dressing' tactic is one of three kinds of behaviour seen in the birds, each of which is driven by the same 'supergene'. Advertisement

Charles Darwin and his contemporary Alfred Wallace both appreciated the functions of deception in their theory of evolution.

However, modern science has started to uncover just how devious many species can be.

One of the main uses of deception in nature is to secure food.

The fork-tailed drongo is a bird found in Southern Africa that lurks around group-living species, including meerkats, and might at first appear helpful because it sounds alarm calls when a predator approaches.

However, much of the time the drongo's calls are made when no predator is around.

The drongo watches as a meerkat digs up a juicy beetle and then makes a false alarm call, which causes the meerkat to flee, allowing the bird to swoop down and claim the prey for itself.

The alarm calls drongos use even mimic those made by the animals they exploit.

But stealing food seems benign compared to the deception of predators, which use mimicry and enticement to lure victims directly into the jaws of death.

Many web-building spiders use bright colours to attract prey, and carnivorous plants also use overt signals and mimicry to attract victims.

The second use of deception is in survival, with the most common method being camouflage. This can involve matching the general colour and pattern of the environment, or can be much more specialist. For example, the owl butterfly (pictured) has evolved to look like an owl in a bid to protect it from predators

Certain male ruffs have been found to mimic females (left) in order to get close to their love interest while avoiding the competition. This so-called 'cross-dressing' tactic is one of three kinds of behaviour seen in the birds, each of which is driven by the same 'supergene'. The right-hand image is a female

The Venus flytrap produces smells that mimic food, luring in flies, and some pitcher plants have been shown to use attractive fluorescent glowing blue colours.

These colourful signals work by exploiting 'preferences' that many animals have in their sensory systems to be drawn to conspicuous stimuli.

The second use of deception is in survival, with the most common method being camouflage.

This can involve matching the general colour and pattern of the environment, or can be much more specialist.

On his eight-year voyage around the Malay archipelago, Wallace encountered the butterfly Kallima in Sumatra and was astounded at how closely its wings matched the colour, shape, and structure of dead leaves.

Many specimens even had markings mimicking patches of mould.

Charles Darwin and his contemporary Alfred Wallace both appreciated the functions of deception in their theory of evolution. While travelling in Sumatra, Wallace discovered that the wings of the butterfly Kallima match the colour, shape, and structure of dead leaves

Resembling other objects for protection is common in nature.

Some excellent early evidence for evolution and natural selection was provided by Henry Bates, an entomologist who travelled to the Amazon with Wallace.

Bates noted that many edible butterflies mimicked the colour and behaviour of toxic species, and were avoided by attackers.

Another striking example is jumping spiders, some of which mimic the appearance of ants, which predators often avoid owing to their strong defences.

Many hoverflies are known for looking like bees and wasps to avoid predators

Organisms also cheat for reproductive reasons.

Orchids have an astounding range of approaches which they use to get insects to pollinate their flowers, while offering no reward.

One method is to lure male insects with smells and colours resembling a potential mate, like bee orchids that attract male bees.

Other species create the false promise of food. One flower from Hainan Island, China, mimics the alarm pheromones and appearance of bees, thus attracting a ferocious predatory hornet.

And once mating has been achieved there are young to be cared for.

The common cuckoo, a notorious cheat, lays its eggs in the nests of other species, so the foster parents rear the cuckoo chick instead.

The cuckoo often even lays eggs that mimic the colour and pattern of those of their host, so the host can't tell the difference.

Insects can be equally devious, seen in the behaviour of cuckoo bees, and the audacious slave-maker ants.

The workers of these remarkable animals often have one function alone  to raid the nests of other ant species and steal the brood.

The common cuckoo (pictured), a notorious cheat, lays its eggs in the nests of other species, so the foster parents rear the cuckoo chick instead. The cuckoo often even lays eggs that mimic the colour and pattern of those of their host, so the host can't tell the difference

The captured ants then integrate with the host colony, dutifully carrying out all the main tasks of the nest, from cleaning and rearing young to defence.

The struggle to survive and reproduce is intense for all organisms, and we should not be surprised that cheats are everywhere.

What's remarkable is the extent to which animals and plants exploit one another and the level of sophistication involved.
Astronomers all over the world have their telescopes trained on the night sky in the hopes of detecting incoming asteroids.

Earlier this week, however, this same network of sky watchers spotted two probes leaving the Earth.

Stunning images from global telescopes show two Mars-bound probes leaving Earth gravitational clutches.

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The ExoMars probe is seen here leaving Earth. These images were were acquired just before midnight local time by the Observatorio Astronomico do Sertao de Itaparica team in Brazil

THE EXOMARS LAUNCH DETAILS Launch vehicle: Proton-M/Breeze-M Launch mass: 4,332 kg (including fuel) Instruments: Orbiter (3732 kg, including 135.6 kg science payload) and Schiaparelli (600 kg) Dimensions: Orbiter: 3.5 x 2 x 2m with 17.5m solar arrays tip-to-tip. Schiaparelli: 1.65 m diameter The launch: The rocet blasted off at 09:31 GMT (10:31 CET) on 14 March, as planned. The first acquisition of signal is expected at around 21:29GMT (22:29 CET). Advertisement

The images show the departure of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli lander, which launched into orbit from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on Monday.

Following separation from the final stage of the rocket, the craft left on a trajectory pointing to where Mars will be in October, travelling at 20,500mph (33,000 km/h) with respect to Earth.

For asteroid hunters, ExoMars offers a perfect target because its departure mimicks, in reverse, the approach of a small near-Earth object, or NEO.

These include rocky asteroids formed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter which head towards Earth every so often.

For the ExoMars launch, the European Space Agencys NEO coordination centre in Italy organised an international campaign for ground-based sightings of the departing spacecraft.

Quick imaging of a rapidly moving object whose location is only approximately known in a short time window is akin to what would happen if an asteroid were discovered on an imminent impact trajectory with Earth.

The predicted path of ExoMars provided by Esas Space Debris Office in the Agencys operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany was converted by the NEO centre into pointing information for telescopes.

The spacecraft appears as a bright object surrounded by at least six other fainter spots (show by the red arrows). These are elements of the rocket's discarded upper stage

This map shows the escape sequence of the craft over the Earth. Initial 'parking orbit' is achieved over east Russia, 'coast arcs' are shown in blue and 'manoeuvre arcs' where the engines are fired (red). Separation between Breeze-M and the ExoMars spacecraft will occur above Africa (purple dot)

THE EXOMARS TIMELINE Launch: 14 March Mid-course correction: 28 July SchiaparelliTGO separation: 16 October 2016 TGO manoeuvre: 17 October 2016 Orbiter insertion into Mars orbit: 19 October 2016 Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing: 19 October 2016 Aerobraking: JanuaryNovember 2017 Science phase begins: December 2017 Advertisement

This information was then shared widely with Esas network of collaborating observatories in the southern hemisphere, from where ExoMars could be spotted.

Stunning images were acquired by Alison Tripp and Sarah Roberts using a 1 m-diameter telescope in Australia, and by Grant Christie at the Stardome Observatory in Auckland, New Zealand.

The most remarkable images, however, were acquired just before midnight local time by the Observatorio Astronomico do Sertao de Itaparica team in Brazil led by Daniela Lazzaro, with Sergio Silva at the telescope.

In their images, the spacecraft appears as a bright object surrounded by at least six other fainter spots  elements of Protons discarded upper stage  moving together in the sky.

Exomars is designed to search the atmosphere of Mars for clues of life on the surface of the red planet has successfully blasted.

It is due to analyse Mars' atmosphere to search for low levels of gases such as methane that may betray the presence of alien life on the planet's surface.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (pictured) aboard a heavy lift Proton rocket at 9.31am GMT, as planned, vanishing into an overcast sky within seconds

Scientists believe the probe has the potential to find 'very strong evidence' of alien life when it arrives at Mars on 19 October. An image taken moments after blast off is shown above

Exomars is the first phase of an historic 1.2 billion (924 million) joint European-Russian mission to search for biochemical 'fingerprints' of past or present life high above Mars and on its surface.

Scientists believe the probe has the potential to find 'very strong evidence' of alien life when it arrives at Mars on 19 October.

It's the heaviest spacecraft ever sent to Mars at 700 tons and Esa's Michael Khan said: 'It has to has be accelerated at high velocity - we need a big rocket

'It will reach Mars on the 19th of October this year - that's a fact.'

Methane could provide one of the biggest clues to whether life exists on Mars.

On Earth, the chief source of methane is bacteria. Billions of flatulent microbes, including many that thrive in the guts of animals such as cattle and termites, belch out the gas.

But methane can also be released by volcanic activity and geological chemistry.

Daniel Rodionov, project scientist at Roscosmos, said: 'The main goal is to study martian trace gases...we will be able to map methane during different seasons.

'So far we don't know the origin of methane on Mars... or if we are to map it globally and see how it changes.'

But the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has super-sensitive instruments for detecting minute traces of methane and other atmospheric gases.

It will look for methane 'hotspots' over the Martian surface, and, crucially, test whether the gas is likely to be the product of biology or geology.
For spiders, the act of mating is far riskier that you'd expect.

Some female spiders gave gained notoriety for eating their partners during sex, but a new study reveals males have a violent streak of their own.

To prevent other males from mating with their partners, a type of orb-weaving spider has been observed to mutilate the genitalia of females straight after sex.

To prevent other males from mating with their partners, a type of orb-weaving spider has been observed to mutilate the genitalia of females after sex. The virgin females have a sexual appendage called a scape, pictured above. The images show the scape before (b), and after (c,d) mutilation

SEXUAL COMPETITION IN SPIDERS Male spiders have developed gruesome tactics to ensure successful fertilization of a female, and secure paternity. Some have been known to guard the female after copulation, or manipulate her appeal through chemical substances. They've even been observed using a 'mating plug' to block the reproductive opening. Now, researchers have discovered another, more effective strategy. Some types of orb-weaving spider have been observed to mutilate the genitalia of females after sex. Mutilation thus establishes monandry, in which the female has just one mating partner during the reproductive period. Advertisement

In the recent study published inBiology Letters, researchers explain the bizarre mating habits observed in some male Cyclosa argenteoalba.

While its not uncommon to see spiders exhibit sexual competition strategies, the violent behaviour of this orb-weaver has just recently been discovered, Kensuke Nakata, a zoologist at Kyoto Womens University who led the research, told National Geographic.

Building off of an earlier study on a different orb-weaving spider, Larinia jeskovi, the researcher has closed in on a new-found technique used by male spiders to secure paternity.

Nakata gathered 84 virgin adult Cyclosa argenteoalba females from bamboo forests in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan in 2014, along with a group of adult males.

The virgin females have a sexual appendage called a scape, which the researcher describes as wrinkled spade-shaped projections, that are bent in the middle.

The male spiders spin a mating thread, which they then vibrate to court the female.

For Cyclosa argenteoalba, pictured above, mutilation establishes monandry, in which the female has just one mating partner during the reproductive period

During the first mating trial, the Nakata found that roughly 90 percent of the females were mutilated after copulation, with just five of the 49 in the sample group retaining their scapes.

While the practice seems gruesome, the researcher said the females most likely dont feel pain when the scape is removed, as the appendage has no sensory hair.

In a later re-mating trial, the researcher observed that these females were accepting of courtship, likely unaware of their mutilation, but failed at attempts to copulate.

Mutilation thus establishes monandry, in which the female has just one mating partner during the reproductive period.

This newly discovered behaviour, the researcher explains, may stand out as the most effective form of securing paternity.

If FGM [female genital mutilation] is a mechanism for males to restrict the re-mating of females, then it is more efficient than other previously known mechanisms, including mate guarding, manipulation by chemical substances or placing mating plugs, the author writes.

Indeed, no mutilated female re-mated, and copulation ability, once lost, was not restored.

Gabriele Uhl, a biologist at Germany's University of Greifswald and leader of the 2015 Larinia jeskovi research, tells National Geographic the findings have greater evolutionary implications, as it was independently observed in these distantly related spiders.

This implies the practice of genital mutilation may extend to other animal groups as well.
A firm has just unveiled a new family of futuristic suits that give wearers the ability to lift with near superhuman strength and walk great distances without stopping to rest.

Panasonic's line of 'Iron Man' exoskeletons are designed to assist industrial workers and sportsmen.

The Assist Suit AWN-03 gives you the power to repeatedly pick up hefty items without straining your back and the PLN-01 'NINJA' helps you get over the roughest terrain and not break a sweat.

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Last year, the firm showed a mega exoskeleton resembles the Power Loader exoskeleton suit from the Alien movies (pictured). The user would strap it around their shoulders, waist and on thigh. It had four embedded sensors that would trigger 20 engines, which would reduce human energy.

To combat on-the-job injuries, Panasonic created the AWN-03 to help elevate some of the stress that weighs on the lower back while lifting extremely heavy objects and costs $8,158 for each suit.

WHAT ARE THE EXOSKELETON SUITS? The Assist Suit AWN-03 HAS a lime green structure with purple plastic back and hip components that easily strap on to the worker to help them lift heavy objects and reduce stress on the back  it reduces weight up to 33 pounds. It has an automatic assist mechanism and a battery that lasts eight hours. The suit raises your upper body while simultaneously pushing on your thighs, which is said to reduce the physical stress. PLN-01 suit features power sensors at the soles of the feet and two motors at the lower back to help people walk more easily. Advertisement

The firm said the suit is designed to sense when the wearer lifts or holds something heavy, which triggers its motors, reports Wired.

The suit raises your upper body while simultaneously pushing on your thighs, which is said to reduce the physical stress.

It has an automatic assist mechanism and a battery that lasts eight hours.

ActiveLink, Panasonic's robotics division, is working with the tech firm to make the PLN-01 suit move easier and human-like.

'Think about the possibilities if we could handle easily power beyond human limits,' says the firm's website.

'Here in ActiveLink we are constantly thinking on technology and its impact on people.'

'Using Robotic Technology equipment anybody can become a superman.'

'We are bringing this dream one step closer to reality.'

PLN-01, which was created for workers and sportsmen who trek up rough terrain, has power sensors on the bottom of the feet and two motors located at the lower back to assist while walking.

For example, hiking up steep mountains during afforestation.

This model only supports the legs, but the firm is currently developing a model for the upper body that will also help users life heavy items.

'Our mission is to help realize a power barrier-less society by offering a helping hand during manual labour and at other worksites' said Hiromichi Fujimoto, president of Activelink, the subsidiary of Panasonic that developed the suits, told E&T.

Panasonic's line of 'Iron Man' exoskeletons are designed to assist industrial workers and sportsmen. The Assist Suit AWN-03 gives you the power to repeatedly pick up hefty items without straining your back and the PLN-01 'NINJA' helps you get over the roughest terrain and not break a sweat

'We are proposing robotics to help at these work sites, because there will always be a certain level of work that must be done by people, and these power assist suits can help reduce the physical strain during such work'.

Another variant assists care workers and nurses with patients who have to move them from beds to wheelchairs, reports International Business Times.

Futuristic suits give wearers the ability to lift with near superhuman strength and walk extreme distances without stopping to rest.The suit raises your upper body while simultaneously pushing on your thighs, which is said to reduce the physical stress

To end on-the-job injuries in factories, Panasonic created AWN-03 to elevate some of the stress that weighs on the lower back. The firm said the suit is designed to sense when the wearer lifts or holds something heavy, which triggers its motors

The Resyone is a wheelchair-like device for the elderly that is combination of electric nursing care bed and an electric full-reclining wheelchair.

It splits in two, transforms into a reclining wheelchair to help caregivers lift patients and reduce stress for both parties.

There is also a robot designed to help the elderly stand-up and walk around on their own.

ActiveLink is working with the tech firm to make the PLN-01 suit move easier and human-like. The exoskeleton suit, which was created for workers and sportsmen who trek up rough terrain, has power sensors on the bottom of the feet and two motors located at the lower back to assist while walking

'As Japan has becomes an aging-society, Panasonic is aspiring to make its contribution by supporting the elderly and their families lead a comfortable life full of smiling faces and laughter' explained Hitoshi Sasaki, assistant director of Sincere Kourien, an elderly care facility run by Panasonic.

'There are many instances that can be straining to both caregivers and care recipients.'

'Just moving from the bed to a wheelchair can be a very energy consuming both parties (sic).'

Last year, the firm showed a mega exoskeleton resembles the Power Loader exoskeleton suit from the Alien movies.

The user would strap it around their shoulders, waist and on thigh.

It had four embedded sensors that would trigger 20 engines, which would reduce human energy and can be used for relief, construction, and public works.

There is no word yet if these 'Iron Man' suits will ever hit the public market, but one engineer has created a DIY exoskeleton that lifts 171.5 pounds.

The Resyone (pictured), a bed that splits in two, transforms into an armchair while the patient is still lying on it  the worker does not have to lift patients anymore. There is also a robot designed to help the elderly stand-up and walk around on their own.

James Hobson, a Californian engineer who is known as The Hacksmith, made his own exoskeleton using scraps of metal to make his dream of having superhero powers a reality. His contraption looks like a mechanical backpack with metal arms, which are strapped securely to his own.

Pneumatic cylinders on the arms allow him to lift heavy weights with ease and he can be seen curling the large weights in the video.

'I didn't feel like I was lifting 170lbsbut my legs felt it,' he said.

Talking about his motivation to create the gadget on his website, he said. \
The ongoing fight against ISIS has seen demand for missiles skyrocket.

Lockheed Martin, which supplies the stocks for the United States and allies, has revealed it has quadrupled production of its Paveway II laser-guided bomb, and is boosting manufacturing of its Hellfire missile.

The firm revealed it is constantly expanding factories to keep up.

US Navy ordnance handlers move a 1,000-pound GBU-16 Paveway laser-guided bomb from the 'bomb farm' onboard USS Kitt Hawk: Lockheed Martin, which supplies the stocks for the United States and allies, has revealed it has quadrupled production of its Paveway II laser-guided bomb, and boosts manufacting of its Hellfire missile.

INCREASING DEMAND FOR BOMBS American warplanes have dropped more than 39,715 bombs as of February 2016 on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, costing roughly $1.5 billion. And, the Pentagon has plans to spend even more, including $1.89 billion on JDAM, Hellfire, and Small Diameter bombs next year, and up to $337 million this year. The demand is climbing outside of the US as well, and it's believed NATO and Middle Eastern allies are also seeking out these weapons. This is especially apparent with Lockheed's Hellfire missile, which is used by Predator and Reaper drones, along with helicopters and fixed-wing planes. Advertisement

The efforts are expected to continue over the next few years, Lockheed vice president says, necessitating the increasing use of these systems by the US, NATO, and Middle Eastern allies.

As the US and allies continue to fight against ISIS, military forces are upping the demand from Lockheed to equip warplanes for 'great-power wars at sea,' Defense One reports.

This is especially apparent with Lockheed's Hellfire missile, which is used by Predator and Reaper drones, along with helicopters and fixed-wing planes.

Last June, the US Army paid $18 million to Lockheed to increase production of this laser-guided weapon from 500 to 650 missiles per month.

'We are seeing a lot of international demand for our product set,' Frank St. John, Lockheed's vice president of tactical missiles, told DefenseOne.

'That's causing us to do a lot of work in international partnerships and co-production and we're very excited about those opportunities.'

The company has also added tools, test equipment, and floor space to production of the Hellfire missiles, according to St. John.

Expanded efforts include 'quadrupled' production capacity at the Lockheed's Archbald, Pennsylvania factory for Paveway II laser-guided bombs.

THE PAVEWAY LASER GUIDED BOMB The Paveway II is an American aerial laser-guided bomb. It has a nose-mounted laser seeker and fins for guidance, and is currently in service with the Royal Saudi Air Force, U.S. Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps, Royal Canadian Air Force, Colombian Air Force, Swedish Air Force, and various NATO air forces. GBU-12 bombs (along with the balance of the Paveway series) are produced by defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. The US Department of Defense has upgraded it to include GPS guidance modes. They use what is known as 'bang bang' guidance. This means the bomb's fins deflect fully, rather than proportionally when it is attempting to guide to the laser spot. For example, if it sees the laser spot and determines that it should make a change it deflects its fins until it has over-corrected and then it deflects back the opposite direction, creating a sinusoidal type of flight path. This type of guidance may be less efficient at times. Advertisement

'It requires a little bit of investment on our part to expand the factories, but the demand is there and we're keeping up with it [and] we're staying ahead of it,' St. John told Defense One.

American warplanes have dropped more than 39,715 bombs as of February 2016 on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, costing roughly $1.5 billion.

And, the Pentagon has plans to spend even more, including $1.89 billion on JDAM, Hellfire, and Small Diameter bombs next year, and up to $337 million this year.

The demand is climbing outside of the US as well, and it's believed NATO and Middle Eastern allies are also seeking out these weapons.

Lockheed's Hellfire missile is used by Predator and Reaper drones, along with helicopters and fixed-wing planes. Pictured above, a technician checks the Hellfire missiles on an Apache AH Mk1 helicopter of 9 Regiment Army Air Corps fly Wednesday March 17, 2004

The ongoing fight against ISIS has seen a rising demand for missiles and other warplane weaponry around the world. This is especially apparent with Lockheed's Hellfire missile, which is used by Predator and Reaper (pictured above) drones, along with helicopters and fixed-wing planes

Lockheed has even begun turning its sights to future wars, and the firm has expanded its Troy, Alabama factory by 60,000 square feet, to build 110 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles for Navy Super Hornet fighters and Air Force B-1B bombers.

For now, the firm says demand for missiles and bombs will likely remain high, as the ISIS campaign is expected to last for years.

'I don't see events in the world changing dramatically over the next couple of years,' St. John told Defense One.

'The conflicts that are requiring the use of our systems are lingering, so anticipate that we'll be producing at a pretty high level for some period of time.'




They boast stunning beaches, world heritage sites, jaw-dropping monuments and fascinating wildlife  yet many holidaymakers dare not visit out of fear or protest.

In dictatorships, the freedoms of citizens are limited and foreign visitors can land in jail for insulting the leader, snapping a photo of a landmark or simply because of their sexuality.

Experts who have travelled to dictatorships have offered their top tips to MailOnline Travel to help visitors stay out of trouble in places such as Cuba and North Korea.

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North Korea

The Grand Monument on Mansu Hill, in Pyongyang, depicts former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il

North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, with a ruler, Kim Jong-un, who took control following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2001.

The secretive country has opened its doors a little wider to tourists recently, but they are accompanied by minders at all times when they travel to places such as Pyongyang, the demilitarised border zone, beaches or Mount Paekdu.

Visitors should be aware that even minor misdemeanors can result in extremely harsh punishment.

Just this week US tourist Otto Warmbier, 21, was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour for 'crimes against North Korea' after he confessed to trying to steal a propaganda banner from a hotel and bring it home as a 'trophy'.

Taking certain pictures can also land visitors in trouble, but according to Simon Cockerell, general manager of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which takes about 2,500 people a year to North Korea, while there are a lot of restrictions on photography, there aren't as many as people expect.

They include photos of the military except in certain situations, construction sites and close-ups of members of the public without their permission. Close-ups of leaders statues or portraits are also a no-no, and tourists should bow and pay respect to statues or monuments when required to.

Visitors should also show respect for the countrys current and former leaders, as critical comments or the damage or destruction of their photos, even those in local newspapers, can cause serious problems, said Cockerell.

Visitors can land in trouble for destroying photos of Kim Jong-un (pictured: a Japanese newspaper)

Rome-based travel blogger Stana Ferrari poses for a photo during her trip to Pyongyang, North Korea

Bottom line, keep your political opinions to yourself, said Rome-based travel blogger Stana Ferrari.

She added: 'This is a piece of advice meant for many dictatorships but North Korea in particular because people are fiercely proud and there is always over hanging.'

It is illegal to bring in outside media relating to Korea, including guide books, pornographic material, South Korean goods, GPS trackers, radios, satellite phones and religious material, such as Bibles, for distribution, said Cockerell.

Ferrari added: 'When I travelled to North Korea I had to comply with strict restrictions and one of them was to not bring along Bibles, Qurans or professional cameras.'

She had to wear a formal dress when she visited Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the mausoleum for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

Lloyd Figgins, a travel safety expert and author of Looking For Lemons  A Travel Survival Guide, said: In places like North Korea, where everything is strictly controlled, the first thing you have to acknowledge and accept is that you will be under surveillance for the entirety of your visit.

This usually takes the form of the secret police tailing you and the group you are with. Your tour guide will be under strict orders on where they can and cant take you, so dont put them in a difficult position by asking them to do something, or take you somewhere not on the itinerary. This includes leaving your hotel for a stroll.

Figgins said visitors should expect to have their hotel room bugged, including its phone, and they should not think for a second that their electronic equipment is secure if left unattended in their room or a safe.

Cuba

On Cuba's idyllic beaches, it is easy to forget that the Caribbean island is still a military dictatorship

Cuba has been named one of the top countries to visit in 2016.

It's now readying itself for an invasion of tourists from the US as the frosty relations between the two countries is thawing.

It has some of the best beaches in the Caribbean and, for visitors who spend their time at all-inclusive resorts such as Varadero it is easy to forget that the socialist country is still a military dictatorship ruled by the Communist Party of Cuba.

Cuba is a one-party state and there is a high level of social control and a strong police presence, with widespread restrictions on freedom of speech, said the FCO.

It warns holidaymakers to avoid demonstrations or large public gatherings, and avoid military zones and other restricted areas.

The FCO said: 'Be particularly careful when taking photographs or videos in these areas, which are not always clearly signposted.'

Homosexuality is legal, but same-sex couples should be careful about public displays of affection as they can lead to unwelcome attention from the police, the FCO said.

Figgins said holidaymakers should spend a considerable amount of time researching the local laws before they visit Cuba or any dictatorship.

Thailand

Thailand, a popular destination for British tourists, has been controlled by a military junta since May 2014

Thailand, a country visited by nearly a million Britons every year, has been controlled by a military dictatorship since May 2014.

The country's interim constitution gives the head of the army, General Prayuth Chan-o-cha, far-reaching powers and the ability to restrict freedom of assembly and expression.

It is illegal to criticise the military coup, so visitors should avoid making political statements and stay away from any protests or demonstrations.

In Thailand, it is illegal to make critical or defamatory comments about King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his fellow monarchs.

The crime is known as lese majeste and is punishable by a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

Ferrari said: As the population in a dictatorship is either truly engaged with the governments mission and belief or is truly obliged to follow them out of fear, the very first thing a traveller should avoid is saying or hinting any derisory comment about their leader, no matter how intolerable it looks to our eyes.

Disrespecting their leader is the surest way to cause dreadful offence to locals and even the tour guides.

Foreigners can also spend time in prison for possession of small amounts of drugs, while crimes such as drug trafficking can lead to the death penalty.

Visitors, meanwhile, won't have access to the full range of media they have at home as the government has pulled several broadcasters off the air and blocked various websites, including those of Western news organisations, discussion forums and WikiLeaks.

Websites that are critical of Thailand's royal family have also been blocked.

China

More than half a million British nationals visit China every year and most visits are trouble free

More than half a million British nationals visit China, a civilian dictatorship, every year and most visits are trouble free.

But problems can arise before visitors even leave the airport. Chinese authorities undertake random drug testing on foreign nationals, and if a visitor tests positive they can be prosecuted regardless of where or when the drugs had been consumed, said the FCO.

Convictions for drug offences carry severe punishment, including the death penalty. A British national was executed in 2009 for drug smuggling.

Police officers have the power to detain foreigners or prevent them from leaving for weeks or months if they are suspected of a crime or even involved in a private or business dispute.

China is a one-party state and, although it is very open to foreign visitors, they should be aware of political and cultural sensitivities in conversation with Chinese people, said the FCO.

It said tourists should avoid becoming involved in protests or calls for Tibetan independence and avoid filming or photographing them.

A number of anti-Japan demonstrations have also been staged and the Falun Gong movement is banned.

The FCO said: 'Avoid any demonstrations or large gatherings. The Chinese authorities enforce public order strictly and you may face arrest, deportation or detention.'

Updating friends back home on holiday exploits in China, meanwhile, is tricky as websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked.

And gambling is illegal in on the mainland.

Preaching and distributing religious materials, including the Bible, are also restricted.

Zimbabwe

Thousands of tourists flock to Zimbabwe's game reserves every year to see lions and other wild animals

Zimbabwe's stunning national parks and game reserves, populated by lions, elephants and other wild animals, draw thousands of tourists to this economically troubled nation.

The African country, a civilian dictatorship, has been ruled by 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe since 1980.

It is illegal for civilians and tourists to make derogatory or insulting comments about the leader or carry material considered to be offensive to the president's office, said the FCO.

People are also banned from snapping photos of government offices, airports, military sites, official residences and embassies without permission from the government.

It is also illegal to take photographs of police and army personnel, and demonstrations and protests.

Tourists should try to steer clear of the president's mansion in the capital of Harare, where loitering and photography are prohibited.

It is illegal for civilians and tourists to make derogatory or insulting remarks about President Robert Mugabe

And tourists in a same-sex relationship should exercise extreme caution as Zimbabwe's laws against indecency effectively make homosexuality illegal.

Ferrari offered this advice for visiting any dictatorship: 'Something that I believe every traveller should keep in mind when they are about to visit a dictatorship is that they cannot behave as they were in Spain, Greece, or Brazil, because these countries are nothing like normal destinations.

'In fact, when traveling to a dictatorship it should be conceived as visiting somebodys house for the first time.

'Meaning: you have to be respectful, polite, aware of their historical and cultural background, and be thankful for the hospitality details and traditions.'

She added: 'This is by no mean a personal suggestion but more of a learnt lesson I acquired from these countries. The way they live, the significance they give to their traditions and beliefs is both endearing and interesting at the same time because these countries do not normally get to show it to the world.'

Egypt

Nearly a million British nationals visit Egypt, which remains under a high threat from terrorism, said the FCO

The number of British holidaymakers visiting Egypt has plummeted since October, when a Russian passenger jet packed with tourists was bombed, killing everyone on board.

The country, a military dictatorship, remains under high threat from terrorism and has been in political turmoil since the uprising in 2011.

Protests and demonstrations can turn violent and police may use live ammunition for crowd control.

If a protest forms, tourists should leave the area immediately.

The FCO said Westerners, including British nationals, have been killed and raped at demonstrations.

And tourists should also think twice before they take a photo.

British nationals have been arrested for photographing electricity stations, train stations and bridges.

Tourists should leave the area immediately if a protest forms (pictured: protesters burning the US flag)

Figgins said: 'Photography can be a dangerous business and most dictatorships will not permit you to take photos of anything other than what an official guide tells you is ok to capture.

'Its not worth risking that quick snap under the assumption it couldnt possibly cause offence.

'Remember that officials can look through any digital images on your camera or phone right up until the time you leave the country. In fact, I have seen them do so to passengers passing through immigration on the way out of Egypt.'

Homosexual acts in public are illegal and it is also against the law to encourage people to convert to Christianity.

Egypt is predominantly an Islamic country, and visitors must be careful not to offend the local cultures or religious beliefs.

Public displays of affection are frowned upon and tourists should dress modestly in rural areas, mosques and souqs.

Drug possession can lead to lengthy prison sentences or even the death penalty, and tourists can also land in jail for taking pictures of, or near, military sites, including the Suez Canal, said the FCO.
American Airlines passengers say they were left shaken after their plane was struck by lightning and forced to make an emergency landing.

The Embraer 175 sustained apparent scorch marks on its tail wing when it flew through stormy weather on a 90-minute flight from Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina to New York.

Passengers described a terrifying scene as they witnessed a flash of light and heard what sounded like a massive explosion.

Aviation safety experts said today's planes are manufactured to withstand lightning strikes

Passenger Rebecca Seger snapped this photo of the plane being met by firefighters after it landed

After the plane landed safely yesterday, passenger Diante Edwards told ABC 7: It was pretty terrifying, Im not going to lie.

Another passenger, Lou Luca, said the plane dipped and he felt like he was on a roller coaster, adding: I thought we got hit by a missile. Soiled my pants a little bit, it was bad.

In an interview with CBS New York, an unidentified passenger said: There was a flash of light right outside the first row window on the left hand side of the plane and then a tremendous bang. It just lit up blue inside the plane.

The twin-engine aircraft, carrying 55 passengers and four crew members from Raleigh-Durham airport, was supposed to land at LaGuardia but as a precaution diverted to JFK International, which has longer runways, for a speedier landing.

Flight 4233, operated by Republic Airlines under American Airlines' regional brand, American Eagle, landed safely at JFK shortly after 6pm local time.

Experts said an aircraft's metal body acts as a conductor, allowing the strike's electricity to pass through it

Passenger Rebecca Seger said the plane was circling New York and it kept flying through a lot of turbulence when the lightning strike occurred.

She told MailOnline: There was just a very bright burst of blue and a tremendous bang, like an explosion, right near where I was sitting in row two on the right side, and it hit right next to the passenger in row one on the left side.

Up front, we knew immediately because the first two rows actually saw the lightning strike.

She said a flight attendant, who was already seated and buckled up due to the turbulence, spoke to the pilot and then made an announcement confirming the plane had been struck by lightning.

The flight attendant told passengers that the plane was fine and the pilot was seeking clearance to land.

Seger said: Another two minutes and the pilot came on, reassured us once again, and told us we might fly into JFK or LaGuardia, and that there were storms near LaGuardia.

All told, we probably had to fly another 30 minutes after the hit before we landed in JFK and were met by fire trucks and guys in haz-mat suits.

Seger said the pilots and flight attendants handled the situation brilliantly, adding: [They] really helped us feel like it was all OK.

She said passengers were scared but calm and everyone began chatting with their seatmates to help them through it.

However, a passenger seated at the back of the plane became ill, she said.

Seger said: 'It was incredibly scary. We all really wanted to see what the plane looked like, but where it actually hit was covered up by the jet bridge [as passengers disembarked.

'Watching the firemen outside the plane, you could tell there was visible damage by their responses and gestures.'

One passenger told news reporters that he saw a flash of light and heard a big bang

Audio posted on the website LiveATC revealed that the pilots were concerned about the storm as they made their final approach to LaGuardia.

They requested a change in their flight path to avoid the storm, but then notified air traffic controllers that the plane had suffered a direct hit.

In the recording, the pilot says: Brickyard 4233, just got hit by lightning.

An air traffic controller from LaGuardia responds: Roger, everything OK?

The pilot says: Yeah, dont send us through there again, its pretty bad. Lets go ahead and divert to JFK.

As a precaution, the plane was met by firefighters when it landed.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it is investigating the incident.

MailOnline has contacted Republic Airlines for comment.

Dai Wittingham, chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee, said aircraft are manufactured to withstand a lightning strike, although some electrical systems can be disrupted and there may be some minor damage.

He said: There is no danger to passengers or crew from the lightning itself as the charge travels through the aircraft skin and there is no charge on the inside of a hollow conductor.

Fuel tanks are bonded, and any charge in the vicinity, such as a strike on the wing, will simply be ducted away by the aircraft skin.

The reason pilots will choose to land at a nearby airport is because there may be uncertainty about the nature of any damage.

Wittingham added: On this occasion, the crew were already concerned about the thunder cell building ahead of them.

The real danger from thunderstorms is not so much the lightning but the violent air currents, or turbulence, created by the convective activity inside the cell.

These cells can also generate strong and gusting surface winds and all large passenger aircraft have systems to warn them of the wind-shear, or rapid changes of speed and direction, that result.
They say music has charms to soothe the savage beast  and now bosses at London Heathrow Airport are using a similar trick to calm the nerves of anxious travellers.

Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world, will be playing audio recordings of poetry over the Easter bank holiday weekend, when nearly a million passengers are expected at its terminals.

Poetry points will be set up throughout the airport for families, with overhead speakers broadcasting new poems inspired by holidays, adventures and exotic destinations, said airport officials.

London Heathrow Airport said it is expecting a record 850,000 passengers over the Easter weekend

The recordings will feature the work of childrens authors and poets Michael Rosen, Danny Wallace, MG Leonard and Laura Dockrill.

With a record 850,000 passengers expected at the airport, the great Easter escape can be stressful for parents who are taking their children abroad for warmer weather or one last go on the slopes before the ski season ends.

Heathrow, the UK's busiest airport, said it is expecting an extra 200,000 families to pass through the airport, so its taken a few steps to make it as enjoyable as possible for mums, dads and children.

To keep children occupied, Heathrow has set up a Passport to Poetry programme, which also includes workshops and a holiday-themed poetry competition for children under 16.

Poetry will be played over speakers designated areas in Heathrow Airport's terminals to entertain children

RECORDS SET TO FALL Easter is one of the busiest travel periods of the year. The UKs three busiest airports are expecting nearly two million passengers combined over the Easter bank holiday weekend: Heathrow  850,000 Gatwick  580,000 Manchester  390,000 Advertisement

It will have dedicated security lanes for families to keep things moving as swiftly as possible and there will be play areas and free meals for children at restaurants.

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said in a statement: Easter at Heathrow brings huge numbers of families travelling for leisure and we wanted to make it as enjoyable as possible as soon as their journey begins.

We hope that by providing poetic inspiration from childrens authors such as Michael Rosen and Danny Wallace, children and families will enjoy getting involved during their journey.

London Gatwick, the UK's second busiest airport, is also preparing for its busiest Easter ever, with Barcelona, Geneva, Dublin, Madrid and Amsterdam ranking as the five most popular destinations.

It said 580,000 passengers are expected over the Easter bank holiday weekend (from 25 March) and 2.2million are expected during the entire Easter holiday (from 25 March to 10 April), up five per cent on last year.

Gatwick is expecting 50 per cent more families with young children and the busiest day is expected to be Sunday 3 April, with 136,000 passengers.

Activities for children include an Alice in Wonderland-themed Mad Hatter's tea party, face painting and play areas, and there will be dedicated family security lanes and pushchairs.

Guy Stephenson, Gatwick's chief commercial officer, said: 'Every year we work to make Easter extra special for the passengers travelling with us through the holiday.

'We know that it's the little thoughts each step of the way that help our passengers  whether its a dedicated family security lane or a pushchair available on your arrival at the airport  ensuring the best start and end to your holiday.'
During their travels the couple have raised almost 30,000 for orphan

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A couple have spent three years driving more than 50,000 miles around the world in a 100-year-old Ford.

Dirk and Trudy Regter from Holland bought the iconic Ford Model T in 1997 and, after retiring, decided they wanted an adventure.

So the grandparents got in the vintage motor, which is famous for being the world's first mass produced car, and set off on a global road trip.

Dirk and Trudy Regter from Holland bought the iconic Ford Model T in 1997 and, after retiring, decided they wanted an adventure

In 2012, the Regters travelled through Africa, racking up 15,000 miles in just six months, visiting the likes of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia before ending up in Cape Town. Pictured: Grand Canyon

The grandparents got in the vintage motor, which is famous for being the world's first mass produced car, and set off on a global road trip

In 2012, the couple, who run website Model T World Tour, travelled through Africa, racking up 15,000 miles in just six months, visiting the likes of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia before ending up in Cape Town.

Despite the tough roads, the Model T proved the perfect car for the epic tour, emerging from it with no problems,

The following year they visited Canada and the USA, home of the Model T, and this time managed to drive the Ford 17,000 miles.

Just like in Africa, the Model T demonstrated its reliability - only suffering a broken alternator and one flat tyre.

In 2014 Dirk and Trudy decided they would like see South Africa, driving the Model T a further 16,000 miles through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.

During this period the couple have raised almost 30,000 for SOS Children's villages International, a charity which helps orphans around the world.

The Model T has a three-litre petrol engine which develops around 20bhp, giving it a top speed of around 40mph.

In 2014 Dirk and Trudy decided they would like see South Africa, driving the Model T a further 16,000 miles through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil

The grandparents are planning on continuing their journey this year and visiting New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and India, crossing the Himalayas to China, through Mongolia and back to the Netherlands via central Europe. Pictured driving through Cerro de Pasco, Peru

Dirk and Trudy's Model T is entirely original apart from the tyres, which are slightly larger to improve the quality of the ride. The spokes on the wheels are wooden.

It was built in Canada and imported to Europe in 1997.

Dirk, a retired architect, previously owned a 1923 Ford Model T and a 1928 Ford Model A, inheriting his passion for vintage Fords from his father and grandfather.

He said: 'My wife and [I] had the idea to make a long trip but couldn't make a decision so we said let's do the whole world.

'A lot of people said you are crazy, why [would] you do that? But it gets a lot of attention and we need the attention to raise money for orphaned children worldwide.

'On the border of South Africa and Botswana we met a farmer who had an old Ford Model T in the shed.'

During their travels the couple have raised almost 30,000 for SOS Children's villages International, a charity which helps orphans around the world

Dirk and Trudy's Model T is entirely original apart from the tyres, which are slightly larger to improve the quality of the ride. The spokes on the wheels are wooden

He added: 'In Africa we had to weld a broken front wheel at the local blacksmith.

'I'm pretty handy, and a screwdriver, hammer, some duct tape, tie wraps and tensioning straps go a long way.'

In 2014 they returned to Europe but they were hit by a truck on the motorway in Belgium, wrecking the Model T.

They took 2015 off and will set off again this year - continuing their journey through New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and India, crossing the Himalayas to China, through Mongolia and back to the Netherlands via central Europe.

The Ford Model T was the world's first mass produced car, with 15 million made around the world between 1908 and 1927.

Despite the tough roads, the Model T has proven the perfect car for the epic tour, emerging from it with no serious problems, just a burst tyre and a broken alternator
The new season of Girls has given a look at Shoshanna's new life in Japan.

And now fans of the show can rent the colorful apartment in Mitaka, outside of Tokyo, on home-sharing site Airbnb.

The quirky apartment is in the 'Reversible Destiny Lofts' and rents for $117 per night for the two-person unit, or $137 per night for the four-person unit.

Quirky: The unusual apartments where the character Shoshanna, played by Zosia Mamet, lives in Japan are for now for rent on Airbnb

The unusual homes were designed to make residents uncomfortable so they'd re-think their daily routines - which the architects hoped would even help people cheat death, they told Newsweek when the building opened in 2005.

The lofts are built around a bright central kitchen and cramped, sunken living space, with different 'pods' jutting off the living area.

The various pods are for sleeping or study. One pod is a bathroom, built around a central, circular shower that Shosh is seen using on the show.

The pods don't have doors or closets, but feature large windows.

Unique: The 'Reversible Destiny Lofts' were designed to get residents out of their comfort zone

Bright: The colorful lofts are in the suburb of Mitaka, outside Tokyo

Bold: The lofts have a sunken, central living space surrounded by pods for sleeping and bathing

The futuristic building was designed by architects Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins.

The architects created the inventive homes in hopes that the design would push people out of their routines, reportedNewsweek when the building opened.

By constantly stimulating people, the architects hoped the wild lofts would even people avoid death.

To keep residents off-kilter, the apartment light switches are in unusual places, and some doors are so small they must be crawled through.

Relaxed: The architects designed the lofts with uneven floors and hidden lights switches to constantly keep residents on their toes

Wacky: The two-person lofts cost $117 per night on Airbnb

Girls loft: The apartments are painted in bright colors and feature an open living space

Mix and match: The exterior balconies with circular pods

Unique look: The lofts have a sunken living area and kitchen surrounded by open 'pods' that act as bedrooms

Some of the floors are uneven, which puts people off balance and forces them cling to poles that are set up around the living area.

The Airbnb listing says the Reversible Destiny Lofts are perfect for visitors who 'want to share an interesting experience with your family' or 'want to naturally increase your perceptive and motor skills by simply being.'

The unusual building has appeared on the current season of HBO'sGirls, which has shown more of Shoshanna's (played by Zosia Mamet) new life in Japan.

In a recent episode, she decided not to return to the US after being fired - standing up her boyfriend at the airport in New York.

New life: The current season of Girls shows Shosh deciding to stay in Japan after being fired from her job
He's never been one to shy away from making controversial remarks on-air.

And shock jock Kyle Sandilands lived up to his reputation this week after he made a surprising confession about his relationship with long-term girlfriend Imogen Anthony, 25.

The 44-year-old revealed on KIIS 106.5's The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Friday that he has to help Imogen with her feminine hygiene products because her nails are too long.

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Loved-up: KIIS 106.5's Kyle Sandilands, 44, (right) opened up about his relationship with girlfriend Imogen Anthony, 25, (left) and left guests Jason Biggs and Jenny Mollen surprised by a particularly bold remark

The Brisbane-born radio personality made the admission during an phone interview with American Pie star Jason Biggs and actress and humourist Jenny Mollen.

During a lively chat with husband-and-wife pair, the conversation drifted to the subject of relationships - as Jason and Jenny admitted to going to marriage counselling.

Kyle then said: 'My girlfriend, she has huge Rihanna claw nails, y'know those glue-in things, whatever they are.

'I had to insert her tampon the other day for her. And I thought, "That's what true love is". What do you think of that?' he asked Jason and Jenny, who were almost speechless.

Glitz and glamour: While Kyle and Imogen put on an affectionate display at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Sydney last year, the model-turned-fashion designer also showed off her trademark long nails

Strong bond: Kyle has been in a relationship with White Trash Royalty mogul Imogen since 2012, having previously being married to pop star Tamara Jaber for almost two years

Kyle added: 'I had to go around from behind and everything. She was like, "Why are you standing behind?" And I said, "Just run with it". Jackie thought that was (the) grossest thing she's ever heard.'

Jason, who has known Kyle for many years, then said to his wife: 'Baby, you haven't spoken to Kyle before, have you? Is this your first time?'

Meanwhile, this week Kyle and his co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson have been broadcasting from Paris, having travelled to the French capital to attend a radio conference.

Edgy: Imogen, pictured here in 2014, has been more daring and experimental with her style in recent years

Standing out from the crowd: Imogen's signature style often includes long, colourful nails

They also spoke to Jason about a potential return to Netflix comedy-drama Orange Is The New Black, in which he played journalist Larry Bloom.

'I am not in the fourth series,' he revealed. 'There is a possibility, y'know, that I could go back. It's sort of TBD (to be determined).

'They way they left the character, he's still around theoretically. He could always make an appearance in the future. But for right now, I am not.

Lively conversation: American actor Jason Biggs, 37, who has known Kyle for many years, seemed to enjoy the no-holds-barred interview on The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Friday

Fun couple: Jason was joined by his wife - actress and writer Jenny Mollen (pictured) - as they spoke candidly and humourously about their relationship on The Kyle and Jackie O Show

I'd always go back. I love that show., I love that group of people. It's a great cast, it's great crew' before adding that he would 'need a haircut' if they asked him back.

Jason also opened up about some of his well-documented Twitter feuds with troubled actress Amanda Bynes and American Pie co-star Tara Reid.

'It's calmed down a bit,' he said. 'Twitter, for me, was a real fun experiment for a while. I really took to it, I really didn't hold back.'

He continued: 'It was all a big joke for me... and I just kind of explored this other side to my personality.'

Sticky situation: Jason Biggs rose to fame in the bawdy 1999 teen comedy American Pie, in which his high school-aged character famously enjoyed an intimate moment with a freshly baked apple pie

'I have a darker side to my sense of humour,' he reflected. 'But unfortunately, as the years have gone on here, people - I don't know what it is, man... it's getting harder and harder to make jokes.

'And particularly in social media, when things are written down they can be misinterpreted and people don't necessarily understand.

'It's almost as if people are looking for the negative. Looking to, sort of, find a controversy... It's a shame, it really is a shame so I've kind of taken a step back. I barely tweet anymore.'
Jo Brand's Hell Of A Walk

Rating:

Speed: F1 Special

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Never was there a more noble cause. Im doing this, declared Jo Brand, strapping on her boots for her Hell Of A Walk (BBC1), on behalf of all the portly, middle-aged women in the country who need to get up off their bums so they can live to bicker with their husbands a bit longer.

She certainly wasnt embarking on her hike across England on the Pennine Trail for the usual reason that celebs torture themselves on camera  to get their faces on the telly. Much of the time, the BBC crew seemed so scared of her that they kept a safe distance and filmed in long-shot.

And she wasnt doing it to make friends. When members of the public trotted up to introduce themselves and take a selfie, Jo greeted them through gritted teeth, and grumbled in a continuous mutter of swearwords as soon as they were gone.

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Im doing this, declared Jo Brand, strapping on her boots for her Hell Of A Walk (BBC1), on behalf of all the portly, middle-aged women in the country who need to get up off their bums so they can live to bicker with their husbands a bit longer'

Even her fellow comedians, who joined the walk here and there to keep her company, soon backed off before they got their heads bitten off. I think Ive done something to upset her, said a worried Alan Davies, banished to walk at least 100 yards ahead of Jo. He looked like a husband who knows he is in the doghouse but cant work out why.

It appeared her motive really was the best. She cursed every aching muscle at every step on the seven-day, 135-mile march from Hull to Liverpool, but by the time the show was broadcast she had already raised 850,000 for Sport Relief.

As a former psychiatric nurse, whose father had suffered from chronic depression (Bless him, but he wasnt a bundle of laughs, she said), she was particularly keen to emphasise that some of the money she raised would go towards mental health charities in Britain such as Mind.

The producer was urging her to get tearful: the more a celeb cries, apparently, the more viewers hand over their cash. Im not going to f****** cry, snarled Jo Christopher Stevens

But there was a limit to what she was prepared to do for donations. The producer was urging her to get tearful: the more a celeb cries, apparently, the more viewers hand over their cash. Im not going to f****** cry, snarled Jo.

She had reason enough, if shed wanted. The gales on the Pennines, in a constant torrent of rain, were bad enough to overturn HGV lorries, and they blew Jo off her feet more than once. She soldiered on, though.

It was in her blood, she said: her parents met at a Young Socialists ramblers club. Now theres a pocket of English life that has disappeared . . . like people picnicking on roundabouts and convoys of green caravans trundling towards Skegness campsites, you dont see a lot of socialist ramblers on the public footpaths nowadays.

The Great British understatement is another vanishing art, though it lives on with TT motorbike racer Guy Martin. Talking to F1 driver David Coulthard about safety, he conceded he had taken a few tumbles, but nothing major.

That isnt strictly true. The last time he came off his superbike, doing 170mph at the Ulster Grand Prix, he broke his back. And his hand, sternum and several ribs. Hes lucky to be walking, never mind getting back on two wheels to challenge Coulthard to a series of tests, in Speed: F1 Special (C4).

The show was geared to promoting the new F1 season, which will be shown on Channel 4 for the first time this year. There wasnt much suspense about the challenges: it was obvious the car was going to emerge the winner. F1s highly touchy publicists would hardly agree to a documentary that claimed bikes were better.

On this showing, shy Guy (right) and suave Dave (left) would make an excellent Top Gear pairing. They were madly competitive, they know and love their engines, and nobody got punched

For viewers who are not obsessed with torque and traction, the interest lay in watching two presenters, meeting for the first time, who were tipped as Top Gear hosts before Chris Evans took over.

PRETENTIOUS LUVVIE OF THE WEEK Wading into an African stream on Mission Survive (ITV), hoping to catch supper with a knife on a pole, actor Neil Morrissey boasted: I used to spear fish for a living in Sri Lanka. No other explanation was offered . . . and the fish swam off. Advertisement

Few observers expect Evans to last long. Every rumour says hes been just about impossible to work with, even before last weekends debacle at the Cenotaph.

On this showing, shy Guy and suave Dave would make an excellent Top Gear pairing. They were madly competitive, they know and love their engines, and nobody got punched.
Jamie Oliver was quick to make a celebratory song and dance about George Osborne's new sugar tax in this week's Budget, after the TV chef's endless tub-thumping for healthier children's food.

But is Oliver's support for the Chancellor's health levy on sugary foods really so pukka?

Down Under, clean-living Jamie is the face of supermarket chain Woolworths, where his recipes for Australian households are hardly health-conscious.

One of his Easter recipes, promoted on Woolworths' website, is a fat and sugar-laden Hot Cross Bun Ice-Cream Sandwich. One serving of the calorific concoction, endorsed by Oliver in an advertising campaign, contains 1 tsp of chocolate and hazelnut spread, 12.5g of dark chocolate and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Jamie Oliver (pictured) is the face of supermarket chain Woolworths in Australia, where one of his recipes is for a fat and sugar-laden Hot Cross Bun Ice-Cream Sandwich

It's hardly going to help Australians 'cook more fresh food from scratch', as Oliver trilled when he announced the no doubt lucrative partnership in 2013.

Nor will the chef's recipes on his own website for Holiday Citrus Slushies, which have 23g of sugar  or gammon cooked in four litres of teeth-rotting Coca-Cola. Coke has around 2.5 tsp of sugar per 100 ml, meaning Jamie's recipe uses some 100 tsp of sugar.

Osborne's sugar tax on fizzy drinks, effective from 2018, has two bands: one for 5g of sugar per 100ml, and one for more than 10g of sugar per 100ml.

A serving of Oliver's ginger and treacle cake with ice cream, posted on jamieoliver.com, contains ten times the amount of sugar taxed in the lower band.

Nevertheless, he welcomed the measure on Instagram, calling the sugar levy a 'profound move that will ripple around the world'.

Oliver's spokesman says: 'You'll see Jamie's view on his website: 'Indulgent food should be enjoyed and savoured, just not every day.'

Jamie Oliver (pictured) was quick to make a celebratory song and dance about George Osborne's new sugar tax in this week's Budget

Like Lucozade? Then TV's Kirstie Allsopp doesn't like you.

Attacking Britain's sugar intake yesterday, the 44-year-old wrote on Twitter: 'Anyone who drinks fizzy drinks, diet or otherwise, every day is an idiot. Lucozade drinkers are the worst.'

Kirstie Allsopp wrote on Twitter: 'Anyone who drinks fizzy drinks, diet or otherwise, every day is an idiot. Lucozade (pictured) drinkers are the worst'

James Norton, Aidan Turner, Idris Elba... the number of actors being tipped as the next James Bond is increasing by the day.

But stage and screen star Rory Kinnear, who is already in the franchise as M's Chief of Staff, has some wise words to offer.

'The thing I remember is that the people everyone thinks are going to be James Bond don't turn out to be James Bond,' he tells me.

Stage and screen star Rory Kinnear (pictured), who is already in the franchise as M's Chief of Staff, has some wise words to offer those tipped to be the next James Bond

James Norton, Aidan Turner, Idris Elba (pictured) have all been tipped as the next James Bond

'So I wouldn't like to nix anyone's chances by nominating them.'

Still, that doesn't stop him panning the chances of action hero Jason Statham. 'Jason is a very good-looking man with a good body and he has that tough image that works in a lot of films,' he says.

'But Daniel Craig has already brought the bad guy image to Bond.'

Princess Eugenie has found an enterprising way to combine her love of travel with hard work.

The 25-year-old's role as associate director at art gallery Hauser & Wirth means she often flies around the world for engagements.

And this week, the daughter of the Duke of York  aka Air Miles Andy  was in LA (near right) with friends playing art guide to actress Michelle Trachtenberg (second right), star of hit TV show Gossip Girl.

Michelle, 30, whom Eugenie met when she worked at Paddle8 auction house in New York, posted this photo online and wrote: 'I got a tour of the brand new Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery in downtown LA...Thanks to my girl E, for being my art guide! Friends who art together stay together!'

Princess Eugenie's (second from left, in white) role as associate director at art gallery Hauser & Wirth means she often flies around the world for engagements

Catching up with Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards before this week's premiere of the film about his life, our greatest-ever Olympic loser told me he has seen the movie four times and, on every occasion, it reduced him to tears.

In part, this is because his father is portrayed as being unsupportive of his ski-jumping exploits, while, in fact, 'he was just as encouraging as my mum'.

Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards said he's seen the movie about his life four times and it reduced him to tears every time (pictured, Taron Egerton who plays Eddie in the movie)

Eddie is played by Taron Egerton. 'He's got me absolutely right. In fact, when I first saw him on set it was like looking at myself in the mirror  which was a bit scary.'

But not as scary as how Eddie describes sitting on the 90 ft-high bar before making his leap.
The Painkiller (Garrick)

Rating:

One of the joys of farce is the sight of grown men with their trousers round their ankles, waddling out of the route of oncoming disaster. They seldom succeed!

Sir Kenneth Branaghs admirable tenancy at the West Ends Garrick theatre continues with a hotel farce by French playwright Francis Veber.

It makes for a cheerful enough evening and offers the sight of not only Sir Ken with his trousers round his feet, but also Rob Brydon.

Then there is the vision of the great Branagh playing a man stoned out of his head on horse tranquilliser. He does this rather brilliantly, even if the direction runs a little out of hand.

The Painkiller makes for a cheerful enough evening and offers the sight of not only Sir Ken with his trousers round his feet, but also Rob Brydon, says QUENTIN LETTS

But the fight scenes  the slapstick violence essential to any farce  are feeble. I suspect that it will not be until they become more convincing that this show will fly.

A suicidal photographer called Dudley (Brydon) arrives at a big-city hotel. His wife (Claudie Blakley) has left him for a suave doctor (Alex Macqueen). Dudley likes to tell people that he is working for a top photo agency but, in fact, he is employed by the Swindon Advertiser.

In the adjacent room is professional assassin Ralph (Branagh). He has chosen his room carefully, for it offers a good view of a courthouse where a Mafia suspect is about to arrive for a trial.

Ralph has been told that if he fails to kill his target, he himself will be liquidated. His boss rings him on his hotel line to check that all is going according to plan.

This play, you see, was originally written in 1969, though it has been updated and anglicised by director Sean Foley.

The two bedrooms have connecting doors. Alice Powers set includes a short flight of steps (good for tripping up/down) and open windows (good for falling out of).

A shower fitting comes off the wall  cue spraying water. Furniture is punched, light fittings are shot from their moorings and there are moments when men seem to be ravishing one another.

If they could pick up the pace a little, it would give audiences less time to notice some of the more far-fetched moments Quentin Letts

Brydon and Branagh have a ball, Sir Ken on good form as a tough-guy assassin whose murderous intentions are soon disrupted by needy Dudley. Mr Brydon is well cast as this maddening fusspot.

Mark Hadfield, perhaps slightly on autopilot, does his normal comedy routine as the hotel porter.

Farce always assumes an inner logic of its own but there are places in this story when that logic almost disappears.

If they could pick up the pace a little, it would give audiences less time to notice some of the more far-fetched moments.

Sir Kens fight sequences with a policeman (Marcus Fraser) are so clunky, they may need a substantial rethink. A cheerful, blameless evening, all the same.

The Truth (Menier Chocolate Factory)

Rating:

French playwright Florian Zeller, with his third show in London in 18 months, certainly proves he is clever. This is the man who wrote that touching play The Father about senility. Its partner play, The Mother, recently opened in Kilburn.

The Truth gives us, again, a story conducted entirely indoors, the decor pale and spare, sliding flats enabling scene changes. Again the characters are prosperous and (I think) Parisian. How heartless modern Frances professionals are made to look.

Here we have two middle-aged couples and a story of marital infidelity exposed. The culprits must decide if they will tell the truth. Might lies not be less hurtful?

Alexander Hanson (too much fruity use of the lips) and Frances OConnor start the show as adulterers in a hotel bed.

Her character has a compulsion to blurt out the truth. His, an incompetent liar, is outraged when he himself is betrayed. Tanya Franks and a subtle Robert Portal complete a taut cast.
Rock The Kasbah (15)

Rating:

Bill Murray plays a jaded music-tour manager, Richie Lanz, living off probably untrue stories of working with Madonna and Stevie Nicks, and trying to eke out an unprincipled living by feeding dreams to no-hopers in a blue-collar Californian town.

That in itself is not a bad premise for a film, but Murrays lugubriousness is destined for Afghanistan, after he is told that there is a fortune to be earned in entertaining the troops.

So off he goes with his protegee, Ronnie (Zoey Deschanel). Only she very quickly and wisely decides that Kabul is not for her, leaving Richie to find moral redemption in the shape of a Pashtun woman, Salima (Leem Lubany).

Bill Murray plays a jaded music-tour manager, Richie Lanz, who is sent to Afghanistan to entertain the troops

She can sing, and with his help becomes the first female contestant on Afghanistans version of American Idol, Afghan Star. You can imagine how that goes down with the local warlords.

Its vaguely based on a true story, but despite the odd good line neither Barry Levinsons direction nor Mitch Glazers script breathe much fun or even poignancy into it.

Bruce Willis pops up as a grunting mercenary, but that doesnt save the film from being dragged from the kasbah into the mire.

Nor could I work out the point of Kate Hudson as a tart with a heart, or why we were meant to be charmed, or maybe amused, by the spectacle of her turning away the long queue of punters outside her Portakabin, telling them it would spare them all a dose of a sexually transmitted disease.

A resounding misfire.

Brian Viner couldn't understand the point of Kate Hudson's character as a 'tart with a heart'

Lanz's protegee Ronnie (Zoey Deschanel) very quickly and wisely decides that Kabul is not for her




While the original remains a cult classic, the sequel has one big thing the original didn't - Joe Manganiello.

With fans waiting 21 years for a follow up to Pee-wee's Big Adventure, star Joe and his stunning wife Sofia Vergara made sure to be in Texas for the film's big premiere.

The newlyweds looked loved up as ever as they posed up at the event held at the SXSW festival on Thursday night.

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Eyes on you: Joe Manganiello and Sofia Vergara looked loved up as ever as they posed up at the premiere of Pee-wee's Big Holiday held at the SXSW festival in Texas on Thursday night

Sofia was obviously very proud that Joe - who plays himself in the film - landed a role in the beloved film's follow up, Pee-wee's Big Holiday.

The star lovingly looked up at her husband adoringly as they stopped for photographs at the Austin event.

And while it was her beau's event, the 43-year-old certainly impressed herself in a sheer lace dress - with opaque panels in the appropriate places - which hugged her famous curves.

The star accessorized her look with a pair of matching red pumps and carried a gold Saint Laurent bag.

Standing by her man: Sofia was obviously very proud that Joe - who plays himself in the film - landed a role in the beloved film's follow up

Lady in red: And while it was her beau's event, the 43-year-old certainly impressed herself in a sheer lace dress - with opaque panels in the appropriate places - which hugged her famous curves

Added extras: The star accessorized her look with a pair of matching red pumps and carried a gold Saint Laurent bag

Joe meanwhile went for a rocker-inspired outfit with the 39-year-old hitting the carpet in a pair of dark jeans with a printed T-shirt and a black Mandarin collared jacket.

While it was hard to pull himself away from his beautiful wife, the actor made sure to catch up with the film's other star, Paul Reubens, or as most people know him, Pee-wee Herman.

In the film, Joe and Pee-wee strike an unlikely friendship and Joe inspires the sheltered Pee-wee to go out and explore the country.

Ready to rock: Joe meanwhile went for a rocker-inspired outfit with the 39-year-old hitting the carpet in a pair of dark jeans with a printed T-shirt and a black Mandarin collared jacket

So excited: While fans tried to snap a picture of the Modern Family star, she was busy trying to capture her husband in a photo

Hold on tight: The actress could not keep her hands off her hunky husband at the premiere

While nothing seems strange about the eccentric Pee-wee in his small town of Fairville, outside in the real world the character finds himself being a target of confusion and getting a little confused, hilariously so, along the way.

For the premiere, Paul did not were the iconic costume of his famed character but, instead wore a navy suit with a checked shirt.

While Joe and Pee-wee may seem like and odd couple, the 63-year-old comedic actor told USA Today in real life they also are pals.

The man himself: While it was hard to pull himself away from his beautiful wife, the actor made sure to catch up with the film's other star, Paul Reubens, or as most people know him, Pee-wee Herman

Paul not Pee-wee: For the premiere, Paul did not were the iconic costume of his famed character but, instead wore a navy suit with a checked shir

Paul said: 'Life is like that - you never really know who is going to be your friend. Chemistry is chemistry. Joe's my friend, and I'm just crazy about him.'

And Joe immediately wanted to be part of the movie: 'I told him I didn't even have to see a script - I'd do it. There's no bucket list where you write down, ''Play in a comic duo with Pee-wee Herman.'' I still cannot fathom it.'

It was Joe's love of the television show Pee-wee's Playhouse that lead to the pair being friends, as the True Blood star said he literally stormed across an Emmy's party to speak to his childhood idol.

'I finally worked my way over to him and said, ''I'm your biggest fan''. And we just started talking.'

Big Holiday babes: Stars of the film (L-R) Stephanie Beatriz, Alia Shawkat and Jessica Pohly also attended

Helping hand: Paul write the film with Paul Rust, who currently stars in Netflix series Love

The men behind the madness: (L-R) Director John Lee, producer Judd Apatow, actor Paul Reubens and chief content officer for Netflix Ted Sarandos posed up on the carpet

The actor told USA Today that Paul was the guest of honour at his wedding to Sofia last year.

'He was the big hit of the wedding. The whole weekend, people kept coming up to me telling me how much they loved Paul. He's like family.'

And Paul said Joe and Sofia are great too - as they are dorks: '[Joe] and his wife together are the dorkiest, nerdiest people. It's just hilarious. People don't get to see that side.'

Pee-wee's Big Holiday is playing in select theatres but the rest of the US will be able to watch the film in their very own homes with the film streaming on Netfilx starting Friday.
Amber Heard has confirmed she will be taking on the role of Mera, the love interest of Aquaman, in the action-packed Justice League films.

The 29-year-old announced the exciting news to Entertainment Tonight, and will also be appearing in the standalone Aquaman film with Jason Momoa in the title role.

Speaking about her costume for the underwater queen, Amber said: 'Its interesting. Its like, half suit of armor, half scales. Its strange Were in the process of building it now, so its coming along.'

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Queen of Atlantis: Amber Heard has confirmed she will star in Justice League Part One as Aquaman's love interest Mera; she was pictured at Stella McCartney's fashion event in LA in January

It was first reported by Variety in January that the actress and wife of Johnny Depp was in talks to take on the role.

The news comes ahead of the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice on March 25. Justice League will feature the same characters.

Mera becomes Queen Of Atlantis and her special powers include controlling and solidifying water.

Amber is joining a league of big names including Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ben Affleck (Batman), Henry Cavill (Superman) along with Ezra Miller (The Flash) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman).

Flooding, no problem: Mera has special powers including the knack for controlling and solidifying water

Production is scheduled to begin in April with director Zack Snyder at the helm.

Justice League Part One is the first installment of a two-parter and slated for a US release on November 17, 2017.

Amber would also be reprising the character in Part Two, which will bow in June 2019.

Bound for glory: Amber (pictured at the Golden Globes) will be joining a league of big names including Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ben Affleck (Batman) and Henry Cavill (Superman)

Superheroes are in: Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice comes out next week and casting is already underway in Justice League Part One that will bring back several characters

The Texas-born beauty has been on a winning steak in the past year with roles in The Danish Girl, The Adderall Diaries and Magic Mike XXL.

Amber and husband Johnny Depp - who met on set of their 2011 movie The Rum Diary - celebrated their first wedding anniversary last month.

And shortly afterwards the 52-year-old revealed that he realised after they'd completed work on the film that he had fallen for Amber, saying: 'She was in my head, so I tracked her down. We tracked each other down. Actually, incidentally, it was amazing.'
He usually doesn't have a hair on his head that isn't perfectly groomed.

But Instagram star Kurt Coleman had to make a quick recovery to regain his composure as he enjoyed an afternoon dip at Tamarama Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Thursday.

The 19-year-old was caught off guard when standing with his back to the ocean being knocked down by an unsuspecting wave.

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I whip my hair back and forth: Instagram star Kurt Coleman had to make a fast recovery after he was knocked down by a wave but still managed to look flawless as he threw his head back

Beach day: The 19-year-old has gained a following on social media, regularly updating his 182,000 Instagram followers with selfies and positive messages

Making a dignified recovery, the Gold Coast-based star quickly picked himself back up before channeling his inner Willow Smith, whipping his hair back and still managing to look flawless the entire time.

Wearing a pair of colourful boardshorts with a pineapple print, the teen showed off his toned and incredibly tanned body as he made his way out of the water.

Managing to see the humour in the situation, the teen was seen laughing with his friend as he dried himself off with his towel.

Having been known to take 500 perfect selfies in 20 minutes, Kurt hopes to use his rising social media following  which currently stands at 182,000 followers  to inspire others to find confidence in themselves.

Flawless: The Gold Coast-based teen has been known to take 500 perfect selfies in 20 minutes but says he just wants to inspire others to find confidence in themselves

Earlier this week, he was forced to defend himself after a Sydney-based teacher labelled him 'self-obsessed' and a 'narcissist' following his recent television appearance on ABC2's Hack Live: Body Obsession.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday, Kurt said he was shocked to discover the series of events after he received multiple videos which showed the private school teacher blast him in front of year 10, 11 and team students.

According to a source, the topic was brought up by the staff member during a sex education class, where they discussed 'positive body image'.

Self-obsessed? Kurt was recently forced to defend himself after a video of a Sydney-based teacher labelled him as 'self-obsessed' and a 'narcissist'

Disappointed: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Kurt said the comments from the teacher were something he'd 'expect off a 13-year-old person...not someone of age and authority'

In the video the unidentified teacher said: 'I felt really sad because I thought what a waste, all these amazing beautiful young people who could be changing the world or doing something truly extraordinary instead of taking selfies of themselves all the time. Like what is that.'

'He has so many pictures on his phone of himself. So this isn't even about enjoying someone else's body...he is just actually really into himself,' she continued.

'Did anyone find him attractive?' she went on to ask the crowd, before adding: 'He is orange. He is a human being but how do you get that orange?

Unfazed:

'He has an incredible level of narcissist and it was quiet remarkable the obsession itself.'

Kurt explained to Daily Mail Australia that he found the comments funny because it would have been something he'd 'expect off a 13-year-old person...not someone of age and authority.'

'It is pretty unprofessional. Aren't you meant to lift your students and teach them not to judge anyone,' he questioned.

Self love: 'You should literally think you are the most amazing person in your life,' Kurt has previously said

'She obviously doesn't understand my message and I am fine that she has those thoughts but do you have to broadcast it in-front of the whole school. To me that is unprofessional.'

He went on to add: 'They [teachers] are literally raising kids and now they are teaching them to say "oh they are orange, do you think they are attractive" when in reality your looks don't matter.

Kurt explained that his message is to teach people of every age and gender to 'love themselves'.

'My message is always love yourself and that it isn't all about what you look like and not about what you have.

'It is just about the person you are and you should always love the person you are because we are all different,' he finished.

Inspiring others: Despite the negative comments he receives from people, Kurt remains confident and has received support from his followers after the teachers comments went viral
It was recently revealed that her ex Scott Disick has a much younger new girlfriend, but Kourtney Kardashian is focused on having fun with her pals.

The 36-year-old enjoyed a girls' night out for St. Patrick's Day on Thursday with two of her famous friends - Lily Aldridge and Miranda Kerr.

The pals, who all appeared to be dressed in black, cuddled up together for a selfie and pulled their best pouts for the camera.

See Kourtney Kardashian updates as she cuddles up to Lily Aldridge and Miranda Kerr

'I'll show you mine': Kourtney Kardashian, Miranda Kerr, Lily Aldridge and their pal Michaeline DeJoria pulled their best pouts during a night out in Los Angeles on Thursday

'I'll show you mine,' Kourtney captioned the Instagram photo, which also featured her friend Michaeline DeJoria.

The photo was taken by 30-year-old Lily as the group huddled up in the bathroom of the venue where they were hanging out.

Miranda, 32, was showing no signs of jet lag as she smiled for the camera, despite having only jetted into LA from Tokyo the previous evening.

The model reposted the snapshot on her own Instagram page, but put it through a black-and-white filter.

'Girls night': The group posed for selfies in the bathroom mirror as they celebrated St. Patrick's Day

Kourtney also shared a selfie with her gal pals to Snapchat, which she captioned: 'Girls night'.

Earlier in the day, Kourtney had taken her two youngest children Penelope and Reign to a music class and then went for lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star looked great in a tight-fitting black tank top, matching heels and red trousers.

She was also seen filming for the family reality show with sister Kim and her best friend Jonathan Cheban.

Family time: Earlier on, the 36-year-old had taken her two youngest children Penelope and Reign for lunch

Looking fabulous: Kourtney looked stunning in a black tank top and heels paired with red trousers

The previous evening Kourtney had headed out for dinner with Diddy's son Quincy Coombs.

The reality star and the 24-year-old actor grabbed a bite before heading to a Downtown Los Angeles studio where they met up with Kendall Jenner.

Last year, Kourtney and Quincy caused a few tongues to wag after they were spotted out together, but at the time she was linked to another much-younger man, Justin Bieber.

The outing came just a day after Scott was seen out with rumoured new 20-year-old love, Christine Burke only the day before.
She's the blonde beauty who is known for being unlucky in love.

And Sophie Monk's luck in the relationship department didn't change after she was set up on a cringeworthy blind date by Australia's Got Talent (AGT) host and KIIS FM Drive radio presenter Dave Hughes.

Speaking about the failed date on Dave's radio show Hughesy & Kate, Sophie said: 'It was so awkward, he started Googling me at some pointthats the first no-no for a celebrity.

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'He's a weirdo': Unlucky in love Sophie Monk went on a cringeworthy blind date set up by Australia's Got Talent host Dave Hughes

'I thought it was Hughesys good friend and so I thought I have to be polite, and he must have good qualities if Hughesy loves him.

'He's a weirdo, thats what I thought,' she concluded.

Adding to the disastrous date, the TV personality revealed her suitor, named Kieran, also spoke about her ex-finance Benji Madden, as well as his new wife Cameron Diaz.

Sophie also mentioned that she's previously been on five blind dates when she lived in Los Angeles.

Awkward! Kieran, the web guy, asked about Sophie's ex-fiance Benji Madden, as well as his new wife Cameron Diaz

Pretends to be nice: Sophie said the only reason she pretended to be nice because she thought he was friends with funny man Dave

'Once I got kidnapped. Hed picked me up from my house and it went on from dinner to then going on to watch a basketball game. I dont like basketball. I couldn't get out,' she said.

Kieran works with Dave at KIIS FM as the 'web guy'.

Meanwhile, the former pop star - who rose to fame as a member of girl group Bardot in the Nineties - has been linked to a string of famous men over the years, including Ryan Seacrest and Sam Worthington.

Looking for love: Sophie admitted on Sunday night's semi final that she 'envied' the duo's relationship

She was engaged to Good Charlotte rocker Benji Madden, before the pair broke up in 2008.

Sophie was also engaged to French business man Jimmy Esebag in 2011, but the pair split a few months later.

Despite a string of failed romances, the former singer and actress, who landed the coveted title of Sexy Australian Of The Year 2016, is still determined to find her soul mate.

New role: The former Popstars winner is currently a judge on AGT alongside Ian 'Dicko' Dickson, Kelly Osbourne and Eddie Perfect

In January she told the Daily Mail Australia: 'I'd really like to settle down and have a baby one day.I want to bust my a** working then I can step back...My ego doesn't need it anymore.'

The former Popstars winner is currently a judge on AGT alongside Ian 'Dicko' Dickson, Kelly Osbourne and Eddie Perfect.

Her forthcoming stint on the Channel Nine show comes after she won Celebrity Apprentice last year, resurrecting her career after a failed stint on breakfast radio in 2014.

She fronted 2DayFM's show with Jules Lund and Merrick Watts but shocked radio bosses by handing in her notice in October of that year, struggling with the early starts.

Past love: Sophie also dated plastic surgeon John Diaz

'I'm a firm believer in moving forward': Sophie used to date Avatar actor Sam Worthington but revealed the pair no longer speak

'In my industry, I've worked really hard to build up a career and get to where I am. I loved 2DayFm but I'm pleased I left.

'It's worked out really well...Celebrity Apprentice was a crash course in getting to know myself, it taught me how to say "no" and know myself better.

'I used to spend a whole day trying to work out how to say 'no' to someone and now I just go "nah"'.

The affable blonde went on: 'I feel I know myself better now and I'm enjoying work and I hope [this year] this is my year. They say when you're happy it happens.'

The British-born Australian has been finding her feet in the past two years since returning from Los Angeles, where she lived for ten years as she tried to crack Hollywood.

Sophie previously agreed her love life has been chequered but revealed she has 'learned a lot' and has 'grown up' living in LA.

Former flame: The blonde bombshell almost married millionaire Jimmy Esebag, pictured after a romantic break in California in 2011

More recently she was linked to retired cricketer Shane Warne, but insists that was just innocent flirting.

Sophie also admitted she is not a fan of online dating, saying: 'Nah, not for me, I'll figure it out somehow. I'll find a way.

'It would be nice to date someone different, a footballer or rugby player.... someone my height or taller for a change, I'm 5ft 7ins,' she added, possibly a jibe at former fiance Benji.
She shot to fame on the cobbles of Coronation Street.

But for her next TV role, Michelle Keegan has swapped the drama of Weatherfield for action in Kenya, as she takes over the lead role in new BBC drama Our Girl.

In a first look at the new series of the drama, Michelle poses in full army combats in the blistering heat of South Africa, where's she's been filming for the past few weeks.

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Action girl: Michelle Keegan is seen for the first time in character as Corporal Georgie Lane for the BBC's drama Our Girl

Michelle, 28, is almost unrecognisable in the promo shots, ditching her usual glam appearance for the gritty new role.

The ex soap star is dressed in a green t-shirt and camo combat trousers for one shot, teamed with lace-up boots.

Dog tags hang around her neck, while the actress's dark locks are pulled back into a braid, and she sports natural makeup.

Another shot sees the star walking in the heat in full combat gear and carrying a gun across her chest.

Armed and ready: One promo shot sees the former Coronation Street star walking in the heat in full combat gear and carrying a gun across her chest for her role as an army medic in Kenya

Speaking to The Mirror, Michellle said: 'First time I put on the uniform it felt quite surreal but then I immediately felt the sense of duty - as if I was in the military.'

The former Coronation Street signed on for the leading BBC war drama in June 2015, replacing Lacey Turner's Molly Dawes in the leading role of Corporal Georgie Lane.

The other big change sees the action switching from Afghanistan to Kenya, where Michelle plays an army medic in a refugee camp.

And relax: In between her intense filming and training schedule in South Africa, Michelle has found time to kick back in the sunshine

The BBC has said: 'It won't be an easy posting as Georgie has to earn the love and trust of her fellow soldiers, and the greater respect of her commanding officer, while working alongside aid workers in the world's biggest refugee camp.

'Kenya will be full of surprises that will challenge Georgie professionally and personally.'

Michelle will be on location for two months, away from her husband of less than a year - Mark Wright.

Sun soaked: The actress has also been sharing snaps of her home away from home during the shoot

She's keeping busy though, telling Hello readers in her blog for the magazine this month that before the shoot began she was put through her paces at a tough boot camp in South Africa, just weeks after intensive training back in the UK.

'I've been back at army boot camp, but this time  NO MUD! This boot camp is in 32degree heat. One word to describe itHardcore!' she wrote.

'I have been learning so much about army life and I have been embracing it all. I've learnt how to hold and fire a gun which felt amazing- serious adrenaline rush, and by the way, they are really loud!

'I have also learned to pack a medical kit and how to extract a casualty to safety.'
She may be experiencing a dry period in her career but Jasmin Walia is on top of the world as she continues to live like a California girl during a romantic trip to Los Angeles with boyfriend Ross Worswick.

The former TOWIE star induced a fresh bout of body envy as she stripped down to her swimwear smalls for her latest series of barely-clothed social media shots on Thursday.

Jasmin, 25, paraded her enviably flat stomach and perky posterior as she soaked up the sun in the luxury confines of her five star Beverly Hills hotel's pool area.

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Bikini body goals: Jasmin Walia paraded her enviably flat stomach in a pale pink two-piece as she continued to enjoy her romantic holiday to Los Angeles on Thursday

The most recent of the image saw the some-time reality star slip her slim form into a pale pink bikini which comprised plain bottoms and a crop-style top, featuring a daringly low-cut neckline.

Onlookers and her Instagram followers were given a generous glimpse of her naturally-pert assets as she sat poolside.

Her abdomen boasted obvious definition and it was clear to see she had put in the hours at the gym before jetting out to America two weeks ago.

Sun's out, buns out: Jasmin, 25, also showed off her pert behind in a brighter pink bikini as she shared a back, poolside shot

'Relaxing by the pool,' the Essex-born beauty captioned it.

Another body-baring snapshot showed her flaunting her peachy behind in a bright pink two-piece as she sat with her back to the camera, with her legs dangling in the water.

Jasmin's upper body looked ultra trim with her glossy dark locks cascading down her back in the picture which she captioned: 'Pool bliss.'

It's not only her svelte beach body she's been showing off while across the pond as in between sun-bathing, she and long-term boyfriend Ross have been made sure to visit the city's most famous sights.

They enjoyed a hike to the Hollywood sign on Thursday which saw the one-time Ex on the Beach star give his girlfriend a run for his money in the body-baring stakes.

Making a statement: The former TOWIE star bared her naturally-perky chest as she shared a shameless selfie during her sun-soaked break

The couple celebrated reaching the top of Mount Lee with a cosy photo in which Ross whipped off his top to reveal his rippling torso.

The previous evening, they discovered what all the fuss is about at famed celebrity haunt Nobu Malibu - a popular restaurant choice among the Kardashian family.

Jasmin and Ross were dressed in their Sunday best as they posed for an obligatory shot on the deck.

'One of the best nights in @nobumalibu #sunset #starwatching with @rossworswick,' she boasted in the accompanying captions.

California couple: Ross Worswick played his girlfriend at the body-baring game as he whipped off his top to reveal his rippling torso in celebration of reaching the Hollywood sign

The couple, who share a love of fitness and fashion, seem to be made for one another, with Jasmin telling MailOnline in November that she has hopes of marrying Ross.

Revealing she would like to think he is 'the one', she stated that while she can't wait to be the blushing bride, there is no rush for him to get down on one knee.

'I hope he is the one but obviously, in today's society, things change everyday because of social media, but I do hope he is the one,' she said. 'There's no rush.'
The 17-year-old model who was thrown into the spotlight when Madonna exposed her breast onstage at her Brisbane concert on Thursday has been spotted enjoying a night out with a male friend.

Josephine Georgiou spent the evening out in the Gold Coast, in Queensland, with a curly haired blonde friend, Pierre Valmage, 24.

The pair walked hand in hand and spent the evening wandering around, stopping in a local restaurant for dinner.

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Josephine Georgiou, 17, was spotted out on the Gold Coast with friend Pierre Valmage, 24

Madonna pulled down Josephine Georgiou's top after inviting her on stage during her concert in Brisbane, Australia on Thursday night

The 17 year-old model was thrown into the spotlight after being asked onstage by Madonna, only to have the singer pull down her leather corset top and expose one of her breasts to the crowd

Ms Georgiou told Daily Mail Australia he 'was just a friend'.

'I don't have a boyfriend right now but I'm spending time with a lovely French boy,' she said.

Ms Georgiou was dressed in low slung black jeans, a black embellished halter neck top, flower patterned Doc Martens and wore her long dark hair straight and loose.

Mr Valmage was dressed casually in a navy t-shirt, light maroon trousers and lace up shoes.

Ms Georgiou says she doesn't think the wardrobe incident - during which Madonna invited her onstage before pulling on the corset she was wearing and exposing her breast - is such 'a big deal'.

Ms Georgiou told Daily Mail Australia she feels like everyone is trying to make Madonna out to be a villain, when she's not.

'There was no bad intentions, it was just love and fun up there,' she said.

'Mum has been playing her (Madonna) since I was little, I idolised her in the Hung Up video clip.'

Her mother, Tina Georgiou, said she had raised her daughter as a fierce feminist.

Ms Georgiou was dressed for the evening out in low slung black jeans, a black embellished halter neck top and flower patterned Doc Martens

She told Daily Mail Australia she doesn't have a boyfriend, but was 'spending time with a lovely French boy'

Ms Georgiou says she doesn't think the incident at the concert on Thursday night is such 'a big deal'

The teenager is modelling part time at the moment, but told Daily Mail Australia she would like to be signed to an agency

'I don't condone that sort of thing (the incident) but I'm saying that it was a unique situation,' Mrs Georgiou said

Mrs Georgiou said that Madonna wasn't to know Josie was only 17, because she looks much older.

'It is quite serious that shes a minor - people are saying what if this was a male performer, what if it was some elses daughter - well it wasnt another man and it wasnt another girl it was Madonna and my daughter.

'It's Josie's business, her unique experience and she wasn't upset about it.

'It's something that she'll probably cherish for the rest of her life.'

Mrs Georgiou owns the corset top Josephine was wearing at the time.

'Its a fun piece of clothing, when you wear it everyone wants to grab the nipple rings, normally its fine, when I wear it I never come out of it'.

The 17 year old said her Mum had been playing Madonna to her since I was little, and she idolised her in the Hung Up video clip

She also said one of her favourite Madonna songs was Unapologetic B****h, which was playing when Ms Georgiou was onstage with the singer

Ms Georgiou said Madonna was calling her a Victorias Secret model the whole time she was on stage, 'which is so flattering'

Josephine Georgiou's mother, Toni Georgiou (left) pictured with Josephine. Her mother said in a post on Facebook that she is proud that Madonna spanked her daughter

Josephine Georgiou told the Courier Mail that she suffered a wardrobe malfunction and the only reason she looked so 'surprised' was because she was standing alongside her favourite idol.

'Only I get to decide if Im humiliated or not  why would people assume I am humiliated by my own breast, nipple or body?'

'I didnt realise my boob was such a big deal - it was nothing to me,' she added.

Ms Georgiou told Daily Mail Australia her and two friends were running late to the concert and got there halfway through the star's first song.

She said a guy at the gate swapped their $99 tickets for $500 tickets with her friend and the next thing they knew they were right up the front, at the end of the runway to the left.

Ms Georgiou told Channel Ten's The Project that she thought 'she was going mental' when she saw Madonna look at her.

The teenager says she doesn't think the incident is such 'a big deal' and said 'only I get to decide if Im humiliated or not'

Gold Coast-based model, 17 year-old Josephine Georgiou had her breast exposed to the crowd at Madonna's show in Brisbane on Thursday night

The 17 year-old model told the Courier Mail 'why would people assume I am humiliated by my own breast, nipple or body?'

'I swear I saw Madonna look at me and smile and like notice me and then talk to some guys on the side of the stage and then were looking at me,' she said.

'They looked like they were talking about me and then ten minutes later this woman said, hey, do you like dancing? Do you know this song? Madonna has a fan come up every show.

'So, yeah. That's how I ended up there.'

When questioned by The Project if she knew what was going to happen onstage, Ms Georgiou said she was told she would get up, dance with Madonna, that Madonna would spank her, they would walk down the runway together, flip off the audience together and the she would go crazy and do her own thing.

Josephine Georgiou was wearing her mother's leather corset-style top with nipple rings at the concert and described the incident as a wardrobe malfunction

The teenager said the only reason she looked so 'surprised' at the time was because she was standing alongside her favourite idol

After the concert Josephine Georgiou's mother Toni Georgiou posted that Madonna had just spanked her daughter

Later Josephine Georgiou's mother posted on Facebook that her daughter 'was thrilled to bits and had the time of her life'

Madonna said to Josephine while she was on stage: 'She's the kind of girl that you just want to slap on the a** and pull...,' as she tore down the the teen's corset-style top

After the concert the teenager's mother Toni Georgiou posted on Facebook: 'Madonna just spanked my daughter, so proud'

Ms Georgiou said it was 'just Madonna' and 'a totally comfortable situation'.

'It was so fine. Like, it was nothing. It was not a big deal. It's just my boob, it's just part of my body, it's just more of me,' she said.

'It was seriously, nothing, I didn't think of it until everyone totally freaked out about it. It's so ridiculous to me I'm on TV for having a breast.'

Josephine Georgiou said Madonna was calling her a Victorias Secret model the whole time she was on stage, which she described as 'so flattering'

Ms Georgiou said the Material Girl star had 'noticed' her during the show, and she was then invited to get up on stage by a member of her entourage.

Once she was there, Madonna said: 'She's the kind of girl that you just want to slap on the a** and pull...,' as she tore down the the teen's corset-style top.

The superstar added: 'Oh s**t.' 'Oh sorry, sexual harassment.'

Josephine Georgiou (right) with a friend (left) before the concert on Thursday night. Madonna joked about pulling down the teenager's top onstage after it happened, saying 'Oh s**t.' 'Oh sorry, sexual harassment'

Ms Georgiou (right) told The Project she was comfortable in the situation, saying 'I think that the other person can kind of feel whether you're comfortable or not as well'

'You can do the same to me if you like... you want to make my hole big again?' she continued, gesturing towards her nether regions.

The Queensland-based aspiring young actress says despite Australian law deeming it a crime to touch someone indecently without their consent, she would never sue the pop star.

'Seriously, why would I sue Madonna for the best moment of life?' Josephine Georgiou said.

'She was calling me a Victorias Secret model the whole time I was on stage, which is so flattering.'

She also said she honestly thought Madonna didn't do anything wrong, describing the incident to The Project as 'a total accident' and that she was '100 per cent cool with it'

Josephine Georgiou was wearing a leather corsette with nipple rings on it and said the incident was definitely an accident

Josephine Georgiou said she does modelling part time and some styling and photography with a friend.

'I'm not signed to an agency unfortunately but I would really like to be signed and do paid work,' she said.

'This (talking to people) has been a lot of fun. I was a lot more confident than I thought I'd be.'

Ms Georgiou's mother Toni Georgiou posted on Facebook: 'Madonna just spanked my daughter, so proud'.

She also posted 'Just so everyone knows, Josephine wasn't 'humiliated' like the media are reporting. She was thrilled to bits and had the time of her life #rebelheart #bitchimmadonna'.

Ms Georgiou (right) said that as Madonna was talking she was moving and her top was tugged a bit, but she didn't mind and then one was tugged too much

Josephine Georgiou, pictured left, with her mother Toni Georgiou (right), said she thinks it's ridiculous she was interviewed on TV for having breasts

Shocked: The brunette teen was plucked out of the audience during the Queen of Pop's Rebel Hearts show

Not holding back: 'She's the kind of girl that you just want to slap on the a** and pull...,' Madonna said as she tore down the teenager's corset-style top

Exposing it: Exposing her chest to the thousands of fans in attendance, Madonna then said 'Oh s**t.' 'Oh sorry, sexual harassment'
She is rarely seen looking anything less than flawless.

And Samantha Armytage yet again looked sensational as she attended the National Trust of Victoria's 60th Anniversary Fundraising Gala Dinner at the historic Como House and Garden, in Melbourne, on Friday.

Taking to Instagram, the 39-year-old Sunrise co-host showed off her curves in a little black frock which included flared sleeves with splits up the sides.

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Sartorial stunner! Samantha Armytage cuts a classic figure in a little black dress with flared sleeves as she celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the National Trust of Victoria

The sartorial dress finished just below her knees to reveal the Sydney native's toned pins as she glided down the old and wooden stair case.

She added a little height with a pair of platform peep-toe heels, while adding a pop of colour to the dress with a metallic bracelet.

Samantha styled her luscious blonde locks into loose waves which danced around her face, while keeping her makeup fresh and clean.

She captioned the snap: 'Happy 60th birthday to the National Trust!!! Thrilled to be hosting its Gala fundraiser tonight. V close to my heart [sic].'

Smiles: The 39-year-old journalist poses with other attendees at the 60th National Trust celebrations

So much to see: The TV personality broadcast live from the Sydney Royal Easter Show and also enjoyed the sites

The post to Instagram comes just hours after the TV personality broadcast live from the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

She even took to the photosharing app to upload a number of pictures of herself enjoying the annual show.

In one snap, the journalist was pictured clutching onto three packets of white and pink fairy floss.

'Fairy floss & Dagwood dogs for brekky!' the Channel Seven star captioned the image.

Behind her was a food truck flaunting Dagwood dogs and large rainbow lollipops.

Fairy floss and Dagwoods! It may have just been breakfast time, but Samantha decided it wasn't too early to indulge in some sweet treats on Friday morning while at Sydney's Royal Easter Show for Sunrise

But nothing was bigger than the smile on Samantha's face as she posed for the social media snap.

The blonde beauty wore a light shirt and fitted black skirt for her last day of Sunrise filming for the week.

It comes after she visited the Easter Show on Thursday as well and let go of her inner-child as she enjoyed a ride on the Teacups.

She wrote: 'Just lounging around in a giant tea-cup with Cranky Franky, my (7th) favourite cameraman #royalEasterShow #frankMaurici #samDesigns @katie.isaac @sunriseon7.'
Every parent knows how quickly the years fly when their children are growing up. And Kris Jenner, 60, is no exception.

On Friday morning she posted a black-and-white snap of herself with a very young Kendall, now 20, sitting on her lap. The image appears to have been taken in the late Nineties.

Kris must have been about 43-years-old at the time and Kendall was most likely aged three.

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Tender moment: Kris Jenner shared this cute snap of herself with a very young Kendall Jenner on Friday morning, captioned, ''FBF @kendalljenner... #proudmama #feelslikeyesterday #love'

She captioned it: 'FBF @kendalljenner... #proudmama #feelslikeyesterday #love.'

It looked like the child was going to a party as she was wearing a long-sleeved dress with a dark velvet top and a frothy net skirt that reached her ankles.

Kendall, a beautiful brunette like her mum, wore a felt beanie with a band of bling and material flowers sewn around the edge.

All grown up: The 60-year-old joined her 20-year-old supermodel daughter at the Palazzo Fendi and Zuma Inauguration on March 10 in Rome

Silver ghost: Kendall walked the runway during the Balmain fashion show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2016/2017 show on March 3

A supermodel in the making, even at that age, she looked straight at the camera from under her fringe with a slight smile on her face.

Kris, 60, appears to have changed very little over the years. She donned a dark polo-neck sweater and smiled broadly as she cuddled her tot, who is her oldest child with her ex-husband, the now Caitlyn Jenner.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star also shares Kylie with the former Bruce Jenner.

Runway star: On March 8 she donned this elegant cream and black creation for Chanel

And she has four other equally famous children Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob with the late celebrity lawyer Robert Kardashian.

Meanwhile, Kendall is enjoying a break from her rigorous gym routine after recently returning from a month in Europe where the 5ft 10ins model walked for Chanel and Balmain during Paris Fashion Week, among other gigs.

'Ive been really, really bad and I literally havent worked out once since the Victorias Secret show in November,' she told PeopleStyle this week. 'Ive been so bad.'
Sean Penn was spending a lot of time with Madonna for a while. He even held hands with her as he took her to his Haiti fundraiser in January.

On Wednesday the 55-year-old star had eyes for another blonde - a twentysomething pretty woman - as he went out to dinner in Chicago, according to Page Six.

This could be another reason that the Material Girl - whose is depressed son Rocco has moved to London to with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie - has been cracking up on stage lately.

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A hot new romance: Sean Penn, seen here in January, was spotted kissing a blonde mystery woman in her early twenties, according to PageSix

He seemed into her: The 55-year-old actor appeared to be dating Madonna, who he took to his Haiti event in January along with two of her children Mercy and Hames

The singer has been seen drinking alcohol on stage and reportedly stumbling. This week the Ray Of Light crooner pulled a fan's top down, exposing her breast.

And then there are the tears - the Evita actress has also cried on stage.

Though many have assumed her breakdown has had to do with losing teen Rocco, it may also have to do with heartbreak over being dumped again by Penn, who she was married to from 1985 to 1989.

It would explain a lot: This could be another reason that the Material Girl - whose is depressed son Rocco has moved to London to with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie - has been cracking up on stage lately; here she is seen on Thursday in Brisbane, Australia

No she did not! The singer has been seen drinking alcohol on stage and reportedly stumbling. This week the Ray Of Light crooner pulled a fan's top down, exposing her breast

Sean does seem to be a bit of a heart-breaker as he goes from woman to woman seemingly with ease.

According to the site, 'Penn arrived at Chicago Cut Steakhouse with a beautiful younger blonde in her early twenties.'

The source added: 'They ate near a window in full view. Many public kisses were shared.'

Madonna and child: The exes were also spotted arm-in-arm in 2013 in NYC

A zillion years ago: Madonna and the Bad Boys actor at the Goose And Tomtom party in NYC in 1986

When fans spotted the Oscar winner, he appeared to get nervous.

'He took one photo with the hostess but then left quickly as guests began to approach him and ask for photos,' a source told Page Six.

The site added that he was also spotted this week at Chicago bar Phyllis Musical Inn.

Everyone wants to know what happened here: In 2015 Penn was serious with Charlize Theron, who he was reportedly engaged to; pictured in May

They ended in divorce: Penn was also married to Robin Wright from 1996 to 2010; here they are seen in 2005

Page Six added that he may have a girlfriend in the city.

In 2015 Penn was serious with Charlize Theron, who he was reportedly engaged to.

They were so serious she even allowed him to spend time with her son and there was talk he wanted to be a part of adopting her second child.

Penn was also married to Robin Wright from 1996 to 2010.
She is already dating Meek Mill.

But Nicki Minaj appears to have fallen in love with someone else (or, more accurately, some other people) - her fans in South Africa.

On Friday the 28-year-old singer professes her adoration for the people of Johannesburg by posting several racy snaps. One of her captions read: 'Dear South Africa, I am deeply in love with you. Can't thank you enough for tonight,' she noted.

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Thank you indeed! Nicki Minaj expressed her appreciation for her fans in South Africa with this racy snap posted to Instagram on Friday

I heart you, a lot: 'Dear South Africa, I am deeply in love with you. Can't thank you enough for tonight,' she noted

The chart topper was dressed in a low cut black bra top that showed off her robust cleavage. She also had on a skirt with leather ties and round accents.

And the Anaconda crooner also wore thick black boots, a wife silver cuff and a blonde wig with black roots.

Her makeup was beautifully done with cat eyes and pink lipstick.

Creamy: Earlier the pinup shared photos where she was wearing a beige suit with fringe on the sides and beige shoe boots

Love and more love: Other captions read: 'omg. I said "South Africa, u mean the wooorrrlldd to meeee. How do u do dat shit?" ~ lol so in love with them'

Other captions read: 'omg. I said "South Africa, u mean the wooorrrlldd to meeee. How do u do dat shit?" ~ lol so in love with them.'

And another was: '#Johannesburg night NUMBER 2!!!!!!'

Then there was: 'nickiminajNight 2 in #Johannesburg was equally as amazing. Can't wait to come bak.  love'

Earlier the pinup shared photos where she was wearing a beige suit with fringe on the sides and beige shoe boots. Again she had on her blonde wig.

Hair-raising: Nicki then uploaded an Instagram vid of herself getting her hair done

My hair is up here: In the brief clip, she flaunted her voluptuous curls

Not shy at all! Minaj dared to bare once again as she flaunted her ample assets in a pink lace bra for a sultry shot she posted on Instagram on Friday

The Anaconda hitmaker treated her 50 million followers to the seriously busty photo just days earlier - which she simply captioned: 'Stephanie.'

Nicki wore her poker-straight platinum locks in a side-swept style and held them in place with her hand, which was adorned with a dazzling diamond ring.

The blonde highlighted her full pout with a simple slick of clear lipgloss and highlighted her peepers with a dramatic set of false eyelashes.

The provocative shot would no doubt be appreciated by Nicki's boyfriend Meek Mill - who she has displayed a playful relationship with on social media.

It's no prison! Nicki visited boyfriend Meek Mill as he serves house arrest then they posed for a shirtless Snapchat in the bedroom earlier in the day

The hip hop artist, who is under house arrest, posted a grinning Snapchat on Wednesday.

His companion Nicki could be seen posing behind the shirtless star in the intimate snap.

The pair look to be having a lot of fun together, and have even been playing around with the Snapchat filters - resulting in a dog face for Nicki.

The reunion is the first time the two have been seen together since they had a 'blowout fight' after Nicki refused to live with Meek at their Philadelphia home while he served the sentence.

Last month a judge told the 28-year-old rapper he must serve a minimum of three months house arrest for parole violations on drug and gun charges.

According to TMZ, he wanted his girlfriend to live with him for the duration but she refused, triggering the fallout.

On February 5 Mill escaped a custodial prison sentence but was dealt a critical blow to his hip hop career.

As they were: Nicki and Meek in January; he was sentenced to six months to a year in a county jail but is serving his time at home

Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley also ordered him to spend six more years on probation.

The judge sentenced the House Party rapper to between six months to a year in a county jail but, in perhaps his only break, is allowing him to serve his time at home.

After his first 90 days of house arrest, Judge Brinkley - whom Meek once branded a b***h' in one of his songs - will evaluate the rapper and decide of the house arrest will continue.

While being holed up in his and Nicki's mansion does not look too bad, the rapper will not be able to work, meaning no recording or touring, and can leave home only to do community service with groups serving adults, not young people.

This comes at a critical time in Meek's career as he battles to keep fans and stay relevant after a very public fight with rapper Drake and then had yet another beef with 50 Cent.

Prosecutors successfully argued that Meek had violated the conditions of his probation for a drug and gun conviction from 2009.

Prosecutors told the judge that Meek took a trip without obtaining a travel voucher, namely to go to New York for a concert and also to join Nicki in various cities including going to the American Music Awards with Nicki.
US: Islamic State carrying out 'genocide'

The United States declared Thursday that the Islamic State group's slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites in Iraq and Syria amounts to a genocide and vowed to halt it.

Secretary of State John Kerry's "moral statement" does not place the United States under any new legal obligations, but the White House said it could back an international investigation.

"The United States will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate genocide," President Barack Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community, who fled violence between Islamic State group jihadists and Peshmerga fighters in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, are seen at a camp for internally displaced persons in the Sharya area on May 20, 2015 Safin Hamed (AFP/File)

Washington does not recognize the International Criminal Court, but officials said US agencies will collect evidence and work with international partners as states seek a way to bring justice to bear.

"Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions, in what it says, what it believes and what it does," Kerry said, using a term for the IS group based on its Arabic acronym.

"Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups," he added.

The Islamic State group recruits Sunni extremists and has regularly carried out mass killings of Shiite Muslim, Christian and Yazidi prisoners.

In June 2014, it seized the formerly cosmopolitan city of Mosul in northern Iraq, placing whole communities under threat of murder, rape or enslavement.

- 'Existential threat' -

Already in March last year, UN investigators warned the self-proclaimed caliphate was trying to wipe out Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic religious minority.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which memorializes past genocides and campaigns against bigotry, welcomed the decision to name Christians and Yazidis as victims.

"We reiterate our call that the US put these two groups at the front of the line for consideration for immigration to our country," it said.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the genocide ruling would not itself change the rules for granting refugee status.

But he insisted Syrian asylum seekers are already being considering sympathetically because the IS group's atrocities are long-known.

And, Kerry argued, the United States is already doing its utmost to halt the slaughter by leading a coalition to "degrade and destroy" the group.

Through air strikes and support for local forces, the coalition has pushed IS from 40 percent of the ground it once held in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, he said.

"And currently we are engaged in a diplomatic initiative aimed at trying to end the war in Syria," he added.

Kerry argues Bashar al-Assad's brutal campaign to cling to power in Syria fuels the chaos that allowed the IS group to seize the east of his country.

He vowed to continue pressing for a negotiated settlement to the broader civil war to allow world militaries to focus their fire on the extremists.

"In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims," he said.

"For those communities, the stakes in this campaign are utterly existential," he said.

- 'Face of evil' -

Kerry issued his ruling after the US Congress voted to declare the killings a genocide and demanded the administration take a position.

Representative Vern Buchanan, of Florida, welcomed a decision he said was long overdue.

"ISIS is the face of evil and there is no room for equivocation. Their actions clearly constitute genocide," he said, citing reports of Iraqi and Syrian Christians being tortured and crucified.

But, after the announcement, Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the House committee that oversees global human rights, asked: "Now what?"

Washington, Smith argued, should now lobby for an international court -- like those set up to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda or Yugoslavia -- to be created.

"A Syria tribunal would hold not only the genociders of ISIS but all parties -- especially the war criminal Bashar al-Assad, who has barrel-bombed Syrian civilians and killed tens of thousands -- accountable for their horrific deeds," he said.

The State Department official would not be drawn on calls for a new court, but said the United States would work closely with fellow members of the UN Security Council.

- Murder and slavery -

The IS group's history of murdering journalists, aid workers and suspected "spies" has made it difficult to document its crimes in great detail.

But the group has itself issued propaganda videos showing the mass killing of prisoners.

And it has issued its own legal rulings pronouncing that captured non-Muslim women slaves may be raped by its fighters.

"We've not been able to compile a complete record, I think that's obvious on its face," Kerry admitted.

"But over the past months we have conducted a review of the vast amount of information gathered by the State Department, by the intelligence community, by outside groups."

"Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions, in what it says, what it believes and what it does," US Secretary of State John Kerry, pictured on March 15, 2016, declared Jim Watson (AFP/File)

Iraqi Christians, who fled the violence in the northern city of Mosul after Islamic State group militants took control of the area, attend a weekly prayer at the Ashti camp in Arbil, Iraq on March 4, 2016 Safin Hamid (AFP/File)
Trump and the White House: a long-held ambition

Donald Trump's meteoric political rise may have come as a surprise to many -- but for the real estate mogul, the White House is a prize he's had his eye on for nearly 30 years.

Here's a look at the billionaire's journey as he barrels towards seizing the Republican nomination for president in July.

- Genesis -

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, pictured on March 15, 2016 in West Palm Beach, Florida, has been eyeing the White House for nearly 30 years Rhona Wise (AFP/File)

October 7, 1999: Bill Clinton is in the White House and Trump pursues a presidential nomination for the small Reform Party. The developer, a tabloid favorite thanks to his flamboyant personal life, had briefly flirted with candidacy in 1988, joking that TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey could be his running mate.

As he launches his bid, Trump ditches the Republican Party and on his way out bashes presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan, saying the conservative ideologue has a "love affair with Adolf Hitler."

He stakes out a left-leaning position on health care, and is already employing a populist message of making America "great."

"I'm conservative, and even very conservative," he says. "But I'm quite liberal and getting much more liberal on health care and other things."

"I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better. It's an entitlement to this country if we're going to have a great country."

Trump's candidacy fizzles after four months and he blames others for the fiasco, including the Reform Party, which he describes as "a total mess."

- The Obama years -

April 27, 2011: US President Barack Obama calls a press conference to publish his birth certificate in an attempt to end conspiracy theories, fueled by Trump, that he was born outside the country and therefore ineligible to be president.

"We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do," Obama says as television networks break into regular programming to cover the statement live.

Forcing Obama's hand in the matter is a victory of sorts for Trump.

The president exacts revenge a few days later at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, roasting the businessman who is a guest at the event.

Trump, Obama jokes, can now "get back to focusing on the issues that matter like, 'Did we fake the moon landing?' 'What really happened at Roswell?" and 'Where are Biggie and Tupac?'"

But Trump's political influence is growing, and Republican 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney travels to Las Vegas to receive the businessman's coveted endorsement in front of TV cameras.

- Governor of New York? -

March 14, 2014: After carefully preparing a run for governor of New York, Trump backs out.

But he writes on Twitter: "I have much bigger plans in mind -- stay tuned, will happen!"

- The Blitzkrieg -

June 15, 2015. Jeb Bush announces he will seek the Republican nomination to run for president.

"Do we really need another Bush in the White House -- we have had enough of them," Trump declares on Twitter.

Bush, the son and brother of presidents, is leading polls and probably has no idea what is coming.

The next day, Trump descends the escalator of Trump Tower in New York and announces that he too is running for president.

His slogan is "Make America Great Again!" and one of his first campaign promises is to build a "great, great wall" on the border with Mexico.

The political establishment doesn't take Trump's candidacy seriously.

"He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation," DNC spokeswoman Holly Shulman quips.

The first poll showing Trump ahead of a large pack of Republican candidates appears in USA Today on July 14.

The conventional wisdom is that it's a fluke. Trump will not win the nomination, Karlyn Bowman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, tells AFP.

"He just has too many weaknesses," she says at the time.

By the first debate on August 6, Trump has stirred up a string of controversies that include accusing Mexico of sending rapists and criminals to the United States, and saying that Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, isn't a war hero.

Trump goes on to insinuate that a Fox News journalist was tough on him in the debate because she was having her period. And in a Rolling Stone magazine interview he mocks his Republican rival Carly Fiorina: "Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!"

Meanwhile, support for The Donald among Republican voters rises from 25 to 30 to 35 percent.

On December 7, Trump stuns the political establishment by calling for the nation's borders to be closed to Muslims.

Trump provokes, contradicts himself, retweets hoaxes and never apologizes -- earning him nonstop coverage on news channels, and saving him tens of millions of dollars in political advertising.

- The kill -

February 1, 2016: Republican leaders briefly hope that Trump's candidacy will collapse after his second-place finish in Iowa. But in the weeks to come, he wins a majority of contests and his opponents drop out one by one, including his most vocal critic, Jeb Bush.

Trump's fans appear to support their man no matter what he says.

"Someday they're going to understand," he tells supporters Tuesday in Florida, where he missed out on a sweep of the state by just one county. "Someday when we take it all, they'll understand."

Profile of Donald Trump, running for the Republican presidential nomination Paul Defosseux, Kun Tian (AFP)

US President Barack Obama makes a statement on his birth certificate at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 27, 2011 Jewel Samad (AFP/File)

Donald Trump speaks to the New York County Republican Committee Annual Lincoln Day Dinner on February 12, 2014 in New York City John Moore (Getty/AFP/File)

Real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his bid for the presidency at the Trump Tower in New York City on June 16, 2015 Kena Betancur (AFP/File)
UN seeks to reach over 1 million besieged Syrians in 6 weeks

A UN-backed taskforce working to deliver aid to besieged Syrians submitted a plan to the regime on Thursday that would allow life-saving supplies to reach over a million people by the end of April.

The head of the taskforce, Jan Egeland, said implementing the plan mostly relied on Damascus, which has still not given clearance for UN convoys to reach six of the country's 18 besieged areas.

"I do not know why they will not give permission," Egeland said. "It is a violation of international law to prevent us from going."

A Red Crescent convoy carrying humanitarian aid arrives in Kafr Batna, in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area, during an operation in cooperation with the UN on February 23, 2016 Amer Almohibany (AFP/File)

Most of the areas concerned are besieged by the Syrian army, not the rebels, Egeland said, adding that the taskforce submitted an operations plan to the government at a meeting on Thursday.

"Altogether, the aim is to reach an impressive 1.1 million people before the end of April," he said.

The UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein had warned last month that thousands of Syrians risked starving to death in besieged areas, after shocking images spread of starving residents in Madaya.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has granted permission to reach several besieged areas in recent weeks.

A convoy including the UN, the International Red Cross (ICRC) and Syrian Red Crescent was distributing aid in four areas -- Madaya, Zabadani, Fua and Kefraya -- on Thursday in an operation that was expected to continue into the night.

Aside from food and basic medical supplies, Egeland said vaccinations were a key part of the UN's humanitarian push for the coming weeks.

"The vaccination rate is now in many areas down to 50 or 60 percent which is a proscription for epidemic disease," he told reporters in Geneva, where fragile peace talks to end five years of civil were continuing.

Egeland noted that a ceasefire that has largely held since being declared on February 27 had allowed UN staff to traverse the country with far more security, but that sporadic fighting had still hampered movement.

Since restrictions on the movements of humanitarian workers were eased in January, aid has reached 150,000 of the nearly half million people living in besieged areas.

That number has meanwhile stagnated since the beginning of the month, as the UN waits for access.

The UN is also trying to improve its technical capacity to make humanitarian air drops over Deir Ezzor, where some 200,000 people are besieged by the Islamic State group, Egeland said.

Aid deliveries have meanwhile also reached nearly 109,000 people in what the UN calls hard-to-reach areas in recent weeks.
DRCongo denies bail to youth activists held for a year

DR Congo's Supreme Court denied bail Thursday to two civil society activists arrested a year ago during a pro-democracy workshop, their lawyers said.

"The Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not grant ... bail to Fred Bauma and Yves Makwambala. They will remain in prison. We are disappointed," defence lawyer Venance Kalenga told AFP.

The arrest of Bauma, 26, and Makwambala, 33, on March 15 last year was part of a growing government crackdown on those speaking out against President Joseph Kabila's bid to extend his stay in power beyond a constitutional two-term limit, ending December 19.

Fred Bauma form the Congolese Lucha movement speaks during a press conference in Kinshasa on March 15, 2015 Federico Scoppa (AFP/File)

The pair were arrested along with at least two dozen other people -- including Senegalese and Burkinabe activists and an American diplomat -- during a workshop on good governance in Africa.

Congolese authorities then accused them of planning terrorist activities and a violent insurrection. They were held without charge for weeks and then transferred to Kinshasa's main prison where they remain.
Governor insists there's blame to share on Flint water crisis

Michigan's governor faced blistering criticism from US lawmakers Thursday over his role in the Flint water scandal that saw sky-high levels of toxic lead enter the city's water supply, but insisted he was not the only one to blame.

At a congressional hearing, Governor Rick Snyder -- flanked by the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy -- was grilled over the handling of the crisis. Both officials faced calls to step aside.

More than 8,000 children are believed to have ingested tainted water in economically devastated Flint, which saw lead levels soar for more than a year before citizen activists brought the tap water contamination into the public eye.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder testifies on the tainted water scandal in the city of Flint, Michigan on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 17, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP)

Snyder on Thursday accepted some responsibility for the debacle, but told the House Oversight Committee there was plenty of blame to go around, including at the federal and local level.

"Not a day or night goes by that this tragedy doesn't weigh on my mind -- the questions I should have asked, the answers I should have demanded, how I could have prevented this," Snyder told the House Oversight Committee.

He was adamant however that responsibility for the crisis was not his alone.

"Let me be blunt: This was a failure of government at all levels -- local, state, and federal officials. We all failed the families of Flint," he said at the hearing to uncover what went wrong in the city, and what steps are being taken to clean up the water supply.

The Michigan governor said his goal at this point was "delivering permanent, long-term solutions and the clean, safe drinking water that every Michigan citizen deserves."

- Tough questions -

McCarthy also faced a tough grilling -- mostly from Republican lawmakers -- over why it took a year for her agency to act, and why no one at the EPA has been fired so far, although one senior official has resigned.

Snyder's administration ordered various cost-cutting measures in financially struggling Flint -- including a shift in the water supply from the Detroit River to the Flint River.

That, as it turns out, was a grave error, Snyder now admits.

Experts believe that the chemical-laced Flint River water corroded lead-bearing pipes, allowing large amounts of the chemical element to leach into the city's water.

But Democrats on the panel did not accept the governor's apparent remorse.

"I'm not buying that you didn't know about any of this until October 2015," said Representative Matt Cartwright.

"You were not in a medically induced coma for a year," the Pennsylvania lawmaker said.

"I've had about enough of your false contrition and your phony apologies."

Critics who have called for Snyder's resignation say he dragged his feet for months after first learning of the problem, making a dire health emergency even worse.

"There's no evidence, even after you were warned by the mayor of Flint they had problems, and they begged you to come to Flint. You ignored them," said Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia.

"I'm glad you're sorry now. I'm glad you're taking action now, but it's a little bit late for the kids in Flint whose health has been compromised, for people whose health and immunity systems were already compromised, for a city in America that is on its knees because of your emergency manager's decision to save four million dollars."

- Flint's future -

The crisis was a huge blow to Flint, a once-thriving Rust Belt city already struggling from years of car industry shutdowns and layoffs.

Snyder told lawmakers however that he took action soon after being alerted to the city's water problems.

"First, we quickly reconnected to the Detroit water supply to begin sealing the damaged pipes," he testified.

"Second, I ordered the immediate distribution of water filters and extensive blood-level testing in schools and homes to identify those at the highest risk so they received health care, nutrition and additional support," he said.

He added that additional diagnostic testing, home nurse visits and home water testing have been put in place.

The hearing was held on the same day that a news report found the problem of lead in US water supplies may be far bigger than previously known.

Some six million Americans have drinking water tainted with higher levels of lead than allowed by federal guidelines, USA Today reported on Thursday.

The newspaper launched an investigation which found higher than acceptable lead levels in about 2,000 water systems across the United States.

Tainted water was supplied to hundreds of day care centers and schools, the report said.

Children are the population most vulnerable to the pernicious effects of lead, a toxin which affects the neurological system and can lead to permanent learning delays and behavioral problems.

A City of Flint Sewer Dept. marker flag waves in the wind on a block where lead water lines have started to be replaced on March 17, 2016 in Flint, Michigan Brett Carlsen (Getty/AFP)

People wait in line to attend a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the tainted water in Flint, Michigan, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 17, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP)
Kurds declare federal region in north Syria

Syria's Kurds on Thursday declared a federal region in areas under their control in the north of the conflict-riven country, a move rejected by both the government and opposition.

The announcement is likely to anger neighbouring Turkey and has complicated peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the five-year civil war.

Washington, a key backer of Kurdish fighters in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, has also warned it would not recognise any self-ruled Kurdish region within Syria.

Aldar Khalil (C), from the Movement for a Democtratic Society, and Sheikh Hamad Sheikh Shihadeh (R), the Naim clan chief in northern Syria, speak during a meeting of delegates from Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and other parties in the town of Rmeilan Delil Souleiman (AFP)

More than 150 delegates from Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and other parties meeting in northeast Syria agreed to create a "federal system" unifying territory run by Kurds across several Syrian provinces.

"We have given our blessing for the establishment of a federal system in Rojava (three Kurdish cantons) and northern Syria," said Aldar Khalil, a member of the conference's preparatory committee.

The announcement came on the second day of the meeting in Rmeilan, a border town in Syria's northeast Hasakeh province.

Kurdish parties already operate a system of three "autonomous administrations" in Syria's north, with independent police forces and schools.

The three cantons stretch along Syria's northern border with Turkey and are known from west to east as Afrin, Kobane, and Jazire.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed branch of the leading Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), has cleared IS from swathes of territory in those areas.

Turkey considers the YPG to be the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an outlawed group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.

- Regime, opposition object -

The new "federal system" is expected to centralise governance in the three cantons under councils elected by the people.

A copy of the conference proposal obtained by AFP said Kurds had "accumulated administrative, social, and institutional experience" by running the cantons.

Therefore, establishing a "democratic federation... is necessary", it said.

Officials stressed the federal region would be based on "territorial" lines, not ethnicity, and was not intended as a step towards full independence.

Delegates elected a 31-member "constituent assembly" responsible for implementing the decision on the ground over the next six months, council co-chair Hadiya Youssef told AFP.

A closing statement distributed to journalists left the territorial boundaries open-ended, saying any areas newly liberated by the YPG could join.

"Our goal is to liberate all areas still controlled by armed groups. We want to liberate Raqa, Deir Ezzor, and all of Syria," Mansour al-Sulum, Youssef's co-chair, told reporters at a closing press conference.

The northern province of Raqa and Deir Ezzor in Syria's east are both IS bastions.

Kurds represent about 15 percent of Syria's population and have tried to avoid confrontation with the regime or non-jihadist rebels since the war broke out in 2011.

Even so, their declaration of a federal region has angered Syria's government and opposition.

Citing a foreign ministry official, Syria's state news agency SANA said the Kurdish announcement "has no legal basis".

The High Negotiations Committee, the main opposition grouping involved in peace talks in Geneva, rejected the proposal as a "misadventure".

The PYD has not received an invitation to negotiations taking place in Switzerland to its dismay.

"The Geneva talks will not succeed without us. We are on the ground, fighting Daesh (IS), protecting our region, and running its affairs," Kurdish delegate Aldar Khalil told AFP.

"All these factors make it difficult for us to fit into the Syrian equation. We are committed to a federal system," Khalil said.

In northeastern Syria, Kurds said the move was a natural step.

"The whole region is heading towards federalism. Syria can never go back to the way it was before," said Jawan Bakhtiyar, 31.

Zana Ibrahim, 38, said the announcement would not change much for him since he already lives under the autonomous Kurdish administration.

"But externally, it will be valuable through the formal recognition that this federation will get," he said.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday that Washington "won't recognise any self-rule autonomous zones within Syria".

Washington-based analyst Mutlu Civiroglu said the Kurdish announcement was a political message "to the United Nations, the US, Russia, and especially to Geneva, that if you ignore us, we are going to determine our future by ourselves."

The Kurdish population in Iraq and Syria Philippe MOUCHE, Laurence SAUBADU, Simon MALFATTO (AFP)
Jihadist recruiters cast wide net in West Africa

Jihadist groups are swelling their ranks by recruiting disenchanted groups of young sub-Saharan Africans across the region's borders, militants and experts say, and training them to mount deadly attacks on civilian targets.

After Bamako in November and Ouagadougou in January, it was the beach resort of Grand-Bassam in Ivory Coast that came under attack from gunmen armed with grenades and rifles on Sunday, killing 19 people.

The three attackers identified so far were black, sub-Saharan Africans, part of a new generation of homegrown fighters in a shifting jihadi landscape once dominated by Arabs.

A man rakes up debris in the sand on a beach in Grand-Bassam on March 15, 2016, a day after a jihadist attack killed 19 people in the resort town Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

In a statement claiming the attack, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) referred to two of its "knights" as "al-Fulani", referring to a group of people, many of them pastoralists, spread across the region.

A third attacker had "al-Ansari" after his name, meaning a native of the area, as opposed to "al-mujaher", which would indicate a foreigner.

It is known that AQIM, founded by Algerians, operates across borders and recruits from multiple ethnicities, but the profile of its fighters is evolving, mirroring a similar phenomenon seen in the Boko Haram movement operating inside Nigeria and its neighbours.

The shift was most visible in Mali, where AQIM put down deep roots before it was routed by French-led forces in 2013 from several northern towns that it had occupied in allegiance with a Tuareg rebel faction.

"AQIM and what is now MUJAO (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa) had already integrated locally: in Mauritania, around Timbuktu and Gao," Sahel expert Yvan Guichaoua told AFP, referring also to another armed Islamist group threatening the region.

- 'Very young cadets' -

He added: "The recruitment base grew during the (Islamist) occupation, however, through the enrolment of very young cadets in training camps in Gao."

AQIM has openly discussed its diverse network of fighters. Its Sahel region commander Yahya Abu el-Hammam even boasted how the group has increasingly carried out operations in Mali's centre and south, extending AQIM's reach beyond its northern stronghold, eliminating the need to dispatch fighters from the north.

"Today, the mujahideen have built up brigades and battalions with sons of the region, our black brothers, Peuls (Fulani), Bambaras and Songhai," Hammam said in an interview with Mauritanian website Al-Akhbar, referring to three West African groups that have been targeted for recruitment.

The Bambara and Songhai peoples live primarily in Mali but have smaller presences elsewhere in the region.

- More female attackers -

Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based Islamist insurgent group that pledged allegiance to Islamic State, is also adapting its recruitment strategy to remain the most formidable armed group in the region.

Active in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, Boko Haram's seven-year insurgency has left at least 17,000 dead and displaced more than 2.6 million people.

A sub-Saharan force from its inception, its fighters now count many more female attackers among their ranks.

A twin suicide bombing at a mosque in northeast Nigeria by two women disguised as men killed at least 22 people on Wednesday.

Boko Haram has "changed the profile of adult male suicide bombers," even strapping suicide vests to children, according to FBI supervisory special agent Victor Lloyd, speaking during the US-led Flintlock military exercise for African countries held in Senegal and Mauritania last month.

The countries battling Boko Haram are reinforced by France's Operation Barkhane, which has at least 3,500 soldiers deployed across five countries in the region to combat the raging jihadist insurgency.

AQIM directly threatened France and its allies in the region after the Ivory Coast attack, warning that nations involved in Barkhane and the 2013 French-led Operation Serval in Mali would "receive a response" targeting their "criminal leaders".

When French forces entered Mali in 2013, they encountered "very, very young local fighters," said Sahel expert Guichaoua.

It is now feared that neighbouring Niger could also become a potent source of homegrown jihadists.

Religious experts there have warned that the ultra-conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam is taking hold in urban areas although Niger's government insists that it is "closely monitoring" the issue.

Governments in the region are grappling with a lack of alternatives for an entire generation of young west Africans.

Unemployment is sky high and opportunities for education are often very limited, creating fertile ground for jihadist recruitment, US Special Operations commander for Africa Donald Bolduc told reporters recently during the recent US exercise in the region.

He said: "If someone's going to be there to provide you with some training, provide you with a gun, provide you with a purpose, provide you with a wife, in the absence of good governance, that's more compelling."

A man scratches in the sand the words, "I say no to terrorism," close to the Hotel Etoile du Sud, in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast on March 16, 2016 Sia Kambou (AFP/File)
Tunisia to launch campaign to curb extremism among youth

Tunisia announced Thursday it is launching a campaign to counter religious extremism among its youth after a string of deadly jihadist attacks in the North African country.

The one-year campaign to start on Sunday aims to promote "Islam's real, moderate values" to protect "youth and their thinking from terrorism", Religious Affairs Minister Mohamed Khalil said.

Extremism has "invaded the thoughts of our youth via the Internet", he said.

Tunisian policemen patrol the beach on July 3, 2015, in memory of those killed the previous week by a jihadist gunman Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

The ministry will launch a website featuring recorded sermons and religious seminars as part of a campaign dubbed "Ghodwa khir" -- "Tomorrow will be better" in Tunisian Arabic dialect.

It will also fund awareness raising programmes on public and private radio and television stations.

A helpline will be set up for "youths with questions about religion" and authorised imams and preachers will supervise classes in mosques.

Tunisia has failed to curb a rise in extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Last year, the Islamic State jihadist group claimed attacks on the Bardo museum in Tunis and a popular resort hotel, killing 59 tourists in total, and the suicide bombing of a bus that killed 12 presidential guards.

Earlier this month, jihadists launched a wave of deadly attacks on army and police posts in a town near the Libyan border.

Thousands of Tunisians have signed up to fight abroad with extremist groups.

Justice Minister Omar Mansour on Wednesday said the authorities would launch a programme to "reform" the thinking of suspects detained in terrorism-related cases.
'The Assassin' makes a killing at Asian Film Awards

A movie about a highly-trained female assassin swept the Asian Film Awards in Macau Thursday, bagging prizes for best film, best actress and best director at the glittering ceremony.

The movie took home more than half of the night's prizes -- eight out of 15 trophies -- at one of Asia's leading film awards held in the glamorous casino town in southern China.

Set in the Tang Dynasty era in China, "The Assassin" is a slow-burning minimalist movie with Taiwanese megastar Shu Qi playing a skilled female assassin sent back to her home province to kill its governor, who is also the man she loves.

Lee Byung-hun (L) holds his trophy for best actor for the movie "The Inside Man" as he poses with Shu Qi holding her trophy for best actress for the movie "The Assassin" at the Asian Film Awards in Macau on March 17, 2016 Isaac Lawrence (AFP)

"I'm so lucky this year," Shu, wearing a sparkling silver dress, told reporters after receiving the best actress award.

"I couldn't have made it through the two years of production for 'The Assassin' without (the help of) bandages and medicine," quipped 39-year-old Shu, referring to the gruelling physical demands required for the action sequences.

Chinese actress Zhou Yun grabbed best supporting actress for her performance in the film, which she said was a "surprise".

"I won the award because the movie is so good, I contributed just a small part of all the impressive aspects (of the movie)," Zhou said.

The film is directed by Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien, who sticks to his trademark aesthetic that won him fame for previous titles "Millennium Mambo" and "The Puppetmaster".

The 68-year-old, who did not attend the ceremony, is one of the most recognisable names in Taiwan's New Wave cinema.

He has won a string of international awards, including best director at the Cannes Film Festival in May for "The Assassin".

Though "The Assassin" dominated the night, others didn't go home empty handed.

South Korean star Lee Byung-hun won best actor for his role in political thriller "The Inside Men".

"Today's result is very good... I am very emotional about everybody's support," Lee told reporters.

Chinese romance film "Mountains May Depart" won the award for best screenplay, while India's "Bajirao Mastani", a love story about a general and a Muslim princess, won best visual effects.

Hong Kong action choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, who worked on films such as "The Matrix", "Kill Bill" and "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was given this year's lifetime achievement award. Veteran Japanese actress Kirin Kiki was also given the prize.

French actress Sophie Marceau attended the ceremony to hand out the best actress award, to Shu's delight.

"I'm very happy to be on the stage to hug Sophie," best actress Shu said.

The awards were organised by the Hong Kong International Film Festival and were hosted at Macau's glitzy Venetian resort this year, the show's 10th instalment.

LIST OF WINNERS

Best editing: Port of Call/Hong Kong

Best cinematography: The Assassin/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best supporting actress: Zhou Yun (The Assassin)/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best visual effects: Bajirao Mastani/India

Best sound: The Assassin/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best original music: The Assassin/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best screenplay: Mountains May Depart/France, Japan, China

Best supporting actor: Asano Tadanobu (Journey to the Shore)/France, Japan

Best costume design: The Throne/South Korea

Best production design: The Assassin/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best newcomer: Jessie Li (Port of Call)/Hong Kong

Best actress: Shu Qi (The Assassin)/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best actor: Lee Byung-hun (Inside Men)/South Korea

Best director: Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin)/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Best film: The Assassin/Hong Kong, China, Taiwan

Lifetime achievement award: Kirin Kiki and Yuen Wo-ping
Republican leader says contested convention a likely possibility

A faceoff at the Republican Party's nominating convention between camps for and against Donald Trump appears to be a real possibility, the speaker of the House of Representatives suggested Thursday.

"Nothing has changed other than the perception that this is more likely to become an open convention than we thought before," said Paul Ryan, who as chairman of the convention is tasked with maintaining order during the July gathering.

"We're getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality, and therefore those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that," he said at his weekly press briefing in Washington.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2016 at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland on March 3, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP/File)

A contested or brokered convention means none of the Republican presidential hopefuls has the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination outright, and the party's nominee will have to be chosen through voting at the July 18 to 21 convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Trump is leading the race for delegates, but challengers Ted Cruz and John Kasich are hoping to secure enough delegates in the state nominating contests still remaining to prevent him from winning the nomination outright.

The last contested convention was in 1976.

The lack of a clear nominee going into the convention this summer will put Ryan in the middle of what will likely be heated battles.

"My goal is to be dispassionate and to be Switzerland -- to be neutral and dispassionate, and to make sure that the rule of law prevails," he said, admitting he needs to study up on the convention rules.

The position of chairman of the Republican National Convention is typically a ceremonial role but it will be a key position at a contested convention.

Ryan on Thursday also dismissed questions on whether he would accept the nomination if there is a deadlock.
Musharraf arrives in Dubai after travel ban lifted

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who faces charges of treason and murder, arrived in Dubai Friday for what his lawyers said was urgent medical treatment after a three-year travel ban was lifted.

Lawyers for the former president, who is facing multiple charges including treason and murder over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have said he needs urgent medical treatment not available in Pakistan.

"I am going abroad for treatment but will return to face the cases against me," a party spokesman in Karachi quoted him as saying. "I am a commando. I love my motherland."

Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008 Asif Hassan (AFP/File)

The spokesman added that Musharraf had reached his Dubai residence, where he will stay for some weeks before seeking an appointment with doctors in the United States.

"Six to eight weeks are required for the treatment and then he would go back home," said Dr Amjad Malik, a spokesman for Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League party in Dubai.

Musharraf was banned from leaving Pakistan in March 2013 after he returned to the country on an ill-fated mission to contest elections.

The former ruler was barred from taking part in the polls and instead faces a barrage of legal cases.

Last June, the Sindh High Court lifted Musharraf's travel ban, but the federal government, headed by his long-time rival Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Sindh High Court decision and ordered the government to allow Musharraf to travel, which it did the following day.

Musharraf's lawyers have provided guarantees he will return to Pakistan in six weeks and pledged he will appear in court for several ongoing cases against him, Pakistan's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said Thursday.

However, analyst Hasan Askari told AFP Friday the chance of Musharraf coming back was "minimal", adding that his return could cause problems for the government and embarrass the military.

"In order to defuse the conflict, the government agreed to let him go," he said.

In January, Musharraf was acquitted over the 2006 killing of a Baloch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.

But four cases against him remain -- one accusing him of treason for imposing emergency rule, as well as those alleging the unlawful dismissal of judges, the assassination of opposition leader Bhutto and a deadly raid on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

Bhutto's son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of her Pakistan People's Party, vowed to launch country-wide protests against the government for allowing Musharraf to travel.

"After facilitating Musharraf's escape this government has lost the moral authority to govern," he tweeted Friday.

- Police decoy -

A large convoy of police and paramilitary rangers left Musharraf's home in Karachi around 3.30 am Friday as a decoy to waiting media crowding his street, while the general travelled to the airport separately.

Musharraf ousted Sharif from power in 1999 in a bloodless coup and ruled Pakistan until democracy was restored in 2008.

He has been under house arrest in Karachi while the cases have ground through Pakistan's notoriously slow legal system, lurching from adjournment to adjournment with little clear progress apart from the granting of bail.

Analysts had previously said they believe the government lacks the will to offend Pakistan's powerful military by pushing for Musharraf's prosecution.

Soldiers leaves the residence of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in Karachi on March 18, 2016

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan holds a press conference in Islamabad after the government lifted the travel ban on former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on March 17, 2016 Aamir Qureshi (AFP)
Spotify reaches royalty deal with music publishers

Spotify, the leader in the booming streaming industry, on Thursday reached a settlement to improve royalty payments to US music publishers as the company hopes to avoid potentially costly lawsuits.

The National Music Publishers' Association, which advocates on behalf of the US houses that hold songwriters' copyright, announced the deal which relates to songs whose authors have been difficult to identify.

Amid the rapid growth of streaming, which allows unlimited on-demand music, Spotify has faced charges that it paid little attention to ensuring proper payment of royalties, which go both to performers and the often more anonymous songwriters.

Amid the rapid growth of streaming, which allows unlimited on-demand music, Spotify has faced charges that it paid little attention to ensuring proper payment of royalties Jonathan Nackstrand (AFP)

Although songwriter credit on modern commercial music is easily obtained, the details are often missing or incorrect on the digital files for obscure or older songs.

Under the agreement, the Swedish company said it would put forward to publishers a pool of money it has stored for previous unmatched royalties and add to it a "large bonus compensation fund."

A joint statement did not specify the amount. A person familiar with the deal said on condition of anonymity that Spotify's existing pool was $16 million and that it was adding another $5 million.

Spotify and the music publishers committed to building a database to match streamed songs to their writers more consistently.

"As we have said many times, we have always been committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny," Spotify spokesman Jonathan Prince said in the statement.

David Israelite, the president of the publishers' association, pledged to keep pushing "digital services to properly pay for the musical works that fuel their businesses.

"After much work together, we have found a way for Spotify to quickly get royalties to the right people," he said.

- Major lawsuits loom -

David Lowery, best known for leading the alternative rock bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, filed a $150 million lawsuit in December alleging that Spotify has systematically infringed on copyright in its rush to upload a vast music library.

He wants a US judge to declare a class action lawsuit in which all aggrieved artists could claim royalties from Spotify.

Lowery's lawyer Mona Hanna criticized Thursday's agreement as an attempt by Spotify to limit its liability "in secret, without court oversight" and questioned the deal's enforceability.

"Thousands of songwriters have been harmed by Spotify, and a class action is the best way to protect their songs and their livelihood," said Hanna, a managing partner at firm Michelman & Robinson.

Songwriter Melissa Ferrick in January also filed a $200 million class action lawsuit against Spotify on slightly different legal grounds.

Individual publishers, which range from major players to small artist-run imprints, will have to choose whether to enter the deal or back one of the lawsuits.

Under the agreement, Spotify will send a royalty check for all songs it cannot match back to the group of publishers -- but only those that take part in the deal.

The joint statement did not specify how the money would be divided among the publishers.

Spotify will keep paying normal royalties to publishers regardless of whether they agree to the settlement.

The private company, which is estimated to be worth more than $8 billion, says it has paid back more than $3 billion in royalties since its launch in 2008.

Critics, notably pop superstar Taylor Swift, disapprove of Spotify's advertising-backed free tier through which three-quarters of its more than 75 million users listen without paying.

Spotify and the publishers' group voiced confidence that the deal would benefit the entire industry as identification problems are not unique to Spotify.

Spotify reached a settlement to improve royalty payments to US music publishers as the company hopes to avoid potentially costly lawsuits Emmanuel Dunand (AFP/File)
N. Korea test fires two mid-range ballistic missiles

North Korea test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles on Friday, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un promised a series of nuclear warhead tests and missile launches amid surging military tensions.

Friction on the divided Korean peninsula has deepened since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

US defence officials said they had tracked two launches -- both believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

A man in Seoul watches a news report on North Korean missiles on parade in Pyongyang on March 4, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File)

The Rodong is a scaled-up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres (800 miles).

South Korean military officials said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the country's southwest at 5:55 am (2055 GMT Thursday) and flew 800 kilometres before splashing down in the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off radar early into its flight.

They came a day after US President Barack Obama signed an order implementing tough sanctions adopted earlier this month against North Korea by the UN Security Council, as well as fresh unilateral US measures.

- Strike threats -

For the past two weeks, Pyongyang has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, Kim Jong-Un announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of "several kinds" of ballistic missiles would be carried out "in a short time".

South Korea's defence ministry said Friday's launches were clearly the result of Kim's order.

"North Korea appears to be speeding up test launches to advance its nuclear capabilities," said ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun.

Calling the move a direct challenge to the UN Security Council and the international community, Moon said the South's military stood ready to respond immediately to any North Korean threat to national security.

Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.

A Rodong test is more provocative, given its greater range, which makes it capable of hitting most of Japan.

The last Rodong test was in March 2014, when two of the missiles were fired into the East Sea.

- Japan ruffled -

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned the launch and said his government would coordinate its response with the US, South Korea and other nations concerned.

"We strongly demand North Korea exercise restraint," Abe told a parliamentary committee.

The US State Department urged Pyongyang to refrain from any actions that could "further raise tensions."

While North Korea is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, its ability to deliver them accurately to a chosen target on the tip of a ballistic missile has been a subject of heated debate.

Most experts believe it is still years from developing a working inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could strike the continental United States.

But Kim's announcement of further tests on Tuesday came as he monitored a simulated test of the warhead re-entry technology required for such a long-range nuclear attack.

The test was a complete success, state media said, and provided a "sure guarantee" of the warhead's ability to withstand the intense heat and vibration of re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

South Korea said it doubted the North had mastered re-entry technology, although it was less sceptical a few days before when Kim said it had miniaturised a nuclear warhead that could fit on a missile.

South Korean markets shrugged off the latest launches, with the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closing at a yearly high Friday, and the Korean won climbing to its highest level against the US dollar this year.

North Korean missiles Adrian LEUNG, John SAEKI (AFP)

US soldiers take part in a live fire drill during an exercise entitled 'Ssang Yong', near South Korea's southeastern port city of Pohang, on March 15, 2016 Ed Jones (AFP)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) is briefed during a simulated test of warhead re-entry technology at an undisclosed location
EU, Turkey strike deal to send back migrants

EU leaders approved a controversial deal with Turkey to curb the huge flow of asylum seekers to Europe, with all migrants arriving in Greece from Sunday to be sent back.

Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila said the 28 EU leaders approved Friday the deal negotiated with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a bid to end an unprecedented crisis dividing the continent.

"The Turkey deal was approved," Sipila wrote on Twitter.

Migrants queue for food at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border Daniel Mihailescu (AFP)

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka confirmed that the expulsion of migrants arriving on the Greek islands would begin on Sunday.

"Deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey as of March 20 will be returned!" Sobotka wrote on Twitter.

More than 1.2 million migrants have come to Europe since January 2015 in the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War II, and around 4,000 have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

But the deal comes at a heavy cost for Europe, with many members of the bloc expressing misgivings about the legality of the deal and Turkey's human rights record.

Turkey has demanded an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, the doubling of refugee aid to six billion euros ($6.8 billion) and visa-free travel in return for taking back all new irregular migrants coming to Greece, the main entry point to Europe.

Davutoglu is now set to formally sign off on the accord at a final meeting with EU leaders.

- 'Dancing in a minefield' -

"Tusk's proposal for the EU-Turkey agreement approved by EU leaders, in principle, as it is now up for final talks with the Turkish prime minister," a senior EU official told AFP.

But in a sign of the tensions that remain between Ankara and Brussels, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted several EU states for taking only a "handful of refugees" in contrast to the nearly three million Turkey has admitted, most of them fleeing the Syrian war.

Erdogan also accused the Europeans of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) days after a bombing in Ankara claimed by Kurdish rebels allegedly linked to the group.

"European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield," he said.

Critics have said the mass expulsion planned under the EU-Turkey deal could infringe international law on the treatment of asylum seekers.

Under the terms of the plan, the EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian readmitted to Turkey from Greece.

- Sticking points -

The move is meant to discourage them from risking their lives in often rickety and overcrowded boats operated by smugglers.

EU officials insisted the deal would be stressed repeatedly each application would be treated individually, with full rights of appeal and proper oversight.

EU sources said last-minute sticking points were cleared up over the deal's legality, Turkey's membership bid, the date for launching the agreement and a plan to double the amount of aid to Turkey to six billion euros ($6.8 billion).

Another major hurdle that was overcome was opposition from Cyprus, rooted in long-standing tensions with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to recognise its government on the divided island.

Many European Union states have expressed concerns about Ankara's human rights record, including its treatment of the Kurds and a crackdown on critics of the government.

The United Nations and rights groups fear the deal could violate international law that forbids the mass deportation of refugees.

Amnesty International set up a sign outside the summit venue: "Don't trade refugees".

The crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populism and anti-immigrant sentiment.

The deal also envisages major aid for Greece, where tens of thousands of refugees are trapped in dire conditions after Balkan countries shut their borders to stop them heading north to richer Germany and Scandinavia.

The agreement does not however affect the more than 46,000 refugees and migrants already in Greece.

Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroublis described the overwhelmed border town of Idomeni where many of the migrants are camped out as a "modern-day Dachau".

British Prime Minister David Cameron was also hosting a meeting with Merkel and several other EU leaders on how to tackle migration flows from lawless Libya, which appeared to be increasing again.

The EU-Turkey summit on the migrant crisis

Over a million migrants have crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey into Greece over the past 15 months Aris Messinis (AFP/File)

Greece will receive aid from the European Union to improve the dire conditions for migrants living at a makeshift camp in Idomeni, on the border with Macedonia Sakis Mitrolidis (AFP/File)

Thousands of migrants are stranded at a makeshift camp in Idomeni on the Greece-Macedonian border Dimitar Dilkoff (AFP/File)

The migrant crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as Balkan states reintroduce border controls Sakis Mitrolidis (AFP/File)
Israel Bedouins trapped between a dump and red tape

The almost unbearable stench of the dump fades for a moment when Musa Tarabin puts freshly ground coffee into a pot of water boiling over open coals.

Tarabin lives in a tiny Bedouin village in Israel's south located right next to a landfill, its mountain of rubbish and scavenging birds looming behind.

"The stench wakes us up in the middle of the night," said Tarabin, a 52-year-old father of seven.

Israeli Arab Bedouin children play in their unrecognised village next to the biggest landfill in Israel Menahem Kahana (AFP)

The grim conditions are a stark example of the land disputes between Israel and Bedouins, Arab citizens of the country who usually live in the Negev desert.

Tarabin tribal members say they were moved by Israel in 1956 to their current location, a patch of land in the Negev flanked on one side by fences of the Dudaim dump, created in the early 1990s.

Israel insists their presence there is illegal, and efforts to relocate the Tarabins have so far failed.

"It used to be fun to live here," said Tarabin. "The Israeli authorities need to figure things out."

The predicament highlights controversy over Israel's attempts to regulate and finalise arrangements for the historically nomadic Bedouins.

A spokeswoman for the Authority for Development and Settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev confirmed the Tarabins had been living at the Dudaim site prior to the dump.

But she stressed the presence of the 40 families there was illegal and the Tarabins were considered "trespassers on state land", pointing to a number of court rulings to that effect.

The authority is tasked with forming new Bedouin communities and expanding existing ones for inhabitants of "unrecognised" and hence illegal villages.

They receive compensation in return for moving.

The spokeswoman noted the Tarabins had over the years received a variety of offers to relocate, but "unfortunately not all of the Tarabins are cooperating with the authorities in talks on permanent residency".

- 'Now there's a mountain' -

To Juma Qadi, a member of the Tarabin tribe living a few hundred metres (yards) from the Dudaim fence, feuds among his Bedouin brethren are the reason they have not relocated.

"We need to work things out amongst ourselves first," he said, relaying his efforts to coordinate a deal between his Tarabin relatives and Israel that he said were ultimately torpedoed due to "internal conflicts and jealousy".

Around 230,000 Bedouins live in Israel's south, including 90,000 in "unrecognised areas", according to official data.

Those in such areas normally have no infrastructure and supply their own water and electricity, but those difficulties are less of an issue for the Tarabins near Dudaim.

Musa Tarabin and other men who gathered in his shack alleged there was a high mortality rate among their families from lung cancer, which they attribute to the asbestos treated in the dump.

The Environmental Protection Ministry said: "The asbestos received at the site is received and treated in such a way that its fibres cannot be spread to the surroundings, and therefore there were no regulations regarding the distances between the asbestos in the site and settlements."

Dudaim's CEO Ido Rubinstein said there was no risk from dangerous materials of any kind in the dump, but agreed no one should be exposed to the stench.

"We believe decent solutions should be found. There's no reason for people to live so close to a dump," he said.

On a small hill near the Dudaim fence, Salem Tarabin, in his mid-twenties, has been building a new home with the help of a cousin, Ouda.

Ouda Tarabin is something of a local celebrity.

He was arrested while visiting his sisters in Egypt in 2000 and spent 15 years in prison on charges of spying for Israel.

He was released in December and welcomed upon his return by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"When I left, there was nothing," Ouda said, gesturing towards the dump. "Now there's a mountain."

Members of the Tarabin tribe say they were moved by Israel in 1956 to their current location, a patch of land in the Negev delineated on one side by the Dudaim dump Menahem Kahana (AFP)

Bedouins hold placards during a protest against a plan to uproot the Umm Al-Hiran village, which is not recognized by the Israeli government Ahmad Gharabli (AFP/File)
Two separate Islamist attacks kill 4 in Niger

Two separate Islamist attacks killed three policemen and a soldier in Niger, an official said, just days before the impoverished west African nation votes in the second round of presidential elections.

Gunmen believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror group's African affiliate, shot dead three policemen in a market in Dolbel near the border with Burkina Faso, the interior minister Hassimi Massaoudou told AFP.

"The attackers were repelled, and we are currently sweeping the area. We don't know the toll on the attackers side, they took their wounded and dead," the minister said.

People walk past a campaign poster of Niger's incumbent president and candidate for re-election, Mahamadou Issoufou, in Niamey Issouf Sanogo (AFP)

Near the border with Nigeria, four suicide bombers attacked a military convoy, killing the local military commander and injuring two others, the minister said.

A fifth suicide bomber, a young girl, was prevented from detonating her vest.

Massaoudou said Boko Haram militants were behind the attack.

There were no civilian casualties.

Niger goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round of presidential elections expected to hand another term to incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou.
Australia vote reforms explode into venomous talkfest

The Australian parliament descended into farce with lawmakers hurling Monty Python insults and even donning pyjamas in a poisonous all-night debate before the biggest shake-up of the voting system in decades was passed Friday.

The government won a revamp of the way senators are elected -- which could take a heavy toll on small parties -- after acrimonious clashes one former minister warned risked "destroying public confidence" in parliament.

Bitter argument ran through Thursday, overnight and well into Friday afternoon before the Liberal administration finally prevailed in the teeth of Labor opposition, thanks to the support of the Greens.

The Australian parliament descended into farce with lawmakers hurling Monty Python insults and even donning pyjamas in a poisonous all-night debate before the biggest shake-up of the voting system in decades was passed Torsten Blackwood (AFP/File)

"I fart in your general direction," said senior Labor senator Doug Cameron, a reference to a Monty Python sketch.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon turned up to the debate in his pyjamas, and with a pillow under his arm.

Labor senator Penny Wong bashed the Greens. "What about the dirty deal... that this leader, the Liberal lap dog that is Senator (Richard) Di Natale, the Liberal lap dog has done a deal," she yelled.

Australia uses a transferable ballot system, where voters rank parties or candidates according to preference. Previously, senatorial elections allowed them to either opt for a single party or rank preferences among a plethora of often-niche groupings.

Under the new system, the automatic transfer will be scrapped, and votes will only be transferred if a preference is expressed.

After nearly three years of deadlock in the senate, the government was supported by the Greens to pass the legislation, which could wipe out minor parties at the next election, due this year.

That angered Labor into supporting groupings such as the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party and the Palmer United Party of self-declared billionaire Clive Palmer, who stand to lose their seats, and sent filibustering into overdrive.

Labor argue that the 15 percent of Australians who voted for minor parties at the 2013 election will be disenfranchised under the reforms.

Despite threats to test the legislation in court, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the government was confident the changes were constitutionally sound.

- 'Clowns at a circus' -

But former resources minister Ian McFarlane said the government's victory could come at a high cost.

"The fierceness of personal politics and the lack of respect for other people's views, combined with the win-at-all-costs... politics attitude may provide a spectacle for the media, but it is destroying public confidence in this institution.

"Is it any wonder when politicians regularly denigrate their political opponents... that we find ourselves being referred to in the general populace as clowns, and this place as a circus."

Monash University political scientist Nick Economou told AFP the brutal exchanges were nothing new.

"If you look back, Australian parliamentary debates have always been really low quality..."

Economou added lawmakers often resorted to "puerile arguments" rather than "great oratory".

"This is a post-colonial country with a very strong egalitarian and very strong philistine streak," he said.

Politicians -- colloquially dubbed "pollies" -- are not held in high regard by many in Australia, where politics can be turbulent.

Malcolm Turnbull last year became the fifth prime minister in as many years when he ousted Tony Abbott in a leadership coup.
Russia flying daily sorties to back Assad forces around Palmyra

Russian jets are flying up to 25 bombing raids daily to back up a Syrian government offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State jihadists, the armed forces said Friday.

Senior commander Sergei Rudskoi insisted that the "conditions have been created for the encirclement and definitive defeat of IS armed formations in Palmyra".

"Government troops and patriotic forces with the support of the Russian air force are carrying out a large-scale operation to liberate Palmyra," he told journalists.

Islamic State fighters seized control of Palmyra -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- in May 2015

"On average Russian planes are flying 20 to 25 combat sorties each day," Rudskoi said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday spoke of "intense battles" going on around Palmyra as he decorated Russian officers who served in Syria and said he hoped the "pearl of world civilisation" would be returned to the Syrian people.

The ongoing strikes come despite some of Moscow's jets in Syria returning home after Putin -- one of the main backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- on Monday ordered a surprise withdrawal of most of his forces from the war-torn country.

The IS jihadist group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near Palmyra.

"The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members" of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in the clashes near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim and a video showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was a Russian military advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured after the clashes, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm either the presence of Russian advisors around Palmyra or the IS claim of the soldiers' killing.

"The advance (on Palmyra) is carried out by contingents of the Syrian army," Peskov said.
Indian men arrested over Hindu leader's doctored image

Indian police said Friday they had arrested two young Muslim men on charges of obscenity for posting a doctored image of a hardline Hindu leader dressed as a woman on social media.

The image showed the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a controversial Hindu right-wing group with close links to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, dressed in a tight pair of women's trousers and black high heels.

The image of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was shared on Facebook and Whatsapp and was an apparent reference to the group's recent decision to ditch its trademark khaki shorts for long trousers.

The image of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was shared on Facebook and Whatsapp and was an apparent reference to the group's recent decision to ditch its trademark khaki shorts for long trousers Sam Panthaky (AFP/File)

Police said they arrested Shakir Yunus and Wasim Sheikh, who are both in their early twenties, after receiving complaints about the image.

"We charged them with circulating obscene content and creating enmity between different groups," said D K Arya, deputy inspector general for the Khargone region in Madhya Pradesh state where the men live.

The RSS styles itself as a cultural organisation devoted to protecting India's Hindu culture.

But critics accuse it of being an anti-Muslim pseudo-fascist organisation with a history of fuelling religious tensions.

Some Twitter users criticised the arrests, which come as India's government faces pressure over its record on freedom of speech.
Niger to hold tense run-off despite lone challenger's absence

With the main challenger airlifted from jail to a Paris hospital and an opposition boycott, President Mahamadou Issoufou seems certain to win re-election on Sunday in Niger, one of the world's poorest countries.

Sunday's second-round ballot is the first-ever run-off in this vast African nation of some 18 million people which is increasingly facing jihadist attacks.

It pits the 64-year-old Issoufou, a former mining engineer nicknamed "the Lion", against former ally Hama Amadou, 66, known as "the Phoenix" for his ability to make political comebacks.

People walk past a campaign poster showing Niger's incumbent president and candidate Mahamadou Issoufou, in Niamey on March 17, 2016 Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

Amadou has been forced to campaign from behind bars after being detained on November 14 on baby-trafficking charges he says are bogus and aimed at keeping him out of the race.

Then just days before the vote, he was evacuated from prison and flown to Paris for medical treatment, with the government saying he was suffering from an unspecified "chronic ailment."

On Friday, Amadou's doctor said his condition was getting better but added that he would have to remain under observation for "at least 10 days."

"His health is improving and currently his condition is not life-threatening," said Luc Karsenty, a doctor at the American Hospital in the chic western Paris suburb of Neuilly.

The hasty evacuation has created a tense atmosphere in the country, which has suffered from several military coups and has only had a multi-party democracy since 1990.

The run-up to the first-round vote was marred by violence between supporters of the rival camps, the arrest of several leading political personalities and the government's announcement that it had foiled a coup bid.

- Unfair treatment -

Issoufou, who is seeking a second term in office, took a solid lead with 48.4 percent in the initial vote on February 21, way ahead of Amadou, who scored 17.7 percent.

During the campaign, Issoufou, who took office in 2011, repeatedly pledged to bring prosperity to this dirt poor but uranium-rich country and prevent further jihadist attacks in its vast remote northern deserts and from Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists to the south.

Just three days before the vote, Niger suffered two jihadist attacks -- one in the west claimed by Al-Qaeda's north African affiliate which killed three gendarmes and another by Boko Haram in which a senior army officer died.

Although Amadou, a former parliamentary speaker, backed Issoufou in 2011, he shifted into opposition in 2013.

His supporters accuse Issoufou's regime of bad governance, saying it has failed to eradicate poverty in the country.

But a clear-cut victory appears assured for Issoufou, who missed winning an absolute majority in the first round by just 75,000 votes.

He has managed to secure the support of former deputy cabinet head Ibrahim Yacouba and two other low polling candidates from the initial round.

The opposition has alleged fraud in the first round, claiming "unfair treatment between the two candidates" and has raised fears of Sunday's vote ending with a Stalinesque result.

- Opposition demands new vote -

On Thursday, the opposition coalition said it would not recognise the results and called for "a political transition" to pave the way for "democratic, free, legitimate, transparent and honest" elections.

The declaration drew scorn from the regime.

"We don't need their recognition," said Mohamed Bazoum, a minister without portfolio and key figure in the Issoufou regime.

"They are not united. Some of them even tried to get Hama Amadou to withdraw."

Amadou's imprisonment since November in the town of Filingue, about 180 kilometres (112 miles) from the capital Niamey, took a dramatic turn recently with the government saying he was in poor health and suffering from eye problems.

Amadou was supposed to be evacuated from prison to a hospital in Niamey but the government said it could not do so as the helicopter due to airlift him had broken down.

But the official version on Amadou's ailment changed with the government saying he was suffering from an unspecified "chronic ailment" and he was evacuated on Wednesday to Paris for medical treatment.

Niger presidential candidate Hama Amadou has been forced to campaign from behind bars after being detained on November 14 on baby-trafficking charges he says are bogus Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou is seeking a second term in office Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou has repeatedly pledged to bring prosperity to the uranium-rich country and prevent further jihadist attacks Issouf Sanogo (AFP)
Street art greats on show in Hong Kong

From Keith Haring and Basquiat to Banksy and Invader, Sotheby's new exhibition of street art legends in Hong Kong, launched Friday, taps into a growing appetite among young Asian collectors.

Although auction houses have taken a knock as the China economy slows, the demand for street art in Asia has grown, with Hong Kong hosting an increasing number of exhibitions, sales and events.

Last year a mosaic of 1970s American cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey by French artist Invader set a world record for that artist at auction, fetching HK$2 million ($258,000) at Sotheby's in Hong Kong.

A bench is seen in front of artwork, including an untitled piece by Keith Haring (R), displayed during a preview of the exhibition titled " They would be kings" held by the Sotheby's auction house in Hong Kong on March 18, 2016 Philippe Lopez (AFP)

The popular piece of street art had been destroyed by the city's authorities, infuriating residents, and was later re-made for sale.

Although that work went to a European collector, Sotheby's Asia director Isaure de Viel Castel says a more adventurous young local market is driving interest in street art in the region.

"It's younger collectors (interested in the work)," says Castel.

"People here are very adventurous. They've travelled a lot, they live abroad, especially the younger generation. They are craving new art, meeting artists, they absolutely love it."

She added that the economic slowdown in China had so far not affected sales and that there was demand for street art across the region.

The new exhibition, entitled "They Would be Kings" is Sotheby's first ever in Asia of street art.

It comes ahead of major art show Art Basel, which kicks off in Hong Kong next week, and sees exhibitors and collectors converge on the city.

All the works at the Sotheby's show are available for private sale, but prices fetched will not be disclosed and there are no pre-sale estimates, unlike an auction.

Organisers say the exhibition is designed to introduce the works to an audience that may not be familiar with the broad range of street art on the market.

The headline piece is Haring's large-scale abstract take on the classical image of ancient Rome's founders Romulus and Remus suckling a she-wolf.

The show is curated by Steve Lazarides, a high-profile London-based art dealer known for his work with British street artist Banksy, whose work "Bomb Middle England" is one of those featured in the new exhibition.

"These artists forged their own path, they bludgeoned their way into the public consciousness," said Lazarides.

"You can now find works by these pioneering artists in museums, advertising and on the walls of some of the world's biggest collectors."
Fake missiles at London's Downing St in Saudi arms sale protest

Campaigners delivered fake missiles to Downing Street on Friday to protest Britain's continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia despite concerns they are being used against civilians in Yemen.

Amnesty International activists wearing white mechanics' boiler suits delivered five replicas of the 1.8-metre-long Paveway-IV weapons used by British-supplied Saudi jets outside Prime Minister David Cameron's office.

"Ministers need to stop burying their heads in the sand and immediately suspend arms sales for the Saudi war machine," said Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen.

Campaigners from Amnesty International carry model missiles through Westminster in central London on March 18, 2016 Leon Neal (AFP)

The Saudi-led coalition began bombing Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in March 2015 to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, in a campaign that UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein on Friday said had killed 3,218 civilians.

The British government concedes that UK-supplied defence equipment has been used in the campaign but says it has "one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world".

It says it has raised allegations of civilian targeting with the kingdom, but refused a call by parliament's international development committee last month to suspend exports until the matter can be properly investigated.

Under Britain's arms export criteria, licences cannot be granted if there is "a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law".

The government approved nearly 3 billion ($4.3 billion, $3.8 billion) of arms licences for exports to Saudi Arabia in the six months to January, according to the international development committee.

Amnesty said that Britain during 2015 transferred 58 combat aircraft and 2,400 Paveway-IV missiles to the kingdom.

"It is absolutely shocking that the UK is still selling billions of pounds' worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia even as the civilian casualties have mounted and mounted in Yemen," Allen added.

A second parliamentary committee, on arms export controls, last week launched an inquiry into the use of British manufactured arms in Yemen, and will hold its first evidence session next week.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade is also pursuing legal action against the government in a bid to suspend exports.
Obama to name first woman to head major US military command

President Barack Obama will name a woman to head a major US combatant command for the first time, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

He said Air Force General Lori Robinson will be appointed as the next head of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which is responsible for the defense of the US "homeland" with an area of operations that extends from Alaska to portions of the Caribbean.

Robinson has "very deep operational experience" as well as "very good managerial experience," Carter said at a conference in Washington.

USAF General Lori Robinson (L), commander of Pacific Air Forces, gives the guidon of the US Forces Japan to Lieutenant General John Dolan (C), during a change of command ceremony at US Yokota Air Base in Tokyo on June 5, 2015 Kazuhiro Nogi (AFP/File)

Her appointment to one of the military's most senior jobs is subject to Senate confirmation.

The position also oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which provides aviation security for the United States and Canada.

Women play an increasingly important role in the US military, making up around 15 percent of personnel.

The Pentagon last year opened all combat positions to women, including elite special operations units.

Carter -- who has long said the military must look for ways to attract and retain top talent -- recently announced a package of family-friendly initiatives for personnel.

They include maternity leave of 12 weeks for all services and a requirement that military installations employing more than 50 women have rooms for mothers to breastfeed their babies.

In January, another woman, General Diana Holland, became the first female commandant of West Point's Corps of Cadets.
Palestinian tries to stab Israeli soldiers in West Bank, shot dead: army

A Palestinian tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Friday before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a months-long wave of violence.

"An assailant, armed with a knife, exited his vehicle and charged at the soldiers guarding the (Gush Etzion) junction," an army statement said, referring to a popular road crossing near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

"Forces responded to the threat and shot the attacker, resulting in his death."

Israeli security forces inspect the scene of a stabbing attack at the Gush Etzion junction on March 18, 2016, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)

The Palestinian health ministry identified the dead man as Mahmud Abu Fanuna, 21, from Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.

Elsewhere, two Palestinians were arrested after knives were found in their possession, the army said, claiming the suspects admitted to planning an attack.

Since October 1, a wave of violence has killed 197 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese, according to an AFP count.

Most of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to the Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead during protests and clashes.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.
Ex-energy minister returns to Algeria from exile: press

A former energy minister has returned to Algeria from three years in exile in the US after an arrest warrant against him for a corruption case was lifted, local media said Friday.

Chakib Khelil, 76, returned home on Thursday afternoon, El Watan newspaper reported.

Khelil, a protege of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ran the energy ministry for a decade before he resigned in 2010 over a corruption scandal at state energy giant Sonatrach.

Then Algerian energy minister Chakib Khelil during a press conference on April 19, 2010 Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File)

His fate had been a main sticking point between Bouteflika and the former chief of the country's powerful DRS intelligence service that investigated the case.

Khelil's return comes less than two months after the president dissolved the DRS and six months after he replaced its powerful head General Mohamed Mediene, dubbed Algeria's "kingmaker".

Khelil left Algeria in early 2013 after an investigation was launched into a case involving contracts between Sonatrach and foreign companies, including Italy's Saipem.

In August that year, the Algerian judiciary issued an international arrest warrant against him, but this was later lifted on procedural grounds.
Detained activists go on hunger strike in DR Congo

Two activists arrested at a pro-democracy workshop in the Democratic Republic of Congo have gone on hunger strike, the pair's lawyer said Friday.

Fred Bauma, 26, and Yves Makwambala, 33, who were detained on March 15, 2015, have refused food since Tuesday, according to the LUCHA pro-democracy movement of which Bauma is a member.

Their lawyer, Beaupaul Mupemba, described the pair as "physically weak".

Fred Bauma from the Congolese Lucha movement speaks during a press conference in Kinshasa on March 15, 2015 Federico Scoppa (AFP/File)

They were refused bail earlier this week by the country's supreme court.

Eighteen LUCHA activists were arrested in Goma, in the country's east, during a peaceful march on Tuesday to protest the supreme court's decision.

Bauma and Makwambala's arrest came amid a government crackdown on those speaking out against President Joseph Kabila's bid to extend his stay in power beyond a constitutional two-term limit, ending December 19.

The pair were arrested along with at least two dozen other people during a workshop on good governance in Africa.

Authorities then accused them of planning terrorist activities and a violent insurrection. They were held without charge for weeks and then transferred to Kinshasa's main prison where they remain.
No Russian air strikes in Syria: US military

Most if not all Russian warplanes have been withdrawn from Syria, a US military spokesman said Friday, adding that Russia has staged no air strikes during the past week.

The US military assessment contradicted assertions by the Russian military that its jets were flying as many as 25 sorties a day in support of a Syrian government offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (IS) group fighters.

US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said some bombardments have taken place in the Palmyra region but that they were believed to have been fired by Russian artillery.

Russian aircraft taking off from the Hmeimim military base in Latakia province, part of the partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria on March 16, 2016 Vadim Grishankin (Russian Defense Ministry/AFP/File)

"In the last week, we have not seen any Russian aircraft conducting any strikes in Syria," Ryder said in a telephone briefing with reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, where they have been backing Moscow's close ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The first Russian aircraft returned Tuesday to a hero's welcome.

"We assessed that the majority if not all of their strike aircraft have left," Ryder said.

The US military, which was taken by surprise by the development, has remained skeptical of Putin's intentions.

On Thursday, a Baghdad-based US military spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, said there had been little change in Russian troop deployments on the ground.

There has been little movement of Russian ground forces, Ryder said, adding that Moscow has kept combat helicopters and some transport planes in Syria.

Russia intervened militarily in the Syrian civil war on September 30 at Assad's request, deploying about 50 combat aircraft.

It also sent more than 4,000 ground troops, artillery, tanks and about 30 combat helicopters.
In Assad heartland, Russian drawdown has Syrians worried

In the sun-soaked coastal city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, shopkeeper Khaled says he already misses the sound of Russian warplanes screaming overhead.

When the stylish young man heard that Moscow would pull the bulk of its airforce out of Syria, he was devastated.

"We don't want them to go, because we love them," the 30-year-old said, describing Russian soldiers as "kind-hearted and mild-mannered".

A billboard sponsored by Latakia's chamber of commerce shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) and his late father former president Hafez al-Assad Louai Beshara (AFP)

Russian planes have been flying back home from Syria since Tuesday after President Vladimir Putin gave the surprise order to draw down Moscow's forces in the war-torn country.

The Kremlin leader said his forces had achieved their military goals and expressed hope that ongoing peace talks in Geneva would put an end to the five-year war.

Since the launch of their air campaign in Syria on September 30, several thousand Russian soldiers stationed at Hmeimim air base would venture into nearby Latakia during their spare time.

The city and broader province of the same name are the heartland of Assad and his minority Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam.

Russian servicemen would eat traditional meals at Syrian restaurants and buy trinkets and souvenirs from shops like Khaled's.

He told AFP that several of his "Russian friends" came to bid him goodbye before they flew back to Moscow.

"I don't know what the future has in store for us. I'm definitely afraid, but I hope God will protect this country," Khaled said.

"We used to feel happy hearing the roar of airplanes above us -- they made us feel safe."

- An economic boon -

Air strikes by Russia's warplanes helped regime loyalist fighters advance in rural Latakia, nearby Aleppo province, and Daraa in southern Syria.

On Friday, Russia's armed forces said jets were still flying "20 to 25 combat sorties each day" to back a government offensive to retake the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State jihadist group.

In Latakia, posters of Putin and former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashar, hang side-by-side in Mouin's sandwich shop.

The thin employee slices shreds of chicken off a spit to make a "shawarma" sandwich -- a favourite of his Russian clientele.

For nearly six months, Mouin's small restaurant was overflowing with "Russian soldiers and their families tasting our sandwiches".

"The Russians leaving will definitely affect the economic activity here," Mouin said worriedly.

One of his favourite customers, a Russian serviceman, visited his sandwich shop on Tuesday to tell him: "Sadly, this is the last sandwich I'll eat in your shop because I have to leave."

But Mouin said he's also concerned that Moscow's drawdown could slow -- or reverse -- the army's recent military gains on the ground.

"This is a loss both materially and in terms of morale, because the Russians pushed a lot of military operations forward and scored speedy victories," he said.

- 'Why would they do this?' -

Along the Mediterranean seafront corniche, Russian flags billow in the spring breeze as families wander down to the sea.

University student Alaa al-Sayyed, 22, said he was "shocked" when he heard Russia was withdrawing.

"Why would they do this? Now is the height of their progress," he said.

"Of course, the Syrian army was protecting our country even before the Russians showed up. But I'm afraid things will start regressing, especially since the biggest victories scored by the government were with Russian support," Alaa said.

But in the nearby Dahiya Tishreen neighbourhood, Tareq Shaabo remained confident.

"They will not let us down," said the owner of the popular coffee shop "Moscow Cafe."

He says he opened the cafe back in 2012 and has offered Russian customers free drinks.

"Russia announced a timeframe for its military operations in Syria. This timetable has expired, they finished their mission, and they withdrew," Shaabo said.

Russia's presence gave Syrian citizens in Latakia a huge "morale boost", but it also changed the fortunes of government forces in the long term, according to Shaabo.

Moscow's air war "destroyed the military, economic, and human resources of the armed (opposition) groups," giving Syria's army an advantage even in the event of a withdrawal.

"Russia will not change its position towards Syria. it still supports us, but it will now pursue a political approach" to end the conflict, he said.

Syrian men fish in the coastal city of Latakia on March 18, 2016 Louai Beshara (AFP)

The city of Latakia and broader province of the same name are the heartland of Syrian President Assad and his minority Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam Louai Beshara (AFP)
UN's Ban wants big powers to decide on Morocco dispute

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants the divided Security Council to clarify its stance on the UN dispute with Morocco over Western Sahara, his spokesman said Friday.

The 15-member council discussed the escalating row during a closed-door meeting on Thursday after Rabat ordered drastic cuts to the staff of the UN mission in Western Sahara.

But the council did not urge Morocco to reverse its decision and did not express support for Ban in the dispute sparked by his description of Moroccan rule in Western Sahara as an "occupation."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (C) arrives at the Sahrawi refugee camp of Rabouni, in the disputed territory of Western Sahara on March 5, 2016

"It would have been better if we had received clearer words from the president of the Security Council," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

Ban will raise the thorny issue during a lunch meeting on Monday with Security Council ambassadors, his spokesman said, adding that it would be "at the top of the agenda" of the talks.

Morocco has ordered 84 staffers from MINURSO to leave in the coming days, a move the United Nations says will paralyze the mission that was set up in 1991 after a ceasefire was reached in the disputed territory.

During a recent trip to North Africa, Ban angered Rabat when he used the word "occupation" to describe the status of Western Sahara.

Dujarric said the word was not used with a "legal definition" in mind, but that Ban sought to express that he was "moved" by his visit of refugees at the Tindouf camp in Algeria.

The dispute escalated following protests in Rabat at the weekend that the UN chief said were staged by the government and directed against him, with demonstrators carrying banners denouncing Ban's "lack of neutrality."

In response, Morocco decided to cut $3 million in funding for the UN mission and expel the MINURSO staff.

Dujarric said an initial three-day deadline for the staff to leave had been extended and that discussions were continuing on the decision.

"We very much hope that we can salvage this mission," he said.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since the 1991 ceasefire ended a war that broke out when Morocco deployed its military in the former Spanish territory in 1975.
Big banks need tougher audits: US regulator

US banking supvervisors should beef up their oversight of large banks beyond stress tests with deep-dive audits and greater use of outside examiners, a top regulator said Friday.

Under a "full-scope" exam, a team of regulators would converge on the largest US banks to pull ledgers, check whether loan payments are on time and "systematically review a cross-section of bank portfolios," said Thomas Hoenig, vice chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Such exams, intended to uncover problems like the profusion of bad mortgages at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, are routine at smaller banks, but not at the biggest ones, he said.

A man stands prior to a press conference by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen in Washington, DC, March 16, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP/File)

Hoenig, speaking at a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the Fed's use of stress tests, which analyze banks' ability to withstand a theoretical severe economic crisis, was helpful but not sufficient to protect the system.

"Supervisors of these firms have become overly reliant on bank models, model validation reviews, stress tests, and updates from bank management as a substitute for records review and hard questioning to draw conclusions regarding a firm's condition," he said.

"Full-scope examinations delve into the quality of portfolios and their implications for long-term resilience. A full-scope exam is a point-in-time analysis of a bank's full balance-sheet quality and management competence."

Hoenig, who has previously supported breaking up the largest US banks, also took a swipe at the Fed's reliance on regulators who are stationed at large banks.

The practice causes regulators to "develop a more insular perspective" that can make it hard to question a bank's assumptions or identify potential disasters.
Iraqi in decapitated head Facebook post guilty of war crime

An Iraqi migrant to Finland has been found guilty of committing a war crime after he posted images of himself on Facebook with the head of an Islamic State group fighter.

Jebbar Salman Ammar, 29, was given a 16-month suspended sentence by the Pirkanmaa district court.

The court found he had desecrated the corpse of a fighter by posting three images on Facebook of himself with the head of the fighter in the Iraqi city of Tikrit.

A defaced ISIS flag is seen in Tikrit after Iraqi forces retook the city on April 5 last year

He admitted to publishing the pictures and to having fought against the Islamic State group, but he denied committing a war crime.

Prosecutor Juha-Mikko Hamalainen said his conduct was defined as "a war crime" by the International Criminal Court. He had sought a two-year prison sentence.

Jebbar Salman Ammar arrived in Finland about six months ago as part of Europe's huge migrant influx.

Finland, a country of 5.4 million people, received 32,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers last year, as Europe experienced it biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
Tunisia's Ben Ali sentenced to 10 years in jail: prosecution

A Tunisian court has sentenced ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to 10 years in jail for abuse of power, the prosecution said Friday, in the latest case against him.

The exiled former dictator was on Thursday found guilty in absentia of "using his position to obtain unjustified advantages, causing harm to the administration" in a case involving an advertising agency, spokesman Kamel Barbouche told AFP, without providing further details.

Ben Ali, who fled Tunisia to Saudi Arabia in January 2011 following a popular uprising against his 23-year rule, has been convicted in a number of cases in the past five years including for corruption.

Former Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in 2003 Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

He also received a life sentence in absentia in 2012 for ordering security forces to fire on protestors during the revolt.

Ben Ali's lawyer Mounir Bensalha was not immediately available for comment.

On Monday, government spokesman Khaled Chouket said in comments aired on radio that he wished Ben Ali would return from exile.

Authorities have faced a string of deadly jihadist attacks and failed to redress the economy since Ben Ali's ouster.
UN chief to visit Tunisia on March 28-29: official

UN chief Ban Ki-moon will visit Tunisia on March 28 and 29, mainly to take part in a conference on the post-revolt problem of employment, a UN representative said Friday.

The secretary general will also meet members of quartet that won the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to the success of Tunisia's democratic transition.

It will be his third visit to the North African country since the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations in New York on March 14, 2016 Don Emmert (AFP/File)

According to the UN Information Centre in Tunis, Ban will be joined on the first day of his visit by World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim in a meeting with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.

Since its revolution, Tunisia has managed to transition to democracy but has struggled to restart its economy.
Torture on the rise in Burundi: UN

Reports of torture have increased in Burundi since the beginning of the year and many people there now "live in terror," the UN rights chief said Friday.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein told the Security Council that violence in the African country could spiral out of control and take on "massive proportions."

"Continued human rights violations, and impunity for perpetrators, mean that many of Burundi's people live in terror," he told a special council session on the situation in Burundi.

A man pushes his bicycle to deliver a coffin in the Bujumbura suburb of Kanyosha on January 10, 2016 Griff Tapper (AFP/File)

"The country remains on the brink of a sudden escalation of violence to even more massive proportions."

Zeid said that while data remained imprecise, "we are seeing increased reports of torture and ill-treatment since the beginning of January."

A recent visit by UN rights officials to detention centers in the capital Bujumbura found that almost half of detainees had been tortured or ill-treated, some seriously, he said.

Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans in April to run for a third term, which he went on to win.

The violence has left more than 400 dead, driven over 240,000 people across the border and fueled fears of mass atrocities in the country.

After UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the country last month, the Burundian government pledged to release political detainees, but Zeid said only 47 people on a list of 125 had been freed.

There has been no decline in arbitrary arrests and detention, with 140 cases recorded so far this month, he added.

France is working on a new UN draft resolution to boost the UN presence in Burundi and help ensure respect for human rights, Ambassador Francois Delattre said.
US Air Force probes drug use at nuclear missile base

The US Air Force is investigating illegal drug use among troops protecting a nuclear missile base, officials said on Friday in the latest scandal to rock the country's nuclear force.

The probe is focusing on 14 enlisted airmen guarding the F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The troops, assigned to the 90th Missile Wing, are under investigation for "illegal drug activity while off duty," General Robin Rand, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, told reporters during a telephone briefing.

The troops, assigned to the 90th Missile Wing at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming , are under investigation for illegal drug activity while off duty Paul J. Richards (AFP/File)

The troops have been removed from duty pending the investigation's outcome, he said, declining to name the types of drugs involved.

The incident is the latest in a series of recent scandals involving missile launch personnel.

In 2013, General Michael Carey was relieved of his position as head of the 20th Air Force -- responsible for three nuclear wings -- after he was reported binge drinking and fraternizing with "two foreign national women" during a trip to Russia.

Soon after, dozens of officers from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana were suspended after they were found cheating on a routine test of their knowledge about how to operate missiles. Two were also implicated in a drug case.

The Air Force uncovered the cheating when it was looking into illegal drug use on several bases.

Investigations by the Pentagon later revealed that missile corps members suffered from "burnout" from what they saw as unrewarding and stressful work in a force seen as a decaying backwater.

The Pentagon announced a major overhaul in November 2014, saying it would boost morale by spending billions of dollars upgrading ageing equipment, improving training and oversight and addressing security lapses.

Commenting on the nuclear force's latest black eye, Rand said "illegal drug use is incompatible with military service."

The F.E. Warren base is one of three installations hosting the country's 450 intercontinental nuclear missiles.

Global Strike Command oversees two of the US nuclear arsenal's three components, which includes Air Force bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles and Navy submarines able to launch missiles at sea.
Senate Dem leader accuses GOP of 'moral cowardice' on Trump

WASHINGTON (AP)  Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Thursday accused the House and Senate Republican leadership of "moral cowardice" for failing to stand up to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

In a speech on GOP policies and Trump's success, the Nevada Democrat said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have tried to have it both ways. They intend to support the eventual nominee, Reid said, but assail Trump for his call to bar Muslims from the United States and his slow disavowal of support from white supremacist groups.

"Giving Trump a slap on the wrist each time he says something detestable, but always committing to support him at the end of the day," Reid said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "This is precisely the kind of moral cowardice that enabled the rise of Trump."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., speaks at Center for American Progress Action Fund, in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. Reid accused the House and Senate Republican leadership of moral cowardice for failing to stand up to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Reid offered a scathing critique of Trump, from the candidate's embrace of the widely debunked notion that President Barack Obama is not American-born to his bombastic campaign comments.

"Trump has made disgusting, sexist statements," Reid said. "He has insulted veterans, immigrants and people with disabilities. Americans are being assaulted and taunted with racial slurs at Trump's rallies. Violence is being threatened and committed against African-Americans with disturbing regularity. And Trump encourages it all.

"There is no gray area here. It is time for Sen. McConnell and Speaker Ryan to find the backbone to say: 'Enough!'" the Democrat said.

Neither Ryan nor McConnell's office responded specifically to Reid's criticism.

Ryan's office highlighted the congressman's comments from earlier in the day in which he said, "It isn't my place to say who our nominee is or what," but promised to speak out to defend conservative principles.

McConnell repeatedly has said he will stay out of the primaries.

Reid argued that Republicans' steadfast opposition to all of Obama's policies helped perpetuate a "big lie" that the rank and file embraced  that whatever Obama proposed, including even a GOP idea, would be no help to Republicans.
Court approves Ontario's 1st doctor-assisted death

TORONTO (AP)  A Canadian judge on Thursday agreed that doctors may help a terminally ill man die, the first case in Ontario and the third in the country where someone has pursued an exemption to the law on assisted suicide under a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Neither the federal nor provincial government opposed the 81-year-old man's request. The man, who is identified only by his initials in the ruling, was diagnosed in 2012 with lymphoma.

Under Canadian law, doctor-assisted suicide is still a crime. However, the Supreme Court last year struck down laws that bar doctors from helping someone die, but put the ruling on hold for one year. Quebec has its own legislative regime on the issue.

In February, the court granted the government a four-month extension but said the terminally ill could ask courts for an exemption to the ban during that period.

The judge said the married grandfather's condition and circumstances meet all the criteria for the exemption, which included him being mentally competent, in extreme pain, and freely making the assisted-death request without coercion or manipulation.

The judge also noted the man's family and doctors support his request.

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Former Subway pitchman faces lawsuit from 1 of his victims

INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A girl whose attorney says she's one of the victims in the sex crimes case that led to former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle being sentenced to more than 15 years in prison is suing the disgraced Indiana man and a former associate, seeking at least $300,000 in damages.

The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Indianapolis names Fogle and the former head of his anti-obesity charity, Russell Taylor. Taylor's wife is also a defendant in the suit, which seeks at least $150,000 in damages each from her husband and Fogle.

Fogle has paid restitution to his victims, but they can still sue him and seek additional money.

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2015 file photo, former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle arrives at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis. Fogle is being sued by a girl who's one of the victims in the sex crimes case that sent him to prison for more than 15 years. The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, March 15, 2016, names Fogle and the former head of his anti-obesity charity, Russell Taylor. It also names Taylor's wife. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

Prosecutors who charged Fogle and Taylor last year said Taylor used cameras hidden in the Indianapolis-area homes where he lived to secretly film 12 minors and shared some of the images with Fogle. The pornography was produced over a four-year period.

Fogle encouraged Taylor to continue filming children, who were recorded as they were nude, changing clothes or engaged in other activities while visiting Taylor's homes, prosecutors said.

The Indiana girl who's suing was among those filmed and has suffered "significant emotional trauma," her attorney, M. Michael Stephenson, said in an email Thursday.

The suit alleges Fogle and Taylor inflicted emotional distress on the girl and invaded her privacy. It says she "suffered severe, traumatic and permanent injuries and mental anguish."

The suit accuses Taylor and his wife, Angela Taylor, of negligent supervision, and all three defendants of negligence.

"Defendants breached their duty of care and were negligent in that they were aware that minor guests of the Taylor residence were being secretly filmed," the suit states.

Fogle's attorney, Ron Elberger, said in an email Thursday that he and his client "have no idea who the plaintiff is as it's not disclosed, nor is the parent's name." He declined further comment.

Taylor's attorney did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

Fogle, 38, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison in November after pleading guilty to one count of distributing and receiving child pornography and one count of traveling out of state to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a child.

He admitted paying for sex at New York City hotels with two girls who were 16 or 17 years old and receiving some child pornography produced by Taylor.

Fogle has appealed his sentence, arguing that a federal judge abused her authority by imposing a sentence three years longer than the maximum term prosecutors had agreed to seek.

Besides the prison time, he paid a total of $1.4 million in restitution to 14 victims, as required by his plea agreement. Each received $100,000.

Taylor, 44, was sentenced to 27 years in prison in December after pleading guilty to 12 counts of child exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography.

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Ryan on presidential speculation: 'Knock it off'

WASHINGTON (AP)  House Speaker Paul Ryan has a message to everyone in the political chattering class who's speculating that he might emerge as the Republican nominee from a contested convention and save the party from front-runner Donald Trump: "Knock it off."

The Wisconsin Republican, thrust into the speakership after predecessor John Boehner of Ohio was squeezed out, said Thursday that he is not interested in being the savior of a GOP establishment appalled by Trump. The 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee reminded reporters that he decided more than a year ago to take a pass on a presidential bid.

"It is not me," Ryan told reporters. "I thought I was pretty clear."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., takes questions from reporters at a weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. The Wisconsin Republican, thrust into the speakership after predecessor John Boehner was squeezed out, said Thursday that he is not interested in being the savior of a GOP establishment appalled by Trump. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

To be sure, Ryan only addresses the idea that he might be named by a brokered convention when asked by the media. He directed his political operation to threaten legal action against a so-called super PAC that was raising money and collecting email addresses in support of an effort to draft him.

Ryan himself stoked speculation on Tuesday in an interview with CNBC's John Harwood in which he failed to slam the door on the idea.

"You know, I haven't given any thought to this stuff," Ryan told Harwood. "People say, 'What about the contested convention?' I say, 'Well, there are a lot of people running for president. We'll see. Who knows?'"

Wrong answer. It sparked a fresh set of speculative media stories.

Then, on Wednesday, after fresh primary results that kept alive the idea that Trump may not arrive in Cleveland this July with enough delegates to win the GOP nod on the first ballot, Boehner entered the picture.

"If we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the above," Boehner told the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida on Wednesday, according to Politico. "They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."

Boehner's remarks cued a fresh round of denials  stronger this time  from Ryan and his camp.

But on Thursday, the question was the first one asked of Ryan at his weekly news conference. This time he sought to slam the door.

"Let's just put this thing to rest and move on," Ryan said.

The selection of an establishment candidate at a contested convention would infuriate Trump supporters, and the candidate suggested on Wednesday that riots could ensue.

Ryan's message to Boehner?

"I saw Boehner last night and I told him to knock it off," Ryan said. "I used slightly different words."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., takes questions from reporters at a weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. The Wisconsin Republican, thrust into the speakership after predecessor John Boehner was squeezed out, said Thursday that he is not interested in being the savior of a GOP establishment appalled by Trump. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Lawyer: Convicted prep school grad had educational meetings

CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  Lawyers for a New Hampshire prep school graduate convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old classmate are offering explanations for why he violated curfew.

Owen Labrie's lawyers say he missed his curfew to attend educational meetings, because of a bus-scheduling problem and for approved meetings with his attorneys.

The 20-year-old Labrie has been living with his mother in Tunbridge, Vermont, as he appeals his one-year jail sentence. He's supposed to be home between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. daily, but prosecutors say he's violated curfew at least eight times and his bail should be revoked.

Labrie's lawyer said the spirit and purpose of the bail order has been followed. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Trump faces obstacles in bid to shake up corporate America

NEW YORK (AP)  Donald Trump's railing about what's wrong in corporate America goes further than the typical political populism: He vows to rewrite trade deals, tax imports and punish U.S. companies. And he's naming names.

He is blasting Ford for beefing up operations abroad. He's refusing to eat Oreo cookies that may soon be made in Mexico and is vowing to get Apple to make iPhones in the U.S.

"You know, our companies are leaving our country rapidly," the GOP front-runner said in Palm Beach, Florida, after winning the state's Republican primary on Tuesday. "And frankly, I'm disgusted."

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 15, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump is railing about whats wrong in corporate America as he woos voters fed up with the status quo. He is blasting drugmaker Pfizers tax-saving plan to move its headquarters overseas, refusing to eat Oreo cookies made in Mexico and vowing to get Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His tirades about unfair competition, tax evasion and lost jobs trumpet a familiar tune, but going further than many others running for president have dared. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Politicians and others have long laid into U.S. companies for shifting headquarters and production abroad and for stockpiling cash in foreign subsidiaries. But changing some of the trade and taxes rules behind such corporate moves are beyond the authority of the president and, experts say, are not so easy to do  at least not without big consequences.

Here's a look at Trump's statements on what's ailing big U.S. companies, and his proposed fixes:

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MOVING HEADQUARTERS ABROAD

Trump vowed after his Super Tuesday victories, "we're not going to be losing our companies," if he becomes president. He criticized politicians for not fixing a tax code that he says drives companies abroad and mentioned drugmaker Pfizer, which plans to move its headquarters to Ireland after merging with Allergan, a company based there.

Pfizer's plan is known as a "tax inversion," a maneuver that allows a company to change its tax jurisdiction to a country where rates are lower. U.S.-based companies claim they are at a disadvantage because the U.S. taxes their profits made both in America and in other countries. By contrast, companies based elsewhere generally pay taxes only on profits made in each country where they operate.

Trump has proposed lowering the nominal top corporate rate in the U.S. to 15 percent from its current rate of about 35 percent. Most companies pay less than the top rate because of various credits and deductions. The drug industry, for example, pays a tax rate of about 20 percent, according to experts.

Either way, those rates are far above those in some other countries. Ireland's rate, for example, is 12 percent, according to the Americans for Tax Fairness consumer group.

The Obama administration has tried to slow the pace of inversions by tightening foreign-ownership requirements, but the administration has said that only Congress, not the president, can change the tax code to put an end to practice.

"The movement of company headquarters overseas is a symptom," not the disease, said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. "The disease is we have an outdated tax code."

Pfizer declined to comment.

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OVERSEAS PROFITS

Trump has vented at U.S. lawmakers for not providing corporate America with incentives to bring home more of their enormous and growing amount of cash held abroad.

By the end of last year, the 500 largest U.S. companies had stashed about $2.4 trillion in foreign subsidiaries and bank accounts, according to an analysis of corporate financial statements by the research group Citizens for Tax Justice.

The report estimated that the companies would be facing a collective tax bill of nearly $700 billion if all the money were pulled out of the foreign accounts and brought back to the U.S., or "repatriated."

Trump's frustration is shared by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who lambasted the U.S. tax code as something "made for the industrial age, not the digital age."

"It's awful for America," Cook told "60 Minutes" during an interview aired in December.

As the world's most profitable company, Apple has accumulated by far the largest hoard of foreign cash  $200 billion. That's enough to pay for a new iPhone 6S for more than 300 million people, or nearly the entire U.S. population.

Cook has estimated that Apple would lose about 40 percent, or $80 billion, of its foreign cash to federal and state taxes if all that money were brought back into the U.S. To get companies to bring money back to the U.S., Trump has proposed lowering the tax rate on repatriated cash to a one-time 10 percent.

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OVERSEAS PRODUCTION

Trump pledged to give up Oreos after Nabisco's parent, Mondelez International, said it would replace nine production lines in Chicago with four in Mexico. He said he would demand that United Technologies reverse a decision to move two of its Carrier heating and ventilating parts plants in Indiana to Mexico, eliminating 2,100 U.S. jobs. He has criticized Ford since last summer after the company said it planned to invest $2.5 billion in engine and transmission plants in Mexico.

Other candidates have criticized the trade deals that facilitate some of these corporate moves, but Trump has gone further. He's threatened to slap a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports. He's threatened to tax auto parts and other equipment made in Mexico. He also wants to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement struck with Mexico and Canada in 1994. His view: The U.S. hasn't gotten enough concessions in negotiations, and American jobs have been lost and wages hammered as a result.

"We're being killed on trade  absolutely destroyed," Trump says.

The U.S. has long been open economy, and specific trade deals like NAFTA have not had a major effect on jobs, economists say. The huge wage gap between the U.S. and developing countries and the increasing use of machines to replace workers have had a far bigger impact.

What's more, Trump's threats could throw the international trading system into chaos. Levying tariffs would probably require congressional approval and could set off a tit-for-tat trade war, an ironic development since it's the U.S. that pushed for open trade over the years.

United Technologies declined to comment on Trump's comments. Mondelez said it is investing in U.S. plants, as well as the new one in Mexico, and that Oreos will continue to be made in the U.S. Ford, which employs 6,000 people in Mexico compared to about 80,000 workers in the U.S., said in a statement that it is "deeply invested in the U.S. and has been for more than a century."

David Kotok, chief executive at money management firm Cumberland Advisors, said he thinks Trump is right about the need overhaul the tax code to keep corporations from moving cash and headquarters abroad. But he's worried about rewriting any trade deals, noting that Americans benefit, among other things, from low prices on goods made abroad.

"When you scrutinize trade agreements, are we really getting killed?" Kotok said. "Do you want to take the price increase and force it on U.S. consumers?"

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Liedtke reported from San Francisco. AP business writers Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit and Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Monday, Nov. 23, 2015, file photo, a man enters Pfizer's world headquarters, in New York. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is railing about whats wrong in corporate America as he woos voters fed up with the status quo. He is blasting drugmaker Pfizers tax-saving plan to move its headquarters overseas, refusing to eat Oreo cookies made in Mexico and vowing to get Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His tirades about unfair competition, tax evasion and lost jobs trumpet a familiar tune, but going further than many others running for president have dared. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2011, file photo, a shopper selects Oreo cookies by Nabisco, which is part of the Kraft Foods Inc. family of brands and products, at a supermarket in Los Angeles. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is railing about whats wrong in corporate America as he woos voters fed up with the status quo. He is blasting drugmaker Pfizers tax-saving plan to move its headquarters overseas, refusing to eat Oreo cookies made in Mexico and vowing to get Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His tirades about unfair competition, tax evasion and lost jobs trumpet a familiar tune, but going further than many others running for president have dared. (AP Photo/File)
Senate votes to hold website in contempt over sex ads

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Senate voted on Thursday to hold the classified advertising website Backpage.com in civil contempt for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena into how it screens ads for possible sex trafficking.

The vote was 96-0. It marks mark the first time in two decades the chamber has voted to hold someone in contempt.

Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sponsored the resolution after they said the company refused to comply with a subpoena last year. Holding the company in contempt would allow the Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee to go to court to try to force Backpage.com to turn over documents about its screening practices.

"Backpage has refused to cooperate," said McCaskill, who returned to the Senate this week after three weeks of treatment for breast cancer. "Today is the day we say enough."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the investigation by Portman and McCaskill  members of the committee  "has revealed how trafficking has flourished in the age of the Internet. It's also revealed how many cases of sex-trafficking  including cases involving children  have been linked to one website in particular: Backpage.com."

Last month, a lawyer for Backpage.com said the company does not believe Congress can compel an online publisher of third-party advertisements to produce the documents under the First Amendment.
Chun withdraws from Kia Classic because of back injury

CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP)  U.S. Women's Open champion In Gee Chun has withdrawn from the Kia Classic next week at Aviara because of a back injury suffered in an airport accident in Singapore.

Chun pulled out of the tournament Wednesday night.

She was injured before the Singapore event two weeks ago when fellow South Korean player Ha Na Jang's father dropped a hard-case suitcase that tumbled down an escalator and struck Chun in the lower back.

Chun missed the Singapore tournament and the JTBC Founders Cup this week in Phoenix.
Star astronaut Scott Kelly: Time right to retire from NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)  After 20 years with NASA, America's star astronaut Scott Kelly says it's time to move on.

He's already hopped on the speaker circuit but is saving the serious job discussions for retirement, coming up in just two weeks.

"You need to leave when the time's right for you  and the time is right for me," Kelly said in an interview with The Associated Press.

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 2, 2016, file photo provided by NASA, International Space Station (ISS) crew member Scott Kelly of the U.S. reacts after landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Kelly is exploring lots of options for the next step in his life. But hes saving the serious job discussions for retirement, coming up April 1. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP, File)

The 52-year-old Kelly announced his retirement last Friday, just nine days after returning from a yearlong, record-breaking mission at the International Space Station.

The astronaut said he doesn't have a full-time job lined up yet despite plenty of offers. He'll have more flexibility to pursue goals, he said, once he's no longer a civil servant after April 1. But he'll still be available for NASA debriefings and medical tests.

"NASA will only have to pay me $10 an hour instead of $70 an hour, so they're getting a good deal," Kelly said. "This just allows me to meet my NASA responsibilities, but do other things."

Speaking by phone Wednesday from Houston  where he plans to stay put at least for now  Kelly said he doubts his bosses at Johnson Space Center were surprised when he informed them last week that he would be leaving. After four missions, he hadn't expected to fly again for NASA.

"I even told my bosses that I'd love to work as a part-timer," Kelly said, perhaps as a contractor flying NASA planes. "I would love to stay as involved with human spaceflight as I can. I'm a huge believer in it."

He'll continue to be a medical test subject, along with his identical twin, Mark, who retired as an astronaut soon after the shuttle program ended in 2011. Mark agreed to take part in an unprecedented twins study that got underway well before Scott's launch last year from Kazakhstan.

Researchers are comparing the space twin with his ground-bound genetic double, on the lookout for any physical changes. Both Navy pilots, NASA chose them as astronauts in April 1996.

Next week, Kelly heads to Russia, where he'll be reunited with the cosmonaut who shared his 340-day space station mission, Mikhail Kornienko. The pair will undergo debriefings with Russian space officials, like their NASA counterparts, keenly interested in the effects of long-duration spaceflight as Mars beckons.

The mission set a U.S. record for a single spaceflight; Russia still holds the world record of 438 days, set back in the 1990s aboard the Mir station. Kelly also holds the U.S. record for most time spent accumulatively in space: 520 days over four missions.

Like his brother, Scott Kelly has signed on with a speakers bureau. He's already booked as keynote speaker at a credit union conference at Walt Disney World in April.

"I'll certainly do a lot of public speaking and talk about the space program," he said.

Kelly is looking forward to spending more time with his two daughters, ages 12 and 21. The youngest lives in Virginia Beach with her mother, who is divorced from Kelly; the oldest lives in Houston. Until this month, he'd been training for or flying NASA missions almost continuously for 10 years.

"Ten years is a long time. A year's actually a long time  I just realized how long a year is," he said, chuckling. He described being off the planet for a year "like an eternity."

By contrast, "it's been kind of a blur" since he landed March 2 in Kazakhstan, going from one medical test and debrief to another, with just one day off at home.

His legs are still swollen and sore; the ankles, knees and hips are stiff, the results of so much time in weightlessness. It's slowly getting better, Kelly said.

"No part" of him wishes he were still up on the space station, but he won't rule out a return to orbit one day on the burgeoning commercial side.

"I tell you what," he said, "I probably will not go a day in my life ever again without thinking about the folks who are in space and how difficult a job it is."

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew

FILE - In this March 4, 2016, file photo, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and his twin Mark get together before a press conference in Houston. Scott Kelly set a U.S. record with his a 340-day mission to the International Space Station. Kelly is exploring lots of options for the next step in his life. But hes saving the serious job discussions for retirement, coming up April 1. His identical twin, Mark, retired as an astronaut soon after the shuttle program ended in 2011, yet agreed to medical testing as part of the unprecedented twins study that got under way well before Scotts March 2015 launch from Kazakhstan. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
Man convicted of terror charge tied to Texas cartoon contest

PHOENIX (AP)  An Arizona man was convicted Thursday of a terror charge tied to an attack last spring on a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas, marking the second conviction in the U.S. related to the Islamic State group.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, an American-born Muslim convert, also was found guilty of providing the guns two of his friends used to open fire outside the anti-Islam event in suburban Dallas. The two Islamic State followers died in a police shootout and a security guard was wounded May 3, but no one else was injured.

He was convicted of a conspiracy charge related to plotting the attack as well as conspiring to provide support to the Islamic State group. Authorities say Kareem and the two gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, had researched travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State fighters.

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff's Department shows Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem. A jury on Thursday, March 17, 2016, convicted an Arizona man of conspiring to support Islamic State in one of the first trials in the U.S. involving charges related to the terrorist group. Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem also was found guilty on other counts stemming from an attack last spring at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas. Kareem was stoic when the verdict was read. (Maricopa County Sheriff's Department via AP, File)

It was the second time a person was tried in the U.S. on charges related to the group. A trial in New York ended a week ago with a guilty verdict against a U.S. military veteran charged with attempting to join Islamic State.

Kareem's attorney, Daniel Maynard, declined to comment after the verdict.

Federal authorities said the conviction demonstrates their commitment to combating terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General John Carlin, head of the U.S. Justice Department's national security division, said the agency "will continue to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who conspire with others to support foreign terrorist organizations and to commit acts of violence."

Kareem, who faces a maximum prison term of 45 years, was scheduled to be sentenced June 27.

Prosecutors say Kareem, who grew up in a Baptist household and converted to Islam as an adult, hosted Simpson and Soofi at his home to discuss the plot and went target-shooting with them in the Arizona desert.

The 44-year-old moving company owner testified that he had no knowledge beforehand that his friends were going to attack the contest featuring cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. He insisted that he didn't even know about the event until after Simpson and Soofi were killed.

It's unknown whether the attack was inspired by the Islamic State or carried out in response to an order from the group.

Prosecutors said Kareem tried to carry out an insurance scam to fund a conspiracy to support the Islamic State group and attempted to indoctrinate two teenage boys in his neighborhood on radical jihadism.

They also say Kareem, Simpson and Soofi initially wanted to blow up the Arizona stadium where the 2015 Super Bowl was held, but when that plan failed, they set their sights on the cartoon contest.

Kareem told jurors that he evicted Simpson from his home because he believed Simpson was putting tracking devices in his car. He also said he strongly disapproved of Simpson using Kareem's laptop to watch al-Qaida promotional materials.

Stefan Verdugo, one of Kareem's former roommates, testified that Kareem wanted to get revenge against people who portrayed the Prophet Muhammad in drawings and had inquired about the types of explosives that would be needed to blow up the stadium.

Defense attorneys attacked Verdugo's credibility by pointing out that he is in jail on a sex trafficking charge.

Kareem denied inquiring about explosives.
Proposal to turn mobster's house into landmark gets whacked

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  A historical landmark advisory board received an offer it could refuse, saying Thursday it won't support a proposal asking that the home of a former mob boss receive landmark status.

Angelo Bruno, who was known as the "Gentle Don" when he ran the city's Italian mob in the 1960s and 1970s, was gunned down outside the house in 1980.

The main argument for declaring it a city landmark was that federal investigations into his affairs shaped the way organized crime was tracked and prosecuted.

Shown is the former home of late Philadelphia mob boss Angelo Bruno on Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Philadelphia. An effort to have the home designated a city historical landmark was rejected Thursday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

But the advisory board said that argument was weak and didn't have a direct tie-in to Philadelphia.

The committee's recommendation now goes to the city's Historical Commission, which will have the final say.

Preservationist Celeste Morello, who nominated Bruno's South Philadelphia row home for the designation, told the committee that Bruno was also a significant historic figure. Bruno's FBI file is part of the John F. Kennedy assassination record, she said, and includes transcripts of conversations in which Bruno says he wanted the president killed.

"That's big. That is very significant," Morello said. "I don't know of anyone else in Philadelphia who has had their FBI file become a part of such a critical moment in 20th century history or United States history."

When Morello finished speaking, Jean Bruno, the late mob boss's 74-year-old daughter who still lives in the family home, spoke from her seat in the audience. She said she'd overheard her father argue against Kennedy's assassination.

Jean Bruno, who has been trying to sell her family home for two years, said she would consider it an honor if the property was designated as historic. During the meeting, she wondered aloud if a historic designation would help with bills.

"Do I get any tax breaks? I just thought about it," she asked.

After the committee voted 4-0 to not recommend the home for historic designation, Morello asked if she should resubmit the application with stronger arguments or a different angle.

Committee member Jeffrey Cohen, a Bryn Mawr College professor of architectural history, said that decision was up to her, but noted, "I don't think you see a lot of encouragement here."
Immense challenges ahead for Chicago area's next prosecutor

CHICAGO (AP)  The Chicago area's likely next top prosecutor handily unseated an incumbent on a wave of frustration over police shooting investigations, but even with that support she'd take over the job facing immense challenges.

First-time candidate Kim Foxx ousted Anita Alvarez in this week's Democratic primary, as the re-election bid of the two-term Cook County state's attorney was dogged by criticism over her waiting a year to charge a white police officer in a black teenager's shooting death.

Foxx, who grew up in the notorious Cabrini Green housing project, campaigned hard on questions about the Laquan McDonald shooting  highlighting an issue that echoed nationwide. The Ohio county prosecutor criticized for his handling of the investigation into 12-year-old Tamir Rice's killing also lost his Democratic primary Tuesday.

Kim Foxx poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press, two days after her primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The same activists who protested Alvarez have already warned Foxx that they expect widespread criminal justice reforms and will hold her accountable. The spotlight leaves the next state's attorney to balance competing interests from law enforcement and the public amid intensifying scrutiny.

Foxx acknowledged the heightened expectations in an interview Thursday, but has navigated a careful line. She said she'll look at all cases fairly, and recognize that police officers put their lives on the line.

"I don't think you should go into this job believing that you have to appease an agenda," she told The Associated Press. "It's about justice."

Besides the outcry over police shootings, Chicago has also seen a spike in violent crime and is searching for a new police chief after the last one was fired in the fallout of McDonald's killing. Protesters have also criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel for the city's response. He admitted Thursday the election showed an "unequivocal and unambiguous message" that agencies must collaborate to build trust, but said he didn't need an election to illustrate the responsibility.

McDonald was shot 16 times in 2014, an incident captured on squad-car video. Alvarez charged the officer with murder, but not until over a year later when a judge ordered city officials to release the video. Alvarez defended the investigation as meticulous, while Foxx and many others disagreed with the length of time it took.

"For decades in certain places injustices were allowed to fester because no one was bringing attention to these issues," she said.

On the campaign trail, Foxx argued that she's better equipped to run the office because she lived through tough issues gripping the region. When shots rang out in Cabrini Green, she and her brother would hide in the bathtub. She says she was also a young victim of sexual assault.

"It's not academic," she said. "I know what that feels like."

Still, making reforms will be difficult in the office overseeing roughly 1,500 employees in a county with a troubled history with wrongful convictions, coerced confessions and an overcrowded jail, the largest of its kind nationwide.

"There are difficulties because the culture is entrenched in a particular office," said New York Law School professor Rebecca Roiphe, a former New York County assistant district attorney. "It's not just a response to the person who's at the head of the office."

Prosecutors are also under unprecedented scrutiny. Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby took heat for announcing charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray right after police wrapped up their investigation and less than a month after his death. St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch's announcement that no charges would be filed against the officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson drew a strong response. A lawsuit seeking a prosecutor to review how McCulloch oversaw the grand jury process lingers.

Foxx said prosecutors could have avoided problems by communicating more with the public. She envisions beefing up alternative means of sentencing and more aggressively vacating wrongful convictions. She pointed to the work of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, who's been praised for both.

A former chief of staff to the county board president, Foxx has also worked in the state's attorney's office and won with establishment backing. That included support from retired federal judge Abner Mikva, a former Democratic congressman. He said the state's attorney must also develop relationships with judges, and supported Foxx after hearing her speak about the balance of when to bring charges.

"She hit all the right buttons," he said.

Foxx is favored to win in November in the heavily Democratic region against Republican Christopher Pfannkuche.

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Follow Sophia Tareen at http://twitter.com/sophiatareen.

Challenger Kim Foxx smiles at the crowd with her husband Kelley, as they celebrate her primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez Tuesday, March 15, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Kim Foxx poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press, two days after her primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Challenger Kim Foxx smiles at the crowd as she celebrates her primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez Tuesday, March 15, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Kim Foxx poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press, two days after her primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Challenger Kim Foxx , right, smiles at the crowd as her daughter Kai, wipes tears from eyes, as they celebrate Foxx's primary win over incumbent Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez Tuesday, March 15, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Court temporarily blocks Grenada from taking over resort

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada (AP)  A court in Grenada has temporarily blocked the government takeover of a resort in the eastern Caribbean island, attorney said Thursday.

The order was issued a month after the government announced it planned to end a 99-year lease and buy the Grenadian by Rex Resorts, a 172-room hotel located on the island's southern tip.

Government officials said property managers didn't fully comply with the lease agreement and argue the resort has become run down. The government also said it is intent on collecting taxes and feels the property is not being operated in the people's best interest. Britain-based Rex Resorts has rejected those claims. It said the hotel is at 88 percent capacity and that it has invested more than $4 million since 2013 to renovate the property. It also said it is up to date on all lease payments, taxes and fees owed to the government.

Rex Resorts signed the lease agreement with the government in 1991 and has operated the Grenadian for 25 years.

The government has not said what it plans to do with the property, and a judge has sealed files in the case.
Graham offers tepid endorsement of Cruz as Trump alternative

WASHINGTON (AP)  Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he'll help Ted Cruz raise campaign cash in the hope of stopping Donald Trump's march toward the Republican presidential nomination.

Graham dropped his own longshot candidacy in December and has been a scathing critic of the Texas Republican in the past.

"It pales in comparison to my differences with Trump," Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday. "I think Ted Cruz is a reliable Republican: Strong on Israel, would repeal and replace Obamacare, would be good on the Supreme Court. So we have many things in common but we also have many differences."

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during an election night watch party Tuesday, March 15, 2016, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

But in a CNN interview last month, Graham pulled no punches in his assessment on Cruz, who is unpopular among his Senate colleagues.

"If you're a Republican and your choice is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a general election," Graham told CNN, "it's the difference between poisoned or shot  you're still dead."

Graham, R-S.C., still says Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich is his preferred candidate but said Thursday, "I don't see John having the path that Ted does in terms of stopping Trump, which is most important to me."

Graham joked at a Washington dinner last month that "a good Republican would defend Ted Cruz. ... That ain't happening. If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you."

At last month's Washington Press Club Foundation dinner, Graham added: "I was asked the hardest question of my political life: Do you agree with Donald Trump that Ted Cruz is the biggest liar in politics? Too close to call."

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An earlier version of this story misattributed a quote to Ted Cruz. All the quotes in this story are from Lindsey Graham.
NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade rings in new era of inclusion

NEW YORK (AP)  From the green line painted on Fifth Avenue to the tartans, pipes and drums, New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade reveled in its long traditions. But to the marchers behind a green-and-lavender banner, it also marked a new era of inclusion at the nation's largest celebration of Irish heritage.

A year after a limited easing of the parade's prohibition on gay groups, organizers opened the lineup more broadly to include activists who protested the ban for years.

"I never thought I'd see the day when I could march up Fifth Avenue in the St. Patrick's Day Parade with my husband," said Brendan Fay, chairman of the Lavender and Green Alliance. "When we started in 1991, after getting arrested so many times for protesting the parade, wow, what a moment this is."

Members of the 28th Battalion Finner Camp of the Irish Army Reserve stand next to Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell before the start of the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. The nation's largest St. Patrick's Day parade kicked off Thursday in New York City, and for the first time in decades, gay activists are not decrying it as an exercise in exclusion. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Roughly 200,000 marchers followed the Fifth Avenue route, flanked by onlookers forming a sea of green.

"We love New York City and the parade and being Irish for a day and having a drop," said Anna Silver, from Nutley, New Jersey, laughing with three friends who all wore bright green T-shirts with green ties and stovepipe hats. "I'm part Irish on my mother's side, but today I'm totally Irish."

This year's parade honored the centennial of Ireland's Easter Rising against British rule. It was also broadcast live in Ireland and the United Kingdom for the first time. The grand marshal of the parade was former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, who negotiated the Northern Ireland peace accord.

The parade traces its history to 1762. For years, organizers said gay people could participate but couldn't carry signs or buttons celebrating their sexual identities. Organizers said they didn't want to divert focus from honoring Irish heritage.

Irish gay advocates sued in the early 1990s, but judges said the parade organizers had a First Amendment right to choose participants in their event.

Over the years, activists protested along the route, and some politicians boycotted. The pressure grew in 2014, when Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to march, and Guinness and Heineken withdrew their sponsorships.

The sponsorships resumed when parade organizers opened a door to gay groups last year, allowing a contingent from parade sponsor NBCUniversal. But critics saw the gesture as tokenism.

Meanwhile, Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade ended a ban on gay groups that organizers had successfully defended at the Supreme Court. In the ensuing months, gay marriage became legal throughout the U.S. and Ireland.

Against that backdrop, New York St. Patrick's Day Parade organizers said they'd add a second gay group this year to the parade ranks: the Lavender and Green Alliance, which had long protested the gay-group ban.

De Blasio said, "Today everyone is celebrating together. Today, the city is at peace, and the city is unified, and we all feel tremendous pride in all of the people who brought us together."

He actually marched twice, returning at the end of the parade to join the alliance as members stepped off. When they entered Fifth Avenue from their staging area, it was to the sound of cheers from the crowd.

But not everyone felt that way. Some longtime parade participants have balked at the arrival of gay delegations.

"It's contemptible," said Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. The group stopped marching last year, saying it was unfair of organizers to open the parade to a gay group but not to an anti-abortion one. Some Catholics gathered along the route Thursday to pray in protest.

But Dillon Roger, visiting from Switzerland, thought the parade was "like a big carnival" and hadn't realized gay groups were kept from marching until recently.

"I always thought the parade was a celebration of being Irish, not Catholic, so yes, it's a big symbol, an important thing for gays to march in the parade today," he said.

Celebrations marking St. Patrick's Day also turned the streets of Savannah, Georgia, into a sea of green, as revelers in gaudy green hats and T-shirts filled the sidewalks and squares.

In Ireland, record crowds celebrated the national holiday with a parade led by the country's most prominent disabled rights activist, Joanne O'Riordan, who was born without arms or legs. She beamed joyously as she steered her scooter past the estimated 550,000 lining the parade route in Dublin.

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Reach Jennifer Peltz on Twitter @ jennpeltz.

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Associated Press writers Alex Lynch in New York, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.

Heavily armed members of the U.S. Armed Forces marches down Fifth Avenue before the start of the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. The first of roughly 200,000 marchers began striding up Fifth Avenue in a procession of throbbing pipes and drums, smiling dignitaries and waving flags. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo marches up Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. The nation's largest St. Patrick's Day parade kicked off Thursday in New York City, and for the first time in decades, gay activists are not decrying it as an exercise in exclusion. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Joanne ORiordan, 19, Irelands most high-profile campaigner for disabled rights and this year's grand marshal of the St. Patricks Day parade greets spectators on OConnell Street, Dublin Thursday March 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, second from left, his wife Chirlane McCray, third from left, Police Commisioner William J. Bratton, right, and his wife Rikki Klieman, second from right, speak to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, left, outside St. Patrick's Cathedral during the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Dennis Dunn, who is originally from the Bronx borough of New York city holds up a sign as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio marches up Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Participants in the St. Patrick's day parade perform as they march up Fifth Avenue, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. The nation's largest St. Patrick's Day parade kicked off Thursday in New York City, and for the first time in decades, gay activists are not decrying it as an exercise in exclusion. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, left, and Catholic Charities Msgr. Kevin Sullivan inspect the Fiat 500 sedan used during the visit of Pope Francis to New York as it makes a stop in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral during the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

A police officer stands guard in front of an anti police demonstrators as the New York Police Department marches up Fifth Avenue past him during the St. Patrick's Day parade, Thursday, March 17, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

A spectator arrives to watch the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets of Dublin Thursday March 17, 2016. (Niall Carson/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT
Arne Duncan returning to Chicago to work with young people

CHICAGO (AP)  Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he's returning to Chicago to work on improving opportunities for teens and young adults.

Duncan said Thursday that he'll join with Emerson Collective to work with people ages 17 to 24 who are neither working nor in school. The Emmerson Collective was founded by Laurene Powell Jobs.

Duncan left the Obama administration in December. He noted it's a tough time to be in Chicago, where he says there is "a lot of anger, fear and a staggering murder rate."

Duncan said the violence is a symptom of hopelessness and that his priority "is to give young people hope by getting them jobs."
Buddhist monk pleads guilty to embezzling temple to gamble

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP)  A Buddhist monk pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge he embezzled more than $200,000 from his Louisiana temple to feed a casino gambling habit.

Khang Nguyen Le, 36, will be sentenced June 27 after his guilty plea to one count of wire fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley's office. Le faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Le served as presiding monk at the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Southeast Louisiana Inc. in Lafayette from 2010 until October 2014, when he stepped down amid the investigation.

Finley's office said Le withdrew nearly $264,000 from temple accounts and used it for gambling at a Lake Charles casino.

In a court filing, a federal agent said Le "admitted to having a gambling problem" and told investigators that he spent up to $10,000 playing blackjack during frequent casino trips. His indictment last year says Le lived and worked at the temple and earned a salary of $1,000 per month.

Le was arrested in September at LaGuardia International Airport in New York after he got off a flight from Dallas, before he could board a flight bound for Toronto, according to court records.

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Q&A: A look at a Minneapolis police shooting, the next steps

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A Minnesota prosecutor has announced he won't use a grand jury to decide whether two police officers should be charged in a black man's November shooting death. Here are some details about the Minneapolis case and a look at how grand juries work:

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SHOOTING?

Police say officers were called to an assault on Nov. 15 and arrived to find Jamar Clark, 24, interfering with paramedics who were trying to help the female victim. They say the officers tried to calm him, but there was a struggle. The head of the Minneapolis police union has said Clark, a suspect in the assault, was shot after he put his hands on an officer's weapon. But some people who witnessed the shooting have said Clark was handcuffed.

James Clark, right, the father of Jamar Clark, listens during a news conference Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Minneapolis where protesters called for prosecution of two Minneapolis police officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark last November. County Attorney Mike Freeman on Wednesday said he will not be using a grand jury to decide whether to prosecute the officers. Clark says he wants to see the officers prosecuted for his son's death. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Clark died a day later.

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ARE CHARGES BEING CONSIDERED?

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Wednesday he won't use a grand jury and instead will determine for himself whether there's enough evidence to charge officers Mark Ringgenberg, who is white, and Dustin Schwarze, whose race hasn't been released. Freeman has said he hopes to have a decision by the end of March.

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HOW DOES A GRAND JURY WORK?

It varies by state. In Minnesota, a grand jury consists of 16 to 23 randomly picked people who decide whether there's enough evidence to indict someone for a crime. Prosecutors present evidence and the grand jury makes its decision in private. Prosecutors in Minnesota are required to use grand juries in cases where the offense is punishable by life in prison, but they have discretion in other cases.

In Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located, grand juries have been used in officer-involved shooting cases for more than 40 years, returning no indictments.

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WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE AGAINST GRAND JURIES?

Grand jury proceedings are kept private, raising questions about their transparency. David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said grand juries are seen as a tool of prosecutors. While grand jury members may be independent, they are only given evidence the prosecutor wants them to see, he said.

"Nobody thinks of the grand jury as some kind of unbiased, investigative body," Harris said. "The people are unbiased, but the process is totally one-sided."

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WHAT ABOUT OTHER CASES?

Public skepticism grew after grand juries declined to indict police officers in the high-profile deaths of blacks in other cities, including the fatal 2014 shootings of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2014 chokehold death of 43-year-old Eric Garner in New York.

But grand juries have reached indictments in other cases. A South Carolina officer was indicted in the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott, who was shot and killed while fleeing a traffic stop. In Chicago, a grand jury indicted an officer on murder charges in the 2014 death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. In both cases, the shootings were captured on video. Harris said having video means police can't control the narrative.

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WHAT'S THE REACTION TO THE MINNESOTA PROSECUTOR'S DECISION?

Members of the Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice 4 Jamar Clark have been protesting at Freeman's office weekly, demanding that a grand jury not be used. They credited community pressure for Freeman's decision.

Coalition members said Thursday that Freeman made a step in the right direction, but they won't be satisfied until the officers are prosecuted  and convicted. The group is holding a community meeting Saturday to organize its next steps.

"Police should be prosecuted in some kind of way," said Clark's adoptive father, James Clark, who spoke at the protesters' news conference Thursday. "That's a 24-year-old kid, laying on the ground. ... I wouldn't do a dog like that."

Harris said community members often see the system as rigged, but convictions are the result of evidence.

"If the prosecutor doesn't have the evidence, he ... shouldn't go forward with the case," Harris said, adding that it may not please protesters, but "that's the law."

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Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti . More of her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amy-forliti .

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman speaks during a news conference Wednesday, March 16, 2016, at the Government Center in Minneapolis. Freeman said Wednesday that after months of careful consideration, he's decided he will not rely on a grand jury to determine whether two Minneapolis police officers should be charged in the shooting death of Jamar Clark. Freeman said he will make the charging decision himself. (Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT; MAGS OUT; TWIN CITIES LOCAL TELEVISION OUT

FILE - This undated photo released by his sister Javille Burns shows Jamar Clark. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Wednesday, March 16, 2016, that after months of careful consideration, he's decided he will not rely on a grand jury to determine whether two Minneapolis police officers should be charged in the shooting death of Clark. Freeman said he will make the charging decision himself. (Jamar Clark/Javille Burns via AP, File)

James Clark, the father of Jamar Clark, speaks during a news conference Thursday, March 17, 2016 in Minneapolis where he and protesters called for prosecution of two Minneapolis police officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark last November. County Attorney Mike Freeman on Wednesday said he will not be using a grand jury to decide whether to prosecute the officers. Clark says he wants to see the officers prosecuted for his son's death. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
The homemade 'Krisha' finds catharsis in tragedy

NEW YORK (AP)  Aspiring filmmakers take note: Nine days of shooting at his mother's Montgomery, Texas, home, a minuscule budget of $100,000 and a cast led by his aunt were enough for writer-director Trey Edward Shults to make one of the more devastatingly empathetic portraits of addiction you're likely to see.

Shults' bravura debut film, "Krisha," has been an unlikely sensation on the festival circuit, where it won the grand prize at last year's South By Southwest Film Festival. In February, it won the John Cassavetes prize at the Independent Film Spirit Awards, an honor for best film made with less than $500,000.

Yet what makes "Krisha," which opens Friday, powerful isn't its humble, homespun production, but rather its intensely intimate drama, inspired by the wrenching family history that played out within the same walls as its setting, and was lived through by many of the very people seen on screen.

This image released by A24 Films shows director Trey Edward Shults, left, with Krisha Fairchild during the filming of, "Krisha." Shults made his debut film in nine days with less than $100,000, shooting at his mother's house and starring his aunt. The resulting film "Krisha" has earned acclaim, been celebrated at festivals from SXSW to Cannes and earned a Spirit Award. (A24 Films via AP)

Krisha Fairchild, Shults' aunt, stars as the title character: a wayward, former alcoholic who comes to the suburban home of her sister (played by Shults' mother, Robyn Fairchild) for Thanksgiving. The scene is festive and teaming, but for Krisha the atmosphere is one of dread.

The film, discordantly scored and dizzyingly shot, captures the small slights and deep wounds of the troubled Krisha as she tries to re-enter family life and keep her demons at bay. We see the judgmental glances that greet her and follow her retreats to the upstairs bathroom.

"I'm not the Krisha of the family but I want to try to understand her and have empathy for her," Shults said in a recent interview.

Shults was drawing from a real past. After years of sobriety, a cousin of his died of an overdose in 2011, shortly after relapsing during a holiday family reunion. Krisha and Robyn Fairchild played significant roles in trying to help their niece and her children.

"I was just terrified of being around someone in that situation," says Shults, remembering the holiday meltdown. "It felt like a slow-motion train wreck. I didn't want to do anything except sit there nervously. Two months later, she overdosed and passed away. I think I started processing that with the script."

Shults and other family members, distraught, would often replay in their minds the struggles that preceded the death.

"So when he presented us with this script that was so emphatic to the person that we loved, we all came to feel that this might be the way to help other people," says Fairchild, who acted in her youth. "It was an immediate rush of: 'Yes, Trey. Yes. You got it.'"

The character of Krisha is a composite. Shults' father was also an alcoholic who fell off the wagon, leading Shults to keep him out of his life for years before visiting him on his deathbed.

Behind the turmoil and tragedy of "Krisha" is the hard question: How is it best to love a perpetually out-of-control family member?

"I think about it all the time," says Shults. "The two big people in our family who inspired this character are passed away now. I think about if I did the right stuff with my dad in cutting him off."

Making the film, which also stars Shults and his 92-year-old grandmother, was excruciating but cathartic.

"We did the good juju because the bad juju had been in every room of our houses for so long," says Fairchild, whose blistering, bare performance commands the film. "We were all holding each other a lot during this."

There were many "foot rubs and temple rubs," Fairchild adds. "A lot of the most difficult scenes we did after everybody else had been sent home for the day."

Shults' next film pulls from his fraught relationship with his father; Shults wrote the script a month after he passed. The indie distributor A24, which is releasing "Krisha," is signed on for that film, too.

Shults promises it will be a slightly "more legit" production, though he's happy if "Krisha" inspires introspection in not just families but would-be filmmakers.

"Our limitations helped make this special," says Shults. "Everyone has a unique life. Everyone has something unique around them. Maybe that doesn't mean cast your aunt and mom and grandma in the lead roles in your movie, but who knows. Get creative and let the limits spur that creativity."

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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2016 file photo, Trey Edward Shults poses in the press room with the John Cassavetes award for Krisha at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, Calif. Shults made his debut film in nine days with less than $100,000, shooting at his mother's house and starring his aunt. The resulting film "Krisha" has earned acclaim, been celebrated at festivals from SXSW to Cannes and earned a Spirit Award. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

This image released by A24 Films shows Krisha Fairchild in a scene from "Krisha." The film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, was made in nine days with less than $100,000, shooting at his mother's house and starring his aunt. The resulting film "Krisha" has earned acclaim, been celebrated at festivals from SXSW to Cannes and earned a Spirit Award. (A24 Films via AP)
UN envoy: Haiti is at a critical juncture toward democracy

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. envoy for Haiti told the Security Council Thursday that the country is at a "critical juncture" in consolidating its democracy and the next few weeks will be decisive.

Sandra Honore expressed concern at the uncertain political situation which puts at risk the roadmap in a Feb. 5 political agreement that includes a postponed runoff election on April 24, with a newly elected president to be installed on May 14.

She singled out delays in confirming the prime minister and in re-establishing the Provisional Electoral Council to oversee elections, coupled with uncertainty over verifying the 2015 electoral process.

Honore expressed fear that "a protracted political crisis may result in diverting the attention of all" from sustaining gains that have been made to stabilize the impoverished Caribbean nation.

She said she has reiterated to all political players in Haiti that "a strong spirit of compromise ... and an equally strong commitment to consensus-building will be key for the country to find a way back to full constitutional order."

Honore and the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the U.S., the European Union and the representative of the Organization of American States also noted the delays in implementing the Feb. 5 agreement "with grave concern" in a statement on Wednesday.
Brazil battles neglect, cash crunch in fight against Zika

CAMPINA GRANDE, Brazil (AP)  In May, as the first cases of the Zika virus were being detected in Brazil, Rossandra Oliveira stopped receiving a critical tool she needed to do her job: insecticide.

Monthly shipments from the government to her office at the epicenter of the outbreak stopped. Oliveira, who manages mosquito control for this city of 400,000, was left helpless. The shortages continued even after President Dilma Rousseff's government declared the mosquito-borne virus a national health emergency Nov. 11.

It wasn't an isolated case. For several months last year cities and states on the front lines of the epidemic in Brazil's northeast ran out of larvicide, and supplies nationwide had to be rationed, according to interviews with local health officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press from prosecutors investigating the shortages.

In this Feb. 12, 2016 photo, Lara, who is just under 3- months-old and was born with microcephaly, is examined by a neurologist at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande in Paraiba state, Brazil. Paraiba and Pernambuco in Brazilis impoverished northeast are ground zero for the Zika epidemic. Since Zika was first detected in Brazil, the two states have accounted for almost half of the 6,158 reported cases of babies born with shrunken heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

The lack of larvicide is only one of a string of public health failings crippling Brazil's ability to manage the Zika outbreak and the surge in rare birth defects thought to be linked to it. A weeklong tour by AP of several cities and towns in the northeast found public hospitals starved for funding and local health officials scrambling to care for the stricken babies.

"In 19 years of working in environmental control I've never seen so much disorganization as I'm seeing now," said Oliveira, whose team of 169 health inspectors in Campina Grande had to carry out door-to-door inspections without the insecticide during the shortage. "We're paying the consequences for having underestimated the enemy."

The immediate culprit is Brazil's deepest recession since the 1930s, which is forcing belt-tightening across Latin America's largest economy. But experts say the collective failure to tackle corruption, crushing inequality and chronic underfunding of the public health system is also to blame.

If addressing such longstanding scourges weren't a steep enough challenge, Rousseff must now do so while fighting for her political survival. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians poured into the streets to demand she resign over a widening corruption scandal now implicating former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. On Thursday, she entrenched behind her political mentor, swearing in Silva as her chief of staff.

Health Minister Marcelo Castro was at a loss to explain what happened.

"If there was this shortage  which I cannot attest to whether there was or not  it was for a short time, and was an isolated incident that does not affect the overall situation," he said in an interview from his office in Brasilia that looks onto the striking modernist presidential palace.

But documents obtained by the AP and interviews with local health officials indicate that the shortages lasted several months and rationing nationwide occurred between August and October, when many women were pregnant and, unbeknownst to them at the time, potentially transmitting Zika to their unborn babies.

The problems occurred despite an alert from the World Health Organization urging nations to strengthen mosquito control in the face of a surge in dengue and chikungunya  viruses transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries Zika.

In a technical note sent in September to the 185 municipalities in Pernambuco, the state's top disease control official even discussed substitutes, such as using household bleach to kill mosquito larvae, or small fish to eat them.

Castro said the reported problems coincided with a cooler period of reduced breeding and larvicide shipments have been normalized since he took office in October. He said the most effective way to fight mosquitoes isn't with chemicals but by eliminating the breeding sites inside people's homes  an effort reinforced by Rousseff's decision to deploy the military to carry out house-to-house inspections.

While the effectiveness of almost any strategy to eradicate pesky mosquitoes is debated by some experts, Brazilian authorities consider larvicide an important part of their toolkit, especially when eliminating breeding in makeshift cisterns that proliferate in the northeast due to a lack of reliable running water.

The pesticide's disappearance, however temporary, is a sign of deep-seated government neglect in a battle that, in the tropics, has to be waged every day, said Dr. Artur Timerman, a virologist and president of Brazil's Society of Dengue and Arbovirus.

"In a war like the one Brazil is facing, any gap has serious, direct consequences," Timerman said.

While Brazilian scientists won international praise for quickly identifying a possible link between Zika and microcephaly, authorities so far have been unable to leverage those discoveries into public health victories.

Instead of focusing on decades of government failures, Rousseff has been appealing to national pride. The T-shirt she wore recently to kick off a nationwide clean-up campaign bore the slogan "A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country." It's a strategy that for weeks seemed to have succeeded in diverting the nation's attention from the debilitating economic and political crisis.

"My entire government is engaged in dealing with this emergency," she told lawmakers last month in her annual state of the union address. "There will be no shortage of resources so we can reverse this Zika epidemic in the quickest and most adequate way possible."

But resources are tight.

Ground zero for the epidemic is Pernambuco and Paraiba, in Brazil's impoverished northeast. Since Zika was first detected in Brazil, the two states have accounted for more than 40 percent of the 6,480 reported cases of babies born with shrunken heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. While only 863 of those suspected cases have been confirmed, and 1,349 discarded as wrongly diagnosed, the number dwarfs the 200 reported previously by Brazil, leading researchers to investigate possible links between the virus' spread and the birth defects.

In Monteiro, a dusty town in the parched northeast, the mayor declared a health emergency just before Christmas as the number of walk-ins to the sole emergency care hospital more than tripled to 5,178 patients  equal to almost a fifth of the town's population. In one particularly frenzied 24-hour period, the hospital burned through a month's supply of pain killers, with many patients suffering from Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses receiving treatment in overcrowded hallways.

"It was a very sad New Year's. There were no parties, no fireworks. Every family had at least one person sick," recalls Ana Paula Barbosa Oliveira, the hospital's pregnant director, who worked non-stop throughout the panic until falling ill herself with what she feared was Zika.

"I was working so much that I thought the mosquito wouldn't catch up with me," she said, half-joking to lighten the burden of having to wait months to find out if her blood test was positive for Zika.

The clinic was forced to handle the stampede of patients amid a collapse in funding. For 15 months, after the state's governor inaugurated the clinic, he stopped sending the checks to keep the facility and a regional ambulance service running.

The town sued last year and the state government was ordered by a judge to resume payments, which account for about a third of the hospital's funding. But over $1 million in back payments remains uncollected.

Paraiba's health secretary said it assisted local authorities during the health emergency with two visits to the town. But when pressed repeatedly by email and phone the secretariat didn't provide further details.

Corruption may also be playing a role. In Paraiba, prosecutors have 96 ongoing investigations into local officials embezzling federal funds meant to build clinics, buy medications and maintain health facilities in the state. Castro said he was unaware of any investigations. But the region's long history of backward politics and awe-striking poverty make it fertile ground for abuse.

"Paraiba is national champion in infant mortality," said Jose Godoy, the federal prosecutor leading the investigations into the alleged abuses. "If basic maternal care is difficult, just imagine how we're going to be able to work with babies born with microcephaly."

The city-run Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande is another case in point of government neglect. There, 29 babies with microcephaly are receiving early intellectual and physical stimulation that can make a significant contribution to their long-term development. The mayor's request for $1.5 million to the Health Ministry to buy an MRI scanner has so far gone unmet.

Well before the Zika outbreak, Brazil's public health care system was on life support, the result of years of mismanagement, underfunding, and more recently, the economic crisis after a decade-long spending spree fueled by China's thirst for South America's commodities. In Rio de Janeiro, more than 20 hospitals and clinics had to close for several days over Christmas as the government fell behind on salaries and even basic supplies like surgical gloves and cotton balls ran out.

The situation now is getting worse. As part of across-the-board budget cuts in February, the Health Ministry was down about $650 million, or almost 3 percent of planned spending.

In Recife, a city of 1.6 million, more than 300 babies have been reported born with microcephaly  the largest number in the nation. There too, a number of health providers told the AP they're financially strapped. The Altino Ventura Foundation, for example, runs a state-of-the-art rehab clinic built with a donation from the German government that treats 135 microcephaly babies.

The nonprofit, which for 30 years has been geared to treating the poor, says the Pernambuco government began falling behind on payments last May, and as recently as February owed more than $3 million. Some of the money from federal outlays was transferred to the state's coffers but never passed along as required, according to public expense tracking records provided by the foundation.

After the AP asked Pernambuco's health secretary about the debt, authorities began to settle outstanding payments.

In the interim, half-built concrete pillars signal an abandoned construction project, with workers parking their cars among tall weeds. The foundation has cut by half the normal number of eye surgeries it performs each month, delayed payments to its own suppliers and for the first time is seeking loans from banks to avoid more drastic cuts.

"Brazil is going through a financial and moral crisis," said Bernardo Cavalcanti, son of the foundation's founder and a member of its board. "The worst part is the light at the end of the tunnel hasn't yet appeared. Things are very bleak still and we have no idea what's going to happen."

Recife's health secretary, Jailson Correia, shares the same sense of frustration. A trained pediatrician with a doctorate in infectious diseases, he quickly assembled a "situation room" adjacent to his ramshackle office when the first cases of microcephaly appeared, using push-pin tacks to map the disease's spread neighborhood by neighborhood.

On Nov. 24, he requested $7.5 million in emergency funding in a meeting with Castro to intensify mosquito-control efforts and provide better care to the sick babies. Despite a receptive ear, only $300,000 arrived.

The insult was double, he says, when Rousseff visited the state a few weeks later to cut the ribbon on a new highway. Until additional money comes, he hopes she never returns.

"It's amazing how a 1-centimeter mosquito is unmasking so many of our problems," said Correia. "I'm not saying a crisis of this proportion is welcome, but perhaps it will finally make us reflect on what kind of society we want to live in."

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Joshua Goodman is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman

Mauricio Savarese is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MSavarese His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/mauricio-savarese

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, patients suffering Zika, dengue or chikungunya symptoms are treated at the emergency hospital in Monteiro, Brazil. A week-long tour by AP of several cities and towns on the frontlines of the Zika epidemic in Brazil's northeast found public hospitals starved for funding and local health officials scrambling to make up for the loss. For 15 months, after the state's governor inaugurated this clinic, he stopped sending the checks to keep the facility and a regional ambulance service running. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 11, 2016 photo, soldiers inspect a home built under a rock during an operation to combat Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus in Monteiro, Brazil. Between August and October last year, the Health Ministry rationed larvicide shipments to all of Brazil, with states at the center of the epidemic running out altogether, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press from prosecutors investigating the shortages. The lack of larvicide is only one of a string of public health failings crippling Brazils ability to manage the Zika outbreak and the surge in rare birth defects thought to be linked to it. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads the Zika virus, clings to a branch outside a home during a government campaign to combat the mosquito in Monteiro, Brazil. Documents obtained by the AP and interviews with local health officials indicate that insecticide shortages lasted for several months and affected the entire country right when many women were pregnant and, unbeknownst at the time, potentially transmitting Zika to their unborn babies. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, six-months pregnant Ana Paula Barbosa Oliveira, standing right, poses for a photo with patients suffering Zika, dengue and chikungunya symptoms at the emergency hospital she manages in Monteiro, Brazil. It was a very sad New Years. There were no parties, no fireworks. Every family had at least one person sick, recalls Oliveira, who worked non-stop throughout the panic until falling ill herself with what she feared was Zika. I was working so much that I thought the mosquito wouldnt catch up with me, she said, half-joking to lighten the burden of having to wait months to find out if her blood test was positive for Zika. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, Luana Vitoria, who was born with microcephaly, cries during a physical therapy session at the Altino Ventura Foundation, a treatment center that provides free health care in Recife, Brazil.The non-profit, which for 30 years has been geared to treating the poor, says the Pernambuco state government began falling behind on payments last May, and as recently as February owed more than $3 million. Some of the money from federal projects was transferred to the stateis coffers but never passed along as required, according to public expense tracking records provided by the foundation. After the AP asked Pernambucois health secretary about the debt, authorities began to settle outstanding payments. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 11, 2016 photo, a boy rides his bike alongside an open sewage canal in Monteiro, Paraiba state, Brazil. In Paraiba, prosecutors have 96 ongoing investigations into local officials embezzling federal funds meant to build clinics, buy medications and maintain health facilities in the state. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, Daniele Ferreira dos Santos holds her son Juan Pedro, who was born with microcephaly, during visual stimulation exercises at the Altino Ventura Foundation in Recife, Brazil. In Recife, more than 300 babies have been reported born with microcephaly, the largest number in the nation. There too, a number of health providers told the AP theyre financially strapped. The Altino Ventura Foundation, for example, runs a state-of-the-art rehab clinic built with a donation from the German government that treats 135 microcephaly babies. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 12, 2016 photo, a municipal health worker sprays insecticide to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spreads the Zika virus, in Campina Grande, Brazil. In May, as the first cases of the Zika virus were cropping up in Brazil, the monthly shipments of larvicide from the federal government to this town at the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak stopped. The shortages continued even after President Dilma Rousseffs government declared the mosquito-borne virus a national health emergency November 11 and despite an alert from the World Health Organization urging nations to strengthen mosquito control. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2016 file photo, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, center, and Rio de Janeiro's Mayor Eduardo Paes, right, walk through the Zepelin shanty town for the launch of the national campaign "Zero Zika" against the Aedes aegypti mosquito in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her shirt reads in Portuguese: "A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, a home is illuminated at dusk in a small village near the border of Pernambuco and Paraiba states, Brazil. The two states are ground zero for the Zika epidemic in Brazils impoverished northeast. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 6, 2016 photo, three-months pregnant Milena Kaline, 17, center, holds her friend Angelica Pereira's daughter Luiza, born with microcephaly, as they visit outside their homes in Santa Cruz do Capibaribe, Brazil. While Brazilian scientists have won international praise for quickly identifying a possible link between Zika and microcephaly, authorities so far have been unable to leverage those discoveries into public health victories. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

This Feb. 12, 2016 photo shows two-week-old Sophia, born with microcephaly, during a physical therapy session at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. While some Brazilian health experts believe the outbreak of the Zika virus is linked to the surge in rare birth defects like microcephaly, this city-run hospital is a case in point of government neglect. For example, the mayors request for $1.5 million to the Health Ministry to buy an MRI scanner has so far gone unmet. As part of across-the-board budget cuts in February, the Health Ministry was down about $650 million of planned spending. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, Terezinha de Melo, 75, who said she has chikungunya and suffers joint pain and headaches, sits in her home as municipal health agents inspect it during a fumigation campaign to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Monteiro, Brazil. In Monteiro, the mayor declared a health emergency just before Christmas as the number of walk-ins to the sole emergency care hospital more than tripled. In one particularly frenzied 24-hour period, the hospital burned through the same amount of pain killers as it does in a typical month, with many patients suffering from Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses receiving treatment in overcrowded hallways. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, a municipal health worker sprays to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spreads the Zika virus, in Recife, Brazil. For several months last year, states in northeast Brazil ran out of larvicide. The immediate culprit is Brazils deepest recession since the 1930s, which is forcing belt-tightening across Latin Americas largest economy. But experts say the collective failure to address longstanding scourges like corruption, crushing inequality and chronic underfunding of the public health system is also to blame. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
In Zika fight, Brazil bogged down by neglect, recession

CAMPINA GRANDE, Brazil (AP)  Last May, as the first cases of Zika were being detected in Brazil, cities at the front lines of the epidemic stopped receiving government shipments of insecticide to kill mosquitoes.

In Campina Grande, a city of 400,000, the shortages continued even after President Dilma Rousseff declared the mosquito-borne virus a national health emergency on Nov. 11.

The lack of larvicide is one of a string of public health failings crippling Brazil's ability to manage the Zika outbreak and the surge in rare birth defects believed linked to it. A weeklong tour by The Associated Press of the impoverished northeast where the epidemic is most severe found public hospitals starved for funding and local officials scrambling to care for the stricken babies.

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, Luana Vitoria, who was born with microcephaly, cries during a physical therapy session at the Altino Ventura Foundation, a treatment center that provides free health care in Recife, Brazil.The non-profit, which for 30 years has been geared to treating the poor, says the Pernambuco state government began falling behind on payments last May, and as recently as February owed more than $3 million. Some of the money from federal projects was transferred to the stateis coffers but never passed along as required, according to public expense tracking records provided by the foundation. After the AP asked Pernambucois health secretary about the debt, authorities began to settle outstanding payments. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

"In 19 years of working in environmental control I've never seen so much disorganization," said Rossandra Oliveira, who manages mosquito control in Campina Grande.

The immediate culprit is Brazil's deepest recession since the 1930s. But experts say the collective failure to tackle corruption and crushing inequality is also to blame.

If addressing such longstanding scourges weren't a steep enough challenge, Rousseff must now do so while fighting for political survival. This week, thousands of Brazilians poured into the streets to demand she resign over a widening corruption scandal now ensnaring her mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Health Minister Marcelo Castro was at a loss to explain what happened.

"If there was this shortage  which I cannot attest to if there was or not  it was for a short time, and was an isolated incident that does not affect the overall situation," Castro said.

Castro said shipments have been normalized since he took office last October.

"We've made a huge effort to ensure that there's no lack of larvicide in any part of Brazil," he said in an interview.

But documents obtained by the AP from prosecutors indicate that the shortages were so severe supplies had to be rationed nationwide between August and October.

In a technical note sent in September, Pernambuco state officials even discussed using substitutes like household bleach or small fish to eat mosquito larvae.

Castro said that the most effective way to fight mosquitoes is eliminating the breeding sites lurking inside homes.

But virologists say it's important to leverage all weapons, including larvicide, which is dropped into makeshift cisterns that proliferate in the northeast due to a lack of reliable running water.

Instead of looking at past failures, Rousseff has been appealing to national pride. The T-shirt she wore to kick off a nationwide cleanup campaign read, "A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country."

"The 204 million of us are much stronger than this mosquito," she said Friday in a speech in Bahia state, which has also been battered by the virus.

Still, resources are tight. The Health Ministry lost almost 3 percent of its budget in cuts last month.

Ground zero is Pernambuco and Paraiba. Since Zika was detected in Brazil, the two states have accounted for 40 percent of the 6,480 reported cases of babies born with shrunken heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly.

In the dusty town of Monteiro, walk-ins to the town's hospital tripled around Christmas. In a single 24-hour period, the hospital burned through a month's supply of pain killers.

"It was a very sad New Year's. There were no parties, no fireworks. Every family had at least one person sick," recalls Ana Paula Barbosa Oliveira, the hospital's pregnant director, who worked throughout the panic until falling ill herself with what she feared was Zika.

The hospital had to handle the stampede after the state government  for 15 months  stopped sending checks to keep the facility running. The town sued last year and won. But over $1 million in back payments remains uncollected.

Paraiba's health secretary said the state assisted local officials during the crisis with two visits to the town. But he didn't provide details.

The city-run Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande is another example of government neglect. There, 29 babies with microcephaly are receiving physical therapy to help their long-term development. The mayor's request for $1.5 million from the Health Ministry to buy an MRI scanner has gone unmet.

Corruption may also be playing a role. In Paraiba, prosecutors have 96 ongoing investigations into local officials embezzling federal health care funds.

It's not just Brazil's long-neglected backwaters that are struggling. For years, the public health care system has been on life support.

In Recife, a city of 1.6 million, where more than 300 babies with microcephaly are being treated, health secretary Jailson Correia feels frustrated. A pediatrician with a doctorate in infectious diseases, he requested $7.5 million in emergency funding in a Nov. 24 meeting with Castro. Only $300,000 arrived.

The insult was double when Rousseff visited a few weeks later to inaugurate a highway.

"It's amazing how a 1 centimeter mosquito is unmasking so many of our problems," reflects Correia. "I'm not saying a crisis of this proportion is welcome, but perhaps it will finally make us reflect on what kind of society we want to live in."

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Joshua Goodman is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman ; His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman

Mauricio Savarese is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSavarese ; His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/mauricio-savarese

In this Feb. 11, 2016 photo, soldiers inspect a home built under a rock during an operation to combat Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus in Monteiro, Brazil. Between August and October last year, the Health Ministry rationed larvicide shipments to all of Brazil, with states at the center of the epidemic running out altogether, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press from prosecutors investigating the shortages. The lack of larvicide is only one of a string of public health failings crippling Brazils ability to manage the Zika outbreak and the surge in rare birth defects thought to be linked to it. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads the Zika virus, clings to a branch outside a home during a government campaign to combat the mosquito in Monteiro, Brazil. Documents obtained by the AP and interviews with local health officials indicate that insecticide shortages lasted for several months and affected the entire country right when many women were pregnant and, unbeknownst at the time, potentially transmitting Zika to their unborn babies. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, patients suffering Zika, dengue or chikungunya symptoms are treated at the emergency hospital in Monteiro, Brazil. A week-long tour by AP of several cities and towns on the frontlines of the Zika epidemic in Brazil's northeast found public hospitals starved for funding and local health officials scrambling to make up for the loss. For 15 months, after the state's governor inaugurated this clinic, he stopped sending the checks to keep the facility and a regional ambulance service running. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 12, 2016 photo, Lara, who is just under 3- months-old and was born with microcephaly, is examined by a neurologist at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande in Paraiba state, Brazil. Paraiba and Pernambuco in Brazilis impoverished northeast are ground zero for the Zika epidemic. Since Zika was first detected in Brazil, the two states have accounted for almost half of the 6,158 reported cases of babies born with shrunken heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, six-months pregnant Ana Paula Barbosa Oliveira, standing right, poses for a photo with patients suffering Zika, dengue and chikungunya symptoms at the emergency hospital she manages in Monteiro, Brazil. It was a very sad New Years. There were no parties, no fireworks. Every family had at least one person sick, recalls Oliveira, who worked non-stop throughout the panic until falling ill herself with what she feared was Zika. I was working so much that I thought the mosquito wouldnt catch up with me, she said, half-joking to lighten the burden of having to wait months to find out if her blood test was positive for Zika. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 11, 2016 photo, a boy rides his bike alongside an open sewage canal in Monteiro, Paraiba state, Brazil. In Paraiba, prosecutors have 96 ongoing investigations into local officials embezzling federal funds meant to build clinics, buy medications and maintain health facilities in the state. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, Daniele Ferreira dos Santos holds her son Juan Pedro, who was born with microcephaly, during visual stimulation exercises at the Altino Ventura Foundation in Recife, Brazil. In Recife, more than 300 babies have been reported born with microcephaly, the largest number in the nation. There too, a number of health providers told the AP theyre financially strapped. The Altino Ventura Foundation, for example, runs a state-of-the-art rehab clinic built with a donation from the German government that treats 135 microcephaly babies. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 12, 2016 photo, a municipal health worker sprays insecticide to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spreads the Zika virus, in Campina Grande, Brazil. In May, as the first cases of the Zika virus were cropping up in Brazil, the monthly shipments of larvicide from the federal government to this town at the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak stopped. The shortages continued even after President Dilma Rousseffs government declared the mosquito-borne virus a national health emergency November 11 and despite an alert from the World Health Organization urging nations to strengthen mosquito control. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2016 file photo, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, center, and Rio de Janeiro's Mayor Eduardo Paes, right, walk through the Zepelin shanty town for the launch of the national campaign "Zero Zika" against the Aedes aegypti mosquito in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her shirt reads in Portuguese: "A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

In this Feb. 7, 2016 photo, a home is illuminated at dusk in a small village near the border of Pernambuco and Paraiba states, Brazil. The two states are ground zero for the Zika epidemic in Brazils impoverished northeast. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 6, 2016 photo, three-months pregnant Milena Kaline, 17, center, holds her friend Angelica Pereira's daughter Luiza, born with microcephaly, as they visit outside their homes in Santa Cruz do Capibaribe, Brazil. While Brazilian scientists have won international praise for quickly identifying a possible link between Zika and microcephaly, authorities so far have been unable to leverage those discoveries into public health victories. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

This Feb. 12, 2016 photo shows two-week-old Sophia, born with microcephaly, during a physical therapy session at the Pedro I hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. While some Brazilian health experts believe the outbreak of the Zika virus is linked to the surge in rare birth defects like microcephaly, this city-run hospital is a case in point of government neglect. For example, the mayors request for $1.5 million to the Health Ministry to buy an MRI scanner has so far gone unmet. As part of across-the-board budget cuts in February, the Health Ministry was down about $650 million of planned spending. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, Terezinha de Melo, 75, who said she has chikungunya and suffers joint pain and headaches, sits in her home as municipal health agents inspect it during a fumigation campaign to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Monteiro, Brazil. In Monteiro, the mayor declared a health emergency just before Christmas as the number of walk-ins to the sole emergency care hospital more than tripled. In one particularly frenzied 24-hour period, the hospital burned through the same amount of pain killers as it does in a typical month, with many patients suffering from Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses receiving treatment in overcrowded hallways. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this March 13, 2016 photo, demonstrators hold a poster with a message that reads in Portuguese; "Lula, Dilma, Zika, Chikungunya. Viruses that have no cure!", placing the country's leader and her predecessor in the same company as the mosquito-borne viruses, in Brasilia, Brazil. The president faces impeachment proceedings over alleged fiscal mismanagement with the country in the throes of the worst recession in decades and amid a sprawling investigation into corruption at the state-run oil giant Petrobras. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

In this Feb. 4, 2016 photo, a municipal health worker sprays to kill Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spreads the Zika virus, in Recife, Brazil. For several months last year, states in northeast Brazil ran out of larvicide. The immediate culprit is Brazils deepest recession since the 1930s, which is forcing belt-tightening across Latin Americas largest economy. But experts say the collective failure to address longstanding scourges like corruption, crushing inequality and chronic underfunding of the public health system is also to blame. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Panasonic grappling with criticism to LGBT policy shift

TOKYO (AP)  Panasonic, the first major Japanese company to start recognizing same sex partnerships in its ranks, has gotten both praise and harshly negative responses to the new policy.

"I never felt this much how different a response can get by nation," Tetsuya Senmatsu, a human resources manager, told reporters Friday, while declining to specify the nations where the change was poorly received.

The policy was welcomed in the U.S. and Europe, he said.

FILE - In this July 31, 2013, file photo, pedestrians are reflected on the glass window of a Panasonic showroom in Tokyo. Panasonic, the first major Japanese company to start recognizing same sex partnerships in its ranks, has gotten both praise for its innovative policy decision as well as some harshly negative responses on Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

Panasonic Corp. has offices around the world, including the U.S., China, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The policy, which kicks off on April 1, recognizes same sex partnerships as the equivalent of marriage in Japan, where Panasonic Corp. is headquartered. Details of how the policy will be applied in each nation are still under consideration, he said.

Senmatsu said the main reason for the policy is that the company opposes all forms of discrimination. The possibility that it might be a plus for recruiting talent was not what drove the decision, he said.

The new policy could help when an employee in a same sex partnership gets moved to another city or nation on assignment, according to Senmatsu.

He said the company does not know how many employees might be affected by the new policy.

"In general, it's said that might be 7 percent of the population," he said.

In China, South Korea, the Philippines and much of the rest of Asia, "coming out of the closet" still has serious consequences, for individuals and also for family members who might become targets of abuse and ostracism. It's an act that takes courage in Asian cultures that value conformity, traditional family structures and harmony.

Panasonic has handled media queries on the same-sex marriage policy in a low key way, declining interview requests. The media opportunity with Senmatsu, which covered general personnel policies, was the first since the new policy was disclosed.

Among other changes, the company also will start encouraging employees to take more time off work, both paid, and unpaid for longer periods, to pursue studies and other interests outside work.

"We think our workers need to go outside the company and learn about the world," Senmatsu said.

Osaka-based Panasonic has had job cuts in recent years, but, for decades after the original company's founding by humanitarian Konosuke Matsushita in 1918, it had stuck to the practice of lifetime employment once prevalent in Japanese corporate culture.

Japanese companies tend to foster extreme loyalty; many workers keep long hours, sometimes dying from overwork; and "salarymen" tend to make their jobs the center of their lives.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama at: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
Garland meets Democrats, Senate recesses, groups up pressure

WASHINGTON (AP)  Merrick Garland has met with two supportive Senate Democratic leaders and spoken by phone to more of his Republican opponents. But he's moved no closer to weakening the GOP barricade against changing his status from Supreme Court nominee to justice.

President Barack Obama's pick to fill the late Antonin Scalia's seat made his first courtesy calls on Capitol Hill Thursday, receiving predictably favorable reviews from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet if anything, GOP leaders dug in even further against considering his nomination, and senators left town for a two-week recess.

Saying that Garland's confirmation "could fundamentally alter the direction of the court for a generation," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans would "act as a check and balance" to prevent Obama from tilting the court's 4-4 balance in the liberal direction and move on to other issues.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., left, puts his arm around Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland during a meeting in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The No. 2 Senate GOP leader, John Cornyn of Texas, branded as "completely unacceptable" talk by a few Republican senators of considering Garland during a lame duck session should a Democrat win the White House in November's elections.

"To do it in a lame duck would to me be completely illegitimate," Cornyn said, citing Senate GOP leaders' insistence that as a matter of principle, the chamber will only consider a nominee by whoever becomes the next president.

Such statements have left Garland as a long-shot to win approval this year.

For Democrats, the day was an early salvo in their campaign to make Garland, a mild-mannered jurist with sterling credentials, the best-known victim of Republican obstruction and a household name in every election battleground state. They also sought to link the Senate GOP's stubbornness to Donald Trump, the party's leading presidential candidate and a source of nightmares for some Republican strategists who fear he'll lose and bring down congressional candidates, too.

"If Republicans continue to stand in the way and refuse to do their job, it will only be because they want Donald Trump to pick the next nominee," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., among a crowd of Senate Democrats who used the Supreme Court steps as a backdrop to underscore their calls for Republicans to give Garland a hearing.

Reid, D-Nev., scoffed at Republicans who have cited strong support from conservative voters for their stance and argued they would not be punished at the polls.

"Let them try to stick with that phony theory, it won't work," he said. "There's more than their base, there's votes in the general election."

Garland met privately with Leahy, D-Vt., and then Reid but said nothing to the swarms of reporters following him.

Garland has spoken by phone to GOP senators including Orrin Hatch of Utah, and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, two of the seven remaining Republicans who voted in 1997 to confirm him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he's now chief judge. Inhofe said he would oppose Garland but told him, "It has nothing to do with you."

With the battleground shifting to senators' home states during the upcoming recess, each side crafted plans to shore up its supporters and torment opposing senators over the next two weeks.

Obama tried to win over key interest groups and activists, holding a conference call to explain that "he hopes that this would be a priority that people all across the country would share," spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Liberal groups' plans include teachers holding rallies in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Lima, Ohio, aimed at Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio; union members mobilizing in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and targeting Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa.; and activists attending town hall and other Iowa events staged by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a key opponent of confirming an Obama court pick.

Former White House aides and other Democrats formed the Constitutional Responsibility Project, which will coordinate liberal groups' efforts around the country. They also created a website, www.weneednine.org, where visitors can "learn about the unprecedented obstruction of the Republican Senate."

On the other side, the Judicial Crisis Network said it will launch a two-week, $2 million ad campaign on television, radio and the Internet on Monday supporting Grassley, Portman and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who all face re-election in November. Also targeted are Democratic lawmakers in Colorado, North Dakota and West Virginia, with ads tying them to positions a more liberal court might take, such as weakening gun rights.

In addition, anti-abortion groups including Susan B. Anthony List and Concerned Women for America formed a coalition and started www.ProtectTheCourt.com. The group said its goal was "to rally around pro-life senators as they hold firm in ensuring that the American people, not President Obama and his pro-abortion allies, get a say" in filling the court vacancy.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., left, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, finish their meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Unity government aims to save Libya, but has to get in first

CAIRO (AP)  The United States, Europe and United Nations have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libya's chaos and blocking the Islamic State group's growth there on a newly announced unity government. The problem is: It's not clear how the government can actually get into the country.

The unity government, brokered by the U.N. and headed by a little-known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, is supposed to replace the two rival administrations  one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk  that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias.

But the Tripoli-based government, dominated by Islamists, and some of its allied militias said this week they will never allow the new administration  whose members are currently in neighboring Tunisia  into the capital.

FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2016 file photo, U.N. special envoy for Libya Martin Kobler, left, is greeted by Fayez Serraj, Libyan designated-prime minister and head of the presidential council, in Cairo, Egypt. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk- that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Maggie Michael, File)

"We say it has no place among us," Khalifa Ghweil, the Tripoli-based prime minister, said in a statement. He said the unity government was "imposed from the outside" and his administration will never let in a leadership "installed" by the United Nations.

Serraj told a Libyan TV channel Thursday night that he would be in Tripoli within days.

Meanwhile, the Tobruk-based parliament, which is the one recognized by the international community, still hasn't formally approved the U.N. deal. While some members support Serraj's government, others outright reject it, viewing it as a compromise to their Tripoli rivals. Most significantly, eastern-based strongman Khalifa Hifter, a general who commands a force of army units and militias that has been battling Islamic militants allied to Tripoli, has remained silent on the deal and many of his loyalists oppose it.

European nations are divided on how to act, even as they and Washington step up their warnings over the threat from the Islamic State group, which has taken advantage of the chaos to set up a powerful and expanding branch. There has already been some low-level, behind the scenes military intervention. U.S. special forces have been on the ground, working with Libyan officials, and U.S. warplanes have carried out airstrikes. Libyan officials say small teams of French, British and Italian commandos are also on the ground helping militia fighters against IS militants in the eastern city of Benghazi, though those three countries have not confirmed their presence.

But Europe and the United States say they want the unity government, known as the Government of National Accord, in place so they can support it militarily to put down the jihadi group  leaving open the question of how to get it into place. European countries are considering sanctions against several politicians accused of undermining it, including Ghweil and the head of the Tripoli-based parliament, Nouri Abu Sahmain, and the head of the Tobruk parliament, Agila Saleh. But the EU is still debating the sanctions.

"The reality is the unity government is the only way out but may not survive," Mattia Toaldo, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, warning that if it does succeed in entering Tripoli, its members could come under attack from the Islamic State group.

"In general, it is a gamble," he said. "We should not be surprised if the government is targeted physically."

Toaldo said one way to secure Serraj's entry into Tripoli could be to arrange a deal among militias within both camps that have shown support for the U.N. deal to protect his government, or at least remain neutral. Most notably, the powerful militias from the city of Misrata, which nominally back the Tripoli administration but are more concerned with fighting the Islamic State group, are largely behind the U.N. deal.

But there is no guarantee that the other factions will back down. So what is a war between two rival governments backed by militias risks becoming a war among three rival governments, none of which recognize the others  yet another permutation to the chaos that Libya has seen since the ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the 2011 civil war.

On Thursday, the U.N. envoy who has led the negotiations over the unity government, Martin Kobler, said it is vital that Serraj and his leadership move into Tripoli and that the two rival governments "cease to exist," but did not say how to bring it about. He urged the Tobruk administration to throw its backing to Serraj to legitimize it.

"The situation in Libya is urgent," he said during a visit to Cairo meeting Arab League officials. "The Islamic State is expanding, the economic situation going from bad to worse." Using an Arab acronym for the militant group, he warned, "Daesh don't discuss agreements ... they just take territory every day and they expand if nothing is done."

The Government of National Accord was the result of months of negotiations including members of both the Tripoli and Tobruk parliaments, held in Morocco. It created a presidential council headed by Serraj that would set up a cabinet and take control of the military, which is fragmented but largely backs Hifter in Tobruk.

Mohammed Ali Abdullah, a representative from Misrata at the negotiations, told The Associated Press, "the deal is full of deficits and flaws." Notably, he said Serraj was forced on the negotiators. "We were surprised but remained silent so not to cause divisions. He is unknown ... He has no political leadership skills. He has nothing."

The U.N. sought agreement from the Tobruk parliament, or House of Representatives, which is internationally recognized since it was the last legislature elected, in 2014. But lawmakers stalled for months. Finally last weekend, a group of 101 of the lawmakers signed a list approving the government and handed it to teams of political dialogue which decided, according to Kobler, that this is enough as an endorsement since the House of Representatives failed to meet.

But many Tobruk lawmakers are crying foul. Mahmoud Jibril, one of Libya's top politicians, warned Kobler that "jumping over democratic measures and the parliament's authority is a clear violation to the political deal itself."

The Tobruk House of Representatives is split into three blocs over the U.N. deal. One bloc supports it. Another is pursuing a separate track of negotiations. The third opposes it entirely, saying it cannot join ranks with "terrorists"  as it calls the Islamists in Tripoli.

The opponents have been encouraged by victories by Hifter's forces, which largely defeated Islamic militias  including IS fighters and pro-Tripoli militias  battling them for control of Benghazi. That has fueled their belief that they can outright defeat the pro-Tripoli militias without having to reach a deal with them.

"There are pressures on the parliament to let this unity government pass. They want us to unite with terrorists and militias in Tripoli," one Tobruk lawmaker, Ali al-Takabali. He predicted the Serraj government will eventually collapse, and can "go to hell."

"This unity government is carrying the seeds of (its own) death within it."

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Musa reported from Tunis, Tunisia. Associated Press writers Colleen Barry in Milan and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Monday, March 7, 2016 file photo, men loyal to Libyan armed forces prepare for fighting with Islamic State group militants west of Benghazi, Libya. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk- that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Mohammed el-Shaiky, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 10, 2016 file photo, fighters battling the Islamic State Group take a break from fighting in the Hawari area, southwest of the city of Benghazi, Libya. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk- that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Mohammed El- Shaiky, File)

FILE - In this Monday, March 7, 2016 file photo, a man loyal to the Libyan armed forces sits in a tank during clashes with Islamic State group militants west of Benghazi, Libya. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk - that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Mohammed el-Shaiky, File)

FILE - In this March 18, 2015 file photo, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, then Libyas top army chief, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in al-Marj, Libya. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk- that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Mohammed El-Sheikhy, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2016 file photo, a civilian fighter holding the Libyan flag stands in front of damaged buildings in Benghazi, Libya. The U.S., Europe and U.N. have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libyas chaos and blocking the Islamic State groups growth there on a newly announced unity government. Headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, it is supposed to replace the two rival administrations - one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk- that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias. (AP Photo/Mohammed el-Shaiky, File)
Anger in China's coal country as miners feel left behind

JUNDESHAN, China (AP)  Hanging from a highway overpass two hours' drive from the Siberian border, a local government banner reads like a last-gasp exhortation to this exhausted coal community: "Improve our structure, change our methods, transform our city."

This area has transformed in dire ways as China has retreated from coal and heavy industry. Li Jiuxian, who hasn't been paid for half a year, sees only mounting debts and anger.

"I don't even have anywhere left to borrow money from," said the 51-year-old miner as he stepped outside a squalid mahjong parlor reeking of smoke and drink where miners while away days without work or pay. "There isn't going to be change."

In this March 16, 2016 photo, miners Zhang Shucun, 49, left, and Li Jiuxian, center, stand near other residents in Jundeshan village in northeastern China's Heilongjiang Province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

Frustration among miners like Li over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in Heilongjiang province in China's far northeast, also known as Manchuria. It spilled over most recently a week ago when thousands of miners protested in the town of Shuangyashan, a direct challenge to Beijing's assertion that it is proceeding smoothly with a sweeping plan to cut capacity in industrial sectors and make the economy more efficient.

Chinese leaders promise the pain will be short-term as they retrain and re-employ the estimated 1.8 million workers who will be laid off from unprofitable government-owned coal and steel companies. Countless more will be axed by private firms. But villagers' struggles and increasing incidents of labor unrest underscore the difficulty of China's transformation.

Faced with coal prices dropping by 50 percent since 2011 and few other economic drivers, mining communities in China's far east are particularly struggling. It's a far cry from the years when heise huangjin  black gold, as the locals call coal  attracted outsiders to mines that paid a hefty $800 a month and made mine bosses rich enough to cruise around town in Rolls Royce sedans.

Standing in a trash-strewn street where mostly mining families lived, Li, the miner, and his friend Zhang Shucun recounted how their village of Jundeshan fell into poverty in just five years. A woman standing nearby interjected to say she was worried, too, that her family will soon starve.

"The party central says they don't owe us any money, but they do owe us," said Zhang, 51, who has worked in mines for 15 years. "They haven't told us anything about plans for other jobs. If just one official came to us to say something, that would be good, but there hasn't been any word."

Miners seem especially furious that government leaders have not been sufficiently aware of their suffering. Last week's protest came after Lu Hao, the provincial governor, said during China's annual parliamentary gathering that miners did not have "even a cent" cut from their pay. The miners who protested are from Longmay, the largest state-owned enterprise in Heilongjiang province with nearly a quarter-million employees, and hadn't been paid in six months.

The protests forced Lu to backtrack, saying he had been wrong. He pledged to get workers their full pay.

Analysts say it's unclear how long the government can keep that promise. Longmay has an estimated annual wage bill of about $1.5 billion, which would be a massive burden for the Heilongjiang provincial government, according to Fitch Ratings analyst Jenny Huang.

At his annual news conference this week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reiterated the government's determination to push ahead with job cuts while supporting laid-off workers with a $15 billion fund to help them find new jobs.

But the economy of the industrial northeast is not the same as southern China's manufacturing hubs, which lay off and re-employ workers at a higher rate, said Geoffrey Crothall of China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit that has tracked a near-doubling in reported strikes on a monthly basis countrywide in the last six months.

"The opportunities for middle-aged or even elderly former coal miners and steel plant workers are more limited in a province where the economy really has slowed to virtually zero," Crothall said.

China laid off around 30 million workers in the state sector in the late 1990s and early 2000s with relatively limited impact on social stability. This time, however, the slower economy is creating fewer chances for re-employment. Social media and non-government-controlled channels of communication, meanwhile, give workers more opportunities to organize, creating the possibility of a nationwide movement much feared by authorities.

The economies of Shuangyashan and neighboring Hegang, which includes Jundeshan, plummeted about 10 percent in 2014, according to local officials. Both towns' economies ticked up a few percent last year.

A visit to the region showed local officials struggling to contain the economy's unraveling, much less find opportunities for growth.

The streets of Shuangyashan were this week filled with thousands of police bused in from across the region to prevent new protests. Those who were not on duty dozed or chatted in dozens of tour buses parked along the main drag.

Videos of the unrest that were not yet censored were readily forwarded on social media. Residents said the hotbed of protesting miners was near the Dongrong mine, which was blockaded by local officials.

At the biggest corner market in Jundeshan, Wang Ruiping, a 24-year-old shopkeeper, said his shop, situated next to several vacant storefronts, was barely breaking even. Even a few years ago it wasn't uncommon for locals to spend 200 to 300 yuan ($31 to $46) on a shopping trip; these days most leave with 30 yuan ($4.60) worth of bare essentials.

The most striking change, he said, was that young people had all headed south to seek jobs. Just last week, four of his friends departed for the port city of Qingdao to work on the docks.

"Those who can leave have left," he said.

The economic performance of Heilongjiang province, and in particular Longmay, its largest state enterprise, remains a sensitive subject after the recent protests. Reporters have been tailed by police upon arriving at a regional airport, and driven away from mining areas by local government and Longmay officials.

In Hegang, men in four vehicles pursued and surrounded a car with Associated Press journalists and took away the drivers  and the car  without explanation. The men said they were employees from a Longmay subsidiary's propaganda office but refused to give their names. Several calls to Longmay went unanswered, as did a fax seeking comment from Hegang officials.

Opportunities to speak openly with workers were often fleeting.

At the Longmay Fuli mine in Hegang, miners stripped out of their uniforms in a changing room after finishing their night shift. Some miners spoke of relief that they were finally issued pay from October and were optimistic more delayed wages might soon follow. Others were despondent, describing how they barely survived off their spouse's income, eating little more than rice.

One miner became agitated, saying that even when they got paychecks, they received a fraction of what they were owed.

"When they say they are paying us 5,000 yuan or 3,000 yuan, that's not accurate, so don't believe the media reports," he said. When he was asked to explain, Longmay executives suddenly appeared, stopped the interview and ushered the miner away.

"We invite you to come in to speak to the company leadership," said a man who identified himself as an employee of the mine's propaganda office but would not give his name. "They can provide better answers to your questions than them."

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Video journalist Paul Traynor contributed.

In this March 15, 2016 photo, Chinese policemen line a street of the prefectural seat of Shuangyashan after several days of protest by miners over late wages in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, a policeman looks out from a police van on a street of the prefectural seat of Shuangyashan after several days of protest by miners over late wages in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, residents walk past a police van on a street of the prefectural seat of Shuangyashan after several days of protest by miners over late wages in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, policemen stand on duty outside the Shuangyashan Mining Industry Group Co. Ltd. in the prefectural seat of Shuangyashan after several days of protest by miners over late wages in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, police vehicles block a road on a street of the prefectural seat of Shuangyashan after several days of protest by miners over late wages in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, residents stand on a road of a village in Shuangyashan prefecture, in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)

In this March 15, 2016 photo, a man on a bike rides through a village in Shuangyashan prefecture in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. Frustration among miners over unpaid wages has swelled to the brink of unrest in the province in Chinas far northeast. (AP Photo/Gerry Shih)
Syria shaky truce allows for rallies against al-Qaida branch

BEIRUT (AP)  With Syria's shaky cease-fire holding, peaceful protesters have yet again taken to the streets in opposition-held areas of the country. But this time, in addition to President Bashar Assad's government, they have another despised authority they seek to topple  al-Qaida's affiliate in the country, the oppressive Nusra Front.

The developments have raised questions as to whether the al-Qaida branch can be sidelined  or in fact even completely eradicated  from any future scenarios for Syria.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, protesters recently set fire to an office belonging to the Nusra Front after major fighting in the area saw the al-Qaida-linked militants crush a division of the U.S.-backed rebel Free Syrian Army, which has become popular with residents in the town of Maaret al-Numan and elsewhere across the province.

FILE - In this file image posted on the Twitter page of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on July 7, 2015, one of the leaders of the Nusra Front, center left, explains to his fighters an attack plan against the Syrian government forces at the western Zahra neighborhood in Aleppo city, Syria. Under the relative calm of Syria's shaky cease-fire, peaceful protests in opposition-held parts of the country have re-emerged, but in addition to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, protesters have found another authority to topple: Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the oppressive Nusra Front group.(Al-Nusra Front via AP, File)

The nearly three-week truce  which excludes the Nusra Front and its rival, the Islamic State group, both designated by the United Nations as terrorist organizations  and the peace talks currently underway in Geneva between the Syrian government and Western-backed rebels have increased pressure on the Nusra Front.

According to Charles Lister, a Middle East Institute fellow who has written a book on jihadist dynamics in the Syria conflict, the truce "was a test of exactly how much" the Nusra Front would succeed in casting itself as a political force and a heavyweight in the conflict.

Apparently, not much.

The Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra as it is known in Arabic, emerged in Syria in 2012, when the country's civil war was already in full swing, quickly establishing itself as the local power in scores of towns and villages in the country's north. But its battlefield strength waned in the face of the rival Islamic State group, which captured almost a third of Syria and neighboring Iraq when it blitzed across the region in the summer of 2014, and a myriad of other militant and rebel factions that took hold in the war-ravaged country.

In the town of Maaret al-Numan, the Nusra Front has resorted to force against residents on several occasions.

On March 4, Nusra Front members and supporters attacked a peaceful anti-government march, detaining several protesters. A week later, militants on motorbikes stormed another protest, beating up demonstrators and snatching away their three-color flags symbolizing the 2011 Syrian uprising against Assad.

Then, on Saturday, the militants swept through the town again, this time capturing and detaining fighters from the popular 13th Division of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

The townspeople had had enough.

On Monday, a throng swarmed a Nusra Front building, tearing down the black-and-white Islamic banner from its facade. Protesters later torched an empty "security office" belonging to the Nusra Front.

A town activist, who declined to give his name fearing for his life, said eight people from Maaret al-Numan and nearby areas have been killed. "The people say the Nusra Front is to blame," he said.

To justify its attack on the rebel 13th Division, the al-Qaida branch spread rumors, said another town activist who now lives in Turkey.

One rumor was that rebel Col. Tayseer al-Samahee had stepped on a Nusra Front banner during a recent protest in Maaret al-Numan, he said. Another was that a rebel had raped the wife of Nusra Front member Abu Ishaq, said the activist, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear for family members who still live in the town.

After the rumor spread, scores of Nusra Front fighters drove into the town from the nearby Jabal al-Zawiya area to try and crush the rebels' 13th Division, he said.

The division gained wide support among Syrians when it pulled out of residential areas after the Russian airstrikes' campaign began on Sept. 30, in an effort to spare the civilian population from being targeted.

The Nusra Front pulled out of some areas but kept a presence in others, which were hit in airstrikes, angering locals, activist say.

"Their presence gives justification to the (Syrian) regime and the Russians to bomb them," said Ahmad, another activist who declined to give his last name, also in fear for his life.

The Nusra Front "appears to have overstepped ... provoking a genuinely popular backlash against its increasingly domineering role in the conflict," Lister said in an article for the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

But despite being excluded from the cease-fire and the Geneva talks, the Nusra Front's recent actions have shown it will not be easily dislodged from Syria. It is deeply embedded in the armed opposition to Assad, and it holds sway over other rebel groups.

The Nusra Front has thousands of battle-hardened, mostly Syrian fighters, and controls wide areas in Idlib province as well as other areas around Syria. They also have strong allies, such as the jihadi Jund al-Aqsa group.

But there are signs of new rifts, including with the powerful Islamic rebel group known as Ahrar al-Sham, which is becoming increasingly distanced from the Nusra Front.

Capt. Islam Alloush, of another powerful Islamic group known as Army of Islam, which is taking part in the Geneva talks, said meetings are underway to form "an armed umbrella that includes all revolutionary forces in Syria." He hinted that the Nusra Front is not going to be part of the umbrella.

Western diplomats who closely follow the Syrian conflict say the cessation of hostilities could be a huge threat to the Nusra Front in the long term, since moderate fighters who support the political process stand to gain grassroots support amid a reduction in violence.

Analysts caution not to expect significant side-lining of the Nusra Front.

"If the cease-fire takes hold and the diplomatic process takes hold, then you might see some shifts," said Fawaz Gerges, a scholar on Islamic groups who has been following the Syria conflict from the London School of Economics.

A major factor in favor of the Syrian al-Qaida branch remaining relevant is its track record as an indispensable ally against Syrian government forces. Its allies-of-convenience are not going to give up the group unless they are given assurances Assad's government will not squash them once the Nusra Front is pushed out.

"To expect a major rupture is wishful thinking," said Gerges.

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Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

FILE - In this file photo posted on the Twitter page of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on April 25, 2015, which is consistent with AP reporting, Nusra Front fighters stand on their vehicles and wave their group's flags as they tour the streets of Jisr al-Shughour, Idlib province, Syria. Under the relative calm of Syria's shaky cease-fire, peaceful protests in opposition-held parts of the country have re-emerged, but in addition to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, protesters have found another authority to topple: Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the oppressive Nusra Front group. (Al-Nusra Front Twitter page via AP, File)

FILE - In this file image posted on the Twitter account of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front Sept. 10, 2015, which is consistent with other AP reporting, fighters from the group gather around a Syrian government forces aircraft, inside the Abu Zuhour air base, in Idlib province, north Syria. Under the relative calm of Syria's shaky cease-fire, peaceful protests in opposition-held parts of the country have re-emerged, but in addition to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, protesters have found another authority to topple: Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the oppressive Nusra Front group. (Al-Nusra Front social media account via AP, File)

FILE- In this Friday, March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, in Kafranbel, Idlib province, northern Syria. Under the relative calm of Syria's shaky cease-fire, peaceful protests in opposition-held parts of the country have re-emerged, but in addition to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, protesters have found another authority to topple: Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the oppressive Nusra Front group. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - In this file image posted on the Twitter page of Ahrar al-Sham on June. 19, 2015, fighters from Ahrar al-Sham march in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria. Under the relative calm of Syria's shaky cease-fire, peaceful protests in opposition-held parts of the country have re-emerged, but in addition to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, protesters have found another authority to topple: Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the oppressive Nusra Front group. (Ahrar al-Sham Twitter page via AP, File)
The Latest: Merkel urges migrants at Idomeni to leave camp

BERLIN (AP)  The Latest on the migrant crisis in Europe (all times local):

6:40 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging migrants in the squalid tent city at Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border, to trust Greek authorities and leave for better accommodation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, speaks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, center, and French President Francois Hollande during a meeting on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived for talks with EU Council President Donald Tusk, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Their meeting is aimed at thrashing out the details of an agreement to send tens of thousands of migrants in Greece back to Turkey. (Francois Lenoir, Pool Photo via AP)

Thousands have stayed at Idomeni following the closure of Macedonia's border, clinging to hopes the Balkan route used for months by migrants heading for central Europe will reopen.

Merkel said Friday after European Union leaders met: "I want to take the opportunity to tell the refugees at Idomeni that they should trust the Greek government and move to other accommodation where the conditions will be significantly better."

She added that "from there, Greece will put asylum procedures in motion or redistribution to other European countries will take place."

Merkel has said refugees don't have a right to choose a specific European country.

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6:20 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a deal between the European Union and Turkey to stem the flow of people to Greece will hit the smugglers' business model hard and send a "clear message" to dissuade would-be migrants to Europe.

The deal calls for Turkey to take back people who make the crossing illegally starting Sunday. Merkel said that means that "anyone who sets out on this dangerous route not only risks his life but also has no prospect of success."

She said European leaders "hope that, with this, irregular migration will end in a short time."

Merkel said of the deal: "The upshot of today is that Europe will manage to survive this difficult test, with all 28 (EU) members and together with Turkey."

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3:25 p.m.

The Czech prime minister says that the European Union and Turkey have reach a landmark deal to ease the migrant crisis and give Ankara concessions on better EU relations.

Near the end of a two-day summit, Bohuslav Sobotka tweeted: "The deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey starting March 20 will be returned."

With the EU's 28 leaders on board, the document still needed to be officially signed off with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had negotiated the final wording on the agreement since early Friday.

Davutoglu said Ankara's prime concern was the fate of almost 3 million Syrian refugees on its territory. At the same time, he was looking for unprecedented concessions to bring the EU's eastern neighbor closer to the bloc.

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2:55 p.m.

The European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, has asked Albania to do more to reduce the "irregular immigration of its citizens" to EU countries, mainly Germany.

Avramopoulos, in Tirana on Friday to talk mainly about the refugee crisis in the region, called on Albania to work on more efficient border protection and information exchange with EU member states.

Since 2010 Albanians can travel to EU countries without a visa.

Last year some 66,000 Albanians asked for asylum in EU countries in search of better living standards and jobs. Some 55,000 of them were in Germany, making them the fourth-biggest group of asylum-seekers after Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis.

Avramopoulos said the Commission will include Albania on a European list of safe countries of origin, making it much less likely their request for asylum would be accepted.

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2:45 p.m.

European Union and Turkish leaders are closing in on an agreement to send thousands of migrants back to Turkey.

EU officials said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has accepted the terms of European leaders after a series of bilateral and technical talks.

The 28 heads of state and government must still examine a new draft statement and officially sign off on the deal.

The officials declined to be named because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing talks, which would essentially see Europe outsource its refugee emergency to Turkey.

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2:25 p.m.

A European Union official has hailed Albania's fast drafting of a contingency plan to address a possible influx of refugees, though there have been no indications they are turn toward such a route so far.

European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos talked on Friday in Tirana with senior officials on migrants and security issues.

Avramopoulos said "so far there is no indication that Albania has been affected by sudden large inflows of migrants, but we have to be prepared for all eventualities."

Albania is cooperating with Italy, which will offer equipment and personnel to register refugees and monitor air, land and sea borders.

Albania's regional neighbors Macedonia and Serbia have closed their southern borders, which could prompt refugees to seek other routes into Western Europe.

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2:10 p.m.

Serbia's interior minister says some 1,300 migrants remain stranded in the country after the closure of the Balkan route for their passage toward Western Europe.

Nebojsa Stefanovic said Friday there are no new arrivals of the refugees after police and the army stepped up patrols along the borders "to prevent illegal entries."

He says Serbia will accept any deal reached between the European Union and Turkey on solving the migrant crisis that has seen some 900,000 people fleeing wars and poverty transit through the country on their way toward wealthier European states.

Serbia and other Balkan states shut their borders for migrants on March 8 after Austria said it will no longer let them in.

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1:00 p.m.

Italy's president, on a visit to Cameroon, is calling for foreign aid programs to help ease the migrant crisis.

President Sergio Mattarrella, speaking to university students Friday, decried what he called some Europeans' opinion that "raising walls, erecting barbed wire fences," can solve the problem.

Italy's head of state said such thinking, besides being "morally unacceptable," is "completely ineffective." He advocated foreign assistance cooperation programs to help Africans in their homelands.

The Italian government has long campaigned for such an approach to encourage Africans to stay home and avoid attempting risky sea voyages arranged by human traffickers to reach Europe in hope of a better life.

Unless the Africans are eligible for asylum, they face deportation from Europe.

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12:15 p.m.

A small group of activists has hung banners from the walls of the Acropolis in Athens, to protest restrictions on the movements of refugees and migrants into Europe.

About 50 people were involved in the peaceful protest. Police said they were not called to handle Friday's incident, and the protesters left shortly after the display.

The banners read "Open Borders," and "Safe Passage Stop Wars."

Although Greek authorities strongly discourage the practice, activist groups and left-wing parties occasionally use the ancient citadel as a prop for political protests, hanging banners from its walls.

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12:05 p.m.

Greece's interior minister has compared conditions at a crowded refugee tent city on the country's border with Macedonia to a Nazi concentration camp, blaming the suffering on some European countries' closed border policies.

Panagiotis Kouroumplis told reporters he "doesn't hesitate to say" that the Idomeni camp is a modern version of the Dachau camp operated by the Nazis in Germany.

During a visit to Idomeni Friday, Kouroumplis said the situation was a result of the "logic of closed borders" by countries that refused to accept refugees.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe's prosperous heartland. Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organized shelters.

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10:30 a.m.

The German Red Cross society says it is sending a mobile health station to the Greek town of Idomeni to help migrants stranded at the border with Macedonia.

The aid group says the clinic, which will be operated jointly with the Finnish Red Crescent, can serve 10,000 people.

The Red Cross said in a statement Friday that it is planning to run the health station for four months, starting next week.

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9:30 a.m.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says the refugee emergency is not something to be bargained over, as the European Union looks to send back tens of thousands of migrants to Turkey.

Davutoglu said on Friday that "for Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining, but an issue of values."

He spoke as he arrived for talks with EU leaders. Europe is looking to outsource to Turkey a refugee emergency that has divided the 28-nation bloc.

Turkey will take back all irregular migrants newly arriving in Greece. For every Syrian among them, the EU will welcome in one Syrian refugee from Turkey. Ankara will also receive billions of euros in aid, visa-free travel for Turks and faster EU membership talks.

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9:10 a.m.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon says building barriers won't solve the migrant crisis in Europe.

The United Nations secretary-general told German daily Bild in an interview published Friday that "building walls, discriminating against people or sending them back is no answer to the problem."

Ban praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "human political leadership" in dealing with the migrant crisis and urged other politicians to follow her example.

He declined to comment on speculation that Merkel might be nominated to succeed him in the top U.N. role when his second term ends on Dec. 31.

European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos speaks at a news conference while on a visit to Tirana to talk with local officials about migration from Albania into central Europe, Friday, March 18, 2016. Avramopoulos called on Albania for a more efficient border protection system and information exchange with EU member states. (AP Photo/Hektor Pustina)

French President Francois Hollande, left, meets with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, right, during an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived for talks with EU Council President Donald Tusk, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Their meeting is aimed at thrashing out the details of an agreement to send tens of thousands of migrants in Greece back to Turkey. (Stephane de Sakutin, Pool Photo via AP)

A migrant woman and two kids walk through the gate of a hangar where people have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. Leaders of the EU's 28 divided nations plan to reconvene in Brussels this week in hopes of ironing out disagreements on a proposed agreement with Turkey in the migrants crisis. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Refugee children jump on a muddy mattress in a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border post of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. European Union leaders agreed upon a common stance on a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey something they will propose to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later on Friday. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)

A migrant child eats as others sit around a fire in a railway repairs hangar where people have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. Leaders of the EU's 28 divided nations plan to reconvene in Brussels this week in hopes of ironing out disagreements on a proposed agreement with Turkey in the migrants crisis. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, right, speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived for talks with EU Council President Donald Tusk, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Their meeting is aimed at thrashing out the details of an agreement to send tens of thousands of migrants in Greece back to Turkey. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Refugee children jump on a muddy mattress in a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border post of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. European Union leaders agreed upon a common stance on a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey something they will propose to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later on Friday. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)

A migrant sits by a fire in a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border post of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. European Union leaders agreed upon a common stance on a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey something they will propose to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later on Friday. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)

A refugee girl draws in a notebook while sitting on the ground by a tent in a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border post of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. European Union leaders agreed upon a common stance on a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey something they will propose to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu later on Friday. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)
Dutch lawmaker Wilders in court on hate speech charges

AMSTERDAM (AP)  In a case that will test the limits of Dutch freedom of expression, firebrand lawmaker Geert Wilders appeared in court Friday for the first public hearing in a hate speech prosecution.

The pretrial hearing at a tightly guarded courtroom on the edge of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport comes with Wilders' anti-Islam Freedom Party standing atop opinion polls a year ahead of Dutch parliamentary elections and with anti-immigrant sentiment rising across Europe.

Prosecutor Wouter Bos said the case pits two key pillars of the Dutch constitution against one another: A ban on discrimination and the right to freedom of expression.

Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders takes pictures of photographers as he appeared in court for a pretrial hearing at a high-security court on charges of inciting hatred, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

"The importance of freedom of speech is great," he said. "It is one of the essential elements of our democratic society." But, he added, "freedom of speech is not absolute."

Wilders' defense lawyer, Geert-Jan Knoops, said freedom of expression is "the last freedom Mr. Wilders has left." The lawmaker has lived with around-the clock protection for more than a decade because of repeated death threats.

The case against Wilders, who was acquitted in 2011 of insulting Islam, centers on comments made before and after 2014 local elections. At one party meeting he asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, drawing them into the chant of "Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!"

"We'll take care of it," he replied.

Wilders looked relaxed as he entered the courtroom, pulling out his mobile phone to snap a picture of press photographers taking his picture before the case got underway.

A small group of supporters of the anti-immigrant Pegida group demonstrated outside the hearing in support of Wilders, one of them wearing a T-shirt and jacket emblazoned with the text "Wilders for President." The Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy, does not have a president.

Edwin Wagensveld, leader of Pegida in the Netherlands, doubted Wilders would get a fair trial. "We are living in a democracy, and one has a right to say things openly," he said.

Prosecutor Bos said that a first anti-Moroccan comment by Wilders during a local election campaign was a "slip of the tongue," but the comments at the campaign meeting when Wilders reacted to the chant of "Fewer, fewer, fewer," were carefully choreographed and planned.

Bos said that one of the first people to file a complaint about Wilders' comments said he "felt sadness and anger at the same time. Would this mean that my child could not live in The Hague?"

Defense lawyer Knoops also demanded an investigation into how a draft copy of his opening statement was obtained by a Dutch newspaper, which published parts of it Friday. He said the case should be delayed until such an investigation is completed.

Knoops called the incident "an attack on this case, an attack on Mr. Wilders' freedom to defend himself and freely communicate with his defense team."

Wilders' trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 31.

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This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of Wilders in the first paragraph and headline.

Two Freedom Party supporters, one wearing a jacket with a slogan "Wilders for President", the other one wearing the Dutch national flag with PVV (Freedom Party) written on it, demonstrate outside the court where firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing on charges of inciting hatred in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Pegida and Freedom Party supporters, one wearing a jacket with a slogan "Wilders for President", demonstrate outside the high-security court near Schiphzl airport where firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing on charges of inciting hatred in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, center, rises as judges enter the court room for a pretrial hearing at a high-security court where Wilders faces charges of inciting hatred, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Photographers take pictures of firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders who appeared in court for a pretrial hearing at a high-security court on charges of inciting hatred, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, front, appeared in court for a pretrial hearing at a high-security court on charges of inciting hatred, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Firebrand Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, front, rises as judges enter the court room for a pretrial hearing at a high-security court where Wilders faces charges of inciting hatred, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
A photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging Friday morning in downtown Beijing's notorious smog has prompted a torrent of amusing comments and some mockery on Chinese social media.

At the time the photo was taken, Beijing's air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

Yet none of the team are wearing face masks.

Scroll down for video

A photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging Friday morning in downtown Beijing's notorious smog has prompted a torrent of amusing comments and some mockery.

FIFTEEN Zuckerberg posted the photo to his Facebook page of him and five others running through Tiananmen Square with the famous gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace in the background. None wore the air-filtering face masks that are ubiquitous in Beijing and other Chinese cities. At the time the photo was taken, Beijing's air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organization. Advertisement

Zuckerberg is a favourite personality among the Chinese public, despite Facebook being banned in the country alongside other overseas social media platforms.

He's also become somewhat notorious for persistent yet so far futile efforts to woo leaders enforcing China's strict online censorship.

The young tech tycoon is in Beijing to attend an economic forum over the weekend, when some of the world's business and finances leaders will rub shoulders with senior Chinese politicians.

'It's great to be back in Beijing!' he wrote.

'I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven.

'This also marks 100 miles in A Year of Running. Thanks to everyone who has been running with me - both in person and around the world!'

Zuckerberg posted the photo to his Facebook page of him and five others running through Tiananmen Square with the famous gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace in the background.

None wore the air-filtering face masks that are ubiquitous in Beijing and other Chinese cities.

At the time the photo was taken, Beijing's air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

Health experts urge people to avoid any outdoor activities on such heavily polluted days.

Chinese residents wondered aloud whether Zuckerberg's jog was yet another gesture aimed at pleasing the Chinese authorities who claim they are gradually winning the battle against air pollution.

Previous efforts include Zuckerberg's telling China's top Internet official on a visit to Facebook's California headquarters in 2014 that he was engrossed in Chinese President Xi Jinping's collected speeches.

The same year he famously engaged his audience in halting Chinese at a forum at prestigious Tsinghua University while avoiding mention of the government ban on Facebook.

A computer screen displays the social media posting by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook in Beijing, China, Friday, March 18, 2016. The photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging in downtown Beijings notorious smog has prompted a torrent of astonishment, mockery and amusement on Chinese social media. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A computer screen displays the social media posting by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook in Beijing, China, Friday, March 18, 2016. The photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging in downtown Beijings notorious smog has prompted a torrent of astonishment, mockery and amusement on Chinese social media.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

'Kissing up?' commented Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist, who reposted Zuckerberg's running photo and added a graphic of Beijing's air quality readings from Friday morning.

Journalist and avid runner Peng Yuanwen joked that Zuckerberg's lungs had single-handedly filtered Beijing's smog after the city's air quality noticeably improved by early afternoon.

'The human-flesh smog vacuum is better when it's American-made,' teased Peng, playing on a joke among Beijing residents that they filter the city's air with their lungs by inhaling harmful particles.

Others noted that Zuckerberg's run took him through the square where hundreds of thousands of Chinese students gathered in the spring of 1989 to demand democracy.
Former Arsenal forward Arshavin signs for Kazakh club Kairat

MOSCOW (AP)  Former Arsenal forward Andrei Arshavin has moved to Kazakhstan, signing a one-year contract with Kairat Almaty.

Arshavin played 75 times for Russia's national team but his last international game was in 2012.

Last season, he won a third Russian league title with Zenit St. Petersburg but was not retained for 2015-16 and instead endured a difficult half-season with relegation-threatened Kuban Krasnodar.

Arshavin's deal at Kairat, which finished second in the Kazakh league in 2015, has an option for a one-year extension.
Police fatally shoot 2 robbery suspects at Houston store

HOUSTON (AP)  A tactical team had been tracking a group of five robbery suspects in the hours before their last stop, a Houston furniture store where officers opened fire and killed two of the suspects and injured two others, authorities said Friday.

Houston police spokesman John Cannon declined to explain Friday why the suspects weren't apprehended before the holdup and shooting late Thursday at the Affordable Furniture store in a shopping plaza adjacent to busy Interstate 45. He did, however, mention that the group had been changing vehicles during the day and that police lost sight of them for a while before catching up with the group as they exited the store.

Five officers shot at the group when at least one of the suspects pointed a weapon at them, Cannon said, and two guns were recovered at the scene. One injured suspect was taken to a hospital with an undisclosed injury and another was treated by paramedics before being arrested.

This still image taken from video provided by KPRC shows police responding to the scene of a shooting, Thursday, March 17, 2015 in Houston. Police fired at five suspected robbers Thursday night outside the furniture store, killing two and injuring two other members of the group, which was being monitored by a tactical team investigating other robberies earlier in the day. (KPRC via AP) MANDATORY COURTESY KPRC, NO ACCESS HOUSTON MARKET LOCAL TV OUT

The ages and identities of the suspects have not been released.

The one who wasn't hit by gunfire had posed as a store employee and tried to hide in a truck parked in front of the business before he was arrested, Cannon said. Officers saw that the man was wearing an ankle monitor and determined he was one of the suspects, according to Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union.

Hunt said the tactical team did not have the evidence, or "probable cause," it needed to apprehend the suspects before they were tracked to the furniture store. When a few of them walked out holding what appeared to be stolen items, officers determined they needed to intervene, Hunt said.

The suspects failed to comply with police orders, he said, and officers were forced to shoot rather than allow the group to claim a hostage or flee into nearby businesses.

"With the evidence that this tactical team then had, they did everything absolutely appropriate to engage the suspects," he said.

Affordable Furniture owner Taj Ali told The Associated Press that an employee who was inside during the holdup said the gunmen were wearing masks and that one pointed a gun at her head and ordered her to lead them to the safe.

At that point, officers interrupted the robbery, shots were fired and one of the suspects yelled, "Time to go," Ali said his employee told him.

Harry Cheng, the manager of a Lumber Liquidators store adjacent to the furniture shop, said he was helping a customer and unaware that a robbery was in progress until he saw a police officer in SWAT gear through a window.

"He just told me to get down," said Cheng. "And all of a sudden I heard gunshots."

Cheng said he and the customer hugged the floor and heard an exchange of gunfire that lasted from three to five minutes.

Cannon said one of the suspects taken into custody was wearing an ankle monitor, but he didn't have details of his criminal record. A call to a spokesman for the Harris County district attorney's office was not returned Friday.

Cannon said it wasn't immediately clear if the suspects had fired any shots but that investigators would analyze shell casings to account for all shots that were fired.

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'My breath is my children': Flight from Syria splits family

IDOMENI, Greece (AP)  Her children are in Germany, safe in a refugee shelter with their father. But for their mother, stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when  or if  she will see her children again is unbearable.

In this sodden, muddy field on the edge of northern Greece, 39-year-old Syrian Layla Ali Kamal Adeen fears her dreams and hopes  of a better life for her family, of a future for her four young children  have come to an end. Curled up in a tiny tent, the relentless rain hammering down on its roof and muddy water lapping at the entrance, she has reached rock bottom. Sometimes, she wonders if she would be better off dead.

"My husband says 'No, Layla, don't say that. God will find a solution.'"

In this picture taken on March 10, 2016, 39-year-old Layla Ali Kamal Adeen sits in her tent in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece.Her children are in Germany, safe in a refugee camp with their father, but for their mother, stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

But God seems far away from these fields of desperation, through which so many have passed in recent months on their way to Europe's prosperous heartland, fleeing war, persecution and poverty. They, like her husband and children, made it through, but Adeen was unlucky. She and tens of thousands of others now find themselves trapped in Greece, after Europe essentially shut its doors.

Six months ago her family, Syrian Kurds, fled the brutal Syrian civil war and their home in Qamishli, where her husband was a dentist.

"What home? It's all gone. It's all flattened to the level of the street," she says. "There was blood in the streets. We sleep and we hear the explosions. That's why we left."

They went to Turkey, but Adeen was afraid of the sea, terrified of the night-time journey she and her family would have to take from the Turkish coast to the nearby Greek islands. Many have died on the short but perilous trip across the Aegean, often undertaken in unseaworthy boats provided by smugglers.

"My husband said: 'Come, Layla, let's go. ... We have nothing left here. But I was afraid. Always afraid."

They went to Turkey, but Adeen says she fell ill before they were to board the boat. And she just couldn't face the journey.

"He took the boat to cross but I was afraid," she said. "I wept and was angry. ... He said: 'Come, you are crazy, it's for the future of our children,' and he left."

That was five months ago, the last time she saw her children. As time went by, their absence bolstered her courage.

"I couldn't bear it any more. I took the boat and I came," she said. "For my children, my heart made me cross the sea."

She traveled with others in her extended family, including her brother Abdel Haqim Adeen, who sold a field he owned to finance their journey and pay the smugglers. They made it across Greece and as far as the Macedonian border before authorities suddenly closed it.

Now Adeen and her relatives pass the days in a field near the small village of Idomeni, where the refugee camp reached capacity long ago, crammed with thousands of people stuck just like them. They pitched their small tents near each other to create a small family compound. Days of relentless rain turned their little courtyard into a morass of squelching mud, and they struggle to warm themselves by a small campfire.

In Berlin, some 1,800 kilometers (1,110 miles) away, Adeen's husband, Nahrouz Ramadan, can only wait at the shelter and try to console his young children, Mustafa, Nerjis, Nazdar and Masaoud, all under the age of 9.

"The children miss their mother a lot," he said. "They sleep very badly and cry all the time; they want their mother back. I've tried to calm them down and play with them. I send them to school and look after them. But they long for their mother."

Adeen mailed Ramadan her passport from the Macedonian border in case anything happens to either of them, and he looks at it all the time with the children, who like to kiss it. He tries to talk with his wife every day by phone, but it's expensive using prepaid phone cards at 10 euros apiece.

"The cards last for five or six minutes, then the conversation's over," he said.

Adeen is pinning her hopes on family reunification, a process where refugees who reached European countries as asylum seekers can apply for permission for their relatives to join them.

But even applying for asylum, let alone family reunification, is a bureaucratic quagmire which can take months or even years.

Last month, the German Parliament approved a package of measures meant to speed up handling migrants and cut the number of newcomers  including a switch that means some Syrians may have to wait longer to bring relatives to Germany. Refugees who didn't face "immediate personal persecution" won't be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years. That would apply to people who receive "subsidiary protection"  a status that falls short of formal asylum.

Ramadan has his hands full with the children and hasn't yet managed to complete the paperwork for the asylum process.

"They say reunification will happen but it could take a year or two years," says Adeen. "I can't wait a year, two years. I would die."

She worries that the children are hungry, cold and sick. Most of all she worries about Mustafa, the youngest, who is still in diapers and has a rash that has spread to his cheeks.

"My children, even in Germany, are sick and crying," she says, flipping through photographs of the children and her husband in their new lives in Berlin. When they talk on the phone they cry and tell her they miss her, she says, breaking down in tears herself.

"I love my children. This is my greatest punishment. It's beyond my control. My breath is my children," Adeen says, burying her face in her hands as tears roll down her cheeks.

"Every day I am dying 10, 20, 30 times."

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Khaled Kazziha, in Idomeni, Greece, and Geir Moulson and Kerstin Sopke in Berlin contributed to this report.

In this March 15, 2016 picture, Nahrouz Ramadan and his for children Mustafa, in his arms, Nazdar, right, Nerjis, second right, and Masaoud, center, walk to an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Germany. His wife, Layla Ali Kamal Adeen, a 39-year-old Syrian, is stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In this picture taken on March 10, 2016, 39-year-old Layla Ali Kamal Adeen shows a photo of her 2-year-old son Mustafa from her tent in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece.Her children are in Germany, safe in a refugee camp with their father, but for their mother, stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

In this March 15, 2016 picture Nahrouz Ramadan poses with his four children from left: Nazdar, Mustafa, Nerjis and Masaoud, prior to an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Germany.. His wife, Layla Ali Kamal Adeen, a 39-year-old Syrian, is stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In this picture taken on March 10, 2016, 39-year-old Layla Ali Kamal Adeen sits in her tent in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece. Her children are in Germany, safe in a refugee camp with their father, but for their mother, stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

In this March 15, 2016 picture Nahrouz Ramadan holds his son Mustafa, prior to an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Germany. His wife, Layla Ali Kamal Adeen, a 39-year-old Syrian, is stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In this picture taken on March 10, 2016, 39-year-old Layla Ali Kamal Adeen shows a photo of her husband, Nahrouz Ramadan and children from her tent in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece.Her children are in Germany, safe in a refugee camp with their father, but for their mother, stuck in an increasingly fetid, overflowing camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, the separation and the uncertainty of when _ or if _ she will see her children again is unbearable.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Woman wants deposition order tossed in Rolling Stone suit

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP)  A young woman at the center of a debunked article in Rolling Stone magazine about a campus gang rape at the University of Virginia is resisting a subpoena in a school administrator's defamation lawsuit.

The Daily Progress (http://bit.ly/1Vj1eUm ) reports that attorneys for the woman identified only as "Jackie" filed a motion in federal court this week asking the court to throw out a deposition subpoena. The judge had ordered her to turn over her communications with the magazine and author and submit to a deposition.

University administrator Nicole Eramo sued the magazine and the author, saying the article cast Eramo as "chief villain." The article was about a student called "Jackie" who claimed she was raped by seven men in a fraternity initiation. The magazine later retracted the article.

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Afghan Taliban leader rallies supporters, calls for unity

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  The leader of the Afghan Taliban on Friday called on followers to end divisions and rally behind him in the battle against the Kabul government as authorities step up the fight against the 15-year-old insurgency.

In a message distributed to media, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor claimed the Taliban were winning the war and were "in a better state than at any other time."

The Taliban were toppled in the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The insurgency has escalated since the end in 2014 of the U.S.-NATO combat mission left inexperienced Afghan forces to battle the insurgents largely on their own.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2016 photo, Afghan security forces look at a Taliban mark on the wall in one of their captured centers, following weeks of heavy clashes to reclaim an area from Taliban militants in Dand-e Ghouri district in Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini, File)

As the Taliban launched their annual warm-weather offensive last year, the government responded with large-scale military operations. Ferocious battles have raged in the militants' southern heartland of Helmand province and elsewhere.

Separately, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had been hoping to revive a stalled peace process with face-to-face talks earlier this month with Taliban representatives. The Taliban issued a statement last week saying they would not participate.

Referring to Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate, Mansoor said that all efforts must be made to reunite the Taliban, split since last summer when they admitted that their founder and leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been dead for more than two years.

Mansoor, previously Mullah Omar's deputy, took over amid much controversy and rifts soon emerged, leading to infighting that has damaged the united Taliban front they had cultivated for so long. Much of the infighting is over control of lucrative smuggling routes through to Pakistan for drugs, minerals, arms and men.
A British play about love turns its attention to America

NEW YORK (AP)  As a playwright, Lucy Prebble isn't frightened of going into big, scary places. She's already delved into pedophilia and stock-market bubbles. Now she's going after love.

Prebble's play "The Effect" makes its American debut this month at the Barrow Street Theatre. To write it, Prebble spent years trying to understand the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific underpinnings of love.

"I'm really interested in things that people tell me are hard to understand. I suppose there's a slightly childish part of me that says, 'Well, I'm going to try to understand it,'" she said. "I look at making a play as an opportunity to learn something as well as feel something."

This undated image released by DKC/O&M shows director David Cromer, left and playwright Lucy Prebble. Prebbles "The Effect," about two young people who become romantic during a clinical trial for a new anti-depressant, makes its American debut this month at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York. (Matthew Murphy/DKC/O&M via AP)

"The Effect" follows two young people who become romantic during a clinical trial for a new antidepressant. They can't be sure if their relationship is true or if they're just enjoying elevated dopamine levels.

"What really drew me to this subject matter was looking at love. The more I thought about love and the more I looked into what it was, the more you have to be faced with science," said Prebble, who wrote the plays "The Sugar Syndrome" and "Enron," as well as the cable series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl."

The director is David Cromer. He first met Prebble a year ago over dinner in London, calling her generous, patient and "the least precious playwright I've ever worked with."

He said the new play, which won the 2012 UK Critics' Circle award for best new play, sits at the intersection of heart and science. "It's a crystallization of theater and it's also a way to examine, one step removed, all that happens when we're falling in love," Cromer said.

The play is co-produced by the Royal National Theatre and marks the first time the British theatrical powerhouse has ventured off-Broadway. It is also being produced by Jean Doumanian Productions and Barrow Street Theatre.

The National Theatre has had success transferring to Broadway such hits as "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," ''One Man, Two Guvnors" and "War Horse." They mounted "The Effect" three years ago.

Tim Levy, who heads up the National Theatre in North America, said he's interested in exploring different ways of collaborating, producing and partnering across the Atlantic.

"For quite a while, we would have a show and it would either go to Broadway or nothing at all. I think the idea that we could actually bring a play like this, which is quite an intimate piece, off-Broadway is something we're really into at the moment," he said.

Doumanian, who also has produced "The Flick," ''Our Town" and "Every Brilliant Thing" at the Barrow Street Theatre, has long admired the National Theatre and said collaborating made sense.

"It's what theater's about, isn't it? It's discovering new things and making connections," the Tony Award-winning producer said.

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Online:

http://www.barrowstreettheatre.com

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Germany: ex-foreign minister Guido Westerwelle dies at 54

BERLIN (AP)  Guido Westerwelle, a former German foreign minister who strongly advocated a "culture of military restraint" and shunned NATO's military intervention in Libya in 2011, died Friday. He was 54.

Westerwelle was diagnosed in June 2014 with acute leukemia. His Westerwelle Foundation said on its website that he died at a Cologne hospital Friday of complications related to his treatment. Alexander Vogel, the head of Westerwelle's office at the foundation, confirmed the death.

Westerwelle became foreign minister and Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy in 2009 after leading his pro-business Free Democratic Party  post-war Germany's traditional kingmaker  to its best-ever election result and ending an 11-year spell in opposition.

FILE - In this April 8, 2013 file photo then German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, speaks during a joint press conference at the Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany. His foundation confirmed Friday, March 18, 2016 that Westerwelle has died. He was 54. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

A skilled party politician and opposition leader, Westerwelle wooed voters with pledges of big tax cuts. But he was unable to push those through after entering Merkel's government, and his party's popularity slumped as it was blamed for frequent coalition infighting.

Even as Germany showed an increasing willingness to exert its financial clout as Europe struggled through its debt crisis, Westerwelle reinforced the country's traditional reluctance to be drawn into military deployments abroad.

In 2011, Germany decided against taking part in NATO's military campaign in Libya and also abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote that authorized the mission  a move that set it against its traditional Western allies.

While there was little appetite at home for engaging in military action, and turmoil in the years after dictator Moammar Gadhafi's overthrow offered ammunition to critics of NATO's limited campaign of airstrikes, Germany's diplomatic handling of the matter prompted widespread criticism. Still, Westerwelle wasn't deflected from his approach.

"The culture of military restraint is more timely than ever," he said in 2012. "I am concerned about a neo-bellicism which awakens the impression that it is possible for military interventions to be faster, more effective and 'surgical,' or without civilian victims."

During Westerwelle's tenure, Germany participated in six-power talks with Iran, which shortly before he left office produced the interim deal that saw Tehran freeze or curb various nuclear activities in return for a limited easing of sanctions.

In Europe, Westerwelle supported Merkel's austerity-heavy approach to tackling the continent's debt crisis, though he voiced concern about the nastiness of some politicians' rhetoric on both sides of the argument. "The tone of the debate is very dangerous," he said at the height of the crisis in 2012. "We must take care not to talk Europe down."

Westerwelle became the Free Democrats' leader in 2001 and sought to freshen their stuffy image. Still, a much-mocked 2002 election campaign in which he toured Germany in a bright yellow bus dubbed the "Guidomobil" ended with poor results for the party, and he subsequently cultivated a more sober, statesmanlike image.

Westerwelle publicly came out as gay in 2004, when he brought his partner, Michael Mronz, to Merkel's 50th birthday party. "I have never lived my life in the closet  I just didn't put in the shop window, I lived it normally," he later said.

Westerwelle's tenure as party leader and vice chancellor ended in early 2011, though he remained foreign minister. He quit the party job following a string of dismal regional election results. Successor Philipp Roesler failed to turn around the Free Democrats' fortunes and they were voted out of Parliament for the first time in 2013.

After leaving government, Westerwelle set up the Westerwelle Foundation, an institution that aims to strengthen democracy by promoting economic development.

In November, Westerwelle presented a book on his experience after his leukemia diagnosis, titled "Between Two Lives."

The current foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Westerwelle "stands for an open, liberal Germany" and was "a true patriot."

"Guido Westerwelle was always a fighter, including in his last battle, which he lost today," Steinmeier said.

FILE - The Jan. 17, 2013 file photo shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, of the Christian Democratic party and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, right, of the Liberal Democratic Party FDP talk during a meeting of the German federal parliament, Bundestag, in Berlin. His foundation confirmed Friday, March 18, 2016 that Westerwelle has died. He was 54. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)

FILE - In this May 8, 2013 file photo German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany. His foundation confirmed Friday, March 18, 2016 that Westerwelle has died. He was 54. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
The Latest: Jury awards Hulk Hogan $115M in Gawker lawsuit

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  The Latest on the trial of wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the New York-based website Gawker (all times local):

7 p.m.:

A jury has sided with ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and awarded him $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media.

Hulk Hogan talks with his attorneys before the start of his trial Thursday, March 17, 2016, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, and his attorneys are suing Gawker Media for $100 million, saying his privacy was violated, and he suffered emotional distress after Gawker posted a sex tape of Hogan and his then-best friend's wife. (Dirk Shadd/The Tampa Bay Times via AP, Pool)

The jurors reached the decision Friday evening, less than six hours after they began deliberations. The trial lasted two weeks.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend's wife. Hogan contended it was a violation of his privacy.

Gawker's editors contended the video and an accompanying post was a newsworthy commentary on the ordinariness of celebrity sex videos.

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1:05 p.m.:

Jurors have begun deliberating in the civil trial of pro wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker media over a sex video.

Lawyers for both Hogan and Gawker gave closing arguments on Friday morning.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, is suing Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend's wife. Hogan contends it was a violation of his privacy.

Gawker's editors contend the video and an accompanying post was a newsworthy commentary on the ordinariness of celebrity sex videos.

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11:15 a.m.:

Lawyers for Gawker Media have started their closing arguments in the civil trial of pro wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker media over a sex video.

Gawker's attorneys told the jury that the video is "not like a real celebrity sex tape" and urged them to watch the video, which contains nine seconds of sexual content.

Hogan's attorneys told jurors that the core of the case is that "Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape . and put it on the Internet."

They said Hogan didn't consent to the video, that Gawker didn't follow usual journalism procedures before posting it, and that the video wasn't newsworthy. Hogan didn't ask for this to happen, lawyer Kenneth Turkel said.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, is suing Gawker for $100 million.

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9:30 a.m.

Closing arguments have begun in the civil trial between pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and Gawker media over a sex video.

Hogan's attorneys presented their arguments first, saying that Hogan didn't consent to the video. They said Gawker did not follow usual journalism procedures before posting the video because they didn't call Hogan for comment.

Lawyers for Gawker will presents closing arguments afterward.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, is suing Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend's wife. Hogan contends it was a violation of his privacy.

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Closing arguments are expected to begin in former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media over a sex tape.

Court resumes at 9 a.m. Friday after Judge Pamela Campbell sent jurors home early Thursday while lawyers for Hogan, Gawker and media companies discussed evidence issues.

On Thursday, the Second District Court of Appeals in Lakeland, Florida, ruled that sealed documents in the case are public records and should be available to the public and the media.

Attorneys for media companies including The Associated Press were seeking to have the files unsealed.

Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, is suing Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend's wife. Hogan contends it was a violation of his privacy.

Hulk Hogan sits in court before the start of his trial Thursday, March 17, 2016, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, and his attorneys are suing Gawker Media for $100 million, saying his privacy was violated, and he suffered emotional distress after Gawker posted a sex tape of Hogan and his then-best friend's wife. (Dirk Shadd/The Tampa Bay Times via AP, Pool)
The Latest: UN envoy says Syria talks to continue Monday

BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on the conflict in Syria as U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva carry on into their fifth day (all times local):

8:40 p.m.

The U.N. envoy for Syria says an upcoming meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could be "crucial" to help move the Syria peace talks toward a political transition in the country after five years of devastating civil war.

Syrian chief negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari, 2nd left, Ambassador of the Permanent Representative Mission of the Syria to UN New York, and UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria Staffan de Mistura, 2nd right, attend a round of negotiations between the Syrian government and U.N., at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 18, 2016. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/pool photo via AP)

Friday's remarks by Staffan de Mistura came at the end of the first week of Syria peace talks that resumed in Geneva. Kerry is expected in Moscow next week.

He says that he has given both sides homework for the weekend and that when talks continue on Monday, he will strive to reach a "minimum" platform between the government and the opposition teams.

He says the purpose is to create a "better understanding" of how to proceed toward a political transition for Syria. De Mistura says he plans three additional rounds of talks, after which "we need to see concrete results."

He urged the Syrian government to put forward a "paper" on transition, saying the opposition had already presented one.

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6:45 p.m.

The head of the Syrian opposition delegation at the Geneva peace talks says his side is focused on achieving a "transitional governing body with full executive powers" for Syria.

Asaad al-Zoubi told reporters after meeting the U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura on Friday that the opposition remains committed to the goals of the uprising against President Bashar Assad.

Al-Zoubi also commemorated the deaths of the first Syrians in the war that erupted as peaceful protests erupted against Assad five years ago. Five people were killed by government forces in the southern city of Daraa on March 18, 2011.

He added that hopefully, by the sixth anniversary of the war "Syria would have gone from destruction to reconstruction."

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6:30 p.m.

The U.N. food assistance agency is exploring use of different aircraft and parachute systems to try to airdrop food into a Syrian city surrounded by the extremist Islamic State group after a previous airdrop largely failed.

World Food Program spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said on Friday that practice drops are underway in Jordan. She says WFP is speaking with partners inside the Syrian city of Deir el-Zour to try to improve drop-zone conditions.

U.N. officials have said food on pallets missed targets or was destroyed when parachutes didn't open in an airdrop last month aimed for the city of 200,000 people.

The U.N. says convoys have delivered aid to 260,000 people in besieged or hard-to-reach areas in recent weeks. On Thursday, food, sanitation items and supplies to help 60,000 people reached four towns.

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5:55 p.m.

The Syrian government side is saying little about how the peace talks in Geneva, now in their fifth day, are progressing.

Bashar Ja'afari, the head of the government team and Syria's U.N. ambassador, says Friday's round was "useful" and focused on "fundamental principles" for a solution to the Syrian conflict that his side had presented.

He declined to respond to questions from reporters after emerging from two-an-a-half-hour discussions with U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura.

Earlier, the opposition said the government is "procrastinating" and not engaging in serious negotiations.

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4 p.m.

Russia's Defense Ministry says its warplanes in Syria are flying in support of the Syrian army's offensive to try recapture ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group.

Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi says Russian aircraft based in Syria are conducting 20-25 sorties a day in support of the Syrian military's offensive.

That's despite a Russian drawdown in Syria that President Vladimir Putin ordered this week in support of the Geneva talks.

Rudskoi told reporters in Moscow on Friday that the Syrian army has seized key hilltop points near Palmyra and has cut supply routes leading to the IS-held city. He says the Syrian army is close to taking control of the city from the Islamic State group.

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2:30 p.m.

The spokesman for the main Syrian opposition delegation at the indirect peace talks in Geneva has accused the Damascus government of "procrastinating" and not engaging fully in the negotiations.

Salem Al Meslet of the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee says Syrian President Bashar Assad's negotiators are not serious about the indirect talks and refused to negotiate with the opposition.

The U.N. special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is hosting separate talks with the HNC and the Syrian government team on Friday in Geneva, where negotiations got under way this week to try end the five-year war.

Al Meslet also says Syrian refugees would eventually return home, once the government stops bombing and killing civilians.

He expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin would stop supporting Assad and stand with the Syrian people.
Venezuelan leader flies to Cuba ahead of Obama visit

HAVANA (AP)  Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba on Friday for a day of high-level meetings and ceremonies that appeared designed to send a message of socialist solidarity two days before Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. president to visit the island in nearly 90 years.

Maduro was accompanied by his ministers of foreign affairs, agriculture, health, petroleum and mining and communications. Communications Minister Luis Jose Marcano told Venezuelan state television that the two governments would agree on new cooperation in pharmaceutical production, urban agriculture, industrial development and tourism.

Later in the day, Maduro received the Order of Jose Marti, one of Cuba's highest honors.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, right, is received by Cuba's Vice President Miguel Diaz Canel upon arrival to Jose Marti International airport in Havana, Cuba, late Thursday, March 17, 2016. (Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate via AP)

Venezuela has been sending hundreds of millions of dollars in oil to Cuba each year in exchange for Cuba sending teams of doctors and other state workers to bolster Venezuelan government efforts. Some of that aid has been cut back as Venezuela struggles with a deep economic crisis. Venezuela's relations with the U.S. remain tense even as Cuba works with the Obama administration to normalize ties.

Cuba has made repeated public statements about maintaining its close ties with Venezuela even as President Raul Castro's government moves closer to the United States.

"We have big differences with the United States because of our emphatic, unlimited, complete solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the military-civilian union of its people," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told reporters Thursday afternoon in a press conference previewing Obama's trip to Cuba.

Maduro's visit was announced shortly afterward.

____

Fabiola Sanchez contributed from Venezuela.

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PICTURED: Editor selections from the Middle East

Here are the highlights from the weekly AP photo report from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan  a selection of news, fashion and daily life photos from the region you might have missed.

This week's gallery features a Palestinian teacher winning a $1m global award in the United Arab Emirates and Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie visiting refugee camps in Lebanon. The visit by Jolie, who is also a special envoy for the U.N. on refugee issues, came on the fifth anniversary of the war in Syria.

From Iraq, there is ballet dancing, a fashion show, and a pre-Christian sect celebrating the creation of the world on the banks of Tigris.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2016 photo, Afghan security forces look at a Taliban mark on the wall in one of their captured centers, following weeks of heavy clashes to reclaim an area from Taliban militants in Dand-e Ghouri district in Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini, File)

In Egypt and Iran, Muslims commemorated the birthday of a Sayeda Nafisa, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and the death of Fatima, his daughter. In Israel, AP witnessed an Ultra-Orthodox wedding and a reenactment of medieval life.

And finally, rainy weather visited Pakistan and Gaza.

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This gallery contains photos published March 12-March 18, 2016.

See the latest AP photo galleries: http://apne.ws/TXeCBN

The Archive: Top photo highlights from previous weeks: http://apne.ws/13QUFKJ

___

Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP/lists/ap-photographers

Follow AP Images on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Images

Visit AP Images online: http://www.apimages.com

See the AP Images blog: http://blog.apimages.com/

___

This gallery was curated by photographer Mosa'ab Elshamy. Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mosaaberizing

file - In this Sunday, March 13, 2016 photo, finalists listen to Palestinian primary school teacher Hanan al-Hroub speak after she won the second annual Global Teacher Prize, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Al-Hroub who encourages students to renounce violence won a $1 million prize for teaching excellence. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

FILE - In this Friday, March 11, 2016 photo, Israeli members of a knights club, a historical reenactment group, wear medieval costumes as they march 10 kilometers at the Judaea desert between Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Jericho. Some 20 history buffs took part in the three day experience reliving medieval life between the 12th and 14th century. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 17, 2016 photo, Iraqi Sabean Mandaeans pray as they stand in the Tigris River during Eid Al-Khaiqeh (creation of the world), marked during the spring by this pre-Christian sect on the banks of the Tigris River, in Baghdad. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, their numbers in Iraq have dwindled due to a rise in religious extremism and sectarian violence. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

FILE - In this Monday, March 14, 2016 photo, Saleem Jan directs his horse to perform in an attempt to attract people visiting Clifton beach in Karachi, Pakistan. Jan earns his living by providing the horse ride to customers visiting a beach. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 15, 2016. photo, U.S. actress Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, waves to Syrian children during a press conference during her visit to a Syrian refugee camp, in the eastern city of Zahleh, Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

FILE - In this Saturday, March 12, 2016 photo, a model presents a creation by Iraqi designer Zead al-Athary during a fashion show at Basra International Hotel in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani, File)

FILE - In this Monday, March 14, 2016 photo, Egyptians walk past a currency exchange office in Cairo, Egypt. Egypts central bank said it will take a more flexible approach to the exchange rate after it devalued the pound to 8.85 per U.S. dollar from a previous 7.73 on Monday, which was aimed at alleviating a foreign currency shortage that has fueled a black market and crippled businesses. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 10, 2016 photo, an Israeli girl, the daughter of a knights club member, a historical reenactment group, wears a medieval costume before marching 10 kilometers at the Judaea desert between Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Jericho. Some 20 history buffs took part in the three day experience reliving medieval life between the 12th and 14th century. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 17, 2016 photo, people visit the al-Malwiya minaret at the Al-Mutawakkil Mosque in Samarra, 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 16, 2016 photo, a Muslim man performs Zikr, or remembrance of god, as he celebrates a Moulid, which commemorates the birth of Sayeda Nafisa, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hasan, in front of the mosque named after her, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

FILE - In this Friday, March 11, 2016 photo, young victims exposed to a chemical attack wait for treatment at a hospital in Taza, 10 miles (20 kilometers) south of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Islamic State group launched two chemical attacks near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing a three-year-old girl, wounding some 600 people and causing hundreds more to flee, Iraqi officials said Saturday. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, March 13, 2016 photo, Syrian refugee girl Amna Zughayar, 9, from Deir el-Zour, Syria, poses for a picture at an informal tented settlement near the Syrian border on the outskirts of Mafraq, Jordan. About half of the 4.8 million Syrians who fled their homeland are children, and some of the most vulnerable live in dozens of makeshift tent camps, including Jordan, which has taken in close to 640,000 refugees. Children in these camps near the northern city of Mafraq say they miss their old lives in Syria, especially going to school. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 16, 2016 photo, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish bride enters to the men's section of the wedding, to fulfill the Mitzvah tantz, in which family members and honored rabbis are invited to dance in front of the bride, often holding a gartel, and then dancing with the groom, during her wedding to the grandson of the Rabbi of the Tzanz Hasidic dynasty community, in Netanya, Israel. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

Fans visit a collection titled "Heat" of Peruvian fashion and portrait photographer Mario Testino during the opening day of the Dubai Photo Exhibition at the Design District in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 16, 2016. Dubai Photo Exhibition presents more than 700 museum-quality artworks by 129 photographers, including very early photographic experiments by pioneer Hippolyte Bayard, iconic images from 20th century masters like Bill Brandt and Dorothea Lange, and creative contemporary artworks by emerging and established photographers from around the world. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

FILE - In this Monday, March 8, 2016, photo, Massa Ibrahim prepares for ballet class at the Baghdad School of Music and Ballet in the Iraqi capital. As Iraq's financial crisis deepens, institutions like Baghdad's only music and ballet school are some of the first places feeling the squeeze. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, file)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 16, 2016 photo, seagulls fly during a rainstorm over the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, March 13, 2016 photo, Iranian women pay their respects during a ceremony commemorating the death of Fatima, the daughter of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, in Tehran, Iran. Iranians commemorated the death anniversary of Fatima who was the wife of Ali, the Shiites first Imam, during nationwide gatherings in the Shiite-dominated country. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - In this Monday, March 14, 2016 photo, Israeli Antiquities Authority official Donald T. Ariel holds a rare, nearly 2,000-year-old gold coin, at the Antiquities Authority office inside the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Israel's Antiquities Authority says a hiker has found a rare, nearly 2,000-year-old gold coin. The authority said Monday that the ancient coin appears to be only the second of its kind to have been found. It said London's British Museum possesses the other coin. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 17, 2016 photo, Afghan artists re-enact the mob murder of Farkhunda Malikzada, 27, an Afghan woman who was beaten to death on March 19, 2015 after being falsely accused of burning a copy of the Quran, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The performance marked the inauguration of a memorial monument built in her honor at the site of her murder. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)

FILE - In this Saturday, March 12, 2016 photo, a Palestinian man checks a bedroom damaged by an early morning Israeli airstrike, which killed a 10 year-old boy, Yassin Abu Khousa, in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

FILE - In this Monday, March 14, 2016 photo, a Bahraini anti-government protester watches for riot police during clashes in Daih, Bahrain. Bahraini police detained a political activist and her year-old son on Monday in an operation that came on the fifth anniversary of Saudi and Emirati soldiers putting down Arab Spring-inspired protests in the tiny island kingdom. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, March 17, 2016 photo, a Pakistani street vendor selling nuts and dried fruit waits for customers, in Karachi, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 15, 2016 photo, relatives mourn over the body of Qasim Jaber who was shot and killed together with Ameer Junaidi during their funeral in the West Bank city of Hebron. The two were killed Monday by Israeli troops after opening fire near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, Israeli military said. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed. File)
Sarkozy condemns Ivory Coast attackers as 'barbarians'

GRAND-BASSAM, Ivory Coast (AP)  Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has condemned the perpetrators of an assault on a beach town in Ivory Coast as cowardly "barbarians."

Visiting Ivory Coast on Friday, Sarkozy placed flowers at a memorial at the hotel Etoile du Sud, one of several sites attacked on Sunday in the town of Grand-Bassam that left 19 dead, in addition to three gunmen.

In brief remarks, Sarkozy said Ivory Coast was targeted because it's a democracy where Muslims and Christians co-exist peacefully.

Sarkozy is a divisive figure in Ivory Coast, having led France during its military intervention in Ivory Coast's post-election violence in 2011 that brought President Alassane Ouattara to power.
11 Cuban migrants detained on tiny island near Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Authorities in Puerto Rico have detained 11 Cuban migrants on a tiny island west of the U.S. territory.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Friday that the 10 men and one woman were found on Mona Island. The group is expected to appear before an immigration judge soon.

Cubans are increasingly leaving their island nation amid fears they could soon lose a special status that allows them to pursue citizenship if they reach U.S. soil.
US lawyer: Jailed Washington woman to be freed in Mexico

SEATTLE (AP)  A Seattle attorney representing a community police leader who has been jailed in Mexico says she is expected to be released from prison Friday.

Thomas Antkowiak says courts in Mexico cleared Nestora Salgado of remaining charges Thursday night and ordered her freed.

Salgado is a resident of the Seattle suburb of Renton who returned to her native Mexico and led a vigilante-style  but legal  community police force, which mounted patrols to protect residents from corruption and organized crime.

Salgado was arrested in August 2013 after people detained by her group said they had been kidnapped. A federal judge cleared her of those charges, but a related state case has kept her imprisoned.
Jailed community leader freed in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP)  A woman who returned to Mexico from Seattle to lead a community police force was freed from prison on Friday after courts threw out charges of homicide and kidnapping.

The case of Nestora Salgado has become a rallying point for activists who say the vigilante-like community groups that have sprung up across rural Mexico are cracking down on crimes ignored or fostered by corrupt government police forces.

"My only crime was defending the poor and the voiceless," she said after her release. Accompanied by relatives and supporters Salgado waved what appeared to be an air-rifle and said "If needed we will even use this, but we won't allow ourselves to be walked over."

Community police force leader Nestora Salgado, waves from inside a bus as she leaves the Tepepan prison after courts threw out charges of homicide and kidnapping in Mexico City, Friday, March 18, 2016. Salgado, who has dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship, returned to Mexico in 2004 and joined one of the community police forces in Olinala, a town about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Mexico City. While legal, the community police forces have often had a troubled relationship with state and federal authorities. She was arrested in August 2013 after people who had been detained by the force filed a complaint of kidnapping. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Salgado donned a green t-shirt with the symbol of her community police force in the town of Olinala, about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Mexico City. It's in Guerrero state, one of the most violent regions off Mexico.

Salgado, who has dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship, returned to Mexico in 2004 and joined one of the community police forces which, while legal, have often had a troubled relationship with state and federal authorities.

She said at a news conference after her release that she planned to return to the United States for medical treatment, but would eventually return to Olinala to continue with her activism.

She said she planned a new campaign to win the release of other imprisoned vigilante leaders and people she described as "political prisoners."

She was arrested in August 2013 after people who had been detained by the force filed a complaint of kidnapping. A federal judge dismissed those charges, but related state charges had kept her behind bars.

Salgado was cleared of remaining charges Thursday.

"This has been the result of the effort of so many people working for Nestora, both in the U.S. and Mexico," said Thomas Antkowiak, who directs the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University School of Law. "We're completely overjoyed that the family will be reunited and Nestora will come home."
Lithuania's FM warns Europe losing info war with Russia

BERLIN (AP)  Europe is engaged in an information war with Russia and it is losing, Lithuania's foreign minister said Friday.

Linas Linkevicius said the media had become as much of a battlefield for Russia as cyberspace and energy policy.

"This is an information war and we are losing this war," he told a conference hosted by the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

Linkevicius urged European governments not to underestimated Moscow's efforts to spread disinformation, which he described as far more professional than Soviet-era propaganda campaigns.

The European Union established a strategic communications task force last year to monitor and respond to disinformation in eastern Europe.

Jakub Kalensky, a representative for the EU task force, cited a sharp rise in negative reports about migrants as an example of the way Moscow seeks to promote its political ends through Kremlin-friendly TV stations and websites.

"Right now we do actually see that it's the refugee crisis and it can be seen that Germany and particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel is sort of a target number one for the pro-Kremlin media," he said.

Kalensky said it was important to distinguish between Russian government-backed media and independent Russian-language outlets in the country and abroad.

"We prefer the word pro-Kremlin to the word pro-Russian because very often we see that actions of the regime are identified with actions of the Russian state as a whole," Kalensky said.

NATO, too, created a strategic communications center two years ago to study what the alliance described as "Russia's information campaign against Ukraine."

Col. Aivar Jaeski, the NATO center's deputy director, said its mission was to analyze rather than actively respond to disinformation.

He acknowledged that the approach puts NATO at a disadvantage.
The Latest: Pianist mourns death of daughters

BENBROOK, Texas (AP)  The Latest on the slaying of two daughters of concert pianist Vadym Kholodenko: (all times local):

7:20 p.m.

An award-winning concert pianist who found his two daughters slain in their beds when he arrived at his estranged wife's home in Texas says the "loss of my children will be with me forever."

File - In this June 9, 2013 file photo, Vadym Kholodenko of Ukraine performs a concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra during finals in the 14th Van Cliburn international piano competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say the two daughters of Kholodenko have been found slain in their Texas home and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds. Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday, March 18, 2016 that Kholodenko is cooperating with investigators and that no one has been arrested in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika and 1-year-old Michela. (Ron T. Ennis/ The Fort Worth Star-Telegram,via AP Photo, File)

In a statement released Friday evening, Vadym Kholodenko (vuh-DEEM' koh-loh-DEN'-koh) says he's grateful for the support he's received and that "wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil."

Authorities say Kholodenko, who won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth in 2013, is not a suspect.

Investigators say the girl's mother, Sofya Tsygankova, who suffered knife wounds, faces a mental health exam.

Police have declined to say if Tsygankova is a suspect in the girls' deaths.

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10:45 a.m.

Police say an award-winning concert pianist arrived at his estranged wife's home to pick up their two daughters and found the girls slain in their beds.

Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday that Vadym Kholodenko (vuh-DEEM' koh-loh-DEN'-koh) is not a suspect and that his spouse, who's being treated for multiple stab wounds, faces a mental health evaluation.

Kholodenko won the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth. Court records show the couple married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November.

Kholodenko stopped Thursday morning to pick up 5-year-old Nika and 1-year-old Michela. Babcock says he found his wife, Sofya Tsygankova, in an "extreme state of distress" and discovered the dead girls. Kholodenko called 911.

Police declined to say how Tsygankova sustained the knife wounds, which are not believed to be life-threatening. Officers are not searching for a suspect in the wounding or the two deaths.

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10 a.m.

Police say the two daughters of an award-winning concert pianist have been found slain in their Texas home and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds.

Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday that Vadym Kholodenko (vuh-DEEM' koh-loh-DEN'-koh) is cooperating with investigators and that no one has been arrested in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika and 1-year-old Michela.

Babcock says the wife, Sofya Tsygankova, is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. He provided no information on how the children died.

Babcock declined to say who called 911 Thursday to summon officers to the Fort Worth-area home where Tsygankova lived with the two girls. There were no signs of forced entry.
Sanders says Clinton does not have 'insurmountable lead'

WASHINGTON (AP)  Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he still maintains a "path toward victory" in his Democratic presidential bid against Hillary Clinton, rejecting suggestions that she has all but sewn up the party's nomination.

"I don't believe they have an insurmountable lead," Sanders said Thursday in a phone interview with The Associated Press from Arizona, where he was campaigning. "Secretary Clinton has done phenomenally well in the Deep South and in Florida. That's where she has gotten the lion's share of votes. And I congratulate her for that. But we're out of the Deep South now."

Clinton's campaign pointed to a recent memo by campaign manager Robby Mook, who suggested she has an "insurmountable lead" in the delegate count. The campaign noted its pledged delegate lead of more than 300 is nearly twice as large as any that then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama held over Clinton in the 2008 primary.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Tuesday, March 15, 2016. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

"And note Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada and Iowa are generally not considered Deep South," said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, referring to states won by the ex-secretary of state.

Sanders said in the interview he would not seek a recount of results in Tuesday's primary in Missouri, saying it was "unlikely the results will impact at all the number of delegates the candidate gets and I would prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money."

Clinton's win in Missouri means she won all five of Tuesday's Democratic primary contests, adding to victories in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina.

Clinton now has a lead of more than 300 pledged delegates over Sanders from the primaries and caucuses: 1,147-830. When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has a much bigger lead  1,614 to 856.

Sanders called his loss in Ohio a "major disappointment," adding, "I thought we had a chance to win or come close in Ohio and we didn't." But he said that while "we know we've got a hill to climb," he was pleased his campaign was able to accumulate more delegates and he had a strategy to take his campaign to the summer convention in Philadelphia.

He predicted the upcoming calendar of races in several Western states, including Arizona and Washington, and April contests in Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania would offer him the chance to catch up. Sanders' team has suggested a strong late showing might persuade superdelegates to abandon Clinton and support the senator's campaign.

"We think from now on out, we are having states that, everything being equal, we stand a chance to do well in. We think we have a path toward victory," he said. In the interview, he pointed to upcoming contests in Washington state, New York and California as states where he could cut into Clinton's delegate lead.

"If we can do well there, we can win a lot of delegates. And we can have momentum coming into the convention," he said.

Sanders also rejected claims by Clinton's allies that his message had turned overly negative in recent weeks.

"These are folks who have waged some very, very strong attacks against me almost every day," he said, pointing to Clinton's suggestion he didn't support the bailout of U.S. automakers or had attacked Planned Parenthood.

"We have never run a negative ad. But not to discuss Secretary Clinton's record, well, that's what a campaign is about. She can disagree with me on the issues. We will express our disagreements," he said.

Sanders said he fully expects the party to unite after the primaries. "I think every sensible person in this country knows that it would be an incredible disaster for the United States to allow a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to be president," he said.

"So I am fully confident that people will come together to defeat whomever the Republicans bring up," Sanders said.

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Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.

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Texas pianist finds 2 daughters dead, wife faces mental exam

DALLAS (AP)  An internationally renowned concert pianist arrived at his estranged wife's home in Texas to pick up their two daughters and found the girls slain in their beds, police said Friday. Authorities say their Russian mother, who had suffered knife wounds, faces a mental health exam.

Vadym Kholodenko stopped Thursday morning at the suburban Fort Worth home where he formerly lived to pick up Nika, 5, and 1-year-old Michela, Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said. The Ukrainian-born musician found his wife, Sofya Tsygankova, in an "extreme state of distress" and discovered the dead girls. The pianist then called 911, police said.

"The loss of my children will be with me forever. But I would like to say that I feel the support of the Fort Worth community and all people who are sending me messages all over the world," Kholodenko said in a statement released Friday evening.

File - In this June 9, 2013 file photo, Vadym Kholodenko of Ukraine performs a concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra during finals in the 14th Van Cliburn international piano competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say the two daughters of Kholodenko have been found slain in their Texas home and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds. Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday, March 18, 2016 that Kholodenko is cooperating with investigators and that no one has been arrested in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika and 1-year-old Michela. (Ron T. Ennis/ The Fort Worth Star-Telegram,via AP Photo, File)

Kholodenko, who won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth in 2013, is not a suspect and is cooperating with police, Babcock said. Police said no suspects were being sought in the deaths of the girls or the stabbing of Tsygankova, who was recovering Friday at a Fort Worth hospital.

Babcock, when asked, declined to say whether police believe the stab wounds were self-inflicted. Tsygankova was being held on a mental health evaluation, Babcock said. Asked if she was a suspect in the girls' deaths, he declined to say.

"We are still looking at all avenues," he said, but added that authorities don't believe there's any immediate risk to others in the area.

Autopsy results were pending on the children, who had no visible trauma, police said. Tsygankova's wounds were from a knife, said Babcock. He declined to say whether a knife was recovered at the home.

Kholodenko and his family moved to Fort Worth in 2014 after he won the $50,000-prize Cliburn competition, which resulted in Kholodenko touring and playing with major orchestras.

"The Cliburn family is mourning the loss of the precious Kholodenko girls. We are heartbroken and offer our prayers to Vadym and all affected by this overwhelming tragedy," said Maggie Estes, a spokeswoman for the Cliburn competition.

Hospital officials declined on Friday to release a condition on Tsygankova, who was born in Russia.

The couple had married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November, according to Tarrant County court records. Babcock said police had responded twice in 2014 to disturbance calls at the suburban Fort Worth residence but would not disclose details on the nature of the visits. Kholodenko routinely picked up the children from the home in the mornings, Babcock said.

Kholodenko and his wife told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2014 that the decision to move from Moscow to the U.S. was a combination of spontaneity and medical problems with Nika's skin.

"Nobody could help us with this problem, and we had a very hard time with her," Tsygankova told the newspaper. "We wanted to be together, with Vadym, to be a family, and for us, maybe it was the only choice for us to come here."

She told the newspaper she hoped to improve her English so she could teach kids in Fort Worth.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is named for the celebrated classical pianist and held every four years in Fort Worth. Cliburn died in 2013. Pianists audition around the world for the Cliburn competition, and finalists are picked to perform in Fort Worth. Kholodenko was among 30 finalists from 12 countries in 2013.

Kholodenko had been scheduled to perform this weekend with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Another soloist, Alessio Bax, was replacing him, the orchestra said.

In his statement, Kholodenko asked people going to the orchestra's concerts this weekend "to think of the music."

"Wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil," he said.

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Weber reported from Austin.

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Online:

http://vadymkholodenko.com/

In this May 2, 2014 photo, award-winning concert pianist Vadym Kholodenko, poses with his wife Sofya Tsygankova at the 2014 Cliburn Gala at Ridglea Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say the two daughters of Kholodenko have been found slain in their Texas home, Thursday, March 17, 2016, and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds. Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday that Kholodenko is not a suspect and that his spouse faces a mental health evaluation. (Richard W. Rodriguezl/Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

FILE - In this 2014 file photo, award-winning concert pianist Vadym Kholodenko, poses with his wife Sofya Tsygankova and daughters Nika, 4, and Michela, at their home in Fort Worth, Texas. Police say the two daughters of Kholodenko have been found slain in their Texas home, Thursday, March 17, 2016, and the musician's estranged wife is being treated for stab wounds. Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Friday that Kholodenko is not a suspect and that his spouse faces a mental health evaluation. (Joyce Marshall/Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Benbrook Police Commander David Babcock confirms at a press conference that Vadym Kholodenko, 2013 winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is not a suspect in the deaths of his two daughters and the stabbing of his wife Sofya Tsygankova, Friday, March 18, 2016, in Benbrook, Texas. (Paul Moseley /Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Benbrook Police Commander David Babcock confirms at a press conference that Vadym Kholodenko, 2013 winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is not a suspect in the deaths of his two daughters and the stabbing of his wife Sofya Tsygankova, Friday, March 18, 2016, in Benbrook, Texas. (Paul Moseley /Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
Only Trump can decide to curb aggressive campaign language

WASHINGTON (AP)  The security ring protecting Donald Trump includes Secret Service agents, his own private bodyguards, local police, sometimes even the Transportation Security Administration. But even that show of force has not halted disturbing episodes of violence. The only person who can stop Trump from egging on the brawling crowds is Trump himself.

His Secret Service detail is limited to keeping Trump safe and the venues where he speaks secure. Local law enforcement officers are there to keep the peace, along with private security hired either by the venues or Trump.

"The Secret Service is not the word police," said Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation, a union that represents Secret Service agents.

In this March 14, 2016, photo, Secret Service agents surround Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he greets supporters after speaking at a campaign event in Tampa, Fla. The security ring protecting Trump includes Secret Service agents, his own private bodyguards, local police, sometimes even the Transportation Security Administration. But even that show of force has not halted disturbing episodes of violence. The only person who can stop Trump from egging on the brawling crowds is Trump himself. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Trump denies that he contributes to the violence at events around the country, even though on Tuesday night he predicted "riots" and "a tremendous problem" if Republican leaders try to maneuver the nomination away from him. He has said at a rally he wished he could punch a protester in the face and longed for the days when someone who interrupted a rally would be "carried out on a stretcher."

"Our concern is overt acts of threats to our protected" officials, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy told Congress on Tuesday. "People have the right to voice their opinions, and it's for the host committee to decide whether or not that's disruptive to that event."

Agents with the campaign detail only advise campaign staff or a candidate about security concerns, Clancy said. The campaign, he added, generally decides whether a protester should be removed  something Trump usually does by saying, "Get'm outta here."

Clancy declined to discuss specific security plans for large rallies.

"There's a lot of give-and-take with all these events," Clancy said. "And there's no question, some of these events create more challenges for us."

In fact, New York police and the FBI are investigating a threatening letter sent Thursday to Trump's adult son Eric.

Trump asked for Secret Service protection in October as his popularity swelled, along with the crowds at his rallies. His federally funded security detail was put in place in early November. The Secret Service has declined to say how many agents have been assigned to protect Trump, citing security concerns.

Such protection is routinely afforded to candidates for president and vice president 120 days before an election. But past candidates, including President Barack Obama, have received protection far earlier. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton gets Secret Service protection as a former first lady, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was approved for a protective detail earlier this year.

Even before federal security protection, private security surrounded Trump during campaign events.

Through the end of January, his campaign reported paying about $170,000 for security, according to Federal Election Commission filings. That includes at least $55,000 to security firms and local police departments since Trump asked for Secret Service protection.

The campaign doesn't include the nearly $78,000 paid to Trump's personal security chief, Keith Schiller. The majority of that money the campaign reports as "pre-paid payroll."

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Trump cancelled a rally because of security concerns, a phalanx of uniformed local police, suit-clad officers and private security watched entry lines wrapped around the building and made periodic rounds throughout the venue as it filled with thousands of people.

Uniformed airport security screeners staffed metal detectors and inspected bags as people passed through. A handful of uniformed Secret Service officers and dozens of other police and security officers were also stationed outside and throughout the arena.

The audience, following instructions from an unidentified speaker on the public address system, routinely pointed out protesters to security officers and cheered their removal. At least one man, dressed in combat boots, camouflage pants and a matching Trump hat, appeared to scout the audience on his own and take pictures with his cellphone. He appeared to share the photos with a security official dressed in a suit and to point to various groups in the audience. Still, scuffles broke out around the arena after the rally was canceled.

Arnette Heintze, a retired senior Secret Service agent who now runs the corporate security firm Hillard Heintze, said he doesn't recall seeing such scenes in past campaigns that he had worked since the early 1980s.

He said there's surely a more tactful approach Trump could take than shouting to the crowd and security "get them out."

"It is entirely out the purview of the Secret Service to speak with the candidate about anything they are going to say or do at an event," Adler said. "They are not confidants. They are not speech writers."

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Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.

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Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

In this March 12, 2016, photo, Secret Service agents guard Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, on the stage after a man tried to breach the security buffer at his campaign event at the Wright Brothers Aero Hangar in Vandalia, Ohio. The security ring protecting Trump includes Secret Service agents, his own private bodyguards, local police, sometimes even the Transportation Security Administration. But even that show of force has not halted disturbing episodes of violence. The only person who can stop Trump from egging on the brawling crowds is Trump himself. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)
Violence at Trump events continues despite security layers

WASHINGTON (AP)  The security ring protecting Donald Trump includes Secret Service agents, his own private bodyguards, local police, sometimes even the Transportation Security Administration. But even that show of force has not halted episodes of violence.

The Republican front-runner's Secret Service detail is limited to keeping Trump safe and the venues where he speaks secure. Local law enforcement officers are there to keep the peace, along with private security hired by the venues or Trump.

Trump denies that he contributes to the violence at campaign events around the country, even though he has said he wished he could punch a protester in the face and longed for the days when someone who interrupted a rally would be "carried out on a stretcher."

FILE - In this Jan. 2, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, listens as his son Eric Trump speaks during a rally in Biloxi, Miss. A law enforcement official says New York City police and the FBI are investigating a threatening letter sent to the Manhattan apartment of Eric Trump. The official says the envelope sent to Eric Trump's apartment on Thursday, March 17, 2016 contained a suspicious white powder and a threatening letter. There were no injuries and the official said preliminary tests indicated that the white substance was not hazardous. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

The Secret Service has made clear its responsibility is not to rein Trump in.

"Our concern is overt acts of threats to our protected" officials, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy told Congress on Tuesday. Agents with the campaign detail only advise campaign staff or a candidate about security concerns, he said.

New York police and the FBI are investigating a threatening letter sent Thursday to Trump's adult son Eric.

Trump asked for Secret Service protection in October as his popularity swelled. His federally funded security detail was put in place in November. The Secret Service has declined to say how many agents have been assigned to protect Trump, citing security concerns.

Such protection is routinely afforded to candidates for president and vice president 120 days before an election. But past candidates, including President Barack Obama, have received protection far earlier. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton gets Secret Service protection as a former first lady.

Even before federal security protection, private security surrounded Trump during campaign events. Through the end of January, his campaign reported paying about $170,000 for security, according to Federal Election Commission filings. That includes at least $55,000 to security firms and local police departments since Trump asked for Secret Service protection.

The campaign doesn't include the nearly $78,000 paid to Trump's personal security chief, Keith Schiller. The campaign reports the majority of that money as "pre-paid payroll."

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Trump cancelled a recent rally because of security concerns, uniformed local police, suit-clad officers and private security made periodic rounds throughout the venue as it filled with thousands of people.

Uniformed airport security screeners staffed metal detectors and inspected bags as people passed through. A handful of uniformed Secret Service officers and dozens of other police and security officers were stationed outside and throughout the arena.

The audience, following instructions from the public address system, routinely pointed out protesters to security officers and cheered their removal.

Still, scuffles broke out around the arena after the rally was canceled.

Arnette Heintze, a retired senior Secret Service agent who now runs a corporate security firm, said he doesn't recall seeing such scenes in past campaigns.

He said there's surely a more tactful approach Trump could take to protesters than shouting to the crowd and security "get them out."

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An iPhone-hacking tool likely wouldn't stay secret for long

NEW YORK (AP)  Suppose Apple loses its court fight with the FBI and has to produce a software tool that would help agents hack into an iPhone  specifically, a device used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters. Could that tool really remain secret and locked away from potential misuse?

Not very likely, according to security and legal experts, who say a "potentially unlimited" number of people could end up getting a close at the tool's inner workings. Apple's tool would have to run a gauntlet of tests and challenges before any information it helps produce can be used in court, exposing the company's work to additional scrutiny by forensics experts and defense lawyers  and increasing the likelihood of leaks with every step.

True, the Justice Department says it only wants a tool that would only work on the San Bernardino phone and that would be useless to anyone who steals it without Apple's closely guarded digital signature.

FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 25, 2015 file photo, people wait in front of an Apple store in Munich, Germany before the worldwide launch of the iPhone 6s. Tech and legal experts say if Apple were to create the iPhone-hacking software demanded by the FBI, it would have a tough time staying secret, given the "potentially unlimited" number of people that would likely get a look at its inner workings. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)

But widespread disclosure of the software's underlying code could allow government agents, private companies and hackers across the world to dissect Apple's methods and incorporate them into their own device-cracking software. That work might also point to previously unknown vulnerabilities in iPhone software that hackers and spies could exploit.

Cases in which prosecutors have signaled interest in the Apple tool, or one like it, continue to pile up. In Manhattan, for instance, the district attorney's office says it holds 205 encrypted iPhones that neither it nor Apple can currently unlock, up from 111 in November. Such pent-up demand for the tool spells danger, says Andrea Matwyshyn, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, since its widespread dissemination presents a clear threat to the security of innocent iPhone users.

"That's when people get uncomfortable with a potentially unlimited number of people being able to use this in a potentially unlimited number of cases," Matwyshyn says.

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THE CREATION PROCESS

The concerns raised by experts mirror those in Apple's own court filings, where the company argues that the tool would be "used repeatedly and poses grave security risks." Outside experts note that nothing would prevent other prosecutors from asking Apple to rewrite the tool for the phones they want to unlock, or hackers from reverse engineering it for their own purposes.

Apple's long history of corporate secrecy suggests it could keep the tool secure during development and testing, says John Dickson, principal at Denim Group, a San Antonio, Texas-based software security firm. But after that, "the genie is out of the bottle," he says.

Even if the software is destroyed after use in the San Bernardino case, government authorities  in the U.S. or elsewhere  could always compel them to recreate it.

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TESTING THE TOOL

Apple argues that the tool, which is essentially a new version of its iOS phone operating software, would need rigorous testing. That would include installing it on multiple test devices to ensure it won't alter data on the San Bernardino iPhone.

Similarly, the company would need to log and record the entire software creation and testing process in case its methods were ever questioned, such as by a defense attorney. That detailed record itself could be a tempting target for hackers.

Before information extracted by the Apple tool could be introduced in court, the tool would most likely require validation by an outside laboratory, say forensics experts such as Jonathan Zdziarski, who described the process in a post on his personal blog . For instance, Apple might submit it to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an arm of the Commerce Department, exposing its underlying code and functions to another outside group of experts.

The likelihood of someone stealing the tool grows with every copy made, says Will Ackerly, a former National Security Agency employee who's now chief technology officer at Virtru, a computer security startup. And while Apple may be known for its security, the federal government isn't.

Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at Ntrepid, a Herndon, Virginia-based provider of secured Internet browsers, pointed to last year's hacking of the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the personal information of 21 million Americans, including his own.

Once such a tool exists, "it will become a huge target for hackers, particularly nation-state hackers," Cottrell predicted. "If I was a hacker and I knew this software had been created, I'd be really trying really hard to get it."

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SCRUTINY IN COURT

Then there's court, where defense experts would want a close look at the tool to ensure it wasn't tainting evidence, says Jeffrey Vagle, a lecturer in law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "It could get quite tangled from a technical standpoint," he says.

One very likely consequence: More eyes on the tool and its underlying code. And as more jurisdictions face the issue of iPhones they can't unlock, it's impossible to calculate where that would end.

The Manhattan DA's office, for instance, says it expects the number of locked phones to rise over time. The vast majority of iPhones now run iOS 8 or more recent versions, all of which supports the high level of encryption in question.

Elsewhere in the country, the Harris County DA's office in Texas encountered more than 100 encrypted iPhones last year. And the Cook County State Attorney's Cyber Lab received 30 encrypted devices in the first two months of this year, according to the Manhattan DA's office.

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Hillary Clinton faces challenge: Black voters in Rust Belt

MILWAUKEE (AP)  This month has brought a new challenge for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign: Black voters in Rust Belt states aren't as solidly behind her as they've been in the South.

It led to the Democratic front-runner's surprise loss in Michigan, where about a third of black voters supported Bernie Sanders, and it nearly cost her Missouri, where African-Americans voted more like their counterparts across the Midwest than in the South. Now it could foreshadow vulnerability for Clinton in Wisconsin, the next Northern battleground primary.

What's behind the trend? Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research reveal a possible answer:

Bradley Thurman, owner of Coffee Makes You Black, a well-known breakfast spot on Milwaukees predominantly African-American north side, talks Friday, March 18, 2016 in his Milwaukee shop. Thurman says he supports Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. in the upcoming Democratic primary in Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Greg Moore)

Black voters up North have appeared more likely than black voters down South to say race relations in the U.S. have recently gotten worse. And while large majorities of African-Americans in both regions trust Clinton to handle the issue, those in the Midwest have been much more likely to say they trust Sanders.

Rust Belt blacks live closer to some of the major racial conflicts of recent years  the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; and the tainted water crisis in heavily black Flint, Michigan. And they are well positioned to turn out and express their dismay at the polls.

"Absolutely, there are enough to make a difference," said Bradley Thurman, 66, an African-American cafe owner in Milwaukee, noting that black support twice helped tip Wisconsin toward Barack Obama, even as many other races in the state have gone in favor of Republicans.

Down South, Clinton has routinely picked up support from 8 in 10 black voters or more. But in areas farther north across the Midwest where manufacturing has contracted and factories have closed, support has been as low as Missouri's 67 percent. That primary election had been too close to call until Sanders conceded Thursday, giving Clinton a 1,531-vote win.

About 7 in 10 black voters backed Clinton in Ohio and Illinois, less than in the South but not enough of a drop to deny her those states on a day when she also picked up victories in Florida and North Carolina.

The tight vote in Missouri  a swing state where residents have long debated whether they're Midwestern or Southern  underscored feelings that could help keep Sanders afloat.

"I didn't like the statement Clinton made calling our kids 'super predators,'" said Syreeta Myers, 42, who is black.

Myers' only child, VonDerrit Myers, was killed in St. Louis in 2014 by a white police officer, two months after Brown was fatally shot in nearby Ferguson. She's been politically active ever since, attending rallies and marches. Myers said most of the people she knows are behind Sanders because of "what he said about stopping police from killing our children."

Marquette University senior Nick Truog also sees race relations as an area where Sanders has an edge.

"I saw online where someone said, 'I can't vote for Dr. King, so I'm going to vote for the guy who marched with him,'" said Truog, whose father is black and mother is white.

Truog studies international affairs and political science in Milwaukee, a city that saw months of protests over the death of Dontre Hamilton, a black man killed by a white police officer in 2014. He said he backs Sanders, citing the candidate's positions on income inequality and student debt as factors.

But Bobby Sanford, 42, who runs a small Milwaukee-area pest control business, doesn't like Sanders' idea of free college.

"No," Sanford said. "We have to pay for that."

Sanford, who is a black independent, remains undecided. "Honestly, I just don't like Clinton," he said. He said he's a fan of Republican front-runner Donald Trump's outspoken style but doesn't admire Trump enough to vote for him.

"I don't think so, but I don't want to vote for Sanders, either," Sanford said. "I pay enough in taxes as it is."

Similar dissatisfaction with the government comes up in Michigan. Exit poll figures show black voters there were somewhat less likely than those in Southern states where the question was posed to have positive feelings about the way the government is working.

This also could hurt Clinton, who's seen as the establishment candidate. The data show that black support at the high levels Clinton has seen in the South probably would have flipped Michigan into the win column and added breathing room for her in Missouri.

Overall, about 45 percent of whites have supported Clinton in the Midwest, making the minority vote a decisive factor. Black voters make up a smaller percentage of the Wisconsin Democratic electorate than other Rust Belt states. In 2008, about 8 percent of Wisconsin Democratic primary voters were black. By comparison, African-Americans made up about 21 percent of Democratic primary voters in both Michigan and Missouri this year.

Still, Thurman, owner of Coffee Makes You Black, a well-known breakfast spot on Milwaukee's predominantly African-American north side, thinks it's enough.

He supports Sanders because of the Vermont independent's bold proposals. "It's a lot of pie in the sky, but at least he's throwing it out there," Thurman said.

His wife looked surprised when she heard his position.

"We don't really discuss politics," said Laurie Thurman, who co-owns the shop.

She's leaning toward Clinton because "she's been around." But the matter isn't decided, she said, and "maybe my husband can convince me."

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Swanson reported from Washington. Follow Greg Moore at https://twitter.com/writingmoore.
Northeast expecting wintry weather on 1st day of spring

BOSTON (AP)  After a mild winter, a weekend storm is bearing down on the Northeast just as residents are looking forward to Sunday's official start of spring.

Over 6 inches of accumulation is possible, mostly in New England and along coastal parts of the region. New York and Philadelphia should at least get a few inches, forecasters say.

"I was thinking that winter was over, but I have learned there is always a surprise around the corner," said Pete Kusinski, a 32-year-old Cambridge resident. "If it's Monday, it's really going to screw up the commute. But if it's over the weekend, it's less of a big deal."

Workers take a lunch break on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Friday, March 18, 2016, in Boston. Weather forecasters say residents of the mid-Atlantic and New England states may see a few inches of snow starting Sunday -- the first day of spring -- and possibly continuing into the Monday morning commute. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)

The snow should start Sunday morning in mid-Atlantic cities like Washington, D.C, Philadelphia and New York, but higher temperatures should help mitigate snow accumulations, said Thomas Kines, a Pennsylvania-based meteorologist for AccuWeather.

"We're most concerned with New England with this storm," Kines said. "I don't think there will be many problems in the D.C./Baltimore area. New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia is a little bit iffier."

New England, in contrast, won't see the brunt of the inclement weather until Sunday night, when temperatures drop.

And the snow could stick around through Monday morning in New England, possibly creating a messy commute and prompting school cancellations, says Frank Nocera, a Massachusetts-based meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

"There's still a lot of uncertainty, still a lot of moving parts," he said. "We're two-plus days out, so the storm really hasn't formed yet."

This winter has been relatively tame for the Northeast.

Washington, New York, Philadelphia and other mid-Atlantic cities have seen higher-than-average snowfall, but temperatures have been milder than usual, meaning the snow hasn't really stuck around very long, Kines said.

New York has seen about 32 inches of snowfall this winter, with about 27 inches for Philadelphia and about 22 inches for D.C., according to Kines. Most of that came during a massive, record-breaking blizzard that blanketed much of the eastern United States in January. In that storm alone, New York got nearly 27 inches and Philadelphia and D.C. each recorded about 22.

In New England, which weathered historic snowfalls last year, accumulation has been below average.

Boston saw more than 100 inches of snow last year but just 26 inches this year, according to Kines. The city averages about 40 inches per winter.

"The best thing about New England is the weather," said Edward Smith, a 25-year-old Boston resident. "You never know what's coming."

To be sure, it isn't novel for the region to see snow on the first day of spring. A few inches fell last year from Boston to Philadelphia.

"March is a very fickle month," Kines said. "This kind of stuff happens. We'll get these warm spells and then people will think spring is here and then Mother Nature says, 'Not so fast.'"

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Associated Press writer Mark Pratt in Boston contributed to this story.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/philip-marcelo.
US government cites Puerto Rico for violations at 3 airports

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it is considering a $917,000 civil penalty against Puerto Rico for violations at three of its airports.

The agency said the government of the U.S. territory was not maintaining aircraft rescue and firefighting capabilities. Officials said most of the violations occurred at the Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, which is Puerto Rico's second largest international airport. Among the complaints there was that the runway had a larger than permitted hole and that one of its aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicles was not functioning properly.

Mercedita Airport in the southern coastal city of Ponce was cited for conducting self-inspections at inappropriate times. Meanwhile, Antonio Rivera Rodriguez Airport in the nearby island of Vieques was cited for its vehicles not having two-way radio communications with its fire station.
First GOP senator calls for vote on Garland court nomination

WASHINGTON (AP)  Sen. Mark Kirk became the first Republican senator to break with party leaders and call for a vote on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court selection, saying Friday, "It's just man up and cast a vote."

The statement by Kirk, who faces a difficult re-election battle this fall in Democratic-leaning Illinois, came two days after Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Garland, a Chicago native, is chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Kirk's stance directly contradicts the path charted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that most GOP senators have followed. McConnell has said for weeks that there will be no Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for any Obama nominee for the vacancy and no confirmation vote by the Senate.

Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, sits during a meeting with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 17, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

"Right, it's just man up and cast a vote," Kirk said on the "'Big' John Howell" show on Chicago radio station WLS. "The tough thing about these senatorial jobs is you get yes or no votes. Your whole job is to either say yes or no and explain why."

Kirk said he believes McConnell won't relent, saying, "I don't see his view changing too much."

Kirk is being challenged in November by Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and is considered one of the GOP's most endangered incumbents.

Illinois Democratic Party spokesman Sean Savett said Kirk should "publicly rebuke the strategy of the Republican majority leader he voted for, not predict the strategy's success."

Democrats in next-door Iowa pounced on Kirk's comment.

"If our neighboring senator is willing to cast an up-or-down vote on Judge Garland, why isn't Chuck Grassley?" said former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, hoping to be the Democratic candidate against the longtime senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley has supported McConnell's refusal to hold committee hearings or a Senate vote.

Friday evening, Grassley campaign spokesman Eric Woolson said, "Chuck Grassley is elected by the people of Iowa and he is standing up for the people of Iowa."

With presidential and congressional campaigns underway and the ideological balance of the 4-4 high court at stake, Democrats have attacked Republicans daily for refusing to consider a Scalia replacement. They say political pressure to relent will be especially intense on a half-dozen GOP senators like Kirk from swing or Democratic-leaning states facing November contests.

Kirk and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have previously said they favored Judiciary Committee hearings on Obama's pick. A small number of GOP senators have said they would be willing to meet with Garland.

Democrats say they believe the number of Republicans wanting the confirmation process to proceed will only grow, a prospect that GOP leaders have disputed.

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Child sexual exploitation report warns of non-stereotypical victims being missed

Children at risk of sexual exploitation could be slipping through the net because they are not "stereotypical" victims, a report has warned.

Boys and girls targeted by older women are among those who experts fear may not be identified.

Children, young people and parents need to be aware that not every case is like high-profile episodes seen in Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford where most perpetrators were male and victims white girls, Barnardo's said.

The report warns that abuse victims do not always fall into the same "stereotype"

The charity's report - titled "It's not on the radar" - concluded there are "multiple models of exploitation" and victims are "not solely white British".

It said: "The risk of stereotyping people affected by child sexual exploitation (CSE) is that it can prevent the identification of victims.

"If frontline professionals focus on the CSE model prevalent in the media, such as groups of offenders, or the more 'traditional' boyfriend/girlfriend model, those who are being exploited using different models may not be recognised."

Four possible scenarios in which victims may be missed were identified:

:: Boys having sex with older women or men

:: Failure to recognize learning disabilities

:: Focusing on one ethnic community to the detriment of others

:: Girls being sexually exploited by older females under the guise of being in a lesbian relationship

Barnardo's chief executive, Javed Khan said: " This horrific form of child abuse can affect any child or young person. Assumptions must not be made when trying to identify sexual exploitation as each victim has their own vulnerabilities.

"Recognising the diversity of victims will help ensure they are identified and get the right support."

Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime Karen Bradley said the Government has made child sexual abuse a "national threat" for police.

She added: "We must do all we can to make sure that a child's vulnerability is never overlooked or ignored because they don't meet a certain stereotype."

Boys and young men affected by sexual exploitation are often a "hidden group", according to the study.

It said: "Societal attitudes linking 'being a man' and being masculine to having sex were thought to be widespread, meaning that boys and young men having sex with an unsuitable 'partner' might not be seen as potential victims."

A fear of being labelled gay - particularly in communities where there is homophobia - can prevent disclosure while boys can be sexually exploited by peers in gang situations, the report said.

It warned that "s ocietal attitudes" towards sexual relationships among lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people can "result in unhealthy or unsafe sexual relationships being accepted as "normal".

Concerns were raised about an apparent lack of information about lesbian young women being targeted.

In one case a teenage girl was found at the house of an older woman who was sexually exploiting her, according to the report.

It said: "No questions were asked as to why the girl was at the house. Had this been a house belonging to an older male, it is likely that the response would have been different."

Barnardo's said victims come from all ethnic and faith backgrounds,

The report said: " Cultural and religious views and practices, particularly those that prize a female's virginity or a male's heterosexuality, may prevent victims from speaking out due to a fear of retribution or rejection from families."
Lewis Hamilton starts as he means to go on in Australia

Lewis Hamilton began the defence of his Formula One title in the best-possible fashion by topping the timesheets in both of Friday's rain-affected practice sessions.

Hamilton completed only 21 laps at Melbourne's Albert Park with heavy rain and intermittent rain causing havoc to the start of the new season.

Nico Rosberg, bidding to stop his Mercedes team-mate Hamilton from winning three successive championships, was the day's biggest victim after he dropped his car in the slippery conditions and crashed into the wall.

Lewis Hamilton was quickest in a rain-interrupted first practice session in Melbourne

The 30-year-old German sustained damage to his front wing and while he attempted to limp back to the pits, he was told to stop on track. Rosberg, after hitching a lift back to the paddock, then watched the remainder of the session from the back of the Mercedes garage.

In contrast, Hamilton was nearly half-a-second faster than the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg with Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari third. But with such limited running, due to the inclement conditions, little can be learned from the times which were posted.

"For the people tuning in at home it must have been boring," Hamilton, 31, said. "Definitely someone was having their breakfast, or eating their food, and their head fell into their plate, because it must have been super boring.

"There is not too much running because it is wet and slippery, but I am happy with how the session went. I hope that tomorrow is a better day. Today has been up and down, and it is almost like we have brought the British weather with us."

Asked how he felt to be leading the order, Hamilton replied: "It doesn't really mean anything, but I definitely feel like I got what I needed. I didn't make any mistakes so I was really happy."

One man who did make a rather embarrassing faux pas was Hamilton's rival Rosberg.

"That wasn't a good start to the weekend for me," he said. "It was very wet out there, which made it tricky. It's a shame that I lost the car in P2. I just applied a little too much throttle through Turn 7, spun round and touched the wall.

"My front wing was quite damaged, so unfortunately the boys will have some extra work to do tonight."

Albert Park had bathed in 32 degree heat as the drivers conducted their media duties on Thursday, but fast-forward 24 hours and they were greeted by an altogether different prospect.

The temperate dropped to just 16 degrees on Friday with the bad weather likely to leave the fans who descended upon Albert Park feeling feeling reactively short-changed. The changeable conditions are set to continue through until Saturday, but the race is expected to be dry.

Meanwhile, the FIA is confident it will be able to police the sport's latest clampdown on team radio transmissions.

The new ruling is designed to place more emphasis on the driver, rather than the team, and thus provide greater unpredictability during the races.

Jenson Button was among a number of drivers to express his concern over the clampdown, saying it would be ''impossible'' to police, but race director Charlie Whiting is confident there will be no such problems.

Whiting said: ''We are listening to it in real time, so we have got four people in race control listening to three drivers each. And then we have got four or five software engineers listening to two or three each.
Rebekah, 11, takes Kate shopping in children's hospices store visit

An 11-year-old girl stole the show as she took the Duchess of Cambridge on an impromptu tour of a new charity shop.

Kate was visiting the new East Anglia's Children's Hospices (EACH) store in Holt, Norfolk, on Friday.

She met Rebekah Hughes, who has the rare Dravet Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy, inside the shop.

The Duchess of Cambridge talks to wellwishers as she arrives to open a new charity shop for the East Anglia's Children's Hospices in Holt, Norfolk.

After asking what her favourite item was, Kate was led by the hand by Rebekah to a display of handbags and jewellery.

Rebekah explained that her favourite item was a silver Gant handbag, to which Kate replied: "We better put a reserved sticker on that."

The girl then asked Kate which her favourite was and Kate chose a 1 penguin brooch.

She added: "There are so many wonderful things."

Kate then helped Rebekah put a bracelet on her watching mother, Annabel Hughes, 44, from Aylsham, Norfolk.

Mrs Hughes said: "I'll have to buy her the handbag now or I won't hear the end of it.

"I think Kate got off lightly - Rebekah has a way of taking over and she's lucky she didn't have her trying on outfits in the changing room.

"She was brilliant with Rebekah and it was a really special moment."

Afterwards Kate selected a book, Fireman Sam's Favourite Tales, as a present for Prince George and a Beatrix Potter Tom Kitten figurine for Princess Charlotte.

She explained Fireman Sam was George's favourite character as she handed over 10 in cash for the gifts.

Sarah Throssell, who served her, said: "She seemed really pleased with the finds."

During the visit, Kate, who is royal patron of EACH, helped volunteers sort clothes in a back room.

She revealed her frustration with security tags as she helped attach one to a garment, saying: "I always wondered how you get them on because they're a nightmare to get off."

Chatting to Linda Gidley, who has been a volunteer in the charity's Long Stratton store f or 15 years, the Duchess said she liked to buy cook books in charity shops.

"They're the ones I always look out for," she said.

Kate also met Chloe Baird, a 15-year-old who has been receiving support from EACH at its Norfolk hospice since 2009.

EACH supports families and cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.

Its services include specialist nursing care and therapy and counselling.

The charity, which has three hospices in Cambridge, Norfolk and Ipswich, offers support to more than 700 children, young people and family members.

The new shop, which is a little over 20 miles (32km) from Kate's home at Anmer Hall, will form part of EACH's network of 21 charity retail outlets.

Kate wore a blue tweed Missoni coat for the visit.

Rebekah Hughes gave Kate flowers and showed her around the shop

The shop in Holt will support the East Anglia's Children's Hospices

During the visit, Kate, who is royal patron of EACH, helped volunteers sort clothes in a back room

One hospice is just over 20 miles from the home she shares with her husband and children at Anmer Hall

EACH supports families and cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.

Kate delivered her first public speech as the Duchess of Cambridge when she opened the charity's Treehouse hospice in Ipswich.

The charity, which has three hospices in Cambridge, Norfolk and Ipswich, offers support to more than 700 children, young people and family members.

Kate bought a gift for each of her children from the shop
Asteroid spotters see ExoMars spacecraft heading on journey towards red planet

Scientists watching out for Earth-threatening asteroids have spotted the ExoMars spacecraft streaking towards Mars at more than 20,000mph.

Remarkable images captured by ground-based telescopes in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil just after the vehicle broke free from Earth orbit show a rapidly moving bright blob.

The first stage of the joint European and Russian ExoMars mission to search for life on Mars was successfully launched on Monday.

An artist's impression of the ExoMars 2016 Schiaparelli separating from Trace Gas Orbiter

A Russian Proton heavy-lift rocket blasted two unmanned probes, Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the lander Schiaparelli, into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Flying together as a combined "stack", the craft are now coasting on a trajectory that will cause them to rendezvous with Mars in October after a journey of 300 million miles.

A final engine burn sent the spacecraft on its way at a speed of 33,001kph (20,506mph).

For asteroid hunters, ExoMars offered a perfect practice target since its departure mimicked in reverse the approach of a small near-Earth object (NEO).

The European Space Agency (Esa) NEO co-ordination centre in Italy organised an international hunt for the spacecraft.

Rapidly identifying a fast-moving object whose location is only known within a short time window is similar to the process of discovering a nearby asteroid on collision course with Earth.

ExoMars's predicted path was supplied by Esa mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, and converted at the NEO centre into aiming data for telescopes.

The information was shared among Esa's network of collaborating telescopes in the southern hemisphere, from where ExoMars was observable.

In the images, the spacecraft appears as a bright object surrounded by at least six other fainter spots. These are elements of the Proton rocket's discarded upper stage moving together across the sky.

TGO will sniff the atmosphere of Mars looking for traces of methane, and has instruments that can show if the gas is likely to have been generated by geology or living microbes.
Stop-and-search surge in weapons crackdown 'not effective for reducing crime'

A surge in stop-and-search activity by police in London had no discernible "crime-reducing effects" at borough level, a Home Office study found.

Experts examined the impact of an initiative aimed at reducing knife crime in 2008 that saw a sharp jump in weapons searches carried out in the capital.

Ten boroughs recorded an increase of more than three-fold in the number of searches, up from 34,154 to 123,335 in the first year of Operation Blunt 2, while another 16 had a smaller rise of 18,103.

An initiative aimed at reducing knife crime in 2008 saw a sharp jump in weapons searches in London

The analysis focused on measures of police recorded crime including different types of assault involving sharp instruments, robbery and weapons, and drugs possession offences.

The report said: " A difference-in-difference regression analysis, which controlled for other factors that might affect crime trends, found no statistically significant crime-reducing effect from the large increase in weapons searches during the course of Operation Blunt 2.

"This suggests that the greater use of weapons searches was not effective at the borough level for reducing crime."

It added: " Overall, analysis shows that there was no discernible crime-reducing effects from a large surge in stop-and-search activity at the borough level during the operation."

However, the report stressed it "does not necessarily follow" that stop-and-search activity "does not reduce crime".

The study was based on data at borough level, with an average population of more than 200,000 per area.

"It is possible that there are localised crime reducing effects of stop-and-search activity that are masked when analysing data on such a large geographic area," the study said.

The use of stop-and-search has varied over the last decade but at its peak in 2009, a search was undertaken every 20 seconds on average around the country.

Last year the issue was at the centre of controversy as Theresa May clashed with Scotland Yard when she insisted suggestions that knife crime was rising as a result of curbs on the tactic are "simply not true".

The Home Office said it had introduced a number of measures since 2014 to improve the effectiveness of stop-and-search.

A spokesman said: " The Government is clear that the power of stop-and-search, when used correctly, is vital in the fight against crime. However, when it is misused, stop-and-search is counter-productive and a waste of police time.

"Stop-and-search must be applied fairly, effectively and in a way that builds community confidence rather than undermining it. No-one should be stopped on the basis of their race or ethnicity."

He added: " This particular study shows that there was no discernible crime-reducing effects from a large surge in stop-and-search activity at the borough level during the operation.
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam wounded and captured in Brussels

Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been wounded and captured in a huge anti-terror operation in Brussels after four months on the run.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel confirmed the news at a press conference alongside French president Francois Hollande hours after heavily armed officers stormed a building in the city's Molenbeek district.

He said that two other men were also held in the operation in a part of the Belgian capital some of the Paris attackers, including suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, were from.

Abdeslam was wounded in the Molenbeek district police raid

Mr Hollande congratulated the Belgian authorities and said moves would start to extradite Abdeslam, who was born in Brussels, back to France.

Mr Hollande said: "I have a special thought for the victims of the attacks on November 13 in Paris, because Salah Abdeslam is directly connected to the preparation, organisation and ... the perpetration of these attacks.

"I also think of the families who have been looking forward to these arrests, whether from close range or long distance, who are connected to that abomination."

Belgian migration minister Theo Francken confirmed the arrest earlier on Friday, tweeting: "We've got him".

Mr Michel left the EU-Turkey migrant crisis summit amid reports of the raid.

TV footage showed armed officers descending on the area and gunshots and explosions were reported.

Fire engines and ambulances were seen driving into the gated complex, which remains under armed police guard, and a helicopter hovered overhead.

Members of the public also began to gather at the scene.

Local media said police, who were joined at the scene by the army, appeared to use grenades while eyewitness reports suggested white smoke could be seen coming from a property.

At least ten gunshots were reportedly heard.

The news came after the Belgian authorities said a man shot dead earlier this week was probably an accomplice of Abdeslam.

Fingerprints found at the address where Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid was killed suggest Abdeslam had been there too.

Two men escaped from the apartment during the gunfight with police and one of them is now thought to have been Abdeslam, 26, who fled from Paris after the terror attacks in November which killed 130 people.

Mr Hollande said that the fight against terrorism would go on, and there were "connections that lead us all the time to Syria".

He said: "Although this arrest is an important stage it is not the final conclusion of this story because there have been arrests already. And there will have to be more because we know that the network was quite widespread, in Belgium, in France, in other countries of Europe as well.

"So until we have arrested all those who took part or contributed, financed, that network, that terrorist network that committed the abominable attacks, the war acts of November 13, our fight will not be over until then."

Mr Michel had earlier said that he had spoken to US president Barack Obama, tweeting a picture of him with Mr Hollande and the message: "Congratulations from @POTUS (President of the United States) Belgium and France stand united in the fight against terrorism."

The White House issued a statement on the call, saying: "The president commended the work of Belgian security services and noted that this significant arrest was the result of hard work and close cooperation between Belgian and French law enforcement authorities.
Moves to scrap 'tampon tax' start next week after Tory MPs threaten revolt

The Government will bring forward legislation to abolish the so-called "tampon tax" next week after Tory MPs threatened to stage a Commons revolt.

Chancellor George Osborne announced the move as he hailed a "common sense" agreement to loosen EU rules on VAT levels.

In an apparent bid to head off a separate rebellion, the Treasury has also insisted the levy on solar panels and energy saving measures will not be raised.

Chancellor George Osborne hailed efforts to scrap the 'tampon tax'

David Cameron highlighted the issue of VAT on sanitary products with fellow leaders at a Brussels summit, and secured a statement that the European Commission will bring forward proposals allowing "flexibility" in the rates applied to different products.

But ministers have decided they need to act before the looser rules are formally implemented. A number of Conservative MPs had threatened to vote for an amendment to the Finance Bill next week to allow the zero-rating of women's sanitary products.

The parliamentary tactic was in part driven by a determination by pro-Brexit MPs to embarrass the Government over the role of the EU in setting VAT.

The current 5% rating on sanitary products is the lowest permissible under EU laws, though exemptions are allowed for countries - like Ireland - which had a 0% levy at the time of their entry into the EU.

Mr Osborne said: "We've used our seat at the top table in Europe to secure what the British public has demanded - common sense on VAT and an end to the tampon tax.

"I said last year we were committed to getting the EU rules changed, and until that happened we would use the money raised to fund women's health and support charities.

"That means 17 million for good causes - and now we're acting to ensure that women see the difference at the till."

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs have also lined up to back a Labour move to block EU-ordered tax hikes on solar panels and energy saving measures.

A dozen Tories, including former cabinet minister Peter Lilley, former deputy speaker Nigel Evans, 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady and select committee chairman Bernard Jenkin, have signed up to an amendment aimed at preventing VAT on the items rising from 5% to 20%.

Mr Osborne had been expected to increase the levy after the European Court of Justice ruled the UK's lower rates were illegal under European Union law.

But Treasury aides said the "installation of all energy saving materials including solar panels, wind turbines and water turbines will also continue to benefit from the current, reduced rates of VAT".

Speaking at the conclusion of the European Council summit, Mr Cameron said his success in securing progress on the "tampon tax" was an example of how the UK could exert influence within the EU.

The Prime Minister said: "We have some EU-wide VAT rules in order to make the single market work. But on this specific issue of VAT on sanitary products, we've been pressing the European Commission for several months to bring forward proposals so we can apply a zero rate.

"I've secured clear Council conclusions for this and that's exactly what they will do, with proposals coming in the next few days.

"What's more, I've secured backing from all other European leaders for this plan, so we are now a step closer to stopping this tampon tax once and for all.

"It shows that when we fight for our interests here, we are heard and we can get things done. We can reform the EU and make it work for Britain, and at this summit we've shown that once again. I believe that Britain will be stronger, safer and better off in a reformed EU."
Louis van Gaal accepts derby defeat would likely end United's top-four hopes

Louis van Gaal admits Manchester United's disappointing Barclays Premier League campaign could reach a crescendo in this weekend's derby against City - not that the Dutchman is feeling any pressure.

Fresh from being knocked out of the Europa League by bitter rivals Liverpool, the inconsistent Red Devils make the short journey to the Etihad Stadium for a mouth-watering encounter.

Manuel Pellegrini's men currently reside in the final Champions League spot and boast a four-point cushion over sixth-placed United with just nine matches remaining.

Louis van Gaal's Manchester United are four points behind local rivals Manchester City

They are circumstances that have not stressed under-fire Van Gaal, though, albeit he concedes defeat on Sunday would likely end his team's top-four aspirations.

"We are now four points behind so you have to win otherwise the gap is bigger and bigger and the (number of) matches you have to play are not so big," the United boss said.

"I think with a gap of seven points and with eight matches then it is very (hard) to recover from that gap.

"It is still possible but it is difficult because West Ham are also in front, not only City. I am never feeling I am under pressure. I do what I have to do."

West Ham lie between the Manchester sides and stand in United's way in the FA Cup, with the teams set to do battle in a quarter-final replay after the international break.

Potential cup success and a shot at Champions League qualification is keeping this difficult campaign ticking over, but defeat on Sunday would see questions about Van Gaal's future increase.

Jose Mourinho's continued unemployment leaves a shadow over the Dutchman, despite a year remaining on his three-year contract.

"I don't discuss that with you," Van Gaal said of his future. "Every day, when we are losing or out of Euro League, you put the questions but why?

"I have a three-year contract and the process is three years.

"For four months now you have been writing I shall be sacked. I have read that four months already. You think that is logical, normal?

"Expectations can be too high. Our purpose was to reach the top three because we want to do better than last year.
German vote on Greek bailout carries risks for Merkel

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN, Aug 15 (Reuters) - In a major test of her authority, Chancellor Angela Merkel will ask sceptical German lawmakers to back an 86 billion euro ($95.5 billion) bailout for Greece on Wednesday despite uncertainty over whether the IMF will play a role in the rescue.

Parliamentary approval is not in doubt because the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens are expected to back the deal. But the vote could expose a deep divide among Merkel's conservatives, damaging the German leader and her close ally Volker Kauder, the head of her bloc in parliament.

Kauder, who incensed fellow lawmakers last week with threats of retaliation if they rebelled and voted against a bailout, has described the involvement of the International Monetary Fund as a "condition" for the support of his party.

However under the bailout approved by euro zone finance ministers at a meeting in Brussels late on Friday, it is unclear whether the IMF will end up playing a role.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told the ministers by telephone that she could not commit until her board reviewed the situation in the autumn. She renewed a call for "significant" debt relief for Greece, a demand Merkel's government has repeatedly pushed back against.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble reiterated his opposition to an outright writedown of the face value of Greek debt in an interview with Deutsche Welle published on Saturday. He said the scope for milder forms of debt relief, like extending debt maturities, was "not very big".

The IMF took part in the first two rescues for Greece, which totalled 240 billion euros, and Berlin is keen to keep it on board because of the Washington-based institution's reputation for rigour.

RISK OF BIG REBELLION

Last month, a record 65 lawmakers from Merkel's conservative camp broke ranks and refused to back negotiations on the bailout.

Far more could rebel in Wednesday's vote, with top-selling German daily Bild estimating that up to 120 members of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), may refuse to back the government.

The Bundestag debate on Greece is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, disrupting Merkel's travel plans.

She had been scheduled to leave on a government trip to Brazil around that time. Her spokesman Steffen Seibert said the departure would be delayed by several hours.

Merkel will also move forward to Monday a planned trip to Milan. She had been due to travel there for talks with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Tuesday, but will now stay in Berlin that day to lobby conservative lawmakers on the bailout.

If 100 or more of her conservative allies rebel in the vote it would be seen as a major political setback for the chancellor, who remains highly popular after 10 years in office.

"The government is in a real quandary," said Greens leaders Katrin Goering-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter in a statement. "It can't demand IMF involvement and at the same time refuse its demands for debt relief."

A large rebellion would be an even bigger danger for Kauder, whose threat last weekend to sanction lawmakers who voted against the bailout by removing them from key parliamentary committees appears to have backfired, firing up the "No" camp.

Senior Merkel allies Ralph Brinkhaus and Eckhardt Rehberg tried to put a positive spin on the Greek deal, noting that Schaeuble had won concessions on privatisations and that the first tranche of aid, at 26 billion euros, would be smaller than initially planned, keeping Athens on a tight leash.

"What the IMF is saying about its future involvement is positive - even if it isn't ready to commit until the autumn," they said.
The coal loophole: doubts on China's will to enforce N.Korea sanctions

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters) - Over two weeks after the United Nations slapped harsh new sanctions on North Korea, several Chinese shipping and trade sources say they have not been told of any curbs on the import of coal from the isolated nation - a lifeline for its struggling economy.

China accounts for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade and its help is crucial in enforcing the sanctions announced by the United Nations on March 2 to punish Pyongyang for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Coal is particularly important to the economic health of North Korea because it is one of its only sources of hard currency and its largest single export item. Coal is also bartered for essentials, including oil, food and machinery.

Although some curbs have been put in place in the border city of Dandong, half a dozen trade and shipping sources at ports in northeastern China said they had received no instructions from the government on any new rules on coal imports from North Korea. The ports account for the bulk of the coal trade between the two countries.

"At this point, nobody has come to us and said you shouldn't do it," said an official at a company in the port city of Dalian that imports North Korean coal and other goods. "I'm not even clear on what the specific sanctions are."

"It's chaos - at this time nobody knows what the impact will be on us and it's tough to tell," he added.

International sanctions experts said U.N. members are expected to implement sanctions immediately, and it was not too early to expect signals of enforcement, including in trade. In practice, however, U.N. resolutions are often inconsistently enforced.

China is North Korea's closest ally, but supported the U.N. resolution as it has become increasingly critical of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes. Nevertheless, Beijing prizes stability on the Korean peninsula and fears that any widespread unrest there could send millions of refugees across the border.

Beijing has barred a North Korean freighter from one of its ports and blacklisted 31 vessels covered by the U.N. sanctions, but Chinese officials and experts have expressed concern that cracking down too stringently could result in disaster for the North's economy.

China's Foreign Ministry said this week the country had always enforced U.N. sanctions and would "strictly manage" businesses accordingly. The Ministry of Transport did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The resolution bans U.N. member states from importing North Korean coal, iron and iron ore unless such transactions are for "livelihood purposes" and would not be generating revenue for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

WIDE EXEMPTION

"I think it's an indication that the Chinese managed to negotiate a wide exemption for the coal trade," said Andrea Berger, deputy director of the proliferation and nuclear policy programme at the Royal United Services Institute.

On Wednesday, the United States slapped harsh sanctions of its own on North Korea that included allowing Washington to blacklist any individuals, whether or not they were U.S. citizens, who deal with major sectors of North Korea's economy.

Analysts say the reference to "livelihood purposes" in the U.N. resolution leaves open a window for China to continue trade with North Korea.

"It's an explicit loophole," said Adam Cathcart, a specialist on China-North Korea ties at the University of Leeds. "Coal is a big lever for them. They're wise from the Chinese standpoint to keep some leeway (so) they're not branded as sanctions violators if a train goes from China to North Korea (carrying resources)."

Last year, North Korean coal deliveries to China surged 26.9 percent to 19.63 million tonnes, making North Korea China's third biggest supplier behind Australia and Indonesia.

China imported $1 billion worth of North Korean coal last year and $73 million worth of iron ore, according to Chinese customs data.

"It's the source of hard currency to the government sector, and military sector as well," said Jong Kyu Lee of the Korea Development Institute. "Hard currency is very important to the North Korean economy."

A coal trader in Dandong, the largest Chinese city on the border with the North, told Reuters his company had stopped importing coal and other products more than a month ago from North Korea, before the U.N. resolution was passed, because of policy concerns.

But because North Korean coal arrives at an increasing number of ports around the country, enforcement of customs regulations must be coordinated nationally. However, China's coal trade is not completely centrally controlled.

A shipping agent told Reuters that coal imports from North Korea to Lianyungang Port and Rizhao Port, both located in the country's north, can still be cleared by customs.

"We've certainly had discussions about this (the sanctions) within the industry, but our business hasn't been impacted," said a representative from a Shandong-based trade logistics firm that specializes in importing coal from North Korea. "The government hasn't issued any notice to us about the sanctions."

China has an incentive to show it is cracking down on trade in Dandong, experts said.

"There is a visual element, the optics of sanctions enforcement," Cathcart said. "There are a lot of foreign journalists and other eyes on the border, everyone is watching Dandong. But the other areas on the border are much less scrutinised."
Former ruler Musharraf leaves Pakistan after government lifts travel ban

ISLAMABAD, March 18 (Reuters) - Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him as he awaited a trial on treason and other charges, his spokesman said.

Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the government to lift the travel ban on Musharraf, paving the way for him to leave the country.

"General Pervez Musharraf has left the country for Dubai," his spokesman Mohammad Amjad told Reuters.

The departure of Musharraf, who has faced a battery of court cases since returning home from self-imposed exile in 2013, will remove a source of friction between the army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Then army chief Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a 1999 coup and ruled Pakistan until 2008 when he stepped down in the face of widespread opposition to his rule.
Australia boost oversight of state asset sales after China lease deal

By Matt Siegel

SYDNEY, March 18 (Reuters) - Australia plans to extend its scrutiny of overseas investment to include infrastructure sales by state governments, following an outcry over the leasing of a northern port to a Chinese firm said to have close ties to the country's military.

The federal Foreign Investment Review Board will be given oversight of the sale of critical infrastructure assets, Treasurer Scott Morrison said on Friday, with some A$20 billion ($15 billion) of state privatizations currently in the pipeline.

The Landbridge Group, owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, was chosen by the Northern Territory government last year to operate the strategic commercial and military Port of Darwin in a 99-year deal worth A$506 million.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull publicly defended the deal following reports that U.S. President Barack Obama had expressed anger at Turnbull for not having informed him of the deal.

Darwin is a hub of cooperation between a rotation of U.S. Marines, as well as the terminus for a critical underwater data cable.

"From 31 March this year the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) will formally review critical infrastructure assets sold by state and territory governments," Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

"While governments can and do work with the Commonwealth when selling such assets, the proposed change will formalise the process."

Upcoming major privatizations include the ports of Melbourne and Fremantle and Australian electricity distributor Ausgrid, but the change was unlikely to affect the sale process, said lawyer Simon Haddy, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills.

Most Australian state governments already regularly consult with FIRB on strategic sales to overseas firms, he said.

"I think it's part of a trend of formalising these processes and broadening the nature of what the Australian national interest is ... with an increasing focus on, particularly those broader issues of national security and the national revenue base," he told Reuters.

Morrison said the changes would not be retroactive.

Although it is officially listed as a private company, Landbridge chairman Ye is a delegate on the advisory body to China's rubber stamp parliament, a high-profile but largely ceremonial position handed out to Communist Party backers.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute called the Landbridge Group a "front" for China's People's Liberation Army in a paper published last year.

A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said Australia alone was responsible for determining its sovereign criteria for foreign investment.

"As Treasurer Scott Morrison said, it is important that critical infrastructure sales are scrutinized to ensure any potential national security risks can be addressed," the spokeswoman told Reuters under the condition of anonymity.
Former ruler Musharraf leaves Pakistan after government lifts travel ban

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik

ISLAMABAD, March 18 (Reuters) - Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him as he awaited trial on treason and other charges, his spokesman said.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the government on Wednesday to lift the travel ban, paving the way for Musharraf to leave.

"General Pervez Musharraf has left the country for Dubai," his spokesman Mohammad Amjad said.

The departure of Musharraf, who has faced a battery of court cases since returning home from self-imposed exile in 2013, will remove a source of friction between the army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Media showed images of Musharraf leaving his home in a heavily guarded convoy for the airport in the port city of Karachi. He entered the airport through a gate reserved for staff and left for Dubai on an Emirates flight.

"I am a commando and I love my homeland," Musharraf told Pakistani media at the airport.

"I will come back in a few weeks or months."

His lawyers have argued that he needed to travel abroad for medical treatment and to visit his ailing mother in Dubai.

Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Thursday the former ruler was being allowed to travel abroad for treatment after a commitment from his lawyers that he would return in 4-6 weeks to face the charges against him.

Musharraf came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup against Sharif and stood down nine years later when threatened with impeachment.

He returned to Pakistan in March 2013 after nearly four years of self-imposed exile to contest elections, despite the possibility of arrest and death threats from the Taliban.

He was acquitted earlier this year of the murder of a separatist leader in 2006.

Musharraf has also been charged in connection with the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the murder of a prominent cleric.

Pakistan's military has ruled the South Asian nation for almost half of its 69-year history. It sets foreign and security policy even when civilian administrations are in power.
U.S. sees new Chinese activity around South China Sea shoal

By David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef that China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said on Thursday.

The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.

Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move.

He said the U.S. military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay.

"I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. That's an area of concern ... a next possible area of reclamation," he said.

Richardson said it was unclear if the activity near the reef, which China seized in 2012, was related to the pending arbitration decision.

He said China's pursuit of South China Sea territory, which has included massive land reclamation to create artificial islands elsewhere in the Spratlys, threatened to reverse decades of open access and introduce new "rules" that required countries to obtain permission before transiting those waters.

He said that was a worry given that 30 percent of the world's trade passes through the region.

Asked whether China could respond to the ruling by the court of arbitration in The Hague by declaring an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did farther north in the East China Sea in 2013, Richardson said: "It's definitely a concern."

"We will just have to see what happens," he said. "We think about contingencies and  responses."

Richardson said the United States planned to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation exercises within 12 nautical miles of disputed South China Sea geographical features to underscore its concerns about keeping sea lanes in the region open.

JOINT PATROLS?

The United States responded to the East China Sea ADIZ by flying B-52 bombers through the zone in a show of force in November 2013.

Richardson said he was struck by how China's increasing militarization of the South China Sea had increased the willingness of other countries in the region to work together, not just bilaterally, but also multilaterally.

India and Japan joined the U.S. Navy in the Malabar naval exercise since 2014, and were slated to take part again this year in an even more complex exercise that will take place in an area close to the East and South China Seas.

South Korea, Japan and the United States were also working together more closely than ever before, he said.

Richardson said the United States would welcome the participation of other countries in joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, but those decisions needed to be made by the countries in question.

He said the U.S. military saw good opportunities to build and rebuild relationships with countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and India, which have all realized the importance of safeguarding the freedom of the seas.

He cited India's recent hosting of an international fleet review that included 75 ships from 50 navies, and said the United States was exploring opportunities to increase its use of ports in the Philippines and Vietnam, among others - including the former U.S. naval base at Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay.

But he said Washington needed to proceed judiciously rather than charging in "very fast and very heavy," given the enormous influence and importance of the Chinese economy in the region.

"We have to be sophisticated in how we approach this so that we don't force any of our partners into an uncomfortable position where they have to make tradeoffs that are not in their best interest," he said.
Exiled Tibetans to elect leader to sustain Dalai Lama legacy

By Abhishek Madhukar and Rupam Jain

DHARAMSALA/NEW DELHI, March 18 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of exiled Tibetans across India and overseas will vote on Sunday to elect a political leader, hoping the democratic exercise will help sustain their struggle to secure complete autonomy for Chinese-ruled Tibet.

The second election of its kind follows a decision by the Dalai Lama, the 80-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate, to relinquish his political authority and vest it in a democratic system that could outlive him.

Concern about the globetrotting spiritual leader's health, after his admission to a U.S. hospital this year for treatment, has reinforced the importance of the vote to keeping the issue of Tibet alive.

The "Sikyong", or elected leader, will be solely responsible for political and diplomatic decisions, as the charismatic monk steps back from the limelight amid uncertainty over how his successor will be chosen.

Tibetan Buddhism holds that the soul of a senior lama is reincarnated in the body of a child after he dies. China says it must sign off on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising.

"Even if China tries to select the next Dalai Lama, the Tibetans will continue to have an elected leader who is outside the Communist Party's grip," said P.D. Mukherji, professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

The contest will decide who leads the parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in Dharamsala, a town in India's Himalayan foothills where a community of Tibetans lives in exile with the Dalai Lama.

"China will see that CTA is going to stay here for a long time and the Tibetan freedom struggle will be here for a long time," incumbent Lobsang Sangay, who is seeking re-election, told Reuters.

Exiled Tibetans consider the CTA to be their legitimate government, but no country recognises it. China has lobbied to sideline the Dalai Lama from the international circuit, although he did address an audience in Geneva last week despite those efforts.

FREEDOM STRUGGLE

The elected leader will have to rally global support for Tibet's campaign for freedom, strengthen ties with India and discourage self-immolation by refugees when protesting against Beijing's ironclad control of the Himalayan region.

This month, a Tibetan schoolboy died in India after setting himself on fire to protest against Chinese rule in Tibet.

Sangay and his opponent, Penpa Tsering, both favour the "middle way" propagated by the Dalai Lama for more than 50 years that advocates non-violence while seeking autonomy for Tibet.

Representatives of the Dalai Lama held several rounds of talks with China up to 2010, but formal dialogue stalled amid leadership changes in Beijing and a security crackdown in Tibet.

One candidate who called for independence from China lost in preliminary elections held in 2015, as voters felt that opposition to Beijing would only undercut international support for, and weaken the economic condition of, exiled Tibetans.

Asked to comment on the leadership election, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing did not recognise the "so-called government in exile".
Poland - Factors to Watch March 18

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

KGHM

Europe's No.2 copper producer signalled on Thursday plans to cut its copper output by 9 percent this year after writedowns pushed its 2015 net loss higher than expected to 5.01 billion zlotys.

Separately, KGHM said the company's 2016 market expectations are cautious, adding it is working on further cost cuts at its mines after the group booked a record loss in 2015 due to write-downs.

The state-run miner is to hold a news conference at 0900 GMT and a conference with analysts at 1100 GMT.

CENTRAL BANK

Poland's parliament is to pick the final new rate-setter for the central bank's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) on Friday, with Jerzy Zyzynski the candidate of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

ENEA

Polish utility Enea is working on updating its strategy, the company's new Chief Executive Miroslaw Kowalik told daily Parkiet, and is considering investing in coal miner KHW.

PKP CARGO

The Polish freight carrier's 2015 net profit more than halved year-on-year to 32 million zlotys ($8.5 million), mostly due to asset impairments, it said.

PKN ORLEN

Lithuania's prime minister expects that negotiations between the Polish oil refiner's Lithuanian arm and the state railway monopoly regarding transport fees will be positive for both sides, Lithuania's energy minister tikd Rzeczpospolita daily.

WIG20

Poland's No.2 oil refiner Lotos will change chemicals maker Synthos in the the Warsaw bourse's bluechip index WIG20 after the session closes.

MBANK

Polish financial regulator KNF recommended that mBank, a unit of Germany's Commerzbank, did not pay out dividend from 2015 profits to strenghten the lender's financial position. MBank has said earlier it did not plan a dividend payout from 2015.

SOCIETE GENERALE

France's Societe Generale is mulling a sale of its Polish retail lender Eurobank and a withdrawal from Poland, daily Puls Biznesu reported citing an unnamed source.

BANK ASSET TAX

Poland's planned bank asset tax revenue may be lower by nearly 400 million zlotys ($105.8 million), as some banks may have to undergo a corrective procedure, which means they will not have to pay the tax, daily Rzeczpospolita reported.

DAIMLER

Poland and Hungary have been shortlisted as potential locations for German Daimler's 800 million euro engine factory, which will employ up to 1,000 people, daily Puls Biznesu reported citing an unnamed source.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Fastjet seeks legal advice after shareholder letter

By Rahul B

March 18 (Reuters) - A tussle between Fastjet Plc and its second-largest shareholder, easyGroup Holdings Ltd, intensified on Friday after the African budget airline said it was seeking legal advice in response to easyGroup threatening to take back the brand.

EasyGroup, which owns the Fastjet brand, said in a letter on Thursday there was a risk that Fastjet could become insolvent in the next few months.

EasyGroup, controlled by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, also said it could terminate the brand licence agreement if Fastjet became insolvent.

Fastjet's shares fell as much as 35 percent to a record-low on Friday before paring some losses to close down nearly 17 percent at 30.125 pence.

Responding to Haji-Ioannou's latest salvo, Fastjet said on Friday it considered the publication of the letter as "wholly inappropriate."

"Whilst the board of Fastjet welcomes constructive engagement with all shareholders, it cannot understand why easyGroup ... has published this particular letter without first raising its concerns with the company," Fastjet said in a statement.

EasyGroup, which has a 12.6 percent stake in Fastjet, also urged the carrier to resume reporting monthly passenger statistics and updated cash flow forecasts for the current financial year.

"By stopping the publication of passenger statistics back in December, the company potentially committed a breach of the current brand licence that exists between Fastjet and easyGroup Holdings," easyGroup said in a statement.

"Potential breach of a brand licence agreement is a very serious legal matter," Haji-Ioannou told Reuters in an email on Friday.

The carrier said in a separate statement that Tim Ingram, easyGroup's representative director on its board, would resign immediately. It refused to comment further on the matter.

Launched in 2012, Fastjet offers "no frills" flights to undercut larger carriers, seeking to copy the model pioneered by easyJet Plc and Ryanair Holdings Plc.

However, the airline has struggled in the face of tough conditions in Tanzania, its home market where most of its fleet is deployed.

It warned earlier this month its results for the year would be well below market expectations and that it no longer expected to be cash flow positive in 2016.

Fastjet bowed to pressure from Haji-Ioannou on Monday, announcing that Chief Executive Ed Winter would step down this week.

Haji-Ioannou, who co-founded Fastjet, had called for the immediate dismissal of Winter, saying the CEO had created a high cost base that was disproportionate to its six-aircraft fleet.
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - March 18

MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- Russia may expand its preferential export tax regime to 13 oilfields from the current 9 fields, the paper reports citing two government sources.

- The number of purchased ready-made online stores in 2015 rose by 23 percent year-on-year. Offline business shifted to the Internet because of the current economic crisis, the paper reports.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Moscow's three airports may introduce "infrastructure" duties for their development which will be included in the price of airline tickets, the daily reports citing sources.

- Russians have bought 6.3 percent less food, while purchases of non-food goods have shrunk by 8.2 percent since January 2015, the paper writes citing the Presidential Academy of National Economy, the daily writes.

- The paper runs an interview with Alexei Platonov, chief executive of Internet Technical Center which regulates Russian internet domains. He says the Russian government tightens control not only over Internet contents, but also over its technical side.

- The devaluation of the rouble and a 30 percent fall in outbound tourism have caused a rise in Moscow shopping mall traffic after a two-year decline, the paper writes citing Watcom's data.

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

www.ng.ru

- Russia's budget system is not capable of securing full indexation of pensions in the next two year, the paper writes citing former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

RBK

www.rbcdaily.ru
Libya's eastern govt warns against imposition of UN-backed cabinet

By Ayman al-Warfalli

BENGHAZI, Libya, March 18 (Reuters) - Libya's eastern government said on Friday moves to impose a new U.N.-backed unity cabinet on the country without a vote of approval by the eastern parliament risked deepening the nation's crisis.

The unity government-in-waiting has called for an immediate transfer of power, and its prime minister said in an interview broadcast on Thursday that it would move to Tripoli from Tunis in the "next few days".

Since 2014 Libya has had rival parliaments and governments, one set based in Tripoli and the other in the east. Both are backed by loose alliances of former rebels and armed brigades which emerged amid the chaos that followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi five years ago.

Western governments have been pushing for the unity government to start work, saying it holds the best hope for ending Libya's turmoil and tackling the growing threat posed by Islamic State militants.

The eastern government said in a statement on Friday that while it supported the unity cabinet, any attempt to impose it represented an "abuse of Libyan sovereignty and a lack of respect for the democratic process".

"It will deepen the Libyan crisis and the economic situation, increase division, and shatter the political accord built on consensus," it said.

It also warned local and international parties to work with the new government only after parliament gave its approval.

In eastern Benghazi on Friday, at least 500 people turned out at a demonstration against the new government and in support of the army, which has made major advances against Islamist groups in the city in recent weeks.

One reason for deadlock over the unity government is the demand from some in the east that the army there and its commander, Khalifa Haftar, should not be sidelined in a political transition.

The internationally-recognised eastern parliament has repeatedly failed to vote to approve the unity government, but a majority of its members signed a statement of support last month.

The United States and European powers cited that statement when they declared on Sunday that the unity cabinet was the "only legitimate government in Libya".

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he had told Libyan Prime Minister-designate Fayez Seraj at a meeting in Tunis on Friday that France was "ready to offer help for the security of the government".

But a Western diplomat said there was no immediate plan for foreign military advisors to help the new government set up in Tripoli.

The unity government and the Tunis-based presidential council that appointed it have faced stiff opposition from hardliners on both sides of Libya's political divide.

On Tuesday, the prime minister of the government based in Tripoli warned the unity cabinet not to move there. On Thursday, one of the many armed factions in the capital, the Libya Revolutionaries, said it was prepared for a "long war" in Tripoli if other groups tried to protect the unity government.
Letter with granular matter sent to Trump's son in New York

NEW YORK, March 18 (Reuters) - Authorities were investigating a threatening letter containing a granular substance that was sent to Donald Trump's son urging an end to the elder's presidential campaign, a New York City police official said on Friday.

The letter was addressed to the Manhattan home of Eric Trump, 32, who has appeared frequently on the campaign trail with his father, the Republican front-runner for the White House in 2016.

"There was a substance inside that is being tested, it's not lethal," the official said.

The letter, which contained threats over Trump continuing his campaign, was being examined by law enforcement experts, the official said. No suspects have been identified.

Police were called to Trump Parc East, a luxury apartment building in mid-Manhattan, at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 EDT) on Thursday with a report of a suspicious letter received by a tenant.
EU urges more countries to impose sanctions on Russia over Crimea

By Robin Emmott and Dmitry Solovyov

BRUSSELS/MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) - The European Union called on Friday for more countries to impose sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula two years ago, but the Kremlin said Crimea was Russian land and its status non-negotiable.

In a statement issued on the anniversary of the formal absorption of Crimea into Russia, the 28-nation EU said it was very worried about Moscow's military build-up in the region, echoing long-held concerns of the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

The EU also said it would maintain sanctions that ban European companies from investing in Russian Black Sea oil and gas exploration, a day after France and Germany's leaders met Ukraine's president in Brussels and reaffirmed that the EU does not recognise the annexation.

"The European Union remains committed to fully implementing its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures," the European Council, which represents EU governments, said in its statement. "The EU calls again on U.N. member states to consider similar non-recognition measures."

Separately, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged the EU and United States to maintain their broader economic sanctions against Russia over its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, in a conflict that erupted a month after the Crimea annexation and has killed more than 9,000 people.

"It is important that we continue the economic sanctions," Stoltenberg told an event in Brussels, also calling for all sides to pursue peace and find a political solution.

Hungary and Italy said this week they would not agree to extend the EU's toughest economic sanctions on Russia, the EU's major energy supplier, without discussions before the summer.

Germany's Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel called on Thursday for the EU to try to create conditions by this summer to lift sanctions.

NOT FOR DISCUSSION

The Kremlin said the issue of Crimea could not be "a matter of negotiations or international contacts".

"Our position is known: this is a region of the Russian Federation. Russia has not discussed and will never discuss its regions with anyone," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a teleconference with reporters.

"In this case we should treat with respect the expression of the will of Crimean residents and the decision which was taken two years ago," he said.

Peskov was referring to Crimea's referendum on secession from Ukraine in March 2014, which was followed by a formal request from the local parliament to the Russian Federation to admit it as a new subject with the status of a republic.

On Friday Putin visited the construction site of a bridge being built to Crimea across the Kerch Strait to connect the Russian mainland with the peninsula.

The West is concerned by Russia's military build-up in Crimea, which they say is part of a strategy to set up defensive zones of influence with surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-ship missiles.

As well as the EU, the United States, Japan and other major economies including Australia and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Russia over Crimea, but others including China and Brazil have avoided direct criticism of Moscow.

The 28-nation EU imposed its Crimea sanctions in July 2014 and then tightened them in December 2014, banning EU citizens from buying or financing companies in Crimea, whose annexation has prompted the worst East-West stand-off since the Cold War.
Health workers rush to contain fresh Ebola outbreak in Guinea

By Kieran Guilbert

DAKAR, March 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Health workers are rushing to the site of a fresh Ebola outbreak in Guinea to bolster efforts to contain the virus and prepare for the likelihood of more cases, aid agencies said on Friday.

Four people in the southern region of Nzerekore were tested on Thursday and two of them were found to have Ebola. They were all from Korokpara, a village where three people from the same family have died in recent weeks from diarrhoea and vomiting.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and aid agencies have sent experts to investigate the origin of the new cases and to identify, isolate, vaccinate and monitor all of their contacts.

The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) has reopened its Ebola treatment unit in Nzerekore, while the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) is reinforcing its team in the region and providing protective equipment and medicine.

"There has been a very professional and experienced response across the board," said Augustin Augier of ALIMA, which admitted the two patients, a child and his mother, to its treatment unit.

"We are doing all we can to be ready to receive more cases," he said, adding that ALIMA were flying in more staff from Paris.

More than 28,500 people have been infected and 11,300 have died since the world's worst recorded Ebola epidemic began in December 2013 - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

While the epidemic has come under control, experts have warned of the risk of new flare-ups, as Ebola can linger in the eyes, central nervous system and bodily fluids of survivors.

The two fresh cases in Nzerekore, where the Ebola outbreak began in 2013, were reported just hours after the WHO declared neighbouring Sierra Leone's latest flare-up over.

Guinea had been nearing the end of a 90-day period of heightened surveillance when the fresh cases were reported - the country's first known re-emergence of Ebola after the outbreak was officially declared over there at the end of December 2015.

"The heightened surveillance means mechanisms were in place and that we were vigilant and prepared to deal with the flare-up," said Guy Yogo, UNICEF's deputy representative in Guinea.

"The population is now aware of the disease and listening to the guidance it receives from the authorities," Yogo added.
0-Europe's most wanted held in Brussels for Paris attacks

By Julia Fioretti, Barbara Lewis and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS, March 19 (Reuters) - Europe's most wanted man was captured after a shootout in Brussels in a major coup for authorities investigating November's Islamic State attacks on Paris.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, the first suspected active participant taken alive, was being held overnight in hospital with a slight leg wound, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel announced at a news conference alongside French President Francois Hollande.

"This is an important result in the battle for democracy," Michel said on Friday, adding that U.S. President Barack Obama had called to congratulate the Belgian and French leaders.

A Belgian minister broke the news by tweeting, "We got him."

Prosecutors said a second wanted man, who used the false name of Amine Choukri, was also wounded and captured in the raid on the apartment in Abdeslam's home neighbourhood of Molenbeek.

The operation, planned after fingerprints and passports were found in a bloody raid three days earlier, was staged in a rush after media leaked word that police had found Abdeslam's trail.

Hollande, who was visiting Brussels for a European summit, confirmed France would seek extradition for the Brussels-based Frenchman who, he said, was definitely in Paris on the bloody night of Friday, Nov. 13 when 130 people were killed.

Abdeslam's elder brother, a Brussels barkeeper who shared a chequered history of drugs and petty crime, blew himself up outside a Parisian cafe that night. Hollande said the younger man's role in the killings was unclear but investigators were sure he helped plan the operation for the Syria-based group.

Since all the identified attackers were killed, Abdeslam offers France a major new chance to understand what happened.

It was now clear, Hollande said, that many more people had been involved in the Paris attacks on a sports stadium, bars and cafes and concert hall than was first thought. Security concerns remain, he added, "The threat level is very high."

FINGERPRINTS

Television footage showed armed security forces dragging a man with his head covered out of a building and into a car.

Several bursts of gunfire rang out earlier in Molenbeek, a down-at-heel borough that is home to many Muslim immigrants, notably of Moroccan descent like Abdeslam's family. Two explosions were heard after the arrest, though it was unclear whether they were part of a new operation or the clear-up.

Some four hours later, the main police presence had stood down but crime scene investigators were still at work.

There had long been speculation about whether Abdeslam had stayed in Belgium or managed to flee to Syria.

Security services will be seeking information from Abdeslam on Islamic State plans and structures, his contacts in Europe and Syria and support networks and finance. Over the past four months, France and Belgium have detained several people linked to the prime suspects but none they suspect of a major role.

A man and two women, members of what prosecutors said was "the family which hid Abdeslam," were detained with the two wanted men and will be questioned. Investigators will want to know how extensive a network, under a code of silence, was able to hide such a high-profile fugitive in a busy inner city neighbourhood just a few hundred yards from his parents' home.

Security agencies' difficulties in penetrating some Muslim communities, particularly in pursuit of Belgium's unusually high number of citizens fighting in Syria, has been a key factor in the inquiry, along with arms dealing in Brussels.

A four-month inquiry that had seemed to go cold, heated up this week when French and Belgium officers went to an apartment in the southern Brussels suburb of Forest on Tuesday, thinking they were simply looking for physical evidence in the case.

Instead, at least two people sprayed automatic gunfire at them as they opened the door, wounding three officers. An Algerian called Mohamed Belkaid was shot dead after a siege but two people were believed to have gotten away. Prosecutors said on Friday these may have been Abdeslam and the man called Choukri.

They also said the Algerian was wanted, under the false name Samir Bouzid, since he appeared on CCTV wiring cash to a woman just after the Paris attacks. She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who fought in Syria and is believed to have been a local organiser for Belgian and French militants. Abbaoud and his cousin died in a gunbattle in a Paris suburb on Nov. 18.

Crucially, police found Abdeslam's fingerprints.

They also found a fake Belgian ID card issued to "Choukri" and a fake Syrian passport for the same man in the name Monir Ahmed Alaaj. That man had been fingerprinted - as Choukri - by German police when he and Abdeslam were stopped in a car there in October. Those prints turned up again in January at a house used by the plotters in a small town south of Brussels.

On Friday, local media said, a tapped telephone confirmed that Abdeslam was in the house in rue des Quatre-Vents (Four Winds Street) in Molenbeek. After French media broke word of Abdeslam's fingerprints being found in the Forest flat, police moved in within three hours and seized the pair in minutes.

PARIS TRAIL

After his elder brother Brahim blew himself up, Salah Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris overnight by two men who admitted doing so and are now in custody on terrorism charges, along with eight other suspects in Belgium.

French police stopped Abdeslam three times on the drive back but his details were circulated only after he reached Belgium.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Hollande and Michel took pains to exchange compliments to their security services and warm cross-border cooperation.
'A space to cry' for Colombia's rape survivors as war trauma takes decades to heal

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA, March 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Her voice cracking and hands trembling, Adriana holds up a silhouette she has drawn of her body in front of 33 other rape survivors sitting in a circle at a therapy session in Bogota.

"I feel desolation and sadness in my soul. We need to repair our hearts," she said, pointing to her heart on the drawing. The others nod in agreement.

"Every day I remember what happened. I spent five days in hospital after I attempted suicide. I still carry the pain," said Adriana, as she recalled being raped by a rebel fighter in her home 15 years ago.

The women, aged from their twenties to sixties, have come from all parts of Colombia. They have suffered sexual violence at the hands of guerrilla and paramilitary fighters, who used rape as a weapon in Colombia's 51-year civil war.

The healing taking place at this government-run therapy session offers a glimpse of the trauma Colombia's estimated 13,600 rape survivors face as the war-scarred nation attempts to bring an end to decades of violence.

The government and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are inching ever closer to signing a peace deal in Cuba, where talks began in late 2012.

But the horrors of war between rebels, paramilitary groups and government troops have left generations of Colombians psychologically traumatised.

Around a third of Colombia's 7.8 million registered war victims - 17 percent of the country's population of 46 million - suffer from some kind of mental health disorder, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"These are far above normal level of psychological trauma and reveal the magnitude and severity of the problem we face," said Andres Moya at Colombia's Los Andes University, who is researching the war's social and economic impact.

"The psychological consequences of the conflict is a topic we have neglected. This is surprising from a country that has been in conflict for 50 years. It's absurd that we haven't paid this the attention we should have."

How Colombia cares for the millions of its citizens who have been psychologically damaged by war will be a measure of the nation's ability to emerge from five decades of fighting.

"The impact of the conflict on mental health is one of the main challenges we're going to face," Moya said.

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Most Colombians either have a relative who was killed, displaced, kidnapped or disappeared and or know someone who has experienced such violence in a war that has killed around 200,000 people and displaced millions.

For many rape survivors, fear and shame has kept them silent about their ordeal for years.

At the therapy session in a luxury downtown hotel, some are sharing their experiences for the first time.

"No one ever asked us what happened to us. We haven't had a chance to unload our grief. This is a space to cry," said 31-year-old Diana, as tears roll down her face.

When she was 14, she was raped by an armed fighter and had a son as a result.

"Sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday. But I feel less alone knowing that it didn't just happen to me," she said.

Other women stare at the ground, clasping their hands and shaking their heads.

Over the next several hours, women are taught breathing and relaxation exercises under the gentle guidance of a psychologist as soothing music plays.

The women speak of feeling angry and seeking revenge after being raped, which has often given way to depression and despair.

They describe having common symptoms of mental illness and panic attacks. Some say they can't sleep and concentrate, others don't want to eat and get out of bed.

After being raped, many women were forced by armed groups to flee their homes in the countryside, seeking refuge in the capital Bogota.

Over the years, many have struggled to cope with the poverty displacement often spawns, and the loss of homes, livelihoods, and the breakdown of relationships, which can create or deepen mental health problems.

So far, more than a thousand rape survivors have received such counselling provided by the government.

Rape survivors, like other war victims, are also eligible for up to around $7,000 each in financial compensation as part of government efforts to heal the wounds of war.

CUMULATIVE TRAUMA

Despite such efforts, the stigma attached to mental illness along with a lack of mental health care, especially in Colombia's rural areas, means many are not getting treatment.

Aid group Doctors of the World says that of the 22,000 people given medical care in three conflict-hit provinces between 2013 and 2014, 30 percent showed symptoms of depression.

Children also show signs of trauma, including young teenagers who wet or defecate their beds.

"For many remote rural communities there hasn't been an opportunity for catharsis, to talk about what has happened," said Ildefonso Jaimes, a psychologist with Doctors of the World.

"Most people in rural areas don't know what a psychologist is and have never met one. Some people say: "I don't need to go to a psychologist, I'm not crazy," he said.

For some men living in Colombia's macho culture, it can be difficult to seek help.

"A macho man wants to hide his pain and not show his weakness and vulnerability," Jaimes said. "Some men say they feel impotent and guilty for being unable to defend their family from rape and or attacks."

The relatives of the estimated 50,000 Colombians who have disappeared during the conflict endure "a complex grief."

"We've come across grandparents who say they will continue to wait until the missing return home," Jaimes said.

Because of the extraordinary length of Colombia's war - a conflict that has spanned several generations - symptoms of mental health disorders build up and can become chronic.

"Many people have experienced a cycle of violence. The impact of the conflict on mental health is accumulated and repetitive over time," Jaimes said.

War trauma could also undermine Colombia's prospects of building long-term peace. Yet the country spends less on mental health care as a percentage of the total national health budget when compared to some other Latin American countries, Moya said.

Back at the therapy session, the healing continues.

With their eyes closed, a psychologist asks women to picture their hearts and go inside them.

"Find where the pain is and what's written there," she said.
UN says Saudi-led bombing of Yemen market may be international crime

By Stephanie Nebehay and Angus McDowall

GENEVA/RIYADH, March 18 (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen may be responsible for "international crimes", a category that includes war crimes and crimes against humanity, the top U.N. human rights official said on Friday.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned an air strike in Yemen this week and added that the coalition was "responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together".

More than 6,000 people have been killed since the coalition campaign began a year ago to fight Iranian-allied Houthis and forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and to restore the president they ousted, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri said on Friday major combat operations were less extensive than earlier in the war and there were "good signs" the U.N. might soon restart peace talks between warring Yemeni factions.

Houthi officials travelled to Saudi Arabia this month for secret talks on the conflict that led to a pause in fighting on the border, a main battlefront of the war, and a prisoner exchange.

Asseri said that despite those "positive signs", any formal peace talks would have to be carried out by Hadi's internationally recognised government, not by Saudi Arabia, and under a U.N. umbrella.

Tuesday's strike near Mustaba in northwest Yemen hit an outdoor market and killed more than 100, a provincial health director and a U.N. official in Sanaa said, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the war.

"These awful incidents continue to occur with unacceptable regularity. In addition, despite public promises to investigate such incidents, we have yet to see progress in any such investigations," Zeid said in a statement.

"We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the Coalition," Zeid said. International crimes includes war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave violations of human rights.

Saudi Arabia enjoys diplomatic backing and military help from the United States and other Western powers for its campaign in Yemen.

The Obama administration is "deeply concerned by the devastating toll of the crisis in Yemen," a senior official said. It is urging all sides to comply with international humanitarian law and to minimize harm to civilians by taking steps including not positioning armaments or military equipment in places where civilians are known to gather.

HOUTHI ATTACKS CONDEMNED

Asseri urged the U.N. not to collect its information from those, like the provincial health director, employed by the Houthi-controlled administration in Sanaa.

"We use the information coming from the (pro-Hadi) Yemeni army because they are on the ground. The attack was under the control of the Yemeni army. It gave the target," Asseri said in a phone interview.

He forwarded a graphic prepared by Hadi's government that said the target of the air strike was a military area where Houthi forces had gathered and that "they deceived people by saying it was a market".

A statement issued on Friday by Hadi's government said it had formed a committee to look into the bombing and whether it was the result of an air strike or of shelling by the Houthis, whom it accused of often blaming the coalition for attacks they carried out themselves.

But Zeid's staff who visited the site of Tuesday's deadly strike and interviewed witnesses at al-Khamees market "found no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack", Zeid said.

Coalition strikes "have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties - and hundreds of private residences," he added. There were 24 children among the 106 reported dead at Mustaba.

Zeid also condemned indiscriminate ground attacks carried out by the Houthis and their allies which have killed civilians, saying these may also amount to international crimes.

Asseri told Reuters: "Today, we have less of what in military science we call major combat, where we use a lot of forces. Today, most of the forces are in the phase of stabilising," he said, adding that military operations continued, particularly near Sanaa.

The pause in fighting on the border, and the breaking of a Houthi siege on the city of Taiz in the south, both mediated with the help of local tribes, was part of a wider effort to reinvigorate the political process, he said.
Serbia arrests 46, including 15 policemen, in anti-corruption sweep

BELGRADE, March 18 (Reuters) - Serbian police have arrested 46 people including 15 police constables on charges of corruption and money-laundering, the interior minister said on Friday, stepping up an anti-corruption drive before an April 24 election.

A local judge, an official of the state-run pension fund and a former mayor were also detained in the nationwide sweep.

The suspects' activities are estimated to have cost the state or local authorities a total of 7 million euros ($7.9 million) because of fines or taxes that were not paid, Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said.

"The 15 constables of the Belgrade traffic police were arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes," he told a news conference.

It was the second big swoop on corruption since December when police arrested 86 people, including a former cabinet minister.

In the April 24 snap election, the Progressive Party of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic aims to cement its hold on power to pursue economic reforms and a European Union integration bid.

To join the EU, Serbia will have to demonstrate progress in dismantling rampant corruption and organised crime that gained a strong foothold during the wars of federal Yugoslavia's break-up in the 1990s. Serbia opened EU accession talks last December.
EU fears new surge of migrants from Libya, plans mission -letter

By Robin Emmott and Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS, March 18 (Reuters) - Nearly half a million people displaced in Libya could travel to Europe, the EU's foreign policy chief has told the bloc's foreign ministers in a letter, urging action to prevent another escalation in the region's migration crisis.

In the message seen by Reuters, Federica Mogherini warned that people traffickers were operating freely in Libya and said the EU was working on sending a civilian security mission to boost the country's police, border forces and counter-terrorism operations.

The letter, sent on March 12, came in the build-up to a series of top-level meetings on the migration crisis, including one hosted by Britain in Brussels on Friday with Mogherini and leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Malta.

Diplomats and activists have said they are concerned Libya could be forgotten while the bloc focuses on reaching a deal with Turkey to return refugees from Greece. An effective deal with Turkey may also push traffickers to focus on other routes to smuggle migrants to Europe.

"There are more than 450,000 internally displaced persons and refugees in Libya who could be potential candidates for migration to Europe," Mogherini wrote.

SANCTIONS, SECURITY OPERATIONS

The European Union is working on helping Libya boost its institutions and on ensuring that a U.N.-backed government, currently based in Tunis, can operate from Tripoli.

The North African oil producer plunged into chaos after rebels ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, backed by British and French air strikes supported by the United States.

London and Paris struggled for months to win broader EU support for sanctions on three Libyan leaders seen as blocking the U.N. process to establish a government in Tripoli.

They finally won support this week to go ahead with preparations to impose asset freezes and travel bans, though the sanctions have yet to be adopted.

Beyond such measures, Mogherini said she was exploring "all possible options" that could help combat people traffickers in Libya. The EU and the United States hope they will be in a position to act quickly if a unity Libyan government is strong enough to call for foreign assistance.

EU defence and foreign affairs ministers will hold a joint meeting focussed on Libya on April 18 in Luxembourg to discuss Mogherini's plans, an EU official said on Friday.

"The possibility of setting up a team of 'deployable experts' on migration and security issues ... could be explored," Mogherini said in her letter.
European Union assures Albania of help with possible migrant influx

By Benet Koleka

TIRANA, March 18 (Reuters) - The European Union will give financial aid to help Albania cope with any influx of migrants from Greece if they switched routes in an attempt to reach western Europe, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Friday.

Macedonia and other states on the Western Balkans migration corridor between Greece and the west of the EU have sealed their borders, stranding around 43,000 refugees and other asylum seekers in Greece, some of them close to Albania.

Avramopoulos said there were no signs so far that refugees were seeking alternative transit through Albania but the EU's Frontex border agency was monitoring matters on the ground and the Albanian government had drawn up a contingency plan.

"Whatever comes as a request from the Albanian government, our reaction will be positive. If it happens, Albania will not be unprepared because we shall be here to help the Albanians address this issue," Avramopoulos told reporters in Tirana after talks with Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri.

The EU will provide financial and political assistance in the event Albania faced a tide of migrants, said Avramopoulos, who visited the Idomeni camp of stranded migrants on Greece's border with Macedonia on Tuesday.

In Brussels on Friday, EU leaders approved a deal with Turkey intended to halt a tide of mainly Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan migrants from that country into Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara.

Prime Minister Edi Rama told Avramopoulos that Albania stood ready to handle any arrival of migrants "within its possibilities and capacities as part of a joint European plan", a statement from his office said.

Albania, a NATO member and a candidate for EU membership, is already getting help from Italy to reinforce security at its border with Greece to stop any Islamist militants from slipping in disguised as migrants and human smugglers from luring migrants to cross the Adriatic Sea to Italy in speedboats.

Such sea journeys have often proved deadly.

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is expected to finalise a cooperation agreement with Albania during a visit to Tirana next week. The deal would see Italy helping Albania record the biometric data of refugees entering the country and electronically sharing information on their identities and the route they had taken with Frontex and possibly Greece, an Albanian official said on Tuesday.

Avramopoulos said EU member states were not well-prepared when the migrant influx began last year "to face such a very complex and difficult situation and we still do not know what will its implications in our larger neighbourhood will be".
Russian, Iran foreign ministers discuss Syria ceasefire - Russia

MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed in a phone call with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif the implementation of ceasefire in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Former first leady Simone Gbagbo to face trial in Ivory Coast in April

By Ange Aboa

March 18 (Reuters) - A former first lady of Ivory Coast will go on trial on April 25 for crimes against humanity for her role in a 2011 crisis in which around 3,000 people were killed, her lawyer said on Friday.

Simone Gbagbo, who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, has already been sentenced to 20 years in jail for crimes including disturbing the peace, organising armed gangs and undermining state security .

The charges stem from a brief civil war that broke out when her husband, then-president Laurent Gbagbo, refused to accept his defeat by Alassane Ouattara in a 2010 election. He is now accused of crimes against humanity and awaits trial at the ICC.

Ivory Coast refused to transfer Simone Gbagbo to The Hague to face similar charges, however, arguing that she could receive a fair trial in a domestic court.
U.S. has helped France, Belgium on security since Paris attacks - W.House

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday the United States had been helping French and Belgian authorities to boost security since November's Paris attacks, and that this would continue.

The comments from White House spokesman Josh Earnest came after news broke that Salah Abdeslam, the most wanted fugitive from the attacks in which 130 people died, was wounded and caught in a shootout in Brussels Friday.

Earnest told a daily press briefing he did not know whether President Barack Obama had been briefed.

"The United States obviously has significant resources and significant capabilities, and we have used them to assist the French and the Belgians as they have conducted investigations into the attacks and as they have taken steps to try to safeguard their country," Earnest said
UN chief disappointed by Security Council on Western Sahara -spokesman

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, March 18 (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was disappointed by the Security Council's failure to take a strong stand in a dispute between him and Morocco over Western Sahara and will raise it with council members soon, Ban's spokesman said on Friday.

The government of Morocco last week accused Ban of no longer being neutral in the conflict and on Thursday ordered the United Nations to cut 84 international staff from its Western Sahara mission, MINURSO.

The 15-nation council discussed the crisis for several hours on Thursday. Afterwards, Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola, council president this month, said members had voiced their concern but agreed to individually approach Morocco to ensure the situation is "evolving in a positive manner."

In a cautiously worded rebuke of the council, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric made clear Ban's disappointment.

"It would have been better had we received clearer words from the president of the Security Council," he said, without elaborating.

Dujarric said that Ban would raise the issue in his monthly luncheon with council members.

Diplomats said the council members that argued against a strong statement of support of Ban and in favor of countries dealing with the issue bilaterally included Morocco's traditional ally France along with Spain, Egypt and Senegal. Council statements need to be unanimous.

The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the United Nations since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission.

Rabat last week criticized Ban for his use of the word "occupation" to describe Morocco's annexation of the region at the center of a struggle since 1975, when it took over from colonial power Spain.

Earlier this month, Ban visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them and fought a war against Morocco until the ceasefire. Ban also accused Morocco of supporting a demonstration against him that he described as a personal attack.

The Sahrawi people's Polisario Front wants a referendum, including over the question of independence, but Rabat says it will only grant semi-autonomy.

Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar complained on Thursday of Ban's "stubbornness" and said his remarks on the issue were "unacceptable."
Ukraine's Yanukovich: assets seizure is attempt to hide Kiev's failings

By Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) - Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich said on Friday Kiev's new government was trying to obscure its failings by pushing through a law to confiscate his alleged offshore assets.

Yanukovich has been living in exile in Russia since he was ousted by mass street protests in Kiev in 2014. His departure lit the fuse for Moscow's annexation of Crimea and a separatist uprising in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine's parliament provisionally approved on Thursday a law allowing the government to seize what it says are offshore assets of the Kremlin-backed former president without a court order. Yanukovich has largely stayed out of public view since his ouster.

"The conversations about the 'mythical billions' of Yanukovich are nothing more than an attempt by the present political losers to distract Ukrainians from the fact they have brought the country to collapse. Politically and economically," Yanukovich said in written comments to Reuters.

Ukrainians have grown increasingly impatient with Kiev's new leaders for not doing enough to tackle endemic corruption.

Cosy ties between politicians and business flourished under Yanukovich and the former president is widely reviled in Ukraine - both by those who opposed him in the street protests and his former supporters in the east of the country who say he abandoned them by fleeing to Russia.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's party said the law would allow the government to seize as much as 50 billion hryvnia ($1.9 billion) worth of government bonds and use the money for social and defence spending.

Yanukovich bought the bonds with money plundered from the Ukrainian state, according to lawmakers, and owns them through a intricate network of offshore companies spread across Cyprus, the Seychelles, Britain, Panama and Belize.

But Yanukovich said his assets in Ukraine consisted of one private house and bank accounts with less than 29 million hryvnia ($1.09 million), which have already been confiscated by state authorities.

A letter from Ukraine's general prosecutor, a copy of which was provided to Reuters, confirmed that he had no bank accounts abroad, the former president added.

Yanukovich said the law was being promoted by corrupt officials known for illegally seizing private assets, a practice known as "raiding".
Republican lawmakers to join Obama's Cuba visit

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - A small group of Republican lawmakers will join President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba on Sunday, underlining growing divisions in the party over the future of the United States' trade embargo against the island nation.

At least five Republicans, all known for favoring normal trade relations with Cuba, will make the trip, congressional sources and lawmakers told Reuters.

Republican congressional leaders have made opposition to President Barack Obama's easing of the Cuban trade embargo a hallmark of their foreign policy. But an increasing number of party members, drawn by the economic benefits of scrapping the cold war-era embargo, are lining up to back the White House.

"This is the right policy. He's done the right thing," said Republican Senator Jeff Flake, an outspoken proponent of closer ties with Cuba who is going to Havana.

Besides Flake, Republicans making the trip include House of Representatives members Mark Sanford, Tom Emmer and Reid Ribble, as well as Senator Mark Heller, congressional sources and lawmakers said. All of the representatives confirmed their participation, except for Heller, whose office declined requests for comment. But other lawmakers confirmed his travel.

Republicans backing Obama's policy cut against the grain of the party's establishment thinking that seeks to avoid giving Obama any kind of policy win, either domestically or internationally. Normalizing relations with Cuba would be a significant foreign policy legacy for Obama.

Many Republicans see the embargo as contrary to their party's pro-business tenets and believe the government should not tell citizens where they can travel.

"It's about Americans' freedom and embracing engagement rather than isolation as a way of changing other governments," Sanford said in a Facebook post explaining his decision to make the trip.

At least 15 of the 54 Republicans in the Senate, mostly members from states like Kansas where agriculture is a significant industry, have publicly backed increased Cuban trade or fewer restrictions on travel.

Supporters of Obama's policy say the total number of Republican supporters in the House and Senate reaches several dozen. Some members say they want to see how the election plays out before speaking publicly.

The U.S. embargo on Cuba, first imposed in 1960, can be lifted only via a majority vote in Congress, which is now controlled by Republicans.

COLD WAR RIVALS

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shocked the world in December 2014 by abruptly announcing the Cold War adversaries would move to normalize relations after more than a half-century's estrangement.

The news drew immediate condemnation in Congress, where a bloc of mostly Republican Cuban-American lawmakers has worked to keep tight restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba for years.

Although polls show 72 percent of Americans want to abandon the embargo, the Republican party line has firmly supported the restrictions. Critics of Obama's policy say Cuba's government is still too repressive for the United States to ease restrictions.

But this week businessman Donald Trump, who has questioned the embargo, easily won the Republican primary in Florida, defeating leading embargo advocate Senator Marco Rubio. Trump's victory countered the long-standing assumption that the state's Cuban exiles would defeat any anti-embargo candidate.

A young generation of Cuban-Americans has warmed to Obama's engagement policy, with many excited about the chance to open businesses in their homeland.

Ribble, a founder of the House Cuba Working Group who is going on the trip, represents Wisconsin, one of several states where farmers want the chance to sell to an island just 90 miles from the U.S. coast.
A look at some Americans held prisoner in North Korea

March 18 (Reuters) - A U.S. student has been sentenced in North Korea to 15 years' hard labor after he was convicted of trying to steal a banner bearing a political slogan. Otto Warmbier of Wyoming, Ohio, committed "crimes against the state," North Korean media said.

Here is a look at some of 13 Americans held by North Korea since 1996. Most of them were sentenced to years of hard labor but held for less than a year.

- Evan Hunziker, then 26, was held for three months in North Korea on spying charges in 1996. After he was apprehended by North Korean farmers, Hunziker spent a month in a detention center near the border before being moved to a Pyongyang hotel. U.S. government officials suggested Pyongyang was using the young drifter as a pawn in a game of international diplomacy. Then-U.S. Representative Bill Richardson secured his release in November 1996. Hunziker committed suicide about a month later.

- Euna Lee and Laura Ling of U.S. media outlet Current TV were arrested in March 2009 along the North Korea-China border while reporting on human trafficking. They were accused by Pyongyang of illegally entering North Korea with "hostile" intent and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. They were released in August 2009 after former U.S. President Bill Clinton went to Pyongyang to secure their return.

- Robert Park, a Christian human rights activist trying to raise global attention to the suffering of the North Korean people, crossed into the reclusive state in December 2009. Park told Reuters just before entering the North that he saw it as his duty as a Christian to make the journey and did not want the U.S. government to try to free him. He was arrested shortly after entering. In February 2010, he was released. The North's official KCNA news agency said Park confessed to entering the state illegally and had changed his mind about North Korea after being treated kindly there.

- Aijalon Mahli Gomes, then 30, of Boston had been working as an English teacher in South Korea and was arrested in January 2010 for illegally entering North Korea from China. He was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and freed after eight months when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter went to North Korea to retrieve him. Gomes' family described his captivity as "a long, dark and difficult period," and thanked Carter for his trip.

- Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, returned to the United States in November 2014 after being imprisoned in North Korea for two years. The North convicted him of trying to overthrow the state and sentenced him to 15 years' hard labor.
(OFFICIAL)-Russia pulls most strike aircraft from Syria -US military

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - Russia has withdrawn most of its strike aircraft from Syria, the U.S. military said on Friday, adding that Russia had also not carried out air strikes in the north of the country this week.

"They still have helicopters and some transport aircraft. But what we've seen is that the majority of Russian strike aircraft have left Syria," Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman at the U.S. military's Central Command, told Pentagon reporters.

Ryder initially said the United States had not seen Russia carrying out any air strikes in recent days but later clarified that applied only to northern Syria.

"While we've seen no Russian airstrikes in the northern areas of Syria this week, it appears the Russians have conducted some airstrikes after all in southern Syria in the vicinity of Palmyra in support of the Syrian regime," Ryder said.
Dal Thrive, a university-wide mental wellness initiative, launches today (March 14), aimed at building a positive mental health environment for faculty, staff and students.



We recognize the need to change the way we think and act about mental health, says Jasmine Walsh, acting assistant vice-president, Human Resources and co-project lead for Dals Strategic Initiative focusing on Diversity and Inclusiveness. Thrive is about creating awareness, reducing stigma and improving access to the mental health supports that we have in place.



Dal Thrive is more than a week-long campaign, it is a mindset that encourages faculty, staff and students to live, work and study in a positive way  to "Thrive" every day.



We decided to take a more holistic approach to mental health, and that is why we partnered with Human Resources and Dalhousie Student Union to launch Thrive, adds Verity Turpin, interim executive director, Student Support Services, and executive director, student wellness. In coming together, it really highlights all of the great work that is happening around our campuses and beyond.



There are many initiatives already underway as part of Dal Thrive, including the Dalhousie Student Unions #MyDefinition poster campaign with Dalhousie students sharing their mental health stories; the "Elephant in the Room" campaign introduced on the Agricultural Campus that is set to expand to the Halifax campus later this year; and a series of Mental Health First Aid (faculty, staff & students) and Mental Health 101 (faculty & staff) sessions that will be ongoing.



As a student leader, Im excited to be involved with Dal Thrive, says Dan Nicholson, president, Dalhousie Student Union. I often hear from students about the need for greater access to mental health supports on campus, and if we can help them through this initiative then weve achieved success.

Visit dal.ca/Thrive to learn more about mental health events, resources, supports that are available.



Why Dal Thrive?





According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, approximately 20 percent of Canadians will experience mental health challenges at some point in their lives.



Dal Thrive is one of many campus-wide initiatives underway as part of the universitys Strategic Initiative on Diversity and Inclusiveness. The development of a mental wellness plan for faculty, staff and students was a commitment outlined in this strategic initiative. In addition, the results from the 2015 Quality of Work Life Survey of faculty and staff indicated a need for more campus mental health resources, supports and services.



Dal Thrive was adapted from the University of British Columbia (UBC). In 2009, UBC recognized the need to improve its environment as it relates to mental health and developed the first Thrive campaign. Since then, more than 11 colleges and universities across Canada have introduced Thrive.



Upcoming Thrive workshops/sessions



March 22  Mental Health 101: A presentation for faculty and staff designed to increase awareness and understanding of mental health problems, and increase confidence in supporting students. Register here.



April 4 and 5 - Mental Health First-Aid session (Halifax): A two-day program for faculty and staff to learn the basics of mental health conditions and develop strategies for responding to different situations. Register here. There are also free Mental Health First-Aid sessions available for students in April, however there is a wait list. Learn more.



May 1 and 2  Mental Health First-Aid session (Truro): Register here.
Each March, Engineers across Canada celebrate National Engineering Month  an opportunity for practitioners, researchers, teachers and students to celebrate the possibilities of a career in Engineering.

One of Dals highlights of month takes place Tuesday, March 22 when Faculty of Engineering students get a chance to show off their skills at the third annual Engineering Design Expo and Poster Competition.



The Design Expo features senior-year Capstone Projects, which integrate course work and engineering design skills and provide innovative solutions for many local industrial partners. In the fourth-year course that spans two terms, students take on industry or community-based projects and work with the client to solve a specific problem.



The Capstone Projects give students from all engineering disciplines an opportunity to use their technical and design skills, in a professional engineering setting, to see how they can benefit clients and society in their role as an engineer, explains Clifton Johnston, associate professor and NSERC Chair in Design Engineering. Its an incredible learning opportunity for the students and the clients are always happy with the outcome.

Hands-on learning



Some of the industry/community projects are designed to be used by the clients, while others are simply an opportunity for students to get to work with detailed, real-world scenarios to enhance their skills. On one project this year, Civil Engineering students collaborated with Dalhousies capital planning team in Facilities Management, completing their own proposal for the structural design and cost estimate for the IDEA Building project.



The forthcoming 72,500 square foot project aims to provide modern, hands-on learning space on Dals Sexton Campus that increases interaction and collaboration between students in the Faculties of Engineering and Architecture & Planning.



L-to-R: Dal Seamone, Rory Hastey, Andrew Smith, Sean Bent.

We were excited to take on the IDEA Building project, explains team member Sean Bent. The site location was convenient, we knew we wanted to design a building and it was cool that it was going to be a Dal building.



We met with Nathan Rogers, assistant director, capital planning for Dal. He provided us with the architectural drawings and laid out the purposes within the building. From there, we began to develop the design.



Participating companies and clients are matched with student teams in September. Through regular site visits and client meetings, project scope and requirements are developed and data are collected and analyzed. Solutions are designed, tested and presented by early April.

Hundreds of Dalhousie Engineering students will be demonstrating their group projects at the Expo.

I think its important for the public to see what our students have been working on, explains Dr. Johnston. The Capstone Projects are a result of four years of intense engineering study. The students put a lot of creativity and effort into these projects that have a goal and real-world applications.

Mentors and partnerships



Each team is paired with a professional engineer that acts as a mentor and consultant to the group. In the case of The IDEA Building design team, they were paired with Geoff Axell, a senior contract engineer for CBCL and a Dal grad. The team met regularly with Geoff to review their plans and get feedback on any issues or concerns.



The project really forces you to utilize your four years of training, shares team member Rory Hastey. At times we were in over our heads, but we learned so much during the process.



Sean adds: In the classroom setting, the problems are very structured and everything kind of works out smoothly as you go though it. But with a real-world project like this, there isnt always a right answer. So, youre going through the process and meeting problems where you didnt expect them and having to work through them.



The team agrees even with various frustrations along the way, the process is incredibly valuable. The project exposed them to everything that goes into the structural design of a building, including the amount of hours that go into a project of this calibre.



Its was really up to us to stay on top of this project. There were times that we put in seven hours but really didnt get seven hours of work out of it because it can take a full day to figure out a problem that just isnt working, explains Sean. But eventually, we always found the solution.

Diverse projects



Approximately 70 projects will be featured at the Engineering Design Expo. The projects range from LaMP (Lower arm Mechatronic Prosthetic), a project to create an upper limb mechatronic prosthetic solution for amputees located in global conflict zones; to a team of students working with Emergency Health Services (EHS) to improve how biomedical devices are tracked for the EHS LifeFlight critical care transport program.



The Design Expo is about celebrating student work, supporting local businesses, strengthening Dal-industry relationships and promoting innovation in our province. The event is free and open to the public. Engineering students will display their projects and be available to answer questions.



The Third Annual Engineering Design Expo takes place Tuesday, March 22, in the Sexton Memorial Gymnasium at 1360 Barrington St. Visitors are welcome to stop by anytime between 12 -5 p.m.


Rating:

Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Rajat Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Ratna Pathak Shah, Alia Bhatt

Director: Shakun Batra

Weve all dreamt a version of this dream: A house with a sloping red-brick roof in a hill station, its large grounds marked lazily by a picket fence. Seen from inside and outside, it sits blissfully at the horizon, where the green hill meets the blue sky, and where all our needs are met. The feelings this dream conjures up are the sort wed like clicked, framed and mounted on the walls of the house. Glowing pictures of that leisurely breakfast around an overflowing dining table, that quiet, peaceful coffee-and-book evening, that crazy lunch when everyone came over, that family celebration which wont end.

Director Shakun Batra, who has written Kapoor & Sons screenplay and dialogue with Ayesha Devitre Dhillon, takes us into exactly such a dream home in Coonoor  the house of daddy Harsh (Rajat Kapoor), mummy Sunita (Ratna Pathak Shah), soon-to-be-98 Dadaji (Rishi Kapoor), dog Geshu, and their two grown-up sons settled abroad. But he takes us there to shatter all illusions about the perfect family. That thing doesnt exist.

Dysfunction has been a great Indian family tradition since the time of Ramayan and Mahabharat. Only its hardly ever called out. We have too many weddings to plan, too many traditions to follow, too many functions to attend, too many boxes to tick, too many lies to live. The few times that it has been, straight-faced and without hesitation, have remained embedded in our psyche. Monsoon Wedding, Highway, even Piku, Vicky Donor, Wake Up Sid, and some bits in that phoney Dil Dhadakne Do.

And now comes Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921). Its a story set in a house thats teetering on the brink  seething with anger and resentment, yet busy with the daily chores of life, family meals, recipes, hospital visits. Like all dysfunctional families, this one too is always just one conversation away from reconciliation, closure and regaining balance, and always just one act, one move away from unravelling, tipping over and disintegrating into complete chaos. Here happiness lies locked in old, painful photo albums.

From the first scene itself, where around the dining table Sunita taunts Harsh about money, and he taunts her about everything, including her taunting, while Dadaji pretends to die, its clear that we are going to bask in the gory glory of a dysfunctional family.

And when Dadaji really does have a heart attack, and his two grandsons, Rahul (Fawad Khan), a successful writer in London who is struggling to write his next novel, and Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra), a bartender in New Jersey who is also writing a book, arrive after a brief glimpse of their own acrimonious relationship, the family begins to unravel.

Rahul returns home to find his room spick and span, as he had left it. His space in the house carefully, respectfully, lovingly preserved. Arjuns room has been taken over completely by his mother, leaving hardly any trace of his existence, not even a memento to say we are waiting for you to return. Sunita has been sleeping there, she explains, because the doctor has advised her to sleep on a hard gadda.

Rahul, we learn, was always the perfect bachcha, and Arjun, well, mummy and daddy never really knew what he was up to. But, hard gadda. Lets return to that. I really like Shakun Batra. I liked his first film, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012), and this one I like even more, because he and Dhillon have taken the smallest, silliest lies we say and hear, and pegged the story of the testy Kapoors on these.

No lumbering, excessively emotional buildup to a heavy and grand revelation-confrontation. There are several revelations and confrontations, but the frantic drama is built around seemingly mundane things said and done. Small things lead to livid outbursts, bitter arguments, with the past being dredged up as if it were just yesterday, all the while telling us a bit more  Rahul calls Arjun a chor and harbours a deep grudge, Sunita brings up the name Anu again and again, Harsh has a secret, but so does Sunita. And Arjun is just too scared to even mention his.

Soon its time for Dadajis 98th birthday, a big family event where he wants his last wish fulfilled  a happy photo. Around organising the birthday and the family portrait, with Dadaji in his wheelchair, the family comes undone. But not before sweet characters are introduced, some believable and one just, well, built around the emotion of the films one and only memorable song, Ladki beautiful kargi chull. Thats Tia (Alia Bhatt), an orphaned princess of sorts. Dadajis photo, when its finally taken, is as if its held together by a band-aid. You first see the fissures, the cracks, the patch-up job. But its a photo thats real in more ways than one.



If, like me, you draw lifes lessons from films (I cut a sorry figure as I write this, of course), Kapoor & Sons says just one simple thing: Life is just too short. There may not be time to get answers to all the questions youve been harbouring. So, either just get up and ask, or learn to live the life you have now.

Kapoor & Sons says dont look at old, happy photos longingly. Make new ones. Howsoever imperfect, at least theyll be real. And it says this through a screenplay thats very clever and modern. It places its characters in seemingly mundane scenes that lead to ugly, socially awkward fights.

The scenes and dialogue are deviously dark and funny  like the scene with the plumber, references to filmy characters recent and past  and the camera is like a dizzy guest, wanting to recoil in disgust, but unable to look away. My one grouse is that Gupta hasnt got over his crush on gori-chitti Punjabi girls. Earlier Kareena Kapoor, and now Alia Bhatt. Though he gives his heroines a role in making the plot move, he just cant get over how cute they are, turning them into not just unreal, but also slightly stupid. There is something called an overkill of cuteness, and that happens with the orphan in the big house with the Nepali help.

Apart from hers all other characters are real and believable. Rishi Kapoors Dadaji is not just adorable but also significant. The randy, loquacious Dadaji who is always doing or saying something inappropriate, arrives not just to lighten the mood, but also to draw attention to how short life really is.

Ratna Pathak Shah is very good, but not a patch on Shefali Shah (Mrs Mehra in Dil Dhadakne...) at conveying seething innards. Rajat Kapoor, who used to drive me insane with his haaan at the end of every sentence, is an absolute delight to watch.

Fawad Khan is not from Bollywood and thats the reason he is brave enough to play the character he does here. I cant think of any leading light amongst our hunks whod take this risk. Sidharth Malhotra is back in great form after a dud. He is brilliantly understated and though he has a tougher role than Fawads, and is less cuter than Mr Khan, he owns every single scene he is in, gently but firmly.
The land being returned to the State by March 31 include 16.30 acres adjoining the campus of Jammu University, 212 acres at Tatoo Grounds in Srinagar and about 58 acres at high grounds, Anantnag (Photo: PTI)

Srinagar: The Army has agreed to return over 350 acres of state land under its use in twin capitals of Srinagar and Jammu and in southern Anantnag and frontier Kargil districts of Jammu and Kashmir by March-end.

One of the preconditions set by Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for forming the government is that the state be compensated for the illegal occupation of acres of land by the army and other central security forces.

The land being returned to the State by March 31 include 16.30 acres adjoining the campus of Jammu University, 212 acres at Tatoo Grounds in Srinagar and about 58 acres at high grounds, Anantnag.

Also, a big chunk of land being held by Army at lower Plateau Khurba Thang in Kargil will be returned as was agreed at a meeting Governor, N.N. Vohra had with Lt. Gen. D S Hooda, GOC-in-C Northern Command, at Raj Bhavan in Jammu late Thursday evening.

An official spokesman said the land at Kargil will be formerly vacated and its possession handed over to the Chief Secretary of the State, B.R.Sharma, who is the chairman of the committee set up earlier to sort out the issue with the Army authorities, during his planned visit to the frontier town later this month.

The land at other places will be handed over to the State before March 31 after the Governor and the Army Commander together will visit the locations for physical verifications regarding their possible utilisation for creating parks and recreational facilities for the youth as has been proposed at mutual discussions earlier.

At Thursdays extensive discussions with Lt. Gen. Hooda, Governor Vohra reviewed the implementation of decisions taken in earlier civil-military liaison conferences with regard to all land matters relating to the Army.

The meeting was attended also by Sharma and other senior officers of the State. The Governor asked the Committee headed by the Chief Secretary to visit the locations in Jammu, Srinagar, Anantnag and Kargil to satisfy all formalities on the spot and take over the said sites.

The official spokesman said that the Governor also reviewed all other decisions and certain understandings arrived at with the Army Commander with regard to the location of Armys High Altitude Warfare School (HAWS) at ski resort of Gulmarg.

The Governor shall shortly have another meeting with the Army Commander on the issue, the spokesman said. Official sources said that the Army may be asked to relocate the HAWS or, at least, hand over some of the land under its occupation to the Gulmarg Development Authority to enhance the facilities at the premier resort of the Valley.

The meeting also discussed all cases relating to the regularisation of certain lands and buildings occupied by the Army at various places across the State and decisions were taken to take further action in this regard before May 31. For this purpose, the Chief Secretary-led committee will meet regularly till all the cases are settled amicably, the spokesman said.

He added the meeting also discussed issues relating to the notification of firing ranges at various places.

It was decided that the Chief Secretary shall pursue the pending issues with the Ministry of Defence, particularly regarding the enhancement of the scales of rent payable for the required areas of land, he said.

At a separate meeting the Governor reviewed internal and external security issues with officials of civil administration, police, Army and Central intelligence agencies.

The Governor was informed about the redeployments undertaken to strengthen security in the aftermath of last months terror attack at Sempora, Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar in which five security personnel including two Army officers and all three militants were killed.

Director General of Police, K Rajendra Kumar and the State heads of various security forces said at the meeting that the Multi-Agency Security Audit of all important establishments and vital installations in the State, undertaken after the recent attack on Air Force Base at Pathankot, has been completed and necessary actions taken.

The meeting discussed various important issues relating to the effective enforcement of the counter infiltration and counter terrorism grids along the International Border and Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir regions.

The measures decided earlier to be taken for maintaining internal order, particularly before, during and after encounters held by the security forces with militants and terrorists, were discussed and certain fresh decisions were taken to more effectively ensure against collateral damage during encounters, a statement issued in Jammu said.

It added that it was also decided that enhanced attention and increased deployment shall be given to counter attempts of infiltration from across the IB and LoC.

The meeting also discussed a new trend in the Kashmir Valley that has caused worry among the security forces authorities, where people are turning in large numbers at the funerals of slain militants and start chanting pro-azadi slogans on seeing security forces arriving in their area to take on militants.

The 'protestors' also move close to encounter sites and even target security forces with stones. At least, two persons were killed and over a dozen injured in security forces' firing and other actions against protesters during past few weeks.

With regards to enlarging awareness of the civilian population regarding the risks involved in gathering when operations are ongoing, the Chief Secretary informed that he had recently held a meeting with all district magistrates and superintendents of police to sensitise them about various important issues relating to security and law and order maintenance, the statement said.

It added that Sharma will be holding a similar meeting in Srinagar for ensuring enhanced coordination between security forces and civil administration.

The Governor stressed the need for continued cohesive action by all the security forces in tandem with the civil administration for ensuring maintenance of public order. The Governor also called upon the Police, CRPF and Army to keep a close constant vigil for effective security management.
India falls into the minority category of 70 nations where homosexuality is a criminal offence.

New Delhi: A day after Rashtra Swayam Sevak joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale stated that gay sex was not a crime, the leader took to Twitter on Friday to clarify that while homosexuality wasn't a crime, it should be treated as a psychological problem and not be institutionalised.

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case. Gay marriage is Institutionalisation of homosexuality. It should be prohibited. Approach to homosexuality should be 'no criminalisation; no glorification either', he tweeted.

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case.  Dattatreya Hosabale (@DattaHosabale) March 18, 2016

Gay marriage is Institutionalization of homosexuality. It should be prohibited.  Dattatreya Hosabale (@DattaHosabale) March 18, 2016

Earlier on Thursday, in a surprising reply to a question on whether homosexuality should remain a criminal offence under Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, Hosabale had said that sexual preference is a matter of personal choice and that it should not be considered a criminal offence.

I dont think homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society, Hosabale said, speaking at a media conclave Thursday.

Read: Centre has not formulated views on gay sex, says Union Minister

Sexual preferences are private and personal. Why should RSS express its views in a public forum? RSS has no view on that. It is for people to have their way. Personal preference of sex is not discussed in RSS and we dont even want to discuss that, the RSS leader added.

Hosabales statement comes at a time when senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's private member's bill seeking to decriminalise homosexuality in Lok Sabha was voted out at the introduction stage itself for the second time.

Read: Shashi Tharoor vows to fight bigotry after bid to decriminalise gay sex fails

India falls into the minority category of 70 nations where homosexuality is a criminal offence. Section 377 of Indian Penal Code terms homosexuality as "unnatural" and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. There have been demands by activists within the country to decriminalise homosexuality.

In February this year, the Supreme Court adopted a positive approach as it agreed to hear the plea against gay sex ban while it referred it to a larger bench.

Read: SC agrees to hear plea against gay sex ban, refers it to larger bench

Following the court order, Union Minister for Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu added that homosexuality was a "humane issue" and that the government had not formulated any view on the matter so far.
"Upon hearing that Donald Trump along with other presidential candidates will be speaking at AIPAC Policy Conference, we come together as Rabbis, Cantors, Jewish Professionals and members of the Jewish community to repudiate the ugliness that Mr Trump espouses. (Photo: AP)

Washington: Several Jewish religious leaders have said they would boycott Donald Trump when he addresses a major pro-Israeli conference on Monday, as they accused the US Republican presidential front-runner of "sowing seeds of hatred".

With several groups organising boycotts, Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, who are leading a protest campaign 'Come Together Against Hate', said their objective is to voice their displeasure and do not want to disrupt the meeting. "Our goal is not to disrupt the proceedings or to offend any of our fellow conference attendees. Our hope is to shine a moral light on the darkness that has enveloped Mr Trump's campaign," they said in a statement ahead of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Monday night.

"Upon hearing that Donald Trump along with other presidential candidates will be speaking at AIPAC Policy Conference, we come together as Rabbis, Cantors, Jewish Professionals and members of the Jewish community to repudiate the ugliness that Mr Trump espouses.

"At every turn, Mr Trump has chosen to take the low road, sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic," said Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which represents the largest Jewish denomination in America. "His campaign has been replete with naked appeals to bigotry, especially against Hispanics and Muslims. Previous comments he has made and not disavowed have been offensive to women, people of colour, and other groups. In recent days, increasingly, he appears to have gone out of his way to encourage violence at his campaign events," it said.

URJ alleged that Trump's extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric reminds "us that our own ancestors' access to American shores of freedom and promise were once blocked, with deadly consequences."

"When he speaks hatefully of Mexicans or Muslims, for example, we recall a time when anti-Semitism put Jews at deathly danger, even in the US. We cannot remain silent, for we have been commanded to "remember the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt," URJ said.
uspect Gyulchekhra Bobokulova from Muslim-majority Uzbekistan -- whom the press have dubbed "the bloody nanny" -- was detained on Monday as she was waving a child's severed head outside a Moscow metro station. (Photo: AFP)

Moscow: Days after the gruesome murder of a four-year-old girl by the babysitter, the culprit nanny told investigators that she was inspired to behead the child by Islamic State's videos posted online, according to a report in the Independent.

Currently detained in a psychiatric hospital, Bobokulova told the investigators that she felt bad for herself, rather than the minor victim whom she killed.

Read: Burqa-clad woman walks Moscow street with butchered childs head

She also said that she was inspired by ISIS videos and the way they behead their captors.

Earlier, she had said that she killed the minor to avenge Muslims killed in the Kremlins campaign of air strikes in Syria.

Read: Moscow nanny shows cops the place where she beheaded child

Bobokulova had recently been brainwashed by her Tajik lover, who was apparently a radical Muslim himself. (Photo: AFP)

Bobokulova said that she heard a voice who asked her to behead the girl in the same manner in which Islamic State militants kill their captors.

Read: Schizophrenic nanny smiles, says, 'Allah ordered childs beheading

The nanny also asked the investigators to shift her to a normal jail claiming that she was alright and no more heard voices. She further added that she did not like the psychiatric jail and was in deep pain. "I walk badly because of the drugs. My hair is dirty and I cannot wash it over here," Bobokulova was quoted as saying.

Read: Moscow nanny who beheaded child didn't act alone

A national of Uzbekistan, Gyulchehra Bobokulova, was arrested by police on March 2, 2016, after she was found roaming on Moscow streets with the decapitated head of a child. She was also heard screaming 'Allahu Akhbar' by shocked on-lookers. She was detained by the police as she passed by Oktyabrskoye Pole station.
Youssef Ettaoujar was under house arrest as part of France's state of emergency, in place since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130. (Photo: AFP)

Paris: One of four people arrested this week amid fears they were planning an attack in France had been under house arrest and was convicted two years ago of planning to join extremists in Syria, an official said Friday.

Youssef Ettaoujar, 28, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was convicted in 2014 along with two others. He finished serving his sentence in October and was under house arrest as part of France's state of emergency, in place since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130, the judicial official said, on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.

Authorities have until Sunday to free or charge any or all of the four. Ettaoujar's companion is among the four arrested in Paris and a northern suburb. It was unclear whether she is the mother of his daughter, Jihad - so named "because Jihad means effort," Ettaoujar said at his 2014 trial.

The trial was notable because it was the first in France of potential jihadi fighters in Syria when French youth were heading at an alarming rate to the battlefields of the Islamic State group.

Ettaoujar was considered the leader among the three arrested in 2012 at a French airport as they prepared to board a plane for Turkey, the leading route to neighboring Syria.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, referring to Ettaoujar without naming him, said Wednesday night that "he might commit violent actions in France."

"This individual may have been in contact with individuals in Syria belonging to the Islamic State."

At his trial, Ettaoujar denied he planned to fight in Syria, claiming his mission was humanitarian. Ettaoujar was given a five-year prison term with one year suspended for "criminal association with intent to commit terrorist acts."
Islamabad: Pakistans ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf left the country early on Friday morning for medical treatment in Dubai, a day after the government allowed him to go abroad.

I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months, Musharraf was quoted by the Dawn.

Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55am (0425 IST), a media report said.

He was the last person to be embarked on the plane and then the gate was closed. The retired general appeared relaxed, the report said.

Musharraf, 72, has been facing a treason trial since 2013 and was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government. The order was declared as illegal by the Sindh high court the same year.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the decision of the Sindh high court, rejecting the governments appeal. But it did not stop the federal government from putting new bars on Musharrafs foreign tours.

Interior minister Nisar Ali Khan told a press briefing on Thursday that after consultation, the government decided to let Musharraf leave the country for treatment.

He said Musharrafs lawyers had formally asked the government to allow him to undertake foreign travels.

The government has decided to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment. He has also committed he will face all cases against him in court, Khan said.

He was referring to several cases against Musharraf, including the high treason charged in a special court for suspending the constitution in 2007 that has been declared under Article 6 as being punishable by death.

He was indicted in April, 2014 but since no progress has been made in the case since.

Musharrafs All Pakistan Muslim League said on Thursday Musharraf was suffering from a backbone problem and he needed to go to the UAE for medical aid.

It is believed that the decision to let Musharraf go out of the country will help heal a rift between the powerful army and the government, as the military was unhappy about a trial of its former leader.

Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Facing impeachment following elections in 2008, Musharraf was forced to resign as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.
Two unidentified militants were killed in an encounter with security forces in north Kashmir's Kupwara district today.





"Two terrorists have been gunned down so far by the army in an ongoing operation at Petha Wadar of Handwara area in the district," an army official said.



Acting on specific information about the presence of militants in the area, security forces last night launched a search operation there, he said.



The hiding militants fired upon the security forces triggering an encounter in which the two militants were killed, the official said.



He said the identity of the slain militants has not been ascertained yet.The operation is in progress and further details are awaited, the official said.
Congress today sought to corner BJP on the suicide by a cow protection activist seeking 'Rashtra Mata' (mother of nation) status to the animal, saying the party will support the government if it goes ahead with such move.



However, the BJP remained more or less elusive while refusing to give any commitment to the demand raised by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti'.



Samiti activist Hindabhai Vambadiya (35) allegedly consumed pesticide outside Rajkot Collector office yesterday and died later in civil hospital.



He was part of the group of eight men who attempted suicide outside the collectorate seeking 'Rashtra Mata' status to cow and beef ban across country.



The issue reverberated in the Legislative Assembly today.



Senior Congressman and the Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela said that his party supports the demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata (mother of nation)".



"BJP should do introspection as to why someone gave his life. Cow is our mother and the BJP government must declare it as our national mother. If government agrees to do that, the Congress will support that move," Vaghela told reporters.



During the Assembly proceedings earlier in the day, Vaghela asked Speaker Ganpat Vasava to allow discussion in zero hour on the issue after question hour ended.



Vaghela told the Speaker that it was a matter of serious concern that someone has ended his life demanding the 'Rashtra Mata' status for cow.



Vaghela said the BJP is more touchy about the cow "as the saffron party uses cow as a mean to secure votes".



However, Vasava rejected his demand, saying there is no tradition of zero-hour in Gujarat Assembly, following which Vaghela and the Congress MLAs staged a symbolic walkout.



After they returned, Health Minister Nitin Patel launched an attack on the Congress, saying the party has no right to speak about cow "as their leaders once supported those who eat beef".



"A Congress MLA in Kerala even hosted a beef party in the past," he alleged.

Senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil hit back at BJP, claiming that people believed in the BJP's pre-poll claims that BJP will declare cow as national animal after coming to power at the Centre.



"BJP claims to be a party of 'Gau-Bhakts (cow worshippers). You only promised to do everything possible to protect cows ahead of polls. You only promised to declare it as Rashtra Mata. Since BJP has not done that, a person ended his life after consuming poison in Rajkot" alleged Gohil.



Responding to Gohil, Law Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja said that BJP is a party with a strong conviction and all the party workers believe in protecting cows at any cost.



The Samiti has called for Gujarat bandh today on the issue.
Sanjay Dutt may have walked out of jail last month after being in and out for the past 23 years but the Bollywood star says the feeling of freedom is yet to sink in.





The 56-year-old actor, who was convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, served a 42-month sentence at Pune's Yerwada jail. He was released on February 25, 103 days ahead of his prison term.



"I was in solitary confinement. It will take a bit longer for me to feel free. The feeling of freedom is yet to sink in. I have been in and out of jail for the last 23 years. There were so many restrictions, permissions to be take. I am getting used to live life like a free man. The feeling is yet to hit me.



"They imprison you mentally more than physically. They tell you what to do and what not do in prison," Dutt said at the India Today Conclave.



He said contrary to people's perception he did not receive any special treatment during his jail term and was given the same food to eat and same clothes as any other inmate.



"I did not get any VIP treatment. In fact I was treated worse than normal inmates as everyone thought I was getting special treatment. The worse thing about jail was the food, it was terrible and not edible at all."



The "Munnabhai" star said the sentence and the imprisonment always haunted him and his family. He assured that he loves his country and is a patriot.



"It has haunted me all these years. It has haunted my family and especially my father. I am a patriot, my family is a patriot. I cannot think of harming my country. It did affect me a lot. But I thank people that they didn't lose their faith in me and believed in me," he said.



The actor said his father actor-politician Sunil Dutt, believed in him and before he passed away he had told him that he was proud of his son. "I don't think I let my father down. He knew I was not a terrorist. Before he died he told me that he was proud of me."



Dutt said other than the day the weapons were found in his house, he has no regrets about anything as he has learnt the valuable lesson of not being brash.



"I don't have any regrets. I have learnt a lot in these years. It has taught me not to be brash. I have learnt to respect the law about our country and also have learnt about it. I think every citizen should know about the law of the country.

But yes I do regret the day those weapons came into my house."



The actor also opened up about his drug problem which he said began after the death of his mother, actress Nargis Dutt. "I am quite a shy person in real life. I got into the habit of drugs after my mother died and then it became chronic. I have done every drug there is.



"My dad didn't understand what was wrong with me, he is from Punjab. But then one day I couldn't handle anymore and my dad took me to hospital. From there I went to a rehab in the US. And it has been 40 years since that incident and I haven't looked back," he said.



Dutt said he does not need drugs anymore as he gets his adrenaline rush from his work now. Talking about the underworld, he said everybody in Bollywood during that time was getting involved with the underworld in some way or the other. He said in his case it was more of a compulsion than a choice.



"In those times everyone from Bollywood was involved with the underworld. Everyone was getting calls, threats. I got the weapon from a producer not from the underworld," he said.



Dutt said that the dark part of his life is over and he had left his part back in the Pune jail. "I have come out to begin a new life." He said it has been a hard road to freedom and had a piece of advice to give.



"Don't take freedom for granted. People should value it. Because I know what it truly means in all these years of my life. Freedom is more important than anything in life."



When asked if he would get into politics like his father, he said he will stay away from it and his main focus is on his family and his work. Dutt said he wants to help jail reforms and people with drug abuse past. "I want to do something for them," he said.
Last month, the Obama Administration announced that it had approved the sale of up to eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in a deal valued at $699 million. Immediately it led to a strong pushback in the US Congress.



Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker raised serious concerns stating, They (Pakistan) continue to support the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and give safe haven to al Qaeda.



Senator John McCain, Chairman, US Senates influential Armed Services Committee, called for a hearing in the Senates Foreign Relations committee to further question the timing of the United States sale of fighter jets to Pakistan and suggested that he would rather have seen it kicked over into the next administration.



His colleague from Kentucky, Senator Rand Paul, separately called for a resolution that would block US arms sales to Pakistan. In the end, however, the US Senate rejected by a vote of 71-24 Senator Rand Pauls attempt to bring to the floor a resolution to block the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.



The Obama Administration had strongly defended its decision. David McKeeby, a spokesman for the US State Department  the agency responsible for conducting the deal  said, Pakistans current F-16s have proven critical to the success of these operations to date.



These operations reduce the ability of militants to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven for terrorism and a base of support for the insurgency in Afghanistan." Secretary of State John Kerry himself was at the forefront of this defence suggesting that the Pakistani military has been deeply engaged in the fight against terrorism."



Indias reaction was strong. It disagreed with the US stand that this sale would help in the fight against terrorism and instead has argued that it would be used against India. The US Ambassador to India was summoned to underscore Indias displeasure. New Delhi is seriously concerned about the changing balance of air power in the region as Pakistan today has four squadrons of F-16 fighters, all built with the US assistance. The anti-US sentiment of the Indian elites once again came to the fore with suggestions in sections of the media that the US cannot be trusted.



New Delhi has some genuine concerns about US military assistance to Pakistan. Such support has traditionally strengthened the military at the expense of the civilian government in Islamabad with which India is trying to have a stable peace dialogue. Pakistan is yet to show that it is taking credible action against groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba.



Groups targeting India and Afghanistan continue to be seen as essential in Pakistani foreign policy matrix. And historically, Washington has more often than not been wrong about its ability to shape Pakistani domestic and foreign policy positively with its military assistance. Just since 2002, the US has provided $30 billion worth of aid and assistance to Pakistan. Yet the US remains hugely unpopular in Pakistan and its Afghanistan policy of relying on Pakistan has been a failure.



Obamas Af policy



Clearly America has its own priorities in so far as its relations with Pakistan are concerned especially in using Islamabads leverage in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban. Obamas Afghanistan policy has faced a lot criticism for its seeming haste in announcing the troop withdrawal from South Asia. And as the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated in the last year, he has had to make compromises in the number of troops that the US will continue to position in Afghanistan.



Now, he has one last chance to seek a resolution in Afghanistan and Pakistan is viewed as critical in managing political transition in Afghanistan. Though the Taliban are not prepared to come to the negotiating table even now, there are hopes that Pakistani will be able to wield necessary pressure to make them see reason. But Washington would do well to take into account Indian interests.



Where the Bush Administration managed to effectively de-hyphenate India and Pakistan, the Obama Administration has not been that sensitive to Indian view point on regional issues. As it sends new fighters to Pakistan, Washington needs to be more emphatic in demanding Pakistan cease exporting terror from its soil.



India should also be more confident of its ability to shape the future trajectory of Indo-US ties. After all, Lockheed Martin, the builder of F-16, has recently offered to move its production line to India from the US to support Modi governments Make in India programme. Today, India is a global player in true sense of the term while Pakistan is just about managing to survive as a cohesive unit. Indian elites too need to de-hyphenate New Delhi from Islamabad in their own minds.



Any overture that Washington makes towards Pakistan is immediately pounced upon as a sign of American duplicity. The reality is that Americas ties with India are truly strategic while its relationship with Pakistan is at best transactional, whatever the gloss the two sides might want to put on it. India and the US are today talking of jointly working on aircraft carriers, discussing joint patrolling of the South China Sea and are nearing completion on an agreement to share military logistics.



As New Delhi and Washington chart an ambitious trajectory in their bilateral ties, they need to find a more effective way of dealing with Pakistan. The Pakistan factor cant be allowed to derail the positive momentum in this very important bilateral relationship, one that will be key in shaping the larger Indo-Pacific balance of power in the coming years.



(The writer is Professor of International Relations, Kings College London)
At a time when genetic testing and genetically personalised treatments for cancer are proliferating, buoyed by new resources like President Barack Obamas $215 million personalised medicine initiative, women with breast cancer are facing a frustrating reality: The genetic data are there, but in many cases, doctors do not know what to do with it.



That was the situation Angie Watts, 44, faced after she walked into a radiation oncologists office last June expecting to discuss the radiation therapy she was about to begin after a lumpectomy for breast cancer. Instead, Dr Timothy M Zagar of the University of North Carolina looked down at a sheet of test results and delivered some shocking news.



A genetic test showed she had inherited an alteration in a gene needed to repair DNA. Radiation breaks DNA, so the treatment might actually spur the growth of her cancer, he said. He urged her not to take the risk and to have a double mastectomy instead. Im not a betting man, he said in a recent interview.



Shaken, Watts called Dr James Evans, a professor of genetics and medicine at North Carolina. He told her the opposite: The mutation she had was not known to be harmful, so he urged her to go ahead with the radiation. A group of doctors met but could not reach a consensus, so, Watts said, they left it up to me to decide.



Watts experience highlights an unsettling side to the growing use of genetics in medicine, particularly breast cancer care. Doctors have long been tantalised by a future in which powerful methods of genetic testing would allow treatments to be tailored to a patients genetic makeup. Today, in breast cancer treatment, testing of tumours and healthy cells to look for mutations has become standard.



But as Watts found out, our ability to sequence genes has gotten ahead of our ability to know what it means, said Eric Winer, the director of the breast oncology programme at Harvards Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.



The ambiguities and disappointments play out in two areas: There is genetic testing of patients to see if they inherited mutations that predisposed them to cancer, and there is genetic testing of cells from the cancer to look for mutations that drive the tumours growth  but if found often cannot be targeted by any drug on the market.



The ability to understand and interpret genetic tests will surely improve. But for now, what sounds like a simple test can leave patients with frightening information but no clear options or guidance for treatment decisions.



The stakes are very high, said Evans, the geneticist who counselled Watts. You have inherently nuanced and confusing tests and widespread ordering and interpretation by doctors who arent really equipped to do so, he said. The situation is ripe for overinterpretation and misinterpretation.



Oncologists say it still makes sense to order these tests, which identify mutations in as many as 100 genes. If they find mutations that greatly increase risk of cancer, that is valuable information. But patients need to be prepared for ambiguities. Typically they are not, said Dr Elizabeth Campbell, an oncologist and former director of the Duke Womens Cancer Centre.



In Watts case, the mutation was a medical mystery known as a a variation of unknown significance. That means it does not destroy the genes function but may alter it  leaving the implications entirely uncertain.



With each gene being tested, there is about a 5% chance of finding a variation of unknown significance. So as more and more genes are tested, ambiguous changes can add up fast.



A recent article published in JAMA Oncology involving 897 women 40 and younger with breast cancer found that nearly all had tests for mutations in the BRCA1 and 2 genes, which can increase breast cancer risk. Most did not have known mutations. But the chance of having a mutation of unknown significance  4.6%  was the same as the 4.5% chance of having a known and risky mutation in the BRCA2 gene.



Watts eventually decided to have radiation therapy and did well. But, she said, It was scary. There are times I regret ever having genetic testing. A couple of decades ago, breast cancer seemed to be on the leading edge of personalised treatments. The first precision medicine drug, Herceptin, was developed and approved for a subset of breast cancer patients in the 1990s. Yet now, as powerful new precision medicine drugs elicit striking responses in patients with other cancers  lung, colon, melanoma, blood, gastric  metastatic breast cancer patients have been left out.



Its like standing outside a candy store on Sunday when the store is closed, looking in the window, said Dr Gabriel Hortobagyi, a director of breast cancer research at MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston.



There is no obvious reason breast cancer in particular should be so resistant to new therapies. But the situation is one of the starkest examples of the frustrating reality of precision medicine today. While labs can test for hundreds of genes that have been linked to cancer, and while the tests may find likely culprits, there all too often is nothing that can be done.



Clinical trial



As a concept, it is beautiful, Hortobagyi said. In practice, we face a number of obstacles. Most breast cancers have not just one but four, six, 10, sometimes 15 or 20 mutations. So which is the driver mutation and which are the passengers? Thats a tall order.



Even if investigators have a good idea of which mutation to go after, there may be no drug that blocks it. Or there may be a drug being tested in a clinical trial but the woman is not eligible because, for example, she has had two rounds of chemotherapy and the trials rules say she can have no more than one. Or there is a drug that was approved for a different cancer, but it costs more than $100,000 a year and her insurer will not pay. Sometimes, a drug that works against a mutation in one type of cancer also works against that same mutation in another cancer, but sometimes it does not.



Dr Norman Sharpless, the director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Centre at North Carolina, estimates that perhaps one in 1,000 women with advanced breast cancer will benefit from using the approved and experimental drugs available today. There are a few who benefit tremendously, but when patients come in expecting a cure, most are disappointed, he said.



Heather Lynn Bowlers experience was typical. Bowler, a 38-year-old office manager who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, learned she had breast cancer in November 2013 and had eight rounds of intense chemotherapy and a lumpectomy that seemed to have taken care of it. Then, last April, her cancer came back, having spread outside her breast.



In May, Bowler started the first of 18 rounds of chemotherapy. During her first chemotherapy visit, her oncologist, Campbell, asked if she would be interested in having her tumours genes sequenced. A month later, the results were in. Bowlers tumour had mutated genes, but none of the mutations could be attacked with todays experimental drugs or with drugs being used in other cancers. The results added nothing to her care, Campbell said. Nothing.




The Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen for one year has caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, the UN rights chief said today, warning international crimes may have been committed.





During its campaign against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen there have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.



Rights groups have also raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the Huthi rebels, but United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the coalition bore the greatest responsibility.



"Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, virtually all as a result of air strikes," Zeid said in a statement.



"We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the coalition."



His office said it had tallied just under 9,000 civilian casualties, including 3,218 killed, since the coalition on March 26 last year intervened to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.



The Huthis are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.Zeid voiced particular alarm at two air strikes on a market this week in northern Yemen's rebel-held Hajja province.



The UN children's agency yesterday put the death toll from those strikes at 119, and Zeid's office said today that 106 of those killed in the crowded market were civilians, including 24 children.



UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded an investigation into the incident, one of the deadliest yet in the war.



During an exclusive interview on Wednesday the coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP the strikes targeted "a militia gathering", the term he uses to describe Huthis.



Assiri said an independent panel was being formed nationally to examine charges of possible abuses against civilians in the war. The alliance says it does not aim at civilians, and that targeting is verified many times to ensure non-combatants will not be killed.



Zeid's office condemned "the repeated failure of the coalition forces to take effective actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, and to publish transparent, independent investigations into those that have already occurred."
Vladimir Putins decision to pull much of his forces and air power out of Syria took the world by surprise. But it really should not have. He has done exactly what he said he would do when he staged his surprise intervention nearly six months ago.





At that time, he said he had two goals: To stabilise the situation of the Syrian government, and to prepare the way for a compromise political settlement of a crisis that is now five years old. It may be unusual for world leaders to mean what they say, or to say what they really mean, especially when it comes to wars, where thin ends often become fat wedges. But Putins intervention in Syria made perfect sense from Russias point of view, and so now does his decision to de-escalate.



It was never really about the militants of self-styled Islamic State (IS), though that was a large part of the cover story and took on greater significance after the bomb explosion on a Russian airliner over Sinai at the end of October. The Russian intervention was prompted above all by the fact that the Saudis, Turks, Qataris and probably Americans had stepped up and co-ordinated their support for rebel groups, which were also increasingly pulling together and starting to pose a real threat to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.



The Russians, and President Assads Iranian allies too, risked losing their strategic investment in Damascus. So both stepped up their involvement. The result is now a level playing field. With Russian and Iranian help, the Syrian forces have straightened out their defensive lines, regained some strategic territory, and put the rebels on the back foot.



But overall victory could only have been achieved at a massive cost which neither Russia nor Iran could afford, with every chance that it would lead to an open-ended sectarian war with a strong regional dimension.



The Russians could very easily have found themselves bogged down in something reminiscent of their ill-fated Afghan expedition, facing the same array of jihadists backed by the Saudis and their allies - in all probability some of the actual veterans from the Afghan academy of jihadism.



President Assad, flushed with borrowed success, may have wanted to go all the way, apparently imagining his minority Alawite-dominated government could simply re-impose its control over the Sunni majority as though the past five years and more than a quarter of a million deaths had not happened.



But the Russians clearly judged that to be a disaster course. They saw their job as being to shore up the government areas, signal unmistakably that they would not allow the government to be overthr-own or Damascus overrun, and hand over to a rebalanced political process. For Bashar al-Assad, the message is clear: Hell have to curb his enthusiasm.



Daunting prospect



Can he expect greater indulgence from the Iranians? The signs so far are negative. Seen from Tehran, the prospect of trying to use Iraqi, Lebanese and other Shia proxy militias, and increasingly their own assets, to control the entire Sunni heartland straddling Iraq and Syria  including IS and rebel-held areas  opens up a daunting prospect of unending turm-oil, just as it would for the Russians. So its back to Geneva.



The prospects there may not look bright, but they are certainly better than they ever have been before, because pretty much all the outside players are finally on the same song sheet, above all the Russians and Americans.



The ambitions of Saudi Arabia and other backers of the rebels must have been quashed by the Russian intervention, and held back by the knowledge that a further lurch of the balance in the rebels favour would trigger another limited counter-move by President Putin. That in no way guarantees that an end to the war is at hand. There could be a long period of strategically limited combat, or an indefinite extension of the current relative truce, without it translating into a stable settlement.



But there is strong momentum, especially from the Americans and their allies, to push a settlement that would allow all parties to turn against IS. For that to happen, the Russians would have to deliver the Syrian government side and also Iran, while the US would have to rein in its currently somewhat headstrong regional allies, notably the Saudis. President Putin has done something the Americans could not have: Recalibrated the situation on the ground, and set himself up as a key player in the settlement game.



But what kind of settlement could work? The idea of straightforward democracy in a united Syria would not, from Russia and Irans viewpoints. They would lose their strategic investment, because that would empower the majority Sunnis, just as it did with the majority Shia in Iraq. At present the only formula that looks viable for holding both countries together and satisfying the outside powers is a loose confederation, with a great deal of power devolved to regions, on a largely sectarian basis.






The Karnataka Budget for 2016-17 has received mixed response from the industry.While a few industry associations expressed that they expected more from the Budget that was announced by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, a few lauded it, terming it as progressive.





Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) President Tallam R Dwarakanath said, The chief minister has extended support for industrial development, skill development, and to ensure last-mile connectivity.



As far as trade and industry is concerned, he has heard the pre-Budget memoranda submitted by trade bodies. He has reduced the VAT rates on many items that affect the common man and encourage basic living standards of both North and South Karnataka... He has made every effort to balance the Budget and cater to various sections of the society. However, the relation between trade and industry bodies such as ours and the government is an ongoing process. We would remain in continuous dialogue, Dwarakanath said.



Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (Kassia) President V K Dikshit termed the Budget as a mixed bag, particularly for MSMEs.



The allocations made for upgrading industrial estates in terms of infrastructure facilities is welcome, but inadequate... What is required is a comprehensive approach to improve infrastructure in industrial estates in terms of roads, water supply, drainage, street lights, walk ways and other supporting facilities, which are absolutely essential for a modern work place but remain poor in our industrial areas. The question of land allocation for the SMEs, a pending request for review of 99-year lease only policy, has been left unaddressed.



When asked what he had expected from the Budget, Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) President Anuj Sharma said, We would have liked to see a greater thrust to promote industrial development in the State. This would be in line with Invest Karnataka 2016 objective. Clarity on land allotment, abolition of entry tax, uniform property tax system, abolition of labour licence and steps to improve the power and infrastructure in the State would have done a lot of good to Karnataka.



Meanwhile, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Karnataka Chairman Ravi Raghavan said, Abolishing of trade license systems and setting up an Invest Karnataka Company for ease of doing business in the state is laudable. Announcement of Rs 175 crore earmarked for infrastructure development in industrial areas and upgradation of existing 30 industries area will help in attracting more investments into the State.



Peenya Industries Association (PIA) President Jayaramu has stated that this Budget is very industry-friendly.


Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim has directed the temples under the Endowment Department to take measures towards tightening the security measures and carrying out development works in temples.





Chairing a meeting on the security of temples at his office hall in Mangaluru on Friday, Ibrahim said that although the authorised staff of temples had been directed to submit the photo catalogue of ornaments and other valuables in the temples, the staff of several temples have not submitted the same.



22 temples submitted



Tahsildar Prabhakar said that out of 40 A group temples in the district, 22 had submitted the photo catalogue after carrying out the evaluation of valuables in temples, but as many as 18 temples are yet to submit the catalogue.



The deputy commissioner directed the temple staff to submit the documents before March 30. He said that it is the responsibility of the temples to install all safety equipment such as CCTV cameras, lightning arresters and fire extinguishers on temple premises.



Basic facilities should be provided to devotees. Physical verification of valuables must be carried out every year, by the temple executive officers, he instructed, and added, A proposal has been sent to the government by the district administration towards the appointment of staff in temples. The use of polythene carry bags in temples is restricted as per government notification. Only sealed plastic containers are allowed to be used.



Complaints



Additional Deputy Commissioner Kumar said that complaints had been filed against those who have availed government grants in the name of non-existing temples.



Soon after availing the grants, the temples have to prepare a technical estimate towards the amount received, and send the estimate to the district administration. The Public Works Department is the technical authority to sanction the development works. Along with the estimate, the temple authorities need to submit affidavit, RTC, income tax certificate and related documents, he explained.



Regarding private auditing, he said that as there are only two government auditors in the local audit committee of the district, permission has been given to the temples to conduct the auditing by private auditors through agencies. Tenders have been invited in this regard, he added.



Security disappointing



Superintendent of Police Dr Sharanappa S D said that, while appointing the security personnel to the temples, the temple administration must subject the candidates to police verification.



The identity of devotees must be verified at temple guest houses, he added. He also expressed his dissatisfaction about the temples not undertaking serious measures to provide better security by CCTV camera installation on temple premises.



DCP Shantharaju and MCC Joint Commissioner Gokuldas Nayak were present among others.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked vice-chancellors of universities to ensure their personal indulgence in promotion of yoga in their campuses.





In a letter to the vice-chancellors, the higher education regulator also asked them to ensure that no stone was left unturned in preparation for the activities suggested to be organised to mark the International Yoga Day June 21.



During the review of proposed plan of action, the Prime Minister emphasised the need for making yoga more appealing to the youth so that they can imbibe this rich cultural heritage and their youthful energy could be effectively channelised in nation-building, UGC secretary Jaspal S Sandhu said in a letter.



He requested the vice-chancellors to organise a Yoga Fest for two to three days during April-May to sensitise students with the strengths and health benefits of yoga.



The activities in the Yoga Fest could include a musical and cultural programmes based on yoga as well as presentations to sensitise of youth about career prospects in yoga, he said.



An instructional booklet on common yoga protocol would be made available online after March 20. They may also be trained in the common yoga protocol to be performed on International Day of Yoga on June 21, he added.



The UGC secretary also asked the vice-chancellors to consider organising special lectures by experts on topics like Yoga for lifestyle modifications, Yoga for wellness, Yuva Yoga, Yoga and detoxification, Power of Pranayama, Yoga for mind and body.
Seemingly flustered and directionless over the Bengal polls for weeks, the BJP is gradually getting back on its feet. It announced its second list of 194 candidates on Friday.





The party gathered strength from the surfacing of a controversial video, which embroils several top Trinamool Congress leaders, sources said.



The second list, ratified by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was released late Thursday evening after a meeting with BJPs central election committee.



With 194 candidates on roster, it has several prominent faces, including actor Roopa Ganguly of TV series Mahabharata fame, and former party state president Rahul Sinha.



On Friday, the party inducted in its ranks Colonel Diptanshu Choudhury and immediately announced his candidature from Asansol South constituency.



Colonel Choudhury, who came to limelight during the 1999 Kargil War, joined the party at its Delhi headquarters in the presence of Union ministers J P Nadda and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, also a retired Army officer and champion rifle shooter.



Following the induction ceremony, national general secretary Sidharth Nath Singh, who is in charge of Bengal, told reporters, We hope Colonel Choudhury will serve the party and people of Bengal just the way he served the Army. The BJP, last of the parties in contest at the upcoming state polls, released a list of 52 candidates.
The indigenous Tejas fighter jets and light combat helicopter (LCH) on Friday showcased their war fighting capabilities in an air exercise involving 180 aircraft, where Astra and Aaksh missiles were also fired.





Tejas dropped a laser guided bomb on a target whereas LCH fired 70 mm rockets, days after integration of these rockets were successfully demonstrated in a test in Jaisalmer.



The Army and Air Force (IAF) require 179 of these armed choppers that are being manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.



The weapon delivery of the homegrown fighter jet and armed chopper at the IAF Chandan range near the India-Pakistan border is probably an indication of Tejas and LCH getting ready for induction into the IAF, decades after they were conceptualised.



The R-73 missile fired by Tejas, however, missed the simulated target, which was a flare attached to a parachute. IAF officials said in reality targets would be bigger with higher radar cross section. This is the first time indigenous Astra and Akash missiles were fired before a civilian audience.



Among the audience for the Exercise Iron Fist 2016 were President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who are responsible to find out a solution for the IAFs depleting squadron strength because which the force admits its inability to take on China and Pakistan simultaneously.



Early induction of Tejas  developed at a cost of Rs 5,777.56 crore ($ 930 million) was conceived as one of the solutions. But arming the homegrown jet remains one of the bottlenecks of using these fighter aircrafts in operational role.



In September 2015, Parrikar informed Parliament that the IAF indicated a requirement of 100 Tejas Mk-1A but no formal order was placed as yet. The plan is to complete the manufacturing between 2018 and 2022-23.



Development of the Tejas Mk-2, though it was sanctioned in 2009, the actual work could not begin before December 2013, because of the delay in finalising the engine contract.



The first flight of the first prototype of Tejas Mk-2 was scheduled by December 2009 and operational clearance is likely to be obtained in December 2022. The Mk-2 version will have active electrically scanned array radar, unified electronic warfare suite, on-board oxygen generation system and upgraded avionics in addition to a better engine.
The Haryana government on Friday heaved a sigh of relief after the Jat community put off its plan to resume the agitation for quota.





Representatives of Jat community said they would meet on April 3 to decide the next action plan in case the government failed to accept their demand, including withdrawal of cases against innocent people who they claim were wrongly booked by the police during the protests.



The government has promised to pass a bill on Jat reservation in the ongoing session of the Haryana Assembly. Jat leaders, however, have been threatening to resume agitation over cases.



Certain ministers, including state Health Minister Anil Vij, have expressed displeasure over the manner in which the Jat leaders have been threatening the government.



There will be no agitation till April 3, All-India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti president Yashpal Malik said on Friday. The government has been on alert since the last few days.



The Centre has sent 3,000 paramilitary personnel to Haryana and deployed hundreds of soldiers to guard the Munak canal that supplies water to Delhi. During the recent Jat agitation, in which as many as 30 people were killed and hundreds left injured, protesters had taken over the Munak canal, cutting off water supply to the national capital.



The government will bring a bill on Jat reservation during the ongoing session of Haryana Vidhan Sabha, Haryana Chief Secretary D S Dhesi said. Dhesi said all aspects of the bill were being worked out and detailed discussions were held between officers of the government and representatives of Jat organisations in a meeting on Friday.



Dhesi said consensus on the setting up of a committee at the level of Central government was achieved in the meeting held on February 21 and 22. He said a committee at the Central level has been constituted and was working on this issue.



Jat representatives have also been asked to send any law specialist for discussion and to give suggestions to the government in drafting the bill.
The Supreme Court on Friday modified its judgment restricting use of politicians picture in government advertisements and allowed photographs of chief ministers, governors and ministers.





A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and P C Ghose allowed a batch of review petitions filed by the Centre and Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and four other states against its May 13, 2015 judgment, which had limited the publication of photographs to the President, prime minister and chief justice of India.



The apex courts order came as a major relief to the ruling parties in states. The previous judgement had caused heartburn to chief ministers of the states. However, several publications carried pictures of chief ministers and other ministers through advertorials.



In its review order, the court said, The exception carved out in the judgment permitting publication of the photographs of the President, prime minister and chief justice of the country, subject to the said authorities themselves deciding the question, is now extended to the governors and the chief ministers of the states.



It added, In lieu of the photograph of the prime minister, the photograph of the departmental (Cabinet) minister or the minister in-charge of the ministry concerned may be published, if so desired.



Similarly, in the states, photographs of the cabinet minister or minister in-charge in lieu of the photograph of the chief minister could be published.



The Centre and seven states, including West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Chattisgarh, had contended that the earlier judgment infringed on fundamental rights and federal structure.



Appearing for the Union government, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had submitted that last years judgement violated the federal structure and citizens right to freedom of speech and expression and the right to information.



This may lead to development of personalty cult, a pernicious trend, which could be neutralised by publishing pictures of others as well, he had said.



NGO Common Cause and others had opposed the plea for allowing the relaxation of the restraint order. They had, in fact, sought order limiting the use of prime ministers photographs in advertisements.



On an application filed by the NGO, the court had earlier also issued notice to Delhi and Tamil Nadu governments over charges of violating the judgment and going ahead with publication of chief ministers photographs which would be dealt separately.
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday issued fresh summons to businessman Vijay Mallya asking him to appear on April 2, acceding to his request to give him more time.





Mallya, who is in the United Kingdom, was earlier asked to face the investigating officer on Friday but he had expressed his inability to appear before him. The summons was issued in connection with a money laundering case filed on the basis of a CBI FIR on Rs 900 crore loan default involving IDBI Bank.



Sources said the ED's investigating officer had received through email Mallyas request for a later date. The agency then decided to ask him to "join investigation in person" on April 2. Mallya, sources said, also cited a communication he claimed he made to some other agencies to buttress his point. The businessman had claimed in that correspondence that he would be out of India during March.
Mystery surrounding the death of actor Kalabhavan Mani had a grim twist after detection of insecticide residues in his viscera samples.





According to a report handed over to the police by officials in the Regional Chemical Examiners Laboratory in Kochi, on Friday, the samples contained traces of Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide.



National Award-winning actor Mani (45) had died at a private hospital in Kochi on March 6. He was suffering from liver and kidney ailments and preliminary reports said his consumption of alcohol two days earlier could have aggravated his condition.



The police have registered a case of unnatural death. Meanwhile, a police team is interrogating three of the actors aides  Arun, Vipin and Murukan  after Manis brother R L V Ramakrishnan said during a television discussion that he had suspicions about them.



The actor had collapsed, reportedly after vomiting blood, at an outhouse near his home in Chalakudy, in Thrissur district, on March 5. Mani had hosted friends and others the previous night; the police said spurious liquor was served during the meet-up.



Ramakrishnan said that the actors aides had returned from the hospital in Kochi to Chalakudy and washed the outhouse clean. Ramakrishnan said consumption of spurious liquor could have caused Manis death.



A detailed probe has to be conducted and all the culprits should be punished. We need to know who all were there with my brother the previous day and what they served, Ramakrishnan told reporters on Friday. According to the United States Environment Protection Agency, Chlorpyrifos can overstimulate the nervous system causing nausea, dizziness, confusion, and at very high exposures (eg: accidents or major spills), respiratory paralysis and death.



Manis wife Nimmi dismissed rumours of a possible suicide and reports that the actor was under stress over issues in his marriage.
With the government agreeing to share costs of its key projects, the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has got its due from the state budget.





However, the BWSSBs challenge lies in arranging its share of the costs for the projects, which include the setting up a water supply and sewerage network in 110 villages and at least 10 sewage treatment plants (STPs).



The budget approved the water supply and underground drainage project for 110 villages coming under BBMP at a cost of Rs 5,018 crore, which would be funded by JICA. It means, the state government would provide Rs 376.37 crore, which is 7.5% of the total cost. While, Rs 4,265.62 crore (85%) would be paid by JICA, the BWSSB will have to provide Rs 376.37.



Besides, the state budget would provide 25% assistance (Rs 355.50 crore) of the total cost required to set up five of the 10 proposed STPs. The five STPs will come up at Vrushabhavathi Valley, Hebbal, Koramangala, Challaghatta and Doddabele.



The remaining five STPs, which are proposed under the AMRUT Scheme with a states share of 20%, would come up in Hulimavu, Begur, Sarakki and Agara lakes and at KR Puram.



Keeping the Cauvery V Stage project in mind, the state government has allotted Rs 160.33 crore to extend the additional untreated water transfer pipeline between Forbes Sagar (Cauvery river basin) and NBR to Torekadanahalli. Retired BWSSB engineer M N Thippeswamy felt the budget had nothing new for the BWSSB.



Set right system



Before investing on STPs, the board must set right the sewage conveyance system, which is in a bad shape. The wastewater flows into almost all the strom water drains and not even half of the Citys sewage reaches the existing STPs, he said, and added that completing the water supply and underground drainage project in 110 villages would take at least eight years.
A day after the Haryana government told Delhi that it would not be able to share water with the national capital, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday that the issue of water should not be politicised.





When asked about Haryanas threat to cut the water supply to Delhi, Kejriwal said, Its not good to do politics over water.



The CM said that his government is ensuring Delhiites get clean drinking water. Ensuring that everyone in Delhi has access to clean drinking water, without any discrimination, Kejriwal later tweeted.



Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra reiterated that the Yamuna does not belong to Haryana alone.
The Supreme Court on Friday told four men, who are accused of being part of the extortion racket in the office of the Karnataka Lokayukta, that it was difficult to grant them bail at the moment.





A bench of Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy, however, posted the matter for consideration on April 1. The Lokayuktas former Public Relations Officer (PRO) Syed Riyazullah, television journalist M B Srinivasa Gowda and two others Shankare Gowda and Ashok Kumar have again moved the court for bail.



We shall take up the matter after Holi vacation. We have gone through the status report filed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT). We cant give you copy of the report. We dont want to say anything but it is difficult (to grant you bail), the bench told the counsel for the accused.



Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra and advocate Joseph Aristotle, who are representing the SIT, submitted two other reports in sealed covers to the court.



They earlier stated that the SITs request for prosecution of former Lokayukta Y Bhaskar Rao was awaiting sanction. They also referred to other cases where there was clear interference by the accused.



The court had earlier refused to modify its September 16, 2016, order that stayed the bail given to the accused by the High Court of Karnataka.
The following are the key features of the Karnataka Budget 2016-17 presented by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the Assembly on Friday.



Agriculture



Karnataka State Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Committee to be constituted under the chairmanship of chief minister to redress farmers grievances and converge schemes of the Agriculture department with schemes of other departments.



As many as 100 villages to be developed as model agricultural villages under the Suvarna Krishi Grama project.



A total of Rs 10 crore to be allocated to provide initial financial assistance to agri-startups.



Animal Husbandry



An ultra-modern vaccine production unit to be established at the Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals, Hebbal. A total of Rs 5 crore earmarked for producing vaccines for blue tongue and zoonotic diseases.



The Karnataka Bovine Breeding Bill to be introduced to regulate indiscriminate breeding by unauthorised animal breeders.



Fisheries



Oceanarium to be constructed at a cost of Rs 15 crore at Pilikula Nisargadhama in Dakshina Kannada district.



Inland Fisheries Development Centre to be established in North Karnataka; Rs two crore allocated.



Water Resources



Modernisation of Malaprabha canal to be taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 962 crore.



Coordination committee to be constituted for early implementation of the Yettinahole integrated drinking water project.



Separate corporations will be formed for Yettinahole and Bhadra projects. But no budgetary allocation made.



Urban Development



Solid waste management schemes to be implemented in all municipalities, Rs 75 crore allocated.



Labour, Employment, Training



Devaraj Urs Skill Development and Vocational Training Research Institute to be setup to provide skill development in various sectors.



Pre-recruitment training to be given to 1,500 Kannadiga candidates aspiring to join defence forces, under Kannadiga in Army scheme.



Food & Civil Supplies



National-level Consumer Research and Training Centre to be established in Dharwad with assistance from the Centre.



Research and Development Centre for Legal Metrology to be built with a Central grant of Rs 1 crore.



Public Works & Infrastructure



A total of Rs 3,500 crore allocated for the development of 2,795 kms of State Highways and 1,520 kms of major district roads.



Breakwater to be constructed at a cost of Rs 125 crore on the northern side of the Karwar port.



Aviation Development Cell to be setup to facilitate development of airstrips and operation of non-scheduled flights.



Kannada & Culture



A total of Rs 30 crore allocated for World Kannada Conference to be held to mark the 60th year of unification of Karnataka.



Important Kannada writings to be digitised and published online, Rs 2.5 crore allocated.



International museum of Konkani Culture to be setup in Mangaluru, Rs 2.5 crore allocated.



State government to observe Mahaveera Jayanthi from next year.



A total of Rs 3 crore earmarked for conservation and development of 47 monument complexes of Rashtrakootas at Shiravala in Shahapur of Yadgir district.



Industries & Commerce



A non-profit company Invest Karnataka to be formed to develop project proposals and market intelligence activities.



Peenya, Bommasandra in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Belagavi, Hubballi industrial estates to

be declared as industrial townships



Cashew Technology Centre to be established at Kumta in Uttara Kannada district; Japanese Industrial Township in Tumakuru district; National Investment and Manufacturing Zone at Chittapur in Kalaburagi district.



To encourage women entrepreneurs, Women Parks to be set up in Ballari, Dharwad and Mysuru.










Rashtriya Swa-yamsevak Sangh (RSS) Kshetreeya Sanghachalak V Nagaraj on Friday said the State government was responsible for the deaths of Hindu activists in the state.





He was referring to the recent killing of BJP worker Raju in Mysuru and the deaths of Kuttappa in Kodagu and Prashant Poojary in Dakshina Kannada district a few months ago.



He made these observations while addressing the media here on the deliberations of the Akhila Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha held in Rajasthan recently.



Earlier Home Minister in the State (K J George) was ineffective and he also allowed withdrawal of 72 cases registered against KFD and PFI. This instilled confidence among the perpetrators. However, the present Home Minister G Parameshwara is trying his best to handle the situation properly, he said.



Nagaraj said the killings of Hindu activists was in reaction to youths joining the RSS.



There was information about possible untoward incident in Kodagu, yet proper security was not provided. It ended in the killing of Kuttappa. It was because of the poor handling of law and order situation by the then Home Minister George, he said.



Nagaraj expressed concern over the growing anti-national and subversive activities in the universities.



This has become a matter of concern. When renowned and premier universities, which are expected to groom patriotic citizens by imparting them the lessons of unity and integrity, generate people who raise the slogan for breaking and destroying the nation, this naturally becomes a matter of concern for the patriotic people, Nagaraj said.
Consecutive droughts and slow down in economy have played havoc on Karnatakas overall growth rate. The Gross State Domestic Product in 2015-16 grew at the rate of 6.2 per cent against 7.8% during 2014-15. Indias average growth rate during 2015-16 was 7.5%.





The Economic Survey of Karnataka - 2015-16, released on Friday, has given a bleak picture of the States economy. It presents an overview and major trends in income, prices, finances, investment, exports, agriculture, and rural developments among others.



The survey says the growth of agriculture and allied sector is expected to show a decline of 4.7% in 2015-16 against a growth of 1.6 per cent during 2014-15. This is due to the fall in production of food grain from 122.6 lakh tonne during 2014-15 to 110 lakh tonnes (expected) during 2015-16 because of drought conditions in 136 taluks during kharif and 62 taluks in rabi season.



Another sector which has taken a beating is industry. The sector comprising mining, quarrying, manufacturing, construction among a host of others is expected to grow by 4.5% in 2015-16 against a growth of 4.7% during the previous year.



The worst is sluggish growth in the service sector too. The sector includes real estate, professional services and ownership of dwellings and communication. The growth rate of the service sector is 9.1 % in the year under consideration while it was 10.3 % in 2014-15.



The survey says despite the States broad success in its fiscal consolidation efforts, the government faces several fiscal challenges arising from limited upside potential for resource mobilisation relative to GSDP rigidities in the form of committed expenditure, and weak linkages between expenditure and development outcomes.



Capital (Net) outlay as percentage of GSDP in expenditure front has decreased from 4.15 in 2009-10 to 2.69 in 2014-15 and slightly increased to 2.79 % in 2015-16. This poses a great challenge and is a matter of concern for Karnataka due to the infrastructure inadequacies prevailing in the State. As the State already has highest tax to GSDP ratio, any further increase in the tax effort is fairly challenging.



Similarly, achieving a higher level of tax buoyancy is difficult as the marginal increase in the taxes from a high base is likely to lower. Hence, till the economy as a whole grows at an accelerated rate, the tax collection will not see a quantum jump like in the past.



Survey stats



States borrowings are more expensive than the loans advanced by government. Karnataka is one of the 5 hot destinations for foreign direct investment in India.

State attracted US $3,444 which is 11.31% share in total FDI to India

IT sector accounts for over 25% of the states GSDP

States share in IT exports is nearly 38% of the countrys exports

3,500 IT firms in State contribute Rs 2.20 lakh crore of exports






In an effort to provide relief to road accident victims, a total sum of Rs 52.96 crore was allocated under the State budget on Friday to set up trauma care centers at 5 places across Karnataka to provide emergency treatment to accident victims.





The Aapathbandhava scheme is being launched with assistance from the Central government under the National Health Mission. According to health commissioner P S Vastrad, existing hospitals would be upgraded to be trauma care centres. Additional manpower, drugs and equipment would be set up at these centres.



A total of Rs 5,032 crore has been allocated to the Health and Family Welfare department in the budget.



Health care facilities in the City would also get a boost from the Medical Education department. A gastroenterology Institute is proposed to be set up on the premises of SDSTB Centre in Bengaluru. Minister for Medical Education Sharan Prakash Patil said that the institute is being planned on lines of the Institute of Nephro-urology in Victoria Hospital.



With a need to focus on non-communicable diseases, a decision has been taken to set up a 25-bed special dialysis unit at KC General Hospital in Bengaluru at an estimated cost of Rs 4.49 crore under the dialysis programme. Besides this, NGOs would be roped in to improve dialysis facilities.



A 50-bed district Ayush Integrated Hospital has been sanctioned in Chikkaballapur, Davangere and 10-bed hospitals would be constructed in Dandeli, Chincholi and T Narsipur at a cost of Rs 6 crore.



Under the Medical Education department, it is proposed that the Kalaburagi Peripheral Cancer Centre is being upgraded at an estimated cost of Rs 50 crore and the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Raichur, at Rs 35 crore.



In co-ordination with Labour, Home, Transport and Health and Family Welfare, the State government has proposed to introduce an Accident Life Saver Scheme with an allocation of Rs 1 crore to train 12 lakh auto drivers registered under private commercial vehicle drivers accident insurance scheme in first aid.






The High Court has struck down section 22A of the Registration (Karnataka Amendment) Act, 1976, which deals with registration of documents that are considered against public policy.





A division bench of Chief Justice S K Mukherjee and Justice B V Nagarathna on Friday quashed the circular issued by the State government on April 6, 2009, and the letter issued by the Secretary of Stamps and Registration and the Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps on April 3, 2012.



Section 22A states, Documents registration of which is opposed to public policy.  (1) The State Government may, by notification, in the official gazette, declare that the registration of any document or class of documents is opposed to public policy.



(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, the registering officer shall refuse to register any document to which a notification issued under sub-section (1) is applicable.



One G Ramachar and others had urged the court to restrain the government from applying and incorporating this section and to declare the said circular illegal and unenforceable. The petitioners argued that the said section was against a Supreme Court order and gave arbitrary and unguided power to the State government to declare particular documents as opposed to public policy.



They also contended that in the absence of any enabling provision in the statute, the government had no authority to regulate registration of documents. The government, however, argued that only transactions permissible under law would have registration of documents. The circular helps sub-registrars across Karnataka prevent the registration of illegal transactions, it said.



But the bench wasnt impressed by the governments argument. Merely on an apprehension of a particular enactment, the sub-registrar cannot prohibit the registration of the document pertaining to the said transaction.



The bench quashed all circulars issued from time to time and struck down section 22A, citing the Supreme Court judgment in the Basant Nahata case and the judgment of the High Courts division bench in the D Pavanesh case.
Re-establishing elephant corridors and mitigating man-animal conflicts have been given a thrust in the budget. To achieve this, the government has allocated Rs 20 crore for the financial year 2016-17 to buy land from private parties.





A senior forest department official told Deccan Herald that in the wake of increasing man-animal conflicts, many private people had come forward to sell land in these areas, but the process faced hiccups due to of government policies. Now, with money being allocated for it in the budget, strengthening elephant corridors and mitigating conflicts will get a boost.



The department has received many applications over the last couple of years from land owners and we were waiting for land acquisition. People want to hand over around 10,000 acres in Sakleshpur in Hassan district, where elephant conflicts are high and around six acres in Chikkamagaluru near Bhadra. There is a huge demand for land acquisition is in Kodagu, Chamarajanagar and Kannapura near Bandipur, the official said.



The government is also encouraging NGOs, forest user agencies and corporates to buy land and hand it over to the forest department. So far, no corporates have came forward to buy land. Now, the government is also keen on easing procedures to encourage corporates, the official said.



The budget for the forest sector has increased to Rs 1,609 crore from Rs 1,300 crore, last year. Apart from this, a supplementary budget will also be allocated based on the needs in November. The official said this will help strengthen corridors and develop the recently declared bear sanctuary in Timlapur forest in Madhugiri of Tumakuru district. The fund will also be used for plantation works. The government said 2.5 crore saplings will be distributed this fiscal. Also, a 150-acre tree park dedicated to Devaraj Urs will be created near Hunsur. Here, thrust will be on bamboo cultivation and creating awareness.



To reduce dependency on firewood, the government has also approved a proposal to provide 50% LPG subsidy to people belonging to general category living in and around sensitive areas of Western Ghats and forest reserves, initially around Chamarajanagar and Uttara Kannada districts. Earlier, this was restricted to the SC/ ST category.




Industrial hemp production and self-driving vehicle technology are a couple of the business themes Trinidad and Las Animas County plan to pursue to revive their economy.

The southeastern county won approval from the Colorado Economic Development Commission on Thursday to join the states Rural Jump-Start Program, taking the second of three slots available this year in Colorados most powerful incentive program.

Under Rural Jump-Start, which launched this year, approved businesses that locate to distressed areas receive a break on state income taxes, state sales-and-use taxes, and county and municipal personal-property taxes.

Also, employees of those companies get state income tax relief. But the approved businesses cant compete directly with existing companies or industries in the state  hence the hunt for new and different ideas.

Jonathan Taylor, Trinidads new economic development director, said another possibility was reviving Trinidad as a hub for gender-reassignment surgery, a niche it dominated in the 1970s.

Developer Dana Crawford, who is credited with saving Denvers Lower Downtown district, is working on the effort to revitalize Trinidad, Taylor said.

Mesa was the first county to get into Rural Jump-Start. The state EDC gave approval under the program in February to two companies in Grand Junction and Palisade and an Australian company that wants to set up North American operations in Grand Junction.

In other votes, commissioners approved three incentive packages worth $3.3 million for three unnamed firms looking to bring 374 jobs to the northern Front Range.

Project Windstream, a German manufacturer of pipe-fitting technology with operations in North America, was the largest company, with 190 jobs paying an average annual wage of $85,306. It is considering a location in Broomfield, as well as in New Hampshire.

The company, which would invest $12 million in a new facility if it comes to Colorado, received approval for $475,000 from the states strategic fund.

Project Operator, a privately held Denver-based communication technology company looking at a possible relocation to Illinois or Georgia, received $2.4 million in state job growth incentive tax credits in return for adding a net 160 jobs paying an average wage of $88,472.

Project Arnold, a Nevada-based clean technology firm, received approval for $400,353 in job growth incentive tax credits. It is looking at two dozen jobs in a new headquarters in Weld County. Those jobs would pay an average wage of $68,333. The firm builds facilities that can convert industrial waste into energy resources.

An unnamed gaming producer also received approval for a spending rebate of $199,500 under the states film incentive program for developing a new mobile game.

The firm cloaked its identity out of fear that a competitor would steal its concept. It plans to hire nine people for the project.

Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or @aldosvaldi
Voting rights activists displeased with a ballot measure that would change the way Colorado draws up maps for U.S. House and state legislative districts are now offering up two new ballot questions of their own.

The competing reforms, their supporters say, are aimed at ending the dogfight that happens every 10 years over the boundaries for Colorados U.S. House members and 100 legislators. Which neighborhoods are included in a district can give an advantage to one party over the other based on demographics and voting history.

Initiative 122 would create a commission to redraw congressional districts, and Initiative 123 would establish a separate commission to shape legislative districts after every 10-year census.

Recently introduced, the measures present a direct challenge to another ballot measure, Initiative 107, announced in November, that would create a 12-member commission of four Democratic appointees, four Republican and four members who are from minor parties or have been unaffiliated from a major party for at least a year. The commission would handle both congressional and legislative boundaries.

The new measures would both feature nine-member commissions that would each include three appointed Democrats, three Republicans and three unaffiliated members.

Critics of 107, including former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, characterized it as a Republican-driven scheme to marginalize the voting strength of minority communities, despite the provision to involve of an equal number of Democrats in the plan.

In 2011, 2001, 1991, 1981 and 1972, the final map-making decision involved the courts after the legislature and governor could not reach agreement.

The biggest difference between Initiative 107 and the two newer proposals is who appoints commission members.

In 122 and 123, the legislature would appoint four members to each panel. The governor would appoint two each, and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court would name three members on each panel.

Under 107, the legislature would appoint 10 members and the governor would appoint two.

Thats politicians protecting politicians, the fox guarding the hen house, said Rob DuRay, program director for Colorado Civic Engagement Roundtable and a board member of New Era Colorado, a left-leaning organization that trains young people on getting involved in public policy.

DuRay submitted the official paperwork to get the newest initiatives on the ballot. All three proposed initiatives would need the signatures of 98,492 registered voters to make in onto the November ballot.

Backers of Initiative 107 think the new proposals were simply put forward to complicate signature-gathering for their initiative and possibly keep it off the ballot.

Theyre playing games. Theyre posturing, and thats unfortunate, said former Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty, who supports Initiative 107, along with former Republican Gov. Bill Owens and former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm, among other officeholders from both parties.

DuRay denies that, but he acknowledged that his initiatives dont have a campaign budget or, as of yet, a firm coalition of organizations to help collect signatures.

He said initiatives 122 and 123 just offer advantages over 107, including more public input, he said.

If were going to fix our current system, we need to default to more citizen involvement, he said.

While 107 has public hearings for preliminary maps, the public doesnt have much involvement after that, DuRay said.

While all the proposals say commission meetings would be open and responsive to public records laws, the newer proposals add a requirement for all hearings to be streamed on the General Assemblys website and for accepting public comment over the Internet.

Elena Nunez, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, said all three proposals need more work. While Common Cause nationally supports the concept of citizen redistricting commissions, she thinks all three measures are still too vague.

She favors a system with the most public input possible, but thinks the three need to work on how appointments are made to minimize partisan political influence.

I think they present an opportunity to have a conversation about reform, and thats exciting, Nunez said.

Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or @joeybunch

Updated Nov. 20, 2015 at 4:31 p.m.The following corrected information has been added to this article: Because of a reporting error, Rob DuRays employment was misstated. His role is program director for Colorado Civic Engagement Roundtable and a board member of New Era Colorado.
Colorado Springs police are seeking other potential victims of a 68-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a child he met through his wifes unlicensed child care business.

Investigator say they began looking into John Jake Frey on Feb. 22 after a complaint was made against him.

He was arrested two days later when police say they identified one of his child victims and uncovered evidence that he had initiated sexual contact with several other juveniles through his wifes business.

To date, detectives have contacted and interviewed a number of witnesses and potential victims but are still interested in speaking with others who may have been cared for at the Freys residence, police said in a Thursday news release.

Anyone with information on the case or a connection to the Freys is asked to call 719-444-7000.

Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or @JesseAPaul
Rocky Allen volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 while in the U.S. Navy, eager to put his skills as a surgical technologist to work saving the lives of injured soldiers, records show.

He was so idealistic that he signed up for a second tour of duty before he had even arrived at the emergency military hospital at the air base in Kandahar. He left in disgrace nearly a year later after his court-martial for the theft of powerful liquid painkillers. By that time, he had witnessed an ongoing stream of death and mayhem, which he said led him to steal fentanyl for the first time, records show.

I never had a patient die on my operating table until I came here, he testified during his court-martial proceeding. Your honor, to have the number go from zero to 14 in less than six months is a numbing experience, and it will forever be imprinted in my mind.

Gone was the free-spirited, happy-go-lucky corpsman who loved playing volleyball, according to the testimony of his friends, superiors and Allen himself. Surgeons at the operating room where Allen worked reported at least 24 double or triple amputees during Allens deployment there.

A transcript of the proceedings released this week by the Army, which handled the court-martial, detail the unraveling of a young man who said he had dreamed of a career in medicine from his childhood in Idaho. Federal public defender Timothy OHara, in a court hearing last month, said Allens experiences in Afghanistan left him a drug addict and turned him into the man now accused of hospital drug thefts

.

Despite the 2011 court-martial, Allen found work in hospital operating rooms across the western United States over the next five years. He was able to feed his habit with little consequence, according to court records, and may have put thousands of patients at risk of contracting hepatitis and HIV.

After his discharge from the Navy, Allen was fired from at least five hospitals where he worked in California, Arizona, Washington and Colorado, including Swedish Medical Center in Englewood. One hospital said it found him swapping a doctors fentanyl with a syringe of saline solution and informed the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. Another discovered him passed out on the floor and, upon testing him for drugs, found fentanyl in his system.

He now faces federal drug theft charges in connection with the alleged theft of a syringe filled with fentanyl from an operating room at Swedish. He has pleaded not guilty. The hospital fired him in January.

Allen is carrying a bloodborne pathogen, authorities said. Thousands of former patients at the facilities where he worked have been warned that they should be tested to make sure they did not contract HIV or hepatitis from a syringe Allen may have used.

The nearly 30 pages of testimony released by the Army offer a detailed view of his descent into what his lawyer has called a long-term addiction.

Prior to his deployment in Afghanistan, Allen had received accolades as a surgical tech at a naval hospital in Washington. He had been promoted to head supply tech there and was put in charge of a budget of more than $4 million, records show.

By the time of his court-martial, he was pleading from the witness stand that he only be allowed to return to the place where I can start my healing.

What many dont understand is that we see hundreds of service members come through those (operating room) doors mangled and torn apart, Allen told the court-martial panel. It was my job to put up those emotional blinders and do everything that I could to help save the patients life. Ultimately, those blinders fell.

Allen said he believed his court-martial could have been a turning point for him. He told the panel and chief military justice that he was on the path to recovery. Professional counseling and the support of family and friends were helping him put his depression and post-traumatic stress behind him, Allen testified.

He confessed to using a surgical wire to pick open hospital lockers where the fentanyl vials were stored at the military hospital in Kandahar. He said he planned to use the drugs to escape the horror of being in Afghanistan but instead threw the drugs away. About two weeks after the theft of the fentanyl vials, a commander saw Allen slip a fentanyl syringe from a container at the hospital into his back pocket, according to testimony.

Allen entered into a negotiated plea agreement. He was sentenced to 90 days confinement, which was reduced to 60 days in accordance with a pretrial agreement. He also received a one-step reduction in rank. About six months later, he received a general discharge from the Navy.

The Navy has not released records connected to a hearing held when he was back in the United States that preceded his discharge.

Allen touted his military experience when applying for hospital jobs. The Navy has said records of the court-martial would have been available if hospitals had requested them.

But the Navy confirmed the court-martial to The Denver Post only after Allens military prosecution was discussed during the court hearing. Obtaining records of the proceedings took three weeks. After Allen was charged last month, the Navy provided a brief account of where he was stationed and the medals he was awarded.

During the court-martial proceedings, fellow workers described Allen as having a keen mind for surgery and a stellar disposition upon his arrival in Afghanistan.

When drugs first turned up missing from the hospital at Kandahar, Julie Witmer, the head of the intensive care unit there, never thought of Allen as the culprit.

When it comes to his skills as a surgical tech, he does his job top-notch, she testified. I was extremely shocked when he told me about the crimes because I didnt believe that he would do something like that. I believe that I knew him.

She said she cried when he finally confessed to her an extended time after the drugs turned up missing.

Allen originally had signed up for a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, but he put in paperwork for a six-month extension to his tour before his actual deployment. It was a decision he regretted soon after arriving, but he did not succeed in getting the extension reversed.

Witmer said he told her he had grown more despondent than ever upon learning he would have to stay.

The only explanation when I asked him was that he wanted to forget his time here, Witmer recalled in testimony.

Barbara Mayer, who was the leading petty officer at the military hospital, said Allen arrived as an exceptional surgical technologist but was shattered by the controlled chaos he witnessed.

Among the worst were the native children who needed treatment for burns caused when oil lamps fell over and set their homes on fire, Mayer said. Then there were the soldiers with limbs blown off, calling out the names of their wives and children and their fellow soldiers as they died, she said.

Allen testified that before his deployment, he knew his experience in Afghanistan would be life-changing.

I knew that this was another journey that I needed to take in my life to help the wounded service members serving this great country, he said.

Allen said he believed he was prepared for the mission, but that was when he thought it would be all about saving lives. He said it was anything but just that.

Nothing can prepare you for the first time a patient comes through those doors screaming for you to not let them die, he testified. Then to have to tell them that youre going to do everything in your power to help them, only to watch them die as you and everyone on your team does everything to save them.

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747, cosher@denverpost.com or @chrisosher
The combination of the Intel Edison Board and Do It Yourself (DIY) Telescopes enables makers to take a peek into the mysteries of the universe.

The earliest recorded working telescopes were refracting devices that first appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. The following year, Galileo built his own telescope that improved upon the Dutch design, and in 1668 Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, a design that bears his namethe Newtonian reflector.

Viewed from a historical perspective, you could say that Galileo and Newton were in the vanguard of application developers and makers. One can only imagine what innovations they might have been capable of creating had they had access to the incredible hardware, software and other development tools that enable todays makers to expand the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Dawning of the Age of the DIY Telescope

Thanks to a recent collaboration between Intel and Professor Jiun-Huei Proty Wui from National Taiwan University, homemade DIY Telescopes are continuing along the path that Galileo and Newton forged. Professor Wu has devoted himself to telescope DIY promotion since 2003, and there are more than 500 sets of DIY Telescopes developed every year at the Taiwan International Science Fair. Many of those creators have gone on to become student finalists for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) over the course of the past decade.

Today, the efforts of Professor Wu and his student contributors have resulted in more than 8,000 self-made telescopes now in existence. And in January of this year, more than 60 science educators from 21 countries gathered in Taipei, Taiwan to take the next step in overturning the traditionally high-cost and complicated astrophotography and photomicrography inherent in the technology into affordable maker projects.

A First for the Intel Edison Board

As one of the evangelists for the popular science and maker movement, Intel co-operated with Professor Wu for the first time to make another first happencombining the Intel Edison Board with a DIY Telescope that can be controlled by mobile devices. Instructed by Professor Wu, people at the workshop learned how to build their own maker devicesknown broadly under the banner of Protison Makerfor astrophotograpy and photomicrography. Intel volunteers at the workshop provided technical assistance to help make it all happen.

Why Intel Edison technology? First of all, its small. Its a wirelessly enabled platform that provides low power consumption. It supports a variety of external interfaces. And finally, Intel Edison is a Linux-based platform, paving the way for open source development.

Heres how it works: Protison combines the Intel Edison mini board, 3D printing and a webcam to make astrophotography and photomicrography possible through Wi-Fi control by mobile devices or computers. The core of Protison is the Intel Edison Breakout Board Kit, which is 3.5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. It contains a processor and memory, operated by homemade software and powered by a commercial battery or any power bank.

When plugged in with a webcam and operated by any mobile device or computer through Wi-Fi, the system can be mounted onto a telescope or a microscope to record images and videos. Users can then easily transfer the resulting media files onto USB drives.

Taking in the View for Future Innovation

There was a tangible sense of excitement among the attendees at the workshop, many of whom were reluctant to leave and stayed after the event to learn more. In fact, the only lowlight associated with the event was that there simply wasnt enough time to sate the technical appetites of those in attendance. Many of the participants left the workshop enthused about the possibility of driving the future adaptation and implementation of DIY Telescope in their own countries.

Equally important, the Intel engineering team on hand collaborated to create a competitive Intel Edison maker manual/SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to serve as a foundation for future maker DIY Telescope innovations.

And finally, the workshop resulted in the building of a new and strong usage model to employ the Intel Edison board and associated technologiesnot only to enable future innovations in the evolving DIY Telescope market, but also to open up new possibilities for Intel Edison and the Intel Developers Kit across the broader scope of the entire field of science.

From Newton to New Horizons

We started this blog with a tip of the hat to Galileo and Isaac Newtonand so well end it with the lyrics culled from an English language nursery rhyme:

Star light, star bright

The first star I see tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.

Its safe to say that, with the help of Intel Edison technology and a host of enthusiastic application developers, makers will able to view the stars from their own back yards, and realize the dream of having their wishes come true. By any measure, the skies are the limit.
Vernee is a new Chinese brand which is going to launch three new phones including the Apollo featuring 6GB of RAM in April.

A new chinese smartphone brand called Vernee, which apparently is just a month old, has unveiled its flagship smartphone called the Apollo. The phone was showcased at a MediaTek event in China yesterday. It shares a similar specification sheet as the Vivo Xplay 5 Elite, which was launched earlier this week. The phone features 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. However instead of Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, It is powered by MediaTeks latest Helio X20 SoC.

The Vernee Apollo is one of the three phones the company is going to launch in April. While official specifications are still under wraps, a Gizchina report suggests that the upcoming device will have a 5.5-inch QHD display, which will offer a force touch-like feature. The website also suggests that the Apollo will be using a 21MP rear camera accompanied by a Sonys IMX230 sensor. At the front, the phone is supposed to feature an 8MP camera. According to the images posted by the official website, the phone is likely to have a full metal body and a USB Type-C port. The device will run on Android Marshmallow and there is a fingerprint sensor at the back of the phone.

According to the official website, Vernee is set to launch these three new phones in the coming months. The company will also be launching , Thor which is a budget offering by the company and is powered by MediaTeks 6753 SoC along with another yet to be named devicve.
European Union leaders held talks with Turkey in Brussels on Friday in an effort to reach agreement on the refugee crisis.

The EU has put forward a controversial proposal that would see Turkey offered financial aid and political concessions in return for taking back all migrants travelling to Greece. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is representing his country in the talks.

Initial proposals offered a doubling of financial aid to Turkey promised last year and a renewed effort on talks aimed at Turkey's EU membership and visa-free travel for Turks to Europe's Schengen states.

However, these were subsequently watered down, with the financial aid pledge less attractive that first offered and the visa-free travel now linked to 72 conditions.

In a robust response to the EU offer, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday Europe should look at its own record on migrants before telling Turkey what to do.

"At a time when Turkey is hosting three million (migrants), those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves," he said in a blunt broadcast on Turkish television.

The European plan proposes that for every Syrian refugee sent back, another Syrian would be resettled in the EU directly from refugee camps in Turkey.

"We're on the right track but we're not there yet," French President Francois Hollande said after the first day of talks in Brussels. "I can't guarantee you a happy ending."
British Finance Minister George Osborne found himself in the firing line once again over one of his Budget proposals as Conservative MPs threatened to rebel over plans to cut disability benefits.

Already facing serious questions over his plan to pull the economy into surplus by 2020 despite failing to cut debt, Osborne faced the prospect of a second embarrassing climb down over welfare reform. The row is the last thing the government needs as it struggles to stop internal divisions widening ahead of the EU referendum in June.

It also harms Osborne's image as the great fixer of the UK economy as he positions himself to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party once Prime Minister David Cameron honours his pledge to step down ahead of the next General Election, which must be called by May 2020.

The latest row is over tightening the eligibility criteria for disability or long-term sick benefits in an effort to carve 4bn from the welfare budget. Last year the House of Lords rejected proposals to slash welfare payments for those on low incomes.

The benefit, known as personal independence payments, is used to pay for items such as mobility scooters or to make homes more accessible for disabled people.

There were already signs on Thursday night that the government could be shifting into reverse gear as Education Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC that the cuts were only a "suggestion" and subject to consultation.

More than 20 Conservative MPs wrote to Osborne ahead of Wednesday's Budget and asked him not to implement the cuts.

"It is simply not sellable, and it is not fair to the people affected. It is not fair to people who cannot work," Conservative MP Andrew Percy told the London Evening Standard newspaper.

"There are scores of Tory MPs who are deeply concerned about this  certainly far more than the government's majority. It would be fair to say there is open rebellion and I would say there is zero chance of getting it through."

'War on the disabled'

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said Osborne had "declared war on the disabled" and he would try to force a parliamentary vote on the issue as soon as possible.

"The announcement made by the chancellor is a reverse of the whole trend of the past three decades, to go back to saying disabled people can't lead independent lives, can't get the support they need," he said

Any rebellion would just add to the reputational damage Osborne is suffering over his budgetary plans. On Thursday the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said he had only a 50% hitting his surplus target, with IFS director Paul Johnson saying Osborne was running out of wiggle room.

Johnson said if growth deteriorated further Osborne would need fresh spending cuts or tax rises to meet his pledge. He also warned that Britain faced an extra would be an extra "year of austerity" after the next election as Osborne promised to maintain the surplus in 2021.

"The chancellor has added another year of austerity, another year of spending cuts to the end of his plans so even if we get - if we get - to surplus in 2019/20 which is the plan, we'll have to have another year of pain to stay there the following year," he told the BBC.

Downward revisions of UK growth over the next four years by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility were a cause for concern, the IFS said.

"If the OBR is right about that we should all be worried. This will lead to lower wages and living standards, not just lower tax revenues for the Treasury," it said.
Britain's soft drinks industry hit back at government plans to introduce a tax on sugary beverages, saying it would do nothing to reduce obesity rates.

Major producers such as Coca Cola, and the industry's lobby group, said similar schemes had been tried in other countries, such as Mexico, and had failed.

Britain's surprise tax, to be introduced in two years, was announced by Finance Minister George Osborne in his Budget on Wednesday. He intends to raise 520m and use the cash to fund school sports. However, many saw it as a populist move designed to appeal to voters when Osborne challenges for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

We believe and acknowledge and understand the issues around obesity and we have worked for a long time to try and address [this] as an industry and as a company, Coca-Colas UK chief, Leendert den Hollander told a retail industry event.

Still, theres clearly more that can be done. If we are truly after behavioural change theres no evidence in the world that it is actually coming from sugar tax so we are not debating the issue we are debating the solution, he added.

We know this is one of the mechanics and solutions that people think will help deal with the issue of obesity, at least from a government perspective, but there is no evidence to suggest that this will reduce obesity.

However, a study published in the British Medical Journal in January said a 10% sugar tax on fizzy drinks introduced in Mexico two years ago cut sales by 12% in its first year, and up to 17% in the poorest households, adding that the average person bought 4.3 litres fewer of sugary drinks.

Diabetes in Mexico, based on hospital admissions, is the highest in the OECD, and ischemic heart disease and diabetes were the two leading causes of mortality in Mexico, the study found in its exploratory research.

"Concomitant with the rise in obesity and diabetes in Mexico are large increases in the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages Mexico had the largest per capita (163 liters) intake of soft drinks in 2011," the study noted.

The British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) also disagreed with the introduction of the tax.

BSDA Director General Gavin Partington said: Evidence from other countries has shown this type of tax does not work. In fact, the soft drinks tax in Mexico has reduced average calorie intake by 6 calories per person, per day with no evidence that it has reduced levels of obesity," he said.
The first nuclear power plant to be built in Britain for 20 years was desribed as a "terrible deal" on Friday, just a day after the French government promised a bailout to allow the project to proceed.

On Thursday, France's economic minister Emmanuel Macron promised the part-state owned Electricite de France (EDF) aid to ensure the company's 18bn Hinkley Point C power project in Somerset could go ahead, saying it would be a mistake for the firm to back out now.

"If there is a need to recapitalise, we will. If there needs to be a further waiver of dividends, we will," he told media during a visit to France's Civeaux power station.

However, an unpublicised document from the Department for Energy and Climate Change showed the deal contained a 'poison pill', which could leave British taxpayers with a bill for 22bn if the plant was closed by a future government before 2060.

The minute set out the deal penned between Westminster and EDF, and committed Britain to paying around 40bn in subsidies during the life of the project. The 22bn 'poison pill', which would be triggered if the plant was forced to close by the government, could also be sparked by a call from the EU or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Professor Catherine Mitchell, an energy policy expert at the University of Exeter, told the Guardian it was a "dreadful agreement for the nation".

The 22bn poison pill effectively reduces the risk to zero for EDF and its backers, which is great for them. But from an outside perspective, it smacks of desperation.

There could be so many reasons over 35 years that you would want to close the plant, she added.

The deal would allow the plant to be closed on the grounds of safety and security without triggering the compensation payment, however.

Hinkley Point C had attracted much controversy since being announced. The project was being funded one-third by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation, and two-thirds by EDF.

A number of City analysts had criticised the plant's planned subsidy level, saying it was double the current wholesale cost of electricity.

The Confederation generale du travail (CGT), a French labour union with seats on EDF's board, had also called for the project to be shelved, fearing the company could not afford to proceed.
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Live OSU updates: Halftime stats, injury news | OSU 26, Iowa 10

The Ohio State Buckeyes take on the Iowa Hawkeyes at Ohio Stadium.
Irish TV, headed by Donegal native Mairead Ni Mhaoilchiarain, has struck a deal with NBC Television to bring live coverage of the 2016 New York City St Patricks Day parade to Irish screens for the first time ever.

Its great news for many, but in particular 'Banna Ceoil Dobhair' who flew out to New York to take part in the parade.

The 92-member band are walking the parade route with the New York Donegal Association, who helped organise the trip.

While band members are paying their own way, local people have also pulled together, like local man Hughie O'Gallagher who cycled the entire coast of Donegal to raise funds.

The band have also had a special harp made for the occasion and will stay in the historic Roosevelt Hotel on 45th street, before returning on March 20.

Irish TVs Gortahork native Ni Mhaoilchiarain, said Securing this live broadcast has taken two years of work behind-the-scenes and we are so proud that a team with Donegal connections is building the bridge between both countries.

When you think about the history of the parade since 1762, and the close ties between both countries, it is a perfect alignment for Irish TV as we launch our digital services into the States.

The parade will feature New Yorks traditional Irish-American organisations like the 49 Ancient Order of Hibernians, as well as the pipe bands of the NYPD and the FDNY.

When you think about the history of the parade since 1762, its such an iconic celebration of all things Irish, said Eamonn Donlyn VP of Irish TV America.

As we get set to launch Irish TV across the US, it is great for us to be able to connect Irish communities on both sides of the ocean with this live broadcast, which is exactly the premise of Irish TV.

New York has always had a strong connection with Ireland and we are excited to transport our viewers to the Big Apple for one of the biggest and best St Patricks Day events on the planet.

The programme will be broadcast live on Irish TV from 3-7pm (GMT) on March 17 on Sky 191, Freesat 400, eVision 191, all free-to-air boxes and online at www.irishtv.com.
Halloween creatures  owls, crows and bats  all live at Crossroads, and that makes us very happy, for these scary animals make a positive contribution to the habitats of the preserve. We don't even mind black cats, IF they are kept indoors. Feral and outdoor cats are exceedingly harmful to wildlife ... and that's not a superstition! But to tamp down superstitions, we at Crossroads will spend the week demystifying Halloween creatures.

On October 28, 2022, at 6 p.m. will be our Evening with Owls. The Open Door Bird Sanctuary will be at Crossroads, offering a one-hour presentation followed by the opportunity to meet and greet live birds. Learn all about owls and the other incredible birds in the care of the Sanctuary!

Down through the centuries, in many cultures throughout the world, owls have been associated with evil and death. Truth is, owls probably are not smart enough to be evil. But researchers agree that owls are about as dim as the nighttime forests in which they hunt.

Owls don't need to be smart. They have everything else going for them. They are muscular. They fly silently. Their huge eyes enable them to see in the dark. Their beaks and talons are strong and wickedly sharp. But their sensitive ears are what make owls extraordinary hunters.

Most people assume that the plumicorns (a.k.a. "horns) of an owl are its ears. Not so.

The actual ears lie under feathers on the sides of the head, and they aren't symmetrical. Because one ear is higher than the other and the ears are unequal in size, sound is different from different directions, helping owls locate prey, which they do almost unfailingly, even in total darkness.

Owls do not smell their prey. As with most birds, the sense of smell is insignificant, if it exists are all. Great Horned Owls frequently prey on skunks. Enough said.

But well-developed intelligence? Researchers have observed owls beating their wings on bushes to try to flush out little birds. Is this learned behavior? Is it problem-solving?

Maybe.

For the most part, owls do not have a lot of problems to solve. They appropriate abandoned nests of other birds, so they don't need building skills. They are stealthy by nature, and they pounce on and usually catch anything they hear, so they don't need hunting techniques.

In spite of ghost stories, legends of American First People, and superstitions from Europe and India, hooting owls do not foretell impending death, although their nocturnal calls are spooky. We hear them now and then this time of year, but we will regularly hear those eerie calls at Crossroads in January or February.

In contrast to owls, crows are noisy all year round and they are amazingly intelligent. They can learn. They can remember. They can solve problems. They can even identify individual humans. And they detest owls, though whether this is innate or learned behavior is not clear.

Those curious about crows will want to attend the Crossroads Book Club on Wednesday, October 26, at 10:00 a.m. This month, the book Crow Planet, Essential Wisdom for the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt will explore the fascinating world of these remarkable birds. The program is free and open to all, whether or not they have read the book.

So bring the family to our program on owls, learn about crows at the Crossroads Book Club, or learn about bats at our pre-school Junior Nature Club on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. or our Family Science Saturday program at 2:00 p.m. Costumes are encouraged but not required at Junior Nature Club and Science Saturday, and adult visitors are welcome.
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Hyundai's luxury sub-brand Genesis - which was spun-off late in 2015 - has teased its new concept ahead of the 2016 New York motor show, simply called New York Concept.

The luxury offshoot has aggressive plans to launch six models by 2020, and this new concept will show the ambitious brand's new design language.

The New York Concept is expected to preview the upcoming G70 sedan.

The G70, a compact mid-size sedan will follow on from the brand's flagship G90 limousine that was revealed at the 2016 Detroit motor show in January.

Genesis has lofty aspirations for its brand hoping to beat the established luxury players such as Mercedes-Benz at their own game.

The president of Hyundai North America, Dave Zuchowski, when speaking with Drive at the 2016 Detroit motor show said, "It is our intent to take on the very best luxury brands in the world, and to beat them with even better product. Period!"

Genesis has also revealed its will use its G70 as the base for a coupe and compact SUV variant, but would not share any underpinnings with its sister brand Hyundai.

"We believe that a critical distinction for a true luxury brand is a commitment to specific platforms and powertrains; others in this segment have opted for platform-sharing efficiencies with decidedly mixed results. We will simply not make that compromise for the Genesis brand," said Zuchowski.

The Genesis New York Concept will be revealed next week at the 2016 New York motor show.
Ardee Community School enjoyed a momentous occasion when it was presented with the Irish tricolour flag at Croke Park last week.

Students Charlotte Lynch and Jack Houlihan and Head Boy Lee Hamill, accompanied by Ms.Murray journeyed up to Croke Park Stadium to collect the flag. This event was all part of the 1916 commemorations.

The event started with an address from the Master of Ceremonies, Ryan Tubridy (His opening remark was about the freezing cold!) But all 6000 in attendance persevered until the arrival of President Michael D. Higgins and his wife Sabina. They entered into the stadium to rapturous applause. The President then proceeded to inspect the Guard of Honour. The school were treated to further speeches from Reverend Michael Cavanagh and a recollection of the life Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish patriot and designer of our flag. There was also a recorded speech from the late, great American President John F. Kennedy from his visit in 1963.

The flag and its meaning were discussed to great lengths: The green- representing the old Irish way; the orange represents the British influence in Ireland; and white in the centre representing truce between the two. It is an enduring symbol of our proud nation. This is evoked in the proclamation which pledges to pursue the happiness of "all the children of the nation equally".

Then they enjoyed an amazing speech from the president. He particularly addressed the students in attendance. He spoke about the pride we should have of our country's rich history. That we were the ones needed to seek change. That we were the ones who must pursue peace, happiness, religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities. Without doubt, he had the audience hanging on his every word, both English and Gaeilge.
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The legal industry is one steeped in tradition. Like our elders who will never give up on the feel of a newspaper for an iPad app, law firms that have been around since the year dot turn a blind eye to advances in technology and changing consumer behaviour, instead choosing to nurture convention. For them, the question is; how long can they cling to the traditional business model and get away with it?

They have failed to observe the increasing commoditisation of services in the digital age

An industry that refuses to evolve with the times, is one that leaves the door open for disruption. But it might not be that simple here. Were seeing increasing evidence that the legal industry is diverging; the old and the new, sitting side-by-side serving their respective client counterparts. Now, tech savvy clients are encouraging the rise of virtual law firms while other players are finding ways to make documents and information more transparent in the digital age.

Even the amount of people using the internet to choose a law firm is said to have increased by 45 per cent over the last 5 years. Now, its expected that 50 per cent of potential clients search for a lawyer online.

So while the traditionalists within the industry will probably be some of the last professionals to let go of the neck tie, they might also struggle to let go of this old adage: time is money. Stuck on the precept that clients buy their time, they have failed to observe the increasing commoditisation of services in the digital age. Whether it be fees for insurance or mechanical services, theres a growing demand for instant fee comparison services; fast outdating the legal sectors elusive six-minute increment charging model for tasks of undefined time.

Traditional services are not meeting the wants and needs of the modern consumer

And this spelled opportunity for practising corporate lawyer, Melissa Sinopoli, who recognised that traditional services are not meeting the wants and needs of the modern consumer:

Being a lawyer myself but also coming from a business background means I knew there was an opportunity to provide consumers with what they want; that being instant access to legal quote 24/7, but also to allow lawyers to access that market of clients which is googling for lawyers online, said Melissa.

That opportunity found itself in her start-up LawyerQuote which provides businesses with a questionnaire, developed by practicing lawyers and designed to give businesses immediate fixed fee quotes in their local area. The questionnaire covers over 100 legal matters for businesses including: Employment Contracts, Privacy Policies, Terms and Conditions, Hire Agreements, Supply Agreements, Confidentiality Agreements and Property Leases.

We found a gap in the market for an instant legal fee comparison services in Australia and also overseas, said Melissa.

The market is now saturated with law firms and businesses will shop around

And the rationale is simple. Melissa explains that the legal industry has been shrouded in mystery for years. According to her, the market is now saturated with law firms and businesses will shop around for their legal services.

Melissa said: As a result, law firms have to give businesses what they want  which is transparency and reasonable, competitive pricing.

Its all about saving them time as they dont have to call around several lawyers to compare quotes. They can do it instantly, and it provides them with certainty as to exactly what they will get and for what price.

The industry is diverging; the old and the new, sitting side-by-side serving their respective client counterparts.

While conceding that many law firms, inevitably, will not be interested in LawyerQuote because it doesnt fit with their pricing structure or strategy, Melissa believes many others will indeed embrace the benefits:

It saves them time getting all the initial information from a new client and trying to work out what fee to charge them and allows them to access the segment of the market which is searching for lawyers online, said Melissa.

There will continue to be pressure on law firms to innovate

The legal industry may be at a point of divergence as more and more new businesses found themselves on the needs of the modern consumer; but for traditional models that have so far refused to budge, theres a clear message from Melissa:

There will continue to be pressure on law firms to innovate and do things differently to stay relevant and differentiate themselves with clients.

Technology will be a significant driver. We will also see non-legal businesses continuing to try to tap into the legal market, putting further pressure on firms. For example, many large accounting firms are now offering legal services and see it as a part of their growth strategy.
Buy now in Broughton, Northamptonshire

Growing competition for fewer properties is pushing up prices in the East Midlands, but with new homes in Broughton, Northants, ready and waiting buyers could avoid further increases.

Research from home.co.uk suggests theres been an 8% drop in supply in the East Midlands over the last year. As a result homes in the area are selling quicker than the national average and prices in the region have increased by 5.1% year on year. Analysts are predicting further rises over the next two years due to the broadening gap between supply and demand.

Helping to bridge that gap, is Redrows Cransley Green development in Broughton.

Combining traditional Arts & Crafts inspired architecture with high specification modern interiors, the homes are proving popular with more than a third of the properties now sold.

Tonia Tyler, sales director for Redrow Homes (South Midlands), said: Around a dozen homeowners have now moved into Cransley Green and, as building work progresses, its sparking further enquiries from potential purchasers. Theres a real sense of urgency amongst buyers and were already taking early bird reservations for properties not yet on release. What people may not realise is that they dont have to wait as we do have a few properties that are ready and waiting for the finishing touches that really make a house a home.

Among the homes that can be moved into almost straight away is the four-bedroom detached Cambridge, similar to the show home and priced from 339,950.

At the heart of the property is an expansive kitchen, dining and family room. This inviting, sociable space is complemented by a separate lounge. A handy utility and convenient cloakroom complete the ground floor accommodation.

Upstairs, there are four generous bedrooms, with the master bedroom benefiting from an en-suite, leaving the remaining bedrooms to share the family bathroom.

Weve had lots of positive feedback about how the design of the Cambridge is conducive to family living as it offers the perfect balance between shared and private space, Tonia added.

Wed encourage anyone looking for a family home in the area to get in touch without delay as not only could they move in a matter of weeks, they could avoid the price increases experts are predicting.

Located on Coxs Lane in Broughton, Cransley Green offers the chance to embrace village living. Broughton is home to a Co-op, post office and community centre, which is well used by various clubs and societies.

Kettering station is only a 10 minute drive away, offering commuter links to Leicester or London.

Show homes at Cransley Green are open daily from 10am to 5pm. For more information see redrow.co.uk/cransley.
This past Tuesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held the second of three hearings on the Flint water crisis. At the hearing, Republicans on the Committee tore into former EPA Region 5 administrator Susan Hedman for her role in what many see as the EPAs delayed response in dealing with the poisoning of Flints drinking water with the powerful, tasteless, odorless, invisible neurotoxin lead.

Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz along with Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg (MI-07) both indicated during their questioning that they had met with EPA staffer and whistleblower Miguel Del Toral and that he told them that he had been punished for a memo he written last summer, a preliminary version of which he leaked to the media.

Despite these accusations, during her testimony Hedman denied that there had been retaliation against Mr. Del Toral. She also took issue with Rep. Walbergs assertion that she had instructed former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling to disregard the memo. Both men claimed to have spoken with Del Toral during a Congressional trip to Flint last weekend.

Heres the segment where Rep. Walberg made the claim:

WALBERG: Ms. Hedman, in July 2015, you told Flints mayor to disregard Mr. Del Torals preliminary memo that found high levels of lead in Flints water supply. Why did it take another five months for the final report to come out? HEDMAN: I never told the mayor to disregard that memo. In fact, if you look at Appendix 3 to my testimony, youll see what actually occurred during the conversation that I had with the mayor WALBERG: Theres dispute on that coming across the board. HEDMAN: Yes, I wrote the email and I know what I said and if we could take the time to take a moment to talk about that, I think we could clear that up. WALBERG: Im not sure we could. Mr. Del Toral certainly has a different recollection of it, as well as responses to him. And I had the opportunity to talk with him in Flint this Saturday, as well. Very different from what we are being told here and thats the concern.

Watch it here:

An email released yesterday and dated Wednesday, March 16, 2016  the day following the second hearing  shows that NEITHER Chaffetz or Walberg had, in fact, had a conversation with Miguel Del Toral last weekend in Flint and that he has NOT experienced retaliation in the form of forced ethics training. The email is from Del Toral himself to Acting Regional Administrator Robert Kaplan, the man who took over for Susan Hedman following her resignation.

The email was in response this email earlier that day from Kaplan:

Thanks for calling this morning. I relayed the info about not being required to seek ethical advice and the fact that you had no contact with the members of Congress this weekend (except a handshake at the open house). The Administrator can correct the record tomorrow if we have something in writing. If not, thats fine. As always, your call.

Here is Mr. Del Torals response:

I was never required by anyone to take ethics training because of Flint or for any other reason other than the mandatory ethics training required to be taken annually by all EPA employees. There is probably some confusion from the emails between Ann Coyle and myself where I was seeking advice from Ann, but that was something I requested. On the meetings with congressional folksthe first I heard about my meeting with Chaffetz was via an email from Nicole Cantello who forwarded an article to me which stated that I had met with him. As I told Nicole, the only time I saw him was at an open house in Flint last Saturday. I was at the corrosion control booth and he stopped by, shook my hand, we exchanged greetings, and he moved on. Same thing with Congressman Walberg. Hi and bye.

You can read the entire email HERE.

So, in a Republican effort to smear the EPA  something thats been a common thread in all three of the hearings  both Chaffetz and Walberg concocted phony meetings between themselves and Miguel Del Toral to give weight to their attacks on Susan Hedman and the EPA.

I guess they should be glad it wasnt THEM that was under oath at that hearing.
Apple has shifted a portion of its cloud services business from Amazon Web Services to the Google Cloud Platform, according to reports published this week.

The company reportedly maintained a smaller presence with AWS, as well as its existing relationship with Microsoft Azure.

It is spending between US$400 million and $600 million under the cloud services agreement, which was signed late last year, CRN reported, citing conversations that Google executives have held with others.

Amazon threw a splash of cold water on the report, raising questions about why Apple would engage in possible violations of its contractual relationship.

Its kind of a puzzler to us, because vendors who understand doing business with enterprises respect NDAs and their customers and dont imply competitive defection where it doesnt exist, Amazon said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Kerri Catallozzi.

Apple Shift Predicted

Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak warned in a research note last month that Apple might reduce its reliance on AWS for cloud services.

CEO Tim Cook in a January conference call with analysts cited Apples plans for additional data centers as a driver of 2016 capex growth, Nowak said. Apple announced plans to build data centers in Ireland and Denmark in 2017 and in Mesa, Arizona, later this year, for a total of more than 2.5 million square feet of space, in a bid to power various services, including iCloud, iTunes and the App Store.

The company spent about $1 billion on data centers in 2015, including money spent on AWS, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty said, noting that it could take one to two years to shift that business away from AWS.

It has a team working on those plans, under the code-name McQueen, as in The Great Escape star Steve McQueen, according to a report inRe/code.

More the Merrier?

Apple is not abandoning Amazon and Azure as providers of cloud services, but adding Google to its stable of providers, according to Jeff Kaplan, managing director ofThinkStrategies. There also is speculation about whether Apple is using its experiences with those companies to shape plans for its own cloud services.

Apples tactic of using multiple cloud providers is comparable to what other enterprises are doing today  experimenting to determine which cloud services are the best fit for their specific needs, he told the E-Commerce Times. In many cases, they are selecting multiple providers so they arent dependent on a single source.

Apple likely is working with multiple vendors to take advantage of the fierce competition in the cloud services space and leverage costs, said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst atTirias Research.

AWS is the big dog in cloud services, he told the E-Commerce Times. Google is likely more aggressive on cost, trying to gain share. For Apple, this could save money and show Amazon its willing to shift vendors and keep its suppliers nervous.

Another Google Gain

The move marks another victory for Google, which last year hired VMware cofounderDiane Greene to help ramp up its corporate cloud services business.

Just last month, streaming music provider Spotify announced that it had moved its business over to Google as part of a decision to move away from buying data centers.
FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the government has the legal right to gain limited access to the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters and other suspected terrorists.

Congress and the judicial system can create a mechanism to protect the safety of the American people while preserving constitutional rights against government overreach, he said in prepared testimony.

New methods of electronic communications have transformed society, Comey noted, adding that he supports the creation of strong encryption technology that protects large institutions and private citizens against cybercriminals and others who might attempt to gain access to proprietary data.

At the same time, terrorists and others criminals have used this technology to stay one step ahead of law enforcement, he said.

We have always respected the fundamental right of people to engage in private communications, regardless of the medium or technology, Comey testified. Whether it is instant messages, texts or old-fashioned letters, citizens have the right to communicate with one another in private  without unauthorized government surveillance  not simply because the Constitution demands it, but because the free flow of information is vital to a thriving democracy.

Clear and Present Threat

However, groups like the Islamic State have used social media to recruit and radicalize individuals to commit terrorist acts, he warned. Law enforcement needs additional tools to gather evidence to prosecute cases and in some instances prevent the acts from occurring.

The FBI is seeking only limited steps from Apple to help it open the San Bernardino shooters encrypted iPhone. It wants the ability to bypass the encryption and spread out the time between individual attempts to guess a password, Comey said during a question-and-answer session with House members.

He likened the request to removing a group of guard dogs so that investigators could access the iPhone and get enough time to essentially break into the device themselves.

Asked repeatedly if the FBI had gone to other private companies or agencies to try to use alternative methods for unlocking the phone, Comey admitted that he was not an expert on the technology and that the FBI and other agencies had been stymied in their attempts to break into the phone.

Agency Assistance

The FBI asked San Bernardino County, where the shooter was employed, for assistance in retrieving data from the iPhone in December, county spokesperson David Wert said.

The statements that have been made contending that resetting the Apple ID password is what made the backup impossible are incorrect. The fact that the phone was off and PIN locked is what made a cloud backup impossible before the Apple ID password was reset, he told the E-Commerce Times.

An iCloud backup requires a WiFi connection, and an iPhone thats turned off wont link to WiFi until the phone is unlocked, Wert said.

At that point, the county said the best that could be done was to check the cloud for any past data uploads, but we would need to reset the Apple ID password because no one knew it. The FBI asked the county if it would do that, and the county agreed, unlocking the cloud and providing the FBI with the data that was in the cloud, he said.

Can of Worms

Granting the backdoor software request in the San Bernardino case will open the door for countless other requests by the Department of Justice  and foreign governments  in far less important circumstances, according to Eli Dourado, director of the Technology Policy Program at theMercatus Center at George Mason University.

This isnt a trade-off between security and privacy  its a trade-off between two kinds of security, he told the E-Commerce Times. One type of security is the kind provided by the FBI; the other is the security that iPhone users can get from encryption on their phones.

In a world with repressive regimes as well as cybercriminals, the latter takes on greater importance, Dourado said.

A U.S. magistrate judge in New Yorkruled Monday that Apple did not have to assist the government in accessing the phone of a drug dealer whose encrypted iPhone was seized along with other mobile devices in a 2014 raid by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The government did not have the legal authority under the All Writs Act to make Apple provide a way to bypass the encryption built into the phone and give law enforcement the ability to search for additional evidence, the judge ruled.

The dealer in that case pleaded guilty last year, and any new evidence would be used at sentencing or to pursue co-conspirators or others involved in the drug ring, according to court documents.

We are disappointed in the magistrates ruling and plan to ask the district judge to review the matter in the coming days, DOJ spokesperson Emily Pierce said.

As our prior court filings make clear, Apple expressly agreed to assist the government in accessing the data on this iPhone  as it had many times before in similar circumstances  and only changed course when the governments application for assistance was made public by the court, she told the E-Commerce Times.

This phone may contain evidence that will assist us in an active criminal investigation, Pierce added, and we will continue to use the judicial system in our attempt to obtain it.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied without comment Apples petition for a review of a lower court ruling that it engaged in price-fixing of e-books.

The company now must comply with a US$450 millionsettlement it reached with 33 states and territories and a private class of e-book purchasers that, together with the U.S. Department of Justice, sued it over the issue.

However, e-book purchasers who were overcharged wont get their hands on any of the $450 million  most of them would be reimbursed through automatic credits at e-book retailers. The credits could be used for future purchases, the DoJ said.

Still, Apple has to take a reserve against a reasonable percentage of this [payout] offsetting profits, pointed out Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. This isnt as bad as cash, but nearly half a billion dollars wont be painless either.

Apple reportedly has $215 billion in reserve and chalked up a record quarterly profit of $18.4 billion the first fiscal quarter of 2016.

End of a Long Battle

The Supreme Court decision put an end to a four-year battle that kicked off when the DoJ filed an antitrust suit accusing Apple of orchestrating a price-fixing conspiracy with five e-book publishers: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Holtzbrinck Publishers (which does business as Macmillan), Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

The suit alleged the companies conspired to fix prices and end e-book retailers freedom to compete on price, and that they succeed in substantially increasing the prices consumers paid for e-books.

The publishers settled with the DoJ before the case went to court, and Apple soldiered on alone.

Judge Denise L. Cote of the Southern District of New York ruled against Apple in 2013. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that decision last year.

Apple in October filed a petition of appeal, arguing that the ruling would harm competition and that it presented issues of national economic importance.

Its behavior was a bid to break into the e-book market, dominated by Amazon, and to disrupt Amazons monopoly, Apple argued.

It seems reasonable to say that the court case has likely negatively impacted Apples position in the book market, both in terms of sales and reputation, remarked Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

The Rulings Impact

At one level, the strategy Apple and its publisher partners followed was an abject failure, he told the E-Commerce Times. Amazon was then, and still remains, the largest force in online book sales and e-book distribution.

On the other hand, Amazon isnt beloved by everyone, and its overall size and influence are still feared by many, he added.

Amazon and to a lesser extent Apple should continue to dominate the e-book market because of their size and their ability to get volume discounts, Enderle told the E-Commerce Times.

Still, the e-book industry is becoming larger and more diverse, mainly due to smaller publishers and individual authors who have been freed by the Web in the same way that Gutenberg revolutionized printing, King said.

What About the Consumer?

Dont expect e-book prices to fall much more. Instead, celebrate the maintenance of the status quo, Enderle said.

Were down to a few big companies and Amazon already prices very aggressively, so there isnt much room for additional discounting unless the publishers combine. Even then, Amazons direct dealing model with authors may be too far advanced to counter, he noted.

What this prevented was higher prices, he added, and thus, assured low prices will continue for now.
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(Photo: REUTERS / Anindito Mukherjee)A worker of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rides his bicycle past the party's campaign billboard featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside their party headquarters in New Delhi February 10, 2015. Upstart anti-establishment Aam Aadmi Party crushed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in an election for the Delhi assembly on Tuesday, smashing an aura of invincibility built around Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he swept to power last year. The billboard reads: "One India, Best India"

Christianity and Islam are under attack by extremists in India, the world's second most populous nation, say the groups religious monitors and human rights grups.

The latest accusations come from International Christian Concern quoting the Catholic Secular Forum in India and show that persecution in the name of religion is not exclsuive to any set of beliefs .

Violent attacks on religious minorities in India averaged one attack a day last year, a rising number that has led a coalition of U.S. Congress members to plead with India's leaders to condemn the violence, International Christian Concern reported March 17.

A total of 34 members of the US Congress, including eight senators and 26 representatives from both parties sent a letter to Modi in February.

It it they expressed their "grave concerns about the increasing intolerance and violence members of India's religious minority communities experience."

"We urge your government to take immediate steps to ensure that the fundamental rights of religious minorities are protected and that the perpetrators of violence are held to account," they wrote.

ICC cited the Catholic Secular Forum that attacks rose more than 20 percent from 2014 to 2015.

There have been 36 attacks on Christians so far this year, ranging from churches being destroyed to priests, nuns, and parishioners being beaten, ICC said as well as four brutal killings of Muslim men by Hindu mobs after they were accused of consuming beef.

For Hindus cattle are sacred.

The Indian government failed to address increasing attacks on free expression and against religious minorities, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2016.

Indian authorities blocked foreign funding and increased restrictions on civil society groups critical of the government or large development projects, HRW said.

GROWING HINDU NATIONALISM

Christian groups monitoring the upsurge in violence say it has coincided with escalting Hindu nationalism, encompassing a wide spectrum of Indian political movements, which believe that Hindu traditions and beliefs should serve as a guide for India and its citizens.

The country's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party has ingored the extremists and even condoned, extremist attacks.

The BJP, or India People's Party, has close ideological and organizational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that presents itself as a nationalist cultural group under a Hindu banner.

"It's a radical Hindu ideology," said William Stark, an expert in South Asia with ICC. "If you see someone Muslim or Christian, they're following a foreign faith, and they're defiling India because they're following a foreign faith."

The past year was the worst one for Indian Christians in the history of post-Independence India, a report released by the forum stated, the Hindustani Times reported earlier in the year.

"There were 120 attacks in 2014. The attacks have more than tripled in the last one year," CSF general secretary Joseph Dias told the Hindustani Times.

The CSF report said: "There has been a very marked rise in attacks on minorities with the swearing in of BJP-led governments at the center as well as the states," with the blame going to Hinduvta groups.

Such groups push aggressive Hindu nationalism in the country where Hindus make up almost 80 percent of the 1.25 million people, Muslims 14 percent and Christians 2.3 percent.

CSF said the majority of attacks on minority groups go unreported because "the victims are too scared to complain," and only those brought to the attention of the police were documented.

"There were some shocking cases of persecution that we were forced to leave out because the police and politicians forced the victims to compromise with their attackers," Dias said.
The U.S. Supreme Court next week takes up a case that has pitted Roman Catholic elementary and secondary schools, religious colleges, orders of nuns, and other groups in a bitter battle with President Barack Obamas administration.

In Zubik v. Burwell (Case No. 14-1418), the justices will weigh whether a federal religious-freedom law protects certain faith-based organizations from having to take any steps to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage to their female employees or students, including simply filing a piece of paper with the federal government to say that doing so would interfere with their beliefs.

The case stems from regulations under the Affordable Care Act, Obamas signature health-care law. The law requires most large employers to offer group health plans with minimum essential coverage, which has been interpreted by the Department of Health and Human Services to include coverage of contraception.

Churches and some other religious organizations are exempt from the contraceptive mandate, but HHS declined to exempt many other religious employers, including schools, colleges, and nursing facilities. Those organizations must opt out of the program by informing the federal government in writing of their religious objections or else face fines.

Raising Objections

Many of those religious organizations object to the contraceptive mandate, arguing that certain forms of contraception are akin to abortion. And they object to having to notify the government of their objection, which triggers various procedures in which insurers or the government would pay the cost of contraception to beneficiaries.

Were all united on this point, the schools, the colleges, and the nonprofit religious groups, said the Rev. Frank Pavone, the leader of Priests for Life, a New York City-based ministry that is among many religious employers challenging the regulations. The government shouldnt be judging our beliefs. When we say that what the government is asking violates our faith, it shouldnt be questioning that.

Range of Challengers

The non-exempt religious employers sued all over the country under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, a federal law that says that government shall not substantially burden a persons exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.

The plaintiffs include Roman Catholic grade schools and high schools in Washington, D.C., and Maryland; a Catholic prep school in Erie, Pa.; religious colleges such as the Catholic University of America, Geneva College, and Oklahoma Baptist University; and, most famously, the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, in Denver. (Religious activities of religious orders are exempt under the rules, but other of their activities arent, giving religious-right legal groups a powerful image in a group of elderly nuns fighting the government mandate).

Six out of seven federal appeals courts to consider the issue sided with the government, while one agreed with the religious employers that the regulations violated RFRA.

The religious employers contend that the Supreme Court, in its 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., concluded that the fines for noncompliance with the contraceptive mandate threatened under the ACA imposed a burden on the religious exercise of family-owned or closely held corporations. The same logic should apply to religious employers, they contend.

The Obama administration argues in a Supreme Court brief that the accommodation offered to religious employers respects religious liberty by allowing objecting employers to opt out of the generally applicable requirement to provide contraceptive coverage. It also respects the rights, dignity, and autonomy of female employees, students, and beneficiaries by arranging for third parties to provide those women with the full and equal health coverage to which they are entitled by law.

Pushing Back

Gregory M. Lipper, a lawyer with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group that filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the governments policy, said that not every employee or student at a religious school or college, or other non-exempt organization, shares the same moral objections to contraception that leaders of the groups have.

If the plaintiffs succeed in getting this accommodation struck down, women who work for these institutions will not have comprehensive health care, he said.

Among the arguments of the religious employers is that the Obama administrations exemption regulations are rife with utter irrationality, as one brief for Catholic religious employers puts it.

Two Catholic elementary schools in the nations capital help illustrate the point.

St. Augustine School, on V Street in Washington, was founded in 1858 to serve African-American students. It is incorporated as part of the Archdiocese of Washington. Because it is incorporated as part of the archdiocese, it is exempt from the contraceptive mandate.

About a mile-and-a-half away, on Park Road, is Sacred Heart School, an elementary school serving a largely Hispanic population. The school is part of a separate structure established by the archdiocese in 1995 called the Consortium of Catholic Academies. The four schools in the consortium have their own central office tailored to their administrative and fundraising needs.

Sacred Heart and the other schools in the consortium, along with a handful of other separately incorporated Catholic schools in the archdiocese, are not exempt. (They are among the many plaintiffs in several consolidated cases the justices are hearing in Zubik.)

There are no meaningful distinctions between these organizations, says a Supreme Court brief for the archdiocese. There is accordingly no basis for the government to treat them differently  when it may treat both equally by offering both of them the same exemption.

Thomas G. Hungar, a Washington lawyer and a former deputy U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush, said that schools and religious charities are integral to the missions of many churches.

Bizarre Wedge

The exemption policy drives this bizarre wedge between different organizations in a way that makes no sense, said Hungar, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of three orders of Catholic nuns, including the School Sisters of Christ the King of Lincoln, Neb., who work as administrators and teachers in Catholic schools in the area.

The brief contends the order is not exempt under the regulations because the government does not consider their expressions of religious belief to be exclusively religious activity as defined in the regulations.

Lipper, of Americans United, said the nation has a history of granting special solicitude to houses of worship. But if the plaintiffs were correct in saying that the government could not distinguish between houses of worship and religious hospitals, schools, and other institutions, then anytime the government gave an exemption to a church, it would have to give it to all religious organizations.

That could bring long-term harm to religious liberty, he said.

The case is being argued on March 23.
The Elliott Wave Principle is a detailed description of how financial markets behave. The description reveals that mass psychology swings from pessimism to optimism and back in a natural sequence, creating specific Elliott wave patterns in price movements. Each pattern has implications regarding the position of the market within its overall progression, past, present and future. The purpose of Elliott Wave Internationals market-oriented publications is to outline the progress of markets in terms of the Wave Principle and to educate interested parties in the successful application of the Wave Principle. While a course of conduct regarding investments can be formulated from such application of the Wave Principle, at no time will Elliott Wave International make specific recommendations for any specific person, and at no time may a reader, caller or viewer be justified in inferring that any such advice is intended. Investing carries risk of losses, and trading futures or options is especially risky because these instruments are highly leveraged, and traders can lose more than their initial margin funds. Information provided by Elliott Wave International is expressed in good faith, but it is not guaranteed. The market service that never makes mistakes does not exist. Long-term success trading or investing in the markets demands recognition of the fact that error and uncertainty are part of any effort to assess future probabilities. Please ask your broker or your advisor to explain all risks to you before making any trading and investing decisions.
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.

08:11, 22 OCT 2022
Big bridge grant for Austin Free Access Austin Borough has qualified for a state grant to cover construction of a new bridge near the towns northern gateway. A $518,400 allotment from the Multimodal Transportation Fund will allow...

Deeds filed in Cameron County Free Access Following are real estate transactions filed with the Cameron County Recorder of Deeds: Blair A. Lundberg to Alcohol & Drug Abuse Services, Emporium, $185,000; David Jeffrey Smith to Elk Mountain...

These are the best of times for deer hunters Free Access There has rarely been a better time to be a deer hunter in Pennsylvanias northcentral region. Not only has the whitetail population been steadily rebounding, but the deer are healthier...

DuBois family leaves millions for volunteer orgs Free Access Christmas came early to seven community organizations whose work was important to the late multimillionaire Arthur F. DuBois (shown in the inset) of Coudersport. Some $3.1 million in proceeds from...
Re: HR or other support for mobbing/bullying at Novartis



Quote: grumpygrapefruit Mobbing is a serious issue in CH and is a legally recognised term for bullying/harrasment in the work place. I know a Swiss guy who is fighting a similar case after he was sent to work in the London office of his Swiss company. While he was there he was treated terribly by management and was actually sacked from the Zurich headquarters whilst on holiday. The firm stopped paying his rent in London and all expenses... there's a lot more to it that i can't go into but he has a good lawyer who is fighting his case on anti-mobbing legislation alone and he seems to getting somewhere.



Have a loot at www.mobbing-zentrale.ch - the sixth button down has some info in English



As GG implies, this is not a [company name removed] issue. Speak to your HR rep as a starting point, but I would ask for advice on who to speak about it rather than telling that person all the gory details in the first instance.



While HR are meant to be neutral, you never know who knows who in a company like [company name removed] and professional lines can be blurred.



Finally, write up all instances of when you think you have been "mobbed" - details detail details: time, place, requests, reactions, behaviors, outcomes... BEFORE you go to HR.



At the end of the day unless someone supports your case, it will come down to "his/her word against yours".



Good luck. To quote GGFrom this thread: Mobbing in Switzerland As GG implies, this is not a [company name removed] issue. Speak to your HR rep as a starting point, but I would ask for advice on who to speak about it rather than telling that person all the gory details in the first instance.While HR are meant to be neutral, you never know who knows who in a company like [company name removed] and professional lines can be blurred.Finally, write up all instances of when you think you have been "mobbed" - details detail details: time, place, requests, reactions, behaviors, outcomes... BEFORE you go to HR.At the end of the day unless someone supports your case, it will come down to "his/her word against yours".Good luck. __________________

Never let right or wrong get in the way of a good opinion Last edited by 3Wishes; 18.03.2016 at 16:20 . Reason: removed company name
Re: Krankenkasse call center cold calls Quote: Tom1234 One kept calling me back every few minutes and then he hang up when I answered.



The Swiss health Insurance companies know about these practices yet they appear to condone them.



It's a pretty aggressive and unpleasant way to do business but hey, we live here and if it's the way it's done here then I guess we have to accept it.



Before this I just had someone call out of the blue. He was polite. Called a few times and then stopped. I received a letter yesterday from my insurance company saying Mr. Agent So and So was going to call me sometime between March 31 and June 30 to help me optimize my insurance plan. So they for sure know about it. Don't know why they're trying to sending me through an agent though.Before this I just had someone call out of the blue. He was polite. Called a few times and then stopped.
They were both kidnapped since the attempt to rescue Marlena (Deirdre Hall) and Ariana, and now the fight will be on to find and rescue John (Drake Hogestyn) and Paul (Christopher Sean) on Days of Our Lives.

John was initially grabbed directly after the fight, and has been holed up as a prisoner--learning the shocking truth along the way that the person holding him captive was none other than his own father, who was now going by an identity of Ling (Tobin Bell), and had much more devious intentions in mind. John's father revealed he needs the miracle drug which saved Caroline (Peggy McCay), and also his son's blood for another illness he suffers. And whether John volunteered or not, Ling was set to take his blood from him, even if it meant killing him in the process.

However, the situation has become even more dire since then, as Ling has also brought a new prisoner in--John's son, Paul, who will be shocked and confused as to why he's been kidnapped since he didn't know about his father's secret past as a trained assassin.

However, the men will have help coming for them as they potentially fight for their lives and try to escape before Ling can genuinely hurt them.

Marlena, Rafe (Galen Gerig) and Steve (Stephen Nichols) are planning to stage a rescue, with intel from Ed (A. Martinez), who is still in a hospital bed after he was shot during the initial stand-off. Ed is the only other person who has the same experience as John when it comes to training as an assassin, and has even more intel into the agency because he was involved with it for so long. Thanks to him, and some of Steve's contact at the ISA, they know that John is still likely being held in Salem, and they even have addresses to check out as they search for him.

And now, the search will officially be on--hopefully, a rescue can happen before it is too late to save them.

Days of Our Lives airs Monday-Friday at 1 p.m. on NBC.
Sarah Paulson's stellar career rise can partly be attributed to Jessica Lange!

Paulson, who starred alongside Lange in four seasons of American Horror Story, has her former co-star to thank for getting the offer to do the series.

Lange and Paulson had previously starred in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway in 2005, and the actresses went to Los Angeles for the Project Angel Food event just as Lange was getting ready to star in the first season of AHS.

"She had just gotten into town to start doing season 1 of American Horror Story, and L.A. is not really her town," Paulson said in a new interview with People. "She didn't know a ton of people so we were spending a lot of time together."

Paulson recalled series creator Ryan Murphy being at the party and spoke about Lange's big gesture:

"At one point, Jessica just threw her arm around me and said to Ryan, 'Oh, can't you find something for Sarah to do on the show? She's going to be in town now.' And he said, 'Oh. Yeah. I think I could do that,' " Paulson said.

The actress would then be cast as psychic Billie Dean Howard in season 1 of American Horror Story, and ultimately became a series regular from season 2 onward. Paulson had a starring role as Lana Winters in Asylum, followed by major roles in Coven and Freak Show and a supporting role in Hotel this past year.

Paulson is now starring in another Murphy joint, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson where she has received much critical praise for playing prosecutor Marcia Clark.

"There's been a switch recently," Paulson said, of her newfound success in the industry. "I've spent my whole career working toward this. Now my life has completely changed."

American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX. American Horror Story season 6 will air this fall on FX.
Fox's Bones will tackle "meninists" and much more when the series returns in April.

Fox has released plot synopses for the first few episodes of season 11B of Bones. The midseason premiere, titled "The Death in the Defense," centers on Hodgins' (T.J. Thyne) struggles in the wake of his paralysis.

The episode synopsis reads as follows:

"Picking up after the explosive fall finale, Hodgins is eight weeks into his rehabilitation for his paralysis and forced to navigate life in a wheelchair, while having difficulty readjusting to his new life at home and the lab. Meanwhile, Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) investigate the death of a public defender who had multiple defendants from previous cases with motives to kill her."

The episode after that is titled "The Murder of the Meninist," and as the title implies, it will center on the death of a man who believes his gender is oppressed and feminists are man-haters.

"The team investigates a body found in a car crash, and the remains belong to a founder of a men's rights organization who may have been the victim of domestic abuse," the synopsis reads. "Brennan uncharacteristically loses her cool during an interrogation and assaults the organization's co-founder. Meanwhile, Angela (Michaela Conlin) and the team struggle to deal with Hodgins' post-wheelchair bitterness and Booth is convinced Brennan is a jinx for the Philadelphia Flyers."

Then, the following episode is titled "The Monster in the Closet" and features Booth and Aubrey (John Boyd) asking for help from behavior analyst Karen Delfs, played by guest star Sarah Rue.

"The Jeffersonian investigates the decomposing body of a social worker in the park, but evidence suggests the killer lived with the body for months before dumping it," the plot synopsis reveals. "Things get even more complicated when they determine another set of remains has similar details which link the multiple victims to a serial murderer who had sinister interactions with his victims' bodies."

This episode also features Cam (Tamara Taylor) trying to figure out what she really wants in her romantic life.

Bones returns on Thursday, April 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
In a bid to attract new businesses to Uitenhage, Bay municipality and Coega are planning expansion of the R287m Nelson Mandela Bay Logistic Park.

IN a bid to keep up with demand and attract new businesses to Uitenhage, plans are being made for major expansion of the Nelson Mandela Bay Logistics Park over the next five years.

The project, estimated to cost R287-million, would be a major boost for the area.

The Bay municipality and Coega Development Corporation (CDC) are exploring various funding options for the expansion of the logistics park, according to the citys economic development, tourism and agriculture head, Anele Qaba.

These include turning to the provincial government and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for help.

Qaba said two of the tenants  polymer parts company Rehau and plastic component specialists QPlas  had told the city they wanted to expand due to new contracts received.

Rehau is a German first-tier investor in the Logistics Park [that] required an expansion to its existing manufacturing warehouse to meet the current and future requirements of VWSA, Mercedes-Benz SA and other client requirements, Qaba reported.

Rehau indicated their interest to extend the facility to accommodate their new paint-line extension as well as an extension to the logistics hall.

Qaba said QPlas had outgrown its space and started using an adjacent warehouse.

The company still needed 5000m to be built.

QPlas owner Tom du Toit said the company was pumping R42-million into its expansion to accommodate its VW contract and had already spent R30-million to accommodate its Mercedes contract.

Du Toit said the expansions would boost jobs from 38 to more than 100 by mid-2017.

The metro and CDC are looking for funding to expand Precinct A, expected to cost about R239.8-million in total.

That is where all the companies are situated at present.

The expansion will include the construction of warehouses, an electrical substation upgrade, and an upgrade of reservoirs and the pump station.

Developments on the parcel of land have reached a stage where there is additional pressure to invest in key economic infrastructure for better delivery of essential services and utilities, such as electricity, water, a fire-ring, internal roads and more, Qaba said.

He said the installation of infrastructure in Precinct B, which is currently a vacant piece of land, was also required.

An estimated 126.4ha is still available in Precinct B for development to accommodate new suppliers in the automotive and other manufacturing sectors.

To ensure future development, Precinct B must be opened and cleared.

This will ensure that the area can be marketed as serviceable land and stimulate investment and economic growth within the area, Qaba wrote.

The infrastructure costs for Precinct B are estimated at R46.7million.

CDC spokesman Ayanda Vilakazi said the corporation was working with the municipality, the province, and the DTI to secure funding.

Source: Herald
In the new conception being put forward by the government, the university is considered as a skill factory which, through mass production, will address the needs of the country's economy. This model thinks of universities not as laboratories of thought but as factories where activities are performed in unison. Instead of a cohabitation of differences in friendship and respectful, heated disagreement, you have a paranoid fantasy that gets rid of all real diversity.

Recent events in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the strong, widespread responses they provoked indicate two things. First, what is at stake in the JNU crisis goes beyond the destiny of a particular university, or even questions of higher education, foreboding wider repression of freedoms in society. Second, in the current contestation over the scope of democracy, the public university as an institution and intellectual space is placed in a position of vital significance. Similarities between the situations that arose in the Hyderabad Central University, Jadavpur University and JNU have been instructive. In all these instances, the state and a section of the population sought to reconfigure the university space and enforce new limits to what can take place there. Has the Indian university become the visible site where the imminent futures of freedom and democracy are being thought and fought over? Special Relationship
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study scheduled for Feb. 18, 2016 online publication in the journal Cell Reports models Early T-Cell Precursor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ETP-ALL), discovering inactivation of the gene EZH2 as a driver and inroad to a potential therapeutic target in the disease.

"About 15 percent of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children arises from T-cell precursors. We know that patients with T-ALL need more therapy upfront, we have to hit it harder. When this form of the disease relapses, or does not respond to established therapy, it's very hard to treat. The ETP-ALL subtype of T-ALL quite frequently appears to behave in this problematic fashion," says Tobias Neff, MD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital Colorado.

A 2012 paper in the journal Nature, describing a large scale sequencing study of pediatric ETP-ALL, showed a complicated mix of genetic alterations with two major results: ETP-ALL shows frequent mutations in molecules mediating growth and survival signals, and more than 40 percent of ETP-ALLs have inactivating alterations of the gene EZH2. Loss of EZH2 function can in turn inactivate what is called Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2).

However, how the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 loss of function mutations would help leukemia growth was unclear from the 2012 Nature study. The current study from the University of Colorado Cancer Center now sheds light on this issue.

ETP-ALL was previously known to have stem cell-like gene expression. Neff, along with co-first author Etienne Danis, PhD, research associate in the Department of Pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine, and colleagues, now show that the differentiation from stem cells into more specialized blood cells partially depends on EZH2/PRC2, directly linking PRC2 loss of function to a stem cell-like gene expression profile.

"How exactly the stem-cell like gene expression profile contributes to the aggressiveness of ETP-ALL of acute leukemia is unknown, but we've known that these stem-like cells are associated with poor prognosis in acute leukemia," Neff says.

Another consequence of EZH2 inactivation is increased growth and survival signaling. In healthy tissues, Interleukin 6 signals cell growth, for example for the purpose of tissue repair after injury. In ETP-ALL, cells become especially sensitive to Interleukin 6, allowing these cells to grow far beyond healthy counterparts. The current study supports the concept that loss of Ezh2 enzyme spurs growth by increasing the expression of cellular receptors for Interleukin 6.

"We have two major features of the disease - stem-like cells and increased growth -- and now we show an actor implicated in both, namely EZH2/PRC2," Neff says.

In fact, unpacking the mechanism of the gene EZH2 and the enzyme Ezh2 it encodes may have implications beyond ETP-ALL. The enzyme is an early player in a complex web of cellular communication that is also involved in a number of other diseases affecting children and adults, including neurofibromatosis, juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.

Neff suggests that considering Ezh2 as an actor in many conditions illustrates a paradigm shift in the way modern science evaluates diseases, from a model in which pathologists define disease by its morphological appearance to a model in which disease is defined by its genetic signature. The diseases in this paragraph may look different in a microscope, but this work shows they may be closely related by their genetics.

"In addition to our specific finding in this disease, we are excited to now have a model that allows us to explore consequences of Ezh2 inactivation that may enrich our understanding of a number of other conditions with a similar set of genetic changes," Neff says.

The group plans to use the newly developed mouse model to test therapies to combat the results of Ezh2 inactivation. Specifically, the paper shows that the existing drug ruxolitinib intercedes at an important link in the signaling chain that may be initiated by Ezh2 inactivation. With this link (namely JAK-STAT signaling) silenced by ruxolitinib, leukemia cells in the group's mouse model showed growth delay.

"Ruxolitinib is unlikely to treat the disease by itself, but this model will help us test possible drug combinations that could eventually benefit ETP-ALL patients," Neff says.

In future studies, the group plans to use the advanced genetic and chemical screening capabilities within the University of Colorado system to test the activity of many drugs against cells with inactivated Ezh2.

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A unique new computer model built on highly complex mathematics could make it possible to design safer versions of the 'fast ships' widely used in search & rescue, anti-drugs, anti-piracy and many other vital offshore operations.

Travelling at up to 23-30 knots, fast ships are especially vulnerable to waves that amplify suddenly due to local weather and sea conditions - extreme funnelling effects, for example, may turn waves a few metres high into dangerous waves tens of metres tall that can destabilise ships, resulting in damage, causing injuries and threatening lives.

Developed with Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) support at the University of Leeds by Dr Anna Kalogirou and Dr Vijaya Ambati with Professor Onno Bokhove, the new model produces unprecedentedly accurate animations and simulations that can show exactly how sea waves can affect fast ships. It highlights the importance of having accurate predictions of the pressure forces that these craft are subjected to, and could aid the design of fast ships better able to withstand the effects of rough seas.

The researchers can already simulate the complex interactions of sea waves that can lead to an anomalously high freak wave, but adding the motion of ships into the equation complicates matters significantly.

Dr Kalogirou said: "We have managed to develop a simulation tool that uses sophisticated mathematical methods and produces fast and accurate simulations of linear wave-ship interactions. Our tool can also provide measurements in terms of wave amplitudes around ships, as well as pressures on ships' surfaces."

The aim is to extend the model over the next three years to produce a tool that can be used extensively by ship designers and maritime engineers.

The model has been validated through laboratory experiments on a man-made freak or rogue wave (the so-called 'soliton splash') using test tanks. A comparison with wave and ship motion, for a ship moored on two anchors, has been set up in a small test tank, which is also used for public demonstrations.

Results from the project are being disseminated to a range of organisations including the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN). A related European Industry Doctorate project with MARIN on rogue and breaking waves against offshore structures has strengthened Professor Bokhove's EPSRC-funded research on wave impact against ships, as well as his EU-funded work on fixed offshore structures.

Fast ships deliver all kinds of services in fields such as disaster response, the fight against crime, the provision of supplies for oil and gas platforms and the transportation of wind farm maintenance personnel. Each year, however, around 100 such ships worldwide are lost or damaged in heavy seas, with around 2,500 casualties in 2013.

Professor Bokhove says: "Describing mathematically the complex behaviour of waves and their interaction with fast ships and then incorporating all of this into a robust computer model has been very challenging. We're delighted to have provided further proof of how advanced mathematics can have real-world applications that help save money and safeguard lives."

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For media enquiries and images contact: EPSRC Press Office, tel: 01793 444 404 or e-mail: pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk.

Further information from: Professor Onno Bokhove, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, tel: 0113 343 9751, e-mail: o.bokhove@leeds.ac.uk; or

Sarah Reed, Press Officer, University of Leeds, tel: 0113 3434196 or email s.j.reed@leeds.ac.uk

Videos of wave simulation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZAYHtVoiMqepQflisp66g:

Linear motion of a wave-energy buoy moving in driven shallow water waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDsxqPAwP7g

Linear motion of a wave-energy buoy in driven potential flow water waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kJ79shKhss

Small-scale realisation of a potential wave-energy device: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZhe_SOxBWo

Benney-Luke nonlinear Soliton Splash simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ibSPPqXQk Scientific Papers:

1. O. Bokhove and A. Kalogirou (2016) Variational water wave modelling: from continuum to experiment (PDF). In: T. Bridges, M. Groves and D. Nicholls (eds.) Lectures in the Theory of Water Waves. LMS Lecture Note Series. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, pp. 226-260.

2. A. Kalogirou, O. Bokhove and E. E. Moulopoulou (2016) Variational finite element methods for waves in a Hele-Shaw tank. Appl. Math. Model., doi: 10.1016/j.apm.2016.02.036.

3. A. Kalogirou and O. Bokhove. Mathematical and numerical modelling of wave impact on wave-energy buoys. Proceedings of the ASME 2016 35th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OMAE2016), June 19-24, 2016, Busan, South Korea. In press.

4. A. Kalogirou, V.R. Ambati and O. Bokhove (2016) Variational linear, finite element dynamics of buoy and ship motion in water waves. In preparation.

Notes for Editors:

The 18-month project 'FastFEM Behaviour of Fast Ships in Waves' began in June 2014 and ended in December 2015, having received total EPSRC funding of just over 147,000.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

As the main funding agency for engineering and physical sciences research, our vision is for the UK to be the best place in the world to Research, Discover and Innovate.

By investing 800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, we are building the knowledge and skills base needed to address the scientific and technological challenges facing the nation. Our portfolio covers a vast range of fields from healthcare technologies to structural engineering, manufacturing to mathematics, advanced materials to chemistry. The research we fund has impact across all sectors. It provides a platform for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture.

We work collectively with our partners and other Research Councils on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk

The University of Leeds, established in 1904, is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK. It is a world top 100 university and renowned globally for the quality of its teaching and research. The strength of its academic expertise combined with the breadth of disciplines covered provides a wealth of opportunities and has real impact on the world in cultural, economic and societal ways. The University strives to achieve academic excellence within an ethical framework informed by its values of integrity, equality and inclusion, community and professionalism. http://www.leeds.ac.uk
Los Angeles, Calif., USA - Today at the 45th Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association for Dental Research, researcher Naoki Kakudate, Kyushu Dental University, Kyushu Dental University, Japan, will present a study titled "Evidence-Practice Gap for Sealant Application: Results from a Dental PBRN." The AADR Annual Meeting is being held in conjunction with the 40th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.

In this study, the researchers aimed to examine dentist practice patterns regarding treatment recommendation of dental sealants and identify characteristics associated with this recommendation. The study was conducted using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey in Japan. Participants were Japanese dentists (N=282) recruited from the Japanese Dental Practice Based Research Network (JDPBRN) who indicated that they do at least some restorative dentistry. Scenarios, images and questionnaire items were the same as those used in a previous U.S. DPBRN study. A series of three clinical photographs of the occlusal surface of a mandibular first molar, together with a description, were presented portraying increasing depths of cavitation. The researchers inquired about the treatment decision for each case, which had a 12-year-old patient with high caries risk. Chi-square tests were performed to assess the association between belief about the effectiveness of caries risk assessment and sealant recommendation. Multiple logistic regression analysis were conducted to evaluate the association between the decision to recommend sealants and dentist, practice and patient characteristics.

Responses were obtained from 189 dentists (67 percent). In the hypothetical scenarios, dentists' recommendations of sealants for the 12-year old patient varied from 16 percent to 26 percent. Nineteen percent of dentists recommended sealants in the absence of dark brown pigmentation. Forty-eight percent of dentists (n=91) recommended sealants to more than 25 percent of patients ages 6-18 years. Multiple logistic regression analysis suggested that the dentist's belief in the effectiveness of caries risk assessment was significantly associated with the percentage of patients who would receive sealants. Dentist practice patterns for sealant treatment recommendation vary widely. Recommending a sealant was significantly related to the dentist having a higher belief about the effectiveness of caries risk assessment.

This researchers was support by NIH grants U01-DE-16746, U01-DE-16747 and U19-DE-22516.

This is a summary of oral presentation #0982, "Evidence-Practice Gap for Sealant Application: Results from a Dental PBRN," which will be presented on Friday, March 18, 2016, 10:45 a.m. - 11 a.m. at the Los Angeles Convention Center, room #406A.

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About the American Association for Dental Research

The American Association for Dental Research (AADR), headquartered in Alexandria, Va., is a nonprofit organization with more than 3,700 members in the United States. Its mission is: (1) to advance research and increase knowledge for the improvement of oral health; (2) to support and represent the oral health research community; and (3) to facilitate the communication and application of research findings. AADR is the largest Division of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). To learn more about the AADR, visit http://www.aadr.org.
Innovative entrepreneurial intentions -- or the aim to create new products and bring them to market, rather than replicating existing products -- are boosted by college experiences, according to research by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

The multi-country study, published in The Journal of Higher Education, suggests that beyond personality, family history of entrepreneurship, and other characteristics, educational practices may actually spur innovation.

"Cultivating innovative entrepreneurship appears to involve both nature and nurture, both personality and experience," said Matthew J. Mayhew, associate professor of higher education at NYU Steinhardt.

Higher education is often scrutinized for how well it prepares students to solve modern problems. Rather than being viewed as innovation engines, colleges and universities are sometimes thought of as threats to innovation. Now, colleges and universities are working to make innovation and entrepreneurship central aspects of higher education, with the number of entrepreneurship programs increasing in the last few decades.

"With the expansion of opportunities to study entrepreneurship comes important theoretical and practical questions," said Mayhew. "Can innovation be taught? Or is innovation something that a student just has? These questions reflect the need for research that examines how students obtain the entrepreneurial skills required to move ideas from thought to action."

Although recent research has found a relationship between participation in higher education and student intentions to engage in entrepreneurship, differences in educational settings have not been fully explored. This study examined the cultivation of innovative entrepreneurial intentions among students in three different settings: a U.S. undergraduate four-year environment, a U.S. M.B.A. two-year environment, and a German five-year business and technology environment.

To evaluate the educational settings, the researchers used an interdisciplinary approach grounded in student learning theory, entrepreneurship education, and economics. The students -- 375 U.S. business undergraduates, 109 U.S. M.B.A. students, and 210 German students in a five-year business program -- all completed an instrument to assess personality dimensions, including extraversion and openness to new experiences. Students also answered survey questions about their college experiences (e.g., challenging learning environments, relationships with faculty, and approaches to problem solving) and their intentions to innovate in an entrepreneurial capacity.

The researchers found that participation in both the German and the American education settings positively influenced innovative entrepreneurial intentions. Personality also played an important role in predicting an intention to innovate, albeit with variations across educational settings. Entrepreneurial intentions were statistically related to a personality that is extroverted and conscientious for U.S. undergraduates; a personality that is extroverted, conscientious, and open to new experiences for German students; and a personality that was open to new experiences for U.S. M.B.A. students.

Confirming earlier findings, undergraduate male students, as well as students identifying as Asian or politically conservative, were more likely than their peers to demonstrate innovative entrepreneurial intentions. For U.S. undergraduates, a family history of entrepreneurship was also related to innovative entrepreneurial intentions.

"This study disrupts the position that higher education may not be conducive to fostering innovation by suggesting that both personality and structured higher education experiences contribute to cultivating innovation potential among college students," said Mayhew. "The good news is that innovative entrepreneurial intentions can be influenced by educators, regardless of the many differences in traits and experiences that students across cultures bring to college campuses."

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In addition to Mayhew, study authors include Jeffery S. Simonoff and William J. Baumol of the NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business and Benjamin S. Selznick and Stephen J. Vassallo of NYU Steinhardt. The research was supported by funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

About the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development (@nyusteinhardt)

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development prepares students for careers in the arts, education, health, media, and psychology. Since its founding in 1890, the Steinhardt School's mission has been to expand human capacity through public service, global collaboration, research, scholarship, and practice. To learn more about NYU Steinhardt, visit steinhardt.nyu.edu.
Some might say it takes a rare breed to survive the Alaska wilderness. The discovery of a possible new species of hybrid butterfly from the state's interior is proving that theory correct.

Belonging to a group known as the Arctics, the Tanana Arctic, Oeneis tanana, is the first new butterfly species described from the Last Frontier in 28 years and may be its only endemic butterfly.

University of Florida lepidopterist Andrew Warren suggests the butterfly could be the result of a rare and unlikely hybridization between two related species, both specially adapted for the harsh arctic climate, perhaps before the last ice age. Details of the finding are available online today in the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera.

Digging deeper into the Tanana Arctic's origins may reveal secrets about the geological history of arctic North America and the evolution of hybrid species, said Warren, who led the new study.

"Hybrid species demonstrate that animals evolved in a way that people haven't really thought about much before, although the phenomenon is fairly well studied in plants," said Warren, senior collections manager at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. "Scientists who study plants and fish have suggested that unglaciated parts of ancient Alaska known as Beringia, including the strip of land that once connected Asia and what's now Alaska, served as a refuge where plants and animals waited out the last ice age and then moved eastward or southward from there. This is potentially a supporting piece of evidence for that."

The new butterfly lives in the spruce and aspen forests of the Tanana-Yukon River Basin, most or all of which was never glaciated during the last ice age, about 28,000 to 14,000 years ago. Study researchers suggest that sometime in the past, two related species, the Chryxus Arctic, O. chryxus, and the White-veined Arctic, O. bore, may have mated and their hybrid offspring subsequently evolved into the Tanana Arctic. Then, during the coldest part of the last ice age, the Tanana Arctic and White-veined Arctic apparently remained in Beringia while the Chryxus Arctic was pushed south into the Rocky Mountains. This would mean all three species were once present in Beringia before the last ice age, Warren said.

For more than 60 years the Tanana Arctic hid beneath scientists' noses incognito as its very similar relative the Chryxus Arctic, until Warren noticed its distinct characteristics while curating collections at the McGuire Center.

In addition to expanded white specks on the underside of its penny-colored wings giving it a 'frosted' appearance, the Tanana Arctic is larger and darker than the Chryxus Arctic. It also has a unique DNA sequence, which is nearly identical to those found in nearby populations of White-veined Arctics, further supporting the hypothesis the new species may be a hybrid, Warren said.

"Once we sequence the genome, we'll be able to say whether any special traits helped the butterfly survive in harsh environments," he said. "This study is just the first of what will undoubtedly be many on this cool butterfly."

Warren said more field research is needed to investigate whether the Tanana Arctic also exists further east into the Yukon. Other species of Arctics are found in places like Russia and Siberia. The group is known for living in environments too cold and extreme for most other butterflies, and they survive in part thanks to a natural antifreeze their bodies produce.

Because butterflies react extremely quickly to climate change, the new butterfly could serve as an early warning indicator of environmental changes in the relatively untouched areas of Alaska where the Tanana Arctic flutters.

"This butterfly has apparently lived in the Tanana River valley for so long that if it ever moves out, we'll be able to say 'Wow, there are some changes happening,'" Warren said. "This is a region where the permafrost is already melting and the climate is changing."

Warren plans to go back to the Yukon-Tanana basins next year in search of the Tanana Arctic. He hopes fieldwork in this rugged environment will result in fresh specimens to fully sequence the species' genome, which will reveal the butterfly's genetic history, including if it is truly a hybrid.

"New butterflies are not discovered very often in the U.S. because our fauna is relatively well-known," Warren said. "There are around 825 species recorded from the U.S. and Canada. But with the complex geography in the western U.S., there are still going to be some surprises."

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New research has provided more evidence that an innovative treatment strategy may help prevent brain swelling and death in stroke patients. J. Marc Simard, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, along with colleagues at Yale University and Massachusetts General Hospital, found that Cirara, an investigational drug, powerfully reduced brain swelling and death in patients who had suffered a type of large stroke called malignant infarction, which normally carries a high mortality rate.

The findings were presented at the International Stroke Conference, held last month in Los Angeles.

"These results are quite promising," says Dr. Simard. "We have a lot more work to do, but this approach could be an effective strategy for severe stroke patients who currently have no good treatment options."

In October 2015, Dr. Simard and his colleagues, Kevin N. Sheth, of Yale, and W. Taylor Kimberly, of Massachusetts General Hospital, presented early data at the Neurocritical Care Society annual meeting, showing that the medication was effective in reducing brain swelling.

In stroke patients who were aged 70 or younger, the researchers found that six months after the stroke, the group of patients who had been given Cirara had a three-fold reduction in overall mortality and a ten-fold decrease in death from brain swelling.

Swelling is a key complication in many central nervous system ailments, including stroke, traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, and others. In all of these conditions, tiny blood vessels react to injury in a way that ultimately can be counterproductive, often leading to severe swelling of brain tissues that can be fatal. Dr. Simard and his colleagues discovered that in many of these conditions, the sulfonylurea receptor 1 (Sur1) plays a major, previously unrecognized, pathological role. It appears that Sur1 is involved in many of the most dangerous symptoms in these diseases, including cell swelling, cell death, and the breakdown of the barrier that normally protects the brain and inflammation.

The researchers have focused primarily on a drug called glibenclamide (also known as Glyburide), which inhibits Sur1. Glibenclamide is a well-known, safe drug that has been in use for nearly 50 years to treat adult onset diabetes.

Cirara, which is made by Remedy Pharmaceuticals, which is based in New York City, is an exclusive intravenous formulation of glibenclamide.

"This new data shows a continued reduction in mortality and improvement in functional scores," Sven Jacobson, CEO of Remedy Pharmaceuticals. "The data further confirms the mechanism of action of Cirara."

The researchers and Remedy are now planning to undertake a Phase 3 trial. The drug will be given to a larger group of people to confirm its effectiveness and compare it to commonly used stroke treatments.

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About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807, is the first public medical school in the United States, and continues today as a pioneering leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland and is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S. with top-tier faculty and programs in cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, vaccine development and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the nation, but also has a global presence, with research and treatment facilities in more than 35 countries around the world. medschool.umaryland.edu/

About Remedy Pharmaceuticals

Remedy Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a privately-held, clinical stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing and bringing lifesaving treatment to millions of people affected by acute central nervous system (CNS) edema -- including stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, as well as other ischemic injuries and neurological disorders.

About Cirara

Cirara is a patented, high affinity inhibitor of Sur1-Trpm4 channels, discovered by University of Maryland School of Medicine neurosurgeon Dr. J. Marc Simard, MD, PhD, which is suitable for intravenous delivery at the bedside or in an ambulance.
An ongoing culture of secrecy, poor access to specialist mental health services and a lack of high quality independent investigations has contributed to hundreds of non-natural deaths in detention, according to a new report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Since 2014, over 225 people detained in prisons, psychiatric hospitals and police cells - many of whom had mental health conditions - have died of non-natural causes in England and Wales. When 2015 figures for psychiatric hospitals are also published, the final number could be far higher.

Swaran Singh is EHRC Commissioner on adult deaths in detention and Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick said: "Failure to make progress in reducing the number of avoidable deaths is a national stain that we should no longer tolerate in modern civilised society."

The Commission's new analysis acknowledges that some improvements have been made in police custody, hospitals and prisons. There has been a welcome reduction in the number of people being held in police cells as a place of safety and there has also been a reduction in the number of deaths of detained patients in psychiatric hospitals. The Commission has noted that positive changes have been put in place to provide better support for prisoners with mental health conditions.

However, this is not enough. Progress is patchy and safety in prisons is a significant concern. Declining levels of safety and increasing violence has seen the number of non-natural deaths of prisoners rise year on year. There were 84 non-natural deaths in 2013 which increased to 98 in 2014 and then to 104 in 2015.

The report also reveals that more must be done to increase access to specialist mental health services in prisons and that 'information black holes' - such as the lack of data on deaths following release from prisons - are holding back progress in reducing self-harm, injury and deaths. A critical issue for hospitals is the establishment of oversight of independent investigations following deaths of detained patients. For police custody the lack of approved mental health professionals in some parts of the country, is leading to delays in mental health assessments. It needs to be addressed urgently.

Today's report follows an inquiry by the Commission published last year and provides new analysis and recommendations to tackle the issues raised. These include calling for a change in the law to ensure psychiatric hospitals, prisons and police forces publish action plans to address recommendations from investigations and inspections; and calling on psychiatric hospitals to investigate whether independent investigations are being carried out into non-natural deaths of detained patients and confirm if they are of sufficient quality.

Other key findings/recommendations are:

Data on use of restraint should be routinely published in prison as well as data on the number prisoners with mental health conditions.

Segregation should not be used for prisoners with mental health conditions.

Families should be fully involved and supported through the investigations process to help ensure that lessons can be learned to prevent future deaths.

The right to life should be central to the development of policies, procedures and investigations in to the deaths of people in detention.

Professor Singh added: "When the state detains people for their own good or the safety of others it has a very high level of responsibility to ensure their life is protected, and that is a particular challenge for people with mental health conditions. Progress has been so slow that we have continued to see a large number of tragic cases in the past two years where that responsibility has not been met.

"There is a corrosive culture of secrecy and blame which is holding back the progress that's so desperately needed. It is tragic that we appear to be going backwards not forwards in some areas, whilst avoidable deaths continue to rise."

###
DALLAS - March 18, 2016 - Demonstrating the potential of precision medicine, an international study based at UT Southwestern Medical Center used next-generation DNA sequencing technology to identify more than 1,000 gene variants that affect susceptibility to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Precision medicine is an emerging field that aims to deliver highly personalized health care by understanding how individual differences in genetics, environment, and lifestyle impact health and disease.

SLE, commonly called lupus, is a serious, potentially fatal autoimmune disease that the National Institutes of Health reports affects nine times more women than men, and is more likely to strike young African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American women. The disease often begins between the ages of 15 and 44.

"SLE starts when the immune system attacks multiple organ systems in the body, which can result in a complex array of symptoms that are difficult to manage clinically and can lead to organ damage," said Dr. Edward Wakeland, Chair of Immunology at UT Southwestern and co-senior author of the study posted online recently in the journal eLife. "Our findings support the potential of precision medicine to provide clinically relevant information about genetic susceptibility that may ultimately improve diagnosis and treatment."

The study also may have implications for other systemic autoimmune diseases, a category of diseases that affect multiple body systems and includes Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, he said.

Dr. Wakeland and colleagues sequenced millions of DNA base pairs from more than 1,700 people, which allowed precise identification of the genetic variations contributing to SLE, he said. Specifically, the researchers identified 1,206 DNA variations located in 16 different regions of the human genome associated with increased susceptibility to SLE. They then showed that almost all of them (1,199) modify the level of expression of specific molecules that regulate immune responses, he said.

In addition, the two-year study identified many of the specific regulatory variations that were changed in SLE patients and demonstrated that accurately identifying such so-called causal variants increased the accuracy of the genetic association of individual SLE risk genes with susceptibility to SLE.

"Prior to our study, such a comprehensive sequence analysis had not been done and little was known about the exact genetic variations that modify the functions of the genes that cause SLE," added Dr. Wakeland, who holds the Edwin L. Cox Distinguished Chair in Immunology and Genetics.

The scientists began their comprehensive sequence analysis using the DNA samples of 1,349 American Europeans (773 with SLE disease and 576 without) from sample collections at UT Southwestern, the University of Southern California, UCLA, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, and the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.

They then determined the precise DNA sequences at SLE-associated genetic regions scattered throughout the genome. They found that SLE risk is associated with specific clusters of DNA variations, commonly called haplotypes, and that some haplotypes increased the risk for SLE while others provided protection from SLE.

After identifying the sets of DNA variants that increased SLE susceptibility in Caucasians, they used multiple public databases, including the international 1000 Genomes Project (2,504 genomic samples from the global human population) to determine whether these haplotypes also were found in South American, South Asian, African, and East Asian populations.

They discovered that the variants and haplotypes were distributed across subpopulations worldwide. Their findings indicate that many common haplotypes in the immune system are shared at different frequencies throughout the global population, suggesting that these variations in the immune system have ancient origins and persist in populations for long periods, Dr. Wakeland said.

"We thank the many SLE patients and control participants whose sample contributions were essential for these studies," the researchers wrote.

Dr. Wakeland and colleagues plan to continue the research by obtaining more DNA samples and expanding their analysis to additional SLE risk genes with the goal of obtaining a data set that can be used to predict an individual's unique risk of SLE, as well as the likelihood of benefiting from specific treatments.

"It is feasible that this same type of genetic analysis will allow the clustering of SLE patients into specific groups, based on their genetic predispositions, which would improve clinical management and potentially allow the development of more targeted therapies," Dr. Wakeland said.

Earlier this month, UT Southwestern announced that Dr. Wakeland, whose laboratory has long served as the institution's Genomics and Microarray Core Facility, will be leading a large DNA-sequencing initiative to address important clinical challenges. The new clinical sequencing facility, in collaboration with the Department of Pathology, will provide panel sequencing for cancer and other diagnoses, and eventually expand to whole-exome and whole-genome sequence analysis for a variety of patients. The laboratory will be established in the BioCenter on the East Campus. To commit full effort to this initiative, Dr. Wakeland will step down as Chair of Immunology, but will remain in this role until his successor is named.

"This clinical sequencing core facility will generate laboratory data to be used for the evaluation of patient tumors. I hope we will someday expand to genotyping patients to identify potential susceptibility to autoimmune disease and many other conditions as the field of precision medicine develops," Dr. Wakeland said.

###

Co-lead authors of the eLife study from UT Southwestern were Dr. Prithvi Raj, Instructor of Immunology, and Dr. Ekta Rai, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Wakeland lab. Other contributing UTSW authors, all from Immunology, included Dr. Ran Song, postdoctoral researcher; Dr. Shaheen Khan, Instructor; Benjamin Wakeland, database analyst; Kasthuribai Viswanathan and Carlos Arana, computational biologists; Chaoying Liang, laboratory manager; Bo Zhang, senior research associate; Ferdicia Carr-Johnson; former lab manager; and Dr. Igor Dozmorov, Dr. Chandrashekhar Pasare, and Dr. Quan-Zhen Li, Associate Professors. Dr. Pasare holds the J. Wayne Streilein, M.D. Professorship in Immunology and is a Louise W. Kahn Scholar in Biomedical Research.

Additional UTSW co-authors include Dr. Christine Garcia, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development; Dr. Carol Wise, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and in the McDermott Center; and Dr. David Karp, Chief of Rheumatic Diseases and Professor of Internal Medicine. Dr. Garcia holds the Kern and Marnie Wildenthal President's Research Council Professorship in Medical Science, while Dr. Karp holds the Fredye Factor Chair in Rheumatoid Arthritis Research, and the Harold C. Simmons Chair in Arthritis Research.

Co-senior author was Dr. Patrick Gaffney of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Others contributors were from Yale School of Medicine, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; Universite Catholique de Louvain; Penn State College of Medicine; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Cincinnati VA Medical Center; University of Southern California; and UCLA.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Alliance for Lupus Research, and the Walter M. and Helen D. Bader Center for Research on Arthritis and Autoimmune Diseases.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of almost 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year.

This news release is available on our home page at http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/home/news/index.html

To automatically receive news releases from UT Southwestern via email, subscribe at http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/receivenews
Kalyan Jewellers has recently roped in actress Sonam Kapoor as the face of the brand.She will be seen endorsing the brands exquisite range of gold and diamond jewellery, especially in the Northern and the Western markets.

Kapoor has replaced actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who was the ambassador of Kalyan Jewellers for more than three years. Last year, the brand courted controversy, when one of their ads, featuring Aishwarya representing aristocracy in the bygone era along with an underage child holding an umbrella over her head, received a lot of backlash on social media. The print ad had to be withdrawn as it was under fire for depicting child labour.

Post this; the company issued a statement, saying "The creative was intended to present the royalty, timeless beauty and elegance. However, if we have inadvertently hurt the sentiments of any individual or organisation, we deeply regret the same. We have started the process of withdrawing this creative from our campaign."

Few months later, the brand came out with an ad, featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Nagarjuna with an aim to reinforce trust in the brand. It was released to underline the idea of trust and respect, than mere product promotion.

We spoke to some branding and advertising experts about Kalyan Jewellers new brand ambassador and if she is the right fit for the brand:

Expert Take:

According to Jagdeep Kapoor, Chairman & Managing Director, Samsika Marketing Consults, When a brand is built, the sole responsibility is on the shoulders of the brand manager, who is like the custodian of the brand. He/she approves the strategy for the campaign and the endorser only takes the decision, whether to go ahead with the script or not. So if anything has to happen, it starts and ends with the brand manager.

Commenting on this, Anshul Sushil, Co-founder, Boring Brands said, Brand endorsement is actually a very tricky thing. Last year when Aishwaryas ad courted controversy, the brand did the right thing, by removing it. They actually had no option, since it was receiving flak on social media. A brand endorser should appeal to audiences across platform, not limited to television or print. I feel Kalyan Jewellers will benefit a lot from getting associated with Sonam Kapoor, because of her latest movie Neerja. In the last 3-4 months, she has been trying to carve out her own niche, which goes well with the personality of the brand. Among the top 5 actresses of today, Sonam fits well with the idea of woman of substance which the brand promotes, and she is the best replacement which Kalyan Jewellers could have got.

On the other hand, Amitava Mitra, Founder & Managing Director, Bee Advertising cited, Not sure what the objective of campaign with Sonam Kapoor is; if it is to rebuild trust after the Aishwarya ad controversy, then I am afraid Sonam Kapoor is certainly not the right choice. With all due respect to her, she doesn't have the stature to rebuild trust for a brand. If it is only to replace Aishwarya as brand ambassador to promote the brand on the style and elegance platform she may be an acceptable choice. However, Sonam cannot be responsible for the brand beyond just projecting the brand and jewellery for those seeking style and elegance.

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UPPER SANDUSKY, Ohio  A growing number of farms in Ohio and neighboring states are turning to solar energy to meet some of their electricity needs. Solar energy can save farms and other farm-related businesses money thanks to increasingly lower installation costs and the availability of government grants and other incentives.

On-farm solar energy development

To help farmers and other agribusiness people find out if solar energy is right for them, experts with the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University have put together a series of fact sheets that cover all key aspects of on-farm solar energy development  from an explanation of how solar energy works to financial considerations.

Eric Romich, an Ohio State University Extension field specialist in energy development and leader of OSU Extensions Energize Ohio signature program, said the fact sheets were created to helps farmers and others looking into renewable energy alternatives make informed decisions about these technologies.

The agriculture sector was an early adopter of off-grid photovoltaic (PV) solar systems as a remote energy source, Romich said. High costs used to be a limiting factor in the widespread adoption of PV solar systems on farms. But in recent years, PV solar cost reductions have been stimulated by a decrease in the cost of solar modules, technology advancements and the scale of market development.

The fact sheet series is available at energizeohio.osu.edu/farm- solar-energy-development. It includes An Introduction to On-Farm Solar Electric Systems, On-Farm Solar Site Assessment, Estimating the Size of Your Solar Electric System, Financial Considerations of On-Farm Renewable Energy and On-Farm Solar Electric System Safety.

Rural Energy for America Program

The website also includes a fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Through a competitive application process, this program provides guaranteed loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses to purchase or install renewable energy systems or to make energy efficiency improvements.

In addition to fact sheets, the site offers short videos showing what solar energy systems look like, agricultural facilities using these systems and information about solar stock water systems.

In general, PV solar systems are very compatible with agricultural operations, as farmers have access to open land and often have high electricity demands, Romich said. Additionally, many farmers support PV solar because it reduces uncertainty of future energy costs, has low maintenance costs and positive environmental attributes, and once the initial capital investment is recovered, the fuel is free.

Educational opportunities

The college also offers workshops and other educational opportunities related to on-farm renewable energy generation throughout the year. In early March, the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster hosted a packed Solar Energy Workshop for Agricultural Producers, featuring university experts, commercial solar energy installers and growers who are using PV systems on their farms. OARDC is the research arm of the college.

On-site renewable energy production is part of a larger trend called distributed energy, which involves the generation of power through small, modular, decentralized energy systems located in or near the place where the energy will be used.

Expansion of distributed energy generation systems in Ohio is driven by the alternative energy portfolio standards, net-metering policies, and incentive programs including the Federal Business Energy Investment Tax Credit, bonus depreciation and REAP, Romich said.

These policies and incentives encourage Ohio farms, businesses and others to invest in on-site electricity generation projects. However, solar projects require a significant upfront capital investment with cash flow paybacks that are often eight years or more, he said.

If you are considering an investment in solar, I encourage you to get multiple quotes, carefully evaluate the system costs (without incentives), understand the value of energy savings and review the assumptions with your utility provider.

To learn more about on-farm solar energy generation and upcoming educational opportunities, contact Romich at romich.2@osu.edu or 419-294-4931.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  The agenda was pretty clear for Ohio Farm Bureau Federation county presidents and vice presidents who traveled to Washington D.C. March 15-17. Their goal was to let legislators know what was on their minds.

The topics on their lists ranged from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to the farm bill and a bill concerning genetically modified organisms in food. The groups even found time to talk to their congressmen about issues impacting farmers in their individual areas.

The budget

Congressman Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, told the group of Farm Bureau leaders that the budget is one of the biggest issues and could determine whether there is another farm bill.

We have got to cut spending, said Johnson.

Johnson said one of the ways he thinks the budget can be cut is in the mandated spending area, but that takes changes in the law and he isnt so confident that will happen.

Tuscarawas County dairy farmer Jim Rowe told Johnson that the dairy provision in the current farm bill is not working for dairymen. Rowe told Johnson that the dairy industry is not making money, even with the low grain prices. He said he has been milking cows since he graduated college in 1973 and has been able to make money every year, even in 2009, but that was not the case in 2015.

He said the feedgrain prices may be low, but other inputs have increased while the milk check has decreased.

The vehicle in the farm bill is not working, said Rowe, and asked that Johnsons office examine the dairy side of the farm bill and come up with another plan in the next farm bill if possible.

GMO labeling

Johnson said he supports a federal law when it comes to GMOs and labeling.

He was co-sponsor on the bill that passed in the House, that would have made a voluntary label regarding GMOs on food products.

Johnson said he knows something needs done but he will wait to see what happens in conference if, and when, the U.S. Senate finally passes its version.

Mahoning and Trumbull county OFBF presidents visited the office of Congressman Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who said he is cautious about the issue of GMO labeling. Ryan supports a federal label, but he wants a balance; he wants transparency, but he also wants consumers to know what is in their food.

Mahoning County OFBF President Barbara Biery made it clear that OFBF doesnt feel the GMO label should be a warning.

We want it to be beneficial to the consumer and not detrimental to the farmer, said Biery.

Mahoning and Trumbull county volunteer-leaders also talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and tried to explain how exports are important to Ohio farmers, since one acre out of every three goes across the world. However, Ryan is opposed to the TPP because it creates an unfair playing field for manufacturing.

Trumbull County Farm Bureau President Mary Smallreed urged Ryan to stay on top of the trade agreements and advocate for free trade.

EQIP funds

Another group of presidents met with Congressman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio,who represents the fourth district, which stretches from Lake Erie to the middle of the state and is considered one of the largest agricultural districts in the state.

Auglaize County OFBF President John Limbert asked the support of Environmental Quality Incentives Program or EQIP funds. EQIP is a cost share program many farmers use to build conservation projects on their farm. The presidents said the funding is necessary for projects like fencing to keep animals out of streams and manure storage facilities. The group of presidents explained that without the cost share program, many projects would be impossible.

Immigration programs

Another program the county presidents brought up was the H-2A program, which is popular in Jordans district. The H-2A program is a temporary agricultural program allows agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.

Sandusky County OFBF President Jerry Cunningham said the program needs a little work. He explained that one farmers workers showed up two weeks late because the computer system was down and the farmer almost lost his entire cucumber crop because of it. Meanwhile, the farmer had to continue to pay for food and housing for the workers for two weeks but they were stuck at the border and couldnt work.

We just want you to know the H-2A program needs some work, said Cunningham.

Overregulation

The group also discussed the Waters of the United States plan under the Clean Water Act and the TPP, and made it clear that the majority of their concerns involve overregulation when it comes to the federal government. The group acknowledged that Jordan is known for not wanting a big government, so they feel there is a common ground.

We understand and are in agreement that we dont want a big government, said Logan County OFBF President Korie Slemmons.

The group did point out that without ways to pay for the enforcement of the regulations, the efforts are wasted.

**To read more about the GMO labeling fight in Washington, check out this story: http://www.farmanddairy.com/news/gmo-labeling-legislation-vote-fails-in-the-u-s-senate/322518.html***
Safety watchdog issues half-term call to keep kids safe on farms
Weed is becoming increasingly herbicide resistant

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

According to new maps published by OMAFRA, Canada fleabane is present in more than 20 counties across Ontario and resistant to glyphosate.

A select few counties including Wellington, Perth and Elgin have Canada fleabane thats also resistant to FirstRate.

Mike Cowbrough, Weed Management Lead for OMAFRA, said in a March 15 interview that focusing on one herbicide and not practicing diverse crop rotation could lead to the weed becoming more tolerant to herbicides.

He said when farmers rotate crops they may change their herbicides, planting and harvesting schedules, which may help keep weeds from becoming resistant.

OMAFRA has provided tips on how to manage Canada fleabane in corn, soybeans and winter wheat.

Corn

Tillage or a pre-plant burndown can help with season long control of Canada fleabane if the crop canopy closes quickly.

According to OMAFRA, glyphosate + Banvel II can control 99 per cent of Canada fleabane.

Soybeans

Tillage can help control fleabane in conventionally tilled fields. OMAFRA suggests a pre-plant burndown in a no-till operation.

In soybean fields, OMAFRA suggests that Broadstrike Dual Magnum can help control 99 per cent of the weed.

Winter Wheat

When it comes to winter wheat, OMAFRA says with the exception of MCPA Amine, Refine Extra and Buctril M, Badge or Mextrol, most of the post-emergent broadleaf herbicides registered for use on winter wheat provide good control of Canada fleabane.

According to Cowbrough, farmers across Ontario are sending samples to the University of Guelph for examination.

Once the samples are tested, the maps will be updated to show their results.

Join the discussion and tell us if youve had issues with Canada fleabane. What weed management practices did you employ to manage the issue?
By Kenzie Kesselring

Consumers with a sweet spot for satsuma oranges can expect to see south Georgia oranges on the market in 2017, according to Jacob Price, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agent and Lowndes County Extension coordinator. Thats because south Georgia satsumas trees are a little more than a year away from producing fruit.

Lowndes County Extension Coordinator Jacob Price looks at a Satsuma orange plant on a private farm in Lowndes County in 2015.

The popular oranges, grown in limited quantities in northern Florida, southern Alabama, southern Louisiana and northern California, have been grown in Lowndes County, Georgia, since 2013. Due to the mandarin oranges increasing popularity, there have been approximately 80 acres of satsumas planted, including some on a patch of land at J.L. Lomax Elementary School in Valdosta, Georgia, where Price is researching satsumas on 10 different rootstocks. The satsuma trees at the elementary school have even sparked some interest from children at the school.

The kids know about the research and will, hopefully, become interested and get involved, said Price. Right now they dont know too much, but once they see the fruit, they should become more interested.

Price believes that Georgia-grown satsumas would be a healthy addition to school lunches. The farm to school movement encourages school officials and administrators to serve locally grown food in school cafeterias. Georgia-grown mandarins seem to fit well in a school cafeteria setting: They are healthy, require little to no preparation, are seedless, easy to peel and children enjoy them, Price said, People love them and want more of them. They sell themselves.

Price has set a meeting in April to discuss forming a Georgia Citrus Growers Association and to provide farmers with more information on growing satsumas. More details about the meeting will be available closer to April, but the meeting will be open to the public and would greatly benefit farmers interested in commercially growing the tiny-sized oranges, Price said.

Since 1999 several new rootstocks have been released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and these varieties have never been tested on satsumas. In Price's research trial, the Owari 874 variety is being grafted onto 10 different rootstocks to determine which one will give the trees the most cold-tolerance and produce the best quality fruit.

The more we study this fruit, the better we are at equipping Georgia farmers with the knowledge they need to grow a sustainable fruit, he said.

Price and his team began planning this trial in 2013 and planted test trees in 2014. He hopes these innovations will give farmers other rootstock options that will allow them to commercially grow this fruit in south Georgia.
When the Captain America: Civil War trailer was released last week, we got our first glimpse of Tom Holland as Spider-Man, which was a great end to a terrific trailer.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man

Spider-Man is joining the Marvel ranks for the first time due to a deal between Marvel Studio/Disney and Sony - who own the rights to the character.

Now director Anthony Russo is dropping little hints as to where the popular character is going to fit into the Captain America: Civil War story.

In the trailer, it looked like Spidey was siding with Iron Man, but it looks like he may not actually be part of the conflict between the Avengers.

Speaking to Forbes, the director said: "I'll say this, part of the fun of Spider-Man is that this film is basically a war amongst the Avengers and Spidey does not have the baggage that all these other characters have.

"He enters the story after the conflict that is happening between the Avengers and that gives him a very unique place in the story."

Holland will take on the role of Spider-Man for the first time in Civil War, before going to star in his own solo film. While Holland is no stranger to the big screen with In The Heart of the Sea and The Impossible under his belt, this looks set to be the role that will make him a global star.

If we are going to see Spider-Man in the upcoming Infinity War movies is still unclear but I am excited to see just where he is going to fit into the Civil War story.

Anthony and Joe Russo are back in the director's chair for Captain America: Civil War, their first film since the huge success of The Winter Solider back in 2014. And the filmmaking brothers will be sticking with Marvel as they are set to take over from Joss Whedon to direct the next Avengers film.

Captain America: Civil War is released 29th April.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Britain's Prince Harry was "broken" when his time with the army was cut short.

Britain's Prince Harry

The 31-year-old royal serviced two operational tours with the Armed Forces but it had to be ended earlier than planned after his deployment was leaked.

Speaking on Good Morning America, he said: "Ten years in the Army was the best escape I ever had. I'd done everything I could to get out there. I felt as though I was really achieving something. I felt as though I was part of a team.

"Literally being plucked out, there was an element of me thinking, 'I'm an officer, I'm leaving my soldiers and it's not my own decision.' I was broken."

The Prince also revealed he felt he had a point to prove and wanted people to see he "had a set of skills - rather than just being Prince Harry".

Meanwhile, the Prince has since turned his attention to helping wounded soldiers with their rehabilitation by creating the Invictus Games.

The third instalment of the Paralympic-style event for injured servicemen and women is set to take place in Toronto, Canada next September, the Prince confirmed earlier this week.

Announcing the news, he said: "I always hoped the Invictus story would continue after the London games. And having seen so many new people benefit from their journey to Orlando this year, I definitely didn't want it to end here. So today, I am absolutely delighted to announce that the Invictus legacy will continue when Toronto hosts the third Invictus Games in September 2017."
Celebrating the release of Game of Thrones season 5 on Blu-ray and DVD, HBO today unveiled an epic large scale embroidery piece in London Art College, at 6m x 4m and depicting one of the most iconic scenes from the television series.

Credit: HBO

Displayed across this one weekend only in Central Saint Martins' Crossing Gallery in London's King Cross, fans will be able to visit the artwork, which took over 30,000 hours and over 50 people's hard work to complete.

Artistic Director of the Embroiderers' Guild and Project Manager, Anthea Godfrey comments: "This has been an amazing project that truly has brought the embroidery community together across the whole of the UK.

"There's also a huge variety of textile skills involved in the making of this piece, including digital print, surface stitchery, machine embroidery, metal thread work beading, applique and quilting. As many of the communities taking part are huge fans of Game of Thrones, we really are all proud to have been involved."

Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season is available now on Blu-ray and DVD and is also available to buy digitally now.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Michelle Keegan has swapped glitz and glamour for baggy combats for her new role in 'Our Girl'.

Michelle Keegan

The 28-year-old actress has traded the streets of Essex, where she resides with her husband Mark Wright, for the blistering heat in South Africa as she shoots the new series of the BBC One military drama for the next six months.

The BBC teased a first look at the brunette beauty in action as it uploaded a shot of Michelle in her army gear this morning (18.03.16) alongside the caption: "First look: @michkeegan stars as Corporal Georgie Lane in the five-part second series of #OurGirl for @BBCOne. (sic)"

The former 'Coronation Street' actress landed the lead role in the second series after Lacey Turner, who played Molly Dawes in the first series, stepped down in 2014.

Michelle will play Corporal Georgie Lane as she's sent out to Kenya on a surprising mission.

Speaking about the part, Michelle, who viewers most recently saw on screen in BBC programme 'Ordinary Lies', said recently: "First time I put on the uniform it felt quite surreal but then I immediately felt the sense of duty - as if I was in the military. I'm a massive fan of the series so can't wait to be a part of it. It's going to be a big but exciting challenge for me."
Mahmut Tanal, member of the Turkish Parliament from CHP opposition party said, An attack on Zaman equals an attack on citizens freedom of information. They are afraid of what the citizens might find out about them. This attack on Zaman also equals an attack on freedom of thought and expression. Former Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay also spoke to Todays Zaman on Friday, saying the country is heading towards a very dangerous place. This [latest act of trustee appointment] has moved beyond a political fight. We are heading towards chaos where all rules, principles and institutions are being destroyed. It is interesting that on Thursday, Twitter whistleblower Fuat Avni claimed that the President Erdogan, who has no tolerance for any media group that would criticize his plans for a presidential switch, ordered the seizure of Zaman daily, the main newspaper under the Feza Media Group.
Kimse Yok Mu, which is charity organization established by the followers of ideas inspired by Turkish scholar Fethullah Gulen, is actively helping Syrian refugees in Turkey. Most of branches of Kimse Yok Mu are involved in campaigns providing assistance to the refugees. The branch in Kahramanmaras city, for example, donated blankets and clothes for more than 800 Syrian families in February. The total number of Syrian refugees in Kahramanmaras is 40,000 and the ones in most need are women and children. The assistance campaigns are to be continued.
Turkish police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at crowd demonstrating against the governments takeover of the countrys top-selling newspaper.

As news of the takeover became public Friday afternoon, supporters began gathering in front of the newspapers offices in Istanbul. Police in riot gear pushed back Zaman supporters who stood in the rain outside its Istanbul office where they waved Turkish flags and carried placards reading Hands off my newspaper before they were overcome by clouds of tear gas.

Three trustees, all openly supportive of Erdogan, were reportedly appointed to manage the paper. Turkish police continue to occupy Zamans headquarters, and the buildings internet connection cut off.
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha that foreign investment in Business to Customer (B2C) e-commerce activities has been opened in a calibrated manner.She listed three circumstances under which an entity is permitted to undertake retail trading through e-commerce.

Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha that foreign investment in Business to Customer (B2C) #

First, a manufacturer is permitted to sell its products manufactured in India through e-commerce retail.Second, a single brand retail trading entity operating through brick and mortar stores, is permitted to undertake retail trading through e-commerce.Third, an Indian manufacturer is permitted to sell its own single brand products through e-commerce retail. Indian manufacturer would be the investee company, which is the owner of the Indian brand and which manufactures in India, in terms of value, at least 70 per cent of its products in house, and sources, at most 30 per cent from Indian manufacturers.She also said that as per regulations framed under Foreign Exchange Management Act, (FEMA) 1999 to promote foreign investment, FDI up to 100 per cent under the automatic route is permitted in companies engaged in e-commerce provided that such companies would engage in Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) has named Norma Kamali as the recipient of the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award.The 2016 CFDA Fashion Awards in collaboration with Swarovski will be held on June 6 in New York, it said in a press release.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) has named Norma Kamali as the recipient of the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award.The 2016#

The CFDA Fashion Awards honor the best and brightest talent in American Fashion today, said Steven Kolb, President and CEO of the CFDA. A CFDA Award is one of the most coveted honors in the fashion industry.Norma Kamali began her business in 1967 as a shop owner making styles in her sample room, and selling from her retail store.She has won numerous awards for fashion, film, interior design, and architecture. She has also received awards from the White House for her work with public schools, as well as a wide assortment of pro-education organizations.Norma received an Honorary Doctorate from FIT and has been honored as the keynote speaker at several commencement addresses. She is involved with, and supports numerous women's organizations. The New York-based designer has been a key speaker and host at a variety of women's, entrepreneurial, and wellness events.Today her brand is based on every aspect of a woman's life, from fitness, health, beauty and style to entrepreneurship. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Adwa town, Ethiopia based Almeda Textile has completed phase one of its three-phased expansion project with an investment of 86 million birr (Br). The expansion is aimed at doubling the company's fabric production capacity, according to Ethiopian media reports.

The primary focus for first stage of expansion was replacing old machinery with the latest ones. Energy saving was another objective. The company has imported Rieter C-70 carding machines, a new draw frame finisher machine from Germany, an open end R-35 from Switzerland and Muratec winding machine from Japan.

These machines are easy to maintain, and demand fewer spare parts than the replaced machinery. These are easily manageable, said Tekelemariam Tesfu, general manager of the factory.

Adwa town, Ethiopia based Almeda Textile has completed phase one of its three-phased expansion project with an investment of 86 million birr (Br). The#

The spinning process, which earlier used to produce 20,000 kg per day will now increase by five-fold, enabling the company to fulfil its own production requirements, enhancing the export opportunities, thereby saving 30 million Br to 40 million Br.

The weaving and fabric making will also increase because of the increase in the production at the spinning stage. Weaving will increase by 33 per cent reaching 32,000 metres of textile roll using the existing machinery; while the fabric making will be doubled to 7,000 kg.

Almeda sources cotton from the states of Afar, Gambela and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples regions and its sister company, Hiwot Farm Mechanization, located in Humera. (NA)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
Nepal is still about four months away before it will be able to utilise the new facility extended by the US government through an exclusive law, The Himalayan Times has reported. It will only be in August that the law will come into force.The US government has extended duty-free market access for 66 Nepali products that include carpets, headgears, shawls and scarves, handbags and suitcases, among others, for the next 10 years.

Nepal is still about four months away before it will be able to utilise the new facility extended by the US government through an exclusive law#

US President Barack Obama signed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 into law, but there are some procedural stipulations that need to be completed by the administration to bring the law into effect.The administration now has to complete some procedural stipulations but it will be completed within this summer, said Dawn M Shackleford, Deputy Assistant US Trade Representative for India and Nepal.There are crucial procedural steps ahead to bring the law into effect. The US President must certify that Nepal meets the country eligibility requirements of the programme which are the same as those for countries that participate in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) programme and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the report said.Nepal is already eligible for GSP programme of the US government but the country must meet the eligibility criteria under the AGOA that includes rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights protection.The second process is products eligibility. The administration has to seek report reviewed by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) of the products covered by the preference programme to ensure that an increase in imports of these products into the US market will not negatively affect its economy, according to Shackleford.The US ITC will conduct the study on impacts on consumers, companies and overall impact in the US economy.After these procedural steps are concluded, the President has to issue proclamation to update harmonised tariff schedule of the US so that the 66 products that have been granted the facility can be imported at zero tariff from Nepal. The products which have received preferential facility should have minimum of 35 per cent value addition.In 2015, trade between Nepal and the US stood at $123 million. During this time, Nepal exported goods worth $87 million to the US. Of these exports, Nepal enjoyed access to duty-free treatment for eligible products worth approximately $5.8 million under the GSP programme.With a view to facilitating economic growth through trade, the US is establishing a new stand-alone trade preference programme for Nepal.Apart from that, the US government will also support trade facilities based on the demand of Nepal government. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Amitabh Bachchan had recently praised his granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda when she tweeted about the India vs New Zealand match. Now, he has warned everyone that it is not Navya's real account and that he was mistaken.

Big B took to twitter and wrote, ''ALARM : my grand daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter .. that account is fake ..!! I responded to it by mistake .. BE WARNED !!''



Click On VIEW PHOTOS To See Navya Naveli's Hot Pictures

Very recently, Navya Naveli Nanda wrote on Twitter, "Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you. #IndvsNZ."

Replying to her tweet, grandfather Amitabh Bachchan wrote, "the grand daughter speaks .. and speaks well ... !!!" The 'Wazir' star further tweeted, "A jolt for our T20 team .. but faith in them .. do not worry TeamIndia, we are with you .. "Well said, don't you think?"

Navya studies in Sevenoaks School, London, along with Shahrukh Khan's kids Aryan Khan and Suhana Khan.

A few months ago, Navya grabbed the headlines for her glamorous high society debut at Parisian Le Bal des Debutantes held in Paris. Le Bal is an annual debutante ball held in Paris, at the end of November, which will bring together 25 girls from different celebrity families.

Navya Naveli has descended from Bollywood royalty not just from the maternal side. She is the granddaughter of the Bachchan family, also the great-grandaughter of the legendary actor Raj Kapoor.
Yay! Good news for all the Deepika Padukone fans out there. Our babe just landed in Mumbai and for obvious reasons shutterbugs couldn't stop themselves clicking her pictures at the Mumbai airport. As always, Deepika nailed her airport look and was looking fabulous!

But why is she here? Any guesses? Well, if sources are to believed Deepika is in Mumbai for only a few hours. She will then travel to Sri Lanka for a day, to attend her childhood friend's wedding.

Below Are The Airport Photos Of Deepika Padukone:

Bhai Bhai! Shahrukh & Salman Spotted Together During TOIFA 2016 (Photos)

Recently, Deepika Padukone's selfie with her actor-director-producer Donnie Yen landed on the social media and we couldn't stop gushing over her hot look for xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage.

20 Pics Of SRK With Deepika, That Prove He Is A True Gentleman & Best Co-star!

Deepika has gelled really well with her other co-stars. Recently, she was spotted with Ruby Rose. The Australian actress took to the micro-blogging site, Twitter and shared some 'picture perfect' moments with Deepika. When a few fan clubs of Deepika, asked Ruby on Twitter, how much she liked the Cocktail actress, she had said, "Where do I start... She's so humble, so beautiful. A talented actor and I adore her. You are a fan of a Wonder Woman."

TOIFA 2016: SRK-Bebo's Bonding Steal The Limelight; Also See Other Celebs' Pics!

Deepika was last seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus Bajirao Mastani, which also casted Ranveer Singh & Priyanka Chopra in the lead roles. The film was highly appreciated by the critics and the audiences as well. As far as Deepika's upcoming Bollywood project is concerned, she has not finalised any of them yet as her current focus is totally on the Hollywood one!
The much awaited event TOIFA 2016 Technical Awards took place yesterday. And big celebs including Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Parineeti Chopra, Varun Dhawan and many others were seen attending the event.

TOIFA AWARDS 2016 PHOTOS! Shahrukh, Kareena & Salman Set The Red Carpet On Fire! (LIVE)

Shahrukh-Kareena's bonding was one delightful sight for everyone and media couldn't stop clicking their pictures together. The duo (SRK-Kareena) posed happily for media and was seen having some good time together.

Click On 'View Photos' To Check Out All The Pictures:

The technical awards, which saw as many as 400 guests, were announced on Thursday (March 17) at a night full of excitement and glamour.

20 Pics Of SRK With Deepika, That Prove He Is A True Gentleman & Best Co-star!

Bajirao Mastani bagged as many as three awards in the Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.

Ranveer, who made an impromptu appearance at the event, collected the Best Costume Design Award in place of ace designer Anju Modi, who was not present at the event.The actor was even seen shaking a leg with the co-host of the show - Manish Paul and Huma Qureshi, on the popular number Pinga, which was picturised on Priyanka and Deepika, from the film.

Awww! Rani Mukerji's Holiday Plan With Daughter Adira Will Make You Jealous!

Other than the Bhansali's directorial, superstar Salman Khan starred Bajrangi Bhaijaan roped in the Best Story award. Superstar Shah Rukh Khan presented the Best Story Award, which was accepted by Kareena Kapoor on behalf of KV Vijayendra Prasad.

Shoojit Sircar's Piku starring megastar Amitabh Bachchan and the Chennai Express actress roped in the Best Screenplay, while Tanu Weds Manu Returns won in the Best Dialogue category. The Best Choreography award was given to filmmaker and choreographer Remo Dspuza, which was collected by actress Parineeti Chopra, who will be co-hosting the main gala on Friday.

Some of Bollywood's iconic names gathered for the event, held as a prelude to main TOIFA night, to be held tonight (March 18, 2016).

Inputs From IANS
Hello peeps! Finally, the much awaited night of TOIFA Awards 2016 has arrived. All roads led to the TOIFA 2016 award night. The event is happening in Dubai. And this being a big night for most of the Bollywood celebs, we are seeing our hot celebs all decked up while arriving at the red carpet.

The who's who of the Indian Film industry flocked in to celebrate the Indian cinema including popular celebs Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Ranveer Singh, Parineeeti Chopra, Varun Dhawan and many others.

Click On 'VIEW PHOTOS' To Go Through All The Pictures:

There is no denying that the hotties of B-town Shahrukh, Salman, Ranveer and Varun are looking piping hot while dressed up in formal. On the other side, our favourite divas including Kareena, Parineeti and Karisma's sizzling looks turned out as the 'head-turner' at this special night.

Every year we see some amazing dresses on the TOIFA Awards red carpet. Today, let's see who will get a thumbs up from us and who will get a thumbs down!

The most exciting thing about this year's awards is that superstars Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan will be seen performing on the stage on their popular tracks.

A few hours back, an inside video from TOIFA was leaked, in which Shahrukh was seen rehearsing on Fan's Jabra song. While, Salman was seen practicing on his old yet most popular songs.

Wait, there is more! The second most anticipated thing to look forward is that the hosting of Parineeti Chopra and Riteish Deshmukh. Apart from that, Varun & Ranveer are all set to enthrall the audiences with their energetic performances.

We will update the all pictures from the event, as soon as we get them!
Rating: 4.0 /5

Kapoor And Sons is finally in the theaters near you and this is one film you would not want to miss. For a long time everyone expected this movie to be another disaster like Shaandaar or an average film like Ek Main Aur Ek Tu, Shakub Batra's previous film, but turns out, it is just the opposite.

Kapoor And Sons directed by Shakun Batra, produced by Karan Johar and featuring Alia Bhatt, Fawad Khan, Sidharth Malhotra, Rishi Kapoor, Ratan Pathak Shah and Rajat Kapoor is a wholesome family entertainer that will keep you hooked.

CLICK ON VIEW PHOTOS: See Alia-Sidharth In Matching Outfits Promoting Film In Jaipur

Cast: Alia Bhatt, Fawad Khan, Sidharth Malhotra, Rishi Kapoor, Ratan Pathak Shah and Rajat Kapoor

Director: Shakun Batra

Kapoor And Sons Plot:

The film is about this not so perfect family, where each of these members have their own flaws. It is basically a story about two brothers, a very successful Rahul (Fawad Khan) and an under-achiever Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra), who come to Coonoor, a hill station in Tamil Nadu to visit their grandfather (Rishi Kapoor).

Rahul is a successful novelist who is the ideal son of the family, the golden boy who is perfect, nice and very loving. Meanwhile, Arjun is the struggling, odd or say disreputable member of the family.

Like any two siblings, these brothers also have love, rivalry and a bit of jealousy amongst each other, which is shown in a very subtle way by the director. Tia (Alia Bhatt) has a typical girl next door character that one will instantly fall in love with and adore throughout.

Each of these actors have excelled in their performances, there is not a moment when you would feel this is not a real family. The silly fights, the bickering, the dinner table tashan, all seem so believable and therefore keeps us invested in the movie.

Fawad Khan is seen in a very different role and it is far from any typical Bollywood characters we have seen for ages. It is good to see that such a role was incorporated in the movie and you guys will know what it is, only after watching the film. While such a role have been seen earlier, they were always cliched but in this movie, it is far from that and shown in a very realistic manner.

Coming to his performance, this extremely good-looking man could have not done a better job. Is it his perfect looks or his perfect acting, we do not know, but every frame that he is in, he manages to perfect it. His performance will move you, make you love him, adore him and much more.

Sidharth's performance is also good and is far superior to some of his earlier works. The actor is slowly but surely excelling at the art, which is noticed in this movie but Fawad takes the lead by a tiny mark.

Alia as usual is a delight onscreen and performs with such ease that you can't take your eyes off her. Rathan Patak Shah and Rajat Kapoor are fantastic actors who just do a perfect job every time they are on-screen.

Somewhere, the cast of this film has been so perfect that this on-screen Kapoor And Sons family seems to be a very realistic one. The story is not just about this family but all the issues or situations one would face in their everyday life. Most importantly it is about the pressure an Indian kid faces from his/her family to be perfect, successful and everything great. The unbearable expectations the family puts on a child is shown really well.

Rishi Kapoor as the naughty grandpa does a very cute job and is one of the most adorable characters in the movie.

Kapoor And Sons is written well, directed well, edited well and each of these actors have performed well too, but the best aspect of this movie, is that, it is nothing like a typical Dharma Production movie.

These characters are not roaming around in designer labels or staying in luxurious houses, the focus is so not how the sest or the actors look, this family drama is very realistic, engaging and thought-provoking. There is no overacting and absolutely no melodrama which we often spot in Karan Johar movies.

This is in fact one of those rare occurrences when a movie just so happens to be perfect. There are absolutely no flaws in this film or may be the movie is so very engrossing that one can't even find any flaws, nonetheless this Bollywood flick is a 100% must watch for it keeps you interested for the entire 132 mins of the screen time.

Director Shakun Batra does a damn good job with Kapoor And Sons, the way he has highlighted things and places where he has held back is simply superb. Hats off to him for doing such a fabulous job.

Verdict:

Kapoor And Sons is a must watch, touching, entertaining family drama that you just can't afford to miss. Book your tickets as soon as possible, this family entertainer is that good!
Deutsche Bank has appointed Boon-Kee Tan as head of its Asia-Pacific financial institutions group, succeeding Bill Nichol who is set to leave the bank in May, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Tan replaces Nichol who will leave in May after 13 years with the bank and is in talks to join another financial firm in a senior role, the person said.

In addition to her regional FIG coverage, Tan will be Deutsche Bank's vice-chairperson of corporate finance for the Southeast Asian region. Prior to her promotion, she was the German banks head of client coverage for Southeast Asia.

The FIG unit at investment banks provides investment banking and merger and acqusition expertise to financial institutions like insurance companies and commercial banks.

Tan will still be based in Singapore where she has spent the last nine years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She will report to Tadhg Flood, Deutsche Banks co-head of global FIG, and also to Richard Gibb and Simon Roue, co-heads of corporate finance Asia-Pacific.

Before joining Deutsche Bank in 2013, Tan was a managing director at Goldman Sachs where she covered financial institutions in Southeast Asia.

Across corporate coverage and investment banking, Deutsche Bank has lost a number of senior bankers in the region.

Among them are Henry Cai and Bhupinder Singh, who left last year. Cai was executive chairman of corporate finance for Asia-Pacific and Singh was co-head of corporate banking and securities for Asia Pacific.

In addition, Herman van den Wall Bake, a Singapore-based managing director who led Deutsche Bank's fixed income capital markets business for three years, left the firm in December. He said he was leaving the industry in Asia and heading back to Europe with his family in the summer.

Head of technology, media, and telecom investment banking for Asia, Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, is also in discussions to leave Deutsche Bank to potentially start his own fund, the person familiar with the matter said.

Battered by increased regulatory scrutiny and intense competition, Deutsche Bank said last year that it would cut 9,000 jobs globally by 2020 and withdraw from 10 countries as part of a strategic overhaul to help focus on its most profitable businesses.
Matthew Kirkby, head of large corporate business for commercial banking in the Asia-Pacific region, has left HSBC after the bank decided to simplify the structure of its commercial banking division, according to four people familiar with his move.

HSBC had a small global team within commercial banking, led by Noel Quinn, that was focused on helping large corporate clients and mid-market firms, with one representative in each region. But the London-headquartered bank decided in recent weeks to simplify decision-making by getting rid of the segmentation by size and maintaining just a country-focused approach, two of the sources said on Friday.

HSBC commercial banking had 8,000 large corporate clients with bespoke event and flow solution needs, according to an HSBC presentation in June. These clients represented a third of revenue in 2014.

In a presentation in May, HSBC also said that segmentation by size enables [HSBC] to achieve greater consistency to increase transparency and mitigate risk."

Kirkby had been in his position for less than a year. It is unclear how many other people have been affected by the decision, although one of the people familiar with the bank's restructuring said: There have been no swingeing job cuts ... most people have been redeployed.

With his background in investment banking, Kirkby was focused on offering corporate finance solutions such as M&A financing to HSBCs largest corporate clients in the region, in partnership with HSBC's product lines.

There were also changes in Kirkby's reporting line after he joined last May. Kirkby was based in Hong Kong and first off reported to Noel Quinn, regional head of commercial banking Asia Pacific and Joel Van Dusen, global head of large corporates for commercial banking.

When Quinn replaced Simon Cooper as chief executive of commercial banking globally, based in London, he was replaced by Paul Skelton as regional head of commercial banking, Asia-Pacific.

Back in May 2014 Cooper said on a conference call with analysts: If we look at segments and geographies, we intend to enhance our strategic relationships with global large corporate customers  And we'll expand our international relationship management model in business banking, focusing on 12 priority markets.

Matthew Kirkby

Kirkby replaced David Morton, who transferred to Gordon Frenchs global banking and markets division last August to become the regional head of credit and lending.

Prior to joining HSBC, Kirkby was at Malaysias CIMB. He was one of the most senior Royal Bank of Scotland bankers brought on board by CIMB as part of its acquisition of RBSs cash equities, equity capital markets, and corporate finance businesses in Asia-Pacific.

The deal, which Kirkby negotiated for RBS along with Peter Irvine, was meant to boost CIMB into one of the largest regionally based investment banking franchises in Asia Pacific and enable RBS to exit these businesses at a limited cost.

Kirkby, who was Asia-Pacific head of global banking and global head of corporate finance at RBS, became co-head of investment banking for Asia-Pacific at CIMB, together with CIMBs head of investment banking, Sooi Lin Kong.

He also took on an additional role as CEO for North Asia, leading the 192-strong team in Hong Kong at the time and providing investment banking advisory services, equity and capital market fundraising abilities, broking services, and research.

Kirkby graduated from Oxford with a law degree and started his career as a solicitor in London and Hong Kong. He joined CLSA as an equity capital markets banker in 1996 and then ABN AMRO as head of South Asia ECM in 2000.

He later became head of M&A and ECM for Asia-Pacific at ABN AMRO (which was subsequently taken over by RBS). He was also global head of equities origination and corporate finance for RBS in London.
BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Home prices in majority of the Chinese cities increased in February, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Friday. On a monthly basis, house prices rose 47 cities out of 70 surveyed by the government. It fell in 15 cities and remained flat in 8 cities. The highest increase in house prices were noted in Shenzhen, by 3.6 percent and the steepest decline was seen in Dandong, by 0.7 percent. Compared with the same month of last year, house prices grew in 32 cities out of the 70 cities in February, while it dropped 37 cities. 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.
TRIESTE (dpa-AFX) - Italian insurer Generali Group (ARZGY.PK) reported Friday that its fiscal 2015 attributable net profit climbed 21.6 percent to 2.03 billion euros from last year's 1.67 billion years. Earnings per share were 1.29 euros, higher than 1.06 euros a year ago. The operating result reached 4.8 billion euros, up 6.1 percent from last year, driven in particular by the P&C segment. The launch of new products and business initiatives boosted total premiums to 74.17 billion euros, up by 4.6 percent, driven by the Life segment and by the recovery of the P&C segment. Net earned premiums improved to 68.51 billion euros from 64.32 billion euros last year. Further, the company said the dividend per share to be proposed at the next Shareholders' Meeting is 0.72 euro, up 20 percent relative to the previous year. The payout ratio is equal to 55.3 percent from 55.9 percent in 2014. Looking ahead, the company said, 'Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment and the high volatility of the financial markets, in 2016 the Group will continue to pursue the strategic actions of the new development phase, confirming the target of an operating ROE above 13 percent, and improving shareholder remuneration, consistently with the strategic plan presented to the market.' 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) - At 3:00 am ET Friday, German statistical office Destatis is due to release its producer prices report for February. Producer prices are expected to fall 2.6 percent year-over-year in February after the 2.4 percent drop in January. On a monthly basis, producer prices are estimated to decline 0.1 percent following the 0.7 percent drop in January. Ahead of the data, the euro fell against its major rivals. As of 2:55 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.7810 against the pound, 1.0923 against the Swiss franc, 1.1292 against the U.S. dollar and 125.65 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.
Regulatory News:

Air Caraibes, the French airline specialising in the Caribbean Arc and Europcar (Paris:EUCAR), the leading car rental provider in Europe and a major mobility player, announced today the signing of an exclusive commercial partnership for the next 3 years.

Thanks to this strategic agreement, Air Caraibes customers stand to benefit from Europcar's mobility services, and the impressive coverage of its car hire network, one of the most important in the Caribbean arc.

The partnership is based on 3 pillars: Flexibility, Quality of service and commercial advantages

This partnership gives Air Caraibes passengers the benefits of a flexible and high quality service throughout the customer journey thanks to a dynamic and personalised car hire service built right into the airline's booking systems.

When booking a flight, passengers get easy access to Europcar hire vehicles and a special offer of 5% off on the public rate. In addition, "Preference" account holders are awarded 500 miles every time they hire a car through Europcar.

Yohan Paulin, Information Systems Director at Air Caraibes stated: "This partnership between Air Caraibes and Europcar, both references in their fields, is part of our strategy to continually provide our passengers with new services while privileging quality and flexibility. The offer we're proposing with this partnership is a response that matches our passengers' needs and places special emphasis on commercial advantages."

Marcus Bernhardt, Group Chief Commercial Officer, stated: "We are delighted with this partnership with Air Caraibes because it is totally in line with our will to support the mobility of our clients. We share the same sense of customer satisfaction with Air Caraibes and are determined to offer passengers a qualitative experience with a wide range of tailored, exclusive services."

About Air Caraibes

Air Caraibes employs approximately 900 people. In 2014, the airline, a subsidiary of the Dubreuil group based in the Vendee region, carried nearly 1,228,000 passengers. Air Caraibes operates up to 33 weekly flights from Paris Orly Sud to Guadeloupe (Pointe-a-Pitre), Martinique (Fort-de-France), French Guiana (Cayenne), Haiti (Port-au-Prince), Saint-Martin (Juliana) and the Dominican Republic (Saint-Domingue). The airline has fine-tuned its regional flight schedules to offer passengers from metropolitan France fast ongoing flights to all its regional destinations: Saint-Martin (Grand Case), Saint-Barthelemy (flights operated by St Barth Commuter), Sainte-Lucie, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Air Caraibes is also the 1st French airline to link French regions and Belgium to the French West Indies Guiana from Orly thanks to the innovative and eco-mobile TGV AIR solution. To find out more: www.aircaraibes.com or by telephone on 0820 835 835 ( 0.12/min.). The airline also provides an Air-Sea link to the island of Marie- Galante in Guadeloupe via navigAIR.

About the Europcar Group

The Europcar Group is listed on the Euronext Paris (EUCAR) stock market. Europcar is Europe's leading car rental provider and one of the major players in the mobility sector. Present in 140 countries, the group provides customers with one of the largest vehicle rental networks both through its own operators and though its franchisees and partnerships. The group does business as Europcar and InterRent, the group's low cost brand. The group and its 6,000 employees put the client's interests at the heart of its mission: this commitment is what drives us to relentlessly develop new services. We created the "Europcar Lab" to keep abreast of tomorrow's mobility challenges by innovating and investing strategically in offers like Ubeeqo and the E Car Club.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005058/en/

Contacts:

Air Caraibes press contact

Veronique MALIALIN, 0590.82.47.41

Marketing and PR manager

vmalialin@aircaraibes.com

or

Europcar Group, press relations

+33 1 30 44 98 82

europcarpressoffice@europcar.com
RICHMOND, VA --(Marketwired - March 18, 2016) - The cost of a four-year degree at public universities is expected to top $150,000 in ten years. To make the college dream possible and avoid burdening graduates with debt, families turn to Virginia's tuition prepayment program, Virginia529 prePAID (prePAID).

For each semester purchased, prePAID will cover a future semester of normal full-time undergraduate in-state tuition and mandatory fees assessed to all students at a Virginia public university. Students may use prePAID at other eligible public and private colleges across the country, but payouts will differ.

Virginia529 offers three tips for making prePAID work for any budget:

1. Start with one semester

prePAID contracts are available in semester increments, with prices starting as low as $27 per month. Jump-start a loved one's educational future by purchasing a single semester now, then add more later to complete your plan.

2. Consider Tier II semesters

prePAID's Tier II semesters have a lower contract price than Tier I semesters because they are based on the cost of two-year or community college programs. However they may be used at either four-year or two-year schools -- the choice is always yours.

3. Rollover 529 savings program funds

Families currently investing in a 529 savings program can lock in today's prePAID contract rates by rolling over part or all of the 529 savings account as a lump sum down payment on a prePAID contract.

The deadline to enroll in Virginia529 prePAID is March 31, 2016. Visit Virginia529.com to enroll, review the prePAID Program Description and explore your options with the prePAID calculator.

About Virginia529 College Savings Plan:

Virginia529 makes higher education more accessible and affordable for families and individuals. With $54 billion in assets under management and 2.4 million accounts as of December 31, 2015, Virginia529 is the largest 529 plan available. Four flexible, affordable, tax-advantaged programs -- Virginia529 prePAID " (prePAID" ), Virginia529 inVEST" (inVEST" ), CollegeAmerica and CollegeWealth -- and early commitment scholarship program SOAR Virginia assist students of any age in reaching their higher education goals. For more information on Virginia529's college savings options, visit Virginia529.com or call 1-888-567-0540 to obtain program materials. These include information on Virginia529 programs, investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses and other important information; read and consider them carefully before investing. All investments are subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest. Virginia529 encourages prospective participants to seek the advice of a professional concerning any financial, tax or legal implications related to opening an account. For residents of states other than Virginia: your state or the beneficiary's state of residence (if different) may sponsor a 529 plan that offers state income tax and other benefits not available to you through Virginia529 College Savings Plan. 2016 Virginia College Savings Plan. All Rights Reserved.

For more information, contact

Kelley Hope

Communications Manager

804-225-2452

Email contact


PUNE, India, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Deepresearchreports.com gives information on "Global Silane Industry 2016 Market Research Report" published during March 2016 and available in the chemicals business intelligence collection of its online library.

The Global Silane Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Silane market spread across 154 pages, profiling 9 companies and supported wit 271 tables and figures. Major companies with their market volumes and revenues are covered for each of the regions. Top players in the industry are Dow Corning, Evonik, Gelest Incorporation, Shin-Etsu Chemical, WD Silicone Company, Wacker Chemie, Momentive Performance Materials, Jingzhou Jianghan Fine Chemical Company and Nanjing Shuguang Chemical Group Company.

Complete report on Silane industry divided into 13 major chapters that offer an overview of current market scenario as well as Silane forecasts is now available at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/169346.html

The report provides a basic overview of Silane industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Silane industry analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status. Development policies and plans of Silane industry are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.

The report focuses on global major leading industry players of Silane market providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Silane industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.

With 271 tables and figures supporting the Silane industry analysis, this research provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market. Order a copy of this 2016 Silane market research report at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=169346

Some of the data tables and figures provided for the global Silane industry in this research report include:

Table Market Share of Different Silane Price Level

Table Gross Margin of Different Silane Applications

Table Regional Import, Export, and Trade of Silane (K Tons)

Figure Global Capacity (K Tons), Production (K Tons) and Growth Rate of Silane 2016-2021

Figure Global Capacity Utilization Rate of Silane 2016-2021

Figure China Capacity (K Tons), Production (K Tons) and Growth Rate of Silane 2016-2021

Figure Global Production Market Share of Major Silane Manufacturers in 2015

Figure Production Market Share of China Major Silane Manufacturers in 2015

Figure Global and China Sales (K Tons) and Growth Rate of Silane 2016-2021

Table Global Supply, Sales and Shortage of Silane 2016-2021 (K Tons)

Table China Supply, Sales and Shortage of Silane 2016-2021 (K Tons)

Table China Production, Import, Export and Consumption of Silane 2016-2021 (K Tons)

Table Global Production (K Tons), Price (USD/Ton), Cost (USD/Ton), Revenue (M USD) and Gross Margin of Silane 2016-2021

Table China Production (K Tons), Price (USD/Ton), Cost (USD/Ton), Revenue (M USD) and Gross Margin of Silane 2016-2021

Another research 2016 Global Silane Coupling Agent Industry provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Silane Coupling Agent market analysis is provided for the Global markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status. With 222 tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market. The report focuses on Global major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Silane Coupling Agent industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered. Comprehensive table of contents and more on this research is available at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/157899.html

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Deep Research Reports is digital database ofsyndicated market reports for global and China industries. These reports offer competitive intelligence data for companies in varied market segments and for decision makers at multiple levels in these organizations. We provide 24/7 online and offline support to our customers.



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AMSTERDAM, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Another Crimea is a unique visual project about the present-day Crimean Peninsula. A series of short-stories on Crimea's daily life and history were shot by a team comprising world-famous photo/video journalists from three top agencies: NOOR, Magnum Photos and VII.

The Crimean Peninsula is considered as a true heaven on earth: prairies, canyons, sea, green hills and mountains, elegant palaces and exotic castles, famous cave cities and picturesque fortresses form its landscape. Nevertheless, its strategic location on the Black Sea has castigated Crimea with a troubled history.

The peninsula has been considered precious loot for centuries. Cimmerians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Tartars, Russians, Ukrainians all left their sign on it. Two events marked its contemporary history: the Crimean War in mid 19th century between Russia and an alliance formed by Ottoman Empire, United Kingdom, France and Kingdom of Sardinia, as well as the 1945 Yalta Conference where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill discussed Europe's post-war reorganization.

Since March 2014 the Republic of Crimea has been administered by the Russian Federation.

In the light of this fact, a team of world-famous photojournalists decided to launch 'Another Crimea', a project aimed at capturing the diverse and fast-changing identity of Crimea. Each author spent ten days on site shooting, travelling and interacting with people, both supporters and opponents of the Crimea's reunion with Russia. The project portrays the diverse spectrum of Crimean society, composed by Russians, Ukrainians, Crimean Tartars and other ethnic groups. The authors documented the deep changes affecting Crimea's economy and social life, explored its rich historical heritage and portrayed the peninsula's beautiful landscapes.

Please, find the outcome onhttp://www.anothercrimea.com , which comprises five unique photo stories by Francesco Zizola (NOOR), Yuri Kozyrev (NOOR), Gueorgui Pinkhassov (Magnum Photos), Olivia Arthur (Magnum Photos) and Christopher Morris (VII), and a video documentary by Pep Bonet (NOOR).

ANOTHER CRIMEA

http://www.anothercrimea.com

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

hello@anothercrimea.com
Wheeled Robots enter the age of Artificial Intelligence

HANNOVER, Germany, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Airwheel, a leading global intelligent vehicles solution provider, launchedits latest product, the first wheeled service robot,at CeBIT 2016. The S9 made its debut at the trade showunder the new marketing slogan, 'Intelligent vehicles make life more convenient and colorful!'

Photo: http://www.airwheel.net/scooters/airwheel_cebit_scooter.jpg

Different from traditional self-balancing vehicles, S9 will be able to playthe role of'family housekeeper', bringing convenience to users by adoptinga series of solutions to enhance performance controland improve the sense of comfort. This isin line with the general industry trend of an intelligent future and alsoAirwheel's R&D capability which includes:

An internal laser radar andauditory collecting system to enable interaction betweenpeople and computers

Comprehensive locating and route planning systems to automaticallyavoid obstacles

Collaboration of IoT and Cloud technology to ensure robots follow users' orders even under remote control

Promotion of plugins and software thatwill enable S9to operate in a greater number of scenarios such aspersonal companion, house service and Smart Home.

The lead theme of CeBIT 2016 is "d!conomy: Join- create- succeed" on Big Data, Cloud, Mobile, Safety and IoT. As the largest ICT trade fair, CeBIT aims to showcase the innovative achievements on Digital IT, household and enterprise communications technology. It's taken asa beacon of future technology and an excellent international platform to demonstrate development trends and announce the latest innovative networking products.

Airwheel holds "Intelligence unties manpower" as a core concept and has achieved basis design and industrialization with years ofexperience on intelligent self-balancing vehicles. With more capital investment, project cooperation and efficient production in the future, Airwheel welcomes relevant enterprises and talents and more qualified global partners for wider-range R&D collaboration.

Based on continuoustechnological innovation, Airwheel will reinforce the statusof theartificial intelligence industry and launch over 50 new models (3-4 series) in thenext threeyears with the aim of making life more comfortable for all its users.

For more information visit http://www.airwheel.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.
OSLO (dpa-AFX) - Norway's jobless rate held steady in March, in line with expectations, the Labour and Welfare Administration, or NAV said Friday. The registered unemployment rate came in at 3.3 percent in March, the same rate as in the previous month. The figure also matched consensus estimate. In the corresponding month last year, the jobless rate was 3.0 percent. The number of unemployed people decreased to 89,334 in March from 90,903 in February. A year ago, the jobless figure totaled 81,011. 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.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Ira Gluskin and Gerald Sheff (the "Founders") each entered into an Amended and Restated Transition and Retiring Agreement with Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. (the "Company"), effective January 1st, 2012 (the "Agreements").

Under certain circumstances, the Agreements provide the Founders with an option to require the Company to pay amounts equal to 90% of the fair market value of its Obligations, as defined in the Agreements.

On April 13, 2015, the Founders delivered notices to the Company exercising their option, requiring the Company to pay them the Value, as defined in the Agreements, of the Obligations. The Company disputed the notices and commenced arbitration proceedings. The hearing for the first phase of the arbitration was held January 18, 2016 to January 26, 2016. The purpose of the first phase was to determine whether the April 13, 2015 notices were valid.

The Arbitrator found that the Founders held the view, acting reasonably, that the Company had breached the Agreements with respect to one of its obligations and further, that the Company had failed to remedy the breach in a timely manner having had the opportunity to do so, and therefore that the April 13, 2015 notices were valid.

As the Company saw fit to make comments in its release of March 17, 2016 regarding the state of its information with respect to how the Founders arrived at their claims, the Founders consider it important to set forth certain facts. Prior to exercising their options in April of 2015, the Founders advised the Company that they had retained two independent experts who had separately provided their preliminary views as to Value. The amounts that are being claimed by the Founders were arrived at with the benefit of those views. The Company was also advised as to the amounts that would be claimed prior to the delivery of the notices. At the request of the Company, the Founders also disclosed the firms of the two independent experts who are leaders in their profession. The second phase of the arbitration will fix the amount of the Value.

While the Founders are not pleased to be in the current situation, they are very proud of the Company they founded and built over many years, and they value the many relationships they continue to enjoy with many of the Company's both current and past clients and employees.

The Founders will assert their respective legal positions in the second phase of arbitration dealing with Value. They do not plan to comment further, pending the final decision of the Arbitrator.

Contacts:

David Spence

Stikeman Elliott LLP

416-869-5689




MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- goeasy Ltd. (TSX: GSY), ("goeasy" or the "Company"), the leading full service provider of goods and alternative financial services that improve the lives of everyday Canadians, today announced that its subsidiary, easyfinancial Services Inc. ("easyfinancial"), has entered into a framework agreement with Sears Canada Inc. ("Sears") to provide a point-of-sale financing platform for Sears' customers who wish to purchase large ticket items.

The point-of-sale financing platform will utilize the industry's first single source application system for point-of-sale financing across all customers in the credit spectrum. Depending on the customer credit profile, either Sears Canada or easyfinancial will extend credit for such purchases. easyfinancial's point-of-sale financing platform will provide the back-end support system and loan servicing needed, and the in-store process is being designed to make the transaction smooth and straight-forward for Sears' customers. Launch of this program with Sears is subject to negotiation of additional definitive documentation and completion of necessary system and operational enhancements.

"We are excited about this new partnership and the potential sales volume it can provide to both organizations," said David Ingram, goeasy's President and Chief Executive Officer. "When the development and deployment of this point-of-sale financing platform is complete, customers of Sears will be provided with financing alternatives across the broadest credit spectrum available in the marketplace using a seamless application process."

About goeasy

goeasy Ltd. is the leading full service provider of goods and alternative financial services that improve the lives of everyday Canadians. Today, goeasy Ltd. serves its customers through two key operating divisions, easyhome and easyfinancial. easyhome is Canada's largest lease-to-own company, offering brand-name household furniture, appliances and electronics to consumers under weekly or monthly leasing agreements through both corporate and franchise stores. easyfinancial is the leading provider of alternative financial services, offering consumer loans between $500-$15,000, and is supported by a strong central credit adjudication process and industry leading risk analytics. easyfinancial also operates an indirect lending channel, offering loan products to consumers at the point-of-sale of third party merchants. Both operating divisions of goeasy Ltd. offer the highest level of customer service and enable customers to transact through a national store and branch network of over 180 easyhome and 200 easyfinancial locations across Canada and through its online and mobile eCommerce enabled platforms.

goeasy Ltd. is listed on the TSX under the symbol 'GSY'. For more information, visit www.goeasy.com.

Contacts:

goeasy Ltd.

David Ingram, President and Chief Executive Officer, or

Steve Goertz, Executive Vice President and

Chief Financial Officer

905-272-9886 (FAX)

905-272-2788

www.goeasy.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Theratechnologies inc. (TSX: TH) and TaiMed Biologics, Inc. today announced a 12-year collaboration agreement to market and distribute ibalizumab in the United States and in Canada. Ibalizumab is a novel CD4-directed HIV entry-inhibitor and is the first humanized monoclonal antibody in clinical trials for the treatment of HIV.

Ibalizumab is currently in a late-stage Phase III clinical trial, the last step before submitting the product for regulatory approval to the Food and Drug Administration in the United States ("FDA"). Over two-thirds of patients required for the open-label, 24-week trial have been enrolled. Patient screening for this study is anticipated to close later this month. The objective of this study is to reduce viral replication in patients with multi-drug resistant HIV infection. The primary endpoint of the Phase III trial is the proportion of patients achieving a 0.5 log10 decrease in viral load 7 days after initiating treatment.

Once the Phase III trial is completed, ibalizumab will be evaluated under the FDA's priority review process which is expected to be completed within six months of the application or during the first half of 2017.

Ibalizumab was designated a "Breakthrough Therapy" by the FDA based on preliminary clinical evidence indicating that it may represent a substantial improvement over existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints. In a Phase IIb clinical trial, conducted on 113 patients, the product significantly reduced viral load in multi-drug resistant HIV-infected patients.

The US FDA has also granted ibalizumab Orphan Drug designation. This status is given to drugs and biologics that are intended for the safe and effective treatment of rare diseases/disorders that affect fewer than 200,000 persons.

Under the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, ibalizumab will be granted 12 years of marketing exclusivity.

Ibalizumab is currently administered as a bi-monthly (once every two weeks) intravenous injection. TaiMed is conducting clinical trials with the same formulation for bi-monthly intramuscular injection (IM) and monthly IM administration. Theratechnologies has also secured exclusive rights to market and distribute the drug for the IM route of administration.

"Ibalizumab represents a perfect fit for our organization. It is a niche, breakthrough treatment for multi-drug resistant HIV patients. These individuals are followed by the same physicians that treat patients suffering from HIV-associated lipodystrophy. Ibalizumab fits very well within our existing commercial infrastructure, as we can leverage our salesforce, our Medical Science Liaison team as well as our Managed Markets group and call center. This is the type of products we want to add to our portfolio as they hold the potential to generate additional revenues while keeping focused on our core business," said Luc Tanguay, President and CEO, Theratechnologies inc.

"Partnering with Theratechnologies for the commercialization of ibalizumab makes perfect sense. They bring experience and knowledge of the world's largest market for our product. On our side, we will stay focused on our R&D expertise and further develop ibalizumab. We have made a transaction which will allow us to rapidly bring our product to market and to generate revenues for our company," said James Chang, Chief Executive Officer, TaiMed Biologics, Inc.

Transaction terms

The terms of the transaction include a US$2 million payment obligation, of which US$1 million was paid in cash at the signature of the agreement and US$1million will be paid at the commercial launch through the issuance of 957,169 common shares of Theratechnologies.

A further US$8.5 million will become due at commercial launch, subject to certain conditions. This amount will be payable as follows: US$2 million in common shares of Theratechnologies at a price to be determined upon FDA approval and US$1 million in common shares of Theratechnologies at a price to be determined upon commercial launch, based on the volume-weighted average trading price of Theratechnologies' common shares on the TSX prior to each of these dates and US$5.5 million, payable in quarterly installments based on a predetermined percentage of net sales during that quarter.

Once sales have reached an aggregate amount of US$20 million over 4 consecutive quarters, Theratechnologies will make a US$7 million milestone payment (payable in two installments over one year). Theratechnologies will also pay additional sales related milestones; US$10 million once annual sales of ibalizumab reach US$200 million, US$40 million once annual sales reach US$500 million, and US$100 million once annual sales reach US$1 billion.

Theratechnologies will also pay development milestones to TaiMed. A US$3 million milestone is due upon the approval of the twice-monthly (once every two weeks) intramuscular route of administration, again payable in two installments over one year. TaiMed will also be planning a larger Phase III trial with the once-monthly (once every four weeks) intramuscular or subcutaneous route of administration, to address a much broader patient population. This development milestone will consist of an upfront milestone payment of up to US$50 million, depending on the size of the newly targeted population, which will be paid quarterly, based on a percentage of net sales generated by the product.

Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Theratechnologies has exclusive rights to commercialize ibalizumab in the United States and in Canada. TaiMed will continue to be responsible for development of ibalizumab and seek approval from the FDA whereas Theratechnologies will be responsible to obtain the approval from Health Canada. TaiMed will manufacture and supply ibalizumab to Theratechnologies at a transfer price of 52% of net sales of the product.

Conference Call, Webcast and Slide Presentation Details

A conference call will be held today at 8:00 a.m. (ET) to discuss the transaction. The call will be hosted by Luc Tanguay, President and Chief Executive Officer. The conference call will be open to questions from financial analysts. Media and other interested individuals are invited to participate in the call on a "listen-only" basis.

The conference call can be accessed by dialing 1-877-223-4471 (North America) or 1-647-788-4922 (International). The conference call will also be accessible via webcast and will be supported by a slide presentation at http://www.gowebcasting.com/7368.

Audio replay of the conference call will be available two hours after the call's completion until April 1, 2016, by dialing 1-800-585-8367 (North America) or 1-416-621-4642 (International) and by entering the playback code 67672037.

About Theratechnologies

Theratechnologies (TSX: TH) is a specialty pharmaceutical company addressing unmet medical needs in metabolic disorders to promote healthy ageing and an improved quality of life. Further information about Theratechnologies is available on the Company's website at www.theratech.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com

About TaiMed Biologics

TaiMed Biologics, Inc. is a publicly held Taiwanese biotechnology company with the mission to discover, develop and deliver for the global market innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious infectious diseases. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.taimedbiologics.com.

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information, or, collectively, forward-looking statements, that are based on our management's belief and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. You can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "may", "will", "should", "could", "would", "outlook", "believe", "plan", "envisage", "anticipate", "expect" and "estimate", or the negatives of these terms, or variations of them. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the approval of ibalizumab, the timelines related to the review of the application by the FDA and the revenue growth to Theratechnologies generated by the commercialization of ibalizumab.

Forward-looking statements are based upon a number of assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Theratechnologies' control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking information. These assumptions include, but are not limited to, the following: ibalizumab will be approved by the FDA; the timelines disclosed in this press release to obtain the issuance of a decision from the FDA is accurate; if, and once approved, ibalizumab will be accepted by physicians and patients as a new treatment; and revenues generated from the sale of ibalizumab will grow our business and create shareholders value.

These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk that the Phase III trial does not generate positive data resulting in halting the development of ibalizumab or having to begin new clinical trials; the FDA does not approve ibalizumab; delays occur in completing the Phase III trial, the filing of the BLA, the issuance of the decision by the FDA and/or the commercial launch of ibalizumab; if approved, physicians and patients do not accept ibalizumab as a new treatment and, if and when approved, sales of ibalizumab do not allow us to generate enough revenues to significantly grow our business.

We refer potential investors to the "Risk Factors" section of our Annual Information Form dated February 24, 2016 available at www.sedar.com for additional risks regarding the Company and its operation. The reader is cautioned to consider these and other risks and uncertainties carefully and not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and speak only as of the date of this press release and represent our expectations as of that date.

We undertake no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable law.

Contacts:

Denis Boucher

EXOCET Public Relations inc.

514-913-1957




STOCKHOLM, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

A new Swedish clothing brand is born with strong focus on one single type of garment - the tunic. The founder Anette Lefvert has a background as Vice President of Operations for First Hotels Sweden, but her dedicated passion for tunics has now resulted in a full collection with both width and depth in the popular summer garment: the tunic.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160318/345672LOGO )



Miss Tunica - timeless and feminine apparel for summer and sun.

The line for Miss Tunica consists of approximately 15 unique designed tunics, which comes in a variety of different colors and patterns. Every piece is handmade in India with natural materials such as viscose and silk. Bright, rich colors and vivid patterns are used throughout the collection. The vision for the brand is to be feminine, energetic and at the same time comfortable - for all types of women.

"We want to offer the contemporary and versatile woman a chic look - in the most relaxing way," states the founder of Miss Tunica Anette Lefvert.

By operating and overseeing the complete production process by themselves - from design, construction and sewing to logistics and sales through the online shop - Miss Tunica is able to sustain an attractive price strategy throughout the collection. "To feel beautiful on the beach shouldn't be expensive. To get value for money with our products is extremely important for us," Anette Lefvert continues.

For press images: http://www.misstunica.com/en/content/11-press

About Miss Tunica

Miss Tunica offers uniquely designed tunics for women who want to feel beautiful - on and beyond the beach. Our ambition is to design timeless collections that you can keep for a long time, favorite by favorite. Miss Tunica is available through our own online shop and through a limited number of stockists in Sweden and abroad.

For more information and to see all the tunics, please visit http://www.misstunica.com
DUBLIN, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

A little over two years after acquiring Boston Dynamics, Google has announced that it will put the robotics design company up for sale. The company is best known for designing robots BigDog, RiSE and Atlas. Several of these robots have been built for the U.S. military, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). However, according to reports, Google has decided to sell because it believes the company isn't likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 )



A recent report published on Research and Markets expects the global robotics market to grow at a rate of 29.11% over the period 2015-2019. It says industries worldwide are demanding better precision and efficiency in order to meet the growing end-user demand. This has led to high demand for machines that are capable of increasing industrial efficiency by handling multiple tasks while remaining uncompromising on overall accuracy.

Boston Dynamic have developed robots of varying shapes and sizes to perform different functions. Cheetah claims to be the world's fastest legged robot, while PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot designed for testing chemical protection clothing. Both Amazon and Toyota are rumored to be interested in purchasing the company.

Amazon has installed thousands of robots across its warehouses to cut operating costs and get packages out the door more quickly. Industrial robots are programmed to automate and control manufacturing processes such as welding, painting, assembly, product inspection, testing, and packaging. Many industries worldwide are embracing automation in pursuit of smart factories and business organization. A report on the industrial robotics market in the heavy industry has projected growth at a rate of 6.19% by 2020.

Bloomberg reports that Google and Boston Dynamics' robot initiative, dubbed Replicant, has been plagued by leadership changes, failures to collaborate between companies and an unsuccessful effort to recruit a new leader. But with the existing and emerging robotics market sectors expected to grow to $123bn by 2026, Google are likely to continue work in the field of robotics at their own research and development facility "Google X".

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Robotics section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NHRR.

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.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/google-is-said-to-put-boston-dynamics-robotics-unit-up-for-sale



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Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com





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DETROIT, March 18, 2016 - American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc. (AAM), which is traded as AXL on the NYSE, will participate in the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2016 Auto Summit in New York on March 23, 2016. David C. Dauch, AAM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to present at 11:00 a.m. EST.

A live audio webcast will be accessible through the Investor Relations page on AAM's website (www.aam.com (http://www.aam.com)). A replay of the webcast will be available following the event.

AAM is a world leader in the manufacture, engineering, design and validation of driveline and drivetrain systems and related components and modules, chassis systems, electric drive systems and metal-formed products for light trucks, sport utility vehicles, passenger cars, crossover vehicles and commercial vehicles. In addition to locations in the United States (Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana), AAM also has offices or facilities in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Scotland, South Korea, Sweden and Thailand.

###

For more information:

Investor Contact

Jason P. Parsons

Director, Investor Relations

(313) 758-2404

jason.parsons@aam.com (mailto:jason.parsons@aam.com)

Media Contact

Christopher M. Son

Director, Marketing & Communications

(313) 758-4814

chris.son@aam.com (mailto:chris.son@aam.com)

Or visit the AAM website at www.aam.com (http://www.aam.com).





AXL BAML Auto Summit_Press Release (http://hugin.info/143751/R/1992766/735242.pdf)



This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc via Globenewswire



HUG#1992766




18 March 2016



LSE Code: 3NGL



BOOST ISSUER PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY (a public company incorporated with limited liability in Ireland) BOOST NATURAL GAS 3X LEVERAGE DAILY ETP SECURITIES PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT OF THE AFFECTED SECURITIES ADJOURNMENT OF MEETING OF THE ETP SECURITYHOLDERS THIS DOCUMENT IS IMPORTANT AND REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. If you are in any doubt about what action you should take, you are recommended to consult your independent financial adviser.



If you have sold or transferred all of your Boost Natural Gas 3x Leverage Daily ETP Securities (the 'Affected Securities') of Boost Issuer Public Limited Company (the 'Issuer'), please send this document, together with the accompanying form of proxy, at once to the purchaser or transferee or stockbroker, banker or other agent through whom the sale or transfer was made, for onward transmission to the purchaser or transferee.



Boost Issuer Public Limited Company (the 'Issuer') wishes to announce that the Meeting of the holders of Boost Natural Gas 3x Leverage Daily ETP Securities (the 'Affected Securities', with ISIN IE00B8VC8061) scheduled for today at 11:00 a.m. (the 'Original Meeting') has been adjourned, in accordance with paragraph 20 of Schedule 7 of the Trust Deed, for lack of a quorum. The adjourned meeting will be reconvened on 11:00 a.m. on Monday 4 April 2016, being a date not more than 30 days after the Original Meeting, and will be held at the offices of Capita International Financial Services (Ireland) Limited in 2 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland (the 'Adjourned Meeting').



The Adjourned Meeting is being held to consider certain amendments to documentation, made under the powers set out in clause 2 of schedule 7 of the master trust deed of the Affected Securities, required to effect a reduction in the principal amount of the Affected Securities from USD 0.20 to USD 0.02. This follows the price of the Affected Securities falling below 500 per cent. of its current principal amount on 19 February 2016, and is designed to maintain the normal trading and operations of the Affected Securities. Full details of the Proposal and Extraordinary Resolution are set out in the notice dated 23 February 2016.



Holders of the Affected Securities will receive a form of proxy by post, allowing them to vote on the matters being considered at the Meeting by proxy. Under article 11.5 of the Issuer's Articles of Association, no further notification is required for the Adjourned Meeting. Holders of the Affected Securities are therefore directed to the original notification posted to them on 23 February 2016, and also available on the website of the Issuer, at www.boostetp.com/Content/Regulatory-Documents. Holders of the Affected Securities should note that a duly completed form of proxy deposited in respect of the Original Meeting will continue to be valid for the Adjourned Meeting unless previously revoked or suspended by a further form of proxy prior to the Meeting.



In accordance with normal practice, The Law Debenture Trust Corporation p.l.c., as trustee, expresses no opinion as to the merits of the Proposal, the terms of which were not negotiated by it. It has however authorised it to be stated that, on the basis of the information contained in the original circular and in this document (which it advises holders of Affected Securities to read carefully) it has no objection to the form in which the Proposal and Notice of Meeting are presented to holders of Affected Securities for their consideration.



Holders of the Affected Securities will be notified of the outcome of the Adjourned Meeting shortly thereafter.



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: Boost Issuer PLC via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1995930]



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Promotions to partner across 11 offices strengthen the firm's global offer

LONDON, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Following an extensive and thorough selection process, Brunswick Group is delighted to announce that we have asked 16 directors to join the Partnership this year.

Susan Gilchrist, Group CEO, said: "The challenges our clients face are increasingly complex and require a broad range of expertise to help navigate them. I am therefore delighted by the calibre and diverse experience of colleagues we are inviting to join the Partnership this year.

"The group includes a real cross-section of our specialist offers, sector expertise and international network, further strengthening our ability to help clients address their critical issues. Along with our recent senior hires, I know they will make a strong contribution to the continued development of the firm."

Annalisa Barbagallo in Brussels. Annalisa has over 18 years of experience in public affairs with a focus on digital, financial services and EU-US relations. Before joining Brunswick, she was Director of Government Affairs at GE Capital and at eBay/PayPal.

Ash Spiegelberg in Dallas. Ash advises on all areas of corporate, financial and M&A communications, and has worked across a wide range of sectors. During his time at Brunswick, he spent five years in London before relocating to the UAE in 2009 and then moving to Dallas in 2014.

Benoit Grange in Paris. Benoit advises on a wide variety of communications issues, including capital transactions, IPOs, M&A, restructuring operations, public affairs and corporate reputation campaigns. Previously, Benoit was Deputy Director at the French and Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul.

Carol Roos in Johannesburg. Carol advises clients on a range of business-critical issues, with a particular focus on the TMT and energy & resources sectors. She has also advised on a number of local and cross-border transactions from Brunswick's San Francisco and Johannesburg offices.

Daisuke Tsuchiya in London. Daisuke leads Brunswick's Japan practice and has worked in crisis, M&A and corporate reputation building. Before joining Brunswick, he spent over 15 years as a fast track diplomat in the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Darren McDermott in New York. Darren works on a range of critical communications issues for clients, including financial situations, reputation management, crisis and litigation and creating compelling content. Darren joined Brunswick in 2012 after 17 years as a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal.

Katie Ioanilli in London. Katie has done extensive work across the retail, luxury, consumer goods and technology sectors in New York, San Francisco and London, where she is now based. She advises clients on a range of critical issues including cross-border M&A, crisis, shareholder activism, IPOs and reputation management.

Kirsten Molyneux in Hong Kong. Kirsten heads up Brunswick's CMA group in Asia and has a wealth of experience running global investor relations programs. Her particular focus is on helping clients develop their investor narrative as well as preparing senior management teams for interaction with the investing universe.

Nina Coad in London. Nina advises clients on corporate positioning, financial calendar, investor relations, media, financial restructurings, crisis and M&A. She has experience across a broad range of sectors, but particularly in B2B sectors, including engineering, construction, property, energy and resources.

Rory Macpherson in Shanghai. Rory has extensive experience developing strategic communications and investor relations programs to enhance corporate reputation and address special situations. Prior to joining Brunswick, Rory led the corporate communications and investor relations functions at Suntech Power for more than five years.

Shahed Larsonin New York.Shahed advises clients on a variety of critical issues, including litigation and crisis, M&A, management transitions, shareholder activism and corporate governance matters. Previously, Shahed was an attorney in the mergers and acquisitions group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Sparky Zivin in Washington, D.C. Sparky uses opinion research tools to advise clients on corporate reputation, crisis communications, issues management, message development, public affairs and employee engagement. Prior to joining Brunswick, Sparky was a Senior Vice President at Edelman's in-house research consultancy.

Stephen Power in Washington, D.C. Stephen advises clients on a range of public affairs, crisis communications and corporate reputation issues, with an emphasis on legislative campaigns, media handling and the challenges facing energy and transportation companies worldwide. Prior to joining Brunswick, Stephen wrote about energy, automobile and airline industries for The Wall Street Journal for 11 years.

Sumeet Desai in London. Sumeet joined Brunswick in February 2015, combining expertise in public affairs, media and crisis communications. Before joining Brunswick, Sumeet was the Head of Public Affairs and Research at the Royal Bank of Scotland and a political and economics journalist at Reuters.

Tom Williams in San Francisco. Tom specializes in M&A, corporate positioning work and crisis communications, advising multinational companies from a wide range of industries. He joined Brunswick in London in 2005 with a background in media and investor relations and has also worked in Brunswick's Johannesburg and Washington, D.C. offices.

Will Anderson MBEin Abu Dhabi. Will is a creator of decisive communications campaigns that help companies and organisations communicate the purpose of their business, enhance reputation, and communicate successfully through transaction, restructuring and crisis.

About Brunswick Group

Brunswick is an advisory firm specializing in critical issues and corporate relations. Founded in 1987, Brunswick is an organically grown, private partnership with 23 offices around the world.

http://www.brunswickgroup.com/

Contact

Julie Andreeff Jensen

Tel: +1 202 393 7337

JAndreeffJensen@brunswickgroup.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brunswick-group-appoints-16-new-partners-300238155.html
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- GrowPros Cannabis Ventures Inc. ("GrowPros" or the "Company") (CSE: GCI) is pleased to announce the signing of a definitive agreement (the "Agreement") with Delta 9 Bio-Tech Inc. ("Delta 9"), a "Licensed Producer" under Canada's Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulation ("MMPR") on multiple collaborative ventures.

Under the terms of the Agreement, Delta 9 will submit to Health Canada an application for Amendment under Section 29 of the MMPR to collaborate with GrowPros on the previously submitted application. (see previous news releases)

In consideration for this collaboration, GrowPros will make milestone payments to Delta 9 in cash or shares (the "Shares") with an aggregate value of $2,000,000. The value of the Shares will be based on the greater of (i) the closing market price of GrowPros common shares on the day immediately prior to the day of issuance and (ii) $0.05 per Share. Under the terms of the agreement, the first milestone payment of $400,000 will be issued in Shares at a value of $0.05 (the closing price on the date of the signing of the previously released collaborative venture terms agreement). Delta 9 will have the option to receive the remaining 4 milestone payments in cash or Shares, with all cash payments made payable to Delta 9 upon completion of the final milestone. GrowPros will announce the completion and terms of each milestone payment as required by regulations. Achieving the final milestone will occur upon the full licensing of the GrowPros facility located in Low Quebec. All milestones payments will be held by our Escrow Agent and will be released upon the completion of the next milestone.

GrowPros will be required to finance the design, development, construction, and all out-of-pocket costs relating to the licensing of the Quebec Facility. GrowPros intends to raise additional capital through both secured debit and private placements to finance the construction. The estimated cost of construction is projected at approximately $3 million dollars.

The Agreement also provides that GrowPros and Delta 9 will enter into a secondary agreement in which GrowPros will provide Delta 9 with production consultation on there Manitoba based facility as well as patient acquisition services focused primarily in Quebec.

In addition, GrowPros will grant Delta 9 a right of first refusal to purchase all dried marijuana product produced at the Quebec Facility for a period of 2 years from the date of acquisition of the production license.

"Over the past year, we have worked closely with Delta 9 to establish a strong and mutually beneficial business relationship", says Ryan Brown, CEO of GrowPros. "This Agreement is the culmination of that hard work and sets the foundation for GrowPros and Delta 9 to continue collaborating on a variety of business opportunities."

"We are very pleased to be working with GrowPros to expand our operations into Quebec and Eastern Canada", confirms John Arbuthnot, Vice President of Delta 9. "With a wealth of experience and resources, GrowPros is a great strategic partner for us. We see a bright future for both our companies," Mr. Arbuthnot explains.

The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed this news release and does not accept responsibility for its adequacy or accuracy.

Forward-looking statements

Some statements in this release may contain forward-looking information. All statements, other than of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including, without limitation, statements regarding potential acquisitions and financings) are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of the words "may", "will", "should", "continue", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "plan" or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict, that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, without limitation, the inability of the Company, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, GrowPros MMP Inc., to obtain a licence for the production of medical marijuana; failure to obtain sufficient financing to execute the Company's business plan; competition; regulation and anticipated and unanticipated costs and delays, and other risks disclosed in the Company's public disclosure record on file with the relevant securities regulatory authorities. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results or events not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake an obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise unless required by applicable securities legislation.

Contacts:

GrowPros Cannabis Ventures Inc.

Ryan Brown

Chief Executive Officer

(613) 421-8402






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - PICO Holdings Inc. (PICO) announced that it has entered into an agreement with Central Square Management LLC and affiliates, which own approximately 6.1% of PICO's outstanding shares, regarding the composition of PICO's Board of Directors.



As per the terms of the agreement, the PICO Board has appointed Andrew Cates as a Class III director and Daniel Silvers as a Class I director, effective immediately.



With the addition of Messrs. Cates and Silvers to the PICO Board, the PICO Board will be comprised of nine directors, eight of whom are non-employee directors and five of whom have been added to the PICO Board since the beginning of 2016.



PICO also agreed to nominate Mr. Cates for reelection at the 2017 Annual Meeting of Shareholders and to cause at least one Class II director not to be renominated for re-election at the 2016 Annual Meeting such that the size of the PICO Board would be reduced to eight directors immediately following the conclusion of the 2016 Annual Meeting.



Under the terms of the agreement, Central Square has agreed to vote its shares in support of, among other things, the election of PICO's slate of directors at the 2016 and 2017 annual shareholders' meetings and at any other shareholders' meetings held prior to the expiration of the standstill period provided for in the agreement and to abide by certain standstill provisions.



Central Square has also agreed to vote its shares against the calling of a special meeting of shareholders by Mr. Leder or any of his affiliates and against any proposals that Mr. Leder or any of his affiliates may seek to bring before a special meeting.



PICO has also agreed to appoint Mr. Cates to the Audit Committee and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee of the PICO Board and Mr. Silvers to the Compensation Committee and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee of the PICO Board.



In addition, Messrs. Cates and Silvers are each being named to a newly-formed Strategy Committee of the PICO Board that will be responsible for, among other duties, monitoring PICO's previously announced plans to return capital to shareholders as assets are monetized with such capital being returned to shareholders through stock repurchases or special dividends.



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TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Dividend Select 15 Corp. (the "Company") declares its monthly distribution of $0.06383 per Equity share. The distribution is payable April 8, 2016 to shareholders on record as of March 31, 2016.

Under the distribution policy announced in September 2014, the monthly dividend payable on the Equity shares is determined by applying a 10% annualized rate on the volume weighted average market price (VWAP) of the Equity shares over the last 3 trading days of the preceding month. As a result, Equity shareholders of record on March 31, 2016 will receive a dividend of $0.06383 per share based on the VWAP of $7.66 over the last 3 trading days in February, payable on April 8, 2016. Effectively, the actual amount of monthly distributions paid will vary with the market price, but the current yield will remain stable at 10% (based on the VWAP) under this distribution policy.

Since inception (November 18, 2010) Equity shareholders have received a total of $4.12 per share inclusive of this distribution.

The Company invests in a portfolio of 15 Canadian companies selected from the following 20 company universe which are among the highest Canadian dividend yielding stocks.

Bank of Montreal Great-West Lifeco Inc. TELUS Corporation BCE Inc. Husky Energy Inc. The Bank of Nova Scotia CIBC National Bank of Canada The Toronto-Dominion Bank CI Financial Corp. Power Corporation of Canada Thomson Reuters Corporation Enbridge Inc. Royal Bank of Canada TMX Group Inc. EnCana Corporation Loblaw Companies Limited TransAlta Corporation Sun Life Financial Inc. TransCanada Corporation --------------------- -------------- Distribution Details: Equity Share (DS): $0.06383 Ex-Dividend Date: March 29, 2016 Record Date: March 31, 2016 Payable Date: April 8, 2016 --------------------- --------------

Contacts:

Investor Relations:

1-877-478-2372

Local: 416-304-4443

info@quadravest.com

www.dividendselect15.com






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - GrowPros Cannabis Ventures Inc. announced that it signed a definitive agreement with Delta 9 Bio-Tech Inc., a 'Licensed Producer' under Canada's Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulation or 'MMPR' on multiple collaborative ventures.



As per the terms of the Agreement, Delta 9 will submit to Health Canada an application for Amendment under Section 29 of the MMPR to collaborate with GrowPros on the previously submitted application.



In consideration for this collaboration, GrowPros will make milestone payments to Delta 9 in cash or shares with an aggregate value of $2 million. The value of the Shares will be based on the greater of the closing market price of GrowPros common shares on the day immediately prior to the day of issuance and $0.05 per Share. Under the terms of the agreement, the first milestone payment of $400,000 will be issued in Shares at a value of $0.05. Delta 9 will have the option to receive the remaining 4 milestone payments in cash or Shares, with all cash payments made payable to Delta 9 upon completion of the final milestone.



GrowPros will announce the completion and terms of each milestone payment as required by regulations. Achieving the final milestone will occur upon the full licensing of the GrowPros facility located in Low Quebec. All milestones payments will be held by our Escrow Agent and will be released upon the completion of the next milestone.



GrowPros will be required to finance the design, development, construction, and all out-of-pocket costs relating to the licensing of the Quebec Facility. GrowPros intends to raise additional capital through both secured debit and private placements to finance the construction. The estimated cost of construction is projected at approximately $3 million dollars.



The Agreement also provides that GrowPros and Delta 9 will enter into a secondary agreement in which GrowPros will provide Delta 9 with production consultation on there Manitoba based facility as well as patient acquisition services focused primarily in Quebec.



In addition, GrowPros will grant Delta 9 a right of first refusal to purchase all dried marijuana product produced at the Quebec Facility for a period of 2 years from the date of acquisition of the production license.



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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - CityCenter Holdings, LLC, a venture between MGM Resorts International (MGM) and Infinity World Development Corp, said it has agreed to sell The Shops at Crystals in Las Vegas to a venture led by Invesco Real Estate (IVZ) and Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG) for about $1.1 billion. Located at the entryway of CityCenter and in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, the retail asset boasts over 324,000 square feet of luxury shopping space. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016. The Shops at Crystals is anchored by 10 luxury flagship stores, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Prada, Fendi and Tiffany & Co., as well as 30 unique-to-market luxury retailers including Celine, Saint Laurent and Richard Mille. Opened in late 2009, The Shops at Crystals features a dedicated tram station, connecting to the Bellagio Resort & Casino and Monte Carlo Resort & Casino and is in close proximity to several luxury resorts totalling approximately 16,000 rooms. 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.
PUNE, India, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to the new market research report "Robotic Vision Market by Component (Camera, Smart Camera, Computer), Technology (2D, 3D [Laser, Structured Light, Stereo Vision]), Application (Welding, Painting), Industry (Electrical & Electronics, Automotive), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is estimated to reach USD 5.18 Billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2015 to 2020.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 20 Tables and 58 Figures spread through 195 Slides and in-depth TOC on "Robotic Vision Market".



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/robotic-vision-market-196002505.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The factors driving the robotic vision market include demand for safety, reliability, accuracy, efficiency, and ease of implementation and penetration.

Robotic vision is used in industries for improved sanitation, correct packaging, and material handling operations due to strict government regulations and increasing public awareness regarding food and beverage safety. Robotic vision ensures quality and safety, prevents defective products from entering the supply chain, and facilitates product traceability. Robotic vision performs these applications reliably and consistently and is a superior alternative to photoelectric sensor-based application. Apart from this, many companies are accepting it due to the value it brings to their operations, that is, value in the form of improved product quality, more manufacturing flexibility, and higher throughput.

Asia-Pacific expected to hold the largest market share and growth during the forecast period:

The Robotic Vision Market in APAC is expected to hold the largest share by 2020 owing to major driving forces such as industrialization, less availability of skilled labors, government initiatives, and demand for safety and accuracy. China and Japan are expected to the next emerging industrial hub after Germany and the U.S. These countries are expected to contribute vision guided robots market with several opportunities.

Automotive industry expected to lead the Global Robotic Vision market:

The automotive industry is the early adopter of automated robotic arms for the manufacturing and assembling of vehicle parts. The industry is increasingly using robotic vision for inspection of parts, welding, and material handling. The industry also relies heavily on highly effective approaches to prevent defects at various stages of production, with the help of robotic vision systems. The electrical & electronics industry has emerged as an important sector for robotics vision after the automotive industry.

Material handling dominates the Global Robotic Vision market:

Material handling and packaging & palletizing application account for a large share in the food and beverage industry. It uses robotic vision to reduce labor costs by vision supported packaging of food thereby ensuring brand quality with label verification.

This report describes the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges with respect to the robotic vision market. The Porter's five forces analysis has been included in the report with a description of each of the forces and their respective impact on the robotic vision market.

Inquiry Before Buying: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=196002505

The major players of robotic vision are Yaskawa, Fanuc, ABB Ltd, KUKA Robotics, Kawasaki Robotics, Basler AG, Cognex, National Instruments, Keyence, and Sick.

Browse Related Reports

3D Machine Vision Market by Component (Camera, Frame grabber, Software), Product (PC-based and Smart Camera-based) Application, Vertical (Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Postal & Logistics, ITS) and Geography - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/3d-machine-vision-market-4125387.html

Machine Vision Market by Component (Hardware and Software), Product (PC-Based Systems and Smart Camera-Based Systems), Application, Vertical (Automotive, Electronics and Semiconductor, Healthcare, ITS) and Geography - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/machine-vision-systems-market-963.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 info graphics 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.



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Regulatory News:

To accelerate the execution of Capio's strategy Modern Medicine and Modern Management, the company has strengthened its focus and organization of the Group Management, effective March 18, 2016.

Capio's vision is to ensure the best achievable quality of life for every patient. The basis to achieve the vision is to speed up the implementation of new treatment methods Modern Medicine with a clear and responsible organization Modern Management.

Stronger medical management aims at speeding up the implementation of Modern Medicine. This implies the transfer of know-how, benchmarking and sharing of best medical practice within and between the countries of operation, as well as further development of systematic medical quality measurements within the Group. This is reflected by the establishment of a new and stronger medical management in Capio.

Modern Management is key for the implementation of Modern Medicine. This implies an empowered organization, from care unit level all the way throughout the Group structure, with clear responsibilities and strong local and regional managers driving change in every day work. Capio is also strengthening its focus on collaboration with key public stakeholders to drive the development and benefit of Capio's role to the public healthcare systems in which the company is active, also reflected in the management of the Group.

The management is structured in Group Management and Operating Management teams for the three geographical segments. Group Management work in close cooperation with the Operating Management teams developing Capio in line with its strategy.

Group Management Thomas Berglund CEO and head of Capio Nordic, Olof Bengtsson CFO, Henrik Brehmer SVP Group Communication Public Affairs, Philippe Durand Business area manager France, Sveneric Svensson Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and Francois Demesmay Deputy Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Francois has previously upheld the position of CMO in Capio France.

Operating Management Teams Business area managers and regional managers

Capio Nordic The Capio Nordic Management team is headed by Thomas Berglund and includes:

Britta Wallgren, Business area manager Capio S:t Goran's Hospital, Susanne Wellander, Business area manager Capio Proximity Care, Peter Holm, Business area manager Capio Specialist Clinics, Lotta Olmarken Ingler, Business area manager Capio Psychiatry and Per-Helge Fagermoen, Business area manager Capio Norway.

Capio France The Capio France management team is headed by Philippe Durand and includes:

Catherine Viatge Deputy Business area manager in charge of people development, process and organization, Frederic Pecqueux Regional manager Ile de France, Nicolas Bobet Regional manager Aquitaine, Veronique Dahan Regional manager Toulouse, Sofien Khachremi Regional manager Provence Alpes Cote Azur, Pierre-Yves Guiavarch Regional manager Lyon, Valerie Fakhoury Regional manager East and Olivier Le Borgne Regional manager La Rochelle.

Capio Germany Martin Reitz, Business area manager Capio Germany and head of the Capio Germany management team.

Thomas Berglund President and CEO Capio AB (publ.)

Capio AB (publ) is a leading, pan-European healthcare provider offering a broad range of high quality medical, surgical and psychiatric healthcare services in four countries through its hospitals, specialist clinics and primary care units. In 2015, Capio's 12,360 employees provided healthcare services during 4.6 million patient visits across the Group's facilities in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, generating net sales of MSEK 13,486. Capio operates across three geographic segments: Nordic (54 percent of Group net sales 2015), France (38 percent of Group net sales 2015) and Germany (8 percent of Group net sales 2015). For more information about Capio, please see www.capio.com.

Capio AB (publ) is required to publish the above information under the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was submitted for publication on March 18, 2016 at 14:50 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005540/en/

Contacts:

Capio AB

For information, please contact:

Thomas Berglund, President and CEO

Telephone: +46 733 88 86 00


ROME (dpa-AFX) - Italian oil and gas company Eni SpA (E) on Friday presented the company's 2016-2019 strategic plan to the financial community.



The company said it has now increased its 4-year target and will dispose of another 7 billion euros of assets by 2019. The asset disposal will be done by the company mainly through the dilution of its stakes in recent and material discoveries as part of its dual exploration model strategy



Further, Eni said it is completing its transformation, which is crucial in a complex oil price environment, in order to enhance long-term growth while meeting short-term financial constraints.



The company noted that the process will provide cumulative production growth of 13 percent over the plan period, despite an 18 percent reduction in overall upstream capital expenditure. The company expects hydrocarbon production to grow by over 3 percent per year across the 2016-2019 period.



Further, the company's group capital expenditure of about 37 billion euros for the period represents a 21 percent reduction at constant foreign exchange rates versus the previous plan.



Throughout the plan, Eni expects new discoveries of 1.6 billion boe, at a unit exploration cost of $2.3 per barrel during the plan period.



Eni said it is continuing to restructure its mid-downstream businesses successfully. Gas & Power will benefit from the renegotiation of long-term contracts and reductions in logistics costs. In Refining & Marketing, the company is focused on lowering its breakeven.



Eni intends to confirm a 2016 dividend of 0.8 euros per share full cash.



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YOKNE'AM, ISRAEL -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Editors Note: There are three photos associated with this press release.

ColorChip Ltd., a pioneer and innovator in the field of Hyper-Scale Single-Mode Solutions, introduces 100G PSM4 QSFP28 transceiver and adding it to its existing 100G CWDM4/CLR4 offerings.

The 100 Gbps family of transceivers are implemented in the Pluggable Quad Small Form factor (QSFP28) package. The PSM4 solution is available with a pigtailed MPO connector, 8 pigtailed LC connectors (4 for Tx and Rx respectively) as well as an integrated MPO configuration. ColorChip's 100G QSFP28 PSM4 and CWDM4/CLR4 QSFP28 Transceiver Modules will be demonstrated at OFC 2016.

Leveraging ColorChip's pioneering SystemOnGlass (SOG) optical integration technology, as well as advanced NRZ modulator solutions, ColorChip is well-positioned to support present-day 100 Gbps Hyper-Scale Datacenters applications as well as future 200 Gbps, 400 Gbps and beyond Datacenter requirements with compact and cost effective solutions.

SystemOnGlass (SOG) - The Platform for Scalability

The 100Gbps CWDM4 and PSM4 transceiver family leverages ColorChip's SystemOnGlass technology and builds upon ColorChip's wafer-scale, waveguide-in-glass PLC core expertise coupled with fully automated photonic integration (PIC). This approach eliminates free-space optics to deliver compact 4xN Gbps optical engine solutions, including nested multiplexing functionality, meeting market needs for ever increasing data rates, low power and low TCO levels. The company's innovative SOG photonic integration know-how stands at the heart of ColorChip's family of high speed transceiver products; a proven economical solution delivering repeatability, reliability and scalability from 40G to 400G.

Applications

The 100G PSM4 transceiver is an extension of ColorChip's QSFPx optical transceiver product line, which includes 100G CWDM4/CLR4 QSFP28 transceiver and the first to market 40GBASE QSFP+ transceiver, available in both 10km LR4 and 2km LRL4 offerings. By using uncooled directly modulated lasers, ColorChip's 100G QSFP28 low power transceivers are designed for use in hyper-scale data center, high performance computer (HPC) and enterprise applications.

Demonstration at OFC/NFOEC 2016

ColorChip's 100G Transceiver Module demonstrations will take place at the ColorChip booth (#1533) during OFC, March 22nd-24th, 2016 in the Anaheim Convention Center. The demo is scheduled by invitation at info@color-chip.com. For more information on ColorChip, please visit www.color-chip.com.

About ColorChip

ColorChip (http://www.color-chip.com) is a pioneer and a world leading innovator in the fields of integrated optical components and sub-systems, enabling reliable, scalable and robust high speed networking and communications solutions. Founded in 2001, ColorChip is dedicated to the development of advanced Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuits (ASPIC).

ColorChip delivers industry leading optical high-speed transceivers to the Datacom/Telecom markets and passive optical splitters to the FTTx markets. ColorChip's robust PLC, waveguide-in-glass technology and the revolutionary SystemOnGlass platform have enabled the company to address critical technological obstacles to deliver groundbreaking solutions for the Datacom/Telecom customers worldwide.

To view the photos associated with this press release, please visit the following links:

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160318-colorchip_mar18_fig01.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160318-colorchip_mar18_fig02.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160318-colorchip_mar18_fig03.jpg

Contacts:

Paul Goldgeier

Director of Product Development & Technical Sales

+972.54.439.3223

paulg@color-chip.com




GATINEAU, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Nouveau Monde Mining Enterprises Inc. ("Nouveau Monde") (TSX VENTURE: NOU)(OTC PINK: NMGRF)(FRANKFURT: NM9) is pleased to announce the addition of three renowned experts to its Matawinie graphite project development team.

MINING DEVELOPMENT - SERGE BUREAU, M.SC., ENG.

Mr. Bureau obtained his bachelor's and Master's Geological Engineering degree from the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi. He is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Ingenieurs du Quebec (OIQ). Mr. Bureau brings over 30 years of mining industry experience related to the exploration, delineation, development and mining of ore deposits. This includes over 25 years in gold and polymetallic mining projects, both in underground and open-pit operations. His duties involved evaluations, feasibility studies, mine construction and operation management on numerous projects.

During his expansive career, Mr. Bureau was tasked with supervising the Engineering and Geology Departments of the Bousquet, Doyon and East Malartic mine for the Barrick Gold Corporation. Mr. Bureau was also involved in supervising the El Indio Mine in Chile, and the Alto Chicama - Las Lagunas Norte mine in Peru. As part of Barrick's Business Development Group for the Peru region, Mr. Bureau was also involved in supervising other technical projects there. Serge Bureau also served as Barrick's Director of Capital Projects for Russia and East Asia and as Manager of Technical Services for the feasibility study at Pueblo Viejo. From 2008 to 2013, Mr. Bureau was involved as President and CEO of Crevier Minerals Inc. and MDN Inc.

Nouveau Monde has mandated Mr. Bureau to perform as an advisor and work with the management of Nouveau Monde to supervise all phases of mining development for the Matawinie project. Serge Bureau's tasks will also comprise of coordinating the multiple subcontractors involved in the project with the goal of delivering a Feasibility Study, as well as an Impact and Benefit Assessment report in a timely fashion.

VALUE-ADDED GRAPHITE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - ALAIN MERCIER, ENG., PMP

Mr. Mercier obtained his Bachelor's degree in engineering from the Universite de Sherbrooke in the Province of Quebec. He is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Ingenieurs du Quebec (OIQ) and a member of the Project Management Institute. Alain Mercier has 25 years of experience in the industrial and manufacturing environment. He possesses an extensive knowledge of capital project management. During his career, he assumed responsibilities and a leadership role at all project stages including; prefeasibility, feasibility and execution. Mr. Mercier has experience in engineering, procurement, construction management, commissioning and operational readiness.

Mr. Mercier started his career as project manager with Noranda, where he was involved in the implementation of new technologies and the commissioning of process systems. He also worked in production, maintenance and product development roles for Fraser Papers. He then became director of production, and later, vice-president of operations for Concert Airlaid Ltd., before starting his own consulting company named: Gestion de Projets Mercier Inc. Alain has since been involved in the development phase and execution phase of numerous mining and metallurgical capital projects for companies such as Glencore, Sheritt International and Stornoway Diamonds. One of his recent mandates was to lead a project team and deliver a feasibility study on the modernization of a metallurgical plant involving Chinese and Canadian engineering collaboration.

Mr. Mercier's initial mandate for Nouveau Monde is to advise and work with the company's management regarding all engineering-related work necessary for the construction of a graphite spheronization operation in Saint-Michel-des-Saints. His task will thus involve the supervision of a handful of world-leading engineers which are based in Asia, Europe and North America (which remain unnamed for competitive reasons), specializing in the production of spherical graphite and anode material. These engineers are currently collaborating with Nouveau Monde.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - FREDERIC GAUTHIER, B.Sc.

Mr. Gauthier studied forest management, environmental sciences, human, and physical geography with an emphasis on regional planning and local development. He recently obtained a graduate diploma in mining management. Frederic Gauthier is a geographer with over 10 years of experience in responsible mining and land-use planning. He possesses an excellent knowledge of socio-economic and environmental matters at the regional, national and international levels.

As a consultant, Mr. Gauthier has worked with various companies and organizations including; Cartier Resources, Osisko, Alexandria Minerals, CDETNO (North-West Territories economic development Corporation) and the Abitibiwinni First Nation (Pikogan). He served as sustainability manager for Geomega Resources where he was actively involved in the Montviel rare earth project, which is located in Eeyou Istchee (James Bay) in northern Quebec. There, he coordinated environmental studies and community relations. Mr. Gauthier also worked in land use and urban planning for the City of Rouyn-Noranda, in Abitibi. He successfully managed a major land reclamation program in the Russian Far-East for Kinross Gold. He currently holds a position of director on the Canadian-Malartic monitoring committee.

Frederic Gauthier has collaborated with Nouveau Monde since April of 2014. His present tasks include; the integration of environmental and social aspects for the Matawinie project, the coordination of environmental permitting and the implementation of a co-conception process with local stakeholders. Mr. Gauthier's mandate aims to address local concerns and expectations during the project development, and to ensure a low environmental footprint.

MATAWINIE GRAPHITE PROJECT

The Matawinie project boasts a graphite resource estimate on the Tony claim block totaling 48.6 Mt at a grade of 3.97 % Cg in the Indicated Category and 34.7 Mt at a grade of 4.08 % Cg in the Inferred Category (see press release dated February 23, 2016). The project is located in the Saint-Michel-des-Saints area, some 130 km north of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The two deposits forming the resource estimate are easily accessible by road, close to infrastructure and to affordable hydroelectricity.

Eric Desaulniers, P.Geo, President & CEO of Nouveau Monde stated: "Now that we have discovered a world-class graphite deposit in the Matawinie region thanks to the best exploration team that a CEO can dream of, we are now committed to build a outstanding team of experts in industrial and mining development which will launch the company into a new phase of growth."

GRANT OF OPTIONS

The Corporation announces the grant of 75,000 options to each of the three consultants mentioned above for a total of 225,000 options. Each option shall entitle its holder thereof to subscribe for one common share of the Corporation, at a price of $0.20 per common share, for a period of five years from the date of grant. These options will vest one quarter at issuance and by period of three months until December 18, 2016. These options were granted in accordance with the terms of the current stock option plan of the Corporation.

The press release was reviewed by Eric Desaulniers, M.Sc., P.Geo., President and CEO of Nouveau Monde, a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 guidelines.

Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) has in any way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction or approved or disapproved the contents of this press release.

Except for historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated by such statements. Nouveau Monde will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect financial results is included in the documents filed from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities by Nouveau Monde.

Contacts:

Eric Desaulniers, M.Sc., P.Geo.

President and Chief Executive Officer of Nouveau Monde

(819) 923-0333






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A flight carrying U.S. direct mail to Cuba took off Wednesday, for the first time in 50 years.



It includes a letter from President Barack Obama addressed to a 76-year-old letter writer in Cuba.



It was a personal response from Obama to Ileana Yarza, that will reach the island before he touches down in Havana on Sunday.



Ileana, who has been waiting for the President to visit her country for years, wrote a letter to him on February 18.



'I heard last night by telesur -- not the Cuban broadcast news -- that you will visit Havana in March. I could not be happier to hear this.'



'An American president finally taking this so much needed step, the second best one after your open admittance that the over half a century cruel embargo on this lovely, enduring and resilient little island just did not work. We Cubans believe it's a black page on American history and geopolitics. Very sorry to say this...'



'I think there are not many Cubans so eager as I to meet you in person, not as an important American personality, but as a charming president whose open smile wins hearts.'



And Obama sent her a reply:



'Dear Ileana:



Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate your support over the years, and I hope this note -- which will reach you by way of the first direct mail flight between the United States and Cuba in over 50 years -- serves as a reminder of a bright new chapter in the relationship between our two nations.



I am looking forward to visiting Havana to foster this relationship and highlight our shared values -- and, hopefully, I will have time to enjoy a cup of Cuban coffee.



Sincerely,



Barack Obama'



An American president has not traveled to Cuba in almost 90 years. But on March 20, President Obama will set his foot on the island country that's only 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The visit is a historic milestone after Obama announced in 2014 he was abandoning a failed, Cold War-era approach to Cuba in favor of a new course to normalize relations.



Since then, the US Government restored non-stop flights between the two countries, helped facilitate more people-to-people interaction and commercial enterprise, and allowed U.S. dollars to be used in more financial transactions with Cuba.



The types of mail that customers in the United States can send to Cuba include First-Class Mail International items, First-Class Package International Service items, Priority Mail International Flat Rate Envelopes and Priority Mail International Small Flat Rate Priced Boxes.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - In yet another demonstration of anti-Trump feeling in America, Jewish religious leaders have decided not to attend a major pro-Israeli conference to be held in Washington on Monday, where Donald Trump is scheduled to speak. Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky, who are leading a protest campaign 'Come Together Against Hate', said in a statement they are boycotting the business tycoon as he is sowing seeds of hatred. With several groups organising boycotts, The Rabbis have made it clear that they do not want to disrupt the meeting, but to shed a moral light on the darkness that has enveloped Mr Trump's campaign. Rabbis, Cantors, Jewish Professionals and other members of the Jewish community were expected to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Scott + Scott, Attorneys at Law, LLP, a global investor rights law firm, reminds investors that March 21, 2016 is the last day to file lead plaintiff papers in the securities lawsuit against Nobilis Health Corp. (NYSE MKT: HLTH). Nobilis investors are encouraged to contact Scott + Scott at (866) 326-5057 or email gjohnson@scott-scott.com to discuss their legal rights.

About the Lawsuit

The securities complaint alleges that defendants issued materially false and misleading statements to investors and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Nobilis' financial statements contained numerous errors concerning the classification of warrants and options, business combination accounting, share-based compensation, and other financial and operating results; (2) Nobilis overstated its net income for the year ended December 31, 2014 by more than $4 million; (3) Nobilis overstated its net income for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 by more than $3.27 million; and (4) as a result, defendants' statements about Nobilis' business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

What you can do

If you purchased shares of Nobilis stock, you may have legal claims against the Company. If you want to discuss filing lead plaintiff papers, or have questions about your legal rights, please contact Geoffrey M. Johnson, Esq. or Joseph Halloran, Esq. by telephone at (866) 326-5057 or by email at gjohnson@scott-scott.com or jhalloran@scott-scott.com.

About Scott + Scott, Attorneys at Law, LLP

Scott + Scott has significant experience prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and employee retirement plan actions throughout the United States. The firm has offices in New York, London, Connecticut, California and Ohio. Please visit www.scott-scott.com for more information about the firm.

CONTACT:



Scott + Scott, Attorneys at Law, LLP

Geoffrey M. Johnson, Esq.

Joseph Halloran, Esq.

(216) 229-6088, toll-free (866) 326-5057

gjohnson@scott-scott.com

jhalloran@scott-scott.com




MOSCOW, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. updates Elcomsoft System Recovery, a tool for IT security specialists and forensic examiners to unlock access to users' Windows accounts. The tool enables recovering or instantly resetting Windows account passwords. The new release adds support for Windows 8, 8.1, 10. In addition to recovering local passwords, the updated release adds the ability to unlock Windows logins protected with the new Microsoft Account, and allows exporting hashed passwords to enable offline attacks to recover plain-text passwords to the user's Microsoft Account. Access to information available in the cloud authenticated with Microsoft Account can be invaluable during forensic investigations.

The new release comes ready to use, and includes a custom boot image based on a customized Windows PE environment. ElcomSoft customizations include many additional drivers to support the widest range of hardware configurations including last-generation chipsets.

Microsoft Account Support

The new release now supports Windows accounts authenticated via cloud-based Microsoft Account, an authentication mechanism introduced in Windows 8 and actively pushed in Windows 10. Since Microsoft Account credentials are authenticated online on Microsoft servers, resetting or recovering the original Microsoft Account password may not be available. Elcomsoft System Recovery instantly resets the locally cached copy of the Microsoft Account password stored on the user's PC, or exports hashed passwords to allow attacking the original password.

"Microsoft is pushing online authentication with its cloud-based Microsoft Account," says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft CEO. "Since Windows 8, Microsoft Account is a viable and recommended authentication option designed to replace local Windows accounts. In this release, we were able to add support for unlocking accounts protected with this type of authentication."

As opposed to local Windows accounts, Microsoft Account credentials are stored remotely on Microsoft servers, and are authenticated online. However, since Internet connectivity may not be always available to the user, a local copy of the password hash is stored locally to provide offline authentication. Elcomsoft System Recovery makes use of the local cache to reset the password and switch account type back to local (offline) authentication. Since the product comes with its own Windows PE-based bootable environment, the tool has no problem accessing, modifying or resetting accounts even if the original password is not known.

In addition to instantly resetting the password, Elcomsoft System Recovery comes with the ability to export hashed passwords in order for the expert to perform an attack on the original Microsoft Account password using Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery or another forensic tool. By recovering that password, experts gain access to large amounts of information stored in Microsoft and third-party services authenticated via Microsoft Account. These services include Skype, Hotmail, and OneDrive. In addition, Microsoft Account can unlock access to Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile backups, synced browsing history, favorites and form data including passwords to online services and social networks.

About Microsoft Account

Microsoft Account (previously known as Windows Live ID) is a single sign-on solution provided by Microsoft that covers a wide range of services. Users who choose to sign in to Windows 8, 8.1 or Windows 10 with their Microsoft Account instead of using a local Windows account automatically gain access to a range of backup and synchronization options. Microsoft Account employs users' email and password (as opposed to username and password used for local Windows accounts). Microsoft Account is used as a single sign-on for a number of Microsoft services such as Hotmail, OneDrive, Skype, as well as third-party service providers authenticating via Microsoft Account.

About Elcomsoft System Recovery

Elcomsoft System Recovery is a must-have Windows management tool for system administrators, IT security and forensic experts for unlocking access to Windows accounts. The tool has everything needed to recover the original Windows password or instantly reset account passwords. By recovering the original password, experts gain access to EFS-encrypted data, while resetting account password allows for a quick login.

Elcomsoft System Recovery can be used to export hashed Microsoft Account passwords, enabling offline brute-force attacks on original, plain-text password. GPU-assisted attacks are available with Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery and similar tools. By recovering Microsoft Account password, experts can gain access to services authenticated via Microsoft Account such as Skype, Hotmail, OneDrive, Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile backups, synced browsing history, favorites, form data and passwords.

Elcomsoft System Recovery is ready to use even if the original Windows installation is locked out. Supplied with a licensed Windows PE environment, Elcomsoft System Recovery is ready to boot, enabling instant access to user and administrative accounts. The boot environment is supplied with a number of additional drivers to support newest and legacy hardware configurations including PCs equipped with last-generation chipsets.

The tool can be used to perform a number of administrative tasks such as assigning administrative privileges to any user, reset or disable password expiration options, unlock and enable accounts, and dump hashed passwords from SAM/SYSTEM files or Active Directory databases.

Compatibility

Elcomsoft System Recovery runs on all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, as well as corresponding Windows Server versions. The tool supports local, Active Directory and Microsoft accounts.

Pricing and Availability

Elcomsoft System Recovery is available immediately. Standard ($99) and Professional ($299) editions are available. Local pricing varies.

About ElcomSoft Co. Ltd.

Founded in 1990, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. develops state-of-the-art computer forensics tools, provides computer forensics training and computer evidence consulting services. Since 1997, ElcomSoft has been providing support to businesses, law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies. ElcomSoft tools are used by most of the Fortune 500 corporations, multiple branches of the military all over the world, foreign governments, and all major accounting firms. ElcomSoft is a Microsoft Partner (Gold Application Development), Intel Premier Elite Partner and member of NVIDIA's CUDA/GPU Computing Registered Developer Program.
Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors for the global platform as a service (PaaS) marketin their latest research report. This report also lists 12 other prominent vendors who are expected to contribute to this market's growth over the forecast period.

To identify the top vendors, Technavio's market research analysts have considered the top contributors to the overall revenue of this market. To calculate the market size, it considers the total revenue generated from the following:

Software licenses and subscriptions

Software implementation and maintenance costs

Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1UXC9Op

"Organizations worldwide are looking for flexible and cost-efficient cloud capabilities. With the evolution of cloud technology, cloud PaaS vendors are looking for ways to leverage the cloud hardware, virtualization, and workload management capabilities of cloud computing. Hence, the PaaS market is witnessing software modularity and loosely coupled application deployment and management," said Amrita Choudhury, one of Technavio's lead research analysts for enterpriseapplication

"These cloud-computing abilities are helping end-users adopt a lean application environment for fast and flexible application delivery. In addition, these trends are aiding organizations in reducing capital and operational expenditure ensuring better control and security," added Amrita.

Five leading vendors in the global PaaS market:

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services was established in 2006 and is headquartered at Seattle, US. They provide IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services. Their products and solutions include application services, deployment and management, storage and content delivery, cloud computing, mobile services, applications, networking, databases, and analytics.

Amazon Web Services operate an estimated 1.4 million servers across 28 zones. In 2015, the company partnered with Community Energy to support the construction and operation of a 80 megawatt solar farm in Accomack County, US, called Amazon Solar Farm US East.

Google

Google was established in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California, US. The company specializes in internet services and products that include search, online advertising technologies, cloud computing, and software. As of December 2014, the company had 53,600 employees. Google spent close to USD 9.8 billion in R&D in 2014. The company reported a net revenue of USD 55.52 billion in FY2013 and USD 66 billion in FY2014.

Google offers high level of durability and availability. Their services are primarily designed for use in cases requiring frequent data access and low latency such as serving interactive workloads, website content, data supporting mobile, and gaming applications. Google also provides better availability when compared to other storage classes with slightly higher storage cost.

Pivotal Software

Pivotal Software was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, US. The company offers agile development services, an open cloud platform and opens a suite of big data products. They serve diverse industries such as automotive, education, healthcare, financial services, insurance, Internet services, public sector, retail, technology, telecom, and media.

Pivotal cloud foundry operates as an open PaaS service provider and offers developer frameworks and application services. Their offerings include features such as multi-cloud, multi-vendor, and open source. It is built for quick-cycle innovation of cloud applications.

Salesforce

Salesforce was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, US. The company provides enterprise cloud computing solutions with a key focus on customer relationship management. The company delivers its solutions as a service through major Internet browsers and on leading mobile devices.

Salesforce operates as a platform for Salesforce automation that enables companies to store data, access customers, prospect information, track leads, forecast opportunities, and collaborate around any sale on desktop and mobile devices.

The company's service cloud Functions as a customer service platform that enables companies to effectively meet their customer service and support needs. The clients use the service cloud to connect their customer service agents with consumers through multiple channels and devices, including phone, e-mail, chat, self-service web portals, social networks, online communities, and directly with their own products and apps.

CloudBees

CloudBees was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Delaware, US. The company operates with an open source business model, as well as develops, and deploys enterprise applications. The CloudBees Jenkins Platform is a fully featured technology platform for implementing continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) products. CloudBees is funded by Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Verizon Ventures.

In June 2015, Cloudbees announced that its CloudBees Jenkins Platform will run on Amazon Web Services' EC2 cloud service. This integration offers CloudBees customers the ability to scale their CD deployments by shifting Jenkins' compute-intensive jobs and resources to Amazon's EC2 cloud. It also enables Amazon Web Service customers using EC2 to use enterprise-level Jenkins solutions in their software delivery processes.

Browse related reports:

Global IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) Market 2015-2019

Global Digital Learning Devices Market 2016-2020

Global SaaS-based Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Market 2015-2019

Purchase three reports from our library for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005012/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com

media@technavio.com
The largest plants and storage projects in Africa and South America; new bigger tender announcements, rising shipments and increasing production capacities; research on more and more effective PV solutions, and, as usual, even more ambitious pledges and bigger plans for the future. What would Dr. Freud say about this size preoccupation in the PV industry? Let's hope that even Freud would put his skepticism aside if he followed the latest PV news coming from Africa. Literally the sunniest part of the world is waking up to the solar opportunities with the largest East African PV plant being constructed in Uganda and the largest battery storage unit to be built in Kenya. Sun rises in Africa. Finally Obviously, what is considered "largest" for the region is rather tiny on a global scale. In Kenya, the British company Solarcentury is building three PV plants with a total capacity of 1,154 kW. One of them will include a solar battery storage system that Solarcentury claims will be East Africa's largest. The storage system will reduce the long term cost of energy, by allowing the PV system to provide up to 40% of the site's energy, as opposed to 15% without the battery storage system, Solarcentury's Senior Design Engineer for hybrid energy systems Andrew Crossland told pv magazine. The largest solar farm in the region, a 10 MW plant in Uganda, is set to be finished in mid-July. In the country with an 18.2% electrification rate, politicians have finally been pressured to put more effort into power generation, as more and more people moving from the low-income to middle-income category. Even more ambitious plans for Africa's "brighter future" have been voiced at Solar Show Africa 2016 in Johannesburg. At the two-day event visitors and experts from various African markets discussed the way to hit some really big goals, such as empowering 600 million Africans without access to electricity. Ready for more Latin America, another region that aims to expand its presence on a world PV map, also had some "large" news to announce this week. In Argentina, the government of La Rioja province signs MoU with a German investors to develop three PV plants with a total capacity of 700 MW. The projects are said to be carried out in the next two years and represent an investment of $1.4 billion. Meanwhile, in Chile solar PV rose to 2.8% in the energy mix. The country now has 1.056 GW of installed solar capacity, and is getting ready to add 2.082 GW between March 2016 ...

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CHARLESTON, SC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Royal Energy Resources, Inc. ("Royal") (OTCQB: ROYE) is pleased to announce that effective March 17, 2016 it has assumed control of Rhino Resource Partners, LP ("Rhino") (OTCQB: RHNO), with the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding membership interests of Rhino GP LLC, the general partner of Rhino, as well as 9,455,252 issued and outstanding Subordinated Units from Wexford Capital LP ("Wexford").

The Subordinated Units purchased by Royal represent 76.5% of the issued and outstanding Subordinated Units of Rhino, and when combined with the Common Units acquired by Royal from Wexford on January 21, 2016, result in Royal owning 55.4% of the outstanding Units of Rhino. As a result of the transaction, Royal has obtained majority ownership interest and control of Rhino.

The acquisition was closed in two separate transactions in order for Royal to secure the requisite change of control under Rhino's $90 million senior secured credit agreement with its lenders. Royal was granted the change of control and the parties closed concurrently with the lenders' approval.

William Tuorto, Royal's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We believe Rhino represents one of the few remaining value plays; a company with high-quality assets, limited debt, cash flow positive, and a strong book value. Rhino's management team is incredibly proficient, and we look forward to working with them to continue to optimize their assets and operations."

About Rhino Resource Partners, LP

Rhino Resource Partners, LP is a diversified energy company focused on coal and energy related assets and activities, including energy infrastructure investments. Rhino operated nine mines, including four underground and five surface mines, located in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Utah. In addition to operating coal properties, Rhino manages and leases coal properties and collect royalties from those management and leasing activities. Rhino's business includes investments in oilfield services for independent oil and natural gas producers and land-based drilling contractors in North America. The investments provide completion and production services including pressure pumping, pressure control, flowback, and equipment rental services, as well as produces and sell natural sand proppant for hydraulic fracturing.

Rhino currently controls an estimated 480.0 million tons of proven and probable coal reserves, consisting of an estimated 425.1 million tons of steam coal and an estimated 54.9 million tons of metallurgical coal. Rhino also controls an estimated 290.0 million tons of non-reserve coal deposits. Additional information regarding Rhino is available on its web site -- www.rhinolp.com

About Royal Energy Resources, Inc.

Royal Energy Resources, Inc. is focused on the acquisition of coal, oil and gas, and renewable energy assets. Royal believes that current market conditions present a rare opportunity to purchase high-quality assets at a fraction of their book or enterprise values. Additional information regarding Royal is available on its web site -- www.royalenergy.us

Forward Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 relating to matters such as prospects, anticipated operating and financial performance. Actual prospects and performance may differ from anticipated results due to economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and circumstances partly or totally outside the control of the Company. These and other risks are described in the Company's reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this communication and Royal Energy Resources, Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Royal undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by law.

Investor Contact:

William Tuorto

+1 843-900-7693

info@royalenergy.us




Mr Thomas is chairman of the board of directors of BACIT (UK) Limited, the FCA regulated firm that manages the assets of BACIT Limited. Jeremy Tigue, chairman of BACIT Limited said "Martin has been instrumental in establishing BACIT (UK) Limited having been part of the team that founded BACIT in 2012. His contribution as a director of the fund has been much appreciated, and we look forward to continue working with him as chair of our appointed fund manager in the years to come".

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.
According to the latest research study released by Technavio, the point-of-care testing (POCT) market in the US is expected to reach over USD 10,534 million by 2019.

This research report titled 'POCT Market in the US 2015-2019', provides an in-depth analysis of market growth in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments that include, blood glucose testing, infectious disease testing, cardiac marker testing, pregnancy and fertility testing, blood gas/electrolyte testing, tumor marker testing, urinalysis testing, cholesterol testing.

Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1LfYlRX

"Improvements in molecular diagnostic technologies have led to the development of a wider range of POCT products. These devices reduce the waiting time for test results, leading to fewer or no follow-up visits, thus improving healthcare accessibility among patients," said Barath Palada, one of Technavio's lead analysts for diagnostics research

Individuals are increasingly using home-based POCT devices such as ACCU-CHEK self-monitoring blood glucose device to conduct their own tests. The growing popularity of POC testing at home is therefore leading to the development of various home-based tests such as pregnancy tests, fecal occult blood assays, ovulation predictors, and blood glucose monitors," added Barath.

Top segments of the POCT market in the US:

Blood glucose testing

Infectious disease testing

Cardiac marker testing

Blood glucose testing market in US: largest revenue contributor

The blood glucose testing market in the US was valued at close to USD 4,384.9 million in 2014. The blood glucose testing market in the US is growing at a significant pace because of increasing cases of diabetes. Rise in the aging population in US is also anticipated to further propel the growth of this market until 2019. Technological advances are predicted to boost the growth of this market during this period. For instance, LifeScan, part of Johnson Johnson, has developed a blood glucose monitor that can send results wirelessly to an iPhone, iPad, or to iTouch. Some of the other products available in the market are Roche's Accu-Chek and Bayer's Contour Plus. Abbott has increased its market share with its hybrid glucose monitoring system, Libre Flash Glucose monitor, as it is designed with a sensor that enables wireless pick up data.

Infectious disease testing market in US: second largest revenue contributor

Infectious diseases are disorders that are caused by pathogenic organisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, or parasites. Infectious diseases such as influenza, HIV, hepatitis, malaria, and others can be detected easily by using POCT devices. The infectious disease testing segment accounted for 9.48% of the POCT market in the US in 2014.

Increasing incidences of sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, and respiratory diseases are the main factors that drive the growth of the infectious disease testing market in the US. As per estimates, there were close to 1,401,906 reported cases of chlamydia, 17,375 cases of syphilis, and 333,004 cases of gonorrhea reported in the US in 2013.

Sexually transmitted diseases pose a significant health challenge in the country as 20 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases occur every year in this country. For the treatment of these diseases, rapid diagnostic techniques such as Alere's Determine HBsAg, ImmunoComb HBSAg, and Axis-Shield Heparin Binding Protein are expected to significantly drive the POCT market in the US over the next four years.

Coagulation testing market in US

Coagulation testing helps in the assessment of viscoelastic properties of the blood. It helps measure the clotting process, which includes fibrin formation, regulation of blood flow, and clot retraction. Fibrinolysis is a process that prevents naturally occurring blood clots from growing and causing problems. Anticoagulant drugs prevent clumping of blood platelets and decrease chances of arteries being blocked by a clot. The coagulation testing segment held a share of close to 4.88% of the POCT market in the US in 2014.

The coagulation testing market in the US is growing due to the prominence it has gained in the assessment of the viscoelastic properties of the blood. Factor X, activated clotting time, bleeding time, and Protein C tests are few coagulation tests that are available in this device category. Hence, the adopting of these devices is expected to help market grow over the forecast period.

Browse related reports:

Global Infectious Disease Diagnostic Testing Market 2015-2019

Clinical Diagnostics Market in APAC Market Analysis 2015-2019

Global Oncology Molecular Diagnostics Market 2015-2019

Purchase any three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

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Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com

media@technavio.com
TOKYO, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Moody's Investor Services, the US credit ratings agency, moved to downgrade its outlook on China to "negative" from "stable". Just a few days before the country's National People's Congress assembles to decide on implementation of its 13th 5-year plan, one would have expected such a profound decision to be accompanied by a suitably sharp dip in the Shanghai Composite and yet ... nothing.

Well, actually, that's not quite true since both the Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Composite ended their sessions more than 4% higher than where they began. This raises the question: does anyone really care what Moody's thinks about China? You'll no doubt remember Moody's and its two main rivals in the world of credit ratings, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, from the monumental subprime debacle. All three of these agencies were paid - BY THE ISSUERS - to give AAA investment grade ratings to packaged CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) containing mortgage loans that had been granted to borrowers without proof of income. Those ratings reassured investors who bought them hand over fist; when the US housing market imploded, those CDOs found themselves at the center of a liquidity and confidence crisis that almost destroyed the global financial system.

Their outlook downgrade revolves, it seems, around doubts they harbor over Beijing's ability to push through structural reforms designed to put China's economy on a more sustainable footing. The most visible of these reforms is the ongoing drive to rebalance the economy away from what has been an excessive reliance upon exports towards a bias on domestic consumption and services. For the most part, that transition has been proceeding in an orderly fashion. Indeed, exports have fallen while consumption has increased considerably.

"We couldn't really put our finger on what Moody's found so objectionable," noted Frank Temple who, Vice President of Corporate Trading at Mizuho Financial Global who oversees $1.5bn in client funds. "The service sector now accounts for just shy of half of China's GDP." But Moody's cited other concerns including the sharp decline in China's foreign currency reserves as raising a question over the sustainability of the People's Bank of China's (PBoC) efforts to defend the country's currency, the renminbi.

Granted, the PBoC has spent $762 billion of its reserves of $3.3 TRILLION in the foreign exchange markets but how, exactly, is this a source of anxiety for Moody's or any Western investors? Western concerns over Chinese monetary policy are ludicrously misplaced. The PBoC are nowhere near exhausting the limits of what conventional monetary policy can achieve.

"With benchmark rates at over 4%, they still have room to maneuver; compare 4% with the US Fed Funds rate or the ECB's deposit rate and one could remark that Moody's should be looking closer to home," added Frank Temple.

"Rather than joining Moody's and agonizing over China's economy, Mizuho Financial Global are busy preparing to upgrade their ratings on a slew of Chinese mainland stocks that they expect to perform well over the next 12 months as the Chinese economy improves," concluded Frank Temple.

About Mizuho Financial Global:

Mizuho Financial Global is an independent, full-service brokerage, wealth management and business management concern dedicated to providing pioneering capital appreciation and wealth preservation solutions to affluent individuals and families and businesses.

Without exception, we place the welfare of our clients first and foremost and we take great pride in knowing that we are the first port of call for their investment and financial affairs. We constantly exceed our clients' expectations by going the extra mile to deliver the service and, most importantly, the returns on investment their patronage demands.

The operations based at our headquarters inTokyo, Japanare responsible for the diligent oversight of more than$4.5 billion-worth of assets on behalf of valued clients located inAsiaandEurope.

http://www.mizuhoglobal.com


BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss stock market ended Friday's session in the red, brining its losing streak to four consecutive sessions. The continued decline results in a significant loss for the week.



The Swiss market got off to a weak start Friday and gave up more ground as the session wore on. Another drop in the pharmaceutical heavyweights pressured the overall market. Meanwhile, shares of the big banks recovered some of their recent losses.



The Swiss Market Index decreased 0.61 percent Friday and finished at 7,813.68. The SMI ended the trading week with an overall loss of 2.3 percent. The Swiss Leader Index fell 0.50 percent and the Swiss Performance Index lost 0.46 percent.



Roche dropped 1.9 percent and Novartis weakened by 1.4 percent. The stocks extended their significant losses from the previous session. Fellow pharma stock Actelion was under even more intense pressure Friday, with a loss of 5.5 percent.



On its final day of trading in the SMI, shares of Transocean declined 4.7 percent. The stock will be delisted from the Swiss stock exchange at the end of the month and will then only be traded in the U.S. Swiss Life will take its place in the index. Swiss Life fell 1.1 percent Friday.



As for the rest of the insurance stocks, Zurich Insurance surrendered 0.4 percent and Swiss Re decreased 0.7 percent. Baloise ended the day with a gain of 0.3 percent.



Sika dropped 3.0 percent Givaudan declined 2.9 percent. Geberit finished lower by 1.8 percent, after HSBC downgraded its rating on the stock to 'Hold' from 'Buy.'



The banks were among the best performing stocks at the end of the trading week. Credit Suisse advanced 2.4 percent and UBS climbed 1.6 percent. Notable gains also came from LafargeHolcim, which increased 2.1 percent. Aryzta rose 2.0 percent and Richemont added 1.5 percent.



In the broad market, Sunrise surged 6.1 percent after Germany's Freenet took a major stake in the telecom company.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Notice is hereby given that on the initiative and by the resolution of the Board of AB Klaipedos Nafta, legal entity code 110648893, with the registered office at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda (hereinafter, the Company), from 18 March 2016, an ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company will be held on 26 April 2016 at 1:00 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Company's offices at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda, in the administrative premises of the Company (in the hall of the meeting on the 2nd Floor).Agenda of the meeting:1. On the announcement of the Auditor's Report regarding the Financial Statements and Annual Report of the Company for the year 2015 to the shareholders.2. On the announcement of the Annual Report of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015 to the shareholders.3. On the approval of the audited Financial Statements of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.4. On the appropriation of profit (loss) of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.The shareholders will be registered from 12.00 a.m. to 12.55 a.m. The persons intending to participate in the meeting shall have a personal ID document (an authorised representative shall have additionally a proxy approved under the established procedure. The natural person's proxy shall be notarised. A proxy issued in a foreign state shall be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalised under the procedure prescribed by laws).A shareholder or his proxy shall have the right to vote in writing in advance by filling in a general ballot paper. At the request of the shareholder, the Company shall send a general ballot paper to the shareholder by registered mail free of charge at least 10 days before the meeting. The filled-in general ballot paper and the document attesting the voting right shall be submitted to the Company no later than until the meeting, sending by registered mail or providing them at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice.The shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes may propose additions to the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders by submitting with every proposed additional item of the agenda a draft resolution of the general meeting of shareholders or, when no resolution is required, an explanation. Proposals on addition to the agenda shall be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt. The agenda shall be supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the ordinary general meeting of shareholders. If the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders is supplemented, the Company shall notify on the additions no later than 10 days before the meeting in the same ways as in the case of convocation of the meeting.The shareholders, who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes, at any time before the general meeting of shareholders or during the meeting, may propose new draft resolutions on items which are or will be included in the agenda of the meeting. The proposals may be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt.The shareholders shall have the right to submit to the Company in advance questions relating to the items on the agenda of the meeting. The shareholders may submit their written questions to the Company on business days or send by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice no later than 3 business days before the meeting. The Company will reply to the questions by e-mail or in writing before the meeting, except the questions which are related to the Company's commercial (industrial) secret, confidential information or which have been submitted later than 3 business days before the meeting.The Company does not provide the possibility of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications means.The Shareholder shall have the right to authorize through electronic communications means another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the meeting on behalf of the shareholder. No notarisation of such authorization is required. The shareholder must confirm the proxy issued through electronic communications means by an electronic signature developed by a secure signature-creation device and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the proxy issued through electronic communications means to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and r.valunas@oil.lt no later than until the last business day before the meeting at 1:00 p.m. The proxy and the notice must be issued in writing. The proxy and the notice to the Company shall be signed with the electronic signature but not the letter sent by e-mail. By submitting the notice to the Company, the shareholder shall include the internet address from which it would be possible to download software free of charge to verify the shareholder's electronic signature.The record date of the meeting shall be 19 April 2016 (only those persons who will be shareholders of the Company at the close of the record date of the general meeting of shareholders or their authorised persons, or persons with whom an agreement on assignment of the voting right has been executed, may participate and vote at the general meeting of shareholders).The shareholders of the Company may familiarise with the draft resolution of the meeting and the form of the general ballot paper under the procedure prescribed by laws in the registered office of the Company at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda (tel.: 8 46 391636), or on the Company's website at http://www.oil.lt/. The following information and documents shall be provided on the abovementioned internet website of the Company:- the notification on convocation of the meeting;- total number of the Company's shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the meeting.Enclosed:1. Draft decision of the General Meeting of Shareholders.2. General voting ballot paper of the General Meeting of Shareholders.3. Financial Statements of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015, prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards, as adopted by the European Union, presented together with the Independent Auditor's Report and Annual Report for the year 2015;4. Draft appropriation of profit (loss) of Klaipedos nafta, AB for the year 2015.Marius Pulkauninkas, Director of Finance and Administration Department, +370 46 391 763.Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=552470
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Republican voters are divided over whether Senators should hold hearings on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, according to the results of a new Morning Consult poll. However, the poll found that a plurality of GOP voters think the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold hearings on Merrick Garland's nomination. Forty-three percent of Republican voters said the committee should hold hearings, while 34 percent said the committee should not hold hearings. Another 23 percent said they didn't know or had no opinion. Among all voters, 48 percent said the committee should hold hearings. The figure included 56 percent of Democratic voters and 42 percent of independents. Forty-seven percent of all voters also said the Senate should actually vote on Garland's nomination, including 63 percent of Democrats, 39 percent of independents, and 36 percent of Republicans. The Morning Consult survey of 2,011 registered voters was conducted March 16th through 18th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 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.
A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating of A (Excellent) and the issuer credit rating of "a" of Compania Internacional de Seguros, S.A. (CIS) (Panama City, Panama). The outlook for both ratings is stable.

The ratings reflect CIS' excellent risk-adjusted capitalization, historically positive technical and bottom line results, its leading position in Panama's insurance market, its strong reinsurance program and solid risk-management practices. Partially offsetting these positive rating factors are the challenges CIS faces operating in a relatively limited and increasingly competitive insurance market, as well as its concentration in Panama, which A.M. Best considers to have an elevated level of country risk (CRT-4).

In 2015, CIS was able to maintain its positive operating performance with a combined ratio of 91.7% and a return on premiums of 15.2%. These results are largely boosted by the continued strong performance of its group life and health businesses. In addition, CIS' automobile line of business improved its performance due to a mix of improved underwriting, new innovative products and CIS' strategic focus on specific niches. Financial income continues to support CIS' results while it maintains a sound risk profile; however, the company is not dependent on these revenues in order to achieve positive bottom line results. CIS continues to underperform in its fire business, mainly derived from strong competition in this business line, which is also generating losses in this industry segment. Although the overall performance of the company is strong, it constantly reviews its underwriting guidelines in order to improve the performance of business segments that are deviating from targets.

CIS' growth was in line with Panama's insurance industry; the company was able to achieve this growth given its brand recognition. CIS' capitalization is very strong and is expected to remain stable in the upcoming years.

Despite the many positive characteristics of CIS, the ratings are still limited by the competitive environment present in the market, as well as A.M. Best's perception of the country risk in Panama. Positive factors that might improve the current rating level or outlook include improvements in Panama's risk profile in combination with a stable upward trend in CIS' profitability while maintaining supportive risk-adjusted capitalization. Factors that might lead to negative rating actions include protracted adverse underwriting and overall performance, a significant deterioration in its risk-adjusted capitalization or a downgrade of Panama's country risk tier rating.

The methodology used in determining these ratings is Best's Credit Rating Methodology, which provides a comprehensive explanation of A.M. Best's rating process and contains the different rating criteria employed in the rating process. Best's Credit Rating Methodology can be found at www.ambest.com/ratings/methodology.

Key insurance criteria reports utilized:

Catastrophe Analysis in A.M. Best Ratings

Evaluating Country Risk

Insurance Holding Company and Debt Ratings

Rating Members of Insurance Groups

Risk Management and the Rating Process for Insurance Companies

Understanding Universal BCAR

View a general description of the policies and procedures used to determine credit ratings. Also in accordance with Mexican regulations, the following is a link to required disclosures A.M. Best America Latina Supplementary Disclosure.

Previous Rating Date: March 31, 2015

Date of Financial Data Used: September 30, 2015

This press release relates to rating(s) that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For additional rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page.

A.M. Best's credit ratings are independent and objective opinions, not statements of fact. A.M. Best is not an Investment Advisor, does not offer investment advice of any kind, nor does the company or its Ratings Analysts offer any form of structuring or financial advice. A.M. Best's credit opinions are not recommendations to buy, sell or hold securities, or to make any other investment decisions. View our entire notice for complete details.

A.M. Best receives compensation for interactive rating services provided to organizations that it rates. A.M. Best may also receive compensation from rated entities for non-rating related services or products offered by A.M. Best. A.M. Best does not offer consulting or advisory services. For more information regarding A.M. Best's rating process, including handling of confidential (non-public) information, independence, and avoidance of conflicts of interest, please read the A.M. Best Code of Conduct

A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright 2016 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160318005934/en/

Contacts:

A.M. Best

Salvador Smith, +52 55 1102 2720, ext. 109

Associate Financial Analyst

salvador.smith@ambest.com

or

Alfonso Novelo, +52 55 1102 2720, ext. 107

Director, Analytics

alfonso.novelo@ambest.com

or

Christopher Sharkey, +1 908 439 2200, ext. 5159

Manager, Public Relations

christopher.sharkey@ambest.com

or

Jim Peavy, +1 908 439 2200, ext. 5644

Assistant Vice President, Public Relations

james.peavy@ambest.com
Momar Nguer began his career in 1982 in Hewlett Packard France's Finance Department. He joined Total in 1984, serving in various Downstream positions. He was named Vice President, Marketing at Total Senegal in 1985 and appointed Vice President, Retail Network & Consumers of Total in Africa in 1991.

In 1995, Momar Nguer became Chief Executive Officer of the marketing affiliate Total Cameroun and was subsequently named Chief Executive Officer of the marketing affiliate Total Kenya in 1997.

In 2000, he was appointed Executive Vice President, Total East Africa Indian Ocean in Total's Refining Marketing business.

From 2007 to 2011, he was Vice President, Aviation Fuel at Total Refining Marketing.

Momar Nguer has been Senior Vice President, Africa and The Middle East at Total Marketing Services since December 2011. He was appointed to the Group Performance Management Committee in January 2012, and Chairman of the Group Diversity Council on August 1, 2015.

Momar Nguer, 59, is a graduate of France's ESSEC business school.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Brookfield High Yield Strategic Income Fund (TSX: BHY.UN) announces a distribution of C$0.1625 per unit for the quarter ending March 31, 2016. The distribution will be paid on or before April 15, 2016 to holders of record on March 31, 2016.

Brookfield Investment Management (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser providing real assets public securities strategies including global listed real estate and infrastructure equities as well as corporate credit and securitized credit. With nearly $17 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2015, the Firm manages institutional separate accounts, registered funds and other investment products for clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net-worth investors. Headquartered in New York, NY, the Firm and its affiliates also maintain offices in Boston, Chicago, London and Toronto.

The Fund is managed by Brookfield Investment Management. The Fund uses its website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Fund is routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfieldim.com.

Brookfield Investment Management is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $225 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2015. For more information, go to www.Brookfield.com.

For more information, please visit www.brookfieldim.com.

Contacts:

Investor Relations

(855) 777-8001

funds@brookfield.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/18/16 -- Brookfield New Horizons Income Fund (CNSX: BIF.UN) announces a distribution of C$0.20 per unit for the quarter ending March 31, 2016. The distribution will be paid on or before April 15, 2016 to holders of record on March 31, 2016.

Brookfield Investment Management (Canada) Inc., an affiliate of Brookfield Investment Management Inc. (collectively "the Firm"), is the manager and investment manager of the Fund.

The Firm provides real assets public securities strategies including global listed real estate and infrastructure equities as well as corporate credit and securitized credit. With nearly $17 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2015, the Firm manages institutional separate accounts, registered funds and other investment products for clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net-worth investors. Headquartered in New York, NY, the Firm and its affiliates also maintain offices in Boston, Chicago, London and Toronto.

The Fund uses its website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Fund is routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfieldim.com.

The Firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $225 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2015. For more information, go to www.Brookfield.com.

Contacts:

Brookfield New Horizons Income Fund

Investor Relations

(855) 777-8001

funds@brookfield.com

www.brookfieldim.com




KANSAS CITY, MO--(Marketwired - March 18, 2016) - Founder of CTK Group, Chris Kamberis has highlighted some of the trends that experts look at when making investments in commercial property. Locally, the Kansas City, MO, unemployment rates continue to lower from 2009 levels of 10.9% to its current 6.3%. Kamberis feels that the drop in unemployment and strong fundamental trends are helping support the robust Kansas City real estate market and driving property prices upward. The success of CTK Group has been based on its process of examining and analyzing all aspects of the potential property development projects, from local vacancy availability and its proximity to amenities, to trends in rental yields.

Vacancy rates provide an overall view of the supply and demand for commercial real estate in a given location. However, investors also require knowledge for which projects are currently underway and will increase the supply of property and the relative appeal of each building. Chris Kamberis highlights pedestrian traffic as providing a boost in the attractiveness of commercial properties. CTK Group uses its detailed knowledge of the market in Kansas City, which allows them to interpret trends and identify the next successful project. "The reinvigoration of the downtown districts has kept commercial properties leaving the rental books in those areas, and vacancy rates continue to be low for properties around the Plaza and other downtown areas," says the CTK Group founder.

Trends in rental yields are also an important indicator of the overall direction of the property market and help support the initial investment into the project. However, the necessary knowledge comes from the details in each property, including the proximity to the amenities that can be useful such as transport routes, parking, recreational spaces, and other facilities. Equally, the quality of the property can be a factor, with new and attractive buildings often getting a premium above the market average for properties of a similar size. CTK Group possesses a premium of experience in the commercial market, allowing it to target well-positioned properties for developments. Chris Kamberis has examined the underlying trends in rental yields and has found strong growth for new commercial properties with modern amenities, noting that high premiums are made for modern foyers and meeting rooms, as well as staff break areas and bathrooms. These can help attract businesses towards more property as they are more likely to invest in facilities that boost customer confidence and staff morale.

The strongest property trends actually sit outside the direct property market data and include the overall population growth, employment statistics, and business performance. All three of these factors show the willingness of new businesses to decide on a location and the willingness of existing business to expand their operations. Kansas City has continued to show extremely good fundamentals with declining unemployment, increasing population growth at the rate of 3.1%, and business confidence, which has continued to rise across the Midwest.

Chris Kamberis is the Founder and President of the CTK Group, a top commercial Real Estate Development Company based in Kansas City. He oversees projects on behalf of each of his clients, and has a solid track record for accurately recognizing movements in the real estate market and for optimizing potential for everyone he works with, including Starbucks, Bank of America, and other Fortune 500 companies.

Chris Kamberis -- Property Expert and Founder of CTK Group: http://www.chriskamberisnews.com

CTK Group -- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CTKGlobal

Chris Kamberis -- Google+: https://plus.google.com/112145369328957551744

Embedded Video Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=funrhyA-zJI

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NEW DELHI Three hours east of New Delhi, in the village of Piplera, recently married Abhilekh Swami has stopped to refuel his first automobile, a Hyundai hatchback, at an Indian Oil (IOC.NS) filling station.

Late model SUVs and Mercedes also ply the potholed roads and dusty lanes of the small gathering of dwellings in Uttar Pradesh.

"Earlier I used to hire a taxi for taking my wife and old parents for long distance travel. Now we travel in our car," said Swami, 28, an accountant with a private company.

Swami said he is averaging about 2,000 kilometres a month in the vehicle he bought last August, mostly for commuting to work, shopping and visiting relatives.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians, spurred by cheap credit and rising incomes, are buying cars each month to free themselves from creaky, unreliable public transport.

This is expected to help push India ahead of China as the energy demand growth leader, with its total fuel consumption rising by a tenth to a record in the fiscal year-to-date.

Underpinned by annual economic growth of 7-8 percent, India's fuel demand is seen as a key oil price support over 2016-2017, eating into a supply overhang that has pulled down global crude LCOc1 as much as 70 percent since mid-2014.

India has already pipped Japan as the world's third-largest oil consumer. By 2040, India will have more than doubled its current oil use to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about on par with China's consumption last year.

This roar of motor - as well as power and household - fuel use means some refineries initially planned for exports, such as the 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery on India's east coast, have been flipped to serve domestic oil demand.

"When we conceived Paradip we were hoping to export gasoline, but now the products will be for meeting local demand," said Sanjiv Singh, head of refineries at Indian Oil Corp. (IOC.NS).

Reflecting India's rising importance as a buyer, Igor Sechin, chief executive of the world's biggest listed oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM), was in New Delhi this week to sign several deals with Indian companies such as IOC, Oil India Ltd (OILI.NS) and Bharat PetroResources Ltd (BPCL.NS).

FUEL GOES BOOM

Over April-February - the first 11 months of India's current fiscal year - fuel demand rose 10 percent to about 170 million tonnes (4 million bpd), according to a report this week by the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).

For the next fiscal year through March 2017, the PPAC has forecast fuel demand growth at 7.3 percent.

"India's push to Make-in-India, reforms in mining, and improvements in infrastructure like better roads, airports and job creation will help increase fuel consumption in the country," said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Energy Economics.

India plans to spend 970 billion rupees ($14 billion) in 2016-2017 on expanding and improving the country's road network, which at 4.7 million km is already vying with China as the world's second-longest after the United States, although highways make up less than 2 percent of that figure.

A 23.55 percent increase in the salaries, allowances and pensions of millions of government employees later this year is also expected to shore up consumer spending, boosting purchases of cars and motorcycles.

Sales of passenger cars and utility vehicles in India are expected to grow by as much as 12 percent in the next fiscal year, up from an estimated 6 percent this year.

That translates to around 230,000 new passenger vehicles hitting the roads each month.

The main impact has been on gasoline demand, which the PPAC expects to grow to 24.2 million tonnes (560,000 bpd) by next year, up more than 12 percent from 21.5 million tonnes estimated for this fiscal year.

"Gasoline demand has been growing in double digits and we expect this to continue as it depends on sales of two-wheelers and cars," said Indian Oil Corp's Singh.

Other fuels are seeing growth as well, and for similar reasons.

To meet rising demand, state refiners are planning a 1.2 million bpd plant on the country's west coast, adding to current overall capacity of 4.6 million bpd, although a fixed timeline has not been set.

In east Delhi, at one of India's busiest motor fuel pumps, owner Ajay Bansal said demand was soaring.

"There is a growing demand for new and second hand cars. Now second hand cars are very cheap," he said. "That's an attraction to first-time buyers."

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Henning Gloystein and Tom Hogue)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: Allegations against ex-Delhi University (DU) lecturer SAR Gilani, arrested under sedition charges in connection with a Press Club event in the capital, are "grievous" and whatever he has purportedly said is against the country, the police told a court on Friday.

The public prosecutor, representing the Delhi police, told additional sessions judge Deepak Garg that he was not in a position to argue the matter as he had not received the copy of Gilani's bail plea yet. "I am not in a position to argue today. There are grievous allegations (against Gilani) and (whatever he has purportedly stated) are against the country," the prosecutor told the judge.

As the hearing commenced, the prosecutor told the court that Gilani's bail petition was not supplied to him but the entire case emanates from the video footage of the Press Club event. To this, the judge told the investigating officer (IO), "What are you doing? These are small things and I need not remind you about this."

Advocate Satish Tamta, who appeared for Gilani, said that arguments on bail plea were deferred on Thursday. The judge, however, said, "Let it (bail plea) be taken up on Saturday morning as the first matter."

During the brief hearing, the prosecutor had asked the IO to bring video footage from the event and a laptop to court. Earlier, on February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Gilani, who was arrested on February 16, after the police had alleged that "hatred" was being generated against the government.

Police had told the court that an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs. It had also said the hall in the Press Club was booked by Gilani, who is presently in judicial custody, through his associate Ali Javed by using his credit card and another man Mudassar was also involved.

At the Press Club event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Afzal Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons.

The police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident. Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned DU professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event, for two days.

Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005.

PTI
Pokhara: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday left this Nepalese resort town after attending the SAARC Ministerial meeting on sidelines of which she held the first bilateral talks with her Pakistani counterpart after the Pathankot terror attack and discussed the issue.

After wrapping up her three-day visit, Swaraj left Pokhara on an Mi17 chopper for Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh from where she will head to Delhi on a special flight.

She announced on Thursday that a Pakistani Joint Investigation Team will arrive in India on 27 March to carry forward its probe into the Pathankot terror attack.

The assault figured very high in the over 20-minute meeting between Swaraj and Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, the first political-level engagement between the two sides after the 2 January terror strike on the key air force base.

Swaraj also accepted Pakistan's invitation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Islamabad for the SAARC Summit to be held on 9-10 November this year.

She also pitched for unleashing the "collective strength" of SAARC while underlining the need for a South Asian Economic Union with greater connectivity and forward movement on pending agreements on rail and motor vehicles.

PTI
After much outrage over BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi allegedly beating up a police horse, Shaktiman, with a stick to the point where the animal needed amputation, he was arrested on Friday morning.

Joshi's daughter reacted to the arrest saying she was not worried as the allegations against him were false and he had been framed. "There is no truth in allegations levelled against him," CNN-IBN quoted Joshi as saying.

Shaktiman's leg had to be amputated after the assault. The surgery was conducted at a veterinary hospital in Dehradun by a team of doctors led by surgeon Feroze Khambatta. This came hours after Army doctors from Pune said that one of the hind legs of the horse that was fractured will have to be amputated as the animal might lose its life due to spread of gangrene from the wound.

"The surgery has gone as planned," Uttarakhand DGP BS Sidhu had said on Thursday night after a limb of the horse, which was still in pain and could not stand on its feet, was removed, three days after the attack that sparked an outrage and led to an FIR being filed against Joshi. "The surgery was basically necessitated by the fact that the blood supply has ceased to the portion of multiple fractures and it was essential for saving the life of the animal. We got the best possible surgeon in the country to perform the surgery and we hope he will be able to survive," Sidhu had said.

Stating that Shaktiman will take a month to recover from the surgery, Sidhu said that in the meantime he will be given temporary prosthetic aid in the form of artificial legs which will be tailor made to his specifications. "Army doctors are attending on the horse. We are doing everything we can to help it recover fully from the injuries," Dehradun SSP Sadanand Daate had said.

Ruling Congress and opposition BJP in Uttarakhand had on Tuesday exchanged charges over the police horse 'Shaktiman' getting injured after being allegedly attacked by Joshi even as the issue dominated the social media with people pouring their wrath on the Mussoorie legislator for showing cruelty to the hapless animal.

Police had registered a case against Joshi and his supporters under Cruelty to Animals Act in connection with the incident, while several animal rights activists including Puja Bahukhandi had also lodged a police complaint against the Mussoorie MLA for his "inhuman" act.

When intercepted by police near Rispana bridge on way to the state assembly during a protest march, BJP workers had tried to jump over the barricades prompting security personnel, including the mounted police, to swing into action to control the protesters.

This had enraged Joshi who allegedly began hitting a 13-year-old police horse named Shaktiman with a stick, causing fracture in one of its hind legs. After news about the horse being injured during protests by BJP spread, Chief Minister Harish Rawat had visited the stable located at the police lines where it has been kept for treatment.

Rawat had asked sub-inspector Shyam Singh Chauhan, who is looking after the injured animal, to take good care of the horse in consultation with veterinary doctors. Rawat also asked Dehradun SSP Sadanand Daate to take the help of doctors of the Veterinary Hospital, Chennai.

"A look at the horse shows the excruciating pain the animal is undergoing. A political party should not vent its frustration on a hapless animal in this manner. "Political workers must learn the value of restraint and tolerance. It seems the word tolerance does not exist in BJP's dictionary," Rawat said.

(With inputs from PTI)
What are the true values in Islam: peace and compassion. Prime minster spoke about this on the inaugural session of the World Sufi Forum on March 17 along with a host of speakers from across the world as his word reverberated on the second day of the conference.

Talking to the speakers it became evident that an alternative and true narrative that defines Islam has been created from the event and with the words of the prime minister.

Dr Muhammad Bin Yahya Ninowy from Madina Institute USA, speaking to Firstpost, said, Prime minister Narendra Modi hit the key points by talking about shared common ground between all different sections of social fabric and how Sufism brings them all together. He even talked about micro-minorities. He was so right when he said that Sufism is about compassion and peace and it is the land of India where Sufism grew and it is India where this great tradition will and should grow and contribute to humanity.

Modi, in his speech had said, It reminds us that when we think of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence, and that the first two names denote compassionate and merciful. Allah is Rahman and Raheem. Sufism is the voice of peace, co-existence, compassion and equality; a call to universal brotherhood.

Jonathan Granoff, president, Global Security Institute and ambassador for peace, security, and nuclear disarmament of the parliament of the worlds religions echoing the same view, said, It was a great speech made by a political leader on the subject of purpose of human birth. He extracted the principles of universal values from a specific tradition that is alive and powerful in India, which is Sufism, and explained its relevance not just to India but to the whole of humanity and human family which he identified as one.

Explaining the relevance of Sufism in the world, Modi had said, When terrorism and extremism have become the most destructive force of our times, the message of Sufism has global relevance we must reject any link between terrorism and religion. Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious. And, we must advance the message of Sufism that stands for the principles of Islam and the highest human values. This is a task that states, societies, sages, scholars and families must pursue.

The point he was making is essential for a sustainable future. Without following and believing in such shared values of what he talked about, fulfilment of sustainable human goals is not possible, said Granoff.

He added, It is required for marginalising and ending those who distort religion and reduces in it the ideology of exclusivism and creating violence. The values he identified will help to create a cooperation needed to counter and overcome all the distortions of the religion.

Talking about the Muslim community and Sufism, Modi had said, It is this spirit of Sufism, the love for their country and the pride in their nation that define the Muslims in India. They reflect the timeless culture of peace, diversity and equality of faith of our land; they are steeped in the democratic tradition of India, confident of their place in the country and invested in the future of their nation; and, above all, they are shaped by the values of the Islamic heritage of India. It upholds the highest ideals of Islam and has always rejected the forces of terrorism and extremism.

Md Tolegen Mukhamejanon, a musician from Kazakhstan and one of the speakers, while talking about the Sufi forum and prime ministers speech said that the memories of the day, words of PM Narendra Modi will remain in my heart throughout my life.
By Shantanu Mukharji

In a bizarre and most inhuman act displaying utter disregard for an animal and the law, a BJP legislator of Uttarakhand mercilessly beat a police horse causing multiple fractures to his leg. The horse, Shaktiman is a handsome mount of the Uttarakhand police force, hitherto actively participating in police ceremonies and passing-out parades.

The incident occurred on 14 March in Dehradun when BJP protesters were agitating against the Uttarakhand chief minister on some political issue. The blatant misconduct and lawless act by the MLA in full public view is a direct assault on the custodians of law and order trying to maintain tranquility. Shaktiman is very much a part of the police force and is trained in crowd control. The sad incident that occurred despite the presence of fellow policemen reveals how hapless or possibly politicised the police is when taken on by unruly politicians.

The police remained passive bystanders as the MLA repeatedly hit the leg of the poor animal. Better sense did not prevail on any of the fellow agitators to stop the enraged MLA. It is hoped that the police leadership will hold those cops, who witnessed this cruelty without actively intervening, accountable.

Similarly, the party leadership or the Speaker of the state Assembly are morally liable to admonish the MLA for this brazen misdeed. If both go unpunished and are even deemed as going unreprimanded, it will give the wrong signal to the public. A direct attack on the guardians of law must not be condoned. After all, it is an assault on the seat of authority.

Incidentally, the Uttarakhand governor is a retired member of the Indian Police Service (IPS) and has the experience of overseeing mounted police during the charges he held in various positions. It's high time he used his good offices to take the MLA to task and also order a probe into police inaction. There is an Act for the Prevention of Cruelty towards animals. And cruelty on animals is also an offence under the Indian Penal Code.

Such provisions of the law must be invoked to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.

Police horses have, throughout history, proved to be very effective assets in maintaining peace and crowd control. The Kolkata Police and mounted police in several other metropolitan cities have been appropriating the services of the horses in good measure. Horse-riding instructions remain compulsory in police-training institutions as well as in the National Academy of Administration. Beating up a mount and that too so mercilessly shows how callous we are towards such a friendly animal! Such a mindset needs a drastic change.

In western countries, horses and dogs in the rolls of police and army have regular ranks and wear badges. They are given utmost care. US forces maintain canine units in war zones and the dogs are familiar with the sounds of gunfire and bombs. In Afghanistan and Iraq , canines did excellent jobs. Our mounts and dogs also excel in their duties in different, hazardous parts of the country. Instead of recognising their role, some senseless people who are expected to be responsible elected representatives of the masses, resort to such heinous and unpardonable acts as in the case of 14-year-old Shaktiman.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his tenure has addressed directors-general of police twice in two years, recently at the Rann of Kutch and earlier in Guwahati. The PM's address was substantial and specific. The police inertia as noticed in Dehradun proves that the police generally remains a passive force and rarely rises to the occasion to meet the challenges. We saw this recently during the Jat agitation in Haryana where police watched haplessly as the 'free-for-all' unfolded and the army had to be called in. We have the brightest of police officers at the helm yet their performance often falls short of expectations. The police force must overcome any constraints and appear more proactive so that it does not fail in situations that warrant action.

The author is a retired IPS officer. Views are personal.
JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were released from jail after they were granted interim bail on Friday. Both the JNU students arrested in a sedition case almost a month ago, were granted bail for six months by a Delhi court.

Students at JNU cheered the duo's release even as actor Anupam Kher, who has been critical of JNU students in wake of the sedition row, questioned how one who "speaks ill" of the country can be celebrated as if he was an Olympic medal winner.

Kher, who was at JNU campus for screening of his movie Buddha in a Traffic Jam, made a reference to JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar saying, "he is out on bail, he hasn't come back with a medal from Olympics that he should be accorded such huge welcome."

"One who talks ill of the country, how can he be celebrated as hero? Has he got an Olympic medal? He is out on bail. He is not Sachin, Saina or Hanumanathappa," he said, without naming Kanhaiya.

"He said that he comes from a poor family but my question is what did you contribute to remove their poverty? My father's salary was Rs 90 when I got my first scholarship of Rs 200 and I had sent Rs 110 to my family. What did you do?"

Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kher said, "It is after years that we have got such a good prime minister. We are also trying to get you all back on road to revolution and patriotism."

Kanhaiya, who was granted bail in the sedition case on 2 March, said, "I have been to jail, I know what being there is. I am glad our comrades will be back but the struggle does not end here."

"With the release of comrade Kanhaiya, there was some relief. But now, with the release of Umar and Anirban, it seems that we can actually heave a sigh of relief before we can gear up again for an intensified struggle," said Shehla Rashid Shora, vice president of JNUSU.

"The arrest and possible arrest of our comrades had given us sleepless nights. I would get nightmares of police raids and wake up in the middle of night, scared and exhausted," she said.

Umar and Anirban faced sedition charges after a controversial event held on 9 February at JNU to mark the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. They surrendered on the intervening night of 23-24 February, hours after the Delhi high court refused to grant them protection from arrest.

They were lodged in jail and had sought bail on the grounds of parity with Kanhaiya, saying he has already been granted bail and the incident did not attract charges of sedition.

Meanwhile, Kanhaiya said that Kashmir is an integral part of India and so Indians can discuss the issues pertaining to Kashmiris at any forum. The JNUSU leader was speaking at the India Today Conclave on Friday. Kanhaiya said, "There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues."

Kanhaiya also denied supporting the executed Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru for his role in the terror attack on Parliament, but said he opposed capital punishment.

At the conclave, Kumar also reacted to Anupam Kher's speech and said, "Today Anupam Kherji came to JNU and shared his views on certain topics. He is one of my favourite actors. Many told me that he should be opposed. I told them that we have to show the world what is JNU. JNU always encourages debates and doesn't oppose anyone's right to speak."

Meanwhile, a Rajasthan minister said that school curriculum is being changed to ensure "no one like Kanhaiya Kumar is born" in the state.

"To inculcate the feeling of patriotism in students, major changes are being made in the curriculum," Vasudev Devnani, minister of state for education (primary and secondary) said in the assembly on Thursday.

"In view of the recent JNU incident, government universities have been asked to hoist the national flag so as to inculcate patriotism in students," State Higher Education Minister Kali Charan Saraf said.

With inputs from agencies
Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has suspended three police inspectors and one

assistant police inspector for dereliction of duty and false reporting in connection with renewal of dance bar permits.

"For pending Dance Bar license applications, Mumbai Police Commissioner had sought report from these officers

regarding compliance of conditions set out by the state government with Supreme Court approval for granting licenses to dance bars," a CMO official said.

"These four police officers had submitted false reports. Hence, CM has suspended them and ordered department enquiry against them," the official said.

In the wake of the Supreme Court order on resumption of dance bars in Maharashtra, the state government has granted licences to owners of four such bars.

The apex court had on 2 March rejected certain suggestions like providing live CCTV footage to police of performances in the dance bars and asked the state government to grant licences to owners within 10 days after they comply with the modified guidelines.

Maharashtra Police had earlier proposed the owners will have to cover and segregate bar area with dance area and provide them the CCTV footage of the performance of women artistes.

PTI
Madurai: The Madras High Court on Friday held that excluding married daughters and siblings of those who succumb in motor accidents from claiming compensation for the death would be against the object of the Motor Vehicles Act.

Dismissing an appeal filed by an insurance company challenging the order of a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal in Kumbakonam to grant compensation to a married sister of a deceased person, Justices S Manikumar and R Mahadevan said "marriage of a kin could not be a reason to deny compensation". "That is what various Supreme Court decisions and Motor Vehicles Act-1939 and Workmen's Compensation Act say", the judges said.

The Workmen's Act listed the "dependants" who were entitled to claim compensation under that legislation and it did not confer a statutory right on a married daughter. However, the 1939 Act stated "all legal representatives of the deceased were entitled to claim compensation", the judges said.

The judges noted that there was a distinction between being dependent on the income of the deceased and receiving a contribution from the deceased, either monetarily or through the services rendered by the deceased to the members of the family, and the same was a decisive factor in computing the compensation.

If the intention of the framers of the Motor Vehicles Act was to restrict the payment of compensation only to the dependants, the word "dependant" as defined in Section 2(d) of the Workmen's Compensation Act would have been incorporated in Motor Vehicles Act also, the Bench said. Besides the quantum of compensation or loss of contribution was not determined on the basis of monetary loss alone.

It was determined on the basis of invaluable and gratuitous services rendered by the mother or the wife as the case may be. The married daughter may not be totally dependent on the income of the deceased mother for her survival or living, but still, there can be a monetary assistance, during the lifetime of the deceased.

A mother can also continuously render her valuable service to her married daughter, the judges said. In the case of a daughter, her father, mother or brother can continue to help her monetarily depending upon the need or out of love and affection. Contribution either by means of service or income or both could determine the quantum of compensation, they added.
Patna: Taking umbrage over Opposition's "frequent walkout" from the House ahead of the government's reply on financial agenda and not pressing cut motion, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday urged the Speaker to declare the motion moved by them as infructuous.

"The opposition members resort to walkout from the House ahead of the government's reply on financial agenda and end up not pressing the cut motion they move upon introduction of budgetary demands by respective departments... it is not a good thing," he said drawing Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary's attention towards empty opposition benches.

"Why should not the cut motion be rejected by the House and declared infructuous if the opposition members are not present to press with it," Kumar asked.

"The Chair should consider declaring the cut motion not pressed by the opposition members as infructuous," the Chief Minister said and urged the Speaker to forward his suggestion to the rules committee of the House for consideration.

Chaudhary agreed to forward the latter's suggestions to the rules committee.

The Chief Minister's interjection came after the Speaker called out BJP member Vijay Kumar Sinha to press ahead with his cut motion on the animal husbandry and fisheries department's budgetary demand of Rs 544.19 crore for 2016-17.

But Sinha was found absent from the house as the BJP-led Opposition staged a walkout as soon as the department's minister Awadesh Kumar Singh stood up to reply to the debate.

The Animal Husbandry and Fisheries department's budgetary demand was later passed by voice vote.

Singh said Bihar State Milk Co-Operative Federation Ltd (COMFED) has proposed to issue licenses to 1,966 liquor shops to sell dairy products in place of country-made liquor.

As many as 306 liquor shops have entered into oral agreement with the COMFED to sell dairy products at their outlets from April one next in place of liquor, he said.

The Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister announced a proposal to set up a veterinary university in the Patna Veterinary College campus at Sheikhpura here.

He also announced 24-hour medical services for cattle.

PTI
Mumbai: A public interest litigation(PIL) on Friday urged the Bombay High Court to take legal action against All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi and party MLA Waris Pathan for their refusal to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The PIL urged the court to order an inquiry into the speeches made by the duo in which they had allegedly showed dishonour to motherland by such remarks.

The petition, filed by Pune-based social activist Hemant Patil, contended that the speeches made by them amounted to spreading communal disharmony and hurting national integrity and unity of the country.

"Such remarks are anti-national and have the tendency to break the social fabric of the society and divide the people on the basis of religion and parochial issues," said Patil, who heads an NGO Bharat against Corruption.

The petition, which is slated to come for hearing in due course, also demanded a ban on AIMIM saying that remarks made by the duo amounted to violation of Representation of the People Act and were against the basic principles of the Constitution.

The PIL further sought a direction to the Maharashtra government, Director General of Police and Secretary of Home Department to call for the records in respect of speeches delivered by Owaisi at a public rally in Latur and Pathan's utterances in the state legislative assembly that they would not say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai".

The petition alleged that Owaisi and his partymen are continuously engaged in delivering speeches which spread communalism and endanger national integration.

PTI
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly on Friday unanimously passed a censure motion against

AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi for his recent remarks that he won't chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

Congress member Jitu Patwari brought the censure motion slamming Owaisi during the Zero Hour of the budget session of the MP Assembly underway here.

Even as he condemned the AIMIM leader for his comments, Patwari recalled that the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharalal Nehru had immense respect for the country.

He said that Nehru in his book 'Discovery of India' mentions his love for the country and touched upon the rich and diversified cultures describing it as 'Mother India.'

He said that his party is against all sort of fundamental mentalities - be it of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and any other religion.

MP Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwari's censure motion and condemned Owaisi saying that such type of anti-national mentality is being noticed since last one and an half year.

He said that India has loved and respected both "Ram and Rahim" equally, and blasted people sympathising with divisive forces.

Mishra also hit out at people behind the sloganeering of "Pakistan Zindabad" and supporting Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

He said that even the anti-national acts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus too should be condemned along with Owaisi.

MP Panchayat Minister Gopal Bhargava rose to join in condemning Owaisi and tried to take a dig at the Congress. But Speaker Sitasaran Sharma, sensing a tussle between the treasury and opposition Congress, got up and announced the passing of censure motion unanimously against AIMIM leader amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai" by members including Congress' Patwari and Hardeep Singh Dang.

On 13 March, Owaisi had said he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' comments that came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," Owaisi had said, at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra.

"I won't utter that (slogan) even if you put a knife to my throat," Owaisi said, amid loud applause by the crowd.

"Nowhere in the Constitution it says that one should say: Bharat Mata ki Jai," he had said.

Bhagwat, on 3 March had said, "Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (hail mother India)."

"It should be real, spontaneous and part of all-round development of the youth," the RSS chief had said.

PTI
Not since the New Delhi Agreement in 1952 has a Kashmiri leader stood so insistently for reassurances from the Central government.

There is a great difference of course. Sheikh Abdullahs prime concern then was to oust the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and obtain maximum autonomy. In fact, he wanted to pave the way for the state to become independent under his (rather than the maharajas) leadership.

On the other hand, Mehbooba Mufti has sought reassurances that the PDP-BJP coalition government, which she is expected to head, would function smoothly. Not only does she want she want policy agreement with the Centre, but also that grassroots leaders of the BJP should not rake up contentious issues.

The other great difference between 1952 and 2016 is a bit of an irony. The New Delhi Agreement led Syama Prasad Mookerjee to resign from Nehrus cabinet and form the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), to agitate against that Agreement  mainly in Jammu. Mehbooba has sought reassurances from the BJSs successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party  which won the popular vote across much of the Jammu province for the first time in 2014.

The divergent insecurities and aspirations of people in the Jammu and Kashmir provinces respectively caused extraordinary friction within the coalition government, between 2002 and 2008, and again in 2015.

It will augur well for the state, and for the country, if confidence is now built sufficiently between the two parties for their coalition to function smoothly. In the past couple of months, Governor NN Vohras administration has shown how well a cohesive government can perform.

Over the past few days, ordinary Kashmiris and some community leaders have praised the efficiency, responsiveness and honesty that they have witnessed under Governors Rule. Officials at levels of public interaction have apparently been living up to peoples expectations.

Despite his redoubtable talents and experience as an administrator, the late chief minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, had been hamstrung through much of 2015 by a series of avoidable controversies over such matters as the beef ban and the state flag. More vital, his hands were tied administratively by a lack of monetary resources.

When she had asked for reassurances a couple of months ago, Mehbooba had pointed out that she did not have her fathers experience or skill, and so would find the task more daunting.

Perceptions make a big difference, in politics more than in most other things. So, the big question is whether policy makers at the Centre view things the same way as Mehbooba and her colleagues. She must ensure that leaders at the Centre do not view her as intransigent or unreasonable.

Confidence-building measures

Apparently, one of the concessions Mehbooba has obtained is that the pending portions of the Rs 80,000 crore `package which the prime minister had announced in Srinagar in November will be swiftly disbursed  and that the state government will have discretion over expenditure.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stated in Parliament last Monday that the government would go `the extra mile to back the equitable distribution of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Sections of the PDP took that statement in Parliament as a very positive signal.

Politically, the return of vast grounds currently occupied by the army will also be positively received. This move will be highly visible, since these grounds are in the states major cities  Srinagar, Anantnag, Jammu and Kargil. The vast plots in Srinagar and Jammu are in the heart of those capital cities of the state.

The Army had already agreed to vacate some of those grounds while he was the chief minister. At a meeting a couple of days ago, Governor Vohra and the Commander-in-chief of the Armys Northern Command agreed to a deadline. The Army will hand over these major grounds to the chief secretary by 31 March.

The possible withdrawal of 'disturbed area' status from certain districts could become another major political talking point for the new chief minister. if that happens, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) would not apply in those districts. The Act gives the armed forces the power to enter and search a place, and search, detain or kill a person suspected with regard to terrorism. The Centre may agree to remove the application of AFSPA from Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts. Mehbooba would want Srinagar district included too.

Governor Vohra had even begun to move towards conducting local bodies elections in the state. He cancelled a meeting he had called for this purpose on Thursday after it became apparent that a coalition government might take office soon.

Some analysts have suggested that the constitutional requirement that there must be no more than a six-month gap between successive sessions of the state assembly means that the legislature must meet by 9 April  and that a new government must be in place before that. Such analyses have served the purpose of putting pressure on the parties concerned to swiftly form a government.

The Home Ministry has been particularly eager to have a state government in place to handle the increasingly visible public support for militancy  as was evident during a recent encounter at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute on the outskirts of Srinagar.

However, the most potent factor pushing both parties towards government-formation is the awareness that they would both fare poorly if fresh elections had to be held. The BJP might lose considerable ground in the Jammu region, where the Modi wave helped it considerably in 2014. The PDP too would lose a number of its current tally of 28.
There is an anecdotal account of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs (RSS) second sarsanghchalak (head) MS Golwalkar and his concern for the Congress. In 1967, when the Congress party lost Assembly elections in many states, Guruji, as Golwalkar was known, was a worried man.

In one of his sojourn in Gujarat, he was pacing up and down soon after the results of Congresss decimation came in.

What is the worry sir? a senior RSS member asked Golwalkar.

I am worried about the country as the Congress losing ground is an ominous sign. Those who attended to Golwalkar those days included a young lad who is now the Prime Minister of the country.

Despite Narendra Modis clarion call of making India Congress mukt (free of Congress), the BJP is acutely conscious of the fact that Congresss irrelevance at the national political scene would be harmful for the country. At the same time, top BJP leaders are also aware of the fact that given its rich political history and legacy, Congress has an innate capacity to revive and regain strength.

But there is genuine fear among a section of Congress veteran leaders that the Grand Old Party is losing connect with its history and unique legacy.

This is the context in which we must place the metamorphosis of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh  who often doubles as the partys conscience-keeper  from addressing Osama Bin Laden as Osama-ji to his seemingly dramatic approval of Bharat Mata Ki Jai chants. An astute leader, Singh is desperately trying to hold on to the sands slipping through his tightly clenched fingers.

But he isnt the only one who realises that the Congress has been gradually losing ground by joining the wrong side of debate on nationalism/anti-nationalism. In the political space, the BJP has successfully forced Congress to cede the middle-ground and align itself with the Left and radical Left positions on critical national issues.

Historically, the Congress has always been on the side of robust nationalism without being a communal party. Unlike Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and its later incarnation Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which identified itself as a predominantly Hindu party, the Congress offered an umbrella where competing social and political forces could gather and co-exist. This is the precise reason why the Congress never lost ground to the BJP on the issue of robust nationalism. Be it 1962 war with China or 1965, 1971 wars with Pakistan or Operation Bluestar in 1984, the Congress won unqualified admiration from the RSS-BJP leadership.

However, old-timers in the party are quite peeved over the manner in which Congress is increasingly being seen as an ideological appendage to the Left parties.

Two instances are particularly galling for those like Singh who believe that electoral setbacks must not push the party to go astray from its original path. Congress leaders admit that Rahul Gandhis dalliance with JNU episode has not gone down well with the partys support base in the Hindi heartland.

In their own estimates, the scion of Nehru-Gandhi family cavorting with those chanting full-throated slogans for destruction of India has substantially damaged the historical perception of Congress.

While Rahuls visit to Hyderbad Central University (HCU) on Rohit Vemula was seen as good politics, his indulgence with the JNU rebels was taken as dilution of the partys nationalist credentials.

What appears to have found the party strategists in a bind is Congresss initial hesitation on the issue related to chanting of Bharat Mata Ki Jai (glory to Mother India).

In the freedom struggle, the description of the nation as Mother India is a construct which has its genesis much older than the RSS. In fact, the RSS borrowed it from the Congress and adopted it as its own.

In the post-partition phase, Mother India, as effectively espoused by the Congress and its stalwarts, came across as an all-encompassing, liberal and caring but not permissive concept. This concept was beautifully translated into a movie Mother India where lead actor Nargis, playing a benevolent mother, shoots dead her own son found on the wrong side of the law. Incidentally, the Congress, not the RSS or its adjuncts, epitomized this concept.

There is little doubt that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwats insistence on displaying their patriotism by chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai is as ridiculous as it can get. Yet there is a strong possibility of using this ploy to push the Congress further away from its historical moorings and appropriate the legacy which does not belong to the Sangh Parivar.

In fact it would be instructive for the Congress leadership to realise that much of the BJPs organisational growth is sustained by ceding of middle-ground by the Grand Old Party of the country. Its course correction is a welcome step as further disarray would ruin the party beyond repair  a prospect that even Golwalkar dreaded.
Srinagar: Former chief minister Omar Abdullah on Friday asked PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti to explain what was wrong with the agenda of alliance her late father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had authored a year ago before forming the PDP-BJP ruling alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.

"Mehbooba's father negotiated the agenda of alliance (with the BJP). So she (Mehbooba) must tell us what was wrong with it," Abdullah tweeted, pointing out that Sayeed had ruled the state for "10 months with this agenda".

"If all she wanted was the agenda of alliance, that was a roadmap with a six-year implementation period. So what was the problem with (the) timeframe?"

Abdullah's tweets, criticising the Peoples Democratic Party chief, came after PDP's talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir apparently hit a dead end in New Delhi.

Ram Madhav, the BJP leader in charge of Jammu and Kashmir, said his party was not ready to accept PDP's conditions for forming a coalition government again. Some PDP leaders said that the alliance between the two ideologically different parties was almost over.

Abdullah lashed out at Mehbooba Mufti and said her demands were vague and had tripped her.

"It seems she didn't know what she wanted from the centre and got tripped up because her demands were too vague and her response too erratic."

The National Conference leader said the PDP chief would now act as if Prime Minister Narendra Modi had let the state down.

"Watch how Mehbooba Mufti will now try and claim that her party wasn't asking for anything new and how the PM has let down J&K."

Jammu and Kashmir has been under Governor's Rule following the death of Chief Minister Sayeed in January.

Mehbooba Mufti, who emerged as a unanimous choice of her party to replace her father, sought fresh concessions from the central government to continue with the alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.

Watch how Mehbooba Mufti will now try & claim that her party wasn't asking for anything new and how the PM has let down J&K.  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016

If all she wanted was the Agenda of Alliance, that was a roadmap with a SIX yr implementation period so what was the problem with timeframe?  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016

It seems she didn't know what she wanted from the centre & got tripped up because her demands were too vague & her response too erratic.  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016

Mehbooba's father negotiated the Agenda of Alliance so she must tell us what was wrong with it. Her father was CM 10 months with this agenda  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016

IANS
New Delhi: In a major relief to various states including poll-bound West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam, the Supreme Court on Friday modified its earlier order and allowed photographs of chief ministers, governors and ministers to be carried in public advertisements.

The court, in its verdict last year, had held that only the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India can feature in government advertisments, a decision which was later challenged by the Centre and seven states.

"The exception carved out in paragraph 23 of ...judgment dated 13 May, 2015 permitting publication of the photographs of the President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of the country, subject to the said authorities themselves deciding the question, is now extended to the Governors and the Chief Ministers of the States," a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

The bench also comprising Justice PC Ghose said, "In lieu of the photograph of the Prime Minister, the photograph of the Departmental (Cabinet) Minister/Minister In-charge of the concerned Ministry may be published, if so desired."

It said that similarly in the states, the photograph of the cabinet minister or minister in-charge in lieu of the photograph of the CM could be published, if so desired.

The bench, however, clarified that all other directions in the judgment of May 2015 shall continue to "remain in force".

The verdict came on pleas by Centre and seven states including Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chattisgarh which had sought review of the 13 May, 2015 verdict of the apex court, saying it infringed fundamental rights and federal structure.

Earlier, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, had strongly favoured review of the verdict on various grounds including that if Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in the advertisements then the same right should be available to his cabinet colleagues as the PM is the "first among the equals".

He had also contended that if only Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in government advertisements then it can be said that it would promote "personality cult" which has been described as "an anti-thesis of democracy" by this court only.

The AG had also said that the chief ministers and their cabinet colleagues too should be allowed to feature in advertisements.

The Centre, while seeking review, had earlier said that Article 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Indian Constitution empowers the state and the citizens to "give and receive" information and it cannot be curtailed and regulated by the courts.

Other ministers and the chief ministers are also answerable to public and they cannot remain "faceless", he had said, adding that the apex court verdict has dealt with print advertisements only in the time where electronic and social media are also there.

The Centre had on 27 October, 2015 joined hands with several state governments in seeking review of the Supreme Court's judgement on the issue.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing NGO Common Cause which had filed the original PIL on review petitions moved by the states, had told the bench that certain state governments were violating the apex court's orders.

On 13 May, 2015, the apex court had passed a slew of directions including the order asking Centre to constitute a three-member committee "consisting of persons with unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality" to regulate the issue of public advertisements.

PTI
Actor Anupam Kher fired a salvo at students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) over issues of freedom and nationalism on Friday. His remarks came hours after JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested last month for their involvement in a controversial event in support of terrorist Afzal Guru, were granted bail by a court. The two are yet to be released.

Kher was at JNU as his new film Buddha in a Traffic was being screened at the campus. Kher had earlier alleged that authorities had refused to screen the film at JNU. The university responded by saying he had never made a request - verbal or written - for the film to be screened.

On Friday, addressing a few students in the campus, Kher asked them about patriotism, freedom and nationalism. The actor was greeted by chants of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' as Kher started his speech with, "You want freedom in this nation? Lets talk about what you need freedom from?"

"You want freedom from hunger? What have you done to remove hunger? What have you done for the development of the nation? What is your contribution? It is easy to criticise," he said, "Its easy to destroy a building, but it takes years to construct it.

He went on to criticise those who have used their families as a manipulative tool in their speeches. You talk about your parents being poor. But if you have spent so many years here (JNU), and studied here (JNU), how are they still poor? What contribution did you make?

He goes onto reminisce about his past and the contribution he made to his family, while juggling work and studies.

"You are of no use even to your parents. They are still poor. At least change their lives. Study, do politics, but dont do politics against the nation," he cautioned.

Kher lauded the government at the Centre and said that the current government is a good one. Complimenting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kher said, "Bahut saalo baad desh ko acha Prime Minister mila hai (After a lot of years, the country has got a good Prime Minister).

Supporters of Umar Khalid and Anirban, including JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was arrested for his alleged participation in the same event, are planning a unity march on the campus on Friday night. "Someone who has returned on bail is not an Olympic hero. People who are out on bail cannot be welcomed back on campus," Kher said.

I want the focus shifted back from Kranti to Desh Bhakti, he said, urging students to revive their patriotism.

As expected, Kher ended his speech with 'Bharat mata ki Jai'.

Watch the video here:
New Delhi: Accusing the BJP-led NDA government of showing "utter contempt" of Rajya Sabha for taking the money bill route to pass the Aadhar bill, the Congress on Friday indicated that the matter could be challenged by "others" in the courts.

"This is a very dangerous trend. The government has taken this to bypass the Rajya Sabha. This is an assault on the Rajya Sabha. The Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are two equal wheels of the same chariot of Indian democracy, if one of the wheels does not run, it will hamper democracy," Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said.

Insisting that a series of conditions are specified in Article 110 and that Article 110 uses the word "only" if those conditions are prevalent can a bill be declared a Money Bill, Ramesh said that the Aadhaar Bill, which was passed as a money bill "ignored five recommendations made by the Rajya Sabha" and had many other provisions.

"It had many other provisions and most constitutional experts have given the view that the Aadhaar Bill is not a Money Bill. While the prerogative of declaring a bill as a Money Bill or not is that of the Speaker and the Speaker's decision is final but the recommendation to the Speaker to consider making it a Money Bill is that of the government.

"It is the government that decides whether it is a Money Bill or not and the Speaker only certifies it as Money Bill," Ramesh said.

"The two examples that the finance minister gave, that they were declared Money Bills in the past, were wrong. They were not Money Bills. The Juvenile Justice Bill of 1986 and the African Development Bank Bill of 1983 which the Finance Minister used to justify the Aadhaar Bill being the Money Bill, turned down to be completely erroneous and false," he said.

To repeated questions on whether Congress will challenge the passage of Aadhar bill as Money bill in Supreme Court, Ramesh evaded a direct reply saying "we have not heard the last on the Money Bill issue. I don't think that you have heard the last on the Money Bill debate. The Money Bill debate will continue."

He said there is a petition already before a five judge bench of the Supreme Court which has not yet given its final verdict.

"So, I am sure, there will be others who will take this issue but as far as we are concerned, we go by the Article 110. The Speaker's decision is final. The Speaker has declared it is a Money Bill, it came as Money Bill, it was discussed as Money Bill, it was recommended as a Money Bill and finally passed as Money Bill and we cannot undo the history."

Asked whether there is a clash between the Speaker's view on Aadhar bill being a money bill and that of the Congress, Ramesh merely said, "we still believe and we have adequate grounds to believe that it is not a Money Bill but the chapter, as far as we are concerned, is a closed chapter. But it is not a closed chapter in a democracy. There are substantive provisions which are completely a separate issue."

Ramesh insisted that the issue is not only about Aadhar but in the larger context of Money Bills.

"This is in larger context of the assault on the Rajya Sabha," he said.

The former minister said that that purpose of this government is clear they want to "totally neglect" Rajya Sabha in legislative business.

Claiming that whenever any bill goes through a Standing Committee or Select Committee, it comes out as a better version, which was seen also in the case of real estate bill.

"Now, Standing Committee is far away, even the possibility of sending a bill to Select Committee is here with the introduction of this Money Bill trend. Congress strongly opposes this strategy

Ramesh also found it "astonishing" that the government was "bypassing" Rajya Sabha even as a number of its senior ministers including Leader of House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and former Defence Minister AK Antony are members of the same House.

"Health Minister JP Nadda, Communication Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are all members of the Rajya Sabha.

"So, without the Rajya Sabha, these people would not be in the Parliament, they would not be ministers. I think what the government has shown is utter contempt and utter disregard for Rajya Sabha which derives its powers from the Constitution of India even as it celebrates the anniversary of the architect of the Indian constitution BR Ambedkar," he said.

PTI
Kolkata: Five special teams, led by Chief Electoral Officers of different states, on Friday started a five-day visit to the districts of West Bengal to undertake a comprehensive review of poll preparedness.

Deputy CEO Amitjyoti Bhattacharya said the teams have started arriving in the districts and started working.

"They will see the overall poll preparedness till 22 March," he said.

The CEOs  V K Singh of Punjab, Anil Kumar Jha of Karnataka, Narinder Chauhan of Himachal Pradesh, Nidhi Chibber of Chhattisgarh and Dr Chandra Bhushan Kumar of Delhi  have been assigned different districts for monitoring work.

The teams will submit their report on 23 March.

Each of the five teams will have five members comprising CEO of a state, a joint or deputy CEO, an IPS officer and two election commission officers.

The Election Commission had last night removed 37 officials, including a District Magistrate and four Superintendents of Police, following complaints from Opposition parties.

The first phase of the six-phased Assembly poll in the state will be held on 4 and 11 April.

Friday was the last day of filing nominations for the 18 seats in the districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura in the first part of first phase.

Altogether, 138 candidates have filed their papers which includes 18 from Trinamool, 11 from CPM, 5 from BSP, one each from CPI and Forward Bloc, 56 from other parties and 18 independents.

Another 23 candidates have however filed their papers saying they are from BJP.

"Some of them will either withdraw their candidature or their nominations will get rejected," the EC official said when asked how 23 nominees from the party have filed papers from 18 seats.

Scrutiny of papers will be done on Saturday and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is 21 March.

The poll watchdog is also sending central awareness observers in each of the districts.

Headed by senior IIS officers, their task will be to monitor the overall voter awareness programs being taken by the districts.

The commission had on Thursday issued showcause notices against Trinamool Congress leaders Anubrata Mandal and Abdur Rezzak Mollah and CPM MP Md Salim for allegedly violating the model code of conduct.

"We have received the replies from Mandal and Mollah which we are examining. Md Salim has yet to respond. If we don't get reply from him within the stipulated time then action will be taken according to the rules," Bhattacharya said.

PTI
Sun City, Arizona: Fearful of a Donald Trump nomination to lead the Republican party, conservative leaders huddled privately in Washington on Thursday in search of a plan to stop the billionaire businessman. His Republican rivals braced for another Trump victory next week, this time in delegate-rich Arizona.

The Republicans have an eager alternative in Texas senator Ted Cruz, yet some party leaders are exploring "other avenues" instead of rallying behind the fiery conservative, an ominous sign that Republican leaders' deep dislike of Cruz complicates their overwhelming concern about Trump.

"The establishment is like a wounded animal, now cornered," said Mark Meckler, an early leader in the tea party movement. "They are terrified, irrational and flailing wildly."

Even after being denied victory in five contests on Tuesday, Cruz insisted that he has a path to the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim the Republican presidential nomination. In the US primaries, voters elect delegates representing the candidates who then vote at the parties' conventions to pick a candidate.

"This is the moment for all those who believe in a strong America to come together and craft a new path forward," Cruz declared on Twitter while conservatives were meeting in downtown Washington to brainstorm ways to stop his party's front-runner.

Organisers of the meeting included conservative commentator Erick Erickson and Christian conservative leader Bob Fischer. The goal, as stated in the invitation, was "to strategise how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and, if he is the Republican nominee for president, to offer a true conservative candidate in the general election".

The group released a statement after spending roughly four hours behind closed doors calling for a "unity ticket that unites the Republican Party".

While many in the room supported Cruz, they declined to endorse the Texas senator or the only other remaining presidential contender, Ohio governor John Kasich, and instead urged all former Republican presidential candidates to unite against Trump. They also embraced the possibility of a contested convention.

"Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump," they said, an apparent reference to a possible third-party candidacy that might stop Trump but would likely sacrifice the Republican Party's chances in the general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Amid the Republican chaos, Democratic front-runner Clinton focused on fundraising as her campaign begins to look ahead to the general election. She claimed a fifth victory in Tuesday's primaries, as rival Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in Missouri. However, Sanders continued to campaign aggressively ahead of contests next Tuesday in Arizona and Utah.

Arizona residents are far more likely to see commercials for Sanders than for any other candidate in either party, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows. Though trailing badly in delegates, he is spending about $1.8 million on Arizona ads, triple Clinton's media plan.

AP
Brussels: Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, one of the most wanted men in Europe, was captured in Brussels on Friday during a raid by armed police, French police sources said.

It was not immediately clear if Abdeslam, 26, believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead, was injured in the raid.

One man was injured and another arrested unharmed in the raid in the gritty Molenbeek neighbourhood of the Belgian capital, French police sources said, without identifying which was Abdeslam.

The arrest came hours after prosecutors revealed that Abdeslam's fingerprints were found in an apartment in another part of Brussels earlier this week following a raid in which a suspected IS militant was killed.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel held a crisis meeting after the arrest with French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for a European Union summit.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.

Franco-Moroccan Abdeslam fled to Brussels after the attacks and is believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks.

He slipped past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the probe said in December.

His brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the massacre, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.

Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

- Fingerprints

Earlier this week, Belgian and French police raided an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels, shooting dead a 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors then announced on Friday that Abedslam's fingerprints had been found in the Forest apartment.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, without elaborating.

Another Abdeslam fingerprint was found in December in a different Brussels apartment, where investigators believe the fugitive hid for three weeks immediately following the attacks.

Prosecutors also said that the man killed in the Forest shootout was very likely a suspect wanted by police in connection with the Paris attacks.

Investigations show that "the so-called Samir Bouzir, against whom a wanted notice was issued, most probably is the Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid" killed Tuesday, a statement said.

Authorities in December determined that a fake identity card in Bouzir's name was used to wire 750 euros ($800) from a Brussels Western Union office to the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud four days after the massacre in the French capital.

AFP
Mexico City: The governor of one of Mexico's most violent states is making waves by proposing that impoverished farmers be allowed to grow opium poppies for legal medical use.

Guerrero state is among Mexico's poorest, and many remote mountain communities already grow small plots of poppies, which are bought by drug cartels that have fought violent turf battles throughout the Pacific coast state.

It has become the biggest opium-producing state in Mexico, supplying about half the heroin used in the United States.

Guerrero Gov. Hector Astudillo suggested this week that farmers be allowed to produce opium for legal medical use.

Astudillo, a member of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, later said his comments were more thinking-out-loud than a concrete proposal.

But they illustrate the government's difficulty in weaning small farmers away from what is often their only alternative to migration. Local farmers often raise corn on their dry mountain plots, but don't grow enough to even meet their own needs. Many keep an acre or so of irrigated poppies to provide an income.

Some say that if more farmers worked for the legal market, it could undermine the power of drug cartels that are now their only buyers.

Lisa Sanchez, who oversees drug policy for the NGO Mexico United Against Crime, is among those who find the proposal interesting.

"The debate has to be oriented toward legal routes for growing poppies, because any orderly market would take power away from the cartels and reduce the violence, even though that is not a magic solution, nor the only one," Sanchez said.

But others say the proposal may be a nonstarter in a world where demand for legal opiates is already being met. They say the kind of controls needed for legal production can't be implemented in the remote, cartel-dominated mountains.

Antonio Mazzitelli, the representative in Mexico for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said the proposal "is not at all viable."

"There isn't sufficient demand to justify more production," Mazzitelli said.

Instead, he said, Mexico should focus on "long-term development alternatives" such as roads, infrastructure and crop substitution that would permit farmers to grow non-drug crops.

The global legal market for opiates is overseen by the International Narcotics Control Board, an arm of the United Nations.

The board calculates demand based on each country's needs and organizes supply in a handful of nations  Australia, France, Hungary, India, Spain and Turkey are some of the largest  that must comply with security and quality requirements to be approved as producers. It also registers all legal global production and oversees transactions to avoid diversions into the black market.

Even if Mexico could meet those requirements, Mazzitelli said legal poppies could not be cultivated where the plant is grown now because of the difficulties, danger and cost involved in trying to monitor the crop in remote mountainous areas where the state has little effective control.

AP
Athens: Six suspected members of a trafficking network were arrested in Greece as they prepared to fly seven Iraqi migrants to Italy in a light aircraft, Greek police said Thursday.

The gang of four Greek nationals and two Iraqis were arrested in Messolonghi, western Greece, on Wednesday as a small Piper plane carrying the migrants, including four children, was about to take off.

The migrants had been driven from Athens by the two Iraqi smugglers.

"A criminal network was dismantled for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft," the police said in a statement.

The network had successfully sent 12 groups of migrants to Italy, the police said, adding that each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 to 7,500 euros ($5,100-8,500).

The migrant children were sent to a juvenile welfare centre, police said. It was not clear what happened to the adults.

Police also seized the Piper aircraft, 34,430 euros in cash, two cars, 700 grams of cannabis and shotgun cartridges during the raid.

The police identified the leader of the gang as one of the arrested Iraqis, and said they were continuing their investigation to find other accomplices.

AFP
Seoul: North Korea defied UN resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials said, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile fired from a site north of Pyongyang flew about 800 kilometres (500 miles) before crashing off the North's east coast.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it wasn't known what type of missile was fired, but a South Korean defence official, requesting anonymity citing department rules, said it is the first medium-range missile launched by the North since April 2014 when it fired two.

A senior US defence official said the Pentagon can confirm the missile launch, saying it appears to be a Rodong missile fired from a road-mobile launcher. The official said the test violated multiple UN Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from engaging in any ballistic and nuclear activities.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said later Friday its surveillance equipment detected the trajectory of a suspected second missile fired from a site where the North's confirmed first launch occurred. A Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said the object later disappeared from South Korean radar at an altitude of 17 kilometres (10 miles) and that it was trying to find out if a missile had been fired or something else was captured by the radar.

Friday's launch came amid a heightened international standoff over the North's weapons programs in the wake of its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened preemptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch. The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls US military threats.

On Tuesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had ordered tests soon of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. Kim issued that order while overseeing a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.

This led South Korean analysts to suspect that the North would likely fire a missile soon to test the re-entry technology. Some analysts also predicted the North might fire a missile carrying an empty warhead, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if those warhead's parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures upon re-entry into the atmosphere and if they could detonate at the right time.

Outside experts said it is a key remaining technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland. South Korean defence officials said earlier this week that North Korea had yet to develop the re-entry technology, so it still does not have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.

It was not clear if Friday's launch was meant to test a re-entry vehicle or other weapons technologies or was just intended as a show of force against Washington and Seoul.

North Korea is thought to have a small arsenal of atomic bombs, but South Korean officials and many outside experts say they are not small enough to place on missiles that can strike faraway targets.

Analyst Lee Choon Geun at South Korea's state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute said the North can probably place nuclear warheads on its shorter-range Scuds and medium-range Rodong missiles, which would put South Korea and Japan under its striking range. Other analysts question that.

The North began to develop ballistic missiles in the 1970s by reverse-engineering Soviet-made Scuds it acquired from Egypt. After several failures it put its first satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket launched in December 2012. Its second successful satellite launch occurred this February. The UN, the US and others say the launches were a banned test of missile technology. Ballistic missiles and rockets used for satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

Experts say a militarised version of the rocket the North used to put its second satellite into orbit in February would potentially have the range to reach the US mainland. However, there are questions as none of North Korea's possible candidates for an intercontinental ballistic missile have been tested "end-to-end," from launch through re-entry and warhead delivery, to show they actually work.

The Korean Peninsula officially remains in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The US deploys about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.

AP
SEOUL North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Friday that flew about 800 km (500 miles) off its east coast into the sea, South Korea's military said, days after fresh U.S. sanctions were imposed on the isolated state.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the missile was likely a medium-range Rodong-missile.

The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula with the North remaining defiant in the face of the U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January.

The missile was launched from an area near the west coast north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsular and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

It did not confirm the type of the missile. But 800 km was likely beyond the range of most short-range missiles in the North's arsenal.

North Korea last test fired medium-range missiles in 2014.

The North fired two short-range missiles last week into the sea off its east coast and its leader Kim Jong Un ordered more nuclear weapons test and missile tests to improve attack capability.

North Korea often fires missiles at periods of tension on the Korean peninsula or when it comes under pressure to curb its defiance and abandon its weapons programme.

New U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang were issued on Wednesday aiming to expand U.S. blockade against the isolated state by blacklisting individuals and entities that deal with the North's economy.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7 in defiance of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions.

On Wednesday, North Korea's supreme court sentenced a visiting American student to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against the state, a punishment Washington condemned as politically motivated.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump surged forward in the US presidential race, President Barack Obama reportedly threw his weight behind the former, while the Republican establishment intensified efforts to dump the brash billionaire.

In unusually candid remarks, Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors last Friday that time is coming to unite behind his 2008 rival, the New York Times reported.

The President, according to the Times, told the group in Austin Texas that Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders was nearing the point at which his campaign would end, and that the party must soon come together to back her.

"Obama acknowledged that Clinton was perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate, and that some Democrats did not view her as authentic," it said.

"But he played down the importance of authenticity, noting that President George W Bush  whose record he ran aggressively against in 2008  was once praised for his authenticity," the Times said.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest denied Thursday that Obama had endorsed Clinton, but acknowledged that he had made a case for party unity.

The Democrats, Obama told them "need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic President will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee."

"And the President did not indicate or specify a preference in the race," Earnest insisted noting that Obama had praised both Clinton and Sanders.

"But once this (primary) process comes to a conclusion, everybody in the Democratic Party will understand the stakes of the debate, and given those stakes, will need to unify behind the Democratic Party nominee to ensure that he or she can win in November," he said.

The Washington Post said Obama and his top aides have been strategising for weeks about how they can reprise his successful 2008 and 2012 approaches to help elect a Democrat to replace him.

Thus out of concern that a Republican president in 2017 would weaken or reverse some of his landmark policies, Obama "is poised to be the most active sitting president on the campaign trail in decades," it said.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, prominent conservatives called for a unity ticket and a convention fight to stop in "a sign of the growing desperation in the party establishment to find an alternative to the billionaire businessman," CNN reported.

Conservatives gathered in Washington Thursday to discuss ways to thwart Trump's march to the nomination.

One proposal included a unity ticket involving Trump's closest rival Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, CNN said citing a source familiar with the conversation.

But the group decided not to commit to that pairing "because of the egos involved," it said.

It also left the door open to potentially supporting a third party race if Republicans are unable to stop Trump.

IANS
Seoul: North Korea has released CCTV images showing American student Otto Warmbier removing a political banner from a wall in a hotel - a "crime" that saw him sentenced to 15 years hard labour.

The brief CCTV clip, taken in a staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, was submitted as evidence during Warmbier's trial on Wednesday.

The United States has accused the North of using Warmbier as a political pawn and condemned the sentence as way out of proportion to what amounted to little more than a misdemeanour.

The grainy, black-and-white footage showed the 21-year-old student from the University of Virginia removing the metre-long, mounted poster from the wall and laying it on the ground.

The banner carried a slogan in bold white lettering on a red background. Part of the banner was blanked out at the trial, but it appeared to read: "Let us strongly arm ourselves with Kim Jong-il's patriotism."

The CCTV images, released late Thursday, did not show exactly what Warmbier did after taking it down, and it was unclear if he attempted to take the poster out of the country.

Warmbier was arrested at the airport as he was leaving the country with a tour group on 2 January.

Four days later, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and experts say the resulting surge in military tensions and the adoption of tough new UN sanctions were probably behind the harsh sentence.

In the past, North Korea has used the detention of US citizens to obtain high-profile visits from the likes of former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in order to secure their release.

AFP
Beijing: Over 800 individuals and 928 companies with bribery records were punished in China last year under President Xi Jinping's campaign against corruption in the Communist nation.

Last year, procuratorates across China accepted more than 3.6 million bribery-related inquiries, up 62.4 per cent, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said on Thursday.

In all 817 individuals were punished, it said.

According to the SPP, among those who made the inquiries, 91 per cent were private enterprises, and over 2.7 million of all inquiries were related to bidding.

The SPP has joined with several ministries to deter bribery in bidding and construction projects by requesting restrictive measures be taken against convicted bribers.

Individuals and companies are likely to be disqualified for bidding on government projects or even forbidden from operating if convicts are found to be involved, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides large number of officials, a number of high level leaders including the former national security chief, Zhou Yongkang and high level military officials were prosecuted and jailed in the anti-graft drive launched by Xi.

Since Xi took over as president and Party chief in 2013, thousands of officials have been punished in massive

anti-corruption campaign.

PTI
Brussels: Police found fingerprints of Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam in a Brussels apartment raided this week, officials said Friday as authorities continued searching for two suspects who fled the scene.

Reports suggested Abdeslam could even be one of the two men who slipped through a massive police cordon Tuesday in the Forest quarter of Brussels after another suspect was shot dead.

Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have played a key role in the 13 November attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead.

Investigations have shown that several of those involved in the assaults lived in Brussels, where it seems increasingly likely the attacks were planned.

The Franco-Moroccan, whose older brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, fled across the border to Belgium hours after the massacre and is now one of the most wanted men in Europe.

Belgium's RTBF television station, citing unidentified sources, said it was "more than likely" that Abdeslam was one of the two suspects who fled the Forest apartment but Belgian authorities refused comment on that issue.

"We can confirm that fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam were found in the apartment in Forest," spokesman for federal prosecutors Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP, without elaborating.

The firefight on Tuesday erupted after Belgian and French police searched the Forest property as part of continued investigations into the Paris attacks.

The officers went to the apartment believing it was rented under the same false identity as a hideout in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used by the Paris attackers.

A report on Friday said that the man killed during the anti-terror raid in Brussels is on a list of IS fighters leaked last week.

TV channel VRT said that the 35-year-old Algerian identified by the authorities as Mohamed Belkaid and who was living illegally in Belgium, was listed as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Contacted by AFP, Belgium's federal prosecutor declined to comment on the report.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and and IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

Asked whether the one of the suspects who escaped the shootout was Abdeslam, a source close to the investigation said: "We can obviously ask ourselves the question."

Another Abdeslam fingerprint was found in December in a different Brussels apartment, where investigators believe the fugitive hid for three weeks immediately following the attacks.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.

The ringleader, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris shortly after the attacks.

Both had links to the largely immigrant Brussels district of Molenbeek which was targeted by authorities after the attacks.

Brahim Abdeslam, Salah's brother, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.

AFP
Manila: Philippine troops battled about 100 Muslim militants Friday in fierce fighting that killed seven gunmen and a soldier and wounded a top militant commander long wanted by both the Philippines and its US ally, a Filipino general said.

Another 16 soldiers and five militants were hurt in the clash that erupted when troops approached rebels from the Abu Sayyaf group in a jungle off Patikul town in predominantly Muslim Sulu province, said Brig. Gen. Allan Arrojado.

Among them was one-armed rebel commander Radulan Sahiron, who led the Abu Sayyaf faction, Arrojado said.

The US government has offered $1 million for any information leading to the capture and prosecution of Sahiron, one of the original Abu Sayyaf commanders who has endured years of fighting and has been blamed for several bomb attacks and kidnappings.

It was not immediately clear if the militants were with captives, including two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipino woman who were abducted last year in a marina on southern Samal Island. The kidnapped victims were believed to be held in Sulu.

In a recent video posted on a Facebook account linked to the militants, they threatened to kill the hostages unless a huge ransom was paid by 8 April. The Philippine military said the government's no-ransom policy remains and security forces would continue efforts to secure the safe release of the captives.

The Abu Sayyaf is one of several Muslim rebel groups in the predominantly Catholic nation's south. The main rebel group has agreed to peace in exchange for autonomy.

AP
MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia could scale up its military presence in Syria again within hours and would still bomb terrorist groups there despite a partial draw-down of forces ordered after military successes.

Speaking in one of the Kremlin's grandest halls three days after he ordered Russian forces to partially withdraw from Syria, the Russian leader said the smaller strike force he had left behind was big enough to help forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad keep advancing.

"I'm sure that we will see new and serious successes in the near future," Putin told an audience of more than 700 members of the military at an awards ceremony. In particular, he said he hoped that the ancient city of Palmyra, which is held by Islamic State, would soon fall to Assad's forces.

"I hope that this pearl of world civilisation, or at least what's left of it after bandits have held sway there, will be returned to the Syrian people and the entire world," Putin said, referring to the World Heritage Site.

In his first public remarks since ordering the withdrawal, Putin for the first time put an approximate price tag on the Russian operation, saying that the bulk of the expenses - 33 billion roubles ($481.89 million) - had been taken from the defence ministry's war games budget.

There would be other costs, he said, in order to replace ammunition and weapons as well as to make repairs.

Russian air strikes against Islamic State, Al Nusra and other terrorist groups would press on, he said, as would a wide range of measures to aid Syrian government forces including helping them plan their offensives.

Putin said he did not want to have to escalate Russia's involvement in the conflict again after the draw-down and was hoping peace talks would be successful. But he made clear Russia could easily scale up its forces again.

"If necessary, literally within a few hours, Russia can build up its contingent in the region to a size proportionate to the situation developing there and use the entire arsenal of capabilities at our disposal," he said.

A senior Obama administration official said that the United States has monitored the return to Russia of a "substantial number" of fixed-wing aircraft and confirmed Putin's assertion that the they could fly back to Syria within hours.

But Russian helicopters, armour, long-range rocket batteries and most of the estimated 5,000 Russian personnel appear to have remained in Syria, said the official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive matter.

A Russian military source has told the Interfax news agency that only around 1,000 troops would stay, of whom more than half would be military advisers.

"THIS PATHWAY TO PEACE"

In a thinly disguised warning to Turkey and others, he said Russia was leaving behind its most advanced S-400 air defence system and would not hesitate to shoot down "any target" which violated Syrian air space.

Unexpectedly, he also paid tribute to a Russian soldier whose death in the five-month operation had previously been unacknowledged. By doing so, Putin tacitly raised the death toll for Russian servicemen to five and confirmed that special forces had been deployed.

Dampening speculation of a rift between Moscow and Damascus over the draw-down, he said the pullout was agreed with Assad beforehand and that the Syrian leader had backed the decision.

Still, the drawdown gives Putin considerable leverage over Assad. Russia could threaten not to send the aircraft back to protect government forces if the Syrian leader continues attacks on moderate opposition forces, said the Obama administration official.

Praising Assad for "his restraint, sincere desire for peace and for his readiness for compromise and dialogue", Putin said the Russian demarche had sent a positive signal for all sides taking part in peace talks in Geneva.

"You, soldiers of Russia, opened up this pathway to peace," he told the audience.

Russia took the world by surprise by first launching air strikes on Sept. 30 last year. The sudden announcement of a partial withdrawal of forces was also unexpected.

Moscow will finish pulling out most of its strike force "any day now" and no later than by the end of this week, Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian air force, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda paper in an interview published on Thursday.

That tallies with an updated Reuters calculation based on state TV and other footage, which shows that as of Thursday 18 or half of Russia's estimated 36 fixed-wing warplanes had flown out of Syria in the past three days.

Mikhail Barabanov, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said the swift withdrawal was meant to show the world how fleet-footed the Russian air force had become in recent years.

($1 = 68.4800 roubles)

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov, Katya Golubkova, Jack Stubbs and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Peter Millership, Don Durfee and Bernard Orr)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
GENEVA/RIYADH The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen may be responsible for "international crimes", a category that includes war crimes and crimes against humanity, the top U.N. human rights official said on Friday.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemned an air strike in Yemen this week and added that the coalition was "responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together".

More than 6,000 people have been killed since the coalition campaign began a year ago to fight Iranian-allied Houthis and forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and to restore the president they ousted, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri said on Friday major combat operations were less extensive than earlier in the war and there were "good signs" the U.N. might soon restart peace talks between warring Yemeni factions.

Houthi officials travelled to Saudi Arabia this month for secret talks on the conflict that led to a pause in fighting on the border, a main battlefront of the war, and a prisoner exchange.

Asseri said that despite those "positive signs", any formal peace talks would have to be carried out by Hadi's internationally recognised government, not by Saudi Arabia, and under a U.N. umbrella.

Tuesday's strike near Mustaba in northwest Yemen hit an outdoor market and killed more than 100, a provincial health director and a U.N. official in Sanaa said, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the war.

"These awful incidents continue to occur with unacceptable regularity. In addition, despite public promises to investigate such incidents, we have yet to see progress in any such investigations," Zeid said in a statement.

"We are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by members of the Coalition," Zeid said. International crimes includes war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave violations of human rights.

Saudi Arabia enjoys diplomatic backing and military help from the United States and other Western powers for its campaign in Yemen.

The Obama administration is "deeply concerned by the devastating toll of the crisis in Yemen," a senior official said. It is urging all sides to comply with international humanitarian law and to minimize harm to civilians by taking steps including not positioning armaments or military equipment in places where civilians are known to gather.

HOUTHI ATTACKS CONDEMNED

Asseri urged the U.N. not to collect its information from those, like the provincial health director, employed by the Houthi-controlled administration in Sanaa.

"We use the information coming from the (pro-Hadi) Yemeni army because they are on the ground. The attack was under the control of the Yemeni army. It gave the target," Asseri said in a phone interview.

He forwarded a graphic prepared by Hadi's government that said the target of the air strike was a military area where Houthi forces had gathered and that "they deceived people by saying it was a market".

A statement issued on Friday by Hadi's government said it had formed a committee to look into the bombing and whether it was the result of an air strike or of shelling by the Houthis, whom it accused of often blaming the coalition for attacks they carried out themselves.

But Zeid's staff who visited the site of Tuesday's deadly strike and interviewed witnesses at al-Khamees market "found no evidence of any armed confrontation or significant military objects in the area at the time of the attack", Zeid said.

Coalition strikes "have hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties  and hundreds of private residences," he added. There were 24 children among the 106 reported dead at Mustaba.

Zeid also condemned indiscriminate ground attacks carried out by the Houthis and their allies which have killed civilians, saying these may also amount to international crimes.

Asseri told Reuters: "Today, we have less of what in military science we call major combat, where we use a lot of forces. Today, most of the forces are in the phase of stabilising," he said, adding that military operations continued, particularly near Sanaa.

The pause in fighting on the border, and the breaking of a Houthi siege on the city of Taiz in the south, both mediated with the help of local tribes, was part of a wider effort to reinvigorate the political process, he said.

"When you increase the political process you decrease the military one to give the opportunity to talk. Today we want to give the ability to encourage and relaunch again the talks to come up with a political solution," he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Angus McDowall, additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Andrew Roche, Bernard Orr)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Lenovo has finally started rolling out Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) update for the K3 Note smartphone in India. The update also adds TheaterMax support for an immersive VR experience. This feature is present in Vibe K4 Note, Vibe X3 and the latest K5 Plus smartphones. The smartphone was launched running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) in India, so it is directly getting the Android 6.0 update, skipping Android 5.1 (Lollipop).

According Lenovos official Android Upgrade Matrix, the Marshmallow update has been rolled out earlier than the expected April release, but it is yet to confirm the roll out time frame for A7000, A7000 Plus, A7010 / VIBE K4 Note, VIBE Shot, VIBE X3, VIBE S1 and VIBE P1 smartphones.

Android 6.0 concentrates on App Permissions, Web Experience, App Links and Power & Charging. It also brings new Doze battery saving feature that uses motion detection to cut off background activity when the phone is in standby, but it will still wake up for important events like alarms.

The Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) over-the-air (OTA) update for the Lenovo K3 Note is 1.65GB in size and also includes Android security patch for March 2016. In case the download is slow or if you have not received the update, download the direct OTA file (From S205_151118 to S322_160314) from here (From S121_150813 to S322_160314) and flash it manually using recovery.
ORNUA CO OPERATIVE LIMITED

Ornua is an Irish agri-food co-operative, which markets and sells dairy on behalf of its members: Irish dairy farmers and dairy processors. The co-operative is Irelands largest exporter of Irish dairy products, it operates under two divisions Ornua Foods & Ornua Ingredients. Ornua Foods is responsible for the global marketing and sales of Ornuas consumer brands including the iconic Kerrygold brand. Ornua Ingredients is responsible for the procurement of Irish and non-Irish dairy products and for the sale of dairy ingredients to food manufacturers and foodservice customers across the world.

The IDB supply a range of milk powders with a variety of nutritional values and shelf lives to suit any manufacturer, including: butter milk powder 11.1%, butter milk powder 6%, fat filled butter milk powder, instant fat filled milk powder, instant skim milk powder, skim milk powder, spray dried full cream milk powder - 26% and spray dried full cream milk powder - 26% & 28% Instant.

They also specialize in a variety of whey powder varieties: demineralised whey powder, deproteinised whey powder, whey powder (acid casein), whey powder (cheese) and whey protein concentrate 35.

Milk proteins: acid casein, calcium caseinate, rennet casein, sodium caseinate.

Butter products: anhydrous milkfat - Butteroil, Irish creamery butter - salted sweet cream, Irish creamery butter - unsalted lactic, Irish creamery butter - unsalted sweet cream, whey butter  salted and whey butter  unsalted

Cheese: Blarney, Cagliata, Carlow, Cheddar, Cream Cheese, Dubliner Cheese and Emmental
Global warming is brought about by a hole in the ozone layer which is a layer of air and chemicals high over the earth surface that shields us from the destructive bright beams of the sun and that burns smaller shooting stars before they hit our planet. Numerous environmentalists are accusing the release of greenhouse gasses originating from contamination discharges from industrial facilities. Since restaurants can be one of them because of the procedure or products that they're using here's how restaurants can fight global warming.

Buy aquaponic seafood and vegetables

Fish manure fertilizes plants and afterward the plant material is utilized to feed the fish in closed loop farming. It's one of the most proficient farming strategies around and following these types of farms permits them to continue battling the great battle.

Compost

Given the proper composting infrastructure, discarded food can be an asset rather than waste. Not just can eateries keep organic matter from making a beeline for a landfill, they can really utilize it to develop herbs and create or give it to a nearby composting collective.

Serve less beef

Being a vegetarian is the most effective approach to spare energy, however since a many people won't remove meat at any point in the near future; the best compromise is to serve less hamburger, which makes three times the gas discharges as pork or chicken.

Substitute underperforming tools

The long lifespan of kitchen tools empowers a use it until it breaks mindset, yet numerous newer machines like fridge really pay for them after some time. Advances in kitchen utensils such as skillet bottoms that take advantage of a surface range are another basic approach to decrease energy waste.

Ditch water-cooled ice machines

The freezing system inside the refrigerator is administered by either cold air or circulating water. Water-driven machines utilize approximately a gallon of water for every pound of ice that is a great deal less efficient than their air-controlled partners.
Most bars offer beers. But that doesn't make them beer bars, those sanctuaries for discerning brew mates looking to truly nerd out on the best mixes on the planet. The term beer bar has gotten to be bastardized to the point that it's difficult to identify whether you're in for a world-class experience or a celebrated fraternity party. These are the signs that a beer bar is utilizing the name freely and likely pouring conservatively.

It asserts on offering all foreign beers in small glasses

Because a beer is from another nation does not mean it ought to be served in a snifter, tulip or cup of the week. A hefeweizen is of German origin; however you can't envision anybody serving it in anything smaller than a half quart glass. All Belgian beer is not high liquor and does not request a small pour.

It promotes ice-cold beers

You can't properly taste and value a beer colder than 38 degrees, leaving the ideal temperature between there and 55 degrees. Furthermore, before you begin exploring about how cold beer is, change to drinking wine coolers.

The bartender aims to lessen head

All beer should be presented with a delightful and rich head on top. This isn't wine, it's a malt-based carbonated drink and aromatics accomplished as dynamic mixes in the brew float to the surface and are opened as they achieve the bubbles.

All beer is served in plastic cup

This is the kind of bottom of the barrel circumstance regularly just found in dimly lit strip clubs and ordinary dance clubs brimming with douches, yet there are times that you'll be served a brew out of a plastic glass. Return it and request a glass in the event that you are served in a plastic cups. And just leave if they don't give you a glass.
Alex Lidow is a man on a mission. His Southern California company, Efficient Power Conversion or EPC, is using Gallium Nitride (GaN) chips instead of silicon for exciting applications, from wireless power charging and 4G LTE to augmented reality and autonomous vehicles.

But can this hot new technology ultimately displace the ubiquitous silicon chip in a $300 billion semiconductor market?

When I first heard from Lidows PR guy, I was admittedly skeptical. After all, this was the same man who was ousted from International Rectifier (IR) over some accounting irregularities and was later sued by the company for intellectual property theft (the suit has since been settled and IR was acquired by Infineon for $3 billion in January, 2015).

But Dr. Lidow does have major tech cred, at least he did. He received a PhD in applied physics from Stanford, was an early pioneer in power transistors and co-invented the technology that made IR an industry powerhouse, so I was curious to hear his side of the story and learn what the future holds for GaN technology.

I wasnt disappointed. Lidows story would make a pretty juicy mini-drama.

His father Eric ran IR for nearly half a century until turning it over to Alex and his brother Derek in 1995. Derek left four years later to found market research firm iSupply, leaving his younger brother to run the show until 2007, when he was ousted in what Alex calls a board coup that also claimed his CFO and head of global marketing and sales.

But that was just the beginning of Alexs problems. He was also mired in a protracted divorce with a restraining order that froze the couples disputed assets, including his IR stock. The divorce wouldnt be finalized and the order lifted until 2012. In the mean time, Lidows reputation and finances were in tatters.

Its said that necessity is the mother of invention and, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, but I dont think Ive ever met anyone who better exemplifies both of those truths than Lidow.

Just before his demise at IR, he had begun work on a new type of power transistor made from a very thin layer of GaN grown on a silicon wafer. Believing this new technology could surpass its silicon counterpart but knowing he had to find a way to bootstrap its development with minimal capital, Lidow and two other PhDs with experience in GaN  Joe Cao and Robert Beach  formed EPC and got to work.

The three founders came up with a novel design for a power transistor that was both smaller and faster than those based on silicon. And Lidow found a Taiwan-based manufacturing partner, Archie Huang of Hermes-Epitek, to make the devices on an older production line using fully amortized capital equipment. As a result, the chips are also less expensive to make than silicon. Huang also became an investor in the company.

EPC would spend the next eight years perfecting and marketing their chips and today boasts 700 customers, including a veritable whos who of electronic product manufacturers such as Google, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and, rumor has it, a certain iconic consumer device company from Cupertino, Calif.

According to Lidow, the first and biggest market opportunity they focused on was envelope tracking for millions of 4G LTE base-stations.

Another exciting application is Light Detection and Ranging or LiDAR, which uses laser pulses to detect and identify nearby objects with a resolution of several inches. EPCs GaN devices are used in LiDAR systems for Googles self-driving cars, Microsofts HoloLens augmented reality headset and autonomous drones.

The third and perhaps most groundbreaking opportunity for GaN is in wireless charging to eliminate power cords. Once the receiver and transmitter standards are developed, the technology will be used to wirelessly charge smartphones, tablets, computers, anything that plugs into a home outlet, and eventually, even electric vehicles.

Lidow explained that electric buses are already being tested in Korea, receiving wireless charges at bus stops  requiring just one minute of charge for one kilometer of travel. Someday, you wont have to plug in your electric car. Just park near a charger, grab a cappuccino, and voila, youre ready to go.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that silicon has already had a fifty-year learning curve whereby transistor density has doubled every two years, according to Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) co-founder Gordon Moores eponymous observation known as Moores Law. The aging technologys scalability is starting to bump up against a wall of physical limitations.

But for GaN, its still early days. This promising new technology thats already faster, smaller and less expensive than silicon is just at the beginning of its own economies of scale. As Lidow says, first power conversion, then analog chips, and someday, the world.

Well, lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

There are quite a few startups and existing semiconductor companies working on GaN technology. And highly integrated low-voltage devices like processor and memory chips are still a long way off. But its clear that GaN has a bright future and the ever-tenacious Alex Lidow, now 61, is on a personal quest to spread the word. Godspeed.
Talks are swirling about the possibility of a contested convention, despite Donald Trump being the clear frontrunner in the GOP race for the presidential nomination.

During an interview on the FOX Business Networks Varney & Co., Randy Evans, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, explained what happens if no candidate acquires 1,237 delegates on the first ballot.

Well really we just go to the second ballot and the third ballot, Evans said. The real challenge is that every state is completely different on how long they bind their delegates. So, for example, here in Georgia as a delegate youre bound by two ballots. In Florida, youre bound by three ballots. There are some states where delegates remain bound until the candidate releases them.

Evans added: You do have to be supported by the majority of eight states in order to get your name in nomination. So it wont be just anybody that they can vote for. It would have to be the majority of eight states to stand up and say we support this candidate. Wed like to place that name in nomination in order to even be eligible to receive votes in the convention tally.

The candidates still have a few months to go before the Republican National Convention, scheduled to be held in mid-July in Cleveland, Ohio.

When asked if the GOP would lose if the candidate who has the most delegates is not the nominee, Evans responded:

Its happened before. If fact, most times when a candidate goes into the convention and they dont have enough to be presumptivein other words theyre not within 75 or 100 or sosomeone else ends up being the nominee.

Evans suggested Trump has a high probability of becoming the Partys nominee.

I just think that unless something really strange happens, I think youre going to see Donald Trump either get to the 1,237 or in the alternative, based on my calculations, I think hell end up about 75 delegates short. But, youll have 100-150 delegates that are unbound. He should be able to win it on the first ballot if the current trajectories continue.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

With the development of smart homes, smart cars, and smart cities, the word "smart" is quickly becoming shorthand for Internet of Things connectivity -- and for good reason. The Internet of Things will enable functionality between seemingly disparate devices and use the resulting data to personalize user experiences and create a truly intelligent technological ecosystem that reshapes consumer and enterprise markets.

With research firm Gartnerestimating that the number of IoT-connected devices will grow 30% in 2016, there's already strong momentum building behind the pending revolution, and certain companies are positioned to see major benefits.

To get a survey of potential IoT winners, we asked three Motley Fool contributors to spotlight a pick for a top Internet of Things stock to invest in. Read on to learn which companies could benefit from the inter-device connectivity trend that will change everything from tech to consumer goods and healthcare.

Daniel B. Kline: In his keynote address at Deutsche Bank's 2016 Media, Internet, & Telecom Conference on March 8,Verizon CFO Fran Shammo admitted that the wireless phone business was no longer a growth opportunity. But while he doesn't expect to attract a lot more phone customers, he believes strongly that the Internet of Things will bring big opportunity for his company.

"When you think about the growth opportunities around consumption of video in that environment, you think about IoT, and smart cities, and all the applications that are coming which have to run over wireless networks ... there's still a lot of potential growth there," he said.

Basically, Shammo told the audience that in the next few years, every device will be connected, and that will require network capacity. Because Verizon has invested heavily in network infrastructure, he believes his company should be able to capitalize.

"The network is still how we build our brand ... and we continue to believe the network will be a differentiator for us going forward," he said.

Shammo is right. Verizon may not make IoT devices or even sell them, but it should clean up by selling access to its network. It's the same model phone companies used when the home security business first launched. Alarms required a phone line, albeit a little-used one, and the companies were happy to sell them -- making money as an infrastructure provider.

It may be a an old-school model, but it's an effective one that makes Verizon a de facto IoT player.

Tim Brugger:Synapticsfollowers may think it's too late to get on board the train. Thanks in part toyet another rumor of a buyout by a China-based investment group earlier this year, the maker of fingerprint sensors, mobile touchscreens, and related technologies isup over20% in value year to date. Why did Synaptics warrant an acquisition offer of $110 a share when it was trading at just $62.05 at the time? Making forays into a key IoT market is a big reason why.

One of the fastest growth areas within IoT, smart cars, may also prove to be the first that enjoys widespread adoption. A recent studysuggests that new-car buyers are more concerned with a car's infotainment system, the technology behind it, and seamless integration with smartphones than actual driving performance. And nearly 40% of the drivers asked said they'd change auto manufacturers if their first choice didn't offer a "smart" infotainment system.

Strange as consumers' changing habits may sound to avid drivers, it's music to the ears of Synaptics shareholders. Synaptics offers a suite of automotive-specific touch, display, and biometric solutions, which are already included in several of the world's largest automakers.

Nearly 90% of Synaptics revenue was mobile-related last quarter, and consumers have spoken: Our cars are quickly becoming the ultimate mobile device, and Synaptics is poised to go along for the ride. Synaptics' forward price-to-earnings ratio of 26 may scare some potential investors, but it shouldn't. Looking even further ahead, Synaptics is trading at a mere 12 times future earnings, and it will continue to grow right along with consumers' love for smart cars.

Keith Noonan:AT&T has developed a reputation as a low-risk, low-growth stock backed by its strong position in wireless and a great dividend -- and it's true that Big Blue has recently held strong while the broader tech sector has dipped -- but the company's outlook is more exciting than its safe reputation suggests. AT&T is looking to the Internet of Things as a growth avenue that could branch its business into new spaces while also improving its wireless stronghold, and the company could play a formative role in the IoT tech push.

The mobile device will likely be at the center of the Internet of Things transition, and AT&T's wireless networks are on track to see data booms that create new demand for the company's storage, processing, and interface capabilities at the consumer and industrial levels. The company already counts more than 26 million IoT devices connected on its North American networks, and the company is in the midst of developing and testing 5G technologies that will pave the way for the next generation of IoT innovations.

AT&T is partnering with a range of companies, including Ericsson, Intel, and General Electric, to test and expand the IoT capabilities of its networks, and the company is also indicating that its DirecTV wing and related wireless broadband tests have already proved to be assets in developing and rolling out 5G technologies. With estimates that 5G could deliver a hundredfold increase over top 4G speeds and a thousandfold increase in data load, network advances could be the key to the IoT revolution and position AT&T as a major beneficiary of inter-device connectivity.

Priced at just 13 times projections for forward earnings and packing a dividend yield of roughly 5% in addition to a formative position in the big connectivity push, AT&T looks to be a top Internet of Things stock.

The article 1 Stock for Investing in the Internet of Things originally appeared on Fool.com.

Daniel Kline has no position in any stocks mentioned. Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. Tim Brugger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric Company. The Motley Fool recommends Gartner, Intel, and Verizon Communications. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Microsoft

Though it's admittedly a subjective list, Microsoft's $7.2 billion purchase of Swedish telecom giant Nokia's crumbling handset businesswill likely go down as one of the worst acquisitions in the tech industry's history.

Just how bad was it?

Just slightly over one year after its April 2014 purchase announcement, Microsoft wrote down the value of its Nokia handset division by $7.6 million. For those scoring at home, that is not a typo. Microsoft actually wrote its Nokia acquisition down for more than its original purchase price. Face-palm. Epic fail.

And while Microsoft's mobile strategy has certainly improved to a fair degree under the company's new leadership, it just received a bit of bad news that brings to light old scars from this historically bad buyout.

Here today, gone tomorrowAccording to recent reports, Microsoft's Windows Phone ecosystem will lose support of its main mapping technology over the course of the next two months. Microsoft has licensed its mapping software from Here, the mapping data provider formerly owned by Nokia, rather than licensing it from key mobile rivals like Alphabet or Apple.

Image source: Here.

According to the company, Here will pull its applications for Windows 10 by the end of March. Furthermore Here will fully discontinue updating its apps for all Microsoft Lumia smartphones no later than June 30, effectively removing what had become the primary mapping technology for all Windows mobile devices from the platform. According to Here spokesperson Pino Bonetti, "To continue offering the HERE apps for Windows 10 would require us to redevelop the apps from the ground up, a scenario that led to the business decision to remove our apps from the Windows 10 store." At the same time, though, this shouldn't necessarily come as a complete surprise for those who follow the space closely.

Last August, Nokia sold Here to a consortium of auto makers including Audi, BMW, and Mercedes for $3 billion, ostensibly to help further their combined autonomous driving efforts, in which proprietary mapping technology is seen as a key strategic asset. As such, the abrupt public severing of ties between Microsoft and Here is more likely a result of the product development ambitions of the above German automakers rather than a souring of relations between Microsoft and Here. Either way, the news again exposes deficiencies in Microsoft's mobile offerings the company would otherwise have you forget.

Ghosts of acquisitions past Though Windows 10's seamless cross-device functionality marked a major win for Microsoft when it launched last year, the cold truth remains that Microsoft is a bit player at best in mobile, while Apple and Alphabet are virtual locks to control this new computing paradigm for the long term. Case in point: Research company IDC estimatedthat Windows Phone accounted for just 2.2% of global smartphone operating system market share in 2015.

Image source: Microsoft.

iOS and Android, meanwhile, comprised 15.8% and 81% of the smartphone software market share, respectively. Microsoft's bungled Nokia acquisition represented a last-ditch effort on the part of the Redmond-based software giant to narrow the widening chasm between itself and the two leaders. However, as losing its Here support shows, the acquisition failed to achieve its aims on virtually every front, even in securing a workable mapping platform for Microsoft.

What's more, this is only the latest in a series of major brands that have elected to end support or move away from Microsoft's Windows Phone platform. As was noted by The Verge, companies like American Airlines, Chase, Bank of America, Pinterest, and others have each ceased support for their Windows Phone apps over the course of the past year. Microsoft has already rallied to promise coming improvements to its own mapping apps for Windows Phone. However, it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see which direction the momentum is flowing for Microsoft's mobile products in general.

The article Another Painful Reminder of Microsoft's Bungled Nokia Acquisition originally appeared on Fool.com.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Andrew Tonner owns shares of AAPL and BAC. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends GOOG, GOOGL, and AAPL. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2017 $35 calls on AAL. The Motley Fool recommends BAC and BAMXF. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The most-wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks was wounded and caught in a shootout with police in Brussels on Friday, Belgian newspaper Derniere Heure and other media said.

Other newspapers reported two people had been arrested, though there were conflicting accounts and French President Francois Hollande said there was no confirmation of the detention of Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect from Brussels.

Several exchanges of gun fire rang out in the city's Molenbeek area - the scene of past investigations - and police officers were seen surrounding an apartment block there.

Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel left a meeting of EU leaders on the migration crisis going on at the same time in the Belgian capital and met to discuss the operation, officials said.

Television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street. Reporters at the scene described white smoke rising from a rooftop and a helicopter hovering overhead.

A police spokeswoman said an operation was ongoing and could not give further details.

Belgian police had found fingerprints belonging to Abdeslam at the scene of an apartment raided on Tuesday, prosecutors said earlier.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up in Paris, was "more than likely" one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.

She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organizer of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

France's BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a Frenchwoman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Belgian officials said earlier in the week that police had not expected to find armed suspects at the apartment and that the presence of French officers was not an indication the raid was of special importance to the investigation.

Abdeslam's elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Parisduring a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later.

Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. There has long been speculation in Belgium that he could have fled to Syria.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for Islamic State.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Andrew Heavens)
Samsung's Gear VR. Image source: Samsung

Samsung's latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S7, went on sale March 11. Buyers who pre-ordered the phone, and those who purchase it by the end of this week, receive a free gift alongside the device: Samsung's Gear VR virtual reality headset.

The Gear VR made its debut last fall, and has been widely praised by critics. Offering an experience not easily matched by other devices, a free Gear VR may prompt a few buyers to consider Samsung's phone over rival handsets. More important, it gives the Korean tech giant and partner Facebook an advantage over their competitors in the emerging VR space.

How big is the Gear VR?When Samsung released the Gear VR last November, the device quickly sold out and was backordered for several weeks. That suggests the Gear VR was at least modestly popular, though it's difficult toquantify.Unfortunately, Samsung has yet to disclose any firm sales figures, and third-party research firms have not put out any credible estimates.

The Gear VR is not a stand-alone device, but rather an accessory -- it requires the use of one of Samsung's smartphones to function, and more specifically, one of its expensive models. Samsung shipped about 325 million smartphones last year, but most were incompatible with the Gear VR. Only Samsung's premium flagships (the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy Note 5, and Galaxy S6 Edge+) supported the headset in 2015. Samsung doesn't regularly breakout its smartphone sales by individual model, but third-party estimates pegged the combined sales of its four flagships at under 100 million last year.That put a hard cap on the Gear VR's popularity, though demand was nowhere near that.

Last week, a Samsung executive told Reuters that the company had received more pre-orders for the Galaxy S7 than its predecessor, the Galaxy S6. He didn't offer up a specific figure, but that could suggest sales of more than 15 million. However, that's phones sold to wireless carriers, rather than end consumers.Last month, Piper Jaffray analyst Travis Jakel (via Fortune) estimated that Samsung would sell 5 million Gear VR headsets throughout all of 2016.

Building a platformWithout hard sales data, it will be difficult to discern how many consumers were enticed to purchase the Galaxy S7 for its virtual reality headset. Many may have planned to purchase the Galaxy S7 even before Samsung announced the promotion, and those who chose afterward could've been swayed by many other factors, such as the device's larger battery, microSD card slot, or water-resistance. But the Gear VR gives Samsung's smartphones something it hasn't had in quite a while: a compelling, exclusive feature.

Samsung's smartphone shipments rose last year, but only a modest 2.1% on an annual basis, according to research firm IDC. That was less than the broader market, which grew 10.1%. Samsung's smartphones have been pressured by low-cost rivals, many of whom offer similar handsets running the same operating system. But they can't offer consumers the Gear VR.

To be fair, there are other VR solutions out there, most notablyGoogleCardboard. Facebook's own Oculus Rift will start shipping at the end of this month, and other headsets will follow later this year. But Samsung is offering the most compelling solution. Bundled with a smartphone most consumers were going to buy anyway, it's affordable, and although it can't offer experiences on par with full-featured virtual reality headsets, it's better than its low-cost rivals.

The Gear VR has already attracted the attention of developers, and boasts several dozen exclusive games on the Oculus Store. Those experiences are tethered to Samsung's phones, but interest in the platform should eventually benefit Facebook. Samsung's Gear VR and Facebook's Oculus Rift are two separate platforms, but they both make use of the same digital storefront. In a Reddit AMA earlier this year, Oculus head Palmer Luckey predicted that many Gear VR apps would be ported to the Oculus Rift over time. Facebook's management doesn't expect VR to affect the company's financials this year, but the success of the Gear VR bodes well for Facebook's own shareholders in the long run.

It's still early days for the platform, but Samsung's decision to bundle the Gear VR with the Galaxy S7 may be the aggressive step needed to push the device into the mainstream.

The article Samsung's Big Gift to Galaxy S7 Owners originally appeared on Fool.com.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Sam Mattera has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends GOOG, GOOGL, and FB. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
As oil prices in the United States hit a 2016 high of $40.23 a barrel, two new stock ratings have emerged on Wall Street. Both affect oil majors -- ExxonMobil and Chevron to be exact -- but here's the funny thing: Wall Street doesn't seem so keen on either one of them.

The newsAccording to our records here at Motley Fool CAPS, the analysts at Nomura Securities are some of the sharpest knives in the stock analysis drawer. Not only has Nomura outperformed 97% of the analysts we track over the past four years. Nomura also boasts the enviable record of having been right on all three of its energy sector recommendations during this period.

Here's the worrisome thing: Despite the fact that oil prices appear to be on an upswing this week, Nomura still isn't convinced it's time to buy ExxonMobil and Chevron. In fact, it actually recommend "reducing" your exposure to Exxon.

Oil -- it's a bubble no more. Image source: ExxonMobil.

Here are three reasons why.

Thing 1: Exxon is great, but...Nomura starts off its "reduce" recommendation for Exxon in a curious place -- praising the oil major for its "downstream integration and resilience"and a business model that's "best-in-class."

As explained in a StreetInsider.com write-up of Nomura's rating, the analyst sees Exxon as admirably positioned to survive a prolonged dive into "low oil prices" (because even $40 isn't all that expensive in light of recent history). Nomura says Exxon's financial position is also "best in class," and even improving, as ExxonMobil ratchets back its capital spending. According toS&P Global Market Intelligence data, Exxon's capital spending declined by nearly one-third between 2014 and 2015 -- and it's down by nearly half from what the company spent in 2012.

Thing 2: But Exxon has limited optionsBy the same token, though, ExxonMobil has cut capex so much already that Nomura sees "little scope" for further reductions producing a positive effect on free cash flow at the company. Even now, free cash flow isn't looking particularly health.

After subtracting $26.5 billion in capital expenditures made in 2015, from the $30.3 billion in operating cash flow produced that year, Exxon ended 2015 with free cash flow of only $3.8 billion in real cash profits -- a far cry from the company's $16.2 billion in reported "net income."

Meanwhile, debt is surging, and cash reserves are shrinking. At last report, Exxon's balance sheet featured a net debt balance of $15 billion.

Thing 3: Chevron could do betterAs it turns out, Nomura believes the other oil stock it initiated coverage on today, Chevron, has better free cash flow prospects than does Exxon. According to Nomura, "Chevron is the most geared supermajor to oil prices with its growth offering the greatest change in free cash flow."

In other words, even if oil prices do hold at $40, and even continue to strengthen, while this will benefit ExxonMobil, it will benefit Chevron even more.

Analyzing the analysisIs Nomura right about all this? Without delving into all of the details of what might or might not happen in 2016 and beyond, here's how I look at the numbers today: Nomura is right that free cash flow is a problem at both of these oil majors.

Reviewing the financial statements at Exxon, it's clear that this company almost never generates free cash flow at levels even approaching its reported net income -- but the disparity has rarely been as great as it is today. At $3.8 billion in free cash flow, and also considering the effect of $15 billion in net debt, ExxonMobil shares currently sell for an enterprise value to free cash flow ratio of more than 100. That's an insane valuation, and a big reason Nomura is right to warnthat Exxon's "premium multiple [is] too wide [compared] to the peer group."

On the other hand, I wouldn't be too quick to buy Chevron, either. (And indeed, while it rates it more highly than Exxon, even Nomura only gives Chevron a "neutral" rating.) While Exxon is generating only minimal cash profit today, Chevron is actually burning cash. At the same time as the company reported "earning" a $4.6 billion "profit" last year, free cash flow at Chevron ran to negative $10 billion.

Long story short, I'm honestly not certain why Nomura is even talking about either of these companies today, because from where I sit, neither of them looks like any kind of a bargain.

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The article Sell Exxon Mobil As Oil Passes $40? 3 Things You Need to Know originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributorRich Smithdoes not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him onMotley Fool CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handleTMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 278 out of more than 75,000 rated members.Rich's reservations notwithstanding, The Motley Fool still owns shares of ExxonMobil, and The Motley Fool recommends Chevron. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
When you enter a movie theater, you don't locate the nearest exit in the case of an emergencyyou look for the nearest bathroom. You don't even bother sitting on the inside of the booth when you go out to eat with friends; you'll only end up disturbing their meal with your myriad bathroom breaks. And you measure a road trip not in distance or time but in the number of rest stops you know there will be.

You are, without a doubt, one of those people who feels like she ALWAYS needs to pee. So what gives with that bladder of yours? Here are a few of the potential causes for your constant trips to the loo. (Want to pick up some healthier habits? Sign up to get daily healthy living tips, weight loss inspiration, and more delivered straight to your inbox!)

Your perception of "always" might be off.

It sounds like kind of a lot, but, depending on how much liquid you drink, peeing roughly 8 times during the day is average, said Betsy A. B. Greenleaf, DO, a urogynecologist based in New Jersey. "Even though it's annoying," she adds, "getting up once during the night is also considered normal." If you're irked by how much time you spend atop the throne, consider keeping a diary to chart your bathroom breaks. When you actually tally up your trips, what feels like a lot might be totally normal. (Here's how to tell if you're drinking enough water.)

You really could have a small bladder.

It's a classic excuse among the frequent pee-ers: "I just have a small bladder!" Turns out, there's some truth to that seemingly odd refrain.

"Anatomically, everybody can be different, just like some people are tall and some people are short," Greenleaf said.

Most bladders hold about 2 cups of fluid. If you're going to the bathroom frequently and producing less than that, that's probably not normal, said Dr. Tamara Bavendam, program director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. And yes, you should actually measure. Grab a container and see if you're hitting 1.5 to 2 cups, she says. (Just maybe wait until you're home alone to do that science experiment.)

The good news for the small bladdered is that you can train your bladder to hold more fluid. "When it's full, it can stretch," Greenleaf said.

In tests of bladder capacity, teachers and nursespeople with limited time to take themselves to the toilet, for obvious reasonsconsistently rank the highest, she says.

"Some people have this idea that it's not good to hold urine in, so when they get the urge they run to the bathroom," Greenleaf said. "That's the opposite of stretching. If you give into the urges too often, you are training the bladder not to hold as much." (Just don't hold it so long that it starts to hurt.)

You could be inadvertently doing this if you've preemptively started emptying your bladder more frequently in just-in-case scenarios, like in hopes of warding off leakage, say, before a workout, Bavendam said.

"A change in your habits to try to prevent leakage can contribute to this cycle of going more and more often, and then you feel like you need to go frequently."

To train your small bladder to bulk up, Greenleaf recommends something called "timed voiding":

 Urinate every 30 minutes for a day or two, whether you have to go or not.

 Add 15 minutes to the regimen: Urinate every 45 minutes for a day or two.

 Keep adding 15 minutes to this regimen, until over time you will have stretched the bladder out.

You're drinking too little water.

Yes, really. Understandably, if you spend a lot of time thinking you have to pee, you might be inclined to dehydrate yourself just a touch. If you don't drink as much, you won't have to go as often, right? Turns out this way of thinking is bladder sabotage.

"When you drink less, the urine becomes more concentrated, and the more concentrated it is the more irritating it can be to the bladder, which can trigger the sensation that you have to go more often," Greenleaf said. "It you drink more fluids, you may actually be able to hold more, because the more dilute the urine is the less irritating it is to the bladder." (Here's why the 8 cups of water rule is arbitrary.)

Of course, you'll also be rushing to pee if you really overdo it on the water, so just drink enough to keep your urine a light, straw-colored yellow, Bavendam said.

You have an infection or kidney stones.

Both a urinary tract infection and the little crystal formations known as kidney stones can irritate the bladder (in the case of stones, it's when they pass through the urinary tract and approach the bladder), increasing how often you feel you have to pee. Both usually also come with other symptoms, so you should get a hint that something's up.

"Usually a kidney stone will cause a lot of pain in the back or sides," Bavendam said. "Typically with UTIs, the classic sign is urgency, feeling like you need to pee really badly, and it also usually hurts to urinate."

You should hit the (pelvic floor) gym.

The stronger those down-there muscles, the easier it is to hold urine in, Greenleaf said.

"A lot of women really don't know how to tighten or relax the pelvic-floor muscles," Bavendam said.

Classic mistake: You get a strong urge to go and you literally run to the loo.

"When you're running, your body's focused on running, not using your muscles to hold urine in your bladder," she said. "Instead, it's better to learn how to use your muscles to tighten the pelvic-floor area, let the urge subside, and walk to the bathroom."

Yes, we're talking about Kegel exercises. If you don't already know, the exercises are performed by tightening and releasing the muscles you'd use to stop the flow of urine without moving anything else in your body. You can get the full scoop here.

This is especially useful advice for women after pregnancy and childbirth. Miraculous milestones, sure, but both can do very real damage and stretching to muscles and tissue, including the bladder. There's evidence women would fare better in the urinary department if more attention was paid to recovery, Bavendam said.

"If you injured your leg muscle, you would work at rehabilitating it, but that has never been a part of the standard practice after childbirth," she said. "Yes, a doctor might tell you to do your Kegels, but how does a woman really figure that out amongst taking care of her child and going to work? It can have a tremendous impact, but it has to be prioritized as being important to a woman's long-term health."

MORE: 7 Things Your Poop Says About You

Your bladder is legit overactive.

If you're going a lot more often than every few hours, 8 times a day, you might qualify as having an overactive bladder. It's a condition more and more women find themselves in as they age, possibly because our nerves age along with us, Greenleaf said. We're more likely to have other medical conditions that also affect how often we've gotta go, she explains, including back problems that could lead to vertebrae pushing on nerves that then make the bladder feel full.

Your doctor might want to test the strength of your stream or use an ultrasound to see if your bladder is emptying completely, Bavendam said.

"An even more sophisticated test can measure bladder pressure for people who have had unexplained symptoms for a long time," she said.

If pelvic floor exercises and adjusting fluid intake don't make a difference, prescriptions meds might help the bladder relax into holding more urine.

You already take other meds.

Water pills or diuretics, often used to treat high blood pressure, "can cause the kidneys to make a lot of urine really quickly," Bavendam said, which can send you rushing to the bathroom on the double.

Another class of meds called anticholinergics, which are used to treat anxiety and depression, among other problems, can keep the bladder from emptying completely, she says, thereby leaving you feeling like you've gotta go again when you just went.

You could have diabetes.

If you've ruled out other causes, there's a chance your constant peeing is due to diabetes. If your blood sugar's high, the kidneys won't be able to process all of it, and some can spill into the urine. That sugar will essentially pull more water out of you, Bavendam said, so you'll be generating more pee. Even eating food or candy with a lot of sugar is enough to make you go more frequently.

"You could go to the bathroom every hour and still see 2 cups every time," she said. "That's not a bladder problem, it's a problem with the amount of urine you're producing."

Something more serious is going on.

Small bladder or not, many of us just figure the way we pee is...the way we pee. A sudden change in frequency or a really powerful urge is something you should bring up with your doc, though, as it could be a sign of underlying health problems, Greenleaf said. Herniated discs, for example, may be compressing the nerves. In some people, peeing a lot can be the first sign of multiple sclerosis. Tumors growing in the abdomen could press on the bladder. Luckily, these are all rare, but just to be safe, don't chalk it up to simply getting leakier with age.

This article originally appeared on Prevention.com.
Right now, men really only have three choices when it comes to birth control: condoms, a vasectomy, or pulling out, Tech Times reports. But after decades of false starts, a male version of the pill is one step closer to hitting pharmacies, according to Broadly.

"It would be wonderful to provide couples with a safe alternative because some women cannot take birth control pills," Dr. Gunda Georg says in an American Chemical Society press release.

Georg and her team at the University of Minnesota are working with "an experimental compound" that would ideally be taken orally to stop sperm with no negative effects on health or libido and no lasting impact on fertility.

But, as Georg says, that's a "very high bar." The compound researchers are working with blocks one of three retinoic acid receptorsthe alpha receptorrelated to fertility.

Studies show animals with a deficiency in that receptor are healthy except for sperm production. "If you could block that receptor, pharmacologically, you could induce infertility," Georg tells Broadly.

So far, researchers are having a hard time tweaking the compound to make sure it hits only the alpha receptor (thus avoiding side effects) while also being able to be taken orally.

"No one wants to inject themselves with a needle once a day or once a week," researcher Jillian Kyzer says in the press release. But the team believes it's close to getting it right, with Georg predicting they'll have a pill ready for animal tests in half a year.

(But will the CDC tell men who don't go on birth control not to drink, like they did women?)

This article originally appeared on Newser: A Birth Control Pill for Men Is One Step Closer to Reality

More From Newser
A quick-thinking store clerk is being credited with saving a baby after her mother collapsed while suffering from an epileptic episode. Jessica Heinonen, who suffered a bruise on her head in the ordeal, said she doesnt remember anything except that she was holding her daughter before she collapsed, Denver 7 reported.

Heinonen, who suffered her first seizure at 9, also said she typically feels a seizure coming on, but this one had no warning.

Thats kind of what scares you the most, is the fact that you cant do anything about it, she told Denver 7.

Rebecca Montano, a cashier at Farm Crest Milk Stores in Arvada, Colorado, was on hand to grab Heinonens daughter before she fell to the ground. Because of the epilepsy, Heinonen cannot drive and has to have someone around her whenever she is with her daughter.

Its sad not to be able to spend time with my daughter too much whenever I want alone time, and have mommy and daughter time, she told Denver 7.

She said she was thankful Montano acted quickly to protect her daughter from any danger, and that she is speaking out to raise awareness of epilepsy.


Miami, Houston and Orlando, Florida, are the cities within the continental U.S. that have some of the highest risk of having "local transmission" of the Zika virus, meaning the virus will spread to people from mosquitoes in the local area, new research suggests.

The new analysis combines a host of data on climate, mosquito breeding patterns, poverty and air travel to identify the cities at greatest risk. Overall, the southeast part of the country faces the highest risk, the Eastern Seaboard faces a moderate risk and the western U.S. has a lower risk.

However, evidence from similar viruses suggests that if Zika does begin spreading locally, the spread even in the highest-risk cities will be limited, affecting dozens of people at most, said study co-author Andrew Monaghan, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. [Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick]

The overall risk to most people in the U.S. is very low, Monaghan said.

"I don't want this to be an alarmist message," Monaghan told Live Science.

Zika virus spread

The Zika virus is spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes from the Aedes genus, including Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Only about 20 percent of people who become infected with Zika virus exhibit symptoms, and those who do typically have only mild symptoms, such as fever, red eyes, rash and joint pain. However, Zika infections in pregnant women have been tied to microcephaly in their infants  a condition that causes unusually small brains and heads, and brings lifelong cognitive impairments.

The virus also may be responsible for a rare form of temporary paralysis called Guillain-Barre syndrome that can strike people of any age.

Zika is spreading in more than a dozen countries in the Americas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it is possible that the virus will spread within the U.S. because the mosquitoes that transmit the virus live in the country.

These mosquitoes also transmit other viruses, included the ones that cause dengue fever and chikungunya. "The mosquito has been in the U.S. for hundreds of years," Monaghan said. "In 1780, there was a dengue outbreak in Philadelphia."

However, though mosquito-borne diseases have caused outbreaks in the past all the way up the East Coast, large outbreaks are less likely today because of changes in mosquito breeding sites and human behavior, he said.

In the U.S., most people spend most of their time indoors, in air-conditioned rooms with screened-in windows, with few opportunities to be bitten by the nasty bugs. What's more, there are relatively few pockets of standing water where the mosquitoes can breed, and mosquito control efforts are generally very good in the continental U.S., Monaghan said.

Mosquito hotspots

To identify the locations with the highest transmission risk, Monaghan and his colleagues looked at 50 major cities in the U.S. They analyzed data on climate; month-to-month models of Aedes aegypti abundance; air travel from Zika-affected regions; poverty levels, which correlate with a lower probability of having air conditioning and screened-in windows; and history of dengue and chikungunya, which are also transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. (The team did not analyze data from Alaska or Hawaii. However, there is an active dengue outbreak on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the state is likely vulnerable to Zika transmission because of its combination of a tropical climate and a bevy of tourists, who are not as savvy about preventing mosquito bites, Monaghan noted.)

For most of the country, the risk of localized Zika transmission will remain very low until the summer, when Aedes aegypti populations rise, the study found.

The areas with the highest risk of Zika transmission are in south Texas and Florida  particularly, places like Miami, which has both the right climate for the mosquitoes to breed and an influx of travelers from Zika-affected areas, the researchers reported today (March 16) in the journal PLOS Currents Outbreaks.

However, even those areas are likely to experience at most a few dozen cases of local transmission, if history of chikungunya and dengue viruses is any indication, Monaghan said.

"We've seen local outbreaks that have been pretty small in Florida and south Texas," Monaghan said. These areas of the country already have active surveillance programs for dengue and chikungunya, and well-established mosquito-control efforts, he added.

However, public health officials in areas of moderate risk of Zika transmission  particularly in the U.S. Southeast  could consider implementing timed mosquito-control efforts, Monaghan said.

Still, the new model is just a first-pass estimate of Zika transmission, Monaghan said. It is limited, for instance, because the researchers looked only at the Zika-transmission risk associated with the mosquito species Aedes aegypti, even though the much more widespread species Aedes albopictus can also transmit the virus.

In addition, researchers still don't know whether the Zika virus is transmitted to people more easily than other similar mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue virus, Monaghan said.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
News broke this week that a Texas lawmaker had allegedly traveled to Oklahoma on taxpayers dime to get an experimental treatment he says has cured his chronic pain, bringing a controversial medical procedure called the Jesus Shot into the national spotlight.

Administered for the past few years by only one doctor, John Michael Lonergan, the Jesus Shot contains two drugs and one vitamin approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Mary Schrick of Full Circle Integrative Health in Edmond, Oklahoma, which used to host Lonergans practice, told the Houston Chronicle. Schrick said those components are Dexamethasone, Kenalog and vitamin B12, and that they are used in combination to treat inflammation linked with chronic pain.

The National Institutes of Health defines chronic pain as any pain lasting longer than 12 weeks. It's the No. 1 adult disability in the United States, affecting more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.



Lonergan, who works at Priceless Beauty Spa in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, has said the Jesus Shot cures chronic pain for life, the Chronicle reported. He reportedly charges $300 for the shot.

Dr. Vania Apkarian, a physiology, anesthesiology, and physical medicine and rehabilitation professor at Northwestern University, called those claims outrageous.

This is some variant of giving some anti-inflammatory drug and cortisol, which is what all chronic pain patients are treated with regularly in almost all pain clinics, Apkarian, who has studied pain in animals and human models for two decades, told FoxNews.com. Its effective for a week or so, and eventually the pain comes back.

He said the success rate of anti-inflammatory drugs like these is 10 to 20 percent at best.

This is quackery, Apkarian said. There is nothing in here that is anything different from the standard lines of managing pain.

He said the shot probably wouldnt cause harm but rather, Its guaranteed not to do anything.

The Chronicle reported that the Oklahoma Medical Board has deemed the Jesus Shot a legal medical procedure and that the antidote has been around for 33 years.

Reji Varghese, deputy director of the Oklahoma Medical Board, told FoxNews.com he could neither confirm nor deny the board was aware of the Jesus Shot, and he declined to offer comment on the controversy surrounding its administration due to any potential patient complaints that may exist, which he also declined to comment on.

As of Friday afternoon, Lonergan hadnt received any disciplinary action from the board, Varghese said.

Lonergan declined to offer comment to the Chronicle when reached at the spa, where he reportedly works Thursday mornings.

News9.com, in Oklahoma, reported that the State Medical Board of Ohio, where Lonergan had previously lived, permanently revoked Lonergans medical license in 2005 after he was federally convicted then incarcerated on multiple counts of tax evasion, mail fraud and health care fraud in Ohio.

Lonergan then moved to Oklahoma, and in October 2012, the Oklahoma Medical Board voted to allow Lonergan, who goes by Dr. Mike, to practice medicine following completion of training at the Center for Personalized Education for Physicians, Varghese said.

This is required for a licensee who is trying to get reinstated or if theres any concern about an applicant who has been out of practice for a while, Varghese said.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who has come under fire for using taxpayer dollars to fund a $1,120 trip to allegedly fly to Oklahoma in February 2015 for the Jesus Shot to relieve his chronic pain, declined to elaborate on the shot during an interview with the Chronicle.

Thats private medical information, Miller told the Chronicle. Im not going to share that with you, but its worked out good.
Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is highly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court; make no mistake about that. Heck, even Bill Clintons arch-nemesis, Ken Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor, likes him. Unfortunately for Garland and the rest of us, the country is about to find out what life is like when Senate Republicans play by the very rules laid down in June 1992 by Joe Biden and the Democrats. Then, as now, government was divided.

They ran Congress, but George H.W. Bush was president, and in case anyone needs to be reminded, a much younger Senator Biden warned Bush that he should not bother nominating anyone to the Supreme Court until the upcoming November elections were over and done. Biden also signaled that if Bush had the temerity to send a name up to Capitol Hill, the nomination would languish in committee like an unopened box of cereal left to be forgotten in a cupboard.

That way, if Bush won a second term, which he did not, Biden & Co. might just get to Bushs pick by Christmas. If they felt like it. But, on the other hand, if the Democrats captured the White House, Bushs nominee would simply be a footnote to history, and a newly elected President Clinton would make the call.

As a practical matter, Bidens posturing shed more heat than light as no seat became vacant. Was Biden being purely political? You betcha. But what else is new? Biden was the same guy who in 1987 helped block Robert Bork, then a judge on the D.C. Circuit  just like Garland  from making it to the Supreme Court.

If youre thinking Biden and his buddies believe the rules apply only to Republicans, youd have plenty of reason to think so. Disregarding Senator Bidens admonition,Vice President Biden and his boss, President Obama, have demanded that the Senate take up the Garland nomination.

Talk about doing a 180-degree turn. But, again, it is no surprise.

Fast forward to 2007, when the Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid, almost torpedoed the nomination of Leslie Southwick, a former Department of Justice colleague of mine, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The fact that Southwick had served as a lieutenant colonel in the Iraq War was of no importance to them, a small incidental that mattered little to Brooklyns best and Vegas finest. Likewise, the fact that Southwick was rated well qualified by the American Bar Association was irrelevant.

Data curated by InsideGov

No, Schumer and Reid were determined to make Southwick a stand-in for the Confederacy, and Southwicks personal history was not about to get in their way. You see, Schumer and Reid were intent on playing social justice warriors, re-enacting the Battle of Vicksburg and placating the Democrats base.

As Southwick recollected in his political biography, The Nominee, Schumer back then sounded a lot like Biden, with the same sanctimony and the same grandiose absolutism. In Schumers eyes, it was the Senates job to consider the history behind the seat to which the candidate has been nominated, as well as the ideological balance within the court to which this nominee aspires.

Turning to Reid, Southwicks problem was that he wasnt a social worker. According to Reid, Southwicks record gives us no reason to hope that he will continue this tradition of delivering justice to the aggrieved.

In the end, Southwick was confirmed by the Senate 59 to 38. Sanity had prevailed.

Against this backdrop, its easy to understand why the Senate Republicans have no interest in giving Garland a hearing. The presidential campaign is in full swing, Biden is now vice president, and it was Barack Obama who first said in 2008, If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.

Right now, the Republicans are acting like Democrats, some of them anyway. And it isnt pretty.
Let us be clear: Republicans in the Senate are under no obligation to interview, vote on or confirm President Obamas pick for the Supreme Court. It does not matter that the president has nominated Judge Merrick Garland, who is widely admired as a competent jurist. It is not about the person, it is about principle  but the GOP leadership has been remarkably inept at framing what that principle is and why they are in the right.

The point is this: President Obama has caused this conflict, by diminishing the role of the legislature and assuming unprecedented power for the executive branch. He has purposefully skirted Congress for the better part of seven years, instead pushing ahead on his mostly unpopular agenda through regulations and executive orders. As a result, the Court is being asked to act as referee, ruling on the legality of Obamas my way or the highway presidency. You dont change a referee in the middle of a contest.

This isnt about Judge Robert Bork, or the Biden Rule -- this is a fight about President Obama undermining the checks and balances established in the Constitution.

For instance, President Obama has tried to essentially shut down our coal industry through new EPA regulations limiting carbon emissions. These rules would create a massive dislocation to our economy, which has long benefited from cheap energy, including abundant coal. That there is a significant cost to the economy is clear; Hillary Clinton recently said Were going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business. How right, and how cruelly nonchalant that statement is. As reported in the New York Times, The plan could transform the nations electricity system, cutting emissions from existing power plants by a third by 2030, from a 2005 baseline, by closing hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants and increasing production of wind and solar power.

Data curated by InsideGov

Because of the sizeable cost to the economy, lower courts have ruled against the presidents anti-coal regulatory blitz. The Supreme Court, in an unprecedented move, issued a stay requested by 29 states and numerous other groups which prevents implementation of the carbon rule while a lower court assesses its legality. In effect, the courts will rule on whether the White House is allowed to unilaterally punish one of our heritage industries and tens of thousands of workers.

Another important issue before the Supreme Court is President Obamas executive action allowing some 6 million people living in the country illegally to be protected against deportation. This unilateral effort to rewrite our immigration laws is opposed by a majority of Americans; but, it is a politically useful policy for Democrats hoping to win Latino votes. Because of possibly harmful consequences, 26 states sued to prevent the order from taking effect.

Last fall, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of those states, upholding an earlier injunction that blocked implementation of the presidents executive order. At the time, Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, which is leading the suit, said, Today, the Fifth Circuit asserted that the separation of powers remains the law of the land, and the president must follow the rule of law, just like everybody else. Thats the point.

For the Republican leadership, refusing to consider Mr. Obamas nominee is a matter of principle, and also an opportunity to reward voters for having elected a Republican Congress. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and others have come under heavy criticism for not effectively countering President Obamas policies. In fairness, substantial resistance from Congress led the president to go his own way, using whatever tools he could find to pursue his legacy agenda. Many think those tools went beyond the rightful scope of the executive branch. Now, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide.

Because the Court will weigh whether Mr. Obama has overstepped, he cannot be allowed to put his thumb on the scale by adding another sympathetic jurist. This is the message that Republican leaders need to send to voters: the president has abused his authority, and we rely on the Supreme Court to reestablish the checks and balances that prevent an imperial White House. The GOP should not be cowed by the bloviating of the New York Times; they are on the right side of this battle.
The appointment of a justice to the United States Supreme Court is one of the most important decisions a president can make while in office because of the repercussions such an appointment has on the legal landscape of our country into the future.

Already, President Obama has appointed two justices to the Supreme Court, and now is calling on the Senate to confirm Judge Merrick Garland, chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the highest court in the land in the waning months of his presidency.

A resounding number of members of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate have expressed their desire to wait to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States until the American people have been allowed to cast their opinion in November regarding who should be making this important appointment to the Court. How has President Obama responded to the American people?

Members of the Republican Party are not the only ones who have voiced concerns with confirming a successor to the Supreme Court during an election year. During a speech in 2007, Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said, [F]or the rest of this President's term and if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria let me say this: We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. Even Vice-President Joe Biden opposed confirming a successor to the Supreme Court during an election year when he was a Senator from Delaware: The Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over."

Thankfully, the Framers of our Constitution created a system of checks and balances that only allows for nominees to the federal bench to be appointed by the Advice and Consent of the Senate. While it is well within the presidents power to make his nomination to the Court, the Senate has no duty to confirm that nominee.

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While I believe the timing of the presidents nomination is questionable, I also have serious concerns about his nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland.

When Justice Scalia passed, he left a tremendous void in legal ideology and intellect that is almost impossible to fill. His more than thirty years on the bench shaped our nations legal landscape as he blazed a trail for textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation, and called for judicial restraint on the part of the federal courts.

The nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland raises too many questions as to what type of jurist he would be on the bench for a tenure that could possibly last for decades. The American people need to know for sure that Chief Judge Merrick Garland would uphold the principles of the Constitution, and not be a justice who seeks to advance any type of ideological agenda while on the bench. The members of the United States Senate must know beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Garland will adhere to the theory of judicial restraint, and respect the original meaning of the Constitution as prescribed by our Framers.

To ignore the advice of the members of the House and Senate and move forward with the confirmation of Judge Garland at this time would be robbing the American people of the chance to speak on where they believe this country should be headed. The choice to fill such an important position on the federal bench should be informed by the will of the American people. But the president has disregarded the voices of the American people during his last months in office.

As to the question of whether or not I agree with President Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court at this timeI respectfully dissent.
Ive known Merrick Garland for over forty years. We were classmates in both college and law school. Even as undergraduates, his peers  myself included  knew that he was one of the great minds of our generation.

He showed the maturity and temperament in his late teens and early 20s to be a Supreme Court Justice.

From his earliest days, he displayed probity, good judgment and was somebody you instinctively trusted to make moral, real and fair decisions.

And thats just what hes been doing throughout his long, esteemed career.

Republicans need not worry that hes an ideological Democrat. Hes not a political man, just a jurist of the highest quality.

Im clearly not the only one who feels this way. In the past, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has sung Garlands praises. When Bill Clinton resubmitted Garland as a nominee to the to the United States Court of Appeals in 1996  he was confirmed with a bipartisan vote of 76-23 in 1997  Hatch commented Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. circuit. His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questionedI know him personally, I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court and when Garland was being considered for a SCOTUS vacancy in 2010 Hatch predicted he could be confirmed virtually unanimously.

Data curated by InsideGov

Then-Senator Strom Thurman offered I have no reservations about Mr. Garland's qualifications or character to serve in this capacityMoreover, I have no doubt that Mr. Garland is a man of character and integrity" in 1996.

Thirty-two Republican senators backed Garland then. Today, only seven have agreed to meet with him thus far.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has argued that it should be up to the next president to nominate a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia. No matter what is being said, there is precedent to nominate a justice in an election year.

Whats more, its very clear that President Obama went to special lengths to find a nominee that has displayed middle of the road judgment. Yes, Garland has often sided with the Environmental Protection Agency and has been accused of not being too friendly to Second Amendment rights, a key argument against him from conservatives. But he is also the man who supervised the investigations into the Unabomber and the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympic bombings. And then there are all his pro-police rulings over the last 20 years as well as ruling to deny Guantanamo detainees judicial review, which greatly angered liberals.

A record like that shows that Garland is a jurist, not a partisan.

As is too often the case, the GOP isnt thinking far enough ahead on this matter. There are absolutely no assurances that they will take back the White House in the fall. Indeed, Hillary Clinton is ahead in general election polling and if she does win theres no reason to think shed re-select the more moderate Garland instead of going for a more ideological candidate.

It follows that the Senate has the opportunity to make sure Merrick Garland is a Supreme Court Justice before they are faced with a more liberal nominee or, frankly, someone not nearly as qualified, well respected and fair.

The Constitutional Responsibility Project, headed by many former Obama campaign officials including Stephanie Cutter, was formed to get Garland elected. They know how to mobilize, fundraise and get things done.

The GOP risks looking  and being  even more obstructionist than they have been in the past if they wont even offer Garland an up and down vote.

If they stick to this position, the Republicans lose and so does America.
The Obama administration finally took an important first step toward protecting Christians and other minorities who are being slaughtered by ISIS  the Islamic State.

Secretary of State John Kerry has now labelled the atrocities as genocide  a long overdue designation which represents a significant step toward the U.S. leading the world in stopping this historic evil being perpetrated by ISIS.

As weve been advocating for years, ISIS is committing genocide and other international crimes. The Obama Administrations determination and declaration is a significant victory.

In his remarks Thursday Secretary Kerry stated that ISIS is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. He said the terrorists are genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does.

And Secretary Kerry asserted that ISIS is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities.

The designation comes after growing pressure by the Administration to act as I pointed out last week.

While Secretary Kerry said that he is neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury with respect to the allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing by specific persons, he did adamantly emphasize that the international community must recognize what ISIS is doing to its victims, the perpetrators must be held accountable, and, while naming the crimes is important, what is essential is to stop them.

While the genocide designation is an important first step, we must continue to urge the Obama Administration to comply with its moral and international responsibilities in the face of genocide.

The designation affirms that the definition of genocide under U.S. law has been met. Because the U.S. has ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, it must now seek enforcement of the Convention.

Obama Administration officials have already asserted that Kerry's finding will not obligate the United States to take additional action against ISIS militants . . . . The United States must lead the world in defending Christians from genocide, not merely pay lip service to their plight as they are slaughtered. And the United Nations needs to do its part on the worlds stage.

The bottom line: in order to fully protect Christians from genocide, there must be a commitment followed by action to defeat and destroy ISIS.

Were grateful for the more than 435,000 people worldwide who signed our petition and spoke out on behalf of the persecuted Christians.

And we will not stop until ISIS is defeated once and for all, ending the genocide against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

Until Christians are truly protected, until ISIS is defeated, we will continue aggressively advocating across the globe for each and every life facing the threat of genocide.
Bernie Sanders said Thursday he will not seek a recount of results in Missouri's Democratic presidential primary, conceding defeat to Hillary Clinton.

"I think it's unlikely the results will impact at all the number of delegates the candidate gets and I would prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Whether we win by 200 votes or lose by 500, it's not going to impact the delegate selection," the Vermont senator added. "It's going to be evenly divided."

Clinton ended Tuesday night with a narrow lead of 1,531 votes, but under state law, Sanders could have sought a recount because the margin was less than one-half of one percent.

Clinton will get an extra two delegates from Missouri for winning the statewide vote.

The win in Missouri means Clinton won all five of Tuesday's Democratic primary contests. She also beat Sanders in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina.

The Republican race in Missouri remains too close to call between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Even though winning Missouri gives Clinton two additional delegates, she remains tied with Sanders at 34, with three delegates remaining to be allocated in the state. Democrats award delegates based on the share of the vote, both statewide and in congressional districts. Clinton was on track to come out ahead with one additional delegate, pending final vote data in two congressional districts.

Clinton now leads Sanders in pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, 1,147 to 830.

When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has a much bigger lead  1,614 to 856.
The top Texas agriculture official reportedly is facing questions over whether he used a taxpayer-billed trip to Oklahoma to receive a controversial medical procedure known simply as the Jesus Shot  which is supposed to cure pain for life.

The Houston Chronicle reported on the strange details surrounding the trip that state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller took last year to Oklahoma City. While he said at the time it was to tour the Oklahoma National Stockyards and meet with lawmakers, Oklahoma officials described his February 2015 visit as a surprise.

Rather, sources told the Chronicle that Miller said he got a medical procedure while in the state. Connecting some dots, the newspaper noted Miller, who suffers chronic pain, already has acknowledged he received the Jesus Shot at some point  and while he hasnt said he did so during that trip, the newspaper reports the only doctor who administers it is in the Oklahoma City area.

Coincidence?

Millers office declined to comment when reached by FoxNews.com.

He apparently insists the trip was for business and served the taxpayers, while declining to confirm or deny whether he got the shot during the same February 2015 trip. But a spokeswoman told the Chronicle that Miller is now reimbursing the state for the cost "out of an abundance of caution.

The official originally had billed taxpayers at least $1,120 for the trip, according to the report.

He even posted a picture on Facebook of him with lawmakers in an office in the Oklahoma state Capitol. The Houston Chronicle reported, though, that Millers visit at the Capitol was very brief. Lawmakers said the meeting was more of a casual conversation in the hallway.

While Miller wont say when exactly he got the injection in question, he insists he used his own private money.

The shot, which is legal, is administered by Dr. John Michael Lonergan, and reportedly contains a combination of drugs used to treat inflammation.
Hillary Clinton is clobbering Bernie Sandersand yet getting negative reviews from some of the pundits.

How is that possible? The Democratic race is essentially over. President Obama is privately telling donors its time to get on the Hillary train, the New York Times reports. A front-runner who wins in state after state usually basks in a winners aura as the party coalesces around her, and draws glowing profiles of how she and her team did it.

Sure, Hillary was always expected to beat Bernie. Its also true that Clinton has never been beloved by the press, and the feeling is mutual.

But the larger problem is the outlook as the commentary class looks ahead to the fall.

Until the last couple of weeks, the conventional wisdom was that a Trump nomination would all but assure a second Clinton presidency. After all, shes the former senator and secretary of State with an awesome political machine, and hes the untested billionaire with a penchant for divisive rhetoric. Plus, Democrats have an Electoral College edge and have won the popular vote in five of the last six campaigns.

But some commentators see troubling signs in Clintons performance so far and wonder how she would withstand a Trump onslaught. The Donald has high negatives, to be sure, but Hillary does as well.

An unsparing assessment comes from Joe Klein, who has known the Clintons for a quarter century and mostly written sympathetically about them since his 1992 New York magazine cover story on Bill Clinton.

Klein agrees with Hillarys self-assessment that she is not a natural politician, but goes much further in weighing a Trump matchup:

Clinton seems particularly ill equipped for the task. She is our very own quinoa and kale salad, nutritious but bland. Worse, shes the human embodiment of the Establishment that Trump has been running against

Indeed, her real problem is that shes too much of a politician. She still speaks like politicians did 20 years ago, when her husband was President. This year, the candidates who have seemed the most appealingTrump, Sanders, John Kasichdont use the oratorical switchbacks that have been beaten to death since John F. Kennedy.

Its no secret that Sanders has pushed Clinton to the left on trade, immigration, Wall Street and other issues. But Klein says that is often viewed as dissembling:

There is an odd new law of U.S. politics: You can lie, as Trump does all the time, egregiously, but you cant temporize. You cant avoid a position on the XL pipeline or the Trans-Pacific trade deal, as Clinton tried to do in the campaign. You cant try to please too many people too much of the time. Raising your voice to make a pointwhich Clinton does all the time, disastrously, because it seems such a conscious actwont get you anywhere unless youre really angry.

In the end, Im not at all certain that Clinton can beat Trump.

A note about her speaking style: When Clinton won five states on Tuesday night, I tweeted that she was shouting her speech and that it would be more effective with the audience at home if she was more conversational. I didnt say she was shrill, I didnt say she should smile, and in the past Ive criticized Sanders for shouting his way through debates.

But I was hit with hundreds of tweets declaring me to be a horrible, misogynistic sexist. Some of this was a wave powered by what others had said about her speech. Maybe my quick take was wrong. But I hope were not entering a period where any criticism of the presumptive Democratic nominee is treated as sexism.

Other left-wing pundits, driven in part by ideology, fear the worst. This Salon headline boils it down:

Hillary Will Never Survive the Trump Onslaught: Its Not Fair, But It Makes Her a Weak Nominee.

Clintons largest problem, in my view, is her low polling marks on honesty, a result of the email scandal and perhaps decades of scars of accumulated accusations, some of them fair and some exaggerated.

Veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield, writing earlier in Politico, spells out three reasons why Clinton could prove to be a weak candidate:

First, Hillary Clinton commands little trust among an electorate that is driven today by mistrust. Second, her public lifethe posts she has held, the positions she has adopted (and jettisoned)define her as a creature of the establishment at a time when voters regard the very idea with deep antipathy. And finally, however she wishes it were not so, however much she argues that she represents the future as Americas first prospective female president,

Clinton still embodies the past, just as she did in 2008 when she lost to Barack Obama. The combination of those three factors is already playing out in the Democratic primary, where younger voters are turning away from her and embracing a geriatric, white-haired alternative in droves.

When Clinton recalibrates, says Greenfield, she always embraces the politically popular stand.

However lukewarm the Democratic base may be about Hillary, she enjoys broad support within the party and most Bernie backers should have no trouble shifting their allegiance to her. The same cant be said for Trump, who is weathering a Republican revolt against the likelihood of his winning the nomination.

Well know Hillary is solving her enthusiasm problem when she starts getting better reviews from journalists on the left.
A key lawmaker who exposed a troubling federal turf battle in the immediate aftermath of Decembers San Bernardino terror attack charged Wednesday that government officials are following a familiar pattern by hunting down the whistleblowers behind the disclosure.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said he learned his sources are being sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately following a dramatic hearing Tuesday in which ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials acknowledged the disturbing incident on Dec. 3, one day after a terrorist couple gunned down 14 at a county office party.

I am concerned that ICE is attempting to identify and retaliate against whistleblowers who revealed a lack of cooperation between USCIS and ICE in the aftermath of the terror attacks in San Bernardino, Johnson said in a follow-up hearing Wednesday. Those who have the courage to come forward should not be retaliated against.

I am concerned that ICE is attempting to identify and retaliate against whistleblowers who revealed a lack of cooperation between USCIS and ICE in the aftermath of the terror attacks in San Bernardino.  Sen. Ron JOhnson, R- Wisc.

Johnson further expressed his concerns about retaliation in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and DHS Inspector General John Roth.

Johnson did not identify the person or persons who told him that USCIS bureaucrats barred federal investigators from their building when they came to interview Enrique Marquez a day after the terror attack. Marquez was a close friend of Syed Farook, who, with his wife Tashfeen Malik, carried out the bloody rampage. Marquez was later charged with supplying the couple assault rifles used in the attack, as well as other crimes.

Marsha Catron, Department of Homeland Security Investigations spokesperson, told FoxNews.com, DHS will respond directly to the Senator.

"DHS does not tolerate retaliation against employees who bring possible misconduct to light and complies with all whistleblower protection laws. As public servants working for both law enforcement and non-law enforcement components, our employees are held to the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct."



At the Tuesday hearing where Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, first raised the issue, ICE Director Sarah Saldana and USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez blamed poor communication for the fact that a federal agency impeded an investigation into a terror attack that had left 14 dead and 22 injured a day earlier.

How can you explain that they would not let Homeland Security agents in the building when they are saying, Listen you could have a potential terrorist here involved in what just happened yesterday in the slaughter of 14 Americans? Johnson thundered. And they dont even allow them in the office? How could that have possibly happened?

Instead of trying to improve communications, Johnson said, it appears ICE and its parent agency, DHS, are trying to root out his source. Johnson believes the whistleblowers could face retribution for the revelation.

"The federal government has a very poor record of retaliation, Johnson said. Weve held numerous hearings about this. It is really quite shocking how often the federal government retaliates. But I certainly will not stand for it, and I certainly dont think this committee will stand for any retribution against those who had the courage to come forward to reveal this incident."

Federal law expressly protects federal employees who provide information to Congress.

In the Dec. 3 incident, USCIS agents were investigating Marquez for marriage fraud, stemming from his 2014 union with Mariya Chernykh, a Russian national married to Farooks brother.

Rodriguez told Johnsons committee that it was a mistake for his agencys San Bernardino office to refuse entry to ICE investigators.

The guidance was to facilitate what Homeland Security Investigations was trying to accomplish, he said. Unfortunately, it all happened so quickly that it was incorrectly perceived that our folks were trying to obstruct what ICE was trying to do. There was never an actual intent to prevent them from doing what they needed to do.

Saldana testified she was initially concerned when her agents were blocked, but told lawmakers there was confusion and chaos in San Bernardino the day after the attack.

We had immediate conversations when it came to my attention, Saldana said. It was taken care of and clarified immediately. We did get the information we needed.

Both Farook and Malik were killed by law enforcement after their morning attack. Marquez is accused of making false statements in connection with his weapons purchases used in the San Bernardino shooting. Prosecutors also have alleged that Marquez and Farook plotted in 2011 and 2012 to carry out attacks at Riverside City College and on the 91 Freeway.

Marquez, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted.

Johnsons committee is already investigating another case of retaliation inside DHS. Homeland Security Investigations Agent Taylor Johnson testified last year about retaliation against her and other whistleblowers who raised concerns about foreigners from countries with terror ties getting green cards under the DHSs E-B5 Visa Program. She testified that high-ranking USCIS officials and operatives of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid threatened her and her team.

Taylor Johnson was fired last month, as part of a possible pattern, according to the senator. She has mounted a fund-raising effort to pay her legal fees.

ICE has a track record of retaliating against whistleblowers, as in the case of Homeland Security Investigations Agent Taylor, Johnson said.
After spending the last month bad-mouthing Donald Trump, Mitt Romney is officially putting his support behind rival candidate Sen. Ted Cruz.

This week, in the Utah nominating caucus, I will vote for Senator Ted Cruz, he said in a Facebook post that did not pull any punches on the partys current front-runner.

Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism. Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. I am repulsed by each and every one of these, he said.

The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee continued.

Trump has so far won 678 delegates in the state contests; Cruz has 413. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is trailing with 143 delegates. The nominee needs 1,237 delegates to win outright. Romney says his goal is to help Cruz get enough delegates to keep Trump from reaching that marker so that the matter instead goes to an open convention floor vote.

At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible, he said.

"I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican."

Romney has been dogging Trump for the last month -- sending out anti-Trump robo-calls for Marco Rubio (who has since suspended his campaign) and Kasich, calling Trump a phony and suggesting Trump has something scandalous hiding in his tax returns. In his comments Friday, he was pretty clear that his decision to vote for Cruz was motivated more by his dislike of Trump than anything else.

I like Governor John Kasich. I have campaigned with him. He has a solid record as governor. I would have voted for him in Ohio. But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.

Trump fired back at Romney, suggesting he should have put the same energy into his own failed presidential bid and chiding him for asking for Trump's endorsement during that campaign.

He reacted to Romney's endorsement on Twitter Friday.
The Air Force is investigating and has removed from their posts 14 airmen at a nuclear missile base in Wyoming for alleged illegal drug use, in some cases possibly including cocaine, defense officials said Friday.

Air Force Gen. Robin Rand, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said at a press conference that the alleged activity occurred while the airmen were off-duty but would not comment publicly on the types of drugs potentially involved.

The accused airmen at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, home of the 90th Missile Wing, were assigned to a 1,300-person security forces group tasked with protecting the base -- and its 150 nuclear missiles.

The probe is a fresh blow to a nuclear missile corps that has been under intense scrutiny for a string of lapses in training and personal conduct over the past three years.

Air Force Global Strike Command is responsible for the entire fleet of Minuteman 3 land-based nuclear missiles; one-third of the Minuteman 3 force is operated by the 90th Missile Wing.

The airmen under investigation are mainly or entirely members of a security force at the 90th Missile Wing, officials said. The allegations do not involve officers who control the Minuteman missiles from command centers, officials said.

Security forces at nuclear missile bases are entrusted to patrol the missile fields and respond to any security emergencies. They are highly trained and given enormous responsibility. Just last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work visited F.E. Warren and observed a demonstration by security forces of the techniques and equipment they would use to recapture a missile silo that had been taken over by intruders.

Officials said those under investigation have been suspended from their duties while their cases are being investigated.

Two years ago, while then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was visiting the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren, officials disclosed that a number of launch officers, known as missileers, were under investigation for drug use. That investigation led to the discovery that dozens of missileers had been cheating on their proficiency tests at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which also operates Minuteman 3 missiles.

Hagel then ordered a broad investigation of problems inside the Air Force nuclear missile corps, which had been extensively documented by The Associated Press starting in May 2013. At the time, he said, "Personnel failures within this force threaten to jeopardize the trust the American people have placed in us to keep our nuclear weapons safe and secure."

The Hagel-ordered review led to numerous changes, including elevating the rank of the commander of Global Strike Command, which is responsible for the Minuteman 3 force, from three-star to four-star. Rand is the first four-star to hold the job.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A union that represents 54 officers from the University of Illinois at Chicago Police Department is speaking outarguing the chaotic Donald Trump rally on campus last week did not have to escalate to an extreme level of disorder and could have continued as planned.

The Metropolitan Association of Police Board Director, Ray Violetto, tells Fox News that UIC Police Chief, Kevin Booker, issued unusual stand-down orders including instructions that officers not bring pepper spray or wear dark gloves to the Trump rallyitems the union officers say are basic and necessary equipment in any type of crowd control.

Violetto tells Fox News the UIC police were the agency in charge considering the Trump rally was on the schools campus and that the officers were in charge of policing the inside of the arena.

I think the inside is what started that and I think it carried outside, Violetto told Fox News. If you watch the inside of the rally there was a pretty large group there that was getting out of control along with the individual that was at the podium.

Violetto said officers were also told not to touch anyone or make arrests. The UIC officers say they have been extensively trained in handling crowds and riots and could have adequately controlled the situation that night.

The MAP police say not only were they put in physical danger but they also were potentially left open to lawsuits because the three people who officers say they rightfully and legally arrested were let go without explanation as a result of the Chiefs no-arrest order.

UIC spokesperson Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez denies the officers' claims and says riot gear was available if needed.

In an email, Gonzalez wrote that pepper spray is typically not used inside the campus arena, officers were not given orders not to place their hands on people, and that officers were told not to wear dark gloves, which look aggressive.

Violetto argues there are no white gloves that are out there.

Gonzalez also wrote that most of the UIC officers were in full uniform with personal protective gear, with the exception of plain-clothes detectives who provided surveillance and valuable intelligence.

The University says Booker was on site and in charge of managing all UIC police activity and coordinated with multiple law enforcement agencies during the event.

The University acknowledged Fox News request for an interview with the police chief but did not grant the interview.

Additionally, Violetto says his officers think the chaos at the rally was caused by professional protestors.

We believe it was a planned event with professional protestors that caused the issues, Violetto said. We dont believe it was students from UIC that was there.
Bernie Sanders, still insisting he has a fighting chance to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, ratcheted up his campaign schedule Friday to hit all three Western states voting next week as he scrambles to recover from Hillary Clintons recent five-state sweep  while President Obama applies pressure from the outside on the Vermont senators underdog bid.

Overnight, Clinton was declared the winner of the last remaining unresolved primary from Tuesday's five contests, in Missouri. Sanders said he wont seek a recount in the tight race.

But, speaking with the Associated Press, he maintained he can still close the delegate gap.

"I don't believe they have an insurmountable lead," Sanders said Thursday from Arizona, where he was campaigning. "Secretary Clinton has done phenomenally well in the Deep South and in Florida. That's where she has gotten the lion's share of votes. And I congratulate her for that. But we're out of the Deep South now."

Sanders is hoping to turn things around next Tuesday, when Arizona, Utah and Idaho vote in the Democratic contest. His whirlwind campaign schedule on Friday was taking him to all three states.

But after his hopes of notching a few more upset victories this week in the Midwest fizzled, the senators path to the nomination remains unclear.

Clinton now has a lead of more than 300 pledged delegates over Sanders from the primaries and caucuses: 1,147-830. When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has a much bigger lead -- 1,614-856.

Factoring both types of delegates, Sanders would need to win a whopping two-thirds of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before Julys convention. Clinton only would need to win one-third.

Even if Sanders focuses only on closing the pledged-delegate gap  in hopes that the pro-Clinton superdelegates might later budge  he faces a steep path. The wild card may still be how the FBI investigation into Clintons email practices resolves, and whether that happens before the convention.

Robert Jackson, professor of political science at Florida State University, said it would take an unexpected shift of events for Sanders to have a legitimate shot at the nomination this far into the process. Barring some almost unforeseen event or eruption of new information we havent seen before, I believe the pathway for him to get the majority of delegates is very, very difficult and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, he said.

Meanwhile, Obama is getting more involved in trying to bring closure and unity to the Democratic primary process.

According to The New York Times, he told a group of donors last week that Sanders campaign was getting close to the end and the party will soon have to unite behind Clinton.

He reportedly did not make an explicit call for Sanders to drop out, but suggested Sanders prolonged presence in the race could help Republicans in the end.

Clintons campaign also is sounding a confident note about their chances as they look to the upcoming contests.

Clinton's campaign pointed to a recent memo by campaign manager Robby Mook, who suggested she has an "insurmountable lead" in the delegate count. The campaign noted its pledged delegate lead of more than 300 is nearly twice as large as any that then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama held over Clinton in the 2008 primary.

"And note Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada and Iowa are generally not considered Deep South," said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, referring to states won by the ex-secretary of state.

Sanders, speaking with the AP, called his loss in Ohio a "major disappointment," adding, "I thought we had a chance to win or come close in Ohio and we didn't." But he said that while "we know we've got a hill to climb," he was pleased his campaign was able to accumulate more delegates.

He predicted the upcoming calendar of races in several Western states, including Arizona and Washington, and April contests in Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania would offer him the chance to catch up.

"We think from now on out, we are having states that, everything being equal, we stand a chance to do well in. We think we have a path toward victory," he said, pointing to California's June primary. "We've got some big states coming up and we think if we can do well, if we go into the convention with delegates, we've got a shot at taking the nomination."

FoxNews.coms Daniel Jativa and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Appearances by top presidential advisers Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes before the House Benghazi committee earlier this year werent always a sure thing  the testimony was only secured after a secret meeting in January between panel head Trey Gowdy and White House officials, a source tells Fox News.

The source familiar with the negotiations said the White House originally said no to the request to have National Security Adviser Rice and deputy Rhodes speak to the committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

But Gowdy, R-S.C., stepped in to personally negotiate for their appearances at the secret meeting, held late January in Charlotte, N.C., with members of the White House Counsels office.

It was during that meeting, where both parties traveled outside of Washington, where the details were finalized and agreed to.

Rice and Rhodes, considered central witnesses in the investigation particularly over their role in crafting the administrations faulty narrative blaming protests over an anti-Islam video, ended up testifying individually for four hours apiece.

Asked Friday about the meeting that apparently led to that testimony, the White House did not respond directly.

I will just say as a general matter that the White House and the administration has, despite what Republicans acknowledge is the pure political motivation of that committee, has sought to cooperate with them, only because they're a co-equal branch of government, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, claiming the administration has cooperated with them repeatedly and provided them access to senior administration officials and access to thousands of pages of documents and emails and other materials.

Fox News also has learned new details about the upcoming Saturday testimony of former CIA Director David Petraeus.

After Petraeus testified in January behind closed doors, he agreed to a second session, which was described to Fox News as an opportunity to close the loop on several issues after new information came to light from the Rhodes and Rice testimony.

The second session is expected to take place in a secure area of the Capitol at 10 a.m. ET on Saturday. Few members of the committee will be there, officials told Fox News. The meeting will mostly include counsel for the committee.

Fox News Chad Pergram and Kevin Corke contributed to this report.
President Obama and the fossil fuel industry at last have found common cause: fighting a lawsuit brought by kids and teenagers over the administrations alleged inaction on global warming.

Though oil and gas interests and the administration often are at warring sides, theyve joined up to grapple with one of the more unusual suits brought against the federal government. The original complaint, filed last August in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, was brought by Oregon nonprofit Our Childrens Trust on behalf of 21 young people ages 8-20.

It asserts the administration, including several federal agencies, has violated the youngest generations constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, and has failed to protect essential public trust resources by not aggressively acting on climate change.

While the suit might sound like a stretch, it was enough to bring the National Association of Manufacturers, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute to the administrations defense. They were allowed in January to join the federal case as intervenor-defendants.

These industry groups have a history of battling the administration over its EPA emissions regulations and other policies, but in this case they echoed the administrations concerns about the potential consequences of the kids lawsuit.

In their motion to dismiss last fall, industry groups argued that if the court accepts the plaintiffs claims, it would empower a group of private citizens to compel through judicial fiat the exercise of sweeping legislative and executive authority conferred by our Constitution exclusively to the political branches.

This, they say, could pose a direct threat to [their] businesses.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Tom Coffin heard arguments in the case last week in Oregon.

Industry groups, which are representing Exxon Mobil, BP and other energy companies, sought to have the case dismissed, while plaintiffs maintained the court has a responsibility to move the litigation forward. Coffin is expected to issue a ruling this spring.

Yet to supporters of the plaintiffs, the bedfellows are not quite as strange as they sound.

If you look at some of Obamas speeches, like when he offered praise for the oil and gas industry in 2012 while speaking in Oklahoma, it is clear they are both on the same side, said Phillip Gregory, one of the lawyers arguing the case on behalf of Our Childrens Trust on a pro bono basis.

The administration has done an inadequate job in getting where we need to be [in protecting the environment] and contesting this case is just another example of how [Obama] is supporting the fossil fuel industry, Gregory told FoxNews.com.

Gregory contends the government for more than 50 years has known about the dangers of fossil fuels but ignored scientific studies.

Some believe the lack of scientific evidence is the reason why groups like Our Childrens Trust are using children as plaintiffs  a strategy that has come under fire.

This step towards having kids [file lawsuits] is just a way to make it more emotional and more political and less challenging to where the science is, Jim Steele, an ecologist and self-described climate skeptic who spent 25 years as director of the San Francisco State University Sierra Nevada Field Campus, told Watchdog.org.

The strategy of placing children at the front of the legal campaign started after Our Childrens Trust founder, Julia Olson, met Alec Loorz, a teenage activist who started Kids Vs. Global Warming with the help of his mother, according to Greenwire.

Olson, an environmental activist and adjunct instructor at the University of Oregons School of Law, and Our Childrens Trust have filed lawsuits on behalf of children across the country and filed administrative rulemaking petitions in every state.

While some find the tactic exploitative, others see it as strategically smart.

I do think it is a little cynical, but it is a clever strategy if you believe plaintiffs are more often successful by using a class that is naturally sympathetic, James Huffman, visiting fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, told FoxNews.com. He said the public trust argument, while ambitious, has not been successful to date in compelling the courts to lean on the administration.

But he said: This case is part of a much broader strategy by environmentalists that contends the courts have authority to order the government to take more aggressive actions to combat climate change. My view is that there is no foundation in common law for their claims, but all they need to do is to find a judge somewhere that may be willing to go along.

Though many legal efforts have failed or been dismissed, a few recent cases have gained traction.

A complaint challenging Washington states enforcement of greenhouse gas emissions was dismissed, but the judge offered a partial victory in her 10-page opinion. King County Superior Judge Hollis Hill ruled against eight youth plaintiffs on the basis the courts do not have rulemaking authority, but opined in her ruling that the childrens very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming.

Huffman, who formerly served as dean of the law school at Oregons Lewis and Clark Law School, believes the legal hill the plaintiffs must climb remains steep.

At the root of their argument is the public trust doctrine, a state common law doctrine regarding state property rights in land submerged under tidal and navigable waterways.

Our Childrens Trust asserts the atmosphere is a trust resource for the benefit of the public, so any individual may sue if they believe the government is not sufficiently enforcing their rights.

The administration has countered that no constitutional right to breathe pollution-free air exists.

No court has ever recognized such a right; more generally, no court has ever recognized a federal constitutional right to a natural environment free of pollutants, the Obama administration said in its motion to dismiss.

Neither the administration, nor representatives with the industry groups, chose to comment on the case when contacted by FoxNews.com.

Despite the suits claims, Obama has helped forge international climate agreements and in his 2017 budget called for $1.65 billion over the next 10 years in mandatory spending to harden infrastructure against climate-change-related threats, among other related spending.
The FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force and New York City police were investigating a threatening letter containing a suspicious white powder that was sent to one of the sons of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Preliminary tests on the substance in the envelope to Eric Trumps apartment in Manhattan Thursday indicated that it was not hazardous, officials said.

The white powder substance has been sent out for testing to confirm that it is not toxic, NYPD Sgt. Carlos Nieves told FoxNews.com Friday.

He said the testing was being "expedited."



The handwritten letter postmarked March 5 and addressed to Trumps 32-year-old son was delivered to his Trump Parc East home on Central Park South.

According to the New York Post, the white powder fell out of the envelope when Eric Trump's wife, Lara Yunaska, opened it. Police, fire crews and the FBI all responded to the scene.

"If your father does not drop out of the race, the next envelope won't be a fake," the letter said. It was signed "X," according to a law enforcement official who had seen the letter and spoke to the Associated Press.

The NYPD in a statement confirmed Friday morning that it had responded to a residential building overlooking Central Park to investigate a suspicious letter received by a tenant but didnt name the recipient.

The NYPD says it was notified about 7:15 p.m Thursday evening, according to Fox 5 New York.



Nieves told FoxNews.com the Secret Service has been notified and was part of the investigation.

An FBI spokeswoman told the Washington Post the Joint Terrorism Task Force was leading the investigation. The task force includes the Secret Service, FBI, New York Police Department and Postal Inspection Service.

Eric Trump and his wife were allowed to return to the home, according to officials.

He is one of Trumps five children. He has been campaigning for his father.

Donald Trumps representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP.

Click for more from The New York Post.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Despite earlier claims by North Korea that it fired two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, two US officials tell Fox News that one blew up shortly after lift-off in an embarrassing new development for the North Korean military.

A US defense official Thursday evening said North Korea launched two ballistic missiles, but did not specify how far each missile traveled. Both missiles were Nodong medium-range ballistic missiles, based on the Soviet-era Scud-C missile.

"Neither was assessed to be a threat to the U.S. or our regional allies. These launches are a violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions," the official said.

Both missiles were launched from mobile road launchers, making it difficult to track their movement since the launchers can be easily hidden.

One of the missiles, launched from the west coast of North Korea north of the capital, Pyongyang, flew hundreds of miles into the Sea of Japan, marking a dangerous escalation in North Korea's missile program.

The medium-range launch was the first North Korean missile capable of hitting Japan since 2014.

Earlier this week, North Korea sentenced a 21-year old American college student from the University of Virginia to 15 years of hard labor in a prison camp for steal a banner while in the communist country.



This is the second launch of missiles into the Sea of Japan this month by North Korea.

In February, North Korea launched a satellite into space on Super Bowl Sunday in the United States. The concern among Pentagon officials is that the same components used to launch the long-range rocket into space are the same components used for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Last week, the US Air Forces top officer told reporters North Korea did not possess the capability to put a nuclear warhead atop one of its long-range ballistic missiles. North Korean leaders a day later said they did.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the U.S. military can knock any North Korean ballistic missile out of the sky.

On January 6, North Korea claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb, a claim later refuted by US officials.

President Obama signed new sanctions earlier this week targeting North Korea's coal industry, which some analysts suspect fuels its missile program.

An earlier sanctions bill signed by the president in recent days targeted luxury goods consumed by North Korea's elite.

The missile launches coincide with annual military exercises between the United States and South Korea involving more than 10,000 troops.

Three nuclear-capable B-2 bombers were sent to the region as part of the exercise in a show of force to the North Koreans.

Late Thursday, State Dept. spokesman John Kirby said used the singular when referring to the missile launch.

"We have seen reports that North Korea launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan," said Kirby.
Private Mars colonization has gotten "The Simpsons" treatment.

In the venerable show's latest episode  "The Marge-ian Chronicles," which aired Sunday (March 13) on Fox  Lisa applies to become an astronaut with a company called Exploration Inc., which aims to launch colonists toward Mars in 2026.

Exploration Inc. is an obvious nod to Mars One, the Netherlands-based nonprofit that wants to land four astronauts on Mars in 2027, as the vanguard of a permanent settlement. [Mars One's Red Planet Colony Project (Gallery)]

Mars One intends to pay for its ambitious activities primarily by staging a global media event around the entire project, from astronaut selection and training, to liftoff, to the pioneers' time on Mars. Exploration Inc. also relies on corporate sponsorship to pay the bills.

"Think of how satisfying it will feel to stand in the Valles Marineris and thunder-chug a Blue Bronco energy drink," one of the Exploration Inc. guys says to Lisa and some other applicants (who include "Simpsons" regulars such as Principal Skinner, Professor Frink and Rainier Wolfcastle.)

The company's spacesuits are covered with logos  for Laramie Cigarettes, Draft-Pigs.com and Simmer Time sauces, to name a few  and one prospective colonist (fringe character Disco Stu) has to drop out because he's not a fan of Fig Gluten cookies. ("The fig seeds get caught in my adult braces," he explains.)

There's a lot of other good stuff in "The Marge-ian Chronicles." For example, Homer and Marge aren't happy about Lisa's Mars ambitions, so they ground her. "You are confined to this planet," Marge tells Lisa. "And its moon," Homer adds.

Eventually, all of the other Simpsons  Homer, Marge, Bart and baby Maggie  apply to become colonists themselves, in an effort to make Lisa lose interest in the project. This development excites the publicity-hungry Exploration Inc. guys.

"A family unit could be perfect for this mission," one of them says. "NASA would never have the guts to shoot a baby into space."

There's also a reference to perhaps the best-loved "Simpsons" episode ever  1994's "Deep-Space Homer," in which "average-naut" Homer launches aboard a space shuttle as part of a NASA plan to get more people excited about space exploration.

"Last time, I almost killed everybody," Homer tells the Exploration Inc. guys. Then, one of them asks him what he learned from his previous spaceflight experience. The response is pure Homer: "Lessons, I guess."

Editor's Recommendations
Three new crewmembers including NASA astronnaut Jeff Williams will launch toward the International Space Station this evening.

Williams and cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to blast off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket at 5:26 p.m. from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV; coverage begins at 4:30 p.m.

If all goes according to plan, the trio's Soyuz spacecraft will reach the orbiting lab at 11:12 p.m. EDT tonight (0312 GMT on Saturday, March 19), less than six 6 hours after leaving Earth. The hatches between the newly docked Soyuz and the space station are scheduled to open at 12:55 a.m. EDT Saturday (0455 GMT), NASA officials said.

When they float through the hatch and into the ISS, the newcomers will bring the orbiting lab back up to its full complement of six crewmembers. NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, Briton Tim Peake and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko have had the space station to themselves since March 1, when fellow space fliyers Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov departed for Earth.

Kelly and Kornienko spent an unprecedented 340 straight days aboard the ISS, completing a mission designed to help lay the foundation for crewed journeys to faraway Mars.

During the 11-month mission, Kelly set an American record for the most total days spent in space  520. But veteran space fliyer Williams will break that record on his upcoming ISS mission; when he lands about six months from now, Williams will have racked up 534 days of spaceflight experience, NASA officials said.

Williams is also embarking upon his third ISS mission, which is another American record.

Williams, Ovchinin and Skripochka will soon be joined in orbit by a robotic visitor  the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which is built by American company Orbital ATK. Cygnus is scheduled to launch on a resupply mission Tuesday night (March 22) and arrive at the space station four days later.

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Lockheed Martin says its developing a Mach 6 aircraft that would be faster than any other fighter jet.

Called the Hypersonic Test Vehicle 3X, or HTV-3X, the new plane could reach speeds of more than six times the typical cruising speed of the Boeing 747-8, which has been chosen as the next presidential aircraft. It will also far outpace anything flown by Americas adversaries.

Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Officer Marillyn Hewson revealed for the first time that significant progress has been made regarding the new fighter jet.



Related: Futuristic military railgun 'bullets' could travel at Mach 6

"We accomplished several breakthroughs on HTV-3X. And were now producing a controllable, low-drag, aerodynamic configuration capable of stable operation from take-off, to sub-sonic, trans-sonic, super-sonic, and hypersonic to Mach 6, " she said in a statement.

"And most importantly, were proving a hypersonic aircraft can be produced at an affordable price. We estimate it will cost less than $1 billion dollars to develop, build, and fly a demonstrator aircraft the size of an F-22," she added.

Just how fast?

The HTV-3X would be three times faster than the F-22 Raptor fighter jets, flying at 4,600 miles per hour  meaning it could travel the distance of the Earths circumference in about five and half hours or the time it takes a 747 to travel from New York to Los Angeles.

Delivering Nuclear Warheads in Under an Hour

At the same time, Lockheeds legendary Skunk Works is working on other secret hypersonic aircraft including the Falcon HTV-2. The unmanned aircraft is launched on a rocket and could achieve Mach 20 speeds  thats 13,000 miles per hour. At those speeds, it could leave New York City and arrive in Los Angeles in less than 12 minutes.

Related: DARPA's unmanned sub-hunter set to revolutionize naval warfare

Developing a hypersonic aircraft would support the Department of Defenses aim to achieve Conventional Prompt Global Strike - conducting airstrikes against any target, anywhere in the world within one hour.
Pope Francis is coming to Instagram this weekend.

News from the Vatican's media team that the man-in-white is about to land on the photo-sharing platform comes just a few weeks after he spent time chewing the fat with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom in Rome. Is it possible Kevin had a quiet word in the pontiff's ear, gently suggesting it was high time he created an account to complement the one already run by the Vatican?

Although not on Facebook yet (maybe Zuckerberg's on the phone right now arranging a meeting), the pope does have a Twitter account (@pontifex) that's amassed an impressive eight million followers since he started tweeting in May 2013.

How the pope's Instagram offerings will differ from those on the Vatican's account remains to be seen, but don't expect the pope to start pulling a smartphone from under his large white robe to snap the occasional selfie as he goes about his day -- it's a safe bet his media team will be in control of the content.

Related: Ready for your close up? Heres how to become Instagram famous

Pope Francis is the first pope to embrace social media to any great extent, with the Vatican using the platform to keep the pontiff in closer contact with Catholics around the world.

To revamp its out-of-date communications operation, the Vatican called on the services of a former BBC chairman. In a talk last year, Lord Patten said it'd be "bizarre if the Vatican was to run its media with its eyes closed to the way every other media organisation is managed in the second decade of the 21st century."

Pope Francis is reportedly going with the handle @franciscus for the new account, though it's not clear if that was his first choice. The options were slim, however: @pontifex and @pontifex2 are already taken, as is @pope, @pontiff, @therealpope, and @iamthepope, but then that's what happens when you leave it so long.
The California college student who stabbed four people last month in a campus spree that ended when he was killed by campus police was described by his roommate as "an extreme Muslim" and carried a manifesto and a photocopy of an ISIS flag -- more than enough to convince John Price he was a terrorist.

Yet, more than a month after the Nov. 4 attack at University of California Merced, local and federal authorities continue to insist that Faisal Mohammad, 18, carried out the vicious attack because he'd been banished from a study group. Price, whose son Byron Price, a 31-year-old construction manager for the family business who was working nearby and was stabbed when he heroically intervened, suspects the White House's reluctance to identify acts of radical Islamic terror has trickled down to investigators who are still probing the Merced attack.

Why dont we just call it what it is -- domestic terrorism?" said Price. "Everyone is afraid to be politically incorrect. I do believe in law enforcement and believe they will do their job, but it seems like to me we arent getting the whole story. I just wonder how much of this is driven from way higher up and is politically driven -- I just dont know.

Why dont we just call it what it is - domestic terrorism? Everyone is afraid to be politically incorrect."  John Price, father of stabbing victim

Mohammad, whose victims all survived, left behind a rambling, two-page manifesto in which he instructed himself to praise Allah as he worked his way through his hit list, a photocopied ISIS flag and at least one shaken roommate who remembers him as a menacing loner.

He was a loner and an extreme Muslim, Ali Tarek Elshekh, Mohammads roommate, told Merced Sheriffs Department Detective Jose Silva in a statement, also noting Mohammad was way out there.

Elshekh, who is Muslim, told sheriffs that a friend of his had asked Mohammad what would happen if he touched the mat he used for praying, and got a chilling response.

I will kill you, Mohammad calmly vowed, in what Elshekh said was not a normal response for a Muslim.

Elshekh, whose statement was included in a warrant obtained by FoxNews.com through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Merced Superior Court, said he last saw Mohammad just minutes before the attack, sitting on his bed in their dorm room, dressed in a hooded sweater, hood over his face, with his backpack on his back, staring straight ahead in silence.

The warrant, which authorized detectives to search Mohammad's dorm, car and other possessions, showed investigators found a second copy of the manifesto in Mohammads garbage can, along with several discarded petroleum jelly cans, duct tape wrappers, large zip ties, a package that had contained a knife and sharpener, a red prayer rug and a copy of the Koran.

Authorities believe Mohammad, who carried out his attack with an 8-inch hunting knife, planned to steal a gun by overpowering a campus cop and then take several more victims. Price was credited with slowing his attack, providing a chance for others to escape and helping to ensure that police ended the onslaught before anyone was killed. To his father, Price helped stop a terrorist.

The hesitance to call a crime terrorism is a familiar scenario replayed last week some 326 miles south in San Bernardino, where authorities took several days to ascribe terrorism as the motivation for an attack despite what seemed like overwhelming evidence. And while authorities, including President Obama, have now said the attack that left 14 dead in San Bernardino was a terrorist act, the motive for Mohammads spree, which resulted in no fatalities, remains unattributed.

The manifesto authored by the 18-year-old freshman, copies of which were found both on his body during the autopsy and in the trash can in his dorm, bore names of his targets, a vow to cut someones head off and as many as five reminders to praise Allah.

He detailed how he wanted to behead, stab and shoot his victims, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke told FoxNews.com, in an earlier interview.

No. 27 was to make sure people are tied down, No. 28 was sit down and praise Allah,' Warnke said. I remember seeing four or five times, scribbled on the side of the two-page manifesto, where he wrote something like praise Allah.

There was a gruesome statement he made about wanting to cut someones head off and kill two people with one bullet, and he planned to shoot the police, Warnke said. He did not have a firearm with him and didnt seem to have a lot of experience with firearms because he thought he could kill two people with one bullet. He reminded himself in the list to raise the gun slowly. He scripted everything out in chronological order.

Warnke, initially involved in the case, told FoxNews.com weeks ago that his office would release the manifesto to the press after the sheriffs role in investigation wrapped up, but the sheriffs department has since withdrawn from the investigation, leaving it to the UC Merced Police Department and the FBI, and Warnke is no longer responding to media requests from FoxNews.com.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Sacramento would not provide any information other than to report, the investigation is ongoing. Neither UC Merced police, the lead agency on the case, nor the universitys administration, have made public the manifesto or the copy of the Islamic State flag Mohammad was reportedly carrying, despite repeated requests from FoxNews.com, also maintaining the investigation still continues.

It seems like people way higher up are not taking this as seriously as they should, at best, and, at worst, they are deliberately ignoring what has really happened for political reasons, Price said. Even if Faisal Mohammad is only one individual, his aim was to cause terror, and while it may not have been commanded by ISIS, the group inspired him.
A senior Air Force general who ran the aerial campaign against ISIS has been fired from his job and will retire after an investigation found that he had an unprofessional relationship with a lower-ranking female officer.

The Air Force said Thursday that Lt. Gen. John Hesterman, the assistant vice chief of staff, was found guilty of misconduct for emails he exchanged with an Air force lieutenant colonel between March 2010 and May 2011.

The investigation found that the emails included language that was "sexually suggestive in places and romantic in other places."

One of Hesterman's emails signed off with "much love" In another he talked about wanting to see her, saying "I've missed you my lovely girl."

Hesterman told investigators that he didn't recall some of the exchanges and that he didn't remember being that friendly.

The Air Force said the investigation did not recover any additional misconduct by Hesterman.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Iraqi-born Palestinian man previously charged with lying to investigators about traveling to Syria was indicted Thursday on the more serious allegation of trying to support a terrorist group.

A federal grand jury in Illinois indicted Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of Sacramento, on the new charge two months after he was arrested in California on accusations of lying about traveling to fight against the Syrian government.

That charge could have brought him up to eight years in prison, but he now faces a maximum 15-year term if convicted of attempting to provide material support to terrorists.

Al-Jayab flew from Chicago to Turkey on Nov. 9, 2013, and then traveled to Syria, federal prosecutors said. Authorities say he joined a group later affiliated with the Islamic State group, though he told investigators he was just visiting his grandmother in Turkey.

Al-Jayab migrated to the United States as a refugee in October 2012, authorities say. He lived in Arizona and Milwaukee until November 2013, when he went back overseas. He moved to Sacramento in January 2014 and registered as a computer science major at a Sacramento community college last fall.

The allegations in the case have not changed, only the charge, said Al-Jayab's attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Ben Galloway of Sacramento. Galloway and California prosecutors say there is no indication Al-Jayab intended harm within the United States.

"The charge stems from the same brief overseas trip more than two years ago," Galloway said in an email. "The thrust of the government's allegation is that Mr. Al-Jayab fought against the Assad regime, which our own government actively opposes, but did so by taking up arms with the wrong people."

A second man charged in the investigation, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, of Houston, faces up to 25 years in prison on three charges that he tried to provide material support to the Islamic State group.
A bag of money fell out of an armored vehicle and was then struck by a truck, sending bills flying all over the road on Route 46 in New Jersey on St. Patricks Day.

The door opened, the money flew out, and I believe the word was poof, the money was all over the roadway, Wayne Police Chief James Clarke told CBS New York.

Police said westbound traffic came to a halt and people were exiting their vehicles to grab the cash and return it; however, some might have pocketed some of the bills.

They could be charged with theft, Clarke said.

The sea of green bills on the highway made Paul Redmon stop and look on his walk to work.

I said, Im looking for a rainbow here, cause this is amazing, Redmon told CBS New York. It's not clear exactly how much money fell out of the car.

Click for more from CBS New York.
The gruesome discovery of an apparently slain dog on a California beach this week has stoked a social media outcry and demands that the killer be brought to justice.



A team of Hawaiian canoe paddlers found the dog after first seeing a shovel standing upright in waist deep water off Marina del Rey. On closer inspection, the blade of the shovel was driven into the ocean floor, and the handle rose up through the dog's collar.

"It appeared that someone used the shovel to force the dog under water and drown it," said FoxNews.com reporter Malia Zimmerman, a member of the 6-person canoe team.

Zimmerman's Facebook post showing the dog stretched out on the beach drew widespread concern even as the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control on Thursday launched a criminal investigation into animal cruelty.

The dogs Los Angeles County animal license was still attached to the dogs collar. It appeared to be a mixed breed.

The license was traced to a Santa Barbara residence about two hours from the scene. The agency was closed Friday, but investigators were at Mother's Beach where the dog was found.

A California prosecutor who learned of the animal cruelty case speculated that the dog may have been killed in retaliation against its owner, since the tag was present and the dog was left in the open.

Hundreds of people have since shared and commented on the post, in hopes of finding the dog killer.
More than four months after a black-clad loner with an Islamist-themed manifesto and a printed ISIS flag in his backpack stabbed four people on a California college campus, the FBI wrapped up its investigation Thursday by saying it may never be possible to definitively determine what motivated the bloody rampage.

The inconclusive findings from the probe of the Nov. 4, 2015 attack at the University of California Merced campus followed months of hesitation by local and federal law enforcement to link Faisal Mohammads stabbing spree to terrorism.

"Every indication is that Mohammad acted on his own; however, it may never be possible to definitively determine why he chose to attack people on the UC Merced campus, the FBIs Sacramento office said in a statement that avoided calling the attack an act of terrorism.

They go to great lengths to avoid the obvious, that is calling it what it is: Radical Islamic terrorism."  Patrick Dunleavy, terrorism expert

Critics say it followed a pattern in which the federal government downplays domestic terrorism even when there are seemingly obvious links. The flag, the manifesto annotated with reminders to pray to Allah in between stabbings  all reported in November by FoxNews.com, yet not confirmed by the FBI until this week, pointed early on to the 18-year-old Mohammad having been radicalized, say terrorism experts. Even the stabbings themselves, which came as a wave of terrorist blade attacks occurred in Israel, were indicators of an extremist motivation, say experts.

The Department of Justice is avoiding stating the obvious, which is that an individual who commits violence in the name of ISIS is a terrorist, said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the New York-based nonprofit terrorism research institute Clarion Project. If someone commits violence and has an ISIS flag and jihadist manifesto in their backpack, they are telling you what their motive was. It's as iron-clad as a suicide note.

Mohammad was shot and killed by campus police near the classroom where his attack began. All of his victims have recovered.

In my opinion, this is domestic terrorism at the very least, said John Price, father of Byron Price, a construction manager who was stabbed as he intervened in the attack. I am glad the FBI investigation did not find any links to outside terror groups, but Faisal Mohammed clearly paid attention when the Islamic State called for these kinds of lone wolf stabbing attacks.

In the days following the attack, local and federal law enforcement repeatedly claimed in a series of press conferences that Mohammed was motivated by being excluded from a study group. FoxNews.com, citing documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, reported in November that the narrative clashed with the account his roommate gave Merced County Sheriffs detectives. Ali Tarek Elshekhs told detectives Mohammed was a loner and an extreme Muslim, who threatened to kill another student if he touched his prayer rug, and who dressed all in black before leaving his dorm to try to kill his fellow students.

Both the FBI and campus police have declined for months to provide copies of Mohammeds manifesto and the photocopied ISIS flag to FoxNews.com, turning down numerous Freedom of Information Act requests by claiming the investigation was ongoing.

Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke, who initially was involved in the investigation and told FoxNews.com about the manifesto and some of its language, has since refused more than a dozen requests for comment on the case, and also declined to respond to a FOIA requested submitted by FoxNews.com.

He initially said he would release the manifesto to FoxNews.com and even read portions of the manifesto.

No. 27 was to make sure people are tied down, No. 28 was sit down and praise Allah,' Warnke told FoxNews.com in an exclusive interview just after the attack. I remember seeing four or five times, scribbled on the side of the two-page manifesto, where he wrote something like praise Allah.

There was a gruesome statement he made about wanting to cut someones head off and kill two people with one bullet, and he planned to shoot the police, Warnke said. He did not have a firearm with him and didnt seem to have a lot of experience with firearms because he thought he could kill two people with one bullet. He reminded himself in the list to raise the gun slowly. He scripted everything out in chronological order.

Another request for copies of the manifesto and ISIS flag made the UC Merced police on Thursday and Friday, now that the probe is officially concluded, were not immediately answered.

The handling of the case seems to reflect a top-down law enforcement approach to downplay terrorism in such attacks, said Patrick Dunleavy, former deputy inspector general of the New York State Corrections Criminal Intelligence Unit.

The Department of Justice continues to process investigations of terrorism cases through the lens of political correctness, said Dunleavy, who authored the 2011 book The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorisms Prison Connection. They go to great lengths to avoid the obvious, that is calling it what it is: Radical Islamic terrorism. It is as if by doing so, they will calm the public's fear, when in fact all their actions and statements only acerbate them.

Following the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, in which a jihadist couple killed 14 and wounded 22, federal officials refused to ascribe a terror motive for two days, and only appeared to do so reluctantly after a local FBI agent alluded to terrorism.

It look more than six years for the Obama administration to label the Foot Hood shooting by US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan a terrorist attack, even though the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, in a 2011 report, called the deadly shooting that left 13 people dead the deadliest terrorist attack within the United States since September 11, 2001. The administration had for all those years earlier categorized the mass killing by the Muslim major as workplace violence.

Officials seemed to think that in order for an act to be connected to a terrorist organization, the deranged individual must have been in direct contact with Abu Bakar al Baghdadi specifically telling him what to do, said Dunleavy. They evidently haven't learned that the methodology used by radical Islamic groups like ISIS has changed. It has morphed and adapted to utilize social media and the Internet.
Next week Arizona, Utah and Democratic voters in Idaho head to the polls for the next round of elections.

Later today, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are holding events in Arizona. John Kasich is campaigning in Utah.

Senator Sanders holds a rally this afternoon in Idaho Falls.

1330EDT -- Sen Sanders holds a rally. Skyline High School, Idaho Falls, ID. LIVE via LiveU

Sanders was interviewed by Rachel Maddow last night. He argues that he still has a path toward victory despite losing all five states that voted Tuesday.

Last night, it was announced that Hillary Clinton did indeed win the close race in Missouri. That means she swept all of Tuesdays primaries Illinois, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri.

Most analysts believe Sanders will not be able to make up the delegate deficit hes facing.

Hillary Clintons allies including George Soros are launching a massive effort against Donald Trump ahead of a potential Hillary versus Trump contest.

Clinton is fundraising today in Connecticut and Virginia.

Howard Kurtz argues in a new column that Hillary Clinton isnt winning over many pundits.. even on the left. He argues Donald Trump may make her establishment bona fides a political flaw.

President Obama is set to play a major role in the campaign. The New York Times reported yesterday the President told voters it was time to get behind Hillary Clinton though the White House pushed back against the Times characterization. Hes expecting to hit the campaign trail in a big way this Summer and Fall.

Kimberly Strassel has a column in todays Wall Street Journal on Kasichs challenges to the nomination.

Peggy Noonan on the GOP Will the GOP Break Apart or Evolve?

Senator Lindsey Graham has reluctantly thrown his support to Ted Cruz calling him best alternative to Trump.

Yesterday stocks turned positive for the year.. as oil went above $40 a barrel.

The Feds have launched a massive investigation of New York Citys public housing authority.

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile as part of its aggressive testing for nuclear capabilities. Its developing re-entry rocket systems to make a deliverable nuclear weapon. The U.S. imposed new sanctions on the dictatorship yesterday.

Amazing new pictures of the tiny dwarf planet of Pluto.

Closing arguments in the Hulk Hogan case today.
A Kansas Weimaraner named Gunner has been reunited with his owner after going on an unexpected 81-mile trip with a suspect accused of snatching the man's car.

Gunners owner went inside a courthouse to renew his auto tags when a man stole the 2013 Chevy pickup with Gunner in the backseat and headed toward Wichita, Kan., according to WIBW. Police did not identify Gunner's owner.

The unnamed suspect allegedly abandoned Gunner and the truck 81 miles southeast of Emporia, Kan. where Wichita police officers found them, according to KWCH-TV.

Police were able to return the dog and the truck to the owner and have arrested the suspect, KWCH adds.
A North Carolina mother was arrested after police say she kept her three teenage children out of school for more than three years.

Jennifer Smith Elam, 36, of Belmont, appeared in court Thursday on three misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, Fox 46 Charlotte reports.

Her three children, 13, 15 and 16, were students in the Gaston County school district.

In November 2012, Elam enrolled the children in a homeschooling program. She was arrested Wednesday.

During the court appearance, Elam claimed the children were being homeschooled, according to the Gaston Gazette.

Police said that was bogus.

The issue was they're not going to school, Gaston County Police Capt. Bill Melton told the paper. There was no documentation that they had been in a home school environment. The name of the home school they provided does not exist.

She also claimed in court that her husband had homeschooled the children until he died.

My husband was homeschooling them until he passed away, the paper quoted Elam as saying. When he passed away, I wasnt aware I needed to change things.

School officials brought the matter to police.

Elam was jailed on a $50,000 bond.

Click here for more from Fox 46 Charlotte.


A Lufthansa flight making its approach to Los Angeles International Airport nearly collided with a drone Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The inbound Airbus A380 was flying at an altitude of 5,000 feet when the drone nearly hit the aircraft, Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Robert Binder told the paper.

Late Friday, authorities were using police helicopters to searching for the drones pilot. The Federal Aviation Administration said the drone missed the passenger jet by only 200 feet.

The plane was 14 miles away from LAX at the time of the incident.

Federal authorities warn those operating drones to not fly above 400 feet or within five miles of airports, the paper reported.
As anti-police rhetoric has grown in some communities, more and more cops are purchasing liability insurance to protect themselves against lawsuits related to their job performance, Reuters reports.

The Fraternal Order of Police which includes more than 330,000 officers nationwide is reporting a big increase in the number of members who have enrolled in its legal defense insurance plan.

In an already litigious society, the likelihood of a police officer being sued or charged, often falsely, grows by the day, FOP Executive Director Jim Pasco told Reuters. Officers are increasingly aware of the need to be protected and joining the FOP legal defense plan in growing numbers.

The FOP, the nations biggest police union, says insurance purchases jumped 15 percent from July 2014 to July 2015, according to Reuters. In previous years the purchases grew only one to three percent.

The sharp jump comes with police departments under attack in some communities after deadly police encounters sparked controversy in several well-publicized cases.

The Obama administration and civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter have called for more police accountability, including the use of body cameras and community oversight.

Some, including FBI Director James Comey, have said that the increased scrutiny has officers afraid to do their job and has led to an increase in crime.

Another rank-and-file police group, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, saw enrollment in its liability insurance plan climb 10 percent last year, Reuters reported.

"The environment has become increasingly volatile towards law enforcement in general," Jonathan Adler, a past president of the group, told Reuters.

Officers sued in wrongful death lawsuits between July 2014 and July 2015 include Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri, officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

The decision not to indict Wilson in connection with the August 2014 shooting led to riots in Ferguson and protests in other cities.

The FOPs legal defense plan would help cover legal fees in civil and criminal cases, Pasco told Reuters. The coverage is available to FOP members at a cost of $265 a year.

The plans brochure also explains that coverage is provided even if the employer defends the officer in a lawsuit.

The plan will provide an additional lawyer to monitor the claim if you are exposed to the likelihood of personal liability for money damages, the brochure says. If your employer refuses to defend you, the plan will pay a lawyer of your choice to defend you as provided in the plan description.
A Texas sex offender who infected a young family member with HIV was convicted of sexually assaulting the 15-year-old and sentenced Thursday to life in prison, the Houston Chronicle reported.

David Richard Wilson, 34, was convicted of sexual assault of a child in connection with the 2014 incident. State District Judge Maria Jackson gave Wilson the maximum sentence as recommended by the jury.

Wilson made a number of outbursts in court earlier Friday, shouting "It's not true," as Jackson read his charges.

In addition to giving the victim HIV, the girl later got pregnant and had a miscarriage, prosecutor Katie Warren said in her closing arguments.

"What's goint to happen to her when she meets the love of her life and has all of this baggage?" she asked jurors.

Wilson was previously sentenced to four years in prison for a similar incident with another 14-year-old girl, according to KHOU.
A suburban Dallas police officer who shot and killed a teenage burglary suspect and wounded another boy while off-duty was released from jail on bond Thursday, authorities said.

Ken Johnson, a Farmers Branch police officer, was arrested Wednesday on murder and aggravated assault charges in the shootings Sunday in Addison. He posted $150,000 bond and left jail early Thursday, according to Melinda Urbina, of the Dallas County Sheriff's Department.

According to Addison police, Johnson, 35, was off-duty when he saw 16-year-old Jose Raul Cruz and the other boy burglarizing a vehicle at his apartment complex. He confronted them, they fled and he gave chase, catching up to them when their vehicle spun out about a half-mile away. An altercation ensued, during which Johnson shot the duo.

Cruz died at the scene. Police haven't released the name or age of the wounded boy, referring to him only as a juvenile. But a police affidavit obtained by WFAA-TV in Dallas identifies him as Edgar Rodriguez Arevalo and says he was a passenger in the car. It says he suffered gunshot wounds to his hands and head and was hospitalized.

Authorities haven't said whether the juveniles were armed or whether they might pursue any charges against the wounded boy. Johnson wasn't injured.

Johnson's attorney, Chris Livingston, has said the officer feared for his life and shot the duo in self-defense. Livingston didn't immediately respond to a phone message left Thursday seeking additional comment.

Addison police Chief Paul Spencer said in a statement Wednesday that there was "probable cause" to arrest Johnson, but that the investigation will likely take several more weeks to complete.

Farmers Branch police spokesman David Laisure declined to comment Wednesday, deferring questions to Addison police. Spencer previously said that Johnson had no disciplinary record. He also noted that department policies don't allow off-duty officers to chase suspects in their own vehicles.

Over the last decade, law-enforcement agencies have recorded roughly 1,000 fatal shootings each year by on-duty police, according to Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who studies police crime. An average of fewer than five each year resulted in murder or manslaughter charges against officers, Stinson found.

Of the 47 officers charged from the beginning of 2005 through the end of last year, about 23 percent were convicted, Stinson found.

But with no national database tracking police shootings, even these numbers are largely speculative, Stinson said. And he said it's unknown how many off-duty officers are involved in fatal shootings each year.

Based on newspaper and other accounts, it appears there are about six cases each where an off-duty officer is charged in a shooting death, Stinson said.

"The policing subculture is so dynamic, so ingrained in these guys that you can't turn it off when you go home at night," he said.

According to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, Johnson has worked for Farmers Branch police for a year. He worked as a peace officer for Dallas Area Rapid Transit for almost eight years before that.
When a politician hugs a koala, the animals aren't the only ones feeling the squeeze.

The cuddly critters are costing Australian taxpayers big bucks, to the tune of $400,000, according to statistics revealed Thursday by the countrys Labor party.

Tony Abbott is no stranger to this  he spent $24,000 so Vladimir Putin could hug a koala at the G20, Labor member Pat Conroy said, referring to the former Australian prime minister.

The price tag was highlighted in the partys Waste-pedia booklet and Waste Watch website, launched this week, The Guardian reports.

Among the koala-related expenses -- $133,000 to fly four koalas to the Singapore zoo, a $62,500-a-day tour of Kangaroo Island with foreign diplomats and $150,000 for a diplomatic trip to Western Australia where politicians hugged wombats instead, the booklet says.

Government spending is not in itself bad, but it must be remembered at all times its taxpayers money, not politicians money being spent, Conroy said, according to The Guardian.

Click for more from The Guardian.


A Virginia man who joined ISIS and surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters earlier this week has expressed regret for entering the terror group's self-proclaimed caliphate, saying he "made a bad decision" and "was not thinking straight."

In an interview broadcast on the Kurdistan 24 news station, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, said he had made his way to the ISIS-held city of Mosul, Iraq with an unidentified woman whom he had met in Turkey while traveling.

"We spent some time together, and she said that she is from Mosul, Iraq," Khweis said. He added the pair traveled from Istanbul to Mosul by bus and private vehicle, arriving on Jan. 16.

"On the way there I regretted [my decision], and I wanted to go back home after things didnt work out and saw myself living in such an environment," Khweis said.

It was not immediately possible to establish the woman's identity, whether she was a member of ISIS, her ultimate fate or whether she even existed. U.S. officials told The Daily Beast this week that the terror group has established a network of women responsible for recruiting new fighters.

Khweis said he was only able to stay in Mosul for a month before he had enough. "It is not like Western countries. It is very strict and no smoking there," he said, adding that most of the foreign fighters he saw were from countries in central and southern Asia.

"I found it very, very hard to live there," Khweis said. "I found someone who could take me back to Turkey. First he told me that he will take me, but then he said it will be difficult to take me all the way to Turkey. [Later] he told me he will take me near Turkeys border."

Khweis ultimately surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga forces near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from ISIS late last year.

Khweis said he had arrived in Turkey after traveling through Europe, stopping in London and Amsterdam along the way. He also elaborated on his background, saying that his parents had moved to the U.S. from the Palestinian territories before he was born.

Khweis said he attended mosque in America, but did not do so frequently. Apart from his encounter with the Iraqi woman, he did not offer any other reason for why he joined ISIS.

When asked by his interviewer if he had a message for the American people, Khweis said, "Life in Mosul is really very bad. The people who control Mosul dont represent a religion. Daesh [the Arabic acronym for ISIS] does not represent a religion. I dont see them as good Muslims."
After months of acrimony, the European Union and Turkey reached a landmark deal on Friday to ease the migrant crisis and give Ankara concessions on better EU relations.

In a final meeting high on smiles, handshakes and backslapping, the 28 EU leaders and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sealed an agreement that will allow thousands of migrants to be sent back to Turkey as of Sunday, while Ankara will see fast-track procedures to get billions in aid to deal with refugees on their territory, unprecedented visa concessions for Turks to come to Europe and a re-energizing of their EU membership bid.

Davutoglu strode into the final joint session with the poise of a winner, happily shaking hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and getting an encouraging pat on the back from French President Francois Hollande.

"The deal with Turkey approved. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey starting March 20 will be returned," tweeted Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka.

Davutoglu said Turkey's prime concern was the fate of almost 3 million Syrian refugees on its territory. At the same time, he was looking for unprecedented concessions to bring the EU's eastern neighbor closer to the bloc.

For the EU, the deal brought some closure to months of bitter infighting over how to deal with the migrant crisis, which would essentially see Europe outsource its refugee emergency to Turkey.

"For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining, but values," Davutoglu told reporters earlier Friday, staking out the same moral ground that the EU has claimed throughout the crisis.

With more than 1 million migrants arriving in Europe over the past year, EU leaders were desperate to clinch a deal with Turkey and heal deep rifts within the bloc, while relieving the pressure on Greece, which has borne the brunt of arrivals.

The agreement would have clear commitments that the rights of legitimate refugees would be respected and treated according to international and EU law. Within a week, Turkish and EU officials would assess joint projects to help Syrian refugees in Turkey, after complaints that promised aid of $3.3 billion was too slow in coming.

Turkey would also be guaranteed that EU accession talks on budgetary issues could start before the summer.

In the Idomeni camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, Muhammad Hassan, a Syrian from the devastated city of Aleppo, was looking for relief from the talks in Brussels and wondered why a continent of 500 million people could not deal with the situation.

"Europe have only 1 million" migrants, Hassan said. "How come it's difficult?" he asked, comparing the EU to Lebanon, a nation of 5.9 million. "If a small country takes 3 million refugees and didn't talk, how about Europe? It's not difficult."

The conditions in Greece and the Idomeni camp were called intolerable by the Greek government on Friday. Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis compared the crowded tent city to a Nazi concentration camp, blaming the suffering on some European countries' closed border policies.

During a visit to Idomeni Friday, Kouroumplis said the situation was a result of closed borders by countries that refused to accept refugees.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe's prosperous heartland. Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organized shelters.

The EU-Turkey plan would be operational despite concerns about Turkey's subpar asylum system and human rights abuses. Under it, the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don't qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every Syrian returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, for a target figure of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.

Apart from easing visa restrictions, the EU will also offer Turkey  home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees  up to 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in aid, and faster EU membership talks.


North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan Friday, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

Both missiles are believed to be Nodong medium-range ballistic missiles launched from a road-mobile launcher, according to the official.

"Neither was assessed to be a threat to the U.S. or our regional allies," the official told Fox News.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles flew 500 miles before crashing off the North's east coast on Friday.

The launch came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads.

North Korea had also said it succeeded in a simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead safely back to the atmosphere from space during a missile launch.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the agency is "closely monitoring" the situation.

"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," he said.

Taken together, Seoul analysts said Pyongyang would likely fire a missile to test the re-entry technology that it needs acquire to develop a long-range nuclear missile.

Some analysts had also predicted the North might install on a dummy device on a missile or even empty warheads, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if those warhead's parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures upon re-entry into the atmosphere and if they were able to detonate at right time.

Outside experts said it is the last major technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

South Korean defense officials said North Korea hadn't yet to acquire the re-entry technology so that it doesn't yet have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.

Friday's launch came amid a heightened international standoff over the North's weapons programs in the wake of its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch.

The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. military threats.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A top U.S. Navy official reportedly has seen increased Chinese activity around a reef in the disputed South China Sea region that Beijing seized from the Philippines almost four years ago.

Admiral John Richardson, the head of U.S. naval operations, told Reuters on Thursday that the U.S. saw Chinese activity around the Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly Island chain  about 125 miles west of a Philippines military base.

"I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. Thats an area of concern ... a next possible area of reclamation," Richardson added.

Richardson expressed concerns that an international court ruling on Chinas aggression in the region could prompt Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route. He said it was unclear whether the activity near the shoal was related to the pending decision.

Chinas massive land reclamation and the creation of artificial island reefs threatened to destroy years of open access trading with Asian countries and could start new rules requiring permission to access those waters, Richardson warned. At least 30 percent of the worlds trade passes through that region.

He said the U.S. plans to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands in the South China Sea and would welcome the participation of other countries in joint patrols.

However, he urges Washington to be careful about using heavy patrols of the region given Chinas influence in the region.

"We have to be sophisticated in how we approach this so that we dont force any of our partners into an uncomfortable position where they have to make tradeoffs that are not in their best interest.

Click for more from Reuters.
Rebels seeking independence for Western Sahara warned Thursday that "the shortest way to the resumption of war" is if the U.N. ends its peacekeeping mission in the disputed territory  and they say that's Morocco's aim.

The Polisario Front's U.N. representative, Ahmed Boukhari, spoke to reporters after Morocco ordered 84 international staff in the peacekeeping mission to leave within three days and reiterated the country's termination of $3 million in funding for the U.N. operation, to protest recent remarks by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Boukhari told reporters that the U.N. Security Council must defend the U.N. presence in Western Sahara.

"If there is no mission, there is a vacuum and an invitation to war," he said.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1975 and fought the Polisario Front until the U.N. brokered a cease-fire in 1991. The U.N. mission was established to monitor the cease-fire and help organize a referendum on the future of the vast, mineral-rich territory. But the referendum has never taken place because of disputes over voter lists.

Morocco considers Western Sahara its "southern provinces" and has offered the region autonomy, but the Polisario Front insists on self-determination through a referendum for the local population.

The Security Council met behind closed doors Thursday afternoon to hear a briefing from U.N. political chief Jeffrey Feltman and discuss Morocco's actions.

Angola's U.N. Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins, the current council president, signaled deep divisions in the U.N.'s most powerful body, briefly telling reporters afterward that the council "expressed serious concerns" and decided that the 15 members should engage with Morocco "to make sure that the situation is stabilized."

U.N. diplomats said Feltman told the council that Morocco's "precipitate action" would make it impossible for the U.N. mission, known as MINURSO, to carry out its mission. He said the U.N. wants "cancellation or mitigation" of Morocco's punitive actions against MINURSO, a return to a normal relationship, and a quick resumption of negotiations on Western Sahara's future  and he stressed that the U.N. was counting on the council's "unified support," the diplomats said.

But there was a total lack of consensus among the 15 members, with France, Egypt, Senegal, Spain and Japan supporting Morocco, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because consultations were private.

Feltman warned that if the peacekeeping mission can't function, the vacuum created could be exploited by Morocco, the Polisario Front or others, which would threaten international peace and security, the diplomats said.

The latest dispute, which led to a massive protest in Morocco on Sunday, was sparked by the U.N. chief's use of the term "occupation" in describing Western Sahara's territorial status during his visit this month to refugee camps in Algeria for the Sahrawis, as the region's native inhabitants are known.

Morocco's Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar told a news conference for French and Arab media on Thursday that "like all the countries in the world, we do not accept injustice or insult wherever it comes from."

Mezouar said the decisions about MINURSO were "irreversible," but he said "Morocco has left pending other decisions." They include a threat to withdraw its 2,300 troops from all U.N. peacekeeping operations.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric called Morocco's order for 84 U.N. civilian staffers to leave within three days "unprecedented," saying past issues with countries over U.N. peacekeeping missions were worked out within months, not days.

According to diplomats, Feltman said he received a text message just before the council meeting from Morocco's U.N. ambassador saying that within three days had been extended to "within the days to come."

Dujarric said U.N. peacekeeping officials are planning for a number of possible contingencies, including terminating the mission. He said Morocco's order was "in clear contradiction" of its international obligations.

According to the U.N. peacekeeping department, Kim Bolduc of Canada, who heads the mission, and other senior people were not ordered out.

Diplomats said Feltman told the council that deescalating the situation will not be easy because the U.N. is committed to negotiations that lead to agreement on the final status of the territory, while Morocco insists that autonomy is the only option, and that its real negotiating partner is Algeria, which supports the Polisario Front.
Smashburger Franchisee Announces Plans To Open Two Restaurants At Denver International Airport

Better Burger Restaurant Expands Hometown Footprint through Midfield Concession Enterprises with Two Non-Traditional Locations

DENVER - March 18, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Smashburger, the rapidly expanding better burger restaurant known for its fresh, smashed to order burgers, has announced plans to open two new locations at Denver International Airport (DEN) through its new franchisee, Midfield Concession Enterprises (MCE-DIA LLC). MCE received approval on the proposed Smashburger restaurants from the Denver City Council and Mayor Michael Hancock on Monday, March 14. The restaurants are expected to open in late 2016 and early 2017.

The new full-service Smashburger restaurants will occupy the 3,573 and 2,317 square foot spaces on concourses B and C that currently house Lefty's Mile High Bar and Grill, and Lefty's Front Range Grill. MCE will offer jobs to the 85 employees impacted by the closure of the Lefty's restaurants. The new Smashburger locations will feature a full bar and a breakfast menu, in addition to Smashburger's traditional lunch and dinner offerings.

"We are excited for our relationship with MCE-DIA LLC and for MCE to bring Smashburger's better burgers to our hometown airport for the first time," commented Rick Schaden, Smashburger Co-Founder and Chairman. "As we continue our rapid expansion of restaurants in non-traditional spaces like airports and casino locations, we look forward to the opening of the first Denver airport location and giving travelers the opportunity to a taste local Denver flavors as they come and go from our hometown."

These openings serve as a milestone for Denver based Smashburger, and represent the brand's first airport locations in Colorado. Both restaurants will feature a full bar with 10 beers on tap, including a selection of local craft beers from Coloradobreweries and a variety of hand-crafted cocktails.

"We're excited to work with the Smashburger brand, which has established itself as a well-known burger concept with strong roots in the Denver market," commentedSamir Mashni, Vice-President of Midfield Concession (MCE-DIA LLC). "This was a big win for the team and we are grateful for the support of the Smashburger team which welcomed us into their restaurant family for this project. We are thrilled to bring these great brands and our award-winning designs and customer focused programs to Denver International Airport."

The MCE-DIA LLC proposal is a 10-year contract, and will also bring Tom's Urban, a restaurant brand developed and operated by Consumer Concept Group which began in 2013 with the vision and funding of Rick Schaden, and new brewery, Tivoli, into the Westin Denver International Airport Hotel. The new deal is the largest food and beverage contract that DIA has ever awarded.

The DEN project continues Smashburger's strategy to bring the brand to non-traditional locations from travel sites to college campuses. Smashburger currently operates in 10 airport locations across the globe with several additional locations coming soon. For more information, visit Smashburger.com.

About Smashburger

Smashburger is a leading fast casual "better burger" restaurant known for its fresh never frozen, 100% Certified Angus Beef burgers that are smashed on the grill to sear in the juices, creating an upscale quality burger packed with flavor and served at a great value. In addition to burgers, Smashburger offers grilled or crispy chicken sandwiches, fresh salads, signature side items such as Haystack onions and Veggie Frites, and hand-spun Haagen-Dazs shakes. On each market menu, Smashburger offers locally inspired items like the regional burger, as well as regional sides and local craft beer. Smashburger began in 2007 with the vision of Rick Schaden and funding by Consumer Capital Partnersthe private equity firm that Rick and his father Richard own. There are currently over 360 corporate and franchise restaurants operating in 35 states and seven countries. To learn more, visit www.smashburger.com

About Midfield Concession Enterprises, Inc.

Midfield Concession Enterprises is an award-winning and premier food and beverage service operator delivering world-class quality food, management and customer service to airplane travelers across the country. MCE has 45+ restaurants located in 10 airports including: Denver International Airport, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Philadelphia International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, Dulles International Airport, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, IndianapolisInternational Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Minneapolis St. PaulInternational Airport and San Francisco International Airport. MCE is highly regarded as a strong operator because of its consistent ability to offer unique brands, superior service and quality foods.

SOURCE Smashburger

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@Work Groups Jason Leverant Earns Staffing 100 List Distinction

President and COO recognized on Staffing Industry Analysts 2016 list of most influential staffing leaders

March 18, 2016 // Franchising.com // KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Jason Leverant, president and COO of @Work Group - a top multi-specialty staffing franchise - has been named for the third time to the Staffing Industry Analysts most influential staffing leaders Staffing 100 list for 2016.

The list is compiled by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), a global advisor on contingent work, and is an aggregated list of top influencers in the industry.

The Staffing 100 identifies the entrepreneurs and executives in the staffing industry who are shifting the world of contingent workers through innovative training, legislative change and industry growth, said Leverant. Our entire @Work Group team collaborates on ways to improve employee and business relations and ways to benefit the industry as a whole. To be recognized on a list with cohorts of this caliber is a tremendous honor and is a testament to the bright future ahead for the industry as a whole.

Nominees were collected through a rigorous review of candidates suggested by individuals, colleagues and other industry sources. Included among the winners are entrepreneurs, strategists, researchers, analysts and business people.

The Staffing 100 is an acknowledgment of those individuals shaping the world of work, and a commendation by their peers of their accomplishments in actively driving the industry, said Subadhra Sriram, Editor and Publisher at Staffing Industry Analysts. Some have lent their vision to new pathways for managing talent and engaging solutions across the workforce ecosystem and with respect to the human cloud. Others have taken on challenges, have shown impressive growth or have been instrumental in key legislation; all included, be they veterans to our list or first-timers, raise the bar for the industry as a whole.

Leverant is responsible for the oversight and administration of the @Work Group brands throughout the country. Leverant joined @Work in October 2007 as vice president, sales, and took over his current role in 2012. He has worked with the American Staffing Association on a number of fronts, including working to create the ASA Affordable Care Act Cost Calculator for Staffing, and was instrumental in rejuvenating the Tennessee Staffing Association, where he served as president.

He is focused on helping @Work Group continue to grow and provide expert staffing services in a range of industries and sectors, as well as strengthen franchise development and operations. His leadership has also helped develop a winning model that makes @Work Group a front-runner in the franchise and staffing industries.

@Work provides companies with flexible employment solutions with the highest level of service available and was recently named No. 349 on Entrepreneur Magazines 2015 Franchise 500 List, as well as an Inaveros 2016 Best of Staffing Client and Talent Award winners list. @Work Groups list of accolades also includes: Workforce Magazines Temporary Staffing Providers Hot List for 2013, the Staffing Industry Analysts Largest U.S. Staffing Firms List for 2013, the Franchise Times Next 300 Franchise Systems, and a 2015 Inc. 5000 ranking.

The North American Staffing 100 List can be found at http://si100.staffingindustry.com/

For more information about @Works franchise opportunities, visit www.@Work.com/@Workfranchising/

About @Work Group

Leading the staffing industry since 1992, @Work Group has grown its franchise to more than 90 locations nationwide. Each location provides employers and employees with the @Work range of services including: @Work Personnel Services, @Work Medical Services, @Work HelpingHands Services, and @Work Search Group. @Work has been cited as one of Staffing Industry Analysts' top U.S. staffing firms. They rank on Entrepreneur Magazine's 2015 "Franchise 500" list, the Staffing Industry Analysts' "Largest U.S. Staffing Firms for 2015" and "Fastest Growing Staffing Firms" lists, and the "Inc. 5000 2015" list. @Work Group's remarkable growth is fueled by the vision of founders John and Glenda Hall: "Think ahead, create opportunity, give exceptional support to franchise offices and always look for the better way, every day." For more information, visit www.@Work.com or call 800.383.0804.

About Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA)

SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions

Elevating the Workforce Solutions Ecosystem

Founded in 1989, SIA is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labor. SIAs independent and objective analysis provides insights into the services and suppliers operating in the workforce solutions ecosystem including staffing firms, managed service providers, recruitment process outsourcers, payrolling/compliance firms and talent acquisition technology specialists such as vendor management systems, online staffing platforms, crowdsourcing and online work services. We also provide training and accreditation with our unique Certified Contingent Workforce Professional (CCWP) program.

Known for our award-winning content, data, support tools, publications, executive conferences and events, we help both suppliers and buyers of workforce solutions make better-informed decisions that improve business results and minimize risk. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England.

SOURCE @Work Group

Media Contact:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

865-977-1973

hripley@ripleypr.com

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MANASSAS  A clerks office in Prince William County has ended a five-year policy of denying journalists access to any legal motions filed in the court after the rule was challenged by The Associated Press.

The policy had been in place since 2011 in the Prince William County General District Court, according to a one-page memo provided Wednesday. The memo was produced in response to a request from an AP reporter seeking to review motions filed in the capital murder case against a man accused of gunning down a police officer on her very first shift last month.

A supervisor in the office explained that members of the general public can read the files but reporters cannot because we know youd write about them.

On Thursday, after a reporter called seeking comment on the policy for a news article, the offices chief clerk, Jacqueline Ward, said the policy had been implemented at the behest of a now-retired judge, Wenda Travers. The current chief judge, William Jarvis, instructed the clerks office to rescind the rule after learning about the dispute.

Neither Travers nor Jarvis returned calls seeking comment Thursday.

Megan Rhyne, director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said she had never heard of a court clerk issuing a blanket policy denying court records to journalists.

Wow, she said. They cant make a blanket prohibition. They cannot pick and choose who gets to see public records. Im just astounded.

The General District Court is just one of three courts operating in the county courthouse, along with the Circuit Court and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. The General District court handles minor criminal matters, and only handles major felonies in their preliminary stages. Legal motions are not filed very often at these early stages of a case, so there may not have been many opportunities for the policy to have been challenged.

The circuit court clerk allows reporters and anyone else access to any motions filed, unless they have been explicitly sealed.

In General District Court, though, before Thursdays change journalists were allowed only to see the initial charging document filed in a case. Any motions as the case proceeded were off-limits. Clerks in the office typically ask people seeking to review files whether they are a lawyer or a party with an interest in the case, so members of the news media usually identify themselves as such when making a request.

The motions obtained Thursday in the capital murder case against Ronald Hamilton of Woodbridge include requests from Hamiltons lawyer for a gag order in the case, which has received national attention, and a motion seeking to protect the privacy of Hamiltons personal records.

Hamilton is charged with shooting and killing his wife, Crystal Hamilton, in a domestic dispute in their home, then shooting three police officers who responded to Crystal Hamiltons 911 call for help. Officer Ashley Guindon, working her first shift after being sworn in the previous day, was shot and killed. Two other officers, Jesse Hempen and David McKeown, were wounded.

A hearing on the motions is scheduled for Tuesday.
Chauffeur Service London Expands Luxury Fleet

HR Carriages of London are pleased to announce their newly expanded fleet which features Bentley, Range Rover, Rolls Royce and Mercedes vehicles. Customers can enjoy style and luxury in London.

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Customers looking for ultimate luxury need look no further than HR Carriages' newly expanded luxury vehicle fleet.

Luxury in London is expected and enjoyed by residents, visitors and business executives alike. The chauffeur hire London company is proud to announce the news for 2016. The London transportation service fleet now consists of a range of luxury vehicles including Range Rover, Rolls Royce, Mercedes and Bentley.

Customers can book online and out of hours via a direct telephone booking service. Chauffeurs are experts in London and can VIP passengers to their destination smoothly and courteously. This allows customers to enjoy a relaxed journey, in style and luxury. For passengers planning events, the company also provides a service for wedding chauffeur hire as well as corporate event and business services. The company provide additional services such as security and protection offers where required by individuals. HR Carriages ensure passengers are provided the best possible service, with in car wifi and mints also at their disposal. This feature was included because customers appreciate the small touches.

Passengers looking to book a London chauffeur are able to do so directly or via a corporate account. PAs and secretaries often take care of travel arrangements for their VIPs. Passengers include high net worth individuals, London residents, tourists, business executives, directors, celebrities and noteworthy individuals.

The company constantly seeks to provide choice and luxury for customers. The company fleet also feature exclusive private number plates for prestige. Customers can also specify their chosen vehicle when booking their service which allows them to secure their preferred vehicle. Chauffeurs are experts on the London scene and can show their passengers what London has to offer. Passengers can enjoy London travel without the stress of driving, navigating and parking, thanks to their chauffeurs London company.

HR Carriages, when asked about London services said:

"We simply aim to provide the best possible service to our customers"

The business contact details are listed below:

HR Carriages 43 Berkeley Square Mayfair London W1J 5FJ 02035 360 152

For more information about us, please visit http://hrcarriages.com

Contact Info:

Name: Rizwan Hussain

Organization: HR Carriages

Address: 43 Berkeley Square Mayfair London W1J 5FJ

Phone: 02035 360 152

Release ID: 107547

For more information visit r



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Karaoke Hire Company In Melbourne Launching A Zero Cost Delivery Service

SmartyParty, a Karaoke rental company in Melbourne, Australia, has updated its hire policy to provide huge and better savings on delivery to new customers and old. Further information can be found at http://www.smartyparty.net.au.

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SmartyParty, a karaoke hire company in Melbourne,Australia, has implemented a new element to its delivery services to benefit both new and existing customers. This change has also been implemented in order to bring an even better savings to their clients that hire more than just one party equipment.

To the delight of many, party and event organizers looking to cut down delivery costs on party equipment such as jumping castles, sumo suits, slushie machine and karaokes, can now take advantage of the new offering from SmartyParty as the release of this offer is now officially announced to the public.

This update delivers a renewed interest to access other party equipment for hire to customers, interested parties and those active within the party equipment rental service arena. SmartyParty Hire P/L has been able to do this by putting the results of a recent customer survey into action.

SmartyParty Hire P/L is excited to unveil the latest benefit for current and new customers as it's specifically designed to improve the experience and better fulfill the needs of party celebrants and event organizers.

When asked to provide greater insight on the subject, Sam McCallister, Head Of Customer Support at SmartyParty Hire P/L said: "We've decided to offer this benefit to encourage people to try out other equipment that would further bolster the level of party fun and enjoyment. We found that some of our clients would rather limit their choices when hiring equipment from us because of concerns that they would be charged expensive delivery fees, something that people just forget to account for. They should be excited to know that we have removed these extra fees when they hire equipment to the total value of at least $150, which really is, a very modest limit considering that there are party firms that charge somewhere between $200 to $800 for some party equipment, EXCLUDING the actual delivery cost."

SmartyParty Hire P/L has made a point of listening to its customers and taking feedback wherever possible. They reportedly do this because it is their most accurate and reliable guide to gauge what people are really looking for when celebrating their special events, parties and occasions..

SmartyParty Hire P/L has made it part of its mission to deliver quality, safe and affordable party equipment to the community of Melbourne, Australia in the party equipment rental service market. The business is known as a company that is always willing to work something out to make each client a customer for life, a goal which Sam McCallister is immensely committed to achieving, with the business being operational now for approximately 3 years.

Interested parties who would like to be among the first to experience the Huge saving on delivery with SmartyParty Hire P/L are encouraged to visit the website at http://www.smartyparty.net.au for full details and to get started.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.smartyparty.net.au

Contact Info:

Name: Sam McCallister

Email: info@smartyparty.net.au

Organization: SmartyParty Hire P/L

Address: Wantirna Victoria, Australia 3152

Phone: +61434 406 484

Release ID: 107365

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Mitech Joinery Looking toward an Eco-Friendly Future

Mitech Joinery launched 27 years ago and they are hugely experienced; dedicated to providing customers with high quality products that are as beautifully designed as they are practical. Business owner, Robert Barlow, is committed to becoming eco-friendly and using sustainable materials moving forward

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Issued: March 2016; Denby, Derbyshire

Mitech Joinery are a dedicated specialist woodwork and joinery business that create bespoke wooden gates for domestic and commercial customers looking for security for their homes and businesses. Each and every gate is designed and manufactured individually, using the best quality materials.

With the government placing emphasis on eco-friendly and sustainable business models, it is especially important for small businesses to comply with this where possible. While woodwork and joinery is already a business that works with renewable resources, it comes down to responsible business owners like Robert Barlow to ensure that they reduce CO2 emissions and use timber materials that are from sustainable forests.

Timber is one of the only commonly used building materials that comes from a renewable resource. However, it is only when this timber comes from a sustainably managed forest that benefits can be seen. By utilising timber and wood in this way, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced, forested trees are re-planted and the process can continue.

Opting for sustainable timber products does not affect quality. Wood is a natural product that when treated correctly will last a lifetime, and will always be easy to maintain and repair.

Using certified timber that is recognised by the government ensures that businesses like Mitech Joinery are sustainable in the long run. Look out for FSC, PEFC and CSA certification.

By opting to use a variety of hardwood and softwood materials that are fast-growth, Mitech Joinery are committing to being as eco-friendly as possible. For more information on the types of wood that are used, please click here.

Climate change and global warming is an issue that affects the world on a local, national and international level. Each and every individual and business that contributes towards reducing CO2 emissions is doing their part to safeguard Earth for years to come.

By committing to using sustainable forest resources, Mitech Joinery are being a part of the solution to the problem that is global climate change.

Please visit www.mitechjoinery.co.uk for more information.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.mitechjoinery.co.uk

Contact Info:

Name: Robert Barlow

Email: robert@mitechjonery.co.uk

Organization: Mitech Joinery

Address: The Unit, Mount Pleasant, Derby Road, Denby, Derbyshire, DE5 8NN

Phone: 01773 570577

Video URL: https://youtu.be/FxIsnau2HZk

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/mitech-joinery-looking-toward-an-eco-friendly-future/107462

Release ID: 107462

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Zumfish: Canadian Free Classified Ads for Local Businesses Announced

Zumfish has defied convention in the Auto Sales market with the release of its new site which allows customers to post free I Want Ads, by region, category, looking for product or services they desire, essentially customizing their own deal service. Further information zumfish.com

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Earlier today, Zumfish finally announced the beginning of its new Canadian free classified ads site which allows customers to post free I-Want-Ads on the web, organized by region and category, looking for product or services they desire, essentially customizing their own deal. Zumfish has been in development since Jan 2014. The main aim is to allow customers to post free I-Want-Ads on the web, and then get bids by local businesses. These are then available to local businesses, similar to a tender, providing qualified market leads to the business. Posting their classified ads gives the customers greater exposure to local businesses, many which they didn't know existed, resulting in multiple quotes to increase the competitive spirit among vendors.... but it does so, with a difference.

A business owner testimonial from K.G. of Calgary, says: "The Company wanted to try something new by trying Zumfish. Anyone familiar with the Auto Sales market will probably have noticed that getting qualified customers is the biggest challenge, but this provides us with a steady stream of qualified leads. This is a problem because Getting quality leads for the Automotive Sales industry a regular basis can be a problem but with Zumfish, that problem is solved."

So as a welcome breath of fresh air, Zumfish was created. No other company out there on the Internet has these kind of leads. Zumfish chose to make this move because At Zumfish, the owners saw a need to fill a gap where people who wanted to get any service done or purchase any automobile could have the business come to them instead bidding on their job. Businesses receive ble market leads on which they can concentrate, directing their efforts to their specific target market. When replying to a customer's ad, the vendor has a prime opportunity to highlight their strengths and advantages, and by doing so build trust with the customer. The result is a lower cost per customer than blanket advertising and a greater level of service to those customers. The customer remains anonymous until they choose otherwise, corresponding with these businesses to receive product information, compare brands, and attain competitive pricing, all from the convenience of their home and on their schedule. Having multiple vendors compete for their business provides the customer better options, pricing, and service, giving them the benefit of internet convenience while they still deal with a local, established business.

Zumfish eliminates the need for customers or salesmen to travel around the region in search of a business relationship gives zumfish a green side, reducing the carbon footprint of the deal. The new Zumfish allows customers to post free I-Want-Ads on the web, organized by region and category, looking for product or services they desire, essentially customizing their own deal. service is set to launch March 14th 2016. To find out more about the service and Zumfish, it's possible to visit http://www.zumfish.com

For more information about us, please visit http://www.zumfish.com

Contact Info:

Name: Kyle Guss

Email: western@zumfish.com

Organization: Zumfish.com

Address: 336 Shoreacres Road, Burlington, Ontario, L7L 2H5 CA

Phone: 403-990-1099

Release ID: 107230

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Los Angeles American Limousines To Buy Build Or Sell New Site Launched

A Los Angeles limousine company has launched a new website allowing users to buy custom-built limousines, browse new and used models and sell their own vehicles. Vehicles bought through the site can be fully customized to each individual's personal taste.

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American Limousine Sales, which specializes in building, buying and selling limousines, has launched a new website where customers can find the exact vehicle they're looking for. New and used models are available, including popular brands like the Lincoln Navigator, with some even on sale for under $5,000.

More information is available on the American Limousine Sales website at: http://buylimos.co.

Limousines are seen as the epitome of class in the vehicle world. They can be outfitted with state-of-the-art technology, the finest leather, wood and vinyl finishes on the interior and exterior of the car, and boast a history of excellence in design, engineering and construction. Because of the nature of the vehicle, they're perfect for business people, who can enjoy meetings and discussions in privacy.

American Limousine Sales is a luxury car manufacturer that provides custom built limousines, SUV limousines, and party buses at affordable prices. Based in Los Angeles, it has an experienced staff of designers and engineers who build their cars using high-quality materials. Alongside this building work, American Limousine Sales offers a customization department that can personalize vehicles to suit the customer's taste.

There is a powerful search tool on site allowing users to filter the results by make, price, year of production and vehicle type. The current inventory is home to over 50 vehicles, from classic designs like the 2014 70-inch Chrysler 300 in white, to more modern pink limousines. Videos and images are available for buyers to get a closer look at the options, and each vehicle can be fully customized. Clients can choose the paint color, window tinting, and a full suite of accessories, as well as custom flooring and special effects.

Anyone wanting to sell a limousine can do so through the website's online store. Users fill in a form listing their vehicle's details, upload photos of the limousine, and let American Limousine Sales take care of the rest.

The office is open from Monday to Friday and can be found at: 5250 W. Century Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045. The company telephone number is: 310-762-1710.

For more information about us, please visit http://buylimos.co/

Contact Info:

Name: Richard Murillo

Email: sales@americanlimousinesales.com

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Phone: 1 310 762 1710

Release ID: 107624

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Brazil is on the brink of a constitutional crisis after a judge blocked President Dilma Rousseffs appointment of her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to her cabinet, prompting clashes in Congress and on the streets.

Mass protests swept the country this week as a court released phone recordings fuelling accusations that Ms Rousseff had appointed Mr Lula da Silva as a minister to protect him from arrest. State prosecutors requested Mr Lula da Silvas arrest last week over charges of money laundering and fraud, accusing the former president of secretly owning a beachside penthouse at the centre of investigations into corruption at state oil company Petrobras. (FT)

In the news

US military chief rejects harsh anti-terror rhetoric A senior US military commander said extreme techniques such as waterboarding, whose revival has been advocated by Donald Trump, would be illegal and likely to damage the morale of troops. (FT)

Costs of a crisis The EUs spending on migration came under fire from its own auditors, who chastised Brussels for failing to plan or monitor its projects properly and for not being able to demonstrate how 1.1bn of funds had been spent. (FT)

N Korea missile test North Korea has fired a mid-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, in its latest show of force to defy tougher international sanctions and US-South Korea joint military drills. The missile was fired on Friday morning from a site north of Pyongyang. It was North Koreas first test of a mid-range missile capable of reaching Japan since 2014, sparking strong protests from Tokyo.

Struggling to adapt US colleges want more international students to increase tuition revenue and have been making a big play for those from China, but language and cultural barriers make assimilation a struggle. (WSJ)

US stocks up, dollar down The S&P 500 briefly turned positive for the year on Thursday, in a reversal of the unbridled selling that kicked off 2016. The gains mark a significant rebound for US stocks. However, the dollars decline, following a dovish Fed statement, continued on Friday. The dollar index, which tracks the worlds reserve currency against six of its main rivals, has fallen to levels last seen in October.(FT)

Test your knowledge with the week in news quiz. Shares in which pharmaceutical company lost half their value this week?

Its a big day for

Ankara, after both the EU and Turkey hardened their positions as they negotiated a European migration plan. The development sets the stage for a clash on Friday over the legal, practical and political elements of a big-bang proposal to systematically turn back migrants reaching Greek islands.

Food for thought

River of life The City and Canary Wharf house thousands of workers from the worlds of finance, law and professional services. But the stretch of the Thames that connects Londons two financial districts is a different kind of workplace altogether. (FT)

No fatal doctrine Fatalism taints the Obama doctrine, writes the FTs Philip Stephens, but to observe that the US cannot solve every problem should not be to conclude it is powerless. Losing wars has done more damage to US credibility than choosing not to fight them. (FT)

Gone fishing The controversy surrounding Mozambiques $850m tuna bond acts as a cautionary tale of poorer nations getting saddled with debt as the emerging markets boom comes to an end. (FT)

Patent pole position Chinas Huawei Technologies held its place as the top international patent filer in 2015, signifying the growing contribution to global intellectual property from east Asia. (NAR)

Death in a cold climate When one woman was asked to write an obituary for her local paper in a remote Alaskan town, she had no idea that over the following two decades she would go on to write hundreds of them, many for people she knew well. (BBC)

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Societys lust for gold has shaped history, through wars, discovering and scientific inquiries. But why do investors continue to hold on to such an idle asset, asks Izabella Kaminska, when they could put their cash into more modern, productive investments?
Twelve years ago, in a village on the edge of a pine forest not far from Lithuanias elegant capital Vilnius, workmen constructed an unusual warehouse. It was the size of an Olympic swimming pool with no windows, many air vents and no stated purpose. The site had formerly been a riding stables and a paddock. It had also served as a local watering hole  a welcome one since the village lacked a bar or restaurant. The new building was shiny and modern, incongruous amid the tumbledown farm buildings and Soviet-era housing blocks. The convivial atmosphere of the riding club was replaced, in the words of one local inhabitant, by this certain emptiness.

Naturally, the neighbours were curious. They speculated about the new buildings function. Was it a military listening post? A drug factory? A clandestine organ transplant lab? None of them guessed that it might be a key facility in the US Central Intelligence Agencys Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme, one of a secret network of black sites, set up in half a dozen countries to house undisclosed prisoners out of reach of lawyers, the Red Cross or other branches of the US government. Why should they? Lithuania was a long way from the front lines of the war on terror, and the village of Antaviliai, although only 20 minutes by car from the capital, was known for summer lake swims rather than for covert operations.

Lithuania. Satellite view of a former riding stables in the village of Antaviliai, annotated by a local resident to show building works, 2004

The secret detention programme, as it was gradually uncovered, stretched across the globe. The network of sites we have documented encompasses Antaviliai and Kabul, North Carolina and Skopje, Columbia County, Milan, Tripoli and Bucharest. In our journeys through this material, we have sought to portray the appearance of disappearance.

Sceptics like to invoke the power of photography, its ability to show what is real. Three years ago, at a hearing for a European Parliament civil liberties committee inquiry into complicity in illegal detentions, one MEP asked if he could see a photograph of a prisoner on a plane. Failing that, he would remain convinced of the fictional world in which it didnt happen. In the same way, Valdas Adamkus, a former president of Lithuania, when asked during a visit to London in 2011 about CIA prisoners being held in his country, stated firmly that: Nobody proved it, nobody showed it.

In unveiling the form and structure of the network, journalists and investigators pieced together elements in many countries. Police identified names of rendition crews from phone and hotel records. We compiled dossiers with material accumulated from plane movements, government archives, NGO and media investigations, contractual paperwork and invoices. A summary of a 6,000-page report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, partially and belatedly released in 2014, confirmed much that had by then already become public, but held a fig leaf over the names of participating countries. Last year, US government lawyers, long loath to admit to the programmes existence, admitted to the existence of 14,000 photographs of prisoners being transported on planes and held in secret locations. Nonetheless, across Europe, officials still deny that there is any evidence of their countries involvement with the secret detention network.

Macedonia. The room in the Skopski Merak hotel where Khaled el-Masri was held by Macedonian officials in January 2004; May 2015. Khaled el-Masri was detained by Macedonian police, who confused his name with that of an al-Qaeda suspect and handed him over to the CIA. He was held in a secret prison in Afghanistan for four months before the CIA acknowledged its mistake. He later sued CIA director George Tenet for imprisonment and torture but the US dismissed the case under state secrets privilege. He later won a case for compensation in the European Court  Edmund Clark

So far, the Obama administration has refused to disclose its 14,000 photographs, and as a result we cannot show them. We can show, however, a swimming pool in a hotel in Mallorca where a flight crew relaxed for a couple of days between dropping off one piece of human cargo and picking up another. We can show a bed in a hotel room in Macedonia, where a man was tied up for 23 days before being flown to a facility in Afghanistan because he had the same name as someone else. We can show the bland fronts of offices, large and small, where the transport was organised. We can show paperwork linking a multinational service provider  a blue-chip company with thousands of employees that was formerly a contractor for Transport for London  to an aviation brokerage, a mom-and-pop affair in upstate New York. And we can show documents from the court case that ensued when two logistics firms fell out over how many hours had been flown and how much money had been earned  documents that, on close inspection, laid out the history and blueprint of the USs most secret post-9/11 government programme.

A page from the CIAs Special Review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003), dated May 7 2004. In 2004, after complaints by government officials, the CIAs inspector-general conducted a review of the first two years of the agencys detention and interrogation activities. It examined the range of 'enhanced interrogation techniques', including ways in which interrogators had exceeded authorised methods. Much of the report was redacted on its eventual declassification and publication in 2009

El-Masris sketch of the layout of the hotel room during his detention. (El-Masri vs Tenet, Court of Appeals for Fourth Circuit, Exhibit F)  Khaled el-Masri

Looking for meaning in unexpected areas began with the weak points of business accountability: the traceable bureaucracy of invoices, documents of incorporation and billing reconciliations from companies using the familiar paths and carriages of executive travel and global exchange. These pieces of paper bear the traces of small- and medium-enterprise America seeking profit from the outsourcing of prisoner transportation. The documents and the locations to which they refer are the everyday facades behind which global, public-private partnership operated. The photographs show only banal surfaces, unremarkable streets, furnishings, ornaments and detritus. Look at them and they reveal nothing. Look into them and they are charged with significance. They are veneers of the everyday under which the purveyors of detention and interrogation operated in plain sight.

The process of investigating these events proceeds in a puzzling order: revelations are veiled, significance emerges in retrospect, the central shifts to the peripheral, paradoxes and contradictions solidify and dissolve. It is an experience that, by turn, sheds light and acknowledges impenetrability. The act of photographing becomes not one of witnessing but an act of testimony, recreating parts of this network.

Mallorca. Swimming pool in the Hotel Gran Melia Victoria, Palma de Mallorca; September 2014. The rendition team and crew from N313P relaxed in the hotel in January 2004 after the transfers of Binyam Mohamed from Morocco to Afghanistan and of Khaled el-Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan. Binyam Mohamed was held in Guantanamo Bay between 2004 and 2009, when he was released without charge  Edmund Clark

In piecing together evidence of rendition, our account includes locations where nothing happened and people who never existed. A flight crew, enjoying a rest and recuperation stop in Palma de Mallorca, travelled under false names with no addresses other than anonymous PO boxes. A plane filed a flight plan for Helsinki but never arrived there, going instead to Lithuania, then recorded its onward destination as Portugal while travelling to Cairo. A company registered in Panama and Washington DC gave power of attorney to a man whose address turned out to be a student dormitory where no one of that name was known. A series of letters, purportedly from the US State Department, accrediting air crew to give global support to US Embassies worldwide, were all signed by Terry A Hogan  one name with many differing signatures.

Billing reconciliation document, N308AB, Prime Jet and BaseOps, August 2004. (Document on file with Reprieve) In 2003, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), an IT support company, acquired DynCorp Systems and Solutions, a private military company, and with it a government aviation contract to organise flights at short notice for US government personnel. CSC made use of trip-planning companies to take care of arrangements such as overflight permissions, landing and handling fees. Here, trip planner BaseOps invoices operating company Prime Jet for services rendered to its aircraft N308AB between August 23 and August 25 2004. This plane carried black site prisoner Laid Saidi from Afghanistan, where he had been imprisoned by the CIA for 15 months, to Algeria, where he was released without charge

These are all masks, obscuring by design and revealing by accident. The most common form in which the appearance of disappearance is found, however, is the simple black line: the redaction or strikeout. Sometimes this can be applied to entire paragraphs, pages. From these black lines many things can be perceived. Every black line has to hide something.

While contemplating these abstractions, we should remember that principally what disappeared here is people. They remained disappeared for between half a dozen and 1,600 days, as far as records  eventually released in 2014 by the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a form that was almost entirely redacted but still susceptible to interpretation  can determine. What also disappeared is the law. In the US, Europe, in almost all the world, the law is very clear: no secret detention, no torture. But sometimes the law is a mirage. The law can determine  has determined, indeed  which firm owes how much money to which other firm for performing prisoner transport flights. But who set up and ran the secret prisons, where, how? Who was responsible? Even as the answers become increasingly well attested, these questions remain beyond the laws vanishing point. The documents and photographs that we have excavated are physical artefacts of extraordinary rendition. At a time when one US president has failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camps after two terms, and one of his prospective successors wants to bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding, the negative publicity evoked by these images is an indication of how the law vanished.

New York. Richmor Aviations office at Columbia County Airport, New York; February 2013. In early 2005, Richmor Aviations Gulfstream jet N85VM was publicly implicated in the CIAs 2003 abduction of the Egyptian cleric Abu Omar from Milan, Italy. A year and a half after the jets role was publicised, Richmors president Mahlon Richards wrote to aircraft brokerage firm Sportsflight. Despite the re-registration of the plane, it would, he said, 'always be linked to renditions'. Shortly afterwards he took Sportsflight to court for money owed. In this section of the court transcript, Richards describes how N85VM flew to Italy, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, 'to every place'. The purpose was to pick up 'a bad guy'. The court clerk has corrected the misheard 'theorists' to 'terrorists'. The judge agreed with Richmors assessment that the context of renditions was 'irrelevant and immaterial' to the case. Sportsflight was ordered to compensate Richmor for its lost earnings  Edmund Clark

Transcript of the cross-examination of Mahlon Richards, Richmor Aviation Inc vs Sportsflight Air Inc, Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Columbia, Index No 07-2171, July 2 2009

Afghanistan. Site in north-east Kabul, now obscured by new factories and compounds, believed to have been the location of the Salt Pit; October 2013. The Salt Pit is the name commonly given to the CIAs first prison in Afghanistan, which began operating in September 2002. Dozens of prisoners were held there over the next 18 months. Gul Rahman, a young Afghan detainee, died of hypothermia there in November 2002. He was buried in an unmarked grave. The US Senates report on the CIA programme described how detainees 'were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste'. Members of a visiting delegation from the Federal Bureau of Prisons commented that they had 'never been in a facility where individuals are so sensory deprived'. The site was closed in 2004 and replaced by a purpose-built facility  Edmund Clark

Sketches by Mohammed Shoroeiya, a Libyan opposed to the Gaddafi regime, of two of the torture devices used on him in a CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he was kept for a year in 2003-04. They show a small wooden box in which he was locked, and a waterboard to which he was strapped. Other drawings showed a narrow windowless box in which he was held naked for one and a half days. According to the US Senate report, Shoroeiya was 'walked for 15 minutes every half hour through the night and into the morning' to prevent him from sleeping. He said: 'They wouldnt stop until they got some kind of answer from me.' In August 2004 he was flown by a CIA-contracted jet to Libya, where he was imprisoned. He was finally released in February 2011. (Mohammed Shoroeiya from Human Rights Watch report, Delivered Into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafis Libya, 2012)

Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition, by Edmund Clark and Crofton Black, is published by Aperture/the Magnum Foundation, 50; aperture.org/flowers gallery.com.

The authors will be in conversation with Julian Stallabrass at the Courtauld Institute on Wednesday March 23, admission free; courtauld.ac.uk.

Images from Negative Publicity will be included in an exhibition of Edmund Clarks work at the Imperial War Museum, London, from July 28 2016 to August 28 2017

Photographs: Edmund Clark, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens its new Madison Avenue branch, Met Breuer, with a brace of philosophically opposed exhibitions. Nasreen Mohamedi is a lingering close-up on an artist of refined craftsmanship and reticent virtuosity. Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible is the museum equivalent of a paintball match: a chaotic, entertaining splatter involving scores of participants.

Mohamedi had to beat back a debilitating illness in order to maintain obsessive control over her fine pencil lines and animated grids. The artists in Unfinished left their work rough for all kinds of reasons: distraction, study, aesthetic purpose, or the careful construction of spontaneity.

The juxtaposition is meant to flaunt the Mets range and multitasking facility in modern and contemporary art. Instead, it suggests an institution unsure of its mission, more eager to entertain provocative ideas than to follow them through with curatorial rigour.

Untitled ink drawing (c1960) by Nasreen Mohamedi  Nasreen Mohamedi

Mohamedi, an Indian artist who died of Huntingtons disease in 1990 at 53, helps to widen the museums vista on the 20th century. Little known in her lifetime, she has become an emblem of Modernisms global reach and of the currents flowing outside western capitals. The Kiran Nadar Museum in New Delhi and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid co-organised the retrospective.

In her monochrome, quietly utopian world, diagonals slice across white paper like the contrails of jets flying in formation. Lines intersect, form nodes, and make waves. They cast shadows and coalesce into hovering forms. In her photographs of pavement stripes, coastlines and walls, she is always alert to the worlds mysterious rhythms.

Andy Warhol's 'Do It Yourself (Violin)', (1962)  Andy Warhol Foundation

The more her body betrayed her, the more exacting she became, as if to insist that random suffering could be palliated by the discipline of beautiful geometry.

Unfinished, however, is half-baked. It includes hundreds of pieces from five centuries, harvested from a score of museums plus the Mets own capacious vaults, all grouped under one vaporous rubric. The notion of examining the artistic process through products that were left incomplete looks good from a distance; up close it dissolves into a jumble of bouncing pixels.

Jacopo Bassano's 'The Baptism of Christ' (c1590)  Metropolitan Museum of Art

When Jacopo Bassano died in 1592, he left his Baptism of Christ still hauntingly partial, with blurred figures adrift in dark shadows. Almost 400 years later, Lygia Clark fashioned articulated puzzle-like contraptions in the hope that the public would complete them by moving and squeezing and stroking. (Naturally, the museum forbids the public from actually doing this, dooming Clarks works to perpetual incompletion.)

Jackson Pollock bent and danced over Number 28, 1950, then titled, signed, and exhibited it, but here it is considered unfinished because his method of flinging and dripping paint on the floor postpones closure and completion he could, it seems, just keep working indefinitely, without ever being done. Bassano, Clark, and Pollock have nothing to do with each other, and summoning them to this ahistorical imperfection convention doesnt really make the case that they do.

You can almost imagine the discussions over what forms of unfinished-ness should count and which should be excluded. Yes to artists who invoke infinity. No sketches or preparatory studies, the curators announce in a wall text  and then include some anyway. Because, really, who could resist a chance to display the notebooks of Michelangelo? Leonardo, with his gloriously tragic inability to bring much of what he began to fruition, is practically the shows patron saint and we can savour some of his divine fragments. Graffiti art doesnt make an appearance, even though the genre practically defines the hit-and-run aesthetic. Yet Basquiats Piscine versus the Best Hotels, which suggests a crayon doodle or high-school locker collage, is actually the product of a meticulous mind. The quintet of curators, led by Sheena Wagstaff, seem more interested in works that look unfinished than in those that actually are.

Lygia Clarks Bicho/Pan-Cubism Pq (Version II) (1960-63)  Lygia Clark

The curtain rises on Titians Flaying of Marsyas, a work from his later years when, escaping from technical virtuosity, he played vigorously with paint, daubing the figure of the martyred satyr  who dared to lose a musical duel to Apollo  with frenzied strokes and blobs of colour. Bits of white fleck the surface with maniacal animation. The work is not unfinished, though. Rather, the rude vitality is typical of Titians late paintings, which Giorgio Vasari described as judicious, beautiful and astonishing.

How could a survey of thoughts left visible fail to discuss the effects of old age on style? Late in life, Rembrandt, like Titian, traded in the theatrical realism of his early work for viscous brushstrokes and psychic depth. These searching portraits are not by-products of infirmity. Pulpy surfaces in golden tones look spontaneous, but are in fact calculated to convey melancholy inwardness, the sense of a deep and authentic bond between the artist and his subjects. Rembrandts students excelled at reproducing the masters buttery brushstrokes and intense emotionality. They imitated him so convincingly that it remains difficult to distinguish a Rembrandt from a not-Rembrandt, or a psychological imperative from an affectation.

Rembrandts The Great Jewish Bride (1635)  Metropolitan Museum of Art

Maybe its apt that an exhibitions attitude should get tangled up with its topic, but I wish the Met had thought better of mounting such a run-on first draft. I felt like staging a bout of guerrilla editing, and scrawling questions on the walls in red pencil: who decides whether a work is complete  the artist, the patron, posterity or connoisseurs? One faction of curators joins forces with the Romantics, who prized unforced effusions of the febrile imagination  and found them retrospectively in the work of artists like Frans Hals. Wagstaffs team wrestles with two overlapping but distinct definitions of finished: polished and complete. The opposite of the first is rough, spontaneous, and vital. The opposite of the second is interrupted and fragmentary. The curators repeatedly conflate these concepts, to intensely annoying effect.

We stumble through all these puzzles into a room of roughly textured sculpture. Rodins gnarled anatomies share a family resemblance with works by Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, and with Alina Szapocznikows Tumors Personified, a malignant spray of resin-coated clods, each marked with a malformed self-portrait. But if a deeper connection exists among all this bumpy organicism, the museum leaves that argument unmade.

Theres a certain appeal to this loose tangle of masterpieces and mediocrities  whenever you find yourself in a thematic blind alley, theres always something stunning to see. Whats disheartening, though, is that Unfinished is meant to herald the Mets new mission  to trace the threads that bind contemporary art with history  and it does the job badly. This is an institution busy reinventing itself with new branding, new digs, new staff, and plans to construct a modern and contemporary art wing. In that expansive spirit, the museum has mounted a show that demands too much from its audience and leaves out too little.

metmuseum.org/visit/met-breuer

Photographs: Ateneum Art Museum; Lygia Clark; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nasreem Mohomedi; Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York
Jupiter has embarked on a major restructure of its UK sales team that will see its advice, wealth management and third-party client divisions form one team.

By bringing the three teams into one, the group aims to make the UK business more efficient, a Jupiter spokesman told FTAdviser today (18 March).

The reorganised team will be led by former retail distribution director James Crossley, who has been promoted to head of retail distribution. He will be assisted by Jupiters strategic alliance and national presentation teams.

Meanwhile, John Tevenan, who was previously international sales director, has been appointed head of wealth.

He will lead a combined wealth team, which includes traditional London wealth clients such as fund of funds, stockbrokers, discretionary fund managers, as well as the global banks that operate from a London base.

The firm also stated that former international sales director Neil Carter will now oversee Jupiters relationships with financial institutions to coordinate sales on a global basis.

In his role as head of global financial institutions strategy, he will work to develop its approach for attracting and keeping clients.

Mr Carter will also continue to have direct contact with some clients, while also serving as an over-arching bank of knowledge on financial institutions, the Jupiter spokesman said.

The three heads will report to Kevin Scott, head of EMEA, who said he looks forward to working with the team as Jupiter looks to extend its market share.

The spokesman noted that no one would lose their jobs as a result of the restructure.

Yesterday, Kames Capital said it had snagged Jupiters investment sales director Hari Patel for its UK wholesale distribution team.

Ben Yearsley, investment director at the Wealth Club, commented: Jupiter have been a successful sales team and taken a lot of money in the last few years, but there is a general trend of consolidation within fund management groups.

There is a move away from having separate teams for discretionary and IFA sales because of costs.

katherine.denham@ft.com
Hendersons head of European equities has raised fresh concerns about the market he covers, warning that the mistakes made in 2008 are being repeated.

During a recent investment trust conference, John Bennett gave the example of subprime loans being rife in the car industry.

We now have eight-year auto loans in the US and no dealer has convinced me that none of that is subprime, he said, describing much of the car manufacturing industry as lousy.

I think the same mistakes of 2008 are being made again, whether its by bankers, leasing companies or the car finance companies themselves; I think we are heading for trouble, he said.

Mr Bennett warned that a number of manufacturing businesses around the world have already entered recession, as what he described as a third industrial revolution is on the way, with booms in science and technology.

Talking about the markets more broadly, he expected stocks to fall this year, but said a 20 per cent drop was normal.

In a bear market, its very normal to lose 15 to 20 per cent in equities in a year. But the problem is people seem to think thats abnormal and refer to a 10 per cent correction as a crash or a crisis, which is nonsense.

Fears China will meaningfully devalue its currency are driving concerns about abnormal markets, he said, adding if China acts to cut the yuan aggressively, then the European market is in serious trouble.

Apart from oil, Mr Bennett said there is nothing on a sector level that his team finds very exciting, adding: I think its the year for stocks, not markets.

Despite suggesting this should play to the strengths of the Henderson European Focus Trust, he admitted this strategy is not working at the moment, because of pressures in the pharmaceutical industry.

In the past three months, the trust has made a loss of 3.4 per cent, against a 2 per cent loss in the European sector, FE figures revealed.

Adviser view:

Ben Seager-Scott, director of investment strategy at Tilney Bestinvest, said: John Bennett is a manager we hold in high regard, and its always interesting to hear what he has to say, particularly at a stock level, since this is where we use him to add value for clients.

From here we do see storm clouds gathering on the horizon, meaning downside risks are starting to grow. That said, the timing of such factors is very hard to gauge, and in the meantime the ECB is continuing to pump money fairly indiscriminately into financial markets.

At some point the market may recognise that QE is not a replacement for fiscal reform and in-and-of itself wont kick start economic growth, but in the meantime equities could continue to climb this wall of worry.

katherine.denham@ft.com
The head of ETF sales for UBS told Investment Advisers Julia Faurschou that UBS has seen strong outperformance from many SRI indices over the past year or so.

UBSs ETF range uses the SRI indices created by MSCI. These indices include just 25 per cent of the parent index to get what MSCI defines as an SRI index, and UBS tracks these for its ETF range.

Talking about the construction of these SRI portfolios, Mr Walsh said there are the usual companies excluded from the index - tobacco companies or weapons manufacturers, for example - but he added there are decent good citizen companies with positive SRI profiles that just do not make the grade for the SRI index series.

He said: For example, an interesting anomaly is that Apple is excluded from the SRI USA index, but this is not a reflection on Apple, just there are better companies out there which have met the criteria laid out by MSCI.

Mr Walsh said that across Europe and the UK, SRI indices have been outperforming their parent indices and this was the situation more widely, except for the US SRI index where the strong performance of Apple has been one of several other factors helping the parent index to outperform.

However, he said that generally good citizen companies have helped the SRI indices to outperform. Historically, people thought that if you wanted to be a good citizen investor, you had to pay the price in terms of performance. But the outperformance of SRI indices compared with the parent index proves you do not have to wear a millstone around your neck in terms of performance.

In Europe, particularly, there is a good set of profiles from companies delivering on their promises and their ratings from MSCI have been very good indeed.

Mr Walsh said the natural underweight to energy in SRI indices would have helped performance, especially given the slide in the oil price affecting parent indices, over the past year or so.

email julia.faurschou@ft.com

4784344339001

MyExperience4784344339001
Craig Yeaman is shutting out market noise in his Saracen Growth fund, leading him to pursue out-of-favour stocks.

Recent market volatility has created buying opportunities for the manager across several areas, including financials, property, emerging markets and commodities, he said.

Mr Yeaman, who is also investment director at Saracen, said he tried to take a step back and look at the UK equity market from a business as usual perspective.

This approach helped him identify companies offering good medium- to long-term value.

Despite banks having struggled to find favour in 2016, Mr Yeaman said the fund had been doubling its position in Lloyds Banking Group in the past quarter, from 1 to 2 per cent.

He called the bank a stable business due to its position in the larger end of the small and medium enterprise and the larger companies space, as well as its intention to increase dividend payments.

Its not just Lloyds that is out of favour  banks in general are very much out of favour at the moment. We arent preoccupied with share prices on a day-to-day basis, Mr Yeaman said.

He also increased a position in building products supplier Tyman as markets turned against it.

The company took a hammering in January, falling 25 per cent in nine trading days. This led the manager to add 1 per cent, taking the total holding to 5 per cent.

The FTSE All-Share index lost 7.2 per cent over the same period.

While Tymans European business was a bit sluggish, Mr Yeaman said the UK and North American sectors had fared much better.

Tyman for us is a geared play on recovery in the US housing market. The majority of its profits come from the US and Canada, and we think there is still a lot of self-help within this company, he said.

Emerging markets investment manager Ashmore was added to the funds portfolio during the last quarter of 2015 at a 2 per cent weighting.

Mr Yeaman defended the position, and said that it was still a financially strong company, despite its focus on an out-of-favour region.

The chief executive, directors and staff own about 50 per cent of the business, so their interests are very much aligned. They have a lot of cash on their balance sheets, so we know the dividend is going to get paid and it has a good yield at present, he noted.

The manager also said Rio Tinto was financially strong, despite the declines in commodity prices.

He began buying shares in the business in August last year, bringing the funds holding to 2.2 per cent.

Were not calling a bottom in the commodities cycle at all, but we think this is a very strong company financially, he said.

The gearing in Rio Tinto is at the low end of management expectations. Its about 20 per cent geared and its still making good margins, even while commodity prices have been falling quite sharply.
Selling off government holdings of Bradford & Bingley mortgages could be derailed by plans being considered by the European Basel Committee, the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association has warned.

In his Budget earlier this week, George Osborne announced the sale - expected to be completed by 2017 to 2018 - in order to repay nearly 16bn of debt created by the governments bail-out of the buidling society during the financial crisis.

Following the collapse of the subprime mortgage sector in 2008, Bradford & Bingley was nationalised and split up, with its deposits and branch network sold to the Santander Group, but the mortgage book retained by HM Treasury.

However, the Imla executive director said a large proportion of the assets are buy-to-let deals, which are the subject of the latest consultation on credit risk weightings from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Executive director Peter Williams said there is a good chance the sale of these assets will be compromised as a result of proposals being considered.

If implemented, these would require any buyer of the mortgages to hold almost three times as much capital against them as they would today. At this level the assets may be deeply unattractive to many investors which will reduce the revenue the sale could generate.

Furthermore, if there is continuing uncertainty around capital weights for buy-to-let mortgages it may be difficult to achieve a sale at all because the market will not know how to price them.

He pointed out that according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders latest industry statistics, buy-to-let mortgages have a strong track record for credit quality, with arrears at around half the level of the market more generally and with just 0.58 per cent of loans over three months in arrears.

The CML recently responded to the Basel Committees revisions to the standardised approach for credit risk, arguing that the plans remain too blunt for a market as well regulated as the UKs.

If adopted as drafted, they could have an unduly harsh effect on buy-to-let lending by lenders on the standardised approach, stated the CML, calling for more differentiation to accurately reflect the level of underlying risk against different tranches of lending.

Mr Williams said there is no evidence to support the Basel Committees proposals for higher levels of capital for buy-to-let mortgages, rather such loans have much lower levels of arrears than other mortgages.

The Basel proposals make no sense at all, but if implemented they may well scupper the plans for the sale of the B&B portfolio and with it the chancellors promise of a budget surplus by the end of this parliament.

peter.walker@ft.com
Hargreaves Lansdown founder Peter Hargreaves has doubled down on his support for a Brexit, saying community has nothing to fear as other European capitals dont have the expertise of London.

Speaking to the BBC Today programme this morning (18 March), he said: We raise money for the Russians, we raise money all over the world for countries that are not in Europe, there isnt the expertise in Frankfurt and Paris to do that.

You cant suddenly have the expertise to do it, because they dont want to use London. Theyve got to use London. London can raise billions on a few phone calls. Nowhere else can they do that and most people that work in the city wouldnt want to work in Paris and be taxed to the hilt.

Most people dont want to work in Frankfurt, he continued. They want to work in London because Londons a fantastic place to work. These people arent going to move, so if people want it done theyve got to come to London because thats where we are. That little bit of insecurity will be a fantastic stimulus for us. Peter Hargreaves

A poll by the Personal Financial Society earlier this month found that advisers are equally divided over the split.

Mr Hargreaves, who is a vocal Brexit supporter, also said that the move would provide the UK an impetus to innovate.

The one big thing in all this, and Im firmly convinced that if hopefully we decide to leave, that little bit of insecurity, that little bit of unknown will be an absolute fillip to everyone. It will be a great incentive to us to go out and prove that its right.

He said this happened when Singapore became independent from Malaysia. That little insecurity, that they were no longer part of Malaysia, was an inspiration and its now probably the greatest economy in the world. I honestly that it will be good for us as well. That little bit of insecurity will be fantastic stimulus for us.

Addressing the issue of EU workers and talent already in the country, he said: I hope the ones that have gainful employment here wed keep. We will always import people to do the jobs that we need here.

We import Filipino nurses. They arent part of the EU. We employ people from all over the world to help us with the jobs that need doing here. It wont stop us importing Polish workers and other people from the EU.
The director general of the Association of Professional Financial Advisers has said he will meet with fellow campaigners soon to discuss the future of the long-stop campaign.

Chris Hannant said it was too early to say how the battle for a limitation period of Fos complaints could be taken forward.

It comes after the FCA and HM Treasury ruled out the possibility of a long-stop in this weeks Financial Advice Market Review.

He said: The FAMR seems to be based on advisers selling long-term products but in my mind RDR changed the world and advisers now sell advice.

There is quite often a product involved but the rest of it is how you invest your money. You cannot expect advice on an investment allocation to last more than six or 18 months because the world changes.

We will have a better idea of where we are going now after we have consulted with our members and our partners.

Apfa has been working with Zurich on its campaign for a long-stop and Mr Hannant said he would be meeting representatives of the provider soon.

Alistair Wilson, head of retail platform strategy at Zurich, said: Weve been campaigning hard alongside Apfa for a fairer limit on adviser liability and are disappointed that FAMR has ruled out the introduction of a 15 year long-stop, and alternatives such as a time limit related to the term of a product.

We note the review has put forward alternative recommendations, such as suggesting changes to how the FSCS is funded and looking at the availability of professional indemnity insurance for smaller advice firms.

We are keen to continue working with Apfa and believe further engagement with advisers, consumer groups and other providers is key if we are to find a way forward.

Earlier this week Alan Lakey, a member of the Apfa long-stop working group, suggested that the FCAs decision could be challenged through the courts.

But Mr Hannant said that while Apfa would consider all options, judicial reviews can prove expensive.
A financial advice firm has been told to pay redress to a client after it completely disregarded her interests and put her money in unregulated schemes.

Ombudsman Louise Bardell said Buckland Harvester advised the client to make a number of investments. These included 150,000 in Stirling Mortimer No.8 UK Land fund and 50,000 in the Connaught Income Fund series 1, both unregulated schemes.

The client - known as Mrs B - met with Buckland Harvesters adviser in 2009 to discuss investing 300,000 made available by downsizing her home, and considered herself a low risk investor.

Mrs B had other investments in Isas and investment bonds following earlier advice from Buckland Harvester, which according to the 2008 fact find amounted to around 160,000.

This meant the Stirling Mortimer fund accounted for around a third of her total investable assets and the two UCIS around 46 per cent.

Ms Bardell said this was too high a proportion and represented enough of a concentration risk to make the advice unsuitable.

She said: Had it not been for Buckland Harvesters unsuitable advice, Mrs B wouldnt have made the investment.

And I think the advice completely disregarded Mrs Bs interests. Buckland Harvester advised Mrs B to invest a significant portion of her funds into two unregulated funds with limited track records.

And Buckland Harvester incorrectly assessed and described the risk associated with them. In these circumstances, I think that its fair and reasonable to hold Buckland Harvester responsible for the whole of the loss suffered by Mrs B.

In order to compensate Mrs B, Buckland Harvester has been told to compare the performance of her investments with the average rate from fixed rate bonds and pay the difference between the fair value and the actual value of the investments.

Both Mrs Bs investments currently have no realisable value so, Ms Bardell said that for the purposes of this calculation, the actual value of each should be assumed to be zero.

Last March the FSCS said IFAs can be held liable for mis-selling which may have occurred in relation to three Stirling Mortimer funds.

Earlier that year the FSCS said it was delaying making any decision regarding payments on claims against three Stirling Mortimer funds - No.4 Cape Verde fund, No.6 Morocco fund and No.7 Cape Verde II fund - as they were being investigated by the SFO.

Meanwhile in March 2015 the FCA said it decided to investigate the activities of Capita and Blue Gate in connection with their roles as operators of the Connaught Income Series One fund.

It also announced it had withdrawn from negotiations aimed at securing an agreement to address the losses for investors in the fund.

Capita Financial Managers was operator until September 2009 when it was replaced by another company.

The fund went into liquidation in 2012 and its liquidator has bought a claim against both former operators.
First Milk is to convert its farmers invested capital into shares, which could mean members quitting the co-op will no longer get cash payouts worth thousands of pounds.

The co-op has written to farmers saying it would turn their loan capital, built up from money taken off milk cheques, into equity.

This would mean members leaving the business would have a stake in First Milk.

Those shares will then be tradeable, which would set their value, a First Milk spokesman confirmed to Farmers Weekly. But how that value is established and whether they could be sold to outside investors has not been decided.

See also: First Milk back into profit with half-year results

Last year the processor announced it would make ex-members wait six years before they were paid back capital contributions, up from five years.

The payout delays were one of several dramatic changes at First Milk last year, along with delayed milk cheques, job cuts, a new chief executive, a refreshed board of directors and an overhauled payment structure.

Most of its farmers are now being paid less than 20p/litre under an A and B system, also introduced last year.

First Milk has billed this latest move as one of the final parts of its turnaround plan, helping to strengthen its balance sheet.

Chairman Clive Sharpe, who joined in February, said the next step was confirming the exact type of shares that would be issued to farmers. He would consider tax implications for members, ex-members and how returns on equity were paid out in the future.

This means that in the new financial year starting in April we can focus on improvements we need to make to our relative milk price and rebuilding the long-term value of First Milk as a member-owned business, he said.

The switch to shares will also change how farmers receive a return on their capital investment.

Members would be paid a dividend, rather than interest on their loans.

First Milk reported an operating profit of 1.1m in the six months to 30 September 2015.

This compared with a 24.9m pre-tax loss for the year to 31 March.

The business managed to refinance with its current banks in December and has been paying down its debt.

In the autumn First Milk sold its Glenfield Dairy site in Fife, Scotland, and early this year confirmed it was stepping away from the joint venture with Arla at Westbury Dairies.
Farmers must find new efficiencies, we are constantly told by the great and good. In the face of catastrophically low farmgate commodity prices and falling subsidies weve all got to up our game to become globally competitive.

To be honest, Ive been a bit slow to come round to this message. Ive always worried that it is very difficult for individual farmers to ensure that they can become world beaters given that we are subject to such powerful and unpredictable economic forces beyond our control.

But having recently sold wheat for a disastrous 97/t, and a fine pen of store lambs for a pathetic 50 a head, even I now concede that I must try to take charge of my own destiny. There are going to have to be some big changes on my farm.

I started to make a list of things that needed to be done. First up was the missing bottom hinge on the gate into the Thirty Acre. For the past week, every time I have checked up on the in-calf cows Ive had to drag the bottom of that gate through mud that is now so deep that I end up briefly losing a wellie.

Retrieving an Argyll wellington boot out of brown sludge while hopping about on one leg is not a productive way to spend ones time. I decided that a new hammer-in bottom hinge must be fitted to the gatepost. I rang my local agricultural engineers and they quoted me 3.75 (excluding VAT) for the bit, which I wrote down as Phase One of my efficiency drive.



Stephen Carr farms an 800ha sheep, arable and beef farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in partnership with his wife Fizz. Part of the farm is converted to organic status and subject to a Higher Level Stewardship agreement. Stephen Carr farms an 800ha sheep, arable and beef farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in partnership with his wife Fizz. Part of the farm is converted to organic status and subject to a Higher Level Stewardship agreement.

Encouraged by such an easy gain, I next toyed with the possibility of a new set of tyres for my tractor. The tread is starting to wear down and I knew I could get the old girl re-shod for less than a grand. But then I remembered that Id recently had to increase my bank overdraft facility just to pay the bills, so I decided to postpone any tyre decision until that definition of efficiency, the RPA, paid my BPS into my bank account.

I paused for thought and wondered whether I was being ambitious enough.

A new bottom hinge for a gate was obviously a huge step forward but I started to have doubts about whether that measure alone would turn my farm into a globally competitive economic powerhouse. What was needed was a root and branch review of the way I did everything on the farm.

Then it dawned on me where I had been going wrong and I was suddenly overcome with excitement. Times had been good enough for me in recent years that Id simply forgotten how to make do and mend and this was now at the root of my inefficiency. I had not been carrying baler twine in my pockets when I had been out and about on the farm.

What a relief. I realised how easy it was going to be to create a perfectly adequate bottom hinge from nothing more than a piece of polypropylene twine. With a flourish I cancelled the order for the galvanised metal version and felt embarrassment that I had ever considered such wild, high-cost profligacy.

So it is that I have joined the worlds farming elite. With the string-in-my-pocket initiative now implemented I stand tall with the low-cost lamb producers of New Zealand and the beef ranchers of Argentina. Even the grain prairies of Canada and Ukraine now need to sit up and take notice of me as an economic threat.

And anyone who suggests that it is delusional of me to think that a mixed English farm of marginal land quality can ever be internationally competitive is just being defeatist.
Agrochemical giant Syngenta has been fined 200,000 over a chemical leak at its plant in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

The firm pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches after an employee accidentally released weedkiller at the site in Leeds Road, Deighton, in December 2014.

More than 3.5t of Paraquat leaked out after a worker opened a valve on a tanker, Leeds Crown Court was told.

See also: Tougher penalties for farm health and safety breaches

A judge fined Syngenta 200,000 on Thursday (17 March) and ordered the company to pay 13,041 court costs.

In a statement, Syngenta said it accepted the fine and had taken steps to ensure a similar incident would not happen again.

A company spokesman said: Syngenta has manufactured Paraquat safely in Huddersfield for more than 20 years and greatly regrets this incident.

There were no injuries to personnel, there was no harm caused to the environment, and members of the public were not at risk from this incident.

Our company did everything you would expect of a reputable operator by reporting the incident to the HSE, admitting to the offence at the first opportunity and taking all the necessary steps to stop a similar incident from happening again.

He added: The judge said Syngenta was a highly respectable company that took its health and safety responsibilities very seriously.

New sentencing guidelines were introduced in February and while the fine is higher than it would have been at magistrates court in January, we fully accept the judges ruling and we now move on.
San Jose, Costa Rica  The traffic spike at Americas Cardroom over the last few months has been attributed to many things  the Freebuy Super Series, an upgraded welcome package, and other innovations. But it turns out that one of its longest-running incentives is whats making Americas Cardroom a player-magnet. Elite Benefits, the online poker sites loyalty program, has taken over the spotlight in the online poker world, proving to be the most lucrative rewards program in the industry.

Elite Benefits is the absolute best loyalty program in all of online poker," said Michael Harris, spokesperson for Americas Cardroom . "After Stars dimmed their loyalty program last year, theres only one place worth playing at for serious online poker grinders and diehard tournament players. And thats Americas Cardroom.

Elite Benefits is Americas Cardrooms loyalty program that awards top-performing players with exclusive entries to live events, bonuses, and levels of distinction cash credits that all add up to tens of thousands in extra money. When coupled with Americas Cardrooms two point races, The Beast and Sit & Crush, Elite Benefits is the most rewarding loyalty program in the industry, not just in the United States but around the world.

The Beast is Americas Cardroom s progressive points race thats funded entirely through the rake that players already pay. The competition gives poker players a chance to race to the top of a leaderboard for cash prizes and tourney seats each week, just by playing at qualifying cash game tables. At the end of each 7-day period, The Beast prize pool is distributed to players who rank on the weekly leaderboard. Sit & Crush is much like The Beast, except its designed exclusively for Sit n Go players.

Americas Cardroom also continues to enhance their tournament schedule. On top of having the biggest weekly major of any of the US facing sites ($115,000 Sunday Special), they are the only US facing site to offer $1,000,000 GTD Million Dollar Sundays throughout the year. Their next one is set for April 24th at 4pm ET as the Main Event to their upcoming Online Super Series.

The Online Super Series VI runs from April 15th to 24th and features $2.5 MILLION in guaranteed prize money. Satellites for the tournament series will be announced soon at AmericasCardroom.eu. San Jose, Costa Rica  The traffic spike at Americas Cardroom over the last few months has been attributed to many things  the Freebuy Super Series, an upgraded welcome package, and other innovations. But it turns out that one of its longest-running incentives is whats making Americas Cardroom a player-magnet. Elite Benefits, the online poker sites loyalty program, has taken over the spotlight in the online poker world, proving to be the most lucrative rewards program in the industry.

Elite Benefits is the absolute best loyalty program in all of online poker," said Michael Harris, spokesperson for Americas Cardroom. "After Stars dimmed their loyalty program last year, theres only one place worth playing at for serious online poker grinders and diehard tournament players. And thats Americas Cardroom.

Elite Benefits is Americas Cardrooms loyalty program that awards top-performing players with exclusive entries to live events, bonuses, and levels of distinction cash credits that all add up to tens of thousands in extra money. When coupled with Americas Cardrooms two point races, The Beast and Sit & Crush, Elite Benefits is the most rewarding loyalty program in the industry, not just in the United States but around the world.

The Beast is Americas Cardroom's progressive points race thats funded entirely through the rake that players already pay. The competition gives poker players a chance to race to the top of a leaderboard for cash prizes and tourney seats each week, just by playing at qualifying cash game tables. At the end of each 7-day period, The Beast prize pool is distributed to players who rank on the weekly leaderboard. Sit & Crush is much like The Beast, except its designed exclusively for Sit n Go players.

Americas Cardroom also continues to enhance their tournament schedule. On top of having the biggest weekly major of any of the US facing sites ($115,000 Sunday Special), they are the only US facing site to offer $1,000,000 GTD Million Dollar Sundays throughout the year. Their next one is set for April 24th at 4pm ET as the Main Event to their upcoming Online Super Series.
Fans who attended the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2022 can renew their ticket orders for next year beginning Monday, Oct. 24.
Bonn graduates : Party at the Rigalschen Wiese

Bonn Its the last day of school today for German students who are graduating this year. Expect to see Abi-2016 and partying students at the Rigalschen Wiese.

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Its the last day of school for German students who are graduating this year. Expect to see some big celebrations and hear party music at the Rigalschen Wiese this Friday afternoon with several hundred students letting loose. School officials and police report that events in the last week of school for seniors have been running peacefully in Bonn, in contrast to events in Cologne.

City spokesperson Stefanie Zienitz says so far 19 schools and 1,200 students have signed up to participate in the celebration at Rigalschen Wiese, followed by the Final-Party at the Stadthalle in Bad Godesberg. This is a long-standing tradition in Bonn, as is the Autokorso, the succession of cars one sees riding and beeping their horns like they have just come from a wedding.

Although police have not officially authorized any Autokorsos, it would not be unusual to see many cars with the words Abi-2016. Abi is short for the Abitur which is what the graduates receive when they pass their exams; its their equivalent of a high school diploma allowing them to attend University. The students may be celebrating today, but lots of work is still ahead as they prepare for their exams in the next weeks.

Wanting to ensure the safety of the celebrating students, police and school representatives have worked on preventative measures. Rules have been communicated to the students, for example no glass is allowed at the Rigalschen Wiese. And although the Autokorsos have not been authorized, police say they have nothing against carpooling.
A59 Accident : Worker killed in construction zone

Bonn A worker securing a construction zone overnight on the A59 was fatally injured when he was hit by a truck whose driver apparently lost control.

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A 49-year-old employee of a traffic safety company was fatally injured on the A59 while he was at his job securing a construction zone. The accident occurred at 2:30 a.m. in the night from Thursday to Friday. He was struck by a 40-year-old truck driver who lost control of his truck and trailer. Apparently, the worker had not been in his vehicle at the time he was hit.

Autobahn police said some asphalt work was being carried out in the night and workers had posted signs warning oncoming traffic of the roadworks ahead. About 1300 meters before the Porz-Lind exit, the truck swerved from the left lane, going into the right lane and ramming at full speed into the construction zone.
Top 10 Sony 4G Android Smartphones To Buy in India 2016 Features oi -Harish

Sony has been a well known brand in electronics and has established itself in the mobile segment as well. The company has so far launched a few of the most powerful smartphones. It is known for offering higher end specs and impressive design in its phone. The company's smartphones are also well known for their camera prowess.

Recommended: Top 20 Smartphones with Great Battery life for long conversations and never ending Facebook chats!

If you are a fan of Sony and are interested in buying a Sony smartphone, you can chose from an a variety of options available in the market. The company offers 4G enabled smartphones, across price range. We compile the 10 best 4G enabled smartphones that boast impressive specs and support high speed network for fastest data connectivity.

Read ALSO: Top 20 Smartphones with awesome Camera and imaging capabilities

Take a look at our pick of Top 10 Sony smartphones that boast wonderful specs and offers 4G LTE connectivity support. Take a look:

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium Click Here To Buy

Key Features

5.5-inch (38402160 pixels) Triluminos Display at 806 PPI

Android 5.1 (Lollipop)

Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with Adreno 430 GPU

3GB RAM

32GB internal memory

expandable memory up to 200GB via microSD card

23MP rear camera

5MP front-facing camera with Exmor R sensor, 25mm wide-angle lens

IPX5 / IPX8 rating for dust and water resistance

Dual SIM

Fingerprint sensor

Sony DSEE HX audio technology, LDAC codec

4G LTE / 3G HSPA+

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German Triple Agent Given Eight Years In Prison

March 17, 2016

Germany has sentenced a former intelligence employee for spying for the United States and Russia.

A Munich court found Markus Reichel guilty of treason on March 17.

The 32-year-old admitted handing over more than 200 documents over four years to the CIA in exchange for at least 80,000 euros ($90,000). The documents included the real and cover names and addresses of German agents abroad.

He also gave three documents to the Russian secret service.

Reichel had been employed at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) since 2007, working in the mail room where he had access to classified documents.

'No one trusted me with anything at the BND. At the CIA it was different,' he told the court at the opening of his trial in November.

Reichel was uncovered and arrested in 2014 after his e-mail to the Russians, with classified documents attached, was intercepted.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/german-triple- agent-jailed-8-years/27619415.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Military Reviews Recommendations on Afghanistan for President

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2016  Military leaders are reviewing recommendations on the way forward in Afghanistan before presenting them to President Barack Obama, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. told the Senate Armed Services Committee here today.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the situation in Afghanistan is challenging. He added that assessments by the current commander in the country -- Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. -- and the previous commander -- Army Gen. John F. Campbell -- are realistic and that the Taliban remain a threat.

Lessons Learned

The chairman told the Senate committee that military officials are examining the lessons learned in 2015 and will apply those to Afghanistan operations in 2016. Dunford, who recently visited Afghanistan, said the mission now is to help Afghan security forces secure their country. There are around 9,800 American troops in the country and another 3,000 coalition troops.

"We have recommendations from General Campbell for changes  to make in 2016 as a result of lessons learned in 2015," Dunford said. "This week, we conducted a video teleconference, Secretary Carter and I, with General Nicholson, who is on the ground in Afghanistan right now, to get his thoughts. And we're in the process of making recommendations to the president for changes that might be made to make us more effective in supporting Afghan forces in 2016 and making them more successful."

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Carter Outlines Security Challenges, Warns Against Sequestration

By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2016  The United States is facing five global strategic challenges, while at home sequestration poses a great risk to the funding of critical investments, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told lawmakers here today.

'Today's security environment is dramatically different from the last 25 years, requiring new ways of investing and operating,' Carter said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the fiscal year 2017 defense budget request.

He testified with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., and Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord.

Carter listed Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and terrorism as the five evolving strategic challenges that are driving the DoD's planning and budgeting, he told the panel.

The defense budget request totals $582.7 billion -- $523.9 billion in the base budget and $58.8 billion in the overseas contingency operations fund. The funding request takes the 'long view' of current and evolving security threats, Carter said.

Sequestration Poses Risk

Last year's bipartisan budget act gave the Defense Department 'much-need stability after years of gridlock and turbulence,' Carter said. But he warned the greatest risk to the department is losing that predictably and having uncertainty and sequester in future years.

Avoiding sequestration would prevent $100 billion in automatic cuts and allow the department to maintain stability and sustain critical investments, he said.

Challenges from Russia, China

Addressing the challenges from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and terrorism requires new investments, new posture in some regions, and also new and enhanced capabilities, the secretary said.

'All the while, we're continuing to help protect our homeland,' Carter said. 'We're accelerating our overall counter-ISIL campaign. We're backing it up with increased funding for 2017 -- requesting 50 percent more than last year.'

Key to the approach is being able to deter advanced competitors, he said.

'We must have and be seen to have the ability to ensure that anyone who starts a conflict with us will regret doing so,' Carter said. 'In our budget, our capabilities, our readiness, and our actions, we must and will be prepared for a high-end enemy -- what we call full-spectrum.'

He described Russia and China as the most 'stressing competitors' that have both developed and continue to advance military systems that seek to threaten U.S. advantages in specific areas.

The Defense Department is taking a 'strong and balanced approach to deter Russian aggression' in Eastern Europe, Carter said.

'The other challenge is in the Asia-Pacific, where China is rising, which is fine, but behaving aggressively, which is not,' he said.

The U.S. military is continuing its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region to maintain the stability the U.S. has underwritten for the past 70 years, allowing many nations to rise and prosper, Carter said. He described the region as the 'single most consequential region for America's future.'

Counter-ISIL Momentum

The U.S. is seeking a lasting defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Carter said. He outlined momentum against the 'parent tumor' in Iraq and Syria, as well as other areas where it is 'metastasizing,' including Africa and Afghanistan.

'Notably, the Iraqis retook Ramadi, and are reclaiming further ground in Anbar province,' he said.

The U.S. and its partners have supported capable and motivated local forces in Syria to retake the eastern Syrian town of Shaddadi, Carter said. That is the last major northern artery between Raqqa and Mosul -- between ISIL in Iraq and ISIL in Syria, he pointed out.

Coalition partners have committed to increase contributions to help defeat ISIL, strikes on ISIL-held cash depots and oil revenues have increased, and there have been strikes against ISIL in Libya as well, he noted.

North Korea, Iran

Forces on the Korean Peninsula remain ready to "fight tonight," he said, noting North Korea poses a threat to regional security and stability.

Iran is demonstrating 'reckless and destabilizing behavior,' Carter said. The United States, he said, seeks to counter Iran's aggression, counter its malign influence, and uphold our 'ironclad commitments' to regional allies, notably Israel.

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IKE Carrier Strike Group Conducts Missile Exercise

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160317-19

Release Date: 3/17/2016 3:22:00 PM

By Lt.j.g. Christian Asaban, USS San Jacinto (CG-56)

ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (IKECSG) completed a multi-ship, live-fire exercise with the Standard Missile (SM-2), March 15.

The dynamic exercise was part of the strike group's final preparation for the composition training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) that certifies all strike groups prior to deployment.

The exercise, led by the carrier strike group's Air and Missile Defense Commander and San Jacinto Commanding Officer, Capt. Dennis Velez, also served to demonstrate the Navy's continued efforts to train for today's warfighting environment.

'We have always worked to evolve our training, including live firing exercises against high speed targets during and shortly after the Cold War,' said Velez. 'And here we are once again adapting and demonstrating our tactical proficiency. With this shoot specifically, we're seeing our Sailors operate their weapons systems successfully against advanced threats in contested battlespace environments.'

The six combatants--USS San Jacinto (CG 56), USS Monterey (CG 61), USS Mason (DDG 87), USS Roosevelt (DDG 81), USS Stout (DDG 55) and USS Nitze (DDG 94)--practiced a number of advanced tactical techniques and procedures including cooperative tracking before firing Standard Missiles (SM-2) at the inbound targets. All six ships scored kills as measured by the missile and target instrumentation, including two direct hits. This demonstrates a successful ramp-up in an era of continued complexity and tactical relevance in the employment of the Aegis weapons system against high-end threats.

SM-2 is an integral part of the layered defense that protects the world's naval assets and gives warfighters a greater reach in the battlespace. SM-2 variants have successfully intercepted targets, proving their lethality against subsonic, supersonic, low- and high-altitude, high-maneuvering, diving, sea-skimming, anti-ship cruise missiles fighters, bombers and helicopters in an advanced electronic countermeasures environment.

IKECSG is comprised of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carrier Air Wing 3, USS San Jacinto (CG 56), USS Monterey (CG 61) and the ships of Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 26--USS Stout (DDG 55), USS Roosevelt (DDG 80), USS Mason (DDG 87) and USS Nitze (DDG 94).

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Saudi Arabia to End 'Major Combat Operations' in Yemen

by VOA News March 17, 2016

Saudi Arabia says it is ending its 'major combat operations' in Yemen, one year after launching Arab coalition airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

A Saudi military spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asiri, told the Associated Press Thursday that the coalition will continue providing air support to Yemeni forces and help build an army.

'The aim of the coalition is to create a strong cohesive government with a strong national army and security forces that can combat terrorism and impose law and order across the country,' al-Asiri said.

He said a small number of coalition troops will stay on the ground in Yemen to train Yemeni soldiers

The White House said it welcomes the Saudi statement and added there is a dire need for a political solution in Yemen.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sana'a in 2014. They sent the internationally recognized government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi fleeing to exile in Saudi Arabia before returning to the southern port city of Aden.

The fighting in Yemen, along with the Saudi-led airstrikes, have obliterated entire neighborhoods and killed more than 6,000 people - mostly civilians. They include 119 killed by an aitrstike on a market northwest of Sana'a Tuesday.

The U.N. says 80 percent of Yemeni civilians are in dire need of food and medical help.

The Saudi-led coalition entered the fight last year. Some Mideast experts say the coalition action did nothing to help push all sides toward a peace settlement.

The U.N and human rights groups accuse the coalition of deliberately firing at civilian targets - a charge the Saudis deny.

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N Korea fires ballistic missile into Sea of Japan

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 17, 2016 11:7PM

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile from a launcher at a southwestern missile site into the Sea of Japan.

The launch took place at a location in the country's Sukchon County on Friday, said a spokesman with South Korea's Defense Ministry, adding that the missile was fired at 5:55 am (2055 GMT Thursday) and flew about 800 kilometers (497 miles) into the Sea of Japan.

He did not confirm the type of missile, but South Korea's Yonhap news agency cited military sources as saying that it was a Rodong missile -- a medium-range missile that can fly as far as 1,300 kilometers (807 miles).

On Tuesday, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un ordered the country's military to prepare to conduct multiple ballistic missile launches and a nuclear warhead explosion test in a short time.

Earlier this month, he had tasked the military with conducting nuclear tests using miniaturized nuclear warheads, which he claims the country has produced.

Pyongyang also claims that it has succeeded in a simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead safely back to the atmosphere from space during a recent missile launch.

US: North Korea fired two missiles

Meanwhile, a US defense official said on Thursday that North Korea has actually fired not one but two ballistic missiles, describing the move as a violation of UN resolutions.

"The US tracked the launch of two ballistic missiles from North Korea. Both are believed to be Nodong MRBMs," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in reference to medium range ballistic missiles.

"These launches are a violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions," the official added.

'Washington closely monitoring situation'

A few hours after the launch, the US State Department said it is closely monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula without actually confirming Pyongyang's missile launch.

"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," State Department spokesman, John Kirby, said, adding that the US "will continue to coordinate closely with its our allies and partners in the region.

North Korea declared itself a nuclear power in 2005 and carried out four nuclear weapons tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2016. It has also carried out various missile tests, including one last month, which it claimed was aimed at placing an earth observation satellite into orbit. The launch was condemned by a number of countries as a disguised missile test.

Pyongyang has been the target of hard-hitting United Nations sanctions over the nuclear tests and missile launches.

Reacting to its latest nuclear test, the UN Security Council passed a raft of economic sanctions against the country earlier this month.

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Russia Sends Arms to Iraqi Kurds for IS Fight

by Rikar Hussein, Fatima Tlisova March 17, 2016

Russia sent arms this week to Iraq's Kurdish region to be used by Peshmerga forces fighting the Islamic State group, Russian and Kurdish sources said.

The arms were delivered Monday and included five anti-aircraft autocannons and 20,000 shells, Artem Grigoryan, the attache to the Russian consul general in Irbil, told RIA Novotsi.

The delivery came one day after Ilya Morgunov, Russia's ambassador to Iraq, met with Kurdish President Masoud Barzani to discuss closer relations between the two sides and provision of military assistance to the Peshmerga fighters.

"The Russian ambassador reiterated his county's support to the Kurdistan region and showed Russia's willingness to provide military assistance to Peshmerga in the fight against terrorism," a statement from the Kurdistan region's presidency read.

A pro-Western region and an effective U.S. ally in fighting IS, Iraqi Kurdistan has received military assistance from several countries, including the United States and Germany. The Kurdish attempts to receive heavy weapons have been fiercely opposed by Baghdad, which fears the Kurds may seek independence from Iraq.

Shipments blocked

Having control over Kurdistan's airspace, Baghdad has blocked several direct arms shipments to the region, arguing that any military assistance should go through the central government. Kurds, in response, complain that shipping through Baghdad is very slow and inefficient.

Kurdistan's representative to Russia told VOA that Baghdad approved the Russian arms shipments to the Peshmerga.

"The shipment was carried by a Russian plane which landed in Irbil with the awareness from Baghdad," Aso Jangi Burhan, the Kurdistan region's representative to Russia, told VOA.

According to Kurdish officials, this was not the first time Kurds had received arms from Russia.

"Just like anti-IS coalition members, the Russian Federation provides us with military assistance. It has provided us with military assistance about three times in the past," Jabar Yawar, the chief of staff for the Kurdistan region's Peshmerga ministry, told VOA.

The conflict in Syria and Iraq and the emergence of IS in the region have allowed for a greater involvement of Russia in the region, analysts say.

"Russia has developed close ties with the Kurds since its intervention in Syria in September 2015," Brian Glyn Williams, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, told VOA. "The Russian-supplied anti-aircraft guns will be deployed in an anti-armor/anti-personnel role by the outgunned Kurds."

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Russian Rights Activist Pays Price For Confronting Kadyrov

March 17, 2016

by Robert Coalson

Igor Kalyapin knows the danger of investigating allegations of rights abuses in Russia's southern Chechnya region better than most people.

When a group of more than a dozen men beat him and pelted him with eggs outside a Grozny hotel late on March 16, it was not his first brush with thuggery.

Kalyapin's Committee to Prevent Torture has been frequently singled out for criticism by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. In 2014, shortly after Kadyrov publicly pledged to raze the homes of 'terrorists' in his North Caucasus republic, Kalyapin's office in Grozny was ransacked and gutted by fire.

On March 6, a group of activists from Kalyapin's organization was stopped near Chechnya's border with Ingushetia. They were pulled from the bus they were traveling in and beaten, after which the vehicle was torched.

'Any human rights activity in Chechnya involves significantly greater risk than in any region of central Russia,' Kalyapin told RFE/RL's Russian Service during an interview in January. 'That is clear.'

Kalyapin noted that, although it is hard to prosecute cases of police torture anywhere in Russia, the situation in Chechnya is unique. 'I can't think of any regions where investigations were opposed and rights activists helping victims were pressured by the head of the region,' Kalyapin said. 'In Chechnya, this happens all the time.'

Although his organization has brought 109 police officers to trial across Russia since it was created in 2009, not one of dozens of cases investigated in Chechnya has gone to court.

'Born Rights Activist'

The 49-year-old activist from the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod is an interesting figure in Russia's beleaguered civil-society landscape. On one hand, he is a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights with special responsibility for defending human rights in the North Caucasus and reforming the Russian penal system.

On the other hand, Russia's Justice Ministry in January included Kalyapin's Committee to Prevent Torture on its list of Russian nongovernmental organizations acting as 'foreign agents,' under a recent law requiring all NGOs receiving foreign funding to declare it.

Kalyapin is contesting that designation, noting that the Justice Ministry did not find any foreign contributions to his organization. Instead, Russian officials listed it because some individuals who supported the organization had 'connections' with organizations that receive foreign funding.

'There are many such organizations in Russia, of course,' Kalyapin told RFE/RL. 'Gazprom, for example.' He says the Committee to Prevent Torture is funded entirely by individual donations made in rubles.

'Not About Kadyrov'

Kalyapin rejects accusations that his work is aimed at Kadyrov.

'Ramzan Kadyrov is not mentioned in our materials,' he said. 'Our materials are about specific police officers. But in connection with this, Ramzan Kadyrov accuses us of helping terrorists, of helping jihadis, of working for the CIA. This is plainly false and slanderous and it is aimed constantly from the head of the Chechen Republic at our organization, at me, and at my co-workers, and so on.

It is clear that Kadyrov takes Kalyapin's work personally. In a 2014 interview published by the opposition, pro-democracy website Open Russia, Kalyapin describes a three-hour one-on-one meeting he had with Kadyrov in 2010.

'And the first question he asked me was: 'Tell me now right away, is it true that your group was sent by [then-Russian President Dmitry] Medvedev to collect compromising material on me?'' Kalyapin recalled.

In the same interview, Kalyapin describes himself as a 'born rights activist,' although his focus was refined in 1993 when he spent three months in pretrial detention in a case he says was aimed at taking over his successful business.

'It wasn't the kind of pretrial detention that we have now,' he recalls. There were 11 of us in a cell designed for four. I remember lying down in a bunk and noticing a crunching sound in the blanket. It was covered with tiny fleas.'

In comments after the March 16 attack, in which Kalyapin was not seriously injured, the activist insisted the perpetrators did not represent 'the Chechen people' or the republic's Muslim majority.

Commenting on the attack on March 17, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said: 'I would not link this situation with Kadyrov's authorities. Rather, it is linked with the crime situation.'

The head of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, said he was 'outraged' by the attack on a council member and called it 'extremism.'

Kadyrov has ruled Chechnya since shortly after his father, former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in 2009. He has been widely accused of human rights abuses, including kidnappings, disappearances, torture, and the murder of political opponents.

RFE/RL's Russian Service correspondent Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sr., contributed to this report

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia- chechnya-kalyapin-pays-price- for-confronting-kadyrov/27619492.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Kurds Claim Federal Region in Northern Syria

by VOA News March 17, 2016

Syrian Kurds declared a federal region Thursday in areas they control in the northern part of the country, a move that was immediately rejected by both the Syrian government and an opposition group.

The declaration also complicates Syrian peace talks underway in Geneva.

The declaration, approved at a Kurdish conference in Rmeilan, would unite three Kurdish-controlled provinces to create a self-run region within Syria, not unlike an area Kurds have controlled in neighboring Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

But Syria's foreign ministry rejected the Syrian Kurds' action, calling it 'unconstitutional and worthless.'

The Syrian state news agency SANA quoted the foreign ministry as saying, 'Any such announcement has no legal value and will not have any legal, political, social or economic impact as long as it does not reflect the will of the entire Syrian people.'

One of the main groups opposed to the Damascus regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian National Coalition, also said it rejected the unilateral declaration, saying it was against attempts to 'confiscate the will of the Syrian people.'

The United States has supported the Syrian Kurds in their fight against Islamic State jihadists in northern Syria, but the U.S. State Department said it would not recognize 'self-ruled, semi-autonomous zones in Syria,' a notion also rejected by Turkey, where the government has fought a three-decade battle against Kurdish claims for more autonomy in the southeastern part of the country.



One official in Turkey said, 'Syria must remain as one without being weakened, and the Syrian people must decide on its future in agreement and with a constitution. Every unilateral initiative will harm Syria's unity.'

The main Syrian Kurdish party, known as the PYD, has been excluded from the Geneva peace talks that resumed this week. Some involved with the talks say that creation of federal areas like a Kurdish enclave could lead to a partitioning of the country.

The Syrian Kurds control an uninterrupted 400-kilometer stretch of land along the Syrian-Turkish border from the Euphrates River to the Iraqi border, as well as a separate region in the Afrin area, with the two Kurdish enclaves split by lands controlled by Islamic State jihadists.

Some material for this report came from AP and AFP.

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RICHMOND  The FBI is conducting a civil rights investigation into the death of a Virginia man who died in police custody after being shocked by stun guns. The federal agency's move follows criticism that the state probe has taken too long.

Linwood Lambert Jr. died in 2013 after officers who brought him to a hospital for a mental health evaluation used stun guns to subdue him. A county prosecutor launched an investigation into the death but has not announced a conclusion. Civil rights leaders want to know why, and whether the officers involved will be criminally charged.

"A black man was killed while in custody of South Boston police," said Jack Gravely, executive director of the NAACP in Virginia. "Why did he die? What did he die of, and why has it taken the commonwealth's attorney more than two years to issue a report on the death of Linwood Lambert Jr.?"

Adam Lee, the head of the federal agency's Richmond division, told The Associated Press that he personally went to the home of Linwood Lambert Jr.'s sister and told her the FBI is investigating. The federal inquiry is separate from a local prosecutor's investigation.

Virginia State Police previously looked into the death of Lambert while he was in the custody of officers in South Boston, a town of about 8,000 near the North Carolina border. Their findings were turned over to Halifax County Commonwealth's Attorney Tracy Quackenbush Martin, who has been criticized by the Lambert family and civil rights groups for not yet deciding whether the officers should be charged.

Martin, who previously told the AP she expected "a parallel investigation" by federal authorities, did not immediately respond to telephone and email inquiries about the status of her probe Thursday. She previously said she would take as long as necessary to make the right decision.

Lee said the FBI is "working in partnership" with South Boston and state police.

"This is not second-guessing, not looking over their shoulder," he said.

Civil rights leaders requested the federal inquiry because they believe questions remain unanswered, and they are unhappy with the pace of the prosecutor's investigation.

David Heilberg, a defense attorney in Charlottesville who is not involved in Lambert's case, said he has never heard of an investigation of this kind taking so long.

Lee said that in addition to visiting Lambert's sister, Gwendolyn Smalls, he called the NAACP to report the FBI's involvement.

"We want to make sure the families are aware and interest groups are aware that if there's anything to it, it will be borne out by a thorough and complete review," Lee said.

Videos released in November show three officers using stun guns on Lambert multiple times after taking him to a hospital for a mental health evaluation. Lambert ran from the officers at the hospital, and instead of taking him to the emergency room, they took Lambert to jail.

An ambulance later brought him back to the same hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy report says Lambert died of "acute cocaine intoxication." Attorneys representing Smalls in a $25 million lawsuit alleging the use of excessive force have argued that the videos cast doubt on that finding.

Joe Messa, an attorney for Smalls, called the involvement of a law enforcement agency that has no ties to the state or local police department a "positive development."

"The goal here is justice for the Lambert family," he said.

Linwood Lambert Sr. recently sent a letter urging Gov. Terry McAuliffe to press Martin to conclude her investigation. He wrote that "the manner in which my son died adds to the devastation" and has made it difficult for him and other family members to sleep and focus on day-to-day activities.

"It's been almost three years thus, we are seeking some form of closure," he wrote.
MARKHAM, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Mar 17, 2016) - MBMI Resources Inc. ("MBMI" or the "Company") (NEX:MBR.H) is pleased to provide an update on the progress of certain legal proceedings involving the Company's former affiliates in the Philippines.

On December 9, 2015, the First Division of the Philippine Supreme Court issued a Decision (the "SC Decision") in Narra Nickel Mining and Development Corporation, et al. v. Redmont Consolidated Mines Corporation (SC G.R. No. 202877) declaring null and void the decision of the Philippine Court of Appeals which affirmed the Office of the President's ("OP's") cancellation and/or revocation of such affiliates' Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (the "FTAA"), "without prejudice to any other appropriate remedy the parties may take against each other."

Background

On November 8, 2006, Redmont Consolidated Mines Corporation ("Redmont") filed an application for an Exploration Permit ("EP") over mining areas located in Palawan. After an inquiry with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources ("DENR"), Redmont learned that those areas were already covered by an existing application for a Mineral Production Sharing Agreement ("MPSA") and an EP issued to Narra Nickel Mining and Development Corporation ("Narra Nickel"), Tesoro Mining and Development Corporation ("Tesoro") and McArthur Mining, Inc. ("McArthur"; collectively, the "Operating Companies"). Subsequently, the Operating Companies converted the MPSA into an FTAA application.

The FTAA application of the Operating Companies was approved. Consequently, they executed an FTAA with the Republic of the Philippines (the "Republic") on April 12, 2010.

The Operating Companies were affiliates of MBMI when the MPSA and FTAA were granted. Redmont sought the cancellation and/or revocation of the executed FTAA through a Petition dated May 7, 2010 filed before the OP. The Operating Companies opposed Redmont's Petition.

In a Decision dated April 6, 2011 (the "OP Decision"), the OP granted Redmont's Petition. It declared that: (1) the OP has the authority to cancel the FTAA because the grant of exclusive power to the President of the Philippines to enter into agreements, including FTAAs, under Republic Act No. 7942 ("Philippine Mining Act of 1995") carries with it the authority to cancel that agreement; and (2) the Operating Companies materially misrepresented themselves as Phlippine corporations qualified to engage in mining activities. According to the OP Decision, the Operating Companies' alleged material misrepresentation was a valid ground for termination of the FTAA. The OP cancelled and/or revoked the FTAA and gave due course to Redmont's EP application.

The Operating Companies appealed the OP Decision to the Court of Appeals. As mentioned, the OP Decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. The Operating Companies then appealed to the Supreme Court, through a Petition for Review.

In its Decision dated December 9, 2015 (i.e., the SC Decision), the Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeals improperly took cognizance of the case on appeal under Rule 43 of the Rules of Court because the OP's cancellation and/or revocation of the FTAA was not an exercise of quasi-judicial authority. The Supreme Court remarked that Rule 43 was a mode of appeal against a judgment, final order, resolution or award of a "quasi-judicial agency in the exercise of its quasi-judicial functions." However, the OP's cancellation and/or revocation of the FTAA was not "adjudication", but merely an exercise of an administrative function pursuant to the President's authority to invoke the Republic's rights under the FTAA.

In arriving at that conclusion, the Supreme Court reviewed the nature of an FTAA. Under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, an FTAA is expressly characterized as a contract between the government and the mining contractor. Since it is entered into by the President on the State's behalf, and it involves a matter of public concern in that it covers large-scale exploration, development, and utilization of mineral resources, it is a government or public contract, which is, according to jurisprudence, "generally subject to the same laws and regulations which govern the validity and sufficiency of contracts between private individuals." Accordingly, an FTAA involves contract or property rights which merit protection by the due process clause of the Constitution and as such, may not be revoked or cancelled at any time.

The Supreme Court further stated that the OP, being one of the contracting parties to the FTAA, could not have adjudicated on the matter in which it is an interested party. Otherwise, the principle of mutuality of contracts would be violated. Thus, at least with respect to cases affecting an FTAA's validity, the Supreme Court effectively ruled that the OP has no quasi-judicial power to adjudicate the propriety of its cancellation/revocation.

The Supreme Court also ruled that Redmont's recourse to the OP did not adhere to the correct course of procedure. In particular, the filing by a third party of a petition for cancellation or revocation of an FTAA was not mentioned in either the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 or the FTAA itself.

Thus, the Operating Companies' Petition for Review was granted by the Supreme Court. The decision of the Court of Appeals was declared null and void for being rendered without jurisdiction, but without prejudice to any other appropriate remedy the parties may take against each other.

Inasmuch as the SC Decision did not expressly declare the OP Decision null and void (i.e., notwithstanding its statements on Redmont's lack of no standing to apply to the OP and challenge the validity of the FTAA, and on the OP's lack of quasi-judicial power as regards the FTAA), MBMI believes that the next step is to initiate arbitration proceedings against the Republic. This action is meant to challenge the OP Decision's purported termination of the FTAA to, in accordance with the dispute resolution mechanism in the FTAA.

Contacts:

For further information relating to the Company or this release, please refer to MBMI's website at www.mbmiresources.com.

Cautionary Statement:

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. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

The foregoing information may contain forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of MBMI Resources Inc. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from MBMI's plans and expectations. These plans, expectations, risks and uncertainties are detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by MBMI with the TSX Venture Exchange and securities regulators. MBMI Resources Inc. does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - March 17, 2016) - Duran Ventures Inc. (TSX VENTURE:DRV)(LMA:DRV) ("Duran" or the "Company") announces that it has mailed the notice of meeting and management information circular (collectively, the "Circular") for its annual and special meeting of shareholders to be held on April 8, 2016 (the "Meeting").

At the Meeting, the shareholders of the Company will be asked to approve, among other things, a share consolidation of the Company's issued and outstanding common shares at a ratio of up to seven (7) pre-consolidation shares to one (1) post-consolidation share (the "Consolidation"). It is not proposed that the Company would change its name in connection with the Consolidation.

The Board of Directors of the Company believes that it is in the best interests of the Company to reduce the number of outstanding Common Shares by way of the Consolidation and thus is recommending that shareholders approve the Consolidation. The Consolidation could increase the Company's flexibility with respect to potential business transactions, including any possible future equity financings.

If the Consolidation is approved, the Board of Directors will have the authority to implement the Consolidation at the ratio of up to 7 to 1 at any time and will be permitted, without further shareholder approval, to select a lower ratio if they deem it to be appropriate. Notwithstanding approval of the Consolidation by the shareholders, Duran's directors, in their sole discretion, may abandon the Consolidation without further approval, action by, or prior notice to shareholders.

Duran currently has 234,649,870 common shares issued and outstanding. Following the completion of the proposed Consolidation, the number of common shares of the Company issued and outstanding will depend on the ratio selected by the Board of Directors. The following table sets out the appropriate number of common shares that would be outstanding as a result of the Consolidation at the ratios suggested below.

Proposed Consolidation Ratio(1) Approximate Number of Outstanding Common Shares

(Post Consolidation)(2) 1 for 7 33,521,140 1 for 6 39,108,312 1 for 5 46,929,974 1 for 4 58,662,468 1 for 3 78,216,623 1 for 2 117,324,935 Notes: (1) The ratios above are for information purposes only and are not indicative of the actual ratio that may be adopted by the Board of Directors to effect the Consolidation. (2) Based on the number of outstanding common shares as at the date hereof.

The Circular, which provides further details of the matters referred to herein, has been mailed to shareholders of the Company in accordance with applicable securities laws. A copy of the Circular is available on SEDAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

The Consolidation is subject to the approval of the shareholders of Duran and the TSX Venture Exchange.

About Duran

Duran Ventures Inc. is a Canadian exploration company focused on mineral processing and the exploration and development of precious and base metal properties in Peru.

Duran Ventures Inc. is a Canadian resource company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and the Bolsa de Valores de Lima: Symbol "DRV"

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.

Disclosure Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation including, but not limited to, the Consolidation ratio, the implementation of the Consolidation and the anticipated benefits thereof. We use words such as "might", "will", "should", "anticipate", "plan", "expect", "believe", "estimate", "forecast" and similar terminology to identify forward looking statements and forward-looking information. Such statements and information are based on assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management in light of its experience, current conditions and its expectations of future developments as well as other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements and information and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such statements and information. Risks and uncertainties are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. While the Company believes that the expectations expressed by such forward-looking statements and forward-looking information and the assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis underlying such expectations are reasonable, there can be no assurance that they will prove to be correct. In evaluating forward-looking statements and information, readers should carefully consider the various factors which could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward looking statements and forward-looking information.
CENTENNIAL, Colo., March 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Uranium Resources Inc. (Nasdaq:URRE) (ASX:URI), a leading exploration, development, and uranium production company, announced today its full year results for 2015, as well as reviewed its outlook for 2016 and commented on the Companys focus on bringing its recently acquired Temrezli project into production as quickly as possible.

Christopher M. Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, We are very proud of what we accomplished in 2015 at Uranium Resources. Despite an extremely challenging commodity and capital markets environment, we were able to execute the strategy we defined three years ago  that is, to advance the development of low cost, near term production. We are excited about the future of this Company as we lower our costs and bring production nearer in time.

Business Highlights for 2015 and to Date:

Financial & strategic highlights

On November 9, 2015, the Company completed the acquisition of Anatolia Energy Ltd.. (Anatolia), an Australian public company whose main asset is the near term Temrezli ISR uranium project located in rural central Turkey. Previous work on this project indicates strong economics, low CAPEX and OPEX, and management believes the project could commence production in 2018. The acquisition also includes extensive exploration properties covering approximately 44,700 acres with numerous exploration targets, including the potential satellite Sefaatli project.

Also on November 9, 2015, URI entered into a binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with Laramide Resources Ltd. (Laramide) for the sale of the Companys Churchrock and Crownpoint properties in New Mexico. In exchange for the ownership of these properties, URI will receive from Laramide at closing $5.25 million in cash and a $7.25 million promissory note payable to URI in three equal installments over the next three years. The closing of this transaction is anticipated to take place in the second quarter of 2016.

On July 28, 2015, the Company completed the sale of its remaining Roca Honda project assets to Energy Fuels Inc. for $2.5 million in cash and $375,000 in Energy Fuels publicly listed shares, as well as other non-cash considerations.

In July 2015 the Company acquired an extensive data set containing historical mineral resource estimates as well as over 2,000 drill logs and other data for the Butler Ranch project, located in Texas.

General and administrative expenses, excluding one-time expenses associated with the Anatolia merger, decreased by 18% to $7.5 million in 2015 compared with $9.1 million in 2014, as the Company continued to reduce its overhead costs. URI continues to focus on reducing cost and is already benefiting from further reductions in its cash expenditure levels in 2016.

The Company completed two registered direct offerings in 2015 as well as made use of its At-The-Market (ATM) sales agreement. Total net proceeds of $6.4 million were raised through these financings in calendar year 2015. In the first quarter of 2016, the Company and Aspire Capital successfully completed a registered direct offering and entered into an option agreement. Under the option agreement URI has the right to require Aspire to enter into up to two common stock purchase agreements which collectively require Aspire to purchase up to $10 million in aggregate of URIs common stock over the next two years, as and when URI requires, for a price determined at that time by agreed-upon formula.

Operational highlights

Upon close of the merger with Anatolia, URI immediately moved to commence a Pre-Feasibility Optimization Study in respect of the high grade Temrezli ISR project. This optimization study is progressing well, and completion is targeted for Q4 of 2016.

Mineral property expenses increased by $1.0 million on a year-over-year basis, due to three drivers: $150,000 was paid for a comprehensive data set in respect of the Butler Ranch project; $600,000 of expenses on exploration programs at the Alta Mesa Este and Butler Ranch projects; and $400,000 associated with evaluation activities at the recently acquired Temrezli project.

During 2015 the Company completed the plugging and abandonment phase of the reclamation program at URIs Rosita project.

Financial Overview

The Companys net loss of $15.1 million or $(5.63) per share in 2015 compared with a net loss of $10.7 million or $(5.28) per share in 2014. Both years included large, one-time items that elevated the year-over-year increase but which the Company believes are not reflective of URIs operational performance on an ongoing basis. In 2014, the Company benefited from a positive $2.9 million non-cash derivative accounting gain while in 2015, the Company experienced just over $3.0 million in expenses associated with the Anatolia transaction. Both years also benefitted from gains on the disposal of assets, which amounted to $4.3 million in 2015 and $2.3 million in 2014, respectively.

Table 1: Financial Summary (audited)

($ and Shares in 000, Except Per Share and Uranium Price) 2015 2014 Variance Net Cash Used in Operations $ (12,019 ) $ (12,006 ) 0 % Mineral Property Expenses 4,470 3,502 28 % General and Administrative 7,488 9,132 -18 % Acquisition Related Expenses 3,048 0 n.a. Net Loss $ (15,143 ) $ (10,684 ) 42 % Net Loss Per Share $ (5.63 ) $ (5.28 ) 7 % Avg. Weighted Shares Outstanding 2,691 2,024 33 % Uranium Average Spot Price for the Year (source: UxC) $ 36.83 $ 33.44 10 % Uranium Long-term Price at Year End (source: UxC) $ 44.00 $ 49.00 -10 %

Cash and cash equivalents were $0.865 million at year-end 2015 and approximately $0.800 million after the closing of the registered direct offering on February 4, 2016 whereby the Company sold 296,667 shares of common stock at a price of $2.82 per share; net proceeds from this offering were $0.8 million.

Immediately following the close of trading on March 7, 2016, the Company affected a one-for-twelve reverse stock split of its common stock. With the reverse stock split, every twelve shares of the Companys issued and outstanding common stock were combined into one issued and outstanding share of common stock. The reverse stock split reduced the number of shares outstanding from approximately 61.8 million shares to approximately 5.2 million shares. In addition, effective upon the reverse stock split, the number of authorized shares of the Companys common stock was reduced from 200 million to 100 million. However, the reverse stock split did not have any effect on the par value of the Companys common stock, and no fractional shares were issued as a result of the reverse stock split. Any fractional shares that would have resulted were settled in cash. All share data herein has been retroactively adjusted for the reverse stock split.

Exploration Update

The Company carried out a short exploration drilling program on one lease in the Butler Ranch project area in late February and early March 2015. The exploration program was comprised of five conventional rotary drill holes that totaled 1,620 feet, and was designed to test for extensions of an adjoining zone of uranium mineralization. All five of the Company's drill holes encountered indications of uranium mineralization, requiring further study. In 2015, the Company acquired a substantial amount of historical exploration drilling information and other geological data for our properties in the Butler Ranch area. Detailed technical studies of this information are being conducted, and this new information is being combined with other data that we hold in order to further evaluate the potential of Butler Ranch.

Operations Update

The Company completed the well field plugging and abandonment phase of the reclamation program at our Rosita project during 2015. The Company is currently performing surface reclamation activities at the Rosita project and are approximately 45% complete in Production Area 1 and 55% complete in Production Area 2.

Since acquiring the Temrezli project the Company has continued the various environmental and hydrological studies required for submission of operating permit applications and undertaking further metallurgical tests. The Company has carried out detailed studies of the quantity and quality of the uranium mineralization at the Temrezli deposit and are preparing a detailed economic and operational assessment of the project. The focus of these studies is upon the potential development of the Temrezli project as a future in-situ recovery (ISR) uranium mine. As mentioned previously, the Company is making significant progress on completing an updated PFS study, which the Company expects to have in hand later this year. The Company is also progressing on its permitting related issues, as well as preparation to move the Rosita plant from south Texas to central Turkey.

Uranium Market Commentary

We expect demand for uranium to increase over time, as do most analysts. With approximately 393 nuclear reactors in the global fleet, and another 148 either under construction or on order, we expect demand for uranium to increase over 30% in the next few years. At the same time, development of most new uranium projects is stalled by low current prices. This means that while demand is increasing, new supply is not yet coming on to satisfy that demand. This supply-demand relationship strongly indicates that prices for uranium will rise. Some analysts believe that uranium prices may rise to as much as $70 per pound in the next 3 years.

Outlook

2015 was a momentous year for Uranium Resources in shaping the future direction of the Company. With a low-cost project now in hand and under development, the Company is moving closer to a position of being in greater control of its future. It has been a difficult period for much of the past six months as commodities in general have been shunned by investors. However, the management team has worked hard to get the Company through this difficult period and reposition the Company for the future.

Christopher M. Jones said, While the outlook for the industry and the commodity remain very bright in the medium and long term, this future has taken longer to materialize than many observers have predicted. At URI, we subscribe this brighter outlook, but we also believe in taking the steps necessary so that we no longer have to be solely dependent on a rising price for uranium to move our business forward. To that end, we acquired the Temrezli project, which is projected to produce uranium at lowest-quartile costs, making it far less sensitive to low prices than many other projects. Also, with low costs, we can expect to enjoy every dollar of price rise when the market rises as projected. We are tremendously excited about how we are repositioning the Company.

Other Developments

Terrence Cryan and Mark Wheatley resigned from our board on March 16, in order to devote additional effort to other business interests. We greatly appreciate the valuable contributions that Mr. Cryan and Mr. Wheatley have made to our business over the last 10 and 2 years, respectively and wish them well in their future endeavors. Chris Jones has been named Interim Chairman.

Patrick Burke has joined our board. Mr. Burke has a background in corporate law in Australia and previously served on the Board of Anatolia. His experience with Anatolia, the Temrezli project and in legal and corporate board capacities are expected to be very valuable to us.

Goals for 2016:

Temrezli. URI estimates that it will have completed its updated economic analysis on the high-grade, low-cost Temrezli in-situ recovery (ISR) project by the fourth quarter of 2016. This will enable the Company to finalize and submit permit applications at that time. Because much of the permitting process runs parallel with the Companys technical work, URI currently expects permit approvals by mid- year 2017, with targeted construction for the project anticipated to begin in the second half of 2017, subject to the receipt of permits, land access and project financing.

Laramide Transaction. The Company continues to work toward completing this transaction in the second quarter of 2016.

Ongoing Cost Rationalization Efforts. The Company expects to reduce its operating and general and administrative expenditures to $11 million in 2016, including expenses for the new Temrezli operations.

M&A Efforts Continue. 2015 was a significant year for URI as it dramatically reshaped the Company for the future. We continue to be active in the M&A space as we focus on adding low cost, near term uranium production.

About Uranium Resources

URI is focused on advancing to near-term production the Temrezli in-situ recovery (ISR) project in central Turkey. URI also controls extensive exploration properties under nine exploration and operating licenses covering approximately 32,000 acres (over 13,000 ha) with numerous exploration targets, including the potential satellite Sefaatli project, which is 30 miles (48 km) southwest of the Temrezli project. In Texas, the Company has two licensed and currently idled processing facilities and approximately 14,000 acres (5,700 ha) of prospective ISR projects. In New Mexico, the Company controls minerals rights encompassing approximately 190,000 acres (76,900 ha) in the prolific Grants Mineral Belt, which is one of the largest concentrations of sandstone-hosted uranium deposits in the world. Incorporated in 1977, URI also owns an extensive uranium information database of historic drill hole logs, assay certificates, maps and technical reports for the Western United States.

Cautionary Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are identified by words such as "expects," "estimates," "projects," "anticipates," "believes," "could," and other similar words. All statements addressing operating performance, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will occur in the future, including but not limited to statements relating to the future financing of the Company, the execution of documentation for the Laramide transaction, the ability of the Company to engage in merger and acquisitions, including the proposed transaction with Laramide, the Companys expected burn rate, and developments at the Temrezli project are forward-looking statements. Because they are forward-looking, they should be evaluated in light of important risk factors and uncertainties. These risk factors and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, (a) the Companys ability to continue as a going concern, (b) the Company's ability to raise additional capital in the future; (c) the spot price and long-term contract price of uranium; (d) risks associated with our foreign operations, (e) the Company's ability to reach agreements with current royalty holders; (f) operating conditions at the Company's projects; (g) government and tribal regulation of the uranium industry and the nuclear power industry; (h) world-wide uranium supply and demand; (i) maintaining sufficient financial assurance in the form of sufficiently collateralized surety instruments; (j) unanticipated geological, processing, regulatory and legal or other problems the Company may encounter, including in Turkey; (k) the ability of the Company to enter into and successfully close acquisitions or other material transactions, including the proposed transactions with Laramide and Aspire Capital, and other factors which are more fully described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of the Company's underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those currently anticipated. In addition, undue reliance should not be placed on the Company's forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release.

Competent Person

Technical information in this announcement is based on data reviewed by Dean T. Wilton (CPG-7659), who is Chief Geologist and Vice President of Uranium Resources Inc. Mr. Wilton is a Qualified Person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101, and a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves (JORC Code). He is a Certified Professional Geologist (CPG-7659), as designated by the American Institute of Professional Geologists, and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (MAIG #6384). Mr. Wilton has more than 5 years of experience that are relevant to the evaluation of the styles of uranium deposits relating to this document. Mr. Wilton consents to the inclusion in this release of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which they appear.

Cautionary Note Regarding References to Resources and Reserves

Investors are cautioned that the requirements and terminology of N1 43-101 and Australian JORC differ significantly from the requirements and terminology of the SEC set forth in the SEC's Industry Guide 7 ("SEC Industry Guide 7"). Accordingly, the Company's disclosures regarding mineralization may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by the Company in the reports it files with the SEC. Without limiting the foregoing, while the terms "mineral resources," "inferred resources," "indicated resources" and "measured mineral resources" are recognized and required by NI 43-101 and JORC, they are not recognized by the SEC and are not permitted to be used in documents filed with the SEC by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a mineral resource will ever be converted into reserves. Further, inferred resources have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of the inferred resources will ever be upgraded to a higher resource category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of a feasibility study or prefeasibility study, except in rare cases. The SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute SEC Industry Guide 7 compliant "reserves" as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit amounts. In addition, the NI 43-101 and CIM Standards definition of a "reserve" differs from the definition in SEC Industry Guide 7. In SEC Industry Guide 7, a mineral reserve is defined as a part of a mineral deposit which could be economically and legally extracted or produced at the time the mineral reserve determination is made, and a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical price (or in certain circumstances, a contract price) is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis of designated reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. Anatolia discloses non-reserve mineralized material that is considered too speculative geologically to be categorized as reserved under SEC Industry Guide 7. Estimates of non-reserve mineralized material are subject to further exploration and development, are subject to many risks and highly speculative, and may not be converted to future reserves of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of such non-reserve mineralized material exists, or is economically or legally extractible. Mineralized material that is not reserves does not have any demonstrated economic viability.



Uranium Resources Contact:

Robert Winters, Alpha IR Group

929-266-6315

www.uraniumresources.com


A scene from "Hitman." (Square Enix). Square Enix

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By Lou Kesten, Associated Press

Ah, the glamorous life of an international assassin. What other career gives you the chance to hobnob with world leaders, models, fashion designers, chess masters and other celebrities  and then murder them?

Such is the lot of Agent 47, the protagonist of "Hitman" (Square Enix, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC). He's executed some difficult contracts over the years, but now he may be facing his toughest assignment yet: anchoring his publisher's ambitious experiment in episodic storytelling.

See, the "Hitman" you can purchase today (for $15) is just the first chapter in a yearlong epic that will take our ruthless killer all over the globe. Square says it will release six more chapters ($10 apiece) through the end of 2016; you can order the whole package in advance for $60.

For now, you get a couple of tutorials and one big, flamboyant assignment set in a sprawling Parisian castle. That's the setting for a fashion show, a top-secret auction, a fireworks display and heaven knows what else, but 47 has two targets in particular: designer Viktor Novikov and ex-model Dahlia Margolis, the ringleaders of the nefarious spy operation IAGO.

Agent 47 has a ridiculous arsenal of lethal tools at his disposal. He can get up close and garrote his victims, or pick them off for afar with a sniper rifle. He can poison them or kill them with a bomb blast. He can drop a chandelier on their heads.

Once the job is done, you can ... wait for the next chapter. Or you can replay the scenario and try different approaches. Can you take out Viktor and Dahlia without hurting anyone else? Can you try on all the disguises available to 47  or finish the mission without using any of them? Can you unveil all the secrets hidden throughout the palace?

You can also complete contracts on some of the hundreds of people who have assembled in Paris for the fashion show. And you can test your skills in "Escalation," a series of increasingly challenging contracts.

So there's a lot to do at the palace, and "Hitman" obsessives will want to explore every inch. Fortunately, it's a well-detailed setting filled with lively characters, some of whom aren't exactly welcoming of a bald assassin with a bar code tattooed on his head.

There are a few aggravating technical glitches, like exhausting loading times when you try to reboot a scenario. And the artificial intelligence of the secondary characters is at times goofy: It's way too easy for 47 to slip away from suspicious security guards.

Most frustrating, though, is that I was ready to move on after just a few visits to the palace. I'm enjoying "Hitman" so far, and for $15 I got a solid five hours of lethal amusement. But the wait for my next contract is going to be killer. HH
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By Staff Report

Le Coterie Society of San Angelo will hold its annual Boys To Men Fashion Show at 7 p.m. March 26 in the Stephens Central Library Community Room.

The society has a philosophy of uniting and maintaining a harmonious society of women with common interests who are dedicated to a concept of sisterhood and developing and enhancing service projects that add to the quality of life in the community. It was established in 1983, and the society's work includes awarding scholarships.

Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children. For information contact Ronetta Jordan at 325- 374-8607 or Helen Williams at 325-949-1637.
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By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times

The Irion County Sheriff's Office and Texas Rangers arrested a Mertzon city official Tuesday on charges of theft of city property and official oppression. On Thursday the Mertzon City Council voted to fire him in an emergency meeting.

Clayvorn James Rose, 69, the city's operations manager, reportedly used city funds for personal expenses and made a lewd sexual comment directed at a female city employee, according to two complaint reports filed March 15 with the Irion County Justice of the Peace Donna Smith's office.

Rose was booked into the Tom Green County Jail and released Wednesday on a $25,000 surety bond.

On Jan. 14, the chief deputy at the Irion County Sheriff's Office contacted the Texas Rangers, saying the department was aware of a possible theft made by Rose, according to the reports.

The Texas Rangers interviewed Norman Rhymes on Jan. 15 and learned that Rose had directed Rhymes to pick up a 350-cubic-inch V-8 motor at the Engine Pro Machine Shop in San Angelo on Dec. 23.

Rhymes said he was told to pay using a credit card issued to Rose by the city of Mertzon, according to the complaint.

Rhymes also told authorities he "worked for a week to install the motor" in Rose's personal vehicle, a 1996 GMC 2500 extended cab pickup, according to the complaint.

The total cost of the engine rebuild performed by Engine Pro Machine Shop was $2,354, and the Texas Rangers took possession of the GMC pickup on March 14, according to the reports.

Rhymes later told authorities that "the engine had been taken from a City of Mertzon vehicle and placed into" Rose's GMC pickup after the rebuild, according to the complaint.

The city council never gave Rose permission to install the rebuilt motor, according to the complaint.

On March 10, in the second complaint, a city secretary told authorities that on March 4 she asked Rose for a container to use to draw the ballot order for the upcoming May city elections. Rose then told the women "to put the pieces of paper in (her) bra and let the candidates draw the numbers from (her) bra," according to the complaint.

The woman had previously reported that Rose made improper sexually related comments to her and to an animal control officer, according to the complaint.

Jimmy Wayne Tharp, 55, a Mertzon City Council member, said he set up an emergency council meeting for 12:30 p.m. Thursday because of the "imminent threat of danger and unforeseen circumstances" related to the arrest of Rose.

Tharp said three of five council representatives showed: himself, Celica Belcher and Elodia Hinojosa. Mike Kahlig and Terry Criner did not attend, nor did Mayor Carol Shaw.

About 17 Mertzon residents, Irion County Sheriff W.A Estes and other city staff were also in attendance, Tharp said.

"We expressed that we were hearing (residents') voices and we gave them our word that we would act on their behalf," Tharp said, adding that in the end, "Mr. Rose was voted out from work."

The city secretary sent the public hearing notice at 10:30 a.m., Tharp said. Mayor Shaw then contacted Tharp via text asking if he had called for an emergency council meeting, Tharp said. He said he replied to the text message stating that he did, but after that "she never wrote back" or called.

Shaw was reached by phone but declined to comment. Calls requesting comments from other council members were unreturned. Calls to the Irion County Sheriff's Office were also unreturned.

The investigation is ongoing.

Rose's charge of theft of property by a public servant, between $1,500 and $20,000 enhanced, is a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and fines up to $10,000.

Official oppression  a charge stemming from the allegations of verbal sexual harassment  is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and fines up to $4,000.

Read the complaint reports here
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By W.J. Hennigan, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama has authorized a limited new plan to train and arm rebel fighters to confront Islamic State group militants in Syria, relaunching a Pentagon program that was suspended last fall after a series of embarrassing setbacks.

The renewed effort, which was recommended by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, appears far less ambitious than the original program, which aimed to train and arm 5,400 fighters a year but never achieved that goal.

"This is part of our adjustments to the train and equip program built on prior lessons learned," said Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Baghdad.

He said training will be focused on "select individuals in key capabilities," and support for them "will be measured against their performance" against the Islamic State group, which is also known as ISIL.

Warren declined to say how many fighters would be trained, where the training would occur, when it would start or other details, citing operational security. The program is separate from a covert CIA-run training operation.

Warren said the new effort would "leverage the new relationships we have developed on the ground, and our approach to focus on existing groups currently active" in fighting ISIL.

The Pentagon has struggled to find a reliable proxy force inside Syria, restricting its ability to gather intelligence and to target ISIL's leaders amid the country's civil war.

The Sunni Muslim extremist group continues to lure recruits and maintain strongholds despite daily airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition since September 2014.

After the first Pentagon train and equip program was suspended in October, up to 50 special operations forces were sent to Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria to work with local militias and identify other potential partners.
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California made a bold move last week by passing legislation that raises from 18 to 21 the legal age for purchasing and using tobacco products. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the measure, California will join Hawaii and a number of major American cities that ban anyone younger than 21 from smoking legally.

Laws that limit Americans' freedom to smoke  combined with higher cigarette taxes and public awareness campaigns  have transformed the face of smoking in America in a good way. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that about 18 percent of Americans are smokers, a rate down significantly from 1997, when almost 25 percent smoked.

Here's how much things have changed: Granted, it's been a while, but when I was in graduate school, no one paid much attention when professors lit a cigarette during class; this year the college where I work established a smoke-free environment, forbidding any use of tobacco anywhere on campus.

I don't smoke and don't plan to start; you probably don't either. Still, I'll admit to some ambivalent feelings about the pressure being put on smokers. We should probably always be wary when government regulation rubs up against personal freedom; friction is inevitable and there's rarely a vivid, clear line between what's right and what's wrong.

But more important is the premise that smoking is a very, very bad habit. And while we should be extremely reluctant to limit the freedom of adults to do just about anything they want  no matter how self-harmful  we should err on the side of boldness in favor of laws that prevent young people from beginning to smoke.

So, good for California and Hawaii, and may other states follow suit.

In fact, let's consider a significantly bolder step: raising the smoking age to 25.

In realistic terms, this is unlikely to happen. Any proposal to raise the age to 25 would be particularly vulnerable to the objection most often raised against a drinking age of 21: If, at 18, you're old enough to fight and die for your country, you're old enough to drink. Or smoke. Or vote.

Or drive or get married. But most states permit these last two activities at ages considerably younger than 18, which is to say that we've never been able to determine a single one-size-fits-all age of maturity. And for many people, to smoke or not to smoke is a lifelong decision that 18-year-olds  or even 21-year-olds  are not yet mature enough to make.

Recent research indicates that the brain doesn't reach full maturity until around age 25, which is why car insurance companies charge their clients higher rates until they reach that age.

Here's some typical research: Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt told National Public Radio recently that 18-year-olds are only about halfway through a maturation process that begins at puberty and ends at around age 25. Until that time, the undeveloped prefrontal cortex is unable to plan and organize for the future and to sufficiently control impulses and risk-taking.

In short, many under the age of 25 don't have the mental maturity to decide if they want to take on an expensive, dangerous habit that will be extremely difficult to abandon.

By age 25, many have started careers and families. The drive to take risks and to impress their peers has begun to wane at the same time that they begin to notice the first inklings of their own mortality. As they begin to see their lives as spans with beginnings and ends, they're much less likely to begin smoking.

Of course, in practical terms laws against smoking before age 25 may not prevent a 23-year-old from smoking any more than current laws prevent 16- and 17-year-olds.

Still it's important for society to be on the right side of this issue, to take the position that under 25 years of age you're not mature enough to make this often irrevocable decision. And we're not going to legitimize dangerous products by making it legal to sell them to you.

Beyond age 25, well, it's a free country.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. Contact him at jcrisp@delmar.edu.
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The following editorial appeared in the March 11 Dallas Morning News:

In theory, being a caseworker in Texas' child-welfare system should be a challenging but rewarding job, with a payoff in protecting vulnerable kids and supporting fragile families.

In reality, it's a recipe for burnout. Investigators and caseworkers for Child Protective Services, part of the state's Department of Family and Protective Services, are so overloaded that they quit in droves, which leads to constant worker turnover, which worsens the burden and makes more workers quit.

That's what a federal judge says; it's what the numbers say; it's what the painful anecdotes of overlooked and forgotten children in a broken system say.

And it's what the caseworkers themselves say, too. This week, CPS workers rallied at the Capitol to ask state officials to quit slapping Band-aid fixes on long-standing caseload and staffing problems, and accept a federal court order for sweeping and immediate reforms.

"We've been screaming for decades: Help, help, help," said Sue Ann Ruth, of Dallas, a retired CPS caseworker and program director. "Nothing's happened."

An annual progress report released by the agency itself this week shows that caseloads for individual workers are still disturbingly high. While the average daily load for each worker overseeing kids who have been removed from their homes showed a slight decline between 2014 and 2015  down to 28 children per caseworker from 31  it's still much higher than the standard established by the Child Welfare League of America, no more than 17 active cases per worker.

In an investigative report published last year, the Austin American-Statesman found that every month, Texas CPS hired 200 new caseworkers. Of that 200, 33 won't last on the job even six months.

These are decent people who want to make life better for children who have already been badly traumatized. Instead, they're being traumatized themselves by a job whose demands are impossible to meet.

After a five-year lawsuit filed on behalf of children in the state's foster care system, a U.S. district judge wisely ruled in December that the system is violating these kids' constitutional right to a reasonable expectation to be kept safe. She mandated sweeping reforms, starting with appointment of a special master to study the system's needs and recommend changes.

The judge, Janis Jack in the Southern District of Texas, has called a hearing to appoint a special master March 21. It's a serious but much-needed move.

Yet Texas continues to wage a legal fight against significant reform. State Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed an appeal to Jack's order, characterizing the ruling as an attempted "federal takeover" of the state's foster care system.

Now it's caseworkers themselves who are joining the chorus for change. It can't come soon enough. For too many children, it's already too late.
Historically, there's been an unfortunate and unproductive divide between people who have the same goal of getting government to make more informed and data-driven decisions. On one side, there are those tasked with measuring performance. On the other are program evaluators.You could look at the history of program evaluation and performance measurement as a cautionary tale of two children who were brought up in the same house but were raised by different tribes and arent so friendly with one another, says Don Moynihan, a professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The [split has become] institutionalized in government.Performance measurement adherents hold a variety of positions in state and local government. Many have some kind of training in measurement but dont tend to consider their jobs as part of a singular profession that's required to adhere to a set of standards.Then there's the more academic group of program evaluators. This is a title that has clear, distinct meaning. These men and women are deeply focused on standards and guidelines, have continuing professional development and have expertise in the field for which they're evaluating programs or agencies.Many evaluators have disdain for performance measurement types because they dont think performance measurement is sufficiently rigorous, says Phil Joyce, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.Whats the difference in the products the two groups produce?Performance measurement is a great tool for monitoring purposes, but it doesnt tell people whether the things you are measuring are the right things to measure, and it doesnt tell why something is happening, says Rakesh Mohan, director of the Office of Performance Evaluations in Idaho.As Joyce explains further, A performance measure could tell you that childhood obesity has declined by 5 percent from last year to this year, but it doesnt tell you that the reason is a particular government program or a change in the economy or a private-sector initiative.Program evaluations, as a result, tend to be lengthy documents that include data (often from performance measurement), interviews and analysis to provide a full picture of the changes that should be made to help agencies or programs function most effectively.There are, however, advantages and disadvantages to the two approaches.For one, the fact that program evaluators follow carefully prescribed standards makes it more likely that one evaluation can easily be compared to another. Unlike performance measurement experts, program evaluators are also often independent of the program or agency they're evaluating.But program evaluations can be expensive and often take at least two years to complete. Some people, including legislators, who would be eager to read an evaluation to inform their decisionmaking, can't wait that long because by the time the evaluation is released, the ground beneath the issue has often shifted. Whats more, evaluations take a snapshot of the status of an agency or program, but they're not useful for seeing what changes have taken place over time.From our perspective as regular users of both evaluations and measurements, any rancor between the two groups defies common sense. In years past, the American Society of Public Administration has reportedly tried to bring the two groups together -- but with little impact. It seems to us that if a state or city doesnt have capacity or time to do an evaluation, then performance measurements can still help them identify efforts that deserve deeper attention. If both sides of the rivalry can agree on nothing else, they certainly agree on this: The more information governments have, the better.
With no fanfare, Gov. Rick Scott late Thursday said he has signed a record $82 billion budget for the next fiscal year, keeping intact $256.1 million in line-item vetoes that he foreshadowed earlier this week.John Tupps, deputy communications director in Scott's office, announced the governor's actions in an email shortly after 8 p.m., with no immediate accompanying statement from Scott.On Tuesday, in a highly unusual move, Scott released a pre-emptive list of planned vetoes and said, "I will be signing this budget into law as soon as the Florida Legislature delivers it to me." He did just that, with his signature coming the same day the budget reached his desk.The governor's speedy signing prevented interest groups or individual lawmakers from mounting pressure on the governor to reverse himself on any planned vetoes.The veto list was far less extensive than lawmakers had feared, widely viewed as a signal by Scott that he didn't want to stir any more dissent within the Capitol. Scott and his fellow Republicans who control the Legislature have had a shaky relationship stretching back to the last session.This year, however, even after Scott's priorities for job incentive funds and tax cuts were rejected or marginalized by the Legislature, the governor showed little evidence of retribution.Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, R-Miami, on Tuesday said Scott was sending "an olive branch" by the more modest veto list. But Diaz added that it was no coincidence that Scott's vetoes totaled $256 million, very close to a $250 million fund for Scott to lure jobs to Florida that lawmakers rejected.Scott's string of vetoes includes after-school mentoring and youth crime-prevention programs, family counseling and inmate re-entry efforts, $8 million for Florida International University's expansion plans, a new jail in De Soto County, a new roof for North Lauderdale City Hall and a cattlemen's arena in Hardee County.
With Democratic members of Congress calling for his resignation, Gov. Rick Snyder lashed out Thursday at federal regulators for their response to the Flint water crisis, saying that despite the Environmental Protection Agency's insistence that the agency bore no direct responsibility there was evidence it could have moved far more quickly to protect the public.Agitated at EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's continued defense of her agency's handling of the high levels of lead found in Flint's drinking water, Snyder cited e-mails showing EPA was fully aware last summer that corrosion control wasn't being used in Flint. Even so, it continued to work with those he termed "career bureaucrats" at the Michigan Department of Environmental Protection -- who the EPA now says were lax -- rather than bringing the threat directly to his and the public's attention."I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, you can only take so much," the normally placid Snyder said at the hearing on the Flint crisis before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after McCarthy again indicated sole responsibility remained with the state. "When I read these things, I'm ready to get sick. We need urgency, and we needed action and they keep on talking. ... This could have been stopped sooner if other people could have also spoken up."Snyder's remarks came during an often tense and contentious hearing that saw him and McCarthy -- the two topmost governmental officials linked to the Flint emergency -- testify for the first time, often challenging the others' statements. With the committee room packed with Flint residents, many wearing "Flint Lives Matter" T-shirts and hats, committee members on either side of the political aisle took turns calling for both Snyder's and the EPA chief's resignations.Snyder again apologized for the state's handling of the drinking water crisis in Flint, saying the MDEQ was clearly wrong in not requiring corrosion control in April 2014 when the city switched to using the Flint River as its water supply, believing federal rules instead called for two six-month monitoring periods first. Because there was no corrosion control, lead leached from old pipes throughout the city.But while saying the state is correcting an MDEQ "culture that valued technical compliance over common sense," Snyder rejected McCarthy's repeated contention that the EPA and its Midwest Region 5 office in Chicago responded appropriately to the situation, noting that for months the EPA was aware that corrosion controls were not being used in Flint and did not alert anyone else to MDEQ's intransigence."I have a really simple question: Why didn't (former Region 5 head) Susan Hedman call (former MDEQ Director) Dan Wyant? Why didn't the administrator call me?" Snyder said after McCarthy said the EPA lacked the legal standing to take more aggressive action. "This is technical compliance again. ... Where is the common sense?"McCarthy, in repeated responses to Republicans on the panel who called for her resignation, said the agency's hands were largely tied by federal law in what actions it could take to force the state to enact corrosion controls. But she also maintained that the MDEQ "slow-walked" any response to the crisis, refusing to move more quickly to implement corrosion control when the EPA urged it."If there was anything (else) I could have done, any switch I could have turned on that would have allowed us to go farther ... I would have pulled that switch," said McCarthy, who in January of this year finally issued an emergency order in response to Flint. "We were late in getting it done, yes. ... There was nothing else I could have ordered that would have made that move faster."But e-mails obtained by the Free Press clearly indicate that while the MDEQ was mistaken in not requiring corrosion control in Flint upfront, some officials in the EPA's Chicago office knew about high lead levels in at least one home as early as last February. And while one EPA lead expert warned there could be widespread problems -- and raised warnings when MDEQ acknowledged there was no corrosion control in Flint last April -- McCarthy said there was not enough evidence of a "systemic" problem for her to act.McCarthy also repeated Hedman's contention that the EPA repeatedly told MDEQ that it was required to have corrosion control, even though there is little evidence of that in thousands of e-mails reviewed by the Free Press; and the EPA did not provide one from anyone other than that one expert -- Miguel Del Toral -- when asked on Thursday.Hedman was criticized for telling Flint's mayor, after Del Toral's draft report came out last June, that it still needed to be finalized, leading the mayor to suggest the water in the city, at that point, was still safe to drink."You need to take some responsibility because you screwed up," said the committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, after earlier calling for McCarthy to "do the courageous thing" and resign."I hear calls for resignation; I think you should be at the top of the list," U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said to McCarthy. He added: "You can read Del Toral's report. It's incredibly accurate. This was dated in June. And not a damn thing was done, really, until January of this year."McCarthy rejected any suggestion that the EPA was to blame for doing anything other than trusting the MDEQ and perhaps not pressuring it to talk to higher-up officials in Michigan sooner. But she said that it never occurred to her or other officials in the EPA that a state would need to be told that you couldn't substitute untreated water from a new source for previously treated water."From Day 1, the state provided our regional office with confusing, incomplete and incorrect information," she said, saying MDEQ refused to accept that corrosion control was needed.And she maintained that MDEQ refused to play along, even after it accepted that corrosion control was required and the EPA offered technical assistance to determine the right amount of corrosion control for Flint, where more than 1,000 homes have now tested for lead levels above the action level of 15 parts per billion."We were strong-armed. We were misled. We were kept at arm's length. We could not do our jobs effectively," she said. When asked whether she would have fired Hedman -- who resigned effective Feb. 1 amid fallout from the crisis -- she responded simply: "I didn't have to face that decision.""It's just offensive to suggest nothing wrong was done. And to not apologize? That's just wrong," Chaffetz told McCarthy, who was asked why she couldn't have used enforcement mechanisms in the Safe Drinking Water Act sooner to force the state and Flint to act. But she maintained that she first had to "show the state wasn't taking appropriate action" -- a process which took months.As for Snyder, Democrats at the hearing angrily called for his resignation, too, with members of the committee citing e-mails that suggested he did not consider Flint's water a priority -- a charge he denied. Democratic members of the committee were incredulous that members of Snyder's inner circle were well aware of the problems early on, yet somehow failed to inform the governor until last fall."If someone gave me water that looked like urine and had a smell to it ... I wouldn't want my family drinking it and I wouldn't be drinking it," said U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's ranking Democrat. "It looks like everyone knew about this problem but you. ... I got to tell you, you need to resign."At another point in the hearing, Cummings likened the Snyder administration to a corporation that sells poisoned toys to children. Another Democrat, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, criticized Snyder's repeated attempt to spread the blame by saying the crisis was a failure at all three levels of government -- city, state and federal. Cartwright called the governor's denials that he knew of the lead problem last year implausible, saying, "Pretty soon we will have men who strike their wives saying ... there were failures at all levels.""Not a day or night goes by that this tragedy doesn't weigh on my mind," Snyder said, explaining that MDEQ officials repeatedly told his office Flint's water was safe when it was not, and that he has tried to replace a "culture that valued technical compliance (with the law) over common sense" in the agency.Snyder also was forced, however, to acknowledge that the emergency manager law that he championed had failed Flint, at least in regard to its water supply, since it was a Snyder-appointed manager who authorized the switch to using Flint River water in 2014."This is a failure of a philosophy of governance that you advocate," U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., told Snyder. The congressman said the emergency managers in Flint sought to save $4 million that brought the city "to its knees."Meanwhile, Cummings also criticized Snyder for charging taxpayers $1.2 million to cover his outside legal fees related to the crisis. "It makes me sick," he said.If the EPA was guilty of anything, Cummings said, it was not acting sooner "to rescue the people of Michigan from Gov. Snyder's vindictive administration and utter incompetence."Michigan members of the committee -- U.S. Reps. Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township; Brenda Lawrence, D-Southfield; and Tim Walberg, R-Tipton -- also asked questions of the witnesses, with Lawrence, in particular, questioning Snyder about a July 2015 e-mail written by his former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, which wondered whether concerns in Flint were being taken seriously enough.Several other members questioned how Snyder would not have heard about that e-mail, even if he wasn't copied in on it. Walberg, on the other hand, questioned McCarthy about e-mails from September 2015 -- reported by the Free Press on Wednesday -- that showed she saw the potential for Flint becoming a crisis then.It wasn't immediately clear where the congressional hearings would go next, but Congress still has decisions to make regarding Flint: A package that would include at least $100 million in low-interest loans or grants for the city to replace damaged infrastructure, as well as other funding, is ready to be considered in the Senate. But it's still being held up by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who has said he considers it a federalizing of water infrastructure spending.Meanwhile, both Snyder and McCarthy agreed on one thing: There need to be revisions to the complicated Lead and Copper Rule, with Snyder calling it "dumb and dangerous" in that it doesn't ensure the worst sites for lead are tested in cities, and that there aren't concrete targets for replacing lead water pipes throughout the nation.Without a change, he said, "this tragedy will befall other American cities."McCarthy, on the other hand, while saying the rules "definitely need clarification," said that if they had been followed properly in Flint, the crisis wouldn't have happened -- a stance which is at least somewhat at odds with her own agency's memo last November, which suggested that "differing" interpretations of the rule, like Michigan's, were possible.At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest expressed confidence in the EPA to police the nation's water systems following the Flint crisis."The EPA administrator sent a letter to governors coast to coast, saying that they need to clarify exactly how they are implementing the Lead and Copper Rule to make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks," he said. Earnest added that McCarthy, "understands how serious this is."The White House continued to put the blame for the Flint crisis at the feet of state and local officials, but stopped short of calling for Snyder's resignation."Obviously the citizens and voters of the state of Michigan are going to have to decide who they want to lead their state," Earnest said.
Following an emotional debate, the Senate blocked a bill that would prevent states from requiring labeling of genetically modified food Wednesday.The Biotechnology Labeling Solutions Act (S2609), authored by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., which would create a national voluntary labeling standard for genetically engineered foods, did not pass. Roberts had hoped to pass the bill before Vermont's mandatory labeling law goes into effect July 1.Despite getting support from Democrats such as Agriculture Committee members Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitcamp of North Dakota, he didn't get the 60 votes he needed. California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein voted against the bill.The discussion before the vote ranged over issues of farming, food companies and consumers' right to know what is in their food.Roberts said it would prevent "a wrecking ball from hitting our entire supply chain," referring to a potential patchwork of inconsistent state laws. He emphasized that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration have all deemed genetically engineered foods safe. "It's not about safety. It's not about health. It's not about nutrition. It's all about marketing," he said.Bill supporters, including an industry lobby that called the bill the Safe Affordable Food Act, say such a patchwork would cost manufacturers $82 billion a year, which they argue would be passed along to the average American family at $1,050 per year. (That estimate has been disputed by groups like Consumer Reports, which estimates the cost to consumers at pennies per day.)Senate Democrats presented a different consumer perspective than Roberts, pointing to various polls showing that roughly 90 percent of Americans favor labeling of genetically engineered foods."Let's be honest with the American public," said Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who has offered an alternative bill that would require national labeling of genetically engineered foods. "All they want is for us to be honest with them about ingredients."A last-minute amendment to the bill would call on manufacturers to provide toll-free numbers, websites, QR codes or social media symbols on labels to inform consumers whether genetically engineered ingredients are present in the product. If 80 percent of manufacturers fail to do that within three years, labeling of genetically engineered food would become mandatory nationally.But Merkley said that wasn't enough, especially since the toll-free numbers or QR codes could be presented without explanation."That's why I call this a house of mirrors," said Merkley, who said people shouldn't have to spend an hour trying to find information.Consumer and environmental groups applauded the defeat of Roberts' bill."Today's vote marked an important milestone for the more than 90 percent of Americans who want GMOs to be labeled," said Tom Colicchio, celebrity chef and Food Policy Action co-founder, in a statement. "I am hopeful that the Senate will now work to craft a bipartisan mandatory on-pack GMO labeling bill that doesn't demonize science and gives consumers the information they demand."
As a political newcomer, Ron Hale struggled to stand out this year in a crowded race to join the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas. Perhaps a billboard, radio spot or other expensive advertising may have helped.But in the lead up to the Republican primary, Hale, who runs a private security firm, did the unthinkable: He says he told a handful of folks who run mom-and-pop petroleum companies to keep the small donations they offered his campaign.The reason? Plunging oil prices that have brought Texas drilling fields to a near standstill.From my perspective, it was easier to tell them no, said Hale, who raised fewer than $3,000 and spent thousands of his own dollars before a third place finish on Super Tuesday. I know how bad they were hurting down there.Hales was hardly the only Texas campaign touched by the dramatic downturn in the oil and gas sector.Campaign contributions from petroleum interests help fuel the states power and relevance in Republican national politics. But operatives are seeing early signs that the collapsing oil market has also depressed the sector's political contributions.Evolving campaign finance laws and fundraising practices make it difficult to make cycle-to-cycle to comparisons. But what is clear from nearly two dozen interviews with state and national Republican operatives, candidates and oil industry insiders is that donors are increasingly telling campaigns no.The sense I get is, it has had some adverse impact on political contributions, said U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan and a former drilling company executive. My expectation is that it will continue to get more pronounced the longer oil prices stay down.Oil and gas companies mostly donate to Republicans, and there is no widespread panic within GOP circles that the party or its candidates are lagging in fundraising. Even still, operatives say they have not seen anything like this in years.Consider the Republican race for railroad commissioner.Ahead of the 2014 primary, with West Texas crude prices trading at around $100 per barrel and shale fields rumbling with activity, donors poured more than $1.5 million into the accounts of four candidates, roughly half from the petroleum sector.Two years later, another seat is open, but the landscape looks vastly different.Now, prices are hovering around $36. They even dipped below $30 earlier this year. That free fall has stacked hundreds of rigs, triggered tens of thousands of layoffs and left many oilfield companies wading in a flood of red ink. And as operators choke back production, some are also pinching pennies with political campaigns.Ahead of Super Tuesday, Hale wasn't the only candidate dealing with that reality. John Greytok, a longtime Austin attorney and lobbyist, took in about $187,000 to lead the pack in fundraising. But only $4,000 of that haul came from oil and gas connections. Former state Rep. Wayne Christian followed with $43,000. That sum included nearly $32,000 from three industry officials  the most by far in a seven-way race that was whittled down to a runoff between Christian and real estate magnate Gary Gates, who has self-funded his campaign.Those closely following the contest say several factors played a role in the spending slowdown: The crowded field meant a runoff was all but guaranteed, prompting some donors to adopt a wait-and-see approach. And Commissioner David Porters sudden exit from the race prompted several candidates to launch campaigns at the last minute, limiting time to fundraise. But the impact of the industry's financial turmoil cannot be ignored, observers say.State and national fundraisers say perennial donors outright turned down donations or reduced their giving. The most oft-cited reasons were they needed to make payroll, or to avoid the unseemliness of making political donations while laying off employees in the fields.But like Hale, some campaign staffers are not even making the money asks anymore of those with ties to the oil industry, citing discomfort with asking for or giving political donations during economic distress.The same goes for some West Texas bundlers, who one Texas fundraiser said are increasingly reluctant to put their friends on the spot financially. The fundraiser pointed to Midland, the West Texas city largely built on oil booms, as an increasingly difficult place to raise money.Flores pointed to another city across the state.Primarily, Houston at this point, he said. Texas in general, but Houston in particular.Several Republican operatives rolled their eyes over how often the sluggish economy comes up during fundraising. The pain in the oil patch has clearly contributed but it's also provided another excuse not to give.I think people are going to use the challenging commodity environment as an excuse not to get involved in this race, said one consultant to a current statewide official who asked that his name not be used so he could speak more freely. Donors will typically use any excuse that they can think of not to give money. This is an easy one.There is, however, one realm of politics where there are few signs of slowdown: federal super PACs.Super PACs are political organizations that allow for unlimited donations, as long as there is no direct coordination with a candidate. And at least seven Texas families with ties to the energy industry rank among the biggest presidential super PAC individual donors, according to The Center for Responsive Politics. The top 50 ranked on the list include fortunes based on natural gas, like the Wilks family of Cisco and Trevor Rees-Jones of Dallas. The list also includes oil and gas investor Toby Neugebauer, who now lives in Puerto Rico and is the son of retiring U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock.Jack Ladd, Jr. is a Midland native and former political strategist. He noted that the donors at the super PAC level may have made their money in oil but have since diversified their fortunes. He and other Republicans say these donors have achieved a level of wealth where they can take the financial hits in stride.They have so many assets, not just in the oil industry, Ladd said. They personally wont be too affected [by the downturn] and they probably wont want to see their influence wane."
Ten years ago, Hawaii saw the nations first lawsuit specifically addressing the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in juvenile detention facilities. In the suit, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that three teenagers detained at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility had suffered abuse and harassment because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The teens said corrections staff had ignored -- and in some cases assisted in -- the mistreatment. A federal district court judge ruled in their favor. While the case forced Hawaii to settle the suit and adjust its policies toward LGBT juvenile detainees years ago, other states and localities are only now moving in the same direction.Last fall, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a practice guide to help state and local youth correctional facilities become more LGBT friendly. The 48-page document includes examples of early efforts by Colorado, New Orleans, New York City and Santa Barbara County, Calif., to protect the privacy and safety of young people who identify as LGBT.The Casey guide is an attempt to help jurisdictions become more aware of their LGBT populations and become proactive in preventing victimization. For example, one of the recommendations is to ask new detainees about their sex at birth, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and whether that identity is at odds with how others will perceive their gender. The questions come from an intake process that juvenile probation departments in 13 California counties already use. The guide follows a set of federal regulations that seek to end sexual abuse in confinement. Some parts of the regulations deal specifically with LGBT juvenile detainees. The rules stem from a 2003 law called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which was relatively toothless until the U.S. Department of Justice published the regulations in 2012.But new legal pressures are only part of the reason jurisdictions are adopting reforms. The other impetus is a growing understanding of the challenges LGBT youth face. Recent research suggests theyre more likely to be homeless, more likely to drop out of school, more likely to suffer depression and more likely to wind up in a correctional facility than their heterosexual or cisgender peers (those whose experiences of their own gender conform to the sex they were assigned at birth). One recent survey of 1,400 detained youth in seven jurisdictions found about 20 percent identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning -- a far higher rate than is estimated in the general population.Colorado has implemented several policy changes in this area. In late 2014, the states division of Youth Corrections adopted a nondiscrimination policy for LGBT teens. The policy calls for giving juvenile detainees uniforms that reflect their self-identified genders. Employees must address inmates by their preferred name and pronoun. Juveniles can also request strip and pat searches by an employee whose sex matches the juveniles gender identity.There might be some growing pains as more jurisdictions adopt policies like Colorados. Corrections as a field is not one that looks at [intake] assessment as a conversation about the wishes or perceptions of the detainee, says Shannan Wilber, the youth policy director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the main author of the Casey Foundations practice guide. That totally has to change.
On Thursday, in the afternoon, at Parliament House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC presided at a meeting of the Executive Council.

In the evening, at Government House, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a reception to celebrate the Centenary of the ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland) and addressed guests.

Following, at Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the Governor and Mrs de Jersey attended the opening night performance of The Sound of Music.
Description

GIS  18 March 2016: An E-Learning System (ELS), which aims at strengthening professional and personal development and providing universal access to learning solutions to Officers in the Civil Service, was launched yesterday afternoon in the Lunch Room of the National Assembly in Port Louis. The ELSs website was also launched on that occasion.

Designed by the Ministry of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms, in collaboration with the UNDP, the ELS has as objective to allow Public Officers learn at their own pace and convenience to enhance their knowledge and skills. It is recalled that an E-Learning System is basically a web-based programme designed to facilitate learning and training through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

In his address at the launching ceremony, the Minister of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms, Mr Alain Wong Yen Cheong, stressed that creating, sharing and using information and knowledge are key factors of economic growth and are essential for competitiveness. The information societys driving force can ensure and assure a better quality of life and work, sustainable employment and digital literacy for all so as to avoid social exclusion, he said.

Minister Wong Yen Cheong also observed that in the knowledge society, the life cycle of knowledge and skills becomes shorter and shorter and this is why it is necessary to invest in human capital and learning technologies to shape our own future. Government has, in the context of these challenges, envisioned to transform Mauritius into a high-income economy where the Civil Service is called upon to play a crucial role in the attainment of this objective, he said. It will have to continually re-engineer itself through the adoption of latest tools and technologies and in building the required capacity to embrace change, added the Minister.

ELS platform

The Civil Services ELS can be accessed on the following link: http://training.civilservice.govmu.org/

Once on the homepage, Government officials can access courses by logging in using their usernames and passwords. The ELS provides Public Officers with a vast array of short and practical online courses and complements traditional face-to-face courses. The courses offered are amongst others: budget preparation and execution; stress management; an introduction to the Social Register of Mauritius; ethics, performance management system; occupational safety and health; service resilience awareness, environment sustainability; basic ICT security; integrated vector management; and gender equality.

At the end of each course, there is a self-assessment feature, where some multiple-choice/short answer questions are set to test the candidates understanding of the courses. Candidates are entitled to a certificate of achievement after successful completion of the course.

An ELS Committee has been set up to receive and analyse requests for adding/deleting courses on the platform.
Does the First Amendment Protect People Who Film the Police?
Improving business of IT Improving business of state (customer service) with the use of IT

Transforming state government: States have responsibilities, challenges, and inefficiencies similar to those of many large cities; they need to become more efficient and "smarter" themselves.

Supporting the development of Smart Cities: States play a major role in supporting the creation of Smart Cities in their jurisdiction through policies and funding.

Creating smart and connected regional clusters: States can connect Smart Cities within their jurisdiction to create smart and connected regional clusters of economic development.

Within the first six months, we started picking up pace for first two steps for Illinois' modernization:It was time to accelerate Illinois' modernization efforts around step 3: leapfrogging to claim leadership position.From my past experience, many cities and countries around the globe are trying to implement smart city solutions. However, due to lack of executive support and focused leadership, most of the cities are only completing pilots. There are very few enterprise-scale sustainable efforts using Internet of Things-based smart cities solutions. In Illinois, we are looking for an enterprise-scale, sustainable, smarter state initiative to improve the overall efficiency of the government, improve workforce opportunities and boost economic growth.Todays blog is an excerpt from the IDC white paper on smarter states, with a case study on Illinois efforts around becoming a smarter state with IoT solutions. Ruthbea Clarke of IDC authored this white paper. Between the publication of the white paper and now (in the last month), we have an Internet of Things Center of Excellence (ICE) in place that includes key agency CIOs and business owners.Here is the introduction from the white paper:States that strive to do these things successfully are "Smart States." This white paper introduces the concept of the Smart State and discusses how the state of Illinois is putting this concept into action.Read the blog from IDC about this white paper and Illinois, and the white paper itself at your leisure.
Open Datafest Highlights Innovation in California

California Refurbishes Campaign Finance Data

Toolbox to Aid Low-Income Communities

Data advocates and health-care officials converged in downtown Sacramento, Calif., this week to discuss the latest open data initiatives and public health projects at the third annual Health and Human Services Open Datafest. The two-day event, held March 16-17, was led by the social impact organization Stewards of Change. It highlighted, among other announcements, updates on the nations progress to put agency expenditures online through the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act). Since the laws passage in 2014, the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have undertaken the weighty task of standardizing how agencies report spending data. Damon Davis, director of HHS Open Data Initiative, said the work has united agencies as they add the data into the beta site for USAspending.gov.Other news included updates on Californias work to pilot a statewide open data portal, San Franciscos use of open data for decision-making, and the work of Waste Not OC, which uses data to redistribute excess food in Orange County to residents in need. If the event follows like last year, footage and updates from the sessions will soon be available on the Stewards of Change website Californias Secretary of State Alex Padilla and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg introduced a bill earlier this week to overhaul Cal-Access, Californias database for campaign finance and lobbying information. The legislation, SB 1349, would refresh the antiquated system with easily accessible data gathering tools, dashboards and search options. Hertzberg and Padilla hope to fund the work with a $13.5 million request to the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review.In a release from Hertzbergs office, Padilla said the redesign is desperately needed, calling the current database outdated, unreliable and long overdue for a complete rebuild. His sentiments are echoed by Gov. Jerry Brown and state voting transparency groups like the League of Women Voters and Voters Right to Know.Earlier this month, Phillip Ung , the legislative and external affairs director at the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), said the undertaking had multiple goals. Open data would be a major component in the redesign, as it would reduce the thousands of record requests by journalists, companies and researchers. At the same time, Ung said that for easy lookup, much of the engineering would consolidate FPPC information on officials' investments, monetary holdings, conflicts of interests, gifts and travel expenses.The social impact group Living Cities has just released a set of digital tools to help cities assist low-income residents. Branded as the  New Urban Practice Toolbox , the package offers guidance on seven focus areas: data, civic tech, investment, civic engagement, leadership and racial equity.Simple to search through, Living Cities has bundled everything into a clickable  and colorful  checkerboard of Web apps, articles and play books. In a few clicks, officials can simply rifle through the assortment of tools that were produced both by Living Cities and like-minded organizations such as Code for America and the innovation charity Nesta. According to its site the tools are the result of Living Cities' 2015 annual report that investigated a host of methodologies and tactics to help low-income and disadvantaged communities. The vision for the toolbox is that it continues to expand with additional contributions.
Kevin Magnussen has backed Renault's decision to give new third driver Esteban Ocon some Friday practice outings in 2016.

Ocon, the 19-year-old reigning GP3 champion, is 'on loan' to Renault from Mercedes' junior programme, with Magnussen confirming he and Jolyon Palmer will have to make way in some Friday practice sessions later this year.

"It is not decided yet" which sessions Ocon will do, "but basically it's cool that Renault gives a young and good driver like Ocon a chance," Magnussen is quoted by BT newspaper.

And he told another Danish publication, Ekstra Bladet: "I think you have to earn your chances in formula one, and Ocon has done that."

However, Ocon is very close to new Renault team boss Frederic Vasseur, and Magnussen was signed on a mere one-year contract for 2016.

But Magnussen, 23, insists: "I plan to stay at this team for many years."

2016 could be a difficult season for Renault, with Magnussen admitting: "There are two things that are essential in formula one - downforce and power - and we are lagging behind in both."

But he said he is delighted to be back in F1 after the end of his McLaren adventure.

"I was close to giving up on the F1 dream and was starting to make a plan B," said Magnussen, "and of course that wasn't nice. But I never gave up completely."

(GMM)
Jacques Villeneuve has slammed F1 drivers who are calling loudly for the introduction of the 'halo' cockpit protection system.

The story has split the driver camp, with Daniel Ricciardo telling Nico Hulkenberg recently to stop being a "hero" by arguing against the radical safety concept.

"I read that and it made me smile," Hulkenberg hit back in Melbourne. "He has his opinion and I have mine and he should respect that."

Indeed, Hulkenberg said his opinion is so strong that he would gladly give up many of today's safety advances in order to drive the F1 monsters of the past.

"Yes," he told Germany's Auto Bild. "Despite the much greater risk of injury that the drivers had back then."

Hulkenberg is not alone.

Former Manor racer Roberto Merhi told El Mundo newspaper that "drivers know from the beginning that this is a risky sport".

And 1997 world champion Villeneuve, an avowed 'purist', scolded those who are balking at one of the last remaining risks of being a grand prix driver.

"If they are afraid, they should go and race touring cars," he told Le Figaro.

"Yes, we must strive for safety, but there are limits we should not exceed. Risk-taking is inherent in F1. It's part of the beauty of the sport.

"For me, halo is too much. I see it that these drivers earn millions and yet they do not want to take any chances. Too bad.

"Do the moto riders ask to ride inside a bubble? This is why they are increasingly respected and admired compared to formula one drivers," Villeneuve, now an outspoken F1 pundit, added.

(GMM)
Carlos Sainz has refused to join the criticism of the latest rule changes in formula one.

In Melbourne, not only is the controversial new 'musical chairs' qualifying set to make its debut, but so too is a further clampdown on pit-to-car radio communications.

Many have not been shy to let their opinions be heard.

Referring to the new qualifying format, Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko said: "What if there is a red or yellow flag or it's raining?

"Now, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time on a Saturday, you're out," he told Austria's Kleine Zeitung newspaper.

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel added: "I hope at least that in the end the fastest driver is still at the top. Otherwise it's pretty questionable from a sporting point of view."

Renault driver Kevin Magnussen is also concerned about the actual spectacle of qualifying.

"I'm worried that it will get boring towards the end because people will be happy with their times and not want to use another set of tyres," he is quoted by Denmark's BT newspaper.

And he also thinks the new radio clampdown could hurt F1.

"I agree with the idea that it should be harder to drive in formula one," said Magnussen. "But with the new rules we will be putting so much energy on the information on the steering wheel.

"Before, we just got a message from the pits and we could just focus on racing hard," he added. "So it could have the opposite effect than what they want."

Toro Rosso driver Sainz, however, is refusing to join the widespread criticism, preferring instead to at least give the new rules a chance.

"I don't want to criticise," he told Spain's AS newspaper, "because too many people are doing that and there is too much negativity right now about F1.

"I don't like that whenever I open a newspaper or a website about F1 and the first things you read are just negative," said Sainz.

"So I'll give the changes they are making a chance, both the qualifying and the radio and the other things, and we'll see what happens.

"If it doesn't work I'll be the first to say it, but first you have to at least see if it helps or not," he added.

(GMM)
Felipe Massa has acknowledged that Williams will not get involved in the title fight between Mercedes and Ferrari in 2016.

Although with a much smaller budget, the British team finished third overall for the past two years and had targeted a step forward this season.

But Robert Doornbos, a former F1 driver, thinks Williams' 2016 car is not a race winner.

"When I saw it in Barcelona it didn't look great," he told the Dutch broadcaster Ziggo Sport Totaal, "especially in the corners where it was very nervous and with understeer."

Doornbos thinks Williams can aim for fourth or fifth overall this year, and even team driver Felipe Massa acknowledges that no higher than third is realistic.

"I would like to be wrong but I think the title fight will be between Hamilton and Rosberg," Massa told Brazil's Globo.

"Our fight, it seems, will be with Red Bull and Force India, in the group behind Mercedes and Ferrari, but I am confident that we can develop," he added.

Another issue for 34-year-old Massa, as he begins his 14th consecutive season in F1, is that his Williams contract expires at the end of this year.

"I'm happy doing what I do and I want to continue in formula one for a few years," he told Spain's El Mundo.

"There are big changes in the rules next year and I feel like an important part of the team for these changes."

Doornbos thinks it is also a crucial year for Valtteri Bottas, who according to rumours only missed out on the move to Ferrari this year when he began to compare unfavourably to the former long-time Ferrari driver Massa.

"Bottas needs to be careful," said Doornbos, who drove for Minardi and Red Bull.

"He is missing some momentum in his career now so the Finn really needs to beat him (Massa) in order to save his career," he told Ziggo Sport Totaal.

(GMM)
The start of Toto Wolff's 2016 campaign hit a roadblock even before he entered the paddock gates in Melbourne.

Germany's Auto Bild noticed that the Austrian only gained entry in Albert Park with a race-by-race FOM pass -- not the full-time credential befitting any other team boss.

The report said Wolff simply filed his application for the permanent pass too late, but a cynic might say it is Bernie Ecclestone's revenge amid the latest political turmoil.

Wolff vetoed a supply of Mercedes engines for Red Bull, is standing against the most radical of rule changes for 2017, and according to the F1 supremo is wielding way too much power in F1 at present.

Ecclestone admitted to City A.M. and F1 business journalist Christian Sylt that a definite "problem is the control that Ferrari and Mercedes have".

Indeed, many see 85-year-old Ecclestone's entire reign as under threat, but former F1 team owner and paddock sage Eddie Jordan insisted: "No one should write Bernie off.

"He is an extremely clever guy who is up to every trick. But he was weakened by the Munich trial. And my impression is that he does not have the full backing of CVC.

"For me it was a shock that he did not manage to bring in the alternative engine, despite the initial support of the FIA.

"Mercedes and its political partners Ferrari were simply too powerful, and Bernie will fight with everything he has. Whether it will be enough is the most interesting question for me," Jordan added.

(GMM)
F1 teams are reportedly angry that Pirelli introduced a new tyre late last year without telling them.

Germany's Auto Motor und Sport said it emerged during a technical meeting between the teams and Charlie Whiting in Melbourne that the new tyre made its secret debut in Brazil last November.

Reportedly, it was the new multi-layered tyre that Pirelli intended to try at the Abu Dhabi test two weeks later.

But on the basis of the secret running in Brazil, the concept - where a special rubber layer replicates the old tyre grip 'cliff' - was sidelined.

"We are no longer sure what we tested in Abu Dhabi," one unnamed team technical boss said in Melbourne.

The story has apparently only come out after a Pirelli engineer working for Lotus last year accidentally forwarded an email to the Enstone based team.

Auto Motor und Sport said the teams are angry.

"The tyre supplier is obliged to communicate technical modifications of the tyres to the teams and the FIA," said correspondent Michael Schmidt.

"The question is whether this scandal will have consequences."

That aside, the meeting on Friday reportedly went well, with Pirelli agreeing to produce bigger, faster and more durable tyres for 2017, even though the final contracts with the FIA are yet to be signed.

(GMM)
Rumours that Red Bull could build its own F1 engine are firing yet again.

Team boss Christian Horner has always rejected the speculation on the basis that engine manufacturing is not a "core competency" of the energy drink-owned outfit.

But many thought Thursday's news of a collaboration with the British luxury carmaker Aston Martin was a sign that Red Bull's search for an engine partner may be over.

"Unfortunately Aston Martin don't have an engine we can use, although a V12 would be nice," joked Horner, whose team are instead pushing ahead with a Tag Heuer-rebranded Renault engine in 2016.

But that is just a one-year contract.

And so rumours are swirling that, now with Aston Martin's help, Red Bull could push ahead with an accelerated programme to make its own F1 engine.

Auto Motor und Sport is even dropping a name that might be connected with the Red Bull-Aston Martin F1 engine project: Alex Hitzinger, fresh from Porsche's Le Mans foray, a former Cosworth F1 chief and no stranger to Red Bull.

According to the well-known former Renault F1 driver Jean-Pierre Jabouille, however, losing Red Bull as a customer would be a blow to the French carmaker.

"It was important for Renault to keep Red Bull as it helps them to assess how good their chassis and drivers are," the 73-year-old Frenchman told L'Equipe.

(GMM)
Ionic transport has been studied extensively over the years for energy devices such as fuel cells and batteries using Li + , H + , Ag + , Cu + , F  , and O 2 as ionic charge carriers. The conduction of hydride ions, H  , is also attractive, the team notes in their paper.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology, in collaboration with colleagues in Japan, have demonstrated the first electrochemical reaction based on hydride ions in an oxide-based solid-state cell for potential next-generation batteries. A paper on their work is published in the journal Science .

[Hydride ions] are similar in size to oxide and fluoride ions and show strong reducing properties with a standard redox potential of H/H 2 (2.3 V), which is close to that of Mg/Mg2+ (2.4 V). Hydride ion conductors may therefore be applied in energy storage and conversion devices with high energy densities.

In contrast to proton conduction that takes place widely in oxides and other systems, pure H conduction has been verified only for a few hydrides of alkaline earth metals such as BaH 2 . Unfortunately, utilization of the hydrides is difficult because of their structural inflexibility, which makes control of the lattice structure to create smooth transport pathways and control of the conducting hydride ion content difficult. Kobayashi et al.

Using an oxyhydride solid state cell, the researchers have now demonstrated pure H- conduction in an oxide for the first time.

Metal hydrides tend to have an inflexible lattice, which makes H transport difficult, so the researchers turned to oxyhydrides where oxygen and hydrogen share the same lattice sites. Another challenge is the high electron-donating properties of H-, which means that the electrons will dissociate from the H- to produce protons and electrons, giving rise to electron rather than hydride-ion transport. As a result the team sought a system containing cations that were more electron-donating than the H-.

Genki Kobayashi and Ryoji Kanno from Tokyo Tech collaborated with colleagues from the Institute for Molecular Science, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kyoto University and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan.

They examined how the structure of their oxyhydride compounds changed with composition and synthesis conditions. They also studied characteristics of the electronic structure that suggested an ionic Li-H bond in the compoundthe existence of H in the oxides.

They then used La 2 LiHO 3 in an orthorhombic structural phase (o-La 2 LiHO 3 ) as an electrolyte in a cell with titanium anode and titanium hydride cathodes. Phase changes at the electrodes by the discharge were consistent with a Ti-H phase diagram suggesting hydride-ion transport.



All-solid-state hydride-ion cell. A discharge curve for a solid-state battery with the Ti/o-La 2 LiHO 3/TiH 2 structure. The inset shows an illustration of the cell and the proposed electrochemical reaction. Kobayashi et al. Click to enlarge.

The present success in the construction of an all-solid-state electrochemical cell exhibiting H diffusion confirms not only the capability of the oxyhydride to act as an H solid electrolyte but also the possibility of developing electrochemical solid devices based on H conduction. Kobayashi et al.

In a Perspective on the work by Kobayashi et al., published in the same issue of Science, Shu Yamaguchi of The University of Tokyo observed that:

Kobayashi et al. report a material with pure H conductivity (and yet an electronic insulator) in an oxyhydride system, which has been a last frontier in solid state ionics.  The result  is just the beginning of a new materials science of H conductivity in oxyhydride systems that will require further elaboration of the underlying mechanisms, as well as potential applications of the extremely reducing H ion in chemical synthesis. A drawback of the current material is its chemical reactivity in oxidizing atmospheres, but this disadvantage may be overcome by various techniques, like surface protection coatings. These explorations of H conductors now leave the question of what will be the next last frontier for solid state ionics.

This research was supported by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO), and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Resources
Actor and activist George Takei arrives in Greensboro this weekend for the Guilford College Bryan Series. The Bryan series guest will address students on campus Monday afternoon, and will speak at the Greensboro Coliseum that evening.

He took some time this week to speak with 1808's editor Tina Firesheets and creative director Mel Umbarger. He spoke of his family's internment during World War II and of his Broadway musical production based on the experience, "Allegiance." He also spoke of his respect for democracy and his dedication to political involvement and activism. We have edited our conversation some for length and ease of reading.

Q: Will this be your first visit to Greensboro?

A: No, as a matter of fact, Ive been to Greensboro before. Guess for what.

Q: What?

A: It was a Star Trek Convention. It was at a big hall (about four decades ago).

Q: Can you imagine what your life might have been without Star Trek?

A: You know, really it was a major benchmark in my life because it was groundbreaking casting, first of all to not play a servant or a buffoon or a villain, which was the stereotype that almost all Asian characters were back then. And then, to be part of a team, a heroic team, the leadership team of futuristic space exploratory agency was a really unique opportunity  a groundbreaking opportunity. No stereotypes, no accents, I was part of the leadership crew. So Im very proud of my association with Star Trek. But the thing is, it was cancelled after three years, and I was starting my career all over again. With a television series, cancellation means you dont work for a long time because youre very much identified with that character. So it was a matter of being creative and finding unique opportunities when they come.

... And I found that opportunity in public transportation of all things. I was the helmsman of the Enterprise, and so I was still involved in public transportation. Mayor Tom Bradley, for whom I campaigned here, appointed me to the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District. His mandate to us was to get started on building the first subway system in Los Angeles. And we have that now operating. I served on it from its inception to passing the half cent sales tax and getting the federal match and getting the state match fro Sacremento and holding all the public meetings on the rod alignment and the station location, and I served for 11 years on that board. And so next time you visit Los Angeles, you have to take a ride on the most, the newest, most futuristic of all the public transit subway systems in the United States  the Los Angeles Metro Rail.

Q: Have you ever considered pursuing more political aspirations?

A: Political races?

Q: Yes. Would you ever run for President?

A: Start from the top, huh? Reach for the highest star? Would you do that? A journalist running for President?

Q: No!

A: Of course, because thats ridiculous. No, I will not run for President. I must say that I did run for President of my High School  Student Body President. And I won. So Ive been a political activist from my high school days. Junior high school days, as a matter of fact.

Q: Is there anything that you would still like to do in terms of your career or your activism?

A: Well, you know, I just closed with the Broadway Show that ran for five months. I call it my legacy project. Its setting is the internment camp. You know, Japanese Americans  American citizens of Japanese ancestry were put in World War II prison camps, simply because we happen to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. There were no charges, and therefore no trials and simply because of our race, we were put into these prison camps for the duration of the war. Its a fact that very few Americans, particularly East of the Rockies know about. So we created a musical on that, called Allegiance, because it was our allegiance that was challenged, but in real fact, the American ideals were challenged by the U.S. Government. It was the most egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution, and we made a musical out of that. We played to cheering spontaneous standing ovations and shouts of Bravo Bravo Bravo for five months on Broadway.

Q: Are there any plans for a national tour of it?

A: I dont think national. Were looking at the West Coast, because this is where memory of that chapter of American history exists. You know, the thing we discovered was, there were people during intermission, in the lobby saying, Is this true? Did this really happen? East of the Rockies, people really dont know about this chapter of American history. And I dont think the people of North Carolina certainly dont  its an embarrassing part of American history. ... I think we learn more, from those chapters of American history where our democracy faltered than the many, many glorious chapters. We know of the shining ideals of our democracy. But we learn more, I think, from where we failed so that we can make our democracy a truer democracy, and it should be a part of the curriculum of our educational system.Thats what were working on. We founded the Japanese American National Museum, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian. Its about the Japanese American experience, including the incarceration during the Second World War, and we send our exhibits throughout the country. I dont think we have sent an exhibit to N.C. yet, but weve sent exhibits to New York City, an exhibit called Americas Concentration Camp. Weve sent exhibits to Texas, to Chicago, to Seattle to San Francisco. To some of the major cities. I think we should consider North Carolina  another important place.

Q: Do you see any parallels from the time period of the internment camps (to the current political climate)?

A: Indeed I do. As a matter of fact, shortly after he (Donald Trump) banned all Muslims from entering into the United States, I extended a public invitation to Donald Trump to come see Allegiance because he apparently is uninformed on that chapter of American history as well, where American citizens were put into prison camps simply because we looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. There is a big lesson to be learned from the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. And Donald Trump doesnt know that. I extended that invitation, and from that day on, we had a seat reserved for Donald Trump, and we counted down the performances that he missed. All together, he missed 91 performances since I extended the invitation.

The climate, the electoral climate here today is very, very resonant to me, of the times in the early 1940s. This whole nation was swept up by war hysteria. And elected leaders, and many of them turned out to be great men. For example, in California, we had an Attorney General, an Attorney General, the top lawyer in the state of California, who knew the Constitution, who knew the law, became one of the outspoken advocates of locking up Japanese Americans. He made amazing statement. He said, We have no report of spying or sabotage or (sic) activity by Japanese Americans, and that is ominous because Japanese are inscrutable. You dont know what theyre thinking so we better lock them up before they do anything. So for this attorney general, this lawyer, the absence of evidence was the evidence. And he fanned the flames of racial hysteria at that time. That hysteria reached all the way up to the presidency of the United States, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive orders 9066, which put us in those prison camps. His fallibility was he was ambitious and he wanted to be governor of California, and he was willing to do anything to get that office and sure enough, he won as governor. And he was re-elected not once, but twice. He served three terms as governor of California back in the 40s, and early 50s, and then he was appointed to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. His name is, and I think youll recognize it, Earl Warren  the great liberal Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Great people got swept up by war hysteria and racism, and imprisoned innocent American citizens who had done nothing, we had nothing to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My mother was born in Sacramento, my father was a San Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles, and I was born in Los Angeles. And yet, we looked like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor and so we were put into these prison camps with no charges, no charges  an egregious violation of our justice system. Due process, the central pillar of our democracy  our justice system is due process and that pillar was completely ignored. They labeled us enemy aliens. Were Americans. So it was suggested they re-categorize us 'enemy non-aliens.' What does that mean? Non-aliens? That is the word 'citizen' in the negative. They even took the word citizen away from us.

It was a dark time in American history, and here again, today, as we hold elections  there is an echo of that in certain ambitious people. We know who they are. And thats why we did Allegiance because whats really questionable is their allegiance is what America is all about. You dont ban millions and millions and millions of people of a certain faith  the Muslim faith, because a small sliver of a percentage of people who hold that faith are terrorists. I mean we have congress members who are of the Muslim faith. Go to Arlington National Cemetery, where all the people who died heroically for this country are buried, when you walk around there, you see on the headstones, religious symbols of the faith of people that are buried there had, and there are a number that have the Muslim symbols there. Muslims have fought for this country and they have died for this country, and how dare Donald Trump say theyre all terrorists? There are more Muslims than Christians on this planet here, and yet hes going to ban them all. That kind of hysteria in a national election for the presidency of the United States  the greatest nation in the world, is shameful.

Q: Youve spoken before about how difficult it was in the internment camps and also how difficult it was once you left there. Your family really worked hard and struggled upon their release to rebuild. I know it must have been very difficult because a lot of those anti-Japanese attitudes were still present. How long did it take to feel comfortable?

A: I had a really unusual, remarkably unusual father because he, in our family, was the one that suffered the most. He used to say, They took my business. They took our home, they took our freedom. The one thing Im not going to give them is my dignity. I will not grovel before this government. And yet, when I was a teenager and I became very curious about my childhood imprisonment. I peppered my father with questions in after-dinner conversations. He was the one that explained American democracy to me. He said, Our democracy is a peoples democracy and it can be as great as people can be, and it can be greatthe founding fathers who articulated the ideals of this country, All men are created equal endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we are also fallible human beings. Then he told me the story about Earl Warren, how people who have greatness in them, brilliance, leadership ability, also have fallibility, and in the case of Earl Warren, it was ambition. So our democracy is existentially dependent on people who cherish those ideals and actively engage in the process.

One Sunday afternoon, he took me downtown to the Adlai Stevenson for President headquarters and he introduced me to electoral politics. I was a teenager then, 16 or 17, you know? And there I was, working with other passionate idealists who wanted to see Governor Stevenson of Illinois elected President, and he was an inspiring person. I saw what it took to make our democracy work. And from that time on, Ive been an activist, not only I the political arena, but in social justice advocacy. And so, with Allegiance, the musical that we just closed on Broadway, I was able to combine my passion for theatre and musical theatre with my personal belief in what democracy requires to make it true. People engaged. People involved. People volunteering. People taking on assignments. Serving on boards. When the Mayor asked me to serve on the transit district board, I said, Mr. Mayor, - I dont call him Tom, because he was a friend of mine. I said, You know, Im an actor, how are you going to sell me as a board member of this public transit board to the press? He said, I have a way. And when he introduced me at the press conference, he said. Ive seen George Takei take hoards of people on a starship from Alpha City Two to Starbase 10. So theres no reason why he cant take us from downtown L.A. to Van Nuys.

Q: You mentioned your social justice advocacy, and you really do have an influential online profile, do you think your activism and outspokenness on social media have influenced young people to get engaged and get active in these sorts of causes?

A: I think it has. I wouldnt do it if I didnt think I was reaching people. I have 9.5 million friends. Can you imagine 9.5 million friends on Facebook? I get some blow back from people on occasion, and I learn from them, but I like to think that I am communicating with people and getting them to think. And, you know, they share their ideas with me, and some of them are in disagreement. And if theyre well thought out, I listen to them and I learn from them. So its like  social media is like the old public square. Everybody gathers, and we all bring our soap boxes and there are hecklers and so forth, and we have trolls on social media. You learn to deal with them, but also you learn from them as well. It is part of the life process that at one time was on that community level on the town square, but now on literally a global level. I have friends in Prague, the Czech Republic or Melbourne, Australia or Lima, Peru. So this world we live in now is literally awe-inspiring. The word awesome is over used and used without people really knowing the meaning of being awed by something. But our technology has really created an awe-inspiring world around us.

Q: What is there left that you would like to do?

A: Oh my. What is there that I havent done yet? You named one of them, running for President. No, Im 78-years-old. In a month Ill be 79, and so I dont think that qualifies me as a potential candidacy for the Presidency. But theres a lot of life in me yet. My grandmother lived to be 104 and she was a dynamo. She told me her favorite hobby was collecting birthdays. And she said, if that isnt your hobby, you dont have a life. Literally.

And she had a wonderfully optimistic attitude, she had a wonderful sense of humor, and I think thats what contributed to her longevity. She collected 104 of her favorite hobby.

She came from Japan, my grandmother was my mothers mother. They were farmers in the Sacramento delta, but my grandparents went back to Japan shortly after the war.

Q: What did they think of your career, your acting career?

A: You know, when the marquee went up on the Longacre Theatre last year, it went up in September, I think, I really wished that my parents and my grandparents could have seen that with my name above the title on that big marquee. It was a moving moment for me. My grandmother lived to know that I did Star Trek. My grandfather died before that. But my parents did see me, well my father lived to see me on Star Trek. And he was very ill at the time we were filming Star Trek, the motion picture, which came ou tin 1979. My mother passed in 2002, so she saw me in all of the Star Trek movies and the Heroes TV series. So my mother, my 104-year-old grandmothers daughter, saw a good part of my career.

Q: Were they theatrical or artistic, do you think it came from them?

A: No. No they were farmers. On my fathers side, my grandfather was a journalist with the Japanese American paper in San Francisco, but I come from a primarily a medical family. My brother is a surgeon of the gums  a periodontist. I have two cousins who are physicians , one is an ear-nose-throat specialist. I have an uncle who was a general practitioner, and I have grand nieces and nephews who are in medicine. So I am the black sheep of the family. And, Im the only working member  Im the oldest of my siblings  the youngest is my sister, she was a school teacher. But now shes retired. My brother  is retired. Im the oldest, and Im still at it. I love what I do.
Achievers

Barrons magazine included the following local individuals in its Americas Top 1,200 Financial Advisors: State-by-State list: Marc Cobb, Edward Jones; Robert Edmonds, Ameriprise Financial; Erick Ellsweig, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management; and Carter Leinster, Triad Financial Advisors.

***

AdvisoryHQ has named these local businesses to its Top Ten Financial Advisors list in Greensboro and Winston-Salem: Blue Rock Wealth Management, DMJ Wealth Advisors, Morton Wealth Management, SFG, Sheets Smith Wealth Management, Trent Capital Management and Triad Financial Advisors.

***

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Greensboro has announced the following new slate of board members: Chidi Akwari, Patty Caudle, Brooks Bossong, Bob Dischinger, Patsy Isley and Lee Way.

***

Steve Drew, the city of Greensboros water resources director, is set to represent North Carolina as a delegate for the American Water Works Association.

Drew will be one of four N.C. delegates on hand at the associations Water Matters Fly-In on April 13-14 in Washington, sharing the water communitys concerns directly with members of Congress and their respective staffs.

Hosted by the associations Water Utility Council, the annual event brings together more than 100 water utility delegates from across the nation.

***

Daryl Bruner, Greensboro Colleges director of academic accessibility and a part-time instructor of counseling, has published a paper on learning in an academic journal.

The paper, Universal Design for Learning: Academic Access for Diverse Learners, appears in the current issue of the online-only National Association of Disability Practitioners Journal of Inclusive Practice in Further and Higher Education.

The paper has its roots in a presentation Bruner gave at a conference in the United Kingdom last summer. The journal is available online at http://nadp-uk.org/uploads/ JIPFHE/JIPFHE%202016%20IC%20Edition.pdf.

***

Merlyn Griffiths, an associate professor of marketing in the UNC-Greensboro Bryan School of Business and Economics, was invited to present her research on hookah smoking to the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations workshop on waterpipes and waterpipe tobacco at the Center for Tobacco Products.

Griffiths work examines hookah culture and the effect of marketing on consumer consumption of waterpipe smoking. Previous research on the topic has been featured in The Wall Street Journal.

***

Greensboro attorney Janet Ward Black has earned the distinction of being named by U.S. News & World Report to The Best Lawyers in America listing for 10 consecutive years.

The 2016 Best Lawyers list recognizes Black for her expertise in the areas of personal injury litigation and mass tort/class action litigation. In addition to this recognition, Black was selected to the 2016 Super Lawyers list for excellence in practice.

***

The Elon University board of trustees recently elected the following people to the board: Cindy Citrone of Southport, Conn., a pediatric occupational therapist and mother of a Elon student; and Dave King of Chapel Hill, the president and chief executive officer of LabCorp.

***

UNC-Chapel Hill has named the co-chairs of a campuswide fundraising campaign expected to begin publicly in the fall of 2017. The co-chairs will rotate through three groups of three-member teams during the life of the campaign.

John G. Ellison Jr. of Greensboro, the chairman of the Ellison Company, is among the co-chairs assisting with the public launch phase.

Awards

The Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education recently announced that Greensboro Day School has been awarded the designation of a CSEE School of Ethical Excellence.

This designation was determined by a variety of standards, including a clear, comprehensive, well-understood public commitment to its goals; success at implementing these goals; and a path for on-going improvement in fulfilling these goals in a changing environment.

Greensboro Day School is the sixth school in the nation to receive this award.

***

The Broadcast Education Associations Festival of Media Arts awarded the Award of Excellence to Jim Goodman, an assistant professor of media production, and students from the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University.

Their short film, The One Per Cent, was selected for one of the festivals top awards in the category for faculty-student productions.

Goodman will accept the award April 18 during the associations annual convention.

***

Hearst Health, a division of Hearst, and the Jefferson College of Population Health of Thomas Jefferson University, awarded Community Care of North Carolina in Raleigh with the inaugural Hearst Health Prize, a $100,000 award given in recognition of outstanding achievement in managing or improving health.

Community Care of North Carolina, a statewide program, was recognized for its model for managing transitional care for North Carolina Medicaid beneficiaries discharged home after hospitalization.

***

Kisco Senior Living has awarded Greensboro based Heritage Greens sales director Sara French with a Presidents Club Award for Outstanding Achievement in sales, the companys highest national honor.

French joins three other Kisco Senior Living sales directors who each assisted the most families in finding homes, among all other sales directors at 18 other communities across the country.
In celebration of National Womens History Month, Greenwich Preservation Trust takes great pride in honoring Emily Elizabeth Holman, one of the countrys first female architects, and acknowledges her contribution to Greenwichs historic building heritage.

Early in Emily Holmans career more than 115 years ago (and she felt that career deserved a capital C), she described her practical architectural duties to include climbing ladders, walking on beams in unfinished houses and constant supervision of workmen. She also had talent for designing and a capacity for hard work and it would be these traits that would enable her to become a successful architect as well as an author of nine books on lifestyle designs.

In March 1900, Scientific American Building Edition featured a half dozen houses designed by architect E.E. Holman that were in Hillcrest Park and on Long Island Sound in Sound Beach (todays Old Greenwich). Erroneously, the journal referred to the architect as Mr. E. E. Holman. The magazine cover showcased Hillcrest Homestead and more than 10 pages would be devoted to Holmans work. The magazine identified the site, Hillcrest Manor, as an example of how a place ought to be done even when a speculator had an eye to profit. The article described its ideal location (a 15-minute drive to the railroad and within 50 minutes of New York City) and the various use of architectural styles that harmonized with the surroundings. Among the unique designer touches of each house included a Moorish smoking room, a third-floor billiard room, 14 bedrooms and an additional toilet to one of the bathrooms for Stonycrest; six Tiffany-designed windows, a Palm court, two vaulted rooms for securing possessions and systematic filing, a conservatory, a main dining room and a servants dining room, an observation room and shuffleboard room on the third floor for Hillcrest Hall; and four entrances, a view of the Sound, 17 different flights of stairs, 160 windows and gold-plated hardware for Buena Vista.

A few months later, an article appeared in Frank Leslies Popular Monthly, Women as Architects, that correctly identified Mrs. Holman with a design of Buena Vista leading the story. Mrs. Holman was described as having a unique position among architects  having already designed theaters, hotels, stores and suburban residences (in all states except Mississippi). The article continued by saying but the work which Mrs. Holman considers her best is Buena Vista. A striking example of making a house climbs gracefully down-hill.

By 1915, one year after Joseph Sawyer took credit for having created Buena Vista in his book How to Make a Country Place, a feature article on Holman appeared in Philadelphias Evening Ledger stating it to be almost impossible that this modest woman was among the first women architects in America and the only successful practicing woman architect in Philadelphia. The article recapped her career by having begun as clerical worker in the office of an architect and with her natural interest in the work (but no formal education in either engineering or architecture) was soon being consulted on all aspects of design. A few years later, she decided to open her own office. As being one of a handful of female architects, she shortened her name to E.E. Holman to mask her identity. In some cases when her clients discovered that it was a woman they were entrusting to building their home, they withdrew their orders, but in the majority of cases, she was simply asked to produce the work that she did to her clients satisfaction.

Ms. Holman died in 1925. Her obituary called her the first woman architect in the City of Philadelphia and the second woman architect in Pennsylvania. Several of her works have been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places and some of her buildings are still standing in Greenwich.

Anne Young is historical director for the Greenwich Preservation Trust.
Companies want machine-like levels of productivity, because they know that the science of productivity -- the ability to output -- can make a significant difference to the bottom line of any company.

However, there is also an art to productivity -- that is, the ability to figure out how to not only do more but to make more better at the same time. Its also important to remember that even machines break down as parts wear out over time without regular maintenance.

Related: 3 Ways CEOs Can Empower Teams to Embrace Collaboration

The same goes with the talent you have in your workplace. Your employees can be efficient machines when given the right maintenance, the occasional tune-up and some tactics designed to keep fueling their desire to deliver maximum quality output. Since having employees, Ive learned a lot about ways to continue increasing their productivity at work  even achieving greater output of up to 20 percent.

Here are eight tips you can put to work in your business that are proven ways to drive greater productivity in the workplace.

1. Encourage with words.

When you tell someone what a great job they are doing and recognize that they are already working hard, you will get even more out of them. Thats because you make them feel good when you acknowledge their efforts and that, in turn, makes them want to do more so there is an opportunity for future compliments.

I have found that verbal encouragement goes farther than even money in terms of motivation for employees. I try to always have an actual incident or example where this employee has shown. Even when I have talented people who outside of the office on a remote basis, I regularly thank them for their great work and continually cheer them on. They feel good, and so do I, because its positively invigorating for all involved.

2. Reward through healthy competition.

Being highly competitive, Ive found that the normal rewards and incentives were not enough. Instead, I found value in creating healthy competitions among the staff or teams. For certain projects or targets, I have created competitions to see which team or individual can meet the objectives first or achieve the greatest number of criteria. The person or team that does then receives some type of reward, which has been anything from a paid day off to gift cards to lunch out with me.

3. Drive accountability and sense of ownership.

When my staff knows that its on them, and they know there are consequences if they dont get a project done, I find that they pick up the pace more so than if I hadnt driven the accountability point home. The idea here is not to scare them into thinking they will lose their jobs. When delegating, I dont lead by fear. Instead, I use these opportunities as a place to illustrate their ownership in the company and that, if they do well and take responsibility for our results, then there will be rewards for them and for everyone.

This doesn't always mean expecting accountability -- it often means allowing accountability. The drivers want the responsibility and accountability. In doing so, I see much more meticulous attention to even the smallest details related to a project, resulting in fewer mistakes -- and more efficient work.

Related: How Marking Milestones Boosts Employee Productivity

4. Make it fun.

While I do like to work hard, I also like to play hard, so I understand that the rest of the team probably feels similarly. Thats why we have been known to take a break to get out of the office and do a walk or go somewhere to unwind for a bit.

For all of us, this has helped to clear the mind and refocus. The result has been more work completed at a faster, higher quality rate. This also bonds those in the office, and they look out for each other and lift the value of all employees work.

5. Set social media and phone policy.

Ive had to set some guidelines through a formal social media and phone policy to ensure we (including myself!) are not distracted by electronic devices or social channels. Instead, I have designated certain times of the day for these diversions, because I understand that everyone likes to stay in touch with their friends and family as well as maybe even stay up to date on the latest funny pet videos or their Words with Friends games. However, by setting some boundaries on use, Ive regained the staffs attention and channeled that into greater productivity.

6. Challenge.

Theres nothing like giving workers something new to do outside of their comfort zone. It certainly wakes them up as their existing knowledge and skills go to work to figure out how to tackle a new project -- and do it well. Rather than shutting down out of fear, I have found greater enthusiasm from my staff when I throw them a curve ball like learning new software or tool or maybe even handing them a task well outside anything they have ever done for me before. They are nervous but excited, and that translates into greater productivity, especially as their learning curve catches up.

7. Minimize meetings.

I have found myself rolling my eyes at the thought of another meeting. Lets face it, no one really likes them, and most peoples minds are somewhere else in the midst of the meeting. Thats why I keep office meetings and conference calls to a bare minimum. Whether its setting a timer and encouraging staff to keep it as brief as possible or taking the meeting outdoors and on the urban hiking trail near our office or just simply taking care of many meeting-related tasks through online collaboration tools, I have discovered that the time not in a meeting is being spent on many more productive activities.

8. Go for comfort.

Too hot or too cold or too stuffy or drafty, and a person will find themselves easily distracted. Finding that optimum temperature and airflow for the office may sound trivial, but something this simply and easy to fix can make an extraordinary difference.

When my staff is working in a cool (but not too cold!) office, they are more alert and focused on their projects. However, if the temperature gets too hot and there is no airflow, I immediately see the difference in their demeanor, like they all could use a nap -- although the idea of sleep pods for power naps is still on my list of potential productivity strategies.

I have also see an increase in personal power as I have allowed others to be in charge of their own level of comfort. A small space heater here or there or a fan lets the employees know that I understand there are difference in personal comfort -- and I respect that.

Besides these strategies, research has uncovered additional ways to boost productivity by up to 15 percent while also reducing operating costs, including avoiding the open floor plan concept and removing layers of processes and bureaucracy from the daily work day. The available research has also found that killing the nine-to-five concept and letting people work flexible hours as well as offering more remote work time over the stale work day stuck in a cubicle resulted in happier, motivated employees who churned out higher productivity.

Related: Tired of Useless Meetings? 9 Ways to Make Them More Effective. (Infographic)

These tactics and tips primarily require making only a few changes to the structure, organization and culture of your company versus a large investment of time and money, making them even easier to implement and realize an immediate return.

Related:

Fun, Flexibility and Competition Will Put the Pep Back in the Step of Your Staff

CEOs: If You Neglect Yourself, Your People and Your Finances, Your Company Is Doomed

Jordan Zimmerman: 'You Cannot Micromanage Anything and Run a Company This Big'



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
They see what you did here, Starbucks. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Two Starbucks regulars in California claim Americans are getting screwed over by their favorite caffeine provider. In a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday, Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles accuse Starbucks of purposefully underfilling lattes by at least 25 percent  an intentional act of fraud, their suit claims, meant to cut costs by putting less milk into the supposed Tall (12-ounce), Grande (16-ounce), and Venti (20-ounce) sizes. Through this alleged ruse, Starbucks has saved countless millions of dollars in the cost of goods sold and was unjustly enriched by taking payment for more product than it delivers, argues the pair, who say they used to visit Starbucks several times a week.

The duo alleges that this isnt just a couple of baristas being chintzy  they say its a company-wide conspiracy. As proof, they point to a system Starbucks instituted in all its stores for preparing lattes in 2009. At the time, baristas got new milk pitchers with fill lines etched in so that drinks would get the same amount of milk. Unfortunately, these two say, thats the smoking gun they needed. According to Law360:

For instance, in making a grande 16-ounce latte, baristas are required to use 12 ounces of milk, plus two 1-ounce shots of espresso. Therefore, the maximum possible fluid ounce amount of latte a customer could possibly receive is 14 ounces, the pair alleged.



Perhaps most significantly, the pair contend that the cups Starbucks uses for its 12-, 16- and 20-ounce lattes can hold exactly those amounts if they are filled completely to the top brim. But as a rule, Starbucks employees are instructed to leave a quarter-inch of space from the top of the cup. From a logical standpoint, that means that no cup Starbucks uses could possibly contain the alleged serving size, and every drink is filled less than the amount advertised, the consumers said.

Neither can the foam count toward a drinks volume because, the lawsuit says, the food science community measures foam by mass, not volume, though right now they argue Starbucks does. Obviously this reasoning could hit some snags when other drinks are factored in  a Grande cappuccino will by definition have less volume than a Grande latte, and in an attempt to bite into the third-wave trend, the coffee giants espresso drink menu lately has exploded with all manner of milk-to-foam variations.

A Starbucks rep responded that the suit has no merit because their handcrafted beverages are inherently going to vary in size, and that they inform customers of the likelihood of variations. A vague-sounding dismissal for now, but the coffee giant certainly isnt planning to roll over and rename the Venti size whatever the Italian word is for 18.

[Law360]
LG has announced that its newest flagship - the G5 - will go on sale globally on March 31. The South Korean company said that the modular phone will come with freebies (ranging from its camera module to a battery pack worth over $100) that will vary depending on the country.

Prices of a couple of G5's friends (accessories) have also been revealed: the Cam Plus camera grip will carry a price tag of around $85, while the audio module (Bang & Olufsen DAC) will set you back around $160.

Over in the US, Best Buy has started accepting pre-orders for the AT&T and Sprint variants - Verizon variant will be up for pre-order starting March 24.

The retailer is offering $100 savings on the device with purchase and activation of a 2-year contract with Sprint. Alternatively, buyers will get a $100 Best Buy gift card with purchase and activation of monthly installment plan - this promo is also available for the AT&T variant.

In addition, all purchases will come with a free bundle (worth $90) that includes a replacement battery, charging cradle, and USB-C to micro-USB adapter.

Source | Via 1 2




Haiti - Hinche : The Ministry of Interior made a provisional assessment of the fire





In a note the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Communities informs the public that a major fire broke out Thursday around 2:00 in the afternoon at a gas station near the bridge Vincent on the National #1, in Hinche in the Central Department.



The provisional toll is 31 people burned to varying degrees including 6 seriously and 7 people lost their lives in the flames.



Significant material damage is also be deplored, initial assessments indicate at least a half dozen homes damaged near the gas station, several vehicles burned including a tank truck and more than twenty motorcycles.



Local structures of the Civil Protection Directorate were immediately dispatched on site to rescue the victims and assist law enforcement agencies, the Red Cross and health facilities. The Delegate of the Centre Georges Garnier, went to the scene to make a first assessment of the situation.



Hospital St. Therese of Hinche assured a first support for victims and the most serious cases were transferred to hospital centers in the periphery, especially in Mirebalais and to the capital.



A contingent of the Minustah also helped to master the main source of the fire with tanker trucks and prevented the fire take greater proportions.



The causes of the incident are not yet known precisely.



Ariel Henry, the outgoing Minister of Interior and Territorial Communities, "presents its sympathies to the relatives and friends of the victims, sharing the pain of hinchois and all those affected by this sad event and ensure that the efforts will not be spared to provide assistance to the population in shock after the terrible fire."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16899-haiti-flash-important-fire-at-a-gas-station-heavy-toll.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diplomacy : The political impasse in Haiti concern to the UN Security Council





Thursday, Sandra Honore, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti, came to UN headquarters in New York to report on the situation of the country to the Security Council affirmed "It is important that Haiti reach to conclude the electoral process begun in 2015 to have an elected President of the Republic and have a government installed by the Haitian Constitution, which will help create the framework for the socioeconomic development of the country."



To recall, following the political impasse late 2015 and early 2016, on February 5, 2016 Haitian political actors have reached an agreement which provides that the second round of the presidential election, by-elections and municipal elections started in 2015, will take place on 24 April [installation of the new President elected May 14, 2016] https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16533-haiti-politic-the-details-of-the-agreement-from-a-to-z.html



Sandra Honore hoped that all stakeholders, authorities, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), political parties and civil society in general, work for the presidential, legislative and municipal elections take place as planned "The Haitians with whom I have had the opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions, and all have all expressed a desire to see the country move forward, to see the growth at all levels and especially to live in stability," affirmed the special Representative adding "they are eager to achieve a regular and normal functioning, they desire to see opportunities for their children and see the socio-economic development forward."



The Special Representative said that despite the political deadlock, the United Nations Mission for the country (MINUSTAH) work to do everything possible to give the Haitian authorities and the Haitian people the opportunity to fully take charge of its destiny and all that should be done for the development of the country.



Members of the Security Council expressed their concern at the political deadlock experiencing by Haiti following the presentation of the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN for Haiti.



The Council hoped that all actors of Haiti overcome their divisions to reach solve the issues they are currently facing, in order to reach a situation of constitutional continuity and return to a normal and regular order, which will enable the socio-economic development ou country.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diplomacy : The Core Group concerned about the delays in the implementation of the Agreement





Sandra Honore, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the other members of the international community in Haiti represented in the "Core Group" (the Ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, United States of America, the European Union and the Special Representative of the Organization of American States) "note, with grave concern, delays in the implementation of the 5 February Agreement which provides a roadmap for the return to full Constitutional order within agreed upon timelines. The 'Core Group' strongly urges the Parliament to play its role in the implementation of the 5 February Agreement https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16533-haiti-politic-the-details-of-the-agreement-from-a-to-z.html by voting on the Prime Minister's government policy without delay in order to facilitate the completion of the electoral process.



Stressing the critical importance of a prompt return to full Constitutional order, through the conclusion of the 2015 electoral process as per the 5 February Agreement, the 'Core Group' calls on all actors to spare no effort to ensure the implementation of the Agreement, in the interest of the Haitian people and their right to choose their leaders and representatives through elections."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16905-haiti-diplomacy-china-wants-the-respect-of-the-election-date.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16905-haiti-diplomacy-china-wants-the-respect-of-the-election-date.html



HL/ HaitiLibre
























Haiti - Culture : 7th edition of the Intercultural Festival of Tales Kont Anba tonel





The Association Foudize Theatre [founded in 2001], proposes from 20 to 26 March 2016 the 7th edition of Kont Anba tonel, the Intercultural Festival of Tales, around the theme "Tale to write my city."



Each year the festival hosts several personalities Haitian and foreign of tale that allow the public to discover or rediscover the stories of their childhood. Among these personalities, we must mention the name of Mimi Barthelemy, a major voice of Francophone tale, the great Haitian storyteller Paula Clermont Pean, Benjamin Moise di Benzo and many others...



The Intercultural Festival of Tales is not just the performances of storytellers. It is also a mix of tale and traditional music. It also proposes talks with international artists, talks with Haitian intellectuals and a tale evening that brings together professional storytellers and lovers but also a show of rara, a child space Tim-Tim Timoun, a craft fair, an exhibition of story books, film screenings, Bar storytelling, Storytelling walk, slam evening... and a closing concert to the delight of festival goers.



Download the full program (PDF) : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/kon-anba-tonel-7.pdf



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Social : The President of the Republic a.i., dismayed by the drama of Hinche





Following the fire of a gas station Thursday in Hinche https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16900-haiti-hinche-the-ministry-of-interior-made-a-provisional-assessment-of-the-fire.html , President a.i. Jocelerme Privert, who said he was "dismayed by this tragedy" presents "his sympathies to the Haitian people, especially the families and friends affected by the tragedy." He also commends the dedication and courage of the local population which, despite its limited resources, has given full support to the victims of this terrible fire to avoid the worst.



The First Lady Ginette Michaud Privert feels deeply shocked by the accident occurred in Hinche yesterday and announced that a substantial aid was sent urgently to the population hit hard "Dokte Ginette Michaud Privert mande tout moun mobilize aksyon yo pou pote sekou a moun Ench yo."



Moreover, a medical convoy of the First Lady is left on the morning of Friday, to assist medical staff already on site to St. Therese Hospital of Hinche to better meet the needs of victims.



The President a.i. invites the police and judicial authorities to shed light on the fire to clarify the circumstances of this tragedy.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Already "gabegies" within the Privert administration ?

The Senator Onondieu Louis member of G9 accuses President a.i. Privert for having authorized the disbursement of tens of millions of gourdes for the construction of offices for senators in their department. He denounced the "gabegies" within the administration of Jocelerme Privert, who has not even functioning government. He said the President has frozen the accounts of the various ministries but authorized disbursement of funds outside the established standards, including to the Central Bank and the National Bank of Credit, banking institutions belonging to the Haitian State.



"The coming weeks will be decisive," dixit Sandra Honore

Thursday, Sandra Honore, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti, came to UN headquarters in New York to report to the Security Council of the situation in the country declared "The next few weeks will be decisive for the short and mid-term prospects for Haitis democratic consolidation.



Haiti needs stable institutions and a capable governance system to tackle the challenges which impact on the daily life of millions of citizens and implement long-term reforms."



"A strong spirit of compromise among Haitian stakeholders will be key to find a way back to full Constitutional order," furthermore, she called all international partners of Haiti "to continue to lend their invaluable support to Haiti's political process," and all actors "to ensure the completion of the democratic process in a climate of serenity and without further delays."



Canadian pressure to the Senate...

Thursday in Parliament, Paula Caldwell St-Onge, Ambassador of Canada accredited to Haiti, met a group of senators, discussions were carried around the country's political situation. She took the opportunity to urge the signatories to the agreement of February 5 to meet their commitments.



Session of ratification, nothing is played

This Friday, March 18, is expected to hold the ratification meeting of the general policy statement of the Prime Minister named Fritz-Alphonse Jean. However, nothing is played to the Chamber of Deputies, the members of the majority group (G48) say they remain committed to give a vote of no confidence to this general policy. While others predict that the PM will obtain the required 60 votes in the lower house.



Fanmi Lavalas aligns nationally

Thursday, Fanmi Lavalas Executive Committee met with representatives of the ten departments to harmonize the organization and share the position of Fanmi Lavalas face the country's political situation.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2016/03/17 | Source

The heartwarming 'Descendants of the Sun' couple Jin Goo and Kim Ji-won had a couple pictorial taken.

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Jin Goo and Kim Ji-won had an interview with Grazia and also had a pictorial taken for the magazine.

Ji Goo, who has to act the dilemma that makes him always to be separated from a woman he loves, answered the question about his acting with the deep intense eyes. He said, "In the drama, there are not many scenes where I can say warms words to Yoon Myeong-joo or dote her. So I wanted to deliver my inner emotions (in the way I show through my eyes)".

Kim Ji-won said she did not feel uncomfortable acting the military doctor role. Because her father was very strict, she was familiar with the highest honorific speech ending in da, na, kka, since she was little. She also said, "The military uniforms were so comfortable, so I went back home in the uniforms directly from the filming set. My parents told me their daughter enlisted".

More of Jin Goo and Kim Ji-won's pictorial can be seen on Grazia April issue published on March 20th.
Published on 2016/03/18 | Source

The popularity of KBS' new series "Descendants of the Sun" keeps growing in Korea and beyond, not least thanks to the male lead played by Song Joong-ki.

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Viewer ratings have been nearly 30 percent here, and in China episodes have been watched 2.5 billion times on a streaming site.

Co-star Song Hye-kyo paid tribute to Song Joong-ki at a media event Wednesday. "I can't imagine who else could play this role so well", she said.

But Song Joong-ki said he does not feel too much heat. "I don't feel the effect of popularity because I'm watching the episodes as an ordinary viewer", he said. Breaking with usual practice, the whole series was shot before the first episode aired, so the actors never knew that they had a hit on their hands.

What makes his part so special? Most male leads in Korean soaps are either rich or, if they are poor, display a rather run-of-the-mill boyish charm. But Song plays a mature professional soldier.

"Soldiers are attractive to viewers in a world of natural disasters and terrorism", says psychologist Kim Byung-hoo. "A lot of middle-aged women have seen their men get older and lose their sparkle, so they like to fantasize about a strong capable man coming to the rescue".

Among women in their 40s, a whopping one-third are watching the series.

The cast of KBS' series "Descendants of the Sun" pose for a photo ahead of a media event in Seoul on Wednesday. From left, Song Joong-ki, Song Hye-kyo, Kim Ji-won and Jin Goo. /Yonhap

But Song Joong-ki would be a draw whatever part he plays.

"Women in Korea, China and Japan prefer men who have both masculinity and femininity rather than patriarchal men who have money, status, and power", says psychologist Choi Sung-ae. "Song Joong-ki epitomizes this ideal".

Unlike most young actors who had years of training in talent factories before they debut, Song had a life before showbusiness and only became an actor while he was a student in business administration at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul.

He was popular for his feminine, pretty looks in the early stage of his career -- "Sungkyunkwan Scandal" in 2010 and "A Werewolf Boy" in 2012. But when he got discharged from military service last year, he came back more masculine.

"I don't think you can really plan to have a certain image as an actor at certain time, like companies set quarterly targets", he said.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is continuing its crack down on under-payment in supply chains and sub-contracting arrangements.



Recent high profile Coles trolley collector underpayment cases have shown that it is imperative for big business to ensure compliance through the entire supply chain.



Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says worker underpayments can happen for reasons ranging from innocent mistakes to deliberate exploitation.



Disturbingly, it has happened when big business either turns a blind eye to, or is willing to hide behind, complex supply chains and sub-contracting arrangements which rely on exploitation of vulnerable workers to make a profit, James says.



She highlights the recent example of supermarket giant Coles, which was the subject of legal action after the employment watchdog alleged it was aware of underpayments and exploitation among sub-contracted supermarket trolley collectors.



The employment watchdog alleged Coles was aware the trolley collectors were not being paid correct minimum wages and conditions and the company failed to ensure its sub-contractors were complying with workplace laws.



In the Adelaide case, Coles Supermarkets Australia had typically used the supply chain arrangements as an out clause for its requirement to comply with the Fair Work Act  often stating it wasnt the direct employer, so the collectors were not its responsibility, James says.



It was that kind of attitude that created the shocking circumstances where a young Adelaide western suburbs trolley collector could be short-changed almost $90,000 in 18 months for his work in this back-breaking job.



However, in October 2014, Coles stepped up to publicly admit that it had an ethical and moral responsibility for the conduct of all persons in its business.



As part of its enforceable undertaking with the employment watchdog, Coles created a $500,000 fund to back-pay collectors of its supermarket trolleys, in a move James says deserves credit.



All levels in the supply chain have now been penalised or had an enforcement outcome applied against it and a first-year report by Coles on how it is meeting its Enforceable Undertaking with us shows strong improvement in compliance, James says.



Coles is now in-sourcing its trolley collectors and deserves credit for cleaning up its act and working with the Fair Work Ombudsman to put a stop to the non-compliance in the industry.



She says there is a clear message to other sectors operating with supply chain and sub-contractor arrangements that they can expect to be held accountable if any part of their labour networks contravene workplace laws.



We have, and will always, vigorously pursue the direct employer when we find cases of non-compliance. It is the employer first and foremost who is responsible for paying the correct entitlements, James says.



If we find a business underpaying workers and that business is part of a franchise or supply chain, we will look up to the business at the top, the franchisor, principal or purchaser; because they are the price-makers and they control the settings.




By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected]

Parents, do you have children that are interested in joining the pageant world? If so, heres your chance to get them started.

The Boone Mall will host an Easter Parade Pageant on the Saturday before Easter, March 26, for participants ranging in age from birth to 19. This event will be one of many official preliminary pageants across the state that will lead up to the 30th annual Little Miss and Teen Miss North Carolina state pageants in August.

Contestants will parade through the malls center court in their best Easter Sunday outfits. The competition will feature a panel of judges, as well as crowns, banners and trophies, and each participant will take something home.

Little Miss and Teen Miss North Carolina Director Carolyn Marley, a resident of the High Country, looks forward to hosting a preliminary pageant event in her own hometown.

This is just a fun event designed to let the kids showcase their Easter outfits, she said. If they have a pageant dress they want to wear it will certainly be okay, but were really looking for what they will wear to church on Sunday morning.

Because this is a preliminary event, Marley said its a great opportunity for children and students in the High Country to get involved in pageantry.

Its not a full-fledged pageant event, so it would give parents an opportunity to put their children on stage in front of a panel of judges and an audience to see if its something they like or dont like, she said. There are some beautiful, talented young ladies in Watauga County and in the Boone area that should really be competing at state.

Marley noted that pageantry is a great way for participants to build self-esteem, to learn to carry themselves with poise, to develop interview skills that will come in handy for jobs and college admissions and to earn money for higher education.

I hear from the contestants and the parents all of the time that pageants have helped them so much, said Marley. We give over $12,000 in cash scholarships at our state pageants, so its a wonderful thing for local students to do.

Registration will begin at 10 a.m. in the mall on March 26 and the pageant will follow at 11 a.m.

For more information on registration fees or to sign a participant up, call Marley at 828-295-3880 or reach her by email at [email protected]

To learn more about the upcoming state pageants, check out littlemissnc.com.

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(Bloomberg)Douglas Greenig, the former chief risk officer at Man Group Plcs AHL unit, said he raised about $500 million from Brummer & Partners this month, more than doubling the assets managed by the hedge fund he started last year. The allocation boosts Greenigs Florin Court Capitals assets to about $900 million, making it one of the largest hedge-fund startups in the past year. London-based Florins macro fund, which uses mathematical models to bet across asset classes, gained 5.7 percent in the first two months of the year, Greenig said in an interview. The HFRI Macro (Total) Index increased by 2.6 percent during the period.

To read this article:
The Service Union United (PAM) is willing to sit down with employers' organisations to discuss the so-called competitiveness pact despite the fact that its executive board has yet to approve the preliminary outlines of the pact, its chairperson, Ann Selin, stated to members of the media yesterday afternoon.

PAM, she revealed, has set strict boundary conditions for its participation in the negotiations. She also said the union did not want to become an obstacle to commencing the negotiations because so many trade unions have expressed their willingness to sit down at the negotiating table.

The Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) has said the negotiations cannot continue without the participation of PAM.

If it's fine by EK, we can start the union-specific negotiations, said Selin. We had to choose between two bad alternatives.

Selin revealed that one of the conditions set by PAM is that the competitiveness pact must not serve as a pretext for wage reductions. The main concern of the 230,000-member union, however, is securing the position of part-time employees.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Petteri Paalasmaa  Uusi Suomi

Source: Uusi Suomi
Jan Vapaavuori (NCP), a Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), has shot down rumours that he is about to take on Alexander Stubb in the race to the helm of the National Coalition Party.

I'm not about to challenge anyone, Vapaavuori said at the launch event of his book, Puoliholtiton Suomi, on Thursday. Everything can change, but it's very unlikely in this case.
'Dirty Dancing' remake to spend $16 million here

Abigail Breslin will star as Baby in a remake of 'Dirty Dancing' to be filmed in and around Hendersonville this spring.

The production team for a television remake of Dirty Dancing will bring up to 1,225 temporary jobs to the Hendersonville area and spend $16 million over the next 45 days, a state Commerce Department spokeswoman confirmed.

Industry recruiters scored a coup when they wrested the production headquarters from Asheville. The Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development and the Tourism Development Authority announced on Friday that the production headquarters would be in Hendersonville and not Asheville, which producers had originally favored.

The remake will be a three-hour TV movie based on the 1987 hit that was filmed in part at the 1950s vintage resort properties of Lake Lure. Set production, wardrobe, props and transportation will be based in Hendersonville while filming takes place across Western North Carolina in April and May. The expected air date is in the fall on ABC.

An estimated 1,225 jobs including 900 extras, 30 cast members and 225 crew positions will support the project. The movie will star Abigail Breslin, Debra Messing, Sarah Hyland, Beau Casper Smart and Billy Dee Williams.

The production company has not finished scouting locations to shoot, said Andrew Tate, president of the Partnership for Economic Development. High Hampton Inn & Country Club in Cashiers has confirmed that the movie will shoot on its campus, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported.

The production received a state Commerce Department incentives grant of $4 million and is projectd to spend $16 million in the state, said Kim Genardo, director of strategic and economic development communications for the Department of Commerce.



Dispute over rooms

One hotel company is asking questions about how the production company books rooms.

Kathy Kanupp, a manager of five motels in Hendersonville and a member of the Tourism Development Authority, complained that the production team had sent an email Friday afternoon that she said backed out of a request made weeks ago to book $100,000 worth of motel rooms over the next six weeks.

We canceled two group tours that were coming in to Hendersonville to accommodate them, Kanupp told the TDA Tuesday afternoon during its regular monthly meeting. I had turned away over $50,000 in revenue business and sent it to other motels because we were booked on this and we were told we needed to guarantee these rooms. On Friday evening we get an email that started out, After speaking with Beth Carden and the Travel and Tourism Board, we can go ahead and cancel those rooms.

Carden, executive director of the TDA, and Tate, who was at the meeting to talk about the Dirty Dancing production, said they had done no negotiation on room pricing and knew nothing about the production companys plans for accommodations.

Theres lots of decisions they havent made  everything from where theyll film to who theyll hire, to where people will stay, Tate said. When Beth and I met, we had a very clean focus and it was on how we connect them to the community, with everything from restaurants, to extras, to dancers. There was a long list of things we discussed. One of those was hotel rooms. They had pages and pages of hotels and rates. They hadnt booked any rooms anywhere.

When Carden described the discussion as a communication breakdown, Kanupp agreed that the TDA and Partnership for Economic Development needed to coordinate more closely on their efforts.

This is not the right way to do it, Tate said, charging that Kanupp was publicly flogging the TDA over an issue that was irrelevant to the recruitment of industry and tourism spending.

How to apply



Hendersonville area residents may take part in the production by working as crew members and as extras and dancers for onscreen roles or by providing period vehicles from the 1950s, '60s and early '70s.

Anyone with film industry experience as crew, production assistant, props or set dressing is encouraged to email a resume to dirtydancingmovie2016@gmail.com. Those interested in applying as an extra are encouraged to send an email that includes two photos (close up and full length), name, age, ethnicity, cell phone number, height, weight, clothing sizes, city and state of residence, and a list of any tattoos or piercings that can be seen in summer attire to ddmoviecasting@gmail.com. Please include in the subject line indication of age, ethnicity, gender and city and state of residence. Dancers should send the same information as well as dance experience and styles to ddmoviedancers@gmail.com.

To submit a period vehicle for use in the film, email a current photo, photo of the owner, year, make, model, a list of dents and damage, owners name, phone number, city and state of residence, and vehicle location to ddmoviecars@gmail.com.
A woman who jumped from an upstairs window of a pub to escape a fire in a laneway below needed medical treatment for her injuries.

The blaze broke out in a passageway beside Nealon's pub on Church Street, Skerries, at about 1.30am yesterday.

It is believed to have started in a bin below where Angela Nealon was, and she quickly jumped from the window to escape the danger.

Neighbours said she had gone to a clinic for treatment but was not badly injured.

"It was absolutely terrible," said neighbour and eyewitness Nuala Hand.

Shocking

"I was in bed asleep and the next thing I heard banging on the window and people shouting to get out.

"The flames were pouring out the gates and the smoke and the smell were shocking.

"Everybody had to get out of their houses and cross the road and the fire engines came then."

Neighbours were yesterday rallying around to help clean up the mess and the smoke damage to adjoining properties.

Four units of the fire brigade fought the blaze which at one stage threatened a gas line.

Nealon's is one of the most popular pubs in Skerries, and the owners hope to re-open as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, three units of Dublin Fire Brigade were called to put out a dishwasher fire in Beaumont.

The incident, on Wednesday morning, resulted from an electrical fault.

Three units of the brigade attended the scene shortly after 11am.

A spokesman confirmed that everyone in the house was accounted for during the incident.

"Units from North Strand, Kilbarrack and Finglas attended the fire, as well as our Breathing Apparatus team to gain access to the kitchen," he said.

The dishwasher was placed on the house's driveway after the flames were put out and was photographed.

Dublin Fire Brigade has issued safety advice to dishwasher-users, saying such fires are generally the result of a faulty appliance and not the owner's fault.

"Remember, closing a door on a fire starves it of oxygen and prevents smoke from damaging the rest of the house," a spokesman said.

The brigade also recommended to opt for a longer-running, environmentally-friendly programme on the washer.
The Humane Society has pets who need a home. Will you open yours?
What you need to know about Powerball and the $580 million jackpot
(Jewniverse via JTA)-"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall," Bob Dylan sang in his 1964 anthem "The Times They Are a-Changin'." Dylan was excoriating Washington decision-makers for dragging their heels on passing the Civil Rights Act. But his lyrics have since become de rigueur for judges explaining legal decisions, much the way rabbis cite the Oral Torah, aka the Mishnah and Gemara, to justify their positions.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed the majority decision in a 2010 Supreme Court case involving sexually explicit text messages because technology was evolving so fast.

"The-times-they-are-a-changin' is a feeble excuse for disregard of duty," he wrote.

In a 2008 Supreme Court case involving collection agencies for pay-phone companies, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the companies lacked a direct personal stake in the litigation.

"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose," Roberts wrote, paraphrasing Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."

But the most cited Dylan lyric, according to law professor Alex Long, comes from "Subterranean Homesick Blues." When a lawyer calls up an expert to make an obvious point, judges will remind the court that "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Avishay Artsy is a news reporter and producer at the Southern California public radio station KCRW.
Hundreds of Orlando college students, faculty, staff and community members will gather together for a celebration of Jewish unity at the fourth annual Mega Shabbat on the UCF campus.

The traditional Shabbat Dinner will be held in the Pegasus Ballroom in the Student Union on April 1, beginning at 6:30 p.m. with appetizers. Women will light the Shabbat candles at 7:15 p.m., and the Shabbat dinner will be served at 7:30 p.m.

Shabbat 1000 is a project developed by the Chabad on Campus National Foundation. Leaders of Chabad on Campus observed that while many U.S. campuses have active Jewish student organizations, the majority of Jewish college students do not participate in Jewish life on their respective campuses. The goal of the Shabbat 1000 program is to create an annual event that is able to attract the interest of the entire Jewish student body. The program was first held at SUNY Binghamton, and has since been held at Harvard, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Southern California, Tulane and many other universities.

"The event has really caught the imagination of the student population here in Orlando," said Rabbi Chaim Lipskier, director of Chabad at UCF. "We have over 50 students working on making this program a success. I really hope that the faculty, alumni and greater Orlando Jewish Community will be able to participate as well, helping to create a greater sense of Jewish community."

"To see hundreds of Jewish students from all walks of life come to spend Shabbat together is very inspiring and renews your faith in the future of the Jewish people! The only way to experience Shabbat 1000 is to be there," said Rivkie Lipskier, program director of Chabad at UCF

Shabbat 770, which took place in this month, with Dr. Pizam, dean of the Rosen School of Hospitality, addressing the crowd.

"Each year Chabad at UCF hosts an incredible mega Shabbat for the entire campus community! With this year's theme of unity, it is going to the biggest and most exciting one yet," said Avi Yashar, president of the Chabad Jewish Student Group

Ari Hadar, chair of Shabbat 1000 said, "Shabbat 1000 is Chabad at UCF's biggest event of the year, the one that students look forward too. Shabbat 1000 brings the UCF Jewish Community together epitomizing Chabad at UCF's effort in creating one big family."

Shabbat 1000 is co-sponsored by Student Government Association, Judaic Studies, UCF Hillel, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Knight-Thon, Knights for Israel and CAMERA.

This event is open to the entire UCF community. For more information or to reserve a seat, please rsvp at http://www.jewishucf.com/shabbat1000

For more information please contact Rabbi Chaim Lipskier at rabbi@jewishucf.com, or 407-310-8876.
(JTA)-A few years ago, Rachel Bloom was best known as the creator of laugh-out-loud YouTube videos like "You Can Touch My Boobies" and "Historically Accurate Disney Princess Song."

Now she is a Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award winner for her portrayal of Rebecca Bunch on "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," a musical comedy series she co-created with Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter of "The Devil Wears Prada" and "27 Dresses."

The show-about a successful but miserable New York lawyer who decides to follow her camp ex-boyfriend, Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), to suburban West Covina, California-is hilarious, zany and addresses Jewish identity in myriad ways.

And it also nearly didn't happen. "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was developed for Showtime, but the cable network declined to move forward. In her jubilant Golden Globe acceptance speech, Bloom recounts how the show was unsuccessfully shopped around-receiving six rejections in a single day-until the CW picked it up.

Last week's episode, the 13th of 18 in the first season, was particularly memorable: Rebecca dukes it out in an epic "JAP battle" with her childhood rival Audra Levine (Rachel Grate) that included such inspired lines as "You're trippin' like Birthright" and "Sheket bevaka shut the f--- up."

JTA spoke to Bloom about that memorable song, becoming a critical darling, Jewish identity and more.

JTA: Every episode of the show has been great, but this week's was one of the best so far. Can you talk about how "JAP Rap Battle" came about?

Bloom: All of the writers had been talking about what's going to happen when Audra Levine and Rebecca meet. We knew we wanted it to be some sort of rap battle because we're all really big fans of "Hamilton." And then, of course, "JAP Battle" is the natural title for that.

Was there any concern from anyone at the network that some people wouldn't get it?

Not at all. They always loved it. It's not the most relatable song, although you'd be surprised. I've gotten some tweets from people who are like, "I'm not Jewish, I live in the Midwest and I love this song." I think at this point, our show lives in specificity-getting specific with different cultures and different types of people-so it just fits into that mold.

Usually when you see Jewish characters on television, it's not really a part of their identity. But Rebecca's entire sensibility is Jewish. Was that important to you to portray from the beginning?

It was always important to us. I think that when you get specific with cultures-especially an East Coast Jewish girl like Rebecca who was raised to succeed and went to Harvard and Yale-cultural identity is inherent in that.

Jews talk about being Jewish a lot. They're very aware of their Jewish identity, so in getting specific with the character, it was natural to make Rebecca own that Jewishness. It also says something to my sense of humor and Aline's. We definitely like Jewish humor.

What was your own Jewish upbringing like?

I went to Hebrew school until around age 9 and then my parents let me quit to do more theater, so I was actually never bat mitzvahed. Both of my parents are Jewish. I was raised pretty secular, but I always say, "We didn't have Passover seders, but I know every single celebrity who's ever said anything anti-Semitic."

You go to my parents' house and it's just filled with books about Judaism and the Holocaust. It was a part of my identity and very divorced from the religious and somewhat even the traditional cultural aspects of it. And then I went to school in New York. I'd always felt like a neurotic Jewish person growing up in California, and New York really brought out in a great way those parts of me.

My husband was raised in a Conservative family and his father's Israeli, so Judaism has come even more to the forefront of my mind because of him and his upbringing.

You said during interviews after the Golden Globes that you were planning a trip to Israel. Did you go on that trip or is that something you're still planning?

We're actually going next week for 10 days. And someone from the Ministry of Tourism is setting stuff up, although we're still looking for leads on free hotels and stuff if anyone wants to hook us up.

Is that going to be your first time there?

Yeah. I've never been.

You were talking earlier about how you always felt like a New York Jew, so now that you're back in California, do you feel like you fit in there?

So many of my friends out here now are also East Coast transplants, so I don't feel like the most neurotic one anymore.

Growing up, I was not the most happy person, and now I'm much more content with who I am. I like Los Angeles a lot and I feel much more comfortable and at home here. And maybe it's because I'm in the city and I'm in show business, but I actually like what the atmosphere does to my personality. In some ways, New York feeds into some of my worst tendencies, like staying up late, ordering in takeout, bad self-discipline, being easily distracted. Here I'm a little bit more focused.

The show has been a critical success from the beginning, but it's struggled to find its audience. Did that put more pressure on you to win awards?

Yes. The stakes are very high now every time we're up for an award. We have survived based on critical acclaim. All I can do is make the best show I want [to make], be on social media, engage with the people who want to engage, but at a certain point, I personally cannot reach the millions of people who aren't watching this show and missing out. So all I can do is continue to be good and everything else is out of my hands.

I think that's why the Golden Globe and the Critics' Choice Award were so important, because it was formal recognition that something we were doing was good. It gives us a legitimacy that we kind of always knew we had, but respected organizations officially gave us.
WASHINGTON, D.C.Deeply concerned about the rising incitement against Jews world wide, Bnai Brith International has issued the following statement:

Bnai Brith International is outraged over the anti-Semitic attack in Uruguay on 54-year-old David Fremd, an outstanding leader in the Jewish community. Fremd was stabbed more than 10 times and died in Paysandu, Uruguay. One of Fremds sons was also stabbed; his injuries are not life-threatening.

The assailant, who has been arrested, reportedly shouted Allahu Akbar just prior to the attack. According to Israelite Central Committee President Sergio Gorzy, the attacker stated during his police interrogation that he was targeting Jews.

We are very concerned about the increasing incitement to anti-Semitic attacks around the world. Jews are being targeted where they pray, where they go to school, where they shop and where they walk.

Bnai Brith calls on our world leaders to condemn these horrific attacks and to recognize and condemn incitement against Jews and Israel.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Fremd family.

Bnai Brith International has advocated for global Jewry and championed the cause of human rights since 1843. Bnai Brith is recognized as a vital voice in promoting Jewish unity and continuity, a staunch defender of the State of Israel, a tireless advocate on behalf of senior citizens and a leader in disaster relief. With a presence around the world, we are the Global Voice of the Jewish Community. Visit bnaibrith.org.
PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA)-Only after Yonatan Azriaev grabbed the terrorist's arms and threw him against a wall of soft drinks did he think he was about to die.

Azriaev, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect, had been handing out religious pamphlets in the open-air market here when he stepped inside a shop at around 4 p.m. Tuesday hoping to give one to the cashier. Then he felt sharp blows to his back and shoulders.

Feeling like he was punched, Azriaev said he figured he was being attacked by someone who hated religious people. But then the shop owner started yelling, "It's a terrorist! It's a terrorist!"

Realizing he had been stabbed, Azriaev said he followed his instincts. He swiveled around, grabbed the attacker by the arms, swung him in a circle-"like you would with a kid," he explains-and threw him against the wall. The attacker fell to the floor and Azriaev realized he was bleeding from the neck.

"I thought that was it, I wouldn't live," Azriaev told JTA in a bedside interview Thursday from Rabin Medical Center here, where he is recovering from his injuries. "I saw he was fighting with someone else. When I saw that, I said, 'I won't live.' So, I said, he shouldn't kill more people."

After slamming the attacker against the wall, Azriaev's memory went blank and he doesn't remember what happened next. Some of the details remain unclear, but the story that has emerged sounds like something from an action movie.

Azriaev, still bleeding from his wound, pulled the knife from his own neck and stabbed his attacker, who died a few minutes later. According to one report, Azriaev initially fled the store before returning to confront the attacker, but Israeli police were unable to confirm that, telling JTA only that some part of the incident occurred inside the shop and some part outside.

The next thing Azriaev remembers is leaving the store and paramedics rushing to help him. He was taken to the hospital and is due to be released Thursday.

Upon returning home, Azriaev said he plans to resume his mission in life: distributing the pamphlets.

"I thought, if there was one thing that could save me, it would just be that I would keep handing out these pamphlets," he said. "That's why God would save me."

A burly man with a calm face engulfed by a bushy black-and-white beard, Azriaev, 35, has spent the past 16 years studying religious books. He lives with his wife and five children in Yavniel, a 4,000-person agricultural village near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. He served in a non-combat position in the Israeli army. He doesn't exercise.

Azriaev joined the Breslov sect at 19 after reading one of its pamphlets. Today he spends his mornings studying Torah and afternoons traveling around Israel distributing the glossy, palm-sized booklets with Hasidic texts to passersby. On Tuesday, he was distributing one titled "You will succeed."

Azriaev's story was one of the few silver linings in a day marred by tragedy. Two stabbing attacks and one shooting in three Israeli cities left 11 injured and one American tourist, Taylor Force, dead.

Every day, when he leaves home and when he returns, Azriaev thanks God for keeping him healthy and whole. He doesn't take credit for saving lives on Tuesday-not even his own. He still doesn't know exactly how he did it but says God, not him, deserves praise.

"I thank God for the miracle he did for me," Azriaev said. "As much as someone takes care of himself, it's not enough. What can save us is just a short prayer to God."
The Jewish Academy of Orlando is launching a special fundraising opportunity to strengthen its school and mission of providing the community with a program of academic excellence while at the same time instilling a sense of Jewish pride in its students. During the Harriett Lake/Weiner Family 2016 Matching Gift Challenge, which will be taking place between February 19 and April 15, all gifts to the Jewish Academy of Orlando's annual campaign will be matched on a 1:2 basis up to $50,000! A huge debt of gratitude goes to the generosity of Harriett Lake and the Weiner families (Louise and Dick, Maura and Ben) for making this possible. Any size gift, whether it be made online, via mail or by phone, will have an impact. For every $2 of donations, a match of $1 will be made, up to $50,000. This gift makes $150,000 in annual campaign gifts attainable.

"The Harriett Lake/Weiner Family 2016 Matching Gift Challenge is an exciting opportunity for our school," said Dr. Jordan Steinberg, Board President. "It's a great chance to see $100 do $150 worth of good, or convert $500 into a $750 impact."

"The generosity of Mrs. Lake and the Weiner families is a tremendous opportunity and we can't thank them enough for all they have done over the years for our school and our community," said Alan Rusonik, Head of School. "Our day school could not exist without the financial support of our community and major donors like Harriett Lake, Louise and Dick Weiner and Maura and Ben Weiner. We are so grateful that we have the chance to leverage their gifts to have a real impact on our fundraising goals."

The Harriett Lake/Weiner Family 2016 Matching Gift Challenge will have a transformative impact on our school, and the critical role it plays in our community. Our Jewish community needs a sustainable Jewish day school; our Jewish community needs the Jewish Academy of Orlando. Our graduates continue to excel in the best high schools and colleges, becoming leaders in their academic, philanthropic and Jewish communities. The Jewish Academy enables its students to grow academically and spiritually. The Jewish Academy makes memories for our families by teaching our students the customs and traditions of our heritage. The Jewish Academy develops the Jewish leaders of tomorrow. And the Jewish Academy ensures the continuity of the Jewish people. In these difficult and trying times in which we live, maintaining Jewish identity through Jewish continuity must remain a critical priority for our community.

To have your gift matched, simply make a donation between now and April 15. Click here to donate online, or call 407-647-0713 during regular school hours.

PS-Increase your impact today! Thank you for your support of the Jewish Academy of Orlando.
Chabad of North Orlando has come a long way in the past five years, thanks to the dedication of Co-Directors Chanshy and Rabbi Yanky Majesky and members of their burgeoning community. Rabbi Majesky reflects back upon the shul's earliest days in 2011, when a handful of congregants met monthly in a local hotel, and only on Friday nights. For the last four years the growing synagogue was given space at an office park in Lake Mary known as The Chamu Jewish Center, thanks to congregants Dawn and Steve Chamu.

As of September 2015, Chabad of North Orlando has its own building to call home, with additional room for expansion. On Sunday, March 27, Chabad of North Orlando will dedicate the new building, known as Nate's Shul, with the entire community invited to join in the celebration of the new synagogue home.

While it's easy to zip past the white, ranch-style house on the corner of Markham Woods and Glen Ethel Road, don't be fooled by the quiet exterior of Nate's Shul, which opened its doors this past fall. During a typical week, the small building overflows with the hustle and bustle of a busy and vibrant Jewish center, with something offered for every age group. On any given week Nate's Shul houses JLI classes for adults, with topics changing every few months. Nate's shul also offers Teen classes, Talmud Class, and Hebrew School on Sunday for ages 5-13. Additionally, the Shul is open every morning for Morning Prayer as well as on Shabbat for Morning Services. Torah Reading and Kids Program are held each Saturday.

Rabbi Majesky expressed his gratitude all those in the community who helped make Nate's Shul possible, especially Rabbi Chaim and Lauren Thomas, the lead donors of the synagogue named in memory of their grandfather Nathan Kaplan z"l. He noted that larger events like Chanukah and High Holidays will still be off-site to accommodate large crowds, but the Markham Woods site will continue to be the everyday home of Chabad of North Orlando.

"This building is only the beginning and we have big dreams we hope will come to fruition with the help of Hashem," Rabbi Majesky shared. "Please see our wish list at http://www.JewishNorthOrlando.com and help build a piece of our future. Please come out and meet us, see the new facility because a Shul is a home for every Jew-welcome home! It is sure to be a fun event with refreshments, music and lots of fun activities for the kids and grown-ups, too!"

The entire community is invited to the dedication of Nate's Shul, the new home for Chabad of North Orlando, on Sunday, March 27, from 2-4 p.m. On that day there will be no parking on site. Please park at Woodlands Elementary, 1420 EE Williamson in Longwood for shuttle service. For more information call 407-636-5994 or visit http://www.jewishnorthorlando.com.
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, one statistic stood out: nearly half of Israel's Jews support expelling the country's Arabs.

The Pew Research Center's study of Israelis' attitudes, which had its findings released Tuesday, had asked respondents whether they agreed that "Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel." Forty-eight percent of Israeli Jews agreed, while 46 percent did not. Among self-described right-wing Jews, 72 percent agreed, along with 71 percent of religious Zionists.

The figure was inconsistent with the findings of previous studies and provoked strong reactions in a country that sees its Arab minority as proof of its commitment to democratic values and respect for diversity. It has also shined a spotlight on what has been seen previously as a fringe proposal. No party in the Israeli Knesset advocates mass population transfer, and it has never been seriously discussed as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The idea that the State of Israel could be a democracy only for its Jewish citizens is unconscionable and we must find a way to address this," Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said at a meeting with officials of the Washington-based Pew center. "I believe that also our democratic values are born out of our Jewish faith, a love for the stranger and equality before the law."

Rivlin called on the public to engage in "soul-searching and moral reflection."

But Alan Cooperman, the Pew study's lead author, says support for expulsion comports with other data points in the survey. Cooperman pointed to survey findings that nearly four out of five Israeli Jews say Israel should give preferential treatment to Jews, 60 percent of Israeli Jews believe God gave the land to them, and that majorities of religious Zionists and haredi Orthodox also feel Jewish law should be the law of the state.

"You see it really makes sense," he said. "Support is strongest among [religious Zionists], very high among settlers."

Analysts say Jewish animosity toward Israeli Arabs has been exacerbated by the recent wave of Palestinian terror attacks and a government response that some consider inflammatory. Rawnak Natour, the co-director of Sikkuy, a nonprofit that works toward Arab-Jewish coexistence, pointed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech decrying "two nations within Israel" following a January terror attack in Tel Aviv.

"I think there's a feeling of fear here that's strengthened by the political echelon," Natour said. "There's a lack of familiarity of the other side."

The Pew finding on expulsion is significantly higher than other recent polls that have sought to measure Israeli attitudes toward coexistence. The 2015 Israel Democracy Index, a survey published annually by the Israel Democracy Institute, found 37.5 percent support for the government merely encouraging Arab emigration.

A 2015 poll by Haifa University Professor Sammy Smooha found that six in 10 Israeli Jews felt "it would be good for Arabs and Jews to always live together in Israel." That survey also found 32 percent of respondents in favor of encouraging Arabs to leave Israel in exchange for compensation.

Israeli pollsters have laid blame on the question itself, calling it vague and misleading. Is the question about Israeli Arabs, West Bank Palestinians or both? When would this expulsion occur, and under what conditions? Would the Arab refugees be compensated?

"It was asked in a very unclear way," said Tamar Hermann, academic director of IDI's Guttman Center for Surveys. "If we didn't get a majority on a more cautious and less aggressive version [of the question], what happened here? I would say take it with a grain of salt."

The statistic is a sign not only of extremism but also of polarization in Israeli society, says Steven M. Cohen, a sociology professor at New York's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who consulted on the Pew study. Regardless of the exact level of support, he called the figure a "warning sign" for Israeli and Jewish leaders.

"There's a lot of support for this notion that God gave this land to me-not to them, to me," Cohen said at a panel discussion of the survey Tuesday in Tel Aviv. "Is there a context in which it seems the authorities are trying to diminish the place of minorities in this country? Is that happening? If that's happening, then this question becomes very critical."
TEL AVIV (JTA)-Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country.

That's one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center.

Coming just three years after Pew's much-discussed study of Jewish-Americans, the Israel study depicts a country divided by religion and ethnicity, where Jews of opposing religious outlooks rarely associate and marriages that cross the Jewish-Arab divide almost never happen.

Israel is 81 percent Jewish and 19 percent non-Jewish, according to the survey. Among the Jews, half are secular. The other half is divided among traditional (29 percent), religious Zionists (13 percent) and haredi Orthodox (9 percent).

The study, which was released Tuesday morning, is based on 5,600 interviews with Israelis conducted between October 2014 and May 2015. It has a margin of error of 2.9 percent on questions asked of Jews and 5.6 percent for those asked of Muslims. Many of the findings confirm commonly held views about Israel, but here are six that may surprise you.

1. Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want Israel to be Arab-free.

Israeli politicians often tout Israel's Arab minority as proof of the country's diversity and democracy. But nearly half of Israel's Jews want to see that minority forcibly removed.

Forty-eight percent of Jewish-Israelis agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel." Slightly fewer (46 percent) disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Support for removal draws largely from right-wing Israelis. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of self-identified right-wing Jews agreed that Arabs should leave Israel, as did 71 percent of religious Zionists and 59 percent of the haredi Orthodox. Among left-wing Jews, 10 percent said yes to forcible transfer.

2. Jewish-Israelis are less liberal and more religious than Jewish-Americans.

Across the board, Jewish-Israelis tack significantly to the right of Jewish-Americans. While nearly half of Jewish-Americans call themselves "liberal," according to a 2015 Pew survey of American religion, the figure for left-wing Jewish-Israelis is just 8 percent. More than one-third of Jewish-Israelis say they are right-wing, compared to just 19 percent of Jewish-Americans who called themselves conservative in Pew's 2013 study.

Those differences are particularly apparent with respect to Israeli-Palestinian relations. Sixty-one percent of Jewish-Americans say "Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully," according to Pew's 2013 survey, while only 43 percent of Jewish-Israelis feel similarly. Sixty-one percent of Jewish-Israelis say God gave Israel to the Jews, a view that even 51 percent of non-Orthodox Israelis endorsed. Only 40 percent of Jewish-Americans agree. A plurality of Jewish-Israelis (42 percent) believe settlements make Israel more secure, as opposed to just 17 percent of Jewish-Americans.

Israelis are also more religious than Jewish-Americans. More than a quarter of Israelis attend weekly services, compared to about one-tenth of the Americans. Half of Jewish-Israelis believe in God with absolute certainty, compared to one-third of Jewish-Americans, and nearly half of Jewish-Israelis don't handle money on Shabbat, while almost all Jewish-Americans do.

3. Two-thirds of Jewish-Israelis keep kosher.

Israelis vary widely in their religious observance. Most religious Israelis pray daily, while their secular counterparts can go years without setting foot in a synagogue. One quarter of Jewish-Israelis say they observe no religious traditions.

But some Jewish customs have gained something akin to a consensus following in Israel. Nearly all Jewish-Israelis attend a Passover seder and almost two-thirds keep a kosher home, including one-third of secular Israelis. By contrast, only 22 percent of Jewish-Americans keep a kosher kitchen. Four-fifths of Israelis, including two-thirds of secular Jews, refrain from eating pork. Nearly half of Israel's Russian-speaking Jews (47 percent) do eat pork.

4. Among Israeli haredim, 19 percent say you can believe in Jesus and still be Jewish.

On the whole, Jewish-Israelis maintain a broad definition of who is a Jew. Solid majorities believe someone can deny God's existence, work on Shabbat, harshly criticize Israel and still be Jewish. But an overwhelming majority draws the line at believing in Jesus as the messiah.

Only 18 percent of Jewish-Israelis-and 19 percent of haredim-say a Jew can believe in Jesus and remain Jewish. In the United States, fully one-third of Jews say belief in Jesus is compatible with being Jewish.

5. Israel is getting more religious-but less Jewish.

Israel's short history has been punctuated by successive waves of Jewish immigration from around the world, but even with those millions of newcomers, the country is proportionally less Jewish than when it was founded.

In 1949, Israel was 86 percent Jewish and 13 percent Arab. Now it's 81 percent Jewish and 19 percent Arab.

Meanwhile, Israel's Jews are becoming proportionally more observant. Between 2002 and 2013, the percentage of Jewish-Israelis older than 20 who are Orthodox grew from 16 percent to 19 percent, according to the Israeli Social Survey. Haredi Israelis have far more children than secular Jews-91 percent have more than three children, while half of secular Jews have two or less. More than a quarter of haredi families (28 percent) have at least seven children.

6. When it comes to religion, Arab-Israelis look more like the Orthodox than secular Jews.

Political analysts often group Arab-Israelis with secular left-wing Israelis due to their similar political leanings. But in terms of attitudes toward religion, Arab-Israelis look more like Israel's Orthodox Jews.

A solid majority of Muslims and Christians in Israel say religion is "very important" to them, compared to just 2 percent of secular Jews. Forty-five percent of the Muslims say being Muslim is mostly about religion-similar to the 52 percent of religious Zionists who see Judaism as mostly about religion.

Similar percentages of Muslims and religious Zionists pray daily. And similar percentages of Muslims and haredim believe in God with absolute certainty. Nearly half of Muslims attend mosque weekly-fewer than the solid majorities of the Orthodox Jews in Israeli who go to synagogue every week, but far above the low rates of non-Orthodox attendance.
In recent weeks, the administration has warned various government ministers that any construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem will be viewed with hostility by the administration.

The messages from Washington ahead of Vice President Joe Bidens arrival in Israel this week show President Barack Obamas hostile policies toward Israel will maintained until he leaves office.

In recent weeks, the administration has warned various government ministers that any construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem will be viewed with hostility by the administration. In contrast, the administration is pressuring Israel to permit construction of homes for Arabs in its capital city and harshly opposes all moves by the government to destroy illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods and in Judea and Samaria.

In other words, it is the Obama administrations policy to deny Jews our civil and property rights while it demands that Israel not assert its sovereignty over non-Jews.

Whether or not Obamas anti-Israel policies will survive his tenure in office depends on who succeeds him. If Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is elected to serve as the next president, there is no question that they will survive him.

During her four years as Obamas secretary of state, Clinton was a full partner in Obamas hostile policies toward Israel. Moreover, as her internal emails have shown, all of Clintons close advisers are hostile to Israel. The good news for Israel is that Clintons chances of election are not as great as they seem from the polls, and she may be too weak to win the White House in November. This is first and foremost the case because of the FBI investigation of her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The FBI probe has been going on since last summer. From what we have already learned, as secretary of state, Clinton and her aides sent thousands of classified emails over her private, unsecured server. Hundreds of those emails included top-secret information and at least two dozen included information whose classification was above top secret.

Under federal law, each time Clinton and her associates sent classified information over the unsecured server they committed a separate and distinct felony offense.

The day after Clintons Super Tuesday primary victories in seven states, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that Bryan Pagliano, Clintons aide who set up her private Internet server, has received immunity in exchange for his testimony to FBI investigators.

Although in order to minimize the sense that she is the subject of a criminal probe, Clinton refers to the FBIs investigation as a security review, the Washington Post reported that the FBIs investigation is a criminal investigation.

There was wrongdoing, one official told the paper.

The nature of the U.S. justice system places Clintons fate in Obamas hands. Acting through his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, Obama has the power to decide whether to whitewash Clintons activities, and so make a mockery of the rule of law, or to instruct Lynch to issue indictments.

Although it is hard to imagine Obama torpedoing Clintons campaign and so paving the way for a Republican victory in November, this week, the White House signaled that Obama feels no great commitment to Clinton.

On Sunday, the Times published a 13,000-word, two-part investigation into Clintons role in the 2011 overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Published in the White Houses paper of record, the report makes no attempt to hide the fact that consequences of Gaddafis overthrow have been calamitous and that the decision to overthrow the Libyan strongman was Obamas most visible foreign policy fiasco.

At the time the U.S. overthrew Gaddafi, it was the position of the U.S. defense establishment that he threatened no one outside his country.

Gaddafi had disavowed nuclear weapons and was assisting the U.S. with its campaign against al-Qaida. Moreover, his regime kept Libyas massive store of advanced weaponry secure.

Since Gaddafis overthrow, Libya has ceased to exist as a functioning state. Islamic State has taken over large swathes of the former country, which now comprises its largest base outside of Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans have been displaced and up to a quarter of a million Libyans have descended on Europe.

Libyas storehouse of advanced weapons has fallen into the hands of jihadists. Huge weapons caches have been shipped to jihadists from Nigeria to Syria, from Algeria and Tunisia to Gaza and Sinai. Chemical agents as well as nuclear yellowcake and advanced anti-aircraft missiles were all to be found in Gaddafis Libya. The trail of many of these weapons and WMD agents has grown cold as ISIS in Iraq have made regular use of chemical weapons.

The Times investigation places the full blame for Obamas decision to overthrow Gaddafi on Clinton. If it hadnt been for Clinton, the story claims, Obama never would have gotten involved.

Clinton reportedly not only convinced Obama to join Britain and France in bombing regime targets, she directed much of the campaign from the State Department.

By the Times telling, it is all her fault.

For most Americans, Clintons central role in the Libyan catastrophe is just the icing on the cake of a story of disaster and defeat that reached its peak on September 11, 2012. That day, al-Qaida attacked U.S. installations in Benghazi murdering ambassador Chris Stevens and four other Americans.

With the publics preexisting sense that Clinton is to blame for Stevenss assassination, the Times article represented a frontal assault against her central campaign narrative.

Clintons campaign is based on the proposition that the former first lady, senator and secretary of state is the most experienced presidential candidate and therefore the most qualified. By showing that the one major policy she led as secretary of state was a disaster of epic proportions, the Times report pulls the rug out from under the central rationale for Clintons presidential bid.

The White Houses decision to make Clinton the fall guy for Libya while she is running to succeed him signals that at a minimum Obama is far from invested in her victory. Even worse for Clinton, since she is dependent on Obamas goodwill to evade an indictment for her transfer of classified information over her private server, Clinton cannot defend herself.

Obama and Clinton justified their decision to overthrow Gaddafi by falsely insisting that Gaddafi was about to carry out a slaughter of his opponents that rose to the level of genocide. They also falsely insinuated that a post-Gaddafi Libya would be a pro-American democracy.

At the same time, they refused to notice mountains of evidence that al-Qaida was a major force in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion and was well positioned to take control over large swathes of the country if he were overthrown.

The underlying assumption of the administrations campaign in Libya was that what happens in Libya stays in Libya. As it turned out, this was the most disastrous assumption of its decision-making process.

The contagion of Islamic revolutions began in neighboring Tunisia a year before the U.S. decided to overthrow Gaddafi. That contagion made clear that there are no isolated events in the Islamic world anymore. Every perceived victory for jihadist forces impacts jihadists regionally and throughout the world. The impact is massively escalated when jihadists gain actual groundas was the case in Libya.

The implications for Israel in regard to the administrations demand that Israel commit to withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and effectively end its sovereign rule over Jerusalem are dire. Every time Israel withdraws from territory, jihadists regionally and worldwide proclaim victory andperhaps more importantare perceived as the actual victors.

So it was in 2000. In the aftermath of the IDFs withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah was viewed in Lebanon and throughout the Islamic world as the victor. This is the main reason that Hezbollah, rather than the Lebanese armed forces, asserted its control over south Lebanon immediately after the IDF departed.

In 2005, the Palestinians and the larger Islamic world viewed Israels withdrawal from Gaza as a victory for Hamas. To a significant degree, it was this widespread conviction that jihad defeated the Jews that propelled Hamas to victory in the Palestinian elections held in January 2006.

Today ISIS and other jihadist forces are growing in power and influence along Israels borders and inside its sovereign territory. This week the Shin Bet revealed that it arrested two more Israeli Arabs who joined ISIS.

On Wednesday Jordanian security forces fought a pitched battle against ISIS terrorists in Irbid.

Seven ISIS fighters and one Jordanian policeman were killed. Five Jordanian security forces were wounded.

Since the Syrian war broke out five years ago, hundreds of Jordanians have entered Syria to fight on behalf of anti-regime forces, including ISIS.

Hundreds are also suspected of having returned to the kingdom. Moreover, ISIS is believed to have the support of a significant number of Jordanians.

The genocidal jihadist force is waging a major propaganda campaign against the Jordanian regime.

If Israel bows to U.S. pressure and withdraws from Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem, either in the framework of a peace deal with the PLO or unilaterally, these moves will be immediately perceived regionally as a massive victory for the forces of jihad. Not only will Israel be imperiled, the fate of the Jordanian regime will likely be sealed as empowered jihadists launch a war against the Western-allied regime.

In the world of ISIS and Iran, Israeli sovereignty over united Jerusalem and Israeli control over Judea and Samaria is the only real, best guarantor of the survival of the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan, and of whats left of stability in the Middle East, after seven years of Obamasand Clintonsforeign policy.

This should be the message to Biden next week, and the basis for our policies in the months and years to come.

This article first appeared in the Jerusalem Post.
By Stephen M. Flatow

JNS.org

It has taken more than a month, but the international news media are finally waking up to the fact that the largest teachers strike in memory is raging in the Middle East.

In a major feature story on March 8, the New York Times reported that public schools across the West Bank have been shuttered since early February, when more than 20,000 Palestinian public school teachers went on strike. The strike has led to the largest demonstrations in years, including four large demonstrations in [the Palestinian Authority capital of] Ramallah, Times correspondents Diaa Hadid and Ramni Nazzal revealed. That news must have been quite a surprise to Times readers, since the newspaper had not reported on these huge protests until now.

Hadid and Nazzal have eagerly reported on Palestinian demonstrations (their euphemism for mobs hurling firebombs and rocks) when the targets were Israelis. The problem this time around is that the target is the Palestinian Authority (PA).

American correspondents in the Middle East seldom report news that is unfavorable to the PA. Its no mystery why they form a protective cordon around the Palestinian leadership. Most reporters, and most of their editors, would like to see a Palestinian state established as soon as possible, and they know that unfavorable news coverage of the PA leadership could turn American public opinion against Palestinian statehood.

Thats why the Times was so slow to report on the strike. News of the teachers actions undermines the cause of Palestinian statehood in three important ways:

First, the strike reveals the totalitarian ways of the PA, a reminder that a Palestinian state likewise would be a corrupt and dangerously unstable dictatorship. Look at the PAs strong-arm tactics: Last week, the PA police arrested 20 teachers and two school principals for participating in a rally supporting the strikers. The Times reports that the PA also has forced a Palestinian legislator who tried to mediate an end to the crisis into early retirement. And Haaretz reports that the PA security services set up rings of checkpoints to prevent the teachers from attending a demonstration in supporter of the strikers. The U.S. State Departments latest annual report on human rights found that under the PA, there are restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and assembly. There are limits on freedom of association and movement. But the State Department report did not attract the interest of the news media.

The second way in which the teachers strike undermines the Palestinian cause is that it focuses attention on the ultimate reason behind the strike: the PAs extreme militarization. And that is another red flag with regard to Palestinian statehood. Two years later, the PA promised to increase teachers salaries, but now says it doesnt have enough money to pay the teachers. Why is it out of money? Because the PA has one of the largest per capita security forces in the world, as more than half of all PA employees are in the security forces. The money owed to the teachers is being diverted to the PAs de-facto army. Which dark regimes of the 1930s does that remind you of?

Third, the strike reminds the world that the Palestinians are striking against the Palestinian Authority because the Israeli occupation ended long ago, and it is the PA which is the occupier. Perpetuating the myth of the Israeli occupation helps gin up international sympathy for the idea of a Palestinian state.

Those of us who dwell in the real world know that in 1995, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo II Accord and withdrew Israels forces from the cities where 98 percent of the Palestinians reside. For more than 20 years, the Palestinians have been occupied by the PA, not Israel. It is the PA, not Israel, which is in control of Palestinian education, culture, elections, the economy, and all other facets of communal life. About the only thing the PA cant do is import and tanks and planes.

Acknowledging this reality interferes with the agenda of those who advocate the Palestinian cause. Amazingly, in the very same edition of the Times that reported on the strike, columnist Roger Cohen, a veteran critic of Israel, wrote, Today, it is Palestinians in the West Bank who are dehumanized through Israeli dominion...The West Bank is the tomb of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Wake up, Mr. Cohen. Turn to page 10 of your own newspaper. Read about the Palestinian teachers who are being dehumanized through the PAs dominion. Face the reality that Israel is still Jewish and still democratic. Israeli citizens vote in Israel; Palestinians vote in PA elections (when their leaders are in the mood to hold elections). Your 1980s-style slogans about the Israeli occupation just dont cut it any longer.

If the editors and reporters of the Times could indefinitely ignore the teacher strike against the PA occupation regimejust as Roger Cohen ignores itsurely they would. But after more than a month of silence, the folks at the Times have recognized that if they continue to black out the news of the strike, it undermines their credibility as a newspaper. And so the news is finally out, much to the dismay of Israel-bashers everywhere.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
MORGANTON  During Burke County Superior Court, Judge Yvonne Mims Evans of Mecklenburg County sentenced a man to a prison for five to eight years, according to a press release from the District Attorneys Office.

Roger Dale Brown, 62, of Morganton, pleaded guilty to charges of one felony count of breaking and entering, one felony count of larceny and one misdemeanor count of breaking and entering a motor vehicle. He admitted to the status of being a habitual felon, which enhanced his sentence.

Morganton Department of Public Safety investigated the Aug. 28, 2014, case. According to the release, Brown entered a Burke County repair store using a stolen key and stole $30 in cash and windshield wipers. He also broke into a parked vehicle, stealing a GPS device. Brown was caught leaving the store in a different vehicle and had the GPS and wipers in his possession at the time of the arrest.

Previously, the courts convicted Brown for breaking and entering, possession of cocaine and possession of stolen goods.
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Periodic floods and erosion change the shape of Assams river islands, often forcing their mainly migrant Muslim dwellers  perceived as Bangladeshis  to relocate.

But the shifting from an eroded island to a habitable one isnt always dictated by nature. It is at times encouraged by the promise of patta (land deed) to loyal landless voters, many living along riverbanks.

This unnatural migration impacted past elections across the erosion-prone constituencies of central and western Assam. The two-phase polls on April 4 and 11 appear to be no different.

Patronised by local legislators, political relocation is most apparent in river islands that straddle multiple assembly constituencies. The movement usually is from the domain of the stronger MLA to that of the weaker.

Assam has more than 3,000 river islands or sandbars, locally called chars, in the Brahmaputra river system. The official count, according to the last census by the states Char Areas Development Authority 12 years ago, is 2,089.

Of the 126 assembly constituencies in the state, at least 50 are along the Brahmaputra. Only Majuli, where BJPs projected chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal is contesting, is a standalone island constituency.

Each of the others is a part of a mainland assembly constituency. A group of interlinked islands off Bijoynagar town 32km west of Assam capital Guwahati is divided among three such constituencies  Barkhetry, Palasbari and Hajo.

This island-group used to touch a fourth constituency, Chhaygaon, but the Brahmaputra washed that part away a few years ago.

For some 220,000 dwellers of this 320 sq km island-group, the Brahmaputra used to be the only threat to existence until waves of strangers, also migrant Muslims, began occupying land around theirs five years ago.

The local administration had to step in several times to stop resultant conflicts.

We are sympathetic to the erosion-displaced because, as inhabitants of islands at the mercy of a turbulent river, we know we might have to move somewhere someday. But something was not right with these settlers, said Muzammil Haque, the headman of five island villages including Kalapani.

Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), an NGO, stepped in to stop this forced migration of people from Barkhetry constituency to Palasbari constituency.

Our local members have put an end to the conflicts and ensured the older settlers do not suffer because of the newcomers, KMSS leader Kamal Medhi said.

Haque said some 1,000 people from Barkhetry area occupying land in the villages under his jurisdiction. But we are tolerating them for now.

Local KMSS leaders accused former chief minister Bhumidhar Barman, the Congress MLA from Barkhetry, of pushing voters of his constituency to Palasbari. This is what legislators do when they cannot provide land in their own constituencies, an activist said.

Barmans supports denied the allegation.

Palasbaris independent MLA Jatin Mali said inter-island or mainland-to-island migration, whatever the cause, was a grim reality.

The boundaries of the constituencies keep moving back and forth with the shifting of the chars. But this necessarily does not impact the electoral rolls, he told Hindustan Times.

A smaller portion of the island-group falling in Hajo constituency  represented by Dwipen Pathak, an independent  has been free from encroachment so far.

Wajed Ali, a teacher in Bhatkhowadia Char, said such land-related conflicts often divert attention from the real issues  poverty, lack of education, health, electricity, and irrigation facilities  char dwellers want solved.

These issues helped the pro-migrants All India United Democratic Front prevail across these chars in the 2013 panchayat polls. The party is eying the assembly constituencies this time.

The local administration had to step in several times to stop resultant conflicts.

We are sympathetic to the erosion-displaced because, as inhabitants of islands at the mercy of a turbulent river, we know we might have to move somewhere someday. But something was not right with these settlers, said Muzammil Haque, the headman of five island villages including Kalapani.

Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), an NGO, stepped in to stop this forced migration of people from Barkhetry constituency to Palasbari constituency.

Our local members have put an end to the conflicts and ensured the older settlers do not suffer because of the newcomers, KMSS leader Kamal Medhi said.

Haque said some 1,000 people from Barkhetry area occupying land in the villages under his jurisdiction. But we are tolerating them for now.

Local KMSS leaders accused former chief minister Bhumidhar Barman, the Congress MLA from Barkhetry, of pushing voters of his constituency to Palasbari. This is what legislators do when they cannot provide land in their own constituencies, an activist said.

Barmans supports denied the allegation.

Palasbaris independent MLA Jatin Mali said inter-island or mainland-to-island migration, whatever the cause, was a grim reality.

The boundaries of the constituencies keep moving back and forth with the shifting of the chars. But this necessarily does not impact the electoral rolls, he told Hindustan Times.

A smaller portion of the island-group falling in Hajo constituency  represented by Dwipen Pathak, an independent  has been free from encroachment so far.

Wajed Ali, a teacher in Bhatkhowadia Char, said such land-related conflicts often divert attention from the real issues  poverty, lack of education, health, electricity, and irrigation facilities  char dwellers want solved.

These issues helped the pro-migrants All India United Democratic Front prevail across these chars in the 2013 panchayat polls. The party is eying the assembly constituencies this time.

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Thanda Thanda cool cool, ghoosh niyeche Trinamool, a wall writing in the city goes, referring to the sting video purportedly showing several Trinamool Congress leaders accepting bribe.

With the date for Assembly election in West Bengal drawing near, poll graffiti like this are becoming common once again, demonstrating its unmatched power to grab attention of voters.

It also proves that its power to appeal to voters has not diminished in the age of fashionable social media campaigning. All political parties have vouched for it.

Veteran politician and TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee said the the ability of the wall writings to reach out to masses was unmatched.

Wall writings and limericks have a very quick impact on the mind of the voters. This has been an age-old method of campaigning in Bengal, Mukherjee told PTI.

The graffiti - some witty, some satirical and some thought provoking - is an inseparable part of any election in West Bengal since 1952.

Even in the age of social media, wall writings and limericks are still important as they make an instant impact.

This has been used for campaigning for the last several decades, when we had not witnessed so much of technological advancement, CPI(M) state secretariat member Sujan Chakraborty said.

Eto bonchona, eto lanchona, eto kutsa dheu/Tobu Trinamool Congresser egiye chola Rukhte parbena keua (Such deprivation, such accusations and such malicious campaign/ Still cant hinder the progress of Trinamool Congress towards the victory lane), goes another graffiti of the TMC.

This refers to the huge debt burden left by the previous government.

Another one of the TMC says, Hate boma, mukhe prem, Er nam CPI-M (Bomb in hand, love on lips, this is the CPI-M).

Jotoi koro Joth, pabe nako aktao Vote, goes another in reference to the alliance between the CPI-M and the Congress.

Paye pori Buddhamama, koro nago raj mama, tumi je ei maha jot eke ta janto..., a wall writing of a TMC candidate mocking at the alliance between CPI(M) and Congress.

Now a days you will find campaigns in new wall (Facebook page), but these age-old methods are still very popular to reach out to the masses, CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said.

While taking about the history of limericks in Bengal, noted poet Sankha Ghosh said, Limericks not only make a deep impact but are also a form of art, which dates back to the time of first election in 1952.

For most of the political parties, they have a set of political workers who write the staff. Art students at times are also engaged as graffiti artists during the elections.

However, the digital printing is slowly taking a toll on the age-old political art of graffiti and poetry.

Political wall writing is an age old art. But it has not been nurtured properly in Bengal. In Europe and Latin America it has acquired a cult status. Neither the Left nor the TMC had taken initiative to preserve this form of art, said a noted painter who did not wish to be named.

Several leaders cutting across political lines blamed various new rules regrading taking permission from the owners of the walls to responsibility not to make the city walls uglier are having an impact on poll graffiti campaign.

Now a days you need to take permission letter from the owner of the wall, then there are moral police who will raise hue and cry over walls getting uglier due to poll graffiti, regretted a political leader.
Madhya Pradesh assembly on Friday unanimously adopted a censure motion, moved by a Congress member and backed by the ruling BJP, slamming All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi for refusing to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

On March 13, Owaisi had said at a rally in Maharashtra that he will not chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai even at knifepoint. The comments came against the backdrop of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwats suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.

Congress MLA Jitu Patwari, who brought the motion during the Zero Hour, said if musician AR Rehman could sing  Maa Tujhe Salaam ( Salute to you mother) what is the issue with others.

Read: Sena wants Owaisis head over Bharat Mata remarks

The refusal to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai is an insult to Bharat Mata and it should be condemned by this House, irrespective of the party, he said. The Congress legislator said his party is against all sorts of fundamentalist outlook  be it of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and any other religion.

State legislative affairs minister Narottam Mishra seconded Patwaris motion and came down heavily on Owaisi. We oppose the mindset that lives in India and chants slogans of Pakistan or Afazal Guru or about breaking this country.

Read: UP student leader offers Rs 21,000 reward for cutting Owaisis tongue

You wont hear such people from minority talking about the unemployment or other issues. They are indulging in such gimmicks just to divert attention from the main issues our country is facing, he said.

Read: Posters branding Owaisi traitor appear outside his Delhi residence

The anti-national sloganeering on the JNU campus in Delhi should also be condemned, Mishra said.

Panchayat minister Gopal Bhargava took the opportunity to take a dig at the Congress by questioning why party vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited JNU when they were condemning anti-national sloganeering at the university campus.

The treasury and the opposition benches passed the motion censuring AIMIM leader unanimously amid chants of Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

Read: Not shouting a slogan is also part of freedom of expression, says Owaisi
Recently, actor Amitabh Bachchan praised his granddaughter Naya Naveli Nanda on Twitter, after she posted a tweet about the India-NewZealand match. The grand daughter speaks .. and speaks well ... !!! he wrote with a link to the tweet. The post was widely shared on social media. However, he has now clarified that the account is fake. ALARM : my grand daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter .. that account is fake ..!! I responded to it by mistake .. BE WARNED !! he posted on Twitter on Friday.

Amitabh Bachchans wife Jaya Bachchan and granddaughter Navya Nanda (Photo by Ajay Aggarwal/ Hindustan Times)

T 2178 - ALARM : my grand daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter .. that account is fake ..!! I responded to it by mistake .. BE WARNED !!  Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) March 18, 2016

Navya Naveli Nanda is very active on Instagram though. She is among the most followed star-kids on the social platforms.
Mallika Sherawat, who is dating a French businessman Cyrille Auxenfans, feels that falling in love with a person who loves you back is an extraordinary thing. The Hiss actress recently shared a picture of herself with Cyrille, captioning it as, Falling in love is an extraordinary thing when the person you love , loves you back.

Read: Mallika Sherawat declares shes in love, introduces her French boyfriend

Few days back, she had shared another picture, writing, To be in love is the best feeling in the world:). The pictures show that two are madly in love with each other and are happy together.

Falling in love is an extraordinary thing when the person you love , loves you back pic.twitter.com/jNS2vBd2Of  Mallika Sherawat (@mallikasherawat) March 18, 2016

The 39-year-old actress has flooded her Twitter account with pictures, wherein she is seen expressing love for her French boyfriend. Previously, she chosed Dharamshala based struggler Vijay Singh as her soul- mate on reality show The Bachelorette India: Mere Khayalon Ki Mallika.?

To be in love is the best feeling in the world:)  https://t.co/eOQnTGiLdd  Mallika Sherawat (@mallikasherawat) March 17, 2016

As per sources, Mallika and Cyrille were introduced to each other through common friends. He is said to have given her a high-end car for Valentines Day. The Dirty Politics actress will be soon seen in Hollywood flick, The Lost Tomb.
Director of a public school filed a complaint against actor Amisha Patel in a local court here for not attending an event at Dalimss Sunbeam School Chaubeypur in December 2015 despite taking advance payment. The court accepted the application of complaint and has fixed April 7 as next date of hearing.

School director Tarun Rupani, who filed the complaint against the actor, her two managers and her personal security man, said, We invited Amisha Patel for the annual function of our school on December 18. She accepted our invitation. Later, I was in contact with her manager Kunal Gumar, Anil Jain and her security man Sharif.

Read: I didnt debut with Hrithik Roshan, says Ameesha Patel

Rupani claimed that Rs 3 lakh were deposited to her bank account as advance in two instalments. Return air tickets from Mumbai to Varanasi for the Patel and her security officer were also booked with arrangements for her stay in a hotel in Sarnath.

Voice recording of Amisha was also played on the FM channel and invitation cards were printed. Due to the heavy publicity, a large number of people gathered at the school to catch a glimpse of the actor but she didnt turn up. Rupani said that the two managers and security personnel of the actor stopped attending his calls.

Rupani filed a complaint against the four, including Amisha Patel, in a local court on March 8. He alleged that the actors move of not attending the school function dented the schools image. The court accepted his complaint and fixed April 7 as date of hearing.
Three hours east of New Delhi, in the village of Piplera, recently married Abhilekh Swami has stopped to refuel his first automobile, a Hyundai hatchback, at an Indian Oil filling station.

Late model SUVs and Mercedes also ply the potholed roads and dusty lanes of the small gathering of dwellings in Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier I used to hire a taxi for taking my wife and old parents for long distance travel. Now we travel in our car, said Swami, 28, an accountant with a private company.

Swami said he is averaging about 2,000 kilometres a month in the vehicle he bought last August, mostly for commuting to work, shopping and visiting relatives.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians, spurred by cheap credit and rising incomes, are buying cars each month to free themselves from creaky, unreliable public transport.

This is expected to help push India ahead of China as the energy demand growth leader, with its total fuel consumption rising by a tenth to a record in the fiscal year-to-date.

Underpinned by annual economic growth of 7-8 per cent, Indias fuel demand is seen as a key oil price support over 2016-2017, eating into a supply overhang that has pulled down global crude as much as 70 percent since mid-2014.

India has already pipped Japan as the worlds third-largest oil consumer. By 2040, India will have more than doubled its current oil use to 10 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about on par with Chinas consumption last year.

This roar of motor - as well as power and household - fuel use means some refineries initially planned for exports, such as the 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery on Indias east coast, have been flipped to serve domestic oil demand.

When we conceived Paradip we were hoping to export gasoline, but now the products will be for meeting local demand, said Sanjiv Singh, head of refineries at Indian Oil Corp.

Reflecting Indias rising importance as a buyer, Igor Sechin, chief executive of the worlds biggest listed oil company Rosneft, was in New Delhi this week to sign several deals with Indian companies such as IOC, Oil India Ltd and Bharat PetroResources Ltd.

Fuel Goes Boom

Over April-February - the first 11 months of Indias current fiscal year - fuel demand rose 10 per cent to about 170 million tonnes (4 million bpd), according to a report this week by the oil ministrys Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).

For the next fiscal year through March 2017, the PPAC has forecast fuel demand growth at 7.3 per cent.

Indias push to Make-in-India, reforms in mining, and improvements in infrastructure like better roads, airports and job creation will help increase fuel consumption in the country, said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Energy Economics.

India plans to spend Rs 97,000 crore ($14 billion) in 2016-2017 on expanding and improving the countrys road network, which at 4.7 million km is already vying with China as the worlds second-longest after the United States, although highways make up less than 2 per cent of that figure.

A 23.55 per cent increase in the salaries, allowances and pensions of millions of government employees later this year is also expected to shore up consumer spending, boosting purchases of cars and motorcycles.

Sales of passenger cars and utility vehicles in India are expected to grow by as much as 12 per cent in the next fiscal year, up from an estimated 6 percent this year.

That translates to around 230,000 new passenger vehicles hitting the roads each month.

The main impact has been on gasoline demand, which the PPAC expects to grow to 24.2 million tonnes (560,000 bpd) by next year, up more than 12 per cent from 21.5 million tonnes estimated for this fiscal year.

Gasoline demand has been growing in double digits and we expect this to continue as it depends on sales of two-wheelers and cars, said Indian Oil Corps Singh.

Other fuels are seeing growth as well, and for similar reasons.

To meet rising demand, state refiners are planning a 1.2 million bpd plant on the countrys west coast, adding to current overall capacity of 4.6 million bpd, although a fixed timeline has not been set.

In east Delhi, at one of Indias busiest motor fuel pumps, owner Ajay Bansal said demand was soaring.

There is a growing demand for new and second hand cars. Now second hand cars are very cheap, he said. Thats an attraction to first-time buyers.
The insurance regulator has clear reservations about the key recommendations of the Sumit Bose committee report, which has attempted to curb mis-selling of insurance products by intermediaries.

With the rise of insurance schemes available for investments, you are spoilt for choice but so are the evidences of wrong selling of these schemes. How many times have pesky insurance agents forced you to invest in schemes you dont want?

Keeping this menace in mind, the finance ministry had set up a committee, headed by former finance secretary Sumit Bose, to look at ways of reducing mis-selling of financial schemes and to protect consumer interest. The report was submitted to the ministry in September 2015.

The insurance sector has a long history and has developed in a certain way. The recommendations of the committee has come to us but we cannot implement sudden changes says TS Vijayan, chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).

Sources suggest that insurers, private and government, as well as the regulator feel that the Sumit Bose committee report will disrupt the insurance sector, if implemented in its entirety.

The main recommendation of the committee is to stop upfront commissions, on investment products and insurance components of bundled products, that intermediaries get on selling investment products. The suggestion is to move the commission to a trail model, based on the amount of business that an intermediary or agent get for a company.

This committee is thinking first of the consumer and her welfare. But we have also taken into consideration the compulsions of the sector. And the changes have been recommended for products sold in the future, says Sumit Bose. But IRDAI chairman feels that, New products will have to be developed keeping in mind the recommendations.

The report also called for more transparency during selling a product by explaining how the customers money is being split between insurance and investment. And if an insurance scheme is being sold to a senior citizen, the report calls for scrutiny by the financial institution selling it.

It recognises that most insurance schemes are sold by agents enthusiastic about getting a fat commission and not on the basis of the need of a consumer, says a source in the finance ministry who did not wished to be named. He further clarifies that all insurers are opposing the report as it delves deep into fundamentally changing the commission system, and this hurts agents aggressively selling products.

The report is one-sided. It has to look into the nature of the insurance sector and how it functions. There cannot be knee-jerk changes in the sector says V. Manickam, secretary, Life Insurance Council; a body that represents all the 24 insurance companies currently operating in India.

Official data reveals that at present over Rs 13.51 lakh crore of retail savings are invested in mutual fund schemes, life insurance products and the National Pension System (NPS). Data with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) reveals that the assets under management with the 24 life insurers was Rs 23,568.14 crore with a total of 46.44 lakh policies as on June 2015.

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At a time when the government is struggling to meet its 3.5% fiscal deficit target for 2016-17, Delhi High Court has more than 1,000 pending income tax appeals, amounting to more than Rs 4,400 crore  due to lacunae in the documents.

The appeals could not be listed and heard because the income tax department did not cure the defects  the deficiency in the appeal petition  that were pointed out by the court registry. Some of the defective appeals date as far back as 2001.

Typically, defects have to be plugged within a month from the date of filing, after which the appeal is numbered and placed before the court for hearing. The court has already dismissed appeals that were filed before 2012 and were still defective in 2016.

The tax department has been grossly negligent leading to a loss to the exchequer, an official said.

Some of the defective appeals date back to 2001.

The spokesperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said: Those 1,000 and odd cases are cases where objections were pointed out to the filing standing counsels of the department. High Court has directed to remove the defects within the time allowed. The task of removing defects and re-filing is under progress.

The court has rapped tax officials for laxity. The court is of the view that a delay of more than three years in refiling of the appeal cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be accepted, a division bench said last month in an order.
Dutch beer maker Heineken is ready to go for the ultimate kill. On Thursday, Reuters reported that Heineken, which holds a 42.4 per cent stake in Indias largest brewer, United Breweries Ltd (UBL) will make the necessary moves to ask the companys chairman Vijay Mallya to step-down, following the latters financial troubles.

A company spokesperson, in an e-mail response said as a matter of policy Heineken does not comment on market rumour or speculation. However for a more specific question on its plans to expand in India, the company said, India has highly favourable demographics with strong economic fundamentals so the market remains an exciting opportunity for continued growth.

Speculations around Heineken wanting to up its stake in UBL surfaced around two weeks ago. On February 25, UK-based liquor major Diageo had forced Mallya to step down from the board of United Spirits Ltd through a $75 million (Rs 515 crore) golden handshake. This was quickly followed by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) notifying that UB Group companies will not be able to raise any fresh capital from the public as long as Mallya was on the board of the companies. With over Rs 9000 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines, Mallya has be declared as wilful defaulter by three public sector banks.

Heinekens speculated move to oust Mallya from UBL is only logical and a prelude to increasing its stake in UBL above 50 per cent. Heineken today holds 42.4 per cent stake in United Breweries up from the 37.5 per cent stake it picked up in 2008 through the takeover of Scottish & Newcastle. Mallya along with a clutch of UB Group companies holds 32 per cent stake in the company of which his personal stake is around 8 per cent.

Beer market in India, according to All India Brewers Association is expected to cross Rs 43,000 crore by 2017. This is not exactly the exciting opportunity Heineken is talking about. Per capita consumption of beer in India is still one of the lowest in the world at 2 litres. In the Czech Republic this number is 132 litres making this small European country of 12 million the worlds No.1 beer nation.

Indias low per capita beer consumption stands out even among the BRICS nations -- Brazil (65 litres), Russia (66 litres), China (32 litres) and South Africa (63 litres).

Even a small increase of the 2 litres per capita in India to say 4 litres would mean a staggering growth for brewers in India. Even with a single digit per capita consumption, India accounts for 13 per cent of the world beer consumption.

With half the market share in India already under its belt, Heineken will be one of the biggest gainers in the relatively dormant beer market in India. With the recent SEBIs order, Heineken will now have a good reason to seek the ouster of Mallya from the board and make UB Groups crown jewel its own.
Ending months of speculation, budget carrier AirAsia India has announced the appointment of Amar Abrol as its next chief executive replacing Mittu Chandilya.

Born and raised in India, Abrol graduated from Delhi University and is a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Abrol, who has over 20 years of experience, was most recently the CEO of Tune Money (an AirAsia Company), a start-up that aims to deliver low-cost financial products in South East Asia.

Before joining Tune Money in 2013, he spent 19 years with American Express, leading diverse teams across multiple markets including Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, India and Malaysia.

AirAsia India is poised for strong growth. I look forward to leading the team and together, giving many more Indians the opportunity to access the exciting promise of Indian civil aviation, Abrol said.

Ability to generate and build on ideas, innovate and execute; known to make things happen. Strong cross-cultural communication and negotiation skills developed via leading and participating in business dealings with prospects and business partners in UK, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Australia and other Asian markets, says his LinkedIn profile background.

Fluent in English and Hindi. Singapore passport, right to work in India, Holder of Hong Kong Permanent ID, it said.

Abrol, a key aide of AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes, and his new management team will take over at a time when the airline is faced with key challenges on multiple fronts.

Launched with much fanfare in June 2014, AirAsia India, a joint venture Tata Sons, AirAsia and Telestra Tradeplace Private Ltd. has failed to live up to its initial hype. As it nears two years of commercial operations, AirAsia India has a domestic market share of just 2.3% and a fleet of six aircraft. Vistara, another Tata Group-backed airline, launched much later has a fleet of nine planes. Arun Bhatia of Telestra has publicly said the airline is controlled from Malaysia.

Sources said Mittu Chandilya, who Abrol will replace, had informed the AirAsia India board way back in December 2015 that he wasnt interested in renewing his contract. Sources said Chandilya was upset with important decisions relating to AirAsia Indias functioning being taken in Malaysia.

Abrol will succeed Chandilya with effect from April 1. Chandilyas contract ends March 31 but he will continue with the company until the end of April to ensure a smooth transition of the CEO role.

Chandilya led AirAsia India from June 1, 2013 and under his leadership, the airline has established a fleet of six aircraft, covering 12 routes and carrying over 1.8 million passengers. In the most recent quarter of operation, October-December 2015, AirAsia India clocked a 134% growth in passenger traffic as it flew over half-a-million customers, and operated 3,376 flights as compared to 1,444 flights in the same period of 2014.
The Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) has sent a new list of 1,200 fixed-dose combinations (FDCs) for a probe to the panel which banned about 350 drugs earlier this week.

FDC medicines combine two or more drugs in a single pill. When multiple drugs from the same therapeutic group, for example antibiotics, are clubbed together, it may lead to resistance, according to experts. In India, many pharma companies obtain licence from a state to make FDCs, and sell them without the consent of the Central government.

The Kokate Committee has reviewed about 6,600 FDCs so far and classified them under four categories  irrational, require further deliberations, rational and require additional data generation.

Under the irrational category, there were 963 FDCs, out of which 350 have been announced, and the list has been dismantled. We have moved to the require further deliberations category, where the final list is expected to come in six months, an official at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) said.

The DGCI has now submitted the B list to the Kokate committee. Out of the 1,200 FDCs mentioned in the list, 8-10%, i.e. around 120 drugs, would fall under the banned category, a senior DGCI official said.

As per estimate, each FDC has at least 5 to 10 brands in the market, which means around 1,200 more drugs are likely to be banned, the official at CDSCO added.

According to government estimates, the ban on 350 FDCs, which impacts over 2,700 branded drugs, will lead to a loss of about Rs 7,000 crore for the industry. The domestic pharma industry currently has a market size of Rs 1 lakh crore.

We are not against any product or brand. We are only siphoning off the irrational combinations, said CK Kokate, chairman of the committee formed by the government to reviewed FDCs.

Drugs shortage warning

Meanwhile, chemists have warned the government that the recent ban on 350 fixed-dose combinations (FDCs) would lead to shortage of almost 5,000 medicines, including generics, from the market.

All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), the association representing about 750,000 medicines sellers across India, has written a letter to the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) citing the possibility of closing their shops for at least 30 days.

The unpleasant action many force us to shut down our shops and find out different brands of banned formulations available with us... followed by return of the stock to the concerned distributor and manufacturer, chemists have written in the letter.

It will take at least 30 days to complete all formalities and return the stocks. It will create serious impact on availability of the medicines to consumers, said JS Shinde, AIOCD president, in the letter.

The notification by the government impacts 5,000 drugs available in the market...It is very difficult for traders to find out brands of these molecules manufactured by other makers. It is very difficult to stop sale of these products with immediate effect, said the letter.

Chemists have also urged the government to advise all concerned state authorities not to take any action against traders.

Read | P&G to challenge Vicks 500 ban: All you should know about banned drugs

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The actual value of Kingfisher House, the former headquarters of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, was pegged at a little more than Rs 50 crore  about a third of the reserve price that SBI Caps had fixed at Thursdays auction.

After the Thursday event failed to attract buyers, sources said lead banker SBI may reduce the reserve price and offer the property for re-auction.

The valuation which was done by multiple partners, including real estate consultant Knight Frank, had considered various factors including the quality of construction, age of property and scope of upgradation, which excludes vertical development as it is located close to the airport, said sources.

Mails sent to Knight Frank elicited no response.

We may have to look at slashing the reserve price by about 10% and invite new bids in the next auction process which generally takes place within a month, said a senior official who asked not to be named.

The 17,000 square feet Kingfisher House is located in a prime suburb of Mumbai, close to the Western Express highway and the airport.

The SBI hoarding for bidders. (PTI)

Despite the prime location, bidders were deterred by the high price and additional investment needed to spruce it up.

Also, fears of subsequent litigation have kept interested bidders at bay, said real estate experts. The banks have fixed a price which is higher than what the consultants had valued it, to realise more. With the real estate market still depressed it will need a reduction in price, said a realty experts.

SBI didnt respond to queries.

Another real estate consultant Liases Foras told HT the reserve price was at least 40% higher than what it should have been.
JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar kept chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and senior communist leader D Raja waiting for a meeting at the Delhi secretariat on Thursday evening.

Kumar and Raja was scheduled to meet the chief minister at 6pm. Though Raja and his daughter Aparajitha, a student of JNU, reached the secretariat on time, Kumar couldnt make it.

Sources said the student leaders failure to reach on time for the meeting did not go down well with Kejriwal.

Raja, despite being a national-level leader, could reach on time but Kanhaiya could not. The CM was upset as he could not meet him and had to leave for prior engagements, sources said.

Sources said Raja and his daughter kept waiting for Kumar till 6.25pm and then went ahead with the meeting without him. They said Aparajitha called up Kumar and made him speak to Kejriwal.

Kumar apologised for his failure to reach the meeting on time. He said he was stuck in a traffic jam, a government source said.

He could not reach on time as he got stuck in a traffic jam. By the time he reached near Supreme Court, the CM had already been waiting for nearly one hour, Raja told reporters.

So they spoke over the telephone and agreed to meet, most likely on Saturday. Kejriwal had prior engagements regarding the coming Budget so he could not wait more, the senior communist leader said.

Sources said Kumar was on his way to Delhi Secretariat from JNU but ran into the peak hour rush near Mandi House.

While Kanhaiya could not be reached for his comments, his party maintained that since Delhi Police could not provide him security for moving out of the campus, he got late and was stuck in traffic, PTI reported.

But a Delhi government official said that contrary to Rajas statement, there has been no agreement on any future meeting.
Strange as it might seem, amid a wave of raucous protests on everything from nationalistic slogans to making the cow the national animal, India is seeing a new awakening that suggests that every generation finds its own voice and tries to improve the social mores of the times. It is a surprise for sure when a senior official of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) goes so far as to get lenient on homosexuality as Dattareya Hosabele did this week,when he said gay sex is not a crime as long as it does not affect the lives of others. Sexual preferences are personal issues. Coming from the joint general secretary of the ideological parent of the ruling BJP in the backdrop of the fact that homosexuality is still a crime under the Indian Penal Code, this is a forward leap in thinking. There is a glasnost of sorts in the conservative RSS, it seems.

Read | How the World Inherited Anti-Gay Laws

Just a couple of days earlier, a BJP MLA in Uttarakhand got into serious trouble with media outrage provoked over his thrashing a horse and fracturing its leg enough to warrant its amputation. He has since been arrested, though not clear under which law. In the land of the sacred cow, it is heartwarming to see some horse sense on animal rights. Elsewhere the University Grants Commission has tightened its rules on ragging. Calling someone Chinki, often a pejorative term for northeasterners, or Bihari, a cuss word for some, will no longer be kosher in the nations campuses. Come April, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal from the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) against jokes involving the stereotyping of Sikhs which it says hurts the psychological well-being of young members of the community.

Such developments are new in independent India, where laws exist to protect religious minorities and Dalits from discrimination in official dealings, but many other holes are left unplugged. Everyday racism in India is a matter of fact in India, but that is being increasingly questioned in the media, which is often nudged by social media posts. This in turns influences thought processes in civil society organisations, political parties and the judiciary, and leads to corrective action. What we are witnessing then is a globalisation of ideas and ideals, not easily reconcilable with the disturbing reality of vigilant violence in pockets of the country on issues such as food habits and love affairs. The surge in political correctness is probably a result of an interconnected globe, where activism and new media are sensitising average citizens to higher levels of human responsibility. Such evolutionary thinking towards more civilised values is decidedly welcome. But we do hope this does not stop us from occasionally laughing at our own idiosyncrasies.
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 12 students complained that Thursdays accountancy exam was lengthy. Though the paper was not difficult, some students left questions that carried 20-25 marks owing to the length.

Students are already complaining about Mondays mathematics paper, which they say was long and tough.

It was such a lengthy paper. In pursuit of completing it, I ended up messing up with everything. I even left a 15-mark question, said Anushi Arya, a commerce student of Montfort School in north Delhi.

She said there was no way anyone could complete the paper within three hours. First math and now accounts. I dont know what is going to happen, she said.

As journal entries with lengthy workings were asked in most questions, students took time to solve them. Even the theory part of the paper was described to be bit tricky. But no question was out of syllabus.

Read more: CBSE will review tough math paper, rework marking scheme

There was a lot of calculation to be done which consumed the maximum chunk of our time. The one-mark questions were especially tricky. There were around three questions that were unexpected, said Priyanka, a student of Presidium School.

After the examination, many students posted complaints on the online board of the National Consumer Forum, demanding leniency in the paper correction.

But among the students too, there were some who could complete the paper and said they were satisfied.

However, the teacher called it an average paper that was wellbalanced and said students who had practised well could easily solve it and get a perfect score.

A few questions were lengthy but it was easy as most questions were application based. Valuebased questions and missing figure questions were simple, said Jyoti Arora, principal Mount Abu Public School, Rohini.
Maithili Ahluwalia needs little introduction. The owner of concept store Bungalow 8 is one of the most individualistic personalities in the business today. Dressed in oversized androgynous denims and an anti-fit top (made out of a vintage African textile reworked by a contemporary designer, she informs us), Ahluwalia welcomes us to her aesthetically decorated bungalow on Carmichael Road early one morning. We discover that her curatorial instincts are not just reserved for her store but extend to her wardrobe as well.

Style sensibility: Style is more holistic than just garments. Its about having substance, a point of view and a certain reading of the world. I like my style to be an extension of who I am and not overly considered. If we limit style to fashion, were looking at things in a very myopic way.

A Maison Margiela bag from Ahluwalias collection (Photo: Aalok Soni/HT)

Wardrobe staples: My relationship with fashion is erratic and unpredictable. It depends on my state of mind. But Id broadly describe my staples as those that boast ease and a degree of effortlessness  that could be worn-out denims, overalls or a vintage kimono from the 70s. Im all about mixing and matching and combining things that dont necessarily go together. An Indian sensibility spruced with globalism and internationalism appeals to me.

Also read: Behind closet doors: Esha Gupta

Shopping haunts: Im not into malls. When I travel, I am drawn to the works of contemporary designers in those cities. So, I seek out independent boutiques that stock designers with a new voice. I can find unique buys just about anywherebe it Assam, London or the Chor Bazaars of the world. Geography is irrelevant.

Go-to designers: A peasant blouse from Sabyasachi Mukherjee is one of my favourite pieces  he has a fantastical mind and is a true storyteller. I love saris by Anavila Misra, she is a product of confident India. I also wear Bungalow 8s in-house label.

A glass necklace from Manila (Photo: Aalok Soni/HT)

Style influences: My grandmother (Chandu Morarji) and mother (jewellery designer Jamini Ahluwalia) have been my immediate style influences. My grandmother was very confident and comfortable in her skin. She wore things no else would dare to. My mother, too, has bucked trends and done her own thing when it comes to style.

Vintage win: While I love contemporary styles, I am drawn to vintage (though the term is highly abused today) pieces. Fashion that is worn-in, one-off and has an element of discovery appeals to me. I am fortunate to be a child of heirlooms and have a lot of treasured pieces from my grandmothers closet.

Ace accessories: An architectural Maison Margiela clutch with a mirrored surface, a vintage Paco Rabanne bag that belonged to my grandmother and a fishermans bag from Khadi & Co are some of my favourite bags. A burnt charcoal necklace, a gold vintage Grecian neckpiece and a glass necklace from Manila are other treasured buys. I also wear my grandmothers temple and tribal jewellery.

Style advice: Style is about celebrating your difference and that which makes you unique. It should be about heterogeneity, not homogeneity. Its important to know yourself to find your personal style.
Kunal Gupta, 34, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) junior resident doctor who was found dead on Thursday, had not eaten for three days and had locked himself in his hostel room.

Expert say the lack of a solid support system in Delhi, work stress and the lack of a coping mechanism push students like Gupta, an MD student, to loneliness.

Read: Scientists say how you react to stress is important, not its frequency

How many of us actually interact with our neighbours regularly? It is a typically urban phenomenon that takes its toll on the human mind, said a senior doctor from the psychiatry department at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, requesting anonymity.

Dr KK Talwar, a former student and faculty at AIIMS and now part of Max Healthcare, said the current generation suffers a communication breakdown that harms the vulnerable among them the most.

The term depression, doctors say, is loosely used to describe the state of an emotional low, which could well be temporary. (Tumblr)

When we were students, each student had a faculty member attached to him or her. Even if a student wasnt visible for a few hours, people would make an effort to check on them. We need to have that culture back, he said.

The solution lies not in cutting off from the immediate environment, but in diverting attention when feeling low. Activities such as reading a book, watching television or a comedy movie and exercising can help, said experts.

Read: New therapy sheds light on post-cancer depression

The term depression, doctors say, is loosely used to describe the state of an emotional low, which could well be temporary.

Only when the blues refuse to go away even after a certain period, and significantly affect your day-to-day functioning, it is time to seek medical help, said the doctor at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more.

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Police arrested two people in Madhya Pradeshs Khargone district for allegedly posting a morphed image of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on social media to ridicule the Sanghs recent decision to change its uniform.

Khargone superintendent of police Amit Kumar Singh told HT the duo was accused for hurting religious sentiments and posting obscene material electronically.

In the image the face of the RSS chief was combined with a womans body wearing tight fitting brown trousers and a white shirt, added Singh.

On the complaint of a saffron outfit activist Rajnish Nimbalkar, the duo was booked under Section 67 of the Information and Technology Act and Section 505(2) of IPC.

The two men identified as an egg seller, 22-year-old Shaqir Yunus Banthia who is a resident of Bhikhangaon area of Khargone, and a 21-year-old college student Wasim Sheikh who is a native of Khargones Balakwada area.

A local Khargone court sent them into two weeks judicial custody.

The duo was allegedly mocking the Sanghs decision to switch from its trademark Khaki shorts to brown trousers, in order to attract young followers and move with the times.

The complaint was made following protests outside Bhikhangaon police station by saffron outfits on Wednesday. The protestors alleged that the act was done intentionally to ridicule the change of dress code by the RSS.

While Shaqir had shared the picture on a WhatsApp group of which he was not a group administrator, Wasim had posted the same picture over the Facebook.

Congress leader Parasram Dandir and party workers met Khargone additional SP AS Kanesh on Thursday and questioned the arrests.
Forty percent of Rajasthan MPs from tech-savvy Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party score low on use of social media  Twitter and Facebook  in the last one year, a report by the partys media cell released on Thursday revealed.

BJP sources said the party has a social media cell to keep track of MPs as how actively they are propagating governments performances among the people using social media networking sites.

The report comes two days after Modi asked its party MPs in Uttar Pradesh how many of them use the mobile app launched by the Prime Ministers Office to get updates on the governments achievements and initiatives.

Modi calls himself tech savvy and has 18.6 million followers on Twitter. And in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, he addresssed four rallies at a time using 3D-holographic technology.

The report says Jaipur (rural) MP and minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore with over two lakh followers on Twitter is the most active followed by Jhalwar representative Dushaynt Singh (13,063) and Bikaners Arjunram Meghwal (3,886).

The MPs who are absent or without any strategy on social media are Sumedanand Saraswati ( Sikar), Chand Nath (Alwar), Bahadur Singh Koli ( Bhartpur), Sanwar lal Jat ( Ajmer), CR Chaudhary (Nagaur), Sonaram Chaudhary (Barmer), PP Chaudhary (Pali), Arjun Lasl Meena (Udiapur), Chandra Parkash Joshi (Chittor) and Manshankar Ninama of Bnaswara.

The report also reads that the MPs who are active on social media seldom use these platforms to communicate people about government policies or its performance. Their posts are non-engaging, devoid of interactivity, almost no post on government achievements, reads the report. MP from Nagaur CR Chaudhray and Union minister of state for water resources Sanwar lal Jat said they would actively communicate with people via social media.

It is a very potent tool to communicate with people, said Chaudhary.
A survey of 4,892 doctors in the country has revealed 80% of them were prescribing at least one drug from the 344 fixed drug combinations recently banned by the Union health ministry.

Doctors feel the sudden ban on these drugs, which are commonly used antibiotics and painkillers, has damaged their reputation.

A healthcare advocacy firm, eMediNexus conducted the survey on March 15 and March 16 to understand the impact of the ban on the medical community. Four of ten respondents labelled the ban unnecessary. The All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists wrote to the Drug Controller General of India asking them to reconsider the ban.

The Centre has banned those drugs that contain more than two formulas or ingredients . Why do we need to give a drug for fever when the patient just has a cold. These combinations were only developing resistance, said a senior doctor from a medical college. Around 60% doctors in the survey supported the governments ban. General practitioners said they are being flooded with calls from patients anxious about consuming the now banned drugs in the past. After reading news reports, patients are worried, said Dr Pratit Samdani, physician, Breach Candy Hospital.
No one had heard of Shaktiman the police horse, until Monday when it was brutally assaulted with a stick allegedly by Uttarakhand Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Ganesh Joshi and his associates.

The animal was caught in the melee following a protest rally against the ruling Congress government in the state. For almost 24 hours, there was fear and uncertainty that the 14-year-old animal might lose one of its legs or even its life.

Citizens, celebrities and animal activists worldwide voiced anger and resentment at the attack, once the video of the MLA attacking Shaktiman was out on social media. PETA, the global animal rights group, said on Tuesday the MLA is a danger to society and must be sacked both from the legislature and the party.

He must be disqualified from his post because any person who beat up a horse is not far from doing the same with people and is a danger to society. The party must not retain him, PETA chief executive Poorva Joshipura said.

Joshipura also urged Uttarakhand Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal to immediately expel Joshi from the Vidhan Sabha on the grounds of extreme and criminal misconduct.

To ensure the maximum safety of animals, a strict action needs to be taken, Poorva said.

Read | Shaktimans fractured limb amputated, fitted with prosthetic leg

She also urged BJP president Amit Shah to expel Joshi from the party.

This is a party which is supposed to stand for everyone, including animals. How can it tolerate the bleeding of a horse?

The matter rocked the assembly during Zero Hour when state BJP president and leader of Opposition Ajay Bhatt demanded a debate on deteriorating law and order scenario which was reflected in the repressive measures adopted by the administration on Monday to quell an agitation by the BJP.

Reacting sharply to Bhatts demand, parliamentary affairs minister Indira Hridayesh said a party which was itself responsible for the law and order going out of grip had no right to seek a debate on it.

Hridayesh said cruelty shown towards a hapless animal by the BJPs Mussoorie legislator had put the party on the backfoot in its so-called movement against corruption and collapse of law and order.

The BJP MLAs shot back, claiming Joshi was innocent. The House was adjourned twice over the issue.

Joshi has rubbished the allegations and released two videos in order to prove that the cavalry police charged the party workers first. I am being framed by the Opposition as todays BJP rally was a big success. Its not me who has beaten the horse. Even video clips do not show this. If found guilty, I will leave politics, he said.

In a show of support to the animal, politicians visited Shaktiman at its stable for photo ops, forcing those looking after it to quarantine the horse. Vets identified multiple fractures in the hind left leg of the white horse.

Hours after Shaktiman was injured, chief minister Harish Rawat visited the animal at its stable. Later, Joshi and some other leaders also paid a visit. By that time horse was unable to stand.

Read | Horse to horse trading? Political drama after Shaktiman row

Political leaders are visiting the stable and disturbing the horse. It is in pain and veterinarians are injecting medicines to give him relief. In a bid to give Shaktiman rest, we are not permitting anyone to visit the horse, senior superintendent of police Sadanand Date told HT on Tuesday.

A team of veterinarians from Pantnagar University arrived to inspect the horse. Shaktiman was operated upon and veterinarians fixed a steel structure on the fractured limb during the procedure that lasted five hours.

Date said the injury was fixed and no amputation was required. However, it was later decided to amputate the leg after doctors failed to restore blood supply to the limb.

Police officials rejected reports that the injured animal will be put down, maintaining that Shaktiman may be handed over to private stables or animal lovers if he is found unfit for police duty. Across the country, people stood by Shaktiman and offers for donations kept pouring in.

They said the horse will remain with the force despite offers for adoption that poured in.

Date said the horse has served Uttarakhand police for 10 years and therefore police will prefer to keep Shaktiman in his home (stable).

Read | BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi held for hitting Shaktiman, more arrests likely
Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI), finds the new Aadhaar bill the strongest that has ever come in terms of privacy safeguards, but emphasized the need for a larger privacy bill to address other concerns such as telephone tapping.

During the debate on the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill in Parliament this week, many lawmakers expressed apprehension about the possibility of misuse of biometric and other data collected under the Aadhaar scheme to give a unique identification number to all Indians.

Parliament cleared the bill on Wednesday but not before the Congress introduced amendments in the Rajya Sabha, forcing the government to take it back to the Lok Sabha. The lower house, where the NDA enjoys a clear majority, rejected the amendments, paving the way for the bill to become a law after it receives the Presidents assent.

In a telephonic interview with HT on Thursday, Nilekani credited the previous UPA government for initiating the vision and the NDA government for seeing the wisdom of the project and taking it through to its logical culmination and putting in place a robust legal framework that will enable Aadhaar to be used in every kind of subsidy and beyond.

We do need a larger privacy bill, not just for Aadhaar but also for many other things like privacy in telephone tapping and in other online systems, said the Infosys cofounder. Huge multinationals are taking data about millions of Indians abroad and nobody seems to be bothered. There are a lot of issues about privacy. Thats quite an omnibus approach.

Nilekani, who was chosen by the UPA government to head the UIDAI and given Cabinet ministers rank, praised the previous government for giving him complete professional autonomy and support at critical times.

On the Oppositions criticism of the Aadhaar bill over privacy concerns, he said, There is no solution that satisfies everybodyFor people who are balanced in the middle and want to solve Indias problems, this is as good as one can get.

The country is on the verge of a revolution as a billion people will have Aadhaar numbers. There are a few billion-plus online user systems and they are all controlled by foreign companies  Google has seven platforms with a billion users and Facebook has three. Even the Chinese have one or two such platforms, but they are in the private sector.

This (Aadhaar) is the only case of a platform with a billion users in the government sector for public good. It has huge transformational potential, said Nilekani, an entrepreneur who unsuccessfully contested the last Lok Sabha election from Bangalore South as a Congress candidate.

I did...foray into politics but now I am out of it. I realise that my strength is not in politics. My strength is in problem-solving using technology and thats where I am going to concentrate my efforts, he said.
A BJP legislator accused of brutally beating up a prized Uttarakhand Police horse and breaking its leg was arrested on Friday morning, a day after the animal underwent an operation to replace the damaged limb with a temporary prosthetic one.

Mussorie MLA Ganesh Joshi was facing three separate police cases for allegedly breaking 14-year-old Shaktimans leg on Monday but the police didnt arrest him, picking up one other man, despite nationwide condemnation of the incident.

The BJP has so far defended Joshi, who denied the charges.

The beloved police horse, Shaktiman, became a household name after a viral video clip showed Joshi brandishing a stick and appearing to strike the horse during a BJP protest rally. The incident triggered criticism from activists and rival parties as photographs of the injured animal spread on social media.

Read More: Shaktimans fractured limb amputated, fitted with prosthetic leg

The video ended with the horse on its back and apparently in pain with a policeman trying to get it back on its feet.

Senior superintendent of police Sadanand Date told HT on Thursday a team of veterinarians amputated the horses damaged hind limb amid fears of spreading gangrene  a decomposition of body tissues.

A permanent prosthetic leg will be fixed after a few days. Doctors believe the horse can lead the rest of his life normally, Date added.

On Tuesday, veterinarians fixed a steel structure on the fractured limb during a surgery that lasted for five hours. They later decided to amputate the leg after failing to restore blood supply to the limb.

Police, however, said the horse will remain with the force despite offers for adoption poured in.

Date said Shaktiman has served Uttarakhand police for 10 years and therefore police will prefer to keep Shaktiman in his home (stable).

Caretaker Shyam Singh Chauhan said the force is hopeful that Shaktiman, now kept in isolation, will soon be able to stay with its partner Aayesha and two friends Veru and Shamsher.

Gauri Maulkhi of People for Animal (PFA), a NGO working for animal rights, said it was if police agree, it was ready to keep the horse at their equine centre, the only such facility in Dehradun.

Police has so far arrested two people over the incident but yet to act against the MLA, whom the party has defended. Union minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi too has called for his expulsion from the party.

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The BJP has removed the vice-president of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha in the Kashi region from his post and suspended his primary membership for allegedly issuing a controversial statement against the chief of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday.

Shyam Dwivedi, BJP Kashi region youth wings vice-president, has been removed from his post and his primary membership from the party has also been suspended with immediate effect, BJPs media in-charge in eastern Uttar Pradesh Sanjai Bhardwaj said on Thursday in Varanasi.

Bhardwaj said partys Kashi region president Laxman Acharya took the action against Dwivedi following the instructions from senior leaders of the organisation. Bhardwaj said the party was against such controversial statement.

Dwivedi, the son of BJPs Allahabad district unit president Ranraksha Dwivedi, had called Owaisi a traitor and said he didnt have the right to live in India.

If he (Owaisi) has objection in saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai, his tongue should be chopped off and one who does so will be rewarded with Rs 1 crore, he had said.

Owaisi had said he will not chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai even if someone puts a knife to his throat at a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district of Maharashtra last Sunday.

His reaction came in response to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwats suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to shout slogans hailing Mother India.
The Supreme Court wants to know whether electromagnetic radiation emanated from cell phone towers is harmful for health and could be termed as pollutants under the Environment Protection Act.

A bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur on Friday asked a group of Vasant Kunj residents to place before it any scientific study in support of their petition that wants a direction to stop installation of mobile towers in the colony.

The residents moved SC after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) held it had no jurisdiction to hear the case because the environment law does not count radiation as a pollutant.

Which forum hears the matter is of no concern? The point is whether these radiations harm the health of humans and animals, the bench said when counsel for the mobile companies opposed the petition. The CJI hinted that his bench may take up the issue if there is study to substantiate the residents worry.

The telecom companies were also told to disclose the standards followed internationally. Why dont we get to see these towers in foreign countries such as London? the bench asked senior advocate LN Rao, representing the mobile operators. Rao denied existence of any study to prove that the radiations generated were harmful to health.

But, the CJI referred to a book written by Kerala High Courts former chief justice JL Gupta who recently died of cancer and said: He said the reason why he suffered from the disease was because he spent a lot of time on his mobile phone and also did conferences with his client. But, is there anything to substantiate it scientifically.

The court adjourned the hearing for two weeks.

The green tribunal had in December last refused to entertain the petition of Vasant Kunj residents who have complained that the installation of cellular towers in the residential park was in breach of the ministry of environments office order, Delhi government and telecom departments advisory guidelines.

In its challenge to the tribunals decision, the residents said the electromagnetic radiation could be termed as pollutants because it is injurious to health of not only human beings but also the environment itself. They referred to the inter-ministerial committee report to support the petition.

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The Election Commission of India (ECI) has withdrawn its expenditure observer Raghavendra Singh from Guwahati on Friday for carrying out an unauthorised raid at residence of Assam minister Rockybul Hussain. The search raid was carried at the state ministers residence at Panjabari area last Thursday.

ECI in a communique on Friday stated that the search raid was conducted at the Assam ministers house by income tax dept and the expenditure observer had transgressed his jurisdiction by reaching at the spot himself and acted against the instructions of the Election Commission.

ECI stated that it does not authorise any of its observers to carry out any such enforcement activities by himself/ herself. There was a lapse from the expenditure observer in entire episode of raid at the state ministers residence.

The Commission has viewed this lapse by expenditure observer seriously and has withdrawn him from constituency forthwith and instructed the controlling authority to initiate suitable departmental action against him. All Observers have been directed to perform their actions within the prescribed framework as laid down by ECI manual, stated in a communique of ECI.

The ECI stated that the search and seizure operation had been conducted independently by the Income Tax Department under the provisions of the Income Tax Act on receipt of intelligence from other independent agency. The expenditure observer deployed by the commission had activated the flying squad as a part of follow up action, following the information received from the Income Tax department.

The search raid at the Congress state ministers house triggered controversy and the ruling Congress in Assam made allegation that section of officials of both the ECI and IT dept acted at the behest of partys political opponent. Chief minister Gogoi said: The search raid at the ministers house is part of a bigger conspiracy against us.

Assam Congress on Friday asked the Election Commission to withdraw Election expenditure observer Raghavendra Singh from the state for allegedly acting in a partisan and high-handed manner against a particular political party.

Singh, accompanied by CRPF and police personnel had surrounded the residence of senior Congress Minister Rakibul Hussain on March 16 without any prior intimation or notice, Assam Congress president Anjan Dutta said in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

Dutta alleged Singh had stopped the vehicle of Hussain, who was accompanied by his wife and son, when they were coming out of their residence, refused to divulge his identity and forcefully conducted search of the ministers personal vehicle and accompanying security escort vehicles.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to focus on governance rather than snooping on opponents.

PM shud concentrate on governance, which is suffering badly under NDA, rather than snooping on opponents https://t.co/Jz3vcnYKSw  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 18, 2016

Kejriwal alleged that officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had interrogated Delhi government officials about him.

Can the prime minister explain this? CBI reports directly to him. What does the PM want? Kejriwal asked.

He said if Modi wants any information regarding him (Kejriwal), he should set up a team for it.

PM wants info abt me? Let PM set up a team. I will come n answer all their questions. I hv nothing to hide. https://t.co/Jz3vcnYKSw  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 18, 2016
The Union home ministry has taken off Ford Foundation from its watch list under which any flow of funds from the US-based international donor agency, any Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO) or person had to be vetted by the ministry before being disbursed to the recipient.

The decision of the home ministry has come prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the US.

It has been decided to remove Ford Foundation, USA from the prior reference category with immediate effect. Now any fund flow from Ford Foundation to any person, NGO or organisation in India need not to be referred for clearance to this ministry, the home ministrys letter to the Reserve Bank India said asking it to inform all banks about the decision.

In April last year, the ministry had put the agency on its watch-list for funding activist Teesta Setalvads NGOs, saying they didnt use the funds provided by the foundation for the stated purpose in violation of the foreign contribution regulation act.

Setalvad, a vocal critic of PM Modi, denied the charge but the home ministry asked the CBI to probe further. Ford Foundation also took up the matter with the home ministry.

The ministry asked the foundation to get itself registered under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) that governs foreign exchange transactions in the country.

According to ministry officials, all liaison offices of international donor agencies need to register under Fema. Since the foundation had not done so, ever since it started working in India from 1952 onwards, it was asked to apply for registration.

In an earlier statement, the foundation had said it had submitted an application for registration under applicable Indian law on the direction of the government.

The response of Ford Foundation on the decision of the government is awaited.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised Islam for its message of peace and harmony and described Sufism as one of its greatest contributions.

He said this while addressing a global audience on the opening day of the World Sufi Forum in New Delhi on Thursday.

Terrorism dominated the discussion at the three-day event in which Sufi scholars from around the world are taking part.

Of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence and the first two names denote compassionate and merciful. Allah is Rahman and RaheemThose who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious, Modi said.

When the spiritual love of Sufism, not the violent force of terrorism, flows across the border, this region will be the paradise on earth that Amir Khusrau spoke about, Modi added, referring to the 13th century Sufi poet.

Read the full text of PM Modis speech

Here are the top 10 quotes from PM Modis speech:

1.Of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence and the first two names denote compassionate and merciful. Allah is Rahman and RaheemThose who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious.

2. When the spiritual love of Sufism, not the violent force of terrorism, flows across the border, this region will be the paradise on earth that Amir Khusrau spoke about.

3. Sufism became the face of Islam in India, even as it remained deeply rooted in the Holy Quran, and Hadis. Sufism blossomed in Indias openness and pluralism. It engaged with her spiritual tradition, and evolved its own Indian ethos. And, it helped shape a distinct Islamic heritage of India.

4. It is this spirit of Sufism, the love for their country and the pride in their nation that define the Muslims in India. They are steeped in the democratic tradition of India, confident of their place in the country and invested in the future of their nation; And, above all, they are shaped by the values of the Islamic heritage of India. It upholds the highest ideals of Islam and has always rejected the forces of terrorism and extremism.

5. As a nation, we stood against colonialism and in our struggle for freedom. At the dawn of independence some chose to go away. The tallest of our leaders, such as Maulana Azad, and important spiritual leaders, such as Maulana Hussain Madani, and millions and millions of ordinary citizens, rejected the idea of division on the basis of religion.

6. Terrorism divides and destroys us. Indeed, when terrorism and extremism have become the most destructive force of our times, the message of Sufism has global relevance.

7. Terrorism uses diverse motivations and causes, none of which can be justified. Terrorists distort a religion whose cause they profess to support. They kill and destroy more in their own land and among their own people than they do elsewhere.

8. The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion. It cannot be. It is a struggle between the values of humanism and the forces of inhumanity.

9. We must reject any link between terrorism and religion. Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious.

10. We need just not constitutional provisions or legal safeguards, but also social values to build an inclusive and peaceful society, in which everyone belongs, secure about his rights and confident of her future.
Delhi Police on Friday opposed ex-DU professor SAR Geelanis bail plea at a city court, citing that the sedition charge he was arrested on was a grievous one. Geelani has been in judicial custody since February 16 for allegedly organising an event that generated hatred for the government.

In a brief hearing, additional sessions judge Deepak Garg deferred the case to March 19, asking the investigating officer to produce the video evidence based on which police arrested Geelani.

Geelani, who was tried in the 2001 Parliament attack case with Afzal Guru, was arrested for allegedly organising an event in Press Club in which anti-national slogans were said to be raised, video footage of which police claim to have.

Read more: JNU row: DU ex-professor SAR Geelanis bail plea rejected

A magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Geelani on February 19, three days after police arrested him on charges of sedition, unlawful assembly and conspiracy with unknown persons.

At the bail hearing on Friday, the public prosecutor stated he was unable to argue the case as he had not yet seen a copy of the 46-year-old professors bail application.

In response to Geelanis advocate Satish Tamta stating that his clients bail plea had already been deferred once, the court said the matter would be heard on Saturday.

Let it (bail plea) be taken up tomorrow morning as the first matter, the court said.

Police told the court that the February 13 event had banners showing the Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs, and a group allegedly shouted slogans hailing Guru.

They further stated that the hall at which the event was hosted was booked by the former professor through his associate Ali Javed using a credit card, with the involvement of one Mudassar.

Based on a FIR registration, Javed, a Press Club member, was interrogated by police for two days.

Prosecution had earlier sought to rely on Geelanis previous arrest in connection with the Parliament attack case. Geelani was acquitted in the matter by Delhi high court in 2003, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005.
The Capital breathed a sigh of relief on Friday after the chief minister of neighbouring Haryana, which supplies half of the citys water, denied reports that his state was planning to turn off the tap.

But the threat of a water blockade is not over as a tussle between Haryana and Punjab over a canal project could still have a trickle-down effect on Delhi. Earlier in the day, the Punjab assembly passed a resolution that the government will not allow the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal despite the Supreme Court ordering a status quo on the land. Haryana alleged the ground has been levelled so it cannot be used.

Media reports said Haryanas irrigation minister had written to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, threatening to snap water supply after the Capitals ruling Aam Aadmi Party supported Punjab in the canal dispute, possibly with an eye on next years elections in the state where it hopes to win big.

Kejriwal said there should be no politics over water, weeks after the city was hit by acute shortage when pro-quota protesters damaged another crucial canal.

His Haryana counterpart, Manohar Lal Khattar, described the Punjab assembly resolution as gross violation of the top courts orders.

The BJP, which is in power at the Centre, also rules Haryana and is part of the Punjab government led by the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)has said that homosexuality shouldnt be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect others and sexual preferences are private and personal.

I dont think homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said at the India Today Conclave on Thursday.

His statement was in response to a question on whether homosexuality is a crime as considered under Article 377 IPC.

On Friday morning, Dattatreya reiterated his comments but maintained that gay sex is still socially immoral.

Gay marriage is Institutionalization of homosexuality. It should be prohibited.  Dattatreya Hosabale (@DattaHosabale) March 18, 2016

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case.  Dattatreya Hosabale (@DattaHosabale) March 18, 2016

Sexual preferences are private and personal. Why should RSS express its views in a public forum? RSS has no view on that. It is for people to have their way. Personal preference of sex is not discussed in RSS and we dont even want to discuss that, Dattatreya said on Thursday.

Section 377 of Indian Penal Code terms homosexuality as unnatural and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. Going by the global trends in this regard, there have been demands in India to decriminalise homosexuality.

Read |Shashi Tharoors bill on homosexuality defeated in LS for 2nd time

Hosabale replied to a series of questions from RSS having a remote control over the Centre to AIMIM leader Owaisis refusal to chant pro-India slogan.

He said RSS sends signals to the BJP-led government at the Centre but dismissed suggestions it held a remote control over it.

There is no control, but certainly remote is there. Remote is there, signal is there. RSS is not having any remote control on BJP or any other political party.

RSS swayamsevaks are working actively and are participants in BJP. BJP also subscribes to certain views and ideology of RSS and the inspiration they take in public life. If family members come to RSS for suggestions, is it remote control or affection. There is no complaint from BJP and there is no wish from RSS, Hosabale said.

Hosabale also said AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi was an anti-national as he said he would not chant Bharat Mata ki Jai, a slogan not coined by RSS but during the freedom struggle.

Asked if one was a traitor by not chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai, he said, Of course, he is an anti-national... All the political leaders except Owaisis party opposed what he said.

If someone says he/she does not want to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai at all, you are not allowing others also to not chant the slogan....If anybody says so, he is anti-national.

Read | Wont say Bharat Mata Ki Jai: AIMIMs Owaisi dares RSS chief Bhagwat

On beef eating, the RSS leader said one should respect the sensibilities of others too.

Cant you live without beef, cant you respect the sensibilities of majority and respect feelings of other people also? Beef eating has not been acceptable in this country. Mahatma Gandhi was also against beef eating, he did not become communal, but RSS is communal, he said.

The RSS leader expressed concern that anti-national activities are being spread in campuses in the country.

Why anti-India feelings are being expressed in university campuses? If some students are raising slogans for breaking India into pieces and its destruction, if they raise slogans in favour of a criminal who has been hanged as per the law of the land, any nation in the world will not tolerate it. In India, being anti-national is not acceptable, he said.

On why women are not there in RSS, he said, It is only in field activities in public that women are not there, but in all other activities women are there. RSS is not averse to the idea of women participation in physical activities in RSS shakhas. It can happen... A day will come sooner than later. We are taking our own time for all this, anything can happen.
Haryana is bracing for a fresh wave of Jat protests even as the government made a last attempt to avert it by inviting Jat leaders for talks on Friday, promising to get a bill on reservation passed during the ongoing Budget session that concludes on March 31.

As a precautionary measure, internet services were blocked in Rohtak, that was a nerve centre and also one of the worst affected during the agitation last month.

We are also actively seeing the development on social media and have tried to infiltrate into groups. We have got hold of a couple of people, who are indulging in rumour mongering, Rohtak superintendent of police, Shashank Anand said.

A senior home ministry official stated all arrangements have been made to secure Haryana; 3,000 paramilitary forces have been sent across sensitive places in the state and some spots on the highway to maintain peace and law.

I have spoken to CM of Haryana, there is no need to worry about anything, home minister Rajnath Singh assured.

Another 300 personnel have been deployed to guard the Munak canal which supplies water to Delhi. During the week-long February agitation in which 30 people were killed, the canal was severely damaged, leaving the national capital dry for several days. The canal took almost a fortnight to be repaired.

The Delhi government on Thursday said it hoped the Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana state government would not be negligent this time and ensure no water crisis in the national capital.

Members of the protesting Jat community, who had issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the government to address their demands by Thursday, said they would take a decision on the future course of action after meeting with Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police Friday afternoon.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Muftis meeting with BJP president Amit Shah in New Delhi failed to break the deadlock on the government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. The ruling party at the Centre on Friday hardened its stance saying that it will not accept any new conditions from its coalition partner in the state and the new government has to be formed on the basis of existing conditions.

Mehbooba was expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi but she will now return to Srinagar on Saturday, said PDP sources.

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who is the partys key negotiator for an alliance with the PDP, said that no new demand is acceptable to the BJP, indicating the failure of talks. Governors rule was imposed in J&K on January 8, a day after chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died. Since then, both the PDP and BJP have been negotiating new terms of engagement.

There is no change in our stand, Madhav said. We have told them that a new government should be formed on existing conditions...New demands can be taken up once a new government is formed. For us, conditions that existed during Mufti sahabs tenure remain. The only change is that he is no longer there, Madhav said, blaming PDP for stalemate. It was for PDP to appoint a new leader and carry on.

Mehbooba wants firm assurances from the NDA government on transfer of central power projects to J&K and time-bound implementation of the Agenda for Alliance, a governance framework established by the two parties.

On Thursday, the army agreed to vacate the land held by it in three places, another key demand of the PDP.

Political observers said both the PDP and BJP were flexing muscles because of the realisation that there is no possibility of an alternative formation. After the 2014 assembly elections had thrown up a fractured verdict, there were attempts to forge a PDP-Congress-National Conference coalition but it did not take off due to obvious contradictions. Given that the Congress is no more enthusiastic about playing any role in the government formation in Srinagar, the PDP is left with little option. The BJP, on the other hand, is playing it hard as it is no hurry given that the Centre is administering the state through the Governor.
The looming threat of the re-initiation of Jat reservation agitation was pushed back on Friday after Jat representatives and khap leaders held parleys with the Haryana chief secretary and director general of police (DGP).

The BJP government in Haryana is preparing to bring a bill for providing reservation to Jats and four other castes in government jobs and educational institutions. However, it could not be tabled in the state assembly this week due to a lack of consensus among the BJP MLAs.

After a four-hour meeting with the chief secretary, All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) national chief Yashpal Malik said they have agreed to defer the agitation till March 31 in view of the assurances given by the Haryana government. On the demands being made by Jat representatives and khap leaders, Malik said they suggested that Jats should be included in the existing backward classes (B) category and this quota should be increased to 14 % from the existing 11 %.

If the 50 % ceiling limit for reservation gets breached, the legislation should be included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to provide it immunity from judicial review, Malik said.

He said they have convened a meeting in New Delhi on March 31 and April 3 to take stock of the situation and decide on the future course of action. On being asked about the ongoing dharna and gatherings of Jats at certain places, particularly in Rohtak, Malik said those were merely symbolic.

Meanwhile, under fire over allegations of inaction during the earlier agitation, chief minister Manohar Lal on Friday talked tough on law and order, saying if anyone had intentions to disturb peace, he should forget about it.

This government belongs to 2.5 crore people of the state and it came to power with full majority. If somebody has any intention to disturb law and order and create an environment against the government, he should forget it, Khattar said.
A Delhi court granted on Friday interim bail for six months to Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who are facing sedition charges for allegedly shouting anti-national slogans.

Additional sessions judge Reeteesh Singh directed the students to file a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each and a surety of equal amount.

Both men were told they could not leave the city without courts permission.

The students lawyers have moved to file bail bonds and surety papers. After this, a court direction would be sent to Tihar Jail authorities to secure their release and the students will likely walk out of jail by Friday night.

The order that generated loud cheers at JNU came two weeks after fellow JNU student and sedition accused Kanhaiya Kumar was granted bail under similar terms. Khalid and Bhattacharya had moved their bail application on the grounds of parity.

Read | Feb 9 events not a major act of indiscipline: JNU professors

The three students were present at a February 9 event commemorating 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Police registered an FIR against unknown persons based on video footage of the event.

The students are at the centre of a nationwide debate on free speech with Kumar emerging as a leading critic of the government through his widely-circulated public speeches. But at a recent rally, he was criticised for barely mentioning Khalid and Bhattacharya.

Police said that Khalid and Bhattacharyas involvement in the rally was deeper than that of Kumars. They were the organisers, prosecution said.

Khalids lawyer Jawahar Raja and Bhattacharyas lawyer Tradeep Pais argued that even the videos of the alleged anti-national sloganeering was in dispute at the present stage.

Read | JNU row: Umar and Anirban organised Feb 9 event, Delhi Police tell court

If there is a strong disagreement, going almost to hatred, divergence between sections that think these students are anti-national, and the students who think they have nothing wrong, this is a difference of opinion and not a question of criminal law, said Pais.

Police, however, said the men attempted to incite disaffection against the nation, which amounted to sedition.

Read | JNU internal inquiry committee finds Umar, Anirban guilty on four counts
Kashmir is an integral part of the country and Indians can discuss issues pertaining to Kashmiris at any forum, JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar said on Friday.

Kumar denied supporting Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru, but said he opposed capital punishment.

Kumar was charged with sedition in connection with an event at JNU where anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted. He was granted bail earlier this month.

Speaking at the India Today conclave, Kumar said: There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues.

Our protest (on February 9) was against capital punishment, not in support of Afzal, he said, adding that even if an ABVP activist was given capital punishment, he would oppose it.

Read | From Begusarai to JNU, Kanhaiya Kumars been on right side of Left

Guru was hanged three years ago for an attack on Indian Parliament in 2001.

The JNU culture promotes debate and discussion. It is not our culture to stop people from speaking or putting forth their point of view, even if we do not agree with it, he said.

Asked why he did not stop people from allegedly raising provocative slogans at JNU on February 9, Kumar said neither he or nor his All India Students Federation (AISF) supported such slogans or Kashmirs secession.

Kumar vowed to wage a battle for scrapping of the sedition law under which he and two other PhD scholars of the university were arrested after a controversy broke out.

Read | Kanhaiya Kumars message was in the delivery

Welcoming the bail granted to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, he said all parties and people supporting democracy must come forward to demand abolishing the British-era law.

Khalid and Bhattacharya, arrested last month on charges of sedition for their involvement in the controversial event, were on Friday granted interim bail for six months by a Delhi court on grounds of parity with Kumar.

Those who are supporting democracy should come together. It will be a long battle. We have been given the bail. We will go on with our struggle to ensure that the sedition law is scrapped, Kumar said.

I have been to jail. I know what it feels to be there. I am glad our comrades will be back but the struggle will continue, said Kumar.

Read | Kanhaiya Kumar: Forged from the fires of Tihar, a leader is born
The Centre on Thursday appointed Kerala cadre police officer, AK Sinha, to head the special protection group (SPG) that protects Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former PMs.

A 1987 batch IPS officer, Arun Kumar Sinha is Keralas Additional Director General of Police (Special service and Traffic). Apart from a stint in the Border Security Force, Sinha has spent most of his career in the state and is in-charge of protection of women and non-resident Indian affairs.

The SPG had been without a full-time chief for nearly 15 months, after the PMO eased out its director Durga Prasad in November 2014 while he was preparing for Modis Nepal visit. Last month, Prasad was finally appointed to head the Central Reserve Police Force.

Sinha will be the third police officer after Prasads transfer to lead the team of about 3,000 crack commandoes handpicked from police forces across the country and put through a gruelling training programme.

The senior-most SPG officer, SS Chaturvedi briefly held the charge before the government moved in IPS officer Vivek Srivastava to the SPG from the intelligence bureau to oversee the PMs security.

Like the PM, Srivastava too has a Gujarat connection -- he is from the Gujarat cadre -- but had spent the past few years in the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

PM Modi had seen Srivastava at work during his 2013 visit to Patna for an election meeting. It was Srivastava, who headed the IBs Patna office, who coordinated arrangements for Modis security after serial explosions went off in the city hours before Modi landed.

Government sources said Srivastava  who was recently given an extension till October 2016  had indicated his willingness to return to the intelligence bureau.

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Union home minister Rajnath Singhs said on Friday that he learnt about Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT)s visit to India in connection with Pathankot airbase attack from the media. The opposition Congress was quick to pounce on the opportunity to take a swipe at the NDA government saying that there is a communication gap between the South Block (where Prime Ministers office is located) and the North Block (home ministry).

The biggest communication gap is not between Islamabad and Delhi. It is between South Block and North Block. There is a hotline between Delhi and Islamabad but there is no hotline between South Block and North Block, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said expressing sympathy with the home minister.

I have come to know through media that the Pakistan team is coming. We are fully prepared, said the home minister at an event to distribute scholarship cheques to the school going children of central armed police forces (CAPFs) personnel who were killed while on duty. Asked whether Pakistan probe team would be allowed access to the airbase, Singh said modalities will be worked out once they arrive in India. Lets wait for Sushmaji (Sushma Swaraj) to be back (from Nepal), he said.

Incidentally, his deputy Kiren Rijiju seemed quite in the loop about the JITs visit as he told reporters on Thursday that the government had given in-principal approval to the visit of Pak probe team and it will be allowed access to all the places including the airbase. After a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, advisor to the Pakistani Prime Minister on foreign affairs, in Nepal on Thursday, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had announced that the JIT would be visiting India on March 27.

The home minister is not aware of the JIT (visit). the defence minister is saying a different thing, said senior Congress leader Anand Sharma alleging that ministers were talking in different voices.
The CBI is examining three lakh financial transactions through which a substantial portion of the public sector bank loans taken by Kingfisher Airlines Limited (KFL) were allegedly siphoned abroad.

The agency is examining if remittances sent to four countries were for business purposes or for siphoning to build assets in violation of loan terms, said a CBI source. The transactions comprise around 60% of a total five lakh transactions flagged by the CBI. The agency suspects this number could go up to 7.5 lakhs as bank documents connected to the loans run into thousands.

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, as chairman for KFL, sought loans from 17 public sector banks to fund the airliner. As the debts remained, the banks declared him a willful defaulter, ultimately leading to the companys fleet being grounded. A total of Rs 7, 000 crore was borrowed during 2004-12.

Its the beginning of the probe as far as default on loans from all the banks, not just IDBI bank, are concerned and the number of transactions will increase substantially, said a CBI source.

The IDBI loan of Rs 900 crore was the last loan taken by the firm at a time the firm was facing rough weather, but loans taken when KFL was doing well stand non-returned too, said the source. The CBI on Thursday said it had expanded its probe to include the firms default on loans from IDBI and the 16 other public sector banks.

So far, the CBI was investigating just a single loan default case, which involved KFLs non-return of IDBI banks Rs 900 crore in 2009. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has similarly expanded its money-laundering probe to include all the 17 banks.

The agency suspects that parts of the loans could have been diverted abroad allegedly on false pretexts. In the IDBI bank case, under the CBI scanner are transactions comprising a significant part of a sum of Rs 169 crore sent via a private bank for payments against lease rentals and purchase of aircraft parts, along with diversion of Rs 3.45 crore to KFL s London account, said another source.

The 17 banks had in the second week of March approached the Supreme Court seeking to impound Mallyas passport, however Mallya had already left for UK on March 2. Mallyas financials came into the spotlight again as news broke of a Rs 515 crore deal UK-based Diageo Plc, the worlds largest spirits maker, was paying for Mallyas exit from United Breweries.

SBI, the largest lender to Kingfisher, had approached the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to restrain Mallya from withdrawing his severance package.

CBI has been probing the IDBI case since July 29 last year after filing a FIR against Mallya, KFL, its the chief financial officer A Raghunathan and unknown bank officials. Since then, senior KFL officials including Mallya were questioned thrice and Mallyas official and residential premises in Goa, Bangalore, and Mumbai searched.

When we questioned Vijay Mallya in the case earlier, he insisted that the IDBI loan amount was spent strictly for business purposes. He denied any wrongdoing, said the source.

The agency recently contacted the four countries for details connected to the three lakh overseas transactions. Refusing to reveal the names of these countries due to the sensitive, ongoing probe, a source said they were contacted through channels other than judicial or diplomatic channels or mutual legal assistance treaties. At a later stage, we will send formal requests or Letters Rogatories to the four countries. United Kingdom and tax havens are suspected to figure on this list.

The ED may take legal steps to get Mallyas property attached, even provisionally, if he does not appear to its summons for questioning. ED will target such assets of Mallya for attachment that gets proven as proceeds of the crime. In that case, assets equal to the amount of the crimes proceeds, Rs 900 crore in the IDBI case for instance, may get attached with courts permission, said a Directorate source. The ED has undertaken an exercise to zero in on such assets.
Home minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the modalities for the joint investigation team (JIT) from Pakistan, which will probe the Pathankot airbase terror attack in India, will be worked out once they arrive in India on March 27.

I have come to know through media that the Pakistan team is coming. We are fully prepared, he said on the sidelines of a function in the Capital.

Asked whether the Pakistan team will be given access to the strategic airbase, the home minister said modalities will be worked out once they arrive in India.

Lets wait for Sushma ji (Sushma Swaraj) to be back, he said.

After a meeting with her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, external affairs minister Swaraj had said in Pokhara (Nepal) on Thursday that the JIT from Pakistan will arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward its probe into the Pathankot terror attack.

On Thursday, Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said that India will allow a Pakistan probe team to visit wherever necessary in connection with the probe into the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

Six terrorists, suspected to be of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, had attacked the airbase on January 2, killing seven security personnel. All the six terrorists were also killed In the gun-battle that lasted over two days.
The family of Sankar, a Dalit man who was brutally murdered in front of his OBC Thevar wife near Coimbatore last week, has received a threatening letter containing multiple caste insults. from a fake address.

Velu, what caste are you? Sakkiliyan? (a SC caste often used as an insult) Making your son study at a college when he should be in Palani sitting under a tree mending shoes as people come and go. You should live your life with the 50 or 100 rupees you get a day, begins the letter.

You should be under the control of the higher caste men. After all, if there is no head, there will be no tail.

Sankar was murdered by members of his wifes family, in the latest incident of honour killing in the state of Tamil Nadu. He was hacked to death in Udumalpet while out shopping.

Kausalya, his wife, was injured in the attack. She is currently recovering.

Police announced that they would begin an investigation after analysing the contents of the letter.
Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat said on Friday there was no political conspiracy behind the arrest of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Ganesh Joshi, accused of brutally beating up police horse Shaktiman and breaking its leg.

The action has been taken by the law enforcing agencies and I have no knowledge of it. The incident has not caused any harm to the governments image as the people have faith in us and trust us. There is absolutely no political conspiracy behind the arrest made in the case, Rawat told reporters in Dehradun.

Uttarakhand BJP president Ajay Bhatt, however, alleged Joshi was not arrested and that it seems to be a case of kidnapping as those who took him away were not in uniform.

We will meet the honourable governor. We will give a befitting reply to the hooliganism taking place in the state under the leadership of Harish Rawat. We believe in democracy and we will do everything in a constitutional manner. But Harish Rawat, the chief minister, stands exposed today. They were in civil dress. We dont know whether they were policemen or goons. Our MLA has been kidnapped, Bhatt told ANI.

We dont know where he (Ganesh Joshi) is and we have asked the district administration to bring him before us at the earliest. And if there are any allegations against him then he must be produced before the court. We will jam the whole Uttarakhand and will not let anything run here if our leader is not released, he added.

Joshi was arrested earlier on Friday morning by Uttarakhand police for allegedly assaulting Shaktiman, a horse part of the security forces mounted unit. The 14-year-old horse was allegedly beaten with sticks by Joshi and his associates during a BJP protest.

Shaktimans left hind leg was amputated by doctors on Thursday after it suffered multiple fractures during a BJP protest earlier this week. An initial assessment by doctors raised hopes that Shaktiman would not lose its leg.

However, it had to be amputated to stop gangrene from spreading to other parts of its body.

The BJP MLA, who has been charged with cruelty and maiming an animal, has alleged that he is being targeted by the states ruling Congress.

Hours after Joshi was arrested, the Uttarakhand government appeared headed for a crisis on Friday as the BJP said it was in talks with some Congress legislators.

BJP leader Tirath Rawat told news agency ANI that 12-13 Congress legislators were in touch with them due to growing resentment. BJP sources told HT they are in touch with a few sulking Congress MLAs who could abstain from voting on the state budget.

The Congress party has dismissed the reports.

There is no danger to our party, were secure. All MLAs are with us, Kishore Upadhyay, Uttarakhand Congress president, said.
The CPI is banking on sedition-charged student leader Kanhaiya Kumar to spread Leftist ideology on campuses across the country, seen as an attempt to revive the electoral relevance of the countrys second oldest political party.

CPI general secretary G Sudhakar Reddy said the party wants the students union leader of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to spend more time on campuses rather than burdening him with campaigning in the forthcoming assembly elections in four states.

Kumar, a member of the CPIs students wing, the All India Students Federation (AISF), achieved iconic status after his arrest last month on sedition charges sparked a nationwide debate on nationalism and free speech. Kumar is out on interim bail.

Read More | HC to hear pleas for cancellation of Kanhaiya Kumars bail on March 23

The CPI, which had said indicated Kumar will campaign for the party in the assembly polls, has come round to the thinking that instead of than spreading Kumars stardom thin, it will make better political sense to use its young face on campuses.

Now, Kanhaiya Kumar is busy with his own campus (JNU). He will be interacting with students from other universities and travelling to campuses in many parts of the country, Reddy told Hindustan Times.

He added Kumar will soon visit the Hyderabad Central University, the epicentre of an agitation against alleged bias against lower-caste students, triggered by the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

Reddy also the party was concerned about the possible security threat to Kumar.

What worries us the most is BJP not condemning unequivocally the threats to him coming from what are known as the fringe elements of the Sangh Parivar. That emboldens these groups.

Read More | Kanhaiya, Rohith emerge as new poster boys for Cong, Left

Despite the partys falling electoral fortunes over the years, Reddy said his party was battle-ready for the forthcoming polls.

In Kerala, the CPI has demanded 29 seats to contest under the CPM-led alliance Left Democratic Front (LDF). The party had contested 27 seats last time.

In West Bengal, the party will be contesting only in 11 seats against 14 seats it had fielded candidates for last time.

In Kerala, we are sure of a Left win in West Bengal, we are sure the people will vote out the corruption-stung Trinamool, he added.

At present, CPI has one just one Lok Sabha MP from Kerala.

The party once had considerable presence in Kanhaiya Kumars home state Bihar including the first CPI MLA in the state, Chandrashekhar Singh, who belonged to his hometown Begusarai.

Read More | Left will not ally with Congress in West Bengal: CPI

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Adding to the Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan controversy, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has questioned the BJP if incumbent CM Mehbooba Mufti will be asked to chant the same as a pre- condition'' to government formation in the state.

Is Mehbooba Mufti also going to be asked to chant #BharatMataKiJai as a condition for Govt formation in J&K? Abdullah tweeted the query out to his 1.3 million followers late on Thursday evening.

Abdullahs comment was in reaction to the outrage over All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisis refusal to repeat the slogan, an issue that led to one of the partys legislators being banned from the Maharashtra assembly on Wednesday.

While PDP refused to react to the comment, Abdullah was not available for comment.

Owaisi countered the suspension saying not choosing to say the slogan was also a freedom of expression and being forced against ones will was not Constitutional.

We are heading into an age of darkness. By supporting the suspension motion, Congress and NCP, who call themselves secular, have been completely exposed, he said.

The decision to suspend Waris Pathan, an AIMIM legislator from Byculla in Mumbai, for showing disrespect to house was passed by all parties on the assembly.
More than 450 years ago, French seer Nostradamus predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will rule India from 2014 to 2026, says Union minister Kiren Rijiju.

French prophet Nostradamus wrote that from 2014 to 2026, a man will lead India, whom initially, people will hate but after that people will love him so much that he will be engaged in changing the countrys plight and direction. This was predicted in the year 1555, the minister of state for home posted on Facebook.

Rijiju, the member of Parliament from Arunachal (West), cited some numbers as Amazing Facts, though its not clear what is the link between the numbers and Nostradamuss supposed prediction, if any.

A middle aged superpower administrator will bring golden age not only in India but on the entire world. Under his leadership India will not only just become the Global Master, but many countries will also come into the shelter of India, Rijiju posted, apparently quoting Nostradamus.

The minister told HT he read about the predictions in a translated version of Nostradamuss works.

Many belive the seer from the 16th century predicted the French revolution (1789), nuclear bomb explosions in Japan (1945) and the 9/11 attacks in the US (2001).
A group of people categorised as overseas citizens of India (OCIs) have challenged a Central notification disallowing them from commissioning surrogate children in the country. In a petition before the Supreme Court, the OCIs termed the move as discriminatory.

Taking up the petition on Thursday, a bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi and NV Ramana asked the government to explain the logic behind leaving the OCIs out in the notification, even as the proposed law does not envisage it.

The SC is hearing a PIL filed by an advocate Jayashree Wad who complained that India had become a major hub for commercial surrogacy in the world due to unregulated practice of the trade.

The Centre issued a notification in November to regulate commercial surrogacy in India, considered to be a $445 million annual business. As a part of stringent measures, the government banned import of human embryo except for research.

Under what authority of law have you imposed this ban? Even the draft bill does not contemplate it, the bench asked the government counsel who assured the court to be back with a response on April 13.

The judges also asked the government to spell out the fate of the bill that was to be tabled before the Parliament. They recalled that the solicitor general had on October 2015 said the bill was at a consultative stage and would be introduced in the Parliament soon.

More than three months have passed what happened to the consultative process? the bench asked the government advocate who said the bill was now pending before a parliamentary standing committee.

The orders issued on November 3 and 4 last year said stated that no Indian mission or foreign office shall issue visa to foreign nationals for this purpose. The detailed advisory by the MHA and health ministry go a step further to stop commercial surrogacy even as the government works on a legislation to bar foreigners from renting a womb in India.

During the hearing, the bench indicated staying the notification in favour of the OCIs. However, on the request of the government counsel it did not issue any order.

The counsel said the purpose behind the notification was to extend the benefit to the infertile Indian parents.

What is the law or mechanism by which you are stopping them (OCIs)? What is the policy? This is contrary to your bill, Justice Gogoi heading the bench observed.

The Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) scheme launched in 2005 provides for registration as OCIs of all persons of Indian origin (PIOs) who were Indian citizens from January 26, 1950 or were eligible to become Indian citizens on that date and who are citizens of other countries, except Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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A reciprocal visit of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing the Pathankot airbase attack, to Islamabad is on cards after the Pakistani investigators complete their four-day visit to India from March 27 onwards.

India is allowing the Pakistani investigators access to the Pathankot airbase, excluding the technical area where countrys air assets are stationed, sources said.

Pakistans joint investigation team will reach New Delhi on the evening of March 27 and from next day onwards it will visit the airbase and other places which it may deem necessary for its probe. After the completion of Pak teams visit, the NIA may visit Islamabad for a possible reciprocal visit, said a senior home ministry official requesting anonymity.

Sources said the NIA may seek access to Bahawalpur, where terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) is headquartered.

Read: Govt under fire over handling of Pathankot attack

Pak militants attacked Pathankot airbase, Jaish operative tells HT

The NIA probe has found that the Pathankot attackers were associated with JeM.

The NIA may like to question Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of JeM, his brother Rauf, who allegedly put a statement on internet on Pathankot attack and the border areas in Pakistan, from where the federal anti-terror agency suspects attackers crossed over to India, said a central counter terror official involved in the probe.

Sources said government has deliberated upon a reciprocal visit of NIA to Islamabad but final decision will be taken after the Pak team goes back.

Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told HT that the Pakistani team will be provided access to all places including the Pathankot airbase that was targeted by six attackers on January 2.

When asked whether the Pak team will be allowed to visit Bamiyal village on Indo-Pak border in Pathankots neighbouring Gurdaspur district in Punjab, which the NIA probe has found to be the place from where alleged Pakistani attackers entered India, Rijiju said: We will allow them to visit wherever necessary for the investigation.

Earlier, defence minister Manohar Parrikar had hinted that the airbase was out of bounds for the Pak investigators. Aides of Union home minister Rajnath Singh had also indicated that the minister was not in favour of Pak probe teams visit to the airbase. But an indication on change in governments thinking came when Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said the air force had no objection to Pak teams visit to the airbase, also adding that any permission in this regard will be a political decision.

Rijiju also denied any visa has already been granted by the home ministry the Pakistani investigators, saying the composition of team has not been communicated by the neighbouring country.

Read: Questions being asked over response to Pathankot attack valid

When terror checked in: Reconstructing the Pathankot air base attack

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The BJP on Thursday strongly condemned Hurriyat (G) deputy general secretarys remark that inspiration for the freedom struggle of Kashmir is only Islam and establishing a model Islamic state is our first and last objective.

Hurriyat is His Masters Voice and speaks the language Pakistan wants it to speak. It has no ideology of its own and is a puppet of Pakistans ISI.

It is for this reason that its leaders rush to the Pakistan High Commission at the first given opportunity, BJP spokesperson Brig Anil Gupta said.

It is a non-negotiable fact that Kashmir is an integral part of India and no power on earth can separate Kashmir from the country, said Gupta.

The statement by the Hurriyat leader is aimed at disturbing communal harmony in the state and instil a sense of fear and uncertainty in the minds of the minorities but the nationalist cadre of BJP is always ready to meet such challenges and ensure unity and integrity in the state, he said.

Gupta further said that the creation of an Islamic State is the declared aim of terrorist outfits like Islamic State, al Qaeda, LeT, JeM and Taliban.

Hurriyat is acknowledging the fact that it is working to further the agenda of these terrorist organisations in Jammu and Kashmir, Gupta said.

Such open and defiant support of these dreaded terrorist outfits by the Hurriyat demands an immediate ban on the party as all these terrorist outfits are already facing an international ban, he added.

Pakistan, which has launched a proxy war against India and is openly sponsoring terror, will never succeed in its nefarious design of disintegrating India -- particularly Jammu & Kashmir, Gupta said.

He also criticised the Pakistan high commissioner for inviting Hurriyat leaders for the Pakistan Day function in New Delhi.
The Haryana government will hold talks with Jat leaders in Chandigarh on Friday after the community threatened another upheaval.

According to reports, the leaders will meet Haryana chief secretary and director general of police.

Various Jat organisations had, on Monday, threatened to resume their quota agitation if the Haryana government didnt meet their demands by Thursday.

Security has been stepped up in the state, with Haryana home secretary saying the administration has called 100 companies of paramilitary forces to tackle any untoward situation.

Centre has also rushed 3,000 personnel of paramilitary forces to guard the Munak canal, which supplies water to the national capital, as it was breached during the Jat agitation.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghursh Samiti president said the state government must bring a bill in the ongoing Assembly session to ensure reservation for Jats.

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has assured that the government will table the bill in the House soon.

State finance minister, captain Abhimanyu, said at a press conference in Chandigarh that the government is working on the bill.

When asked about the expiry of ultimatum, he said the district administration has been given power to register cases under National Security Act against the miscreants. He warned that arson will not be tolerated. The Jat agitation claimed 30 lives in February.

Meanwhile, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hoodas aide, Professor Virender Singh, who was booked for sedition, criminal conspiracy and inciting violence during the agitation, was arrested on Thursday.

The Rohtak Police said Singh will be produced before a court and his custodial interrogation will be sought.
Uttarakhand BJP legislator Ganesh Joshis arrest for allegedly brutally beating up police horse Shaktiman was politically motivated and under pressure from the Congress government in the state, the Mussorie MLAs daughter told ANI on Friday.

His arrest is overturning of democracy and constitutional processes. His arrest is only because of a political reason. He is not guilty at all, said Neha Joshi.

Dehradun Superintendent of police Ajay Singh confirmed to HT that Joshi was arrested on Friday morning for breaking 14-year-old Shaktimans leg and said more arrests were likely. He was sent to 14 days judicial custody.

The BJP MLA is facing three cases in the local Nehru colony police station. One section pertains to the animal cruelty act while some other sections relates to hindrance in the official work and mishandling with the government employees.

Neha Joshi echoed the views of the BJP that criticised the Congress of trying to score political points off Shaktiman.

Shaktimans leg broke because of an accident but Congress has played cheap politics in the entire issue, party spokesperson Virendra Bisht said.

A BJP delegation met Uttarakhand director general of police BS Sidhu over the arrest as his supporters blocked roads.

Others welcomed the arrest.

He is not an MLA, he is an animal, Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav (JDU) told ANI.

Gauri Maulkhi of Peoples for Animal (PFA)  an animal rights NGO - said she was happy that MLA was finally arrested.

A consensus should be made to make Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 stronger since because the penalty for abusing animals in the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 is a ridiculous Rs 50.

The beloved police horse, Shaktiman, became a household name after a viral video clip showed Joshi brandishing a stick and appearing to strike the horse during a BJP protest rally. The incident triggered criticism from activists and rival parties as photographs of the injured animal spread on social media.

The video ended with the horse on its back and apparently in pain with a policeman trying to get it back on its feet. The BJP leader has denied the charges.
Islam is a religion of faith and peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, stressing the fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion.

Modis remarks came at a time his right-wing government is facing criticism over alleged religious and political intolerance.

Of the 99 names of Allah, none stand for force and violence and the first two names denote compassionate and merciful, Modi said at World Sufi Forum, in apparent bid to reach out to Muslims.

The Opposition and a section of the intelligentsia are critical of Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Congress president Sonia Gandhi has accused the ruling establishment of abetting an atmosphere of fear, intolerance.

The PM has been criticised for not speaking out on attacks on minority communities, and irresponsible comments by some BJP lawmakers have drawn flak.

We must reject any link between terrorism and religion. Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious, Modi said at the Sufism meet.

Modi said when the spiritual love of Sufism, not the violent force of terrorism, flows across the border, this region will be the paradise on earth.

Here are five other instances when Modi reached out to minorities.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi listens as artists perform at the opening ceremony of World Sufi Forum at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)

February 2015

Hate speeches by Sangh leaders and the ghar-wapsi (religious conversion) campaign sparked a debate within months of Modi taking charge in May 2014.

A series of attacks on Christian properties in Delhi made matters worse.

Modi faced criticism for his silence, and the New York Times asked: What will it take for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out about the mounting violence against Indias religious minorities.

In February 2015, Modi broke his silence, pledging to uphold the freedom of faith and crack down on inciters of sectarian tensions.

My government will ensure thateveryone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence, Modi said at a gathering of the Christian community in Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (centre) with Christian missionaries and PJ Kurien, deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha (second from left), in New Delhi. (PTI)

March 2015

A 71-year-old nun was gangraped at a missionary-run school in Nadia district of West Bengal in March 2015, an incident that sent shock waves across the country. Around the same time, an under-construction church was vandalised in Haryana.

PM is deeply concerned about the incidents in Hisar, Haryana (the church attack) and Nadia, West Bengal, the Prime Ministers Office tweeted amid outrage.

PMO has asked for immediate report on facts & action taken regarding the incidents in Haryana & West Bengal.

May 2015

In May, Modi said in an interview with Time magazine that the focus of his government is inclusive growth.

Take everybody together and move toward inclusive growth. Wherever a [negative] view might have been expressed [about] a minority religion, we have immediately negated that.

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. The unity and the integrity of the country are the topmost priorities. All religions and all communities have the same rights, Modi said.

June 2015

In an interview with UNI, Modi stressed his agenda of Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas (Together with all, progress for all), and said his government stood for every one of the 1.25 billion Indians regardless of caste or creed.

The PM described anti-minority comments by some leaders unfortunate and uncalled for.

Our Constitution guarantees religious freedom to every citizen and that is not negotiable. I have said this before and I say it again: any discrimination or violence against any community will not be tolerated, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a meeting with a delegation from the Muslim community. (Photo from PMO website)

June 2015

Modi told a delegation of Muslim leaders that he will be available even at midnight to address their concerns.

Modi discussed social, economic and educational issues related to Muslims with a 30-member delegation led by Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chief imam of the All India Imam Organisation.

The Prime Minister told me that his doors would be open to us even at 12 in the night to discuss any issues and concerns of the Muslims. He said, I give you my word, I will respond if you knock on my door at midnight, Ilyasi told HT.

Modi said he neither believes in politics which seeks to divide people on communal lines, nor will he ever speak communal language, a statement from his office said.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj left Pokharan on Friday after attending the SAARC ministerial meeting in Nepal.

Swaraj also held the first bilateral meet with her Pakistani counterpart after the Pathankot terror attack.

After wrapping up her three-day visit, Swaraj left Pokhara on an Mi17 chopper for Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh from where she will head to Delhi on a special flight.

She announced on Thursday that a Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) will arrive in India on March 27 to probe the Pathankot terror attack.

The assault figured very high in the over 20-minute meeting between Swaraj and Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz, the first political-level engagement between the two sides after the January 2 terror attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

Swaraj accepted Pakistans invitation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Islamabad for the SAARC Summit, to be held from November 9-10 this year.

She pitched for unleashing collective strength of SAARC, underlined the need for a South Asian Economic Union with greater connectivity and progress on pending agreements.
The Congress-led government in Uttarakhand plunged into crisis on Friday night as the Opposition BJP staked claim to power with what it said was support from nine ruling party lawmakers.

Chief minister Harish Rawat, who took the hot seat in 2014 after an intense intra-party power struggle, said his government was safe with the backing of 35 legislators in the 70-member assembly.

I am confident and will prove my majority on the floor of the House, he said.

The crisis unfolded when rebel Congress legislators, led by former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, supported the BJPs demand for a conscience vote in favour of the appropriation bill in the assembly.

Congress ministers almost came to blows before speaker GS Kunjwal adjourned the House till March 28.

Late in the evening, BJP leader Ajay Bhatt led 27 party legislators to the Raj Bhawan to ask governor KK Paul to dismiss the Congress government, saying it doesnt have the numbers to rule. The Opposition party sought to form the next government with the support of nine Congress rebels and a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator.

The 36 legislators will meet the governor to stake claim, state BJP vice-president Dhan Singh Rawat said.

Chief minister Rawat enjoyed the support of 42 legislators  37 from the Congress, three Independents and two BSP members  while the BJP has 28 MLAs. The BJPs total strength would be 37, a comfortable majority to form its government, if the nine Congress MLAs loyal to Bahuguna join the rival camp.

But constitutional experts said all eyes will be on the assembly Speaker, who could disqualify the rebels under the anti-defection law.

The immediate trigger of the crisis is said to be a notice to Bahuguna and cabinet minister Harak Singh Rawat for not attending assembly sittings regularly. When the House met in the morning, the duo along with legislators loyal to Bahuguna walked over to the rival BJP to protest the appropriation bill.

Harak Singh told a news channel that he had resigned from the cabinet.

The central leadership, already saddled with a similar crisis in Arunachal Pradesh, is said to be speaking to some of the rebel MLAs.

The Congress, which has 47 MLAs in the 60-member Arunachal assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them revolted and 11 BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, Congress dissident Kalikho Pul became chief minister with the BJPs support.
Two militants were killed by security forces in an encounter that broke out on Friday morning in Handwara town of Kupwara district, Jammu and Kashmir. The encounter is currently underway as more militants are believed to be hiding in the area.

According to sources, the encounter began after security forces got inputs about presence of militants in the Beigh Mohalla wuder area in Handwara.

Security forces surrounded a house in Beigh Mohalla (Rajward Bala) area in Kupwara district today (Friday) morning, a senior police officer told IANS.

When the security forces came under heavy gunfire as they approached the house where militants were reportedly hiding. The militant firing was retaliated by the security forces, triggering an encounter in which two militants have been killed so far. Firing exchanges are still going on in the area.

Forces are combing the area to flush out remaining militants.

More details are awaited.

(With inputs from IANS)

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The British governments decision to raise visa application fees across categories from Friday will have a significant impact on Indians, who travel to the United Kingdoms in big numbers.

In 2015, 85,403 Indians got entry clearance visas to the UK and were second to 93,076 Chinese travelling to the country. Work permit, skilled migration, students visa holders all require entry clearance before they enter the UK.

The impact of the hike will be felt across the board. The fee of visas linked most closely to economic growth, such as those offered to workers and students will go up by 2%. So is the case with tourist visa fee. Applications for settlement, residence and nationality fee would also see a steep hike of 25%.

Read | UK to increase visa fees for nearly all categories from March 18

The fee for intra-company transfer visa used by most Indian information technology companies to get their workers posted in the UK will go up to 1,151.

The fee for a tourist visa for six months will go up from 85 to 87. Tourist visa fee for two years will see a hike of 6 to 330 and for five years it will be 600 from 588 and for 10 years it will be 752 from 737.

Indian professionals and others on visas leading to a settlement in Britain will also see a steep rise of 375 when applying for indefinite leave to remain: the fee will rise from 1500 to 1875. The super premium service and priority visa services overseas will be increased by 33%.

The UK Home Office notification on the fee hike says the aim of the increase is to achieve a self-funding system while continuing to provide a competitive level of service. The UK government also said the fees structure that remains attractive to businesses, migrants and visitors, is their aim.

Read | New tough UK visa restrictions to hit Indian IT professionals

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The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether a dog-bite victim is entitled to monetary compensation from the government.

Which forum should the victim go to seek compensation in the dog bite cases, especially in case of death? We need to also lay down the criteria for grant of such compensation and the authority to look into such claims should be fixed, a bench headed by justice Dipak Misra.

It will on April 5 take up the application of Kerala-based Jos Sebastian whose wife, a MNREGA worker, was killed after she was bit by a stray dog.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate VK Biju, argued that it was the States responsibility to look after its citizens. He complained there was no department to look into the grievances of a dog bite victim.

Kerala state counsel offered to grant compensation to Sebastian from the chief ministers relief fund. He can move the human rights commission for monetary claim, the advocate told the bench, which was not convinced with the states explanation.

SC had on March 9 asked states and civic bodies to take steps to sterilise and vaccinate nuisance-causing stray dogs under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, had said that balance needs to be created as there were instances of death due to dog bites. Dave had said he was yet to come across news where animal-loving NGOs have come forward to help victims of dog bites and hence, the need of the hour is to strike a balance.
Police arrested a woman dressed in CRPF uniform on Friday near the cantonment area in Punjabs Pathankot where six attackers struck the Indian Air Force base in January.

The woman was spotted by Indian Army personnel when she was peeping through the gates of Mamun Cantonment area. The personnel informed senior officers who then took her into custody and informed Pathankot Police.

Senior superintendent of police RK Bakshi told Hindustan Times he has asked his men to investigate about the woman. He also said the woman, who is around 40 years old, has been living in Pathankot for many years and seems to be mentally disabled.

Bakshi said she could have picked up a rejected uniform of some personnel and worn later.

We cannot take a chance even then and would investigate with all means, he added.

Seven soldiers were killed when suspected Pakistani militants laid siege to the Indian Air Force facility on January 2. Pakistan has registered a case but it has not given the dates for a visit by a Pakistani probe team.
A Bandra (Mumbai) housewife has found one hell of a way to drive home the point on road safety

Shes gone around Bandra wearing a 777 Boeing helmet and riding a horse. Shes even gone around meeting celebrities and clicking photos with them. Shes attracted stares, some have thought shes a lunatic. But she doesnt care.

Lisa Sadanah aka Helmet Girl Bandra (who runs a blog with the same name), a 43-year-old Bandra resident says she doesnt mind wearing a bikini and a helmet and going swimming even. But then wonders that her son  who swims at the same pool, Glenmark Aquatic Foundation, BKC  might be subject to mockery.

She has created a wave with her antics, wearing a helmet everywhere she goes, but for a cause  road safety. People think I do this for attention... its true. If I dont get the attention, nobody will listen to what I want to talk about.

Lisa Sadanah goes swimming in Bandra Kurla Complex (Aalok Soni/HT; location: Glenmark Aquatic Foundation, BKC)

Sadanah, who rides her Suzuki and Activa bikes regularly, figured that the helmets available in India werent of a good quality. Shed get caught a lot for not wearing a helmet, and the one she wore was of no use. She knew that if she would meet with an accident, the helmet would kill her. And so, she would avoid wearing one and get past the police too. When you live in Bandra, you know where cops stand and where they dont. Then I went online in January and decided to finally get a good one.

The Eureka moment

Helmet Girl Lisa Sadanah in Bandra (Aalok Soni/HT)

Having bought a new helmet Sadanah took a picture of her wearing it and sent it to her friends. They found the picture hysterical. I realised I could make my friends smile with my silliness. Thats how it started. She started thinking of what she could do with this idea. She aims to talk to the teenagers about road safety with her own personal experiences, through her blog and create awareness drives.

ALSO READ: The funniest book of Parsi phrases, abbreviations and insults

And for her, personal experiences mean accidents where she has been thrown off a bridge in Pune while a car chased her, or when she decided to sneak out of her house at the age of 15 to get on a bike with a stranger, only to land up in a hospital. My parents never knew that I did drugs, or rode rashly. I was brought up in a strict, middle class household. I was a rebel. She never understood why she was not allowed to go anywhere after 9pm. These issues are happening even now. I want to tell the teenagers about how certain decisions can affect the rest of your life. The helmet brings the attention to me. Otherwise I just sound like a mother of two kids giving advice, and we have enough of those uncle and aunties, she laughs.

Caution: danger ahead

It took her daughters accident to make her realise about the worst that could happen with reckless driving. When she was driving her daughter, aged four then, to her class, Sadanahs bike skid and her daughter fell off the bike, fracturing her hand. The greatest injuries during a bike accident are head injuries, Sadanah says. You may not die, but you could be paralysed, and then what? What happens if you lose a friend?

Going around with a helmet is bound to raise a few eyebrows. Some thought she went around with a helmet because she was balding, and some thought she had a head injury. Sadanah wonders how shell manage the heat with the helmet once the summer sets in, and has realised that swimming in a helmet is a tough act. At an event once, I wore it an entire day and because the helmet is heavy, I had a headache the next day.

Lisa Sadanah goes shopping (Instagram.com/helmetgirlbandra)

She plans to go around schools and talk to kids about these issues. I can only do that once I become popular on social media. People only relate to celebrities these days. So, I go about with my helmet to events, take selfies with celebrities, tell them about road safety and the worst that can happen if you drive recklessly. Actors Sonali Bendre, Elli Avram and Norah Fatehi have shown her great support so far.

Being a former make-up artist and a wife of a filmmaker (Kamal Sadanah) has helped her get invited to events. Her daughter didnt like it initially when Sadanah would post their pictures on Instagram but has learnt to manage it now. Many of my sons friends follow me and they think Im hysterical. I even get invited to some of their birthday parties.

The road ahead

She will be a part of a cyclothon on March 19 as a safety ambassador, organised by Young Environmentalists, will run for Autism on April 3 and is also the captain of the Bandra womens throw ball team, where she plans on spreading her initiative amongst parents too. I also plan on meeting accident victims and tell everybody their stories. Further, she has plans on getting her husband on board to create a fun web series about how not to drive a bike.
Eye in the Sky

Director - Gavin Hood

Cast - Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi

Rating - 4.5/5

In 1993, Steven Spielberg introduced us to one of the most powerful anti-war symbols ever put on screen. Amidst all the chaos and heartlessness of the Second World War was the girl in red, an innocent reminder of how there could still be hope despite the tragedy of war. The soul of Eye in the Sky, the new film by Gavin Hood, is another girl in red  and even though decades have passed since Schindlers List, we find that not much has changed. The world is still at war. It never stopped.

It isnt easy to forget the first time you see the Collateral Murder drone footage that Chelsea Manning leaked to Julian Assange. I was reminded of Schindlers List. But this time the image that erupted in my head wasnt the girl in red. It was Amon Goeth, shooting down innocent Jews with casual depravity in his heart and a smirk on his face. Modern drone warfare is perhaps an update of Goeth, where war is waged from a distance  a distance that brings a sense of security to the powerful. Because of it, they think they can get away with horrific crimes in the name of greater good.

Eye in the Sky, I am pleased to inform you, is a minor classic. It is a magnificently crafted little film with huge ideas. It is one of those rare movies that does not let a modest budget get in the way of pure ambition.

In a house in Nairobi is a group of high value targets, the most valuable of which is a British born woman, recently radicalised, armed and dangerous. The mission is to capture her with minimal collateral damage. In Las Vegas, Aaron Paul plays a drone pilot. In London, Alan Rickmans General Benson is tasked with coordinating the operation. Helen Mirrens Colonel Katherine Powell is in a subterranean bunker in Surrey  she is in charge of the mission.

There are no bad guys in this movie. Certainly not Helen Mirren. (YouTube)

An on-the-ground spy camera reveals that the targets are preparing for a suicide attack in the house. Suddenly, capturing them is no longer a viable option. They need to be killed. Helen Mirren gives Aaron Paul the order.

The girl in red lives next door to that house. Every morning, she takes homemade bread and sells it just outside the wall separating her house from that of the terrorists. As if on cue, she sets up shop just as Colonel Powell gives the command. Aaron Paul spots her and in the films first moral decision, decides to abort the attack.

Read more movie reviews here

And so begins an unusually intelligent, tightly written, master class in suspense moviemaking. The morality play puts every character to the test. They know that the girl will likely die if they carry on with the mission, but is her life worth the countless others that could potentially be at harm if the suicide attack isnt stopped in time?

None of the characters addresses the situation in the same way. Arguments are heard and decisions are taken. Sometimes these decisions are manipulated. Like 12 Angry Men, Eye in the Sky is the story of people trapped in rooms. They will not leave their prisons until a consensus has been reached.

The script is a work of art. The debates and discussions all take place in claustrophobic rooms. (YouTube)

The entire movie plays out in one extended scene. Our characters will never meet each other in person but after the day is done, it feels as if they know each other intimately. Some, like Aaron Pauls pilot and his partner, who happens to be on her first day at the job, have never even been part of an attack before. Blind chance brought their fates crashing together.

Eye in the Sky is a passionately anti-war film that wisely chooses not to focus its target on one particular war. Like its characters, the enemies are also isolated in a room. Despite the political commentary it is making about accountability and the grounded vision of modern espionage it is portraying, it is a deeply human drama.

Films like these are made by their writing and performances. Anchoring it all here is Helen Mirren, the only character who makes purely rational decisions. She has the look of a veteran who has seen it all. Its impossible to understand how long it took her to keep the emotion at bay, but she manages to hold on, despite the flicker of hesitation that always clouds her eyes when a difficult situation presents itself. Aaron Paul, on the other hand, is the perfect foil to her character. It is a similar dynamic that the show he made his name on  Breaking Bad  explored. Jesse Pinkmans raw emotion was always the perfect foil to Walter Whites cold rationality.

Every moment Alan Rickman is on screen he absolutely demands your attention. Weve always known just how penetrating Rickmans delivery can be, but its almost as if he saved his best for last. This is as good a send-off the late actor could have asked for. His characters final moments in the film almost spell out goodbye.

Goodbye Alan Rickman. (YouTube)

The film is directed by Gavin Hood, the South African filmmaker who, after winning an Oscar for Tsotsi, went on to make the worst movie in the X-Men franchise with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This is his redemption. He has created a near-perfect thriller that culminates with one of the most tightly-wound scenes youre going to see this year.

He puts the girl in red in peril - the limbo in which she perpetually finds herself. And he tries his absolute best to save her. The rest is up to his characters.

13 Hours review: Michael Bays Benghazi is alive. Youre probably dead

Follow @htshowbiz for more

The author tweets @NaaharRohan

Watch the trailer here

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Even as Punjab and Haryana are fighting over Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, Arvind Kaur, daughter of Avtar Singh Aulakh, a superintendent engineer who was posted in the SYL Canal project, said: Can I get my father back?

Aulakh was killed by terrorists on July 23, 1990, in his Sector-26 office in Chandigarh when he was attending a meeting with other engineers.

The Punjab government has now announced to give back farmers land. The farmers are rejoicing, but who would bring back my father who was killed for no fault of his. I feel the vacuum which no one can fill, said Arvind with tears in her eyes. The very mention of SYL Canal brings gloom in the family, she said.

Aulakh was 54 when he was shot dead. It was no age for a person to go. There has been not a single day when I have not remembered him, said Arvind.

Why security was not provided to him and other engineers of the SYL Canal project when it was such a controversial issue? she questioned.

Arvinds husband Capt BS Gurunay (retd) chose to stay in the house which Aulakh built about three decades ago at Phase 3, SAS Nagar, and as a tribute to his father-in-law, he has named the house Avtarasheesh (Avtars blessings). He had not done many changes in the house. Aulakhs life-size portrait hangs on the lobby wall of the house.

Gurunay, who remembers his father-in-law as a brave person, says the issues are raked by politicians for which the common people suffer. He was getting threats but he never let his family know about that, he added. We experience the same grief every time an innocent person is killed, said Gurunay, who had married Arvind over a year ago when Aulakh was shot dead.

Their daughter Divya, who was four-month-old then, is 26 now. I missed an important part of my life as I did not get the love and company of my grandfather, said Divya, for whom Aulakhs old photo album is a priced possession.

Aulakh was an engineering graduate in civil trade from the Indian institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, and was a thorough professional and a good human being, said Arvind.

Aulakhs wife Amarjeet Kaur died four years ago. Each day of her life after my fathers death passed in grief and she was inconsolable, said Arvind.

Arvind, who is MSc in zoology and PhD, has a grouse from then government that her request for a job on compassionate grounds was turned down on a plea that after getting married, she was not dependent on her father.

The untimely death of my father shattered our family. Relatives who used to respect my father, stood against my mother, seeking a share in the property. I had to fight a long legal battle to save our property, she said.

Aulakh tried to stop terrorists

The then chief engineer of the project, ML Sekhri, died on the spot while another engineer SK Goel was injured in the terror attack. When Aulakh tried to intervene and asked terrorists not to resort to violence, they fired bullets at him from a point-blank range. He died on the way to Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. A Class 4 employee jumped out of the window to save his life. The construction of the canal was stopped after the attack.

Goel, who was injured in the attack, was attached with the irrigation department as consultant to advice the state government on inter-state water issues after retirement. He is camping in Delhi these days and supervising Punjabs case in the Supreme Court.

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The Centre is unlikely to intervene in the ongoing dispute between Punjab and Haryana on sharing of water through Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal anytime soon saying the governor has adequate Constitutional options to resolve the issue.

Kaptan Singh Solanki, who is officiating as governor of both Haryana and Punjab, has adequate constitutional provision to resolve the crisis, Union home ministry officials said.

The governor can sit indefinitely over the bill passed by the Punjab assembly to de-notify the land acquired for the SYL and its restoration back to the farmers or send the legislation to the President.

Punjab has to obey the Supreme Court order as it has no option else it amounts to breakdown of Constitution. However, whatever Punjab is doing looks like political posturing ahead of the next years assembly elections, a senior home ministry official said.

If Punjab refuses to comply with the Supreme Court order to maintain status quo on land meant for the canal, it will amount to breakdown of Constitution leading to imposition of Presidents rule, the official said.

Officials also discounted the possibility of any violence on the issue as there are enough Central forces stationed in both Punjab and Haryana to deal with any situation arising out of the dispute.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday went to the headquarters of Radha Soami Dera at Beas, about 35 kilometres from here.

Around 5pm, he left Amritsar, and in about an hour, he reached the dera; where he will stay overnight. Since the state elections are due in less than a year, the leaders of all parties are making rounds of the popular deras of Punjab.

Also read: Punjab Congress president Capt visits Beas Radha Soami dera

Also read: Eye on Dalit votes, Kejriwal visits Dera Sachkhand Ballan

Even the district administration and top police officers were caught off guard. Police had to make sudden arrangements when Rahul entered the jurisdiction of Beas by road. We had no information until the last moment, said a top official of the administration, who has confirmed that sect head Gurinder Singh Dhillon was at the dera when Rahul arrived without the company of a senior leader.

A few months ago, Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh had also visited the dera. In 2014, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior leader LK Advani had stayed here for the night. A few days ago, even Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal had visited Dera Sachkhand Ballan, a sect of the Ravidassia Dalits near Jalandhar.

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A day after Hindustan Times highlighted the abysmal state of toilets in the city government schools, the education department issued instructions to all schools heads to submit a report on the cleanliness of toilets, and whatever repair work is required in their school premises. A meeting of all cluster heads was also called on to look into the pathetic state of the toilets, and other issues pertaining to the government schools.

District school education (DSE) Rubinderjit Singh Brar said, We have sought reports from all the heads on the issue. The district education officer (DEO) has been tasked to look into the matter.

Talking to HT, DEO Vijay Sood confirmed that the circulars had already been issued to schools seeking detailed reports. She added a meeting of 20 cluster heads was held on Thursday afternoon to discuss the deteriorating condition of toilets in government schools. We have also asked them to provide information on the remaining repair work at these schools, and to ensure cleanliness at the earliest, she said.

Various cluster heads even pointed out that officials of the public health department did not revert to the schools complaints and hence the repair work was not carried out in time. Meanwhile, the issue of lack of grants was also cited as a reason, she maintains.

Sood added, Since the finance is an obstacle, for now, we have asked the schools to ensure basic hygiene, and repair work done as soon as the budget for the next financial year is allocated.The department has, nonetheless, requested the schools to carry out the maintenance work at their end.

While the new UT adviser wishes to prioritise cleanliness in all areas, including schools, HT on Wednesday had visited five government schools and highlighted how they didnt even have proper toilets. While in one school, a toilet was under-constructions, others had broken doors, dysfunctional taps and flush and broken toilet seats, and water coolers placed inside the toilet of one of the schools.

Besides, other issues pertaining to government schools were also discussed in the meeting. To avoid untoward instances, the school heads and other teachers have been directed to leave school premises only after all the students leave the campus.

To discuss such issues more often, the DEO said a meeting with all cluster heads will be held every month from now on.

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The Punjab and Haryana high court came down heavily on Chandigarh airport chief executive officer Sunil Dutt for filing a misleading affidavit in January, wherein he had submitted that international operations had already started, citing the landing of a plane carrying French President Francois Hollande during his visit to the city in January. You (respondents) are mocking at the HC. This is mockery Are we kids here? Who has filed this affidavit? The high court is looking like a fool with this kind of affidavit, the bench observed, adding that it was surprising that the CEO filed such an affidavit and was let off by the coordinate (previous) bench.

Further, the high court has said it would order the registration of a first-information report (FIRs) against officers responsible for holding up the decision on starting international flights from the newly-built Chandigarh international airport in SAS Nagar, if the Centre failed to clarify its stand during the next hearing in the matter scheduled for Monday (March 21).

In December 2015, the Mohali Industries Association had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the high court highlighting that international flights had not started from the airport, even three months after its inauguration in September. The petition had sought directions to start international flights.

During the resumed hearing on Thursday, the court said prima facie it appeared a case of embezzlement and those involved should face criminal proceedings.

Intl flights from Chandigarh: Justify delay or face FIR, HC warns
Fuming at the delay over the start of international flights from the newly-built Chandigarh international airport in SAS Nagar, the Punjab and Haryana high court has said it would order the registration of first-information report (FIRs) against officers responsible for holding up the decision, if the Centre failed to clarify its stand during the next hearing in the matter scheduled for Monday (March 21).

In December 2015, the Mohali Industries Association had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the high court highlighting that international flights had not started from the airport, even three months after its inauguration in September. The petition had sought directions to start international flights.

During the resumed hearing on Thursday, the court said prima facie it appeared a case of embezzlement and those involved should face criminal proceedings.

Everybody is aghast in the region. We cant let their confidence be shattered, the high court division bench of justice SS Saron and justice Gurmit Ram observed during the one-hour hearing on Thursday as the Centre failed to submit status report on the action taken on airlines requests to start operations.

Appearing for the civil aviation ministry, assistant solicitor general Chetan Mittal told the court that meetings were on, but he could not spell out what action had been taken.

The ministry was to submit a status report on action taken by it on proposals received from Bulgarian carrier, BH Air and Flydubai, a Saudi Arabian airline seeking permission to start flights between Chandigarh and their countries.

We (the court) are satisfied ...there is embezzlement. We will go ahead with the writ petition. In the meantime, FIRs will be registered by CBI (to probe the role of officials responsible for delay), the HC bench observed upon submissions of petitioners counsel Puneet Bali that even as almost `1,400 crore had been spent, requisite infrastructure was not in place, and international operations were yet to start in spite of the fact that inauguration took place in September.

Upon requests from Mittal, the bench agreed to adjourn the matter for Monday, but made it clear that if the court remained dissatisfied, it would order registration of FIRs . The HC also stated that it was dissatisfied over the handling of matters related to this region by the centre, observing that it had different yardsticks.

We have seen this in many cases, justice Saron remarked, citing a case about affiliation of dental colleges of Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
The Juvenile Justice Act is there to protect the minors involved in heinous crimes and not to punish them, said infamous Delhi gang rape victim Nirbhayas parents at Lovely Professional University here on Friday.

More than three years have passed since the horrendous incident shocked the nation, leading to an uprising to check crime against women as people from all spheres of life hit the street.

Parents of 23-year-old Nirbhaya, Badrinath Singh and Asha Singh, said justice had not been given till now. They said they felt so helpless and shattered when one of the culprits, a minor, was allowed to walk free.

While interacting with the media, they said perpetrators of such heinous crimes should be hanged irrespective of their age. Those who can do such acts cant be considered minors and deserve no mercy, they said.

He had done an evil act and still he was freed because he was a juvenile. I want to say that we should not go by the age, but consider what he is capable of doing, said Asha Devi.

We do not even know his whereabouts. Will the court ensure that he will not do something like this again? Not only this, the case against other four is still pending, said Asha.

Nothing has changed to make women feel secure. Weak laws only encourage people to indulge in crime, said Badrinath.

The situation has only deteriorated over the years and the crime against women has increased. Its pity that we dont have laws strong enough to protect women, he added.

Nirbhayas parents run Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust, through which they help and encourage victims fighting for their rights. This is what we are doing through Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust. Currently, about 1,500 advocates are associated with the trust. We go and tell people that if they are suffering in any manner, we will back them in fight for their cause, said Singh.
With recent registration of case against BJP councillor Satish Kainth for allegedly grabbing a plot of widow in Hallomajra, the councillors past run-ins with the law are also expected to get him unwanted attention.

From locking a chief engineer in his room, pelting stones at the Manimajra police station to taking up fights with district education officer and registration and licensing authority officer, Kainth, against whom the plot grabbing case was registered three days back by the UT police, has shown scant regard for law in past four years.

The police booked Kainth under Sections 420 (cheating), (punishment for criminal trespass) and 120 B (punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code at the Sector 31 police station on March 14. The complainant woman namely Bimla Devi, a native of Faridabad, had complained against Kainth six months back, alleging that Kainth had illegally occupied her five marla plot in Hallomajra.

Speaking to HT, Kainth said, In the plot grabbing case, I have given representation to the SSP. Let the court decide the matter. As far as pelting of stones at police is concerned, I was not involved. I was just there as the area councillor. On other issues, he refused to comment.

Kainth, who was an elected councillor from the Congress from ward number 20, had shifted to the BJP in February 2014.

Cong seeks Kainths resignation, arrest in both cases

Congress leaders have demanded immediate resignation of Kainth from the MC councillor post, after the police registered cases against him for taking illegal possession of the plot at Hallomajra and of stone pelting at cops at Colony Number 4 last year. In a statement issued on Thursday, Congress leaders Amarjit Gujral, Rajni Talwar, Rajiv Moudgil, Ajay Sharma, Dharamveer, Yadvinder Mehta, Parmjit Singh, Parveen Duggal, Naresh Gupta, Satbir Singh and Jatinder Yadav said Kainth has no right to continue on the councillors post. They said the support extended to Kainth by the BJP leaders shows that he joined the BJP in lieu of the support from the BJP leadership in this case. Now, the BJP leaders are paying him back by protecting him and putting undue pressure on the police and administration for not taking action against him, statement added.

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The municipal corporation (MC) passed the Rs121-crore budget for 2016-2017 on Friday amid a war of words between the mayor and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) councillors.

The budget was passed without a detailed discussion on the 11-page document.

However, mayor Balwant Rai Nath, who represents the Shiromani Akali Dal, failed to give satisfactory answers to queries put forth by senior deputy mayor Tarsem Goyal regarding income- generating measures.

The lack of homework on the budge by representatives of the people was evident from the fact that many of the councilors, especially women, were caught unawares about the proceedings of the budget meeting.

Not a single councillor from the Congress raised any question. Leader of the Congress in the House Jagroop Singh Gill was conspicuous by his absence.

The mayor, who was in a hurry to attend a private function, stood up and asked the councilors, most of whom were enjoying refreshment, Should we pass the budget now as it has things which we discuss every year.

The senior deputy mayor said there must be a detailed discussion as the budget for development has been reduced to 16% from 61% last year.

Dont ask me tough questions as I know that you (senior deputy mayor) are trying to corner me. I know the exact intentions behind your question, replied the mayor, who was seen baffled over his subordinates query.

The mayor almost insulted another BJP councilor Sanjay Bishwas, who raised questions over the lack of development in his ward.

Now you (Sanjay) tell me how to run the corporation. I am the mayor and know my work well. Moreover, most development works are being carried out in your ward over the past one year and still you are complaining, the mayor said.

Visibly upset over his grievances, the mayor said, As a councillor, you (Sanjay) are not fit to sit on a chair, you should rather sit on the floor to get clicked by photographers.

No one from the BJP, not even the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor Gurinderpal Kaur Mangat, came to Sanjays defence.

Big chunk to go into Salaries, pensions

The civic body has passed a surplus budget of Rs 121 crore, but its major chunk would go into salaries and pensions of employees.

The corporation will spend Rs 60 crore on salaries and clearing benefits of pensioners during the next year.

However, with addition of Rs 24 crore, which the civic body carried from the ongoing financial year, the expected income for the next year is estimated around Rs 145 crore.

However, the estimated committed and non-committed expenditure target of for the next year is Rs 126 crore.

Indeed, the corporation has specified only Rs 20 crore for development works, which fall in the non-committed category.

The civic body had stipulated Rs 25 crore to be spent on development works last year, but it had managed to spend only Rs 12.8 crore.

Moreover, the corporation is banking on loans of Rs 52 crore and Rs 105 crore from the Punjab infrastructure Development Board (PIDB) and theHousing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) to carry out the main development works, including laying of sewerage and water supply lines.

The mayor said they had concentrated on income-generation resources in the budget so as to improve the fiscal condition of the civic body.

We are expecting to generate Rs 14.06 crore from property tax against the last years collection of Rs7.5 crore.

Efforts would be made to generate more than Rs 8 crore from sewerage and water supply bills, the mayor said.

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The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has banned the shooting of feature films at the Golden Temple complex, saying it disturbs the peace and serenity of the shrine.

SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar announced this while addressing the media here on Friday.

In the past few years, a number of Hindi and Punjabi feature films have been shot at the shrine. These include Shah Rukh Khans Rab Ne Bana Di Jori, Aamir Khans Rang De Basanti and of late Sarabjit.

Unruly scenes were witnessed during the shooting of Sarbjit, a biopic on Indian prisoner Sarbjit Singh, who was murdered in a Pakistani prison. The makers of the film objected to media photographers clicking photographs of Aishwarya Rai, who plays Sarbjits sister, Dalbir Kaur, in the movie. Objections were also raised on the movement of devotees at the spots where the scenes of the film were shot. At one point matters got so ugly that the SGPC had to stop the shooting, though it was allowed later in the day.

Taking all these factors into consideration, Makkar said it had become necessary to take the decision as the religious body had been receiving a number of complaints from the public.

Such activities create disturbance to the pilgrims who come to the shrine to pay obeisance and listen to Gurbani and kirtan, he added.

Makkar said that in future only shooting of documentary films and feature films that are religious in content would be allowed inside the shrine. However, first the makers of these films must present their scripts to the SGPC, and if cleared, the shooting would be permitted, he added.

Thanks Centre on Sehajdhari issue

Makkar thanked the Centre for having carried out the necessary amendments in the Gurdwara Act of 1925, debarring Sehajdharis from voting in the SGPC elections.

The long-standing demand of Sikhs has been met. We thank the Rajya Sabha members for passing the bill. We also thank the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for pursuing the matter, he added.

He also welcomed the admission of an SGPC petition by the Supreme Court. The petition mentions the manner in which jokes are made about Sikhs and their religion, and seeks a ban on them.
Tikka Shatrujit Singh, the royal scion of Kapurthalas Ahluwalia dynasty, has been conferred with the prestigious Knight of the Legion of Honour for his extraordinary work in the exchanging the French lifestyle and Indian culture with each other.

French ambassador to India Francois Richier bestowed the honour on the 54-year-old Singh in a ceremony here late Thursday evening.

The business journey with Tikka started with Louis Vuitton and he has been an incredible man of culture working tirelessly for promoting the French culture in India, the ambassador said.

He was born with a French history, and he turned out to be the right person at the right place. Had he not done, what he did, the relationship between the two countries would not have been this great, he said.

Singh, known as the guru of luxury, is the Advisor to the Chairman of multinational group Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton (LVMH). The great-grandson and heir of Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala who was a celebrated Francophile, Singh got his understanding of French culture in legacy.

It is an honour for me to receive this recognition. I get the aesthetic experience of French culture from my great grandfather. I think its genetic to keep up the high esteem of French culture as he did, Singh said.

A banker for almost 10 years after completing his education from Doon School and Delhi University, Singh joined LVMH as the Chief Representative in Asia in 1995.

Dressed in Punjabi attire with a turban on his head, Singh attended the function with his mother Maharani Geeta Devi. Pioneering the entry of LVMH perfumes and cosmetics and the LVMH fashion group into India, Singh has also organised many events including Paris  Delhi  Bombay in 2011 where he hosted fifty famous Indian and French artists at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Through years of my service to LVMH, I am deeply satisfied to to see that my work has helped in developing a worthy relationship in diverse fields which will enrich both the countries, he said.

Singh is also known for his endeavours to preserve the tangible and intangible heritage of Kapurthala, which is a blend of Indo-French architectural styles.

The Legion dHonneur, created in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, is the highest civilian award given by the French Republic for outstanding service to France, regardless of the nationality of the recipients.

A photo-feature detailing of the legacy of the royal family of Kapurthala was also screened at the occasion.
Family of the two-year-old girl, who was raped by her neighbour on March 13, held a protest demonstration at Bharat Nagar Chowk and disrupted the traffic for at least one hour on Thursday, demanding strict action against the accused.

Family members claimed that the accused in the case was actually 19 years old, but the police was trying to shield him by telling that he was a minor.

BJP district president Praveen Bansal, who also reached the spot, listened to the demands of family members, who said that the girls treatment must be done on government expenses.

The protesters then went to the police commissioners office, where they raised slogans against the police and demanded that the police should take action against the culprit not considering him as a minor.

Additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP) Dhruv Dhaiya assured the protesters of appropriate action against the accused as per law. He said police was not trying to shield him. He assured that every kind of help would be provided to the family. On this assurance, the relatives lifted the protest.

ADCP (crime) Gurtejinder Singh said, The tests to determine the accuseds age will be done soon.

Praveen Bansal said, Rape is a heinous crime and culprit must be dealt with strictly. I have asked the family that if they face any problem in getting justice, they can come to me anytime.
Factions in the Batala Congress came to the fore during the road show organised by Punjab Youth Congress secretary Nitin Sharma here on Friday.

Though all the Sekhri supporters remained absent from his huge road show, which passed various markets of the town bringing the traffic to a halt. Many of the veteran Congress leaders, including former

city Congress president Kasturi Lal Seth, former state executive member Manjit Hanspal and several former councillors and sarpanches joined his yatra.

Traffic came to a standstill at various places with the harried traffic cops working overtime to help commuters reach their respective destinations.

Holding flags of the Congress, hundreds of activists led by Sharma moved from the Sukha Singh Mehtab Singh Chowk to Kali Mata temple through Gandhi Chowk shouting pro-Amarinder Singh slogans.

Talking to HT, Sharma, who is also a ticket contender from the youth Congress quota for the Batala seat, said he had started this yatra

Capt leyao, Punjab bachao (Bring Captain, save Punjab) to listen to the grievances of the residents of this industrial town towards the government and later give the entire report to the party high command.

For the next three months, I will go door to door and will cover the entire assembly constituency and will aware the people about the policies of the Congress.

Making a stern attack on Sekhri, Sharma said Sekhri did not take part in the discussion on the SYL canal and instead wanted to speak on an irrelevant issue in the state assembly, he should be censured by the party high command.

Todays road show has vertically divided the party into anti and pro-Sekhri groups, a development which does not augur well for the party ahead of the assembly elections.

This is not the first time the MLA has to face the wrath of his partymen. Earlier, when he used his casting vote to install a BJP man as the president of the municipal committee (MC), there was a huge uproar

against his action. Disciplinary proceedings should be initiated against the MLA for indulging in anti-party activities. I am going to take a delegation of the youth Congress workers to Delhi soon o meet AICC president Sonia Gandhi where we will apprise her of the activities of the MLA, said Nitin Sharma.
The Kannada film industry or Sandalwood, as it is popularly called, has been hit by a fresh controversy. It is being alleged that multiplexes in the city are trying different tactics to ensure that Kannada films do not get screened. If you try to book a ticket on the ticket aggregator web site Book My Show for recent Kannada releases such as Actor, Bhale Jodi or Madhura Swapna, chances are a user will get Unavailable or Sold Out message. Subsequently, the shows of these films are cancelled for lack of audience.

On personally visiting the multiplex, one viewer found that the hall was empty. He went on to share this experience on a social networking site. KM Veeresh, producer of the new movie Actor, who is also the editor of Kannada movie portal, Chitraloka, faced a similar issue, forcing him to bring the issue to the notice of the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC). In their defence, the multiplex authorities are said to have called it a technical error.

Read: Exposing Tamil Nadus underbelly of honour killings with films like Yenru Thaniyum

Kannada producers and filmmakers feel that this is a conspiracy hatched by multiplex owners to prevent screening of Kannada films, since a ticket for a Kannada film is priced much lower than a Hindi or English film. Tax exemption enjoyed by Kannada films in the state is said to be the reason, which in turn, reduces the profit margin for a multiplex.

When Veeresh contacted Book My Show, they clarified saying the issue arises out of the schedule changes from PVR and suggested that he get in touch with the PVR team for more clarifications.

Watch Madhura Swapna trailer here:

Veeresh told HT that this is not an isolated case. Ever since he has spoken about the issue, many other producers (Rambo, Plus) have spoken to him about similar experiences faced by them in the past. They added that they too had approached the KFCC for help.

This problem is faced only by filmmakers, whose movies dont have any star value or have big names attached to them. Their earlier complaints might have fallen to deaf ears. This issue is making news today because I am a journalist myself and have dared to question the multiplexes, which carry a lot of clout. Despite taking so much effort, no action has been taken yet since both the parties in question are blaming each other.

Read: Two Tamil films on disaster being planned

He added, I have not even recovered the money I spent on advertising, let alone profits. I lost all the money I had put into this movie. Such dire situations have often led producers from our industry to end their lives in the past. The issue we are facing with the multiplexes is only going to make matters worse.

Watch Kannada film Actors trailer here:

The penalty imposed on these multiplexes by the government is a measly Rs 10,000, Veeresh claims.

Producer Shashikumar attempted suicide in February 2016, since he had taken loans and invested close to Rs 3.25 crore in his film Half Mental. But he could not get it released for a year-and-a-half, due to non-availability of dates with distributors and theatre owners.

Speaking about how theatre mafia had reached even the multiplex industry, Kannada actor Chetan said, As it is, a new small budget film faces many issues and this is only going to aggravate the situation. Any film industry grows because of new ideas and if you dont allow small budget films to grow, how can one do experimental cinema? Multiplexes are expected to be systematic like a corporate setup, but this is equivalent to lying to the public and strict action needs to be taken.

He said there is no lack of audience for Kannada films. Since investment is relatively smaller in Kannada movies, recovery is smaller too.

Filmmaker Dinakar Thoogudeepa, brother of popular Kannada actor Darshan, faced a peculiar issue with his recent film Maduveya Mamatheya Kareyole in January in 2016. Out of 200 seats, almost 160 seats were sold out at PVR (Orion Mall). But when audience entered the hall, they were made to wait for almost 45 minutes and a different movie was screened altogether. When people protested, they offered to reimburse double the ticket amount along with parking fee. I had to reach the spot to control the situation. On asking why they didnt screen my movie, they said the content submitted by the makers was corrupted. It sounded illogical because they have to download the movie via satellite anyway. Thoogudeepa filed a police complaint against the management the following day.

He adds, They cant do this to big starrer movies and hence theyre trying these tactics with movies featuring lesser known faces. This is how multiplexes cancel shows by claiming lack of audience.

Read: Remya Nambeesan, the Sethupathi girl who emotes through her heart

While a big film release could guarantee you a minimum of four shows per day, others can only hope to get one or two shows at the most on a single day.

Well-known filmmaker Rajendra Singh Babu, who is the chairman of the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, said that the academy, along with the KFCC have already submitted a memorandum to the chief minister. We want multiplexes to have a limit or maximum cap of Rs 120 on movie tickets, like it is in Tamil Nadu. We want a minimum of 2 shows per day for Kannada movies in all screens at primetime.

Other demands include 300 Janata Chitramandiras (which will exclusively screen Kannada films) to be provided immediately in the state, as promised in 2015s budget and release funds for a Film City in Mysore.

Popular Kannada film actor Shivarajkumar, son of legendary film actor Rajkumar, has also backed the memorandum and urged the government to implement it in 2016s budget.

Kannada film director and producer Dayal Padmanabha has also started a petition on Change.org for multiplexes to have a maximum cap of Rs 120 on ticket prices.

Kannada film producer and KFCC president Sa Ra Govindu said that it is common for multiplexes to screen movies of other languages in the slot meant for Kannada films. In their last meeting, multiplex representatives admitted that such tactics are often used to prevent a Kannada film screening. We are pushing for uniform rate of admission, irrespective of the language of the movie screened. We have given several recommendations in the memorandum and that is the only way Kannada movies can survive.

Though no decision has been taken regard this dispute by the government so far, a meeting scheduled on March 11 between the KFCC, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, multiplexes and government officials is expected to provide greater clarity.

When contacted, PVR Cinemas PR claimed they were not aware of any such issue.

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A Munich court has handed down an eight-year prison sentence to a German former intelligence agent who spied for both the CIA and the Russian secret service because he wanted to experience something exciting.

Markus Reichel had admitted to handing over scores of documents and internal information to the CIA, including names and addresses of agents for the Federal Intelligence Service or BND, in exchange for 95,000 euros ($107,000).

Some 200 of those documents sent to the CIA were deemed very sensitive, and even included papers detailing the BNDs counter-espionage strategies.

The 32-year-old also delivered three classified documents to the Russian secret service.

Reichels case had emerged during a furore over revelations of widespread US spying in documents released by former CIA intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, which had also plunged its partner service the BND into an unprecedented crisis.

Partially disabled after a botched childhood vaccination, Reichel, who speaks haltingly, had admitted that he had spied for foreign services out of dissatisfaction with his job at the BND.

No one trusted me with anything at the BND. At the CIA it was different, he told the court at the opening of his trial in November.

Not only did the CIA offer adventure, the Americans also gave him what he craved  recognition.

I would be lying if I said that I didnt like that, he told the court. I wanted something new, to experience something exciting.

After finishing his studies at a training centre for the disabled in 2004, Reichel had struggled to find a job until late 2007, when the BND offered him a position in its personnel division.

As a member of staff in the lowest salary band, he drew a monthly net pay of 1,200 euros.

The CIA did not pay him significantly more  he received between 10,000 and 20,000 euros a year in cash at a secret meeting point in Austria, but it gave him a thrill, he said.

Using the undercover name Uwe, Reichel first sent documents to a US agent codenamed Alex by post before later transmitting them by email and later directly entering them into hidden software on a computer provided by the CIA.
The Islamic State jihadist group has claimed that it has killed five Russian troops near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in the clashes near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

The fierce battles around Palmyra city in the east of Homs province left five Russian soldiers dead on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as several others from the Hezbollah militia and Afghan Shiite militias, Aamaq claimed.

Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area, it added.

Aamaq was referring to a video showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured after the clashes, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass.

A packet of bandages was filmed with instructions written in Russian.

This undated photo released Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, file photo, on a social media site used by Islamic State militants, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows smoke from the detonation of the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin in Syria's ancient caravan city of Palmyra. (AP Photo)

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the Pearl of the Desert, last May, sending shock waves across the world.

Nearly 1,800 civilians killed

Speaking to AFP, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said at least one Russian soldier was killed in recent days around Palmyra.

President Vladimir Putin, Assads main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russias armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike jihadist targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

At a press briefing on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm either the presence of Russian advisors around Palmyra or the IS claim of the soldiers killing.

The advance (on Palmyra) is carried out by contingents of the Syrian army, Peskov said.

On Thursday, however, Putin had warned that Russia would remain engaged in Syrias war.

Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged, he said, adding that fierce fighting was raging near Palmyra.

Putin also named four Russians, including a military advisor, killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched its military intervention on September 30.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at a ceremony to present state awards to Russian military personnel who fought in Syria at the Kremlin in Moscow, on March 17, 2016. Russia has been accused by a prominent Syrian human rights body of killing Syrian civilians on a daily continuous basis. (AFP Photo)

Previously, the defence ministrys official toll had been three, excluding a soldier who reportedly committed suicide.

A total of 1,799 Syrian civilians including 431 children have been killed in Russian air strikes, according to an updated toll by the Observatory.

Another 1,276 IS members have also died, as have 1,567 rebels and fighters from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, it added.

The Observatory accused Russia, a permanent UN Security Council member, of being a key accomplice in the killing of Syrian civilians, on a daily, continuous basis, using the fight against IS as an excuse.

Moscow has denied claims of hitting civilian and non-jihadist rebel targets.
A group associated in the past with terrorism against India and Indian interests said on Friday it will campaign peacefully for Khalistan after Britain lifted a 15-year-old ban on it in a move likely to infuriate New Delhi.

Minister of state in the Home Office John Hayes signed the statutory instrument relating to the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2016, lifting the ban on the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) on Friday after both houses of British parliament approved a motion this week to drop it from the list of proscribed organisations.

Indian official sources told Hindustan Times they were disappointed with the development.

Banned in Britain since 2001, the ISYF continues to be outlawed in India, Canada and other countries. Formed in 1984 as the international branch of the All India Sikh Students Federation, it was associated with several assassinations and kidnappings in the 1980s.

Read | Decks cleared to lift UK ban on pro-Khalistan ISYF

The Home Office said: The government does not condone any terrorist activity. Deproscription of a proscribed group should not be interpreted as condoning any previous activities of that group. The British Government has always been clear that the ISYF was a brutal terrorist organisation.

Bhai Amrik Singh, chair of the Sikh Federation (UK) that lobbied to overturn the ban, said: Successive British governments have maintained the organisation has every right to campaign and lobby for an independent Sikh homeland as long as it does it democratically and peacefully.

The group said since the ban had been lifted, the ISYF will become an organisation linked to the Sikh Federation (UK), with its leadership drawn from those youngsters that have an interest in Panthic issues and will focus on youth engagement and development.

Singh said the Sikh Federation felt vindicated because there is absolutely nothing wrong with peacefully campaigning for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan.

The Indian authorities claimed to have ended the armed struggle in Punjab some 10 years earlier in the early 1990s so the ban made no sense in 2001, he said.

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The most-wanted fugitive from Novembers Paris attacks was wounded and caught in a shootout in Brussels on Friday, Belgian newspaper Derniere Heure and other media said.

Other media reported two people had been arrested, though Frances President Francois Hollande said there was no confirmation of the detention of Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French suspect from Brussels.

Television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street in the capital and reporters at the scene described white smoke rising from a rooftop.

A police spokeswoman said an operation was ongoing and could not give further details.

Read: Manhunt in Brussels after raid linked to Paris attacks

Belgian police had found finger prints belonging to Abdeslam at the scene of an earlier shoot-out, prosecutors said.

The Belgian federal prosecutors office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation at an apartment in Brussels on Tuesday was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on November 13.

A Handout picture shows Belgian-born Abdeslam Salah seen on a call for witnesses notice released by the French Police Nationale information services on their twitter account November 15, 2015. (REUTERS)

It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French national, is believed to have played a key logistical role in the attacks, and fled across the border to Belgium hours after the killings. He and his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in Paris, had run a bar together in Molenbeek that was shut down by the authorities just weeks before the massacre. Friends and locals had said they were fond of drink and a joint and that there was no sign they were radical Islamists with murderous intent.

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam was more than likely one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.

Read: 129 killed in Paris attacks, Hollande vows merciless response

She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organiser of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

Frances BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a Frenchwoman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Belgian officials said earlier in the week that police had not expected to find armed suspects at the apartment and that the presence of French officers was not an indication the raid was of special importance to the investigation.

Abdeslams elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Paris during a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later.

Read: Paris attacks: Hunt for attacker who got away, IS HQ bombed in Syria

Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. There has long been speculation in Belgium that he could have fled to Syria.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for Islamic State.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.
Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan for Dubai early on Friday for what his lawyers said was urgent treatment of a spinal condition after a three-year-old travel ban was lifted.

Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am, hours after interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced his name had been removed from the Exit Control List (ECL).

Local media reported a convoy of police and paramilitary Pakistan Rangers left Musharrafs home in Karachi at around 3.30am as a decoy for the large number of journalists crowding his street. The former president travelled to the airport separately.

Musharraf was the last person to board the plane and appeared relaxed, a media report said.

Lawyers for the former army chief, who is facing multiple charges including treason and murder over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said he needs urgent medical treatment not available in Pakistan.

I am going abroad for treatment but will return to face the cases against me, a party spokesman quoted Musharraf as saying. I am a commando. I love my motherland. I will come back in a few weeks or months.

Amjad Malik, a spokesman for Musharrafs All Pakistan Muslim League party in Dubai, said: Six to eight weeks are required for the treatment and then he would go back home.

When 72-year-old Musharraf returned to Pakistan from self-exile in 2013 to contest the general election, he was charged with treason for imposing emergency in 2007.

He was barred from leaving the country by the government and a court barred him from contesting elections for life.

The travel ban was declared illegal by the Sindh high court in 2014. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld the Sindh high courts ruling and rejected a government appeal.

Observers believe Musharraf is unlikely to return to Pakistan soon. The governments decision to allow him to leave the country could help heal a rift with the powerful army, which was unhappy about its former chief being put on trial.

Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Threatened with impeachment by the Pakistan Peoples Party following elections in 2008, Musharraf was forced to resign as president and went into self-exile in Dubai and London.
The US military has disciplined more than a dozen personnel, including officers, following a deadly October airstrike in Afghanistan that destroyed a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontiers and killed at least 42 people, US officials told Reuters on Friday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US military took administrative and non-judicial actions against the US personnel, instead of seeking criminal charges.

In November, the US military described the strike, which killed at least 42 medical staff, patients, and caretakers, as a tragic, avoidable accident caused primarily by human error.

According to the initial US investigation, US forces had meant to target a different building in the city and were initially led off-track by a technical error in their aircrafts mapping system but then misidentified their intended target.

The full results of an investigation into the strike are expected to be released in the coming days.
Virgin Atlantic is investigating a Chinese womans claim that she was racially abused on a London-Shanghai flight by a fellow traveller who allegedly called her a Chinese pig.

The passenger, identified only as Yu, posted her experience on Chinas Twitter-like Weibo platform soon after the incident occurred earlier this month, and more than 5 million users had read and commented on it within a few days.

Virgin CEO Richard Branson responded to the volley of online criticism and outrage on Friday morning by tweeting: Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight VS250. We do not tolerate abuse and @virginatlantic are investigating.

Yu told Chinese media she was allegedly insulted by a male Caucasian passenger and her complaints were subsequently ignored by flight attendants.

It was the first time Ive experienced racism for being Chinese, she told China.org, a government portal, adding she was alone at the time and returning to Shanghai after a trip to Britain.

I did nothing to that white man. But he came directly towards me from his seat and said, You f*cking Chinese pig! Get the f*ck out of here!

According to what Yu told the Chinese portal, a male flight attendant also threatened her instead of helping her and restraining the male passenger.

The attendant whispered to the man whod abused me, then walked up to me and scolded me, asking me not to fight with the man and to respect other passengers, otherwise he would remove me from the plane.

Throughout the 11-hour flight, Yu was upset and frightened. No flight attendants came forward to apologise to me or explain to me why an aggressive and self-declared mentally unstable man can do whatever he wants, she said.

Thousands of Chinese netizens reacted angrily to the incident. Many said Chinese tourists should stop flying on Virgin as there are other options.
After leaving users of mobile devices running Window Phone 8.1 in the dark for quite some time, Microsoft is finally letting them see the light, announcing Thursday that it has started to roll out Windows 10 Mobiles to applicable devices.

This announcement is a major one for those who had an attachment to an older device or simply weren't willing to shell out the cash for a new one. To date, the only way to get access to Windows 10 Mobile was to either purchase a new phone with the OS pre-installed, or use unfinished software. This update eliminates that - for the most part.

In Micrsoft's announcement, the firm provided a link that leads to a page displaying all the phones and devices that can updrade to Windows 10. The supported phones are: Lumia 1520, 930, 640, 640XL, 730, 735, 830, 532, 535, 540, 635 1GB, 636 1GB, 638 1GB, 430, 435; BLU Win HD w510u, BLU Win HD LTE x150q; and the MCJ Madosma Q501.

As you'll notice, this list skews heavily toward devices built by Microsoft and Nokia, so if your cherished phone happened to be an HTC One M8, for example, you're out of luck. Additionally, the firm admitted that "many older devices are not able to successfully upgrade without an impact on the customer experience," so don't hold your breath if your phone does happen to be Microsoft/Nokia-made but isn't on the list.

Similar to Microsoft updates in the past, the availability will differ depending on the "device manufacturer, device model, country or region, mobile operator or service provider, hardware limitations and other factors."

If you meet all the prerequisites for the upgrade the method to update the device will stay the same no matter what. Once you free up enough storage space to download, simply plug the phone in, connect to Wi-Fi and let the updater do its thing.

Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor app can help users figure out how to free up some space for the installation.

It should be noted that users should expect to see some changes once they upgrade. Not only will certain Windows 10 Mobile features like Continuum and Windows Hello not work because they're hardware dependent, but other features like Cortana or Me Tile and Me Card will either become lost or modified.

This is the second time Microsoft has botched an update related to Windows 10. The first time was when reports came in about peoples PC's upgrading to Windows 10 without any input.

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When drought or excessive rain occurs, plants can suffer. But how much can they withstand? That's a question that scientists have tackled by taking a closer look at a family of proteins that play a vital role when it comes to a plant's ability to withstand environmental stresses.

Cellular membranes are the barrier between the cell and its external environment. This means that the membrane needs to have a decent amount of receptor systems to "figure out" exactly what's going on in the environment, process that information, and then tell other cells how to respond.

In this latest study, the researchers decided to look a bit closer at the cell membrane to see what reacted to the environment. They found a family of proteins, called the CAR proteins, that actually cluster together to create a series of points throughout the membranes. These can be used as key signaling proteins in order to carry out adaptive functions.

"These [CAR] proteins form a kind of landing strip, acting as molecular antennas that call out to other proteins as and when necessary to orchestrate the required cellular response," Pedro Luis Rodriguez from the IBMCP said.

When drought occurs, plants close up the tiny holes in their leaves in order to retain water. When it's extremely wet, the opposite holds true.

"In a medium-sized cell, the distance a molecule must travel from the point at which it synthesizes to the membrane itself is comparable, relatively, to the distance between Madrid and Cadiz," Armando Albert, fellow researcher, said. "For this journey there are mediators, both during and at the point of arrival, where they carry out a fundamental role in docking the signaling proteins in the appropriate cellular context."

CAR proteins acts as one of these mediators. This means that they play an important role when it comes to regulating a plant's response to environmental stress.

The findings help researchers better understand plant biology. In addition, it may help researchers develop plants that are more resistant to environmental stresses, such as drought. This could result in hardier crops that could be important in the future with the continuation of climate change.

The findings are published in the 2016 journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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What should come of the notorious military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, if it closes? Researchers proposed turning the naval base into a marine research center and international peace park as part of the easing of relations between Cold War enemies Cuba and the U.S.

"Guantanamo could become the Woods Hole of the Caribbean," explained Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont, referring to the famous U.S. ocean science center in Massachusetts. "This could be a powerful way for the Obama administration to achieve the president's 2008 campaign promise to close the prison - while protecting a de facto nature reserve and some of the most important coral reefs in the world."

Last month, President Barack Obama announced plans to close the facility. However, whether or not he'll be able to is still in question. The researchers' proposal comes just days before the president is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since 1928.

"As a result of this accident of history, wildlife has been thriving there, and that is sort of what prompted me also to put forward this idea - we don't want to lose that," Roman said.

Roman and study co-author James Kraska, an ocean law professor at the U.S. Naval War College, explained that their proposal is designed to attract both sides and could unite Cuba and the U.S. in joint management, rather than serve as a wedge between them.

Cuba has more than 3,000 miles of coastline, home to some of the most pristine mangrove wetlands, seagrass beds and tropical forests in the region - not to mention "unparalleled" coral reefs, fish diversity and marine life.

"Almost all the scientists I've spoken with, whether they are in the United States or are in Cuba, are excited about the idea that there could be a place in the future where we could work together," Roman added.

In their proposal, the researchers wrote: "As U.S. involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq winds down, and detainees are released or subject to criminal trial, perhaps the most compelling reason for the Pentagon to possess the base disappears."

Furthermore, the base's other missions, including anti-drug operations or search-and-rescue work, could move to the naval station at Key West, Fla., only 90 miles away.

However, some U.S. politicians have recently called for the prison to remain open indefinitely. In contrast, the Cuban government has considered the U.S. presence in Guantanamo illegal since the 1960s.

That's why researchers call their proposal "a third path." Since the Obama administration has made it clear that it is not yet ready to return the Guantanamo base to Cuba, researchers argue that an international peace park and research station suits both countries' interests.

The idea is that if Gitmo were to become a research center, it would give global recognition to Cuba's conservation efforts and strong stance on climate change, all while providing financial support and up-to-date facilities for environmental work.

"Cuba has great conservation scientists," Roman said. "They just don't have money or equipment."

If the proposal is a success, most of the land and sea could be given to threatened Cuban manatees and hawksbill sea turtles, while the existing buildings could be converted into labs and meeting rooms, partly powered by four large wind turbines already in place.

For now, the future of Cuba is very uncertain. Researchers wrote: "For the next generation, the name Guantanamo could become associated with redemption and efforts to preserve and repair the environment and international relationships."

The new proposal was recently published in the journal Science.

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Baby monkeys speed through childhood to avoid being killed by adult males, according to a new study on wild ursine colobus monkeys.

Researchers at the University of Ontario monitored the behavior of nine groups of wild ursine colobus monkeys from 2007 to 2014 and found that babies facing greater risks of being killed by adult males developed faster than their safer counterparts.

"Infanticide occurs in many animals, including carnivores like lions and bears, rodents like mice, and in primates," said lead researcher Iulia Badescu, a Ph.D. candidate in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Toronto, according to a university release.

"Typically, an adult male kills an infant sired by another male so that he can mate with the mother and sire his own infants with her," she explained.

Badescu and her team tracked the development of ursine colobus monkeys by studying changes in their fur color. Researchers explain that colobus babies are born with white fur that turns grey after a few weeks and then black and white between two and five months.

Study observations revealed that the fur of baby monkeys at greater risk of infanticide changed quicker from white to grey to black and white.

"We found that infants facing a greater risk of infanticide developed faster than infants facing lesser risk," said co-researcher Pascale Sicotte of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary.

Previous studies on infanticide behavior revealed that babies living in groups with multiple males are more likely to be killed.

Researchers hypothesize that mothers of babies at risk of infanticide may invest more energy in their infants in a short time span to speed development.

"We know that infanticide is the result of an evolutionary arms race, where males compete with each other for reproduction and try to influence females in mating with them," Sicotte added. "In species where it happens more often, it can certainly influence the nature of the social relationships between males, as well as between males and females."

"Infant males are at greater risk of infanticidal attacks because killing a male infant not only gives reproductive access to the mother, but also eliminates a future sexual rival for the infanticidal male and his future offspring," Badescu explained.

Researchers said the next step would be to understand how the mother perceives the threat of infanticide and the exact mechanism by which they help accelerate infant development.

The findings are published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

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Arguments have been raised, criticisms have been thrown, and reasons have been given, but finally, Google's premier video streaming service, YouTube, finally agreed Thursday to partner with T-Mobile's Binge On program, which allows users to stream unlimited videos from partner sites without consuming any data, provided that the videos get converted to 480p resolution.

The relatively simple business model has received its fair share of critics since it was launched, with Google among the most vocal ones. Since YouTube's revenue relies largely on ads, Google expressed reservations about the automatic degradation of video quality through the Binge On service, which the company fears would compromise user experience on the site.

While T-Mobile's controversial service garnered critics such as Google, other video providers have been quick to accept the provider's business model. Since launching, Binge On has managed to get partnerships with Netflix, Time Warner and HBO. Despite the support it has garnered, the absence of YouTube has been notable.

While announcing its definitive partnership with Google's video streaming service, T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere stated that an agreement was finally reached after much talk and deliberation between the tech firm and the telecom giant.

"We don't just launch and leave. We listen, we learn and we improve things, and that's exactly what we did here with YouTube," he said.

YouTube isn't T-Mobile's only partner for the venture. Together with the video streaming service, Google Play Movies would also be available on T-Mobile's Binge On program. For its part, Google has stated that it finally agreed to T-Mobile's proposal after the telecom firm suitably addressed the search giant's concerns about the program.

With the changes, users of T-Mobile's Binge On plan would have the option to forego the limits of the service and stream videos in HD, including full 4k YouTube videos. Of course, if users do decide to watch videos in high resolution, their data allocation would be used up. While streaming would then not be free for users, it does restore the choice.

Apart from YouTube and Google Play Movies, T-Mobile has also added Fox Business, Red Bull TV and Discovery Go as its newest partners. With these additions, Binge On's partners now amount to more than 50.

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Innovative wildlife photo-identification tracking technology developed by researchers at Dartmouth College has shed new light on African wildebeest population in northern Tanzania. Their technology, aptly named "Wild-ID," showed that the iconic species remains vulnerable, despite recent efforts made to combat habitat fragmentation and poaching.

In one of the largest and longest-distance mammal migrations on Earth, about 1.3 million East Africa wildebeests travel round-trip between protected areas in Tanzania and Kenya annually. The animals time their migration to coincide with seasonal patterns of rainfall and grass growth.

However, such migrations require large connected landscapes and access to seasonally available resources. Therefore, human development - roads, livestock fences, farms, suburban settlements and energy infrastructure - greatly interferes with the animals' travel, creating fragmented migration corridors and fewer foraging options.

Previously, wildlife biologists would monitor large mammal populations by counting them from the air or attaching expensive GPS collars. Dartmouth's new technology, however, uses an unusual computer-assisted photographic capture-mark-recapture method. With this, researchers are able to better assess the link between wildebeest abundance and their ability to freely move within the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem.

"A lot of people didn't think tracking hundreds, let alone thousands, of individual wildebeest was possible, but we managed with Wild-ID," said lead author Tom Morrison, who conducted the wildebeest study as part of his Ph.D. in Dartmouth's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program.

Although wildlife photo-recognition software has previously been used to track cheetahs and zebras, for example, who have unique spotted or striped markings, similar technology proves to be ineffective for species like giraffes and wildebeest, due to their irregular coats.

That's why Dartmouth scientists integrated an irregular pattern-matching algorithm in "Wild-ID," originally developed in 2011. Wild-ID has proven to be much more accurate, with an error rate of virtually zero for giraffes and about eight percent for wildebeest. Wild-ID is also less invasive, expensive and time consuming.

"The Wild-ID technique not only provided an understanding of population size, but importantly, it also allowed us to know the movement and migration patterns of individual animals over time," Morrison added. "Together, this information provides a basis for predicting the future prospects of this wildebeest population."

Using this technology, researchers found that wildebeest populations have declined with fewer migration routes available in Tanzania. Specifically, researchers also found diminished connectivity within and between seasonal areas.

"What was probably once a population of tens of thousands of animals now numbers roughly 10,000 despite a landscape that rivals the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem in total area," Morrison explained. "Recent conservation efforts to protect seasonal habitat and to enforce anti-poaching policies outside protected areas have likely helped stabilize the population, at least temporarily, since the early 2000s relative to the severe declines observed in the 1990s, but we caution that several key vulnerabilities remain."

Wild-ID therefore has the potential to improve conservation measures. Their study was recently published in the journal Biological Conservation.

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What was life like on early Earth? That's a question that many scientists have tackled over the years. Now, though, researchers have announced that when Earth's organisms first formed, it may have been in an ice cold ocean.

Many researchers have thought that Earth's early oceans were very warm, reaching temperatures up to 80 degrees Celsius. New findings, though, suggest that the opposite may have been true. It seems as if Earth's climate may have been very cold instead of very warm.

In this latest study, the researchers analyzed volcanic and sedimentary rocks in South Africa that were deposited at depths of 2 to 4 kilometers. These rocks once formed at latitudes that were comparable with that of the Canary Islands. Surprisingly, the sedimentary rocks showed a remarkable resemblance to those known from more recent ice ages.

But how did the researchers find out the temperature of the ocean from these rocks? They analyzed the relations between oxygen isotopes in rocks known as "chert," which is a rock composed of pure silicium-oxide. These rocks had been exposed to high temperatures, but this was related to hydrothermal activity.

The researchers also looked at finely grained sedimentary rocks that existed along with the deep-submarine volcanic rocks. There, they found gypsum, which is produced under high pressure and at very cold temperatures, as in the present deep ocean.

"In other words, we have found independent lines of evidence that the climate conditions at this time may have been quite similar to the conditions we have today," Harald Furnes, one of the researchers, said.

With that said, Furnes believes that some researchers will have difficulty accepting the idea of a cold, early Earth. However, all current lines of evidence that Furnes and his team have uncovered points in that direction.

The findings reveal a bit more about what Earth was like 3.5 billion years ago. At that time, it's likely that our planet suffered a type of global ice age. Not only that, but it indicates that life may have first formed on a cold planet rather than on a warm one.

The findings are published in the March 2016 journal Science Advances.

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The massive die-off of seabirds has made its way to Alaska's Lake Iliamna, North America's eighth-largest lake. Thousands of common murres were found dead at the southwest lake, leaving experts puzzled as to what caused the event.

"We've talked about unprecedented things about this die off," said John Piatt, research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. "That's another one."

Piatt said that although murres occasionally land in fresh water, to have such a large amount of them do so is unprecedented.

"You figure it's a misguided individual," he said. "To have 6,000, 8,000 birds in the lake is pretty mind-blowing, really. I've never heard of any such a thing anywhere in the world."

The strange occurrence began in March 2015, when dead common murres began to make their way onto Alaska beaches, all of them showing signs of starvation. Following the storms in late December, 8,000 were found at the Prince William Sound community of Whittier, and with the recent findings the total death count has hit 36,000.

Despite these high numbers, not all of these birds wash ashore and few beaches have been surveyed due to Alaska's large coastline, meaning there could be many more deaths that have gone unnoticed.

Randy Alvarez, a commercial fisherman and member of the Lake and Peninsula borough assembly, believes that the birds likely made their way to Alaska after being unable to find food in the Pacific. With Iliamna's population of salmon smolt, they probably found a new source of food.

Alvarez said that typically, he and his friends catch smelt, a small silvery fish, in standard winters, but that this year has been bad for them as well.

"This was the worst anybody had ever seen it for smelt," he said, suggesting that it could stem from the third straight year of higher temperatures in the North Pacific and expressing worries that salmon might have a rough time as well. "I think something is not right."

Federal agencies are currently working together to determine the exact cause of the murre deaths and are examining numerous possibilities including starvation, weather, parasites and disease.

Wildlife biologist Sarah Schoen is one of the experts examining the common murre corpses and said that one had an empty stomach as well as emaciated pectoral muscles, which allow it to fly.

"As the bird starves, the body eats the muscle for energy," she said. "The muscle becomes more and more concave."

Despite signs pointing to starvation so far, there are numerous other factors that likely played into the deaths of the birds, and further research will need to be conducted to uncover them.

"This is the thing about this die-off," Piatt said. "We don't even know what we don't know."

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News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
Do you have trouble making sales, and a tough time getting through to the decision maker?

As CEO of a top 10 global hotel chain, I get hit on a lot by vendors. But the reality is, I hardly ever buy. That's because most people don't know how to sell effectively.

I met Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inns many years ago. Someone asked him the secret to selling and he said, "The easiest way to sell is to let other people buy." What he meant was, offer something valuable to that person, then stand back and let them make the decision.

I met one of the best salesmen I have ever seen in October 2013 in Edinburgh, where I was attending a distribution technology seminar. One of the presenters walked up to me afterward and asked if I had a moment to visit. He said if it wasn't a good time to chat, he could leave it with me.

He pulled out a white envelope and said that his team had spent 9 months analyzing review data on 1000 Magnuson Hotels, and that he had some ideas on how we could increase room rates and brand ratings for each hotel without much effort. All of this was presented in a couple of sentences with a simple graph on a bar napkin.

Within a couple of weeks, we signed a chain-wide software agreement with that company.

My point is, don't sell to anyone unless you have something they need. Don't ever tell someone 'I want your business.' That's like telling them you just want their money. Don't ever come to another person's house for dinner without a nice bottle of wine or some flowers.

So, here are some basic rules on how to sell to the CEO.

Research your prospect; make sure you know their business. Find a clear problem, and then offer a solution they clearly need at a fair price. When you follow up, do not ever call or email unless you have something new to add. Don't ever say, "I'm calling to see if you got the proposal." Instead, each time you follow up, let them know that you've just added a new feature that was not in the original, or let them know a new market development that is key to helping them. Always bring a gift. Always ask if it is a good time to talk, don't fire-hose people with your pitch as soon as they answer the call. Use a good system like salesforce.com to stay on track and maximize your time. Sales is a numbers game, so you need to build a pipeline to do this. Focus and repeat. Make 25 personal calls a day, not emails. When you are in a slump, get to work earlier. Each time Bill Clinton faced political doom, he went to work earlier every day. It kept him focused and always put him back on top.

Follow these simple rules religiously, and soon you will be taking the calls instead of making them.

Magnuson Hotels

US: +1509.747.8713 or UK: +44 208 767 4878

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One of Ireland's finest young acting talents, Antonia Campbell Hughes' peripatetic lifestyle has thus far prevented her from putting down roots. However as long as the work continues to be exciting, she's keen to seek out new adventures

On a couple of days break from filming the new BBC series My Mother and Other Strangers in Belfast, the waiflike 33-year-old blonde met with our writer Olaf Tyaransen in the upstairs lounge of the Westbury Hotel.

The actress's movie roles have ranged from small parts in features like Albert Nobbs, Breakfast On Pluto and When Harvey Met Bob to leads in Sherry Horman's 3096 Days, Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal and Kieran Evans' Kelly + Victor.

"What is interesting about a career as an actor, is you never know what something's gonna be until it's done", Antonia observes.

"You can have a feeling about it and all you can do is go with that feeling, and certain elements like the people you're working with - and whether they inspire you and what they've done before. Then take a leap of faith and jump in- and sometimes it's the right one and sometimes it isn't."

"That's what's amazing about my job", the actress explains, "if you get the opportunity to keep going. But that's why I think I'm slightly different to a lot of actresses, because I don't think age is in anyway limiting to me. i think that my career will continue to be interesting and strange and varied and evolving."

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Antonia also expands on happiness, being a loner by nature and her life in the fashion industry prior to her acting career.

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Irish writer and filmmaker John Carney is reflecting on his 80s schooldays in the dirty Dublin of that run-down era. They were as grim as you might expect  but not as grim as they could have been. Thankfully, I was never really bullied, he says. In some respects, I was pretty lucky, I guess.

Hot Press is meeting the bearded, bespectacled, somewhat restless 44-year-old in an executive suite of the Merrion Hotel, the morning after the triumphant Audi Dublin Film Festival screening of his latest movie. Carneys first cinematic offering since 2013s Begin Again, Sing Street already had its world premiere, to largely ecstatic reviews, at Sundance in January. It looks as if he might just, deservedly, have a majot hit on his hands.

The title is a pun on Dublins Synge Street CBS. In 1984/85, Carney spent a year attending the thennotorious Christian Brothers secondary school, where much of his new movie is set. Still open today, its less than a mile away  but many worlds apart  from this fivestar, luxury hotel.
"We want to thank the people of Ireland for their warm welcome and continued support"

Star Wars will use Ireland as a filming location once again.

Lucasfilm, the American film production company responsible for Star Wars, have announced that the next instalment of the Sta Wars saga will be partly shot in the west of Ireland, as was the last one, The Force Awakens.

In a statement today, the Vice President of Physical Production at Lucasfilm said they are thrilled to return to Ireland to film several sequences for the next chapter in the Star Wars saga.

The beauty of Skellig Michael in the final scene of The Force Awakens was stunning, she continued,  and we know the new locations along the Wild Atlantic Way will prove to be equally as beautiful in Star Wars: Episode VIII. We want to thank the people of Ireland for their warm welcome and continued support. Ireland has become an important part of Star Wars history.

The Irish Film Board also issued a statement on the news.

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Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board is delighted to welcome the production of Star Wars Episode VIII to some of our most spectacular locations along the Wild Atlantic Way, said Chief Executive James Hickey.

The Irish film industry has experienced much success this year on the back of major international awards and nominations for Irish films Room and Brooklyn. We believe that having Star Wars Episode VIII film on location in Ireland will also help to build on this success, creating further opportunities and growth for the Irish film industry, resulting in increased levels of job creation, incoming tourists and foreign direct investment to Ireland."

Star Wars Episode VIII is being directed by Rian Johnson (Looper) and sees actors Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver and Mark Hamill return along with new additions Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern.

Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson is also returning as the villainous General Hux.
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Astronaut Scott Kelly Announced as a Featured Keynote Speaker at Elliott Masies Learning 2016 Astronaut Scott Kelly, just returned from his record-breaking Year in Space, will be a featured Keynote Speaker at the MASIE Learning 2016 event.

Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 03-17-2016 10:30 pm

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Saratoga Springs, NY (PRWEB) March 14, 2016Elliott Masie announces that astronaut Scott Kelly will be a Featured Keynote Speaker at Learning 2016, taking place October 23-26 in Orlando, Florida.Back from his historic record-breaking Year In Space, NASA astronaut Captain Scott Kelly has laid the groundwork for the future of space travel and exploration, and continues to garner media exposure like no other pioneer of our time. From the cover of TIME to live interviews on TODAY to features in Forbes and on CNN to a Twitter following that is rapidly approaching 1 million, the world remains in awe as we celebrate a heros return to the planet that is home, from an adventure that is extraordinary. With life lessons and personal stories that reveal unique and valuable advice on pushing ones own limits, along with insight on the leadership and teamwork required in such demanding conditions, and other challengessuch as long term deprivation from loved ones and Planet Earth&m...

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eMindful and Humana Researchers to Present Success of Mindfulness Programs in Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Resiliency and Decreasing Metabolic Syndrome Innovators in mindfulness to share what works At Willis Towers Watson / The Conference Boards

Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 03-17-2016 10:53 pm

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Vero Beach, FL (PRWEB) March 15, 2016eMindful, the leading provider of live, online mindfulness programs for employers, will host researchers from Humana Inc. and a partner from Bridge Builders Collaborative in presenting results of applied mindfulness programs across dozens of employers. The panel discussion will be held at The Conference Boards 16th Annual Employee Healthcare Conference Thursday, March 17, at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront in San Diego.Norman Anderson, PhD, senior scientific advisor to eMindful, will provide a broad overview of the status of scientific findings on mindfulness." Dr. Anderson is the immediate past CEO of the American Psychological Association.Kevin Renner, eMindful senior vice president, will share results from eMindfuls analysis of several dozen companies with a sample of more than 2,000 employees in the U.S. and abroad. It is the only known research of its kind to span findings on workplace mindfulness programs across more than four...

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Sterling Management Client Study Proves Financial Literacy Includes Corporate Social Responsibility Sterling Management releases the case study of a client, a CPA firm, that was able to fight financial illiteracy by incorporating corporate social respons

Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 03-17-2016 10:57 pm

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Glendale, CA (PRWEB) March 14, 2016According to a study published in the Business Intelligence Journal, when employees had positive feelings towards the companys commitment to social and environmental responsibilities, engagement and production spiked to 86%, as compared to 37% for employees who had negative feelings. (1) Through its business with a purpose mission, one Sterling Management client has embraced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to have a positive impact on the surrounding community, and found that its company culture and success also improved as a direct result. Per Kevin Wilson, CEO of practice management consulting company Sterling Management, incorporating a well-thought-out CSR policy can have a long-term impact on a companys viability.Case in Point:The Problem: A Vermont-based CPA firm and Sterling Management client had been donating money and services to regional nonprofits in a disorganized, shotgun fashion. The firm had no way of t...

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The Liquidation Channel Taps 24 Seven Global Search to Recruit New President 24 Seven, the leading specialized recruitment firm for the Retail, Fashion and Creative industries was retained by the VGL Group to identify and recruit a new leader for The Liq

Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 03-17-2016 10:54 pm

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New York, NY (PRWEB) March 14, 201624 Seven, the leading specialized recruitment firm for the Retail, Fashion and Creative industries was retained by the VGL Group to identify and recruit a new leader for The Liquidation Channel, their home shopping TV network and a global leader in direct sales of colored stones, diamonds, precious metals, lifestyle and beauty products, and a variety of luxury goods and innovative products.The firm is happy to announce that Mr. R. Kevin Lyons has accepted the role as President, The Liquidation Channel. Mr. Lyons was previously with HH Gregg in Indianapolis where he held the position of Senior Vice President, E-Commerce.24 Seven was selected to head up this search because our Global Executive Search team brings unparalleled understanding and credibility in the high-level luxury retail talent space, said Ricardo Alvar, 24 Sevens Managing Director, Global Search, Our innovative approach combines global reach, industry expertis...

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Visier Launches New Applied Big Data Solution forHealthcare Providers Visier Workforce Intelligence for Healthcare enables hospitals to connect their workforce to patient satisfaction, driving better outcomes

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 03-18-2016 12:17 am

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Visier, the leader in Workforce Intelligence, today announced the launch of a new Applied Big Data solution for healthcare providers. VisierTM Workforce Intelligence forHealthcare includes workforce analytics and planning capabilities that are purpose-built to meet the specific needs of healthcare providers -- including connecting workforce dynamics to patient satisfaction and outcomes. The healthcare industry today is facing a perfect storm, says John Schwarz, CEO and Founder, Visier. On one hand there has been unprecedented growth in demand for healthcare services. On the other, market and regulatory pressures require hospitals to continuously improve patient satisfaction and reduce costs and readmission rates to obtain full value from insurance reimbursements. The biggest factor in both dimensions is the workforce: a highly specialized and very mobile group of skilled caregivers who are consta...

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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-18 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Negotiations at EU-Turkey summit to resume on Friday [02] Two ferries with more than 700 refugees expected to dock at Piraeus on Friday [01] Negotiations at EU-Turkey summit to resume on Friday Negotiations in Brussels will resume on Friday with a meeting of the European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu aiming at reaching an agreement with Turkey on the refugee issue. The working dinner in the first day of the EU-Turkey summit on the refugee issue was completed without a press conference. In statements following Thursday's meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel estimated that the talks with Turkey would be difficult. Merkel also said that no specific dates had been set for the start of either resettling Syrian refugees in EU countries or the return by Greece of migrants to Turkey, but noted that all EU countries wanted the agreement to go through. [02] Two ferries with more than 700 refugees expected to dock at Piraeus on Friday The ferry "Ariadni" carrying 638 refugees and migrants from two islands of Eastern Aegean Sea docked at the port of Piraeus early in the morning on Friday. More specifically, the ferry carried 240 persons from Chios and another 398 refugees and migrants from Mytilene. Later in the day is expected to arrive the ferry "blue star 2" with 79 refugees from Leros and another 5 from Kos. Buses sit on the curb at the port to transport the refugees in hosting centres in the city of Ioannina, in Epirus (Western Greece). However is difficult to be confirmed the number of the people who shall be relocated, since many of the refugees deny to embark and leave the port, fearing that they remain stranded in the centres and could not leave Greece. According to the numbers provided by the Piraeus Port Authority, the number of the refugees and migrants hosted in the passengers stations and other facilities of the port on Thursday raised to 4,500 persons. On Thursday only 349 persons could be possible to be transported from Piraeus port to the hosting centre of Ritsona. Within the port's premises are stationed forces of the Coast Guard in order to discourage and deter incidents among the refugees, like the one recorded on Thursday that left three refugees injured. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-18 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Alternate Finance Minister dismisses press reports on new tax burdens [02] Activists hang banners at the Acropolis [03] Interior Min Kouroumblis describes the situation at Idomeni as a "modern Dachau" [04] A total of 46,207 refugees in Greece, says Special Management Coordinating Body for Refugee Crisis [01] Alternate Finance Minister dismisses press reports on new tax burdens Alternate Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiadis on Friday acknowledged there will be a further tax burden on 2016 incomes, but stressed it will be fair and proportionate from a certain level upwards. Alexiadis said press reports over additional tax burdens on wages of between 1,500-2,000 euros were excessive and hypocritical, although he admitted that the tax system still remains unfair. [02] Activists hang banners at the Acropolis A group of activists hang banners at the Acropolis earlier on Friday to protest against restrictions on the movement of refugees and migrants to Europe. The "Safe Passage-Stop Wars" initiative hang banners reading "Open Borders" and "Safe Passage Stop Wars." The members of the initiative remained at the Acropolis for 15 minutes and left. [03] Interior Min Kouroumblis describes the situation at Idomeni as a "modern Dachau" Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis, who visited Idomeni on Friday, said the conditions at the refugee camps remind of a "modern Dachau." Kouroumblis pledged to improve the health system and the policing of the area while he urged refugees to be transferred to accommodation centers. "The situation here reminds of a modern Dachau and this is a result of closed borders. We believed in a Europe of open borders, a Europe which has constantly in mind that the blood shed because of nationalism should not be shed again. Europe, unfortunately, sees again the rise of a peculiar nationalism towards persecuted people. And a Europe of 580 million inhabitants hesitates to absorb 1.0-1.5 million people who were forced to leave their country because of a war in which Europe also participated and Europe," Kouroumblis noted. [04] A total of 46,207 refugees in Greece, says Special Management Coordinating Body for Refugee Crisis A total of 46,207 refugees are in Greece, according to the latest figures of the Special Management Coordinating Body for Refugee Crisis on Friday. On the islands of the Aegean, the number has risen to 7,271 persons. In the Attica region, there are 13,592 refugees of whom 670 are newly arrived. 1,970 are hosted at Schisto, 712 at Elaionas, 4,490 at the premises of Elliniko, 800 at Malakasa, 402 at the camp of the Agricultural Bank at Lavrion, and 264 in the hosting facilities for asylum seekers at Lavrio. At the port of Piraeus, there are 4.954 people. At the camp of Ritsona 547 refugees are hosted, 392 at a hotel in Thermopylae, 191 at Trikala and 400 at Larissa. In Diavata there are 2,211, 3,852 at Cherso, Kilkis, 3,504 in New Kavala, Kilkis, 731 in New Karvali, Kavala, 210 in Eleftheroupoli, Kavala, 479 in Drama, 400 in Kozani, 162 in Konitsa and 190 in Pieria. For the first time, 325 refugees were hosted in the port of Thessaloniki for the first time. Another 10,500 people are in the camps at Idomeni and 1,250 in the gas station of Polykastro. As regards the situation at Idomeni, eight new prefabricated houses were transferred at the camp of Idomeni at the Greece-FYROM buffer zone, where more than 12,000 refugees remain stranded awaiting the results of the EU-Turkey summit. Two of them will be used as info points to provide information on the relocation programme, one will be used for translators and another one for the needs of the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KEELPNO). The other four will host the people working there. Meanwhile, police distributed a new leaflet for refugees in Greek, Arabic and Farsi saying: "The borders are closed. Food and accommodation are provided in hospitality centres. Do not trust irresponsible people that put you at risk. Do not get into trouble for any reason." Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-18 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Merkel pleased with EU-Turkey deal and readmission of refugees [02] Gov't says 12,000 Greek farmers to first return illegal subsidies given in 2008-2009 [01] Merkel pleased with EU-Turkey deal and readmission of refugees BRUSSELLS (ANA-MPA/M. Spinthourakis) a German Chancellor Angel Merkel expressed on Friday her satisfaction with the deal achieved earlier between the EU and Turkey on a plan to tackle migration flows in Europe and the readmission of refugees and migrants from Greece to Turkey as of Monday, noting however that implementation will be monitored. Speaking to journalists after the summit meeting in Brussels, Merkel said the return of refugees and migrants from Greece to Turkey will take place through a permanent mechanism whose mode of operation is still under discussion. She also expressed hope that all member-states will participate. The Chancellor also urged refugees stranded in Idomeni, the makeshift camp in Greece's northern border, to leave and find shelter in one of the temporary camps set up by the Greek government, noting they no longer have a reason to stay there. Commenting on recognizing Turkey as a safe third country, Merkel said Greece has already recognized it through its bilateral deal on readmissions, but added that Turkey will have to implement the Geneva Convention on refugees. Asked about Cyprus, the Chancellor expressed hope that the Cyprus issue will be resolved soon, while she added that the visa waiver for Turkish citizens will only be implemented if Turkey fulfills its obligations arising from the deal. In her closing remarks, Merkel said that today's deal is proof that Europe can overcome great crises. [02] Gov't says 12,000 Greek farmers to first return illegal subsidies given in 2008-2009 Rural Development Minister Evangelos Apostolou on Friday said that 12,000 Greek farmers that received the highest amounts will first be asked to return their share of some 215 million euros in illegal subsidies handed out to 95,000 farmers through the "Hatzigakis package" of 2008-2009. The subsidies were ruled illegal in an irrevocable decision of the European Court of Justice, which has ordered that they be recovered. Replying to SYRIZA MP Stavros Arachovitis in Parliament, the minister said that all legal avenues for contesting the court's decision had been exhausted. He said the first notices for repayment will be sent to 12,000 farmers that received state assistance exceeding 5,000 euros each, from which the Greek state expects to recover 40 million euros in total. Giving examples, Apostolou said that a farmer that was given the sum of 12,000 euros at the time would now be asked to return 7,000 euros. In addition to the Hatzigakis subsidies, Greece also faced action over the 'Kontos package' worth 108 million euros and the 'Moraitis Package' worth another 500 million euros, he warned. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
of the worlds largest supermarkets has offered a job to an unlikely candidate after he was caught stealing from one of its Malaysian stores.The new recruit, who did not wish to be named, attempted to steal food worth RM27 (ND$9.77) from a Tesco supermarket in the northern town of Bukit Mertajam.The stores general manager, Radzuan Maasan, chose not to report the would-be thief after hearing the of mans situation.I had quit my job as a contract worker after my wife fell into a coma during a birth complication last week, he told the local Star newspaper.The man, who already has three other children between two and seven, immediately admitted the transgression when employees approached him.He was not a regular thief, stressed Maasan. When we questioned him, he immediately confessed, saying that he stole the fruits and drinks because his son was hungry.In my 23 years of experience in the retail line, I had never come across thieves who admitted their act so easily, he continued. Most would give all kinds of reasons. He also told us that he was unable to work as he has to look after his three children.As well as offering the man a job, Tesco  which takes the title as fourth-largest supermarket in the world  also gave him cash to cover expenses until he could begin bringing in a wage.The mans situation really touched our hearts. We visited his relatives house. It was so empty and poor, added Maasan.
When Quinn was born in January, she seemed like a perfectly healthy baby.

But when she was a few weeks old, she caught a cold and didn't recover.

Parents Robert Shirley and Dawn Roberts took Quinn to the hospital in their hometown of Victoria, B.C. There, the baby was subject to a slew of tests.

"Our doctor at the time had this funny feeling, thinking something wasn't right with her," Robert said.

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Quinn and her mom, Dawn Roberts. (Photo: Robert Shirley)

Blood tests helped doctors figure out that Quinn had a rare genetic disorder called adenosine deaminasedeficient severe combined immunodeficiency, known as ADA-SCID, or SCID.

Because of the condition, Quinn's immune system doesn't work as it should. Any infection  be it a serious virus or a bout with the common cold  could kill her.

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Quinn. (Photo: Robert Shirley)

"She produces all the white blood cells she needs to fight infection, but when her body reproduces those cells, the old cells that her body leaves behind aren't being filtered out," Robert explained in an interview with The Huffington Post B.C. "So when those old cells break down, they produce a toxin that's killing some of her new white blood cells that she needs.

"As soon as you get exposed to germs, [patients] don't have the immune system to fight it off. Her body doesn't react to seeing a cold  it'll just let the virus do its thing. She won't get fevers or anything like that," he added.

"Babies that have SCID, a lot of them don't make it to the hospital because parents just don't know they're sick," Dawn added. "So it was actually a blessing that she happened to catch that bug."

'Bubble babies'

No SCID case is better known than David Vetter's. Born in Houston in 1971, Vetter spent his entire life  save two weeks  inside what was essentially a big, plastic balloon.

It was a sterile space that acted as a barrier between life and death.

He became known as "the boy in the bubble," living inside the plastic walls until he died at the age of 12.

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Vetter was a phenomenon, because back then, babies with SCID just didn't live as long as he had.

Most didn't even come close.

Nowadays, children like Quinn  commonly known as "bubble babies"  have treatment options.

The first is a bone marrow transplant. Robert and Dawn are testing to see if they're a match, although it's not likely. A sibling would be a better candidate, but Quinn doesn't have any.

The second option, if a transplant is ruled out, would be an experimental gene therapy treatment available at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Doctors would extract one of Quinn's defective cells, repair it, and then put it back in the baby's body. That cell would then reproduce, slowly building a functioning immune system.

If successful, Robert and Dawn say Quinn would have a chance at a "normal" life.

"We've have an amazing medical team working with us to get Quinn and get her on the right path," Robert said.

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Newborn Quinn with her parents before being diagnosed with ADA-SCIDS. (Photo: Painted Barn Photography)

As of November 2014, 18 children with SCID had been cured through treatment at UCLA.

One Toronto boy that underwent the procedure is "well on his way" to recovery, and Dawn said she's in touch with his mom to chat about what happens next.

Doctors from Vancouver General Hospital have applied to see whether Quinn is eligible for the treatment, but haven't heard back.

Costly cures

Quinn's parents face heavy costs, no matter which route they take.

If the baby undergoes a bone marrow transplant, Dawn and Robert will have to cover the cost of living in Vancouver, prepping their home for long-term recovery, and their daughter's post-op medication.

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If they go for gene therapy, the family will likely have to cover travel costs to California. On top of that, it's not clear whether the experimental U.S. treatment will be covered by B.C.'s Medical Services Plan.

Robert and Dawn say they're not sure how much they'll have to shell out for treatment at UCLA, but they're certain it won't be cheap.

With both options, the couple would leave their jobs to care for Quinn in her own "bubble" while she recovers.

The process could take several years.

"Its been quite a process ... But were willing to do anything to keep her healthy."

In March, Quinn's extended family launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for the anticipated bills.

They've raised nearly $20,000  a number Dawn said is overwhelming.

Quinn is currently in hospital, fighting off an unrelated problem with her bowels. When she's able to eat properly again, her parents will be able to bring her home while they wait for a decision on a treatment for her condition.

While they wait, the family will have strict rules to follow.

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Robert Shirley, Dawn Roberts, and baby Quinn. (Photo: Robert Shirley)

"We'll be sent home to live in isolation," Dawn said. "No visitors ... our dog won't be allowed in the same room ... and I'm not able to breastfeed, because I could catch a cold and pass it onto her."

"It's been quite a process ... But we're willing to do anything to keep her healthy," the first-time mom added.

"What we just have to do is stay positive for Quinn. She's been extremely strong, and she's been through a lot for only two months on the planet."

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**NOTE: This recap contains spoilers for "Big Brother Canada" season 4.

After being put on the block in week two, Loveita Adams managed to reclaim her HOH title at the start of week three. This meant there was another chance for her to put her enemy, Kelsey Faith, up on the block.

Surprisingly, Adams passed on putting up the flight attendant, opting for Christine Kelsey and Cassandra Shahinfar instead.

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After a week as a Have-Not, Shahinfar was ready to return to the regular bedroom and more importantly to eat, but after Big Brother revealed she and Joel Lefevre were caught eating during their week on slop, the two were forced to stay in the Have-Not room for another week.

Competing on a slop-filled stomach isn't easy, so it's no surprise Shahinfar wasn't able to pull out a win during this week's elaborate "The Divergent"-inspired challenge, which Dallas Cormier conquered.

After debating over pulling Kelsey off the block in favour of alpha male threat Jared Kessler, Cormier kept the nominations the same, making enemies out of both Kelsey and Shahinfar.

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On the the HOH competition this week called "Locked Lips," houseguests were told to compete in pairs to transfer a ball from one end of the course to the other. The catch? They weren't allowed to use their hands.

Who will be the new HOH? #BBCAN4pic.twitter.com/K9HbA9DeSe  Big Brother Canada (@BigBrotherCA) March 18, 2016

The winner then decided who got to keep the HOH title for the upcoming week. For pairs, Shahinfar teamed up with Raul Manriquez, Lefevre with Mitchell Moffit, and Faith with Ramsey Aburaneh. Winners Lefevre and Moffit decided to keep Lefevre as the winner (which was revealed later in the livefeed).

During elimination, Kelsey, the 47-year-old housekeeper from Vancouver, was sent packing after a six to five vote.

How will things change next week since Lefevre has the power in his hands? We'll just have to wait and see.

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A slim majority of Canadians wants federal Liberals to keep in place controversial changes to the Citizenship Act made by the previous government, a new poll suggests.

According to numbers from the Angus Reid Institute, 53 per cent of Canadians say Bill C-24  the so-called Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act  should not be repealed. Twenty-one per cent want the law scrapped, while 26 per cent aren't sure.

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Among other things, the legislation gives the federal government power to strip dual citizens of their citizenship if they're convicted of terrorism, treason, and espionage. Those same rules apply to dual citizens who take up arms against Canada by joining an international terror group or foreign army.

Source: Angus Reid Institute

During last fall's election campaign, Tories used those powers for the first time to strip Jordanian-born Zakaria Amara of his citizenship. The "Toronto 18" ringleader was sentenced to life in prison six years ago for his role in the foiled terror plot.

Liberal legislation tabled late last month would remove terrorism as grounds for revoking citizenship and, if passed, restore Amara's Canadian citizenship.

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The bill would do nothing, however, to revoke the right of the federal government to remove citizenship for those who obtain it through fraudulent means.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the poll shows that Conservative supporters are the most likely to argue against change, with 84 per cent saying the law should be left as is. But 38 per cent of Liberal supporters and 40 per cent of New Democrats feel the same way.

Former Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau shake hands following the Munk Debate on Canada's foreign policy in Toronto on Sept. 28, 2015. (Photo: Mark Blinch/CP)

Angus Reid Institute found that younger Canadians and those with more education were the most likely to say C-24 should be scrapped.

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Still, while 33 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 want to see the law repealed, 36 per cent in the same age range say it should be maintained.

By way of comparison, 52 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 35 and 54, and 67 per cent of Canadians over the age of 55 say the law should be kept.

Liberals score well on security

The poll also found that two-in-three Canadians say the Trudeau government is doing a "good" or "very good" job on the national security file.

But Canadians are also eager to see the Trudeau government bring in promised amendments to C-51, the anti-terror law brought in by the past Tory government and supported by Liberals.

Shachi Kurl, executive director for the Angus Reid Institute, said Friday that the government has managed to "effectively thread the needle" with the Canadian public on its support for C-51  a position some speculated could hurt them in the campaign.

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The poll suggests support for C-51 is now at 80 per cent. Kurl said those numbers suggest earlier opposition was more about the Harper government than the bill itself.

"Far more people are inclined to say just leave the legislation as it is, don't repeal it, as would say it should be walked back." Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute

But the Liberals are not aligned with many Canadians on C-24.

"The numbers speak for themselves," she said. "Far more people are inclined to say just leave the legislation as it is, don't repeal it, as would say it should be walked back."

While Kurl doubts the Liberal position could become a "major liability" for a government enjoying an extended honeymoon, she said it demonstrates that Canadians aren't quick to praise every change or tweak as "the right move to make."

The survey was conducted online among 1,492 Angus Reid Forum panelists from March 14 to 17. Similar surveys have a margin of error of 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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'A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian'

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau forcefully argued during the campaign that C-24 created two tiers of citizenship.

The Tories released an audio recording of Trudeau explaining why terrorists should get to keep their citizenship just days before the Munk foreign policy debate in September. The recording was also used in an attack ad.

Trudeau and then-Tory leader Stephen Harper had a feisty exchange on the topic during the Toronto debate, in which the Liberal leader maintained that "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian."

Footage from CBC News:

Though Liberals ultimately won the day, Immigration Minister John McCallum faced a number of questions about the party's position at a press conference in February. McCallum was repeatedly pressed on why someone who plotted to blow up buildings in downtown Toronto deserved to regain his citizenship.

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"It is a question of principle," McCallum said. "It is our profound belief that there should be one class of Canadian, not two classes of Canadian. That a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

"That in order to deal with serious criminals, we have in place a criminal justice system, we have prisons in place, and we will deal with criminals through that justice system, through those prisons."

Tories wasted little time blasting the Liberal government's decision.

This should not be a priority for the Canadian government. RT if you agree. #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/DDRxenKC5I  Conservative Party (@CPC_HQ) February 26, 2016

Fraud, but not terrorism?

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, McCallum justified why the government should be able to strip citizenship because of fraud, but not terrorism.

"I think those things are different in kind. When you give false pretenses to become a citizen, the offence relates specifically to citizenship," he told the newspaper.

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"The other is about if you commit a crime or you can name any other contingency  those things are not related to the process of becoming a citizen."

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Theres no shortage of celebrity mini-mes in Hollywood. But every now and then we get some celebrity lookalikes who truly blow us away.

Earlier this week, Jackie Kennedy Onassis granddaughter Rose Kennedy Schlossberg made headlines thanks to her uncanny resemblance to the late first lady. As a result, were taking a look at all the grown-up celebrity kids who look just like their famous relatives.

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From Eminem and his daughter Hailie to Mick and James Jagger, these family resemblances are incredible!
Donald Trump winning the U.S. election would pose as large a risk to the global economy as the threat of jihadi terrorism, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

In the event of a Trump victory, his hostile attitude to free trade, and alienation of Mexico and China in particular, could escalate rapidly into a trade war  and at the least scupper the Trans-Pacific Partnership between the US and 11 other American and Asian states signed in February 2016, EIU said in its latest risk assessment.

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EIU gives a Trump presidency a risk intensity score of 12, the same rating given to the rising threat of jihadi terrorism.

That makes Trump a larger risk than Britain leaving the European Union or the threat posed by collapsing oil prices, but a smaller risk than a Chinese economic hard landing (the number-one risk) or Russias interventions in Syria and Ukraine.

Robert Powell, global risk briefing manager at EIU, told Politico its the first time the research body of The Economist magazine has ever identified a single politician as a risk to the global economy.

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Trump winning is a "moderate risk" with "high impact," the EIU said, noting that "we do not expect Mr. Trump to defeat his most likely Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton."

Not only does the EIU see Trump as being as large a threat as terrorism, it sees Trump actually exacerbating terrorism.

His militaristic tendencies towards the Middle East (and ban on all Muslim travel to the U.S.) would be a potent recruitment tool for jihadi groups, increasing their threat both within the region and beyond, the EIU asserts.

Meanwhile, Trumps assertion that undocumented Mexican migrants are rapists, and his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., has given rise to fears of racial divisions and even racial violence.

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Trumps goading of China  calling it a currency manipulator  has made many experts worry about the possibility of a trade war between the U.S. and China, the worlds two largest economic powers.

But in authoritarian China, the state press has been focusing on Trump to argue democracy doesnt work.

Big-mouthed, anti-traditional, abusively forthright, [Trump] is a perfect populist that could easily provoke the public, the Global Times, an organ of Chinas communist party, wrote this week.

Despite candidates' promises, Americans know elections cannot really change their lives. Then, why not support Trump and vent their spleen?

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If you rub your eyes when you wake up only to find crusty gunk, you certainly aren't alone.

While you sleep, oil, mucus, skin cells and other debris build up in the corners of your eyes, creating a thick and crusty discharge. This is commonly referred to as "sleep" or "gunk" or sometimes, eye boogers.

This gunk is completely normal and even develops during the day.

"Every time we blink, we wipe away the tears on our eyes and replace them with a new layer. But while we're sleeping, the moisture on our eyes does not get replaced and it builds up on the surface," Dr. Harbir Sian of Highstreet Eyecare Center in Abbotsford, B.C. tells The Huffington Post Canada.

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Since the fluid in our eyes contain different levels of debris and bacteria, not all eye gunk is made the same, which is it can vary from thick to sticky to virtually non-existent.

Regardless of whether or not you notice sleep in your eyes when you wake up, Sian recommends cleaning your eyelids to prevent infections, inflammation and styes.

When cleaning your eyes and eyelids, use a towel or cloth with hot water and a mild soap like baby shampoo. Start by gently scrubbing the base of both your top and bottom lashes, working your way around the eyes.

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While every day eye gunk is nothing to be bothered by, the colour of the discharge is worth paying attention to.

"If it appears to be more yellow or green in appearance, it may be due to bacterial build up on the surface of the eyes or even an active bacterial infection," Sian says. Signs of bacteria can also include stickiness.

Sometimes, eye infections can be so severe that discharge builds up on the lashes. If this is the case, visit your doctor for a medicated eye solution.

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When Colleen Darbyshire went to Walmart in Hinton, Alta. on Tuesday, she never thought she'd leave with a jury summons.

But that's precisely what happened when she was at the store in the rural community's Parks West Mall and spotted a pair of Alberta sheriffs coming her way, CBC News reported.

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"I come to the front of the store and these two sheriffs come up to me and say, 'Excuse me, ma'am, can we have a word with you?'" she told the network.

The officers told her she had been summoned for jury duty along with about 20 other people who were soon herded on to a bus with their shopping bags and taken to the courthouse.

Justice J.H. Goss of the Court of Queen's Bench issued the summons after the court lost a juror before hearings began, The Hinton Voice reported.

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Under the Alberta Jury Act, additional jurors can be summoned "if the number of persons on the jury panel who are in attendance is insufficient or is so reduced by exemptions, exclusions or persons being found not qualified as to be insufficient to select a full jury."

"I realize this has been very inconvenient," Justice Goss said in the courtroom, as lawyers went about choosing a jury for a four-day trial.

The court called three groups of six potential jurors each. The first 12 were dismissed. And when the last group of six was called, there were still two more possible jurists sitting in the gallery.

The first two of this group were dismissed before the third was selected. One of the potential jurors sitting in the gallery pumped his first when he learned he would not be chosen.

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The process took about two hours before shoppers were taken back to the mall.

And Darbyshire, for one, appreciated the experience.

"Sure I could have been doing work, but to have two hours off to see how the selection is done, I was fine with it," she told CBC News.

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Justin Trudeau had good news for seniors when he said he'd roll back eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) from 67 to 65 years old in next week's budget.

It wasn't such sweet news for millennial taxpayers who now  again  have to pay for a retirement program whose costs are expected to more than double over the next 15 years. And then keep growing.

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The decision has some wondering what Trudeau will do for young Canadians when seniors enjoy better financial health than they ever have  some of whose pocketbooks will only grow healthier with the upcoming budget.

In 2012, then-prime minister Stephen Harper hiked the OAS eligibility age to 67, phasing in the change starting in 2023.

The decision would have eliminated an estimated $11 billion in annual spending up to 2030, which would have grown to $16 billion per year by 2050, according to actuarial reports.

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But Trudeau, who promised the reversal during last year's campaign, called Harper's move a "mistake," and said he was changing it "because how we care for our most vulnerable in society is really important."

He didn't outline precisely why he's changing it back, but the C.D. Howe Institute's Alexandre Laurin said he did it to protect low-income seniors who would have had to rely on social security while waiting two more years to retire.

The government could pay for this any number of ways, such as budget cuts and "prolonged low interest rates," Laurin said.

He also said it could "probably be financed by a small increase in the GST rate, or in income tax rates."

"How we care for our most vulnerable in society is really important."

Trudeau may feel he's protecting the vulnerable, but BMO study from 2014 shows the average Canadian senior is anything but financially frail.

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Seniors are "four times richer than their parents were at the same age in the mid-1980s," the report said. More of them have jobs, own homes and enjoy higher returns from their investments.

"Today, the typical senior is nearly nine times richer than the typical millennial, a wealth gap between similar age groups that has more than doubled since 1984," it said.

And despite that, millennials are paying for a retirement system that benefits people who are richer than they are.

What is 'OAS'?

OAS is Canada's biggest pension program. It doles out monthly payments to seniors aged 65 years or older, with amounts based on how much money they make per year.

Unlike the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), it is funded out of general revenue, meaning every taxpayer pays for it.

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A senior who makes up to $73,756 receives a maximum monthly payment of $570.52. A recovery tax, or clawback, kicks in for any amount above that, up to $119,398, the highest income at which you can receive OAS.

As the Fraser Institute noted, a couple that makes a combined income of $147,512 could still be pulling in full OAS benefits.

That means any millennial man making $42,160  the average salary for a male aged 25 to 34, according to Maclean's  is topping up the income of a household making over three times as much as he does.

Harper changed OAS eligibility because the program "was put in place when Canadians were not living the longer, healthier lives that they are now."

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The government noted that life expectancy was age 69 for men and 76 for women when OAS was first introduced. Legislation to set the age of eligibility at 65 was passed in 1965, after it was originally set at 70.

By 2012, life expectancy had climbed to age 79 for men and 83 for women.

Baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, represented the largest age cohort in history, the government said. As they retired, the cost of the OAS program would balloon from $38 billion in 2011 to $108 billion in 2030.

An actuarial report also showed that the program's expenses would shoot as high as $266 billion in 2060.

All of this is set to happen with fewer and fewer taxpayers supporting retirees' income.

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UBC economist Kevin Milligan told HuffPost Canada that Harper's changes, while problematic, would have reduced spending on retirement to the equivalent of 2.7 per cent of Canada's economy, compared to 3.14 per cent under the lower age limit. That burden is equal to an additional percentage point on the GST, he said.

It's an expense that Trudeau is putting back on the books.

By 2030, Generation Xers will have reached retirement age at a time when OAS costs will total $108 billion. Millennials can guess who'll foot the bill.

Milligan said it's fair to ask why millennials are having to supplement the incomes of people making approximately $73,000 to $120,000 a year.

"It is an interesting question whether that threshold is in the right place, and whether that [clawback] rate is sharp enough," he said.

"Those are fair questions to ask, especially for someone from a younger generation."

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The rising costs of OAS are also a concern for Paul Kershaw, a UBC public health professor and spokesman for Generation Squeeze, a group that advocates for people under 40.

He's less worried about the change from 67 to 65 than the program's cost increasing by about $14 billion in the next four years.

Kershaw said Harper's decision to raise the age to 67 "might have made some sense on average if it used the anticipated savings in OAS to invest now in young people who are earning thousands less for full time work than in 1976," he told HuffPost Canada via email.

"Why can the federal government find so much more new spending for the aging population by comparison with what it says it can find for young Canadians?" he asked.

"Especially when the federal government already spends five times more per retiree than it does per person under age 45."

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Asked for comment, the Ministry of Finance referred HuffPost Canada back to the prime minister's Bloomberg interview, and wouldn't say more until the budget comes down next week.

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It's been almost two years since Rihanna gifted the world with her 2014 CFDA Fashion Awards gown (which may be better know as the "naked dress"). And we admit, not a day goes by where we don't think about that dress and how it left little to the imagination...

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We mean, c'mon. The Adam Selman fishnet dress, which was fitted to perfection and covered in 200,000 Swarovski crystals, is now iconic. Rihanna even twerked braless in it, so who could possibly forget it?

The way we celebrate after a beautiful night or should I say the second half of a beautiful night #cdfaicon A video posted by Yusef (@yusefhairnyc) on Jun 2, 2014 at 9:32pm PDT

But in her April 2016 Vogue cover story, the 28-year-old Barbadian pop star explains to Abby Aguirre that she does have regrets about the dress. And they're regrets that will haunt her forever.

She first tells the glossy why she decided to forgo a bra:

"I just liked it better without the lines underneath. Could you imagine the CFDA dress with a bra? I would slice my throat," she says.

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Then she spills on the regret:

"I already wanted to, for wearing a thong that wasn't bedazzled. That's the only regret I have in my life."

"Wearing a thong that wasn't bedazzled is your greatest regret in life?" asks Aguirre, for clarification.

"To the CFDA Awards. Yes," Rihanna confessed.

So there you have it. Riri's biggest and only regret in life  a bedazzled thong.

BRB, bedazzling everything we own now! #noregrets2016

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A non-profit advocacy group says the Liberal government has conjured up a partisan facade after the prime minister recommended seven new senators on Friday.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, said that despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus pledge to only name independent senators, the systemic nature of the upper chamber curdles that ambition.

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Anyone who is appointed to the Senate by a Liberal prime minister  who also chose the advisory board that nominates them  is a Liberal appointee, not an independent senator, he told The Huffington Post Canada in an interview.

Conacher pointed to the example of Peter Harder, a longtime civil servant who led the Liberals transition team and has now been named government representative in the Senate.

I dont think hes very independent from the prime minister, which is probably why hes the government representative, he said.

We live in a democracy.  Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch co-founder

Trudeau confirmed in a statement that while he has tasked Harder to steer government legislation through the Senate, the senator will sit as an independent  something he said will help guide the institution towards being less partisan.

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But Conacher says Harders appointment, among the six others, only underscores the need to abolish the red chamber all together.

We live in a democracy and to have an unappointed part of Parliament as the Senate that can stop what the elected MPs in the House of Commons propose is just fundamentally undemocratic.

Impressive women recommended

Following the announcement of a gender-balanced cabinet in November, more than 80 prominent Canadian women urged Trudeau to seize an historic opportunity to appoint a Senate with gender parity.

We are thrilled that a champion of women in politics has been appointed to the senate.  Equal Voice statement

Though the Liberals did not recommend all women to the Senate, nonpartisan advocacy group Equal Voice is pleased with the prime minister's appointment of four impressive women.

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Governor General David Johnston invests Frances Lankin into the Order of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall on Nov. 22, 2013 in Ottawa. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

They represent a diversity of Canadians and have multi-partisan backgrounds, the group said in an statement to The Huffington Post Canada, noting the appointment a founding member of the organization, Frances Lankin.

We are thrilled that a champion of women in politics has been appointed to the Senate.

Tories: Trudeaus words flowery

During the election, Trudeau campaigned on a pledge to make government more transparent to Canadians. The seven names forwarded Friday are steps being made toward that goal, he said.

The government is today taking further concrete steps to follow through on its commitment to reform the Senate, restore public trust, and bring an end to partisanship in the appointments process.

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The seven recommended names would fill current vacancies in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.

Raymonde Gagne (Manitoba)

Justice Murray Sinclair (Manitoba)

Peter Harder (Ontario)

Frances Lankin (Ontario)

Ratna Omidvar (Ontario)

Chantal Petitclerc (Quebec)

Andre Pratte (Quebec)

The Conservatives were quick to criticize the new Senate appointments, charging the prime minister made them on a whim and used flowery words in his announcement.

Tory MPs Scott Reid and Blake Richards issued a joint statement condemning of a Senate process shrouded in secrecy, with names that they said may or may not have been pulled from a non-binding list of recommended appointees.

The secrecy surrounding recommendations for appointment is unacceptable and undemocratic.  Tory MPs Scott Reid and Blake Richards

We remain concerned that these first Liberal appointments were required to be sponsored for consideration in secret, under a prohibitively short deadline, and that the identity of those sponsors will remain unknown, they said.

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The secrecy surrounding recommendations for appointment is unacceptable and undemocratic.

Harpers 59

Reid and Richards comments that the Liberals are not being transparent or democratic with who they recommend for Senate seats mirror criticisms the Tories faced when the party was in government.

Over nine years, former prime minister Stephen Harper made 59 appointments to the Senate before he had a change of heart, issuing a moratorium on future appointees weeks before the election was called.

Harper said at the time that leaving vacant seats will save taxpayer money. By not appointing anyone to the Senate since 2013, the former prime minister said his decision saved $6 million.

Currently, there are 42 Conservative senators.

Two years ago, Trudeau made headlines for his decision to eject Liberal senators from caucus in an effort to curb partisanship. But under Senate roles, technically there are 26 Liberal senators and 13 sit as Independents.

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TV villains run the gamut from the charming and the seductive, to the psychopathic and the supernatural.

And with "Daredevil's" second season premiering on Netflix on Friday, audiences can be sure of meeting some great new ones, just like they did last year.

Season one acquainted viewers with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind superhero from Hell's Kitchen who used superior senses to watch over the neighbourhood.

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The series pitted him against Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), a terrifying, yet vulnerable antagonist with a competing (and more brutal) vision for the area's future.

Fisk overpowered his opponents with savage beatings, using anything from his fists to car doors. But audiences still felt for him after learning about his difficult childhood.

He frightened us, but he also intrigued us. And the same is true for many other TV antagonists who are anything but one-dimensional.

Here are 17 of TV's most frightening villains:

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Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) sees himself as a reformer, as someone who can take the ashes of New York's Hell's Kitchen and rebuild it into something better. But he does it by violent methods, intimidating and pummeling his enemies into submission. It takes him several episodes to discover he's not the hero  but the villain that Hell's Kitchen needs.

Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker) was a black nationalist imprisoned at Oswald State Penitentiary for blowing up a warehouse that was owned by white people. He would go on to become a powerful leader among Muslim prisoners, capable of commanding power with a single, icy stare.

The "Yellow King of Carcosa" haunted the first season of "True Detective" like a dark spirit before audiences finally met him in its final moments. He led detectives Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) on a surreal, mind-bending chase before they finally confronted him face to face.

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Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje) was one of Oswald State Penitentiary's scariest inmates. As if decapitating an undercover policeman wasn't enough, inside the prison he developed a fearsome reputation through rape, murder and drug dealing.

Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) was a model of ruthlessness as he entered a drug war with Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). With the help of his brutal enforcers Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson), Stanfield ruled the streets of Baltimore with an iron fist. Just wait to see what he does with his victims' bodies.

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A brutal, but loyal soldier to Stanfield, Snoop (Felicia Pearson) was called upon whenever he needed someone killed. Audiences first met Snoop in a chilling scene that saw her politely buy a nail gun in a hardware store. It was only a hint at what was to come.

"You'd find offense in a bouquet of flowers." That was how Atlantic City boss Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) described Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale), a gangster with a hot temper and very thin skin. A simple lesson about 3-In-One Oil is enough to set him off, and that didn't scratch the surface of the chaos he wreaked as he tried to take over Nucky's liquor-running business.

There was plenty to like about Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). He was a kind, intelligent businessman who ran chicken franchise Los Pollos Hermanos. But that was all a front for his activities in the drug trade. Fring wouldn't hesitate to kill his most loyal henchman in gruesome fashion if it meant showing how fierce he was.

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Bob (Frank Silva) was a malevolent force who could kill in both physical and metaphysical realms. Identified early on as the killer of Twin Peaks homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), he was known to possess and terrorize members of the bizarre Pacific Northwest community, making them do things they wouldn't think of if they had control.

You know Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore). Now meet his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga). The product of a sad home life, Norma becomes fiercely protective of her son. And she comes to possess him in more ways than one.

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Kilgrave (David Tennant) can make people do anything he wants simply by telling them to. It's a power he exercises with grim results as he pursues Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), a former flame who uses her own superpowers to resist and try to destroy him.

Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) is the frightful next-door neighbour to the Harmons, who have just moved into the "murder house," a home she once occupied before she caught her husband cheating and killed him. She gradually develops a bizarre obsession over Vivien Harmon's (Connie Britton) baby.

In a land of evildoers like Westeros, it says something that Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) can stand out so prominently. Audiences meet the bastard son of Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton) as he tortures Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), and his deeds become only more disturbing from there. You fear for Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) the moment she meets him.

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Villain or anti-hero? It's impossible to say for sure with Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey). The U.S. president is a textbook psychopath, willing to charm and manipulate his way to the top, sparing no thought for people standing in his way. He will cheat, he will lie, he will even kill to achieve power.

Consulting criminal Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) is a perfect foil for hyper-intelligent detective Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch). Menacing to his core, he loves to play games with Sherlock, even taking the Crown Jewels just to grab the sleuth's attention.

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Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) regret early on their association with drug kingpin Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz). A ferocious, domineering personality, he initially distributes their drugs before kidnapping both of them, ostensibly with the goal of holding them prisoner so they can cook for him.

Seductive and dangerous. Just two words you can use to describe Countess Elizabeth (Lady Gaga). The owner of the Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, she and her consort Donovan (Matt Bomer) lure unsuspecting victims back to their lair, have sex and then suck the blood out of them.

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James Peragine via Getty Images Unhappy Depressed Woman

Rachel faces a gut-wrenching decision: put her own life and her step-daughter's safety at risk, or live on the streets.

Rachel, 55, took her step-daughter, Jessica, 15, with her when she escaped her abusive husband and left her home in rural Ontario. Rachel and Jessica (whose names have been changed to protect their identity) went to a YWCA shelter, where staff contacted a local community support organization, hoping to find the pair a safe home. The community non-profit helped Rachel and Jessica move into a low-rent apartment, thanks to a subsidy from Niagara Regional Housing.

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Here's where the story goes awry.

Rachel is on disability support from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. It's her only source of income. She has shared legal custody of Jessica, but the ministry only provides Rachel with financial support for one person. Even with a rental subsidy, Rachel didn't have enough money to pay for the apartment and put food on the table. Worse, the government hadn't bothered to tell the other organizations involved in her case that, because Rachel still owns part of the house she escaped from, they'd cut off her disability payments if she moved into another home.

Yet another organization -- this one specializing in legal aid -- then became involved in Rachel's case. That agency tried unsuccessfully to help her resolve the conflict. To regain her disability payments, Rachel must go back home, taking Jessica with her and putting them both back in reach of their abuser. If they don't go home, Rachel and Jessica have no money and no place to live.

If you found this story confusing, imagine being Rachel, a traumatized single step-mom, and actually living it.

Provinces need to work with non-profits to adopt a "one family, one file" approach -- creating a single intake form and database.

The experts who work in the trenches with Canada's homeless tell us, routinely, vulnerable individuals like Rachel complete reams of paperwork and attend meetings with as many as five different government agencies and non-profit organizations. Often, the only outcome is severe stress for already devastated families.

A newly-released report from Raising the Roof, a national organization seeking solutions for the homeless, has a proposal for provincial governments that we believe will help organizations cut their red tape, and truly collaborate to find solutions.

Provinces need to work with non-profits to adopt a "one family, one file" approach -- creating a single intake form and database. When a homeless family first approaches any agency -- be it for social assistance, child welfare, or a homeless group -- a single electronic file would be started for all necessary information.

The province would assign families a single case worker whose job is to coordinate efforts between them and the different agencies. In addition to serving as liaison, this professional would help create a plan that ensures everyone knows what is expected of them and when, so the family gets into a stable home as quickly as possible.

It may seem like a simple idea, but unifying and streamlining administration will save both time and money, which can be better invested in helping people. The principle has been demonstrated as far away as in Tanzania, where a new electronic health tracking system and database is helping the government and non-profit groups to boost immunization rates.

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A unified process also prevents additional trauma to parents, like Rachel, who will no longer have to constantly retell their story, reliving nightmare experiences over and over again, according to experts at Raising the Roof.

The executive director of the community non-profit that tried to find Rachel a home believes that if the ministry of community and social services had been more forthcoming, and worked with all the other organizations from the outset, a great deal of time and resources could have been saved. And Rachel and Jessica would not be facing a terrifyingly uncertain future.

It's a shameful failure if a system that is supposed to help homeless families, instead sees them back on the street.

Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger founded a platform for social change that includes the international charity, Free The Children, the social enterprise, Me to We, and the youth empowerment movement, We Day. Visit we.org for more information.

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lovelyday12 via Getty Images light bulb from sunset on hand concept

On March 2, 2016, energy efficiency companies and experts from Canada and the United States gathered in Edmonton to talk about Alberta and energy. On the surface, that doesn't seem odd. Alberta is almost synonymous with energy in a lot of circles. However, when it comes to energy efficiency programs, the province is a big red rectangle among a continent of green.

"There's a chart that I shared that identified the budget per capita for energy efficiency programs across North America," says Dain Nestel, of ClearResult, an energy efficiency company from Portland, Oregon. "You see a lot of numbers in the United States. You see a lot of numbers in Canada. But the really big number you see in Alberta -- zero. Because Alberta doesn't have energy efficiency programs."

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This becomes terribly ironic when you look at Canada as a whole. Nestel notes that an International Energy Agency study looked at the impact of energy efficiency programs on reducing energy use, and Canada is tied with the United Kingdom for second place behind Germany as being the best at energy efficiency in the world.

But people came from across Canada and the U.S. to the Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance's event, "Advancing Energy Efficiency in Alberta," not to berate the province, but to talk about how it can leap right from energy efficiency tadpole to a majestic bullfrog.

The Alberta [dis]advantage

The opportunity is actually quite staggering, and not just from an environmental standpoint, either.

"I would say it boils down to three key things: jobs, jobs and jobs," says Nestel. "The money that's freed up stays local. [One study] showed that if you made a $30-billion investment in energy efficiency, the total economic value would be a $150 billion. That's a nice multiplier. $94 billion of [that] would stay in Canada. Those are huge numbers."

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As if to spite Alberta's shiny new climate change plan, sagging oil prices continue to drag the province through the mud. However, Nestel and others believe this presents a great opportunity for energy efficiency programs which have a compelling bang/buck ratio when it comes to saving energy, creating jobs, reducing emissions and stimulating the economy.

And that's exactly what Alberta Minister of Energy Margaret McCuaig-Boyd said when she addressed the audience later at that same event.

According to McCuaig-Boyd, the government plans to use revenue from their newly implemented carbon tax to fund the efficiency initiatives.

"By investing the carbon levy funds in the right energy efficiency programs we can create green jobs, stimulate the economy and further reduce emissions," she told the audience.

Jesse Row, the executive director of the Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance, says they've crunched the numbers. If Alberta invested $34 per capita, the average of other provinces, Alberta would generate $510 million in energy savings and 3,000 jobs while reducing emissions and making Alberta more competitive.

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Row says this is exactly what the U.S. did when their economy was flagging: "When we look at the United States during the last recession and recovery, they actually doubled their investment into energy efficiency programs, because they saw it as a good thing for the economy."

Nestel explains how it works: "There was a farm who invested $175,000 in updated refrigeration," says Nestel. "That allowed them to reduce their total energy consumption by 40 per cent. That drives the price of production down and allows them to be more competitive in the markets that they serve. In addition, they invested to capture the lost heat from their compressors and use that to heat their water. So now they're spending less money on propane, like 70 per cent lower consumption for propane. That's pretty incredible."

So what would energy efficiency look like in Alberta?

McCuaig-Boyd did not reveal any details of what Alberta energy efficiency programs might look like, but Dain Nestel has some ideas: "I would look at a couple of approaches for residential, because there are so many existing homes out there," says Nestel. "Weatherization, LED lighting, water heating, et cetera. Also a consumer products program, because that's gonna get you so much leverage across all the people that live in Alberta. It's so easy, because they're going to the store anyway."

McCuaig-Boyd said when Alberta implements a program, it will target homes, businesses and communities. She also said education will play a role along with training of the workforce. In the Alberta Speech from the Throne on Mar. 8 Alberta committed to "Create an energy efficiency agency to help families, businesses and communities reduce energy costs and greenhouse gases."

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Row says best practices suggest Alberta will use rebates, good solid information and other strategies to target homes, business and industry.

When asked what the coolest energy efficiency thing he has done in his own life, Row said he added insulation to his attic, not the hippest or sexiest thing, but an easy step you can take to get big savings in kilowatts and dollars.

Personally I have become intrigued with condensing clothes dryers. They offer the chance to tame one of the big energy hogs in our homes, the cost of keeping clean.

McCuaig-Boyd said Albertans will know what these programs will look like in the coming weeks and months. So I'll have to wait and see if there's a program that will help me buy my dream dryer on the cheap.

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Gerald Herbert/AP Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 15, 2016. At right is his son Eric Trump and at left is campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This blog was originally published on Medium.

I'm holding Donald Trump's hair piece.

It's the middle of the 2015 federal election in Canada where I'm running as a candidate for the NDP (a social democratic party), and I'm at a popular downtown Toronto gay bar. The evening features the city's best drag queens performing political showstoppers and one of queens is dressed as Donald Trump, lip syncing lines from "The Apprentice." She's funny and fierce. She ends her piece by throwing The Donald's toupee into the audience. I catch it, and it feels like I won a prize.

Just the year before I was at a similar performance, but the queens were making fun of Rob Ford, Toronto's former crack-smoking mayor. While known to the world for his drug scandal, in the LGBTQ community he was known for refusing to march in our city's pride parade year after year, even when Toronto hosted World Pride in 2014.

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The rise of Donald Trump is familiar to Torontonians because Rob Ford speaks the same language. Like Trump, he's a master of slogans, sound bytes, and keeping it simple stupid, delivering a refreshing voice that sounds like a real human being. Trump's Twitter handle @realdonaldtrump drives this point home. They are both rich successful white men, born to wealthy, powerful fathers, who present like average Joes, sweaty red faces and all.

My American friends are quick to point out that at least Rob Ford wasn't racist. Rob Ford used so many racial slurs, the list became too long to recall. This included "nigger," "fucking kike," "fucking wop," "dago," "Paki," "Oriental people," "Gino-boy," and the catch-all "fucking minorities." Despite this, he won support from many "minority" groups. His supporters, known as Ford Nation, felt he was standing up for the little guy. Perhaps the slurs were part of the big middle finger he represented to a system failing too many.

But this wasn't a policy or a platform you say? Our former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper took care of that. Harper campaigned with Rob Ford and his brother Doug Ford (who later ran for mayor when Rob announced he was fighting cancer), using terms in debates like "old stock Canadians." During the federal campaign, the Conservatives proposed a hotline to report "barbaric cultural practices" as well as banning niqabs at citizenship ceremonies. Fear driven politics comes with a volume knob. On one end is the loud-mouth "build a wall" and "ban Muslims" Trump-Trump-Trump chants, at volume 11. On the other end, there's a polite, symbolic Canadian whisper saying the same thing.

"To all the Americans searching 'how to move to Canada' after each Trump primary win, please be warned. We're just as stressed."

Two groups are watching the U.S. race very closely here in Canada, social democrats and conservatives. The NDP went from official opposition to 44 seats on election night, due to a Liberal wave and promise of sunny days from the centrist party that campaigned both to the left (the rich should pay more in taxes) and the right (Bill C51, supporting surveillance legislation in the name of "anti-terrorism"), depending on the issue. Watching the rise of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, and big and bold statements from "tuition and debt free college" to "dismantle the banks," his campaign inspires us social democrats greatly. I can't think of the last time such a popular candidate called for a "political revolution." Bernie's message is clear, and it's connecting. The NDP's wasn't. As my party attempts to rebuild and reexamine who we are and what we stand for, win or lose Sanders shows us the way.

The NDP wasn't the only party that suffered a big loss last year; the Conservatives moved from government to official opposition, and are now searching for a new leader, and perhaps a soul. A conservative pundit I know fears that the rise of Trump could move Conservatives here in Canada to electing a populist leader, splintering the Conservative party similar to what's unfolding right now with Trump. Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" (which was modeled after his show "Dragon's Den" here in Canada) is already testing the waters, saying he's considering a run for both the Conservatives and Liberals. He's made several media appearances, stating outrageous things, likely in an effort to conduct his own internal polling or seeing if he can trump the media. He can.

So to all the Americans searching "how to move to Canada" after each Trump primary win, please be warned. We're just as stressed. This has happened here. While on lower volume, income inequality is squeezing people out and Canadians are looking for someone to do something about it. The NDP, the Conservatives, and the governing Liberals realize this, and are watching the U.S. race closely, furiously taking notes.

Jennifer Hollett has reported for CBC, CTV, and CHUM. She was a federal NDP candidate in the 2015 Canadian election, as well as the digital director for Olivia Chow's 2014 Toronto mayoral campaign. Jennifer has her Masters of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School and is the co-founder of Super PAC App.

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Phil Walter via Getty Images AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - FEBRUARY 17: The abortion drug Mifepristone, also known as RU486, is pictured in an abortion clinic February 17, 2006 in Auckland, New Zealand. The drug, which has been available in New Zealand for four years and is used in many countries around the world, is expected to be available to Australian women within a year after parliament yesterday approved a bill which transfers regulatory control of the drug to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, a government body of scientists and doctors that regulates all other drugs in Australia. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Trudeau needs to put women back in the budget. Because it's 2016.

A key part of being feminist is respecting all people's choices about their own bodies. While a gender-balanced cabinet is a step in the right direction, there is no such thing as gender equality without bodily autonomy. If women aren't able to make decisions about their own bodies, equality is null and void.

Despite the fact that abortion has been legal in Canada for almost three decades, it's available in only one in six hospitals, mostly in big cities and 150 km of the United States border. On top of a limited number of services, there are other barriers like wait times, age, money, migration status and doctors who refuse on moral or religious grounds.

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Abortion is legal but not necessarily accessible in Canada.

Yes, health care -- including access to abortion services -- is a provincial/territorial jurisdiction. But the federal government has a responsibility to guarantee that provinces and territories uphold their end of the Canada Health Act. That means universal access to essential health care services -- including abortion.

A government that is serious about gender equality needs to guarantee that any person seeking to end their pregnancy can do so safely.

One way the government could make good on their pro-choice approach includes funding to provinces and territories for comprehensive, barrier-free access to sexual and reproductive health services like abortion. This must be part of a renewed health accord that is adequately resourced to meet the right to health of all people in Canada.

Another is investing in training for new and existing family physicians to provide the soon to be available Mifepristone in rural and remote areas. Mifepristone is the gold standard of abortion pills, already available in nearly 60 countries worldwide and listed as an essential drug by the World Health Organization.

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The drug, packaged under the name "Mifegymiso," was approved by Health Canada last September and is expected to be available this summer.

While the availability of the drug could mean access in regions like Northern Canada, where only four abortion facilities cover the one million square kilometres across Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, we need to address the issue of cost.

The abortion pill regimen is expected to cost $270.00. A pro-choice budget would include financial resources that cover all costs associated with the pill.

A government like Canada that is positioning itself as a leader on gender equality and women's rights in Canada and globally, must put its money where its mouth is.

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The Government of Canada needs to fund initiatives and grassroots organizations that help countries expand access to sexual and reproductive health services, including contraception and safe abortion.

The government took a great step forward by committing renewed funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for sexual and reproductive health programs and supplies .

But Canada is far from meeting the global aid target -- 0.7 per cent Gross National Income. And it's even further from the benchmark of allocating 10 per cent of Official Development Assistance for sexual and reproductive health and rights.

This government needs to guarantee that rights like access to safe abortion are prioritized as part of new funding and are central to existing aid programs on child, early and forced marriage and sexual violence, and the Muskoka Initiative on maternal, newborn and child health. Up to now, these programs have specifically excluded safe abortion and neglected contraception despite evidence of the necessity of these two interventions.

But money needs to go beyond services. Part of a pro-choice commitment means budgeting resources to advocate for sexual and reproductive rights in countries that receive Canadian aid -- in addition to increasing access to services in Canada and globally.

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If Trudeau is serious about feminism, he needs to put women -- and their sexual rights -- back into the budget.

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FAROOQ NAEEM via Getty Images Pakistani civil rights activists light candles during a ceremony on the site of attack on slain Pakistani minority affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti in Islamabad on March 3, 2011. Pakistan announced three days of national mourning and vowed 'fool-proof' security after a Christian government minister who decried Islamic blasphemy laws was gunned down. AFP PHOTO/Farooq NAEEM (Photo credit should read FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images)

As Toronto was getting ready in the first week of March to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Pakistan Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti's assassination, the Government of Pakistan hanged a man, Mumtaz Qadri, for the brutal murder of Punjab province's governor, Salman Taseer.

The murderer of Salman Taseer met his fate in Pakistan. Perhaps this was a way for Pakistan's army elite and politicians to deliver a message to official bodyguards that no one would be spared if they killed bosses. Taseer was shot dead by his bodyguard on Jan. 4, 2011, over his stance against Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws.

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However, there is no such message for Shahbaz Bhatti's murderers, since Bhatti belonged to Pakistan's poor Christian community. Shahbaz Bhatti was shot dead in Pakistan about two months after Taseer on March 2, 2011.

Bhatti happened to visit Canada just few weeks before he was gunned down by Taliban in Islamabad.

Just after his visit to Ottawa, Canada's then-minister for citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism issued a statement that read, "Over the past two days I have had the great honour of hosting Pakistan's brave Minister of Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti... We expressed our sincere condolences to Minister Bhatti over the recent assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, and reiterated Canada's opposition to the abuse of blasphemy laws."

In the following year, 2012, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird presented the 2012 John Diefenbaker Defender of Human Rights and Freedom Award to the late Shahbaz Bhatti.

The same organization held a 5th Martyrdom anniversary of Shahbaz Bhatti recently. The ceremony was attended by Liberal MP Raj Grewal, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis and NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh, as well as Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, the chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, church leaders, family members, friends and representatives from all walks of life.

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Shahbaz Bhatti's brother, Peter Bhatti, a Canadian and chairman of International Christian Voice, said at the event that Pakistan cannot continue with extremism, religious bigotry and hatred.

Pakistan's consul general in Toronto, Asghar Ali Golo, also attended the meeting and said that a culture of intolerance was cultivated in Pakistan after the U.S. supported jihadists against the Soviet Union.

However, he didn't say a word whether Pakistan would abolish its notorious blasphemy law.

Dr. Swett addressed the community and spoke of the impact martyr Shahbaz Bhatti had on the human rights and religious freedom community in the United States. She spoke of the many challenges that Pakistan is facing in regards to the intolerance and inequality that has plagued the nation as a whole.

She spoke of Shahbaz Bhatti's integrity and conviction in fighting for religious freedom in Pakistan and encouraged the community to follow his example.

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett hoped that Canada would maintain the status of office of religious freedom.

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In the same context, former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the establishment of Office of Religious Freedom in Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at headquarters in Vaughan in 2013, where he talked about Shahbaz Bhatti and he stated, "I am privileged, in the course of my service as prime minister, to encounter many, extraordinary individuals and, from time to time, even among all of these extraordinary people, someone is exceptional... one such person I met in my office on Parliament Hill in 2011, he was the Minister of Minorities of Pakistan, Shahbaz Bhatti. He worked tirelessly to defend the vulnerable not only his fellow Christians, but also Hindus, Sikhs, Ahmadi Muslims, and all other minorities. He did so knowing that it placed him under a constant and imminent threat to his life. He was an honourable and humble man."

The future of the office of religious freedom is though uncertain.

In a way, memories of Pakistan's assassinated Christian leader recalls the importance of Office of Religious Freedom.

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Design students from Goldsmiths University have made an art project showing what tampons would look like if they were actually luxury items.

Magdalene Welch, an 18-year-old student working on the project, wrote on Facebook: If tampons are considered a luxury then why not wear them that way?

She and six other first year students put together the pictures.

If tampons are considered a luxury then why not wear them that way? A visual rhetoric questioning the Tampon Tax... So proud of a day's work!! #tampontax Posted by Magdalene Sylvie on Friday, 22 January 2016

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The photos include two of the students wearing a tampon, one as an earring and one as a headdress.

The art project came after a petition to remove tampon tax amassed more than 300,000 signatures.

Tampons are subject to VAT by the EU, as they are classified as luxury, non-essential items.

One of the women working on the project, Penny Chen

Melina Hadjiargyrou told HuffPost UK: As a group we had read an article about the pink tax and the expense of womens products in comparison to mens. It inspired us to communicate this concept through photography.

The photographs draw their inspiration from our findings, and from Renaissance paintings. They seek to show tampons as a luxury product, the 21-year-old student said.

Students Elba Cerezo, Claudia Del Olmo Russo, Gracelyn Ormasa and Dorota Bojanowska also worked on the project.

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Melina Hadjiargyrou

The students came up with the concept, sourced the costumes and edited the photographs in around five hours as part of their undergraduate design degree at the London University.
The five things you need to know on Friday March 18, 2016

1) SUGGESTION TIME

Its the job of this morning email to not just give you a round-up of whats in the morning papers or online, but also a feel for whats moving in politics. And yesterday our early radar system picked up George Osbornes first hint of a rethink over disability benefit cuts. With one key line on BBC Breakfast (it was 7.20am, I do this so you dont have to), the Chancellor said the magic words: Im always happy to listen to proposals that others might have on how we can improve [the PIP reforms].

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After a day of growing Tory backbench anger - which saw private worries turn into full-blown public yelling on the World At One and elsewhere - the rethink was made even more explicit by Nicky Morgan on Question Time last night. The 4.4bn cuts were now only a suggestion and part of a consultation, she said.

The blame-game over the PIP cuts has started in earnest in Whitehall. Some DWP-friendly MPs whisper that the Treasury just grabbed the consultation rather too eagerly as a last-minute attempt to make its welfare cap look even less ridiculous. Some Treasury-friendly sources mutter that the DWP has failed to make a clearer case about the rationale and legal hearing that sparked the changes.

What is undeniable is that we have seen Osbornes fabled tin ear once more. And the protestations and justifications for the policy remind me so much of the Treasurys steadfast refusal last year to back down on tax credits cuts - until it was forced to. The merits of the policy are now almost a sideshow to the long-term political damage that's being done to the 'Compassionate Conservatism' brand. How long before Boris gets in on the act...?

Despite its reputation, the Tory party has a long and proud tradition on disabilities and charitable work and its members are furious to see it trashed so easily. The Mirror scoop on Zac Goldsmith being axed as the patron of a disabilities group (like other Tory MPs) is just one telling factor in all this. And when Tory backbenchers say a policy as zero chance of getting through, you know things are bad. The online mockery of Osborne was summed up by this tweet that went kinda viral.

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The IFS had a bumper day yesterday, slating everything from the sugar tax to the perks for the rich in the Budget. Wrap in a tight majority and Eurosceptic MPs out to duff up Osborne for anything and you have a very sticky wicket. Whats surprising is how this safety-first Budget has proved anything but. In fact, it looks like a curdled mixture of hubris and political self-harm.

2) OPPOSITION POSITION

One of the laziest political tropes around right now (its repeated by Ian Birrell in the Telegraph) is that there is no functioning Opposition, so the Tory government can get away with what it wants. Well, Team Corbyn have their flaws - and not a few critics internally- but on the disability benefits cuts, no one can accuse the Shadow Cabinet of not providing effective opposition.

Jeremy Corbyn made the disability cuts a centrepiece of his response to the Budget, John McDonnell unequivocally vowed to reverse the PIP cuts and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith was swift to spot the original Friday night drop from DWP that started this whole political row last week.

And if disability cuts turns out like tax credit cuts, dont forget that it was Labour in the Lords that really forced that issue. Of course, Tory rebels are crucial in all this, but the Opposition needs to do its job and its been doing it. On defence, Labour have also spotted that hundreds of millions have been shifted around in the Budget (is Mr McBride behind that I wonder?).

The Mirror report of a new YouGov poll has cheered some Labour MPs too. Labour are on 34% of the vote - one point ahead of the Conservatives on 33%. Ukip was on 16% and the Lib Dems on 6%. The key factor is the Tories have dropped. Was that ICM poll a rogue after all?

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Still, internal Labour battles arent far away. The Times reports activists in Lambeth Momentum cheered calls to picket a fundraiser of the Progress Blairite" Greater London Authority candidate Florence Eshalomi. Joan Twelves, a fellow Momentum activist and a former left-wing leader of Lambeth council, read out the address and details of the pizza and politics event being hosted next Wednesday by Heidi Alexander, the Labour frontbencher, and Neil Coyle MP. Momentum says its fully behind Flos campaign. Right behind her, with a stiletto? Chaka Umunna says the Left are doing the Tories dirty work for them.

3) ZERO TAX. PERIOD

A hint of a rethink over disability cuts wasnt the only thing George Osborne signalled yesterday morning on the breakfast airwaves. He also revealed that within the next few days the EU would allow the UK to abolish the 5% VAT tampon tax. And last night, at the EU summit no less, David Cameron got 27 other EU leaders to welcome a reform package to allow just that.

The Chancellor put out a statement: We heard peoples anger over paying the tampon tax loud and clear..It just shows how Britain can make a case for a reform that will benefit millions as a powerful, confident voice inside a reformed EU. Vote Leave chief exec Matthew Elliott retorted: We shouldnt have to hold a referendum every time we want to alter a tax rate.

There is, as ever, some small print. The EU deal is expected next Wednesday - the day after the Commons vote on Paula Sherriffs amendment to axe the tax. Sheriff, supported by Tory Eurosceps, is not backing down. And officials say its unlikely the EU will agree the final package before the June 23 referendum. Theres also the issue of how to fund the 17m for domestic violence and other charities being doled out (5m already plus 12m in the Budget) from the tampon tax.

Its all a far cry from the days of Gordon Brown cutting the tax from 17.5% to 5% in 2000. I remember Brown couldnt bring himself to say the word tampon in the Budget, and one MP said at the time: We tried to get him to say sanproBut even that didn't seem to appeal.

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BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

4) MCCAIN-ING IT

Speaking of Gordo, hes due to make a star appearance on the EU IN campaign trail, Alan Johnson tells The House magazine. The ex-PM has a mixed record in big polls, having swung some Scots pensioners in the independence referendum, but then failed to make any impact in the get-Corbyn campaign last summer.

No10 is more happy about another big name backing the In camp this morning: Senator John McCain. A veteran and hawk on matters military, he joins his old foe Barack Obama in making the point that the West needs the UK in the EU and not just in Nato. And he plays the Putin card too:

British membership in the EU is a vital contributor to the security and prosperity of Europe and the United States. Whatever the outcome of the referendum on EU membership, it will send a strong message to Vladimir Putin.

On the strong security front, as the EU presents its final migrant package to Turkey this morning, the PM has been pushing an Aussie-style approach to get patrol boats to turn back vessels carrying refugees from Libya. At the same time, an internal audit shows the EU wasted two thirds of a fund to stem migrant flows.

5) CUP THAT

Ah, Defra Questions. One of the quietest backwaters of Parliamentary life actually yielded a story yesterday. And with freethinking (aka loose cannon to some colleagues) Rory Stewart around, it was only a matter of time before something interesting came up.

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The Environment minister said a tax on plastic bags had been a success and - wait for it - coffee cups seem to be a very good thing to look at next. Yes, with just one in 400 coffee cups recycled, it was time to act. Except it wasnt. Within hours, a Defra spokesman said that there were definitely no plans to tax coffee cups. The Mail, which called for the plastic bags tax (its one of the few taxes it likes), splashes the story.

COMMONS PEOPLE

In a spooky coincidence, coffee cup taxes feature in our Quiz of the Week in the latest Commons People podcast: Listen HERE (the quiz is 16 mins in). Its a Budget-tastic special with lots on disability cuts, sugar tax, lifetime ISAs and more.

If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox.
My name is Ali. I live in the glorious Cotswolds in a beautiful town called Stroud. My life had just got to the point where it was turning around. My Womble-resembling dog Madam Cholet (Maddy for short) and I were rising early and walking at least five miles before work every day. At work, I had just started to train to be a solicitor (which at 36 was long overdue) and I couldn't have been happier.

Then the pain started. In August last year I started to feel this blinding pain in my pelvis. It would be around the time of my period - which had always been incredibly painful. I remember going home and telling my partner Darren and that it might get worse as I got older. Darren was furious because the GPs had told me there was nothing wrong and should just get on with it. I remember sulking because he kept making me going back to the doctors so regularly - but now I can never thank him enough for his persistence.

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After ruling out bladder infections, IBS, indigestion and appendicitis I was sent for an ultrasound where a 10cm complex cyst was identified. Then it all seemed to go crazy for a little while - calls from GPs and endless hospital appointments.

I had severe endometriosis as well as the cyst and it was recommended I have a full hysterectomy. Three consultants told me they were confident it was not cancerous but would proceed as if it might be. I was so certain that I was not the sort of person that would get cancer it never crossed my mind.

Over the next few weeks I became increasingly ill. I now know I was experiencing other common symptoms of ovarian cancer. I felt bloated and tired all the time. Maddy and I were only managing a mile or so in the morning.

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My dog Maddy

So there I sat, the day after my operation, contemplating why the promised 4-inch scar was almost eight inches long (but relieved I had not woken up with the expected colostomy bag), when I was told about the cancer in the cyst. I always thought if I was told I had cancer it would be like the world had fallen apart. But I just said "Right ok, has it all gone? Yes, great, when I can I get out of here - the food's terrible!" Looking back I think my positive reaction might have been aided somewhat by the pain medication.

I was caught at the earliest stage - 1a - but the tumour was grade 3, so a more serious form. This means I have had to have preventative chemotherapy. I am just over halfway through. One of my biggest concerns was that I might fall behind on my study to become a solicitor, so I was thrilled to still be able to do exams after my first session of chemotherapy. Each time it gets a little harder, though. A few days after one of my sessions David Bowie died. I couldn't believe it when I read the news and that he had written, recorded and produced an album while he was sick.

I have been asked a few times how I felt about the idea of not being able to have children, but that had never been on the cards for me. I have two wonderful step-children (22 year old twins) and that is more than I could hope for. What I didn't properly consider was how hard the menopause was going to be. My cancer was oestrogen-dependent so no HRT for me - and yes, hot flushes are as awful as your mother said!

I hadn't allowed myself to consider it was cancer - and then when it was all gone I wouldn't allow myself to be down. I had been lucky and so many others hadn't. My nurses explained to me that so many women are not caught so early. I knew the symptoms of breast cancer and testicular cancer but I had barely heard of ovarian cancer. That is wrong. Men and women need to know the symptoms so we can all work together to help catch it early.

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With Darren

I was asked if I had a tip. It is this - own it. If you want to cry over a Christmas tree then you go ahead (that is one of the two times I have cried - the other was over a badly made cup of tea). But if you want to just get on, then don't let anyone tell you that is wrong either.

I wish I had space to tell you about all the incredible people I have met on this journey, the positivity and fight you get to experience in the oncology centre. The kindness and generosity people you barely know will show you. But I am afraid I don't - so I hope you enjoyed reading my story.

The symptoms of ovarian cancer are:

Persistent pelvic or abdominal pain (that's your tummy and below)

Increased abdominal size/persistent bloating - not bloating that comes and goes

Difficulty eating or feeling full quickly

Needing to wee more urgently or more often than usual

Occasionally there can be other symptoms such as changes in bowel habits, extreme fatigue (feeling very tired), unexplained weight loss or loss of appetite. Any post-menopausal bleeding should always be investigated by a GP. You can find out more information at www.targetovariancancer.org.uk.

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Ali Coates is 36 and from Stroud in Gloucestershire. She is an ambassador for the charity Target Ovarian Cancer and blogs here about her experience living with a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
For all its shortcomings as an institution for scrutinising new legislation and holding the Government to account - and I've spoken and written extensively about those shortcomings! - Parliament does actually spend quite a lot of time and effort pouring over draft new legislation. Over a period of months, MPs and members of the House of Lords spend dozens of hours between them debating the detail and likely impact of a Bill. And Ministers spend many hours on their feet, seeking to explain and justify their intentions.

And yet, despite all this often laborious activity, it is still possible for important - even devastating - consequences of a Bill to go unnoticed, and for ministers to somehow fail to mention those (intended) consequences when fending off the legitimate anxiety of MPs or peers. Take the Immigration Bill, currently nearing the end of its passage through Parliament after fifteen sessions of line-by-line scrutiny by a committee of MPs, and four lengthy Committee Stage sessions in the Lords.

One of the Bill's key provisions - one that has been of great concern to many MPs and peers - is the replacement of the current system of basic Section 4 welfare support for failed asylum seekers who are unable to leave the UK for medical or other reasons with a new mechanism, to be known as Section 95A support. There are some important (and regrettable) differences - including a lack of any appeal against a refusal of Section 95A support. Until now, MPs and peers have been assured by ministers that Section 95A support will be available to any failed asylum seekers who have a genuine reason for not leaving the UK immediately, such as being heavily pregnant.

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Last month, however, sharp-eyed lawyers at the Asylum Support Appeals Project (ASAP) were astonished to read a five-line paragraph buried away in a 20-page document, quietly issued by the Home Office in January. This states clearly that the new Section 95A support will only be available to those who apply for it within 21 days of their asylum claim being finally refused (or within 90 days in the case of those with children).

This is a fundamental change. So I tabled a parliamentary question to the Home Office, asking how many single adult failed asylum seekers were granted Section 4 support in 2015, and how many had applied within that 21 day period.

And last week, I received the answer: 105 otherwise destitute failed asylum seekers were granted Section 4 support last year, 42 of them on the basis that they were unfit to travel for medical reasons (including six heavily pregnant women). Yet only six of those 105 men and women had applied for that support within 21 days of their asylum claim being finally refused.

In other words, more than nine in ten of those without children who were granted Section 4 support last year would have been denied that essential support, had the proposed new system been in place. So the Bill will leave vulnerable people - including pregnant women - homeless and destitute on our streets. And, not only have ministers failed to take the numerous opportunities presented to them to spell that out, but they have repeatedly denied that is their intention.

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This is no way to make legislation. Ministers should be open and honest with MPs and peers about their intentions, so that they can be properly challenged. I will continue to do all I can to make that happen.
With the Budget been and gone the next political battle on the horizon is the May elections. Here in London, all eyes are on a race that's still too tight to call

While much has been made of the different candidates' positions on Europe, party politics and - of course - the city, less attention has been paid to the difference the Mayor can make for London's families.

One in three families in the capital is headed by a single parent, a higher proportion than the national average of one in four families. The majority are women, older than you might think - an average age of 38 nationally - and most are working. Like all Londoners, they face high travel and housing costs, longer than average journeys to work, along with the upsides of living in - as the current Mayor puts it - the best city on earth.

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But as single parents, there are particular challenges.

Childcare in London is some of the most expensive in the world, with research last month showing costs are typically a third higher than in other parts of the UK. For many if not most parents, especially those with younger children, it's now the second biggest outgoing after housing.

While sky-high costs can be a problem for even the most well-off households, for single parents juggling bills on the one income, even part-time childcare for one child can mean struggling to make ends meet. Half of those we surveyed have had to borrow money to pay for childcare - from banks, friends even payday lenders.

Many of these families are not just making sacrifices; they are struggling to do the basics - be it pay for food or stump up for the latest gas bill. Indeed, while most single parents in London are working, almost half of the children growing up in London's single parent families are living in poverty. And for many, they are one big bill away from going under, for others they're already fighting to survive.

Most of the mayoral candidates have acknowledged the problems Londoners face around childcare, and recognise the strain it puts on household budgets. Labour's Sadiq Khan has promised childcare will be 'a priority', while the Conservative camp says Zac Goldsmith will 'ensure the promised 30 free hours of childcare from 2017 adequately reflects the cost of childcare in London.'

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But thus far, detail has been thin on the ground. What can the Mayor really do, and isn't childcare a government issue, you might ask? It's true the many different factors making childcare such a problem in this country - and it's not just affordability, it's also accessibility - require action at a national level.

However, that doesn't mean the Mayor can't improve the especially acute situation Londoners face.

Next week Gingerbread will publish a report recommending Upfront, a childcare deposit guarantee scheme. Aimed at parents about to start new jobs or increase their working hours, this would see the London Assembly pay the initial deposits nurseries and other childminders often require to secure childcare places.

Many single parents tell us finding the money for the initial upfront cost, typically a month's fees in advance, can be hard. For some, it tips them into the red. Others tell us they've been forced to turn down work as they can't afford to line-up childcare until they get paid.

We're calling on all the mayoral candidates to endorse the deposit scheme as a low-cost "no brainer", and now we're asking that you write to the candidates to support our campaign.

We've looked long and hard at the power the Mayor has to really help families in the city struggling to pay for childcare, particularly when they've just landed a job, and believe this could make a real difference to people facing cash flow issues.

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Childcare is a big issue, and the next Mayor won't have a magic wand. But more than a million parents of kids under 16 will be voting in London come May. So the first candidate to commit more than fine words on childcare might just make headway with this group - and we know that for 320 000 single parent voters real action like the Upfront deposit scheme would be very welcome.
Motivated and compassionate. Those are two adjectives you likely haven't heard hurled at millennials, the much-maligned demographic cohort born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. The so-called "selfie generation" is typically labelled as narcissistic and said to have wildly unrealistic expectations. Why can't a 20-something have the corner office - now?

Our organisation comprises a non-profit, social enterprise and event day that specialises in getting people to embrace the concept of "WE"--thinking beyond themselves and helping others. We achieve this mission with a mostly millennial staff. (Craig is one of them.) And we have personally witnessed thousands of millennials giving back.

Here, we debunk four myths on the generation.

Myth: Millennials are so-o self-centered

Our friend David Stillman is a generational specialist who literally (co)wrote the book on millennials. In "The M Factor" (Harper Collins, 2010), Stillman writes that millennials have a desire to make a difference in the world. The (mostly) under-30 set are also more likely than any other age group to pay more for products tied to a social benefit, according to a 2014 Nielson survey of 29,000 people in 58 countries.

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One-third of the so-called "me generation" has researched a corporation's business practices, according to a 2013 Cone Communications study on social impact. The same study shows when companies support social and environmental issues, millennials reward them with increased trust (91 percent), loyalty (89 percent)--and are 89 percent more likely to buy their products and services.

Myth: Millennials are disloyal job-hoppers

Millennials are the fastest-growing segment of workers today. They also entered the workforce at one of the hardest economic times in history. Yes, millennials change jobs frequently. But they're often forced to if they want a non-contract gig with benefits, and have any chance of getting ahead in corporate world dominated by boomers in plum positions who don't plan to retire.

What we love about millennials is they aren't content to do good on their spare time; they want their work to matter. This generation was raised by parents who instilled in them the message: find something that has meaning for you. While jobs haven't been plentiful for millennials, the Cone social impact study shows that 78% of millennials say a company's CSR record influences whether they want to work there.

Myth: Millennials aren't activists

These digital natives don't know what it's like to live without computers. Accordingly, their social activism tools don't include marches, picket signs and going door-to-door to get a paper petition signed. But they are amazing online activists who wield hashtags like weapons and can ensure a video on an issue they care about goes viral.

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If this sounds like "slacktivisim" to you, consider a 2011 study out of Georgetown University in Washington D.C., that found those who support a cause online are two times more likely to volunteer their time for that cause, four times more likely to follow up by contacting a decision-maker, and five times more likely to recruit others, than a person who supports a cause offline.

"The term slacktivism is inaccurate as a descriptive of the online petition phenomenon," says Dr. Jonathan White, director of service learning at Bentley University in Massachusetts and an expert in cause engagement.

Myth: Millennials are cheap

Millennials don't splash around cash. Research shows they're the drivers of the sharing economy, who are happy to share cars, and even rent clothing for a big event. A 2015 survey by American investment firm Merril Lynch reveals millennials are more likely than any other generation to think carefully before making big purchases. That's great money sense for a cohort bogged down by student debt and record-high rental and real estate rates. The same study finds this generation is three times more likely than others to splurge on something if it generates lasting memories. They crave experiences over purchases, which we applaud.

We can't wait for millennials to inhabit corner offices and take on positions of power in government; their sense of social compassionate will benefit everyone.
In the panic to prevent irregular migration and save Schengen, the EU is losing sight of the bigger picture in its relations with Turkey.

Cyprus, a non-Schengen member, has vowed to block efforts to speed up Ankara's EU accession talks, a Turkish demand for cooperation on migration. However, the Republic of Cyprus has understandable form with its Turkish relationship. The UK by contrast has long been a strategic supporter of enlargement of the EU to Turkey and a strategic friend of Turkey. That we should now join Cyprus in our attitude to Turkey reflects dreadful developments in Turkey. We must ensure that the EU does not engage in a purely transactional arrangement, ignoring the causes of the current refugee crisis, and endorsing the Erdogan regime's outrageous recent domestic and foreign policies.

Turkey has been propelled into a tailspin and it is increasingly difficult to see how it can recover. Ordinary Turkish citizens face economic, security, and political challenges akin to those faced by some of their Arab neighbours. This stems from their own Government's failed and failing authoritarian policies. Furthermore, Erdogan hangs over Turkey the prospect of a constitutional referendum to move towards a more presidential system. Given the management of the last election, full dictatorship is now alarmingly close.

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In Syria, Erdogan has been obsessed with toppling Assad and preventing Syrian Kurds from taking and administering any territory along their common border. This has translated into delayed efforts to close the porous border, which ISIL aligned extremists have been able to exploit, attacks on Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) positions, and regrettably successful lobbying to exclude them from the Syrian peace talks. This runs directly counter to the shared international interest in ending the Syrian civil war with an inclusive settlement and prioritising the fight against ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Domestically, the Government chose not to treat the killing of two police officers by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) sympathisers in July 2015 as a criminal case. Instead, it tore up the hard-won ceasefire from 2013 and resumed wide-scale military repression, restarting a depressingly familiar cycle of violence. Analysis of the military escalation with the Kurds points to disgraceful motives by the Erodgan regime, namely to shore up their nationalist credentials after the loss of the ruling AKP's parliamentary majority in June. Horrendously it has worked and they recovered that majority in November.

With every bomb that goes off, not only are more innocent individuals slaughtered, but more tourists stay away, damaging the entire economy. Furthermore, civilian casualties serve to reinforce the Government's hand in its continuing crack down on press freedoms. The recent takeover of opposition newspaper Zaman newspaper was only a single step in a long running saga. Erdogan has also announced he is seeking to widen the definition of terrorism to include their "supporters", possibly including "academics, lawmakers, authors, journalists, or NGO executives".

Ahead of the EU-Turkey summit last week Reporters Without Borders strongly stated that "The European Union must not settle for just reminding the Turkish authorities of the principles of media freedom... There can be no question of resuming EU accession talks while Ankara visibly tramples on basic European values. If the EU continues to yield to blackmail regarding migrants, it will give the impression of abandoning the principles on which it was founded... Is the EU determined to let itself be humiliated?" Sadly, it turns out the answer was yes.

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The final statement by European leaders only contained the single paltry line that they "also discussed with the Turkish Prime Minister the situation of the media in Turkey." Really? That's it? The EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini had arrived at the summit calling for cooperation on ending the Syrian civil war, the need to re-engage with Kurdish political representatives, and to "respect the highest standards when it comes to democracy, rule of law, fundamental freedoms." It is inexcusable that by the end of the summit such sentiments were left behind on the cutting room floor.

We should expect more from Turkey as not only are they a NATO ally, thus committing us to their defence, but supposedly a democracy. EU Heads of Government are now talking about opening further chapters to speed up the accession process. Whilst EU membership is still far away, it is quite wrong to give positive signals to such a regime as its commitment to democracy, media freedom and human rights is evaporating. Such a move undermines the entire purpose of the EU accession process, namely to encourage positive developments, not to be used as bargaining chips when dealing with blackmail. Accession negotiations should only be deepened and progressed when the Turkish Government has demonstrated that it is serious about both reforms and its existing commitments to the EU, including those on Cyprus.

The EU is right to intensify cooperation with Turkey on irregular migration which has led to countless deaths in the Aegean and is threatening the political stability of Europe. However, it appears we are reducing what should be a comprehensive dialogue to a frenzied scramble to meet Turkish demands. Not only will we miss the opportunities to address some of the real causes of the crisis, but we will reward terrible behaviour, legitimise brutal policies, and undermine the EU's moral authority.
Jeremy Corbyn was voting against the Single European Act when David Cameron was still at university. He sounds scarcely keener in relation to Cameron's "renegotiated settlement". He needs to propose several interrelated measures to be enacted regardless of the outcome of the referendum, and if at all possible prior to it.

The economic, social, cultural and political power of the British working class, whether broadly or narrowly defined, cannot exactly be said to have increased since 1973. Any more than Britain has fought no further wars since joining a body as successful as NATO or nuclear weapons when it comes to keeping the peace. We had full employment before we joined the EU. We have never had it since. No job in the real economy is dependent on our membership. Or were trade with, and travel to, the Continent unheard of, because impossible, before our accession to the EU?

Not for nothing did Margaret Thatcher support that accession, oppose withdrawal in the 1975 referendum, and go on, as Prime Minister, to sign an act of integration so large that it could never be equalled, a position from which she never wavered until the tragically public playing out of the early stages of her dementia. "No! No! No!" was not part of any planned speech. In anticipation of Cameron's Single European Act on speed, Labour needs to get its retaliation in first. Corbyn needs to demand immediate legislation.

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First, restoring the supremacy of United Kingdom over European Union law, using that provision to repatriate industrial and regional policy as Labour has advocated for some time, using it to repatriate agricultural policy (farm subsidies go back to the War, 30 years before we joined the EU, and they are a good idea in themselves, whereas the Common Agricultural Policy most certainly is not), and using it to restore the United Kingdom's historic fishing rights of 200 miles or to the median line.

Secondly, requiring that all EU legislation, in order to have any effect in this country, be enacted by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or the other of them. Thirdly, requiring that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard. Fourthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament. That would also deal with whatever the problem was supposed to be with the Human Rights Act.

Fifthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe's kleptomaniac nomenklatura, of people who believed the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.

Sixthly, reducing in real terms the British contribution to the EU Budget; that is another longstanding Labour policy. And seventhly, pre-emptively disapplying in the United Kingdom any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, thus making any such Agreement impossible in practice. Outside the EU, would Cameron just negotiate something even worse with the United States? Not before 2020, when he would need to be replaced with Corbyn.

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All regardless of the outcome of the referendum. After all, which privatisation did the EU prevent? Which dock, factory, shipyard, steelworks or mine did it save? If we needed the EU for the employment law that, since we do not have it, the EU is obviously powerless to deliver, then there would be no point or purpose to the British Labour Movement. Or have the trade unions disbanded, their job done?

Far from preventing wars, the EU has done nothing to prevent numerous on the part of, at some point, most of its member-states, and not least this member-state. It was a key player in, and it has been a major beneficiary of, the destruction of Yugoslavia. It is now a key player in, and it seeks to be a major beneficiary of, the war in Ukraine, which is the worst on the European Continent since 1945, and which is a direct consequence of the EU's expansionist desire to prise a vital buffer state out of neutrality and into the NATO from which the EU has become practically indistinguishable.
The economy slows yet the government persists in following the same scorched-earth cuts policy which has already so abjectly failed. And of course this isn't just an abstract failure, to be pointed out on a graph in an economic journal, it has real human consequences.

This budget is a total disaster for some of the most vulnerable people in the UK. The chancellor has announced cuts to welfare for disabled people, cuts to pensions for nurses and teachers, and cuts to local government funding. The government's claim that we're "all in it together" has clearly been abandoned.

The rich will continue to get richer and when it comes to spending on favoured projects - no matter how destructive or unnecessary they may be - like Trident, the UK's nuclear weapons system, it seems the government can always find the money.

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The government remains determined to replace Trident at a cost of over 100billion, even though an increasing body of expert opinion now suggests that Trident will be made redundant through new technological advances in cyber-warfare and underwater drones.

Trident, far from making us safe, now poses a grave danger to our security.

The cost of Trident continues to rise

When CND first used the 100billion figure we were accused of making wild exaggerations but, in light of new data, the figure now seems conservative.

The cost of Trident replacement hit the headlines at the end of last year when the government's Strategic Defence Review came out. It states that that the budget for building four new Trident submarines is set to rise to 41billion, rather than the original 25billion budget. The 41billion figure includes a 10billion contingency which, based on past record, means 41billion will be spent, and possibly even more.

But the cost of the submarines is only one part of the cost of Trident. Running costs must also be factored in.

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Crispin Blunt MP, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has calculated these 'in service' costs using official figures from a Defence Minister. When you add these to the cost of the submarines, we are now looking at a figure in the region of 183billion.

Those who deplore the savagery of government attacks on the welfare state will easily think of better ways to invest this money - in health, education or housing. Those who watch with horror the depletion of our conventional forces and weaponry will choose real ways to boost our country's security - not the irrelevant posturing of a Cold War system.

It is time for a major policy rethink. There is no room for vanity projects which just reveal the skewed priorities, and the head-in-the-sand approach of our decision-makers.

So we call on the government to cancel Trident replacement and invest the money instead in things that are of value to our society. Trident makes us less safe, and as this budget shows, directs resources away from things of actual use to our country and our communities.

Last month, over 60,000 people joined CND's Stop Trident demonstration. It was the largest demo of its kind in over a generation. It brought together the Labour Leader, the Scottish First Minister, the leader of Plaid Cymru, as well as cultural figures, trade unionists and faith leaders.

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I was a female soldier in active service for 14 years, but battling depression was the fight of my life.

It has been a little over two years now since my career and the only life I'd known for almost 15 years was taken from beneath my feet.

I started my career in the British Army at the tender age of 17. What began as a normal day shopping with a friend in Bolton town centre ended with the opportunity to completely change my life. I was offered the chance to travel and play rugby whilst earning a living doing the things I loved, and being young and spontaneous, I jumped at the chance.

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Was I scared? YES! Fearful of the unknown? Yes. Excited? Definitely.

My first experience of Army life was arriving at Tidworth to discover I was moving straight to Northern Ireland. I was told to wait in the gymnasium whilst the vehicles were being loaded. I can remember standing there not knowing a soul, surrounded by strange men. It was not long before I stepped in to the back of a vehicle with 30 men and the doors where closed behind me. Hours later the doors opened and we were in Northern Ireland. No-one spoke to me during the whole journey, although I felt scrutinised. The feeling of fear really hit me then, as well as missing home and my parents. Had I done the right thing?

I was to spend the next three years serving with 1WFR regiment (now 2 Mercian) and I can truly say that this was the best time of my career. The army became the family I needed while I was missing my own, and I soon began to feel at home wherever I was on duty. I exercised in Belize and rested in Cancun, and I was even supported by my regiment in my dream to play rugby for the British Army. I trained daily with the lads to ensure my fitness was at its best. During my time with 1 WFR, I was selected for the British Army Team and my own corps. I could not have been happier.

During my military life I was privileged to serve with a number of units, deployed to Bosnia, Germany, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. Through the army I learned strength, both physical and mental, discipline, self belief and the training to instruct, lead and manage accounts. I also met my amazing husband Gareth and had my three beautiful children. More than anything, I felt I had found the place where I truly belonged.

But in 2014 my world came crashing down.

I was medically discharged with compartment syndrome and adjustment disorder, and the day I had to hand my ID card to the Captain and become a Mrs instead of a Sergeant affected me more than I could ever have imagined possible. Those who know what it is to suffer in silence will fully understand, it's a dark hole where nothing matters. Your will to live, your sense of who you are, your self esteem... are all gone.

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I had complete mental breakdown and ended up attempting to end my own life. Despite my husband and my beautiful children, I had convinced myself the world was better off without me.

My husband found me and gave me two choices: either give up and leave or be the wife and mother my young family needed me to be. It wasn't easy coming back from the darkest time of my life, but I knew at some level that I couldn't give up for my family's sake. I had been in active service for 14 years and yet somehow, this was the hardest fight of my life.

I realised I had to somehow reconnect with my strengths. I was not going to let my physical and mental disability affect my family anymore. I knew I needed to somehow find my own identity away from the Ministry of Defence. Yet I still wanted to give back somehow... they had given me so much. I avoided bitterness and blame, knowing it would only keep me stuck. It was the system that had failed me, not my colleagues.

I originally founded Direct Transitioning Help Foundation alongside my dearest friend and copywriter Anastasja from the civilian world, to hopefully prevent this happening to others. I started without even a shoestring but just a belief that this was my purpose for my next chapter, and somehow that faith and confidence has kept me going.

Adjustment disorder is a term used a lot for the devastating darkness so many ex-servicemen and women fall into after transitioning to civilian life with very little practical or mental preparation for how difficult life without structure or rank can be after excelling in your career for years. Some of us go from making life or death decisions, operating some of the most sophisticated technology or machinery in the world and leading troops through some of the toughest situations you can imagine, to finding ourselves unemployed, using alcohol or substances to cope with day to day reality or homeless on the streets through having never had to deal with our own finances or think practically about our future. Sometimes we struggle to fit in with civilians because we know our training has made us think differently - we see things very much in terms of being part of a team at all times and being prepared to die for our colleagues and our country, so our sense of ourselves as individuals outside the forces family takes time to develop. This makes us cling to our own community when we really need to be getting out there and making friends, which can make us spiral more deeply into depression because we are living in the past instead of building a future.

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I am lucky that I had my husband and kids to keep me going, along with the confidence to go out to meet other people in the civilian world to talk about my work and gather some support. Others aren't so lucky, and these are the people I really worry about.

In 2015 we piloted our first workshops at the 2 Lancs regiment, starting with me talking about my story and giving soldiers some facts and information about what they need to be thinking about long before they actually leave - in terms of housing, legal issues, employment, education and financial management, with various experts coming in on a voluntary basis to speak to small groups at a table.

Our workshops are already having a positive impact on so many, and I can't wait to see what we can achieve as things develop and grow.

Through speaking out and telling my story I wasn't only helping those who I have served with, but ladies who also suffer with mental health problems and confidence issues. This led me to launch Dreamz Networking on social media with monthly meetings in Blackpool and fortnightly workshops. The saying about how there's power in numbers is so true, these groups and our little community is my way of staying well and motivated. Knowing I can truly make a difference and be someone my children and hubby can be proud of keeps me going no matter what.

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I am absolutely shocked, sad and disappointed. BBC Two broadcasted the documentary Britain's Secret Slavery Business about modern day slavery in the UK on March 11, 2016. It depicted several instances where slavery is currently occurring and shared the personal stories of some male survivors; while it completely failed to incorporate the voice of female survivors and their experiences. The organisation Modern Slavery estimated that in 2013, two thirds of the potential 10,000 - 13,000 victims of slavery in the UK were women. Free the Slaves' figures show that women and girls make out 55% of slavery victims globally. To exclude women's experiences in a documentary set out to generally discuss modern day slavery is problematic to say the least.

The documentary specifically highlights the exploitation of labour in factories, fishing trawlers, car washes in London, and farms. Some brave male individuals shared their horrific experiences with Darragh MacIntyre; stories which are incredibly important to share with the general public. MacIntyre made an effort stating the backgrounds of all the men interviewed. There was a Hungarian factory worker, an English autistic man, Polish car washers, and an Indonesian fisherman. Yet, the analysis did not go any further than that. I then ask myself, how can you on behalf of a national network discuss modern day slavery and not even touch upon the experiences of women? How can you reject any intersectionality analysis as to how everyone's gender, nationality, disability, class, caste, race, religion, physical and mental health, sexuality affects and amplifies your experience of modern slavery?

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Gender analysis

About half way in, MacIntyre states this is a story we have all heard before; the story of men being exploited. This rhetoric was reiterated by Lucy Mangan who wrote "Who's up for an hour-long pitiless examination of man's apparently inexhaustible capacity for inhumanity to man?" (emphasis added). The documentary made no examination of situations particular to women in the UK.

"Migrant domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and abuses of their human rights...This results from migrant's socio-economic conditions, lack of information about their rights and entitlement to protection in the UK, their personal family and emotional circumstances, attitudes towards the police, the low availability of personal and professional networks, but, most of all, from their immigration legal status." (para 9.38)

For full understanding of modern day slavery of migrant domestic workers I highly recommend the comic strip Almaz's story, by Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock. Domestic workers held in slavery often see several of their rights being infringed simultaneously (WRC, para 6.7). In addition, the story of Abike by Positivenegatives is the perfect supplement to the documentary. Because, what MacIntyre fails to even mention, this brilliant comic strip explains in just a few pictures. It illustrates the various dynamics and underlying factors leading to situations of servitude and shines some light on women in sexual exploitation servitude in the UK.

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According to the BBC, in 2012 two of the most prevalent instances of modern day slavery were sexual exploitation (accounting for 35% of the potential victims in 2012), followed by labour exploitation (23%). UK's Modern Slavery Act 2015, entered into force on 29 October 2015, sets out to tackle the issue of slavery. It has created two new civil orders to prevent modern slavery; it established an Anti-Slavery Commissioner; and made some provisions for the protection of victims. The organisation Anti-Slavery argues that the Act fails to guarantee minimum standards of protection of victim's rights. They also criticize that migrant domestic workers are required to prove they have been trafficked before they can leave their abusive employers for a new employer. For many, this requirement can be impossible to fulfil. WRC argues that when a domestic worker has no right to change employer, trafficking increases (2013, para 6.34).

What effect does this have?

Nowhere in its description does the BBC state that this is a documentary merely reflecting men's experiences. That leads me to ask the following questions: Are women's experiences niched? Can we really accept that women's experiences are treated as niched? Would we have to make an entirely separate documentary discussing modern day slavery as experienced by women? Would a documentary focusing on women's experiences be seen by a smaller audience? Would that documentary then have to reference women's experiences in the title or description? Britain's Secret Slavery Business surely did not state in its title that it set out to only analyse the experiences of men...

Another problematic dimension of the documentary can be seen when asked why women's experiences were excluded. Women usually work in unregulated informal sectors (WRC, para 9.38). Did MacIntyre purposely disregard the lived experiences of women and girls as their work did not fit the category of "public work"; seen as domestic work takes place in the home and not in the general public? If so, he then reinforces the stereotypical and essentialist assumption about women's roles in the public/private as discussed by Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin. Meaning, their unrecognized labour performed in the private is of less value than the work done by men in the public.

The documentary strongly suggests that it is up for the consumer to do the analysis. If there is a team of five washing your car for 30 minutes and all you pay them are 3, then you should be able to tell that something is wrong. It is true though, consumers do need to be wary, but with such a strong and important message it is unacceptable to neglect women as it proposes that women are of lesser value than men. Even if MacIntyre was not able to set up any interviews with women, their stories still could and needed to have been told.

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Is George Osborne entirely responsible for the economic fortunes of families and businesses up and down the country? Watching coverage of the Budget you may believe he is. I disagree.

While far too many decisions are taken in Westminster, devolution is giving people far away from Downing Street the chance to shape their own destiny.

Take business rates, which are due to be completely localised. Yesterday George Osborne announced a cut in business rates for the smallest firms, although he failed to explain what the impact will be on local authorities' finances. Haringey has gone one step further than the Chancellor by cutting business rates by 30 per cent for firms, large and small, who move into our borough.

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Our business rate cut will make a huge difference to hundreds of firms in Haringey. It'll save small businesses around 1500 a year. And large firms will save around 15,000 a year. And it will attract firms to take advantage of the affordable workspace, highly skilled workforce and great transport links in Haringey.

Our business rate cut shows how those outside Westminster can stand on their own feet and make a real difference to people's lives. And it's an important signal to the wider world that Haringey is pro-business, open for investment and on the up. Just last month an independent report found Haringey will see the fastest jobs growth over the next 20 years, faster than Westminster or the City of London. We are determined to ensure our residents are at the front of the queue to take advantage of the huge jobs growth in the coming years with every school in Haringey rated good or outstanding and new opportunities for residents to learn about science, tech engineering and maths skills (STEM).

Every council has been hit hard by funding cuts over the past six years. Haringey has seen a 40 per cent cut of 190 million over eight years. As brutal as the cuts are, I reject the idea that the measure of success is managing decline better than your counterparts. To me that's a complete betrayal of the people we were elected to represent. The days when councils could plead deprivation and special circumstances and hope for a larger handout are gone, especially if we are not willing to seize every lever at our disposal to change the economic landscape and improve the life chances of residents.

That's why this week Haringey has become the first council in country to cut business rates for new firms. It's why we are delivering the biggest regeneration programme in the country and it's why we launched a STEM commission chaired by Baroness Sally Morgan to make sure every Haringey resident has the chance to learn new science, tech engineering and maths skills.

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"A mile wide and an inch deep" might be an achievement if one was talking about some new way of manufacturing plate-glass. It certainly isn't, however, when the subject is the nation's maths curriculum. And yet that is the expression used by Andreas Schleicher, the director of education at the OECD, when he was explaining to the Global Education Skills Forum in Dubai why Britain is ranked twenty-sixth out of sixty-five countries, coming in behind Poland, Estonia and Vietnam.

Of course Mr Schleicher is not alone in deploring Britain's performance. Business leaders and other employers say the same. Even graduates can come through the system innumerate and some companies run remedial maths programs for new employees. More important is Mr Schleicher's analysis of the cause. He compares China and Singapore, where children are given a deep understanding and taught to think like scientists or mathematicians, with the UK where the emphasis is on relatively shallow knowledge acquired by rote; a system where relatively simple mathematics is made to appear more difficult by being used in complex contexts. The result of this? Children in Shanghai whose course does not deal with finance come out as more financially literate than those in the UK who are taught finance, because they have a deeper understanding of numbers and can apply it to finance or to anything else.

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No doubt all this comes as a great surprise to the trendier educationalists, who have always been seduced by the idea of making education more relevant and getting away from difficult things like teaching children how to think. Actually, however, they should have known because, if they had spent their time reading rather than parroting patronising assumptions about children being unable to deal with difficult concepts, they would have come across a paper entitled "The Lost Tools of Learning" which was published by Dorothy L Sayers in 1947; that's right, the Dorothy L Sayers who also wrote the detective stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

Sayers' essay is available at http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html but her essential point is that education should teach children how to think, analyse and learn and then, as a secondary matter, allow them to apply those techniques to the various subjects. That is different from the alternative system, apparently as prevalent in 1947 as it is now, of teaching a number of subjects and hoping that the pupil will pick up some idea as to how to analyse and learn as it goes along. Understanding logic and reasoning should be the fundamentals, as should be the ability to explain ideas. Rather than learning how to order a meal in a foreign language the student should begin by understanding the structure of languages - one of the great values of a classical education - and then later apply that understanding to those languages he or she wishes to master.

All this is still as true as it was in 1947 but if anything it is now more important. We are constantly told that rapid change and advances in longevity mean that, during a career, an individual will typically have to do a number of quite different things. It's not much use, then, if his or her education only serves as a preparation for the first of them rather than giving the tools to unlock the subsequent disciplines as and when it becomes necessary to do so.

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Many years ago I asked a distinguished maths teacher about the qualities he looked for in the children he taught. "Well there's intelligence, of course, and perception and then of course there's laziness".

I was a little taken aback. "Laziness?" I asked, slightly surprised. Actually he didn't mean laziness in the teenage sense with coffee cups piled in the sink and an inability to get up before midday. What he meant was that the best maths students, when faced with a problem, will not mindlessly cover sheets of paper with formulae they have learned but will rather ask themselves the question "isn't there some simpler and easier way of doing this?".

The same spirit of analysis and enquiry lies behind success in other disciplines as well. The good historian, having read his sources, sits back and thinks through the analysis. The linguist applies his knowledge of grammatical structures. The artist tries out a series of sketches. To teach pupils to think laterally, a teacher has to have a very good grasp of the subject.

That is why it is worrying to hear of subjects being taught by those who, although they may hold teaching qualifications, are not themselves expert in the subject being taught. Yes, with determination and effort they can teach those parts of the syllabus which can be learned by rote but they cannot begin to communicate a deeper understanding if they do not have it themselves.

The Department of Education reacted to Mr Schleicher's comments by saying that they are already improving the quality of teaching. Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, has brought in teachers from Shanghai to help raise standards. In the end, though, real improvement in maths and in other subjects too will be dependent on the teaching profession becoming more attractive so that the best people are recruited. The recession has helped a bit here and so will other changes in demand which move teaching up the social and economic pecking order. There is a lot of concern at the disappearance of office jobs as computerisation makes people redundant. Perhaps an improvement in the standard of education will prove to be a silver lining.

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Today I will visit a project in Edinburgh which aims to help asylum seekers and refugees settle and integrate in Scotland. With weeks until the Scottish election almost every minute of my day is accounted for. Every meeting has to count. And this meeting really counts, but it has nothing to do with the Scottish election.

In fact, the SNP are in agreement with me on the most concerning story involving refugees seeking protection in our country at the moment - alleged mistreatment and inappropriate accommodation here in Scotland and in other parts of the UK.

I recently used my Daily Record column to call for an independent investigation into the reports of how refugees have reportedly been treated so I welcomed seeing the SNP leader at Westminster Angus Robertson call for the same at Prime Minister's Questions recently.

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Sadly, a Prime Minister who has become defined by his arrogance let himself down badly with his reply.

He said that he was happy for these to be investigated but perhaps the Scottish Parliament could do it.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said that perhaps the Scottish Parliament should investigate scandals which are being reported on the Home Office's watch.

That simply isn't good enough. The Prime Minister cannot continue to ignore the stories we are hearing about the frankly inhumane treatment of asylum seekers.

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Everyone, no matter where they come from, should have a safe and secure home. Many of us take that for granted, but a moment's thought reminds us that a good home is no given - ask anyone falling into homelessness and they will tell you that.

Respect and appropriate accommodation are what refugees seeking protection need - it's a basic right many of us don't give a second though to.

The breadth of reports and allegations made in the first three months of this year in Scotland and across the UK tell us something is wrong. That basic right is not being respected.

Instead of the swelling of pride which we felt when Scotland spoke as one to say 'refugees welcome' I'm feeling a burning sense of shame and anger after learning what is reportedly happening to vulnerable people in my country.

We are reading reports of utter humiliation of brave but vulnerable people. All the while it is sometimes lost that these are women, men, and children who like anyone else are entitled dignity and the lifeline service of housing.

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If nothing else, these allegations suggest that basic standards of shelter and dignified treatment may not always be delivered by the private companies that the Home Office has outsourced the responsibility of asylum accommodation.

The Tory government pays these companies millions of pounds to provide accommodation to recently arrived refugees. This is public money and the companies receiving it must be held to account for the way they treat people in need in our name. If they do not do that, then they should not retain these lucrative contracts.

These are extremely serious allegations and the Prime Minister should stop prevaricating- he should order an independent investigation today.
Most of us remember the image of thousands of Ethiopians starving during the famine of 1984/85, the luckier ones seemingly fed only by the power of the Western media to incite compassion and belated action from international agencies.

On a recent visit to the country, I heard how the weather conditions now are as bad as during that terrible disaster. In some ways they are even worse as the impact of climate change means that rainfall has been reducing over time, making droughts more common and giving people less time to recover before the next crisis hits. This time, El Nino is aggravating the long term challenges, intensifying the drought. Three successive rains have failed.

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Driving out from the bustling town of Dire Dawa, east of the capital Addis, where the markets were full of people buying and selling vegetables and animals, I saw the vegetation get sparser by the mile. In such an arid region it wasn't that that raised alarm, it was the groups of people standing by pits beside the road, waiting for the tanker to bring them that most vital and scarce resource, water.

Just an hour or so from the town, a village leader described the terrible condition of the pastoralists as they had arrived with their few remaining animals over the preceding months. He told me of herders roaming for weeks between countries in search of food and water, steadily losing their animals to the drought until they arrived at the village where water and the bare minimum of food were available.

People are suffering. Pastoralists who roam distances across the Sahel and between countries are finding no water or grazing. They have watched their animals die or sold them at knock down prices. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their crops and all their assets.

Ten million people - more than the combined populations of Greater London and Birmingham - are now in need of help to feed themselves. People told me just how often the rains now failed. They didn't have time to recover from one drought before the next one hit. To us it is climate change, to them it is their livelihoods wiped out.

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Yet despite such hardship, the truth is that Ethiopia has come a long way over thirty years. It is less poor, better prepared and its government is insistent that it can and will lead the response. Although 85% of its 100 million people remain dependent on rain fed agriculture, there is more irrigation and more boreholes to supply water in remote areas.

Unlike 30 years ago, this time around most people hit by the drought are getting at least some help. The Ethiopian government is leading a complex operation that is now getting food and water to many millions. Village heads and health workers tell the same story as local officials, that people are struggling but aid is getting through.

Malnutrition is a serious challenge even in normal times but health workers describe how people's health has improved in recent months as the operation has been scaled up. There is severe drought, and there is not enough assistance, but there is not yet a famine. That is a major achievement.

Oxfam is playing our part. Working closely with local organisations we are providing water to hundreds of thousands of those most affected, giving out money to buy essentials to those in greatest need, helping people feed enough animals to breed from when times improve, buying animals off people who can't feed them and using the meat to feed those most hungry and undernourished.

No one involved in the relief effort - the Ethiopian government, NGOs like Oxfam or international donors - can afford to be complacent. Resources and logistics are massively stretched. Delivering food and tankering water up to hundreds of kilometres is expensive and challenging. The combination of government resources and international aid is still not enough to sustain and extend the operation. Help is uneven and there remains a real risk the situation could deteriorate again.

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Nor will the problems be over when the rains do come. It will take months for crops to grow, and people will need seed. They have had to eat what they have. Even if help if forthcoming, the rebuilding stocks of cattle and goats will take years.

Donors, including the British government, have helped but so far only half of the 1billion needed to meet the needs of people this year has been pledged. Officials I met from the Ethiopian government were adamant that they will mobilise whatever funds are needed, but if they don't get more outside support they are clear that will have to take money from other essential activities including education and health.

A recent Washington Post headline screamed that history is repeating itself in Ethiopia. The truth is that it isn't, not yet at least. Climate change, overwhelmingly caused by rich countries would have it so. But the fruits of development, preparation and a better managed response mean that a different outcome is possible.

Disaster has so far been averted but the struggle is not over yet. The rains are still to come, funds are to be raised and the humanitarian operation maintained and extended. The 1980s famine indelibly linked the image of starving children with Ethiopia for a generation. Thirty years on, Ethiopians have a chance to cast off that shadow but we all need to do more to make sure it happens.
A father holds his seven month old baby at a makeshift camp set up between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia border registration points. UNICEF/Pappas

It's been a miserable couple of weeks for children on the move to Europe. Last week I stood in the muddy field outside the transit center in Tabanovce, close to the Serbian border. While 14,000 people, half of whom were children, had become stranded in makeshift tents in Idomeni, Greece, a similar situation was unfolding right under my eyes at the border between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia.

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The last 437 Syrian refugees who crossed the border in the south were now stranded in the north, not allowed to continue their journey through Serbia. A quarter of them were children under the age of five and 12 of them less than one year old.

One young Syrian couple approached me, timidly, asking me to find help for their daughter who had been distressed since they had left Syria. "If you just touch her with your finger she starts screaming. We don't know what to do for her."

Another father, pleading, handed me a dirty, used milk bottle and asked me to help him get some milk for his children. As a mother and a grandmother, I couldn't look at the bottle and not feel rage. I thought about the 3.7 million Syrian children under the age of five who have known nothing but a lifetime shaped by war. After having seen the destruction of their houses and their whole life falling apart, these people had to spend nights out in the rain, with no access to proper food or services.

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A boy wearing show too big for his size, tries to walk through a muddy field where 437 refugees have been stranded since 7 March.UNICEF/Pappas

The ad-hoc border restrictions along the Balkan land route had already left over 1000 people stranded in the Tabanovce transit centre. On 7 March, as the European Union - Turkey Summit took place, this last group allowed to cross into the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia from Greece, were now stuck in between the two border registration points.

"After being on the train for over four hours, we got to the border, got an exit stamp from the Macedonian police and walked towards Serbia, but the Serbian police wouldn't let us pass," a young father told me as he tried to shield his baby from the freezing rain. "We cannot go back to the transit centre. We have nowhere to take cover from the rain and cold and we have no food," he added.

When I returned to the site two days later, it was still raining. The muddy fields were now filled with tents - put up with the help of the UNICEF field coordinator and other aid workers - all lined up along banks of streaming muddy water. The muddy sludge was so deep that one refugee man came to help me from falling as I walked around to talk to people.

"We cannot go back," one mother told me. "I have two teenage daughters who traveled alone to Germany a few months ago and I need to join them."

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This woman reminded me of the risk of family separation and that border closures have not stopped desperate people from wanting to make the journey. Parents are resorting to having their small children spend days in horrible conditions, in the hope that borders will reopen and they can continue.

Many are even making sacrifices to go without access to basic services. However, we cannot allow this to happen. UNICEF and partners have been handing out food, hygiene kits, nappies and warm clothes, while encouraging mothers to continue breastfeeding their babies, but so much more needs to be done. How many more days will children spend sleeping in the mud?

Children have suffered the most in this crisis. They have suffered more in their first years of life than most of us would endure in our lifetime.

Governments need to be reminded of their obligation to allow safe and legal channels for children escaping war and conflict through appropriate measures including family reunification, so they do not suffer more.
Did I miss something? Or is George Osborne already prime minister?

Because if he isn't, why did he announce on Wednesday that he intends to turn all schools in England into academies by 2020? Is 'setting schools free from local education bureaucracy' (otherwise known as denying them local authority support and removing any last vestige of local accountability) now part of a chancellor's job description?

He says education reform is essential to improving the UK's productivity record. In which case perhaps he should be looking at ways to recruit - and retain - more good teachers, and ensure decent funding for all the nation's schools. There's no magic about academies: some are good, some are bad, just like any other schools. Taking them away from local authorities and transferring ultimate responsibility for them to central government, while entrusting the running of them to charitable trusts and commercial sponsors, will not automatically deliver better-educated children.

Perhaps Mr Osborne should have paid more attention to the man who used to run one of the government's pin-up academies, Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, east London. Sir Michael Wilshaw is now the chief inspector of schools in England and just last week, he said this about some of the Trusts which are now running academies:

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'There has been much criticism in the past of local authorities failing to take swift action with struggling schools. Given the impetus of the academies programme to bring about rapid improvement, it is of great concern that we are not seeing this in... [some] multi-academy trusts and that, in some cases, we have even seen decline.'

It was hardly a vote of confidence in an idea that has so far failed to prove that it can deliver on its promises. In the words of Laura McInerney, editor of Schools Week magazine: 'Perhaps the saddest thing about Osborne's policy is that it doesn't do anything to help the very real concerns in schools about the difficulty of hiring teachers and seriously squeezed budgets. Spectacle over substance: politicians fall for it every time.'

You've heard of pre-election budgets; this was a pre-referendum budget. It was, therefore, also a damp squib budget, designed mainly to disguise the fact that Osborne's economic strategy isn't working. So why couldn't he wait till after the referendum is out of the way and then do what needs to be done for the sake of the country, rather than for the sake of his political ambitions? According to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times: 'Nothing that the chancellor of the exchequer announced in the Budget is of great relevance to the economic or fiscal health of the country. Indeed, on balance, the UK would have been just as well off without it.'

So why freeze fuel duty while oil prices are at rock bottom and I can now buy petrol at 99p a litre? Why is that more important than trying to ensure adequate financial support for people with disabilities? It's so patently unjust that even some Tory MPs are finding it hard to stomach.

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Why fiddle with tax rates so that, once again, the better off become even better off and the worst off get nothing? According to Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies: 'The biggest gainers were those towards the top of the income distribution, with most towards the bottom broadly unaffected.' Politics is about priorities, and Mr Osborne's are clear to see.

I have listened to far too many budget speeches over the years, and one of the things I have learned to watch out for is what isn't included as well as what is. So why, in a budget that the chancellor boasted was 'for the next generation', was there not a single, solitary mention of the need for new incentives to encourage investment in green technologies? (I did a word search for the word 'green' in his speech: it appeared just once, in the sentence 'We are giving the green light to High Speed 3 between Manchester and Leeds.')

According to Richard Black of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit: 'The 730million announced for renewable energy should mean we'll continue building offshore wind farms at about the current rate, but it's equally notable that there's nothing new for onshore wind, biomass and solar - or, indeed, for measures to cut energy waste, which we know is the energy investment that Britons support most.' (Full disclosure: I am a member of the ECIU's advisory board.)

The chancellor had probably already written his speech by the time the latest global climate data were released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, showing that last month was the hottest February in 137 years of record keeping, and the 10th consecutive month to set a new record. Still, bequeathing a habitable planet to our grandchildren obviously pales into insignifance besides the importance of that referendum vote in June.
1. Work on the male pill began in the 1920's when scientists managed to control sperm production in rats by manipulating their pituitary glands.

2. In the 1950's, Dr. Marthe Voegeli discovered that soaking the testes in hot water at 116 F (46.7 C) once a day for three weeks resulted in 6 months of infertility.

3. In the 1990's scientists developed a version of the male pill using the female sex hormone progestogen with three monthly injections of testosterone to counteract 'feminizing' side effects. It didn't catch on.

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4. In 2002 there was a huge fuss about NB-DNJ, a drug which proved to be very effective at rendering mice infertile. Only mice.

5. Then there was reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance (RISUG) which involved an injection into the testicles. Ouch.

6. And what about the Clean Sheets Pill? It works by suppressing which means that men experience a dry orgasm. Really.

7. The latest 'male pill press release', for that is all they ever seem to amount to, is the brainchild of Dr. Gunda Georg, head of the University of Minnesota's College of Pharmacy. In 2013, she received $4.7 million to work on male contraception, and two days ago, at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting, she revealed that by tinkering with an existing male oral contraceptive, her team had made some progress in finding a non-hormonal pharmaceutical solution to prevent sperm reaching maturity.

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8. That exciting 'breakthrough' went viral, but Georg also mentioned that the changes they made to the compound reduced "the specificity of the compounds for the intended retinoic acid receptor- target".

9. In plain English, that means the new drug affects all sorts of cells in the body, not just the ones involved with creating sperm.
Russian President Vladimir Putin passes an honor guard formation during wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. The Defenders of the Fatherland Day, celebrated in Russia on Feb. 23, honors the nation's military and is a nationwide holiday. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

MOSCOW -- President Putin's decision to start pulling Russian troops out of Syria made headlines around the world this week. But if one recalls official statements at the start of the operation and after it was in full force, the decision was to be expected. It was said from the very beginning that the operation would continue for only a limited time, that there would be no permanent extensive military presence in Syria, that the purpose was not to support President Bashar al-Assad's regime but save Syrian statehood, and that the future of the country would have to be determined by the Syrian people through political talks. What has transpired in Syria is nothing less than what was contained in those official statements -- what they said is happening now.

The Russian conceptual framework is very different than the West's. From Moscow's point of view, only support of legitimate governments, even non-democratic ones, can at least slow down the overwhelming collapse of the regional security system and bolster general stability. Any ambitions to "improve" the way nations are governed leads to uncontrolled sociopolitical explosion and deconstruction of institutions, which is the best way to create a vacuum for terrorism. The Western approach is the opposite: authoritarian -- by default "bad" -- governments should be replaced by democratic "good" ones. That's why the Russian mantra is "don't touch what's left," while the Western mantra is "dictator must go."

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Any ambitions to 'improve' the way nations are governed leads to uncontrolled sociopolitical explosion and deconstruction of institutions, which is the best way to create a vacuum for terrorism.

Why now? The question of the exit strategy has been raised throughout the operation. Putin felt it was the right time. Looking back, one can impute why the time is right from the criteria set at the beginning of the mission. The ruling regime in Syria had to be fortified because, in Russia's opinion, the spread of radical Islam could be stopped only by strengthening statehood. The present Syrian government is internationally recognized, and Russia offered its helping hand to official Damascus. Russian aircraft bombed its opponents -- the self-proclaimed Islamic State and other groups. The mission took more time than was initially planned because the Syrian army turned out to be less combat ready than expected. Eventually the situation was reversed, allowing Russia to reduce its presence and responsibility for what will happen in the future. From the perspective of a Russian citizen, the biggest relief is that the government seems fully aware of all risks and used the first and the best opportunity to begin to withdraw.

What are the results? The Assad regime has been saved from collapse and has increased the territory under its control. It does not embrace the entire country, but it still covers the territory where a big part of its population lives. The change in the balance of forces on the ground inspired hope that political talks could take place and would not be just an exchange of accusations, as before in the various conferences in Geneva, Vienna, Cairo and Moscow. The opposition can no longer hope to win militarily, and neither can the regime after the eventual exit of Russian troops. Moscow does not want to become a hostage to Damascus' policies, which seek to maintain the status quo. But few in Moscow believe that the present Syrian regime will last long without changes. Syria needs profound reforms in order to restore its statehood. And Moscow's decision to partially pull out is also a signal to the Syrian authorities that Russia will not do their work for them.

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Footage taken from the Russian Defense Ministry official website on Oct. 2, 2015 shows an attack made from a fighter jet in Syria. (AP/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)

Russia had started the operation under the slogan of combating ISIS, but eventually this task became secondary, and the war was essentially waged to keep the Syrian state itself intact. And yet joint efforts helped stop the spread of ISIS. To secure its ultimate defeat, other methods must be employed. Airstrikes, Russian or American, alone are not enough. They must be followed by a ground campaign and ideally by joint efforts of the Syrian army and opposition fighters. But this can only be achieved through a political process.

Will Bashar al-Assad survive if Russia leaves Syria? Russia will not leave completely. There have been two similar situations in recent history. One was negative and the other one positive so far. When Americans pulled out of Iraq completely, the country basically fell apart and ISIS emerged. When the United States withdrew the bulk of its troops from Afghanistan, it continued to maintain a serious military presence in that country, thus keeping it together despite all of its problems. Russia should follow the latter example. It should keep its military infrastructure -- the naval and air bases -- and a compact military contingent in Syria to guarantee that the Syrian regime will not collapse and that Assad will not share the fate of Muammar Gaddafi or Afghanistan's last communist leader, Mohammed Najibullah. Russia has learned its lessons. As Putin said on Thursday:

What kind of balance of power will be there, taking into account the reduction of the Russian group? Such a balance will be ensured. Moreover, bearing in mind our support and the strengthening of the Syrian army, I am sure we will see new successes of patriotic forces in fighting terrorism in the near future.

What are the political results? Russia has proven to be an influential international player. An effective use of force and a show of capabilities are always an argument to take a country seriously. The agenda with the West has been broadened. Prior to the Syrian campaign, the discussion focused mainly on the Minsk process in Ukraine. This is a rather peripheral international topic, while the Middle East is a central international issue. It would be naive to expect some sort of "Ukraine for Syria" bargaining, but there is no doubt that Russia is viewed as a much more serious player now than six months ago, and this indirectly impacts the Ukrainian talks.

Few in Moscow believe that the present Syrian regime will last long without changes.

Does the Geneva process have any future? As we know from similar conflicts, parties start to seriously think about negotiations when they realize that no military victory is available. By intervening in October, Moscow showed the opposition that it can't expect to win this war. By pulling out some forces in March, Russia sends the same signal to the regime: it can't count on Russian military might to win complete military victory. The fact that Russia is somewhat distancing itself from Assad while not giving up on him completely is a positive sign. Syria will change. In a new Syria, Moscow will be able to interact not only with the Alawites, but with a broader array of actors, too. Coupled with intensive diplomatic efforts among Moscow, Washington and Riyadh, this will provide a chance for settlement.

Has Russia proved its credentials as a great power of global scale? Yes. Does Russia have a strategic blueprint for the next stage? Certainly the answer is no. But to strategize is not the most important capacity of President Putin. He believes much more in accumulating capabilities and calculating a reaction based on changing circumstances. His intuition tells him when to intervene and when not to. So we'll have to wait and see where he feels the next opportunity is.

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There was a period of time in the thirteenth century, BCE, some 300 years, during which the Israelites did not have a king, a centralized ruler, and their tribes were guided by leaders -- warriors and prophets -- called "judges". One of these judges, Gideon (Jerubbaal), served as such a judge for 40 years (about 1222-1183 BCE). Upon his death, his son to his concubine sought to rule in his father's place. Abimelech hired "vain and light fellows" with whom he "slew his brethren upon one stone; but Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left; for he hid himself" (Judges 9: 4-5). Abimelech, Jotham's half-brother, was crowned king of the town Shechem.

7 And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.

8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us.

9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?

10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us.

11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?

12 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.

13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?

14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.

15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

16 Now therefore, if ye have done truly and sincerely, in that ye have made Abimelech king, and if ye have dealt well with Jerubbaal and his house, and have done unto him according to the deserving of his hands;

17 For my father fought for you, and adventured his life far, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian:

18 And ye are risen up against my father's house this day, and have slain his sons, threescore and ten persons, upon one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your brother;

19 If ye then have dealt truly and sincerely with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice ye in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you:

20 But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem, and the house of Millo; and let fire come out from the men of Shechem, and from the house of Millo, and devour Abimelech.

21 And Jotham ran away, and fled, and went to Beer, and dwelt there, for fear of Abimelech his brother. Judges 9:7-21King James Version (KJV)

The trees sought to anoint a king, but the fruitful modest trees declined their offer because, in their eyes, honoring God and people was more important than becoming king.

Faced with this situation, the impatient trees asked the bramble, a thorny, fruitless, dry bush, to reign over them. The bramble jumped eagerly at the chance of being a monarch and, making use of the leadership vacuum, declared that if they want to anoint him king, they should take refuge in his shadow; and he threatened: "if not, let fire proceed from the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon" (Jud. 9:19-20). The bramble does not have much of a shadow, but it can catch fire quickly and burn down the tall, majestic, evergreen cedars of Lebanon which have everything to which the bramble aspires.

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Jotham forcefully proclaimed this parable to the people of Shechem and then fled, and the men of Shechem continued to support Abimelech. They were the ones who gave Abimelech silver with which he hired assassins (Jud. 9:4-5), though a few years later a different relationship developed between them and Abimelech: they "held a festival, and went to the house of their God, where they ate and drank and cursed Abimelech" (Jud. 9:27) who, not long afterward was killed.

Jotham's speech, which appears between the parable and its moral, was addressed to the Shechemites and not to Abimelech, a criminal for whom there was no hope. The speech radiates with its rhetorical questions as it juxtaposes Jerubaal's good deeds with the evil deeds of the Shechemites.

Did the Shechemites anoint a king that mirrored themselves? Does the bramble represent only Abimelech, or does it suggest that people become leaders because they are not productive? Are the fruit trees at fault, because they made it possible for the bramble to lead? Or were they correct in that they had a different purpose and were not suitable to reign? Was the cedar at fault for being too humble to reign even though it was taller than the fruit trees?

When one thinks of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Mahatama Gandhi, one cannot dismiss all leaders as brambles. The one centralized leader is not our only leader; we have many leaders in the system, including administrators. When they are good, they help us and the system flourishes. When lacking merit, they are nevertheless appointed because of "politics" or as a result of injudicious desecration, they can be destructive due to their character and inadequacy.
Saving money for retirement is a lot like flossing. Experts agree that its important in the long run, but getting into the habit of actually doing it now isnt easy.

The good news is that many employers offer a retirement savings plan commonly known as a 401(k). The bad news is that understanding your 401(k) isnt easy. There are many different types of 401(k) plans to consider, and the surrounding terminology may make it tricky for some employees to understand how to make the most out of this investment.

We joined forces with State Farm to explain the ins and outs of 401(k) retirement plans in six simple comics, helping you maximize your savings while avoiding common pitfalls that may chip away at your nest egg in the long run.

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Your job offers a 401(k) plan? Great!

Image: Michael Driver

No one would choose to pay taxes voluntarily, yet thats exactly what you do when you dont take advantage of a 401(k). Arising from a 1978 law, 401(k) plans have helped Americans save more by allowing them to invest, or defer, a portion of their pre-tax earnings into a retirement fund sponsored by their employer. Unlike the funds in a savings account offered by a bank, the money in a 401(k) is directly invested in higher interest opportunities.

Does your employer offer matching contributions? Boom!

Image: Michael Driver

Although theyre not required to, many companies offer matching contributions to your 401(k), which is a game-changer in boosting the size of your retirement account. On average, employers match contributions up to 2.7 percent of an employees salary, which has a huge impact on the total size of your retirement account when its time to cash out. Think of it as a bump in salary!

Wait, how much should you contribute?

Image: Michael Driver

Get the most out of your employers matching plan: Contribute at least as much as your employer is willing to match, otherwise you are literally passing up free money. Although a portion of your employers matching contributions is immediately available to your 401(k), you often need to satisfy a vesting schedule that slowly unlocks your employers contributions after each year you remain with the company -- typically five -- until youve reached 100 percent.

Switching jobs? Here's what you should do.

Image: Michael Driver

If youre changing employers, you have four options to consider when deciding what to do with your (now) old 401(k). You may choose to leave your old 401(k) with your former employer, roll it over to a new employers 401(k), or cash out. The fourth option is to roll over your 401(k) into an IRA, or Individual Retirement Arrangement.



As tempting as it may sound, cashing out is generally considered to be the worst decision, because not only will your savings be subject to a federal tax between 10 to 39.6 percent in addition to state income tax, youre also subject to a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty if youre younger than age 59 1/2.

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If your new employer permits it, rolling over your old 401(k) to your new plan is generally a sound strategy; youll continue to earn money on your previous savings while putting in additional money from each paycheck. In case your new employer doesnt offer a 401(k), your previous employer may allow you to keep your old 401(k) under the stewardship of the fund manager if it has $5,000 or more in it. The drawback is that you wont be able to make additional contributions toward your old 401(k), making it grow much slower.

What about an IRA? When does that make sense?

Image: Michael Driver

IRAs allow you to set up a savings account similar to a 401(k), except its not tied to your employer and you generally have more flexibility over how your money is invested. There are two types of IRAs for you to consider: a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA.

A traditional IRA is similar to a 401(k) in that you wont pay taxes on your earnings until you decide to cash out. The major differences: an IRAs individual contribution limit is $5,500 as opposed to the $18,000 for 401(k), and there wont be any matching contributions from your employer.

On the other hand, the money you put into a Roth IRA is post-tax, but you wont have to pay any taxes on your earnings when you withdraw your money. Many employers also offer whats known as a Roth 401(k), which functions exactly like a 401(k) but it follows the tax scheme of a Roth IRA.

Its time to cash out! Or is it?

Image: Michael Driver

When youve turned age 59 1/2, youre finally able to cash out your 401(k) and IRA accounts without paying the steep early withdrawal penalties, but should you?

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Since the full retirement age is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, its in your best interest to keep working at least until then, as youll be able to delay the distribution, or payout, of your 401(k) and traditional IRA until youre 70 1/2 years old.

Once youve figured out the right way for you to receive your savings, take a moment to step back and marvel at the prudence of your younger self: youve made it.

Life gets infinitely easier when youve planned ahead. Now that you have the tools to embrace your future with confidence, let State Farm help you to protect it.
Despite banking attempts to weaken them. [WSJ | Paywall]

Once again, breaking all U.N. sanctions. [Reuters]

"An analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data showed about 350 schools and day-care centers failed lead tests a total of about 470 times from 2012 through 2015." And reports of high lead levels are emerging from Newark, New Jersey. [USA Today]

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For the Bumble Bee Tuna recall. [Kate Bratskeir, HuffPost]

The FBI has determined a University of California Merced students stabbing spree last fall was inspired by ISIS. [Reuters]

WHATS BREWING

Global temperatures were at an all-time high. [HuffPost]

"A rising number of high schools are under federal investigation for complaints they failed to protect alleged rape victims from coming face-to-face with accused perpetrators in the classroom." [HuffPost]

Thoughts on all the best? [HuffPost]

Meet the "Brotailers." [Bloomberg]

Watch how fast this snake can strike. [HuffPost]

The cooking version of for-profit colleges. [Priceonomics]

Apparently twice a day. Or maybe not. It's up to you. [GQ]

For more from The Huffington Post, download our app for iOS or Android.

WHAT'S WORKING

"All made in Hanoi using readily available materials and parts, the machines are durable, easy to use and do not require expensive materials. Installed in more than 250 hospitals, MTTS equipment has so far been used to treat more than three-quarters of a million babies suffering from infant respiratory distress system, jaundice or hypothermia." [HuffPost]

For more, sign up for the What's Working newsletter.

BEFORE YOU GO

~ What to order at your favorite restaurants that won't break the calorie bank.

~ So turns out Clark Kent can go to Times Square and not get recognized.

~ This plastic watch costs over $8,000.

~ Rihanna talks the alleged beef with Beyonce.

~ Lin Manuel-Miranda and Emma Watson free-styling about feminism? What else does the Internet want?

~ The "So That Happened" team talks that Hillary Clinton fundraiser with the Theranos founder, otherwise known as "scenes from the wreckage of the Democratic party."

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~ The Economist believes a Donald Trump presidency is as dangerous a threat as terrorism.

~ Vanity Fair details the "global alliance to take down Uber."

~ True love: Julianne Hough took photos as her sister got very seasick on their vacation.

~ The wonders of New York's trash.

~ Fabio isn't ruling out running for office after becoming a U.S. citizen.

~ Adele is a living, breathing emoji.

~ We're all about the March Madness Twitter over the upcoming Yale-Duke match-up.

~ Google will pay you $100,000 if you can hack its Chromebook remotely.

~ Bloomberg has to be happy about what's going on across the pond: The UK is proposing a soda tax to curb obesity.

~ Are we hitting "superhero fatigue?"

~ And watching a baby bald eagle hatch should give you more faith in America than the 2016 election. Happy Friday.
Two weeks ago, millions of people watched as 51 survivors - including myself and my fiancee- standing alongside Lady Gaga delivered an unforgettable performance of "Til it Happens to You," an original song from the campus rape documentary The Hunting Ground. Introducing the performance, Vice President Joe Biden made a powerful statement against victim blaming, inviting viewers to join him and student activists in pledging to change the culture surrounding campus sexual violence. The Hunting Ground was just made available for streaming on Netflix, so people who haven't yet had the opportunity to see the film- which screened on CNN last November and has been screened at over 1,000 colleges and universities in the last year- will be able to see it and learn more about the issue. I challenge anyone to watch the film, or Lady Gaga's performance, and not come away sharing the Vice President's belief that something, something needs to change.



Survivors on stage with Lady Gaga at the Academy Awards on February 28th, 2016

So what is that something?

It's tempting- and perhaps just- when we hear about the rape epidemic on campuses to want to focus on finding and punishing the perpetrators. A bill proposed last fall, the so-called "Safe Campus Act"- sought to address this problem by instituting "mandatory reporting"- demanding that if survivors turn to their school for support, they must also go through with filing a formal report to the police. Dubbed the "(Un)Safe Campus Act" by activists, dialogue over the bill showed that focusing on prosecution and punishment rather than support and healing raises questions of believability and probability of conviction for all survivors, who are held up to the myth of the "perfect victim" and are often re-traumatized in the process.

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A side effect is that this focus on prosecution and "justice" causes us to minimize the vast majority of rape and sexual assault cases that do not result in conviction and punishment of a "bad guy," asking survivors, "Well, did you report? Were they found guilty?" If not, doubt emerges. Legally, every perpetrator deserves due process. But every survivor deserves to be believed. The two are not in conflict if our response to hearing about rape does not require that we go out and find "the bad guy," but instead, that we support the survivor in their healing process. The truth is that "solutions" to domestic and sexual violence do not occur in a vacuum, and can cause more harm if they do not account for the real root causes of violence.

My professor once told a story about prevention that I think is applicable here. She said, "if you were standing next to a river, and saw someone in the water, drowning, you would help that person. But if another person, and another, and 10, then 100 more appeared, you would no longer be able to help them all. And after a while, you would ask why all these people were in the river, drowning. If you asked them, and they told you that someone just upstream was pushing them it, you'd solve the problem not by finding a way to rescue them all, but by stopping the person pushing them in."

How can we prevent rape, not just prosecute and punish those responsible? One policy change that has resulted from lobbying to address this issue is "Bystander Intervention" in which students are trained to intervene in situations that look "risky." This runs the risk of confirming stereotypes about what assault looks like, and ignores the fact that over 60-80% of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows- a friend, or a dating partner. Someone who doesn't look 'suspicious'- someone the victim trusts.



"Yes Means Yes" chalked on the sidewalk at University of Michigan

Many activists would point to Affirmative Consent legislation, which was signed into law by the California legislature in 2014 and is becoming the standard policy on many college campuses. Just like the White House's "It's On Us" campaign, affirmative consent and "Consent Education" inform students of a shifting standard from "no means no," to "yes means yes," which means "If you don't get affirmative and ongoing consent, it's rape." Sex is pretty complicated, though, and 'doing it' right- consensually, pleasurably- requires some pretty advanced communication and an understanding of issues from consent to anatomy, power dynamics to protection. Yes means yes... but yes to what? Anyone who's had sex will tell you that "yes" is where the conversation begins- not where it ends.

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These interventions are trying to resolve a symptom, without looking deep enough into the cause.They presume that it's rapists who are pushing all these survivors in, and administrators and law enforcement who are neglecting their duties to identify and remove these perpetrators from campus. Or the government failing to enforce equal access legislation. Or careless students failing to look out for one another. All these may play a part in the problem- but to truly prevent this epidemic, we need to look at where young people- perpetrators and survivors alike- are learning about sex.

An "It's On Us" commercial I've been seeing a lot of lately involves a variety of celebrities informing me, "There's one thing you can't have sex without- and that's consent. Without consent, it's not sex. It's rape." We are learning more and more about rape, but where are young people learning about sex? Primarily abstinence only educational programs that encourage students to "just say no," to wait for marriage (even though 95% of Americans don't)- and then engage scare tactics, or share medically inaccurate information. Meanwhile there is no shortage of sexual content in the media, never mind what young people can find on the internet. Beyond the movement to address sexual violence, other millennial feminists are raising awareness of a "bad sex" culture- in which hook ups look more like conquests, and intimacy and mutual pleasure are rare.



Me (on the right) with my fiancee/co-author, Nastassja Schmiedt, and Vice President Joe Biden holding our book Millennial Sex Education at the Academy Awards
Taliban in Action Photo:PKKH.tv

The fighting pattern in Afghanistan, at least since the Taliban became resurgent circa 2006, has followed a predictable pattern: fighting lull in the winter due to inclement weather and resumption of Taliban attacks in the spring. But the Taliban would still carry out low level sporadic attacks and assassinations during this lull.

2016 saw a change in this predictable pattern as the Taliban continued relentless military pressure on the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). This began last September with the spectacular assault on Afghanistan's fifth largest city, Kunduz. They were driven out after 15 days of fighting with the considerable help and airpower of the US forces. In the southern province of Helmand, the Taliban are in full control of many districts including Sangin and Khanashin. In a brazen attack on ANSF facilities in Kandahar Airport, the Taliban killed dozens last December. Also in December, the Taliban launched a suicide attack near Kabul Airport. In January the Taliban attacked a compound in Kabul used by foreigners. On Monday February 1st a suicide bomber attacked the Afghan National Civil Order Police station in Kabul. There were at least 20 police officers killed and scores more mostly civilians injured. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Report, Afghanistan is a more dangerous place today than a year ago and the Taliban control more territory than at any time since 2001. The emergence of an ISIS branch in the eastern province of Nangarhar adds to the travails of the ANSF.

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Afghan Army in Action

What is significant this year is that the Taliban were able to escalate the fighting in the absence of their founding leader, Mullah Omar, who, it was revealed in July of 2015, had been dead since 2013. While there have been numerous reports of discord and infighting between various Taliban groups, their brazen attacks show their continued resilience to the detriment of Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government for the first time recently acknowledged that Pakistan is harboring Afghan Taliban amid pronouncements that they are in favor of a peaceful settlement between their protegees and the Afghan government. The Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG)consisting of Afghanistan, Pakistan, US and China was hopeful for the eventual participation of the Taliban in the peace talks. But the Taliban categorically rejected taking part in talks tentatively scheduled for early March. They reiterated their demand, which is the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan before any engagement in peace talks.

In my opinion there are three reasons for the Taliban's rejection of the latest peace talks: 1) The Taliban think that they have the upper hand in the fight vis a vis ANSF. They therefore can negotiate better from their position of strength. 2) Since Pakistan has publically acknowledged its support of them, the Taliban do not want to appear subservient to the will of Pakistanis. Pakistan had indicated that the Taliban would partake in the March talks. 3) The infighting between the Taliban factions, some of whom reject any talks, prevents new leader Mullah Mansoor from taking a position on peace talks. Given the degree of animosity and the breadth of heavy fighting from Helmand in the south to Jowzjan in the north of Afghanistan, the road to peace is an arduous one at best.

There is dissent and political infighting within the Afghan government also which could add to the complications of the peace process. The Afghan High Peace Council was revived recently with Peer Gailani as its head. In a recent interview with the BBC, Mr. Gailani questioned the legitimacy of fighting with and killing Taliban. Afghan CEO Abdullah called for his resignation, insinuating that Mr. Gailani favors the Taliban over the interests of Afghan government.



March 21, 2016 brings a new year to Afghanistan according to the Afghan calendar and normally the beginning of a new fighting season. However, this year the fight never ceased and the old fighting continues unabated, causing much suffering for the powerless rank and file Afghans caught in between.

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The US and NATO allies continue to reassure the Afghans that they will not abandon Afghanistan. But Afghans are tired of their government's incompetence and impotence in the face of the Taliban onslaught. Young people leave in droves, braving a perilous journey to find a better life for themselves in Europe.
Both Ends Burning, an organization dedicated to ensuring that all children around the world are have an opportunity to be given a permanent home, is hosting its second global symposium at the Marina del Rey Marriott, Los Angeles from April 3-6. The organization's goal is ensure that global child welfare includes family-based solutions as a core value. This year's symposium, Achieving Child Permanency Through Innovation, is focused on solution-based strategies.

Representatives from dozens of organizations, including UNICEF, and countries such as Ethiopia, the Philippines and Guatemala will share child welfare experiences, challenges they have faced, successes they have had, and hopes for the future.

"Our goal is to spend a few days encouraging the world to look at child welfare in a different light, consider how we can produce better programs to serve the welfare of children and use this experience as a catalyst to becoming innovators in our field," explains Craig Juntunen, founder of Both Ends Burning and author of Both Ends Burning, a memoir about his experience adopting three children from Haiti. "Communication can change and influence everything and we have created a very dynamic and interactive agenda to provoke new thoughts and ideas."



At the first symposium last year at Harvard University participants developed a list of priorities, which included:

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Increase the knowledge of the damaging consequences of institutional care (orphanages)

Create information system tools allowing countries to track, assess, and monitor plans to improve the lives of children under their care

Build strategies and methods to expand social worker capacity

Support the process of legal reform

This year's symposium aims to outline the next steps forward. The Leadership Committee has identified the following objectives for this symposium:

Learn about the process of innovation

Share inspirational success stories

Present new ideas for future best practices

Identify opportunities to transform current practices

Form relationships needed for future collaborations

Expand global opportunities to promote awareness and advocate for change
I just got an email from Marc Ash, editor of the progressive news site, "Reader Supported News." The title of the piece gives a clue about how exasperated Ash is at President Obama's pick for his Supreme Court nominee. "Merrick Garland, What's the Point?"

In the piece, he describes how Garland was someone that Senator Orin Hatch, conservative from Utah, had suggested would be a good pick. And then Ash writes: "Battle? Ideological confrontation? Reshaping of the Court? Forget it - Garland is a safe pick for America's ruling class. Obama punted. Hatch defeated him without a fight."

I don't suppose he's really asking a question when he writes, "What's the point?" More likely he's declaring that he sees no point. But I'm going to venture an answer to the question anyway, because I think that Ash is likely missing the point.

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The first issue to be examined is this: What chance is there that Merrick Garland, or anyone else President Obama might have nominated, will be confirmed?

I don't really know, but if anyone offered to bet me that Garland or anyone else would be confirmed, I'd take the bet. Even if the odds were 2:1 to the no side, I think it would still be a good bet. The Republicans have dug themselves so deeply into this hole, and they have proved themselves so completely committed to an obstructionist approach to the whole Obama presidency, that I just don't see them backing down and doing the right thing. I hope I'm wrong, but that's my bet.

If neither Garland nor any other possible nominee would get confirmed, then the question is: What's the best strategy for punishing the Republicans for their disgraceful behavior?

Here's probably the main answer to Marc Ash's "What's the Point?" question. If we cannot fill the vacancy opened up on the Court by the death of Scalia because the Republicans are so fixated on power above all -- American tradition and the spirit of the Constitution be damned -- then the job at hand is to use their conduct to bludgeon them in the court of public opinion in this election year.

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Ash writes that "Obama will leave the Presidency as he began it, wrapping his policy and legacy around not offending white Republicans. It's a travesty and an abdication."

If that's what the President is doing, that surely would be a shame. But I'm betting that what the President is doing is not trying to appease the Republicans but rather using this moderate and apparently first-rate and unobjectionable judge to give him and the Democrats a bigger club with which to bludgeon them the harder.

But what if I'm wrong about the Republicans continuing to refuse to confirm the President's nominee? What if Garland does get a seat on the Supreme Court.

Ash writes: "We fight for a better, more just nation." He thinks Garland is clearly not worth fighting for. But just what do we really need in the person who fills this vacancy?

I must confess I have not yet studied the record of Judge Garland. But I do have some thoughts about what is, and what is not, of true importance in the filling of this seat. What does not matter terribly much is whether we get a justice who is way out on the progressive end of the spectrum. The question that would be important to me is simply this: If this judge had been sitting on that bench instead of Antonin Scalia, how many of the terrible 5-4 decisions would have gone the other way?

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My sense is that one does not need anyone very far to the left to shift that balance in the right direction. Some of those 5-4 decisions have been truly terrible -- like on campaign finance and on the Voting Rights Act. To wager once again: I would bet that even if Sandra Day O'Connor had been on her old seat, rather than Justice Alito who replaced her, even that Reagan appointee would have spared us some of these travesties.

What we need on the Court, then, is someone sane and reasonably fair-minded, who is not altogether signed on to assisting the corporatist takeover of the nation.
Definition of failure: Noun 1. lack of success.

That's all it is. Yet, society tends to make it much more that that, using terms like loser, wimp, disappointment, underachiever, and worse, to describe someone who has failed. If you're going to be slapped with a label like that, it's no wonder no one wants to admit they made a mistake.

I'm here to say that it's time to bring back failure. Reward it! Applaud it! Ask for more! Why? Because research shows that almost all innovations are the result of prior learning from failures. Edward D. Hess, Professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden Graduate School of Business, says failure is imperative to the innovation process because "from failure comes learning, iteration, adaptation, and the building of new conceptual and physical models through an iterative learning process."

So I am starting the Bring Back Failure! campaign by admitting a few of my many, many leadership and business mistakes. Here are some of my doozies...

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The Christmas Crackers That Blew Up in My Face

How did a 25 year-old recent college grad become the general manager of a 150-room hotel in Kenya? In retrospect, I'm not sure, but that 25-year-old was once me. The resort I managed provided European (mainly British) tourists with an "African experience".

It's Christmas, the peak of high season, with our highest room rates of the year to cover all the Christmas extras we provide. Because I'm a young, American woman, most people do not think I can do the job. So I'm on a mission to prove myself. I want everything to be perfect for my first high season with a whopping 400 guests, from Christmas to New Year's Eve.

In November, Kadri, our Food and Beverage manager, asks how many Christmas crackers to order for Christmas. I tell him none. He looks at me quizzically, and repeats the question. I emphatically reply with the same answer. He walks away, shaking his head. In the meantime, I order fireworks for New Year's Eve. After all, fireworks are far more impressive than Christmas crackers, right?

After weeks of preparation, the Christmas season knocks on our door, and so do 400 guests. The hotel looks beautiful and festive with lights twinkling on palm trees, and wreathes made from fragrant flowers. Christmas Eve is truly special with an African choir singing carols. On Christmas morning, Santa arrives on a camel to our guests' delight. I'm feeling extremely proud of our hard work at this point.

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Santa on a Real, Live Camel?

Then it's time for Christmas dinner, with chicken as the entree. Everyone settles into their seats and the staff is ready with the appetizer.

The Murmur Quickly Escalates into an Uproar

That's when I hear a questioning murmur that quickly escalates into an uproar. "Where are the Christmas crackers!?" And then it hit me. An appetizer of cheese and crackers is not what they wanted. New Year's Eve fireworks are not what they wanted. They wanted their traditional British Christmas crackers. Hundreds of angry guests were about to revolt on the biggest day of the year. I had failed them, and my team, big time.

So what did I learn from this doozie of a mistake?

Lessons I Learned From Failing:

Pay attention to, and genuinely aim to understand, cultural nuances and perspectives.

Ask questions, especially when someone asks you the same question twice, even when you think you know the answer.

Beware of trying to prove yourself to others. It closes your eyes and ears to what's going on around you.

Listen to what's being communicated nonverbally. My food and beverage manager shaking his head at me was sufficient at tipping me off to a problem if only I been paying attention.

Moments like these are what push me to now focus heavily on

(EQ), listening skills, and diversity. If I were competent in those skills back then, the I would have respected the tradition of Christmas crackers rather than blow it off, thinking I knew better, and I would have avoided disappointing 400 guests and my team.

Ebay Business Goes Bust

Fast-forward 10 years. By this point, I'd grown and sold the Kenyan hotel and built and sold Eco-resorts, my eco-friendly safari company. I was back the U.S., wondering what my next business would be.

At this point, most people introduced me as "Anne from Africa", as a conversation starter. In addition, I wore lots of African jewelry and carried beautiful, handmade African bags. I had lived there for ten years! My house was decorated with African textiles and art. Everyone kept asking me where they could buy my bag or necklace, so I decided to sell African things on Ebay. I knew someone else who did it and thought, "How hard can it be?" Little did I know...

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How Hard Can It Be?

First of all, I needed inventory. Since this was a new business, I flew to Africa and went market to market, looking for the best buys. Then I had to lug the goods back to the States in suitcases. Next, I had to upload pictures and descriptions (this process was not an easy task in 2001!) to Ebay. Once everything was loaded on the site, all I had to do was wait for sales.

And wait.

And wait...

Some things sold well, yet when I went back to the markets to get more inventory, the same items were unavailable. Some things didn't sell well, because I didn't bring back what people wanted to buy. So let's just say that many of my friends received African goods as gifts for several years!

Some people would call that a huge waste of time and energy. I wouldn't. I learned a ton that I carried forward into my future work.



So What Did I Learn From This Total Flop?

Lessons I Learned from Failing:

Do your research and make sure you understand the playing field before starting a small business. Market research is your friend! It would have helped my chances of success if I understood online marketing.

Know your market and what they want to buy. This includes knowing the generation (or generations) of your target consumer so you can "speak their language" when marketing to them.

Develop a strong, reliable supply chain.

Now, I don't believe a strong business plan guarantees success. The fact is, in business and in life, you never know what is going to happen, especially in an economy that is constantly in flux. In that sense, treating your business plan as though it is set in stone is detrimental to your ability to succeed. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do your research about the market you are entering and who your target consumers are.

As leaders we are expected to know everything, so we feel hesitant asking questions or admitting we don't know something. Yet, we have to ask questions! And that's just the first step. The next step is actually listening, a skill so valuable that it deserves continual practice.

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So there you have it. Two of my many failures to jumpstart my Bring Back Failure! campaign. My Christmas cracker blowup and eBay flop strengthened my business sense, and improved my communication and listening skills. My eyes were opened to the need for leaders to truly understand and respect cultural diversity. And rather than sending me into a spiral of bone crushing disappointment, my failures motivated me to keep trying. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Ready to join the Bring Back Failure! campaign? Share a story of a time you failed with pride. Tell us (and others) what you learned. Encourage those around you to lose their shame over failure and embrace it as one step closer to innovation. Start today by sharing your story in the comment section below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

Denis Waitley says it well:

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."
Image: Prison. Stock Photo. Pixabay.com

Kazakhstan's prison authorities were itching to get their hands on human-rights lawyer Vadim Kuramshin, who had embarrassed them inside and outside the country by exposing abuse of inmates.

When Kuramshin accused prosecutors in southern Kazakhstan's Zhambyl Province of corruption, the prison bosses got their chance.

As often happens across the former Soviet Union, those who level corruption allegations often find themselves quickly facing trumped-up corruption charges of their own -- and that's what happened to Kuramshin.

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He ended up in prison, where he was subjected to beatings, sexual abuse and denial of medical care.

Kuramshin's plight encapsulates a problem that is widespread in the former Soviet Union: Prisoners of conscience are routinely beaten, tortured and denied medical coverage while incarcerated.

Most of the abuse is at the hands of prison staff but sometimes penal authorities have inmates do their dirty work, as in a recent case in Armenia.

To be sure, ordinary criminals -- as opposed to prisoners of conscience -- are mistreated as well. Lots of prisons in the region have shown they are equal-opportunity brutalizers.

For those of us who are human-rights defenders, abuse of prisoners of conscience who have committed no crimes is particularly repugnant.

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I include in the category "prisoners of conscience" political dissidents, human-rights defenders, journalists, persecuted religious minorities and corruption whistleblowers.

One of the most egregious examples of the mistreatment of a prisoner of conscience was the case of Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in a Russian prison in 2009 generated international outrage.

Magnitsky, who was with the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan, was helping American-owned Hermitage Capital Management document corruption allegations against Moscow government officials, police and mafia elements. That corruption was making it harder for Hermitage Capital to operate and make a profit.

Magnitsky's whistleblowing angered those he was trying to expose, and they succeeded in getting a trumped-up corruption case filed against him.

It came as no surprise when a court convicted him and sent him to Moscow's notorious Butyrka Prison in 2008.

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At Butyrka he began suffering from an inflamed gall bladder, gall stones and an inflamed pancreas -- ailments that debilitated him and caused excruciating pain. Prison officials ignored his condition for months, but finally scheduled surgery for it in June of 2009. But they never had it done.

Magnitsky died in prison in November 2009. In addition to his health problems, there was evidence he was beaten before he died, international human-rights defenders said.

His death spawned world headlines, and the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which calls for visa and banking restrictions to be placed on Russian officials involved in human-rights abuses.

A recent Armenian prison-abuse case also gained international attention because there was a twist to it. It involved inmates instead of prison staff roughing up a dissident.

The victim was Vardges Gaspari, a 59-year-old political and human-rights activist.

On February 19 of this year he spent a week in Nubarashen Prison in Armenia's capital of Yerevan on allegations that he failed to show up to face a charge of interfering with an election commission's work.

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When he began a hunger strike to protest his detention, prison officials responded by transferring him to another cell.

Three of the four inmates in the cell received cellphone calls that Gaspari was able to overhear. In each case the caller ordered the inmates to force Gaspari to stop his hunger strike, he said.

Jasper concluded that the calls came from prison officials offering the inmates leniency, less time in confinement or other rewards for try to intimidate him into ending his protest.

The three who received the phone calls began kicking him as he lay in bed, demanding that he begin eating, he said.

He yelled to guards for help, but was ignored.

When a guard finally did show up, his cellmates told the guard nothing was wrong -- and the guard left.

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Prison officials whitewashed an investigation into Gaspari's abuse complaint by finding that no abuse had occurred.

Mistreatment of prisoners of conscience such as Vadim Kuramshin, Sergei Magnitsky and Vardges Gaspari is widespread across the former Soviet Union, according to political dissidents, human-rights defenders, journalists and others.

For every case that gets news coverage, however, many more do not, critics of the practice say.

Penitentiaries in a number of developed countries separate prisoners of conscience from hard-core criminals to prevent prisoners of conscience from being abused -- but this is not the case in the former Soviet Union.

Likewise, nothing is done to protect prisoners of conscience from prison-staff brutality.

This makes the stakes for imprisoned dissidents, whistleblowers or journalists in the former Soviet Union very high: They face continual risk of injury, deteriorating health stemming from lack of medical care, and death.

Unfortunately, there are no signs that this is going to change.

In a part of the world that routinely tramples on human rights, those least likely to have their rights protected include prisoners, including prisoners of conscience.

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Eric "Slowhand" Clapton is one of the most respected guitarists and musicians in the world today. He got his nickname in 1964 while playing with The Yardbirds. It was fondly invented by Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky when Clapton broke a string and would change it on stage thus delaying the show. The audience responded (when he took too long) by giving him a slow hand clap. So the nickname "Slowhand" was coined.





I've been a fan of the blues all my life. Leadbelly,Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, I couldn't get enough of them. I played the Blues Breakers (aka The Beano album) LP by John Mayall so many times that I wore it out. John Mayall was one of the most influential blues musicians in England at the time. His band consisted of : John Mayall on piano, Hammond organ, vocals, and blues harp, Eric Clapton on guitar, John McVie, (who joined Fleetwood Mac shortly after it was formed in 1967) on bass and Hughie Flint on drums (Alexis Korner and Savoy Brown and Bonzo Dog Band) Mayall also used a horn section consisting of Alan Skidmore, Johnny Almond, and Derek Healey.

The guitar that Eric Clapton played during the recording of Blues Breakers was a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard with two humbucking pickups. In 1966 shortly after the recording of Blues Breakers that guitar was stolen along with other equipment from Clapton's van.

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LAYLA

On that same day John Mayall was booked to perform (in the basement) below The Brighton Aquarium on the south coast of England. My friend David and I (the one who'd helped me wear out The Beano album) had managed to buy 2 tickets to the show that night. At the appointed time, we arrived. The band finally "hit" the stage and Eric Clapton immediately walked to the microphone and explained to us about the van robbery earlier that day. He'd managed to borrow a guitar for the night, but discovered he was short a plectrum (Brit speak for guitar pick) My friend David (who ironically later became a highly acclaimed blues drummer,) without missing a beat, produced the requested pick, that'd probably been lying dormant in his pocket amongst candy wrappers for decades and offered it to Clapton, who gratefully accepted the loan, going on to perform one of the greatest concerts of his life. After the gig Clapton bounded off the stage walked up to David and I, and with a huge smile and a sincere thanks, he returned the plectrum. David told me that he unfortunately lost the pick, when he finally cleaned out his pockets six months later!!

I'd seen Clapton perform several times before The Aquarium gig, at The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond when he was playing with The Yardbirds, and had been impressed by his amazing talent. He joined The Yardbirds in 1963 shortly after they became the house band at The Crawdaddy club (succeeding the Rolling Stones)

The Yardbirds began to get noticed in the burgeoning rhythm and blues world after they started working at the Crawdaddy Club, and ultimately became known as a "who's who" of the British music scene at the time, producing artists like, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) Jeff Beck (Beck, Bogert & Appice) and of course Eric Clapton amongst others.

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The time spent at the Crawdaddy Club playing with The Yardbirds allowed the musicians to hone their craft with a repertoire drawing on their love of Chicago blues. Songs like "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Smokestack Lightning" became Yardbird staples, while the audiences that packed The Crawdaddy Club each night couldn't get enough of the music of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. A few years later when they were playing with Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones recorded "Bring it On Home" by Sonny Boy Williamson.

Eric Clapton had never been a disciple of commercial success and in 1965, he left the Yardbirds, shortly after they released For Your Love that went on to become a huge hit for them. But Clapton wanted to be a blues purist, and joined Mayall in 1965.

Clapton was born on March 30, 1944 to parents Patricia Clapton and Edward Fryer, but grew up with his grandmother Rose, in Surrey and was educated at Holyfield School in Surbiton, going on to study at The Kingston School of Art where he left early, as his main focus was clearly on music. He then spent time busking (street singing) around Kingston and the West End (London's theatre district) and then formed a band with friend David Brock a fellow blues enthusiast, playing in pubs. At 17 he then joined an R&B band called The Roosters with friend Tom McGuinness (Manfred Mann group, later of McGuinness Flint Band teaming up with Hughie Flint of Mayall fame) and then in October 1963 he joined The Yardbirds

In 1966 Eric Clapton left John Mayall Bluesbreakers (being replaced by Pete Green) and was invited by drummer Ginger Baker (Graham Bond Organization) to join his new group along with Jack Bruce (Manfred Mann and The Graham Bond Organization) The new group was to be called Cream. I'd first seen Ginger Baker with The Graham Bond Organization. Ginger Baker, became known as "rock & rolls first superstar drummer," and was famous for his lengthy drum solos and flamboyant style of percussion ( even more flamboyant than Keith Moon of The Who) (I remember a 19-minute solo with the GBO, where we all stood hypnotized by his talent, percussive skill, and energy) so the natural fit of Jack, Ginger and Eric was immediately electric. By the time I graduated from high school in 1967 Clapton was being touted as Britain's top guitarist and Cream were becoming enormous in the US as well. In March 1967 they performed a 9 show sell out at the RKO Theatre in New York. They recorded Disraeli Gears in May 1967 in New York that included Clapton's searing guitar work and Baker's polyrhythmic percussive techniques. The short lived life of Cream was accelerated by the tensions between Baker and Bruce coupled with the excessive use of drugs by the band members. The demise of the group affected Clapton profoundly. In 1999, Disraeli Gears, Creams defining LP was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

By 1969 Eric Clapton who by now was a household name decided to form Blind Faith, with Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood (Traffic) and Ric Grech. (Family) Initially Clapton was hesitant to invite Baker to play with him again, so soon after Cream had disbanded (It'd been just 9 weeks since the break up) but Stevie Winwood while jamming with him at his home in Surrey south of London, convinced Clapton that Baker would add significant power to the new "super group." In May 1969 Ric Grech was also formally invited to join them, and Blind Faith (Baker,Grech,Clapton and Stevie Winwood) debuted at a "free" concert in London's Hyde Park on June 7th 1969. Over 100,000 people attended that day.

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Steve Winwood was signed to Island Records (his brother and former bandmate Muff Winwood ((Spencer Davis Group-worked at Island as an A&R man)) so subsequently Blind Faith was "leased" to Polydor Records. Having toured in the US and Scandinavia just once and producing one LP "Blind Faith," the band dissolved after just 7 months with Eric Clapton joining Delaney and Bonnie as a sideman.

During his stint with Delaney and Bonnie, Clapton recorded with, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, and Dave Mason. He also added his unique guitar style to Stephen Stills' song "Go Back Home"

Clapton has received respect from both rockers and blues players. He's broken racial stereotypes and is equally loved by both genders. He's overcome personal pain, beyond what most people could bear, and turned all that emotional roughage into songs like "Layla" and 'Tears in Heaven". "Layla" was originally released in 1970 when he was with the blues/rock band Derek and The Dominos. The song was inspired by a poem called "The Story of Layla and Majnun" from 5th century Arabia about unrequited love. Clapton's love affair with Patti Boyd (George Harrison's former wife) has been much written about and clearly caused him a great deal of pain. The searing guitar in the opening of "Layla" sparks an almost tribal response in all of us. "Layla" has withstood the test of time, The acoustic version of 'Layla" won the 1993 Grammy for "Best Rock Song" over 20 years after its first release proving it resonated with a new generation.

Clapton's personal relationship with the blues go way beyond disappointment in romance. His personal life reads like a Greek tragedy.

TEARS IN HEAVEN

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Clapton is a man who grew up believing that his 16-year-old Mum, Patricia, was his sister. Because society was so rigid about teen pregnancy, he was raised by his maternal Grandmother Rose and her husband Jack. Eric Clapton never got to meet his Canadian Father, Edward Fryer, (who played piano and saxophone,) because he didn't learn of him in time and his father died young of leukemia. Yet, Clapton pressed on and developed his amazing musical talent. He impacted and developed so many musical friendships around the globe including Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Jim Gordon only to lose them tragically to death and mental health issues. Clapton said of Duane Allman, "He was the musical brother I'd never had but wished I did". Clapton then fell in love with a woman (Pattie Boyd) he couldn't have, which drove him to struggle with substance abuse and brutal press coverage. When he emerged and finally "won the girl", their brief marriage was painfully marred by the inability to have children. During the turbulence, he had an affair with Lory Del Santo which produced a son, more bad press, and destroyed his marriage to Pattie Boyd, the love of his life. But, he emerged again and loved his son Conor. He continued to produce and perform amazing music only to lose his beloved son to a tragic, freak accident only 4 1/2 years later. He has had incredible loss in his life. To lose a child and then be able to produce "Tears in Heaven" is extraordinary. No wonder so many great blues musicians respect Clapton. It is not just his great playing, but his life that makes him authentic. Just like the great short film about the legendary Sonny Terry, Clapton's life is "Shoutin' the Blues". When we pause to marvel at his talent, we should also marvel at his spirit and his tenacity. The great American novelist Walter Mosley in "The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey" wrote, "The Great Man say that life is pain. That mean, if you love life, then you love the hurt that come along with it. Now, if that ain't the blues, I don't know what is."

Leon Redbone, the Canadian/American guitarist said, "The Blues ain't nothing but a good man feeling bad".

Eric Clapton plays from the inside out, like no one else we've ever heard.

In 1997 Eric Clapton founded The Crossroads Center whose "commitment has been to provide treatment of the highest quality and integrity, while optimally supporting the dignity of individuals and their families suffering from the effects of alcohol and other drug addictions." The center is based in Antigua. Clapton explains the reason why he founded Crossroads. "As a recovering addict and alcoholic, many people over the years spoke with me about the problems associated with drug and alcohol abuse on the island. Subsequently, around 1993, I began to speak with more and more people about the possibility of founding a Centre on the island for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction. There was certainly a need, and so the dream and the vision were born."

"My vision was to create a Centre of the highest caliber to treat people of the Caribbean and throughout the world. The Centre would be staffed with experienced and internationally recognized professionals. The cost of treatment would be held to the lowest possible level, ensuring affordability and accessibility. And most importantly, this non-profit Centre would provide treatment scholarships for people of the Caribbean region and around the world."

AWARDS

Eric Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards, and the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. He's been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times. Once as a solo artist, once as a member of The Yardbirds, and once as a member of Cream. He's also been ranked second in Rolling Stones magazine 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time.

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On November 3rd 2004 Eric Clapton was awarded the CBE for services to music by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace in London

Despite the tragedies he's suffered in his life Eric Clapton, coming up for 71 on March 25, 2016, has emerged as one of the most popular and beloved blues guitarists of the 21st Century. Happy Birthday

Photo credits:

The legendary Eric Clapton playing live at the Hard Rock Calling concert on June 28, 2008 in Hyde Park, London

By Majvdl (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

CREAM undated

By General Artists Corporation (management) /Atco Records (the band's record label at one time). (eBay item photo) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Eric Clapton, Keb Mo and Buddy Guy 26Jun2010.jpg

By Steve Proctor (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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BLIND FAITH:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3665054

Tina and Eric By fattkatt from england (tina and eric wembly) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
It was Christmas Eve last year when I saw the BBC headline "Nigeria Boko Haram: Militants 'technically defeated'- Buhari". What immediately came to mind was George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner. I was taken aback by this headline because the media reports prior to this day gave no indications that Boko Haram had been defeated.

The article went on to quote President Buhari saying, "So I think technically we have won the war because people are going back into their neighborhoods. Boko Haram as an organized fighting force, I assure you, that we have dealt with them." If the BBC had not included the video of the interview with the report, I would have been tempted to believe that he was perhaps misquoted.

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In the next few days, I expected to see a press release saying that he did not properly articulate his position, but none came. For a substantial population of Nigerians, this statement was either a blatant lie or an act of self-delusion. Only four days after the interview, Boko Haram showed Buhari that they have not been 'technically' defeated. Using two women, they detonated bombs in Madagali, a town in Borno State, killing at least 30 people. They unleashed other multiple attacks on that day and the days following.

You can only imagine how surprised I was when on February 28 I saw another headline in the Punch Newspaper: "Boko Haram no longer poses threat to us, says Buhari." The article quoted Buhari boasting that, "We, however, take pride to inform you that since our coming to power, Boko Haram has been systematically decimated and are in no position to cause serious threat to our development programmes."

If the statement in December was an accidental utterance from a clueless president, this one can only be understood as self-delusion. Boko Haram continues to displace people and kill many of our soldiers. Perhaps Buhari lives in a different Nigeria. He actually does as he has been living in the Aso Rock bubble and also globetrotting. Like the attack following Buhari's statement in December, on Wednesday, March 16, two female suicide bombers detonated bombs at a mosque in the outskirts of Maiduguri, killing at least 22 people. If the past has anything to teach us, we are likely to see more attacks in the next few days and weeks. A pattern is beginning to form here and It would be wise for Buhari and his government to stop making these irresponsible utterances as they cost lives.

It is politically understandable why Buhari feels he should convince Nigerians and the world that he has defeated Boko Haram. The defeat of Boko Haram was one of the central pillars of his campaign and he had promised Nigerians that he would defeat Boko Haram by December of last year. Like most of his campaign promises, he has failed in this area.

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The other day, I was in one of my student's homes. Noticing the lack of dust--really, the house is always clean--I joked to her, "Is it you or your parents vacuuming these floors so well?" She told me that they actually have a central vacuum system installed in the house.

As someone who lives in a rather modest townhouse, she might as well have been speaking Latvian. A central vacuum system? That sounds amazing.

Thus, as I usually do, I began the rabbit hole internet search about central vacuum systems. When I ruled out that a central vacuum system would be possible in our house, I thought about other options. What's the thing that the YouTube videos always show cats riding around on? A Roomba?

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When I arrived at the iRobot website, I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only do they sell Roomba, but they have also come up with robotic devices to clean the gutter, mop the floor, and clean the pool. Now, it's possible that I'm behind the times. After all, my students have to show me how to use Snapchat and Twitter properly. However, do we really know what is quietly being developed behind the scenes?

Continuing down the rabbit hole of Google searching, I came across a robot called HEXA. Marketed as a consumer robot, and less for industrial purposes, it basically looks like a mechanical spider. Built with distance sensors and an infrared camera, you can imagine the applications. My first thought was that it would have use in law enforcement. Reeling it in to the domestic sphere, though, I imagine it could probably help senior citizens and disabled individuals to grasp objects in hard-to-reach places.

What's interesting, is that the startup company, Vincross, does not mention specifically what HEXA can be used for. It seems the possibilities truly are endless, since HEXA is fully programmable by the user. The robot is able to climb on a variety of surfaces and even write its name. (Actually, if it has literary abilities, that would be one more way it could help disabled people!) I think I even saw it dancing at one point. I was personally bewildered at all of this; as a non-tech person, I felt as it I was finally catching up to the times. A robot? In our houses? Really?

Of course, this brings me to my philosophical musings on the idea. Technology is always a double edged sword, isn't it. With a Roomba, parents might have a clean floor, but they lose out on the parenting opportunity of getting kids to vacuum the floor as a chore. In some ways, we might consider the phrase, just because we can doesn't mean we should. With that said, technology that has the opportunity to help the marginalized should always be considered. At the end of it all, it's not the products themselves; it's how we, as humans, utilize them.

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Did you hear who won the election in Illinois this week? No, not that election. I'm talking about the election for United States Senate. Representative Tammy Duckworth won Illinois' Democratic Senate primary. She represents Chicago's northwest suburbs and had been expected to easily defeat her opponent. She will face incumbent, Senator Mark Kirk, in the general election in November.

What has me particularly intrigued about the Illinois senate race is that it will pit - perhaps for the first time in U.S. political history - two people with severe disabilities who are choosing to speak openly about their disability and how it shapes their lives and policy agendas.

Rep. Duckworth is the first female veteran with a disability to serve in Congress. She lost both legs during the Iraq War when the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was shot down. Sen. Kirk continues to recover from a massive stroke in 2012. Both Duckworth and Kirk speak candidly about their disabilities and showcase their stories in campaign materials.

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Part of me is delighted that most people are unaware of the historic nature of this election. Perhaps it's an indication that living with a disability is becoming more accepted and it is, therefore, less remarkable that these two public servants are squaring off. But make no mistake. This is absolutely remarkable. Here you have two high-profile politicians with disabilities who have chosen not to hide their disability, as FDR did during his presidency, but rather embrace it. Like the other 56 million Americans with disabilities, they see their disability as part of the human condition and their everyday lives. They are not defined by it, but their experiences that led to their disabilities certainly influence their approach to public policy. Sen. Kirk, for example, has introduced legislation to help stroke survivors and is an advocate for stroke research. Rep. Duckworth has made veterans affairs a major part of her tenure.

By all accounts, this will be a fierce political campaign. I hope, though, that amidst those battles Rep. Duckworth and Sen. Kirk don't lose site of a real opportunity they both have to address a critical and timely issue impacting the disability community. It has to deal with self-disclosure of disabilities in the workplace.

For Duckworth and Kirk, they already have checked that box. But too many employees don't feel comfortable sharing information about a disability with their employer. And that could prove costly if their employer is among the 40,000 federal contractors who do business with Uncle Sam. Without employees identifying that they have a disability, it will be much more difficult for those companies to assess how well they are working toward new federal targets for disability hiring. Those businesses that cannot demonstrate efforts to reach the targets face penalties, including possibly losing federal contracts.

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The members of the National Organization on Disability CEO Council, made up of companies that already are leaders in disability inclusion, work hard to create workplace environments where their employees feel comfortable about disclosing their disabilities. It allows managers to ensure their employees can maximize their productivity. And it creates a culture of inclusion that builds trust and support across the enterprise.
Every year, more than three million babies die in their first month of life. Most of these deaths could be prevented if appropriate technologies were available in the hospitals of the world's poorest countries.

Nga Tuyet Trang, the founder of Medical Technology Transfer and Services, or MTTS, is trying to make this happen.

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After spending a year studying in Denmark in 2003, Nga returned home to Vietnam imagining a world where every infant, no matter where they were born, had an equal chance for a healthy life. Assembling an international team of specialists in biomedicine, mechanics, electronics and industrial design, she tasked them with adapting developed world medical equipment and practices to meet the needs of treating the most common problems affecting newborn babies at hospitals and clinics in developing countries.

Twelve years later, the outcome is MTTS' range of low-cost, high-quality neonatal intensive care equipment. All made in Hanoi using readily available materials and parts, the machines are durable, easy to use and do not require expensive materials. Installed in more than 250 hospitals, MTTS equipment has so far been used to treat more than three-quarters of a million babies suffering from infant respiratory distress system, jaundice or hypothermia.

Hanoi, Vietnam | Photographer: Gregory Dajer

"The Other Hundred" is a series of unique photo book projects aimed as a counterpoint to the Forbes 100 and other media rich lists by telling the stories of people around the world who are not rich but whose lives, struggles and achievements deserve to be celebrated.

The second edition of "The Other Hundred" focuses on the world's everyday entrepreneurs. The book offers an alternative to the view that most successful entrepreneurs were trained at elite business schools. Here are people who have never written a formal business plan, hired an investment bank, planned an exit strategy or dreamt of a stock market floatation. Find out more about the upcoming third edition, "The Other Hundred Educators," here.

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When the open road beckons, sometimes the only way to answer the call is by renting a car. Some of the world's most popular travel destinations, like Hong Kong, London, New York City, Paris, Rome and Toronto, don't require renting a car because they have excellent public transportation. Others, like Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Havana, Cuba and Montreal, Canada, are geographically compact and easy to navigate on foot. And some, like Venice, Italy, simply don't allow cars at all. Nonetheless, there are many destinations (think the south of France and interior parts of the United States and Canada) where having a car can make or break a trip.

With gas prices down, an increasing number of travelers are renting cars to explore the countryside and smaller towns, or planning vacations to places like California's Pacific Coast Highway or Australia's Great Ocean Raod where the drive is the destination.

Whether you're headed to Iceland, South Africa, Maine, British Columbia or countless places in between, renting a car is often your best bet, not only for convenience but also to see sights only accessible via driving. Here are Cheapflights.com's tips for renting a car around the world.

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You've chosen the destination, now it's time to determine if you can actually rent a car there. In nearly all corners of the world, it is possible to rent a car. However, the rules about eligibility vary and can depend on factors like your age, the type of license you have, and which company you are renting the car from (a local mom-and-pop shop versus an international chain). Contact the embassy or consulate in the country you plan to visit or consult with your travel agent, rental car company or guidebook to determine the eligibility requirements for driving legally during your stay.

Plan ahead to determine what the license and insurance requirements are to drive legally. Some countries may permit you to drive with your home country's driver's license and/or an International Driving Permit. Other countries may require a local driver's license, which may necessitate some advanced planning or may not be available to non-residents. To determine the requirements, consult the embassy or consulate of the country you plan to visit.

In some cases, your driver's license from your home country won't be enough to allow you to legally drive in another country. For times when your driver's license isn't enough, the International Driving Permit, in conjunction with a valid driver's license, allows travelers to drive for a short-term period in up to 150 foreign countries.

The International Driving Permit is not a license but an official translation of your license and includes the driver's name and photo and translates your driver information into 10 languages. International Driving Permits must be obtained in the same country in which your driver's license was issued, and cannot be used in the country in which it was issued. If you are stopped by local police, you will be expected to show both your driver's license and the International Driving Permit.

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Not all countries require the International Driving Permit to drive, but it may be required to rent a car. Drivers must be 18 years old to apply for an International Driving Permit, which is valid for one year. U.S. driver's license holders can only apply for an International Driving Permit through the only two U.S. State Department-approved agencies: American Automobile Association and the National Automobile Club.

Most car rental contracts and fees include insurance, but it can be pricey. It's a good idea, and often required, to have car insurance when renting a car. Before you sign and drive, it's best to consult your current car insurance company to determine if you have coverage abroad already. If you are renting a car using your credit card, check your credit card policy to see if car insurance is included as well. Make sure to read the fine print as credit card insurance is often only applicable if you decline the rental car company's insurance. Finally, if you have purchased travel insurance, see if the policy extends to any accidents or injuries that may occur from renting a car.

It's important to determine if your existing car insurance coverage meets the minimum requirements of your destination country. It's best to buy insurance that is equivalent to what you have at home. However, your current policy may not be as robust when you use it abroad. Make sure your policy includes liability insurance. If you find you are under-insured, shop around. You can often buy additional insurance in your home country, your destination country or from the car rental company. Finally, if you are traveling to more than one country, be sure the insurance you buy covers you in all the countries you plan to visit.

It pays to be a savvy shopper. Here are some tips for getting the best deals on your vacation wheels:

Book in advance, particularly in high season in smaller locales where the inventory and options may be limited. It may often be cheaper to bundle the rental car when booking air and hotel.

Booking and paying before the trip often makes the rental process easier. Plus, you lock in the exchange rate on the date of booking and avoid any potential language barriers.

Rates may be cheaper if you avoid renting from the airport and book in advance.

If you're renting a car in Europe, try to book through a company that is a participating member of the European Car Rental Conciliation Service, an organization that helps customers with unresolved complaints concerning cross-border vehicle rentals within Europe. No matter where you rent or go, always confirm with the car rental company where you can and cannot drive the car.

Ask about hidden fees. Rental car companies are known to tack on charges for a variety of things, including underage drivers (typically drivers younger than 25); overage drivers (typically drivers older than 70); fuel; weekend rentals; late drop-off; using GPS equipment and more.

Ask about discounts. Great places to look include frequent flyer programs, credit card companies, automobile associations, senior citizen discounts and travel websites or agencies.

Size matters: Be sure to reserve the right size car for your group. If you are a family of four or someone in your group is tall, a compact car may not be the way to go.

Manual versus automatic. In many countries, manual transmissions are the standard issue. If you can't drive a stick shift, be sure to order a car with automatic transmission but expect to pay extra for this.

Before you drive out of the lot, take the following precautions and inspect the car before buckling up. Check the following:

Fuel level: Rental car companies are famous for sky-high charges for refilling the tank. Be sure you are departing with a full tank.

Look under the hood: Check the oil and windshield wiper fluid to ensure all fluids are at the proper level. It's no fun stopping to add oil on the side of the road instead of having fun in the sun.

Kick the tires: Check the tire pressure.

Inspect the paint job: Walk around the car and look for any signs of damage from previous renters, including nicks, dings and scratches. Be sure the rental car personnel notes any damage, so you aren't liable later on.

Interior inspection: Look around the car for any stains, tears in the seat cushions or any other interior damage. Turn on the radio, air conditioning/heater and GPS to ensure all are working. If you will be driving in an area that has toll booths, inquire about renting a digital scanner to efficiently pay tolls along the way (note: many car rental agencies charge a fee for this service, but having the device will save you time and take away the stress of ensuring you have enough change toll after toll). Same goes for destinations that require special driving permits.

Snoop around: Look in the glove compartment to ensure a copy of the registration for the car is inside should you be stopped by local police and asked to provide a copy.

Know how to call for help: Whether the car has broken down or you have been in an accident, make sure you know how to call for help. Check with the country's embassy or consulate, a travel guidebook or the car rental agency for the emergency numbers in the country you are visiting. Despite all your planning, a flat tire, a breakdown or an accident may be unavoidable. Check out our tips for a worry-free road trip, including how to change a tire, what to do if the car breaks down, what to do in a car accident and more.

Buckle up, even if it isn't the law, as wearing a seatbelt can be a lifesaver.

You got the keys to your new ride but, before you pull out of the parking lot, make sure you know the rules of the road, especially in far-flung locales where the road signs may not be in your language. In addition to confirming basics, like which side of the road to drive on, local speed limits, basic signs like stop, and where to park legally, be sure to ask the car rental agency personnel about local customs or obscure laws to be aware of before shifting into drive. For example, it may be illegal to talk or text on your cell phone, so be sure to understand the cell phone laws in your destination. Thieves looking to grab goodies from cars is such a concern in Turks & Caicos that some car rental agents actually verbally warn renters not to lock their doors as they will be stuck with steep fees if windows are broken during an attempted smash and grab. The rationale is keeping the doors unlocked makes it easy for would-be thieves to check the car for items to steal. Some countries in Europe like Switzerland and Austria require the purchase of special road permits (often called vignettes) instead of paying tolls to use their divided highways. These can be purchased at border crossings, gas stations and post offices, but check to see if your rental car already has one.

Drivers can obtain a copy of the foreign country's driving laws before the trip from the embassy or consulates, foreign government tourism offices, or the car rental company in the foreign country.


Album art for Nic Nassuet's "Eleutherios."

I love cross-genre explorations and their ability to make you rethink a song, an album and even artist's entire output. When Miles Davis took on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" in the last few years of his life, he unearthed a deep melancholy that turned a hollow sound into one of haunting resonance. Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek conversely brought out the whimsy of Carl Orff's weighty battle cry in his synthesizer-infused eighties rendition of "Carmina Burana." So I was excited when I heard that up-and-coming indie artist Temporary Hero was tackling Fleetwood Mac's experimental album "Tusk" after interpreting Chet Baker. My excitement waned as I listened to the album though and heard the emotion draining from the songs. What Stevie Nicks expressed with effortless warmth is lost in Temporary Hero's slick R&B inflected covers that substitute cool for substance. I don't want to be too harsh because the idea is admirable but its execution falls flat. Whether it's the flat croons of Jonah Bell or the toothless arrangements which do little more than occupy space, it's difficult to listen to more than a track or two at a time without succumbing to fatigue.

There aren't a lot of Estonian synth pop musicians out there to my knowledge so that alone is a reason to take a listen to Tehnoloogiline Paike. Music is often spoken of as a universal language but how our ears interpret sounds is very much rooted in our cultural upbringings. This is why eastern music that deviates from the western twelve-note structure can sound impossibly discordant. The first few bars of the tracks on Tehnoloogiline Paike's hypnotic "Technological Sun" feel as uncomfortable as an ill-fitting scratchy sweater but as the songs continue grooves begin to form. In a way its more satisfying because you have to work for it a little bit like the first time you heard Sigur Ros or Bjork. A layered synth riff on "So Many Days" is particularly memorable and its chorus has echoes of new wave.

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The guitar phrasing and ghost-like lingering vocal lines of Stockholm-based The Lost Poets coalesce nicely together on their album "Insubordia Pt II" as do the chord changes on songs like "Danny Electro" and "Bound." The problem is that the presence of James Hetfield and the rest of Metallica is overwhelmingly felt throughout to the point that its hard to see who The Lost Poets are. It's not that they are simply rooting around in the genre of melodic metal so much as every stylistic impulse including tempo, lyrical themes, melodic structure, and even occasional string interludes echo the California rockers. There are hints - a soulful lingering vocal refrain on "Mouth," the piano-riff driven interlude of "Beyond Redemtion" - of a unique voice submerged beneath the surface but it lies dormant for much of this well-produced and tightly structured album in favor of playing tribute.

5to4's EP "Tip It" feels utterly disjointed despite being only three songs. The title track is driven by a piano vamp that brings to mind Michael Jackson's "Beat It," but Phil Goss' voice doesn't exude soul as much as the airy expansiveness of prog rock. There's also a hint of the verse melody from R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon." Each shift though deepens the puzzle, including a just-barely-jazz piano interlude. The confusion only deepens in the two other tracks. "Walk" sounds like it was written on the moon with each instrument floating through zero gravity as the composer tries frantically to plunk out a few notes before it disappears into a black hole.

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via Pixabay

I'm no psychologist, psychiatrist, or any type of specialist in the field for that matter. But it doesn't take an expert to accurately observe that mental health issues are highly stigmatized in Asian culture. And recent tragedies -- namely, the alarming trend of suicide committed by both university and secondary school students in Hong Kong -- have galvanized those in the education, health, and youth sectors to act with exigency. Why is this happening, and what can we do to help and prevent it?

An explosion of speculation has hit the Internet on this matter. After all, as humans, our favorite thing to do first in such situations is rationalize.

-Hong Kong's "pressure cooker" education system is exceedingly stress-inducing and unhealthy for the youth. True.-Hong Kong's traditional counselling strategies are outdated. True.-Overly protective parents reduce the ability of an individual to handle problems on his or her own. True.-Many students are utterly absorbed in a virtual world and have a lack of family support, frequently due to busy workaholic parents. Quite probably true.

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What all of this discussion fails to address, however, is the overarching problem that mental health issues are still highly trivialized and stigmatized in Asian culture and society -- dare I say, the most stigmatized in the world.

In a global climate where plenty of countries are taking progressive strides to address the reality of mental health problems and how we deal with them, there is silence in Asia. That is, silence only broken when tragedies escalate to such heights that they cannot go unaddressed.

via Pixabay

The truth is, mental health issues are still somewhat of a taboo subject in Asia. They are associated with weakness, guilt, and shame. As a result, the shattered psyches of many are often simply swept in a corner, left to fester.

Why? Well, the stigma surrounding mental health issues is deeply rooted in traditional Asian values -- and numerous studies and case reports on mental health in Asian countries have arrived at the same conclusion. A major case study on the situation of mental health in China by the academic Veronica Pearson notes:

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"There is widespread belief that mental illness is a punishment for the ancestors' misdeeds visited on the present generation, effectively shaming several generations of the family simultaneously. The 'taint' associated with mental illness is so strong that it extends beyond the affected person, for instance with regard to the issue of marriage."

That case study may be two decades old, but the modern attitude is more or less the same. Ask any Chinese person remotely in touch with his/her culture, and he/she will likely give a nod of acknowledgement -- because this all stems from ancient Confucian ideologies about family. Even if today's generations don't promulgate the "punishment of ancestors" business, the idea of the all-important family name, the concept of hefting your ancestors' burdens -- those whose shoulders you stand on -- is pretty explicit in Chinese family culture (even of those who don't live in Asia). The carried weight of all these factors therefore intensifies the stigma of mental health illnesses, and often results in attempts to conceal them.

But this isn't limited to Chinese society. An insightful article by Priya Alika Elias about the silence surrounding mental health in South Asia echoes similar beliefs in desi culture:

"The concept of izzat, or honor, is paramount to those raised in traditional South Asian families. It's linked to the concept of sharam, or shame. The two are so inseparable that the Hindi word lajja counts both 'shame' and 'dishonor' in its list of meanings.To admit to mental health issues would be to threaten the izzat of one's family, since depression is so deeply stigmatized in our communities. As a consequence, we live performatively. We maintain izzat at the expense of individual health."

Notice the common threads of shame and honor woven in the blanket of stigma that envelopes mental health problems; I'm sure it extends beyond Chinese and Indian beliefs in Asia as well. The way I see it, it all relates back to outward appearances and "face" or dignity associated with family. Everyone else in society is watching -- and that matters.

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Lauren Livingston via Unsplash

So if we look past socio-political contexts, past issues of poorly funded mental health services and education systems, past the perpetual stress of competing in the education rat race and facing a gloomy future of being overworked and underpaid -- the traditional ideas of maintaining family honor coupled with those of shame, guilt, and weakness are at the bottom of what hinders real progress in recognizing, accepting, and helping those with mental health illnesses in Asian society.

And it makes me sad to say so, but the older generations alive today perpetuate it. They keep the stigma alive by discouraging conversation about mental well-being issues in their children, their grandchildren, their students, their patients. Maybe it's because older people tend to be more skeptical of the problems of today's youth since they "had it so much worse" back in the day; maybe it's because they're just ignorant.

A shocking example of this is the story of a friend who sought help for mental health problems at her university clinic in Hong Kong, and was told by the apathetic, condescending, and presumptous doctor that her problems weren't "real". He proceeded to trivialize and discredit each of her concerns, making the entire process extremely humiliating and degrading. It wasn't until she showed him evidence of self-harm that he was convinced to get her a referral to a psychiatrist --an extent to which no human being should ever have to go.

Now, general physicians at university clinics are likely weary from seeing desperate students with fake coughs, headaches, and other superficial ailments (and maybe that doctor was just especially a curmudgeon) but it's no excuse for failing to take someone's issues seriously. These dismissive attitudes are precisely why many troubled people do not seek help. What's more, this mindset is not uncommon among people in Hong Kong of older generations -- the generations of the very people who race to find a remedy for the rapidly declining mental well-being of Hong Kong students.

    

We must recognize that Asian society is seriously behind in the discussion surrounding mental health, and endeavour to rebuild an environment that acknowledges, accepts, and wants to help those with mental disorders and illness. And of course, this applies to the rest of the world too. A person in suffering, in need of support, is less likely to open up in a society that shames ideas of depression or anxiety -- or pretends they don't exist at all.

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Another week, another series of Trump victories, and another series of odd comments from establishment politicians.

Your typical establishment politicians are disappointing in a number of ways. They often talk of compromises and big plans, ideas, or changes that will make all of our lives better while getting money from donors who set political agendas along with non-elected lobbyists.

In light of the failures of many politicians, U.S. voters are largely unsatisfied with both political parties. This has led to "populist" strains on both left and right, often interpreted narrowly as arising from dissatisfactions with the status quo. I believe there is more to these dissatisfactions. People are seeking individuals who "speak their mind" (mostly for the wrong reasons).

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I want to talk here in particular about the unnerving rise of the political right form of "populism", which is currently characterized by Donald Trump and his fervent supporters.

Trump has used the fears and anger of many people to become the candidate to beat, to the worry of establishment politicians. He has fanned and manipulated his crowds by playing the victim, the resolute winner, and the epitome of American wealth and success all at once.

At this point, how will the establishment right unseat him? Some suggest an open Republican convention in July. Then, the decision of many voters will be questioned by a small part of the GOP, while Trump has already suggested that there might be riots. He is truly a master at manipulation.

Amidst this almost cultic rise, many have compared Trump and his ascent to Nazi Germany. Sure, Trump has presented himself as a one-man authority figure with a knack for creating his own version of the truth. He also has a voter base willing to resort to violence and has only given a limited insight into how he will "Make America Great Again". Yet, does he really have that much in common with a genocidal lunatic who willfully attempted to erase an entire people? Hopefully we will never have to answer that question.



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Instead, our human history can shed light on how politicians, particularly those with a tenuous relationship with the truth and a flair for the dramatic, manipulate the wider masses. These individuals pushed the weaknesses and fears of others and turned them into an opportunity for themselves to access the highest forms of power.

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Bust of Julius Caesar via Wikimedia Commons

Let me use Julius Caesar as a loose comparative example (appropriate as we have observed the Ides of March), while keeping in mind that he was actually an able military tactician and leader, an eloquent speaker, and an experienced politician. Trump obviously lacks on several fronts here, but the relationship between these two individuals and the wider populace were/are astoundingly brilliant.

Caesar was a political careerist in the first century BC. He used his name, family wealth, and persona to project a sense of self-importance and success. We know of various instances where he went out of his way to inflame the public. For instance, he used his aunt's funeral to praise her while also proclaiming himself as a descendant of the fourth King of Rome and the goddess Venus. Caesar used his military experience and intermittent returns to politics to strengthen himself in the public limelight, always gaining more notoriety. However, one of his most brilliant exploits was a marriage for the ages. He married the daughter of a well-known general and politician (Quintus Pompey) who was also the granddaughter of Sulla, a conflicting statesman who took over Rome with force as a dictator.

Caesar's intermittent political growth is significant to those who study the past, but let us take a look at events that he manipulated to widen his popularity with the people. When Pompey's triumphant return from wars in the eastern Mediterranean was seen as a possible turn to dictatorships, Caesar stoked the popular sentiment up to the point of threatened violence.

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Similarly, when Caesar used a military opportunity as an excuse to avoid his debt of over twenty million denarii, he strengthened his image in Rome as a victor. Later he used his political position to weaken his opponents by claiming that they were hiding behind their legislative loopholes, demanding that debates and procedures were released to the public for the first time in Rome.

After many victories, conquests, and plunders across Europe, Caesar's gains had taken a toll on the pockets of the rich in Rome. They chose to prosecute Caesar, leading him to cross the Rubicon. This crossing into Italy with an army behind him was a serious affront. Despite that the establishment had pushed Caesar through procedures and threats of exile, he used the love of the people and his veteran army to eventually become an even stronger titan. His undoing was his disenfranchisement of the Roman nobility. Senators, from noble stock, eventually accosted Julius Caesar on the Senate floor and murdered him; a typical move in antiquity.

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How does Caesar relate to Donald Trump? Well, they both use the poor (or poorly educated in modern cases) to forward their own agenda. They have exploited their name and wealth. They also rocked entrenched establishment politicians and patrons. Their careers have been propelled upwards through an exploitation of others. Their names are a brand synonymous with "success" (and sometimes steaks and failed airlines) which blinds their loyal supporters from their other weaknesses.

Such individuals did not truly "speak their mind". Instead, they used public sentiment to their benefit.

Perhaps, our biggest fault is that Trump was not taken seriously for too long. Until recently, there has been a puzzling lack of emphasis regarding his rise as a demagogue, someone who willfully foments his crowds but then backs away from responsibility when prodded. On the other hand, we should also keep in mind that the establishment right is only voicing their dissent because they have lost control of the fates of their party.

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Throughout his campaign, Bernie Sanders seems like he has been holding back.

It's like he has been afraid of the S-word: Socialism.

Sure, he has flirted with it, dabbled in it, and tiptoed around it. But he has not thrown down and gone all in with it.

No doubt, Bernie's fear of the S-word is for good reason. After all, most if not all of us associate "socialism" with being "bad," "un-American," and "against freedom." Boo, hiss!

Ever since the first "Red Scare" 100 years ago, we have been subjected to relentless campaigns to frighten us into believing that social movements to protect ordinary citizens, the workers, pose some sort of a radical threat to our free society.

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Hm. It's funny how we could become so thoroughly convinced of something when that something is such a disadvantage to us while simultaneously being such a great advantage to the corporate ruling class promulgating it.

How in the world could we have fallen for that?

But Bernie must know all too well the potential backlash from proposing socialistic solutions. He has championed causes of protecting ordinary workers for decades now as what he calls a "democratic socialist." So we are not even talking about the kind of hearty socialism where the government owns the means of production, like the factories, farms, and banks. Not even close. We are only talking about a society that simply protects the working people against exploitation by the vast power of the corporate ruling class. It's like "socialism lite." Actually, it's more like democracy than socialism.

Just as the notion of any sort of socialism has been beaten out of us, the notion must also have been beaten out of Bernie that any sort of a socialist, even a lite democratic socialist, could ever be elected president.

So Bernie backed-off. He only put one toe into the water. He did not really provide us with a grand vision and a big solution to our problems.

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Now, Bernie's candidacy is in trouble. His opponent Hillary Clinton has won 18 primary states compared to only 9 states for Bernie, and the pundits are chattering that Hillary has pulled so far ahead that Bernie may not be able to catch her.

So Bernie is on his last leg here. If he does not shake things up with his campaign right now, then it's curtains for Bernie. His noble candidacy is about to be swept into the dustbin of history, never to be heard from again.

So c'mon Bernie! Don't give up yet! Make one last stand! Give it one last push! It's worth a shot!

In fact, there is one last thing that Bernie could attempt to keep his candidacy alive, and maybe even turn it around. And that is that Bernie could let loose!

He could stop holding back and instead allow his inner democratic socialist to burst free into the open and sing his heart song for all to hear.

And there is a real opportunity here.

Bernie ignited an explosive movement all across this nation with his candidacy. He put his finger directly on the pulse of America with his focus on the biggest issue of our time, namely, income inequality. This catapulted Bernie out of obscurity and onto the national stage to suddenly become a real competitor to the dominant political machine of Hillary Clinton.

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This same widespread discontent among the middle and lower classes is what also catapulted Donald Trump to prominence on the Republican side. People all across the land are suffering from the disastrous effects of income inequality and they are desperate to find a candidate who will ease the burden.

Bernie took-off like a rocket because he addressed income inequality openly and directly. And people responded.

But the problem with Bernie is that he stopped short. He gave people only the first half of the loaf. He addressed the defining issue of income inequality, yes, but he failed to follow through with the second half of the loaf by proposing any meaningful solutions. So as a result, he left people high and dry, and they lost confidence that he could actually deliver results.

But it's not too late. The truth is that no candidate of either party has offered a real solution to income inequality. Some people support Trump because with no other option for a real solution, they might as well let this billionaire tyrant give it a try. And others support Hillary because with no promising proposal from a challenger, they might as well just stick with the established insider. But, amazingly, the majority of the population is not inspired by either frontrunner of their parties, Trump or Hillary.

So if any candidate from any party were to suddenly offer a viable solution to income inequality, this candidate would immediately be swept onto a real path to victory.

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This leaves Bernie with one last chance. He could come out and start vigorously advocating for a socialistic solution to income inequality.

Even though people may still be afraid of socialism, it is clear that socialism does indeed offer a very real solution for fixing income inequality. This would introduce a new element into the discourse. This would be the first time that the voters would actually hear a real solution, and this solution is clear, simple, and one that people would instantly understand.

Sure, Bernie would be mercilessly attacked with the S-word. But he could attack right back with the C-word. Capitalism.

And in this climate of economic suffering, it is quite possible that the C-word might actually have become more scary to Americans than the S-word.

The simple and obvious truth is that capitalism is what caused this problem of income inequality in America. And under our current capitalist system, the problem will indeed continue to spiral us downward. This is clear. People understand this on a very visceral level.

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America cannot compete with low-cost labor around the world. It's as simple as that. Vietnam provides labor at 65 cents an hour. We cannot compete against that. Period. Case closed. End of story. And more and more countries are becoming available locations for this sort of cheap labor. We are experiencing the globalization of capitalism. It is the inevitable future, and we cannot stop it.

If Bernie sings this tune, people will understand it instantly.

Neither Trump nor Hillary is offering a realistic solution to this problem. Trump says he will bring back jobs to America from these foreign countries. Yeah right. This obviously will not work.

Even if Trump were to magically force companies to manufacture everything in America, which, of course, he cannot do and will not do, no one would buy the American products anyway because they would be so much more expensive than the equivalent cheaper products made by foreign competitors and shipped into America.

And simply shutting down trade with the rest of the world and trying to make all products in America is obviously not an option.

Hillary's solution is no better. She opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Big whoop. Opposing this trade agreement will not improve anything inside America. Vietnam will still provide its cheap labor at 65 cents an hour, and the rest of the world will make products there that Americans will want to buy. Closing our eyes to reality will not solve the problem.

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Bernie could blast Trump and Hillary for their worthless positions, and people would understand this immediately.

Bernie could then articulate how a more socialistic approach would, in fact, solve the problem.

Sure, we would go ahead and allow American corporations to continue shifting manufacturing jobs out of America to overseas locations to utilize the cheap foreign labor. This would enable American companies to compete on a global basis.

But then, America would enact policies internally that would prevent all of the cost savings to flow into the pockets of the top corporate executives and shareholders. Instead, these profits would be required to be shared more equally among the middle and lower classes throughout America, including those Americans who lost their jobs to cheap labor overseas.

The idea is simple: Spread the wealth more fairly.

This sharing could be achieved in all sorts of ways. The middle and lower classes could receive subsidized or even free healthcare, housing, daycare, utilities, and on and on, to lower their cost of living. If we open ourselves up to sharing the wealth, the possibilities become endless for creating a more fair, free, and secure society for everyone.

It would still be possible to become rich in America. No problem. But not until the middle and lower classes are adequately provided for.

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People before profits.

So Bernie should let loose, swing for the fences, and begin advocating for this solution. It is understandable why he previously held back, but at this point, his campaign is heading off into the sunset anyway so he has absolutely nothing to lose. And he has everything to gain because people might just be ready now for this sort of solution, and it might just catch-on like wildfire.

Talk about feeling the Bern!

But if Bernie does not at least propose this choice to the American people, well, then, we will never know.
F. Stewart Kallinger is angry. A retired English teacher turned author, Kallinger has boldly channeled his outrage over teachers unjustly being blamed for failing schools and low literacy rates into a book titled, A Lesson for Ms. Fort. In the book, Kallinger allows his voice to speak for teachers unable to openly oppose Common Core standards and other academic initiatives for fear of retaliation. "I felt like I had to write this book as a protest novel," Kallinger says.

Drawing on his 31 years of experience teaching in New York City public school classrooms, Kallinger's A Lesson for Ms. Fort demonstrates why programs designed to spur student achievement through increasingly intense methods of teacher accountability are destined to fail. Kallinger categorizes his book within the creative nonfiction genre, where a nonfiction story is presented in a novel form. "It's about a fictitious teacher in a fictitious school," he explains, "but it's set in the very real context of the New York City public schools."

Over the course of his teaching career, Kallinger observed a steady decline in student aptitude. "To put it bluntly, things deteriorated," he says. "I went from teaching raw Shakespeare to 7th graders who could handle it to having students who couldn't read because they didn't know the sounds of the alphabet."

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In retirement, Kallinger took on a part-time job teaching at a consortium of three community colleges. "I thought it would be a challenge, and I was looking forward to it," he says. "Instead, I discovered to my horror that colleges are offering classes in remedial reading and writing because they have to. Low-functioning students have been pushed through the system despite their complete lack of understanding of basic concepts. Students are still struggling to read at the college level. How can this be?"

When Kallinger investigated the causes of this educational abyss, he discovered that many students were coming from dysfunctional homes, where education wasn't a priority. "Instead of coming from homes where families sat around the dinner table talking, these students were coming from empty homes," he says. "Their parents were disinterested, not around, or often in jail. In many cases, prison has not only become a way of life for these families, it's actually being glamorized. There's been a complete breakdown of the family unit."

Kallinger says this is a national issue, affecting people of all ethnicities from all areas of the country. "It's not about race and it's not about location," he says. "It's not just New York City. Colleges across America are finding it necessary to offer remedial writing, reading, and math courses, so obviously something is very wrong in our schools."

The idea of writing the book came to Kallinger while watching a State of the Union address during which President George W. Bush reprimanded teachers for poor student performance levels. "He basically said we needed better teachers," says Kallinger. "I thought to myself, 'Well excuse me, Mr. President, but I'm doing the best I can.' Granted, there are some teachers who are incompetent, but the number is so miniscule, it's not a factor in this systemic failure."

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In response, Kallinger has addressed A Lesson for Ms. Fort directly to the president of the United States. "It's not for a specific president, it's for any president," Kallinger says, adding that he sent a copy of his book to each of the presidential candidates. While he did receive form "thank you" letters from a few of them, he hasn't received genuine responses from any of them. "It's frustrating," he admits. "Education should be a key issue in selecting a president."

Kallinger says his goal with the book is to help presidents and others understand that the problem goes far beyond anything teachers can be expected to accomplish in the classroom. "We need public acknowledgement by our president, by the governors of each state, and the mayors of each city, that the problem with education today is not the teachers, it's the breakdown of the family unit," he says.

Other contributing factors in this educational battle include students' ever-present cell phones. "The little social communication they do engage in is texting," says Kallinger. "They don't even have to spell out the word 'you.' It's just 'u.' 'Your' becomes 'ur.' There are no apostrophes. There's no punctuation. The little writing they are doing isn't even English."

Kallinger vows to continue to advocate for teachers. "I'm 100 percent pro-teacher," he says. "Let me tell you about the teachers I know. They work hard. They go in early and stay late. They give up their lunches and prep time to meet with parents and offer students extra help. It's bad enough that they don't get credit for all they do, but they're also being belittled, humiliated, and taking all the blame for the failure of public education when the root causes are taking place outside of the classroom."

Instead of spending millions of dollars on ineffective, teacher-centered programs like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, Kallinger proposes that money be put towards workshops led by social workers and school psychologists to reach out to failing students and their families. "They need help learning how to create stable homes," he says. "We need to show them the value of education. We have to show them a better way. People need to be aware of what's going on in the schools in this country. Only then will we be able to bring about a change."

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Article by Melissa Fales, Story Monsters Ink magazine, April 2016. Read full article and more at www.StoryMonsters.com
The Constitution of the United States of America on a wooden desk

Unless you have been sequestered for an O.J. level criminal trial for the last few years, you have probably heard that people in our country are fed-up with Washington D.C., and, ultimately, the politicians we put there. While there are a multitude of individual reasons why this has happened, there is one, overarching fault that seems to be at the heart of the seething distaste for all the bureaucratic chicanery that seems to be synonymous with government these days. Compromise has become taboo, and negotiating and the art of making is now just as derided as a pair of anti-vaxxer parent who use maple syrup as a cure for meningitis. Mmmmm. More vaccine please, mom.

"Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best." When Otto von Bismarck said this in 1867, he realized that being a politician was less about getting what you wanted and more about wanting what you got. Realpolitik was a political philosophy based on pragmatism, and it was a large part of Bismarck's mindset when he made that most famous utterance. You don't need to take the word of a long-dead Prussian statesman, though, to understand how politics work. It really just comes down to plain and simple common sense. In politics and life in general, getting everything you want is impossible, and you often have to compromise if you want to walk away with anything at all. Unfortunately, those we have sent to Washington to represent our interests have not only forgotten this in recent years, but have taken their successful election to mean that constituents would rather have the government shut down than give one inch of ground. The only other people who act like that wear diapers or have the last name Kardashian. Or both.

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You may wonder how this abandonment of responsibility is being justified. Well, politicians on both sides use the same excuse when they dig in their heels - that the core beliefs their party was built on are at stake, and it would be impossible to compromise these long-held tenants. Now, saying deliberate and forceful things like "core beliefs," and "long-held tenants" make for great sound bytes when said with authority, and, at first, it makes people want to say "yeah, right on! You tell those stupid democrats/republicans!" Unfortunately, just like almost everything else politicians say today, it requires a pretty liberal definition of "the truth" to be considered what we generally regard as fact, and by pretty liberal I mean the opposite. Here's a bombshell - the political parties you know today are not the same parties that they were 150 years ago, and they aren't even the same parties your grandfather (and possibly grandmother) voted for.

Political party platforms and names are always changing and evolving. It may surprise you to know that until 1824, there were no Democrats and no Republicans - there were only the Democratic-republicans. That went on for about fifty years, and then there was a split, and the seeds of today's two-party system were planted. Yup, both Democrats and Republicans came from the same party. When the Federalist party died out in 1820, the Democratic-Repubublican party became the grandfather of all parties from that period on. Talk about a mutual background! All politicians today share a common ancestor, unfortunately, when you watch them it's much more likely you'd think that political first cousins married. For three generations. In Chernobyl.

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Like any ancestor's line, the sides of the family have grown apart and matured individually as the years went on. When the Democratic and Republican parties separated, they evolved and the platforms they have run on have varied wildly. They even completely switched sides, at least once. Party members throughout the history of our country realized that the good of the United States demanded change, and they made compromises to effect that change. Since 1776, American political platforms have had more flip-flops than a Hawaiian Surf Shop. So, when the politicians of today claim they are duty-bound to uphold the beliefs of the party they represent, you can go ahead and call B.S. on that.

If you need a more specific example, look to the revered Founding Fathers. They made more compromises then an out of work actor to get the Constitution written and signed. When they reached an impasse, compromise was their go-to move, their old-standby - the "missionary position" of early American politics. In fact, there's even a famous one - does the phrase "Connecticut Compromise" ring a bell? If not, then you probably should have spent less time feeding your Tamagotchi and more time watching filmstrips.

1812 was a heady time in America when The War Of said year was raging, and calling someone "The Great Compromiser" wasn't a horrendously insulting slur. It was a compliment, and it was paid to Henry Clay - a representative, a senator, the Secretary of State, and someone who also argued cases in front of the Supreme Court. His ability to compromise helped hold off the civil war for another 40 years. That certainly doesn't sound like someone who was a failure in history's eyes. I'd be grateful to do even one of those things, but I'd almost certainly become a shill for big sugar. Or big Splenda (watching my figure).

So, now that you know that our country, the constitution, the two-party-system, the Civil War, and pretty much every major bill passed was based on some sort of compromise, does it change your opinion of that fiery rhetoric the candidates are spouting about "waffling," and "flip-flopping?" Being able to negotiate to get some of what you want is one of the cornerstones of the American political system, which, let's face it, hasn't worked well in years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying any one party is at fault. Both sides refuse to work with the other, and in my book that's clearly dereliction of duty. If both parties entrench themselves and threaten to take their ball and go home, all that does is leave the American People with a government that has no balls.

Somewhere along the line in the last decade or so, our representatives got it into their heads that serving the American populace means spouting taglines and recording sound bytes while sternly waggling their finger at the other side. It takes up so much time, though, that no one is governing any longer. Like him or not, a majority of the American people decided we would be best served by keeping President Obama at the helm. So, republicans refuse to work with him, and then he refuses to work with republicans, and then the democrats refuse to work with the republicans, and then the catfish - well, you get the idea. All we end with is more refusals than a novelist trying to publish "The Lighter Side of Al Qaeda - Beards & Bird Watching," and certainly less written.

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Compromise, changing someone's mind, and the art of making a deal are part and parcel of American governance, and vilifying someone who does it is the same as coming out against our current republic system of government. I decided to pen this piece after my wife became fed up with me shouting at the television "that's what they are supposed to be doing" every time some politician claimed his rival was "compromising and making deals with the other side." It's time for you to get angry, too, and tell your politicians that compromising is what makes this country great.
I have a new job. It's to explain Donald Trump to Europeans.

The only requirement is that I am American and can stroke my chin thoughtfully when someone asks me, as they now often do, how in the world do people in the US support Donald Trump?

I've been on a three-city tour, including London and Paris, and have been gratified at the response to my concise explanations, even though it's not easy to explain the rules of "The Apprentice" and describe the ersatz Spanish architecture of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, where he let Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Pressley somehow spend their honeymoon.

The British, having invented Western democracy, are of course worried about their famous colonial offspring, the United States. Having heard about the televised debates featuring Trump and his Republican rivals, they politely wonder out loud how Americans define "debate." In Britain, debates go by rules developed at Oxford University which have something to do with facts and logic and a set time for calmly and wittily making arguments.

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I respond that American debate rules, in which it is fair game to call competitors stupid and discuss the comparative size of genitalia, were established at Trump University.

The French wonder how is it that Trump's Manhattan penthouse apartment is done up in the style of Louis XIV and his Versailles palace. Does this mean a President Trump would oppress Protestants, invade Holland and rule for 72 years like Louis did?

I answer that although The Donald and the Sun King share tastes in gold, marble and chandeliers, Trump is mostly concerned with insulting Mexicans and invading China and anyway, he is not married to the pious daughter of the King of Spain but to a Slovenian model who has appeared practically naked on magazine covers. Also, Trump is already too old to rule 72 years. Maybe a couple dozen.

Italians are naturally concerned with the bruta figura (bad form) of Trump's public appearances and his appeal to violence. But in some ways, the Italians beat Americans to Trump territory. Italy's most dominant politician of the past 20 years was Silvio Berlusconi, who like Trump is a gazillionaire and a former cruise ship entertainer who mastered television performances. He habitually loved and left comely women and has had two wives. That's just one behind Donald! His current squeeze is a Neapolitan lady 49 years younger than him, but so far, they are just "partners."

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While not habitually as vulgar as Trump, Berlusconi once called Angela Merkel (trigger warning!!) an "unf#ckable lard ass." His main rhetorical tactic was to frontally attack the traditional Italian ruling class and call people who didn't like him Commies.

Presently, the main Italian opposition political group is the brainchild of a comedian whose off-the-cuff rants most resemble Trump's. His favorite public speaking phrase is vaffa, which loosely means (trigger warning No. 2) f#ck off. He campaigns on the notion that all current Italian politicians should go home.

In fact, what I notice running around Europe is how many mini-Trumps are at large and how often their main platform is to express discontent with their ineffectual rulers of the past two decades or so. Hard to argue with that. A lot of it has to do with uncontrolled migrant flows into Europe, a continent-wide economic stagnation, chronic unemployment and general dithering. And anti-immigrant European politicians were campaigning to ban Muslim immigration long before Trump.

Here's a sample of stuff that could easily please a Trump rally:

A follower of Nigel Farage, the anti-immigrant politician in the UK, blamed heavy rainstorms on gay marriage legislation. Make the UK Great Again!

Marine LePen, the right-wing leader in France, once said, "Tolerance? What does that mean? I am a very tolerant and hospitable person, like you. Would you accept twelve illegal immigrants moving into your flat? You would not!" Make France Grande Again!

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Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban, said of migrant flows, "The borders of Europe must be closed." Make the Austro-Hungarian Empire...Again!

Frauke Petry, the head of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party has suggested police must "use firearms if necessary" to prevent illegal border crossings. Make Germany...hmmm, maybe not!!

And a fascist party, black uniforms and all, has entered parliament following a vote in Slovakia. Wherever that is!
Say what you will about the spooky Central Intelligence Agency (and God help us, the list of accusations is as long as your arm), but the crime that should make the CIA the most stunningly laughable agency in administrative history is "impersonating an ultra-competent governmental body."

In truth, the CIA owes its vaunted reputation to one source: Hollywood's movie studios. The way the movies portray America's clandestine services goes so far beyond mere "exaggeration" or embellishment, it verges on outright hero worship, stubbornly confusing James Woolsey with James Bond. Alas, if our intel-gathering networks were a fraction as accomplished as Hollywood portrays them to be, we wouldn't have been mired in Vietnam or Iraq.

Just consider the record. This "ultra-competent" spy organization embarrassed itself by not seeing the imminent dissolution of the USSR until a week or two before it happened--basically about the same time that foreign correspondents working for various media outlets found out about it. In other words, the end of the decades-long Cold War was as much of a shock to the CIA as it was to the rest of us.

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Or consider the Iranian Revolution that occurred during the Carter administration. Not to overstate it, but it has to be said that the CIA never saw this one coming. Had the CIA been able to assess the volatility of the situation--had their trusted intelligence sources been worth the money we taxpayers were paying them--those Iranian "students" wouldn't have overrun the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and those embassy employees wouldn't have been held hostage for 444 days.

Or take Cuba, the little island in the Caribbean that became the bane of our existence for half a century. In his history of the CIA ("Legacy of Ashes") Tim Weiner notes that even though placing spies within Fidel Castro's inner circle was one of the Agency's critical "priorities" going all the way back to the Kennedy administration, they failed utterly in the attempt.

Not only were they unable to install a singly spy in the Cuban government, but over the span of roughly 22 years, every CIA operative sent to Cuba became a double-agent. As mind-blowing as that seems, according to Weiner, it's an absolute fact. Every spy we sent to Cuba to spy on Castro was turned into a "Fidelista" to spy on us. Not exactly James Bondian in its implications, no?

To those who think we're being too tough on the CIA, and argue that international spy-craft is way more difficult and demanding than we make it out to be, let us consider a case a bit closer to home. In fact, let us consider an episode that occurred not only on U.S. soil, but one that occurred right inside the CIA's own shop.

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Of course, we're speaking of the infamous Aldrich Ames, the CIA agent who was found to be selling secrets to the Soviet Union. What made this debacle so outrageous was the Agency's unbelievable incompetence in "breaking" the case. Indeed, if Hollywood were to produce a film tracing Ames's traitorous career, it would be too preposterous to be believed.

To make a long story short, Ames had dropped so many obvious clues, a blind could have seen them. Although his civil service salary was $60,000 a year, he was able to purchase a $500,000 home, a $50,000 Jaguar, a closet filled with custom-tailored clothing, and a credit card whose monthly fee was greater than his monthly salary.

Ames was also an alcoholic, a man who reportedly would be drunk at his desk before noon. In other words, not what one in the clandestine service would consider a "tough nut to crack." But it took the CIA forever to figure out that this guy was selling secrets to the Soviets. This 31-year counterintelligence officer was finally arrested, in 1994, after a decade of selling top secrets.
Conventional wisdom in the United States holds that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are right to enter the chaos defining Syria's civil war. After all, this is their region of the world, not ours. Yet the fallout could have dangerous implications for NATO, of which the United States is the dominant member.

Saudi Arabia has already sent troops and weapons, including fighter jets, to NATO-member Turkey's Incirlik air base. While the move highlights Saudis' anxiety over what's taking place on the ground in Syria, the desert kingdom's military leaders fail to grasp the perils ahead. Saudi Arabia and Turkey could easily provoke Russian military resistance, given Russia's own extensive military involvement in war-torn Syria.

I'm convinced Russia would escalate tensions if and when its fighter jets come under attack from advanced weapons purchased by Saudis from the United States, including surface-to-air missiles. Worse, if Turkey is supplying weapons and sanctuary for Saudi fighters, it could spark a full-scale NATO-Russia confrontation, embroiling yet other nations.

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Such provocation by Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- both Sunni-led nations -- provides Russia some justification for deploying, if it hasn't already, far more sophisticated weapons, including its fifth generation fighter jets, advanced S-500 missile defense systems, and other high powered weaponry. Result: Syria becomes the battleground of a war pitting NATO powers against Russia. Imagine the toll in this horrifying scenario.

Let's look deeper at Russia's geopolitical motives, shall we? Russia's involvement in Syria goes beyond supporting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad or fighting ISIS terrorists. Rather, it aims at dividing NATO and destroying Syrian rebels supported not only by the United States but also by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And don't discount the role Iran, a Shiite power, plays in all this. It provides fighters and military leaders on the ground in Syria to plan attacks against the rag-tag rebels seeking Assad's overthrow.

Of note: Iran recently purchased advanced Russian fighter jets and missile defense systems; all the reasons why the Saudis and Turks' military engagement in Syria will only result in more causalities and collateral damage, but no decisive winner.

With Turkey and Saudi Arabia expressing their intention of getting involved in this bloodbath, Russia and Iran will seize the opportunity to cement their alliance and further their own objectives, despite opposite trajectories. Are the Saudis and Turks biting off more than they can chew? Are they foolishly betting that Russia will suffer the same fate it had in Afghanistan in the 1980s?

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Or are the Saudis and Turks being drawn into a trap with no way out? The answer to these questions depends on who you ask from both sides of the Atlantic.

Conversations swirling in Brussels and other Western capitals pivot on whether Turkey is actually pursuing yet another agenda -- targeting the neighboring Kurds -- rather than bolstering NATO interests such as limiting Russia's expansion and fighting ISIS terrorism. NATO leadership fears that whatever Turkey's motives are, it could trigger a major confrontation with Russia. Meanwhile, Russia is moving forward with its own plans targeting Syrian rebels.

One thing you can bet on: Russia will not withdraw from Syria until a political settlement regarding the future of Syria is achieved to its own satisfaction.

One must wonder what truly motivates Saudi Arabia and Turkey to embark on such a risky military venture that could (and would) soon turn into a bloody war without easy end. The Saudis and Turks want to ensure that Sunni rebels prevail (which I do not foresee) while at the same time sending a message to Iran that they will challenge Tehran's geopolitical aspirations.

In any case, this alliance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia will probably be short-lived. If history is any guide, Arab leaders talk more and act less; their sabre-rattling summits and conferences seldom amount to much. But all are mistaken if they think Russia will stand by and watch as Saudi and Turk ground troops march toward Damascus.

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Of note: Mr. Putin threatens to use tactical nuclear weapons against Turkey if it launches a ground invasion of Syria.

This leads me to ask one specific question: Is Turkey, a NATO member, supposed military adventure in Syria aim at achieving its Sunni sectarian objectives? If so, could this explain why the Saudis are willing to sacrifice their own troops (unusual approach given its history of taking the back seat while letting US troops do the fighting for it) in support of this objective? The answer is yes to both questions.

One thing is certain: the quagmire in Syria could quickly turn into a global war. For now, I argue that both Saudi Arabia and Turkey want to get involved for different reasons. For the former, it's an ideological spat against Iran to avoid the expansion of Shi'ism. For the latter, it's the targeting of the Kurds once for all.
If you ask me why CSH chose to pursue the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) housing-health initiative and also SIF Pay for Success - the answer is DATA and SCALABILITY.

For 25 years, CSH has worked with government and organizations to create supportive housing - affordable housing with services to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in our country.

As a result of our work we can point to reductions in chronic homelessness in communities across the country. And we can cite the cost savings associated with housing someone with chronic health issues as opposed to allowing them to continue utilizing costly crisis health services.

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For over two decades we funded or participated in countless local studies that bolstered the hypothesis that it is less expensive for someone to be housed and have access to services than to repeatedly access a hospital emergency room or frequent the county jail.

And we built a reservoir of real examples of people whose lives were changed because of supportive housing, like a gentleman who likes to be called Popeye.

Popeye is now in supportive housing because of SIF.

But before SIF he lived most of his adult life on the side of a highway in Pasadena. He was so well known to passing motorists; a local radio station once described him as a landmark in a traffic report.

Local hospital workers and first responders also knew Popeye very well. In the course of just one year Popeye had visited the hospital emergency room or a clinic 63 times. 63 times in one year!

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One day, intoxicated and high, Popeye wondered from the side of the road into traffic and was hit by an oncoming car. He spent two months recovering in a hospital and two weeks of that extended stay in a coma.

The costs associated with his healthcare were astronomical.

Fortunately, after leaving the hospital, Popeye was introduced to SIF and supportive housing and his life changed immediately.

He was off the side of the freeway, safe, a roof over his head. He went into recovery from his addictions, getting the treatments he needed. He found a part-time job. He reconnected with family, including a grown son he had only seen when the boy was a baby and a granddaughter he never knew.

Now his short visits to medical facilities average just 3 times a year.

If CSH had so much research and experience then what would we gain from participating in SIF? Complete data!

We had plenty of local evaluations from communities throughout the country including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Columbus and Maine but what we didn't have was a multi-site rigorous evaluation.



Participating in SIF is providing us with a multi-site randomized controlled trial evaluation or as I fondly refer to it - The Holy Grail.

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Now when we advocate for supportive housing among federal, state and local agencies and make the case for supportive housing as a platform for improving health outcomes - we will be armed with a multi-site evaluation that is part of the SIF federal initiative.

I can tell lots of stories about Popeye and people like Popeye but what often compels decision makers to act is the data. Of the over 570 people housed through our SIF initiative, 91% are still in affordable housing and 85% have access to the primary care they need.

Scalability is what attracted us to the other SIF signature, Pay for Success. We see Pay for Success as a vehicle for scaling supportive housing.

It changes the way government allocates resources by investing in what works.

It increases accountability in the provider community by setting metrics.
I was disturbed with some of the recent disparaging comments women were making about other women in regards to voting based on gender. Especially women my age and older talking down to younger women. I believe that women should always support women. However, we fought hard for our feminist rights. We continue to fight for our rights. We need women to have equal pay, a place at the C suite, a seat in the board room and so much more.

My work is focused on disability inclusion, accessibility and empowering persons with disabilities. According to the World Health Organization there are over 1 billion people with disabilities in the world or 1 in 7 people. Some countries like the United States are higher. According to the Census Bureau, 1 in 5 persons with the United States are living with a disability. One in five American adults have at least one kind of disability, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Released in July 2015. The study, drawn from 2013 data, says 53 million Americans have a disability. "We know disability types and related challenges can vary," said Elizabeth Courtney-Long, a health scientist with CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. "In order to understand and address their needs, we need to understand their diverse circumstances. This report provides a snapshot into that. The Report can be found here

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Women and girls with disabilities face even bigger barriers and are the victims of two-fold discrimination: as women and as persons with disabilities. Studies conducted by the United Nations women with disabilities are often invisible "both among those promoting the rights of persons with disabilities, and those promoting gender equality and the advancement of women."

Women with disabilities all over the world are shamed, bullied, raped, murdered and treated as if they do not matter. It is past time for all women to be empowered and to support all genders.

Women with disabilities all over the world are shamed, bullied, raped, murdered and treated as if they do not matter. It is past time for all women to be empowered and to support all genders. I have the honor to work with Rosemary Musachio, a brilliant woman and also the Chief Strategic Officer at Ruh Global Communications. Rosemary happens to have been born with Cerebral Palsy. Rose shared her thoughts on this topic with me recently, this is what she said:

"Steinem's quote is a generalization, which is often detrimental and even dangerous. Her remark may stereotype younger women in a bad light, not caring about anything except self-gratification. If society acquaints this negative image with women who were born after 1990, they may not receive support from other women. They also may not get opportunities that they deserve.



Being a woman with cerebral palsy, I've experienced the repercussions of generalization all of my life. The public still automatically links having a disability with not being a productive member of society or my mind being in a wheelchair. Because of this, I constantly have to fight to prove myself. Now, because of Steinem's comment, millennial women may have to fight to prove themselves." - Rosemary Musachio, Chief Strategic Officer at Ruh Global Communications

As an undecided voter, I fought for my feminist right to decide on a candidate based on the issues not based on gender. I am also embarrassed of women my age and older telling younger women they don't understand the fight for equal rights for women. Once while attending a conference for Women Global Leaders, I was talking with several other attendees. One guest brought up how we should be mentoring the younger generation in business leadership. Maybe we could create a program to help millennial women engage with other women on these issues. Several of the women agreed that they would not want to take part in mentoring millennial women. I recall one woman describing young millennials as spoiled, self centered, socially immature and addicted to their devices. I was shocked and commented, "How can you say that? We have fought so hard for women to have a voice. We still have so much work to do."

How can we decide this of an entire generation? Younger women are not adding value, contributing to the conversation, understand the past fights and are immature? I am personally hooked on social media and my smart devices. I chatter so much on social media about disability inclusion and accessibility for all, that I sometimes stress myself out. The millennial women that I have met are almost always amazing leaders trying to make a huge impact for our world.

As a woman in my late 50's I meet and work with millennial women all the time. I see many Millennial women highly engaged in social good, social entrepreneurship and "Be-the-Change" type activities. I have met millennial women, including women with disabilities, all over the world that are sacrificing everything to be included. I believe we did not fight this hard for women's rights to now decide that millennial women do not care for our rights or past efforts. When I speak to young women, they are proud of those who fought for their rights. They look up to these women and it must have really hurt them to hear these comments. I asked the opinion of my Creative Director, Emily Ha. She is a millennial woman whose opinions I've come to value. Here's what she had to say:

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"I am a first generation Burmese-American woman who works in the realm of disability inclusion. I advocate for women with disabilities because we all matter and when I say that I'm talking about millennial women as well. Their viewpoint is very unique and at times overlooked. Giving a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves is what I try to do. I appreciate the struggles of so many human rights advocates from the past, more than I can express. That being said, I am wary of being quick to side with any blanket statement, and certainly don't appreciate being labeled for having an opinion that may be different. Everyone of us is unique, our experiences and lives differ. Saying that all of one type is like this or that is reductive thinking. Aiding a stereotypical societal view, and one I don't support. Understanding one another and where people are coming from is tough, but step one is to simply listen before casting judgments. Wouldn't you assume the same respect of a stranger meeting you for the first time? Young women are still having to fight those that would limit their voices, freedoms, and equalities. Some Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers have unfairly awarded millennial's such epithets as "entitled, naive, coddled, uninformed, lazy, ungrateful, and attention-crazed". Some even consider millennials to be Tech Savvy to a fault.. But is the vilification fair? We've evolved past this ignorance, and we need to stand by our progress. We should also remember that generational clashes are nothing new. Many past generations of emerging adults have sparked angst and disdain in their predecessors. Even the Baby Boomers had once been labeled the "Me Generation". Perhaps it's time we break this pattern and embrace what we each might uniquely offer. - Emily Ha, Creative Director at Ruh Global Communications

We have so many issues to resolve in our world including civil rights for persons with disabilities, climate change, religious freedoms, discrimination, violence and many more issues. I believe it is critical to mentor, empower and encourage younger generations. My generation should support all women of all ages, especially women with disabilities to help them continue to find their voices and join these empowering conversations. Otherwise we may accidentally send the wrong message to others. For example, what messages are we giving to men of all ages especially millennial men? I asked my son, Kevin Ruh a millennial to voice his opinions on this matter.

"Following the campaign news can be tedious. It seems fraught with needless drama and pandering for pandering's sake. It is a time when we form opinions on who we would like to see become the leader of this country for four years into the future. There are times when I have made quick leaps of faith that people will think the same way as me. At times I am correct, at others I'm dead wrong. Listening to every word out of every potential candidates mouth is not only impossible, but maddening. When someone comes out and makes a late statement, a defining principle, then it is time to really pay attention. Some lost my vote early on by spreading bigoted ideals. I simply cannot support a candidate who is so close minded to human and race relations. When someone tells me that my vote is set to one candidate based on sex they lose my confidence, I support a woman's right to chose for herself as much as I support anyone's self choices. We need to stop falling back into archaic ways, stay alert and listen when it really matters, support the change you want. - Kevin Ruh, Chief Marketing Officer, at Ruh Global Communications

Women should support each other but never take away the right for another woman to vote for someone that has a different gender or opinion than us. Let's not bully other women that is so sad to watch. Instead we should encourage younger women to find their voice, to have a place at the podium, to fight for their right to decide for themselves. Everyone matters including people like me that are older but please also understand that the Millennials are an amazing generation and they have the ability to change the world and help us evolve.

I am a woman that supports other women. I am a woman that will decide who to vote for based on the candidate that I feel will best lead our country. I am a woman that values diversity. I am a woman that believes that women with disabilities add great value to the world. I am a woman that can think for herself. I am an older woman that is PROUD to work with Millennials to help make the world a more empowering place for all women including women with disabilities. Join us in helping assure that everyone has an empowering voice in our societies especially women and girls with disabilities.
Earlier this month, allegedly mentally ill Kyle Odom shot pastor Tim Remington in Idaho because he "knew" the pastor was a Martian. In his untreated delusional state, Kyle then flew to Washington, D.C. and started throwing his possessions over the White House fence to get the president's attention so he could inform him about all the other Martians in government, including Senators Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Roger Wicker, and Patty Murray.

Congress should learn from episodes like that. Yet at the same time Kyle went on his mission, Senators Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.) went on theirs. They revealed a discussion draft of their Mental Health Reform [sic] Act of 2016 (S. 2680), and on March 16, succeeded in having the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee pass it. While no one doubts their good intentions, it is perhaps the worst mental health bill ever conceived, a pretend mental health bill. It pretends to help by creating a rudderless hodgepodge of studies, reports, commissions, and added bureaucracy that would do nothing to help people like Kyle.

John Snook, of the Treatment Advocacy Center, an organization focused on improving care for the seriously mentally ill, told Modern Healthcare, "If this were to pass as is, it would be of no benefit to [people with] severe mental illness." Mental-illness-policy advocate, blogger, and former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley wrote, "The Senate has now set a low standard."

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Alexander and Murray should know better. There are plenty of bills floating around that include useful provisions. Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) introduced the Mental Health and Safe Community Act of 2015 (S2002) specifically to reduce violence by the most seriously mentally ill. It encourages states to use assisted outpatient treatment (AOT). Assisted outpatient treatment is only for a tiny group of the most seriously ill who have already accumulated multiple episodes of violence, arrest, homelessness, incarceration, or hospitalization because they refused to stay in treatment. It allows judges to order them into six months of mandated and monitored treatment while they continue to live in the community. It is the only program with independent research showing it reduces homelessness, arrest, incarceration and violence in the 70 percent range.

Senators Alexander and Murray also ignored provisions in the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 (S. 1945), proposed by Senators Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) and Bill Cassidy (R., Louisiana). That bill would slightly ameliorate the federal proscription on using Medicaid mental health funds for those who are so seriously mentally ill they need hospitalization. New York City Police commissioner William Bratton recently described the lack of hospital beds as the top difficulty for officers who are called to assist the seriously mentally ill. Alexander and Murray expressed support for these provisions but claimed they are outside their committee's jurisdiction.

But Alexander and Murray also ignored all the extraordinary work of Representative Tim Murphy (R., Pa.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas) in the House. They introduced the bipartisan Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 2646), which would eliminate wasteful, counterproductive federally-funded mental "wellness" programs and reallocate the savings to programs that are proven to help the most seriously mentally ill. H.R. 2646 would start by defanging the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), perhaps the most useless bureaucracy in Washington. Its own employees rated it one of the worst federal agencies. SAMHSA funds anti-psychiatrists who lobby Congress, encourages states to use federal mental illness funds on people who don't have mental illness, certifies as "evidence-based" programs that don't help the mentally ill, and wastes money. There is no support for it other than from those who receive funds from it. Alexander and Murray added more bureaucracy rather than taking a scalpel to it. Their committee should have done better.

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Alexander and Murray ignored fixing the provisions in HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996), a patient privacy law that prevents families that provide housing and case-management services to mentally ill loved ones from receiving the same information that paid providers receive. Families that are prohibited from communicating with doctors cannot ensure that prescriptions are filled or transportation to appointments arranged or take other actions to prevent tragedy. Instead of fixing the problems within HIPAA, Alexander and Murray layered on new regulations and money, to educate service providers as to what HIPAA is supposed to really mean.

The problem with this approach, is that if Congress passes this bill, it will feel it "did something" when all it really did was ignore addressing the needs of the most seriously mentally ill.

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act is the best bill in Congress if the goal is to use taxpayer funds efficiently, help people like Kyle, and keep patients, the public, and police safer. The bill has massive support, except from those who want to keep their SAMHSA funding in place and those who defend the right of the psychotic to stay psychotic.

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act has the support of 135 Republicans and 50 Democrats. But 11 recalcitrant Democrats are holding up passage and, to accommodate them, Representatives Fred Upton (R., Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R., Penn.) are so far refusing to let the bill come to a vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee. They should bring it to an up-or-down vote immediately.

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While Congress dithers, persons with serious mental illness are going untreated, needlessly suffering, stabbing innocent people in New York, shooting a pastor in Idaho, and throwing foreign objects over the White House fence. Most persons with mental illness, even serious mental illness, are not violent, but we can't ignore those who are. Only when H.R. 2646 passes the House and a companion bill passes the Senate will the madness start to subside.

D. J. Jaffe is executive director of Mental Illness Policy Org., a non-partisan think tank on serious mental illness.
FILE - In this July 27, 2013, file photo, North Korean soldiers turn and look towards their leader Kim Jong Un as they carry packs marked with the nuclear symbol as they parade during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea claims to have tested its first H-bomb on Jan. 6, the day after the Department of Defense report came out. That claim has been disputed, but there is no doubt it has some nuclear weaponsa capability and its technicians are hard at work improving the nuclear weapons in quantity and quality. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

Yet again North Korea has angered "the world." Pyongyang recently violated another United Nations ban, launching a satellite into orbit. The Japanese UN ambassador spoke of "outrage" on the Security Council. Washington led the campaign to sanction the North.

Announced UN Ambassador Samantha Power: "The accelerated development of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program poses a serious threat to international peace and security--to the peace and security not just of North Korea's neighbors, but the peace and security of the entire world."

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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a bad actor. It is hard to imagine anyone -- certainly its neighbors, but also the U.S. -- looking with favor on further enhancements to the DPRK's weapons arsenal.

Yet inflating the North Korean threat also doesn't serve America's interests. The U.S. has the most powerful military on earth, including 7100 nuclear warheads and almost 800 ICBMs/SLBMs/nuclear-capable bombers. Absent evidence of a suicidal impulse in Pyongyang, there's little reason for Washington to fear a North Korean attack. And members of the Kim dynasty long have wanted their virgins in this world, not the next.

Moreover, the North is surrounded by nations with nuclear weapons (China, Russia) and missiles (those two plus Japan and South Korea). Even if the Kim Jong-un regime was a more normal authoritarian system, it would have no reason to respect the fundamental hypocrisy of a nonproliferation system enforced by existing nuclear powers. As a "shrimp among whales," any Korean government could reasonably desire to possess the ultimate weapon.

Finally, Pyongyang apparently sent up a satellite. Of course, there is good reason to suspect that Pyongyang's launch was really a missile test. (The two are different: a rocket only goes up, while a missile must also come down under control.) However, the DPRK can claim legitimate reasons for sending a satellite into orbit: "It must be very frustrating, and frightening, for the generals in Pyongyang to know that the enemy can see what they are up to, but they can't reciprocate," wrote NK News' Tim Beal. He noted that even Laos wanted its own satellite. North Korea at least can claim as justification something more than antagonism toward the rest of the world.

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Under such circumstances, allied complaints about the North Korean test sounded an awful lot like whining. For two decades U.S. presidents have said that Pyongyang cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. It has done so. Assertions that the DPRK cannot be allowed to deploy ICBMs sound no more credible.

After all, the UN Security Council took its time drafting new sanctions after the January nuclear test. While China agreed that a response was necessary, it insisted that any new measures not destabilize the peninsula. Which means they will not threaten the Kim regime's survival. Yet only that offers any chance of inducing Pyongyang to desist.

Even so, the North is unlikely to yield. So far Pyongyang appears to have taken the measure of its large neighbor. After the purported satellite launch, the Chinese foreign ministry explained that it was "extremely concerned" and urged the North to exercise "restraint." Yet the Kim regime announced its satellite launch on the same day that it reported the visit of Chinese envoy Wu Dawei, who handles Korean affairs. When he returned to Beijing he told reporters that he had "said what must be said, did what must be done." The trip appeared to result in another insulting rebuff for Beijing, dramatic evidence of China's impotence in the face of North Korean intransigence.

Despite U.S. criticism, the People's Republic of China has reason to fear disintegration of the North Korean regime: loss of political influence and economic investments, possible mass refugee flows, violent factional combat, and loose nukes, and creation of a reunified Korea hosting American troops on China's border. Moreover, Beijing blames the U.S. for creating the hostile security environment which encourages the North to develop WMDs. Why should Beijing sacrifice its interests to solve a problem of its chief global adversary's making? So far Washington has failed to convince Beijing to act.

Thus, the U.S. and its allies have no better alternatives in dealing with Pyongyang today than they did last month after the nuclear test and before that after the rest of North Korea's many provocations. War would be foolhardy, sanctions are a dead-end, and China remains unpersuaded.

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The only alternative that remains is some form of engagement with the DPRK. After all, the North appears to desire such contact. Cho Han-bum of the Korea Institute for National Unification argued that the North was attempting to force talks with America. Pyongyang originally stated that it planned its missile launch between February 8th and 25th, "Which indicates their intent to create a negotiating environment." However, Washington showed no interest in negotiation, so the DPRK launched.

Of course, no one should bet on negotiating away North Korea's weapons. If nothing else, Pyongyang watched American and European governments oust Libya's Moammar Khadafy after, in its view, at least, he foolishly traded away his nuclear weapons and missiles. Nevertheless, there are things which the North wants, such as direct talks with America, a peace treaty, and economic assistance. Moreover, the DPRK, rather like Burma's reforming military regime, appears to desire to reduce its reliance on Beijing. This creates an opportunity for the U.S. and its allies.

Perhaps negotiation would temper the North's worst excesses. Perhaps engagement would encourage domestic reforms. Perhaps a U.S. initiative would spur greater Chinese pressure on Pyongyang. Perhaps not. But current policy has failed.

Yet again the North has misbehaved. Yet again the allies are talking tough.

Samantha Power insisted that "we cannot and will not allow" the North to develop "nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles." State Department spokesman John Kirby said the North's "disregard for UN Security Council obligations will not be tolerated." A South Korean official promised "searing consequences" for the North.

However, yet again Washington is only doing what it has done before. Unfortunately, the same policy will yield the same result as before. It is time to try something different.
When actor Charlie Sheen appeared on the Today Show to reveal his positive HIV diagnosis, he shared the stage with his physician of four years: Dr. Robert Huizenga. While watching, I was struck by the relationship between patient and doctor, because it is one I have seen countless times throughout my own medical career. Huizenga appeared not only as a physician, but also as a source of emotional support for his patient. His presence was a visible comfort to Sheen, and it was obvious that the two had forged a strong and lasting bond over the course of treatment. Most of all, he ensured that Sheen didn't have to face this moment alone.

For the HIV positive patient, a good doctor is far more than just a healthcare provider. He or she is a constant ally in what will be a lifelong fight held on numerous fronts: emotional, legal, bureaucratic, and of course, medical. The special bond that HIV patients (and others who suffer from chronic illnesses) share with their doctors is more than just unique and therapeutic. It is an essential part of the treatment process.



But this bond is being broken for many in New York, as discriminatory out-of-network restrictions on individual healthcare continue to separate HIV positive patients from the doctors they depend on. While our governor says that New York stands at the forefront of HIV treatment, we are in fact one of only three states in the union where these restrictions exist (the others are New Hampshire and Massachusetts).

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As an immunologist and HIV specialist who has been treating patients since the dark days of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, I have continually witnessed the power of the doctor-patient relationship in effective care of this disease. I had seen some of these relationships grow for upwards of 30 years--until 2013, when the Affordable Care Act changed everything. While the ACA has had many positive consequences, there has been a glaring error in its execution here in New York. In order to attract a greater number of individual insurers, the state health department wholly eliminated requirements for out-of-network coverage on individual health plans. In the short-term, this has made our healthcare exchange among the nation's most successful. But it has also risked the health of many vulnerable citizens. Put simply, these restrictions mean that patients who purchase their own healthcare plans on the individual marketplace cannot see any specialists who are not on the in-network provider list. This legislative decision is shattering decades of work for New York's HIV patients--tearing them apart from their long-time doctors and leaving them to fend for themselves in networks with critical shortages of HIV specialists.

You may ask: why don't more HIV specialists go in-network? I tried, and it simply does not work. On top of having treatment plans second-guessed by insurers at every turn, paltry in-network reimbursements required me to see three to four patients in a single hour in order to keep the lights on. No matter how you look at it, 15 minutes is just not enough time to treat this disease. This kind of timeframe not only eliminates the benefits of the doctor-patient relationship, it creates an environment in which things are missed--with potentially fatal consequences. HIV is variable and needs someone with a profound depth of knowledge and experience to recognize a trend, a shift in someone's condition, or something else unexpected coming down the road. This is why I had to leave the networks, and it is why I now see around 10% of my long-term patients pro bono. If I don't, I leave them at the mercy of an insurance marketplace that is quite literally risking their lives.

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Make no mistake: this is discrimination, pure and simple. Individual purchasers with HIV are receiving a different quality of care than those who receive coverage through employment. If they are even able to find an in-network HIV specialist, they could end up waiting months for one 15-minute appointment. This is a huge step backwards for all of us--and New York is one of only three states where it is happening.

During his recent World AIDS Day Speech, Governor Cuomo told us that: "Thirty years ago, New York was the epicenter of the AIDS crisis--today I am proud to announce that we are in a position to be the first state in the nation committed to ending this epidemic." The Governor is right: here in New York, AIDS is our fight. We have a moral duty to act as an example to the rest of the country--and the rest of the world--on how to treat this disease. That makes it all the more shameful that we persist in holding on to these regressive policies.
Washingtonians have witnessed historic change to neighborhoods and streetscapes over the past two decades. The renewal of struggling neighborhoods and the development of properties and blocks that had long been void of economic activity have created thousands of new retail storefronts and jobs for DC residents as national retailers made unprecedented investments in the district. Whether it's the Target in Columbia Heights or the Costco in northeast DC, retailers are playing a critical role in anchoring new developments and attracting restaurants and small businesses back into our neighborhoods.

During this period of unprecedented growth, property developers, retailers and city government have worked collaboratively to balance the interests of job providers and taxpayers. In many cases, through smart growth policies and strategic investments in transit and infrastructure, DC government has been the catalyst for new development and private-sector job creation. These developments have literally transformed many district neighborhoods, and the new jobs, shopping and dining opportunities have attracted young people and families to move back into the district after decades of migration to the suburbs.

But much of this progress could grind to a halt if the DC City Council passes a disastrous and ill-conceived new law aimed at punishing large retailers that do business in the city.

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At issue is legislation often referred to as "predictive scheduling"--and it would disrupt the operations of virtually every large retailer and restaurant chain in the district. The stated intentions of those pushing the legislation seem harmless--at its core are regulations that would require retailers to post employee schedules 21 days in advance. Who doesn't want to know their schedule in advance? Seems harmless, right? But as with most government intrusions into the private sector, the devil is in the details. And the details would hurt those most in need of economic opportunities.

First, the law unfairly singles out retailers and restaurants; it sends a profoundly negative signal to these industries that the jobs, payroll and tax revenue they generate in the district are somehow less valued by DC government. Given the role these industries have played in the revitalization of many of our communities, this would be a tremendous mistake.

More egregious than the targeted nature of the legislation are the details of the policy itself. This law, if enacted, would penalize employers for communicating with their employees about their schedule inside a 21-day window. So if an employee calls in sick, the city government punishes the business if they ask another employee if they would like to pick up the shift. Or if an employee wanted to swap shifts with another employee because of a family commitment or unforeseen obligation, the employer would be punished for trying to facilitate such a request. This type of request happens routinely in any retail establishment--in fact, that flexibility is one of the things most retail employees like about their jobs. But if the city council acts on this misguided scheduling legislation, retailers would have no choice but to deny this flexibility to their employees. You can't have flexible leave policies but then tie an employer's hands from implementing them--it just doesn't work in the real world.

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But perhaps the most damaging aspect of the bill is language that makes it difficult for retailers and restaurants to hire new workers, particularly seasonal or part-time help. Besides being unworkable and a serious intrusion into a private employer's operations, this provision would make it harder for retailers to hire young, first-time workers, as well as seniors looking for a part-time job. It would make it virtually impossible for large retailers and restaurants to participate in DC's Summer Jobs program for high school students. It would also make hiring part-time employees during the holiday season or other busy periods of the year untenable. Anyone who looks forward to a part-time, flexible job to make a few extra bucks during the holiday season would likely be out of luck next time if the council moves forward with this law.

This new scheduling law is a solution in search of a problem, and its impact on those it professes to help will be far worse than any perceived ills its proponents suggest need fixing. Many retail and restaurant employees enjoy the flexibility they currently have--taking it away will not only hurt those employees but it will serve as a giant caution sign for businesses considering creating or expanding their presence in the district. Laws such as these discourage development, and if passed, it will undoubtedly cause some job providers to rethink plans to create new jobs in our city.

National retailers and restaurants have brought thousands of jobs and generated millions of dollars in tax revenue for the District of Columbia. Let's not stall DC's progress by passing laws that punish and discourage investment in our city. To keep DC moving forward, the city council should reject the so-called predictive scheduling bill. The only thing predictive about this legislation is the negative impact it will ultimately have on the district, our neighborhoods and its residents.
One of the aspects of the fight for gender equality in Africa that has been particularly frustrating for women activists is that much of this inequality is the continuing legacy of colonialism, which has altered the empowered role that African women once had in traditional African societies. For example, women activists in Swaziland have lamented the loss of traditional Swazi society which once respected women. In response to many of the sexist laws that exist in Swaziland, an activist named Cynthia Simelane said:

All these laws that make Swazi women second-class human beings, they were not part of traditional Swazi life because we did not live under Western laws. Swazi women want to return to the way it was when we were equal.

Recently the Nigerian Senate voted against a gender equality bill. Even more disturbing than the mere fact that such a bill could be defeated in a nation that is in dire need of gender equality is the fact that the Bible was invoked as an argument against the bill. There is a hint of irony in the fact that the Bible of all texts is used to justify denying African women equal rights. Two of the most powerful women in the Bible are African women, the Queen of Sheba and the Kandake of Kush. The only other queens mentioned in the Bible are queens because of their marriage to the ruling king, but the Queen of Sheba and the Kandake of Kush are mentioned independently of a male ruler. In fact, according to Ethiopian tradition the Queen of Sheba was unmarried at the time that she visited Solomon.

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The role of African women in the Bible speaks to the important role women played in African history. This includes women such as Queen Nzinga, Yaa Asantewaa, and Amanishakheto. The Rain Queen was the most powerful position among the Balobedu people. Among the Akan people it was the queen mother who nominated candidates to become chief, and if the candidate is successfully elected as the chief the queen mother serves as his adviser.

Speaking of Nigeria specifically, among the Ibo women there was a practice known as "sitting on a man," which was essentially a form of protest that was used against a man who had disrespected an Ibo woman. These same protest tactics were used against the colonial government in Nigeria.
KENT, OH - MARCH 15: Ohio voters go to the polls for the Ohio primary at Franklin Elementary School on March 15, 2016 in Kent, Ohio. The Ohio Republican primary is a winner-take-all state were 66 delegates are up for grabs.(Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

GOP presidential contender Donald Trump loudly boasts that he has turned out "millions" of new voters. He gloats that these are the people the GOP has never seen before. The millions figure is vintage Trump bunkum since there is no way to measure just how many of the big uptick in GOP primary voters stormed the polls solely because he was on the ballot. But there are three things that can be taken away from Trump's braggadocio. The first is that there are lots more GOP voters than Democratic voters that are showing to vote up in the primaries than in elections past. How many more? The Pew Research Center put the number at 17 percent more of eligible Republican voters came out in the first 12 primaries of 2016. That's the biggest number in more than three decades. On the other side, Democrats are getting a bump-up in turnout from past years, but their numbers are far less than the GOP's numbers.

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The second thing is that the much bigger GOP turnout has been nowhere more glaring than in the two states that have been the absolute indispensable pathway for a presidential candidate to the White House for the past two decades. The states are Ohio and Florida. The gap between GOP and Democratic voter turnout in numbers should set off loud alarm bells in Democratic strategists. GOP presidential candidates got slightly more 2.2 million votes combined in Florida. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton got slightly more than 1.6 million votes combined. The gap was more than 600,000 votes.

In Ohio, the GOP candidates got slightly more than 1.9 million votes combined; while Sanders and Clinton got almost 1.2 million votes combined. The gap there was over 700,000 votes. The gap can't be explained solely because of Trump mania, a hotly contested and competitive race between the GOP candidates, and a favored son candidate, Kasich on the ballot. The Sanders and Clinton face-off has been just as fiercely contested, competitive, and has aroused the passions of lots of voters, plus Sanders had just come off a win in the neighboring Michigan primary which should have been enough to stir even more Democrats to turn out. But the numbers didn't come close to the GOPs and so far few have seen fit to ask or try and figure out just why that happened.

Some are happy to shrug it off with the standard retort just wait until the general election and Democrats will flood the polls and swamp the GOP numbers as they always seem to do. But that's tantamount to banking on a Hail Mary pass for victory and paying far less attention to the type of ground work that is absolutely essential to put a Democratic candidate over the top. With the GOP firmly in control of the legislatures and the statehouses in Florida and Ohio, not to mention the voter suppression tactics the against minorities and youth the GOP has put firmly in place in both states the lack of an intense, all out stir the passions, get out the vote drive, bolstered with lots of spending cash, is a horrendous prescription for Election Day disaster.

The third thing is that this election cycle is like none other in living memory. So far all the traditional rules of the political game, namely that both party establishments pretty much handpick who their presidential nominee will be, and that voters always play it safe and stick with the safe, established, and experienced, known quantity candidate, which means an established pol insider, are out the window. Trump and Sanders have shown that this go round it could well be different.

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Trump has done one more thing for the GOP and that's publicly anyway force it kicking and screaming to double down on mounting a near crusade to the polls by the GOP's traditional base. This is older, white, males from the South and Midwest, suburban and rural areas, and in addition grabbing a big chunk of the dissatisfied, alienated, hostile blue collar Democrats, young and old.

In Florida and Ohio, there is some evidence that the strategy paid off in the extra thousands of voters that the GOP padded its total with. In a general election showdown between Trump and Clinton, the very real danger to the Democrats is that the enthusiasm and the anger at the party establishments, and the thirst for change, that Trump seemingly whipped up in the Ohio and Florida primaries may not abate in November. Many of those same voters may stick around and again cast their ballot for Trump. If nothing, else, the perception that there is a real difference between Trump, the outsider, and Clinton, the established Washington insider, won't go away. Trump will exploit that to the hilt. If it still plays well in Ohio and Florida, and worse yet in other states, the voter turn-out numbers will really tell a troubling tale for the Democrats.
In September of last year, Vladimir Putin announced that he was sending military support to fight ISIS and support Syrian President Bashar Assad. The announcement was received angrily by the West. Not only were western powers skeptical that Putin's motive was to fight ISIS, but it was predicted by President Obama, that Russia "was going to get ... stuck in a quagmire and it won't work." A keystone of American policy in Syria has been the removal of president Assad. In Putin's view however, America had no idea who would replace Assad, hence the only road to peace in Syria was to fight terrorists and support Assad. Recently Russia has announced the withdrawal of most of its troops and aircrafts from Syria, stating that it has accomplished its goal. Currently president Assad is in control of more territory of the country then when Russian support arrived, and peace negotiations are in progress. With his usual excellence in crafting geopolitical chess game, president Putin by removing Russian troops and aircraft from Syria, in effect, put pressure on Assad to make a peace deal in Geneva. Now Assad is greatly insentivized to make concessions at the negotiating table or he else he will inevitably put at risk all the gains Russia granted him. It is also possible this will be a time for Russia to offer Assad asylum and a new President will replace him. After all, Russia's interest is not the man Assad but the country Syria. Of course Russia will still have its bases in Syria either way. But in case a new leader comes into picture, the world will be well aware that Russia had picked him, but the demand of the West to replace Assad will have been met which should hopefully calm the situation around Syria. After a six month fight Putin was able to establish Russia as a major player in the Middle East, show off Russia's advanced weapons, and prove Obama wrong(once again) about Russia being caught in a quagmire. At the same time Putin successfully secured Russia's land bases, which have a strategic importance for the country. Moreover, if and when a peace is ultimately negotiated Putin is going to reestablish himself on the world stage as a man capable of bringing peace in a region that seems to never be at peace. If peace brings a reduction of the "flow" of Syrian refugees to Europe Putin may even find that a grateful Europe is in favor of curtailing its sanctions against Russia.
A group of GOP elites, panicking at the idea of a Donald Trump nomination, have met "secretly" in DC to figure out what to do to stop the bloviating billionaire's inexorable march to a majority of delegates. The meeting, which was held on Thursday March 17, ended without a clear path of resistance. The options, vague as they were, appeared to be: stop Trump from amassing delegates, present a viable alternative at the convention if he has enough delegates to sway the floor vote, or run an independent third party Republican and hope to wrest control of the party back from the base.

None of those options are good. A contested convention will lead to chaos. A viable alternative will struggle to garner enough enthusiasm. An independent run will rupture the party and require a complete rebuild of the political machinery and donor networks the Republican power structure relies on. No, there's only one option that makes sense: block Trump now and force him to run third party.

This will absolutely lead to a numerical electoral defeat in November. A Trump run will split the right in 2016. The GOP may lose the White House and the Democrats may pick up working majorities in the House and Senate. But that's not necessarily a bad thing for the GOP.

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For years now, the party has cultivated an almost completely white, paranoid, extremist right wing base. It's a detriment in presidential elections -- the demographic math is against Republican candidates for president, and it's getting worse.

But it's great for midterms.

And that's where the GOP has had the most success of late, using those elections to rev up the base and gain majorities in Congress. It's poetic justice, of course, that the very tactics of whipping up hysteria used in those midterms has produced a party base willing to elect Trump and kill the Republican Party, but that's another story.

With control over Congress, the GOP has outsized political power and can use that power to gerrymander districts to retain it. The GOP can use that power to constrain the kind of legislation a Democratic president sends it and affect judicial nominees. It's a strategy that has seen the Republican Party dominate U.S. politics in an eight-year period where the first black president was elected, gay marriage was legalized and a new civil rights movement was born.

There's another side to this, too. Electoral defeat does not necessarily mean the GOP won't capture the White House. A three way race between Clinton, Trump as third party, and a more moderate GOP candidate will most likely mean no one candidate reaches 270 votes. There are many reasons for this -- Trump will sweep the Deep South, Clinton will win the Upper Midwest and Northeast, but it's quite possible the GOP could win enough states to deny the Democrats an absolute majority. There is still a moderate right wing in presidential politics.

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If we take my generated map (made over at 270 to win) as showing the grey for Trump, nobody gets to 270. I give Trump Arizona, Alaska and Iowa because of the hard right base in those states and the fact that the Ds and Rs will split the rest of the votes, giving him a majority. Trump gets Maine and New Hampshire because he's running third party.

If nobody gets 270 -- if my projection is at all correct -- that's when things get interesting. And disastrous for the Democrats.

Without an absolute majority, the election goes to the House. And the House, while it will be fractured, anarchic and full of anger over the split in the Republican Party, will come together to deny Clinton the presidency and give it to the Republican nominee over the protestations of the Trump faction of the chamber.

What happens then, nobody knows. But what won't happen, no matter if blocking Trump leads to a Clinton presidency or a House-elected Republican president, is the GOP being labeled with Trump's ideology for the next generation.

And that's just about the only way for the GOP to snatch any sort of lasting victory from the jaws of this self-created defeat, and keep the party in place.


Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Los Angeles. Photo by EMS.



Ivan Wirth speaks at the press opening. Photo by EMS.

Los Angeles Grand Opening: Sunday 13 March 2016, 2 - 6 pm



The grand opening of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel played out like a mix of a Fellini and Terrance Malick film. One traversed the throngs of art world patrons elite and average pedestrians gazingly enthralled by the majestic walls of the antique grain mill in Los Angeles downtown. The repurposed 116,000 square-foot HSW complex is the former Globe Mills complex in the Arts District, settling itself as the new Fortress of the Arts, and we're not even talking about a new museum, but yet a mere gallery. Just another gallery in Los Angeles of international magnitude to thumb its nose like Tati to the rest of the world. At the grand opening I envision Marcello Mastroianni languidly strolling the exhibition halls of HSW wondering aloud, "Where did this come from, this new Rome, a city of Nero and Caligula, parties and galas like the Satyricon - all this art - all these sophisticated people gathering - not from Paris or London or Berlin, but from Malibu and Calabasas and East LA. There was live music in calming 80 degree weather, and there were pig heads as part of the feast luncheon.



Photo by EMS.



Paul Schimmel addresses the media. Photo by EMS



As I strolled through the wonder of the inaugural exhibition I saw monumental works of women celebrated in 'Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 - 2016. HSW described the exhibit : "Through nearly 100 works made by 34 artists over the past seventy years, this ambitious undertaking traces ways in which women have changed the course of art by deftly transforming the language of sculpture since the postwar period. Works on view reveal their makers inventing radically new forms and processes that privilege solo studio practice, tactility, and the idiosyncrasies of the artist's own hand. 'Revolution in the Making' explores multiple strains of artistic approaches, characterized by abstraction and repetition, that reject the precedent of a monolithic masterwork on a pedestal, employing such tactics as stacking, hanging, and intertwining, to create an intimate reciprocity between artist and viewer. The exhibition examines how elements that are central to art today - including engagement with found, experimental, and recycled materials, as well as an embrace of contingency, imperfection, and unstructured play - were propelled by the work of women who, in seeking new means to express their own voices, dramatically expanded the definition of sculpture."



Works by Louise Bourgeois, Ruth Asawa, Eva Hesse, Liz Larner and Senga Nengudi are on view till September 4. Approximately 20% of the art in the show is for sale.

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Revolution in the Making. Photo by EMS.



Revolution in the Making. Photo by EMS.



Revolution in the Making. Photo by EMS.

HSW comes complete with an on-site bookshop called Artbook, a cafe restaurant called Manuela (opening summer 2016), and a panel discussion room called Hauser & Wirth Book & Printed Matter Lab. Based in Switzerland, this is the sixth location of the multi-national heavy-weight. HSW promises museum-caliber exhibitions, public programs, educational activities, and a dramatic courtyard for informal gatherings. Hauser & Wirth was founded in Switzerland in 1992 by Ivan and Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser and LA's HSW marks the sixth location by the multinational heavy-weight. The gallery's global operations are overseen by Ivan and Manuela Wirth; Marc Payot, Partner and Vice President; and Paul Schimmel, Partner and Vice President.



Long line to get in the grand opening. Photo by EMS.



Revolution in the Making. Photo by EMS.



Revolution in the Making. Photo by EMS.

Paul Schimmel helmed the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1990 as chief curator until 2012. He is known for his 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter: Los Angeles Art in the 1990s, and curated other historical exhibitions such as 1998's Out of Action: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, and 2011's Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981.



Ivan Wirth and Paul Schimmel. Photo by EMS.



Mark Bradford and Ivan Wirth. Photo by EMS.

Check out the short film I did at the grand opening:

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Perhaps it was written to be clickbait, but the New York Times put a pot-stirring headline on a story that has quickly reignited a tiresome and seemingly unproductive debate around charter schools and discipline. And while anyone would be concerned, even appalled, by the headline itself, it misleads readers about the content of the piece.

Here's the headline:

Charter Schools Suspend Black and Disabled Students More, Study Says

Motoko Rich, the writer of the piece in question, explicitly (and rightly) states in the second paragraph that similar inequities exist in traditional public schools. Here are her exact words:

These inequities are similar to those in traditional public schools, where black and disabled students are disproportionately disciplined for even minor infractions, and as early as preschool--although on average, charter schools suspend pupils at slightly higher rates than traditional public schools.

But someone made the editorial decision to exploit the power of a headline to perpetuate a narrative about charter schools that distracts from a very real and national problem of higher suspension and expulsion rates for students of color and students with disabilities.

As Rich's piece clearly lays out, these higher rates of suspension are a problem for traditional public schools and charter public schools; but since the piece went up, my Twitter feed has been abuzz with teachers unions and anti-charter groups falling over themselves to perpetuate the myth that charters suspend at far higher rates than traditional district schools. Truth be told, it doesn't even seem like those rushing to share the story have actually read the piece.

Because if they had read the piece, they'd realize that the data used in the report is from 2011-2012. And this is a problem because the issue of suspension rates has been a priority for some of our major cities and charter networks during the years between then and now. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools published a response to the Times piece that included concrete and current data on suspensions and expulsions in both New Orleans and Washington, D.C.--two cities with robust charter school sectors.

In New Orleans, despite serving a much more at-risk student population, New Orleans' expulsion rate is lower than the state average (0.6 percent for New Orleans and 0.7 percent for Louisiana). The transition to an all charter school system, coupled with equity-driven leadership, has resulted in more students staying in school.

The expulsion rate for D.C. public charter schools has been cut by two-thirds since 2011, and the rate of out-of-school suspensions has decreased by about 20 percent.

No one can deny that inequities exist around suspensions and expulsions across school sectors nationwide. It is a concern that many of us, on both sides of the most divisive issues in education, actually share. There is common ground here. So while anti-charter groups, union groups, and other high profile news outlets like Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times swarm over this unfortunate headline, the substance around solving the problem is lost amidst the noise. By oversimplifying and ignoring nuance, the conversation becomes about squabbling adults instead of the students impacted by what's happening every day in their schools.

Ginning people up over a narrative based on misinformation and false dichotomies inevitably leads to more clicks and shares but if we are are really about the best interest of kids, we should be working to support all schools of any and every kind to find better and more effective ways to manage student discipline.

And in this case, that just didn't happen.
How America's moms are leading the battle for clean drinking water



This is America's water.

We saw Flint coming. In fact, I've seen this whole national water crisis coming for years. I see these issues happen, I know where they are. I know when they're going to hit. And I know they're going to come up, year after year after year.

I know because tens of thousands of people write to me each month. I started creating a map and I have more than 10,000 communities across the U.S. recording their plights. People come to me, saying, there's too many children on our street with cancer, or we've had too many high school kids die of brain tumors, or we live next to a superfund site and we think our water is contaminated. After one comes forward, then five follow, then 20, 30, more. I read hundreds of these emails everyday, and sometimes you have to be able to read between the lines. I can sense the urgency. I know when what people are saying is just not right. Some emails clearly speak volumes, and I'm like, we need to jump on this now. It's about being responsive: Last February, when my investigator Bob Bowcock and I heard about Flint, he was on a plane the next day.

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What has always stuck me the most were the instances where people's health was deteriorating. This has been true from the time I was a little girl to my work in Hinkley and beyond. What's that common denominator? It's usually the water. The one thing that sustains us all.

Communities across the country have been dealing with lead issues for years -- but they've always fallen on a deaf ear. Flint is simply the perfect storm.

I didn't discover Flint -- the community wrote to me. We got out there and tried to sound the alarm. There's almost always a community leader, and nine times out of 10, it's going to be a mom. She starts gathering the community, setting up town meetings so we can inform people about what's happening. We show folks how to protect themselves and their families. We try to work with the emergency contingency team that's in place -- we do that everywhere we go, and they usually don't want to hear it. They want to run things their way, they think we're just there to cause trouble, but that's not the case at all.

Unfortunately, it takes a huge crisis like Flint for everybody else to wake up.

***

Right now, we're in this special moment where people are paying attention and raising their voices. These chemicals, this problem, did not just arise yesterday. People have been drinking water that's contaminated with PFOA or lead or TCE or other chemicals for too long. Towns in New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York are learning that their water is contaminated. Schools have turned off water fountains due to lead poisoning. Hannibal, Missouri and Tyler, Texas and Sebring, Ohio are all sounding the alarm.

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These issues don't see any boundaries of rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat. All kinds of people everywhere are being taken advantage of. There's this false sense of security that we've all been lulled into, and only now are people actually waking up to reality.

Eventually this moment will go away, when the attention wanes, and we will all forget that it ever happened -- until the next crisis hits the news.

Look, there's plenty of blame to go around. It's here. It's happening, it's been going on for a very long time. It will continue to go on, and it's going to get worse until we have a disaster situation that we cannot turn around. Agencies have not listened; they haven't done the right thing, either out of fear or greed. This is morally wrong on a thousand different levels. And this is where we have to change.



These horrifying images are sent to me every week from people all over the United States.

The EPA is over burdened, understaffed and broke. And this agency oversees our Safe Drinking Water Act. If we are going to have these federal agencies, we need to actually support them. Because, frankly, right now they're not doing any good.

Sure, there are some good, well-intentioned, intellectual people in the EPA who want to make a difference. I don't want everybody to go down when someone makes a bad decision, but unfortunately, bad decisions are happening everywhere.

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We learned just this week that, in a memo, an EPA official stated that "Flint was not worth going out on a limb for." The fact that someone from the governmental agency that is there to protect the health and the welfare of the people made such a disgusting comment will tell you where the problem is.

I'm so perplexed by Governor Rick Snyder's thinking. He should be criminally prosecuted because he has done so much damage. That's my opinion. To continue to waste millions of dollars of tax payers' money to defend himself -- Where is your decency? Where is your integrity as a human being, Governor? Please step down. Save that money, give it to those people who need it, get out of office, and let us begin the difficult task of repairing this problem.

These are real, legitimate, serious issues, and too often our government officials dismiss the affected community. Too often agencies fail to check on the health and welfare of people who live in a known contaminated zone. Too often they are dodging a bullet, hiding information, and doing it just to save a buck. Too often, the government is in denial.

Until we really start to listen -- and I mean, until the municipalities, federal and state agencies start to listen to the people -- instead of reacting to these disasters, we're going to continue to create greater problems. Government officials and communities need to change their thinking in order to catch the crisis before it happens. And it starts with listening to the people. Right now, nobody is listening, so they come to me.

***

I'm a grandmother now, and I'm asking myself, what will be our legacy? What am I leaving? If I don't continue to fight for this, what kind of world would I leave for my little grandchildren, Molly, Grace, and Charles?

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My job isn't to sit here and point fingers, my job is to care. We all do, about our health, our family's health, our grandchildren's health, and our neighbors health. I know we do.

Nothing is more important than water. It is connected to every single thing we do: our health and our welfare and our economy. And it should be up to the federal government, the state, every agency, right down to the local levels, to find a solution that provides safe water for all. The solution to pollution is not dilution. That is what we have used our water systems for in the past, and if we continue to do so, we are going to pay the ultimate price -- many people already have.

If we could look back at history do something different, we would. We are at that moment right now. We can do something different. We don't have to make history repeat itself. We are better than that.

We are living in a great country full of great people. We are now more connected then we have been before. We have easy access to information, we are more aware, more educated, more informed -- and that's helping us make different choices in how we live our lives. The millennials are starting a groundswell, which I think is fabulous. In the past our voices haven't been heard -- but now they are starting to rise.

When everyone uses their voice, that's when we all get on that page -- and I'm talking about our leaders. That's how we change things. That's how we set the tone and it's how we move the world forward.

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As the fragile ceasefire helps the dust settle somewhat over Syria, it is time to take stock of who has stood firm through these turbulent years and who has wavered. There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has been among the select few to have kept its position, despite the ebb and flow of the embattled country's fight for survival. Since the beginning of the crisis, Riyadh has maintained that this regime is murderous and brutal and that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go -- either via negotiations or through military means, if lasting peace is to be achieved.

Things went from bad to worse and turmoil within Syria spread far and wide. The Arabs kept faith that common sense would prevail among all stakeholders. At the same time, they also banked on the credibility of United States President Barack Obama, particularly when he said that the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" for the regime, the crossing of which would lead to prompt action. However, we soon found out that the regime was not abiding by that "red line" and was in fact encouraged by America's failure to put words into action.

This bizarre turnaround and the world's inability to do something about it have resulted in enormous loss of human life -- more than 250,000 according to one estimate. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights counts more than 370,000 people killed since the beginning of the revolution, with as many as 122,997 of them being civilians. According to Unicef, the conflict has created 2.4 million child refugees, killed many and led to the recruitment of children as fighters.

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The other, perhaps more horrendous, outcome of this conflict has been the emergence of ISIS (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), a phenomenon that the world is yet to come to grips with. The group has not only attracted thousands of fighters from all over the world, it has also wreaked havoc across large swathes of land in the region. Despite this, however, it is only Obama who miraculously believes -- which he expressed in a recent interview with the Atlantic -- that his decision not to take action in Syria has been his major achievement.

Leading from the front

Contrary to Obama's depiction in this rather lengthy interview, and his reluctance to put a firm foot forward, Saudi Arabia is now leading the region from the front. More admirably, it is doing so on several fronts at the same time, something that was probably least expected even a few years ago.

A Saudi Arabia-led coalition is now fighting a decisive battle in Yemen, even as it remains committed to a political solution. Besides, Riyadh is part of the US coalition against ISIS and has succeeded in building a new alliance, which was demonstrated in the Northern Thunder drills over the past few weeks, showing the world what it can do.

All this has gone on while Syria has descended into chaos and still seems years away from real peace. While lack of American action has been the contributing factor in the Syrian crisis since the beginning, Russia's entry into the battlezone added another dimension to the conflict. Moscow's missiles not only emboldened the Syrian regime, but also became a catalyst for Iran and Hezbollah's greater involvement in the killing fields.

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For Assad loyalists, Russian military build-up in Syria was understandably not an invasion or indeed, a new foreign occupation, of Arab lands. To them, Assad continues to remain a legitimate leader and the intervention has been on behalf of the people who elected him. However, Russian withdrawal on Monday once again opened a Pandora's Box on whatever the future holds for Syria.

The Iran nuclear deal was another major phenomenon that unfolded as the Syrian crisis was going on. The deal led to the lifting of sanctions against Iran and gave the country a new lease of life after years of isolation. The US allies in the Gulf were kept away from the negotiation table and the regime in Tehran, which has spread its tentacles across the Arab world, was unshackled. This can potentially create further upheaval in the region.

There is little doubt that Arabs will never forget how Obama let them down and sided with Tehran, which now remains the only force on the planet backing the murderous Syrian regime.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA. MARCH 17, 2016. Russian president Vladimir Putin speaks at an award ceremony in St George Hall of the Moscow Kremlin. The Russian president has awarded Russian servicemen and military industrial sector workers who took part in the 2015-2016 military operation in Syria. The military operation was conducted after an official request by the Syrian government. Mikhail Metzel/TASS (Photo by Mikhail Metzel\TASS via Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on March 14 that he would begin withdrawing his main forces from Syria. Russia appears to have deployed about 70 aircraft and more than 4,000 support personnel to protect and maintain the aircraft. It was not a major deployment, but it shifted the situation on the ground. Before the deployment there had been serious discussion that Bashar al-Assad's regime had its back against the wall. That expectation dissolved as Russians carried out attacks against those working to overthrow the regime.

It is unclear why the expectations shifted. It is possible that the limited sorties the Russians flew were sufficient to break the opposition's operational capabilities. It is possible that simply Russia's presence was enough to shift the psychology of the opposition and break their will. It is also possible that the opposition was so fragmented and so fundamentally weak that virtually anything would shatter them.

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The question of course remains: Why did the Russians intervene in the first place? Assad's father had been close to the Soviets, and post-Soviet Russia made gestures at continuing the relationship. But Syria was never central to Russian interests, and having any number of other problems, particularly Ukraine, devoting precious resources to solving what from Russia's perspective was a relatively small problem is odd. But when you think about it, it made complete sense, even beyond ensuring Assad's survival.

The first reason Putin intervened in Syria was simply to show that he could. He had two audiences for this: the Russian public and the West, particularly the United States. Deploying an air wing consisting of different kinds of aircraft and then maintaining them in combat operations for months demonstrated that Russia had a significant military capability and was able to deploy it effectively.

In Russia, as in other countries, successful, short military operations generate massive support. It demonstrated to the U.S. that it had the ability and will to intrude into places that the U.S. regards as within its area of operations. It changed the perception of Russia as a declining power to a significant global force. Whether this was true was less important - it needed to appear to be true. And it cannot be denied that there was truth to it.

The second point is much stranger and not fully aligned with the prior reason. The Russians intervened in Syria to bail the U.S. out of a very difficult situation. The U.S. opposed the Assad regime and wanted it replaced by a coalition of opposition forces. It was increasingly obvious that this was not going to happen. Assad might fall but what would replace him was a fractious opposition as much at war with each other as with Assad. This might be preferable to Assad, but the Islamic State was deep into Syria and had already engaged and defeated some of Assad's armored forces - not to mention that IS controls far more territory than any other rebel group. If Assad fell, and if he was replaced by the opposition, it was conceivable they could in turn be replaced by IS. The U.S. was aware that it had constantly underestimated IS, and the possibility of IS in Damascus was both real and unacceptable to the United States.

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The United States had a political problem. Not only had it opposed Assad, it had been deeply aligned with anti-Assad factions. It could not suddenly become the protector of the Assad regime. At the same time, the United States, at that moment, could not afford the fall of Assad. The Russian intervention solved the problem for the United States.

Was this a formal deal or merely the unexpected outcome? I doubt that papers were signed but I also doubt that it was unexpected by either side. The Russians certainly knew the American situation in Syria: the U.S. didn't trust its own sponsored opposition, was unnerved by IS and helpless to do what it had to. The Russian intervention followed directly from Moscow's public position and posed no problem for it.

By doing this, in the face of massive American air power, Russia either assumed that it could coordinate with the United States in time or that coordination was discussed in the beginning. The Russians knew they were solving an American problem, and the Americans, for all their rhetoric, knew their problem was being solved. And that bought Russia some points for its problem in Ukraine.

Ukraine is of fundamental interest to Russia. It cannot let Ukraine become part of the Western alliance system - a matter we have extensively discussed. Russia's core interest in Ukraine is military neutralization. Its secondary interests are some degree of autonomy in the east and some settlement on Crimea that gives Russia more extensive rights there than it had before.

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Syria was intended to do two things. The first was to demonstrate that Russia was a military power to be taken seriously. Second, it was designed to put the United States in a position where publicly, opposing Russia was seen as too risky, and privately, Russia would be viewed as a partner, not a hostile force. The Europeans already wanted a deal to abandon the sanctions, and this would help.
By Lauren Hepler

Technical difficulties are embarrassing  especially when you're supposed to be regulating high-tech companies.

That was the situation Tuesday, when a U.S. Senate committee hosted executives from General Motors, Google, ridesharing giant Lyft, auto supplier Delphi and Duke University to discuss an issue decidedly more nuanced than day-to-day IT troubles: integrating self-driving cars into society.

"Something very real and fundamental is shifting here," said Joseph Okpaku, vice president of government relations for Lyft, during the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing. "Concepts that could once only be imagined in science fiction are on the verge of becoming a reality."

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A struggle at the hearing to tee up an old Google promotional video highlighted a primary point of contention: how government officials far removed from R&D hubs in Detroit or Silicon Valley are supposed to effectively regulate fast-moving transportation technology that raises big questions about safety, cybersecurity, data privacy and legal liability, among other issues.

Still, self-driving cars are often hailed as a prime opening for the U.S. to flex its advanced manufacturing muscle while creating jobs, increasing transportation efficiency and cutting smog-inducing traffic  a refrain echoed in other fields navigating industrial technology breakthroughs, such as drones and so-called smart cities.

"There are clear potential economic and safety advantages," said Mary Louise Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab and Duke Robotics at Duke University. "How can we get there with minimal risk?"

States such as California are at the forefront of localized efforts to create new systems for testing self-driving cars. But as commercialization looms larger, businesses warn that outdated rules and a "growing patchwork" of new local, state and federal laws may stifle innovation and undercut U.S. competitiveness in the industry.

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America is currently in very much a leadership position," said Chris Urmson, director of self-driving cars at Google X. "Not a day goes by where a company in China isnt trying to recruit engineers from our team."

Although (mostly Democratic) lawmakers at the hearing pressed the issue of minimum standards for cybersecurity and privacy, Urmson contended in Silicon Valley's signature libertarian tradition that, "the best action is to take no action."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pointed to auto industry history to argue for a more hands-on approach.

Witnesses sat here 30 years ago and said the same thing about seat belts and air bags," Markey said. "We need minimal standards."

Care to share a self-driving car?

Automakers and tech companies such as Apple and Google say that fully autonomous vehicles could hit the market in a matter of years  a sharp contrast to more skeptical calculations that it could take decades  but there are also parallel shifts in transportation already underway.

Fast-growing cities have fueled the growth of shared transportation services, such as Zipcar, Uber and Lyft, calling into question how long personal car ownership will be the norm for a majority of consumers. And how many cars of the future will run on gasoline versus electric engines?

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For GM, fresh off of a $500 million investment in Lyft and the $1 billion acquisition of self-driving car startup Cruise Automation, those efforts could merge sooner than later.

"We believe that the next logical step toward public availability of high-level automated vehicles will be controlled ride-sharing projects, such as what we are planning with Lyft," said Mike Ableson, GM's vice president of strategy and global portfolio planning.

Although high costs of radar and camera systems for self-driving cars are likely to persist in the immediate future, Abelson said that introducing autonomous vehicles as ridesharing fleets could make deployment more economically feasible. In addition to maximizing the usage of expensive early autonomous vehicles and easing consumers into the idea, GM's top brass also "thinks it's very interesting" to make those shared cars electric, he added.

"We would introduce it originally as vehicles with drivers  within the next couple of years," Ableson said.

GM also isn't banking on retrofitting existing cars with fully autonomous systems, largely because of cybersecurity and other vulnerabilities that Ableson said are unlikely to be bridged with a stop-gap fix.

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We need to design these vehicles with this in mind," he said. "It would be a new car."

Tech troubles

While GM and the other big guns in the automotive industry know minimum safety standards and testing requirements well, newer entrants in the space are also entering the political fray in a big way.

Ridesharing companies such as Lyft are no strangers to regulatory battles pitting innovative technologies with rapid adoption curves against slow-moving government and outdated laws  often against a backdrop of fights with the taxi industry and background checks and pay standards for drivers.

"Three years ago, only one state had issued a regulatory framework for the ridesharing industry," said Lyft's Okpaku. "Today, 30 states have enacted legislation for this industry."

Among the regulatory issues at hand are how many hours self-driving cars should have to long on a test track and how state and federal agencies will balance oversight of the autonomous vehicle industry. Urmson and Ableson said that current legal gray areas could make it impossible to drive an autonomous cars across state lines and extend the time it will take to get the vehicles to market.

Cummings warned that the behavior of human drivers will ultimately be one of the toughest nut to crack when it comes to rolling out self-driving cars. Complications are already happening as companies start publicizing partially automated systems for driving on freeways or other seemingly straightforward scenarios.

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"Recently, Tesla suffered from one of [its] drivers getting in the back seat of the car while on autopilot," she said. "If humans just think the car is pretty good, then their behavior is going to be even worse."

In the most heated exchange of the two-hour hearing this week, Sens. Markey and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) took issue with executives from all four auto industry companies evading questions about whether they would support minimum standards for cybersecurity and privacy.
A tall minaret can be seen from afar. In the labyrinth streets of the city of Kasur in Pakistan, this tall minaret of the mosque becomes our guide. It takes us right to the shrine of 18th century Sufi poet and philosopher Bulleh Shah. The actual shrine is a modest structure compared to the imposing mosque. This is yet another symbol of appropriation. Bulleh Shah rebelled against the religious establishment of his era, which was backed by the religious orthodoxy. In one instance he is recorded to have said:

Dharamsal dhardwaye rehnde, Thakar daware thug,

Wich maseet kosete rehnde, ashiq rehan alag

Partisans live in Dharamsalas, cheats in temples,

Butchers reside in mosques; while lovers live apart.

The grave of Bulleh Shah is located in the middle of an open courtyard. Verses of his poems are inscribed on the wall. Just like at other Sufi shrines around the country, women are forbidden from entering the main shrine. The irony is unmistakable. During his lifetime, Bulleh Shah took up residence in the house of a courtesan to learn dance, and was not defiled. But today, his shrine will be become impure with the feet of his female devotees

It is also ironic how now the shrine is located in the centre of the city of Kasur. At the time of Bulleh Shah's death in 1757 CE, the political and religious establishment did not allow him to be buried in Kasur's graveyard. He was a blasphemer and an infidel they said. His impure body could not enter the pure earth of Kasur, they said. Leading the charge against him was the Pathan family of Kasur, who felt threatened by the rhetoric of the Sufi poet. This tribe moved to India with the Mughal forces of Babur and helped him win the decisive battle of Panipat in 1525 CE, which laid the foundation of the Mughal Empire. Initially they were settled in Bengal but later, during the tenure of Akbar, they moved to Kasur.

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Buried under the shade of a Waan tree in the courtyard of Bulleh Shah's shrine is the grave of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, one of the most important contemporary descendants of the Pathan family of Kasur, who once ostracised Bulleh Shah from the city. Muhammad Ahmad Khan was shot near Fawara chowk at Shadman in Lahore in 1974. In 1979, the deposed Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by the kangaroo courts of military dictator Zia-ul-Haq for Muhammad Ahmad Khan's murder. The coincidences of history only get weirder from here.

In 1931, the British wanted to hang freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and his comrades for the murder of John Saunders, a British police official, and the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi in 1929. However, by this time Bhagat Singh had become a household name and no magistrate was willing to supervise the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his comrades in Lahore jail. It was honorary magistrate Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, who finally agreed to do so. On March 23, Bhagat Singh, and his comrades Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged at the same Fawara chowk where almost 40 years later the honorary magistrate was shot and killed.

Where once, the ruling family of Kasur ridiculed Bulleh Shah calling him a blasphemer, he is now seen as a patron saint of their city. Tradition has it that at the time of Bulleh Shah's death the religious and political establishment of the city refused to offer his namaz-e-janaza or funeral prayers because they regarded him to be a blasphemer. The task was taken up by his devotees. Over the years as the poetry of Bulleh Shah captured the imagination of the people, and the city slowly grew to gather around his shrine, the ruling classes too started appropriating him as the saint of Kasur. Generations of family members from Kasur's ruling family are now buried within Bulleh Shah's tomb's courtyard.

Bulleh Shah was a devotee of Shah Inayat Qadri, another Sufi saint from Kasur, who settled in Mozang, Lahore, where his shrine is now located. Bulleh Shah spent several years at the madrassa of Shah Inayat in Lahore. Together, Bulleh Shah and Shah Inayat represented a rebellion against religious orthodoxy. They mocked the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and championed the cause of poor people. Legend has it that Bulleh Shah once risked his life to protect a Sikh man under attack by a Muslim mob.

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However today, both Bulleh Shah and Shah Inayat have been appropriated by the same religious orthodoxy and establishment they once challenged. Shah Inayat belonged to the Qadri Sufi order. So did Mumtaz Qadri, who assassinated Punjab governor Salman Taseer in 2011. Mumtaz Qadri was hanged for Taseer's murder on February 29. His funeral procession in Rawalpindi was attended by thousands of people. Compare this to Salman Taseer's funeral, which was attended by a handful.
We may all be doing our best but, as Winston Churchill said: "In a crisis, it is not enough to do our best - we have to do what is necessary". Today we are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the end of a habitable planet in the foreseeable future, depriving all future generations of their right to life and the lives of preceding generations of meaning and purpose.

This apocalyptic reality is the elephant in the room. Current policies threaten temperature increases triggering permafrost melting and the release of ocean methane hydrates which would make our earth unliveable, according to research presented by the British Government Met office at the Paris Climate Conference.

Long before that point, our prosperity, security, culture and identity will disintegrate. A Europe unable to cope with a few million war refugees will collapse under the weight of tens or even hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

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While scientists are increasingly in a state of panic about the state of the environment, the media - prone to exaggerate other news - downplay catastrophic threats to the planet. When the London "Times" provided a realistic overview recently (15.04.2015), it felt obliged to include the phone number of the Samaritans for those feeling distressed after reading it. One wonders how the Samaritans dealt with those calls!

Last month, N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman, after noting that climate change "just keeps getting scarier" asked: "So what's really at stake in this year's (US) election? Well, among other things, the fate of the planet." A study by the US National Academy of Sciences last year concluded that claims of "de-coupling" economic growth from growing CO2 emissions and resource consumption, i.e. that we can consume more and conserve more at the same time, have been based on false accounting, underestimating the raw materials required to create the products counted. (The Guardian, 25.11.2015).

So why have we not already formed an emergency alliance to do everything humanly possible to stop and reverse course?

Why have we not identified a hierarchy of risks and developed a common narrative and strategy? These are questions I often hear, especially from the young, for whom the work of the World Future Council (WFC) and its members provides rare hope that they still have a future.

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Despite many challenges, the WFC has achieved remarkable successes. Today it is widely acknowledged for its work spreading exemplary policies and the holistic perspective embodied by its members. As a result, to quote one of our partner organisations, the WFC has "outstanding convening power".

The WFC has developed a remarkable sense for future themes. Even unorthodox proposals, such as money creation, the political representation of future generations, and 100% renewable energy targets are now debated in many fora. Our work has become an important reference point, both for popular authors, researchers and UN organisations. We have developed three iconic cross-silo projects: the Future Policy Award (FPA), the Future of Cities Forum (FCF) and the Global Policy Action Plan (GPACT).

Our world today is different from when we last met a few years ago. The basic argument has since been won. As a columnist in the right-wing British "Daily Telegraph" wrote recently (17.12.2015): "Whether or not you accept the hypothesis of man-made global warming is irrelevant. The (Chinese) Politburo does accept it. So does President Xi Jinping...This political fact is shattering for the global fossil industry and the economics of energy". What happened? The Himalayan glaciers and Tibet's permafrost are melting, threatening key Chinese water supplies.

The coal lobby is already seeing the writing on the wall: "We will be hated and vilified in the same way slave traders were", says the Secretary-General of the EU coal industry organisation (FT 16.12.15).

At the recent opening conference of the new WFC office in China it was very obvious that the Chinese authorities take the climate threat very seriously and are looking for solutions and partners.

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Tragically, in the USA, this is not yet the case, with Donald Trump claiming climate change is a "Chinese hoax". For, to quote the Wall Street Journal (03.08.2015): "If anthropogenic climate change is a reality, then that would be a huge problem only government could deal with. It would be a heaven-sent opportunity for the left to vastly increase government control over the economy and the personal lives of citizens."

The myth that climate change is conspiracy to reduce freedom is spread by a powerful and greedy elite which has largely captured governments to preserve their privileges in an increasingly unequal world.

The real history of the past 40 years shows that the often disputed Limits To Growth report was prophetic, even for the USA: "The median US household income in 2014 was $50.000. If we had maintained pre-1970 productivity growth, it would have been $97.300" (FT 20.2.16).

As a result the USA is now facing a youth revolt, with young voters backing a socialist and more of them having a positive view of socialism than of capitalism (NYT 02.12.2015).

But in many ways this is a conservative revolt against an insecure future, opposed to the disruptions of recent decades, including globalisation, corporate "personhood" and the resulting un-affordability of their parents' American dream.

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The promised technological revolution does not excite them which is probably a good thing, for, to quote WFC councillor Rolf Kreibich, "there is not a single reference to sustainable development in the whole Big Data and Smart Data debate". Techno-Stress is causing falling gadget sales, while in Japan, "people are becoming distrustful of technologies in a broad sense, as they are now often associated with fakeness and futility."

The new "satori" generation there, is anti-consumerist and looking for "enlightenment" (Baku Eye, May 2014).

They and their peers in Europe and the USA are "less likely to endorse the importance of democracy; less likely to express trust in democratic institutions." (World Values Survey, 2015).

This is not surprising when policy-makers decide based on cost-benefit-analyses provided by economists, whose models are ideological, serving the interest of the privileged and discounting away the needs of future generations. Their tunnel vision fails to see that our economies depend on functioning ecosystems, whose collapse does not just destroy current GDP but the natural capital on which all future GDP depends.

Thus, their widely used DICE model calculates that, even a disastrous +4C temperature increase would only reduce GDP by 4% and a +6C increase reduce it by less than 10%, although predicted to make large parts of the planet uninhabitable. In such models, Africa could be gone but global GDP still increase...

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No religious dogma is as powerful and dangerous as the dogmas of economists who assume that we will all become richer even on a burning planet!

This dangerous nonsense still rules and even the UN SDG strategy suffers from it. "Given the existing ratio between GDP growth and the income growth of the poorest, it will take 207 years to eliminate poverty with this strategy, and to get there, we will have to grow the global economy by 175 times its present size." - an obvious impossibility. (Seeds of Change, Vol. 32, No.1, Jan-April 2016, p. 15) The SDG Goal 17.1 calls for more trade liberalisation and power for the WTO - although environmental threats mandate the opposite: boarder tax adjustments to stop environmental dumping.

How is it possible that we have lived so long according to this narrative which dis-connects us from our earth and now threatens our survival? In 1980 the US Heritage Foundation used the election of Ronald Reagan to impose the agenda still ruling the world, organizing 20 project teams involving 300 participants to develop policy recommendations for all government departments. These were published in a 1000 page book, "Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration". There was of course nothing "conservative" about the radical disruptions planned. But the recommendations were well argued, and many were implemented, as there was nothing available to counter them. To quote Margaret Thatcher: "Economics is the method: the object is to change the soul". (Sunday Times, 01.05.81).

Today, even the business publication Forbes acknowledges that "Capitalism has... devastated the planed and has failed to improve human well-being at scale" (09.02.16). So the awareness has been raised and we now need a methodology how to end this devastation. While we do not have the resources the Heritage Foundation has accumulated, at the expense of people and planet, we will have many allies on the path to Earth Trusteeship and Earth Justice.

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But we need to re-think what we have done so far, not because it is wrong, but because it is no longer a sufficient response to the Earth Emergency. Asked at a recent conference why she was talking about climate change and not about jobs, trade union leader Sharan Burrow replied: "Because there are no jobs on a dead planet!" The eco-industrial transformation will of course generate many millions of new jobs, but she understands the hierarchy of risks and dangers...

Our challenge is immense but not new. "There is 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 to things. Because the innovation has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new" - to quote Macchiavelli's 'The Prince', published in 1532.

As I said, we have many powerful allies

our living planet which can still respond and recover if we change course before irreversible tripping-points are reached.

the youth of the world who see that the promises of the current global narrative are hollow and are in search of credible alternative.

the global unprotected who are realizing that, while the new world order claims to have no ceiling, it definitely has no floor.

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our ancestors who have put their trust in us to ensure that their lives and achievements have not been in vain

and

all future generations of life on earth who are rooting for our success as we have the historically unprecedented power to decide if and how they will live!

The WFC Global Policy Action Plan is our manual for responsible leadership. It summarizes key policy recommendations for people and planet, now under threat from the consequences of the Heritage Foundation policies. It aims to replace the Washington Consensus - now increasingly rejected - with a new consensus, which may become known as the Hamburg consensus!

The fallacies and contradictions of the old narrative have been exposed and changes required discussed at great length.

We must now build new alliances, moving beyond the infighting, backbiting, bureaucracies, narrowness and jealousy so prevalent among NGOs and their supporters.

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The WFC has shown that it has the ability to initiate new coalitions, not because we know more or better, but because we build on what the international community has already agreed to, but failed to implement. We work to close the gaps between inter-connected crises still treated as separate by activists and funders, the gaps between policy research and the advice require by policy-makers, the gaps between rights agreed, e.g. in the UN World Charter For Nature, and their legal implementation. As the defenders of privilege know (but we often forget), the devil is in the policy detail!

Many, in business and civil society, prefer easier to achieve voluntary self-regulation. The recent first global over-view of self-regulation proves them wrong, showing that in 82% of the schemes assessed, voluntary measures failed.

The level of protection delivered was much lower than a law would have delivered. A Welsh charge on plastic bags cut their use overnight by 80% while an English voluntary measure achieved a 6% drop in seven years...

In many areas, legislation will be a challenge. The easy win-win scenarios are often a myth. The Climate Legacy Initiative concludes that the taxation required to lead to adequate demand reduction will cause "significant social pain". Politicians fear their voters rebelling, yet need to understand that nature rebelling will be a more serious matter, for we cannot negotiate with melting glaciers or spreading deserts.

The acclaimed economist Dambisa Moyo laments "an erosion of productivity around the world", which she cannot understand, describing it as "really weird".

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Considering the urgent needs of people and planet on the one hand and growing global unemployment on the other, this "weirdness" clearly has a cause, namely the perverse dogmas worshipped by Moyo and her fellow economists.

They claim that the now urgent reforms are too expensive, implying that we cannot afford to live on this planet. But whatever a society has the human and natural resources to produce, it can also finance. The WFC Future Finance team has, over the past two years, produced several ground-breaking reports exposing the ruling fallacies and how to remedy them.

First, we need real world accounting. The unused global renewable energy potential wastes trillions of dollars annually. Yet, while every coal mine closed is lamented as a waste of industrial capital, the immensely larger destruction of natural capital caused by not maximising renewable energy production has been ignored - until the WFC calculated it.

Creating ("printing") new money by central banks to save the financial system was quickly accepted. Yet funding the urgent transition to sustainable and regenerative societies in the same way, has been a political taboo, until the WFC showed last year how this can be done to fund the production of new goods and services: 100% renewable energy, retrofitting buildings, sustainable transport systems, etc. - also generating millions of jobs in the Global South, reducing the pressures to migrate in order to survive.

Our shared future requires a cohesive plan for step-by-step policy reform and the WFC GPACT is the first attempt to design one - not the usual endless wish list, but a priority policy instruction manual, building, wherever possible, on national and regional policies already working, analysed by us, according to the principles of Future Just Lawmaking already agreed by the international community.

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GPACT summarizes the minimum policy reforms required to build a world where solutions can again grow faster than problems. It aims to enable such a world, not pretend that we already know all the solutions. As Martin Luther King said, laws do not move the heart, but they restrain the heartless - those who have built the dictatorship of the present benefitting them at the expense of the future of life on earth.

GPACT sets out the path and the milestones to a sustainable future:

1. Environmental Education

We have identified the best law - from Maryland, USA - and are now working to spread it.

We have also identified the best programmes to teach environmental literacy in business schools and to students of economics (see futurepolicy.org).

2. Revitalising democracy

We are have identified and researched the exemplary Icelandic law, which ensures that private money cannot buy elections. Spreading this will be a huge exciting challenge.

3. Adopting alternative progress indicators

Again, a small country, Bhutan, took the lead. The EU BRAINPOoL project, in which the WFC participated, shows the way ahead. We also need to reform accounting standards and mandate longer time horizons for credit rating agencies.

4. Ensure the political representation of the needs of future generations

The WFC played a key role in building the exemplary Welsh legislation, based inter alia on the experiences of the pioneering Hungarian Parliamentary Ombudsperson for Future Generations, WFC Councillor Sandor Fulop.

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5. Ending crimes against future generations

The WFC Future Justice commission has been working on this since 2008, and now requires more resources to take it forward.

We have identified pioneering judgments and the obstacles facing their implementation.

6. Re-direct military spending and foster a culture of peace.

The WFC Peace and Disarmament Commission has produced a handbook on nuclear disarmament policies for the IPU and initiated a broader security debate by highlighting the links between climate and nuclear risks. It has also brought the Argentinean programme for the surrender of firearms to Bosnia.

7. Incentivize the shift to 100% renewable energy production

The WFC's unique role in spreading best policies, especially feed-in-tariffs, is widely recognized, and has had a remarkable impact. Divestment campaigns are already hurting the fossil fuel industry, but need to become mandatory.

8. Regenerative Cities

Our best policy programme has been presented to decision-makers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and China and we are working to rapidly expand this.

Our new office and credibility in China offer exciting possibilities. There are now exemplary Chinese laws, e.g. ensuring that profits from falling oil prices are retained by the government to fund conservation and anti-pollution measures.

9. Preserve healthy eco-systems

Ocean acidity is now increasing at ten times the highest rate during the past 56 million years. We must strengthen and spread the Law of the Sea, as well as the exemplary other ocean, forestry and biodiversity laws from Palau, Rwanda and Costa Rica, which we have honoured with the Future Policy Award.

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10. Green tax reform including carbon taxes

We must shift taxation to what is bad and scarce. Good policy examples can be found on our special website for policy-makers, futurepolicy.org. We also work on policies to ensure that our financial system enables real wealth creation and no longer favours speculation and debt.

11. Liberating enterprise

Human ingenuity and risk-taking must be incentivized to serve the common good. Benefit corporations (Maryland, USA), the TOP Runner programme (Japan) and the Cradle-To-Cradle design principles provide examples waiting to be replicated.

12. Protect the vulnerable.

During the unavoidable chaotic transition now coming, it is vital that we protect children, women and the large and increasing numbers of persons with disabilities worldwide. The WFC has identified and honoured and works to spread exemplary policies for the right to food (Belo Horizonte) and child safety (Zanzibar Act), to protect women and girls against violence (2014 FPA winning policies) and abolishing barriers for persons with disabilities (Zero project/ WFC policies).

The benefits of tackling these inter-connected challenges jointly are obvious. But while the WFC can bridge policy implementation gaps, the bottom-up pressure on policy-makers must increase to help them to withstand the lobbyists of the status quo.

We are now working to find the resources and allies to initiate - to quote Naomi Klein "a spasm of rapid-fire law-making, with one breakthrough after another".

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The moral revolution which ended slavery was not achieved just by petitions, nor will the transformation now urgent be won by General Twitter and Admiral Facebook. You cannot fight massively entrenched power with statistics or appeals to reason alone. Our opponents are poisoning our common well - a capital crime for our ancestors.

To quote the US PR expert Frank Mankiewicz: "The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania (which quickly ended the Ceaucescu dictatorship) before they prevail."

We also need to project a powerful and attractive vision of our shared future as earth citizens, in a world of scarce resources. It will be a world of "fewer car races and more dancing competitions" (Chandran Nair), but a vibrant and flourishing world of education, arts, music, research, sports, spiritual quests and social interaction. My biologist grandfather envisaged that in such a world, life's meaning would not "be sought behind the objects but behind the subjects".
LIKE if you agree with Trump. Illegal aliens should not be awarded birthright citizenship!

A graphic shows a photo of Trump with the text, "End Birthright Citizenship."
Aisle of a cathedral, Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC, USA

Politics will not be enough to confront this 2016 election. We will also need a spiritual message. There are gospel issues at stake here, particularly on the issues of race, with America's original sin now being sold as a political strategy to angry white people. Racism is being incited and condoned, and now violence is being incited and condoned. So we will need to bring what Archbishop Desmond Tutu once called "a spirituality of transformation." I remember when he preached that message from the pulpit of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. I had the blessing of preaching from that same pulpit this past Sunday, and I wanted to share the sermon I preached with you. Polls won't be enough anymore for this election. We are going to need sermons. Here's one.

What does the Word of God mean in our lives and our times? That is always the question for us as the people of God. How does the narrative of the Word of God change our narrative?

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My wife, Joy Carroll was one of the first women ordained in the Church of England -- she is a Brit! And in the U.K., she is well known as the Real Vicar of Dibley (after the hit television show in which she was the script consultant).

One summer we went to the Greenbelt Festival, where we had first met, with our 4-year-old son, Luke. Joy was up on the stage celebrating the Eucharist for 25,000 British young people. My young son, sitting on my lap, was watching his mom lead the service. She would speak and people would respond, "The Lord be with you ... and also with you. She would ask them to do things and they would. After watching this for a while, Luke looked up at me and asked. "Dad, can men do that too?" Women in ministry are changing the narrative in the church, the society, and in our families.

I'm sure many of us here today are finding the narrative in our country very troubling.

What does the Word mean? How does it 'touch down,' 'hit the streets' in the face of what we are now seeing in the world -- in the angry racial rhetoric of a presidential election campaign, and even in the violence at political rallies this very week?

And as a Christian, my doctrine of the incarnation is that in Jesus, God hits the streets. What does that mean for the church right now -- for the body of Christ -- to help lead by also for getting its own house in order?

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What is behind all the angry talk, alarming conflict -- and where are we going? Can and how will the people of God help make a way, a path in the sea, and find sustaining streams in the desert?

I was reflecting on Isaiah 43:16-21 in light of what we are seeing and many of us are feeling in our country right now.

16 Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,

18 Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. 19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

WATCH the sermon:

I believe the great political and historical reality behind all the rhetoric and conflict we now see and feel in our country is this: In just a few decades, America will no longer be a white majority nation; we will instead be a majority of minorities. And some of our citizens, especially many older white Americans, are having deep fears and resentments about that -- the potential loss of the historic white supremacy and privilege, which all of us have become accustomed to and which, I believe, was America's original sin.

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That sin must now be clearly relegated to the "former things" and dramatically put away as the "things of old," as Isaiah says. Our original sin was at the very foundation of our country -- the decision to justify our slavery by claiming that black lives matter much less than white lives. Because the sin is so deep in our American DNA, it won't be overcome easily. The lame claims of "I am not a racist," fall mute in the face of parables like Flint, Mich., which are teaching us that racism is literally in the air we breathe and the water we drink.

For Christians, and both Jews and Muslims, repentance doesn't just mean saying that you are sorry, it means turning and moving in a new direction. And some good news (yes, there is some) is that we are beginning to see both blacks and whites, along with members of other racial communities -- especially a new generation -- asking in new and fresh ways how we can turn around so that black lives do matter, so that all lives finally can -- and that the first is necessary for the last.

Many working class white people in America are angry for understandable economic reasons: losing incomes, jobs, homes, families, children in war, and the attention of the both Wall Street and Washington. But such anger is now in great danger of being manipulated and used for self-aggrandizing political purposes -- to aggressively divide rather than to crucially unite America.

So what's happening in our nation now, even in the last several days, is both frightening and dangerous. As the people of God, we need to ask ourselves how we will help heal our country.

Our text from Isaiah says God can help us inspire that mission:

... for I give water in the wilderness,rivers in the desert,to give drink to my chosen people, 21 the people whom I formed for myselfso that they might declare my praise.

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The good news is that I see that new conversation -- with a commitment to action -- taking place around the country.

I have just come home from a book tour of "town meetings" in 15 cities across the country where there was a real hunger for multiracial truth-telling, fighting for justice, and praying for healing. These meetings were large, multiracial and multicultural, women and men, and very intergenerational. Seeing so many young people coming and trusting the environment enough to speak their hearts and minds was especially exciting to me. The meetings were also interfaith, and included people with no religious faith at all, but with strong moral commitments to racial, economic, and criminal justice.

Over the last few years, the public revelations of so many tragic killings of young men and women of color, and the rise of a new generation of activists, are awakening many. I even hear more and more white Christians agreeing with us when we say that if we acted more Christian than white, black parents might have less fear for their children. It's sparking deep conversions about "whiteness" as an idol and not just an ideology.

But amid all of this while we were experiencing these powerful, very diverse, and hopeful town meetings -- from the East Coast to the Midwest, to the West Coast, and even in the South -- the media kept only focusing on the state of the political horse race.

While what I saw Americans discussing was the more difficult but much deeper discussion of the state of race in America -- underneath the narrow media and political discussions which still mostly leave "race" out of our public discourse. But beneath that narrow mainstream focus on polls and politics, the deeper conversation is now occurring, which is just what our nation most needs right now.

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Perhaps now, with the escalating racial rhetoric and violence of the presidential campaign, the media can bring the crucial issues of race, division, and unity to the center of our public discussion. I hope and pray so.

Over the past few months, I have seen black, Hispanic, Asian, indigenous, and white voices together embracing America's growing diversity and asking how we can build that bridge to a new America. And that's a discussion I almost never hear about in the mainstream media -- right to left.

However, this cannot just be a political movement and neither political party has yet to adequately embrace the requirements of racial justice and healing. It will be only a spiritual movement that can help change politics. As Desmond Tutu often reminded us, and did so from this very pulpit, we need the "spirituality of transformation." That is indeed what we now most need for a new American future. And as Pope Francis has clearly and recently told us, building bridges rather than walls is the Christian vocation.

On the tour, we visited cities that have also become "parables," stories from which we can learn important lessons about America, like Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Atlanta. We went to very diverse cities, like Los Angeles and New York, to still very white cities, like in the Pacific Northwest. But everywhere we found people who believe that the emerging American diversity is a gift and a blessing -- and not a danger and a threat! Can I get an Amen to that?

But that will take a battle, a moral battle, a struggle for the integrity of our faith -- and one that people of faith and moral values will have to make.

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Throughout my travels, one of our Christian Scriptures came up again and again: Galatians 3:28.

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Given what is happening on our country now, it is time to shout out that text!

This Galatians text was a baptismal text and liturgical formula in the early church. Baptism is where new converts made their faith public and the new Christian community was clearly saying this: The three oppressive things that divide humanity are these Galatians factors -- race, class, and gender. All three separate us form one another. At their baptisms the new church was making this very public -- that what they were about as the community of following after Jesus, the body of Christ -- was to undermine, overcome, and take down those barriers, and begin to create a new and united community. They were, in effect, saying if you don't want to be a part of that -- a community bringing down the divisive forces of race, class, and gender -- you don't want to come here because that is what we are about! Unity, instead of division, is part of our vocation as ministers of Christ's gospel of reconciliation.

Imagine if that was the primary message to a divided America right now -- from those who name the name of Jesus. So let us get that message out -- even now in the face of this alarming and dangerous racial rhetoric, which included fear and hatred, and even violence, which racism has done since the beginning of America.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said 50 years ago that the most segregated hour in America is 11 a.m., the hour we are together today! But I have been in churches where a new generation is transforming themselves into multicultural communities, and one I preached in had an average age of 28.

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Here's a local story from the John Eaton Elementary School, just blocks from here and where the kids see this Cathedral every day. All my kids went there as the most diverse elementary school in Washington, D.C. When I spoke to my son Jack's 5th grade class about immigration, which they were studying, I told them about the 11 million immigrants who, because they are undocumented, can't get the medical care or police protection they need, and how their families were being separated and destroyed by 1,000 deportations per day. The kids were immediately and deeply concerned, and asked me, "Why doesn't Congress fix that? Have you talked to them? What do they say?"

I told them I had talked to them, and they told me their constituents were afraid. "Afraid of what?" the students asked. I looked at their class, all the worried faces staring at me, and then it hit me. There they were, a Washington, D.C., 5th grade public school class -- African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, white, Somali, Maltese, and other international students -- "They're afraid of you," I said. The kids were astonished. "Afraid of us? Why?" I told them, "Because you look like what America is becoming ... You're the new America."

Now perplexed, the students said, "But why are they afraid of that?"

A very good question. "Because they don't think it's going to work," I told them. "Tell me, is it working?"

The kids looked at each other, then at me and several said, "Yeah ... it's working great! It's really cool."

I told them our job was to show America that this new more multiracial and multicultural nation really will work, will make us even better and yes, "is really cool."

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Now that is also the job of the faith community, central to our vocation: to show that this will really work, that this was God's design and dream from the beginning of creation described in Genesis. Instead of our becoming an illusory post-racial society, the book of Revelation ends with the worship of God by countless numbers of people -- in their own diverse languages, tribes, and ethnicities. Our job right now in this country is not only to call out the racism we see, but also to lead by example -- by getting our own houses of worship in order and using the power of our multiracial relationships to change public spaces and public policy.

We have to change the narrative of race in America, where privilege and punishment are the outcomes of skin color -- that just cannot be accepted by people of faith.

My wife Joy has helped change the narrative for her children and many others about what women can or cannot do. What would it mean for the people of God in America to change our nation's narrative on race, to repent of our original sin of the racist valuing of other lives less, to help to build a bridge over our present turbulent waters, and find a path though our current political wilderness -- all to an emerging new America? I believe our nation is waiting for that.

This Psalm has a pastoral word to those who suffer such pain and anguish from our original sin of racism but still press on toward the goal of justice, equality, and unity.

5 May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. 6 Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,shall come home with shouts of joy,carrying their sheaves.

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Amen.
In a bold move designed to simultaneously shore up his support with women, and bring in a kindred soul on crowd control, Donald Trump selected former University of Missouri Professor Melissa Click to be his running mate for the 2016 election.

Before last year, Assistant Professor of Communications Melissa Click, a fiery redhead who wears glasses and a scarf, was little known across the nation. But that all changed during protests at the University of Missouri, where Dr. Click tried to expel student journalists from covering the Concerned Student 1950 protests about the school's administration and its insensitivity to complaints about racial harassment.

"I need some muscle over here," Click famously said after trying to block a camera and make student reporter Mark Schierbecker leave.

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Trump has been known for having controversy with protesters showing up at his events, and their violent removal and Trump's incendiary language has made headlines. "I like her call to use muscle to deal with troublemakers," Trump admitted. "It showed she's got spunk!"

The fact that Professor Click had been charged with third-degree assault for the incident did not seem to bother the Republican front-runner. "I'll even pay for her legal fees," Trump boasted.

Republican lawmakers had previously chastised the former professor at Missouri's Communication Department and School of Journalism, claiming that she "displayed a complete disregard for the First Amendment rights of reporters."

But that didn't bother Trump. "Republican lawmakers have been making me look bad since this primary season began," the tycoon told reporters. "And I think we need to rethink some of that freedom of the press stuff anyway. Have you seen what they've been saying about me?"

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Trump's campaign manager agreed. "We could always use someone who knows about journalism," he said, citing a recent scuffle with a Breitbart reporter. "Can you imagine Dr. Click getting in a fight with her, or Megyn Kelly, over covering a Trump event? We could sell tickets to the event."

Trump also noted that Dr. Click's value on the ticket could help him do better in Missouri, where his campaign eked out a win over Senator Ted Cruz. Additionally, he could use a female on the ticket to overcome charges that he's a misogynist. "Everyone knows I love women!"

A statement from Hillary Clinton's campaign called the selection of Dr. Click a cheap political stunt to play the gender card, but Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' staff seemed more receptive to the move. "We always thought Donald Trump was a liberal, and this confirms it," a state director said off the record. "Her positions are close to Bernie's than they are to Hillary's."

At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, a battle appears to be brewing over whether Trump would get the nomination, if he doesn't win enough delegates. A more moderate compromise candidate like Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan might get the nod. Trump hinted that there could be riots if that happened. The event could turn into a media circus. "We would certainly need someone with Dr. Click's strength to show the delegates who is boss."
As Larry Maguire, now CEO and President of Far Niente winery, remembers it, "Back in 1968 Napa Valley was mainly known for its prunes. Napa itself was a sleepy, old cow town."



Wine has been made in California's Napa Valley since Charles Krug opened a winery there in 1861, followed by 140 more by the turn of the century, but economics, infestations and the onset of Prohibition in 1919 effectively stopped expansion in its tracks. Only after 1933 did the wine industry slowly regain momentum, but it was not until the late 1960s that Robert Mondavi proved at his namesake Napa estate that California wines could compete with the best in France.



Today there are 450 vintners in the Valley, 95% of them family owned.



Maguire, who comes from northern California, had planned to go into the music business (he's still an avid guitarist) but instead joined the California wine revolution in 1983, becoming a partner in Far Niente, and later with sister properties Dolce, Nickel & Nickel, EnRoute, and Bella Union.



Far Niente dates back to 1885, but was abandoned during Prohibition. In 1979, Gil Nickel purchased the winery and vineyard, restored them (gaining a place on the National Register of Historical Places), built a complex of old caves (right) for aging purposes, and took on the original name of Far Niente, which in Italian means "without a care." The first releases came in 1982--Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, which are still the focus of Far Niente.



Nickel & Nickel is devoted exclusively to producing 100 percent varietal, single-vineyard wines, which has become a rarity in Napa when it comes to Cabernet Sauvignon. The En Route winery is located in the Russian River Valley, producing Pinot Noir. Bella Union makes--at least for the moment--a less expensive Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon blend. They also produce a late-harvest sweet wine called Dolce.



All the wineries are eco-committed and farmed organically, with Far Niente powered by a solar system called Floatovoltaic that allows for net-zero use of electricity and annually produces more energy than the wineries consume. I did a tasting of several of the company's wines with Maguire at a New York steakhouse, where they showed well with dishes like grilled quail, foie gras and rack of American lamb. I asked Maguire about the tendency of Napa Valley red wines to push the limits for alcohol, although Far Niente's rarely go above 14.5%. "If you have alcohol, you get power and weight," he explained, "which you feel immediately, and then on the mid-palate the acid is important to provide elegance in the flavor and finish."



That was the balance I tasted in the 2013 Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon--an abundant vintage--whose structure was due to alcohol and tannins mellowed by oak and acid, so the dark fruit flavors emerged in silky layers.



As a producer of single-vineyard wine, Nickel & Nickel needs to express its terroir, so winemaker Darice Spinelli, with long familiarity of the various regions and soil compositions of Napa Valley, favors the well-drained, loamy soil of the western Rutherford bench of the Quicksilver Vineyard. The 2013 vintage provided ideal weather, with warm summer days and cool, foggy nights. At 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, this is a sturdy, generous wine ($110), with what they call the flavor of "Rutherford dust," and it won't be released until September, to allow its oak and tannins to calm down and the fruit to emerge.
At its annual meeting in November of 2015, a group of members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) endorsed a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions by a vote of 1040-136. In April, the general membership of the AAA will vote on whether or not to accept the resolution, which reads, in part, as follows:

Whereas Israeli academic institutions have been directly and indirectly complicit in the Israeli state's systematic maintenance of the occupation and denial of basic rights to Palestinians, by providing planning, policy, and technological expertise for furthering Palestinian dispossession; and

Whereas the vast majority of Palestinian civil society organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors, have called for an international boycott of Israeli academic institutions as part of the broader boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement; now therefore

Be it resolved that the AAA as an Association endorses and will honor this call from Palestinian civil society to boycott Israeli academic institutions until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law; and...

As an anthropologist and member of AAA, I find this quite disquieting. The resolution, should it be enacted, serves little more than to squelch the open exchange of ideas among scholars in Israel and other countries -- including those individual scholars who have provided planning, policy, and technological expertise to the Israeli government -- and inhibits the free pursuit of research and education about all sides of and attitudes toward the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

And this particular academic boycott reeks the strong odor of uncritically applied and deeply biased political ideology. The Israeli government clearly has not been a friend of human rights when it comes to the Palestinians, but why is the AAA, given its professed claim of a commitment to the "protection of human rights for people around the world," only singling out Israel? We see human rights violations in many, many countries -- North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. But the AAA has not made any effort to boycott those nations. Why only Israel?

In fact, if the AAA's concerns are truly related to the complicity of academic institutions in a government's "systematic maintenance of the occupation and denial of basic rights" then they should consider boycotting American academic institutions, which have long been involved in the U.S. government's military establishment and foreign affairs, from developing weapons technologies to contributing to the creation of policy. This has often resulted in systematic denial of basic rights of people in other countries either directly or indirectly by the U.S. government.

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Also, over the past year, there has been a great deal of public discourse concerning racism in American universities and the failure of many institutions to develop policies that address the needs of racial and ethnic minorities. What is interesting is that I have not seen calls within AAA for a boycott of American universities although there have been many public claims of systematic racism in academic institutions that dispriveleges minorities.

Academic boycotts serve little purpose and, in fact, can hurt not only institutions but individual scholars. In this case, these are scholars who should be engaging with academics within AAA (and elsewhere) about Israeli policy and the role of academic institutions in that policy. Although the AAA indicates that it is not targeting individual scholars from Israel, the effect is the same and the resolution obfuscates the fact that many Israeli academics oppose their own government's Palestinian policies.

Regardless of how one responds to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, it is difficult to comprehend why the AAA feels the need to single out Israel other than to engage in selective demonization of a country that many members of the AAA don't seem to like.

As Harvard's Steven Pinker asks, "In a world of repressive governments and ongoing conflicts, isn't there something unsavory about singling the citizens of one of these countries for unique vilification and punishment?"

More than unsavory, the AAA resolution is hypocritical and arrogant. It fails to recognize the fact that Israel is one among many governments and institutions, including American examples, that have found ways to systematically disrespect basic human rights. And it represents the case of a group of scholars in one country mounting a moral high horse from which they are targeting foreign academic institutions (and thus individuals) for sanction, an act that runs counter to the basic tenets of open discourse, academic freedom, and respect for different perspectives and viewpoints.

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Take time out from mourning your losses in the Mini-Super Tuesday primaries by taking our latest Week to Week News Quiz.

Here are some random but real hints: You can't hit a pinata if you won't even see it; she might have to create a lot more cabinet posts; he declared victory and went home; and not much difference win or lose. Answers are below the quiz.

1. What did Turkey and the European Union agree upon this week?

a. Returning migrants from the EU to Turkey for $6.6 billion in aid and other concessions

b. Entry into the EU for Turkey next year

c. A military pact

d. A free trade deal expected to facilitate $400 billion in annual trade between the EU and Turkey

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2. Who did President Barack Obama warn Republicans not to treat like a "political pinata"?

a. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton

b. First Lady Michelle Obama

c. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland

d. Secretary of State John Kerry

3. Whom did former Speaker of the House John Boehner say should be the Republican presidential nominee?

a. Donald Trump

b. Paul Ryan

c. Hillary Clinton

d. Mitt Romney

4. How did Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff help out former President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, who is being prosecuted in a corruption scandal?

a. She granted him a pardon

b. She ordered the arrest of the state prosecutors

c. She appointed him as her chief of staff, which shields him from prosecution

d. She rewrote the constitution to legalize corruption involving sitting presidents

5. What surprise announcement did Russian president Vladimir Putin make on Monday?

a. He is pulling most of his troops out of Syria

b. He is endorsing Donald Trump

c. He is sending short-range nuclear missiles to Syria

d. He is funding anti-Merkel propaganda in Germany

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6. Sarah Palin's husband Todd was injured this week. How was he injured?

a. Bar fight

b. Snowmobile crash

c. Hunting accident

d. Gun-cleaning accident

7. On Monday, President Obama helped the nation celebrate what math-related day?

a. The 3,000th anniversary of the Pythagorean theorem

b. Birthday of Alan Turing

c. Pi Day

d. Common Core Story Problempalooza

8. How is Maryland changing its state song?

a. It is removing a reference to the "going price in new slaves"

b. It is replacing references to "northern scum" and the "despot" Abe Lincoln with a poem about the state's scenic beauty

c. It is adding the words "sovereign nation of" before any reference to "Maryland"

d. It is making the entire song gender-neutral

9. Where did police arrest Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from November's terrorist attacks in Paris?

a. Brussels, Belgium

b. Lyon, France

c. London, UK

d. Istanbul, Turkey

10. What did Bernie Sanders decide not to contest?

a. A speeding ticket his campaign bus received in Illinois

b. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's description of him as a "rumpled Marxist"

c. The U.S. Senate's plan to cancel all further legislative sessions until after the election

d. Hillary Clinton's razor-thin victory in the Missouri Democratic primary

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BONUS. Why did Chinese internet users make fun of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg?

a. He released a video praising Beijing while speaking Cantonese

b. He called Chinese President Xi Jinping "Mr. Mao Xiaoping" during a televised official greeting ceremony

c. He was photographed braving Beijing's air pollution jogging in Tiananmen Square without a mask

d. During his recent visit to China, he wore a hoodie emblazoned with Chinese characters for the words "choo-choo banana king"

ANSWERS

1. a.

2. c.

3. b.

4. c (to make matters even more interesting, President Rousseff is also facing impeachment).

5. a.

6. b.

7. c.

8. b.

9. a.

10. d.

BONUS. c.

Want the live news quiz experience? Join us Monday, March 21 in downtown San Francisco for our next live (and lively) Week to Week political roundtable with a news quiz and a social hour at The Commonwealth Club of California. Panelists will include Daniel Borenstein, Carla Marinucci, and Dr. James Taylor.
I am not colored, Negro, Afro-American, African-American, nor any other identifying appellation or abstract term historically imposed upon me.

Nor are people that look like me. Black people in the U.S. are "New Afrikans," and I'm going to tell you why.

In 1968 at a conference convened by the Malcolm X Society and the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL) in Detroit, more than 500 black nationalists - including Queen Mother Moore, Betty Shabazz, Jamil al-Amin, Maulana Karenga, Imari Obadele, Amiri Baraka, and many others - collectively agreed that the descendants of enslaved Africans in America should be identified as New Afrikan.

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That was significant because it was the first time, since the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 abolishing slavery, that such a broad and credible delegation of black people representing the African Diaspora in the U.S. had assembled to forge a national identity and destiny for the descendants of enslaved Africans in America.

Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanzaa and a former Minister of Culture with the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, once argued that the first act of a free people is to define reality and shape the world to reflect their own image and interests.

Detroit-based activist and entrepreneur Kwasi Akwamu agrees. New Afrikans, he says, "exist in a social and political space that defines us as inferior, worthless, lazy, corrupt, dumb, undisciplined, powerless, criminal, disloyal, lewd, and all that is bad and dishonorable."

He disagrees with the use of African-American as a form of identity.

"African-American dismisses the historical national aspirations of our people in America," says Akwamu. "It serves to reinforce the misleading notion that all of our people have always wanted to be citizens of the United States, and that is false. It is true that there have always been some of our people interested in citizenship with full rights as Americans, but that represents only one part of our struggle; many have always and continue to desire self-government, national independence on land of our own."

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The term African-American first came into existence during the early 20th century, but its widespread acceptance mainly has its roots in the Civil Rights movement among proponents of integration and assimilation to white centered American society.

The term was used most famously by Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. during his 1988 presidential campaign, and since then has been adopted as the proper means of referring to blacks in the U.S.

I argue that Akwamu is right. It is inappropriate to refer to black people in the U.S. as African-American.

Furthermore, history has shown that black people in the U.S. are only Americans on paper; hundreds of years of evidence overwhelmingly support that conclusion.

Jim Crow laws and the so-called "War on Drugs," which Michelle Alexander in her book "The New Jim Crow" cogently makes clear is actually a war on black and brown people, are prominent historical and contemporary examples of institutional and state sponsored repression of black people even after so-called emancipation.

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Quite poignantly, the treatment of President Barack Obama and his family serves as an unsavory reminder that blacks in the U.S. are only American on paper. A black person can be the President of the United States and he/she is still a... (Insert racial epithet of choice.)

To label black people in America as so-called African-Americans is woefully disingenuous; it ignores the persistent socioeconomic reality of second class citizenry for black people in this country.

Now, let's discuss that other notorious term used to describe Africans and people of African descent - "black."

Referring to any African or person of African descent as "black" is improper, and an abstract affirmation of the white centered social construct of race (though I use the term in this writing to avoid confusion).

Black, as a noun describing African people, is notional and only exists vis-a-vis ideas of whiteness.

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In her 2011 essay "White Fragility" (http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116), Dr. Robin DiAngelo points out that black is the antithesis of white in a racial dichotomy that positions non-whites, or the "raced other," as the backdrop against which whites, or the "unracialized individual," may rise.

In this way, the African Diaspora and other non-whites in the U.S are reduced to nothing more than a canvas for the expression of white supremacy.

Black can be thought of as a euphemistic cognomen for "doormat race."

Semantics matter.

Black as a noun referring to Africans and people of African descent must be removed from common usage in the English language the same way "Negro" was.

Verily, the title New Afrikan is more than just a name. It gives national identity to people of African descent in the U.S. as it denotes consanguinity, and most importantly makes the African Diaspora in this country eligible for rights and protection as a sovereign nation under international laws of self-determination.

According to international law, newly freed enslaved Africans should have been afforded an opportunity to hold a plebiscite to determine their future as a people, but instead American citizenship was imposed upon them and subsequently their descendants by the 14th Amendment.

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The amendment that made formerly enslaved Africans American citizens on paper also served to rob them of the opportunity to organize as a nation, leading to a myriad of complications since; including the inability to obtain proper reparations.

The 1968 conference of black nationalists - New Afrikans - was the first plebiscite to occur for formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants, making the title New Afrikan the first and only legitimate name for so-called "black" people in America.

Though America may want to forget, New Afrikans like Akwamu, myself, and many others are here to remind our people of who they really are.
Something incredible has happened in the short time between Occupy Wall Street and #BlackLivesMatter. While the Occupy movement was mocked for their ukulele playing and library-lending programs, the latter are being lauded as heroes for interrupting politicians and challenging authority.



In 2016, activism is finally cool again. For the Millennial generation who are coming of age in this election cycle, taking to the streets in protest for something you believe strongly in, is somewhat becoming a right of passage. Make no mistake, there is an all-out civil war being fought for the soul of America. It's South Carolina versus New York all over again. Except this is a war fought not with state's armies, but with tweets about "states rights." To paraphrase Lincoln, now we are engaged in a great, albeit "cold," civil war.



Today, young black women are being thrown out of political rallies by white supremacists, and journalists are being "choke-slammed" by Secret Service agents. It's easy to see the parallels to the darker days of American history. For further proof that we have traveled back in time, even the O.J. Simpson murder trial is back in the news cycle.



Racial and societal tensions in this country are nothing new. While the battle between the North and the South, of Blue States and Red States has been present for generations, we've never seen a level of demonization quite like this. With no clear existential military threat to this nation's survival, Americans are using psychological warfare to create enemies within our own borders. Ask anyone the question, "Who is likely to destroy America?" and the answer you receive will be a subset of Americans themselves. Depending on who you ask, perhaps its liberals or Republicans or Muslim-Americans. America is consumed by an "us versus them" mentality, where the "us" in the equation is defined less by what you are for than what you are against.



It's within this context that we are seeing a massive resurgence of activism, led by the enthusiasm of Millennials. The only thing more honorable than attending a Trump or Bernie rally, joining arm in arm with those that share your values, is to be the lone antagonist intent on trolling the other side. Unfurling a banner, or shouting at Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz is no longer seen as obnoxious, but heroic.



While the polarization of America has reached a fever pitch with this election cycle, I believe the origins of this "Cold Civil War" date back to 2009. The collapse of the American economy, the election of the nation's first African-American President, coupled with increased social media adoption has created a "perfect storm" for hate and divisive rhetoric to fester. In 2009, when Congressman Joe Wilson shouted "You Lie!" at President Obama during an address to Congress, it was met with gasps from half of the country, and cheers from the other. There is sadly very little middle ground, with the loudest voices not only being heard, but being retweeted.



We may never see Trump build his wall along the Mexican border, but we are heading towards walls being built between Red States and Blue States. And we're all going to pay for it.
A few months ago, Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslim immigration. Recently, he claimed Islam hated America. I was hoping he would backtrack on some of these outrageous comments, but he has doubled down instead. Other politicians appeasing America's far right have voiced similar bigotry in the past, but the fact that a presidential candidate has bagged increasing influence with his escalating anti-Muslim rhetoric is unprecedented in modern-day American politics. It is very disconcerting. The celebratory tone of his vote-bank, and their violent tendencies, is a sign that the problem always existed. It is deep-rooted, and is far greater than Trump himself.

Already, we are seeing record high anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Studies suggest a threefold rise in vandalism, harassment and anti-Muslim hate crimes over the last year. This trend is dangerous, and is pointing to a remote -- but real -- possibility that America could be headed down the path of a Trumpistan.

I know well because I have lived in one.

I am a Pakistani who immigrated to the United States seven years ago in search of security - and education. I came to flee the horrid persecution that Muslims from my faith community - the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community - face back home in Pakistan.

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Like America, Pakistan was founded on the ideals of equality, pluralism, liberty and justice for all. Early in its course, extremist clerics who espoused a theocratic vision started to agitate the secular establishment. Headed by Abul Ala Maududi - the father of violent Jihad in Pakistan - these extremist elements entered mainstream politics and began to exploit religion for their political ideals.

Maududi made fiery speeches across the country and spread his politically charged global Jihadist narrative through vigorous publications - at least one of which was also found in the San Bernardino shooters' home. Extremist clerics began demanding Saudi-style Sharia laws be imposed across Pakistan. Because Ahmadiyya Muslims reject a supremacist and violent Jihadi narrative on Islam, and because their spiritual reformist ideology was fast growing in influence, the radical right saw them as a primary threat.

Maududi, therefore, spearheaded a malicious propaganda campaign against the Ahmadi Muslims and incited violent countrywide anti-Ahmadi riots in 1953. The State handed him down the maximum penalty for this agitation and made it clear that it would not tolerate any demagoguery.

Fast-forward 20 years. Times changed. Maududi had been set free and was preaching his extremist message with impunity. His influence grew and gradually seeped into the country's mainstream political discourse. Politicians started pandering to the extremist cause. In 1974, the State gave in to their demands and declared the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community a 'non-Muslim' minority through a Constitutional amendment. The voices that stood up for Pakistan's founding values of separation of mosque and state were quickly drowned out. Ten years later, then president Zia ul-Haq passed an ordinance curtailing the religious freedom of Ahmadi Muslims. Thousands - including three of my uncles -- were rounded up from across the country for identifying as Muslim, praying like Muslims or reading the Quran.

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Since then, violence has only escalated. Talibani militants have killed hundreds of Ahmadi Muslims. Mobs have torched thousands of Ahmadi Mosques, homes, and businesses. And millions of Ahmadi Muslims remain disenfranchised with no representation in government. To escape this brutal persecution, I decided to move to the United States. And after finding a new home in this great country, I am suddenly - for the first time - experiencing a deja vu.

Will Trump be the Zia ul-Haq of America?

For quite some time, anti-Muslim sentiment has been systematically nurtured in America. There has been a whole network of propagandists and fear-mongers that have - like Maududi -- laid the foundation for this rise in anti-Muslim sentiment. They have craftily convinced a large faction of America that Islam is evil and that Muslims are to be feared and suspected. The fear mongering of the likes of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller on the far right and the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Sam Harris of the new atheist movement has, over the years, radicalized many American minds.

And now, this bigoted narrative has sadly crept into mainstream politics. Politicians like Trump are capitalizing on the fear, and ushering in an epidemic of hate.

This is exactly how Pakistan started to drift away from its founding values. Will we also reach a tipping point where the prevailing climate of anti-Muslim animus will translate into national anti-Muslim policies and laws? Will I one day be an outcast in my new home just as I was forced to be in my first? As Trump leads the Republican race to the White House, I shudder to think so.

This is not just about American Muslims. It is the very social fabric of America that is at stake here. Having lived the horrors of extremism in my motherland, the last thing I can afford is watch silently as my new home heads down the same path of a Trumpistan.

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I've been proud to call Maryland my home for more than 30 years. We have a great history of political engagement, with strong leaders laying out the issues for the voters and allowing them to make the best choice. Unfortunately, Congresswoman Donna Edwards has refused to run that kind of campaign in this year's U.S. Senate race. At every turn, she has attacked Chris Van Hollen -- misleading voters with no concern for the facts.

The most egregious example of this has been on Social Security. As someone who has dedicated her life to advocating for a secure retirement for America's seniors, I find this kind of misinformation to be deeply troubling.

Here are the facts.



Chris believes deeply in the promise we make to those who have earned the dignity of a secure retirement. He has a 100 percent lifetime rating from the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare has singled out Chris' leadership, calling him "the savior for us for years now."

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The praise is well earned. As top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, he has been unanimously elected by his colleagues -- including Congresswoman Edwards -- to lead the fight against Republican efforts to end the Medicare Guarantee and cut Social Security. Under Chris's leadership, retirement security has been preserved, despite the best efforts of the Tea Party.

But Chris hasn't been content to protect Social Security. He's looking to expand it, supporting legislation that would increase retirement benefits and ensure long-term, sustainable solvency for the program. Chris also supports the Social Security Caregivers Credit Act which would improve benefits for millions of Americans.

If we're being honest, the biggest risk to Social Security in recent history has been the vote to default on the full faith and credit of the United States. If we had actually done so, it would have wreaked havoc on the economy and put Social Security benefits in real jeopardy -- something Congresswoman Edwards herself has acknowledged. Barbara Mikulski didn't vote to do that. Neither did Ben Cardin. But Donna Edwards voted with the Tea Party Republicans to default on our debt and endanger our retirement security.

I founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives at Georgetown University, and, as Maryland's former Lieutenant Governor, I've focused on seniors' issues for my entire career. And I know Congresswoman Edwards isn't being straightforward about the choice facing Maryland Democrats in this election.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during an election night event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 15, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton has already come closer than any other woman to becoming president of the United States. From the earliest days of public opinion research, polls have been documenting the country's shift from rejection to skepticism to acceptance of the idea of a woman president. Changing public attitudes on women and the presidency, from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archive:

Public willingness to vote for a woman

In 1937, the first time the public was asked by Gallup about its willingness to vote for a female president, the question included the caveat "if she were qualified in every other respect." Gallup removed that phrase, with its implications, and tried a new version in 1945, asking, "If the party whose candidate you most often support nominated a woman for President of the United States, would you vote for her if she seemed best qualified for the job?" The results remained the same, with about one-third saying yes.

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In 1948, the country was split on a new version of this question, which identified the woman candidate as qualified, but not "best" qualified. The final wording became settled in 1958 and has been asked repeatedly since. Large gains were made over the 1970s and the proportion answering yes has continued to rise, reaching 95% in the most recent poll.

Americans may say they are willing to vote for a woman, but when asked to assess the willingness of others, people have not been as optimistic about women's chances of winning the presidency. In 1984, when NBC asked likely voters if they were ready to elect a woman president, only 17% said yes.

Erroneous expectations

The 20% saying the U.S. isn't ready to elect a woman president is similar to the proportion who said the same about an African-American president in an August 2008 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. Earlier polling indicated that a plurality of Americans once believed a female president was likely to be elected before a black president.

In a 1998 Shell poll asked Americans who they thought would be elected president of the United States first: a woman, a person under 40, a black, a Hispanic, or an Asian? Forty-one percent said a woman, 27% a person under 40, 22% a black, 4% a Hispanic, and 1% an Asian. A majority of the public has in fact expected a woman president in the not-too-distant future since the 1970s.

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Questions asked during the 2008 primary season showed differing attitudes about the relative obstacles in becoming president. In a June 2008 CBS poll, 46% of registered voters said a woman faced greater obstacles than a black man, 32% said a black man did.

Willing - but not excited

Although the majority of Americans now say they are willing to vote for a woman, less than one-third express enthusiasm for doing so, and about one in seven people still express some reservations.

The potential to be the first female president does not seem likely to help Hillary Clinton much with voters. In an April 2015 Bloomberg poll, 12% of the public said the idea of electing the first woman president made them more inclined to vote for Clinton, and 4% said they were less inclined; 83% said it didn't matter much.

Women vs. men

Over the years, polls have tried to capture how Americans perceive gender differences in politicians. In a 1971 poll, men and women largely agreed on how a female president might differ from a male president. Solid majorities of both expected that a woman president would be more sympathetic to the problems of the disadvantaged and do a better job of supporting arts and culture.

Smaller majorities agreed that a woman president might have a harder time dealing with crime and the economy. Roughly half thought the physical toll of the job might prove harder on a woman. Under four in ten thought a woman president would be more principled than her male counterpart.

In 1987, solid majorities of seven in ten or more Americans in a poll by the National Women's Political Caucus said that women would do an equally good or better job carrying out the responsibilities of political offices from school board to U.S. Senate. But only 57% said so about the presidency, compared to 31% who said a woman would do a worse job, indicating that the presidency was still seen as substantially different from other political offices.

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Attitudes about women's emotional suitability for politics have changed over the decades that Americans have declared their willingness to vote for female candidates. Three-quarters of the public now disagree with the proposition that men are better suited for politics, while only 19% agree.
Some Republicans really don't want Trump as their nominee for president. (Michael Vadon/Flickr)

Donald Trump is the front runner to be the Republicans' presidential candidate.

And many Republican leaders are ... trying to stop him from winning.

Yes, top conservatives desperately want to stop their most likely, and most popular, candidate.

As of March 18th, he has won 678 delegates in the primaries and caucuses. He's looking like the obvious Republican nominee.

(Delegates officially vote for their candidates at the Republican convention. They generally vote based on the results of the primaries.) His two remaining rivals, Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, are way behind him, and the primaries are already over halfway done.

But that doesn't mean his nomination is 100% in the bag. The GOP establishment is not a fan of things like his violent words and statements against Muslims and immigrants, his non-conservative stances on issues like free trade, and his past donations to Hillary Clinton, among other things.

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So they're officially Team #StopTrump.

Yep, conservative leaders have been meeting secretly to discuss ways to stop Trump. Here are the 3 key ways they could do just that.

hmm well I'd say I'm hoping for Ryan to stop Trump. Trumpism is bad but the conditions and policies that led to it... those are very good  Italian Alex Pareene (@pareene) March 18, 2016

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

1. Clear alternative

Governor John Kasich, a possible alternative to Trump. (OhioMHAS/Flickr)

Weirdly, despite all the animosity towards Trump, very few Republican politicians have thrown their support behind his opponents:

- Both Cruz and Kasich are backed by only 2 senators each. (Cruz will probably get an endorsement soon from Senator Marco Rubio, who dropped out.

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- Three governors support Cruz, and two support Kasich.

- Cruz has 27 House Republicans backing him, and Kasich only has 7.

If all the Republicans in office who dislike Trump threw their support behind Kasich or Cruz, it would send a strong message of solidarity against the current frontrunner.

Could it work?

Probably not--the more politicians and the media attack Trump, the more tightly his followers cling to him.

The RNC / GOP is to blame for all this BS concerning Trump! We will not back down Ever! Trump Vote or No Vote! Cruz, Rubio, Kasich go home!  Trump # 1 (@Scottmkmny) March 12, 2016

And that's not even considering how difficult it would be to make every elected Republican agree to the plan. Or to agree on which guy to back, Cruz or Kasich.

Neither one of them stirs up a ton of enthusiasm.

Here is the best 1:19 of the week: Watch Lindsey talk on CNN about why he's fundraising for Cruz: https://t.co/xDWHL0r9ZY  Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) March 17, 2016

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And it would take a lot of money to try.

NEW: @JohnKasich campaign says it had its best-ever 24 hours of fundraising after Kasich's Ohio primary win. -@bgittleson  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 17, 2016

2. Brokered convention

Believe it or not, Abraham Lincoln won a brokered convention. Even he couldn't secure enough delegates to win the nomination outright. (Ben C.K. (Benck's)/Flickr)

If Kasich and/or Cruz win enough states in the primaries, they could stop Trump from earning enough delegates to get the Republican nomination. (You need 1,237 to win. He has 678. Cruz has 413, and Kasich has 143.)

If no one gets to 1,237, this could lead to a brokered convention, or a convention where the delegates create new voting rules and make deals and sometimes can vote for whoever they want. Possibly even someone who didn't run this year. (Looking at you, House Speaker Paul Ryan.)

This would be a hugely chaotic and complicated process, but the establishment might be willing to try it to keep Trump away from the nomination.

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Trump is already on record claiming a contested election would be unfair:



"Whoever has the most delegates at the end of this trip should win."

He also warns (promises?) his supporters might riot if he loses at the convention.

Could it work?

Definitely, but only if Trump doesn't win those 1,237 delegates.

Another problem is that a lot of Republicans hate the idea of a brokered convention.

As one RNC member said: there's no "magic figure," but it's not good to stop Trump if he's up 300 delegates https://t.co/N3sSaAcHMx  Ari Melber (@AriMelber) March 18, 2016

It's impossible for Kasich to win the nomination outright at this point, and a Cruz victory is unlikely too, but if the two of them combined win several more states, they could successfully withhold enough delegates from Trump.

And that would allow the Republican party to call a brokered convention, at which point it's anyone's game.

3. Electoral college

The founding fathers put a safeguard in for situations like this. (kjd/Flickr)

Americans don't elect our presidents directly, remember? Each state has a certain number of electors in the electoral college. Those electors generally vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state during the presidential election.

But here's the thing: They don't have to.

State legislatures have the option to choose their state's electors themselves, as opposed to having the electors chosen by popular vote. The legislatures could choose electors who will vote not based on the popular vote, but based on whomever the legislature wants to win.

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The electoral college wouldn't allow a trump win. He can't win. But what he will do is create tension and violence with his given spotlight.  Alexis Isabel (@lexi4prez) March 16, 2016

it's fascinating how we do not have a Democracy..

this Electoral college and delegate crap is absurd. #WeirdThingsICantUnderstand  Jon Hartmann (@jonhartmannjazz) March 9, 2016

In other words, state legislatures could foil Trump even if he wins not just the Republican nomination, but the entire election.

Could it work?

It could--it's technically legal--but Trump supporters would see it as dirty and underhanded, and it could set a precedent for future elections. Imagine an America where state legislatures decided to do this every presidential election. The popular vote would mean nothing.

None of these options are easy, and they definitely aren't sure things. But will anti-Trump Republicans consider them worth a try to keep Trump out of office?

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Activists demonstrating near the White House to call attention to ISIS' genocidal acts against Christians. (RLBolton/Flickr)

As long as we've been aware of ISIS, or Islamic State, we've called what they're doing terrorism. Now we have a new name for it: genocide.

It's official: ISIS is committing genocide.

First, what is genocide?

Genocide is the killing, systematically and deliberately, of a large group of people, often a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group--or even an entire nation.

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The definition of genocide in international law is a bit more complicated. In 1948, a code was adopted called the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. It laid out two aspects of genocide: mental--the intent--and physical, including:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This international treaty also says an individual or group can be punished for 5 different forms of genocide: not just genocide itself, but also conspiracy (planning), incitement (efforts to get others to commit genocide or join in), attempt (trying to commit genocide is itself a crime), and complicity (being involved in an act of genocide in any way).

Basically, if you have any role in trying to destroy a specific group of people, you are committing genocide.

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Notice the date of that international code on genocide? 1948? That was just after the Holocaust, which ended in 1945. (The word genocide was coined in 1944.)

You'd think it would be completely obvious when genocide is being committed, but surprisingly, sometimes the facts are so murky that it isn't always clear. So it's very major when a genocide is officially declared to be taking place.

Who is ISIS killing in a genocide, and where?

An Iraqi Yazidi girl in a refugee camp with her family. (DFID/Flickr)

We all know ISIS as terrorists who have done a lot of seriously horrible and horrifying things, like kidnapping innocent people and beheading them, and carrying out major deadly attacks like the one in Paris last November.

But here's what they are doing that is genocidal: ISIS is targeting Christians, Yazidis, and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Syria.

W/ @JohnKerry as he announces determination that #Daesh has committed genocide against Christians, Yezidi & Shia 1/2 pic.twitter.com/CN8VC5zjRU  Assistant Secretary (@DRL_AS) March 17, 2016

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All those who rightly urged this recognition shld support actions were taking & resources we need to help victims reclaim their lives 2/2  Assistant Secretary (@DRL_AS) March 17, 2016

The Yazidi are a ethno-religious group (you can't convert to become Yazidi--you have to be born into it) are followers of a faith that combines parts of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam. (The faith itself is also called Yazidi.) There are as many as half a million Yazidi.

There are two main branches of Islam: Shiite (Shia) and Sunni. They fight a great deal, but both groups overall hate ISIS. Still, ISIS specifically targets Shiites in an effort to, in their own twisted logic, purify the religion.

They've also targeted Sunnis, just not quite as much as Shiites. And they've killed a lot of Kurds too. Kurds are a huge ethnic group in the Middle East--there are around 25-35 million of them--and most of them are Sunni. They've been fighting ISIS with their own armies, sometimes very successfully.

How is ISIS carrying out this genocide?

Some of the evidence of what ISIS has done to the Yazidi. (sethfrantzman/Flickr)

Here are just some of their sickening, genocidal acts:

- They've bombed several areas in Iraq that are heavily populated by Shiite Muslims.

- When they capture areas, they let Sunni Muslims go, and keep the Shiites (or Shia) and execute them.

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- They have captured Yazidi women and girls and turned them into sex slaves.

- They decapitated a group of Coptic Christians. (The Coptics, or Copts, are another ethno-religious group.)

Who decided that what ISIS is doing is genocide?

Secretary of State John Kerry. (Notice that in his announcement, he referred to ISIS as Daesh, a name the terrorists are known to hate.)

It's mind-boggling what ISIS has been carrying out:

.@JohnKerry: "#Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control..."https://t.co/beEhWe5RUW  CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2016

Kerry also accuses ISIS of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and destroying priceless artifacts.

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It's a big deal for a US president's administration to declare that a genocide is taking place while it's going on, not afterwards. In fact, this is only the second time in history that it has happened. (The first was in 2004, by Secretary of State Colin Powell, about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.)

And it's not just the US State Department--the House of Representatives just passed a resolution identifying ISIS's acts as genocidal. Not one congressperson voted against it.

What does declaring genocide accomplish?

The biggest thing is that it shines a brighter spotlight on ISIS' horrifyingly brutal acts, making it clear to the world that they're not only carrying out terrorist attacks, but also systematically targeting, torturing, kidnapping, raping, and killing specific ethnic groups.

Kerry wants the leaders to be brought to justice in an international war crimes court, though how that would happen isn't clear. It's somewhat easier to arrest and hold a trial when a country's leaders commit war crimes and crimes against humanity than it is to hold lawless, stateless terrorists accountable.

US says #ISIS has committed genocide against Christians, Shias, Yazidis. Designation may mean leaders subject to int'l war crimes trial.  CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) March 17, 2016

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In the meantime, the US and some allies have already been targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria with airstrikes--in part because of these atrocities, as well as trying to help victims of their genocide.

Of course, many survivors are among the refugees who fled Syria and Iraq because of these horrors. And there's a huge controversy over helping these refugees and letting many of them come to America.


Back in 2003, exoneration stories of the wrongfully accused did not seem quite as common or frequent as they might today. But that's not the only reason that the story of Darryl Hunt struck me then, as it does now, as extraordinary.

On Christmas Eve of that year, authorities in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I was based as a reporter for the local NPR station, released Hunt after nearly 20 years in prison for a rape and murder he had not committed. He spent some nine years in prison even after DNA seemed to remove him as a suspect. Eventually, through the relentless work of local and national attorneys and a stunning, award-winning series of articles in the Winston-Salem Journal, Hunt won his release and, a couple of months later, exoneration for the crime. He later received a monetary settlement from the City of Winston-Salem and became the subject of a documentary and the recipient of many awards and much acclaim.

But he recently died. He was 49. Authorities don't yet know why but believe it was suicide; it could have been cancer, but it also could have been related to a mental illness, like depression. He was found dead in a parking lot, alone.

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Before I delve into the sad, albeit powerful, metaphorical meaning of that image, I feel called to describe another, perhaps more powerful image, from that Christmas Day homecoming in 2003. As I reported on Hunt's freedom at a press conference, another reporter asked what he most looked forward to, now that he was a free man. "I just want to watch the sun go down," he said.

In eight years as a journalist, I filed hundreds of stories, with thousands of interview quotations, but that one stands out among all others I heard. The room audibly exclaimed, thunderstruck that a man who could have easily lashed out in anger instead found the space to appreciate something which many of us, myself included, take for granted in our daily, free lives--to admire a sunset.

But beyond Hunt's grace and his ability to forgive, or at least move forward, lay a struggle--multiple struggles, really. Hunt fought to end the death penalty, which he nearly received himself but for the vote of one juror. He took on the causes of others in a similar situation to his own--imprisoned for reasons they felt were unjust. But he also struggled with finding his way, with fear, and with depression. In short, he achieved freedom from a physical prison but seemingly not the emotional one much harder for the outside world to see.

The image at the top of this piece says a lot. Taken the day Hunt was finally exonerated, in 2004, it clearly shows a man overcome with emotion--probably the "happy tears" many of us shed in times of great triumph. But it may also have revealed the fears of a man whom the state robbed of nearly half of his life, who had no idea what to do now, or where to turn for help.

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Ironically, Hunt himself wanted to do all he could to help others trying to find their way, setting up a foundation aimed specifically at people he called "homecomers"--ex-offenders by another name. Less than a month before he died, he even spoke on behalf of a man seeking the kind of justice he sought more than a decade earlier. But his nonprofit could not win the support it needed to serve the thousands of returning inmates just in Hunt's hometown alone, and it vastly reduced its presence. This, despite the support Hunt had received personally after his release. ""It hurts that we have cut back on the service because I wanted to help as many people I can. That will keep me up tonight," Hunt confessed.

That wasn't the only thing that kept Hunt up, evidently. He had gone through marital separation, even an order of protection filed against him (later withdrawn). At a vigil, supporters contended that "the burdens he had had become more intensified recently; they were constantly with him. He had been through so much." Another said, "What didn't get calculated into the equation was how he internalized his fight with the legal system. It became a form of internal obsession to not let happen to others what happened to him....Darryl had a lot of pride, dignity and didn't put himself out there for his own care. He never took the time to get the counseling that someone who had his experience needed...He was trying to make some sense out of his life..."

I can't blame him. Hunt was imprisoned from roughly age 17 to 36. I am 37, and while I have discovered some important answers as to my purpose in my life (loving spouse and father, committed public servant, etc.), I am still searching, and I had nearly 20 more years of freedom than Hunt did.

I don't know why Hunt did not get counseling, but he undoubtedly needed it. He admitted he would hesitate each time he opened his household door, even years after his release, thinking it would open automatically, as it did in prison. "And after he leaves the house and before he returns, Hunt drives to an ATM. It's not that he needs money in his pocket. He's focused on getting a receipt and he takes comfort in knowing that his picture is taken. Those two things -- a receipt and his picture -- serve as his alibi just in case Winston-Salem police officers pick him up and throw him in jail."

Incredible.

We will have to wait for the answers to many questions about Hunt's death. But my question goes beyond him: what does a society, and a justice system, which egregiously mistreats a man like Hunt, owe him in return?

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So much of our justice gets practiced in a "retributive" form. Someone is accused of harming another person, and a group of jurors legal professionals decide that person's guilt or innocence, often without any input from those directly involved in the alleged act. Guilt means some form of punishment--but seldom, if ever, any help for the victim or that victim's family.

Restorative justice, on the other hand, understands that a crime impacts more than a single victim, and the offender bears responsibility for their actions. Communities can come together and determine how to make each other whole, whether through deeds or words, and not simply lock up a perpetrator and say goodbye for life.

And what if the alleged perpetrator becomes the victim, as Darryl Hunt did? Yes, the City of Winston-Salem and the state of North Carolina paid Hunt a total of nearly $2 million, and the City apologized, and those gestures matter. But neither they nor countless foundations or individual donors opened their wallets for Hunt's work with ex-offenders. And Hunt, like the ex-offenders he wanted to help, didn't know where to turn--for others, and for himself. To a degree, Hunt had seemingly been kidnapped by his past, but money couldn't pay the ransom. He needed something more--he needed someone, or perhaps many someones, to help him chart his future--a future of physical and mental health and personal fulfillment. He couldn't find it. And he died alone.

Should someone imprisoned--rightfully or unjustly--be given more care in prison than in freedom? If that question doesn't impact you, consider that you (and the rest of the public) spend more than 20 times the amount of money on imprisoning someone than is spent out of jail on probation for that same person. With more than 40 percent of offenders re-offending within three years, according to one Pew study, it seems clear that former inmates (be they true ex-offenders or wrongfully imprisoned) cost much more to punish than to help. What could we do to help them live freely? How can we invest in their freedom, beyond paying for their punishment? And what do we owe someone we wronged beyond belief--stealing decades of life away?

Darryl Hunt's lonely death pains me, not because I knew him personally, but because I can't forget his words--his desire to savor a sunset as his first act of freedom that cold Christmas Eve more than a decade ago. I also can't forget his story--either the story of his imprisonment or the story of his next chapter, one tragically left unfinished.

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Among the myriad of health disparities affecting African Americans, Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) boasts a high position on that list. Although we only make up 12% of the population, we account for 22% of HCV infections.

There are a lot of things that African Americans frequently do to combat HCV in our community. We take time to understand the risk factors associated with spreading the virus, educate our community about HCV symptoms, and we encourage one another to talk to our doctors about any liver-related suspicions that may arise.

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But there is one thing we do not do to help advance HCV treatment and prevention: participate in clinical trials. The reason? Our deep-seated lack of trust.

We don't trust the news. We don't trust the "system". And then there's that cousin on our daddy's side who we love, but just don't trust.

In this same vein, when it comes to scientists, researchers and even our own doctors, we say, "I just don't trust 'em." And the proof is in the pudding. According to the Food and Drug Administration, only about 10% of clinical trial participants are African Americans.

This low number is not only concerning, but it also self-defeating. We know innately that when it comes to health information and treatment, what applies to the general population does not always apply to us. Hepatitis C is a great example of this.

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African Americans are twice as likely to have been infected with HCV and more likely to suffer from chronic HCV than white people. Why? African Americans do not respond as favorably to HCV treatment as white people. Why not? Some studies suggest that African Americans with HCV progress to cirrhosis of the liver at a much slower rate than whites. But, why?

Why don't we have the answer to these questions? Part of the reason is because African Americans do not participate in clinical trials--largely due to a lack of trust in researchers.

African Americans are right to approach clinical trials with caution. We quickly cite the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments and the cloning of Henrietta Lack's cells as our go-to arguments. We also note the severe lack of African American researchers in the field. But thanks to the National Research Act of 1974, we have better legal protections and an added assurance of the ethical standards of human research now in place.

Just as there are risks to participating in clinical trials, there are risks if we don't. Not participating means that researchers will continually make assumptions about how to treat us, apply what is learned in predominately white studies to African Americans, or worse, determine that the findings are inconclusive as it relates to African Americans. With a widening gap in HCV knowledge as it relates to African Americans, and only 5-10% of us participating in HCV clinical trials, it may be time to give some consideration to the benefits:

Clinical trial participants get access to new treatments that aren't available to the public. This means that you're first in line if it works. Participants of clinical trials are closely observed by experts and always receive quality care, both standard and specialized. You'll learn more about your condition and how best to take care of yourself during a clinical trial. You'll help scientists and researchers understand how to better treat people who are similar to you (namely, other African Americans).
The media tells us that Hillary has a lock on the nomination. That news should make her supporters extremely nervous, and not because the prognosticators have been wrong so many times already. All Democrats should worry because her major policy and character flaws could leave us with a Republican president this fall. Here's why.

1. The Senator from Wall Street: This is not 1972 when the country was so deeply divided over the Vietnam War. That upheaval wrecked the Democratic Party and led to the Nixon landslide over George McGovern. Now the country is united against Wall Street. Hillary will have a great deal of difficulty triangulating her way to safety. She will never be able to explain away why she received over $11 million in corporate speaking fees, much of it from Wall Street, and why she still is accepting millions from Wall Street for her campaign.

The defensive lines she is using are weak -- Obama did it too. I'm have a proven record against Wall Street. I can't be bought. My proposals are even tougher than my opponent's.

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Do you really think that will sell in the Fall?

2. Free Trade Cheerleader: The neo-liberal consensus on corporate-managed trade has collapsed. The American people know they've been had. They see that average worker and thousands of communities have been screwed by trade agreements which put Americans in direct competition with low wage workers around the world. Hillary, during her husbands administration, pressed hard for NAFTA. And until very recently, she was proud of her work to develop the TPP -- "the gold standard" of all trade agreements she said -- until Bernie forced her to retreat. She has no credible defense.

3. Global Warrior: The American people are also turning away from regime change. Hillary's record is consistently hawkish. She voted for the Iraq War. She pushed for the takedown of Kaddafi and Assad. Now she wants a dangerous no-fly zone in Syria and she encourages the use of special OPS troops all over the world. The Libya and Middle East are her quagmire.

4. Enthusiasm Gap: While a Trump or a Cruz will draw many to the polls just to defeat them, there is no substitute for positive enthusiasm. We should be worried about the fact that Hillary is having difficulty breaking into double digits with young voters. That's where the real energy is this year. Maybe she can make up for this with older voters, especially women. But it's a gamble -- a big one. Those Sanders kids may stay home. And guilt-tripping them into voting is not likely to work.

5. Trust: Hillary does not generate trust. Nearly 55% of voters think it's a quality she lacks. Sure, it's a wash if Trump is the nominee, given his high unfavorables. But what if it's a Cruz-Kasich ticket or Ryan? Hillary will be hobbled. And it's not just a bum rap. She has shape-shifted too many times, on too many issues. Yes, you can always explain away any one instance or another, by saying how she has changed, learned or made a mistake. But doing so only reinforces the image that she's not being straight -- that she'll say whatever needs to be said to get elected.

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6. "I" not "We": Hillary seems to say "I" more than any other candidate. The election is so clearly about her -- her record, her skills, her experience, her ability to get things done. I've been in the situation room. I've had to make the tough choices. I will work hard for you. "I" is her sense of public service. She wants to do for others, she says again and again. In normal times that might be enough, assuming it was believable. But these are not normal times. There are movements afoot. Bernie has made "we" the mantra of his political revolution. Trump talks about his movement. Cruz talks about the conservative movement. But voters want to be included, to be part of something important. Hillary doesn't have a feel for how to rally people to a cause. That's not her. She's an insider, a player, a person who commands $225,000 speaking fees. And that spells "I".

7. Working Class Blues: A lot has changed in the public's perception of Hillary since 2008 when she ran against Obama. Then, she captured the lion's share of the white working class vote. Much, but not all, had to do with race. It also had to do with the perception that she and Bill were public servants, not rich people. I feel your pain. Today, Hillary casts a different image. She and Bill are very, very rich. They hang out with other very rich people. Together, the Clintons have made over $130,000,000 during the last 8 years. They threw a multi-million dollar wedding for their daughter. That life style creates a growing chasm that separates them from the average working family.

Trump is much richer but doesn't talk that way. In comparison, Hillary sounds more like Jeb Bush -- the policy nerd. Not a good year for that.

8. Unmotivated African-American voters: Hillary is beating Bernie because of her lopsided support among black voters. Clearly the Clinton machine's many years of engagement with the black political and social infrastructures has made a difference. But will that translate into a massive turnout in November without Obama on the ticket? It's possible that her support for Wall Street and trade bills will temper the turnout among some black working class voters. And she doesn't seem to have any proposals that will generate real enthusiasm. Just saying "breaking all barriers" is not enough. Are we counting on Obama doing it for her?

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9. The Typical Politician: Hillary sounds incredibly scripted -- like every line was carefully tested in a focus group. It's not just that she says them again and again. By this point, every candidate is a broken record. It's that she seems less than sincere. It's hard to fathom what she really believes. But that is not her biggest problem. Her real political character comes out when she goes on the attack. For example, her claim that Bernie didn't support the auto bailout was a monumental distortion, if not an outright fabrication. The fact that she doubled down and repeated accusations showed a political character that is not about trust. It's the opposite, in fact. It showed that we could trust her to lie, when necessary, to get what she wants -- what she feels is her due.

10. Weaker Polling: Hillary supporters should be worried that Bernie polls better against the Republicans. Yes, there are many ways to explain that away too. The argument most repeated is that the Republicans haven't done a number on him yet. Wait until they red-bait him....

But Hillary's poll numbers show weakness right now. Yes, she beats the Republicans in most polls. But why is Bernie doing better? Think about that for a bit. He's a self-declared socialist in the most capitalist country in the world and he's doing better than Hillary Rodham Clinton, a capitalist to the core? How can that be?

The answer is simple. Bernie is everything Hillary is not. He's a straight shooter, who is willing to fight Wall Street and to stop fighting useless wars. He offers bold proposals that would really make a tangible difference in people's lives, like free higher education. And he doesn't need to test his lines in a focus group. As a result, he has the enthusiastic support of young people of all hues. He's also a big hit with independents. Everyone knows he's completely committed to fighting runaway inequality. And this year, that's what voters really want.

What they don't want is what we're hearing from so many Hillary supporters -- defensiveness, complex explanations about why her positions have changed, why she's being treated unfairly, why her more centrists positions are really more progressive, why she's really telling the truth even when she isn't. It's spin after spin after spin. It doesn't sit well with voters.

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Plain and simple, Hillary is a much bigger risk this fall than Bernie. It's not too late to do something about it.
It may surprise many to learn that one of the most powerful things a country can do to set itself on a path to health and prosperity starts the day a baby is born. The healthy growth and development of not only children but also societies depends on good nutrition. And when it comes to good nutrition, it doesn't get any better than breast milk.

Breastfeeding: The Cornerstone of Child Health and Development

New evidence recently published in the British medical journal The Lancet revealed that breastfeeding has the power to save more than 800,000 children's lives each year and increase a child's IQ by three to four points. This makes supporting breastfeeding the single largest action that we can take to ensure children survive and thrive. Not only does breast milk acts as a child's first line of defense, protecting from infections, disease, and other potentially life-threatening illnesses, it also fuels brain development. The evidence shows that when children are breastfed longer and exclusively for their first six months they are more likely to do better in school, get higher paying jobs, and contribute more to their country's economy.

Despite the tremendous benefits of breastfeeding, less than 40 percent of children under 6 months are exclusively breastfed around the world, resulting in huge health and economic losses for both individuals and nations. In low income countries like Bangladesh and middle income countries like Mexico low breastfeeding rates are estimated to cost countries up to $70 billion a year in health care costs and lost productivity. In high-income countries like the U.S., this number is more than $230 billion in losses.

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Promoting Breastfeeding in Vietnam: It's Working

As The Lancet rightly points out: "Success in breastfeeding is not the sole responsibility of a woman--the promotion of breastfeeding is a collective societal responsibility."

This insight contributes to the success of a program supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Alive and Thrive, which is a terrific case study for how countries can increase breastfeeding rate.

Since 2009, breastfeeding rates in Vietnam have tripled from 20 percent to over 60 percent. This dramatic increase is due in part to Alive and Thrive's innovative communications efforts and advocacy to support the growing political resolve on the part of Vietnamese policymakers to protect breastfeeding.

Five years ago, Alive and Thrive launched several television spots in Vietnam to promote breastfeeding and address misperceptions about the adequacy of breast milk. Their "talking babies" TV spots were viewed by new mothers across the country, reaching 800,000 women in 2013 alone.

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Just one year following the launch of the TV spots, exclusive breastfeeding rates had risen dramatically to over 40 percent. But it wasn't just TV commercials that moved the needle in Vietnam. In 2012, the Vietnamese National Assembly extended paid maternity leave from four to six months to support women to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of a child's life.

Countries like Vietnam show us that incredible progress is possible. What's needed is political action and an investment in supporting mothers to breastfeed.

The Time to Invest is Now

Despite the naysayers, the science is clear: Breastfeeding saves lives and gives kids the strongest start to life. And we know what works--a shift in policies and social norms can make a huge difference in achieving breastfeeding success for both mom and baby.

It's time for policymakers to step up and recognize that healthy societies aren't made--they're born. And they're born every day with each new child that is brought into the world. Let's make sure our children get off to a great start by giving them the opportunity to reap the incredible benefits of breastfeeding.

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When world leaders convene on the eve of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil at the "Nutrition for Growth" summit, they have the chance to make bold commitments to improve the lives of kids everywhere. There is no better place to start than with breastfeeding.
FLINT, MI - MARCH 1: Nakeyja Cade with her one-year-old daughter Zariyah Cade whose blood has tested high for lead in Flint, MI on March 1, 2016. The working single mother of three says Zariyah started having seizures months after she was born and believes that the lead in the water is responsible. Her 3-yr-old son was tested and his levels are not as high. She has yet to test her 50year-old daughter and herself. After trying three different water filters, water in the house is testing high for lead. At night, she bathes the three children in heated, bottled water to avoid further contamination. The City of Flint, through a series of maneuvers, went from using drinking water from Detroit to water from the Flint river. The Flint river water has now been shown to contain trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases. A study by the Hurley Medical Center stated the proportion of infants and children had an extremely above-average levels of lead in their blood which had nearly doubled since the city switched its water source. (Photo by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Americas political blame game continues while children continue to suffer life impairing harm. The nation was riveted this week as Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chief Gina McCarthy were grilled over the shameful inaction on the Flint, Michigan water crisis by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. There is plenty of blame to go around. But where is the action for the children and families of Flint? Every day we delay the damage to children and their families grows. While Congressional members were calling for accountability and resignations, water in Flint was being tested again. Recent testing at one home in Flint found lead poisoning levels of 11,846 parts per billion. When 5,000 parts per billion is considered hazardous waste, why are we wasting time apportioning blame before the problem is fixed and the poor children and families of Flint have fresh, clean water to drink and cook with and bathe in? Tick, tock, tick tock.

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During the months following the governor-appointed emergency manager's April 2014 reckless decision to switch its water supply from Lake Huron and Detroits system to the Flint River corrosive water as a cost-saving measure  never mind its health and life threatening impact on the children and citizens of Flint  and the delayed decision to tell residents to stop drinking the water in October 2015, the crisis in Flint has too many shameful moments to recount at so many levels. Authorities disregarded or hid evidence and misled residents who could clearly see, taste, and smell the problem for themselves and put the citys financial concerns ahead of concerns for child and adult life and well-being. The revelation that General Motors stopped using Flints water in its manufacturing plant in October 2014 and told the city it was too corrosive for its car parts was a full year before authorities admitted and warned people not to drink, cook with, or bathe in it. Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock.

The states quiet January 2015 late action to provide bottled water just for its Flint employees was 10 months before children and families were warned. The EPA failed to act for months after it knew that lack of corrosion controls in the citys water supply could put residents at risk of lead poisoning. Michigans Department of Environmental Quality failed to heed EPAs private warnings for months that corrosion controls were needed to prevent a risk to public health. A state-employed nurse reportedly dismissively told a Flint mother whose son was diagnosed with an elevated blood lead level: It is just a few IQ points. ... It is not the end of the world. No child in America is disposable. Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock.

No blood lead level is safe. Thats what the group of doctors led by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha knew when they raised concerns about elevated lead levels they saw in Flints children.

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Lead exposure, through water, paint, soil, or other environmental sources is a threat far beyond Flint. The EPA has called it the most serious environmental health hazard for children. An estimated 535,000 U.S. children between one and five years old suffer from lead poisoning. An estimated 24 million housing units have deteriorated lead paint and elevated levels of lead-contaminated house dust. Over 40 percent of the 26 states and District of Columbia that reported childhood blood lead level results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) national database have higher rates of lead poisoning among children than Flint. Nearly half of the states did not participate in this voluntary reporting preventing the true measure of the lead problem in America. Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Lead causes biological and neurological damage linked to brain damage, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, developmental delays, academic failure, juvenile delinquency, high blood pressure and death. Pregnant women, babies, and young children are especially vulnerable because of developing child brains and nervous systems. Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock.

For the Flint children exposed to lead including 9,000 preschoolers under 6 local, state and federal help are needed right now. While lead poisoning is irreversible, some steps can decrease its effects. Michigans Governor Snyder failed horribly in his response to the crisis, but has now proposed funding for safe drinking water, food and nutrition, physical, social and educational enrichment programs, and water bill relief. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) approved Governor Snyders request for a Medicaid and CHIP waiver from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to raise income eligibility standards to enable 15,000 more pregnant women and children in Flint to receive program benefits. Approximately 30,000 current Medicaid beneficiaries in the area also are now eligible for expanded services under this new waiver agreement. Thanks to a letter from Michigan Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow and Representative Dan Kildee, HHS has also expanded funding to enable Flints Head Start and Early Head Start programs to serve every eligible child. These programs will now provide comprehensive early learning, health, and family well-being services to 1,011 Head Start children and 166 Early Head Start children in the city of Flint.

I and so many others are beyond angry that the lead in the water in Flint would have been addressed much more quickly if the majority of the child victims had not been poor and Black. In Flint 56 percent of the population is Black and 60 percent of its children live in poverty. Even though important progress has been made over the years in reducing lead levels in the U.S., Black children remain disproportionately at risk. A 2013 CDC study showed that twice as many Black as White children had elevated blood levels.

Children and families everywhere would benefit immediately from stronger, clearer and consistent national standards for measuring, monitoring, and reducing lead exposure that are enforced. The incalculable child harm from lead poisoning should be reason enough to act now with great urgency and persistence. And the nations bottom line would benefit too. Every dollar invested to decrease lead hazards yields an estimated return of $17:1 to $221:1. These cost benefits exceed the return on vaccines long considered one of the most cost-effective public health interventions.
In advance of President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba on March 20, there is speculation about whether he can pressure Cuba to improve its human rights. But a comparison of Cuba's human rights record with that of the United States shows that the U.S. should be taking lessons from Cuba.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains two different categories of human rights -- civil and political rights on the one hand; and economic, social and cultural rights on the other.

Civil and political rights include the rights to life, free expression, freedom of religion, fair trial, self-determination; and to be free from torture, cruel treatment, and arbitrary detention.

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Economic, social and cultural rights comprise the rights to education, health care, social security, unemployment insurance, paid maternity leave, equal pay for equal work, reduction of infant mortality; prevention, treatment and control of diseases; and to form and join unions and strike.

These human rights are enshrined in two treaties -- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The United States has ratified the ICCPR.

But the U.S. refuses to ratify the ICESCR. Since the Reagan administration, it has been U.S. policy to define human rights only as civil and political rights. Economic, social and cultural rights are dismissed as akin to social welfare, or socialism.

The U.S. government criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while disregarding Cubans' superior access to universal housing, health care, education, and its guarantee of paid maternity leave and equal pay rates.

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Meanwhile, the U.S. government has committed serious human rights violations on Cuban soil, including torture, cruel treatment, and arbitrary detention at Guantanamo. And since 1960, the United States has expressly interfered with Cuba's economic rights and its right to self-determination through the economic embargo.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba, now a blockade, was initiated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Cold War in response to a 1960 memo written by a senior State Department official. The memo proposed "a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the [Castro] government."

That goal has failed, but the punishing blockade has made life difficult in Cuba. In spite of that inhumane effort, however, Cuba guarantees its people a remarkable panoply of human rights.

Health care

Unlike in the United States, health care is considered a right in Cuba. Universal health care is free to all. Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors to patients in the world at 6.7 per 1,000 people. The 2014 infant mortality rate was 4.2 per 1,000 live births - one of the lowest in the world.

Health care in Cuba emphasizes prevention, rather than relying only on medicine, partly due to the limited access to medicines occasioned by the US blockade. In 2014, the Lancet Journal said, "If the accomplishments of Cuba could be reproduced across a broad range of poor and middle-income countries the health of the world's population would be transformed." Cuba has developed pioneering medicines to treat and prevent lung cancer, and prevent diabetic amputations. Because of the blockade, however, we in the United States cannot take advantage of them.

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Education

Free education is a universal right up to and including higher education. Cuba spends a larger proportion of its GDP on education than any other country in the world. "Mobile teachers" are deployed to homes if children are unable to attend school. Many schools provide free morning and after-school care for working parents who have no extended family. It is free to train to be a doctor in Cuba. There are 22 medical schools in Cuba, up from only 3 in 1959 before the Cuban Revolution.

Elections

Elections to Cuba's national parliament (the National Assembly) take place every five years and elections to regional Municipal Assemblies every 2.5 years. Delegates to the National Assembly then elect the Council of State, which in turn appoints the Council of Ministers from which the President is elected.

As of 2018 (the date of the next general election in Cuba), there will be a limit of no more than two five-year terms for all senior elected positions, including the President. Anyone can be nominated to be a candidate. It is not required that one be a member of the Communist Party (CP). No money can be spent promoting candidates and no political parties (including the CP) are permitted to campaign during elections. Military personnel are not on duty at polling stations; school children guard the ballot boxes.

Labor Rights

Cuban law guarantees the right to voluntarily form and join trade unions. Unions are legally independent and financially autonomous, independent of the CP and the state, funded by members' subscriptions. Workers' rights protected by unions include a written contract, a 40-44-hour week, and 30 days' paid annual leave in the state sector.

Unions have the right to stop work they consider dangerous. They have the right to participate in company management, to receive management information, to office space and materials, and to facility time for representatives. Union agreement is required for lay-offs, changes in patterns of working hours, overtime, and the annual safety report. Unions also have a political role in Cuba and have a constitutional right to be consulted about employment law. They also have the right to propose new laws to the National Assembly.

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Women

Women make up the majority of Cuban judges, attorneys, lawyers, scientists, technical workers, public health workers and professionals. Cuba is ranked first in Save the Children's 'Lesser Developed Countries' Mother's Index. With over 48% women MPs, Cuba has the third highest percentage of female parliamentarians in the world. Women receive 9 months of full salary during paid maternity leave, followed by 3 months at 75% of full salary. The government subsidizes abortion and family planning, places a high value on pre-natal care, and offers 'maternity housing' to women before giving birth.

Life Expectancy

In 2013, the World Health Organization listed life expectancy for women in Cuba at 80; the figure was 77 for men. The probability of dying between ages 15 and 60 years per 1,000 people in the population was 115 for men and 73 for women in Cuba.

During the same period, life expectancy for women in the United States was 81 for women and 76 for men. The probability of dying between 15 and 60 per 1,000 people was 128 for men and 76 for women in the United States.

Death Penalty

A study by Cornell Law School found no one under sentence of death in Cuba and no one on death row in October 2015. On December 28, 2010, Cuba's Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of Cuba's last remaining death row inmate, a Cuban-American convicted of a murder carried out during a 1994 terrorist invasion of the island. No new death sentences are known to have been imposed since that time.

By contrast, as of January 1, 2016, 2,949 people were on death row in state facilities in the United States. And 62 were on federal death row as of March 16, 2016, according to Death Penalty Information.

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Sustainable Development

In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a leading global environmental organization, found that Cuba was the only country in the world to have achieved sustainable development. Jonathan Loh, one of the authors of the WWF report, said, "Cuba has reached a good level of development according to United Nations' criteria, thanks to its high literacy level and a very high life expectancy, while the ecological footprint is not large since it is a country with low energy consumption."

Stop Lecturing Cuba and Lift the Blockade

When Cuba and the U.S. held talks about human rights a year ago, Pedro Luis Pedroso, head of the Cuban delegation, said, "We expressed our concerns regarding discrimination and racism patterns in US society, the worsening of police brutality, torture acts and extrajudicial executions in the fight on terror and the legal limbo of prisoners at the US prison camp in Guantanamo."

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government in lecturing Cuba about its human rights while denying many basic human rights to the American people is glaring. The United States should lift the blockade. Obama should close Guantanamo and return it to Cuba.
Bernie Sanders is like Jefferson or Adams defying the King of England at the very beginning of the American Revolution. Many upstanding and reasonable citizens felt that it was far too impractical, too radical, or just plain mad (because of the violence that would ensue) to seek such independence.

Now present day corporations and other powerful elite constituencies that heavily influence American politics and economics are basically just as corrupt and restrictive as England was on the Colonies back then. A crucial difference is that it's not a matter of land and course taxes, but plausibly deniable subjugation that runs deep at the systemic level, while parading a story of progress and western, white, humanistic triumph (it is everything but humanistic).

Behind the scenes, Hillary may personally detest the overall circumstances we are in, she may have a strong conscience and simply feel justified in "doing what needs to be done," as the saying goes. This is also the view of many practical and centrist-progressive folks who really like Bernie, but feel he will wreak havoc, just like the pre-States Continental Congress members refused to support the revolution even as they sympathized with the cause.

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The problem with Clinton and her centrist-progressive supporters, like the ambivalent pre-States Congress members, is that they respect and cooperate far too much with these overarching powers. This yields a defeated politics, where supporters practically, if unwittingly, accept and enable the pervasive influence of a detestably wealthy and astoundingly small minority (you know, that small portion--1/10th of the one-percent--possessing more wealth than 90% of the nation, as Sanders likes to repeatedly call out). "What other choice do we have?" ask the realists, libertines and centrist-progressives? "We've got to be practical," they plea. "We've got to be realists," they swear.

It's a strange predicament - so many American commentators and friends preaching the pragmatic gospel, as if everyone else is totally missing the boat, either gone crazy or fascist. Historically speaking, it's worth noting that pragmatism was not central to the nation's core political principles, practices, civic virtues and distinguishing features; at least, not in an explicitly formulated way since it didn't yet exist. Can you imagine what striking persuasive force pragmatism would have had on the pre-States Continental Congress? Surely, we'd have delayed Independence indefinitely!

It was not pragmatism or a species of realism that defined the American way of life and political landscape in its beginnings. Rather, it was Republicanism (which essentially means making civic engagement indispensable to governmental agency, organization and legislation), old-fashion liberalism and ongoing civic procedures for interrogating and ending corruption and subjugation--these were some of the founding principles, practices and virtues that distinguished the American political landscape.

However the nomination trajectory unfolds, Bernie's dynamic influence has only just begun in terms of future potentials of revamping and empowering American democracy and civic life. In the wake of Sanders, I am convinced that we will see many initiatives and even a movement spawned, one that mobilizes vibrantly around Sanders' mission and voice. Further, as Senator (rather than President) he and his Team could have serious impact in the Senate; they would also be far more available for fostering ground-up change in robust, organized ways that are directly motivated by Sanders' uncompromising moral vision and sober commitment to social transformation and justice.
Young happy caucasian woman listening music in the nature with her modern ear phone, during the sunset.

As a traveler and wanderer at heart, it has been in the last decade that I have fully realized the significance of listening to your instincts. Whether that is traveling to far off lands, starting your own business, or using your voice to take a stand for the nonsensical discrepancies of our world, the power of living into these feelings within yourself is very important to not only your own journey, but to the story that is being played out and begging for your participation.

In this journey of life, we are participants, not pawns.

We are here to live into our unique purposes. We all have passions and desires that are idiosyncratically formed specifically to the heart that we were given for a reason.



There is a significance in following your heart and living into your dreams. We only have so many breaths on this earth and those breaths are bound by each moment that has been given to us and play a central role in the story this life.

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The instinctual feelings in which I speak of, for me, come in the gentle form of traveling the world, writing about the beautiful process of our hearts and sharing in hopes of encouraging others.

Over the last few months I found myself exploring Central and South America. I wandered, listened and most importantly observed. While in Nicaragua I was immersed in a culture that is much different than the one we look around and see here in the U.S. Nicaragua is beautiful, breathtaking, and it is also heartbreaking. The poverty is powerful and is waiting for change. Another reminder of the immense disparity that is prominent in our world.

And so, I write and I will share... I will share in an attempt to live into my unique purpose in hopes it will perhaps help others to live into theirs.



For we all are figuring out this life together.



Here is a short narrative on the feelings surrounding returning home after such a substantial journey.

She walks in the door after a long voyage.

She steps foot on the lush carpet of her brothers home, an instant comfort as the smell of vanilla and spices hits her nose.

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She walks slowly on the soft carpet beneath her feet and puts her stuff down in the spare bedroom that has been made up for her. The big, over sized comforter placed neatly on a bed fit for a queen.

She smiles because she is exhausted, it has been a crazy journey. With a wake up call long before the sun rises, a precious young Nicaraguan sharing an amazing conversation as they drive the long dirt road to the airport, only to follow up with a missed flight, multiple layovers and a mini (perhaps rather large) emotional breakdown with the not-so-nice flight assistant, she is ready for some comfort.

So, why does she feel a tugging in her chest as she walks into what many Americans find to be the normal equivalence of comfort in our all too familiar suburbia?

She's traveled the world and she has seen a lot in her short years on earth. She has watched as women in the Cherangani Hills of Kenya walk miles for their daily water. She has seen hundreds and hundreds of Cambodian amputees and their families struggle in poverty. She has seen the trash lined streets and failing infrastructure in countries all over the world. She knows the familiar smell of sweat mixed with the pungency of filth...

She knows that these white picket fences are not all there is in this in-depth world.

As she basks in the thick carpet and warm shower, she feels a certain longing for the discomfort of traveling the world.

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Perhaps she just needs to settle back in, this is what she tells herself every single time she returns from a trip as she struggles with the mind-boggling discrepancies that are a very real and very big part of our existence.

She goes to sleep, ready to rest her weary brain that seems to constantly struggle between longing to change the world and longing to simply enjoy it.

As she wakes she feels a little more herself, a little more refreshed, slightly less engulfed in the reigns of anxious expectations of what will be next. Not quite herself, but not as lost as when she was consumed with exhaustion.

As she makes the drive back out to her home, nestled sweetly in the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge, she finally starts to feel a sense of peace. A wave of complete surrender to the fact that she is exactly where she is meant to be for this moment. Surrounded with God's beautiful, intricate creation.

She walks in her front door and her cozy, tiny, perfect space feels warm and inviting.

She drops her bags and sits heavily in her chair.
March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day.

March 21st was selected as March 21 = 3/21 = 3 copies of the 21st chromosome. (

clever!

)

Since it's a global celebration of Down syndrome, numerous events are happening and many organizations are beating the donation drum. Some projects to consider spending your time and energy participating in are:

1. A Day in the Life of Down syndrome

"A Day in the Life with Down syndrome" is a fantastic smorgasbord of stories from days in the life of those with Down syndrome. It's a great way to take a peek at other's lives, and to celebrate your own, or the person you love who has Down syndrome.

Down syndrome Blogs is folded into the A Day in the Life with Down syndrome site, so you can also browse blogs that have a connection with Down syndrome and get to know some other families and voices from the Down syndrome global community.

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2. Random Acts of Kindness

This is a 4-step project that celebrates Down syndrome through random acts of kindness:

On March 21st, wear a t-shirt that is Down syndrome-related (the "Chromosome Shirt" would be awesome!)

Choose an act of kindness, like bringing an overwhelmed mom a dinner package or giving warm socks and a shoe certificate to a homeless person (for more suggestions, check out the the IDSC list below)

Print out a WDSD postcard and give it out or place it with your Random Act of Kindness.

Take pictures of your random act if possible and post it on your social media pages with the hashtag #WDSD16.

For the postcards to print out and idea lists, click

to go to the IDSC site.

3. The 3*21 Pledge

The 3*21 Pledge is a project from Ruby's Rainbow, an organization that seeks to help people with Down syndrome go on to higher education. The "3*21 Pledge is to:

Donate $21.

Pledge to be kind and considerate to peeps of all abilities.

Ask three friends to do the same.

All proceeds go to college scholarship funds for adults with Down syndrome.

Click here to pledge and learn more about this wonderful endeavor.

Donate

There are some organizations that are run on shoestring budgets and affect great change that can use more support. Here are a few:

Lettercase

They are the ones who produce the outstanding books on "Understanding a Down syndrome Diagnosis". They do truly amazing work with outreach to physicians and expectant parents, and have recently released a Spanish-language booklet. Read more about their work

The link to donate is

.

2. The National Down syndrome Adoption Network

This is totally grassroots and they literally accomplish life-changing feats on the slimmest of budgets. They can use support. The link to learn more about them is here. The link to donate is here.

3. Give to Research

There are few organizations that do great work with researching Down syndrome - there is still SO MUCH we do not know about this syndrome, that would be really helpful to know. The links between Down syndrome and leukemia? Down syndrome and Alzheimers? What about that zero-impulse control piece, or visual learning in individuals with Down syndrome?

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Here are some organizations to give to -
Today, a conversation between Mette Ivie Harrison and Kendall Wilcox, cofounder with Erika Munson ofMormons Building Bridges.

1. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Mormon church taught that being gay was an evil "lifestyle choice," and that could be reversed through various therapies. It seems that from the "Mormons and Gays" website that the church has rejected the idea that being gay is a choice. What progress have you seen from that time period to this in being gay and Mormon?

We've experienced a momentous shift in the tone with which the church addresses us and our lived experience. They have attempted to improve the Church environment for LGBT people so that it is a safer and more welcoming space. In some circles you'll hear stories of inclusion and love and empathy and understanding with leaders stretching themselves to make space and accommodations for LGBT people, given the parameters set-up by the Church. But in other circles, you hear the same old tragic stories of homophobia and hostility with leaders and fellow members explicitly shunning and excluding LGBT members.

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2. The hierarchy of the Mormon church now uses the phrase "Same-Sex Attraction" rather than "gay" or "LGBT." Do you think there's still an undercurrent of pathology in this term?

In a word, yes. Before the 1950s the church used the phrase "the sin that dare not speak its name" with the occasional use of the explicitly Biblical/Victorian term of "sodomy." This came from the predominant perception of sexuality as a behavioral choice rather than an expression of orientation. It wasn't until the assignment of Elders Kimball and Peterson to study the topic because of concerns that the behavior or "practice" had begun to "infiltrate the Church," that Mormon leaders reluctantly began using the clinical term of "homosexuality" from the 1960s through the late '80s.

As the Church began to enter same sex marriage legal battles and with the appointment of Elder Oaks to the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, the term "same gender attraction" came into use. The explicit intention was to dissuade gay members from "over identifying with the temporary mortal condition" but rather to keep their identity fixed as "children of God" and "disciples of Christ" with the inference that all of God's children are inherently heterosexual (or more precisely, void of orientation since it is irrelevant in spiritual terms).

The inference embedded in the term "same sex attraction" is 1. that it is merely an attraction/feeling/tendency that is a condition of this mortal existence for some people and is like many other maladies that will be removed by death or by the resurrection; and 2. it is therefore something that we experience because of forces or causes outside our innate self and is not part of our innate self as the usage of the sexual orientation nomenclature would infer; and 3. therefore it is something that can be managed and abstained from in this life.

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These days the preferred phraseology for members of the Church in good standing is to refer to oneself as "experiencing same sex attraction" while those who are more suspect in the eyes of the faith community would say that they "identify as LGBT." A couple of notable exceptions underscore the point. The Church opted to use the word "gay" in the url for its official website addressing the topic of same sex attraction, mormonsandgays.org. But it is important to remember that the audience for the site was originally an "out group" rather than the "in group" of Church membership so the Church formed its messaging accordingly. Another notable exception came in early 2015 as the Church officially came out in support of legislation that would, in its view, properly balance the interests of the LGBT community and the Church, the "Utah Compromise."

3. Since being openly and practicing LGBT still is a reason for being excommunicated from the Mormon church, there are few Mormons who can act as loving role models for young Mormons who are currently coming up through the ranks. Is there any healthy choice other than leaving Mormonism for them?

Yes, there is but access to it is highly restricted or discouraged by both the LGBT and LDS communities because the dominant narrative and cultural norm is still locked into the mindset that someone must choose to be "all in" or "all out." Again, this is caused by both the Church and LGBT communities. Individuals and families can find a healthy place for themselves that does not necessarily (but may) include distancing themselves from the Church or from their LGBT identity.

The emphasis has to be on the process of finding that space and far less on the outcome of that process. The Circles of Empathy practice is one such process growing in visibility and availability to the LDS community. There is also a growing number of culturally competent mental health professional who are able to walk with individuals through the careful process of self-determination according to the recommendations given in the APA's report on proper responses to sexual/religious conflicts.



Of course, practically speaking, with the advent of the Nov 5 LDS Handbook of Instructions policy changes, the options of "middle ground" or "third path" or a self-made liminal space within the Church have been summarily cut off with little room for individual self-determination on the part of LGB members or their local leader.

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4. Do you think that the Mormon church is still encouraging mixed-orientation-marriages as the only solution for LGBT Mormons who want to stay active in the church? Or is celibacy and remaining quiet about the gay now the preferred option?



The Church is no longer explicitly encouraging LGBT members to marry as a cure or fix for their sexual orientation. But LDS doctrine and culture however does, of course, sacralize marriage as the ultimate saving ordinance for all members, and thus man-woman marriage continues to heavily occupy Church teachings, policies, and ideology.

As a default "solution," LGBT members are left with celibacy as the only remaining option - not because it is the preferred option but because it is the only one left. It's important to understand the subtle distinction here. The Church does not heavily emphasize celibacy because there is little to no actual doctrine or scriptural text encouraging it as a path of discipleship. In fact, there are some scriptural verses discouraging it.

The Church prefers instead to maintain a prescriptive stance focused on the eventual man-woman marriage for all of God's children. For those "few" who cannot attain such a marriage in this life, the message is simply to "hold on" and have faith that the promised blessing of man-woman marriage will be made available to them eventually.

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5. When there are no openly gay church leaders in the highest levels, how can they understand and speak to this "problem" with compassion? Is it possible that we will ever see a gay member of the Twelve?

I would speculate that we will not see a "gay Apostle" unless or until there is a change in the doctrines of the Church concerning chastity and marriage. Baring such doctrinal changes, the closest we'll ever come to seeing a "gay Apostle" would be someone who "formerly experienced same sex attraction" and through "faith and obedience" has since overcome the influence of that "tendency" to choose behaviors in alignment with the doctrines and commandments of God.

I believe that the leaders try to acknowledge the pain and struggles of LGBT Mormons and show sympathy for the struggle. But that is not enough. What the situation requires is the healing and revelatory power of empathy. There is a very real and egregious empathy gap between the lived experiences of LGBT members and the hearts and minds of the Church leadership - and it must be overcome if we are going to see real substantial change of any kind.
UK media is in much ado over the (re)suspension of anti-Semitic Labour Party Member, Vicky Kirby. Mrs. Kirby was suspended from the Labour party in 2014 after posting several anti-Semitic tirades on her Facebook page, but shortly after she was readmitted. The renewed criticism erupted when news website Guido Fawkes disclosed that Kirby was not only readmitted into the Labour party, but was also elected as the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) vice-chair.

Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was urged by furious MPs to expel the verbose Mrs. Kirby, especially after his tweet stating that "The vile anti-Semitic abuse being directed @lucianaberger is completely unacceptable. It has no place in our society." All this comes on the backdrop of the accusations against the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) that they are "having a problem with Jews," which pictures the ostensibly liberal party in rather unappealing colours.

However, one should only expect a party that elects a leader who defines Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of anti-Semitic individuals as friends to be home to the likes of Kirby and to students who "have a problem with Jews." However, even if the labour party were to oust them all, it would hardly make a difference. The chase of anti-Semites is futile as long as the cause that creates it is thriving and spreading its venomous ambiance.

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The chase of anti-Semites is futile as long as the cause that creates it is thriving and spreading its venomous ambiance.

In "Why Do People Hate Jews," I elaborated on the myriad pretexts Jew-haters have used over the centuries. But more importantly, as I wrote there, we should pay attention to the fact that in each era, different reasons and rationalizations were used in order to explain the hate toward the same group of people. When you consider the diverse, often conflicting reasons for hating Jews, you are left with a distinct impression that none of them is the root cause, but that there is a deeper motivation here that lurks beneath the surface, probably beneath even the consciousness of the anti-Semites struggling scrambling to explain "the irrationality of Jew hatred."

Hating Jews begins to make sense when you examine the reasons for the hatred as a whole, rather than examining each reason separately. From this broader perspective it becomes clear that Jews are hated because they are blamed for problems. In fact, it is hard to find a problem for which they are not blamed. Perhaps this is why comedian and writer, David Baddiel, suggested, "Short of a conspiracy theory? You can always blame the Jews," or as one anti-Semite stated, "Even when fish fight in the sea, the Jews are behind it."

Blaming Jews for every wrong seems to make even less sense than when you focus on each reason for itself until you consider that Jews are judged by a different standard compared to all other nations. People judge Jews much more harshly compared to other nations when it comes to morality and humanism. This makes the Jews inadvertent role-models.

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As a result, whatever Jews project spreads throughout the global human society and reflects itself in people's behaviour. When Jews display brotherhood, it reflects in people's relations with one another. When Jews display ill will toward each other, the nations follow suit among themselves. Deep down, they feel this dependence on the Jews and reflect it in their statements.

If the world is in a poor state, people feel it is the fault of the Jews and reflect it in anti-Semitic tirades, and sometimes in actions. Most anti-Semites cannot provide a rational explanation as to why they feel they do, at least not one that cannot be refuted in two sentences by anyone with minimal knowledge about Jewish history and the state of Israel. However, anti-Semites feel that the ill-will among people emerges from the Jews. They expect the Jews to be a positive role-model, or to put it in more Biblical terminology, to be "a light unto nations."

In that regard, renowned English historian, Prof. Paul Johnson, wrote in A History of the Jews:

"No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny. At a very early stage in their collective existence they believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own society was to be a pilot."

If Jews want to uproot anti-Semitism, they need to focus on their own relationships and shift from alienation and separation into brotherhood and cohesion. The Jewish society is still today expected to be a pilot, since the world has no role-model society worthy of emulating, and only the Jews have prior experience. When Jews unite, their unity will reflect on the rest of the world. Just as currently the Jewish internal schism reflects itself in worldwide conflicts--as the nations themselves claim--when Jews unite, their unity will reflect in worldwide cessation of conflicts and collisions.
This was co-authored by Shabnam Mojtahedi.

As the conflict in Syria enters its sixth year, gross human rights violations remain one of the main features in the conflict. Although the anniversary of the uprising this year has coincided with a U.S.-Russia brokered 'cessation of hostilities' agreement that has, contrary to the expectations of many observers, lasted since Feb. 26, the big picture in Syria appears bleak.

The Syrian government forces and rebel armed groups have been committing gross human rights violations at an alarming scale, dragging the country into an endless cycle of violence and revenge attacks. Torture, in particular, has been one of the most widespread and well-documented acts of violence in the current conflict. The practice of torture has a long history in Syria and was common during the three decades of former President Hafez al-Assad's rule. Syrians shared thousands of accounts of torture and the mistreatment of political prisoners in detention. Several novels were written on the abuses in Tadmur Prison alone. No real changes were brought to the security forces, detention conditions, or even the justice sector after Bashar al-Assad, Hafez's son, succeeded to power in Syria. The practice of torture continued - something I faced and witnessed myself during the few months I spent at Sednaya Military prison in 2006.

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As the recent uprising of 2011 broke, security agencies, relying on decades of experience in arbitrary arrests, torture, and fear, became as ruthless as ever. Detention centers employed a revolving door arrest campaign, and the aim of torture shifted from the extraction of information to merely killing detainees. The scale of brutality shocked the world, particularly after Caesar, the now well-known military police photographer, defected and left Syria, displaying the photos of torture for all to see.

But how has the government's increase in violence influenced Syrians in the opposition? Rather than fighting against the use of torture, certain rebel groups, including factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat Al Nusra, quickly learned from Assad's practices and began perpetrating horrifying acts of torture of their own. They introduced opposition-controlled secret detention centers, and stories and videos of their atrocities began appearing online.

For many Syrians, torture has become a daily part of life, whether from a broadcast on the news, videos on YouTube, or knowledge that a friend or relative experienced or died from the abuse; yet, the majority of Syrians are not mobilizing against the practice. Although this may be because Syrians inside the country fear for their safety, Syrians in the Diaspora have also turned a blind eye on such practices.

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Through my work on Syria, I have interviewed hundreds of torture survivors over the course of a decade, witnessed torture first-hand at the Sednaya Military Prison, and most recently, have been leading the Syria Justice & Accountability Centre's work on documentation. Over the years, I have been able to identify the following trends regarding torture in the Syrian context:

1.The practice of torture is increasing. At the beginning of the uprising, Assad and his forces used torture to suppress political dissent, but now almost all sides are implicated in the practice.

2.Torture is being justified. Sectarianism in both Syria and Iraq is growing. Sectarian hatreds are not only increasing the brutality of torture but also giving Syrians and Iraqis a reason to excuse the perpetrators -- as long as the perpetrator belongs to their own sect. This is true even among educated Syrians.

3.Torture is no longer a private matter. Historically, torture in Syria has been committed in detention centers, away from the public eye. Sometimes videos were leaked, but overall it was the government's dirty secret. In today's Syria, torture has become a public act, thus normalizing its practice in the street, check points and on the fighting fronts. Onlookers can even cheer for the perpetrators, publicly showing support for its practice.4.Torture is committed in groups. One of the most alarming trends is that torture is being committed by groups of perpetrators. The evil of a single perpetrator inflicting this type of harm on another human being is easier to comprehend than when it happens in a group. Rather than voicing an objection or a sign of empathy, they encourage each other, as if competing to see who the more brutal perpetrator is.

5.Syrians in the Diaspora are supporting torture. Often, I have seen Syrian refugees post torture videos and slogans calling for revenge on social media. Syrians in the Diaspora denounced the conviction of a former FSA fighter in Sweden after he posted a video of himself torturing a prisoner in Syria in 2012. Swedish investigators found the video, and a court sentenced him to five years in prison. Despite the clear evidence, many Syrians did not believe a punishment was warranted for "treating Assad soldiers the same way they treated us."

6.Only justice will help deter torturers. Syrian human rights activists, lawyers, and ordinary people have worked tirelessly, and at extreme risk to their lives, to document the violations occurring in the conflict and to shame the perpetrators internationally. But, after five years, it is clear that documentation alone is not deterring the practice, or even opening a debate within Syrian society about the wrongness of torture. For documentation to be truly effective, it must be accompanied by accountability processes. Accountability can begin now through the jurisdictions of European and North American courts and should continue into the future.

The practice of torture threatens to further tear Syria's social fabric and increase sectarianism. Syrians need to better understand that torture affects every community, regardless of ethnicity or religion. In the long run, torture will continue playing a destructive role in Syria, even after the conflict ends, unless Syrian society uniformly condemns it and works to reform current and future practices. Most importantly, the current talks in Geneva must prioritize justice and accountability for torture and other human rights abuses and include investigations into and a condemnation of torture in the final peace agreement.

Mohammad Al Abdallah is a Syrian human rights lawyer and activist. Former political prisoner in Syria for two prison terms. Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Syria Justice & Accountability Center.
There exists a realm called Envision, betwixt beach and jungle it lies,

Created with care and precision, for bright and curious eyes.

The moment you pass through its gates, under blue skies draped in white lace,

A world of adventure awaits, full of peace, love, and bass.

To step into the threshold of Envision Festival is to take a leap of faith. The journey required to arrive there is one riddled with challenges that the thousands of flocking patrons affectionately embrace. There are many aspects that make Envision special but the beacon that shines the brightest, as always, is Mother Nature. Set within the quiet jungle community of Uvita, hidden from sight by a verdant layer of forest, lies Envision with the vast Pacific Ocean cuddling up next to its perimeter. The biophony of the forest's creatures and the geophony of the trees and sea accompany the musicians on stage.

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The setup was similar to last year, however a few changes and improvements were made. The yoga area was expanded and the Lotus Stage changed its name to the Lapa Stage, a grander version of the humble Lotus. Being the only stage playing music during the day, the Lapa was home to all the house, techno and psy-trance you could handle, blaring pulsating beats that could be heard from the beach. There was a musical progression on the Lapa as the daytime DJs played funky beats often incorporating classic tracks like Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" or Ella Fitzgerald's "When I Get Low, I Get High." As the day transitioned to night, the BPMs increased and house music began to bump its way into the Lapa. Into the deeper night, through the wee hours of the morning, psy-trance overtook the Lapa in one final burst of wild, flailing sound. Artists such as Cats Pajamas, IrieEyes, Zach Walker, M.A.N.D.Y., Lee Reynolds, Tara Brooks, and Nicefingers graced the Lapa.

The Village Stage, which was nestled by the campgrounds, hosted a combination of music, meditation and speakers. Definitely the most intimate of the four stages, The Village was a place of serenity and education. Artists, such as David Block of the Human Experience, offered up their sounds while inspirational speakers, such as Envision founder Stephen Brooks, shared their knowledge. The Village Witches stage was situated by the food vendors where you could overhear speakers sharing psychedelic stories about Terence McKenna whilst you munched happily on your vegan Luv Burger.

The Sol Stage hosted a wide array of genres, mostly of the instrumental varieties. Its elaborate, laser cut facade was adorned with a jolly, mustached sun whose Technicolor facial expressions morphed with precise 3D mapping. The stage itself was a sober acid trip as the colorful projections created remarkable designs that twinkled and moved across the wood. On Sunday night, the sound of the melodica echoed through the air as Oakland-based band Dirtwire (half of which is David Satori from Beats Antique) performed the aptly titled song, "Mueve En El Sol," which has become the unofficial song of Envision, already finding its way into a few post-event videos. From the worldly sounds of Beats Antique to local Costa Rican reggae group, Un Rojo to the folk ensemble Elephant Revival, The Sol Stage was the place to go to experience music the good ol' fashioned way.

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The Luna Stage spewed bass out of Funktion One speakers and fire out of its antennae while also being the home to the festival's sunrise sets. Cut into the shape of a moth, this nocturnal butterfly was the canvas for kaleidoscopic projections that swirled and glowed until the sun came up. With aerial acrobats, dancers, hoopers and fire-spinners adorning the stage, the Luna was a vision of splendor that displayed the deepest corners of the human imagination.

Artists such as Lafa Taylor, Beat Fatigue, Andreilien, Hedflux, Medium Troy, An-Ten-Nae, Cualli, Digital Rust, and Shpongle lured patrons to the Luna with various boops, bleeps, womps, clicks, dribbles, drips, rhymes and flows. Even Patty Partymuch, the lime green reindeer made an appearance atop the stage. Envision veteran Random Rab welcomed in Sunday morning with his 5th Envision sunrise set. The most epic consecutive run of artists at the Luna, however, was the Sunday night finale with Nominus, Dimond Saints, Clozee, Grouch, Atyya, Spoonbill and finally, The Human Experience, performing the grand finale and closing out the festival. The gut wiggling music combined with being intoxicated by the leave-it-all-on-the-dancefloor energy that surrounds the last night of a festival made the air come alive with bliss.

The Envision Art Gallery could also be found in this area along the back perimeter featuring the work of visionary artists from past and present. Live artists such as Lucas Rodriguez were sprinkled throughout the festival, caressing canvases upon bamboo easels. One of the grandest and most memorable live art pieces was the giant mural painted by Oakland-based street artist, Ernest Doty. His piece was captivating and mysterious, a faceless humanoid swathed in rainbow.

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Envision is a haven of creation, inspiring love through music, dance, yoga, art, healthy living and sustainability. As amazing as the festival is, what is even more amazing is its organizers. With all beauty comes imperfection and with all journeys come challenges. Costa Rica is a predominantly Catholic country and on Saturday there was an anti-Envision protest organized by a local church. "We met them with understanding and acceptance. We offered fruit and water to the protesters and they were extremely nice and politely declined," Justin Brothers explained. "It's understandable why an extremely Catholic establishment may be afraid of Envision and what we're bringing to their community but at the end of the day we actually all have common viewpoints on community and love."

Another challenge that Envision faces every year is safe transport from the festival to the local communities at which many attendees booked hotels. All the local cabs, including those from Dominical and Uvita, are a part of the department of transportation which runs out of San Isidro. The purpose of this system is to prevent patrons from jumping into random, unaccounted for vehicles. "The local cabs have the same opportunity to be a part of the system that we've enacted," says Brothers. "We want nothing more than all Uvita and Dominical based businesses to thrive and succeed from Envision's presence but we also need to put systems in place that standardize and protect everyone involved."

From a local's standpoint, I can understand how it may be difficult when thousands of counter-culture expats flood into your town. However, one of the transformational festival's strongest foundations is acceptance. The festival community exists because we all found a place where we are not seen as outcasts but embraced as family. The organizers of Envision work every year to strengthen the community in which the festival sits. In 2013, they donated money towards the construction of a sidewalk along the dangerous jungle roads, where many hitchhike and walk unsafely.

They have also upgraded the water system over several years, given computers to the local school, donated to the police station, and this year they started a youth center in Uvita that they have handed over to the youth to run and plan to support into the future. "We really wanted to put it in their hands so it wasn't an Envision thing but something supported by the community and for the community," Brothers voiced. "It's a great opportunity for anyone interested to explore entrepreneurship and project development. We're excited to see what direction the youth center takes and we're here to support it throughout."

Though no festival is perfect, Envision Festival is quite close. Even torrential downpours and stomach viruses could not dampen the spirits of the Envisionaries. Definitely one of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing festivals, it is these challenges that make Envision's patrons so special. The jungle teaches patience, the ocean teaches respect, and the festival teaches love.

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There is something so enchanting about the final sunrise set. It is a time when festival warriors can conjure the spirit to dance so hard that the sun decides to ditch his party and join us on our side of the hemisphere. As night transitions to day, a magical sense of freedom and gratitude sweeps across the dancefloor as we warmly welcome the most glorious Monday morning. My Envision festival ended with a giant group hug, celebrating those who were left standing, on the dancefloor and on the stage, as a cart offering free fruit was pushed through the crowd. It was a sweet ending to a decadent weekend.

Photos by Miles Najera
UNITED STATES - MARCH 17: Supreme Court justice nominee Merrick Garland talks with Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., during a meeting in Russell Building, March 17, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Antonin Scalia's death triggered another episode in the extraordinary polarization of American society and the Supreme Court itself. The Republican Party has long insisted that it will categorically refuse to consider any nominee Barack Obama would propose to replace Scalia on the Court. It stuck to its guns when Obama recently nominated Merrick B. Garland, a respected moderate judge. In its view, "the people" should decide who will replace Scalia by giving this responsibility to the next president. Of course, "the people" already elected Obama, which gives him the power to appoint justices. Critics therefore argue that such obstructionism violates the constitutional process and could damage the GOP's reputation.

However, the Republican Party's gamble was predictable. One way to think of the issue is by borrowing a concept from economics: sunk costs versus opportunity costs.

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Sunk costs generally refer to the time and resources invested doing something. Here, it is no secret that the Republican Party resorted to an unprecedented degree of obstructionism during the Obama years, as illustrated by its record number of filibusters. Once Obama entered the White House, Mitch McConnell, the GOP's leader in the Senate, squarely admitted that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

The party systematically refused to compromise and saw Obama as an illegitimate president with a ruinous agenda. Hardliners like Senator Ted Cruz also played a key role in precipitating the shutdown of the federal government in 2013. This strategy was partly made possible by how Republican leaders convinced their base that Obama's health care reform is a "radical socialist" policy even though it is based on past plans from Richard Nixon and the Heritage Foundation that were initially instituted in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney when he was the Bay State's Governor.

Given the considerable stock that Republican leaders invested in obstructing Obama's agenda for nearly 8 years, it would seem obvious that they would not finally bow down and consent to letting Obama appoint a replacement to Scalia. The sunk costs would seem plainly too high to change strategy at this stage.

On the other hand, opportunity costs basically refer to wasting an opportunity by doing something else. If the Republicans consent to letting Obama appoint a justice, they might waste the opportunity to do so if a Republican wins the presidency in November. The opportunity would seem too big to waste considering the Supreme Court's colossal importance. "President Obama's nominee would flip the court from a 5-to-4 conservative to a 5-to-4 liberal-controlled court, and that's the concern," Senator Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican, candidly recognized.

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But this calculation might reflect the "sunk costs fallacy," namely relentlessly pursuing a self-defeating strategy and overlooking other opportunities. Polls suggest that the public mostly blamed the GOP for the 2013 government shutdown crisis. Similarly, a majority of the public believes that the Senate should consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee. Along with the hardline agenda of the current Republican presidential candidates, from Donald Trump to Ted Cruz, the party's obstructionist strategy might backfire by alienating moderate voters. Yet, the GOP would feel vindicated if it reclaims the presidency. We will probably find out on election night if this gamble paid off.
TUNIS -- There are many compelling reasons why the United States and Europe -- for the sake of Libya itself -- should resist the momentum that seems to be building towards some kind of Western-led, military escalation in the Southern Mediterranean.

Libya is currently engaged in a concerted process to bring about national reconciliation and restore national governance -- admittedly a tall order five years after NATO helped oust the country's longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

Intervention at this sensitive moment, even if it focused on a systematic campaign against ISIS, would probably irreparably fracture the peace-building process by injecting more violence into an already violent situation and encouraging Islamists and nationalists to resist the introduction of external hard power in their own rough balance of forces.

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Moreover, despite the recently revealed Pentagon plan to "cripple" ISIS in the country by scaling up American attacks on the group, roughly similar expectations promising a total victory over insurgents have all too often brought about reverse outcomes: In particular, greater violence and socio-economic collapse that pushes more people into the arms of extremists while incubating ever more determined iterations of armed movements.

One particularly compelling argument, however, for not intervening in Libya lies just next-door in Tunisia.

Almost exactly one year ago, this country was rudely awakened to the extent of its neighbor's breakdown when ISIS-linked terrorists, trained in Libya, killed dozens of Tunisians and foreigners at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis.

That attack was then followed up with another Libya-originated operation in the resort city of Sousse in June. Thirty-nine people were killed and the vital tourism sector ground to a halt.

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Over the past two weeks, ISIS has ratcheted up pressure on Tunisia even further, complementing a four year long, Al-Qaeda-led insurgency in the Gassrine region of Western Tunisia with attacks on the city of Ben Gardane that sits astride the porous, south-eastern border with Libya.

Here again, the 100-plus attackers, mostly Tunisian and from the area of Ben Gardane itself, were reportedly indoctrinated, trained and equipped at ISIS bases just across the border in Libya. Their mission was either a series of probing attacks or, as some Tunisian government officials have said, the establishment of an ISIS "emirate" in the area.

Although Tunisian leaders and Western diplomats I met with recently have publicly proclaimed that Tunisia is strong enough to foil either of these objectives, privately both sides express grave concern that the country could fracture along regional lines if repeatedly or boldly challenged in the coming weeks and months by ISIS or others.

The reason for this fear is that the country is grossly unprepared to defend itself.

Its army remains small, under-trained and under-equipped. The far larger police and National Guard forces are widely viewed as abusive of the civilian population, inefficient and rife with corruption (especially when it comes to the kind of cross-border smuggling from which ISIS also benefits).

And instead of a robust de-radicalization program, the security sector is instead imprisoning people at a faster rate than ever before, sometimes arbitrarily and all too often in a manner that only encourages greater radicalization.

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At the same time, the World Bank expects Tunisia's official GDP growth for 2015 to be near zero. The tourism sector has essentially collapsed, unemployment is rising, especially among youths who were behind recent protests in Gassrine, and the country faces severe currency and budgetary pressures over the next year, despite a hurried series of loans engineered by the US and Europe.

Amid all of this, a Western-led, military escalation in Libya now would only aggravate these already troubling indicators, not least because it would likely push ISIS (and more Libyan refugees) farther westward towards the heart of Tunisia.

In this scenario, any attacking coalition would be forced to decide if expanding its area of operations farther afield would be possible, much less desirable.

No matter the decision though, the further destabilization of Tunisia as a result of the initial intervention would greatly exacerbate the refugee situation for Europe by adding yet another Mediterranean state to the list of failed or failing countries at its door.

The US and its allies would also find its own attempts to monitor and stabilize North Africa to be a vastly more complicated affair than it already is since new territory would be opened up for any number of insurgent or criminal groups.

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Neighboring Algeria, too, would face mounting problems on top of its own unprecedented trifecta of threats represented by falling energy prices, elite infighting and the already dangerous level of regional disintegration.

But most of all, the further destabilization of Tunisia would be catastrophic for Tunisians themselves.

Instead of standing as a Nobel Prize winning country and the only successful democratic transition to come out of the 2011 Arab revolts, Tunisian citizens would face the very real prospect of their families, friends and compatriots joining the ranks of so many tens of millions of Arab citizens whose countries lie in ruin and for whom constant violence and socio-economic hopelessness are now the norm.

This is not to say that a major intervention in Libya should be totally ruled out in the future.

In order to avoid the pitfalls that seem likely, any such move at a bare minimum should be preceded by three crucial actions.

First, the Libyan reconciliation process should be fully supported with readily available political, economic and diplomatic tools until a reasonably stable and sustainable transitional government is reached.

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Second, the Syria war has to be substantially de-escalated and a robust peace process put in place. Without this, the vortex that Syria has become - both sucking in and generating violent extremists who then destabilize the whole region and beyond - will continue to serve as a lifeline for the expansion of ISIS's footprint and as a strategic depth that diverts finite resources (and political capital) from its enemies.

But perhaps more importantly, ahead of any intervention, Tunisia must be able to adequately defend itself and prevent any westward push by ISIS. This would mean finally providing Tunisian democrats with enough hard power so that they can reform the security sector and the grossly inefficient and unfair economic order - all in order to get both on a fighting basis.

Indeed, the harsh reality is that unless the deeply rooted, parallel state here is rapidly pushed to the margins, meaning the top tier of the corruption matrix that exists between some in the security sector, some economic elites and the traditional mafia, Tunisia will likely not be able to resuscitate its economy and it won't be able to defend itself from a determined enemy with ample territory to find sanctuary.

More cash, weapons and training then, from the US and Europe, will only end up being wasted, as has been the case in similar circumstances around the world where parallel states are allowed to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the economic dislocation and security breakdown that they actually helped to foster in the first place.

The path forward is for the elected representatives of Tunisia to join with the external backers of the country, especially the UN, the EU and the US, to collectively design and implement policies that can realize the bold reforms in the economy and the security sector that are desperately needed.

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Unfortunately, given the power of the parallel state, this may necessitate ceding some national sovereignty: One proposal would be to create a hybrid Tunisian-UN tribunal that would rapidly investigate and try cases of grand theft corruption among security officials and businesspersons.

While many Tunisians would probably be rightfully skeptical of such an approach, the country is already involved in a far less transparent process of starting to cede some of its sovereignty to international actors who are initiating a more robust "engagement" with the Tunisian military and, at the same time, exacting various legal changes via loan guarantees.

The country also faces the prospect of losing sovereignty over large swathes of its territory to groups like ISIS should they prove successful in their inevitable next attempts to punch through the border.
Chris Horner, a DC-based lawyer, climate change denier and Fox News regular, is also being paid as a "Regulatory Counsel" for the coal company, Alpha Natural Resources, according to bankruptcy filings reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). Horner's repeated filing of lawsuits against leading U.S. climate scientists has been described as "harassment."

Alpha funding for Horner was first reported by Lee Fang, writing for the Intercept in August 2015 from earlier bankruptcy filings, although his role as Counsel was unknown until now.

Horner's role as Regulatory Counsel for Alpha is described in a declaration that he signed, and which was filed with the bankruptcy court on January 11, 2016. Another document shows that funding from Alpha to Horner has continued through to at least the end of January, 2016, which is the most recent reporting period.

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As the Wall Street Journal has reported, Horner was paid a total of $18,600 by Alpha for the months of May, June and July 2015. More recent filings reviewed by CMD show that he has subsequently been paid at least $12,000 more since then, taking the total amount to at least $30,600 for the nine month period between May 2015 and Jan 2016.

With the U.S. coal industry increasingly collapsing, coal company bankruptcy filings are now revealing what has long been suspected but not proven: that leading climate change deniers and many of the biggest defenders of coal, are funded by the industry that they are working to protect.

Coal Industry Funding of Climate Denial

CMD recently revealed that another coal company filing for bankruptcy, Arch Coal, has provided funding to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), where Chris Horner is also a Senior Legal Fellow. Both Arch and Alpha also fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), another climate change denial group, in which Horner has participated for many years. ALEC has been instrumental in trying to block action to implement the Obama-administration's Clean Power Plan at the state level. The Clean Power Plan is currently on hold, pending review by the Court of Appeals.

Through E&E Legal, Horner has filed countless public record requests with climate scientists working at state universities and other public bodies--requests that typically demand unpublished research and personal emails. When the scientists don't hand over everything, lawsuits are filed and years of litigation begins, distracting from actual climate research.

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In his bio, Horner doesn't mention Alpha or any other coal company, although he does list the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), "scientists," and members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate as all being past or current clients.

In addition to his role working for Alpha, whatever it is he does in that role, Chris Horner is an illustrative example of how the coal industry has spread funding to myriad groups, giving the impression of a broad cast of characters for its climate denial performance. In reality its a relatively small group of actors performing all the roles.

This is what is known to date about Horner's work with groups funded by the coal industry:

Chris Horner's Coal Ties:

Regulatory Counsel for Alpha Natural Resources

Senior Legal Fellow at Energy & Environment Legal Institute, which is funded by Arch Coal.

Senior Clinical Attorney for the Free Market Environment Law Clinic from which he received $110,000 in 2014, and which is funded by Alpha Natural Resources.

A Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which in 2009 funding from $90k Murray Energy and $100k from Massey Energy.

Participant in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, funded by a host of coal companies, including Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources

An "expert" for the Heartland Institute, which is funded by Alpha Natural Resources.

As CMD has previously reported, Horner was a speaker at a 2015 private and highly secretive annual coal summit, organized by five coal companies, including Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, as well as Alliance Resource Partners, Drummond Company, and United Coal Company.

CMD was provided with a copy of an email sent to attendees after the event.

The note, signed by the CEOs of all five coal companies, suggests each of them may be funding Horner. It said: "As the 'war on coal' continues, I trust that the commitment we have made to support Chris Horner's work will eventually create great awareness of the illegal tactics being employed to pass laws that are intended to destroy our industry."

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Peabody Energy, described as the largest coal company in the world, is the next coal giant facing bankruptcy. The price of Peabody stock has dropped 97% over the past year and it recently warned its investors that it may seek bankruptcy protections from creditors.
On Tuesday, March 15, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed the government's leave to appeal the finding of the High Court that it should have arrested Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he came to the country in June 2015. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued two arrest warrants for al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the western Sudan region of Darfur. It is on the basis of these warrants and South African law that South African authorities could have arrested al-Bashir, but didn't.

In the decision, the SCA found that in not arresting al-Bashir, the South African authorities' actions were inconsistent with existing legislation and ultimately unlawful. The SCA was also very critical of the government's conduct during the High Court proceedings that they were seeking to appeal. The lawyer for the state had, several times during the proceedings, reassured the court that al-Bashir was still in South Africa. This despite widely circulated images on social media showing al-Bashir's motorcade arrive at Waterkloof Airbase, as well as the Sudanese presidential jet leaving the base. Calling the government's conduct "disgraceful", the court raised concerns that the government and/or its lawyers misled the High Court. Al-Bashir indeed left the country just when proceedings at the High Court had started.

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For the South African government, the issue - at least today - is fairly simple: international criminal justice is important, but sitting heads of state must enjoy immunity from prosecution (even for international crimes) and thus cannot be arrested. This view was enunciated by President Jacob Zuma in October 2013 following an extraordinary African Union (AU) Summit to discuss Africa's relationship with the ICC. It is certainly not a new view.

The South African government's position in 2009 was slightly more nuanced. The then Director-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba, stated that while al-Bashir had been invited to President Zuma's inauguration, he had been warned against attending. The department, aware of an arrest warrant issued by a magistrate in Gauteng, had advised al-Bashir not to travel because he risked arrest.

To be clear, the department was not at the time saying that al-Bashir did not enjoy immunity. That issue was somewhat skirted. Instead, it was saying it could not control what the courts and the criminal justice officials would do. Puzzling, as this may seem, the departure thus was not in a view that al-Bashir should be arrested, but rather that in 2009 the department of international relations could not guarantee that he would not be arrested.

This thus raises questions as to whether the South African government's position on international criminal justice has changed. The answer lies in how far back into the country one goes. At least from 2009 (and even in the years immediately prior when former president Thabo Mbeki voiced his opinions on immunity), the view has largely remain unchanged, though it has hardened.

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Going further back to 2002, South Africa's position has definitely changed. It would be interesting to hear the views of the crafters of the Implementation of the Rome Statute Act, who in 2002 saw it fit to frame the law in a way that ensured all men (presidents included) are equal. It is that law that they drafted 14 years ago that has empowered judges at various levels to decide against government action.

The SCA rebuffed the government's arguments regarding immunity of heads of state. While acknowledging that in customary international law this issue is not yet resolved, the judges instead made (and, arguably, rightly so) reference to South African law.The majority of the judges were of the view that the Implementation of the Rome Statute of the ICC Act effectively does away with immunity from prosecution for international crimes and that the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act should be read with this in mind. Using a purposive constitutional interpretation of South African law, the judges found that the Implementation Act should be seen as a tool to promote and protect rights contained in the South African Constitution. The Act, the SCA found, does this by criminalising gross human rights violations. This was a significant pronouncement.

Heralded by civil society as a landmark judgment, this decision - coming from the country's highest court on non-constitutional matters - dealt a big blow to the South African government's stance.

Of course, indications are that the government will likely appeal to the Constitutional Court. This would buy it more time, since the ICC is still waiting for the South African government to submit its reasons for not complying with the ICC's request to arrest al-Bashir. South Africa was granted a postponement until domestic legal processes were completed. With the SCA decision, the deadline is drawing even closer.

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In the meantime, questions are still lingering about who should be held responsible for what the SCA calls 'unlawful' and 'risible' conduct on the part of the government.

If the Constitutional Court, should the government appeal to it, endorses the decisions of the SCA and the High Court, then investigations into who was responsible would have to follow. The rule of law demands it. Whether they will, remains to be seen.

Ms Maunganidze is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa
Mrs. Thakur* went to a government hospital with an 8-centimeter cancerous lump in her breast. The doctor she saw told her the cancer was too advanced and sent her home with a prescription of Paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen), saying: "There is nothing more we can do." She was left to die in excruciating pain on the concrete floor of her home.

Her husband found out by chance about a palliative care clinic in the area. He visited the healthcare staff there, saying his wife could not come because she was in too much pain. The doctors gave Mr. Thakur some painkillers from the clinic, and arranged a home visit for the following week.



(The organization "Eastern India Palliative Care" has information kiosks at busy government hospitals such as this one in Kolkata to help people access the care they need - photo by Dr. Hannah Fox)

Palliative care is an approach which cares for people, and their families, with life threatening or life limiting illness. Palliative care teams address physical pain and symptoms, as well as offering social, psychological and spiritual assistance.



Mrs. Thakur was only 30 years old, suffering from advanced breast cancer. She was in so much pain that she could not sit up, sleep, eat, or drink. The palliative care doctor gave her an injection of a painkiller, an antiemetic (a drug that is effective against nausea and vomiting), and sedatives, which he uses as a substitute for morphine.



(A family doctor delivering care at home without the necessary medicines available. It is difficult for doctors to control a patients' pain - photo by Dr. Hannah Fox)

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In Kolkata, India, where the Thakurs live, and in much of the rest of the world, morphine and other opioid pain medications are very difficult to obtain. This is because of regulatory barriers such as unduly restrictive laws, attitudinal factors such as concerns about addiction and reluctance to prescribe or stock these medicines, or insufficient training for health professionals (See WHO, 2011) .



As a result of these barriers, each year over 18 million people around the world die in agony without access to essential medicines (See WHPCA). Mrs. Thakur's doctor was not able to give her morphine to help relieve her pain, even though this medication is safe, cheap, and effective.

In India, certain major hospitals stock morphine, but often people with diseases such as cancer - sometimes advanced - have to travel many miles to get there, and if a doctor is practicing privately, the licensing is very complicated. Either way, people are left without proper pain management.

In a report released this year, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) recognized that approximately 5.5 billion people (see page 13 of International Narcotics Control Board's 2014 Report) still have limited or no access to medicines containing narcotic drugs, such as codeine or morphine, leaving 75% of the world population without access to proper treatment.



(Morphine is a safe effective and inexpensive medication for pain relief but currently it is only available to a small proportion of people who need it - photo by Wikimedia Commons)

Around 92% of the morphine used worldwide (see page 13 of International Narcotics Control Board's 2014 Report) is consumed in countries in which only 17% of the world population lives - primarily the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

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Dr Hannah Fox, a visiting British doctor who attended the consultation with Mrs. Thakur, said: "These situations are incredibly sad. Before we arrived, Mrs. Thakur had not taken any pain relief. Seeing that level of suffering is really shocking. The United Kingdom has the National Health Service that is currently free to all and a network of charitable hospices. As a result, you would not see a young woman dying of cancer without any support. Cases such as this illustrate why palliative care and access to morphine are so important."

In April this year, the General Assembly of the United Nations will meet in a Special Session to discuss "the world drug problem." In the past, the issue of access to essential pain-relieving medications such as morphine has been overshadowed by a fervent campaign to stop the trade of illicit drugs through legal action.

The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was drawn up and signed by UN member states in 1961. This document calls for both the halting of trade in illicit substances and the need to ensure adequate access to these medicines for medical use. However, in the decades since the adoption of the Single Convention, the need for access to controlled substances for proper medical use has been sidelined as the infamous 'War on Drugs' has led to the creation of national laws and policies which restrict access to all narcotic substances - harmful drugs and helpful medications alike.

Inadequate access to pain-relieving medications contradicts the notion of article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to medical care, which also encompasses palliative care.

Dr. Stephen Connor, Executive Director of the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance, said: "We call upon the UN General Assembly to ensure that there is balance between the medical use of controlled substances and prevention of misuse. Lack of access to pain relief is a global crisis."



(A government hospital in Kerala, India - photo by Dr. Hannah Fox)

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For people like Mrs. Thakur, hope rests on the decisions made and actions taken by the United Nations member states to improve access to essential pain-relieving medications. Health must be a central consideration in the global response to the world drug problem so that people in serious pain can access the medications they need, no matter where in the world they live.

*Names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Mrs. Thakur's story originally appeared on Dr. Hannah Fox's blog.

Pamela S. K. Glasner is a published author and filmmaker. Learn more about Ms. Glasner at http://tinyurl.com/ccywpza and http://tinyurl.com/mfqxebu.
Nora Ephron in 1960s Photo Credit: Dan Greenburg/Courtesy of HBO

Nora Ephron, along with Joan Didion before her and Mary McCarthy before her, were my literary heroines, the Lit Supremes of the 20th century. Forget Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina (both created by men.) The characters of the Lit Supremes were talented women finding themselves in a world that had turned out to be a pretty cold place. In fact it seemed as if the more accomplished you were, the more you were apt to get it wrong.

Nearly every girl I know picked over the work of the Lit Supremes for clues to a way of being in this world we all admired, who remembered her first encounter with these three writers oddly akin to the way she remembered her first sexual experience: with a whiff of post-coital breathlessness. I read slowly and carefully, soaking up the cleverness, the clear-eyed (Mary) or dry (Joan) or self-deprecating (Nora) wit, and then there was this crescendo, I could hardly turn the pages fast enough to discover what startling things they -- or their characters -- did to handle their complicated lives.

Whether it was a fictional character or a piece of journalism, I sensed right away that these very smart women had something rare and precious to offer me that my mother did not: the truth about men and work.

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Ephron died in 2012 leaving much sorrow but a great deal of affection and a diverse, ambitious, widely-acclaimed body in her wake. Ephron's son Jacob Bernstein's documentary about his mother, Everything is Copy airing on HBO on the 21st (and which has traveled the festival circuit), is one of many homages to her life and work. But as an investigation, it is moving in subtle, probing ways.

I had read Scribble, Scribble and Crazy Salad Nora's essay collections where I first heard about her mother's admonition to take notes because "everything was copy." Nora had gone to Wellesley, like McCarthy's college Vassar, its rep stood on turning out girls who were going to make a difference in the world. Ephron had been married and divorced to Dan Greenburg and then married and famously divorced to Carl "Watergate" Bernstein a journalist who allegedly betrayed her with the wife of the British Ambassador to Washington, but she made lemonade and wrote Heartburn and got revenge in print and then in a successful movie starring Meryl Streep.

Mary and Joan and Nora took themselves very seriously. They wanted to be writers from an early age, all three the smart girls in the front row. Mary and Nora were extroverts, Joan an introvert, the queen of understatement and witholding; Nora the queen of overstatement and oversharing. Mary got into trouble; Joan didn't. Mary was pretty and liked sex and needed a lot of attention; Joan was willing to be the observer. Nora was scruffier, not afraid to reveal how she felt about her breasts (not enough) and her neck (too much). Mary was Catholic and an accidental Communist; Joan was from a family of hardscrabble California settlers; Nora was Jewish and liberal, yet the three had a similarly bold way of looking at themselves and at life that made me jump.

Any one of them were models not just for their work but also for their messy lives, which proved the inside-the-box life was not worth living as it gave you little material to work with. Everyone always assumed when all three wrote novels they were thinly-veiled romans-a-clefs anyway and they were usually right. Trying to pick apart what was real from what was made up was one of the more inviting things about their work. You didn't have to choose, they suggested, it was all a great big heap of copy to be scooped out in measuring cups according to your own recipe.

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All three considered themselves good cooks and liked to entertain. Joan made famous dinners in LA; Mary made famous dinners in Maine (I have a copy of a shopping list she made for stew ingredients alongside notes about Turgenev) and Nora, well Nora couldn't let a day go by without salting it with a tablespoon of something.

Nora shared my fascination with Mary McCarthy (and Lillian Hellman), two talented, ultra-competitive lit dames who hated each other. Nora even wrote a musical about them. A musical! Nothing daunted her. I recently met Cherry Jones who played McCarthy (very well) and we commiserated about these kind of fearless women gone missing: The bench is not as deep as it should be.

Nora Ephron Photo Credit: Wellesley College/Courtesy of HBO

Nora knew she was special. I met her only a few times, but was thoroughly intimidated by her biting wit and the fact that she knew everything and everybody. I remember feeling sorry for her sisters (no slouches themselves) because you could never be as great as Nora. That you could go from mail girl to journalist (New York Post, "I thought I was Brenda Starr or Lois Lane") to essayist (Esquire) to book-writer (Scribble Scribble, Heartburn, I feel bad about my neck, et al) to screenwriter (Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally) to director (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail etc) to theater/musical writer (Imaginary Friends, Lucky Guy), and be insightful and witty about almost everything was impressive. Nora had her greatest fame as a writer/director in Hollywood but she had kept at the acerbic essay writing, which morphed eventually into blogging for The Huffington Post.

"When you slip on a banana, people laugh. But when you tell about it, it's your laugh," Nora summed up her attitude about her self-revelatory approach. Mike Nichols -- among many candid interview subjects -- tells Jacob Bernstein who is a style and social columnist for the New York Times, "She knew what she wanted and she did it." (I didn't know she had gone to high school with Barry Diller who remembers her firing him at the newspaper when she was editor-in-chief. I am quite sure nobody else has ever fired Barry Diller.)

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Seeing Jacob Bernstein interview his father is particularly poignant, especially his confession that his father's outsize betrayal of Ephron "affected" the way he viewed him for a time. "In writing it funny, she won," [over Bernstein] says Nichols about the painful situation. "Tough is good" insists editor and savior Robert Gottlieb who housed her when she was fleeing Bernstein and the scandal. "She had an overwhelming need to have success," he says -- and ample talent to back it up.

Jacob Bernstein, Nora Ephron and Max Bernstein in 1980 Photo Credit: Courtesy of HBO

Bernstein talks with her good friends, her colleagues, all more or less remembering the same woman who could be judgmental and sharp-elbowed as well as warm and caring. All say she mellowed after her marriage to writer Nick Pileggi who is not part of the documentary, (understandably) but whose absence leaves something of a hole. (The film 45 Years with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay came to mind, the fact that every marriage has its yin and yang, and the question of the shifting balance who is really supporting whom often something that can never be truly ascertained by an outsider.) Nora had acolytes in the current generation as well and forged a relationship with Lena Dunham whom she clearly felt was carrying on her tradition of love/slash/burn/write/show/tell.

Rob Reiner says she knew more about the women and men and how they relate to each other than anyone he knew. "How we feel about love is shaped by the movies" said Ephron. Ephron who was brainy and brilliant but not beautiful (more so later in life when she did something about her neck and more) was typically wry about her own needs, "In my sex fantasy," she allowed "nobody ever loves me for my mind."

Some of her work had great success, other efforts less so. Still she carried on. "you don't learn anything from failure" she claimed.

Nora Ephron Photo Credit: Courtesy of HBO

What is the cost of "everything is copy"? Ephron's parents were both alcoholics; their family life was mostly good until their Hollywood screenwriting careers went off track. This was something Nora was determined not to replicate.

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In the end, however, she did not allow her death to be copy. She told practically nobody she was sick -- for six years -- except her closest family. Her friends, including Mike Nichols who was himself ill, were kept in the dark. Meryl Streep calls it an "ambush". Many of them resented this, but others just took it to be part of the same impulse to control things that had ruled the rest of Nora's life. "Who's gonna tell us what to do (now)?" they ask.

Since her death, I've reread the collected works and re-seen my favorite films Silkwood and Heartburn, (maybe because they star Meryl Streep who was as bold an actress as Nora was a writer and was maybe the only one Nora could see inhabit her skin.) I catch glimpses of You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle when they are on television with their more saccharine but popular motifs.

Probably the most famous scene in any Nora Ephron book or movie is the one where Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal are sitting at Katz's Deli in When Harry Met Sally (directed by Reiner) discussing women faking orgasms, which Ryan then demonstrates in the crowded deli and which ends on the famous line (which Billy Crystal actually ad libbed) of the neighboring female diner to her waiter,

"I'll have what she's having."

When Harry Met Sally, written by Nora Ephron

That line could also actually sum up how I feel about Nora Ephron: I'll have what she's having: the ambition, the wit, the credits, the ability to cross over into many genres, the confidence, the recipes, the large and talented circle of friends.

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You've got to have some fun with Broadway stars once in a while! And who doesn't love a pug? A pug, you ask? And Constantine Maroulis? What do they have in common?! Absolutely nothing, but throwing a pug in is -- how you say -- "what the heck?" Why not! I'm at the LGBT Expo at the Javits Center in New York City. It's a modern, eclectic event that has everyone embracing unity. And what does that have to do with a pug? Nothing. No, really, nothing!

Tony Award-nominated Constantine gave an outstanding performance and rocked the house with his rocker voice and smoldering stare while giving his shoulder length hair a quick flick.

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The guy has a stage presence that should be bottled as "Hot" cologne.

I talk with Constantine, where he headlined the LGBT Expo. Backstage, after his performance, we talk about some of his favorite moments in his career. He just about took over American Idol on Season 4 with his killer rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Constantine further proved himself when he starred in Rock of Ages on Broadway. He's now got a lot of projects going on including producing the critically-acclaimed show, Spring Awakening. Constantine is also recording a new album that will have his rocker style in place and the album has some collaboration with acclaimed production and writing duo Andy Waldeck and Chris Reardon (Daughtry, David Cook and Scott Stapp). His new album is coming out really soon through Noble Steed Music, an independent imprint run by former Warner Music's Jason Spiewak.

Enter the pug, maybe Penelope the pug's eyes reminded him of his audiences over the years of females with eyes popping out of their head to watch this talented guy on stage. Maybe he likes pugs (who doesn't really), or maybe when said reporter as in moi, asked him to sing a little to Penelope -- he was game. Who knows?

Constantine belted out the chorus of "Oh Sherry" from Rock of Ages and my devoted Penelope was a slave to him. It was disgusting -- she never even blinked, she was so enthralled. So goes another fan. Chalk it up to the guy having the whole package: talent, talent and smoldering eyes, no I meant talent. I have a feeling, Penelope is going to be listening to Constantine's new album with the same devotion. Rock on, Constantine, and for showing support of Broadway Sings for Pride, you're a rocker of all ages.
Several years ago, I was flying to Argentina to speak. The flight was terrible. I had to fly from Minnesota to New York to Miami to Buenos Aires.

When I finally arrived in Argentina, I was exhausted. I was miserable. The one thing I was looking forward to was being picked up and taken to my hotel room where I could finally sleep off my journey and awaken refreshed the next day ready to work.

But this was not to be.

When the local Chabad rabbi picked me up from the airport, I was told that we would be making a pit-stop on the way to the hotel.

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"A woman in the community," explained the rabbi, "recently lost her son and she's been too depressed to speak to anyone or leave her home for months. When we told her you were coming, she agreed to speak with you. We are going to stop by her house on the way to the hotel so you can talk to her."

I was not very happy about this to say the least. Not only was the assignment daunting -- What do you say to someone who is so depressed? -- I was quite perturbed that no one had asked me first.

'Why didn't anyone ask me?'

But what could I do? She was already expecting us so I had no choice.

When I met the woman at her home, she looked as if she had died. There was no light in her eyes. No life in her voice. No color in her face.

Her 19 year-old-son had died in a car accident while he was trying to get home in time for selichos (the penitential prayers leading up to Rosh Hashana). The three other boys in the car survived, but he did not.

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She told me about how special her son was. He was respectful, courteous and kind. He was considerate, wise, caring and mature beyond his years.

"That was an amazing boy you had," I said when she was finished. "And to think, you had him for 19 years."

She was not at all impressed with my response.

"I understand," I assured her. "The shock of losing your son so suddenly is horrible. But imagine for a moment that G-d had come to you in advance and told you the following: 'I'm looking for someone to be the mother of a really special kid for 19 years. Will you agree to be his mother?' What would you say?"

I thought for sure she would say yes, but to my surprise she replied defiantly: "Absolutely not!"

Now I was completely at a loss of what to say, so without thinking I retorted: "Well then it's a good thing He didn't ask you."

Suddenly a floodgate of tears opened and she began to sob uncontrollably. This woman finally allowed herself to have a good cry for the first time since her son's death. And she cried out her grief.

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After about twenty minutes, she looked alive for the first time since the tragedy. She was a new person. I felt as if I had literally witnessed a woman go from beyond to the grave to among the living right before my eyes.

This was probably the most meaningful, emotional and powerful experience I have ever had in my 50 years of counseling people.

In the car, on the way to the hotel I reflected. When they first told me to meet with this woman I was angry. I was upset. 'Why didn't you ask me?'

And if they had asked me beforehand if I would meet with her immediately after my flight, what would my answer have been? I would have said: "Absolutely not!"

And that would have been the wrong answer! I wouldn't have been able to help her and I would have missed out on something incredible.

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Most of the great things we do in life are not done in response to situations we have willingly chosen. We don't ask for challenges.

If someone asked you if you would like some difficulties or some tests in your life, you would say: No thanks.

If G-d asked us in advance each time He wanted to send us a challenging situation, we would always say no . And then, we wouldn't do anything noteworthy in our lives. We'd amount to nothing.

So, we have to thank G-d at every moment -- or at least every morning when we wake up - for not asking our permission. We all endure our share of pain in this world. It's all part of G-d's plan. It is our struggles that help us to grow and become better people.
I read an article recently about how not doing homework could actually be better for kids. This article quoted the findings of a psychologist and neuroscientist at Duke University, which stated: "180 research studies found that homework has no evidence of academic benefit for elementary school students."

This seems obvious to me: Why should kids spend an average of seven hours chained to a desk in school, only to repeat the same process--and often, the same work--when they finally make it home?

What was less obvious were some of the comments on that article, calling students "weak" and insinuating they wouldn't be able to handle college, nor the real world, if they were already struggling with their homework load.

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Let's break this down: An average school day, as I mentioned, is close to seven hours. Meanwhile, the National Education Association reports that "first and second grade children had three times the homework load recommended by the NEA," despite "free reading" being the only homework shown to be significantly beneficial to elementary school students. Across the country, students and their parents are grappling with several hours of homework a night--on top of extra curricular activities and socializing we also expect them to excel at and thrive in.

Even if we give it a low-ball estimate--that students are doing two hours of homework every night--that comes out to about forty-five hours of schoolwork every week for elementary students. That's more than the hours spent at an average part-time job.

Needless to say, the do-it-all, power-through, homework-driven culture is killing our students...literally. Those "weak" elementary school students are turning into depressed college perfectionists, which explains why suicide rates in college students have increased.

We keep telling students something is wrong with them, that if they don't "get" the homework (and are thus able to do it quickly), they aren't smart; that if they don't get perfect grades, they aren't worthy; that if they are stressed or anxious, they are weak.

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Collectively, the education system is what is wrong with students.

Somewhere along the line, we decided "creativity" was for lackluster underachievers and that joy in learning was a waste of time. We've created a race that nobody can win: Our cores are too common and there are certainly children left behind. We've told students they aren't good enough before they can even spell "not good enough."

Decades ago, kindergarten and the early years of elementary school were devoted to play: Things like building with blocks, playing "pretend," and drawing were all cornerstones of classroom time. Now, we've formalized education to the extent that it turns militant around four or five years old--you better get ready to achieve, little kid, because play time is a waste of time.

We want achievement. We want success, and we want these things to manifest themselves in our children academically early on. That's how we justify the homework, the time spent in school: We're preparing them! We're giving them tools to be the academic elite, the employed, the smart, and the successful. Well, then how do you explain the fact that countries like Finland, where formal education doesn't begin until students are around age seven, are ranked higher than the U.S. in reading and math?

Would starting school that late work in America? No, probably not. But what will work is creating a culture where the emphasis is on learning, not educational achievement, and where we give our kids space to learn as just that: Kids.

Meanwhile, we take away recess--as freedom is the ultimate leverage over prisoners--when a child forgets their homework or misbehaves in class. Pressure to adhere to great test scores and mandated academic requirements means anything unnecessary has to go. In this case, the thing that is deemed non-achievement-oriented, recess, or playtime, gets dropped.

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Do we realize what we are taking from them? The opportunity to think creatively, at their own pace? The chance to experiment, engage, and solve problems on their own? And, maybe greatest of all, a moment just to be a kid?

There are numerous problems with our education system, far too many to list in any one article. But the biggest--and most all-encompassing--has to be that we're slowly turning our students into A+-getting, academic robots, and devaluing their humanity. Of course nothing is wrong with good grades! What is wrong is that we expect them at all costs, at the expense of everything else, and we forget that, sitting at a table in tears of frustration over math is a child, not just a future college student.

If we aren't going to value childhood, we may as well stick them on the conveyor belt with tiny briefcases now. But deep down, we know learning should be more than a sweating, striving race to any top. It should be part of the growth of a human being--which involves creativity, freedom, and compassion.


All photos by Meredith Wright.

Starbucks is our happy place. Iced lattes cool us down from the oppressive Shanghai heat, and the cheerful, air-conditioned interior serves as welcome relief from an afternoon of monotonous castings. But one of our crew wasn't happy: She was a model from Russia, 15 years old, sitting alone and looking down at the floor. Her English wasn't great, and she mainly talked to the other Russian girls, but through a friend, she told her story. She had just returned from a photoshoot where the photographer was touching her inappropriately. She started to cry on the set, and when the photographer complained to our agents, the agency hastily discounted the model's fee.

I would like to tell you that this day was unusual. But events like these are common -- I'm tempted to say normal -- for young models working overseas. When I was 17, a modeling scout approached me at a mall. Modeling helped me pay for courses at McGill University and allowed me to travel the world. I climbed Mount Fuji, ate gelato by the Coliseum in Rome, and sailed high above the rooftops aboard the London Eye.



Me (second from left) and friends at an Osaka fireworks display.

My Facebook page boasted photos of exotic destinations and new friends. But I struggled working in an industry that exploited so many young women so easily. After seven years in the business, I was ready to quit. But to move forward, I had to go back. So I returned overseas on a modeling contract -- only this time I packed a camera along with my portfolio and heels.

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The result is Agency, a documentary film I made working undercover as a model in Japan. It tells the story of models like Holly Angus, the 13-year-old Canadian who told me about being so homesick that she felt physically ill and would cry herself to sleep every night. Our agency, like many others, discouraged parents from accompanying their daughters abroad and assured them we would be chaperoned. But Holly's apartment was unsupervised, her weekends were unsupervised, and her photoshoots were unsupervised. "I'm 13 and I'm doing this on my own? Well I guess this is what I signed up for," she said.

I met Jacqueline, a chain-smoking 17-year-old from South Africa who talked at length about her recent trip to the hospital. She had been working back-to-back jobs, partying in the evenings, and not eating -- something "models do all the time," she explained. Concerned because she had not left her room in hours, a male model broke her door down. He found her shivering and feverish and rushed her to a hospital where she "had convulsions and almost went into a coma," Jacqueline says.

I interviewed an Estonian model named Dagmar who was crestfallen when she was sent home after two weeks for gaining two centimeters around her waist. Like the other models, her contract guaranteed her pay and housing for two months in Osaka, which she had banked on to launch her modeling career. She never got a chance. Laura, a 14-year-old American who looks like a real-life Anna from Frozen, told me how she loves modeling wedding dresses because it makes her feel like a princess. She beamed when she described working 18 hours over the weekend and getting to kiss a 23-year-old male model on the shoot. When I asked her how she felt being away from home, she said "It gets lonely sometimes. It's a lot to take on at 14."



Katia Prokopyeva, age 15, at a wedding shoot casting.

Models in the U.S. lack the legal protections that many other workers enjoy. In Europe and Asia, conditions are even worse. Because they are told they are independent contractors by their agencies (an issue a newly-proposed California bill, put forth by the Model Alliance and Assembly member Marc Levine, aims to clarify), they are not protected from workplace sexual harassment, they have no mandated breaks in the workday (or night), and no minimum wage. They are weighed and measured -- often on a weekly basis. I've witnessed contracts being voided because a model dared question her payment, and pocket money being withheld to discourage models who've gained weight from buying food. Though many are legally too young to drink, they are regularly exposed to drugs and alcohol by nightlife promoters, who value their fresh young presence at their clubs.

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In most other industries, this would never stand, not when the majority of the workforce is still young enough to be in high school. However, because we're talking about the fashion industry -- the glamorous fashion industry -- lawmakers have traditionally turned a blind eye.

But things are finally changing. Federal lawmakers are currently considering passage of the Child Performers Protection Act of 2015, which would classify models under the age of 18 as "child performers." The law would limit working hours, guarantee financial protection in the form of proper payment (and not just discarded runway garb), and put in place a system to hold employers and contractors liable for any sexual harassment that occurs on their sets. If this bill passes, it might finally protect these girls from needless mental and physical abuse.

Following the CFDA's implementation of model health guidelines, fashion industry trendsetters like Vogue have vowed not to work with underage models. But until the government takes on regulation of the industry, the abuse will almost certainly continue. That is why we need to support the Child Performers Protection Act here at home. Then, at least we can stand up as a model for the fashion industry abroad -- a beautiful, healthy, safe, and prosperous model.
Photo by Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie

In January, as part of a tour sponsored by the Center for Jewish, Christian and Islamic Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, I had the privilege of visiting Israel and Palestine. Like many across the globe, I am concerned that Israeli democracy is in jeopardy and that the failure to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine has created an untenable human rights crisis that threatens both Palestine and Israel.

Americans have a reputation for arrogance and speaking when they should listen. My hope is that readers will look past that stereotype and hear my deep concern for both the Israeli and Palestinian people after years of study and after my first visit to a beautiful land. I believe in the right of Israel to exist and have opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS Movement) because too many BDS leaders question that right and use anti-Semitic language in their rhetoric. At the same time, I believe there must be a viable Palestinian state. Criticism of Israel's human rights record concerning the Palestinian people is justified, and Israel has lost moral authority across the globe.

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None of this justifies the knife attacks that have been undertaken by some Palestinians. One such attack, near where I walked just over a month ago, took the life of an American student. Too many Israelis live in fear. This was a message shared over and over during my visit. Palestinians shared similar fears and were highly critical of home demolitions taking place in the Occupied Territories. Frustration with the Palestinian Authority, called corrupt and inept by many, was another message shared by Palestinians. There is a lack of trust in both Israeli and Palestinian officials by people on both sides who have all but given up that their leaders can forge peace.

The two-state solution might not seem viable at this moment but what is the alternative? Donald Trump, one of the GOP presidential contenders, said this week that the status quo, occupation, and violence, might just have to last forever. That is naive thinking. All-out conflict will come sooner -- not later. The difference, this time, is that many will see Israel at fault. Under Netanyahu, the future of Israel has become less secure.

The New York Times reported this week that the White House is debating whether or not President Obama "should lay down the outlines of a (peace) agreement ... perhaps through a resolution at the United Nations Security Council or in a presidential speech. The objective would not be to revive direct negotiations ... but to enshrine the proposals Secretary of State John Kerry made during his last failed effort at peacemaking in 2014."

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If asked, I would support such a move by President Obama. Israel is spiraling out of control. The people of Israel should not be considering removing Arabs from Israel. What is needed is an end to the expansion of the settlements and a process that brings the many pro-peace grassroots groups in Israel and Palestine together to force the Israeli and Palestinians governments into a diplomatic process that puts the people of Palestine and Israel in charge of creating a lasting peace. The work would be difficult but not impossible.

The longer Israel waits, however, the weaker the Palestinian Authority will become (which seems to be part of Netanyahu's plan) and the more chaos will reign. Israel will continue to see their friends across the globe question the legitimacy of a government that allows such suffering, and which is willing to undermine their own democratic traditions. Presidential elections in the United States this year could provide Netanyahu with an ally. That would be a disaster. President Obama, Secretary Hillary Clinton, and Secretary Kerry have been all that stood between Netanyahu and regional war with Iran.
"The Most Revolutionary Thing You Can Do Is To Study, And Study Hard "

Rev. Peter E. Bauer

Over forty years ago, there was a revolution at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J. The movement occurred in the Spring, and the budding bloom of the Wisteria in Princeton made for an idyllic environment for change. That year, there was a lot of concern for lack of representation of African-Americans and women on the seminary Board of Trustees. There was also concern at Princeton University about corporate investment in US corporations doing business in South Africa. The then Third World Center was active in protesting against the university financial holdings in companies that were profiting from the Apartheid system in South Africa.

I remember that I was involved in the protests. During the noon hour, several of us students would go over to then President Bowen's house on the university campus and we would bang together metal garbage can lids to register our displeasure. There were more sophisticated demonstrations that occurred including a big event that occurred at the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton. Even then CBS Journalist Dan Rather came down from New York to cover this event.

The advocacy work of that Spring paid off; the university divested of its corporate holdings in South Africa and the seminary began to work for full inclusion of women and African-Americans on the Board of Trustees. All during this time, I remember that I continued to study and work hard academically even though the activism involvement was tense.

We are now currently seeing a lot of student activism again manifesting in the Black Lives Matter, Income Inequality and other human rights movements. Like forty years ago, students are feeling torn between their academic commitments and a desire to correct injustice and to bring about change. Students are struggling with exhaustion trying to balance academic and activist pressures and in the process mental health needs are increasing. At Brown University, the following has been noted :

"There are people breaking down, dropping out of classes and failing classes because of the activism work they are taking on," said David, an undergraduate whose name has been changed to preserve anonymity. Throughout the year, he has worked to confront issues of racism and diversity on campus.

His role as a student activist has taken a toll on his mental, physical and emotional health. "My grades dropped dramatically. My health completely changed. I lost weight. I'm on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills right now. (Counseling and Psychological Services) counselors called me. I had deans calling me to make sure I was okay," he said.Schoolwork, advocacy place strain on student activistswww.browndailyherald.com/.../schoolwork-adv

While I empathize with these students regarding juggling the priorities of academics and activism, and the desire to work for a better world, I would argue that the most revolutionary thing that you can do is to study and to study hard, especially now that higher education is so unaffordable.

Again consider Brown University, who has produced distinguished alumni like the late John F. Kennedy Jr. and CNN Journalist Christiane Amanpour, the annual cost of education is:

Undergraduate tuition for academic year 2015-16: $48,272.

Room, board, and required fees: $12,700.

Total cost: $62,046.

About Brown.

Facts About Brown | Brown University https://www.brown.edu/about/facts



Considering the high financial cost and the inevitable need to obtain student loans to pay for school, I would want to get the most out of the educational experience. If you want to change the world, you have to have a job and resources.

I was fortunate. My seminary education was completely paid for by financial aid. I am grateful for the generosity of those who assisted me. My later graduate degree in Social Work was paid for out of my own pocket. However, I was working full time and tuition was affordable. If I had to do all of this now, in the present economic environment, I don't think I would have made it. Thus, I commit myself to giving back to those who need assistance in gratitude for those who assisted me in my time of need.

The Beatles were right when John Lennon observed

" Say you want a revolution, yeah you know,

We all want to change the world "

But I still contend that if you want healthy and effective change for the world, you have to begin with providing and working for an effective future for yourself. The most revolutionary thing that you can do is to study and study hard.

May it be so.
In this week's Scheer Intelligence, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer sits down with journalist Thomas Frank to discuss his new book, "Listen, Liberal," about how the Democratic Party abandoned the American working class.

Journalist Thomas Frank has written several books, including the acclaimed "What's the Matter with Kansas," as well as founded the magazine "The Baffler." His newest book, "Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?" seeks to understand why Democrats have moved away from addressing inequality over the past few decades.

In their conversation, Frank tells Robert Scheer how the party has become class-based, now representing primarily the "professional" or upper socioeconomic class. Frank also talks about the Clintons' role in this shift and why he believes people who might have earlier voted democrat are now flocking to Donald Trump.



Finally, Frank discusses why he believes Democrats need to be more self-critical now than ever.

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Adapted from Truthdig.com

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Read the full transcript below



Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, the intelligence coming from my guests, which in this case is Thomas Frank, who first came to public attention, or at least to my attention, with a great book about whatever happened to Kansas. A, you know, basically enlightened state that was the center of all sorts of change and dissenting thought and enlightenment in America, and he grew up there. And then, you know, it went off into madness, and actually it even continues, with somebody who is the governor and is sort of against most modern standards of intelligence. And then he's written a number of other books. But the one that we're here today to discuss is one that might not be as endearing to people who liked his Kansas book, which really took on the vast right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton used to talk about. And this one is called "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" Thomas Frank, you know, I read this book, finished it just before the debate in Michigan. And it was really quite interesting, because Hillary Clinton at that debate--one of the liberals that you presumably want to have listen--brought up Marian Wright Edelman again, and the Children's Defense Fund, and her concern for poor people, her concern for black people going back to her earliest days. And I had just finished reading in your book where you discuss Marian Wright Edelman's husband's book, Peter Edelman. And Peter Edelman--in case you forgot, it's on page 243--and it was interesting to me, because after I had read that, you know, maybe a half hour later I'm watching television and there's Hillary Clinton once again saying, you know, she's in that great tradition of concern for poor people. And Peter Edelman, for people who don't know him, is a brilliant scholar, and in addition to being married to Marian Wright Edelman, was in the Clinton administration. And in that administration, the first years, Bill Clinton implemented what he called welfare reform, which was basically ending the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program that was the main poverty program we had in this country. And 70 percent of the recipients were children, and the rest were mostly single mothers. And Peter Edelman, who was no fan of the old system, as you point out, nonetheless left the administration because he thought it was a betrayal of any federal obligation to help poor kids. And then he wrote really a scathing, but very detailed critique of what happened afterwards. And I noticed in the Michigan debate, Hillary Clinton did not do what her husband once did--well, a number of times has done. He has actually defended his welfare reform, and the fact is, she sort of seems to be backing away, but still says it was only--it would have been a good program but it was hurt by George W. Bush. The Clintons really figure in this book, and you know, what you're basically talking about is, what happened to the Democratic Party?

Thomas Frank: Yeah.

RS: And a lot of what went wrong, in your eyes, with the Democratic Party, really is Clintonism. And--

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TF: Yeah. Well, he's the pivotal, he's the pivotal figure in all of this, in the sort of great transition of the Democratic Party. It's a bigger story than one man, though, of course; it's a bigger story than even his little clique of friends, you know, the Democratic Leadership Council. It's a story that goes way back to the early 1970s. But let me just say in broad outline, what I'm talking about here in the book is this problem of inequality that I think is the biggest problem we face as a society. And in fact, I think the word inequality is a euphemism for problems that are much bigger than that--you know, for the crumbling communities--like, they were debating in Flint, Michigan, you know, there is no better evidence for what inequality looks like than a place like Flint, Michigan, you know. De-industrialization, the withering of the middle class--all of these things happening at the same time. And you know, we call it inequality; it is the one great problem that we have. And so my, the question in the book is, you know, the Democrats have been talking about inequality forever; this is why they exist as a party, is to take this on. Why haven't they been able to do anything about it? And the answer isn't what you think. You know, it's not just because Republicans are so diabolically clever and stop them all the time. And it's also not just because of the money that is sloshing around in politics, although that's, you know, obviously that's a huge part of the story. But the answer is because the Democrats aren't who we think they are. You know, they talk about inequality, but their heart really isn't in it. Income inequality is really not something that they have cared about for a very long time. You know, there are individuals here and there who do, but you talk about people like the Clintons--I mean, Hillary Clinton, her concern for inequality is, this is, I would say is almost completely feigned.

RS: Underwriting that, if I can intrude--as somebody who studied economics in the sixties in graduate school and so forth--with the exception of people like Michael Harrington and Gabriel Kolko and C. Wright Mills, the conventional wisdom in liberal circles was that, you know, capitalism was really working. And what they ignored was, yes, it was working to a considerable degree because you had labor unions that had developed; you had enlightened policies developed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration in response to the Great Recession. It wasn't some free market bubble going on its own; it required government intervention, it required citizen activism, it required labor organizing, and so forth. And, but what became, I think, the conventional wisdom in the party over the years was, no, the system works real well, and what we have are these social restraints against women, against minorities, and so forth, and those can be tinkered with. And that's sort of what I got out of your book; an emphasis on the meritocracy, let's get more people back into school and so forth, and that will solve the problem.

TF: Yeah, that's the key word, is meritocracy. Or, you know, the different word for it is professionalism. So what I looked at is, why has the Democratic Party--why haven't they been more aggressive on the subject of inequality? Why do they do things like, you know, the Clintons' welfare reform? By the way, he did that in 1996; this is simultaneous with the series of bank deregulations that he's doing. So he's cracking down on poor people--you know, they passed the big omnibus crime law in 1994--cracking down on the poor, and at the same time letting Wall Street do whatever it wanted. You know, giving them unprecedented freedom; the law is not going to be enforced on these people anymore. These are Democrats that did this, it's not Republicans. And they did it wholeheartedly. So the question is, why do they do things like that? And so you know, it's a historical mystery. So I went back, and the answer that I finally came up with is, because, is that the Democratic Party itself has changed. And in particular, what's changed about them is the social class that they answer to, that they respect, that they come from OK? And this is--the social class--you know, we used to identify Democrats with workers, with organized labor, with the sons of toil, blue collar--whatever you want to call it, right? But that changed, and beginning in the 1970s, Democrats began to identify themselves with the professional class. And they have all sorts of really nifty ways of describing that group of people, very flattering ways. And you've heard some of these. Remember, the "symbolic analysts" was one; "wired workers" is one; the "creative class" is one they use a lot right now. But this is basically, this is the group that Democrats idolize; this is the group that they, from where their support comes; and it's also the group from which leading Democrats themselves are drawn. So they have internalized the way this certain stratum of society view the world. They've internalized that; it's very natural to them, and the centerpiece of that way of viewing the world is meritocracy. You get what you deserve, and what you deserve is defined by how you did in school.

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RS: Yeah, but it also means, of course, that you've succeeded through dint of hard work, and not by selling out, not by betraying the people you came from, not by accepting benefits. So you know, if your son-in-law has a hedge fund that's not doing well, but he's making a lot of money, it's not because Lloyd Blankfein helped him out; it's not because they want to curry favor with the Clintons. No; he's just finding his measure, and he'll get it.

TF: [Laughs] I know what you're talking about there. That's not exactly the direction I was going to go in. What I was going to say is that, as a group, professionals are very interesting. So basically, you see what I'm getting at here, is I'm saying that the Democrats are a political party--they're a class party. OK? They're a party that has internalized, I mean completely and utterly, one hundred percent, have internalized the world view of a particular social class, OK? And one of the peculiar things about that--so they look at people like hedge fund managers on Wall Street, or Wall Street bankers. And they see those people as colleagues, as classmates; as friends, even. And this is just in the last 20 years; in the old days, as you know, Robert, Democrats habitually regarded Wall Street as the arch-fiend, you know. You look at Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or William Jennings Bryan, these guys always, forever denouncing Wall Street--well, with Bill Clinton, and even before Bill Clinton, Democrats came to see it kind of differently. This is the creative class; this is a creative industry, they're making these really nifty derivative securities, they're addressing risk, there's all this wonderful complexity going on. And so they see something like Wall Street and the meltdown there--you know, the complete collapse on Wall Street--and they're like, oh, how can we help? How can we help? The idea that Wall Street was engaged in, like, world historic fraud is not an idea that occurs to them naturally, or that is even acceptable to them.

RS: My series here is an effort to find the saving grace of our system, which is individuals who don't buy that malarkey, and who question. And you have one such person in the book, Brooksley Born. I don't think she--frankly, one of my few criticisms of this book, which I think is a marvelous book--is I think she's one of the great heroes of this whole, she is the great hero of this story. And the destruction of Brooksley Born tells you really what you need to know about this kind of Democrat. And for those who don't know her, Brooksley Born, you know, was the first woman editor of the Stanford Law Review; very distinguished, in the meritocracy, and then went to work for big law firms and so forth, and got to know Hillary Clinton because she was also concerned about women's rights. And she was somebody that they thought they might make Attorney General when Janet Reno was considered, but she was given the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And anyway, she's the one who said these derivatives are not cute and they're not interesting; they're, it's thievery, it's destructive--

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TF: Yeah, it's dangerous, it's a dark market, and we have to--

RS: --yeah, and she said this five years before Warren Buffet called them financial instruments of mass destruction.

TF: Right.

RS: And the Clintons, even though they knew her, respected her--she clearly knew more about banking than anyone they ran into; she was a highly regarded expert, legal expert on financial systems at one of the biggest firms. Yet when she blew the whistle, they went with the people you describe in the book, the Gang of Three, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan, and you know, no--

TF: Oh, come now. They're not a gang; they're the committee to save the world! [Laughs]

RS: Right, Time Magazine cover--

TF: Remember, on the cover of Time Magazine, right? No, they're the ones who--those three came together to shut her down. And you know, and not only to shut her down. So Brooksley Born proposed regulating derivative securities, certain kinds of derivatives that were completely unregulated at the time. This was in the sort of later years of the Clinton administration, and she was, as you said, a high-ranking regulatory official. And that's what she proposed. And those three officials, Summers, Rubin and Greenspan, came together not merely to shut her down and to stop her from regulating derivative securities, but then they went ahead and got a law passed [laughs] that made it impossible. It made it, that went in completely the other way by, you know, by law. That these securities could not be regulated; they called it the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Remember that word, now, Robert; modernization. That's always the key in these matters. You got to get in step with modernity!

RS: It's interesting you say that, because two years previously, when they pushed through the reversal of Glass-Steagall, that was called a Financial Services Modernization Act, the same use of modernization.

TF: Yes, exactly, exactly.

RS: So, what I'm--

TF: By the way, there were more than just those two. I mean, the Clinton administration was, it was a parade of deregulation. There were many different bank deregulations. And the repeal of Glass-Steagall took years; it wasn't just this one act at the end, it went on and on and on, first under Reagan and then under Clinton. But it was, they repealed it by bits and pieces in slow motion.

RS: It's interesting. I want to go back to your original point about the social class that they have, because I think there's really a lot of wisdom in that concept that you have. In that what they discovered is, hey, these people on Wall Street, they go to Martha--you have a whole big thing about Martha's Vineyard in your book--they socialize with us; these people are pro-choice, they're not religious fanatics, they're not crazy. They're our kind of people. They [go to] our kind of schools.

TF: Yeah, and they don't pollute.

RS: Yes, yes.

TF: And they don't pollute, remember that, this is very important. So Wall Street is not a polluting industry, and by their lights, neither is Silicon Valley.

RS: And Martha's Vineyard will remain pristine, and they'll even put up big hedges.

TF: [Laughs]

RS: So this was the idea, though, that in fact, you're quite willing, consciously, to betray the people that the Democratic Party was supposed to be helping. The people that Bill Clinton, even more, much more than Hillary, came from, you know? And you're going to betray these people, whatever their color; you're going to ignore class; you're going to pretend that you have an avenue up to the meritocracy; forget about anybody else who comes from a different background or has a different skill set. And, in fact, you're not--you're going to embrace these folks as winners on Wall Street, and you're going to do what Ronald Reagan was not able to do. This goes to an argument that I'm going to have with you at the end of this interview, about lesser evilism. Because you know, here was Ronald Reagan, because of the savings and loan crisis, actually tightened regulations a bit at the end. It remained for Bill Clinton to come in, make an alliance with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the banking committee--who then goes on to work for the Swiss bank UBS as his reward, and his wife is on the board of Enron that gets a loophole in that very modernization--

TF: Enron, yeah. OK, so Enron is an important part of this story. But can I just throw in something here? One of the many really interesting things that I found when I did the research for "Listen, Liberal" was an internal Clinton administration document where they, after one of their many bank deregulations, they were boasting that they got done what Reagan couldn't. That Clinton did [Laughs] what Regan couldn't. And I remember--and it seems like--that might as well be a motto for the Clinton administration, you know? For the kind of things they did. But I don't want to just pick on Clinton here. And you mentioned Enron, so let me talk for just a second about that. You know, I used to be fascinated by Enron; I used to write about them when they were still a going concern. And when Enron went down in this, you know, in this blaze of fraud; and George W. Bush, who was president at the time--and this is very interesting--was intimately connected with Enron, had even let Enron basically write his administration's energy policy--do you remember this?

RS: Oh, yeah.

TF: Even this guy, George W. Bush, knew that he had to get tough with them. And he went and he prosecuted Enron. And a lot of those Enron officials went to prison. OK? And you look at Barack Obama, a Democrat, who we all, you know, we elected with great relief--George W. Bush is gone, this is fantastic, we've got this wonderful president--and how many bankers has he prosecuted? You know, there's this long tradition in this country of prosecuting white-collar crime; you get to Barack Obama, and it just completely stops. All of a sudden, these wonderful professionals on Wall Street are above the law. In fact--

RS: Well, they're your classmates.

TF: Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, the Obama administration has been pretty zealous on prosecuting mortgage fraud by individuals. So if you liked on a mortgage application back in the bubble days, they'll come right after you. But if [laughs] if you're the CEO of a company that's handing out liars' loans in order to jack up fake profits and get, you know, ring the bonus bell--oh, no. Nothing wrong with that. Because you're a professional.

RS: The Enron scandal really was made possible by the Enron loophole in that Commodity Futures Modernization Act that Bill Clinton signed as a lame duck president; he didn't even have to do it. He signed it, it was a gift to Wall Street, Wall Street then backs his wife. And my wife Narda Zacchino has a book coming out on California, and she has a long interview with Gray Davis, who was our governor, driven from office because of the Enron scandal--not his doing at all, but Enron came in and wrecked the economy in California. And Gray Davis, plaintively, in this interview in her book, talks about going to Bill Clinton. And he said, I got the same answer from Bill Clinton that I got from George W. Bush: talk to Ken Lay.



TF: Hah--oh, my Lord.

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RS: This is a Democratic, progressive governor of California--I don't want to give away, I guess I am giving away one of the really good points in my wife's book [laughs] which is coming out in August--but I, that interview, I was shocked, you know? Because I mean, here is Gray Davis, goes to Bill Clinton, says can't you help us out? Enron is raping our economy in California. It's destroying it! He's then driven from office, and Bill Clinton says oh, Ken Lay's a good guy, he'll take care of it. Same advice he got from George W. Bush. They wouldn't lift a finger to hold Enron accountable.

TF: What can I say, Robert? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. So basically, the story that I'm trying to get at in "Listen, Liberal" is, why don't Democrats care about inequality? Why don't they, why hasn't Barack Obama done more, why hasn't he been more aggressive with Wall Street, why hasn't he been more supportive of efforts for workers to earn more money? You know, we can go on and on and on down the list of the ways that they've screwed it up legislatively. But at the end of the day, it's because Democrats, their favorite constituency, the apple of their eye, the people that they listen to, that they admire, that they hold up as examples for our children to be like, is basically just a different stratum of the very top of American society. So you know, Democrats love to talk about the one percent, and the point one percent, and the Koch Brothers; and that's all true, and that's all fine. But the real mass constituency for inequality is not the one percent. It's the ten percent.

RS: The point you make--it's like Nixon going to China.

TF: Yes, yes.



RS: Now, a Democrat couldn't have gone to China and end this whole ridiculous phase of the Cold War. It took a Republican. Well, by the same token, Republicans could not have deregulated Wall Street. [Laughs] It took a Democrat.

TF: Right. That's right. It takes a--I believe one of the people I quote in the book says that: "It takes a Democrat" to do some of these things. And what he was specifically talking about is something that the public to this day still doesn't know about, which was Bill Clinton's effort to privatize Social Security.

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RS: I want to give a proper introduction to your book. [Laughter] I'm talking with Thomas Frank. The book is called "Listen, Liberal." And I just want to quote from a blurb on the jacket about it. "Departing from the usual line that our raging inequality is solely the fault of greedy, heartless Republicans"--who were exposed, by the way, by Frank in a previous book--"Frank baldly states that Democrats bear no small part of the responsibility. And not just for inequality: the prison spree, the free trade agreements that cost so many Americans their jobs, deregulation, a free ride for Wall Street--it's time, Frank says, for Democrats to own up to their part in this country's downward slide." And now you're bringing up one that your book actually goes into in a way that hasn't--the whole deal with Gingrich and Bill Clinton over destroying Social Security.

TF: If listeners can remember the late 1990s, there was this kind of mania for privatizing Social Security and investing it in the stock market. And what we now know, thanks to the work of a historian, is that in fact Clinton and Gingrich, who were, we at the time thought were these sort of mortal enemies, right, these political opposites, were in fact fully in agreement on a scheme to privatize Social Security. And they met secretly--there's photographs of them meeting--they met secretly, they talked it over, they came up with a plan. And Clinton started on their plan; he announced, you know, that he was going to, you know, I forget how he put it, that he was going to save Social Security or something like that, by which he meant privatize it. And then they were [laughs] so rudely interrupted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, right? Which came along the next day and polarized the country, and polarized Washington; so, you know, so finally put Republicans in one corner and Democrats in another, that Clinton and Gingrich could not, they couldn't have any kind of consensus activity. Or, no--that was the end of triangulation, let's put it that way. So it never happened; it never happened, thanks to Monica Lewinsky.

RS: One of the arguments I had in my own career that I have some doubt about was with Christopher Hitchens, who had been a good friend of mine for a long time. And I still strongly disagree with his support of the Iraq war, which was a betrayal of his ideas. But I remember around the Monica Lewinsky thing, I went soft on the Clintons. And I was writing columns for the L.A. Times, and you know, I felt, as you say in your book, "Hillary Clinton is not a callous or haughty woman"--this is what I felt about Bill also--"She has much to recommend her for the nation's highest office: for one thing, her knowledge of Washington; for another, the Republican vendetta against her, which is so vindictive and so unfair that I myself might vote for her in November." Now, I read that, I thought, my goodness, that's the folly I descended into. Because when this vast right-wing conspiracy was attacking Bill Clinton, I got a little soft in the head, and ah--

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TF: But wait a minute! But that's exactly what we all felt. It was so unfair, and so vindictive. You remember what that was like!



RS: Yes.

TF: The impeachment committee--oh, my God. It was ridiculous! [Laughs]

RS: I understand--



TF: It was the one moment when I liked Bill Clinton, you know! [Laughs]

RS: That's exactly, that's exactly my problem that I'm confessing to you. And so I actually wrote a column saying that Bill Clinton will be remembered as a very good president--I might have even said great president--I said "right of center," I did say that; but someone in the Eisenhower mold, and so forth. Having now done three books on the record, really, of Clinton, I realize I was so unfair to Eisenhower--



TF: [Laughs] That's good, that's good, I like that.

RS: --who was a genuine--no, really, a genuine, sincere, ah, moderate--

TF: Yeah, a Kansan, a good man.

RS: --yes. In fact, he brought, you know, Khrushchev, end of the Cold War, to--not Kansas, but I guess it was Iowa, was it?

TF: That's right, that's a famous, very famous, yeah, that's a famous story. And Khrushchev made fun of tail fins on cars--do you remember this? [Laughs] Among other things.

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RS: Yeah. So, but I mean, he had a real sense of decency and limits and so forth. And I realized--and then I, you know, Clinton wrote me a letter saying yeah, oh, I liked your column, but what do you mean, right of center? I'm really this great progressive. And he listed all these things. Anyway, and then I get invited, thanks to Sidney Blumenthal, to a White House dinner; at which dinner, you know, Hillary Clinton, as I'm going through the receiving line, says oh! Robert Scheer, my favorite columnist in America--no, in the whole world! You know.

TF: Wow.

RS: So these people know how to schmooze you, okay? And so forth--

TF: Yeah. No, can I tell you a similar--I've never met Bill Clinton, but I went to his presidential library. And you know me, Robert; I'm very cynical and sarcastic and willing to believe the worst. And I went to his presidential library, and I listened to the narration that he himself recorded, you know, with that wonderful voice that he has. And I came away from that library loving the man.

RS: Oh, yeah.

TF: And it wasn't 'til several days later that I was able to sort of recover my balance after that. It's--he is so charming, you know, that it's--you know, look, I think I'm pretty hard on him in this book, but let's admit, he is a charming fellow.

RS: The book had a big impact on me. Because there's such clarity about the socializing, corrupting power of the socialization that they're involved in. You know, the Martha's Vineyard hook; how you can get along [with] Wall Street; it's all part of a notion of sophistication. So what I'm suggesting is maybe, you know, these people are--what's the right word--maybe they're not the lesser evil. [Laughs] Maybe it's a different kind of evil--

TF: I think that's, I think--you could make the argument that Bill Clinton did things in the 1990s that no Republican would have been capable of doing. As you yourself said, Reagan couldn't push the--well, maybe it was me that said--Reagan couldn't push bank deregulation as far as Clinton did; Clinton pushed it, did things that Reagan would never have dared to do. Welfare reform, all the stuff with the deregulation--he just went so much farther. NAFTA? George Bush couldn't get NAFTA passed, lest we forget; that took Bill Clinton to do it. You know, there's many examples like this. And so you start to think that the game that the Clintons play with us, where we vote for them because we have nowhere else to go--you know, it's a two-party system, it's a duopoly, and there's--you studied economics; there is a sort of political economics of how we the voter are manipulated in this situation, and they're very, very good at playing that game. And so people like you and me, who are on the left, are captured, basically; we don't have anywhere else to go, and they play us in a certain way. So in writing this book, I'm coming up against, I have a lot of friends who say well, you can't criticize the Democrats, because you'll just, you'll weaken them and then the Republicans will get in. But I say that we can't give up our critical faculties just because of the ugly historical situation that we're currently in.

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RS: My only question would be, and this gets back to Nixon and the Cold War, at least when you have a Republican in power you have Democrats who will criticize. You have, you know, a dialogue going on. When you have a Democrat in power, it stifles the very people who could make the necessary criticism. Secondly--

TF: That's right, we're all supposed to get in line.

RS: Yeah, but also you start to implement policies, as Clinton did, that create the base of resentment in the country that can promote a right-wing jingoism, chauvinism of the kind that Trump has. After all, it's the failure of our economy to address income inequality, and the condition of workers, including white workers; the failure of the union movement--all the things your book discusses in a compelling way--that created the basis of what could be a neofascism or something, you know, even more direct, as we're seeing. Where you blame the immigrants, you blame others, you develop a hysteria, which we're seeing on the right. And so the real question is, how do you counter such forces? Do you get in line?--

TF: Oh, my God. Well, you know, this is the exact, this is the question of the book. This is the problem that--you know, this is exactly what the book is about. It's funny that you mention Trump; I just finished writing a story about Trump. I watched a whole bunch of Trump's speeches, and I was--I'm no fan of Trump, OK? Let's make that clear. But I was watching his speeches, and do you know what issue he emphasizes more than anything else? It's trade. It's trade. It's, like, trade deals like NAFTA, brought to you courtesy, brought to you by Bill Clinton and the Democrats. And he drives this thing home, and he leaves, there's no uncertainty in the minds of his listeners after they've sat through one of his speeches that he is a guy that is going to get tough with American companies that want to move their factories to Mexico or to China or anything like that. Left parties the world over were founded in order to give voice to and to help and to serve working people. That's what they exist for. And those people are now flocking to Donald Trump, who is railing against things like NAFTA. We're in this situation now where thanks to the Clintons, and thanks to Obama, the social dynamics of the two-party system have been completely--not completely, but mostly turned on their head. The appeal of centrism, the appeal of people like Bill Clinton, was the idea that by moving to the center, they were winners, you know; they could do what people like Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis couldn't do, right? By moving to the center, they were so practical, right? And they were going to triangulate, and they were going to win--these are the ones--but Bill Clinton, this great pragmatist who moved the Democrats to the center, the so-called center, is also the one that lost Congress. And Democrats, you know, my kind of Democrats, Franklin Roosevelt Democrats, had held Congress from the 1930s right up to Bill Clinton. From the thirties up 'til the 1990s, with only two very brief interruptions.

RS: If that's true, why are we kidding ourselves? Then the difference between a Bernie Sanders and a Hillary Clinton is enormous for the future of that party. It's not that they're basically, you know, in agreement, and they're basically good--no, no. The debate between the two of them is fundamental. And you will not get progress with Hillary Clinton's approach; you'll get more of the same, and at least Bernie Sanders stands for a profound challenge of that way of doing business.

TF: I think that's right, I think that's probably right. I'm trying to not endorse candidates [laughs] or anything like that. But I--

RS: Well, then, be the theater critic--

TF: Look, the way--sure, but look at the way Bernie Sanders is challenging the Democratic establishment. I think he is saying exactly what needs to be said about these guys. I think he is hitting the nail on the head. He's also challenging the Clintons on trade. And I think at this point, Hillary will say anything and change her opinion on anything in order to stave off that challenge. So the best, my biggest hope for Hillary is that as president, you know, maybe she'll -maybe she's had a change of heart or something like that. But I don't think that's really a good reason, you can't really bank on that, you know? If you look at the entire sort of sweep of Hillary Clinton's career, what Hillary Clinton is interested in has always just been meritocracy and professional achievement, which she usually expresses in these kind of feminist, you know, the sort of feminist vocabulary. But it's always--it's always about--

RS: Right--and when she--and when she breaks through the glass ceiling, all American women will have it made, right?

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TF: Right. Well, the ones who want--no, I mean, women will be able to become, you know, CEOs of the Fortune 500 or something like that. The point that I'm making is that our country's problems, and women's problems, are much, much, much bigger than that.

RS: Well, thank you, Thomas Frank, for writing a really critical book for this election season, and actually for the future of American politics. "Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?" Please don't ignore this book; it's critical to getting a debate going in this country about what's truly important. And thank you, Thomas Frank, for joining me.

TF: Thank you for having me, Robert.


Photo by Great Lakes Commission (@GLCommission)

Shedd Aquarium had several of our team members in Washington at the end of February, all working toward solutions for the betterment and protection of the Great Lakes. As I met with various organizations to discuss steps toward the conservation of the waters of the world, including the Great Lakes, as well as ways to improve environmental quality, my colleague Allen LaPointe attended the Great Lakes Commission Semi-annual Meeting and Great Lakes Day in Washington.

The Great Lakes Commission is an interstate agency that promotes the development and preservation of the water and resources of the Great Lakes basin and St. Lawrence River, and serves to carry out the terms and requirements of the Great Lakes Basin Compact. Comprised of more than 50 commissioners from each of the Great Lakes basin states and provinces, the Commission meets twice per year to discuss issues surrounding the Great Lakes and ways to solve them.

As the vice president of environmental quality at Shedd, Allen was well-positioned to observe the Great Lakes Commission and like-minded organizations as they discussed issues revolving the health of the Great Lakes and methods for improvement. He was also able to extend our Shedd team's appreciation for the folks who stand up for the Great Lakes and thank the Commission for their dedication to healthy waterways. Allen brought some key takeaways from their discussion back to our Great Lakes team at Shedd, allowing us to engage in conversations to find ways that we can lend to the greater good of the Great Lakes basin.

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From Allen LaPointe, Vice President of Environmental Quality, Shedd Aquarium:

Representing Shedd Aquarium as an official observer, I was provided the opportunity to attend the Great Lakes Commission Semi-annual Meeting to hear from the Commission on key issues in the basin and their plans of resolution. Over the two-day meeting, a range of topics were discussed - nutrient loading, invasive species control, changes in government funding, etc. These three were the most important and where the bulk of the conversation took place.

The first of these three components - nutrient loading - focused on Lake Erie specifically because it has seen an extreme increase in algal blooms as a result of phosphorus and nitrogen inputs, mostly coming from agriculture. In addition to clogging river systems, algal blooms can eventually cause drinking water to turn unpalatable or even toxic - a reasonable cause for concern. The Commission noted that they plan to reduce nutrient loading (algal blooms) by 40 percent. Though the Commission is still working through specifics on how to reduce and measure nutrients, this high reduction percentage shows that the Commission isn't messing around - nutrient loading needs to be addressed.

As for issues concerning invasive species control, this is not a new topic for the Commission. Asian carp are still a looming threat and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided updates on monitoring and prevention of their spread. A large part of the conversation, however, was spent on ballast water. Being that ballast water provides a means of transportation for invasive species like zebra and quagga mussels, the Commission discussed the need for regulations or treatment technologies that would prevent invasive species from hitching a ride from other bodies of water and settling in our own. As part of the list of priorities and resolutions that came from the meeting, the Commission resolved to continue investigations for a long-term solution that would prevent transfer between the Great Lakes and Mississippi river basin while simultaneously allowing industries (recreation, shipping, etc.) to reap the benefits of adjoining waterways.

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Among other important topics discussed - safe drinking water, aging infrastructures and oil transportation - the last of what I would consider "big topics" was the decrease in government funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). This year's $50 million cut in funding brought concern for the future of GLRI funding, especially considering the impending changes in administration. Nonetheless, the Commission was confident in the ability to continue restorative and preventative measures, and even listed "providing at least $300 million for the GLRI in FY 2017" among their resolutions.

Whether it was discussing invasive species or government funding, the general theme of the meeting was bipartisanship. Representative Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania noted that, "there can't be anything political about saving the Great Lakes," and the overwhelming presence of both political parties from all across the Great Lakes basin made that abundantly clear. Being that our roots are in Illinois, we appreciated the presence of Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley and representatives for Senator Mark Kirk. We commend the Commission for their work to preserve the Great Lakes and look forward to seeing more resolutions as part of their five-year strategic plan.

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Though a large portion of these topics center around government actions, there are still roles you and I can play to help advocate for the health of the Great Lakes and support the Commission's resolutions. Help educate your peers on the value the lakes bring to us. If you're a boater, you can make sure to empty ballast water before transferring your boat from one lake to another. Or, if you're a registered voter, you can help by voting for a presidential candidate that supports the well-being of the Lakes and the people that live off of them.

If you're interested in learning more about the Great Lakes Commission's meeting resolutions, visit the Great Lakes Commission website. You can also take a look back at tweets from the meeting and the Great Lakes Day in Washington in this Storify that we've created.
It's not a secret that the US education system could use improving, but faith-based instruction is seldom singled out as part of the problem.

Earlier this year, Naftuli Moster, executive director of YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education) drew attention to the plight of young Jewish boys attending yeshivas instead of public schools. According to Moster, nearly 50,000 yeshiva students in the New York City area "are not being taught science, history, and geography among other subjects," even though the NY State Department of Education "requires non-public schools to teach a variety of subjects, including English, math, science, history, geography, art and more." Misinformation and omission of subject matter are problems not just relegated to New York or to yeshivas.

As Dana Hunter wrote in Scientific American, millions of children are being taught in Christian private schools and through religious homeschooling that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that Noah's flood is "the event that formed most of the geologic record." Many of these schools, as well as parents who homeschool their children for religious reasons, use non-accredited science books, such as Science of the Physical Creation in Christian Perspective, that inject religious ideology into "lessons" about science.

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And according to Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax of the Washington Post, tens of thousands of American schoolchildren attending Islamic schools face a similar underexposure to important secular subject matter. As an example, Strauss and Wax point to the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, which doesn't require students to take classes in US history or government. Moreover, their textbooks include religious instruction that fosters conflict. One, for example, states: "The Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews."

Though parents have the right to teach their children about religion and to send their kids to private religious schools, there can be far-reaching negative outcomes if they emphasize religious education over secular education.

Students who are undereducated in this way may miss out on fulfilling careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, all of which require a solid foundation in secular subject matter. Furthermore, the ability of students to understand the world in which they live is artificially limited by their lack of a full education. Struggling to see the universe through the foggy lens of religious dogma further leads these young people away from identifying real-world problems and finding real-world solutions.

At an individual level, many will be at a disadvantage in their higher education options and job market prospects, but at a societal level, we may suffer much more serious consequences by increasing the population of undereducated people. When decisions are in the hands of the scientifically illiterate (be they students, elected officials, or even presidential candidates) we debilitate public policy debates and progress on global issues like reproductive health, we reduce funding for potentially life-enhancing scientific research, and we endanger efforts to protect the earth's fragile ecosystems.

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Today was a long day. I almost lost my vote. I had a feeling of disenfranchisement running through my entire body.

New York State (NYS) is a closed primary, which means you have to belong to a "party" in order to vote within that party. So if I want to vote for Bernie Sanders, I have to be registered as a Democrat, even though I'm independent.

Sounds simple. Except, in NYS, you have to change your party affiliation 25 days prior to the previous year's (2015) general election in order to be eligible to vote in the Democratic primary in the current year (2016). For example, to vote as a Democrat in the NYS primary on April 19th, 2016 you had to have changed your party affiliation by October 9th, 2015. Dizzy yet? You better sit down.

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The Process

I followed the rules. I mailed out my and my ex's (who at the time was my gf) change of party registration forms prior to the October 9th deadline last year. However, a couple of weeks ago I looked up my registration through NYS Board of Elections (BOE) and I noticed that, even though my address was updated, my party was still listed as not affiliated, but my ex's party affiliation was correctly updated. I sent both forms out the same day, so there must've been an issue. Instead of freaking out I thought I'd re-register again through the DMV's online registration portal. I knew it was past the deadline, but I had to update my address again anyway and it was worth a try. I checked the BOE site today. No bueno. My voter record showed that my new address was updated, but under party it still said not affiliated. Even worse, my eyes were straining while browsing the BOE search site because the design looked like it was created by a 12 year old in the 1900s. Where the hell are my taxes going NYS?

I called up the BOE and explained my registration situation to a clerk who insisted that I didn't send a voter registration. We went back and forth as I explained that just because they don't have a form from me, it doesn't mean I didn't send it. He explained that he could not change my affiliation since the deadline had passed. I had screenshots of what had occurred, as well as a Time Machine backup that showed I had filled out a NYS voter registration form in September 2015 and I offered to e-mail him the information. The clerk explained that the chances of me being able to update my party affiliation was slim. I said that I would go down to the BOE office to speak to a supervisor because my vote was very important to me. So I got my ass up, in a fiery rage, and headed down there wearing my #Bernie2016 t-shirt. Viva la Politico Revolucion !

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I've been volunteering for #Bernie2016 for almost a year now; he was only 3% in the polls and most people didn't even know he only owned one pair of underwear . I've been really active for our movement. I wear my #Bernie2016 t-shirt once a week. I'm informing people about the issues. I'm phonebanking and facebanking. I'm registering voters. I've donated almost a $1,000 and I have $2,700, the max allowed, budgeted for the entire campaign. So being told I won't be able to vote for him, I felt what many people that have been disenfranchised due to "insufficient identification" must have felt: suppressed.

When I reached the BOE office my body was shaking. I've had to deal with retail stores refusing to take a return, restaurants screwing up my food, and other first world problems and I've handled those situations amicably. This, however, was my vote, my voice, I was fighting for. This felt like a third world problem. I was livid. Yes, using the word disenfranchised or to claim this is a third world problem may seem dramatic, but these types of situations are occurring all over the country. Whether it be voter ID laws (a.k.a. poll tax), registration cut-offs, or having to join a corrupt party, they are making us work like dogs in an agility competition to earn our right to vote.

After a frustrating debate with the clerk and his associate, I was able to convince them to issue a correction ballot, which is allowed by NYS law. Though, they keep this a secret because, well, you don't want people changing parties last minute to vote against the party's interest . It's not like NYS politicians are corrupt, or that over 40 elected officials in NYS have been accused of wrongdoing since 2003. With one of New York's own running for President while under investigation by the FBI.

Automatic

I can understand why many Americans have given up on the process. I'm a highly informed and active voter myself. I've been very involved in the process and luckily I knew about the deadlines and I double checked my registration. I had the ability to go down to the BOE because my career gives me flexibility. Can you imagine how many people are going to show up at the polls in NYS on primary day and be told they can't vote because there was a clerical error, or because they didn't register by March 25th, 2016, or because they didn't change party affiliation by the ludicrous deadline of 6 months prior to a primary election. How many Republican/independent voters would've even known that they would have to register as a Democrat 6 months prior, if they wanted to vote for Bernie. People probably hadn't even made up their minds about what they were doing for Thanksgiving, let alone who they wanted to vote for half a year later.

Luckily, some states have moved towards same day registration as well as a semi/fully open primaries. So you can register the day of and vote in one of the parties of your choice. A couple of states have even passed laws to automatically register it's citizens. Like Vermont. You know Vermont? While we're discussing improvements. It's 2016. Can we start voting online or what? Or at least a national day off to vote? Pretty please?

This is why the political revolution is so important. We don't want to be part of a system that prevents us from participating. We want a government of the people, by the people, for the people and this hunger will only keep us burning .

Have you ever been disenfranchised? What's your story? Add your experiences to the comments.
March is Women's History Month and there's so much to celebrate. Women have made a tremendous impact as entrepreneurs; providing for their families, communities and the overall economy. Yes, there's still a ways to go in regard to equal pay and opportunities but my glass is half full. I'm optimistic that the fierce momentum will continue to expand, especially with free educational resources, vocal advocates and inspiring mentors.

I found a great deal of inspiration in a just released comprehensive report titled, Breaking Through: Harnessing the Economical Potential of Women Entrepreneurs by The Center for An Urban Future and Capital One. In regard to the state with the most women-owned businesses, the study says, "What's clear from our research is that women entrepreneurs in New York have come a long way in recent years. More than 62 percent (163,000) of the 262,000 new private companies formed in the city between 2002 and 2012 are women-owned. All told, in 2012, women-owned businesses in the city generated $53 billion in revenue." (2012 is the most recent year that provides rigorous data on this)

Those numbers represent major impact and many of those women-owned businesses are 'solopreneurs,' where the only employee is the owner, who will hopefully grow and scale to add more employees and boost revenues even higher.

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One woman, who started as a solopreneur and now has 40 employees is Barbara Armand, founder and CEO of Armand Corporation. Ms. Armand is the epitome of an entrepreneur who followed her passion, despite all odds, to build her own successful consulting business within the male-dominated construction industry in 1991.

I recently spoke to Barbara Armand about her now 25-year-long entrepreneurial journey. Her company has had substantial involvement in projects with construction values from $500,000 to $1,200,000,000. Armand has received many construction industry honors and serves as a mentor and inspirational figure for many women.

Her lifelong passion for construction began when, as a young child, she watched her uncle run his construction business in Louisiana. Armand recalls, "It was during the time of segregation, when white people wouldn't build homes in black neighborhoods. So, my uncle took it upon himself to build many homes for the black community, sometimes even providing mortgages. I was a little girl and was in awe of what he did. I realized later in life what a big impression he had made in my life."

BARBARA ARMAND'S INSIGHTS FROM HER ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY:



Create Your Own Opportunities

Before striking out on her own, Armand worked for a large defense contractor that had projects for the U.S. Navy and Marines. In time, she realized she could start her own firm doing the same type of work she did as an employee. So, she asked her current employer if she could be a consultant rather than employee. The employer agreed and the Armand Corporation was launched. Barbara says, "I was the same person at the same desk doing the same job, but I was no longer an employee; I was CEO of my own business." It was fortuitous that Barbara made that change because the funding for the defense initiative soon dried up and she would have lost that job. Instead, it became the first company listed on her new firm's roster.

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Get Certified

Armand learned from a colleague that the city of Philadelphia was providing special opportunities for "certified" minority and woman-owned businesses. She had only been in business for two years, but had all of the necessary documentation to get certified. Once certified, Barbara was made aware of available governmental contracts within her industry. This led to her first big job; demolition of the old JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Many other firms had turned it down because it was a risky and very complicated endeavor but Barbara's company took on the challenge and succeeded. She recalls, "It was such a relief that everything worked out well and the job was done safely and successfully. It got me noticed and brought in other inquiries." Minority and women-owned business certification remains available nationwide.

Build Your Business One Job At a Time

Armand says, "I got a boost of confidence from that big accomplishment, so I was picking up anything that came along that I felt like I could handle. I needed to stay afloat and during those first few years, I had to take anything even if I had to outsource certain parts of the job. I had the confidence to take jobs and then figure it all out. Building little by little was the way it had to be. My goal was getting a project that would last more than two months."

Never Give Up

Armand says, "My finances were a disaster from taking piecemeal projects, but there was no turning back. I never once thought about giving up. It never even crossed my mind. Everyone always said if you can make it past the first five years, you'll be okay. But it took much longer than that milestone for me to feel successful. I went through a stressful divorce that took me six to seven years to recoup financially. It wasn't until year 15 that I started to feel successful."

BARBARA ARMAND'S QUICK TIPS FOR ENTREPRENEURS:

Be laser-focused. My natural ability to focus allows me to dive through complicated issues quickly. But, focus can be learned. Focus on doing one thing well.

Before you start a business, think about the financing behind it. Interview two to three different banks and lending officers; ask them what they're looking for from entrepreneurs. If a banker doesn't offer detailed specifics, this is not the right match.

Don't be put off when people question your goals. If you have a passion, follow that passion. I knew construction was my calling and I never strayed. Naysayers will always be around, ignore them.

Never doubt yourself. Operate from a place of confidence. Know that every single day there will be challenges, but you will succeed as long as you never consider giving up.

My policy with my employees is that it's okay to make a mistake but if you do, tell somebody so that we can rectify it.

Never make the same mistake twice.

Find the right team for your business so that you can supervise rather than micromanage. I hire people to do a great job on their own.

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Communication is important. I meet with all new hires for 30 minutes every six months to keep employees on track and get feedback, especially with Millennials. I want to help the younger employees reach their own goals as well, whether that's with Armand Corp. or not.

Celebrate success, even if it's just quickly! In the beginning, I'd do a 30 second 'Happy Dance,' when I got a new project and then I'd just keep moving forward, looking for the next project.

The Importance of Giving Back

Armand says, "Mentoring is important to me. Quite often I'd counsel husband and wife teams, I can offer objective advice on making it work. I like to let couples know that only one of them needs to have the true passion for their business. One is a visionary, and the other is the implementer or supporter. That's okay."

Armand also serves as President of the N.Y. national chapter of Professional Women in Construction, where she meets and mentors a lot of women. "We have ongoing discussions for mentorship, I see these women as they progress. I've also been formally asked to mentor someone in a corporate management program at a defense contractor. I have never said no when someone asks me to mentor them. I feel a responsibility to help".

Her lifetime experience seems to cover so many challenges that she says, "I've persevered through financial disaster, divorce, health issues and I've gotten through everything. I don't think there's anything that I cannot counsel on. I'm happy to provide the lead for someone else now."

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In honor of National Women's History month, let's make a collective effort to leverage the progress that women like Barbara Armand have made. We can support women-owned businesses with our purchasing power and also reach out to offer help in three areas that remain difficult for many women: financial management, finding funding and networking/mentoring.

Additional Resources: SCORE, the U.S. Small Business Administration, NAWBO and many accelerators, incubators meet-up groups and co-working spaces in most major cities.

If you need assistance with your business, utilize these resources and reach out to local women like Barbara Armand, who are ready and willing to share their wisdom. And if you're an experienced entrepreneur, let others know that you're willing to help. As Maya Angelou said, "When you learn, teach. When you get, give."
This has not happened yet, but contrary to what you might think, it is not a figment of my wild imagination, but rather a page from the history of the Middle East, one worthy of remembrance.

Thursday, March 13, 1997.

The day started off as a beautiful sunny morning, like so many others in Israel. A group of 7th and 8th grader girls from a local Middle School in Israel were excited, getting ready to go on their annual school trip. This time the destination was the "Island of Peace" in Naharayim, right on the border between Israel and Jordan.

Naharayim is a site in the Jordan Valley, located right on the border between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. During the War for Israel's Independence in 1948 the area was conquered by the Jordanian army. In 1994, after signing the Peace Agreement between Israel and Jordan, the site was renovated and rebuilt as a buffer zone between the two states, under Jordanian sovereignty but in partnership with Israel, and included a park called "The Island of Peace", where Israelis and tourists could enjoy and visit. This was the girls' destination.

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A day which started off so bright, turned all of a sudden very bleak and dark. During the girls' visit to this unique symbol of the hope of co-existence, only 3 years after the signing of the Peace Accord with Jordan, a Jordanian soldier on the premises turned his gun at them. He shot and killed seven school girls, while seriously injuring six others. The event sent shock waves throughout Israel. The cruelty, and the symbolism, were painful and evident.

And yet, something happened afterwards which gave a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, we could overcome this difficult moment: a gesture long remembered in the annals of history, but one which seems to have been forgotten from our hearts.

Sunday, March 16, 1997.

Upon learning of the incident, the late King Hussein of Jordan (and father of the current King Abdullah II) cut short an official visit to Spain and in a courageous gesture arrived in Israel to give condolences in person to the bereaved families. In an image forever seared into the memories and hearts of so many in Israel, the Hashemite King, dressed in his traditional Jordanian Keffiyeh, knelt in mourning with the families of the seven Israeli schoolgirls, whose each and every family he visited. The late King had this to say to the families: "We are all members of one family, as this incident is a crime that is a shame for all of us. I feel as if I have lost a child of my own. If there is any purpose in life it will be to make sure that all the children no longer suffer the way our generation did."

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"Many Israelis were touched by Hussein's condolence call, including Yehezkel Cohen, whose 13-year-old daughter Nirit was killed in last Thursday's shootings. "I really love him. Despite the sorrow, I say this: I hope and believe in King Hussein and a real peace." (CNN report by Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem, March 16, 1997).

This month marks 19 years since that attack. As we are immersed in the US Presidential Elections which take center stage, we still seem to search for that "Great" leader, a continuous ongoing struggle for humanity, both when it comes to judging past leaders as well as when looking into prospective ones.

To me, leadership has always been about inspiration, a vision, an ability to spark people's hearts and imagination. The late King Hussein's act of leadership did just that, as he dared not only to "condemn" an attack in a diplomatic language, but to rise to the tough challenge and look in the eyes of the victims' parents, not to mention doing so in front of international media and a room filled with cameras. This is a deed worthy of our remembrance and learning.

Thursday, March 17, 2016.

Another Palestinian attacked an Israeli woman with a knife this morning, injuring her severely. These days innocent Israelis are attacked almost daily by Palestinian terrorists, while Palestinian Authority leadership praises these murderers. Not a word of denunciation, reprimand or sorrow for the loss of life and acts of violence. Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas has a lot to learn, and Palestinians and Israelis much to gain, from remembering history.

Just imagine if Abbas did.
There is something seriously troubling and painful happening in Africa which should worry the rest of the world. At their recent meeting in Addis Ababa, African leaders under the aegis of African Union voted to withdraw from the international criminal court (ICC). If African nations proceeded with this proposal, this will not be a first. The US, for instance, is not a signatory to the Rome statute of 2002 which created the ICC as the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.

Whereas the US is reluctant to ratify the Rome statute because it wants to protect the rights of American soldiers from frivolous and politically motivated trials, African leaders are threatening to withdraw from ICC as a strategy for protecting themselves from being held accountable for atrocities which they committed while in power. As Kenya's national newspaper, Daily Nation said in a recent editorial, "leaving the ICC with no credible mechanism for justice for mass crimes in sight would be an error of colossal proportions."http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Editorial/Bid-to-pull-out-of-ICC-is-deceptive-ill-conceived/-/440804/3059820/-/s8w8wpz/-/index.html

This decision by African leaders only reinforces the fear of many Africans that victims of genocide and war crimes in Africa will never get justice if the process is left in the hands of self-serving African leaders. Furthermore, unless perpetrators of these crimes are held to account no matter their position or status, there is no guarantee that even more heinous atrocities will not occur in the continent in future. Many current and former African leaders are complicit in some of the worst forms of atrocities in the continent within the last three decades. They must be brought to justice.

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The argument that Africa is being unfairly targeted flies in the face of logic. No African leader has picked holes in the process, protocol, and procedure of ICC. In addition, the chief prosecutor of the court, Fataou Bensouda who is African, in a recent interview with the London-based International Bar Association was equivocal in rejecting any claims of bias against Africans. According to her, "there has never been an African bias, there is no African bias and there never will be an African bias. If you look at the reality on the ground you will see... that it's actually African governments, African countries and African Member States that are coming towards the ICC to request intervention."http://www.ibanet.org/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleUid=f97baf93-ad16-4c94-8956-480a8d3a9d4f

What is unfair is the fact that the perpetrators of some of these crimes are still in power or are protected by African governments while the memories of their victims are forgotten. The more fundamental question that needs to be answered by African leaders is not why or where perpetrators of these crimes should be tried but rather why so many of these atrocities are being committed in African soil. I do not see how the security, sovereignty and dignity of Africans which President Kenyatta claims as reason for pushing for this withdrawal will be imperiled by the trial of African leaders who committed crimes against humanity.

As at today, the ICC has 23 cases and situations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Apart from the situation in Georgia and the Comoros the rest are in eight African countries--Kenya, Ivory Coast, Libya, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda, and Mali. The ICC has also opened inquiries into crimes against humanity in two other African countries, Nigeria and Guinea. https://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/situations%20and%20cases/Pages/situations%20and%20cases.aspx

While there are many unreported cases of crimes against humanity in many parts of the world, no one can deny that these statistics point to a troubling reality in Africa. Why is it that the lust for power has led many African leaders to stew in the blood of their fellow citizens? Why is it that the African spirit of Ubuntu, that is, the priority of the community over the individual is no longer respected in Africa today especially when it comes to the accession to power and retention of power in many countries in Africa? Why are so many African leaders changing their national constitutions to perpetuate themselves in power while triggering off national crisis which often lead to suppression and crimes against the innocent?

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The socio-political history of Africa within the last three decades is littered with violence and blood as a result of actions of serving or former African leaders. Just to give one example, no African can forget the atrocities committed by former President of Chad, Hissene Habre who is standing trial in the Extraordinary African Chambers, a court set up for this trial by African governments under the supervision of the ICC. A truth commission in Chad found that more than 40,000 people were killed and thousands more tortured during Hissene Habre's repressive 17 years in power which ended in 1999. During his time in power, Habre, whom Human Rights Watch called 'the Pinochet of Africa', was the most destabilizing political force in the West African sub-region.https://www.hrw.org/legacy/english/docs/2004/10/14/chad9475_txt.htm He was, however, the friend of the US, France and Britain who saw him as a counter-balancing power to Libya's Ghaddafi.

I remember as an elementary school kid in Nigeria in the 80's seeing the massive influx of Chadian nationals--women, young people and children--especially members of the Zara, Hadjeria and Zaghawa ethnic groups who were particularly targeted by Habre's killing force, the DSS. These unfortunate Chadians were begging in the streets of Nigeria, living under the bridge, and often exposed to the elements. The then Nigerian government did not have a well developed system for Internally Displaced People. Besides, the Structural Adjustment Program was biting hard on the country making it impossible for the Nigerian state to support these Chadians many of whom died from starvation and diseases. The painful recollection of the suffering of these Chadians is still fresh in my memory.

Another former African leader who is standing trial is Laurent Gbagbo, who is indicated of war crimes and crimes against humanity for post-election violence and civil war in Cote d'Ivoire which led to the killing of more than 6000 people. President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto have not been convicted of the crimes for which they were charged, but the Kenyan government under him has not fully investigated the deaths of more than 1200 Kenyans in the post-election violence of 2007-2009. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/13/kenyan-tribal-clashes-116-dead

Sudan and South Sudan continue to witness the worst form of violence, semi-permanent humanitarian disaster, and displacement of thousands of people. But these are the result of President Omar al-Bashir's dictatorial regime. He is facing 3 counts of genocide, two counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity in ICC but has refused to turn himself in to face trial. He continues to walk freely in Africa while Darfur continues to be in ruin. And the list goes on...

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Zachary Levi and Laura Benanti in She Loves Me.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Theatergoers who want to see why Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's She Loves Me is a well-nigh perfect Broadway musical should head to Studio 54, where Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi and Jane Krakowski--and the book, music and lyrics--virtually gleam like crystal perfume bottles on a silver tray in the bright sun. As for those who don't care about classical perfection and only want a warm, funny and bounteously romantic musical valentine, get your tickets now.

This is the 1963 musical version of Parfumerie, a 1937 Hungarian play by Miklos Laszlo which is familiar to audiences through three disparate film versions. Georg (Levi), the head clerk in an elegant Budapest parfumerie, develops an instant antipathy for new sales clerk Amalia (Benanti), unaware that she is the secret pen pal to whom he nightly pours out his hopes and dreams. And vice versa. The relationship starts out rocky in summer and becomes nearly lethal in late fall, but everything is neatly wrapped up with a joyful clinch on Christmas Eve.

The show is Bock and Harnick's masterpiece, although their Fiddler on the Roof was and remains far more successful. The two scores were written more or less together; when Fiddler (which they started in 1960) ran into delays, they turned to She Loves Me before finishing Fiddler. Harold Prince, who was originally connected with neither project, ended up producing the original productions of both as well as directing She Loves Me.

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Chief among the pleasures of this revival are the leading players, who take the innately charming material and add their own personal magic. Amalia is a soprano's dream; Barbara Cook created the role, turning the big aria "Ice Cream" into something of a standard for hard-singing heroines. (Cook originated not only "Ice Cream" but Leonard Bernstein's "Glitter and Be Gay" from Candide, two numbers that serve as something of a trial by fire for musical comedy leading ladies.) Here we have Ms. Benanti, who can match just about anyone in the vocal spotlight. What sends her performance over the top is her comedy skills; there is humor in the role, yes, but Benanti makes it downright funny. The bedroom scene, for instance (leading to "Ice Cream"), plays like high comedy. Let it be added that the book by Joe Masteroff--who later turned his hand to Cabaret--works marvelously well.



Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi in She Loves Me.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Levi--from the film "Tangled" and the series "Chuck"--made a favorable impression in 2013 in the weak First Date. He here demonstrates that he can carry a good musical. He also contributes mightily to that bedroom scene, which includes a wonderful moment where we see him flustered as he realizes that Amalia is the "dear friend" of the letters and that just maybe--to borrow a phrase from lyricist Harnick--"she loves me."

Speaking of Harnick, he and the late Mr. Bock are the heroes of the evening. Their score is a brimful cornucopia of delight, compounded of no less than 21 songs. ("Tango Tragique" is cut, understandably so as it is relatively weak and extraneous.) Harnick was here at his considerable best; the words are warm, witty and lusciously flavorful. (She Loves Me is a rare musical at which audience members sit noticeably forward in their seats, eager to catch every savory pun as it flies by.) Theatergoers who are lucky might even find Sheldon--fresh and alert at 91--sitting in the house, basking in the glow of people basking in the glow of his show.

Ms. Krakowski--a familiar face due to "30 Rock" but with musical comedy in her blood since she 1989, when she amazed us as Flaemmchen in Grand Hotel--is also a standout. Ilona, the lovelorn cashier who finally finds new purpose via a trip to the library--slyly set by Bock against Ravel's seductive "Bolero"--is perennially a crowd-pleasing role. Even so, Krakowski outdoes herself; we see not only the second female lead in the comedy role of the heroine's best friend, but a living and breathing and lovable character. Her songs are warm and wonderful, and she even contributes a deft touch to the Christmas number.

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Also on hand are Gavin Creel, as the slimy Lothario, Kodaly; Byron Jennings as the cuckolded shop owner, Maraczek; and Nicholas Barasch as the very-redheaded bicycle messenger Arpad. Special mention goes to Michael McGrath as the warm-hearted but unambitious clerk Sipos. Like Benanti, Levi and Krakowski, he accentuates the comedy; the cafe scene, where he recognizes Amalia with a rose in her copy of "Anna Karenina," has him sputtering like a combination of Lou Costello and Jackie Gleason. This, somehow, works marvelously in context, and makes McGrath the finest Sipos we've seen.

The Roundabout--which first revived the show in 1993 at the Criterion Center, followed by a transfer to the Atkinson--has retained director Scott Ellis but otherwise given us an entirely new production. This one is considerably richer than the first, with folk like choreographer Warren Carlyle, musical director Paul Gemignani, orchestrator Larry Hochman and set designer David Rockwell along for the ride.
If you want your kids to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, you may need to tone down your negativity about this Halloween tradition.
By Susan Blumenthal, M.D., Yingna Wang and Samara Levin

The prevalence and impact of depression underscore the importance of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)s new recommendation issued on January 26, 2016 that primary care providers should screen all adults for this illness. In February, the Task Force released additional guidance that all adolescents be screened as well. The USPSTF, an independent, U.S. government-appointed body of experts, evaluates scientific evidence when weighing the risks and benefits of recommending preventive and early detection screening tests and programs. The group bases its recommendations on the evidence of both the benefits and harms of the service and an assessment of the balance. The USPSTF does not consider the costs of providing a service in its assessment and recognizes that clinical decisions involve more considerations than evidence alone. The Task Force underscores that clinicians should understand the evidence but individualize decision-making to the specific patient or situation. Similarly, the USPSTF notes that policy and coverage decisions involve considerations in addition to the evidence of clinical benefits and harms.

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The Task Forces recommendations on depression screening were based on evidence demonstrating a decrease in the health damaging effects of depression when adults and adolescents were screened for the illness in a primary care setting, and if diagnosed, then treated with psychotherapy or antidepressants alone, or their combination. Additionally, the Community Preventive Services Task Force, which makes evidence-based recommendations on preventive services for community populations, recommends collaborative care for the management of depressive disorders as part of a multicomponent, health care systemlevel intervention that uses case managers to link primary care providers, patients, and mental health specialists.

The USPSTFs recommendations come at a major turning point in Americas fight against mental illness. In 1985, I served as Head of the Suicide Research Unit at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as well as the Coordinator of Project Depression, the first national public education campaign about this mental illness sponsored by the federal government. In the 1980s, depression was often viewed as a character flaw or as a personal weakness. The goal of the campaign was to de-stigmatize depression by increasing public and health care provider knowledge about the disease through research and education. An analogy was developed to heart disease to help people better understand that depression is an illness just like heart disease, and is on a spectrum from mild to severe. As occurs with the spectrum of cardiovascular illness, some people will have only have mildly elevated blood pressure whereas others will experience a severe heart attack. Similarly on the depressive illness spectrum, some people will have mild symptoms such as difficulty concentrating or sleeping, where others will have a life-threatening disease that interferes with the persons ability to function. Depression has biological, psychological and environmental risk factors just as does heart disease.

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Much progress in the understanding and treatment of MDD has been made since the launch of the Project Depression campaign in the 1980s. Science has been expanded, stigma is being shattered and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 now provides parity in insurance coverage for treatment of mental illnesses including depression. The federal government has recently issued screening guidelines for the disease to encourage people to be diagnosed early and linked to effective treatment. Additionally, for the first time, the US Preventive Services Task Force has found sufficient scientific evidence to support the screening benefits for specific population groups over the lifecycle, including older adults, pregnant women and new mothers.

Women and Depression: Guidance during Pregnancy and the Post-partum Period

Depression is more common in women as compared to men. Science has shown particular vulnerability to the illness at specific stages of the lifecycle. Postpartum depression (PPD) affects 1 in 7 women, and about 1 percent will experience a psychosis that severely interferes with a womans functioning and in some cases has been linked to infanticide and suicide. Mothers are not the only ones affected by PPD; evidence reveals that maternal depression also affects the child in terms of development, attachment, and cognitive abilities. The US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation to screen pregnant women for depression is based in part on findings from a study of 10,000 women, in which one-third experienced the onset of the illness during pregnancy rather than after the birth of their baby.

In reviewing the scientific evidence, the Task Force determined that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective depression treatment for pregnant and postpartum women, specifically because evidence-based counseling such as CBT does not pose the same biological risks to the developing fetus or breast fed infant as some prescription medications used to treat depression, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Cognitive behavioral therapy works to change negative patterns of thought that occurs with depression. Some experts recommend that if pregnant and postpartum women must be prescribed antidepressant medication because of the severity of their illness, they should be given a single anti-depressant, and not take two or three different types concurrently. The CDCs Treating for Two initiative collects information about the use of medications during pregnancy and their side effects, evaluating the evidence, providing guidance and education. Some anti-depressants have been linked to birth defects in babies. Another finding highlights the risk of abruptly stopping a course of antidepressants pose to both the mother and fetus or breast fed infant. Before changing any course of antidepressant treatment, women taking medication should consult with their doctor.

Adolescents and Depression

Primary care providers play an important role in identifying depression in youth since they are often the first point of contact during times of emotional turmoil. Schools are also play a critical role in identifying and treating depression in adolescents. In 2011, 12 percent of adolescents, aged 12 to 17 years, reported receiving mental health care at school. The new USPSTF recommendations also support the use of antidepressants in the treatment of some adolescents who have clinical depression, whereas the previous guidelines issued in 2009 recommended only counseling based therapies for treatment of adolescents. This shift in the most recent edition of the USPSTF guidelines is the result of a review of the scientific literature documenting the effectiveness of medication in treating depression in adolescents, especially in conjunction with psychotherapy. However, in some depressed, high-risk young people, antidepressant medications can be associated with increased agitation as well as suicidal ideation and attempts; therefore, treatment with these medications in adolescents must be monitored carefully for these and other side effects.

Clinical Concerns

While the new USPSTF recommendations to screen all adults and adolescents are not mandatory for health care providers to administer, they provide important guidelines for clinical practice. The USPSTF found adequate evidence that the magnitude of harms of screening for depression in adults and in postpartum and pregnant women is small to none.

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However, some experts have expressed concern that routine screening for depression, particularly in adolescents, will lead to a rise in the diagnoses of this disorder, resulting in an increase in the over prescription of antidepressant medications. Antidepressants are currently the third most commonly prescribed class of drugs in the United States. These medications can have side effects such as agitation, weight gain and suicidal ideation in some people.

However, other physicians and mental health advocates strongly support the issuance of these new recommendations to screen all adults and adolescents for depression. The USPSTF recommendations themselves help raise awareness about depression and help reduce the stigma of discussing depression and other mental health issues with doctors, friends and family. The guidance also means that these mental health screening services will be considered a preventive service under the Affordable Care Act of 2010 without cost sharing or a deductible.

By issuing these new recommendations, the US Preventive Services Task Force acknowledges that depression is a major public health concern and that the diagnosis and treatment of this illness must be mainstreamed into medical practice and reimbursed by health insurance.

The Way Forward

But just diagnosing depression is not enough. Effective treatment must then be available and administered. As a result of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, most health plans must now cover preventive services recommended by the USPSTF at no additional cost. The law also provides health insurance parity protections for 62 million Americans, prohibits insurance plans from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions including mental illnesses like depression, and includes coverage for preventive and early detection services  now including depression screening for adults and adolescents, as well as behavioral assessments for children.

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In the 21 century, new ways of assessing a patients mental health are being developed. Consider this: when physicians conduct a physical examination, they usually measure a patients vital signs, like blood pressure, temperature, and respiratory rate. Any irregularity would then prompt the physician to conduct further screening or administer treatment. Likewise, physicians should be able to measure brain vitals, through evaluation of a patients mood, cognition, reaction time, spatial discrimination and memory, so that any deviations from standardized measurements would prompt the physician to further evaluate the patient, order additional tests or provide treatment for depression and/or other mental health problems.

Currently, the FDA has approved several new technologies to measure brain vitals, which allow physicians to assess the brain health of a patient and detect emotional and cognitive changes. One such technology, a brain thermometer, is a mobile phone application used in military settings by the US Army to identify traumatic brain injuries (TBI), concussions, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This innovation could potentially be expanded for application in a general health care setting, where physicians would be able to detect signs of emotional distress and neurocognitive changes that signal the presence of a TBI, concussion, or mental illness.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the median delay between the appearance of first symptoms and seeking treatment for a mental illness such as depression is nearly a decade. However, routine screening for depression as recommended by the USPSTF will now increase the likelihood of being diagnosed and receiving effective treatment if needed, helping to reduce the painful symptoms of depression. It also underscores why it is so important to better integrate mental health into primary care practice.

While the USPSTF recommendations urge primary care providers to screen their patients for depression, everyone has a role to play in discussing depression with friends, family and colleagues, raising awareness about mental illness and helping people seek treatment if needed. After all, mental health is fundamental to our overall health and we need to start viewing it that way.

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In the 21 century, with one out of five Americans affected by mental illness annually, our country urgently needs a mission to the mind; the brain is the last uncharted territory on earth. A better understanding of this inner space -- the human brain  and the contribution of genetic, behavioral, social and environmental factors on its development and function is urgently needed. That's why bold investments must be made in neuroscience and behavioral research. Additionally, revolutionary new advances in science, technology, and public health must be applied to develop innovative strategies for the prevention and treatment of mental illness that can end the needless suffering caused by disorders like depression in the years ahead. This is the moonshot of our generation.

Rear Admiral Susan Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.A. (ret.) is the Public Health Editor of The Huffington Post. She is a Senior Fellow in Health Policy at New America and a Clinical Professor at Tufts and Georgetown University Schools of Medicine. Dr. Blumenthal served for more than 20 years in senior health leadership positions in the federal government in the Administrations of four U.S. presidents including as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States, the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Women's Health, and as Senior Global Health Advisor in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also served as a White House advisor on health. She provided pioneering leadership in applying information technology to health, establishing one of the first health websites in the government (womenshealth.gov) and the "Missiles to Mammogram" Initiative that transferred CIA, DOD and NASA imaging technology to improve the early detection of breast and other cancers. Prior to these positions, Dr. Blumenthal was Chief of the Behavioral Medicine and Basic Prevention Research Branch, Head of the Suicide Research Unit, Coordinator of Project Depression, and Chair of the Health and Behavior Coordinating Committee at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She has chaired many national and global commissions and conferences and is the author of many scientific publications. Admiral Blumenthal has received numerous awards including honorary doctorates and has been decorated with the highest medals of the U.S. Public Health Service for her pioneering leadership and significant contributions to advancing health in the United States and worldwide. Named by the New York Times, the National Library of Medicine and the Medical Herald as one of the most influential women in medicine, Dr. Blumenthal was named the Health Leader of the Year by the Commissioned Officers Association and as a Rock Star of Science by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation. She is the recipient of the Dr. Rosalind Franklin Centennial Life in Discovery Award.

Yingna Wang is a junior at Dartmouth College, majoring in Classical Languages and Literatures with a minor in Global Health. She is a Health Policy Intern at New America in Washington, D.C.

Samara Levin is a senior at The George Washington University with a major in Economics and a minor in Health and Wellness. She will be a first year medical student at The George Washington School of Medicine this fall. Samara is a Health Policy Intern at New America.

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Forgive us if we've written about this before but this is something we think about deeply and often: how to pack for extended travel overseas.



Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

We travel a lot in our jobs researching and reporting on overseas retirement. Last month we were on the shores of Lake Chapala, south of Guadalajara, Mexico. Then after a short jaunt to Panama City, we write to you now from Merida, the capital city of Mexico's Yucatan state. We typically travel with one carry-on suitcase each, plus a personal carry-on that holds our immediate-need prescription medications, toiletries, electronic equipment, and any other valuables we might have.

(Yes, you can put electronics and valuables in your carry-on-size suitcase, but depending on the type of aircraft--think small regional planes and "exec jets"--you can't always take your carry-on suitcase aboard. When you have to gate check your carry-on--and it will happen, believe us--you will want your valuables with you.)



Outdoor Cafe, Merida, Mexico

But we're not writing today about the clothing you should pack. That's certainly a personal decision. If we had any advice to give about that it is this: Less is better. If you're going to be traveling for just a week, you should easily be able to pack everything you need in your carry-on suitcase. If you'll be gone longer than that, plan to do laundry.

But what are the items you should pack for every trip, regardless of length of time or destination?

There are the essentials:

Passport

Always be sure your passport is valid. You never know when the opportunity for international travel will present itself and you don't want to be shut out because of an expired passport. And be aware that most airlines won't even allow you to board an international flight if your passport will expire within six months.

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It's a good idea to make copies of your passport's information pages and keep a copy in your suitcase, on your laptop or a memory stick, or give a copy to a friend or family member. If you lose your passport while traveling, having access to this information can come in handy.



Credit Cards/Debit Cards

Credit and debit cards are accepted just about the world over and with new chip technology there is little risk in using them anywhere. While we have found that American Express is not as widely accepted, Visa and MasterCard typically are. (Don't even think about traveler's checks. Those days are over and you'll have a very difficult time finding any vendor that accepts these.)

ATM machines, too, are ubiquitous the world over. We never go to currency exchange houses; instead we prefer ATM withdrawals where you get the most current exchange rate. Be sure you know your PIN to advise both your credit card company and your bank when you'll be traveling overseas. (We use Capital One as it reverses fees charged for foreign ATM transactions.)

Travel Insurance

This is a good time to call your health insurance company and see what coverage you have for international travel. If you won't be covered where you plan to travel, you'll want to purchase a travel medical insurance policy and be sure it covers trip interruption, emergency evacuation, etc. Some credit cards provide this, so be sure to check with yours to verify coverage.

Plug Adapters/Chargers/Three-Port Extension Lead

If you are traveling to an area with an electrical system different than yours at home (such as to Europe or Asia from the U.S. or Canada), you'll need a universal plug adaptor.

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A plug adapter has come in handy for us more times than not as we have often stayed in places with outlets that aren't grounded. An extension lead may come in handy if there are few outlets.

Wristwatch

Ok, we know young people don't wear wristwatches any more as they can always check the time on their phone. But we're old school. And forgetful. If we forget our phone or forget to charge it, it's nice to know what time it is.

Laptop or Tablet

We could not live (or work) without our laptops and tablets. So those are always with us. It may not be necessary for you, especially if you have a smartphone or if you're taking a short pleasure trip. Tip: You can download a free white noise/fan noise/rain/ocean waves application that you can play on a loop at night--also essential for us or anyone who needs this stimulation to foster restful sleep and block out outside noise.

Small Bag and a Small Foldable Tote Bag

Some like the idea of a money belt or pouch, but we've never felt the need. Instead, we carry small bags that strap diagonally across our chests. These fit in our personal carry-on bags and when we get where we are going, the carry-ons go in the closet and these come out. They're far lighter than toting a backpack around on a sightseeing jaunt. We never take them off, even when dining in a restaurant. That way we won't forget them. (See above. We are forgetful.) We also throw a small foldable nylon tote bag in our suitcase--the kind that collapses into its own tiny pouch and with a small clip you can attach to your belt. This comes in handy for shopping, carrying wine to a dinner party, etc.

Toiletry Kit

This is another thing we've gotten down to a science. Our toiletry bags go in our carry-ons so they are definitely compliant with the TSA's 3-1-1 rule. You are allowed to bring a quart-sized bag of liquids, aerosols, gels, creams, and pastes through the checkpoint. These are limited to 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) or less per item. Bring the basics. For instance, unless you have allergies and need special products, don't worry about bringing shampoo or soap. Your hotel will provide those items.

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Prescription Medications

Always take enough medication to last the duration of your travels...and then some, just in case you encounter delays and it takes two or more days to get home instead of one. If you are checking out a place as an overseas retirement destination and will be there a month or more, take at least a one-month supply--enough to last until you can find a local equivalent. (If you take specialized medications, check on this before you go.) Importantly, pack these in your carry-on just in case your luggage doesn't go where you go.

Note: Some people carry a small first-aid kit. We don't feel the need to do this, as it's easy to find pharmacies just about anywhere you might travel. (And remember, we pack light.) We do, though, typically have some small packets of aspirin and tissues tucked away. And we always have cough drops...a must on stuffy plane rides. If you have chronic allergies, you may want to pack some antihistamine. If you need them, don't forget extra hearing aid batteries or anything else--such as knee or elbow braces--you regularly use.

Extra pair of Eyeglasses/Sunglasses/Contacts and Solution

Jetlag has caused us to doze off and forget our glasses on a Paris airport bus and to leave our contacts behind on a trip to Thailand. If this happens to you, it will be a big relief to have an extra pair of eyeglasses tucked away in your suitcase. While you can buy contact solution almost anywhere, it may not be the brand you're accustomed to, so pack a small bottle of that if you'll need it.

Sweater/Jacket/Shawl

Even if you're traveling to a warm tropical climate such as Panama or Nicaragua, you'll be glad to have a light jacket or wrap with you. (One of us prefers a Pashmina shawl, which has many versatile uses.) If you go to an air-conditioned restaurant, movie theater, or take a cross-country bus, you'll have something to wrap up in.

Rain Gear/Hat

We don't always do this, we'll admit, but if you're traveling during rainy season or especially if you're heading somewhere like Ireland, you'll want to pack a compact travel umbrella or maybe even a hooded rain-repellant jacket. A hat is always a good idea as it keeps the rain and sun off your head. Protection from the sun is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself.

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Sunscreen

See above. Always wear your sunscreen, even on a cloudy day. More trips have been ruined by sunburn than anything else. Apply it well and often, and reapply after swimming or strenuous activity.

Insect Repellant

With all the scary mosquito-borne diseases out there, why would you not always have some mosquito repellant on hand? We prefer the handy individual wipes that pack flat. These were once confiscated from us by an over-zealous TSA inspector who claimed they were hazardous materials. We suspect...or at least hope...that by now he has been educated on the fact that these are FAA approved.

Flashlight

You will thank yourself when you need a flashlight and actually have one. Believe us, they come in handy. Of course, your smartphone will have a flashlight app, but if you don't want to carry your phone with you, revert to an old-fashioned flashlight. If you're like us (forgetful) you may not mind being reminded to check the batteries.

Comfortable Walking Shoes

Sore feet are akin to sunburn in our book--they can ruin your trip. We especially love Keen and Teva brands for their sturdy, comfortable soles and good ankle support. You probably have your own favorite. Just be sure your shoes are well broken in and comfortable. Good socks are a plus. (And yes, we are beyond caring what anyone thinks when we wear socks with our comfy sandals, especially on an airplane.)

Flip flops

Flip flops can come in handy when you want to run down to the front desk at your hotel and you just don't feel like putting your shoes on again. And of course, they're perfect for the pool, the beach, or a visit to a hot springs. Do not, though, think you can walk long distances in flip flops. Your feet will hate you for it.

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Contact List

Carry a list of emergency contacts. It's best to have this on you at all times, just in case there should be...well, an emergency. Add your medical information: allergies you may have, medications you take, if you have a pacemaker, etc. If--heaven forbid--you should not be able to communicate with emergency personnel, you'll be glad you have this. Be sure your emergency contact has your health insurance information or knows how to access emergency funds for your medical treatment if need be.

Tip: Stop at Duty Free. In our opinions, Duty Free exists so we can have a nice bottle of wine in our hotel room when we get where we are going. This only works, of course, if you don't have a connecting flight or you are not going on a cruise. The Duty Free attendants will know what the allowance is for your overseas destination.



Lake Chapala Malecon, Jalisco, Mexico

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Earlier on Huff/Post50:
It's been almost less than one year ago when Greece holds a referendum the essential question of which was whether or not the Greek people want Greece to stay in the Europe by keeping being a member of the euro currency. At that time, thousands of Greeks poured into the streets outside of the Hellenic Parliament defending Greece's European membership carrying placards where it was written their primary slogan "Yes to Europe." I did not belong to those protestors not because I conceive that my country's future would be brighter by falling apart from the so- called European project and selecting to be isolated geostrategically and economically. But because I didn't believe - and still today myself hasn't been convinced of that- that the European Union as it has been developed so far deserves to be praised or applauded by its people.

Shouldn't these pro-Europe Greek protesters calling in July 2014 the government to say "Yes to Europe" be feeling today very uncomfortable on the eve of the unprecedented refugee crisis to which Europe has been caught unprepared? Yes I would say so. And perhaps even ashamed because Europe, they were defending is the same one proven today incapable of reducing the human toll for thousands of humiliated refugees and their children.

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The images that the distinguished Reuter's photojournalist Yannis Behrakis took depicting the nonstop drama of the Syrian refugees and other immigrants arrived on the shores of the Greek Islands are shocking. But it's an even bigger shock for somebody to realize that Europe does nothing to avert this painful for those children, women and man's situation rather than taking the closed doors decisions pretending of alleviating the misery of these people, but in reality, European leaders are doing quite the opposite. They condemn these refugees and immigrants not to have access to Europe as a shelter for a better life with peace, dignity and respect to their lives, instead of assuming the right action to provide the safety they deserve as asylum seekers.

The way that many of the European member states are doing regarding the managing of this situation is something more than a mere indication of how Europe in nowadays perceives the meaning of its existence. It's a clear evidence that the European Union has been transformed into a group of countries they are committed to operating together in order to save just their societies from the "strangers" who in this case are the thousands of people attempting to "save" their lives from the war and the atrocities taking place in Syria and other countries in the Middle East. The European Union is getting demolished as it's taking down the principles based on which it was established.

It's unacceptable that the EU leadership, including the Greek Prime Minister Mr. Tsipras are watching the FYROM and the Turkish authorities pathetically to violently and inhumanly treat these refugees. It's hypocritical that above the ashes of the lost dignity of these people, the EU states are playing a negotiating game of seeking a manner for their countries to undertake in their shoulders as less burden of responsibility as possible. It's disgusting that Europe is confronting these refugees not as human beings, only as a trouble the EU politicians are attempting to transfer it to each other erasing from the European consciousness words like "solidarity" and "humanity".
By: Climate Reality Mentor, Jaazeal Jakosalem

Our country is situated in one of the vulnerable areas of the Earth, along the typhoon belt of the Asia-Pacific region. It is a living testimony of the climate crisis.

Reality

Climate related disasters can be felt on all of the islands. Typhoons most greatly impact life in the Philippines. We have almost too many to name. Reality is telling us that typhoons are becoming stronger and more violent, surpassing even the estimated limit of the 'strongest level' from super to mega typhoons. The devastating effects of climate change are literally killing our people.

This is a reality in our country, climate change is changing Filipino lives. After the devastation left by Typhoon Haiyan, we are now conscious of the need to build typhoon-resilient houses, the advantage of disaster-mapping for our islands, and even constructing bunkers for disasters.

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From wilderness to reality

The climate campaign of Nobel Laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore started as a lone visionary, his was a voice from the wilderness. And yet, so compelling that people started thinking about the climate crisis. For a long time prior, we did not hear about how the melting polar ice cap connected with our tropical climate, we did not measure the rising sea levels happening right in our backyard - all that we were aware of was that we were catching less fish. Indeed, Mr. Gore facilitated the clarion call making us aware that there is no Planet B, telling us straight that we need to protect the 'blue marble' from being a 'red planet.' His love for the planet started young and was emboldened by the astonishing events of 'reality' happening in his lifetime. His film, "An Inconvenient Truth" highlights the awakening of making us be vigilant of the 'reality' - that climate change is real.

Al Gore will be in the country to train the next batch of Climate Reality Leaders on March14-16, 2016 The participants come from many different backgrounds including environment, academe, government and cso. A majority of the participants are from the Philippines.

Now is the time

The time to make a difference is now. The Paris Climate Agreement will be signed a month from now on April 22, 2016 and our country as an active participant will get to sign the agreement - once and for all.

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The Climate Reality Project's role in highlighting the events leading to the Paris agreement was invaluable. The words and actions of trained Climate Reality leaders across the globe fueled the hearts and minds and of people around the world working to combat climate change.

The goal of the Paris Agreement, put simply, is to stop the deterioration of our planet. The Filipino people have suffered enough from environmental destruction--many communities have been destroyed by mining companies, pollution from factories, devastation of the remaining forests, indiscriminate destruction of our oceans (an important food source).

The Climate Reality Project calls for a global awareness and recognition that we need solutions to stop the warming of the Earth. The campaign provides the template for maximizing renewable energy, the fact-based climate change awareness, and grassroots organizing for global climate action initiatives.

Every Climate Reality Leader is a catalyst for change, from the boardroom to the remotest communities of the planet - encouraging communities to act for the climate.

Filipinos for Climate

The reality of the climate crisis is already present in the social consciousness of Filipinos. We are aware that the Earth is deteriorating.

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The reality of the climate crisis, proven by the catastrophic impact of typhoons and other disasters have made us aware that the time to act is now, not tomorrow. We must activate climate action in behalf of the voiceless people and planet.

The reality of the climate crisis, should convince our political and institutional leaders to respond seriously to the Paris Climate Agreement - by stopping the construction of coal-fired power plants, embrace the renewable models of our power structure, respond to climate adaptation.



About Brother Jaazeal Jakosalem:


Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By: Steven Casale

In every society there are those tortured by their own mind--individuals born mentally ill or afflicted by mental illness after suffering a grave misfortune. How we treat such people continues to evolve. Luckily, in much of the world, the rough medical techniques of the past have largely been abandoned, with insane asylums replaced by modern psychiatric hospitals.

But there was once an insane asylum so notorious that its very name entered the English language as a word for chaos, mayhem, and confusion. That institution is London's Bethlem Royal Hospital--nicknamed Bedlam.

READ MORE: 5 INSANE ASYLUMS AND THE HORRORS THAT HAPPENED THERE

Founded in 1247, Bethlem is Europe's oldest center devoted solely to the treatment of mental illness. The facility was founded by the Italian Bishop Goffredo de Prefetti and built directly atop a sewer that frequently overflowed. It originally served not as a sanctuary for the insane but to help raise money for the Crusades via alms collection. During this time, it was not uncommon for monks and other religious figures to take in the indigent, who were often mentally ill.

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Credit: Wikimedia Commons

When exactly Bethlem's mission transformed from the collection of alms to the treatment of the mentally ill is unclear. By 1330, the institution was being referred to as a hospital and by 1377 historians believe it had become the exclusive home for the insane. Little is known of the institution's inner workings during the Medieval period, but by the 1600s, control was transferred from the church to the state.

In 1675, the facility--shabby and in desperate need of additional space--moved north of London to the Moorfields. Two ominous statues were installed over its entrance gate--one named "Melancholy" who appeared calm and the other named "Raving Madness" who was chained and angry. As evermore schizophrenics, epileptics, and those with learning disabilities crowded into the facility, Bethlem twisted into Bedlam, and patient treatment took a turn for the sinister.

READ MORE: THE DARK HISTORY OF THE TRENTON PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

One such approach was rotational therapy. A patient would be placed in a chair and suspended from the ceiling. The chair was then spun at the direction of a doctor, sometimes at more than 100 rotations a minute. The patient would often vomit and experience extreme vertigo, but these were seen as healthy reactions with the potential for healing.



Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In 1728, James Monro became Bethlem's chief physician, initiating a Monro family dynasty that lasted for roughly four generations. As the Monros shifted their focus from apothecaries to surgeons, treatment procedures grew worse. Patients were routinely beaten, starved, and dunked in ice cold baths. One such doctor, William Black, wrote his Dissertation on Insanity in 1811 and said of Bethlem: "The strait waistcoat, when necessary, and occasional purgatives are the principal remedies."

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Patients were also victim to bloodletting by leeches, cupping glass therapy, and the inducing of blisters. Treatment was so severe that the facility refused to admit patients deemed too meek to withstand it. Indeed, many did not survive. Modern investigations have uncovered mass graves on the property, dug exclusively for those who died under Bethlem's care.



Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps most humiliating of all, was the time period when the facility opened its doors to the public. Initially the policy hoped to draw in family members to visit their loved ones. Unfortunately, wealthy Londoners often paid money to roam the halls of Bedlam, taking in the zoo-like conditions and marveling at the psychosis around them.

Thankfully, times change. The Bethlem Royal Hospital has long since renounced the dark practices of the past and today its staff works day and night to care for those who cannot help themselves. There's even a museum that exhibits the artwork created by the facility's patients.



Credit: Wikimedia Commons

But Bedlam, the word, remains--and continues to haunt the present with the traumas of the past.
This coming week we have the opportunity to enact our faith with those fleeing violence and seeking sanctuary in our country. Doing so is how we can actually make Holy Week holy.

Starting Sunday and continuing until Easter, Christians from around the world will gather to remember and re-enact Jesus' final days. He risked traveling to Jerusalem to teach and heal, eventually being assassinated by the Roman Empire through crucifixion, yet raised from the dead to show that the Divine stands with the lowly and oppressed of the earth.

Today, millions risk violence to escape from violence; they risk death to have a chance at life, crossing deserts and raging seas. They face scorn and rejection as they look for a place to lay their heads. Refugees and immigrants face hurdles most of us cannot fathom, only to arrive to face new dangers whether on our shores or in Europe, especially.

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Rather than merely lament the hard-hearts that demand the crucifixion of strangers, I invite you to find opportunities to show Christ's face of welcome, to show that his way was not and cannot be killed so long as there are those who follow. I know of at least two Los Angeles-area events that reveal this truth.

This Sunday afternoon will be the 14th annual Palm Sunday Peace Parade in Pasadena, CA, thematically focused on welcoming refugees. Divine Wisdom as Sophia will lead us as we march from north of the 210 Interstate south to downtown Pasadena (the 210 acts as a cultural dividing line in the city). It is an event for families that shows the spirit of the gospel (besides being a lot of fun!).

On the following Wednesday morning, a coalition of faith, labor, and community organizations will gather in downtown Los Angeles demanding "Sanctuary, Not Deportation!" for our siblings coming to our country as immigrants and refugees. It will involve a pilgrimage, rally, and prophetic street action, identifying the spirit and institutions of violence that turn away "angels unawares." It lifts up in particular the raids targeting refugee mothers and children fleeing extreme violence from Central America and those seeking asylum.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus' family fled to Egypt to escape political persecution. We can honor that story by living the values of compassion and justice today, wherever we may dwell. For in doing so, we can make the week a holy one.

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The surrender of an American ISIS recruit provides the United States a rare opportunity in its struggle against the terrorist organization. Not only could the young man provide valuable intelligence on the Islamic State, he may also prove to be a valuable asset in the effort to counter its extremist ideology and disrupt its recruiting.

Ever since ISIS (DAISH according to its Arabic acronym) exploded onto the world stage in the spring of 2013, law enforcement, the military and counter-terrorism experts have been struggling to understand its ideology and disrupt its highly affective recruitment efforts. Why, the pundits have wondered, has the group's message of religious intolerance and strict adherence to a rigid form of Shari law been so appealing to young Muslims, even those in the affluent West?

Probing this vexing question has led to the painful realization that countering an extremist ideology is even harder than combatting a terrorist organization. The self-proclaimed caliphate has misused the teachings of Islam to create a seductive empowerment narrative. That narrative has persuaded marginalized youth that their lives will have greater meaning if they join ISIS. Coupled with the lure of exotic adventure, the group's message has motivated thousands of young men and even some women to journey to Syria.

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Understanding the channels through which young people get information, ISIS has mastered social media. It has made extensive use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, producing slick videos of its activities, offering an exiting adventure to young men. It also appeals to young women, "Jihadi Janes," with a romantic fantasy of marrying a Sheik and having babies for the caliphate.

ISIS also understands that new recruits make the best recruiters. The Islamic State has made extensive use of its zealous converts to attract more followers. Young men traveling to Syria Tweet about their experience every step of the way. They attract friends and acquaintances, often vouching for them with the ISIS leadership. Some of these foreign fighters soon regret joining the group, but few have escaped to share their story.

That lack of testimony by disillusioned recruits makes Jamal Khweis potentially so valuable. Mainstream imams, scholars, and teachers have done a great deal to debunk the perversion of Islam by extremist groups, but the ability of these leaders to dissuade eager youth may be limited by their age and their status as members of the establishment. A young person who has gone through the radicalization process, however, may be far more effective in reaching people his own age.

If the Kurds turn Khweis over, the U.S. government will face a choice. It could prosecute him for providing material support to a terrorist group, but that would be a mistake. The authorities would do far better to rehabilitate him and elicit his help in preventing others falling into the trap he did. If ever there were a time for restorative instead of retributive justice, this is it.
A community relaxation group.

When I was attending my meditation certification intensive, my teacher worked with a group of middle managers from a national manufacturing company. The company had approached her because these men were literally dying on the job from stress-related illnesses. While working with this unlikely group of meditators during a week long wellness seminar in Sedona, my teacher reported that the men were taking to the practice with enthusiasm. Some even had profound experiences. She also said that they were concerned about how they would be able to keep their practice going once they got back to their plants, knowing they simply couldn't do it without her voice to guide them. How would they keep up their new practice without her? It's a problem so many teachers face once students are no longer in the meditation room and go off to try to establish a practice on their own. The idea for my company, CalmCircle, was inspired by these hardworking men trying to find time to meditate in their hectic schedules.

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Our first major workplace test showed that employees who had the benefit of the program were more productive and efficient and reported a positive change in their attitude and relationship with stress. Gratified to know that the program was successful, we began to expand our vision to consider other populations that may have a need for this type of mental training.

"The 2015 American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment reflects the alarming percentage of college students who face anxiety, depression, sadness, exhaustion, and a feeling of being overwhelmed."

We visited a recovery program at a large Texas university. These were students who were in active recovery from addiction and needed extra support in order to stay in school. Their counselors were very interested in a way to deliver a meditative practice as part of their program in such a way that the students would have ongoing support available to them between counseling sessions.

We spoke with a campus counselor whose non-profit organization conducted school workshops on suicide prevention, a training that's now mandatory in Texas schools. She stated that counselors knew that a meditative practice would be very valuable to students of all ages but they had never found a way to deliver that practice. In our meetings, they discussed the need for all college students to learn this type of stress management as a preventative approach, citing how many freshmen left college after only a few weeks each year, being unable to manage the stress that had so quickly become unmanageable.

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The 2015 American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment reflects the alarming percentage of college students who face anxiety, depression, sadness, exhaustion, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. As a result, students often feel out of control and out of touch with their own emotions. And so CalmCircle expanded its reach to include CalmCircleCollege with a mission to provide techniques and skills to create mental rest, relaxation, and stress relief to help students succeed at school and lead healthier, happier lives.

"Since I have seen firsthand the impact of stress in the workplace, I think the idea of helping students learn to manage stress and sleep better before they join the workforce is a perfect match for the goals of my company."

When asked if CalmCircle would be interested in participating in the #sleeprevolution College Tour with the Huffington Post in support of Arianna Huffington's new book, The Sleep Revolution, it was easy to accept, knowing it was time to build a CalmCircle program that would be designed to meet the unique needs of today's college student. Arianna wants to launch her book on college campuses because she believes them to be among the most sleep-deprived people in the country. It's also valuable to educate students about this type of self-care before they join the workforce. Since I have seen firsthand the impact of stress in the workplace, I think the idea of helping students learn to manage stress and sleep better before they join the workforce is a perfect match for the goals of my company.

We are looking forward to meeting students at campuses across the country on the #SleepRevolution College Tour, hearing about what they care about, and helping them find ways to successfully manage stress throughout the day and experience restorative, rejuvenating sleep at night.

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Kenyan gay and lesbian organisations demonstrate outside the Nigerian High Commission in Nairobi on February 7, 2014. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 had signed a bill into law against gay marriage and civil partnerships. The Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2013 imposes penalties of up to 14 years' imprisonment for anyone found to have entered in to such a union. Anyone who founds or supports gay groups or clubs also runs the risk of a maximum 10-year jail term. The legislation, which effectively reinforces existing laws banning homosexuality in Nigeria, has been widely condemned abroad as draconian and against a raft of human rights conventions. AFP PHOTO/SIMON MAINA (Photo credit should read SIMON MAINA/AFP/Getty Images)

Jungle Justice is not a novel phenomenon in Nigeria. It has been described by some, more favorably as 'informal policing,' and by others, less favorably as 'vigilante justice'. Jungle justice occurs when ordinary citizens in Nigeria take the enforcement of the law into their own hands. It is the legal, social, political and/or cultural legitimization of extra-legal and extrajudicial modes of enforcing the 'law' and punishing 'crimes'. When someone is suspected of a crime, the people suddenly become judge, jury and executioner, sometimes to devastating effects. Many people have lost their lives through this form of lynching, and others have been hurt and humiliated in undignified ways.

There are many historical, political, social, economic and cultural factors that can account for the predominance of jungle justice in Nigeria; some of these factors may include the residual security force left over in many cultures from pre-colonial to colonial times, corruption of the Nigerian government, the underpaying, under-training and understaffing of the police force in Nigeria, which leads to the corruption of the police force. The corruption within the police force leads to bureaucratic inefficiencies that ultimately lead to them underperforming in their jobs of protecting the security of Nigerian citizens.

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Consequently, this leads to Nigerians feeling less safe and deciding to take the law into their own hands to preserve their security. These aforementioned reasons do not act to justify or even excuse the act of jungle justice, but it does allow us gain a little bit of an insight into the practice itself, and why it has come to be so culturally entrenched as to be viewed by many to be a cultural necessity.

There are many reasons Jungle justice goes unnoticed and underreported in Nigeria, as it has been able to blend itself into the national narrative of one of the ways 'justice' is dispensed. The Nigerian police have sometimes actively and passively supported acts of jungle justice, either by joining in or by standing by and doing nothing. A police spokesman in Nigeria, Emmanuel Ojukwu, was once quoted as saying, "They pre-date the police, and they compliment our efforts. The police can't get into every nook and cranny," and as such, many times, the police welcome the practice of jungle justice with open arms.

However, there have been times when the practice of jungle justice has made news and was elevated to the national and even international narrative of the country. The most memorable being what is now referred to as the 'Aluu Four Lynching'. During this incident, which occurred on 5th October 2012, four young men, Ugonna Obuzor, Toku Lloyd, Chiadika Biringa and Tekena Elkanah, were falsely accused of stealing and were lynched to death in the community of Aluu in Port Harcourt.

The 'Aluu Four Lynching' enraged the public both nationally and internationally, protests were held, arrests were made, and then jungle justice simply dissipated away from the public's attention. But, the 'Aluu Four Lynching' did make a dent in the national conversation, and is still referred to today as the practice at its absolute worst.

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There are many issues with jungle justice, not the least being that it is an extra-legal and extrajudicial practice that violates the constitutional rights of the people that are subjected to the practice. But, one of the most significant worries when it comes to jungle justice is that a practice that gets its legitimacy from its cultural environment will usually punish crimes that extend beyond what is legally prohibited to what is culturally prohibited, and this can become very problematic, very fast. The culture of homophobia is no secret in Nigeria, and it is one that I have written about extensively.

In Nigeria, about 93 percent of the population are against the practice of homosexuality. Homosexuality has always been illegal in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, but not necessarily in pre-colonial Nigeria. And, on the 13th of January 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan inflamed what was already a deeply homophobic culture by signing a bill that criminalized gay marriage and gay civil unions, organizations that directly or indirectly supported gay rights, and the direct and indirect public exhibition of 'homosexual behavior.' Homosexuality was already illegal in Nigeria, and so this bill was unnecessary; all it did was fuel up hatred and prejudice towards homosexuals in Nigeria. Homophobia is deeply entrenched in the Nigerian culture, and so it follows that a practice that gets its legitimacy from cultural realities will also act in a way that extends the homophobic culture.

On the 17th of February of this year, Akinnifesi Olumide Olubunmi was allegedly accused of being gay in Ondo State, which is a state in South-Western Nigeria. Olubunmi was brutally attacked and beaten by the youth of Ondo State. He was rushed to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries. His alleged partner is currently on the run, and his property has allegedly been destroyed by the youths of the village. To date, no arrest has been reported.

Olubunmi is not the first homosexual to be attacked in Nigeria, and he will unfortunately not be the last. His name has been added to a long string of names of people who are the victims of a culture of prejudice so deeply entrenched that people have forgotten to question it. It is ironic that jungle justice is a reaction against the bureaucratic and institutional failings of the colonial creation of the police force, and yet the practice is used to enforce laws that were enacted in the country during colonial times.

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The question becomes what to do about the practice of jungle justice, and the grim anticipation of the disproportionate effects it will continue to have on homosexuals in Nigeria. The sad and inescapable truth is that even if we somehow fix corruption within the Nigerian government and the Nigerian police, and fix the institutional and bureaucratic failings that accompany this corruption, it will still not be enough to completely eliminate jungle justice and attacks against homosexuals in Nigeria, although it might help.
Earlier I noted that African Americans appear front and center in recent American films about the institution of slavery. Consider four recent films and their worldwide earnings: 12 Years a Slave (2013, 181M); Django Unchained (2012, 450M); Lincoln (2012, 182M); and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012, 137M). Why are audiences fascinated by events that occurred 150 years ago? These four films earned more than $950M. For comparison, consider The Young Victoria, a 2009 English film about the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband in 1861 the year Lincoln assumed the Presidency. It earned $27M worldwide.

The forces that produced American slavery and the Civil War have not vanished. They confound American culture to this day. Until 1865 the southern half of the United States was developed using the muscles, minds, and souls of millions of enslaved human beings. As candid slave owners admitted, southern wealth consisted mainly of land, land that could not be tamed at minimal costs without the other great source of southern wealth, black bodies yoked in perpetual servitude. Slavery is the monstrous fact of American history that we recognize for a few moments. When our shame and guilt rise too quickly we forget. In its place are endless stories about the Civil War and white men fighting and dying in glorious battles. More importantly, slavery's role in the creation of American wealth does not match the exciting image of the United States as blessed by God, as the shining city on the hill as President Reagan said with conviction. In Sean Hannity's words, "America is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." Stephen Colbert provided a useful summary of Hannity's proposition.

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In 12 Years a Slave an innocent man is rescued by the goodwill of white people who restore him to his family. A rough 20th century analog would be Martin Luther King, Jr. His mastery of non-violent confrontation and the heroism of the people of the Civil Rights Movement inspired the world. Likening himself to Christian martyrs, King spoke in Detroit, June 23, 1963, saying, "If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

In sharp contrast Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino, portrays a combative black man, Django. He is rescued through his alliance with a canny foreigner who teaches him how to use a gun. In that narrow sense, the movie echoes the passions of the Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s and (some of) the insights of Malcolm X early in his militant career.

The story is straightforward: Django (played by Jamie Foxx), an American slave, has been sold away from his wife, Broomhilda (named after Brunnhilde, a shield goddess, or Valkyrie.) Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter, discovers Django in a slave coffle and learns that Django knows the location of the people he is pursuing. A gunfight ensues; Schultz kills one of the slave drivers and wounds the second. Django goes with Schultz and the other slaves head north.

With his customary brilliance, Tarantino makes us feel the pain of injustice, makes us ache for revenge, and then releases us through cathartic violence. After many adventures, Django finds his beloved on a plantation and schemes to free her. Lest we overlook the film's message, Calvin Candie, the plantation owner, explains why black slaves failed to rebel against their captors: they were biologically incapable. While this is insulting to any thinking person--since there were slave rebellions--it serves the comic-book fantasy that all the slaves lacked were gumption (provided by Django) and a white leader (provided by Dr. Schultz).

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Suddenly, in a frenzy of righteous anger, Schultz kills Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Like old-fashioned demonstrations of nuclear fission, Schultz's single shot sets off a thousand more shots. Bodies fall everywhere. Django fights with passion and unbelievable skill. It is impossible not to cheer for Django when he kills sociopaths who have desecrated his family. In the final scenes, he slaughters countless bad guys (and a bad woman), suffers no serious wounds, and annihilates Candie's mansion. All very gratifying except we know, behind our cheering, that the enslaved and those who owned them were not cartoons.

The slaves were systematically terrorized, controlled, and imprisoned in a vast system that the South called civilization. Those who enslaved them benefited from that system. It became a way of life, a form of normalcy that elite southerners championed with pride and Christian conviction. The puzzle is not that slaves refused to rebel. They did rebel.

The puzzle, our American puzzle, is that it took a Civil War to address our shared crime and it has taken another 150 years to remember it, even if in fits and starts through the movies.
As an American Muslim, I believe we have to confront the so-called "Muslim Problem" head-on and start a civilized discussion on this world-shaking controversy, with an eye toward what I see as a concrete, three-pronged solution.

I wish it truly were as simple as 1-2-3, but if the following three steps actually could be achieved, I think it would tilt us toward widespread peace and perhaps even save us from World War III. Those steps are (1) the U.S. and other governments stop interfering in the Middle East, (2) Muslims openly condemn violent extremism, and (3) democracy takes root in the Middle East.

All are daunting tasks, to be sure, and each step is more challenging than the previous. But two recent news stories led me to this conclusion. First, I heard Republication presidential candidate Donald Trump call for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration. Then I read CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria's reaction in the Washington Post, where he wrote, "I am Muslim, but Trump's views appalled me because I am an American."

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The truth lies somewhere in between Trump and Zakaria.

Americans have good reason to be worried about Muslim extremism at home, but categorically branding all Muslims as a threat to the U.S. is wrong and potentially a violation of civil rights. This doesn't mean we should ignore the risks. We need to talk about it -- not just concerned Americans, but also good Muslims everywhere.

When a gunman goes on a killing spree or a bomb explodes in public, simultaneously millions of bombs explode in the hearts and minds of Muslims throughout America and the world. They hold their collective breath, hoping the perpetrators don't turn out to be Muslim. A cloud of fear hovers over the conscience of every Muslim.

After Syed Farook and his wife killed 14 innocent civilians and wounded 22 more in San Bernardino, California, I called home and told my wife not to wear her head scarf when going in public. I feared she could become a victim of retaliation by someone inflamed with anti-Muslim sentiment.

The image of Islam has become that of a militant, backward, ancient religion as the world watches beheadings, kidnappings, stoning of women, rapes and acts of unmitigated violence committed by Muslims. The world has become fearful of Islam.

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As a result, Muslims and non-Muslims see each other in a twisted carnival mirror, fearing each other's distorted image. Is this the true Islam, or some sick byproduct of the Middle East's failed states?

Islam has been around for more than a thousand years. In my native Afghanistan, Muslims and non-Muslims lived in harmony for centuries. However, religion has been always leveraged to achieve political aims.

The separation of church and state is a relatively new and predominantly American idea. Theocratic governments date back to Constantine the Great in 306 A.D., and even to this day, the monarch Queen Elizabeth holds the title of "Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England."

Let me explain how U.S. interference in the Middle East has gone awry. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early '80s, I spent some time in Peshawar, Pakistan, and witnessed the pipeline of money from the U.S. and its allies. It flowed into the hands of the Afghan resistance: mujahedeen who were lionized by the U.S. and others as "freedom fighters" because they would bleed their cold war adversary, the former Soviet Union.

Followers of the more moderate Afghan resistance were allowed to migrate to U.S. and European countries. The most radical Islamists, like the Hezb-e-Islamic Party headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, reportedly were funded by the CIA. After the Soviet withdrawal in the early '90s, these freedom fighters, proud of their victory (Osama bin Laden among them), believed that if they could defeat the invincible Red Army, they could fight any superpower.

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Today, religion is the only organizing force that fills the political gap created by the collapse of Middle East states. Many people in this region have been ruled by colonial powers for most of their adult lives, deprived of the right to elect their own leaders. The colonial axiom of "divide and conquer" carved out new countries and fragmented others.

The Kurds lost their country and are still fighting to regain it. In Iraq, a Sunni minority ruled a Shiite majority. In Syria, a Shiite Alawi minority disfranchised the Sunni majority, stoking religious, regional and tribal rivalries that erupted into civil war.

Despots like Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak and Bashar-al-Assad owed their power to the support of foreigners. They ruled by violence and barred their people from exercising their rights. Without any mechanism for a peaceful transfer of power, the removal or death of tyrants led to the collapse of whole systems, creating gaps for religion to fill.

The rivalry between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi has led each to arm their extremist proxies, such as Hamas, ISIS and Al Qaeda, all jostling for influence in the region.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government still has a distorted view of Middle East politics and conflict.

"In Syria, we backed ... in some cases some of the wrong people, and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army," Gen. Tom McInerney told Fox News. "I've always maintained ... that we were backing the wrong types. Some of those weapons from Benghazi ended up in the hands of ISIS. So we helped build ISIS."

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If the U.S. wants to mitigate the risk, it should refrain from taking sides or even arming the "moderates," because almost every terrorist starts as a "freedom fighter." As Gen. McInerney suggests, the best intentions of the U.S. can morph into an uncontrollable fire which will engulf the region.

At home, we should not become complacent or ignore the threat. We have to be vigilant, while avoiding confrontation or hostility toward American Muslims who love America as much as you do. Marginalizing Muslims is un-American and will play into the hands of extremists.

I suggest the best approach to shield the U.S. from the flames of the Middle East conflict is to keep an eye on those mosques and communities that advocate violence or incite anti-American views. Charge them with crimes and/or deport them if possible.

But if you have hired a Muslim real estate broker, go ahead and close the deal. If you are the patient of a Muslim doctor, keep your appointment. If your taxi driver is named Mohammad or Abdul, don't jump out of the car. Fear only what is reasonable to fear, and don't give extremists an extra excuse to hate us.

But if you fail to report extremists, you are an accomplice and should be held accountable. And to Mr. Trump: don't turn away the good Muslims, just find a way to identify and deport the bad ones.

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ANKARA, TURKEY - MARCH 17: Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu puts a Turkish flag to the place where the Ankara terror attack took place in Ankara, Turkey on March 17, 2016. (Photo by Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

My sister sent me an odd text message after the explosion that happened in Ankara on March 13th, killing 37 and wounding many. The message was in the format of those messages you copy and paste so that it reaches a large group of people. It informed me that on March 20th, Turkey will turn into a "lake of blood". Don't go to crowded places, stay away from consulates and embassies, warn your family. It ends with a list of the twenty cars that are suspected to have bombs in them, including their makes, models and plate numbers. I received two more messages, with varying contents afterwards. They were warning me not to go to specific neighborhoods, had some sort of narrative about who warned them. "Don't post this anywhere because it will cause panic," one said.

I could not, and still cannot understand the point of spreading these messages other than make people fear their day to day life more than they already do. Whoever prepared it is partaking in terrorism by terrorizing with the promise of terrorism. If I do yield myself to entertaining this warning I end up asking myself unanswerable questions and getting more confused and angry. Angry because, it has now become a normal expectation in Turkey that people will continue to become casualties in large numbers for an indefinite amount of time. Confused because, why aren't these cars being stopped and investigated? What if this is a ploy of distraction? What if the attacks happen on Friday instead? Who does this message reach and why not others? The message in the message is that the only way you might survive living in Turkey at this time, is to hide in your apartment and hope it passes, as if it's a natural disaster that no one saw coming. As if it's not the work of a country that has failed to produce solutions to a problem that has been in violent need of one for many decades.

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The explosions happen in the cities, and we remember that we are the unfortunate citizens of a government that is making unfortunate decisions. In the East, in the demolished Kurdish cities of Sur, Cizre and in other not yet demolished there have been curfews and military control for months. I read an interview with a local businessman from Cizre who was asking for the curfew to be lifted because it had become impossible for him to make a living under military rule. What I couldn't get past was that he was trying to continue "living", amidst the bombs and the guns and the children who sit at home, and the meals that are somehow cooked with what's found. Living in Turkey today means going out into the street and not fearing death more than you would on any given day. Living in Turkey means trying not to live with the realization that you are living in a war zone under the pretense that it's a civilized place.

After the explosion in Ankara a story titled: "The Stories of Those Who Lost Their Lives in Kizilay" was circling social media. It had pictures and short biographies of the people who died in the explosion. There was a picture of two university friends, one of them had died during the peace rally bombing in October, the other one died in the most recent one. In a country that is an ally of the US and Canada, that is a coveted tourist spot, the country's own people can explode to pieces in a street corner as they wait for the bus. I've been told that responding to terrorism, taking it to heart, having it impact your life means that you make the act succeed. But I am not responding to this one specific act. I am responding to many years of living with the same problem. The most recent explosion is the culmination of a problem that has been killing the citizens for a long time.

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I don't live in Turkey at the moment and I won't be there on March 21st. Still that message, even though i cannot logically process it as a legitimate threat, sank my heart. It made me think about my family and my friends, who wait in traffic, who go to malls, who conduct business and who get on the subway or walk their dogs. It is where they've chosen to live, go back to after being in other countries, vote to with the belief that they'll be represented by people they at least somewhat agree with. The only way they can respond now is to fear the public space they have to occupy.
Paul Zimmerman via Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 29: Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation speaks at the 2016 'Tina Brown Live Media's American Justice Summit' at Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on January 29, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Zimmerman/WireImage)

Just days before Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to America, the international US-based donor agency Ford Foundation has been taken off the watch list of the Union Home Ministry.

It has been decided to remove Ford Foundation from the prior reference category with immediate effect. Now any fund flow from Ford Foundation to any person, NGO or organization in India need not to be referred for clearance to this ministry, the Home Ministrys letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said, according to Hindustan Times. The letter also asked the RBI to inform all banks about the decision.

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In April 2015, the Indian government had put the organisation onto a security watch list as it had donated huge sums of money to Modi critic Teesta Setalvad's NGO, Sabrang. The Home Ministry had said that it was exercising the powers conferred under Section 46 of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 2010, and had directed the RBI to ensure that funds coming from Found Foundation be brought to the notice of the ministry.

The Ford Foundation, on its part, froze all the donations and funding that they were slated to make to several NGOs and individuals in India for developmental work. "We don't want to move ahead until the time we are clear about the rules and nothing we do is viewed as illegal," a spokesperson had told Reuters.

Ford Foundation, which has been operating in India since 1952, was not registered either as an NGO or under any other category like the Indian Society Act. It applied under FEMA and got registered as a branch office by the RBI in December 2015.

"Over the past 60 years our office in New Delhi has made more than 3,500 grants totalling more than $508 million to nearly 1,250 diverse institutions," says the official website of the Ford Foundation.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images DEHRADUN, INDIA - MARCH 14: Police horse Shaktimaan got his leg fracture after allegedly beaten by BJP MLA during a BJP rally at Vidhansabha, on March 14, 2016 in Dehradun, India. (Photo by Vinay Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse. Specifically, a horse named Shaktimaan.

Those who dislike the BJP, see in the Shaktiman saga more proof of a bullying party that is happy to beat up all those who come in its way  protesting JNU students, a Muslim ironsmith in Dadri, even a horse. Those who support the BJP, see a story of its political opponents and media rushing to judgement, eager to pin the blame of any and all accidents on the BJP.

It was the ultimate gotcha moment for both sides.

A horse cannot be said to have ideological blinkers. It did not read the wrong kind of textbooks like a Kanhaiya Kumar might have. It cannot be accused of insufficient patriotism like an Umar Khalid. Its not a test case pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression with anti-national cries. No one can say But why did you not shout Bharat mata ki jai? It was just a horse doing its job. And the video of BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi with a stick during the protest that hobbled the horse was enough to stir up a firestorm of outrage. Now there was clinching proof of rote brutality and it was seized upon triumphantly by the BJPs foes and not just because they are all animal rights activists.

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Except sometimes images do lie or at best tell half-truths, leaving us to join the missing dots according to our own ideological blinkers.

Now it turns out the BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi had seized a stick from a police officer and was hitting the ground with it trying to scare the horse. And another BJP leader Pradeep Bora has been arrested. He is the one accused of actually having pulled the animals leash. The horse stepped back, fell and broke its leg.

Joshi has vehemently denied he hit the horse and offered to chop his own leg if it was proven he hit the horse and broke its leg. But in the process he seems to be admitting something else that could actually be more serious  that he seized the lathi from a police officer, a public servant on duty and then used it to try and scare the horse which proceeded to back away from him. If that is true, then its fair to say that those who rushed to pillory Joshi as horse-abuser jumped the gun.

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But Joshis defence hardly covers him in glory either. Seizing a police officers lathi and trying to scare an animal by hitting the ground in front of it is not exactly law-upholding role model MLA behaviour either. His daughter Neha Joshi offered up a spirited defence of her father calling it a witch hunt against him, bearing testimony to his love for animals including stray dogs, and reiterating that he was only trying to protest against the atrocities committed by the mounted police at the behest of the Congress government.

Theres a difference between brandishing a stick and brandishing a stick and hitting someone, she says. Its a difference we might able to see but the question is could the horse tell the difference as it backed away?

But in the curious ways politics plays out, especially in polarized times, both sides will claim victory.

Joshi will stick to his line  I did not hit the horse and break its leg. And he will be correct.

His opponents will say Joshis actions caused the horse to be hurt and they too would have a good case. Even his daughter, to her credit, admits to a moral responsibility.

A horse cannot be said to have ideological blinkers. It did not read the wrong kind of textbooks like a Kanhaiya Kumar might have.

A picture does not tell the whole story, says Neha Joshi. She is right. We seize on the part of the picture that confirms our bias. And we know this truth not just from this video, but the Kanhaiya Kumar rally videos, as well as the images of journalist Pushp Sharmas now contested RTI response from the AYUSH ministry about Muslim yoga teachers. In all these cases an image broadcast by the media has actually made the waters murkier rather clarifying anything. We are being taught literally over and over again not to believe our own eyes and that cannot be a good indication for the future and is certainly a failure of Journalism 101. Broadcast first, ask questions later. Or worse, broadcast first knowing its questionable.

But it is even more troubling that such is the winter of our discontent that it is so easy for us to believe (according to our ideological leaning) the worst about others  that they cannot bear to have a Muslim yoga teacher even though logically it should serve their cause and show all is well in India, or that they are brutal beasts who break a horses leg in full public view or that the Ph. D student must have shouted slogans demanding the barbaadi of India. And all of this made worse by grandstanding on all sides leading to a fight that is more about politics than animal cruelty. The arrest of Joshi has precipitated a Uttarakhand government crisis with the BJP claiming 12-13 Congress legislators were in touch with them due to growing resentment.

In her piece for Mint, Rajyasree Sen points out that the BJP seems to have a morbid predilection for offering up various body parts as proof of innocence and virtue. HRD minister Smriti Irani offered up her head and now Joshi offers his leg.

It all makes for a rather macabre politics of dismemberment. But the saddest part is the one that has actually lost anything in this story is the hapless Shaktiman. He is the one that has had his leg amputated while we play politics with his plight.

"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and, therefore, am no beast. - William Shakespeare, Richard III.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2011 file photo, a sign with Facebook's

Indian cyber security experts are at the top when it comes to hunting bugs as part of Facebook's bug bounty program. The country tops the list of the rewards paid to the ethical hackers who helped find vulnerabilities in the social network.

Indian programmers have earned almost 4.8 crore since the program was started in 2011, out of 28.4 crore paid worldwide. Recently a Bengaluru researcher Prakash Anand was paid $15000 (Almost 10 lakh) to find a bug regarding Facebook login. The bug could have potentially caused the leak of personal and financial data of the users.

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Facebook's technical program manager of Bug Bounty team Adam Rudderman recently posted on Facebook before an event in here "India is consistently the Facebook Bug Bounty program's #1 source of valid vulnerabilities. We're excited to be here to meet the local community face to face, celebrate the successes of Indian researchers with Facebook, and talk about the most effective ways to find high impact bugs and get higher payouts to help us protect 1.5 billion users around the world!"

He added that "The Facebook bug bounty program pays out based on a bug's risk, rather than its complexity or cleverness. This means you can maximize the value of your report by focusing on high-impact areas and submitting good quality reports".

Facebook's bug bounty program was just meant for hunting bugs in the social network initially, but later it was expanded to Facebook's products such as Instagram, Oculus, Internet.org, and Onavo. A recent post by the bug bounty team suggests that over 2400 valid submissions have been made till now and more than 800 researchers have been rewarded. In 2015, 38% more high impact bugs recorded than the previous year. A total of 6.23 crore were paid to the bug hunters in the last year.

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Although India is topping the list of bug bounty program, Indian cyberspace is under attack constantly. Recently, A Pakistani app was taken down from Google play store for reportedly spying on Indian Army. Pakistani hacker grous also attacked Raipur AIIMS website and railways website.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - MARCH 7: Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar speaks at the JNU Campus, on March 7, 2016 in New Delhi, India. JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar was granted interim bail for six months by the Delhi High Court after spending 20 days in jail. Kumar was arrested on February 12 on charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy after alleged anti-national slogans were raised on the JNU campus on February 9. (Photo by Vipin Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing sedition charges, said on Friday that the controversial event held on February 9 on the university campus was to protest against capital punishment and not in support of Kashmirs secession.

Emphasizing that there was no doubt Kashmir was an integral part of India, Kumar denied of raising slogans in support of executed parliament attack convict Afzal Guru but said he was against capital punishment. He added that even he would oppose capital punishment even if it was awarded to an ABVP activist.

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"There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues." Kumar said at the India Today Conclave.

Clarifying his stand on the Kashmir issue, Kumar said the JNU provides a conducive atmosphere for debate and discussion and that it was not in the universitys culture to stop anyone from conveying their thoughts.

Kumar was arrested on February 12 on sedition charges for allegedly raising anti-national slogans and was later let out on six-month bail. A probe panel constituted by the university recently issued show cause notices to JNU students including Kumar who were involved in the February 9 event.

Apart from Kumar, two other JNU students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, were also accused of sedition and arrested.

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On Friday, both Bhattacharya and Khalid were also granted six-month interim bail by a Delhi court.

A former Delhi University professor, SAR Geelani, was also arrested by the police on charges of sedition for holding an event at the Delhi Press Club allegedly to protest the 2013 hanging of Afzal Guru.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Delhi state Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and leader of Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man's Party attends a public meeting to mark the partyas 100 days government in the capital, in New Delhi, India, Monday, May 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)

NEW DELHI--A scheduled meeting between Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Kanhaiya Kumar had to be cancelled on Thursday as the JNUSU president failed to reach the Delhi Secretariat on time, "upsetting" the CM who had waited for nearly an hour.

CPI National Secretary D Raja, who also waited for Kanhaiya along with the CM, said that the student leader could not reach as he got stuck in a "heavy traffic jam", which apparently did not go down well with the CM, sources said.

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Kanhaiya was supposed to meet Kejriwal at 6 pm for which Raja, accompanied by his daughter Aparajita who is also a JNU student, had reached before scheduled time.

"He could not reach on time as he got stuck in a traffic jam. By the time he reached near Supreme Court, the CM had already been waiting for nearly one hour.

"So they spoke over the telephone and agreed to meet most likely on Saturday. Kejriwal had prior engagements regarding the upcoming Budget so he could not wait more," Raja told reporters.

While Kanhaiya could not be reached for his comments, his party maintained that since Delhi Police could not provide him security for moving out of the campus, he got late and later got stuck in traffic near ITO.

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However, a Delhi government official said that contrary to Raja's statement, any future meeting between the two has not yet been agreed upon.

"Raja, despite being a national-level leader could reach on time but Kanhaiya could not. The CM was upset as he could not meet him and had to leave for prior engagements," sources told PTI.

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STRDEL via Getty Images This photograph taken late on February 23, 2016 shows Indian student activist Umar Khalid (C) and Anirban Bhattacharya (L) walking through the campus of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on their way to surrendering to Indian authorities. Khalid and Bhattacharya are accused of sedition over a rally at which anti-India slogans were shouted. Students have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing nationalist government of misusing the British-era sedition law to stifle dissent. AFP PHOTO / AFP / STRDEL (Photo credit should read STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW DELHI -- More than three weeks after they were arrested, Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, accused of sedition, were granted six-month interim bail by a Delhi court on Friday.

Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh at Patiala House Court directed each student to furnish Rs 25,000 as surety amount, and told them not to leave the city.

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The Modi government has accused Khalid and Bhattacharya of organising an event to mark the third anniversary of Afzal Gurus execution.

Afzal Guru was sentenced to death for plotting the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, which claimed the lives of 14 people. The 43-year old Kashmiri was pulled out of the death row cue and executed by the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government on Feb 9, 2013, in the run up to the national election. His sentence and execution have always been a subject of controversy.

The JNU row sparked a nationwide debate on free speech, the space for dissent especially in academic institutions, and nationalism.

While they are mixed feelings on whether students should organise events, which are deeply hurtful to the sentiments of many people, and regarded by them as "anti national," the Modi government has faced a great deal of criticism at home and abroad for slapping sedition charges on the JNU students.

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JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar was also arrested for allegedly making an anti national" speech after the Afzal Guru event.

Kumar, who is not accused of organising the event, was granted six months bail, earlier this month.

Khalid, Kumar and Bhattacharya have been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 124 A (sedition) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).

Citing Kumars example today, Khalid and Bhattacharya argued that they should also get bail on the grounds of parity.

The Delhi Police argued that Kumars circumstances were different because he had not organised the event.

The government also argued that Khalid and Bhattacharya had raised anti national slogans, and described Afzal Gurus execution as a judicial killing.

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While the two students argued that the video footage of them raising anti national slogans was false and doctored, the Delhi Police said that they were also relying on statements of ten witnesses.

Meanwhile, a JNU internal inquiry has accused 21 students of organizing the Afzal Guru event, and asked them to explain why they should not face disciplinary action.

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Reno County sees a spike in drug and alcohol overdoses during October

The 27 overdoses through Oct. 21 is an average of more than one a day, the highet average since officials began tracking the data real time.
YouTube, Google Play Reverse Course, Join T-Mobiles Binge On Free Streaming Plan

Google has been a strong public supporter of net neutrality and critic of "throttling" which would favor specific content providers. Apparently, those standards don't apply to its own Google Play and YouTube divisions.

By Karl Bode of Techdirt

Last year you'll recall that T-Mobile launched its "Binge On" zero rating program, which exempts the biggest video services from the company's usage caps (aka "zero rating"). Net neutrality advocates quickly complained that the practice violated net neutrality, since the very act of giving some companies an advantage automatically disadvantages some others. After T-Mobile spent some time lying about the nature of the program, the EFF came out with a detailed report noting that T-Mobile was just throttling all video files back to 1.5 Mbps, whether the content was being streamed or directly downloaded.

Net neutrality advocates like the EFF argued that the program should be opt in instead of opt out, voicing concerns that T-mobile continues to ignore. YouTube similarly initially complained about the program and that video partners were being throttled by default. But in a matter of months, Alphabet/Google appears to have completely changed its mind, issuing a new blog post that says it's now partnering with T-Mobile to zero rate Google Play Movies and YouTube content traveling over the T-Mobile network.

According to YouTube, T-Mobile made a number of changes to Binge On that satisfied YouTube's concerns, including new "short codes" that let users more easily opt out. T-Mobile also apparently was willing to listen to YouTube's concerns about throttling partner services by default with no dialogue between companies:

"While T-Mobile has always stated that any video service can join the program at no charge, prior to our discussions, video services were not given a choice about whether their streams would be managed by T-Mobile if they did not join the program. Going forward, any video service meeting traffic-identificationrequirements will be able to opt-out, and T-Mobile will stop including them in the Binge On program and will no longer modify their video streams. In addition, T-Mobile will now work with video services that wish to optimize their own streams, using an average data rate limit. This allows video services to offer users an improved video experience, even at lower data rates, by taking advantage of innovations such as video compression technology, benefiting T-Mobile, their customers, and video providers.

To be clear it's good that T-Mobile is being slightly more transparent, even though it lied pretty consistently about what it was actually doing in the first place. It's also great that the company is providing better, simpler opt-out tools for consumers (dial #263# to turn Binge on off, and dial #266# to turn it on again). And it's also a major improvement that T-Mobile's letting video service providers opt out, while giving companies more control over precisely how video traffic is managed. The problem is that none of this solves the core problem with zero rating: the horrible precedent set by zero rating in the first place.

The superficial consumer lure of "free data" overshadows the fact that zero rating, no matter how much lipstick you put on it, still puts some companies at a market disadvantage. In a press release announcing YouTube's inclusion, T-Mobile crows that there's now 50 Binge On video partners. But how many video services exist on the Internet? 500? 1000? How many non-profits, educational services, startups, and independents still aren't being whitelisted by T-Mobile's systems? How many even realize they're being put at a market disadvantage to bigger companies?

By opening the door to zero rating a sliver, we've opened the door to fundamentally changing how Internet business works. That's why numerous regulators in India, Japan, The Netherlands and elsewhere have banned zero rating outright. Here in the States, the FCC, wary of hindering usage cap driven "innovation," decided to let the zero rating story play out, addressing anti-competitive behavior on a "case by case basis." But the FCC has failed to act, and that failure has not only resulted in T-mobile's Binge On (potentially bad), but companies like Verizon and Comcast now exempting their own content from caps (immeasurably worse).

Despite its faux-punk-rock consumer friendly rhetoric, T-Mobile has never been a fan of net neutrality, repeatedly coming out against both net neutrality rules and the FCC's Title II push. Google, once a net neutrality champion, has consistently weakened its position on the subject as it realized it too could benefit from a distorted playing field (especially in mobile).

Because users get "free data" doesn't mean zero rating is a good idea. Because YouTube's now happy that it has a little more control, doesn't make zero rating a good idea. Because users and companies can opt out, doesn't negate zero rating's negative impact on the Internet economy. Because all-too-many consumers, analysts and journalists don't really understand what's happening here doesn't make zero rating a good idea. Setting arbitrary usage caps and then letting somecompanies bypass them aggressively distorts the entire landscape of the Internet. But because so many folks still don't appear to understand this, we're down the zero rating rabbit hole. And it's not really clear if we're ever coming back.

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A proposal by Californias insurance exchange has brought health insurers and providers together in opposition. The plan is to cut hospitals from the exchange network if they do meet performance targets.NPR says that it appears to be a US-first and would require insurers to report those providers which are considered outliers in terms of cost or quality. Hospitals would be first to be targeted, in 2018, with doctors and medical groups ranked later. Those that do not measure up would be removed from health plans by 2019.Health insurers are not happy about being forced to reveal their negotiated rates with providers but Covered California says it is time to move beyond enrolment to provide better service for consumers.Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms, believes it could raise standards: "California is definitely ahead of the pack when it comes to taking an active purchasing role, and exclusion is a pretty big threat," she said.Short and mid-term life insurance products in China are to face tighter regulations to dissuade aggressive investment by insurers in stocks and long-term assets using short-term funds.According to Reuters, Chinese life insurers must immediately stop selling products in which more than 60 percent of policies are expected to have less than a year duration, and gradually cut back other short- and mid-term products.China Insurance Regulatory Commission director of life insurance supervision told a press conference: "Insurance companies shouldn't sell quasi-wealth management products purely for investment purposes. That's not insurance."The London insurance market is open for business from Brazil. That was the key message from the International Underwriting Associations CEO Dave Matcham this week as he addressed the Anglo-Brazilian Insurance and Reinsurance Summit in Sao Paulo.Matcham said that London is not a domestic market and is keen to raise its profile in Latin America. London has the highest concentration of intellectual capital fostered by the close co-location of insurers, brokers and support services. It should be the fulcrum of insurance invention, where new solutions to meet new customer demands are developed, nurtured and delivered.The speech follows last years relaxation of rules requiring reinsurance contracts to be placed with local reinsurers.
Exclusive: Rahul Dravid a Very Good Communicator, Over Time India Will See Benefits of Him as Head Coach - John Buchanan

'He Just Asks How The Ball is Coming From The Wicket...': Virat Kohli Enjoys Batting With Suryakumar Yadav
News / Health

by Staff reporter

Junior doctors have refused to sign a government contract of employment which they claim violate women's rights and fair labour practice.The doctors petitioned Health Services Board (HSB) chairperson Lovemore Mbengeranwa, Health minister David Parirenyatwa and Health ministry permanent secretary Gerald Gwinji on Wednesday.Mbengeranwa confirmed receiving the petition but referred all questions to Gwinji.Gwinji's mobile phones were unreachable.The doctors, who are referred to as junior resident medical officers, claim their contract of employment was prejudicial to their welfare."We junior doctors . . . are petitioning you to rescind the document presented to us as a 'Contract for an Internship Training programme' . . . we have found it to be grossly flawed as it violates our constitutional rights, labour laws as well as women's rights", the junior doctors wrote in their petition.They took issue with being referred to as as interns on attachment, saying they have graduated from the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) as medical doctors and are registered with the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe."The contract violates our constitutional rights which leave room for exploitation," the doctors said, adding that the contract outlaws joining or forming labour unions or participate in job actions."Section 4.3 (b) of the contract violates women's employee right to a fully paid maternity leave for a period of at least three months," they argued.The doctors, who were supposed to commence their duties at the beginning of this month, said the contract was also not clear on salaries, allowances and non-cash incentives.The contract was flawed and carried void clauses, they said, which did not leave room for negotiation on other issues to do with working timetables.According to the petition, detention for more than seven days by the police was an act of misconduct warranting a dismissal.
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
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

A man from Morningside in Bulawayo has been fined $200 after he was found in possession of a gun and rounds of ammunition without certificate.Obadiah Moyo pleaded guilty to the charge when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Evelyn Mashavakure. The magistrate convicted and sentenced him to two months in jail with an option of $200 fine.The court heard that on March 11 2016 Moyo was at his house when the police from the Criminal Investigations Department raided him and found him in possession of a Star Pistol serial number 1415769 and 16 rounds of ammunition. All the ammunition and the gun were confiscated.This led to his arrest.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

Zanu PF youth in Manicaland's Rusape area fought running battles with the Zimbabwe People First members according to the Heal Zimbabwe Trust update on Human Rights Violations in Zimbabwe.The trust said on the 4th of March 2016, 30 Zanu PF youths fought running battles with their counterparts from the opposition Zimbabwe People First over use of the ruling party's building in Rusape, leaving tenants leasing the property stranded.The trust also said in Manicaland - Nyanga North MP Hubert Nyanhongo (Zanu PF) held a meeting on the 4thof March at Ruwangwe growth point, where he told villagers that food aid in the form of maize grain from the Social welfare Department will be given to Zanu PF members only."He further warned the people gathered that those who would be tempted to join Joyce Mujuru's party will be forced out of the area. Efforts to get a comment form Nyanhongo were fruitless," said the trust.
News / Local

by Collette Mukome

AN 18-year-old teenager from Dora communal lands just outside Mutare escaped jail last week after he was convicted of stealing female panties.Manica Post reported that Mutare senior magistrate, Sekai Chiundura, slapped Artmore Karumbidza with a six-month jail term, wholly suspended on condition that he does not commit a similar offence in the next five years.Karumbidza, a Form Two pupil at Dora High School pleaded guilty to theft charges. Fletcher Karombe told the court that at an unknown date, but during the period of November and December last year, Karumbidza stole panties from several women.Asked why he committed the offence, Karumbidza told the court that he wanted to wear them. "I enjoy wearing female panties Your Worship. I have my own male panties, but I like female panties," he said.Chiundura warned him to stay away from crime. "Learn to respect people's property. Today, I will let you go, but if you come back to court facing similar charges I will send you to prison," she said.In an unrelated incident, Evans Mutsago of Hobhouse 1 was heavily assaulted by citizens after he was caught stealing a pair of jean trousers from a drying line.On March 10, Mutsago was spotted stealing at House Number 2652, Hobhouse and angry citizens assaulted him before handing him over to the police.He told the court that he wanted to wear the jeans. Chiundura sentenced him to 60 days imprisonment which was wholly suspended on condition of good behaviour.
Imperial Valley News Center

22 Organizations Working to Restore Soils in 2016

Washington, DC - According to the recent United Nations report, Status of the Worlds Soil Resources, the world can ameliorate soil degradation if more sustainable practices are promptly implemented. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines soil degradation as "a change in the soil health status resulting in a diminished capacity of the ecosystem to provide goods and services for its beneficiaries. Degraded soils have a health status, such that they do not provide the normal goods and services of the particular soil in its ecosystem."

Soils are naturally incredibly diverse. One teaspoon of soil could contain billions of microbes, thousands of species of protozoa and fungi, mites, and nematodes, and a couple of termite species. But a 2003 study, Soil Diversity and Land Use in the United States, published by the University of Berkeley, found that 4.5 percent of the soils in the United States are in danger of substantial loss or complete extinction as a result of urbanization and agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa, soil is under threat as a result of overgrazing and other unsustainable practices.

According to FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva, further loss of productive soils would severely damage food production and food security, amplify food-price volatility, and potentially plunge millions of people into hunger and poverty. It is imperative that we take action now to protect and renew soils to ensure a more food secure future.

Luckily, there are solutions. One answer is growing a diversity of crops. Monoculture crops like corn and soybeans tend to be hard on soils, depleting nutrients rather than restoring them. But growing crops in rotation and growing a variety of crops can help restore soils and help both large and small farms produce more nutrients per acre or hectare.

Farmers all over the world are also revitalizing soils by incorporating cover crops such as winter wheat, rye, and clover or planting perennial varieties of sorghum, sunflower, and wheatgrasses that can help hold soils in place.

Thankfully, there are hundreds of organizations and individuals working to improve soil health and restore land quality, and Food Tank is excited to highlight 22 of these projects which recognize that soil is more than just dirt.
Ambassador Jenkins Travels to Pakistan for the IAEA International Network for Nuclear Security Meeting

Washington, DC - Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins is leading the U.S. delegation to the annual meeting of the International Network for Nuclear Security Training and Support Centres (NSSC Network), held this year in Islamabad at the Pakistan Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Nuclear Security, from March 14 through March 18. Ambassador Jenkins serves as the chair of the NSSC Network. The aim of this annual meeting is to review the status of implementation of the NSSC Network.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Secretariat established the NSSC Network to encourage states to share lessons learned in their own individual CoEs with the international community. In order to coordinate current and future efforts of states or regions as they establish and maintain such centers, the IAEA organized a meeting that took place from January 31 through February 2, 2012, at which it agreed to launch a collaborative network. CoEs help strengthen the global nuclear architecture, a key goal of the Nuclear Security Summit process. This is the first time that the IAEA NSSC meeting is taking place outside of the IAEA in Vienna.
Inflatable Halloween Pumpkin Twice the Size of a House Rings in Spooky Season
News / National

by Tendai Rupapa

A ZIMBABWEAN woman who fell victim to a human trafficking scam in Kuwait is reportedly battling for her life in that country after attempting to commit suicide following repeated abuse at the hands of her "employer" in the Arab emirate.This was revealed on Wednesday during a bail hearing for James Tungamirai Maroodza (30), an employment agent accused of recruiting the woman and trafficking her to Kuwait, among other victims.Hundreds of female job seekers were lured to Kuwait on the pretext that they would secure employment, but were sold into slavery and forced into prostitution and other menial jobs.While in police custody, Maroodza reportedly received a phone call from his alleged accomplice in Kuwait informing him of the attempted suicide.The investigating officer, Detective Sergeant Washington Museredza, told the court that the said accomplice asked Maroodza to send another woman to replace the one who had been hospitalised."Your Worship, there is a clear nexus linking the accused person to the offence. He facilitated the trafficking of several unsuspecting women to Kuwait using his company, Employment Engine Global Services."He knows all the women he sent there. As we speak, one of the victims is battling for her life in a hospital in Kuwait after she tried to end her life. She could not bear the abuse and attempted to commit suicide. I cannot reveal her name but can only do so if the court asks me to," he said."While interrogating the accused person, he received a phone call and I ordered him to put it on loudspeaker. That is when I heard their conversation in which his accomplice in Kuwait was advising him to look for another woman saying the one he had sent was in hospital after she tried to kill herself."While giving evidence in support of refusal of bail, Det Sgt Museredza said people were flooding their offices with most of the reports on human trafficking pointing to Maroodza.However, Maroodza denied the allegations arguing that he did not misrepresent facts to the complainants as he was doing his job as an employment agent to secure jobs for them. He said he was not aware of what happened to them once in Kuwait.Maroodza further argued that his company was registered in accordance with the laws of this country.He submitted that he was ready to abide by any bail conditions imposed by the court. Magistrate Mr Elijah Makomo granted Maroodza $400 bail yesterday.Maroodza reportedly placed an advertisement in a local newspaper to the effect that maids were wanted in Kuwait at a salary of $600 per month.Sylvia Chabikwa and her sister Agness responded to the advert and were advised by Maroodza to go for HIV tests, which they did.Maroodza is said to have facilitated their visas and air tickets. On arrival in Kuwait, their passports were confiscated by immigration officials who handed them over to an agent identified as Hannan.Hannan took them to a location where he forced them to remove their clothes and put on Muslim regalia which he provided.According to the State, the two sisters were subjected to slavery and all sorts of abuse at the hands of their "employers".The pair was eventually rescued through the Zimbabwean Embassy.Meanwhile, Brenda Avril May, the secretary to the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Zimbabwe, was on Wednesday released on $500 bail coupled with stringent conditions, among them reporting three times a week to the police.Mr Makomo ordered her to surrender her passport, not to interfere with witnesses and to reside at her given address until the matter is finalised. She will be back in court on April 14.In his ruling, Mr Makomo said she was not a flight risk adding that the State's fears should be allayed by the stringent bail conditions."I am not convinced that she is a flight risk. An accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, hence the right to liberty should not be interfered with. Bail is a right, according to the Constitution."There is no single proof that she tried to abscond because when she was released on summons she never ran away. When the police re-arrested her, they did not have any difficulties in locating her. This is testimony enough that when wanted, she would be available."What I can say is that the accused person can be ordered by the court not to interfere with witnesses and investigations," he said.He said the seriousness of an offence on its own was not sufficient to deny an accused person bail, adding that even in murder cases, suspects were granted bail.May reportedly connived with former Kuwaiti ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ahmed Al-Jeeran, and advertised for nurse aide vacancies in Kuwait and several female job-seekers responded to the advertisement.
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The solution to Katie Holmess present predicament would appear straightforward.

Can she deliver a performance that will re-ignite her career and go some way to offsetting the dominant perception of her in the public eye as the former wife of Tom Cruise?

We are sitting in the plush surroundings of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in midtown Manhattan to discuss her new film, Touched with Fire, in which she plays a bipolar poet who falls in love with a fellow manic-depressive patient (played by Canadian actor Luke Kirby) in a psychiatric hospital.

Recommended Read more Rihanna answers rumours of rivalry with Beyonce

Since her high-profile split from Cruise in 2012 and move to New York with their daughter Suri, now nine, Holmes has alternated between little-seen indie films such as Miss Meadows, where she played a vigilante school teacher, and modern-day Chekhov adaptation Days and Nights, and supporting roles in movies backed by mogul Harvey Weinstein such as The Giver and Woman in Gold.

She also appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebecks play Dead Accounts, which closed early, four years after she made her New York theatre debut in Simon McBurneys production of Arthur Millers All My Sons.

Holmes, 37, has subsequently moved back to California from New York and critics argue that her career might have benefited from more direction.

Touched with Fire is written and directed by first-time film-maker Paul Dalio, son of American hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio. Its an autobiographical study depicting the consequences of love for bipolar sufferers that also stars Christine Lahti and Griffin Dunne and is co-produced by Spike Lee. Paul Dalio suffers from the manic-depressive disorder himself.

The films subject-matter spoke to Holmes. I approached this project not really knowing much about this disease so this was a wonderfully creative experience, she says. When I met with Paul, I was so inspired by his passion and willingness to bring such a personal story to the screen. The opportunity to take on a role of such challenge was something that seemed right.

The gamble has paid off, at least critically, with Holmes receiving the best reviews for more than a decade.

Though the film is dark, she speaks of filming being just so much fun. I wanted to keep doing more and more takes just because it was like playing a game [where] we got to be free. But while the film is raw and provocative, the same cannot be said for Holmes in person.

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Given her new film is about personal growth, I ask about how she has developed in that respect. She replies, thats a really interesting question, before choosing to answer it in professional, not personal, terms: I think this movie is more of an exploration of people at a certain time in their lives and trying to figure out the right way to deal with an illness.

"As an actor I think this was an incredible experience to grow creatively we all had different stories that we shared. I realised through this process how many people have been affected personally [by bipolar disorder] so it made the work really rewarding.

Holmes has never fully opened up on what prompted her to leave Cruise, whom she married in 2006 (there were reports of her wanting to escape both his devotion to the Church of Scientology and allegedly controlling ways, the latter denied by his people).

The world's highest-paid actors 2015 Show all 10 1 /10 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 1. Robert Downey Jr Iron Man 3 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 2. Jackie Chan AFP/Getty The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 3. Vin Diesel Kevin Winter/Getty Images The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 4. Bradley Cooper Getty Images The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 5. Adam Sandler Getty Images The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 6. Tom Cruise Getty The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 7. Amitabh Bachchan The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 8. Salman Khan Getty Images The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 9. Akshay Kumar AFP PHOTO / STRDEL The world's highest-paid actors 2015 The world's highest-paid actors 2015 10. Mark Wahlberg Getty Images

Its clear she is not about to start doing so on the day we meet. She is now reported to be dating Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, and said of Suri in a recent interview on NBCs Today show: My little one is very, very generous and very sensitive. So shes always [saying]: Mom, lets give my old toys to people who need it.

Hearing stories from the set of Touched with Fire, Holmess reticence becomes more understandable.

Much of it was filmed in outdoor settings in New York and such was the media frenzy surrounding the shoot that, according to a production source, at one time Holmes resorted to using a producers apartment as her trailer.

The paparazzi were unscrupulous even by their standards with the source adding that photographers told crew members that, unless they were given clear sight of Holmes on the set, they would shout cut in the middle of a take during filming.

Contrasting with some of the lighter fare Holmes has appeared in, her new film deals with issues such as medication, madness and pregnancy. Abortion also features in the movie and Holmes, a practising Catholic, she says she wasnt seeking to offend anti-abortionists. It was part of the narrative, she says. I think it was put there to put some realistic stakes in these peoples lives. The characters choice is the characters choice. Its not a statement.

Im proud of the whole piece and you take away from it what your own experience is, Holmes adds. Somebody starts the movie thinking one thing and hopefully they learn something by the end of this movie. With this you really do and Im really proud of that. Or maybe you dont but you recognise an experience that youve had.

Katie Holmes as Joey Potter in Dawson's Creek (Channel 4)

Holmes is reluctant to draw on her specific experiences but comparisons have been made between her choosing to be in a film that spells out in graphic detail the consequences of going off your medication and Tom Cruises zealous warnings against the overuse of psychiatric medicine, which Scientology is opposed to, and which coincided with the early stage of his relationship with Holmes.

Today show host Matt Lauer, who was notoriously dubbed glib by Cruise when the pair clashed over the issue in 2005, raised this suspected connection with Holmes during promotion of the new film last month, only for her to reply that director Dalio had done a wonderful job.

Dalio himself hints that Holmess history made her even more suitable for Touched with Fire: The casting director on this film [Avy Kaufman] actually discovered Katie Holmes in her first film, The Ice Storm, and they had a very strong relationship, he said.

She called me and said, I have a really strong feeling that Katie is going to resonate with the character. Katie did strongly resonate with the role and had an intense draw to the character. I definitely knew that she would have a way into the character.

Following The Ice Storm, Holmes quickly progressed as a Hollywood starlet with acclaimed roles in films such as Go, Pieces of April and Wonder Boys and, most successfully of all, TV teen drama series Dawsons Creek.

One story I heard testifying to her youthful ambition recounts how, at the age of 20, she flew to London of her own volition to audition for the role of Pelagia in the film version of Louis de Bernieress bestselling novel Captain Corellis Mandolin (she may have dodged a bullet though, in losing out for the role to Penelope Cruz, given the tepid reception for the film).

Holmes also starred in Christopher Nolans Batman Begins prior to her union with Cruise.

Does she look at the forthcoming Batman v Superman and wish she was in more blockbusters? Ive absolutely no idea  I ask her what her attitude to big studio films is, given she appears in so few of them, but she answers by saying how gratifying it was to be on the set of Touched with Fire and be allowed to have the freedom to try different things... we really had the space and the time to do that.

ecently Holmes has migrated to TV, starring as Jackie Kennedy Onassis in 2011 mini-series The Kennedys, which received decidedly mixed reviews. Shell reprise the role in The Kennedys: After Camelot with the unlikelier casting of Matthew Perry as Ted Kennedy. She will executive-produce and direct one of the episodes.

Shortly after we meet, it was announced that Holmess directorial debut, All We Had, will receive its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next month. Its a low-budget independent movie, in which she stars as a poverty-stricken mother living in New York.

Katie Holmes might have reclaimed her independence but you get the sense she wont be giving up her adventures in independent film.

Touched with Fire is out later this year
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There's been one tantalising secret about the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot that has so far been kept hidden from fans; the exact nature of Bill Murray's teased cameo.

And, while we're probably going to have to wait until it hits cinemas to find that out; director Paul Feig has revealed how he convinced Murray to make an appearance in the first place, though he's been vocally against any involvement in new Ghostbusters movies in the past.

Turns out Murray's just a big fan of the new cast; which sees Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Melissa McCarthy pick up the proton packs for a rebooted take on the 1984 comedy.

"Bill worked with Melissa in St Vincent and he's been around the [SNL] set enough, and Kristen knows him really well," Feig told Yahoo Movies. "One of the reasons he did it, I think he liked the role we wrote for him. But he also just likes these actors, and just wanted to be a part of it. And he didn't want to give any stamp of disapproval by not coming on board."

Feig certainly seems appreciative of Murray's support on the project. "That was a big moment for me when he walked on the set," he stated. "Youre so in the moment that nothing seems like it has any kind of historical value while youre doing it, because were just making this thing.  But when he walked onto the Ghostbusters set I was like, 'This is a big deal. It was really nerve-wracking, and special."

As he was doing this role we wrote," Feig continued. "He did this one take in particular where like, in Meatballs, where he just bursts out with some big thing. It wasnt scripted. Thats when youre like, 'Oh my God, wow, Bill Murrays here. This is Bill Murray from Stripes.'"

Murray will also be joined by cameos from original cast members Sigourney Weaver and Dan Aykroyd; though it's been previously confirmed Murray and Aykroyd won't be returning as Peter Venkman and Raymond Stantz.

Ghostbusters hits UK cinemas 15 July.
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A controversial song about ecstasy titled "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" has shot to number one  but rather than ban the track, Radio 1 will add it to its A-list.

The song by US singer Mike Posner topped the official UK Top 40. Posner said he wrote the song after taking ecstasy with the Swedish dance musician Avicii in a club on the Balearic island.

The song opens with the line I took a pill in Ibiza, To show Avicii I was cool then lists the largely negative consequences of the experience.

Recommended Read more Police issue warning amid fears of dangerous batch of ecstasy

The BBC banned the last chart-topper to directly reference ecstasy, The Shamens "Ebeneezer Goode" in 1992. But the broadcaster has endorsed Posners song.

A Radio 1 spokesman said: The song starts with the singer taking ecstasy but the lyrics clearly state he had a negative experience. We are going to A-list the song.

Its clearly popular and we dont believe it glorifies the drug lifestyle. Its a controversial song but we trust our audience to recognise it doesnt endorse drugs.

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

However the song is listed as simply In Ibiza on the playlist and DJs have been advised to refrain from using its complete title. The full title is a bit stark. It could be misinterpreted as being pro-drugs, the spokesman said.

Posner, from Michigan, said he had only taken ecstasy once after collaborator Avicii invited him to the Ibiza gig.

Posner said: I dont drink, and I dont smoke pot anymore. I take psilocybin every five months or so, as a way to try and look at my life a little differently.

His original acoustic version has been given a chart-friendly sheen by Norwegian remix duo SeeB.

"I Took A Pill In Ibiza" beat Lukas Graham to No 1 by just 261 combined sales and streams, the closest chart race of the year so far.
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The owner of a club in Croydon, London has claimed that the Metropolitan Police are pressuring him to stop playing bashment music because it incites violence.

Dice Bar owner Roy Seda told Noisey that he has been repeatedly told that the genre attracts the wrong type of clientele and was sent an email by a licence officer detailing what this borough finds unacceptable forms of music.

The penny dropped after a little while about what they meant when they said change your clientele. I think we all knew what they meant at that stage. he added to Noisey. I like to stay away from saying comments like theyre racist, but I think the facts speak for themselves.

Local police are of course experts when it comes to bashment, as seen in minutes taken during a meeting at the station between Seda and officers regarding a recent knife incident at the bar.

According to the Croydon Advertiser, one officer noted how Dice Bar was not adhering to the music policy and that they agreed not to play bashman or John Paul, which we can only assume to mean Bashment and Sean Paul.
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Earlier this week, Radiohead announced their first world tour in four years after months of speculation,

Thom Yorke and co will be playing London's Roundhouse on May 26-28 as well as a host of dates around the world until October.

You can buy tickets here

The band, who are still in the running to be announced as Glastonbury's Saturday night headline act, have a string of European festival dates across the summer, including Barcelona's Primavera Sound and Lisbon's NOS Alive.

After shunning the promotion of their last two albums, In Rainbows and The King of Limbs, fans assume the world tour all but confirms the existence of a ninth record, prompted even further by the creation of a mysterious online company back in January.

On Christmas Day 2015, the British band, who hail from Oxfordshire, released a disused version of a Bond theme for Spectre that they were asked to write.
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David Bowie's long-time producing partner Tony Visconti has spoken out against the music industry suggesting that new talent is getting quashed due to record labels' inability to take risks.

"There are great people all around us  the next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Springsteen,' Visconti said during his keynote speech at South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Texas. "...but theyre not getting a shot, theyre not being financed."

"Back in the Seventies, Fleetwood Macs Rumours sold between 14 and 16 million," The Guardian reports the producer as saying. "Since then the worlds population has nearly doubled to close to 8 billion and last year Taylor Swift sold 12 million.

"With the population doubling how come we cant sell records? The record labels now are not giving you quality - thats why youre disenchanted, thats why you dont buy records."

David Bowie: A life in albums Show all 27 1 /27 David Bowie: A life in albums David Bowie: A life in albums David Bowie 1967 David Bowie: A life in albums Space Oddity 1969 David Bowie: A life in albums The Man Who Sold The World 1970 David Bowie: A life in albums Hunky Dory 1971 David Bowie: A life in albums The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars 1972 David Bowie: A life in albums Aladdin Sane 1973 David Bowie: A life in albums Pin Ups 1973 David Bowie: A life in albums Diamond Dogs 1974 David Bowie: A life in albums Young Americans 1975 David Bowie: A life in albums Station To Station 1976 David Bowie: A life in albums Low 1977 David Bowie: A life in albums Heroes 1977 David Bowie: A life in albums Lodger 1979 David Bowie: A life in albums Scary Monsters 1980 David Bowie: A life in albums Let's Dance 1983 David Bowie: A life in albums Tonight 1984 David Bowie: A life in albums Never Let Me Down 1987 David Bowie: A life in albums Tin Machine 1989 David Bowie: A life in albums Tin Machine II 1991 David Bowie: A life in albums Black Tie White Noise 1993 David Bowie: A life in albums Outside 1995 David Bowie: A life in albums Earthling 1997 David Bowie: A life in albums Hours 1999 David Bowie: A life in albums Heathen 2002 David Bowie: A life in albums Reality 2003 David Bowie: A life in albums The Next Day 2013 David Bowie: A life in albums Black Star 2016

The producer and musician also criticised televised talent shows.

"It cant get any worse. [Talent shows make people think] that becoming a big star is just luck; they think 'get a great hairdo and makeup and everything's going to be hunky dory.'"

Visconti collaborated with Bowie for years, working with him intermittently from the 1969 Space Oddity LP right through to the new Blackstar album which was released the week prior to Bowie's death on 10 January.

In a touching Facebook post following the news of his friend's passing, Visconti described the album as Bowie's "parting gift."
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The welcome return of Underworld to something like their best is the result of five years of diverse work, which has at times seemed to draw them away from themselves.

The journey has encompassed, since 2010s Barking, not just Karl Hydes brace of albums with Brian Eno, but also the industrial-folk soundtrack for Danny Boyles Frankenstein, and, famously, their work on the same directors staging of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, for which Rick Smith was musical director.

The prospect of another Underworld album seemed to be receding into the distance as the duos muses were engaged elsewhere, mostly in the service of others guiding visions.

Recommended Read more Biffy Clyro on why they love LA and writing festival anthems

Then, two years ago, Hyde and Smith re-convened for a series of shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dubnobasswithmyheadman, their breakthrough 1994 album, which still offers the most invigorating nostalgic whiff of Nineties rave culture.

It certainly invigorated them, the re-connection with its imaginative dance-pop soundscaping sending the duo back to their Essex studio, revitalised.

That inspiration comes across most clearly in the opening I Exhale, which can be interpreted as an impressionistic love letter to those ravey days.

Over a loping beat and two-note bassline swathed in relaxed surges of fizzing synth, Karl Hydes characteristic found-phrase lyric about asbestos rooms, corrugated rhythms smash it up, get it down you, do as much as you can, step out fresh vividly depicts those loved-up all-nighters, the track developing a subtle momentum over eight minutes until dawn breaks as the end nears, with a white glow on the horizon.

Its beautiful and warm, more poignant than nostalgic, and it heralds an album on which that pioneer spirit drives Underworlds best music in years. A shuffle-twitch techno groove, If Rah starts with possibly Hydes most ridiculous opening gambit  The origin of numbers is a questionable hypothesis  leading into another fragmentary lyric with touches of Mark E Smith about it.

Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Show all 5 1 /5 Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Lemmy The Motorhead frontman recently revealed his excessive lifestyle - rumoured to involve drinking a bottle of whisky a day - had to be scaled back after he started being unable to stand up during a recent show. Getty Images Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Willie-Nelson 82-year-old Nelson says he started smoking cigarettes when he was just six, and that his love affair with marijuana was the smoothest of all his marriages. He even has his own brand of marijuana called 'Willies Reserve'. Getty Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Shane-MacGowan The Pogues singer was kicked out the band in the nineties for his excessive drinking, and was given just six weeks to live, and is still partial to a G&T after a doctor suggested he stick to clear liquids. Getty Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Keith-Richards The Rolling Stone guitarist is still a fan of marijuana. "I smoke regularly, an early morning joint. Strictly Californian, he told Mojo. Getty Images Musicians and Actors on Growing Old Disgracefully Jack-Nicholson The legendary actor knows his limits, even if they are extreme. Ive woken up in trees, Ive woken up almost hanging off cliffs, but Ive always known how to sort myself out. Getty Images

But then the track starts to blossom, with emotive organ chords and syncopated piano figure accompanying a chant of lunar, lunar, lunar, which, perhaps pointedly, echoes the lager, lager, lager catchphrase that established Underworlds reputation (and fortune). But this time, theyre looking at the sky, not the gutter.

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Low Burn rides a four-on-the-floor beat, with blurry keyboard swirl, before the snare cross-rhythm gallops in; Hydes semi-audible vocal hoves into earshot as synthesised strings and French horns drape a cinematic backdrop over the groove.

Then, at the mid-point, the band play their joker with Santiago Cuatro, with the small Mexican guitar of the title inscribing cyclical figures over a low electronic hum. Its disarmingly open, a simple but moving counterweight to the physically animated music around it.

It leaves one open to the subtle charms of Motorhome, a slower, more comforting groove, where Hyde advises, Dont let it drag you down/ Keep away from the dark side.

That could stand as a motto for the album: this is music seeking to let in the light, from the white glow of sunrise in I Exhale, to the lunar moonlight of If Rah, to the classic Underworld hands-in-the-air moment halfway through the closing Nylon Strung, when the counterpoint melody sweeps in like a 1,000-watt floodlight.

Its a wave of gleaming optimism that brings home the sentiment behind the album title: a shining future, indeed.
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Dressed in jeans, black boots and a cosy jumper, sitting in an airy office in Londons Soho and with a discernible but soft Australian twang, 23-year-old Harry Richardson is talking about horse-riding on the set of Doctor Thorne. I had only ridden western style, with legs spread and a lax attitude, he says laughing, an image that doesnt really say English gent. But traditional-style horsemanship in stiff period costume was the order of the day on Julian Fellowes adaptation of Anthony Trollopes nineteenth-century novel about cash-strapped and status-obsessed English aristocratic families. The horses had been in more films than any of us. They were very professional. Richardson plays the role of Frank Gresham, a financially troubled heir whos in love with his beautiful but poor childhood friend Mary Thorne (Stefanie Martini). It is his first major TV gig since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2014. Richardson has English family and he went to primary school here until he was 12, factors that meant Franks RP accent was easier to nail than the riding. I was cheating massively, he says. At drama school, his tutor would put on Fellowes Downton Abbey to help study British accents. Still, going from appearing in one Australian film to a primetime ITV period drama in the coveted Sunday slot is a big step and Richardson, who paid for his own flight to attend the final audition with Martini, is refreshingly self-deprecating. We met before the series aired and he told me that he planned to watch it with his two British-based sisters. I suggest theyll be proud. Mockings more the word.

He was learning from some of the period drama pros on the Doctor Thorne set. Fellowes was often on hand to give advice on aristo etiquette. Its like having someone from that time period with you  no hands in pockets, never, never, never, he says, repeating one of the writer's mantras. It helped that Martini was also a newcomer and the pair had a wealth of experienced colleagues to turn to, not least Tom Hollander - hilarious, a hero of mine- in the titular role, Ian McShane as alcoholic railway tycoon Roger Scatcherd and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham, Franks scheming mother, desperate for her son to marry well to secure the future of the family seat. Cressida Bonas, Prince Harry's former girlfriend, also appears in her first TV role. Hollander in particular seems to have taken Richardson under his wing, inviting the newcomers to lunch so they could ask as many questions as they wanted. Both of us were fresh out of drama school, wed never done something like this with an arc or journey, he said. Is he worried about Doctor Thorne going up against Hollanders other project The Night Manager, currently pulling in eight million viewers in the Sunday night slot. Its a win, win for Tom.

With one episode to go, viewers are waiting to see whether Frank will get to marry Mary, or if he will be thwarted by the family need for money. So far, the old-fashioned-feeling but cosily entertaining series has attracted around three million viewers, some of whom have noticed Richardsons leading-man good looks (he's tall, with the kind of dark wavy hair that actually looks good in a top hat) that could garner comparisons to Aidan Poldark Turner. I dont think anything can prepare you for that, he says of heartthrob status. In this series however, he avoided any topless scenes. I got out lucky, he laughs. He has now permanently relocated to London and is looking for his next job in the UK, on stage or screen. It is an exciting time to be a young actor. The possibilities are infinite, theres no real roof on anything. Before he heads off into the Soho sunshine, He tells me that evening hes off to the theatre with Hollander. I sense well be seeing more of them both.

The final episode of Doctor Thorne is on Sunday at 9pm on ITV. It will also be available on DVD and digital download from Monday
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On Saturday night, cities across the world will go dark as the globe comes together in the fight against climate change.

The voluntary power cut marks Earth Hour, a grassroots initiative organised by the World Wildlife Fund.

In cities across the globe, the time between 8:30pm and 9.30pm will be a time of solidarity for everyone worried about the effects of climate change.

Lights at landmarks will be turned off at 8.30pm local time to represent the efforts that are needed to tackle climate change.

The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Taipei 101 and the Sydney Opera House, as well as numerous brands and companies, are all expected to participate.

Social media users will also dedicate their feeds to raising awareness of climate change, including changing their profile photos, which can be done here.

Organisers are hoping to build on the momentum built by the COP21 Paris climate talks. Participating countries in the negotiations agreed that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies.

The world is at a climate crossroads, said Siddarth Das, Executive Director of Earth Hour Global.

While we are experiencing the impacts of climate change more than ever, we are also witnessing a new momentum in climate action transcending borders and generations.

From living rooms to classrooms and conference rooms, people are demanding climate action. This tenth edition of Earth Hour is our time to ensure people are empowered to be a part of climate solutions.

Earth Hour reminds us that while people are on the front lines of climate change, they are also our first line of defence, said Mr Das.

Our actions today, as individuals and the global community, have the power to transform what the world will look like for generations to come -- the time to act against climate change is now.

Since its inception, the Earth Hour project claims to have galvanised and organised climate change legislation and action globally.

Climate change protests around the world Show all 25 1 /25 Climate change protests around the world Climate change protests around the world People rally to promote climate protection in Rome, Italy Climate change protests around the world Hundreds of demonstrators gather in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world People hold hands to form a human chain during a gathering called by ecologist organisations in Marseille, southern France, to protest against global warming a day ahead of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) held in Paris Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators clash with French riot police during protests on Place de la Republique, ahead of the COP21 World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, France Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators clash with French riot police during a protest on Place de la Republique ahead of the COP21 World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, France Climate change protests around the world A group of people perform during a rally to promote climate protection in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Climate change protests around the world A protester sits next to his sign that reads 'Monsanto the Devil Incorporated ' as he joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Environmentalists dance during a protest near the Place de la Republique after the cancellation of a planned climate march following shootings in the French capital, ahead of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21), in Paris, France Reuters Climate change protests around the world People protest next to characters dressed as wild animals during a march against climate change near the Monument to the Revolution, in Mexico City AP Climate change protests around the world Protesters carries a banner while they take part in a protest about climate change at New York City Hall steps in lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People take part in a protest about climate change around New York City Hall at lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People rally to promote climate protection in Piazza Castello, Turin, Italy Climate change protests around the world A woman holds a globe during a protest for the global climate day in Lugano, Switzerland Climate change protests around the world Yemenis hold banners as they participate in the Global March for Climate in the old city of Sanaia, Yemen Climate change protests around the world Protesters dressed as Santa Claus take part in a protest about climate change at New York City Hall steps in lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People gather at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo, during the Global Climate March to demand action on climate change telling world leaders on the eve of a crunch UN summit that there is "no planet B". From Sydney to London, humid Rio to chilly New York, at least 683,000 hit the streets in 2,300 events across 175 countries at the weekend, co-organiser and campaign group Avaaz said, calling it the largest number of people to protest over climate change all at once Getty Images Climate change protests around the world Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators participate in the Global March for Climate in Athens, Greece Climate change protests around the world A man wearing a Bernie Sanders mask leads hundreds of demonstrators who marched near City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Patricia Hauser joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California Climate change protests around the world A woman holds a poster of a sick Earth as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Hundreds of demonstrators march around City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world A demonstrator holds cut-out of US Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world George Patten holds a sign that reads 'No Fracking Ever!' as he joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Gabrielle Sosa wears 'Rising Sea Levels' sign as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA

Among other measures, it has inspired a Argentine Senate bill protecting marine life and installed solar lights to villages without electricity in India.

The initiative comes a week after it was revealed that February was the warmest month on record, sparking fresh concerns over the pace of climate change.

Scientists also believe that 2016 could become the warmest year on record, despite 2015 being warmer than any other year on record.

February also marked record low measures of arctic sea ice by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

It is believed that March 2016 could now become the warmest month on record, and with a record low amount of arctic sea ice.
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Fashion houses are all keen to see themselves as more than that, these days. Fashion is ephemeral, fickle. How about luxury? Sounds much more impressive. Of course, luxury isn't just limited to the clothes on your back. It's about lifestyle, another word brands are keen to ally themselves to. Which is why last week Fendi elongated the already strung-out fashion month calendar by jetting a selection of press and ambassadors (brand ambassadors I mean  of the Kendall Jenner sort, mostly) to celebrate the inauguration of the Fendi palazzo.

Fendi actually has two palazzos  its new one is on Via dei Condotti, in the heart of Rome. It's really the Fendi boutique and formerly a clutch of corporate offices, which has been rehauled to expand said shop and encompass a restaurant (an outpost of the modern Japanese restaurant Zuma, full of rich food), a fur atelier (for very rich people to have very expensive coats made), and a private apartment (invite-only, for the richest people to entertain in the grand style). The other palazzo is formally known as the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, where those corporate offices have relocated to. On the outskirts of Rome, it's also known as the square colosseum, a key piece of Fascist architecture which now houses every facet of Fendi. There is an exhibition space on the ground floor, which has greeted some 36,000 visitors to an area of Rome previously abandoned and now ripe for regeneration. Tourists flock there to take pictures. The building was used in the latest Zoolander film.

The new palazzo embodies Fendi's idea of beauty (Getty) (Getty Images)

In the perpetual search for culture to couple with fashion, Fendi has effectively played the trump card. The label is fortunate in that it's based in Rome, known as a capital of culture rather than fashion, which in Italy clusters around Milan (proximity to manufacture and the silks of Como helped to determine that). The geographical distance is matched by ideology: whereas Prada, say, creates a contemporary art foundation or Armani erects "Silos", a museum filled with his greatest hits, Fendi helps to restore the Trevi fountain (with a 2.4m contribution) and revitalise heritage sites.

These are big, bold, sweeping statements  indicative of the house's strength, staging shows with coats costing a million euros, posting turnover that has broken the billion-euro mark. "Tying and connecting our name to Rome doing something good for the city  I believe benefits also Fendi, and the image of Fendi," says Pietro Beccari, the gregarious 48-year-old CEO of Fendi. He's talking on the phone from Rome, from his seat in Fendi's colosseum, about Fendi's palazzo. "People, yes, recognise the products, but they want to share something more than just products." This is key to Fendi's thinking  mimicked across fashion, not only in Italy. Louis Vuitton opened a public art space in Paris, but it also stages grand shows in far-flung location, offering clients in, say, Palm Springs (where its May 2015 show was) or Rio de Janeiro (where a show is slated for this May) the chance to experience something other than purchasing a handbag.

Pietro Beccari at the Trevi fountain, which Fendi is helping to restore

Of course, the aim is, ultimately, to get them to purchase many more handbags. "A real luxury experience," is Beccari's turn of phrase for customers' immersion in the brand upon entering the new palazzo, which for him embodies "our [Fendi's] idea of beauty, and beautiful. I think that's very unique. People don't just want to come to a brand, buy a product and go. They want to hear why they should come to you. They want to share a set of values. It's a statement for what we stand for."

It's also interesting in a wider sense, in the direction that luxury retailing and its interaction with its customers may take in the coming years. Fendi isn't a small, isolated company  although it may seem it, pottering about its palazzos in Rome  it is a key element in the behemoth luxury conglomerate LVMH, whose overall turnover for 2015 stands at around 27.89bn. Fendi's new store stands out from others not because of its breadth  many boutiques boast far more impressive square-footage  but because of its depth, a single building encompassing a hotel, restaurant, showroom and atelier. The latter is important, for Beccari. "Now the super-cool thing is to eat in the kitchen with the chef," he says  subconsciously distancing himself from fashion, again, when discussing Fendi. "Our atelier is our kitchen  to show people how we do things, why they are so expensive. It's a new way to live luxury today, in total transparency."

The notion of transparency - of experiencing luxury - may well be where fashion will wind up next (Getty) (Getty Images)

Obviously the atelier isn't the true messy, creative guts of the operation  Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi's veteran creative director since 1965, won't be seen padding the halls designing his next collection. It's kind of like a show home for its craft  but it's still real. And that notion of transparency  of experiencing luxury  may well be where fashion will wind up next, moving away from the hyper-glossy super-stores that have dominated high fashion retail, and offering something with a little more soul.

"It's a way to identify ourselves," states Beccari. Which, in an over-crowded luxury marketplace, is all-important.
News / National

by Walter Mswazie

CONFRONTED by a huge python while out herding goats along a riverbank, a 27-year-old Chivi woman leapt into a river hoping to wade across to safety.Terrified Tsitsi Gwanangara had no way of knowing that she was jumping into the jaws of a crocodile which ripped open her abdomen and chopped chunks of flesh from her legs and arms with its gnashers.Gwanangara, of Mavhima Village under Chief Madzivire, was yesterday battling for life at Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital after the ferocious attack by the reptile at around 2PM on Wednesday.The Chronicle heard how Gwanangara bravely fought the crocodile by poking its eyes and punching it in the mouth for several minutes until it let go - but not before stone-throwing villagers joined the rescue effort.She was admitted to Chivi District Hospital and then later taken to Masvingo General Hospital before being transferred to Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare yesterday after her condition deteriorated.A nurse who spoke to Gwanangara at Masvingo General Hospital, before her injuries appeared to overwhelm her, said:"She's a brave woman. She just refused to die. She told us how she used her bare hands to poke and hit the crocodile in the mouth area until it let go of her."Gwanangara, according to the nurse, suffered "horrific" injuries in the abdomen, right arm and right leg."She was cut and bruised all over the body. You'd think she was attacked with a chainsaw. She met unimaginable misfortune - running from a python into the mouth of a crocodile. It's a classic case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire," said the nurse, who cannot be named for professional reasons.Before her terrifying ordeal, Gwanangara was herding her goats close to the flooded Runde River with three others when she came across the python.She fled the snake, which constricts and swallows prey whole, before launching herself into the river intending to walk across to safety.Ruvarashe Chimbi, 57, who was with Gwanangara when the crocodile attacked, said villagers pelted the reptile with stones until it gave up its human prey."We were herding goats together with an eight-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. We saw a snake near our goats and decided to drive them to safety. The snake became aggressive and we tried to escape to the other side of Runde River," said Chimbi."When we got into the flooded river, we walked in a single file. The crocodile emerged out of nowhere when we were in the middle of the river and clamped its jaws on Tsitsi's right leg."Chimbi said she dragged the children out of the water while screaming for help."Tsitsi fought the crocodile, which was huge."She poked her fist into its mouth and it let go of her leg but then gripped her abdomen, just below her right breast," she said.Chimbi said Gwanangara bravely fought with the crocodile for what seemed like an eternity, until other villagers arrived and pelted the reptile with stones and logs forcing it to let go.Village head Thomas Mavhima said Gwanangara was rushed to the hospital by her husband, Robson Nyika, and other villagers.He added: "We've heard a lot of stories of this nature from Runde River, although this is the first in 2016."Chivi District administrator, Hebert Hadzirambwi, said they had received a report on the crocodile attack and officials would visit the scene with Parks rangers to see if they can locate and kill the crocodile before it strikes again.
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There is a moral imperative to find out why many autistic people die before the age of 40, a charity has said as it published a report highlighting shocking levels of premature death.

The group, called Autistica, urged the NHS to carry out an immediate review as it launched a drive to raise 10m to fund more research, the Guardian reported.

The report, called Personal Tragedies, Public Crisis, detailed evidence from a major Swedish study, which found that autistic adults died an average of 16 years younger than the general population.

And the average life expectancy of those who also have epilepsy  which is much more common among autistic people  and other secondary brain disorders was just 39, the study found.

Jon Spiers, Autisticas chief executive, said: This new research confirms the true scale of the hidden mortality crisis in autism.

The inequality in outcomes for autistic people shown in this data is shameful. We cannot accept a situation where many autistic people will never see their 40th birthday.

We believe there is a moral imperative to act and to understand better why people with autism are dying so young.

Suicide is a significant factor in the death rate. Autistic people with no learning disabilities are nine times more likely to take their own lives than the general public.

Mark Lever, of the National Autistic Society, told the Guardian: The 700,000 autistic people in the UK and their families will be deeply distressed by these findings.

Our charity cannot, and will not, accept a world where autistic people are dying more than a decade earlier than the rest of the population.
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STAY

For a truly chic retreat look no further than Hotel D'Angleterre. Conveniently positioned next to the Kongens Nytorv public square and tube station, it is around a 15-minute metro ride away from the airport. Established in 1755, there is real character in this grand palace, but it is balanced with a boutique look in the recently revamped and immaculately presented rooms.

Of the 90 rooms, 60 are suites and all come with spacious bathrooms and the latest technology. A soothing grey palette forms the basis of the elegant design, with glorious floral arrangements, statement lighting, sumptuous furniture and pastel coloured carpets throughout. Treat yourself to a Michelin-star feast in the Marchal restaurant, which hosts a generous and delicious champagne brunch on Sundays.

And cap off your trip with a visit to the Amazing Space spa, complete with the only swimming pool in Copenhagen's centre. Ideally located for browsing the Danish design and department stores this is just the spot for a short stay in a stylish city. Rooms are priced from around 340 per night (dangleterre.com)

Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Show all 7 1 /7 Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Royal Suite Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Royal Suite Bathroom Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Breakfast Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Guestroom Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Reception Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Royal Suite Hotel D'Angleterre in pictures Hotel D'Angleterre Royal Suite Living Room

EAT

Fiskebar (or The Fish Bar) is a buzzing restaurant in the trendy meatpacking district. A great combination of fine dining in an informal venue, it is a must for fish lovers. The food is freshly prepared and the staff are so passionate about what they do.

Head chef Jamie Lee is a Brit who trained under Jason Atherton. Ask for a tour of the kitchen to see an immaculate and thriving culinary hub and watch the desert being prepared in the exposed patisserie area. Try the bleak roe, scallops and cod, leaving room for the Bolivian chocolate dessert.

The wine has been carefully chosen as much for its story as its taste. Family vineyards and bright young things breaking the usual wine boundaries make the list interesting (fiskebaren.dk).

DRINK

A speakeasy for our time, Curfew offers such a warm welcome. Passionate owner and mixologist Humberto Saraiva Marques lives and breathes this cosy little bar. He has turned a run-down pub into a hip hangout, dressed in his vintage finds.

Curfew bar, Copenhagen

Designer friend Louise Kingan taught him how items from different eras work together if they share the same ethos: "A container with American vintage Arthur Umanov bar stools was on the way from USA and Louise immediately saw the potential. She even let them play the leading role in the bar by applying a bright red colour to them and setting them against Portuguese teracotta tiles."

Retro green velvet sofas and coffee tables made by a local blacksmith add character. Menu covers are from a bookbinder named Klara K and the bartender uniforms are by Mayenne Nelen. Outdoor brass lamps have been turned into table lamps while a decanter lamp hangs above the bar and pineapple shades represent old-school hospitality. The cocktails are divine. Order Odyssey Number 10 or Old Iberian for a refreshing hit. Then soak up the ambience (curfew.dk).

SHOP

Normann Copenhagen: the flagship store in a converted cinema sets the standard for Danish design, normann-copenhagen.com

Hay: pick up stationery in the market or splash out on high-end furniture, hay.dk

Illums Bolighus: a smart edit of furniture, fashion and accessories from established and breaking designers, illumsbolighus.com

Designer Zoo: an eclectic mix of trinkets, ideal for finding a special gift, dzoo.dk

Illum: this department store houses recognisable international brands alongside Denmark's finest, illum.dk

Twitter: @amiranews

instagram.com/lifestylelowdown
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Its a traditional post-Budget ritual for the Institute for Fiscal Studies to opine a day after the event.

This time around, what some might see as Britains real independent Office for Budget Responsibility said George Osborne is running out of wiggle room if he is to meet his target of a budget surplus in 2020.

Giving him only a 50:50 chance of hitting it, on current projections, the IFS is concerned about the deterioration in global economic conditions. How he deals with those conditions may define his legacy far more than any surplus, or lack of one, in 2020.

If the current direction of travel continues, he will face two options. He could either increase taxes and cut spending (again) in a bid to hit that target. Or he could just throw it out of the window and make policy based on a pragmatic assessment of Britains economic needs. There are some grounds to hope for the latter. This Chancellor has, after all, missed targets before.

The budget deficit was supposed to have been eliminated by the end of the last parliament. It didnt happen.

However, this time its different. David Cameron is planning to step down as prime minister at the end of the current parliament. Being the guy who eliminated the deficit therefore assumes greater political importance and could encourage Mr Osborne to take more risks. And to plumb new depths.

Take the cuts to disability benefits, which will have a brutal impact on thousands of people. They appear to have been imposed not just with an eye on the deficit but also so that fuel duty can be held and people can buy their petrol slightly more cheaply.

George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Show all 8 1 /8 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Debt forecasts up, growth forecasts down The OBRs new forecasts have downgraded growth in all of the next five years to 2020. The watchdog says the economy will only grow by 2 per cent in 2016, as opposed to the anticipated 2.4 per cent. Borrowing and productivity growth are also down  with forecast borrowing in 2018-198 16 billion higher George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New tax on sugary drinks The Chancellor announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks, which is projected to raise 520 million. At least some of the money will be spent on doubling funding for school sport, the Chancellor says. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the levy George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Tax cut for higher earners paying the 40p rate The Chancellor has raised the threshold for paying the higher rate of income tax to 45,000. The higher rate is paid by roughly the richest 15 per cent, currently people earning over 42,386 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Increase in tax-free income tax threshold The tax-free allowance increase to 11,500 in April 2017  up from 10,600 now. The Chancellor previously raised the allowance from 6,475 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative manifesto pledges to put the allowance up to 12,500 by the end of the Parliament George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New devolution for counties and powers for London and Manchester The West of England, the East of England and Greater Lincolnshire will all get elected mayor-led combined authorities with new powers. The Chancellor says they are backed by 1 billion new funding. Greater Manchester will get new powers of criminal justice while London will keep its business rates  giving whoever is elected Mayor a lot more spending power George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Fuel duty frozen for sixth year running The Chancellor had planned to end the fuel duty freeze he had put in place for the whole previous parliament. In the event, he has announced a freeze for another year George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance All schools to become academies As reported yesterday the Chancellor unveiled legislation to turn all schools into academies. He said all schools would either be academies or on their way to being academies by 2020, and that funding had been set aside to fund the change George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Lifetime ISA The Chancellor announced a new savings account to encourage under-40s to save for retirement  for every 4 saved, the Government will top this up by 1 up to the value of 4,000 a year. Tax-free ISAs will also be increased from 15,000 to 20,000

Around 20 Tory MPs are said to be deeply unhappy. If their backbones are stiff enough, they may yet prove that such a thing as compassionate Conservatism exists.

But its not just the callousness of what is being contemplated that makes these cuts problematic. If they stop disabled recipients working  a distinct possibility  they will inevitably become burdens on the state. The cuts thus become self defeating.

Yet more of this may be coming if hitting his self-imposed, and rather silly, target is to be met at a time of global economic upheaval. And that assumes Britain remains in the EU. If not, all bets are off.

Sadly, the Chancellor appears set on propping up a totem even if it damages Britains economy and drives a cart and horses through social justice.

Socially unjust and economically illiterate? What sort of a legacy is that?

Investors arent begging for more as pharma boss leaves

Talking of legacies, how should we view Sir Andrew Wittys at GlaxoSmithKline?

Mixed is probably the diplomatic way of putting it. He has been garlanded with honours and is departing with 40m in his back pocket. Was it all well earned? Thats rather open to question.

To be fair, he has done some good things. One of his most notable deals was the $20bn (14bn) asset swap with Novartis that traded cancer drugs for vaccines and has been hailed as innovative  and far more advantageous to shareholders than blowing lots of their money on an overpriced purchase.

He has built stable earnings streams from that and consumer healthcare, which helps cushion the group from the volatile pharma market (and GSKs poor drugs pipeline).

Yet, at the same time, he could be said to have over-promised and under-delivered on returns. That is partly why he is staying on until next year, when a promised return to double-digit earnings growth is supposed to materialise, which might mollify some of his more trenchant critics.

Some of them. His successor will have to deal with noisy calls for a break-up from activist investors now circling the company.

Some of Sir Andrews opponents have suggested that GSK is now an amalgamation of four FTSE 100 companies, none of which is being run particularly well. That might be over-stating it a bit, but it is a criticism that deserves a space on the charge sheet.

And those sheets are something GSK has seen too many of during Sir Andrews tenure, what with the corruption scandals that have dogged it.

The markets verdict on the news of his departure was decidedly tepid. When a truly starry chief executive falls on their sword, the lights go out and the shares tumble.

GSKs finished the day down by just over 1 per cent, which speaks volumes. Theres been a lot going on under Sir Andrew, but the shares have basically drifted.

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.

Whatever dangers you see, this man can trump them

Oh dear. The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Donald Trump becoming president of the US as one of its top 10 global risks.

Not very surprising, you might think, given the Donalds rantings about building walls on the Mexican border, his bellicose rhetoric towards China, and the threat of him sailing the US economy into a protectionist iceberg.

Given that little lot, and watch some of his rallies because theres plenty more where that came from, its fair to say he poses more risk even than a potential Brexit or an armed clash in the South China Sea.

But heres the bigger problem. Mr Trump is not the number one risk. No, Russias interventions in Syria and the Ukraine and a hard economic landing in China are rated as even bigger dangers. What will he do to secure the top spot? Hes not a man who likes coming second, or worse. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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Berkeley, Tony Pidgleys housebuilder lashed out at the Governments stamp duty tax rises as sales fell and investors dumped the shares.

Berkeley has seen its stock fall 13 per cent so far this year and 5 per cent of its shares are on loan with hedge funds including Crispin Odeys Odey Asset Management  in effect taking a 200 million-plus bet against the company.

The company slipped another 62p to 3196p on Friday as Berkeley  founded by Pidgley 40 years ago  revealed sales fell 4 per cent between November and February against last year.

The top end of the market continues to struggle with 62 properties sold for more than 2 million  showing no signs of improvement on the market slowdown in the run-up to last years general election.

Berkeley insisted underlying demand has remained strong despite uncertainty including the impending EU referendum. But it criticised reforms to stamp duty enacted in December 2014 for raising the stamp duty bill on homes worth more than 937,500 and creating one of the worlds highest property taxation regimes.

Outrageous property deals in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Outrageous property deals in pictures Outrageous property deals in pictures The Park Lane townhouse set to become one of the UK's most expensive student flats at 4,000 a week A town house situated in Park Lane, one of the most affluent places in London, is about to become the capitals most expensive student residence. Most of London students usually live in halls of residence before moving on to house-share. For this reason it is fair to say few will able to afford the 3,540 square foot three-bedroom flat, which is available for 4,000 a week, 16,000 per month or 192,000 per year. Wetherell Outrageous property deals in pictures London's most expensive flat goes on sale at Buckingham Palace near Buckingham Palace priced at 150m A luxury flat in Londons historic Admiralty Arch, which overlooks Buckingham Palace, could sell for up to 150 million. If sold for that price, the 15,000 sq ft apartment will become London's most expensive flat, topping One Hyde Park, a flat which sold for 140 million in 2014.The Grade I listed property boasts 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms Outrageous property deals in pictures Little White House inside the US embassy complex in London goes on sale for 2.5m A luxury home inside the US embassy complex has gone on sale for 2.5m. The property is said to be the most protected home in Britain and any visitor is asked to carry an identity card at all times. The complex has patrolling US marines, a 24-hour British police presence, checkpoints, anti-tanks blocks and CCTV.But potential buyers looking for a fortress should not get their hopes up as all the security will disappear once the US embassy moves to a new site in Nine Elms in 2017. The home, located at 4 Blackburnes Mews near Grosvenor Square, dates back to 1732 and owes its nickname to its white facade, grand entrance and sweeping staircase as well as its proximity to the US embassy. It provides nearly 3,000 sq ft of living space and benefits from access to communal gardens. Wetherell Outrageous property deals in pictures First London luxury flats to contain their own private art gallery with prices going from 3.8m up to 7.7m The first private luxury apartment building in London with its own private art gallery has been unveiled in March. The Chilterns at 24 Paddington Street contains 44 luxury residences, the majority of which were sold in 2013. It contains a signature restaurant, a 24 hour-hotel style concierge service, a gymnasium and sauna and a private cinema. The new art gallery, with original pictures of the area by David Bailey, is part of the lobby of the building and is one of the most exciting and unique features of the Chilterns, according to Stephen Conway, CEO of Galliard Homes. With prices going from 3.8 million up to 7.7 million for a three bedroom flat, the residence is located between the local shops of Marylebone High Street and Baker Street. Outrageous property deals in pictures Margaret Thatcher's Belgravia home is up for sale for 30m Margaret Thatchers six-floor townhouse in Belgravia is on the market for a cool 30 million. The Grade II listed building on No. 73 Chester Square, one of Londons most prestigious addresses, now boasts a lift, a newly constructed mews house with a roof terrace and a private garage after a three-year refurbishment by Leconfield, a development and construction company. Some features from Thatchers time at the property remain. The layout and design of the formal dining room and interlinking study on the ground floor has been reinstated exactly as the Iron Lady had it during her 22 years at the property, from 1991 until her death in 2013. Outrageous property deals in pictures Tiny London house that is just 10ft wide goes on market for 800,000 A tiny terraced house that measures no more than 10ft wide has gone on the market in south London for a staggering 800,000. The house, generally labelled "unique" by estate agent Foxtons, looks all the more unusual because it is sandwiched between two regular-sized homes. It doesn't even have a proper back door - images of the interior suggested renovators had sought to maximise the property's space by including a folding aperture to the similarly narrow back garden. Outrageous property deals in pictures The Mayfair penthouse that sold for 30 million A Mayfair penthouse on Albemarle Street, one of Mayfair's oldest roads, sold to a mystery buyer for 30 million in December. The 5,845 sq ft, three-bedroom family home is thought to be one of the most expensive properties sold in the capital this year, and comes with an annual service charge of 61,000. supplied by Estate agent Peter Wetherell Outrageous property deals in pictures The dilapidated pre-fab 'shed' sold for nearly 1 million A pre-fabricated bungalow in south-east London has sold at auction for just under 1 million. The 1950s property in Peckham comes with 0.6 acres of land, is in need of renovation and has no fitted bathroom, but still sold for 950,000. A guide price of 590,000 was initially set, but increased rapidly during the bidding. Google Maps Outrageous property deals in pictures The starter home flats that went for a combined 60 million Some 215 affordable starter homes, specifically designed for first time buyers, sold out in just three hours in November, after dozens of aspiring homeowners camped overnight and queued in bad weather to get their hands on the flats. The starter home flats at Trinity Square by Galliard Homes went for a combined 60 million, or an average of 700 per sq ft. Londoners looking for affordable housing did not hesitate to camp out for up to two days to snag a flat, despite the fact that the project will not be complete for another two years. Galliard Outrageous property deals in pictures The longest lateral flat where H.G wells hosted a book club: yours for 3.65m The 2,200 square foot apartment in Chiltern Court in Marylebone was also home to author Arnold Bennett and political cartoonist David Low. Now on the market for 3.65 million through Rokstone agency, the four-bedroom flat has been refurbished into a luxury apartment, providing an exceptional 40 meter window frontage and depth. It claims to be the longest and most outstanding lateral flat - ones that stretch the full width of a building, or sometimes across two buildings - currently for sale in Londons West End. Rokstone Outrageous property deals in pictures Gatti House: the flats with celebrity links and private "pizza" lift that sold for a collective 16.5 million Celebrity links, a famous history and a private pizza lift has helped set a new record for price per square foot for a block of flats in central London. The four flats have sold for a collective 16.5 million at Gatti House on Londons Strand. Gatti House, a magnificent grade II building built in 1867, was sold as four separate apartments priced from 2.95 million to 5.95 million by CBRE Residential and Beauchamp, which has completed the last remaining sale. CBRE Residential and Beauchamp Outrageous property deals in pictures Londons most expensive office A newly refurbished office in the heart of Mayfair measuring 6,000 sq ft was unveiled by Enstar Capital in October. At 500 per sq ft, it is set to be the most expensive commercial fit out ever undertaken in the West End, according to the developer. The workspace on 54 Brooks Mews features gold-plated executive washrooms inspired by Armani-hotel in Italy, timber flooring imported from a 16th century monastery in Tuscany and an Art Deco entrance restored with a new 54 entrance logo replicating Steve Rubells famous studio 54 nightclub logo from the seventies. While the directors floor include a rooftop terrace dressed with loungers and an outside meeting and dining table. Enstar Capital Outrageous property deals in pictures Former garage in Mayfair become worlds most expensive mews house at 24m in Mayfair In September, the worlds most expensive mews house, in Reevews Mews, sold to a Qatari buyer for an eye-watering 24 million. Outrageous property deals in pictures A penthouse where you canoe from your front door, yours for 16.95 million London luxury dockside complex located on Chelsea creek is due for completion by the end of 2016. But its luxury flats are already on sale including this penthouse yours for 16.95 million. Its future residents will be able to slip down the river for a work out on the water at anytime of the day. Outrageous property deals in pictures The only property in London too expensive for the citys super-rich property buyers A 45 bed-room mansion near Hyde Park, previously owned by a Saudi Prince, received a private bid for 280 million. If accepted this would have made the property he most expensive single home ever to be sold in Britain. It was originally listed with an asking price of 300 million more than double the price of the UKs second most expensive home.

The tax turmoil could prevent people moving and deter development, the builder said, adding: Transaction levels at the upper end of the housing market have been affected by the significant increase in transaction taxes over the past 18 months which will have effects on both social mobility and the supply of new homes.

Despite the recent concerns over the market, Berkeley added that profits will be at the top end of expectations  around 526 million  compared with a City consensus of 509 million.

It also remains on course to make 2 billion in profits in total by the end of its 2017/18 financial year as luxury projects in the capital complete and Berkeley shifts more of its building outside London.

City analysts said short-sellers could be burnt as fears of an over-supplied market in Nine Elms and Battersea were overplayed since Berkeley has already sold all the flats in its Riverlight scheme.

Jefferies Anthony Codling said: Berkeley still has developments in the Battersea area but it is not a pure play. Nor does it have significant exposure to the markets causing some to be concerned.
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Teachers will face a tough new driving-test style assessment in future before they are qualified to teach in the classroom.

A White Paper published on 17 March shows ministers are planning to scrap the current system of awarding teachers Qualified Teacher Status after completing a probationary year in a school.

Instead, they will have to prove they can control a classroom and show their subject expertise in front of their headteacher and an expert from another school before they become a fully fledged teacher.

The best and most competent teachers can still qualify within a year but it could up to 10 years in the classroom before some teachers pass the test.

The White Paper, Education Excellence Everywhere, describes the new accreditation as a stronger more challenging accreditation based on a teachers effectiveness in the classroom, as judged by great schools.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said the proposal goes further than any Government has done to recognise teachers as the professionals they are.

In a speech on 17 March, she added that the proposals were devo-max in the truest sense of the word - giving schools and heads more control over their own destinies.

The move was welcomed by secondary headteachers with Malcolm Trobe, acting general secretary of the Association of Schools and Colleges saying: We believe this will help to ensure the highest standards and that it will be good for both new teachers and for schools.

However, Mary Bousted, general secretary of the association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the idea was highly problematic, adding: At a time when school budgets are being cut in real terms, there will be pressure on school leaders to delay accreditation as a way of saving wage costs.

The plan is one of a series of reforms outlined in the White Paper - which includes the call announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his Budget to turn every school into an academy.

The White Paper identifies cold spots where education provision in state schools is weak - such as coastal towns and parts of the North-East. Ministers plan to set up a National Teaching service which ensures the most talented teachers are sent into the worst-performing schools to improve standards.

Other plans include giving failing schools a breathing space to turn things round once a new head is appointed or the school is taken over by a new sponsor. A new head will not normally face an inspection by education standards watchdog Ofsted until he or she has been in post for 30 months - while a sponsor can expect to be given until their third year to turn a school around before an inspection.

This is to avoid heads facing the sack after just three to six months before they have had the chance to make improvements.

Ministers say they expect most schools to become part of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs), running a number of schools  possibly in different areas of the country. MATs will be judged by league tables - in the same way as individual schools are assessed on their exam results at present.

In addition, ministers plan to remove the requirement for schools to have an elected parent representative on their governing body - on the grounds that they should concentrate on appointing individuals such as business representatives who have the skills to run a school. A strengthened complaints procedure will be brought in, though, to allow parents to voice any grievances they have.

The White Paper also signals the creation of more University Technical Colleges for 14 to 19-year-olds - which specialise in developing pupils skills in areas like construction and engineering. We are committed to ensure there is a UTC within reach of every city so that increasing numbers of young people can benefit from this kind of education, it says.

The plans were condemned by Labour whose Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell said: There is no evidence that this agenda will raise standards

The White Paper does little to address the real issues facing education today: teacher shortages - particularly in the key subjects of maths, English and science, of a crisis in school places, of a widening attainment gap between the disadvantaged and the rest.

In this challenging context, to ask school leaders to take time away from educating children and to spend money, mainly on lawyers to convert to an academy is irresponsible.
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Teachers overwhelmingly think that the Government's plans to turn schools into academies will make educational standards worse rather than better, a poll has revealed.

The teaching profession opposes proposals to turn more state schools into academies, outside of local authority control, by a margin of nearly three to one, survey figures show.

Chancellor George Osborne on Wednesday unveiled a 1.5bn blueprint to make every school an academy by the next election in 2020, or to have a plan to convert by 2022 in place.

The Government argues that academies drive up standards by encouraging schools to innovate.

(YouGov)

However, the survey of 8,259 teachers and professors found that less than a fifth of teachers, 17 per cent, agreed. Nearly half, 48 per cent, thought academies made standards worse, while 28 per cent said they made no difference.

Women teachers are more likely to oppose academisation than men, while younger teachers are more likely to support it, with 28 per cent of 18-24 year old teachers in favour.

Meanwhile, support for turning schools into academies among wider the public has softened since the coalition government was elected in 2010.

The public is fairly evenly divided on whether academies make standards better - with 28 per cent agreeing and 31 per cent disagreeing - they have become gradually less likely to say that existing schools should become academies, YouGov found.

Soon after the Conservatives first began encouraging existing schools to convert into academies, in 2011, 40 per cent were in support while 32 per cent were opposed.

Support fell to 33 per cent in 2013, 30 per cent in 2014 and 25 per cent currently, while opposition has remained at 39 per cent and more have become unsure.

Education secretary Nicky Morgan fleshed out the academies plan on Thursday, when she published the Government's education white paper.

Teacher training qualifications will take into account performance inside the classroom, while heads will now be given longer - 30 months - to turn round "failing" schools to attract more "great leaders" to enter the profession.
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After successfully campaigning for quality school dinners and the introduction of a sugar tax, Jamie Oliver has announced he will now turn his efforts to encouraging women to breastfeed.

But some women have not reacted positively to the celebrity chefs latest project.

After Chancellor George Osborne announced in the 2016 Budget that he would impose a sugar tax on the soft drinks industry, Mr Oliver told LBC radio: Probably the most upsetting thing for me at the moment, and Im desperately trying to scrabble around to get more information on it, [is] breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding in public controversies Show all 11 1 /11 Breastfeeding in public controversies Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman has sparked a heated debate among parents after she revealed that she breastfeeds both her and her friend's son. Jessica Colletti, from Pennsylvania, said nursing Charlie Interrante's son seemed like the natural thing to do because she was already breastfeeding her son. Colletti told the Mama Bean parenting blog that she asked permission to nurse Interrantes son when she began looking after him, after they met at a photoshoot for new mothers. Interrante agreed as her son had not taken to formula milk Breastfeeding in public controversies New Hampshire State Rep. Josh Moore said on Facebook that men should be allowed to grab the nipples of breastfeeding mothers if the law banning women exposing their breasts did not pass Breastfeeding in public controversies When Gemma Colley's photo of her son with fake tan on his fake after she breastfeed him went viral, she also saw that no parent is alone when they make a silly mistake. Over 100,000 people liked and 40,000 people shared Ms Colleys photo of her sons sleepy face with fake tan encircling his mouth and nose, after she posted it to the Unmumsy Mum Facebook page Breastfeeding in public controversies A candid image of a mother breastfeeding her young child while using the toilet has divided parents online, as some argue its an honest depiction of parenthood, while others have labelled it disgusting Breastfeeding in public controversies The exclusive Claridges hotel has been widely criticised for asking a woman to cover herself with a ridiculous shroud while breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. Lousie Burns said she burst into tears when staff members at the five-star venue asked her to cover herself and her baby with an oversized napkin in order to avoid causing offence to other guests Breastfeeding in public controversies An Australian cafe has been praised for sticking up for a breastfeeding mother after a customer told her to cover up. Jessica-Anne Allen, owner of Cheese and Biscuits Cafe in Queensland, Australia, has described how she was approached by a male customer in the cafe to complain that he was upset by a woman in the coffee shop breastfeeding her child nearby. The customer asked the cafe owner, 29, to tell the mother to cover up. When Mrs Allen refused to do so, he took matters into his own hands and challenged the woman himself. Staff at the cafe then asked the man to leave Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman who claimed a Primark security guard had forcibly removed her child while she was breastfeeding has admitted to perverting the course of justice. Caroline Starmer sparked a series of headlines after claiming on Facebook that a store guard had taken her nine-month-old daughter Paige away from her. The mother from Leicester then repeated her claims in a number of interviews, before Primark denied the incident and handed CCTV over to the police to show there was no evidence to support the allegations. Appearing in Leicester Crown Court, she admitted the charge of perverting the course of justice by not telling the truth Breastfeeding in public controversies Pope Francis has become an unlikely advocate for public breastfeeding, by encouraging mothers to feed their babies in the Sistine Chapel. During a ceremony in Vatican City on Sunday, the Pope baptised 32 babies and told their mothers: If they are hungry, mothers, feed them, without thinking twice, because they are the most important people here Breastfeeding in public controversies Facebook has changed its community guidelines to allow users to post photos of breastfeeding. The change comes as the wide-ranging #FreeTheNipple online campaign has built pace in its attack against guidelines used by social media websites to regulate nudity  from photos of breastfeeding to topless photos post by singer Rihannas on her now defunct Instagram account. Facebooks Community Standards, which outline what users are allowed to post, never included a outright ban on photos of breastfeeding Breastfeeding in public controversies The manager of a public swimming pool at the Lux Park centre in Liskeardhas been forced to apologise after he told a mother to stop breastfeeding her son by the waterside. 23-year-old Rebecaa Hough of Torpoint, Cornwall, was feeding 10-month-old Max a few steps from the main pool, when the manager told her to carry on in the changing rooms in case the infant was sick into the water. She was also told that she should not to return for half an hour to ensure the milk was fully digested Breastfeeding in public controversies A Conservative MP has claimed allowing women to breastfeed in the House of Commons chamber would expose politicians to tabloid ridicule. Sir Simon Burns, a former transport minister, spoke on what he called a controversial subject in a debate in making Westminster more family-friendly

We have the worst breastfeeding in the world.

"If you breastfeed for more than six months, women are 50 per cent less likely to get breast cancer. When do you ever hear that? Never.

It's easy, it's more convenient, it's more nutritious, it's better, it's free, said the 40-year-old father of four.

A recent report published in The Lancet journal found that over 800,000 children could be prevented from dying worldwide if more women breastfed. It also revealed that fewer than 1 per cent of babies were breastfed up to their first birthday in the UK.

In a call to LBC radio, a woman called Robin suggested that Mr Olivers comments were unnecessary and that mothers do not need his help.

We didnt know what to do with our nipples until Jamie Oliver popped his head above the parapet.

Hes so annoying. Who did not know that breast milk was the best thing for their baby?

Its the most bizarre thing.

Other women took to Twitter to air their concerns, and highlighted that Mr Oliver risked shaming the many women cannot breastfeed, including those who have experienced breast cancer, as well as those who choose not to. Some accused him of "mansplaining".

LBC presenter Iain Dale later mirrored the callers comments, and accused Mr Oliver of being very patronising.

There are plenty of campaign groups, there are plenty of people who are putting the case for breast feeding. Why would it be that Jamie Oliver should be the next face of persuading women to breast feed? I dont get it.

Mr Olivers announcement came after he and his wife Jools Oliver confirmed that they were expecting their fifth child.

The couple are already parents to Poppy Honey Rosie, 13, Daisy Boo Pamela, 12, Petal Blossom Rainbow, six, and Buddy Bear Maurice, five.

The TV chef, 40, told the Daily Mirror he was "really pleased" that his family was growing.

He said: "I thought we'd have a couple of kids but that's about it. Basically I do what I'm told but she's an amazing family maker and I just go with it."

But he added that he expects this to be their last child.

"I mean, it's just getting ridiculous otherwise," he said. This was not expected, I can't even believe I'm saying it. I think my own family were like, 'Really?'

The couple celebrated their 15-year wedding anniversary last year.

Additional reporting by PA
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During a visit to New York on Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was approached in a restaurant by two Americans, who got on their knees and begged him to run for the office of U.S. president.

Footage of the encounter, which took place in the East Village's Mile End Deli, a Montreal-style delicatessen, was captured by Canadian journalist Marie-Joelle Parent.

Buzzfeed Canada's Ishmael Daro has a rundown of the brief, hilarious moment:

Could you run for president here? they asked Trudeau.

The Canadian prime minister tried to explain that even if he wanted to, he couldn't run for president because he wasnt born in the United States. But the two men wouldnt take no for an answer.

All our guys are so bad, they said.

Theyre either boring, weird, you have to settle for them  please!

Trudeau tried to explain that he already had a pretty important job. But his fans wouldnt relent, as this video by journalist Marie-Joelle Parent shows.

Eventually Trudeau just had to walk away, leaving them still kneeling on the floor.

Since coming to power late last year, Trudeau has emerged as something of a darling of North American liberals, who admire his outspoken stand on issues such as the settlement of refugees, climate change and multiculturalism. WorldViews noted earlier this month how Trudeau stood in conspicuous contrast to the Republican 2016 field, particularly front-runner Donald Trump.
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The man who lost out on becoming one of the most powerful figures in British policing by the toss of a coin was among four men arrested during an investigation into a suspected 1m charity fraud.

Will Riches, 40, who quit as vice-chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales earlier this week, was being questioned after detectives were called in to scrutinise its books in the latest turbulent episode for the organisation.

The inquiry  Operation Rutland  focused on a money transfer of about 1m to a charitable account in August 2015. The Charity Commission has been informed about the inquiry.

The case is being investigated by police in Surrey, the home of the organisations state-of-the-art 26m headquarters, and they arrested two men in their 50s and two in their 40s. Three of them are serving officers on secondment from their forces.

We are carrying out a detailed and thorough investigation into allegations of fraudulent activity involving significant amounts of money, said Detective Superintendent Karen Mizzi, who is leading the inquiry.

Our enquiries are at an early stage but specialist officers, including our Economic Crime Unit, are investigating to establish whether any offences have occurred.

The four men were arrested for alleged fraud through abuse of their positions and conspiracy to defraud.

The organisation, which represents 122,000 officers from constable to chief inspector, sits on vast reserves of tens of millions pounds but has been criticised for its opaque financial structure.

Following a raft of controversies that included the controversial role of regional officials in the Plebgate saga and accusations of lavish spending, the Home Secretary announced in 2014 that state funding for the organisation would end.

In a statement, the Police Federation of England and Wales said it was cooperating with the inquiry and said that day-to-day running of the organisation was unaffected. Until the enquiry is complete, it would be inappropriate to comment further, it said.
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Amnesty International is going to deliver giant missiles to Downing Street to protest UK arm sales to Saudi Arabia.

Campaigners in white boiler suits, masks and gloves will deliver five dummy missiles bearing the message Made in Britain, destroying lives in Yemen to Downing Street today at 10:20am.

The missiles will be carried across Westminster bridge at 10am and taken around Parliament Square before being delivered to Downing Street.

The missiles are 1.8-metre-long exact replicas of the weapons Amnesty allege were sold to Saudi Arabia by the UK.

Amnesty claims the UK sold 2,400 missiles and 58 war planes to Saudi Arabia in the past year despite the clear risk that they could be used to commit war crimes in Yemen.

Air strikes in Yemen from Saudi planes began almost a year ago on 26 March 2015, targeting Houthi rebels who had stormed the capital and forced the prime minister and president to step down, taking over with their own parliamentary council.

Amnesty has protested at the crisis in Yemen that has arisen from the relentless bombardment from air strikes.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that the civilian death toll currently stands at 3,000, and Amnesty claim that horrific human rights abuses, as well as war crimes, are being committed throughout the country.

Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images Show all 18 1 /18 Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348501.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348502.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348503.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348504.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348505.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348506.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348507.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348508.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348509.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348510.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348512.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348513.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348514.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348515.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348516.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348517.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348518.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348519.bin Amnesty International

Amnesty also claims to have recorded at least 30 unlawful airstrikes on Yemen, including strikes which deliberately targeted civilians.

Amnesty UK director Kate Allen said: Its absolutely shocking that the UK is still selling billions of pounds worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia even as the civilian casualties have mounted and mounted in Yemen.

Ministers need to stop burying their heads in the sand and immediately suspend arms sales for the Saudi war machine.
News / National

by George Maponga

MASVINGO Provincial Affairs Minister Senator Shuvai Mahofa resumed official duties on Tuesday after nearly four months on the sidelines suffering from an undisclosed ailment that saw her at one time hospitalised in South Africa.Sen Mahofa (74) was initially expected to return to work on March 5, but postponed the date to regain strength.Sen Mahofa announced that she was back at work at her Benjamin Burombo Government complex offices."I am happy that I am now fully fit and have resumed my duties. I started going to the office on Tuesday and today (Wednesday) is my second day and it feels good to be back,'' she said."I am now in good shape and I feel better. I am more than prepared to discharge my duties. It's now back to business.''She was last seen in the office before the 15th Zanu-PF Annual National People's Conference held in Victoria Falls where she reportedly went down following a stomach problem.Sen Mahofa was initially hospitalised at an undisclosed Harare hospital before being transferred to South Africa after her condition reportedly deteriorated.A director in her office, Mr Kudakwashe Machako, has been conducting business in her absence.
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A chain of pet shops has banned the sale of rabbits during the Easter period to prevent the animals from being abandoned when the holidays end.

Pets at Home has pledged to stop selling customers rabbits from 9am on Good Friday, 25 March, and will continue again on 29 March.

The firm will also run free rabbit workshops over the holidays to raise awareness of how to care for the mammals.

An estimated 1.3million rabbits are kept as pets in the UK. Recent figures showed that the Scottish SPCA rescued around 730 rabbits in 2015. UK-wide figures from the Rabbit Welfare Association & Fund (RWAF) from 2012 found that around 67,000 rabbits were given to shelters each year.

Peter Pritchard, chief operating officer at Pets at Home, said that pet owners should take time to learn about how to properly care for their animals, Pet Gazette reported.

In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Germany.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Poland.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Australia.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe UK.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Sweden.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe Ireland.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe US-reuters.jpg Reuters In pictures: Easter traditions from across the globe France.jpg Getty Images

The ban mirrors the Dogs Trust A Dog is for Life not just for Christmas campaign.

Each year, the charity highlights the problem of dogs being bought as Christmas gifts but abandoned soon after.

A charity in Canada recently took a different approach to the issue of abandoned rabbits by teaming up with a gym to hold a Bunny Yoga class.

In a bid to tackle the rabbit overpopulation problem in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, the managers of Sunberry Gym teamed up with Bandaids for Bunnies to host special yoga sessions with the docile creatures.

Bandaids for Bunnies campaigns to help animals who have been left in the streets, but are unable to look after themselves because they are house-pets.

They end up malnourished, injured, sick, hit by cars, and attacked/killed by predators, both animal and human. These rabbits need help, the website warns.
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As holiday snaps go, Matthew Adamss are more hair-raising than most.

Here he is at the theme park, climbing up the roller coaster, without safety equipment, to enjoy the view from 115ft up.

And here he is in Sweden, 800ft up a television mast, leaning over the edge with nothing but a friends grip on his arm to stop him plummeting to almost certain death.

The same as walking along the edge of a kerb, he says. You dont fear toppling off the kerb, do you? 10ft, 100ft, the only difference is mental.

Oh, and heres another photo, of Mr Adams before he got good at climbing, in hospital, having broken his pelvis, his wrist and two vertebrae in his lower back, after falling from a viaduct.

Recommended Read more Mystery man Base jumps from top of the Shard

I was screaming until the ambulance came, he says, chuckling. In a viaduct. Think how much that screaming echoed We laugh about it now.

Such are the joys and perils of joining the urban explorer, rooftopping and skywalking community, a secretive but slowly growing bunch who find their way into derelict buildings, or up tall structures  rooftoppers just taking photos, skywalkers doing stunts, too.

For the most part, they are determined to stay underground, in every sense  they also like exploring disused tunnels. Mr Adams, though, has been thrust into the limelight by another peril faced by urban explorers: the police.

A Sunday afternoon stroll up a 100ft crane in his home town of Lowestoft, Suffolk, has just resulted in Mr Adams and three friends being fined 100 for a public order offence of threatening behaviour. Suffolk Police said had they fallen, they could have killed innocent passers-by on the ground.

Mr Adams and his friends received a two-year ban on climbing any structure in England and Wales over metre 9ft 10in high. That wont stop him. This is my passion, my life, he says. Hell just go abroad. Hes already enjoyed another trip to Sweden: Great place: fewer police.

A former Catholic schoolboy, he was a 17-year-old photography student when he saw an online video of urban explorers in New York. From then on, he says, I was obsessed. It was secret, fun, exciting  you had to sneak around, duck and dive. I could find my niche as a photographer instead of shooting the same boring old stuff as everyone else.

His first mission was to a disused mental asylum in Essex. The security guard chucked us out within 20 minutes.

He persevered, found internet forums, made friends. Im on first-name terms with the asylum security guard now. Hes an absolutely lovely bloke, but very good at his job. So he chucks us out, but has a chat first.

UK urban explorers, now numbering well over 10,000, are, he says: A right mix. You get punk guys, artistic types who are in it for the photography. Theres even a lawyer.

And talking of the law, Mr Adams insists they are not criminals. They get into derelict buildings, but they never break in.

Our motto is take only photos, leave only footprints. We leave everything as we found it. We share information only with people we trust, who wont trash buildings or steal. We enter buildings to document the history. We show things people wouldnt otherwise experience.

Anyway, trespass: Thats a civil offence isnt it? If its only a civil offence I dont think anyone can be too concerned.

It might have taken him three years and 10 visits to crack one empty stately home, but, he says: Theres always a way in.

He just wont tell you what it is. This is a world that jealously guards it secrets  jealousy, according to Mr Adams, being the operative word.

There are lots of rivalries, fallings out. One group might not share a way in with another group. Someone might tell the wrong person about a building.

And the biggest sin of all is to go to the mainstream public with your exploits  as Mr Adams does with newspaper interviews and his Unexposed Exploration Facebook page.There are people who hate me, he says. Ive had to block 400 people on social media.

But then, he has had harder knocks. Three years ago, he added climbing to exploring derelict buildings. Which might seem a strange move for a man who merrily acknowledges as a kid, I was a terrible climber and admits that he had no training.

In February 2014 he went up that 30ft viaduct in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, and down again at what felt like a million miles an hour after slipping from scaffolding near the top.

He did consider quitting as he lay in hospital being told he might not walk again. Then he decided just to tattoo the date of his fall on to his arm, as a more visible souvenir than the two metal rods helping hold his pelvis together. Why should something you love be ruined by an accident?

He did make one change. We practise all the time now, he says. People dont understand that whatever we do at height has been practised at low level hundreds of times.

So he will carry on, abroad. Hes planning a lovely romantic holiday in Dubai with his girlfriend. It will be our first holiday together, he says. But I might sneak away occasionally. Dubais skyscrapers look amazing.

And which skyscrapers might he be intending to visit? Mr Adams paused.

Perhaps its best I dont tell you.
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The chairman of a Conservative association has reportedly quit in a long-running row over the club's toilets.

Peter Lockyer resigned as head of Gosport Conservative Association after one of its male members continued to use a unisex toilet that had been repurposed as a female bathroom because "men kept leaving it in a disgusting state", according to The Times.

Though Mr Lockyer reportedly tendered his resignation over a number of issues, the main problem has always been the ladies toilets upstairs, he said.

Mr Lockyer's successor says everyone is now "perfectly happy", but refused to say why his predecessor had quit.

Brian Taylor, who has only been in the role for one day, denied that there is an going use of toilets at the club.

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He told The Independent: We, the association, own this building. We share it with Caroline Dinenage [MP for Gosport] and her staff.

It has three toilets. One is unisex, one is a male toilet, one is a female toilet.

Ive spoken to all the staff, theyre all perfectly happy

Weve all moved on and were doing whatever were doing.

Apparently contradicting the reports by The Times, Mr Taylor also said that the disputed lavatory had always been a unisex toilet".

Indeed, according to Mr Taylor, the staff who work in the building have a toilet situation enviable to most British workers: Theres only three staff, theyve got a toilet each if they want.

Caroline Dinenage MP did not comment on the issue and said it was a matter for the Gosport Conservative Association.
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The Government is preparing for a major U-turn over 4.4bn cuts to disability benefits, as Conservative backbenchers threatened to rebel against plans that would leave nearly 400,000 disabled people thousands of pounds worse off.

While Downing Street insisted that ministers remained committed to the reforms, which will cut support for people deemed to require aids and equipment to help them get dressed or go to the toilet, Treasury sources said it was likely the Government would go into complete reverse.

The cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which were announced last week and included in George Osbornes Budget statement, have provoked a growing backbench revolt which could see them defeated in the House of Commons.

 Osborne questioned about disability cuts on Sky News

Senior Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, chair of the House of Commons Health Committee, told The Independent that voters would be rightly uncomfortable with a Budget measure that removed support for disabled people at a time when higher earners have been given a tax break.

There is a nuanced argument to be had about PIP, but I do think the Government will have to think again about why they are doing this, she said.

If you cant bring the disability charities with you need to think again about proceeding.

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said that the cuts to PIP, which will free up 4.4bn over four years for the Treasury, will leave 370,000 people on average 3,500 a year worse off.

George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Show all 8 1 /8 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Debt forecasts up, growth forecasts down The OBRs new forecasts have downgraded growth in all of the next five years to 2020. The watchdog says the economy will only grow by 2 per cent in 2016, as opposed to the anticipated 2.4 per cent. Borrowing and productivity growth are also down  with forecast borrowing in 2018-198 16 billion higher George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New tax on sugary drinks The Chancellor announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks, which is projected to raise 520 million. At least some of the money will be spent on doubling funding for school sport, the Chancellor says. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the levy George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Tax cut for higher earners paying the 40p rate The Chancellor has raised the threshold for paying the higher rate of income tax to 45,000. The higher rate is paid by roughly the richest 15 per cent, currently people earning over 42,386 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Increase in tax-free income tax threshold The tax-free allowance increase to 11,500 in April 2017  up from 10,600 now. The Chancellor previously raised the allowance from 6,475 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative manifesto pledges to put the allowance up to 12,500 by the end of the Parliament George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New devolution for counties and powers for London and Manchester The West of England, the East of England and Greater Lincolnshire will all get elected mayor-led combined authorities with new powers. The Chancellor says they are backed by 1 billion new funding. Greater Manchester will get new powers of criminal justice while London will keep its business rates  giving whoever is elected Mayor a lot more spending power George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Fuel duty frozen for sixth year running The Chancellor had planned to end the fuel duty freeze he had put in place for the whole previous parliament. In the event, he has announced a freeze for another year George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance All schools to become academies As reported yesterday the Chancellor unveiled legislation to turn all schools into academies. He said all schools would either be academies or on their way to being academies by 2020, and that funding had been set aside to fund the change George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Lifetime ISA The Chancellor announced a new savings account to encourage under-40s to save for retirement  for every 4 saved, the Government will top this up by 1 up to the value of 4,000 a year. Tax-free ISAs will also be increased from 15,000 to 20,000

Disability charities, while advocating reform of PIP to ensure interventions are targeted more appropriately, have opposed the cut.

The Government insists that the overall PIP budget will continue to rise in real terms, but analysis by the IFS indicates that, under current plans, this will not be the case.

Downing Street said that it would be several months before the proposals on PIP were brought before Parliament, after the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan described the cuts as merely a suggestion on Thursday night.

The governments position hasnt changed, the spokesperson said. We remain committed to making these much needed reforms. We have got the time now with the proposals out there, before we bring forward legislative proposals, to explain it to colleagues across the House and to engage with disability groups.

This is about making sure that we can get PIP back to what it was originally intended to do, which was to target the most vulnerable and the most in need.

 Corbyn slams Disability budget

But a Treasury source told the Independent that the risk of political damage to the Government, following the announcement of plans to raise the threshold at which people pay the higher band of tax from 43,000 to 45,000, would likely prove too great for the Government to proceed.

The change is so complicated that the overall narrative is that this is Tories hitting disabled people to lower taxes for the middle classes, the source said.

Any reversal of the cuts would require a recalculation of the Chancellors budget proposals. Conservative MP Andrew Percy has proposed the Government consider adding a penny or two to fuel duty, rather than proceed with the PIP cuts.

Although a Department for Work and Pensions consultation on the reforms has closed, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith this week wrote to MPs insisting that the Government was continuing to talk to disability groups and colleagues about the best way to do this before bringing forward legislation.

The number of people who qualify for PIP support had tripled in 18 months, he added.

Labours Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith said the Government should come clean on its intentions and allow a full vote in the House of Commons on the reforms.
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A vote to leave the European Union would spark a constitutional crisis that could put the future of the UK at risk, according to the Welsh First Minister.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Welsh leader Carwyn Jones used the strongest language of the referendum campaign so far to warn of the disastrous political consequences if the separate nations of the UK vote different ways in June.

Mr Jones also warned that the Welsh economy would tank in the event of Brexit, as EU grants to the nation disappear and multinational employers pull out. Wales benefits significantly from EU aid and farming subsidies and, like Scotland, is considered one of the more pro-EU regions of the UK.

If Wales votes to remain in the UK but the UK votes to leave, there will be a crisis. There will be a constitutional crisis. The UK cannot possibly continue in its present form if England votes to leave and everyone else votes to stay, the Labour politician said.

If we leave the EU our economy will tank and we might be in a position at some point in the future where the Welsh people are asking which union  the UK or the EU  we should be a member of.

How Wales gains more from eu membership than rest of UK No official figures exist for the overall investment that Wales receives from the EU, as figures are calculated on a UK-wide basis. However most independent experts agree that Welsh industry and Welsh farming are heavily reliant on Britains membership of the EU. Much of the aid is intended to fund long-term infrastructure investment and previous funding has helped build new roads, revamped train stations and funded the regeneration of many South Wales Valleys town centres. It has also helped support a jobs programme in Cardiff. Rural areas like West Wales and the Valleys get far more EU funding than many other areas in the UK, while Welsh Labour says that nearly 200,000 Welsh jobs rely on EU membership and more than 40 per cent of exports, including 90 per cent of Welsh lamb, go to the EU.

The First Minister added: We benefit from our membership of the UK, just as we benefit from our membership of the EU and its sad from a Welsh perspective that we are being asked to choose between one or the other.

Speaking ahead of the EU vote and Mays Welsh Assembly elections, Mr Jones attacked the flag-waving nationalism behind elements of the Brexit campaign.

The First Minister claimed that an Out vote would signal the collapse of a 1.2bn regeneration and transport deal for South Wales that was announced earlier this week. And he warned that major firms and manufacturers would quit Wales if the country lost access to EU markets.

We have companies in Wales who are here because it is their European base, and if we are not in the EU they will go elsewhere, he said. It wont happen overnight, but they will go after an exit vote. When I go abroad looking for investment to bring to Wales, EU membership is absolutely fundamental.

Back in November, Mr Jones said an effective veto for Wales and Scotland over the UK leaving the EU was worth considering, but his latest comments have more weight as they are attached to his strongest warning yet on the economic implications of Brexit for Wales.

Wales, which receives around 500m a year in EU funding and has a farming industry heavily reliant on financial support from Brussels, has historically leaned towards supporting EU membership, although recent polls have been less clear and Eurosceptic support is thought to be increasing in some areas.

Leave campaigners will accuse the First Minister of resorting to scare tactics, but Welsh Labour says 200,000 jobs in the country rely on EU membership and that more than 40 per cent of exports go to the EU.

Mr Jones said it was nonsense that the EU would fall over itself to construct trade deals with the UK in the event of a Brexit vote. There is so much uncertainty if we were to leave that its impossible to predict what the future of the UK might look like or even whether it exists at all in its current form, he said.

A financial shock to rival the 2008 crash  or An inspiration? Quitting the EU could cost every UK family 6,400, delivering a shock to incomes equivalent to the 2008 banking crash, says a study published yesterday. In the most optimistic scenario, average incomes would fall by 850 per household, said the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Britains GDP would fall by 26bn-55bn due to lower trade and productivity, a bigger hit than the other 27 EU states combined, it said. The report was attacked as scaremongering by Leave campaigners. And a prominent stockbroker, Peter Hargreaves, argued that the insecurity triggered by a Brexit would inspire people and boost the economy, as happened to Singapore when it gained independence.

Mr Jones, the Assembly member for Bridgend since 1999, also used the interview to launch a veiled attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron as he called for more passion from Westminster politicians in favour of continuing EU membership. He also admitted that open warfare in the Westminster Labour Party would have an impact on Welsh Labours prospects in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Im not going to pretend otherwise... but this is a different election campaign. Our election campaign is about Wales.

Welsh politicians will have just a few weeks to campaign over EU membership after Mays Assembly election, which Welsh Labour sources say remains the partys top priority. The party faces its toughest challenge in the 17-year history of devolution and could face its first major nationwide defeat in Wales since the Liberal win in 1918 under David Lloyd George.

Early polls suggest the Conservatives could win several seats, while a surge in support for Ukip in Wales could help reduce Labours hold on the Senedd thanks to its proportional representation electoral system. This is despite allegations of in-fighting with Ukip in Wales and the selection of shamed former MP Neil Hamilton and former independent MP Mark Reckless to stand for the party.

Mr Jones said the two candidates showed Ukip was treating Wales with absolute and utter contempt by using it as a dumping ground for Westminster failures.
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Labour will force a vote in the House of Commons on whether to go ahead with the Governments disability benefits cuts, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The Labour leader said the Government had declared war on the disabled with the changes, which would see 370,000 disabled people lose an average of 3,500 a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Cuts to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) confirmed by the Chancellor yesterday will raise 4.4 billion by 2020, by stripping people who use specially adapted appliances of payments.

Recommended Read more Watch Osborne react as he is confronted with impact of disability cuts

The opposition party has highlighted the fact the changes will save roughly as much money as the Government spent cutting the higher rate of tax for the top 15 per cent of earners  unveiled in the same Budget.

We are going to force a vote on this. Were launching a petition this morning against this, because what the Chancellor is doing is demanding that those with disabilities who want to lead the most independent life they can pay for his corporation tax cuts, he told BBC News.

Surely as a society were good enough, big enough and open enough to say we want everybody to fulfil their dreams in their lives. Thats what this is about, independence for those with disabilities.

Any of us could become disabled at any time. Were just a car accident away from a major disability. We should think about that.

Ministers have previously pushed benefit cuts through as statutory instruments, which do not have to be debated, and denoted them as financial instruments to prevent the House of Lords from blocking them.

Any vote forced by Labour would likely be non-binding on ministers  but a major defeat could push them into a climbdown if it felt it was losing support.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is backing the cuts (Getty)

Under parliamentary procedure, opposition party can use its 'opposition day' debates to highlight certain issues and call symbolic votes.

Several Tory MPs have publicly voiced opposition to the cuts, with Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan last night saying they were simply a suggestion despite their inclusion in the Budget.

The Government has only a slim majority  meaning even a fairly small rebellion by Conservative backbenchers could derail the plans, which charities have warned would make life more difficult for people with disabilities.

Last year opposition from backbenchers and Labour pushed the Government into a damaging climbdown on the majority of its tax credit cuts, which have been postoned until 2020.

7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Show all 7 1 /7 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Closing Remploy factories The Work and Pensions Secretary called time on Britains system of Remploy factories, which provided subsidised and sheltered employment to disabled people. People employed at the factories protested against their closure and said they provided gainful work. Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee? Mr Duncan Smith said at the time, defending the decision. I promise you this is better. The Remploy organisation was privatised and sold to American workfare provider Maximus, with the majority of the organisations factories closed. The future of the remaining sites is unclear 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Scrapping the Independent Living Fund The 320m Independent Living Fund was established in 1988 to give financial support to people with disabilities. It was scrapped on July 1 2015, with 18,000 often severely disabled people losing out by an average of 300 a week. The money was generally used to help pay for carers so people could live in communities rather than institutions. Councils will get a boost in funding to compensate but it will not cover the whole cost of the fund. This new cash also doesnt have to be spent on the disabled 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut payments for the disabled Access To Work scheme Iain Duncan Smith is bringing forward a policy that will reduce payments to some disabled people from a scheme designed to help them into work. The 108m scheme, which helps 35,540 people, will be capped on a per-used basis, potentially hitting those with the more serious disabilities who currently receive the most help. The single biggest users of the fund are people who have difficulty seeing and hearing. The cut will come in from October 2015. The charity Disability UK says the scheme actually makes the Government money because the people who gain access to work tend pay tax that more than covers its cost. The DWP does not describe the reduction as a cut and says it will be able to spread the money more thinly and cover more people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut Employment and Support Allowance The latest Budget included a 30 a week cut in disability benefits for some new claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The Government says it is equalising the rate of disability benefits with Jobseekers Allowance because giving disabled people more help is a perverse incentive. The people affected by this cut are those assessed as having a limited capability for work but as being capable of some work-related activity. A group of prominent Catholics wrote to Mr Duncan Smith to say there was no justification for this cut. Mental health charity Mind, said the cut was insulting and misguided 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Risk homelessness with a sharp increase disability benefit sanctions Official figures in the first quarter of 2014 found a huge increase in sanctions against people reliant on ESA sickness benefit. The 15,955 sanctions were handed out in that period compared to 3,574 in the same period the year before, 2013  a 4.5 times increase. The homelessness charity Crisis warned at the time that the sharp rise in temporary benefit cuts was cruel and can leave people utterly destitute  without money even for food and at severe risk of homelessness. It is difficult to see how they are meant to help people prepare for work, Matt Downie, director of policy at the charity added 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Sending sick people to work because of broken fitness to work tests In 2012 a government advisor appointed to review the Governments Work Capability Assessment said the tests causing suffering by sending sick people back to work inappropriately. There are certainly areas where it's still not working and I am sorry there are people going through a system which I think still needs improvement, Professor Malcolm Harrington concluded. The tests are said to have improved since then, but as recently as this summer they are still coming in for criticism. In June the British Psychological Society said there was now significant body of evidence that the WCA is failing to assess peoples fitness for work accurately and appropriately. It called for a full overhaul of the way the tests are carried out. The WCA appeals system has also been fraught with controversy with a very high rate of overturns and delays lasting months and blamed for hardship 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people The bedroom tax The Governments benefit cut for people who it says are under-occupying their homes disproportionately affects disabled people. Statistics released last year show that around two-thirds of those affected by the under-occupancy penalty, widely known as the bedroom tax, are disabled. There have been a number of high profile cases of disabled people being moved out of specially adapted homes by the policy. In one case publicised by the Sunday People last week, a 48 year old man with cerebral palsy was forced to bathe in a paddling pool after the tax moved him out of his home with a walk-in shower. The Government says it has provided councils with a discretionary fund to help reduce the policys impact on disabled people, but cases continue to arise

A poll conducted by YouGov after the Budget found that 70 per cent of the public believe the cuts are the wrong priority, with only 13 per cent believing they are a good idea.

Sources close to Iain Duncan Smith this morning however suggested a U-turn would not be forthcoming, while a Downing Street spokesperson said:

We have got the time now to bring forward the legislative proposals to be explaining it to colleagues across the House and explaining it to disability groups.

This is about taking PIP back to what it was originally intended to do, to target the support on the most vulnerable and the most in need.
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Labour MP Stella Creasy says she has thrown a charity boss out of Parliament following a row over evicting residents.

Keith Nunn, who is chair of trustees for the Glasspool Trust, reportedly dismissed Ms Creasys concerns about the welfare of social housing residents who are facing eviction after their homes were sold to private developers by telling her: it happens. the Walthamstow MP says that she was so horrified by his apparent lack of empathy during their meeting at Westminster that she immediately ended the meeting and arranged for police to escort him out of Parliament.

The Glasspool Trust is an organisation which makes individual grants for household goods to people in poverty. It has come under criticism recently after it announced it was selling a number of flats which it owns in Walthamstow to property developers without first informing tenants who had lived there for decades or giving them the chance to purchase the homes. Some tenants have said that they first found out about the deal when they were given eviction notices. Many have expressed concerns that they will no longer be able to live in their communities or to send their children to the same schools, following eviction.

They also allege that The Glasspool Trust has refused to meet with former tenants to explain the reason for or processes behind the sale.

George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Show all 8 1 /8 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Debt forecasts up, growth forecasts down The OBRs new forecasts have downgraded growth in all of the next five years to 2020. The watchdog says the economy will only grow by 2 per cent in 2016, as opposed to the anticipated 2.4 per cent. Borrowing and productivity growth are also down  with forecast borrowing in 2018-198 16 billion higher George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New tax on sugary drinks The Chancellor announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks, which is projected to raise 520 million. At least some of the money will be spent on doubling funding for school sport, the Chancellor says. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the levy George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Tax cut for higher earners paying the 40p rate The Chancellor has raised the threshold for paying the higher rate of income tax to 45,000. The higher rate is paid by roughly the richest 15 per cent, currently people earning over 42,386 George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Increase in tax-free income tax threshold The tax-free allowance increase to 11,500 in April 2017  up from 10,600 now. The Chancellor previously raised the allowance from 6,475 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative manifesto pledges to put the allowance up to 12,500 by the end of the Parliament George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance New devolution for counties and powers for London and Manchester The West of England, the East of England and Greater Lincolnshire will all get elected mayor-led combined authorities with new powers. The Chancellor says they are backed by 1 billion new funding. Greater Manchester will get new powers of criminal justice while London will keep its business rates  giving whoever is elected Mayor a lot more spending power George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Fuel duty frozen for sixth year running The Chancellor had planned to end the fuel duty freeze he had put in place for the whole previous parliament. In the event, he has announced a freeze for another year George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance All schools to become academies As reported yesterday the Chancellor unveiled legislation to turn all schools into academies. He said all schools would either be academies or on their way to being academies by 2020, and that funding had been set aside to fund the change George Osborne 2016 budget at a glance Lifetime ISA The Chancellor announced a new savings account to encourage under-40s to save for retirement  for every 4 saved, the Government will top this up by 1 up to the value of 4,000 a year. Tax-free ISAs will also be increased from 15,000 to 20,000

Following the encounter, Ms Creasy explained in a Facebook post: For the first time in six years I have thrown someone out of parliament- the chair of Glasspools who had the temerity to suggest they have no obligations or concerns for the residents of Butterfields Estate who are being made homeless because of their decision to sell the properties to a private development company.

Despite Glasspools charitable objective being to prevent destitution he just shrugged and said it was ok because they had made money and it happens. I said Glasspools werent a charity, they were a disgrace and needed to take a long hard look at themselves and what they owe those families now facing an uncertain future.

If they think they can treat the lives of Walthamstow residents as collateral damage in their investment schemes they are mistaken! She ended the post with the hashtag #angrymp

Mr Nunn told The Independent: "I have no wish to get involved in a tit for tat argument about who said what during a meeting which I had been led to believe was private."
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A new poll has put Labour ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.

Labour was on 34 per cent, with Tories one point behind on 33 per cent, according to the YouGov poll. Ukip was in third place on 16 per cent with the Lib Dems on six per cent, The Daily Mirror reported.

A recent poll by ICM had put the Conservatives and Labour level on 36 per cent, but some had thought this might have just been a one-off, freak result.

Recommended Read more Corbyn supporters urged to use NEC elections to cement hold on party

YouGov found that 51 per cent of respondents thought the Government was dealing with the economy badly. The number of people who thought Chancellor George Osborne was handling the economy badly, 46 per cent, was double those who thought he was doing well, 23 per cent.

Anthony Wells, YouGovs director, said the Conservatives Euro squabbles were hurting the partys image.

When its poll was published on Monday, ICM warned it might just be a rogue result.

The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.

But it also said the Tories splits over the European Union could be hurting its level of support.

Under normal circumstances, we might not have been surprised to see a collapse in the government share, ICM said.

We have an unprecedented level of division within the Conservative Party over the EU, a battle which is very much being fought front and centre with the current Prime Minister on one side and a Prime Ministerial hopeful on the other.

Under such circumstances, polling support tends to suffer  theres nothing worse than party disunity to prompt a polling freefall.
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A lion has mauled a man after straying into rush hour traffic in Nairobi.

The male, which is thought to have become agitated by the hooting of car horns by passing motorists, was then captured and taken back to a reserve that lies on the edge of the city, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said.

KWS, which manages the country's safari reserves including the Nairobi National Park on the outskirts of the capital, said its units had caught the lion after images posted on social media showed it wandering along a main road near the park.

"A man who was injured by the lion (has been) taken to hospital," KWS said on its Twitter feed.

KWS spokesman Paul Udoto told Kenya's NTV that the elderly man was in a stable condition after the black-maned lion attacked him when it became agitated.

The images on social media showed the lion walking along a grassy verge next to the busy road and past some people who looked on from behind a closed iron-bar gate.

Inside Nairobi National Park, which lies on the city limits, tourists enjoy views of lions, rhinos, giraffes, zebras and other wildlife against a backdrop of high-rise buildings.

Lions are occasionally spotted in the city close to the park after finding a way through fences that protect the built-up areas near the reserve.

Reuters
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A 4-year-old boy has died after being put in boiling water by his stepmother as a punishment, it has been reported.

Ohio police were called to the home of Anna Ritchie, 25, on Wednesday morning after she reported that she awoke to find her step son Austin Cooper was not breathing. Medics tended to the scene but could not revive the child.

Ritchie told police that she had put Austins legs in boiling water as a punishment the evening beforehand, CBS News reports. She says that she put the child to bed that evening and did not believe he was seriously injured.

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

She has been arrested and charged with child endangerment.

Investigations to establish the precise cause of the childs death and an autopsy is due to be performed by Warren County Coroner.

Ritchie is being held at Warren County Jail and is due to be arraigned later today.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Mthwakazi Republic party spokesperson Mbonisi Gumbo has accused the ruling Zanu PF government for taking the people for a ride by introducing a national flag salute pledge which makes people violate God's commandment that they must have no any other God beside him.The beginning of the pledge reads,"Almighty God, in whose hands our future lies, I salute the national flag."Gumbo said this opening part was designed to capture the attention and allegiance of an increasingly christianised society, and ensure a sacred subservience to the whole string of hidden evil that follows. Heb said Christians have a tendency to follow as holy anything done under God's name,....here Zanu PF is taking people for a free ride.Party of it reads, "United in our diversity by our common desire for freedom, justice and equality."But Gumbo said this is a big lie after a remark that acknowledges the seniority of the creator, God."Who in Zimbabwe is united with who? This is by all means an attempt to outdo the existing ethnic tensions among the new generations, noticing that after a score and a half after the matabelaland ethnic genocide, tension continue to swell than subside," Gumbo said."This is calculated mischief, that is set to allow a domineering ethnic group to exploit and dupe the other other to accommodate their selfish interests! A preamble of definitions could have protected these words( 'united', 'justice', equality') from abuse"Another part reads, "Respecting the brave fathers and mothers who lost lives in the Chimurenga/ Umvukela and national liberation struggles.""We all know this is a lie! Nkomo's nationalist concept has been greatly violated together with that of other zipra Cdes who died for Zimbabwe, No respect of any kind has been conferred to them with utmost genuine of course the divisionist interests of Zanu PF has been respected," he said.Part of the pledge reads, " We're proud inheritors of the richness of our natural resources. We're proud creators and participants in our vibrant traditions and cultures. We commit to honesty and the dignity of hard work".Gumbo said this bottom line pays respect and sums the commitment to the 1979 grand plan."In essence, our children will be forced to recite a victory prayer for the grand plan with the blessing of its victims, their parents!" he said.Zanu PF is a sly party! Masking evil by pretending to acknowledge God!Cdes let's watch out!."
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Eric Trump has been sent a suspicious package containing white powder, prompting his wife to call the police.

The envelope had a Massachusetts postmark and was addressed to the real estate mogul at his apartment in the Trump Parc East, according to sources as reported by New York Post.

The letter sent a threatening message to Donald Trumps second eldest son that suggested that he and his siblings would be hurt if their father did not withdraw from the presidential race.

When his wife Lara Yunaska opened the envelope, white powder spilled out.

Police, fire crews and the FBI all reportedly responded to the incident.

It is not clear what the powder was, but initial tests found the substance was not hazardous, as CBS reported.

The incident occurred just one week after Mr Donald Trumps rally in Chicago was cancelled due to the businessmans fear that people would get hurt amid a spike in aggression and violence against protestors at his gatherings.

Last week a man tried to rush at Mr Trump in Ohio as he passed security staff and climbed onto the stage, prompting Mr Trump to grab the lapels of his nearby security guards jacket in surprise.

The hacker group Anonymous warned this week that they would launch a cyber attack on Donald Trumps various business entities starting on April Fools Day.

Mr Trump has angered many people due to his comments about Muslims, Syrians, Mexicans and women.

Marco Rubio, former Republican presidential candidate who dropped out this week, expressed his relief on Tuesday that his team at his former Washington-based headquarters were safe after they were also sent suspicious envelopes containing white powder. The staff had gathered on the roof while authorities investigated.
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US military staff that were involved in a deadly airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan face punishment, according to officials.

The bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital (known by its French acronym MSF) in Kunduz last October killed at least 42 people. The attack happened as Nato-backed Afghan forces fought with insurgents for control of the northern provincial capital, just one month after the Taliban seized the city, their biggest coup after they were ousted from the country by the US 14 years earlier.

The US military found that the bombing of a medical centre full of doctors and civilians was as a result of human error.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, US Central Command director of public affairs, said in a statement said the individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties and were referred for administrative action.

Some individuals were removed from theater, he said, meaning they had been removed from the conflict.

He said that General John Campbell, the US Commander in Afghanistan, decided to refer some of the recommendations to [Army Lieutenant General Joseph L Votel, the Commander of the Joint Special Forces Operations Command], for his review and action as appropriate.

We are in the process of reviewing those actions and will provide updates when available, he said.

According to the Guardian, more than 10 military personnel face administrative action, which could range from negative counselling - being told not to do something again - to a warning letter, which usually blocks any chance of promotion, one officer said. Those in question could also see their power of command being removed.

A report on the Kunduz attack will be released next week by the Pentagon. Classified material will be removed from the report.

President Obama has apologized and said the government will pay compensation to the victims families. Many people had been killed immediately by the bombing, whereas other patients who were unable to move burned to death in the fire that followed.

An initial report of the Kunduz attack, which was carried out by General Campbell, left MSF with more unanswered questions than answers.

The organisation said the bombing a warcrime and has called for an international and independent investigation into the airstrike.

US military commanders reportedly took 17 minutes to act after they were warned by MSF that their aircraft was bombing a medical centre rather than what they thought was a Taliban-controlled building a few hundred meters away.

MSF also said it repeatedly gave its coordinates of its trauma center in Kunduz to the US military as late as 29 September to avoid being bombed.

This did not prevent the accident from happening just four days later.
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The US Air Force has launched an investigation into a dozen airmen at a nuclear missile base for alleged use of illegal drugs, in some cases possibly including cocaine.

The drug investigation at FE Warren Air Force Base, located near Cheyenne, Wyoming, is home of the 90th Missile Wing, was announced on Friday by Gen Robin Rand, the four-star commander of Air Force Global Strike Command.

This is very important to me that we get to the bottom of this, he told the Associated Press. We have a special trust with our nation, with our public, with the mission that we do in Air Force Global Strike Command.

Gen Rand is leading the probe (US Air Force)

The command is responsible for the entire fleet of Minuteman 3 land-based nuclear missiles; one-third of the Minuteman 3 force is operated by the 90th Missile Wing.

The airmen under investigation are mainly or entirely members of a security force at the 90th Missile Wing, the officials said.

The allegations do not involve officers who control the Minuteman missiles from command centers, officials told the news agency.

Security forces at nuclear missile bases are entrusted to patrol the missile fields and respond to any security emergencies. They are highly trained and given enormous responsibility.

Just last month, Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work visited FE Warren and observed a demonstration by security forces of the techniques and equipment they would use to recapture a missile silo that had been taken over by intruders.
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Police are investigating an alleged rape at an elite school in Washington DC attended by the daughters of President Barack Obama.

According to police, the alleged rape happened at the Sidwell Friends School at around 2.30pm on Wednesday on the city's Wisconsin Avenue campus. The incident was reported later on Wednesday night and involved a male and female student, both in their upper teens.

Fox News said a police report did not say where on campus the alleged rape happened. The report said the incident was not consensual, even though at one time the two teens did engage in a consensual sexual relationship.

The Obamas have sent both of their daughters to the school (AP)

Sidwell Friends School is known for educating the children of some of Washingtons most notable politicians and other noteworthy people, including Mr Obmas daughters, Sasha and Malia. Bill and Hillary Clintons daughter, Chelsea, also graduated from the school.

In a statement, Ellis Turner, the associate head of schoo, said: It is the longstanding policy of Sidwell Friends School to cooperate fully with any law enforcement investigation. It is also our policy not to comment on such investigations.
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Chicago has decided to remove the tax from tampons and other feminine hygiene products, reclassifying them as medical necessities rather than luxury items.

The City Council voted to remove their portion - 1.25 per cent - of the total 10.25 per cent tax, as reported by the Associated Press.

Illinois is still considering a state-wide change to the law.

Recommended Read more Tampon tax to be scrapped as Government avoids Eurosceptic defeat

The measure, introduced by Chicago's finance committee, was met without opposition, and joins states that have dropped the tax including Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

At least seven states are considering similar legislation but success is not guaranteed.

Earlier in March, an all-male panel of lawmakers in Utah voted against removing the feminine products tax.

I have no idea why states would tax these as luxury items, President Obama said in an interview with YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen in January. I suspect its because men were making the laws when those taxes were passed.

Five women recently filed a lawsuit in New York arguing that the states 4 per cent tampon tax is unconstitutional.

New York currently does not charge tax for other medical items which include dandruff shampoo, lip balm and products which stimulate hair growth for men.

It is a vestige of another era, and now is the time to end it, the lawsuit said, which claims that low-income women are hit hardest by the tax. Their plight is supported by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, as reported by CBS.

Womens periods, tampons and sanitary pads have become a global, issue, being debated from Canada and France to Australia.

In the UK the tampon tax was abolished after the European Union approved a zero VAT-rating for sanitary products this week.

It has yet to be determined, however, what will happen to that portion of UK tax money which was to be channeled into funding domestic violence shelters - a move that was announced just a few months ago.
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Bernie Sanders took on the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County on Thursday by accusing him of being un-American and uncivilised.

The Vermont Senator spoke to an estimated crowd of 2,800 at the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he told the story of his wife Jane Sanders meeting Sheriff Arpaio at the infamous "Tent city."

She asked him about racial profiling and he didn't have an answer, Sanders said, according to The Washington Post. She asked him about conditions in tent city and other abuses that he has perpetuated, and he didn't have an answer. You know what, he cannot have an answer because what he is doing is un-American and uncivilised."

Sheriff Arpaio then compared the conditions to overseas detention centres that soldiers experience overseas.

"It's easy for bullies like Sheriff Arpaio to pick on people who have no power, but if I'm elected president, the president of the United States does have the power, Sanders said. Watch out, Joe.

Sanders was introduced at the rally by Katherine Figueroa Bueno, who said she witnessed her undocumented parents get arrested on local television several years prior.

If elected president, we are going to pass comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship, whether Mr Arpaio likes it or not, Sanders promised.

Sanders also said he would remedy the appalling levels of inequality and systematic injustice Native Americans face in the country.

The Sanders campaign previously announced a series of rallies across Arizona this week as the state prepares for the March 22 primary..
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The writer of an episode of The Simpsons set in a future where Donald Trump became president of the United States has said it was written as a warning to America.

Dan Greaney, who wrote the Bart of the Future episode which was broadcast in 2000, told The Hollywood Reporter that the election of the billionaire business mogul to the most powerful position on the planet was written into the story because it was a vision of America going insane.

It showed the adult Bart in 2030 very much in the mould of his father, Homer, while his highly capable sister Lisa has become president.

She has taken office after the Trump presidency, which has proved to be a disaster that even she cannot solve.

Mr Greaney said someone else had actually pitched the idea of Mr Trump being elected president.

It was a warning to America, he said. And that just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane.

The important thing is that Lisa comes into the presidency when America is on the ropes and that is the condition left by the Trump presidency.

What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her.

He said he was tickled we are getting all this attention for an episode that was one of his favourites but which was criticised by some for portraying a bleak future for Bart.

The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over-the-top side of American culture and [Trump] is just the fulfillment of that, he added. In the episode, Lisa tells her staff: As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.
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Im speaking with myself, number one. The year is less than three months old, but for our planet these may already be the six most terrifying words uttered in 2016.

And no prizes for guessing who uttered them, in an interview this week with the cable channel MSNBC. Donald Trump, property mogul, reality TV celebrity and heavy favourite for the Republican presidential nomination, was being pressed on who was advising him on a foreign policy that thus far has consisted of feel-good platitudes, positions on issues that can change in 24 hours, and insults and threats to anyone or any country deemed to stand in Americas way.

Foreign policy is an area where US presidents, so constrained by the checks and balances of domestic politics, have largely unfettered power. For weeks now, the man who aspires to have his finger on the nuclear button has promised to unveil his team of advisers.

Make no mistake: should the once unimaginable come to pass and Mr Trump find himself in the Oval Office, he will have advisers. No president, however expert in international affairs, can keep abreast of the intricacies of a complex world, let alone a world as disorderly and dangerous as this one. Decisions of war or peace, summits with Russia and China, and the delicate matter of alliance maintenance, are no place for giant ego trips, unbiased by any knowledge of the facts.

Indeed, were it any other frontrunner in Trumps position, Republican foreign policy luminaries would long since have been discreetly stressing their closeness to the candidate, as they jockey for plum national security jobs in a new administration. But that hasnt happened.

People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Show all 8 1 /8 People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Miley Cyrus 'God he thinks he is the f***ing chosen one or some shit!  Honestly f*** this sh*t I am moving if this is my president! I dont say things I dont mean!' Jemal Countess/Getty Images People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Whoopi Goldberg 'I dont think thats America. I dont want it to be America. Maybe its time for me to move you know' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Samuel L. Jackson 'If that mother**er becomes president, Im moving my black ass to South Africa' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Raven Symone 'My confession for this election is, if any Republican gets nominated, Im gonna move to Canada with my entire family. Is that bad? I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Cher 'If he were to be elected, I'm moving to Jupiter' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Neve Campbell 'Im terrified. Its really scary. My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game ... [I'll] move back to Canada' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Jon Stewart 'I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planets gone bonkers' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Randy Blythe 'He could just be a clown. If he is the president, though, I am leaving America 'till he's gone'

Instead Mr Trump brags vacuously about getting the best people, so far unidentified. And as he continued in that surreal performance on MSNBC, I have a very good brain my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff.

In the meantime, the only names that have surfaced are those of Jeff Sessions, the arch-conservative junior senator from Alabama, with some experience on the Armed Services Committee, and Mike Clovis, a retired US Air Force colonel and a member of Trumps tight-knit inner campaign circle. And theres a reason for the silence. Most Republican national security honchos wont touch him with a barge pole.

More than 120 have now signed an open letter, declaring themselves united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency. These gentlemen, of course, should not be regarded as infallible. Many were enthusiastic backers of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, arguably the USs biggest foreign policy blunder of the last 100 years, Vietnam included. But their critique is withering.

Mr Trump is fundamentally dishonest, they write. He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence his vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle. Then there is the candidates admiration for foreign dictators, his violent anti-Muslim rhetoric, his backing of torture, his threats against allies and his readiness for trade wars.

 Anonymous Declares Total War on Donald Trump

And yes, hes put the boot in on almost everyone: France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, all of them longstanding US allies.

Everyone too knows about the Trumpian rants against Mexican immigrant rapists and his vow to build a Great Wall of Trump along the southern US border, paid for by Mexico.

US rivals like China and Iran obviously get no quarter (though some of his kindest words are for Vladimir Putin). Climate change is a hoax, he maintains, while global warming is a concept created by and for the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive. Could someone explain this last?

Believe it not, however, there is a method to the madness. Only to an extent is Mr Trump making it up as he goes along. Strip away the bombast, the insults and the self-adoration, and his basic views have a long consistency and have ample precedent in US history.

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Back in the mid-19th century, the Know-Nothing movement railed at the Irish and German immigrants who were threatening the very essence of America, much as the Mexicans and Muslims of todays Trumpian demonology. In the 20th century, plenty of politicians and celebrities admired dictators and wanted to pull back from the world: think Charles Lindbergh and his pro-Nazi proclivities, or Robert Taft, the conservative senator who opposed US aid for Britain in 1940, and subsequently made three unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination.

Or take a interview Mr Trump gave to Playboy magazine in 1990 when his vaulting ambitions were already evident. A President Trump, he said, would believe very strongly in extreme military strength. He wouldnt trust anyone hed have a huge military arsenal, perfect it, understand it. Part of the problem is that were defending some of the wealthiest countries in the world for nothing... Were being laughed at around the world, defending Japan.

The self-same themes resound in 2016. In doctrinal terms, Mr Trump could be described as nativist, mercantilist and neo-isolationist. Put more simply, he is viscerally anti-immigrant and believes America is a soft touch, ripped off by the Chinese especially but by its other trading partners too.

And third, he believes America should cut back its involvement in the world, sheltering behind a mighty military apparatus that would crush any aggressor like a fly. But if wealthy countries like Japan, Germany and Korea want America to defend them too, they should pay for it instead of freeloading, as Mr Trump claims they do now.

Whether these views would survive his first Oval Office collisions with global reality is anyones guess. Maybe the deal-making skills he vaunts would come into play. Maybe those skills would produce a more even-handed US approach to the Israel-Palestine crisis. Who knows?

But right now all we have is words, and on that basis a Trump presidency is a truly scary prospect. A couple of weeks ago, The Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum warned that we may be just three votes away from the disintegration of the post-war international order: the election of Trump, Brexit, and a President Marine Le Pen in France.

On the available evidence, the first vote alone would probably do the trick.
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Venezuela is to be shut down for a week over the Easter period as an energy crisis grips the country.

The traditional two-day Easter holiday will be extended by three days, effectively closing the country,which is also in the throes of an economic crisis, for a full working week.

The move is intended to reduce pressure on the countrys limited electricity supply, despite Venezuela owning the worlds largest oil reserves.

The majority of electricity in the country is supplied by hydropower, from infrastructure such as the 10.2-gigawatt Guri Dam in the eastern Bolivar state.

However, due to a drought, the water reserves which are needed to power hydroelectricity are extremely low.

In pictures: Venezuela elections Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Venezuela elections In pictures: Venezuela elections An opposition masked man holds a Venezuelan national flag as supporters of Venezuelan opposition coalition Mesa de Unidad Democratica (MUD) celebrate the victory of the party in Caracas, after the Venezuelan National Election Council's President, Tibisay Lucena (unseen), announced that MUD won the legislative election EPA In pictures: Venezuela elections Several people celebrate in a street in Caracas EPA In pictures: Venezuela elections A woman reacts as people celebrates in a street in Caracas EPA In pictures: Venezuela elections Humberto Lopez, known as "El Che", reacts as National Electoral Council (CNE) President Tibisay Lucena announces the official results of parliamentary elections in Caracas. Venezuela's opposition won control of the legislature from the ruling Socialists for the first time in 16 years, giving them a long-sought platform to challenge President Nicolas Maduro Reuters In pictures: Venezuela elections Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks after listening to the results of the legislative elections in Caracas. The Venezuelan opposition won national elections by a landslide, with at least 99 of the 167 seats confirmed for the alliance of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). It was the first defeat of the socialist movement since its founder Hugo Chavez came to power in a 1998 electionelection In pictures: Venezuela elections Opposition leaders, from left to right, Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, Freddy Guevara, of the Voluntad Popular party, Jesus Torrealba, head of the Democratic Unity Movement (MUD) party and deputy Julio Borges celebrate in Caracas. Venezuela's opposition won control of the National Assembly by a landslide, delivering a major setback to the ruling party and altering the balance of power after 17 years of socialist rule AP In pictures: Venezuela elections Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles votes in the legislative election, in Caracas Getty Images In pictures: Venezuela elections A citizen votes in the legislative election in Caracas Getty Images In pictures: Venezuela elections Presidential Guard officers hold their national identification cards as they enter a polling station during congressional elections in Caracas AP In pictures: Venezuela elections Voters enter a public school serving as a polling station, decorated with an image of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez, right, and current President Nicolas Maduro, during congressional elections in Caracas. The system built by Chavez faces its gravest electoral test as voters cast ballots in what seems to have become a tightening race for control of the national legislature AP

Unlike other countries which use hydropower as a significant source of energy, such as the United States, Venezuela has no sufficient reserve energy system to use if there is a problem with hydropower.

In addition to water rationing, this has caused the worsened recent power shortages. However, there have been rolling blackouts since 2009.

Critics have said this is due to a rapid increase in electricity demand but insufficient government efforts to expand and update infrastructure.

The government has blamed the El Nino weather system  which has caused dry weather - and unidentified saboteurs for the energy crisis.

Were hoping, God willing, rains will come, President Nicolas Maduro said of the emergency measures in a national address, Bloomberg reported.

Look, the saving is more than 40 per cent when these measures are taken. Were reaching a difficult place that were trying to manage.

However, critics have blamed economic mismanagement, poor planning and political favouritism for the energy crisis.

The news comes as Venezuela's Supreme Court approved President Nicolas Maduro's request for a 60-day extension of an economic emergency decree.

Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God Show all 19 1 /19 Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God mauduro9.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God maduro6.jpg EPA Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles0.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles3.jpg Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles2.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God maduro7.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God maduro4.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles20.jpg EPA Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles21.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God maduro2.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles19.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles17.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God madur5.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles9.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles5.jpg AFP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles14.jpg Reuters Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles12.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles7.jpg AP Venezuela's Maduro bids to be new Christ of the poor with help from Hand of God venezuela-capriles8.jpg AP

The proposal, granting wider economic powers to President Maduro, had initially been rejected by congress, which is controlled by the opposition.

Opposition politicians have accused President Maduro of being the cause of the countrys economic despair, and said he did not need further powers.

Venezuela has been hit hard by the fall in global oil prices, exacerbating the crisis.

Since first being granted the special powers in February, President Maduro has devalued the currency and raised petrol prices, previously the worlds cheapest, by 6000 per cent in a bid to make up for a steep decline in government revenues.

Small but widespread protests around Venezuela have been on-going since the start of the year.

More than 1000 demonstrations  nearly 17 per day  were recorded by the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict in January and February, according to Reuters.

Protesters have been expressing their anger not only at the water and electricity crises, but also labour disputes and rising food costs and scarcity.
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A woman has donated her kidney to a stranger after she read about his ordeal on Facebook.

Michael Norton, from Knox County, Kentucky, continued to work as a corrections officer at his local sheriffs department despite having 13 per cent kidney function.

Mr Norton appeared on ABC-affiliated local news station Wate 6 at the end of 2015 to tell of his wait for a match.

The officers wait ended when a woman spotted a post on the Wate 6 Facebook page entitled Knox County corrections officer wants a kidney for Christmas.

All he wants for Christmas is a new kidney. #WATE Posted by WATE 6 On Your Side on Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Touched by the article, Maryanne Ridenour, a young mother, called the University of Tennessee transplant centre and told them she was prepared to dontae.

Following tests to ensure she was physically and mentally fit to be an organ donor, doctors told Ms Ridenour she was a perfect match for Ms Norton. Eight weeks later on 24 February, the pair went under the knife.

Ms Ridenour told Wate 6: I had no fear. I felt like I was supposed to do this.

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

She added that she wanted to help Mr Norton because he just seemed like a normal guy, just like me and my family.

Mr Norton said Ms Ridenour is his guardian angel.

The pair are now recovering well, according to staff at the University of Tennessee, Wate 6 reported.

Ms Ridenour donated her organ weeks after a school teacher in Wisconsin announced she would give her kidney to her 8-year-old student.

Natasha Fuller, who is in the first grade, was born with prune belly syndrome which means she must use a dialysis machine to survive.

Her teacher Jodi Schmidt revealed to her student that she was going to donate her organ by presenting her with a box with the words its a match inside.

I have had some really good days in my life, and that was probably one of the best days of my life, Schmidt said of watching Burleton's reaction when she learned her granddaughter would be getting a kidney, according to FDL Reporter.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Zanu PF senator Misheck Marava has said President Robert Mugabe's long life was a blessing to Zimbabwe as he is expected to continue guiding the nation towards success.Speaking in parliament Marava said there is no country without elders."I was quite happy when I read one time that there is an Indian person who is 145 years old, who is still walking today. It is a gift that comes from the Lord. We thank the Lord for the gift of life. That gift of life was also granted to our President," he said. "We should be grateful for the years that he has achieved, whole heartedly; he is now in a group of the elite old men of this world. When we are debating here, we should tell the truth that the President is 92 years and as Zimbabweans we are grateful."He said Mugabe is not a South African or Canadian citizen."He is a gift to Zimbabwe. If you have the majority of elders living to 130 years, it does help us that will have advice us of a several pools of advisors and that way, we will not lose our history," he said. "An advisor or consultant in other countries is paid a lot of money and they are well respected. We have our advisor, our President who is now 92 years old, we thank him. As he grows older, he has had several experiences, both good and bad. One of the good things that he did was to lead the liberation war struggle up until we attained our independence as he waged the struggle from Mozambique.""We voted for him and I even learnt to draw the picture of President Mugabe and we went to celebrate as I was holding a drawn picture of the President  that was the time, bygones will stay bygones. This is why the whites say we should call a spade a spade. We should do that, our President is still alive; he could do a lot of good things because he is still alive. If we fail to tell him the truth, then we will be failing in doing our duty. We should not be bootlicking, those are into bootlicking should know that it does not take our country any further; it does not help the development of this country," he added.He said President Mugabe was the second one to sign the Kampala Declaration on the issue of statelessness, other countries domesticated that Kampala Declaration to assist their citizens but regrettably domestication of that document has not been done in Zimbabwe."We have not yet started using it, but it is an important aspect which could assist our children that are in this country and those who are in the Diaspora as asylum seekers," he said. "Other countries are benefiting from a document that our President is one of the first few signatories, yet we are not beneficiaries. When his Chairman tenure of African Union ended, he gladly passed on the baton, as Zimbabweans we did not even make an effort that our President should be given another term. Once a turn has come, one attains that position of Chairmanship regardless of our qualities, we led for that period and we did it. Our President did not embarrass us except for the few occasions here and there."He said they no longer have any income per capita, the strength of the US dollar has gone down, that can only be maintained by a leader of this country."Our President has no power over it because the American dollar is not our currency but it has helped us to stabilize our economy, we thank the Americans for their dollar. Where would we have been without the American dollar?" he said."I want to thank our President, he is the one who accepted to have the Government of National Unity, at the time of dollar for two, all of us were there. We thank him for having led us during that time, if we were closer to the GNU, we should have been better. If it was possible and I believe it is possible, it is not difficult that when we come into the Senate, we take the oath of loyalty to Zimbabwe."He said the Constitution that we now have, which was signed by the President, we should fight tooth and nail that it should come into full operation for the benefit of all our children."By so doing, we will have created a good image as other countries are watching to see if Zimbabwe will do what it has set itself to do that came out from its people. We will overcome, let us keep on walking," he said.
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North Korea has fired a ballistic missile into the sea, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un ordered further nuclear warhead and missile tests, according South Koreas defence ministry.

The launch comes amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula with the North remaining defiant in the face of the U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed earlier in the month in response to a nuclear test conducted in January.

The missile was launched from an area near the west coast north of the capital, Pyongyang, flying across the peninsular and into the sea off the east coast early Friday morning, Seouls office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

They added the missile flew 800 kilometres before crashing off the North's east coast on Friday.

Reuters reported that the distance was likely beyond the range of most short-range missiles in Pyongyangs arsenal. The regime last fired medium-range missiles in 2014.

It wasn't immediately known what type of missile was fired.

Associated Press, Reuters
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Today marks the one-year anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack at the Bardo National Museum in Tunisia.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the incident that left 24 people dead, including 20 foreign tourists.

In the year since, travellers have been the target of several other acts of terrorism, including a shooting on a beach at a Tunisian resort, the explosion of a Russian passenger jet and, most recently, a suicide bombing in the heart of Istanbuls historic district.

In the wake of the two Tunisian attacks, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has warned against all but essential travel to the country, advice that Simon Calder does not believe will change any time soon.

To learn more about how this attack has impacted both Tunisian and international tourism, watch this video.
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Greece could start sending refugees back to Turkey from the start of next week after a controversial refugee deal was reportedly reached in Brussels.

Bohuslav Sobotka, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, tweeted from inside a meeting of 28 European leaders to say the proposals were going ahead on Friday afternoon.

The deal with Turkey has been approved, he wrote. All illegal migrants who reach Greece from Turkey starting on 20 March will be returned.

Juha Sipila, the Prime Minister of Finland, also said the deal was approved by all EU members.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrives on the second day of the European Union summit to discuss the ongoing refugee crisis, in Brussels on March 18, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images)

The agreement will not be official until it is signed by Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish Prime Minister.

Under the scheme, any asylum seekers arriving in Greece will be given a swift individual interview to determine whether they will be allowed to remain or sent back to Turkey.

Responding to heavy criticism from international humanitarian organisations, a spokesperson for European Council President Donald Tusk said that the agreement ensured that any removals would have to be in full compliance with international and EU law and that there would be no collective expulsions.

The cut-off date is March 20 - that is on Sunday, he added. All migrants arriving after that cut-off date will be returned after individual assessment.

The EU has agreed to safely resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey for each irregular migrant returned to the country, in a move aimed to discourage asylum seekers from paying huge sums to smugglers for treacherous sea crossings.

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.

The proposal also addresses Turkish concerns about the slow delivery of 3 billion (2.3 billion) promised by the EU last November, by including a commitment to identify within the coming week a list of projects which will receive funding.

A further 3 billion is being made available after the initial funding runs out and the deal is also understood to promise visa liberalisation for Turkey's 75 million inhabitants within the Schengen area from this summer.

The EU has also agreed to re-energise its relations with Turkey by accelerating talks on eventual accession to the EU, which began in 2005 but have long been stalled.

European leaders have been accused of failing to censure the country alleged human rights abuses as negotiations on the refugee deal continued.

The talks continued in Brussels as dozens of activists, journalists and academics were detained in police raids and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for journalists, lawyers and politicians to be prosecuted as terrorists.

Turkish riot police use water cannon and tear gas to disperse supporters at Zaman daily newspaper headquarters in Istanbul. An Istanbul court ordered into administration a Turkish Zaman daily newspaper that is sharply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, amid growing alarm over freedom of expression in the country

Civilians are reported to be among hundreds of people killed in a military crackdown on Kurdish areas of south-east Turkey, where militant groups have been fighting an insurgency for decades.

The violence has been accompanied by restrictions on press freedom and civil rights, seeing the Zaman newspaper taken over by the government, journalists, academics and activists arrested and protests crushed by riot police with tear gas and water cannons.

Human Rights Watch condemned the situation as a new low and said the proposed conditions put the very principle of international protection for those fleeing war and persecution at stake.

The plan has also been heavily criticised for singling out Syrian refugees, who make up roughly 40 per cent of arrivals in Europe, over Iraqis, Afghans and other groups needing protection.

There was widespread speculation that the deal could be scuppered by a veto from Cyprus, which is in continuing dispute with Turkey over the invasion of the island in 1974 and formation of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

 Refugees in Greece stranded as borders shut

But President Nicos Anastasiades said he was satisfied with the latest draft of the agreement and was happy to sign.

The Overseas Development Institute, which has conducted research on why refugees choose to migrate, warned that the deal is unlikely to work to stop the crisis.

Marta Foresti, the think-tank's Director of Governance and Security, said: Our research shows refugees and migrants do not make the decision to leave their home lightly, are willing to take significant risks and will not be deterred by the policies and restrictions of EU countries.

Those excluded from the deal will continue to try different, more dangerous routes if the border between Turkey and Greece is shut to them.

The EU has failed to provide a humane or pragmatic response to the crisis, what is now needed is leadership at the global level.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Human rights organisations have hailed a "dark day for Europe" after a controversial deal between Turkey and the European Union aiming to stem the number of refugees fleeing across the Aegean Sea was reached in Brussels.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, confirmed the agreement was made unanimously on Friday afternoon.

After less than an hour of discussions, the prime ministers of Finland and the Czech Republic tweeted from inside the European Council negotiations to announce that the 28 leaders had given their approval to the arrangement, which must be signed off by the Turkish Prime Minister before being implemented.

 UN says EU-Turkey refugee deal would violate law

Authorities reported a surge in boats being sent towards the island of Lesbos as talks entered their final stages as smuggling traffic appeared to spike ahead of the expected crackdown.

Mustafa Nazmi Sezgin, the governor of Dikili district, told Reuters he knew of around 300 people who had been detained in his district alone and officials in Ankara said the total number detained was around 3,000.

Under the scheme drawn up by Mr Tusk and Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish Prime Minister, any migrant arriving in Greece after 20 March would be given a swift individual interview to determine whether they will be allowed to remain or sent back to Turkey.

Responding to heavy criticism from international humanitarian organisations, a spokesperson for European Council President Donald Tusk said that the agreement ensured that any removals would have to be in full compliance with international and EU law and that there would be no collective expulsions.

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.

The EU has agreed to safely resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey for each irregular migrant returned to the country, in a move aimed to discourage asylum seekers from paying huge sums to smugglers for treacherous sea crossings.

Turkey will also be sent billions of euros and is pushing for visa liberalisation for its 75 million citizens visiting Europe, as the EU re-energises accession talks.

Human Rights Watch condemned the situation as a new low and said the proposed conditions put the very principle of international protection for those fleeing war and persecution at stake.

The plan has also been heavily criticised for singling out Syrian refugees, who make up roughly 40 per cent of arrivals in Europe, over Iraqis, Afghans and other groups needing protection.

Save the Children said that almost 90 per cent of Syrians and 80 per cent of Iraqis have their asylum application granted, making any division on the basis of nationality "arbitrary and illegal".

The UN raised similar concerns, saying "blanket returns" would not be consistent with international or European law.

Amnesty Internationals UK director, Kate Allen, said: This is a dark day for the Refugee Convention, a dark day for Europe and a dark day for humanity.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and France's President Francois Hollande attend a meeting during a European Union leaders summit on migration in Brussels, Belgium

"It's absolutely shameful to see leaders seeking to abandon their legal obligations. Forcing refugees back into the hands of the very smugglers they just came from so they can have another go at exploiting them is obviously madness.

"There's no way anyone should herald this as a solution."

The Overseas Development Institute, which has conducted research on why refugees choose to migrate, warned that the deal is unlikely to work to stop the crisis.

Marta Foresti, the think-tank's Director of Governance and Security, said: Our research shows refugees and migrants do not make the decision to leave their home lightly, are willing to take significant risks and will not be deterred by the policies and restrictions of EU countries.

Those excluded from the deal will continue to try different, more dangerous routes if the border between Turkey and Greece is shut to them.

The EU has failed to provide a humane or pragmatic response to the crisis, what is now needed is leadership at the global level.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Refugees in Europe are living in conditions comparable to Nazi concentration camps, a senior Greek politician has said.

The Greek interior minister, Panagiotis Kouroublis was visiting the Idomeni camp on Greece's border with Macedonia.

Despite being planned for just 2,500 people, the camp hosts around 12,000 refugees - many from Syria and Iraq - in wet, cold and muddy conditions.

"I do not hesitate to say that this is a modern-day Dachau, a result of the logic of closed borders," said Mr Kouroublis. "Whoever comes here takes several blows to the stomach."

A migrant man walks on railway tracks at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Idomeni is regarded as one of the worst refugee camps on the European migrant trail, which has increased in size following Macedonia's decision to close its border.

Last week, in an example of the desperate situation faced by refugees in the camp, a photo emerged of a baby being washed by its parents in a puddle.

Mr Kouroublis is not the only Greek official to have spoken out against conditions in the camp.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship at the EU Commission, visited the camp on Tuesday.

Tents in Idomeni camp (AP)

The situation here is tragic, he said. It doesnt honour the civilised word, it doesnt honour Europe.

He also criticised the closing of the border, saying: "All our values are in danger today, and you can see it here in Idomeni.

"I believe that by building fences, by deploying barbed wire, is not the solution.

"We have to work together. Our target is to be in a position to relocate 6000 people per week."

Living conditions  mainly tents in swathes of mud  are extremely poor in the camp.

Health workers have been warning of an imminent health crisis, as they deal with numerous diseases and a myriad mental health issues among the camps inhabitants.

Despoina Fillipidaki, a logistician for the Red Cross, said: "We have found women in tents writhing in pain as a result of [intrauterine] foetal deaths," the Guardian reported.

"My biggest fear is that soon people will start to die. And what was their crime?

"All they want is a better life, to escape war, to escape poverty. And what do they get? Greece of [Nazi] occupation. These are scenes from another century, another time."

The United Nations has raised concern about shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation in the tent city, while Save the Children condemned the fetid conditions.

 Migrants form human chain

More than 46,000 refugees and asylum seekers are believed to be trapped in Greece after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting migrants pass through.

European Union leaders are currently holding a summit in Brussels aiming to strike a deal that could see those attempting to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece returned to Turkey.

In exchange, an equal number of Syrian refugees would be relocated safely directly from Turkish camps to Europe, while the country is also pushing for concessions to advance its accession to the EU.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, has dismissed growing criticism of a military crackdown on south-eastern parts of Turkey and restrictions of press and civil freedoms that have seen dozens of academics, journalists and lawyers arrested in recent days.

He claimed European leaders were "dancing in a minefield" and supporting terrorist groups, apparently referring to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

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.

"At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves," Mr Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television.

On Wednesday he said that freedom and democracy have absolutely no value in Turkey in the wake of several bombings and other attacks, having previously called for MPs, activists and journalists to be classified as terrorists.

European leaders have been accused of failing to censure Turkey over alleged human rights abuses as efforts continue to secure the deal on refugees.

Human Rights Watch condemned the situation as a new low and said the proposed conditions put the very principle of international protection for those fleeing war and persecution at stake.

The plan has also been heavily criticised for singling out Syrian refugees, who make up roughly 40 per cent of arrivals in Europe, over Iraqis, Afghans and other groups needing protection.

An agreement could be reached at a summit in Brussels today, where the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu were continuing negotiations.

Additional reporting by AP
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A Muslim woman agreed to lift her niqab while giving evidence in court, after she was warned she could face a fine or jail if she refused to do so.

Amira Behari, 43, was giving evidence in Munich, Germany, at the trial of a man she had accused of racially abusing her.

Last November, the 59-year-old man, named as Kai O, was acquitted by a judge after Ms Behari refused to remove her veil while in the witness stand.

The decision caused outrage and retrial was ordered.

On Thursday, Ms Behari agreed to lift her veil, but judge Claudia Bauer found the defendant not guilty of shouting at Ms Behari at Munich's central train station.

At the first trial at Munich's State Court, the judge had told Ms Behari that she must lift her veil so that he could "read her emotions", Mail Online reported.

Judge Thomas Mueller, added: "I need to see you otherwise there will be considerable problems in adjudicating your case."

Ms Behari refused, saying: "I have a God at the end of the world who will see me right at the end. I will not do this."

She was given the option of withdrawing the allegations - that the defendant had shouted "you people are a***holes" and "you don't belong here" at her - rather than remove her niqab, which is similar to a burqa but with a gap for the eyes.

Refusing to remove the niqab during the trial could have resulted in her being fined or sent to prison, Ms Behari was told. The court authorities consulted Koranic authorities, who said that it was acceptable for Ms Behari to remove her veil in front of judges, police and prosecutors.

But Ms Behari said she wanted to give evidence, removing her veil so that the judge, but not those sitting in the public gallery, could see her face.

The judge ultimately sided with the defendant, who was acquitted for the second time.
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Fingerprints belonging to Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam have been found at a Belgian flat where suspected Isis sympathisers started a shoot-out with police earlier this week.

One gunman was killed by a sniper but two other suspects are still at large after the raid in the Brussels district of Forest on Tuesday, where four officers were injured.

RTBF, Belgiums public broadcaster, reported that Abdeslam may have been one of the men who fled but officials would not confirm whether he was present.

Salah Abdeslam is still on the run after disappearing the day after the Paris attacks

According to our information, it is more than likely that he is one of the two individuals who escaped during the shootout, RTBF said on its website.

 Brussels raid: IS flag found

Tony Connelly, from Irish broadcaster RTE, separately quoted a Belgian police source claiming the killed gunman sacrificed himself to allow Abdeslam time to escape.

A spokesperson for Belgium's federal prosecutor confirmed that Abdeslam's fingerprints were found at the property, while Belgian and French media outlets said his DNA was also found on a glass.

"The investigation continues day and night," a spokesperson said. "It is currently not possible to give any additional information to avoid causing any damage to the investigation."

The fugitive remains on the run after appearing to have removed his suicide vest and fled during the Paris attacks on 13 November, when his older brother Brahim blew himself up.

No sightings have been confirmed since friends gave him a lift to Brussels on that night, despite an international warrant for his arrest.

Abdeslam's fingerprints were previously found at another Brussels flat where investigators believe explosive belts may have been manufactured ahead of the massacres.

Prosecutors released two men they detained in the wake of Tuesdays raid without charge on Wednesday, leaving the hunt on for the unidentified suspects.

In pictures: Brussels shooting Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Brussels shooting In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police secure an area in Brussels followinf the anti-terror raid linked to last year's Paris attack AP In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting An armed police officer runs on top of a roof during a police operation on the site of a shooting in the rue du Dries in Forest, Brussels EPA In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police officers take position on a rooftop during a police raid in Forest, Brussels EPA In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police at the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police at the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police at the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting A victim is removed from the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting A victim is removed from the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters In pictures: Brussels shooting Brussels shooting Police at the scene where shots were fired during a police search of a house in the suburb of Forest near Brussels, Belgium Reuters

The dead man was identified as Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian living illegally in Belgium, whose only contact with authorities appeared to be a theft charge two years ago.

But it emerged on Friday that the 35-year-old was already wanted for involvement under the Paris attacks under a pseudonym, Samir Bouzid.

Authorities did not know the Isis militants real name when putting out alerts to trace him in November after revealing that he was one of two men who travelled to Hungary with Abdeslam last year.

The pair was with a third accomplice using a fake Belgian identity card under the name Soufiane Kayal who went through police checks at the border with Austria on 9 September.

Belkaid was suspected of facilitating and financing the Paris attacks and other planned atrocities, transferring 750 (580) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the female cousin of ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud who died alongside him in another police raid five days after the Paris attacks.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in a firefight with police in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis (AP)

Officials said they were part of a terror cell planning further attacks in France, possibly on Charles de Gaulle Airport and the La Defense business district in Paris.

A Kalashnikov was found by his body as well as a book on Salafism, the ultra-conservative strand of Islam violently adhered to by Isis and other extremist groups.

An Isis flag was also discovered inside the flat, along with 11 loaders for Kalashnikovs and a large stock of ammunition.

The Belgian federal prosecutor said four Belgian and two French police officers came under fire from at least two militants as they burst into the home, which they believed to be empty.

Four officers were slightly wounded and one of their guns and protection vests were left with bullet holes.

More than a hundred houses have been searched and 58 people arrested so far in Belgiums investigation into the Paris attacks, where 130 people were murdered in a series of shootings and suicide bombings.
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Salah Abdeslam, the suspected Isis jihadi accused of helping kill 130 people in the Paris attacks, has been caught alive after being shot in the leg during an anti-terror raid in Brussels.

"We got him," the Belgian justice minister declared after confirming that Abdeslam, who has been on the run since the night of the attacks in November, had been captured during the operation in Molenbeek.

Another man was also injured in the raid on the flat in the Rue des Quatre Vents in the Molenbeek district  only a few hundred metres from the cafe that was once run by Abdeslam and his older brother Brahim.

Five people in total, including Abdeslam, have been arrested in connection with the raid.

Police sources said that Abdeslam had been besieged there for more than an hour before a police marksman immobilised him by shooting him in the leg, after which he was captured.

The second man arrested was named as Soufyane Kayal, said to be an associate of a suspect killed on Tuesday. A third man is reportedly still in the flat.

TV footage showed armed officers descending into the area and gunshots and explosions were reportedly heard.

Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old who is wanted for his part in Friday's killings (Police Nationale/PA)

Fire engines and ambulances were seen driving into the gated complex, which remains under armed police guard, and a helicopter hovered overhead.

Local media said police, who were joined at the scene by the army, appeared to use grenades while eyewitness reports suggested white smoke could be seen coming from a property.

Mr Michel left a European Union summit on the refugee crisis early as the raid unfolded.

He tweeted that US President Barack Obama has called him to congratulate him on the arrest and said he and France "stand united in the fight against terrorism".

French President Francois Hollande has said more people were involved in the November plot thatn authorities had initially assumed.

He has called for Abdeslam's extradition to France to face trial.

Earlier today, Belgian federal prosecutors confirmed they found Abdeslam's fingerprints in a Brussels raid on Tuesday.

Abdeslam may have been one of the men who fled the raid on Tuesday, RBTF reported, but officials would not confirm whether he was present.

A suspect is seen being escorted by police (Nex Noticias)

Abdeslam went on the run after appearing to have removed his suicide vest and fled the Paris attacks on 13 November which left 130 dead.

He is one of two Paris attacks suspects to escape alive, the other being Mohamed Abrini, who is still wanted by police.

In pictures: Paris attacks Show all 25 1 /25 In pictures: Paris attacks In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police with protective shields walk in line near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers evacuate an injured person on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Vigipirate troops mobilize next to Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French soldiers mobilize near to the Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated outside the scene of a hostage situation at the Bataclan theatre EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks People react as they gather to watch the scene near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police secure the area outside a cafe near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers workers evacuate victims near the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and French President Francois Hollande attending an emergency meeting at the Interior Ministry AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Spectators invade the pitch of the Stade de France after explosions were heard outside AP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A man lies on the ground as French police check his identity near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police officers man a position close to the Bataclan theatre AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Two men evacuate the Place de la Republique square in Paris as a police officer looks on AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Football fans are evacuated from the Stade de France stadium In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks An armed police officer Dan Gabriel In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France is evacuated after reports of an explosion In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A member of the French fire brigade aids an injured individual near the Bataclan concert hall In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police are seen outside a cafe in 10th arrondissement of the French capital Paris, In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers assist an injured man on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, close to the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The scene at a restaurant in 10th arrondissement In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Bataclan theatre - where around 100 people are thought be held hostage In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France as it was evacuated In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Forensic experts inspect the site of an attack outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis AFP

The Belgian-born son of Morrocan immigrants has remained at large since fleeing the capital on the night of the attacks.

The 26-year-old participated in the attack on restaurants near the Bataclan theatre with his older brother Brahim before they reportedly went to the Stade de France to blow themselves up.

Brahim was the only one to follow through on their plan. Abdeslam bought a SIM card from a shop in the 18th arondissment in northern Paris an hour after the attacks and called two friends in Brussels to come pick him up.

After walking for near nine hours he met them in Chatillon a suburb on the other side of the city at around 7am.

In his statement to Belgian authorities after the attacker, one of Abdeslam's friends said they had last seen him in the Schaerbeek area of northern Brussels the day after the attacks.

Authorities do not believe the flight was planned and he has reportedly been hiding from Isis as well as intelligence agencies as he did not fulfill his "martyrdom".

His name has been excised from all propaganda issued by the so-called Islamic State in the wake of the attacks. This has led to speculation that he might be as much on the run from Isis as from Europes police forces. Rumours have swirled for weeks about his possible whereabouts, with reports that he fled to Morocco or  implausibly  to the Isis-controlled parts of Syria and Iraq.

It is currently unknown how Abdeslam became radicialised.

One of Abdeslams friends from Molenbeek told The Independent he could "never, ever, ever have imagined it could be the same person [he] knew".

Abdel Ben Alal said: "We chatted and talked about school and sports. I didnt see any sign of hatred in him whatsoever".

Belgian policemen walk in a street during a police action in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, (Reuters)

Abdeslam also reportedly liked to frequent gay bars and was reportedly seen in one in central Brussels just weeks before the attacks.

It is believed he may have become an extremist after serving time in prison for robbery with his childhood friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud - the ringleader of the attackers who was killed in the Saint Denis raid in the days after - five years ago.

Earlier, the Belgian federal prosecutors office named the Algerian killed in Tuesdays raids as Mohamed Belkaid, alias Samir Bouzid, a known associate of Abdeslam and Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the leader of the Paris attacks. A black Isis flag and a book on Salafism, the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, were found in the flat.

Policemen block a road, near the scene of a police raid in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels, (Reuters)

Bouzid had been sought since December when police published closed-circuit images of him sending money to Paris two days after the 13 November massacres. The money was sent to a cousin of Abbaoud, who died with him when police stormed their hideout on 18 November.

Belgian police say that they did not expect to find anyone when they knocked on the door of the house in Rue du Dries on Tuesday. Although the six police officers  four Belgian and two French  were armed and wearing bullet-proof jackets, they also failed to anticipate that the suspects might flee through the first floor window, into the back alleys and gardens, and along roofs.
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The President of Turkey has said democracy and freedom have absolutely no value in the country after calling for journalists, lawyers and politicians to be prosecuted as terrorists.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Wednesday as almost 50 people, including activists and academics, were detained in a wave of police raids.

In a speech to local politicians in Ankara, he criticised critics raising concern over Turkeys record on democracy, freedom and rule of law as discussions over a landmark deal on the refugee crisis continue.

Turkish riot police use water cannon and tear gas to disperse supporters at Zaman daily newspaper headquarters (GETTY)

For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer, he said in the televised address, according to a translation by DPA.

Those who stand on our side in the fight against terrorism are our friend. Those on the opposite side, are our enemy.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes Show all 8 1 /8 Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Just a week before he was elected President, he called Erdogan Amberin Zaman, the Turkey correspondent for 'The Economist', a "shameless militant woman disguised under the name of a journalist" after she had asked an opposition leader whether "Muslim society is able to question" the authorities. "Know your place," Erdogan said. "They gave you a pen and you are writing a column in a newspaper. "And then they invite you to a TV channel owned by Dogan media group and you insult at a society of 99 per cent Muslims," he said he said according to Today's Zaman newspaper. Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Turkish people are pictured chanting slogans during an anti-government protest on Taksim square in Istanbul, on 29 June, 2013. The protests were sparked by brutal police action against a local conservation battle to save Istanbul's Gezi Park, and soon turned into nationwide demonstrations against the government. Amid the protests - the worst in Turkey for years - Erdogan accused demonstrators of being "arm-in-arm with terrorism," according to Reuters. "This is a protest organized by extremist elements. We will not give away anything to those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism," he said. GURCAN OZTURK/AFP/Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes During last years protests, activists used social media to organise and disseminate information. Several dozen tweeters were arrested following the protests, according to local media reports. Erdogan responded by calling the technology a "menace". "There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society," BBC New reported. Vladimir Astapkovich/RIA Novosti via Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Not helping to allay accusations of authoritarianism, after Turkish police detained 49 people, including well-known business people and those close to the ruling party, Erdeogan ominously told reporter that Turkey "is not a banana republic" that can be affected by unnamed "operations", according to Today's Zaman newspaper. People who are backed by the media and certain funders cannot change this country," he said. "People backed by certain dark gangs both inside and outside Turkey cannot mess with the country's path. They cannot change conditions in Turkey. Turkey is not a country that anyone can launch an operation into. The [Turkish] nation will not allow that. The AK Party, which is governing this nation, will not allow this." Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Friends and relatives of the miners who died in an explosion at the Soma mine are pictured praying following the burial in Soma cemetery of the last body to be recovered from the mine in May 2014. At the time, the then-Prime Minister badly misjudged the Soma mining disaster, in which 301 workers died. He told the relatives of dead and dying miners that "these types of incidents are ordinary things", following allegations that the government had ignored safety concerns about the privately owned mine, the Guardian reported. In his defence, Erdogan recounted in a separate speech a list of mining disasters which occurred abroad, including a British disaster in 1862, and one in America "which has every kind of technology". Oli Scarff/Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Palestinians pictured attending Friday noon prayers in a destroyed mosque that was hit by Israeli strikes, in Gaza City. As Prime Minister, Erdogan has condemned Israel, accusing it of deliberately killing Palestinian mothers and warned that the it would "drown in the blood it sheds." Speaking to thousands of supporters during a rally in Istanbul ahead of the 10 August election, Reuters reported him as saying: "Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target." "They kill women so that they will not give birth to Palestinians; they kill babies so that they won't grow up; they kill men so they can't defend their country ... They will drown in the blood they shed," he said. AP Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes Amid the worst protests in Turkey for years which had spread across dozens of cities last June, Erdogan accused demonstrators of being "arm-in-arm with terrorism," according to Reuters. A demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square grew into mass protests against a heavy-handed police crackdown and what opponents called Erdogan's authoritarian policies. "This is a protest organized by extremist elements," Erdogan said before departing on a trip to North Africa. "We will not give away anything to those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism," he said. Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most controversial quotes The Turkish President's craziest quotes In March 2014, Erdogan accused a 15-year-old boy who died from injuries sustained in last year's anti-government protests of being linked to terrorism. Berkin Elvan, who became a symbol of anti-government protests, had gone to pick up bread when he was hit with a teargas canister - sending him into a nine-month coma before he passed away. In a speech broadcast on state TV, Erdogan said of Berkin: "This kid with steel marbles in his pockets, with a slingshot in his hand, his face covered with a scarf, who had been taken up into terror organisations, was unfortunately subjected to pepper gas. How could the police determine how old that person was who had a scarf on his face and was hurling steel marbles with a slingshot in his hand? ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images

On Monday, the President had vowed to extend the legal definition of terrorists to include MPs, activists and journalists.

It is not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should also be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title, Mr Erdogan said.

Police operations claim to be targeting the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) following a bombing claimed by one of its splinter groups that killed 37 people in Ankara on Sunday.

 Car bomb in Turkish capital

But friends of those detained have said they include academics who signed a declaration calling for peace and a British man arrested over leaflets found at his home.

Kurdish groups are suspected of orchestrating several recent attacks across Turkey as government forces continue a crackdown in south-eastern parts of the country where the minority has been demanding greater autonomy for decades.

A ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK collapsed in July and military operations intensified in December, seeing hundreds killed including civilians, the destruction of several districts and more than 350,000 people displaced.

The violence has been accompanied by restrictions on press freedom and civil rights, seeing the Zaman newspaper taken over by the government, journalists arrested and protests crushed by riot police with tear gas and water cannons.

A woman inspects her belongings in her ruined home in Cizre. Turkish authorities have scaled down a 24-hour curfew imposed on the mainly Kurdish town (Getty Images)

European leaders have been criticised for failing to censure Turkish politicians over the alleged abuses as they attempt to secure a controversial deal that could help stem the flow of refugees and migrants crossing the Aegean Sea.

An agreement could be reached at a summit in Brussels today, where the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will continue negotiations after EU leaders agreed a common stance on Thursday.

The accord would see Turkey agree to take back asylum seekers picked up off the Greek coast in exchange for Syrian refugees being directly relocated to European nations from camps in Turkey and a series of concessions to speed up the EU membership process.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A leaked election manifesto has revealed that Germanys vote-winning new anti-immigrant party has plans for draconian laws which would discriminate against handicapped children, single mothers, and the mentally ill  and oblige history teachers to end a perceived over-emphasis on the Nazi era in schools.

The radical proposals are contained in an election manifesto produced by the right-wing populist Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party, which made sweeping gains in three state elections last weekend in a show of public opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door refugee policy.

The AfDs success meant that the party is now represented in eight of Germanys 16 state parliaments. A poll published by YouGov showed that more than 70 per cent of Germans now believe that the AfD is firmly on course to win seats in Germanys national Bundestag parliament next year, when it will contest a general election for the first time.

The previously secret draft national manifesto, which is due to be approved by a full AfD party congress at the end of April, has been published by the not-for-profit German research group Correctiv.org. It shows that the AfD is far more than the single issue anti-immigration party portrayed in recent campaigning.

The partys manifesto makes it clear that the AfD wants a return to what it calls national values in Germany. It says it sees the traditional family as the only model which can reverse the countrys declining birth rate. To this end the party pledges to take steps to ban abortion and make divorce more difficult. By contrast, German families which produce children should be rewarded with financial incentives, it says.

 Germany: Anti-refugee AfD party make big gains in regional elections

It regards single-parent mothers as a burden upon taxpayers and a disincentive to healthy family life, and says it would end the provision of state benefits for them. The AfD is against the state financing the self-chosen single parent life model, the manifesto says. It also advocates an end to the funding of state-run kindergartens, and favours young children remaining at home to be looked after by a parent.

Further socially disadvantaged targets include the mentally ill. The party argues: Therapy-resistant alcoholics, drug addicts and psychologically ill perpetrators should not be kept in psychiatric hospitals but be put under lock and key.

The AfD also suggests that handicapped children should not be included at all costs as pupils in regular schools because, it claims, their presence can impede other pupils progress. It wants the age of criminal responsibility to be reduced from 14 to 12. The party also favours dramatically cutting state benefits and introducing a flat 20 per cent tax rate, which would primarily benefit the wealthy.

The AfDs proposals for history teaching in schools are equally radical. The party aims to end what it describes as the current limitation of history teaching to the period of National Socialism. Instead it proposes a wider consideration of history which includes more positive aspects of Germanys past.

AfD election manifestos published in the run-up to last weekends state elections also contained proposals to compel museums and theatres to strengthen their identification with German as opposed to foreign culture.

The Social Democrat Party leader Sigmar Gabriel argues the AfDs ideas and language are a fatal reminder of the vocabulary used in the 1920 and 1930s, in a reference to the period during which the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. He added: The AfD is trying to establish a nationalistic society based on the idea of excluding people.

Beatrix von Storch, a leading AfD politician who helped to draft the manifesto, has argued that the AfD should move beyond its opposition to the euro and asylum-seekers, to concentrate instead on opposing Islam.

The manifesto says the state should set limits on the practice of the Muslim faith. Minarets should be banned along with the wearing of the burka and niqab in public. Muslim organisations should have tax benefits cut. Male circumcision should be outlawed and a ban be imposed on the slaughter of animals without anaesthetic.

Commentators and politicians in Germanys mainstream parties have accused the AfD of resorting to language and terminology once used by Hitlers National Socialists. However the AfD has yet to defend its leaked manifesto in public.

Frauke Petry, the AfDs leader, who recently sparked outrage after she insisted that firearms should be used to deter migrants at Germanys borders, was at the centre of a row on Friday after apparently refusing to appear on a breakfast chat show on Germanys ZDF public television channel. She had been due to answer questions posed by an award-winning Iraqi-born journalist, Dunja Hayali.

Hajo Funke, a Berlin university expert on the far right, said: We must confront the AfD on its racism and its extreme right-wing policies. These endanger the community rather than support it.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political analyst Joseph Phiri has said former Vice President Joice Mujuru must explain a lot of what was happening in the Zanu PF administration before she could be considered by the electorate as a true democrat.He said Mjuru is an uninspiring leader an d she sounds like Buhera South MP Joseph Chinotimba."l wonder if her doctorate is genuine or she acquired it the Zanu PF way," he said. "Besides she has a lot to explain before she is accepted by the people of Zimbabwe in general as a true democrat in the opposition corridors. I am afraid her position at the moment is tainted with her long association with Mugabe."He said her crew of Didymas Mutasa, Jabulani Sibanda and Rugare Gumbo to name a few don't give her an appealing complexion."Mujuru should tell us who was sponsoring those atrocities committed in the name of the powers to be without their knowledge as she claims," he said.
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The familiar riverscape of Paris  elegant, low buildings and a large metal tower, will be transformed today into something closer to Moscow-sur-Seine.

A large golden dome, the first of five, will be winched into place on a new Russian Orthodox cathedral under construction on the Quai Branly, close to the Eiffel Tower.

The cathedral, officially called Sainte-Trinite, but nicknamed Saint Vladimirs after the Russian President, has been the subject of political, financial and architectural disputes for eight years.

Despite an attempt in a French court on Thursday to seize all assets on the site, the 170m (132m) project  entirely funded by the Kremlin  is due to be completed by October.

The cathedral, which will also house a cultural centre and a school, is a symbol of Moscows determination to project a powerful image of a resurgent and spiritually strong Russia. There is already a Russian orthodox cathedral in Paris but it remains under the control of expatriates descended from the White Russians who fought the Leninist Revolution a century ago next year.

The French intelligence services objected that the new cathedral might serve Moscows aims in a more practical way. They have, according to reports in the French media, surrounded the building with jamming devices to prevent electronic surveillance of nearby government offices.

48 hours in Paris Show all 1 1 /1 48 hours in Paris 48 hours in Paris

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened personally in 2008 to ensure that Russia could buy and develop one of the most prestigious sites in the French capital. One of the other candidates to take over the former French Met Office site was the Saudi Arabian government.

Since then, there have been several arguments over the cathedral  notably the un-Parisian nature of its five, traditional bulb-shaped domes, which will decorate the left-bank of the Seine between the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides. Such disputes have been mild compared to the unholy stink that might have been raised by the French right if the cathedral had been a Saudi-funded mosque.

It was, in fact, the centre-left former Parisian mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, who objected in 2012 to the first, garish and uncompromisingly Russian design. Mr Delanoe complained that this ostentatious pastiche was utterly inappropriate for the site. The cathedral was redesigned under the supervision of the French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte.

The final version, part modern, part traditional, includes typically Parisian masonry with the same Burgundian stone used in the four plinths of the Eiffel Tower. Mr Wilmotte said: This is an orthodox church in Paris not in St Petersburg. We wanted to Parisianise it.

The new design retains, however, the five golden domes. The first  cast in a Breton shipyard, 12m high, 11m in diameter and weighing 8 tons  will be placed on the building on Saturday, with the head of Vladimir Putins private office, Alexandre Kolpakov, among those attending.

Despite the freeze in Russian-European relations since Moscows annexation of the Crimea two years ago, President Francois Hollande has, like his predecessor, gone out his way to smooth the way for the Orthodox cathedral.

A French diplomat who followed the saga was critical, telling Le Monde: There was nothing wrong with building a new church but nobody wanted to confront Russias ulterior motives for creating what will inevitably become a symbol of Russian power in the heart of Paris.

Jean de Boishue, a former adviser to Mr Sarkozys Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, said the former president saw the cathedral as a building block in a special Franco-Russian relationship. It was Realpolitik  the same impulse which led France to make a deal after the Georgian war [in 2008] to sell two Mistral warships to Russia, he said. The deal to sell the Mistrals was revoked by President Hollande as part of the post-Crimea EU sanctions on Russia. The cathedral was not.

Michel Eltchaninoff, author of Dans la tete de Vladimir Poutine (Inside the head of Vladimir Putin), said: Holy Russia has always been used as a tool of foreign influence. [The cathedral] is a seductive statement of power, imposed by a country which boasts of its Christian roots on the capital of a secular state judged (by the Russians) to be enfeebled by multiculturalism and spiritual amnesia.
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Salah Abdeslam was a ghost, a jihadist whose presence in Europe was, four months after the Paris attacks, subject to considerable doubt.

He could not remain un-found, surely, with an entire continent singularly focused on capturing the man who slicked the Paris pavements in blood? He could, it seemed.

Detained at the pleasure of the same Belgian police he avoided at every turn for almost four months, his leg injured in a gunfight, the 26-year-old jihadist whose struggle against unbelievers was completed with Paris attacks, may have been thinking that his greatest mistake was staying alive.

His conspirators in terror, the other Isis jihadists who, on 13 November murdered more than 130 people in Paris, were soon dead. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris cell leader, was dead days after the attack, killed by French security forces. Also dead was Abdeslams brother, suicide bomber Brahim Abdeslam.

But Abdeslam suvived. He dumped his suicide belt in a dustbin in Montrouge, just south of the Paris city boundary, in the early hours after the attacks. He made a mobile telephone call from Montrouge a few hours before he was rescued by two friends from Brussels at 5am on the Saturday. He was then seen in northern France, looking nonchalant. With him that morning was his friend Hamza Attou, now in custody.

Abdeslam eventually returned to the Belgian capital, Brussels, where he holed up in the districts he knew best, restive Molenbeek, newly identified as the hotbed of Europes Islamist movement. Those familiar with Molenbeeks combination of crushing poverty, isolation, and lack of employment opportunities had forewarned an Islamist uprising. Still, that Abdeslam had been plotting their attack in the Belgian capital was a surprise to authorities in both countries.

 Brussels raid: IS flag found

The trail went cold, opportunities to capture a man wanted across a continent were missed. Culpable, certainly, were Belgian police. Their error was admitted, and authorities promised lessons would be learned.

A month before the attacks, Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans, received a list with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area. On that list were the brothers Abdeslam and Abaaoud. What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists, Ms Schepmans said. That, she added, is the responsibility of the federal police.

Still, at the turn of the New Year, Abdeslam eluded authorities. Some believed he had travelled on the migrant trail to Syria. But police forces across the Continent still believed that in the case of Abdeslam, absence of evidence did not constitute evidence of absence.

The investigations continued. Eventually, searches of the Schaebeek neighbourhood of Brussels found the flat where the suicide belts used in the attacks were almost certainly constructed. Also found in the flat were Abdeslams finger prints. You will never see me again, were Abdeslams last words to a friend in Schaerbeek before he left the district.

Almost certain was that he would not return to Isis. His failure to die in the Paris attacks, and his fleeing, made him a non-person in the eyes of the jihadist group. He did not even feature in the propaganda videos of the Islamists after the attack.

French and Belgian investigators believed that Abdeslam refused to carry out a suicide bombing and was, therefore, as much on the run from Isis as from Europes police forces.

If the self-proclaimed Islamic State had given up on Abdeslam, police forces in France and Belgium had not. In Molenbeek, they finally had their man.
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Gathered in a small white marquee pitched on a sweeping lawn at the UNs Palais des Nations in Geneva were a bunch of people who are rarely to be found sharing a tent. There was Major Hassan Ibrahim, a haggard Syrian rebel commander, up on stage to mark the fifth anniversary of the uprising in his country. Watching from the assembled crowd of journalists, the head of Damascuss foremost propaganda agency made no effort to hide his smirks.

That these two figures from rival sides of the conflict were just a few metres apart was strange enough, but such surreal scenes are not the oddest aspect of the Syria peace talks that resumed this week. Two thousand miles away, tens of thousands of people are starving; here, in the genteel Swiss city, the parties at the UN headquarters dance around the arguments as groups of noisy teenagers go past on school tours.

Rather unfortunately for what is supposed to be the fulcrum of world peace, the austere neoclassical facade of the Palais des Nations, constructed in the early 1930s, has strong echoes of Nazi architecture.

The setting is lovely, with views over the glittering Lake Geneva and the snowcapped Swiss Alps, and the cafes are the only place in this ludicrously expensive city where a cappuccino costs less than 4. Otherwise there is little to commend it.

The palace is impossible to navigate, with signs leading you up and down and round and round until you are back where you started. Helpfully for visiting peacemakers from Syria, Yemen or Ukraine, the rooms are labelled with Roman numerals. God forbid you mistake Halle XIV for Salle XIV when searching for a meeting room: youd end up accidentally at a cinema donated by the Republic of Kazakhstan. Perhaps the hope is that warlords and tyrants will be so disorientated by the time they reach the negotiating table that they will agree to anything.

The grand, glassy corridors are filled with strange artwork. Youve got to wonder what Mohammed Alloush, chief opposition negotiator and a member of Saudi-backed Islamist rebel faction Army of Islam, makes of the 10ft oil paintings of bare-breasted African tribeswomen.

In the area where press conferences are held after each meeting, a giant canvas features a naked, bald man striking an action pose as if about to leap into the lake for a skinny dip. He bears an uncanny resemblance to Staffan de Mistura, the UN Syria envoy, who must stand just five metres from this likeness when he updates the world press on his efforts to end the worlds most deadly conflict.

The two delegations  from the Syrian government and the body anointed to act as the official opposition  stay in hotels a few miles from the UN, with a huge coterie of advisers and hangers-on. Finding somewhere to stay is often a problem. Mr de Mistura recently claimed he had delayed the latest round of talks because the 86th annual Geneva International Motor Show meant all the hotels were booked up.

The warring parties generally come into the UN on alternate days, so there is no danger of blood being spilled on the marble floors. But sparks do fly when journalists from opposition news channels quiz the government delegation and vice versa. Reporters from as far and wide as Brazil and Japan look on, bemused, usually trying and failing to catch the mutterings of a translator somewhere near the back.

Veterans of the Syria talks spoke of a new spirit of optimism this week compared with previous rounds. Discussions began against the backdrop of a two-week ceasefire and a Russian promise to withdraw troops. The opposition in particular was thrilled by Vladimir Putins announcement  one diplomat said he had to be peeled off the ceiling after hearing the news.

There were other encouraging moments. One day this week, I spotted a member of the opposition delegation laughing and joking in a corner of a UN cafe with a staffer from a staunchly pro-Assad news channel. Naively, I asked to take a picture. Both leapt to their feet and vigorously shook their heads. But it was nice to see them behaving like two normal people when the cameras had stopped rolling.

The fact remains, however, that the rival delegations do not refer to each other by name, let alone speak to each other. Bashar al-Jaafari, chief negotiator for the Syrian government, lashed out at his opposition counterpart on Wednesday for demanding the death of Bashar al-Assad. He described him as terrorist and said he would refuse to meet him until he shaved off his beard.

As Mr de Mistura himself is fond of saying, the key to solving this crisis lies in the hands of the world powers that sponsor rival sides. Until that happens, it is hard to resist the sense that everyone is just going through the motions  and roaming the endless corridors.
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Some Syrians in the besieged areas of Daraya and Deir al-Zor have been reduced to eating grass because food supplies are cut off, the UN World Food Programme said on Friday.

"In the most severe cases, they are enduring entire days without eating, sending children to beg and eating grass/wild vegetation," a report said.

Deir al-Zor is under seige by Isis forces, while Daraya is besieged by government forces and has become a focus of UN efforts to get aid to all of Syria. Syria's government has not yet granted permission for aid to go to the city.

 Weakened, cold and starving to death in Syrian town

Households in the two cities were unable to eat more than one meal per day, giving priority to children, said the WFP report, a survey of Syrian food market conditions in February.

Fresh bread was "sporadically available at an extortionate cost" in Daraya, 30 times above the market price in nearby Damascus. Rice was 17 times higher than Damascus prices.

Earlier this year, the Syrian government approved humanitarian aid deliveries to seven besieged cities considered to be most in need of relief by the 17-member International Syria Support Group.

However, despite a widespread truce that has lasted almost three weeks, the government has refused to give permission for UN aid convoys to enter six areas under siege by its forces, including Daraya.

In pictures: Syria conflict Show all 40 1 /40 In pictures: Syria conflict In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians carry children amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man carries a girl on a street covered with dust following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians react as they stand amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man carries a girl amid debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis An injured Syrian man walks out from the rubble of a destroyed building following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman makes her way through debris following a air strike by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis People stand on the rubble of collapsed buildings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in the Al-Fardous neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian residents stand amid the rubble of destroyed buildings In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian resident grasps a mattress amid rubble in the al-Firdous neighborhood of the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A view taken from Tel al-Sawadi shows a large explosion allegedly at the Wadi Deif Syrian army base in northwestern Idlib on May 14, 2014, which opposition fighters have been trying to capture for more than a year. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamist rebels detonated explosives planted in a tunnel under the army base killing or injuring dozens. AFP In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A bullet-riddled parking sign stands amid debris in a deserted street leading into the old city of Homs In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A general view shows abandoned buildings on a deserted square in the old city of Homs after Syrian government forces regained control of rebel-controlled areas In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A military vehicle that belongs to the Free Syrian Army is seen in Al-Amariya district in Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A mosque is pictured through shattered glass in the old city of Homs, as rebel fighters withdrew from the city centre in line with a negotiated withdrawal deal with the government after having held out under tight siege for nearly two years In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Buses carrying Free Syrian Army fighters leaving Homs. Exhausted and worn out from a year-long siege, hundreds of Syrian rebels left their last remaining bastions in the heart of the central city of Homs under a cease-fire deal with government forces. The exit of some 1,200 fighters and civilians will mark a de facto end of the rebellion in the battered city, which was one of the first places to rise up against President Bashar Assad's rule, earning it the nickname of "capital of the revolution" In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian government forces hold up a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad (L) while others raise the national flag on top of a pole in the old city of Homs In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad run through Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr crossing after their release by rebels. They were freed as part of a larger deal which saw the last remaining Syrian rebels in central Homs city evacuate their positions and free captives in several locations in northern Syria In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman and two children walk past heavily damaged buildings in the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man carries a wounded girl following a reported bombardment with explosive-packed "barrel bombs" by Syrian government forces in the al-Mowasalat neighborhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A wounded man sits as he is treated at a makeshift hospital following a reported bombardment with explosive-packed "barrel bombs" by Syrian government forces in the al-Sakhour district of the northern city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Debris rises in what Free Syrian Army fighters and Islamic rebels said was an operation to strike Al-Sahaba checkpoint, which is considered a gateway to Al-Dayf valley, and remove forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Maarat Al-Nouman, Idlib province In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Men try to put out fire at a site hit by what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Civil Defence members try to put out fire In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Survivors react at a site hit by what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Residents queue as they wait to receive food aid distributed by the UNRWA at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, south of Damascus In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Belongings of Syrian rebels inside a chapel at Crac des Chevaliers, the world's best preserved medieval Crusader castle in Syria. The village was destroyed in fighting between the government and rebel forces while the castle, listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, also has been damaged over the past two years In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Hosen Sabah, a 16-year-old student is comforted by his mother at a hospital in Damascus. Nosen was wounded by a mortar outside his school, while 14 other students were killed and over 80 wounded In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Free Syrian Army fighter works on a locally made launcher before firing it towards forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Mork town In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian policemen and citizens inspecting the site of a car bomb at the entrance of Moadhamiyet al-Sham neighborhood in rural Damascus. According to Syria's Arab News Agency (SANA), a car bomb explosion has gone off in the countryside of Damascus and initial information say there are casualties, where a car rigged with explosions was remotely detonated at the entrance of Moadhamiyet al-Sham neighborhood in rural Damascus during engineering units it was trying to dismantled it In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Opposition fighters carrying a rocket launcher during clashes against government forces in the Sheikh Lutfi area, west of the airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man helps a woman to make her way through debris following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian man reacts as he carries the body of injured boy following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 33 civilians were killed in the attack In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrian rescue workers carry the body of a woman following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A Syrian woman walks past the burning wreckage of a car following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man and two children run to a safer place following reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man holds an injured child after, according to activists, two barrel bombs were thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Hullok neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis An injured man talks on a walkie-talkie after, according to activists, two barrel bombs were thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Hellok neighbourhood of Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis A man walks inside a mosque damaged by, according to activists, a barrel bomb thrown by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad in Old Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Syrians gather at the site of reported air strikes by government forces in the Halak neighbourhood in northeastern Aleppo In pictures: Syria conflict Syria crisis Rebel fighters carry their weapons as they run to avoid snipers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the town of Morek in Hama province

UN humanitarian advisor Jan Egeland said on Thursday that countries backing the Syrian peace talks had given the Syrian government seven days to answer a UN request to deliver aid.

"It is in violation of international law to prevent us from going," he said, adding that the six areas were no more strategic or symbolic than other areas that had already received aid convoys.

"In Daraya there has been fighting, but we had a very clear impression that we will not be having any problems in delivering if we get the two sides to agree to the cessation of hostilities so that we can deliver to the few thousand people there, civilians who are in a very, very difficult position," Egeland said.

With no hope of getting convoys into Deir al-Zor by road, the UN hopes to do air drops of food. But a first attempt failed because the plane had to fly so high and fast to avoid the threat of surface-to-air missiles, causing the parachutes to fail because of the severe jolt when they opened.

Civilians in several Syrian cities have been starving as a result of sieges by the regime, rebel groups and Isis.

Thousands of civilians in the besieged settlement of Madaya were forced to eat leaves and flower petals to stay alive after eating the town's stray dogs and cats.

Supporters of the Syrian regime shared photos of their dinners to taunt the civilians and express their "solidarity with the siege of Madaya".

Reuters
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Woodrow Wilson was never likely to be revered as one of America's mightiest presidents. He was an academic, a quiet man, rather than a thumper of tubs. But he made a lasting contribution to his country's narrative when, on 25 August 1916, he signed the National Park Service (NPS) into existence. He did so, he said, to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide the enjoyment of the same in such a manner as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

A century on, he achieved his aim. The NPS's broad arms now embrace 410 sites across the United States  not just national parks (of which there are 59), but a host of national Trails, Parkways, Monuments and other protected places that form an intricate tapestry for tourists with a desire to explore. You can find details of centennial events at locations across the country at nps.gov/2016 and visittheusa.co.uk  but if you want to see America at its most superlative, the following national sites provide happy extremes in all manner of shapes.

Biggest and highest: Alaska

Alaska is a realm of giants. The sheer scale of America's largest state (it would be the world's 17th biggest country were it a sovereign entity) is apparent in the fact that it plays host to the US's most sizeable protected enclave. Wrangell-St Elias National Park & Preserve (nps.gov/wrst; free entry) is a behemoth of 20,587sq miles, where Mount St Elias rears to 18,008ft (5,489m) as the second highest peak on the continent. It is beaten by Denali (Mount McKinley), a masterful bluff of 20,310ft, which preens within neighbouring Denali National Park (nps.gov/dena; $10/7). Together, the pair are a haven for climbers and active travellers. Exodus (0845 314 2304; exodus.co.uk) offers Alaskan Wildlife and Wilderness  a 16-day group odyssey that spears into both parks for strenuous days of hiking. From 3,849 per person, with flights; five departures this summer.

Smallest: Arkansas

The tiniest US national park (a shard of just 8.5 square miles) flies below the radar of international perception in Arkansas. But Hot Springs National Park (nps.gov/hosp; free) has long been appreciated by Americans  not least the Cherokee and Choctaw, who were fully aware of the thermal waters that bubble from the Ouachita Mountains in the 18th century. Set in the town of the same name, the site hit its stride in the early 20th century  a popularity that spawned Bathhouse Row. You can still bathe in neoclassical finesse at the Buckstaff (buckstaffbaths.com; from $33/24) and Quapaw (quapawbaths.com; from $20/14) spas. A basic package of seven days' car hire and return flights to state capital Little Rock (50 miles to the north-east)  from Heathrow via Dallas on 21 May  costs from 843pp with British Airways Holidays (0344 493 0787; ba.com/holidays).

Geothermal pool in Yellowstone (AFP/Getty)

Coldest: Alaska

Enormous Alaska can also claim America's frostiest ring-fenced area. Even the name  Gates Of The Arctic National Park and Preserve (nps.gov/gaar; free)  talks of ice, though remarkably, while this northern hermit (it sits above the Arctic Circle, at 67N) can drop into the bowels of minus 60C in winter, it can briefly soar to 30C in summer. This is the time to visit its remote tranche of peaks (the Brooks Range) in search of the polar bears, lynx, wolves and cougars that call it home  but you will need specialist help. Anchorage-based Equinox Wilderness Expeditions (equinoxexpeditions.com) has two forays to the park (plus nearby Kobuk Valley National Park, a roadless expanse of water and sand dunes) planned for August  each offering 12 days of hiking, canoeing and fishing. From $5,690 (4,064) per person, not including international flights.

Hottest: Hawaii

America's mid-Pacific archipelago is mostly perceived as a beach oasis, but it showcases the full majesty of its magma-fried origins on the south-east side of the island of Hawaii (The Big Island)  where Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (nps.gov/havo) frames two of the planet's feistiest rock gods. Mauna Loa (13,679ft) is generally considered the largest volcano on the planet. It has kept its cool since 1984. The same cannot be said for Kilauea, which has been erupting since 1983, pouring its soul into the ocean in a haze of steam and fire, its lava hitting temperatures of 1,100C. This spectacle is accessible via Chain of Craters Road  a 19-mile game of dare that curls up to the inferno. Trafalgar (0800 553 5619; trafalgar.com) offers an 11-day Hawaii Discovery holiday that visits the park (plus Oahu, Maui and Kauai). It costs from 2,635 per person, excluding international flights.

Oldest: Wyoming

Yellowstone (nps.gov/yell; seven-day passes from $15/10.70 per person) is a slice of the American landscape so feted that it earned national park status (the first such enclave on the planet) almost half a century before there was a National Park Service  in 1872. Sprawled across the north-west of Wyoming (so that it ebbs into Montana and Idaho), it is a place for standing and staring, at a host of wonders  the 24-mile gap of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone; the roaring two-tier cascade of Yellowstone Falls; the spurting punctuality of the geyser, Old Faithful. Explore (01252 883 846; explore.co.uk) runs Yellowstone And Western Trails, a 15-day group jaunt that spends three days in the park as part of a splendid route that also visits Utah. From 2,699 per person, with flights.

Death Valley

Youngest: California

By contrast, Pinnacles National Park (nps.gov/pinn; seven-day passes from $10/7 per person) is a stripling. Not in terms of raw geology (its craggy, swarthy piles of stone are millions of years old), but in status  it became the newest national park, upgraded from National Monument by the Obama administration, in 2013. It was worthy of promotion  its 30 miles of hiking trails dash between outcrops where climbers swarm and birds of prey (condors, falcons) hover. Located 120 miles south-east of San Francisco, it is within easy day-trip range for tourists who try the Surf California, San Jose and Santa Cruz road trip sold by America As You Like It (020 8742 8299; americaasyoulikeit.com)  seven nights in Silicon Valley and on the beach. From 1,769 per person, with flights, car and hotels.

Driest and Lowest: California

California is not short on serrated spaces. Death Valley National Park (nps.gov/deva; seven- day passes from $10/7 a head)  thrust so firmly into the east of the state that it crosses into Nevada  can claim two American superlatives. Named by the unfortunate pioneers who stumbled into its desperate inhospitability in 1849, its salt flats and dunes are the driest portion of North America, granted but two inches of rain a year. It is also the lowest, the fiercely saline water of Badwater Basin skulking at 282ft below sea level. Consequently, it is a place best seen from an air-conditioned car. North America Travel Service (0333 323 9099; northamericatravelservice.co.uk) sells Western Parks & Canyons, a 15-day fly-drive looping in and out of Los Angeles, which holes up in Death Valley, in the Furnace Creek Inn. It costs from 2,109 per person  with car hire, flights and hotels.

Wettest: Florida

The Sunshine State rarely turns its gaze from the seafront. So much is shown by Biscayne National Park (nps.gov/bisc; free), a protected 270sq mile pocket due south-east of central Miami, which is 95 per cent water and submerged coral reef. It is a haven for sporty days: fishing, kayaking, windsurfing and diving are all permitted. Island Dreamer Sailing (001 561 281 2689; biscaynenationalparksailing.com) offers six-hour voyages  which allow for snorkelling and swimming  from $149 (106) per person. A basic package of seven days' car hire and flights from Heathrow to Miami on 12 May costs from 696 per person through Virgin Holidays (0344 557 4321; virginholidays.co.uk).

Travel By Numbers: US national parks Show all 4 1 /4 Travel By Numbers: US national parks Travel By Numbers: US national parks 354672.bin AFP/Getty Images Travel By Numbers: US national parks 354677.bin AP Travel By Numbers: US national parks 354678.bin AP Travel By Numbers: US national parks 354679.bin RexFeatures

Busiest: Tennessee

While that Arizona icon Grand Canyon National Park (nps.gov/grca; from $15/10.70 per person) is surely the most fabled member of the NPS club, the most popular is the mass of leafy glory that drapes itself across Tennessee and North Carolina. Great Smoky Mountains National Park (nps.gov/grsm) greets more than 10 million visitors a year. With good reason. Encompassing an 816sq mile wedge of the Appalachian Range, here is a hiking heaven wearing a coat of fir, the state line coursing through it, ascending to a peak of 6,643ft where Clingmans Dome stares across an ocean of green. Bon Voyage (0800 316 3012; bon-voyage.co.uk) offers a 13-day Blue Ridge Parkway fly-drive, which rolls through Virginia and North Carolina  before pausing in Gatlinburg, the Tennessee gateway to the national park. From 1,795 per person  with flights, car and hotels.

Longest: Colorado

Holidaymakers who are happy on foot are also drawn to the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, the epic path along the spine of America, which, at 3,100 miles in length, outlasts the more eulogised Appalachian Trail (2,180 miles; nps.gov/appa) in the east. It runs from the Mexican border in New Mexico to Canada's edge at the top of Montana, and also veers into Idaho and Wyoming. But it is at its most dramatic in Colorado, in Rocky Mountains National Park (nps.gov/romo; from $10/7)  where a 30-mile section is described by the NPS as breathtaking ... high peaks and fragile alpine tundra. US operator The Wildland Trekking Company (001 928 379 6383; wildlandtrekking.com) proffers the Continental Divide Loop  a five-day guided hike that charts this area, camping in the wild. Eight departures this summer, from $1,240 (871) per person  tour only.
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The framed print stands on a quayside, where the artist painted the original watercolour. Across a small bay his subject rises with solemn grandeur, a stronghold of the Knights Templar transformed in the 14th century by the Kings of Majorca into a magnificent summer palace.

It was in the summer of 1924 that the Scottish architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh painted The Summer Palace of the Queens of Aragon in Collioure, a small fishing village in southern France, near the Spanish border. He and his equally creative wife, Margaret, had abandoned a winter of discontent in foggy London for the sunshine and warmth of Roussillon, where they spent his final years wandering between the Vermilion coast and river valleys snaking into the high Pyrenees.

Almost a century later, their travels have been way-marked with reproductions of 30 of Mackintosh watercolours in situ where they were painted, interspersed by interpretation centres. It is a trail through time and space, from fortified medieval villages to a place Mackintosh called fairyland.

Margaret wrote that Collioure, framed by a jumble of wooded hills and terraced vineyards, was one of the most wonderful places we have ever seen. It was already an artists' colony, where Matisse and Derain had shocked the Parisian art world with vivid expressionism that became known as Fauvism.

The picture postcard village that attracted artists inevitably drew tourists, and today its narrow cobbled streets and lanes are lined with galleries and restaurants. A glimpse of the past survives in Les Templiers, a lounge bar that was the hub of the artistic community in the 1920s, when it was the Cafe des Sports. A starboard navigation light hangs from its bar, shaped like a fishing boat, and its walls are still crammed with paintings donated by artists in lieu of payment.

Mountain village near Villefranche (Gavin Bell)

The Royal Palace is another time machine, with a warren of chambers, passages and battlements transporting visitors to an age of courtly society and clash of arms. When Louis XIII's troops took it from the Spanish in 1642, their ranks included a musketeer by the name of d'Artagnan.

Amelie-les-Bains was generally more peaceful. This was where the Mackintoshes first arrived from London, and they could not have chosen a more blissful contrast. A thermal spa town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, dating back to Roman times, it has healing waters and miles of walking trails through woods of oak, chestnut and pine. The ambience is relaxed; a haven for couples enjoying spa treatments and aperitifs in pavement cafes.

In a hamlet above the town, a fine little exhibition of Mackintosh's work is displayed in the annex of a 10th-century church. Reproductions of his watercolours feature with distinctive Art Nouveau furniture, videos of his early life in Glasgow, and his designs for splendid concert halls that were never built. Outside, the peace of the mountains pervades a cluster of old stone houses and quiet lanes, disturbed only by birdsong.

Plaque of Mackintosh (Gavin Bell)

En route to Amelie, the Mackintoshes stopped at Ceret, a town with a medieval heart that a decade earlier had been the epicentre of Cubism. Works by Picasso, Herbin and Kremegne hang in its fine Museum of Modern Art, and the Brasserie de France, across the street where the painters drank and debated, still serves good food and wine beneath enormous plane trees.

The deeper they ventured into the eastern Pyrenees, the more enchanted Mackintosh and his wife became. Their next discovery was the valley of the River Tet, where they checked into a hotel in Ille-sur-Tete, a market town in a fruit-growing area, and decided to stay for good in what Margaret called this lovely, rose-coloured land. This is where one of Mackintosh's reproductions stands where he painted it, of monumental pillars of rock.

There are no fewer than five villages in and around the beautiful Tete valley. One of them is Villefranche-de-Conflent, a Unesco-listed medieval walled town that looks like a set for a swashbuckling film. This is because it has preserved fortifications designed by Vauban, the great military engineer of Louis XIV. Wandering its cobbled lanes at dusk, when most visitors have gone, one half expects to hear the clash of swords and see d'Artagnan and his carousing musketeers emerge from the shadows.

A grim mountain fortress perched above it once imprisoned ladies who had fallen out of favour at Louis XIV's court, and is now the unlikely setting of a small exhibition of Mackintosh reproductions and furniture. It was from here that the Mackintoshes travelled on one of the world's great little railways to the roof of the Pyrenees. The Petit Train Jaune (Little Yellow Train) still runs daily with most of its original carriages on a narrow gauge electric line to one of the highest stations in France at Bolquere Eyne (5,226ft), and beyond to the Spanish border.

It is not an express train. It takes an hour and a half to trundle barely 20 miles through chasms, over ravines and through tunnels to another Vauban citadel on a high plateau ringed by mountain peaks. This is fine with its passengers, who are there for the journey rather than any pressing need to get anywhere. Sitting on a wooden bench in one of the open-air carriages is like a fairground ride on a toy train that bravely climbs mountains. It is great fun, and it goes to fairyland. This is what Mackintosh called the highlands, around the fortified village of Mont-Louis, which became a favourite summer haunt. In spring and early summer, the plateau is ablaze with mountain wild flowers, which he and his wife collected for him to portray in exquisite watercolours.

The Mackintoshes eventually returned to the coast, and took up residence near Collioure in a hotel in Port-Vendres, then bustling with cargo ships and ferries to French North Africa. One of Mackintosh's favourite spots for painting was a green, rocky headland where a footpath winds by an 18th-century fort to a bay framed by a breakwater and a lighthouse. Several of his framed reproduction prints placed in situ in Port-Vendres have gone with the wind, or with souvenir hunters, but the views remain the same.

Getting there

The closest airport is Perpignan, served by Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) from Stansted and Birmingham, and by Flybe (0371 700 2000; flybe.com) from Southampton.

Staying there

Appart'Hotel Castel Emeraude, Amelie-les-Bains (00 33 468 88 34 89; castelemeraude.fr). Doubles from 29, room only. Mas St Joseph, Ille-sur-Tete (00 33 468 67 85 62; bit.ly/MasStJoseph). Doubles from 80 B&B. Hotel Les Caranques, Collioure (00 33 468 82 06 68; hotel-les-caranques.fr). Doubles from 110, room only.

More information

crmackintoshfrance.com
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25hours Altes Hafenamt, Hamburg

The latest 25hours hotel opened on 1 March in Hamburg's regenerated Hafencity district, right next door to its predecessor, 25hours Hafencity. There's nothing new about the hotel's setting though; this listed building dating from 1885 is the oldest in the neighbourhood and once housed the harbour's Office for Electricity and Harbour Construction. The decor of the 49 rooms channels the look of a captain's house and there's a Boilerhouse Bar and NENI Restaurant serving Eastern Mediterranean cuisine.

Ueberseeallee 5, Hamburg, Germany (00 49 40 55 55 750; 25hours-hotels.com). Doubles from 135, room-only.

The Langham, Chicago

The Langham, Chicago

Mies van der Rohe is one of the giants of modern architecture. Design buffs can check into one of his famed buildings, the former IBM office block completed in 1972. Overlooking Lake Michigan, the first 13 floors now house The Langham hotel. The clean lines of the lobby were designed as a tribute to van der Rohe by his grandson, Dirk Lohan, while the 268 guest rooms have views of Chicago's forest of skyscrapers.

330 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, US (001 312 923 9988; langhamhotels.com). Doubles from $420 (300), room-only.

The NoMad Hotel, New York

The NoMad Hotel, New York

This handsome Beaux-Arts office block dates back to 1903 and stands in an overlooked part of mid-town Manhattan. It was given a new lease of life when The NoMad Hotel opened four years ago. As the name suggests, it's set north of Madison Square Park, on a slightly chaotic stretch of Broadway. The interior was the first stateside project for French design supremo Jacques Garcia and the look is subdued and sophisticated.

1170 Broadway, New York City, US (001 212 796 1500; thenomadhotel.com). Doubles from $345 (246), room-only.

Hotel Ekta, Paris

Hotel Ekta, Paris

The Hotel Ekta is something of a surprise amid the 19th-century streetscape of this chic Parisian neighbourhood. This 1970s office block has been imaginatively converted into a 25-room hotel with typical Parisian panache. It was opened last year in the heart of the 8th arrondissement; its interiors are a homage to the Sixties and Seventies fashion scene, and reminiscent of the work of celebrated designer, Andre Courreges.

52 rue Galilee, Paris, France (00 33 1 53 76 09 95; hotelekta.com). Doubles from 115, room-only.

Mondrian at Sea Containers, London

Mondrian at Sea Containers, London

Sea Containers House was initially conceived as a hotel in the 1970s, but was turned into office space instead. It takes its name from one of its tenants, and it was not until 2014 that the first guests started to check in as the South Wing became home to the 359-room Mondrian. Tom Dixon was tasked with the makeover of this landmark building overlooking the Thames and took his cue from the golden era of steam travel with cruise-liner touches.

20 Upper Ground, London SE1 9PD (020 73747 1000; morganshotelgroup.com). Doubles from 230, room-only.

The Old Clare Hotel, Sydney

The Old Clare Hotel, Sydney

Every up-and-coming neighbourhood needs a fashionable hotel to cement its arrival, and Sydney's Chippendale got that with The Old Clare Hotel late last year. Singapore-based hotelier Loh Lik Peng fused the former Clare Hotel and the erstwhile offices of the Carlton United Brewery for this property. The result includes an Art Deco pub, a Jason Atherton-conceived restaurant and a rooftop pool.

1 Kensington Street, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia (00 61 2 8277 8277; theoldclarehotels.com.au). Doubles from A$269 (141), room only.
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Pulling into the tree-lined forecourt of the Rosewood Beijing is like turning off a main road and finding yourself in a Pathe newsreel. A sleek traffic jam composed almost entirely of Mercedes and BMWs and the odd Batman-like supercar is dispatched by valets in red crushed red velvet jackets and shiny black shoes, holding doors for women clutching bags that cost more than houses. It looks like a queue for a debutante ball, but this is just an ordinary Wednesday evening.

Founded in Dallas in 1979 by oil scion Caroline Rose Hunt, the almost excessively luxurious Rosewood Hotels and Resorts now has 18 hotels around the world  including one in London currently up for sale at 450m. Another 16 are set to open over the next three years. Opened in October 2014, the Beijing outpost is the first of four planned in China (the others will be in Hainan, Guangzhou and Sanya), and seems to be as popular with well-to-do Chinese guests as it is with Westerners.

The design is modern international, with lots of trad Chinese references, while the phrase well-appointed barely covers the facilities; a simple recitation of what's available is hard to do in a single breath. There is the stupendously large indoor pool glazed with tiny gold tiles, a Chinese spa which is accessed via a footbridge across a candle-strewn relaxation pool, a nightclub with DJs every night, a members' club open to those staying in certain rooms and all suites (guests are victualed by an Old World wine list here and a help-yourself buffet four times a day, all gratis).

Plus there are two bars and four restaurants  French brassiere Bistrot B, hot pot restaurant Red Bowl, a Huaying private dining set-up, and northern Chinese joint Country Kitchen, whose Peking duck deserves a laudatory poem. Skimped, they most certainly have not. It is a chic temple of diversions.

Bistrot B (Durston Saylor)

Location

The hotel is directly across from the Chinese state broadcaster, in the Chaoyang district. The 54-storey, OMA-designed China Central Television Building is a spectacular sight to look out on to, its eccentric shape giving rise to a local nickname: the Big Pants Building. The district is primarily business-centric, though there is no shortage of high-end shops.

Nominally, it is 40 minutes by car from the airport  the hotel offers a Jaguar XJL car service to and from, and the use of a VIP check-in area, for those able to pay  however, the figure is a tad misleading because the traffic in Beijing is so variable that it might take slightly less time or it might take an hour and a half.

A subway line stops directly below the hotel, but be warned, the Beijing subway makes the London Tube look like a Daimler. It gets seriously full. Ubers are cheap and plentiful and if you are lucky and it's not rush hour, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are only 20-30 minutes away. Local taxis are available but the language barrier proved near insurmountable for me.

Comfort

The Rosewood achieves what all hotels in big cities stretch for  that elusive sense of being at once shut off from the hustle and bustle, and yet still part of it. It has a deep sense of place which begins when you pass through the main doors, which are guarded by enormous stone lions, and continues to the 283 guest rooms and suites.

The rooms are decorated with charming Chinese objets d'art but the coffee machine, mini-bar and leather chaises longues will be familiar to regular travellers  ditto the television, free wi-fi and blinds that you control from a panel by the bed.

Rooms are spacious; some of the biggest in the city, by all accounts. The smallest deluxe room is about 50sq m and the biggest suite, Beijing House, is 177sq m. Floor-to-ceiling windows and good-sized dressing areas and bathrooms add to the airy feeling. In the flinty, unsympathetic centre of Beijing, the Rosewood offers a well-upholstered oasis of calm.

Travel essentials

Rosewood Beijing, Jing Guang Centre, Hujialou, Beijing, China (00 86 10 6597 8888; rosewoodhotels.com)

Rooms: 

Value: 

Service: 

Double rooms from 190, room only
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Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt (various)

The National Trust and National Trust of Scotland have joined forces with Cadbury to offer 300 Easter egg hunts across the country, from woodlands and coastline to historic houses and castles. Trace a trail around a lighthouse in Kent, search for sweet treats in the Scottish Highlands, or track down Mrs Tiggywinkle and friends in Cumbria. Don't worry if your detective skills aren't up to scratch, though  everyone taking part gets a chocolate prize. The NT also offers extra activities at some properties, such as Easter bonnet-making and feeding the lambs (egg hunts from 1, plus normal entry fees; mostly 25-28 March, some continue for the school holidays; cadbury.co.uk/easter).

Easter Wildlife Safari Adventure (Bridgend)

Look out for lapwings and great crested newts on a self-guided trail through Parc Slip Nature Reserve in south Wales. Pick up a map or download the Dare to Discover app and set off on the Nature Keepers' Quest through grassland, woods and wetlands, spotting flora and fauna, and picking up clues as you go. At the end, you'll be rewarded with an Easter egg (suggested donation 3; 25-27 March; bridgendbites.com).

Craft workshops (London)

Swap bunnies for dragons and unicorns at east London's Museum of Childhood, which is running a series of craft workshops for youngsters. Inspired by TV classics such as Bagpuss and The Clangers (to be screened over Easter weekend). Children can make weird and wonderful creatures from fabric or paper (workshops 5 each; 28 March to 8 April; vam.ac.uk/moc).

The Beatles Story

Eastival (Lincoln)

Children can soak up some culture at Lincoln's Eastival arts festival, taking place at four of the city's top arts venues. There will be theatre, workshops, films and music aimed at children, as well as free family films. Complete the Easter Egg Challenge and you'll receive a prize; all you have to do is find 10 eggs across the festival venues  Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Lincoln Drill Hall, Terry O'Toole Theatre and The Collection (event entry ranges from free to 10; from 23 March to 10 April; visitlincoln.com).

International Science Festival (Edinburgh)

Until 10 April, there's a range of events and exhibitions across the city, including a drop-in Space Day at Summerhall on 2 April with dressing-up, face painting and the chance to create your own nebula and put together a space magazine (many events free, Space Day 3.50; 26 March to 10 April; sciencefestival.co.uk).

Easter Adventure Quests (various)

English Heritage is opening up more than a dozen properties to young adventurers over Easter weekend, when they can meet historic figures, from monks at Battle Abbey to Roman soldiers at Framlingham Castle, who will send them on a clue-cracking treasure hunt with the promise of a prize at the end  spoiler: it's chocolate (free for EH members, or included in general admission; 25-28 March; english-heritage.org.uk).

Warwick Castle maze

Encounter Vikings, Normans, Stuarts and First World War soldiers at a new interactive Horrible Histories maze. Solve clues to re-order time and get enough passport stamps to escape the maze (opens today; general admission 18.60 adults, 16.20 children; warwick-castle.com).

Chessington World of Adventures

New attractions will enhance this popular Surrey park over Easter, including Pandamonium, a show featuring life-size animatronic pandas and an appearance by Kung Fu Panda's Po (from 27.60; opens Good Friday; chessington.com/2016).

The Beatles Story (Liverpool)

The world's largest permanent exhibition on the Fab Four, offers kids the chance to redesign the cover of Help! at a free afternoon workshop. (general admission 14.95 adults, 11.50 children; 5 April; beatlesstory.com/events).

Dining in the Dark (St Andrews)

A pop-up with a difference at the Old Course Hotel. Dans le Noir includes three different experiences: a whisky tasting on Thursday and special lunches and dinners thereafter, all served in complete darkness by blind staff. With no menu to choose from, diners select meat, fish or vegetarian, then let their other senses enjoy what follows (from 35 to 85; 24 March to 6 April; dininginthedark.co.uk).
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A few weeks ago the editor of this newspaper wrote that The Independent would begin using Bombay rather than Mumbai to describe the Indian city. Amol Rajan has advocated returning to using the Anglo-Portuguese colonial name Bombay for the Indian city of Mumbai in order to protest extreme Hindu nationalism.

At first glance, it might seem rather counter-intuitive to combat an ideology that stems from sentiments of Hindu disenfranchisement and international Hinduphobia by endorsing colonial appropriation, in a British newspaper.

Some might go so far as to argue that calling Indias financial capital by the name given by its democratically elected government 21 years ago isnt supporting right-wing extremists, as Rajan argued on the BBC. But, just perhaps, unilaterally re-imposing a colonial-era name on the south Indian city might reinforce their narrative.

Nevertheless, Rajan seemed so keen on the matter that I question why we dont take it to its logical next step? The striking rise of the Front National in France and their brand of xenophobic French nationalism should surely merit teaching our neighbours to the south a lesson. Frankreich, their name under German occupation in the 1940s would hit home. Lets not forget President Trumps 2017 victory speech in Times Square to the people of New Amsterdam.

The issue of singularly attacking the worst excesses of Hindu nationalism by painting with too broad a brush, and the excess of 200 million voters who in 2014 backed the centre-right Hindu nationalist coalition, is confined to neither Rajan nor the Independent.

While Western commentators ought to condemn intolerance, illiberalism and jingoism wherever they may be, their explicit and somewhat discriminatory focus on India has led to what many inside the country label Hinduphobia. Take the BBC documentary on a horrifying rape case Indias Daughter, which had any comparisons to other countries, including the fact that sexual assault is more frequent in both England and the US, removed in the final version. The effect of this was to insinuate that rape is an endemic specific to India with Indian and Hindu culture at fault.

The New York Times offers another striking example of Indias special treatment by Western media. A piece by Gardiner Harris blames poor sanitation and malnutrition on some ancient Hindu texts, blaming one of the oldest belief systems in human history for an issue largely caused by poor infrastructure, overpopulation and attitudes. Now imagine exchanging diarrhoea for terrorism and Hinduism for Islam.

Donald Trumps attribution of the crimes of a few Mexicans or Muslims to whole races or groups of people has earned well-deserved retribution. Yet it is a mystery to me why the Independent is punishing a landmass for the illegal actions of a tiny minority of extremists, especially when this will invigorate their siege mentality against a hostile Abrahamic world.

Hindus, like Muslims, Christians or Buddhists, are first and foremost human beings. They are prone to passion, anger and all other mortal traits. They are also influenced by a belief system in which peace, self-mastery and compassion for life are key tenets.

While some may stray from these principles, ultimately a recognition of our shared humanity and the validity of all belief systems will go much further than a semiotic attack on their independence.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Mthwakazi Republic Party secretary General Hloniphani Ncube has claimed that People in Matabeleland have never benefited from President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF government since independence in 1980 but only experienced marginalization and oppression."Since the inception of Mugabe and his government in Mthwakazi no single development have been done with the interest of the local Mthwakazi people. Our Mthwakazi Research Council have noted with concern the devilish schemes implemented by the government of Zimabwe before and after they were controversially given the power they continually abuse up to this day, which is slowly but surely coming to an end," he said."In 1979 the Zanu PF cronies crafted the most horrific 14 page documents entiled the grand plan which portrayed how the Mugabe led government was going to kill, disempower and underdevelop Mthwakazi among other issues. A lot contained on that document have been implemented even though the results at the end of the day do affect both tribes as this was targeting the people from Mthwakazi."Ncube said around 1980 to 1987 Zanu PF brutally implemented the Gukurahundi programme which was aimed at killing all the Ndebele people as enshrined on the 1979 grand plan."This programme saw more than 25 000 people from Mthwakazi who were not armed loosing their lives, while the President and his fellow cabinet were enjoying tea. The people who were killed by these aggressive soldiers named the 5th brigade specifically reporting to Mugabe were the civil pregnant women, youths, bread winners and children. This brutality was stopped by the madness termed the unity accord. No apology or program to assist those people have been implemented. The peace and reconciliation committee headed and appointed by the subjects of the perpetrators cannot be a solution to the vulnerable victims," he said.Ncube said the most painful part of this atrocity is that, the people who were killed by the government of Zimbabwe are still lying in pits and hollows, and no decent burials have been carried out except the ones that were done by the Mthwakazi Republic Party."Prayers undertaken pertaining that matter have been barred by the perpetrators security agencies. Moreover, many children of the victims did not access education because their relatives who were bread winners were no more. Apart from that, some of the victims still do not have birth certificates because the death of their relatives were not recorded up to this day," he said."Around 1999 to 2000 the brutal government of Zimbabwe also went on to take the land from the Mthwakzi people who comprised of both the White and Black Mthwakazi people and gave it to their fellow Shona people. Our research have established that many farms are occupied by people from the intelligence and people who implemented Gukurahundi as a reward. Therefore land was not properly distributed and it is an urgent area that, the party will solve it very soon."The SG said furthermore, the government of Zimbabwe also implemented the Murambasvina during the era of MDC T which is an extended project of Zanu PF which saw the abolishing of proper houses leaving our people homeless up to today.He said the stands that were offered after that were given to the members of the army predominately Shona and the war veterans who implemented Gukurahundi."As from 1980 to date, Zanu PF have completely deindustrialised Bulawayo and transferred all industries to Harare leaving our youths with an option to look for employment in South Africa. Apart from that, Mugabe regime also introduced the Economic Structural adjustment program without a comprehensive research to eliminate the Ndebele people from the government institution who were left by the colonial government. This serves to depict that Zanu PF have no agenda to develop Mthwakazi because they know that, it would eventually be free," he said."Zanu PF also made it a point to employ only Shona people into the public institutions of government. Thus why all government institutions have now officialised Shona language at the expense of the local people. People are dying in government hospitals because the nurses and doctors cannot communicate in local languages."He said hence many have died after having been given wrong medical prescriptions due to language barrier. Ncube said police are not able to serve justice to our people because they do not understand the local language. Teachers at school as low as ECD cannot pronounce even a single local language, and our children are served with junk Dokora primitive education."Bakwethu kunengi osokwenzakele sikhangele. Ungabe usidla amathe esitha kodwa lolucuku olwenziwa nguhulumende weZimbabwe lukhandelwe wonke umuntu wakoMthwakazi. Siyazi silabafowethu abasebenzela luhulumende ekuqhubeni uhlelo lokubulala isizwe, kodwa sithi labo abazinikeleyo ukuthi bakhulule ilizwe basixhase ngoba njengebandla leMthwakazi Republic Party sizimisele ukumelana lokuhlukumezwa kanye lokugxhilazwa kwesizwe," he said.
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By any measure, the war waged by the EU against the people smugglers blamed for the refugee crisis has been an abject failure.

If sabre-rattling, barbed wire, and naval flotillas and other barriers could disrupt the trade in transporting migrants, this is a war would have been won long ago.

Yet the EU-Turkey deal offers more of the same. Rounding up people smuggled into Greece and trading them for refugees registered in Turkey is not just unethical, its also unworkable.

Earlier this month, David Cameron declared that despatching the Royal Navy to the Aegean to intercept and return refugees would help break the business model of the criminal smugglers.

That outcome is unlikely. The business model of people smugglers is built on an imbalance in supply and demand. Simply stated, the number of asylum seekers and other migrants driven to Europe by fear, hope and aspiration greatly exceeds the number allowed in, creating a market for intermediation served by trafficking.

If there is one pervasive theme linking the diverse stories of migrants, it is a generalised indifference to the risks associated with strengthened border defences, perilous sea journeys, and strictures from EU leaders warning them not to travel.

Whatever its military prowess, the Royal Navy is powerless to suspend the laws of economics. Refugees will continue to head for Europe  and the people smugglers will be there to facilitate their transit.

The overwhelming focus on strengthening borders and maritime patrolling is ultimately self-defeating. As migration and people smuggling become more risky - and more criminalised - the profits to be made from trafficking will rise. Europol estimates that a market now generating a turnover of some $6.6bn annually could triple in size over the next few years.

With the risks and rewards associated with smuggling increasing, more organised criminal groups will enter the market. The Turkish mafia, assorted jihadi groups in Libya, and networked crime networks linking Europe to the Sahel are already strengthening their grip on people smuggling routes, eroding the already porous borders between people-smuggling, drugs-trafficking, gun-running and money-laundering.

Apparently immune to evidence, Europes policy makers appear hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the war on drugs. That war has created extraordinary profits for organised crime, hurt vulnerable people, and supported the rise of institutions like the great Mexican drug cartels.

So how should European leaders respond to the migrant crisis? They should start by pulling out of the cattle-market in refugee trading underpinning the proposed deal with Turkey.

The way to defeat people smuggling is to suck the oxygen out of the market through a large-scale global resettlement programme, safe transit and orderly processing of asylum claims.

Kevin Watkins is Director of the Overseas Development Institute
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If a global poll were taken today asking people whether the world is going in the right direction, the answer, I think, would be a resounding No. Five years after popular movements emerged throughout the Arab world, memories of the Arab Spring have a bitter taste. In Syria, war has raged for half a decade and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, scattering refugees across Europe.

Chaos and extremism reign in Libya. Blood continues to be shed in eastern Ukraine.

For leaders trying to deal with these problems, never have the challenges been more complex. Not only is the world more interconnected than ever, it is also changing rapidly. Globalisation, mass migration and the internet  all have made it more difficult for individual governments to address the crises of our time.

It is easy to be pessimistic. Co-operation has been replaced by mistrust, reminiscent of the Cold War. Think tanks explore war scenarios in Europe. Last month, the BBCs World War Three: Inside the War Room imagined a hypothetical global catastrophe.

Its not just imagined scenarios. The United States is planning to deploy over $3bn (2.07bn) worth of additional heavy weapons and equipment in central and eastern Europe  one example of the collapse of trust in international affairs.

A militaristic mindset, it seems, has infected politics and the media. For two decades governments have been too ready to resolve disputes with force or the threat of force. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and other interventions have brought more harm than good. Yet we fail to learn the right lessons. International discourse, full of harsh polemics and mutual accusations, smacks of a propaganda war. In such an environment, dialogue  the most effective cure for the worlds ills  becomes almost impossible.

Despite all this, I see reason to be hopeful. Even last year, as war ravaged the Middle East and relations between Russia and the West deteriorated, green shoots were visible.

Negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme  unthinkable a decade ago  ended in success. After years of inaction, important agreements were finally reached at the Paris conference on climate change. In recent weeks, the US and Russia edged towards a ceasefire in Syria; President Putin announced the withdrawal of most Russian forces. The truce is fragile, but it now seems we are heading in the right direction.

I hope from all this our Western partners now understand that it is pointless trying to isolate Russia. As an indispensable actor in addressing major problems, Russia cannot be isolated  the world needs us. What Europe now needs most, in the face of a global threat from terror, is co-operation. If terror cells  like the one behind last years Paris atrocities  heed no borders, neither should our efforts to combat them. Information, resources, expertise must be shared.

A new grand agreement, like the Helsinki Accords of 1975 and the 1990 Paris Charter, would help modernise European leaders approach to security. After all, the threats we face have changed beyond all recognition in the last 25 years. A new agreement would help leaders work together to prevent disagreements degenerating into conflicts, and conflicts into armed hostilities of the kind seen in Ukraine and Syria.

Russia, in the grip of a financial crisis, would certainly benefit from a healthier international atmosphere. Sanctions have crippled Russias economy, as has the falling price of oil. But tempting as it is to blame our woes on external pressures, Russia must face the fact that the crisis is mostly of its own making. Economic prosperity is unachievable without political reform.

What we now lack, above all else, is democracy. In the world today, it seems democracy is not in a good condition. Yet I am convinced that without the democratic process  without involving the people in a search for solutions  we cannot break the vicious cycle of self-created problems that holds us back.

We need to overcome the authoritarian trend in our politics. It is not, of course, a recent phenomenon in Russia. In the 1990s we saw the emergence of one-man rule, with a constitution biased towards executive and presidential powers, making it easy for the president to be elected and re-elected again and again. A firm hand, we were told, was needed to conduct reforms. The result? The economic crash of 1998.

Then came further re-centralisation of power, enacted supposedly to stabilise Russia and aid economic recovery. Losing parliamentary and judicial independence, democracy and an independent media was a heavy price to pay for the temporary stability of an economy that would soon find itself in crisis again.

It is clear that the current model of government in Russia does not work  politically or economically. It does not allow for alternative ideas or new leaders. All decisions should not be left to one person because no one person has all the answers.

To return to the path of real democracy we must resist the urge to divide society into good and bad, the red and the blue, patriots and liberals. Just as governments must co-operate to face global terrorism, we Russians must work together to pursue our common goals.
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In a week when the talk has been of making mathematics compulsory  presumably to encourage children to become business-savvy little wealth-creators  I have been at the dreamier end of the academic spectrum, listening to stories and poems. If George Osborne had been with me, he might have considered adding creative writing to his list of subjects which should be an obligatory part of the school curriculum up to the age of 18.

In fact, the term creative writing is not quite right in this context. It sounds self-important, a busy little industry designed to appeal to the many people who now dream of becoming Lee Child, J K Rowling or E L James. In the class I attended, there was little talk of publishers or of writing an eye-catching synopsis for an agent. The words, and the feelings that words can convey, were the thing. I was reminded, as powerfully as I can ever remember, why writing matters.

We were in an old Nissen hut on the ex-army base on the bleak and beautiful north coast of County Antrim, which is now Magilligan Prison. There were 14 of us sitting around a table and we took turns reading, talking and, towards the end of the day, singing songs.

One man had written about visiting Peru, meeting a girl in a bar who convinced him to smuggle drugs back to the UK; at Dublin airport, a sniffer dog walked over to his suitcase and sat down beside it. There were poems about not fitting in at school, appearing in court. Someone had written a Wonderland-like fantasy for his daughter. A slight, pale man in his twenties read a poem for his sister, who had killed herself last year.

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Someone had a guitar and sang three extraordinary songs he had written about addiction, regret and faith. Then there was a strange tale of alien creatures featuring a giant red button which, when you press it, changes the world around you. The man who wrote it explained that the button had been his favourite fantasy as a child, when he was raised in care homes.

For someone who writes for living  an opinion here, a story there  listening to a group of prisoners trying to make sense of what has happened to them through the medium of words and music is a sobering experience. Although there was a lot of laughter, every piece of writing contained sadness and regret, often a longing for family, but surprisingly little anger.

In most creative writing classes there is more than a hint of competitiveness. Here, in this group, there was kindness, an understanding of what it has taken to write a story, poem or song. Each reading received a round of applause. The comments and discussion were generous. There was a remarkable lack of bravado, not a hint of macho bragging.

I have, until now, been sceptical of the theory that writing something down can act as therapy. The idea that storytelling makes a person saner, happier or more emotionally evolved was hardly supported by the characters of some of those who do it for a living, after all. It was easy to see why the creative writing industry should peddle the idea of storytelling as a spiritual purge: even if you dont get published, you will somehow be improved. I had never been convinced. But now, listening the writers of Magilligan, I was reminded how it can order thoughts, give a sense of perspective, sometimes make sense of the senseless.

For prisoners with children, writing stories kept them in touch with their families. Magilligan, an enlightened place where the importance of connection to the outside world is recognised, works with the Northern Ireland Library Service on something called the Big Book Share. Prisoners are encouraged to record stories for their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, who are then given a CD of the reading with a copy of the book or story. One prisoner told me that his eight-year-old son, who had never previously liked books, was now one of the best readers in his class  thanks to his imprisoned father.

Perhaps it is time for governments, local authorities and teachers to recognise the restorative power of creativity. For too long, it has been seen as a namby-pamby add-on to more important subjects. The day I spent in Magilligan showed me how people with unimaginably harsh backgrounds can articulate their feelings and thoughts through the medium of fiction. It helps them communicate and provides a much-needed empathy. These are more than merely personal benefits; they must help in the world of interviews and jobs, too.

Successive governments, obsessed by business, qualifications and exams, have ignored the other kind of growth which creative writing provides. In the same Budget which championed compulsory maths for all, cuts in business rates will reduce still further the funds of local councils with the result that public library closures, a great scandal of the past two administrations, will be accelerated.

It is time to press the giant red button and change this resistance to creativity. Libraries and schemes such as the Big Book Share provide hope and potential for young and old. There is no reason why storytelling and writing poetry should not be within the curriculum, developing parts of the brain and spirit which mathematics cannot reach.

Back in Magilligan, the writing class was interrupted by a two-hour lockdown. While the writers were in their cells, I was shown around an exhibition about Auschwitz that the prisoners had curated in three of the Nissen huts. Schoolchildren visit the prison, hear the grim stories from the past. Imaginatively, a connection has been made to bullying in schools and respect for minorities. The message conveyed to visitors was simple, personal and timely: Dont Stand Back.

Howard Jacobson is back next week
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A land forgotten.; The worlds most secretive country.

This is how North Korea is introduced on Lonely Planet, a travel website.

The worlds last Stalinist state is often advertised as a quirky and mysterious travel destination for those seeking perhaps the most obscure passport stamp. Another tourism website invites travellers to visit one of the most magical places still untouched by the outside world.

For American tourist Otto Warmbier, however, his trip was anything but magical.

On Wednesday the 21-year-old student was sentenced to 15 years hard labour for stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel. He was arrested as he attempted to leave the country in January.

In the Hermit Kingdom, any crime - no matter how small - can be used to fit with the regimes narrative that it is constantly under threat from imperialist western powers. The Korean Central News Agency, the mouthpiece of the regime, said the offence was "pursuant to the US government's hostile policy." Warmbier appeared on TV making an apology and confession that sounded suspiciously scripted.

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The episode is a stark reminder that underneath the image created by travel agencies, North Korea is a dangerous totalitarian state with a horrendous human rights record.

"Foreigners who travel to [North Korea] on tightly controlled tours are also subjected to strict control, coercion, surveillance, and ultimately punishment if the regime thinks they have 'fallen out of line, says Greg Scarlatoiu, Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

Absolutely no one is safe while inside North Korea."

According to Human Rights Watch, North Korea remains among the worlds most repressive countries in which the government attempts to intrude on all aspects of daily life.

 The moment US student Otto Warmbier stole poster of 'Kim Jong il' in North Korea

Dissenters are sent to labour camps in which they are subject to torture, rape and eventual execution. They are often joined by their families for sharing the same tainted blood.

Its economy has been in dire straits thanks to continued economic mismanagement. After the fall of the Soviet Union, which had been propping up the North Korean state with cheap fuel oil, a devastating famine ensued resulting in the deaths of around 330,000 people from 1994 to 2000.

Critics point out that tourism treats the country like a normal state, thus legitimising the regime and ignoring human rights abuses. Even supporters concede that travellers provide the state with much needed foreign currency - tourists are not allowed to use the North Korean won but instead euros and dollars, which are better for lubricating the countrys foreign trade.

This makes the country a controversial choice for travel.

Admittedly, some others see the benefit of tourists visiting North Korea. John Sweeney, journalist and author of North Korea Undercover claimed that, The goal of the regime is to keep their people in the dark about the outside world and say how it is worse off than their country.

But when North Koreans see westerners with their nice shoes and expensive camera equipment, it is a drop of evidence that the regime is lying.

Yet the state also benefits from tourists in the country in a more subtle way - albeit only from those who fall out of line with the state. Like other convicted tourists before him, it is improbable that Warmbier will serve much of his sentence. He will likely be used as a pawn by the regime as it continues its nuclear programme.

Tourism may help the regime with foreign cash while offering its people a glimpse of the benefits of liberal capitalism. And almost all of the thousands of tourists who visit each year do so safely.

But tourists like Warmbier not only put themselves in danger - they undermine efforts for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. That is the real danger. And its important to remember the baggage that can come with treating the worlds most repressive state like a holiday destination.
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Everyone who cares about how freedom lives, and dies, should visit the Topography of Terror in Berlin. Built in the hulking shadow of Hermann Goerings air ministry complex and on the site of the wartime Gestapo HQ, this permanent exhibition tells the story of the Third Reich and its crimes.

It does so not through portentous rhetoric but with concrete data, lucid explanations and  above all  panel after panel of unforgettable photographs.

Take the shot of a crowd of workers at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg as Adolf Hitler speaks to them in 1936. Your eyes scan the docile legion of Sieg Heil-ing drones  and dupes  with outstretched arms. Then they settle on the solitary figure who stubbornly refuses to salute the Fuhrer. Who was he, and where did he find the courage or understanding to reject the idolatrous herd?

Thanks to his daughter, we know that August Landmesser joined the Nazi party in the early 1930s. But he had a Jewish wife, Irma Eckler. The couple had two children. Whatever their inner doubts, no one else in that almost-unanimous crowd allowed secret scepticism to break cover into visible dissent. Arms proudly folded, August Landmesser did, thinking maybe of the non-Aryan partner who had made a nonsense of fascist mumbo-jumbo. Love made a sort of hero out of him. Later, Landmesser went to jail for betraying his race. Irma was murdered in the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942.

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During the 12 years of the Third Reich, Hitlers genocidal regime faced dismayingly few protests on a larger scale than Landmessers. Probably the biggest took place on Rosenstrasse in Berlin in 1943. Hundreds of Aryan women gathered to march against a decree that had extended deportation orders to their Jewish husbands and other relatives. Repeatedly, they defied armed SS men outside the detention centre to demand the release of family members. Remarkably, the protest worked and the order was rescinded. Auschwitz and other camps claimed a couple of thousand fewer victims.

Of course, millions of Germans ought to have cried out in shame and horror on every single day of Hitlers rule. They did not. But the bonds of affection, loyalty and kinship could prevail even against the Gestapos reign of terror. It took private needs and longings to make the call for justice heard on the streets of tyranny.

Rational calculus alone will seldom push people to withstand social or political evil, or to struggle for equality and reform. Justice needs passion as much as hatred does. Now turn to the US today, and its increasingly bizarre presidential race. On Tuesday, Donald Trump won primary contests from Illinois to Florida. He has triumphed in 18 out of 27 states and stands within hailing distance of the 1,237 delegates required to secure the Republican nomination. This week, a forecasting firm rated his chances of getting them at 78 per cent.

Trump is no Hitler. On his long-term record, he does not even count as a committed right-wing ideologist. As ultra-conservative career head-bangers, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio  on whose electoral corpses he stomps  outrank The Donald by a league. One of the cuter conspiracy theories in this year of topsy-turvy politics maintains that Trump entered the race as a payback favour to his chum Bill Clinton in order to guarantee the election of Hillary.

Whatever his mixed and murky motives, Trump has jumped ahead because he gives voice to pure, unbridled passion, oblivious to reason and unshackled by facts. The shameless demagogue has harnessed to his chariot of cant the four horsemen of the post-slump apocalypse: anger, fear, resentment and grievance.

The violence that now breaks out at Trump rallies whenever a heckler interrupts looks like the spume atop a deep whirlpool of fury and suspicion. Forget those routine departures from reality that lead Trump partisans to believe that Barack Obama is a foreign-born Muslim, or that the British NHS runs death panels for ailing pensioners. For the grudge-driven voter, wrathful paranoia can prove a  literally  fatal disease.

During the US flu pandemic of 2009-10, shock-jock radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh attacked federally funded protective jabs as socialistic meddling by the Islamo-Bolshevik Obama. As a result, Democrats proved much more willing to seek the injections than Republicans. It seems that many extreme conservatives are willing to die for their prejudices.

Ever since rabble-rousing demagoguery began to tweak the new democracy of the late 19th century, rational progressives have feared the hysterical crowd. They championed the people but not the mob-like mass. In the 1890s France of the Dreyfus affair, with Jews and migrants the target of mob frenzy, Gustave Le Bon wrote in The Crowd about the anonymity, contagion and suggestibility that, en masse, reduced a thinking being to a grain of sand amid other grains of sand. This barbarian herd needed to follow a cultic leader. It is terrible, warned Le Bon, to think of the power that strong conviction combined with extreme narrowness of mind gives a man possessing prestige.

Remind you of anyone? In 1922, Sigmund Freud built on Le Bons work for his essay on group psychology and ego analysis. To Freud, writing in the wake of the xenophobic hurricanes of the First World War, the modern mass-hysterical crowd is not so much a herd as a horde: a revival of the primal horde led by a primal father, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent. Freud says nothing about hair replacement as an attribute of primitive charisma. He does insist that members of the demagogue-directed crowd become disinhibited children again. They exhibit a picture of regression of mental activity to an earlier stage. A decade after Freud wrote, Hitler came to power.

With the best of motives, the non-violent and non-Leninist left has always feared this primal horde. True, a Sanders or a Corbyn can enlist righteous indignation against yawning inequality and the diminution of life-chances for the poor, the young and the non-white. Yet that urge for equity adopts polite, reasonable and evidence-based forms. Mainstream progressive movements long ago forsook class hatred for intellectual persuasion. In the 1880s, the Fabian Society set up shop as a fact-finding and fact-dispensing body: the first of many to climb towards the New Jerusalem on a staircase carpentered from reason alone. Later, as affluence spread and the truly deprived became them rather than us, democratic socialists no longer denounced their foes as (in Nye Bevans Trump-like term for the Tories) lower than vermin.

Even after the meltdown of 2008, when the monumental irresponsibility of a feather-bedded few really did deserve rancour and contempt, banker-bashing failed to gain much traction. Fred Goodwin and his chums never came within striking distance of a handcuff  or a fisticuff. Instead, fashionable warriors for social justice began to brandish sweetly reasonable manifestos such as Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinsons much-admired study The Spirit Level. This sensible and scholarly defence of lower income differentials as the precondition of a happier society changed minds but would hardly man a barricade. On the rationalistic left, treatises and statistics, not catcalls and cobblestones, have for a century made the case for betterment.

The politics of witness and experience has not quite fled progressive ranks. From the civil-rights movement of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement now, it survives in heartfelt action for equality. A hunger for racial justice may even top the polls. In county elections in Ohio and Illinois this week, challenger candidates backed by Black Lives Matter ousted incumbent prosecutors who had allegedly failed to take swift action on fatal shootings by police. A passion for dignity swayed those local votes, and swayed them left.

Still, these brushfires at the margins seldom scorch the middle ground. There, every reformist bid for power means the scrupulous elimination of populist toxins. That works well enough when your opponents play by the same rules. Obamas election in 2008 owed much to the decency of John McCain. Once a Trump turns up, it leaves level-headed improvers with a glaring deficit.

Liberals will never out-scream Trump: that Freudian id on a stick. But they might try  as early-phase Obama did  to channel hope as well as their enemies channel fear. The lefts defective language of emotion has long worried the American cognitive scientist George Lakoff. In books such as Moral Politics, he has exposed the frailty of liberal reason against reactionary fervour and argued for a frankly subjective politics of values and convictions on the left. Lakoff deals in the metaphors we live by, and urges reformers to promote their benign model of the nurturing family against the punitive patriarchy of a Trump.

Here, Old Labour once commanded that feelgood language of sharing and community. New Labour dumped it as an outdated relic. Corbyn Labour can speak warmly to itself but not, so far, to the wider national family. Somehow, the side of the angels needs to argue for tolerance, compassion and solidarity as human impulses just as profound, indeed visceral, as the drives to destruction recruited by the demagogic right. They might start with a glance at August Landmesser, whose family values kept his arms folded while the world went mad around him.
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It has taken me over six months of therapy to finally feel comfortable in myself, and to have the confidence to not worry about covering my arms  which have self-harm scars on them - in public. To have this confidence diminished while buying a birthday present is the last thing I expected.

I was visiting the Tesco store in Fulbourn to purchase a bottle of champagne and birthday card for my friends birthday this week, when I seemingly had my mental capacity judged. I had shown my ID to prove my age, so was extremely confused when the member of staff said, Im not allowed to serve you with those scars on your arm.

She informed me that it was Tesco policy, so she would have to call over the supervisor. In front of a queue of about three people, I was left standing to the side while she enquired to the supervisor in a loud voice, for what felt like everybody to hear, about what she should do.

The supervisor said to serve me anyway, but didnt apologise to me. I went home and after speaking to a member of staff online, I was informed that this was not in fact a policy of theirs at all, so I went back to the store with the transcript from that online conversation to complain to the manager.

I was told that the manager wasnt available to talk to, but the next day I was sent some flowers by way of apology and invited to talk with her in-store.

This situation wont stop me shopping in Tesco, nor do I want the member of staff involved to be reprimanded; it could have happened in any store, anywhere in the country. I am sure that the member of staff didnt mean to discriminate, and potentially thought she was helping me, or even preventing a suicide attempt.

But at the end of the day, after fighting my illness for so long, I shouldnt have to be ashamed or feel judged every time I have my arms on show.

I was shocked and overwhelmed by the positive responses I received when I initially posted on Tescos Facebook wall. There was so much understanding, and people started sharing their stories, which I think is the most vital way to squash the stigma with mental health.

There were, of course, plenty of people who had unhelpful opinions, turning up to comment that self-harm is attention-seeking, and that I should cover my arms so other people dont have to see the scars.

I have worked in schools, and now work as a healthcare assistant; in the schools, I would always cover my arms, because I personally would hate to think that I made children believe self-harm is the right way to deal with the pain you feel on the inside.

In the hospital I work in now, the policy is bare below the elbows, which means I have to have my arm on show - but again, I make up excuses, because I know that not everybody is comfortable with the idea of openly talking about mental health.

This is what needs to change. People find it uncomfortable to face the reality of mental health issues, but talking is the only way to stop this kind of judgement and discrimination happening again. The more people who know about the unknown the better.

This is not a one off issue; mental health discrimination happens daily. Its the snide remarks, the judgemental looks, the dismissal from a job with a petty excuse given, and the refusal of goods and services.

Simply put, the demons I fought in my past shouldnt be the first thing people bring up when I go about my day-to-day life  and only open dialogue can prevent that.
Gardai were called to the scene

Several homes in a Cork housing estate were evacuated after a pipe bomb was discovered.

The device, which was described as viable, was found at Shannon Lawn in the Mayfield area of the city.

Both the Army Bomb Disposal Team and the Garda were called to the scene at around 5am.

A Defence Forces spokesman said: "The device was assessed to be viable and was removed to a safe military location for deconstruction and further examination.

"Items of evidential nature have been handed over to the gardai to assist them with their investigation."

It is believed the device was thrown at a home in the estate in the early hours of the morning but failed to detonate.

The scene was declared safe shortly after 7am.
Ireland now accounts for almost a fifth of all new US investment flows into Europe with foreign direct investment (FDI) between the two countries strengthening significantly over the past decade.

According to a new report, commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, FDI into Ireland from the US amounted to $310bn (283bn) by the end of 2014.

The new report was written and researched by US academic and Wall Street economist, Joseph Quinlan.

In his report Mr Quinlan highlighted a surge of investment flows of $58.1bn in 2014 from the US into Ireland.

Mr Quinlan said that despite increasing worldwide economic disorder, Ireland remained one of the "prime destinations" for US FDI.

"Yes, there has been a great deal of churn and change in the global economy since our last report. But what has not changed is international investors' overriding preference for doing business in Ireland.

"Various metrics point towards Ireland and the United States deepening their well-established trade and investment linkages," Mr Quinlan said.

Ireland's portion of FDI from the US can be compared favourably to that of Germany and France.

With Ireland's amounting for just under 20pc of all US investment flows into the EU, France takes just 3pc while Germany accounts for just 2pc.

The Irish share of US investment stock has risen substantially over the last ten years, up to 11pc in 2014 from 6pc in 2004.

American Chamber of Commerce Ireland president, Bob Savage, said he was delighted at the positive story that arose from the report.

Mr Savage was speaking at the launch in the Intercontinental Hotel in Dublin, where he eluded to the importance of US FDI to Irish job creation.

According to Mr Savage 75pc of the 19,000 jobs announced by IDA Ireland last year were created by US companies.

"To maintain and strengthen our success in the global battle for FDI, our nation must continually reassess the needs of business, both domestic and multinational. We believe Ireland can continue to compete strongly on the international stage continuing to attract strong US FDI over the coming decade," Mr Savage said.

The chamber also outlined the challenges facing Ireland in order to keep foreign direct investment coming from the US.

Education, accommodation, and nationwide jobs growth were amongst the challenges listed by the chamber.

Ireland must ensure its education system is challenged to produce graduates with business-relevant skills sets, the chamber said.

Mr Savage addressed the current housing crisis as an issue that may impinge on FDI if it isn't addressed appropriately.

The chamber president highlighted the importance of "ensuring Ireland has a sufficient supply of quality, affordable and well serviced accommodation for all those who want to build a great career in Ireland".

Since 2008, Ireland has been second only to the Netherlands in attracting more US investment flows to Europe on a cumulative basis.

In the research Mr Quinlan says that Ireland's resilience has made it amongst the most attractive destinations in the world for US FDI.

The Wall Street economist says the US looks to invest in expanding economies and with Ireland's rate of expansion it is "no surprise" that US FDI has spiked here.
technology company Oneview Healthcare has fomally listed its shares on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASE) after raising A$62.4m (42m) in the first deal of its kind by an Irish company.

The Dublin-based Oneview Healthcare produces software for hospitals, including products that can help integrate IT systems across devices like bedside terminals, televisions, tablets and smartphones.

The business already sells into markets including Australia and Dubai, and has its sights on the vast US healthcare sector.

The sale of a third of the business through an initial public offer (IPO) is to fund "aggressive growth of its digital platform that is revolutionising patient care in Australia, the USA and the Middle East", Oneview said.

The St Patrick's Day market debut in Australia caught the interest of local backers with Irish dancers, green balloons and green neckties that celebrated both the listing and Ireland's national festival.

"Australia is our most mature market and 50pc of our shareholders are Australian," founder and executive director Mark McCloskey said.

"For a company established in Dublin in 2008, we have come a long way in a short amount of time and today's IPO will provide the launch pad for our company's growth and expansion into new markets," he said.

Oneview said the listing was a milestone for Irish-Australian corporate relations, but other companies and bankers will also be watching it for signs that Australia's IPO market still has appeal following a quiet 2015.

Oneview's technology is in four hospitals in Australia, where the health sector is growing quickly as a result of an ageing population.

With that growth, the government has been cutting subsidies - a factor McCloskey said would stoke demand for products that improved efficiency.

In reality the location for the listing was selected in large part because of the link to Australian shareholders, who had backed the Dublin-headquartered software business with venture funding. Early backers also include Enterprise Ireland.

"A key focus of Enterprise Ireland is to support Irish companies to scale in international markets. Enterprise Ireland has been working with Oneview since 2008 and I warmly congratulate them on this exciting and historic occasion," Enterprise Ireland's Julie Sinnamon said.

"As one of the leading global providers of patient engagement solutions for healthcare facilities, Oneview is a fantastic example of the type of innovative Irish companies that are making a real impact in global markets.

"I wish Oneview every success as they continue to grow and expand in international markets," Ms Sinnamon said. (Additional reporting Reuters)
President of Aramark's Irish Operations, Donal O'Brien and Simon Pratt, Managing Director of Avoca at Avoca Malahide Castle in Co Dublin

UPMARKET retail operation Avoca is to open a new store in Dunboyne, Co Meath, leading to the creation of 80 jobs.

The move will bring employment levels at the group to 900 - it was recently taken over by Aramark.

The shop will open in Autumn.

Outlining the plans for the new store Simon Pratt, managing director, Avoca said; This is our 12th store and our largest and most ambitious to date. Were investing more than 3 million to create a gorgeous experience for our customers and the fit out will be to the highest standards. The location is superb and will attract consumers from West Dublin, Meath, Kildare and beyond, looking to enjoy the Avoca experience.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

The MDC led by Welshman Ncube has expressed dismay over reports that some foreign embassy officials have taken advantage of the plight of suffering Zimbabweans by selling them off as slaves to their countries.MDC Secretary for International Relations and External Structures,Ngqabutho Mabhena said they note with great concern that the embassy of Kuwait facilitated the movement of over 200 young Zimbabweans to Kuwait on the pretext that there are employment opportunities in that country.Reports say upon arrival after waiting for hours at the airport, the poor Zimbabweans were taken by their slave masters to different locations. They were stripped off of their travelling documents and could not contact their relatives. They were made to work for about 22 hours a day."This movement of people happened in August and September 2015. While we are outraged by this heinous crime by the Kuwait embassy staff and demand that the full wrath of the law falls on the culprits, we lay the blame at the door step of the mis- ruling Zanu PF party," he said. "The people of Zimbabwe voted for jobs and a decent living on 31 July 2013. This regime has totally failed to meet the basic needs of the people of Zimbabwe, particularly young people who after being forced out of the country to look for greener pastures find themselves working under harsh conditions with threats of deportation for failing to obtain legal documents in foreign lands."Mabhena said the MDC calls on the people of Zimbabwe to avoid making a mistake of voting for a party that does not advance, deepen and defend their rights as citizens."It is only the MDC under the leadership of Professor Welshman Ncube that seeks good relations and partnerships with the rest of the World in developing a sound economy so as to better meet the best interests of the people of Zimbabwe. We further call on Zimbabweans in the diaspora to continue flooding our MDC branches and strengthen this people's movement as we prepare for 2018," he said.
Ireland ranks 20th out of 28 EU countries on broadband take-up, with just 8pc of rural Ireland covered by fast broadband compared to a European average of 25pc.

The Government is to seek "more aggressive timelines" to build State-subsidised rural broadband services as fears of delays to the National Broadband Plan grow.

The Government had promised that 750,000 rural homes and businesses would get access to modern broadband by 2020.

However, any commencement of construction is now unlikely to start until next year and will have an anticipated five year completion period.

It means that many rural homes may be left without adequate broadband until 2022, two years after the Government's promised delivery date and 10 years after the government first launched the state-subsidised scheme.

Ireland ranks 20th out of 28 EU countries on broadband take-up, with just 8pc of rural Ireland covered by fast broadband compared to a European average of 25pc.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources said the Government still hopes to make the 2020 deadline.

"The Department will request bidders to put forward more aggressive timelines and marks will be awarded during the procurement process to incentivise this to achieve the objective of full rollout by 2020," she said.

The contract to build the network out to 750,000 rural homes and businesses could be worth upwards of 500m of State funding, with the Government seeking an unspecified amount of matching investment from winning contract bidders.

At present, 10 telecoms companies have expressed an interest in discussing the National Broadband Plan rollout with the Government.

Eir and Siro, the joint fibre venture between Vodafone and the ESB, are considered to be front runners to contend for the state contract. Enet, the company that manages metropolitan area networks in 94 towns around the country, has also indicated that it intends to compete for the state broadband tender.

Other companies to have expressed an interest include French-based Bouyges subsidiary Axione and Gigabit Fibre, which is fronted by the former O2 Ireland boss Danuta Gray.

Virgin Media, formerly UPC, will not compete for the National Broadband Plan tender according to its chief executive, Tony Hanway.

The number of homes and businesses under the tender could shrink, according to officials in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

The officials say that if Eir proceeds with plans to build out fibre infrastructure to 300,000 of the identified 750,000 rural premises, those 300,000 premises will be withdrawn from the National Broadband Plan.

Under EU competition rules, state bodies cannot intervene with services where there are viable commercial alternatives.

2012

Then Government minister Pat Rabbitte launches the National Broadband Plan, pledging high speed access to every home in country

2013

Government commences mapping exercise of broadband coverage in rural areas

2015

Government completes mapping exercise, seeks approval from EU for state intervention. Launches pre-tender consultation with telecoms companies

2016

Government sets March 31 deadline for end of pre-tender consultation with telecoms companies. Government expresses hope of awarding tender by the end of this year
The Sony PlayStation VR was recently unveiled as the cheapest way for users to get into virtual reality but the true cost is a good bit higher

Sony has to be happy with their full reveal of the PlayStation VR, with the news quickly spreading that it will be hundreds of Euro cheaper than any rival system when it arrives in October 2016. But, as ever, it's not really that simple.

The basic kit will cost $400/400 when it launches, with the processor box, console and cables all ready to go. That sounds like a bargain, and certainly is next to the 800 HTC Vive, but there are some important components missing. For example the PlayStation Eye camera will be essential for the system to work properly and Sony also recommends two PlayStation Move controllers for the best experience. You will be able to use a basic DualShock 4 pad but you'll lose out on all the gesturing goodness.

Now Sony has announced a new PS VR bundle launch pack which includes two controllers as well as the camera and a whole new game called VR Worlds.

That's everything you need to get the most out of your new system, and the cost is said to be $499, there's no Irish price yet. This bundle is also thought to be exclusively for those who pre-order, with Sony hoping to bump up the numbers who are interested in the console ahead of time.

Two different versions of the pack makes a certain kind of sense - some people will already have a controller or the camera and it would be cheaper to buy those things separately, and Sony is likely to have a pack of all three out in time for release, but it's important that people know they'll need more than the basics to get into VR at launch.
Ted Baker's full-year profit rose by nearly a fifth due to strong demand for its offbeat fashions and the opening of stores from Mexico to the Middle East, setting the British clothing retailer apart from its rivals in a competitive market.

The company said on Thursday that initial reaction to its latest spring and summer collections had also been "positive".

Established British clothing retailers are engaged in a fierce battle with fast-fashion brands such as Inditex's Zara and the trendsetting designs of the likes of Reiss and Whistles.

Next and Marks and Spencer Group have attributed disappointing sales to an unusually mild winter, while French Connection's sales were hit by a lukewarm response to its spring collection.

Ted Baker's dresses, suits and shirts, often sporting quirky details such as flowery collars and polka-dotted sleeves, have helped it to stand out from rivals in Britain and, increasingly, overseas.

"Americans have quite a good term. They see us as a 'bridge-brand'," Finance Director Charles Anderson told Reuters. "By that they mean we are not high street, we are not luxury, we are somewhere in between."

Ted Baker's stock has more than tripled in the last five years. At a multiple of 26.9 times its 12-month forward earnings, it trades at a premium to most of its peers, according to Thomson Reuters data.

On Thursday, Ted Baker's shares fell 1.3pc to 2912p by 10.35am, in line with a wider decline of the FTSE 350 General Retailers Index.

Ted Baker, which opened its first store in Glasgow in 1988, has outlets in more than 35 countries. The company has its own in-house team of designers, headed by Ray Kelvin, its founder and chief executive.

For the year ended January 30, Ted Baker's profit before tax and exceptional items rose 18.6pc to 58.7m.

Revenue increased 17.7pc to 456.2m for the same period, during which the company opened its first stores in Amsterdam, Azerbaijan, Hawaii, Mexico and Qatar.

The company raised its total dividend to 47.8p from 40.3p.
One of the stories of the last year has been the collapse in oil prices. Photo: Bloomberg

Ever hear the one about the missing oil? The Punt has heard a few of these over the years - be it phantom tankers roaming the high seas or oil fields apparently not connected to anything. In any case, phantom oil has raised its head yet again.

One of the stories of the last year has been the collapse in oil prices.

The plunge has been put down to many things, one of which is the glut in supply in an already flooded market.

The scale of the excess supply has prompted many analysts to suggest it will be years before oil prices start to rebound in a meaningful way.

But is that really the case? A story in 'The Wall Street Journal' suggests it may not be. According to the Journal, there were 800,000 barrels of oil a day unaccounted for by the International Energy Agency (IEA) last year. The IEA data is considered the benchmark when it comes to supply and demand.

Do these excess barrels exist? Nobody really knows. They could be stored in China or Russia, for example. Or they could be an accounting error and may not exist at all.

Whatever the answer, it is vital that the IEA finds out. Take 800,000 barrels a day out of excess supply, and the market becomes a good bit tighter pretty quickly. Their existence may dictate whether oil prices can recover more quickly than might have been expected otherwise.

We look forward to hearing the conspiracy theories that explain this.

Making right connections

ConnectIreland, a jobs for Ireland programme dreamed up in the teeth of the recession, has been recognised by the World Media Awards, winning a gong alongside global brands like Lexus, Airbnb and Microsoft.

ConnectIreland picked up the award for its Community Action Plan in the Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Development category, which gave the team a perfect start to St Patrick's Day, according to ConnectIreland CEO Joanna Murphy. The award is designed to recognise effectiveness in targeting hard-to-reach investors and businesses, to promote investment and trade.

ConnectIreland is credited with helping to forster up to 2,000 jobs at 70 companies in Ireland since it was set up.

The simple idea behind ConnectIreland was to ask ordinary people to make the first move in attracting foreign direct investment, by offering rewards from the Government of potentially up to 150,000 to anyone who refers a company that may be considering opening up here to the team.

Bloomberg's Trudeau gush

After ditching plans to launch his own presidential election campaign US billionaire Michael Bloomberg has finally endorsed a politician he admires.

Moderate republicans in particular have been hoping to get the nod from Bloomberg since he opted not to run, and yesterday the former New York mayor and founder of the eponymous business information service finally backed a candidate.

Unfortunately for America, he got behind Canada's Justin Trudeau.

"Last year, Canadian voters elected an energetic and pragmatic prime minister," Bloomberg wrote in an article on his own news service.

"He campaigned on a platform of inclusion and tolerance, focusing on the need to bring people together to solve problems," he wrote, before going on to favourably compare the youthful Trudea, inset, to the late John F Kennedy.

Not that he was really writing about Canada.

"Strong economic leadership, as Trudeau seems to understand, does not begin with protectionist or socialist policies that vilify scapegoats.

"It begins with uniting people around a hopeful and realistic vision that can be fulfilled if government works in concert with markets," said Bloomberg.

Now we wonder who he could possibly mean?
German power firms and government members clashed at a court hearing this week over the country's controversial decision to shut down all nuclear plants by 2022, in a lawsuit that could allow utilities to claim 19bn in damages.

The case pits a struggling energy industry against the government.

Germany's Constitutional Court will examine the arguments of industry giants E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall, who want to be compensated for the decision to accelerate a phase-out of nuclear power.

The hearing comes five years after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, which triggered Chancellor Angela Merkel's move to speed up the nuclear shutdown and reverse an earlier agreement that extended the lifespans of some plants.

"The decision to end the use of nuclear power as soon as possible following the drastic events of Fukushima not only meets legal requirements, it was and continues to be the right decision," Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks told the eight-judge panel.

She said she was confident the government would win the case.

The decision deprived power firms of one of their main sources of profit and pitched them into crisis as the focus moved to renewables while electricity prices tumbled.

The government said at the time that the risks for nuclear power had changed as a result of the Fukushima meltdown that was caused by a tsunami following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

Utilities argue the events had no impact on the security of Germany's nuclear stations, while the accelerated shutdown cancelled 1,800 terawatt hours of planned production, enough to power Europe's biggest economy for about three years.

"The risks connected with nuclear energy did not change following Fukushima, just their reception," said Matthias Hartung, head of the power generation business at RWE, Germany's largest power producer.

Johannes Teyssen, chief executive of larger peer E.ON, told the court that the utilities were not disputing the decision to abandon nuclear power, but said fair compensation was needed as part of the reversal.

"We paid our taxes, we paid our wages, we have done what every other company does with its investments," Mr Teyssen told reporters, adding E.ON had invested billions of euros in nuclear technology over the past decades.

While a decision is expected to take several months, the hearing could provide insight into the thinking of the judges' panel, either through its line of questioning or through comments that might hint at its eventual opinion.

Power producers may look beyond Germany for help, if the courts there side with the state.

Vattenfall, whose group headquarters are in Sweden, has also filed a lawsuit with the Washington-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), where it is seeking 4.7bn in damages.

However, in June 2015, the European Court of Justice ruled that Germany's tax on the use of nuclear energy did not breach European Union laws, dealing a blow to utilities' hopes for a multi-billion euro refund on that score.

Since falling out of official favour the sector has been hit with major bills and levys on everything from the use of fuel rods at nuclear facilities to storage of waste material. (Reuters)
Sales are down among bar regulars, says Beer Shooter franchise manager Ricardo Gil at the imported and locally-brewed craft beer shop in Madrid this week. Photo: Reuters

The political stalemate in Spain is starting to chip away at its economic revival, raising the chances of a slowdown the country can ill afford if bickering between political leaders drags on.

The souring mood of consumers, who underpinned Spain's bounce back from recession as jobs returned, is just one of the symptoms worrying businesses as parties on the right and left struggle to agree on forming a coalition.

Even bars have noticed a blip.

"Regulars who used to come every week and have five or six beers are not coming as often, and only having one or two when they do," said Ricardo Gil, who sells craft beer in Madrid's well-heeled Chamberi district.

His earnings in February and March had been much worse than he had expected after a buoyant January.

The impasse that followed an inconclusive election in December is now nearly three months old. A Socialist-led pact failed to win support in parliament and rivals, including the conservative People's Party (PP) which won the most votes in the election, are struggling to find allies after all the parties fell short of a majority.

Economists say the extent of the drag on Spain's output is as hard to read as the next twists and turns in the political saga, which looks likely to culminate in new elections in June.

The stakes are high. Spain suffered an economic crisis between 2008 and 2013, dropping in and out of recession before recovery took hold. Huge numbers of people lost jobs and big cuts were made in public spending.

The crisis helped to change the traditional dynamic, with voters turning to new parties - the anti-austerity Podemos (We Can) and business-friendly Ciudadanos (Citizens).

Unemployment is falling but is still running at more than 20pc, and sustaining the recovery will be key to keeping the deficit in check. By the second quarter, signs that households and investors are more hesitant might become clearer.

"The information we've been getting from our branches since December is that clients are being a little more cautious when it comes to buying a car or a home," said Angel Ron, chairman of Banco Popular.

Federico Vazquez, whose small construction firm specialises in developing airport shops, said none of the public or private 1m-plus projects on his radar have been awarded in the last two to three months.

"People have drawn up investment plans but no one seems to be signing off on anything big," Mr Vazquez said.

BBVA researchers predict the uncertainty could knock up to 0.5 percentage points off their forecast growth rate of 2.7pc for 2016. Spain's economy expanded by 3.2pc in 2015, its fastest pace in eight years. The impact from aborted investments on jobs is hard to measure and largely anecdotal for now.

Ricardo Gil, the bar manager, had planned to open a BeerShooter franchise in Madrid every six months after launching his first one last June. But he is holding fire until a government is formed and he has more clarity on issues such as tax. "I'm not overly concerned about the political leanings it might have," Mr Gil said. "I do need to know what the rules are."

Mr Vazquez's Aeropuertos Obra Civil may be able to offset any slowdown at home with contracts from overseas. Others may be less fortunate as the standstill trickles down to suppliers.

Alejandro Tato, who rents out cement mixers, drills and other machinery to builders, has already seen what the handover period between governments can do to business.

He usually relies on a construction company that works with Madrid's city council, but says their pipeline of projects has dried up since local elections last May, when a Podemos-backed leftist candidate ended 24 years of PP rule. He let one of his employee's go last month as his February revenues fell nearly 40pc year-on-year.

"There is no question the political deadlock will have an effect," said Fergus McCormick, head of sovereign ratings at DBRS.

"We need a government now," said the builder Vazquez.

(Reuters)
The Skellig Michael islands were used in the new Star Wars movie

The famous beehive huts on Skellig Michael that are now being recreated at Pinewood Studios

The Wild Atlantic Way and Skellig Michael, above, which is in the new Star Wars movie, feature heavily in a new guide from Discover Ireland. The Western seaboard is an enormous draw, said Irish Hotels Federation president Stephen McNally. Photo: Valerie O'Sullivan

THE firm behind the filming of Star Wars on Skellig Michael has spoken for the first time about their return to Co Kerry for filming of the next episode of the famous movie franchise.

Lucasfilm have confirmed that they are to return to Kerry in the near future.

Preparations are already underway with the construction of a metal roadway on the slopes of Ceann Sibeal on the Dingle Peninsula.

The company is expected to return in a number of weeks to film several sequences for the next Star Wars film.

Candice Campos, Lucasfilm vice president of physical production, said Ireland is an important part of Star Wars history.

The beauty of Skellig Michael in the final scene of The Force Awakens was stunning and we know the new locations along the Wild Atlantic Way will prove to be equally as beautiful in Star Wars: Episode VIII.

Lucasfilm is thrilled to return to Ireland to film several sequences for the next chapter in the Star Wars saga.

The filming will come 40 years after Ryans Daughter was filmed in the area.

Local farmers and landowners have signed contracts with the production company with many of them bound to secrecy about the filming.

Fishermen and locals in Ballinskelligs were tied to similar agreements during filming on Skellig Michael.

Irish Film Board chief executive James Hickey said the announcement was another boost for the film industry here on the back of major international awards and nominations for Irish films Room and Brooklyn.

We believe that having 'Star Wars Episode VIII' film on location in Ireland will also help to build on this success, creating further opportunities and growth for the Irish film industry, resulting in increased levels of job creation, incoming tourists and foreign direct investment to Ireland."
Actress Neve Campbell attends the portrait unveiling and season 4 premiere of Netflix's "House Of Cards" at the National Portrait Gallery on February 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images For Netflix)

(L-R) Nathan Darrow, Kevin Spacey, Paul Sparks, and Neve Campbell attend the portrait unveiling and season 4 premiere of Netflix's "House Of Cards" at the National Portrait Gallery on February 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images For Netflix)

When you meet Neve Campbell, the gorgeous Canadian actress with the striking brown eyes, glossy hair and dazzling smile, you might be surprised to hear she got her start on the panto stage.

Although the Scream stars first professional role was in the original Toronto cast for Phantom of the Opera, aged 14, she laughs with delight as she recalls her days romping through panto staples like Aladdin.

In America, they really have no idea what panto is! My dad is Glaswegian, and he used to direct an amateur Scottish theatre troupe in Canada that my brother and I grew up in, and we did pantos. I think when the Scots go to a different country, they become more Scottish. I think thats true of any nationality, when you go to a different country you hold on to your roots, sometimes too deeply!"

Campbells first career was as a dancer, but after suffering injuries, she moved into acting.

Expand Close Actress Neve Campbell attends the portrait unveiling and season 4 premiere of Netflix's "House Of Cards" at the National Portrait Gallery on February 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images For Netflix) / Facebook

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I do miss ballet, although Im too old for it now. Ive always had part of me that missed it and I used to struggle with it a lot more, but I made a film The Company that Robert Altman directed, and that was such a beautiful experience and a way of exorcising that demon for me.

"Since then, I feel like Ive done what I was supposed to do.

Perhaps a segue into acting was inevitable  her father was a drama teacher for 35 years, her mother had a dinner theatre in Canada that both she and Neves brother acted in, and her grandparents ran a theatre company in Amsterdam.

Its in the blood, she says with a smile.In 1994, she got her big break, when she landed a role on the family drama Party of Five, which would go on to run for six seasons.

Two years later, she shot to fame as Sidney Prescott, the heroine of the hit slasher film, Scream, and its three sequels, in one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time.

Campbell returned to our screens last week on the award-winning Netflix series House of Cards as Leann Harvey, the steely, ambitious campaign manager to Robin Wrights Claire Underwood. She says she was a big fan of the show before being cast, though she admits to only catching a few episodes when she wasnt run off her feet looking after her three-year-old son, Caspian.

Its nice to play an unapologetically strong woman, which is still very rare unfortunately. For me, its nice to be seen as, yes, a strong woman, but as an adult. I like the fact that shes intelligent, shes ambitious, and shes successful. Shes kind of unlike anything Ive done in the past, she says with a smile.

Now 42, Campbell notes that the kind of roles out there for women over forty arent usually so tempting.

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I get offered a lot of moms and wives, but thats unfortunately what the industry is like at the moment. You just have to wait it out and try to find the right jobs, she says.

Unfortunately there are just far fewer roles for women in this industry. Thats got to shift at some point.

There are starting to be more female executives in studios, but even they are finding it challenging to get rid of this old story that women cant put bums in seats. Its not true! Especially when you look at leading female television characters, who have this huge fan base, so obviously there are a lot of people who want to see women do well in this industry and want to see their work.

Its just an old story that has to change, and Im not sure how thats going to happen. It will, in time, but at the moment we just have to be patient, she says.

Campbell seems to have grown weary of the imbalance in the industry, but observes its a much bigger problem in film than on television.

In the feature world, its much harder for women. Its hard to get feature films financed these days. Independent features used to get a budget of about $10-12m, but those dont exist anymore. You either get a micro-budget of $1.2m if youre lucky, or the studios are making these big action films or reboots of old films just because theyre not courageous enough to try something new.

If theyre making far fewer films than they used to make, then theyre going to convince themselves men are more of a guarantee to make money, so they continue doing that.

Campbell now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her son and her partner JJ Feild. She lived in Los Angeles for many years, but says it never really felt like home.Living in LA didnt suit me. I just felt that I wanted more culture. Its not very multi-cultural, and theres not a lot going on in theatre or dance. Im from a walking city, and I like being in a city where I can go out and have my day find me, as opposed to having to plan everything.

I find it more inspiring to live amongst lots of different cultures and kinds of people, and LA is very one-track minded. Its all about the industry, and that gets a bit old after a while. I get bored, and I dont want to raise my son there, to be honest. Id rather him be around different cultures and experiences, and to have more stimulation than that offers.

One of the advantages to living in California, however, is the No Kids Policy magazine publishers recently adopted to prevent paparazzi from taking photos of celebrity offspring, following a campaign from A-listers including Jennifer Garner, Halle Berry and Kristen Bell.

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There have been pictures taken of me and Caspian here and there, and I get that thats part of the business, but I dont like when it involves my child. Thats the hardest bit, she says.

Its more than 20 years since Campbell first appeared in Party of Five, and television has undergone a dramatic revolution in that time. Its incredible how TV has changed, she says.

Of course, Netflix played a huge role in revolutionising storytelling on television with their all-you-can-eat business model.

On Netflix, youre not trying to create a beginning, a middle and an end to each episode. You dont have to wrap every episode up with a pretty bow, and as an actor you dont have to finish a characters arc in an hour. It can be carried over the episodes, and thats more fun for an audience to engage, I think, says Campbell.

Although shes not a binge-watcher, she loves Orange is the New Black and Amazons original series, Mozart in the Jungle.

A major part of the binge-watching phenomenon is the proliferation of a spoiler culture. If you havent yet finished all 13 episodes of House of Cards fourth season, youd be wise to shield your eyes on social media to avoid discussions on the shows many twists and turns.

Campbell is no stranger to spoiler warnings, which she first encountered in the 1990s. I had the same thing with Scream, we had to be really mum about it!

She also appeared in a wonderful cameo on Mad Mens final season. The series showrunner, Matt Weiner, is notorious for his aversion to spoilers, and even asked Campbell to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Its understandable, she says. People dont want it to be spoiled because theyre such fans of the show.

Shes also been instructed to stay tight-lipped about her character on House of Cards, but what she will say is this: I think being in the world of politics and being a woman, you would have to behave a certain way, and there would have to be a certain amount of coldness. So Claire and Leann are similar in a lot of ways, and I think that makes sense, because theyve had to survive a lot.Is it possible to get ahead in politics and still be a good person? Campbell doesnt think so.

I find it hard to believe that you can be completely clean and get things accomplished in politics, unfortunately. There are so many people with different opinions of what should occur, and I think there are always going to be compromises that have to be made, sadly.

The new season follows Kevin Spaceys Frank Underwood as he makes a bid for re-election. Outside of the show, were also watching a presidential election play out in the US, but Campbell thinks the drama on the show cant compare to the real thing.

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Its funny, if we were to put whats going on in America right now into a television series, I would say it was over the top. Its almost more extreme than any fiction that could be written, she says.

Its kind of frightening whats going on at the moment.Campbell, who became an American citizen 10 years ago, says the show has taught her a lot about the electoral process in the US  and given her an inside look at the real-life world of politics.

Through the show, Im learning more about politics. Politicians come to set sometimes. We were just in Washington for the premiere and I met a bunch of politicians. And Ive just been invited to the White House! she says, beaming.

Im very excited about that.House of Cards has already been renewed for a fifth season. Although Campbells performance showcases serious staying power, she wont give any hints as to whether shell be returning next year. Whatever happens, Campbell doesnt seem to be missing the mayhem of her Scream years, and says she has become more selective when choosing roles since then.

Ive been offered leads in network television series, and I wouldnt do that because of the schedule, she explains.

Thats not the kind of mom I want to be. An ensemble piece like House of Cards is just what I was looking for. Im able to go to work two or three days a week, and then Im able to be with Caspian the other days, which is great. Im very happy.
(L-R) Dancer/choreographer Michael Flatley, son Michael St. James Flatley and wife Niamh O'Brien attend the "Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games" Broadway opening night at the Lyric Theatre on November 10, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Brent N. Clarke/WireImage)

Michael Flatley  recipient of The American Ireland Fund Arts & Humanities Award with Kieran McLoughlin and John Fitzpatrick.

Michael Flatley has said his body has taken a "severe beating" as he prepares to retire from dancing this evening.

Speaking after receiving an award from the American Ireland Fund in Washington DC, he said he had given "every last drop" of what he has to dancing ahead of his final performance in Lord Of The Dance in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas tonight.

Expand Close (L-R) Dancer/choreographer Michael Flatley, son Michael St. James Flatley and wife Niamh O'Brien attend the "Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games" Broadway opening night at the Lyric Theatre on November 10, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Brent N. Clarke/WireImage) / Facebook

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"It has been a great 20 years," he said.

"I would like to think the good times have outweighed the bad times, but sometimes I wonder.

"My body has taken a severe beating."

Flatley (58) said he had both his shoulders replaced and his knees, while he also needs "a lot of work" on his spine.

"It's been severe, but I wouldn't trade it for the world," he added.

Flatley said it was a great honour to take his shows on tour.

"We've sold out every major performance venue from Tokyo to Texas and from Mexico to Moscow," he said.

"We've entertained people from all over the world, and I'm proud to say I brought the tricolour with me everywhere.

"As I finish in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas I can honestly say, hand on heart in front of God, that I have given every last drop of what I have to my art and to Ireland."

Flatley received the Arts and Humanities Award from the philanthropic organisation.

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He also took the opportunity to pay tribute to his parents, "without whom I would be nothing".

Also on the night, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan presented his predecessor John Boehner with a Leadership Award.

Senator Tim Kaine and US union chief Terry O'Sullivan also received awards.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was scheduled to speak at the event in Washington, but could not attend due to EU meetings regarding the migrant crisis.
Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond addresses a mass rally, c. 1912-15. Location unknown. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection)

Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond addresses a mass rally, c. 1912-15. Location unknown. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection)

The notion of an Irish republic was not something that the Irish people were considering before 1916. Instead, their support was for John Redmond's Home Rule bill as these images from the Irish Independent's archive show. Images below.

Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond addresses a rally in support of the 1912 Home Rule Bill on Sackville (O'Connell St), Dublin, 31 March 1912.

Expand Close Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond addresses a mass rally, c. 1912-15. Location unknown. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection) / Facebook

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Mass rallies and public meetings were held across the country.

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IPP Leader, John Redmond, addressed huge crowds wherever he went, informing them of the Home Rule Bill.

John Redmond was the undisputed political leader in Ireland until 1916.

Irish support and interest in Home Rule was massive as shown by these images, c.1912-15.

To see more historic images and to buy copies from the Irish Independent archive go to IndependentArchives.com.

(All images part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection)
News / National

by Itai Mushekwe

Cologne

- Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) Commander, General Constantine Guveya Chiwenga, is set to become Vice President of Zimbabwe, if and when his incumbent top ally, Emmerson Mnangagwa, sails through to succeed President Robert Mugabe during 2016, Spotlight Zimbabwe, reported today.Chiwenga will thus become the first highest ranking military chief in the country's history, to assume the second most powerful office in the land, after his predecessor, the late General Vitalis Zvinavashe, came within a whisker of taking up the same office in 2004 following the death of VP Simon Muzenda, in a thrilling grand political plan that has been brewing since 2008, reportedly mooted and involving former Ethiopian leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam now exiled in Zimbabwe after receiving asylum in 1991, who is said to be the brainchild of the scheme, as a hired national security consultant of the military.Former VP, Joice Mujuru, who is now leader of the recently formed Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) party went on to be nominated and appointed to the post, under a clever quota system for women in Zanu PF to have representation within the party presidium, which is thought to have been engineered by her late husband another military general,Solomon Mujuru.It has also come to light that the fallen Ethiopian autocrat, has been key in advising Zanu PF to militarise elections and civilian structures, as a way of consolidating power, resulting in the opposition MDC-T being denied power, especially eight years ago when Mugabe was beaten hands down by Morgan Tsvangirai, before a violent run-off orchestrated by the army saved the day for Zanu PF in second round voting.Only a few days ago, former Masvingo resident minister and legislator for Mwenezi East, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, booted out of Zanu PF for being a Mujuru ally, let the cat out of the bag by claiming that Mugabe personally deployed the army to wage a violent campaign against Tsvangirai and the MDC in the run-up to the presidential election re-run in 2008.According to confidential sources within Zanu PF and army circles, Mnangagwa is likely to elbow out or demote VP Phelekezela Mphoko, to make way for Chiwenga, in a commensurate move with a brotherhood-like pact between the two, allegedly master-minded by Mengistu, when Mnangagwa was promoted to defence minister by Mugabe, as reward for his hardwork in ensuring that Zanu PF remained in power, by enfeebling the opposition into a coalition government trap, which saw Tsvangirai becoming Prime minister.Mphoko we understand could remain one of the vice presidents in the new regime, if Mnangagwa softens up, but the coast in now clear for Chiwenga to deputise him if he seizes power this year, we are told."This is one of those things(Chiwenga's vice presidency), which has been in the pipeline since the controversial 2008 elections, and now gathering steam from behind the scenes," said a top Zanu PF official who has served in cabinet. "Mengistu was roped into play to give military consultancy services, while offering advise to government when needed. However he became a silent member of the Joint Operations Command, although not attending official meetings, and he has been holding important meetings to forward this agenda between 2008 -2013 either at his Gunhill mansion in Harare or his farms in Mazowe and Vumba."JOC or the Joint Operations Command, is an influential national security organ thought to be the real power broker in the country, and it brings together the top brass from all security services.The former minister stressed out that it is highly unlikely that Chiwenga will be fired from his post, amid media reports last December that Mugabe could drop him as the military boss, and appoint him into the Zanu PF politburo, as retribution for allegedly meddling in his explosive succession wars. First Lady, Grace, had been reported to be to be pulling the strings from behind to ensure Chiwenga's ZDF ouster, but it now appears that the General is going nowhere pending his ascendancy into the executive.Grace has also openly accused the army and some senior service chiefs of involvement in the attempted bombing of their diary farm business, Alpha Omega in Mazowe, Mashonaland Central.In 2014, the first lady dared Chiwenga to shoot her for coming out guns blazing against Joice Mujuru, whom she was accusing of plotting to topple Mugabe by assassination with the aide of her sympathisers in the military."I am not scared. I will talk about it. I even said Chiwenga should shoot me. They want to kill me," said Grace a few months before Zanu PF's controversial elective congress to choose new leaders of the party and country."Yes we are seeing a lot of so-called Mnangagwa allies being purged from government, and there are rumours of a cabinet reshuffle, but believe me ministers have symbolic power, those holding and controlling it's levers are in the army. That is food for thought for your paper," said the former minister.Army sources last month said Chiwenga's recent moves to acquire a PhD, with the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa last year, indicates that he is aiming for higher office.The General's degree examines alleged double standards in the United Nations Security Council humanitarian missions."People in his shoes do not just study for fun. It could be the case that he is aiming for a higher leadership office, and to hold such nowadays University qualifications play a role," the sources said.Other Mugabe administration insiders, who spoke to Spotlight Zimbabwe this month, see Chiwenga and VP Mnangagwa as having connived, with Mengistu's reported aid to rope in the army machinery, to leverage its influence in drawing first blood once and for all in Zanu PF's factional wars to take over from Mugabe, now pitting deadly plots between themselves and Grace Mugabe's so called Generation 40 (G40) confederacy.A recently declassified White House document, brings to light U.S involvement in Mengistu's passage to Zimbabwe exile. The document contains a memo, detailing an Oval Office meeting memorandum dated 24 July 1991. The meeting was held in Washington between Mugabe and President George H. W. Bush (Bush Sr.). Others in attendence were Brent Scowcroft, and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Robert C. Frasure.According to the document, one of the two major discussion points on that meeting was Mugabe's attempt to intercede on behalf of Mengistu, the deposed Ethiopian leader.Here is what Mugabe is reported to have said in the meeting: "Mengistu is now in Zimbabwe. It is a real shocker for us," Mugabe said. " I talked to him, and he gave me the whole history of Ethiopia, of the Arabs trying to take over. He [Mengistu] asked if it is still the view of the U.S. that Ethiopia is one country"?In August 1989, a top American official then Assistant Secretary of State Hank Cohen the declassified document says, he assured Mengistu of America's commitment to preserve Ethiopia's "territorial integrity" and keep Ethiopia intact. President Bush after musing on Mengistu's characterization of events, requested Robert C. Frasure, (then Africa Director at the National Security Council), to respond to Mugabe's inquiry.Frasure reply to Mugabe is as thus: "With respect, President Mugabe, Mengistu is not being straight with you. We did try to arrange a provisional government. We were trying to do that in London after Mengistu fled the country. We were on the verge of an agreement when things fell apart in Addis."Some Western diplomats in Harare said the U.S could have facilitated Mengistu's escape, with the "good intention" of bringing about "peace and stability" to Ethiopia and quickly ending the civil war.Foreign Affairs contacts yesterday confirmed that Mengistu and his family now hold full Zimbabwean citizenship issued in 2002.Mengistu was charged by the Ethiopian government led by Meles Zenawi in absentia for the genocide of nearly 2,000 people. The trial began in 1994 and ended in 2006. Following an appeal on 26 May 2008, Mengistu was sentenced to death in absentia by Ethiopia's High Court, overturning his previous sentence of life imprisonment.Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi was not reachable last night for comment, as his mobile phone went unanswered.ZDF spokesman Overson Mugwisi is on study leave, and officials in his office requested us to send our questions in writing.
Against the backdrop of a renewed interest in the involvement of Irishmen in the First World War, and with the on-going peace process and emphasis on reconciliation, perhaps its not entirely surprising the significant contribution of Germany towards the insurrection and its planning has gone largely unmarked, writes historian Donal Fallon.

1966 Commemorations

In late 2015, there was much debate at the prospect of a British Royal or Prime Minister lining up on OConnell Street come Easter Sunday, though few pondered if there would be German representation there. As an active protagonist in the Rising, it was a surprisingly absent subject of discussion.

In April 1966, five men arrived in Dublin Airport to take part in the Golden Jubilee of the Easter Rising. They were not returning veterans of the Irish Volunteers or the Citizen Army, but elderly German men; Raimund Weisbach, Otto Walter, Walter Agustin, Hans Dunker and F. Sohmitz had all participated in the failed German landing of arms on the eve of the rebellion.

Welcomed as heroes, one contemporary newspaper report noted that they looked rather like benevolent businessmen enjoying the pleasures of retirement, the German officers who played so big a part in the drama before the Easter Rising, as they sat in the VIP lounge of Dublin Airport to talk to newspapermen.

The Easter Rising not only occurred during the First World War, it was, in many ways, an event of that conflict. It was the outbreak of the European conflict that provided the imperative for republicans to meet at Parnell Square on 9 September 1914, in the library rooms of the Gaelic League.

The seven signatories of the proclamation, along with other republican activists such as Major John MacBride and Sean T. OKelly (later President of Ireland) clearly viewed the war as providing the needed catalyst for revolt.

OKelly would later recall that those in attendance believed that the war could present opportunities for rebellion in a number of forms, as at that meeting it was decided that a Rising should take place in Ireland, if the German army invaded Ireland; secondly if England attempted to enforce conscription on Ireland; and thirdly if the war were coming to an end and the Rising had not already taken place, we should rise in revolt, declare war on England and when the conference was held to settle the terms of peace, we should claim to be represented as a belligerent nation.

Connolly

In the pages of James Connollys newspaper, The Workers Republic, readers were left in no doubt that what was occurring was not a war upon German militarism, but upon the industrial activity of the German nation.

Connolly sympathised with those who had followed the advice of John Redmond and enlisted, outlining a belief that  the spirits of murdered Irish soldiers of England call to Heaven for vengeance upon the Parliamentarian tricksters who seduced them into the armies of the oppressor of their country. Connolly was not uncritical of the German state, nor was his primary loyalty to it; a banner hung across Liberty Hall in 1915 made it clear that his movement served neither King nor Kaiser  but Ireland.

For many, support for Germany merely reflected the realpolitik of the moment; Volunteer Joseph Lawless recalled that the fact was that we were pro-German, insofar as Germany was Britain's enemy, and we would have been pro-anything else that would oppose the ancient tyrant that held our country in bondage

The Aud

Crucial contacts with the German state had been established primarily through the endeavours of John Devoy, the Kildare-born Fenian who controlled the movement in the United States, and who Patrick Pearse would proclaim to be the greatest Fenian of them all.

It was Devoys networks who opened channels of communications with Johann Henrich von Bernstorff, Germany's Ambassador to the United States, and Devoy later financed Roger Casements mission to Germany.

While Casement was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts to build an Irish Brigade from the ranks of Irish POWs, the clandestine relationship between Irish separatists and Germany ultimately resulted in the ill-fated SS Libau expedition to Ireland. Better known today as the Aud, the name she masqueraded under in the hope of avoiding detection, this was an attempt by the German state to land thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition, captured Russian rifles from the Eastern Front, machine guns, grenades and more besides of the southern coast to assist the Irish Volunteer forces.

Ultimately, the crew of Captain Karl Spindler made the decision to scuttle the Libau rather than surrender her load to British forces. The final act of Spindlers men was to take down the decoy Norwegian flag the ship had been flying, and to hoist the Imperial German flag in its place.

When the crew of the Libau visited Ireland in 1966, they laid flowers on the grave of Roger Casement in Glasnevin Cemetery, and took their place on OConnell Street for the commemorative parade.

The 'concerted German plan'

The broader context of the Easter Rising is crucial in understanding the events of that time and the political climate. How many know that during the course of the Easter Rising in Dublin, the British state had more to contend with than an insurrection on Irish soil; on 25 April, a German battle cruiser squadron shelled the English town of Lowestoft, which combined with a series of Zeppelin raids the previous day was enough to convince sections of the British press of a concerted German plan which was entangled with events in Dublin.

When denouncing the rebellion in Westminster, John Redmond would over-dramatically maintain that so far as Germanys share in it is concerned, it is a German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as selfish and as cynical as Germanys invasion of Belgium Redmonds support for the British war effort proved a decision that ultimately cost many their lives, indeed in November 1915 he was quoted in the media as questioning those Irish shirkers who were running away in the hour of their Empires need.

The renewed public interest of recent years in the First World War in an Irish context is to be welcomed, as I would maintain is anything that increases public engagement with history.

Still, when it comes to the Easter Rising we cannot twist the narrative now to remove it of its European context, perhaps finding the participation of a belligerent nation many Irishmen were fighting at the time uncomfortable.

In 2016, unlike the Golden Jubilee, it is perhaps a case of dont mention the war.

Donal Fallon is a historian and one of the writers behind Dublin history blog ' Come Here to Me'
Eleanor Joel and her partner Jonathan Costen had their convictions for killing Evelyn Joel by neglect quashed. Photo: Collins Courts

A couple whose convictions for killing a 59-year-old MS sufferer by neglect were overturned earlier this month, will not face a retrial.

Evelyn Joel's 41-year-old daughter, Eleanor, and her partner Jonathan Costen (43), with last addresses at Cluain Dara, Enniscorthy, had pleaded not guilty to the unlawful killing of Evelyn by neglect in Co Wexford in January 2006.

Following a retrial, they were found guilty by a jury at Wexford Circuit Criminal Court and were given a two year suspended sentence by Judge Sean O'Donnabhain in March 2013 on condition they carry out 230 hours of community service.

Earlier this month, they successfully appealed their convictions and the Court of Appeal was told this morning that the Director of Public Prosecutions will not be seeking a retrial.

Counsel for the DPP, Justin Dillon SC, had told the court that his client wished to consider the judgment and his instructions this morning were that no retrial would be sought.

Giving judgment on March 4 last, Mr Justice George Birmingham said Evelyn Joel moved in with her daughter in 2004. It was not expected be a long term arrangement but would last until Evelyn was offered suitable accommodation by the local authority.

Following a diagnosis of advanced primary progressive multiple sclerosis, Evelyn was offered a long term hospital bed in Wexford General Hospital but she refused it.

In December 2005, her condition deteriorated and ambulance personnel who were called at the behest of Jonathan Costen's mother were greatly disturbed by the condition in which they found their patient.

Evelyn Joel was in very poor condition, the paramedics found. The bed she was lying in was filthy, her lower body was covered in faeces and she had extensive bed sores which were infected and found to contain maggots.

Following admission to hospital on January 1, 2006, she immediately made progress in response to treatment but unfortunately developed pneumonia and died on January 7.

Eleanor Joel and Jonathan Costen were charged with manslaughter and the case advanced against them was one of neglect while she was living in their home.

Turning to the grounds of Appeal, Mr Justice Birmingham said Eleanor Joel and Mr Costen contended that others, including healthcare professionals and local authority officials, were responsible for such negligence as allegedly occurred and that no private individual had the resources to mount an investigation into the negligence of others.

While there was no indication of criminal conduct, Mr Justice Birmingham said, the nature of the HSE's interaction with Evelyn Joel gave rise to concern and disquiet.

During the first ten months of her stay with her Eleanor Joel, Evelyn was seen 15 times by a public health nurse or one of her team. However in the final four months, she was not visited by any HSE nurse despite the deterioration of her condition up to that point.

During the final four months of her life the HSE involvement ... was limited to leaving nappies outside the house where she resided, the judge said.

One would have to say that there were sufficient indications of possible failings on the part of statutory agencies, the the Minister for Health spoke of huge failings, that the matter required investigation, the judgment stated.

The approach of the gardai to various healthcare professionals who featured in the case ... was in marked contrast to the garda approach toEleanor Joel and Mr Costen. However, the court was not persuaded that the nature of the garda investigation rendered a fair trial impossible.

The healthcare professionals who dealt with Evelyn Joel were potentially very significant witnesses and ought to have been called to give evidence or to be cross examined. The fact they were not rendered the trial unsatisfactory, the judge said.

Furthermore, such was the extent of publicity across County Wexford arising from the first trial, Mr Justice Birmingham said the issues at stake were so emotional, so sensitive and the coverage so massive and intense, their retrial should have been transferred from Wexford to Dublin.

He said the court was concerned that a significant step in the trial  the replacement of a juror  was taken in the absence of Ms Joel's legal advisors. It was an unsatisfactory state of affairs and Ms Joel succeeded on this ground.

On causation, Mr Justice Birmingham said Evelyn Joel's complicated medical history made identifying the exact cause of death was not altogether straightforward. The blurring of the test in these circumstances was unfortunate and this ground of appeal also succeeded.

Mr Costen also succeeded on a ground relating to the trial judges directions to the jury on his duty of care.

Accordingly, Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, quashed the couple's conviction.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Justin Dillon SC, told the court this/yesterday morning(FRIDAY), that his client's instructions were that the DPP would not be seeking a retrial.

Mr Justice Birmingham thanked counsel, including John O'Kelly SC for Mr Costen and Rosario Boyle SC for Eleanor Joel, as well as Mr Dillon for their assistance in what was a difficult and complex case.
A man who began taking Ecstasy tablets and sniffing petrol at the age of six has been jailed for three years for carrying out a violent attempted handbag snatch.

Anthony Dwyer (24) punched Rose Kim repeatedly in the head and grabbed her throat when she refused to let go of her bag.

Dwyer, formerly of Yellow Meadows Ave, Clondalkin, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to attempted robbery at Kilbarrack Rd. on May 30, 2013. He also admitted two offences of criminal damage at Howth Junction DART station on the same date.

Judge Melanie Greally said the attack was disgraceful and imposed a sentence of three years for the attempted robbery. She also imposed a consecutive sentence of two years for criminal damage of parked cars but she suspended this sentence to leave light at the end of the tunnell for Dwyer.

Leo Mulrooney BL, defending, told the court that his client's formative years had been blighted by dysfunction. His aunt took him into foster care when he was three years old and his mother died when he was aged just five.

By six years, he was sniffing petrol, taking E and smoking cannabis and all this was detailed in care plans from the State's Child and Family Agency. By his early teenage years his aunt couldn't deal with his behaviour and he was taken into residential care.

Dwyer's 47 previous convictions include one for assault and one for robbery as well as 20 for criminal damage.

Dwyer had been drinking at Portmarnock Beach on the day of the offences and had also taken Benzodiazepam tablets. The attempted robbery only ended when a passing motorist stopped, got out and walked over to help.

Dwyer walked away and into the nearby DART station, where he smashed the windows of two cars and tried to hot wire one vehicle. He was picked up by gardai here and initially denied attacking the woman.

Counsel said the good news is that his client had stopped abusing tablets and was in a stable relationship and has a young child.

Judge Greally suspended the two years for the criminal damage offences on condition that Dwyer keep the peace for three years and obey all instructions of the Probation Services in relation to treatment for drugs and alcohol abuse.

The court heard that the victim was walking up to her home when she saw Dwyer rummaging in her bins. She felt uneasy and kept walking past her home but Dwyer followed her.

He pushed her in the back and then punched her in the head before grabbing her bag. She didn't let go of the bag and he kept pulling and began punching her in the head.

He grabbed her throat but the victim held on to the bag and dragged him with her to a neighbour's house to get help. She was screaming for help but there was nobody around.

Dwyer never let go of the bag during all this time, even as two women came over to help and tried to push him away. He only walked away when the man came over to help.

At this point the victim was lying on the ground while Dwyer punched her around the head a few times. She was sobbing and gasping for breath, the court heard.

After his arrest Dwyer told gardai he couldn't remember anything about the robbery but said he wouldn't have done that, adding: Any man that hits a woman is a dirt bird.

Judge Greally commented that this was an apt description. She said that Dwyer had a very difficult and disturbed youth.

She said she was structuring the sentence to allow him light at the end of the tunnel and in the hope that he could break a disgraceful cycle of criminality.
A SOMALIAN man has been refused bail after a court heard he claimed he was from terror group ISIS during a bomb scare at Dublin city-centre Garda station.

Yousif Moog (35), who has given an addresses at homeless centres on the North Circular Road and in Santry in Dublin, was refused bail and will face his next hearing on Thursday.

He is facing public order and violent behaviour charges following an incident which caused panic at Pearse St Garda station in the early hours of yesterday.

He was arrested and held by gardai pending his appearance at Dublin District Court and could face additional charges.

He is accused of being intoxicated to such an extent he was a danger to himself and others, engaging in threatening abusive and insulting words or behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, and violent behaviour at Garda station.

Judge Cormac Dunne was given a certificate detailing the man's arrest and time he was charged. Garda Joe Lowney also told the court he was objecting to bail being granted to Mr Moog.

This morning at 4am, it is alleged Yousif Moog arrived at Pearse Station station with a rucksack and that he flung the rucksack over the counter, Gda Lowney said.

He said the man then shouted at the gardai that there was a bomb in the rucksack and he ran out of the station and said he was from ISIS.

Judge Dunne heard that this caused panic at the station and gardai ran out and arrested Mr Moog. Gda Lowney also said he expected that there would be further charges.

Gda Lowney also said the accused does not reside at the North Circular Road address he had provided following his arrest.

He agreed with defence solicitor Caroline Egan that it was a hostel but said the man did not live there.

Ms Egan said the man had been availing of services for homeless people and has to ring a free-phone number every night, and has been using a hostel in Santry.

Mr Moog also said he is homeless and does no receive social welfare payments. He said he moved around a lot and was on the streets and had previously lived at the hostel on the North Circular Road.

Ms Egan asked the court to note that her client has been living in Ireland a number of years. However, he was suffering from severe depression and lost his mother in December. He had also lost his wife and two children, the defence solicitor said.

Refusing bail, Judge Dunne said he could not believe the defendant and remanded him in custody to appear on March 24th at Cloverhill District Court.

Legal aid was granted to Mr Moog, who has not yet indicated how he will plead.
A DUBLIN-bound flight from Washington DC was forced to turn around due to a maintenance issue.

United Airlines flight UA126 departed Washington Dulles airport at 10.20pm last night.

The flight was forced to turn around over the northeastern coast of the US, after the pilot told passengers the plane was experiencing an 'instrument malfunction'.

However the plane was forced into a holding pattern for four hours to burn off fuel before landing, a witness told Independent.ie.

The Boeing 757-200 aircraft had 164 passengers and nine crew on board.

It landed safely at around 4.30am local time.

"The pilot and flight crew were brilliant and the passengers well behaved and resigned to their fate", the witness said.

"Loads of young teenagers on board were incredibly well behaved", they added.

The plane was carrying a group of Irish scientists returning from an event in the city.

A spokesperson for United Airlines told Independent.ie: "Our team at Washington Dulles is providing our customers with meals and hotel accommodation.

"The aircraft is scheduled to depart Washington Dulles on this evening at 6pm and is expected to arrive in Dublin at 4:55am local time on March 19th.

"We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused."
Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny will seek Fine Gael's backing to enter into a second round of talks with Independent TDs who have expressed a "serious interest" in forming a minority government.

The next phase of negotiations, scheduled to begin on Holy Thursday, March 24, will involve detailed policy discussions surrounding areas such as health and political reform.

Senior Fine Gael figures are understood to have assured Mr Kenny that the talks with Independents are progressing well and that they are confident of winning the vote for Taoiseach on April 6.

However, there is still an acceptance that a minority government is likely to require the support of Fianna Fail on certain issues.

Independent deputies, meanwhile, are to consult with their supporters this weekend before further meetings with both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail towards the end of next week.

"On Thursday and Friday, things will start to get serious," said one source involved the negotiations.

One potential problem for both Mr Kenny and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is being able to commit to Independents' demands, which appear to be rapidly stacking up.

Kerry TD Michael Healy Rae told the Irish Independent last night his support would be offered in return for a pledge to re-open rural garda stations, and the introduction of concrete measures aimed at protecting post offices and rural GPs.

Healthcare

And Independent TD Finian McGrath admitted that he wants to see significant investment in healthcare, in particular the area of cystic fibrosis.

Fine Gael ministers Simon Coveney and Simon Harris are expected to brief their parliamentary party on Tuesday on the progress of the talks to date.

Mr Kenny is likely to seek the backing of TDs to intensify the talks and establish which deputies are willing to back him in the April 6 vote.

Speaking in Brussels yesterday, Mr Kenny singled out the Green Party as having engaged in "constructive" talks.

"Obviously, we were talking about policy issues in so far as the Green Party is concerned," he said. "And obviously, they are looking forward, I think, to seeing issues that are of importance to the Green Party."

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail suffered a blow yesterday after Labour TD Willie Penrose rejected suggestions of voting for Micheal Martin for Taoiseach.

"Our focus now is on rebuilding the party. We will abstain on April 6," Mr Penrose said.

A spokesman for Tanaiste Joan Burton added: "We are prepared to engage in talks if they arise, but we have made very clear we won't be returning to government as we didn't receive a mandate to do so.

"For that reason, we believe the most important talks now are those between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail with a view to providing stable government."
In a quiet corner of Leinster House on Tuesday afternoon, patience was wearing thin. Suspicious of the media reports predicting a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition, one Independent TD felt he was becoming part of a game of political charades.

"I have one simple question," the deputy asked the minister.

"Are you playing us? Because if you are, I'm out of here."

While the minister's assurances were taken at face value, the exchange illustrates the colossal task facing both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail if they want to form a lasting, minority government.

If Independents can so readily threaten to walk away from a negotiating table at such an early stage, can their support for a budget or a Social Welfare Bill really be relied upon?

That is one of the many questions being pondered over by Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin as they consider their next move.

Three weeks to the day when politics was dealt a body blow that will be remembered for decades to come, the prospect of a stable government being formed is a long way off.

Returning to the negotiations table and the demands of Independents are really stacking up.

Each deputy has a shopping list, which appears to be getting longer as the days go by. A Minister for Rural Affairs, the re-opening of garda stations, the roll-out of high speed broadband and a deal to protect hundreds of post offices and rural GP services. And that's just the wish-list of Kerry's tag team of Michael and Danny Healy Rae.

Likewise, Dublin Bay North TD Finian McGrath admits he has a full list of demands in the areas of health, disability and cystic fibrosis. His colleague Shane Ross, McGrath explains, is "looking after" political reform and the judiciary.

And their fellow Independent Alliance comrade Michael Fitzmaurice has quite a long shopping list for rural dwellers, which includes a substantial package to assist homes prone to flooding.

The most unfortunate message emanating from the talks with the Independents is the apparent willingness of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to meet these demands.

The term 'auction politics' springs to mind.

But as the country enters Easter week, the mood within both the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail camps is upbeat.

Some Fine Gael TDs even believe Enda Kenny is undergoing a resurrection of his own after being crucified at the polls.

The real test for both parties will be in the days after April 6, when we should know which political leader will be given the first chance at forming a minority government. Maybe then we will find out whether the gap between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail can be closed on issues that really matter - USC, housing, mortgages and the elephant in the room that is Irish Water.
IRELANDS eviction crisis is set to deepen with the revelation 120 further Cork tenants will be ordered to quit apartments and homes that are now being sold-off.

But 15 tenants at the Eden complex in Blackrock, Cork are now being allowed additional time to find alternative accommodation.

A total of 35 Eden tenants were initially told by a receiver to vacate their rented properties by the deadline of today.

Twenty tenants quit the luxury apartment complex between January and March.

The remaining 15 are now being allowed additional time to find alternative accommodation.

Ten are understood to be in the process of moving within days.

I dont really want to say anything while the negotiations are going on, one remaining tenant said.

The majority of tenants are single professionals, many from overseas, who are working in technology and service firms in the Blackrock and Mahon areas.

A spokesman for the receiver, Grant Thornton, confirmed they have been working closely with the tenants who require deadline extensions.

The tenants in 20 units have vacated and we will continue to work with the tenants in the remaining units over the coming months, a spokesperson said.

The notice period provided to all tenants reflects the maximum period in which tenants must be notified under the Residential Tenancies Act that was enacted in December 2015.

The receivers office has facilitated extensions for tenants who have required assistance and has also facilitated tenants seeking to vacate early in circumstances where they have found alternative accommodation.

In such circumstances tenants are only charged rents pro rata.

The notices to quit were issued after rents at the Eden complex went up by 25pc last year.

Grant Thornton also pointed out that any tenants who have shown interest in purchasing their properties at Eden have been directed to Lisney, the estate agents appointed for the sale of the 35-40 units being brought to market this year.

The plan for the remaining 87 Eden units controlled by Grant Thornton will be reviewed later this year.

However, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Chris OLeary, warned that Eden is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to the local eviction crisis.

There are question marks over 80-something other properties in Eden, he said.

But I also know there are between 100 and 120 tenants in various other developments around Cork that are facing eviction over the coming months.

He said it was clear that the Tyrellstown crisis in Dublin which has dominated national headlines will now be replicated across all other Irish cities and towns as property prices continue to spiral.

Two Cork politicians, Mick Barry TD and Donnchadh OLaoghaire TD, urged residents facing eviction not to quit their homes.

Tenants who are facing these kinds of evictions should stand their ground and realise that the entire country will support them, Mr Barry said.

Brazilian father-of-two Celso Lomas, quit the Eden complex last month having received notice to leave.

I was told I had to leave. I got a letter in mid January. We were given eight weeks to leave. There wasnt much negotiation, he said.

Mr Lomas, who is now living on Connaught Avenue, said it was very difficult to find comparable accommodation within the same price bracket.

The Eden complex was developed on the site of the former Ursuline Convent in Blackrock.

The 22 acre site was originally purchased for 13m in 2001 but was later sold to Pierce Construction for 30m and was the focus of plans to develop 550 high-end housing units.

A receiver was appointed to portions of the complex in 2010 on behalf of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).

The receiver said the unit sales will be used to fund further development of new residential housing on the Eden site. The undeveloped site has capacity to facilitate more than 100 new dwellings.

A spokesperson said no further tenancy notices will be issued in 2016.

It is understood 127 units at various parts of the Eden complex will come onto the market over the next nine months.

The recovery of the property market in Cork has been particularly evident in Blackrock where privately owned parts of the Eden complex have been snapped up since 2013.
News / National

by Staff reporter

FIRST Lady Grace Mugabe - through her son Russell Goreraza-has been dragged into a US$3 million fuel scam in which a local oil company is accusing a British Virgin Islands-domiciled firm of fraudulently selling its four million litres of diesel worth US$2,6 million and pocketing the money.Line Petroleum (Pvt) Ltd, a locally-registered company, is accusing Sela Energy Limited, based in Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, of irregularly selling its fuel after a dodgy arrangement with South Africa's quasi-government entity Strategic Fuel Fund Association (SFF).SFF controls many companies, including the Petrol, Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa. It helped Line Petroleum to procure 10 million litres of diesel from Kuwait's Independent Petroleum Group in May last year through a letter of credit guaranteed by Standard Bank of South Africa, parent company to Stanbic Bank.SFF, according to documents seen by the Zimbabwe Independent, entered into a formal agreement with Line Petroleum in retrospect on January 27.After the deal was sealed last year, Zimbabwe's state-owned National Oil Infrastructure Company (Noic) offered fuel storage facilities to Line Petroleum at its Masasa depot in Harare. Noic management accountant Washington Gadzikwa confirmed in a letter, dated May 8, 2015, to Line Petroleum receiving and storing its fuel.Following the supply of the fuel, Sela Energy, controlled by shady South African-based tycoon Niko Shefer - a convicted fraudster who has delved in murky mining activities in DRC and Liberia - laid claim to the fuel, saying he was part of the deal.It is understood Shefer, working in cahoots with his local partner Lionel Mhlanga, approached Line Petroleum management indicating he had permission from then SFF chief executive Ambassador Bheki Gila to sell part of the fuel stock held by Noic.Mhlanga, who was last week arrested on fraud charges over the deal, has close links with Grace Mugabe's son, Russell Goreraza. Besides, Mhlanga is also reportedly close to Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi's son Simukai. Using their alleged closeness to Grace, through her son, Mhlanga and his partner Shefer are said to have been brandishing their Gupta-style connections to refuse to compensate Line Petroleum over the embezzled fuel and the US$2,6 million proceeds.As a result, Line Petroleum bosses reported the case to the police last week after failing to recover their fuel or money, and upon discovering Sela, Shefer and Mhlanga had no permission in the first place from SFF to sell the fuel.As the consignee, Line Petroleum had been pressured by Shefer to release a total of four million litres of diesel worth US$2,6 million to Sela for distribution, claiming he had SFF and Gila's permission to take over the fuel.Before an agreement was signed between SFF and Line Petroleum, the South African entity had sent a team to Zimbabwe to carry out a due diligence exercise to establish if Line Petroleum had the capacity to become the consignee.Shefer approached Line Petroleum in August last year, claiming he was an interested party in the deal, with the blessings of SFF and Gila. As a result, Shefer and Mhlanga took control of the fuel and sold the four million litres, pocketing US$2,6 million.Shefer's shenanigans were exposed when a new SFF chief executive Sibusiso Gamede came in to replace Gila. A meeting was held on October 19, 2015 in Harare to discuss the situation and SFF demanded Shefer and Mhlanga must be stopped from selling the fuel as they had been doing so fraudulently.Gamede then wrote a letter two days later - on October 21, 2015 - to then Line Petroleum chief executive Nyikadzino Cleopus Mathabire formally instructing the local company to take charge of the remaining fuel  six million litres."Following on our meeting on 19th October 2015 at your office at Chisipite, Harare, Zimbabwe; for the selling of the 6(six) million litres of diesel currently stored at Noic on behalf of SFF, Line Petroleum as a consignee for the product is now granted the conditional sole mandate by SFF to sell the entire volume," the letter reads."All purchase orders and product release will be approved by SFF. No monies will be paid, stemming from the diesel transaction, to Sela Energy or Niko Shefer."The bulk of the four million litres of diesel was sold to Harare businessman Luka Ignatius Fabris who is involved in mining, construction and trading businesses. Fabris mainly dealt with Shefer, his son Adam, Mhlanga and Sela when the fuel was sold.After failing to recover its fuel or money, Line Petroleum last week made a police report to the Criminal Investigations Department Serious Fraud Squad. The first case, DR/21/3/16, relates to the fraudulent sale of four million litres of diesel and the second one, DR29/3/16, concerns US$450 000 Line Petroleum paid to Sela, through its Cyprus bank account, to order petrol which was never delivered.This led to Mhlanga's arrest on fraud charges last week. It is said Goreraza, using his mother's influence and family connections through name-dropping or direct intervention, then played a key role in helping Mhlanga to get released from police custody.In his warned and cautioned statement, Mhlanga denied the charges although Fabris told the police he was involved. "I deny the charge in the manner alleged by the state," Mhlanga wrote in his police statement.However, Fabris told the police: "I paid cash (for fuel) amounting to US$600 000 to Lionel Mhlanga who was in the company of Simu (for Simukai) Sekeramayi at my house."Fabris this week refused to shed light on the issue to the Independent, saying: "My friend this is a sensitive matter; I'm in a meeting will call later." But later Fabris was no longer answering his phone.Shefer's cellphone was answered by a lady who only identified herself as Charmaine. She said he was not around. The Independent left relevant contact details, but Shefer did not call back.Sources say Shefer was contacted this week to report to the police, but claimed he was too busy before changing his line to say he was ready to avail himself after he was threatened that Interpol was now going to be involved to get South African police to extradite him to Zimbabwe. Shefer, a former commodities broker, who also has an Israeli passport, is no stranger to extradition. He was paroled in South Africa in 1995 after being extradited from Switzerland and serving five years of a 14-year sentence for stealing R47 million from Trust Bank which was established in Cape Town.Goreraza's phone repeatedly went unanswered, while Mhlanga could not be found.Grace's spokesperson was unreachable for comment.Fabris's statement explains how he met Shefer who later sold him the embezzled fuel."Sometime early in July 2015, I met with Niko Shefer at my house (in Highlands) during one of his visits to Zimbabwe," Fabris says"He explained that he was in possession of a large amount of diesel in tank at National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe, Msasa Depot, Harare, which was for sale through Line Petroleum Private Limited at an excellent price.He told me that the diesel was owned by Sela Energy Private Limited, but consigned to Line Petroleum."After studying the offer and comparing market prices, I became interested as it seemed profitable in a very difficult economic environment to buy diesel at US94 cents per litre. Niko Shefer further told me that in order to make the fuel availiable, he needed a substantial amount of cash in advance. I paid cash amounting to US$600 000 to Lionel Mhlanga who was in the company of Simu (Simukai) Sekeramayi at my house."A short time after making several payments, my company began to receive diesel release notes from Joseph Manjoro and Cleo Nyika at Line Petroleum. As we received diesel (at the agreed price of 94c per litre Delivered Duty Paid Ex- Tank Noic Msasa) we continued to make further payments in various forms to Line Petroleum and Sela Energy partnership."But Mhlanga says in his statement dated March 10:"I, as Lionel Mhlanga, did not supply the complainant (Line Petroleum) with the invoices and challenge them to show the court the said invoices and prove that they originated from me."I challenge the complainant to prove that they paid the money to me directly as I never supplied them any bank details. All in all I do not know anything concerning these transactions as I was never involved in their execution."However, Fabris insists Mhlanga was involved in the deal and, in the company of Sekeramayi's son, collected US$600 000 from his house in Highlands. Shefer, a controversial dealer and convicted fraudster, is known for flaunting his ill-gotten wealth. In one interview, he was reported to have boasted: "I move with cash. I can buy a President a Mercedes 600. How can a normal company justify that? How do they explain that to the shareholders? I do not need board meetings. I am the board."
The lights will go out in Aras an Uachtarain this Saturday.

President Michael D. Higgins and Sabina have asked that all non-essential lights in Aras an Uachtarain will be switched off from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm, to mark Earth Hour.

Earth Hour is a global moment of solidarity for climate action, when more than 350 of the worlds most iconic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and the Sydney Opera House  and millions of homes around the world - prepare to switch off their lights.

President Michael D. Higgins said: During Earth Hour, buildings around the world switch OFF their lights, encouraging people to switch ON their power to make a difference.

He added: "Earth Hour is a moment for us to highlight the importance of taking action to protect our vulnerable planet from the effects of climate change. We know what action needs to be taken and we have the global agreement, in the shape of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. What we need now is the will to make those agreements a lived reality.
A 45-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a prison officer in Northern Ireland.

Christopher Alphonsos Robinson had previously been charged with attempting to murder Adrian Ismay in a dissident republican bomb attack in Belfast earlier this month.

The charge was changed to murder in the wake of the 52-year-old's death on Tuesday.

The long-serving prison officer, a father of three, suffered a heart attack, and a post- mortem examination confirmed the cardiac failure was linked to the injuries he suffered when a device exploded underneath his van in east Belfast on March 4.

Robinson, from Aspen Park in Dunmurry, west Belfast, was remanded in custody last Saturday after appearing before a district judge charged with attempted murder.

He is due at the same court later on Friday to face the murder charge.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Detective Chief Inspector Richard Campbell said: "Following liaison with the Public Prosecution Service, the 45-year-old male previously charged with attempted murder in relation to the death of prison officer Adrian Ismay has now been charged with murder and will appear before Belfast Magistrates' Court later this morning."

A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the peace process, claimed to have carried out the bombing.

Police have warned there could be more attacks ahead of this month's centenary of the Easter Rising, which marked Irish rebellion against Britain.
The families of two Irish teenagers are becoming increasingly concerned after they went missing on Tuesday night.

Louis Thompson and Ebony Briggs, both 14, who have been in a relationship for six months, went missing after Louis walked Ebony to a bus stop near his home in east Belfast on Tuesday night.

Louis' granny, Ruth, said the family are sick with worry and appealed for the youngsters to contact a family member.

"I'm going out of my head with worry," she said.

"On Tuesday Ebony called to see Louis who was at his mother's home. She is staying in a care home for a few weeks and had to be back by 10pm.

"At 9.20pm she was getting ready to leave and Louis said he would walk her to the bus stop but we haven't heard from them since."

Ruth said there had been sightings of the pair on Tuesday night and that police considered them high risk.

The young couple had stayed out overnight before, but had come back the next morning.

"I know Ebony was quite upset during the day as she doesn't like the care home," Ruth said.

"We have looked everywhere for her, we have looked in Belvoir Wood, Victoria Park and in the Village and in Ballysillan. We have been all over town. We have run out of places we can even think of.

"It's been absolute hell, we are in and out of the house. I've had no sleep worrying about them.

"His mum is worried sick and is in bits - it's her eldest son. We just want them home or if someone sees them to let us know.

"We can't cook, we can't eat or sleep, we can't do anything because it's on our minds all the time."

Ebony's brother, Dylan Briggs, told the Belfast Telegraph that she contacted family members on Wednesday but refused to say where she was.

He said: "I spoke to her last week as I knew she was in foster care and wanted to see how she was keeping. She said everything was OK. But then I was told she was missing.

"I've been sending her messages on Facebook because she had asked if she could get a shower at my aunt's house on Wednesday night."

He said the family was growing increasingly worried.

"I don't want anything happening to her," he added. "I am devastated she is missing - as her big brother I should be looking out for her."
A man in his 20s has been arrested after a sickening attack on a female tourist in a city centre nightclub.

The thug kicked a woman in the stomach in an unprovoked attack in the bar before later grappling with his arresting officers.

An eyewitness told the Herald that the English woman who was the victim of the assault was kicked with such force that she travelled across the dance floor.

Outside the man responsible for the attack was held by gardai despite making an ill-fated getaway attempt, pushing a garda as he tried to escape.

The man was then subdued with pepper spray by gardai before he attempted to break free again.

However, he sustained a head injury when, blinded by pepper spray, he fell against the kerb.

The incident happened in a pub in the Temple Bar area shortly after 2am, as St Patricks night celebrations got into full swing.

Gardai met the woman who was assaulted and viewed CCTV of the vicious attack.

It is understood that the woman did not require hospital treatment.

The attacker needed medical attention from gardai however, who were forced to bandage his head after his fall and wash out his eyes with bottled water.

He was later released on bail and is due in court next month in relation to the assault.

In another incident in an alcohol-fuelled night in the capital, a rickshaw driver was attacked by another Dublin man.

However, the attacker lost his footing and fell hitting his head off the wheel of the rickshaw before any serious damage was done to the driver.

Emergency services were under pressure last night across the capital.

Dublin Fire Brigade tended to 169 ambulance calls between 6pm on Wednesday and 9am this morning.

They also tended to 33 fire-related incidents in the same period.

The call-outs for medical incidents represent about a 40pc increase on last Thursday, while for fire there was a 65pc increase.

An extensive clean-up operation was under way across the city by Dublin City Council who are charged with cleaning up the mess left by revellers.

Last night rubbish bins were overflowing despite plans to empty them every hour.

A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said that it had been difficult to access the bins in some places last night due to the number of people.

The streets were also strewn with rubbish, with street cleaners tidying up from the early hours of the morning.

In Temple Bar a private security firm and gardai manned the entrances, keeping crowd levels manageable.

The plan was introduced after last years large crowds led to fears over health and safety.
The creation by early Christians of the St Patrick lore inadvertently helped preserve knowledge of ancient pagan Ireland.

Much of what academics now know about the traditions of pre-Christian Ireland have been gleaned from the myths built up around St Patrick.

A University College Cork (UCC) study has found that many of the legends surrounding the Welsh-born missionary and his conversion of Ireland to Christianity offer fascinating glimpses of the pagan culture he helped supplant.

UCC Department of Religion Studies academic, Dr Jenny Butler, pointed out that the lore surrounding St Patrick - including the legend of him banishing snakes, chasing monsters into lakes, being tormented by a black bird on Croagh Patrick and preaching the Gospel near holy wells and groves - offer an insight into ancient pagan traditions.

"St Patrick is the archetypal missionary saint, whose appearance is equivalent with Christianity's arrival," she said. "As a mythic figure, he is synonymous with Christianity."

But she stressed that interwoven into the myths surrounding St Patrick are clues as to the traditions and values of pagan Ireland.

She explained that the famous story of the saint ridding the island of Ireland of snakes can be interpreted as symbolic of the new religion of Christianity superseding the older pagan religion, adding: "Snakes and serpents are found in many indigenous cultures as symbols of ancient pagan deities."

St Patrick is supposed to have defeated the 'Caoranach', a female serpent the saint is described as pursuing from Croagh Patrick to Lough Derg.

She explained that these two locations, the mountain in Mayo and the lake in Donegal, may have been sacred in the indigenous religion.

The legend of him climbing Croagh Patrick also contains the story of him being tormented by a black bird.

The black bird refers to the shape-shifting Celtic war goddess 'the Morrigan' in Irish mythology.
A second man has died after suffering serious injuries in a car crash earlier this week.

Gardai have renewed their appeal for information after the 23-year-old died in hospital yesterday.

He and a 28-year-old friend had been in a car which collided with a van on the Hyde Road near Limerick city on Tuesday night.

Both were rushed to University Hospital Limerick where the 28-year-old later died.

The the driver of the van, a man in his 40s, and his five-year-old daughter, were treated for minor injuries.

Eight people have been killed on Limerick roads so far this year.

"Investigating gardai are renewing their appeal for information in relation to this collision," said a Garda spokeman.
Eamon Curtin: It was heartbreaking to see him revert to being a child after brain injury Photo: Domnick Walsh

Bridie Curtin from Lyreacrompane, Duagh, Listowel, Co Kerry, holds a photo of her dead son, Eamon. Also in the picture is her partner Mike Carmody. Photo: Domnick Walsh

The mother of a man who died a year after being left in a coma from a one-punch attack has pleaded with others to think before they lash out.

Eamon Curtin (41) collapsed and died in the bathroom of his mother's home on Saturday, March 5.

Just over 12 months earlier, on a cold evening in Stockholm, the "gentle giant" from Kerry received a blow that would have a devastating effect.

As he stood waiting for a train in the Swedish capital with his hands in his pockets, he was approached by another Irish man who punched him once in the face. Mr Curtin hit the floor.

His mother Bridget (Bridie) Curtin has pleaded with anyone who may want to lash out to take a step back and remember just one punch can end someone's life.

"The minute that man made a fist that night, Eamon's life ended and so too did all of ours," she said.

"All I would ask, no matter how hard it is, is to think before you lash out.

"Our beautiful, caring loved one is now gone. His infectious laugh will be heard no more, and his zest and energy for life and the love he had for us all has been ripped away. Please just think."

Ms Curtin is to wed her long-term partner Michael Carmody this May and her eldest son was due to give her away.

"How can I replace him?" said Ms Curtin, from Lyracrumpane, near Listowel. "I know regardless he will be there walking me down the aisle, but that doesn't make this any less heartbreaking."

Mr Curtin died the same weekend Guinness brewery worker Patrick 'Paddy' Mullally was killed after a one-punch assault in Dublin after intervening in a row.

The 57-year-old was making his way home from his own retirement party when he was hit once in the face close to his home in Harold's Cross. A Taekwon-do trainer arrested for the assault later pleaded with his family for forgiveness.

Mr Curtin was working in Sweden with Irish construction firm ICDS at the time of the attack on February 22, 2015. In a cruel twist of fate, the machinery engineer would never have been hit had he not missed an earlier train by seconds.

His devastated mother and Eamon's father, Eamon Snr, flew to Stockholm where their son had been placed in an induced coma at the city's Karolinska hospital.

"He was in a coma for two months when they flew him back to Ireland via air ambulance," said Ms Curtin.

"He was taken back to Cork University Hospital where he spent two weeks before waking up and regaining consciousness fully."

She said it was heartbreaking to see her 6ft 4in son revert to being what she described as "being a child" after the brain injury.

Mr Curtin was moved to Tralee Hospital for another two and half months and, in November 2015, was finally released into the care of his mother.

"Eventually, he found his feet again, but his left side was a lot weaker. It took him a long time to get his voice back after they had taken out his respiratory tube, but he was a fighter and got there in the end," said Ms Curtin.

"Throughout the whole time, I knew that he would never be the same again.

"All I could do was hope and pray that he would have some quality to life."

While the results of a post-mortem examination have yet to be released, it is believed he died as a result of complications stemming from the injuries sustained during the attack last year.

No arrests have been made but Swedish police are continuing to liaise with the family.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks through a pair of binoculars as he guides the multiple-rocket launching drill.

Thousands of tourists, locals and beer bottles covered the streets of Temple Bar last night as St Patrick's Day celebrations went into overdrive in the capital.

A major clean-up operation is planned to take place in the city centre today.

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'Water bills evaders will be pursued - FF' is the front page story from the Irish Independent this morning as the paper reports that householders who fail to pay their bills will be pursued for payment by the new government.

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Gardai have a man in custody who they believe was in the getaway car used in the murder of gangster Vinnie Ryan, report The Herald today. 'Suspect 'in murder car'' is the headline of the piece as Chief Superintendent Patrick Clavin spoke at a late-night court hearing last night.

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'Scientists staggered by record rise in Earth's temperature' is the front page lead from the Irish Examiner which reports that the Earth got so hot last month that scientists described temperatures as "astronomical", "staggering", and "strange".

The Irish Daily Mirror lead with the story 'Desperate' that caretaker Taoiseach Enda Kenny has reached out to the Green Party in a bid to form a Government.

'I'll party like the Healy-Raes' is the front page story from the Irish Daily Star, using a quote from Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary as he declares his plans if he wins today's Gold Cup.

European Union leaders have agreed a plan to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Turkey which they will put to Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

At late night talks in Brussels on Thursday, leaders were assured that the draft deal would not result in mass deportations and some differences were bridged over sweeteners to give Turkey in exchange for its help.

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Larry Drake, who earned back-to-back Emmy Awards for his portrayal of mentally challenged character Benny Stulwicz in LA Law, has died at the age of 66.

Drake's body was found in his Los Angeles home by a friend, said Charles Edward Pogue, himself a long-time friend and collaborator of Drake's.

Read More

North Korea has fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea, days after leader Kim Jong Un ordered tests aimed at developing technology to build a missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile flew 500 miles before crashing off the North's east coast.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Government has forked out US$3 million on accommodation for the country's two Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phekezela Mphoko after it bought houses for them in Harare's affluent suburbs at a time four million people are facing hunger due to severe drought.Government sources say Mphoko who rejected several posh houses in Harare's leafy suburbs has settled for a $1.9 million mansion in Highlands.Mnangagwa's house in Borrowdale was also acquired at a cost of $1.5 million.A senior government official said the search for Mphoko's house had been strenuous before he finally settled for the Highlands mansion.
A number of young men believed to have been involved in an attack on the chief suspect in the fatal stabbing of Lorcan OReilly have been forced to flee their homes.

Criminals linked to the Freddie Thompson mob are suspected of being behind the campaign of terror that has led to the young men leaving their south inner city homes and moving to undisclosed locations.

The development is the latest twist in a tense saga that has developed since Lorcan (21) was stabbed to death in the Oliver Bond flats complex on Halloween night 2015.

These fellas have left their homes and it was very much the smart thing to do as a serious threat is on them and this still exists, a source said.

A 15-year-old chief suspect was quickly identified in the case and it emerged that this juvenile criminal has close links to the Thompson gang.

However, he became a figure of hate to some men known to tragic Lorcan, and was hospitalised after he was given a severe beating in the early hours of New Years Day.

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Several young men attacked the 15-year-old in Dublins south inner city shortly after 4am on New Years Day and the teenager suffered a number of serious kicks and punches to the head.

He was brought to St James Hospital, where he was treated for a number of hours before being discharged.

Expand Close The Funeral of Lorcan O'Reilly at The Church of Saints Augstine and John The Baptist / Facebook

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Just hours after this, the teenager fled Ireland in the company of a gangster to Germany and then Holland before he returned home a number of weeks ago.

Sources say that gardai expect to arrest him before the end of this month after a major investigation.

Expand Close Relatives at the Funeral of Lorcan O'Reilly at The Church of Saints Augstine and John The Baptist this morning. / Facebook

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He previously presented himself for questioning at Kevin Street Garda Station with his two grandmothers a number of days after the stab attack.

However, officers declined to take a statement from the teenager as they intend to collect more evidence before questioning him about the murder.

In the weeks after the murder, gardai arrested up to 16 people, including a number of women and juveniles, for withholding information about the savage knife murder of Lorcan, who was considered a highly respectable young man.

It later emerged that gardai got a number of key statements from crucial witnesses.

An adjourned inquest into the knife murder heard last month that Lorcan died from cardiac haemorrhage due to a single stab wound to the thorax.

Inspector Paul Cleary applied for a six-month adjournment of the inquest proceedings to allow for ongoing investigation.

This is a homicide, the investigation is active and ongoing and a file is being prepared for the DPP, Inspector Cleary said.
Police in Northern Ireland have seized 579,000 (400,000) worth of suspected herbal cannabis in Belfast and Antrim.

A 33 year old man and a woman believed to be in her 30s have been arrested on suspicion of a number of drugs offences and money laundering, police have said.

257,000 (200,000) worth of suspected cannabis was seized today. Police arrested the man after a car was stopped on the M2 around midday. Properties were searched at Shore Road, Belfast and in Newtownards as part of the investigation.

A further 257,000 (200,000) worth of the drug was seized separately in Antrim.

Police say they are investigating to establish the existence of any links between the seizures.

Detective Inspector Andy Dunlop from Reactive and Organised Crime Branch said: This was initially great work by our District colleagues and officers from our Operational Support Department who reacted quickly to information received from the community. The seizures are a great example of how easy it can be when the public report their suspicions to us. I am confident of further arrests.

We are aware of the threat posed by illegal drugs and are determined to use every opportunity to take controlled drugs off the streets and bring anyone involved in their sale, supply or distribution before the courts.

"I would appeal to anyone who has any concerns or information about illegal drugs to contact their local Police on the non-emergency number 101. Or, if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111."
A former (unsuccessful) gun smuggler was passing through an airport in the city where a notorious gangster, from whom his terrorist organisation procured weapons, was based.

The gun smuggler was delayed for several hours by immigration officials - albeit it's unclear if the authorities knew of the past connection with the city.

Nonetheless, some would call that karma.

Sinn Fein try to claim it is some sort of diplomatic incident when former IRA gun smuggler Martin Ferris got delayed at Boston Airport after arriving on a later than expected flight.

Fresh from comparing himself to civil rights heroine Rosa Parks because he was delayed by the Secret Service entering a White House reception, Gerry Adams now regally pronounces he wants "the full normalisation of relations between Sinn Fein and the White House".

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

Adams needs to realise he is merely the leader of an opposition party in a small European country.

He's not the Dalai Lama.

Besides, the White House has done plenty for Adams and Sinn Fein over the years. How quickly Adams forgets the risks taken by a previous US President, Bill Clinton, in granting him a 48-hour visa back in 1994, when the Provos were still active.

The controversial move was a key development in the peace process. But in the post-9/11 climate, it would be unthinkable for the political leader of a terrorist movement to be afforded such treatment.

Now Adams wants the red carpet rolled out for him when he sets foot in the States, even though he holds no office other than member of parliament.

Anyway, back to Boston. Whitey Bulger was one of the most ruthless gangsters in America. He was a central figure in organised crime in the Boston scene from the 1970s to the 1990s.

His reign of terror is depicted at present in the film 'Black Mass', starring Johnny Depp (below). After several years as a fugitive, he was captured in 2011. He was found guilty of federal racketeering, extortion, conspiracy and 11 murders.

Bulger was given two life sentences plus five years in prison in 2013. During sentencing, US District Judge Denise Casper said directly to Bulger: "The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes are almost unfathomable."

When the IRA sought to import arms in the 1980s, it was to Bulger it turned. The shipment from Boston made it as far as Fenit, when the 'Marita Ann' trawler, with Ferris on board, was intercepted by the Irish navy.

Ferris hilariously claimed these days the IRA wouldn't have dealt with Bulger, had they known his background: "No, absolutely not, because he was a gangster."

The IRA also accepted a weapons cache from Colonel Gaddafi. Clearly, the Provos didn't realise he was a despotic dictator in Libya who murdered innocent people.

Sinn Fein fail to see why the US authorities would be concerned about individuals with terrorism records and past criminal associations.
A SPECIALIST crime unit has been set-up by Gardai to target an Eastern European gang carrying out multiple attempted ATM robberies.

The gang have become known for using gas to blow up ATM machines to rob cash.

Gardai are investigating the gangs latest botched attempt after they attempted to blow up an ATM in Greystones, Co Wicklow, on St Patricks day morning.

Sources said the gang is also responsible for at least 10 other similar botched burglaries including attempts in Drogheda, Leixlip and Rathfarnham.

An Audi estate car linked to the gang has been tied to this and other similar attacks.

The car was seen in the area at 4.30am on Thursday morning when they attempted to free an ATM machine from a bank on Main Street in the town.

After the attempted robbery went wrong they fled the scene and were spotted by a pensioner. They veered their car towards him but he managed to escape unharmed.

They left without any cash but caused considerable damage to the ATM and the front of the bank.

Senior garda sources are said to be very concerned at the nature with which the ATM attacks are carried out after a court in the UK heard that the safe distance for anyone passing by from one of these explosions is around 100 metres.

There are fears that someone could eventually be killed by one of the explosions.

However, very few of the attacks have been successful for gangs here.

The most high profile success came when a homegrown gang took almost 100,000 after blowing up a machine in Enniscorthy in 2013.

Criminals fired shots at unarmed gardai as they fled.
Alan Smith (center with Cheque) celebrates with the Eleven other members of the Bausch & Lomb winning Syndicate from Waterford at Lottery HQ after they picked up a winning Cheque for 2,578,134.

Alan Smith (center with Cheque) celebrates with the Eleven other members of the Bausch & Lomb winning Syndicate from Waterford at Lottery HQ after they picked up a winning Cheque for 2,578,134.

Alan Smith (center with Cheque) celebrates with the Eleven other members of the Bausch & Lomb winning Syndicate from Waterford at Lottery HQ after they picked up a winning Cheque for 2,578,134.

Alan Smith (center with Cheque) celebrates with the Eleven other members of the Bausch & Lomb winning Syndicate from Waterford at Lottery HQ after they picked up a winning Cheque for 2,578,134.

A dozen Bausch and Lomb employees are celebrating today after their workplace syndicate won more than 2.5m in last Saturday's National Lottery jackpot.

The group from Waterford city and county hired a bus and brought about 40 friends and family with them to celebrate their good fortune as they collected a cheque for 2,578,134 at the National Lottery headquarters in Dublin this afternoon.

Split equally between them, each member of the syndicate will take home just under 215,000.

The pavement outside the Lotto office was soaked with champagne as the syndicate and their supporters sprayed each other with bubbly as passing cars and pedestrians cheered them on.

"We're the dirty dozen because we're now all stinking rich," joked Derek Burke from Waterford city.

He is among the syndicate, calling itself the "RP111" heads" named after the production unit at the contact lens manufacturer, who have been faithfully buying lotto tickets each week for the past 16 years.

They have been playing the same numbers, 9, 18, 23, 27, 31, 38 and bonus 30 , which finally paid off. They bought the winning 8 ticket on the day of the draw at the Spar shop in Ferrybank, Waterford.

Mr Burke estimates he has splashed out about 3,000 on lottery tickets over the years and his investment has finally paid off.

Although some of the syndicate, aged between 37 and 50, took redundancy from the company previously, they all still socialise together and play the lottery as a group.

None of the current workers plan to quit their jobs, but the win will make life much more comfortable for everyone, Mr Burke said.
The 'How Gay Are You' quiz appeared in The Irish Sun on St. Patrick's Day

A quiz titled "How Gay Are You?" has been dubbed as "shameful", by an LGBT community activist.

The quiz, which appeared in The Sun on St Patricks Day, included questions such as How many sexual partners have you had and What is your favourite Madonna era as a means of determining just How Gay the reader was.

Brian Finnegan, Editor of Gay Community News, said the quiz was hugely outdated and is an exercise in pushing offensive stereotypes.

This quiz is straight out of the 1970s.

I am a gay man and Im part of a very diverse community, where people come in all shapes and sizes with many different interests and attitudes. The gay community isnt as narrow as this quiz suggests.

The Sun and other tabloids have always been interested in homosexuality as a means to garner salacious headlines.

Expand Close The quiz printed in the Irish Sun pushes 'offensive' stereotypes, according to an LGBT activist AFP PHOTO / Paul FaithPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook

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The quiz is compiled of many offensive questions, particularly the one which asks How many sexual partners have you had which pushes the completely shameless stereotype that gay men cant keep count, he said.

Finnegan suggested that the publication of the quiz almost one year after Irelands historical referendum, which legalised same-sex marriage, is not representative of the attitudes of the ordinary Irish person.

This quiz does not represent the ordinary people of Ireland who became the first in the world to support same-sex marriage by referendum. It does not represent the ordinary people of Ireland who pushed for the LGBT community to have the same dignity and respect as everyone else in this state.

This quiz is portraying that homosexuality is all about sex but considering our historical achievement last year, Irish people have changed that view and are seeing gay as love, just as it is for everyone else," he said.

Speaking of the quiz Brian Sheehan, Director of the Gay, Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) said: "Essentially I can imagine that this article was meant to be a bit of fun and its harm was perhaps unintended but this stereotyping can be difficult for people in the LGBT community.

"Young people in particular can end up being ridiculed by these kind of articles, which have unintentional consequences for vulnerable members of this community and young people who are struggling.

"I don't think this article is supported by Irish people, who last year voted in support of equality. LGBT people are at the heart of so many Irish families in this country and articles like this one are unintentional lapses by the media, which for the most part, is very responsible in this area."

Twitter-users were also offended by the quiz, which linked a love of Judy Garland, interior design, and Kylie Mingoue with being homosexual.

Chris Kennedy tweeted: Bloody Hell, this is 2016, yes? The Sun is clearly in the Dark Ages.

Yesterdays Sun is open in the coffee room on an awfully offensive and crudely stereotyping How Gay Are You quiz, wrote Thom ONeill on Twitter.

Editor of the Irish Sun Paul Clarkson said the entire point of the piece was to "poke fun at stereotypes".

Mr Clarkson said: "I'd ask anyone to actually read the piece before they jump to lazy conclusions about the Irish Sun perpetuating negative stereotypes about the Gay community.

"The entire point of the piece, written by Gay campaigner and author Matt Cain is to poke fun at the stereotypes - and I quote, the author writes:

'In reality the only thing that makes us even a tiny bit gay is if we would enjoy kissing another man - however you might feel about Madonna and musical theatre'.

"The Irish Sun has a very progressive attitude to gender and anyone who actually reads our paper would know that, rather than looking for offence."
Shauna Sheridan of St Marys Holy Faith Convent Secondary School plays Padraig Pearse as the Glasnevin schools students enact a reading of the Proclamation of Independence. Photo: Colin ORiordan

Schools around the country held ceremonies this week to mark the 1916 Proclamation of Independence. In many cases this involved drafting proclamations of their own. To judge from some of these proclamations, the men and women of 1916 died for better public services.

Hmm, could the British not have provided that without any blood being shed? They have the NHS, after all, and as shambolic as it is, it seems to be better than our HSE.

The original proclamation is being touted as though it was a left-wing text of some kind. In fact, most of the proclamation is given over to justifying the rebellion in the name of Irish freedom and placing the rebels as the legitimate heirs of a long tradition of rebellion against British rule.

That is nationalism, not socialism, or even social democracy.

The references to equality, are to "equal rights" and "equal opportunities". There is nothing specifically left-wing about either of these ideas. There is nothing there about equality of outcome.

The "children" in the line about "cherishing all the children of the nation equally" are the children of the various religious traditions, Protestant and Catholic. (In the children's rights referendum, it was ludicrously claimed that it was a literal reference to children).

This could not be further in spirit and letter from the spirit and letter of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia the following year, a revolution, incidentally, that the Anti-Austerity Alliance still holds up as a model to us all.

The proclamation begins and ends by placing the rebels and the Irish Republic under the protection of God. How many of the new "proclamations" read out in schools this week invoked the name of God at all?

Many of the men and women of 1916 were deeply religious, as befitted the times. It would have been extremely strange and extremely alienating to most Irish people if they had not invoked God.

They had to invoke Him and "the nation" in order to justify their actions. People must always invoke something to justify controversial actions.

But was the Rising justified? As educated Catholics, they ought to have been familiar with 'Just War' theory. Was the Rising a just war?

One person who says "definitely not" is the Jesuit philosopher Seamus Murphy. Writing in 'The Irish Catholic' a few weeks ago, he set out the major criteria by which a war may be considered just or unjust.

He lists these as: don't target non-combatants; don't start a war if there is no hope of success; only a "competent authority" such as a government or popular representatives possess the right to start a war or insurrection; the war requires a just cause such as defence against invasion; and there is no realistic alternative to war.

The 1916 Rising did target civilians. Civilians are always killed in war, but they can never be deliberately targeted. Dr Murphy points out: "On the first day of the Rising, the Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army members deliberately killed some civilians and unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police constables."

Kevin Myers has very ably listed the atrocities some of the rebels engaged in.

The rebels knew they had no hope of success and that the Rising would be put down. There is wriggle room here for the rebels, however, because they could argue that their hope was that the Rising would trigger something in the broader Irish people. And it did. So in that sense it succeeded.

Were the rebels a "competent authority", that is, did they have the right to start a rebellion and kill people? They invoked the "dead generations" and the "old tradition of nationhood" as their legitimators.

But couldn't anyone do that? That's what the IRA did and it did not legitimise their long campaign of violence.

The French Revolution had genuine popular support. So did the American Revolution. The Rising did not. Most Irish people were opposed to it and only switched their sympathies when the British started to execute the rebels.

So the Rising certainly fails this Just War criterion as well.

Was there a "just cause" for what they did? That is, were Irish people being killed as a result of invasion? Was mass killing otherwise underway? Was the weight of oppression so great that the only proper response was violent insurrection? The answer to all these questions is "no".

The rebels would argue that Ireland had been invaded, albeit centuries before. But Britain had ceased to be a violently oppressive ruler and a number of British governments, starting in the 19th century, had tried to ease the lot of ordinary Irish people.

But perhaps the Rising was justified because there was no other way to become independent?

It fails on this ground as well because there was another path to independence and it was well represented by John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party.

People complain that the Home Rule on offer from Britain didn't go far enough. It was part of a process, however. We'd have won full independence eventually, probably following the Second World War when Britain was shedding its empire and around the time India won its independence.

There were violent elements in the Indian independence movement (some of them inspired by the Easter Rising, incidentally), but the real architect of Indian independence was, of course, the pacifist Mahatma Gandhi.

In an earlier age, the British might simply have executed Gandhi but by the 1940s, they had lost the will to rule. And that was the point. They would have lost the will to rule Ireland as well and independence would have come peacefully.

What the Easter Rising did instead was to give a false legitimacy to the notion that any group of men could justify violence by wrapping themselves in the mantle of the "dead generations" and the "old tradition of nationhood" which, as mentioned, is exactly what the IRA did.

Catholics in the North were unjustly treated but there was an alternative to the "solution" offered by Sinn Fein and the IRA, and that was the path offered by John Hume and the SDLP.

The 1916 rebels set out on the wrong path to independence and the IRA followed them down that path only a few decades later.

We should have continued on down the path being followed by Redmond. That would have been a much better thing to remember than what we are remembering and celebrating now, namely violence without justification.
Anyone who has seen the movie 'Zero Dark Thirty' about the black ops mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden will recall the frustration and impatience of the female CIA agent Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, while awaiting approval to mount an assault on a suspect compound in Pakistan.

As time passed, with no decision to move in on the target, the irate agent would write in red marker on the glass window of her superior's office the number of days which had elapsed - and encircle it with vehemence. Many of us are now longing for such a glass window to display our impatience with the carry-on of our elected politicians, particularly senior members of Fianna Fail.

Enda Kenny was correct to assert this week that Fianna Fail have a duty to help Fine Gael towards the formation of a government.

The inevitable alliance is between the two parties. Talking to Independents and small parties and waffling about Dail reform is a masterpiece of distraction.

Claims of incompatibility on policy are easily countered by an examination of the respective party manifestos. Such an analysis was done by economist Jim O'Leary this week, and it reveals a remarkable degree of similarity on tax and spending projections.

He concludes that, on tax, the two parties are "on the same page" - for example, they're both in favour of reducing taxes, unlike Sinn Fein, who propose penal rates of tax, and the Social Democrats, who undertook not to cut taxes.

The truth is, Fianna Fail are notoriously slow to embrace change. Recall the pleas about their "core values" trumpeted in advance of the first mould-breaking FF/PD coalition in 1989.

Similarly, on Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution - and any proposals for changing them in the context of a political settlement on Northern Ireland - I recall how early talks involving Fianna Fail on the issue broke down on whether the Irish government "could" or "would" contemplate changing those articles.

As we now know, Fianna Fail finally accepted and implemented those constitutional changes and the principle of consent nearly a decade later in 1998, following the Good Friday Agreement and referendum.

Fianna Fail are always cautious about big moves. Another example of slowness in shifting position relates to the party's long-standing policy on military neutrality, going back to the days of Frank Aiken in the 1940s.

Fast-forward to the mid-1990s, and proposals to consider Ireland's engagement with other Euro-Atlantic countries in operations under NATO's Partnership for Peace. This would allow Irish troops to participate in bilaterally agreed areas such as NATO-led peace-keeping missions, and disaster and humanitarian operations.

Fianna Fail wrestled with their consciences and anti-NATO sentiment for five years before agreeing to join the Partnership for Peace. Former FF Minister, TD and diplomat, Martin Mansergh, memorably described this slow process as "FF turning the ship around without alarming the passengers".

So, Micheal Martin has a real challenge internally if a deal is to be cut with Fine Gael. But he must do it.

For a start, he needs good counsel around him - and not necessarily all party colleagues. Sometimes it's wise to keep nervous passengers in the dark.

In the old days, PJ Mara would be pacing the corridors, smoking cigarettes and knocking heads together. Trusted intermediaries should build bridges and scope out possibilities.

With the PDs, it was always Charlie McCreevy - on the Fianna Fail side - with Mary Harney or Bobby Molloy, who shared strong friendships and inter-party trust.

It seems incredible that three weeks after the General Election, Enda Kenny has not spoken to Micheal Martin. Mr Kenny is the longest serving member of Dail Eireann. He knows well how to reach out to the Fianna Fail leader.

Mr Martin, buoyed by a strong popular mandate, should embrace such talks with colleagues capable of thinking progressively.

It is baffling that Fianna Fail are fielding TDs with dogged, intransigent views to address the media. Eamon O Cuiv and Barry Cowen have a particular talent for holding the line and saying nothing. Fianna Fail need to adopt a fresh approach or risk forfeiting recent electoral gains.

The suspicion is that Fianna Fail are fearful of change, and of the rise of Sinn Fein. To be afraid of Sinn Fein as a political force is akin to fearing them as paramilitaries - and that is a tyranny.

A good government would take the wind out of the Sinn Fein sails. There is a coalition deal to be done, and drafting a programme for government would be straightforward. It just takes political courage.

Uncertainty and instability like this is damaging to our international reputation.

Political discourse itself is being debased by a phoney media debate and procrastination. By not pulling together, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are exposing Irish politics to all the nihilist, anti-business rhetoric flowing freely from the anti-establishment hard left.

Such forces of disorder thrive in a political vacuum, poisoning the public mood and our international reputation.

A good, progressive and stable partnership government to address immediate challenges in health, housing and poverty would quickly defuse the noise coming from those quarters.

To avoid civil and industrial unrest, inflammatory evictions, street protests and worse should be a priority of the new government.

Dithering is neither good politics nor good government.
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe is today scheduled to address a Zanu-PF rally in Bindura to counter inroads by former Vice-President Joice Mujuru's Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) in his party's strongholds, NewsDay reported.According to top Zanu-PF and government officials, the rally could be a way to prop up First Lady Grace Mugabe, who is set to resume her rallies soon as her Generation 40 (G40) camp solidifies its stranglehold on Mugabe (92), Zanu-PF and government structures.Mugabe's rally, according to top party officials, was calculated to douse fissures threatening to tear his governing party apart.
Emily Ratajkowski marked her Irish roots on St Patrick's Day with sun soaked celebrations in Los Angeles.

The Gone Girl actress (24), who shot to fame in Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video in 2013, is vocal about her Irish heritage and spent nearly every summer in Bantry, Co Cork, but she bucked the parade for the pool with her mother Kathleen.

Emily's mother Kathleen was an English professor in California, while her father John is a renowned artist who often shows his work in Ireland. The pair are based in Los Angeles where Emily grew up, but she now divides her time between the City of Angels and New York.

She spent the day soaking up the sun with her mother, showing off her world famous figure by the pool at The Ace Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

A photo posted by Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) on Mar 16, 2016 at 12:34pm PDT

"I absolutely love Ireland. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth and I have strong ties here," she told the Sunday Independent. "Both my grandmothers are from Ireland and I have spent every summer in Bantry since my father, who is an artist, had the romantic idea 20 years ago to buy an old farmhouse on the west coast and renovate it.

"I go back any time I get the opportunity and I have many friends who I still hang out with in the local pubs. I have great childhood memories cow-tipping, going off and getting lost in the bog for hours and coming home covered in dirt.

"I love the pubs  the fact that you can find all ages there. It's so easygoing, an old man could be dancing with a young girl having a bit of fun and no one bats an eyelid. It's so relaxed and everyone is so friendly. I'm more of a Smithwick's or Bulmer's girl than a pint of Guinness."
LEADING Democrat Harry Reid has torn into Republican leaders, accusing them of 'moral cowardice' for allowing Donald Trump to thrive.

"The Republican Party has become without question the party of Trump," Senate Minority Leader Reid said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should now say "enough" and "do it now," the Nevada Democrat said.

Trump's rise has unsettled many Republican leaders, particularly on Capitol Hill, who remain deeply wary of the real-estate billionaire's potential for divisive and inflammatory statements. But they have been unable to unify behind an alternative, which has left many Republicans in Congress trying to distance themselves from Trump while saying they will support whoever wins the nomination.

Senator Reid used his fiery speech to make the case that Republicans need to own up to their role in Trump's success."If Senator McConnell wonders from where Donald Trump came from - he should look in the mirror," said Senator Reid.

He added that if Senator McConnell disagrees with Trump's "racist" statements, he should say so and reject him outright.

But they haven't rejected Trump, he said. "This is precisely the type of moral cowardice" that led to Trump's rise.

The Nevada Democrat accused Republicans of wanting to have it both ways for too long.

Senator Reid argued that Republicans, with seven years of obstructing President Barack Obama and refusing to reject the more extreme elements of their party, set the stage for Trump. "Republican leaders created the drought conditions," he said. "Trump simply struck the match."

Senator Reid said Republican leaders chose obstruction and "scorched-Earth" tactics even before Obama took office.

"What thrived in the wasteland Republican leaders created? Resentment, hatred," Senator Reid said.

He said that pattern continues, as evidenced by the Republican treatment of Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Republican leaders have said they will not consider any nominee for the high court from Mr Obama.

Republicans also have rejected science and other evidence that supported Democratic policies, such as on climate change and gun violence, he said.

There have been other by-products of Republican actions, said Senator Reid, that have helped kick off "the Donald Trump movement".

Those included, he said, pushing the idea that Obama's presidency was somehow illegitimate, including through the birther movement, which promoted the false story that Obama was born in Kenya.

"And who was the most prominent Republican in the birther movement? Yeah, Donald Trump," said Reid.
The Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft carrying the crew of Jeff Williams of the U.S., Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka of Russia blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) from the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. ReutersShamil Zhumatov

A Soyuz space capsule carrying two Russians and an American is heading for the International Space Station after blasting off from Russia's manned space launch complex in Kazakhstan.

The launch appeared flawless and the craft entered orbit nine minutes after lift-off. The Soyuz is to dock with the space station about six hours later.

Russians Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka and Nasa's Jeff Williams are aboard for a six-month mission. At the end of it, Williams would notch the American record for cumulative days in space -- 534 over three missions.

Russian Gennady Padalka holds the world record at 878.

Aboard the station, they will join American Tim Kopra, Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and Briton Tim Peake flying for the European Space Agency.
Oscar Pistorius was the target of a scam

South African police say Oscar Pistorius was the target of a scam in which a man posing as a prosecution official offered to quash the former track star's murder conviction.

Police say the 33-year-old man was arrested next to a Pretoria courthouse after receiving an initial payment in a police sting operation. They say the man faces corruption charges.

A police statement said the man accused of masquerading as a National Prosecuting Authority official promised "to have Oscar Pistorius's murder case destroyed".

In a statement, Pistorius's family commended the police for their "swift and efficient" handling of the case.

South Africa's highest court dismissed Pistorius's appeal of his murder conviction for the death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Sentencing is scheduled for April 18.
Britain's Prince of Wales has expressed his "despair at the pointless cruelty" in the world as he made a speech on reconciliation - referencing his beloved uncle Lord Mountbatten.

Speaking on St Patrick's Day, Prince Charles spoke about the murder of Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb on a boat at Mullaghmore, Co Sligo.

"Back in 1979, my dearly-loved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, died in a horrific bomb attack in Ireland, along with his grandson, my godson, and others who were with him in his boat," he said.

"I feel, therefore, that I have at least some understanding, through my own experience, of the heart-rending anguish that so many families in this region, of whatever nationality, race or religion, have experienced through the loss of loved ones.

"But after many years of reflection and, indeed, despair at the pointless cruelty and destruction we witness around the world, my own conclusion is this - that only reconciliation offers the assurance that our children and grandchildren will not suffer the same agonies as our generation."

Prince Charles gave the speech at a reception hosted by the speaker of the Serbian parliament, Maja Gojkovic, in Belgrade. The event was held to celebrate British women on the Serbian front line in World War One, and the relationship between the UK and Serbia.

Ahead of the evening reception, crowds gathered as the Prince and Duchess of Cornwall made a number of stops, beginning the day at a cultural market in Novi Sad.
A mentally ill man who beheaded his devoted wife after suffering a paranoid delusion that 'X Factor' dancers were under control of a "puppet master" has been sectioned indefinitely.

Timothy Allen killed Samantha Ho (39) at their home in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, England, in August last year.

Her head and body were discovered separately and a post-mortem examination concluded she died of multiple cuts to the neck.

Southwark Crown Court in London heard that the couple, who met at university in 1995, had been watching the ITV talent show on August 29 when Allen suffered a delusion and attempted to take his own life.

Prosecutor Andrew Jackson said: "They had been, it seems, watching 'X Factor' together on television - that appears to have been the trigger for what happened."

Allen turned the knives on his wife and also on the couple's pet dog, Cherry.

He later told police he had believed the dancers were "puppets being controlled by a puppet master" and they were "speaking" to him through the television.

He believed this was an attempt to punish him and his wife with "eternal damnation" for an imagined crime and so decided he had to take her life and his own, Mr Jackson added.

"When she asked him not to kill her, he carried on and had meant to do so," he said.

Ms Ho called 999 shortly before 11pm and told police her husband had tried to kill himself.

When officers arrived, they found a bare-chested Allen "in the process, having killed Samantha, of killing their dog".

Allen, of Curlew Place, St Neots, denied murder and prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

Medical reports from four experts suggested he had suffered a catalogue of psychiatric problems, including paranoid schizophrenia, following a serious motorbike accident in 2004.
News / National

by Staff reporter

President Robert Mugabe is heading back to the Far East - and specifically to Japan - as the country's economy and his Zanu-PF party continue to implode.The trip, based on the need to boost bilateral investment and economic cooperation deals, comes as the high-riding' nonagenarian has just taken a savage political beating over his trip to India for a low-key cultural event recently.Mugabe, who maintains a punishing global schedule for a 92-year-old, is expected to hold talks with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito."...the president and his spouse will make a State call on their majesties the emperor and empress of Japan, and their majesties the emperor and empress will host a court luncheon (for) the president and his spouse," the Japanese Embassy said in a statement."The government of Japan sincerely welcomes the visit...and hopes that this visit will further strengthen the friendly relations between Japan, and the Republic of Zimbabwe."Born in 1933, Akihito was heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought World War Two. His heir is Crown Prince Naruhito, age 56.Akihito was also the first royal heir to marry a commoner, Empress Michiko, now 81, and his efforts to draw the imperial family closer to the people in image, if not in fact, played into a carefully crafted picture of a "middle-class monarchy" that has helped shield it from the harsh criticism suffered by flashier royals abroad.In his last trip to Tokyo, Mugabe's inclusion of his daughter Bona in official proceedings created a storm, which critics said was based on her presence given that she is not a State official.Still, the Zanu-PF leader's frequent travels have angered many Zimbabweans for their economic impact on the country and the New Delhi trip was flayed as one of those excursions to waste taxpayers' money, political opponents said.Apart from rounding up on him over the botched trip, observers called on the increasingly frail nonagenarian to quit for his own good, his family and the nation.In particular, Zimbabweans are miffed about the cost of these trips and where the globetrotting Mugabe often travels with tens of hangers on and State officials.With a penchant for foreign travel, the 92-year-old leader's recent trip have, however, not been that rosy and smooth-sailing after a series of health, and age-linked gaffes, and challenges.As it is, Mugabe was forced to abandon his much-criticised junket to India, which was even snubbed by supposed host Pranab Mukherjee and several other world leaders.
Emergency vehicles travel along a street blocked by armed police officers during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels. (Aaron Hamerlynck via AP)

Police evacuate a woman and a small child during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt)

Armed Belgian police secure the area upon their arrival in Molenbeeck, near Brussels, Belgium. Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, one of the main suspects from November's Paris attacks was arrested after a shootout with police in Brussels on Friday. Reuters/VTM

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Police officers guard an entrance of a school during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium

Police officers guard an entrance of a school during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium

Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

One of the main suspects in the Paris attacks from last November, Salah Abdeslam, was among five people who were detained in a raid in Brussels last night, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has announced.

Abdeslam, the 26-year-old suspect who has been on the run for four months, was said to have been wounded in the leg during the raid.

The suspects detained tonight include three members of a family who allegedly sheltered Abdeslam.

France's BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured.

Expand Close Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir / Facebook

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The Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, confirmed the news that Abdeslam had been arrested on Twitter.

He simply tweeted: "We got him".

Expand Close Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir / Facebook

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Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said tonight: "This evening is a success in fight against terrorism."

The police operation that captured the most wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks four months ago ended this evening before 7.40pm.

Expand Close Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir / Facebook

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Several bursts of gunfire rang out earlier in the capital's Molenbeek area - the scene of past investigations into the Paris attacks - and police officers were seen surrounding an apartment block there from around 4 pm (3pm Irish time).

Two other people believed to be linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Expand Close Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir / Facebook

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At a joint news conference with the Belgian prime minister, French President Francois Hollande said Abdeslam had been formally identified.

He congratulated the Belgian government for an operation that lasted several weeks and said the investigation was not over and more arrests will come.

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The Belgian prosecutor said five people were detained in total in the Brussels raids, including three who sheltered fugitive Abdeslam.

Authorities said Abdeslam was among several attackers who targeted cafes, a rock concert and a stadium in Paris' deadliest attacks in decades, which killed 130 people.

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Belgian Police descended in force late this afternoon to search a residence in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels.

Police faced armed resistance during the raid that captured Abdeslam, the Belgian prime minister revealed.

Mr Hollande said the operation was "very dangerous and took exceptional courage".

He said the threat level everywhere in Belgium and France remained high.

France will also seek the extradition of Abdeslam, Mr Hollande said.

The French president revealed that more people were involved in the November plot to attack Paris than authorities initially thought.

He said authorities needed to detain everyone who in any way allowed, organised or facilitated the attacks, adding "such people are much more numerous than anyone could have imagined".

Today's caputure of Abdeslam comes after Belgian authorities said they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighbourhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam - Mohamed Belkaid - was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors say. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

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Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months" in the apartment.

Abdeslam fled Paris after the November 13 attacks. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up.

Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, a childhood friend of suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

Helmeted police with riot shields cordoned off the area this evening, and two explosions were heard.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, had not been found.

At one point during today's police operation, a phalanx of officers in camouflage, masks and riot helmets marched through the neighbourhood with guns and automatic weapons drawn, escorting people out of buildings.

Abdeslam's exact role in the attacks is not clear. The car he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he had apparently used were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest - or fleeing in fear.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation. They were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But on Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.

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Four days after the November 13 Paris attacks, the same false ID card was used to transfer money to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, Abaaoud's niece. Both Ait Boulahcen and Abaaoud died afterward in a police siege.

Abdeslam slipped through a police lockdown to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, has not been found since.

In January, Belgian authorities said one of his fingerprints was found alongside homemade suicide bomb belts at an apartment in another area of Brussels.

Belgian prosecutors said it was not known whether he had been at the address in the Schaerbeek district before or after the Paris attacks, or how long he had spent there.
Sweden says the American lobster is threatening its European cousin

Sweden has asked the European Union for help to stop an invasion of American lobsters, saying they could wipe out their European cousins with deadly diseases.

The Swedish Environment Ministry said that more than 30 American lobsters have been found along Sweden's west coast in recent years.

It said the American lobster, also known as Maine lobster, "can carry diseases and parasites that could spread to the European lobster and result in extremely high mortality".

It also said interbreeding among the crustaceans could have "negative genetic effects" and threaten the survival of the European species.

Sweden asked the EU to list the American lobster as a "foreign species", which would prohibit imports of live American lobsters into the 28-nation bloc.
French President Francois Hollande, right, shakes hands with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, left, prior to a meeting during an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, March 18, 2016. (Stephane de Sakutin, Pool Photo via AP)

The EU and Turkey have finally inked an accord on how to control the numbers of migrants arriving in the bloc through the Greek islands.

After three summits and months of legal wrangling and political horse-trading, Turkey has said it will take back all illegal Syrian migrants arriving in Greece after midnight Sunday.

In exchange, EU leaders offered Turkey money to support Syrian refugees on its territory, visa-free access to the bloc from July and the partial unblocking of Ankaras stalled EU membership talks by June.

As part of the deal, the EU will take in one legally registered Syrian refugee for every illegal migrant Turkey takes back, up to a maximum of 72,000, and only for a limited time.

Once flows to the Greek islands are substantially and sustainably reduced, EU leaders said they would look at resettling more Syrian refugees directly from Turkey, but only on a voluntary basis.

Ireland will not take in any extra people as part of the deal, the Taoiseach confirmed yesterday, and will stick to a September 2015 pledge to rehouse 4000 people from within and outside the EU.

However, he said he would consider what, if any help Ireland could offer Greece in terms of personnel to process asylum seekers that have already arrived on its shores.

The EU has been intent on locking down its external borders since the flow of migrants to the bloc skyrocketed to 1.2 million last year - most of them fleeing the civil war in Syria and reaching the EU across the Aegean Sea from Turkey. The flows have barely abated, with more than 156,000 people arriving already this year.

This agreement alone is not going to resolve that crisis, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said. It will not stop people leaving Syria and it will not prevent people from wanting to come to Europe in the first place, but it should help to manage and diminish the flow of asylum seekers more effectively, also more humanely and obviously more fairly.

The deal, which was first outlined at an emergency summit on 7 March, was beset by legal, political and practical obstacles and looked to be in jeopardy until a breakthrough was reached on Friday afternoon.

The UN and other human rights organisations had criticised the first draft, saying that deporting migrants en masse back to Turkey would contravene international and EU law.

But EU leaders say they have circumvented legal challenges by treating asylum claims individually, offering the right of appeal to those whose claims are denied and refusing to turn away people in danger of persecution or death.

A second obstacle was Cyprus, which threatened to torpedo an accord over Turkeys EU membership talks, but a solution was found that partially unblocks the talks while pushing more contentious issues further down the line.

The resulting deal assures Turkey of 6bn euros between now and 2018 to upgrade Syrian refugee camps, and hinges on Ankara making a raft of legal changes to bring it into line with EU human rights and democratic standards.

It also depends on Greece being able to process the estimated 43,000 people currently in the country, and the thousands still arriving on its islands each day.

UNICEF yesterday raised concerns about returning refugee and migrant children to what they called an uncertain future in Turkey.

Oxfam was also quick to condemn the deal, which it said may amount to trading human beings for political concessions.

Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summit meetings, said that the deal was only one part of a strategy that includes strengthening the EUs external borders, keeping the Western Balkans' route closed and reopening internal border crossings in the EUs 26-country passport-free zone.

Some may think this agreement is a silver bullet, but reality is more complex, Mr Tusk told reporters in Brussels after the two-day summit. "It is just one pillar of the European Union's comprehensive strategy and can work only if the other pillars are also implemented."

Technical work will continue over the weekend to ensure the deal can be rolled out after the Sunday cut-off date.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flow of people to Greece will hit smugglers hard and send a "clear message" to dissuade would-be migrants to Europe.

The deal calls for Turkey to take back people who make the crossing illegally starting on Sunday.

Ms Merkel said that means that "anyone who sets out on this dangerous route not only risks his life but also has no prospect of success".

She said European leaders "hope that, with this, irregular migration will end in a short time".

Ms Merkel said of the deal: "The upshot of today is that Europe will manage to survive this difficult test, with all 28 (EU) members and together with Turkey."
Soldiers from the Belgian Army stand guard following the terror raids earlier this week (AP)

Police officers guard an entrance of a school during a raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels (AP)

After a four-month manhunt, police have captured the top fugitive in last year's deadly Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighbourhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and is suspected of driving a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings.

He and four other suspects were detained in a raid in Molenbeek, including three members of a family who allegedly sheltered him. Abdeslam was shot in the leg, officials said.

Helmeted police with riot shields cordoned off the area, and two explosions were heard.

France's BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured.

The Islamic extremist attackers killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on November 13 in Paris, in the country's deadliest attacks in decades.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel called Friday's arrests a success in the "fight against terrorism".

He said he spoke to President Barack Obama about the arrest, and the White House said US officials have been in close touch with French and Belgian officials about the investigation into the Paris attacks.

French president Francois Hollande congratulated the Belgian government for an operation that lasted several weeks. He warned that the investigation is not over and said authorities would continue to pursue anyone involved in financing or organising the attacks.

Two other people believed to be linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

The capture of Abdeslam came after Belgian authorities said they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighbourhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam - Mohamed Belkaid - was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors said. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months" in the apartment.

Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of the attacks, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area on Thursday.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, had not been found.

At one point during Friday's police operation, a phalanx of officers in camouflage, masks and riot helmets marched through the neighbourhood with guns and automatic weapons drawn, escorting people out of buildings.

Abdeslam's exact role in the attacks is not clear. The car he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he had apparently used were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest - or fleeing in fear.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation. They were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But on Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.
Russian planes have been supporting the Syrian army (AP)

Russia's Defence Ministry says its planes in Syria are flying in support of the Syrian army's offensive to try recapture ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group.

Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi said Russian aircraft based in Syria are conducting 20-25 sorties a day in support of the Syrian military's offensive.

That is despite a Russian drawdown in Syria that President Vladimir Putin ordered this week in support of the Geneva talks.

Lt Gen Rudskoi told reporters in Moscow that the Syrian army has seized key hilltop points near Aleppo and has cut supply routes leading to the IS-held city.

He said the Syrian army is close to taking control of the city from the Islamic State group.
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Most people will take a glass and fill it with water if they are thirsty and wish to quench that thirst.

However, at close scrutiny we will see that the glass is not full. We make sure that we don't fill to the brim so that it doesn't spill over. So, actually, it's not really full.

Much to my surprise the other night I picked up and opened a bottle of water from Wally World and spilled some out because it was filled to the top.

Many of us are familiar with powdered mixes such as Kool-Aid and Tang. If you pour a glass of water and you are able add a mix to it, it's contents change.

The word full is defined as: "Completely filled, containing all that can be held; filled to utmost capacity, entire, maximum, and completely occupied."

Let's see what God's word says about full: "And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost  was led by the Spirit." - Luke 4:1.

Let's take a look at ourselves, especially those of us who proclaim to the world that we are "saved, sanctified and fire baptized."

From the above statement we come to realize that if we add a powered mix to water it is no longer just water, but water with a different flavor that is perhaps sweeter. I also found out if you can add something, then it wasn't really full.

It has been my own experience that many of the Spirit-filled believers aren't really full. And if you are, full of what?

Once a container is full, nothing can get in without providing room by pouring out some of the contents in the container. All is needed is a little space and now it's not full. So, child of God, put the mirror of your soul under the eternal light and you might discover that you are not yet full.

I have witnessed that a vast majority of those that say they are full are right; full of envy, strife, jealousy, backbiting, troublemaking, lies, pride and meanness. Yes they really are full of judgment and criticism.

Now the Bible says, "And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost was led by the Spirit." So as we take a look at ourselves, perhaps we should ask who is leading us to do some of the unrighteous acts we do against one another. I believe if you were really full, you would want some of Him to spill over on somebody else.

If nothing else, make sure you are full of salvation and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Norman Davis serves as an elder for High Calling Ministries International in Anderson and is a former contributing writer to a Christian publication based in New Jersey.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Joice Mujuru-led Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) has rattled Zanu-PF as it penetrates deep into the ruling party's strongholds, hardly a month after it was launched.ZimPF today holds a public meeting at Sadza growth point in Chikomba District, an area perceived to be a Zanu-PF stronghold in Mashonaland East Province.The Chikomba gathering that has since been cleared by the police comes after a well-attended public meeting in Marondera last week that left President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF in panic mode.Mashonaland East is reportedly a Mujuru stronghold and judging by last week's attendance, the former Vice-President commands a huge following in the province.
A crowd of visitors join members of Central Presbyterian Church of Anderson in a prayer led by pastor David Bailey during the 2015 Easter Sunday sunrise service at Cater Lake Park.

SHARE Mandy Keathley, music director for Central Presbyterian Church of Anderson, leads a handbell group during the 2015 Easter Sunday sunrise service at Cater Lake Park. Marlin McCollum, left, a member at Meadowbrook Baptist in Anderson, stands near son Maddox and daughter Ava, during Central Presbyterian Church of Anderson's 2015 Easter Sunday sunrise service at Cater Lake Park. Rays of the Easter Sunday sun April 5, 2015 beam near the steeple at Asbury Baptist Church in Anderson.

By Charmaine Smith-Miles of the Independent Mail

In the darkness of Easter morning, the congregation at Grace Episcopal Church will light a bonfire in the church's front yard. And as the sun peaks above the horizon, another crowd will gather at Anderson's Cater's Lake.

At both places, the people will be waiting for the same thing: to hear the story of resurrection.

While it is still dark, at 5:50 a.m. on March 27, the congregation at Grace Episcopal Church will gather around a bonfire they will use to light individual candles and then proceed into a dark sanctuary. In a sanctuary lit only by flickering candles, they will watch through the windows the sun slowly rise and listening to a retelling of the acts of God from the creation to the resurrection, said the church's pastor, the Rev. Jack Hardaway.

"In the darkness, a fire is kindled," Hardaway said. "It echoes that first day of creation, when light came into the darkness, and that moment when Christ was resurrected and brought a new light into the world."

Hardaway said the service marries the traditions of the sunrise service and the ancient Easter vigil, in which people often would wait through the night as the first disciples did before hearing the news of Jesus' resurrection on Easter morning.

About 70 people usually gather at the downtown church for that early vigil, Hardaway said.

It is the start to a day full of worship all across Anderson.

Other congregations will gather in their own sanctuaries, in fields and in local parks to celebrate the arrival of Easter morning.

At 7 a.m., the congregation of First Baptist Church will gather for the third consecutive year at Carolina Wren Park in downtown Anderson for a sunrise service.

And at Cater's Lake, on East Greenville Street, the people of Central Presbyterian Church will help host a nearly 40-year tradition for Anderson.

The church's pastor, the Rev. David Bailey, said the church began the sunrise service at Cater's Lake under the leadership of Rev. Bill Brown, who led Central Presbyterian Church from 1978 until 1989. Bailey said Anderson County's Clerk of Court, Richard Shirley, and his father, Spencer Shirley, initially started cooking the pancakes for the breakfast following the sunrise service and are still cooking at that breakfast each year.

As many as 350 people, from a variety of churches, usually come to the sunrise service at Cater's Lake, Bailey said.

The ducks of Cater's Lake sometimes become part of the worship service.

"One year, they tried to gang up on me while I was preaching the sermon," Bailey said with a laugh. "And occasionally, they will sing along with us during the hymns."

Over the years, the service has really become a community event.

"Being there together, when the sun comes up, gives you a really good sense of the day," Bailey said. "The gospel accounts say that Mary came to Jesus' tomb at dawn. That first Easter, the good news was announced early, early in the morning. So that is what we gather to hear."

Follow Charmaine Smith-Miles on Twitter @Charmaine_AIM
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An Anderson teen has been charged with third-degree arson after a fire Monday damaged a woman's property.

Dylan Cole Matthews, 17, is accused of setting a fire in the 2100 block of Deloach Drive in Anderson, halfway between Centerville and Townville near a notch in the Lake Hartwell shoreline.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which the Anderson County Fire Department asked to help investigate, filed the charge.

It was not clear Thursday whether the fire involved a home, another building on the property or other possessions. A spokesman for the state agency said he was not sure. Anderson County Fire Chief Jimmy Ray Sutherland did not respond to a request for comment.

The charge of third-degree arson carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison if a person is convicted.
Antonio Raquan Patterson

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By Mike Ellis of the Independent Mail

Anderson County sheriff's deputies have arrested the last person wanted for allegedly taking part in a gas station robbery that left a clerk shot in the chest.

Antonio Raquan Patterson, 18, is believed to have been in a car nearby when two others went into a 7-Eleven early on Feb. 17 on S.C. 187 near Interstate 85 exit 14.

Patterson was arrested Thursday afternoon at a home in the Townville area, said Lt. Sheila Cole of the Anderson County Sheriff's Office.

The clerk is expected to fully recover, Cole said.

Three others have been arrested.

Donkevius Euquon Martin, 19, is accused of being the man who shot the clerk, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Devin Matthew Cantoni, 18, is accused of jumping over a counter to get money, and 17-year-old Amanda Rose Harrison is accused of waiting in the car along with Patterson, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Martin and Harrison are in custody in a Whitfield County, Georgia, jail. They are facing extradition to South Carolina.

Patterson was being processed Thursday at the Anderson County Detention Center, and Cantoni remains in the same jail.

Cantoni turned himself in to deputies Tuesday.

Follow Mike Ellis on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM
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By Nikie Mayo and Mike Ellis of the Independent Mail

A man who was sentenced to castration in the 1980s after raping a woman at an Anderson motel was back in court Thursday after being found guilty of rape again.

In 1983, Michael Braxton and two others pleaded guilty to raping Elizabeth Daniel, a woman in her 20s who weighed 80 pounds and stood less than 5 feet tall. Investigators said Daniel lost 4 to 6 pints of blood and nearly died during an attack that lasted several hours. After Braxton and his co-defendants pleaded guilty decades ago, Circuit Judge C. Victor Pyle offered them a choice: They could serve 30 years in prison or be castrated and released on five years probation.

Braxton and at least one other defendant chose castration. But the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled it mutilation, an unconstitutional form of punishment, and all three men were sent to prison. Braxton was 19 at the time.

The case gained national attention.

I remember there were reporters from Japan, Finland, all the networks, radio stations ... it seemed like everyone, recalled George Ducworth, a former solicitor who prosecuted the case.

According to court and jail records, Braxton got out of jail in South Carolina in 1994. By 1998, he had been convicted of raping someone he drove to a hotel room from the campus of Tennessee State University in Nashville.

It was that 1990s conviction that brought him back to Anderson County recently.

Peter OBoyle, a spokesman with the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, said Thursday that this state had placed a hold on Braxton because of the Tennessee case. OBoyle said records show Braxton finished his time in the Tennessee prison system in October. He was soon sent back to Anderson County, accused of violating the terms of his South Carolina parole.

Braxton, now 52, stood before Judge Lawton McIntosh in the Anderson County Courthouse on Thursday seeking bail. He had no attorney.

Braxtons previous cases were not discussed in court. But McIntosh did say he denied Braxton bail because of his previous record.

Braxton said little in court.

I really just dont know what to expect, he told McIntosh.

Braxton could face a hearing in front of a South Carolina parole board as early as next week. The board will be tasked with deciding whether Braxton has served enough time for his crime, or whether he should be sent back to a South Carolina prison. Officials familiar with the case said Daniel, who spoke on national TV about her rape, died a few years ago. But her family will be notified if Braxton has a hearing next week.

Follow Nikie Mayo and Mike Ellis on Twitter @NikieMayo and @MikeEllis_AIM
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Nine more candidates from Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties filed Thursday to seek office, including a second challenger in the South Carolina House of Representatives District 8 race.

Thursday was the second day of the two-week candidate filing period, which closes at noon March 30.

Albert Howard filed for the House District 8 seat now held by freshman Rep. Jonathon Hill. Howard, 28, is running for office for the first time. He is an assistant manager of a TD Bank branch in Anderson.

Don Bowen filed Wednesday to reclaim the House District 8 seat that he lost to Hill in 2014.

Four other incumbents filed in Anderson County on Thursday: state Rep. Brian White, state Rep. Craig Gagnon and County Council members Tom Allen and Cindy Wilson.

David Wagner filed to run for the solicitor post for the 10th Judicial Circuit, which handles the prosecution of criminal cases in Anderson and Oconee counties. Wagner runs the Oconee County office for Solicitor Chrissy Adams, who is not seeking re-election for health reasons. W. Wilson Burr, the former Oconee County chief public defender, filed Wednesday for the solicitor's post.

Three candidates filed Thursday in Pickens County. Jeff Willis filed for the County Council District 5 seat that his wife, Jennifer Willis, has held since 2009. Allan Quinn filed for the state Senate seat currently held by Larry Martin. Former state House member Rex Rice filed Wednesday to run for Martin's seat. Rep. Gary Clary filed to seek a second term.

A total of 29 candidates now have filed to run in Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties. All of them are Republicans.

'robocall' Challenge issued

Willie Day challenged his four Republican rivals Thursday to not use "robocalls" in the final days before Tuesday's primary for the vacant South Carolina Senate District 4 seat.

"Not only do these calls bother voters  the constituents whose quality of life we all say we want to improve  but they often do so in the middle of dinner, or lunch, or some other family activity," Day wrote in an email to the other candidates.

Day, who retired last year as the city of Anderson's neighborhood and transit services director, is running against Williamston Town Councilman Rockey Burgess, state Rep. Mike Gambrell of Honea Path, Greenwood attorney Tripp Padgett and Williamston resident Mark Powell for the Senate seat that Billy O'Dell held until he died in January.

Burgess said Thursday that he would not rule out using automated calls. He said volunteers for his campaign have been calling voters, many of whom were unaware that a primary will happen Tuesday.

Padgett said he will not use automated calls in his campaign. He described the practice as a "waste of money."

Gambrell and Powell could not be reached Thursday.

Roots of the Democratic Party

Genealogist Carolyn Duncan recently rediscovered some paperwork that may offer clues about the beginning of the Anderson County Democratic Party.

Duncan is active in the county chapter of S.C. Genealogical Society and helps maintain the local office in downtown Anderson.

Documents in that office  a mix of handwritten notes and excerpts from the Anderson Intelligencer  show that Democrats in this part of the Upstate were active in 1876. That year, a Democratic Club was formed in Anderson. The club resolved that it was "in favor of a straight-out Democratic nomination in every office of the government, from the president down."

Democrats hold county convention

The Anderson County Democratic Party will hold its county convention on Saturday.

Officers for the county party will be elected during the convention, which starts at 10 a.m. at the Westside Community Center, 1100 W. Franklin St. in Anderson.

Written by Independent Mail reporters Nikie Mayo and Kirk Brown. Follow them on Twitter @NikieMayo and @KirkBrown_AIM.

Email them with tips at mayon@independentmail.com or kirk.brown@independentmail.com.
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By Charlie Bauder, WNEG AM- Special to Independent Mail

TOCCOA  Stephens County School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey expects to propose a property tax rate decrease for the upcoming budget year.

Dorsey spoke to the Stephens County Board of Education a week ago about the early numbers for the school system's fiscal year 2016-17 budget.

The early numbers support the idea that the property tax rate can be lowered, he said.

"I think that we would feel comfortable in recommending to the board that we roll back the millage rate one full mill," he said. "I think we have enough room in there to do that and feel confident that shouldn't change."

A 1-mill decrease would make the property tax rate levied for the school system 18.75 mills.

"Looking at our preliminaries, as long as the (Georgia) Legislature approves the budget plan we are talking about, we should be slightly up on our state revenues, so we will not see any loss there," Dorsey said.

Dorsey said he feels comfortable a property tax rate reduction will be possible for that reason, and because of savings the school system is seeing this year.

According to current budget numbers for fiscal year 2015-16, the school system is projected to end the year with about $3 million more in revenue than expenditures.

Dorsey said he feels that number could continue to grow.

"It probably will close out somewhere between $3 million and $5 million," he said, adding that school-level restructuring has saved more than officials thought it would.

Dorsey said it is still early in the budget process, and school system staff will continue to work on the numbers.
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By Elbert Menees, Anderson

After E.W. Scripps Co. was joined with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in April of last year to form the Journal Media Group, which now operates the Independent Mail, I noticed something new and very exciting in the paper. Columns by Thomas Sowell are now showing up frequently on the editorial page.

Sowell, an 85-year-old African-American legend, is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, California. He is also associated with three other institutes, or "think tanks," as they are often called. His books, monographs and other publications would fill up a small library. I have his "Basic Economics" textbook in my home office. His nationally syndicated column appears in 150 newspapers from Boston to Honolulu and now Anderson is apparently fortunate enough to be one of them.

Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard, a master's from Yale and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, studying under Milton Friedman, now deceased, who is the recognized authority in America on "monetary policy." Sowell taught at some of the best universities and has received numerous honors and awards, including the National Humanities Medal in 2002.

From my perspective, the Independent Mail has moved up a notch in the journalism world.
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By Monica L. Rockwell, Anderson

Scary times. The day following the Republican primary, I had a conversation on social media with a Trump supporter. I fact-checked some of her claims. Let's start with his tax plan. The conclusion by the Tax Policy Center is that the "fundamental concern (Trump's) plan poses is that, barring extraordinarily large cuts in government spending or future tax increases, it would yield persistently large, and likely unsustainable, budget cuts." How about the environment? I stated in my response to her gushing praise of her candidate, 97 percent of scientists agree on climate change and that it is fueled by human activity. Trump's position? Climate change is a hoax. The woman insisted that I was quoting Barack Obama (read, "lie"). Um, no, try NASA (check it out at www.climate.nasa.gov). How about his plan to deport 11 million illegals? The Congressional Budget Office found "the net financial impact of illegal immigration on state and local budgets was most likely modest." But who needs facts? Immigrants and the poor make easy targets. Examining the real roots of our national problems is hard and harder still is owning up to them and holding elected officials' feet (and our own) to the fire. Fear shouldn't be allowed to win, and I would suggest that those using it as a stick are doing so for their own gain, hardly ours. We ignore facts and the truth to our own peril.
Cisco Systems Inc is planning to invest US$100 million to accelerate the phase of Indias digitisation programme under the Digital India scheme, as per report.As per reports, the company plans to connect villages through digital networks. The company is also in talk with the Central and the State Government to launch incubation centers for entrepreneurs and training students.Earlier in the day, John Chambers, Chairman, Cisco called on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During the meeting, he explained to the Prime Minister the elements of CISCO's Country Digitization Acceleration Programme, and how it is aligned to the Prime Minister's vision and initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India, Start-up India, Smart Cities and Cyber Security initiatives.The Prime Minister appreciated this initiative of CISCO, and emphasised its benefits in areas such as long distance education. He said that use of digital technology has been useful in eliminating leakages in subsidy. He also discussed possibilities of cooperation in the area of cyber security.
Cisco and the government of Andhra Pradesh have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which includes skills development for the new digital economy through expansion of the Networking Academy program, investing in innovative startups in the state, establishing an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam and Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in Tirupati focused on manufacturing and cyber security solutions, sponsoring a research program at University of Andhra to develop and customize digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh, and expansion of the Golden Mile project with Cisco.The MoU between Cisco and the Government of Andhra Pradesh was signed today as part of the inauguration of Indias first statewide broadband project  AP Fiber-Net  in Visakhapatnam, in the presence of the Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandra Babu Naidu, and other government dignitaries John Chambers, Executive Chairman, Cisco; Irving Tan, President, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan; and Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC.Cisco will set up an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam to foster regional innovation and will enable partners and startups to build solutions around IoE and engage in rapid prototyping. This will also act as a platform to bring startups, accelerators, developers, researchers, ecosystem partners and the venture community together to showcase possibilities of the Internet of Everything.In addition to this, Cisco will also invest in an advanced Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in the Institute of Digital Technology (IDT), Tirupati, focused on cyber security, smart city and manufacturing solutions. The centre will help train graduate engineers in advanced digital technologies and solutions and equip them with skill sets required for the digital era.As part of the initiative to boost research, Cisco will sponsor and collaborate with Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on a 12-month research program to identify and explore the possibility of developing and customizing digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh.As India plays a pivotal role in Ciscos overall growth, innovation and talent strategy, the company announced plans for the expansion of Cisco Networking Academy in 70 colleges to train approximately 10,000 new students in the state of Andhra Pradesh over next three years. As part of Ciscos commitment to accelerating Digital Andhra Pradesh, the company will work with the state to integrate NetAcad courses as part of the technical education curriculum. This will help India increase its pool of highly skilled technology professionals.The Cisco Networking Academy in India is one of the largest programs for Cisco worldwide. Across 180 academies nationwide, more than 100,000 Indian students have been trained since its inception. The skills-development program is a cloud-delivered, scalable, high-quality program that helps students learn how to design, build, secure and maintain computer networks and prepare for jobs in the digital economy.As part of the Golden Mile project, Cisco has started deploying key technologies in the 5 km area including Smart Wi-Fi, Smart Safety & Security, Smart Lighting, Smart Parking, Smart Transports, Smart Bus Stops, Smart Kiosks, Remote Expert for Government Services (REGS) and Smart Education in the city of Vijaywada. As part of the expansion of the project, Cisco announced that it will develop new applications specifically for Indian Smart Cities and collaborate with the state for its upcoming Smart Cities in AP.As part of its commitment to help the state realize its vision of Digital Andhra Pradesh, and lead as a role model for digital transformation for other states to follow, Cisco has collaborated with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to design and implement AP Fiber Net, the first statewide broadband project in India. AP Fibre Net is a huge step toward realising the governments vision to provide broadband on fiber to every house in the state. This transformational project is aimed at providing on-demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 to 20 Mbps for all households and 1 to 10 Gbps for all institutions by 2018 and is expected to significantly boost the economy. The network will cover 2,500 locations and is 22,500 km long, reaching 2 million households. Cisco has designed and implemented the network infrastructure for AP Fiber Net using statewide high-speed, aerial-optical fiber leveraging existing electricity distribution assets. Cisco has helped establish a scalable Infrastructure-Platform as a Service Model providing wholesale bandwidth and made provision to provide affordable On-Demand bandwidth for households and the private sector.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

An Apostle Try Immanuel a leader of Greaterlife Embassy recently reportedly confounded the sceptics on his mind-blowing miracles which raised interest within the anonymous fellows in the press and the social media after he healed a known mad man and two elderly women.The shocking incident was captured on his YouTube account as he added a video on which he had miraculously healed a mentally disturbed man and two old ladies.According to sources a Beatrice man with mental illness well known as Pedzisai Haurovi who has been mentally disturbed for years was miraculously healed by the Apostle on his healing programme dubbed ISC (Interdenominational Spiritual Clinic) in Beatrice on the 20th of February this year.According to research it is said people with this challenge are in the state of significant behavioural or psychological syndrome characterized by distressing symptoms, significant impairment of functioning, or significantly increased risk of death, pain, or other disabilities.This was proven to be fibs when the Apostle of God laid his hands upon him. He had an aggressive and stereotyped behaviour which led him to be isolated and sometimes cuffed."His mother wanted to bring him to the site where the man of God was ministering with help of other two neighbourhood man but failed to tame him," said the source."He mother who had uncontrollable pain on her leg and her whole body came limping and the man of God was moved with compassion and ministered to her. Instantly she got healed and began to run joyfully as evidence of the absence of pain from off her body."The source said after she saw what God can do she requested the man of God to pray for Pedzisai in his absence."It seemed to be illogical to Beatrice residents when she said it, but the Apostle declared that he be released from the cage was is in .He sent a car to pick him and shockingly they found him calm and he entered the car on his own accord," said the source.In the video shown on YouTube he is seen walking un-cuffed, calm and interactive. The Apostle laid his hand upon him and automatically he recovered his memory and began to speak sensibly. He started to identify her relatives and her own daughter, even asked about the whereabouts of his wife who left him because of his lunatic condition. Pedzisai completely recovered and is seen at the all night prayer.As if it's not enough her mother's sister also had a problem with her left ear for three years and was instantly healed after her faith was raised when she saw the testimony of Pedzisai and her mother. The Apostle of God left Beatrice residents astonished. It is evident in proclamation that God is using this man.
stated that the Bank is planning to raise funds sthrough new

The bank periodically evaluates borrowing opportunities through various instruments. Bank is currently evaluating issuance oflong term bondsin the nature of debentures forlending to long term projects in infrastructure and affordable housing on a private placement basis.

ICICI Bank Ltd ended at Rs. 227.55, up by Rs. 1.1 or 0.49% from its previous closing of Rs. 226.45 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 230 and touched a high and low of Rs. 235.4 and Rs. 225.05 respectively. A total of 31220515(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 132299.05 crore.

The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 2 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 342 on 19-Mar-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 180.8 on 26-Feb-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 235.4 and Rs. 212.6 respectively.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 0 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 62.68 % and 8.65 % respectively.

The stock traded below its 200 DMA.

The borrowing proposal will be considered in the meeting of Committee of Executive Directors at any time in next week starting from March 21,2016.
Clossing Bell:

Finally BSE Sensex ended with a gain of 275 points at 24,953. The BSE Sensex opened at 24,729 touched an intra-day high of 24,87and low of 24,681.The NSE Nifty closed with a gain of 92 points at 7,604. The NSE Nifty opened at 7,543 hitting a high of 7,584 and low of 7,515.The India VIX (Volatility) index was down 2.71% to 16.3825. In broader market with the benchmark indices with the BSE midcap and smallcap indices closed higher.At 3:04 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 24,982 up 305 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 7,567 up 55 points.The BSE Mid-cap Index is trading up 0.62% at 10,296, whereas BSE Small-cap Index is trading up 0.58% at 10,305.GAIL, TCS, Tata Steel, Wipro, Adani Ports, SBI, Infosys and HDFC Bank are among the gainers, whereas Lupin, Sun Pharma, Maruti Suzuki, HUL and Dr.Reddy's losing sheen on BSE.Some buying activity is seen in telecom, metals, IT, teck, capital goods, banking, utilities, telecom and oil and gas sectors, while pharma and FMCG sectors are showing weakness on BSE.The INDIA VIX is down 3.38% at 16.2700. Out of 1,796 stocks traded on the NSE, 717 declined, 809 advanced and 270 remained unchanged today.A total of eight stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, while 26 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.The Indian rupee opened 13 paise higher at 66.62/$ on Friday as against the previous close of 67.75/$. On Thursday, Indian rupee extended the upside against the greenback, helped by foreign capital inflows and ensuing firm tone in equity markets.LT Foods rallied 6% to Rs.237.10 on BSE. HUL announced that it has signed an agreement for the sale of its Rice Exports business carried out primarily under the brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana, to LT Foods Middle East DMCC, a group company of LT Foods Limited (owner of Daawat).DLF gained 1.7% to Rs.106.85 on BSE. The company has decided to sell its shopping mall in Saket in the national capital to its unit for Rs.904.50 crore as part of its plan to streamline and monetize its existing assets. DLF Ltd has announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on March 17, 2016, has declared an interim dividend of Rs. 2 per fully paid equity shares of Rs. 2 each of the Company for the FY 2016.Eros International jumped 10.6% to Rs.174.60 on BSE.JSW Energy jumped 2.7% to Rs.70.35 on BSE. The company is planning to acquire a 1,000 MW Jindal Power plant for about Rs. 6,000 crore, according to reports. The deal is likely to be announced shortly.Moil soared 5% to Rs.217.35 on BSE. The company has informed BSE that the Government of Madhya Pradesh has granted Mining lease over 48.974 hectare in village Lugma, Tehsil Paraswada of Balaghat District (Madhya Pradesh) in favour of MOIL Limited. The said lease has been executed and registered by the Company. This area falls under Ukwa Mine of the Company.Dhanuka Agritech Ltd has informed BSE that the company has received a 'Licence to manufacture Insecticides' form Joint Director of Agriculture (Plant & Protection), Rajasthan for the Manufacturing unit of the Company situated at Keshwana, Kotputli (Jaipur), Rajasthan. The company has declared 2nd Interim Dividend @ 200% (i.e. Rs.4/- per Equity Share having Face Value of Rs.2/- each) for the Financial Year 2015-16.Aurobindo Pharma has received final approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) to manufacture and market Dexmedetomidine Hydrochloride Injection, 200 mcg (base)/2 mL (100 mcg (base)/mL) single-dose vials. The product is to be launched post Q1 FY16-17.Mphasis gained 2% to Rs.498.88 on BSE. According to media reports,Blackstone Group is close to acquiring the IT firm.Oil India gained 1.3% to Rs.310. LIC has raised its stake in the company by 2% through open market acquisition, as per media reports. LIC bought 1.22 crore shares or 2.04% of equity capital, to raise its stake in the company.
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Things are not looking positive for the Britishs giant financial service provider Royal Bank of Scotland, as the bank has divested the India onshore loan commitments to DBS Group Holdings Ltd. This was a much awaited deal that will see the exit of UKs government owned bank from one of the fastest-growing economies. DBS group has acquired the Indian onshore deal, which is expected to be around Rs. 1,000 crore.



As on March 2015, RBS recorded a balance sheet of Rs 19,000 crore and loan book of Rs 11,150 crore. The bank has decided to retain other two verticals  the network of 10 branches and debt capital market. It has decided to sell its Indian business in parts due to lower valuation, according to reports. This deal is just a continuation of what they did previously when they sold their diamonds business to IndusInd Bank and their private banking business to their former executive.



RBS is also planning to trim its 448 investment banking jobs in the UK. RBS plans to cut its back- and middle-office roles in its investment bank, including a small number of technology jobs. It plans to shift two-thirds of its jobs to India. The bank will transfer about 300 jobs offshore, in its existing operations located in Gurgaon, near Delhi, and Chennai in southern India.



The layoff is expected to happen by the end of next year. However, with this move, London and Newcastle-under-Lyme will bear the brunt of the cuts, along with Manchester. Such a decision comes right after RBS announced plans to lay off 550 investment advisers replacing them with an automated system that will offer advice based on customers responses to a series of questions.



During the financial crisis, the bank was bailed out while witnessing its eight consecutive annual loss at 2bn for 2015.
AppAlert Incs Indian subsidiary AppAlert Online Services launches a completely mobile-based real time school bus tracking system that delivers peace of mind to both parents and schools.US-based AppAlert Inc. has raised $900K in its seed round of funding, led by Narinder Singh, a US based serial investor. The companys Indian subsidiary - AppAlert Online Services has launched a Cloud, Mobile only, real-time school bus tracking system. A first to launch a Mobile only platform, it helps parents as well as the school management knows the precise location of children when they are on the school bus.The funding secured will be deployed to build and enhance the core application and to expand its service offerings in markets of Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Australia. AppAlert has kicked off trials at more than 20+ schools in NCR and Mumbai encompassing 15,000 children.AppAlert provides real time information to school authorities and parent alike, as to the whereabouts of the school bus en-route. In the event of an accident or breakdown, help can reach the school bus with immediacy. AppAlert alerts parents in advance when the bus arrives at the students stop, so that the parent/guardian doesnt have to stand outside in the rain or sweltering heat and pollution, waiting for transportation, all the while aware of their wards attendance on the bus. This not only gives peace of mind to parents but also to school administrators because of the number of reduced phone calls from worried parents. For the school transport administration, the platform enables gathering information related to over-speeding, accidents/ breakdowns, unscheduled stops, harsh braking, traffic congestion and panic alarms.The average waiting time for parents and caregivers at bus stops today is a minimum of 17 minutes. More than half the calls school managements have to field are about buses leaving or arriving. In todays day and age when any and all information is available on ones fingertips, it is unfair that parents and schools struggle with gathering and dissemination of such vital information on a daily basis. At AppAlert, we are working to provide meaningful solutions to this seemingly simple, yet emotionally draining problem, said Mr. Ashuvinder Ahuja, Founder, AppAlert. We are committed to further establishing and growing in the Indian market, which has huge potential, he added.The AppAlert parent app is available on Android and iPhone. Parents are also allowed to designate up to 3 other individuals as custodians of the app.
Read More:

LT Foods rallied 8.9% to Rs.243 on BSE. HUL announced that it has signed an agreement for the sale of its Rice Exports business carried out primarily under the brands Gold Seal Indus Valley and Rozana, to LT Foods Middle East DMCC, a group company of LT Foods Limited (owner of Daawat).DLF gained 1.7% to Rs.106.85 on BSE. The company has decided to sell its shopping mall in Saket in the national capital to its unit for Rs.904.50 crore as part of its plan to streamline and monetize its existing assets. DLF Ltd has announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on March 17, 2016, has declared an interim dividend of Rs. 2 per fully paid equity shares of Rs. 2 each of the Company for the FY 2016.Eros International jumped 12.5% to Rs.174.60 on BSE.JSW Energy jumped 2.7% to Rs.70.35 on BSE. The company is planning to acquire a 1,000 MW Jindal Power plant for about Rs. 6,000 crore, according to reports. The deal is likely to be announced shortly.Moil soared 5% to Rs.217.35 on BSE. The company has informed BSE that the Government of Madhya Pradesh has granted Mining lease over 48.974 hectare in village Lugma, Tehsil Paraswada of Balaghat District (Madhya Pradesh) in favour of MOIL Limited. The said lease has been executed and registered by the Company. This area falls under Ukwa Mine of the Company.Dhanuka Agritech jumped 4% to Rs.582 after the company has received a 'Licence to manufacture Insecticides' form Joint Director of Agriculture (Plant & Protection), Rajasthan for the Manufacturing unit of the Company situated at Keshwana, Kotputli (Jaipur), Rajasthan. The company has declared 2nd Interim Dividend @ 200% (i.e. Rs.4/- per Equity Share having Face Value of Rs.2/- each) for the Financial Year 2015-16.Aurobindo Pharma slipped 3% to Rs.703. The pharma company has received final approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) to manufacture and market Dexmedetomidine Hydrochloride Injection, 200 mcg (base)/2 mL (100 mcg (base)/mL) single-dose vials. The product is to be launched post Q1 FY16-17.Mphasis gained 2% to Rs.498.88 on BSE. According to media reports,Blackstone Group is close to acquiring the IT firm.Oil India gained 1.3% to Rs.310. LIC has raised its stake in the company by 2% through open market acquisition, as per media reports. LIC bought 1.22 crore shares or 2.04% of equity capital, to raise its stake in the company.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced that Million Women Mentors (MWM) crossed a major milestone by reaching two thirds of the programs goal of 1,000,000 pledges from STEM mentors for girls, young women and minorities  in only two years since its inception. At a March 15 luncheon in Washington, DC, corporate and nonprofit partners were joined by more than 20 U.S. Senators and Congressional leaders, who spoke regarding the importance of MWM and inspiring more women and girls in under-represented communities to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and careers.Million Women Mentors success is a testament to the collective impact we can have as leading organizations in North America, devoting the passion of our people and technology as critical factors to inspire more girls and women to puruse STEM education and careers, said Sury Kant, President of North America, UK and Europe, Tata Consultancy Services. The power of mentoring cannot be overstated. It can make a huge difference in fostering new female STEM leaders who will drive the U.S. innovation economy.MWM has more than 650,000 pledges, with participation from 55 corporate partners and 67 nonprofit, education and media partners. More than 34 states across the U.S have been engaged, with 13 Lieutenant Governors and one Governor acting as Honorary Chairs for their respective states. At the March 15 event, members of the Executive branch, Congress, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and United States Department of Agriculture made pledges to support this movement.As a founding member of Million Women Mentors, TCS pledged 15,000 mentors from its highly skilled global workforce, with the hope of inspiring girls and women to pursue needed STEM careers in both the U.S. and around the world. TCS has also provided pro-bono services to develop the MWM technology platform, capturing the pledges, providing mentoring opportunity maps by zip code, connecting mentors to organizations serving mentees, and tracking progress.TCS role with MWM is part of its diverse corporate social responsibility efforts at the local, state and national level in North America, centered around education, health and the environment.TCS is a significant partner for Million Women Mentors and industry participation is critical to our success, said Edie Fraser, CEO of Million Women Mentors and STEMconnector. Our MWM site has been led by TCS and were incredibly grateful. They have provided significant skilled human capital to propel this movement, built on our shared passion to make a difference for girls and women in STEM.
As the weather gets a little nicer here in Indianapolis, we all know what is going to happen: The streets are going to get a little meaner. That means more people are going to be shot, and we are going to have more victims of criminal homicides.

So far this year, as of March 13, the city has seen 20 murders, and the statistics surrounding the murders are showing the beginning of a familiar trend. Half of the murder victims had adult criminal histories; 75 percent of the suspects did. Ten of the murder victims had a total of 37 felonies, while three of the murder suspects had 11 felonies. And just to put a little chocolate icing on the cake, 14 of the 20 criminal homicide victims were Black; thats 70 percent for those of you keeping tabs at home. And remember, Blacks only make up about 27 percent of the citys population.

But I did not come here to reiterate my theme of the self-cleaning oven (when bad guy kills bad guy) or homeycides, as one colleague of mine put it (thats when bad Black guy kills another bad Black guy). No, I came today to share with you my theory about why crime is so prevalent in some parts of the city.

I know, I know. Therere always the usual culprits: poverty, racism, lack of jobs, lack of education, lack of hope and lack of opportunity. Blah! Blah! Blah! Weve heard all this before. What no one really wants to talk about is part of the reason crime is so bad in those communities: a dislike, distrust and, lets be honest, sometimes a downright hatred of law enforcement. Dont look at me like that. Odds are, you dont live there either, and if you do, youre trying to figure out a way to get out.

Lets be honest: Theres a reason a lot of Black murders go unsolved. Its because the people in those neighborhoods and communities dont want to cooperate with the police in helping get rid of the crime in the first place. When Amanda Blackburn was murdered last November, her community stepped up to cooperate. Neighbors turned in home security camera footage, people called in tips to police and everyone cooperated. When 10-year-old DeShaun Swanson lost his life due to violence, nobody saw anything.

When Malik Perry, Marshawn Frazier and Clarence Havvard were all killed in the same 30-day window in Butler-Tarkington, nobody saw anything. Thats just to name a few. Folks complain because the white homicide clearance rate is about 80 percent with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, while the Black murder clearance rate is 50 percent on a good day. Well, no offense people, but guess what? When you dont cooperate with law enforcement to stop the bad guys, the bad guys tend to get away. Call me crazy.

Now, why wont people cooperate with law enforcement? Your guess is as good as mine. Some will say police need to do a better job of community engagement. The community needs to do a better job of self-policing and weeding out the bad element. I will never understand the snitches get stitches mentality. In other words, reporting to law enforcement means retaliation. Pick your reason or excuse; none of these bode well. I fully appreciate the mistrust between the police and community in other cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, but lets be clear: Indianapolis is not those places.

And let me make another thing clear: Indianapolis is on the path to another record-breaking murder year if folks dont have a come to Jesus/Allah/Buddha meeting real quick. You get the policing you deserve. Remember that later this summer.

Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
News / National

by Staff reporetr

DStv subscribers in the rest of Africa and Zimbabwe will not see a price hike when MultiChoice increases the subscription fees of packages in South Africa on 1 April.Unless there are unexpected economic shocks impacting African countries, MultiChoice Africa said there will be no price increase in 2016.Naspers, MultiChoice's parent company, said it will provide the necessary financial support to MultiChoice Africa."We are in a position to do this because most of the Naspers group business (65% of revenue) is outside Africa, where times are better and our businesses are in good shape," said Naspers."As a group, we believe in the longer-term potential of our markets in Africa."
Born with muscular dystrophy, a condition marked by progressive weakening and wasting of the muscles, Kevan Chandler has been living on his wheelchair for several years now. Although the condition limits his physical movements, it has not been able to curb his spirit. And with the help of his friends, Kevan is heading out for a backpack trip through Europe, as a backpack!

wecarrykevan.com

But this is not his first such exploration. Four of his friends had earlier taken turns to carry him while exploring the sewers at Greensboro. Kevan has a personalised seat with additional padding, a back rest as well as a saddle to make his journey as well as that of his friend's, a comfortable one.

vanchandler.blogspot.com

Kevan weighs 65 pounds and hopes his friends will carry him through France, England and Ireland. While most of Europe's infrastructure is largely inclusive, Kevan wants to explore the less-accessible destinations like monasteries and catacombs.

hpenews.com

Kevan wants to share the story of his experience with the world as an example of true friendship. "We're all broken in some way or another and so we all need our burdens to be held up and carried by each other and the only way that's going to happen is if we help each other out and that requires sacrifice of self," he said.

gofundme.com

The "We Carry Kevan" page will have all the action of his journey written by Kevan himself. His friends  Ben Duvall, teachers Philip Keller and Tom Troyer, and Luke Thompson, are working on increasing their stamina to carry him through the trip that will take place from June 19 to July 8.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended this year's edition of the World Sufi Forum on Thursday in New Delhi and proceeded to speak about India and sufism in a very well-written speech which was delivered in trademark Modi-Style.

The speech touched many important points like India's diversity, Islam in India, war on terror, not waging war on Islam, rise and spread of Sufism and as always random anecdotes from people who are left rolling in their graves later.

PM Modi with Sufi Leaders at World Sufi Conference. Image: PIB

Like always, PM Modi kept his speech concise and praiseworthy never delving into useless and sensitive issues of national importance like Beef and 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' chants.

In fact, such was the impact of his speech that many people were in-fact influenced to imbibe sufism and its tenets into our daily lives.

We are proud to share these 15 quotes from his speech, that will make you leave everything else and go join the Sufi movement right now. Read on:

1. When he spoke about the heart of India and its tolerant nature

Like our nation, the city's (Delhi's) heart has place for every faith, from those with few followers to those with billion believers.

2. When he told that Sufi's are the hope in these dark times

At a time when the dark shadow of violence is becoming longer, you are the noor or the light of hope. When young laughter is silenced by guns on the streets, you are the voice that heals.

3. When he praised the unity shown by Sufis

In a world that struggles to assemble for peace and justice, this is an assembly of those whose life itself is a message of peace, tolerance and love.

4. When he praised the diversity of Islamic civilisation

You represent the rich diversity of the Islamic civilization that stands on the solid bedrock of a great religion.

5. When he quoted Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti

In the words of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, of all the worships, the worship that pleases the Almighty God the most is the grant of relief to the humble and the oppressed.

6. And showed off his deep understanding of Islam

When we recall the ninety-nine names of Allah, none of them stand for violence. He is both Rahman and Rahim.

7. When he reiterated his faith in Islam's conviction against terror

The ideals of Islam have always rejected the forces of terrorism and extremism.

8. When he stressed that how important secularism is to India (we are sure no one taking it out of the preamble now!)

All our people  Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, the micro-minority of Parsis, believers, non-believers, are all an integral part of India.

9. When he talked about the impact of terror on World Economy

Every year, we spend a 100 billion dollars in securing the world from terrorism. This is money that should be spent improving the lives of the poor.

10. And he said that terror is not religion, but anti-religion

Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious.

11. He continued talking sense about War on terror

The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion. It cannot be.

12. Again praising Diversity; raising a toast to it!

Diversity is a basic reality of Nature and source of richness of a society; and, it should not be a cause of discord.

13. Stressing on being human more than being hindu or being muslim!

The global community must be more vigilant than ever before to encounter the forces of darkness with the light of human values.

14. I knew he be my homie when he quoted Rumi!

Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi's words, "Contain all human faces in your own, without any judgment of them."

15. He talked about and aknowledged the nationalistic pride of Muslims!

It is this spirit of Sufism, the love for their country and the pride in their nation that define the Muslims in India.

Say, what may about the Indian government and it's stand on religious freedom, Modiji has proved beyond doubt that as a leader of this great nation of diverse people, he strongly backs any citizen who is truly committed to the cause of India; irrespective of his faith.

Here's the complete speech, if you don't believe that he truly said these wonderful things:

Such honesty and bravado should always be commended. The question is how his followers will take it; especially the minority who always believe that India is a Hindu-Rajya!
Hyderabad police have issued a look-up for two people who are suspected to have involvement in the abduction and murder of a teenager in the city. Police have announced a one lakh reward for information on the killers.

The CCTV visuals released by police show the victim, Abhay Modani, riding behind one of his alleged kidnappers, hours before he went missing.

Please Have a look and contact us if anybody identifies the suspect anywhere...The Suspect in the Photos [Person... Posted by Hyderabad City Police on 17 March 2016

The class 10 student was allegedly kidnapped by men who used to work for his father Raj Kumar, a city based businessman.

deccanchronicl

His body was recovered by police bound with rope and stuffed in a TV package box on Wednesday.

This was even while the alleged abductors were in negotiating with Kumar of a ransom of Rs 10 crores for Abhay's release.

According to reports Kumar had agreed to pay half of the amount, Rs 5 crore to secure his son's release. However police believe Abhay was killed even before the ransom call was made.

Police is yet to ascertain the motive behind the crime.
Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who has been in the eye of the storm for sometime over the mega World Culture Festival which was held at the ecologically sensitive Yamuna floodplains last week said the garbage generated by the event has been cleaned.

BCCL

Speaking to The Times of India in Bengaluru, the spiritual guru said the venue in question "was a dumping ground. Not a park, not a sanctuary. It was not a place with birds, it was not beautiful. It was stinking. Nobody would say it was an ecologically pure place".

PTI

He however said if someone had raised the ecological concerns least three or six months before, they would not have gone to this place at all.

BCCL

Ravi Shankar also said it would have been more economical if the event was held somewhere else.

"I could have gone to a much better place, it would have cost me much less", he said.

"The intention of having it there is to see that the Yamuna gets more attention, and it is easy for all people to come there. And the government should take notice of the cleaning of the 17 nullahs that was not done", he explained.

Ravi Shankar also said they have reached out to the farmers in both sides of the plain and have compensated them for the loses they suffered.

PTI

PTI

Regarding the fine imposed on AoL by the National Green Tribunal, he said the organization will be paying the amount but insisted that it wasn't a penalty, but a compensation to develop the place.
Angered at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi's refusal to utter 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', Mohammad Imam  representing the Muslim community  wrote 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' in blood on India's map at Meerut's Bachcha Park crossing on Thursday afternoon.

Imam and his supporters further said that Islam doesn't stop them from chanting pro-India slogans and that Owaisi is making such remarks to gain political mileage.

TOI

"Saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai is equivalent to hailing the land, women, children, sisters and soldiers of India. The remark of Owaisi is completely anti-national and is not acceptable. The posters of Owaisi have BR Ambedkar's pictures along with him. I would like to ask Owaisi: is this what Baba Ambedkar taught him?" said Mohd Imam, who is also the district vice-president of Congress.

TOI

Blood was drawn out from Imam's wrist with the help of a syringe and the Muslim community then wrote 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' on three maps of India that were specially printed for the purpose.

"We are Indians and saying 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is our responsibility. People like Owaisi are trying to defame Islam and derive political mileage from their remarks. Islam doesn't give the right to be against the country we live in and in fact never denies us permission to chant pro-India slogans. His Lok Sabha membership should be cancelled with immediate effect," said Haji Saeed, one of the citizens at the gathering.

TOI

This has come three days after Asaduddin Owaisi, a three-time parliamentarian from Hyderabad, controversially declared that he will not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' even if somebody puts a knife to his throat.
Last month California fisherman, Nick Haworth lost his 1-and-a-half year old German Shepherd, Luna, when she joined him on his boat. Whilst pulling up the the fishing nets, she had disappeared and they couldn't find her in the murky dark waters despite help from the naval coast guard.

Naval Base Coronado

They had assumed she was lost until a few days ago when she was spotted on an island off the coast of California which is used for training by the US Navy. She was identified as Luna when she responded to her name and also because domestic animals are not allowed on the island.

Luna, the overboard dog who swam to shore & survived 5 weeks, one step closer to home. https://t.co/Rhwb4B6l6g pic.twitter.com/B6Atqfy3E8  The Union-Tribune (@sdut) March 17, 2016

Haworth who was out of town for work was thrilled to learn of her survival. Luna had lost weight due to living off rodents and dead fish but was not malnourished in anyway.

She was returned to Halworth's best friend who will look after her till he returns. Luna was gifted with a new dog tag from the navy which read "Keep The Faith".

(With inputs from Associated Press)
The exhilarating beauty spanning across four hundred square kilometres at the Balule Nature Reserve in the Limpopo province, South Africa, is difficult to put in words. Lions, African elephants, African leopards, white and black rhinoceroses are an integral part of a majestic mega-fauna that this ecotourism hotspot boasts of. Apart from that, the perfect coalition of flora and fauna at this nature park makes for an unforgettable trip for those consumed by wanderlust. Located in the subtropics Lowveld boasts of over 336 species of trees, more than 220 kinds of birds and 30 different kinds of mammals in the Savannah.

Amy's wildlife photography

Africa, however, is also a favourite for poachers killing African tuskers, lions and the white rhinos in cold blood.

The statistics are even more shocking - 1175 rhinos were poached in South Africa in 2015, averaging an unreal three rhinos a day. Over a quarter of a million elephants have been slaughtered in the last six years for their ivory. It is a fact that poaching has become a huge business. Whether it's for jewellery, status symbol, or for 'medicinal purposes', people still have people willing to pay big money for products made from endangered species.

Poacher's Camp/ Black Mamba APU

But things are getting better in the Balule reserve

The Black Mambas - a one-of-a-kind anti-poaching unit, comprising mostly women, has waged a war against poachers here, and the fearless caretakers of the reserve are putting things back in balance. Formed in 2013, the Mambas move along the boundaries of the reserve, hunting for hunters, and over the last three years, have caught the attention of people on a global scale. If you go by the numbers, the Black Mambas have noticed a 76% reduction in incidents related to poaching in the Balule reserve. Thousands of snares have been destroyed, along with poacher camps. In fact, the unit has even managed to catch six poachers.

James Suter

According to their official website, The Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit currently have 26 Black Mambas/rangers trained along with another 23 armed guards operating at the reserve at all times. Apart from patrolling the park and alerting the guards and the wardens, some Mambas also visit the local schools educating kids about the dire need of saving our forests and wildlife, and the impact of poaching on our community. They believe that the battle against poaching will not be won with arms and ammunition, but with education and working with the local communities. Hence, they not only have an anti-poaching program, but also work towards the education and the social upliftment of the local areas.

The Mambas also run a rhino conservation program which includes the daily monitoring of rhinos. They have also designed a real-time locality map of rhinos pointing out hotspots and the high-risk areas, which make deploying aid more effective.

Black Mamba APU

Julia Gunther

There are risks aplenty as well

Although these rangers are trained for combat, they are not allowed to carry anything more dangerous than a pepper spray. They might be catching poachers, but they let the armed guards handle them. You can't expect the animals to behave any differently either.

Lee-Ann Olwage

United Nations has honoured the Black Mambas with the highest environmental honour - the Champion of Earth Award for their terrific work in preventing illegal wildlife trade. Mambas hope to carry on the inspiring work they have been doing but they still rely heavily on donations to sustain themselves. One can donate, get involved in a fundraising event, or even sponsor one of the Mambas to help them achieve their objective - a better, brighter future for humans and animals alike.
News / National

by Wilbert Mukori

There is no thinking Zimbabwean out there who would dispute that the country is in serious polit-ical and economic trouble. The economy is in total meltdown with unemployment a nauseating 90% plus and 76% of the population now living in poverty with over 3 million of them so poor they cannot afford even one decent meal a day! Zanu PF is imploding and 36 years of political re-pression has made it impossible for a competent opposition party to emerge.So we are facing a double tragedy here; an economy in total meltdown and have no working po-litical system to chart the way out of this hell-hole! Wait, correction, Vince Musewe has a solution!"I, therefore, propose a gathering of coalition forces," he wrote in his latest article (Time to save Zimbabwe) "where all political parties come together to give Zanu PF notice that unless we enter into substantive negotiation on a political transition now, we will bring Zimbabwe to a standstill until change comes."For me that is the only power we have and it's time to use it. There is no doubt that we all want the same things, we all want Zanu PF to go and it is time we put aside our differences and save our Great Zimbabwe."To the regular readers this is nothing new, we have all heard Mr Musewe's hare-brain plan be-fore and know exactly what he will say next!"I continue to insist that those who continue calling for political reforms (implementation of the 2008 GPA reforms, to be exact) without offering us the practicalities of it are really wasting our time. These are times for solutions and not change rhetoric," wrote Musewe.For those not too familiar with the GPA forms, these were the democratic reforms everyone in 2008 agreed should be implemented to ensure the rule of law, human freedoms and human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections and the right to life itself. The principal task of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms so that the madness of the blatant vote rigging and wanton violence of the 2008 elections will never ever be repeated.The task of implemented the reforms fell on Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti (who is the president of PDP of which Musewe is Secretary for Finance and Economic Affairs) and the other MDC leaders in the GNU. They failed to get even one reform implemented in five years. Not one!Soon after the rigged 2013 elections which saw Mugabe reclaim the presidency and his party secure the two thirds majority in parliament (MDC has since increased these a few more free-bees) SADC complained that MDC leaders "were busy enjoying themselves in the GNU and for-got why they were there (to implement the reforms)". MDC leaders have never owned up to their betrayal of the nation in failing to implement the reforms.Mr Musewe's smart-Aleck jibe about "those who continue calling for political without offering us the practicalities of it" is just part of the MDC leadership's attempt to falsify the facts about the GPA reforms. MDC failed to get even one reform implemented during the GNU not because it was not practical but because they sold-out!Vince Musewe is not the only who has been calling on the opposition parties, civic society and all the other stakeholders in Zimbabwe to unite and confront Mugabe and Zanu PF demanding an end to the tragic misery the economic meltdown has brought to the nation. The coalition has never materialized because people would not agree on what exactly they would be demanding from Mugabe, amongst other things.Tsvangirai and his MDC-T followers plus a few other opposition parties wanted to demand the implementation of the electoral law reforms, wishy-washy watered down variation to the GPA reform. Veritas, a local think tank on legal matters, have dismissed the reforms as "inadequate and incomplete"!Musewe has dismissed the demanding the implementation of the GPA reforms because Mugabe will never accept any. So Musewe is proposing that we demand the formation of "political transi-tion", a second GNU, and to make this attractive to Mugabe, he will be assure that there will be no democratic reforms leading to free, fair and credible elections at the end of the transition.If we are going to confront Mugabe then we must demand of him something worthwhile; if not an immediate end to the corrupt and oppressive dictatorship and the holding of free, fair and credi-ble elections then a clear roadmap with solid rock guarantees that the democratic reforms nec-essary for free and fair election will be implemented this time without failure! To ask people to risk life and limp to demand the implementation of useless electoral law reforms or the formation of yet another GNU which will leave Zanu PF with its dictatorial powers untouched is not just a waste of time but it is downright stupid!We are in this hell-hole because for the last 36 years we have been bending over backwards to appease Mugabe. Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders did not implement even one democrat-ic reform during the GNU because Mugabe would have been most displeased if they had done so! Even now with the nation is serious economic and political trouble people like Musewe still continue to discount the only viable solution out of this hell because Mugabe will not approve of it.Damn it Musewe; are we looking for a solution out of this hell-hole or a solution to appease Mu-gabe it regardless of whether it works or not! The dictatorship is the problem here and it must be dismantled. We cannot have a healthy and functioning democracy, which we all agree is abso-lutely essential in solving our teething economic problems, and still keep the dictatorship just to appease Mugabe, the dictator.We are in a hole; we can pick the direction to take but, if we want the way out, then they will all be uphill. There is no such thing as an easy downhill route out of a hole, it is an oxymoron. For 36 years we taken the easy downhill path and allowed Mugabe to do as he pleased. We must now confront him with the truth; his no-regime-change mantra is not just unworkable it is destroy-ing the nation and it must be dismantled, period!It is the confused messages coming from the likes Tsvangirai and Musewe which have allowed Mugabe to hang on to power this long; why would he want to give up his dream of no-regime-change if he is being told he does not have to. However the economic meltdown will continue and get even; it is the economic mess and/or the social consequences flowing from it that will, in the end, force Mugabe to accept free and fair elections and regime change.
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Noam Chomsky on the 2016 Elections:

'I Have Never Seen Such Lunatics in the Political System' By Simone Chun Professor Chomsky was interviewed in Boston by the writer and activist Simone Chun for the Hankyoreh newspaper. Here is the English translation of the interview, courtesy of Ms. Chun. She was accompanied in her first meeting with Prof. Chomsky in November 2015 (pictured) by Christine Ahn, the founder of Women Cross DMZ, which led a historic march across the North-South Korean border last May (full disclosure, Ms. Chun, Ms. Ahn and myself are all affiliated with the Korea Peace Institute). Ms. Chuns interview recently took place, at Professor Chomskys office at MIT. Here is the Q&A. March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Alternet "- Chun: Do you feel that there will be any significant change in the foreign policy of the United States after President Obama? Chomsky: If Republicans are elected, there could be major changes that will be awful. I have never seen such lunatics in the political system. For instance, Ted Cruzs response to terrorism is to carpet-bomb everyone. Chun: Would you expect that Hillary Clintons foreign policy would be different from President Obamas? Chomsky: Judging by the record, she is kind of hawkishmuch more militant than the centrist democrats, including Obama. Take for instance Libya: she was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East. Its a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter. Look at the so-called global war on terror. It started in 15 years ago with a small cell in a tribal sector in Afghanistan. Now it is all over, and you can understand why. Its about comparative advantage of force. Chun: How about Bernie Sanderswhat do you think his foreign policy will be? Chomsky: He is doing a lot better than I expected, but he doesnt have much to say about foreign policy. He is a kind of New Deal Democrat and focuses primarily on domestic issues. Chun: Some people in South Korea speculate that if Bernie Sanders gets elected, he may take a non-interventionist position towards foreign policy, which would then give more power to South Koreas right-wing government. Chomsky: The dynamics could be different. His emphasis on domestic policy might require an aggressive foreign policy. In order to shore up support for domestic policies, he may be forced to attack somebody weak. Chun: Do you believe that Americans would support another war? Chomsky: The public is easily amenable to lies: the more lies there are, the greater the support for war. For instance, when the public was told that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S., this increased support for the war. Chun: Do you mean that the media fuels lies? Chomsky: The media is uncritical, and their so-called the concept of objectivity translates into keeping everything within the Beltway. However, Iraq was quite different. Here, there were flat-out lies, and they sort of knew it. They were desperately trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Chun: Do you think that the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing? Chomsky: I dont think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle itby establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants. Iran has been calling for it for years, and the Arab countries support it. Everyone except the United States and Israel support it. The U.S. wont allow it because it means inspecting Israels nuclear weapons. The U.S. has continued to block it, and in fact blocked it again just a couple of days ago; it just wasnt widely reported. Irans nuclear program, as U.S. intelligence points out, is deterrent, and the bottom line is that the U.S. and Israel dont want Iran to have a deterrent. In any case, it is better to have some deal than no deal, but its interesting that Obama picked the day of implementing of Iran deal to impose new sanctions on North Korea. Chun: And do you think that the same can be said about North Korea? Chomsky: You can understand why. If North Korea doesnt have a deterrent, they will be wiped out. Chun: What is the most constructive way to address the nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula? Chomsky: In 2005, there was a very sensible deal between the U.S. and North Korea. This deal would have settled North Koreas so-called nuclear threat, but was subsequently undermined by George W. Bush, who attacked North Korean banks in Macau and blocked the Norths access to outside the world. Chun: Why does the United States undermine efforts to reach an agreement with North Korea? Chomsky: I dont think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons. Chun: Can you elaborate? Chomsky: If you look at the record, the United States has done very little to stop nuclear weapons. As soon as George W. Bush was elected, he did everything to encourage North Korea to act aggressively. In 2005 we were close to a deal, but North Korea has always been a low priority issue for the United States. In fact, look at the entire nuclear weapons strategy of the United States: from the beginning, in the 1950s, the United States didnt worry much about a nuclear threat. It would have been possible to enter into a treaty with the one potential threatthe Soviet Unionand block development of these weapons. At that time, the Russians were way behind technologically, and Stalin wanted a peace deal, but the U.S. didnt want to hear the USSRs offer. The implication is that the U.S. is ready to have a terminal war at any time. Chun: What do you think about U.S. Pivot to Asia policy? Chomsky: It is aimed at China. China is already surrounded by hostile powers such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Guam, but the United States wants to build up more tension. For example, few days ago, a B-52 nuclear bomber flew within a couple of miles of China. It is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire. Chun: What do you think about Japan? Do you think Japan is remilitarizing, and if so, does this pose a threat to the region and the world? Chomsky: Yes, Japan is trying very hard, but it is not certain that it will succeed. Take for instance Okinawa. There is no actual military purpose, but the United States insists on maintaining a base there. Chun: As you know, part of my work centers on supporting individual activists in South Korea who do not tend to receive media attention. Your statements of solidarity in support of them enable them to receive much-needed attention by the Korean media. It has been very effective. Chomsky: I hope that my support has been helpful. Is there any hope or mood in Korea in support of Sunshine Policy? Chun: It is difficult due to the incumbent right-wing government. Chomsky: How about South Korean public opinion? Chun: As you know, successive conservative governments have obstructed engagement with the North, and this has greatly deflated the public mood on the matter. Opposition parties remain divided and ineffective, and the current government exercises tight control over the media and represses any activists who would express criticism. South Korea appears to be heading back to the authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s. Chomsky: Part of the reason why the United States doesnt care about North Korea is that the North Korean threat provides justification for the right-wing conservative regime in the South. Chun: Yes, many people argue that the biggest obstacle in dealing with North Korea is South Korean right-wing politics. Chomsky: Relaxation with North Korea would mean conservatives losing power in the South. Thats why, for instance, we have to keep the war on terrorism. Chun: Professor Chomsky, thank you again for your time and your support.
Putin Warns: Russia May Deploy Forces Back to Syria in Mere Hours if Necessary By RT March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " RT "- While Russia is withdrawing most of its forces from Syria, they could be deployed there again in a matter of hours if such a need arises, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated. He added that the Russian bases in Syria are well-protected. Of course, if such a need arises, Russia can, in several hours, build up its forces in Syria to a size capable of dealing with an escalating situation and use the entire range of means at its disposal, Putin said. We wouldnt like that. A military escalation is not our choice. We hope the parties involved would show common sense and that both the government and the opposition will stick to the peace process, he added. Putin was summarizing the results of the Russian five-month-long anti-terror campaign in Syria at a solemn ceremony in Moscow. The Russian president said Moscow was open in saying from the start of the operation that it was a limited campaign with a set deadline. We have created the conditions for a peace process. We have established constructive and positive cooperation with the US and a number of other countries, with respectable opposition forces in Syria, which really want to end the war and find a political solution of the conflict. You, Russian soldiers, paved that way, Putin told the Russian military personnel who took part in the campaign. He added that the Syrian Army, with Russias support, can now hold out against terrorist forces and take back terrorist-controlled territories. The president acknowledged that the pull-out may be reversed, if necessary, even though Moscow would not want to see such a development. He also stressed that advanced air defense systems deployed in Syria for protection of Russian military sites remain there and would attack any hostile forces threatening them. We stick to the fundamental international laws and believe that nobody has the right to violate Syrias sovereign airspace. We have created an effective mechanism for prevention of air incidents with the Americans, but all our partners have been warned that we would use our air defense systems against any target that we considered a threat to the Russian troops, Putin said. The Syrian operation cost Russia some $480 million, Putin said, and most of the funding came from the Russian Defense Ministry, which used money allocated for military training in 2015 to foot the bill. 5 Russian soldiers die during Syria op On Thursday, Putin handed out awards and decorations to the participants of the operation in the presence of the widows of the servicemen who lost their lives during the five-month campaign in Syria. The President confirmed four deaths in combat. Here, in this hall we have the widows of our brothers in arms, who gave their lives in the fight against the terrorists. They remained faithful to the oath and military duty until the end. Well always remember their courage and nobility; that they were real men and brave soldiers, Putin said, personally mentioning the four women by name. Military pilot, Oleg Peshkov, died on November 24, 2014 as he was shot dead by the terrorists after catapulting from a Su-24 bomber, which was shot down by Turkey for an unproven airspace violation. Marine Aleksandr Pozynich was killed during a search and rescue operation on the Turkish Syrian border aimed at retrieving Peshkovs co-pilot. The names of the two other deceased Russian servicemen  Ivan Cheremisin and Fedor Zhuravlev  only became known to the public at the ceremony at the Kremlin. In late October, the death of a fifth serviceman was reported, with Defense Ministry saying that Vadim Kostenko committed suicide. President Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, later confirmed to Reuters that the Russian military lost five of its troops in Syria.
The Murder That Exposed Hillary Clintons Grim Legacy in Honduras





Most U.S. coverage failed to mention Hillary Clinton's support for the Honduran regime that assassinated activist Berta Caceres



By Adam Johnson



March 18, 2016 "

Information Clearing House

" - "

FPIF

"- Who murdered Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres?

While the identities of the killers remain unknown, activists, media observers, and members of the Caceres family are blaming the increasingly reactionary and violent Honduran government.

The authorities had frequently clashed with Caceres over her high-profile campaign to stop land grabbing and mining while defending the rights of indigenous peoples.

While Caceres death and the outcry of grief over it did draw some mainstream U.S. media coverage, there was a glaring problem with it: Hardly any of the articles mentioned that the brutal regime that probably killed Caceres came to power in a U.S.-backed coup.

Heres a quick recap.

In June 2009, the Honduran military abducted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country. The United Nations, European Union, and Organization of American States (OAS) rushed to condemn his ouster.

Fifteen House Democrats joined in, sending a letter to the Obama White House insisting that the State Department fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place and follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law.

But under Hillary Clintons leadership, the State Department staunchly refused to do so. Emails revealed last year show that Clinton knew very well there was a military coup, but declined to add her voice to the loud objections coming from the international community.

As The Intercepts Lee Fang reported, Clinton attempted to use her lobbyist friend Lanny Davis to open up back channels with Roberto Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler military strongmen installed after the coup.

This maneuver effectively endorsed the new right-wing government that would go on to crack down on Caceres and other activists.

In the original version of her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton disclosed she had no intention of restoring the rightfully elected Zelaya to power.

In the subsequent days [after the coup], I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras, Clinton wrote, and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.

This is why State Department officials blocked the OAS from adopting a resolution that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship.

Interestingly, the paperback edition of her memoir released last year left out what happened in Honduras altogether.

Likewise, outlets like The Washington Post, NBC, CNN, and NPR treated the coup  and its subsequent purging of environmental, LGBT, and indigenous activists  as an entirely local matter, leaving out Clintons role and our governments involvement. The New York Times briefly mentioned what happened in Honduras seven years ago and the subsequent increase in oppression. But it left out any mention of U.S. responsibility.
The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

By Bill Bigelow

March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Zinn Education Project "- Wear green on St. Patricks Day or get pinched. That pretty much sums up the Irish-American curriculum that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, todays high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead OConnors haunting rendition of Skibbereen, which includes the verse:

 Oh its well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And thats another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougals U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to The Great Potato Famine. Prentice Halls America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a horrible disaster, as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflins The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the ravages of famine simply on a blight, and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as famished and ghastly skeletons. Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with todays curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books dull and lifeless paragraphs? Todays textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyones life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, its important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potatoduring the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, Irelands was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly. But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddys Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultryfood that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the Great Famine, we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the Worlds Food System: Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.

Patels book sets out to account for the rot at the core of the modern food system. This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on  reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19th century Ireland to 21st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But todays corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital. The Pearson empire had 2011 worldwide sales of more than $9 billionthats nine thousand million dollars, as I might tell my students. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, Hunger on Trial, that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregonincluded at the Zinn Education Project website students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But lets honor the Irish with our curiosity. Lets make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irishand that are starving and uprooting people today.
New Bill Would Turn GOPs Xenophobic Rhetoric About Refugees Into Law By Murtaza Hussain March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Intercept "- THE HOUSE JUDICIARY Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would reduce the already small number of refugees allowed into the United States, and effectively codify the bigotry of Donald Trump and other GOP candidates. The Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act (H.R. 4731) proposed by Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would impose new caps on refugee resettlement limits, discriminate on religious grounds, redefine the word refugee, and give local and state governments broad powers to refuse resettlement. In ordinary circumstances, the question of how many refugees America accepts is made at the executive level. President Obama has set a target for accepting 100,000 refugees into the United States in fiscal year 2017. This bill, however, would effectively take the decision out of his hands by imposing a hard limit of 60,000 refugees in 2017, even as the world is dealing with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. But other provisions included in H.R. 4731 would make it hard for the government to even reach that reduced target. According to the text of the bill, state and municipal level government officials could refuse refugees through any action formally disapproving of resettlement in that locality. This provision effectively grants veto power over resettlement to local officials. Such a provision could greatly complicate any resettlement program. The bill also creates a new definition of who is a refugee by stating that protection from violence would not be offered if that violence is not specifically directed at the person. For Syrians and others, the violence of the war is not directed at them as individuals, but rather is occurring as part of a broader conflict. If you look at the situation in Syria, Russia is bombing entire townships, not singling people out as individuals, but targeting them regardless because they are in a war zone, says Jennifer Quigley of Human Rights First. The language in this bill is a huge change from existing standards and would drastically narrow the definition of who constitutes a refugee. During this election cycle, a number of Republican presidential nominees have called for incorporating religious discrimination in the refugee process. H.R. 4731 would compel the Department of Homeland Security to grant priority consideration to such applicants whose claims are based on persecution  by reason of those applicants being practitioners of a minority religion in the country from which they sought refuge. During the present conflict in Syria, the vast majority of refugees come from the majority Sunni Muslim population, which has also borne the brunt of the governments military crackdown. While they are among the most desperately needy refugees in the world today, because they are not minorities in their society, the bill would make it harder for them to gain refuge in the United States. What this provision is trying to get at is stopping the resettlement of Syrian Muslim refugees, by basing acceptance criteria on identity rather than need, says Quigley. During this election cycle, GOP candidates have seemed to be competing to express the greatest hostility toward refugees. Ted Cruz and others have said that the United States should refuse all refugees except Christians, while Donald Trump recently promised his supporters that he would look Syrian children in the faces and say, You cant come here. The xenophobic rhetoric in response to the current refugee crisis is ironic given the GOPs history. Ronald Reagan, viewed as an icon by most Republicans, famously granted asylum to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflicts in Southeast Asia and Central America, and even invoked Americas generous refugee policy in his 1989 presidential farewell speech. Even George W. Bush, who ignited some of the conflicts that people are today fleeing, chose to restart the Refugee Resettlement Program after 9/11. Some of the Republicans advocating against refugees today dont know that historically GOP presidents have had welcoming asylum policies toward people fleeing conflicts, says Quigley. The rhetoric in this presidential campaign is making it easier for legislation like H.R. 4731 to be proposed, but it is also silencing traditional refugee supporters by making them feel uncomfortable about speaking out against it.
Russia Is Proud Of You



By Vladimir Putin At a meeting in the Kremlins St George Hall, Vladimir Putin presented state decorations to service personnel and defence industry specialists who distinguished themselves in the performance of special missions in the Syrian Arab Republic.



More than 700 officers and men of the Aerospace Forces, the Ground Forces and the Navy attended the ceremony, along with representatives of the military-industrial complex. March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - President of Russia Vladimir Putin : Comrade officers, friends, I would like to welcome you  all the service personnel who took part in the operation in Syria. All of you  pilots, sailors, service personnel of control bodies, of special purpose units, intelligence, communication and procurement, military advisers  acted consistently and with precision. Words of special gratitude go to the female service personnel. You serve alongside men, with persistence and dignity. Your choice in life brings you our deep respect. Thank you all for your dedication to our Fatherland. Russia is proud of you, of its soldiers and officers who protect the interests of their homeland with a great degree professionalism and courage. Comrade officers, You remember what the situation was like in September of 2015. Back then, a significant part of the country was seized by terrorist groups, and the situation was getting worse. In full compliance with international law, at the request of the legitimate government and the countrys president, we made a decision to launch our military operation. From the very start, we were very clear about its goals: support of the Syrian army in its lawful struggle with terrorist groups. Our actions were also timed for the period of active assaults against the terrorists. We stated clearly that we did not intend to get involved in an internal Syrian conflict. Only the Syrians themselves should seek a final solution and decide their countrys future. The main target of our operation was terrorism. The struggle against international terrorism is a fair and righteous cause. This is a struggle against enemies of civilisation, against those who bring barbarity and violence, trying to renounce the great spiritual, humanitarian values that the world rests on. I would like to repeat that the main goal of our actions in Syria was to stop the global evil and not to let terrorism spread to Russia. And our country has demonstrated its unquestionable leadership, willpower and responsibility. Regarding the results we have achieved. Your actions and intense combat effort turned the situation around. We did not let this terrorist tumour grow, destroyed the bandits hiding places and munitions depots and blocked oil smuggling routes that brought the terrorists their main funding. We have done a huge amount of work to support the lawful Syrian authorities  this is what I spoke about when addressing the United Nations on the organisations 70th anniversary. We strengthened their armed forces, which are now capable of not only holding back the terrorists, but also of conducting assault operations against them. The Syrian army has gained the strategic initiative and continues clearing its land of terrorists. The main thing is that we have created conditions for the start of a peaceful process. We have managed to achieve positive, constructive cooperation with the United States of America and a number of other countries, as well as with the responsible political forces within Syria that truly wish to stop the war and find the only possible political solution to the conflict. It was you, Russian soldiers who opened up the road to peace. Comrade officers, After the ceasefire agreement was reached between the opposition and government forces, the scope of work for our aviation units was significantly reduced. The number of sorties went down threefold from 6080 to 2030 a day. This made the grouping we had created there excessive in the military sense. The decision to withdraw a significant part of our service personnel and equipment was coordinated with the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad, who was notified of our plans in advance and supported them. I would like to add that in our joint statement, Russia and the United States stressed that the struggle against terrorist organisations, recognised as such by the UN, will continue. Meanwhile, the government troops in Syria will not conduct any action against the armed units of the Syrian opposition that indicated their commitment to a ceasefire. At the same time, I would like to stress that any group violating the ceasefire will be taken off the list provided by the United States, with all the consequences that come with it. In this connection, I would like to specify the tasks our service personnel remaining in the Syrian Republic will be working on. I will repeat that the primary task is to monitor ceasefire and create conditions for a political internal dialogue in Syria. Our bases in Syria are at Tartus and Khmeimim, the service personnel there are reliably protected from land, sea and air. All the components of the deployed air defence system, including close range Pantsir-F and long-range S-400 Triumph units will be on regular duty. I would like to note that we have significantly restored the potential of the Syrian air defence forces as well. All the parties concerned have been made aware of this. We proceed from fundamental international norms  nobody has the right to violate the airspace of a sovereign country, Syria in this case. We have created together with the American side an efficient mechanism to prevent air incidents, but all our partners have been warned that our air defence systems will be used against any target that we deem to be threatening Russian service personnel. I want to stress  any target. We will of course continue to provide assistance to the lawful Syrian government. This assistance is comprehensive in nature and includes financial aid, supplies of equipment and arms, assistance in training and building Syrian armed forces, reconnaissance support and assistance to headquarters in planning operations. And finally, direct support, I mean, the use of our space force and strike and fighter aviation. The Russian forces that remain in Syria are enough to ensure this. We will continue to assist the Syrian army and authorities in their fight against the so-called Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups that have been declared as such, as I have said, by the UN Security Council. Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged. What will the balance of forces be like after the reduction of the Russian group? A balance would be ensured. Moreover, I am certain that with our support and strengthening of the Syrian army, we will shortly see the patriotic forces there achieve success in their struggle against terrorism. As you may know, fierce fighting is on around Palmyra and on the approaches to the city. I hope this treasure of the world civilisation, or whatever is left of it after the bandits got there, would be returned to the people of Syria and the whole world. If necessary, of course, Russia will be able to enhance its group in the region in a matter of hours to a size required for a specific situation and to use all the options available. We would not want to do that. Military escalation is not our choice. Therefore, we still count on the common sense of both sides, on the adherence by both the Syrian authorities and the opposition to a peaceful process. In this connection, I would like to note the position of President Bashar al-Assad. We see his reserve, his sincere striving for peace, his readiness for compromise and dialogue. The very fact that we withdrew part of our military group there against the backdrop of negotiations on the Syrian settlement that started in Geneva is an important positive signal, and I am certain that all parties to the Syrian conflict will duly appreciate it. We will work and make every effort in coordination with our partners to help establish peace in Syria, to rid the long-suffering people of Syria of the terrorist threat and help the Syrians restore their country. Comrade officers, You have proved that our army and navy are strong, modern and well equipped and our warriors are steadfast, well-trained and hardened, capable of resolving the most complicated large-scale tasks. In the course of the anti-terrorist operation, you have performed more than 9,000 operational sorties. Mass strikes using high-precision Kalibr cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 km were dealt at terrorist facilities from our naval ships located in two seas  the Caspian and the Mediterranean, both from subsurface ships and a submarine. We are proud of the professional actions of our navy. Our long-range strategic aviation has also done a good job. Thus, they used new air-based X-101 missiles with a range of about 4,500 km. And finally, over the short period in Syria, as I have said, we deployed a modern and efficient air defence system and developed cooperation between all the forces and resources and organised administrative support for the group. Our military transport aviation and Navy support vessels have done well too. In other words, all the most important support issues, the organisation of our group in a remote combat area were resolved competently and in a timely manner, which again demonstrated the enhanced quality of Russias Armed Forces. I would also like to thank representatives of the military-industrial complex: workers, engineers and designers. The latest Russian weaponry has passed the tests, and not at shooting ranges but in real combat. This is the best and the most serious test. This experience will make it possible to introduce necessary changes, to improve the efficiency and reliability of the equipment, to create new generation weaponry, and to improve the Armed Forces and enhance their combat capability. Life itself has shown that they are a reliable guarantee of our countrys security. We should bear in mind the threats that appear when we do not do things on time; we should remember the lessons of history, including the tragic events of the beginning of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, the price we paid for mistakes in military construction and planning and the shortage in new military equipment. Everything should be done on time, while weakness, neglect and omissions are always dangerous. The military operation in Syria certainly required certain funds, however the main part of the funding came from the Defence Ministry, their resources. Some 33 billion rubles were earmarked in the Ministrys 2015 budget for military exercises. We simply retargeted these funds to support our group in Syria, and there is hardly a better way of training and perfecting combat skills than under real combat conditions. In this sense, it is better to use motor operating time and combat stock in combat than at a testing range. You, professionals, know this better than anyone else. Obviously, additional funds will be required to restock our arsenals, equipment and ammunition, including repairs of the equipment that was used in Syria. I am sure these costs are reasonable and necessary, because this was a chance to test everything in combat, find faults and rectify them. These costs help enhance our countrys defence capability and resolve strategic and current tasks to ensure Russias security. We need to do it now, to avoid paying a much higher price later. That price is high, and I am not talking about money now. Here in this hall are Yelena Peshkova, Valentina Cheremisina, Irina Pozynich and Yulia Zhuravleva  widows of our comrade officers who died fighting terrorists. I know that for their families and friends, the loss of Oleg, Ivan, Alexander and Fedor is irreparable. We all take this as our own loss. That is why I used your husbands, fathers and sons first names. I spoke not as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief or President, but as a grateful citizen of Russia who grieves over this loss. We will remember their courage and chivalry; we will remember them as real men and courageous warriors. Comrade officers, The large-scale operation in Syria went on for more than 5 months in a complicated region, far from Russia, and you have done your duty with honour by protecting the security of your country and your people at faraway frontiers. The tasks you were set have been generally met, troops are returning to their regular deployment locations, returning home, to Russia. I would like to note here, for this audience and for the entire country: Russias main agenda today is that of peace. It has to do with developing the economy in complicated conditions, with maintaining and improving the wellbeing of our people. However, without ensuring our security, without creating a battle-ready, modern and efficient Army and Navy we would not resolve a single task. Moreover, the very existence of a sovereign and independent Russia would not be possible without it. It is very symbolic that we are honouring you in the legendary St George hall that holds the history of Russias military glory along with the names of its great sons. Everything here is filled with the victorious spirit of Russian warriors. Our officers and men have demonstrated yet again that they are courageous, noble, strong-willed warriors, true to their Fatherland Thank you for your service. I thank all the participants of the military operation in Syria. Thank you. Allow me now to move on to the presentation of state decorations. I will not be able to present them all today. I will present them to some of you; however, I assure you that we know how each one of you did your duty. Thank you. Hero of the Russian Federation, Colonel Viktor Romanov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Allow me to thank you for all these high decorations on behalf of the Aerospace Forces service members carrying out missions in Syria. For my comrades and me, the participation in this military operation has become a true combat baptism. Many young people passed through it, and this experience is incomparable to anything else. Every time we took off into the Syrian skies to destroy militants, we fully understood that we were protecting not just the Syrian people, but our Fatherland as well. Today, we continue the traditions of the Russian veterans  our fathers and grandfathers. Our pilots have always stood out for their strength of spirit, honour, and high military and moral qualities. I want to assure you, Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief, that the Aerospace Forces personnel are capable of protecting our state, ensuring its security and fulfilling all the objectives we are set. Corporal, Intelligence Officer of the Rocket Artillery Battery Squad of the Black Sea Fleets180th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade (Marines) Oleg Baranov: Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief, On behalf of my comrades and myself, allow me to thank you for your high assessment of our contribution to the fight against international terrorism. We will remember this meeting at the Kremlin as a sign of your trust and we want to assure you that we will live up to that trust. Today, our army is powerful, efficient, and capable of withstanding any enemy. I know from personal experience that Russian weapons are the best and most reliable; they have never let us down in battle. We are proud to serve in the Russian Army. Our citizens can be confident that we will channel all our energy into protecting our Fatherland and do everything to ensure our citizens peaceful life. Vladimir Putin: Comrade officers, friends, Allow me to once again sincerely congratulate you all on returning home and on receiving your state decorations. In his speech, one of the award recipients just said  and clearly, he was nervous, because this is an atmosphere and situation we are not used to  that they were proud to be serving in the Russian Army. And Russia is proud of its army and of you. Thank you.
Brownshirts & Republican Wimps



By Patrick J. Buchanan



March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - Friday evenings Donald Trump rally in Chicago was broken up by a foul-mouthed mob that infiltrated the hall and forced the cancelation of the event to prevent violence and bloodshed. Brownshirt tactics worked. The mob, triumphant, rejoiced. And the reaction of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich? All three Republican rivals blamed  Donald Trump. With his dangerous style of leadership, Trump stokes this anger, mewed Rubio, This is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of bitterness and anger and frustration. Rubio implies that if Trump doesnt tone down his remarks to pacify the rabble, he will be responsible for the violence visited upon him. Kasich echoed Rubio: Donald Trump has created a toxic environment (that) has allowed his supporters and those who sometimes seek confrontation to come together in violence. But were the thousands of Trump supporters who came out to cheer him that night really looking for a fight? Or were they exercising their right of peaceful assembly? Cruz charged Trump with creating an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discord, thus offering absolution to the mob. Friday night cried out for moral clarity. What we got from Trumps rivals was moral mush that called to mind JFKs favorite quote from Dante: The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a time of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. As news outlets have reported, Fridays disruption at the University of Illinois-Chicago auditorium was a preplanned assault. Behind it were the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Hispanics hoisting Mexican flags and cop-haters carrying filthy signs to show their contempt for the police. People for Bernie, a pro-Sanders outfit, tweeted, [This] wasnt just luck. It took organizers from dozens of organizations and thousands of people to pull off. Great work. Now, Sanders did not order this assault on the civil rights of Trump supporters. But MoveOn.org has endorsed him and Bernie signs and T-shirts were everywhere among the disrupters. Hence, he has a duty to disavow this conduct and those who engaged in it. If Sanders refuses, he condones it and is morally complicit. Can one imagine how the media would pile on Trump if working-class white males in Trump T-shirts invaded a Hillary Clinton rally and shut it down? Can one imagine how the networks and cable TV channels that host town halls with the candidates would react if hell-raisers snuck into their audiences and shouted obscenities during discussions? The keening over the First Amendment would not cease for weeks. Some of us have been here before and know how this ends. When the urban riots broke out in the 60s, Hubert Humphrey declared that, if he lived in a ghetto, I could lead a pretty good riot myself. At his 1968 convention in Chicago, radicals baited and provoked the cops in the front of the Conrad Hilton, and as this writer watched, their patience exhausted after days of abuse, Chicagos finest tore into the mob and delivered some street justice. Richard Nixon, wrote Hunter S. Thompson, is living in the White House today because of what happened that night in Chicago. Hunter got that one right. That fall, Humphrey was daily assailed by the kinds of haters now disrupting Trump rallies. Everywhere he went, they chanted, Dump the Hump! At times, Humphrey came close to tears. That fall, Humphrey realized the monster he helped nurture. My tormentors, he said, are not just hecklers, but highly disciplined, well-organized agitators  some of them are anarchists, and some of these groups are destroying the Democratic Party and destroying this country. In 1970, when President Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia to clean out Viet Cong sanctuaries, and students rioted, Ronald Reagan called them cowardly fascists, and declared, If theres going to be a bloodbath, let it begin here. Not much Cruz-Rubio-Kasich equivocating there. When radicals stomped down Wall Street desecrating Old Glory, construction workers came down from the building sites they were working and whaled on them. Union president Peter J. Brennan was soon in the Oval Office  and in Nixons Cabinet. Secretary Bunker, we called him. Prediction. Given their victory in Chicago, MoveOn.org and its allied nasties will try to replicate it, again and again. And as Americans came to despise the 60s radicals, they will come to despise them. And, as in the 1960s, the country will take a turn  to the right. America has changed from the land we grew up in. But she is not yet ready to allow ugly mobs screaming obscenities at Trump and his folks inside and outside that hall in Chicago, or their paragons like socialist senator Bernie Sanders, to take over the country. Those raising hell in the street in Chicago and that convention hall are unfit to be citizens of this democratic republic. For as Edmund Burke reminded us, Men of intemperate minds can never be free. Their passions forge their fetters. Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website. Copyright  2016 Creators.com
News / Regional

by Staff reporter

THE people of Binga are excited about the digitisation programme, which will see the district, together with many others countrywide that had never received radio and TV signal, getting coverage.An appreciative crowd from nearby villages in Manjolo and Siachilaba yesterday gathered at the Manjolo transmitter base station which is under construction.The Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Dr Christopher Mushohwe, deputy Sithokozile Mathuthu, Permanent Secretary George Charamba, directors and other officials visited the district to tour Manjolo transmitter, which will be 113m tall covering a 120km radius.Traditional and local leaders commended Government saying the district would be able to receive local news as opposed to foreign signals from pirate radio stations.Chief Sikalenge said: "There are a lot of programmes that will be done in Tonga and we are looking forward to the start of the stations."Chief Siachilaba-designate Nonah Mungombe who will be installed next week said: "We are happy because we have never received local signal here and now we will be updated on Government programmes. We commend the Government for this because we will now be treated equally like other districts and places like Bulawayo, Harare and Masvingo which have been favourably getting signal."We have been listening to radio from Zambia and we are grateful that we will soon have our own."Binga District Administrator Lydia Ndethi-Banda said Binga would now be able to contribute to the national agenda."We are very happy that this will now enable us to receive Government programmes first hand especially addresses from His Excellency," Ndethi-Banda said.Minister Mushohwe was mesmerised by Manjolo Choir which led the singing of the National Anthem.The leader of the choir, Twapegwa Binga, said they were ready to deliver content enough to cover programming in Tonga."We can't wait to be on air. We have been working hard and we are happy that the Government is moving in to empower us," she said.The Manjolo transmitter is one of 24 new stations that are being constructed countrywide, to add to the 24 old ones. It is the first to be built and Minister Mushohwe said it would be the first to be switched on.From Manjolo, the delegation proceeded to Kamativi where digital broadcasting is already being demonstrated from Kamativi Police Station using two digital transmitters. Equipment at Kamativi was mounted on the existing transmitter.Minister Mushohwe said Binga was fortunate to be the first district to be considered for digitalisation."Binga is fortunate to be the first. Yes, you may be connected on mobile network, but you need radio and TV."People of Binga have a rich history of the struggle as they crossed to Zambia to join the war while those from Bulawayo and Harare were going to school. For that they have to be rewarded by getting the first digital transmission," he said.After the tour, villagers were given grocery hampers.Construction work will be finished on April 15, after which installation of digital equipment such as dishes and transmitters will begin. The transmitter will be switched on in two months.Today the delegation will tour two transmitters, one at Chibondo in Hwange and another in Lupane.
Protesting Trump and Hillary Too



The left shouldnt be suckered into making Trump the paramount issue. The low hanging fruit of open bigotry should not be the only galvanizing force for progressives.



By Margaret Kimberley Hillary Clinton is no less terrible and if Trump is the nominee she will become even worse. March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " BAR "- On March 11, 2016 hundreds of people in Chicago gathered to protest Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The billionaire reality television star has unleashed the barely concealed angst and fury of white America. He calls for preventing Muslims from entering the United States and for building an even bigger wall on the Mexican border to stop immigration there. He was forced to renounce the support of the KKK and he continues to make racist statements about the blacks. The Chicago actions brought together young and old in a multi-racial coalition. It was wonderful to see a gathering of black Americans and Latinos and whites and at least one person with a flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle. Trump is a lightning rod and rightly so but he should not become the only one. Hillary Clinton is no less terrible and if Trump is the nominee she will become even worse. At a recent debate neither she nor Bernie Sanders were willing to call Trump a racist. The Donald Trump phenomenon has already created an even more rightward shift among the Democrats. They want support from white people who have been yearning for someone to come out of their closet and openly make the case for white nationalism. The Donald Trump phenomenon has already created an even more rightward shift among the Democrats. Trump has bested other Republican candidates because he gets to the heart of the matter for the white peoples party. While others pursue an agenda crafted by pollsters in focus groups he speaks directly to those who have been called the silent majority or Reagan Democrats. Gun rights are more about white people being in physical control of the black population. Abortion restrictions are intended to make white women have more babies. Evangelical Christians believe in Americas ultimate religion, white supremacy, more than they believe in anything else. Trump has made all of these issues irrelevant because he tells white people that he will make them and their issues number one again. Republicans didnt become the party of white America with talk of tax cuts for the rich. The masses of their voters dont really care about that. The system which destroyed living wage jobs has upended their lives too and neither party speaks to that need. Unfortunately, Trump lets the Democrats off the hook because his racism gives them an out. They love free trade deals just like the Republicans do. They eagerly conspire with Republicans on governmental austerity and none of them are anti-war. Their crimes are now ignored because they have Trump to point to as the new bogeyman. The Chicago protests should be replicated around the country but not just against Trump. Evangelical Christians believe in Americas ultimate religion, white supremacy, more than they believe in anything else. Trump opposed the invasion of Iraq. He has since backtracked but he spoke of a need to be even handed with Israel. He has said that Social Security is fine the way it is and he has no plans to change it. He initially wasnt disparaging of Obamacare and expressed concern about not letting people die in the streets. He opposes trade deals like NAFTA which have sent jobs overseas in the neoliberal inspired race to the bottom. All of these issues put him to the left of Hillary Clinton, who must also become the target of protest. Progressives were aghast when Trump said he would kill terrorist suspects and their families. Of course Barack Obama already did that when he performed an extra-judicial execution on Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. The same people who feign shock at Trump are silent regarding Democratic criminality. The same week that Chicagoans took to the street against Trump, the Obama administration killed 150 people in Somalia in an air strike. We were told they were taking part in a terrorist graduation ceremony. There is no indication of a commencement speaker or caps and gowns but those people are dead and Trump isnt even in the White House. The same people who feign shock at Trump are silent regarding Democratic criminality. Every four years the public are distracted with the high level foolishness inherent in an American presidential campaign. The corporate media and the two largest political parties work together to bring endless coverage of candidates who differ very little from one another and use double speak and code words to assure the ruling class that they wont change very much at all. The low hanging fruit of open bigotry should not be the only galvanizing force for progressives. The whole political system must be protested. The people need to be up in arms over many issues and not just the ignorant ruminations of one boorish man rich enough to pay for his own campaign. The left have no friends among the Democrats or Republicans. The quadrennial circus side show is a very dangerous distraction. Instead it should be a time to gain political insight and maturity. It is time to shut down Trump and Hillary too. Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
How Propaganda Feeds War on Syria Western propaganda against countries targeted for regime change can be especially insidious because mainstream journalists abandon skepticism and go with the flow, such as the case of Syrian torture photos. By Rick Sterling March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortium News " - There has been a pattern of sensational but untrue reports that lead to public acceptance of U.S. and Western military intervention in countries around the world. For instance, in Gulf War 1 (1990-91), there were reports of Iraqi troops stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. Relying on the testimony of a Red Crescent doctor, Amnesty Interenational verified the false claims. Ten years later, there were reports of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq for development of weapons of mass destruction. One decade later, there were reports of Libyan soldiers drugged on viagra and raping women as they advanced. In 2012, NBC broadcaster Richard Engel was supposedly kidnapped by a pro-Assad Syrian militia but luckily freed by Syrian opposition fighters, the Free Syrian Army. All these reports were later confirmed to be fabrications and lies. They all had the goal of manipulating public opinion and they all succeeded in one way or another. Despite the consequences, which were often disastrous, none of the perpetrators were punished or paid any price. It has been famously said, Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. This report is a critical review of the so-called Caesar Torture Photos story. As will be shown, there is strong evidence the accusations are entirely or substantially false. Overview of Caesar Torture Photos On Jan. 20, 2014, two days before negotiations about the Syrian conflict were scheduled to begin in Switzerland, a sensational report burst onto television and front pages around the world. The story was that a former Syrian army photographer had 55,000 photographs documenting the torture and killing of 11,000 detainees by the Syrian security establishment. The Syrian photographer was given the code-name Caesar. The story became known as the Caesar Torture Photos. A team of lawyers plus digital and forensic experts were hired by the Carter-Ruck law firm, on contract to Qatar, to go to the Middle East and check the veracity of Caesar and his story. They concluded that Caesar was truthful and the photographs indicated industrial scale killing. CNN, Londons Guardian and LeMonde broke the story which was subsequently broadcast in news reports around the world. The Caesar photo accusations were announced as negotiations began in Switzerland. With the opposition demanding the resignation of the Syrian government, negotiations quickly broke down. For the past two years the story has been preserved with occasional bursts of publicity and supposedly corroborating reports. Most recently, in December 2015 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report titled If the Dead Could Speak with significant focus on the Caesar accusations. Following are 12 significant problems with the Caesar torture photos story: Almost half the photos show the opposite of the allegations. The Carter Ruck Inquiry Team claimed there were about 55,000 photos total with about half of them taken by Caesar and the other half by other photographers. The Carter Ruck team claimed the photos were all similar. Together they are all known as Caesars Torture Photos. The photographs are in the custody of an opposition organization called the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD). In 2015, they allowed Human Rights Watch (HRW) to study all the photographs which have otherwise been secret. In December 2015, HRW released their report titled If the Dead Could Speak. The biggest revelation is that over 46 percent of the photographs (24,568) do not show people tortured to death by the Syrian government. On the contrary, they show dead Syrian soldiers and victims of car bombs and other violence (HRW pp 2-3). Thus, nearly half the photos show the opposite of what was alleged. These photos, never revealed to the public, confirm that the opposition is violent and has killed large numbers of Syrian security forces and civilians. The claim that other photos only show tortured detainees is exaggerated or false. The Carter Ruck report says Caesar only photographed bodies brought from Syrian government detention centers. In its December 2015 report, HRW said,  The largest category of photographs, 28,707 images, are photographs Human Rights Watch understands to have died in government custody, either in one of several detention facilities or after being transferred to a military hospital. They estimate 6,786 dead individuals in the set. The photos and the deceased are real, but how they died and the circumstances are unclear. There is strong evidence some died in conflict. Others died in the hospital. Others died and their bodies were decomposing before they were picked up. These photographs seem to document a war-time situation where many combatants and civilians are killed. It seems the military hospital was doing what it had always done: maintaining a photographic and documentary record of the deceased. Bodies were picked up by different military or intelligence branches. While some may have died in detention; the big majority probably died in the conflict zones. The accusations by Caesar. the Carter Ruck report and HRW that these are all victims of death in detention or death by torture or death in government custody are almost certainly false. The true identity of Caesar is probably not as claimed. The Carter Ruck Report says This witness who defected from Syria and who had been working for the Syrian government was given the code-name Caesar by the inquiry team to protect the witness and members of his family. (CRR p12) However if his story is true, it would be easy for the Syrian government to determine who he really is. After all, how many military photographers took photos at Tishreen and Military 601 Hospitals during those years and then disappeared? According to the Carter Ruck report, Caesars family left Syria around the same time. Considering this, why is Caesar keeping his identity secret from the Western audience? Why does Caesar refuse to meet even with highly sympathetic journalists or researchers? The fact that 46 percent of the total photographic set is substantially the opposite of what was claimed indicates two possibilities: Caesar and his promoters knew the contents but lied about them expecting nobody to look. Or, Caesar and his promoters did not know the contents and falsely assumed they were like the others. The latter seems more likely which supports the theory that Caesar is not who he claims to be. The Carter Ruck Inquiry was faulty, rushed and politically biased. The credibility of the Caesar story has been substantially based on the Carter-Ruck Inquiry Team which verified the defecting photographer and his photographs. The following facts suggest the team was biased with a political motive: The investigation was financed by the government of Qatar which is a major supporter of the armed opposition. The contracted law firm, Carter Ruck and Co, has previously represented Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also known for his avid support of the armed opposition. The American on the legal inquiry team, Professor David M. Crane, has a long history working for the U.S. Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency. The U.S. government has been deeply involved in the attempt at regime change with demands that President Bashar Assad must go beginning in summer 2011 and continuing until recently. Crane is personally partisan in the conflict. He has campaigned for a Syrian War Crimes Tribunal and testified before Congress in October 2013, three months before the Caesar revelations. By their own admission, the inquiry team was under time constraints (CRR, p11). By their own admission, the inquiry team did not even survey most of the photographs The inquiry team was either ignorant of the content or intentionally lied about the 46 percent showing dead Syrian soldiers and attack victims. The inquiry team did its last interview with Caesar on Jan. 18, 2014, quickly finalized a report and rushed it into the media on Jan. 20, two days prior to the start of United Nations-sponsored negotiations. The self-proclaimed rigor of the Carter Ruck investigation is without foundation. The claims to a scientific investigation are similarly without substance and verging on the ludicrous. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved. In an interview on France24, David Crane of the inquiry team describes how Caesar was brought to meet them by his handler, his case officer. The expression case officer usually refers to the CIA. This would be a common expression for Professor Crane who previously worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency. The involvement of the CIA additionally makes sense since there was a CIA budget of $1 billion for Syria operations in 2013. Cranes Syria Accountability Project is based at Syracuse University where the CIA actively recruits new officers despite student resistance. Why does it matter if the CIA is connected to the Caesar story? Because the CIA has a long history of disinformation campaigns. In 2011, false reports of viagra fueled rape by Libyan soldiers were widely broadcast in Western media as the U.S. pushed for a military mandate. Decades earlier, the world was shocked to hear about Cuban troops fighting in Angola raping Angolan women. The CIA chief of station for Angola, John Stockwell, later described how they invented the false report and spread it around the world. The CIA was very proud of that disinformation achievement. Stockwells book, In Search of Enemies, is still relevant. The accusers portray simple administrative procedures as mysterious and sinister. The Carter Ruck inquiry team falsely claimed there were about 11,000 tortured and killed detainees. They then posed the question: Why would the Syrian government photograph and document the people they just killed? The Carter Ruck Report speculates that the military hospital photographed the dead to prove that the orders to kill had been followed. The orders to kill are assumed. A more logical explanation is that dead bodies were photographed as part of normal hospital / morgue procedure to maintain a file of the deceased who were received or treated at the hospital. The same applies to the body labeling / numbering system. The Carter Ruck report suggests there is something mysterious and possibly sinister in the coded tagging system. But all morgues need to have a tagging and identification system. The photos have been manipulated. Many of the photos at the SAFMCD website have been manipulated. The information card and tape identity are covered over and sections of documents are obscured. It must have been very time-consuming to do this for thousands of photos. The explanation that they are doing this to protect identity is not credible since the faces of victims are visible. What are they hiding? The Photo Catalog has duplicates and other errors. There are numerous errors and anomalies in the photo catalog as presented at the SAFMCD website. For example, some deceased persons are shown twice with different case numbers and dates. There are other errors where different individuals are given the same identity number. Researcher Adam Larson at A Closer Look at Syria website has done detailed investigation which reveals more errors and curious error patterns in the SAFMCD photo catalog. 9. With few exceptions, Western media uncritically accepted and promoted the story. The Carter Ruck report was labeled Confidential but distributed to CNN, the Guardian and LeMonde. CNNs Christiane Amanpour gushed over the story as she interviewed three of the inquiry team under the headline EXCLUSIVE: Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad regime. Critical journalism was replaced by leading questions and affirmation. David Crane said This is a smoking gun. Desmond de Silva likened the images to those of holocaust survivors. The Guardian report was titled Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of industrial scale killing of detainees with the subtitle, Senior war crimes prosecutors say photographs and documents provide clear evidence of systematic killing of 11,000 detainees One of the very few skeptical reports was by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor. Murphy echoed standard accusations about Syria but went on to say incisively, the report itself is nowhere near as credible as it makes out and should be viewed for what it is: A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar , a regime opponent who has funded rebels fighting Assad who have committed war crimes of their own. Unfortunately that was one of very few critical reports in the mainstream media. In 2012, foreign affairs journalist Jonathan Steele wrote an article describing the overall media bias on Syria. His article was titled Most Syrians back Assad but youd never know from western media. The media campaign and propaganda has continued without stop. It was in this context that the Carter Ruck Report was delivered and widely accepted without question. Politicians have used the Caesar story to push for more US/NATO aggression. Politicians seeking direct U.S. intervention for regime change in Syria were quick to accept and broadcast the Caesar story. They used it to demonize the Assad government and argue that the U.S. must act so as to prevent another holocaust, another Rwanda, another Cambodia. When Caesars photos were displayed at the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, Chairman Ed Royce said It is far past time that the world act. It is far past time for the United States to say there is going to be a safe zone across this area in northern Syria. The top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee is Eliot Engel. In November 2015 he said , Were reminded of the photographer, known as Caesar, who sat in this room a year ago, showing us in searing, graphic detail what Assad has done to his own people. Engel went on to advocate for a new authorization for the use of military force. Rep. Adam Kinzinger is another advocate for aggression against Syria. At an event at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in July 2015, he said, If we want to destroy ISIS we have to destroy the incubator of ISIS, Bashar al-Assad. The irony and hypocrisy is doubly profound since Rep. Kinzinger has met and coordinated with opposition leader Okaidi who is a confirmed ally of ISIS. In contrast with Kinzingers false claims, it is widely known that ISIS ideology and initial funding came from Saudi Arabia and much of its recent wealth from oil sales via Turkey. The Syrian Army has fought huge battles against ISIS, winning some but losing others with horrific scenes of mass beheading carried out by ISIS. The Human Rights Watch assessment is biased. HRW has been very active around Syria. After the chemical attacks in greater Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, HRW rushed a report which concluded that, based on a vector analysis of incoming projectiles, the source of the sarin carrying rockets must have been Syrian government territory. This analysis was later debunked as a  junk heap of bad evidence by highly respected investigative journalist Robert Parry. HRWs assumption about the chemical weapon rocket flight distance was faulty. Additionally it was unrealistic to think you could determine rocket trajectory with 1 percent accuracy from a canister on the ground, especially from a canister on the ground that had deflected off a building wall. In spite of this, HRW stuck by its analysis which blamed the Assad government. HRW Director Ken Roth publicly indicated dissatisfaction when an agreement to remove Syrian chemical weapons was reached. Roth wanted more than a symbolic attack on Syrian government forces. Regarding the claims of Caesar, HRW seems to be the only non-governmental organization to receive the full set of photo files from the custodian. To its credit, HRW acknowledged that nearly half the photos do not show what has been claimed for two years: they show dead Syrian soldiers and militia along with scenes from crime scenes, car bombings, etc. But HRWs bias is clearly shown in how it handles this huge contradiction. Amazingly, HRW suggests the incorrectly identified photographs support the overall claim. They say, This report focuses on deaths in detention. However other types of photographs are also important. From an evidentiary perspective, they reinforce the credibility of the claims of Caesar about his role as a forensic photographer of the Syrian security forces or at least with someone who has access to their photographs. (HRW, p31) This seems like saying if someone lies to you half the time that proves they are truthful. The files disprove the assertion that the files all show people who were tortured and killed. The photographs show a wide range of deceased persons, from Syrian soldiers to Syrian militia members to opposition fighters to civilians trapped in conflict zones to regular deaths in the military hospital. There may be some photos of detainees who died in custody after being tortured, or who were simply executed. We know that this happened in Iraqi detention centers under U.S. occupation. Ugly and brutal things happen in war times. But the facts strongly suggest that the Caesar account is basically untrue or a gross exaggeration. It is striking that the HRW report has no acknowledgment of the war conditions and circumstances in Syria. There is no acknowledgment that the government and Syrian Arab Army have been under attack by tens of thousands of weaponized fighters openly funded and supported by many of the wealthiest countries in the world. There is no hint at the huge loss of life suffered by the Syrian army and supporters defending their country. The current estimates indicate from 80,000 to 120,000 Syrian soldiers, militia and allies having died in the conflict. During the three years 2011-2013, including the period covered by the Caesar photos, it is estimated that over 52,000 Syrian soldiers and civilian militia died versus 29,000 anti-government forces. HRW had access to the full set of photographs including the Syrian army and civilian militia members killed in the conflict. Why did they not list the number of Syrian soldiers and security forces they identified? Why did they not show a single image of those victims? HRW goes beyond endorsing the falsehoods in the Caesar story; HRW suggests the cataloguing is only a partial listing. On page 5, the report says, Therefore, the number of bodies from detention facilities that appear in the Caesar photographs represent only a part of those who died in detention in Damascus. On the contrary, the Caesar photographs seem to mostly show victims who died in a variety of ways in the armed conflict. The HRW assertions seem to be biased and inaccurate. The legal accusations are biased and ignore the supreme crime of aggression. The Christian Science Monitor journalist Dan Murphy gave an apt warning in his article on the Carter Ruck report about Caesar. While many journalists treated the prosecutors with uncritical deference, he said, Association with war crime prosecutions is no guarantor of credibility  far from it. Just consider Luis Moreno Ocampos absurd claims about Viagra and mass rape in Muammar Qaddafis Libya in 2011 . War crimes prosecutors have, unsurprisingly, a bias towards wanting to bolster cases against people they consider war criminals (like Assad or Qaddafi) and so should be treated with caution. They also frequently favor, as a class, humanitarian interventions. The Carter Ruck legal team demonstrated how accurate Murphys cautions could be. The legal team was eager to accuse the Syrian government of crimes against humanity but the evidence of industrial killing, mass killing, torturing to kill is dubious and much of the hard evidence shows something else. In contrast, there is clear and solid evidence that a Crime against Peace is being committed against Syria. It is public knowledge that the armed opposition in Syria has been funded, supplied and supported in myriad ways by various outside governments. Most of the fighters, both Syrian and foreign, receive salaries from one or another outside power. Their supplies, weapons and necessary equipment are all supplied to them. Like the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s, the use of such proxy armies is a violation of customary international law. It is also a violation of the UN Charter which says All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other matter inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. The government of Qatar has been a major supporter of the mercenaries and fanatics attacking the sovereign state of Syria. Given that fact, isnt it hugely ironic to hear the legal contractors for Qatar accusing the Syrian government of crimes against humanity? Isnt it time for the United Nations to make reforms so that it can start living up to its purposes? That will require demanding and enforcing compliance with the UN Charter and International Law. Rick Sterling is an independent research/writer and member of Syria Solidarity Movement. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com .
How Barack Obama Turned His Back On Saudi Arabia And Its Sunni Allies



World View: A striking feature of the President's foreign policy is that he learns from failures and mistakes



By Patrick Cockburn March 18, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Independent "- Commentators have missed the significance of President Barack Obamas acerbic criticism of Saudi Arabia and Sunni states long allied to the US for fomenting sectarian hatred and seeking to lure the US into fighting regional wars on their behalf. In a series of lengthy interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic magazine , Mr Obama explains why it is not in the USs interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies. Obamas arguments are important because they are not off-the-cuff remarks, but are detailed, wide ranging, carefully considered and leading to new departures in US policy. The crucial turning point came on 30 August 2013 when he refused to launch air strikes in Syria. This would, in effect, have started military action by the US to force regime change in Damascus, a course of action proposed by much of the Obama cabinet as well by US foreign policy specialists. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies were briefly convinced that they would get their wish and the US was going to do their work for them by overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. They claimed this would be easy to do, though it would have happened only if there had been a full-scale American intervention and it would have produced a power vacuum that would have been filled by fundamentalist Islamic movements as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Mr Goldberg says that by refusing to bomb Syria, Obama broke with what he calls, derisively, the Washington Playbook. This was his liberation day. The US has been notoriously averse since 9/11 to put any blame on the Saudis for creating salafi-jihadism, at the core of which is Sunni sectarian hatred for the Shia and other variants of Islam in addition to repressive social mores, including the reduction of women to servile status. President Obama is highly informed about the origins of al-Qaida and Islamic State, describing how Islam in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, had become more intolerant and exclusive. Asked why this had occurred, Mr Obama is quoted as replying: The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs have funnelled money, and large numbers of imams and teachers, into the country. In the 1990s, the Saudis heavily funded Wahhabist madrassas, seminaries that teach the fundamentalist version of Islam favoured by the Saudi ruling family. The same shift towards the Wahhabisation of mainstream Sunni Islam is affecting the great majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world who are Sunnis. Arab oil states spread their power by many means in addition to religious proselytism, including the simple purchase of people and institutions which they see as influential. Academic institutions of previously high repute in Washington have shown themselves to be as shamelessly greedy for subsidies from the Gulf and elsewhere as predatory warlords and corrupt leaders in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. Mr Goldberg, who has had extraordinary access to Obama and his staff over an extended period, reports: A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. Ive heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as Arab-occupied territory. Television and newspapers happily quote supposed experts from such think tanks as if they were non-partisan academics of unblemished objectivity. It will be important to know after the US election if the new president will continue to rebalance US foreign policy away from reliance on Sunni powers seeking to use American military and political muscle in their own interests. Past US leaders have closed their eyes to this with disastrous consequences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Mr Goldberg says that President Obama questioned, often harshly, the role that Americas Sunni Arab allies play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is clearly irritated that foreign policy orthodoxy compels him to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally. What is truly strange about the new departures in US foreign policy is that they have taken so long to occur. Within days of 9/11, it was known that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, as was Osama bin Laden and the donors who financed the operation. Moreover, the US went on treating Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies as if they were great powers, when all the evidence was that their real strength and loyalty to the West were limited. Though it was obvious that the US would be unable to defeat the Taliban so long as it was supported and given sanctuary by Pakistan, the Americans never confronted Pakistan on the issue. According to Goldberg, Obama privately questions why Pakistan, which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered an ally of the US at all. As regards Turkey, the US President had hopes of its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but has since come to see him as an authoritarian ruler whose policies have failed. A striking feature of Obamas foreign policy is that he learns from failures and mistakes. This is in sharp contrast to Britain where David Cameron still claims he did the right thing by supporting the armed opposition that replaced Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, while George Osborne laments Parliaments refusal to vote for the bombing of Syria in 2013. Not surprisingly, Obama sounds almost contemptuous of Cameron and the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who played a leading role in demanding the Nato air campaign in Libya. The US went along with President Sarkozys bragging as the price of French support, though Mr Obama says that we [the US] had wiped out all the air defences and essentially set up the entire infrastructure for the intervention. Despite all the US efforts not to make the same mistakes it made in Iraq in 2003, Obama concedes that Libya is a mess and privately calls it a shit show, something that he blames on the passivity of US allies and Libyan tribal divisions. Three years later, the collapse of Libya into anarchy and warlord rule served as warning to Obama against military intervention in Syria where he rightly calculated that the Libya disaster would be repeated. The calamitous Libyan precedent has had no such impact on Cameron or the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who continue to advocate armed action using arguments which President Obama has abandoned as discredited by events as well as being a self-serving attempt by others to piggy-back on American power. It will become clearer after Novembers presidential election how far Obamas realistic take on Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and other US allies and his scepticism about the US foreign policy establishment will be shared by the new administration. The omens are not very good since Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, intervention in Libya in 2011 and bombing Syria in 2013. If she wins the White House, then the Saudis and the US foreign policy establishment will breathe more easily. Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East (OR Books) by Patrick Cockburn is published this month
The Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, has pledged to build a new hostel for the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam, Anambra State.

Akpabio made the pledge Thursday while delivering a lecture as part of activities line up for the universitys 7th convocation.

In his lecture on The Nigerian Question: Ethics in an Age of Uncertainty, Senator Akpabio, a two-term governor of Akwa Ibom State, called on Nigerian leaders to uphold ethics and morality as part of efforts to curb corruption in the country.

He defined ethics as doing things that are right and moral.

The Senate leader also hailed the Federal Governments anti-corruption campaign but stressed that it should be done across board.

Mr. Akpabio also advised political leaders against cross carpeting, saying it was mostly done in selfish interest.

He assured the gathering that members of the National Assembly would continue to maintain ethics and good moral behaviour in making laws in the interest of the masses.

Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Fidelis Okafor, commended Akpabio for his promise to build a hostel in the institution.

Mr. Okafor urged students and graduates to imbibe the spirit of morality in life.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the institution will hold its convocation on March 18.

(NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday paid tribute to late Minister of State, Labour and Employment, James Ocholi, describing him as an epitome of civility, archetype of intellectualism and the paragon of loyalty.

In the tribute issued in Abuja, Mr. Buhari described Mr. Ocholi as one of his right hand men in the quest to reposition Nigeria for the betterment of all citizens.

The president maintained that Mr. Ocholi had taught many, including himself, fidelity, commitment and loyalty to party, to government, and to God.

Mr. Buhari, who said that a lot had been said about Mr. Ocholi and a lot more would be written on him, added that the late minister was no mean man. He was a man among men, an Iroko in a forest of trees.

How do I begin to pay this tribute to a man who was the epitome of civility, the archetype of intellectualism, and the paragon of loyalty?

How do I begin to mourn James Ocholi, whom you can describe as one of my right hand men in the quest to reposition our country, and fashion a land of peace and prosperity, where no man is oppressed?

A lot has been written about Ocholi since the tragic event of March 6, 2016, which took the life of our Minister of State, Labour and Employment, his wife, Blessing, and his son, Joshua.

And a lot more will be written, for Ocholi was no mean man. He was a man among men, an Iroko in a forest of trees.

How are the mighty fallen!

Among many other positive and pleasant things, I will always remember Ocholi for his loyalty to our beloved country Nigeria, loyalty to our party, the All Progressives Congress, and loyalty to our administration, in which he had served for just about 4 months, before death took him.

In 2011, Ocholi ran to be governor of Kogi state on the platform of our then party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). I believed so much in him, and in his ability to add value to the governance of his state, that I followed him round the state on campaign.

We visited all the local governments, visited the paramount rulers, and urged the people to vote in a worthy man as governor. But politics is a peculiar game in Nigeria.

The best often does not win. Ocholi did not win. But he bore it gracefully. In 2015, he threw his hat into the ring again.

He sought to be governor on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he had helped midwife. He still did not win at the party primaries, an eventuality he bore gracefully again.

When the APC was being negotiated into existence among the legacy parties, Ocholi did a yeomans job, contributing his quota to the legal processes.

This he did under a junior lawyer, who was not a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), like him then. But what mattered to Ocholi was the birth of a strong, solid party, which could wrest power at the centre, and bring change to our country.

Hierarchy is important in the legal profession, just as it is in the military. But Ocholi subordinated pride and ego, served under his subordinate, and APC was born.

Dream became reality.

Steadily but sure-footedly, he was part of the Change Cabinet, resolved to bring our country from out of the woods, and pedestal Nigeria among the greats in the comity of nations.

Then the unthinkable happened. The Grim Reaper harvested Ocholi. What a pity! Sad and tragic.

But we have this consolation: the departed has taught us fidelity, commitment and loyalty to party, to government, and to God.

He will be sorely missed.

(NAN)
Senate President Bukola Saraki on Friday stormed the Code of Conduct Tribunal where he is facing charges of alleged false asset declaration and corruption.

Saraki, who arrived the court room of the CCT at about 10:00am accompanied by other senators, immediately went to greet members of his legal team led by former Justice Minister, Kanu Agabi (SAN).

It would be recalled that the Senate president had attempted to scuttle his trial by challenging the powers of the tribunal but the Supreme Court ruled that not only did the Justice Umar Danladi-led tribunal have the powers to try him, it was properly constituted to hear the case against Mr. Saraki, a former governor of Kwara State.

On resumption of the trial, Mr. Agabi, said there were 80 lawyers on his team, saying his client would surely emerge winner in the event of a voting contest.

We are 80 of us on this side, my lord, he said. At some point let the matter be put to vote.

He then started announcing the names of the other lawyers with him.

As at the time of filing in this report, proceedings have commenced as the Tribunal Clerk calls out the case.
The death toll in Wednesdays two suicide bombings, which targeted a mosque in Umarari village on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, has risen to 27, an official of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said yesterday.

The Northeast coordinator of NEMA, Mohammed Kanar, said the death toll rose from 24 after three other victims died while receiving treatment at a local hospital. Among the dead were the two bombers.

Two female suicide bombers carried out the attacks early morning of Wednesday.

While one of the attacks took place inside the local mosque, the second explosion occurred a few minutes later, about 50 meters away.

Though no group has claimed the attack, the modus operandi has Boko Haram written all over it.
News / Regional

by Staff Reporter

A woman in Baobab township in Hwange was buried in the absence of her children after they boycotted the funeral citing she never showed them love when she was alive.Everest Mukuli's four children refused to attend the burial.She died on March 5 and mourners had to bury."Mukuli died on 5 March after a short illness. As the orm, friends, relatives gathered but none of her children turned up and mourners gathered for a week expecting them to come."They never turned up and their uncle had to phone them asking for a way forward and that is when they said she should be buried in their absence" said one relative."They openly declared that they were not moved by her death as she dumped them when they were young and therefore had a painful upbringing,".Mukuli's brother Jersey confirmed the incident."We buried her in the absence of her children because they refused to attend." It is really sad and whatever reasons they had, I do not think my dead sister's spirit will ever forgive them for their actions".
The government of Ekiti State disclosed that one of the lawmakers detained by the Department of State Services (DSS), Hon Afolabi Akanni has died in the agencys custody.

Akanni, representing Efon constituency, was arrested on March 4 and was taken to Abuja. He had since being in the custody of the DSS, despite the ruling of the Federal High Court in Ado Ekiti, delivered by Justice Taiwo Taiwo, ordering the DSS to either release him or produce him in court on Wednesday, March 16.

Information reaching us indicates that one of the abducted members of the Ekiti state House of Assembly, Hon. Afolabi Akanni has died in the custody of the Department of State Service, it was said at an emergency press conference in Ado Ekiti jointly addressed by Information Commissioner, Mr Lanre Ogunsuyi, the speaker of the Assembly, Hon Kola Oluwawole, Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Ajayi Owoseeni, Special Assistant on Communications to the governor, Lere Olayinka and Akannis lawyer, Mr Obafemi Adewale.

The DSS, however, denied the statement, presenting the hale and hearty Afolabi before newsmen at its headquarters in Abuja, and also denied abducting the Ekiti lawmakers.

This Press Conference has become necessary in order to debunk a rumour which is being dangerously spread in Ekiti State by some mischief makers to the effect that Hon. Afolabi has died in our custody, the DSS said.

Nigerians and Ekiti people in particular are convinced to see that Afolabi is hale and hearty as he is being presented to the Press today (yesterday).

You may have been aware of the recent situation in Ekiti State in which the DSS was accused of abducting the State Assemblys legislators.

The fact is that one of the members of the Assembly, Hon. Akanni Afolabi was duly invited by the Service over some serious breaches bordering on state security for which he has some explanations to make. These breaches fall under the purview of the DSS to investigate.

The DSS warns all those who have planned to make a meat out of this to desist from it and stir clear from trouble as the Service will not hesitate to bring the full weight of the law against any one or persons that may engage in violent actions of any kind.
Ethiopias leader has urged the world to donate more towards food aid he says is needed to fight a drought that has left more than 10 million people hungry. Aid agencies and the government said they must raise more than $1.4 bn of aid, but that only about half of that amount has been collected. The emergency appeal is the third largest in the world after those for Syria and Yemen.

Ethiopia should not be neglected by any means despite all the other crises that are going on elsewhere in the world, Prime Minister Hailemariam Deselagn told the Associated Press news agency in an interview. The US has been the biggest donor, giving more than $532 million in humanitarian aid to the country since October 2014.

The Ethiopian government has also spent about $380 million of its own money. My country deserves more support because we are also sheltering some 750,000 refugees from neighboring countries that need food aid, Hailemariam said, referring to the fact that the Horn of Africa nation hosts a large number of mainly South Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali refugees. If something goes wrong, it is the international community who has not come in. The aid provided to us so far is very little and it often came very late. I urge organisations like UNICEF to come in if they think this is a worst case scenario. Just talking is not a solution.

The drought was brought on a result of the the El Nino climate phenomenon that affected seasonal rains, causing crops to fail and livestock to die. Ethiopia was devastated by a drought in the 1980s that  exacerbated by a civil war  killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought the country global attention.

Source: AJ Agencies.
President Muhammadu Buhari Thursday said a sociological study would be conducted on Boko Haram when they are finally subdued by the government.

The president said such a study will assist in determining the origin, the remote and immediate causes of the movement, its sponsors, its international connections and steps to prevent its recurrence.

Since launching a bloody campaign against the Nigerian state in 2009, Boko Haram has killed over 12,000 people, displaced millions in the Northeast, destroyed livelihoods and property worth several billions of naira and gained notoriety as the worlds deadliest terrorist organization, ahead of the Islamic State (IS).

Buhari, who spoke at the opening ceremony of the International Islamic Conference on peace and nation building in Abuja, noted that the theme and timing of the conference, which is a joint effort between Jamaatu Izalatil Bida Wa Iqamatis Sunna based in Nigeria and the Muslim World League, is coming when most parts of the world are grappling with one form of violent conflict or another.

He welcomed the Executive Secretary of the Muslim World League, His Eminence, Professor Abdullahi bin Abdulmohsin Al- Turki to Nigeria.

He said: I assured Nigerians that at the end of the hostilities when the group is subdued, the Government would commission a sociological study to determine the origin, the remote and immediate causes of the movement, its sponsors, its international connections if any, to ensure that measures are taken to prevent a recurrence.

The outcome of the proceedings of this conference will be useful in that regard, he added.

Buhari reiterated that Boko Haram is a mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam.

He said also that he was impressed by the objectives of the conference, which are among others, to: *promote national, regional and global cooperation against the spread of insurgency;

*correct the distortions about the concept of peace in Islamic ideology and philosophy;

*contribute to the global fight against terrorism because security is a shared responsibility; and to

*attract global attention to the plight of those most affected by the insurgency, which is mostly concentrated in the North Eastern part of our country. These include Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), orphaned children, widows and the elderly who have been rendered homeless and helpless as a result of the insurgency.

The president told the gathering that Nigerias joint cooperation with its neighbours has substantially degraded the attacking capability of Boko Haram and have compelled them to retreat.

We will pursue them relentlessly until they become an item of history, he added Speaking further, Buhari said: The tragic paradox of the global insurgency situation is that most of the atrocities committed by various insurgents all over the world today are being carried out mainly by people who pretend to be Muslims, yet most of the victims and casualties are equally Muslims.

To underscore their cruelty and godlessness, they particularly target the most vulnerable members of the society: children, women and the elderly. No religion approves of such heinous crimes against humanity; definitely not Islam nor Christianity, to which two most Nigerians belong, he added.

Noting that normal people must rise up against terrorism, Buhari said that Islam does not permit lawlessness as it frowns at extremism even in normal acts of worship.

He added: The emergence of any group advocating the contrary is, therefore, irreligious and unacceptable. Religious leaders must intensify their efforts to send out the real teachings of their religion in order to counter the diabolical ideology that motivates the insurgent elements.

President Buhari also urged the forum to call on all religious, community and political leaders to mobilise their followers against corruption and crimes of any kind, lamenting that Nigeria had suffered many years of official neglect and corruption, which in turn led to untold hardship to the common man.

They should also encourage them to be more tolerant of each other; and recognise the rights of others as they want others to recognise their rights to worship and live freely, he added.

Buhari promised that his administration will do everything possible to safeguard lives and property and also to ensure even development across Nigeria.

The president also pointed out that the global economic challenges facing the world today might turn out to be a blessing for Nigeria as it will stimulate the latent economic opportunities that have remained untapped for decades in the country.

According to him, poverty breeds disaffection, which in turn leads to crime and lawlessness, including confrontation against the State.

To checkmate this, we must work hard to lift our economy, engage our youth and rebuild infrastructure. We can only achieve these with full cooperation of all Nigerians and under a stable polity. We are determined to do this and we shall not be deterred, Buhari said.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar; Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi; governors and other leaders were at the occasion.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon has condemned the double suicide attacks on 16 March in Maiduguri in Borno State by suspected Boko Haram elements, which left 20 people dead and many injured.

He extends his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to those injured.

The Secretary-General also reiterates the UNs support to the Nigerian Government in its fight against terrorism, which should be grounded in international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law.

In a similar vein, the Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, strongly condemned the suicide attack which was reportedly carried out by two female suicide bombers, resulting in the death of 22 worshippers.

While commiserating with the Government and people of Nigeria for the loss of life due to the attack, the Chairperson of the Commission applauded the Nigerian Government for its commitment to combat terrorism, not only in Nigeria, but in the wider Lake Chad Basin and Sahel regions.

She reiterated the AUs continued commitment, through the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) established by the Member States of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and Benin, to neutralize and eliminate the Boko Haram terrorist group.
Fresh out of university or been unemployed since finishing university a year or two ago and have been searching for a job ever since. Well, this isnt unusual considering the high unemployment rate in Nigeria. Job scams do exist, and there are scammers who have realised that graduates are an easy target. There are just as much job seekers out there as there are job scammers. They are everywhere, waiting for vulnerable and unsuspecting job seekers to scam. Well, just so youre on the alert, INFORMATION NIGERIA has outlined 5 easy ways to spot those fake jobs and their perpetrators.

No website: If the company has no proper website, with descriptions of what they do, it is probably a scam and you should ignore .

Unbelievable offers: When it seems too good to be true. When they tell you what you will be earning is way more than what every other company pays for such position.

Payment: Any company that asks you to pay money up front is probably trying to scam you. A potential employee is not supposed to pay any sum to getting a job.

You didnt contact them, they contacted you: They often say they found your resumee online. They either offer you a job right away or say they want to interview you. Sometimes the scammers will try to entice you by saying that you made the cut and they are interviewing the finalists for the job.

You get the job right away. After a quick phone or Instant Message interview, the interviewer immediately contacts you to offer you the job.

Vague Job Requirements and Job Description: Scammers try to make their emails sound believable by listing job requirements. Usually these requirements are so ridiculously simple that almost everyone qualifies.

Unprofessional Emails: Some emails from scammers are well-written, but many arent. Real companies hire professionals who can write well. If the email contains spelling, capitalization, punctuation or grammatical mistakes, be on your guard.

Emails dont include contact info or are sent from a personal email account: If the email doesnt include the companys address and phone, its a good bet that its a scam.

Search results dont add up: Before agreeing to an interview, do your research. If its a real company, you should be able to find information about the company by doing an online search. Finding information does not guarantee that the company is legit, but if you cant find anything, you can bet its a scam.

They want you to pay for something: Legitimate companies dont ask for money. If youre told you need to purchase a software or pay for services, beware.

We hope these tips help!!!
Hunters in Adamawa State have threatened to withdraw their services in the counter-insurgency operation in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States following the arrest of the State Chairman of the Hunters Association, Usman Tola, by the police.

The Hunters Association in Adamawa has about 3,000 of its members currently engaged in war against Boko Haram insurgents in the Northeast.

Daily Trust reports that Tola was detained on Monday after honoring an invitation at the police headquarters in Yola, the state capital.

The police had invited the associations chair following the death of three of his men in a clash with a rival group led by Muhammadu Sarkin Yaki, the head hunter in Gombi, when the former was celebrating the coronation of one of his commanders in Gombi town.

The adviser to the hunters association, Abubakar Nyan Yelwa, told the newspaper yesterday that following the detention of Tola, the hunters had no option than to withdraw from the fight against Boko Haram.
The National Christian Elders Forum has joined in the campaign against the proposed Kaduna State Religious Bill, which seeks to regulate preaching activities of religious groups in the state.

The Christian Elders made their position known on Friday at the National Christian Center in Abuja, Nigerias capital.

Speaking at a media briefing, the group asked the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, to withdraw the bill from the State Assembly.

The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Kaduna State has also met with the State Governor over the proposed Religious Preaching Regulatory Bill that was presented before the State House of Assembly for passage.

The clergymen, led by their Chairman, Bishop George Dodo, met with the Governor, who was represented by his Deputy, Bala Bantex, on Wednesday in Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria.

The Deputy Governor explained that the Religious Preaching Bill was only meant to curb religious extremism and hate speeches that could trigger religious violence in the state.
The political battle of supremacy between former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and his successor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has claimed its first casualty in the person of the Chief Whip of the Kano State House of Assembly, Zubairu Mamuda.

Hon. Mamuda was removed on Thursday for recognizing Kwankwaso, who is the currently the senator representing Kano Central, as the state leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Mr. Mamuda represents Madobi constituency, where the former governor hails from.

The impeachment followed a motion moved by a member representing Nassarawa Local Government Area, Ibrahim Gama, on the floor of the house.

Mr. Gama, alias Lugard, posited that the removal of the chief whip had become imperative in view of the legislators disloyalty to Governor Ganduje.

The house unanimously adopted the motion and immediately removed Mr. Mamuda, who was replaced with Labaran Madari, a member representing Warawa constituency.

It would be recalled that 36 out of 40 members of the house, on Tuesday, visited the governor, where they pledged allegiance to him, deepening the political divide between Mr. Ganduje and his predecessor.
The Lagos State Government on Friday said that arrangements had been concluded to transform the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) Bus Terminal to attract more tourists to the edifice.

The Commissioner for Transportation, Dr Dayo Mobereola, disclosed this at a stakeholders meeting organised by his Ministry in Lagos on Friday.

According to Mobereola, redevelopment was part of Gov. Akinwunmi Ambodes efforts to further enhance the states mega-city project.

The reason for this redevelopment is to actualise the vision of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, in his strive to make the state a real mega-city.

To affirm this, there are some infrastructure that are to be in place.

TBS stands for Lagos State. It is a rallying point for us, so we want to beautify it more and make it a tourist centre.

It is very important and imperative to make the terminal a world-class edifice, so that when anyone comes to this place, they will bow and respect the state, Mobereola said.

The commissioner said that the purpose of the meeting was to seek the opinion of stakeholders and to carry them along.

We need your contributions to make it better. We are just going to make the place an ultra-modern terminal for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses, taxi operators and passengers.

What we want to do is to protect all during the rainy and hot seasons. Everyone will have its own section: Danfo drivers, BRT and taxi operators, so that passengers are not confused where to go.

What we are doing is for the benefits of all. When it is completed, it will be enforced, he said.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Transportation, Mr Anofiu Elegushi, added that the purpose of the project was not to displace the operators.

We are ready to receive your inputs, comments and advice. Our intention is to re-arrange. It is not an intention to take over your operations, but we need your support to move the state forward, he said.

In his presentation on the project design, Mr Bolaji Bada, the Director Transportation Engineering in the ministry, said that the project would have a hightech fibre to provide shade.

Bada said, The weight of the material is approximately one per cent of glass, which make it light enough to withstand any weather condition. It is dust and repellant-free and can serve for 40 years.

This technology has the ability to transmit light when illuminated from above at night, so it will be spectacular, of high architecture and colourful, with a lot of land spacing for a standard terminus.

In his reaction, Alhaji Tajudeen Agbede, the Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), who lauded the project, urged that the government should be cautious of disrupting peoples sources of income.

I want to appeal that you do not displace the operators and traders when the project is eventually completed because they are of immense benefit to both passengers and their families, Agbede said.

Mr Hammed Okunuga, the Chairman, Road Transport Employers Association (RTEAN) in Lagos Island, said we appreciate this as we have been looking forward to it, but let it not be that you want to take over what we feed our families with.

A private Park-and-Ride operator at TBS, identified as Alfa Abolore, urged the government not to displace entreprenuers who have been making a living in the area.

In his response, Mobereola, said, no stakeholder should be fearful. We will not take your source of income. We must do it together.

We may have to relocate people that might be affected because by the time we are done with TBS, you will tell us to go and repair Obalende. Obalende is not up to standard.

We need your support because of the inconvenience it will bring during execution.

He added that the facility would include enhanced security and maintenance features such as Closed Circuit Television and a world-class toilet facility.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that stateholders at the meeting included members and executives of the NURTW and the RTEAN, traders, politicians and residents, among others.
Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja, who is hearing the case involving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Olisa Metuh, yesterday vowed to remain on the case pending the decision of his employer.

Metuh had raised sundry accusations against the judge and asked him to withdraw from the case.

The defence counsel, Emeka Etiaba (SAN) wrote to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, asking him to transfer the case from Abang to another judge.

But Justice Abang said he would not be intimidated, adding that by virtue of the National Judicial Council, NJCs circular, he would continue with the case until the chief judge takes a decision on Metuhs petition.

In a March 11 letter to Justice Auta, Metuh through his lawyer, claimed to have been Justice Abangs classmate at the law school and that they met a few weeks before the trial.

The PDP spokesman, who is standing trial with his firm, Destra Investment Limited, on a seven-count charge of money laundering, accused the judge of bias and giving him no access to records, with the intention of denying him right to appeal.

The judge made the disclosure yesterday while ruling on an application by Metuhs lawyer, Ifedayo Adedipe (SAN), for adjournment, on the grounds that the lead defence lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), was unavailable.

Justice Abang said: On March 16, 2016, at 4 pm, the chief judge forwarded a copy of the letter by Emeka Etiaba (SAN), praying him to transfer this case to another judge, eight witnesses having been called and the no-case application of the defendant dismissed for lack of merit.

I want to say that I have a circular by my employer, the National Judicial Council (NJC), to the effect that where there is a petition in a matter seeking the transfer of the case to another judge, the judge handling the case shall continue to preside over the matter until a decision is taken by the authority to which the petition was addressed.

On the account of this circular, I shall continue to preside over this matter until the chief judge takes a decision on Mr. Etiabas petition, Justice Abang said.

The judge, however, expressed surprise that Etiaba failed to give the prosecution a copy of his letter, as required under Rule 30 (5) of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners.

He said having refused to serve the prosecution with a copy, Etiaba violated the rules of professional conduct for lawyers.

Justice Abang noted that by not serving the prosecution, Etiaba denied the prosecution the opportunity to react to issues raised in the letter.

Mr. Etiaba complained in the letter that the record of proceedings was not made available to him. The record of proceedings of about 212 pages have been served on the defence team since two days ago. This is not the only case the court is handling. This court is a busy court.

And again, Etiaba said the accused is my classmate. I dont know the accused as my classmate. It is for him to prove that he was my classmate. Assuming the accused was my classmate; that will not change the facts of the case and the law.

I do not take arbitrary decisions. Whatever decision I take here is in line with the law and my conscience. I fear no evil. I am guided by my conscience, without fear or favour, the judge said.

Going through the history of the case, the judge noted that most adjournments were at the instance of the defence.

Metuhs legal team, comprising three senior advocates, including Ikpeazu, Adedipe and Etiaba, developed cold feet and refused to open its defence after the judge dismissed the defendants no-case submission for lack of merit on March 9.

The PDP spokesman made a no-case submission after prosecution completed its case after calling eight witnesses, who the defence team cross-examined.

Rather than lead evidence in his defence, Metuh chose instead to make a no-case submission, which the court dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution raised several issues to which he (Metuh) must respond to.

After the judge refused his no-case submission on March 9, Metuh was asked to open his defence and he sought time to enable him prepare his witnesses, prompting the judge to adjourn to yesterday.

Rather than open his defence yesterday, Adedipe, who led the defence team, told the court that the lead lawyer, Ikpeazu, who prepared the defence witnesses, was unavailable.

Adedipe again, sought an adjournment, pledging to conduct defence in the event that Ikpeazu was away, at the next date.

The prosecution lawyer, Sylvanus Tahir, reluctantly agreed to an adjournment following Adedipes promise to conduct the defence on the next date even if Ikpeazu was absent.

Justice Abang, therefore, upheld Adedipes application and adjourned to March 23.
Opinion / Columnist

On March 7 the Pentagon announced that it had killed 150 members of the Al-Shabaab guerrilla movement in a bombing operation in Somalia.These military actions are part and parcel of a broader United States foreign policy strategy to dominate the Horn of Africa. The administration of President Barack Obama has continued the military and political intervention in Somalia aimed at remaking the political landscape of the East African state which shares borders with some of Washington's closest collaborators in the region including Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya.The administration's rationale for a renewed air campaign in Somalia was to downgrade and destroy training bases for Al-Shabaab. The Islamist movement has not only continued its war against the Western-backed regime in Mogadishu, but has crossed over into neighbouring Kenya and Uganda in apparent retaliation for their military deployments in the country as members of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) established in 2007.A Department of Defence Press release claimed the targeted area "is a training facility of al-Shabaab which is a terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaeda. The strike was conducted using manned and unmanned aircraft and the fighters who were scheduled to depart the camp posed an imminent threat to US and AMISOM forces".An escalation in the Pentagon's air campaign in Somalia coincides with the years-long proxy war inside the country which has resulted in the deployment of 22 000 troops (AMISOM) from eight different African states who are trained, armed and given logistical support by Washington, the United Nations and the European Union (EU). In addition, the Somalia National Army (SNA) is supplied by Western governments and their allies in an effort to transition the character of the war to defeat the Al-Shabaab organisation, which maintains control over large areas of the country.This bombing operation was followed on March 9 by reports that at least 15 Al-Shabaab fighters had also been killed in another raid led ostensibly by the imperialist-backed and trained Somalia National Army (SNA) troops working in conjunction with US Special Forces. News of the second attack emanated from al-Shabaab itself and a Somalian federal government official.Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, a spokesperson for Al-Shabaab, stressed that foreign soldiers had attacked their base located approximately 30 miles (50 km) from the capital Mogadishu in the Lower Shabelle region. Abu-Musab said of the attackers that; "They were masked and spoke foreign languages which our fighters could not understand. We do not know who they were but we foiled them." (Reuters, March 9)According to Abu Musab, Al-Shabaab only lost one fighter, contradicting reports from other media and governmental sources. The Islamist organisation said that the military commandos landed along the River Shabelle. They then dropped off the commando unit which travelled to the Al-Shabaab base located in the town of Awdhegle.The suspected Special Forces unit were armed with M16 rifles and rocket launchers utilised in the attack. US government officials later announced to the Press that their military troops were involved in the attacks alongside Western-backed Somalian military forces, noting the operation had resulted in deaths among the Al-Shabaab combatants.Administration Seeks Rapid Advances in Long WarThe latest phase in the war of containment, domination and control of the resource-rich Horn of Africa state is approaching 10 years when Washington attempted its renewed efforts to impose a political dispensation on the country beginning in 2006.After the failure of the 1992-1994 occupation of Somalia by thousands of US Marines, UN troops along with allied forces from Canada and other states, when the people of this beleaguered state rose up in an uprising, successive administrations sought avenues to interfere in the internal affairs of the country. Somalia had not been able to set up an internationally-recognised government since the collapse the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre in early 1991, a US ally in Africa.During 2006, an Islamic Courts Union (UIC) movement began to solidarise with local organisations establishing a political system that operated independently of the foreign policy imperatives of the administration of former President George W. Bush. Washington encouraged its contacts inside Somalia to force out the Islamic Courts which proved to be a disaster.Sentiments towards the US government became even more hostile leading to the invasion of Somalia by neighbouring Ethiopia, which is a staunch partner of Washington in its so-called "war on terrorism." Yet, the intervention of the Ethiopian military then under the leadership of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, was by no means sufficient to drive out the Islamic Courts movement from Mogadishu and other areas in the central and south of the country where they had taken control. Over the next three years, the Islamic Courts split over whether to enter a transitional government in Mogadishu that was backed by the imperialist states. By 2009, the Al-Shabaab group, meaning "the youth", emerged as the main opposition to the US and British supported regime in the capital.Al-Shabaab MilitantsThe escalating deployment of forces from Uganda, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and other African states strengthened the AMISOM operation driving out Al-Shabaab from most of Mogadishu and some other areas of the country in the central and southern regions.Nevertheless, Al-Shabaab remained strong while attracting fighters from other countries and reportedly pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda.At present the EU, one of the major funding and logistical supporters of AMISOM, said that it would reduce its assistance by 20 percent. This announcement has prompted sharp rebukes from those states which have served as ground units propping up the federal government in Mogadishu.According to an article published by Jane's Defence Weekly: "The move was criticised during a summit of leaders from AMISOM's contributing countries in Djibouti on 28 February. Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta said in his speech that the international community must provide adequate support for the mission in the run-up to elections later this year." (March 3)President Kenyatta said; "This is the time to strengthen AMISOM through a surge in troops and resources, not weaken it."The same Jane's Defence Weekly report noted that a "joint declaration released at the end of the summit said the leaders noted 'with serious concern the decision by the EU to reduce financial support to AMISOM troop allowance by 20 percent, especially during this critical phase of AMISOM operations' and called on the UN to cover the resulting shortfall."The Obama administration's recent bombing of the country does signal a greater reliance on air power and the drawing-down of military assistance to AMISOM and the SNA. Exposing further the dominant imperialist role in the war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, AMISOM has announced that it will rely more on air power in light of the reduction of funding from the EU.Kenya's Nation newspaper stated on February 21 that AMISOM "may have to concentrate more on air strikes than ground attacks in its war against Al-Shabaab militants to minimise expenses after one of its main donors reduced funding."Nonetheless, overall these developments provide no real plan for a reduction in the escalating Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State Department involvement in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) which has thousands of troops in Djibouti and other continental states has been bolstered under the Obama administration.The absence of any substantive discussions surrounding foreign policy in Africa during the presidential campaign leaves policy-making to the intelligence agencies and the defence department much to the detriment of people in Africa as well as in the US. Unless this situation changes dramatically, there will be no real shift in Washington's foreign policy in the region.
The National Economic Council (NEC) will next week hold a two-day Retreat from Monday, March 21 to March 22. President Muhammadu Buhari will deliver the keynote address during the formal opening session on Monday morning.

Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, who is the Chairman of NEC, an advisory body to the President, would preside over the retreat with governors from the 36 states of the federation attending, including the Central Bank Governor and the Budget & Planning Minister among other top government functionaries, a statement by Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant on Media & Publicity to the Vice President said.

The objective of the NEC Retreat is to provide a forum for in-depth discussions by NEC members of the policy actions that the States and the Federal Government can consider in order to stimulate local production, cut costs and enhance public revenues among other measures to stimulate the economy.

According to the statement by Akande, the Retreat is not an emergency national economic conference, as widely assumed. The idea was mooted at the last regular NEC meeting in January, where members requested an intensive session to review economic trends and evolve strategies to cope.

March 17, 2016
Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has commended the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai for his exemplary leadership style, which he noted has led to successes in the fight against terrorists.

The governor added that Buratais style motivates the officers and men in the war front against insurgents.

Speaking when the Army Chief paid him a courtesy visit at the Government House, Benin, on Wednesday, Oshiomhole said, we in Edo State appreciate the leadership that you are providing for the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigerian Army in particular. We watch you on television and we see a very senior officer going to meet his officers and men right in the battle field, sharing the dust, the sun and all the deprivations, the sort of thing you sometime see in foreign countries. I think that you are leading by example in every sense of the word.

Yes, Boko Haram has not exactly disappeared, but there is no doubt that they themselves will in their own way appreciate that things have changed, that the Nigerian side is better. They no longer have that audacity, that impunity to move freely without fear. So, you are doing a terrific job for Nigeria, and I believe that we are the beneficiaries, we the civilian population.

He continued, Nigeria doesnt have boundaries, North East, North West, South East. It is just one. And I know that at a point, the Boko Haram elements had gotten up to Kogi. If that situation had continued, it was clear that by now some of us cant sit here presiding over government affairs. So, we are very impressed with your leadership, we are impressed with your style, we are impressed and excited with your total commitment that people can see from your body language and from your action in the battle field. We can only pray that God will give you more strength, more wisdom and even better courage that this war which is already won that you sustain it, and in the very near future our brothers and sisters who have been displaced, some of whom are in Edo State, will have the confidence to be able to return to their various homes and get on with their lives the way it was before the word Boko Haram ever emerged in our national discourse.

Let me also thank you, sir, that your officers at the 4th Brigade under the leadership of the Brigade Commander, his officers and men; they have been very terrific in helping us to do what is not conventional in military duty, in complementing the efforts of the police in day-to-day security related issues. We have what we call Operation Thunder Storm, and your officers and men have been wonderful through that scheme helping us to maintain and to fight criminality, violent crimes, kidnappings and armed robbery. And you know when our people see the army uniform, it instills the sense of discipline in the people, and that is because the Nigerian Army has, in spite of the challenges you have had in terms of poor funding, or even diversion of funds, conducted itself in a way that it commands respect in the eyes of the Nigerian people.

He added, For us in Edo State, the army is part of the Edo community and we see the barracks as an extension of the community. And many of our children are attending schools that are located within the barracks. So, we are very thankful, very appreciative for the support that we have enjoyed from officers and men of the Nigerian Army under the brigade here in Benin.

Yes, Boko Haram is still there, but obviously there is no doubt it no longer has that capacity to harass us. I think whatever they do now is like a dead snake, it might still continue to wriggle its body, but its dead. It is only with time that the teeth will be removed.

So, congratulations on your efforts. I believe the Nigerian people appreciate. We also congratulate the Commander-in-Chief for his leadership. What has also come out in recent times is that no matter how serious the Nigerian Army is, if the Commander-in-Chief is not clear and doesnt provide the right leadership, the army will to that extent be constrained. President Muhammadu Buhari is exactly the kind of person we need at this time, when Nigeria is in distress, we need someone to give all of us the sense of confidence. And there is a leadership that we can trust, a leadership that commands respect and a leadership with integrity.

Earlier, Lt.-Gen. Buratai said he was on a familiarization visit to army formations and units in Edo State.

He said, Your Excellency, I am here today in Edo State on a familiarization visit to my units and formations here within the 2 Division areas of responsibility. I was in Ibadan yesterday, and today I am here in Benin. I have visited the 4 Brigade as well as the Nigerian Army School of Supply and Transport.

I am here to formally get myself acquainted with the officers and soldiers of the Brigade and also to assess their performances in various duties, both internal as well as the operation Pulo Shield as well as the administrative, logistics and operational challenges. So, Your Excellency, I deemed it necessary to pay you a courtesy call as a mark of respect and also as a mark of a very good relationship that has been existing between the good government of Edo State ably led by you and the Nigerian Army formations and units here.

He said, I want to appreciate most sincerely despite the short notice you accepted to host me this evening. I appreciate you Your Excellency, and I want to assure you that the Nigerian Army, in spite of its constitutional role will continue to support the state government in its discharge of its sensitive security responsibilities that have been enshrined and mandated in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. For this, I must commend the 4 Brigade for its good relationship not only with the State Government, but other security agencies, and this collaborative effort has really stabilized the security situation here, and I want to assure you that this will be maintained.

The Nigerian Army will continue to observe the rules of engagement which are properly backed up with the necessary laws of the nation. And I want to assure you that the Nigerian Army will remain professional and remain responsive to the needs and aspirations of the State in terms of security. Thank you, Your Excellency. I am pleased to be here. I thank you for all the support.
The candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the April 11 governorship election in Rivers State, Dakuku Peterside, Wednesday met with the national leadership of the party in Abuja ahead of this Saturdays rerun elections into the National Assembly and State House of Assembly.

Peterside, who refused to speak with journalists, was overheard, saying they will bow, they will bow despite attempts to get information about the motive behind his visit as he was moving towards his vehicle.

Informed sources said apart from the rerun elections, the newly appointed Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), who met the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and other National Working Committee (NWC) members behind closed doors, also thanked the party leaders for his appointment.
Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje says the government is making concerted efforts to replace the famous groundnut pyramids with rice pyramids.

Ganduje said that was why the state government is providing the environment that will encourage the massive production of rice, wheat, and tomatoes.

Speaking, Friday while fielding questions from State House correspondents after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Ganduje said the state government would provide rice farmers with the incentives they would need to be able to increase the production of the product.

Now, we are soon going to talk about rice pyramids not groundnut pyramids because rice is the order of the day now.

The groundnut you are talking about in those years it was the production of groundnut to be exported to the foreign land and be processed and be brought back to Nigeria.

But now it is a different issue. We have a lot of oil mills that consume the groundnut. So, you will not expect to see the groundnut pyramids as you used to see because the economic situation has change.

The industrialisation is much better than those days.

So, you better stop dreaming of groundnut pyramids now. But when you are talking of rice; that is where we need the pyramids now.

So, we assure you that in Kano we are providing an enabling environment for the production of rice, wheat, and tomatoes, the governor said.

The governor said that during the meeting, he brought the President up to date with the security situation in the state, particularly the issues relating to cattle rustling and kidnapping.

According to him, cattle rustling and kidnapping have been brought under control.

He also said that he briefed the President on the states amnesty and empowerment programmes extended to repentant cattle rustlers and kidnappers in the state.

On the row between him and Kwankwaso, Ganduje stated that the situation is under control, saying that efforts have been intensified to address the problem.

The situation is under control, it is an in-house problem which is under control. We are talking about it.

Yes, reconciliation is ongoing and it will work. We have been together for long; we are politically brothers and friends.

Therefore, we will make sure that we dont allow things to continue to fall apart.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, says the army has commenced investigations into the alleged extrajudicial killings of unarmed pro-Biafran protesters in Aba, Abia State.

MAKURDI  The incursion of suspected Fulani herdsmen into parts of Benue state took a worrisome dimension Thursday afternoon when the invaders stormed Tombo in Buruku local government area of the state, killing no fewer than 15 persons.

Thisday

Africas richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has partnered the Bank of Industry (BoI) and the Kaduna and Kebbi State Governments to acquire a majority stake in Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Limited.

Daily Times

Pandemonium struck on Wednesday at the Ondo State Governors office in Akure, the State capital, following a heavy inferno that broke out at an inner room which led to the State Executive Council (SEC) chamber.

Guardian

The Presidency is set to partner the National Assembly (NASS), on a new policy to carter for the needs and inclusiveness of Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Daily Trust

Key players in the camp of Senate President Bukola Saraki are holding secret meetings with the camp of his main rival, Senator Ahmed Lawan, Daily Trust has reliably gathered.

National Mirror

Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has said the country stands to earn more in foreign exchange if the extractive sector of the economy is properly harnessed. Fayemi disclosed this at the New Telegraph Economic Summit tagged, Nigeria: Beyond the Oil Economy, held in Lagos yesterday.

Leadership

The minister of state for petroleum resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, has allayed fears that the current development in the global oil market would plunge oil and gas companies and financial institutions in the country into bankruptcy.

The Nation

THE judge handling the case involving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh yesterday said Metuh raised sundry accusations against him and asked him to withdraw from the case.

Tribune
A New York state resident was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison for trying to recruit fighters to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levent (ISIL), the longest prison term handed out yet to an American convicted of supporting the group. Mufid Elfgeeh, a 32-year-old pizza shop owner of Rochester, was sentenced in a Western District court on Thursday after the districts attorney, William Hochul, called Elfgeeh one of the first ISIL (also known as ISIS) recruiters ever captured.

Convictions for ISIL-related activity by US citizens have become more frequent in recent months as more than 80 such cases brought by US prosecutors since 2013 work their way through federal courts. Although Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in December only to trying to recruit two individuals to join ISIL, he was also originally charged with trying to kill US service members and unlawfully possessing firearms and silencers.

Beginning in 2013, the FBI paid two informants to help investigate Elfgeeh, according to court records. The informants recorded conversations in which Elfgeeh talked about wanting to kill members of the US military and Shia Muslims in New York. One of the informants eventually sold Elfgeeh firearms and ammunition.

Elfgeeh tried to send the two individuals to Syria to fight on behalf of ISIL, buying them a laptop computer, a high-definition camera, an expedited passport and other travel documents, according to his plea agreement. He used Facebook and WhatsApp to activate a network of ISIL sympathisers in Turkey, Syria and Yemen who could facilitate their trip, the plea agreement said.
A former Governor of Oyo State, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, has heaved a sigh of relief that he did not emerge winner of the 2015 governorship election in the state.

Mr. Alao-Akala, who sought a return to the Agodi Government House on the platform of the Labour Party, LP, said he remains thankful to God for losing the election, because had he won, he would have been at a loss as to coping with the issue of dwindling monthly federal allocation.

The former governor spoke at the national secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) after meeting with the partys national chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and other leaders from the South-West geo-political zone.

I said that because I pitied the governors because of what they are going through now. I wouldnt have been able to sleep with these dwindling monthly allocations. That was the reason why I said that. I dont know how I would have coped. It doesnt go beyond that, Alao-Akala said while fielding questions from journalists.

The former governor, who confirmed that he is now a bonafide member of the APC, said he was at the APC secretariat in Abuja to hold talks with the party leaders.

On his plan for the 2019 general elections, the former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor said, When we get to the bridge, we shall cross it. This is just 2016. Time will tell wherever anybody wants to go. Why do you try to ask God about 2019 now? Do you know whether you will sleep tomorrow and wake up tomorrow? Lets leave 2019 to God.

He said despite the initial challenges by the APC-led federal government, the party would succeed.

The change agenda has already started. It has not been the business as usual. Things have started changing. I know its purely for good purpose by the grace of God, he said.

The nomadic politician, who said nobody should be threatened by his entry into the APC, pleaded with Nigerians to continue to exercise patience with the Muhammadu Buhari administration, assuring things will soon turn around.

According to Akala, Change comes with time. When you want to make a change, it doesnt happen suddenly. It has to be gradual. We have started seeing it. I know we will get there by the grace of God.
Recent events involving the FBI and FCC read like a tale of two governments: one fighting doggedly to strip away the encryption protecting your phone's privacy, and the other advancing rules to safeguard your online personal info.

It's an appealing story in contrasts. Unfortunately, the privacy advocates heralding the FCC's "strict new privacy rules" and its role as "privacy cop" have been too quick to celebrate. Ultimately, these changes will do little to defend consumers' privacy from the increasingly ubiquitous surveillance of the digital age.

The proposed rules prohibit ISPs from selling users' data, such as customer name, address, location and Internet activity, to third parties without users giving opt-in consent to share that information. This is the same kind of privacy protection that already applies to telephone customers' data, and it barely scratches the surface of the motherlode of data generated through online activity.

Internet providers will also not be allowed to track customers without consent by using a unique number tied to a user's Internet activity or phone location. This month, Verizon paid $1.35 million to settle zombie cookie privacy charges and agreed that any future use of hidden undeletable numbers to track mobile users would be by consent only.

That decree didn't apply to tracking done by AOL, which Verizon acquired last year for $4.4 billion. But under the FCC proposal, subsidiaries would only be allowed to use an Internet provider's customer data to market "communications related services." Thus, AOL's use of online advertising technology would also need to be opt-in.

The rules don't ban programs like the one AT&T rolled out last year that charges customers a premium for the privilege of not being tracked. Even FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler admitted he was concerned about privacy becoming a luxury service. But "at this point in the debate, we have to deal with what we can deal with today," he said.

What we seemingly can deal with today is a determined emphasis on "opt-in." Despite all the predictable hand-wringing from cable industry groups about "burdensome privacy regulations," the proposed rules say nothing about prohibition. They're simply about getting permission to do what ISPs have been quietly doing all along: collecting and selling customers' personal info. How burdensome for them.

It's unclear what that opt-in process will look like, but if it takes the form of terms-of-service contracts that users routinely agree to without reading, it's hard to see this as anything more than business as usual for surveillance capitalism.

"Surveillance is the business model of the Internet," security expert Bruce Schneier has said. "We build systems that spy on people in exchange for services. Corporations call it marketing." Data is currency online, and consumers are willing to hand it over in exchange for "free or convenience," Schneier said.

"At a most fundamental model, we are tenant farming for companies like Google. We are on their land producing data," he said.

To date, Internet users have been very productive creating -- and giving away for free -- what Goldman Sachs calls a "gold rush" of personal data. Theoretically, if every user decided not to opt-in, it would threaten the flow of information on which the burgeoning telecom-data-as-a-service market relies -- a field currently worth $24 billion per year and on its way to $79 billion in 2020, according to estimates by 451 Research.

Companies like SAP, IBM, HP, and others are hoping users remain complacent and do nothing to upset the under-the-radar partnerships with carriers that give them access to consumers' data, according to an Ad Age investigative report. Insiders say carriers exploring these kinds of data-sharing businesses are tight-lipped because "fear of consumer complaints is always lurking in the background."

"The practices that carriers have gotten into, the sheer volume of data and the promiscuity with which they're revealing their customers' data creates enormous risk for their businesses," said Peter Eckersley, chief computer scientist at privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"While the world is riveted by the showdown between Apple and the FBI, the real truth is that the surveillance capabilities being developed by surveillance capitalists are the envy of every state security agency," says Shoshana Zuboff, professor emirita at Harvard Business School and author of the forthcoming book "Master or Slave: The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization."

Indeed, Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan believes the FBI's focus on encryption backdoors is misplaced. "There is a ton of rich data at ISPs that can be used to identify and track terrorists and criminals. In fact, this data is more fertile than what is on a personal smartphone because it reveals networks and connections that involve crime or terrorist rings," Litan told Computerworld.

Now the FCC wants to give consumers the option to keep some of their data secret. "Privacy rights confer decision rights, but these decision rights are merely the lid on the Pandora's Box," Zuboff says.

The FCC's actions are a welcome baby step toward privacy rights, but hardly in the same category as tough data protection rules passed in December by the European Commission. "Europe's approach to privacy is much stronger than in the United States," Peter Church, a technology lawyer in London, told the New York Times. "There's a fundamental difference in culture when it comes to privacy."
The latest beta of Windows 10, build 14291, brings two worthwhile new Edge features -- extensions and pinnable tabs -- as well as a greatly improved Map app, a Japanese one-handed kana touch keyboard, and minor changes to the UI for Alarms & Clock.

Windows spokesperson Gabe Aul published his usual list of features on the Windows Experience blog.

If you use the Map app, the latest changes will compensate for the disappearance of Here. But for most people, the key change with build 14921 is Edge's newfound ability to run Chrome-like extensions. Users have been expecting that capability since last November (some of us were hoping to get it last July), and now it's here. But the implementation is underwhelming at best.

Users who were expecting a Chrome- or Firefox-like experience will be disappointed. Some day you'll be able to pick up Edge extensions in the Windows Store, but for the time being you will have to download them from a developer website and sideload them. The instructions are confusing because the screenshots don't match the product, and it isn't clear when to switch from dealing with the download to wrestling with Edge's Ellipsis icon. (Tip: The Run command is at the bottom, with the downloader; the More command is in the upper-right corner of Edge.)

The new Edge ships with three extensions: a page translator, a mouse gesture overlay, and a port of the Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES makes it easier to absorb even more of Reddit at a glance). Each extension works in unique ways.

Microsoft's Mouse Gesture extension adds right-click navigation to Edge: right-click and swipe down to move the page down, right-click and swipe left to go to the previous page, and many more. You can put a Mouse Gesture icon on your address bar: After sideloading the extension, click on the Ellipsis icon, then Extensions, pick Mouse Gestures, then slide "Show button next to the address bar" to On. Once the button is on the address bar, you can click it and customize the actions taken with any specific gesture.

Once the Microsoft Translator extension is installed, the icon appears next to the address bar whenever you venture to a non-English site. Click on the Translator icon and the whole page is translated. In my experiments with the Thai language, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Microsoft Translator translation is considerably better than the Bing translator in side-by-side comparisons.

The RES extension automatically kicks in RES whenever you go to the Reddit website. I can't find a way to change that behavior, short of uninstalling the extension. I didn't see any difference between the new RES in Edge and the old RES in Chrome, although Microsoft lists four known bugs in the downloaded readme file. This is the only extension of the three that was developed by a team outside Microsoft.

We're promised that "later this year customers will find popular extensions from partners like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, Amazon, LastPass, Evernote and more." You have to wonder why the developers in question are having such a hard time getting their extensions to work -- and how much "later" the new extensions will be.

I'm starting to think Windows 10 Redstone 1 may miss its (reported) June deadline specifically because Edge extensions won't be ready. What we're seeing now is a fledgling attempt, at best.

The other Edge improvements -- pinning tabs and Paste and Go -- work exactly the same way as they do in Chrome. (For example, copy a URL to the clipboard, right-click inside the address bar, choose Paste and Go, and Edge goes to the website. I've always used Ctrl-V, but it's nice to include the right-clickers.)

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Some day Edge may actually be useful.
Opinion / Columnist

Out of ignorance, I recently teased my friend who used to drive a Land Rover Discovery 4 but is now driving a Toyota Corolla Bubble shape with an engine size of a mere 1.4 liters. I changed my attitude towards him after he explained why he had to change car from a fuel guzzler to an economy one. Financial prudence dictates that one must take such radical moves when things are not well.I have also read about South Sudan which is currently scaling down staff at its foreign embassies amid an economic crisis caused by the oil-producing nation's two year old civil war. I saluted them for taking a wise financial decision and at the same time I wondered why we don't take lessons from such. I have even seen a myriad of embassies in this country which are manned by just two people. Business goes on smoothly at such embassies.Government, through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development has identified a bloated civil service as an albatross around Government efforts to turn around the economy. As such, the Public Service Commission was assigned to assist in the reduction of the wage bill. The wage bill currently stands at 83% and it has to be reduced to 53%. That reduction will see government remaining with surplus funds for ministerial operations.In view of that, the PSC has already done away with over 22 000 vacant posts so as to control the wage bill. However, it is quite disturbing when you learn that the major stumbling block to this national effort is none other than the ministers themselves. I am certain that the decision to scale down government workforce emanated from cabinet where these ministers sit. It is therefore an appalling insincerity for ministers to sabotage a collective decision they contributed and ascended to, more so when such a decision has a national benefit.Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwa, the Chairperson of the PSC recently told the parliamentary portfolio committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare that the ministers were largely responsible for the bloated government workforce since they demand additional staff in their offices. He said despite being overstaffed, these ministers still demanded these additional staff from outside the civil service structure. That alone shows that the ministers are not real. If they really wanted additional staff, they must let PSC find them from a pool of the civil service rather than bringing them from outside and arm-twist PSC to employ them. One does not need to be clever to see that the ministers are just creating jobs for their relatives and friends.Dr Nzuwa said if he refused to give them the additional staff, they would accuse him of stifling their work. Dr Nzuwa must learn to be firm even if it means facing persecution for what is right. He must know that by succumbing to the ministers' selfish demands, his work is also being stifled. The nation wants to see the economy on its feet again and the reduction of the wage bill is one way to do it. He must therefore choose between satisfying the national vision and the egotistical tastes of certain ministers. He must learn to say a big NO if issues of national interests are at stake and that way he will maintain his integrity.Our economy is not fit enough to withstand such profligacy. Honestly a private secretary and a personal assistant duplicate duties. There is no need of maintaining both of them under one boss. Having complained about the behaviour of these ministers, Dr Nzuwa must not end there. He must rectify this problem soonest.Government must also take a leaf from South Sudan. There is just too much staff at our foreign embassies. Unfortunately the output from such embassies does not tally the size of same. If possible, government can even reduce the embassies themselves and remain with essential ones.We have always encouraged government to reduce the cabinet itself. There are ministries that can be merged because there is a very thin line between their functions. This is the reason why we have witnessed some clashes between ministers of different ministries over policing of some issues that overlap. For instance, when Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing banned housing cooperatives, Cde Sithembiso Nyoni objected saying she is the one responsible for cooperatives as the Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises Development.Even our Parliament is just too big considering our population and the ailing economy. It's shocking that the countries which have better economies and bigger populations have lean parliaments. A close scrutiny of the sizes of parliaments of other countries with bigger economies and populations can illustrate how bloated our parliament is. Yes the wage bill can be reduced if there is a political will without necessarily laying off poor the civil servants.
Triple Digit Hog Rally Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Lean hogs extended their rally into the weekend with another $0.20 to $2.10 gains in the front months. December was up the most on Friday, but is still a $1.40 discount to Feb. Through the week, December... HEZ22 : 89.125s (+2.41%) HEJ23 : 93.850s (+0.78%) KMZ22 : 98.000s (+1.16%)

Cotton Limits the Weeks Pullback with Friday Strength Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Cotton futures traded in a wide 413 point range from +253 to -160 (Dec). At the close the front months were 32 to 173 points in the black. December closed the week at a net 402 point loss, having spent... CTZ22 : 79.13s (+2.24%) CTH23 : 78.55s (+1.67%) CTK23 : 78.15s (+1.44%)

Wheats Closed Mixed on Friday Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT CBT SRW futures ended the last trade day of the week with 1 to 1 1/2 cent gains. For the December contract that meant a net 9 cent loss for the week. KC futures pulled back by 1/2 a cent to 2 cents on... ZWZ22 : 850-6s (+0.18%) ZWH23 : 869-4s (+0.17%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.8533 (+0.24%) KEZ22 : 948-2s (-0.16%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.0581 (-0.16%) MWZ22 : 961-4s (-0.10%)

Nov Beans Held under $14 Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT The Friday session ended with soybean futures 3 1/4 to 4 cents higher with November options having expired. Nov soybeans spent the week in a 41 1/2 cent trading range and ended 11 3/4 cents higher from... ZSX22 : 1395-4s (+0.29%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.5026 (+0.29%) ZSF23 : 1404-4s (+0.32%) ZSH23 : 1411-6s (+0.28%)

New Contract High for Dec Cattle Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Cattle added another 62 to 75 cents to the upside on Friday, with December printing a new life of contract high of $152.50. Dec gained a net $4.65 for the week. The weeks cash trade picked up on Thursday... LEV22 : 150.475s (+0.47%) LEZ22 : 152.425s (+0.49%) LEG23 : 155.525s (+0.44%) GFV22 : 175.275s (-0.17%) GFX22 : 178.350s (+0.45%)
Macroeconomics, hedge funds and Teladoc all featured in IIs best stories of the week.

This week at Institutional Investor, writers took a look at the current macro landscape, explained the tax implications for hedge fund returns and profiled Jason Gorevic, CEO of Teladoc.

Writers also reported on investment trends in agriculture technology and examined how cities and states around the U.S. are responding to a retirement savings crisis.

3rd Rock from the Sun: A Macro Perspective

In this blog post, Content Editor Anne Szustek shares insights from the National Association of Business Economics conference in Washington, with a bit of 90s pop culture trivia thrown in. Macroeconomic expansion and productivity are crawling along, and birth rates are sinking in the Group of 20 countries, the dire consequences of which the character of Sally on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun emphasized in one memorable episode.

Do Hedge Funds Provide a Hedge to Taxes?

As tax day approaches, Preston McSwain, founder and managing partner of registered investment adviser Fiduciary Wealth Partners, illuminates some of the impacts of taxes on hedge fund returns. Taxes on big short-term gains, which are common among hedge funds, can exceed 50 percent in some states. This means that managers need to be particularly skilled at generating returns in order to come out ahead.

Teladoc CEO Is Leading a Virtual Health Care Revolution

Senior Writer Julie Segal spoke with Jason Gorevic, CEO of Purchase, New York-based telemedicine company Teladoc about how technology is changing health care, and how Gorevic saw some of the changes coming. When he joined the company in 2009, Gorevic felt the time was right for telemedicine and raised $13 million in one of the worst years for capital markets, Segal writes.

Investors Cultivate a New Crop of Ag Tech Start-Ups

Technological disruption has come to agriculture technology. Associate Editor Kaitlin Ugolik explains the ways entrepreneurs and investors are taking advantage of digital innovation to address global food and water needs, from sustainable seafood to customizable crop data analytics software.

U.S. City, State Pension Push Falls Short on Retirement Security

City and state lawmakers around the U.S. are worried about their citizens ability to afford retirement, and they are responding by offering vehicles such as 401(k)-style savings accounts, writes Contributor Bailey McCann. In New York, Public Advocate Letitia James and Mayor Bill de Blasio are supporting a bill that would offer a 401(k) plan for private sector workers who dont have access to one.
It would seem that most millennials are not too keen about starting a career in insurance, according to a news feature segment on National Public Radio.The interview revealed that while the insurance industry has a lot of open positions for new graduates and up-and-coming professionals to take, many millennials shy away from the industry due to its unsexy image.My idea of working in the insurance industry is kind of like older men making a lot of money, and there isn't a lot of room for creativity, said Charlotte Hudson, a finance sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University.An industry survey conducted last year showed that only 4% of millennials interviewed were interested in insurance as a career.The radio report briefly featured Prita Mistri, one of the rare few students who had just accepted an offer to work for an insurerin her case, Travelers Insurance. Mistri reasoned that she accepted the offer since 55% of the companys upper management was eligible for retirement, which opens the doors for career advancement.Far more common, however, are the opinions expressed by Charlotte Hudson, a sophomore studying finance at Virginia Commonwealth University.My idea of working in the insurance industry is kind of like older men making a lot of money, and there isnt a lot of room for creativity, Hudson told NPR.Those sentiments are concerning, particularly as Baby Boomers continue to retire and at least 70,000 insurance positions for this year and the next will be vacant, according to The Institutes.With plenty of job openings just waiting to be filled, a number of insurance agencies and companies have taken matters into their own hands and have directly approached high schools and colleges (such as Virginia Commonwealth University) to actively entice students to consider a career in insurance. Liberty Mutual Insurance campus recruiting manager Shawn Tubman noted how difficult it was to recruit graduates, or at least grab their attentions.We don't have a, quote, got milk, campaign within the insurance industry. And that's something I'd like to see us spend more time thinking about, Tubman said.Hamilton Insurance Group CEO Brian Duperreault hopes to use the service aspect of the insurance industry to appeal to millennials who strongly care about their fellows welfare.From major hurricane events and earthquakes to explosions - in all those cases we take a person's risk and give them some comfort and some reassurance that things will be OK, Duperreault elaborated.The news feature concludes with a warning: a quarter of the insurance industrys workers are retiring in the next three years, based on data by McKinsey & Company. It goes without saying that insurance companies will need to come up with creative solutions to get new blood into their systems before it is too late.Insurance consulting firm ICPS Australia has announced the appointment of a key new hire for its business.Mark Ballard, a chartered civil engineer with 25 years of experience, will join the business as a geotechnical engineer, it has been announced.Brad Nicholls, managing director of ICPS Australia, said that the addition will help the business in its work alongside the insurance industry.As ICPS Australia continues to expand, Marks skills will be increasingly valuable as we service insurers, loss adjusters and other clients around the nation, Nicholls said.Ballard is an experienced project manager , team leader and technical lead and has worked on projects in Queensland, New south Wales and South Australia.A new cloud-based IT system designed and developed to help improve insurance services in tsunami-hit Samoa is now revealing its potential with existing insurance companies at home and beyond.Auckland-based InsuredHQ is making waves not just in the world of microinsurance  big players wanting to replace their clunky server-based IT infrastructure with more modern cloud-based services are now getting in on the act too.The seed was sown when industry veterans Matthew Davies and Pauline Barratt wanted to help people who were having trouble with their claims following the devastating 2009 tsunami in Samoa.Since there were no brokers resident on the island there was no one to advocate for clients or negotiate claims settlements.Davies told Insurance Business that whilst setting up a brokerage in 2010 to solve this issue, they hit a major obstacle in finding an appropriate system to transact the business.As we grew we realised we couldnt use the spreadsheet process any more. We started looking for a policy management claims administration type system and found there were two options  the high end enterprise systems, which were totally unaffordable in an emerging market where we were earning local currency, or the individual bespoke system, which had an outdated operating system which we couldnt manage from New Zealand.Unable to find a system to fill that gap, Davies, who called on his marine cargo experience and involvement with NZ product Insureze, said they decided to build their own, with the help of an enterprise systems expert.The features of the system they came up with include being cloud-based so it can be managed from New Zealand, being considerable to cater for the many different processes each insurer had, and being scalable.We decided the only way this was going to be workable as a system was if you could eliminate the cost of the different stages of the policy lifecycle and essentially if we werent going to be using it in Samoa we just wouldnt build it, Davies said.We built the system for our own needs but we started getting enquiries from local New Zealand companies who were also looking for systems and thats when we got involved with the Massey University ecentre about how we could commercialise this product.Through the validation stages with the ecentre, Davies said they discovered they could make insurance more economically viable for some of the four billion people in the world who currently couldnt access insurance.The system allowed for effective administration of very low accumulated premium to be collected daily, weekly or monthly for a low value settlement. It also allowed for upselling by adding different covers, be it to cover a sewing machine or cattle or be it for life cover.InsuredHQ also allows the ability to individually underwrite risk so you dont just get the one size fits all, so individual underwriting is probably one of the key traits of the system.My whole insurance career has been claims oriented and the value of your insurance policy is at claim time.I know its a cliche but its so true, and for people to have a mechanism for proof of a policy and get it settled quickly, theres no better way really, its the ultimate. It feels great to facilitate this.The past year has seen things take off for InsuredHQ, with companies up and running now in South Africa, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.The company has now been accepted on IBMs Global Entrepreneur program which takes care of all their security and data centre aspects and in the meantime they have embarked on a fundraising round which has seen some fantastic investors come on board.Its not about the money, its about the really fantastic networks and the doors that these people can open, Davies said.Thats really our driver for investors and creating a really diverse board and getting the governance in place now so that we can definitely scale.While they just have a broker product at the moment, as of 1 April they go live with their insurer product in Curacao which Davies believes will unlock vast potential. Indeed they are set to have talks with a major insurer in New Zealand later this month.This year is going to be an exceptional year I think.
Opinion / Columnist

This writer once attended a workshop that was designed to encourage a health reform in the eating habits so as to reduce cancer, which was said to be the number one killer disease the world over.The articulacy and perspicuity of the speaker would have seen even the modern popular preachers consumed by envy. He passionately spoke against the consumption of certain food stuff. However, he was suspiciously obese, a condition that spurred this writer to throw an eagle eye on his eating habits.At tea break, the gentleman shoveled five teaspoonful of sugar into a 250ml cup of coffee. Come lunch time, the gentleman literally concealed himself behind a mountain of starch. After lunch, he would be seen puffing up cigarettes, one after the other. With all that, the confidence in the man was totally lost. He was preaching what he does not live.The era of 'do as I say and not as I do' is over and that technique of instruction is no longer effective in the contemporary world. It is rather hypocrisy at its worst.There is a close connection between this health presenter and the MDC-T leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. The media reported this week that Gweru MDC-T mayor, Hamutendi Kombayi and his Town Clerk, were arrested over the alleged theft of $187,500, part of which was used to pay for the broke Tsvangirai's stay in Gweru's top of the range hotels.It is likely that Mr Tsvangirai's entourage was also treated to this goodwill. Tsvangirai, with his 'serious zip governance challenges,' it cannot be an extreme assumption that the train even included some women of the world, those who have love for sale. The media was recently awash with pictures of Tsvangirai surrounded by ladies who were meagerly dressed. Interestingly, Obert Gutu, who thinks being a spokesperson is synonymous with senseless refutation of the obvious, dismissed the pictures which he said were photo-shopped by Zanu PF's propaganda machinery. However, Tsvangirai himself said the ladies were his supporters. Imagine President Mugabe frolicking with scantily dressed ladies.Mr Tsvangirai had strolled up and down the streets of Gweru and certainly he saw the sorry state of that city. Gweru city council employees had gone for months without salaries, let alone service delivery to the rate payers. Still Mr Tsvangirai received that money without shame.Mr Tsvangirai has become so predictable that whenever he opens his mouth to speak, the subject is either on election boycott, mass protests, mostly on the perceived vice of corruption within Zanu PF or even a missing button on his shirt ostensibly pinched by President Mugabe.The MDC-T leader has been launching into Zanu PF for alleged corruption. He always lectures the world that Zimbabwe's economy collapsed because of Zanu PF corruption. Agreed, corruption decimates national economies but that of Zimbabwe was largely ruined by sanctions or restrictive measures as Mr Tsvangirai would love to call it, in line with the warped western definition.Not to say there is no corruption in Zanu PF, but accusers must be of high moral standing. One day the Pharisees attempted to test Jesus by bringing to him a woman who had been caught in adultery and asked for his take on the Law of Moses that commanded them to stone such. Jesus said: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone."For sure Mr Tsvangirai cannot be the first to throw a stone at Zanu PF. Why does he see the speck in Zanu PF's eye when he has a whole log in his own eye? Mr Tsvangirai would do well if he takes out the log in his eyes before trying to take out a speck in other people's eyes.The MDC-T has been vociferous on the $15 billion diamond money which it says was looted by Zanu PF. It is just politicking; otherwise they know for sure that Zanu PF is equally perturbed by the illicit diamond trading that took place at Chiadzwa.By winking at corruption committed by Kombayi, Mr Tsvangirai has already shown his potential to committee more serious vices especially when he becomes a state president with immunity privileges. This is the same Tsvangirai, who, after joining the corridors of power in the inclusive government, was involved in a string of appalling sleazes. Remember the double dipping scandal in which he prejudiced government of US$1,5m after he received US$1,5m from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for the renovation of his posh Highlands house and went on to receive the same amount from treasury for the same purpose.Corruption is in his DNA. He was accused of being complicit in the crippling of councils by councilors from his party who stole rate payers' money. Some of the councilors were rank marshals with no educational aptitude or any other skills but mysteriously rose to opulence in proverbial rags to riches style.With the recent revelations in Gweru, one can be forgiven to think that these councilors 'tithed' to Tsvangirai who used it for lavish trip overseas until he earned himself the title 'legend of the carnal seas.'It's so strange that with a man like this, Luke Tamborinyoka had the temerity to wax lyrics of praise for Mr Tsvangirai on his birthday. He unashamedly called such a man 'a leader so simple, so honest.' What a misnomer. Some bootlicking must make sense Luke!
The Massachusetts Division of Insurance said this month that it has opened an investigation into Zenefits, a human resources software startup.

Founded in 2013, the San Francisco-based Zenefits offers software to small- and mid-sized businesses to help automate their HR services, including healthcare benefits. The company has some 10,000 corporate clients across the country, including more than 200 customers in Massachusetts.

But Zenefits has come under regulatory scrutiny for allegedly allowing unlicensed brokers to sell health coverage. Insurance regulators in California and Washington also opened investigations into the company in recent months.

Zenefits said it has taken steps to address the compliance concerns. In February, Zenefits Chief Executive Officer Parker Conrad resigned, and David Sacks, a former PayPal executive who joined as chief operating officer a year ago, took over as the new CEO. The company also appointed its first chief compliance officer as well as three outside board directors.

According to media reports, Zenefits also announced in February that it is eliminating some 250 jobs, about 17 percent of its workforce, to refocus its strategy.

Zenefits spokesman Kenneth Baer said that when it came to light that Zenefits had problems with its licensing compliance, the company asked an independent, Big Four accounting firm to conduct an independent third-party review of its licensing compliance and controls.

We also self-reported to all 51 departments of insurance across the country  including Massachusetts  about the issue and our internal review, and are working with them, Baer said.

As Zenefits new CEO has made clear, Zenefits has turned the page on what happened in the past, and is embracing new corporate values and culture, he said. Operationally, that means we have built best-in-class software in our Salesforce system that prevents anyone who is not licensed from selling a policy from selling it.

Senior executives who were responsible for the macro issue are no longer with the company. We appointed a former federal prosecutor as our first chief compliance officer, and we added three outside board directors with impeccable credentials, Baer said.

Looking ahead, Zenefits is 100 percent committed to the mission of helping people across the country who want to start, manage, and grow a small business.

Topics Massachusetts
Bangladesh police launched a criminal investigation on Thursday into the cyber theft of $81 million from the central banks U.S. account but said it was too early to pinpoint any suspects.

The money was transferred to accounts in the Philippines, and a Senate hearing there was told that nearly half a million dollars was skimmed off and packed into a bank branch managers car. The bulk went to two casinos and an individual who is believed to be a junket operator.

The heist took place between Feb 4 and Feb 5, when unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements.

The other transfers were blocked, but $81 million went to accounts in a Manila branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC), and was quickly further transferred.

Romualdo S. Agarrado, a reserve officer of RCBC who was at the branch at the time, told the hearing that a withdrawal slip for 20 million pesos ($432,000) from one of the accounts was made out by the manager Maia Santos Deguito herself and cashed.

Agarrado cited her as saying at the time: I would rather do this than me being killed or my family.

In Dhaka, a central bank spokesman said a police team visited the bank on Thursday to understand the workings of the accounts and budget department and the computer system as they launched their probe.

We have just started our investigation. It is a bit early to name suspects, a police official said.

The cyber thieves hid their tracks by installing malware that manipulated a central bank printer to hide evidence of the heist, according to a person familiar with an investigation by cyber security experts.

However, the investigators have so far found no evidence of inside involvement in the hacking of the banks computers, the source said.

Earlier, central bank officials filed a police report that said that a computer and printer the bank used to order SWIFT wire transfers were manipulated so that authorities could not see records of outgoing wire transfer requests or receipts confirming that they had been received.

Details about the issues with the computer and printer were among the first clues to surface as to how the attack was carried out.

A representative from Brussels-based SWIFT, a bank-owned cooperative that runs a secure private messaging system widely used for requesting money transfers, declined comment on Wednesday.

Manager Says Made Scapegoat

In the Philippines, officials have told the Senate committee that the $81 million was wired to four fictitious accounts at RCBC, most of it was subsequently consolidated into one account and was then sent on to a foreign exchange broker called Philrem Service Corp.

From Philrem, more than $30 million was delivered in cash to an ethnic Chinese man who some witnesses said they believed is a casino junket operator in Manila, although regulatory officials told Reuters they had not previously heard of him.

A further $50 million was split between a casino resort and a gaming firm in the Philippines, officials said.

Thursdays hearing focused on the branch manager, who for the most part declined to answer questions from the senators except in camera.

The 20 million pesos was placed in the car of Ms. Deguito and she drove off with it, RCBC attorney Maria Celia Fernandez-Estavillo told the hearing, referring to details of an affidavit from Agarrado, the reserve officer.

In an interview with a local TV channel before the hearing, Deguito denied any wrongdoing and said she was being used as a scapegoat.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council of the Philippines said complaints have been made against the manager of the RCBC branch and the holders of fictitious accounts into which the money was originally deposited at the branch.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Related:

Topics Auto Cyber New Markets
Missouri lawmakers in both chambers say passing statewide regulations for app-based car services will lead to thousands of new jobs.

Ubers general manager for Missouri Sagar Shah said that regulations making their way through the Legislature would allow the company to expand to Springfield, Jefferson City, St. Charles and St. Joseph. The company currently operates in Kansas City, St. Louis and Columbia.

The House has already passed insurance regulations for ride-hailing companies, and a Senate panel amended the measure to make it easier for taxi companies to opt into the new regulatory system. Taxi companies in the past have objected to creating different rules for businesses that offer essentially the same service.

Proposed regulations stalled in each chamber last year. This year, Uber has registered 11 lobbyists in Missouri.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Missouri
The sweeping agreement to reduce carbon emissions and battle climate change hammered out by world leaders last year could be greatly transformative for the insurance and reinsurance industry, according to industry experts who have read and thoroughly analyzed the document.

To use a cliche, the COP 21 Paris agreement, the fate of which is darkened by politics here in the U.S., is a potential game-changer for the industry.

Thats the definite impression I came away with after interviewing Mayram Golnaraghi with the Geneva Association, an international think tank for insurance and risk management issues.

Golnaraghi, who has been an advisor on disaster and climate risk management in the public and private sectors for the past 20 years, has constructed a detailed interpretation of the agreement for the industry. She detailed her findings in a recent report, and has been speaking with top industry officials about what the agreement means for their industry.

When I asked Golnaraghi to quantify how profound the changes to the industry will be, she steered the conversation toward addressing the opportunities that the agreement presents for the industry.

Pressed for a comparison, analogy, or at the very least a sentence to describe how the industry will look in 2050 if the worlds nations make good on the agreement, Golnaraghi stuck to her positive outlook, preferring not to get into the business of forecasting on behalf of the trillion-dollar insurance industry.

Still, its hard not to read between the lines when talking with Golnaraghi, who is intimately familiar with the agreement down to the minutiae.

In her report she states that its inevitable that by 2020 the reinsurance sector will not only be providing a wider range of risk-transfer solutions, but also will be supporting emission reduction efforts and transitioning to a low-carbon economy through its investment strategies as well as actively managing its carbon footprint.

The COP21 agreement will go into force following ratification by the governments by 2020. Every participating government is required to offer a new upgraded plan for managing of risks, and reduction of carbon emissions every five years up to 2020 toward the 2050 goal of having a no-carbon economy.

The three main objectives of the agreement are to reduce carbon emissions, adapt to a changing climate, which includes creating solutions for the management of loss and damage, and financing through new commitments.

The word insurance is mentioned a few places in the agreement, but it is implicit throughout the document.

The agreement spells out the need for more insurance in not only developed countries but also developing countries, where penetration is estimated at less than 1 percent in some countries  the potential market for insurance in developing economies is estimated to be between 1.5 and 3 billion policies, according to Lloyds of London.

The agreement calls for the government and the industry to work together to significantly beef up penetration, so its not difficult to interpret that as providing many times the amount of insurance to those nations during the next 30 years over what is being provided currently.

This opens up an unprecedented opportunity for the industry to start a very positive, open dialogue with the government towards development of sound, scalable and sustainable insurance programs, as part of which significant amount of innovation can happen, Golnaraghi said.

Governments for the most part arent in the risk management game, and they are far less knowledgeable about how to quantify risk; nor are governments as skilled at risk modeling.

For governments to be able to develop sound programs that prevent risk and transfers the risk, they need to base it on understanding and quantifying what that risk, Golnaraghi said. If you work with many governments, you realize that they dont have the skill sets and the tools and methodology to develop that.

Beside direct mentions of insurance, Golnaraghi in her report highlights several other moves made in conjunction with the agreement that have implications for the insurance sector.

One of those moves came from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and his s A2R (Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape) Framework.

The framework was launched at COP21 with the aim of helping build resilience to disaster and climate risks in the worlds most vulnerable countries. The initiative seeks to raise funds and strengthen capacities in early warning systems, insurance and social protection and resilience of infrastructure, Golnaraghi notes.

Eight Lloyds of London syndicates are participating in the initiative and have a committed capacity of USD $400 million towards solutions that address natural catastrophe risks in emerging and developing economies.

These syndicates are managed by Amlin, Beazley, Hiscox, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, Nephila, Renaissance Re Syndicate Management, Tokio Marine Kiln and XL Catlin, Golnaraghi said.

Insurance is also considered as an essential tool to address loss and damage through the requirement in the agreement that the UN and the International Warsaw Mechanism on Loss and Damage  created COP19 in 2013 in Warsaw, Poland, this mechanism is geared to address loss and damage associated with impacts of climate change in particularly vulnerable developing countries  to create a clearinghouse for risk transfer that serves as a repository for information on insurance and risk transfer, which could facilitate the efforts of countries to develop and implement comprehensive risk management strategies.

This concept of clearing house for risk transfer is one of the things in the broadly worded agreement that needs to be clarified.

Exactly how youre doing it. What are you monitoring? Golnaraghi said.

She added: This is where, again, in all interactions with UN, we very much promote that UN and the International Warsaw Mechanism should very closely consult with the insurance sector. Not from just the insurance perspective, but as an expert in this field of risk analysis, structural prevention and so on, to see how such a clearing house can be designed effectively.

Topics Market Risk Management
Deborah M. Pickford has joined InVEST, the insurance industrys classroom-to-career education program that is in more than 600 colleges and high schools, as executive director.

Pickford will replace Diane Mattis, who served as InVEST executive director since 2010 and will retire effective April 1.

Pickford previously served as Allstate Insurance Co.s senior field corporate relations manager.

The future of the independent insurance agency system and the industry as a whole depends on attracting new talent and InVEST plays a huge role in this development, said Robert Rusbuldt, Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, or Big I, president and CEO.

Rusbuldt thanked Mattis for her service to the association at the state and national levels and congratulated her on her retirement.

Founded in 1970 at Hollywood High School by the Independent Insurance Agents of Los Angeles, InVEST started out educating students in insurance to become better insurance consumers. Over the years, it has expanded to also teach insurance agency and company operations and encourage students to pursue careers in the industry. InVEST provides schools and teachers with free materials necessary to launch an InVEST program.
Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $502 million to a group of patients who accused the company of hiding flaws in its Pinnacle artificial hips that caused the devices to prematurely fail and left them facing surgeries and pain, in J&Js first loss over the products.

A federal-court jury in Dallas concluded that artificial hips sold by J&Js DePuy unit under the Pinnacle brand name were defective and company officials knew about the flaws but failed to warn patients and doctors of the risks. They awarded $142 million in actual damages and $360 million in punitive damages to a group of five patients whose hips broke down and had to be surgically removed.

The defendants have tried six different arguments against people with failed implants, said Mark Lanier, a lawyer for those who sued. One worked  that the surgeon put it in wrong. The other five havent worked and wont, because it is a defective product.

In an earlier trial, J&J won, using the first argument in a trial with a single plaintiff. Lanier was the attorney for the patient with the implant.

The grounds for appeal are strong and the punitive damages will be reduced to around $10 million subject to the Texas statutory cap, John Beisner, a lawyer for the company, said by e-mail.

Company Statement

Mindy Tinsley, a DePuy spokeswoman, said the company acted appropriately and responsibly in the design and testing of the devices. The product is backed by a strong record of safety and effectiveness in reducing pain and restoring mobility for patients, she said in an e-mailed statement.

The verdict is the second-largest jury award in the U.S. this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The largest, also in Texas, came in February when a federal court jury awarded $625.6 million to Virnetx Holding Corp. in a patent-infringement claim against Apple Inc.

The J&J verdict comes in the second trial of about 8,000 lawsuits filed against it and DePuy over the metal-on-metal version of the Pinnacle hips. J&J stopped selling the devices in 2013 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration toughened artificial-hip regulations. J&J won the first Pinnacle case heard by a jury in 2014.

The devices werent covered by New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&Js $2.5 billion settlement of claims over another line of artificial hips known as ASRs. J&J recalled 93,000 of those implants worldwide in August 2010, saying 12 percent failed within five years.

Cases Gathered

The Pinnacle cases have been consolidated before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas for pretrial information exchanges and test trials. Kinkeade agreed to combine five cases selected by plaintiffs lawyers in the most recent trial. About 170,000 DePuy hips were implanted after the devices went on the market in the U.S. in 2000, according to court filings.

Margaret Aoki, Jay Christopher, Donald Greer, Richard Klusmann and Robert Peterson all got Pinnacle Ultamet metal-on-metal hips that failed and had to be surgically removed. Greer, 79, is a plastic surgeon from Chicago, and Klusmann, 68, is a former chief executive of a hospital, according to court filings.

The group said their DePuy hips leached cobalt and chromium material into their bloodstreams, leading to the hips failures and surgical removal. They claimed J&J officials knew their metal-on-metal design would cause such injuries but pushed ahead to rack up billions in sales.

Lanier told jurors in closing arguments that DePuy officials launched an aggressive campaign to market the metal-on-metal hips in the U.S. and across the world. The effort included paying kickbacks and bribes overseas, paying U.S. doctors millions to tout the devices and misleading doctors and consumers about the safety of the hips, the lawyer said.

Seedy Story

Its a seedy story of deception, payoffs and hidden truths, Lanier said. DePuy hip patients are walking time bombs, he said.

Richard Sarver, DePuys lead lawyer, countered that the metal-on-metal design was not defective and each of the five plaintiffs had an individual reason the device failed.

The defect doesnt exist and didnt cause the hips to fail, Sarver said in his closing arguments. The devices may not be perfect, but they are not defective.

Lanier unfairly attempted to paint J&J as a rogue company when it came to selling artificial hips, Sarver said.

This is not a bad company, he told the panel. This company is a good company.

The case is In re: DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. Pinnacle Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, 11-md-02244, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas (Dallas).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics USA Texas
A judge in Wilkinson County, Georgia, has awarded $64.6 million to a man who claimed he was beaten by several employees in a personal-care home.

Media outlets report that in January, Judge William Prior issued the final judgment against the owners of the Total Care Personal Care Home in Gordon and against 10 employees.

A complaint was filed in November by Betty Gill, the mother of Joseph Cason Jr. The complaint says Cason, who is mentally disabled, was repeatedly and sadistically beaten and otherwise abused by employees in November 2013. A surveillance camera recorded the abuse.

Gordon Mayor Mary Ann Whipple-Lues sister, Pamela Reaves, operated Total Care. The claim says Total Care employees took Cason to cast a vote for Whipple-Lue in the Gordon city election despite his mental incapability to vote.

Reaves could not be reached for comment by media outlets.

Topics Legislation Georgia
An electrical malfunction started a barn fire that killed 12 horses and injured 11 at an equestrian complex in suburban Palm Beach, Florida, investigators said Wednesday.

Palm Beach County fire investigators concluded the blaze at the South Florida Trotting Center was caused by a catastrophic failure at the meter, the Palm Beach Post reported. Sparks ignited hay, feed and other combustibles.

Sam Stathis, the centers owner, told the newspaper that two horses suffered critical injuries. All 11 injured horses were taken to a veterinarian. The fire erupted late Tuesday and burned into the early morning Wednesday.

We saved 11 horses, and we lost 12, Stathis told the newspaper. God be with us.

Fire officials told the Post that workers were able to get some horses out as the fire spread. The barns roof collapsed and hay inside fed the flames.

Stable worker Roman Lopez told WPTV-TV his friend tried to open gates and let horses out, but the thick smoke made it impossible.

It was just too tough. The roof started to come down. The horses were just on fire. You just freak out. You dont know which way to go, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida
An Uber executive lost a bid to throw out a breach of contract lawsuit filed against him by his former employer, Lyft, in advance of a trial scheduled for next month, according to a tentative ruling by a California state judge on March 17.

Lyft accused its former chief operating officer, Travis VanderZanden, of improperly soliciting Lyft employees to move with him to Uber in 2014 and failing to promptly return proprietary Lyft information. VanderZanden has denied those allegations.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn rejected Vanderzandens motion to defeat the lawsuit without the need for a trial. Based on VanderZandens emails and texts, Kahn wrote in his tentative ruling that a judge or jury could conclude he breached his fiduciary duties to Lyft.

California judges often issue tentative rulings, which are then finalized after a hearing with few major changes.

Representatives for Lyft and VanderZanden declined to comment.

VanderZanden served as Lyfts chief operating office until August 2014, when he expressed disagreement with the companys leadership and approached two board members about taking over as chief executive, according to court filings.

Lyft accepted VanderZandens resignation instead, and he eventually became vice president of international growth at rival Uber. Lyft sued him in November 2014.

In court filings, VanderZanden has argued that California law does not recognize proprietary information, only trade secrets. Since Lyft did not specifically allege trade secret violations, VanderZanden argued he should win the lawsuit.

The case in Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco is Lyft Inc vs. Travis VanderZanden, 14-542554.

Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Leslie Adler

Topics Lawsuits California Legislation
A medical marijuana dispensary in New Mexico has been fined for safety violations after an explosion badly burned two workers.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration spent about eight months investigating the July 23 explosion and found a total of 12 serious health and safety violations.

OSHA has ordered New MexiCann Natural Medicine to pay several fines totaling $13,500. Online records show that inspectors verified in January that there were no continuing hazards.

The explosion occurred while the two workers were making hash oil, a process that involves soaking marijuana in butane to extract THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. A report from the Santa Fe Fire Department said the blast was caused when a butane leak met with an ignition source.

The state Environment Department released video of the explosion, which shows the dispensary going from completely normal to engulfed in flames in just a flash.

A report from the Santa Fe Fire Department said a butane leak from one of the lines met with an ignition source to cause the blast, which was powerful enough to separate the roof from the wall and melt fluorescent lights close to the explosion.

Fire inspectors couldnt pinpoint what caused the ignition, but noted that the extraction equipment is moved often and could have caused a leak in one of the butane lines.

New MexiCann is one of the states 35 medical marijuana dispensaries. After the explosion, two inspections were conducted  one for safety hazards and one for health hazards. The safety investigation netted seven serious violations, meaning the infractions that can result in serious injury or death, according to OSHA officials.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Workers' Compensation Cannabis Mexico New Mexico
Opinion / Columnist

Recent claims by former ZANU-PF Hurungwe West legislature Temba Mliswa that MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai will win the 2018 harmonized elections depicts how foolish and myopic this man is.After he was purged from the ruling party, Mliswa is still seeking political accommodation. As it stands, the young man seems to be confused about his political carrier. The grapes that he tasted have turned sour for him. Indeed, his political life is in crumbling. Actually, it's getting cold out there for Mliswa hence singing for his supper.While addressing his supports at a rally in Bulawayo some months ago, Tsvangirai confirmed that his supporters no longer have confidence in him. The embattled leader created his own demise such that most people who used to admire and support him are no longer interested in his leadership. After seeing the light, most of his supporters defected from MDC-T to the revolutionary party, ZANU-PF.So, what is it that Tsvangirai has done that will make him an automatic winner of 2018 elections? Firstly, Tsvangirai's autocratic rule has angered a number of his officials and supporters. This was witnessed by many splinter groups from that opposition party. Tendai Biti, Elton Mangoma and Welshman Ncube are all victims of Tsvangirai's dictatorial rule who decided to part ways with their former boss.As of now, rumour has it that there are fissures between Tsvangirai and his secretary general, Douglas Mwonzora. If their misunderstandings persist, another split is in the pipeline.Tsvangirai must stand reminded that a prophet from West Africa, Temitope Balogun Joshua, commonly known to as T. B. Joshua, once prophesied that Tsvangirai will never lead this country. To add on, most of his followers are sick and tired of him. In simple, there isn't any iota of hope that Morgan will win the election 2018 elections.In actual fact, Tsvangirai is panicking the launch of Mujuru's new opposition party, Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF). ZimPF champions a real threat to MDC-T's pre-existing hegemony on the opposition politics front in the country. It may not surprise to hear Morgan Tsvangirai saying he will not participate in those elections. Tsvangirai has a propensity of chickening out whenever he sniffs a challenge ahead on him. Hence, Mliswa should stop predicting falsehoods about future elections which he is not sure of.Morgan Tsvangirai lost his political path long back. In 2008, election results showed that Tsvangirai was leading but with an unrecognized margin. The law prescribes that, for a candidate to be considered a winner he/she should have won the election by 50 percent plus one vote of the valid votes casted. This simply means that Tsvangirai was never a winner as claimed by this day dreamer, Mliswa.It's only a matter of time before Tsvangirai is buried in his political grave. There is no doubt that his party is finished. Meanwhile, it is reported that Tsvangirai was moving around trying to mobilize people who are already throwing spanners at him.Tsvangirai's spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka is one of the people who are nonsensically singing for their supper. His statement that Tsvangirai is touring the country to assess the problems affecting people in different parts exposes cheap politicking by that opposition party. Instead of motivating his supports, Tsvangirai is actually demotivating them. How can a leader of a political party just move around empty handed knowing well that there are people who are hungry due to El-Nino induced drought? Holding rallies to the people who are hungry is not an option Tsvangirai. It will actually make him a useless leader.Tsvangirai should take a leaf from First Lady, Dr Amai Grace Mugabe, who when touring around the country's provinces carry with her foodstuffs such as maize meal, cooking oil among others to feed the nation.While he was in inclusive Government, Tsvangirai was given the opportunity to prove that he is efficient, but alas, he spent most of his time chasing mistresses and abusing government resources and funds. Truth be said, Tsvangirai will never get another chance like the one he wasted while he was in the inclusive government.
The Department of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule, was originally scheduled to be phased in from April 10, 2017, to Jan. 1, 2018. As of June 21, 2018, The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals officially vacated the rule, effectively killing it.

However, according to language from former Department of Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, stated in early May of 2019, that the DOL was working with the SEC to resurrect the fiduciary rule.

Breaking Down the Fiduciary Rule

The DOLs definition of fiduciary demands that retirement advisors act in the best interests of their clients and put their clients' interests above their own. It leaves no room for advisors to conceal any potential conflict of interest and states that all fees and commissions for retirement plans and retirement planning advice must be clearly disclosed in dollar form to clients.

The definition has been expanded to include any professional making a recommendation or solicitation in this area, not simply giving ongoing advice. Previously, only advisors who were charging a fee for service (either hourly or as a percentage of account holdings) on retirement plans were likely to be fiduciaries. (And even then, to find out for sure you needed to ask.)

Key Takeaways The Fiduciary Ruling was one of the most hotly debated topics in finance, with many brokers and investment firms doing all they could to halt it from being enacted.

The Fiduciary Ruling was brought into effect to protect the interests of clients versus the financial interests of their brokers and advisors. This led to lower commissions for brokers, less income from "churning" portfolios, and increased compliance costs.

The DOL Fiduciary Rulings were vacated in 2018, but statements made by the DOL Secretary in May of 2019 stated the DOL was working with the SEC to reenact the controversial ruling.

The individual investors most affected were those with fully managed IRAs and 401(k) accounts. These investors would have benefited the most from the Fiduciary Ruling.

History of the Fiduciary Rule

The financial industry was put on notice in 2015 that the landscape was going to change. A major overhaul was proposed by President Obama on Feb. 23, 2015: "Today, I'm calling on the Department of Labor to update the rules and requirements that retirement advisors put the best interests of their clients above their own financial interests. It's a very simple principle: You want to give financial advice, you've got to put your client's interests first."

The DOL proposed its new regulations on April 14, 2015. This time around, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the rule in record time, while President Obama endorsed and fast-tracked its implementation; the final rulings were issued on April 8, 2016.

Before finalizing the ruling, the DOL held four days of public hearings. While the final version was being hammered out, the legislation was known as the fiduciary standard. In January 2017 during the first session of Congress of the year, a bill was introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson (R, S.C.) to delay the actual start of the fiduciary rule for two years.

The fiduciary rule expanded the investment advice fiduciary definition under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Running 1,023 pages in length, it automatically elevated all financial professionals who work with retirement plans or provide retirement planning advice to the level of a fiduciary, bound legally and ethically to meet the standards of that status.

While the new rules were likely to have had at least some impact on all financial advisors, it was expected that those who work on commission, such as brokers and insurance agents, would be impacted the most.

In late March 2017, the world's two largest asset managers, Vanguard and BlackRock, called for a more significant delay considering the confusion these repeated moves to delay the rule had caused. After a 15-day public comment period, the DOL sent its rule regarding the delay to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

178,000 The number of letters the DOL received that opposed a delay to enact the new Fiduciary rulings.

After the review by the OMB, the DOL publicly released an official 60-day delay to the fiduciary rule's applicability date. The 63-page announcement noted that "...it would be inappropriate to broadly delay the application of the fiduciary definition and Impartial Conduct Standards for an extended period in disregard of its previous findings of ongoing injury to retirement investors." Responses to the delay ranged from supportive to accusatory, with some groups calling the delay "politically motivated."

On March 1, 2017, the DOL announced a proposed extension of the applicability dates of the fiduciary rule and related exemptions, including the Best Interest Contract Exemption, from April 10 to June 9, 2017. Then, in late May 2017, then-newly appointed DOL Secretary Alexander Acosta, writing in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, confirmed that the fiduciary rule would not be delayed beyond June 9 as the DOL sought "additional public input."

Then, in early August 2017, the DOL filed a court document as part of a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, proposing an 18-month delay to the rule's compliance deadline. This would have changed the final deadline for compliance from Jan. 1, 2018, to July 1, 2019. The same document suggested the delay might include changes to the types of transactions that are not allowed under the fiduciary rule. The proposed delay was approved by the Office of Management and Budget in August 2017.

Originally, the DOL regulated the quality of financial advice surrounding retirement under ERISA. Enacted in 1974, ERISA had never been revised to reflect changes in retirement savings trends, particularly the shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, and the huge growth in IRAs.

The Fiduciary Rule Under President Trump

The regulation was initially created under the Obama administration, but in February 2017, former President Trump issued a memorandum that attempted to delay the rule's implementation by 180 days. This action included instructions for the DOL to carry out an economic and legal analysis of the rule's potential impact.

Then, on March 10, 2017, the DOL issued its own memorandum, Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2017-01, clarifying the possible implementation of a 60-day delay to the fiduciary rule. Full implementation of all elements of the rule was pushed back to July 1, 2019.

Before that could happenon March 15, 2018The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, vacated the fiduciary rule in a 2-to-1 decision, saying it constituted "unreasonableness," and that the DOL's implementation of the rule constitutes "an arbitrary and capricious exercise of administrative power." The case had been brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Institute, and other parties. Its next stop could be the Supreme Court.

On June 21, 2018, The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed its decision to vacate the ruling.

Fiduciary vs. Suitability

Fiduciary is a much higher level of accountability than the suitability standard previously required of financial salespersons, such as brokers, planners, and insurance agents, who work with retirement plans and accounts. "Suitability" means that as long as an investment recommendation meets a client's defined need and objective, it is deemed appropriate.

Under a fiduciary standard, financial professionals are legally obligated to put their clients best interests first, rather than simply finding suitable investments. The new rule would have therefore eliminated many commission structures that govern the industry.

Advisors who wished to continue working on commission would have needed to provide clients with a disclosure agreement, called a Best Interest Contract Exemption (BICE), in circumstances where a conflict of interest could exist (such as the advisor receiving a higher commission or special bonus for selling a certain product). This was to guarantee that the advisor was working unconditionally in the best interest of the client. All compensation that was paid to the fiduciary was required to be clearly spelled out as well.

Covered Retirement Plans Included:

What Wasn't Covered

If a customer calls a financial advisor and requests a specific product or investment, that does not constitute financial advice.

When financial advisors provide education to clients, such as general investment advice based on a person's age or income, it does not constitute financial advice.

Taxable transactional accounts or accounts funded with after-tax dollars are not considered retirement plans, even if the funds are personally earmarked for retirement savings.

Reaction to the Fiduciary Rule

Theres little doubt that the 40-year-old ERISA rules were overdue for a change, and many industry groups had already jumped on board with the new plan, including the CFP Board, the Financial Planning Association (FPA), and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA).

Supporters applauded the new rule, saying it should increase and streamline transparency for investors, make conversations easier for advisors entertaining changes and, most of all, prevent abuses on the part of financial advisors, such as excessive commissions and investment churning for reasons of compensation. A 2015 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that biased advice drained $17 billion a year from retirement accounts.

However, the regulation met with staunch opposition from other professionals, including brokers and planners. The stricter fiduciary standards could have cost the financial services industry an estimated $2.4 billion and $5.7 billion over 10 years by eliminating conflicts of interest like front-end load commissions and mutual fund 12b-1 fees paid to wealth management and advisory firms.

The June 2016 Chamber of Commerce Lawsuit

Three lawsuits have been filed against the rule. The one that drew the most attention was filed in June 2016 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The basis of the suit is that the Obama administration did not have the authorization to take the action it did in endorsing and fast-tracking the legislation. Some lawmakers also believe the DOL itself was reaching beyond its jurisdiction by targeting IRAs. Precedent dictates Congress alone has approval power regarding a consumers right to sue. This is the suit that resulted in the March 15, 2018, ruling against the fiduciary rule discussed above.

After the DOL officially announced the 60-day delay to the rule's applicability, a "Retirement Ripoff Counter" was unveiled by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Partnering with Americans for Financial Reform and the Consumer Federation of America, this counter attempts to highlight the "... cost to Americans of saving for retirement without the fiduciary rule, starting from Feb. 03, 2017." The press release from Americans for Financial Reform states, "Every day that conflicted advice continues costs them [Americans] $46 million a day, $1.9 million per hour, and $532 a second."

Who Did the Fiduciary Rule Affect?

The new DOL rules were expected to increase compliance costs, especially in the broker-dealer world. Fee-only advisors and Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) were expected to see increases in their compliance costs as well.

The fiduciary rule would have been tough on smaller, independent broker-dealers and RIA firms. They might not have had the financial resources to invest in the technology and the compliance expertise to meet all of the requirements. Thus, it's possible that some of these smaller firms would have had to disband or be acquired. And not just small firms: The brokerage operations of MetLife Inc. and American International Group were sold off in anticipation of these rules and the related costs.

Advisors and registered reps who dabble in terms of advising 401(k) plans might have been forced out of that business by their broker-dealers due to the new compliance aspects.

Ameriprise CEO James Cracchiolo said, The regulatory environment will likely lead to consolidation within the industry, which we already see. Independent advisers or independent broker-dealers may lack the resources or the scale to navigate the changes required, and seek a strong partner.

Annuity vendors also would have had to disclose their commissions to clients, which could have significantly reduced sales of these products in many cases. These vehicles have been the source of major controversy among industry experts and regulators for decades, as they usually pay very high commissions to the agents selling them and come with an array of charges and fees that can significantly reduce the returns that clients earn.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is among the oldest and most prestigious American companies. Founded in 1886 by three brothersRobert, James, and Edward Johnsonthe company was established in New Brunswick, N.J. While Johnson & Johnson has changed over its long history, the company continues to be a key innovator and pioneer in the health care sector. The company was the first to standardize and mass-produce first aid kits, maternity kits, feminine products, and dental floss, all before 1900.

In Nov. 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced it would divide into two publicly-traded companiesone includes the pharmaceutical and medical devices businesses and the other will comprise the consumer products business.

Key Takeaways The top individual shareholder of Johnson and Johnson is executive chairman Alex Gorsky with 3.2 million shares.

Joaquin DuatoJ&J's chief executive officeris the second-largest individual shareholder with one million shares.

Paulus Stoffels, Ph.D., is the third-largest individual shareholder with almost 872,000 shares. Stoffels is JNJs former chief scientific officer.

Jennifer Taubert is a leader within J&J's pharmaceutical research division and is the fourth-largest shareholder with nearly 454,000 shares.

The fifth-largest individual shareholder of J&J is CFO, Joseph J. Wolk with just over 100,000 shares.

Undertsanding Johnson & Johnson

On July 12, 2018, a Missouri jury ordered that the company pay $4.69 billion to 22 women who accused the company's talc-based products, including its baby powder, of containing asbestos and causing them to develop ovarian cancer. In 2017, lawsuits were mostly filed in state courts in Missouri, New Jersey, and California.

The company denies both that its talc products cause cancer and that they have ever contained asbestos. However, the company still faces thousands of pending lawsuits. In April 2020, a U.S. District judge from New Jersey made a decision regarding the expert witnesses that can be called by both sides. The decision paves the way for the trial to proceed in which J&J faces thousands of allegations from those claiming that the company's talcum powder causes cancer.

The 38,000 lawsuits filed against Johnson & Johnson related to the baby powder, however, have been halted as of November 2021. The case is delayed for two months and will be heard in the companys headquarters in New Jersey. The company has removed its talc powder from store shelves in the U.S. and Canada.

Despite the company's legal challenges, J&J developed a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine.

The Top 5 Johnson & Johnson Shareholders

Below are the top five individual shareholders of Johnson and Johnson.

Alex Gorsky

Johnson & Johnsons executive chairman, Alex Gorsky, is the largest individual shareholder. As of Feb. 23, 2021, Gorsky holds 3.2 million shares.

Gorsky originally joined JNJ back in 1988 as a sales representative and rose through the ranks of the company. He was named company group chair of JNJs pharmaceutical arm and president of Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of JNJ by 2003.

However, Gorsky left JNJ in 2004 after being named the leader of Novartis AG's (NYSE: NVS) pharmaceutical business. After his brief stint at Novartis, Gorsky returned to JNJ in 2008 as a group chair for Ethicon Inc. By 2012, Gorsky was named the CEO and chair of JNJ, where he continues to serve.

Joaquin Duato

Joaquin Duato is the second-largest individual shareholder of JNJ with 1,041,512 shares as of February 2021. Duato currently serves as the company's chief executive officer, a position he has held since 2021. He has been with the company for almost three decades.

Paulus Stoffels

Paulus Stoffels, Ph.D., is the third-largest individual shareholder of JNJ with 871,800 shares, as of February 2021. Stoffels served as JNJs chief scientific officer since October 2012 and was named executive vice president in May 2016 before retiring in December 2021.

Outside of JNJ, Stoffel specializes in infectious disease treatment and tropical diseases.

Jennifer Taubert

Jennifer Taubert is the fourth-largest individual shareholder of JNJ with just over 453,000 shares. She is the executive vice president and worldwide chair of JNJ's Pharmaceuticals. Taubert is a member of the corporations executive committee and leads the Pharmaceuticals Group Operating Committee.

Taubert has been a leader within Johnson & Johnsons pharmaceutical research division, which is called Janssen Research and Development (JRD). Janssen is a consistent and significant contributor to Johnson & Johnsons overall growth strategy. Janssen is responsible for innovative pharmaceutical developments, including helping the fight against immune-related diseases, HIV, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and mental illness.

Joseph J. Wolk

The fifth-largest individual shareholder of J&J is Joseph J. Wolk with almost 101,000 shares. Wolk is the executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) for Johnson & Johnson. Wolk is charged with developing, leading, and executing JNJs global long-term financial strategy.

As the CFO, Joe Wolk leads J&J's Finance and Procurement organizations and leads nearly 9,000 JNJ team employees worldwide. Wolk was appointed CFO in July of 2018 but has been with Johnson & Johnson for 23 years, including as VP of Investor Relations, which involves building strong relationships with J&J investors.
China has steadily accumulated U.S. Treasury securities over the last few decades. As of Q3 2022, the Asian nation owns nearly $1 trillion, or about 3.2%, of the $31.1 trillion U.S. national debt at the time. That was more than any other foreign country except Japan. U.S. debt to China comes mainly in the form of U.S. Treasury securities (bonds issued by the federal government).

Some analysts and investors fear China could dump these Treasuries in retaliation and that this weaponization of its holdings would send interest rates higher, potentially hurting economic growth. This article discusses the business behind the continuous Chinese buying of U.S. debt.

Key Takeaways China invests heavily in U.S. Treasury bonds to keep its export prices lower.

China focuses on export-led growth to help generate jobs.

To keep its export prices low, China must keep its currencythe renminbi (RMB)low compared to the U.S. dollar.

U.S. debt to China comes in the form of U.S. Treasuries, largely due to their safety and stability.

Although there are worries about China selling off U.S. debt, which would hamper economic growth, doing so in large amounts poses risks for China as well, making it unlikely to happen.

Chinese Economics

China is primarily a manufacturing hub and an export-driven economy. Trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that China has been running a big trade surplus with the U.S. since 1985. This means that China sells more goods and services to the U.S. than the U.S. sells to China.

Chinese exporters receive U.S. dollars (USD) for their goods sold to the U.S., but they need renminbi (RMB or yuan) to pay their workers and store money locally. They sell the dollars they receive through exports to get RMB, which increases the USD supply and raises the demand for RMB.

China's central bank, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), carried out active interventions to prevent this imbalance between the U.S. dollar and yuan in local markets. It buys the available excess U.S. dollars from the exporters and gives them the required yuan. The PBOC can print yuan as needed. Effectively, this intervention by the PBOC creates a scarcity of U.S. dollars, which keeps the USD rates higher. China hence accumulates USD as forex reserves.

Self-Correcting Currency Flow

International trading which involves two currencies has a self-correcting mechanism. Assume Australia is running a current account deficit (i.e., Australia is importing more than it is exporting, as in scenario 1). The other countries which are sending goods to Australia are getting paid Australian dollars (AUD), so there is a huge supply of AUD in the international market, leading the AUD to depreciate in value against other currencies.

However, this decline in AUD will make Australian exports cheaper and imports costlier. Gradually, Australia will start exporting more and importing less, due to its lower-valued currency. This will ultimately reverse the initial scenario (scenario 1 above). This is the self-correcting mechanism that occurs in the international trade and forex markets regularly, with little or no intervention from any authority.

China's Need for a Weak Renminbi

Chinas strategy is to maintain export-led growth, which aids in generating jobs and enables it, through such continued growth, to keep its large population productively engaged. Since this strategy is dependent on exports (18% of which went to the U.S. in 2021), China requires RMB in order to continue to have a lower currency than the USD, and thus offer cheaper prices.

If the PBOC stops interferingin the previously described mannerthe RMB would self-correct and appreciate in value, thus making Chinese exports costlier. It would lead to a major crisis of unemployment due to the loss of export business.

China wants to keep its goods competitive in the international markets, and that cannot happen if the RMB appreciates. It thus keeps the RMB low compared to the USD using the mechanism that's been described. However, this leads to a huge pileup of USD as forex reserves for China.

PBOC Strategy and Chinese Inflation

Though other labor-intensive, export-driven countries such as India carry out similar measures, they do so only to a limited extent. One of the major challenges resulting from the approach that's been outlined is that it leads to high inflation.

China has tight, state-dominated control over its economy and is able to manage inflation through other measures like subsidies and price controls. Other countries dont have such a high level of control and have to give in to the market pressures of a free or partially free economy.

China's Use of USD Reserves

China has approximately $3 trillion in total foreign exchange reserves as of Q3 2022. Like the U.S., it also exports to other regions like Europe. The euro forms the second biggest tranche of Chinese forex reserves. China needs to invest in such huge stockpiles to earn at least the risk-free rate. With trillions of U.S. dollars, China has found the U.S. Treasury securities to offer the safest investment destination for Chinese forex reserves. With euro stockpiles, China can consider investing in European debt. Possibly, even U.S. dollar stockpiles can be invested to obtain comparatively better returns from euro debt.

However, China acknowledges that the stability and safety of investment take priority over everything else. Though the Eurozone has been in existence for about two decades now, it still remains unstable. It is not even certain whether the Eurozone (and Euro) will continue to exist in the mid-to-long term. An asset swap (U.S. debt to Euro debt) is thus not recommended, especially in cases where the other asset is considered riskier.

Other asset classes like real estate, stocks, and other countries' treasuries are far riskier compared to U.S. debt. Forex reserve money is not spare cash to be gambled away in risky securities for want of higher returns.

Another option for China is to use the dollars elsewhere. For example, the dollars can be used to pay Middle East countries for oil supplies. However, those countries too will need to invest the dollars they receive. Effectively, owing to the acceptance of the dollar as the international trade currency, any dollar supply eventually resides in the forex reserve of a nation, or in the safest investmentU.S. Treasury securities.

U.S. Debt to China and the Trade Deficit One more reason for China to continuously buy U.S. Treasuries is the gigantic size of the U.S. trade deficit with China. The monthly deficit is around $37 billion, and with that large amount of money involved, Treasuries are probably the best available option for China. Buying U.S. Treasuries enhances China's money supply and creditworthiness. Selling or swapping such Treasuries would reverse these advantages.

Impact of China Buying U.S. Debt

U.S. debt offers the safest heaven for Chinese forex reserves, which effectively means that China offers loans to the U.S. so that the U.S. can keep buying the goods China produces.

Hence, as long as China continues to have an export-driven economy with a huge trade surplus with the U.S., it will keep piling up U.S. dollars and U.S. debt. Chinese loans to the U.S., through the purchase of U.S. debt, enable the U.S. to buy Chinese products. Its a win-win situation for both nations, with both benefiting mutually. China gets a huge market for its products, and the U.S. benefits from the economical prices of Chinese goods. Beyond their well-known political rivalry, both nations (willingly or unwillingly) are locked in a state of inter-dependency from which both benefit, and which is likely to continue.

The U.S. national debt as of October, 2022, stands at over $31.1 trillion.

USD as a Reserve Currency

Effectively, China is buying the present-day reserve currency. Until the 19th century, gold was the global standard for reserves. It was replaced by the British pound sterling. Today, U.S. Treasuries are considered virtually the safest.

Apart from the long history of the use of gold by multiple nations, history also provides instances where many countries had huge reserves of pounds sterling (GBP) in the post-World War II era. These countries did not intend to spend their GBP reserves or to invest in the U.K. but were retaining the pounds sterling purely as safe reserves.

When those reserves were sold off, however, the U.K. faced a currency crisis. Its economy deteriorated due to the excess supply of its currency, leading to high-interest rates. Will the same happen to the U.S. if China decides to offload its U.S. debt holdings?

It's worth noting that the prevailing economic system after the WW-II era required the U.K. to maintain a fixed exchange rate. Due to those restraints and the absence of a flexible exchange rate system, the selling off of the GBP reserves by other countries caused severe economic consequences for the U.K.

Since the U.S. dollar has a variable exchange rate, however, any sale by any nation holding huge U.S. debt or dollar reserves will trigger the adjustment of the trade balance at the international level. The offloaded U.S. reserves by China will either end up with another nation or will return back to the U.S.

Repercussions

The repercussions for China of such an offloading would be worse. An excess supply of U.S. dollars would lead to a decline in USD rates, making RMB valuations higher. It would increase the cost of Chinese products, making them lose their competitive price advantage. China may not be willing to do that, as it makes little economic sense.

If China (or any other nation having a trade surplus with the U.S.) stops buying U.S. Treasuries or even starts dumping its U.S. forex reserves, its trade surplus would become a trade deficitsomething which no export-oriented economy would want, as they would be worse off as a result.

The ongoing worries about China's increased holding of U.S. Treasuries or the fear of Beijing dumping them are uncalled for. Even if such a thing were to happen, the dollars and debt securities would not vanish. They would reach other vaults.

U.S. Debt to China: Risk Perspective for America

Although this ongoing activity has led to China becoming a creditor to the U.S., the situation for the U.S. may not be that bad. Considering the consequences that China would suffer from selling off its U.S. reserves, China (or any other nation) will likely refrain from such actions.

Even if China were to proceed with the selling of these reserves, the U.S., being a free economy, can print any amount of dollars as needed. It can also take other measures like quantitative easing (QE). Although printing dollars would reduce the value of its currency, thereby increasing inflation, it would actually work in favor of U.S. debt. Real repayment value will fall proportionately to inflationsomething good for the debtor (U.S.), but bad for the creditor (China).

Although the U.S. budget deficit has been rising, the risk of the U.S. defaulting on its debt practically remains nil (unless a political decision to do so is made). Effectively, the U.S. may not need China to continuously purchase its debt; rather China needs the U.S. more, to ensure its continued economic prosperity.

U.S. Debt to China: Risk Perspective for China

China, on the other hand, needs to be concerned about loaning money to a nation that also has the limitless authority to print it in any amount. High inflation in the U.S. would have adverse effects on China, as the real repayment value to China would be reduced in the case of high inflation in the U.S.



Willingly or unwillingly, China will have to continue to purchase U.S. debt to ensure price competitiveness for its exports at the international level.

Is China Increasing or Decreasing Its U.S. Treasuries Holdings? China's holdings of U.S. Treasuries peaked between 2012-2013, with a value of over $1.3 trillion. Since then, its size has been slowly declining. It dipped below $1 trillion in mid-2022 for the first time since 2010. As of Q3 2022, it stands just below $1 trillion at around $980 billion.

Is China the Largest Foreign Holder of U.S. Debt? No, China is currently the second-largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, behind Japan (which holds around $1.2 trillion as of Q3 2022).

Why Does China Buy U.S. Treasuries? There are several good reasons that China buys U.S. Treasuries. First, Treasuries are among the world's safest assets, making them secure and stable. Second, the U.S. dollar remains the world's reserve currency in international trade, so it allows the Chinese central bank to effectively hold dollar-denominated assets. China pegs its currency to the dollar, so it needs such assets as a way to maintain the peg. Most importantly, though, is that China receives a surplus of U.S. dollars due to the trade imbalance between the two countries, where China exports more to the U.S. than imports. But, Chinese companies and their workers need to be paid in local currency, the yuan (or renminbi). As a result, the Chinese banking system must convert dollars with the central bank, which must then do something with them. The central bank then uses those dollars to purchase Treasuries, which earn a stable return.

What Would Happen If China Sold All of Its Treasuries? First, it is unlikely that China would sell its U.S. Treasuries all at once, because this would be economically painful for China and leave it holding dollars that it would need to spend or invest elsewhere. The most immediate effect would be an increase in interest rates on Treasuries, since selling so many at once would artificially depress their prices in the bond market - thus increasing their yields. If the Fed were not to react at all to such an event, it is estimated that it would increase long-term Treasury yields by 30 to 60 basis points.

The Bottom Line

Geopolitical realities and economic dependencies often lead to interesting situations in the global arena. China's continuous purchase of U.S. debt is one such interesting scenario. It continues to raise concerns about the U.S. becoming a net debtor nation, susceptible to the demands of a creditor nation. The reality, however, is not as bleak as it may seem, for this type of economic arrangement is actually a win-win for both nations.
Corvex Management is a New York-based hedge fund that was launched with much fanfare in 2011 by noted investor Keith Arlyn Meister. By 2013, the fund's assets had more than doubled. However, after reaching a peak in mid-2015, assets under management steadily declined, as the company's value-based investing approach delivered mixed results over the years. Specifically, Corvex uses an opportunistic methodology to make its stock picks: special situations, event-driven strategies, and value investing.

Keith Meister: Trained and Funded by Activists

Even in the hedge fund community, few investors received the kind of training and financial backing that Corvex founder Keith Meister received. Prior to the fund's launch in 2011, Meister was widely known as Carl Icahn's right-hand man. Meister took Icahn's philosophy of being aggressive, contrarian, and confrontational, and bolstered it with $250 million in seed capital from George Soros.

Key Takeaways Corvex was launched in 2011 with seed capital from a platform backed by George Soros.

Corvex's head manager, CIO, and managing partner Keith Meister was once known as Carl Icahn's right-hand man.

While assets under management increased in the four years after the hedge fund's launch, the amount has dropped substantiallyfrom more than $9 billion to $2.2 billionsince a peak in 2015.

Yum! Brands, Energen, and MGM Resorts are among the companies where Corvex has applied its activist approach.

The hedge funds performance has been strong at times, though assets have been leaving the firm. Reuters reports that the fund was up 20% for 2019 (through mid-December). However, since 2011, assets (the amount held in equities) have wavered from a peak of $9.1 billion in 2015 down to $2.1 billion at the end of 2019, according to the website Gurufocus.

Meister's style of investing at Corvex is controversial. Many fund managers are reserved, quiet, and straight-faced; by contrast, Meister is outspoken and ornery, even more so than his famous former boss. In Oct. 2014, The Wall Street Journal published an article that opened with the line, "Keith Meister takes things personally." It went on to describe the activist as "competitive" and "very emotional."

Meister has been sued multiple times for his professional and interpersonal actions, including a relatively high-profile showdown with the ADT Corporation's board of directors, on which Meister once served. In its lawsuit, ADT alleged that Corvex's leader "aggressively pressured and intimidated his co-board members" to participate in a repurchase of Corvex shares.

Though his style has earned him a legion of detractors and critics in the financial media and across corporate boards, Meister is respected by power players in the fund community because he drives results. "He's intense in the best sense of the word," said Aurora Investment Management executive Justin Sheperd, one of Meister's investor clients.

Yum! Brands and Corvex

Yum! Brands has been one of Corvexs most noteworthy activist endeavors. In 2015, Corvex Management acquired an activist stake in Yum! Brands at about the same time Third Point Management, Daniel Loeb's hedge fund, took a much smaller position. Meister's group bought more than 15 million shares to become the largest shareholder; Loeb only grabbed 3.5 million shares for a distant second place. As a consequence, Corvex became the lead activist, although it is likely the two hedge funds worked with each other to promote shareholder value.

Corvex entered the Yum! Brands arena looking for a seat at the board of directors and a number of operational changes, including the sale of KFC Eleven and Super Chix as well as a spinoff of Yum!'s Chinese division. Meister and Loeb's activist activities were strategically timed around a switch at Yum! Brands for CEO, when Greg Creed replaced longtime executive David Novak. Creed, who had been chief executive at Taco Bell from 2011 to 2014, unwittingly walked into a firestorm.

Yum! and Creed initially balked at Corvex's requests, particularly the spinoff idea for the Chinese division. Creed received support from Novak, who became executive chair of the board after leaving the CEO slot, although public dialogue between Corvex and Yum! was amicable. Yet, one by one, the demands from Meister and Loeb fell into place.

By April 2015, KFC Eleven was closed. By August, Super Chix was sold to an investment group headed by founder Nick Ouimet. At about that same time, China was hit with its worst stock market collapse in years, leading to global concerns about a recession in 2016 and the bursting of an asset bubble in the Far East. Chinese prospects were much bleaker, and the Yum! China brand was, thus, less valuable.

On Oct. 15, 2015, the fast-food operator announced it would add Keith Meister to its board of directors. Meister bragged about the company's "multiple avenues for unlocking significant long-term value" and said he would work expeditiously to "deliver that value to shareholders." It was a much-needed win for Meister, whose firm had suffered through a 24% drop in the Yum! Brands stock price since making its position. The company remained openly committed to keeping its China division intact, though that did not last.

By Oct. 20, 2015, Yum! announced a plan to split Yum! China and Yum! Brands, arguing the move would increase shareholder value and allow more room for KFC and Pizza Hut to grow. Meister's fingerprints were all over the rushed decision; the Chinese division could now grow debt-free, something Meister argued was imperative. Creed said the speed of the decision was based on "a lot of common ground" between the two individual proposals.

Energen and Beyond

In 2017, Corvex took an activist position in Energen along with Elliott Management Corporation. The two firms urged for a sale of the business. Corvex held a 5.5% stake and lobbied that the firm was heavily undervalued and that significant profits would result from a sale of the business. As an energy company, Corvex also argued that the firms land deals involving research, development, and exploration were available at a high value to others looking to potentially acquire and consolidate.

The firms actions were met with opposition and did not go far. Energen hired investment banks to review the business and found that they would remain on track with their current framework and strategic plans. Nevertheless, Diamondback Energy (FANG) made a bid for and acquired Energen in May 2018 at $84.95 a share (By comparison, Corvex started building a stake in Energen in May 2017 at roughly $57.50 per share).

$9.2 Billion The amount Diamondback Energy paid for Energen in 2018 with Carl Icahn and Corvex together owning 9% of shares outstanding.

Heading into 2020, Corvex is no longer heavily invested in Yum! Brands and Diamondback Energy has replaced the position in Energen. The hedge fund's biggest position is MGM Resorts International (MGM) and represents nearly one-third of the portfolio. Meister joined MGM's board of directors in July 2019, with his fund owning nearly 3% of the company's outstanding shares. Other names in the portfolio include Adobe (ADBE), Madison Square Garden (MSG), and Forescout Technologies (FSCT).
Investment Banking vs. Investment Management: An Overview

Plenty of undergraduate finance majors and master of business administration (MBA) students consider pursuing a career in investment banking or investment management, two intensely competitive fields in the finance industry, after receiving their degrees. These professions offer some of the highest starting salaries in the field, and there's plenty of room for growth for those who are talented and ambitious enough to land one of these spots.

If you take away all of the industry terminologies and boil these jobs down to their basic elements, investment bankers and investment managers (sometimes called asset managers or fund managers in the U.K.) are primarily responsible for channeling money from investors to companies that need capital. Some of the top experts in the investment world can be found in these positions.

Investment management is all about investment decisions and asset allocation. This means coming up with investment strategies and directing funds to property, equities, or debt securities on behalf of clients. Investment bankers, by contrast, are deal-makers. They work as high-level consultants and analysts for large companies to help with capital raising strategies.

Key Takeaways Investment managers help clients by managing their money. Clients can include individuals, educational institutions, insurance companies, and pension funds.

Investment managers perform financial analysis, portfolio allocation between bonds and stocks, equity research, and issue buy and sell recommendations.

Investment bankers help with corporate finance needs, such as raising funds or capital. Companies and governments hire investment bankers to facilitate mergers and acquisitions as well as IPOs, and new debt issuance such as a bond offering.

Investment Management

Investment managers help clients reach their investment goals by managing their money. Clients of investment managers can include individual investors as well as institutional investors such as educational institutions, insurance companies, pension funds, retirement plans, and governments. Investment managers can work with equities, bonds, and commodities, including precious metals like gold and silver.

Investment managers can have varied roles and responsibilities, depending on the firm, which can include:

Financial statement analysis

Portfolio allocation such as a proper mix of bonds and stocks

Equity research and buy and sell recommendations

Financial planning and advising

Estate and retirement planning as well as asset distribution

Investment Banking

Investment bankers help with corporate finance needs, such as raising funds or capital. Companies and governments hire investment bankers to facilitate complicated financial transactions, including:

Debt issuance such as a bond offering

New securities underwriting

Mergers and acquisitions

Initial public offerings (IPOs)

Investment banking can involve equity and security research and making buy, sell, and hold recommendations. Investment banking firms are also market makers, which provide liquidity or connect buyers and sellers to "make" the market.

Almost every investment banker starts out as an associate or analyst and hopes to put in enough years to reach a role as a vice president or managing director.

Special Considerations

Education and Skills

Competition for both careers is notoriously stiff. Investment banking firms are usually only interested in candidates who have graduated from top schools and who have worked previously with major corporate players. It's virtually impossible to find an investment banking associate position without an MBA and strong recommendations from respected professionals in the field. Investment management positions aren't quite as crowded by top applicants, but it's still very difficult to break into major firms.

Networking is very important and sometimes matters more than experience or academic bona fides. Many firms use internships as extensive application processes; in fact, some investment management and banking internships are more competitive than entry-level positions for corporate finance or research analyst positions.

Undergraduate degrees are preferred in business disciplines, such as finance, economics, accounting, or investment analysis, although degrees from other fields are considered. Some banks look for demonstrated analytical proficiency in specific sectors, like healthcare or pharmaceuticals.

Firms are generally looking a strong combination of the following skills and characteristics:

Strong written and verbal communication skills

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Demonstrated independence and responsibility

Responsiveness and attention to detail

Negotiation and client management skills

Knowledge of investments, corporate finance and business negotiations (practical commercial expertise)

Advanced mathematical and technical skills

An ambitious, eager, get-it-done attitude

Salary

Investment banking and investment management jobs have attractive salaries and bonuses. Even the lowest-level investment banking analyst at a smaller firm can expect a first-year salary of $65,000 to $95,000 and a hefty signing bonus.

The average base pay for investment managers is $95,829 with salaries that can be as high as $180,000, according to glassdoor.com. Additional compensation averages $14,900, which includes commissions and bonuses.

The average base pay for investment bankers is $119,110 with salaries that can be as high as $235,000, according to glassdoor.com. Investment banking analysts make anywhere from $73,000 to 108,000.

Work-Life Balance

High-level investment jobs are highly concentrated in New York, London, and Tokyo. Even though there is some evidence of geographical shifts as the 21st century marches forward, it is still probable that a career in investment banking or investment management means moving to one of these three global financial hubs.

Workloads for investment managers vary. Those employed by mutual funds or hedge funds work when the stock market opens and closes. This can be a relatively short time if the firm is only active in one market, but those active in all three major exchanges can have very irregular. Private equity firms average much longer workdays, sometimes as many as 65 to 70 hours per week.

Investment bankers sometimes joke that they enjoy a nice "work-work" balance. Very few careers demand as much time and energy as investment banking; it's not uncommon to work 12- to 14-hour days for six or seven days a week. Despite the high salary and prestige afforded to an associate or analyst, many burn out and suffer physically and emotionally after a few years on the job. These roles are for career-minded people who may have little time for relaxing on weekends and spending time with family.

Occupational Outlook

These are very prestigious careers with huge salaries, so competition should remain very high for the foreseeable future. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that financial jobs such as analysts, bankers, and financial managers will experience 15% job growth between 2019 and 2029.

In all likelihood, a prospective banker or manager must decide on a firm-by-firm basis. Pay structures and workloads can vary, and the choice may hinge on the specifics of the role and the career goals of the individual.
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Procter & Gamble (PG) is one of the world's largest consumer goods companies. A consumer good is anything that's sold directly to consumers and can be used for personal or recreational use.

This segment includes services and durable goods or products that don't have a shelf life. Nondurable goods are also part of this segment. These are goods that have an expiration date like mouthwash and vitamins. Consumer goods are those that people can't do without and are always in demand, regardless of the economic conditions. This is one of the reasons why P&G is always so profitable. Keep reading to find out more about the company and the top four mutual funds that invest in P&G.

Key Takeaways Procter & Gamble is one of the world's largest consumer goods companies.

Institutional investors hold nearly two-thirds of P&G shares.

The top 4 mutual funds that invest in P&G are the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, and the Fidelity 500 Fund.



Procter & Gamble: An Overview

P&G was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. The multinational corporation is headquartered in Cincinnati and employs more than 97,000 people around the world. As mentioned above, it is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world.

The company has a portfolio with 10 different categories, which include fabric care, home care, baby care, feminine care, family care, oral care, personal health care, grooming, hair care, and skin and personal care. It owns more than 50 well-known brands, such as Tide, Gillette, Dawn, and Pantene.

P&G reported its financial results for the 2020 fiscal year on July 30. It earned $71 billion in net sales for the year. This was an increase of 5% from the previous year. Organic sales increased by 6% and operating cash flow came in at $17.4 billion for the year. P&G's market capitalization was $304.19 billion at the end of trading on Feb. 26, 2021.

Below, we've listed the top three mutual fund investors in P&G as per Morningstar.
Bunny Ranch brothel owner Dennis Hof filed today as a Libertarian candidate to run for the Nevada Assembly seat currently held by Republican James Oscarson.

Hof, the owner of seven legal brothels located throughout Nevada, is a worldwide celebrity known for his starring role in the HBO reality-TV series Cathouse.

The outspoken bordello tycoon was nominated by a unanimous vote at the Libertarian Party of Nevada's state convention held in Mound House last Saturday. Hof filed today in person at 1 p.m. at the Secretary of State's office in Carson City, located at 202 North Carson Street, 89701.
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In September 2015, the United Nations Member States adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will inform their development agendas and policies over the next 15 years. The Parliaments of Central and Eastern Europe first met to discuss concrete steps to help implement the SDGs in their countries and the region on the occasion of a Regional Seminar held in Bucharest in June 2015. On this occasion, they adopted an outcome document that calls for concrete parliamentary action in a number of key areas, including through adoption of national sustainable development strategies and tackling environmental risk and climate change. This seminar will follow up on the conclusions of the 2015 event and will aim to further define the opportunities and challenges facing parliaments in exercising their role in the implementation of the SDGs The proceedings will be conducted in English only.
John Dunleavy, the former chairman of the New York City St. Patricks Day Parade and Celebration Committee, had a spring in his step when he marched with the United Irish Counties on Fifth Avenue yesterday, with good reason: the New York State Attorney Generals office has closed its investigation into allegations that he misused parade funds during his tenure as chairman, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan greeted him with a warm embrace on the steps of St. Patricks Cathedral.

The inquiry was prompted by a letter and supporting documentation sent from the parades board of directors, signed by Executive Secretary Hilary Beirne, to the Charities Bureau of the Attorney Generals office last November. The letter outlined a number of financial improprieties that a forensic audit of the parades finances uncovered last year: among them, that Dunleavy used the parades credit card to purchase the male enhancement pill Triverex in multiple charges in 2012 and 2013, and other purchases including hotel stays, restaurant and clothing charges totaling more than $30,000.

John Sheehan, head of the Attorney Generals Charities Bureau, found that the alleged financial mismanagement did not rise to the level that would warrant further action from his office. The letter was sent by the parades board to ensure compliance with its non-profit 501 (c) (3)status.

Sources close to the investigation told the Irish Voice/IrishCentral that Sheehan is satisfied the parades board acted promptly by removing Dunleavy from his former position as head of parades operations, and that new controls are in place under new board chairman Dr. John Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

The Charities Bureau would possibly instigated further action if the new controls hadnt been in place, the source said, but the amount of alleged financial irregularity didnt warrant further action on the agencys part.

Besides Dunleavy, the other former parade officials noted in the boards letter to the Charities Bureau, Michael Cassels and Carla Chadwick, are no longer officially affiliated with the parade: last September Cassels repaid the board with a check for $1,752.86, which covered the amount that he billed the parade for expenses that had been previously paid to him. Cassels was also expelled from his board membership. Chadwick, who had worked as Dunleavys executive secretary, is also no longer affiliated with the parade.

Francis Young, Dunleavys attorney based in White Plains, Westchester, County, issued a press release on Wednesday that stated in part, These false charges were deliberately and recklessly made by Dr. Lahey and Hilary Beirne against Mr. Dunleavy and others in order to distract from their hostile and illegal takeover of the New York City St. Patricks Day parade.

Instead of trying to quietly address these purported accusations within the confines of the board, Dr. Lahey and Mr. Beirne chose to conduct an orchestrated and sustained publicity campaign in the pages of Irish Central defaming the good names and reputations of Mr. Cassels, Ms. Chadwick and Mr. Dunleavy. We chose not to address these false accusations in the media, but rather let the investigation takes its course.

Today, they have all been vindicated by the New York State Attorney Generals Office. We are grateful to Charities Bureau for conducting a thorough and fair investigation into this matter and making every effort to resolve this matter by March 17th so that they can proudly hold their heads up high as they celebrate and honor the glorious St. Patrick! These attacks upon the integrity of Mr. Dunleavy, Mr. Cassels and Ms. Chadwick not only affected their reputations within the Irish-American community, but have also taken its toll upon their emotional well-beings and threatened their livelihoods.

This episode shows that Dr. Lahey and Hilary Beirne have lacked the courage,

honor and integrity to quietly and respectfully resolve their issues with Mr. Dunleavy in

private. Their actions have caused a tremendous amount of damage to the goodwill of the parade, especially with the affiliated organizations who are the heart and soul of the parade.

The affiliates were out in force yesterday, including all of the county organizations led by the United Irish Counties. Dunleavy marched in the front line of the UIC contingent, and wore the organization sash.

Dunleavy made his way to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was reviewing the parade from the steps of St. Patricks Cathedral and customarily greets the leaders of many of the early marching contingents. The cardinal greeted Dunleavy, a staunch and vocal opponent of gay groups having a place in the parade line of march, with a long and clearly heartfelt embrace.
The acting Minister for Education says she is willing to engage with the ASTI to clarify any issues regarding Junior Cycle reform.

Jan O'Sullivan was responding to plans by the ASTI to stage a series of one-day strikes from September if the ongoing dispute around proposed changes to the junior cycle is not resolved.
Lawyers for a man accused of being an ISIS recruiter say it is highly likely the Irish authorities have told Jordanian authorities of their suspicions.

As a result, they fear he will be detained and possibly tortured if he is deported to his homeland.

The man, who cannot be identified, arrived in 2000 and withdrew his application for refugee status after securing residency through the birth of his son.

His permit was not renewed after his son returned to the Middle East three years ago, and a judgement on his appeal against a deportation order is due next month.

His lawyers are also trying to get the State to process his original application for asylum because they say it was never refused, merely withdrawn.

Gardai believe he is a threat to Ireland's national security because of alleged links to ISIS.

He denies the allegations and fears he will be tortured because of them if he is sent home.

The State claims there is no reason to believe he will be detained if he is deported to Jordan, but his lawyers believe the threat exists by the very nature of the allegations made.

Mr Justice Richard Humphreys will make his judgement at a later date.
The Dublin Tenants Association have hit out at the Government for courting so called "vulture funds".

They say recent actions by such funds, where many tenants were given notices to quit, are not the result of a natural disaster, but a direct consequence of government policy.
A police officer in Scotland has been injured following the arrest of a man seen carrying two machetes in public.

Officers responded to reports of a disturbance in Hill Street in Glasgow city centre this morning.

Eyewitnesses reported a man wearing a balaclava and running back and forth by the private school St Aloysius College, the BBC said.

There were reports the man threatened a lollipop man and tried to attack a janitor at the Glasgow School of Art.

A police spokesman said: "At around 8.30am on Friday, police responded to reports of a disturbance on Hill Street in Glasgow.

"A man has been arrested in connection with the incident and no members of the public are believed to have been injured.

"One officer sustained a minor injury during the arrest. Inquiries are ongoing to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident."

A Glasgow School of Art spokeswoman said: "The Glasgow School of Art can confirm that a member of our staff did encounter the individual described, whilst parking his car near to a GSA building.

"The member of staff is shaken, but unharmed."
A woman in England has won a family court fight for the return of her two-year-old son despite social workers' concerns about the implications of a Christmas Day "drunken sexual escapade" with a stranger she picked up on Facebook.

Social services staff said the woman's engagement in "risky" sex led them to the conclusion that the boy, who had been put into temporary foster care, would not be safe with her and should be placed for adoption.

But a family court judge has come to a different conclusion.

Judge Ross Duggan said social workers should plan for the youngster to be returned to his mother's care.

The judge said adoption would be "safe and permanent", but he said the little boy "loves his mother" and concluded that the Christmas Day "episode" did not create an "unacceptable risk of harm".

Detail has emerged in a ruling by the judge following a private family court hearing in Preston, Lancashire.

He said no one involved could be identified.

But he indicated that the woman lived in Blackburn, Lancashire, and said social services staff involved worked for Blackburn with Darwen Council.

Judge Duggan said social workers had initially been concerned about the "turbulent and violent" relationship between the woman and the boy's father.

They had felt it essential that she stayed away from the man and protected her son. And, the judge said, the youngster had been taken from the woman and placed into foster care late last year because social services staff said she had a "chronic inability" to break away from the man.

But Judge Duggan said in recent months the woman had achieved a "remarkable degree of success" in staying away from the boy's father. He said social workers' concerns had now switched to her Christmas engagement in "risky" sex.

He said the woman had given evidence and told him what happened on December 25.

"There was ... a drunken sexual escapade in the mother's home with a man that she did not know whom she had picked up on Facebook," explained Judge Duggan in his ruling.

"It turned out that this was a man with a family and a criminal record. Mother explains that she was very low about Christmas time. She was spending Christmas, of course, without her child. The world was celebrating at a time when she was alone and she felt the need for company, any company."

The judge added: "The mother insists that this behaviour would not have arisen if she had her child at home. She points out that she never had strange men at home when the child was in her care and I accept her evidence on this point. It is argued that December represents a part of a pattern of unthinking unsafe behaviour, but for me the correct approach is an analysis of the likelihood of harm to the child."

And he went on: "If the mother was taking strange men home with a child present, that would be totally unacceptable behaviour. However, there was no child and more importantly and fundamentally, I accept that mother would not behave in this way if there was a child in her care ... For me, the mother has achieved a remarkable change by breaking away from the insidious control of the father. For me, December does not fatally undermine that progress."
Record low borrowing costs is encouraging many Germans to overcome their traditional aversion to buying their own flats and houses, with some also regarding property as an attractive investment.

Rising state spending on refugees and special tax incentives for investors who build flats in urban areas are expected to give the construction sector an additional push.
Sources said such a move would likely be a prelude to the Dutch drinks firm raising its stake in the maker of Kingfisher beer to above 50%, betting on a small but fast-growing beer market.

Heineken acquired a 37.5% stake in United Breweries in 2008 through its takeover of Scottish & Newcastle and has since increased its holding to 42.4%.

With Mr Mallya distracted by debts from a collapsed airline venture, this could be a timely grab by Heineken in a market that is growing much faster than the global average.

Two thirds of Indians do not drink alcohol, often for religious or cultural reasons, but rapid urbanisation and a rising middle class are changing consumer habits.

India accounts for 13% of world beer consumption, and annual volume growth is expected to outpace the global average, and major markets such as China, through 2019, according to Moodys.

The sources said Heineken was considering asking Mr Mallya to step down from the United Breweries board he chairs. Alternatively, it could call a shareholder meeting to vote on his ousting from a company his father built into an empire. A Heineken spokesman declined to comment on any move to tighten control overbrewer but said India remains an exciting opportunity for growth, given its demographics and strong economic fundamentals.

Mr Mallya and a spokesman for UB Group did not respond to requests for comment. Banks, regulators and investigators in India have turned up the heat on Mr Mallya, who inherited UB at the age of 28 and led it on an ambitious expansion.

Creaking under mountains of bad debt, banks themselves are under pressure from the government to chase up high-profile cases such as Mr Mallya, whose Kingfisher Airlines collapsed in 2013 leaving unpaid wages and angry creditors.

Mr Mallya has already been forced to give up control over United Spirits, part of his UB Group, to Diageo, which now owns about 55% of the company. He stepped down from the board last month, receiving a $75m pay off.

A member of Indias upper house of parliament, Mr Mallya is known as the King of Good Times for his party lifestyle.

* Reuters
World Of Beer Will Pay You $12,000 To Travel And Drink Beer

Trending News: Like Beer And Travel (Who Doesn't)? This Job Will Pay You To Do Both!

Why Is This Important?

Because travel, drink beer, get money  could there be anything better in life?

Long Story Short

World of Beer is looking for a 'Drink It Intern' whose job description is to travel around to breweries and beer festivals in America and around the world while drinking beer and documenting their travels on social media. Up for it?

Long Story

Dream job alert!

Want to travel, drink beer (and I'm not talking about Pabst here, I'm talking good craft beer) and get paid? An American chain of taverns, World of Beer, is offering up three spots for its 'Drink It' internship that will pay you $12,000 to travel from brewery to brewery, tavern to tavern and beer festival to beer festival  check out the job description here.

Game? The job is open to anyone who is allowed to work in America and is over 21, but more specifically, World of Beer wants somebody who loves beer, travel and sharing their experiences on all the social media platforms. That's not even that hard to BS!

Wouldnt you rather travel, explore beer, and get paid? Get a job you actually like. Apply to be a #DRINKITINTERN pic.twitter.com/YkItGLEpkm  WOB - Pooler (@wobpooler) March 15, 2016

"Whether youre a photographer or writer, social media maverick or beer blog surfer, we are looking for you," explains the job advertisement on the website. "Adventure seekers and storytellers, beer experts or novices, brewery nerds and foodie fans all open to apply. So if you want to live, drink and tell the tale to the world, get ready to apply for the chance to share your experience as a Drink It Intern."

All you have do to apply is fill out an online application and record a one-minute video pitch.

For an extra leg-up on the competition, if you're around the Orlando, Tempe, College Station, Texas or Tampa then head out to one of the World of Beer taverns for an in-tavern interview (scheduled interview times available on the site).

No better time to apply or start getting prepped than Saint Paddy's am I right?

Applications are open until March 26.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Has there ever been a better job description known to man?

Disrupt Your Feed

Hope they like slurry, sloppy, and blurry drunk videos cause I got a portfolio bursting with them!

Drop This Fact

Scientists from the University of Idaho are defending research this week that suggests that beer will be able to cure cancer (or at least a component in beer)! Acids found in hops called humulones and lupulones allegedly have the ability to halt bacterial growth and disease, as summarized by The Telegraph.
However, the hospital does not have a doctor trained in pediatric forensic evaluation. The knock-on effect could be that child abusers will escape charges due to insufficient evidence.

Since the closure of Galways Child and Adolescent Sexual Assault Treatment Service (CASATS) on February 28, several children have required the specialist examination service. CASATS closed as the HSE would not agree to find additional funding of approximately 100,000 per annum, as requested by doctors, to enable a best-practice model of care

As there is nowhere in the West and Mid-West where a child who has been sexually abused can receive a forensic medical service, the only option is to attend an ED.

Joanne Nelson said any such child attending Galways ED will be in a busy environment and will have no-one trained to assess them. This scenario has already occurred, since the specialised clinic, for which Dr Nelson acted as clinical lead, has closed in recent weeks, she said.

Doctors at University Hospital Galway are not trained to take samples or to provide an informed professional opinion on the presence or absence of relevant physical signs in child sex abuse cases.

Whilst childrens safeguarding needs can be met by the gardai and Tusla, their forensic needs cannot  almost no forensic evidence can currently be collected following child rape, said a hospital spokesperson.

Dr Nelson said children subjected to sexual abuse had health needs, as well as everything else. This involves evaluation of the risk of, and screening for, sexually transmitted infection.

In an acute assault, consideration needs to be given to preventing HIV or hepatitis B, by emergency treatment or vaccination. Emergency contraception needs to be explored, she said.

Normally, all of this would be done smoothly, as part of a comprehensive assessment in our service, also addressing psychological needs, forensics, and safeguarding, said Dr Nelson. In the absence of our service, each component now has to be addressed separately. Unfortunately, not all components are currently being addressed, which is devastating for all concerned.

Prior to closure, CASATS was operated by four doctors, rotated on an on-call, 24-hour service. Children often came from other parts of the country to access the service out of hours. The doctors had been asking the HSE to fund integral components of a safe, quality-assured, and sustainable service for some time.

Given that 212,000 per annum will sustain, and maintain, the only 24-hour acute, and historic, forensic medical service for children under 14 years suspected of sexual abuse, anywhere in Ireland, this would seem a worthwhile investment, said Dr Nelson.

Responding to the closure, a HSE spokesperson said discussions with the four clinicians that provide the CASATS service have not been successful.

We have been informed, by the clinicians, that they are not prepared to sign the proposed contracts, said the spokesperson. Therefore, we have no alternative but to advise agencies that would refer to the service that we can no longer accept referrals.
He categorically refused to discuss forming a coalition government with Fianna Fail as he arrived for a two-day summit in Brussels.

Mr Kenny, now in the position of caretaker, will face a fresh vote in the Dail on April 6 when he will be pitted against Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin. The party is not expected to make serious advances to Fianna Fail until they have worked through the alternatives.

One of these is to form an alliance with the two Green Party TDs, a cohort of independents and the Labour Party  even though their former coalition partner has said they would not go into power again.

Mr Kenny met the two Green Party deputies, Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin, in Dublin on Wednesday to discuss how they could cooperate.

amon Ryan

Obviously, we talked about policy issues in as far as the Green Party is concerned. They want to talk ot their people on Monday, the Taoiseach said.

Mr Ryan, a former minister in the Fianna Fail-led government, lost his seat in the 2011 when his party was wiped out. He topped the poll to be first elected in Dublin Bay South this time round, to the surprise of many.

Mr Kenny, who has a guaranteed 50 votes from the TDs from his own party, will be looking for an additional 20 votes.

Asked about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams difficulties with security at the White House in Washington during the traditional St Patricks Day celebrations, Mr Kenny said that everyone is treated the same going into the White House. Security is absolutely stringent and that is as it should be.

But on Mr Adams comparing his difficulties with that of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, the Taoiseach said, Rosa Parks was an international icon, a woman of courage and bravery who made a real mark on history to its benefit.
Following more than four hours of discussions, many of the details were thrashed out between the 28 leaders.

But one of the most intractable involving Cyprus continuing veto on negotiating EU accession for Turkey remained on the table.

The Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu is due to meet the leaders on Friday morning when they will put the deal to him.

They will hope to find a form of wording around the reopening of accession discussions will be sufficient to sign the deal.

One of the other important areas for Turkey - visa liberalisation for short term 90 day stays - by June rather than October will be on offer - provided Turkey can fulfil all 72 conditions. At the moment more than 30 are outstanding.

A sticking point for many countries was that the deal on sending back refugees, including Syrians, to Turkey would be in line with international asylum laws.

They accepted assurances that everyone that applies for asylum in the EU, and in this case in Greece, would have their applications fully processed in line with international law and that there would be no blanket returns.

The details have still to be worked out including the timing of taking the migrants that are currently on the Greek islands to the mainland and announcing that any new refugees that arrive will be processed, but will be then automatically returned to Turkey where they can apply to come to Europe.

This the EU explains is to break the business model of the smugglers. Turkey will also be asked to ensure that the rest of its border with the EU, including Bulgaria, is sealed.

Member states have pledged to take 160,000 from camps, and from Italy and Greece, and these places will be used to absorb the 44,000 refugees currently in Greece.

After the discussions last night German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Greece will need considerable help to process the migrants quickly and that member states were being asked to send experts.

Agreement was also reached on the 3bn to be spent on Syrian refugees in Turkey and for another 3 billion by 2018.

However much will depend on agreeing a form of words acceptable to Turkey to deal with the Cypriot issue.

Negotiations are reaching a successful conclusion between the Turk and Greek Cypriots on the divided island. But Cyprus wants Turkey to allow their planes to land and their ships to dock in Turkey.
Several countries fear that an agreement to send refugees back to Turkey is not legal under international law.

Lawyers for the EU institutions however were insisting it is legal as every person applying for international protection would have their case considered in the normal way and would be able to appeal any decision.

The Latvian president, Dalia Grybauskaite, summed up the attitude of several leaders when she said the proposal was very complicated, very difficult to implement and is on the edge of international law.

There was some comfort, however, offered by the Council of Europe  which is separate from the EU, and oversees the European Convention on Human Rights. It welcomed that all asylum seekers would be treated individually with no question of blanket returns.

However, some were not reassured about the Turkey deal. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel described it as a form of blackmail and said the EU was not going to be duped.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was not optimistic. This meeting will concentrate on the migration issue and its not going to be easy to solve, he said but described the draft as acceptable.

It allows for the removal of all migrants on the Greek islands to the mainland where their request for protection will be considered.

All Syrians are likely to be successful together with Iraqis and Afghans, and it is expected they will be allocated to member states who have pledged 72,000 over two years, including 4,000 to Ireland.

Any migrants arriving on the islands from Turkey after this will have their request for asylum considered.

Those who qualify will, however, be returned to Turkey where they will go to the back of queue of this applying to come to Europe. For each Syrian returned, the EU will agree to take a Syrian refugee from Turkey.

Reception centres in Greece and Italy are being beefed-up to allow them accept and process asylum seekers. The timing of when all this will happen is seen as critical because of fears that once announced, there will be a massive influx of refugees desperate to get to the EU before the border with Turkey is finally shut.

The EU has already promised 3 billion to Turkey to be spent  in conjunction with UN supervision  on their 2.6 million Syrian refugees and they are expected to agree to an additional 3 billion up to 2018.

The second major problem was with Turkeys request for long-stalled talks on joining the EU to be resurrected. Cyprus has vetoed this because of the partition of the island following the Turkish invasion and occupation of the island since the 1970s.

Negotiations between leaders in both parts of the island have progressed well but Cyprus wants Turkey to lift its ban on their ships docking and their airplanes landing in Turkey among other points before agreeing that the EU can open five more chapters in the accession talks.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is most interested in securing visa free travel for his citizens to the EU. This would be short stay, 90-day, visas that they say are mostly required by business people.

The EU had already agreed to introduce this in October but Turkey wanted it brought forward to June. However, they have still to fulfil 32 of 74 conditions which many doubt they will be able to do.
In an unusually blunt foray into the political sphere, President Higgins said the crisis required political and moral leadership that is courageous and farsighted, based on human rights and accepting moral and ethical obligations.

However, in Brussels, as EU leaders settled in for a long night of tortured negotiations, there was a chasm between what Europe was willing to give and Turkey was ready to accept.

While 44,000 refugees waited to hear their fate in Greece, the leaders of many EU countries wanted reassurance that Turkey would control their border and not allow the 1,800 that on average are crossing into Greece daily to continue.

The deal would include taking all migrants off the Greek islands and giving those who qualified asylum in the EU, while any new refugees that arrived on the islands, if they qualified for asylum, would be sent back to Turkey to UN administered sites.

Those who feared that this may not be legal under international laws were reassured that the process would be strictly according to the rules.

Refugees in Greece

However, Turkey would then be able to send bone fide Syrian refugees to Europe on a one-for-one basis. Some say the sums do not add up, as the 72,000 places member states have agreed to provide for refugees is less than a tenth of the flows from Turkey to Greece last year.

In exchange, Turkey wants 90-day visa free travel by June, something it had been promised for October, but it still has more than 30 of 70 conditions to fulfil.

Turkey also wants negotiations on their accession to the EU to be reopen but Cyprus was threatening to veto this because of the 40- year-old dispute over the division of the island.

While Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said he was cautiously optimistic going into the summit last night, the man chairing the leaders meeting, Donald Tusk said he was more cautious than optimistic.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was subdued also saying that it was not going to be easy to solve. Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to arrive in Brussels late last night but the negotiations were expected to go on through the night and no meeting would be finalised with him this morning unless a deal had been agreed between the EU leaders.

President Michael D Higgins

Paying tribute to members of the Naval Service who worked on missions in the Mediterranean, President Higgins said: The immediate humanitarian response in which our vessels have been engaged is an essential element of what is needed  but it is not sufficient. The source of displacement must be addressed, and it is of deep concern that progress on achieving peace in Syria is so slow.

It is a crisis that requires political and moral leadership that is courageous and far-sighted and grounded in the founding values of human rights, accepting our moral and ethical obligations in an interdependent world.

Recognising the rescue efforts of almost 200 Irish troops who have served in the Mediterranean, he said their courage and great spirit of humanity remind us that active citizenship will always call us to face challenges and obstacles.

He added: The numbers who perished at sea, a number that also continues to increase, is truly shocking, particularly when we reflect on the fact that this is a human and not a natural phenomenon.

We can be very grateful to the crew members of our Irish naval vessels for the critical role they have played in the humanitarian search and rescue operations. Not only did you save the lives of many men, women and children, but you also served as invaluable role models to all Irish citizens and particularly to our young people.
A meeting in Cork recently, which 300 Garda Representative Association (GRA) members attended, pushed for a militant stance on recouping a 22% pay cut, and suggested the possibility of industrial action.

PJ Stone, who was the GRAs general secretary for many years, has just retired, and the deputy general secretary, John Healy, is also due to step down within few weeks.

A number of names are in the frame as replacements to head the 10,500-member organisation. Garda Damian McCarthy, a brother of former Cork South West TD Michael McCarthy, is being mentioned as a possible new general secretary.

Garda McCarthy, who is from Dunmanway, Co Cork, but stationed in Dublin, confirmed yesterday that he was interested.

He is vastly experienced in the organisation and served a two-year term as president.

Garda John Parker, also a former president, who is based in Mallow, Co Cork, is also a likely successor to PJ Stone.

However, he confirmed he would not be seeking election as general secretary.

He plans to concentrate on securing better rights for members, under a new working time agreement.

This involves a ballot on a controversial new roster, which many at the recent meeting in Cork suggested should be shelved, or at least put on hold, until the Government starts to pay back the cuts endured since 2007.

GRA grassroots also want the Government to row back on pay cuts of 10% to new entrants, and to provide them with an annual rent allowance, worth 4,000, which benefits other members.

A ballot on the new roster is expected to be held on either April 21 or 22, a few days prior to the GRAs annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry.

Current president, Dermot OBrien, based in Galway, is also a possible contender for one of the two top jobs. He is urging members to adopt the new roster for a 12-month period, at which time the GRA would hold another ballot on whether to continue with it.

Garda OBrien said the revised roster addressed most of the issues identified by the membership. He said the working time agreement secured existing entitlements, and provided for further protections for his membership.

The GRAs leadership was criticised at the Cork meeting for not doing enough to claw back lost wages. The review of pay and conditions, under the Haddington Road Review, is currently up and running, said Garda OBrien. This process is looking at all aspects of pay and conditions of An Garda Siochana, currently, and into the future.

A GRA spokeswoman said an interview board would be set up by its 30-plus central executive committee members to decide on successors to the general secretary and deputy general secretary. The vacancies will be advertised before the GRAs annual conference on April 26/27.
The Immigrant Council of Ireland confirmed that on two separate days since the beginning of last week, members of the public have been contacted by people pretending to be ICI staff.

On the first day, March 8, callers were requested to make donations to the charity.

Anyone with a missed call discovered that it was from the actual ICI phone number, even though the Immigrant Council had nothing to do with the calls. Some people who had missed calls contacted the ICI switchboard, alerting the organisation to the scam.

The calls then stopped, but resumed on Tuesday of this week, when, once again, people were contacted by scammers purporting to be from the Immigrant Council, only this time looking for money to prevent deportations.

That approach echoes a warning first issued last November, and repeated a number of times since, by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS), the state agency responsible for issues that include citizenship, repatriation, and asylum. The INIS contact page currently has a warning: Warning about deportation orders by telephone. Some people are being called by phone and told they must pay money to prevent deportation. (Numbers may be prefixed 062 XXX XXXX and appear to be from INIS Citizenship.) This is an attempt at fraud. INIS never asks for payment by telephone. If you receive a telephone call like this, ignore it. One INIS phone number is 062-32500.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not specify whether people facing deportation had been directly targeted, but said the scam was brought to the Departments attention by An Garda Siochana, last November, prompting the first notice to be published on the INIS website shortly afterwards.

It is understood the Immigrant Council contacted gardai in Pearse St, in Dublin, after being told of the first batch of rogue calls last week, and when the calls resumed, this week, made fresh contact with investigators.

The ICI had been in the news last week, after its legal mission visited the refugee camps in Calais.

Brian Killoran

Brian Killoran, the chief executive of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, said: We are very concerned at an attempt to defraud the generosity of people across Ireland at the expense of men, women, and children fleeing war and terror.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland never seeks donations by phone, and never charges clients for use of its services. Anyone contacted by phone, seeking same, should immediately contact gardai, who are investigating this scam as an act of fraud.

Those behind this crime have shown their callousness, by timing their activity to coincide with a legal mission we have mounted to support people trapped in a desperate situation, in refugee camps in Northern France. Anyone wishing to support those efforts can do so through our website, on Facebook, or by posting a cheque to the Immigrant Council of Ireland.
How An Apple Watch Saved This Guy's Life

Trending News: This Guy's Apple Watch Saved His Life (Still Think It's Useless?)

Why Is This Important?

Because haters who say the Apple Watch is useless (pretty much everyone) need to hear this guy's story.

Long Story Short

Dennis Anselmo's Apple Watch tipped him off that he had a high blood pressure, so he went to hospital where he was told he'd had a heart attack. Doctors said if he'd done nothing, he could have had a second attack in his sleep, which could have killed him.

Long Story

The Apple Watch sure looks cool, but it's costly and it's unclear whether it can do anything your smartphone can't  but contractor Dennis Anselmo bought one anyway, despite protests from his wife (he does have 35 other timepieces).

One day last summer, the Canadian was on a job in Edmonton and suddenly started to "feel terrible," like he was coming down with a fever, according to The Sun. So, the 62-year-old took a break, sat down and looked at his Apple Watch. Anselmo had gotten into the idea of keeping track of his heart rate and noticed an alarmingly high beats per minute count (your resting heart rate should generally be around 70 bpm) .

Most people are 55 to 75. I brought it up and - and it was 210 bpm," said Anselmo to The Sun. "I turned to my helper and said: We need an ambulance."

In hospital, Anselmo was told he'd had a heart attack and the blockages were cleared.

They told me that if I had gone home and gone to bed - as many people do - I would likely have had another, more serious bout in the middle of the night," said Anselmo. "Those second attacks are the ones that kill. That is a common problem.

Needless to say, Anselmo's wife Mary is now happy he went with the Apple Watch.

She complained but after the heart attack she said 'that watch has paid for itself'."

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

If you don't take the hefty price in consideration, would the Apple Watch actually be a helpful thing to own?

Disrupt Your Feed

A good reminder to keep track of your heart rate.

Drop This Fact

Signs of a heart attack include pressure, tightness, pain, or a squeezing or aching sensation in your chest or arms; nausea, indigestion, heartburn or abdominal pain; shortness of breath; cold sweat; fatigue; and light headedness or sudden dizziness, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In 2014, there were a record six, in 2015 there were four, and today there is only one woman on the council, Irish woman and US Ambassador, Samantha Power.

With thousands of women at UN headquarters this week for the annual meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, four UN ambassadors who served on the 15-member council including Power spoke about being part of the male-dominated body and the need to put more women in the front lines on issues of international peace and security.

UN political chief Jeffrey Feltman, who moderated Wednesdays panel, said being back to just one woman on the council shows the need for a sustained commitment to gender parity in dealing with world crises and conflicts.

But he stressed its not just the security council where women are outnumbered.

Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has increased the number of undersecretary-generals and assistant secretary-generals serving overseas to about 20%, and the number of women ambassadors at the UN has risen from about seven 20 years ago to about 37 today, which is also about 20%, but again its not enough, Feltman said.

Numbers arent everything, but theyre an important signal to the international community of the implementation of the UN goal to achieve equality for women, including in leadership positions, he said.

The first woman to serve on the security council was Ana Figueroa Gajardo of Chile in 1952. The first American woman with a seat on the council was Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1981.

Ms Power said the first time she felt that she was the only woman on the council was last Thursday during a debate on sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, where she spoke out strongly.

I felt when I was strong, very strong, I could see the little thought bubbles in some of my counterparts who were listening to me thinking, This is because shes a woman. Shes this fired up about this issue, Power recalled.

I dont think it has anything to do with being a woman. It has to do with basic decency and injustice and a sense of what the UN stands for.

She said people will also ask why theres been no woman secretary-general and why there have only been two women presidents of the general assembly in more than 70 years, she said.

Other ambassadors said getting a seat at the security council table was harder for women than for men but that being female also had its advantages in diplomacy.

Jordans UN ambassador Dina Kawar said women get where we get ... because we fight more to get where we want to get.

I think we all navigate in no mans land, male and female, Kawar said. But theres something in this nature in women where we want to find solutions.

Lithuanias UN ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite said having women sitting at the council and debating world affairs is a very powerful signal for those who would like to be there in the future.
Unavailable to negotiate as she expects to be replaced soon, Education Minister Jan OSullivan said the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) is unjustified in undermining junior cycle reforms already supported and introduced by other teachers.

She was responding to the unions standing committee decision to call a series of one-day strikes in September if the dispute is unresolved.

On Wednesday, the ASTI said it still has worries about the lack of an externally assessed oral exam in modern languages and Irish.

The union, representing around 18,000 teachers at more than 400 schools, said increased workload and bureaucracy for teachers were also among the issues it wants to have addressed.

Last September, the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) accepted the reforms negotiated with Ms OSullivan and Department of Education officials.

ASTIs previous concerns over teachers assessing their own students for State certification purposes have been addressed, said Ms OSullivan. Unfortunately, ASTI has now unilaterally decided on a course of action that will damage students interests.

Ms OSullivan will not attend the annual conferences of the three main teachers unions at the end of March, as she expects to be replaced. However, whoever takes over faces teacher strikes on a number of fronts.

TUI members shut 14 ITs six weeks ago to highlight similar issues at third-level.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation directed members on Monday not to co-operate with the departments school self-evaluation process from April 4.

All three unions could be mandated to escalate the various actions when nearly 2,000 delegates attend their conferences, beginning on Easter Monday.
It launched a travel brochure showing what the region has to offer during the cruise industrys premier showcase event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Officials from the company have attended Seatrade Cruise Global.

A key event in the cruise calendar, it guarantees to bring together every facet of the business including cruise lines, suppliers, travel agents, and others. The Port of Cork attended as an exhibitor on the Cruise Ireland and Cruise Europe stand.

The ports commercial manager Michael McCarthy said the Fort Lauderdale spectacle was the epicentre of the cruise industry.

He said some of the industrys most knowledgeable delegates will attend and speak at the conference, so networking opportunities are substantial.

The Port of Corks cruise strategy for the next five years will focus on promoting the region and all it has to offer to potential cruise passengers, as well as expanding our business, said Capt McCarthy.

Our relationship with the cruise lines is excellent and they are very aware of what the port can handle in terms of ship size. Our challenge now is to make sure the cruise companies know exactly what there is to see and do for their passengers while visiting Cork and that is why we will be marketing the Cork city and county region at Seatrade Cruise Global.

This year, the port will welcome 58 cruise liners to Cobh. Over the next five years, it aims to increase cruise visits to 75 per annum.

Capt McCarthy said the company was exploring the feasibility of building a second cruise berth in Cobh, which would greatly enhance Corks ability to attract more liners.

This global cruise event is a key opportunity to further sell Cork as a cruise destination and to interact and liaise with the key decision makers within cruise companies, he said.

Capt McCarthy, a speaker at the conference, is also the current chairman of Cruise Europe and says having a presence was vital.

The cruise industry is difficult to enter, but once you do you must work hard at maintaining relationships and keeping informed of the opportunities and threats to the industry.

Its important for any port to ensure their cruise offering is kept alive and fresh, as with many cruise companies some passengers are repeat passengers who want to experience something different and new on every cruise.
And among the 80,000-strong crowd was his proud mother, Bridie Breen, aged 95.

Myles said: My earliest recollection of St Patricks Day was working with my mum and dad in the family pub in Shannon St which still bears the family name. Its great that she is here today to see me being honoured by leading the parade.

Myles has just returned from New York, where he won a leading actor award for his one-man play, Language Unbecoming a Lady.

Following tradition, the Boherbuoy Band, which dates back to 1850, led the 77 bands, sports clubs, and community groups down OConnell St.

They were followed by the younger St Marys Prize fife and drum band, which dates back to 1885.

Adding to the vintage aspect of the parade was a 1952 Dennis Fire Appliance driven by Limerick fire service sub officer Charlie Cavanagh.

Charlie said: She is in great condition and has a V8 Rolls Royce engine. This appliance was one of five originally ordered by the Indian government, but when they couldnt come up with the money. The Dennis company in the UK sold them to the Irish government and one was sent to Limerick.

Double act Jedward got a huge welcome as they travelled in a 1950s Rolls Royce Regent, driven by Mike Prenderville of Diamond Limousines.

Also among his passengers was Jym Daly from Cobh, Co Cork, who made a spectacular exit from the parade.

As part of the Fidget Feet act, Jym was hoisted more than 30m over the crowds by a crane in an inverted bungy act.

Jym, dressed as St Patrick, said: The only thing I have to be careful about is the St Patricks tunic, which we have hired for the day from the Abbey Theatre.

Among the many voluntary groups were the 15 members of the Limerick Land Search Team.

Team leader Matt Franklin said: Since we were founded in 2013 we have taken part in searches in forests and open countryside all over the country for people who have gone missing.

We got a great reception from the crowd and its great recognition for the voluntary work we do in all kinds of weather.

We assist the Limerick Marine Search and Rescue by doing searches along the banks of the Shannon when they are out searching on the river.

As the parade drew to a close, Myles remarked: I gave the performance of a lifetime without learning a line.
Posing for friends photos in the car park of Clare County Council, where parade participants were gathering, the group, decked out in their traditional African garb, could not hide their exuberance any longer and spontaneously began to sing Ireland! Ireland! Together standing tall

Breaking away from the sing-song, Taiwoo Matthew said: Today means everything to me. I am very, very proud to be Irish.

Dr Matthew, part of the Association of the Nigerian Community in Clare group, said: We are coming out today to identify ourselves as part of the new Irish. This is our nation and we are recognising today the sacrifices that people have made  especially in this very year celebrating the 100 years of the freedom of this State.

Having lived in Ennis for the past 17 years, Dr Matthew said: We are eternally grateful to those have made such sacrifices for Irelands freedom. The only thing we can do is to celebrate our nation, pray for our nation as a people of all races, all colours, all languages united in one.

At the front of the building, the parades grand marshall, Patrick Pakie Wall, was busy receiving a certificate of recognition from fifth class pupil Anna Whelan from Ballyea National School where Pakie attended from 1923 to 1931.

Pakie, 97, comes from Ballydineen, Kilmihil, in west Clare. He was selected as grand marshall following a nomination through Clare County Council for the oldest living Patrick in Clare to join mayor of Ennis Pat Daly in leading the parade in a horsedrawn carriage.

Before being led away in the carriage, Pakie said that he delighted to be chosen as grand marshall.

More than 10,000 people lined the streets of Ennis to give Pakie, and the more than 50 groups to participate in the parade, a great reception. The parade was light on floats but heavy on community involvement as groups from across the county took part. Some of the groups included Clare Youth Theatre, the Clare Older Peoples Council, and the Ennis Brass Band.

One of the floats to feature was from Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann, which was yesterday celebrating the return of the All-Ireland Fleadh Ceoil to Ennis, an event that is expected to attract 400,000 people to the town in August.

The fleadh was last held in Ennis in 1977 and an oversized fiddle, bodhran, and concertina on the fleadh float announced the its return. Prop maker Tommy Casby was commissioned to design and construct the float.
Some of them were unaware that St Patrick is Irelands patron saint but it did not put them off joining in the fun and frolics.

Parisienne Valentine Turpaud and his friends looked more Irish than the Irish themselves, sporting everything from Leprechaun hats to viking helmets and, perhaps optimistically, oversized green sunglasses.

Unknown to them as the Apostle of Temperance, they cheerfully raised plastic pint glasses of stout in salute to Fr Mathew, who stood stoney-faced as the multi-cultural parade passed by.

We are having a fantastic time, said Valentines friend Nora. Yes, she said, its a French name too.

We are here on an Erasmus scholarship for the past six months and this is the first time I have been at a St. Patricks Day parade. It is great fun and everyone is really friendly.

Alexis and Christopher, also from Paris, were enjoying the parade but, in common with many of their Irish companions, were also anxious to get back to the pub and enjoy le craic.

All were anxious to get a good view of the street theatre, pageantry, and the 3,000 people from community and voluntary groups who were on the march.

Bai, from Beijing and who is studying at UCC, said the parade reminded him of similar events at home. Its not as big as we have, but it is more fun and very friendly, he said.

Members of the Massachusetts State Police strode ramrod-straight from the Mall to St Patrick St. It was a bitter-sweet moment for them as their participation in the parade came a day after one of their members was killed in the line of duty.

Colonel Richard McKeon, Superintendent of Massachusetts State Police described Trooper Thomas L Clardy, 44, as a good trooper and a great man and said his colleagues were devastated by the loss.

Cork City Lord Mayor Chris OLeary and his family travelled the route in a vintage car, while the Grand Marshals of the parade were deemed to be the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, with actors re-enacting scenes from the Rising.

On the parade stand the Lord Mayor presented Josephine McSwiney (101) from Crookstown and Mary McGrath (100) from Barrack St, both centenarians, with crystal vases to mark the occasion.

Among the favourite bits of paddywhackery on show were green moustaches while St Patrick himself played lively jigs under Mangans clock.

A giddy collection from the Irish Redhead Convention added a splash of ginger as they sashayed from the South Mall to the viewing stand. Every single one of them was sporting a ginger head, even the bald ones.

The gleaming golden helmets of Cork City Fire Brigade shone against the leaden skies as they strode behind a smoking chimney on rollers. UN veterans drew widespread applause as they walked behind a contingent of Irish army soldiers brandishing gleaming rifles with bayonets fixed.

Jesus! I hope they are not loaded, screeched an excitable young woman. I presume she means the guns, an older man nearby joked.

The parade can be viewed on www.corkcity.ie/TV
IRISH women werent welcome when the time came to fight in 1916. Eamon de Valera refused to let them into Bolands Mills, one of several rebel garrisons around Dublin city. He reckoned they wouldnt have the stomach for fighting, unlike his men. His fellow rebel leader Ned Daly was of the same mind.

Catherine Byrne, however, was one of 200 women during the Easter Rising who werent for turning. She kicked in a window at the GPO on Dublins Sackville St, jumped through it and landed on top of another Irish Volunteer so she could get in on the action. Aoife de Burca, a nurse featured in the RTE television documentary Seven Women, got a taxi to bring herself and her luggage into Dublin so she could do her bit.

Still womens parts were belittled. Margaret Skinnider, for example  who shot several British soldiers as a sniper during the week of fighting and was wounded while setting fire to a British outpost on Harcourt St, and is also one of the characters featured in the documentary  was turned down a military pension because it was assumed to be a combatant was to be male.

AIRBRUSHED IMAGE

Perhaps the most famous image of the rebellion is the picture taken of Padraig Pearse surrendering to Brigadier General William Lowe. Nurse Elizabeth OFarrell stands beside Pearse, but she is obscured. Its only possible to see her feet. In some of the press photos that did the rounds afterwards, she is airbrushed out of the frame.

Its a big sexual politics thing, isnt it? says Fiona Shaw, the presenter of the documentary. Most history in the world has been a male history, but the activity of actually eradicating women from history, particularly that piece of history, at the very moment that the proclamation was declaring that Irishmen and Irishwomen would be equal was quite surprising.

The documentary makes the point that the women who risked their lives taking part in the Easter Rising  many of whom were forced into roles as couriers, which was more hazardous than, say, sitting in the GPO  would have been better off staying in the United Kingdom, as far as civil rights were concerned, than the society fashioned for them in De Valeras 1937 Constitution.

Its very true, says Shaw, who was born in 1958, and studied philosophy at UCC before becoming a star of the stage and cinema. I dont know to what extent women were conscious when they took part in that revolution that they were in some way heading towards the vote or equality. Some of them, as the documentary states, genuinely thought they were part of a new world where the thinking would be different, but when I think of my own upbringing in Cork and realise how utterly segregated women were from men Im not sure it didnt get worse in the ensuing decades.

She points out how the church was the centre of a town. Girls werent allowed to be altar boys or participate in the church in any way. Women were told that they were a temple for the Holy Spirit and their job was to defend that position only, to be passive, quiet. We learnt the 1916 proclamation at school but just by rote, as though it had nothing to do with us at all. Nobody ever debated it.

They were brought up to believe that men were more suited to the running of countries than women. It would be good for women to take more responsibility in the government of Ireland, but the signal we were given was that it was mens work. That prevailed right into the 1970s: Dont bother your heads too much with politics; it isnt for you.

In the end it was domestic and medical legislation that allowed equal rights to rear its head. The issues of contraception and abortion have allowed women to take part properly in the political debate in Ireland. In my time, we were very excluded from the politics of the country. Women didnt talk about politics very much. I remember I used to go to the debating club at university  The Philosoph, which was good for a shout  and it was all men debating.

Countess Markievicz is one of the women profiled in the documentary, which also features an actress, a teacher, a courier and the eye witness Elsie Mahaffy, the daughter of Trinity Colleges provost, the great wit John Pentland Mahaffy, who, when asked what the difference was between a man and a woman, responded: I cant conceive.

A scene from Seven Women

BRUTAL SHOOTING

One of the most jarring episodes of Seven Women is the reconstruction of a scene from the Easter Rising when Countess Markievicz shot an unarmed policeman walking through St Stephens Green. I got him, she shrieked excitedly. Her comrades shook her hand and congratulated her on her feat.

Markievicz later blazed a trail as the first woman to be elected to parliament at Westminster in 1918, although, tellingly, Sinn Fein only put forward two women in that election. Most of the other women who survived the Easter Rising became marginalised. Some emigrated, some lost their husbands or family members during the War of Independence or the ensuing Civil War.

Even after the queens visit to Ireland, which was such a huge handshake between the two islands that showed its best to look forward and not back, there is an opportunity with this centenary to see the unsung heroes of that time, the people who have been shunned, who did not gain by the rising or indeed by the independence of Ireland, says Shaw. They gave a lot and they didnt gain a lot, but its lovely that we have a chance to look at them again, brush them down, set them up in proper light and give them due credence.

Its a difficult thing to talk about because none of us now wish the thing happened in the way it happened. For a long time, though, we thought it was great the way it happened; the history we were thought at school was that it was marvellous! Or that it was run by an ideology that we would not entirely support now. Revisionism is always going to happen in history, but the one good thing about this centenary is that we have a look at people who I certainly never heard about when I was at school. Its good to look at these under-sung heroines but also its very good for young girls in Ireland to realise that they have a huge part in the inheritance of the country.

Seven Women will broadcast on RTE One, 9.30pm, Sunday
I cant believe these new rules for au pairs. Its totally au revoir to my new nose if we have to pay ours the minimum wage. Its not like we treat the girl badly. I even made her a cup of tea last week when she finished painting the house. Do you have any advice?  Laura, Ballintemple, and not one of the cosy cottages, before you ask.

My mother was only talking about this the other day. She wanted to know where this current generation got the idea that its okay to treat young foreigners like muck. I said from our parents who took in Spanish students during the 1980s and made them live on fishfingers. She wasnt a bit happy. Luckily she couldnt say anything because just then our au pair walked in after cutting the grass. Id be lost without her.

Like totes howz it goin. Me and my girls came down to Cork for Paddys Day because like have you seen Temple Bar? Anyway, Ive just woken up on the couch in an apartment after a party. Theres a guy like sitting at the dining room table in a blue jersey with a yellow stripe across it. Hes drinking milk out of the carton, just like an animal. Is it safe to talk to him?  Pippa-May, I wont be leaving Dublin 4 again for a while.

The guy at the table is from Tipperary. Do not start a conversation. It will just encourage him and Tipperary people are known to be unstable. (They regularly elect Michael Lowry and Alan Kelly. Say no more.) There is an even better reason not to initiate a chat. And thats his reply. It will sound like a man speaking with his head in a barrel of water. Im not even sure they are speaking English.

Guten tag. I have just started working here in Cork and am not sure of the social scene. I currently have Monday and Tuesday off. I went to a pub the other night but there just a drunk guy there who wanted to know if my grandfather was in the Nazis. Then he started singing about Blackpool girls swimming in the nude. Where should I go to meet the ladies for meaningless sex?  Jurgen, Hamburg and St. Lukes.

Im intrigued by your notion of meaningless sex. Are you saying theres another kind? Anyway, have you heard of Crane Lane? Its a lively pub in town thats hopping with a cosmopolitan crowd all week. I like to go in there and hear people speaking in their native tongues. All going well, one of those native tongues will end up down my throat. (Dont tell my Conor. He doesnt realise we have an open marriage.)

Bonjour. I have decided to reverse the normal trend, so I am leaving Paris to propose to my girlfriend. We arrive in Cork next Friday and I would like to make a big fuss to disguise the fact that I have three other girlfriends. (My friends think I am prude.) Where is the most romantic part of Cork city?

Jean Claude, Paris, I need somewhere we can smoke.

Try the Shaky Bridge. Its a pedestrian affair often used by residents of Sundays Well (aka Posh Norries.) They are also known by other names, like Ken and Lucinda. Dont worry about bringing a nice bottle of bubbly to celebrate the occasion. Its Good Friday so every second person will be drinking on the streets. After that Id recommend a romantic walk through Fitzgeralds Park. After all, nothing says je taime more than slaloming around mounds of dog poo.

Howre oo goin on? Im after arranging a date with this younger woman who lives inside in Cork. Between yourself and myself, I might have lied on daul dating website profile. Lets just say add 10 years to my age, 5 stone to my weight, and you still wouldnt be right. My plan is to buy a new outfit that will make me look like a 27-year-old rugby player. Where would I get that in Cork?  Din Jim Jimmy, head west from Durrus until the people start to look like goats.

Your best bet is head to Opera Lane. There are a lot of shops there with sound-proofed changing rooms. Thats so you cant hear middle-aged men roaring, Not a feckin chance, I better lay off the pints and late night cheese burgers. The one exception is Gap. Their stuff is made with Americans in mind. So lets just say theres room for everyone.

Id recommend a romantic walk through Fitzgeralds Park. After all, nothing says je taime more than slaloming around mounds of dog poo
It was a Friday evening in 2002. Niall Smith was preparing to leave the office for the weekend when the phone rang.

The man at the end of line introduced himself. He was Texan, called Gary OKeeffe and he wanted to know where the observatory was in Cork.

Niall Smith, an astrophysicist at CIT, had to tell him that the city didnt have one. OKeeffe said it was a pity and that one should be developed. Smith had to agree with him.

So myself and Alan Giltinan started looking for sites with Gary and we spent the best part of two years in farmers fields, different locations, looking at dark sites, essentially. But the cost of buying land prohibited our plans, plus we had planning and rezoning issues.

Two years later, Cork City Council bought the 16th-century Blackrock Castle from an engineering company. Its tower, three miles from the city centre, was built by the citizens of Cork in 1582 to protect the harbour from pirates.

Smith sent off a two-liner letter to the then city manager Joe Gavin suggesting that it would be a great site for an observatory. They were shocked when Gavin came back to them quickly, said he really liked the idea and asked for a two-pager expanding on their plans.

Co-founders of the Blackrock Castle Observatory , Alan Giltinan, systems manager, Blackrock Castle Observatory, and Dr Niall Smith, head of research CIT. Picture: Gavin Browne

Shortly afterwards, we found out it had been given the green light by the council. It was like all our Christmases had come together. Following much renovation, we opened in 2007.

When Blackrock Castle was built, people did not even understand what stars were. In fact, Blackrock Castle pre-dates the invention of the telescope, says Smith, sitting in his office surrounded by research papers. A phrase we use about our location is 21st-century technology in a 16th-century castle.

Blackrock is a working observatory, generating new knowledge. Its a science and discovery centre with PhD students actively conducting research.

Much of the research we do has its basis in conversations we had with Aidan OConnor, who, like Gary Keeffe, is now deceased. Aidan was a lecturer and a brilliant researcher and intimately involved with discussions about BCO at the outset. He also did a lot of the original data analysis.

A primary function of the observatory is educating children, under the tutelage of the effervescent performance astronomer Frances McCarthy, who has a degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Toronto and experience in interactive museums around the world.

Weve been running a project called TARA, where we allow children to remotely operate a small telescope on the roof of a school in California and the key thing is the eight-hour time difference as it allows Irish children during the day to see the US skies at night.

We are now installing a telescope in Pune, India. They are five-and-a-half hours ahead, which means we can access it in the afternoon and also later for after-school clubs. The telescope in California also gives opportunities for Irish children to interact with American children. This has been moderately successful, but we are breaking new ground.

We also have an agreement to get access to a bigger telescope in California at the world-famous Lick Observatory, which is linked with University of California, Berkeley. We are looking to raise 20,000 to allow 50 nights access to the telescope. This telescope has more than six times the light-collecting ability of the telescope at Blackrock Castle, but it is also in a dark site. The quality of the images for the children will be amazing. You could track an asteroid, for example, with this telescope, or look at distant quasars. These are among the most distant objects in the universe. The children will be able to search for supernova, stars that are dying or forming, theres a universe of stuff you can see with it.

Whats interesting is that nobody outside ourselves will have access to the Lick telescope for this kind of project. Basically, they liked our project TARA... bringing astronomy into schools. Smith says the figures speak for themselves when it came to the observatorys popularity.

Children at the observatory. Picture: Gavin Browne

We will have over 30,000 children doing workshops, either in the castle or through our outreach programme this year. We also have another 30,000 drop-in visitors. On top of that, we have another 50,000 who visit the castle site and while most would be going to the popular Castle restaurant, they still see our exhibits in the courtyard, so they are being touched and made aware of science, even if its only marginally.

A number of times during the year, Cork Astronomy Club bring their telescopes to the castle for observing sessions that are open to the public.

Prepare to be spaced out: On a clear night, you would see about two-thirds of the way across the universe with the Blackrock Castle telescope. Thats about 30bn light years.

We dont even have the biggest telescope in Cork  an amateur astronomer has one twice the size  but the work we are doing is important in developing techniques in observing. Size doesnt always count. We can take the techniques we are developing and apply them elsewhere on bigger telescopes. The future looks good for the observatory, which is managed on behalf of CIT by a wholly-owned subsidiary, Cosmos Education, says Smith.

BCO had its most successful year last year, but, importantly, secured two generous grants in recognition of its work to date.

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upward & leads us from this world to another" -Plato (c Killian Jackson Photo) pic.twitter.com/qHdxM0niD7  MTU Blackrock Castle Observatory (@blackrockcastle) February 25, 2016

We became a Science Foundation Ireland strategic partner and were allocated 200,000 over two years. It will allow us to develop further our workshops. There is also a new national STEM ( science, technology, engineering and maths) week called Space Week, which runs from October 8-15, which we are co-ordinating on a national level. The national element of Space Week is important, as it allows us to strengthen our influence outside the confines of Cork.

The space industry is growing in Ireland, there are 50 companies on the Enterprise Ireland list connected with space, working largely with the European space industry.

Failte Ireland also provided a 160,000 grant to the castle.

We will use this to cover the castles long maritime history but with science and technology threaded throughout the story. We are all about STEM, so its important for us. Our remit is to engage and enthuse. That can be challenging but incredibly rewarding when you get it right.

Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork City, looking splendid last night @blackrockcastle @deric_hartigan pic.twitter.com/2WuwoqHEyb  John Delaney (@Johndelx) March 13, 2016

Niall Smith is starting a new monthly Sky Matters column in the Irish Examiner from Monday. He wants to encourage people to look up at the sky with their naked eye to observe whats happening overhead.

Birr to Chile: Some cool views around the world
VIEWERS of the American political TV drama, House of Cards will be unsurprised by the risk of misallocation of scarce resources caused by excessive access and privilege afforded to powerful groups that comprise the Deep State  it is the stuff of human behaviour, the silent hand of soft power.

Americas Depression leader, President Roosevelt, didnt mince his words alerting US citizens that behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

President Eisenhowers broadcast when departing his office in 1961 named part of the Deep State: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex.

Speaking truth to power isnt easy, neither is it rewarding in a country like Ireland whose own version of its Deep State appears entrenched and immune from a political system that remains mired in the shoe leather of constituency clientelism, selecting every few years those best at playing the local game to the national chamber in the uncertain hope that the long-term national interest will be served.

In truth, it matters not to the Irish Deep State who controls the Dail chamber, so long as sufficient power rests outside it to allow the organism to fulfil its primary purpose, which is to survive and thrive.

The Irish Deep State is a nexus of relationships comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, bank executives, public trade union brass, top accountancy firms, multinational corporations, IBEC, agencies like RTE, regulators and quangos and is defended by an outer circle of those most dependent on it.

You certainly wont hear about it on the State broadcaster nor among the panels stuffed with net takers, university lecturers for the most part, who find it hard to accept their role in a Deep State which stood by while the worst parts of the last depression were privatised, namely the job losses and emigration that devastated the indigenous Irish economy and emaciated its private working poor and most indebted.

You wont hear President Higgins name it and neither, sadly, are you likely to hear it in a media nervous of a litigious billionaire, nor among Irelands conventional political classes who live in perpetual fear of upsetting it. But its there in plain sight, just follow the money, power and privileges:

Despite causing social devastation, the surviving bank officer class leaned over the shoulders of Government and ensured that the Insolvency Act maintained the chronic imbalance between creditor and debtor, ensnaring tens of thousands of Irish workers in open-ended stress while many of the most powerful got write-downs and, some, salaries.

Trade unions which ought to be principally fighting for the weakest and most vulnerable to exploitation by pernicious private sector employers, crossed to the Deep State lured by gains from Benchmarking for which no notes exist, in deals linking their personal remuneration to the top echelons of the Civil Service and which are a multiple of those of ordinary workers.

In the last round, the drawbridge was pulled up, with open pricing against new teachers, for example. Its why (and, despite constant demonisation) Ive consistently named public sector trade unions, a price-fixing cartel.

Despite linking the dismantling of the last remnants of protectionism in the professions to the conditions of Irelands controversial bailout, the legal profession escaped the fulsome reforms that accompanied the removal of protective barriers in all others.

There is to be no fall in Irelands very high legal costs, leaving barriers for many consumers elevated. FOI requests reveal evidence of official lobbying by the Bar Council and Law Society but there will be no trace of the impact of the galvanised efforts of its most powerful members.

Irish society is within two decades of a chronic social crisis characterised by retirement apartheid as most of the private workforce face retirement poverty. The unfunded pension debt in the social insurance scheme is 324 billion but remains unspoken among the political class because to do so means grasping the nettle of the 100bn in the public sector scheme debt, the reform of which would most threaten the top echelons including long-serving senior politicians whose retirement benefits run into several millions and rank as the largest asset on their balance sheet.

No clearer example exists of the Deep State than the manner through which the early retirement scheme was fattened with benefits during the worst hours of Irelands depression and then immunised from taxation on its biggest pensions by ensuring the economic cost was understated and matched by free life cover to pay off Revenue debt on premature death for anyone unfortunate to be caught. Meanwhile over 2bn was appropriated from private pensions, by threatening the guardians, pension trustees, with daily fines of 380 for any delays.

Adjusting for its youthful population, Irelands spending on health relative to GNP is among the highest in Europe, with some of the worst outcomes. Its not just about money. Eleven years after forming the HSE, it still has no centralised HR system or digitised patient files and over 50 different invoice systems  whod stand to lose?

Bending to internal interests, the Government allowed the HSE a second outing to compress the huge National Childrens Hospital into the wrong location, the latest at St James expected to cost over 800m for which the Irish people could get both a childrens and a maternity hospital co-locating at the vast green field Connolly Hospital site, off the M50.

The 31st Dail elected on the promise of reform, delivered the largest state agency since the HSE, with no efficiencies and conceived in a room comprising 33 local councils, trade union chiefs and the Minister for the Environment, a meeting without notes, the template for which was set by Benchmarking.

Irish Water is a shambles, rejected by the Irish people whose ownership of water, like all natural resources, was alienated in the 1937 Constitution by de Valera when he took ownership of it to the State and prevented the Irish people from challenging its guardianship through their courts which is why there are protests on the streets.

The attitude, especially to whistleblowers, those within the gardai, exposed the cultural reflex in favour of secrecy and protection, behind which the Deep State gets its work done. The opposite is a culture of openness, engagement, accountability and a strongly independent, free-thinking press.

These, among many other reasons, are why I deem Irish democracy to be captive both externally, by EU rules and a credit market for highly indebted countries and, internally. It is evidently weak and chatter about breakthroughs driven by arithmetic following the general election lacks credibility.

Government of the Irish people, by the Irish people, for the Irish people, cannot properly exist, outside of short general election windows, without a polar shift in power, pushing down to local government and communities, empowering Dail committees and replacing Punch and Judy politics with collegiate engagement and open debate, that depoliticises budget setting in particular.

The answer to balancing Deep State power is deep access, transparency, and accountability. Government in the sunshine, led by a fully modernised public sector energised by fresh leaders running teams driven by performance and not dampened by the secrecy, obduracy and conservativeness of an Edwardian legacy, where longevity and not merit is most treasured.

Meanwhile, to take the posturing, opinion and guesswork out of social progress, it ought to be measured at grassroots across a range of outcomes like literacy, education, health, crime detection and equality. These measures of social impacts could feed into a single annual measurement of social progress so that we do not stumble forward venerating GDP, praying for its trickle down, but instead utilise our best experts to depoliticise the debate by scientifically reporting to the Irish people how well or otherwise we are translating economic activity into a range of social outcomes.

An annual Social Progress Index can inform healthy debate about how tax transfers ought to be best weighted, using left of centre or right of centre policies  whatever works best.

Eddie Hobbs is a financial advisor.
IF all else appears to be in a state of confusion, following the general election, it is clear that any impetus for a referendum to change the Constitution on abortion has been somewhat deflated.

Fianna Fail seem set to form part either of a government in coalition with Fine Gael, or to be pivotal to a minority Fine Gael government that is dependent on them for support. Fianna Fail collectively come out in a rash when faced with the prospect of anything that would liberalise or clarify our abortion laws. Enda Kenny is not far behind. The Labour Party will no longer be there to give a liberal prod in the right direction.

During the election campaign, Fianna Fail leader, Micheal Martin, was asked a number of times about his stance on abortion and he would answer consistently that he was essentially pro-life and not in favour of a referendum on the Eighth amendment, which gives effect to the abortion ban. Hugely in keeping with his manner of leadership, he has proposed that the issue be hived-off to a judge-led commission to decide on the best way forward, provided, no doubt, that the judge in question does not propose a referendum.

Last year, he said it would pose considerable difficulty if a potential coalition partner wanted the repealing of the Eighth Amendment included in a programme for government.

He is hardly likely to view his partys unexpected electoral success as a message that he should change the Fianna Fail stance on abortion.

Elsewhere, we look at the raft of TDs who are known for their liberal views, and who played prominent roles in the same-sex marriage referendum, but who got the chop from the electorate, among them Alan Shatter, Jerry Buttimer, Aodhain ORiordain, Alex White, Ciara Conway, John Lyons and James Reilly, the former Fine Gael deputy leader.

The common wisdom is that it was an interview given by Dr Reilly, towards the end of last year, when he called for a referendum, which backed Enda Kenny into the corner of proposing a Citizens Convention to deal with abortion. The Taoiseach was convinced by senior ministers, primarily Paschal Donohoe, that something had to be done, and that the convention proposal also defused abortion somewhat as a potential election issue.

But just a few months prior to that, the Taoiseach had said of the Eighth Amendment: I do not favour abortion on demand and I have no intention of abolishing the Eighth Amendment, without considering what it might be that might replace it.

In other words, it would be no surprise to discover that, in any potential negotiation for government, Mr Kenny might not lose too much sleep if there was no Citizens Convention.

So far so depressing for those who were hoping to see significant change, and who felt that momentum had been building since the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar.

But it is worth looking beneath the more obvious post-election facts, not least that Enda Kenny may not be leader of Fine Gael for too much longer.

But of even more relevance is the manner in which the debate has moved on in Irish society; those in favour of change are far less shy of speaking out about it.

Prior to the general election, a number of candidates signed up to the National Womens Council of Irelands Breakthrough Manifesto for Women. A part of that was a pledge to support reproductive rights and repeal the Eighth Amendment by delivering a referendum to remove the Eighth Amendment from our Constitution, and bring Ireland in line with international human rights standards.

The Abortion Rights Campaign, and coalition of pro-choice groups in Ireland, also gathered signatures to call for a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. They invited people to sign the petition and join the movement to repeal the Eighth Amendment and pave the way for a more equal, safe, and healthy Ireland.

Amnesty International have tallied the number of newly elected TDs who signed either one or both pledges, or whose party position backs change, and so there are 64 TDs in the new Dail, or just over 40%, in favour of repealing the Eighth amendment.

Clearly, the overwhelming majority of these are outside Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Many of the candidates from those two parties would have explained that they were instructed not to sign up to the policy platforms of other organisations.

In other words, the result does not factor in the people in both parties who may also be supportive.

It is party policy for Sinn Fein, the Social Democrats, and PbP/AAA to support change. But there could obviously be instances, if it came to it, of individual deputies deciding to vote against, such as happened with Sinn Feins Peadar Toibin, who lost the party whip when he opposed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill.

So while, on initial examination, it appears as if the case for a referendum received a serious knock-back with the result of the election, there is no ignoring the fact that a significant section of the new Dail is in favour of it going ahead.

There is comfort in the results of opinion polls, not least the recent Red C poll, carried out for Amnesty International.

It found that, overall, 87% of Irish people are in favour of expanding abortion in Ireland beyond the current legislation.

The debate, within that figure, relates to the circumstances in which the law should extend to such as fatal-foetal abnormalities, or rape, or incest, or a woman simply making the choice to have an abortion. According to the same poll, just under one in six Irish people agree that expanding access to abortion should be one of the priorities for the next government, while almost three-quarters of people agreeing that politicians need to show leadership, and deal proactively with widening access to abortion.

So while the main parties are busy not talking to each other right now about how they might make sense of the result of the general election, we can only hope that, if and when they do, one of the issues that gets scheduled for discussion is abortion. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have committed to taking particular action. My personal preference would be for a the citizens assembly, but, in proposing a judge-led commission, Fianna Fail is also acknowledging that something needs to be done.
The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians, Yazidis because they are Yazidis, Shiites because they are Shiites, Mr Kerry said, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym, and accusing it of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for the US to argue for greater action against the group, it does not create a legal obligation on the US to do more.

On Wednesday, US state department spokesman Mark Toner said: Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.

IS militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing control of large swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The groups videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks, and drowned in cages lowered into swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

US president Barack Obama has ordered air strikes against the group but has not made any large commitment of US troops on the ground.

It may strengthen our hand getting other countries to help, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It may free us against some [legal] constraints, but the reality is that when you are fighting somebody, you dont need another reason to fight them.

Mr Kerry argued that the US has done much to fight the group since the start of air strikes in 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why the Obama administration had not done more to prevent genocide.

Historians have asked the same question about Darfur and Rwanda, both places where the US also concluded that genocide had taken place.

IS militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in Iraq, though US officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the amount of territory the group controls in both.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died. A fragile cessation of hostilities has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.
There is huge international interest in Nefertiti, who died in the 14th century BC and is thought to be Tutankhamuns stepmother. Confirmation of her final resting place would be the most remarkable Egyptian archaeological find this century.

An analysis of radar scans of the site, last November, has revealed the presence of two empty spaces behind two walls in King Tuts chamber, antiquities minister Mamdouh el-Damaty told a news conference.

The scans point to different things behind the walls, different material that could be metal, could be organic, he said.

Mr Damaty said in November there was a 90% chance that something was behind the walls of King Tuts chamber, following an initial radar scan that had been sent to Japan for analysis.

A more advanced scan will be conducted at the end of this month, with an international research team to confirm whether the empty spaces are, in fact, chambers. Only then, Mr Damaty said, can he discuss the possibility of how, and when, a team could enter the rooms.

We can say, more than 90%, that the chambers are there, he said. But I never start the next step until Im 100%.

The find could be a boon for Egypts ailing tourism industry, which has suffered numerous setbacks since an uprising toppled autocrat, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011, but remains a vital source of foreign currency.

British egyptologist Nicholas Reeves who is leading the investigation, believes that Tutankhamuns mausoleum was originally occupied by Nefertiti, and that she lies undisturbed behind what he believes is a partition wall.

The discovery of Nefertiti, whose chiseled cheek-bones and regal beauty were immortalised in a 3,300-year old bust, now on display in a Berlin museum, would shed fresh light on what remains a mysterious period of Egyptian history.

It can be the discovery of the century. Its very important for Egyptian history and the history of the world, said Mr Damaty.
The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), linked to militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey, said they carried out Sundays bombing, and vowed further strikes to avenge military operations in the largely Kurdish southeast.

Berlin closed its embassy in Ankara, consulate in Istanbul, and German schools in both cities, citing concrete and very serious indications of terror attacks being prepared against its properties. It was not clear if the threat to German interests also came from Kurdish militants.

We have hundreds of members ready to conduct suicide attacks, TAK said on its website, describing Sundays bombing as revenge for military operations in the southeast, where hundreds of people, including civilians, soldiers, police, and militants have been killed since July.

It is the second suicide bombing in a month in Ankara that was claimed by TAK, opening a dangerous new phase in Turkeys war with Kurdish militants, as deadly attacks spread to its biggest cities, well beyond the southeast. The government sees the rising violence as linked to the war in neighbouring Syria, where three Kurdish-controlled regions voted to approve the establishment of a federal system in the north.

Ankara fears Kurdish ambitions in Syria are fuelling separatism at home. It says Kurdish militants in Turkey have deep ideological and logistical ties with Kurdish groups in Syria, and have brought weapons and fighters across the border.

That has complicated international efforts to end the war in Syria, and raised tensions with Washington, which has backed Syrian Kurdish militia fighters against Islamic State.

TAK said it had been targeting the security forces in Ankara and had not intended to kill members of the public. But it said civilian deaths were inevitable.

Security officials have said the two perpetrators of the Ankara bombing, a man and a woman, were linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launched an armed uprising in southeastern Turkey, in 1984, to press for Kurdish autonomy.

AK, which also claimed a February car bombing in Ankara that killed 29 people, says it has split from the PKK, but experts say they retain close links.

A senior PKK commander described the previous Ankara attack as payback, saying Turkey could see thousands of such bombings for its policies toward Kurds.
The first lady made her debut at the Austin showcase of buzzworthy bands and technology, sitting with Grammy winners Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott, to talk about girls education and empowerment.

However, Mrs Obama broke into song when reflecting on seven years in the White House. She said time is almost up, before softly singing some of the Boyz II Men hit Its So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.

Mrs Obama says she will most miss interacting with people  but says she has no presidential aspirations of her own. No, no. Not going to do it, she told the packed, convention-centre crowd in liberal Austin.

She mentioned her teenage daughters, Malia and Sasha, as two of the main reasons. The daughters of a president. Just think about it. Come on, young people. Not so easy, Mrs. Obama said. Theyve handled it with grace and with poise, but enough is enough.

Mrs Obama steered clear of hot-button topics. She instead promoted her Let Girls Learn initiative, which encourages world leaders to provide education to the 62m girls globally who do not attend school.

She also says she will not disappear from public view, or slow down, once she leaves the White House next year.

Sometimes, theres much more you can do outside the White House, without the constraints, the lights and the cameras, and the partisanship, Mrs Obama said.

Theres a potential that my voice can be heard by many people, who cant hear me now, because Im Michelle Obama, the first lady. I want to be able to impact as many people as possible in an unbiased way.
This government is obsessed with hugging koalas. Weve had A$400,000 which included [foreign minister] Julie Bishop paying A$133,000 to fly four koalas to Singapore Zoo, opposition minister Pat Conroy said outside parliament.

She spent, I think it was A$130,000, taking diplomats to Western Australia where they hugged wombats for a change  so at least they changed up the marsupial.

It was not immediately clear how the figures were reached.

Australias marsupials, including koalas and kangaroos, are mammals that mostly carry their young in a pouch and are a major tourist draw for the country.

The report also flagged the cost of koala hire during the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane, in which then Australian prime minister Tony Abbott famously threatened to shirt-front Russian premier Vladimir Putin. Shirt-fronting is a term for a crude tackle in Aussie Rules.

Tony Abbott ... was talking about shirt-fronting Vladimir Putin, but in the end, he spent A$24,000 on letting him hug a koala.

Mr Abbott was ousted as prime minister by Malcolm Turnbull last September.

Australians Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Luna makes ocean return

USA:

Fishermen like to tell stories, but Nick Haworth will have a whopper of a tale.

The California mans beloved dog, Luna, has returned more than a month after she fell overboard in the Pacific Ocean and was presumed drowned.

The one-year-old German shepherd was spotted on Tuesday on San Clemente Island, a Navy-owned training base 110km off San Diego.

The blue-eyed pup disappeared on February 10 as Mr Haworth, a commercial fisherman from San Diego, worked on a boat more than 3km from the island.

They were pulling in their [lobster] traps, and one minute Luna was there, and the next minute she was gone, said Sandy DeMunnik, spokeswoman for Naval Base Coronado. They looked everywhere for her. They couldnt see her. The water was dark, shes dark.

Mr Haworth notified Navy personnel.

He insisted that he was 90% sure that she made it to shore because she was such a strong swimmer, said Ms DeMunnik.

Mr Haworth searched the waters for about two days and Navy staff searched the island for about a week but found no sign of Luna.

She was presumed lost at sea until Tuesday morning, when staff arriving for work at the islands Naval Auxiliary Landing Field spotted something unusual  a dog sitting by the side of the road. Domestic animals arent allowed on the island for environmental reasons.

It was Luna.

She was just sitting there wagging her tail, Ms DeMunnik said. The staff called to Luna, and she came over.

A biologist then examined the dog and found her a little thin but otherwise healthy.

It looks like she was surviving on rodents and dead fish that had washed up, said Ms DeMunnik.

The biologist called Mr Haworth, who was out of state working in the middle of a lake. He was overwhelmed. He was so happy and grateful, Ms DeMunnik said.

Dog swallows polar bear

USA:

A veterinarian helped save the life of an ailing New Mexico dog after discovering the source of the pups pain  a 15cm long, 5cm wide stuffed polar bear.

Santa Fe Animal Humane officials told KRQE-TV in Albuquerque that the bear was discovered in the dogs stomach during surgery.

A veterinarian said the dog named Honey had been sick for about a week and would have likely died within two days. The dog is now expected to survive.

Game is up, chicken baron

ROMANIA:

A court has upheld the prison sentence of a former Romanian lawmaker known as the chicken baron who was convicted of bribing voters with 60 tons of packaged, ready-to-fry meat.

The top court of appeal rejected the appeal of Florin Popescu, who went on trial in 2014, a court official said.

Popescu bought 60 tons of chicken for 485,000 lei (108,000) for his campaign for another term as local council chairman in June 2012 elections. He protested he had not even eaten a chicken wing.

Popescu later won a Parliament seat, but resigned on March 2. Romanian politicians reputedly have previously handed out oil and flour to voters in rural areas.

Police foil nun on the run

USA:

State police say a 78-year-old nun was caught shoplifting $23 worth of coffee, snacks, and toiletries from a Pennsylvania store.

Troopers say Sister Agnes Pennino was seen taking the items from the Surplus Outlet near Berwick on Monday.

WNEP-TV reports police determined the woman captured on surveillance video was the nun who lived about 30km away at a convent in Danville.

The nun will likely face a fine if shes convicted.
Mr Putin, who ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian warplanes from Syria earlier this week, said that Russia has kept some forces there to support the Syrian armys action against the Islamic State, the Nusra Front, and other extremist groups.

He said that the Russian military is ready to use its air defence missile systems in Syria against any targets that would threaten our servicemen.

Mr Putins statement underlined Russias intention to maintain a strong military presence in Syria to keep its gains, after a five-month air campaign that has turned the tide of war and allowed Syrian president Bashar Assads forces to make significant advances.

Speaking during a Kremlin ceremony honouring Russian military officers who have taken part in Syria, mr Putin said that the campaign has demonstrated Russias leadership, will, and responsibility in preventing the growth of a tumour of terrorism.

Russian warplanes have conducted 9,000 combat missions since the air campaign began, on September 30, allowing the Syrian army to gain strategic initiative, Mr Putin said.

He said the military spent 33bn rubles ($480m), which it had previously earmarked for manoeuvres, in financing the Syrian campaign.

There is no more efficient way of training than real combat, he said, adding that the military action in Syria allowed the Russian armed forces to test its long-range cruise missiles, and other new weapons, in real action.

Mr Putin added that a Russian- and US-brokered ceasefire, which began on February 27, has allowed Russia to reduce its military presence in Syria.

The number of Russian air missions in Syria has dropped from 60-80 to 20-30 a day, so some warplanes could be sent home, he said, but he did not say how many would stay.

Mr Putin said Mr Assad had been told in advance about the Russian pullout and supported the decision.

Mr Putin praised the Syrian ruler for what he described as his readiness to contribute to a peaceful settlement.

We have seen him show restraint and demonstrating a sincere striving for peace and readiness for compromise and dialogue, he said. Mr Putin voiced hope that the partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria would help Syrian peace talks, which began in Geneva on Monday.

While praising co-operation with the US in negotiating the truce, Mr Putin warned that the Russian military that would remain in Syria would be ready to act against any groups that violated the ceasefire.
Business KBZ Bank, Army-Run Companies Among Top Corporate Tax Payers

According to Burmas Internal Revenue Department, Kanbawza Bank (KBZ) tops the list of corporate tax payers for 2014-15, along with army-owned companies.

RANGOON  According to Burmas Internal Revenue Department, Kanbawza (KBZ) Bank tops the list of corporate tax payers for 2014-15, along with army-owned companies.

The department on Friday identified online the names of the countrys top 50 tax-paying companies, saying it would release the rest of a top-1,000 list on its website at a later date. Banks are well-represented on the list, making up five of the top 50 tax-paying companies.

KBZ Bank paid 22 billion kyats ($18.1 million) in taxes for 2014-15, securing the No. 1 spot. This is more than double the figure of the second-place company on the list, Myawaddy Bank, which paid less than 10 billion kyats. The top five was rounded out by Denko Trading Company, Myawaddy Trading Company and Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) in third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Myawaddy Bank, Myawaddy Trading Company and UMEHL are run by the military.

Nyo Myint, senior managing director of the KBZ Group of Companies, told The Irrawaddy that this is fourth time that KBZ Bank has topped the list.

The tax amount grows each year as we offer more services, products and customers, and I hope that these amounts will only continue to increase next year, Nyo Myint said.

Founded in the 1990s in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, and owned by Aung Ko Win, the KBZ Group of Companies owns one of Burmas largest banks and also has business interests in several other sectors. Crucially, it is not on the US Treasury Departments blacklist, unlike a number of other large conglomerates in Burma. Aung Ko Wins name did appear for a time on the Australian and European Unions sanctions lists, targeted for his ties to Burmas former military regime, but he was removed shortly after the government of President Thein Sein assumed power in 2011.

Shwe Taung Development Company, ranked 12th, was the sole construction company to be included in the top 20. The rest are banking and trading companies. The well-known Asia World Company, led by US-blacklisted Steven Law, also known as Tun Myint Naing, came in at No. 22.

The Internal Revenue Department has said previously that its tax collection methods are improving and that government revenues generated from taxes are increasing.
Buddhist Nationalist Monks to Protest Christian VP-Elect

A group of Buddhist nationalists plan to protest the NLDs selection of a Christian vice president, saying it is not the will of majority-Buddhist Burma.

RANGOON  A group of nationalist Buddhist monks and supporters are preparing to protest the National League for Democracy (NLD) for appointing a Christian vice president-elect this month.

The group, called Buddha Gonyi, claims to be a protector of the Buddhist religion. Its leader, Ashin Aggadhamma, told The Irrawaddy that his members have already asked a police station in Rangoons Bahan Township for permission to stage the protest.

The NLD chose Henry Van Thio, an ethnic Chin Christian, as a vice presidential nominee last week, and this week Parliament confirmed him for that post. He will be the first Christian vice president in the majority-Buddhist country.

Ashin Aggadhamma, who will lead the protest, offered a nuanced or perhaps merely perplexing explanation for the groups objection to Van Thio: We arent protesting because he is Christian. Our country is Buddhist; 80 percent of the population is Buddhist. That is why we are against the NLD appointing a Christian vice president.

He said his group is worried about future violence if the Christian vice president were ever put in a position to run the country.

Once the group receives permission from the police in Bahan Township, where the NLD headquarters is located, its members will launch a protest to show the party their disapproval.

It is a democratic system, he said. As a democracy, the NLD will have to listen to the voice of the people.

Buddhist nationalists have made headlines in recent years as an unfolding democratic transition has allowed for greater freedom of expression, most often for anti-Muslim rhetoric, but also late last year following a highly charged trial in Thailand that saw two Burmese Buddhist migrant workers convicted in a controversial double murder case.
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="108382,108383,108384,108385,108386,108387"] MANDALAY  After several months of delays, restoration work on Mandalays Golden Palace Monastery, one of the citys ancient sites, resumed on Thursday. Repairs will begin in the southern part of the building by replacing the decayed, century-old teak wood columns along the balcony, as work to fix the flooring. According to the New York-based World Monuments Fund (WMF), which is heavily involved with the restoration efforts of the Golden Palace Monastery, about 20 columns need complete replacement, while others need only partial repair. New teak logs from Karenni State were chemically treated so that they would be protected from both weather and termites. Founded over 50 years ago, the WMF joined with Burmas Ministry of Culture in 2013 to preserve the 19th-century teak wood monastery, also known Shwe Nan Daw Kyaung. The monastery was once a royal chamber of King Mindon, who reigned from 1853 until 1878, and was covered with gold leaf and glass mosaics and adorned with intricate woodcarvings. After King Mindon passed away, his son, King Thibaw, moved the chamber out of the palace compound and transformed it into a monastery for fear that the kings spirit might haunt the building. Unlike most historical buildings in Mandalay, the Golden Palace Monastery survived aerial bombardment during World War II, and is the only original structure of the former royal palace which remains.
Burma NLD Leadership Irked By Medias Htin Kyaw Driver Gaff: Source

A long-time NLD member reflects on the incorrect labelling of the President-elect as a former driver by both state-run and international media.

RANGOON  According to a long-time National League for Democracy (NLD) member close to chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi, international news outlets incorrect branding of President-elect Htin Kyaw as her former driver is reminiscent of press from a darker era in Burmas history.

After Htin Kyaws nomination for the presidency by the NLD in Parliament on March 10for which he was officially selected the following weekinternational outlets including the Agence France-Presse wire service, CNN and the UKs Telegraph all published headlines and content referring to him as Suu Kyis personal driver.

In reality, Htin Kyaw is a writer and an executive member of a Suu Kyi-led charity.

The NLD source wished to remain anonymous since the partys official spokesperson was not available for comment, but he told The Irrawaddy that the reference caused embarrassment to senior members of the NLD, including the chairwoman.

It is inappropriate to mention the countrys president as a driver, he told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday. The media shouldnt write as [they] like. The way [they] write pisses off the leadership, he added.

It should be noted that before his name was put forward for the presidency, Htin Kyaw was relatively unknown in Burmas political scene, leading news outlets to scramble for biographical details in the wake of his nomination; the NLD did not release a statement on his personal background until about six hours after the announcement, by which time, errors had already become widespread.

The sting felt by party members over the incorrect label can perhaps be traced back to stories written over 15 years ago, when Htin Kyaw found himself on the receiving end of harsh words by Burmas own military regime.

The NLD source said that articles written by the countrys military intelligence in the early 2000s reportedly also described Htin Kyaws role as that of a driver. At that time, the role was offered in an attempt to discredit him as he sometimes drove for [Suu Kyi], he explained.

In another article published by government mouthpiece The Mirror in September 2000, Htin Kyaw was referred to by the offensive and derogatory Burmese term nga ti for his role in supporting the NLD.

During the period of military rule, the Burmese regime carried out a sustained media attack on Suu Kyi and her party, labelling them destructive elements attempting to disintegrate national solidarity and the Union.

Led by the former Gen. Khin Nyunt until he was purged from the position in 2004, Burmas military intelligence was notorious for its crackdowns on political opponents and human rights activists, sentencing them to lengthy stints in prison, which many did not survive.
Burma Peace Stakeholders Soul-Searching With MPCs Fate in Limbo

The incoming governments failure to articulate a clear plan for the Myanmar Peace Centers future has its staff pondering possible outcomes.

The National League for Democracys failure to articulate a clear plan for the Myanmar Peace Centers future has its staff dusting off resumes, pledging fealty to the incoming administration or, in the case of the outgoing governments lead peace negotiator, eyeing a role outside the official dialogue.

While peace process stakeholders largely agree that the status of the MPC will be decided by NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi, there is no such certainty about the institutions fate over the years to come.

In an interview with The Irrawaddy in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Hla Maung Shwe, a senior advisor at the MPC, a government-affiliated organization that brings together government and ethnic leaders for negotiations, said Suu Kyi has not yet made clear how the organization will function in Burmas changing political climate.

When we met her [Suu Kyi], she said three things about the MPC: First, she appreciated what the MPC has done. Second, she will keep the MPC. And third, she will have to review all of the work that [the organization] has done, Hla Maung Shwe said.

Some observers, however, predict that there will be major changes within the MPC, particularly when it comes to deciding which members will be dismissed and which members might be integrated into a new peace organization led by Suu Kyi.

Tun Tun Hein, an executive committee member of the NLD, told The Irrawaddy on Friday: We will not abolish the MPC, but we will have to reform it in the future.

All of the [necessary] people will find out about these reforms when the time comes.

He assured members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an alliance of nine ethnic groups that have so far opted out of signing the Oct. 15 nationwide ceasefire with the outgoing government, that they would have a seat at the negotiating table in an NLD-led dialogue, whatever form that might take.

Aung Min, MPC chairman and the outgoing governments lead negotiator, said he would split from the center and form a think tank-style organization that focuses on peace and development in the region.

Ill be supporting from the outside, Aung Min told The Irrawaddy during a meeting last month in Chiang Mai with leaders from ethnic armed groups. For peace-building to be sustained, we ought to start thinking about development. When I form [a new] foundation, I am thinking of naming it the Peace and Development Foundation. I could work on peace issues while also focusing on regional development.

A BBC report, quoting a senior MPC member, has claimed that Aung Min is applying for a license at the Home Affairs Ministry and plans to open his new office in downtown Rangoon.

Min Zaw Oo, director of the MPCs ceasefire negotiation and implementation department, told The Irrawaddy that as the organization goes through its own transition, some members will pursue different tasks within the MPC, while some may leave altogether.

All individuals can decide freely. As of right now, I dont know whether or not Ill continue at the MPC. Ill help whoever comes to power. Ill help the NLD when it comes to power, Min Zaw Oo said, adding that the NLD had not officially contacted him about a job offer. However, he said that it was unlikely that he would join Aung Mins new organization.

Sources familiar with the MPC say Western donors such as the European Union (EU) will halt financial support of the MPC at the end of March until Suu Kyi makes a decision on the centers fate.

The MPC, launched in 2012 as a part of an agreement with the Norway-led Peace Support Donor Group, marks one of the EUs earliest re-engagements with Burma after the ruling military junta transferred power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011.

The Irrawaddy reporter Kyaw Kha contributed to this report.
Profile Su Su Lwin: Not The Lady, but Rather Burmas Next First Lady

After years promoting education and supporting Suu Kyi and the NLD from the sidelines, Su Su Lwin steps into the spotlight, as Burmas new first lady.

RANGOON  The world knows Burma for its Noble laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. The Lady is a prominent political figure and leader of the pro-democracy movement who spent years under house arrest. But the people of Burma have a new lady in the spotlight now, the countrys incoming first lady, Su Su Lwin.

But who is Su Su Lwin?

Before her husband, Htin Kyaw, became Burmas president-elect, people knew Su Su Lwin as the chairwoman of the Lower Houses International Relations Committee and head of the education committee in Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD). She helped drafted the controversial National Education Bill, which in 2015 resulted in nationwide student protests. But her relationship with Suu Kyi and the NLD goes much deeper than that.

Even though the 63-year-old former educator wasnt a party member when the NLD was founded in the late 1980s, she was no stranger to the party. Her late father U Lwin was a former colonel in the Burma Army and a leading figure in the NLD, which he helped found and later served as party treasurer. As U Lwins daughter, she witnessed the birth of the NLD.

At that time, Su Su Lwin had a post-graduate diploma from Sydney University, a masters degree in English from the Rangoon Institute of Education and had worked for over 10 years at Burmas education research bureau.

Suu Kyi took notice of Su Su Lwins education background and asked her to teach English to NLD youth members at her home, after all schools and universities across the country were closed following the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

According to Zaw Aung, an independent social researcher who was then an NLD youth member and a student of Su Su Lwins, there were about 20 students in the NLD English class. They were all student activists who had been involved in the 1988 demonstrations and later joined the NLD.

He remembers her as a great teacher who was very passionate about education.

Her teaching methods were different from any others I had ever received in my life, he told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.

For Zaw Aung, Su Su Lwins student-centered approach was a new experience. The classroom was fun and interesting because Su Su Lwin was always friendly, lively and patient with the students, he said. She taught them not only language skills, but also used English novels and short stories to teach them critical thinking.

But after less than six months, the class had to stop when Suu Kyi was put under house arrest in July 1989. Su Su Lwin told her students to come to her home instead if they still wanted to learn from her. But former student Zaw Aung was also imprisoned and spent 10 years in jail.

Su Su Lwins commitment to education was noticeable to everyone around her. Suu Kyis former personal assistant, Dr. Tin Mar Aung, echoed Zaw Aungs opinion.

She is always so eager to share what she knows with others, she said.

Su Su Lwin and Dr. Tin Mar Aung worked together at Unicef for about a decade, where they became close friends. She portrayed Su Su Lwin as a caretaker who treated everyone around her like family. They each have an intimate relationship with Suu Kyi and sometimes spent time together at Suu Kyis house talking about cooking and books, she said.

Before getting involved in politics, Su Su Lwin invested most of her time in the education sector. She worked for Unicef from 1990 to 2005 and later served as a freelance consultant for monastic education programs.

She founded a local non-profit organization called Hantha Educators in 2006 that partnered with local influential monks and focused on improving traditional monastic education, early childhood care and development programs. She was concerned about the lack of education opportunities for the poor, especially in Sagaing Division and Arakan State, and the failure of many development programs to reach those most in need. Her organization stressed the importance of child-centered teaching and critical thinking.

Her former student, Zaw Aung, crossed paths with her again after his release from prison, when they both worked at Unicef and then at Hantha Educators. Zaw Aung remembers her being a vegetarian and her tendency to bring vegetarian meals to her office for colleagues.

She knows how to cook vegetables deliciously, he said.

Zaw Aung said she was kind and modest, despite growing up in an elite family, with a father who served as a minister during Gen. Ne Wins socialist regime.

[Su Su Lwin and Htin Kyaw] supported Daw Aung San Suu Kyi closely, in their own different ways, he said. And in every possible way.

They were two of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis most trusted confidantes.

She married Htin Kyaw in 1973 when she was 21-years-old. According to a 2007 interview with Htin Kyaw in local art magazine Padauk Pwint Thint, Su Su Lwin was even more familiar with Htin Kyaws father, the prominent Burmese poet Min Thu Wun, because she had translated some of his poems into English.

Despite her close relationship with Suu Kyi, she told The Irrawaddy that she officially became a NLD party member just before the 2012 by-election, when she won a seat along with dozens of fellow party loyalists. She dived into Burmese politics before her husband, and has represented Rangoons Thone Kwa constituency in Parliament ever since her 2012 victory, winning re-election to the seat last year.

While working for Unicef, she was not supposed to show any political affiliation, so she avoided being in the public eye. But as the daughter of U Lwin, she witnessed every change and development of the NLD, Zaw Aung said.

Its remarkable that not only the president-elect, but also the first lady, played historic roles in assisting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, he added. He believes that Su Su Lwin can be more than a first lady.

Given her proven independent streak, passion for worthy causes and dedication to country, Burmas next first lady promises to be a trailblazer in her own right, breaking a mold set by recent predecessors at a time of countless firsts in a democratic transition that continues to unfold.

Additional reporting by Kyaw Phyo Tha and Sandy Barron.
Burma China to Push Burmas New Government on Stalled Myitsone Dam

China says it will push Burmas new government to resume the controversial stalled dam project in Kachin State, saying the contract is still valid.

BEIJING  China signaled on Thursday that it will push Burmas new government to resume a controversial stalled dam project in the Southeast Asian country, saying the contract was still valid.

Outgoing Burmese President Thein Sein angered Beijing in 2011 by suspending the $3.6 billion, Chinese-invested Myitsone dam project, some 90 percent of whose power would have gone to China.

Other Chinese projects in Burma have proved controversial too, including the Letpadaung copper mine, against which residents have repeatedly protested, and twin Chinese oil and gas pipelines across the country.

Speaking ahead of a summit next week in China between Premier Li Keqiang and leaders of five Southeast Asian countries, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said the Myitsone dam was an important cooperation project.

Very regretfully it was shelved by the Myanmar government in 2011. But the contract is still in force. How to push this cooperation forward is an important thing for both countries, he told a news conference.

I think that the existing government has no time to get this project restarted. I believe that once the new government is in office, the Chinese government will continue to discuss with them how to restart this project.

He said he did not yet know who exactly would be representing Burmas government at the summit on the southern Chinese resort island of Hainan.

Burmas Parliament elected a close friend and confidant of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as president on Tuesday, making Htin Kyaw the first head of state since the 1960s who does not hail from a military background.

Chinese diplomats have been quietly approaching senior officials in Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) about the dam, senior NLD sources have told Reuters.

While Beijing had strong ties with Burmas military junta, it has also moved to cement relations with Suu Kyi, who met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last year.

Chinas Foreign Ministry, in a statement late on Wednesday, said Xi had sent his congratulations to Htin Kyaw.

Xi said the two countries had a long tradition of friendship and deepening cooperation was in the interests of both parties.

China is willing to work hard with Myanmar to promote the continued steady development of the all-round strategic cooperative relationship to better benefit both peoples, Xi added.
Friday, March 18th, 2016 (11:40 am) - Score 8,127

The cross party Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquiry into UK broadband infrastructure has revealed some useful new information on the cost per [street cabinet] of BTs (Openreach) FTTC fibre broadband service and confirmation of which BDUK areas have fallen behind their coverage targets.

At present the Governments state aid supported Broadband Delivery UK programme has just achieved its original Phase One target, which claims to have put 90% of people within the United Kingdom in reach of being able to order a superfast broadband (24Mbps+) connection (here). Work on Phase Two (95% coverage) is now slowly getting under-way and should complete by around 2017/18.

Progress has been reasonably good for such a large project, although you might expect that to happen given that all of the Phase One contracts are being dominated by the national telecoms giant (BT) using a mix of up to 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL) and ultrafast 330Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology. However Phase Two is a bit more diverse, with Gigaclear, Call Flow and some wireless ISPs also playing a role, although BT still dominates most of the contract extensions.

However its worth nothing that some of the 40 or so Local Authorities involved in the Phase 1/2 stages of the national BDUK programme are running behind schedule and the organisations CEO has now clarified matters to the inquiry team.

Chris Townsend, CEO of BDUK, said: I am delighted to report that we are maintaining good progress on Phase 1 of the Superfast Broadband Programme and as a result we are at or around the 90% UK superfast target in line with the timetable that we have set. With respect to progress with individual projects, I am pleased to report that since I gave evidence to the Committee on 9 December 2015, the position on projects behind schedule has improved as a result of our continued intervention, to the point where we now have three projects of concern to BDUK regarding delays to overall deployment. Two of these are Cumbria and Lancashire, which have suffered delays due to extreme bad weather and flooding, causing a delay to 20,000 premises within those projects, and the third is Wiltshire which is currently projected to be approximately 3,000 short at its end point at the end of March 2016. We are working with BT and the local bodies to agree a recovery plan. However, overall the Superfast Broadband Programme is 200,000 premises ahead of schedule. Based on current data and information we are on schedule with regard to delivering our next target of 95% superfast broadband coverage by the end of 2017. In addition to the above we continue to seek support from BT to provide premises coverage data which will assist the delivery of the ten alternative network provider projects under Phase 2. This will prevent overbuild and ensure that gaps in coverage can be filled cost efficiently. We hope that BT will supply that data in the very near future.

We wrote a bit about the Superfast Lancashire (SFL) project earlier this week, which originally aimed to deliver 97% coverage of high-speed fibre broadband by the end of 2015 and then 99% by around 2017/18 (here). However the projects last website news / progress update was made well over one year ago.

Elsewhere BT has also produced a couple of written submissions for the inquiry (example), but the one of most interest to some of our readers will be their response to questions about the cost of rolling-out new FTTC street cabinets under BDUK Phase One and Two.

BTs Written Statement 1. Could you explain what type of expenditure is being treated as operational expenditure, as opposed to capital expenditure, especially as it relates to the BDUK phase 1 and phase 2 programmes? BT can only claim funding against capitalisable expenditure that is incurred in relation to the implementation of the network specific to the local bodys intervention area. To support this activity, BT incurs incremental expenditure that cannot be capitalised, which includes some management of the programme during the deployment period and some management and reporting costs associated with the implementation of the network. These include the following: resource and capacity planning of BDUK plan and build activity (both internal and external)

stores management of BDUK related vendors

resources (onshore and offshore) associated with compiling some reports

travel for engineers and project teams and some fleet costs. Outside of the deployment of the network, BT incurs incremental costs from operating and maintaining the network once it is in service to meeting the ongoing open-access obligations including power and wayleaves, regular maintenance, capacity management and repair activity. 2.Could you also please demonstrate what the average cost per cabinet will be for phase 1 of the rural broadband programme. Please set out how this average figure is calculated. The cost per cabinet completed to date (FTTC only) is currently 26,500. This cost includes: additional exchange equipment

fibre and associated duct work between exchange and the cabinet

civils work in preparing the cabinets plinth and new duct (where necessary)

power connections, which can be extremely variable and expensive

physical fibre cabinet (DSLAM)

connections to the copper cabinet. 3.If there are estimates for the average cost per cabinet for stage 2 at this stage (ie, the SEP), then please provide that figure as well. Phase 2 is in its earlier days of planning. In the procurement of these contracts, the average cost per cabinet was 27,500. This is +18% higher as there are more cabinets that require rearranging the current network to achieve the speed requirements. This excludes project and contract management planning and reporting costs. FTTP is not included in the above figures.

By our working 27,500 is only about 3.8% higher than 26,500 (not +18%), but were probably missing some key piece of context that BT left out of their written statement and 27.5k actually seems a bit low given the increasingly rural focus. Its also worth mentioning that these costs are likely to be averages (cabinets can cost just a few thousand, but others seem to need around 80k or more depending upon the area size / cabinet type etc.).
Microsoft yesterday updated its Windows 10 preview, adding support for extensions to the default Edge browser, finally fulfilling a promise it made last year that was itself a delay on a pledge to boost the browser's functionality.

As part of Windows 10 build 14291 -- the latest in a series of test versions fed to participants in Microsoft's Windows Insider program -- Edge can now run one or more of the three extensions the Redmond, Wash. company currently offers.

"The Windows Insider build will include three preview extensions: Microsoft Translator, an extension that automatically translates pages in over 50 different languages, a Mouse Gestures extension, and an early preview version of the popular Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES)," said Drew DeBruyne, Edge's general manager, in a post to a company blog late Thursday. "Later this year customers will find popular extensions from partners like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, Amazon, LastPass, Evernote and more."

DeBruyne said Edge add-ons would "ultimately" reach the production version of Windows 10, but gave no timeline. Microsoft is expected to update 10 this year, most likely in mid-summer -- around the one-year anniversary of the OS's debut.

Microsoft has had to recast its browser extension model for Edge because it ditched its ActiveX proprietary add-on technology -- core to Internet Explorer (IE) for two decades -- and went with an approach that relied on HTML5 and JavaScript. Microsoft has boasted that extensions written for Google's Chrome will take little if any work to revamp for Edge.

Microsoft has essentially dead-ended IE by relegating it to legacy support. Although it has promised to support IE11 through Windows 7's January 2020 retirement, it has demanded that customers abandon most older versions of IE. The mandate caused a dramatic decline in Microsoft's share of the browser market.

Under Microsoft's original plan, add-ons were to make it into Edge last year, but five months ago the company acknowledged it would not make that deadline. The lack of add-ons has been a sticking point with users, many of whom have cited the omission as the reason why they set Edge aside and went with another browser, primarily Chrome.

Edge has not succeeded in holding a majority of Windows 10 users, according to several metrics sources. Depending on the data, Edge accounted for between 13% and 31% of the browsers run by Windows 10 users in February. U.S. users have been more likely to run Edge than the global average.

Currently, Edge users download add-ons directly from Microsoft, but when the browser is included with the next Windows 10 production build, extensions will be available from the Windows Store, analogous to Google's practice of limiting add-on distribution to the Chrome Web Store.

Build 14291 and the preliminary Edge add-ons are available only to Insiders who have selected the "Fast" release track.
Today

Sunny with gusty winds developing this afternoon. High 87F. W winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

Tonight

Clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 64F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

Tomorrow

Sunny skies. High 81F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
In August 2014, a cyber-crime shook the entertainment industry when private pictures of celebrities have been leaked. Those victimized were Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lawrence and Rihanna, to name a few.

Recently, it seems justice had been served when the perpetrator behind Jennifer Lawrence's nude photo hacks has been captured by the FBI. According to Vanity Fair, 36-year-oldRyan Collins has pleaded guilty to the felony charges brought against him.

Jennifer Lawrence herself felt violated, telling VF in 2014 that "...it is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting."

Collins' cyber-crime is categorized as a felony. His computer hacking days are now over as he awaits his sentence which can have him locked up to five years. However, Collins has signed a plea agreement with the United States Attorney's L.A. Office this week because he cooperated with the prosecutors. His five year sentence may get reduced to 18 months instead.

Collins explained that he was able to access personal data by "phishing" his celebrity victims through emails that appeared to be official Apple or Google communication. The FBI insisted that consumers practice caution regarding their personal information.

When Jennifer Lawrence was asked how she felt about the capture and the sentence, she said that "the law needs to be changed, and we need to change."

The "Hunger Games" actress said that she will not apologize for photos that should have been private. "I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years," she said. "It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he's going to look at you."
In an ongoing battle against the federal government for Apple to unlock an encrypted iPhone, Apple engineers joined in with the company to resist law enforcement in request to disable existing iOS encryption, claiming that they would quit their jobs if the FBI wins court fight.

According to The New York Times stating, more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees, whom they were assigned by the FBI to build a backdoor to an encrypted iPhone may decline its request to do so, and they are willing to put their jobs on the line, where Apple engineers may quit the company entirely as an alternative option rather than helping break the security measures if the court order pushes through.

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee said, "It's an independent culture and a rebellious one, if the government tries to compel testimony or action from these engineers, good luck with that."

This views also reflects Apple's CEO Tim Cook and SVP's Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi on the heated opposition.

This could present a roadblock for the FBI, where a court order can push Apple to assist on breaking into the iPhone, but it can't stop Apple employees from resigning rather than siding with the FBI. If Apple engineers goes through to leave the company, it may cause a long delay for the federal government to unlock the iPhone.

Apple has been in numerous debates over smartphone encryption that alters a user's privacy and rights against national security. In February, the company was ordered by a federal judge to aid the FBI to break in an iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The company refused the request stating that bypassing the security measures goes against their values, and they will continue to go against the FBI in any further demands to break in iPhone encryption.
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By of the

Milwaukee mayoral candidate Bob Donovan is balking at a radio ad that describes him as a Republican.

"I'm a proud nonpartisan," said the fourth-term alderman. "I don't belong to either party."

Donovan did run twice for the state Assembly in the early 1980s as a Republican candidate, losing both times. His opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett, has highlighted these facts in the ad criticizing Donovan.

Donovan also is using the slogan "Make Milwaukee Great Again," a variation on GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's vow to "Make America Great Again!" Donovan said he also likes Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton's slogan "Fighting for All of Us."

But Donovan gets tight-lipped when asked about the upcoming presidential primary.

Which candidate will he be voting for on April 5?

"I haven't even thought about that at this point," Donovan said Wednesday after a news conference announcing Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.'s endorsement.

Will he be voting in the Republican or Democratic primary?

"I haven't thought about that," Donovan said. "I'll vote for who I think will do the best job."

Ok, maybe he'll tell us which presidential candidate he voted for in 2012. Is he a backer of President Barack Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney?

"That's between God and I," Donovan said.

Barrett was much more forthcoming. One of the state's most prominent Dems, Barrett said he would vote for Clinton in the April 5 primary and that he supported Obama in 2012. The president has endorsed Barrett for a fourth term as mayor.

Gillian Drummond, spokeswoman for Barrett, said it's clear where Donovan stands, despite his refusal to answer the questions.

"Bob Donovan isn't fooling anyone," Drummond said, suggesting the alderman will be voting for Trump.
Alex Molinaroli, Johnson Controls chief executive, says a new office building for Johnson Controls Inc. near Milwaukees lakefront is still on the table. Credit: Associated Press

By of the

A new office building for Johnson Controls Inc. near Milwaukee's lakefront is "still on the table," but don't expect an immediate decision on that  given the company is in the process of dramatic changes including a spinoff and merger with Tyco International, the company's chairman said Friday.

"We have a lot going on," Alex Molinaroli said as he spoke to businesspeople at a Pfister Hotel breakfast meeting about the company's merger plans and his commitment to Milwaukee.

Molinaroli also discussed the need for the company to respond to attacks on the presidential campaign trail concerning Johnson Controls' planned shift of its corporate headquarters for tax purposes from Glendale to Ireland.

The chairman of Wisconsin's largest public company said he was in his office when Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton came to Glendale the day after her debate with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Clinton filmed a commercial across the street from Johnson Controls' battery business headquarters, located on the same campus as the corporate office along N. Green Bay Ave.

"I walked out the door," Molinaroli said. "She  the candidate  was across the street, and I started walking across the parking lot, but they were very efficient. They came and went pretty quick."

In the commercial, Clinton says that if elected she would propose charging an "exit fee" to companies that seek taxpayer assistance to grow and then shift their corporate headquarters overseas to avoid or minimize tax payments to the U.S. government.

Johnson Controls estimates it will achieve tax savings of $150 million from the inversion. The company said it did not receive assistance from the federal government's bailout of the American automotive industry, although some of its key customers  the automakers of Detroit  did.

The commercial began airing before the Minnesota primary and has been running subsequently in Michigan and other states. Molinaroli said he expects that commercial could get more airtime locally in the weeks ahead as the April 5 Wisconsin presidential primary nears.

Molinaroli said he felt compelled to speak up because he did not want his own employees and community members to question the company's intentions and its reasons for undertaking the Tyco deal.

The main reason for the merger wasn't the tax savings but rather the move to create a one-stop shopping environment for building owners to buy products, ranging from Johnson Controls' heating and cooling products to Tyco's building security and fire suppression systems.

Referring to the tax advantages, Molinaroli said, "It would be irresponsible for us as a company to not take advantage of the opportunities that come along. But that is not the reason we are merging with Tyco. We're merging with Tyco because we'll be the undisputed leader in building technology for buildings. Period, full stop."

Seismic technological shifts are creating a more interconnected world in which cars can park themselves and will soon brake on their own or drive on their own, and similar changes will happen with buildings through the Internet of Things, Molinaroli said.

Technologies for building systems are in the process of converging, leading to more fully automated buildings that Johnson Controls and Tyco hope they can help building owners manage with an elegant technological solution.

The merger and spinoff of the automotive seating business will position Johnson Controls to provide it a platform of growth to "do some pretty special things" over the next decade, he said, "and we'll be doing that from Milwaukee."

Johnson Controls last year received city funding to study a potential office development site, about three acres south of E. Clybourn St. and west of N. Lincoln Memorial Drive. The company has been evaluating the possibility of a move to help it consolidate its local offices  now located in Glendale, West Allis as well as downtown Milwaukee.

The company's planning process found there were constraints to expanding at any of the local sites where the company now operates, including its campus in Glendale and the E. Michigan St. headquarters of the building efficiency business.

As part of the merger with Tyco, expected to be completed this year, the company will be consolidating the headquarters operations of Tyco, now run from Princeton, N.J., with the Johnson Controls headquarters functions here.

"We've made the decision to be in Milwaukee," Molinaroli said, who said he expected a final decision would occur while he's still running the company  meaning over the next two years.

"Now we have to optimize that decision."

Molinaroli spoke at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Milwaukee Business Journal.
In this July 2014 file photo, one of the largest carbon-composite motor yachts in the world was on its way to the Mediterranean after being built at the Palmer Johnson Yachts shipyard in Sturgeon Bay. Credit: Courtesy of Palmer Johnson Yachts

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It's not often that a 98-year-old yacht builder shuts down, but when it does, the tools that go up for sale could be a woodworker's dream.

Now through March 30, thousands of tools are available in an online auction of the production assets of the Palmer Johnson Yachts plant in Sturgeon Bay.

Last fall, Palmer Johnson announced it was leaving Sturgeon Bay and moving to the Netherlands, eliminating about 100 jobs. The company, founded in northeast Wisconsin in 1918, had built yachts costing tens of millions of dollars.

Palmer Johnson hired Hansen & Young Inc. of Prairie Farm to auction off the production equipment, including about 4,500 lots of woodworking and metalworking tools.

Some of the lots include multiple tools. The age and condition of the equipment varies.

"Some of the old woodworking tools are as solid or better built than some of the new stuff," said Bryce Hansen, auctioneer and vice president at Hansen & Young.

The inventory includes band saws, drills, sanders, grinders, CNC machines, dust-collecting machines, vacuums, sewing machines and much more. It also includes materials and supplies.

All of the bidding takes place on the Internet.

"It's an eBay-style auction, except it's on our website," Hansen said.

Most of the items are at the former Palmer Johnson plant at 128 Kentucky St., Sturgeon Bay. They will be available for viewing March 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and bidding will end March 29 or March 30 depending on the item.

It's a liquidation sale, so everything will be sold.

"There will be interest from all over the country, but it's not like this stuff is super rare or hard to find. I would say 95% of the sales will probably go to individuals and businesses in the Midwest," Hansen said.

Bay Shipbuilding announced plans to buy the former Palmer Johnson plant. It is the only boat builder left in Sturgeon Bay, a city that has a rich maritime history.

Yacht building is an important niche industry in northeast Wisconsin, where the brands include Palmer Johnson, Carver, Marquis, Burger, Cruisers and Rampage.

But yacht builders fell on hard times in the Great Recession. The Carver and Marquis brands, based in Pulaski, were sold in a bankruptcy auction in 2010. In 2013, Carver introduced three new motor yachts, the first time it had done that in years.

The tools auction will mark the end of Palmer Johnson in Wisconsin, where it began by building and repairing commercial fishing vessels.

For more information about the auction and the tools for sale, visit: www.hansenandyoung.com/palmer-johnson.
Mrs. M----'s Cabinet," created by the Chipstone Foundation, invites visitors to explore at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Credit: Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher Art City An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue. SHARE Mrs. M---'s Cabinet," a recently opened installation at the Milwaukee Art Museum, relies on a fictional character to help explore American decorative arts. Brent Budsberg

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You could arrange your priceless collection of 17th-century ceramics on pedestals, light it well, label it and call it a day. Or, you could do what the Chipstone Foundation has done for its new installation at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and hire dozens of artisans to craft a historically accurate room for a 19th-century ghost who collects things.

And while you're at it, you can make the ghost a proto-feminist world traveler who rejects conventional thinking about American identity.

Chipstone has been an active partner with the art museum for 17 years, exhibiting aspects of its American decorative arts collection and staging shows. Chipstone is known for pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a museum, and visitors have come to expect the unexpected in terms of presentation and curation.

Which is where the art-collecting ghost comes in.

She is called, mysteriously, Mrs. M----, and she oversees "Mrs. M----'s Cabinet," a wood-paneled room the Chipstone recently installed in the galleries it oversees at MAM. Since she travels so often to build her collection, Mrs. M---- isn't in right now, but you're free to look around. You might notice that a maquette, a tiny replica of the room, has been tucked into a corner. Pull the tassled cord nearby, and a ghostly image of Mrs. M---- steps into the maquette and starts talking to you.

"What is America?" she asks. "Where is America? Who is America?"

You soon learn that Mrs. M---- is every bit as intriguing as her collection. She explains that, as a child, she traveled the world with her ship-captain father but also spent time in Virginia, where she'd find shards of pottery in the silt of the James River. They are remnants, she'd later discover, from two centuries earlier, when a robust global trade brought objects from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near East to the British American colonies.

By the time she is addressing you from the maquette, Mrs. M---- has developed a fascinating hobby: tracing the shards' origins. She journeys the world in search of whole vessels that match her broken artifacts. "One of the most marvelous things about this nation's first century," Mrs. M---- says, "was its expansive global reach. I can collect as a woman of the world and still create an American cabinet."

The Chipstone Foundation is not the first to create settings, characters and even theater to make historic subjects come alive  I'm reminded of the "Streets of Old Milwaukee" at the Milwaukee Public Museum. But most examples are didactic. Entertaining and interactive, for sure, but designed to educate. Mrs. M----, on the other hand, wants to raise your consciousness. She's not giving you a lecture on tin-glazed earthenware; she's sharing her values about the interconnectedness of cultures.

Mrs. M---- also challenges a popular narrative about her nation's past. Her figure in the maquette (Chipstone used a 19th-century technique called Pepper's Ghost to create the effect) is dismayed at the Brit-centric nature of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia: "I searched for the America I knew, but I couldn't find it." She sees America "as something more complex." By collecting decorative artifacts, she's finding a way to sort our those complexities.

The installation is designed to encourage visitors to explore. On my first visit, before I knew about the tiny talking ghost, I had the pleasantly disorienting feeling of not knowing what I was looking at, but knowing there was something there to find.

Designer Brent Budsberg oversaw a team of artisans to create a space frozen in time. They wanted visitors to step inside and lose any sense of being in a museum. A nook displaying Mrs. M----'s collection of Chinoiserie ceramics is lined with sumptuous, hand-painted wallpaper. Built-in, glass-encased shelves contain ceramics with archaeological ties to colonial America, Britain and elsewhere. The names of foreign cities, some of them unfamiliar, crawl in gold along the walnut paneling. There's a key in the wall that, when turned, rings a bell. Through a locked glass door you can peer into Mrs. M----'s office, where her desk shows work in progress and a narrow staircase leads to a second floor.

MAM's recent reconfiguration gave the Chipstone curators more room, and they've used that space to stretch their ambitions. "We don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over again," said Jonathan Prown, the foundation's director and chief curator. The cabinet is his team's latest effort to create new museum experiences and break from standard practices.

So, for instance, this installation is less about interpreting objects for visitors and more about inviting them to find their own interpretations. Sarah Anne Carter, curator and director of research, emphasizes that there is no single message to take away or lesson to learn. "Mrs. M---'s Cabinet" succeeds only when it provokes a question, idea or discovery.

Intriguingly, the curators aren't even quite sure what Mrs. M---- will do next. They know she'll keep collecting. They'd like to see her take an interest in Native American culture. Maybe she'll host salons.

It's deliciously uncharted territory, and it gives the Chipstone staff all sorts of room to explore. "A literal, historical figure would have been limiting," Carter pointed out. Not so Mrs. M----, who is plausible and based on thorough research, but still fictional. "We can go places with her."

Conveniently, a website has been built to let us do just that. The Chipstone will soon add a scrapbook and a ledger that will identify the pieces in her cabinet.

Anyone who, like me, finds themselves drawn to Mrs. M---- will surely want to follow her journey. I admit I have questions -- what's the story with her husband? Where did she get the money to build such a grand house? How does she feel about America's westward expansion?

No one's promising we'll find out except to say that clues will be forthcoming. It's a pretty clever way to encourage return visits, and I'm OK with that. I'm eager to see what new notes are sitting on Mrs. M----'s desk or new ceramics arranged on her shelves. I want to learn from a woman who's forging her own way at a time when it wasn't easy for women to do that, and who's looking outward to define America rather than being satisfied with the common thinking.

Mrs. M----, your next glass of Madeira is on me.

"Mrs. M----'s Cabinet" is in the Constance and Dudley Godfrey American Wing in the Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Drive. For more information visit mam.org and MrsMsCabinet.org.

Diane M. Bacha is a former newspaper executive, editorial director at Kalmbach Publishing Co., and a regular contributor to the Journal Sentinel's Art City pages.
SHARE Author Kwame Alexander Lauren Conrad CREDIT: Courtesy of Kohl's Department Stores Sally Mann Michelle Hood / CC BY-SA 3.0

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Sorry, Mr. Eliot, April is hardly the cruelest month when it comes to high-profile authors visiting Milwaukee. Here are some, by no means all, of the glitterati landing here:

Lauren Conrad: The reality TV star turned style guru celebrates her new book, the party-planning guide "Lauren Conrad Celebrate," at 7 p.m. April 1 at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave. Tickets are $30; they include a signed copy of the book. Visit brownpapertickets.com/event/2517405.

Nick Offerman: The "Parks and Recreation" star salutes some of his ruggedly humorous heroes in "Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom With America's Gutsiest Troublemakers." Offerman speaks at 7 p.m. April 7 at the Riverside Theater, 116 W. Wisconsin Ave. Tickets are $20; they include a copy of the book. Visit pabsttheater.org/show/nickofferman2016.

Helen Macdonald: British naturalist Macdonald's memoir "H Is for Hawk," about the year she trained a goshawk while mourning the loss of her father, has won multiple prizes and been named to best-of-the-year lists on both sides of the ocean. Macdonald will speak at 7 p.m. April 12 at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, 1111 E. Brown Deer Road, Bayside. Tickets are $21 (including a paperback copy of "Hawk") or $27 (a copy of the poetry collection "Shaler's Fish"); $5 from either goes to the SANC. Visit brownpapertickets.com/event/2477246.

Gail Carson Levine: The author of "Ella Enchanted" will speak at 2 p.m. April 16 at Boswell Books. Levine will be in town because First Stage is performing "Ella Enchanted" April 1 through May 1 at the Marcus Center. Levine's Boswell talk is free. For info on tickets to the First Stage production, visit firststage.org.

Kwame Alexander: Children's book writer and speaker Alexander won the Newbery Medal for his verse novel "Crossover." He visits Boswell Books to share his new work, "Booked," the story of a 12-year-old who gets help with life's passages from a rapping librarian. 3 p.m. April 17.

Michele Wucker: In "The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore," Wucker draws on her experience in economics, international relations and crisis management to argue for a strategic approach to problems we see charging right at us. Wucker, a former Milwaukee Sentinel reporter, will speak at 7 p.m. April 20 at Boswell Books.

David Sedaris: Humorist, public-radio star and former elf Sedaris performs 8 p.m. April 23 at the Riverside Theater as part of his tour for the paperback edition of "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls." For tickets ($47-$57), visit pabsttheater.org/show/davidsedaris2016.

Jason Reynolds: The author of "The Boy in the Black Suit," "Ghost," "When I Was the Greatest" and other books starring black teens, is the star of this year's Delta Memorial Endowment Fund luncheon. It takes place 11:30 a.m. April 23 at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago St. For ticket info, call (414) 640-2654 or email dmeftickets@yahoo.com.

Felicia Day: Actress and online queen Day visits Boswell at 7 p.m. April 25 for the paperback tour of her memoir "You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)." Tickets ($17) include a signed paperback; Day will accommodate photos with readers as well. Visit brownpapertickets.com/event/2521269.

Elizabeth Nunez: In her new novel "Even in Paradise," Nunez has transposed the story of King Lear to the Caribbean. Her earlier books include "Boundaries" and "Anna-in-Between." She will speak at 7 p.m. April 27 at Boswell Books.

Sally Mann: Photographer Mann visits Boswell Books at 7 p.m. April 30 on the paperback tour for her memoir "Hold Still," which delves deeply into her family history, including the photographs of her children that both made her reputation and brought upon her sharp criticism. In his New York Times review of "Hold Still," Dwight Garner described it as "a cerebral and discursive book about the South and about family and about making art that has some of the probity of Flannery O'Connor's nonfiction collection 'Mystery and Manners' yet is spiked with the wildness and plain talk of Mary Karr's best work." For tickets ($20, including a signed book), visit brownpapertickets.com/event/2522156.

Jane Hamilton: Wisconsin novelist Hamilton, whose "The Book of Ruth" was an Oprah Book Club pick, returns with "The Excellent Lombards," which sets a family's love for its apple orchard against the potentially destructive forces of a changing world. Hamilton will speak at 1 p.m. May 1 at Boswell Books.

Curtis Sittenfeld: Sad "The Bachelor" is over? Console yourself with "Eligible," Sittenfeld's witty riff on "Pride and Prejudice," sporting a former "Bachelor"-esque star. Sittenfeld, whose other novels include "Sisterland" (twins with a psychic connection) and "American Wife" (loosely based on Laura Bush's life story), is the featured speaker at this year's Spring Literary Luncheon on May 3, presented by the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library. For ticket info, visit bit.ly/1poyjS8.
The poached fish soup features mild fillet pieces bobbing in spicy fish stock with bok choy, cucumber, bean sprouts, peppercorn and red dried chiles. (The fish is long lee, or sole in English.) Credit: Angela Peterson

Carol Deptolla Dining Critic SHARE The menu includes mango smoothie (center), taro bubble tea, (left) and raspberry ice tea. Angela Peterson Asian Fusion aims to feed international students who might be looking for a taste of home. Angela Peterson Coconut chicken features white meat battered chicken with creamy white coconut sauce and sprinkles. Angela Peterson

It wasn't a mere whim when two restaurant families from Racine and Kenosha opened Asian Fusion on the east side late last year.

The owners noted the number of Asian students enrolled at Milwaukee colleges and opened their restaurant in a small shopping plaza on E. North Ave., seizing an opportunity to feed students who might be looking for a taste of home.

Both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Milwaukee School of Engineering, the two schools nearest the restaurant, report rising numbers of international students over the past five to 10 years; the majority are from Asian countries.

(Most of Asian Fusion's other customers when I was there appeared to be college-age; at least one was wearing an MSOE ID badge.)

Paul Chen of Chen's Bistro in Kenosha and Alan Huang of King's Wok in Racine and their families built the L-shaped Asian Fusion in two storefronts, putting a bubble-tea shop in one wing and a modern, comfortable dining room in the other, with padded booths and tables with black leather chairs.

C-pop is the soundtrack, and on one dining room television recently, actors in a period martial-arts film spun and floated while a video of the restaurant's grand opening played on endless loop on a second TV.

The restaurant is a polished transformation of a storefront, but it's still casual, set with paper napkins, plastic water glasses and laminated menus.

The food itself isn't fusion, per se. It's more pan-Asian, a survey of mostly traditional, regional Chinese dishes  many Sichuan style  with some Chinese-American, Korean and other plates in the mix.

The appetizers alone were a parade of textures and flavors: scallion pancakes ($6.95), fried brown and crisp; springy, dense fish meatballs ($4.95) with a Thai-style coconut curry sauce; a salad of cucumbers in chile-garlic sauce ($4.95); a crunchy, snappy salad of black fungus, or wood ear mushroom caps ($5.95), in black vinegar sauce, an irresistible dish.

Many of the appetizers are served chilled; hot, just-grilled appetizers include a pair of skewers threaded with pieces of what amounted to an entire squid ($6.95), and skewers stacked with juicy chunks of lamb, seasoned with Sichuan peppercorn.

Scattered throughout the menu are dishes containing Sichuan peppercorn, that not-really-spicy, more-like-a-numbing-menthol seasoning. It's in a compelling poached fish soup, ($19.95) with mild fillet pieces bobbing in spicy fish stock with bok choy, cucumber and red dried chiles. (The restaurant identified the fish as long lee, or sole in English.)

Noodle bowls sat at many of the tables with those college-age diners  the menu lists more than a dozen kinds of comforting soups made with house stocks such as lamb, beef and mushroom, and a choice of four noodles. Lamb noodle soup ($12.95) held chunks of lamb to be chewed from the bone, with shiitake mushrooms and bok choy.

Pork chops ($10.95) on a rice plate get the same treatment more often seen for shell-on shrimp, a good dousing with salt and pepper, and it's delicious. Hong Kong-style roast duck ($12.95) with deeply browned skin is another of the tasty rice-plate meats, though the duck was barely warm.

A vegetable dish like steamed baby bok choy and shiitake mushroom caps in a brown sauce made from mushrooms and oyster sauce ($9.95), or the whole mala okra ($9.95), with Sichuan peppercorns, would be good for the table to share with those rice plates or on their own.

Some of the biggest joys on the menu are listed as chef's specials. Many of them arrive in shiny stainless-steel hot pots, kept simmering over a flame, or in clay pots, retaining the high heat of the oven in their walls and leaving sauces and broths bubbling.

There's beef brisket and dried tofu skin ($17.95), the skin the texture of good pasta and the meat ultra-tender. Potato, shiitake mushrooms and carrots make it a hearty stew. (The menu suggests tendon is in the dish; there's none of the gelatinous tendon, only tender fat and connective tissue on the meat.)

Eggplant in a clay pot ($14.95) is cooked until it's like satin; bits of beef, leek and peppers bolster the flavor. One of the most compelling dishes of all was Korean-style braised rice cakes and kimchi with beef slices ($12.95). Kimchi made the broth incredibly flavorful, with heat and tang; the rice cakes, in cylinders, provided texture, a little spring and chew.

Attentive, friendly servers can guide diners through the menu, and they take care throughout the meal; one server checked leftover containers by lifting the bag to make sure it was balanced and secure.

Not one, though, mentioned specials (check the board listing them on the way in) or suggested dessert. An assortment of tiny cakes in flavors like mango, coconut and mocha, topped in silky frosting, stand in boxes at the bubble tea and takeout counter; they're worth ordering or buying on the way out.

But someone who's had one of the flavored, sweetened teas  hot or cold  has probably had enough sugar for one day; the restaurant also has smoothies and soft drinks but no alcohol, at least for now.

Besides offering some Chinese-American dishes like General Tso's chicken, Asian Fusion makes concessions to American tastes, such as serving salt-and-pepper shrimp without the shells. The menu, though, is stocked with traditional flavors for diners who hunger for them.

Contact Carol Deptolla at (414) 224-2841, cdeptolla@journalsentinel.com or on Twitter, @mkediner.

ASIAN FUSION

1609-C E. North Ave.

(414) 273-6688

asianfusionwi.com

 (very good)

Food:

Service:1/2

Ambience:1/2

Fare: Regional Chinese, with some Chinese-American, Korean and other Asian dishes

Atmosphere: Modern and relaxed

Hours: Noon-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, noon-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday; later in summer

Prices: Entrees, $8.95-$19.95

Parking: 6 marked spaces in adjacent lot; more on street

Wheelchair access: Yes, at entry and restrooms

Payment: MasterCard, Visa

Of special note: Vegetarian and vegan dishes; takeout; high chairs; Wi-Fi

Reservations: Recommended at peak times on the weekend and always for parties of 5 or more

Noise level: Comfortable

Deptolla's star ratings

Extraordinary. Consistently outstanding in all areas, including food, service, atmosphere and value. A first-class dining experience.

Very good. Most menu items are excellent, though a few might miss the mark. Service generally is very good. A memorable meal is guaranteed.

Good. A worthy restaurant; food is generally appealing.

Fair. A few entrees may be very good; most are average. Work is needed.

Poor restaurants would receive no stars.

Carol Deptolla strives to dine anonymously, with food and drink paid for by the Journal Sentinel. To sign up for the Journal Sentinel's weekly food and dining newsletter, visit www.jsonline.com/newsletters
Zoe Kravitz (from left), Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q and Miles Teller take up arms in The Divergent Series: Allegiant. Credit: Murray Close

Listings SHARE Christian Bale has a moment in Terrence Malicks Knight of Cups. Melinda Sue Gordon

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Here's a guide to what's on the big screen in the Milwaukee area. It doesn't include listings for movies opening next Friday but holding Thursday night screenings, including "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2."

As always, all theater information is subject to change. Check with individual theaters for updates.



Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

PG (some mild rude humor and language). 86 minutes. Playing: Hillside (Fri.-Sun. only), Majestic (Fri.-Sun. only), Menomonee Falls (Fri.-Sun. only), North Shore (Fri.-Sun. only), Oak Creek Budget, Ridge (Fri.-Sun. only), South Shore (Fri.-Sun. only), Southgate (Fri.-Sun. only).

In the fourth live-action/computer-animated movie inspired by the novelty-song-turned-cartoon characters, Alvin, Simon and Theodore hit the road to stop Dave (Jason Lee) from getting married and dumping them.

Berlin Philharmonic: The Beethoven Project

Not rated. 160 minutes. Playing: Majestic (Sat. only), North Shore (Sat. only).

The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle, performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 7 in this filmed concert.

The Big Short

R (pervasive language, some sexuality/nudity). 130 minutes. Playing: .

An eccentric money manager, a young Wall Street banker, an activist-minded hedge fund operator and a former banker bet against the 2005 housing boom  and the global economy. Michael Lewis' bestselling nonfiction book about the economic collapse is the basis for this comedy directed by Adam McKay, with Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt as the iconoclastic foursome. Oscar winner for best adapted screenplay.

The Bronze

R (sex, nudity, pervasive language, some drug use). 107 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, Oriental, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore.

After an inspirational medal-winning performance at the Olympics, a gymnast wallowing in her fading glory is forced to serve as coach to her small town's new gymnastics prodigy. Coarse comedy with Melissa Rauch, Haley Lu Richardson, Sebastian Stan.

The Brothers Grimsby

R (crude sexual content, nudity, violence, language, some drug use). 83 minutes. Playing: Hillside, IPic/Bayshore, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

Sacha Baron Cohen plays a working-class, English football-obsessed layabout who is reunited with his long-lost brother (Mark Strong), who turns out to be a secret agent on the run and trying to thwart a terrorist attack. With Rebel Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Gabourey Sidibe.

Carol

R (brief sexuality and nudity, brief language). 118 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara play women from very different backgrounds who unexpectedly fall in love in 1950s New York in this Oscar-buzzy melodrama directed by Todd Haynes ("Far From Heaven," HBO's "Mildred Pierce"). Based on the 1952 romance novel "The Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith. With Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler.

The Choice

PG-13 (sexual content, some mature themes). 111 minutes. Playing: Rivoli/Cedarburg.

A couple succumb to their chemistry, marry and start a family, only to have a tragedy force one to make a decision that will affect them both. Latest romantic drama based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. With Benjamin Walker, Teresa Palmer.

Creed

PG-13 (violence, language, some sensuality). 133 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

The son of Rocky's rival-turned-pal Apollo Creed seeks out the ex-fighter to help him train for the ring. With Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed and Sylvester Stallone as the aging Italian Stallion.

Daddy's Home

PG-13 (language, crude and suggestive content). 96 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

Stepdad Will Ferrell and birth dad Mark Wahlberg try to outdo each other in winning their kids' affection in this slapsticky comedy. With Linda Cardellini, Thomas Haden Church.

Deadpool

R (pervasive violence and language, sexual content, nudity). 108 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

Ryan Reynolds plays a former mercenary who undergoes a lifesaving experiment that leaves him horribly scarred but also gives him accelerated healing powers  and amps up his expletive-spewing, morally ambiguous persona in the latest addition to Marvel's screen superhero canon.

Dirty Grandpa

R (pervasive crude sexual content, nudity, language, drug use). 102 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

A lewd, crude oldster tricks his straight-laced grandson into taking a raunchy road trip in the hopes of liberating them both. With Zac Efron, Robert De Niro.

The Divergent Series: Allegiant

PG-13 (violence, thematic elements, some partial nudity). 121 minutes. Playing: Avalon, Hillside, IPic/Bayshore, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

After discovering that the walled-in Chicago they live in is part of an experiment, Tris and her friends break through and find what seems like a utopia  until they learn the outsiders' real plan. Third movie in the "Divergent" series. With Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Miles Teller, Zoe Kravitz, Ansel Elgort, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer. (Showing in IMAX format at Mayfair Mall.)

Easter Mysteries

Not rated. 160 minutes. Playing: Menomonee Falls (Tue. only), South Shore (Tue. only).

An original musical theater production of the Passion Play  depicting the trial, suffering and death of Jesus  told from Peter's perspective.

Eddie the Eagle

PG-13 (some suggestive material, partial nudity, smoking). 105 minutes. Playing: Fox-Bay, Hillside, Menomonee Falls, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime.

With help from an unorthodox coach, an Olympic wannabe defies the odds to represent Britain in the 1988 Winter Games as a ski-jumper. Inspirational sports drama about real-life Olympic also-ran Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards. With Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman.

Embrace of the Serpent

Not rated (some drug use, violence). 125 minutes. Playing:Downer.

A shaman in the Amazon befriends two European scientists, including one who needs a rare plant to survive. Dreamlike drama, filmed in black and white, was the first Colombian movie nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. In Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and German, with English subtitles.

The Finest Hours

PG-13 (intense scenes). 116 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

An oil tanker bound for Boston is ripped in half during a killer storm, and a small Coast Guard boat sets out to rescue the survivors. Based-on-a-true-story heroic drama, with Chris Pine as a young Coast Guard captain leading the rescue, and Casey Affleck as the tanker engineer trying to keep his co-workers alive.

Gods of Egypt

PG-13 (fantasy violence, some sexuality). 127 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall, South Shore.

In ancient Egypt, a mortal and the warrior god Horus take on Set, the god of darkness, to rescue Egypt. Violence and world-shattering battles ensue. With Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

The Good Dinosaur

PG (thematic elements). 92 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

In an alternative world where that asteroid missed Earth, a young dinosaur befriends a lost little boy. Animated Disney movie with voices by Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Jeffrey Wright.

Hail, Caesar!

PG-13 (some suggestive content, smoking). 106 minutes. Playing: Oriental.

Coen brothers comedy about a movie studio fixer who, when the star of a big prestige picture is kidnapped, enlists studio talent to help get to the bottom of it. With Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, Alden Ehrenreich, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton.

The Hateful Eight

R (violence, language, a scene of violent sexual content, some nudity). 187 minutes. Playing: Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Showtime, South Shore.

In Quentin Tarantino's latest revenge-ish Western, a bounty hunter known as "The Hangman" (Kurt Russell) is ferrying a prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) when the pair find themselves holed up in a mountain shack with six other unsavory types, played by Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen and Bruce Dern.

Hello, My Name Is Doris

R (language). 90 minutes. Playing: Downer.

Sally Field as a quirky, generally overlooked sixtysomething woman who begins to come out of her shell with help from a new co-worker and a self-help guru. With Max Greenfield, Peter Gallagher, Tyne Daly.

How to Be Single

R (sexual content, pervasive language). 110 minutes. Playing: Ridge.

After a bad breakup, a young woman (Dakota Johnson) gets help in navigating the dating world from a free-spirited pal (Rebel Wilson). Romantic comedy with Leslie Mann, Alison Brie.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay  Part 2

PG-13 (violence, some thematic material). 136 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and friends take the rebellion to the Capitol in the final chapter in the blockbuster action series, based on the second half of the third book in Suzanne Collins' trilogy.

Jane Got a Gun

R (violence, some language). 98 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

Western starring Natalie Portman as a woman defending her homestead against some outlaws with the reluctant assistance of a former beau (Joel Edgerton). Long-delayed production  first by cast and director changes, then by studio bankruptcy filing. With Ewan McGregor.

Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921)

Not rated. 132 minutes. Playing: Ridge.

Estranged brothers return to their childhood home, and are forced to stick around with their bickering family  even when they fall in love with the same girl  when their grandfather has a heart attack. Indian comedy-drama with Alia Bhatt, Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan. In Hindi with English subtitles.

Knight of Cups

R (some nudity, sexuality, language). 118 minutes. Playing: Oriental.

Dreamlike drama by Terrence Malick, with Christian Bale as a writer wrestling with his demons in Los Angeles. With Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman.

Kung Fu Panda 3

PG (mild rude humor). 95 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall, Oak Creek Budget.

Po, that free-spirited martial-arts panda voiced by Jack Black, has to face off against an evil bull that has absorbed the powers of other masters in the spirit realm in this animated sequel.

The Lady in the Van

PG-13 (a brief unsettling image). 104 minutes. Playing: Downer, Times.

An elderly woman talks playwright Alan Bennett into letting her park her van in his driveway, and winds up living in it, there, for the next 15 years. Based on a true story. With Maggie Smith.

London Has Fallen

R (violence, pervasive language). 99 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

A Secret Service agent who saved the president from a terrorist attack at the White House is back on the case when a different terrorist targets the president during a state funeral in London. Sequel to 2013 action hit "Olympus Has Fallen." With Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart.

Miracles From Heaven

PG (thematic material). 109 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

When her daughter is diagnosed with an incurable disease, a fiercely protective mother refuses to give in. As she's on the brink of losing faith, a freak accident yields a miracle  pushing the girl's mother, her family and her community to address the issue of faith in the face of insurmountable odds. Faith-fueled drama from the producers of "Heaven Is for Real." With Jennifer Garner, Queen Latifah, Martin Henderson, John Carroll Lynch, Eugenio Derbez, Kylie Rogers.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

PG (sensuality, language). 95 minutes. Playing: Avalon (Sun. only).

Nia Vardalos' 2002 indie hit about a young Greek woman who falls in love with a non-Greek guy and tries to make it work with her crazy, heritage-obsessed family. With the sequel opening March 25, this is part of a special "Big Fat Greek Brunch" at the Avalon, with a $13 brunch package including admission, a breakfast sandwich and a mimosa (pastries also available). Movie shows at 11 a.m.; movie-only ticket is $5.

My Neighbor Totoro

G. 88 minutes. Playing: Avalon (Sat. only).

Two sisters in rural Japan share adventures with a giant furry forest spirit named Totoro. 1988 animated classic written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Showing in English, at 10:30 a.m. Saturday only; admission is $5.

National Theatre Live:

As You Like It

Not rated. 180 minutes. Playing:Majestic (Mon. only), North Shore (Mon. only), Oriental (Sun. only).

New modern-dress stage production of Shakespeare's comedy. With Rosalie Craig, Patsy Ferran.

The Other Side of the Door

R (some violence, gore). 96 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall.

Horror movie in which, years after losing her young son in an accident, an inconsolable mother learns of an ancient temple that has a portal to the other side that will allow her to communicate with him one last time  unless she screws things up by opening the door.

The Perfect Match

R (sexuality, some nudity, pervasive language). 96 minutes. Playing: IPic/Bayshore, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, South Shore, Southgate.

A relationship-averse ladies' man is bet that he can't stay with one woman for an entire month, and the woman he picks is, for once, just not that into the idea of a long-term deal. Romantic comedy with Terrence J, Cassie Ventura, Paula Patton, Donald Faison.

The Revenant

R (violence, some gore, a sexual assault, language, brief nudity). 156 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Mayfair Mall, Ridge, Saukville.

An explorer and hunter in the American wilderness of the 19th century, left for dead by his companions after being attacked by a bear, sets out for revenge. Atmosphere-rich historical drama  based on a novel inspired by a real-life story  by Oscar-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, with Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio as the vengeance-fueled woodsman.

Risen

PG-13 (violence, some disturbing images). 108 minutes. Playing: Majestic, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime.

In Jerusalem, a Roman soldier is ordered to find out what happened to Jesus' body after he was crucified and then seemingly vanished, before his disappearance is hailed as the sign of a new messiah. Faith-fueled action movie directed by Kevin Reynolds. With Joseph Fiennes, Tom Felton, Maria Boto, Peter Firth.

Spirited Away

PG (some scary moments). 125 minutes. Playing: Avalon (Tue., Thu. only).

A young girl, disappointed at her family's move away from the city, discovers a world of spirits, apparitions and secrets. Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 animated masterpiece won an Oscar for best animated feature. In Japanese with English subtitles. Showing at 9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; admission is $5.

Spotlight

R (some language). 128 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall, Saukville.

Oscar winner for best picture, original screenplay. Investigative journalists at The Boston Globe dig into a story of a priest facing multiple accusations of sexual abuse and discover a much bigger conspiracy within the Catholic Church and Boston's power elite. Drama based on the true story, co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy. With Michael Keaton, Kenosha native Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber.

Star Wars:

The Force Awakens

PG-13 (fantasy/action violence). 136 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Ridge, South Shore.

Thirty years after the events of the first "Star Wars" trilogy, the rebellion is in trouble, a dark organization called the First Order is on the rise, and old warriors are in the fight. J.J. Abrams picks up the gauntlet from George Lucas in the seventh movie in the franchise, with some new faces (when you can see them)  including Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver and Lupita Nyong'o  and some old friends, including Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and even R2-D2.

TCM Presents: The Ten Commandments

G (biblical disasters). 240 minutes. Playing:Playing: Majestic (Sun., Wed. only), Menomonee Falls (Sun., Wed. only), North Shore (Sun., Wed. only), Ridge, South Shore (Sun., Wed. only).

1956 Bible epic staged by Cecil B. DeMille with Charlton Heston as Moses, with Yul Brynner as Rameses, a cast of thousands and Oscar-winning special effects that still hold up. Sixth-highest-grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation.

10 Cloverfield Lane

PG-13 (thematic material, some violence, brief language). 103 minutes. Playing: Hillside, IPic/Bayshore, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

After an accident, a young woman finds herself locked in an underground bunker with another guy and a doomsday prepper who tells them there's something apocalyptic happening outside. But what if it's happening inside, too? Horror-thriller co-produced by J.J. Abrams, who also produced "Cloverfield" (but swears this isn't a sequel). With John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr.

Triple 9

R (pervasive violence and language, drug use, some nudity). 115 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall.

En route to a big score, a crime crew made up of corrupt police and military types and in league with the Russian mob runs into an honest cop. Drama directed by John Hillcoat ("The Proposition"). With Casey Affleck, Anthony Mackie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Paul, Clifton Collins Jr., Norman Reedus.

Twinkle Toes Lights Up

New York

Not rated. 71 minutes. Playing: Mayfair Mall.

Animated movie as product placement, in which Twinkle Toes  a character who is part of the marketing for Skechers Kids shoes  joins her dad when he directs a Broadway musical.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

R (pervasive language, some sexual content, drug use, violent war images). 111 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore.

A TV reporter looking to get out of her rut is assigned to cover the war in Afghanistan. Comedy of sorts based on Kim Barker's memoir "The Taliban Shuffle," with Tina Fey as the reporter. Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina co-star.

The Witch

R (violent content, mature themes, nudity). 92 minutes. Playing: Oriental.

In 1630 New England, a farmer and his family move to the edge of a scary forest, where an evil creeps into their farm  an evil they all blame on his teenage daughter, who they accuse of witchcraft. Sundance Film Festival award-winning horror film is Robert Eggers' directorial debut.

The Young Messiah

PG-13 (some violence, thematic elements). 111 minutes. Playing: Hillside, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

Portrait of Jesus as a young boy, as he and his family return to Nazareth from Egypt. Inspirational drama based on Anne Rice's novel, telling young Jesus' story from the boy's perspective. With Adam Greaves-Neal as young Jesus; co-starring Sean Bean, Jonathan Bailey, Sara Lazzaro, Christian McKay.

Zoolander 2

PG-13 (crude and sexual content, brief violence, brief language). 102 minutes. Playing: Oak Creek Budget.

Derek Zoolander, the dimwitted supermodel who saved the (fashion) world in 2001, is called on to do so again 15 years later when someone begins targeting the world's most beautiful people. Ben Stiller directed and stars in this sequel, with Owen Wilson returning as his sidekick and Will Ferrell as his nemesis; also co-starring Penelope Cruz, Kristen Wiig.

Zootopia

PG (rude humor, some thematic elements). 108 minutes. Playing: Avalon, Fox-Bay, Hillside, IPic/Bayshore, Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, North Shore, Ridge, Rosebud, Saukville, Showtime, South Shore, Southgate.

In a mammal metropolis made up of habitat neighborhoods for every environment, a bunny who's the first of her kind on the city police force is determined to make her mark. Animated Disney comedy with voices by, among others, Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer. (Showing in 3-D at Majestic, Mayfair Mall, Menomonee Falls, Rosebud, South Shore.)

Written and compiled by Chris Foran.

For more on the movies, go to jsonline.com/movies.

THEATER GUIDE

Avalon(Neighborhood Theater Group): 2473 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., (414) 539-6678

Downer(Landmark): 2589 N. Downer Ave., (414) 962-3120

Fox Bay(Cinema Grill): 334 E. Silver Spring Drive, Whitefish Bay, (414) 906-9999

Hillside(Marcus): 2950 Hillside Drive, Delafield, (262) 646-7300

IPic/Bayshore: 5800 N. Bayshore Drive, Glendale, (414) 963-8779

Majestic(Marcus): 770 N. Springdale Road, Brookfield, (262) 798-4099

Mayfair Mall(AMC): 2500 N. Mayfair Road, Wauwatosa, (888) 262-4386

Menomonee Falls(Marcus): W180-N9393 Premier Lane, Menomonee Falls, (262) 502-9070

North Shore(Marcus): 11700 N. Port Washington Road, Mequon, (262) 241-6180

Oak Creek Budget(Marcus): 6912 S. 27th St., Oak Creek, (414) 761-7469

Oriental(Landmark): 2230 N. Farwell Ave., 276-5140

Ridge(Marcus): 5200 S. Moorland Road, New Berlin (262) 797-0889

Rivoli/Cedarburg: W62-N567 Washington Ave., Cedarburg, (262) 377-1010

Rosebud(Neighborhood Theater Group): 6823 W. North Ave., Wauwatosa, (414) 763-7975

Saukville(Marcus): 350 S. Riverside Drive, Saukville, (262) 268-9455

Showtime(Marcus): 8910 S. 102nd St., Franklin, (414) 425-2600

South Shore(Marcus): 7261 S. 13th St., Oak Creek, (414) 768-5960

Southgate(Marcus): 3330 S. 30th St., (414) 672-5111

Times(Neighborhood Theater Group): 5906 W. Vliet St., (414) 763-1763
Ask any Jewish person to explain virtually any Jewish holiday and you'll probably hear some form of, "They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat." The early spring holiday of Purim, which starts Wednesday evening and ends Thursday evening, is no exception.

Here's a recap. The scene: ancient Persia. The villain: evil government official Haman. The drama: Haman plots to kill the Jews. The heroine: beautiful, brave Queen Esther alerts the king to Haman's plot, thus saving the Jews. The food: hamantaschen, a three-cornered pastry resembling Haman's three-cornered hat.

Traditionally, hamantaschen is sweet dough filled with fruit-flavored jelly, chocolate, poppy seeds or nuts. But a recent trend toward savory hamantaschen is hitting local kitchens. Two families of hamantaschen fans explain their choices in joining Team Sweet or Team Savory.

Team Sweet

Lori and Jim Salinsky host an annual hamantaschen baking party in their east side home. Salinsky, a digital strategist for GE Healthcare, is also a woodworker, but baking is in his blood. Salinsky's grandfather, Bud Pollak, owned Milwaukee's Chicago Bakery and was famous for his impressive wedding cakes, breads, desserts and hamantaschen.

Salinsky's parents hosted a hamantaschen baking party while Jim was growing up. Ten years ago, Jim and Lori, a middle school teacher at Milwaukee College Preparatory School, took over hosting along with their two daughters, Jordan, a sophomore at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ali, a sixth-grader at Milwaukee Jewish Day School.

"We usually have 12 to 15 people in our kitchen on a Sunday morning. We turn out 20 to 30 dozen hamantaschen," Jim said. "Doing it together in a group makes it fun."

Lori said, "All that dough folding becomes tedious; the more hands you have, the quicker it goes and the more you can give to friends."

In an effort to increase efficiency, Jim created a rolling machine in his basement wood shop.

"It's based on the concept of an old-fashioned clothes wringer," he said.

Lori added, "It works, but it takes a whole team of people. Someone has to feed the dough, someone has to hold the dough, someone has to hold the machine steady and someone has to turn the crank."

"They laughed at Eli Whitney, too," said Jim. "I'm working on a 2.0 version that might be hydroelectric or bike-powered."

While process improvements are a fun addition to the party, switching from sweet to savory is not an option. The idea of a tomato goat cheese or pesto hamantaschen holds no appeal to the Salinskys.

"That's a quiche, not a hamantaschen," Lori said.

Team Savory

Jill Weinshel is a Mequon mom and classically trained pastry chef who's open to experimenting with savory hamantaschen.

"I'm an equal opportunity glutton. I'll join Team Savory, but I will never give up my poppy seed filling," Weinshel said.

As a Sunday school teacher at Congregation Sinai, Weinshel frequently uses food to teach Jewish history.

"Through cooking, students learn different ways of identifying with many aspects of Judaism," Weinshel said.

Weinshel appreciates the healthy aspect of savory hamantaschen.

"Not having sugar is a nice thing. We're all becoming more conscious of the amount of sugar we're consuming," she said.

Sweet treats are associated with the happy ending to the Purim story.

"That's the reason for the sweet cookie; it's celebratory. Purim is a holiday we're commanded to celebrate," Weinshel said.

But not everyone associates celebrations with sweet treats.

"One person's version of celebration is the salty crunchy stuff. Why not celebrate with a five onion and goat cheese Hamantaschen?"

Experimenting with new foods is the American way.

"While we really love our annual traditions, there's something about the American nature that always wants to break out of the box," Weinshel said.
Aspiring pilots, rejoice. JetBlue has launched a program to select and train everyday folks to fly a commercial jet.

JetBlue's pilots don't like the idea, saying there are already plenty of experienced pilots ready to work for JetBlue.

The pilot recruiting and training program, dubbed Gateway Select, is designed to make "the profession more accessible to a broader range of candidates with diverse backgrounds and experiences." But only 24 people will be picked to go through the four-year training course, starting this summer. The price tag: $125,000 per pilot.

A labor union representative for JetBlue's pilots said that pilots hired by JetBlue now have an average of 5,000 to 8,000 hours of flying experience. But the new program would put pilots into JetBlue cockpits with 1,500 flight hours' experience  the minimum required by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We believe that the best pilot-training program is one that is able to ensure that the safest and most experienced pilots are in the cockpit," said Jim Bigham, chairman of JetBlue's pilot's master executive council.

A JetBlue spokesman said the airline will continue to hire experienced pilots through other channels.

Spirit cuts bag fees for military members

Spirit Airlines, the Florida-based carrier that has led the industry at imposing passenger fees, is giving some fliers a break.

The ultra-low-cost carrier announced last month that it would no longer charge active members of the military fees for their first two checked bags and for one carry-on bag.

The airline charges as much as $45 to check your first bag and $55 for your second, depending on when you pay.

The carry-on bag fee can be as high as $100 if you pay at the gate, or $35 if you pay online.

Spirit has defended the various fees by saying the carrier gives travelers a choice to pay for only what they need.

United Airlines adds biofuel airplane

A Boeing 737 jet that took off from Los Angeles International Airport on March 11 looked like most other planes launching into the partly cloudy skies.

But this San Francisco-bound United Airlines flight was preceded by speeches and fanfare because the plane's engines were powered by a blend of petroleum-based fuel and sustainable biofuel, brewed at a southern California refinery from natural oils and agricultural waste.

Other airlines have tested biofuel, but the Chicago-based carrier says no other airline has committed to using the fuel on a regular route. The jet flies the L.A.-San Francisco route four to five times a day, and it will be fueled by a blend of 30% biofuel and 70% petroleum fuel for two weeks. The airline also plans to continue using the biofuel in its regular operations at the airport.

"This is definitely a milestone," said Angela Foster-Rice, United's managing director of environmental affairs and sustainability.

Still, experts say the industry is years away from closing the tap on petroleum-based jet fuel.

The biofuel blend cuts carbon emissions by more than 60% compared with traditional jet fuel, United said.

Los Angeles Times
Darryl Morin (left) of League of United Latin American Citizens speaks Friday at a City Hall news conference about Milwaukees recent triple homicide. At his side, Bee Xiong holds a photo of homicide victims Mai K. Vue and her husband, Phia Vue. Xiong is the mother of Mai Vue. Credit: Angela Peterson

By of the

Representatives from more than 22 organizations in Wisconsin on Friday called for the triple homicide of a Puerto Rican man and Hmong couple by a white suspect to be prosecuted as a hate crime.

"This act needs to be labeled what it is," said Darryl D. Morin of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

"It is important that our community, our city, our state and, in fact, our nation admit that hate does exist and where we see it, we must identify it," he said.

The coalition also urged authorities to report on how the suspect, Dan J. Popp, had access to firearms given his history of mental illness and to review the treatment he received from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Jesus R. Manso-Perez, 40; Phia Vue, 36; and Mai K. Vue, 32, were shot and killed on March 6 inside their apartment complex in the 3300 block of S. 92nd St.

Popp, 39, is charged with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide in their deaths and one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide for firing toward Manso-Perez's 18-year-old son. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence on each count of first-degree intentional homicide.

Popp has not been charged with a hate crime. Earlier this week, Milwaukee police said the motive remains under investigation and prosecutors said they are still evaluating evidence to determine if additional charges or enhancers will be filed. A hate crime penalty enhancer would add five years of potential imprisonment.

Knowing the motive behind the shooting and clearly labeling it can help a community recover and move forward, said Pardeep Kaleka, whose father was one of six people killed in 2012 when a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek.

"We ask for that same clear articulation that this is indeed driven by hate, not simply mental illness, and that this crime needs to be prosecuted as such," Kaleka said.

Witnesses told police that Popp questioned Manso-Perez and his son about their background before the shooting, according to a criminal complaint.

When they said they were from Puerto Rico, Popp replied, "Oh, that's why you don't speak English," the son told police. A short time later, Popp pointed the gun at Manso-Perez, said, "You guys got to go," and then pulled the trigger, the complaint says.

After that, Popp went to the apartment of Phia and Mai Vue. He fatally shot them after pulling them out of a bedroom in front of their four children and another relative, according to the complaint.

Popp's attorney, Christopher Hartley, has raised the question of his mental competency, telling reporters after a court hearing that Popp had spent time at the mental health complex

A Journal Sentinel review of police records and interviews with people who knew him has also uncovered evidence of mental illness in Popp's history. In 2008, Greenfield police confiscated two firearms from Popp after he sensed demons and witchcraft in his mother's house, and said he believed unknown people were plotting to murder him. Those weapons were turned over to Popp's brother six months later.

Investigators have said a rifle and a handgun were found at the scene of the triple homicide on March 6. They would not say whether those were the same guns once confiscated from Popp.

On Friday, the couple's nephew, Somsak Vue, spoke on behalf of their family.

"They were a truly hardworking and really family-loving couple with such a bright future ahead of them, and the future has been taken from them in this tragedy," Vue said.

"Why, I cannot even fathom or try to explain," he continued. "For the time being we, as the Vue family, are trying just to make it through."

During a vigil for the victims this week, a letter from Manso-Perez's son was read. He wrote, in part, "just because my parents or any other parent do not speak English does not give anyone the right to end the life of someone else."

Donations can be made to the "Vue Family Memorial Fund" at Landmark Credit Union, 4501 W. National Ave. in Milwaukee, or online at www.gofundme.com/tmt6st7f.

Donations for the family of Jesus R. Manso-Perez can be made online at www.gofundme.com/5qt2y57u.
Ald. Bob Donovan (right) says he now backs Milwaukees residency requirement, after previously arguing against efforts to fight a state law that sought to end that requirement. Dovovan is challenging Mayor Tom Barrett (left) in the April 5 election. Credit: Michael McLoone

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By of the

Milwaukee Ald. Bob Donovan insists he hasn't had a change of heart when it comes to requiring city employees to live within city limits.

The south side alderman says he has always supported the city's residency requirements, and has only opposed city leaders' decision to defend it in court.

"I have never had a problem with residency  never," Donovan said Wednesday.

When asked again if he supported Milwaukee's residency requirement, he said, "I do, yeah."

Donovan made his comments to reporters at a campaign event where he was endorsed in the mayor's race by Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. and the Milwaukee Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 215.

But less than three years ago, Donovan was a vocal opponent of a move by city leaders to fight for residency requirements and battle the state in court over the issue.

In July 2013, Donovan and Ald. Joe Davis were the only two aldermen to vote against a pair of Common Council resolutions designed to maintain Milwaukee's nearly 80-year-old residency ordinance.

Donovan slammed the vote, which came two days after Republican Gov. Scott Walker ended residency requirements as part of the state budget, calling it "insanity."

If "you don't like laws, no problem, just ignore them. Better yet, order other people to do the same," Donovan wrote in a satirical statement. "I'm told that this effort is being engineered by the mayor's office. No surprise there, but sad that that high office is being tarnished in such a way. Needless to say, if this insanity passes, it passes absent of my support."

The Milwaukee Police Association brought a lawsuit against the city that was later joined by the Milwaukee firefighters union. The city has halted the residency rule while the case continues, even though it won the latest round in the legal fight.

The residency fight is before the state Supreme Court.

The 2013 budget provision prohibited local governments from maintaining residency rules other than those requiring police and firefighters to live within 15 miles of their borders. That conflicted with Milwaukee's policy, enacted in 1938, requiring employees to live within the city.

Mayor Tom Barrett and most city officials argue they should be able to continue to enforce the policy under the "home rule" provision of the state constitution.

When asked to clarify his position on the issue, Donovan issued a statement saying, "I support residency, period."

In February 2013, Donovan had traveled to Madison to meet with aides to Walker and top Republican leaders. At the time, it was assumed Donovan was working to lobby in favor of lifting the residency rule, but the alderman declined then to say what he was doing in Madison. He later explained that he was actually there pushing for more police officers on the streets, not to overhaul residency rules.

Two years earlier, in March 2011, Donovan did vote in favor of a resolution expressing support for maintaining local control over residency rules. That resolution was co-sponsored by 14 of 15 aldermen, with Donovan the lone Common Council member not to sign on. He did vote in favor of it, but passed up a chance to comment afterward.

Barrett campaign spokeswoman Gillian Drummond criticized Donovan, saying he failed to fight for residency requirements.

"When it really mattered, Bob Donovan fought for those who want to leave the city," she said. "Milwaukee residents won't be fooled  Bob Donovan shares Scott Walker's ideas and Donald Trump's erratic temperament."

Her comments echoed those in recent radio advertisements released by the Barrett campaign. The ads accuse Donovan of having "unsteady, erratic behavior" like Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2016 presidential race, and siding with Walker and Republicans in the Legislature "when they've tried to hurt Milwaukee."

Donovan called on Barrett to pull the ads, saying they were inaccurate.

He said they falsely portrayed him as a Republican, saying he hadn't even thought about whom he planned to vote for in the primary, or even whether he would vote in the GOP or Democratic primary.
President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan wave from Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base as they return to Washington after a vacation at their California ranch in 1986. Credit: Associated Press

When public figures are forced to issue a retraction for something they said, typically they're talking back an unfair criticism they've made of someone else. Perhaps they get overemotional and say something intemperate about an opponent, and subsequently have to apologize.

But man took a healthy bite out of dog last week when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was forced to retract a compliment. On the day of former first lady Nancy Reagan's funeral, Clinton praised Reagan's efforts to combat the AIDS virus, saying, "because of both President and Mrs. Reagan  in particular, Mrs. Reagan  we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it."

It was a human moment from the robotic Clinton, who often appears as she needs tears extracted from her eyes with a pair of pliers. But her praise of the Reagans with regards to AIDS and HIV sent her liberal backers running for paper bags into which to breathe.

Gawker called Clinton's comments "shocking, insulting and utterly inexplicable." Charles Kaiser, author of "The Gay Metropolis," said, "This is shameful, idiotic, false  and heartbreaking." On Twitter, Clinton claimed she "misspoke" about the Reagans and AIDS and quickly apologized.

But Clinton had nothing to apologize for.

It is part of the standard left-wing canon that Reagan was an anti-homosexual monster, based mainly on the fact that he never publicly mentioned AIDS until 1985. This, despite the fact that Reagan vocally opposed a late-1970s California ballot measure that would have barred gay men and women from teaching in public schools. When Reagan was asked during the 1980 presidential primary whether he thought gay people had the same civil rights as everyone else, Reagan replied, "I think they do and should."

But the "silence" charge seems like a bogus way to measure an administration's commitment to an issue; certainly, Barack Obama supports research projects that he doesn't mention in public speeches.

And Reagan's deeds outpaced his lack of words. As historian H.W. Brands put it, Reagan "quietly allowed money for AIDS research to be included in the federal budget, but he let others in the administration do what little talking executive branch officials did on the subject."

In a speech in 1987, Reagan noted that it was only in June of 1981 that five cases of AIDS appeared in California, and the AIDS virus was only detected in 1984. But between 1982 and 1986, Reagan's budgets spent over $500 million on AIDS research. When asked about it in 1985, Reagan answered that AIDS "has been one of the top priorities for us." He noted that the federal commitment to AIDS research in 1986 alone would be $126 million, saying, "Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and we need to find an answer." When Reagan sent his budget to Congress several months later, AIDS research funding was categorized as a "high priority" program.

Reagan also rejected the idea that AIDS was simply a gay disease, saying, "I don't want Americans to think AIDS simply affects only certain groups," adding, "It calls for compassion, not blame. And it calls for understanding, not ignorance."

Of course, Reagan's record on gay rights isn't perfect  he once noted that the Bible considered homosexuality an "abomination," but later backtracked, saying what people did in their own bedrooms was their own business. And for Republicans in the early 1980s  many of whom considered AIDS "God's judgment" on gays  Reagan's view was far more compassionate.

A more accurate accounting of Reagan's stance on AIDS exposes Hillary Clinton's weak-minded pandering to the edges of her party. On the day she praised the Reagans for their efforts on AIDS, I also complimented Clinton for her fairness and open-mindedness.

But as is now evidently custom, I have to publicly and vehemently retract that compliment.

Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email cschneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CM
Inflation is a top issue for voters, but politicians' solutions could make things worse

Voters have shifted their top priority from abortion to their wallets, but candidates are limited in what they can do about rising prices.
Chicago  As in many faith traditions, it is a core belief in Islam that one must care for the poorest and most vulnerable.

Reporter's Notebook Videos and Photos Next Entry



Follow along with photos, videos and notes from reporter Mark Johnson and photojournalist Mark Hoffman on our Follow along with photos, videos and notes from reporter Mark Johnson and photojournalist Mark Hoffman on our Journey to Jordan page.

Find Mecca app Mark Hoffman

The main subject of our upcoming story, Syrian-born pediatric neurologist Tarif Bakdash, is a Sufi Muslim, a follower of an ancient tradition of scholars and mystics, who take very seriously the tenets of the faith.

He is leading a group of Milwaukee-area volunteers  doctors and nurses among them -- to Jordan to work for a week at a Syrian refugee camp. Bakdash, a U.S. citizen, hopes to return again next month, and is seeking a job that will allow him more time to make such trips.

He and his group leave Friday night. I made the journey early.

Mark Hoffman

Waiting to get on the plane at O'Hare International Airport, there were quite a few people who took time to affirm their relationship with God by bowing down in the direction of Mecca and praying.

How do they know which direction to face?

Well, there's an app for that.

The overwhelming majority of the passengers on the flight to Jordan appeared to be Arab Muslims, so no one gave it a second thought that people were kneeling and praying in the airport concourse.

One thing I had never seen before while boarding a plane was a large presence of officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one with a dog, double-checking travel documents at the gate.

While on the plane, monitors on the seat-backs told passengers how far the aircraft was from Mecca and what direction it was.

Upon clearing customs in Amman, Jordan, large groups of families were reunited with warm embraces  the sort that might embarrass most Americans.

 Mark Hoffman, photojournalist
Petra, Jordan  The violence in Syria is making its presence felt in a tranquil corner of this peaceful nation.

Normally this time of year, business is bustling at Jordan's top tourist attraction, the ancient Nabataean city of Petra.

Follow along with photos, videos and notes from reporter Mark Johnson and photojournalist Mark Hoffman on our Journey to Jordan page.

The ancient city, half built and half carved into the side of a gorge, may be most familiar to Americans for its role in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The area has been designated by the United Nations as a World Heritage site.

The Syrian border is a drive of several hours away, but those who make their living from tourists say half as many people visit the site now as compared to five years ago when war began in Syria and the prominence of the Islamic State grew.

This should be the high season, but restaurants are nearly empty outside the gates to the ancient city.

Khalid Mosa, a Bedouin who was born literally in the shadows of the city, says it been difficult to support his family of seven children because there aren't as many tourists to sell rides on his pair of donkeys.

A Lebanese-born waitress at the Sandstone restaurant about 200 yards from the entrance to the historic site has never seen it this quiet. She thinks its because of the misconception that strife in the region has affected the area.

Mark Hoffman A horse gallops past souvenirs for sale Friday in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. The archeological site is the top tourist attraction in Jordan, and has been named a World Heritage Site by the United Nations.

Mark Hoffman Khalid Mosa (left) is shown with two donkeys he uses to sell rides to tourists in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. Mosa, who was born in the shadow of the city, works to support his seven kids, but in 30 years has never seen so few tourists.

Mark Hoffman Tourists, guides and men offering rides on donkeys and camels gather in front of the treasury in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. The city may be most familiar to Americans for its role in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Mark Hoffman Boys who make money by selling donkey rides to tourists pass Roman colonnades in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan. Those who make their living from tourism say about half as many people visit the site now than five years ago when war intensified in Syria and the prominence of the Islamic State grew.

Mark Hoffman After a strenuous hour-long hike up 800 uneven steps, a tourist arrives at the monastery in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. The site is carved into pink sandstone cliffs and is accessed through a narrow canyon.

Mark Hoffman Tourists and others outside the treasury in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra. Tourism has been greatly affected by concerns about violence in the region, even though the Syrian border is a several hours drive away.

Mark Hoffman A man walks in an amphitheater that was carved from solid stone and could seat 6,000 people.

Mark Hoffman Children disobey their parents and climb ruins in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra.

Mark Hoffman Camels make their way back to the entrance, where tourists will pay to ride them into the ancient Nabataean city of Petra.

Mark Hoffman Camels are led back to the entrance after being ridden by tourists in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra.

READ MORE International reporting for this project is supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

twitter.com/MJSphotog mhoffman@journalsentinel.com
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by Peter Van Buren | ( Tomdispatch.com)

The nuances of foreign policy do not feature heavily in the ongoing presidential campaign. Every candidate intends to destroy the Islamic State; each has concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea, and China; every one of them will defend Israel; and no one wants to talk much about anything else  except, in the case of the Republicans, who rattle their sabers against Iran.

In that light, heres a little trip down memory lane: in October 2012, I considered five critical foreign policy questions  they form the section headings below  that were not being discussed by then-candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Romney today is a sideshow act for the current Republican circus, and Obama has started packing up his tent at the White House and producing his own foreign policy obituary.

And sadly, those five questions of 2012 remain as pertinent and unraised today as they were four years ago. Unlike then, however, answers may be at hand, and believe me, thats not good news. Now, lets consider them four years later, one by one.

Is there an endgame for the global war on terror?

That was the first question I asked back in 2012. In the ensuing years, no such endgame has either been proposed or found, and these days no ones even talking about looking for one. Instead, a state of perpetual conflict in the Greater Middle East and Africa has become so much the norm that most of us dont even notice.

In 2012, I wrote, The current president, elected on the promise of change, altered very little when it came to George W. Bushs Global War on Terror (other than dropping the name). That jewel-in-the-crown of Bush-era offshore imprisonment, Guantanamo, still houses over 160 prisoners held without trial. While the U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq the war in Afghanistan stumbles on. Drone strikes and other forms of conflict continue in the same places Bush tormented: Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan (and its clear that northern Mali is heading our way).

Well, candidates of 2016? Guantanamo remains open for business, with 91 men still left. Five others were expeditiously traded away by executive decision to retrieve runaway American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan, but somehow President Obama feels he cant release most of the others without lots of approvals by well, someone. The Republicans running for president are howling to expand Gitmo, and the two Democratic candidates are in favor of whatever sort of not-a-plan plan Obama has been pushing around his plate for eight years.

Iraq took a bad bounce when the same president who withdrew U.S. troops in 2011 let loose the planes and drones and started putting those boots back on that same old ground in 2014. It didnt take long for the U.S. to morph that conflict from a rescue mission to a training mission to bombing to Special Operations forces in ongoing contact with the enemy, and not just in Iraq, but Syria, too. No candidate has said that s/he will pull out.

As for the war in Afghanistan, it now features an indefinite, generational American troop commitment. Think of that country as the third rail of campaign 2016  no candidate dares touch it for fear of instant electrocution, though (since the American public seems to have forgotten the place) by whom exactly is unclear. Theres still plenty of fighting going on in Yemen  albeit now mostly via Americas well-armed proxies the Saudis  and Africa is more militarized than ever.

As for the most common American someone in what used to be called the third world is likely to encounter, its no longer a diplomat, a missionary, a tourist, or even a soldier  its a drone. The United States claims the right to fly into any nations airspace and kill anyone it wishes. Add it all together and when it comes to that war on terror across significant parts of the globe, the once-reluctant heir to the Bush legacy leaves behind a twenty-first century mechanism for perpetual war and eternal assassination missions. And no candidate in either party is willing to even suggest that such a situation needs to end.

In 2012, I also wrote, Washington seems able to come up with nothing more than a whack-a-mole strategy for ridding itself of the scourge of terror, an endless succession of killings of al-Qaeda Number 3 guys. Counterterrorism tsar John Brennan, Obamas drone-meister, has put it this way: Were not going to rest until al-Qaeda the organization is destroyed and is eliminated from areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Africa, and other areas.

Four years later, whack-a-mole seems to still be as polite a way as possible of categorizing Americas strategy. In 2013, the top whacker John Brennan got an upgrade to director of the CIA, but strangely  despite so many drones sent off, Special Operations teams sent in, and bombers let loose  the moles keep burrowing and hes gotten none of the rest he was seeking in 2012. Al-Qaeda is still around, but more significantly, the Islamic State (IS) has replaced that outfit as the signature terrorist organization for the 2016 election.

And speaking of IS, the 2011 war in Libya, midwifed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, led to the elimination of autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, which in turn led to chaos, which in turn led to the spread of IS there big time, which appears on its way to leading to a new American war in Libya seeking the kind of stability that, for all his terrors, Qaddafi had indeed brought to that country during his 34 years in power and the U.S. military will never find.

So an end to the Global War on Terror? Nope.

Do todays foreign policy challenges mean that its time to retire the Constitution?

In 2012 I wrote, Starting on September 12, 2001, challenges, threats, and risks abroad have been used to justify abandoning core beliefs enshrined in the Bill of Rights. That bill, we are told, cant accommodate terror threats to the Homeland.

At the time, however, our concerns about unconstitutionality were mostly based on limited information from early whistleblowers like Tom Drake and Bill Binney, and what some then called conspiracy theories. That was before National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden confirmed our worst nightmares in June 2013 by leaking a trove of NSA documents about the overwhelming American surveillance state. Snowden summed it up this way: You see programs and policies that were publicly justified on the basis of preventing terrorism  which we all want  in fact being used for very different purposes.

Now, heres the strange thing: since Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 presidential race, no candidate seems to find it worth his or her while to discuss protecting the Bill of Rights or the Constitution from the national security state. (Only the Second Amendment, it turns out, is still sacred.) And speaking of rights, things had already grown so extreme by 2013 that Attorney General Eric Holder felt forced to publicly insist that the government did not plan to torture or kill Edward Snowden, should he end up in its hands. Given the tone of this election, someone may want to update that promise.

In 2012, of course, the Obama administration had only managed to put two whistleblowers in jail for violating the Espionage Act. Since then, such prosecutions have grown almost commonplace, with five more convictions (including that of Chelsea Manning) and with whatever penalties short of torture and murder are planned for Edward Snowden still pending. No one then mentioned the use of the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act, but that wasnt surprising. Its moment was still coming.

Four years later, still not a peep out of any candidate about the uses of that act, once aimed at spying for foreign powers in wartime, or a serious discussion of government surveillance and the loss of privacy in American life. (And we just learned that the Pentagons spy drones have been released over the homeland, too, but dont expect to hear anything about that or its implications either.) Of course, Snowden has come up in the debates of both parties. He has been labeled a traitor as part of the blood sport that the Republican debates have devolved into, and denounced as a thief by Hillary Clinton, while Bernie Sanders gave him credit for educating the American people but still thought he deserved prison time.

If the question in 2012 was: Candidates, have we walked away from the Constitution? If so, shouldnt we publish some sort of notice or bulletin? In 2016, the answer seems to be: Yes, weve walked away, and accept that or else you traitor!

What do we want from the Middle East?

In 2012, considering the wreckage of the post-9/11 policies of two administrations in the Middle East, I wondered what the goal of Americas presence there could possibly be. Washington had just ended its war in Iraq, walked away from the chaos in Libya, and yet continued to launch a seemingly never-ending series of drone strikes in the region. Is it all about oil? I asked. Israel? Old-fashioned hegemony and containment? History suggests that we should make up our mind on what Americas goals in the Middle East might actually be. No cheating now  having no policy is a policy of its own.

Four years later, Washington is desperately trying to destroy an Islamic State caliphate that wasnt even on its radar in 2012. Of course, that brings up the question of whether IS can be militarily destroyed at all, as we watch its spread to places as far-flung as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya. And then theres the question no one would have thought to ask back then: If we destroy that movement in Iraq and Syria, will another even more brutish group simply take its place, as the Islamic State did with al-Qaeda in Iraq? No candidate this time around even seems to grasp that these groups arent just problems in themselves, but symptoms of a broader Sunni-Shiite problem.

In the meantime, the one broad policy consensus to emerge is that we shouldnt hesitate to unleash our air power and Special Operations forces and, with the help of local proxies, wreck as much stuff as possible. America has welcomed all comers to take their best shots in Syria and Iraq in the name of fighting the Islamic State. The ongoing effort to bomb it away has resulted in the destruction of cities that were still in decent shape in 2012, like Ramadi, Kobane, Homs, and evidently at some future moment Iraqs second largest city, Mosul, in order to save them. Four American presidents have made war in the region without success, and whoever follows Obama into the Oval Office will be number five. No questions asked.

What is your plan to right-size our military and what about downsizing the global mission?

Plan? Right-size? Heres the reality four years after I asked that question: Absolutely no candidate, including the most progressive one, is talking about cutting or in any way seriously curtailing the U.S. military.

Not surprisingly, in response to the ongoing question of the year, So how will you pay for that? (in other words, any project being discussed from massive border security and mass deportations to free public college tuition), no candidate has said: Lets spend less than 54% of our discretionary budget on defense.

Call me sentimental, but as I wrote in 2012, Id still like to know from the candidates, What will you do to right-size the military and downsize its global mission? Secondly, did this countrys founders really intend for the president to have unchecked personal war-making powers?

Such questions would at least provide a little comic relief, as all the candidates except Bernie Sanders lock horns to see who will be the one to increase the defense budget the most.

Since no one outside our borders buys American exceptionalism anymore, whats next? What is Americas point these days?

In 2012, I laid out the reality of twenty-first-century America this way: We keep the old myth alive that America is a special, good place, the most exceptional of places in fact, but in our foreign policy were more like some mean old man, reduced to feeling good about himself by yelling at the kids to get off the lawn (or simply taking potshots at them). Now, who we are and what we are abroad seems so much grimmer America the Exceptional, has, it seems, run its course. Saber rattling feels angry, unproductive, and without any doubt unbelievably expensive.

Yet in 2016 most of the candidates are still barking about America the Exceptional despite another four years of rust on the chrome. Donald Trump may be the exceptional exception in that he appears to think Americas exceptional greatness is still to come, though quite soon under his guidance.

The question for the candidates in 2012 was and in 2016 remains Who exactly are we in the world and who do you want us to be? Are you ready to promote a policy of fighting to be planetary top dog  and we all know where that leads  or can we find a place in the global community? Without resorting to the usual shining city on a hill metaphors, can you tell us your vision for America in the world?

The answer is a resounding no.

See You Again in 2020

The candidates have made it clear that the struggle against terror is a forever war, the U.S. military can never be big enough, bombing and missiling the Greater Middle East is now the American Way of Life, and the Constitution is indeed a pain and should get the hell out of the way.

Above all, no politician dares or cares to tell us anything but what they think we want to hear: America is exceptional, military power can solve problems, the U.S. military isnt big enough, and it is necessary to give up our freedoms to protect our freedoms. Are we, in the perhaps slightly exaggerated words of one foreign commentator, now just a nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conducting military operations against primitive countries?

Bookmark this page. Ill be back before the 2020 elections to see how were doing.

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hoopers War.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2016 Peter Van Buren

Via Tomdispatch.com)

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Channel 4 News: No ISIS if we didnt invade Iraq: David Kilcullen interview
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By Killian Redden | (Maan News Agency) |  

BETHLEHEM (Maan)  Palestinian and international leaders joined a growing chorus of criticism this week over Israels recent seizure of hundreds of acres of land in the southern occupied West Bank, saying it was proof Israel is not interested in peace.

In the latest condemnation, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said Thursday that the systematic land grab constituted a flagrant violation of international law.



h/t Wikipedia

The Israeli government is not interested in peace, Hamdallah said, according to a statement issued by his office. It rather implement(s) a policy designed to prevent the formation of a contiguous Palestinian state.

The land in question  2,342 dunams (580 acres) of land to the south of Jericho  was declared state land by Israel earlier this month, in a decision that far surpassed the 1,500 dunams (370 acres) initially approved for takeover by Israels Minister of Defense in January.

Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said that the land confiscation would pave the way for the construction of 358 housing units in the illegal settlement of Almog.

Jamal Dajani, Hamdallahs official spokesperson, said: Israels decision to appropriate a large tract of fertile land in the occupied West Bank, in the Jordan Valley near Jericho sends a very strong message to the international community that the current far-right Israeli government led by PM Benjamin Netanyahu does not abide by previous agreements, and does not support a two-state solution to the conflict.

Hamdallahs comments were matched by earlier condemnations from senior PLO officials Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi, with Ashrawi telling a delegation of students from Harvard University on Wednesday that she strongly denounce(s) the decision.

Israel is yet again demonstrating its willful efforts to single-handedly destroy the chances for peace and stability and to create a situation where the two-state solution is impossible, she was quoted as saying in a statement issued by her office.

A growing number of international states have also slammed the decision, with French officials saying they were extremely concerned by the move, and the German foreign ministry reportedly saying the timing was particularly bad, coming amid efforts to restart peace talks.

On Thursday, Japan also said it deplored the decision, which it said clearly contradicts the ongoing efforts by the international community toward a two-state solution.

This followed yet another condemnation by the US State Department, with spokesperson John Kirby telling reporters on Tuesday that Israels land expropriations, settlement expansions, and the legalization of settlement outposts were fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.

Kirby said: We strongly oppose any steps that accelerate settlement expansion, which raises serious questions about Israels long-term intentions.

Reporters asked him whether Israel had announced the decision as a sort of slight to the US at a time when US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, although Kirby only said: I would let the Israeli authorities speak to the timing.

He accepted that despite public and private statements, Israels actions throughout the Obama administration had routinely contradicted a two-state solution, but insisted the White House still backed and believed in the viability of a two-state solution.

One journalist responded: You can still believe in unicorns if you want to, but that doesnt mean that they exist.

Peace Now said the land confiscation south of Jericho followed that of around 5,000 dunams (1,240 acres) of Palestinian land in Bethlehem district in 2014.

The group said Israel has not confiscated such large swathes of land for the purpose of settlement expansion since the pre-Oslo period in the 1980s, with recent moves indicating a clear change of policy.

Israels growing settlements in that earlier period played a significant role in triggering the First Intifada, or uprising.

Peace Now said: Instead of trying to calm the situation, the government is adding fuel to the fire and sending a clear message to Palestinians, as well as to Israelis, that it has no intention to work towards peace and two states.

Via Maan News Agency
Cenk Uygur | (The Young Turks Video Report) |  

Interesting development: The New York Times wrote a positive story about Bernie Sanders for a few hours until they edited it into a hatched job. Why did this happen? Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan took her paper to task Thursday after a piece about Democratic presidential candidateBernie Sanders was updated to add negative paragraphs for seemingly no reason at all.

The original Times article Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years via Legislative Side Doors, was a generally positive piece about how Sanders managed to score legislative victories in Congress despite being an independent. But after publication, the following two paragraphs were added without any indication from the Times that the piece had been updated.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat (Life) summarized Russian sources on Thursdays speech by Russian president Vladimir Putin:

Putin made several points:

1. Russia hopes that the ceasefire and Geneva peace negotiations can now go forward relatively smoothly toward a political settlement in Syria

2. Russia will continue to bomb al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front) and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Syria.

3. Russia will go on supplying the Syrian Arab Army with training, with weapons, and with military advice.

4. Russia is leaving in place powerful anti-aircraft batteries and will blow interlopers out of the air if they enter Syrian air space (a reference to Turkey).

5. If the opposition tries to take advantage of the cessation of hostilities to mount a substantial assault on the Damascus regime, Russia can ramp back up its forces in Syria within hours.

A Russian general is quoted in the same piece saying that the bulk of Russian planes and helicopter gunships will be withdrawn from Syria within two or three days at the most.



Related video:

AFP: Putin warns Russia can ramp up military presence in Syria 
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Athabasca Nuclear Corporation (TSX-V: ASC) (Athabasca Nuclear or the Corporation) is pleased to announce that it intends to conduct a non-brokered private placement of up to 8,020,000 common share units at a price of $0.05 per unit (the Units) to raise gross proceeds of up to $401,000 (the Financing).

Each Unit under the Financing will consist of one common share and one full common share warrant. Each warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Corporation at a price of $0.05 per common share for a one year period from the closing date.

The Corporation advises that insiders of Athabasca Nuclear may participate for greater than 25% of the Financing.

Shares issued pursuant to the Financing shall be subject to a four-month hold period pursuant to applicable securities laws of Canada.

The Corporation may pay finder's fees on certain subscriptions of the Financing equal to 7%. Net proceeds of the Financing will be used for working capital purposes and ongoing efforts to advance the Corporations exploration projects.

About Athabasca Nuclear Corporation

Athabasca Nuclear Corporation (TSXV:ASC) is an exploration company focused on uranium through its 50% interest in the Preston Uranium Project, one of the largest tenure positions in the emerging Western Athabasca Basin. The Corporation also holds other mineral exploration projects including its district-scale Wollaston NE Uranium Project. More information about Athabasca Nuclear and its projects may be found at www.athabascanuclear.com.

Signed,

Ryan Kalt, Chief Executive Officer

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently expected or forecast in such statements.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contact Info:

Brian Biles

604-329-4421

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www.athabascanuclear.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - March 17, 2016) - Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:SYH)(OTCBB:SYHBF)(FRANKFURT:SC1N) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the addition of Mr. Andreas Norlin as a member of the Company's Advisory Board.

Mr. Norlin is the founder and Managing Director of the International Thorium Energy Organization, an international and multi-stakeholder advocacy platform with the goal of facilitating the pathway to power the world with thorium fueled nuclear energy. Through the organization, Mr. Norlin has aided development in the area of nuclear energy since 2009 with a continuously growing community of nuclear proponents. He has a vision to power the world with clean, safe and affordable energy. Mr. Norlin has a background in Physics and Technology Development from Lund University and has been published in Nature. He also holds a patent for a laser plasma wakefield accelerator technology he developed in laboratories at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Through his unique network and experience in the fields of energy, nuclear and thorium he can advise on related matters.

Jordan Trimble, President and CEO of Skyharbour Resources, stated: "We would like to welcome Andreas to our Advisory Board as he is a highly respected thorium expert having founded the International Thorium Energy Organization. Through his unique network and experience in the fields of energy, nuclear and thorium he can advise the Company on related matters. Skyharbour is committed to building a preeminent uranium and thorium company with a strong, diversified management and advisory team."

About Skyharbour Resources Ltd.:

Skyharbour holds interest in an extensive portfolio of uranium and thorium exploration projects in Canada's Athabasca Basin and is well positioned to benefit from improving uranium market fundamentals with four drill-ready projects. The Company owns a 100% interest in the Falcon Point (formerly Way Lake) Uranium Project on the east side of the Basin which hosts an NI 43-101 inferred resource totaling 7.0 million pounds of U 3 O 8 at 0.03% and 5.3 million pounds of ThO 2 at 0.023%. The project also hosts a high grade surface showing with up to 68% U 3 O 8 in grab samples from a massive pitchblende vein, the source of which has yet to be discovered. Skyharbour has a 50% interest in the large, geologically prospective Preston Uranium Project proximal to Fission Uranium's Triple R deposit as well as NexGen Energy's Arrow deposit. The Company's 100% owned Mann Lake Uranium project on the east side of the Basin is strategically located adjacent to the Mann Lake Joint Venture operated by Cameco with partners Denison Mines and AREVA where high-grade, basement-hosted uranium mineralization was recently discovered. Skyharbour's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.

To find out more about Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:SYH) visit the Company's website at www.skyharbourltd.com.

SKYHARBOUR RESOURCES LTD.

Jordan Trimble, President and CEO

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management 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 or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information.
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"Ktown Cowboys" is premiering in select North American theaters on March 18.

The Hollywood production provides a heartfelt and comedic examination of the challenges faced by five Korean-American friends, who attempt to gain love and success in Los Angeles, Koreatown.

Screenwriter and comedian Danny Cho leads the cast as Danny, a stand-up comic who is plagued by delusions of unattainable fame. His bawdy humor is offset by the tribulations of Sunny, the son of liquor store proprietors and a restauranteur, portrayed by Sunn Wee. Sunny attempts to balance filial obligations with his own pursuit of happiness.

Bobby Choy, who performs under the stage name Big Phony, is Robby, an adoptee whose Korean heritage is off-set by his suburban, American upbringing.

Peter Jae tackles the role of Peter, a design student who is seemingly out of place within the fashion world.

Shane Yoon rounds out the cast as Jason, a financially privileged businessman who unexpectedly falls upon difficult times.

The coming-of-age flick debuted at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2015, before going into limited release. KpopStarz sat down with the cast for an interview, during the preeminent music, film, and technology event.

Danny Cho weighed in on the motivation for setting the film within LA Koreatown.

"Before we shot the web series, no one had ever focused on K-Town," said Cho. "That's where the director and I spent most of our formative years, partying. I thought that would be interesting and we knew that most people didn't know about it. Once the web series came out, The Food Network visited Koreatown. Anthony Bourdain was eating at Sizzler, for some reason."

He went on to describe the juxtapositions between Koreatown and the land which has served as the launching point of the Hallyu Wave.

"K-Town is not necessarily full blown Korean culture," said Cho. "It's Korean-American culture and it's different from Korean culture. I don't want people to think this is Korean culture because it's not; it's kind of a like an older version of it. I like to think of it as a 1980's version of Korean culture. That's when my parents immigrated and they never went back. It's like the culture stopped."

"Ktown Cowboys" premieres in select theaters on March 18, with screenings in Los Angeles at CGV Cinemas, New York City's AMC Empire 25 theater, AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco, and Cinema Arts Theater in Virginia.

Screenings will also be accompanied by select after-party events featuring "Ktown Cowboys" cast members.

For more information, including ticketing and showtimes, visit the website for "Ktown Cowboys."
BRUSSELS (AP)  After an intense four-month manhunt across Europe and beyond, police on Friday captured the top fugitive in the Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighborhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam was shot in the leg and detained by police during a raid in Molenbeek, said Ahmed El Khannouss, the neighborhood's deputy mayor.

Police are still searching for another suspect who is holed up in a house that is just a few dozen meters (yards) from two schools, he added.

Helmeted police with riot shields have cordoned off the area and two explosions were heard.

Brussels-born Abdeslam, 26, was among the attackers who killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on Nov. 13 in Paris.

In addition to Abdeslam, the whereabouts of two Paris attack suspects remains unknown, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Friday's caputure of Abdeslam comes after Belgian authorities say they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighborhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam  Mohamed Belkaid  was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors say. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months," in the apartment.

Abdeslam fled Paris after the Nov. 13 attacks. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area Thursday.

Salah Abdeslam, a childhood friend of suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation, and were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.

Four days after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, the same false ID card was used to transfer 750 euros ($847) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, Abaaoud's niece. Both Ait Boulahcen and Abaaoud died afterward in a police siege.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, has not been found since.

In January, Belgian authorities said one of his fingerprints was found alongside homemade suicide bomb belts at an apartment in another area of Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said it wasn't known whether he had been at the address in the Schaerbeek district before or after the Paris attacks, or how long he had spent there.
FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2015 photo, Dylan O'Brien attends the premiere of "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" in New York. OBrien has been injured on the set of Maze Runner: The Death Cure during production in Vancouver, Canada. 20th Century Fox said in a statement Friday, March 18, 2016, that OBrien was immediately transferred to a local hospital after being injured Thursday. The studio said shooting will be shut down while the actor recovers. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)
In this March 13, 2016 photo, demonstrators hold a poster with a message that reads in Portuguese; "Lula, Dilma, Zika, Chikungunya. Viruses that have no cure!", placing the country's leader and her predecessor in the same company as the mosquito-borne viruses, in Brasilia, Brazil. The president faces impeachment proceedings over alleged fiscal mismanagement with the country in the throes of the worst recession in decades and amid a sprawling investigation into corruption at the state-run oil giant Petrobras. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Benbrook Police Commander David Babcock confirms at a press conference that Vadym Kholodenko, 2013 winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is not a suspect in the deaths of his two daughters and the stabbing of his wife Sofya Tsygankova, Friday, March 18, 2016, in Benbrook, Texas. (Paul Moseley /Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
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Part of a series.

I have advocated in this series of posts on direct primary care in one form or another (i.e., membership, retainer-based, concierge and various other incarnations and conceptions) because it works well for both patients and primary care practitioners. Direct primary care allows the doctor the opportunity to give the type of outstanding care that each of us needs, whether currently healthy or beset with multiple chronic illnesses.

But there are many other innovative transformations can be successful. Here are a few other approaches that also create a reasonable PCP-to-patient ratio and, therefore, the time each patient needs and deserves:

Capitation, in which the PCP receives a large enough per-member per-month fee that the total number of patients drops from the current number. As just one example, I posted about a Medicare Advantage plan offered through a group of continuing care retirement communities.

Insurers change the fee-for-service reimbursement methodology to assure better care of chronic illnesses and enhanced preventive care, as described with a commercial insurer.

Employers establish their own primary care operations with an appropriate employee-to-doctor ratio or pay for direct primary care via an HSA

Insurers decide to pay a monthly fee for direct primary care, as did the Nevada Health Co-op in association with Turntable Health, in which the usual requirements of insurers were waived in lieu of a fixed monthly payment (The NHE was, for other reasons, ultimately not successful financially.)

Insurers, employers, unions or associations contract with organizations like Iora Health to provide primary care unencumbered by the usual insurance mandates, with only a reasonable number of patients per doctor depending on circumstances and with an emphasis on a team approach and health coaching.

Insurers agree to a contract with a provider organization that places extensive resources into primary care for the benefit of those with multiple chronic illnesses and socioeconomic deprivation, as with a Medicaid contract with a provider company to care for the sickest of the sick.

In each of these examples, the intention  whether stated or not  was to convert from a dysfunctional medical care delivery system to a true health care delivery system. When this happens, it is clear that the quality of care rose, and the total costs declined, often dramatically. In each the key was innovation  stepping away from the current system and constructing a new, better approach.

In each, as with direct primary care, the goal was to create a primary care delivery system that offers high-quality care to a satisfied patient by an enthusiastic and energized physician (or other provider) at a reasonable cost that lowers the total cost of care. All who have the needed abilities and expertise can develop their own solutions to the problem. These individuals are at the front line, so they know better what will work in their settings. The solutions can be sorted out in the health care marketplace, with the best of each ultimately used together.

What has always driven individuals to become physicians is the opportunity for a trusting, meaningful and useful relationship with the patient. This relationship is the heart of primary care. The goal today should be to enhance that relationship by assuring that the PCP has the needed time with the patient for listening, thinking, preventing, treating and coordinating. That means fewer patients per doctor and it means much less nonclinical busy work dictated by others. Another part of the goal is to reduce the burden on the PCP by making better use of the team.

A third element is to assure a proactive approach with all patients at all times, not just when they show up at the office with a problem. When the PCP-patient relationship is present, the workload of the PCP is reduced, and the entire patient panel is proactively managed by the primary care provider and team, then the PCP becomes the backbone of the U.S. health care delivery system. This means assurance of excellent care, increased satisfaction for both provider and patient and reduced total costs of care. It means a health care system, not the dysfunctional medical care system of today.

Stephen C. Schimpff is a quasi-retired internist, professor of medicine and public policy, former CEO, University of Maryland Medical Center, and senior advisor, Sage Growth Partners. He is the author of Fixing the Primary Care Crisis: Reclaiming the Patient-Doctor Relationship and Returning Healthcare Decisions to You and Your Doctor.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Midas Gold Completes C$55.2 Million Funding With Paulson & Co.

Midas Gold Corp. (TSX: MAX) reports that it has completed C$55.2 million in financing with Paulson & Co. Inc. through a previously announced offering of Canadian dollar-denominated 0.05% senior unsecured convertible notes issued by a subsidiary of the company and common shares. Through this offering, we are now positioned to continue to advance the world-class Stibnite gold project (in Idaho) with certainty of funding," says Stephen Quin, president and chief executive officer of Midas Gold. Victor Flores, partner with Paulson & Co., adds, We are excited to play an important role in the development of one of North America's largest, highest-quality gold projects." In conjunction with the financing, Midas Gold has appointed Flores and Marcelo Kim, also a partner at Paulson & Co., to its board of directors. In order to accommodate these appointments, Wayne Hubert and John Wakeford stepped down from the board. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Turquoise Hill Resources Reports Profitable 2015 Turquoise Hill Resources (TSX, NYSE: TRQ) reports 2015 net income of $313.3 million, or 16 cents per share, compared $26.9 million, or a penny, in 2014. The increase is mainly due to a $210.2 million non-cash impairment charge recorded in 2014 and a deferred tax asset of $165 million recognized in 2015, partially offset by adjustments for inventory write-down of $103.2 million. Operating cash flows before interest and taxes in 2015 were $650.5 million compared with $718.5 million in 2014, reflecting the impact of lower commodity prices on sales revenue, offset by the continued production and cost improvements, the company says. Turquoise Hills principal asset is a two-thirds interest in Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, one of the world's largest copper-gold-silver mines. In 2015, copper production of 202,200 tonnes exceeded the companys guidance and annual gold production of 653,000 ounces met guidance. Silver output was 1.2 million ounces. Late in 2015, Oyu Tolgoi signed a $4.4 billion project finance facility for the next phase of expansion at Oyu Tolgoi. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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Prior to PDAC, there were two takeover bids in West Africa initiated by two separate mid-tier producers. On February 29, Australian miner Perseus (PRU.TO) announced a friendly takeover via a UK scheme of arrangement deal in an attempt to acquire Amara Mining PLC. Then, four days later, Endeavour Mining (EDV.TO) announced a court approved plan of arrangement to acquire True Gold (TGM.V).



As it becomes increasingly apparent that the bottom in the sector has been reached, this could be the beginning of a consolidation phase in West Africa. Upon speaking with the management of both major and mid-tier West African miners (at PDAC), I gathered that they realized that due to the bargain basement priced deposits in West Africa, rivals will be snapping them up posthaste.

Since last December, I have accumulated shares in five West African miners that I believe to have the least risk in what is perceived to be a high-risk jurisdiction.

Mid-tier Growth Oriented Producers (Most likely to acquire)

Endeavour Mining (EDV.TO): This company is currently my largest holding as I feel they are in the process of creating the next West African major. If the True Gold deal is finalized in April, Endeavour will have a market cap of roughly $1 billion with $300 million in cash, including La Manchas future $61.5 million investment and the $20 million from the sale of the Youga mine. The companys debt (which has been paid down $25 million per quarter since Q3 2015) is now down to a very manageable $144 million. With the addition of Karma they will be producing over 700k oz. per year at an AISC of $900 per oz. Furthermore, if they build Hounde by 2018, it would add another 200k oz per year.

Compare Endeavour to Randgold, who now produces 1.2 million oz per year at a similar cost base yet has an $8.6 billion market cap! Semafo (SMF.TO): I was fortunate enough to ride this Burkina Faso-based company during the last cycle (from the 2008 bottom) for strong profits. Early last year they acquired Orbis Gold, who had a number of strong, high grade projects in Burkina Faso. One such project, Natougou, could be a game changer. The deposit boasts open pit reserves of 9.6 million tonnes at a grade of 4.15 g/t AU for 1,276,000 oz of gold. Moreover, this is a young property yet to be fully explored. Due to an average head grade of 5.72 g/pt, Natougou could add annual production of more than 226k ounces at an AISC of only $374/oz. The first gold pour is expected by Q2 2018 with full steady-state production by 2019.

Natougou would double Semafos current production and lower their AISC from the already industry low of $645 per oz to a $500 per oz range. Its current market cap is $1.1 billion US.

Mid Tier Producers I Believe Could Be Acquired Soon

Golden Star Resources (GSR.TO): This former high cost producer in Ghana with the largest land package in the Ashanti Gold Belt has become a great turnaround story. They have just completed a streaming deal with Royal Gold to fund the underground high-grade development of their Wassa and Prestea mines. The deal is a $130 million stream financing with RGLD and a $20 million term loan. Details of the loan are here.

GSRs just released Q4 is very impressive as the company has lowered its costs considerably to a five year low with production of over 221k oz. in 2015. An ASIC below $900/oz makes their long-term debt of $92 million quite manageable. GSR remains a very strong takeover candidate, as majors in the area (such as Newmont) need to replace mined ounces. Current market cap is $126 million US. Teranga Gold (TGZ.TO): This company boasts a substantial land package with the only gold mine and mill in Senegal. In 2015, the 200Koz per year mine had a 13-year mine life with an open pit head grade of 1.79 g/pt. The AISC including taxes and a $73 per oz. Franco Nevada owned royalty is at $1000 per oz. Sustaining capex on the mine this year is $26 million, $9 million in 2017, and only $8 million in 2018.

They have a pro forma cash balance of $57 million with current debt of only $15 million (drawn from a $30 million credit facility). Iamgold and Randgold have operations right next door and are searching for cheap replacement ounces. Current market cap is $190 million US.

The Optionality Play I Believe Will Be Acquired Within The Next Two Years.

Orezone Resources (ORE.V): This is a very attractive option on the gold price if you are of the opinion, as I am, that the gold price will rise to a solid $1350 floor this year. CEO Ron Little and his team previously discovered and proved up a property . in Burkina Faso called Essakane and sold it to Iamgold in December of 2008.

They are attempting to repeat this feat with a very large staged development play that has 4.56 Moz M&I + 0.72 Moz Inferred. That figure includes a +2 Moz oxide resource within 50m of surface that is heap leachable and boasts strong grade and recovery potential.

Little has a keen understanding of the optionality issue at play and has done an excellent job of keeping spending to a minimum while maintaining a very reasonable share float of under 127 million shares fully diluted. The mining permit is expected in early Q2. Market cap is $56 million US. Prominent mining CEO and financier Ross Beatty acquired a stake in 2015.

If youre not risk averse with your entire precious metal miner portfolio, then I believe these companies should be considered and accumulated on weakness and held until they are either bought out by a major or to maturity at the top of the next cycle.

David Erfle; Contributor to Kitco News

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By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun

SEATTLE  Sixty-six years after being quietly buried, Medal of Honor recipient and former Keyport resident Emil Fredreksen will receive full military honors at a graveside service next week.

Fredreksen died in 1950 at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Seattle. With no known next of kin, he was buried without ceremony and a headstone at Evergreen Washelli Memorial Park.

The Danish immigrant was forgotten until January when Ray Johnston, who as a member of the Medal of Honor Historical Society finds lost recipients, tracked him down.

Cemetery workers followed a plot map to where Fredreksen was recorded to rest. They dug down about 4 inches and uncovered a temporary marker. It read "E. Fredreksen, 1867-1950."

Fredreksen and his gravesite will be recognized and honored at 2 p.m. March 25 in the same way as the cemetery's six other Medal of Honor recipients were. Ronald Roberts, casualty/funeral honors program manager for Navy Region Northwest, will oversee the honors, which will include a rifle detail, flag pole team, bugler and chaplain.

Johnston, after several dead ends, found Fredreksen through his pension records. His organization's next step normally is to purchase a marker, but that won't be necessary.

"In this case the cemetery went nutso and they're going to get a marker and have a ceremony and a dedication," the Ohio man said.

Fredreksen received a rare peacetime Medal of Honor. On July 21, 1905, he was aboard the gunboat USS Bennington in San Diego when one of its boilers exploded. Of the 179 men aboard, 66 died and 46 were seriously wounded in the Navy's worst peacetime disaster. Eleven were awarded the Medal of Honor, including watertender Fredreksen, for "extraordinary heroism displayed in the line of duty."

Jennifer Truelove of Evergreen Washelli pieced together Fredreksen's life.

He was born in Copenhagen in 1867, immigrated to the United States when he was 17 and began a lifelong career as a sailor. He enlisted in the Navy in 1897. He served on more than 20 ships, in roles as boilermaker, fireman and quartermaster. His highest rank was chief watertender, which was responsible for tending to fires and boilers in a ship's engine room.

When Fredreksen was released from active duty in 1925, he moved to Keyport and continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until 1930. At 75, he was working for Bremerton construction company Howard S. Wright & Co. In 1944, he bought a small home in Seattle and lived the last years of his life there, dying of natural causes in 1950.

The whereabouts of 376 of 3,471 Medal of Honor recipients remain unknown, but one more in now off the list.

"My job's done, I located him," Johnston said of Fredreksen. "The kudos go to the community for holding a ceremony to honor the gent who really deserves it."

Navy Region Northwest, which provided Navy funeral honors to almost 5,000 veterans last year, is honored to participate.

"Eleven men earned the Navy Medal of Honor for actions on July 21, 1905, and Chief Fredreksen was one of those men, so we are fortunate to tell a story about the Navy's history, as well as a day in the life of a Navy hero," Navy Region Northwest spokeswoman Sheila Murray said.
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By Rachel Seymour of the Kitsap Sun

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND  Discussions about a new police location are back since residents voted down a bond last fall to build a joint police and court facility next to City Hall.

During the March 15 city council meeting, City Manager Doug Schulze presented four new sites for a new police station.

Schulze discussed the new locations along with three options the city had previously considered. He also noted residents had taken issue with combining the police station and municipal court, as well as locating the facility in the Winslow commercial core.

Residents voted down a 20-year, $15 million bond in November. The city estimated the combined 27,000-square-foot, two-story facility would cost the owner of a $430,000 house, the median on Bainbridge, about $100 more in property taxes each year.

While the current station is 3,773 square feet, a report for the city indicates the department needs about 18,500 square feet to meet all its needs and desires.

While describing the properties to the city council, Schulze said all but one of the new sites  the Ericksen property  did not meet the sizing needed for the police department's need.

NEW Options

- 600 Ericksen Avenue: There is an existing building that could be used for the station after "some tenant improvements." The site has "ample" parking and emergency access to Highway 305.

- 9191 Moran Road: The site is large enough for the department's needs, although zoning would require a conditional use permit. There is an existing building on the property that is not large enough for a police station. Water and sewer are available to the site.

- 9657 Yaquina Avenue: The property is not large enough for the city's need and zoning requires a conditional use permit, although there is "good access" to Highway 305. The property is undeveloped and "heavily wooded."

- 8954 Madison Avenue N: The land is across Madison from the Yaquina property, and had the same description at the Yaquina site.

PREVIOUS OPTIONS

- Existing location at Winslow Way and Highway 305: The property is not large enough, because of its shape and would require a three-story building. It conflicts with the Ferry District Urban Design Plan, according to the city, and has "much greater commercial value."

- New Brooklyn Road: While the property is large enough and located next to the fire department headquarters, traveling to the south end of the island requires passing through school zones.

- Wintergreen/Visconsi: This site also is large enough, although its location behind a commercial center is "not desirable" and the cost would exceed $15 million.

Police Facility Options
Once common in Puget Sound until the 1940s, harbor porpoises are making a comeback, according to a 20-year aerial survey conducted by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun

The stubby gray fin of the harbor porpoise is popping up again among the waves of Puget Sound.

In what scientists are calling a small but hopeful sign of the sound's recovery, the harbor porpoise is making a startling comeback after a nearly complete disappearance from local waters more than 40 years ago.

An annual aerial survey conducted by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife over the past 20 years shows the marine mammal began making a rapid return about 10 years ago.

"I'm excited that the data show a clear and powerful story of their comeback," said John Calambokidis, a biologist who has studied the sound's porpoises since the 1970s.

Commercial fishing and pollution spurred the mammal's decline starting in the 1940s. Air-breathing porpoises were regularly snared and drowned in gillnets, fish traps, trawls and seines during the post-World War II fishing boom.

Stricter fishing rules and bycatch reduction efforts likely helped the porpoises recover.

"As fishing ramped up in the '40s, the porpoise populations dwindled to the point they were almost non-existant," said Joe Evenson, the Fish and Wildlife biologist who led the survey. "When fishing was curtailed, they started to come back."

Reductions in pollution also helped. Porpoises are susceptible to heavy metals, fossil fuel contaminants and other industrial contaminants, which wreck havoc on their reproductive and immune systems. Many sources of pollution have been cleaned up or shut down, and tougher regulations have been enacted since the 1970s.

Harbor porpoises don't typically venture out of the sound. They stick close to shallow harbors and bays, hunting schools of smelt, herring and other forage fish.

The smallest of the 22 cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) in the Salish Sea, harbor porpoises typically reach 5 feet in length and weigh 110 pounds.

They're often mistaken for Dall's porpoises and Pacific white-sided dolphins. While there are clear physical differences, behavior is the biggest clue.

"Dall's porpoises and dolphins swim high in the water and fast," Calambokidis said. "They're social, and they regularly approach boats."

Harbor porpoises move slowly, stay close to home and avoid people.

"They're the shy and retiring type," he said. "And with their tiny dorsal fin, they're very difficult to see."

The Fish and Wildlife aerial survey began as an assessment of marine bird populations.

"But we started recording all the marine species we saw," Evenson said.

Flying a zigzag route over the sound, Strait of Juan of Fuca and the Strait of Georgia's south portion every winter, scientists noticed a downward trend for marine bird populations  but more and more harbor porpoises were popping up.

Evenson, a waterfowl specialist, called in Calambokidis and his Cascadia Research Collective for help interpreting the data. Calambokidis had been noticing higher porpoise numbers, too, but he had been relying on reports from boaters and occasional porpoise strandings.

"And then came this waterfowl survey, and it gave us tremendous insight," he said. "There were lots of things telling us there were more porpoises, but this data perfectly clarified what was happening."

The survey showed an annual growth rate of nearly 37 percent. That outpaces the animal's natural ability to reproduce, indicating that immigration is playing a role in the porpoise's resurgence.

"Ten percent is their natural threshold, so it's likely they're coming from somewhere else," Evenson said.

They might be coming from the waters off British Columbia, but scientists aren't sure why they'd be heading south.

The rise of harbor porpoises comes with a decline in Dall's porpoises.

Calambokidis believes this is a natural swapping of territory. Dall's are deep-water dwellers, and likely had moved into the sound as harbor porpoises faded.

"In the north Pacific, Dall's number in the hundreds of thousands," he said. "But the shallow waters of Puget Sound  that's the heart of harbor porpoise habitat. This is their niche."

The sound's highest concentrations of harbor porpoises are in Admiralty Inlet, between Port Townsend and Whidbey Island, and the Whidbey Basin on the island's east side.

The most sightings off Kitsap County were near Point No Point, Port Madison Bay between Bainbridge Island and Indianola, and in the Yukon Harbor area, between Manchester and Blake Island.

No sightings have been recorded in Sinclair or Dyes inlets since the survey began in 1995. Only a couple of porpoises were spotted in Hood Canal.

For scientists who have been studying the sound's decline for decades, the harbor porpoise resurgence is a welcome bit of good new.

"It's an exciting development," Calambokidis said, noting that harbor seals and humpback whales also are appearing in greater numbers. "When I started working in Puget Sound in the late 1970s, there were relatively few species left. So many had been eliminated. Now we're seeing some returns, and that's made Puget Sound a far more interesting and diverse place to study."
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By Larry Little

For months, pundits and observers all over the globe have been both curious and dismayed at the candidacy of Donald Trump. A recent front cover of "The Economist" has Trump in an Uncle Sam outfit with a single word caption, "Really?"

CNN, in a lengthy article entitled, "Why I'm voting for Trump" (Jan. 28, 2016), reported comments based on what they said were interviews with more than 150 people in 31 cities. To describe a Trump supporter, the article used phrases such as: "fearful that they are being displaced by minorities and immigrants  being taken advantage of  white people, too, face discrimination in this country  and that they are wrongfully accused of being racist;" According to the article, his supporters like him because he is "unfiltered  willing to speak the truth [he has an] unvarnished approach to self-expression [and], he "seems to just not give a f---."

There has not been an equivalent outpouring of concern over the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, despite his self-proclaimed socialism. Moreover, his overwhelmingly young supporters seem equally enthusiastic about their candidate as do Trump's. Just like with Trump supporters who will probably not vote for Ted Cruz or John Kasich if Trump doesn't get the nomination, many Sanders supporters may not vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee.

The commonality between the two groups of potential Trump and Sanders voters seems well expressed in a USA Today article on March 16, which noted that both groups are united by their concern about an "acute sense of fairness." An article in "The Guardian" on March 13 reported that their survey indicated one in ten Sanders supporters find Trump their second choice. The story quotes a supporter of both saying that Trump and Sanders are sources of "new ideas out of the box."

My sense is that the Trump candidacy, and to some degree the Sanders candidacy, is a continuation and acceleration of a groundswell collecting many grievances issues of discontent, but collectively constituting a revolution that is not just political. In a strange way it's like seems like a warm up to a possible second "War of Independence." If one examines the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence addressed to which then remonstrated the King of England, many of them (with obvious need for updating) could be validly addressed to our recent and current leaders  and some, as in the no different from a few in our original declaration, are dubious.

Often quoted (even by me) is a sentence from a letter of Thomas Jefferson dated Nov. 13, 1787. He wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

We have moved so far from such bold (or inflammatory) language in our typical discourse that it seems shocking when someone punches someone else in a Trump rally. This was apparently not our founders' manner of discourse. "Discourse" to our founders included pistols at ten paces.

Thus when a man, such as Trump, who seems in his public persona to be a braggart and ill equipped to be president in character and experience, hesitates to stop, and even condones acts of physical defiance, we are dismayed.

While it's likely that social progress over the centuries dictates that we should condemn such acts, we should also be careful to examine what is behind such anger. Marco Rubio expressed one valid perspective on the violence brewing at the Trump rallies when he said in his concession speech that we should not "give in to fear  We are a hopeful nation." On the other hand, John Kasich expressed another take on the matter when he spoke of his experience, saying, "when you went to college in the 1970s, you appreciate a good protest."

On a basic level, the Sanders supporters are fans of his strong language about plutocracy and economic inequality, while Trump focuses his loud volume on jobs going overseas. Often unstated is the strong feeling that values have been destroyed "drip by drip," dishonesty is the hallmark of politics, and the "malefactors of wealth" (a phrase often used by my father) have usurped the American dream.

Most importantly, we should be careful to note all of Jefferson's sentence, including the last words, the phrase "blood of  tyrants." A revolution may or may not be a needed or welcome event, a tyrant is not.

To me the "revolution" appears deeper and wider than simply about inequality and immigration, and even jobs and our external dangers. It's really partly about not being heard. It's also partly about struggling against a system that seems corrupt and controlled by elites. It's partly about discrimination of all sorts and coming from many different directions. It's partly about values and partly about freedom. It's partly about how great America is, about how to make it great again, and partly about why that matters or doesn't matter today.

It's worth discussing in greater depth in the local forum of an Independent Thinkers meeting this spring. Let me know if you are interested.
John Drinnan writes:

MediaWorks withdrawal from current affairs and its focus on reality shows has led to the perception that it is being dumbed down.

Chief executive Mark Weldons no dissent management style and a flood of staff departures have led to criticism in the media, and on the left of the political spectrum.

The commonly advanced view from many of those critics is that the current management is taking TV3 to hell in a handcart.

I have had my own differences with Weldon, but I believe that to a degree, coverage of MediaWorks has been personalised against him.

With an open letter this week from Labour MP Jacinda Ardern, TV3s shift appears to have become politicised.

Ardern accused Weldon of destroying TV3.

I found the political attack on a private business appalling.

I hate to think of the reaction from the Left if a National politician had attacked another media business for its business plan.

Admittedly, TV3 plays a big part in the culture.

I asked Ardern if it was appropriate for a senior politician to attack the business plan of a private business.

She said she would not have written the letter if she was a Cabinet Minister.

I am an Opposition MP, and on this occasion chose to use my voice to articulate concerns that I know are shared by many.
County Schools Finance Director Christie Jordan on Thursday afternoon presented a $42 million "wish list" of items aimed at bolstering some of the identified weak areas of the school system, including literacy, the high priority schools, and graduation and job readiness assistance. Technology is another big area of the proposed spending.

Ms. Jordan said with projected rises in the property tax and sales tax collections and an additional $7 million in state BEP funds the school revenue should reach $357,832,943.

The $42,040,000 in new spending would bring the budget to $393,298,462, leaving a shortfall of $35,465,519.

Board member Rhonda Thurman said, "As usual, we know we are not going to get this much money."

George Ricks, another board member, said he welcomes all the items on the list, but realized that full funding is not likely.

Ms. Thurman said the board needs to look at some changes that would help it afford more of the wish list. She said transportation for magnet school students should be axed, saying that busing had caused schools to have to start earlier and end later in the afternoon. She said the late dismissal "was killing our vocational program" because voc-ed students were hampered from getting after-school jobs.

She also said the single-path diploma policy was "costing this county a lot of money." Administrator Robert Sharpe said the state had followed the county's lead in going to single-path.

Ms. Thurman also said the schools should drop bloc scheduling and go back to traditional scheduling. She said bloc scheduling had required adding a number of teachers. Board member Steve Highlander agreed that bloc scheduling should be dropped.

He and Mr. Ricks said vocational programs should be expanded. Mr. Ricks noted that was not on the spending list.

Ms. Jordan said she was expecting the property tax to grow by 1.5 percent and the sales tax by 1.5-2.0 percent. She said the schools should know by mid-April the amount of the BEP increase.

The spending increases including adding specialists in teams at the high priority schools, including two for reading and math and one for social studies and one for science. There would also be leaders and recruitment and retention personnel for the high priority teams.

Ms. Jordan said the number of English Language Learning (ELL) students is soaring - going from 1,466 in 2011 to 2,178 in 2015. Additional staff would be assigned to work with these students.

She also said the school system is working with Volkswagen and Chattanooga State on a program in which 25 county school students will take classes at the Volkswagen Academy. At graduation, they would be equipped to step into a job at the VW plant and they would have some college credits. It is planned to initially take students from high schools in the vicinity of VW, but the program may be expanded later.

Ms. Jordan said another idea is to utilize elementary STEAM (the A is for the arts) "to really make a difference in literacy." There would be 44 new positions at the elementary schools, including arts, foreign language and STEM instructors.



There would be $1 million set aside to provide supplies at new schools as they are opened and $1 million to boost the amount given to teachers for supplies. Ms. Jordan said the long-time amount of $100 "is not nearly enough."

She said the schools need to be replacing personal computer devices for teachers and students every four years on a rotating basis.



The list includes a five percent salary increase. Ms. Jordan said county school personnel some years have not received any raises and have fallen behind the Georgia schools and local business rates.

The request includes an extra $2 million for capital maintenance.

The budget also includes funds for different software and technical equipment items

Funding is also needed to reopen an annex at Calvin Donelson School, it was stated.

Ms. Jordan also mentioned a tele-medicine program in which a doctor would diagnose kids' illnesses via the Internet. She said a bookkeeper would be hired to submit bills to TennCare for the service.

She said the charter schools are expecting an increase of 185 students. Chattanooga Charter School of Excellent and the Ivy School are both adding a grade.

Two new school buses are needed, and utilities are expected to be up - especially water and sewer expenses.










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Easter Vigil set for The Standard

An Easter Vigil service will be held at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, March 26, at The Standard on Jackson Avenue in the Old City. The service is an ecumenical one that was proposed initially by St. John's Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Knoxville.

Easter Vigil is an ancient tradition in the Episcopal church, said The Rev. Joshua A Hill with St. John's. Traditionally it included a bonfire and baptisms.

The service on March 26 will begin outside with a barrel fire, Hill said. A candlelight procession will follow, as will singing, communion and the possibility of baptisms. The evening will conclude with a party.

Author Kingsbury to stop at 1st Baptist

Nashville author Karen Kingsbury and her family will stop in Knoxville on Sunday, April 3, at First Baptist Church downtown for a program of sharing their faith. Presented by Compassion International, the evening features the novelist and daughter Kelsey Kupecky (actress/designer/speaker) and Kelsey's husband Kyle Kupecky (Christian recording artist).

Kingsbury's Angels Walking series deals with angels carrying out missions here on earth. In the final book in the series, "Brush of Wings" (Howard Books, due out March 29) the team of angels is busier than ever with an epic battle between life and death.

Kingsbury has been recognized by Time Magazine and The Today Show for her work. Many of her novels are under development with Hallmark Channel and as major motion pictures.

Other programs and events during Holy Week include:

Ober Gatlinburg: Easter Sunrise Service at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 27, will led by local pastors of the Gatlinburg Ministerial Association. The offering will be used by the association to assist those in need. Free tram rides will carry guests to the mountain top every 15 minutes beginning at 5:30 a.m. the service begins. Complimentary parking for those who prefer to drive up the mountain. In the event of inclement weather, the service will be held in the Ober Gatlinburg Upper Tramway Mall. For more information, contact Ober Gatlinburg at fun@obergatlinburg.com, www.obergatlinurg.com or 865-436-5423.

Beaver Dam Baptist Church: The Hall's Business & Professional Association will host the annual Good Friday Prayer Breakfast at 7:30 a.m., on Friday, March 25 at the church's Fellowship Hall. This year's speaker is Ted Hall, news anchor for WVLT-TV. Tickets are $10 and are available from Sue Walker at 925-9200, www.swalker@tindells.com or at the door.

Central United Methodist Church: Noonday Handbell Recital in the Fellowship Hall at 12:05 p.m. Monday, March 21. Performing will be St. John's Cathedral Bellringers, directed by Richard Sidey. The recital is free, followed by a $6 lunch. For more information, call 573-7301. 201 Third Ave.

South Knoxville Baptist Church: Hike or bike to church services begin at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 3. For more information, call 573-1973. 522 Sevier Ave.

Powell Presbyterian Church: Palm Sunday (March 20) and Easter (March 27) Worship is at 10:30 a.m. On Easter Sunday, March 27, free pancake breakfast at 9:30 a.m. and Community Easter Egg Hunt at 11:30 a.m. For more information, call 938-8311 or visiy www.powellpcusa.org. 2910 W. Emory Rd. Powell

Bookwalter United Methodist Church: Easter cantata "Champion of Love" by the Chancel Choir under the direction of Rusty Boggs at 6 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. John Bawcum is soloist. For more informatiom, call 689-3349. 4218 Central Avenue Pike

Mount Hermon United Methodist Church: Easter Service at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 27, followed by breakfast. All are welcome. 235 E. Copeland Road, Powell.

Maryville College: Easter Sunrise Service will be held at 7:15 a.m. on Sunday, March 27, on Lloyd Beach, on the southeastern end of the campus, offers a view of the sun rising over the Chilhowee Mountains. The service is casual, and attendees who are not able to stand during the service are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets. All are invited to enjoy coffee, pastries and conversation on Willard House porch after the service. In the event of rain, the service and breakfast will be held in the Samuel Tyndale Wilson Center for Campus Ministry. For more information, call 981-8299.

Refreshing Springs Church of God in Christ: Celebration of first lady Evelena Allen's day at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. Guest speaker is first lady Pankey of Praise Temple Holiness Church. All are invited. For more information, call 438-5165. 1110 Ohio Ave, Lonsdale

Knoxville First United Methodist Church: Maundy Thursday communion and Scriptural Stations of the Cross at 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. Communion shared around tables in the fellowship hall, progressing at 6:30 p.m. up to the sanctuary for a Scriptural Stations of the Cross: readings followed by short anthems and hymns by the choir and congregation. Child care provided. 3316 Kingston Pike. 525-0435.

Reformata Baptist Church: Egg hunt and lunch 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, March 19. Children up to age 12 are invited to the egg hunt. 10840 Chapman Highway, Seymour

St. James Episcopal Church: Holy Eucharist will be held at 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday, March 27. The Episcopal Church Women will host the Easter breakfast between the services, $3/person, $12/family. An Easter Egg Hunt for the children follows the 10:30 service. For information, please call 523-5687. 1101 N. Broadway
Charles Thomas arrived on bike to attend a St. Patrick's Day news conference at the intersection of the Gay Street Bridge and Council Place on Thursday announcing a new city initiative to build green bicycle lanes on city streets to highlight potential areas of conflict between bicycles and vehicles. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE Caroline Cooley, right, tells Mayor Madeline Rogero about her bicycle during a news conference at the intersection of the Gay Street Bridge and Council Place on Thursday to announce a new initiative that uses green painted bicycle lanes on city streets to highlight potential areas of conflict between bicycles and vehicles. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) Caroline Cooley, president of Bike Walk Knoxville, demonstrates how to use the green bicycle lane at the intersection of Council Place and the Gay Street Bridge on Thursday. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

St. Patrick's Day offered an appropriately color-coded day for Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero to unveil a new bright green bike lane to enhance cyclists' safety at a South Knoxville intersection Thursday.

Decked out in green, along with many city staffers, Rogero announced the completion of the $1,800 thermoplastic coated lane and plans for five more in intersections around Knoxville.

"We're hoping this means a much safer and less stressful experience for both bicyclists and the drivers at these locations," Rogero said.

The lanes are meant to alert drivers to look out for cyclists and guide cyclists into the safest routes.

"If you're not looking for it, you won't see it," Police Chief David Rausch said. "So what we're asking you to do is look for it. Expect on our roadways that there will be other forms of transportation."

Other intersections receiving upgrades include Blount Avenue and Chapman Highway; Maplewood Drive and Island Home Avenue at the River's Edge apartment complex currently under construction; Central Street and Broadway, Central Street and Baxter Avenue, and Central Street and Bernard Avenue.

The intersection at Council Place and the Gay Street Bridge was part of a $14,000 project to re-stripe Sevier Avenue with bike lanes from the bridge to the James White Parkway.

The Sevier Avenue bike lane project is meant to offer cyclists a safe commute from downtown to the Urban Wilderness and to set the tone for businesses moving into the redevelopment corridor along the South Waterfront.

"I personally love this project because it literally connects so many of our city initiatives in sustainability, redevelopment and transportation," Rogero said.

The green lanes are made of thermoplastic fused to the street, which city officials touted as lasting longer than regular street paint and offering more traction for bicyclists.

The future green lanes at the intersections on Central will be part of the city's streetscape improvements along that corridor, which are slated for completion in 2017.

The city's first green lane went in last year at University Commons Way and Joe Johnson Drive. The success of that location, deemed a pilot program, prompted additional lanes elsewhere, officials said.

"There have obviously been a lot of people trying to bike places, and they're fearful," said Caroline Cooley, president of Bike Walk Knoxville. "They're fearful or they're not confident. Having facilities that increase their safety and also that are part of the infrastructure, it increases users.

"It increases the number of people riding bikes, and it makes the city a more livable and enjoyable place."
SHARE Leslie Kopper, special agent with the FBI in Denver, left, works with other members of the FBI Evidence Response Team to recover human remains during a training at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, often called the body farm, on Thursday, March 17, 2016. FBI agents from across the country are attending the weeklong training. (MJ SLABY/NEWS SENTINEL) Robert Weiderhold, who works at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, VA, sifts dirt for evidence of human remains during a training for FBI agents at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, often called the body farm, on Thursday, March 17, 2016. FBI agents from across the country are attending the weeklong training. (MJ SLABY/NEWS SENTINEL) photos by MJ SLABY/NEWS SENTINEL FBI agents from evidence response teams across the country work with staff from the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, often called the body farm, to recover human remains on Thursday, March 17, 2016. FBI agents from across the country are attending the weeklong training.

By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Kneeling around a shallow grave, four FBI agents removed the dirt methodically, using small shovels and dustpans to look for human remains.

"Is that the skull?" one asked.

Joanne Devlin, a University of Tennessee anthropologist, told agents they had uncovered the rear part of the skull  just behind the ear.

At crime scenes, members of the FBI evidence response team look for human remains and collect evidence. Then specialists like the anthropologists at the UT Forensic Anthropology Center  often called the "body farm"  analyze the evidence to figure out what happened to the person who died.

This week, roughly 40 FBI agents from around the country, including Knoxville, are practicing just that at the UT center, which was the first of its kind to use the bodies of donors as a way to study human decomposition.

"In our world, it would be a victim," said Leslie Kopper, a special agent for the FBI based in Denver, as she helped recover the human remains. "Here, it's a donor."

This year is the 17th annual training in evidence recovery for FBI agents at the center.

It's one of the center's longest running training programs, said Dawnie Steadman, the center's director.

The training is "as realistic as possible" for the agents and allows for center staff and graduate students to meet and work with members of the FBI, said Devlin, assistant director of the center.

Marshall Stone, supervisory special agent for the FBI's Knoxville field office said the training is popular among agents and there's a waiting list of agents who want to attend each year.

"It's very practical experience for body recovery and crime scene processing," Stone said. "It's been a great relationship with UT over the years to be able to provide this to the FBI."

Stone said learning from experts and then having an opportunity to apply it immediately is unique.

"Body recovery is something you may not have a lot of experience in because you may not encounter it all that frequently in the FBI," he said.

Evidence recovery is more than taking a shovel, digging up a clandestine grave and then putting bones in a box, Devlin said. She said FBI agents at a crime scene need to note how the bones are arranged and consider additional evidence like insects, which can help determine details like how long a body has been in a certain location.

She said anthropologists then analyze that information.

During the weeklong FBI training, Devlin said the agents learned technique in the classroom and then applied their new skills at the outdoor center, "almost like a test."

Kopper said the agents first had to locate the clandestine grave by looking for disturbances and areas that look different from the nearby landscape.

Once they found the site, she said they outlined an excavation area with the help of center staff.

"They've taught us to go through, very methodically through the soil and identify the boundaries," she said.

Kopper said agents working in evidence recovery do that in addition to other full-time roles with the FBI, such as investigating white-collar crime or working in national security.

"What we're hoping is to be able to recognize when we're out in the field when we may need a specialist to join us," she said. "We're learning to identify what would be of value at the scene."
A street party to celebrate St. Patricks Day will take place on Saturday. The Honest Pint, an Irish pub downtown at 35 Patten Parkway, will close the street between Georgia Avenue and Lindsay Street from 9 a.m. until10 p.m. The bar received a special events beer permit at the Thursday morning meeting of the Chattanooga Beer Board. Guinness will sponsor the event and will bring in a tap truck. There will also be a tent selling canned beer and a food truck. IDs will be checked and wrist bands issued at one station to speed up the lines. It is being billed an event for all ages.

The Chattanooga Film Festival will be held for the third year at the Majestic Theater, 345 Broad St. from March 31-April 3 from noon until midnight. This special event that features independent films along with social events has grown from its beginning in 2013 to 10,000 attendees spread out over the four days, last year. Parties take place outside and around the theater where beer sales will be allowed, but Victoria Love Diener who is organizing the activities outside, said most beer sales take place inside the theater. Different color wrist bands will be given for each day after IDs are checked.

Taste, another special event was also approved for a beer license Thursday morning. This is the sixth year that the fundraiser for The Kidney Foundation has been organized by Chattanooga Presents. A ticket will allow unlimited tastes of food from 20 eateries from around Chattanooga. There will be two bars selling beer and wine and a silent auction. Hours will be from 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m.

The Stone Cup Cafe has moved a half block from the original location to 208 Frazier Ave. Because of the move, a new beer license was required. Beer Board Vice Chairman Christopher Keene said that this is a well established business and is run properly before he made the motion to approve a new license for owner Charles Megahee, which was unanimously approved.

Moccasin Bend Brewing is also moving from its original location on Tennessee Avenue in St. Elmo. The new address is 3210 S. Broad St. This business that brews specialty craft beers was approved for a Consumer, a Carry-Out, and Distribution license.

The Bitter Alibi, a restaurant and bar at 825 Houston St., has had a consumer beer license for the past two years. The owner Matthew Skudlarek applied for and received an additional Caterers license at the beer board meeting Thursday.

A mix-up that was no fault of the restaurant required that Jorge Parra representing Taqueria at the Plaza, 850 Market St. appear before the beer board on a technicality. At the time of the original application in December 2015, a small matter needed to be cleared up and the owner was asked to reappear at the next meeting. When a beer license is approved by the local board, the next step is that the state of Tennessees treasurers office bills the business for an annual fee.

This restaurant received the treasurers bill before coming back to the Beer Board and paid it, believing all approvals had taken place and after that, believed their license was valid. Their appearance before the board Thursday, gave the business formal approval from the city for selling beer.

ichael Hunter was approved for a beer permit at two locations of Burns Tobacconist, 108 Jordan Drive and at 723 Cherry Street. Both are cigar shops that also will be selling craft beers. The business will open at 10 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. The downtown store will stay open until 11 p.m. on the weekends.
SHARE In this Dec. 10, 2014 photo, state Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, attends a House GOP meeting in Nashville, Tenn. Daniel on Thursday, March 17, 2016, defended his comments that free speech rights on Tennessee college campuses should apply to everyone, even recruiters for the Islamic State group. Daniel had been challenged about the impact of his proposed "Tennessee Student Free Speech Protection Act" in a committee hearing a day earlier. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)

By ERIK SCHELZIG, Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A Republican lawmaker on Thursday defended his comments that free speech rights on Tennessee college campuses should apply to everyone  even recruiters for the Islamic State group.

State Rep. Martin Daniel of Knoxville said on the floor of the state House that he supports First Amendment rights for people and groups regardless of whether he agrees with their aims.

"I will never apologize for defending the First Amendment," he said. "I will always cloak myself in it, and defend others' right to speak."

Daniel had been challenged about the impact of his proposed "Tennessee Student Free Speech Protection Act" in a committee hearing a day earlier. Democratic Rep. John Deberry of Memphis had asked whether it would go so far as to allow people to stand in the middle of campus and "recruit for ISIS."

Daniel responded that it would.

"So long as it doesn't disrupt the proceedings on that campus, yes sir," he said. "They can recruit people for any other organization, too, or any other cause. I think it's just part of being exposed to differing viewpoints."

Following Daniel's comments, Chairman Mark White, R-Memphis, abruptly moved to have the bill removed from consideration for the year.

Daniel's bill is part of a larger effort by GOP lawmakers to rein in what they call overzealous diversity initiatives at the University of Tennessee's flagship Knoxville campus. Some officials there have encouraged the use of gender-neutral pronouns and advised against religious-themed holiday parties. The school later rescinded both initiatives.

The University of Tennessee also drew the ire of religious conservatives for banning John McGlone of Breeding, Kentucky, from preaching on campus in 2010 because he had not gained authorization from the school.

McGlone sued, and the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found the policies to be vague and open to discrimination. The university subsequently enacted new policies requiring outside speakers to be invited to campus.

Daniel's bill would have banned schools from adopting policies to "suppress debate or deliberation because the ideas being debated or deliberated upon are considered to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong."

Deberry said Daniel's bill would have gone too far.

"You can't have a nation and keep it safe and keep it sane unless there are some rules and some norms," he said
SHARE Martin Daniel Harry Brooks

By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel

NASHVILLE  A state bill introduced with great fanfare in January to freeze tuition at Tennessee's public colleges and universities suffered an obscure death this week in a House subcommittee.

The bill had the powerful backing of Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey and had advanced through a unanimous vote of the Senate Education Committee, chaired by the bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville.

During her committee's hearing last month, Gresham presented an unusual slideshow of charts and graphics that sought to shift blame for large tuition increases over the past two decades away from state lawmakers  whose appropriations of taxpayer dollars have been cut in half as a share of the costs of educating a state college student and toward what she called inflated salaries and staffing levels on the state's campuses.

The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, made a similar case  enhanced with slides showing large payouts by the University of Tennessee to settle various lawsuits against it  in the House education subcommittee on Wednesday. But his presentation failed to sway subcommittee members, who killed the bill on an unrecorded voice vote after an hourlong discussion.

The Tuition Stability Act, House Bill 2069, would have frozen tuition and mandatory fees at current levels until the 2018-19 school year, and in subsequent years required unanimous approval by an institution's governing board for tuition increases greater than 2 percent above the consumer price index.

The bill also would have instituted a tuition freeze for individuals, so that each students' tuition and mandatory fees remained fixed at their freshman-year rates through their undergraduate years, if they stayed enrolled full time and graduated on time.

Daniel and Gresham argued the UT system has 1,465 employees and the Tennessee Board of Regents system has 945 with annual salaries of $100,000 or higher. They also concluded salaries of various university officials were 14 percent to 37 percent higher than similar positions in state government.

"When higher education can't get the money they need out of the state, instead of making tough choices to cut their budgets and live within their means, higher education has been balancing their budgets on the backs of Tennessee students and working families," Martin told the subcommittee.

He concluded his presentation by asking why it matters whether students face high tuition and debt loads upon graduation.

"Here's why: When someone gets out of school with heavy debt loads, are they going to be thinking about getting married? Is someone going to want to marry someone who has $35,000 in debt? Probably not," Daniel said.

Daniel also said graduates with heavy student debt find it harder to buy cars and other products, which he said diminishes state tax revenue, and have less time to engage in volunteer and charitable work. He said the prospect of heavy debt would likely change behaviors, including young people "eschewing college in favor of military or skilled trades, community college (and) online alternatives ...(and) gravitation of students to majors that enable higher income rather than majors that really interest them."

But Rep. Harry Brooks, R-Knoxville, who recorded a vote for the bill, said lawmakers over the years have cut the state's share from 66 percent of the higher education system's budget to 32 percent.

"I can recall years past when decisions were made to cut back on the number of state dollars going into higher education. And I can recall the discussions ... saying we're going to back off on state dollars; we want to increase the tuition, and there was an attitude that we needed to shift the percentages to where government is less and tuition is more," Brooks said. "Well, unfortunately that's what happened  and that's legislatively driven."
Greg Johnson, KNS columnist.

Knoxville government executives sure know how to upset the apple carts of entrenched bureaucracies, but without a socialist "revolution" a la Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and without calling government workers and elected officials names a la GOP misanthrope Donald Trump.

Former Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, now the big boss governor of Tennessee, has invaded the safe space of government workers, especially at the University of Tennessee, by proposing to outsource building maintenance and management across the state. Haslam has already saved taxpayers beaucoup bucks by turning on his businessman's brain and more efficiently using state office space in Nashville.

His proposal to outsource some state stuff would save about $35 million per year. Chump change, say some of those unsettled by Haslam's attempt to be a better steward of taxpayers' hard-earned money, given the state budget is around $35 billion. But consider:

Haslam this year budgeted about $30 million for "Indigent Defendant Counsel" for those entitled to an attorney in a court of law but who cannot afford one. We could provide counsel to a bunch more indigent defendants with an extra $35 million.

Salaries and benefits for the men and women who represent our interests in the Legislature, our state senators and representatives, total about $33 million in the current budget. Heck, if Haslam could get his outsourcing plan through we could double the pay for legislators and have a couple millions left over. I am definitely joking but, hey, with all the anti-outsourcing rhetoric, it could be a vote-getting idea.

If neither of those move the angry mob of union workers and students and faculty at UT, the average starting teacher pay in Tennessee is somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000. Average overall teacher pay is about $48,000. With Haslam's $35 million, leaving aside local contributions, we could hire 1,000 new teachers or 729 experienced ones to help educate our kids.

And with total expense of attendance at UT approaching $30,000 for this year, that $35 million could fully fund a year of attendance for almost 1,200 students. Hopefully the point is clear: $35 million could do a lot for a lot of Tennesseans. And all state employees, in this scenario, would keep their jobs.

Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett's proposal to give county employees cold, hard cash for saving taxpayers' cold, hard cash could be just as disruptive to entrenched bureaucracy, but the moral mob has less reason to riot. Burchett's plan would give government workers money for money-saving ideas.

County employees who have a cost-saving idea implemented get a bonus of 10 percent of first-year savings up to a maximum of $5,000. The Bonuses for Cost-Cutters Act is before the U.S. Congress now and would work similarly. California, with backing from powerful public employee unions, has had such a program for decades and, according to an article on governing.com, has saved $95 million since 1950.

Ironic, eh? Haslam's plan could save taxpayers that much in three years. But we aren't unionized.

Greg Johnson's columns appear on Wednesdays, Fridays and the second Sunday of each month. Follow him on Twitter @jgregjohnson. Visit his Greg Johnson Opinions Page on Facebook. Email him at jgregjohnson@hotmail.com.
Mark Harmon, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist.

A shibboleth is something commonly believed and repeated that may signify belonging to a group, but also may be untrue. The time has come to destroy two shibboleths common to conservative Republicans.

Shibboleth No. 1 is labor force participation.

When President Barack Obama took office the U.S. unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. This past month it was 4.9 percent. That's good news. For hard-core opponents of this president, however, it is a source of cognitive dissonance. They can't admit to any good indications during the Obama years. Thus, they've flailed about  dismissing the figures or even alleging some nefarious conspiracy among statisticians in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The latest trick, espoused on these pages by local and national columnists, is to misinterpret an obscure data set, the Labor Force Participation Rate. It's understandable you've never heard of this measure of the percentage of those 16 years of age and older in the civilian labor force.

From 1950 to the present it averaged 63 percent of the population. Right now it sits very close to that average at 62.9 percent. The record low was 58.1 percent at the end of 1954; the record high was 67.3 percent at the beginning of 2000. So, if none of these extremes are in our current political time frame, what's the problem?

The answer is there is no real problem, just a desire among radical Republicans to do some sleight of hand. Labor force participation has been on a slow, steady decline since 2007 because of demographic shifts. Baby boomers are retiring. People are living longer into their retirement. People with disabilities are living longer. The pace of women entering the workforce has slowed. The bureau has calculated from Census data that the number will continue to slip, slumping to 61.6 percent in 2022.

This has not stopped conservative pundits from noticing that labor force participation was 65.7 percent at the start of the Obama administration and now is 62.9 percent, concluding it is a sign of Armageddon. Nope. It's a sign of the graying of America, and perhaps also an indicator of radical-right argument desperation.

The Federal Reserve in a 2014 staff report, and another study that same year by Shigeru Fujita at the Fed in Philadelphia, concluded that the vast majority of the changes in the Labor Force Participation Rate were from these structural and demographic shifts.

The economy has some real and troubling trends: low wages and benefits; corporate abuse of workers, consumers, tax laws and the environment; and declining social and economic mobility. The Republicans, however, have no answers to these trends beyond exacerbating them by the failed trickle-down policies of the past. Thus, their only argument is to misuse an obscure statistic.

Shibboleth No. 2 is buying health insurance across state lines.

This is presented as a panacea by the Republican presidential candidates who this year condemned the Affordable Care Act and promised some vague better replacement.

Let's get real. Just about any health insurance company can sell health insurance right now in Tennessee. That company just has to abide by Tennessee's rules. This proposal is just a disguised corporate giveaway where firms must follow only the rules of whatever state has the lowest consumer and financial safeguards. We suffer the consequences in our care and in our wallets, and in a deception that lingers around the political landscape.

Mark Harmon is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee and a member of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee. He may be reached at markdharmon@yahoo.com.
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"People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines. ... Such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel."  Voltaire

In the popular imagination, there are dog people and cat people, although one rarely encounters them in real life. Me, I'm leery of anybody who dislikes dogs, although it's necessary to make allowances for people with bad childhood experiences. Cat-haters are almost invariably men. Probably cats are spooked around them.

But do domestic animals love us back? Most pet owners find it an absurd question. What could be more obvious than a dog's joy at welcoming us home after an absence? Than a cat's curling up and purring in our laps?

For the longest time, strict behaviorists clung to pseudo-scientific fundamentalism claiming that talking about animals' emotions was sentimental nonsense. Psuedo-science, as Carl Safina points out in his wonderful book "Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel," precisely because it required ignoring almost everything we know about their anatomy, evolutionary history and observed behavior.

"So, do other animals have human emotions?" he asks. "Yes, they do. Do humans have animal emotions? Yes; they're largely the same. Fear, aggression, well-being, anxiety, and pleasure are the emotions of shared brain structures and shared chemistries, originated in shared ancestry."

Enter now one professor Paul Zak, advertised as something called a "neuroeconomist"  a term hinting at mumbo-jumbo to me  who recently undertook an experiment to determine which domestic animal loves us best. Dogs? Or cats?

Judging by his Wikipedia profile, Zak is a handsome rascal who makes a handsome living advising corporate clients that we'd be better off if we went around acting like a bunch of Italians, with lots of hugging and kissing each other's cheeks. He's probably right, too, although your mileage may differ.

Zak's book, "The Moral Molecule" expounds upon the wonders of oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that gives people the warm-fuzzies when people they love (or attractive Italians) embrace them. He goes on TV a lot.

Anyway, at the request of BBC-TV, the professor set out to determine which species got the biggest oxytocin boost after 10 minutes of being dandled by their owners, dogs or cats. So he assembled 10 of each at his laboratory, took saliva samples, instructed their owners to play with them, and then took more saliva samples, which he analyzed for the happy hormone.

According to Elyse Wanshel's summary in the Huffington Post, "Canines were proven to love us Homo sapiens five times more than their feline counterparts."

That's right, cat lovers, dogs rule!

Except, you know what? I don't have a Ph.D. in neuroeconomics, but I do have an unusual orange tabby cat named Albert. His nickname is "The Orange Dog," on account of how he's the smallest member of our security team  consisting of two Great Pyrenees, a German shepherd and Albert.

Albert has many unusual personality traits. Besides preferring canine company, he's been known to sit atop fence posts to let Mount Nebo the horse nuzzle him. The other horses, no. He wanders among cows as if they were as inert as hay bales. He's totally devoted to me, perching on the arm of my chair watching ballgames, and lying on my chest at bedtime purring.

Then he retires to the bathroom towel closet, fishes open the spring-loaded door and lets it thump shut behind him. Around 5 a.m.  thump!  he's up and out the door. Many afternoons he accompanies my wife, five dogs and me on an hour-long walk around the pastures to my neighbor's hay barn, rubbing on the dogs' legs and panting like a little lion. Sometimes he stays the night out there hunting mice. A country cat, Albert's wise to coyotes.

I'm absurdly fond of him, and the feeling's clearly mutual.

However, Albert has two significant phobias: cars and strangers. He vanishes when company comes, keeps the house under surveillance from an undisclosed location and materializes after they've gone.

So carry him to a laboratory, let a stranger take a saliva sample, play with him for 10 minutes and then let the stranger mess with him again?

Our basset hound Daisy would be fine with that. She loves riding in the car, has never met a stranger and pretty much drools all day anyway.

Elevated oxytocin levels? Albert would take a week to forgive such an indignity. He might bite. So would most cats.

What a farcical experiment. The moral molecule indeed!

So what does Albert feel when he's lying there on my chest? I think basically what I feel: security, contentment and deep affection.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). He may be reached at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
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A community duty bill, a two-year pilot Knox County project permitting community service for indigent persons who have been convicted of minor crimes but cannot pay court costs, is a good idea. It can have a positive influence for defendants and nonprofit service organizations that need helping extra hands.

The Tennessee House and Senate have passed the measure by unanimous votes. The spark for community duty came from Mike Hammond, Knox County criminal court clerk, and was sponsored in the Legislature by Knoxville Republicans Bill Dunn in the House and Richard Briggs in the Senate.

Hammond related the genesis of the idea: His chance meeting with a man facing multiple financial penalties after pleading guilty to a minor offense. Unaware of Hammond's title and position in the county, the man asked if he should follow a friend's advice and inform the judge he was indigent and could not pay his costs.

After Hammond stated his position as collector of court fees, he then contacted Burt Rosen, head of the Knox Area Rescue Ministries. Hammond submitted a list of 130 names of people who had declared themselves indigents, sought dismissal of court costs and gave the KARM shelter as their address.

It turned out, according to a review of the records, that 20 of the 130 people had never had any affiliation with KARM. Others had not had contact with the organization for a year or more, Hammond said.

That thoughtful bit of research showed that some people were misleading the courts in claiming they were indigent. Meanwhile, other defendants who are more honest about their finances and addresses face genuine hardship in trying to pay their court costs.

Hammond then presented the idea to judges who preside over criminal cases. While they supported the community service plan, they were hesitant to take the step on their own without the support and coverage of a state law.

Enter Dunn and Briggs, who agreed to sponsor the bill. Speaking before the House last week, Dunn said the bill now gives judges three options: dismissing the financial court costs and penalties; requiring the defendant to pay them, even if it causes hardship; or ordering the defendant to take the community service option to pay off the court costs and other fees.

Dunn said someone facing 10 weekends of community service might come up with the money after all. "That might save the taxpayers," he said. On the other hand, a defendant who performs community service might be humbled enough to consider the everyday plight others face and find some personal benefit to helping them.

Briggs explained in the Senate that the community service option would be voluntary for defendants, and the law would not affect other statutes, for example, revoking a driver's license for unpaid penalties in some situations.

The pilot project provides adequate time for what Dunn called getting "the kinks out." For that two-year shake-down cruise, the bill needs careful and thoughtful monitoring to ensure that service actually is performed on community projects, that the defendants fully understand the options and that they really are indigent.

Their work could aid their rehabilitation process and set a positive example for other communities facing similar issues.
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I see the writer of the letter "Republicans don't want kinder party" is busy pigeonholing people again. Democrats are saints, and Republicans are sinners. Republicans hate everyone but rich white people, and Democrats love everyone. How simple can it get? It sounds like someone is blinded by intellectual snobbery.

It wasn't a Republican who stood in front of his restaurant with an ax handle to keep black people out, and it wasn't a Republican who stood on the steps at the University of Alabama and vowed blacks would never be admitted. It was two rich, white Democratic governors. It wasn't a Republican president who had thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans rounded up and put in guarded camps for years, it was the Democrats' hero, Franklin Roosevelt. It was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

We have had many presidents since Washington, some good and some not so good. Both parties have had their share of each. The same is true of members of Congress. Four of the last seven governors of Illinois are in prison, some from each party. Democrats have the edge in Tennessee, thanks to Ray Blanton.

I would suggest that if and when fascists come, they will come in the form of elected officials who overstep their authority by imposing rules and regulations not authorized by congressional actions and who slowly remove freedoms that citizens have always enjoyed. They will be aided by a Supreme Court that believes that the Constitution is a living document that needs to be more in tune with today's needs. Our universities will help by squelching debate and insisting on conformity in thought, word and deed. That all sounds familiar, and it's happening with liberals in charge. Who would have thought?

Robert Gairns, Friendsville
Dr. Kelly Arnold says you do not need to go out of the country to do mission work; you can go to Holtzclaw Avenue.

She was referring to Clinica Medicos as she spoke Thursday afternoon to Rotary Club members at the Convention Center. Located at the corner of Holtzclaw and 23rd Street, Clinica Medicos is Chattanoogas first bilingual, comprehensive clinic dedicated to the underserved Latino population.

Dr. Arnold  the clinics medical director who has practiced family medicine and obstetrics in Chattanooga for 10 years  gave an inspiring overview of her place of business that blends patient care, urgent care, and obstetrics with public health, community service, and education.

The clinics mission is to provide affordable and quality healthcare where patients may walk in with or without an appointment, unrestricted by age, gender, pregnancy, and insurance status.

Healthcare is becoming highly sub specialized, Dr. Arnold said.

And while she loves this mastery of medicine, she believes it is not necessary for everyone. Not all fractures need to go to an orthopedist, she told the captivated crowd.

Her background in Spanish and logical thinking led her and a small team to open Clinica Medicos in March of last year. It is a one-stop shop for Latino citizens in need of a variety of services, including minor operations, X-rays, ultrasounds, lab work, and prescriptions.

Dr. Arnold told one story of a pregnant woman from Honduras she treated at her previous practice for a urinary tract infection. The woman came to America for a better life and did not speak any English. When she went to the pharmacy to pick up the medicine Dr. Arnold prescribed, she left empty handed because of the language barrier that blocked the pharmacist from helping her.

As a result of not getting her prescription, the woman went into preterm labor. Her newborn had to spend a considerable amount of time in the NICU, which runs at an average cost of $75,000, Dr. Arnold said.

We can do better than this, and everybody wins, Dr. Arnold declared as she calmly and confidently promoted the humanity in providing excellent care at minimized costs.

She said the 54 million Hispanics in the U.S. make up the largest ethnic minority. One in three Americans is projected to be Hispanic by 2050. In Chattanooga alone the Hispanic population tripled from 2000 to 2010. Clinica Medicos saw 2,500 registered patients last year, Dr. Arnold said  a number that is rapidly growing.

Currently, three physicians  including Dr. Arnold  practice at the clinic along with two future doctors and a dentist.

The student doctors see (the clinic) with naivety and an un-jaded aspect of youth that says, Were all in it, and we all want to help.

She educated on the Pillars of Underserved Healthcare with the acronym CELL: culture, economics, language, and logistics. To address these pillars, the clinic stays open seven days a week and speaks Spanish as its primary language so the patients are free to use their voices.

The website for the clinic is also bilingual.

It is not a free clinic, and Dr. Arnold said her staff gets paid very fairly. But it is a flexible clinic, one that cares more about the patients health than his or her ability to pay.

Youre human. Were going to take care of you, is the doctors motto.

In closing, she said the faith-based, hardworking, and industrious clinic has whittled its way into many community leaders hearts, and has already experienced many victories.

One such victory regards a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala who had to have surgery, and who is working while going to Howard to pay Dr. Arnold back because he wants to do it the right way.

Thats a victory, Dr. Arnold said.

Her final words sparked the crowd to clap for her for several minutes. The best is yet to come, she said in Spanish.
Shareholders of SK Corp., the holding company of South Korea's No. 3 conglomerate SK Group, on Friday approved a proposal to appoint SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won as its new board member.



Chey also took the title of chief executive officer for the company, heralding that the business mogul will come to the forefront of group management.



In 2014, the group chief stepped down from all key posts at the group's affiliates as he was convicted on charges of spending corporate funds for personal use. He was sentenced to four years in prison but was released with a special pardon last year.



The appointment came as the National Pension Service (NPS), the country's state-run pension fund, voted against the proposal, and the Institutional Shareholder Services, a global corporate advisory firm, also advised its clients to object. NPS is the second-largest shareholder in SK Corp. with a stake of 8.57 percent.



SK Group operates businesses in the telecommunications, chemical, tech and other sectors, taking third place behind Samsung and Hyundai Motor.



Public sentiment has become increasingly intolerant of misbehavior by members of family-controlled conglomerates, called chaebol, who hold a tight grip on business empires even after they are convicted of illegal activities. (Yonhap)




From left, Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Shinsegae Group Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin



By Yoon Ja-young



Samsung Group and Shinsegae Group, the country's leading conglomerates coming from the same root, are in conflict over mobile payment services.



Some Samsung Group subsidiaries, including Hotel Shilla, Shilla Stay, Shilla Duty Free and Everland, stopped accepting gift certificates issued by retail giant Shinsegae from early this month as they failed to renew the contract.



Market watchers speculate that this is Samsung's response to Shinsegae, which does not accept Samsung Pay.



The electronic wallet service developed by the world's top smartphone manufacturer is expanding, but all Shinesegae Group subsidiaries, including retail outlet E-Mart, Shinsegae Department Store, Starbucks and Chosun Hotel, do not accept it.



"Samsung Pay can be used in most places that accept credit cards or check cards, except for Shinsegae subsidiaries, gas stations, and Korail," Samsung Pay says on its website.



Shinsegae Group said it was not accepting Samsung Pay because negotiations were still going on.



"We are still talking with Samsung Group...we haven't come to conclusion yet," said a spokesperson for Shinsegae.



Other retail giants like Lotte Group and Hyundai Department Store Group accept Samsung Pay.



It also seems unusual when considering that the two conglomerates come from the same family.



Lee Jae-yong, Samsung Electronics' vice chairman and heir apparent of Samsung Group, and Shinsegae Group Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin are cousins. Lee's father, Samsung Group chief Lee Kun-hee, is an elder brother of Shinsegae Group Chairwoman Lee Myung-hee, who is Chung's mother.



However, the two juniors of the conglomerates have clashed because they are both eyeing mobile payment services for growth.



The junior Lee led the launch of Samsung Pay here last August. Samsung plans to expand the service to China and Europe within this month.



Chung is concentrating on expanding to online and mobile services. SSG Pay is at the core of Shinsegae's blueprint.



According to Shinsegae, SSG Pay is accepted at around 3,000 Shinsgae shops, ranging from the department store to retail outlet E-Mart, as well as Starbucks and convenience store chain Withme.



"We plan to expand franchises that accept SSG Pay," the spokesperson added. About 1.4 million have downloaded SSG Pay.



However, some analysts say it will be a hard game for Shinsegae because Samsung Pay has much wider use as well as being installed on Samsung handsets as a default.



Market watchers also note that the owner families of Samsung Group and Shinsegae Group have been alienated since 2012, when late CJ Group honorary chairman Lee Maeng-hee sued his younger brother, Samsung Group chief Lee Kun-hee, over inheritances from their late father, Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull.



Shinsegae Chairwoman Lee Myung-hee officially took a neutral position in the conflict between her brothers, but it was regarded as a supportive gesture for Lee Maeng-hee.
By Nam Hyun-woo



Mirae Asset Securities' bid to acquire KDB Daewoo Securities has reached its final phase, with Mirae Asset agreeing with KDB Daewoo Security's major stakeholder, Korea Development Bank (KDB), on the amount of a 43 percent share of Daewoo Securities.



Mirae Asset Securities announced Friday it has agreed with KDB on acquiring 43 percent of Daewoo's stake for 2.32 trillion won, down 64.8 billion from 2.385 trillion won which it offered in December. The amount is tantamount to 10.24 percent of Mirae Asset's gross assets and 98.52 percent of its net worth.



KDB and Mirae Asset signed a stock purchase agreement on Jan. 25 and have been engaging in negotiations over the price since then. In the negotiations, Mirae Asset reportedly called for a price cut, claiming the value of Daewoo's office building outside of Seoul should be depreciated.



"With the agreement, the acquisition has only a few remaining steps," an official at Mirae Asset said. "After the company is approved as the largest stakeholder by the government, it will pay the amount and get down to the actual merger." The company expects it can get down to the merger as early as the end of this month.



One remaining step for Mirae Asset is passing the Financial Services Commission's (FSC) eligibility evaluation. According to an act on corporate governance, an entity or a person who seeks to become the largest stakeholder of a bank or a securities firm should undergo the government's evaluation on whether the acquirer has ever been involved in illegalities.



The FSC reportedly is not raising questions over Mirae Asset's eligibility and will likely wrap up screening as early as this month.



Mirae Asset's acquisition bid has been faced with opposition from Daewoo Securities union members, claiming the bid is a leveraged buyout (LBO) damaging minority stakeholders.



An LBO is a tactic of acquisition using a significant amount of borrowed money to meet the cost. It is often deemed "burdening" the target company because the target company's assets are also used as collateral for the loans.



The union members earlier this month held a sit-in in front of the FSC office in central Seoul and claimed such a tactic can be regarded as professional negligence so the FSC should not allow it.



Mirae Asset, however, said its bid is not an LBO case, because the company is using its own shares as collateral to meet the acquisition cost. KDB also acknowledged this, while the FSC also reportedly did not look into whether it is an LBO.



Should the process finish as planned, Mirae Asset will be the largest player in Korea, boasting 200 trillion won of customer assets.



"In order to become a global IB (investment bank), Mirae Asset pushed for such a plan. This is a stepping stone for the company's bid to jump into the global market," said the Mirae Asset official.




By Nam Hyun-woo



The share price of apparel company Codes Combine extended its shed on Friday, after swaying the overall market with its mysterious and extreme ups and downs earlier this month.



The loss-making apparel company's share has created the so-called "Codes Combine frenzy," as its stocks gained a whopping 700 percent in value this month without explanation. On Thursday, however, the price nosedived by a whopping 30 percent, raising concerns that "the time bomb will soon explode to hurt small investors."



Codes Combine shares ended at 90,400 won on KOSDAQ Friday, down 8.41 percent from the day before. It is almost half the 184,100 won high posted on Wednesday. Also the company's market cap, which swelled on Wednesday to 6.645 trillion won to surpass IT giant Kakao's 6.642 trillion won, shrank to 3.42 trillion won after 501,333 shares were traded.



Kakao has the second-largest market cap on KOSDAQ, following Celltrion, a biopharmaceutical company with some 11.9 trillion won. Given the fact that the apparel company has seen red numbers for several business years, such a hike is seemingly unexplainable, for which the company said it could not offer any explanation.



Korea's bourse operator on Wednesday launched a probe over such "mysterious" fluctuation, which led to distortions in the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market. The Korea Exchange (KRX) has ordered a number of securities firms to hand over ledgers and information on accounts that intensively made buy orders on the shares, but did not come up with suspicious manipulative forces.



The company's share price has been showing an unexplainable hike for nine consecutive business days since March 3. Its price has jumped more than sixfold from 23,200 won over that period and risen by the daily limit for four straight days. Trading of Codes Combine shares was suspended on March 10, but the rally lasted until Tuesday.



The total outstanding shares of Codes Combine are worth 37.8 million, but more than 99 percent of them are locked up by its largest shareholder Cotton Club and other creditors, with some 250,000 shares publicly traded. Experts say high volatility is oftentimes observed in an item with a small number of free floats.



As the company's share price shot up, KOSDAQ reached the 700 mark, but the KRX sees the index as seemingly distorted.



"The KRX is paying keen attention to the situation," the official said. "It is working on coming up with measures to prevent potential distortion, but it is not fixed when we will disclose such measures because the Codes Combine price is showing signs of stability."



In 2014, Codes Combine recorded a net loss of 23.8 billion won. Its operating losses were also extended to 29.9 billion won in the same year.



Meanwhile, other shares having small free floats are also displaying moves similar to Codes Combine, raising concerns over "speculative investment regardless of a company's fundamentals."



Medium-sized furniture maker Teems' shares ended at 28,600 won, up 30 percent from a day earlier. Its shares also shot up to the price hike ceiling on Tuesday. The company also replied to a KRX inquiry that it could not explain. The company suffered a 1.1 billion won operating loss last year.




A local appeals court on Friday released a police officer, accused of leaking presidential documents, after handing down a suspended jail term.



The Seoul High Court sentenced the police inspector, identified only by his surname Han, to a year in prison suspended for one year for copying documents he found in an office and leaking them to another police officer, who was later found dead in an apparent suicide.



A lower court had sentenced Han to a year in prison.



While finding the 46-year-old guilty of the charges, the appeals court said it took into consideration that he had been faithful to his duties for the last 18 years and that it was his first time working in information management when he committed the crime.



In October, the Seoul Central District Court found former presidential secretary Cho Eung-cheon and senior police officer Park Kwan-cheon not guilty of violating the Presidential Records Management Act, noting the leaked documents cannot be seen as presidential records since they were all copies. (Yonhap)




Towards the end of Thursday nights quarterly meeting of the Hamilton County School Board meeting, the idiocy that has been the earmark of the elected group since January began to seep into the conversation. It started with a play by the Good Ole Boy representatives that the interim superintendent must be an educator, as if a central office filled with inept educators are not the first and foremost reason the Chattanooga school district is today the worst in Tennessee.

We saw the top educator tuck tail and run  without so much as a bitter goodbye  when Superintendent Rick Smith, after causing more damage than the Japs did one morning at Pearl Harbor, abruptly resigned by sunrise on Monday. This came six days after he pledged to work out the remaining 3  years of his contract yet only one day after a scathing report of our poorest schools was revealed after being carefully hidden from the school board since January.

So the first order of business was to appoint Dr. Kirk Kelly as the temporary interim superintendent with Dr. Lee McDade as the co-temporary interim in a brief stint until the school board -- eager to do nothing further until the next regularly-scheduled meeting on April 14 -- could get around to deciding what steps to take for a real interim.

Understand, the application deadline for the interim was set by the board for March 4 but Thursday night chairman Jonathan Welch instructed the human resources office to continue to take applications for (a) an interim, (b) an interim who would also be eligible to be the permanent, and (c) the permanent superintendent that could be elected in the interim.

As if that wasnt funny enough to be a skit on the old Carol Burnett Show, the outspoken Rhonda Thurman then went on another verse of her hit single, Stay In Your Own Lane, blasting outside groups that are eager to help the school board regain respect and a return of academic excellent that has fallen quite dramatically in the years the same Rhonda has  in stark truth  played a key role in the premature demise of the past three superintendents.

Were elected officials and We dont need any outside help and We run the schools . Period. What is laughable is no one is questioning that. What is factual is the Hamilton County Board of Education is not producing enough students to fill the demanding job market in Chattanooga. Not one outside person has voted on school board matters, but Rhonda screams, Do you know how much money these (Chattanooga 2.0) people make? as if that has anything to do with anything.

What matters is how much our students can make with an education versus what the school board has allowed to happen. My goodness, what Rhonda claims are only statistics were supplied by the central office itself. Smith shared more with the Benwood Foundation, the Public Education Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce than he would ever reveal to those who were, rather jokingly, his actually bosses.

And then Chairman Welch (who is actually a sound thinker) rose to the bait and dreadfully showed his colors. The 2.0 initiative has been in the works for about two years and the first 18 months we didnt hear a word about it!

My goodness, Jonathan, thats embarrassing; stop sulking  Rick Smith was in the 2.0 framework from the very get-go and the fact he told the school board less than a KGB operative is hardly anyones fault except for Fallen Rick. Then again, it is just as much the school boards fault for failing to angrily pursue truths that have yet to be revealed in much of the past four years. Admit it, it happened! This aint Algebra I (where Hamilton County is in the bottom 10 of 161 school districts statewide.)

Dr. Welch, a dentist, then actually asked his school board colleagues the most bizarre question of the night. I have been asked to be on the 2.0 steering committee. Do yall think I should or shouldnt?

Oh my gracious. It is worse than waiting yet another month for a voice of leadership and reason within the central office! Rhonda opted, You sure better take it  without a seat at the table you cant call em off or help control them

Them? Them is us, Rhonda. This petty and juvenile behavior is humiliating to the 3,200 teachers and 41,000 students who want better. One member said, Our teachers would feel better with an educator as a superintendent and I can promise that is a lie. Theyve seen what Smith and his regime did.

No, the teachers in Hamilton County want leadership that cares, leadership that will eliminate the awful factions that have fractured the system, a central office completely rebuilt based on trust and professional integrity, and all the outside help they can get.

Before the regular meeting the school board members were discussing the budget and Rhonda yelped, I dont see why we are doing this  we wont get the money while George Ricks added, But we ought to ask because the wish list has some things we ought to do.

In my way of thinking, as long as the school board insults and fights and balks at the Chattanooga communitys earnest efforts to help where it has clearly failed, the distrust and ridicule of the Hamilton County School Board will simply continue to mount. Good luck on the budget, kids, when you could be getting extra revenue from the private sector that you brazenly insult and shun.

Do you not think County Mayor Jim Coppinger and the Hamilton County Commission have noticed your circus? The business community is mortified. The philanthropic groups could really help but until everybody plays together, our school district will continue to suffer and, as an ancient Pogo cartoon once immortalized, The enemy is us.

royexum@aol.com


By Ko Dong-hwan

Police have booked without arrest two men over an allegedly fraudulent insurance claim involving a dead dog.

On Feb. 5, a French bulldog belonging to a car-wash owner identified by his surname Byun, 29, ran on to the road, where a car hit it. Byun's employee, surnamed Jung, 35, was in the building and saw the incident.

The dog suffered a fractured spine and broken back legs.

Jung, according to Seoul Songpa-gu police Friday, told his employer that a pet owner could claim insurance if the animal was on a leash.

"I felt partly responsible for the injured pet because I could have prevented the accident," Jung said, according to reports. "Besides, I worked for Byun, so I wanted to help him out by suggesting the idea."

After euthanizing his half-paralyzed pet, Byun submitted a claim to his insurance company saying his pet was on a leash when it was killed in an accident.

The company paid him 7.7 million won ($6600) to cover the dog's funeral costs and veterinarian bills.

Byun then filed another related claim, claiming his luxury watch fell on the ground when the leash was pulled from his hand. The company paid him an additional 4.5 million won ($3800).

But after company officials viewed security camera video feeds of the area where Byun said the accident occurred, they realized his claims were false, police said.
By Kim Hyo-jin



Potential presidential candidates in the opposition bloc  Rep. Moon Jae-in, Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, and Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon  have faced different results in the nominations of their confidants to run in the April 13 general election.



With the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) and the minor opposition People's Party nearly completing their nomination processes, the attention is going to how many aides of the opposition heavyweights have won a ticket for the parliamentary race. The result is viewed as a barometer for whether they could gain momentum in the run-up to the 2017 race.



While most associates to Moon and Ahn are on the ticket for the upcoming election, most of Park's aides failed to win candidacy.



Moon, a de-facto leader of loyalists to late President Roh Moo-hyun, appeared to suffer a heavy blow when Rep. Lee Hae-chan, former Prime Minister under the Roh administration and a symbol of the faction, was excluded from nomination by the MPK leadership, but, overall, Moon saw a satisfying result.



Most aides of Moon  Reps. Hong Young-pyo, Jeon Hae-cheol, and Kim Kyung-hyub and Kim Kyung-soo, the head of the party's regional bureau in South Gyeongsang Province  survived. And the figures Moon recruited strategically to widen the party's personnel pool, including former Samsung Electronics executive Yang Hyang-ja and criminal profiler Pyo Chang-won, were put up as candidates without holding intra-party elections.



Ahn's confidants also survived the nomination process, signaling that he could further tighten his grip on the party which is led by the fragmented leadership, including Reps. Chun Jung-bae and Kim Han-gil. Former lawmaker Kim Sung-shik and incumbent lawmaker Moon Byeong-ho, both of whom are close to Ahn, also got on the ticket to run in the race.



However, Mayor Park faced a gloomy result. About 10 aides threw down the gauntlet, but all failed to be awarded nomination, except Ki Dong-min, vice mayor of the state affairs.



Park's former chief of staff Chun Joon-ho didn't have the chance to run in the primary while the party designated his constituency in Seoul, the Dobong-B district, as being for strategic nomination. Former vice mayor of state affairs Lim Jong-suk and the head of the state affairs committee, Kwon Oh-joong, failed to win their primaries.



On Friday, the MPK announced an additional nine candidates to run in April. Rep. Yoon Hu-duk was nominated as a candidate for a constituency in Paju, a border city in Gyeonggi Province, and Sohn Hye-won, the party's public relations director for the Mapo-B district in Seoul, to fill in vacancy made by the recent exclusion of Rep. Jung Cheong-rae.



Yoon came under fire last August after being caught abusing his influence to help secure his daughter a job at LG Display. Although he was dropped from nomination due to the controversy, the party withdrew the decision after the lawmaker was acquitted by the Prosecution.




Ruling Saenuri Party Chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung, center, heads to the party's Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul, Friday. / Yonhap



By Kim Hyo-jin

A deepening factional conflict in the ruling Saenuri Party has caused a temporary shutdown of the nominations committee for the second straight day, Friday, casting concerns that the nomination procedure could be further prolonged ahead of the April 13 general elections.

With some committee members having boycotted the meeting scheduled for earlier in the day in protest after Chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung disagreed with their list of nominations, the committee head Lee Hahn-koo cancelled the meeting.

"Lee unilaterally announced the cancellation of the meeting, saying it's impossible to function when members refuse to participate," Rep. Hwang Jin-ha, the party's secretary-general and a committee member, told reporters.

The committee members refused to continue their work, requesting an apology from Kim for harming the autonomy of the committee.

Kim on Wednesday raised questions over the results of the latest nominations that excluded high-profile lawmakers  five-term Rep. Lee Jae-oh and Rep. Joo Ho-young, former minister of special affairs under the Lee Myung-bak administration.

The party's nomination committee has taken flak from the lawmakers excluded from the nominations following the disclosure of the list on Tuesday, in which those affiliated with Rep. Yoo Seong-min and former President Lee Myung-bak were mostly excluded. Yoo was a former party leader who has been estranged from President Park.

The losers have lashed out at Park loyalists and Lee Hahn-koo, Park's ally who is leading the nominations committee, claiming they launched an attack against adversaries to Park.

On Friday, the party faced a series of departures by its lawmakers. With the departure of the lawmakers excluded from the latest nominations speeding up, the expectation that they could form an alliance as an opposing force outside the party is growing.

However, political observers view that the move will hardly gain momentum as there is no key figure which they can create force with.

Rep. Ahn Sang-soo, former Incheon mayor, announced that he quit the party in protest of the result of the nominations.

"The party has vowed to apply the bottom-up nominating process, but it was all ruined while few people wielded power arbitrarily," Ahn said during a press conference.

"April 13 is a day to judge Lee Hahn-koo (head of the nominations committee)  I will be back after winning a victory," he added, declaring to run as an independent candidate in Incheon.

Rep. Cho Hae-jin also followed suit. The lawmaker affiliated with Yoo had denounced the party leadership following his exclusion from nominations on Tuesday.

Rep. Joo Ho-young, a three-term lawmaker and former minister of special affairs under the previous Lee Myung-bak administration, held a press conference later that day, hinting at his departure from the party and the announcement of his possible independent candidacy.

"I will make my final decision after doing my utmost in appealing to the unfairness of the party in the results of the nominations," Joo said. "I'm considering a legal measure to stand against Lee, the head of the committee, who violated party rules."

There are five, including four lawmakers have so far quit the party amid widening chasm between the pro-Park and the opposing faction. Rep. Chin Young, who left the party on Thursday, is expected to join the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) to run as its candidate in his constituency Yongsan, Seoul.

"Party leader Kim Chong-in has tried to recruit him and we expect Chin will make a decision soon," an MPK party official said. Chin and Kim have reportedly had a close relationship while they worked in the ruling camp in preparation for the previous presidential election.

"The lawmakers are quitting the party in pursuit of their own interests but it remains to be seen if they could win a seat without running under the name of the ruling party," Park Myung-ho, a professor of political science at Dongguk University said. "Also, they will find it hard to join forces as their roots are all different and there's no one figure who can bring them together with charismatic leadership. The case is different than it was in 2008 when pro-Park members excluded from the nominations gathered under the leadership of Park."


One falls into waters within Japan air defense zone

By Jun Ji-hye

North Korea launched two missiles, presumed to be the nuclear-capable mid-range Nodong-type, into the East Sea Friday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The latest provocation is a show of force against increasing international pressure to give up its nuclear program and the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.

One missile fell within the Japan Air Defense Identification Zone (JADIZ) in the East Sea after flying about 800 kilometers, while the other disappeared off the radar early into its flight, raising speculation that it may have detonated in midair right after takeoff.

Seoul slammed Pyongyang for challenging new U.N. sanctions, adopted on March 2 for the latter's Jan. 6 nuclear test and Feb. 7 rocket launch in breach of previous resolutions.

In addition, the U.S. government imposed fresh sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday, further tightening the screws on the country for its nuclear and rocket tests.

The military is keeping a close watch on the movements of North Korean soldiers in preparation for any additional provocations, officials said.

The JCS said the North launched one ballistic missile at 5:55 a.m. from Sukchon County, South Pyongan Province in the western part of the country.

"The missile dropped into waters within the JADIZ after flying about 800 kilometers," a JCS official said, noting that the missile appeared to have been launched from a transporter erector launcher, a type of mobile missile vehicle.

And at 6:17 a.m., the South Korean military's radar detected what appeared to be a second missile fired from the same area, but lost track of it at an altitude of 17 kilometers.
By Lee Seong-hyon





South Korea may have been an innocent bystander hit by a stray bullet fired from Uncle Sam's gun that was aimed at China. This is a plausible decoding of the confusing "peace treaty" drama enacted by Washington and China right before our eyes. It reveals poor strategic communication between Seoul and Washington.

Do China and the U.S. have a behind-the-scenes deal on North Korea? Is the U.S. becoming less aligned with the interest of its ally, South Korea, while pursuing its own interests? Why is China "suddenly" proposing a peace treaty? And why did the U.S. display a willingness to accommodate the Chinese proposal, but backpedal belatedly after it created uproar in South Korea? Further, what about the Wall Street Journal leak of a "secret meeting" between North Koreans and Americans in New York discussing a peace treaty in the days leading up to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test? Is something really transpiring without Seoul's knowledge?

Speculation has been rampant in South Korea that Washington is stepping back from its denuclearization precondition for peace treaty talks with the North. It happened after State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. did not rule out the possibility of a "parallel process" by which it would hold peace treaty talks with the North in tandem with denuclearization negotiations. The remark, coupled with the vigorous Chinese sales pitch for a peace treaty, has created an appearance that Washington and Beijing might have struck a secret deal _ without Seoul's knowledge.

Koreans react with sensitivity when its powerful neighbors make moves, especially without telling them. It is understandable because history shows that such moves could change their destiny in a dramatic way. Koreans still vividly remember the Taft-Katsura Agreement in 1905, a collusion between the U.S. and Japan. The two former imperial powers acquiesced each other's occupations of Korea and the Philippines. That trauma left a scar in Koreans' awareness of superpower politics.

So this warrants a deeper look into the recent peace treaty episode that has produced so many commentaries in South Korea's public sphere. First, is there indeed collusion between the U.S. and China on peace treaty negotiations? Apparently not. We know there is a channel for such talks in New York between North Koreans and Americans. For years, North Koreans used the channel to demand a peace treaty from the U.S. So the peace treaty itself is a non-event and we should not be surprised the meeting took place.

The interesting part, however, is timing. The contact happened sometime in late 2015. But somehow the information was leaked to the Wall Street Journal, timed with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to the U.S.

"The news freaked the Chinese out," said a well-placed source. "China became suspicious that something was going on behind the scenes. They became worried that the North Koreans and Americans were planning something, while completely casting aside China's interests."

This well-placed insight reveals that, contrary to wide speculation, Washington and Beijing were not "coordinating" the peace treaty narrative together. The U.S. knew well that Wang Yi was coming to Washington to sell the idea. Washington preempted it, putting China "off balance," to take the upper hand in their negotiations. Later, Washington massaged the Chinese apprehension a bit with a goodwill diplomatic gesture for the Chinese proposal so that it could draw Beijing's cooperation on the U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang.

Second, why did China abruptly propose a peace treaty? It may have sounded "out of the blue," but it has in fact been a consistent Chinese position.

"China has always argued that peace' is important," Yun Sun, a senior associate with the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., told The Korea Times. "By that, they mean a peace treaty between the U.S. and North Korea. They identify that the lack of a peace treaty is the fundamental reason North Korea wants to develop nuclear weapons.

"So, the timing of China's proposal for a peace treaty may sound abrupt, but the Chinese position itself is not. Running back to the peace treaty is China's pattern in handling the Korean nuclear crisis."

The Chinese proposal echoed a longstanding demand by North Korea. Minister Wang characterized it as a "reasonable concern of North Korea." Lu Chao, an expert on North Korea at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in northeast China, echoed the view. "The North Korean demand is reasonable, because after the armistice, there has not been a peace treaty. The armistice is only temporary. If we want North Korea's denuclearization, we should also factor their concerns into consideration."

Jingdong Yuan, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, thinks China is turning the tables with the proposal.

"China has long been criticized for not doing enough on North Korea or scolded to apply more pressure, or cut off oil and stop providing economic aid to North Korea," he said. "China now thinks that if the U.S. folds its arms and sticks to the usual strategic-patience' approach, nothing will really move forward. So, China is saying to the U.S., why don't you also consider this proposal?'"

China's foreign diplomacy on North Korea has been characterized as passive and reactive. China also wants to correct it, by grabbing the initiative for the North Korean nuclear crisis and thus leading the international public diplomacy narrative that has been under Washington's purview. China is also partly motivated by the ongoing discussions on the possible deployment of THAAD and the joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea that fuel Chinese fears of regional instability.

"China has felt that it has been a bit pushed into the corner," said Yun.

So, do not be fooled. The U.S. and China are playing the usual game: cooperation on the surface, competition inside. This time, China's goal is to combine its salvaged "peace treaty" rhetoric with the resumption of the six-party talks, and take over the initiative of the North Korean nuclear crisis that has been led by the U.S. and its narrative shaped by U.S. media outlets laying all the blame on China for a lack of progress in resolving the North Korean crisis.

An interesting question is whether the U.S. is seriously interested in signing a peace treaty with North Korea.

"Certainly no at the moment," said Lu. "This is something everyone knows."

Yuan underscores the need for the U.S. to invest more political resources in tackling the North Korean issue.

"The U.S. position of not negotiating with North Korea is not a policy that could reverse North Korea's actions," he said. "Diplomacy is the art of getting things done. From China's perspective, the U.S. policy [of strategic patience] is just not going to work."

Lee Seong-hyon, Ph.D. is a research fellow at the Sejong Institute. He can be reached at sunnybbsfs@gmail.com.


Korea calls in Japanese Embassy minister to lodge protest



By Chung Hyun-chae



The Korean government condemned Japan for authorizing new high school textbooks reinforcing its territorial claim over Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.



According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Friday, 27 of the 35 new social studies textbooks for high school freshmen, or 77 percent, described Dokdo as Japanese territory illegally occupied by South Korea. The books will go into use April 2017.



This number is up from 69.2 percent, or 27 out of 39 books in current use after a previous authorization in 2012.



The Japanese government's approval of the textbooks came after the two countries struck a deal on Dec. 28 to settle the decades-old issue of Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women.



The Korean government issued a statement urging Japan to "rectify the distorted content."



"It is deplorable that the Japanese government again authorized textbooks containing distorted and unjust claims to Dokdo, which is Korea's territory historically, geographically and by international law. We demand immediate correction," MOFA spokesman Cho June-hyuck said in the statement.





"It is the Japanese government's responsibility to teach correct history for its future generations and the neighboring countries that suffered from Japan's actions," he said.



He called for Japan's sincere actions to open a new chapter in Korea-Japan relations.



MOFA protested the Japanese government's approval of the distorted textbooks to Hideo Suzuki, minister and deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.



As a countermeasure, it also decided to translate promotional footage of Dokdo into 13 languages, including Vietnamese and Turkish, in addition to the 12 languages in which it is currently available.



Korea's Ministry of Education also reacted strongly against its Japanese counterpart, saying the new textbooks may give students the wrong historic perception and develop nationalistic ideas, which could lead to history repeating.



"Adhering to a distorted historical view, the new textbooks play down Japan's occupational rule and intensify its claims to the sovereignty of the Korea-controlled Dokdo, which are outrageous assertions," education ministry spokesman Lee Seung-bok said in the statement.



The ministry said it will send the Japanese government an official request to correct the textbooks by June, as well as intensify education on Dokdo for Korean students by developing and distributing teaching materials about the islets.



In one of the Japanese textbooks, the book describes Japan and Korea having a territorial dispute over Dokdo. But the Japanese government demanded that the publisher change that part, saying students may have trouble understanding, so the publisher changed it to say Korea is illegally occupying Dokdo and thus the Japanese government has been trying to resolve the issue, according to the ministries.



About wartime sexual enslavement, the books use vague expressions to say "women were sent to frontline brothels" instead of stating they were forced to do so by Japan.



The books did not reflect the agreement between the two countries on the sexual slavery issue, because the application for the screening was made in the first half of last year.
By Chung Hyun-chae



Police are investigating the whereabouts of 19 children who have not attended elementary school despite being of school age, according to the Ministry of Education, Friday.



The move came after a series of child abuse cases by parents  the most recent being seven-year-old boy Shin Won-young, who was allegedly beaten to death by his stepmother.



The ministry asked police to investigate 286 elementary-age children who have not come to school and whose whereabouts or safety were unconfirmed.



Police confirmed the safety of 267 of the cases, but are still investigating the remaining 19. Included among the 267 was Shin.



The ministry said most of the 267 children had been absent from school because they have gone abroad, are attending international schools or have diseases preventing them from attending school.



It plans to strengthen countermeasures against child abuse, obliging schools to request a police probe when a student is absent from school for two days without clear reasons.




By Jun Ji-hye



South Korea and the United States will hold high-level talks in Seoul next Monday to coordinate the implementation of new sanctions against North Korea, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Friday.



The meeting will be led by Kim Hong-kyun, Seoul's special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, along with the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Sung Kim and the U.S. State Department's sanctions policy coordinator Daniel Fried. Both U.S. officials will arrive in Seoul on that day.



"The two countries will discuss ways of faithfully implementing U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2270 as well as each country's unilateral sanctions to increase international pressure on North Korea," the ministry said in a release.



The officials will also exchange opinions on Washington's overall policy toward the Kim Jong-un regime, the ministry said, including President Barack Obama's recently issued executive order authorizing additional sanctions on Pyongyang.



Kim Hong-kyun, who was appointed as Seoul's top nuclear envoy on Feb. 29, met with his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim on March 10, during a visit to Washington at which the two conducted in-depth discussions on joint measures to make North Korea move toward change.



The Seoul official also met with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in the late afternoon on Friday and discussed how to better implement fresh U.N. sanctions targeting the North's nuclear and missile programs.



"I plan to share assessments of the threat of North Korea's provocations and focus on overall ways to change the North's thinking and behavior through faithful implementation of the UNSC resolution," Kim told reporters before boarding his plane to China.



Such meetings come as Pyongyang has shown no sign of abandoning its nuclear ambitions even after the UNSC unanimously voted for Resolution 2270 on March 2, imposing the harshest sanctions yet on the regime for its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and long-range rocket launch on Feb. 7.



The repressive state fired two medium-range missiles into the East Sea early Friday morning in its latest defiance of U.N. resolutions, about a week after firing two short-range ballistic missiles also off its east coast.



The Kim regime recently claimed that it had miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit in its missiles and that it had acquired missile reentry technology necessary to bring a nuclear-armed ballistic missile back into Earth's atmosphere.



Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye




The chief nuclear envoys of South Korea and China are to meet Friday for the first time since the U.N. Security Council slapped fresh sanctions on North Korea to punish the regime for its recent nuclear and missile tests.



Kim Hong-kyun, South Korea's special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, left for Beijing earlier in the day to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei.



The two sides plan to coordinate their response to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, focusing on ways to implement the new U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, according to the Foreign Ministry.



The planned meeting comes hours after North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the East Sea in the latest show of force against the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.



Tensions remain high on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea has threatened to carry out further nuclear tests and ballistic rocket launchings in defiance of the sanctions over Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch last month.



China, the North's last major ally and economic benefactor, has vowed to strictly enforce the U.N. sanctions, though it has called for resuming dialogue with Pyongyang to fundamentally resolve the standoff over its nuclear program.



Beijing has also expressed strong opposition to the possible deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense in South Korea, viewing it as a threat to its own security interests.



The ministry said it expects Friday's meeting to contribute to close coordination among South Korea, China and the U.S. over the North Korean nuclear issue.



The new U.N. sanctions were adopted earlier this month after close coordination between Washington and Beijing, two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council. They include the mandatory inspection of all cargo going in and out of the North and a ban on the country's exports of coal and other mineral resources, which serve as a key source of hard currency for the cash-strapped regime.



Last week, the South Korean envoy traveled to Washington for similar talks with his U.S. counterpart, Sung Kim, during which the two sides agreed to focus on putting strong pressure on the North to ultimately change its behavior. They also agreed to warn Pyongyang of a stronger response should it make additional provocations.

It will be Kim's first meeting with Wu since taking office last month. (Yonhap)




South Korea issued a strong protest Friday after Japan authorized dozens of new high-school textbooks that renew territorial claims to the South's easternmost islets of Dokdo in a move sure to aggravate historical tensions between the two neighbors.



The approval dampened the mood for bilateral cooperation, which has emerged in the wake of the North's latest provocations and a Dec. 28 deal to settle the decades-old issue of Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, observers here noted. (Yonhap)




South Korea and China have agreed to better implement the bilateral free trade agreement and ease non-tariff barriers for Korean companies operating businesses in China, Seoul's trade ministry said Friday.



On Thursday, South Korean Trade Minister Joo Hyung-hwan held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Gao Hucheng, to evaluate the implementation of the FTA that took effect in December and seek ways to step up business ties between the two nations.



They also touched on the ongoing anti-dumping probe on imports of Korean-made electrical steel, bispenol A and acetone, as well as the new battery subsidy rule, the ministry said.



In January, China stopped offering subsidies to nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery plants in China, which are mostly owned by South Korean companies, citing safety issues. In what appeared to be a discriminatory move, however, Beijing provided incentives to Chinese producers of lithium iron phosphate (LIP) batteries used in electric buses.



The move was seen as an apparent attempt to boost its local manufacturers and isolate their South Korean rivals, including LG Chem Ltd. and Samsung SDI Co., which have expanded production facilities to tap deeper into the fast-growing Chinese market.



"We asked the Chinese government to reflect Korean companies' opinions in the process of safety inspection for batteries, and Chinese officials promised to discuss the issue with the related organizations so as not to disadvantage foreign companies," a ministry official said.



The two sides also agreed to launch working-level talks to discuss service and investment between the two nations.



"The service and investment consultations are expected to foster new service industry in such areas as culture, contents, medicine and tourism in both countries," the ministry said.



China is the world's single largest importer of South Korean goods, accounting for nearly one-fourth of South Korea's total outbound shipments. However, South Korea's exports to China have been on the wane despite the implementation of the Korea-China FTA in December 2015. (Yonhap)




The United States purposely included Indonesia in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathering it organized in California last month to serve as a counterpoint to China in Asia.

Indonesia is a vigorous democracy, with the fourth-largest population in the world. It is also the most populous Muslim country and remains a moderate society.

Its economy is relatively healthy. Gross domestic product growth slipped in 2015, but to a very respectable 4.8 percent. The country does relatively well with exports of palm oil, rubber, tin and oil.

Compared with Asian rivals China, India, Japan and South Korea, though, it punches beneath its weight. One problem is geography. Indonesia is an archipelago of 13,466 islands, which makes infrastructure  as well as national governance  expensive and complicated.

President Joko Widodo was elected in 2014 on a platform of change and honesty. He is a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, which controls only 105 of 560 seats in the parliament, thus requiring him to govern through an unwieldy coalition. His party is led, not by him, but by Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president and, worse, the daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, a dictator who ruled from 1945, when it gained independence from Holland, to 1967.

Indonesia's major challenges come from its size, potential vulnerability to Islamic extremism, widespread corruption and China's sagging fortunes as a customer.

All of that said, Indonesia remains a promising partner for the United States in Asia, particularly as a moderate Muslim state with economic promise. President Barack Obama, who spent part of his youth there, is right to court the country.

This editorial appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
By Park Si-soo



North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile into the East Sea Friday morning, said South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The missile was fired at 5:55 a.m. from the Sukchon region, north of Pyongyang, and flew for about 800 kilometers before falling into the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, it said.

This came eight days after the reclusive state fired two short-range missiles in an apparent show of anger against new U.N. sanctions and Seoul-Washington joint military drills that will end today.

China has urged the North to refrain from provocative actions to avoid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The United States urged North Korea on Thursday to refrain from raising tensions after the communist nation fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the East Sea.



South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the North fired a Rodong missile into the East Sea. It was believed to be the first time in about two years that the North has launched the medium-range missile.



The launch, banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions, represented the latest show of force against the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.



"We have seen reports that North Korea launched a ballistic missile," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, adding that the U.S. is closely monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula.













"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," Kirby said.



Kirby also said that the U.S. remains steadfast in its commitment to the defense of its allies South Korea and Japan and will continue to coordinate closely with the allies and partners in the region. (Yonhap)
/ Yonhap



North Korea fired two mid-range missiles into the East Sea on Friday in the latest show of force against the ongoing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States, but one missile appears to have blown up in flight, official sources said.

One ballistic missile was fired at around 5:55 a.m. from near Sukchon, in the western part of the country, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

The missile, believed to be a mid-range Rodong model, flew about 800 kilometers across North Korea before falling into the sea off the east coast.

"The missile hit waters within the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone," the JCS said.

About 22 minutes after the first launch, South Korean military's radar detected what appeared to be a second missile fired from the same area. But the radar lost track of it at an altitude of 17 kilometers, the military said.

Officials said the second missile may have exploded in the air without reaching its target area.

"An analysis so far indicates it was a missile, but more examination is needed to verify the data," the JCS said.

Military officials here said the first ballistic missile appeared to have been launched from a transporter erector launcher, a mobile missile vehicle.

This came eight days after the reclusive state fired two short-range missiles in an apparent show of anger against new U.N. sanctions and Seoul-Washington joint military drills that will end today.

China has urged the North to refrain from provocative actions to avoid raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
China called for North Korea on Friday to comply with U.N. resolutions after the North fired two mid-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea in its latest defiance of a fresh U.N. resolution.



One of the missiles flew about 800 kilometers before crashing into the sea earlier in the day, while the other might have exploded mid-air, South Korean military officials said.



"We urge North Korea to abide by the (U.N.) resolutions," Lu Kang, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, told reporters. Lu then urged "all relevant parties" to exercise restraint.













The Friday test of ballistic missiles, which are banned under U.N. resolutions, comes amid heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea has threatened to conduct more nuclear tests since the U.N. Security Council imposed fresh sanctions on the North following its fourth nuclear test and rocket launch this year. (Yonhap)
President Park Chung-hee, left, visits Hohmanneum in 1965. On his left is Fritz Hohman.

/ Courtesy of Nam Ki-bong



Declassified documents show respected German educator was a child predator

The late Fritz Hohmann (1909-1982) / Courtesy of Nam Ki-bong

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Fritz Hohmann (1909-1982), the founder of the now defunct vocational high school Hohmanneum in the southwestern city of Naju, is remembered by Koreans as a hero who helped provide free education to some 500 poor children.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when most Koreans lived in dire poverty, many of his students were able to go to Germany for further education after completing their course at his boarding school, which trained young Koreans for the German labor market. Some went on to complete their bachelor's, even doctoral degrees in Germany, which enabled them to pursue successful careers. For them, Hohmann was a guardian angel who changed their lives. Because of the students he had helped, the German engineer-turned-aid worker became a well-known figure in Korea. In 1965, President Park Chung-hee awarded Hohmann with the Cross of Merit for his dedication to turning the poorest of the poor into highly skilled, in-demand technical workers who could work in Germany and send remittances back to Korea.

A Korea Times investigation, however, found that Hohmann led a double life  he was a respected educator during the day and a pedophile at night.



In its early years, Hohmanneum used hyanggyo or a Confucian academy as a classroom. Later the school had its own building. / Courtesy of Nam Ki-bong

He sexually abused dozens of his students and forced them to perform sexual acts for him with the promise that he would send them to Germany, a land of opportunity. The systematic sexual abuses of children continued for a certain period since the school was established in the early 1960s, according to declassified German diplomatic documents available in the archives of the German foreign ministry.

In August 1967, then German Ambassador to Korea Franz Ferring had two unusual guests in his office in Seoul  two former employees of the Hohmanneum school who were there to blow the whistle. Having witnessed numerous children being sexually assaulted by Hohmann in his residence, they were determined to meet with the German envoy and tell him the truth. Three days after the meeting, Ferring confronted Hohmann regarding the allegations, but the German educator denied the allegations and even threatened to take legal action against his accusers. Not convinced by his denial, Ambassador Ferring directed an unnamed cultural advisor of the embassy to travel to Naju to investigate the case, who successfully obtained the testimonies of 23 victims. The testimonies, which were included in the German investigator's report, detailed how the victims were raped or abused. According to the report, Hohmann had lived with five or six children at his residence in Naju. A nine-year-old boy who brought wood to his home during the winter was quoted as saying those boys were forced to do sexual acts for him. One student was also quoted as saying that in August 1966, Hohmann promised he would send the boy to Germany for study and invited the boy to his house and "learn the European lifestyle." From August to December that year, the boy was forced to perform sexual intercourse with Hohmann.





Students study in Hohmanneum in 1963. / Courtesy of Nam Ki-bong

Since then, however, the sexual abuse scandal had been forgotten by the Korean public, and due to the diplomatic customs, all files related to the sexual abuses had been classified for 30 years.

Nam Ki-bong, who belonged to one of the first groups of students to attend the vocational high school in 1964, said he remembers the German diplomat visiting the school frequently during the summer of 1967. Nam, however, said that he still doesn't believe Hohmann was a child predator.

"I was 17 at that time and didn't know exactly what was going on. But I knew that something serious had happened," he told The Korea Times over the phone.

"It was a difficult time for all of us. I don't know how the investigation turned out .... What I remember is that Mr. Hohmann was accused of being involved in a certain case. I heard that someone reported to the German diplomat about something baseless to discredit Hohmann and the German diplomat was there to unearth the truth."

Nam, a retired professor who taught students at Dongshin University in Naju after earning his doctoral degree in architecture from a university in Berlin in 1991, said Hohmann had a female neighbor who was an American. According to him, she was a Peace Corps volunteer and testified against Hohmann, after which "things became very serious."

Asked if he knew anybody who was sexually abused by Hohmann, Nam said neither he nor his classmates were victims and cautiously raised a conspiracy theory.

"Mr. Hohmann was a caring man," he said. "Although I was young at that time, I felt that a witch hunt was going on because I heard that the German Embassy didn't like him and had a bad perception of him for some reason," he said.

The Korea Times contacted Friends of Korea, a Washington-based association of former Peace Corps volunteers to find the female Peace Corps volunteer and verify Nam's comments and learn more about the case.

David Lassiter, a board member of the group, circulated The Korea Times email request to the group's members on March 14 but said that as of March 18, no one had come forward.

"So far no one has knowledge of her, but there are a few leads I am still tracking down," he wrote in an e-mail. He quoted one volunteer who was based in Gwangju near Naju as saying that he remembered there was no one who volunteered in the immediate area until early 1968. "The volunteer you were looking for was probably in one of the groups not involved in rural health," he said in an email forwarded by Lassiter to The Korea Times. "It seems odd today since Naju is a suburb of Gwangju but I don't recall meeting a woman assigned there."

Hohmann was able to avoid punishment from German law because he gave up his German citizenship after the scandal and became a naturalized Korean. Stars & Stripes reported on Dec. 2, 1967 that Hohmann became the first German to be a naturalized Korean and adopted a Korean name, Yongbu Homan.

Forgotten crime

Hohmann first came to Korea in 1959 as a technical advisor for a state-run fertilizer company in Naju. In 1964, while hiking on a nearby mountain, he met a poor boy whose parents couldn't afford to finance his education. This encounter inspired him to establish the vocational school. Initially, the school was not accredited, so its first graduates, including Nam, had to take a state test to earn the certification that demonstrates high school-level academic skills.

After the German Embassy investigation confirmed Hohmann's misbehavior, it forced him to resign from the school, which was at the time funded by the German government. As his sexual abuses had not been made public while he was alive, he continued to live in Naju and even taught students at a local technical college until he died in 1982 at the age of 73.

Even after the diplomatic documents were declassified in the 1990s, the case remained forgotten for another two decades until it was discovered accidentally by then Korean-German doctoral student Martin Hyun, who was researching the Korean migration to Germany for his dissertation in the German foreign ministry's archives. In August 2013, the German publication MIGAZIN ran his article about the systematic sexual abuses at the Hohmanneum vocational high school.

The story captured the attention of German parliamentary member Katrin Werner, who then asked the German foreign ministry if it had any plans to follow up on the scandal. In an open letter sent to the ministry in August 2013, the lawmaker asked if the foreign ministry was going to compensate the victims and their families or offer an official apology to them.

The ministry answered that it would reinvestigate or reappraise the case if the victims wish, but it had not received such a request so far. Regarding Hohmann, the foreign ministry indicated that the German authorities were unable to punish him because he gave up his German citizenship. The ministry added that all documents regarding the sexual abuses are now declassified and therefore accessible in the ministry archives.

Over three decades have passed since Hohmann died as a free man. Currently, no Korean government officials can verify whether or not the government was aware of Hohmann's sexual abuses of his students.

Because the scandal is largely forgotten, however, Hohmann is still remembered by many Koreans as a good-hearted man who loved the country so much that he even asked his family to bury his body on the land of his second home, Korea.
By Kim Yoo-chul





Park Dae-young

Samsung Heavy-Engineering

CEO

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) said Friday that the country's leading shipbuilder has no plans to merge with Samsung Engineering.



"Currently, SHI has no plans to merge with Samsung Engineering," SHI CEO Park Dae-young told reporters on the sidelines of the company's shareholders' meeting in southern Seoul.



The remarks are a major reversal a few months after the CEO's remarks last September that the two firms should eventually merge.



SHI's 2014 takeover attempt of Samsung Engineering had failed due to shareholder opposition.



But the scenario for the merged entity is still a top issue in the domestic shipbuilding industry, as Samsung Group is accelerating its efforts to transform its corporate structure focusing on consumer electronics, finance and biotech by unloading unprofitable businesses and merging key group units.



SHI CEO Park was reinstated, securing his CEO post for another three years after last year's management overhaul. SHI reported historically high operating losses in 2015.



The CEO, however, remained positive that the group's shipbuilding affiliate will turn a profit this year.



"The situation is desperate. If ship orders pay for the return of ships, which were being built in SHI's shipyard in Korea, then I am very much confident that SHI will return to the black," said Park.



Despite the continued liquidity problems, SHI said it has no plans to raise additional capital by selling new shares.



"The number of company executives was halved in the last two years," Park said. "SHI is on track to improve financial soundness by cutting costs and selling none-core assets A huge number of company executives took responsibility for the disastrous corporate performance."



SHI hired former Samsung Electronics global technology center chief Kim Jong-ho, in what officials say is a move to overhaul the shipbuilder's key manufacturing process.
(From left) SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, SK Telecom CEO Jang Dong-hyun and SK hynix CEO Park Sung-wook



Group overhauls severance payment system



By Kim Yoo-chul



SK Holdings Chairman Chey Tae-won returned to the top management two years after he had been forced to resign from all key group posts to serve a prison term for embezzlement.



"Shareholders of SK Holdings, the control tower of SK, approved adding Chairman Chey as a registered board member of SK Holdings," SK president Cho Dae-shik said in a shareholders' meeting at SK's headquarters in downtown Seoul, Friday.

"Amid growing uncertainty, SK needs Chey's leadership and management abilities."



SK said the majority of its shareholders voted for Chey's reinstatement, though the group declined to unveil the portion that voted for his return.



Chey resigned from all key posts at SK Group's affiliates in March 2014.



The National Pension Service (NPS), the second largest shareholder of SK Holdings, opposed Chey's return to the board after global advisory Institutional Shareholders Services (ISS) recommended foreign shareholders oppose Chey's return to the top post.



"Chairman Chey will be responsible for any key decisions on affiliate breaches of trust or legal violations," SK said in a statement. "His given role is to find ways to boost the value of SK and SK affiliates."



In a separate shareholders' meeting, Chey's nephew Choi Shin-won, who also serves as vice chairman of SKC, was named as a registered board member, strengthening the Chey family's grip on SK affiliates.



"To respond to growing calls by investors for improved management transparency, SK owner family members will actively participate in daily management," said the statement. "All of them will be responsible for the results of key business decisions."



SK said it will also significantly reduce the severance pay when group executives leave group affiliates to cut costs and improve management transparency.



"SK's key affiliates  SK Holdings, SK Innovation, SK hynix and SK Telecom  made a big overhaul in the severance pay system," said the statement. "Under the new system, senior and top management of group affiliates will receive 33 percent less severance pay when they agree to terminate contracts with SK."



Its Governance Committee, which will be comprised of four external directors, will be in charge of managing key decisions that have a greater impact on the group.



SK hynix admits worsening situation



On a related note, SK hynix CEO Park Sung-woo said the world's second-biggest memory chip manufacturer is urged to take on growing market risks amid signs of an industry downturn.



"As part of plans to focus on offsetting the growing risks of the industry's downturn, SK hynix will do its best for efficient use of capital spending and other costs," Park said at the company's shareholders' meeting held in the firm's headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.



The remarks were in line with memory chip market leader Samsung Electronics' plan to halve its investment in DRAM chips this year, down to a level similar to what Samsung spent in the 2011 and 2013 down cycles.



Park said its latest DRAM-producing plant  M14  will go online as scheduled.



"For future growth, SK hynix will be consistent in developing next-generation memory chip products such as NVDIMM and HBM."



The company, which generated 18.8 trillion won in sales and 5.3 trillion won in operating profits last year, has reinstated President Kim Joon-ho as a registered member of its board.



However, SK Chairman Chey failed to be listed as a new registered SK hynix board member, despite Chey's passion toward the growth of SK's semiconductor business.



SK Telecom, the top shareholder of SK hynix, separately said it has identified media, life value and Internet of Things (IoT) as the company's next revenue streams.



"SK Telecom is looking beyond telecom service as we are aiming to become a leading platform provider," SK Telecom CEO Jang Dong-hyun said at the company's shareholders' meeting.



During the meeting, SK reinstated the six current directors of its board.



SK Telecom fixed its plan to pay out 10,000 won per common share for dividends for 2015.



"Competition is getting fiercer," the company CEO said. "SK Telecom wants to be a platform leader and this will help us grow sustainably."



Jang, however, declined to comment about issues related to its planned takeover of CJ HelloVision (CJH), which is currently being reviewed by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Fair Trade Commission and Korea Communications Commission to determine whether the plan will hurt fair competition and limit consumer choice.
The Southeastern Emergency Medical Services Directors Association named Hamilton County Emergency Medical Services Captain John Miller as Paramedic of the Year at the awards banquet during the annual EMS conference held at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Captain Miller was honored for his leadership as on scene medical commander during the July 16, 2015 terrorist attack on Chattanooga. It was an honor to be recognized by the SEEMSDA committee and my co-workers who provided care for those in need on that tragic day. I only accept this award on behalf of the brave men and women of HCEMS, who with me, responded without hesitation while literally under fire, said Mr. Miller.

Mr. Miller began his career as a paramedic for HCEMS in 1990. His professionalism and superior patient care, allowed him to move into the supervisory position of lieutenant for Hamilton County and again in 2010, because of his exemplary performances as a shift lieutenant, Mr. Miller was promoted to the position and rank of shift captain.

According to Director of HCEMS Ken Wilkerson, Captain Millers first concern during the July attack, was for his team members and executing the plans of action implemented by the HCEMS administration for terrorist attack situations. While no one can predict a situation like the one on July 16th, Captain Miller remained in control and led his teams to do exactly what they are trained to do and that is to provide professional emergency care to patients at a scene and transport them safely to the hospital. I am very proud to have the dedicated HCEMS crews caring for our community and for the exemplary service of Captain Miller. He is a crucial part of our service and exemplifies the quality of our team leaders, said Mr. Wilkerson.

The SEEMSDA Awards Banquet was held to recognize EMS personnel from the Southeastern Tennessee area for their outstanding emergency medical services in patient care. The three-day EMS Conference focused on issues for better patient care and treatment in todays emergency situations. A variety of hands-on training

was provided to regional EMS personnel giving them the opportunity to gain continuing education units (CEUs) for recertification and licensing.

The mission of the Southeastern EMS Directors Association, Inc. is to provide quality EMS leadership through cooperative service interaction by combining progressive education and thorough information to direct regional EMS providers forward into tomorrows healthcare field. It is made up of the 11 Southeastern Tennessee County EMS agencies.
Soddy Daisys zoning ordinance was changed Thursday night to allow smaller lot sizes.

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The existing ordinance required a minimum of 75 feet of road frontage for a building lot. After the vote, the minimum width of lots was reduced to 50 feet. This was initiated by Commissioner Gene Shipley who believes it will help Soddy Daisy compete with other cities in Hamilton County and in the Chattanooga area by allowing a greater number of smaller lot sizes to accommodate cottage type houses with small yards that he believes will keep people in the city. He sees this as a benefit to retirees who would like to reduce yard maintenance.

Commissioner Robert Cothran expressed concern about this issue coming from his constituents and from himself. Fearing that the small lots would cause poor quality development since the maximum width of a house would be 30 feet after all the setbacks are satisfied. He asked for suggestions of how the city could safeguard against bad construction on the tiny lots and put restrictions on the buildings.

You could take the finest subdivision in Soddy Daisy and a redneck could junk it up, said Commissioner Shipley. Arnold Stulce, an interested citizen of Soddy Daisy, said he remembered the small company-owned houses from the past that were built in Soddy Daisy and said they are still slums today. He said that he just threw this out as a word of caution.

City Attorney Sam Elliott made the suggestion that this lot size could be restricted to certain areas of the city. A vote was unanimous to approve the zoning change, even though some did it reluctantly.

This change affects only houses that are hooked up to the sewer. If a building has a septic tank, the minimum width will become 65 feet of road frontage. Commissioners said that the composition of soil all around Soddy Daisy varies, some areas have chert and some have creek rock underlying and there is a difference in the way they perk. It was suggested to have a requirement of having the soil tested to determine the size lot that would be needed for a septic system. The motion passed to explore this process.

The owner of the industrial park in Soddy Daisy has asked for relief from an M-1 zoning ordinance that requires a conditional permit for a business to operate. These permits are given by the planning commission that meets just one time a month, which makes it difficult for some people to schedule hearings when they are needed. A suggestion was made for conditional permits to be approved by the board of zoning appeals because they meet more often. Another solution would be to revert back to the original zoning in the industrial park which was M2. This allows only the uses that are specified in that zoning designation.

Soddy Daisy has had some unexpected expenses during the year that were not in the budget such as a lightning strike that did a lot of damage at city hall. Other spending was moved into this years budget from the previous year for various reasons. An amendment to the current budget was necessary to clean up these expenditures.

State Rep. Patsy Hazlewood presented a special proclamation on behalf of the Tennessee House of Representatives jointly with the state Senate to W.V. Roberson. This honor recognized Mr. Robersons contributions to the Soddy Daisy community and for improving the quality of life. Among other things, he has been instrumental in providing meals to veterans and putting flags along the highways and in front of city hall on Veterans Day and Flag Day. He has also been involved in collecting toys during Christmas for children in Soddy Daisy and in collecting coats for needy children.
In a letter on Friday to Secretary of the U.S. Navy Ray Mabus, Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and Representatives Chuck Fleischmann and Tom Graves asked the U.S. Navy to give all due consideration to honoring the five servicemembers killed in Chattanooga, Tennessee on July 16, 2015 by naming an appropriate naval vessel the USS Chattanooga.

In the wake of this tragedy, we believe that it is appropriate for the U.S. Navy to honor the legacy of those who lost their lives, wrote Senators Alexander, Corker, and Reps. Fleischmann and Graves. We therefore ask that you give all due consideration to naming an appropriate vessel the USS Chattanooga.

The letter said:

Dear Secretary Mabus:

We are writing to ask that you give all due consideration to honoring the five servicemembers killed in Chattanooga, Tennessee on July 16, 2015 by naming an appropriate naval vessel the USS Chattanooga. The Chattanooga City Council and the Tennessee General Assembly passed separate resolutions supporting naming the next eligible U.S. Navy ship in honor of the five servicemembers who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attack in Chattanooga.

On July 16, 2015, a lone terrorist attacked both a United States Military Recruiting Station and a Navy and Marine Corps Operational Support Center, ultimately claiming the lives of Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Lance Cpl. Squire Skip Wells, and Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith. Furthermore, the five service members were awarded the Purple Heart on December 16, 2015 because the attacker was found to be inspired by propaganda from a foreign terrorist organization.

In the wake of this tragedy, we believe that it is appropriate for the U.S. Navy to honor the legacy of those who lost their lives. We therefore ask that you give all due consideration to naming an appropriate vessel the USS Chattanooga.

Sincerely,

Lamar Alexander

United States Senator

Bob Corker

United States Senator

Chuck Fleischmann

Member of Congress

Tom Graves

Member of Congress


Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and Federal Councillor and the Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Mr. Didier Burkhalter on Thursday (03.03.2016) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Foreign Office Consultations between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation, in Bern the capital of Switzerland. The agreement would facilitate a more stronger and regular dialogue between Sri Lanka and Switzerland. The MoU was signed at the conclusion of an official visit to Switzerland, which was noted to be the first by a Sri Lankan Foreign Minister to Bern in 30 years. Ministers also discussed on the possibility of entering into a comprehensive partnership agreement on migration between the two countries, and agreed to pursue the proposal through technical committees from both sides.

Welcoming Minister Samaraweera in Bern, Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter, recalled his visit to Sri Lanka March 2015, shortly after the Presidential elections. He affirmed Switzerlands continued cooperation and assistance to Sri Lanka both for the ongoing activities, as well as in new areas, including in providing expertise to the process of developing the proposed models of reconciliation by the Government of Sri Lanka.

During the bilateral meeting, a number of mutually important issues were discussed by the two Foreign Ministers including exploring new avenues for further expansion of bilateral relations, as the two countries celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations this year. Minister Samaraweera briefed the Federal Councillor Burkhalter on the progress made over the last one year, by the new Government in its reform and reconciliation programme based on the proposed four-pillar model, and the drafting of a new constitution, all of which are aimed at mitigating the effects of the conflict and to enable return to stability and offer new prospects for the country with guarantees for non-reoccurrence. Federal Councillor Burkhalter congratulated Minister Samaraweera on the progress achieved so far and assured him that Switzerland would continue and indeed step up its support for the proposed process.

The two Ministers also agreed that in addition to the cooperation in political spheres, there is potential for strengthening economic cooperation between the two countries and in this context Minister Samaraweera requested the support of the Government of Switzerland to encourage Swiss investment into Sri Lanka, taking advantage of the investor friendly business climate in the country at present, in particularly in strengthening the areas of financing and banking sectors, IT, hospitality industry and pharmaceutical industry, where Switzerland has particular expertise. The need for reviewing the current agreement on investment promotion and protection established in the early 1980s between the two countries was also agreed upon. Switzerland also assured continued support for Sri Lanka through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), for activities including the Colombo Process a Group of 11 contractual labour sending countries in Asia, presently chaired by Sri Lanka. Federal Councillor Burkhalter assured the support of Switzerland for Sri Lanka becoming a member of the Foundation Council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and to assist Sri Lanka with training on security policy under the GCSP framework. Assistance in asset recovery through the support of the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR)  Basel was also discussed at the meeting. Regarding the follow  up to the Singapore diaspora dialogue, Minister Samaraweera hoped that the next dialogue could take place in Sri Lanka.

In addition to the bilateral engagement, the two Ministers also focused on cooperation at multilateral and regional organizations, including the SAARC and the ASEAN.

Responding to questions by the Swiss media at a joint press-stakeout held following the bilateral meeting, Minister Samaraweera invited the Sri Lankan diaspora in Switzerland to return to their motherland and to assist with rebuilding the country to its true potential. Federal Councillor Burkhalter acknowledged that Sri Lankan diaspora are making significant contributions to Swiss society and are engaged in multiple skilled fields. He also agreed to continue assistance to encourage those who are willing to return to Sri Lanka voluntarily. The Sri Lankan diaspora is the largest non-European community living in Switzerland and comprise 0.6% of the Swiss population.

Minister Samaraweera was assisted by Ambassador Ravinatha P. Aryasinha, the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva and Consul General to Switzerland, Ms. Mahishini Colonne, Actg. Director General/UN, US & Canada, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Mafusa Lafir, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka in Geneva, Mr. Daniel Alphonsus, Media Secretary to the Hon. Minister and Mr. Sameera Hettiarachchi, Public Relations Officer to the Hon. Minister.

The Federal Counciller Burkhalter was assisted by Mr. Heinz Walker-Nederkoorn, Ambassador of Switzerland to Sri Lanka, Mr. Michael Cottier, Regional Coordinator of South Asia, Asia and Pacific Division and other senior officials from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka

Geneva
Ted Rall is the editorial cartoonist whose long-term freelance gig with the Los Angeles Times opinion pages ended last year over a blog post he wrote about a jaywalking encounter with the LAPD many years before. You'll remember, the Times looked into a complaint from the officer involved that Rall got his facts a lot wrong, the editors concluded that Rall was more than a little off and publicly cut ties, and Rall went public with a campaign alleging the Times and LAPD were conspiring to do him in because his cartoons were critical of the police.

Now he is suing for defamation, breach of contract and wrongful termination and alleging that he has been blacklisted. His Santa Monica lawyers, Shegerian and Associates, put out a press release with his side.

In the New York Observer, Rall says "The Times made a mistake. Newspapers make mistakes every day. They issue retractions. In my case, they not only made a huge mistake, they refused to admit it, and doubled down. I dont understand why theyre violating so many basic journalistic principles.

The Times, through spokeswoman Hillary Manning, says the allegations that Mr. Rall has made against the Los Angeles Times are unfoundedThe Times will vigorously defend itself against Mr. Ralls claims.

A coordinated campaign by Rall and his friends last year got a some media to bite on the idea that an old barely audible audio tape proves he was right, and that the Times was buckling to pressure to muzzle a journalist. I didn't hear what he claims was there and neither did most of the other people I heard from.

Forgot to mention: Rall's lawyer, Carney Shegerian, was also the attorney for T.J. Simers when he sued and temporarily won a $7.1 million jury award for not being fired by the Times. That award was overturned by the trial judge, citing insufficient evidence for the jury to give those damages.

Previously on LA Observed:

LA Times still says Ted Rall got facts wrong, he still disagrees

Ted Rall dropped by LA Times over blog post about LAPD*
Here is the Fort Oglethorpe arrest report for March 11-17:

Addison Ezra Smith, 18, of 25 Morgan Circle, Fort Oglethorpe was arrested March 12 on charges of loitering/prowling and possession of marijuana.



Clayton Lee Cox, 18, of 48 Westside Drive, Rossville was arrested March 12 for loitering and prowling.



Matthew Clarence Gardner, 17, of 15 Crabtree Road, Rossville was arrested March 12 for loitering and prowling.



Nancy Yadira Ramirez, 21, of 7881 Goodwin Road, Chattanooga was arrested March 12 on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and failure to maintain lane.



Jimmy Howard Rogers, 30, of 16 Shady Oak Circle, Rossville was arrested March 12 on charges of outstanding fugitive warrant, possession of marijuana, public drunkenness and violation of Georgias controlled substance act.



Blanche Drusilla Turner, 60, of 2567 Johnson Road, Chickamauga was arrested March 12 on charges of driving while license suspended/revoked and failure to maintain lane.



Joshua Lamar Sellers, 32, of 820 Graysville Road, Ringgold was arrested March 12 on charges of theft by shoplifting and obstruction of officers.



Edward Eugene Romines, 20, of 111 Hogan Road, Rossville was arrested March 12 for probation violation.



George Benard Hughes, 45, of 4723 Midland Parkway, Apt.

A, Chattanooga was arrested March 14 on charges of obstruction of officers and theft by shoplifting.Leander Lee Johnson, 58, of 2311 East 14th Street, Chattanooga was arrested March 14 on charges of driving while license suspended/revoked, fleeing attempting to elude police, fugitive/uniform criminal extradition act, obstruction of officers, theft by shoplifting and probation violation.Lisa Lynn Massey, 49, of 1600 Howard Farm Lane, Graysville, TN was arrested March 14 on charges of permitting unlawful operation of a vehicle, theft by shoplifting and obstruction of officers.Albert Randolph Chastain, 33, of 268 Rocky Ford Road, Rossville was arrested March 15 on charges of no insurance, driving while license suspended and suspended registration.Michael Carl Caputo, 39, of 7384 Applegate Lane, Chattanooga was arrested March 16 on charges of criminal trespass and theft by shoplifting.Debra Jean Nevins, 53, of 105 Melissa Drive, Ringgold was arrested March 16 on charges of driving while license suspened/revoked and failure to dim headlights.Justin Daniel Blue, 28, of 1505 East Crane Street, Rossville was arrested March 17 for theft by shoplifting.

Citation Statistics:



Speeding24

Improper backing.4

Vehicles to drive on right side of roadway.1

License required.1

Failure to obey stop signs and/or yield signs.2

Driving on roadways laned for traffic..3

Suspended registration..2

Failure to exercise due care.1

Following too closely.5

Driving while license suspended or revoked.4

Right of way in crosswalks.1

Fleeing or attempting to elude police officer(s).1

Use of multiple-beam road lighting equipment1

Proof of insurance required.3

Driving on divided highways..1

Failure to obey authorized person(s) directing traffic.1

Safety belt violations17

Vehicles approaching or entering intersection1

Failure to obey traffic control device.3

Registration and license requirements..2

License to be carried and exhibited on demand..1

Requiring or permitting the unlawful operation of a vehicle.1

Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.1

Operation of vehicle without current plate9






Now were talking.

This is the refrain that leaps to mind after plunging into John Mack Faraghers Eternity Street  and it is a plunge. Think of every Western movie youve ever watched, then consider: The darkest of them are soft, pink cotton candy compared to what actually occurred in lawless frontier towns such as Los Angeles.

But Faraghers fascinating account of the twisted threads of murder, ethnic violence and mob justice in 19th century Southern California is not just a treat for L.A. history buffs. His book is also is on point.

Unlike so many chronicles of violence, it gets to the right question: Why do people get murdered  certain people, that is, at certain times, in certain ways?

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Notice, the question is not why do people commit murder? That is a little like asking why people lust, hate and covet  and why they seek to prevail.

Because they do. Because they can.

The better question is, when can they? When are the murders of certain people tolerated? Why are some individuals and groups protected and others killed publicly, with impunity? What function does impunity serve? This is where the answers begin to be interesting. Now were talking.

Faraghers history examines the chronic murder and mob-justice syndrome that infected Los Angeles in the century after its founding in 1781. The heart of the book is about 30 bloodstained years, from the 1840s to the 1870s, during which the dusty, drunken settlements lawless violence produced a death rate far worse than that in American inner cities during the crack epidemic of recent decades.

Faragher digs deep into the savagery of life alongside the Zanja Madre, tracing the lives of dozens of people, some of whom we first meet as young fighters in the Mexican-American War. Decades later, these same battle-scarred, leather-tough characters keep popping up, sometimes growing old, sometimes meeting brutal, ignominious ends.

From its earliest days under Mexican rule, when the region was home to just a few thousand Indians and a few hundred Spanish-speaking settlers, the legitimacy of state justice was in question in Los Angeles. The first vigilante execution described by Faragher takes place in 1836. It was occasioned by a love-triangle murder and carried out by a mob-led firing squad not far from where the countys criminal courts building stands today.

The scourge sets in for the duration. As murder proliferates, lynch mobs, vigilantes and various self-appointed arbiters of informal justice leave a trail of corpses across Los Angeles. They stage a dozen hangings in the first five years of California statehood alone.

Just as the legends suggest, gunslinger shootouts marred the sunny California idyll, and outlaws were duly hunted. But these bare statements of fact pretty things up considerably.

People were tortured. Bodies were mutilated. And despite plenty of practice, Californias vigilantes remained strikingly inept at the art of hanging, inflicting one horrifying, clumsy and painful death after another.

Faragher lays bare how, from the start, the pueblo is vulnerable to frenzies of popular justice. Formal systems of state justice are weak. Courts are ineffectual and mistrusted, law-enforcement all but nonexistent. And willing usurpers of the governments role abound.

Early on, the regions Spanish-speaking inhabitants lynched because they considered popular justice superior to no justice. Mexican law provided for automatic appeals, and there existed no court in California to hear such cases  only in Mexico City. It meant formal justice was delayed for years, if it was not thwarted completely.

Later, it was much the same, even after California became part of the United States and the ethnic mix had changed. People argued that lynching was a superior, cheaper form of law enforcement.

Mob justice was inflamed by racial and ethnic animosity. But quarrels, rivalries and alliances could be complex, interweaving ethnic strands and often belying any simple narrative of racial oppression.

Lines between the lawful and the lawless could be similarly blurred. Roles shift. Lawmen by turns were thugs, protectors or both.

Many legal norms were by modern standards unjust. And at a time when proceedings were crude and hangings public, the difference between a legal execution and a lynching could appear rather fine. One prominent vigilante swiftly changes his tune when he becomes a district judge.

Even the citys worst and most lethal outburst of racist communal violence  the massacre of 18 Chinese immigrants by an enraged mob in 1871  is tinged with ethnic and legal complexity in Faraghers account.

It begins with a street shootout between rival Chinese gangs and pivots when an Anglo bystander and a Latino police officer are hurt trying to intervene and a Mexican boy is caught in the crossfire. Some lawmen are brave in the line of duty. But others incite the mob.

When one rashly deputizes onlookers, the episode swiftly mushrooms into a riotous anti-Chinese pogrom. Amid the chaos, an Anglo passerby, Benjamin McLaughlin, steps up in defense of Chinese victims. I said it was not right, he recounted later.

Other times ethnicity plays little or no role. When, for example, in 1870, French immigrant Michel Lachenais is made the victim of yet another bungled hanging for killing an Anglo neighbor, another Frenchman, an Irishman and a Methodist preacher lead the mob. Lachenais is seen as simply a troublemaker, a thorn in the communitys side who has killed with effective impunity before.

In between such episodes, Faragher guides readers through a vast landscape of war at one extreme and petty, personal violence on the other. These dont exist as separate phenomenon but underlie and inform each other, as the states legitimacy is contested at every level.

Faragher shows how the political chaos of the Mexican-American and the Civil War shake down to the realm of saloon brawls. The focus on legitimacy ties it all together.

It yields an interpretive lens for both factional tension and of the kind of insult- and quarrel-driven violence that typically pits members of the same ethnic group against each other.

Such is the way of such violence everywhere. No scholar of contemporary violence would be surprised to learn that Indian-on-Indian murders were rampant in the early years of the pueblo, nor that the American war effort was riven with power feuds.

This is not just their world, its ours. Think Gaza, South Africa, Compton. Its tempting to look down on the confusion and brutality of our rough frontier predecessors. But we are not much closer than they were to understanding the legal dynamics that leave people vulnerable to extralegal violence.

For lynching is not exclusive to Southern white supremacists, and scholars have only lately begun the work of understanding the diversity of popular-justice phenomena worldwide.

Whats clear is mob violence happens among people of all colors, and what have been described as soft forms of popular justice  taboos against snitching, for example  are commonplace even in modern L.A.

Much work remains to be done to understand why. Faraghers inquiry wraps up in the 1880s, although mobs and posses crop up in L.A. well into the 20th century. And yet he pushes in the right direction and cuts through familiar fables about racism and repression to expose the problems that permit extralegal violence.

He goes straight for hard questions. Did communal justice substitute for law, or compete with it? Was it effective?

Again and again, we see how residents of this region genuinely struggled to cope with violence in their midst and advocated for popular justice on behalf of the public good. Advocates argued for it as community self-defense, as people throughout the world still do. They clothed it in flowery declarations and organized committees. They saw it as moral.

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Others wrestled with their consciences and vacillated  among them, the most enlightened, well-meaning and educated people in the frontier milieu, such as the brilliant newspaperman Francisco P. Ramirez. There are many astonishing characters here but no unsullied heroes. Such is real life.

Faragher chooses to focus on one episode in particular, a case study for those who assume they know American lynching from freshman readings on Jim Crow:

In 1854, an Anglo minority and Spanish-speaking majority are attempting to unite in Los Angeles under American rule. Two men commit murders, one Anglo, the other a Spanish-speaking Californio.

Both are sentenced to death by local courts. Local leaders are proud; its a win for colorblind formal justice. Law punishes the criminal with equal penalties according to the offense, no matter his country, his color, or his race, a triumphant judge declares.

But this civil-rights victory soon sours. Local authorities receive a stay of execution from the state Supreme Court sparing the Anglo man but not the Californio. Hopes for multicultural harmony are dashed. Local Spanish-speaking residents are up in arms.

An English-speaking newspaperman calls on fellow Anglos to even the score  to stand up for equality on behalf of their Californio neighbors and ensure that both men hang. Failing to act risked widening still further the breach between the groups, he writes.

Popular justice in Los Angeles had evolved to the point that both English- and Spanish-speaking locals believed lynch law should be employed in the service of racial justice, Faragher writes.

A lynching, in other words, meant not to serve racism but to fight it.

Faragher covers this and other mob-justice episodes with patience and a wealth of granular detail. He is to be praised for carrying forward the important work of the late UCLA scholar Eric Monkkonen and for the thoughtful comprehension he applies to domestic violence, in particular. Faragher understands that it is about power and that it is part of a bigger picture.

Killing in early California proves a vast, sprawling subject. As Faragher pursues one labyrinthine storyline after another through pages of dense passages, he aims more to catalog than to dramatize. Its an occupational hazard: Randolph Roths American Homicide and Manfred Bergs Popular Justice: A History of Lynching in America are similarly crowded works. When so little history on a subject has been compiled, the historians first task is to get it all down.

Despite this, the sheer power of these events, the craggy, inscrutable characters and the haunting magic of this only dimly familiar landscape  at one point it rains for a solid month  burn up these pages.

The hard way these people fought, lived and died lingers. Im killed! more than one exclaims at the fatal blow.

Faraghers telling yields new appreciation for the astonishing spectacle that was early California history and gives us new eyes for the place. How easily, for example, are its steep-sided canyons made into traps. How thick and muscular are the low branches of its native trees, oaks and sycamores. Just right for dangling ropes.

But Faragher should be praised most for advancing the framework for the study of violence generally  not just rough justice in the American frontier or the racial spectacle lynchings of the South but extralegal violence in societies around the world.

The questions he raises are the right ones. The insights gained may help dissect gang violence, drug violence, honor killings, witch killings  even the unseen internal disputes of the various peoples subjected to recent counter-insurgency and state-building projects.

Now were talking.

Leovy, a Times staff writer, is the author of Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America.

::

Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles

John Mack Faragher

W.W. Norton: 624 pp., $35
Virtual Reality Trumps Human Connection In Comedy 'Creative Control'

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 18, 2016 6:36AM



David (Benjamin Dickinson) is immersed in augmented reality in "Creative Control." (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.)

Smart and stylish, Creative Control is very much a movie of the moment. With technology and marketing increasingly the twin engines driving modern life, this witty and beautifully filmed satire targets how each affects personal relationships with their promises of immediate gratification and transformation.

Set in a Brooklyn of the very near future, the movie follows David (director, co-writer and star Benjamin Dickinson), who works in the creative department at a trendy advertising agency. He's been put in charge of marketing Augmenta, a breakthrough augmented reality system that works through Google Glass-styled eyewear.

As is often the case with new tech, Augmenta's potentially mind-blowing capabilities are first utilized for pornography. Testing the product, David creates a sex fantasy avatar using the image of Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), a cute twenty-something who also happens to be dating his womanizing photographer pal Wim (a very funny Dan Gill). But fantasy intrudes on real life when David pursues Sophie, despite his long-term relationship with yoga instructor Juliette (Nora Zehetner).

Comparisons to Spike Jonze's Her (in which the lead character falls in love with a feminine operating system) are inevitable, but Creative Control is less about human-to-machine interaction than human-to-human interaction distorted by non-stop artificial stimulus. What the movie does share with Her, as well as Alex Garland's far more ominous Ex Machina, is serious consideration of our increasingly intimate relationship with technology.

Creative Control also has a broader view of what's ailing us. Glib New Age philosophizing, omnipresent anti-anxiety medications, and faux intellectual marketing jargon all take well-deserved shots in this mirror of an increasingly narcissistic society, forever searching for easy answers to life's dissatisfactions.

Dickinson, a veteran of commercials and music videos, skewers "pitch meeting" culture with precision. The casting of actual media and tech figures like Gavin McInnes (co-founder of Vice) and Jake Lodwick (co-founder of Vimeo) adds interesting wrinkles to an often-unflattering view of that world. Playing himself, comic and musician Reggie Watts (the proposed spokesman for Augmenta) brings a welcome note of absurdity to the process.



Reggie Watts cyber-conferences with David in "Creative Control." (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.)

Outside of the workplace, Dickinson paints a portrait of brittle relationships among his privileged and self-centered characters. To some degree, he's exploring the same upscale, New York-obsessed territory as Woody Allen, though in a very different and much more vital vein. Allen (who is quoted praising the film on its website) has been almost hiding from modern culture since he first started making films. Dickinson tackles it head on.

Dickinson also shows a lot more visual imagination than perennially stodgy Woody. The nods to Michelangelo Antonioni and Stanley Kubrick may be a little too film school-centric for some tastes, but with so many recent films relying on cell phone aestheticsjerky, handheld camerawork mainly capturing actors above the shouldersit's a pleasure to watch a movie where every shot is so artfully composed. Dickinson and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra's eye-catching black-and-white imagery might be accused of being too cold, but it suits the fragile, fussy egos of the characters perfectly. Modest but convincing special effects enhance the movie's minimal science fiction content.

Gill, Zehetner, Rasmussen and other cast members all get moments to shine, but the real casting coup is Dickinson himself. It's a dicey choice for a virtually unknown director to take the lead role in his own film, but he plays David with just the right combination of understatement and edge. The jaded ad man may be a pretty shallow, unsympathetic fellow, but the clinically fashionable milieu of his world helps you understand how he got that way.

This is the Wheaton native's second feature and it's getting a much bigger push than his debut (2012's First Winter) after being picked up for distribution by aggressive newcomer Amazon Studios. Amazon also produced Spike Lee's controversial Chi-Raq, which was a mess, but at least an ambitious one. This time out, they got ambition and superb execution. Creative Control announces Dickinson as a genuine talent worth keeping an eye on.

Creative Control. Directed by Benjamin Dickinson. Written by Dickinson and Micah Bloomberg. Starring Dickinson, Nora Zehetner, Dan Gill, Alexia Rasmussen and Reggie Watts. Rated R. 97 mins.

Opens Friday, March 18 at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago and AMC's South Barrington 30. (Benjamin Dickinson will appear to introduce screenings and host Q&As for select Music Box showings on Friday, March 18 and Saturday March 19. Check the theater's website for times.)


March 30-April 2

AWP Conference

The spring literary event season is upon us. The first and most amoeba-like is the AWP Conference taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center  and bars, sleek hotels and other event venues within affordable Lyft distance. AWP is the Assn. of Writing Programs, so its conference is a gathering of 14,000 creative writers getting MFAs, plus undergraduates and all their teachers. The goal is elbow-rubbing, mutual admiration and envy, and craft talk, so a $45 pass to the Saturday program will include discussions of poetry, literary nonprofits and panels such as Against Palatable Writing. For the curious but less dedicated, a stellar array of off-site readings are open to the public. They include a party at Barcito benefiting 826LA with readings ($10 donation), the launch party for Coiled Serpent, a new massive poetry anthology edited by L.A. Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez at the Ace downtown, and a benefit for Cave Canem, a national organization supporting poets of color, hosted by keynote speaker Claudia Rankine (at Elysian in Glassell Park, $10, $100 VIP reception)  and thats only a sample of the events happening on March 30 alone.

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Info: A complete list of official off-site events is here: www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule_overview_offsite

FULL COVERAGE: Spring 2016 arts preview | Exhibits | Theater | Dance | Pop music

April 9-10

L.A. Times Festival of Books and L.A. Times Book Prizes

And then comes the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC, with the L.A. Times Book Prizes the first evening. More than 500 authors  poets and prizewinners and short-story writers and authors of nonfiction books and international journalists and childrens book authors and bestsellers  are participating in the book festival. Authors include James Patterson, Joyce Carol Oates, U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Kwame Alexander, Jorie Graham, Mona Simpson, Ransom Riggs, Richard Price, Michael Connelly, Sylvia Day, Don Winslow, Marie Lu, Jonathan Lethem, Attica Locke, Valeria Luiselli and literally hundreds more. There will also be people known for other things who have new books: astronaut Buzz Aldrin, journalist Amy Goodman, TV host Padma Lakshmi, musician-actor Carrie Brownstein, media mogul Arianna Huffington, politician Tom Hayden, swimmer Diana Nyad, actress Holly Robinson Peete, actor Rainn Wilson, designer Rachel Roy and restaurateur Alice Waters, just to name a few. If it seems unseemly to mention it here, well, heck, its a pretty good festival, with events for the whole family, most of which are free.

Info: Tickets and details are available now: https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

April 14

Adam Hochschild at ALOUD

If you find so many simultaneous readings a little too much, there are single events worth note. ALOUD at the L.A. Public Library hosts historian Adam Hochschild talking about his new book Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, a look at how that conflict was connected to the art and culture of the 20th century.

Info: Tickets are free.

April 19

The Comma Queen at Writers Bloc

For the grammarians among us, the highlight of the spring will be Mary Norris appearance at Writers Bloc at the Goethe Institut in Beverly Hills. Norris wrote Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and the copy editor extraordinaire at the New Yorker. Shell talk about her witty book and share stories.

Info: Tickets: $21

April 30

Indie Bookstore Day

In 2014, California served as the trial run for a bookstore version of a day modeled on Record Store Day. Now Indie Bookstore Day is happening at 400 bookstores nationwide, L.A. is still in the mix (with the likes of Book Soup, Skylight Books, Vromans, Chevaliers and Diesel) offering special limited-edition products, plus bookstore readings and other special events.

Info: Check each bookstore for details, or visit

May 11

Exiled authors

Two Iranian authors living in exile discuss writing and politics with L.A. writer and professor Joshua Wolf Shenk. Hossein Mortezaeian Abkenar writes fiction and screenplays; Yaghoub Yadali is a novelist, film director and journalist. Local independent press Phoneme Media launches its City of Asylum series with an English translation of Yadalis Rituals of Restlessness; the books portrayal of an extramarital affair saw the author sentenced to a year in prison. Both writers have been part of the City of Asylums residency program, which provides housing in America to writers under threat at home.

Info: The event is free; www.skylightbooks.com

Documentary filmmaker Sebastian Junger (Restrepo, The Perfect Storm) comes to town to LiveTalksLA at the Ann & Jerry Moss Theater in Santa Monica with his new book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

June 7

LiveTalksLA

Journalist Sebastian Junger (Restrepo, The Perfect Storm) comes to town to LiveTalksLA at the Ann & Jerry Moss Theater in Santa Monica with his new book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, that looks at contemporary veterans through a lens of history, anthropology and psychology to explore why a small group with shared purpose, mostly lost in American society today, can feel like home.

Info: Tickets: $20-$95;

carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com
One of the countrys biggest Chinese-language newspapers has agreed to pay $7.8 million to past and current employees to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit involving allegations of multiple labor violations.

The suit against Chinese Daily News, known in the Chinese community as World Journal, stretches back to 2004, when three employees sued over alleged abuses, including failure to pay overtime and not giving meal and rest breaks. The paper is basedin Monterey Park.

The three workers  including a reporter and sales agent  said they were often forced to work 12-hour shifts six days a week without the required rest break. They were not paid overtime, nor were they allowed to report the actual number of hours they worked.

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The suit was certified as a class action, eventually ballooning to more than 200 newspaper workers, including reporters, salespeople and other hourly employees from the Monterey Park and San Francisco offices.

In 2008, a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles ordered the paper to pay those workers more than $3.5 million in damages and penalties in addition to more than $1.5 million interest. That followed a 2007 jury verdict in favor of the workers.

But the case got locked in appeals courts for years, said Randy Renick, a plaintiffs lawyer.

Chinese Daily News was going to fight this until the end of time, he said. They appealed and appealed again.

Finally, after 12 years of litigation, Chinese Daily News decided to settle to avoid protracted litigation, said Yi-Chin Ho, an attorney for the paper.

Chinese Daily News wanted to focus on its core business of producing the most widely circulated Chinese-language paper in the U.S., she said. It believes all wage and hour policies are fully compliant with California and federal law.

One of the original plaintiffs, Lynne Wang, said the settlement was a small measure of justice after what she described as years of labor and wage abuses. Wang said managers and editors have long had friction with the papers rank-and-file staff. In 2001, employees had voted to unionize.

After the vote, they added to the workload, she said. After you are done for the week, you had to come to the office at 10 or 11 p.m. to have a late-night meeting until midnight.

Wang worked at the newspaper for 18 years as a reporter; she said she was terminated for refusing to switch to a position as a translator. She now works as a freelance writer and radio broadcaster.

As part of the settlement, about $100,000 will be donated to fund clinics to help Asian American workers at UCLA, Loyola Law School and USC Gould School of Law, Renick said.

Wang said she wants other Asian immigrant workers to have access to aid in the same way that she and her former co-workers did when they pursued their own lawsuit.

Its really difficult for Chinese immigrant workers to sue a company, she said. So we want to help them.

shan.li@latimes.com

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Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. called off a $12.2-billion buyout agreement with Marriott International Inc. in favor of an offer from a group of investors led by Chinese insurance company Anbang Insurance Group Co.

The decision came after Anbang upped its offer for Starwood by nearly $370 million Friday, bringing the total to more than $14 billion.

Starwood, which owns the Sheraton and Westin hotel brands, has to pay Marriott $400 million to end the deal.

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The latest offer from Anbang and its partners is worth $83.67 for each share of Starwood, up from its previous offer of $81.50 per share. Starwood shareholders would get $78 in cash for each share they own plus $5.67 in stock for a spinoff of a vacation business.

Marriott has until March 28 to make another offer. The Bethesda, Md., company said Friday that it still believes its agreement with Starwood is superior and is contemplating its next step. Marriott first offered to buy Starwood in November, which would have created the worlds largest hotel company, with more than 1 million rooms.

The million-rooms mark has long been seen as the holy grail for hotel companies and was a major factor in the Starwood-Marriott deal, said Christopher Muller, professor of the practice of hospitality at Boston Universitys School of Hospitality Administration.

Worldwide, it puts them in a position where they have enough rooms, and they dont have to be reliant on those third-party price setters, he said, referring to sites such as Expedia and Trivago. It gives them market clout they dont currently have.

Plus, the larger network of hotels would enable the combined company to better compete with the reach of home-sharing site Airbnb.

Although Starwood loses the million-rooms advantage if it goes with the Anbang bid, the Stamford, Conn.-based hotel company could benefit from Anbangs large presence in China, Muller said. Starwood recently made a push to expand in Asia and cater to the regions growing middle class.

And the sweetened offer from Anbang made it difficult to turn down.

I think the board has a responsibility to at least consider this offer because its so much of a jump, Muller said. Youre talking big money.

Anbang seems to have plenty of cash, said Bill Crow, managing director for financial services firm Raymond James.

There does not seem to be any constraint of capital with Anbang, he said. If weve learned anything from their negotiations from the Waldorf Astoria, its that theyre very long-term-natured investors, and thats not the worst environment to be in when you have a very cyclical industry, like lodging.

If the deal falls through, it doesnt necessarily mean that Marriott will seek another acquisition. Starwood was unique in that it was putting itself up for sale. Marriott had said that one of the key assets Starwood brought to the deal was its much-loved loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest.

Shortly before noon Pacific time, shares of Starwood were up $3.82, or 5%, to $80.21. Shares of Marriott rose $1.56, or 2.2%, to $73.36.

Anbang made a dramatic entry into the U.S. two years ago when it bought the famed Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York for almost $2 billion. Days before it contested Marriott for control of Starwood, it agreed to a $6.5-billion deal to buy Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., which owns several high-end properties, including the JW Marriott Essex House in New York and Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego.

Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.
Los Feliz is  like its name implies  a happy place to be.

Angelenos have been attracted to living on the ruggedly beautiful slopes below what is now known as Mt. Hollywood since at least 10,000 years ago. The arrival of the Spanish in the 1780s began a transformation when the coastal basin  which would be named Los Angeles, after the river that flowed through it  was carved into ranchos under the colonial land-grant system. Cpl. Jose Vicente Feliz, received the first gift  10 square miles of semiarid land that would become some of the priciest, most sought after real estate in the world.

But before movie stars descended on the Rancho de Los Feliz, the land acquired a legend fit for Hollywood. Real estate huckster and horse racing magnate Lucky Baldwin bought it and sold it at a loss, and it eventually fell into the hands of Col. Griffith J. Griffith, a mining tycoon whose military title was wholly bogus. Griffiths drunken attempt on his wifes life in 1903 scandalized polite California society and landed him in San Quentin for two years.

Griffith tried and failed to market the scenic hillsides to home buyers who, it turned out, preferred to buy land that came without a family curse. He eventually gave up and ceded most of the seemingly ill-fated rancho to the city of Los Angeles, which turned it into one of the countrys largest urban parks.

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Eventually, the legend of the curse lost its potency, as the motion picture and oil industries began to produce prosperous individuals whose desire for seclusion trumped rustic superstitions. They built large homes in the hills above Los Feliz Boulevard, where only the coyotes of Griffith Park could see what went on behind their privacy hedges and stuccoed courtyard walls.

Below the boulevard that still bisects the neighborhood, a commercial district sprang up to cater to the well-heeled residents above, while more modest tracts of homes were built to house the grips, cameramen and other workaday employees of the movie studios clustered around the intersection of Talmadge Street and Sunset Boulevard.

Though the epicenter of the movie industry eventually shifted, Los Feliz has remained a popular celebrity enclave. It also proved an irresistible draw to masterful architects challenged to design spectacular homes on a rugged, eroding hillside.

Neighborhood highlights

Incredible architecture: Wallace Neff, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, R.M. Schindler  the list of renowned architects who have left their mark on the hills of Los Feliz is impressive.

Los Feliz Village: One of L.A.'s most walkable commercial districts, this collection of historic storefronts along Vermont and Hillhurst avenues has it all, including dive bars, restaurants, a neighborhood movie house, an independent bookstore and hip clothing boutiques.

Griffith Park: A miles walk up Vermont from the village is one of the largest urban parks in the U.S., a rugged, semiwild patch of deep canyons and circuitous hiking trails, thick with coyotes, home to the landmark Griffith Observatory and one of the very few pumas left in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Neighborhood challenges

Traffic: As convenient as Los Feliz is to downtown, Hollywood and the Valley, it is a long, trafficky slog to the Westside. Street parking can be tough to find. The closest Red Line station is just far enough away to discourage subway travel to and from Los Feliz.

Pronunciation: There are two schools of thought on how to pronounce Los Feliz; the Spanish pronunciation Los Feh-LEES or the SoCal-via-the-Midwestern drawl of Los FEE-liss.

Expert insight

Los Feliz has a very eclectic, varied architecture. Theres a real diversity of culture. Its like a microcosm of the city itself, said Boni Bryant of Bryant l Reichling Real Estate at Sothebys International Realty. Homes on the market need to be camera-ready: When buyers open the door, they want to see a home that is done, and complete.

Market snapshot

In January, based on 12 sales, the median price for single-family homes in the 90027 ZIP Code was $1.153 million, down 15.9% from January 2015. The median price for condominiums was $595,000.

Report card

Franklin Elementary tops the charts for the area with a score of 916 out of a possible 1,000 in the 2013 API ranking system. Thomas Starr King Middle earned a score of 843, and John Marshall Senior High scored 757. Los Feliz Elementary came in at 792.

hotproperty@latimes.com
Snapchat this week hired a Pandora veteran as its new vice president of product, a high-profile addition to an executive team that has become something of a revolving door.

Tom Conrad, who most recently served as chief technology officer at the streaming music site, will join the Venice start-up, Snapchat confirmed Thursday. Re/code was the first to report Conrads hiring.

The ephemeral video messaging app believed to be valued at $16 billion has recently lost a number of executives.

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Jill Hazelbaker, the companys vice president of communications and public policy, left in October for Uber. Chief Operating Officer Emily White, who joined the company from Facebook in 2014, left Snapchat after only a year and three months on the job. And Mike Randall, Snapchats head of revenue and another Facebook alum, resigned in January 2015 after only eight months at the company.

But those departures belie an aggressive expansion.

Snapchat, led by co-founder and Chief Executive Evan Spiegel, has doubled its workforce to about 600 employees in the last year. The company is under growing pressure to drive up revenue as it weighs going public.

Conrad wasnt the only new hire this month. Noah Edwardsen, formerly of Symantec, was added to Snapchats corporate communications team.

He joins other experienced new hires at the company, including chief strategy officer Imran Khan (formerly of Credit Suisse) and vice president of finance and acting chief financial officer Drew Vollero, who had previously worked at Mattel Inc. and Yum! Brands.

Follow me on Twitter: @dhpierson
In a remote desert in northwestern China, about 20 minutes outside the city of Dunhuang, a wealth of ancient Chinese artworks is squirreled away inside a mile-long stretch of caves that were carved more than 1,700 years ago.

These are the Mogao Grottoes. Nearly 500 of them, stretching across a cliff face along Chinas Silk Road, were used as Buddhist temples commissioned by wealthy art patrons aiming to score points with the gods.

This spring the Getty Museum will exhibit replicas of three of these caves for Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on Chinas Silk Road, which opens May 7. The ambitious, three-part exhibition, co-organized by the Getty Research Institute and the Getty Conservation Institute with the Dunhuang Academy and its foundation, also includes a gallery showing of more than 40 objects resurrected in 1900 from one cave, nicknamed the library cave, as well as a 3-D multimedia installation.

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To re-create the cave interiors, about 10 Dunhuang Academy artists have painstakingly replicated to scale, image by image, the Buddhist-themed murals that were painted there in the 5th, 6th and 8th centuries. They used the same paint base, made from local river bed clay, that the artists used more than 1,000 years ago. Copying Buddhist imagery, in this context, takes on added meaning, says Getty Research Institute chief curator Marcia Reed, as replication is part of the artists spiritual and artistic practice. The re-creations, she says, are incredibly perfect renditions of the caves  blow-your-head-away quality.

FULL COVERAGE: Spring 2016 arts preview | Exhibits | Theater | Dance | Pop music | Books

The replica caves also include original inscriptions on the walls, such as rows of ancient art donor names, and re-creations of Buddhist sculptures.

The Getty Research Institute galleries will display art and artifacts  including wood sculptures, calligraphy, paintings on silk, embroidery, works on paper, manuscripts and ritual diagrams  on loan from the British Library, the British Museum, the Musee Guimet and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. In compiling the objects, the exhibitions curators were going for as much diversity as possible in the realms of culture, language, historic time periods and artistic mediums, Reed says.

A wall painting of a dancing figure from the late Tang dynasty from the Mogao Grottoes. (Lori Wong / J. Paul Getty Trust)

We wanted to emphasize how multicultural the site was before the age of multiculturalism, Reed says. So many different languages, artistic styles and practices, so many different kinds of patrons who of course had to fund and make possible the art  across 10 centuries. Its amazing. We wanted to make sure the objects worked together and told the many different stories.

The multimedia portion of the exhibit will feature two installations, an immersive panoramic projection of the sweeping cave site, virtually transporting visitors to the Gobi Desert. The second is a 3-D stereoscopic tour of one lavishly adorned cave from the High Tang period in the 8th century. The technology, the museum says, has never before been used in a museum setting.

Cave Temples also tells the story of how the Getty Conservation Institute has worked with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989 on preserving and conserving the site. The site has been widely visited in China, but the Getty exhibition will be the first time the replica caves and many of the art objects will be shown in North America.

This is the biggest deal Ive ever been involved with here, Reed says, and Ive been here since 1983.

Twitter: @debvankin



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

Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on Chinas Silk Road

Where: Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood

When: May 7 through Sept. 4

Tickets: Free; timed reservations must be made on-site; parking $15

Info: (310) 440-7300, www.getty.edu/cavetemples
Spring dance performances on our radar.

MARCH 25-26

Evidence, A Dance Company

Ronald K. Browns ensemble, based in Brooklyn and influenced by African dance, makes its Broad Stage debut with three of the choreographers signature works: The Subtle One, set to music by jazz pianist Jason Moran; Come Ye, set to the music of Nina Simone and Fela Kuti; and Grace, set to the music of Duke Ellington, Roy David Jr. and Kuti.

Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. $40-$80. (310) 434-3200. www.thebroadstage.com

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MARCH 26-27

FULL COVERAGE: Spring 2016 arts preview | Exhibits | Theater | Pop music | Books

Pennington Dance Group

The modern dance company marks its 15th anniversary with a pair of programs that includes three premieres, plus a revival of Bella Lewitzkys 1969 On the Brink of Time and a reconstruction of Lewitzky and Lester Hortons 1948 The Beloved.

State Playhouse, Cal State Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, L.A. $16, $22. (626) 204-0331. www.penningtondancegroup.org

APRIL 6-10

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Over the course of three distinct programs plus one hour-long moderated performance, the company will present four Southern California premieres (Awakening, Open Door, Exodus and No Longer Silent), the Segerstrom debut of the 2014 piece Odetta, and classic repertoire including Blues Suite, Cry, Love Songs, Revelations and A Case of You.

Segerstrom Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $29 and up. (714) 556-2787. www.scfta.org

APRIL 15-17

Complexions Contemporary Ballet

The multicultural dance troupe presents a varied program that includes the West Coast premiere of Imprint/Maya, celebrating poet Maya Angelou, plus pieces set to the music of Bach, Vivaldi and Stevie Wonder.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $34 and up. (213) 972-0711. www.musiccenter.org

APRIL 28

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

The contemporary dance company marks the Irvine Barclay Theatres 25th anniversary with a program that includes works by choreographers Penny Saunders, William Forsythe and Crystal Pite.

Irvine Barclay, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $45-$100. (949) 854-4646. www.thebarclay.org

MAY 7

Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre

This local company specializing in site-specific dance is re-imagining Parts & Labor, Ducklers 1993 exploration of Americas love-hate relationship with the automobile. The performance includes a 1970s Cadillac miked up and played like a musical instrument by percussionists from the band Antenna Repairmen.

Santa Palm Car Wash, 8787 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. (818) 784-8669. www.heididuckler.org

MAY 7, 28 and JUNE 4

Los Angeles Ballet

The company presents the L.A. premiere of the late British choreographer Frederick Ashtons staging of Romeo and Juliet, Prokofievs classic setting of Shakespeares tragic love story.

Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale (May 7); Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 E. Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach (May 28); and Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood (June 4). $31-$99; discounts available. (310) 998-7782. www.losangelesballet.org
Imagine a Venn diagram of silent film buffs, symphony aficionados and fans of the Police. Its a niche demographic, but that appears to have been the audience drawn to this weeks performance of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the 1925 silent epic with a new score by Police drummer Stewart Copeland.

The Valley Performing Arts Center on the campus of Cal State Northridge wasnt full during Wednesday nights performance, but the crowd was full of life. From the in-your-face rock percussion announcing the familiar MGM lion to the final cymbal echoes ringing over the resurrection finale, Copeland commanded the audiences attention and praise. A potent combination of the films still-fresh action sequences and Copelands sweaty, muscular performance couldnt help but overwhelm, even if you werent enraptured.

Copeland, who has been scoring films since the Police disbanded  with notable early assignments for Francis Ford Coppola (Rumble Fish) and Oliver Stone (Wall Street)  first penned music for this tale of the Christ in 2009, for a live theatrical re-creation of some of its iconic sequences. He then took the film itself and had it polished to a shine, whittling it down to a tight 85 minutes, and adapted his earlier material into a score, which he premiered two years ago at the Virginia Arts Festival.

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While Copeland has earned his badge as a composer, its his drumstick prowess that takes the spotlight in Ben-Hur. With his drum kit and jungle of rhythmic toys planted at the front of the stage (showing some mercy to the cellists cochleas with plexiglass sound walls), its effectively a concerto for rock drums and orchestra (flawlessly conducted by Richard Kaufman)  to the point where Copelands arena-style smashing swallowed all but the Pacific Symphonys brass section for long stretches.

Concerto gives the wrong idea of form, though. This is programmatic prog rock. A concept album come to life, exploring the exploits of Judah Ben-Hur in a series of melodic ideas firmly rooted in comfortable Western, rock n roll tonality with dashes of Eastern spice.

But its mostly drums  and aggression. Seemingly innocuous scenes are ratcheted up to hysterics, to the point where the splashy set pieces (namely the pirate attack and chariot race) merely sustained the momentum and attitude that preceded. There was little respite from the assault of the trap set and relentless, masculine energy of Copelands score, which ultimately wears on the ears and misses out on the power of contrast. It does also run a current of crackling, anachronistic electricity into these images  giving the sepia, centenarian cells a defiant urgency.

When Copeland first bounded on stage, smiling and childlike, he made it clear this would not be a stuffy, formal affair. When this machine gets rolling, he told the audience, acknowledging the films more antiquated trappings, you too will drink the Kool-Aid. Once the smoke cleared after the pirate ship of his brazen, thunderous rock score had rammed into these ancient flickerings of an even more ancient story, it was clear they had. Copeland and the Pacific Symphony will ride the Ben-Hur chariot to the orchestras home turf, the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, for a performance Friday night and on Saturday.

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A Los Angeles County judge on Friday denied a request by three media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, to unseal documents in the contentious dispute over whether media mogul Sumner Redstone is mentally competent.

Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan, however, said he appreciated the important constitutional role of the media to report fully about matters of public concern.

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Cowan said he was trying to balance competing interests: the publics interest in the case vs. the ailing 92-year-old moguls right to keep details about his medical condition private.

The court doesnt take lightly telling the press that it cannot have access to documents, Cowan said during Fridays hearing. The court wants the press to scrutinize judicial proceedings.

Cowan did order the unsealing of 15 court documents, including a declaration by Redstones daughter, Shari Redstone, who is vice chair of his media companies, Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp.

The judge also said that a Dec. 11 letter from Redstone to his daughter should be unsealed.

Another court document that contained emails between Redstones nursing staff and Redstones attorney also will be unsealed.

The Times, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety had filed motions last month to open the records in the case after attorneys representing Redstone asked that large batches of documents be sealed.

We were pleased the court did not accept the blanket request to seal so many documents, attorney Jean-Paul Jassy, who represented The Times and the Hollywood Reporter, said after the hearing. And the judge did unseal 15 documents.

Jassy has argued that the media was entitled to see the documents because Redstone was an important public figure with a reduced expectation of privacy.

Until six weeks ago, Jassy noted, Redstone was the executive chairman of CBS and Viacom, which owns such well known properties as the CBS broadcast network, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the Hollywood movie studio Paramount Pictures.

Redstone remains the controlling shareholder of both CBS and Viacom.

He is a very powerful and influential man, Jassy told the judge. He is a person who has a different station in life.

Cowan said documents had to meet a rigorous test to remain sealed. Doctors reports and other medical information, including a detailed log kept by Redstones nursing staff, would remain confidential, he said.

1 / 10 Media magnate Sumner Redstone attends the dedication of the Sumner Redstone Production Studios at USC on Feb. 5, 2013. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 10 Sumner Redstone, right, and members of the USC marching band are shown at the dedication of the Sumner Redstone Production Studios at USC on Feb. 5, 2013. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 10 Sumner Redstone, seated, was honored by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 30, 2012. (Christina House / For the Los Angeles Times) 4 / 10 Philippe Dauman, left, now the chief executive of Viacom, and Sumner Redstone are photographed at Redstones home in Beverly Hills on September 27, 2007. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 10 Sumner Redstone and his then-wife, Paula Fortunato, attend the premiere of Paramounts Zodiac in Los Angeles on March 1, 2007. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press) 6 / 10 Paramount Pictures Chief Executive Brad Grey, from left, Sumner Redstone and producer Brian Grazer attend the Friends of the Los Angeles Free Clinic annual gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Nov. 20, 2006. (Phil McCarten / Associated Press) 7 / 10 Actor Clint Eastwood, from left, businessman Sumner Redstone, director Steven Spielberg and Paramount Pictures Chief Executive Brad Grey attend the Paramount Pictures premiere of Flags of Our Fathers in Beverly Hills on Oct. 9, 2006. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images) 8 / 10 Sumner Redstone poses with his then-wife, Paula Fortunato, at their Beverly Hills home on June 10, 2005. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 10 Businessman Sumner Redstone is photographed in a screening room at National Amusements on Oct. 2, 1998. (John Blanding / Boston Globe via Getty Images) 10 / 10 From left, Sumner Redstones then-wife, Phyllis Raphael, poses with Sumner Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Wendy Neuss and Patrick Stewart at the National Conference of Christians and Jews annual Humanitarian Award Dinner on April 23, 1998, at which businessman Sumner Redstone was honored. (Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

The judge said he had spent considerable time sifting through the voluminous filings in the case to make sure that documents unrelated to Redstones medical condition would be available for public inspection.

Cowan added that his ruling Friday was an interim one because much of the information under seal will probably come out in trial, set for early May.

The court intends that the trial be open to the public ... as well as for the exhibits offered at trial to be available for inspection, Cowan wrote in a tentative ruling. In addition, merely because a document filed in connection with the motions at issue here was sealed does not meant it will be sealed if it is offered at trial.

Attorneys representing Manuela Herzer, Redstones former companion who brought the petition questioning Redstones competency, also had argued that documents in the case be made public.

The 1st Amendment interests have been deferred, but this is a very conscientious judge, said Pierce ODonnell, who represents Herzer.

Judge Cowan has made it abundantly clear that the trial proceedings will be open to the public and media and all the evidence will likewise will be available to the public and media, ODonnell said.

Then it will become apparent to all that Sumner Redstone is a tragic victim preyed upon by those in positions of trust and confidence who are supposed to protect him, he said.

Herzers legal team contends that Redstone last fall came under undue influence by those around him because of his frail and weakened state.

Her lawyers have asserted that Redstone was mentally incompetent on Oct. 16 when he changed his healthcare proxy, naming Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman to replace Herzer on the document.

At the same time, Redstone revised his estate plans and cut Herzer out of his will. She would have been in line to receive $50 million and Redstones mansion in Beverly Park, worth $20 million, after the Viacom founder dies.

In court on Friday, another Herzer attorney questioned keeping confidential the entire log that is maintained by nurses who care for Redstone around the clock at his Beverly Park mansion. The nursing logs are expected to be a key part of Herzers case as she attempts to show that she was improperly removed from a position of power.

Redstone changed his healthcare proxy and will only after one of his nurses told him that Herzer was stealing millions of dollars from him, the attorney said Friday. ODonnell said Herzer did nothing of the sort.

He and others on Herzers legal team contend that Redstone acted irrationally because he was undue influence.

Redstones legal team, however, maintains that Herzer is driven by financial gain and that she is not interested in Redstones health or welfare.

We applaud the courts order granting Mr. Redstones motions to seal and its continued regard for his privacy and dignity in this proceeding, Gabrielle Vidal said in a statement after the hearing.

By opposing the sealing of Mr. Redstones private records, Ms. Herzer once again proved her utter disregard for Mr. Redstones wishes and best interests, Vidal said.

Twitter: @MegJamesLAT

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Allegiant is the kind of movie where, when a character says, Were gonna be OK, you know her troubles are just beginning. Especially if that characters name happens to be Tris Prior.

As sturdily played by Shailene Woodley in two previous films with one more yet to come, Tris is a young woman whos had a lot to contend with as the heroine of the Divergent series of adaptations of Veronica Roths mega-selling young adult novels.

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These books have such a devoted audience that the final book in the series, like Harry Potter and Hunger Games before it, has been split into two films.

This first part is mildly diverting, unsophisticated fare that takes liberties with the original novel yet still stumbles on confusing exposition that doesnt really make complete sense even when its taken from the book.

When last we left the intrepid Tris at the close of the previous Insurgent, evil Janine had been vanquished and the citizens of the futuristic ruin that was once the great city of Chicago are headed for the wall that encircles them and keeps them from whatever is on the other side.

Not so fast, says director Robert Schwentke, whos returned from that last effort. Before showing us whats on the other side of the wall, he and a brand-new trio of screenwriters (Noah Oppenheim and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage) take a little time to reveal how bad things have gotten even after Janines death.

For starters, de facto new ruler Evelyn (Naomi Watts), undaunted by rival Johanna (Octavia Spencer), is putting on the equivalent of Stalinist show trials before a blood-thirsty mob angry about an old regime that divided everyone into factions.

Youve incited a mob. Good luck controlling them, says her son Four (Theo James), who does double duty as Tris beau, in a good example of the films comic-book dialogue. (Evelyns response, Im doing this for you, is just as feeble.)

Fed up with all these bad vibes, Four, Tris, Tris brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), her gal-pal Christina (Zoe Kravitz) and all-around slimeball Peter (Miles Teller) manage to get over the wall and confront whats on the other side.

Initially, its not a pretty picture but, rather, an enormous toxic waste dump area unappetizingly called The Fringe. But then our heroes run into some slickly dressed types who announce, kind of like an old ad for G.E., Welcome to the future. Weve been waiting for you.

The future turns out to be an ultramodern citadel called the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, established in what used to be Chicagos OHare Airport and run by the unctuous David (an underutilized Jeff Daniels). Tris may think shes safe here, but we know better.

The tale that David tells her about the origins of the old faction-dominated system back home in Chicago, a perplexing saga involving wars caused by genetic modification, an experiment that has lasted 200 years and the difference between pure and damaged genes, is far-fetched even by the standards of the genre, not to mention confusing.

No matter, because the high school-style emotions that are the storys underpinnings are never far from sight. Tris, for reasons that are unclear, spends more and more time with David, causing Four to feel peeved. Will attractive Bureau resident Nita (Nadia Hilker) catch his eye? Stay tuned.

As directed by Schwentke, who did the more involving Insurgent but wont be returning for the final film, Allegiant has its share of brisk action and high-tech gizmos like drones that obey finger commands.

But because the series plot reveal turns out to be more confusing than compelling, and because turning a novel into two films invariably leads to inflated productions, only the most devoted fans of the book will pledge allegiance to whats on the screen.

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The Divergent Series: Allegiant

MPAA rating: PG-13, for intense violence and action, thematic elements, and some partial nudity

Running time: 2 hours

Playing: In general release

kenneth.turan@latimes.com
Get Inked At The First Annual Walk-Up Classic At Great Lakes Tattoo This Weekend

By Carrie McGath in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 18, 2016 5:50PM



Great Lakes' owner, Nick Colella, at work (photo courtesy of Nick Colella)

For Chicagoans, getting a tattoo from a nationally-renowned artist can often mean a cross-country road trip (not to mention a months-long stint on a waitlist). Not so this weekend, though. This Saturday and Sunday, Noble Square's Great Lakes Tattoo will host its 1st Annual Walk-Up Classic, where visitors can get tattoos from greats on a first-come, first-serve basisand anyone can browse for free.

More than 20 artists from around the country, all of whom live more than 300 miles from Chicago, will come to town to work the event. Visiting artists will include Beau Brady from New York City, Brad Fink from St. Louis, Jennifer Lawes from Toronto and Scott Sylvia from San Francisco. Though they're not doing custom designs, each artist has created their own flash sheeta board or paper of original, pre-set designsjust for the Classic.

The event is the brainchild of Great Lakes' owner Nick Colella, who has been tattooing in the city since 1994. He's seen firsthand how Chicago tattooing conventions, and local tattoo culture, have changed over the years. This Walk-Up Classic is inspired, in part, by his nostalgia of old-school tattoo conventions.

I hate to say [modern conventions are] commercial," Colella told Chicagoist, "but there is just so much other stuff going on at these conventions now that tattooing has taken a backseat to the piercing, the suspension, vaping and whatever else they can fit.

Colella fondly recalls the smaller conventions he frequented earlier in his career: They were a good time to meet new people and to reconnect with old friends, he said. That's gotten less feasible at modern conventions, though, which are both bigger and less important. With social media, Colella said, advertising with a convention booth is no longer a must.



Great Lakes' interior (Carrie McGath/Chicagoist)

He misses the simpler times, though, and you can tell from his shop. "There are nods to the [history] of tattooing in Chicago all over the space," Colella explained. "The stripes on the wall match the stripes that were on the wall at Hollywood Arcade on State Street in the 1950s."

In the 1950s heyday of Chicago's vice district, located mostly on State Street between Van Buren and Roosevelt, tattoo artists like Tatts Thomas and Ralph Johnstone worked in "studios" within arcades. They would frequently ink sailors coming in from the Great Lakes Naval Base in their studios, often as small as reception desks, set up like pop-ups within arcades and art theaters.

In another homage to historic Chicago tattoo artists, Colella has hung the walls at Great Lakes with their old flash sheets, and still tattoos modern customers with their vintage designs.

The Walk-Up, though, will hinge more on the flash sheets visiting artists' made for the event. Robert Ryan, one of the owners and artists at Electric Tattoo in New Jersey, told Chicagoist he created his designs around a theme. The sheet I made is a blend of Western classic carnival and Eastern esoteric mysticism," he said. "All images I would love to tattoo.

Dan Smith, the owner of Captured Tattoo in Tustin, California, will attend with a flash sheet focused on classics.

The classic tattoo designs like girls faces, roses, daggers, hearts and flags will always be the backbone of Americana tattooing, he said. He tends to create these traditional images while remaining open to images "from current events, events in history, ideals and beliefs, song titles or lyrics and even... logos or symbols.

Steve Byrne, the co-owner of Rock of Ages Tattoo in Austin, kept bells and whistles to a minimum on his Walk-Up flash sheet.

I tried to keep it nice and simple," he told Chicagoist. "There's a little Texas flavor in there, too, as I'll be the only person coming from that region.

Great Lakes Tattoo is located at 1148 W. Grand Ave. The Walk-Up Classic is from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. First come, first served. Pricing will be determined based on the design and the artist.
It should have been fun  sitting in the Splash Zone at SeaWorlds Shamu stadium with her two sons, watching killer whales perform impressive tricks. Instead, Gabriela Cowperthwaite felt a pit in her stomach. Seeing whales up-close in captivity made her uneasy. So she began looking into the theme park, working on a documentary called Blackfish  a 2013 film that would ultimately shift the way the public viewed the multibillion-dollar corporation too.

Just three years after the release of Blackfish, SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby announced Thursday in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times that the company would stop breeding orcas this year. That means that the 29 killer whales currently owned by the theme park will be the last to swim in SeaWorld tanks. The remaining orcas will live out the remainder of their lives at the companys three SeaWorld-branded parks in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego but will not perform in theatrical shows by 2019.

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We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the worlds largest marine mammals, Manby wrote. Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create.

Though Manby made no reference to Blackfish in his op-ed, the film was largely responsible for that attitudinal change. The documentary was released in theaters in July 2013 and went on to gross $2.1 million  a respectable sum for a documentary. But the film really began to make waves after it aired in October of that year on CNN, where the movie has since been broadcast more than 30 times and been seen by nearly 30 million viewers, according to the cable network.

Its exceedingly rare to see this kind of result, said Amy Entelis, the co-founder of CNN Films, which acquired Blackfish at Sundance in January 2013. There are a lot of good stories out there, but they dont always see the final chapter that Gabriela is seeing at this point. Weve had other documentaries about Steve Jobs and Glen Campbell attract many viewers during their premieres, but Blackfish endures even after multiple viewings. Its had a deeper impact and has been seen by far more people.

There have been just a handful of documentaries released over the last few decades that have led to tangible change, including 2004s Super Size Me, in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock suffered serious health complications after eating only McDonalds for 30 days. Six weeks after the film came out, the fast-food chain stopped offering super-size portions. Theres also Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofskys Paradise Lost trilogy, which ultimately led to the release of three Texan men who had been wrongly imprisoned for murder for nearly two decades.

It seems to make a difference when a film is very specifically calling out a company or government official by name, said Thom Powers, who serves as the documentary programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival. But Blackfish also has an enormous amount of filmmaking craft at stake. I watch 300 or 400 films a year on very worthy topics, but many of them dont rise to a level that makes them as compelling as that movie was.

Cowperthwaite, 45, began working on Blackfish in 2010 following the death of Dawn Brancheau, a SeaWorld trainer who was dragged underwater to her death by an orca. Cowperthwaite was disturbed by the news and began exploring the idea of making a movie about what it was like to work as a killer-whale trainer.

I didnt necessarily think there was anything wrong with what SeaWorld was doing with their whales, recalled Cowperthwaite, who lives in Culver City. I had no agenda. And nobody sees documentaries, anyway. They dont garner huge audiences. I couldnt have imagined that the film would be like lighter fluid.

Immediately after Blackfish was released, backlash against the theme park began on social media. The public boycotted a number of musical acts set to perform at SeaWorld, and celebrities, including Cher, Ellen Page and Harry Styles, urged their fans to stop visiting the parks. In 2014, attendance at the companys 11 parks dropped 4.2%. In 2015, lawmakers in Sacramento and the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation that would keep whales out of captivity. The California Coastal Commission also proposed a ban on orca breeding at the parks San Diego location.

And just last week, SeaWorld announced that Tilikum  the killer whale responsible for Brancheaus death  was in declining health. Tilikum was largely the subject of Blackfish, as the film explored how living in captivity may have driven the whale to erratic, dangerous behavior. Tilikum has lived at SeaWorld for 23 of his 35 years, the company said, and is now suffering from a drug-resistant bacterial infection in his lungs.

All the while, Cowperthwaite remained a spokesperson for the cause. Even this fall while making her debut feature, Leavey - about an Iraq war hero who is bonded to her bomb-sniffing dog  she would answer interview requests about SeaWorld from the set in Spain.

It was constant, the amount of information I had to learn every day to continue to speak on this issue and inspire people, Cowperthwaite said. But it gets inside you. You can move on, but the idea becomes a part of your DNA. And still, I never imagined SeaWorld would stop breeding orcas. That is such a huge shift, them realizing that the grand experiment didnt work. Its a defining moment.
Arnaud Desplechins Cannes sensation My Golden Days contains an intoxicatingly realistic portrayal of the intense emotionality, the intertwined joy and pain, of first love. Its not the whole film, but its power is so strong it feels like it is.

The translation of the pictures original French title, Three Memories of My Youth, gives a more accurate idea of what Desplechin is up to here. This is essentially an omnibus film, featuring a trio of stories all dealing with the early days of Paul Dedalus, the alter ego of co-writer (with Julie Peyr) and director Desplechin.

As played by Mathieu Amalric, the die-hard romantic Dedalus was the protagonist of one of Desplechins earlier films, My Sex Life, or ... How I Got Into an Argument. But enjoyment of this new tale, created with tangible warmth and emotional precision, is not linked to familiarity with that earlier effort.

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Amalric does make a brief but crucial appearance as the adult Dedalus in the framing device that opens and closes the film. We meet him as an anthropologist working in Tajikistan but returning to Paris to take on a government job, a return that triggers the three memories of the title.

The first memory, titled Childhood, has the very young Paul growing up in Roubaix (Desplechins home town as well) and dealing with a difficult family of origin, trying to comfort and protect his two siblings from both a deranged mother and a depressive father.

Next comes Russia, the story of a high school trip to Minsk (now in Belarus), where he agrees to give his passport to a young Russian Jew desperate to leave the country and start a new life.

Both of these stories (which take up 30 minutes of the films two-hour running time) present a Dedalus who feels things very deeply. Its a trait that makes life difficult for him more often than not, but he wouldnt have it any other way.

The lions share of Golden Days running time is devoted to the third story, Esther, named after the young woman who turns out to be not only Dedalus first love but also the most significant passion of his life.

It starts with a 19-year-old Dedalus (newcomer Quentin Dolmaire), an impoverished student working toward a bachelors degree in anthropology in Paris, returning to Roubaix to visit his younger brother and sister.

There he locks eyes with the 16-year-old Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet, another newcomer), whose come-hither blond sensuality makes her the femme fatale of the local high school.

My eyes devour you, he tells her, and she confidently replies: I always do that to guys. I have that effect because Im exceptional. You cant forget me, you never will.

The ups and downs of what goes on between these two plays out amid the chaos of his siblings and their circle of friends (a portrait of the hectic nature of the young adult years that feels exactly right), but Esther and Dedalus are always front and center.

We see them playing out the drama of attraction and insecurity, inexorably drawn to each other but having to face the problems different personalities invariably bring to relationships.

Their passion makes them mad with both desire and despair, and their intimate love scenes are convincingly filmed by cinematographer Irina Lubtchansky. Yet their union is as spiritual as it is physical, as each is able to see the other person whole in a way the rest of their circle cannot.

The difficulties they face, however, are formidable, starting with the one of distance, as both are forced by their school lives to spend most of their time in different cities. This leads to a soulful exchange of letters, some of which are read to the camera by the actors to great effect.

These young actors, guided by the veteran Desplechin, are so effective in their roles that we feel we are watching them live out a lifetimes worth of emotions right in front of our eyes. Film has always been especially effective it portraying what it can feel like, what it can mean to be in love, and My Golden Days is right up there with the best of them.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com

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

My Golden Days

In French with English subtitles

MPAA rating: R, for some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and language

Running time: 2 hours

Playing: Landmark, West Los Angeles
Louie Anderson, the comic and author, is right now delivering one of the years great performances on Baskets, a melancholy FX comedy about a bitter man in search of beauty. That is Chip Baskets, played by series co-creator Zach Galifianakis, whose training in French artistic clowning has taken him no further than a rodeo in Bakersfield. Anderson, 62, plays his mother, Christine.

Although he is a man playing a woman, there is no gimmickry or irony in Andersons portrayal. Christine is Chips critic and protector; her disappointment in him is just the flip side of her hopes for him. Though a lazier show might make her a monster, in Baskets she is flawed but human and at times heroic.

Anderson, who grew up poor in St. Paul, Minn.  one of 11 children of an alcoholic father and an optimistic mother  puts both light and dark into the part. His unlikely and, as it turned out, perfect casting began when Galifianakis described Christines voice to Louis C.K. and director Jonathan Krisel, the series co-creators. You mean like Louie Anderson? C.K. asked, as Anderson tells it. Shall we give him a call?

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Im pretty sure my mom orchestrated it from the great beyond, Anderson said recently, cause I mean how would that come up otherwise? She always could have been a star herself, so shes finally getting a chance to act.

In Baskets Christine is protective of Chip, but she also gives him a hard time.

Anderson: The thing that people love to do that always amazed me, that always bothered me, is they love to scold their children in front of strangers. And so I make sure Christine does it. Ive never said anything mean to Chip when Im alone with him, its always when someone else is there. Thats a really big Midwestern thing.

Im maternal as a person, Im helpful. I learned it from my mom: Be nice to people, you never know what kind of day they had. Big insight. I didnt get it as a belligerent teenager: Wha? Youre crazy. But I heard every word.

You say your mother could have been a star.

She was a big personality; funny, a lot of grace.

So even with an alcoholic husband and a lot of kids 

... she was able to be herself to some degree, to maintain that person she was. She was a lovely person; people loved being around her; she always had positive things to say. She was an elegant person. She loved soft clothes, colors  when I picked the clothes for Christine, I tried to pick all stuff my mom or sisters would wear. Even though we were dirt poor, she always looked nice.

You grew up in St. Paul.

In the Roosevelt Projects. The difference between projects in St. Paul and [elsewhere] is that we had real lawns; people took care of their lawns.

Was it a dangerous neighborhood or just a poor one?

Well, if it was, we were the danger. Nobody would come in there. Kids wouldnt come that way. People automatically assume that if its the projects, nobodys any good in it. I mean, you dont think, Hey, lets find a really good person. Why dont we go over to the projects? If your car broke down on Maryland Avenue where the projects were, would you go to the right where the projects are and knock on a door, or would you go to the left where the nice apartments are?

Did it affect whom you could be friends with?

As soon as your friends parents found out you were from the projects the kid either became your friend anyway, because the parents were not prejudiced or worried, or you werent friends anymore  My mom said I cant hang out with ya. And then when you line up and they say, Project kids on this wall and the other kids on this wall, that gives you a really definite idea.

How about your siblings  did any of them turn to the arts?

I think theyre all artistic, but when you live in an alcoholic household, theres dynamite wired up, and youre waiting for it to go off. Whether it goes off or not doesnt really do the damage, its the waiting  so to concentrate on anything, is  you know. My dad was a violent drunk.

I always wanted to be something. President for a long time. Cause it seemed like a powerful job, and I didnt have any power growing up in my family. Youre powerless around an alcoholic  they minimize everybody.

What made it possible for you to concentrate?

Timing. My era. Therapy was popular. There were school social workers, there were books on alcoholism, there were meetings galore. I had friends who said, Hey. its not the end of the world. I grew up in a time where there were resources. Minnesota is a leading resource of chemical dependency [treatment]. Hazelden, the Johnson Institute  these are breakthrough people in that. I think that was it. I did lots of therapy.

Your father quit drinking at 69. What stopped it?

I dont know. I think he got a DUI. It must have been a little more than that. Maybe not. He lived seven years after that.

Did it change your relationship?

He was meaner: dry drunks. But you know I always loved my dad, and there was a lovable part of him. Cause he was an artist himself. He was a great musician with Hoagy Carmichael, in the early 1900s. I had heard all the stories, but he had false teeth by the time I was born and no longer played the trumpet; he had a mouthpiece he used to blow into, and he had a ukulele he used to play and a harmonica. Andy Anderson. Although his name was Louie, we called him Andy. I didnt know I was named after him till I was six or seven years old.

When did you go from wanting to be president to be a performer?

1978. I did it on a dare, comedy. I said these guys arent funny and someone said, Why dont you try it? I said, I will. I signed up next week, my mom and dad came down, my family came down, my coworkers. And I did three minutes, and I felt like I did good.

Can you remember your routine?

I cant stay long, Im in between meals, which got a big laugh. Fat jokes. They were good jokes; they still get laughs. Let me move the microphone so you can see me. I was the first kid on the block voted most likely to become a group.

So your first jokes were all about your size?

Stuff about my family I stumbled upon doing crowd work. I said to a guy [in the audience], Is that your dad? He goes, Yeah. I go, He seems nice. He goes, Yeah. You got a good relationship? Yeah. I said, My dad never hit us, he just carried a gun; he never shot us, hed just go [makes the sound of a cocking gun]. And I could tell that that was brand-new, I could sense that Uh-oh. It was like opening a room and finding treasure in there.

Do you like your material to feel a little uncomfortable?

Well, you know, I came to a fork in the road  am I going to be this surly guy I really am or am I going to be this guy that really is sweet, like my mom, am I going to be that guy onstage? Am I going to demean people or encourage people? Am I going to be the butt of the [joke] or tell them I think theyre idiots? I tried both gloves and one fit better; Im much better as a nice guy. I probably would have been just as good if I went the other way, but certainly it would have been much, much darker. Im at that crossroads right now. I have a great following, but Im doing something brand-new and this might be the opportunity to, you know, open the trunk.

Have you tried out that darker Louie onstage?

Ive done some jokes like, I read where a guy killed his family today; people are always surprised by that. I always think, why doesnt it happen more often? I dont think it starts out where youre going to kill everybody, but the rush of the first one must carry you right through. And that is a very dark joke. But thats the kind of humor that I feel a kinship to.

And now, do you keep up with younger comics?

I try not to watch comics; you have to be careful if you watch too much comedy cause itll seep into your act. But I always watch if Im at the Comedy Store, and I always give notes. I say to every comic out there, Dont do anything that doesnt mean something to you, dont waste your time; theres nothing you can get looking outward compared to the stuff that you have inward. I was always doing it, luckily, I just kept mining that same deep mine  and then sometimes Id find a side mine I didnt even know I had. Im working on a couple of new writing things; I want to develop a one-hour drama, and I want to develop another animated show, and Id like to play my dad like I play my mom; Id like to play that mean character who has a big heart; that person whos caught in the middle. Id like to have a chance to play that.

Do you feel your dad is inside you too?

Oh, my God! I work very hard at not being mean to people. I mean, Im an egomaniacal comic, full of myself, you know. But my mom, thank God, has a bit in my mouth and a bridle.

You sound so natural in the show; are you doing much improvisation?

Well, Jonathans so generous, I say to him, Do you mind if I try it like my mom would say it? Yeah, do it. I was terrified I had to learn all that dialogue. And he goes, Dont worry about that  cause I was honest with him  well take it slow. I never knew how to act early on  I thought I had to portray something. But Im not portraying anything, Im just being that character, as authentically as possible.

Do you think Christine is from Bakersfield, or did she somehow wind up there?

From USA. From Middle America, USA. But Middle America could be on the East or West Coast. Big-box store America, dont you think? I think that swatch through the country is socioeconomic, and everybodys in it whether theyre in Jersey, Bakersfield or Sheboygan. And you know I was in my element in the kitchen. Midwesterners and poor people  the kitchens it. You talk there, you live there, you eat there, you fight there; its all done in the kitchen.

Follow Robert Lloyd on Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd
Its the television show where viral videos are made.

Lip Sync Battle, which got its start as a kooky segment on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and later on The Tonight Show, has remixed itself into a full-fledged half-hour program on Spike TV where big names like Channing Tatum channel their inner-Beyonce and face off with their celebrity brethren. The series boasts Fallon as well as Stephen Merchant and John Krasinski as producers  helping with its street cred among A-listers.

The celebrity vocal showdown, which is hosted by rapper and actor LL Cool J and features commentary by model Chrissy Teigen, is currently in its second season.

The beautiful thing about Lip Sync Battle is you dont have to possess any skill whatsoever, other than a love of music and commitment to the song, said Casey Patterson, who executive produces the show alongside Jay Peterson. It is a little bit of a dream factory. They do get to dream up anything they want and we make it happen.

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And in case youre wondering, theres no book of songs participants are choosing from like you might at your local karaoke joint.

It is blue sky on the music, Patterson said. Karaoke shows generally build a book that they can clear. People choose from that book or that list. But we dont. We say, pick anything you want and well go get it. Its a very unusual and challenging way to produce something. But thats where the magic is. Fans get to learn about the personal music tastes of these celebrities that they love. 

We asked Patterson to walk us through some of this seasons major performances, each of whoms essence is captured by director Beth McCarthy-Miller.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Janet Jacksons Rhythm Nation

Joe absolutely loves that song. Joe was one of the founding fathers of Lip Sync Battle. He did the show with Jimmy on Late Night. He did Superbass. And I still think, to this day, I think on the merit of lip syncing, thats the best performance I have ever seen. He just crushed. So he knew that if he were coming back to do the show, he would have to do something to top that. And he didnt do Season 1. He wasnt ready, the timing didnt work out, the song wasnt there. He was really busy. And then in Season 2, he came ready. I think everything Joe does, he does to perfection. He came ready and when he does something, he commits all the way, which is the key to Lip Sync Battle -- commitment.

There were no hiccups with the song selection. I think the minute Janet and her team heard that it was Joe, I think they were very excited to see how he would interpret that song. And Joe loves Janet. So he wanted to get it right for her because he loved her so much growing up and loved her music. He just thought, if he was going to do it, his approach would be to do the choreography, which has a copyright.

That choreography has a copyright associated with it. I think this is the first time weve actually ever told anybody that. There is a copyright that comes along with it so we had the original choreographer for Rhythm Nation join our team that week. Joe went method. He did it and he did it step for step to what Janet did. And she tweeted afterward.

The only thing you can remember is Joe on that show. But if you go back and watch Anthony Mackies performance, its one of the best weve ever had. He came flying out of a toaster -- that boy band thing where you pop off the ground. And his pants ripped at that time so hes holding his crotch the whole time and people thought that was a creative choice. But its actually that his pants are tearing away so hes doing his best to keep them on his body for a minute. He deserved more credit.

Eva Longoria, Nicki Minajs Anaconda

She had that song in her head. She was filming. She flew in from San Antonio that morning to make it happen. She was filming her show and she flew in from San Antonio. She wanted to battle Hayden [Panettiere]. Eva loved Nicki because she loved how ambitious Nicki is. Shes hard to do, but if you nail Nicki, you have a good shot at winning. And so she just visually liked the idea of being able to play with the workout scene. She wanted a big entrance. And so we were able to bring her in on the shoulders of the gorgeous dancers. She wanted something that had all those layers to it, where she could have a great entrance, and she could play with Nickis persona, and you know that song is a fan favorite.

Josh Gad, Divinyls Touch Myself

The person who worked hardest at it was Josh Gad. Josh is a member of our crew now. He is officially a member of the writing team, the producing team. It was so abstract. He had this whole high concept for it. He wanted to do something around Donald Trump. We even said, God, will he even be in the race at that time? and he was like, I think hes going the distance. And I think its going to be timely and I think it needs to be done. We were having a hard time imagining it. And he was like, no, no, no, Ill show you. And he came over and he showed us. Before rehearsal, before anything, before we agreed to the song, we didnt understand, we didnt get it because our brains arent as fast and awesome as Josh Gad. He said, I understand youre having a hard time wrapping your head around this. Im coming over. And he came over to the studio and he walked us all through it. We were like, sold, this is amazing, youre a genius. Will you join us as a producer full time? And I think it aired the night of the Fox debate. So I would be alarmed if Trump were responding to our Lip Sync Battle performance. I cant believe we escaped fire, actually. I would have liked to have heard those insults. But, yeah, Josh was the one who went meta.

Channing Tatum, Beyonces Girls

Oh, my God. Well, obviously, Channing would be incredible at lip syncing. Hes just such a multi-faceted performer and so good. Obviously loves music and is so good at the singing and dancing thing. And we all knew this. We knew it from Magic Mike, but you also just know that Channing can do anything music and dancing-wise. From Season 1, John Krasinski, who is really good friends with Channing, has been asking him. I think Channing had resisted because its like he knew. Our first phone call was like, I hate you. You know if we do this, we have to do this all the way. Im going to kill you. And it was he and his wife, Jenna Dewan. We loved the couple of it all. Seeing the two of them together, doing what they do, doing what they love to do, which they have not done since Step Up. And the two of them are so deeply, frighteningly competitive just made it the best week of Lip Sync Battle. It was a house divided. They had separate rooms in their house where they would go through their routines. They would kind of split the house in two because they did not want the other to know what was going on. So it was a whole household thing. Jenna would come rehearse at the studio at crazy hours -- I think she rehearsed at midnight one night -- so he wasnt anywhere around. She was like, nope, I dont want him to see any of this. I cant do it at the house. We only had stage light. We had no crew. And they didnt need it. We used a boom box and it was just unreal. I mean, could you imagine? It was just unreal. That was a family affair. Their daughter came, they had family there.

And we had to ask Beyonce for permission. We called her people for the 1,000th time because shes the most requested artist on this show. We explained in detail what youre doing. He knew he wanted to do Beyonce because he knew he could do that choreography. Hes so wickedly competitive, he knew he wanted to shut it down. Which he did. We never warned him we had trouble in the past. Beyonce very quickly approved it. I think it was easy to see, if youre Beyonce, and Channing is doing it you know hes going to put everything into it. I think she had a sense of comfort that he was going to do something really interesting and fun with it. And its so brave. Im sure she respected how brave it was for him to go for it. He went all the way.

So, she cleared the song, it was on her radar, and as the week evolved, and as he got more comfortable, he was like oh, my God, it would just be incredible if she would come. We called and we asked. She didnt say no. She was thinking about it. And Channing got to a point where he was like, If Im going to do it, I have to do it right. I cant look like a parody of her. I have to come as close as I possibly can. So we hired her glam squad. It was Beyonces glam that did Channing. Those are her wardrobe stylists and her hair and makeup team. So I think once everyone came on board and she knew how much was going into this, he sent her a little video. A message for her from one of his final rehearsals. Only Channing knows what was on that message, but I know she got it. And the next morning, we heard that she was coming and the only hurdle was that we had her glam. We were like, we can figure it out.

We didnt let anyone know. Only the people who would need to deal with her security and logistics, and the director. Absolutely no one knew. And they didnt want to see each other. She was like, Im going to come out on stage. You do your thing and Im going to come out. Theres a little split second when hes dancing and he knows shes going to come out but you can see for a second he kind of repeated the move. And you wouldve thought you were in the O2 Arena. The noise was deafening. There were cameras we couldnt use because the room was shaking so much. People were bawling their eyes out, screaming. Its one thing to see him do it, but then she walks out. It was too much for people. It was almost like a computer, the crowd went haywire from all of it.

And we tried to get the real horse from the video. But the stage was the problem. We didnt have a clear path to get the horse out unless it went around through the top of the stage and turned around and went back out the way it came. It was too much. But that would have been a live horse. That was a last-minute thing. Thank God that fake horse existed. It was a rental piece from Warner Bros. We called and were like, hey, we need a horse. They were like, OK, can do.

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Tribune Publishings purchase of the Orange County Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise is doomed if the U.S. Department of Justice obtains a temporary restraining order on antitrust grounds, the owner of the Los Angeles Times argued Friday.

The publishing companys $56-million cash offer for the two newspapers owned by bankrupt Freedom Communications was selected as the highest bid at a Wednesday auction. The federal government sued in U.S. District Court the next day to block the sale, arguing it would harm consumers and advertisers.

Tribune, in a response filed Friday morning, said that Freedom will run out of financing March 31 and that any delay in closing the sale would force the Santa Ana newspaper publisher to accept a rival lower bid or liquidate the papers.

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Tribune attorneys described a restraining order as a death-knell to the bid, which would cause harm not only to Tribune but to Freedoms creditors and the public.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge is scheduled to consider approval of Tribunes offer for Freedom at a Monday hearing in Santa Ana. There has been no hearing set to consider the request for the restraining order, which is being decided by a different judge.

The [Justice] Department has the leverage, said Warren S. Grimes, an antitrust professor at Southwestern Law School. The bankruptcy judge is not likely to wait for a trial.

One solution could be for Tribune to agree to certain conditions on its purchase, said William Markham, an antitrust attorney in San Diego. Tribune could agree to operate the Register and Press-Enterprise separately from The Times, allowing the newly acquired dailies to still set their own subscription and advertising prices.

Or Tribune could acquire only one of Freedoms papers, but not both.

But such scenarios may not be palatable to the government or Tribune Publishing, which is looking to extend its reach in Southern California and save money by streamlining business

operations at a challenging time for the newspaper industry. The company identified $24 million in potential cost synergies across several departments.

If Tribune has to make too many concessions, It may defeat the very purpose, Markham said.

If Tribunes bid fails, Digital First Media, the owner of the Los Angeles Daily News, probably would be the next in line  though its bid was valued as much as $13 million less for the estate, according to Tribunes filing. A group of Freedom insiders pulled out of the auction prior to its start, but their attorney, Leonard Shulman, has said they are willing to step in as a third alternative.

A lower sale price means that some creditors would receive less money, Tribune said in its filing, including the government agency that guarantees Freedoms pension plan. Some unsecured creditors might not be paid at all, including employees owed benefits since Freedom filed for bankruptcy.

In its request to block the sale, the Justice Department argued that the deal would allow Tribune to raise prices to advertisers and subscribers by controlling 98% of English-language

local daily newspapers for sale in Orange County. In Riverside County, Tribune, which purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune last year, would own four of the top five English-language newspapers by circulation, according to the department.

Tribune and some media and antitrust experts have criticized the governments argument as outdated. With the advent of the Internet, consumers and advertisers have far more choices than decades ago, they said.

For better or worse, the court and the government need only look at the phone in their pocket to understand that the trend toward digital content is accelerating, Tribune said in its filing.

That transition is evident in newspaper circulation in Southern California. The Times, Orange County Register, Riverside Press-Enterprise and San Diego Union-Tribune had a combined Sunday circulation of 1.2 million in the third quarter of last year, according to Alliance for Audited Media. In 1990, the L.A. Times alone boasted a Sunday circulation that topped 1.5 million.

Advertising revenue has also fallen. In 2010, The Times advertising revenue was $435 million, compared with $249 million last year, according to a declaration from an economist in support of Tribunes filing.

Tribune argued that a judge should deny the restraining order because the government has other options, such as pursuing its antitrust litigation after the deal has closed.

In a response filed Friday afternoon, the government asserted that unwinding the sale is not so simple. It said Tribune plans to fire large numbers of employees after the merger  and substantially reorganize the combined papers printing and newsroom operations.

If Tribune takes actions like this, the court could not later unscramble the eggs and restore the Register and Enterprise to the competitive position they are in today, the filing said.

Shares of Tribune Publishing closed at $8.03 Friday, down 26 cents, or 3.1%.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com
A generation ago, long before Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of Latasha Harlins lit a fuse inside Los Angeles African American community.

Latasha, 15, was shot in the back of the head by a Korean woman who owned a South Los Angeles liquor store. The killing was captured on a grainy security video.

On the national stage, her case was overshadowed by another video that surfaced just weeks before, the one showing Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King.

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But in Los Angeles, Latashas death had a profound effect in both the black and Korean communities.

For blacks, the killing became a symbol of the dangers and indifference faced by African American youths. Those feelings turned to rage when the woman who shot Harlins, Soon Ja Du, avoided jail time. That  along with the not-guilty verdicts in the King case  became a rallying cry during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

1 / 9 Ruth Harlins, center, in scarf, grandmother of Latasha Harlins, and other family and community members raise candles in memory of Latasha on the 25th anniversary of her shooting death along Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 9 Shinese Harlins, left, cousin of Latasha Harlins, receives a hug from Tracy Blackwell at a vigil held on the 25th anniversary of Latashas shooting death in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 9 Richard Lloyd Brown Jr., second from left, uncle of Latasha Harlins, receives a hug as Latashas grandmother Ruth Harlins, center, and community members attend a vigil for Latasha on the 25th anniversary of her shooting death along Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 9 Relatives and community members hold a vigil for Latasha Harlins on the 25th anniversary of her shooting death along Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 9 Shinese Harlins wears a T-shirt in her cousin Latasha Harlins honor at a vigil on the 25th anniversary of Latashas shooting death in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 9 A 1992 photo shows Empire Liquor Market Deli in South Central Los Angeles. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 9 Grocer Soon Ja Du, shown in a 1992 photo, fatally shot Latasha Harlins after a scuffle at Soons store. (Ken Lubas / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 9 Numero Uno Market stands on the site of Empire Liquor, where Latasha Harlins was killed two weeks after the Rodney King beating. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 9 A pedestrian walks past Numero Uno Market on South Figueroa Street. The store is at the location where Latasha Harlins was fatally shot by a Korean American grocer in 1991. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

For Korean Americans, the case prompted soul searching and debate about the rocky relationship between Korean immigrants who owned liquor stores in black communities and their customers.

The Latasha Harlins incident made it absolutely clear that Korean Americans are not spectators to the unfolding American racial drama, nor bystanders, said Edward J.W. Park, an Asian American studies professor at Loyola Marymount University. They were now intimately and inextricably implicated.

Latashas killing inspired songs and a book. But the memory of her death faded in a way that Kings beating never did. The King case resulted in changes over the years in how LAPD officers were allowed to use force. Latashas death left no standing monuments or policy changes, something that haunts her family.

All these people came to the surface, said her aunt, Denise Harlins. But nothing was ever done. That still bothers me to this day.

On March 16, 1991  25 years ago this week  Latasha walked into Empire Liquor Market and Deli in South L.A.

Du accused her of trying to steal a $1.79 bottle of orange juice. Witnesses said that Latasha, who put the orange juice in her backpack, intended to pay Du and that she had $2 in her hand. After Du grabbed her sweater, the teen punched her in the face and broke free, knocking the store owner to the ground. Latasha tossed the orange juice on the counter and walked toward the door. Du picked up a .38-caliber handgun and fired a shot into the back of the girls head, killing her instantly.

Police later concluded that there was no attempt at shoplifting.

A jury found Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter, which carried a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. Judge Joyce A. Karlin gave her probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 fine.

Latasha stands as a sad symbol of criminal injustice, writer Erin Aubry Kaplan said. She was the most innocent of the innocents. She was 15 years old, not even legal age. A girl. The community saw this as execution.

The case also reflected deeper tensions. African Americans complained for years that Korean merchants treated them with rudeness and contempt. Korean merchants, in turn, said that a language barrier hurt communications and that the high number of gang crimes at the time  some of which claimed the lives of Korean store owners  put them on edge.

In the weeks after Latashas killing, Denise Harlins launched a crusade to preserve the girls memory.

Harlins formed two organizations bearing her nieces name. She invoked the teens name during protests, and she made plans to turn the market where Latasha was killed into a community center named after her.

 Najee Ali and other activists speak at a vigil for Latasha Harlins.

In those early months, there was a swell of support from politicians, activists and residents. But as the years wore on, the rage that fueled a movement faded. The crowds at the protests thinned, dreams of a center died and Harlins felt forced to move on, although she had hoped to be able to make a difference in that system.

The Latasha Harlins Justice Committee called for Karlin, the judge who issued Dus sentence, to step down. Activists protested at her home and on the steps of the courthouse where she worked. They collected thousands of signatures in two failed efforts to recall her. Karlin remained a judge until stepping down in 1997. She long defended her handling of Dus case.

The committee pushed for the district attorney to appeal the sentence, which he did. A state appeals court upheld the sentence in April 1992, just a week before four officers were acquitted in the beating of King, and the ensuing riots.

Now, when the nation is again grappling with the issue of race and discrimination, Latasha is largely left out of the conversation.

At a candlelight vigil this week to mark the 25 years since her death, relatives inserted Latasha into the discussion in an attempt to keep her name alive.

As we look at the families of Trayvon Martin and Ezell Ford, we can do the roll call of racially charged killings, said David Bryant, co-founder of the Latasha Harlins Justice Committee. We were like  the forerunners to all that misery. But we didnt learn the lesson then.

UCLA historian Brenda Stevenson said Latashas case remains relevant, especially with the new national debate about how the criminal justice system deals with African American young people.

Its not just the [police] thats this damaged arena of the criminal justice system, said Stevenson, author of The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins.

It is also the jury, judge and the ... prosecutor. Every level of the criminal justice system is problematic with regard to race and class, with all kinds of social barriers that tend to marginalize people.

She said Latashas killing was one of the reasons that rioters burned Korean-owned stores and businesses during the riots.

Park, the professor, said that although Korean Americans differed among themselves in how they viewed Latashas shooting, it was one of the most defining moments for Los Angeles Korean American community.

Some Korean Americans, he said, felt that Korean merchants walked into the middle of long-simmering racial tensions and were being saddled with an unfair share of the blame. Others lamented that the killing quashed budding grass-roots efforts to bridge African American and Korean communities, including the Black-Korean Alliance, which formed in 1986. Still others were flustered that the frequent violent crimes against Korean business owners seemed not to merit much attention.

For Korean Americans, the most confusing thing was, why doesnt Korean life matter? When will the city mourn the lives lost and the American dreams dashed for these Korean store owners? Park recalled. If you run a liquor store in an inner-city community, the price you pay is, you dont get sympathy.

In the aftermath of the riots, there were many efforts to ease tensions between blacks and Koreans, including sensitivity training for merchants. A decade later, there was general agreement that relations had dramatically improved.

But there also were major demographic changes by then. Some Koreans got out of the liquor store business, as the city pushed to reduce the number of such businesses in heavily non-white areas.

At the same time, South L.A. saw a significant migration of blacks to suburban areas and a new influx of Latino immigrants.

During this weeks vigil honoring Latasha, dozens of her relatives and people affected by her death gathered to celebrate her short life. Some wore black-and-gray T-shirts that said Gone but not forgotten.

We are here to remember Latasha, activist Najee Ali said as he held a bottle of orange juice. We never forgot her here in the community.

Times staff writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report.

angel.jennings@latimes.com

Twitter: @angeljennings

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In 2014, Southern California Gas Co. asked state officials for a rate hike to pay for an ambitious, highly proactive safety program to test all 229 of its active natural gas injection wells before they result in unsafe conditions.

Wells in four storage fields  including its Aliso Canyon facility near Porter Ranch  were deteriorating, the utility warned, and had been leaking more frequently since 2008. The wells posed a risk of uncontrolled failure.

The rate hike request is still pending, and along with it, the safety program.

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In the interim, the gas companys warning came true: The failure of one of the Aliso Canyon wells in October released an estimated 5.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas containing methane and noxious odorants.

The leak forced the evacuation of thousands of residents, the closing of schools and emergency regulations requiring testing of all gas storage wells statewide. The leaking well was capped last month, clearing the way for some residents to begin the move back.

Investigators are now trying to determine the cause of the underground blowout and whether anything could have been done to avoid it.

But a Times review of state records shows that before and after Southern California Gas asked for the rate hike to pay for a safety program, it was boosting production of its wells in ways some experts say increased the risk of failure.

In proposing the rate hike to the state Public Utilities Commission two years ago, Southern California Gas officials said the company was repairing leaks in older wells only as they happened. A rate increase, they said, was needed to fund a sweeping $236-million program that included extensive inspections of wells before they leaked, abandonment of wells that failed and the drilling of new wells to replace them.

It remains unclear whether Southern California Gas took any steps to begin that program before the Porter Ranch leak. Gas company officials said the company began testing some wells but have not said how many. State records show the gas company sought permits for tests of Aliso Canyon wells in December, after the leak began.

The PUC and the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, which champions consumers interests, said the company had an obligation to deal with the failure risk when it was discovered years ago, rather than wait for a rate increase.

If SoCalGas thinks there is a safety risk of any kind, they are obligated to mitigate the risk immediately, PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said. They do not need to wait for CPUC authorization.

Mark Pocta, who manages the natural gas division at the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, said the utility should have begun checking aging wells ahead of the start of the preventive maintenance program it outlined along with its rate hike request.

You dont need to call it a program, Pocta said. You just need to do the work.

Southern California Gas operates four underground storage facilities in what were once oil fields, including Aliso Canyon. Wells designed and built to pump oil were converted in the 1970s to inject gas at high pressure into the porous oil sands a mile or more below ground. Gas piped in from elsewhere is stored there and withdrawn for distribution to core customers and wholesale markets when prices rise or demand spikes.

Permit records and utility filings show the most troubled wells at Aliso Canyon are the older ones. More than 40 of the 115 still in use were drilled more than half a century ago.

Industry experts and former gas company engineers told The Times the wells deteriorate with age and use. They said outer steel casings typically corrode from exposure to salty brine, or are blasted thin from sand drawn up along with the high-pressure gas. The cement that seals the pipe from surrounding rock can also crack, allowing gas to escape.

Industry experts say pressure readings filed with the state suggest that Southern California Gas may have increased the risk of failure by the method it used to boost the wells production.

In addition to pumping gas from below ground through the narrow inner pipes of wells, commonly less than 3 inches in diameter, the utility also drew gas through the larger outer casings of those wells, typically 7 inches wide.

Experts said using the outer casing of a well to increase productivity creates problems in several ways. It accelerates damage and increases the risk that a leak will contaminate groundwater or reach the surface. The narrower production pipes are intended for such wear and are easily replaced; outer casings are permanent fixtures of a well and more difficult to fix when they go bad. In addition, the outer casing provides a safety barrier, almost like a double-hull tanker, says Dan Hill, chairman of the Texas A&M Energy Institute.

Engineers who worked with Southern California Gas confirmed the practice. The utility did not respond to questions regarding the extent that the practice was used, and it remains unclear whether the practice played a role in the leak.

In the wake of the leak, a panel of experts formed by state regulators has recommended that regulators forbid the practice of pumping gas through outer casings at Aliso Canyon. New draft rules by the state also would require gas storage operators to inspect not just production pipes but also outer casings for corrosion.

At the same time that Southern California Gas sought a rate increase to improve safety, it moved forward on a $210-million construction project  still underway  to sharply increase the ability to put gas into storage. In that effort, the utility is installing powerful turbine compressors that boost the amount of gas that can be compressed for injection in a single day at Aliso Canyon, with most of the capacity allotted to wholesale customers. Company officials said the project would not increase the pressures that wells are subjected to.

State files on more than 110 company wells in Aliso Canyon and other fields show that Southern California Gas commonly kept wells with damaged casings in operation by using cement patches, metal sleeves or inner liners.

Production reports show Southern California Gas generally injects gas into the fields through newer wells and withdraws it through older ones. However, four wells drilled as long ago as 1941 were used extensively to do both, according to an analysis of monthly well activity data obtained from the state. Those data show these older wells were among the top gas producers in Aliso Canyon. Several experts, including a former gas company engineer, said the practice stresses the steel casings of a well.

State Department of Conservation files contain no record of integrity or pressure tests conducted on any of those four wells after 2008. One of them is Standard Sesnon 25, the well that began leaking in October. Its last pressure test was in 2006, and its last structural integrity test was in 1991.

All the Aliso Canyon wells had annual temperature surveys, which can identify wells already leaking. But of the 15 Aliso Canyon wells drilled before 1946, according to state records, only three had been inspected or pressure-tested in the last three years  at least one of them because it had begun to leak. None of the rest had been inspected or pressure-tested since at least 2006.

Mitch Findlay, president of a company that performed well tests for Southern California Gas from the 1980s through the early 1990s, said inspections to look for problems before leaks occurred were frequent during that period but slowed in the early 90s. A single casing inspection, he said, can cost several hundred thousand dollars. He said the temperature and pressure readings, like those the company currently takes, only detect gas already escaping.

After the leak began in October, California regulators ordered Southern California Gas to suspend injections into the field.

Regulators issued an emergency order March 4 requiring the gas company to perform pressure tests and casing inspections of any wells to be put back into use. The order also prohibits the use of well casings for pumping gas.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Demonstrators accused of blocking the 101 Freeway during a 2014 protest against police abuse were exercising their free-speech rights and used nonviolent action to make their point, a defense attorney told jurors on Thursday.

As the trial of seven Black Lives Matter protesters began in an East Los Angeles courtroom, attorney Caree Harper said the demonstrators wanted to improve the treatment of blacks and other people of color by law enforcement in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and compared their action to that of civil rights icons such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

You have an unique opportunity to be a witness to these vessels of change, she told jurors, adding: Change is coming to Los Angeles.

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But prosecutor Jennifer Wexler told jurors that no matter the reason for their behavior, the defendants shut down a freeway and snarled traffic for miles, then refused officers orders to disperse.

Voice your opinion  but do it legally, Wexler said.

They did not want to listen to what officers had to say and they did not want to leave, she added.

The defendants  Rosa Clemente, Haewon Asfaw, Povi-Tamu Bryant, Sha Dixon, Todd Harris, Damon Turner and Jas Wade  were among 323 demonstrators who were arrested while protesting the police killing of a young black man in Missouri.

The group is accused of blocking lanes of the northbound 101 freeway near Alvarado Street on the morning of Nov. 26, 2014.

Those on trial are charged with obstructing a thoroughfare and refusing to comply with lawful police orders. Both charges are misdemeanors.

The protests in Los Angeles followed news that a grand jury would not indict a police officer in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri.

That decision set off scores of protests in cities across the country, some marked by violence and looting. Demonstrations in Los Angeles were calmer but police arrested more than 300 people, surpassing arrest figures in cities that experienced more violent disturbances, such as Oakland, St. Louis and Ferguson.

Los Angeles City prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the vast majority of the people detained by police.

Eventually, 27 protesters  fewer than 9%  were charged.

The charges included obstructing thoroughfares, refusing police orders and assault or battery on officers.

Charges of resisting arrest against Jasmyne Cannick, a political consultant and frequent critic of the Los Angeles Police Department, were later dropped.

Harper, who represents Dixon, told jurors that her client and the others were demonstrating against police systematically executing people of all colors, and said prosecutors would fail in proving a malicious intent by the group.

They were chanting No justice, no peace, no racist police, she said.

Defense attorney Nana Gyamfi, who represents six of the defendants, will give an opening statement after the prosecution concludes its case.

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

Twitter: @sjceasar

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The California rail authority has proposed major bullet-train route changes that would put more of it underground as it crosses the San Fernando Valley, avoiding some of the impacts of aboveground routes that have drawn strong protests.

High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard said Thursday the state is committed to mitigating the effects on low-income communities as a matter of environmental justice.

After a public meeting held by the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments, it was clear that the new plan would continue to receive resistance from the communities, even though it would avoid bisecting neighborhoods in several cases.

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The fight is not over, Georgina Carranza, a Valley resident who has been active in the matter, told the council. We are standing with our neighbors in Shadow Hills and Sun Valley.

The difficult passage from Burbank to Palmdale involves the geologically complex San Gabriel Mountains, where aquifers, faults and shattered rock formations will increase the difficulty of tunneling.

The number of possible routes is down to three in the new plan.

The plan makes significant modifications to one of the earlier possible routes as it follows Highway 14. The old plan would have put tracks above ground through Pacoima, San Fernando, Sylmar and Santa Clarita, a possibility that drew hundreds of protesters to a board meeting last summer in downtown Los Angeles.

The new route along Highway 14 goes underground south of Pacoima and would not surface until north of Santa Clarita.

A second possible route also now goes underground south of Pacoima.

The third route would still run aboveground through Sun Valley, Shadow Hills and Lakeview Terrace neighborhoods.

The rail authority also dropped one of three plans to take the rail through tunnels under the Angeles National Forest, but the plan largely leaves in place two other forest routes.

The new plan drew praise from some officials in the communities. But they continued to urge the state to find underground routes that would fully eliminate the rails impact on the equestrian communities along the Tujunga Wash and other communities in Sunland.

Michael Murphy, intergovernmental relations manager for Santa Clarita, said the city appreciated steps the rail authority has taken, but said the City Council is on record supporting a fully underground alignment from Palmdale to Burbank. The city is still evaluating the new plan, Murphy said.

It needs to be a broader commitment, he said.

The rail authority estimates the new routes will require 22 to 24 miles of tunnels under the local mountains, which would be the most ambitious tunneling project in the nations history. That compares with about 20 miles that it estimated last year, though on Thursday the authority said the old plan actually required 21 to 23 miles. So, the new plan adds an extra mile or two of tunnels, which could increase project costs by an unknown amount.

At the meeting, Richard said the rail authority had reconsidered the alternative routes in direct response to community concerns. This is a very challenging job to go through this area, he said.

Richard said the state could not eliminate all the impacts and noted that the authority has held firm on its route planning in the wealthy Bay Area community of Atherton, which has filed environmental lawsuits. We have told them this is where the rail should go, he said.

Richard, a resident of the Bay Area, said his exposure to the communities from Palmdale to Burbank had become a real area of education for me as he has met with residents and elected officials.

But several dozen residents and officials continued to press for more concessions. Speaking to the council of governments, they noted that at least two endangered species depend on the ecosystem along the washes that flow out of the Angeles National Forest.

The Tujunga Wash is a national treasure, said George Gamble, a Shadow Hills resident. The natural springs accommodate wildlife. I am fearful of the impact of any high-speed rail construction on this fragile ecosystem.

After the protests last year, the rail authority agreed to conduct a series of expedited studies to determine the seismic challenge of the route and how much impact it would have on the horse communities and mountain aquifers.

The authority tapped the Mineta Transportation Institute to conduct the equestrian study, which found that effects on horses would be minimal. Richard noted that studies in Europe found that cows became acclimated to the noise of bullet trains.

A number of horse owners at Thursdays meeting took exception to comparing cows to horses and demanded a new study. They asserted the institute was not independent, since rail authority Chief Executive Jeff Morales and former rail authority board member Rod Diridon both serve on the institutes board.

The route would pass through one of the largest equestrian communities in Southern California, where an estimated 25,000 horses are boarded, according to Dale Gibson, a rodeo cowboy who serves on the Los Angeles Equine Advisory Board.

Two organized labor officials praised the new plan, saying the project would create badly needed jobs.

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

Twitter: @rvartabedian

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Day and night, the stench of raw sewage wafted through the aging trailer park in Pomona.

The odor billowed from scores of uncapped pipes that empty the waste tanks underneath the trailers.

Any time anybody flushes their sewage out of their tanks, you smell it, said Dave Smith, 62, who has lived in the park for three years. If ever you smelled it, you dont forget it.

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The trailer park sits on the Los Angeles County fairgrounds and is managed by the county Fair Assn., a nonprofit organization that operates the annual fair and several year-round businesses on land owned by taxpayers.

Residents said the open sewer pipes were symptomatic of the associations neglect and mismanagement of the 160-space trailer park, which sits near old horse barns at the fairgrounds, known as the Fairplex. The trailer park was established decades ago primarily to house people who worked at the Fairplexs thoroughbred racetrack, which is now closed. Tenants with no ties to the fairground also eventually made the park their home.

The current residents complained of bathrooms in disrepair, a laundry room that has been shuttered, overhead power lines peeling insulation, and roads and walkways marked by potholes and cracked pavement.

At the same time, the Fair Assn. has imposed regular rent increases and had for years improperly collected from residents a transient occupancy tax, the same levied on hotel guests. The tax amounted to 10% of the monthly rent for trailer spaces, which now typically go for about $500. It was unclear how long the tax had been collected, but some residents say they have been paying it for up to 10 years or more.

The associations finances and operations have come under scrutiny by government auditors and others after a Times investigation that revealed lucrative pay and benefit packages given to its top executives. Chief Executive James Henwood Jr., 69, received more than $1 million in total compensation in 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available from the associations federal tax filings.

Association representatives said they had not devoted enough attention to problems at the trailer park and were addressing them. Regarding the taxes, they said the money was delivered to the city of Pomona and the association did not benefit from the revenue.

The city refunded a years worth of the tax money  about $46,000 to 95 people  and blamed the association for the improper collections. Pomona officials learned of the problem after a resident questioned the legitimacy of the tax. Deputy City Manager Mark Gluba declined to disclose how much money was collected in previous years, saying the information was confidential. The fair organization said it was not its responsibility to reimburse the tenants.

City Council members disagree on a solution for the residents. If the Fairplex did the right thing, they would refund all the money, Councilwoman Paula Lantz said.

But Councilwoman Debra Martin said the Fair Assn. owes the residents nothing and a Pomona ordinance prohibits the city from returning more than a year in payments. Unfortunately, for the residents, thats the law, Martin said.

Thats money out of my pocket, said resident Dorothy Feldscher, 83, a retired cashier who estimated she is owed about $5,000 collected over the decade she has lived there  money that would help her afford medicine she needs after a stroke. I am on Social Security. I deserve to get this money back.

Some tenants filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking full reimbursement from the Fair Assn. The suit is pending.

The association raised rents in January at the trailer park by 8%, wiping out most of what the residents had gained from the elimination of the tax. Henwood said the higher rents reflected market conditions. We havent had increases in I dont know how many years, he said.

After The Times produced documentation of six rent increases over the last eight years, the association acknowledged seven occurred and released a schedule showing they totaled 33% in that period.

Association spokeswoman Renee Hernandez said the latest increase would cover many of the maintenance and improvement needs of the park.

Henwood said he regretted that problems, such as the open sewer pipes, went unresolved for so long. The association installed new caps shortly after The Times inquired about the situation with state officials. A reporter had counted about 80 open pipes, some of which residents had tried to seal with cinder blocks, soda bottles and chunks of asphalt.

Tenants said the peeling power lines were part of a bigger problem, and past surges have ignited electrical boxes and destroyed appliances. Hernandez said the fair association plans to upgrade the electrical system in the coming weeks.

The communal bathrooms were refurbished last year after a complaint filed with the California Department of Housing and Community Development cited a broken window, a hole in the floor, no shower curtains, no soap and no hot water.

Evan Gerberding, a spokeswoman for the state housing agency, said it had received a complaint about the sewer pipes about 13 months ago but took no action. That shouldnt have happened, she said.

After Times inquiries about the matter, state officials said the open sewer pipes created a potential health hazard and requested that the Fair Assn. make repairs. State officials also determined that the trailer park was not properly registered. The Fair Assn. was ordered to pay more than $42,000 in penalties and registration fees that had not been paid since 1987.

In addition to collecting rents, the association has used the trailer park to raise money for construction of a convention center it operates at the Fairplex. Seven years ago, the city of Pomona gave the association $3.3 million to help build the $28-million convention center in exchange for preserving 50 of the 160 trailer spots for low- and moderate-income housing for 55 years.

The deal required the association to maintain the trailer park in good, sanitary and tenantable condition.

Some park residents say the association hasnt lived up to its side of the deal.

The $3.3 million they had? Weve never seen it over here, said Ellen McKeever-Jacobs, 57, who has lived there for more than 15 years. Until the recent upgrades, she said, they did nothing here.

Mike Dubrawsky, 61, said the county Board of Supervisors should demand that the association take better care of the trailer park. The association runs the park and its other businesses at the Fairplex under a lease with the county.

I just want them to do the right thing, Dubrawsky said.

County Supervisor Hilda Solis, whose district includes the Fairplex, did not respond to requests for comment.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who called for the ongoing county audit of the association, was very concerned about the trailer park, spokesman Tony Bell said.

We are looking into it and asking for answers, Bell said.

Hoy: Lea esta historia en espanol

ron.lin@latimes.com

@ronlin

paul.pringle@latimes.com

@PringleLATimes

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
Photos: Logan Square Dive The Mutiny Caught Fire Last Night

By Mae Rice in News on Mar 18, 2016 3:15PM



The Mutiny's lovably grimy interior (via Faceook)

Beloved Logan Square dive bar the Mutiny caught fire Thursday night, but the blaze caused no major damage, a fire department official said.

Chicago Fire Commander Walter Schroeder told DNAInfo that his department received a call about a fire in the bars back offices at 9:45 p.m., and firefighters put it out 30 minutes later. No one was injured.

In fact, the bar may not even have fully closed during the blaze. The Chicago Readers music editor, Philip Montoro, tweeted:

I'm hearing that the bar at the Mutiny is still open right now, despite the fire. It was pretty small and contained.  Philip Montoro (@pmontoro) March 18, 2016

However, it did cause at least minor inconvenience. The fire forced a show by Glyders, a local band, to switch venues, from the Mutiny to East Room:

Place burned down before we could get rollin', come to East Room, we're doing a quickie survivor set in a few minutes Posted by Glyders on Thursday, March 17, 2016



Casey Walker also tweeted a photo of the scene at the Mutiny:

Damn the Mutiny on Fullerton and Western on fire. Was inside when the flames in the back office burst out :( so sad pic.twitter.com/bCeAkS1zCf  casey (@caseycew) March 18, 2016

The Mutiny, which has been a Logan Square staple since 1990, has made no mention of the fire on its Facebook or its extremely old-school website as of yet.
Drivers for Uber, Lyft and limousine services in Los Angeles should undergo fingerprint scans and background checks similar to those imposed on local taxi drivers, Mayor Eric Garcetti and two city lawmakers told California regulators this week.

The recommendation was included in a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, which is weighing whether to impose stricter rules on the popular app-based ride services.

The letter  signed by Garcetti, Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian and council President Herb Wesson  will probably resurrect a multi-year debate over the Silicon Valley transportation companies driver screening practices.

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Uber and Lyft do not use fingerprint-based background checks, which are often considered the gold standard for screenings because they can identify applicants who use an alias or lie about their criminal records.

By contrast, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation runs the prints of potential taxi drivers through federal criminal databases. Applications from drivers with certain convictions or charges are flagged and sent to city officials for review.

The opaque nature of how Uber, Lyft and town-car companies screen their drivers is a cause for concern, the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

With the utilities commissions approval, Los Angeles would start a pilot program that would ban non-fingerprinted Uber and Lyft drivers from working within the city limits, according to the letter.

Officials also would require Uber and Lyft to share data on which applicants have been rejected, and whether current drivers would have been approved to drive under a fingerprint-based system, Krekorian said in an interview.

To do that, L.A. would need state regulators to approve the program, and require that Uber and Lyft participate.

The pilot program would enable Los Angeles to gather sufficient data to make smart policy decisions on what screening requirements should be adopted locally, and statewide, Krekorian said.

The companies, the letter said, would be required to reveal their criteria, patterns and practices for denying drivers employment, driver appellate processes and their pre- and post-fingerprinting rates of acceptance and rejection for new drivers.

In an email, Uber spokesman Michael Amodeo didnt address Garcettis recommendation, but said the companys background check process stacks up well against the alternatives.

All Lyft drivers go through a comprehensive screening process, including a background check and an in-person session where their credentials are confirmed, spokeswoman Chelsea Wilson said.

Elected officials and taxi company representatives have pushed back, saying the processes can miss key criminal databases or rely on others that are incomplete.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascon has called Ubers verification process completely worthless because applicants arent fingerprinted.

Last year, The Times reported that four Uber drivers ticketed by airport police had criminal histories that would have barred them from becoming city taxi drivers.

Last year, the top prosecutors for Los Angeles and San Francisco identified 25 Uber drivers with convictions for murder, assault, driving under the influence and other offenses. That information emerged as part of a lawsuit filed by the cities that alleges Uber misled consumers over background checks.

For more transportation news, follow @laura_nelson on Twitter.
The questions were coming fast and frantic: How strong was the earthquake? Was it on the San Andreas? Is the Big One coming?

A massive temblor had struck near Joshua Tree shortly before 10 p.m., causing buildings to sway all the way to Las Vegas. As the public braced for more shaking, the media flocked to Caltech that night in 1992.

One woman seemed to have all the answers. It was a magnitude 6.1, explained U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, and the odds of a larger quake in the next three days stood at 15%.

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She shifted her weight and turned to the next TV camera. Cradled in her arms was her sleeping toddler.

In her 33 years with the USGS, Jones has become a universal mother for rattled Southern Californians. After each quake, she turns fear of the unknown into something understandable.

When I give it a name, I give it a number, I give it a fault, it puts it back into a box and makes it less frightening, Jones said. You feel better if somebody shows they understand whats going on.

In a city defined by celebrity, Jones has a unique kind of fame. Shes been called the Beyonce of earthquakes, the Meryl Streep of government service, a woman breaking barriers in a mans world.

Her son, now 25, recently texted her: Youre on Jeopardy! with a photo of the clue.

Authoritative yet nurturing, the earthquake lady has a knack for making a complicated point so simple it seems obvious. Along the way, she has dramatically changed the way the Southland prepares for earthquakes. Buildings are safer, first responders are better equipped and millions of residents have learned that the worst thing to do in an earthquake is to run outside.

When the big one hits, people will be living because of the work that she has done, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said.

Now Jones hopes to leverage her earthquake credentials to tackle even more ambitious projects. Shes retiring from the USGS this month to help officials develop science-based policies related to climate change, tsunamis and other kinds of natural disasters.

More can be done, she said. This is a chance to experiment.

::

When the big one hits, people will be living because of the work that she has done.  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Lucy Jones

Jones dedicated herself to science on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. That night, staring up at the sky in wonderment, she told her father she was going to study astrophysics.

Her father, an aerospace engineer who helped build the descent engine for the Apollo mission, fueled her interest with Isaac Asimov books. Upon giving her a copy of Second Foundation, he said, The heroine is a precocious 14-year-old girl, just like you.

But science, apparently, was for boys.

Instead of celebrating Jones perfect score on a science aptitude test, her guidance counselor at Westchester High School in Los Angeles accused her of cheating and made her retake the exam under supervision, she said. Once again, her score was perfect.

When Jones was accepted to Brown and Harvard  well, Radcliffe, because Harvard was for the men  her math teacher told her to go to Radcliffe because Harvard had a better class of eligible bachelors.

Jones picked Brown and enrolled in 1972. It just really bugged the hell out of me that I couldnt go to Harvard, she said.

Earthquakes found her halfway through college, when she met two geophysics professors with an appealing pitch.

Physics, youre just making bombs, she remembered them telling her. Geophysics, you can play in mountains and get paid for it.

One class and she was hooked. Her childhood ambitions to work in space had evolved into fascination with the ground beneath her feet.

Jones went on to MIT and became an early expert on foreshocks, identifying certain smaller earthquakes as possible harbingers of a bigger one. She had an interest in China  her undergraduate degree is in Chinese language and literature  and focused her research on a series of roughly 500 foreshocks to a magnitude 7.3 quake that struck the city of Haicheng in 1975.

When Chinas communist government agreed to open its doors to select researchers from the U.S., Jones jumped at the opportunity and, in 1979, became the first American scientist to enter the country. Her research also took her to Afghanistan, Japan and other corners of the world before she made her way back to Southern California and the USGS, where her research enabled officials to start issuing earthquake advisories.

A 1980 conference on earthquake prediction proved fateful. She gave a talk about her research in China while a fellow graduate student ran the audiovisual equipment behind the scenes. She married that student, Egill Hauksson, who now heads the seismic network at Caltech.

They raised two sons, Sven and Niels. To make it all possible, she worked part time until Sven was in college. Being a woman meant compromise, Jones said, and she couldnt have done it without a supportive, hands-on husband.

Lucy Jones is photographed outside Caltech. Authoritative yet nurturing, the earthquake lady has a knack for making a complicated point so simple it seems obvious. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Being a woman also meant being mistaken for fellow seismologist Kate Hutton, who joined the Caltech-USGS team seven years before Jones.

We dont look anything alike  the only reason we were confused was because we were both women, Jones said. The guys doing the same thing dont get called the earthquake guys.

But, she acknowledged, the earthquake guys dont get remembered.

Jones refuses to conform to the expectations of a mans world. Her handshake is strong; her nail polish sparkly. Her lap is often filled with colorful yarn as she catches up on crocheting.

She just made a blanket for our baby, a colleague whispered, watching her fingers fly during an engineering conference.

Shes also a fixture on Twitter, where she has more than 15,000 followers. Got an earthquake question? Tweet it to @DrLucyJones and shell answer.

Anything can be a teachable moment. During the premiere for the earthquake thriller San Andreas, Jones commentary was often more entertaining than the movie itself.

OMG! A chasm? If the fault could open up, thered be no friction. With no friction, thered be no earthquake, she fired off on her phone.

OMG! A chasm? If the fault could open up, there'd be no friction. With no friction, there'd be no earthquake  Dr. Lucy Jones (@DrLucyJones) May 27, 2015

::

Much of what Jones does today centers on this: What good is scientific knowledge if people dont use it?

The question came to mind when she joined the California Seismic Safety Commission in 2002 and realized that crucial decisions about infrastructure were being discussed without taking science into account. For instance, a fault ruptures over a large area during an earthquake, not just at one point. If an aqueduct crosses the San Andreas to deliver water to Southern California, having three backups cross the fault at other locations wouldnt work because a single quake would break them all, she explained over and over again.

The experience gave her a new mission: translating convoluted disaster science into tangible actions for the public.

First came the 308-page ShakeOut report, a massive research effort that laid out the myriad ways a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault would devastate Southern California. Among them: six months without water, explosions at the Cajon Pass where natural gas and petroleum pipelines meet, devastating landslides and more than 1,600 fires.

The report persuaded officials to invest in earthquake-resilient infrastructure. It also gave birth to the annual ShakeOut drill  more than 43 million people last year practiced drop, cover and hold on.

When Garcetti needed an earthquake czar to confront long-ignored risks threatening Los Angeles, Jones seemed made for the job. In more than 130 meetings with property owners, utility agencies and business groups, she preached the risk of doing nothing  a city with no cellphone service, buildings reduced to rubble and an economy in shambles.

Her tactics paid off. The city last year passed the most sweeping retrofitting laws in California history.

Her work earned her a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America medal, often referred to as the Oscars of government service. The American Geophysical Union, the Southern California Earthquake Center and many others also praised her achievements in translating science into policy.

Jones, who just turned 61, realized there was much more to do.

Lucy Jones, former U.S. Geological Survey seismologist. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

After her last day at the USGS on March 30, she can start raising money to create a center that bridges science and public policy. She can also partner with cities on disaster issues the way she worked on earthquakes with Los Angeles.

Climate change is a big priority. In the same blunt way she persuaded the public to confront its denial about earthquakes, Jones will try to force a conversation about the need to adapt to a warming planet.

Leaving the USGS will also allow her to devote more time to an old passion: the viola da gamba. She practices the cello-like instrument every night, and among all the media praise shes received, what gets her most excited are two words the Los Angeles Times once used to describe her ensembles performance: Exquisitely performed, she said, relishing each syllable.

As the day came to a close, she gazed around the office shes about to leave behind and contemplated her life beyond these walls. She headed for the front door, past the darkened offices of USGS colleagues shes worked with for decades.

When she reaches home, she and her husband will discuss the next big scientific question. Passion, after all, does not retire.

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

Twitter: @RosannaXia

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Admissions stress isn't just for the college-bound these days. On Friday afternoon, parents across Los Angeles will be checking their emails frantically as they await the biggest decision affecting their child's life so far: whether they've been accepted by a private kindergarten.

Some kids have a built-in advantage, though  their birthday.

In this rat race, age matters. Many private schools are less likely to take students who are going to turn 5 in the summer, thanks to rigorous curricula that have made kindergarten more like first grade.

For some of the most exclusive schools, the admissions process is demanding, requiring essays, open houses, parent interviews, child assessments and in some cases even IQ tests. And most schools send their acceptance letters on the same Friday afternoon in March, a day that mothers have long dubbed "Black Friday."

Figures based on most recently available information. (Sonali Kohli )

Kindergarten is no joke. That's especially true in the world of exclusive Los Angeles private schools that can cost from $20,000 to upward of $30,000 before added costs like new student fees, "grounds" fees, activity fees and parent organization fees.

Even with those costs, there can be five or more applicants for every available spot, and kindergarten admission ensures that the student has a spot through at least elementary school, and often a better chance at enrolling in elite middle and high schools.

In recent years, as kindergarten has become less about building blocks and more about performing on math and reading comprehension, "private schools are looking more and more for slightly more mature kids," said Sandy Eiges, founder of L.A. School Scout, a school admissions consulting service.

Part of the shift comes from an education trend in public schools, too  the kindergarten cutoff date used to be December birthdays, but that changed after the state adopted Common Core standards in 2010.

Follow the Times' education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>

Now, children who are going to turn 5 between September and December can go to transitional kindergarten, a lower-pressure option. Fall babies can go to kindergarten, but only after they turn 5.

Private schools don't have to follow Common Core standards. But they certainly pay attention to the benchmarks, even as early as kindergarten.

Why? Nathalie Miller, director of admissions at Berkeley Hall, says it's because the current president of the College Board, which administers the SAT and Advanced Placement exams, both of which private school students take, also helped develop the Common Core.

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An age-old practice

It's no secret that younger kids might have a tough time breaking through the barrier that is private kindergarten.

Smart parents will give their child the gift of an extra year if their child has a late birthday or a fall birthday, Miller said.

This isn't a new trend, she said. Miller's own daughter, who is now 24, repeated kindergarten at Berkeley Hall because, having an October birthday, she wasn't ready.

It's better for children to have an extra year of preschool than kindergarten, because they don't feel like they're being "held back," Miller said.

Some schools have early summer cutoff dates for kindergarten applicants, or will talk to parents about keeping their child in preschool another year, until he's developmentally ready to learn academically.

Some parents who do apply receive "young letters," Eiges said. In those cases, the school rejects the parents by letting them know that their kid is great, but maybe just a few months shy of ready. Try again next year, they might say.

Even at schools like Children's Community School in Van Nuys, a progressive school where there are no tests or textbooks and the birthday cutoff date is Dec. 31, students skew older, not because the curriculum demands it but because it's en vogue to hold them back and let them be the oldest in the class rather than the youngest, said Heather McPherson, the school's director of advancement.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

What are schools looking for?

Schools are notorious for talking about finding children who are "a good fit," a phrase that fills parents with anxiety and confusion.

Part of that good fit, admissions counselors say, is the feeling parents get when they visit the school: Do they like the instruction style they see? The administration's mind-set?

But part of it is if the child is ready. Whether or not he can read a full sentence yet doesn't matter for all schools. Instead, they might want to know that he's ready to interact with other children in a play-based learning environment, or that he'll be able to sit in a classroom and comprehend information for fixed periods of time.

For 4- and 5-year-olds, a few months can make that difference.

There is a push for academics much more today than ever before with the competition for ... places at these schools," said Elizabeth Fraley, the director of KinderPrep at Academic Achievers, a tutoring company based in Santa Monica. Fraley works with students as young as 3 to prepare them for kindergarten and holds $1,000 weeklong camps during the summer to get children ready for "the rigor of kindergarten."

On Friday, parents will find out if they're accepted, wait-pooled (more fluid than "wait list") or declined (more polite than "rejected"). Here are some moves that will not help your 4-year-old get one of those coveted spots:

It's L.A., everyone knows a celebrity. Recommendation letters from celebrities do not help," said Miller, who recalled a parent who asked if a letter from Barbara Walters would help her child's chances. Were in L.A., people will try anything," she said. Don't pad the admissions file with more letters than necessary -- admissions officers have to read everything, and a lot of the extra stuff is useless Money doesn't talk. By all means, attend the school's fundraising gala and get to know the admissions officer there, but schools say that they keep their fundraising departments and admissions departments at arm's length from each other. And the schools we spoke to said they do not accept donations from applicant families. "You can't grease our palms," Miller said. Keep your distance. Showing up to school tours and open houses can be a good thing, since that tells the school that you're invested. If you're wait-listed, call the school and express your interest. But don't show up repeatedly, or attach yourself to the admissions directors, said Darlene Fountaine, director of admissions at Westside Neighborhood school. They might realize that they don't like you all that much.

Perhaps the most important advice to keep in mind Friday comes from McPherson at Children's Community School:

"Just remember," McPherson said, "That its only kindergarten."

Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli.

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Did a high-ranking UC Berkeley official go easy on a law school dean accused of sexual harassment in order to secure a faculty appointment for himself?

No way, said Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks.

This is absolutely untrue, Dirks said in a statement Friday.

His comments follow the revelation last week that Provost Claude Steele allowed the dean of the Berkeley Law School, Sujit Choudhry, to remain in his post despite the fact that he repeatedly kissed, hugged and touched his former assistant against her will.

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After investigators in Berkeleys Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination made that determination last July, Steele ordered a 10% cut in Choudhrys $415,000 annual salary, required him to attend counseling and ordered him to apologize to the assistant, Tyann Sorrell.

While the case was still under investigation in May, Choudhry urged the law school faculty to let Steele join their ranks, according to documents obtained by The Times.

However, it is not clear whether Steele was aware that Choudhry was under investigation at the time his appointment was being considered.

Steele declined a request for an interview.

But Dirks came to his defense, saying concerns that Steele imposed lenient sanctions in exchange for the law school appointment were completely unfounded.

He added that he -- not Choudhry -- was the one who suggested that Steele join the law school faculty.

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UC President Janet Napolitano also spoke up for Steele, calling him an eminent scholar whose social psychology research made him a valuable addition to the law school faculty.

Steele was asked about the questionable timing at a March 10 faculty meeting and denied there was a connection, according to law school sources. But he agreed at the meeting to resign from the law school appointment, which the faculty approved in voting last June.

Choudhry pressed for Steeles appointment in a May 29 email to the law school faculty.

When his term comes to an end, Provost Steele may wish to return to full-time research and education, Choudhry wrote in the email. Although Steele already had appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Graduate School of Education, he said adding Steele to the law schools roster would be an excellent opportunity for Berkeley.

In what Choudhry called an unusual and exceptional procedure, he asked for an online vote rather than the traditional process of at least two meetings with the candidate.

Steele has been widely criticized for his handling of the case against Choudhry, who resigned as dean last week after Sorrell sued him for sexual harassment. Faculty, students and staff at the law school became aware of the harassment only when the suit was filed.

Dirks said that Steele did not choose to keep his decision secret from law school members but that discretion was expected by the systemwide university regulations that guide these investigations.

In a statement this week, the law schools six associate deans said that faculty members were unaware of the sexual harassment investigation when they approved Steeles appointment in June. The deans called him an extraordinarily well-regarded scholar, who clearly meets the standards for an appointment to the law school, but said it was better that he stepped down.

We believe that Steeles resignation is in the best interest of the law school at this time and will allow the interim dean to assume that post without any concerns about the appointment process, the statement said.

Dirks said he and Steele believed the resignation was regrettable but a necessary step toward ensuring the stability of the school in the wake of the Choudhry investigation.

Some law school members support further action.

Robert Berring, a law professor at Berkeley for more than three decades, said Steele should resign his position as provost as well. He said it was unconscionable for Steele to allow Choudhry to remain at the law school after admitting to sexual harassment, potentially endangering others.

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He has lost credibility with a wide swath of faculty and certainly with most students, Berring said of Steele. Hes really failed in a major way to understand the dynamics of the situation. It looks as if youre a powerful enough person, you get special treatment.

The Boalt Hall Student Assn. is demanding an outside investigation and asked that Steele be barred from overseeing any sexual harassment cases until that investigation is completed.

A coalition of 13 Berkeley law journals issued a joint statement condemning the entire affair.

Too often, the safety of women is subordinated to the career interests of men, the statement said. Until there is a real threat of serious sanctions, up to and including termination, we can only expect sexual harassment and assault to recur.

For more education news, follow me @TeresaWatanabe

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A student at Bridge Street Elementary School in Boyle Heights was rushed to the hospital after a reported stabbing Thursday morning, officials said.

A parent told KTLA that the victim was a fifth grade boy who was attacked by another student.

Los Angeles Fire Department officials said they responded to the school about 10:30 a.m. and took a patient to the hospital after a reported stabbing.

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An 11-year-old boy has been charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of bringing or possessing a weapon on school grounds, according to Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Districty Attorney. Hes expected to be in Eastlake Juvenile court on Monday.

The Los Angeles Unified School District released a statement on the incident but refused to comment on the fate of the victim or what happened with the attacker.

The entire L.A. Unified family is saddened by the tragic incident involving two students at Bridge Street Elementary School yesterday. Student safety is paramount and remains our top priority, the statement read. Our thoughts go out to the entire school community, especially the victim. While the law enforcement investigation continues, the District is providing support for students and staff, including those who may have witnessed the incident. Crisis counselors are at the school today. All schools have a Safe School Plan in place, and this plan will be included in the recovery process at Bridge Street Elementary School.

School principal addressed the incident in a letter sent home to parents, KTLA reported.

One student injured another student, it read. "The L.A. Unified is working closely with police to investigate the incident and respond accordingly.

No information on the victims condition was immediately available.

Email: joseph.serna@latimes.com

Follow me @josephserna

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Porter Ranch residents will have another week to return home as they transition out of temporary housing because of the gas leak in Aliso Canyon.

Attorneys for Los Angeles County and Southern California Gas Co. agreed to extend the deadline to next Friday after a court hearing.

The county had taken the utility to court to try to force it to give residents another two months in temporary housing, paid for by the gas company. But a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied the request, opening the way for an agreement between the two sides.

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The relocation period was initially set to end 48 hours after the gas leak was determined to be sealed, which occurred Feb. 18. It was extended to eight days under an agreement between the gas company and city officials, and extended by another 22 days under a court order last month.

County attorneys on Friday sought an extension to May 15, or at least for another month, saying that time was needed for the county Department of Public Health to work out protocols and do testing inside some of the homes in the area.

Air tests outside the homes have found chemical levels are back to normal, but some residents who have returned home report continuing health effects similar to the ones that caused them to leave while the leak was in progress. Those include headaches, nausea and nosebleeds.

Deborah J. Fox, an attorney representing the county, told the judge that the situation remains far from normal.

When the leak stopped, the nuisance didnt stop, she said. The residents should not be forced to move home before the nuisance is abated, she said.

Attorneys representing the gas company argued that there has been no proof that the air inside of homes was unsafe.

The law tells us if theres extraordinary relief thats required, there are extraordinary levels of proof needed, Jim Dragna, an attorney for the gas company, told the judge.

Judge Emilie H. Elias said residents who do not want to move home could pursue their own lawsuits against the company, but said there was not enough evidence to continue a blanket order.

Right now, in front of me, I have absolutely no evidence to say that these houses are not safe, she said.

The county public health department has not yet begun testing the air inside of homes, but other researchers have.

The gas company hired a contractor, Geosyntec Consultants Inc., to test air inside the homes for methane and mercaptans. The mercaptans, additives that give natural gas its distinctive odor, are believed to be responsible for many of the health effects people experienced.

The tests found normal levels of methane and did not detect mercaptans, the company said Friday.

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Tony Bell, a spokesman for county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, said public health officials want to test for other chemicals as well.

Separately, Fox said a UCLA professor has done analysis of the interior of some of the homes, but those results were not entered in the court record.

About 2,600 households are still living in hotel rooms, costing Southern California Gas $1.4 million to $1.8 million a day, Dragna said.

Jim Frantz, an attorney representing a group of residents who are suing the utility, said after the hearing that he was pleased that they would at least have another week to prepare to move home.

The judge left the door open for the parties to file for another extension if they get new information about conditions in the homes. It was not immediately clear if the county would do so.

Twitter: @sewella

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Prosecutors are seeking possible victims connected to an Uber driver who has been charged with raping a female passenger after he picked her up from a bar in Fullerton.

Omar Mahmoud Mousa, 52, of Anaheim appeared in court Thursday, where his bail was set at $100,000, said Roxi Fyad, spokeswoman of the Orange County district attorneys office. His arraignment was scheduled for April 8.

Mousa was taken into custody March 7 at the Los Angeles International Airport on an arrest warrant after he returned to the country, prosecutors said. He has been charged with one felony count of forcible rape and two other felony sex-related offenses, according to the district attorneys office. If convicted, he faces up to 24 years in state prison.

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The assault occurred on the night of Oct. 24, 2015, when Mousa was working as a driver for the popular app-based ride-sharing company, prosecutors say. They believe there may be more victims.

Mousa picked up the 21-year-old victim and her friend at a motel in Anaheim and drove them to a bar, prosecutors say. Mousa is believed to have given the women his business card, telling them to call him when they were ready to leave instead of using the Uber app on their phones.

Hours later, the victim and her friend called Mousa, who picked them up from the bar and drove them back to the motel in Anaheim, prosecutors say.

According to the district attorneys office, he walked the woman and her friend to their motel room.

While the womans friend was passed out on the bed, Mousa placed the victim on the same bed and began sexually assaulting her while she was intoxicated, prosecutors said.

She repeatedly told Mousa no and pushed him away, the district attorneys office said. He then left the motel room and drove away, prosecutors say.

The victim reported the attack to the Anaheim Police Department later that day.

Uber has a zero-tolerance policy for violent behavior, and our thoughts are with the victim of this atrocious crime, Uber said in a statement. We immediately blocked this individuals access to the Uber platform upon learning of this incident and actively assisted law enforcement in their investigation.

This week, Los Angeles city officials sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, urging regulators to impose fingerprint scans and background checks on Uber, Lyft and limousines drivers in the city. Uber and Lyft do not use fingerprint-based background checks.

The companies have said their background checks are comprehensive.

Anyone with information related to the case against Mousa is urged to call Supervising District Attorney Investigator Mark Gutierrez at (714) 347-8794.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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Officials at UC Merced said Thursday they were relieved that an FBI investigation into a campus knife attack by a self-radicalized student had concluded and that it was now time to move on.

In a statement, Chancellor Dorothy Leland thanked the public and campus community for their patience while federal investigators looked into the Nov. 4 attack by Faisal Mohammad, an 18-year-old freshman from Santa Clara.

While I shared your desire for a quicker resolution, we are better served by law enforcements completion of its investigation in due course, the statement read. I am proud of the way our campus community came together in the aftermath of this incident, and the kindness displayed by so many only reinforced what I already knew to be true about UC Merced. Now, we move to the task of further healing and taking care of the needs of our students, staff and faculty.

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The FBI announced on Thursday that a review of Mohammads electronic devices found that he drew inspiration from terrorist propaganda and may have been self-radicalized before the attack. He was shot and killed by police after he had injured four people.

His laptop contained pro-ISIL propaganda, and he had visited ISIL and other extremist websites in the weeks prior to his attack, the agency said, using an acronym for the extremist group, which is also called ISIS or Islamic State.

Mohammad began his preparations for the rampage at least a week beforehand. No information was found that showed he was helped or directed by another person or group in carrying out the stabbings, the FBI said.

News of the Islamic State link comes nearly four months after a San Bernardino attack that killed 14 people. The FBI said the two shooters in that incident were also self-radicalized and inspired by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. An Islamic State propaganda magazine later praised the couple as martyrs.

Mohammads alleged connection to the Sunni Muslim extremist group was new information, said Daniel Mayfield, an attorney representing Mohammads family.

He said the family had not been able to review investigative reports on the incident. From the FBIs brief statement about the conclusions of the inquiry, Mayfield said, it was unclear what type of pro-Islamic State propaganda was found on Mohammads computer.

It could be anything from a 17-year-old trolling the Internet to a class assignment to something nefarious, Mayfield told The Times. What can you say ... until we get the computers back?

Investigators seized property belonging to family and friends of Mohammad after the stabbing, but that was returned after nothing notable was found, Mayfield said.

In a statement issued by Mayfield, the family said Mohammads actions were a sharp departure from the boy they knew: Faisal was always quiet, respectful and studious.

Starting shortly before 8 a.m. at the Central Valley university, Mohammad, 18, stabbed four people before being shot and killed by a campus police officer.

Investigators found a two-page, handwritten manifesto in the assailants pocket during an autopsy, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said at a news conference. The document detailed an elaborate script for the attack, Warnke said.

Mohammad had planned to go into a classroom and force another student to help him tie his classmates hands with zip-tie handcuffs, Warnke said. Mohammad listed some students by name.

He then planned to put petroleum jelly into clear bags, cut holes in the bags and squirt the substance onto the floor, making kind of a slip-and-slide that would make it difficult for anyone who entered the room, the sheriff said.

In the note, Mohammad said he anticipated a confrontation with police and planned to steal an officers gun before leaving the classroom to do other tragedies on campus, the sheriff said.

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That plan was foiled by a construction worker, who entered the classroom and befuddled Mohammad, Warnke said last year.

Mohammads apparent inspiration by Islamic State marks a sharp contrast to what the sheriff said last year: that Mohammad was angry about getting kicked out of a study group.

There is still nothing to indicate ... that this is anything other than a teenage boy who got upset with fellow classmates and took it to the extreme, Warnke said.

In Thursdays statement, the FBI signaled a note of uncertainty: It may never be possible to definitively determine why he chose to attack people on the UC Merced campus.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

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A murder charge against a drug and alcohol rehab corporation and its employees in the death of a client was thrown out Friday by a Riverside County judge, sharply limiting a criminal case that had sent a jolt through Californias large drug and alcohol rehabilitation industry.

The judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence for murder, but decided the state attorney generals office could continue with dependent adult abuse charges against A Better Tomorrow and four of its employees. The facilitys lawyers said the case marked the first time in California history that a corporation had been accused of murder.

We think the court reached the right conclusion with regards to the murder charges in this case, said attorney Brian Hennigan, who represents one of the accused employees. Were gratified we got a fair hearing and a ruling on the merits.

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Superior Court Judge Elaine M. Kiefer also dismissed dependent adult abuse charges against another employee, Tami Scarcella.

Rachele Huennekens, a spokeswoman for the attorney generals office, said the company and its employees are responsible for serious abuse that led to Gary Benefields death in 2010 and that prosecutors would continue to pursue the remaining charges.

Patients and family members rely on the promises of caregivers and trust they will provide the best possible care to their loved ones. A Better Tomorrow broke its promises, violated that trust and caused the untimely death of Gary Benefield, a vulnerable person seeking help to overcome addiction, Huennekens said.

A Riverside County grand jury indicted the company and its employees last year.

Benefield came to California from his home in Arizona seeking treatment for alcohol addiction. He was found dead the morning after arriving at A Better Tomorrows Murrieta detox facility. It was his 53rd birthday.

The longtime smoker suffered from a host of medical troubles. He had been hospitalized with a bad bout of pneumonia and for years had relied on an oxygen tank to breathe.

Prosecutors argued that the company, in its drive for profit, accepted Benefield when it was not prepared to care for him and killed him by giving him medications that made it difficult for him to breathe and failing to refill his oxygen.

Benefield was given Serax, an anti-anxiety drug often used to treat alcohol withdrawal, to calm him down, according to court records. Prosecution experts told the grand jury that Serax would have inhibited Benefields breathing, compounding his lack of supplemental oxygen and ultimately contributing to his death.

Defense attorneys noted that the Riverside County coroner who handled Benefields death determined that the Arizona man had died of natural causes, but he was never called as a witness before the grand jury. The coroner later said in a court declaration that he did not believe the lack of oxygen or drugs given to Benefield at the facility contributed to his death.

The defense accused the attorney generals office of misconduct and said Deputy Atty. Gen. Joel Samuels decision not to call the coroner had unduly swayed the grand jury against their clients.

In her ruling, Kiefer dismissed that argument, saying that Samuels acted properly when he presented details of the coroners findings to the grand jury, even though he did not call him as a witness.

In tossing out the murder charge, however, Kiefer said the prosecutor failed to establish that the defendants acted in ways they knew could endanger Benefields life, as required under state law to support a murder charge.

The prosecutions case relied heavily on the fact that medications were given to Benefield without a prescription, she said. But the prosecutor didnt show that the employees thought those medications might kill Benefield.

There is no evidence that any of the defendants knew that their acts of giving the medications to Benefield were dangerous to the extent that they risked killing him, she wrote.

The prosecutor, however, did present enough evidence for the grand jury to find that the defendants acted negligently when they gave out unprescribed medication, she said in upholding the abuse charges.

Benjamin Gluck, an attorney who represents company founder Jerrod Menz, who is among those indicted, said he was very pleased with the judges ruling.

We appreciate the courts carefully reasoned decision on some very complex and novel issues, he said.

The other defendants are Kris McCausland, the house manager at the Murrieta facility; company director James Fent; and employee Meg Dean.

Experts said the attorney generals office may have pursued the murder charge as a warning to Californias massive treatment industry of more than 1,500 facilities that draw clients from around the nation.

A state Senate oversight committee in 2012 issued a report outlining Benefields death and others, saying the state was failing to properly police treatment facilities with deadly results.

Benefield was the fourth person to die at A Better Tomorrow in a little over two years.

In the months after Benefields death, the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs moved to revoke the license for the house where Benefield was admitted. By then, the company had already closed it, although the firm continued operating other facilities.

After Fridays ruling, Huennekens, the state attorney generals spokeswoman, said the office would continue to hold for-profit care facilities accountable and enforce our state laws.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Twitter: @PalomaEsquivel

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The Air Force is investigating about a dozen airmen at a nuclear missile base for alleged use of illegal drugs, in some cases possibly including cocaine, defense officials said Friday. The probe is a fresh blow to a nuclear missile corps that has been under intense scrutiny for a string of lapses in training and personal conduct over the past three years.

The drug investigation at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, home of the 90th Missile Wing, was announced Friday by Gen. Robin Rand, the four-star commander of Air Force Global Strike Command. The command is responsible for the entire fleet of Minuteman 3 land-based nuclear missiles; one-third of the Minuteman 3 force is operated by the 90th Missile Wing.

Rand, speaking by telephone from his headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, said the 14 airmen range in rank from Airman 1st Class to Senior Airman and are members of the security group at F.E. Warren that is responsible for securing not only the base but also the missile fields and convoys that move nuclear weapons.

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Rand said the 14 are accused of off-duty drug activity, which he refused to further define. He said the allegations were credible.

This is very important to me that we get to the bottom of this, Rand said, adding that he is confident that the vast majority of airmen in the nuclear missile corps comply with Air Force standards of personal conduct. We have a special trust with our nation, with our public, with the mission that we do in Air Force Global Strike Command.

The security group at F.E. Warren includes about 1,300 airmen, Rand said, of which nearly 1,000 are junior enlisted members of ranks similar to the 14 under investigation. They are commanded by Col. Christopher L. Corley.

The investigation was started after a member of the security forces alerted his superiors of his suspicion of drug activity by another airman. Rand said the commander of the 90th Missile Wing, Col. Stephen Kravitsky, informed him Tuesday that an investigation was under way.

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Rand said the 14 have been removed from duty while the Air Force Office of Special Investigations looks into the case. He declined to provide further details, including what drugs are allegedly involved, citing an active investigation. Two other defense officials said the drugs included cocaine; the officials discussed details they were not authorized to release publicly and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The allegations do not involve officers who control the Minuteman missiles, officials said.

Security forces at nuclear missile bases are entrusted to patrol the missile fields and respond to any security emergencies. They are highly trained and given enormous responsibility. Just last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work visited F.E. Warren and observed a demonstration by security forces of the techniques and equipment they would use to recapture a Minuteman 3 missile silo that had been taken over by intruders.

Two years ago, while then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was visiting the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren, officials disclosed that a number of launch officers, known as missileers, were under investigation for drug use. That investigation led to the discovery that dozens of missileers had been cheating on their proficiency tests at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which also operates Minuteman 3 missiles.

Hagel then ordered a broad investigation of problems inside the Air Force nuclear missile corps, which had been extensively documented by The Associated Press starting in May 2013. At the time, he said, Personnel failures within this force threaten to jeopardize the trust the American people have placed in us to keep our nuclear weapons safe and secure.

The Hagel-ordered review led to numerous changes, including elevating the rank of the commander of Global Strike Command, which is responsible for the Minuteman 3 force, from three-star to four-star. Rand is the first four-star to hold the job.

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Police Reformer Slams Top CPD Superintendent Finalist For Saying Police Can Police Themselves

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Mar 18, 2016 7:07PM



Michael A. Wood Jr. (Twitter) made a name for himself last Juneafter riots over Freddie Gray's death overtook Baltimorewhen he began tweeting out examples of police misconduct that he had personally witnessed while on the force. Whether it was a cop slapping an innocent woman who got in his way, racial profiling or cops pooping on the beds of suspects, Wood didn't hold back.

And now he's speaking out against the finalists for the top spot in the Chicago Police Department.

Wood retired from the force as a sergeant in 2014, and he has been studying for his PhD in the meantime while speaking out against police brutality and racism. But when Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy's spot opened up, he decided to apply (and he even shared his resume and essays). He had no expectation of even becoming a finalist, and he even placed his bets on who they might be.

He was disturbed to see that one finalistAnne Kirkpatrick, the retired police chief of Spokane, Washingtonwas espousing the virtues of broken windows policing and suggesting that cops police themselves. These were the two questions asked by DNAInfo that gave Wood pause:

Q: Chicago has tried a number of strategies to reduce the rate of shootings, homicides and other serious violent crimes. What are the most effective methods of achieving reduction in these categories? Kirkpatrick: "In 1994, Commissioner Bill Bratton accomplished a turnaround of an epidemic crime problem in New York City by implementing the Broken Windows theory to crime fighting. ... The theory was "that untended disorder and minor offenses give rise to serious crime and urban decay." Based on that theory, Bratton took a zero tolerance position on quality of life crimes, and New York saw an astonishing drop in violent crimes. If I am selected as the next Superintendent of Police, I would go back to basics and implement those practices that we know work."

Q: What does accountability mean in the context of policing? "As a former chief of police, my mantra was that we are in the business of regulating other people's conduct, so I expect us (the police) to regulate our own conduct. ... At times, corrective action includes termination in order to maintain a highly effective and well-run organization."

This over me? Kirkpatrick wants broken Windows return & police can police themselves? https://t.co/YmIls4F95E pic.twitter.com/ZyisB2cIWQ  Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) March 18, 2016 I never expected to be a finalist, but you chose Broken Windows Policing???? Really??? Really????  Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) March 18, 2016

The broken windows theory of policing became popular in the 1990s. The theory was that cracking down on smaller crimes, like vandalism, public urination or skipping out on subway fare was necessary to preserve the social order and keep petty crime from escalating. The city that took up this theory and ran with it was New York City. Critics say that the theory isn't effective, and in practice it can be racist (like New York's since-reformed stop-and-frisk practice) and end up criminalizing the poor and homeless.

Kirkpatrick is one of three finalists for CPD Superintendent. The other two are Cedric Alexander, who is the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Public Safety in DeKalb County, Georgia. Eugene Williams is the internal finalist: he's CPDs Deputy Police Superintendent.
Fox News slams Donald Trump for crude and sexist verbal assaults on Megyn Kelly

After days of Donald Trump calling Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly crazy on Twitter, the network struck back Friday in a statement saying that his sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate.

Fox released the statement shortly after the Republican presidential front-runner urged his 7 million Twitter followers to boycott Kellys show. She is sick, & the most overrated person on tv, Trump wrote.

Fox called Kelly a phenomenal journalist who would maintain the networks support through Trumps endless barrage of crude and sexist verbal assaults.

As the mother of three young children, with a successful law career and the second highest rated show in cable news, its especially deplorable for her to be repeatedly abused just for doing her job, the Fox statement said.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks put out a statement saying Kelly constantly disparages Mr. Trump with negative and inaccurate reports.

Despite the fact he wants nothing to do with her and will not appear on her show due to her extremely biased reporting, much of the program is about him anyway on a nightly basis, Hicks said.

Fox News begged Mr. Trump to do a prime-time special with Kelly, Hicks said, and he declined.

The feud started at the first Republican presidential debate in August, when Kelly asked Trump about his history of calling women fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. She questioned whether that sounded like the temperament of a president and asked how he would respond to charges he was part of the war on women.

The next day, Trump said she had blood coming out of her wherever, a remark many found sexist. Trumps insults against Kelly escalated until Fox News infuriated him with a sarcastic statement saying he had a secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers.

Trump reacted by refusing to participate in a Fox News debate just before the Iowa caucuses. The conflict eventually subsided. Trump and Kelly had civil interactions in a debate in Detroit in early March. But since then, Trump has repeatedly ridiculed her on Twitter.
The Harvard education professor Howard Gardner once advised Americans, Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.

Following his recommendation, I enrolled my 7-year-old son in a primary school in Joensuu, Finland, which is about as far east as you can go in the European Union before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border.

OK, I wasnt just blindly following Gardner  I had a position as a lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland for a semester. But the point is that, for five months, my wife, my son and I experienced a stunningly stress-free, and stunningly good, school system. Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation.

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In Finland, children dont receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light.

Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day. Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. According to one Finnish maxim, There is no bad weather. Only inadequate clothing.

One evening, I asked my son what he did for gym that day. They sent us into the woods with a map and compass and we had to find our way out, he said.

Finland doesnt waste time or money on low-quality mass standardized testing. Instead, children are assessed every day, through direct observation, check-ins and quizzes by the highest-quality personalized learning device ever created  flesh-and-blood teachers.

In class, children are allowed to have fun, giggle and daydream from time to time. Finns put into practice the cultural mantras I heard over and over: Let children be children, The work of a child is to play, and Children learn best through play.

The emotional climate of the typical classroom is warm, safe, respectful and highly supportive.

The emotional climate of the typical classroom is warm, safe, respectful and highly supportive. There are no scripted lessons and no quasi-martial requirements to walk in straight lines or sit up straight. As one Chinese student-teacher studying in Finland marveled to me, In Chinese schools, you feel like youre in the military. Here, you feel like youre part of a really nice family. She is trying to figure out how she can stay in Finland permanently.

In the United States, teachers are routinely degraded by politicians, and thousands of teacher slots are filled by temps with six or seven weeks of summer training. In Finland teachers are the most trusted and admired professionals next to doctors, in part because they are required to have masters degrees in education with specialization in research and classroom practice.

Our mission as adults is to protect our children from politicians, one Finnish childhood education professor told me. We also have an ethical and moral responsibility to tell businesspeople to stay out of our building. In fact, any Finnish citizen is free to visit any school whenever they like, but her message was clear: Educators are the ultimate authorities on education, not bureaucrats, and not technology vendors.

Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in Americas inner-city schools, which instead need boot-camp drilling and discipline, Stakhanovite workloads, relentless standardized test prep and screen-delivered testing.

But what if the opposite is true?

What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale  highly qualified, highly respected and highly professionalized teachers who conduct personalized one-on-one instruction; manageable class sizes; a rich, developmentally correct curriculum; regular physical activity; little or no low-quality standardized tests and the toxic stress and wasted time and energy that accompanies them; daily assessments by teachers; and a classroom atmosphere of safety, collaboration, warmth and respect for children as cherished individuals?

Why should high-poverty students deserve anything less?

One day last November, when the first snow came to my part of Finland, I heard a commotion outside my university faculty office window, which is close to the teacher training schools outdoor play area. I walked over to investigate.

The field was filled with children savoring the first taste of winter amid the pine trees. My son was out there somewhere, but the children were so buried in winter clothes and moving so fast that I couldnt spot him. The noise of children laughing, shouting and singing as they tumbled in the fresh snow was close to deafening.

Do you hear that? asked the recess monitor, a special education teacher wearing a yellow safety smock.

That, she said proudly, is the voice of happiness.

William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright scholar and a lecturer on media and education at the University of Eastern Finland. His latest book is PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy.

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Here in California we have a patchwork of minimum wages. The states $10-per-hour rate is already much higher than the national $7.25 rate, but a number of cities have pushed up the baseline even more  such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the minimum wage is set to rise to $15 in the next few years. In November, California voters will have a chance to even things out by voting on the Fair Wage Act, which would establish a statewide minimum of $15 by 2021.

Although theres something enticing, on the surface, about having the state catch up to its most politically progressive cities, the Fair Wage Act is likely to have negative consequences for many working-class Californians.

Certain parts of the state would feel the effects of the Fair Wage Act more than others, because certain areas have more low-wage workers than others. (Raising the minimum wage will not boost the compensation of a banker earning millions each year, for instance.)

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Calculations based on data from the American Community Survey indicate that when fully implemented, in 2021, the Fair Wage Act would affect about 22% of workers in the states highest-wage counties, such as San Francisco and Santa Clara, and roughly 38% of workers in Los Angeles. In low-wage areas, it would affect a much larger share of workers  nearly 50% in Fresno and Merced.

Great news! the Fight for $15 advocates would argue. This means the Fair Wage Act will do even more to help workers in the most economically distressed areas. But this perspective focuses only on the potential benefits of a higher minimum wage, while denying any costs.

Standard economic theory holds that when the costs of low-wage workers are raised by a higher minimum wage, employers reduce employment  for two reasons. First, employers suddenly find it economical to replace, say, two minimum-wage workers with one slightly more expensive, presumably more experienced or efficient worker. (One $25-an-hour worker may be a better deal than two $15-an-hour workers.) Second, the rising cost of salaries leads employers to raise prices, which leads to lower demand, meaning they have to lower overhead by reducing head count.

Raising the statewide minimum wage to $15 would also do more to help businesses and workers in high-wage than in low-wage areas.

A great deal of evidence confirms economic theory. Indeed, many recent studies have found that higher minimum wages in the United States have reduced employment among low-skilled workers. Some economists contest this conclusion  most notably Michael Reich of UC Berkeley, who argues that a $15 minimum could actually increase employment. But the research is simply at odds with the oft-repeated assertion from the likes of economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that theres just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs.

In areas where the $10 state minimum wage now prevails, the Fair Wage Act would raise the minimum wage by 50% over five years  and, according to standard estimates, reduce employment among the least skilled by 5% to 10%. But those standard estimates are probably low, because theyre derived from research based on much smaller wage hikes. Since a 50% jump would touch so many workers, employers might find it difficult to make the sorts of adjustments that could mitigate layoffs  such as cutting health insurance benefits.

Perhaps more important, some evidence suggests that short-term job loss from a higher minimum wage prevents low-skilled workers from getting a foothold in the labor market, and thus keeps them from acquiring the experience that leads to higher wages in the future. A very high minimum wage may therefore condemn some low-skilled workers to prolonged dependency on government benefits. Maybe it is better to have fewer workers employed at higher wages, and more people without jobs reliant on public support. But Ive never heard advocates for a $15 minimum wage make that argument.

Raising the statewide minimum wage to $15 would also do more to help businesses and workers in high-wage than in low-wage areas. Business owners in cities that have already enacted $15 minimum wages, for instance, should welcome the Fair Wage Act, because it would reduce their cost disadvantage relative to other areas. Workers in these cities should welcome it too, because the act would reduce employers incentive to move to or expand in lower-wage parts of the state. I dont hear advocates for the Fair Wage Act making these arguments either.

Higher-minimum-wage activists want to capitalize on their recent political successes in progressive cities by pushing a high compensation baseline across the state. Thats rash. A $15 minimum wage may not make sense anywhere. But it surely makes a lot less sense in Fresno than in San Francisco. Wouldnt it be better to let economists study local minimum wage experiments before expanding them?

David Neumark is chancellors professor of economics at UC Irvine and director of the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute.

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Even though we are conservative professors, weve argued publicly that conservative attacks on universities are too often overheated and counterproductive. Nonetheless, liberals shouldnt pretend that academia is untouched by political prejudices. Conservatives do face some bias and are wildly underrepresented in the social sciences; enough, perhaps, to warrant new affirmative efforts to increase political pluralism in academia.

According to a recent study, only 6.6% of professors in the social sciences self-identify as Republicans (compared with 24.2% in business, 23.3% in engineering, and 22.9% in the health sciences). In sociology, Marxists outnumber Republicans by 4 to 1. Conservative professors are, then, less well represented in the social sciences than women and people of color.

This imbalance is partly attributable to the fact that conservative students steer clear of the social sciences well before they consider graduate programs. One study found that students politics is among the very best predictors of their undergraduate major choice, with conservatives tending to select the natural sciences.

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Its possible that these conservative undergraduates simply prefer the natural sciences  some evidence, for example, suggests that they are slightly more focused on financial success than are liberals. But its also germane that conservatives feel uncomfortable in classes that touch on politics.

A climate survey conducted by the University of Colorado found that Republican students were more than three times as likely as their Democratic peers to feel intimidated when sharing their political ideas in class. Another study found that students active in campus conservative groups avoid coursework in the social sciences  an especially striking discovery given these students self-evidently strong interest in social and political issues. A third study found that conservatives report less satisfaction with their coursework in the social sciences than do liberal students.

Weve also found that right-leaning PhD students seem to avoid the most politicized subfields in the social sciences. One young political scientist, for example, told us that she would have preferred to study the Middle East, but opted for a safer subfield instead: I didnt do the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which was the thing I wanted to do. As one professor of the ancient world  a safe subfield in history  explained more generally: If youre a conservative, there [are] such huge no-go zones.

A survey conducted by U. of Colorado found that Rep. students were more than three times as likely as their Dem. peers to feel intimidated sharing their political ideas in class.

The one exception  that proves the rule  is economics. Economics has a long history of openness to thinkers on both sides of the political divide and is the one social science field that actually looks like America; it has roughly equal proportions of professors who identify as Republicans, independents and Democrats.

Academic sorting is especially troubling given that the university is one of the only institutions that could model civil discourse for young people in our polarized age, an example that is hard to provide with so few conservatives about. Additionally, a growing number of social scientists are recognizing that political homogeneity makes it hard for humanistic disciplines to converge on the best approximation of the truth; homogenous fields not only generate a narrower range of research interests and interpretations, they are also plagued by confirmation bias  our tendency to accept findings and theories that fit our assumptions.

One liberal argument for affirmative action is sympathetic to these very points. In his 1978 opinion on Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. noted that truth is discovered out of a multitude of tongues. (He was quoting an earlier decision on another topic.) If Justice Powell is right  if the primary purpose of affirmative action is to increase the variety of tongues  then we should increase conservative ones too.

Some might reasonably object that the real purpose of affirmative action is to remedy historical discrimination. Universities, however, have long emphasized the virtues of diversity over remedial justice. In fact, liberals embraced the diversity rationale in the 1970s partly because it allowed them to extend affirmative action to new groups  especially women  with far weaker historical grievances than African Americans. Today, universities are so committed to diversity  not remedial justice  that they are now practicing affirmative action for men so that their campuses dont become even more dominated by female students.

Diversity is now the new religion of the university  and its one they could practice much better. We dont endorse preferences in graduate admissions and hiring. At a bare minimum, however, universities should stop barring conservative speakers from their campuses. In just the past year, for example, Williams College disinvited two conservative speakers from its uncomfortable learning series.

In hiring committees, liberal faculty might also question their natural preference for like-minded colleagues. (Progressive professors often say that they prefer to hire liberals, all else being equal.) Before they start sorting through resumes, departments might consider advertising positions in fields that are more popular among conservatives, such as military history, political history, the American founding, sociology of religion and natural law. Scholars in such fields would bring some balance to a curriculum increasingly dominated by race and gender. Finally, universities could grant visiting appointments in conservative thought, an experiment already underway at the University of Colorado.

Even these modest reforms should help conservative feel much more welcome in all of academia, not just in some of its quarters. When that happens, the university will also deepen its public legitimacy  an increasingly rare and fragile good in our polarized age. But that fine achievement depends critically on liberals. As conservative professors, we have defended the progressive university against its polemical right-wing critics. Now we are asking the university to better practice what it preaches.

Jon A. Shields is associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Joshua M. Dunn Sr. is associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado  Colorado Springs. They are authors of Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Always a bit of a rebel, Debbie Dooley was so frustrated in 2009 over bank bailouts and stimulus packages that she threw herself into organizing Atlantas first tea party rally.

Today, the daughter of a Southern preacher has shifted her energy and passion into electing Donald Trump as the latest Washington outsider to shake up the status quo.

No matter that many of Trumps policies stray from the tea partys original small-government ideals. The tough-talking billionaire ignites that same anti-establishment fervor that fired up many tea party foot soldiers like Dooley.

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In the process, Trump has recast their earlier champions  namely tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz  as disappointing outsiders-turned-insiders who cater to corporate donors and fail to deliver on big promises.

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The support for Trump is not only a screw-you to the Republican establishment, its a screw-you to the conservative establishment, said Dooley, 57, an energy consultant. [People] are sick and tired of the same old, same old  just money corrupting the political process. They work hard, they vote for elected officials and they expect them to keep their promises.

Trumps candidacy has not only fractured the Republican Party, its threatening to break apart the tea party movement and erode a once-powerful voting block that has driven conservative politics and elections for the past seven years.

In addition to grass-root defections by activists like Dooley, tea party leadership has split over Trumps presidential bid. Some conservative activists met this week to try to stop him, while others have joined his campaign.

Meanwhile, major financial backers, including groups funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, have been sidelined from publicly backing GOP primary candidates, partly out of fear they might alienate their divided base.

The soured relationship should come as no surprise. The tea party was always somewhat of a marriage of convenience between Washingtons free-market powerhouses and frustrated ordinary Americans who showed up at rallies with their tri-cornered hats and Dont Tread on Me flags.

Fighting President Obama provided an easy alliance that Republicans at first leveraged to their advantage. But it also was a relationship built on what now looks like a rickety foundation  less about think-tank-driven policies and more about voter outrage against perceived elitism.

From an ideological standpoint, the tea partys natural candidate should be Cruz, the Texas senator who was swept into office in the tea party revolt and wears his unpopularity in Washington as an outsider badge of honor.

But in Trumps long shadow, Cruz and rival Sen. Marco Rubio, before he left the campaign, suddenly looked to many rank-and-file activists as part of the problem.

I dont see Ted Cruz being a job creator, Dooley said.

Trumps positions against free trade and his reluctance to slash entitlement spending have led policy purists to call Trump a RINO  Republican in Name Only.

David McIntosh, the president of the free-market Club for Growth, which is running anti-Trump TV ads in early voting states, noted that the businessman often portrays himself as outside of the GOP establishment.

Trump is a huge wake up to the senior Republican leadership of the party, McIntosh said, adding that the GOP should do more to embrace conservatives if it wants to prevent further tea party defections to Trumps campaign.

We have to make the tea party a part of the Republican coalition, he said. We cant take them for granted.

But at Trump rallies, a growing number of former tea party activists see him as their new hope, noting that Republicans have failed to repeal Obamacare, stop illegal immigration or scale back Obamas domestic spending programs.

Weve given the Republican Party a chance, said Amy Kremer, a founding tea party leader who now backs Trump. They would have never taken the House without the tea party. We gave them the Senate. What have they accomplished? They havent accomplished a damn thing.

The most high-profile splits are between original tea party leaders like Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin, who were part of that first tea party in Atlanta and who went on to help form Tea Party Patriots.

Martin, who now runs the group, is backing Cruz. For our organization, it hasnt just been about anger, its a set of principles, Martin said.

Also aligned with Cruz is Christine ODonnell, an early Sarah Palin-backed Senate candidate in 2010 perhaps best known for a TV ad declaring she was not a witch.

Palin, however, has endorsed Trump, as has Kremer, who previously helped elect Cruz but now is working at a pro-Trump super PAC with Jesse Benton, a former top aide to another tea party favorite, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Trumps national spokesman, Katrina Pierson, shows the elasticity of tea party loyalties with one of the most circuitous routes to her new boss. She was a Democrat who voted for Obama before becoming a Dallas tea party leader backing Cruz. Then she switched to Trump after the senator introduced her to the billionaire, according to reports.

The shifting alliances leave the impression the tea party is no longer a coalition joined by a common refrain  Taxed Enough Already  but silos of think-tank wonks, big-business conservatives and angry white voters who dont speak the same language.

Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a libertarian advocacy group formed by leaders of an earlier Koch-backed enterprise, said the split doesnt signal the end of the tea party as much as an evolution of it.

Regardless of who wins the presidency, he said, the rise of Trump and Cruz  the two most outsider candidates of the primary cycle  shows the tea partys influence on the GOP.

The one thing that comes out of this: The Republican Party is a smoking crater on the ground, said Brandon, who in his spare time is a Revolutionary War reenacter. The tea party has won. Now the bifurcation is: Do you want a burn-it-down with Donald Trump or do you want a battler like Ted Cruz.

Added Martin: It shows, this movement, seven years and three weeks old, is picking the presidential nominee on the right. Thats a big deal.

But FreedomWorks and other big conservative players  Tea Party Express, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and Heritage Action  are all sitting out the presidential primary.

Virtually none of them attended a meeting of conservatives last week in Washington trying to plot an anti-Trump effort. Some prefer to focus on congressional races or state issues. But they also risk losing influence among their members if they back the wrong candidate.

The high-dollar donors at the Koch organizations winter meeting preferred Rubio, while activists voting in a straw poll at FreedomWorks conference in Ohio this month overwhelmingly backed Cruz.

We just dont dive into a primary of this magnitude and try to dictate, said a person within the Koch network granted anonymity to discuss. It would harm the willingness of a lot of people to work with us. ... It would harm our long-term effectiveness.

Thats fine with Dooley, who said shes fed up with both the GOP establishment and big-dollar Washington donors telling people what to think.

They look down their noses on average people in the grass roots, she said. They think theyre the only ones who can define conservatism.

Twitter: @lisamascaro

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The state ethics watchdog agency acted Thursday to close a loophole that some say provided politically connected people with a direct link to influence state lawmakers votes without registering as lobbyists.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission, meeting in Sacramento, changed the rules for a so-called ride-along exception to the lobbyist registration requirement.

The exception allowed lobbyists to bring others to meetings with legislators to help make their case  without requiring those people to register as lobbyists.

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The proposed amendments seek to curb potential abuses by clarifying this narrow exception applies only to employees who are subject matter experts who attend meetings with a lobbyist to add substantive information on a particular issue, said Hyla P. Wagner, the FPPC general counsel, in a report to the panel.

The new law is one of several being proposed this year to make sure lobbyists are registering.

It was floated in response to an investigation of former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamantes involvement in the demise of a 2008 bill that would have required law enforcement officers on cruise ships.

Bustamante, who was not registered as a lobbyist, reportedly talked to friends on the Legislative Latino Caucus, then-Sen. Joe Simitian, the bills author, later told investigators.

Simitian said that members of the Latino Caucus told him that they had been contacted by Bustamante attempting to influence their vote by telling them to vote a certain way, according to the investigative report by the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

But the FPPC told Bustamante last year that it was closing the case without action, despite the fact that you contacted state officials for the purpose of influencing legislative or administrative action on behalf of your clients.

Investigators said they were unable to determine what portion of the monthly payments Bustamante received were for communicating with legislators compared with other activities. The ride-along exception also was too vague to determine whether a violation occurred.

The change was opposed as too ambiguous by Thomas W. Hiltachk, attorney for Institute of Governmental Advocates, a trade group for registered lobbyists.

However, commissioners said the change has the opposite effect of confusing the rules by specifying that a person accompanying a lobbyist must be a subject matter expert on the bill being discussed and an employee of the firm or group that retained the lobbyist.

I think this is a really good regulation that is going to provide clarification, said Jodi Remke, chairwoman of the panel.

The panel listed examples that would be in compliance, including a teacher to talk about classroom realities, a personnel director to talk about employee issues, a safety foreman to talk about changes in oilfield regulations or an engineer to explain technical issues.

Bustamante, a former Assembly speaker, did not return calls to his office seeking comment on the change in rules.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Twitter: @mcgreevy99

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Costa Mesa City Council members decided this week to keep the citys animal-shelter services with the Orange County Humane Society for the next two years and to cut a check of up to $50,000 to address aspects of its operations that the city acknowledges arent up to snuff.

Some community members urged the council at its meeting Tuesday to move away from the Huntington Beach shelter, which recently was the subject of allegations from animal control officers in Newport Beach who said they found unsanitary and inhumane conditions there.

Maybe you get what you pay for  you know, we got a cheap rate and its not the best facility, said Costa Mesa resident Robin Leffler. But somethings got to change and if I were up there (on the council dais) making this decision, I would not feel easy going with the same contractor.

Costa Mesa has contracted with the Orange County Humane Society for animal-care services since 2009.

The latest agreement runs until January 2018  costing about $75,000 a year  but city staff took another look at the Humane Society after the allegations from Newport.

The Newport Beach City Council decided in November to end its agreement with the nonprofit and move the animals from Newport Beach that had already been taken there to Home Free Animal Sanctuary in Newport. The citys animal-control officers said they had witnessed Humane Society staff leaving animals wet for several days and housing them in a building without proper sunlight or ventilation, among other allegations.

An audit by Newport Beach released in December also alleged that the shelter had been unnecessarily charging 8% sales tax on pet adoptions.

Costa Mesa city spokesman Tony Dodero said city staff found that some things at the shelter were not up to snuff, basically.

Animal control officers identified deficiencies in the Humane Societys record keeping, as well as a need for some structural work, he said.

Staff did not, however, turn up the same things that the Newport Beach animal control people saw, Dodero added.

Representatives of the shelter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Costa Mesa council members unanimously agreed to provide up to $50,000 to help address issues at the facility.

The money will go toward structural improvements such as ventilation fans, skylights to increase lighting and a new block wall to separate cats from kenneled dogs. The funds also will go toward developing software to help the shelter better track and process animals in its care.

Councilwoman Katrina Foley questioned why the city should provide additional money to the Humane Society, which she said has failed to live up to the terms of its contract.

What Im seeing in this staff report is we are essentially agreeing to pay for the breach of the consultants contract, she said.

Councilwoman Sandy Genis also raised concerns about the shelter, saying she has seen issues such as damaged kennel fencing, empty water bowls and a general lack of cleanliness.

With all due respect to staff, this place has been a pit for a while, Genis said. Ive been in a lot of shelters; this one smells the worst.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer said its apparent the Humane Society needs additional funding.

They need some help to operate; they need some software thats proper so we can make sure we count things properly, and it should probably cost us a little bit more money, he said.

Even taking the additional $50,000 into account, Costa Mesa would spend considerably less for animal control and sheltering services than some of its neighbors, according to a city report.

The annual net cost of those services in Costa Mesa is currently about $343,530, the report says. In Newport Beach, its $589,175; in Huntington Beach, its $885,000, and in Santa Ana its $977,669, the report says.

Though the council chose to stay with the Humane Society for the rest of the current contract, Dodero said the city can opt out should the need or desire arise.

We consider them a partner at this point, Dodero said. Were going to work with them  for that facility to be a better facility for stray animals that end up there. But we also leave our options open.
As racing mogul Roger Penske celebrates his 50th anniversary in the sport, the team owner will revisit one of his hallmark feats this weekend when NASCAR returns to Fontana.

Penskes company built the 568-acre Auto Club Speedway complex, originally called California Speedway, which hosts Sundays fifth race of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, the Auto Club 400.

Nothing would please Penske more than to have one of his two Cup drivers, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, mark the occasion with a victory on the two-mile speedway.

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It would be amazing to score another win in Fontana, Penske said. To have it there would be a real thrill. One of the biggest things we did was to build the California Speedway.

Penskes team rolls into Fontana among the favorites. Keselowski, the former Cup champion who drives the No. 2 Ford, is the defending winner of the Auto Club 400, and he also won two weeks ago in Las Vegas.

Im feeling very confident were going to be in the hunt in California, Penske said.

Nicknamed The Captain, Penske, 79, oversees teams in NASCAR stock-car racing and in the Verizon IndyCar Series. His IndyCar team also is off to a fast start this year.

Penske driver Juan Pablo Montoya won last weeks IndyCar season opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Montoya will defend his Indianapolis 500 win in 2015 when the series holds the 100th running of the legendary race in May.

A former race-car driver, Penske also runs an automotive empire thats earned him a net worth of $1.5 billion, according to Forbes.

His Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Penske Corp. has interests in car dealerships, truck rentals and transportation logistics. It generates $23 billion in annual revenue and employs 50,000 worldwide.

Penske built the Auto Club Speedway for $120 million in the mid-1990s and later sold the track to its current owner International Speedway Corp., the entity controlled by the France family that also controls NASCAR.

Attendance for NASCAR and IndyCar races at the track has risen and fallen over last 20 years. The speedway opened with 72,000 seats, expanded to 92,000 and, in response to the recession and a leveling off of NASCARs popularity, cut its capacity to the current 68,000.

Penske, though, has never lost faith in racings popularity in Southern California.

Even though there are so many different opportunities for how people spend their spare time in the region, the fan base is loyal, theres no question, he said.

Penskes drivers will face stiff competition in Sundays race, of course, starting with six-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who also is the only five-time winner at Auto Club Speedway.

Other front-runners are Kyle Busch, last years Cup champion, and Matt Kenseth, the 2003 series champion. Each has three Cup wins at Fontana.

Two of the longtime favorites of the Southern California crowd, former champions Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon, wont be racing. Stewart is recovering from a preseason back injury and Gordon retired as a driver after last season.

Brian Vickers will substitute for Stewart on Sunday in the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet.

Qualifying for Sundays race is Friday afternoon, and a race in NASCARs second-level Xfinity Series is Saturday.

NASCAR at Irwindale

One of NASCARs minor-league series, the K&N Pro Series West, opens its season at the half-mile Irwindale Speedway on Saturday night with the Toyota/NAPA Auto Parts 150.

Cup drivers Chase Elliott and Riversides David Gilliland, whose son Todd Gilliland races in the K&N series, are scheduled to attend.
Al Qaeda and its allies have a new strategy for spreading fear in West Africa.

Once focused on taking hostages for ransom and striking military targets in the desert, the terrorist network has been sending small groups of nimble gunmen to attack hotels, resorts and other soft targets where Westerners congregate. The latest assault came Sunday in Ivory Coast, where the dead included 15 civilians.

The shift is an attempt by Al Qaeda and its affiliates to gain visibility as the worlds attention has turned to threats from Islamic State militants. It is also a response to a French military offensive against insurgents in the region as well as airstrikes and other interventions by the U.S. and its allies in Africa and the Middle East.

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Its almost a symbolic reminder that this is a serious force to be reckoned with, said Paul Rogers, a terrorism analyst at the University of Bradford in England, describing Al Qaedas recent attacks and its fight for relevance. It doesnt have the capacity to take on military forces head on, so its concentrating on soft targets with high impact.

The strategy has been on display for some time on the east side of the continent, where the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabab has launched attacks killing hundreds of civilians in Somalia and Kenya, including high-profile assaults on a mall and a university.

Its adoption in West Africa began late last year. In November, the group known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and its ally Al Mourabitoun killed 22 people at a luxury hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. In January, the two groups struck again, killing at least 30 people at a hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

The attack in Ivory Coast marked the first time the country had experienced Islamist terrorism.

Three gunmen shouting God is great! attacked beach bars and hotels in Grand Bassam, east of the capital, Abidjan, shooting down white tourists and locals. In addition to the civilian victims, three members of the security forces and the gunmen were killed in an ensuing shootout.

AQIM claimed responsibility for the attack. The full names and nationalities of the attackers have not been released.

In a statement to the media on its website, the terrorist groups media wing called the beach resort a lair of espionage and conspiracies in the Ivory Coast, where the heads of criminality and looting got together.

And it warned Westerners of future attacks, threatening to destroy your security and that of your citizens, just as you destroy ours.

The groups view Ivory Coast as an ally of the West.

Their greatest wrath is toward France, which sent troops to Mali in 2013 to fight the terrorist groups and take back large swaths of territory they had won in a series of attacks on military targets there.

France now has more than 3,500 troops in the region, the vast majority part of Operation Barkhane, an anti-insurgent campaign it launched in 2014 in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania. The operation involves gathering intelligence, attacking terrorist bases and training local forces.

It has eliminated some key terrorists, but experts said the French forces are spread too thin across a vast area to eliminate the organizations or cut off their income sources, which include drug trafficking and weapons smuggling.

The campaign also had an unintended effect: Looking for new ways to demonstrate its power, AQIM turned to high-impact brazen attacks in capital cities.

The goal is to get publicity and to send a message that they can do these attacks and they have this expanding reach, when they were initially confined to northern Mali, said Vincent Rouget, an analyst on the Sahel region with the consulting firm Control Risks.

Such publicity helps terrorist groups raise money and recruit members.

Once the dominant force in Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda has lost its clout in recent years, as the militant group Islamic State has become the primary recruiter of foreign fighters, the brutal overlord of territory in Syria and Iraq and a master in using extreme violence, graphic videos and social media to spread fear.

Africa represents Al Qaedas biggest opportunity at the moment.

Its most significant affiliate in the western part of the continent is AQIM, which traces its roots to the 1990s and a group of rebels in Algeria. The group operated in the Sahel and raised money by kidnapping Westerners and smuggling drugs and weapons.

Al Mourabitoun was formed as a breakaway faction, but the two groups have reunited.

As the allies try to extend their reach and compete with Islamic State for followers, experts said, the violence is likely to spread to countries that have long been spared from terrorism.

The strategy presents almost limitless opportunities. Its a continuing worry for authorities because you cant protect every hotel and you cant protect every soft target, Rogers said.

The terrorist groups are in little danger of running out of weapons, as the collapse of Moammar Kadafis Libyan government in 2011 flooded the region with looted arms that are traded freely.

Governments have been increasing security around hotels, French schools and cultural centers and other potential targets, according to security experts.

Pretty much any West African country might be next, for example Senegal and Ghana, said Yan St-Pierre, an Africa specialist at the Berlin-based Modern Security Consulting Group, a risk analysis firm. Any soft target  hotels, resorts, government buildings in any West African country.

Follow @RobynDixon_LAT for news from Africa.

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South Siders Organize Monday Water Drive For Flint At Bridgeport Bar

By aaroncynic in News on Mar 18, 2016 5:30PM



Flint CFO Jody Lundquist addresses residents' concerns regarding water bills at a town hall meeting. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

South Side residents are organizing a water drive for residents of Flint, Michigan, which will take place at Bernices Tavern in Bridgeport on Monday.

Organizers were inspired by Chicagoans and people across the country who have traveled to Michigan to help Flint manage the public health crisis caused by its lead-poisoned water supply.

Flint could easily be Chicago. Anywhere could be Flint, said Natalie Walhberg, whos helping to organize the drive. All of these decisions happening out of our hands that effect residents and children.

Wahlberg said that politicians havent done enough about the situation, and in the meantime, people have to step up. Community is all we haveat the end of the day, even if political candidates hold a debate in Flint, theyre not going to save it. All we have is each other.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been under fire for his role in the crisis, facing numerous calls for his resignation from residents, government officials, and presidential candidates. While he attempted to blame anyone but himself at a Congressional hearing Thursday, it did nothing to dampen criticism or calls for him to step down.

At the hearing, NPR reports Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright said:

"Governor, plausible deniability only works when it's plausible and I'm not buying that you didn't know about any of this until October 2015. You were not in a medically induced coma for a year. And I've had about enough of your false contrition and phony apologies."

The water drive at Bernice's Tavern is one of many community efforts to step up and help Flint. Though the Facebook event for the drive says it begins at 7 p.m. on Monday and goes until 11 p.m., Bernice's will really be taking donations all day, from 3 p.m., when the bar opens, to its 2 a.m. close. Cash donations, 100 percent of which will go to organizations in Flint, will be accepted, but water is the main thing organizers are looking for.

The goal is to run out of room in the bar for the water," said Wahlberg. "You might have to sit on a case of water instead of a barstool."
Although Chinas carbon dioxide emissions have soared in the past 30 years and the country has become the largest greenhouse gas contributor, China is responsible for just 10% of global warming since the pre-industrial era, according to a new study published in the science journal Nature.

Chinas share of responsibility for global warming has remained remarkably consistent over the last 260 years or so, the study also found. However, the research suggests that the nations efforts to reduce air pollution might actually increase Chinas contribution to global warming.

Thats because China may find it easier to cut back on emissions of cooling pollutants like sulfate and nitrate aerosols, as compared with emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use.

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The report, which examines bio-geochemical, climate and research data from 1750 to 2010, is significant because it offers a comprehensive assessment of Chinas contribution to climate change, said Bengang Li, professor and deputy dean of the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences of Peking University, and the studys lead author.

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FOR THE RECORD

April 3, 7:44 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the report examined data from 750 to 2010. The data covers the period from 1750 to 2010.

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Chinas government didnt know how much China contributes to the global climate change, Li said. So now they know. When they make negotiations with the U.S., with Europe.they can have more quantitative information.

Lis team did not publish figures on other countries relative contributions to global warming. However, the findings likely put China in second place behind the U.S. in terms of total contribution to global warming, said Andrew Gettelman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

Previous studies put the United States in first place with a contribution to global warming of almost 20%, a figure that scientists say is not surprising given that America has a much longer legacy of emissions because it industrialized earlier than many countries, and on a much bigger scale.

Humans affect Earths climate through many mechanisms. One way is by emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. Another is by land-use change -- deforestation for agriculture and urbanization, for instance. Some of this human behavior has a warming effect, and other activities and emissions have a cooling effect. Added together, these effects are known as radiative forcing.

Over the last two centuries, theres been a net increase globally in warming factors. But each country is different in its warming factors and cooling factors. By examining these various factors and adding up the positives and negatives it is possible to calculate a countrys responsibility for the overall global climate change.

Cyclists pass through thick pollution in 2006 from a factory in Yutian, east of Beijing. (Peter Parks / AFP/Getty Images)

Lis study is significant because his team examined the factors in a comprehensive way, and accounted for all the drivers of climate change linked to human activity, according to Dominick V. Spracklen, an associate professor of biosphere, aerosol and climate at the University of Leeds in England, and author of a News and Views commentary published alongside the study in Nature.

While carbon dioxide emissions have soared in China, so have sulfate emissions, which have a counteractive, or cooling effect, because sulfate particles scatter light. Lis quantification of how emissions from carbon dioxide and sulfates offset each other is what makes the study remarkable, Spracklen wrote.

China didnt use fossil fuels on a mass scale before 1900, even as other countries were burning them for industrialization, Li said. Even after China stepped up its use of fossil fuels and began industrializing, land-use changes throughout much of the 20th century kept China from becoming an outsized contributor to global warming. Chinas move to start planting trees helped absorb and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Around 1980, Chinas carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels began to soar. But so did its emissions of sulfates. The negative radiative forcing, or cooling, effect of the sulfates offset the positive radiative forcing, or warming, effect of the carbon dioxide, Lis team found.

To improve air quality, many other countries have slashed their sulfate emissions in recent decades.

As a result, today sulfur emissions are 90% below peak levels in Europe, and around 80% below peak level in the U.S., according to Gettelman, the scientist.

Although sulfate aerosols temporarily mitigate against global warming, some scientists believe countries should take strong steps to curb the sulfur dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels that forms sulfate aerosols through oxidation in the atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide and other emissions from fossil fuels can have negative health effects, such as exacerbating heart and lung diseases and ailments like asthma.

There is a huge health burden from this pollution, said Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and climate policy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in Cambridge, Mass.

Gettelman said that since the black carbon aerosol warming and sulfate aerosol cooling offset each other, there would likely not be much effect on climate from reducing them both. There would be a substantial and immediate positive effect on air quality in China from reducing black carbon and sulfate emissions, he added.

Li said it would be difficult for China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it keeps using coal as its main energy source. The use of more clean and renewable energy is key, he said.

That takes political will and commitment, scientists said.

All of this is not going to happen without very deliberate policies and thats true in China as much as its true in the United States, Cleetus said. As China makes that transition it too will have to make some choices about where its going to get its energy from.

An analysis of preliminary data for 2015 released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency, or IEA, found that China and other countries are making some progress.

According to the agency, emissions of carbon dioxide in China declined by 1.5% as coal use dropped for the second straight year. In the United States, which has undergone a significant switch from coal to natural gas use in generating electricity, emissions declined by 2%, according to the agency.

Because were already reaching a critical point when it comes to climate change and global temperature increase, weve got to do a lot more a lot faster, Cleetus said. The U.S. and China are both in a position to play a strong leadership role on this.
Simon Lai has no personal need for tampons. But this year, the resident of southern Chinas Guangdong province expects to buy more than half a million dollars worth of the feminine hygiene products in Los Angeles, ship them across the Pacific, and sell them for a good profit.

His business on Alibabas e-commerce site Taobao is called Puff House, and it specializes in personal care items. Between June of last year and January, he sold $180,000 worth of imported tampons, making him the biggest vendor of Tampax products on the platform.

The tampon business has grown much quicker than I expected, Lai said.

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Lai is filling a void in the market. Although Chinese consumers have in recent years embraced countless Western products including Levis jeans, Converse shoes, Chanel perfume and Nivea antiperspirant, a complex mix of cultural and commercial factors have kept tampons from widespread acceptance, and interest in them is just starting to take off.

Tampons came first came into use in the United States in the 1930s, and more than 70% of American women now use them., But while Chinese manufacturers produced 85 billion sanitary napkins last year, not a single one of them made tampons.

There are many barriers to acceptance in China, starting with a lack of sex education. Even young Chinese women say they know little about their body parts and fear (mistakenly) that tampons will break their hymen and rob them of their virginity.

Chinas media regulator, meanwhile, has banned advertisements of feminine hygiene products on TV at lunchtime and during prime time, reasoning that such commercials, along with ads for hemorrhoid treatments and foot disease remedies, were disgusting.

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Only $190 million worth of tampons were sold in China in 2013, according to Mintel, a London-based market research company. While that was up 8.7% compared with a year earlier, those sales equaled just 2.5% of the $7.6-billion sanitary pad market.

Yuan Rong, product manager of Ladycare, Chinas fifth-largest sanitary pad maker, said the tampon market was still immature. Weve been doing research on tampons since a decade ago, but Chinas tampon market is not big enough for us to produce any, she said.

Johnson & Johnsons O.B. tampons appeared on shelves in China in 1993 and are still the only brand sold in stores. They are generally stocked only in higher-end shops, such as personal health and beauty retailers Mannings, or foreign megamarkets like Wal-Mart.

Liu Li, a Mannings store clerk in Beijing, said shes seen an uptick in interest. A year ago, she was selling about six boxes of tampons a month. Now its about six boxes per week.

According to Lai, most of his tampon customers are young white-collar workers in big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, including many women who have returned to China after living overseas for some time. Chinese girls, he said, are often told by their mothers, Use tampons after you get married.

Li Yinhe, often described as Chinas first sexologist, said despite increasingly liberal attitudes toward sex, the country still has a virginity fetish. There are many clinics offering hymen repair surgery so that sexually active women can present themselves to their fiances as virgins, noted Li Sipan, founder of Women Awakening Network, a feminist organization in Guangzhou.

But Li, the sexologist, said attitudes and customs are changing. Before 1989, only 15% of Chinese had had sex before marriage, but by 2013, that number had risen to 71%, she noted.

For some Chinese feminists, tampons are a weapon for them to assert themselves and refute myths about virginity. I use whatever I want during menstruation. I dont care if men think my hymen is intact or not, said Wu Dengmin, a 20-year-old junior at Anhui Normal University. I dont care how my behavior will be measured by those conservative women either.

Wu was born and bred in Anhui province, and grew up surrounded by messages about sexual purity. Among the provinces most famous tourist sites are female chastity memorial arches built by local governments between the 14th and 20th centuries to honor widows who never remarried, and to this day are seen as totems to promote the idea that women should only have sex with one man in their lifetime.

Wu said her high school biology textbook contained pictures of only male genitals, and she taught herself to use tampons at 16 by studying pictures online. She never told her mother.

My mom would think Im not a good girl any longer, she said.

Safety concerns about Chinese-made sanitary pads are driving some Chinese women to tampons. Two years ago, reports surfaced that some Chinese-made pads might contain fluorescer  a cancer-causing agent.

After that, He Yuelin, 32, a human resource manager for an airlines company in Shanghai, said she began to buy U.S.-made pads via Taobao.

Sensing that China might be on the cusp of embracing tampons, French businessman Jeremy Rigaud launched a tampon brand called Wishu in Shanghai in 2012. Wishu buys tampons from manufacturers in France and Italy, labels them with Wishus logo and sells them in China, through online platforms such as JD.com.

Last year, Wishus revenue reached about $770,000, Riguad said. I see many potentials in Chinas tampon market, he said, adding that hes now working on distributing Wishu tampons via supermarkets in Chinas big cities.

In the U.S., tampons are increasingly regarded as old-fashioned, with women now being offered new products such as menstrual cups and period panties. But Lai sees little chance of such products leapfrogging tampons into the Chinese market.

Last year, when Lai and his sales team had a meeting to discuss importing menstrual cups, all 30 of his staff members voted against the idea.

Tampons are not fully accepted by Chinese customers now, he said. Its too hasty to try a newer product.

Yang is a special correspondent.

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Hes spent years studying Chinese. Hes hosted Chinas cyberspace czar at his office, and encouraged employees to read President Xi Jinpings book The Governance of China. Now Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg  whose social network is still blocked by the Great Firewall  has gone yet another mile in his ceaseless courtship of China: Hes gone jogging through Beijings Tiananmen Square during a yellow-level smog alert.

On Friday morning Beijing time, when the Air Quality Index had soared over 350, deep into hazardous territory, Zuckerberg posted a message on his Facebook account saying he had just jogged through Tiananmen Square. The accompanying photo showed Zuckerberg to be without a protective face mask. Its great to be back in Beijing! he wrote, noting that hes logged 100 miles of jogging so far in 2016.

The post immediately attracted both praise and derision on Facebook as well as other social media. Some critics snidely wondered how Zuckerberg was able to even post such a message, given that his site is blocked in the country.

How can you use fb in China? It is forbidden by the government, asked Yiu Sing Lee. (Zuckerberg, like many Facebookers in China, probably used VPN or similar software to access his own site.)

Others expressed concern that Zuckerberg was harming his health by running in such conditions. Hey Welcome to Beijing. I don't understand why you would do something like this to yourself ... The AQI in Beijing is like 300 now, wrote another user, Shuo Wang. You know the damage to your lung is permanent and could be detrimental right ... If you need an air purifier let me know.

Still others rapped Zuckerberg on political grounds. A student at the University of Macau left him a message saying the [ground] you stepped has been covered by blood from students who fought for democracy. But, enjoy your running in China, Mark.

But Zuckerberg had his defenders too.

I'm quite sure that Mr. Zuckerberg  is totally aware of what happened there in 1989, wrote Hugo Wang. However, he's not cowardly sitting by a screen typing useless words but trying his best to change this world by working very hard.

In some ways, Zuckerberg seemed to be taking a page out of Xis own playbook. In February 2014, the Chinese president made a pop-up appearance in central Beijing on a particularly smoggy day.

He visited a traditional hutong neighborhood with Mayor Wang Anshun and the citys Communist Party chief, Guo Jinlong. The event quickly was splashed across the Chinese Internet, with some official news sites pointing to Xis uncovered face as proof of his solidarity with the people.

Share the same breath, share the same destiny, remarked the official feed of the Peoples Daily newspaper on Weibo, Chinas Twitter-like service.

Zuckerberg joined the board of Tsinghua Universitys School of Economics and Management in 2014. In October last year, he gave a 22-minute speech at Tsinghua entirely in Mandarin.

Zuckerbergs Friday jog around Tiananmen quickly became one of the top-10 most discussed topics on Weibo.

Some Chinese netizens even suggested that Zuckerberg be nominated for a campaign currently being run by the state-run China Daily newspaper, asking for readers to nominate warm-hearted foreign friends who are sharing positive energy in the spirit of Lei Feng.

The state-run newspaper China Daily wants foreigners to share positive energy. Some Chinese Internet users have suggested nominating Mark Zuckerberg for the campaign. (China Daily )

(Lei was an army truck driver whom Chairman Mao chose in 1963 as a role model for the people. Although he was accidentally killed by a falling telephone pole in 1962, even today he is portrayed as the embodiment of the selfless individual serving his comrades and his leader, and even went so far as to wash his comrades' socks.)

The Chinese market could easily be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Facebook, but Chinese authorities have blocked the site for years out of concerns that it could be used to organize anti-government protests.

Zuckerberg met Xi in Seattle this past September at a confab with U.S. tech executives. On a personal note, this was the first time Ive ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language. I consider that a meaningful personal milestone, he said at the time in a message on Facebook.

Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, is of Chinese descent; he has said that part of his motivation for studying Mandarin is also to communicate with her elder family members. The couple recently had a daughter, Maxima, and gave her a Chinese name, Chen Mingyu.
The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq earlier this week said he made a bad decision in joining Islamic State, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station.

In the TV interview, which aired late Thursday night, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Va., detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the Islamic State-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul.

Once in Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city that was captured by the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, Khweis was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters, he told the Kurdistan 24 station.

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Khweis said he met an Iraqi woman with ties to Islamic State in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across the border into Iraq. In Mosul, Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies, and it was then he decided to try to flee.

I didnt agree with their ideology, he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul.

Khweis said a friend helped him escape from Mosul to the nearby city of Tal Afar. From there, he walked toward Kurdish troops. I wanted to go to the Kurdish side, he said, because I know they are good with the Americans.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from Islamic State militants late last year. In the past year, Islamic State fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation.

Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State have told the Associated Press that they are seeing an increase in the number of Islamic State members surrendering following recent territorial losses. As the militants lose territory, U.S. officials predict there will be more desertions.

I wasnt thinking straight, Khweis said in the TV interview.

My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad, he said, adding that he doesnt believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam.

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The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other extremist groups. An earlier estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a think-tank at Kings College London, said terror fighters include 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans.

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The Obama administration declared Thursday that rapes, killings and repression of minorities in Iraq and Syria by Islamic State militants constitute genocide.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the regions Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims were victims of genocide -- the deliberate and systematic elimination of a group -- and ethnic cleansing.

Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims, Kerry, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, said in announcing his determination.

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Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions -- in what it says, what it believes and what it does.

Elevating the characterization of Islamic States litany of atrocities to genocide would normally imply robust action to stop the radical group.

The Obama administration did not announce new initiatives but said ongoing military and political activities, including airstrikes and propaganda campaigns, would be intensified.

Is [the determination] going to trigger something new? No, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. But [genocide] is part and parcel of how we have been thinking of this for nigh-on a year.

Kerry noted that Islamic State has also in some cases attacked Kurds and Sunni Muslims.

The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians, Yazidis because they are Yazidis, Shia because they are Shia, Kerry said.

This is the message it conveys to children under its control. Its entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology.

Thursday was a congressionally mandated deadline for the State Department to pronounce whether genocide was being committed in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic State fighters have taken over vast areas thanks to chaos and warfare.

The level of their brutality has shocked even hardened observers, given the militants penchant for videotaping beheadings, the burning or drowning alive of victims, and other chilling slayings.

The U.S. House of Representatives this week declared Islamic States actions to be genocide, possibly putting pressure on Kerry to act.

It is the first time the U.S. has made a genocide declaration since 2004, when then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell determined that violence in Sudans Darfur region deserved similar classification.

Human rights groups immediately praised Kerrys decision and urged Congress to agree to receive more refugees from the region.

For more news about global affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson
After FBI digital forensic experts broke into Faisal Mohammads laptop, they found that the 18-year-old was drawn to the flashy terrorist propaganda of Islamic State and self-radicalized before stabbing four people at UC Merced last fall.

The discovery announced Thursday, almost four months after the couple who gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino were found to be inspired by the extremist militants, is part of a trend that has confounded the Obama administration.

Now, the White House is again revamping its strategy to strike the Islamic State propaganda machine. It is launching a new counter-messaging center, enlisting the help of Silicon Valley and hunting recruiters and propaganda operatives on battlefields in Iraq and Syria.

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This is a very savvy group that treats the information battle space as important, if not more important, than the physical battle space, Michael Lumpkin, President Obamas new counter-messaging chief, said in an interview. Islamic State is a brand, so we need to treat it like a brand.

Combating Islamic State online is the least developed and most controversial part of the administrations multi-pronged military strategy against the Islamic State, which includes daily airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, deployment of military advisors to assist Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, and attempts to choke off the militants financing from oil sales and foreign donors.

Lumpkin, a 51-year-old retired Navy SEAL who directed the Pentagons response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, was named this week by presidential executive order to run the new Global Engagement Center.

The counter-messaging command hub is based on the second floor at the State Department and draws on information provided by the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, foreign allies and social media companies.

Instead of posting directly to social media itself, as the administration has tried, the center will provide money and expertise to nonprofit groups, foreign governments and Muslim activists overseas to help craft and post their own material intended to counter the allure of jihad.

The center will also leverage analytics to track social media accounts and to pinpoint so-called fence sitters, who are leaning toward radicalism, and target them directly. The collected information will be passed along to nonprofits or other Muslim groups, who can intervene directly through public or private messaging to refute Islamic States twisted view of Islam and injustice.

Mohammad, a freshman at UC Merced, began preparing for the Nov. 4 rampage at least one week beforehand, the FBI said. No information was found that showed he was helped or directed by another person or group in carrying out the stabbings, the agency said, but his laptop contained pro-Islamic State propaganda, and he visited extremist websites in the weeks prior to his attack.

A campus police officer trying to stop the attack shot Mohammad to death. On Friday, the university chancellor said the school community was relieved the investigation was over and ready to move on.

Investigators found a photocopy of the black Islamic State flag in Mohammads backpack along with a two-page, handwritten plan detailing his intentions, including taking hostages and killing students and police officers.

U.S. intelligence agencies are increasingly seeing such attacks carried out by small cells or lone actors who watch propaganda videos and self-radicalize  do-it-yourself terrorism, Lisa Monaco, Obamas senior counter-terrorism advisor, said last week at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Many of these recruits have been middle class and seemingly well-adjusted in their communities, she said.

The FBI has investigated ISIL-inspired suspects in all 50 states, she said, using an acronym for Islamic State. And this is not just an American or a Western problem  as weve seen from Nigeria to Indonesia, this is a global problem.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The White House was caught flat-footed and slow to react to Islamic States propaganda campaign, said Alberto Fernandez, who led the forerunner to the Global Engagement Center, called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, from March 2012 to February 2015.

That operation was established in 2011 to coordinate counter-messaging against Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. Back then, Osama bin Laden attempted to recruit and rally followers with hour-long videotaped sermons from remote caves  tactics that now seem as dated as black-and-white TV.

When Islamic State swept into Iraq from Syria during the spring of 2014, it began posting short films online complete with slick jump-cuts and soundtracks. It also had recruiters on social media at all times of the day, trying to lure new followers.

The U.S. governments work on social media looked second-rate by comparison. It tried to compete by posting a minute-long YouTube video entitled Welcome to ISIS Land, using another acronym for Islamic State. The video depicted severed heads, crucifixions, and other executions that the militants had carried out and was widely disparaged for being overtly violent and corny.

Everything we did was on the cheap, Fernandez said. ISIS started a propaganda arms race and they were winning The legacy of ISIS will not be their use of violence. It will be their use of social media, which has forced all other terror groups to step up their games.

White House National Security Council spokesman Emily Horne acknowledged the administrations initial strategy responding to Islamic States messaging blitz wasnt successful and needed to change.

One of the important things we have learned is that the U.S. government is not necessarily the best communicator on these issues for the most vulnerable audiences that we most need to reach, she said.

Unable to compete online, the Pentagon has also tried to wipe out the propagandists.

U.S. warplanes bombed seven facilities Wednesday near Mosul, Iraq, that the Pentagon said were used to produce Islamic State propaganda. And in August, a U.S. drone strike near Raqqah, Syria, killed Junaid Hussain, a British-born propagandist and hacker, who had posted the names, addresses and photos of about 1,300 U.S. military and other officials online and urged followers to attack them.

U.S. Cyber Command, which is responsible for U.S. offensive operations in cyberspace, has also targeted some computer networks and social media accounts.

But stopping that communication has proved an immense challenge, which is why the administration has enlisted Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media and tech companies to block material used to recruit and radicalize online.

Facebook deletes pages or posts from any person or group who posts terrorist material, said Monika Bickert, a company executive. The company also passes tips to the government when an anti-terrorism post goes viral, showing its appeal.

Twitter, which also has a zero-tolerance policy for pro-terrorist tweets, said it had suspended more than 125,000 accounts.

Campaigns looking to compete with Islamic State online can be ineffective, though, because the militants are seeking fellow zealots, not broad Muslim support, said William McCants, an expert on Islamic extremism at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank.

They are trying to polarize Muslims and recruit from the tiny minority who get excited about its messages, he said. Its hard to see how any counter-message -- no matter how well-crafted or well-researched -- could make ISIS any more unpopular. It doesnt matter who the messenger is or how much money they have.

Times staff writers Joseph Serna and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.

Twitter: @wjhenn

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All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced.  19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
Latino groups are not happy with the U.S. House of Representatives passing a resolution granting Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., the right to file an amicus brief opposing President Barack Obama's immigration executive actions.

What House Lawmakers Are Saying

According to Ryan, who introduced the resolution, the amicus brief would represent the entire House of Representatives in an effort to defend the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article I.

"In recent years, the executive branch has been blurring these boundaries, to the point of absolutely overstepping them altogether. As a result, bureaucrats responsible for executing the laws as written are now writing the laws at their whim," said Ryan in defending H.Res.639 and Article I of the Constitution.

"As speaker, I believe the authority of the office that I have been entrusted with by each and every one of you is to protect the authority of this body. I am prepared to make our case," Ryan later said.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that the House resolution is "misguided." She added the resolution attempts to force all lawmakers to block Obama's immigration executive actions, the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the new Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA).

"This amicus brief that Speaker Ryan will file on behalf of the entire House of Representatives not only goes against well-established Constitutional precedents but also against our economic interest. The Congressional Budget Office and numerous other researchers have found that immigration raises average wages for U.S. born workers and grows our economy by billions of dollars," said Sanchez. "In my state of California alone, the President's executive action will generate 130,000 jobs and lift 40,000 Californian children out of poverty."

Shortly after noon, H.Res.639 passed, 234 in favor and 186 against. All House Democrats who were present voted against the resolution, along with five Republicans, including Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Illeana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

Latino Groups Speak Out Against House Resolution

Prior to the vote, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of 40 countrywide Latino advocacy organizations, announced its opposition to the resolution.

NHLA Chair Hector Sanchez, who also serves as executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, compared Ryan to former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, for not allowing immigration reform legislation into the House. Sanchez noted that the House's inaction is what led Obama to move forward with the executive actions in November 2014.

"The true intention of the House leadership is clear: they do not want to act and they do not want the president to act," Sanchez said. "Their preference is the perpetuation of a broken immigration system that tears apart families, keeps people in the shadows, exploits workers, undercuts law-abiding businesses, and deprives our economy of the skilled labor it needs to thrive."

"Rather than waste time on a resolution to weigh in with the Supreme Court on a pending case, the Speaker should bring immigration reform legislation to the floor of the House for debate and a vote," he added.

Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, a non-profit Latino and immigrant civic engagement organizations, said Ryan's resolution is a direct attack on immigration and promotes hate and divisiveness in politics. He added that Obama's executive actions stand on the right side of history, and he is confident DAPA and DACA's extended guidelines will be approved by the Supreme Court.

"Every day that passes without the implementation of the President's programs, there are millions of families of U.S. born citizens that live under the fear of separation and deportation," said Monterroso. "Our community is watching and will hold accountable those who have stood on the way of our families through the ballots in November."

The Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said the group was "outraged" with the resolution's passage. FIRM's Sulma Arias said H.Res.639 advances the GOP's anti-Latino, anti-immigrant, xenophobic agenda and reminded lawmakers that the Latino electorate will play a major key on Election Day this November.

"This November, the Latino and immigrant communities throughout the country will remember those who have been in favor of DACA and DAPA, and those who have been against it. This November there will be 27.3 million Latinos who are eligible to vote and we will do everything in our power to ensure they come out to vote on November 4. Politicians and judges who stand against DAPA and DACA stand against American families and communities," Arias said, adding FIRM will continue to defend Obama's executive actions from politicians "who have been waging a political, hate-filled war against our families."

Ryan's amicus brief comes before the Supreme Court when it starts hearing oral arguments on April 18 about the legality of Obama's 2014 immigration executive actions. The court is scheduled to render a decision in June.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Several Latino groups joined activists, LGBT groups, and others in signing a letter to Hillary Clinton this week, asking the Democratic presidential candidate to fully commit to a plan to end the HIV epidemic by the year 2025.

The Latino Commission on AIDS, Latinos in the Deep South, OASIS-Latino LGBTS Wellness Center, and the Hispanic Health Network were among the groups included in the letter.

The groups sent the letter to the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner after her recent mischaracterization of the role President Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan played in the AIDS crisis. Clinton said that the Reagans started a "national conversation about AIDS and HIV."

"As you have acknowledged over the past several days, in order to realize a viable vision for our future together, the darkest time in our shared history of AIDS must be remembered with accuracy, and we must be able to acknowledge the true heroes and successful strategies amassed in the fight against HIV, both past and present," the letter adds.

Clinton Angered Some With Praise for Reagans in AIDS Fight

Clinton was taken to task after makin the comments and has since issued an apology for the error.

"President Reagan did not utter the words 'AIDS' or 'HIV' publicly until 1985, and his first speech about HIV/AIDS was not given until 1987," the letter stresses. "By which point, over 40,000 people had died of AIDS-related causes."

While acknowledging the former secretary of state's overall record and documented commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS, group members went on to demand more of her.

Among other proposals, the group pushed Clinton to appoint an HIV adviser to her campaign. In addition, the group urged her to meet with HIV community leaders to devise a national plan of attack on the disease, as well as a plan to vastly increase funding for global AIDS programs like the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) over the next several years.

New York City Plan Praised for Direction

As yet another blueprint, organizers pointed to the Ending the Epidemic (ETE) task force appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo two years ago, which is devoted to eradicating the disease in the state by 2020 through expanded HIV testing, early antiretroviral treatment and essential services for those affected by the disease.

"ETE now serves as the foundation for budget and policy priorities for reaching the 2020 goal, and its implementation is underway," the letter adds. "Governor Cuomo's bold commitment sparked national and global interest and action. Since 2014, other U.S. jurisdictions, including Washington State, Colorado, and San Francisco, have seized the opportunity to end their local HIV/AIDS epidemics; and similar efforts are underway in Atlanta, Texas, and Massachusetts."
Weapons involved in the infamous U.S. firearms operation called "Fast and Furious" have been linked to Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the killings of three Mexican police officers.

"Fast and Furious" Weapons Linked to El Chapo

According to a Justice Department summary issued on Tuesday, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have connected a rifle recovered at El Chapo's former hideout before he was taken into custody in January. Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik confirmed that a .50-caliber rifle found at Guzman's Los Mochis residence was associated with the "Fast and Furious" operation.

In a statement, Kadzik wrote that the rifle was purchased in July 2010 by a person identified as a subject of the operation. He added that the ATF had not connected the weapon to other crimes.

Under the "Fast and Furious" operation, which ran from 2006 to 2011, ATF agents allowed narcotics traffickers to illegally buy and sell thousands of firearms so that they could track the weapons back to Mexican drug cartels. However, the controversial operation backfired after it was discovered that some of the guns were being used to kill innocent people along the Arizona-Mexico border, including U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010. The flawed operation also led to a congressional inquiry and the ouster of the U.S. attorney in Phoenix who approved it.

"Fast and Furious" Weapons Linked to Police Killings

It was also recently discovered that another weapon linked to the botched investigation was used last year in a deadly shootout that left three Mexican police officers dead.

A Justice Department summary provided to two Republican congressional committee chairmen Tuesday found that a WASR-10 rifle, which was purchased in a November 2009 transaction as part of the flawed federal gun trafficking operation, was one of three rifles fired in the July 27 assault in the town of Valle de Zaragoza.

"ATF and the (Justice) Department deeply regret that firearms associated with Operation Fast and Furious have been used by criminals in the commission of violent crimes, particularly crimes resulting the death of civilians and law enforcement officers,'' Kadzik said Tuesday in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa and House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah.

"ATF accepts full responsibility for the flawed execution of Fast and Furious, and will continue to support Mexican law enforcement in efforts to recover and identify associated firearms," he added.

The Department of Justice letter goes on to state that 885 firearms purchased by targets of the ATF operation have been recovered as of January of this year. Of those weapons, 415 were found in the U.S., while 470 "appear to have been recovered in Mexico.''
Woman Charged With Staple-Gunning Her Mom's Political Opponent In The Head

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Mar 18, 2016 3:30PM



Jessica Soto and Bradley Fichter (Chicago Police Department)



Eds. note: this post contains a graphic image.

Illinois House Representative candidate Robert Zwolinski said that he was viciously attacked earlier this month by two people putting up posters for his opponent Rep. Cynthia Soto outside his Noble Square campaign office. Zwolinski says he was hit in the head with a bottle, kicked and shot at with a staple gun, and he shared a gruesome picture as proof. However, the attorney representing Zwolinski's alleged attackers said that Zwolinski started the fight as "a media stunt... I think that he might have used the staple gun on himself.

Now, prosecutors have charged two people in the attack on Zwolinski, and there's a twist: one is the daughter of incumbent Rep. Cynthia Soto.

Bradley Fichter and Jessica Soto, both 26, are being charged with three felony counts of aggravated battery in connection with the March 6 attack, according to a release from the Chicago Police Department. Fichter, who claimed that Zwolinski attacked him in a police report, has also been charged with filing a false police report, also a felony.

The attack happened in the 800 block of N. Ashland at 9:15 p.m. Police say that a verbal altercation broke out and escalated. Fichter and Soto struck Zwolinski in the head with a bottle and "a metal object" (the staple, probably). The pair then fled the scene. They were identified later and placed into custody on March 16. Zwolinski told Chicagoist after the attack that the woman attacked him first and she was "screeching like a velociraptor."

Since Zwolinski came forward with details about the attack, Rep. Cynthia Soto kept her seat, beating him easily with 79.61% of the vote.

Here's the photo Zwolinski tweeted after the attack.

Politics is a contact sport. Apparently that's literally the case. pic.twitter.com/wIlFIP366W  Robert Zwolinski (@BobZ_Chicago4th) March 7, 2016

Related:

Politician Says He Was Staple-Gunned In The Head By Opponent's Supporters [Graphic Photo]

Staple Gun Assault On House Candidate A 'Media Stunt,' Defense Lawyer Says


Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla is continuing his campaign for congressional leaders to move forward with legislation that will give the U.S. commonwealth solutions for its debt and health crises.

A Debt & Medicare Crises, Now Zika Virus Crisis

Garcia Padilla is reportedly meeting with congressional lawmakers on Capitol Hill ahead of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's March 31 deadline, when select policymakers are expected to submit recommendations solving Puerto Rico's $72 billion debt. The governor is hoping for legislation that will give his government a "broad" restructuring framework and address the faltering health care system affecting the island's 3.5 million U.S. citizens.

During a press call on March 16, Garcia Padilla explained the island's crises has produced more problems including the inability to pay for new emergency measures against the Zika virus. According to the governor, citing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Zika virus may affect up to 20 percent of the territory's population by the end of this year. Garcia Padilla said the Zika virus is the latest issue of the island's worsening humanitarian crisis.

In regards to its debt problems, Garcia Padilla said $50 million in 2014 tax refunds to citizens have yet to be paid and delayed approximately $2 billion to vendors, which range from the gasoline supplier to the commonwealth's police department, the food provider to the prison system and clean both public schools and hospitals.

The "Tools" Puerto Rico Requests

It's not the first time Garcia Padilla visited and called on congressional lawmakers to act for Puerto Rico. Last December, in Washington, D.C., he explained about the "tools' the island needs, including the same Chapter 9 bankruptcy rights as the 50 U.S. states, and reiterated that the territory is not requesting a bailout.

He has criticized the U.S. Congress for playing a role in the island's crises, acknowledging the legislative body's move to eliminate the competitive advantages for American enterprises in Puerto Rico in 1996, which led to hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just leaving the commonwealth, but going to other countries such as Ireland and Singapore.

The governor also called on improved Medicare and Medicare programs. Residents in Puerto Rico do pay the same Medicaid and Medicare payments, but receive less in return compared to mainland-U.S. residents.

President Barack Obama did make a number of proposals for Puerto Rico in his 2017 fiscal year budget. As his budget plan noted, Puerto Rico's economy declined by more than 10 percent since 2006 and encountered over 250,000 job losses. In addition, more than 45 percent of the island's residents, who are born as U.S. citizens, live in poverty. Puerto Rico also has an unemployment rate of 12.5 percent, which is twice the mainland U.S. average.

Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided Puerto Rico with an additional $7.3 billion since July 1, 2011, the aforementioned fund is expected to run out by 2019's end. In Obama's budget plan, he proposes approximately $30 billion in Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico that would last for the next nine years.

Must Read: Declining Population, Jobs in Mainland US Linked to Puerto Rico's Troubles

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Bumble Bee Foods and Tri-Union Seafoods have taken the initiative in recalling canned chunk light tuna because of "process deviations" that could pose serious health threats to consumers.

The recalled sets were produced in February and March 2016 and distributed throughout the country.

Bumble Bee, Tri-Union Leads the Recall

"Bumble Bee recalled specific codes of canned Chunk Light Tuna produced in Chicken of the Sea's Georgia production facility, a third-party supplier for Bumble Bee," said Stave Mavity, the company's senior vice president.

In total, Bumble Bee is including 31,579 cases of this specific kind of tuna in the widespread recall with UPC codes of 8660000020, 8660000021 and 8660000736. Tri-Union also confirmed the recall of 2,745 cases of Chicken of the Sea brand with the codes 0 4800000195 5 and 0 4800000245 7.

Consumers who want to reach out to the companies may contact Bumble Bee at 888-820-1947 and Tri-Union Seafoods at 866-600-2681.

What's Behind the Sudden Recall

Although there have been no illnesses reported regarding the tuna released, both Bumble Bee Foods and Tri-Union Seafoods are opting to choose the safer route of voluntarily recalling the canned seafood from the shelves.

According to Tri-Union, their decision to recall the products was due to the possibility of the canned tuna being undercooked in relation to an equipment malfunction during its production in the Georgia facility.

"These deviations were part of the commercial sterilization process and could result in contamination by spoilage organisms or pathogens, which could lead to life-threatening illness if consumed," the two companies explained in separate statements.

Despite their acts of caution, Bumble Bee was quick to assure consumers.

"The recall is being initiated out of an abundance of caution due to the possible under-processing of the affected products," Bumble Bee said, adding that they are working to get the products recalled as soon as possible.

Bumble Bee Planned Acquisition

The past year, Bumble Bee Foods was poised to be acquired by fellow seafood brand Thai Union Group Public Co. Ltd. However, last December the latter announced that the two companies mutually agreed to terminate the deal due to antitrust objections by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thiraphong Chansiri, president and CEO of Thai Union explained that the approval is now unlikely to push through.

Chansiri said that the company has poured their efforts in the acquisition adding, "However, we also recognize that the clearance is now unlikely due to a higher level of complexity in the process. We have decided to focus our energy on our existing business. Thai Union remains committed to the North American seafood market."
President Obama is standing by his decision to nominate a Supreme Court justice that would fill in the vacancy created by the demise of Justice Antonin Scalia. He picked appeals court judge Merrick B. Garland, who is a seasoned legal expert and has earned the admiration of some politicians, Democrats or Republicans, throughout the course of his career.

"I've selected a nominee who is widely recognized not only as one of America's sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence," the president said. "These qualities, and his long commitment to public service, have earned him the respect and admiration of leaders from both sides of the aisle."

But, it seems like the GOP is also bent on their stand not to consider the nomination. The Republicans have reiterated that they are not in favor of a Supreme Court nomination until after the November elections when the next president can make his own endorsement.

"The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "The next president may also nominate someone very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy."

His Credentials

Prior to his nomination, Garland was the chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. He has been a part of the Justice Department early in his career and rose to the Chief Judge position in 2013. He was first nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals by former President Bill Clinton in 1995 and was confirmed in 1997. He is a Harvard College alumnus where he graduated summa cum laude in 1974.

Had Republican Backing in the Past

Back in 1997, Garland's confirmation for his appeals court position was made by the Senate with a 76-23 vote, 32 of the affirmatives coming from the GOP side. Some of the Republican senators lauded him in the past as one of the best options available.

During the Senate debate at that time, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch praised Garland for his "intelligence and his scholarship," as well as his "impressive" legal experience.

Personal Life

Garland is Jewish and will be joining three others in the court that is mostly Roman Catholic. He has been married to Lynn Rosenman Garland for almost three decades and the couple has two daughters, Rebecca and Jessica. Lynn's grandfather was a New York State Supreme Court justice.

Highlight of Career

He was in charge of the Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995, which was considered the most fatal terrorist attack in the country at the time.

Supreme Court Nomination

The recent nomination of Garland was preceded by the first one back in 2010. President Obama was looking for a replacement for the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, but it was Justice Elena Kagan whom he chose.
Donald Trump has a double digit lead over Ted Cruz in Arizona heading into Tuesday's Republican primary and is locked in a tight battle with the Texas senator as the favorite among GOP voters in Utah.

Trump now leads Cruz in Arizona 31 to 19 percent. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is tied with Marco Rubio, who has already dropped out of the race, at 10 percent.

Trump Scores Endorsements

Trump is also hoping to ride the recent endorsement of anti-immigration Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio to even wider appeal among the border state electorate. The candidate has also bagged the endorsement of former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, another immigration hardliner.

Still, given that 30 percent of the state's voters remain undecided and late voters have typically broken against Trump this campaign season, Cruz remains hopeful.

Meanwhile, a recent Utah Policy poll found Cruz leading the field at 18 percent, followed by Rubio at 17 percent and Trump at 13 percent. Meanwhile, 15 percent of all voters said they remain undecided.

The poll also found Cruz scoring exceedingly well among those who describe themselves as "very conservative," earnering 41 percent of that demographic to Rubio's 18 percent and Trump's 15 percent.

Trump, Clinton Widen Leads

On the Democratic side, overall party front-runner Hillary Clinton leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders among democratic voters 51 to 44 percent.

The picture brightens even more for both Trump and Clinton based on a snapshot of the upcoming New York primary on April 19.

A new Emerson poll shows Trump racing out to 64 percent of the GOP vote, leading Cruz by a staggering 52-point margin. The survey also finds Kasich received absolutely no bounce from his recent home state victory and is stuck at just 1 percent.

Trump also has the highest favorable rating among Republican voters in New York, with 71 percent of voters viewing him favorably against 23 percent who have a negative image of him. By comparison, Cruz's numbers in the state are 52 percent to 44 percent, and Kasich is at 54 percent to 34 percent.

Clinton's lead over Sanders in New York is nearly as big. The former first lady is registering 71 percent of the democratic vote to Sanders' 23 percent, accounting for a 48-point cushion over her liberal challenger.

The former secretary of state leads among some of the most important demographic groups, including Hispanics (85 to 8 percent), African-Americans (72 to 22 percent), women (73 to 20 percent) and men (66 to 29 percent).

As he has throughout much of the election season, Sanders leads among younger voters 53 to 40 percent.

When it comes to potential general election match-ups, the poll shows both Clinton and Sanders besting Trump in the state by an average of 18 points, while Cruz loses to Clinton by an even wider margin of 31 points.

Among Democrats, the issues considered most important are the economy (29 percent) and race relations (18 percent), while dissatisfaction with government (47 percent) and the state of the economy (29 percent) top the list of Republican concerns.

Hispanics Play Pivotal Role in New York Electorate

A recent Pew Research study found Hispanics now comprise 13 percent of eligible voters in New York, with 1.8 million Latinos eligible to cast their ballots in 2016. Rising numbers of Latinos suggest that the views expressed by each of the front-running candidates on immigration could go a long way in determining who actually owns the state come general election season.

Several media outlets recently reported Latinos across the country are actively seeking to become registered voters in order to cast ballots against Trump in light of his vow to deport 11 million immigrants.

Clinton, on the other hand, has pledged to legislatively tackle immigration reform within her first 100 days in office.
The lower house of Congress in Chile has approved a proposal that lifts a ban on abortion in limited circumstances. The draft was submitted by the government of president Michelle Bachelet which allows the practice of abortion when the fetus is not viable, there is a health risk for the mother, and in cases of rape.

Marco Antonio Nunez, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, said it was "incredible" that the motion was passed. Telesur TV reported that lawmaker Karol Cariola of the Communist Party called the passing of the bill "a historic day" for Chileans. Cariola also commended the government for letting women make their own decisions.

The proposal that lifts abortion ban was approved by 66 to 44 votes. The government of Chile, which evaluated the bill 14 months ago, managed to get the approval of several members of the conservative Christian Democrats. The surveys suggest that most of the people in Chile approve the change.

Chile is one of the seven Latin American nations where abortion is still illegal, says Strait Times. Other countries include Haiti, Nicaragua, Surinam, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. Meanwhile, Guyana, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and Cuba allowed abortions in cases other than incest, a risk to a woman's health, and rape. Mexico City has also legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks, same as Uruguay which voted narrowly to lift a ban on abortion.

According to BBC, despite being predominantly Catholic, Chile allowed the practice of abortion until 1989. However, General Augusto Pinochet banned such practice in one of the last acts of his military government.

In 2013, President Michelle Bachelet vowed to reform the abortion ban in Chile if elected for a second term. The current administration argued over a year about the abortion bill, facing stiff oppositions even from within the Chile's ruling coalition.
The Tennessee Student Free Speech Protection Act, as proposed by Republican Senator Martin Daniel, would extend the rights of the First Amendment to everyone, including ISIS members recruiting for new blood on university ground. That inclusion effectively removed the bill from consideration.

Daniel of Knoxville set up a firestorm on the age-old tension between security and freedom when he was asked in the middle of his presentation if the bill would protect radicals like ISIS recruiters. Representative John DeBerry, a Democrat from Memphis, fielded the question. The Tennesseean quoted Daniel's reply as follows: "Yes. So long as it doesn't disrupt the proceedings on that campus. Yes sir. They can recruit people for any other organization or any other cause. I think it's just part of being exposed to differing viewpoints."

Minutes after Daniel's ISIS-related comments, House Education Administration and Planning Subcommittee Chairman Mark White, R-Germantown, removed the bill from further consideration.

In its backgrounder, Yahoo News reports that Daniel's bill was part of an overall strategy by the GOP to temper overzealous actions made in behalf of certain ideologies that had violated constitutional freedoms. The University of Tennessee in particular had come under fire recently because some of its officers had championed the use of gender-free pronouns and the abolition of holiday-themed parties on campus. A court also found it guilty of discrimination in 2010 for prohibiting a Christian minister to hold a talk.

Deberry, however, said that Daniel's proposed bill had gone beyond safety parameters. He said, "You can't have a nation and keep it safe and keep it sane unless there are some rules and some norms."

A day after the hearing, Daniel released a statement saying that he fundamentally disagrees with ISIS' ideology and without hesitation condemns its terrorist acts. As reported by Local8Now, Daniel also clarified his stand, saying that he extends free speech rights to everyone, in so far as it does not lead to the creation of "an imminent threat to anyone, including [the] country."
China and Taiwan's eight-year diplomatic truce ended after the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Gambian counterpart Neneh MacDouall-Gaye signed a Joint Communique in Beijing, which is a signal of the official establishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Here is an excerpt from the Communique statement: "The People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of The Gambia...have agreed and decided to resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level as of the date of the signing of this Joint Communique."

The renewed national reunifications of the two countries were fortified when they also agreed to exchange ambassadors. China.org reported that the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations allows the two countries to provide necessary assistance for the establishment of embassies and the performance of their respective duties on a reciprocal basis.

China and Gambia are now official allies; the Chinese government supports the Gambian government in its efforts to safeguard national sovereignty and develop the economy.

During the signing of the Joint Communique, Wang Yi stated that "From here on, China and Gambia's relations have turned over a new leaf...The early resumption of ties accords with the basic interests of both countries and conforms to the trend of the times and general trend of the development of China-Africa friendship and cooperation," as reported in Reuters

According to Channel News Asia, the two countries began their unofficial diplomatic truce in 2008 when its leaders signed a series of landmark trade and economic agreements. This was after Taiwan's election of president Ma Ying-jeou. That time, China was still trying to convince Taiwan of its friendly intentions after decades of hostility and suspicion.

Gambia had recognised mainland China as an ally from 1974 to 1995, before moving over to Taiwan's side. This small, West-African state had silently witnessed China's and Taiwan's hostile treatment towards each others for decades. Gambia's cut relations with Taiwan last 2013 triggered further hostility, which also caused China to hold back from establishing formal ties.

The two countries often tried to poach each other's allies by sending generous aid packages in front of the leaders of developing nations. But the Joint Communique would hopefully end this feud, as the Chinese Foreign Minister said "it hoped China and Taiwan would not engage in target competition," in a report by the Channel News Asia.
The opposition party of the current government in Niger will not recognize the initial results of the presidential elections. This is despite the authority's claim that the election was within international standards.

According to Amadou Babacar Cisse, the spokesman for the COPA 2016 opposition coalition, they will not recognize their opponent's proclamation so far. The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) was the one who announced the results. There was a total of 7.5 million eligible voters across the country into the Sahara desert where there is a growing terrorist attack from the jihadist of Nigeria, Libya, and Mali.

It will be the second term of President Mahamadou Issoufou who faces three main challengers in the election. He said that he is confident of a quick victory in the first round of the poll as per Yahoo.

But according to opposition spokesman, Cisse, they are ready to ask their supporters to resist the victory of Issoufou. He added that the results came in from fake polling stations because of the grave passivity of the CENI. Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou denied the allegations though, claiming the elections met international standards. He added that if they lose then they will leave but if they win, then they will definitely stay.

A stronghold of supporters for the jailed former prime minister Hama Amadou in the capital of Niamey said that he got the majority of votes in the first round. According to Fox News, he has been detained since November for his alleged involvement in a baby-trafficking scheme which he has denied.

The former leader had been campaigning behind bars. As reported by My Fox Boston, the opposition even announced that Amadou will not participate. They said that the CENI is responsible for validating election results and are clearly working with the current government to ensure its victory.

CENI has so far announced only 10 percent of the more than 300 voting precincts which makes it hard to create a definite conclusion. The African Union deployed 40 observers and said that it was satisfied with how the organization handled the election despite some delays. Niger is considered as one of the poorest countries in the world despite its abundance of uranium, oil, and coal.
Botswana's Court of Appeals backed the request of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual of Botswana (LEGABIBO) organization for official recognition. The court, on Wednesday, dismissed the Home Affairs Minister Edwin Batshu's rejection of LEGABIBO's application.

On an article published by IOL, Batshu argued that the application might encourage the LGBT community to break the law. Homosexuality is an offense punishable by law under Botswana's penal code of 1965.

However, the court refers to the rejection of registration as unconstitutional. Judge Ian Kirby, head of the nation's Court of Appeals, said in a report by Reuters, that the government's move to ban the group "interferes with the most fundamental way with the respondents' right to form an association to protect and promote their interest." Kirby emphasized that the group has the right to be allowed to campaign for changes in the anti-gay laws. Kirby also said, "That concern or reason for refusal was irrational on the evidence before us, so there can be no question of his decision being necessary in the interests of public order."

The decision handed down by Kirby from a five-judge bench upheld a High Court decision on 2014 to allow the applicants to assemble and associate under the name LEGABIBO. It was a decision supporting the rights of the LGBT community in Africa's nations which are mostly anti-gay. Botswana is supposed to be a democratic nation yet gay rights are highly dismissed and homosexual acts are prohibited.

Section 13 of Botswana's Constitution titled Protection of freedom of assembly and association states that ,"...no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of assembly and association, that is to say, his right to assemble freely and associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to trade unions or other associations for the protection of his interests." Furthermore, the section also states that, "Nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held inconsistent with or in contravention of this section..."

Cindy Kelemi, a worker of a local health advocacy group, BONELA, pointed out that there are still so many things to be done to support the rights of the LGBT community.

President Ian Khama of Botswana, however, is in contrast with the idea of promoting homosexual rights. Khama upholds an anti-gay agenda which firmly emphasizes the unlawfulness of homosexual act. His government refuses to distribute condoms to prisons. Health groups are pointing this as a reason for the country's position as one of the leader in the worlds' highest rates of HIV infection.
The United Kingdom's Prime Minister, David William Donald Cameron, claims victory for feminists as his proposal of removing tax on tampons was supported at the European Union during the Brussel's summit.

The European Union agreed on the plans of the European Commission, its executive arm, on giving its 28 member states the option of completely removing a tax on tampons. Money Control reported that the proposals were for increased member state flexibility to reduce Value Added Tax to zero for feminine sanitary products.

In the Telegraph, the Conservative MPs that supported to end the tampon tax said that there is a possibility for the deal to be vetoed in the European Parliament and that it could be delayed because of plans to back a Labour amendment ending the tax despite the wishes of the prime ministers. But the MP's have vowed to defeat the government over the European Union taxes on sanitary products.

Uncertainty remains as to when this proposal can be effective. But the European Commission was able to confirm in BBC that it will publish its "Action Plan" on VAT in a few days.

There is currently a five percent VAT on female sanitary products such as tampons and sanitary towels - which feminists view as unfair. Eurosceptics, the opposition of EU, noted that the razors, which were mainly for men, were exempted from VAT. Reuters added that, Cameron fought for the inclusion of tampons in the 1970s VAT waiver of Zero-rating to the many essential items like food and medicine. Those products that were not classed as essentials received a minimum five percent VAT rate, as EU required.

EU has not allowed its member states from adding new items to the VAT waiver, but Cameron was able to persuade them to add tampons to the list.

UK's Chancellor George Osbourne has also pledged to spend the proceeds for the tax on women's charities. In BBC, he said "we'd use the money to benefit women's charities and we've already distributed 17m to good causes across the country."

"We'd fight for agreement to reduce the VAT rate to zero, and tonight all European leaders have welcomed our plan to do just that. We've achieved what no British government has even tried to achieve," Osbourne added.
Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Assassin" won eight awards at the 10th annual Asian Film Awards, held yesterday in Macao, including best director, best film and best actress.



A poster of Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Assassin." [Photo: mtime.com]

Taiwanese actress Shu Qi played the leading role of a female assassin in the Tang Dynasty era sent back to her home province by her mentor to kill its governor, who also happens to be her lover. In her acceptance speech for the best actress award, Shu said, "Thank you director Hou Hsiao-hsien, thank you for 'The Assassin,' and thank you to the bandages and medicine that helped get me through the two years of filming and production."

In addition to best film, best director, best actress, and best supporting actress, "The Assassin" won four other awards. This made it the most awarded film ever in Asian Film Awards history, breaking the record held by Wong Kar-wai's "The Grandmaster," which took home seven awards in 2014.

Besides the Asian Film Awards, director Hou has also won a string of international awards, including best director at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival for "The Assassin."

Other notable handouts include South Korean star Lee Byung-hun, who won best actor for his role in the political thriller "The Inside Men," beating Chinese director Feng Xiaogang who played a leading role in "Mr. Six." Though Feng lost the best actor award this year, and has lost multiple best director awards in the past, he did receive the Asian Film Awards 10th Anniversary Special Award last night.

Best supporting actress award goes to Zhou Yun for "The Assassin" while best supporting actor was handed to Asano Tadanobu for the Japanese film "Journey to the Shore."

Best newcomer was given to Jessie Li for her performance in the widely acclaimed thriller "Port of Call," which also won best editing award.

The Chinese art-house romantic film "Mountains May Depart" won best screenplay, while India's "Bajirao Mastani" won best visual effects.

Hong Kong martial arts choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, who has worked on films like "The Matrix","Kill Bill," "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" and the more recent "Ip Man 3," was given this year's lifetime achievement award. Veteran Japanese actress Kirin Kiki was also given the trophy.

The awards were organized by the Hong Kong International Film Festival and were hosted at Macao's Venetian resort. Thirty-six films from nine Asian countries were competing for the top honors.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
'Madam Secretary' season 2 episode 17 airs this Sunday, March 20. The said episode will feature Elizabeth and Alison on college campus tour. But Elizabeth ends up facing protesters.

'Madam Secretary' season 2 episode 17 was supposedly aired last Sunday. But the show took a short hiatus and will continue airing on upcoming Sunday, March 20. The change in schedule took place due to Academy Awards, according to CarterMatt.

'Madam Secretary' season 2 episode 17 will see Elizabeth with Alison on a college campus tour. Alison is searching for the perfect post-secondary education school. But the day is seemingly ruined because of the protesters. Elizabeth and Alison were ambushed by groups protesting a Chilean mining corporation.

As seen in the trailer, Elizabeth will try to answer their questions. She said that the US government will not interfere. As for Madam Secretary, she has to get used to this instances, which includes dealing with strong opinionated persons, as long as she is still in that position.

According to TVOM, Alison will realize how difficult her mother's job is. She may also realize the life of children who have parents working in the government.

Henry, on the other hand, will see things unfold in a different way than before as he takes on his new job. 'Madam Secretary' season 2 episode 17 will also focus on Henry's search for Disah's third wife, Hijriyyah. He and Jane will work with the rest of the Murphy station team.

As per 'Madam Secretary' season 2 episode 17 'Higher Learning' synopsis: "While Elizabeth accompanies Alison on a college campus tour, she is ambushed by protestors about a Chilean mining operation involving the U.S. and Chilean governments. Also, Henry, Jane and Jose Campos (Carlos Gomez), attempt to track down Jibral Disah's third wife, Hijriyyah."

Will Henry and team find Disah's wife? Will Alison and Elizabeth have a good day despite the protesters? Share us your thoughts below for 'Madam Secretary' season 4 episode 17.
Ding Lei, head of LeEco's car development arm, delivers a keynote speech at a press conference on March 16, 2016 in Beijing. [chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese Internet giants Baidu Inc and LeEco Holdings Co Ltd are squaring up at the start of what could become a classic race to develop the world's first commercial self-driving vehicle.

Just hours after LeEco, formerly LeTV Holdings Co Ltd, unveiled details of its car-making strategy, a Baidu executive said on Thursday it is set to test-drive the company's first driverless vehicle in the United States.

Beijing-based LeEco was the first to touch the throttle. It appointed Ni Kai, a former head of Baidu's auto-driving development team, to lead its auto project.

LeEco on Wednesday also announced it was partnering with six top Chinese automotive manufacturersincluding BAIC Motor, BYD Co and Dongfeng Motorto embed a LeEco-developed in-car operating system.

Ding Lei, head of LeEco's automobile arm, said teaming up with traditional carmakers will help the company expand its products and services in the automobile market, before the auto-driving era arrives.

"Our goal is to build an open platform that every player in the industry can join in," said Ding.

LeEco is scheduled to show off a concept self-driving vehicle at an automobile expo in Beijing next month.

Baidu, meanwhile, has also been quick off the grid to promote its ambitious strategy. The company's chief scientist Andrew Ng was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying the 16-year-old online search provider is set to test its auto-driving technology in the US, a major step toward rolling out its first car available for commercial market by 2018.

Late last year, Baidu tested its technology in Beijing when a heavily modified BMW sedan performed a test run on a busy highway.

Baidu's top executives are lobbying Chinese and US legislatures to support the development and commercial use of self-driving technologies. Robin Li, its founder and CEO, urged Chinese authorities earlier this month to implement regulations and technology standards on self-driving cars.

Appearing at a hearing hosted by the US Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday, Ng also called on the US government to remove certain regulations that hinder the commercialization of robot cars.

Yang Huachao, an analyst with China Galaxy Securities Co, said the auto-driving market is likely to really start accelerating around 2020, when Baidu, LeEco, Google Inc, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and other tech companies all introduce their retail models.

"The auto-driving sector is a long-term investment opportunity.

"Companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and LeEco were among the first developers of the technology, and are likely to start earning from it a little earlier than others," said Yang.

A report from Beijing-based broker Essence Securities Co Ltd said likely support from the government will fuel auto-driving market growth over the next several years.

But it also warned of the possibility that some companies could fail to deliver the vehicles on time due to technical difficulties.

By 2025, approximately 20 million self-driving cars will be built worldwide, and the market could be worth up to US$1.9 trillion, according to consultancies Juniper Research and McKinsey & Co.
Eight rural migrant workers are sentenced to imprisonment for disrupting public service in Langzhong, an ancient city in southwest China's Sichuan province, March 16, 2016. [Photo: thepaper.cn]

The conviction of eight migrant workers for coercing a police officer and disrupting public services has provoked heated debate online.

The People's Court of Langzhong in southwest China's Sichuan Province sentenced the workers to six to eight months in jail in connection to an incident last August, when 100 workers gathered outside the offices of a real estate development company demanding unpaid wages.

After failing to get their money, they blocked access to a local tourist attraction preventing visitors from entering. Four of the workers then grabbed a police officer, and forced him to go with them to government offices.

Photos released by the court showed the convicted workers, flanked by police, on a stage as an official read out the verdict.

China's Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly announced in 1988 that it would be illegal to parade the accused or convicted through the streets.

Many have commented online that the open trial showed no respect for the workers' personal dignity.
Toyota C-HR to arrive in US market by spring 2017

Mar 18, 2016, 12:34pm ET

The US production version will be revealed sometime later this year.

Toyota has announced a US launch window for its C-HR concept, a unique "five door coupe" that was recently shown in closer-to-production form in Geneva.

The US production version will be revealed later this year before arriving in showrooms in spring 2017 for the 2018 model year. The compact high-riding model will likely take center stage as the Japanese automaker retires Scion and attempts to give its core Toyota brand a more youthful image.

"The style and substance of the production C-HR will make it a winner in the hottest segment in the industry," said Toyota VP Bill Fay.

The production crossover will be built on the modular Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) platform, sold with traditional powertrains and a gasoline-electric hybrid system repurposed from the Prius. Front- and all-wheel drive will be offered, though the company has not yet confirmed technical details for the US-bound edition.

The C-HR will be positioned below the RAV4, serving as Toyota's entry to the mini-CUV segment. The company appears to believe the C-HR's unique styling will give it an edge against the Honda HR-V and other rivals.

Live images by Ronan Glon.
Conservation officials in New Zealand are claiming an early win in the battle to save one of the world's most endangered birds from extinction.

This year could see the most successful breeding year in the history of the species recovery program for the kakapo, the critically endangered flightless giant parrot, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said Friday.

Only 125 kakapo, which are nocturnal and found only in New Zealand, are known to exist and they are famous for their character, rarity and strange appearance.

"So far this season, 42 out of 54 female kakapo have nested, with 28 chicks alive and well and another 19 fertile eggs still to hatch," Barry said in a statement.

"Two of the females have even managed to produce two clutches of eggs after their first clutch was taken for artificial incubation to ensure their safety."

Kakapo last bred in 2014, with six chicks successfully raised, and the previous record breeding season was in 2009 when 22 chicks were raised.

Some birds inevitably would not survive and infertility rates were high, but all the indications were that this year would break the 2009 record, Barry said.

"Our nation almost lost the kakapo to introduced pests brought in by Europeans. If this season continues its successful start, by the middle of this year there could potentially be more kakapo in New Zealand than any time in the last 50 years."

The birds are housed on three predator free islands in the north and south of the country.

The Department of Conservation recovery program used ground-breaking science to help increase the kakapo population, including genetic mapping, artificial insemination and automated radio tracking technology, said Barry.

When the program started in 1995, the kakapo population was just 49.

Earlier this month, New Zealand scientists announced the kakapo would become the world's first species to have genome sequencing of all surviving members in a bid to understand its genetic variation and improve breeding strategies.

Historically a widespread species, kakapo can live for decades, but their numbers declined rapidly after European settlement with the loss of habitat and the introduction of predators such as rats, cats and stoats.
The Allentown Fire Department battled a row-home fire Thursday night on the city's East Side.

It was reported shortly after 8 p.m. at 224 S. Carlisle St., a three-story end unit in the row, fire Capt. John Christopher confirmed.

"Heavy smoke was seen coming from what would be the third floor," he said of initial reports.

One firefighter was taken to an area hospital for observation, Christopher said; he was unaware of any immediate reports of injuries to occupants.

The American Red Cross was responding to assist residents of the multi-unit building.

Firefighters battled the fire for about 90 minutes, with a second alarm called in almost immediately to increase manpower at the scene, Christopher said. It was knocked shortly before 10 p.m. The fire department continued after that to deal with hot spots, he said.

Firefighters rescued two dogs from the second floor, according to emergency radio broadcasts.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Frustrated with the deterioration of a prominent South Side Bethlehem building, the city is trying to get the old Goodman Furniture building declared blighted.

Bethlehem's blight designation committee has twice certified the building at 30 E. Third St. blighted as city rules require.

It was then to be sent to the city planning commission but building owner Alvin Kanofsky, a physics professor at Lehigh University, appealed to Northampton County Court, said Alicia Miller Karner, city community and economic development director.

The city prevailed in court this week and the blight designation should go before the planning commission in April, Karner said.

If the commission declares the property blighted, the city would make an offer to purchase the property.

If Kanofsky does not respond, the city would begin eminent domain proceedings, Karner said.

Kanofsky did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment.

The building has sat vacant for more than 25 years and many think it is an eyesore. The city code enforcement office has a 3-inch-thick file on the building

Karner is most concerned currently about the crumbling stucco on the facade.

"We're afraid it is going to hurt somebody," she said.

The city is in the process of appraising the building.

Karner has said Kanofsky has a long history of appealing Bethlehem Code Board of Appeals decisions, leading to court battles.

Code violations on the building date at least to 1989, and include a leaking roof, broken windows, foul odors and brick deterioration, according to city records. Kanofsky has made some repairs over the years, the records show.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Paul Serrano Paul Serrano III.jpg

Paul Serrano, of Slatington, wants to be resentenced for murder.

(Courtesy photo)

A gang member who shot and killed a 15-year-old Bethlehem boy in a case of mistaken identity wants to be resentenced for the crime.

Paul "Bam Bam" Serrano III, formerly of Slatington, previously pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2006 shooting death of Kevin Muzila, an eighth-grader at Northeast Middle School.

Serrano was 17 at the time of the crime. He argues in court papers that because of his age, the sentence of life imprisonment without the chance of parole amounts to cruel punishment, a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.

His attorney, Matthew Potts, filed the papers Friday in Northampton County Court.

Serrano's request for resentencing is the latest in a string of similar requests following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that juveniles could not automatically receive life-without-parole sentences due to their immaturity.

Another teen killer - Qu'eed Batts, who was 14 and living in Phillipsburg when he gunned down Clarence "C.J." Edwards in 2006 in Easton - brought a similar argument before Northampton County Court in 2014 and lost. Batts' case last year went before an appellate court, which upheld the life-without-parole sentence.

In the Serrano case, prosecutors said he sought to carry out a gang order to kill a rival heroin dealer to protect street territory. But on Dec. 18, 2006, he instead fatally shot Muzila at the doorstep of the boy's home in the first block of West Union Boulevard after mistaking Muzila for the targeted dealer.

Serrano, now 27, is serving his sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview in central Pennsylvania.

Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Colonial Regional police car generic

Colonial Regional police searched a Hanover Township, Northampton County, home where they said an informant had bought drugs twice before. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

A Bethlehem-area man faces charges after a police search allegedly turned up marijuana and cocaine in his Northampton County home.

Colonial Regional police on Friday searched Jeremy Thomas Hagen's house in the 1300 block of Oakwood Drive in Hanover Township, where Hagen had allegedly sold marijuana to a police informant twice this month.

Fifty grams of marijuana were found in Friday's search, along with eight various smoking devices, a small bag of cocaine, two scales, a metal grinder, three cellphones and a ledger, police said in an affidavit. Hagen allegedly admitted to drug possession.

Hagen, whose age was redacted in court documents, is charged with five counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, four counts of possession and two counts of criminal use of a communication facility. His bail was set at $10,000.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Crash ruled accidental; viewing next week for Wilson woman

Samantha Hendershot remembers being a new sixth-grader at then-Philip F. Lauer Middle School in Wilson Borough and not having many friends.

Haylee Morgan Rosenberg (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

But when it came time for lunch and Hendershot had no place to sit, Haylee Morgan Rosenberg took her hand and told her, "My friends are your friends," Hendershot recalled Rosenberg saying.

"I was the girl who was always picked on and Haylee changed that," Hendershot said Thursday night. "She brought me in and made sure I was welcome."

Both 2013 graduates of Wilson Area High School, Hendershot said she never imagined the trip last summer to Point Pleasant would be their last vacation together.

Rosenberg was one of two people pronounced dead after the 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo in which they were riding struck a 2008 GMC Sierra pickup, police said. The driver of the Sierra was also pronounced dead at the scene.

Pennsylvania State Police at Fern Ridge were continuing to investigate what caused the crash about 1:30 a.m. on Route 115 less than a mile north of Sugar Hollow Road in Chestnuthill Township, Monroe County.

Rosenberg was with friends headed for a late-night snack, family members said Thursday night.

Police identified the driver of the Jeep as 21-year-old Trevor Matthew Roberts, of Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, and the pickup's driver as 26-year-old Nicholas Hicks, of Effort, Pennsylvania.

Autopsies are planned Friday morning to try to determine the cause and manner of the deaths.

Rosenberg was the front-seat passenger in the Jeep. The back-seat passengers -- Brian Robert Mathious, 21, of Effort, and Joshua Jesse Mann, 19, of Nazareth -- suffered moderate injuries in the crash, according to police.

Rosenberg leaves behind her parents, Rita and Joe Cramer, both of Wilson Borough, and siblings Scott Oliver, Mariah Rosenberg, Brandon Mayberry, Justin Mayberry and Joseph Cramer.

Services are being handled by the Strunk Funeral Home.

'Full of life'

Rita Cramer and Tracey DeRohn Rigsby, Rosenberg's aunt, described the 21-year-old with long blonde hair and blue eyes as simply "full of life."

She was popular, hanging out with friends in her free time. She worked at Keystone Snacks and was a cat lover, Cramer said.

A group of about five girls who grew up with Rosenberg gathered at the Cramers' Forest Street home to console one another, share memories and celebrate Rosenberg's life.

"The room is full of girls here. They all have been best friends since they were very little," Rigsby said. "We have boxes of tissues out. We're just devastated."

Haylee Rosenberg, left, and Emily Collins, both then-17 and students at Wilson Area High School, get ready for competition February 4, 2012, at the 2012 District XI Athletic Directors Cheerleading Championship "Cheer for Cures and Dreams" in Forks Township. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

Those who grew up with Rosenberg recalled rushing off the school bus to play Barbie dolls at each other's houses. Kaitlyn Stahl, of Wilson, remembered the pair rapping to music by Eminem when they were in elementary school and staying up late during sleepover birthday parties.

"She is one of the only people I would consider one of my sisters," Stahl said.

"She was always making everyone laugh," said Meredith Campbell, of Williams Township. "She always had a smile on her face."

Several friends remembered Rosenberg talking about wanting to become a cheerleader as young as kindergarten. And she did, cheering on teams through middle school and high school.

One of her proudest achievements was when the All-Star Cheering Squad in 2006 won the national competition in Orlando, Florida.

"It was just one of the biggest things in the world at the time to her," said Haylee Smith, of Wilson, a fellow cheerleader at the time. "It was really a big moment in our life. And we accomplished that together."

Social media outpouring

There was an outpouring of emotion throughout Thursday on Rosenberg's Facebook page.

Several posted Rosenberg would be missed by many and touched several lives.

"The whole town is upset," said Shelby Loucks, who attended Wilson Area High School with Rosenberg. "Everyone knew her somehow. She was like a wildfire."

Smith remembered the nickname Rosenberg's parents and her parents had for the best friends: "Haylee Squared" because they had the same first and middle names.

And even after high school graduation when the pair went separate ways with Smith attending college and Rosenberg heading to work, Smith said she always found a way to reconnect with her.

Rosenberg had sent a text just a few days before the crash with an inspirational statement to Smith.

"She said, 'Years later and I still have your back,'" Smith said. "That was one of the things I loved about her. She would always be there for you no matter what."

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Lehigh County teenager sentenced to 35 years to life for plotting with her soldier boyfriend via text message to kill her mother has appealed her case in an effort to get it sent back to juvenile court.

The Morning Call reports that 15-year-old Jamie Silvonek can't challenge her sentence because she agreed to a plea bargain, but she can ask an appeals court to reconsider a judge's decision to try her as an adult.

If the Pennsylvania Superior Court agrees, she can only be jailed until she is 21.

Silvonek has agreed to testify against 21-year-old Army Spc. Caleb Barnes at his trial next month.

Prosecutors say the couple discussed killing 54-year-old Cheryl Silvonek for a week. They say Barnes stabbed the woman in her driveway at her Upper Macungie Township home.

Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Official conservation agencies in China and New Zealand on Friday agreed to work together to protect wetlands used as nesting areas on epic bird migrations.

The wetlands are visited by red knots and bar-tailed godwits during their 12,000-kilometer migratory flights.

Red knot (L) and bar-tailed godwit [file photo]

A memorandum of understanding between New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC) and China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) was signed at Pukorokoro Miranda, an internationally significant wetland on the northeast of the North Island, where thousands of red knots and bar-tailed godwits have spent the southern summer.

The red knots breed in Siberia, the godwits breed in Alaska, but they both land at wetlands in China, to refuel before flying on to their breeding sites.

DOC and the SFA will work together to protect, manage and restore wetlands where red knots, godwits and other migratory shorebirds stop to feed during annual migrations.

"These small birds that fly non-stop between New Zealand and China form a bridge between our two countries. They connect us as people. We will work together to keep the bridge open," said Chen Fengxue, the Chinese minister responsible for the SFA in a statement.

A key wetland covered by the agreement is a 7-km stretch of coastal mudflat and salt ponds at Luannan on Bohai Bay, where half of the red knots land after flying non-stop from New Zealand.

The red knots refuel on shellfish before flying to their breeding sites in Siberia.

A second wetland covered by the agreement is in the Yalu Jiang Nature Reserve, near Dandong on the Chinese border with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Half the godwits that summer in New Zealand stop over at Yalu Jiang on their way to breeding sites in Alaska.

"The MOA (memorandum of understanding) we've signed shows DOC in New Zealand and the SFA in China are committed to working together to ensure these remarkable birds can continue to make these epic journeys," DOC director-general Lou Sanson said in the statement.

The MOA formalizes a relationship between the Pukorokoro-Miranda Naturalists' Trust and the Yalu Jiang National Nature Reserve that began 17 years ago.

"The only way to protect these birds is to protect their habitat, the number of these birds is declining. Signing the MOA marks a significant step in securing a safe flight path for the red knots, godwits and other migratory birds that fly between New Zealand and China," trust chair Gillian Vaughan said in the statement.
A former Wilson Area High School cheerleader and the two drivers in a crash early Thursday morning in Monroe County died from injuries sustained in the wreck, Coroner Bob Allen ruled.

Haylee Morgan Rosenberg (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Haylee Morgan Rosenberg, 21, of Wilson Borough, was a passenger in a 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee that crashed head-on into a 2008 GMC Sierra pickup about 1:30 a.m. on Route 115 in Chestnuthill Township, according to Allen and Pennsylvania State Police at Fern Ridge.

Police identified the driver of the Jeep as 21-year-old Trevor Matthew Roberts, of Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, and the pickup's driver as 26-year-old Nicholas Hicks, of Effort, Pennsylvania.

Allen ruled the deaths accidental due to multiple blunt-force trauma.

All three were pronounced dead at the crash site.

Two people hurt in the crash were taken for treatment first to Pocono Medical Center but then they were transferred to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, Allen said.

Police early Friday afternoon didn't have anything new on the crash. It was too foggy early Friday morning to fly a medical helicopter, but it's not immediately clear if the weather contributed to the crash.

A viewing for Rosenberg will be 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Strunk Funeral Home at 2101 Northampton St. on Wilson. Burial will be at the convenience of the family in Northampton Memorial Shrine, according to her obituary.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Allentown school district administration center

The Allentown School District Administration Center.

( Express-Times file photo)

By Scott Armstrong



What are the odds that the Allentown School Board would vote "yes" on a teachers' contract provision that's likely illegal? Apparently, pretty good.

Scott Armstrong

Just weeks after the media reported on the Allentown Education Association's taxpayer-funded "ghost teacher," the school board brazenly voted to keep the teachers' union president on district payroll.

As a result, Allentown residents will continue paying the salary and benefits of a teacher who hasn't taught a class in years.

Just one school board member present, Michael Welsh, sided with taxpayers against this abuse. This vote came despite the fact that last year, the district's solicitor said the practice is likely illegal -- not to mention the district is in the midst of a financial crisis that could force up to $64 million in borrowing just to keep schools open.

For years, skyrocketing expenditures and stagnant revenues have forced this high-poverty district to lay off teachers as well as reduce curriculum and opportunities for students. Yet the teachers' union that routinely portrays itself as the defender of public education and children's best interests again insisted on a contract provision that requires taxpayers to pay the full-time salary of the union's president.

Money that could and should have been used for classroom teachers has instead allowed a teacher to leave the classroom and become an employee of a private organization. And it's been going on for decades.

These ghost teachers have cost Allentown's taxpayers more than $1.3 million since 2000. In 2015-16 alone, the union president received $126,000 in salary and benefits. To put that in perspective, the district spent approximately $13,200 per student in 2013-14. Paying one ghost teacher costs the same as educating nearly 10 students.

When I learned of this practice as a director for the school district, I was appalled. Simple logic says taxpayers should not fund a private organization's employees. Unfortunately, this reasoning has been lost to many directors who have served, and continue to serve, on the Allentown School Board. As a sitting director, I questioned the prudence of this practice at a meeting last year. My concerns fell on deaf ears.

Not easily deterred, I contacted the Fairness Center, a non-profit public interest law firm that represents those wronged by government unions. With their assistance, I recently filed a lawsuit to stop the misuse of taxpayer dollars.

The need for this lawsuit was confirmed earlier this month. The new teachers' contract makes plain that the business-as-usual practice of funding the teachers' union president will not end if left up to the school board.

The union is a private organization working for its own interests. That is their right. If the union wants to hire employees, or pay its president a salary, it can do so. However, public dollars meant for education should not be used to subsidize the union's payroll.

While the school board may not agree, lawmakers in Harrisburg have taken a different view. State Sen. Patrick Stefano recently introduced legislation, SB 1140, that would protect taxpayers from paying for full-time ghost teachers across the state. A similar bill, HB 1649, is pending in the state House, sponsored by Rep. Kristin Phillips-Hill.

My hope is that this lawsuit will end this unfair practice in Allentown, propel this legislation forward, and put money back in the classroom where it belongs.

Scott Armstrong is a former member of the Allentown School Board.
A problem involving foul- smelling and strong-tasting water has been solved, Irish Water says.

The company had recieved complaints from residents in Newbridge, Kildare town and Athy regarding smells from the tap water.

"My understanding is that the water from the Barrow supply has been over chlorinated," Cllr Mark Lynch (SF) told the Leinster Leader.

He had asked the water company to investigate, and questioned if Irish Water outsources the treatment of the water supply from the River Barrow.

He also asked what is the lower and upper level of chlorine allowable to enter the water supply.

Irish Water responded that the local water department have confirmed that the chlorine levels in the supply have now been reduced to resolve the issue.

It may take several days for the residents to notice the result in their supply."

As regards the issue of who treats the water, they said they would get back to him.
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China voiced opposition to the new sanctions imposed by the United States on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Thursday.

"China has always opposed any unilateral sanctions by any country," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing.

Lu said under the sensitive and complex situation of the Korean Peninsula, China opposes any moves that may further escalate the tensions.

Moreover, China has "repeatedly stressed during its contact with a certain country that unilateral sanctions imposed by any country should not affect or undermine China's legitimate interests," Lu added.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order imposing new sanctions on the DPRK on Wednesday.

The White House said the "robust new sanctions" are part of its response to the DPRK's Jan. 6 nuclear test and Feb. 7 ballistic missile launch.

The executive order blocks certain transactions on property belonging to the DPRK government and to the Workers' Party of Korea.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Wednesday also announced new sanctions on DPRK following Obama's executive order. The sanctions are aimed at 17 DPRK government officials and organizations.

It also identified "20 vessels as blocked property."

The new sanctions target DPRK's energy, mining, financial services and transportation sectors, prohibit exports of goods, services, technology and new investment in the country.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on tougher sanctions on the DPRK to curb the country's nuclear and missile programs.
A Mohill woman has issued a heartfelt appeal for the return of jewellery stolen from her home last Thursday night.

Anne Guilfoyle made the plea on her facebook page following the burglary last week, asking people to spread the word in an effort to locate personal items taken during the break-in.

Ms Guilfoyle, who was not home when the break-in occurred, said that her son had come to check on her home on Friday, March 11 and found the attic stairs unfolded. Further investigation found that thieves had gone through her bedroom making off with, not only Anne's own personal jewellery, but also with jewellery left to Anne and her sisters following the passing of their mother in December last year, just 12 days after the sudden loss of their sister.

In her facebook appeal Anne said: There are only a few things that I want back......my Nanna's wedding ring is an example of one of the items. I am heart broken as this is only one item that cannot be replaced. Please, everyone here in Ireland share my plea for help......to the people who have our jewellery please have a heart and let me have back some special bits that my Mum gave to me.

Speaking to the Leitrim Observer, a clearly heartbroken Anne said that she did not care if the thieves kept her own jewellery, although it has great sentimental value.

They can have the rest, but I am just pleading with them to return some of the items from my late mother's jewellery, she explained.

In particular she is looking for the return of her grandmother's gold wedding band, a ring with three ruby coloured stones and two white stones, and a gold bracelet - all much loved pieces belonging to Anne's mother.

If somebody knows something or has these pieces, if they would be kind enough or good enough to put them in an envelope and drop them into my letter box. That's all I want, those pieces back.

They probably mean nothing to the person who has taken them but they mean the world to me and my family and they are completely and utterly irreplaceable.

Gardai told our reporter that they are investigating two burglaries which occurred in Mohill between March 6 and 11. The Gardai said they could not confirm if the two incidents were linked, but had not ruled it out. Damage was reported in both homes and gardai are appealing for anyone with information to phone local gardai on (071) 9650510.
Strong words from Tim Farron in todays Independent about the proposed EU deal with Turkey which would see refugees returned from Greece to Turkey. Rather than create safe and legal routes for refugees, Tim argues that this deal would violate international conventions.

Second, given the deteriorating state of press freedoms and human rights in Turkey, this deal would risk sending vulnerable people who are in need of protection back to a country that is far from safe. This is morally wrong and sets an unpalatable precedent, weakening our authority to fight for improvements in human rights standards globally.

For instance, collective expulsions of people seeking international protection are condemned by the EUs own Charter of Fundamental Rights. We know Turkey has failed to fully implement the Geneva Convention on refugees and has no functioning asylum policy. David Cameron would do well to re-read the international human rights agreements and principles Britain has committed to, before he signs on the dotted line in Brussels.

So what should the EU be doing?

At the Liberal Democrat Spring conference last week, my party unanimously adopted a policy paper on Syria and the refugee crisis. One of our key demands is the call for safe and legal routes to be put in place, so that genuine asylum seekers can apply for humanitarian visas in the refugee camps themselves. This would remove the necessity for desperate families to risk everything, including their lives, for a place in a boat across to Greece. There is no doubt about it  David Cameron has failed to respond adequately to this refugee crisis. We are a country with a proud history of welcoming those seeking protection. But by continuing to put his fear of UKIP ahead of doing what is right, he does our country a great disservice.

Its not as if we dont have a really good example to follow:

We only need to look to Canada to see what is possible. The new Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, horrified by the plight of so many Syrians on our side of the Atlantic, has delivered a programme which has resettled 25,000 refugees in Canada over a three month period. Despite the fact this crisis is in our own backyard, our prime minister had to be pushed to agree to take 20,000 over five years, well below what we are capable of.

As Tim said in his Conference speech last week, each one of these refugees is a human being just like us who needs help. As one of the richest countries in the world, we are in a position to be able to give that help and we should.

You can read the whole article here.
As a young American woman who has interned in the Canadian Parliament, volunteered for American campaigns and is now working in the British Parliament, it has been interesting following the 2015 British Parliamentary elections through a variety of lenses. The recent change of government in Canada and the ongoing presidential election in the United States seem worth unpacking, in order to delve into possible lessons which could be learned by Liberal Democrats from these other spaces.

I propose that there are lessons worth learning from two American Democrats, President Obama and Bernie Sanders, as well as Canadas new Prime Minister Trudeau. For the former, the reasons may be self-evident. President Obama rose from a relatively unknown position into an incredibly influential presidency. For Bernie Sanders, it is worth understanding how another political outsider has once again come to challenge Hillary Clinton in her bid for the presidency. Though he will likely lose the primary, Mr. Sanders has been a formidable opponent from a stance that rarely would be noticed in the United States. With regards to the Canadian elections, I would like to explore the ways in which a party can move from a third-party position into a powerful government in the way the Liberals have done under Trudeau.

There are three characteristics which President Obama and Bernie Sanders have shared in their campaigns: they excel in grassroots organising, they offer clear messages of hope, and their platforms are cohesive. The first point, grassroots organising, is something which Liberal Democrats would benefit from greatly. Bringing staunch supporters out to volunteer in elections is a powerful force to reckon with, especially in university areas. In my home state, Ohio, both Obama and Sanders effectively coordinated university students to participate in the electoral process as vocal volunteers. From what I have seen, it seems that the Liberal Democrats could recruit a significant amount of volunteers from universities for the 2020 elections. This is a lesson sorely learned by the Liberal Democrats in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. Understanding the implications of reversing stances on university tuition prices is a hard lesson, but it does offer a high incentive for maintaining consistency in the future.

Hope for change in the future of politics has also driven these American campaigns. In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned powerfully with a message of hope for change in the future. Today, in 2016, Sanders is using this same message to shape all his policies. Sanders has taken the frustration of American people with mainstream politics and channelled it into a focused campaign for change. As the United Kingdom faces tough decisions over the next year regarding the refugee crisis, the possibility of a Brexit, and shifts in benefits and so forth, there will likely be a significant growth in the proportion of constituents hoping for change. The Liberal Democrats can choose to be this voice, pointing to a bright future.

Finally, it is important to understand how a clear message benefitted the campaigns for both Obama and Sanders. This last point is especially important to consider. As Liberal Democrats conduct business for the remaining duration of this Parliament, the party should strive to maintain a clear, cohesive message for constituents that will provide ample room for the electorate to feel empowered and encouraged.

As for the Canadian interpretation of events, I think it is imperative to understand that a third-party can make a sweeping comeback into Government. The Liberal party took a significant hit in the 2012 Canadian election. They became the third party as the NDP swept into opposition. Yet today, the Liberal party once again holds a majority Government. There is a strong message here for Liberal Democrats in the UK: never give up hope!

* Anne Curie works for Lord Roger Roberts
LIMERICK man John Hartnett has been appointed as chair to a body which will support trade and investment between Northern Ireland and the USA.

The appointment of the Corbally native was confirmed in Washington this Tuesday on the second day of a programme of meetings in New York, DC and California.

The deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland executive Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, said he is delighted that Mr Hartnett had agreed to chair the group.

John Hartnett is a senior technology executive and investor based in Silicon Valley, very well known in the technology sector in the US and Ireland, he commented.

Chairing another arm of this body will be Shaun Kelly, of KPMG.

Mr Hartnett also established and chairs the Irish Techology Leadership Group (ITLG) which brought its annual conference to Limerick in January 2014.

He set it up because he realised, unlike other Diaspora groups in the US, such as Israel, the Irish Diaspora had failed to mobilise to help tech firms from Ireland achieve success stateside.

Locally, the Limerick Institute of Technologys Enterprise Acceleration Centre, which caters for the next generation of entrepreneurs, was renamed in his honour in 2013.
THE plight of two whistleblowers at the University of Limerick, who remain suspended, has led other former staff members to set up a support group to help staff who have suffered distress in the course of their employment at UL.

The support group has been established by Dr Niall Cahill, who was director of medical services on the campus for 15 years, and Jeremy Callaghan, a former director of student affairs at the university.

Speaking to the Limerick Leader about their motivation in setting up this group, Dr Cahill highlighted the cases of two female employees in the finance department who remain suspended 10 months on, and the earlier case of another employee, Leona O'Callaghan, who brought her concerns regarding financial matters in the university, which she also felt compelled to question, to the Public Accounts Committee.

The university has largely been silent on all these matters. No apologies, no employee assistance, nothing. We believe they are good people who deserve support and this group will try to do what it can to support them, said Dr Cahill.

Mr Callaghan said he was dismayed but not surprised by the findings in the Mazars report, which reviewed some of the allegations of the three women, all of whom worked in the finance department, and the policies and procedures in place at UL.

That review was established by the Higher Education Authority, after the cases of the three women were highlighted in the Limerick Leader, and then brought to a public hearing in the Dail, by Fianna Fail deputies Niall Collins and Willie O'Dea.

Both deputies confirmed to the Leader that their advice and knowledge has been sought by more UL ex-staff than just these three employees, and that they have dealt with distressed staff members across a number of departments.

Mr Callaghan said it is not just these three employees in the public domain who have disputes with their employer, and he is aware of a number of others whose cases are ongoing or who have left the university on bad terms.

There are at least another five that I know of, said Mr Callaghan. One thing this group will do is provide a forum in which this information can come forward, he said.

We have no legal expertise and we have no money to obtain it. But we do have knowledge of the university system, and of this one in particular, Dr Cahill said.

We can seek to bring pressure to bear on the various authorities to resolve the issues that are still outstanding. We have written to local TDs and I have also written to the HEA, bringing a number of matters to their attention.

Our group will give some confidence to those who feel that they are alone, said Dr Cahill.

Mr Callaghan said that as they are no longer employees they will not feel obliged to keep quiet. I notice a staff member writing to the Limerick Leader did so anonymously. Nor should it be forgotten that we have been staff at UL and that we genuinely have its interests at heart.

It affronts me that an institution I gave my time and commitment to should depart so unnecessarily from accepted standards of decent behaviour, and I want to bring it back, he said. I have already said that UL needs to learn that those who are its strongest critics are also its greatest allies.

Anyone who is interested in talking to the support group can contact Mr Callaghan and Dr Cahill by email, via jemcallaghan@gmail.com and niallfcahill@gmail.com

UL did not respond to the Limerick Leader when asked if they wished to comment
DORAS Luimni has called for the introduction of legislation against hate crime, in order to protect victims of racism and discrimination.

According to Doras Luimni director, Leonie Kerins, Ireland is the only country in the European Union that does not have legislation that deals with this issue.

Doras Luimni is a member of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) campaign, which is lobbying for the Criminal Law (Hate Crime) Bill, drafted by UL researchers, to be fully-implemented.

Ms Kerins said crimes with a racist motive can have a very severe impact on victims.

Introducing specific provisions that recognise the gravity of the crime and the impact on the victim is urgently needed. This would send a strong message to perpetrators, victims and the general public that racially-motivated crimes are taken seriously in Ireland.

Irelands framework for reporting racism is hugely inadequate and does not accurately reflect the scale of the problem and the number of incidents of racism occurring, she said this week.

She added that the gardais PULSE crime-reporting system was a very positive development that, she said, will hopefully be a step towards introducing legislation and sentencing guidelines for racially-motivated crimes.

Given the recent surge in negative attitudes and the racist backlash evident across Europe since the escalation of the refugee crisis in particular, stronger protection for victims of racism is needed now more than ever.

We have witnessed an increase in racist incident reporting here in Limerick over the past few months, in line with national trends. We urge the new Government to acknowledge this issue and to address racism effectively by introducing legislation and publishing a national integration strategy to prevent further escalation of these issues.

An ENAR petition, which can be accessed via www.Uplift.ie, will be delivered to the Minister for Justice on March 21.
LIMERICK secondary school principal Noel Malone, who was in the High Court last week seeking to block an investigation into alleged misconduct on his part, has described the past year and a half as a nightmare for him and his family.

Following three days of hearings before Mr Justice McDermott in the High Court, Mr Malone and Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board (LCETB) are now awaiting the delivery of a judgement in the case.

Mr Malone, 51, who has been principal of the 900-student Colaiste Chiarain school in Croom since 1999, sought a judicial review of the disciplinary action being taken against him by the LCETB. He has been suspended from his post since July 2014 on foot of alleged incidents between 2012 and 2014 that year, including that he arranged for a teacher to tutor his own children on a one-to-one basis, as part of that teachers 22 weekly hours.

He is accused of assigning teachers to tutor his son in accounting and his daughter in agricultural science on a one-to-one basis. The latter subject is not on the school syllabus.

The married father of four was also the subject of a complaint that he inappropriately stared at, smiled at and winked at a male teacher at an event.

Mr Malone says there is video evidence to disprove those claims, which he vigorously denies. His barrister John Hennessy SC described the claims against him as utterly baseless, false and malicious and an attempt to get rid of him by certain members of staff.

In a statement issued on Facebook and Twitter following the conclusion of the High Court hearing, Mr Malone said he was happy it was all over and was awaiting the decision of the judge in due course. Id like to thank my family and friends for all the support I received over the past week, and indeed the past year and a half, which has clearly taken its toll and has been a nightmare for the whole family, he said.

Taking this case to the High Court was obviously very stressful and challenging, but it needed to be done, if there was to be any hope of justice. I feel we acquitted ourselves well under the circumstances, he added.

Mr Justice McDermott's judgement must be delivered by June 7. However, it is expected that it will happen before that time.

In taking the High Court case, Mr Malone sought to challenge the manner in which the investigation into the allegations against him was carried out and his subsequent suspension on pay from his post.

His barrister claimed that this formed part of an agenda to remove him as principal of the school.

However, barrister for the ETB, Feichin McDonagh SC, said LCETB did not accept that Mr Malone had been denied fair procedure or that it delayed in bringing a quick resolution to the process.

Acting principal Matt Power was appointed in September 2014 following Mr Malones suspension.

In a statement to the Leader at the time, a spokesperson for Mr Malone stressed he had absolutely not resigned from his position and has every hope of resuming his post as soon as possible.
A TREASURE trove of artefacts and historical gems, depicting a life of peace and struggle in 1916, were officially launched on the monumental Proclamation Day, on Tuesday night in Limerick.

Welcomed by a crowd of history buffs of all ages, members of the Defence Forces and those eager to learn more about the Easter Rising, the exhibition  entitled They Dreamed and are Dead  was launched by organisers, council officials and special guests.

Amongst the visitors was John Colivet  grandson of former Limerick City MP and TD, Michael Colivet  who spoke fondly of his family roots and the exhibit.

A publication supplementing the exhibit was also launched at the Merchants Quay museum.

Before the launch kicked off, spectators were entertained by the St Marys Prize Band, followed by a performance by Irish World Academys Roisin Ni Galloglaigh, who sang rebel songs from the Fenian and Jacobite eras, to commence and finish the launch.

Though the commemorative showcase remembers those who fought, and died during the Easter Rising, the exhibit also examines layers of Limericks social and cultural life in 1916.

On loan from the Imperial War Museum, in London, the most prominent artefact is a green flag bearing the Limerick City coat of arms, which was in Roger Casements possession when he was arrested for trafficking ammunition from Germany.

The flag was given to Casement and fellow rebel Robert Monteith by Limerick-born German consul Thomas Gaffney.

Also sealed inside glass cases are Volunteer uniforms, letters, literature, booklets, a manifesto for the Limerick Young Ireland Society, portraits and paintings, Colivet memorabilia, and information on sporting and social life. The exhibition also showcases a brief history of the Limerick lace industry.

Deputy Mayor of Limerick City and County, Cllr Gerald Mitchell congratulated those involved and said that the exhibition also commemorates those who fought in World War One.

This is very important. Thousands of Limerick men joined the British army and navy. Can you imagine how worried the families of the soldiers and sailors were, waiting to hear news about their young ones. In 1916 alone, 279 Limerick people died in the war.

It also looks at life in 1916. It was full of new inventions. Limerick had world-class industries, such as bacon, clothing, and even womens fashion was taking on the modern appearance. But sadly, there was a lot of poverty and hardship. Many people had no work and no money. They lived in small, dark and dirty houses or flats, without toilets, running water or even separate bedrooms, he added.

Editor of the publication, Jacqui Hayes said at the launch that Limericks involvement in 1916 life is not very well known, and that she hopes the public learn a lot from the museum.

The Daly family, for example, were the icons of nationalism. John Daly was the link to the previous rebellion, and he was this spiritual master who all the revolutionaries looked to. They all hugely respected him.

Limerick City Museum and Archives scholar, William ONeill said that they wanted to publish the book to complement the exhibition and to show that there was colourful and diverse life in Limerick 1916.

Its a fantastic feeling that people can come here and learn about these things. You should be learning about these people and getting a sense of who they were. We painted a picture of life in Limerick, good and bad, war and peace.

And while we should be commemorating the people who died, there was an awful lot of life in Limerick. Surely, that should mean as much now as it did back then, he said.

Josephine Cotter Coughlan, of Limerick City and County Council, congratulated all council officials, members of the public and groups involved in the project.

It is an example of history at its best, resting on solid academic foundations, but accessible and meaningful to the community. You should all be very proud of your contribution for a greater understanding and appreciation of Limericks history and heritage, and I hope you all enjoy the exhibition.

Mr Colivet concluded the launch, reflecting on his grandfather Michael, who grew up on Windmill Street.

I am glad to see that the Limerick Volunteers are being remembered, he started. As a young father, its interesting to look over Michael Colivets life. Because, at the time of 1916, he was 34 years old, and he wasnt a particularly young man. He was married three years with two small children. So why would somebody - and its hard for me to imagine now - go down that path. Its difficult to conceive.

His mother was a Fenian from Askeaton, while his father was a French navy sailor, who died after his ship sank in World War One, in 1917.

Certainly, my grandfather inherited some of the French stubbornness and the Republican sentiments from both his father and his mother! he enthused.

The former TD was arrested and jailed in Lincoln Prison for his role in the Rising. While there, he was elected MP for Limerick City, in 1918. He shared a cell with former President Eamon De Valera.

The exhibition is expected to be showcased for most of 2016, according to organisers.

Organisers said that 80-90% of the collection is from the Limerick City Museum and Archives.
LIMERICK people will be able to show their appreciation to the All-Ireland Club hurling champions Na Piarsaigh this Monday evening at a special event.

Limerick City and County Council has confirmed it will host a homecoming ceremony for the Caherdavin club on the steps of City Hall at Merchant's Quay from 6pm on Monday.

The event is open to the public.

We will host a public homecoming for champions Na Piarsaigh @ City Hall Monday evening! https://t.co/TyNV3e2uqj pic.twitter.com/B3KIA1VfM2  Limerick Council (@LimerickCouncil) March 18, 2016

Na Piarsaigh became the first ever Limerick side to win the Tommy Moore Cup, beating Cushendall of Antrim by 2-25 to 2-14 yesterday.

All Ireland glory for Na Piarsaigh & history for the Caherdavin club. Result in All Ireland club SHC final Na Piarsaigh 2-25 Cushendall 2-14  Jerome O'Connell (@JeromeSport) March 17, 2016

As a result of this, the club's sky-blue and white flag is flying proudly at City Hall, and Mayor Liam Galvin has warmly congratulated the team.

Speaking from Boston, the mayor said: "We're inviting the people of Limerick to come out on Monday night and show the team just how proud we are of their achievements."

He added: "Na Piarsaigh gave a thrilling performance in Croke Park which has gladdened the hearts of all Limerick hurling supporters coming just six months after our All Ireland under 21 success. I want to pay tribute to manager Shane ONeill and all the backroom team who have worked tremendously hard with this talented Na Piarsaigh squad preparing for the final and we look forward to celebrating this famous victory with the team and their supporters on Monday night.

The council has also announced a civic reception will take place to honour Na Piarsaigh's history makers at a date to be decided.
TWO Limerick short films, featuring a homegrown cast and crew, will make their world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival this May.

Top industry professionals and film fanatics from around the globe will see the first screening of The Cheese Box, produced by and starring Kevin Kiely, Jr., and Safe, directed by 25-year-old Stephen Hall.

The two Limerick projects are part of 17 Irish movies that have been selected to be screened at Cannes Film Festival, this summer.

Spectators will also be getting a taste of Limerick history in Kielys performance in the Cheese Box  directed by Paddy Murphy  where he plays the biopic role of his late grandfather, Michael Draughty Purcell, who was from Janesboro.

Its a biopic of my mothers family and a particularly bad day in their lives in the 1950s, he told the Limerick Leader this week.

The tough moment involves, basically, this man has to do something for the good of his family in the night time, and he doesnt find it very easy, but he has to do it. The crux of the film is the activity of what he needs to do, and the reason why he needs to do it.

The 29-year-old actor and filmmaker, from Ballysimon, said that it is a great opportunity to attend the festival, which he said was their original aim when they were first filming the short drama.

It was really important for me and for Paddy [the director] that we give it a good go to get the film on time for submission for Cannes.

To have the work screened, and having a reason to go is an amazing opportunity.

And I am proud of the team. People went above and beyond what I expected. I dont expect a lot, but I expect people to turn up and respect each other and to respect the story.

But then people started to get really emotionally involved in the best way possible, and every time we went on set, the set was charged with this energy. It was amazing to oversee this as the producer, he enthused.

For Mr Hall, he found out that his post-apocalyptic film had been selected, shortly after he won Best Film at the Screamvention Film Festival for his short movie Dinner Date, last month in Dublin.

It is a massive, massive honour, the 25-year-old said, The Cannes Film Festival is something that you hear about, as a filmmaker, growing up and going Some day, some day, some day, and to be selected finally allows yourself to believe that maybe I can actually do this.

Any artist has a lot of self-doubt, and things like this inspire you to push on. Its a great achievement and a massive stepping stone.

Halls project Safe, shot in just seven hours, with a small three-person crew, is about a chance encounter in a harsh time, in a dangerous world.

It is about one mans fight to survive and he is left with mans dying wish, which is to bring his wife home. I like to create stories that have some sort of grounding in reality, but are very high concept; something utterly fantastical.

The whole film is based on a conversation and it is based on a raw and very honest conversation, and it is something that really makes you want to see more. Its the catalyst for the story that follows. So when we go over there, we can really go over there and sell it, he explained.

He said it was a fantastic experience working with both actors, Adam Moylan and Zeb Moore.

It was my first time working with Adam Moylan and, probably, my hundredth time working with Zeb, and the two of them absolutely bounced off each other. I am really looking forward to working with Adam again because, really, he takes direction so well. And Zeb, as always, is fantastic. Hes the dying character and he really made you feel, he said.

Safe is just seven minutes long, and will join The Cheese Box at the Short Film Corner, at Cannes Film Festival.

The Cheese Box was produced by Isleboro Productions, a Limerick-based production company.
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Spinosaurus was the biggest of all the carnivorous dinosaurs, larger than Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus. It lived during part of the Cretaceous period, about 112 million to 97 million years ago, roaming the swamps of North Africa.

Two Spinosaurus species have been named based on the regions where they were discovered: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Egyptian spine lizard) and Spinosaurus maroccanus (Moroccan spine lizard).

Spinosaurus means "spine lizard," an appropriate descriptor, as the dinosaur had very long spines growing on its back to form what is referred to as a "sail." The distinctive spines, which grew out of the animal's back vertebrae, were up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) long and were likely connected to one another by skin.

Recent fossil evidence shows Spinosaurus was the first dinosaur that was able to swim, and likely spent most of its life in the water, according to a study published September 2014 in the journal Science. "Spinosaurus had short hind limbs (like early whales and other animals that spent more and more time in the water), dense and compact bones (penguins show a similar bone profile in cross section), wide and flat claws and feet (possibly used in paddling), and a long and slender snout with conical teeth (perfect for catching fish)," said Nizar Ibrahim, a University of Chicago vertebrate paleontologist and lead author of the study.

Function of the sail

There has been much scientific debate regarding the evolution and purpose of Spinosaurus' sail. Because of its size, this dinosaur did not have many predators, but the sail could have been used to ward off enemies, as the dinosaur would have appeared to be twice its size with the sail fully extended. The dinosaur's upper spine was fairly flexible, and its vertebrae had ball-and-socket joints, meaning it was likely able to arch its back to a point. It may have been able to spread the sail when threatened or looking to attract a mate.

In a 1997 study published in the Journal of Paleontology, paleontologist Jack Bowman Bailey proposed that Spinosaurus and the similar Ouranosaurus didn't have sails after all, and instead had large, bisonlike backs. (Ouranosaurus was another spiny dinosaur, which lived in the same general area as Spinosaurus a few million years earlier.) These humps, Bailey argued, would have acted as dissipative "heat shields" that, unlike sails, would have helped the dinosaurs survive in the hot and dry environment they were thought to have lived in (it's now known that their environment was actually a lush swamp).

Other paleontologists have hypothesized that Spinosaurus used its sail to regulate its body temperature by absorbing heat or storing fat. However, Ibrahim and his colleagues found that the spines were composed of dense bones with few blood vessels and were likely wrapped snugly in skin, which doesn't support the thermoregulation idea.

"The sail was likely used as a display structure," Ibrahim told Live Science. "It would have been visible from far away and even when the animal was swimming. This way, the animal could convey information about its age, size and  gender to other animals, in particular other Spinosaurus."

Additionally, some paleontologists, Ibrahim included, have hypothesized that the sails were brightly colored (much like the fins of some modern-day reptiles), making them even better display structures. But, Ibrahim notes, "the sail likely had more than one function."

Artwork by Scott Hartman reveals the bone structure of Spinosaurus. (Image credit:  Scott Hartman / All rights reserved)

More gigantic than Giganotosaurus

Spinosaurus was larger than both T. rex and Giganotosaurus, which was previously the largest carnivorous dinosaur known. But it's unclear just how big Spinosaurus was, due to incomplete fossils.

In a 2005 study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, researchers estimated Spinosaurus was 52 to 59 feet (16 to 18 m) long and weighed 7.7 to 9.9 tons (7 to 9 metric tons), based on extrapolations from skull measurements. However, other scientists took issue with the study's methods, and instead claimed the behemoth was 41 to 47 feet (12.6 to 14.3 m) long and 13.2 to 23 tons (12 to 20.9 metric tons), according to a 2007 study in the same journal.

The partial Spinosaurus skeleton Ibrahim his colleagues analyzed suggests the specimen was 50 feet (15.2 m) long and still growing. The fossils also suggest Spinosaurus' long neck and trunk shifted the dinosaur's center of mass forward. This allowed the animal to move easily in water, but made movement on land nearly impossible unless the dinosaur used all four legs.

Spinosaurus had a long and narrow snout at the end of its skull, and a small crest above its eyes. It had six or seven needlelike teeth on each side of the very front of the upper jaw and another 12 teeth behind those. There were also a few large, slanted teeth that interlocked at the end of the snout. While its jaw was powerful, none of the teeth were serrated, making it unlikely that it could have used them to tear into tough prey. This gives credence to the theory that it mostly survived on fish and carcasses.

What did Spinosaurus eat?

Spinosaurus is thought to have survived primarily on fish, including giant coelacanths, sawfish, large lungfish and sharks, which lived in the dinosaur's river system, according to Ibrahim. "The skull of Spinosaurus has 'fish eating' written all over it, so those are the kinds of animals Spinosaurus would have preyed on," he said.

In addition to anatomical evidence, chemical analyses also suggest Spinosaurus preferred to dine on fish, a 2010 study in the journal Geology shows.

In 2004, researchers found a tooth belonging to Irritator challengeri  a spinosaur, or dinosaur in Spinosaurus' taxonomic family, Spinosauridae  embedded in the remains of a Cretaceous pterosaur (flying reptile). The find, detailed in the journal Nature, suggests the fish-loving spinosaurs also hunted (or scavenged) nonaquatic animals.

Spinosaurus lived in Egypt and Morocco. There is speculation that the Sahara is rich with Spinosaurus fossils, but the harsh environment makes them difficult to unearth. [Images: Digging Up a Swimming Dinosaur Called Spinosaurus]

Fossil discoveries

Very few Spinosaurus fossils have been discovered, and no complete remains have been found. The first Spinosaurus partial skeleton was unearthed in 1912 by Richard Markgraf in the Bahariya Formation of western Egypt.

These original remains, which were described and named by Ernst Stromer in 1915, were destroyed in Allied bombing raids on Munich, Germany, during World War II. It is only due to Stromer's meticulous notes, including detailed descriptions and sketches, that much of the scant knowledge surrounding this dinosaur has been retained.

In 2011, a neck vertebra from a dinosaur, believed to be a spinosaur, with a snout resembling that of a crocodile was found in Australia, showing that the dinosaur family had a much wider range than scientists had previously thought possible, according to the study published in the journal Biology Letters.

Kim Ann Zimmermann contributed to this article.

Related pages

More dinosaurs

Time periods

Precambrian: Facts About the Beginning of Time

Paleozoic Era: Facts & Information

Mesozoic Era: Age of the Dinosaurs

Cenozoic Era: Facts About Climate, Animals & Plants

Additional resources
The Goths were a people who flourished in Europe throughout ancient times and into the Middle Ages. Sometimes called " barbarians ," they are famous for sacking the city of Rome in A.D. 410. After the Western Roman Empire diminished, two Gothic kingdoms rose: the short-lived Visigoths and the longer-lasting Ostrogoths.

The earliest surviving written records mentioning the Goths date back to the first century A.D. although their existence dates back further with some records suggesting that they migrated from Scandinavia wrote David Gwynn, Reader in Ancient and Late Antique History at Royal Holloway University of London, wrote in his book " The Goths: Lost Civilizations (opens in new tab)" (Reaktion Books, 2017).

Ironically, however, the Goths are often credited with helping to preserve Roman culture. After the sacking of Rome, a group of Goths moved to Gaul (in modern-day France) and Iberia and formed the Visigothic Kingdom, which would eventually incorporate Catholicism, Roman artistic traditions and other aspects of Roman culture . The last Gothic kingdom fell to the Moors in A.D. 711.

Today, the meaning of the word "Goth" has evolved beyond any direct relationship to the ancient Goths. The late Middle Ages saw the rise of a style of architecture characterized by large, imposing cathedrals and castles. The term "Gothic" was applied to the style as a critique, as the word, even at that time, was a synonym for "barbaric."

Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, England is the Gothic castle that inspired Dracula. (Image credit: Photos by R A Kearton)

During the 18th and 19th centuries, a genre of dark, romantic literature called "Gothic fiction" flourished. Characterized by novels such as Bram Stoker's " Dracula ," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the genre got its name from the Gothic locations in which the stories took place  for example, Dracula's dark, foreboding castle.

In modern times, "goth" has been used to describe a subculture with its own style of music, aesthetic and fashion. The dark, often-gloomy goth imagery was influenced by Gothic fiction, particularly horror movies.

Where did the ancient Goths come from?

The exact origin of the ancient Goths is a mystery. In the sixth century A.D., the writer Jordanes (who was likely Gothic himself) wrote a history of the Goths. He claimed that the Goths came from a cold island called Scandza, possibly in modern-day Scandinavia. When they would have lived there is unknown.

"Now from the island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago under their king, Berig by name," he wrote (translation by Charles Mierow). After a series of southward migrations, they found themselves living close to the borders of the Roman Empire.

Our knowledge of the Goths before they interacted extensively with the Romans is limited. They had a written language that made use of runic inscriptions. However, few of these inscriptions have been found, and those that survive are quite short. "Only a few 'Gothic' runic inscriptions have survived, on objects which were found in modern-day [Romania] and Hungary," Tineke Looijenga, a now-retired researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, wrote in her book " Texts and Contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions (opens in new tab)" (Brill, 2003).

Gothic style buckle with rectangular plate deriving from Roman forms. The decoration reveals regional Gothic fashion. The gilded silver buckle with an eagle's head is typical of the northern Black Sea area which was settled by Crimean Goths. A.D. 400 to 660. (Image credit: World History Archive via Alamy Stock Photo)

Jordanes claimed that, prior to the Goths' conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, their religion included the "veneration of heroic ancestors" and the "worship of a god of war" whom the Romans associated with the god Mars, wrote Gwynn. Jordanes also claimed that the Goths hung human arms from trees in the war god's honor and performed human sacrifices of captives.

The Goth's history before they came into contact with the Roman Empire is hazy. After they moved into the empire they adopted some Roman customs - like Christianity and some of their arts and culture. After moving into the Roman Empire they also lived in cities and founded new kingdoms. Goth records suggest that at some point, prior to contact with Rome, they were more nomadic, migrating from Scandinavia.

Goths vs. Greeks

During the third century A.D., the Goths launched a series of invasions against Roman-controlled Greece. Fragments of a text discussing these attacks , written by the third-century Athens writer Dexippus, were discovered in the Austrian National Library and detailed in The Journal of Roman Studies (opens in new tab) in 2015.

Dexippus said the Roman emperor Decius (who reigned from A.D. 249 to 251) led the Roman army against the Goths but suffered a series of defeats, losing both territory and men. The text also tells of a battle between the Goths and Greeks that took place at the pass of Thermopylae. It's not clear when exactly the battle was fought but it was likely in the 250s or 260s. The Goth army was trying to reach Athens while a Greek force had fortified the pass in an attempt to stop them. The fragment ends before the outcome of the battle is known.

Goths' attacks on the Roman Empire

The Goths launched other raids in the third century A.D., into the Roman Empire. "The first known attack came in 238, when Goths sacked the city of Histria at the mouth of the river Danube," Peter Heather, a medieval history professor at King's College London, wrote in his book "The Goths" (Blackwell Publishers, 1996). "A series of much more substantial land incursions followed a decade later."

He noted that in A.D. 268, a massive expedition of Goths, along with other groups also called barbarians, broke into the Aegean Sea, wreaking havoc. They attacked a number of settlements, including Ephesus (a city in Anatolia inhabited by Greeks), where they destroyed a temple dedicated to the goddess Diana.

"The destruction wrought by this combined assault on land and sea were severe, and prompted a fierce Roman response," Heather wrote. "Not only were the individual groups defeated, but no major raid ever again broke through the Dardanelles."

Here we see a painting titled "The Goths Approaching Rome," by W. Edward Wigfull. (Image credit: Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Goths' tumultuous relationship with Rome would continue into the fourth century. While Goths served as Roman soldiers and trade took place across the Danube river, there was plenty of conflict.

Heather noted that a Gothic group called the Tervingi intervened in Roman imperial politics, supporting two unsuccessful claimants to the emperorship. In A.D. 321, they supported Licinius over Constantine, and in A.D. 365, they backed Procopius rather than Valens. In both instances, their strategies backfired, with Constantine and Valens launching attacks against the Tervingi after becoming emperor.

As contact with Rome intensified, a form of Christianity known as Arianism spread among the Goths. "In the 340s, the Arian Gothic bishop Ulfilas or Wulfila (d. 383) translated the Bible into the Gothic language in a script based chiefly upon the uncial Greek alphabet and said to have been invented by Ulfilas for the purpose," Robin Sowerby, formerly a senior lecturer in English studies at the University of Stirling in Scotland, wrote in an article in the book " A New Companion to the Gothic (opens in new tab)" (Wiley, 2012).

In time, the Goths would adopt the Catholic form of Christianity practiced in Rome.

Goths and the Huns

This complicated relationship between the Romans and Goths would be forever altered with the appearance of a new group, called the Huns, north of the Danube around A.D. 375. The Huns pushed the Goths into Roman territory.

The Goths, seeking refuge among the Romans, were treated poorly. Lacking food, they were forced to sell their children into slavery at humiliating prices. "When the barbarians after their crossing were harassed by lack of food, those most hateful [Roman] generals devised a disgraceful traffic; they exchanged every dog that their insatiability could gather from far and wide for one slave each, and among these were carried off also sons of the chieftains," wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman soldier and historian who lived in the fourth century A.D. (from the book Ammianus Marcellinus: with an English translation by John C. Rolfe, W. Heinemann, 1935).

Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigoth king Theodoric I against the Huns. (Image credit: imageBROKER/Sunny Celeste via Getty Images)

After being refused entry to the city of Marcianople (now in modern-day Bulgaria), the Goths revolted, roaming across the Balkans and plundering Roman towns.

Emperor Valens, who ruled the eastern half of the Roman Empire, personally led an army into the Balkans to subdue the Goths. On Aug. 9, 378, this army engaged the Goths near the city of Adrianople (also called Hadrianopolis). Valens underestimated the size of the Gothic force. As a result, his army was outflanked by the Goths and annihilated, along with the emperor himself.

"Just when it first became dark, the emperor being among a crowd of common soldiers, as it was believed  for no one said either that he had seen him, or been near him  was mortally wounded with an arrow, and, very shortly after, died, though his body was never found," Marcellinus wrote (translation by C.D. Yonge).

Valens' successor, Theodosius, made a treaty with the Goths that lasted until his death in A.D. 395.

Rise of Alaric

After A.D. 395, the treaty with Rome fell apart. A Gothic leader named Alaric rose to preeminence, leading the Goths into battle against both the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire. The conflict that followed was complicated. Alaric wanted to make a deal that would give the Goths under his command good farmland and monetary rewards. He undertook raids to pressure the Romans.

A depiction of Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, in Athens, by German painter Ludwig Thiersch. (Image credit: Public domain)

Heather wrote that by A.D. 403, Alaric was in the Balkans, becoming an "outlaw rejected by both halves of the Empire." An attempt by Alaric to move the Goths into Italy had failed, and there had been a massacre of the Gothic inhabitants of Constantinople in A.D. 400.

Fortunes changed for Alaric and the Goths when the Western Roman Empire began to crumble. The emperor Honorius faced rebellion among his army, and a usurper named Constantine III amassed territory in Britain and Gaul. In the wake of these problems, Honorius had his general, Flavius Stilicho, killed in A.D. 408.

Seeing weakness, Alaric advanced into Italy a second time, finding support from Stilicho's former supporters as well as runaway slaves. He was camped outside Rome by A.D. 410, using the city as a bargaining chip in an effort to get concessions from Honorius' government. After a series of unsuccessful negotiations, Alaric sacked the city on Aug. 24.

Two kingdoms: Visigoths and Ostrogoths

Alaric died a few months after the sacking of Rome. During the fifth century A.D., as the Western Roman Empire faded, two Gothic kingdoms rose.

"When Gothic power reached its zenith at the dawn of the sixth century, Gothic kingdoms dominated the map of the former western Roman Empire," Gwynn wrote. The Visigoth Kingdom formed in Iberia and southwest Gaul, while the Ostrogoths came to power in Italy.

In Italy, the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths formed by the end of the fifth century A.D., eventually dominating the entire peninsula. This kingdom was short-lived, however. Theodoric of Amal (who reigned from 493 to 526) ruled over it for much of its existence, using Ravenna, in northern Italy, as the capital. "Although his kingdom would crumble after his death Theodoric reigned successfully over Goths and Romans alike for more than three decades," Gwynn wrote. Not long after his death, Justinian I, emperor of the Byzantine Empire , launched a campaign against this kingdom, wiping it out and conquering Italy.

Byzantine mosaic of Emperor Justinian and his retinue. (Image credit: Richard T. Nowitz via Getty Images)

The Visigoth Kingdom lasted much longer, and its rulers would eventually govern this kingdom from its capital, Toledo, in what is now Spain. Central control of the kingdom was weak at times, and in 552, Justinian I took advantage of a Visigoth civil war to capture part of southern Iberia for the Byzantine Empire. The seventh century saw something of a cultural renaissance for the Visigoth Kingdom, in which art and writing flourished, Gwynn wrote.

During this renaissance, Roman art traditions continued. One of the most spectacular examples is a hoard of seventh-century artifacts found near Toledo in the 19th century. The stash includes gold crowns and crosses, as well as precious gems; it "confirms the artistry of the Visigothic court" and shows "a perfect blending of Roman traditions with those of the Byzantine East," Heather wrote in the book " The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century (opens in new tab)" (Boydell Press, 1999).

The Visigoth Kingdom survived until A.D. 711, when it fell to an invasion by the Moors. However, in northern Iberia, a small force led by Visigothic nobleman Don Pelayo held out, and he founded the Kingdom of Asturias in 718. They began the reconquest of Iberia, a process that would take nearly 800 years, Ingmar Sohrman, professor emeritus of languages and literature at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, wrote in an article published in 2017 in the journal Romance Studies (opens in new tab). The rulers who led the reconquest used Gothic heritage as a symbol of their legitimacy and right to reconquer Iberia, Sohrman wrote.

As Europe entered the Dark Ages, the Visigothic Kingdom would help preserve many aspects of Roman culture, including its religion and artistic traditions. It's ironic that the Goths, who sacked Rome in A.D. 410, helped the Roman culture endure.

Additional resources

See photos of Gothic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (opens in new tab) .

. Learn more about the Gothic art style from the Victoria and Albert Museum (opens in new tab) .

. Take a look at the Google Arts & Culture section (opens in new tab) devoted to pre-Renaissance Gothic art.

Originally published on Live Science on March 18, 2016 and updated on August 8, 2022.
Tutankhamun, or King Tut as he is often called today, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was buried in a lavish tomb filled with gold artifacts in the Valley of the Kings near modern-day Luxor. His tomb was discovered in 1922 by an archaeological team led by British Egyptologist Howard Carter.

Today he is also sometimes called the "boy-king" because he ascended the throne at age 9 or 10 in the 14th century B.C. He died about a decade later. His treasure-filled tomb was discovered mostly intact, which is extraordinary given that most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been looted in ancient times.

The discovery of his tomb in 1922 attracted worldwide attention and turned King Tut into a household name. "It's difficult to imagine the past century without Tutankhamun and the discovery of that time-capsule tomb," Christina Riggs (opens in new tab), a history professor at Durham University in England, wrote in her book " Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century (opens in new tab)" (Atlantic Books, 2021).

"There would have been no media frenzy of Tut-mania and mummy curses to kick-start the jazz age, and no surge of corresponding pride in the newly independent nation-state of Egypt [which had declared independence from Britain in 1922]," Riggs wrote.

But while Tutankhamun's tomb was lavish, historical and archaeological evidence indicates that the young pharaoh was sickly and spent his short rule undoing a religious revolution started by his father, Akhenaten .

Son of a revolutionary

A relief showing King Akhenaten, Queen Nefertiti and their children, along with the sun disk, Aten (Image credit: UniversalImagesGroup / Contributor via Getty Images)

King Tut, called Tutankhaten at birth, was born in ancient Egypt around 1341 B.C. His father, Akhenaten, was a revolutionary pharaoh who tried to focus Egypt's polytheistic religion around the worship of the sun disk, the Aten. In his fervor, Akhenaten ordered the names and images of other Egyptian deities to be destroyed or defaced. He also built a new capital at what is now Tell el-Amarna. He was able to carry out these acts without a widespread violent rebellion but after his death he was condemned.

Tutankhaten's biological mother is unknown but likely was not Akhenaten's principal wife, Queen Nefertiti  although Egyptologists still debate this. As an infant, Tutankhamun was wet-nursed by his half-sister, Meritaten. A family portrait, painted in a tomb at the ancient city of Amarna, shows Meritaten nursing her infant brother.

Tutankhamun ascended the throne around 1332 B.C. Given his young age, the boy king would have relied heavily on advisors. At some point, he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun, removing the word "aten"  a reminder of his father's attempted religious revolution  from his name and replacing it with amun, the name of the principal Egyptian god. This change illustrates King Tuts move away from his fathers religious changes, returning Egypt to its former polytheistic beliefs.

Tutankhamun condemned his father's actions in a stela found at Karnak, near modern-day Luxor, which stated that Akhenaten's religious revolution caused the gods to ignore Egypt. Part of the stela reads: "the temples and the cities of the gods and the goddesses, starting from Elephantine [as far] as the Delta marshes  were fallen into decay and their shrines were fallen into ruin, having become mere mounds overgrown with grass  The gods were ignoring this land." [Excerpt taken from " The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti (opens in new tab)," (Thames & Hudson, 2014)] This act may have helped him cement his power. Tutankhamuns young age when he ascended the throne meant that he relied heavily on advisors to make decisions.

Ill-health and death

A view of King Tut's mummified head, displayed in a climate-controlled case at his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 2007. (Image credit: AFP / Pool via Getty Images)

Archaeological evidence indicates that Tutankhamun suffered from ill health. A 2010 study of his remains published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (opens in new tab) (JAMA) found that he had a variety of medical conditions and illnesses, including malaria and Kohler disease, a rare bone disorder of the foot). Archaeologists also found a number of canes in Tutankhamun's tomb, which suggests the pharaoh had difficulty walking at times.

Despite these maladies, he may have worn armor  although whether he went into battle himself is unclear. A 2018 analysis of leather armor found in Tutankhamun's tomb found that the armor had been worn.

Tutankhamun may have also had Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that can leave someone with unusually long fingers, arms and legs. Members of the royal family were depicted with these features during Akhenaten's reign. However, the 2010 JAMA study found that Tutankhamun probably did not have this condition.

Tutankhamun married his half-sister, Queen Ankhesenamun, and the couple had twin daughters who were stillborn; their fetuses were buried in jars in the pharaoh's tomb. The couple left no heir to the throne. The tomb of Queen Ankhesenamun has not yet been found.

The boy king died in 1323 B.C. around the age of 18. His death was likely unexpected, and his tomb appears to have been hastily finished. In 2011, Ralph Mitchell, a professor of applied biology at Harvard University, helped analyze 'brown spots' in the tomb . Those spots which turned out to be remains of microbes that had once grown on the walls, possibly as a result of paint that was still wet when the pharaoh was interred in the tomb. "We're guessing that the painted wall was not dry when the tomb was sealed," Mitchell said in a statement (opens in new tab).

No one knows what killed Tutankhamun. Egyptologists have put forward numerous hypotheses over the years. In the JAMA article, a research team suggested that a combination of malaria and necrosis (death of bone tissue) from a broken bone in his left foot may have caused his death.

Burial and King Tut's mummy

In a paper published in the journal Etudes et Travaux in 2013, famed archaeologist Salima Ikram (opens in new tab) suggested that returning Egypt to its traditional polytheistic beliefs was so important to Tutankhamun  and his advisers  that he had himself mummified in an unusual way to emphasize his strong association with Osiris, the god of the underworld.

Ikram, an Egyptology professor at the American University in Cairo, wrote that Tutankhamun's skin was soaked in oil after his death, which turned his skin black. His heart was also removed (something which wasnt usually done). Additionally his penis was mummified at a 90-degree angle, something that was also unusual. In legend, Osiris had black skin, strong regenerative powers and a heart that had been hacked to pieces by his brother Seth.

However, the large amount of flammable oil caused Tutankhamun's mummy to catch fire shortly after burial.

King Tut's tomb

Howard Carter's team discovered the tomb's entranceway on Nov. 4, 1922, and entered the tomb on Nov.26.

"As one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another," Carter wrote in his diary of the dig. The tomb was later given the designation KV 62.

Carter and his team found that the tomb contained a wealth of untouched treasures. "Our sensations and astonishment are difficult to describe as the better light revealed to us the marvelous collection of treasures: two strange ebony-black effigies of a King, gold sandalled, bearing staff and mace, loomed out from the cloak of darkness; gilded couches in strange forms, lion-headed, Hathor-headed, and beast infernal " Among the many other treasures was a dagger whose iron came from a meteor. The most iconic treasure was his death mask, made of gold along with inlaid stones and glass, which the king was found wearing.

The discovery of the boy king's tomb caused a media sensation. Newspapers breathlessly reported on the myth that the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb awakened a curse that killed those who helped find it. The mummy's curse was refuted in a 2002 British Medical Journal (opens in new tab) study that examined the records of 25 people who went into the tomb shortly after its discovery. People who entered the tomb lived on average to the age of 70 and lived about 20 years on average after being inside the tomb. Those numbers were not unusual given the average life span at the time and age of those who went inside the tomb.

While the treasures were incredible, the tomb was unusually small for a pharaoh's burial, with a total volume of 9,782 cubic feet (277 cubic meters) the Theban Mapping Project website (opens in new tab) notes. In comparison the tomb of Seti I (reign ca.1294 to 1279 B.C) has a volume of 67,110 cubic feet (1,900 cubic m), according to the mapping project (opens in new tab). This space is divided among the passage corridor, burial chamber, antechamber and two rooms now called the "annex" and the "treasury."

The tomb may be small because the pharaoh died young and unexpectedly, leaving no time to carve out a larger tomb. Its possible that the tomb may not have originally been intended for a pharaoh at all, wrote Richard Wilkinson (opens in new tab), an Egyptology professor at the University of Arizona, in a paper published in the book "The Oxford Handbook of the Valley of the Kings (opens in new tab)" (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"The tomb of Tutankhamun is not of royal design, and it may have been hastily taken over for his burial when the young king died and [the] tomb that was being prepared for him was not yet complete," Wilkinson wrote. Despite the name Valley of the Kings, people who were not pharaohs were also buried in it.

View of the antechamber of the tomb looking south, following its discovery in 1922 (Image credit: Heritage Images / Contributor via Getty Images)

In 2015, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, an independent scholar, published a paper in the periodical Amarna Royal Tombs Project, suggesting that Nefertiti was also buried in King Tuts tomb and that her burial remains hidden. However, ground-penetrating radar surveys have failed to find solid evidence of a hidden burial .

The discovery of his intact tomb and the media sensation around it have made King Tut more prominent in death than he was in life. This "long-lost king, buried before he was out of his teens, found more fame and influence in the twentieth century than he had ever known in his own life-time," Riggs wrote.

That worldwide fame continues today, and KV 62 is now a major tourist attraction. But tourist entry is strictly managed, as changes in humidity (brought about by people passing through the tomb) can damage the tomb and its wall paintings. To help mitigate the risks, the Getty Conservation Institute conducted conservation work on the tomb between 2009 and 2019, during which the conservation team installed a new ventilation system in the tomb and conducted a detailed check of the wall paintings.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, western powers shipped Egyptian archaeological treasures home to their own museums and private collections. As a result, Egyptian authorities enacted laws to ensure that Tutankhamun and his treasures would remain in the country, wrote Richard Parkinson (opens in new tab), an Egyptology professor at the University of Oxford, in a chapter published in the book " Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive (opens in new tab)." (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2022).

Additional resources

The Griffith Institute (opens in new tab) maintains a detailed archive of material from the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb, much of which can be accessed on its website. Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (opens in new tab) has online galleries showing images from the tomb and information on how to visit it on its website. The ministry also has a virtual tour (opens in new tab) of the Tutankhamun artifacts on display in the Egyptian Museum.

This article was originally published on April 01, 2016, and was updated on Oct. 20, 2022.
Researchers used spectral imaging to read the writing on this fragment, which details the third-century Thermopylae battle.

Fragments of an ancient Greek text telling of an invasion of Greece by the Goths during the third century A.D. have been discovered in the Austrian National Library. The text includes a battle fought at the pass of Thermopylae.

Researchers used spectral imaging to enhance the fragments, making it possible to read them. The analysis suggests the fragments were copied in the 11th century A.D. and are from a text that was written in the third-century A.D. by an Athens writer named Dexippus.

During Dexippus' life, Greece (part of the Roman Empire) and Rome struggled to repel a series of Gothic invasions. [10 Epic Battles That Changed History]

"Warding off the battle columns"

Lecturers Christopher Mallan, of Oxford University, and Caillan Davenport, of the University of Queensland in Australia, recently translated one of the fragments into English. The translated text, detailed in the Journal of Roman Studies, describes the Thermopylae battle: At the start of the fragment, "battle columns" of Goths, a people who flourished in Europe whom the Romans considered barbarians, are attacking the Greek city of Thessalonica.

"Making an assault upon the city of the Thessalonians, they tried to capture it as a close-packed band," Dexippus wrote of the attack, as translated by Mallan and Davenport. "Those on the walls defended themselves valiantly, warding off the battle columns with the assistance of many hands."

Unable to capture Thessalonica, the Goth force turned south toward Athens, "envisioning the gold and silver votive offerings and the many processional goods in the Greek sanctuaries, for they learned that the region was exceedingly wealthy in this respect," Dexippus wrote.

An image of sulfur springs near Thermopylae pass, Greece. Long ago, the narrow pass made it a good point to try and prevent the invading Goths from reaching Athens and southern Greece. (Image credit: eFesenko / Shutterstock.com )

A Greek force assembled at the narrow pass of Thermopylae in an attempt to stop the Gothic advance. "Some [of the Greeks] carried small spears, others axes, others wooden pikes overlaid with bronze and with iron tips, or whatever each man could arm himself with," Dexippus wrote. "When they came together, they completely fortified the perimeter wall and devoted themselves to its protection with haste."

"Terrifying to the enemy"

In the text, Dexippus said the commander of the Greek force, a general named Marianus, tried to raise morale by reminding the Greeks of the battles their ancestors had fought at Thermopylae in the past, including the famous fifth-century B.C. battle between the Persians and a Spartan-led force. [In Photos: Spartan Temple and Cultic Artifacts Discovered]

"O Greeks, the occasion of our preservation for which you are assembled and the land in which you have been deployed are both truly fitting to evoke the memory of virtuous deeds," Marianus' speech to his troops reads, as translated from the fragment. "For your ancestors, fighting in this place in former times, did not let Greece down and deprive it of its free state.

"In previous attacks, you seemed terrifying to the enemies," said Marianus. "On account of these things, future events do not appear to me not without hope "

The fragment ends before the completion of Marianus' speech, and the outcome of the battle is uncertain, researchers said.

Marianus may well have given a speech (or speeches) to the troops, the researchers said; however, the speech recorded in this text was likely invented by Dexippus, something ancient historians often did.

Though no one has an exact date for the Thermopylae battle, it was likely fought in the 250s or 260s, researchers said.

An emperor fights

The Thermopylae fragment is one of several written by Dexippus, discovered in the Austrian National Library book, that discuss the invasion of Greece by the Goths. The Thermopylae battle fragment was first published in 2014 in German in the journal Wiener Studies by Gunther Martin and Jana Gruskova, researchers at the University of Bern and Comenius University in Bratislava, respectively.

Martin and Gruskova have published several articles in German and English on the other fragments. Some of the fragments tell of an attempt by the Roman Emperor Decius (who lived A.D. 201-251) to stop the Gothic forces, as described by Martin and Gruskova in 2014 in the journal Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. In those fragments, Dexippus wrote that Emperor Decius suffered a series of setbacks, losing territory and men.

Like Marianus, Emperor Decius also supposedly gave a speech to raise morale among his troops. "Men, I wish the military force and all the provincial territory were in a good condition and not humiliated by the enemy," Emperor Decius told his troops (translation by Martin and Gruskova).

"But since the incidents of human life bring manifold sufferings  it is the duty of prudent men to accept what happens and not to lose their spirit, nor become weak."

Again, this speech may have been invented by Dexippus.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Part of New York's plan for combating Zika virus is to distribute "Zika protection kits" (shown above) to pregnant women.

New York state officials have announced a new plan aimed at preventing the transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus or limiting an outbreak if the virus were to arrive in the area.

Part of the plan involves trapping and testing thousands of mosquitoes in New York for Zika. Specifically, researchers will monitor the Aedes group of mosquitoes, which are the major carriers of the virus in Central and South America, where the virus is currently spreading.

Although scientists have not yet determined if the type of Aedes mosquito in New York can also transmit Zika, researchers plan to trap and test about 60,000 mosquitoes in the region per month, according to a statement from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

New York will also distribute free "Zika protection kits" to pregnant women in regions where the virus might spread, the statement said. These kits include insect repellent, condoms (to prevent the sexual transmission of the virus) and larvicide tablets (that can kill mosquito larvae) to treat standing water. Initially, the state will give 20,000 kits to health care providers for distribution to patients.

"The state is taking aggressive action to reduce the risk of Zika transmission in New York," Cuomo said in the statement. "We have put in place a first-in-the-nation action plan that will work to eliminate Zika at its source, reduce potential transmissions and safeguard expectant mothers against this dangerous disease." [Here Are the US Cities at Highest Risk for Zika Transmission]

Although the Zika virus usually causes either mild illness or no symptoms in adults, health officials are concerned about a strong link between infection with the virus during pregnancy and microcephalyin infants. Babies born withmicrocephaly may have an abnormally small head and cognitive impairments. The virus is transmitted primarily by mosquitoes, but there have been cases of sexual transmission as well, and the virus has been found in the semen of infected men.

Transmission of Zika by mosquitoes has not yet occurred in the U.S.  so far, all cases diagnosed in the country have been in people who either contracted the virus while traveling abroad or acquired it through sexual activity with a partner who was infected while traveling.

However, health officials say that a limited spread of the virus is likely in the U.S., because the Aedes mosquito is common in some areas. A recent study suggested that New York City had a "moderate" risk for the local spread of Zika.

New York's plan for Zika is laid out in six steps:

Eliminating mosquito breeding sites by distributing 100,000 larvicide tablets throughout the region;

Deploying mosquito traps in 1,000 locations per month;

Distributing Zika protection kits to pregnant women;

Deploying a "rapid response team" if Zika transmission by a mosquito is confirmed, which will inspect surrounding areas and develop an action plan;

Requiring all local health departments to submit an action plan for Zika, if Zika is found mosquitoes in the area; and

Launching a public awareness campaign, which includes a Zika information hotline.

People can protect themselves against mosquito bites by wearing long-sleeved shirts and using mosquito repellent that is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
The Internet is a busy place. Every second, approximately 6,000 tweets are tweeted; more than 40,000 Google queries are searched; and more than 2 million emails are sent, according to Internet Live Stats, a website of the international Real Time Statistics Project.

But these statistics only hint at the size of the Web. As of September 2014, there were 1 billion websites on the Internet, a number that fluctuates by the minute as sites go defunct and others are born. And beneath this constantly changing (but sort of quantifiable) Internet that's familiar to most people lies the "Deep Web," which includes things Google and other search engines don't index. Deep Web content can be as innocuous as the results of a search of an online database or as secretive as black-market forums accessible only to those with special Tor software. (Though Tor isn't only for illegal activity, it's used wherever people might have reason to go anonymous online.)

Combine the constant change in the "surface" Web with the unquantifiability of the Deep Web, and it's easy to see why estimating the size of the Internet is a difficult task. However, analysts say the Web is big and getting bigger. [Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web]

Data-driven

With about 1 billion websites, the Web is home to many more individual Web pages. One of these pages, www.worldwidewebsize.com, seeks to quantify the number using research by Internet consultant Maurice de Kunder. De Kunder and his colleagues published their methodology in February 2016 in the journal Scientometrics. To come to an estimate, the researchers sent a batch of 50 common words to be searched by Google and Bing. (Yahoo Search and Ask.com used to be included but are not anymore because they no longer show the total results.) The researchers knew how frequently these words have appeared in print in general, allowing them to extrapolate the total number of pages out there based on how many contain the reference words. Search engines overlap in the pages they index, so the method also requires estimating and subtracting the likely overlap. [Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed?]

According to these calculations, there were at least 4.66 billion Web pages online as of mid-March 2016. This calculation covers only the searchable Web, however, not the Deep Web.

So how much information does the Internet hold? There are three ways to look at that question, said Martin Hilbert, a professor of communications at the University of California, Davis.

"The Internet stores information, the Internet communicates information and the Internet computes information," Hilbert told Live Science. The communication capacity of the Internet can be measured by how much information it can transfer, or how much information it does transfer at any given time, he said.

In 2014, researchers published a study in the journal Supercomputing Frontiers and Innovations estimating the storage capacity of the Internet at 10^24 bytes, or 1 million exabytes. A byte is a data unit comprising 8 bits, and is equal to a single character in one of the words you're reading now. An exabyte is 1 billion billion bytes.

One way to estimate the communication capacity of the Internet is to measure the traffic moving through it. According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index initiative, the Internet is now in the "zettabyte era." A zettabyte equals 1 sextillion bytes, or 1,000 exabytes. By the end of 2016, global Internet traffic will reach 1.1 zettabytes per year, according to Cisco, and by 2019, global traffic is expected to hit 2 zettabytes per year.

One zettabyte is the equivalent of 36,000 years of high-definition video, which, in turn, is the equivalent of streaming Netflix's entire catalog 3,177 times, Thomas Barnett Jr., Cisco's director of thought leadership, wrote in a 2011 blog post about the company's findings.

In 2011, Hilbert and his colleagues published a paper in the journal Science estimating the communication capacity of the Internet at 3 x 10^12 kilobits per second, a measure of bandwidth. This was based on hardware capacity, and not on how much information was actually being transferred at any moment.

In one particularly offbeat study, an anonymous hacker measured the size of the Internet by counting how many IPs (Internet Protocols) were in use. IPs are the wayposts of the Internet through which data travels, and each device online has at least one IP address. According to the hacker's estimate, there were 1.3 billion IP addresses used online in 2012.

The Internet has vastly altered the data landscape. In 2000, before Internet use became ubiquitous, telecommunications capacity was 2.2 optimally compressed exabytes, Hilbert and his colleagues found. In 2007, the number was 65. This capacity includes phone networks and voice calls as well as access to the enormous information reservoir that is the Internet. However, data traffic over mobile networks was already outpacing voice traffic in 2007, the researchers found.

The physical Internet

Decades of research and speculative fiction have led to today's computerized assistants such as Apple's Siri. (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

If all of these bits and bytes feel a little abstract, don't worry: In 2015, researchers tried to put the Internet's size in physical terms. The researchers estimated that it would take 2 percent of the Amazon rainforest to make the paper to print out the entire Web (including the Dark Web), they reported in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics. For that study, they made some big assumptions about the amount of text online by estimating that an average Web page would require 30 pages of A4 paper (8.27 by 11.69 inches). With this assumption, the text on the Internet would require 1.36 x 10^11 pages to print a hard copy. (A Washington Post reporter later aimed for a better estimate and determined that the average length of a Web page was closer to 6.5 printed pages, yielding an estimate of 305.5 billion pages to print the whole Internet.)

Of course, printing out the Internet in text form wouldn't include the massive amount of nontext data hosted online. According to Cisco's research, 8,000 petabytes per month of IP traffic was dedicated to video in 2015, compared with about 3,000 petabytes per month for Web, email and data transfer. (A petabyte is a million gigabytes or 2^50 bytes.) All told, the company estimated that video accounted for most Internet traffic that year, at 34,000 petabytes. File sharing came in second, at 14,000 petabytes.

Hilbert and his colleagues took their own stab at visualizing the world's information. In their 2011 Science paper, they calculated that the information capacity of the world's analog and digital storage was 295 optimally compressed exabytes. To store 295 exabytes on CD-ROMS would require a stack of discs reaching to the moon (238,900 miles, or 384,400 kilometers), and then a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the moon again, the researchers wrote. That's a total distance of 298,625 miles (480,590 km). By 2007, 94 percent of information was digital, meaning that the world's digital information alone would overshoot the moon if stored on CD-ROM. It would stretch 280,707.5 miles (451,755 km).

The Internet's size is a moving target, Hilbert said, but it's growing by leaps and bounds. There's just one saving grace when it comes to this deluge of information: Our computing capacity is growing even faster than the amount of data we store.

While world storage capacity doubles every three years, world computing capacity doubles every year and a half, Hilbert said. In 2011, humanity could carry out 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second with all of its computers  similar to the number of nerve impulses per second in the human brain. Five years later, computational power is up in the ballpark of about eight human brains. That doesn't mean, of course, that eight people in a room could outthink the world's computers. In many ways, artificial intelligence already outperforms human cognitive capacity (though A.I. is still far from mimicking general, humanlike intelligence). Online, artificial intelligence determines which Facebook posts you see, what comes up in a Google search and even 80 percent of stock market transactions. The expansion of computing power is the only thing making the explosion of data online useful, Hilbert said.

"We're going from an information age to a knowledge age," he said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+.
Online retailer Amazon has filed a patent for a system that would let you pay with your face.

Amazon may be looking at ways to let you pay for purchases with just a look. But experts warn that such systems have proven easy to fool in the past.

In a new patent application  U.S. patent No. 20,160,071,111, filed on March 10  the company described a system that would let a user authorize a purchase using two things: an image of the person's face and a live motion to check that the image is actually the owner of the phone.

In theory, the system would help stop fraud, as many online stores (Amazon included) have apps that let anyone make purchases directly from a phone. To make sure it is a real person making a purchase, and not a just photo of the individual taken from somewhere, the system would ask for a blink, a wink or some other motion that only live humans do.

The problem is that faces are not hard to fake, said Jim Wayman, a facial-recognition expert and senior fellow at San Jose State University in California.

Securty researcher Jan Krissler noted that Amazon's methods of detecting whether a person was real or not  motion detection, for instance  would need hardware that phones don't have yet, like infrared sensors and LEDs. (Krissler was the hacker who famously faked German Defense Minsiter Ursula von der Leyens fingerprints using only a few photos  inlcuding one he took from several yards away.)

Gestures, Krissler noted, are not hard to fake either. "It's still easy to fake if they only use the normal camera built into a smartphone or computer. You can simply use a video showing the required gesture instead of a photo."

There are a number of already-publicized instances where people used Photoshop to simulate closed eyes. Creating a GIF, or short movie file, that stitches together a closed- and open-eye photo and animates is easy, too. [Shop 'Til You Drop: 7 Marketing Tricks Retailers Use]

An image included with Amazon's patent application. (Image credit: Amazon patent application)

For example, Android introduced a "face unlock" feature in 2011 that let users hold their phones in front of their faces to unlock the devices. But it didn't take long for hackers and even relatively novice users to discover that the recognition software would respond to photos of their faces as well.

There was even a video, uploaded to YouTube by user "Technotricks," that showed how a phone could be unlocked using a photo presented by another phone. Google (which makes Android phones) had denied that this was possible, in a story by Matt Brian at TheNextWeb.

Less than a year later, Google introduced the "Liveness Check" aimed at preventing the use of photos to unlock phones. But once again, a little work with a basic photo editor was able to fool the system.

According to its patent application, Amazon said it plans to use tracking technologies to look for head movement or some other indication that the person in the phone's camera view is actually a living, breathing human being. If that's the case, said Lisa Vaas, writing on security company Sophos' Naked Security blog, the kind of monitoring needed to do this will require a lot of computing power.

There's a long way to go from a patent application to an actual product, and it is far from clear what the technical details of the system will be, as the patent application doesn't say.

Wayman noted that even government agencies that have tried to create security systems based on face recognition have had problems making it work. "The National Security Agency [NSA] worried about this problem [of using photos] in the late 1990s and publicized the work on national TV at the direction of NSA Director Mike Hayden," Wayman said.

The segment aired in 2001. Since then, the NSA has been looking at using gestures to secure its smartphones, according to the news site biometricupdate.com.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
This digitally-colorized image shows particles of Zika virus, which is a member of the family Flaviviridae. The virus particles are colored blue in the picture. They are 40 nanometers (0.00004 millimeters) in diameter.

More than 100 cases of Zika virus have been confirmed in the United States, a new report finds.

The 116 residents who have now tested positive for the virus include one infant who was born with severe microcephaly, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All 116 cases of Zika were confirmed by lab tests at the CDC.

The report includes all Zika cases reported between Jan. 1, 2015, and Feb. 26, 2016, but more than three-quarters of the patients reported that their illness began in 2016, according to the report released today (March 18). The patients ranged in age from the newborn infant with microcephaly, up to 81 years old, the report said. [Zika Virus News: Complete Coverage Of The Outbreak]

Ten percent of the patients were children and adolescents younger than 18, and 65 percent of the cases were in females, according to the report.

The patients were residents of 33 states and Washington, D.C., and all had reported either recently traveling to areas with the Zika virus or having sexual contact with such a traveler, according to the CDC. Specifically, 110 patients had traveled to areas with Zika, including the mother of the infant born with microcephaly, who reported being infected with the virus in Brazil during her first trimester, according to the report. In the other five cases, the patients became infected through sexual activity with a person who became infected while traveling.

The most common countries visited by the patients were Haiti, El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras and Guatemala, the CDC reported.

To date, there have been no reports of people contracting Zika from a mosquito bite in the U.S., although officials have said that a small number of such cases are expected to occur. Officials have warned that Zika has been found in the semen of infected men, and that men who travel to regions where the virus is spreading and have pregnant partners should use condoms or abstain from sex until the baby is born.

The patients in the report said they became ill between 37 days before returning to the U.S. and 11 days after returning to the U.S., according to the report.

Although the Zika virus usually causes no symptoms or mild symptoms in adults, health officials are concerned about the link between infection during pregnancy and microcephaly in infants. Microcephaly is a condition where babies may be born with an abnormally small head and cognitive impairments.

All 115 patients (not including the newborn) reported clinical symptoms of Zika, including the mother of the infant born with microcephaly, according to the CDC. The most common symptoms were rash (113 of the patients), fever (94 of the patients) and joint pain (76 of the patients), according to the report. Other symptoms included headache, muscle pain and conjunctivitis (pink eye). Nearly all of the patients reported experiencing two or more of the symptoms, and over two-thirds of the patients reported experiencing three or more, according to the report.

Four patients were hospitalized, but no deaths occurred, according to the report.

The CDC has warned that the number of cases among travelers will likely continue to increase, and that this could lead to local transmission.

Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @SaraGMiller. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
Next Monday, March 21, is the closing date for Longford organisations to apply for funding under the Community Tourism Initiative for the Diaspora.

The initiative, launched in 2014, provides a national fund of 1m and it builds on the community involvement legacy of The Gathering 2013 and is a joint partnership between Longford County Council, IPB Insurance and Failte Ireland.

Administered locally by Longford County Council, interested parties are advised to contact Bernadette Doyle, bdoyle@longfordcoco.ie 043 3343472 to apply.

We all witnessed the benefits from The Gathering and this scheme gives us an opportunity to build on its legacy, Longford County Council Cathaoirleach Gerry Warnock explained.

The Community Tourism Initiative allows us to sustain many of the grass roots networks which sprang to life during The Gathering in Longford and sustain an infrastructure of events and relationships which will have long term tourism and social benefits for this region for many years to come.

For that reason, I would urge anyone out there with a good idea or interesting event, which would help us to reach out to the diaspora, to get in touch with us and make an application.
Longford businessman and the son of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds is celebrating this week after his horse, Mall Dini, landed a huge win at Cheltenham.

Mr Reynolds 14/1 shot scooped the Pertemps Hurdle on the third day of the festival who outbattled the Philip Hobbs trained Arpege DAlene by three quarters of a length.

It was an emotional Reynolds who afterwards attributed the win to his late father.

He got me into racing at a very young age, he said.

He used to bring us to Galway when it was a three day meeting and that was our summer holidays so that was where it started.

Mr Reynolds was similarly wholesome in his praise for relatively unknown Galway based trainer Patrick Kelly.

Its incredible, Ive dreamt about this for so long.

Pat Kelly trains five horses in a tiny village, this is what racing is all about, he added.
New York, NY - March 17, 2016 - Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and James J. Hunt, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced today the conviction of Moshe Mirilasvhili, a board-certified, state-licensed doctor, for conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. During the period of the charged conspiracy, Mirilashvili wrote more than 13,000 medically unnecessary prescriptions for oxycodone, typically in return for cash payments. Mirilashvili was convicted after a three-week jury trial before Judge Colleen McMahon.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: In just a matter of two years, Dr. Moshe Mirilashvili flooded the streets of New York City with more than a million pills of highly addictive oxycodone, a drug involved in the overdose deaths of thousands of Americans each year. As the jury unanimously found today, Dr. Mirilashvili, blinded by greed, cast away his Hippocratic Oath and instead aligned himself with street-level drug dealers. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the federal and local law enforcement partners, Dr. Mirilashvili is no longer in the business of fueling for profit the opioid addiction that plagues too many people in our communities.

The following is based on the Indictment as well as evidence presented during trial:

Oxycodone is a highly addictive, prescription-strength narcotic used to treat severe and chronic pain conditions. Every year more than 13 million Americans abuse oxycodone, with the misuse of prescriptions painkillers such as oxycodone, leading to as many as 500,000 annual emergency room visits. Oxycodone prescriptions have enormous cash value to street level drug dealers, who can fill the prescriptions at most pharmacies and resell the pills at vastly inflated rates. Indeed, a single prescription for 90 30-milligram oxycodone pills has an average resale value in New York City of $2,700 or more.

From October 2012 until December 2014, Mirilashvili, a board-certified, state-licensed doctor, wrote thousands of medically unnecessary prescriptions for large quantities of oxycodone in exchange for cash payments. Mirilashvili did so out of a sham medical office located on West 162nd Street in Manhattan where Mirilashvili typically charged $200 in cash for patient visits that typically involved little, if any, actual examination and almost always resulted in the issuance of a prescription for a large quantity of oxycodone, typically 90 30-milligram tablets.

Virtually none of these patients had any medical need for oxycodone, nor any legitimate medical records documenting an ailment for which oxycodone would be prescribed. Instead, most of these individuals were members of crews  that is, they were recruited and paid by drug traffickers (the Crew Chiefs), to pose as patients in order to receive medically unnecessary prescriptions. The Crew Chiefs then obtained these prescriptions and arranged for them to be filled at various pharmacies so that the oxycodone pills thereby obtained could be resold on the streets of New York.

As established at trial, Mirilashvili worked directly with some of these Crew Chiefs who paid Mirilashvilis cash fees in return for the oxycodone prescriptions Mirilashvili guaranteed for their patients. As part of the scheme, Mirilashvili frequently accepted and even created fraudulent and fake documents  such as MRI and urinalysis reports  ostensibly documenting the medical need for the oxycodone prescriptions Mirilashvili was writing. For example, among documents recovered from Mirilashvilis home at the time of his arrest, were lab reports in which the name of the patient had been cut and pasted onto the document, as well as similar reports in which the name of the patient or other relevant information had been whited out. More than $1.75 million in cash earned from writing these medically unnecessary prescriptions was also recovered from the defendants home at the time of his arrest.

In total, between October 2012 and December 2014, Mirilashvili wrote more than 13,000 medically unnecessary prescriptions for oxycodone, comprising nearly 1.2 million oxycodone tablets with a street value of $36,000,000 or more. Mirilishivili collected more than $2.4 million in fees for doctor visits during this time period.

Ten other participants in the conspiracy  including the drug traffickers who oversaw crews of patients sent into the clinics to obtain medically unnecessary oxycodone prescriptions and clinic staff, who profited by selling access to Mirilashvili and the fraudulent prescriptions he wrote  have previously pleaded guilty.

Mirilashvili, 67, of Great Neck, New York, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and two counts of unlawful distribution of oxycodone, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison each. Mirilashvili will be sentenced July 20, 2016, at 2 p.m. before the Judge Colleen McMahon.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara thanked the DEA Tactical Diversion S quad  New York, comprising agents and officers of the DEA, the New York Police Department, the Westchester County Police Department, the Town of Orangetown Police Department, and the New York State Department of Finance for their work in the two-year investigation, which he noted is ongoing.

The case is being prosecuted by the Offices Narcotics Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Edward B. Diskant and Brooke E. Cucinella are in charge of the prosecution.
Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Food & Water Watch Published: March 18 2016

Local Residents Urge Representatives to Cosponsor New York GMO Labeling Bill

East Meadow, NY  This week, Food & Water Watch is generating over 100 phone calls into representatives offices around East Meadow, urging them to support Assembly Bill 617 / Senate Bill 485, which would give consumers critical information about whats in our food and how it is produced. The bill would label genetically engineered foods in New York, which are pervasive in our food supply, but are often bred to withstand applications of harsh chemicals. Local residents are calling on Assembly Member McKevitt and Senator Michael Venditto to support the GMO labeling bill.

Long Island residents have made over 200 calls in the last few weeks, demanding the right to know if food is genetically engineered in order to make informed decisions about what to eat and feed their families.

I find it so hard to believe that we even have to fight for such a basic right as knowing what is in the food we are feeding ourselves and our children, says Jacqueline Hassett of Farmingdale. There are many people Ive talked to that already think our food is labeled for GMOs and are shocked to find out theyre not

An overwhelming majority of Americans  over 90% in many polls want GMOs to be labeled. New York would be the fourth state, following Vermont, Connecticut and Maine, to pass a law in support of labeling.



At the federal level, the U.S. Senate is currently considering legislation that would block state efforts to label GMOs. If passed, S.2609 would undermine democratically enacted state laws that give consumers the right to know whats in our food. The proposed federal legislation could create a weak, voluntary measure for labeling genetically engineered foods that would limit access to information to those with internet access or a smart phone. New Yorkers  and the majority of Americans  want GMOs to be labeled.

We are an organic farm that strives to provide a clean food source to the community. Our first priority is to keep our farm and the produce and products we sell in our farm store non-GMO, says Judi Consigli, Operations Manager at NLT Crossroads Farm in Malverne. We believe that consumers have the right to know what is in their food and all food products should be labeled.

The effort to label GMOs in New York is growing in Long Island and across the state. Consumers are calling on state legislators to pass A. 617/S. 485 and thanking U.S. Senators Gillibrand and Schumer for opposing S.2609 and protecting New Yorks right to decide whether to label genetically engineered foods. Activists will make hundreds of calls this week, in addition to 1300 petitions signatures theyve gathered this spring, as well as a letter with 45 local businesses, organizations, and parents urging Long Island representatives to support the bill.

We need to ask our politicians just who is it they are working for, big agriculture and Monsanto or the American people? Hassett says.

About Food & Water Watch

Food & Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves peoples lives and protects our environment.

Food & Water Watch is a Washington, DC-based non-governmental organization and consumer rights group. Any views or positions expressed or advocated by the group are its own, and do not necessarily reflect those of LongIsland.com or its staff.
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

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They have a word in Hollywood for movies in which a 36-year-old woman falls for a 70-year-old man: Normal.

But reverse the genders of the May-December romance, and have 70-year-old Sally Field pursuing 35-year-old Max Greenfield, and youre breaking a sexist taboo that most movies take for granted. Director and co-writer Michael Showalter finds comedy and poignancy in such a situation in Hello, My Name Is Doris.

Doris (Field) doesnt have any cats, but that doesnt stop her millennial co-workers from thinking of her as the crazy cat lady of the office. Taking the ferry in from Staten Island to her swanky Manhattan office every day, wearing thrift-store sweaters and (non-ironic) granny glasses, Doris is woefully out of place among the hipsters who sneer at her. If they knew her, they might know that she is deeply lonely, her elderly mother having just died and her brother (Stephen Root) pressuring her to sell off the family home where shes lived her whole life.

Doris life gets turned around when John (Greenfield) is hired as the firms new art director. He sees her when the others dont, and Doris latches on to his friendliness like it was a life preserver. Soon, shes turned to stalking him on Facebook, pretending to like the EDM bands he likes, and hanging out in Brooklyn with his beautiful young friends. (Hey, they can bond over a shared love of artisanal baking  although Doris uses a mix.)

There are definitely cringe-worthy moments here, as when Doris fearlessly and recklessly throws herself into new situations, like going out clubbing late at night. All the while, shes quietly pining for John, risking ridicule and rejection. Given Showalters career as a satirist (The State, Wet Hot American Summer,) I worried that Hello, My Name is Doris would be cruel to its title character.

But Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso reserve their satiric barbs for the full-of-themselves millennials, who gush about the LGBT preschool they volunteer at or the artisanal chocolate they sell, with a haiku on every wrapper. Kumail Nanjiani, Natasha Lyonne and Rich Sommer are very funny as Doris co-workers. Sommers carefully curated outfits get more ridiculous with each passing scene.

The movie treats Doris gently and sensitively, giving her some dignity as she forges ahead into almost certain heartbreak. Field plays her so well, so vulnerable and open, with that smile that lights up her face out of nowhere. And Greenfield, who typically plays jerks on The New Girl and The Big Short, is winning as John, a nice guy who values Doris friendship, and oblivious to the effect he has on her.

I hope Showalter never abandons the caustic, absurdist satire hes known for, but Hello My Name is Doris is an empathetic and satisfying step in a new direction for him. Itll make you look at the older women in your life a little differently.
Akram Abbas al Kabi, the Secretary General of the Harakat Nujaba, holds hands with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Image from the League of the Righteouss website.

An influential Iranian-backed Iraqi militia said that it and Hezbollah are the twins of resistance that cannot ever be loosened or separated. The militia, known as Harakat al Nujaba, or Movement of the Noble, made the statement after the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Hashem al Musawi, the official spokesman for Harakat al Nujaba, issued a statement on the groups official website on March 13 that defended Hezbollah from the terrorist designation by both the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League earlier this month.

Musawi also indicated that Hezbollah actively fought inside Iraq and took casualties there, presumably during the US occupation as well as during the current fighting against the Islamic State.

The blood of Hezbollah which flowed in the land of Iraq is our responsibility for so long as we exist, Musawi said at the opening of his statement, which was translated by The Long War Journal.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah [Hezbollahs Secretary General] will remain as the fear that plagues the hearts of the Princes of Petrol [Gulf countries] and the Zionists [Israel], wherever they may go, Musawi continued. Hezbollah and the Nujaba movement [Harakat al Nujaba] are the twins of resistance that cannot ever be loosened or separated.

Musawi then accused the Gulf countries or cowardice and said the Popular Mobilization Front, the Iraqi government-sanctioned organization that is dominated by Iranian-backed militias, including Harakat al Nujaba, must teach them the meaning of bravery and sacrifice. He also accused the Gulf nations of being American puppets.

The Princes of Petrol have to learn the meaning of bravery and sacrifice from the sons of the Hashed al Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Front], without whom there would not be a trace of these people worth mentioning, Musawai said. The conspiring statelets of the Gulf will never be liberated so long as America moves them however it pleases.

Links with Hezbollah

Harakat al Nujaba has close ties with Lebanese Hezbollah. The two groups have coordinated activities as Iraqi militia fighters entered Syria to battle rebels and jihadists. The militia was established to funnel fighters from two other Iranian-backed militias, Hezbollah Brigades and Asaib Ahl al Haq, into Syria. It has been spotted on several battlefields in Syria, including in Aleppo.

Harakat al Nujaba is led by Akram Abbas al Kabi, who previously served as a senior commander in both the Mahdi Army and Asaib Ahl al Haq. Kabi was listed by the US as a global terrorist in September 2008 for aiding the Iraqi insurgency. He was listed along with Abdul Reza Shahlai, a deputy commander in Irans Qods Force.

Kabi has close ties with Iran. Last year, Kabi was photographed with Qods Force leader Qassem Soleimani during a battlefield tour in Aleppo, Syria. Photographs of the two commanders were published on Harakat Nujabas website.

Harakat al Nujaba also touts its relationship with Hezbollah. On its website, the group published a picture of Kabi holding hands with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. The two met in 2015 to discuss the security situation in Iraq.

Cooperation between the two groups and their leaders goes back more than a decade, when Irans Qods Force directed Hezbollah to aide in the establishment and training of what US military commanders used to call the Special Groups. Qods Force leader Qassem Soleimani, who is frequently seen on Syria and Iraqs battlefields coordinating with Shiite militias against the Islamic State, and commanders such as Abdul Reza Shahlai were instrumental in establishing the Mahdi Army, Hezbollah Brigades, and offshoots such as the Asaib Ahl al Haq.

Hezbollah also aided in the formation of the Special Groups. Musa Ali Daqduq, a top Hezbollah operative who served as the chief of Nasrallahs bodyguards as well as the head of the terror groups special operations branch, was ordered to help establish Shia groups in Iraq along the lines of Lebanese Hezbollah, according to the US government.

The US captured Daqduq in Basrah, Iraq in March 2007. Daqduq was released to Iraqi custody in December 2011 as the US withdrew from Iraq with the promise that he would be tried for his war crimes. But in 2012, he was freed by the Iraqi government and immediately traveled to Lebanon. After his release, US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal said that Daqduq was involved with supporting Iraqi militias fighting in Syria.

In its designation of Daqduq as a global terrorist in November 2012, the US Treasury Department said that sometime in 2005, Iran asked Hezbollah to form a group to train Iraqis to fight Coalition Forces in Iraq. The designation stated: In response, Hassan Nasrallah established a covert Hezbollah unit to train and advise Iraqi militants in Jaish al Mahdi (JAM) [or Mahdi Army] and JAM Special Groups, now known as Asaib Ahl al Haq [the League of the Righteous], a Mahdi Army faction.

As of 2006, Daqduq had been ordered by Hezbollah to work with IRGC-QF [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force] to provide training and equipment to JAM Special Groups to augment their ability to inflict damage against US troops, Treasury noted.

Thus, Musawais statements that Harakat al Nujaba and Hezbollah are the twins of resistance that cannot ever be loosened or separated, and the blood of Hezbollah which flowed in the land of Iraq is our responsibility are accurate.

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.
Gear purportedly from a killed Russian soldier at Palmyra

As fighting between the Islamic State and Syrian regime forces continue around the ancient city of Palmyra (or Tadmur in Arabic), the jihadist groups Aamaq News Agency has claimed that five Russian soldiers were executed in recent days. To prove this, the news outlet has posted photos from one of the slain Russian soldiers phones. Aamaq News is linked to the Islamic State and often provides reliable information about the groups local and international operations.

The photos show the soldier posing in various places in Syria, both by himself and with other members of his unit. In a video released earlier today, Aamaq News shows a killed Russian soldier and his gear. The camera then zooms in on the soldiers equipment, which includes Russian markings. In addition to the five Russians, Aamaq also claims Islamic State fighters executed several members of Hezbollah and other Shiite militias.

The Islamic State took full control of the city after a week-long offensive last May. At least 462 civilians, 241 government troops, and 150 Islamic State fighters were killed in the fighting in and around Palmyra over a three week period after May 13, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The jihadist group also took over several nearby towns and the Jazal oil field. [For more on this, see LWJ report, Islamic State seizes Syrian city of Palmyra.]

The Islamic State is not the first jihadist group to claim to have battled Russian troops in Syria. In November, a Chechen al Qaeda-ally, Ajnad Kavkaz, claimed to have captured spoils from Russian troops after battles in the northwestern province of Latakia. (See Threat Matrix report, Chechen group says it took spoils from Russian forces in Syria.)

Photos allegedly from the slain Russian soldiers phone:

Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.

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 21st issue of the Islamic States weekly Al Naba newsletter, which was released earlier this month, contains an infographic (seen below) that says much about the organizations operations inside Libya. The image purportedly summarizes the most important military operations against the apostate Awakenings and the Libyan Army in the city of Derna during a three-month period that ended Feb. 29, 2016.

A map at the top of the infographic highlights four key cities along the Mediterranean coast. From west to east they are: Sirte, Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk. Sirte has fallen to the caliphates fighters, who also control the neighboring towns of Nawfaliyah and Bin Jawad. In Benghazi, the Islamic States arm most likely cooperates, tacitly or otherwise, with other jihadists against General Khalifa Haftars forces in the Libyan National Army.

But the story in the eastern city of Derna has been different. Abu Bakr al Baghdadis followers have repeatedly fought their jihadist rivals in the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) and other aligned factions since last year. The MSC has received the backing of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and has noteworthy ties to al Qaedas international organization.

The Islamic State refers to the MSC and allied organizations as the apostate Awakenings. The term Awakenings was once reserved for the Islamic States tribal opponents in Iraq, but the caliphate has broadened the meaning of the term to include even those organizations affiliated with al Qaeda.

Al Naba notes that the entirety of Derna falls under the jurisdiction of the Wilayat Barqah (or its eastern Cyrenaica Province). But the Islamic States soldiers are based in Al Fatayih (an area in the eastern part of the city) and its surrounding areas, as opposed to the heart of Derna. This is due to the groups battles with the MSC last year. The Islamic States men were forced to abandon their strongholds in Dernas center for the outlying neighborhoods.

According to the statistics in Al Nabas infographic, however, the Islamic State continues to battle its jihadist foes. Its snipers targeted the apostate Awakenings 15 times and the group also detonated 32 improvised explosive devices against them as well. The caliphates soldiers launched 7 commando operations.

In sum, Al Nabas editors claim that 250 members of the Awakenings and the Libyan Army were killed or wounded, four tanks and 18 other military vehicles were destroyed, and five military outposts were overrun. In addition, several vehicles were captured, along with a variety of other weapons and ammunition. The Islamic State does not break these figures down further, so there is no way to tell how the alleged casualties were distributed between the Awakenings and Haftars forces.

These statistics cannot be independently verified, but Al Nabas infographic highlights the ongoing fighting between the Islamic States Libyan arm and its jihadist foes.

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.
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.
MADISON  Voters in Wisconsin can begin casting ballots in the presidential race on Monday, a little over two weeks before the state's April 5 primary where a seat on the state Supreme Court is also at stake.

It marks the first presidential election where Wisconsin voters will be required to show photo identification to cast their ballots, a new law that election clerks worry will cause delays and longer lines. Early voting runs through 5 p.m. on Friday April 1, but is no longer allowed on weekends.

There is no official turnout prediction yet from the state elections board. But local clerks are preparing for long lines both because of the new photo ID requirement and the high interest in the presidential race where Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are looking to Wisconsin to solidify their leads.

The state Supreme Court race, between Justice Rebecca Bradley and state Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, will also be decided April 5. Supporters of both candidates have been urging their backers to vote early.

"You will see lines," said Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell on Friday. "The presidential is going to drive it. The fact you have viable campaigns on both sides is unusual. There's just an intense amount of interest. The Trump campaign seems to be driving people who haven't voted in April before."

Early voting was not significant in the last presidential primary election in 2012. Only about 2.4 percent of the total votes cast that year were absentee ballots, according to figures from the Government Accountability Board.

But that year the presidential race was far less tumultuous, with President Barack Obama unchallenged on the Democratic side and Republican Mitt Romney close to becoming the presumptive nominee by the time Wisconsin voted.

The five remaining presidential candidates are expected to turn their focus to Wisconsin next week after Tuesday's primaries in western states. Although Clinton and Trump are the front-runners, neither has locked up their parties' nomination and challengers are expected to compete fiercely for Wisconsin's delegates.

There are 42 delegates at stake on the Republican side and 86 for the Democrats, not counting 10 super delegates who can choose whichever candidate they want regardless of who wins the popular vote.

Clinton is challenged by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, while Trump faces opposition from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Cruz has dispatched staff to the state, and state Sen. Duey Stroebel, a Republican from Cedarburg, has been working to organize backers across Wisconsin. U.S. Rep. Steve King, a Cruz backer from neighboring Iowa, said Friday he thinks Cruz will do well in rural Wisconsin and has a "healthy and reasonable chance" of winning the state.

Kasich has called in support from a trio of prominent former office holders. Former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former U.S. Reps. Scott Klug and Mark Neumann are backing Kasich, who can't win enough delegates through the primaries to get the nomination but could siphon off enough to deny Trump the majority he needs.

Trump's effort in Wisconsin appears to be more organic, without as much public support from current or former elected officials. One Trump backer, Thiensville village president Van Mobley, said he thinks Trump supporters in Wisconsin mirror his backers in other states, but will also include some swing voters who may be deciding between him and Democrat Bernie Sanders.

Trump may also be able to pick up Republicans who had been backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio before he dropped out last week, Mobley said.

On the Democratic side, Sanders backers including former Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey opened an office in Madison last week. Clinton backers, including prominent Democratic Party operatives, office holders and fundraisers, have been working for months on her campaign in Wisconsin.
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The United States has seen Chinese activity around a reef China seized from the Philippines nearly four years ago that could be a precursor to more land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Navy chief said on Thursday.



The head of U.S. naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could be a trigger for Beijing to declare an exclusion zone in the busy trade route.



Richardson told Reuters the United States was weighing responses to such a move.



China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims.



Richardson said the U.S. military had seen Chinese activity around Scarborough Shoal in the northern part of the Spratly archipelago, about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Philippine base of Subic Bay.



"I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. That's an area of concern ... a next possible area of reclamation," he said.



Richardson said it was unclear if the activity near the reef, which China seized in 2012, was related to the pending arbitration decision.



Asked about Richardson's statement, Lu Kang, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it was hypocritical for the United States to criticize China for militarizing the region when it carries out its own naval patrols there.



"This is really laughable and preposterous," he said.



The Philippine foreign ministry said it had yet to receive a report about Chinese activity in Scarborough Shoal.



A Philippine military official who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media said he was unaware of a Chinese survey ship in the area.



"China already has de facto control over the shoal since 2012 and they always have two to three coastguard ships there. We are also monitoring their activities and movements," the official told reporters.



Richardson said China's pursuit of South China Sea territory, which has included massive land reclamation to create artificial islands elsewhere in the Spratlys, threatened to reverse decades of open access and introduce new "rules" that required countries to obtain permission before transiting those waters.



He said that was a worry given that 30 percent of the world's trade passes through the region.



Asked whether China could respond to the ruling by the court of arbitration in The Hague by declaring an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did to the north, in the East China Sea, in 2013, Richardson said: "It's definitely a concern.



"We will just have to see what happens," he said. "We think about contingencies and ... responses."



Richardson said the United States planned to continue carrying out freedom-of-navigation exercises within 12 nautical miles of disputed South China Sea geographical features to underscore its concerns about keeping sea lanes open.



JOINT PATROLS?

The United States responded to the East China Sea ADIZ by flying B-52 bombers through the zone in a show of force in November 2013.



Richardson said he was struck by how China's increasing militarization of the South China Sea had increased the willingness of other countries in the region to work together.



India and Japan have joined the U.S. Navy in the Malabar naval exercise since 2014, and were due to take part again this year in an even more complex exercise that will take place in an area close to the East and South China Seas.



South Korea, Japan and the United States were also working together more closely than ever before, he said.



Richardson said the United States would welcome the participation of other countries in joint patrols in the South China Sea, but those decisions needed to be made by the countries in question.



He said the U.S. military saw good opportunities to build and rebuild relationships with countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and India, which have all realized the importance of safeguarding the freedom of the seas.



He cited India's recent hosting of an international fleet review that included 75 ships from 50 navies, and said the United States was exploring opportunities to increase its use of ports in the Philippines and Vietnam, among others - including the former U.S. naval base at Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay.



But he said Washington needed to proceed judiciously rather than charging in "very fast and very heavy," given the enormous influence and importance of the Chinese economy in the region.



"We have to be sophisticated in how we approach this so that we don't force any of our partners into an uncomfortable position where they have to make tradeoffs that are not in their best interest," he said.



"We would hope to have an approach that would ... include us a primary partner but not necessarily to the exclusion of other partners in the region."
Seaspan has named three new Vice Presidents to its Senior Leadership Team, announcing the appointments of Linda Wortman as Vice President, Finance & Accounting; Catherine Chick as Vice President, Business Services & Technology; and Shawn Chylinski as Vice President, Health, Safety, Environment & Quality.



As Vice President, Finance & Accounting, Linda is responsible for strategic financial oversight of the marine division and corporate services. She is a key advisor to the CFO and Executive Leadership Team and ensures information and metrics are available to inform value added business decisions.



Linda joined Seaspan in 2008 as Controller, Marine and was appointed to the role of Vice President, Finance & Accounting in January 2016. She completed her Bachelor of Commerce Degree, specializing in Accounting from the University of Calgary and holds a Master of Business Administration. She also holds a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPACMA) designation.



As part of the Senior Leadership Team, Catherine provides vision and leadership for developing and implementing information technology initiatives in support of the companys short and long term business strategies. Catherine joined Seaspan in 2012 to establish internal project management capabilities to manage the delivery of enterprise process and system improvement projects. In 2013, her role expanded to include the management of IT Operations and in January 2016, she was appointed to Vice President, Business Services & Technology.



Catherine has a background in management consulting, technology strategy and program management. She has worked in a broad range of industries including technology, higher education, financial institutions and retail. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Business Administration from McMaster University.



Shawn joined Seaspan in June 2013 as Director, Safety & Environment and was appointed to the role of Vice President, Health, Safety, Environment & Quality in March 2016. As part of both the Seaspan Marine and Seaspan Shipyards Senior Leadership Teams, Shawn provides strategic leadership and direction for all HSEQ management systems throughout Seaspan. Additionally, Shawn will be the driving force behind a culture of safety, environmental stewardship, quality and efficiency throughout the company.



Shawn brings more than 20 years experience leading health, safety and environmental performance in the forestry and utility sectors. He has been a leader of success in HSEQ and has led change in Seaspans safety culture that is positioning the company to achieve its zero workplace injury goals. Shawn completed his Bachelor of Forestry Degree from Lakehead University, and has since gone on to complete an Integrated Leadership Development Program from Simon Fraser University, as well as a Leadership Program from the Schulich School of Business.



Seaspans leaders represent the very best-of-the-best in the marine transportation, shipbuilding, and ship repair industries, and I am thrilled to congratulate Linda, Catherine and Shawn on their new and well-earned roles on our world-class team, said Jonathan Whitworth, CEO  Seaspan ULC. Thanks to these appointments, Seaspan continues to bolster its Senior Leadership Team with a wealth of diverse experience and expertise as it re-writes shipbuilding and marine transportation history on Canadas West Coast.


Argentina tenders for 19 cargoes.



Asian spot prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) eased under pressure from growing supplies though fresh demand from Argentina limited losses, traders said. LNG for May delivery in Asia eased to $4.50 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), down 5 cents from the previous week.



Traders said prices were supported by Argentina's tender to buy 19 LNG cargoes for May to August delivery, following a large purchase earlier in the week. Traders said Argentina bought about 20 cargoes on Wednesday from companies including Trafigura, Statoil, BP, Gazprom, Glencore, Gas Natural and Petrobras, having tendered for 32.



The cargoes sold for about $4.50 per mmBtu, they said. "We expect to some additional optimisation activity around Argentina in the coming weeks," one trading source said. Egypt's state-owned EGAS also tendered for supply this week, seeking two cargoes for April delivery.



New supplies from Australia and the United States continued to pick up with Chevron's Gorgon project off the coast of Western Australia expected to ship its first cargo any day with the Asia Excellence vessel moored at the facility. Cheniere Energy shipped the United State's second cargo of LNG this week, with another seven to nine cargoes expected to be shipped from its newly commissioned Sabine Pass terminal in the next couple of months - before its long-term offtake agreement with BG Group starts.



Demand in Asia remained slow with traders noting that storage levels remained healthy although there was some fresh demand from India. Top buyer Japan's imports of LNG totalled 7.433 million tonnes last month, down 3.8 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said.



Traders were awaiting the outcome of Taiwan's CPC tender to buy 14 cargoes for May to December deliveries. In January, CPC tendered for 60 cargoes for delivery over five years from 2017 which traders said was awarded to BP.





By Sarah McFarlane and Oleg Vukmanovic
The SENER engineering and technology group was again a participant at the annual congress organized by the American Society of Naval Engineers, ASNE Day 2016.

As in previous years, the meeting took place in Arlington, near Washington DC, on March 2 and 3. The event brings together a large number of military shipyards and related companies from across North America, as they gather to learn about the sectors new developments in both the technical presentations and the exhibition area.

SENER had its own stand and presented the innovative V80 version of the FORAN system, a step forward needed for complex demands in the context of naval design and construction. The advantages provided by FORAN V80 include: use of a single tool for integrated design and production throughout the products life cycle; an innovative 3D approach to early design stages; connection with the rest of the companys systems and processes, including two-way integration with PLM (product lifecycle management) tools and interaction with the virtual model of the ship in advanced devices as tablets.

SENER's FORAN System, a CAD/CAM/CAE software program for the design and production of all kinds of ships and vessels, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. After half a century of continuous reinvention, it is the longest-standing product of its kind on the market. In use in 40 different countries, FORAN is based on cutting-edge innovative technology and is used in world-leading military programs such as those of NAVANTIA (Spain), BAE Systems (United Kingdom), Babcock International Group (United Kingdom) and ASMAR (Chile).

For many years now SENER has been making concerted efforts in the North America region, where it offers a unique solution for the marine and naval sector and has a number of major clients. In attendance at the event was a team consisting of SENERs head of the North America region, Veronica Alonso, and its director of marine projects in North America, Antonio Valderrama.
The Indonesian government has ambitious plans for major infrastructure projects in the near future in order to give a massive boost to the countrys economy, already the largest in South-East Asia. Its shopping list includes among other things the construction of dozens of ports to serve the countrys almost 14,000 islands. To achieve this the Indonesian government is looking abroad for international expertise from among others Antwerp, the second-largest port in Europe.



During the foreign trade mission headed by Princess Astrid of Belgium, Port Authority chairman Marc Van Peel signed two framework agreements with IPC Corporate University, a subsidiary of the Indonesian Port Corporation (IPC), one of the countrys four national port authorities.



Training

The agreement was signed during a maritime seminar in the presence of among others Princess Astrid, Flemish minister Philippe Muyters, the Belgian secretary of state Pieter De Crem, Indonesian coordinating minister for Maritime Affairs Rizal Ramli and Fisheries minister Susi Pudjastuti. The preparations for the meeting began already in 2015 when an IPC delegation visited Antwerp. Indeed, Indonesian maritime professionals have long been coming to Antwerp. APEC, the maritime training centre for the port of Antwerp, has welcomed no fewer than 340 Indonesian trainees for its standard programmes over the past three years. In addition APEC offers tailor-made courses for the Indonesian port authorities. Under the terms of the framework agreement that was signed on Wednesday APEC will now also conduct seminars on the IPC Corporate University campus in Jakarta.



Consultancy

In future the other Port Authority subsidiary, Port of Antwerp International (PAI), will also be more active in Indonesia. Together with IPC Corporate University, PAI will carry out consultancy work for the Indonesian port authorities.


On February 16, 2016, Judge Carl J. Barbier of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana granted summary judgment in favor of the various commercial oil spill response companies involved in the federal governments response to the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The responders had been sued by numerous individuals claiming that they incurred damages, including personal injury and/or medical monitoring claims for exposure or other injury resulting from the post-explosion and spill clean-up efforts. Plaintiffs fell into five categories: (1) crew involved in the Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) program; (2) workers involved in decontaminating vessels; (3) other marine personnel not involved in the VoO program; (4) clean-up workers and beach personnel involved in onshore clean-up efforts; and (5) residents who lived and worked in close proximity to coastal waters who alleged exposure to oil and/or dispersants. The plaintiffs asserted negligence, gross negligence, negligence per se, nuisance, and battery on the part of the responders. In addition to compensatory damages, they sought punitive damages and declaratory relief; Florida plaintiffs also sought medical monitoring awards, as allowed by state law.

Following extensive discovery, the clean-up responder defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. Plaintiffs were given one more chance to provide some specificity to their broad claims of misconduct by the clean-up responders but were unable or unwilling to do so. At that point, the court could have simply dismissed the case on the ground that there was no genuine dispute as to any material fact. The court noted, though, that the clean-up responders had gathered substantial evidence that their clean-up activities were at the direction of the federal government involving an oil spill of national significance. Plaintiffs counsel objected to admission of that evidence, but the court overruled the objections.

FOSC Authority

The court found that, in accordance with the Clean Water Act, the President had delegated full authority to control the oil spill response to the Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC), including the actions undertaken by private parties. In accordance with the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), and the National Contingency Plan, the effective and immediate removal of a discharge and the efficient, coordinated, and effective action to minimize the damage from the discharge are best achieved if the President, acting through the FOSC, directs all levels of response  federal, state, and private  so as to eliminate the confusion that impeded past responses by establishing a clear chain of command and responsibility. This spill response regime imposes a duty on private entities such as defendant clean-up responders to obey the FOSCs direction during the response effort. The evidence clearly showed that the FOSC, after consulting with numerous parties and considering the advantages and disadvantages of the various actions, specifically ordered the various actions, including use of chemical dispersants, involved in plaintiffs complaints.

Clean Water Act Derivative Immunity

The court then turned to the application of law to the facts of this spill response. Parties acting under the direction and control of the federal government in the exercise of legitimate federal authority are entitled to the benefit of derivative immunity. In other words, if in the exercise of federal authority a federal agency is immune from liability, then a private party acting for and at the direction of the federal agency is also immune from liability. The Clean Water Act provides: The United States Government is not liable for any damages arising from its actions or omissions relating to any response plan required by this section. The National Contingency Plan is such a response plan. It follows that, if the federal government was immune from liability for plaintiffs alleged damages, then the clean-up responders who were acting on behalf of the federal government and at the specific direction and oversight of the FOSC are also entitled to immunity.

Federal Tort Claims Act Discretionary Function Immunity

To the extent that some of the claims could have been addressed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) if brought against the federal government, the court considered such possibility. It noted that the FOSCs decisions during the response and clean-up effort involved an element of judgment or choice and were based on considerations of public policy. For example, the FOSC engaged in a comprehensive analysis before deciding that the use of dispersants to mitigate the impact of the oil spill was appropriate, requiring a robust assessment of net environmental benefits and monitoring activities at the wellhead, in the benthos, water column, water surface, and along the shoreline. The court found that these are precisely the types of governmental decisions that are afforded discretionary function immunity and shielded from second-guessing via an action in tort. As the government would be entitled to discretionary function immunity under the FTCA, it follows that this immunity extends to the clean-up responder defendants.

State Law Preemption

Finally, the court noted that some of the claims brought by the plaintiffs sounded in state law. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law may preempt state law when compliance with both federal and state regulations is a physical impossibility or when the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of federal law. Permitting these state law claims to proceed against defendant clean-up responders could cause clean-up responders in the future to refuse or hesitate to provide their services to mitigate the impact of future spills. It is precisely this second-guessing of the governments decisions that would stand as an obstacle to federal law. Thus, the doctrine of implied conflict preemption prevents these types of claims against clean-up responders acting at the direction and with the oversight of the federal government from going forward.





CWA Liability Exemption

The Clean Water Act includes a provision exempting from liability for damages actions taken or omitted to be taken by a person in the course of rendering care, assistance, or advice consistent with the National Contingency Plan or otherwise as directed by the President relating to a discharge or the substantial threat of a discharge of oil or a hazardous substance. This provision, though, has two important caveats as respects clean-up responders. It does not apply with respect to personal injury or wrongful death and it does not apply if the person was grossly negligent or engaged in willful misconduct. In the instant case, plaintiffs complaints included allegations that they suffered personal injury and that the defendants were grossly negligent.

Conclusion

The court here, though, sidestepped these issues, finding that implied conflict preemption is consistent with the purpose of CWA liability exemption and going directly to the heart of the matter. It ruled that since the defendants were acting as agents of and at the direction of the federal government, those defendants could only be held liable for the alleged injuries if the federal government could have been held liable if it had engaged in this conduct directly. Since the federal government is clearly immune from such liability, it follows that the clean-up responders are also immune.

This well-reasoned decision, a case of first impression, has addressed and overcome the final theoretical obstacle to responder immunity that has haunted clean-up responders since enactment of the Clean Water Act. While district court decisions have no precedential effect, this one, rendered by a respected jurist, will carry great weight and is expected to resolve the responder immunity question for the foreseeable future.

As alluded to by the court, it is of little moment that we have the most robust spill response regime in the world if no one will show up to do the work for fear of litigation. That fear has now been largely dissipated.
APM Terminals Pipavav (Gujarat Pipavav Port Ltd), one of western Indias gateway ports, today announced the commencement of the INDFEX service at Pipavav.



The INDFEX ( India  Far East Express ) is run in consortium with Wanhai, K-Line, Shipping Corporation of India, Pacific International Lines ( PIL ) & Simatech, with Wan Hai deploying two vessels, and the others deploying one each. The service provides a weekly connection between the Far East and India. The port rotation is SHANGHAI, NINGBO, HONG KONG, SINGAPORE, PORT KLANG NORTH PORT, NHAVA SHEVA, PIPAVAV, COLOMBO, SINGAPORE, SHANGHAI



The first vessel m.v. WANHAI 509 berthed at Pipavav at 1048 hours / 14 March, 2016. Officials of APM Terminals Pipavav accorded a grand welcome to the vessel and her crew, captained by Capt. Ma Ke Zeng.



The operations were carried out successfully, using the new Post Panamax cranes, recently installed at the port.



The berthing of MV WANHAI 509 is yet another testimony of the infrastructure capabilities APM Terminals Pipavav has built over the years in handling container vessels, bulk & liquid cargo and RoRo vessels. The efficient port operations, service capabilities, excellent connectivity to the rich hinterlands in the North and West Regions of India via rail and road from port and being a part of the global APM Terminals portfolio provides confidence and reliability to our customers.



Commenting on the occasion, Managing Director of APM Terminals Pipavav, Mr. Keld Pedersen said, We are delighted to welcome the new service of MV WANHAI 509 at APM Terminals Pipavav. We thank the consortium for choosing our port and assure to provide the best services through our operation efficiency & service capabilities and dedicated and well trained employees.



This is a step towards our journey to be the Port of choice for all container, bulk & liquid cargo and RoRo vessels coming into and going from Western India.


Marines with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 executed dissimilar air combat training and bilateral tactical mission training during the Komatsu Aviation Training Relocation exercise at Komatsu Air Base, Japan, March 7-18, 2016.



Komatsu ATR is a dissimilar air combat training exercise allowing pilots with diverse aircraft to simulate aerial warfare and execute basic fighter maneuvers, aircraft tactical intercepts and offensive-defensive counter air missions in preparation for real wartime situations.



VMFA-314, known as the Black Knights, trained with Japan Air Self-Defense Force to execute theater security cooperation and increase operational readiness for the U.S. and Japanese forces. The squadron is home based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, and forward deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan with the unit deployment program.



ATRs are an important part of our training because it allows us to establish relationships and understand the strengths and weaknesses on both the U.S and Japanese side, said Lt. Col. Gregory A. McGuire, commanding officer of VMFA-314. Its never a good idea to show up to a fight without understanding what your partner or opponent is capable of.



JASDF flew alongside VMFA314s F/A-18A Hornets with the F-15 Eagle presenting the squadrons with an opportunity to practice offensive and defensive basic fighter maneuvers, or dogfighting, and air-to-air combat training against different aircraft.



The F-15 is a much larger aircraft with a more powerful engine and bigger fuel tanks, said Capt. Joshua Martin, a pilot with VMFA-314. There are certain aspects of these flights where the JASDF have a huge advantage and there are areas where we are at an advantage.



Training with another squadron allows more aircraft to be in the air to provide both red air and blue air roles. Red air role players, or the threat aircraft, act as training aids to assist blue air, or allies, in overcoming the threat.



By exploiting each others strengths and weaknesses, both the U.S. and Japanese pilots can learn from one another and be prepared for real world situations.



This is my first ATR, said Martin. Im relatively new to the squadron so going out and finding a Japanese F-15 pilot waiting for me was interesting, but really cool. Overcoming the language barrier and getting used to flying in this weather made it somewhat challenging, but hopefully were both learning and teaching one another during this training.



Despite heavy clouds, rain and cold weather, VMFA-314 and JASDF pilots successfully carried out every training mission. The diverse climate helped familiarize the pilots with their aircraft and how to overcome challenges as they arose.



Coming from San Diego, our pilots are not used to operating in the colder climate of Komatsu, said McGuire. But getting used to training in a foreign location and working with new people gives the Marines confidence they can go anywhere and do anything. Despite the cultural differences and language barriers, we learned that deep down were [U.S. and Japanese pilots] all the same at heart. We laugh at the same things, love to fly and fight against each other.



The ATR program better prepares U.S. and Japan forces to work together in the future while continuing to enhance combined interoperability, increase combat readiness, and build integral relationships with the host nation.





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A substitute judge in Henry County General District Court on Thursday denied bond for two of the four men charged in the March 8 murder and robbery of Damien Anthony Ferrell of Fieldale.

Separate hearings requesting bond to be set were held Thursday afternoon for defendants Malik Davon Galloway, 20, of 45 Vera Drive Apartment 7, Collinsville, and Kerry Marcel Scales Jr., 19, of 148 New Hope Drive, Bassett, both of whom are charged with first-degree murder, robbery and use of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

In Galloways bond hearing, which began about 1:30 p.m., his court-appointed attorney, Roscoe Reynolds, called Galloways father, Michael D. Galloway, as a witness. The father asked that a bond be set. He said he and other family members would get a bail bondsman.

Michael Galloway said his son had been living with him and that after he learned the sheriffs office was looking for his son in connection with the March 8 incident that he took him to the magistrates or sheriffs office and turned him in. The father said that if the son were released on bond, he would live with the father, and that if he did anything illegal he would turn him in to law enforcement. The father said there are no weapons, alcohol or drugs in his home. The father also said he could keep the son from communicating with or contacting the co-defendants if the son were released on bond.

The father said the son went to the 10th grade, did not graduate and was not working at the time of the incident.

Reynolds indicated he had not yet gotten a report about the investigation from the commonwealths attorneys office but that his understanding is that another suspect is the one who did the shooting, Reynolds also said he feels an affidavit in the case is vague and attributes almost nothing of what took place March 8 to Galloway himself.

Substitute Judge Larry Gott said he could see Reynolds point about the affidavit being vague.

A criminal complaint in the case alleges the following:

-- On March 8, the Henry County Dispatch Center received a call about a man being shot multiple times at 167 Chadmore Drive, Fieldale. Upon arrival, deputies found Damien Antony Ferrell, 20, without signs of life. Ferrell was transported to Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, where he was pronounced dead.

--The investigation revealed four males arrived together and entered the residence of 167 Chadmore Drive. They went to Ferrells bedroom in the back of the residence and demanded money and other items, including narcotics. The individuals were identified by multiple witnesses as Malik Davon Galloway, Kerry Marcel Scales Jr., and Sean Demetrus Goddard, along with an unidentified man. (The Henry County Sheriffs Office said in a news release that through the course of the investigation, the fourth person involved in the murder was identified as Adrian Lewis Purcell.)

--A discussion ensued and a handgun was produced, resulting in Damien Ferrell being shot, the complaint says. After Damien was shot, the individuals took a long gun and 2 PlayStation controllers belonging to Damien and a wallet belonging to Katlynn Dowling, who is Damiens girlfriend. Witnesses stated Damien was directly targeted and shot multiple times as he was trying to get away.

Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Jessica Henson opposed bond being set because of the alleged facts in the case and the serious nature of the charges. Earlier in the hearing, she pointed out that Galloway had a juvenile adjudication for breaking and entering.

Judge Gott denied bond for Galloway, saying there is a presumption of no bond in first-degree murder cases, and he didnt think Galloway had overcome that.

Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Dawn Futrell told Reynolds at the end of the bond hearing that the commonwealths attorneys office received a preliminary investigation report earlier Thursday and that it was available for Reynolds to see.

Scales bond hearing began at about 4 p.m. About 30 of his supporters were in the spectator area of the courtroom. Robert Deatherage, Scales court-appointed attorney, called nine of them plus Scales to testify. Deatherage said he could have called several more witnesses to testify in Scales behalf if time permitted.

Witnesses for Scales -- mostly relatives, but also a minister and a youth minister  generally testified that they consider him a nice young man; they do not consider him a danger to the community; they had not known him to ever be in criminal trouble before as an adult. They said positive things about him, such as he was respectful, polite, a mentor to younger people; and they said that to their knowledge he did not possess weapons or have a drug or alcohol problem.

Several relatives offered for Scales to live with them if he is were released on bond. One relative offered to post up to a $100,000 property bond. All or many of witnesses said they would keep a watch on Scales if he were released on bond to make sure that he lived up to any bond restrictions and that they would turn him into the law if he did not.

Scales said he is a good father to his 1-year-old child, and has no adult criminal record, but he when he was a juvenile, he was involved in a matter involving pills at school. He said he is working on a GED. Scales said he would comply with any court-ordered restrictions if bond were granted.

Deatherage said the criminal complaint is very vague. No one is alleging Kerry is the shooter, Deatherage said. He added that Scales did not drive to or from the scene, and there was no evidence he had any of the items stolen from Ferrell. Deatherage pointed out that Scales turned himself in when he learned he was wanted by the Henry County Sheriffs Office, and that he has been and continues to be cooperative. Deatherage said Scales is a lifelong resident of Henry County and that he has a large family and church family who will try to make sure that he would obey the law if released on bond.

Henson agreed that the criminal complaint is vague, but she expressed opposition to bond being granted because of the alleged facts, the serious nature of the crimes, the allegation that drugs were involved and that Scales had a juvenile incident involving possession of pills at school and a probation violation related to that.

Judge Gott told Scales supporters that in Gotts years as a lawyer and a judge he had never seen such expression of support that you have shown for this young man. Kudos. You have done everything in your power.

Gott also said he thinks the affidavit is vague, but what is known about the allegations is that a young man is dead, four people were present, one was the shooter and items were taken.

Gott denied bond for Scales. Gott cited a presumption of no bond in first-degree murder cases and indicated Scales had not overcome that.

Deatherage noted an appeal.

Galloway and Scales are being held in the Henry County Jail without bond.

The other two suspects in the March 8 incident are Sean Demetrus Goddard, 18, of Martinsville; and Adrian Lewis Purcell, 32, of 1420 Yancey Street, Reidsville, North Carolina. Both are charged with first-degree murder, robbery and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Purcell also is charged with use of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Goddard is being held without bond in the Henry County Jail, and Purcell is being held without bond in the Rockingham County Jail in North Carolina.
On the anniversary of the Paris Commune we republish an article written by Lenin in 1908.

After the coup d etat, which marked the end of the revolution of 1848, France fell under the yoke of the Napoleonic regime for a period of 18 years. This regime brought upon the country not only economic ruin but national humiliation. In rising against the old regime the proletariat under took two tasksone of them national and the other of a class characterthe liberation of France from the German invasion and the socialist emancipation of the workers from capitalism. This union of two tasks forms a unique feature of the Commune.

The bourgeoisie had formed a government of national defence and the proletariat had to fight for national independence under its leadership. Actually, it was a government of national betrayal which saw its mission in fighting the Paris proletariat. But the proletariat, blinded by patriotic illusions, did not perceive this. The patriotic idea had its origin in the Great Revolution of the eighteenth century; it swayed the minds of the socialists of the Commune; and Blanqui, for example, undoubtedly a revolutionary and an ardent supporter of socialism, could find no better title for his newspaper than the bourgeois cry: The country is in danger!

Combining contradictory taskspatriotism and socialismwas the fatal mistake of the French socialists. In the Manifesto of the International, issued in September 1870, Marx had warned the French proletariat against being misled by a false national idea[2]; the Great Revolution, class antagonisms had sharpened, and whereas at that time the struggle against the whole of European reaction united the entire revolutionary nation, now the proletariat could no longer combine its interests with the interests of other classes hostile to it; let the bourgeoisie bear the responsibility for the national humiliationthe task of the proletariat was to fight for the socialist emancipation of labour from the yoke of the bourgeoisie.

And indeed the true nature of bourgeois patriotism was not long in revealing itself. Having concluded an ignominious peace with the Prussians, the Versailles government proceeded to its immediate taskit launched an attack to wrest the arms that terrified it from the hands of the Paris proletariat. The workers replied by proclaiming the Commune and civil war.

Although the socialist proletariat was split up into numerous sects, the Commune was a splendid example of the unanimity with which the proletariat was able to accomplish the democratic tasks which the bourgeoisie could only proclaim. Without any particularly complex legislation, in a simple, straightforward manner, the proletariat, which had seized power, carried out the democratisation of the social system, abolished the bureaucracy, and made all official posts elective.

But two mistakes destroyed the fruits of the splendid victory. The proletariat stopped half-way: instead of setting about expropriating the expropriators, it allowed itself to be led astray by dreams of establishing a higher justice in the country united by a common national task; such institutions as the banks, for example, were not taken over, and Proudhonist theories about a just exchange, etc., still prevailed among the socialists. The second mistake was excessive magnanimity on the part of the proletariat: instead of destroying its enemies it sought to exert moral influence on them; it underestimated the significance of direct military operations in civil war, and instead of launching a resolute offensive against Versailles that would have crowned its victory in Paris, it tarried and gave the Versailles government time to gather the dark forces and prepare for the blood-soaked week of May.

But despite all its mistakes the Commune was a superb example of the great proletarian movement of the nineteenth century. Marx set a high value on the historic significance of the Communeif, during the treacherous attempt by the Versailles gang to seize the arms of the Paris proletariat, the workers had allowed themselves to be disarmed without a fight, the disastrous effect of the demoralisation, that this weakness would have caused in the proletarian movement, would have been far, far greater than the losses suffered by the working class in the battle to defend its arms.[3] The sacrifices of the Commune, heavy as they were, are made up for by its significance for the general struggle of the proletariat: it stirred the socialist movement throughout Europe, it demonstrated the strength of civil war, it dispelled patriotic illusions, and destroyed the naive belief in any efforts of the bourgeoisie for common national aims. The Commune taught the European proletariat to pose concretely the tasks of the socialist revolution.

The lesson learnt by the proletariat will not be forgotten. The working class will make use of it, as it has already done in Russia during the December uprising.

The period that preceded the Russian revolution and prepared it bears a certain resemblance to the period of the Napoleonic yoke in France. In Russia, too, the autocratic clique has brought upon the country economic ruin and national humiliation. But the outbreak of revolution was held back for a long time, since social development had not yet created the conditions for a mass movement and, notwithstanding all the courage displayed, the isolated actions against the government in the pre-revolutionary period broke against the apathy of the masses. Only the Social-Democrats, by strenuous and systematic work, educated the masses to the level of the higher forms of strugglemass actions and armed civil war.

The Social-Democrats were able to shatter the common national and patriotic delusions of the young proletariat and later, when the Manifesto of October 17th[4] had been wrested from the tsar due to their direct intervention, the proletariat began vigorous preparation for the next, inevitable phase of the revolutionthe armed uprising. Having shed common national illusions, it concentrated its class forces in its own mass organisationsthe Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, etc. And notwithstanding all the differences in the aims and tasks of the Russian revolution, compared with the French revolution of 1871, the Russian proletariat had to resort to the same method of struggle as that first used by the Paris Communecivil war. Mindful of the lessons of the Commune, it knew that the proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of strugglethey serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolutionbut it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.

And although these magnificent uprisings of the working class were crushed, there will be another uprising, in face of which the forces of the enemies of the proletariat will prove ineffective, and from which the socialist proletariat will emerge completely victorious.

Notes

[1] The article Lessons of the Commune published in Zagranichnaya Gazeta (Foreign Gazette), No. 2, March23, 1908 is the verbatim report of a speech made by Lenin. The editors of the newspaper introduced the article with the following remark: An international meeting was held in Geneva on March 18 to commemorate three proletarian anniversaries: the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Marx, the sixtieth anniversary of the March revolution of 1848, and the anniversary of the Paris Commune. Comrade Lenin on behalf of the R.S.D.L.P. spoke at the meeting on the significance of the Commune.

Zagranichnaya Gazetaa newspaper published by a group of Russian emigrants in Geneva in March-April 1908.

[2] See K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, 1958, p. 497.

[3] For Marxs evaluation of the historical role of the Paris Commune, as a forerunner of the new society, see The Civil War In France (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, 1958, pp. 473-545) and letters to Kugelmann for April 12 and 17, 1871 (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, pp. 318-20).

[4] This refers to the Manifesto of October 17th, 1905 in which the tsar, frightened by the revolution, promised the people civic liberties and a constitution.

Source: Marxist Internet Archive
On March 9th half a million workers and youth took to the streets throughout France, protesting against the socialist government's unprecedented attack on the labour laws. This was followed by further protests on March 17th.

As always, the reformists end up being managed by the system they seek to manage. President Francois Hollande served as a forerunner to Syrizas Tsipras, as a reformist leader exposed by the capitalist crisis as an Emperor with no clothes. Within two years of his election he withdrew the seventy-five percent top rate of income tax. To date he has handed out over 40bn in corporate tax breaks.

Hollande now faces a stagnant economy, ten percent unemployment, rising to twenty-four percent among the youth. In a bid to improve the economy, and with a bankruptcy of ideas, Hollande has based himself openly on the programme of the capitalists. Even Sarkozy never attempted to do away with the 35-hour week, introduced by the Socialist Party in 2000 (although he often spoke of doing so).

The El Khomri bill

The bill that the socialists are attempting to pass through parliament, drafted by the minister of labour, Myriam El Khomri, would have very profound consequences on wages, hours and workers rights in general. The bill seeks to loosen French capitalism from the conditions set by the current labour laws. It would allow French companies to negotiate longer working hours and over-time with the trade unions. Workers could be forced to work up to forty-six hours, with overtime pay cut for work over thirty-five hours.

French business would also be given greater freedom to shorten hours and reduce pay, which currently they can do only in times of serious economic difficulty. French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, has called this the de facto end of the 35-hour working week.

The new law would make it easier to sack workers. According to the capitalists the existing labour laws discourages business from creating permanent jobs. They say the reason that vast numbers of young workers are on temporary contracts is because, under French law, permanent jobs are too permanent.

To solve the problem, the new law will limit awards for unfair dismissals. This will enable the boss to calculate the cost of dismissing troublesome employees, freeing up positions for the upcoming generation! In negotiations, if no deal can be reached, the union will be by-passed by the bosses and the workers consulted directly in a binding referendum.

However, the ruling class may regret getting their way on this last point. The trade unions are the first point of organisation for most workers in the class struggle. Currently unionisation in France stands at only eight percent. However, the ranks are often far to the left of their representatives. The ruling class underestimate the workers, for whom they have only an aristocratic contempt. But by drawing the entire workforce into a referendum on terms and conditions, they could get more than they bargained for.

In order to increase competition between workers, the El Khomri bill seeks to undermine industry-led negotiations, replacing them with negotiations at the company level. A similar model is being applied in the English school system - the creation of independent schools, free of the national curriculum, creating unequal conditions designed to fragment industry-wide negotiations by the teachers. In exceptional circumstances, employees could work up to sixty hours a week. The loosening of rules on lay-offs and working from home and at night is also part of the El Khomri bill.

The average French worker produces 45.6 per hour, according to eurostat, and works 1,661 hours a year. This means he generates approximately 76,000 per year for the boss. Yet in 2014 his average cost was only 29,700. Meaning he generated a profit of over 45,000 for the capitalists.

Despite this, and French workers being among the most productive in Europe, they nevertheless work 186 fewer hours than the Germans, and 239 fewer than the British. That is not enough for French capitalism, which demands that more surplus be sweated from the workers.

The defeat or undermining of the 35-hour week, most importantly, is viewed with symbolic importance by the ruling class. It would signal a victory for the boss class, and a green light for an offensive against the workers in the struggle for cheap labour in France.

EDF

The recent agreement at the state-owned EDF, involving a not-insignificant 30,000 workers, lays the basis for further attacks. EDF workers ceded some of their ten-week holiday allowance in return for a pay-rise. The deal is optional, reversible and not open to blue-collar workers.

But as the perspicacious FT notes, ...its real significance, however, lies in the precedent it sets for employers and unions to agree substantive reforms at company level.

The average 39.5 hours worked by EDF white-collar workers was compensated by an additional twenty-three days off a year, in addition to the standard twenty-seven. However, EDF recently negotiated between seven and sixteen days a year less annual holiday for the workers. This was compensated by a 7.5% pay rise. It will mean that EDF workers will work far more than the thirty-five hour weekly average limit over the course of a year. This sets a precedent for the French capitalists to repeat.

March 9th

An online petition demanding the government abandon the bill has gained an enormous 1.3m signatories. This prepared the ground for the March 9th protests called by students and the unions.

The unity of the students and rank-and-file trade union workers has been immediate since the 9th. The students have called for weekly demonstrations, which see the participation of many workers, and workers have also spoken at General Assemblies of the students. The trade union leaders have been somewhat cooler in their support. It marks, however, the beginning of a national coordination of the students.

According to the FT: Diverse constituencies are coming together in protest, united by dissatisfaction with Francois Hollandes floundering presidency. Hollandes approval rating currently stands at fifteen percent, the lowest of any President in fifty years.

Workers, the unemployed and youth took to the streets on March 9th in more than two-hundred cities across France to oppose the bill. In Paris between 80,000 and 100,000 came out in the cold and the rain. This coincided with a rail strike that shut down a third of trains that day in Paris. Protesters at the Place de la Republique shouted slogans such as Loi El Khomri, Vie pourrie, which translates as El Khomri Law, Rotten Life.

The SPs own student union, UNEF, played a leading role. Around one hundred high schools across France were closed by students barricading entrances with garbage cans. The youth presence is not surprising, considering the conditions faced by young workers: one in four are unemployed, work available is casualised and housing is expensive. They are disgusted by the political elite and reject their arguments when they say the youth should be forced to renounce the security of Frances labour laws.

The Associated Press quoted Maryanne Gicquel, a spokesperson for the FIDL high school student union. She described young people's experience of the job market as a succession of internships and poorly-paid jobs Now we're being told that it will be easier for companies to lay off workers.

The BBC reports, Teenagers and students were among thousands marching in Paris chanting slogans such as El Khomri, you're beat, the youth are in the street, in reference to Labour Minister Myriam el Khomri. The BBC correspondent concluded This reform has crystallised all those forces on the left who, while feeling increasingly unhappy about the government's drift, until now had no clear-cut issue around which to rally.

With this attack, Hollande has unified all progressive forces in society against him. A recent survey by pollster Oxoda found that 70 percent of French people over the age of eighteen oppose the bill.

Hollande has opened up divisions within the SP, one year prior to the 2017 Presidential elections. Given this level of popularity, he is unlikely to be re-elected, having alienated much of the working class base that brought him to power. The most advanced workers have turned away from the SP in disgust, thus removing any pressure from below. In these conditions Hollande is free to act as open lackey of the bourgeois, testing the limits of the workers tolerance for the SP.

The SP Mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, in a recent article in Le Monde, entitled Enough is enough, attacks the government, asking: Who could imagine that making redundancies easier will encourage employment? She added that the reforms were inspired by the opposing camp and will mean ...the preparation of a long-lasting weakening of France, and of course, the left. The spectre of PASOK haunts the Social-Democracies of Europe.

Socialist government in retreat

The prime minister, Manuel Valls, has had to postpone the announcement of the law because of the threat of street protests by unions and students and the internal dissent within his own party. Valls has proposed a further round of consultations with the unions and bosses organisations before March 24th. The SP government plans to secure parliamentary approval of the bill by the summer.

On March 14th Valls announced a partial retreat. He announced that the bill will no longer limit the amount workers can win in the case of wrongful dismissals. The possibility to introduce flexible work practices into small and medium-sized companies has been slightly decreased, compared to the first draft of the bill, although the main attacks remain.

But multinationals will still be able to cut jobs more easily at their French loss-making operations. A judge will be tasked to verify the financial rationale of such cuts. Medef, the bosses union, expressed disappointment at the retreat.

The new deal is supported by the CFE-CGC and the CFDT union, but the the ex-communist CGT remain opposed. Along with FO and the largest student union, UNEF, they called for the entire draft reform to be withdrawn.

"If the government insists on going ahead with this reform, the people need to go into the streets," CGT leader Philippe Martinez said. One survey shows that two-thirds of people believe there will be widespread protests if the law is pushed through.

March 17th

One week later the students took to the streets once again, and were again joined by a strong contingent of workers. However, without a clear call from the CGT national leadership to participate in this demonstration, it did not achieve the size of March 9th. But it was marked by an increased participation of students and school students. This is significant, as it underlines what the Marxists have been highlighting for some time, the extreme radicalisation of the youth which merely needed a channel to express itself.

Alors on repond quoi ? RESISTANCE !!! #loitravailnonmerci #OnVautMieuxQueCa #ReleveLaTete Posted by Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France (MJCF) on Thursday, 17 March 2016

The movement is at an early stage, but is expanding both in the universities and the high schools. Students blocked the entrances to 115 high schools throughout France. A very radical mood prevails, which is being met by provocations, riot police and lock-outs by university administrations - for fear of how far the students could go. This is precisely how May 68 began, and the powers that be will have taken note! Tear gas was fired in Paris, arrests have taken place and students have been injured.

It is clear that the government is desperate to stop this process developing, and is doing everything it can to divide the workers from the radicalised students, fearing contagion. It thus offered a carrot to the unions on Thursday, stating it would lift the public sector pay freeze that has been in place since 2010. At the same time, it has met the students with the stick, trying to quell the student movement through force. Such efforts will be in vain. Repression will only further radicalize and mobilize more students. Another demonstration has been called by the student and youth organisations for the 24th. This will be part of the build up to the March 31st general strike, which promises to be a gigantic show of strength by the French working class. All the elements exist for a general conflagration.

President Francois Hollande said on the eve of the protests that he wanted to help them "have more job stability we must also give companies the opportunity to recruit more, to give job security to young people throughout their lives, and to provide flexibility for companies. Have we tried everything? Let us look outside France. What has happened elsewhere? They have all evolved, they have all done things," he said.

Elsewhere across Europe we see only extreme casualization, pay freezes, the dismantling of the welfare state and Greek-style austerity. But the contradictory rhetoric of the President is of no consequence to the French ruling class, as it serves them in fogging the issue. They understand that job stability is incompatible with flexibility for companies in the best of capitalist times, let alone in the midst of an unprecedented capitalist crisis. Once they have finished with the SP next year, the bourgeois will discard it like a dirty dishrag.

However, the destruction of the authority of the SP, from the point of view of the bourgeois, is like sawing at the branch they rest on. The capitalists lean on the authority of the reformist leaderships and use this to get their own programme accepted within the labour movement. However, in doing so, they also expose the reformists. What we are therefore witnessing in France is the capitalist crisis destroying the authority of reformism. This is an international phenomenon.

A radicalization of the situation is being prepared in France. This answers all those sceptics who could only see a shift to the right in France with the growth of the National Front of Le Pen. What is actually taking place is a polarisation, both to the right and the left. And what we will eventually see is that the forces shifting left are far stronger than those moving to the right.

The March 9th and 17th demonstrations mark an important coalescing of the workers and youth, the living forces in French society. The youth are fighting on clear class issues, in support of the workers and in a fight for their future. The coming general strike will have a huge impact, which will reverberate throughout Europe, adding to the process in Spain where years of protests eventually produced Podemos, to the process in Britain where we have the Corbyn phenomenon, and in turn will strengthen these processes. It will also give a mighty impetus to the Italian workers and youth. The tide is turning in France and the wave will be felt internationally.
Nagano_MSO.jpg

Montreal Symphony Orchestra conductor Kent Nagano

((Photo courtesy of Montreal Symphony Orchestra))

BOSTON - The conductor stands on the stage, his hands clasped together in front.

As the conductor stands perfectly still, a flute begins to play.

The conductor stands there, motionless, like the rest of the spellbound audience inside Symphony Hall.

It was a brief moment, one that lasted no more than 4 or 5 seconds. But in that moment, I learned a lot about conductor Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which delivered a dazzling concert on Wednesday night as part of their United States tour.

In that brief moment at the beginning of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," Nagano exuded a sereneness which seemed to guide every beautiful note the orchestra played that night. The day after the concert, I read that Nagano fell in love with surfing growing up in California. Suddenly, everything made sense.

Unlike some conductors who seem more interested in showing off for the crowd, Nagano didn't look rushed or flap his arms around. He simply let the music wash over him, like a gentle breeze or a passing rain. He didn't fight the tide. He went with the flow.

And the reason I think Nagano conducts this way is because he trusts his orchestra and himself. He trusts them to get the notes right and to play the music exactly the way I'm sure they discussed during rehearsal. And he trusts his own ability to communicate clearly with the musicians exactly what he wants them to do.

Watching Nagano stand perfectly still as the flutist started playing seemed to set the tone for the entire night. In that instant, it was as if Nagano was saying to the audience and the orchestra, "Relax and follow me."

Nagano also probably felt pretty relaxed on stage since he surely feels at home in Symphony Hall. Years before Nagano was a star conductor and took over the reins of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2006, he was an assistant conductor under Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The Montreal Symphony Orchestra looked right at home in Symphony Hall as well, even though the last time they performed there was 1989.

While only 10 minutes long, the Debussy piece was one of the highlights of the night. The orchestra brought out all the lush, melodic tones in this luxurious piece of music. It was the perfect start to a nearly perfect evening.

My only small complaint has to do with the music itself in the second piece, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major. The music drags a bit at times, especially during parts of the first movement. And like many pieces of 20th century classical music, this composition from 1921 doesn't really have much a melody.

But to be honest, I didn't really care since Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto provided me with an opportunity to see and hear the tornado named Daniil Trifonov. I witnessed Trifonov perform last year in Boston for the first time. The concert was one of the most amazing solo piano concerts I have ever seen in my life. (Fortunately, you can see Trifonov performing a solo concert this summer at Tanglewood in Lenox on Aug. 4. He's also perform Chopin's gorgeous Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood on Aug. 6.)

Trifonov is the polar opposite of Nagano. Instead of calmly approaching the music with a cool, relaxed air, Trifonov looks like a feral animal crouched over the piano. He doesn't play the piano. He attacks it. At one point, during a brief pause, he looked to down to his right at the keyboard. A few seconds later, his fingers leapt onto that exact spot, like an animal hunting his prey.

Both times I have watched Trifonov perform, I have found myself thinking, "Is this guy for real?" If you were just watching him without the sound, you might think he was showing off for dramatic effect. But every time I closed my eyes and simply listened to him play, there was no doubt in my mind. Trifonov vividly brings to life every single note he plays. There's never the slightest hesitation. And you can hear his confidence every single second.

He's also a very generous performer. The first time I saw him perform, he played several encores. On Wednesday, he played one as well - Rachmaninov's arrangement of Bach Gavotte from solo violin Partita No. 3. Unlike the Prokoviev piece, this music was simple and straightforward. So was Trifonov's performance of the encore. It was actually quite something to watch. Who know Trifonov could play so well - and so straightforward?

For the final, official piece on the program, the orchestra performed one of the greatest pieces of 20th century music, Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." First performed in 1913, this driving piece of classical music still feels fresh and alive more than a century later. On Wednesday, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's interpretation of this classic work was muscular, confident, enthralling.

Then came something I'm not used to hearing at orchestra concerts - an encore from the orchestra itself. After they received a standing ovation, the orchestra performed Ravel's "Pavane pour in enfant defunte." This simple, gorgeous piece fit right in with the Debussy composition on the program. The two pieces also made me want to hear more French music performed by this orchestra. They made both works sound so effortless, so natural, so sublime.

Then, just as I was getting ready to leave, it was time for a second encore featuring more French music. This time, it was Farandole, from Bizet's "Arlesienne." This fast-paced piece has a march-like quality. Listening to the music, I felt like I was watching the orchestra take a victory lap after their winning performance. And frankly, who can blame them. They sounded terrific. I only hope we don't have to wait 27 years to hear them again in Symphony Hall.
BOSTON - Mayor Marty Walsh isn't putting away the snow equipment any time soon.

With a potential snow storm heading towards Massachusetts on Sunday, the city's chief executive quipped to reporters that they'll keep the equipment primed and ready until probably July.

"We'll be ready if there's a storm," Walsh said, adding that the city could "easily be missed" based on changing forecasts.

"It's still a little early," he added.

After the storm starts on Sunday, the state is expected to see six to nine inches on Monday, but snowfall estimates are all over the place.

"A lot of people last weekend took a lot of things out of their sheds and out of their basement," the mayor said. "What it looks like, even if we do get a snowstorm, looks like the following days will be warming up."

Walsh said he didn't anticipate the storm affecting the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston, since the storm is expected to start later on Sunday afternoon.

The parade, put together by the Allied War Veterans Council, starts at 1 p.m. at the MBTA's Broadway Station.
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One of the guns seized in a Dorchester traffic stop was a sawed-off shotgun that was lying on the driver's lap, according to Boston police.

(Boston Police Department)

BOSTON  Two guns were recovered and three people were arrested in separate traffic stops in the city's Dorchester section late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, police said.

Around 11 p.m. Wednesday, Boston police officers spotted a car that was "operating in a suspicious manner," police said. They stopped the vehicle for an alleged traffic infraction near 178 Magnolia St. and found a loaded sawed-off shotgun on the driver's lap, police said. Officers quickly grabbed the gun and arrested 51-year-old Peter Sands without incident.

The Dorchester man was expected to be arraigned in Roxbury District Court on charges of possession of a sawed-off shotgun, unlawful possession of ammunition, and carrying a shotgun on a public way.

Just after 2:30 a.m. Thursday, officers pulled over a rental car in the area of Hartford and Wayland streets for an alleged traffic infraction. After interviewing the driver and his passenger, the officers learned that neither was authorized to drive the vehicle, police said.

While waiting for the car to be towed, officers conducted a standard inventory search that turned up a loaded .380-caliber handgun near the driver's seat, police said. As a result, the driver, 21-year-old Michael Turner of Dorchester, was charged with using a vehicle "without authority" and unlawful possession of a gun and ammo, police said.

Turner's passenger, 25-year-old Lauren Ugwunze, also of Dorchester, was wanted on two outstanding warrants, police said. Both were taken into custody without incident and were expected to be arraigned in Roxbury District Court.
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(File Photo)

BOSTON - United Steelworkers Local 12003, the gas workers union negotiating a contract with National Grid, has voted down another offer from the company.

But the two sides now have even more time to come to an agreement.

"On Tuesday the company and the union agreed to extend the existing collective bargaining agreement for a four-month period to continue negotiations," National Grid spokeswoman Mary-Leah Assad said in an email.

"As always, our top priority will continue to be safe and reliable delivery of natural gas to our customers," she added.

The existing collective bargaining agreement has been extended to July 17, both sides say.

Joe Kirylo, USW Local 12003 president, called it a "cooling off" period. The union represents about 800 National Grid employees who live in 35 Massachusetts communities.

"Since last fall, National Grid has been negotiating in good faith with United Steelworkers Local 12003 for a new collective bargaining agreement," Assad, the spokeswoman, said in the email.

Kirylo's union voted to reject the latest offer from National Grid by a 524-31 vote. The previous offer was rejected by a 497-64 vote.

According to the union, the latest offer from the company still contained a move towards putting new hires into 401(k)-like plans, instead of a pension plan.

The union also says the offer would have increased out-of-pocket medical expenses for current workers and future retirees, while boosting the subsidy they would receive from the company for work boots.

The union has also expressed some concerns about safety issues within the contract language.

The union has previously voted to allow a strike if union leaders can't come to an agreement on a new contract with National Grid.
SPRINGFIELD - Two brothers are being held on $10,000 bail each after allegedly assaulting a couple at a Springfield house party and then refusing to let them leave for two hours.

"Sit on that chair and don't make any noise or I'll knock another tooth out," Mark Provenzano, 21, of Chicopee, told the male victim after sucker punching him at a Cumberland Street apartment on March 5, according to the arrest report.

During the party, Provenzano allegedly took the man's hat and then struck him in the face when he asked for it back. The victim's girlfriend was shoved and repeatedly punched after she tried to grab the hat back from Provenzano, the report said.

When the couple tried to leave, Provenzano stopped them, saying: "You two aren't going anywhere," according to the report.

Provenzano and his brother, Kevin Provenzano, 19, also of Chicopee, were arrested this week and charged with kidnapping, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and assault.

Flanked by four court officers, they pleaded not guilty to the charges Thursday in Springfield District Court as their mother watched from the gallery.

Assistant District Attorney Cary Szafranski asked for cash bail, citing the new offenses and the brothers' criminal history.

Mark Provenzano is on probation in Hampden Superior Court for kidnapping and assault charges and on bail in Chicopee, Westfield and Eastern Hampshire District Court in pending cases, Szafranski said.

Kevin Provenzano also has a case pending in Eastern Hampshire District Court, Szafranski said.

The prosecutor asked Judge Judge William Boyle to revoke the brothers' release in their pending cases and impose $10,000 bail for Mark Provenzano and $5,000 for Kevin Provenzano on the new charges.

A neighbor called police around 3 a.m. after hearing arguing and a loud thump coming from an apartment at 54 Cumberland St., according to Szafranski and the arrest report.

When police arrived, they heard a child crying inside; they kicked the door down

after the occupants refused to open it; by then, the couple and their alleged assailants had left, the report said.

Police were later called to Baystate Medical Center to speak to the two assault victims; the male, who was missing a tooth and had blood stains on his shirt, told police Mark Provenzano had taken his hat during the party and refused to return it, the report said.

After repeated requests for the hat, Provenzano struck the victim in the face with a closed fist. "He was hit so hard he fell to the kitchen floor and upon standing up observed blood on the floor," the report said.

At that point, both brothers began punching the victim. When his girlfriend grabbed the hat back from Mark Provenzano, she was punched several times and pushed into a cabinet, she told police.

The couple told police they were held against their will for two hours; they escaped out the back door when police began pounding on the front door, the report said.

Defense lawyer Brandon Freeman, representing Kevin Provenzano, opposed the bail request.

The younger Provenzano is mentioned only once in the arrest report, said Freeman, adding that police never interviewed the party's host or other "objective" witnesses to the incident.

He works full time at a pool company in Ludlow, and is the prime caretaker for his 85-year-old grandmother, Freeman said.

An intern defense lawyer representing Mark Provenzano asked for his release, saying the kidnapping charge was excessive given the circumstances of the alleged assault.

"We're not talking about weapons, or drugs or gang rivalries. We're talking about a hat," said Adwoa Nkrumah, adding that her client also plays an important role in caring for his elderly grandmother.

Like his younger brother, Mark Provenzano grew up in the area, has strong family ties and poses no flight risk, Nkrumah said.

At the prosecutor's request, Boyle set bail at $10,000 for Mark Provenzano and revoked bail in his three open cases.



He doubled the bail request for Kevin Provenzano, setting the figure at $10,000, and revoked his release in the open case in Eastern Hampshire District Court.

Even if they post bail on the new charges, the Provenzanos will remain in jail for at least 90 days due to the bail revocations.

As the brothers were led from the courtroom, their mother called out "I love you" and began sobbing.
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The above map and other visitor information is available on the Holyoke St. Patrick's Road Race website at holyokestpatricksroadrace.org.

HOLYOKE -- Thousands of vehicles and visitors will pour into the city for the Holyoke St. Patrick's Road Race Saturday and the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade Sunday, and yet, parking doesn't have to be a nightmare.

The key is to arrive early for both events -- the more time allowed, the better the chances of getting a parking space closer to the action, officials said.

Also: Don't be afraid to park blocks away from the events and walk, the distance facilitating a faster get-away because of separation from the crowds when it's time to leave, they said.

The two downtown parking garages will be open Saturday and Sunday at $5 for all day parking. But the two garages combined, the Ernest Proulx on Dwight Street (430) and the William Taupier on Suffolk Street (375), offer only 805 spaces.

Parking also is available downtown around Lyman and High streets -- an area of focus on both days -- with on-street spaces and in private parking lots that probably will charge a fee. But those parking spots fill fast.

Among the private lots that may be available are those at Open Square Way, City Hall at 536 Dwight St., across from the United Postal Service on Dwight Street, and Mater Dolorosa School, 25 Maple St.

Side streets off the main roads that are featured in both days' events remain popular parking spots, though it might take some driving around to find a space on both busy days. Spaces on side streets are available on a first-come basis and as long as visitors don't block private driveways.

Like last year, a free shuttle will be available on road race day for those who want to park at Holyoke Community College.

Police Capt. Manuel Febo said the city welcomes visitors and requests that they exercise planning and patience. He suggested the tactic of parking blocks and away and walking.

"I would say get there early," Febo said.

The 41st St. Patrick's 10K (6.2-mile) Road Race begins at 1 p.m. at Maple and Lyman streets at 1 p.m.

"On-street parking is available on all city streets but is limited to first-come basis. Please obey all posted signs and temporary signs posted by the Holyoke Police Department," the road race website said.

Lyman Street will be closed to traffic Saturday at 8 a.m. and the parts of Hampden and Maple streets in that area will be closed to traffic around 9 a.m., Febo said.

On road-race day, those who want to skip the hunt for a space can park at Holyoke Community College (HCC) on Homestead Avenue and take a free shuttle to Mater Dolorosa School near the race's starting point, the road race website said.

The first shuttle will leave HCC at 9 a.m. Those who want to be at the starting line for the beginning of the race must be at the college no later than noon to catch the shuttle, the website said.

The last shuttle will run at 5 p.m., the website said.

The parade is the weekend's rock star. It pulls in hundreds of thousands of visitors and this year's is the 65th straight.

The parade begins at 11:30 a.m. from the Kmart plaza at Northampton Street and Whiting Farms Road.

The 3-mile journey goes down Northampton Street, right on Beech Street, right on Appleton Street and left on High Street to its end on Hampden Street three to four hours later.

Police will close Northampton Street (Route 5) from Hitchcock Street south to the Kmart plaza to all traffic at 10:30 a.m. Sunday unless someone is escorted by police, Febo said.

At 11 a.m., Northampton Street from the Yankee Pedlar Inn at Beech Street south to the Kmart plaza will be closed to traffic, he said.

Barriers in the form of police cruisers and wooden horses will be posted at certain spots to block traffic.

All of the streets that comprise the routes for the road race and the parade will be closed to traffic while those events are taking place. Most will reopen by around 3 or 4 p.m. on both days as the race and the parade recede from each street. But High and Maple streets downtown will stay closed to traffic later on both days because those areas fill with people as the events end there later on both days, Febo said.

The shuttle and use of the parking garages worked well last year, said William D. Fuqua, general superintendent of the Department of Public Works.

The city received $2,325 in revenue from parking at the Proulx garage and $1,550 from the Taupier garage on last year's road race and parade days, he said.
home World Easter, Hindu festivals officially become national holidays in Pakistan

Easter, Holi, and Diwali have been officially declared as national holidays in Pakistan on Tuesday after Parliament adopted a new resolution.

The resolution marks the first time in 68 years that Pakistan's religious minorities including Christians and Hindus will get to celebrate their important festivals as national holidays. Hindu lawmaker Dr. Ramesh Kumar Vankwani is the one who moved the resolution to make Easter, Holi, and Diwali national holidays, according to India Times.

For Vankwani, the resolution will contribute to Pakistan's image of religious tolerance. He noted that the U.S. and India also observe such holidays, the report relays.

The resolution to make the changes received no opposition, allowing the changes to be implemented without any barriers, the Huffington Post reports.

Although Federal Minister for Laws and Justice Pervaiz Rashid said Pakistan already has more holidays than any other country, he still did not oppose the resolution. Instead, he said there should be no discrimination based on faith and religion among Pakistanis. He added that all of them should bear one another's sad and happy times.

"Every citizen is enjoying religious freedom," Rashid declared.

In line with the approval of the resolution, Hindus, Christians, and other members of religious minorities can now take leave during their respective religious festivals, the report adds.

Pir Aminul Hasnat Shah, the State Minister for Religious Affairs, announced that the Interior Ministry has already permitted the heads of federal organizations, institutions, and departments to allow their employees to take leave to celebrate the said festivals.

Pakistan's population is comprised mostly of Muslims. The decision to adopt the resolution is a significant milestone for the country's minorities because it reflects increasing religious tolerance, Time says.

Just 1.6 percent of Pakistan's population are Christian, with Hindus making up roughly 2 percent of the population.
Bozeman-based online scheduling company Schedulicity http://www.schedulicity.com has announced the return of its former CEO and the launch of a new platform that it says will better help its more than 15 million consumers and businesses around the country.

Jerry Nettuno, who founded Schedulicity in 2010, had been operating on the companys board of directors since 2013 but returned to his CEO position in February along with the news of a redesigned website and services.

By Lewis Kendall Chronicle Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/former-schedulicity-ceo-returns-to-company/article_68331821-735f-54f3-9fab-3fb2cad6e3f9.html

***

Schedulicity Founder Jerry Nettuno Returns As CEO in Bozeman, Montana http://www.matr.net/article-70522.html
Tolerance zero pour les autorites concernant la peche illegale dans le territoire maritime ou celui de la zone exclusive avec l promulgation de la Fisheries and Marine Resources (Vessel Monitoring System) Regulations 2022.

Cabinet has taken note of the promulgation of the Fisheries and Marine Resources (Vessel Monitoring System) Regulations 2022. The main objective of the Regulations 2022 is for Mauritius to adopt a zero-tolerance approach in respect of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing and serves as a guiding principle. The Regulations would enable the authorities to monitor the fishing activities of all those fishing vessels to which licences have been issued by the State of Mauritius in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Mauritius, on the high seas and/or in the maritime zones under the jurisdiction of another State, during the validity of the licences.

The fines relating to the contravention of the Fisheries and Marine Resources (Vessel Monitoring System) Regulations 2022 have also been increased up to a maximum of one million Euros or its equivalent in Mauritian rupees

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MultiChoice announced its media broadcast partnership with The Earthshot Prize to help accelerate and spotlight the ingenuity and ambition of innovators, activists and scientists across Africa who are working to address the climate crisis on the African continent and around the world.

The Earthshot Prize aims to find scalable solutions to address the worlds biggest environmental problems and repair the planet over the next 10 years. The Prize is awarded to winners in five categories, with each winner receiving 1 million grant to scale their work.

The partnership aims to raise awareness and understanding of The Earthshot Prize across Africa, supporting local finalists and highlighting their innovative solutions and mobilizing communities to address sustainability challenges.

As the leading entertainment company in Africa, we have an extensive footprint on the continent  we reach 21.8 million households across 50 countries. We are well positioned to make a meaningful contribution to create a sustainable future in Africa. This partnership will enable us not only to educate communities on climate change, but to also encourage innovators to pitch their solutions, inspire other corporates to join the fight against climate change and to motivate governments to prioritize climate change as part of their national agendas, said Imtiaz Patel, MultiChoice Group Executive Chairman.

MultiChoice is a Member of The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance, a global network of nonprofit and international organizations committed to the environment and sustainable development. The collective power of the Global Alliance gives the winners and finalists of the Prize access to resources across numerous professions and sectors including manufacturing, retail, supply chains, legal advice, digital technology, business strategy and government relations.

There are thousands of game changers and entrepreneurs committing their lives to solving our generations biggest challenges; investment and support is critical for each of them to fulfil their vision, said Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize. MultiChoice is a deeply impactful partner and we are inspired by their incredible investment into The Earthshot Prize, one which will shine a spotlight on a multitude of solutions that might otherwise go unseen, pull hundreds of others into focus across the continent, and inspire a new generation of innovators.

For the next eight years, The Earthshot Prize will launch a global search every year for groundbreaking solutions to five Earthshot goals  Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World and Fix Our Climate.

The Earthshot Prize was first launched in 2021 with three African organizations selected as finalists  Sanergy (from Kenya), Reeddi Capsules (from Nigeria) and Pole Pole Foundation (from the Democratic Republic of Congo).

By spotlighting these innovators and their solutions, the Prize aims to spark the worlds collective imagination to drive a collective mindset of urgent action on the issues surrounding the climate crisis.

MultiChoice recognizes the importance of collaboration and partnerships to address socioeconomic challenges. In the last 30 years, it has consistently partnered with non-profit organizations, civil society and governments to drive social change.

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Viva Technology and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) today announced a call for applications for the first edition of the AfricaTech Awards, a pan-African initiative developed to recognize and support the most innovative and impactful tech start-ups across the continent.

Entrepreneurship has been a key driver of economic growth in Africa, promoting competitiveness and fostering job creation, particularly among young people. According to reports from Briter Bridges*, investment in African tech start-ups reached $4.9 billion in 2021, marking a significant increase from the $2.4 billion invested in 2020. Despite growing interest from investors, this is still a fraction compared to the funding that start-ups received in other parts of the world  for instance, in 2021, over $100 billion was invested in European start-ups and about $330 billion in start-ups in North America**. Moreover, a lack of infrastructure and inadequate regulations often present additional challenges to the scale-up of start-ups across Africa

Africa is buzzing with innovative tech solutions that can help address climate change, promote food security, and expand financial inclusion, said Makhtar Diop, IFCs Managing Director. Yet over 80% of African start-ups report difficulties in accessing funding. Initiatives like the AfricaTech Awards, which bring together entrepreneurs, governments, and investors, are key to attracting the resources and support that tech start-ups need to scale their innovations across the continent and beyond.

The AfricaTech Awards will recognize African start-ups that are driving innovation and development impact in three main sectors  climate tech, health tech, and fintech. Participating startups will have until March 25, 2022 to submit their applications. In May, with support from Viva Technology and IFC, a panel of industry experts from our knowledge partner Deloitte will pre-select the top 45 applicants. The final winners in each category will be announced during the 2022 edition of Viva Technology, taking place on June 15-18 in Paris and online.

Each of the three category winners will benefit from increased visibility and access to the networks provided by Viva Technology and IFC, including select one-on-one meetings with leaders and top executives in the tech industry.

For Viva Technology Co-Presidents Maurice Levy and Pierre Louette and Managing Director Julie Ranty: We have been impressed by the quality of African innovations during our various on-site roadshows and in our meetings with the 1000+ African startups that have already taken part in VivaTech. With the AfricaTech Awards, our objective is to boost visibility for African innovation ecosystems and to create opportunities for African entrepreneurs within global markets.

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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.
by Tobi Elkin @tobielkin, March 18, 2016

Its no secret that over the last couple of years, AOL has aggressively built up its ad-tech stack through acquisitions. That ad-tech stack has become ONE By AOL. Most recently, AOL acquired the French programmatic performance company AlephD in January.

But prior to that move, AOL went on a tear, acquiring Vidible in December 2014. Vidible helps websites expand their video content by running selected or pre-filtered content from other publishers.

AOL snapped up Convertro in May 2014a move that would enable clients to evaluate different media channels, ad formats and segments in order to understand how their ads influenced consumers and who their consumers were.

Then there was Gravity, acquired in January 2014, a technology that personalizes and recommends content. The acquisition of Precision Demand, which would help with cost-efficient targeting, came in May 2014.

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Setting the stage for AOLs plan to bulk up its ad tech stack, the company set its sights on programmatic video provider Adap.tv, which it acquired in August 2013.

Eldad Persky, Head of Product, ONE for Publishers at AOL Platforms, is responsible for AOLs programmatic sell-side offerings. Prior to this role, Persky was senior vice president, product management, for Adap.tv, AOL Platformshe came along with AOLs Adap.tv acquisition.

Real-Time Daily:Why did AOL acquire AlephD? What value does it add to the AOL ONE Platform?

Eldad Persky: AlephD brings a number of enhancements to our platform, centered around two important issues for publishers.

The value of each video, mobile and display impression changes every second, based on market needs, ad buyer behavior and even the weather.

For publishers, its incredibly challenging trying to understand these factors, analyze them for the short and long term, and then price accordingly based on where the ad market is at any given moment.

Publishers are faced with a crucial question: At what price should I sell my inventory? But thats not easily answerable. Many publishers simply rely on potentially outdated historical information. They have no easy way to understand the value of their inventory at any given moment.

RTD: Essentially, publishers are shooting in the dark with respect to the value of their inventory.

Persky: Yes, and publishers need to be able to evaluate different monetization modelsfrom public auction to private deals, and so onand understand the best way to use the various tools at their disposal in order to maximize revenue opportunities.

Advertisers have been able to enjoy this kind of prescriptive technology in areas such as multitouch attribution and bid optimization. However, publishers dont have a central analytics and optimization layer to help them make critical decisions and remain ahead, whether its evaluating selling inventory based on context vs. audience, reserved vs. programmatic channels.

Thats why we brought on AlephD to help build on what were doing with ONE by AOL for Publishers, which is helping publishers become more financially successful using technology and data.

RTD: Publishers have seen a decline in CPMs for a variety of reasons. What are those reasons?

Persky: There are a number of reasons why publishers are under pressure today.

Advertisers have been using optimization technology for years now, which has driven down prices in second-price auctions, for example. Aggregators, such as demand side platforms, also limit the number of bids submitted into any one auction, which reduces bid density and, therefore, clearing prices to publishers.

Also, the shift to audience-based buying has left many publishers behind in terms of being able to forecast, price and understand that selling model in order to be successful. Finally, audiences are shifting to mobile, but inventory pricing and fill-rates have not followed suit.

Weve seen the rise of the data-driven advertiser over the past few years. Now its its time for the rise of the data-driven publisher.

With AlephD, were trying to level the playing field for publishers, to help them carefully optimize floor prices in every auction. The combination of analytics and optimization tools with a data management platform and a set of supply-side platforms offers publishers what they need to enable audience-based selling while protecting yield. These tools are channel-agnostic so publishers can understand monetization opportunities not only within a mobile environment, but also within the larger cross-channel marketing mix.

RTD: What is your view of programmatic direct and guaranteed?

Persky: Despite optimistic projections, we havent seen programmatic-direct's rise to prominence. Considering complex and, at times, conflicting interests between advertisers, agencies, publishers and technology vendors, the motivation to drive change has to be extremely strong.

However, the operational efficiencies that programmatic-direct promises arent great enough to change buyer behavior. Im a big fan of using existing programmatic pipes and capabilities to enable direct audience-based buying and selling on guaranteed, and possibly even a fixed price basis.

RTD: Whats your take on the rise of header bidding?

Persky: Header bidding has been rapidly adopted thanks to its clear effect on yield.

Publishers want to make the best decision per impression across transaction models and demand options, and header bidding emerged as a workaround to solve this partially, in an ecosystem where larger players have traditionally controlled partnerships.

However, header bidding only addresses a symptom, rather than focusing on the larger issue for publishers, which is the need to leverage data and technology and help them consider all of their monetization options for each impression and act to capture the greatest value for it.

I think header bidding has residual, unwanted effects, like introducing latency within a users experience. There wont be an audience to monetize if we resort to over-engineering things through daisy-chained hacks and tweaks.

RTD:How do you see the potential for programmatic TV evolving?

Persky: Programmatic TV has a lot of potential for both advertisers and the networks, but we are still at the very early stages. We need to develop standards and baseline measurement that both buyers and sellers can align against in order for it to take off.

Today, we are seeing every network, agency and technology vendor ginning up their own technology and siloing data, which will only lead to issues of scale later on. Also, theres the question of what value programmatic brings into the process when the data, technology and standards are all siloed within competing players.



RTD: People talk about buying audience segments and audience targeting. How do AlephD's capabilities and functions enable improvements in this area?

Persky: As the market continues to shift to audience-based buying as a currency, our goal is to give tools to publishers so they can place a price tag against audiences.

The promise of programmatic for publishers is having a comprehensive, real-time understanding of the value of their audiences and being able to act against these marketplaces with pricing and packaging intelligence. We aim to offer publishers these capabilities so they can efficiently harness first- and third-party data.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, March 18, 2016

Gustavo Martinez is no longer CEO of WPPs J. Walter Thompson, but the harassment lawsuit filed by the agencys Chief Communications Officer Erin Johnson against him is still ongoing and the two sides are now fighting over the admissibility of a DVD recording of an agency retreat that Johnson claims backs up some of her charges.

The legal teams for both sides yesterday filed letters with the New York Federal court presenting their arguments.

Howard Rubin of Davis & Gilbert, the law firm representing Martinez, the agency and its holding company, urged Judge J. Paul Oetken not to allow the admission of the tape -- at least for now, because the defense side was not aware that a copy of the tape still existed until Johnson requested it be admitted earlier this week.

Plaintiff has apparently kept the only copy of that fuller version which JWT did not even know existed, the defendants argued through their law firm, which also noted that Johnson and her law firm (Vladeck, Raskin & Clark) have refused to make the DVD available to them.

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The WPP side also argued that the event being recorded discussed a process that is highly confidential and proprietary to JWT, which would suffer significant damage if the recording were made public. Johnson earlier described it as a process to pilot a new method for generating ideas.

In a responding letter one of Johnsons lawyers, Anne Vladeck, dismissed the opposing sides arguments noting they were just plain wrong in asserting that the DVD at issue contains any confidential and proprietary material.

The content on the DVD contains less than a minute of footage and consists entirely of the biased remarks of [Martinez] made at a JWT retreat in Miami that were described in detail in both the initial and amended complaints filed by Johnson.

Johnson attorney Vladeck also denied that her client had improperly kept the video unbeknownst to JWT. In fact, plaintiff advised, at a minimum, the head of human resources at JWT that she had safeguarded it out of concern about the biased conduct that it reflected. Johnson also told Martinez she had the recording and neither he nor the HR head asked her to return it, she told the court via the letter.

Moreover, Vladeck argued, plaintiffs maintaining such evidence of the discriminatory environment that flourished at JWT is protected activity, an issue certainly not to be determined in the context of a motion to preclude an exhibit to a complaint.

Somewhat amusingly, both sides accused the other of making efforts to try the case in the press.
by Larissa Faw , March 18, 2016

Industry veteran Marco Bailetti is returning to his roots by becoming VP of Data Science at Razorfish's Toronto's office. In his new role reporting to global chief intelligence officer Samih Fadli, Bailetti will be responsible for deploying data and customer insights for clients across the agency's core retail, automotive and financial services verticals.

While Bailetti most recently worked at Franklin Templeton Investments, he is a familar face within the network having served as director and region lead of marketing analytics and search engine optimization at SapientNitro, which now sits alongside Razorfish as part of the Publicis.Sapient platform. In that role, Bailetti is credited with growing the firms marketing analytics and search team from two to forty analysts in seven cities.

This latest hire comes on the heels of the agencys "aggressive strides" to further expand its global data science and artificial intelligence practices. In 2015, the agency announced the release of Cosmos, Razorfishs Machine Learning and Data Intelligence platform. This cognitive algorithm ecosystem is designed to learn, reason, predict and inform the entire digital marketing journey.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 18, 2016

Suppose that a nuclear device on a timer, or a child being tortured, is on the other side of a door -- would you hand over the key, ask Time correspondents Nancy Gibbs and Lev Grossman in an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The hypothetical question came up during a recent Timeinterview with Cook in a discussion about privacy, America's security, and the ongoing debate and battle with the F.B.I. over encryption following the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack in 2015.

Cook, who opposed helping create a backdoor key after Apple provided the information related to the iCloud backup, said "if I had a key to that door I would turn that door. But thats not the issue here, just to be clear. Its not that I have information on this phone, and Im not giving it. I had information. I gave all of it."

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The F.B.I wants Apple to invent a key, but Cook believes that "no one should have a key that turns a billion locks" -- which Peter Friedman, LiveWorld's chairman and CEO, points to as one of the important passages in the interview. He worked at Apple for more than 10 years in the 1980s and 1990s, the most recent as VP and GM of Apple Internet Services.

In fact, Apple encryption engineers could quit their jobs if they were forced to help law enforcement authorities unlock the iPhone, rather than undermine the security of the software they created. Friday's report cites more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees.

"If you open a back door a great many people will enter," Friedman told Search Marketing Daily in an earlier interview during South by Southwest Interactive. "Big Web sites are under cyberattack continually, and you need to fight them in other ways."

The request makes it possible to reopen anyones phone through hacking and surveillance. If Apple complies with the F.B.I., Friedman said, this will not only trample civil rights, but will expose national security and enable terrorists to learn more about where people are and carry out more attacks on individuals and crowds -- and that just as it enables law enforcement to get into terrorist phones, it will enable terrorists to gain access into law enforcement phones.

If Apple did this, as Cook suggests, some third parties around the world could create software to put the encryption back in, Friedman said. "Ill add so the terrorists would have it and be protected anyway, but U.S. law enforcement wouldnt use it to protect themselves as they would be violating U.S. rules to do so wed be even worse off than we are now," he said.

So, yes, "it sucks" that we cannot get more information from terrorists in this way Friedman said -- but it's the price of civil liberties, and not arming the terrorists with a way to get at the information they want and endangering us even more.

"If you open a back door a great many people will enter," he said. "Big Web sites are under cyberattack continually, and you need to fight them in other ways."
The unraveling of the human genome has triggered a shift toward classifying cancer according to patterns found in molecules and genes rather than cells and tissues. An example of this is a new study that defines a new subtype of bladder cancer that shares molecular signatures with some forms of breast cancer.

Share on Pinterest The team found that a subtype of muscle-invasive bladder cancer shares molecular signatures with some forms of breast cancer.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill describe how they arrived at the new definition in the journal JCI Insight.

Bladder cancer accounts for about 5% of all new cancers in the US. It is the fourth most common cancer in men, but it is less common in women.

Estimates suggest that during 2016, about 76,960 Americans will discover they have bladder cancer, and about 16,390 will die of the disease.

The wall of the bladder has four layers. Nearly all bladder cancers start in the urothelium  the innermost layer.

Next to the urothelium is a thin layer of connective tissue, blood vessels and nerves, followed by a thick layer of muscle. The outside layer  made of fatty connective tissue  separates the bladder from other nearby organs.

As the cancer grows, it spreads from the innermost layer into and through the other layers. The more layers it penetrates, the more advanced the cancer is and the harder it is to treat.

Patients diagnosed with muscle-invasive and metastatic tumors have a much poorer prognosis than patients with low-grade tumors that are largely confined to the inner layers of the bladder wall.
Researchers are developing a new, low-cost, fast and accurate laser tool that can detect bacteria growth inside packaged food or medical blood supplies without having to disturb their packaging. Share on Pinterest The researchers are developing a new, low-cost, fast and accurate laser tool that can detect bacteria growth inside packaged food without having to open the package and take a sample. The researchers  from Zhejiang Normal University in China and Umea University in Sweden  describe the device and how they tested it on two types of bacteria in the journal Applied Optics. The reason packaged food has sell-by and use-by dates is to avoid the risk that it may go bad  due to growth of bacteria and other microorganisms  and cause illness. Such precaution means food often has an unnecessarily short shelf-life. A better understanding of the growth process of microorganisms  and its detection  could help reduce food waste and perhaps also the number of people who get food poisoning, note the researchers. Similarly in medicine, a tool that could quickly and non-invasively detect bacterial growth could save time and reduce waste of precious medical resources. For example, it is important to be able to measure the quality of blood samples quickly and accurately. If they are contaminated, they may have to be discarded and repeated. Also, bacterial growth in medical blood supplies  while rare  means the blood has to be thrown away. And if it is not detected, then there is the risk of infecting patients and possibly death. A rapid screening tool means a larger percentage of blood could be directly tested for possible bacterial contamination.

Optical spectrometry is sensitive and gives instant results However, microorganisms are complex beings  their growth is driven by many factors. This makes it difficult to estimate how much bacteria might be present inside sealed packages of food or blood. For their study, the team focused on the fact that bacteria let off gas  for example carbon dioxide  as they multiply. First author Jie Shao, assistant professor at the Institute of Information Optics at Zhejiang, says: By assessing the level of [carbon dioxide] within a given closed compartment  bottle or bag  its possible to assess the microbial growth. The technology that shows much promise for accurate measurement of gas composition is optical spectrometry. It is highly sensitive, provides instant results and can be used non-invasively, such as through glass or the see-through films and plastics used to package food. For their study, the researchers focused on one particular optical technology called tunable diode laser absorption, or TDLAS. They decided to investigate it because it combines all technical requirements of a measurement tool with an ease of use and low cost, explains Prof. Shao. TDLAS can measure concentrations of various gases  including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water and methane  within a mixture. It uses tunable diode lasers to measure their presence via absorption spectrometry  a technique that can detect compounds from the specific and unique way their elements absorb different wavelengths of light. The TDLAS device the team is developing comprises a tunable laser diode as the light source, beam-shaping optics, a place to carry the sample, plus receiving optics and one or more detectors.
Cedars-Sinai research scientists have found that immune cells in the brain play a direct role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, offering hope for new therapies to target the neurodegenerative disease that gradually leads to paralysis and death.

The findings will appear in the journal Science on March 18, 2016.

The researchers focused on a genetic mutation that causes ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and frontotemporal dementia, another neurological disorder that typically leads to changes in personality, behavior and language.

The investigators developed two genetic strains in mice lacking the gene, known as C9orf72, which they found is important for the function of the immune system in the brain.

Instead of developing ALS, mice without the gene unexpectedly suffered immune system abnormalities. Structures within immune cells -- known as lysosomes -- that normally dispose of unwanted cellular material stopped functioning properly without the C9orf72 gene.

"The C9orf72 gene is critical for the function of immune cells in the brain, adding to growing evidence that the brain's immune system actively contributes to disease rather than simply responding to injury," said Robert H. Baloh, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and director of Neuromuscular Medicine in the Department of Neurology and the multidisciplinary ALS Program at Cedars-Sinai. "These findings continue a paradigm shift in the way we think of how brain cells are lost in conditions like ALS and Alzheimer's disease."

ALS gradually kills nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It is one of the most prevalent neuromuscular diseases, resulting in more than 5,600 new diagnoses in the U.S. each year, according to the ALS Association. Around 10 percent of those diagnoses are caused by the mutation of the C9orf72 gene.

Studies suggest that about 500,000 people in the U.S. are carriers of the mutation.

Baloh and fellow researchers noted that their findings may point the way to new therapies to target immune cell dysfunction, particularly in patients carrying the C9orf72 gene mutation. He said that drugs aimed at decreasing levels of the gene should also be approached with caution because they could further disrupt the immune system.

Jacqueline Gire O'Rourke, PhD, a project scientist who contributed to the study, said the results also could help physicians understand the disparities between carriers of the gene mutation and other ALS patients.

"Our work opens the possibility that C9orf72 gene carriers may even respond differently to immune modulating drugs than other ALS patients," O'Rourke said.

Clive Svendsen, PhD, director of the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, where the research was conducted, added that Baloh's research represents an important step toward understanding the role of this particular genetic mutation.

"These new findings will make the field think differently about the causes of ALS," said Svendsen.
Antibody-secreting plasma cells arise from B cell precursors and are essential for adaptive immune responses against invading pathogens.

Plasma cell dysfunction is associated with autoimmune and neoplastic disorders, including multiple myeloma.

Surface markers that are specific to plasma cells have not been identified and antibodies that only recognize these cells have been challenging to generate using conventional systems.

In the current issue of JCI Insight, Gotz Ehrhardt and colleagues at the University of Toronto describe the generation of a plasma cell-specific antibody from immunized lampreys.

The authors injected lamprey larvae with a bone marrow isolate from a multiple myeloma patient and screened the resulting monoclonal antibodies for those that recognized both malignant and non-malignant plasma cells.

Further characterization of antibody VLRB MM3 revealed that this antibody is specific to plasma cells and does not recognize other B cell populations or progenitors.

VLRB MM3 binding was shown to coincide with CD38 dimerization and correlate with and impede the NAD glycohydrolase activity of this glycoprotein.

The VLRB MM3 antibody represents a unique tool with potential for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications for plasma cell disorders.
Drug therapies for many conditions end up treating the whole body even when only one part - a joint, the brain, a wound - needs it. But this generalized approach can hurt healthy cells, causing nasty side effects. To send drugs to specific disease locations and avoid unwanted symptoms, researchers developed cellular "backpacks" that are designed to carry a therapeutic cargo only to inflamed disease sites.

The researchers presented their work at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"What we want to do is take advantage of immune cells whose job it is to seek out disease in the body, and use them to deliver cargo for us," says Roberta Polak, a postdoctoral research associate. "How do we do that? Our lab developed cellular backpacks that can be loaded with therapeutic compounds and unloaded."

Polak and fellow researchers in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) labs of Michael Rubner, Ph.D., and Robert Cohen, Ph.D., make the backpacks by stacking ultra-thin layers of polymer materials on top of each other. According to Rubner, they could be used to treat a wide range of diseases from cancer to Parkinson's.

The resulting pack has different functional regions. One is Velcro-like, attaching via antibody-antigen binding to immune cells, such as monocytes and macrophages. These are the body's defense cells that travel to sites of inflammation - a natural reaction to infection and disease - and gobble up foreign invaders or attack cancer cells. In vitro testing has shown that the backpacks can stick to the surfaces of the immune cells without getting engulfed. In collaboration with the group of Samir Mitragotri at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the MIT team has also demonstrated in mice that these backpack-functionalized immune cells accumulate in locations where inflammation - a sign of disease - occurs.

But there was a problem. The medicine they were using to test the backpacks, a cancer drug called doxorubicin, was leaking out - even during the initial fabrication process. So Polak worked on this part of the backpack, its payload region. To stop the premature release of the drug, she trapped it in liposomes, tiny bubbles that have already been used to carry therapeutic compounds for other delivery systems, and then incorporated them into the backpacks. She found that she could fit nine times the amount of doxorubicin in the liposomes than in the backpacks alone, potentially transforming them into an even more potent weapon.

To control the release of the drug payload, Polak used liposomes that are echogenic, or sensitive to ultrasound. So in principle, when backpacks infused with these bubbles reach their destination, they can be burst open with ultrasound waves.

Now, to see how well they work to treat a specific disease, Polak is collaborating with Elena Batrakova, Ph.D., at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Batrakova has been working with mice to develop new treatments for brain inflammation, a characteristic of diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. They want to see if they can use the backpacks to carry an inflammation-fighting enzyme across the blood-brain barrier.

Polak acknowledges funding from MIT's National Science Foundation Materials Research Science & Engineering Center.
"Our results even suggest the four-drug strategy is actually doing more harm than isoniazid-alone therapy because study participants found it less tolerable and stopped using it," says senior study author Amita Gupta, associate professor of medicine and deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education.Overall, the researchers report that the low mortality rate they found among all study participants supports systematic TB screening and preventive isoniazid therapy in all outpatients with advanced HIV.Gupta says recent TB prevention studies enrolled people with less advanced HIV, namely those with higher counts of the protective CD4 T lymphocyte cells. For example, in the 2015 TEMPRANO trial, 41% of participants with HIV had a CD4 count greater than 500. A CD4 count less than 200 signals a stage 3 infection (AIDS). In the REMEMBER study, the team enrolled people with CD4 counts of less than 50."This was the very patient population we were most concerned about because of the World Health Organization's recommendation to use only one drug," says Gupta. "Some investigators feared that the use of just one drug would inadequately treat undiagnosed, subclinical TB and lead to more rapid drug resistance, which would be deadly."For the new study, conducted from October 2011 to June 2014, researchers enrolled 850 participants - 450 male and 400 female - 13 and older, with a median age of 36, from 18 sites in 10 countries - Malawi, South Africa, Haiti, Kenya, Zambia, India, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Peru and Uganda. It excluded those with suspected or actual TB.All participants were started on antiretroviral therapy. Half (424) were randomly assigned to preventive isoniazid therapy and half (426) to the four-drug combination used as the standard treatment for TB, though it was used in this case as a preventive measure. The four-drug cohort received a weight-adjusted, fixed-dose combination of rifampin, isoniazid, ethambutol and pyrazinamide daily for eight weeks, followed by a fixed-dose combination of rifampin and isoniazid daily for 16 weeks, beginning within seven days of receiving their initial antiretroviral therapy. The single-drug cohort received 300 milligrams of isoniazid daily for 24 weeks.After 24 weeks, one in 20 participants from each group died mostly from complications related to HIV/AIDS, including meningitis, cancer and TB. A total of 49 participants developed TB, and drug resistance developed in three participants in each group.Stage 3 or 4 signs or symptoms, such as weight loss, diarrhea and fever, occurred in approximately one in 10 participants from each group. Stage 3 or 4 laboratory abnormalities, such as anemia, neutropenia and abnormal liver enzymes, occurred in one in five participants from each group.Overall, Gupta says, there was more 'disease burden' among the multidrug treatment group over the 24-week trial period. 72 participants from the four-drug cohort either died or had significant progression of their HIV/AIDs, while only 53 participants in the single-drug cohort experienced the same at 24 weeks."We went into this trial thinking that using the full, four-drug tuberculosis treatment would be able to prevent more deaths," says Gupta, compared to the isoniazid therapy alone. "We found - unequivocally - no difference," she says, with an absolute risk difference between the two treatment groups of 0.06%.Gupta says that in addition to preventing TB and being better tolerated, isoniazid is more affordable than diagnosing and treating TB. This is especially true for poorer countries, where HIV and AIDS - and co-infections, such as TB - are undertreated in part because of cost. On average, the cost of isoniazid is pennies per pill, while it can be six times more expensive to try to diagnose and treat TB in each patient.Gupta emphasizes that antiretroviral therapy by itself reduces the TB risk for most patients, but an estimated one in five in 'resource-limited' settings die within six months of starting HIV treatment.Autopsies often reveal these patients had undiagnosed tuberculosis, which contributed to their deaths. Failure to diagnose TB happens, in part, she says, because the most common test for tuberculosis - sputum acid-fast bacilli testing - has low sensitivity in patients with advanced HIV. Results of other TB tests can take as long as eight weeks because tuberculosis cultures grow slowly. Thus, routine preventive therapy makes sense, she adds.Use of isoniazid alone to prevent TB in patients with HIV has been a World Health Organization guideline since 1998 but has been hampered by noncompliance among health care providers concerned about both the tolerability of the treatment and the promotion of drug resistance, especially among the most vulnerable patients with advanced HIV.The REMEMBER study researchers found isoniazid was well-tolerated among their participants and that there was no evidence of increased drug resistance. "We actually underestimated the benefit of isoniazid preventive therapy in this highly vulnerable population, so what this trial found was that you could do a good job of screening for tuberculosis using locally available measures and safely put patients on isoniazid," said Gupta.The researchers also recommend that providers screen for tuberculosis symptoms at follow-up visits, also a guideline of the World Health Organization. The REMEMBER study is ongoing, with more results to come at 48 and 96 weeks.Source: Eurekalert
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Also, walking during breaks and hitting the treadmill at the office did not have any effect on the sitting time. Researchers stressed that standing for a prolonged period does not burn calories instead only increases the risk of knee pain and varicose veins.The study's lead author, Nipun Shrestha from the Health Research and Social Development Forum, Thapathali, Nepal, said, "This Cochrane Review shows that, at the moment, there is uncertainty over how big an impact sit-stand desks can make on reducing the time spent sitting at work in the short term. There is also low quality evidence of modest benefits for other types of interventions. Given the popularity of sit-stand desks in particular, we think that people who are considering investing in sit-stand desks and the other interventions covered in this review should be aware of the limitations of the current evidence base in demonstrating health benefits. We need further research to assess the effectiveness of different types of interventions for reducing sitting time in workplaces in both the short and long term. The evidence base would be improved with larger studies, longer follow-up and research from low income countries."Co-author Jos Verbeek, from the Cochrane Work Review Group, Kuopio, Finland, said, "It is important that workers who sit at a desk all day take an interest in maintaining and improving their well-being both at work and at home. However, at present, there is not enough high quality evidence available to determine whether spending more time standing at work can repair the harms of a sedentary lifestyle. Standing instead of sitting hardly increases energy expenditure, so we should not expect a sit-stand desk to help in losing weight. It's important that workers and employers are aware of this, so that they can make more informed decisions."Source: Medindia
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"This is one of the first studies to demonstrate later-life risks of mild cognitive impairment in relation to a remote history of traumatic brain injury in a large population sample," said senior author Dr. C. Munro Cullum, Professor of Psychiatry, and Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern. "We cannot yet determine who is at greatest risk for later-life cognitive decline following TBI, but these results suggest that a relationship exists for some people. Our ultimate goal is to identify various risk factors that may play a role."In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that TBIs accounted for approximately 2.5 million emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States. Mild cognitive impairment, which typically occurs later in life, affects 10-20% of those aged 65 years and older, according to the Alzheimer's Association.In the database sample group, researchers found TBI patients who had lost consciousness were 1.2 to 1.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with MCI than those who had not suffered brain injuries. Much of that elevated risk also was influenced by a history of depression, added Dr. Cullum, who holds the Pam Blumenthal Distinguished Professorship in Clinical Psychology.The data came from patient information documented in the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center database, which is pooled from 29 National Institute of Aging-funded Alzheimer's disease centers in the U.S. The group studied included those aged 50 years or older who had initial and follow-up visits completed between September 2005 and December 2013."TBI is hypothesized to activate a neurodegenerative process that may interact with age and other factors over time," Dr. Cullum said. "This study shows a correlation between TBI and MCI, but more research remains to be done to explore this apparent link. Factors such as neuroinflammation and buildup in the brain of proteins such as tau or amyloid following injury and over a person's lifetime may play a role."Source: Eurekalert
Introduction

The current fight between the U.S. government and Apple, in which the FBI is seeking Apple's assistance in unlocking the phone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook,[1] is just the most recent example highlighting jihadis' use of Apple devices and products. Among jihadi groups affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, and other organizations, and their followers and sympathizers, Apple products - including iPhones - are widely popular, and the best ways of utilizing them is a topic of jihadi discussions.



German rapper-turned-ISIS-member Denis Cuspert aka Deso Dogg aka Abu Talha Al-Almani, and his Apple laptop. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in October 2015.

Regardless of the outcome of the current Apple vs FBI fight over cracking the encryption of a single iPhone, it is important to realize that this is just one of a number of issues involving cyber jihad that concern both the tech/social media companies and the government. These cyber jihad issues also impact public safety and national security.

As Apple fights this encryption battle, with the backing of every major tech and social media company, what is missing is a unified statement from them declaring that they oppose terrorist use of their platform, and that they will work to come up with ideas to stop it, at the same time as they protect both privacy and freedom of speech. These groups need to come together to create industry standards for how tech companies and social media should deal with cyber jihad.

Aside from the iPhone in question in the San Bernardino shooting case, there are thousands of other iPhones and other Apple devices in the hands of many more jihadis, and jihadi organizations are closely following the current case. The more secure iPhones, Apple products, and other companies' products end up being, the more heavily jihadis will continue to rely on them, and the problem will not go away. The following report will give examples of how jihadis are using Apple products and how they are discussing and praising them on social media.

2013: Jihadi In Syria Touts iPhones As Helpful In Joining ISIS

A jihadi who traveled to Syria, Abu Turab Al Muhajir, who stated on his Twitter account that he is 25, from Chicago (or possibly Canada), and had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), tweeted praise of his iPhone in his first tweet from Syria. On December 21, 2013, he tweeted: "Internet, Restaurants, Cars, iPhonesOC Allah has made Hijra and Jihad in Sham [Syria] so easy... why are we still clinging to the Earth and hesitating?"[2]

2014: Well-Known Jihadi In Syria Tweets Photo Of Handgun And iPad Mini, Noting "That's Jihad"

One example of how jihadis highlight their use of Apple products is a tweet by "Life of Mujahid," also known as Abu Bakr, featuring a handgun in an iPad Mini box, that was posted in 2014. Life of Mujahid's Twitter avatar features children playing and states "Jihad Is Our Playground."

October 2014: Warning Against Using Search Via iPhone Personal Assistant Siri Posted On Leading Pro-ISIS Jihadi Forum

On October 13, 2014, a jihadi posted a warning on the leading pro-ISIS jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam about using the search function of Siri, the Apple voice-controlled personal assistant for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, and noting that search queries are saved on Apple servers for two years.

December 2014: ISIS Bans Use Of Electronic Devices With GPS, Calls Apple Products Particularly "Dangerous"

On December 13, 2014, ISIS issued an order banning its fighters from using "any electronic device or communication methods" with GPS services. The ban came in light of coalition airstrikes against ISIS's soldiers; ISIS stated that the devices' GPS capabilities were being used to pinpoint fighter locations. Because of the growing popularity of Apple products, ISIS also explicitly banned all of them - including phones and tablets - calling them "dangerous," and gave its fighters a one-month deadline to comply. After that, it said, any Apple devices would be confiscated and their owners would be investigated.[3] It should be noted that Apple was the only manufacturer that was specifically pointed out.



Fatwa by ISIS-supporting imams discouraging the use of Apple products

May 2015: Tutorial On Encrypting iPhones Posted On Leading Pro-ISIS Jihadi Forum

On May 28, 2015, a tutorial on encrypting iPhones was posted on the leading pro-ISIS jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam. The tutorial was disseminated via the content-sharing website Justpaste.it, which is widely used by jihadis.

January 2016: ISIS Cyber Activist Tweets To Followers How To Use Apple iPod Touch For Secure Messaging

Tech-savvy jihad supporters frequently circulate information on Twitter about how to "secure" their phones against law enforcement surveillance. For example, on January 4, 2016, the well-known pro-ISIS cyber activist Abu Naseeha, who frequently provides cyber security tips, tweeted to his ISIS followers information on how to use an iPod Touch for secure messaging.

Abu Naseeha frequently disseminates links to open-source content that he thinks will be valuable to jihadis operating online. For example, he shared a September 2015 article on "How to use an iPod Touch as a secure calling and messaging device."[4]

The article that Abu Naseeha shared noted: "Modern communication technologies are abundant, but legacy phone calling and texting (SMS, MMS) are inherently insecure" and that "communications content in addition to metadata is collected and stored by various organizations and for many years." It added that "The modern iPod fills a much needed space. WiFi only. Generations 5 and 6 support iOS 8 which is the minimum requirement for Open Whisper System's free and open source Signal application."

Setting out the "advantages" of using Apple products, the article that Abu Naseeha shared stated:

- "Network: the iPod does not have inherent baseband insecurities or SIM card insecurities.

- "Network: you can control which WiFi networks to expose your device to.

- "Data at rest: The iPod employs default device encryption.

- "Data at rest: Signal employs default message database encryption and isolation.

- "Data in motion: Signal only uses modern protocols and state-of-the-art encryption.

- "OS security: Apple pushes security patches relatively quickly and the iPod is a more challenging device to infect with malware when used correctly.

- "Verifiability: Signal allows users to compare and verify encryption key fingerprints.

- "Verifiability: Signal is a free and open source software project that is publicly audited.

- "Scalability: other people with an iPod, iPhone or Android can freely install and use Signal.

- "Liability: when employed in a work place with supportive policy, work-oriented communications are compartmentalized from personal devices."

After naming a handful of disadvantages, the article that Abu Naseeha shared then provides "operational security practices": "Define a strict use case for your iPod for when certain groups of people ask. If you routinely travel, possibly through airport or border security, you don't want to raise suspicion of your device. It is an iPod after all, people will have expectations that it is for listening to music. You may be coerced to provide access to the device to prove its legitimacy. Plan ahead.

- "If your iPod is for professional services (like law, journalism, etc) only certain groups of people, maybe clients, should be aware of your communications practices. Your organization may even make certain policy decisions like making it public information that you can be reached via Signal for secure communications.

- "If your iPod is for personal use, since you can't risk connecting the iPod to computer systems to sync files, perhaps use it for photography and picture viewing."

February 2016: Jihadi Forum Member Asks About iPhone Safety

In light of Apple's refusal to cooperate with the FBI in unlocking the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, one member of the major pro-Al-Qaeda jihadi forum Al-Fida' asked, in late February 2016, whether this means iPhones are safe to use.

March 2016: ISIS Fighter Praises iPhone Security

In a March 2, 2015 tweet, an ISIS fighter touted jihadi superiority over American, Russian, and Israeli security services, noting how the FBI cannot unlock an iPhone.

March 2016: Instructions For Creating Twitter Account For iPhone Without A Phone Number Posted On Leading Pro-ISIS Jihadi Forum

On March 10, 2016, Aafaq Electronic Foundation posted, on the pro-ISIS jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, instructions for creating a Twitter account for an iPhone without providing a phone number.

March 2016: In Video, Pro-ISIS Hacking Group Shows How It Uses Video-Editing Software For Apple iPad, Reiterates Its Oath Of Fealty To ISIS Leader

On March 14, 2016, the pro-ISIS hacking group Cyber Caliphate Army disseminated, via its Telegram channel, a video showing members of the group editing video using "Cute Cut" editing software for the Apple iPad. The video (view it here) also featured the group reiterating its oath of fealty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.[5]

Pro-ISIS Elements On Popular Encrypted Communications App Telegram Discuss Using Apple Products For Encryption And Other Purposes

Another issue for Apple is the use of its products in conjunction with the popular encrypted communications app Telegram, the Berlin-based secure messaging app. Telegram's Channels Service, launched in late September 2015, allows individual message content to be transmitted to an unlimited number of subscribed users. ISIS has already created a number of channels on Telegram for sharing their content with thousands of followers. The app and its channels service are increasingly popular among jihadi supporters as well.

Although Telegram is Germany-based, it is available only via Apple's iTunes and Google's Google Play - both of which are U.S.-based. Thus, Apple, and for that matter Google, are stakeholders in Telegram, and are in a powerful position to pressure it to take action against ISIS's widespread use of its services.

Downloading Telegram from Apple's iTunes

The Telegram app allows anyone - including ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other jihadi organizations and their supporters - to open a private channel for secret communications. Any smartphone owner can ask to join channels.[6] The following are just a few examples to highlight how jihadis are referring to the benefits of Apple.

The popular IPHONE Izizx Android channel on Telegram, while not a jihadi account, has many jihadi members who post to it, use content from it, and reference it. The channel, displayed below, has 18,333 members as of March 8, 2016.

In this post, IPHONE Izizx Android explains how to use Telegram and how to get it from iTunes.

A post in the "Culture Online" group mentions the "Apple vs. FBI" fight; the video is a media report also on "Apple vs FBI":

The "Tarjamat" ("Translations") group also highlighted "Apple vs. FBI":

In the following group, "#Caliphate_State," information was shared about downloading from iTunes "eslamicblog by Islamic," with an explanation that it includes ISIS nasheeds and speeches by ISIS leaders that are released on it daily. The member sharing it asked other members with iPhones to support it:

In the same group, jihadis discuss using the Talkatone app, which offers free calling and texting, including photos, and a free local U.S. phone number, and how to download it via iTunes:

Also in the "#Caliphate_State" group, Betternet, "the best proxy VPN for Wifi Hotspot Security," is promoted:

Betternet, a "free VPN for iPhones, iPad, and iPod Touch," on iTunes:

This discussion below in the "Al-Mutahaboun Fi-llah" group, focuses on communications apps, including Talkatone, and downloading them via iTunes:

Below, information is shared in the "Al-Mutahaboun Fi-llah" group for using iTunes to download a messaging app:

Betternet is promoted in the "Al-Mutahaboun Fi-llah" group:

An account with an avatar of Islamic State of Iraq leader Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi in discussion about downloading encrypted messaging apps from iTunes, in which the Telegram channel "Unknown," which shares links for ISIS supporters to download encrypted messaging apps from iTunes and Google Play, provides one such link:

Sharing links to apps in iTunes in the "Unknown" group:

Below, a user in "Unknown" shares links to Betternet; the description here states that allows users to "Access Sites and Protect Privacy and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch."

Telegram user "Fustat Ahl al-Iman" shares links to a "Quran Tutor" app using speech recognition software, available on iTunes, that is being used by ISIS sympathizers:

Another example of pro-ISIS elements focusing on Apple on Telegram was a discussion about Apple encryption on a pro-ISIS group called "Group for Chatting," whose avatar is a handgun. Participants discussed the use of VPNs on Apple products to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Participants asked about "vpn for apple," "ipad iphon," and "which one is recommended for apple." Other participants answered with the "best vpn for apple is Betternet" and "VPN HMA! Pro is a good one for Apple."

In other conversations, jihadis in various Telegram discuss the availability of apps in iTunes, showing how easy it is for anyone wishing to carry out a terror attack to obtain resources from Apple. Below, Telegram user Abu Aseed Al-Maqdisi shares tips for fellow ISIS supporters to download Telegram from iTunes:

Al-Qaeda's Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) Channel On Telegram Discusses Using Apple Products

The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), an Al-Qaeda-affiliated media company, has been using Telegram since December 2015, for sharing updates and news-related items with its followers, on variety of cybersecurity topics.

The Telegram channel belongs to the technical section of GIMF, which since 2007 has been behind the development of various secure communication programs.[7] The conversations below include a focus on "making the iPhone more secure," how Apple uses patches to fill vulnerabilities, and more.

"Apple releases OS X system update 10.11.3, El Capitan. #MediaFrontTechnicalSection"

"10 tips to make the iPhone more secure. #MediaFrontTechnical Section"

"Apple releases a patch for a vulnerability that allows stealing cookies files. #MediaFrontTechnicalSection"

"Information Security" Jihadi Tech Channel On Telegram Posts Links To Articles On Apple, Encryption

The "Information Security" channel on Telegram, with nearly 4,000 members, caters to jihadis' tech needs. It describes itself as "an independent technical channel publishing lessons and workshops in the field of electronic defense and information security, [and is] moderated by specialists in the field."[8]

On March 11, 2016, the Caliphate Cyber Army, a pro-ISIS jihadi hacking group, forwarded on its Telegram channel a post from Information Security about the Apple vs. FBI fight.

On March 9, 2016, Information Security shared links to articles in Arabic on Apple and on encryption issues:

*Steven Stalinsky is Executive Director of MEMRI; R. Sosnow is Head Editor at MEMRI.

Endnotes:


Four ISIS jihadis were arrested by Bangladeshi officials in December2015

On February 12, 2016, Bangladesh's State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Md. Shahriar Alam, dismissed media reports that the Islamic State (ISIS) is gaining ground in Bangladesh, saying: "On the ground, in the investigations that we have carried out, we have as yet found no evidence of ISIS links."[1]

Alam, who made the statement during a visit to Washington, was speaking in the context of a series of terror attacks in Bangladesh last year for which ISIS claimed responsibility. He refused to share the Western assessment that this was a serious threat, noting: "I do not think [that] any terrorist or groups would ever gain permanent or semi-permanent ground in Bangladesh."[2]

The government of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is in her second term, has severely cracked down on Bangladeshi jihadi groups, especially the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). This has forced some of its members to flee to the neighboring state of West Bengal in India. Shahriar Alam's security assessment should be judged against some of the terror attacks that have taken place in recent months, as detailed below.

Attacks In Bangladesh Claimed By ISIS

On September 28, 2015, Italian national Cesare Tavella, an employee of the Netherlands-based organization ICCO which works in development sector, was killed by jihadi terrorists in the capital Dhaka. Immediately after his killing, ISIS issued a statement in Arabic claiming responsibility and warning that people from "the Crusaders alliance" would not be safe in Muslim countries.[3] This was the first declaration that the ISIS is present in Bangladesh.

On October 3, Japanese national Kunio Hoshi was followed by jihadi terrorists and shot dead in the town of Kaunia in northern Bangladesh. ISIS immediately issued a statement, via the pro-ISIS leading jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, claiming responsibility for Hoshi's killing, identifying him as the "Japanese infidel," and warning that the attack was a continuation of the group's targeting of members of coalition countries that are fighting in Syria and Iraq.[4] The killings of Cesare Tavella and Kunio Hoshi were timed to coincide with ISIS's Arabic-language announcement.

On November 18, a third foreigner - Italian priest Piero Parolari - was followed by terrorists mounted on motorcycles and was dead at Mirzapur in Dinajpur district. According to a U.S.-based threat monitoring group, this attack too was claimed by ISISI; the group's role in attributing the attacks in Bangladesh to ISIS was, however, questioned by the Bangladeshi media.[5]

On October 5, Bangladeshi Christian priest Luke Sarker was attacked at his home, but in that case six individuals arrested by police were suspected to be members of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).[6] Also, on November 26, 10 Christian priests received death threats, in a letter sent to one of them - but not by ISIS.[7]

On the night of October 23-24, in Dhaka, a series of bomb attacks killed one person and wounded over 60 were wounded as Shi'ite mourners gathered for the Ashura procession to mark the annual day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.[8] This was believed to be the first attack on Shi'ite Muslims in Bangladesh. ISIS claimed responsibility, saying: "The soldiers of the Caliphate in Bangladesh" had detonated explosives during "polytheistic rituals."[9]

On November 26, an attack took place at a Shi'ite mosque at Bogra, 200 km northwest of Dhaka, killing the muezzin and wounding three others;[10] ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.[11] Since Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have coexisted peacefully in that area for decades, it could be concluded that the attack was a deliberate attempt at sparking sectarian war in the area. This was second attack on Shi'ite Muslims in Bangladesh within a month.

On November 4, a police checkpoint was attacked in the Baroipara area, near Dhaka. A media report stated that ISIS had claimed responsibility for the attack, and that the group had stated: "In a security operation, Allah enabled the soldiers of the state in Bangladesh to attack a police checkpoint."[12] A few days later, on November 10, a soldier was attacked near a military camp in Dhaka.[13]

The preceding week also witnessed similar small-scale attacks: On October 22, a policeman was stabbed to death at Gabtoli checkpost in Dhaka.[14] On October 31, Faisal Arefin Dipan, of the book publishing house Jagriti Prokashony, was hacked to death in his office; several hours previously, another publisher, Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, owner of the publishing house 'Shuddhaswar,' was wounded in an attack along with others in his office.[15] These attacks were not claimed by ISIS.

On December 25, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mosque of Ahmadi Muslims at Bagmara, 250 km from Dhaka, wounding three. Ahmadis are not considered Muslim by the mainstream Sunni Deobandi and Barelvi organizations as well as by the jihadi groups. ISIS issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack and calling Ahmadis "polytheistic."[16] Although the attack was claimed by ISIS, it appears the attack may have been carried out by the JMB because Bagmara is the stronghold of JMB militant leader Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai, who was executed in 2007.[17]

Should Bangladesh Worry About The ISIS Threat?

Bangladesh has witnessed two types of jihadi attacks in recent years: a) a series of targeted killings of liberal Bangladeshi bloggers, responsibility for which is generally claimed by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which affiliated itself with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS); and b) the series of terror attacks discussed above, many of which were claimed by ISIS. Currently, there are attempts to recruit young Bangladeshis to work for ISIS, both from within Bangladesh and from abroad; additionally, regular arrests have been made by Bangladeshi officials.[18]

Jihadism in Bangladesh has roots in the 1980s Afghan jihad. Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist organization founded by Abul A'ala Maududi in 1941, has been the main feeder organization for jihadi groups across South Asia. Following the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and of Bangladesh in 1971, Jamaat-e-Islami split, for all practical purposes, into four branches that are ideologically similar but organizationally not connected: a) in India; b) in India's Jammu & Kashmir; c) in Pakistan; and d) in Bangladesh. In the last three, jihadi groups have been sheltered by mosques, madrassas and organizations affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami.[19]

In Bangladesh, young men emerging from Jamaat-e-Islami formed the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). It is from the JMB - many of whose members fled to India following the crackdown by the Sheikh Hasina government - that the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) emerged. Two Bangladeshi nationals were found among a group of five ISIS terror suspects arrested by Indian officials in Delhi in mid-January.[20] There is a continuing overlap between the JMB and ABT. In the cases of the terror attacks claimed by ISIS, it does not appear that the ISIS's top leadership is planning and executing the operations in Bangladesh.

This is similar to the AQIS's claims of terror attacks, especially those on the secular bloggers, in Bangladesh. In those cases too, it did not appear that the AQIS's top leadership was planning and executing the attacks in Bangladesh. However, in both the cases, AQIS and ISIS claimed the attacks. In both the cases, it does not appear that there is top-down linking with the local jihadi groups. It is more like bottom-up links being created by the local militants with the ISIS, especially as they have seen the successful use of social media by ISIS. The current series of ISIS-claimed attacks appear to have been planned by the locals who, inspired by the spectacular success of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, sought to find support from the ISIS leadership.

The fact that the local militants have linked up with the ISIS was ascertained when Issue No. 12 of Dabiq, ISIS's English-language online magazine, published a lengthy article titled "The Revival of Jihad in Bengal - With the Spread of the Light of Khilafah."[21] While the article itself was short on information on ISIS operations in Bangladesh, it traced the history of jihad in Bengal (which includes Bangladesh and India's West Bengal state).

Bangladesh's Sheikh Hasina government is capable of fighting the ISIS threat. However, the greater, long-term threat for Bangladesh could come from the mass fundamentalist organizations like Hefajat-e-Islam which the Sheikh Hasina government sought to coddle in order to win elections.[22]

* Tufail Ahmad is Director of MEMRI's South Asia Studies Project

Endnotes
On February 5, 2016, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind (JUH, or the Organization of Indian Islamic Scholars) attorney Ejaz Maqbool told the Supreme Court of India that since Muslim personal laws in India originate from the Koran, it cannot be questioned by the SC. The JUH, founded in 1919, is a leading Deobandi network of Islamic clerics across India.

In India, there are no "Muslim personal laws" as such; the reference refers to the existence of some shari'a laws from India's pre-Independence days, under which Indian Muslims marry, divorce, and inherit. These, however, are not codified as laws, meaning that every Indian cleric is in practical terms a judge who can issue orders to Muslims in these three areas.

This lack of clarity in the Indian legal system has led to many problems. Muslim women are divorced arbitrarily by husbands using "triple Talaq," the practice of uttering "Talaq" (divorce) three times. Further, since no such laws exist, Muslim husbands are also forced to divorce under these non-codified shari'a laws, because the Indian courts do not admit divorce applications.

As a result, there is a movement in India for the enactment of the Uniform Civil Code, a goal set by the framers of the Indian Constitution for future governments to enact laws which will apply equally for members of all communities in India. However, the Islamist organizations in India have always opposed any demand for the Uniform Civil Code.

The following are excerpts from an Indian media report on the JUH's statement to the Supreme Court of India that Muslim personal laws flow from the Koran and cannot be scrutinized by the court:

"Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, the powerful body of Muslim clerics, has said that Muslim personal law flows from the Holy Koran and cannot be subjected to any scrutiny by the Supreme Court based on principles of the Constitution.

"'Mohammedan law is founded essentially on the Holy Koran and this cannot fall within the purview of the expression "laws in force" as mentioned in Article 13 of the Constitution, and hence its validity cannot be tested on a challenge based on Part-III of the Constitution (guaranteeing fundamental rights, including right to equality),' stated the JUH application, which was filed through advocate Ejaz Maqbool.

"The assertion by the body marks a fierce challenge to the intent to extend the principle to gender equality to Muslim women, and can open a fresh phase in the debate on whether personal laws based on religion can trump the Constitution. The debate will require the... [Indian] government to spell out its stand on the fraught issue.

"Last year, while entertaining a petition, a two-judge bench of Justices A R Dave and Adarsh Goel had directed registration of a separate PIL [public interest litigation application] to consider the rights of Muslim women, as there was no safeguard against arbitrary divorce (triple talaq) and second marriage by Muslim men during... their first marriage. The court had issued notice to the attorney general and National Legal Services Authority (Nalsa).

"On Friday [February 5], a bench of Chief Justice T. S. Thakur and Justices A. K. Sikri and R. Banumathi took up the petition titled 'Muslim Women's Quest for Equality' and agreed to make JUH a party to the proceedings and sought responses from the JUH, the AG [attorney general] and Nalsa on the questions posed by the SC [Supreme Court] in six weeks. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board [a non-governmental Islamist organization] is also expected to request the SC to make it a party in the case.

"The JUH also referred to Article 44, which figures as a provision in the Constitution, providing that the state shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India. But the JUH said, 'Article 44 envisaging UCC is only a directive principle and is not enforceable. This article by implication recognizes the existence of different codes applicable to different religions in matters of personal law and permits their continuance until the state succeeds in its endeavour to secure for all citizens a UCC.'

"It said the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, a legislation brought by the... [Indian] government [at that time] to step around the SC-directed equality in maintenance for Muslim women in the Shah Bano case, provided for the rights of Muslim women in matters of divorce and maintenance. [Shah Bano, a destitute Muslim woman, was awarded alimony by the Supreme Court, but the Indian government at that time appeased the Islamists by bringing in the law to quash the SC order.]"

Source: The Times of India (India), February 6, 2016.
The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.)

Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Pledges To Conquer Lebanon, Threatens Its Christians

On March 11, 2016, ISIS's "Al-Raqqa Province" in Syria released a 12-minute video titled "Oh Grandsons of the Prophet's Companions in Lebanon." The video features two ISIS operatives who call on Lebanon's Sunni Muslims to join ISIS and rise up against their government. One of them also promises that ISIS will conquer Lebanon and then Jerusalem, and calls on Lebanon's Christians to either embrace Islam or pay the poll tax, otherwise they will be punished.

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Features: Elderly Man Carries Out A Suicide Bombing In Iraq

The following clip is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.

Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

EXCLUSIVE: Jordanian Group Declares Loyalty To Al-Baghdadi, Vows To Behead Jordanian King Abdallah

In recent days an allegedly Jordanian group published a message pledging of loyalty to Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and threatening Jordan's King Abdallah. The message was released in reaction to the recent Jordanian security forces' radid against an ISIS cell in Irbid.

EXCLUSIVE: Indian Islamic Scholar Examines Islamic Classical Sources: 40 Characteristics Of Kharijite Forces Like ISIS, The Taliban And Al-Qaeda

The following report is from MEMRI's Counter-Radicalization Initiative.



Islamic State (ISIS) militants

In a recent article, Indian Islamic scholar Ghulam Ghaus examined various classical Islamic sources, in which he identified some key characteristics of Kharijite (rebel) forces in Islam such as the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Ghulam Ghaus "is an Alim and Fazil (classical Islamic scholar) with a Sufi background," according to NewAgeIslam.com which published his article. A note accompanying the article states that Ghulam Ghaus "completed the classical Islamic sciences from a Delhi-based Sufi Islamic seminary Jamia Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia... with specialization in Tafseer [interpretation of the Koran], Hadith [traditions of Prophet Muhammad], and Arabic."

EXCLUSIVE: In Pakistani Weekly, Radical Cleric Writes: 'It Is Obligatory To Convey The Message Of Islam To The Kuffar, And... If They Do Not Accept This, They Must Be Beheaded'

In an article in a recent issue of Pakistani jihadi weekly Haftroza Al-Qalam, radical cleric Talha Saif details several key principles of jihadi targets. Haftroza Al-Qalam is a weekly newspaper published by Pakistani jihadi group Jaish-e-Muhammad and is sold openly across Pakistan.

ISIS Suicide Bombers Threaten 'To Raid' Moscow

Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

Fighter In ISIS Video Vows To Defeat Russians

On March 10, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) Damascus province released a video titled "The Protectors of Good Deeds." The video shows battles between ISIS and the Syrian army forces near Mahin in the Homs governorate, and refers to an attack on a building serving as a command center for Syrian army forces in the village of Huwwarin in the Homs governorate. The attack was carried out by two of ISIS's inghimasiyun fighters - commandos that infiltrate deep into enemy territory.

ISIS Video Shows Body Of 'Russian Military Advisor' Killed By ISIS Near Palmyra

On March 17, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) news agency 'Amaq released a video showing the body of what it claimed to be a Russian military advisor killed by ISIS in battles west of Palmyra, Syria.

ISIS Video Shows Downing Of Iraqi Military Aircraft, Dead Crew Members

The Islamic State (ISIS) news agency 'Amaq reported today that ISIS had downed an Iraqi military aircraft over Al-Huwaija, Kirkuk. The agency also released a short video of the plane moments before its crash, along with scenes from the wreckage with graphic images of the crew's mutilated bodies.

ISIS Burns 'Christian Instruction Books' In Mosul

The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.

On March 10, 2016, the Islamic State's news agency A'maq released a 25-seconds video titled "Diwan of Education Destroys Christian Instruction Books." The video shows a large pile of booklets ablaze and an ISIS member adding more to the pile.

ISIS Fighter In Libya Shares Experiences On Facebook

An Islamic State (ISIS) fighter on Facebook claims to be fighting in Sirte, Libya. The ISIS fighter often posts photos of weapons, local scenery, and food. He interacts with many ISIS supporters around the globe, and regularly extolls the virtues of traveling abroad to wage jihad. Based on his knowledge of Swahili, he is likely East African in origin, and also speaks English and Arabic. He apparently plays a part in recruiting members to join ISIS in Libya

AQAP Entertains Hundreds Of Young Men with Various Activities, Programs In Its Al-Aqsa-Themed Event In Mukalla

On March 12, 2016, Al-Athir, a media agency affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), published a video documenting a three-night event titled "Oh Aqsa We Are Coming," which the group had organized between March 2 and 4, 2016, in the city of Mukalla, Yemen. The video, links to which were posted on Al-Athir's Facebook and Twitter accounts, highlighted parts of the programs presented in the event, which including standup comedy, martial art performances and presentations, as well as coverage of the different activities taking place in several Da'wa centers.

Telegram Channel Devoted to AQAP's 'Inspire' Magazine Posts Bomb-Making Instructions

A Telegram channel called Inspire Muslims shared, on March 17, 2016, pages from the well-known article from Inspire, the English-language online magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom." The article originally appeared in magazine's premiere issue in the summer of 2010. The shared pages included step-by-step instructions and images on bomb-making.

AQIM: Ivory Coast Attack Was Response To France's Military Campaign In Sahel - And Vengeance Against The Countries That Participate In French Military Operations In The Region

On March 13, 2016, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) released a full statement concerning its attack that day on the resort town of Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast.

Immediately following the attack, AQIM had released a brief statement claiming responsibility for it, via its Telegram channel.

In the full statement, AQIM said that the attack was part of its ongoing campaign to target the Crusaders' "dens" in the region, and underlined that the resort town was in fact a "spying and conspiracy den" used by the "heads of crime and theft."

AQIM Claims Responsibility For Ivory Coast Attacks Via Its Telegram Channel

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed responsibility for today's deadly attacks at three hotels in the beach resort city of Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast.

Reports From The MEMRI Archives On Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) Chief Maulana Masood Azhar, Now In Pakistani Government Custody

On February 25, 2016, it was reported that Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of Pakistani jihadist group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), had been arrested by the Pakistani government. While reports of his arrest had been circulating in the media since mid-January, it was not formally confirmed until Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistani prime minister's advisor on foreign affairs, stated that Masood Azhar was in the "protective custody" of the Pakistani security agencies.

In Upcoming Video, Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Documents Its Presence In Major Battles In Syria, Calls On Muslims To Join The Jihad

On March 15, 2016, Sawt Al-Islam, the media wing of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), a jihadi group of Uyghur Muslims from East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in western China, released a trailer for an upcoming video documenting its fighters' involvement in major battles in Syria and calling on Muslims to join the jihad there.
On March 16, 2016, the prominent liberal Syrian intellectual Georges Tarabishi passed away, at age 77. Tarabishi, who was born in Aleppo, was director of Radio Damascus (1963-4), editor of the Journal of Arab Studies (1972-84), and editor of the Al-Wahda journal (1984-9). In the late 1990s he moved to France, where he lived until his death.

Tarabishi's literary works included philosophy books and Arab literary criticism, along with translations into Arabic of many Western philosophy books. He also focused on a rereading of Arab literary heritage and used it to counter the Islamists.

In 2008, MEMRI published an interview he gave to the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.[1] In the interview, Tarabishi stressed the importance of critical thinking and self-criticism in the Arab world, and stated that secularism is a precondition for democracy in it, and a cure for the sectarianism that prevails there today.

Following his death, MEMRI is republishing its translation of the interview:

The Rise of Fundamentalism Led Me to Turn from Literary Criticism to Criticism of the Arab-Islamic Heritage

Q: "Your intellectual trajectory has traversed a number of stations. You went from the Ba'th to existentialism, from Marxism to liberalism, and recently you have engaged in a critique of the Arab mind. At the end of this packed trajectory, where do you find yourself? Are you at a stage of self-criticism, reviewing this full trajectory, or at a stage of criticizing the Arab reality?"

A: "I am part of my generation, and my generation has lived through more in 50 years than other generations in other countries lived through in 100 or 200 years. My generation's situation is like an Arab novel, like [those of] Naguib Mahfouz; in 50 years he went from historical novels to realist novels, and from there to symbolism and novels [dealing with the Islamic] heritage, and finally to the metaphysical novel. In other words, Naguib Mahfouz's personal novelistic trajectory covered, in 50 years, the trajectory of the European novel in its 300-year development.

"Our generation was subjected to the pressure of rapid change. It saw the rise and fall of Nazism and Marxism, the student rebellions, and changes in European thought, starting with existentialism, then the Frankfurt School, and finally structuralism and postmodernism. At the same time, momentous world events took place: the end of World War II, the outbreak of the Cold War, the national liberation movements and third-worldism, the fall of the socialist camp, and from there to globalization.

"Our generation had to react to all of these events and to make room for them in its consciousness. It had to know how to adopt them and at the same time take a critical stance towards them. Thus, if it wanted to stay in touch with the age, which was all about change, it couldn't adopt [just] one fixed vision.

"I think that my personal trajectory reflects the path of the generation itself, in that it moved from one school of thought to another in accordance with the changing phases, and in applying the principle of criticism and self-criticism, which is the primary guarantee of the continued survival of one's identity through change and adaptation to a changing reality.

"This trajectory of successive changes does not mean the disavowal of everything one has left behind. On the contrary; through [this] history, change, and reckoning there is a process of accretion and reconstruction. If I have left behind the phases I passed through of pan-Arabism, existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, this does not mean that I do not preserve elements from these [various] stations that still play a role in the final outcome of my intellectual trajectory. Thus, today I benefit from all of my past experiences in order to develop a composite and profound vision of the reality in which I live.

"[This reality] is a new turn in the trajectory of the Arab world, with the outbreak of the fundamentalist phenomenon which today is expanding. This was one of the principle reasons for my intellectual shift from literary criticism to criticism of the Arab-Islamic heritage, as expressed in [my] project Critique of the Critique of the Arab Mind, which has reached, and continues to reach, encyclopedic proportions that I myself did not foresee when I began to work on it more than 20 years ago..."

Today's Fundamentalism Is an Innovation - In Muslim Heritage, No One Called Himself An "Islamist"

Q: "Could we say then that your project comes in the context of employing [Islamic-Arab] heritage in the battle for modernity?"

A: "Both heritage and other things. The confrontation with the enemies of modernity and the traditionalists is a long and hard battle. I think that it will take at least the next 50 or 100 years. These traditionalists can only be confronted through all of the scientific and intellectual accomplishments and achievements of modernity, and likewise through a return to the same sources in the heritage that [the traditionalists] claim strengthen [their position].

"When I say here that this is what they claim, I mean exactly what I say. This fundamentalism that we are confronting today is, in my view, a completely invented innovation. There is proof for this: if we return to the heritage, we don't find anyone living at that time who said of himself that he was an 'Islamist.' There were Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, but no Islamists."

"The Prevailing Culture Today in the Arab World... Stir[s] up Emotions instead of Stimulating the Mind"

Q: "What is your explanation for the decline of the Arab mind, following the period of openness and flowering in the past? Are we in need of an Arab renaissance project? [And if so,] what would be its outlines?"

A: "It is difficult to answer in [only a few] lines this kind of question, which I have written entire books answering. Here I will just express a reservation about the use of the word 'mind.' I believe that many Arab intellectuals, and the audience they address, do not think with their minds, but with a mentality. There is a big difference between the two.

"It may well be that the renewal of the project of the Arab Enlightenment (nahda), which is currently suffering from severe setbacks, is dependent on the ability of the Arab intellectual to once again go from basing himself on the mind instead of on the mentality. And a mind is only a mind if it is critical.

"What characterizes a mentality is its tendency towards defensiveness and justification. That is what most dominates the prevailing culture today in the Arab world, especially on the Arab satellite stations, which put defensiveness before criticism and stir up emotions instead of stimulating the mind..."

Arab Modernism Failed Because of the Absence of Arab Philosophers

Q: "In your most recent book, Heretical Thoughts on Democracy, Secularism, Modernity, and the Arab Refusal, you deny that there is any modern Arab philosophy. You consider the experience of thinkers like 'Abd Al-Rahman Badawi, Samir Amin, and Hasan Hanafi to be no more than translation, or midwifery of Western thought by way of translation. Don't you think that is a bit unjust?"

A: "Once again I will say: Philosophy is a product of the mind. [But] what prevails today in Arab culture is the mentality. Thus, I could almost say that it is impossible today for Arab philosophy to exist. Perhaps there is some degree of generalization in this sentence - but nonetheless, give me one single example of an Arab philosopher worthy of the name. And I do not exempt myself from this judgment.

"This is saddening, since we know that what created Western modernity was first and foremost philosophy. Should we not attribute the failure of Arab modernism, at least in part, to the absence of Arab philosophers?"

"Lebanon... [is] Proof of the Crisis of Democracy When It Is Reduced to Just the Ballot Box"

Q: "In the paper you read at the conference on 'Secularism in the Arab East' held recently in Damascus, you concluded that it was necessary to combine democracy with secularism. You said of the latter that it was developed in the laboratories of the West as a cure for the disease of sectarianism..."

A: "There can be no democracy without secularism, since only under secularism can one free oneself from religious or sectarian mentalities, and as a consequence think and choose with one's mind. For this reason I have emphasized in more than one study that democracy depends not just on the ballot box, but also, and primarily, on the box [called] the cranium.

"How can we imagine an enduring democracy when we know that Sunnis will never vote for anyone other than a Sunni candidate, and likewise Shi'ites for a Shi'ite, Catholics for a Catholic, and Orthodox for an Orthodox?

"Let us take a specific case, like that of Egypt. Although the Copts comprise 8%-12% of the Egyptian population, the prevailing sectarian situation in Egypt today leads to [a situation in which] not a single Coptic MP is elected, and the state is forced to intervene and appoint some Coptic MPs. Look too at the example of present-day Iran. The Sunnis comprise some 20% of the Iranian population, but nevertheless have only 10 MPs, out of a total of 600, if I am not mistaken. This is because the supposed democracy in Iran and Egypt, and in the rest of the Arab states, is cut off from secularism.

"Lebanon, the Arab country with the deepest-rooted democracy, offers us further proof of the crisis of democracy when it is reduced to just the ballot box, and when voting is entirely on a sectarian basis. And the ballot box, in the true democratic meaning of the word, does not exist at all in most Arab countries."

Arab Secularism Needs to Go Beyond the Public Sector and Extend to Society - Otherwise We Will Face a Crisis Like Turkey's

Q: "In your paper you wrote that sectarianism is not something extraneous to Islam, but is rather one of the fixed elements of Islam [throughout] history. Some raise the objection that you attribute the problem of sectarianism to religious conflict, ignoring the primary factor - that is, political and social conflict, given that the meaning and heart of the sectarian problem is the struggle for power... How do you respond to that?"

A: "Who ever said that the sectarian struggle is a purely religious one? I dwelt at length on the sectarian struggle in Islam simply to draw attention to its existence, which had escaped notice, and not to deny its connection to the struggle for power and social influence.

"I emphasized the existence of the sectarian struggle in Islam in the course of my refutation of those who claim that secularism was invented in the laboratories of the West as a way of dealing with the sectarian struggle in Christianity.

"While I don't deny that secularism was indeed invented in the West, I do not consider this proof that it is not applicable to the Arab world. Were we to adopt this logic, we would have to reject the implementation of democracy in the Arab world, since democracy was also invented in the laboratories of the West.

"In any event, if secularism is the cure for sectarian struggle, then the Islamic world's need of it is no less than the West's need of it, since it is afflicted with the disease of sectarianism even more acutely, and more bitterly, than what would be found in Europe between the Catholics and the Protestants at the start of the modern era."

Q: "Yet some thinkers believe that the Arab secularists have not been able to develop a model of secularism applicable to the Arab world. How do you respond to that? What, in your opinion, is the solution?"

A: "In my writings on secularism, I have proposed more than once that secularism in the Arab world is not a ready-made formula that comes with an operating manual. It needs to be rediscovered, reinvented, and developed so that it will be appropriate to the Arab reality and its requirements.

"A secularism translated word for word [from the Western model] would have a fate no better than that of the Arab philosophy, whose existence I just said was impossible, since it remained just translated philosophy.

"Secularism in the West, as I will explain in my forthcoming book Heretical Thoughts 2, arose on the basis of separating the state from religion. It was limited to the public sector, and did not extend to society. I think that settling for separation of religion and state is not sufficient in the Arab world.

"Secularism [in the Arab world] must necessarily take its axe to the depths of society itself. Otherwise, we will face a crisis like that which is tearing apart Turkey today, because it is divided between a secularized state and an Islamist society, or one that has been re-Islamized."

Endnote:
Doing campaigns for Being Human and making a movie on how to save your community dog or a humanitarian movie about crossing borders to drop a Pakistani child home does not suffice for Salman Khan in the court of law. The incident of Salman Khan allegedly hunting two chinkaras on 26th September 1998, therefore, made him land up in court.

 Reuters

The case had been going on since then and finally concluded on Wednesday. For now, the order has been reserved by Justice Nirmal Jeet Kaur of Rajasthan High Court and will be pronounced after the revision hearing of another case of poaching.

Last year, on November 16, Sallu Bhai had challenged the courts appeal for a one-year jail-term with the help of his defence lawyer, Mahesh Bora, who consistently tried to prove that the entire case was framed against him. Oh my!

The arguments between the prosecutor and the defence lawyer heated up on matters of circumstantial evidence. It is because, in this case, the defence lawyer didnt examine the prime witness of the act, Harish Dulani, who was the driver of the car from which Bhai allegedly poached the poor Chinkara.

 Wikimedia Commons

The prosecution counsel, AAG K.L Thakur, protested to these arguments and requested the court to record the statements of both the driver and the forest official, Lalit Bora, in the presence of Khan to which the defence council objected. Now, if the whole case is so fabricated against our dear Bollywood superstar, then why is he and his defence counsel shying away from facing the prime witnesses?

After a prolonged scuffle of words, Justice Nirmal Kaur has decided to reserve the order for now and commence again on 28th March during the revision petition.
Every human being falls in love and everyone loves sex. Hell, every living creature, for that matter. Now, who people want to have sex with is their personal concern which the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) fails to understand. The comments came forward during last weeks Lok Sabha session voting against private members bill presented by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor aiming at decriminalising homosexuality.

Dattatreya Hosabale, the joint general secretary of RSS, had said on Thursday that homosexuality is not a crime until the common people are affected by it as these are completely personal matters which should not be intervened.

 reuters

Now, you may be thinking that finally some sensibility and rationality has blessed our politicians. Do not be mistaken. It is because it just took a day for Hosabhale to change his verdict from a positive to a negative one. On Friday he explained his statement in his tweet, Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case.

 twitter

In this day and age, in which remarkable movies like Aligarh and The Danish Girl are changing mindsets, RSS joint-general secretarys statement that homosexuality is still a mental disease and one should not support gay marriage is just too disappointing.

Homosexuality is not a crime, but socially immoral act in our society. No need to punish, but to be treated as a psychological case.  Dattatreya Hosabale (@DattaHosabale) March 18, 2016

According to Tharoor, BJP played a part in slackening the process of the bill in the House. Though the Delhi High Court had legalised gay marriage last November, theSupreme Court held on to article 377 of the Indian Penal Code which was devised by the British to eradicate gay marriage. Under this article, anyone indulging in homosexuality would be subject to life imprisonment as homosexuality is against the order of nature.

Okay then, back to the dark ages!
Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanatidis met at the Foreign Ministry today, Friday, 18 March 2016, with the Romanian Minister Delegate of Foreign Affairs for Romanians Abroad, Dan Stoenescu, who was accompanied by MPs Mihai Deaconu and Ovidiu Critian Iane, the Romanian Ambassador to Athens, Lucian Fatu, and ministry officials.



During the meeting, which took place in a warm atmosphere, both sides expressed their satisfaction at the two countries cooperation, both bilaterally and within the framework of the European Union. They also looked at issues concerning the further deepening of bilateral cultural and educational relations, and Mr. Stoenescu thanked the Greek side for the excellent living conditions of the Romanian community in Greece.



Regarding his countrys stance on the refugee crisis, Mr. Stoenescu reiterated Romanias firm support, noting that Greeces security is our security, and adding that Romania intends to honour the commitments it has undertaken with regard to relocation of refugees.
Ladies and Gentlemen,



Publication is the soul of justice. This saying from the Swiss philhellene Johann Jacob Meyer, which graces the central hall of the Union of Reporters of Daily Newspapers, in Athens, is at once a reminder of and guide to the universal human principles and values that the press is called upon to safeguard beyond national borders.



In fact, far removed from the homeland and ancestral hearths, the vocation of the Greek press, in the countries of the Hellenic Diaspora, takes on additional obligations that go beyond the control of powers as a foundation of the democratic polity.



For world Hellenism, the press is not just a point of reference, a source of action and connection between Greeks abroad and their ancestral hearths, but also the guardian of the Greek language, of tradition and of the Greek critical spirit; a pivotal link of Greek communities in a global network for development and support of Greek action.



In the more general context of globalized markets and challenges, which go beyond nation states, the Greek press is called upon to serve as a basic field for targeted strategic promotion and communication of Global Hellenism, as well as a channel for spotlighting and maintaining the Hellenic spirit in the 21st century.



Strengthening of the presence and functioning of the Greek press is thus a key component of our national strategy for the institutional strengthening of the bond between Greeks abroad and the homeland, because it is a shaper of the modern Greek Diaspora and, at the same time, it is a means of promoting Greek principles and values in the countries where the Greek Diaspora resides.



The Greek presence in the country of the Nile is not just age-old, but also an example of the cultural wealth of Ecumenical Hellenism in the depths of history.



The presence of Greeks abroad, particularly the younger generations, in the scientific, economic and political reality of the countries where they live abounds in distinctions. Enhancing the promotion of their activities is thus imperative to expanding Greeces influence. Strengthening their ancestral identity, as a global safety net in defence of Greek rights, is a permanent and longstanding pursuit on our part.



In achieving the above goals  as in our joint effort to capitalize on and disseminate the comparative advantages of our country and of our identity and culture  the Greek press cannot but play a decisive role.



Thank you.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Konstantinos Koutras stated the following in response to journalists questions regarding yesterdays unacceptable comments from the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson on statements from the state and political leadership of Greece:



Turkey appears to believe that if history does not agree with its claims, so much the worse for history. But this is too precarious a time for cheap and hypocritical rhetoric.



Obviously, the Republic of Turkey must abandon its obsessions and come to terms with its historical record. Greece will be at Turkeys side in this difficult task.
The Michigan Senate unanimously approved a $1 million one-time appropriation Thursday, and sent the bill to the state House for consideration.

The money would be added to an empty fund that was authorized by the governor in January 2015, and is supposed to cover medical costs for certain types of cancer spurred by carcinogens firefighters absorbed on the job.

But it's unclear whether it would apply for firefighters who already have related medical bills.

"I don't know. I honestly don't know," said Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, a Republican from West Olive.

It's also unclear if the money could be applied retroactively, said state Rep. Henry Yanez, a Sterling Heights Democrat who is a former firefighter. That's still being negotiated, and Yanez said he still hasn't "gotten an official answer yet."

A fiscal analysis said the fund would cover respiratory tract, bladder, skin, brain, kidney, blood, thyroid, testicular, prostate or lymphatic cancer.

It could be difficult for firefighters to prove that the cancer came from the job, said Fred Timpner, executive director of the Michigan Association of Fire Fighters.

"I think this is a good positive step forward, however I still think in the future hopefully we can take a look and address some of the issues," Timpner said.
Americans have fallen into three camps when it comes to watching the debates: Some have been watching only the Republicans, slightly more have watched only the Democrats and a still larger group has used the debates to check out candidates on both sides.

Those who dipped into debates in both parties have turned out to be the biggest political junkies of them all: They accounted for 39 percent of total debate viewers, but did 73 percent of all the watching.

That's all according to figures released Thursday by Nielsen for its new "Election Central" political insights blog. The company analyzed viewership for 12 debates  the first six in each party.

Nielsen concluded that the figures may signify that "the more engaged viewer finds the time to balance both sides of the political pontification."

The dozen debates that were studied reached 97 million Americans, including 29.2 million who watched only GOP debates, 30.2 million who watched only Democrats, and 37.8 million who watched debates on both sides.

While the Democratic debates may have attracted slightly more eyeballs, the Republicans  usually with brassy former reality TV star Donald Trump at center stage  held on to their viewers far longer.

The debate-watchers spent an average of 138 minutes watching GOP debates, compared to 63 minutes watching the Democrats.

So far, the Republicans have held a dozen debates and the Democrats eight. With Trump and Hillary Clinton steadily padding their delegate leads, the debate season is now winding down.

Plans for a GOP debate on Monday in Salt Lake City collapsed on Thursday after Trump said he wouldn't attend and then John Kasich decided to bow out, too.

Democrats have sanctioned two more debates, one in April and one in May, but no dates or locations have been set.

The debates have been a big draw all season, starting with the 24 million viewers who tuned in for the first Republican face-off last summer on Fox. The most recent GOP debate averaged just under 17 million viewers. The Democratic debates have attracted smaller but still sizeable crowds, including 15.8 million for the first debate and 6 million for the most recent faceoff.
Did you serve in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn, Djibouti, Africa, Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm or the Southeast Asia theater of operations after August, 1990?

Do you think you may have been exposed to burn pits and other airborne hazards?

Some Veterans have reported respiratory symptoms and health conditions that may be related to exposure to burn pits. The long-term health effects of exposure to burn pits and other airborne hazards are not fully understood. In an effort to better understand these health effects, VA has launched the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry for Veterans and Servicemembers.

"While nearly 61,000 Veterans and Servicemembers have joined the Burn Pit Registry since its launch nearly two years ago, this is only a small fraction of the estimated 3 million individuals who may be eligible to join this registry," said Dr. Stephen Hunt, National Director of VA's Post-Deployment Integrated Care Initiative. "I encourage as many eligible individuals as possible to sign up for the Burn Pit Registry."

"It provides Veterans long term follow up for any conditions they have or could emerge down the road."

Since the early 1980s, Dr. Hunt has conducted registry exams for the Agent Orange, Former POW, Gulf War, Ionizing Radiation, and the Airborne Hazards and the Open Burn Pit Registries. According to Dr. Hunt, the Burn Pit Registry will help Veterans in a number of ways.

The Registry gives participants an opportunity to document any concerns they may have about deployment-related exposures and provides an opportunity to obtain a free health evaluation by a VA or DoD provider. The evaluation can identify and document any problems potentially related to the exposures and ensure ongoing follow up for any existing health conditions or any additional conditions that could emerge down the road.

One challenge when addressing environmental exposures is that we don't always know what the long-term health effects of those exposures may be or when those health concerns might arise. Some exposures don't lead to any long-term problems. Others, however, may have long-term or downstream health effects that aren't identifiable early on. Through the registry, if health conditions related to exposures do emerge months or years later, we will be able to identify them more quickly and to make sure that Veterans get the health care that they need in a timely manner.

A common misunderstanding about the registry is that participation is required to obtain disability compensation benefits. This is not true. The burn pit registry and all other VA registries are unrelated to the disability compensation rating process. While a Registry note in your medical record summarizing your exposure concerns and related medical treatment may serve as evidence to support a claim, it is not a necessary document or step in the claims process.

The registry is open to anyone who served in:

Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn

Djibouti, Africa on or after Sept. 11, 2001

Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm

Southwest Asia theater of operations on or after Aug. 2, 1990

Interested Veterans and Servicemembers can learn more about the registry in this short video, or sign up. "Ultimately, our goal in VA is to have 22 million healthy Veterans using VA services and resources as needed to ensure that they enjoy the most meaningful, satisfying, and productive lives possible," said Hunt.

"The Burn Pit Registry is a nice way for Veterans to get their foot in the door at the VA and to explore the services, benefits and resources available to them through VA health care."

The Burn Pit Registry is one more reflection of how far VA has come. It is a measure of how much progress we've made in taking care of individuals with deployment-related exposure concerns, and in taking care of Veterans in general.

Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn Djibouti, Africa on or after Sept. 11, 2001 Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm Southeast Asia theater of operations on or after Aug. 2, 1990
Lawmakers on Thursday filed legislation intended to prevent states from taxing severance pay of combat-injured veterans, which one senator claims has resulted in some $78 million improperly taken from veterans.

The money being taxed is the one-time lump sum disability severance pay veterans receive from the Defense Department, a payment that is not supposed to be taxed and would not be but for a glitch with the DoD's automated payment system, according to lawmakers.

"Most troubling is that we learned the government had known about this problem for decades yet continued to take this money from thousands of disabled veterans," said Tom Moore, an attorney and manager of the Lawyers Serving Warriors Project at National Veterans Legal Services Program. "The sad truth is that the government essentially stole $78 million from disabled combat veterans because of an accounting problem it's known about for years."

After looking at all the legal options, NVLSP determined that the only way to fix the problem was through legislation, Moore said. That legislation was filed by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and John Boozman, R-Arkansas.

NVLSP estimates that more than 13,800 veterans potentially have been denied full severance pay as a result of wrongful taxation, including 720 veterans in Virginia and 165 in Arkansas.

The Combat-Injured Veterans Tax Fairness Act of 2016 requires the DoD to identify each veteran wrongly taxed, determine how much they are owed and allow them to recover the money. The legislation also extends the statute of limitations to ensure that all those who were improperly taxed may recover the money.

The improper taxing has been happening since 1991, according to Boozman, who released his statement jointly with Warner.

Louis Celli, director of the Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Division at The American Legion, said the Legion is backing the bill.

"The American Legion ... has worked with veterans in the past to recover these funds," he said. The group has specialists who regularly advise transitioning service members on the tax and have them sign paperwork to prevent the tax from being taken out.

He said the Legion's office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, handles the program for the East Coast and the office in Salt Lake City, Utah, covers the West Coast. Additional information can be gotten by calling the Legion at 202-861-2700 or on its website, www.legion.org, he said.

-- Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and ISIS all pose threats, but the "biggest strategic danger" to U.S. national security would be a return to the arbitrary budget caps of the sequester process, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday.

"If the bipartisan budget agreement were to fall apart, as everyone has said, that is our biggest strategic danger because that would affect in future years our ability to recover full-spectrum readiness," Carter said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the proposed DoD budget for Fiscal Year 2017.

"That is the greatest risk to the Department of Defense -- the reversion to sequestration. We very much hope to avoid that," said Carter, who testified with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford in support of the Obama administration's proposed defense budget of $583 billion -- $524 billion in the base budget and $59 billion in the war fund for Overseas Contingency Operations.

As they have previously, Carter and Dunford said that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria all posed main threats, adding that those threats would possibly go unchallenged if the budget caps of the 2011 Budget Control Act returned in 2018.

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and the Committee's chairman, argued for more defense spending this year. He called the military "undersized, unready and underfunded to meet the current and future threats."

Dunford said that the proposed budget was adequate, but McCain noted that Dunford's predecessor as JCS chairman, now-retired Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said last year that the military was at the "lower ragged edge" of readiness.

Since then, the military has cut 24 Blackhawk helicopters, 50 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, five Navy cruisers, and 77 Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicles while also trimming $1.3 billion in military construction and family housing, McCain said.

"The unfunded requirements of the military services now total nearly $18 billion," McCain said. "That represents the additional ships, airplanes, helicopters, fighting vehicles, training and other programs that our military leaders say they need simply to carry out our increasingly antiquated defense strategy at an acceptable level of risk."

"So now you're satisfied with the level -- it is hard for us to understand, general," McCain told Dunford.

In response, Dunford said that "By no means have I said the resource level for the department as we look out over the next few years is adequate. What I simply said was this year's fiscal year 2017 budget is sufficient to meet the (overall national security) strategy."

Carter disputed McCain on his estimate of $18 billion in unfunded requirements. Carter said the actual figure was $11 billion, and said the Defense Department has been able to close some of the gap because of the fall in oil prices and through cutting expenses.

Last year's bipartisan budget act gave the Defense Department "much-need stability after years of gridlock and turbulence," Carter said, but he warned that the return of sequester would take $100 billion out of defense spending in the coming years unless Congress acts to lift the caps permanently.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com
As Marine Corps officials plan to move newly minted female riflemen into infantry units by early 2017, they're working to create a system that they believe will make the historic move successful.

Support jobs, ranging from logistics to administration, are now available to female Marines within infantry units, officials told reporters Thursday. The goal, they said, was to install female leaders at the units in keeping with a mandate from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter before the junior women arrived.

"Throughout the Marine Corps, everyone is now assignable to certain billets," said Col. Ann Weinberg, deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office and one of the architects of the Corps' plan to incorporate women into previously closed ground combat units.

While a few billets will stay female-only and male-only, such as those for drill instructors overseeing recruits of the same gender, the exceptions are rare, Weinberg said.

The 233 female Marines who have already completed infantry training and received a secondary infantry military occupational specialty during previous research can request to make a lateral move into a ground combat unit at any time. But female recruits who want to enter a "loadbearing" ground combat specialty, such as rifleman or mortarman, will not be able to ship to boot camp until Oct. 1. Female recruits in non-loadbearing combat-arms fields, such as artillery or tanks, can begin boot camp June 1 at the earliest.

Setting conditions

This delay will give Marine officials the opportunity to ensure that senior female officers and enlisted Marines are in place before the junior Marines arrive. The goal is to have a female staff noncommissioned officer and an officer in support MOSs at each infantry battalion who will unofficially support the unit and new female members throughout the transition period.

"As soon as we get demand signals from junior female Marines matriculating into entry training pipeline to become 03XXs [the Marines' infantry designator], we'll start assigning senior female leadership to those infantry battalions as well," Weinberg said. "We've just got to manage the population and the inventory of that particular population. Setting the conditions is really where we are."

When the first female Marines enter the fleet as infantrymen, a process expected to start early next year, Weinberg said they will be assigned in pairs. Either two female Marines with the same MOS will go to the same unit, or if there isn't a second Marine available, a male and female Marine who have trained together in the same MOS will be assigned together.

"We found with previous experience especially with pilot pipeline that it doesn't matter if you're the same sex. What matters is that you've trained together, you know each other, and you trust each other," Weinberg said. "So you have that task cohesion ... I trust that you can do your job, you trust that I can do my job, we go into a unit together, we get assigned to the same unit, we all vouch for each other."

Once women have been installed in previously closed ground combat units, their progress and success will be measured with a longitudinal assessment plan designed to allow officials to make adjustments as needed. Lessons learned by the first generation of female infantrymen may help those that come after.

"The longitudinal assessment is going to take a look at propensity, performance, injury rates, career progression rates, command rates and take a look at that not just for women, but really throughout the Marine Corps," Weinberg said. "Because we haven't, to be perfectly honest, done a really good job of understanding what is it that keeps a Marine in, what is it that encourages a Marine to leave the Marine Corps, male or female, so we wanted to be able to capture those in terms of surveys at the end of the career, in the middle of the career, when you decide to get out, what are some of the factors going into that."

Waiting for recruits

One unknown could delay all these plans: the length of time it takes to see the first female Marines express interest in going infantry.

To date, none of the previously qualified 233 female Marines have requested a lateral move, though some have expressed interest in doing so in the future.

Brig. Gen. James Glynn, head of the Marine Corps' office of communication, noted that some of the qualified women had career concerns as well as circumstantial delays such as light duty status that made them temporarily ineligible for a move.

To date, no female recruits have requested to go infantry. Steve Wittle, a deputy assistant chief of staff, G3, at Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said the recruiting offices would keep a count of the women who requested newly available specialties. Meanwhile, MCRC is pushing information out to all the female poolees in the Corps' delayed entry program, he said, to inform them that they have the opportunity to change their desired field if they wish.

Perhaps one of the greatest unknowns is when a woman will make it through the Corps' grueling infantry officer course. To date, 29 female officers have attempted the course, but none have completed it. Officials said Thursday that one woman, whose name has not been released, is now preparing to attempt the course in coming months in hopes of becoming an infantry officer.

Still, Glynn said, the Marine Corps will be able to execute its integration plan even if IOC continues to stymie female Marines.

"I'm not going to sit here and hide behind it; it's definitely a challenge. Would we prefer to have it that way? Certainly we would. And I think if I were that young PFC reporting, I'd prefer to have it that way," Glynn said. "But where we sit right now, part of that experiential learning piece is going to be, we're quite likely going to learn that particular dimension without that in place."

With all units and jobs open to women, it is possible that a female Marine could end up involuntarily assigned an infantry MOS in the future. But Glynn said current demand for infantry jobs makes the chance of that happening slim.

"We haven't had to involuntarily assign someone to the infantry for decades," he said. "We fill that early in the year and it's actually quite competitive."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson was named by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday as the nominee to head Northern Command, which would make her the first woman leader of a combatant command in the history of the U.S. military.

Carter also said that Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, now head of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), had been chosen to take over command of U.S. Forces Korea. He would replace Army Gen. Curtis M. "Mike" Scaparrotti, who has been named to become the next NATO Supreme Commander and head of European Command.

At a breakfast session with Politico, Carter said that President Obama had signed off on approving the nominations of both Robinson and Brooks.

If confirmed by the Senate, Robinson, now commander of Pacific Air Forces, will replace Adm. Bill Gortney, who has headed NorthCom since December 2014. Her nomination will culminate a fast rise through the upper ranks of the military. She was named a one-star brigadier general in 2012.

Brooks' nomination signaled the Pentagon's commitment to the rebalance of forces to the Asia-Pacific region. At USARPAC, he has been the architect of the "Pacific Pathways" initiative aimed at getting the Army more involved in the region through the rotation of troops on training exercises with allies.

Carter called Robinson one of a number of female officers "we have coming along" who qualify for top posts. "We have an amazingly deep bench," he said. Carter cited Robinson's managerial experience and her "very deep experience running air forces in the Pacific."

Brooks has been the commander "shepherding Pacific Pathways" and his nomination showed that the U.S. military viewed the Asia-Pacific as "the single most consequential region of the world" for U.S. security, Carter said.

Robinson, 57, joined the Air Force in 1982 following the ROTC program at the University of New Hampshire. She later held a staff position in command of Airmen who flew the B-1 Lancer bomber, the KC-135 Stratotanker and the E-3 Sentry aircraft in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Earlier this month, Robinson pledged that the U.S. would continue to fly missions over the South China Sea despite China's buildup in the region and the construction of artificial islands, and she urged China to avoid a "miscalculation."

"We've watched the increased military capability on those islands, whether it's the fighters, whether it's the missiles or the 10,000-foot runways," Robinson told reporters in Australia. We will continue to do as we've always done, and that is fly and sail in international airspace in accordance to international rules and norms."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com.
Fourteen junior enlisted airmen assigned to security at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, where 150 Minuteman III nuclear missiles are on 24-hour alert, were under investigation Friday for alleged drug activity off base in the latest scandal to hit the nuclear force.

The seriousness of the charges was underlined by the presence at F.E. Warren of Gen. Robin Rand, commander of the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, to announce that the Office of Special Investigations had implicated 14 airmen in the "open and ongoing" investigation of drug activity in nearby Cheyenne, Wyoming.

"These 14 airmen are assigned to the 90th Security Forces Group and their duties include protecting the base and the surrounding missile complex at F.E. Warren," Rand said in a phone briefing to the Pentagon.

Rand said the investigation had taken on a "high priority" for the Air Force and added that, "This is very important to me that we get to the bottom of this. We have a special trust with our nation, with our public, with the mission that we do in Air Force Global Strike Command."

The base a few miles north of Cheyenne is home to the 90th Missile Wing, which controls a network of launch officers who work out of underground silos for the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that are spread throughout the countryside.

Rand said that the investigation was "still in the preliminary stages," indicating that others might be charged. He declined to state whether the 14 airmen were suspected of being involved in the use or sale of drugs. Rand also declined to say what type of illegal drug was involved, but the Associated Press reported that it was believed to be cocaine.

The 14 suspects were all airmen, airmen first class, or senior airmen (E-2 to E-4), Rand said, and all have been suspended from their security duties while the investigation continues.

Rand said the alleged drug activity "came to light because of one airman who had suspected drug activity by another" and reported his suspicions through the chain of command. Rand said the security duties of the 14 carried major responsibilities and required intensive training for the work at a nuclear missile base.

Last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work was on hand at F.E. Warren to observe a training exercise in which the security forces were tasked with recapturing a missile silo that had been taken over by intruders.

"The drug allegations involving these 14 airmen are credible," Rand said. "Each of these 14 airmen, who are presumed innocent unless proven guilty, have been removed from their duties pending the investigation's outcome," but their suspension "has not had an operational impact on the 90th Missile Wing," Rand said.

The 90th Security Forces Group, commanded by Col. Christopher L. Corley, has 1,300 personnel at the base, and about 1,000 of them are enlisted. Rand stressed repeatedly that the drug investigation did not indicate a systemic problem in the nuclear force. He said he commands 31,000 airmen nationwide and "the vast majority" meet or exceed Air Force standards.

F.E. Warren is one of three Air Force bases, along with Malmstrom AFB in Montana and Minot AFB in North Dakota, where the Air Force's fleet of 450 nuclear-armed Minuteman III missiles are located.

In 2014, during a visit to F.E. Warren by then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, officials disclosed that an investigation was underway into alleged drug use on and off base.

That investigation then led to the discovery of a cheating scandal involving "missileers" who work in the launch silos at F.E. Warren, Malmstrom and Minot and passed test answers among themselves.

Hagel ordered a broad review of the entire nuclear force that led to major changes in training and testing aimed at improving morale. At the time, he said, "Personnel failures within this force threaten to jeopardize the trust the American people have placed in us to keep our nuclear weapons safe and secure."

Hagel's review also turned up problems in the maintenance of the nuclear force. At a Pentagon news conference in 2014, Hagel disclosed that a maintenance backlog had forced airmen to Federal Express a single wrench between bases to tighten screws on warheads.

"It is true," Hagel said of the special wrench fiasco involving Minot AFB, Malmstrom AFB and F.E. Warren. "I think it's an indication of the depth and width of what has happened over the last few years" to undermine confidence in the deterrent, Hagel said.

"They did it by Federal Express with one wrench," Hagel said. By way of assurance, Hagel added that, "We now have a wrench at each location."

One of the changes Hagel ordered involved elevating the rank of the commander of the Global Strike Command from three-star to four-star rank. Rand is the first four-star general to hold the post.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com.
Almost 100 people mostly from Haiti who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for...
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Honda Civic

(Wiki Media Commons)

DETROIT, MI - Omron Automotive Electronics Co. has agreed to plead guilty and pay a $4.55 million fine for conspiring to rig bids on power window switches for Honda Civics sold in the U.S., the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

The felony charge filed in the the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan says that OAE conspired with another, unnamed manufacturer from 2003 to 2013 to rig bids on power window switches sold to Honda.

The company's sales and marketing office for the U.S. is based in Novi. OAE is being prosecuted by the DOJ's Antitrust Division office in San Francisco and the FBI's Detroit Division.

The switches in question were in Honda Civic cars sold from 2005 through 2013.

OAE has agreed to plead guilty. The plea agreement is subject to court approval.

"Omron and its co-conspirators targeted the Honda Civic, one of the best-selling cars in the United States, to benefit themselves at the expense of Honda Civic owners," Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer of the DOJ's Antitrust Division said in a statement. "Our investigation will continue to hold accountable companies and executives across the auto parts industry who chose to conspire rather than compete."

OAE is just one of 39 companies and 58 executives that have have been charged as part of an ongoing investigation by the DOJ's Antitrust Division that has led to some $2.6 billion in criminal fines.

In a statement, the company said it is fully cooperating with government officials.

"OAE takes this matter seriously and has taken steps to further strengthen its training programs to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in order to prevent the recurrence of such issues in the future," the company's statement reads.

OAE is a subsidiary of Kyoto, Japan-based Omron Corporation, a $6.6 billion global manufacturing and technology company.

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.
The grounds of the former Willow Run Powertrain Plant in Ypsilanti Township are one step closer to becoming used as a connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) testing facility.

In an announcement made Friday morning, on the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's website, the MEDC revealed a nonprofit organization has been formed and a board of directors selected for the project known as The American Center for Mobility.

The board has also approved a CEO for the organization as John M. Maddox will immediately take over as CEO. Maddox is the assistant director of the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center, which operates U-M's connected vehicle research facility MCity.

"The American Center for Mobility's mission is to collaborate with industry and government to accelerate the development of voluntary standards for connected and automated vehicles," Maddox said in a press release. "We need standards before we'll see widespread deployment of these vehicles, and the benefits they are expected to provide in terms of safety, energy use and mobility."

Maddox will retain a partial appointment with MTC according to the press release.

The American Center for Mobility is a joint initiative involving several different partners in Michigan. The Michigan Department of Transportation and Michigan Economic Development Corp., the University of Michigan, Business Leaders for Michigan and Ann Arbor SPARK are all involved in the CAV facility.

The board will be comprised of Doug Rothwell, president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan; Paul Krutko, president and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK; Jon Kinsey, assistant vice president for research at U-M, and U-M Mobility Transformation Center Director Huei Peng.

In May of last year, SPARK was awarded a $250,000 grant to develop a plan that would bring a CAV facility to bomber site. The grant was awarded as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration Science and Research Park Development Grants program.

Plans to bring a testing facility to the 332 acre site were first announced in September 2013 when Walbridge Development LLC agreed to purchase a majority of the site. A month later, the firm announced it would demolish the buildings on the grounds and conduct clean up the site to prepare it for a CAV research facility.

Cleanup of the site was completed last year.

Krutko said SPARK has been involved with planning for the facility from the beginning and is excited to see how much progress has been made.

"The idea for this came out of SPARK's five year strategic plan that we needed to do something significant with the site because of its size," Krutko said. "We're very pleased with how far this has come and the fact that what we did yesterday with business leaders from Michigan and U-M was to form the operating entity for that facility."

The American Center for Mobility will offer a larger area for testing than MCity and a more diverse infrastructure set thanks to sheer size of the grounds where the facility is located. MCity will continue to use its facility for simulated urban and suburban roads and supporting infrastructure, according to the press release.

One of the advantages of the Willow Run site is that there is a significant amount of highway infrastructure on the grounds that would cost millions of dollars to build at other proposed testing facilities across the U.S.

Next Tuesday, the Michigan Strategic Fund will decide whether or not to provide state funding for the project, starting with a $3 million grant for the acquisition of the property from Walbridge. During his State of the State address in January, Gov. Rick Snyder announced plans for the state to buy the facility.

"The next step is the state completing its acquisition and then it will have a ground lease with the American Center for Mobility," Krutko said.

Once the property has been purchased, an additional $17 million in funding could be approved by the fund board.

Krutko said there could be movement at the site as early as a year from now, but final site plans will have to be approved first. Now that there is a board in place and funding likely to be approved, Maddox and his team can begin working with interested parties to offer features and infrastructure that they need at the facility.

Auto makers and suppliers from Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Toyota Motor Corp., and Robert Bosch GmbH have expressed interest in using the center.

Krutko said SPARK's role is now to promote the facility to local auto companies and investors to move operations closer to the site while also attracting companies around the world to the area so they can be close to the center.

Local leaders believe the creation of the American Center for Mobility will be a key component to revitalizing the economy in Ypsilanti Township and the regions.

"This is an effort that is intended to secure Southeast Michigan's our regions preeminence in the auto industry," Krutko said.

Matt Durr is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- About 500 Washtenaw County residents remain without power Friday, March 18.

High winds brought down power lines and knocked out electricity for thousands of people in Washtenaw County Thursday afternoon.

John Austerberry, DTE Energy spokesman, said the company should have power restored for most, if not all, the residents sometime Friday.

About 5,000 residents in the Ann Arbor area lost power, including in southwest Ann Arbor and Lima, Scio and Superior townships.

The DTE Energy outage map shows customers who live between Dexter and Chelsea and near Milan and Clinton don't have power. Small pockets of residents in Ann Arbor and in Salem Township don't have electricity.

Lindsay Knake is a cops and courts reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Follow her on twitter or contact her at 989-372-2498 or lknake@mlive.com.
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The Y Lot next to the Blake Transit Center in downtown Ann Arbor on Sept. 23, 2015.

(Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News)

Update: Attorney confirms Dahlmann is selling downtown Ann Arbor lot

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Two years after buying the Y Lot in downtown Ann Arbor from the city for for $5.25 million, local developer and property manager Dennis Dahlmann might be looking to sell the property.

Rumors about a potential sale have been swirling in recent days, and it's the city's understanding that a deal to sell to a Chicago-based firm is in the works.

"I have been told Dahlmann entered into a conditional sales agreement with The Habitat Company LLC, but the city has not received a copy of the agreement, which is required under the deed restrictions to give notice for the city's right of first refusal," said Tom Crawford, interim city administrator.

Crawford said Dahlmann notified him of the agreement and Habitat has been in talks with the city's staff about a potential mixed-use development with a significant residential component.

Dahlmann and his attorney couldn't be reached for comment, nor could representatives from The Habitat Company.

Dahlmann purchased the former YMCA property known as the Y Lot from the city in April 2014.

He is restricted from selling or transferring ownership without giving the city an opportunity to exercise a right of first refusal.

A crew conducts drilling on the Y Lot in downtown Ann Arbor on a snowy day in late February 2016.

The Y Lot is the empty parking lot bound by Fourth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, William Street and the Blake Transit Center. Until Dahlmann bought it, it was actively being used for public parking across from the downtown library.

The city would be able to buy back the property for the lesser of $4.2 million, the transfer price agreed upon by the third party, or the appraised value.

The rumored sale was discussed by community members at a Thursday night meeting inside the Michigan League, where the potential developers of another downtown property, the Library Lot on Fifth Avenue, met with residents to discuss their plans for a hotel/apartment high-rise across from the Y Lot.

Under terms agreed upon by both Dahlmann and the city, Dahlmann was required to construct a building on the Y Lot rising at least five stories by April 2018. But in two years, no development plans have been formally submitted to the city.

However, Dahlmann publicly shared renderings last fall for a couple of development ideas he said he was considering for the Y Lot. That included one that was primarily an apartment high-rise and another that was a six-story office building.

He said he was leaning toward the apartment high-rise and that it would include other elements stipulated in his agreement with the city, including office space, ground-floor restaurant/retail, and a landscaped open space with a fountain.

But for the development to proceed, Dahlmann argued the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority needed to relocate some of the bus stops that surround the Y Lot. He said buses idling and constantly picking up and dropping off passengers on all sides of the property were in conflict with his plans for turning the Y Lot into a place where people would live and work.

City Council Member Jack Eaton, D-4th Ward, said he's not surprised to hear that Dahlmann may be selling the Y Lot because he had heard that Dahlmann was frustrated with the AAATA bus situation.

AAATA officials couldn't be reached for comment.

When agreeing to sell the property to Dahlmann in April 2014, the city stipulated that the Y Lot project must include retail/restaurant space on the ground floor, office space on the remaining lower floors, and residential apartments on the upper floors, with no apartment having more than three bedrooms.

If a development didn't happen by April 2018, the agreement called for the property to revert to the city upon payment by the city to Dahlmann the lesser of either $4.2 million, which was the city's initial asking price, or the new appraised value.

Crawford said he believes Habitat would need to ask for an extension of the April 2018 deadline, as that's a pretty tight timeline at this point. He said he doesn't have any sense for when a formal proposal might come forward.

He said Habitat is aware of the mixed-use development requirements for the property.

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
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Nicklaus Lefebvre and Jacob Houck pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in the Pinckney-area.

(Courtesy of Livingston County Jail)

Two Pinckney-area high school students pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, according to a report by the Livingston Daily.

Nicklaus Lefebvre and Jacob Houck pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct of a victim at least 13 years old but younger than and 16, the Livingston Daily reported. Lefebvre pleaded guilty to three counts of the sexual assault while Houck pleaded guilty to one count for the sexual assault and one count for giving the girl alcohol.

The two were scheduled for a pretrial hearing Friday.

Third-degree criminal sexual conduct is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Furnishing alcohol to a minor is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail on the first offense.

Police believe the teens, who were 17 when they were arrested, and a juvenile gave the girl alcohol on Dec. 16, 2015 and took her to a home where they performed sexual acts on her, according to previous media reports.

A charge against Lefebvre for child abusive commercial activity for allegedly photographing the assault was previously dismissed because an image could not be recovered, the Daily reported.

The status of the juvenile's case was not immediately known due to his juvenile status.

The Daily reported that the teens seek sentences under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act and are scheduled for sentencings in April.

Under the act, the teens would have no criminal record once they completed their program.

Darcie Moran covers cops and courts for MLive and The Ann Arbor News. Email her at dmoran@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter @darciegmoran.
BAY CITY, MI -- Two search teams from outside Bay County are joining a police effort to find a missing Bay City man.

The morning of Friday, March 18, Midland County Search and Rescue and the Grand Rapids-based Michigan Search & Rescue planned to meet at the Bay County Law Enforcement Center to coordinate their search for 59-year-old Robert Billingsley. Bay County Undersheriff Troy Cunningham said his office reached out to the Midland County group and the Grand Rapids outfit volunteered its services.

Michigan Search & Rescue is bringing three dog, two "scent" dogs that can search for the missing man's scent and one dog that can smell cadavers, even if they are underwater, Cunningham said.

Robert "Bob" Billingsley

"They're planning on walking the river banks, starting in Bay City and searching all the way to Essexville," Cunningham said.

Cunningham and Bay County Central Dispatch Director Chris Izworski also asked area residents to check any unsecured structures on their property -- such as unlocked garages or sheds with broken windows -- to see if Billingsley might have ventured into them. Izworski added the search parties scouring the area Friday and Saturday could include upwards of 200 people.

Billingsley was last seen Monday, March 14, leaving his job at LJ's Kitchens of Bay City, 404 Washington Ave., where he worked as a salesman. His white Ford Ranger pickup truck remained in the business' parking lot.

"We've had no sightings of him since then," Cunningham said. "There's been a full-court press search for him for the past week in different areas. We've checked hotels, bus stations, taxi cab companies, airports. We're bringing in the dogs to rule out anything having happened by the river."

Anyone with information that could lead to finding Billingsley is asked to call 911 or the Bay County Sheriff's Office at 989-895-4050, Cunningham said.

The missing man's son, Scott Billingsley, said on Tuesday his dad was recently "battling some depression issues."
DETROIT, MI -- Nearly three months after a fatal police shooting in Detroit, detectives and prosecutors are still working to determine if the killing was justified.

A Dearborn police officer in his patrol car followed 35-year-old Kevin Matthews, who relatives say was mentally ill, while he walked north across the Dearborn border into Detroit the afternoon of Dec. 23.

Matthews didn't heed the officer's order to stop. A struggle ensued in the backyard of a home about three houses into the Detroit neighborhood. The officer, who hasn't been identified, shot Matthews multiple times and he later died.

Because the shooting occurred in Detroit, the Detroit Police Department Homicide Unit investigated.

Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor and spokeswoman Maria Miller said the investigation has been submitted for review to determine if the use of force was proper, but will be returned to Detroit police with a request for more information.

Police issued a statement following Matthews death stating he was wanted after escaping police earlier in the day related to a suspected larceny and had an open warrant for a probation violation.

Matthews was unarmed.

A clerk for the Redford Township 17th District Court confirmed Matthews had an outstanding warrant for drunk and disorderly conduct at the time of his death.

Previous charges of felony first-degree home invasion and domestic violence were filed against Matthews in Wayne County in 2008, although they were later dismissed. The reason for the dismissal wasn't immediately available in online court records.

Matthews also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor "alcohol-related violations" in 2000, according to Wayne County 36th District Court records. He has no felony convictions in Michigan, according to online Michigan Department of Corrections records.

Kevin Matthews, 35, of Detroit; and Janet Wilson, 31, of Detroit, were both killed by Dearborn police on Dec. 23, 2015 and Jan. 27, 2013 respectively.

Since Matthews killing, Dearborn police also fatally shot Janet Wilson, 31, of Detroit, who is accused of trying to hit security guards and police with her vehicle when they tried to stop her following a disturbance she's accused of causing at Fairlane Town Center Mall.

Wilson was shot multiple times by police Jan. 27. She was unarmed.

While state police are investigating the Wilson shooting, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office hadn't received the investigation for review as of Thursday.

State Police Lt. Michael Shaw confirmed dash-cam footage is being reviewed in the Wilson case. Neither Detroit nor Dearborn police would reveal if there was audio or video evidence available in the Matthews shooting.

"We just can't keep shooting down unarmed citizens," Les Little, 62, of Detroit said at a protest following Matthews's death. "I know the police have a tough job, but that's what they signed up for ... There's a whole line of law enforcement agents who have tough jobs, but they manage to get the job done without shooting unarmed citizens."

Relatives of Wilson gathered outside the Dearborn Police Department following her death, which they called an unnecessary "murder."
GENESEE COUNTY, MI - State health officials now believe 10 people have died from a Flint-area Legionnaires' Disease outbreak.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Friday, March 18, that a 10th death was associated with the outbreak in 2015.

The state health department says they confirmed the newest fatality after conducting a comprehensive review of all Legionnaires' Disease deaths in the state.

Health officials say the victim was a Shiawassee County resident who was hospitalized at a Genesee County hospital within the two week incubation period of developing Legionnaires' Disease symptoms.

MDHHS spokeswoman Jennifer Eisner said the victim was an adult, but declined to comment on age or sex due to privacy concerns.

"To date, 88 cases and ten deaths have been identified in total for the 2014 and 2015 outbreaks in Genesee County," said Eden Wells, M.D., Chief Medical Executive with the MDHHS. "While legionellosis is not uncommon, it's important that any person who is having symptoms of respiratory illness let their doctor know right away."

Health officials have questioned the role the city's switch to the Flint River in April 2014 for its drinking water may have played in the outbreak, but an official source of the infections have not yet been confirmed.

There is no clear evidence that link the outbreak and the Flint River but documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by The Journal showed an investigation aimed at linking or ruling out the river as the cause.

Gov. Rick Snyder has said he wasn't briefed on the outbreak until January 2016, but state emails show officials in his inner circle were made aware of the outbreak as early as March 2015.

The public was not notified of the outbreak until earlier this year.

State health officials initially reported that 10 people died as a result of the outbreak, but that number was eventually changed to nine before Friday's announcement.

Of the 88 confirmed cases between June 2014 and November 2015, 35 percent received Flint water at their residence. Roughly 30 percent had no connection to a Flint-area hospital, nor were their homes on the state water system, according to health officials.

Health officials earlier this month issued a statement warning of the dangers of the Legionella bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease.

Legionella bacteria is commonly found in the environment. It grows best in warm water, such as hot tubs, water systems, cooling towers and decorative fountains.

If infected, the bacteria can cause a respiratory disease that can infect the lungs and lead to pneumonia. It cannot be transmitted person-to-person.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from Florida, waves as she opens the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012.

FLINT, MI -- The chairperson of the Democratic National Committee said she is joining in calls for Gov. Rick Snyder to resign over the Flint water crisis following his testimony Thursday.

DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, criticized Snyder's administration and said she is joining in the call for the governor's resignation.

"Gov. Rick Snyder started his congressional testimony today by calling the Flint water crisis a failure of government. And he's right. By giving state-appointed emergency managers authority over local communities to cut costs and chip away at public resources, Gov. Snyder's inept administration put politics above people with disastrous consequences. This failure is exactly what happens when Republican leaders get the 'small government' they all fight for, and that's why the Flint crisis is not an isolated case. This is the same incompetence we saw with FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and it's the same governing philosophy that would have let the auto industry collapse. Americans deserve better leadership and smarter government.



"I join our two Democratic candidates for president, who have boldly called on Gov. Snyder to resign. They understand that the power of elected office exists to solve problems for the people - not cause them, ignore them or wish them away." Schultz said in a statement

Snyder's spokesperson Ari Adler said the governor is committed to helping Flint residents.

"Gov. Snyder is committed to helping the people of Flint in the short, intermediate and long term. Everyone working together to fix this crisis and address the problems that allowed this failure to happen in the first place is what the Governor is focused on and remains committed to. There is plenty of blame to go around when looking at how the Flint water crisis occurred. But what the people of Flint need now more than ever is partners willing to work together to put public health and safety first and to stop focusing on political finger-pointing." Adler said in an email to The Flint Journal.

Snyder testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, along with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy in a second round of hearings this week over the water issue on Thursday, March 17.
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver speaks about the Flint water crisis during a press conference on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at City Hall in downtown Flint. Weaver anticipates $3 million in state funds to help with Flint residents' water bills. Jake May | MLive.com

FLINT, MI -- Flint's mayor is urging the U.S. Congress as well as the Michigan Legislature to focus on passing funding to aid in the city's water crisis.

Mayor Karen Weaver said on Thursday, March 17 that the focus of the U.S. Congress and the Michigan Legislature must be to provide the funding needed to fix Flint's contaminated drinking water infrastructure. Weaver said the health needs of children and families must be addressed as well, according to a news release from the city.

Weaver's comments come the same day Gov. Rick Snyder and the nation's top environmental official appeared before a Congressional committee investigating the Flint water crisis.

"We need the Michigan Legislature to pass the full appropriations needed to fix the city's problems with water infrastructure, health, educational intervention, economic recovery and other challenges caused by the state's failure," Weaver said in a statement. "While the people of Flint demand accountability for those responsible for the crisis, we must not let the finger pointing occurring at today's committee hearing and in other instances get in the way of putting the federal and state resources into place to fix this crisis."

Weaver also believes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should have been stronger in response to the water crisis and called on Congress to quickly move to pass the bipartisan Drinking Water Safety and Infrastructure Act, according to the release.

Over the weekend, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz visited Flint and toured the water plant. Weaver said she felt "very encouraged" by the Utah Republican's pledge to help Flint residents by urging Congress to pass the critical Flint funding package.

"Now the state and federal government must live up to their promises," Weaver said in a statement.

The federal package put together by Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters would provide the city $100 million in funding through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund system, loan forgiveness on other debt burdening the Flint water system, and $70 million in credit subsidies from the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Authority (WIFIA), according to the release. The federal package also would give Flint access to $50 million for additional public health programs and services.

The bipartisan federal aid package for Flint and other communities affected by lead is pending in the U.S. Senate was put on hold by Senator Mike Lee, who is in the Utah Congressional delegation with Chaffetz.

At the state level, lawmakers have approved more than $50 million to help Flint amid the water crisis, but Weaver said more money is needed to remove lead pipes and make other changes. Snyder has asked for the appropriation of $127 million for water infrastructure, health resources, children and family services, and economic renewal through supplemental budget bills that are being debated, according to the release.

Weaver said both state and federal monies need to come to the city soon.

"Governor Rick Snyder has acknowledged that the state and federal government should assist Flint in addressing this problem. But so far, there's been more promises than action," Weaver said in a statement. "Meanwhile, the people of Flint are paying a high price -- in health impacts, in economic difficulties, and in stressful worry about the future. We need action now."

Snyder spokesman Ari Adler said the governor's office is working with the state Legislature to provide funding for lead service line removal, but the work also needs to be completed to determine where exactly the service lines need to be replaced. Adler said Flint's records need to be confirmed with site visits before a tremendous amount of work can begin.

"We all need to be careful to move cautiously when replacing water lines so as not to increase the risk of creating a larger problem," Adler said in an email to The Flint Journal. "That is why chemical treatment has been underway for some time to replace the coating on the inside of the pipes to help prevent additional lead from leaching, and water tests are underway across the city to monitor the progress."

The state is continuing to monitor, analyze and respond to results on scientific water testing in Flint with updated data collected regularly from about 600 Sentinel Sites.

Adler said the latest round of testing show 91.6 percent were at or below the federal action level of 15 ppb and 8.4 percent were above. This round of results are better than the first round at the Sentinel Sites, which had 90.4 percent at or below 15 ppb, and 9.6 percent above the federal action level.

"We also are working with outside water experts like Professor Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech to ensure the work the state is doing is making a real difference, and he agrees that it appears to be so far," Adler said in an email to The Flint Journal. "For everyone involved, we must carefully work to restore safe water to the people of Flint as well as their confidence in government at all levels being able to do something right."

When it comes to funding, Adler said the state has already provided $67 million for resources in Flint and Snyder has proposed more than $230 million total so far for additional resources for people in the city. He said other efforts by the state will continue.

"The state's efforts are providing water, filters, water tests, blood tests, nutritional resources, jobs and more to the people of Flint, as well as $30 million to provide for water bill relief so that people weren't paying and won't be paying for water they cannot drink," Adler said. "Gov. Snyder is committed to delivering permanent, long-term solutions and clean, safe drinking water to Flint. The governor and his team is working every day with partners at the city, state and federal level to help the people of Flint recover from this crisis and move Flint forward."
FLINT, MI -- There is no "magic pill" to treat lead poisoning, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is warning Flint residents to beware of potential scammers who say otherwise.

Since September, when Hanna-Attisha revealed that number of children and infants with elevated lead levels in their blood tripled in "high risk" areas after switching to Flint River water, she says she's been getting emails and phone calls from people who believe they have the perfect solution for those affected.

The problem is there is no such thing as a perfect solution when it comes to lead poisoning, said Hanna-Attisha.

"Every day, I get people who want a magic pill or remedy, or I get people saying, this is what your community needs. I've heard of everything from special water purifiers to herbal remedies..." Hanna-Attisha said. "Unfortunately, like in many other conditions, people are searching for that magic pill. There is no magic pill here. So, it's all about that other stuff that will promote healthy kids and child development."

Hanna-Attisha says there are a lot of products that basically claim to cure lead poisoning, but none of them are proven to actually work.

She recommends good nutrition, which prevents lead from being stored in the bones, and positive environmental influences, which encourage healthy childhood development.

Several people have called her about a process called chelation, where a synthetic solution is injected into the bloodstream to remove heavy metals from the body. Hanna-Attisha says the process does not eliminate the effects of lead poisoning and can actually cause more harm.

Mark Morningstar, who is a chiropractic neurologist at Natural Wellness and Pain Relief Center in Grand Blanc Township, says it depends on each person, but says chelation does work, and that there's no scientific evidence because studies on chelation would be impossible.

To understand how therapies like chelation can be harmful, Hanna-Attisha said it's important to understand how lead is stored in the body.

When lead is ingested, it is either excreted from the body through kidneys and then urine, or it is stored in the bones, said Hanna-Attisha.

Good nutrition can prevent lead from being stored in the bones in the first place, but once it is there, certain things like stress, pregnancy and bad nutrition can cause the lead to be released from its storage and re-expose the body.

The problem with chelation is that it pulls the lead out from inside of the bones and causes neurotoxicity all over again, she said.

Morningstar disagrees.

He says that the purpose of chelation is to inject an agent into the body that binds itself to the heavy metals so that they can be excreted. He says that when the agent binds itself to lead or another heavy metal, it keeps that object from binding or sticking to other places in the body.

"If its chelated, it is essentially inert. The chelating agent binds to it and pulls it out of the system so that the body can excrete it," he said. "The body is not going to absorb it back into the tissues."

Even if that is true, Hannah-Attisha said that there is no scientific evidence that chelation corrects damaging affects of lead poisoning.

"It does not change the neurodevelopmental outcome of the child, and thus it is not recommended," Hanna-Attisha said.

Morningstar says no studies have been done because it's impossible to measure what would have happened if lead was left in a child's body versus if the child was treated with chelation therapy.

"I think that everyone can agree that no amount of lead in the body is good, so if you can catch the child young enough before lead has been in their system for a long period of time, I think that the childs function can improve," Morningstar said. "Neuro functions do not have a chance of improving if the lead stays in the body."

Another reason Hanna-Attisha says chelation is not recommended for people in this area is that it only works on people who have very high levels of lead in their blood - 40 to 45 micrograms per deciliter or more, she said - which isn't something she's seen in any Flint patients since the switch back to water from Lake Huron.

Morningstar says they don't use chelation therapy on everyone who walks through the door -- it is administered on a case-by-case basis, and testing is done to determine whether or not a patient could benefit from the therapy.

The only thing that both agree is proven to combat lead poisoning is good nutrition.

"It prevents storage of lead in the bones, and it also prevents it from coming out of your bones in the future," Hanna-Attisha said.

Foods loaded in calcium, iron and vitamin C are recommended.

Morningstar suggests eating plenty of dark green, crunchy vegetables like spinach.

Additionally, services that support child development can help mitigate the effects of lead, such as early education, supporting families, nutrition classes, positive parenting and mental health services, Hanna-Attisha said.

While families may be very vulnerable and desperate for solutions right now, she is urging those affected by lead poisoning to be wary of products that claim to cure lead poisoning.

"We will only recommend what works. People can try whatever they want, but this is the science," Hanna-Attisha said.

Hanna-Attisha urges parents to do their research before trying anything.

She recommends reading literature from credible sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. And, don't be afraid to talk to your physician to get their opinion on different therapies, Hanna-Attisha says.

"Unfortunately, a lot of people either want to make a buck out of this or really think whatever they're selling works," she said. "Things like chelation can actually harm people, so some of these things are not entirely safe. It's not something that should be taken lightly."
GENESEE TOWNSHIP, MI -- A large-scale lead screening event set for this weekend at a Flint-area church is part of an initiative to get all children potentially impacted by the water crisis to get their blood tested by April 1.

Related: Free lead testing events set in Flint, Genesee County



The free screening for children newborn to 17 years old is set for 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, March 19 at New Jerusalem Full Gospel Baptist Church, 1035 E. Carpenter Road, and is being held in collaboration between the Genesee County Health Department and Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Organizers, including community partners University of Michigan-Flint School of Health Professions, Molina Health Care and McLaren Health Plan, hope to have all children in zip codes 48501 through 48507 and those living in Burton and Flint Township tested by month's end.

"Lead poisoning is a very serious condition that can cause delays and difficulty learning for babies and young children," said Toni LaRocco, nurse director with the Genesee County Health Department, stressing the importance to parents of having their children tested if they have not done so since Oct. 1, 2015.

LaRocco added lead stays in a person's blood for a short time span, but there are other potential sources of exposure for those living in older homes. Health care providers will be on hand to explain their child's test results.

Anyone with insurance is being asked to bring their insurance card to the event that will include lead poisoning education, nutrition advice. Adults bringing their children can also get tested free of charge.

Those residents with questions about the event or future lead clinics may visit the Genesee County Health Department's website at www.gchd.us/flint_drinking_water_resources.php and click on the Lead Community Awareness Events link.
CHEBOYGAN COUNTY, MI - A 75-year-old Cheboygan doctor is accused of killing his wife with prescription medications.

Dr. Jerome Siudara was arraigned Friday, March 18, on charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siudara, 60.

She died Aug. 30, 2014, at McLaren Northern Michigan hospital in Petoskey.

Investigators say Jerome Siudara, licensed in osteopathic medicine and surgery and pharmacy, prescribed numerous pills for his wife that ultimately killed her.

Police contend that the defendant "was prescribing the pills in a wanton and willful disregard for Elizabeth Siudara's well-being and that his prescribing and dispensing of the pills to her was done in a grossly negligent manner," Cheboygan County Prosecutor Daryl Vizina said in a statement.

"After a year and a half long investigation by Michigan State Police, led by Detective Rich Rule, I feel confident there is enough evidence to charge this case."

Siudara is held on $500,000 bond.

He was arrested Thursday, March 17.

State police Lt. Derrick Carroll said investigators noted discrepancies in the doctor's statements to police but declined to provide specifics, including the names of drugs allegedly provided to the victim.

The couple married on Sept. 22, 1984, in Little Current, Ontario, Canada. She was office manager for her husband's medical practice for 35 years, according to her obituary.

She also was a certified scuba diver, accomplished sea plane pilot and had sailed the Great Lakes.

John Agar covers crime and other issues for MLiveE-mail John Agar: jagar@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReporterJAgar
HUDSONVILLE, MI - Hudsonville Superintendent Nick Ceglarek said Friday the district is taking appropriate action against two students being investigated by police for making specific threats toward students and staff at Baldwin Middle School.

Ceglarek said an assistant principal became aware of the hand-written threats after school hours on Monday, March 14. He said no one was ever in danger.

"There was no lockdown and school was never disrupted," he said. "We immediately contacted the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office, which initiated an investigation."

Related: Threats toward 'specific students' at middle school not credible, police say

Police interviewed the two Baldwin students suspected of making the threats, ages 12 and 13, and their parents. Ottawa County Sheriff's Capt. Mark Bennett said there's no reason to believe the threats made are credible.

"We don't disclose student discipline, but we take all threats seriously," said Ceglarek, when asked about the possible suspension or expulsion of the students. "We are making sure we follow due process."

Neither Ceglarek nor police are releasing the specific nature of the threats, or the number of students and staff on the list.

"For student privacy reasons, I cannot share all of the details surrounding the case, but I can say that we, both the Ottawa County Sheriff's department and school officials, do not believe that there is a any threat to any members of our school community," he said.

"The safety of our students and staff is our top priority, and I'm happy to talk with anyone in our school community who has concerns."

In November 2014, three Kelloggsville High School sophomores who allegedly made a "threat list" of students and teachers to harm were expelled for the remainder of the school year.

Related: Expelled: 3 students who allegedly created a 'threat list' to harm teachers, students

Monica Scott is an education writer. Email her at mscott2@mlive.com and follow her on Twitter @MScottGR or Facebook
SOUTH MANITOU ISLAND, MI - A sudden storm that swept through Northern Michigan in the spring of 1878 was blamed for overturning a small boat carrying island lighthouse keepers Aaron and Julia Sheridan, and their infant son, Robert.

Historians this week marked the anniversary of the trio's deaths, whose bodies were lost in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan on March 15, 138 years ago.

Vignettes shared by the Leelanau Historical Society Museum and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore give a glimpse into the life of this couple, whose deaths are now part of Up North lore.

The couple were keepers of the South Manitou Lighthouse off the shore of Sleeping Bear for a dozen years, and Julia was the only female assistant keeper to ever serve at the island, according to the museum.

Aaron Sheridan was hired on as the lighthouse keeper in 1866, a year after he wed Julia, and after a Civil War wound left him without the full use of his left arm, according to information about the couple offered by the national park.

The couple had six sons. While their family expanded, so did their lighthouse station. It saw the addition of a tower and a steam-powered fog signal.

On the day they drowned, the couple and their youngest child were returning to the island from a trip to the mainland. The boat, owned by island fisherman Chris Ankersen, overed turned near the island's icy shoreline.

Ankersen clung to the boat and was rescued, according to the park service.

The surviving Sheridan children were raised by their grandparents. One of their offspring, George Sheridan, became a lighthouse keeper. His assignments included Chicago, Michigan City, Ind., and Saugatuck.

South Manitou Island and its nearby sibling, North Manitou Island, are part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Years ago, its deep-water harbor and dense forests made it a great spot for steamers to get firewood for their boilers as they traversed the Manitou Passage.

The island grew as a farming community, and shipping disasters on Lake Michigan made it part of the government's plan to build lifesaving stations.

The U.S. Coast Guard closed the island's lifesaving operation in the 1950s, and some two decades later South Manitou became part of the national park.

Camping and hiking are allowed on South Manitou. The island can be reached by private boat, or ferry service from Leland.
HUDSONVILLE, MI - The Salad Bowl City soon will get a new home for its farmers' market, accessible by a "Woonerf."

A curb-less street designed to be as accommodating to pedestrians and bicycles as it is to motor vehicles could be built next year in Hudsonville, off I-196 west of Grand Rapids.

The City Commission this week approved plans to issue a $5 million bond for the shared street, along with a farmers' market building and landscaping along Chicago Drive, a state highway that runs past the downtown business district.

The Woonerf, still being designed, will be on the existing Harvey Street between Cherry and Plaza avenues, then extended to School Avenue where the city will buy and renovate a former car dealership at 3380 Chicago Drive into a farmers' market facility.

"Harvey Street right now looks like an alley, a lot of asphalt and concrete. It's not what I would call a visually appealing or pedestrian-appealing place to be," Mayor Mark Northrup said. "The goal would be to make that a walkable city street with shops and stores.

"We're spending this money to enhance our city and make it livable. Hudsonville is not going to be a drive-through, ugly suburb that people race through. That is not going to be the destiny for Hudsonville."

RELATED: Big idea for Bridge Street 'has legs,' but won't happen soon

According to the city's bond resolution, the planned Woonerf - known as a "'living street" and developed in the Netherlands and Flanders - gives equal priority to all modes of transportation including motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. It will include bike racks, decorative lighting, trees, seating and art, looking something like this. The project also will bury overhead power lines.

Grand Rapids city leaders last year floated the idea of a shared street on Bridge Street NW, where New Holland Brewing Co. is developing a new restaurant and brewery.

The plans in Hudsonville all are part of the city's Imagine 2030 vision. A centerpiece of that plan, a kind of Central Park just south of Chicago Drive, has stalled over property acquisition and denial of a grant request. Another downtown venture - an effort to build a Dr. Seuss theme park - has been scrapped for lack of willing donors.

Out of the Seuss plan have evolved aspects of the 2030 plan that now are being implemented, Northrup said. Residents have 45 days to challenge the bond - which would not cause an increase in property taxes - and put it up to a public vote.

RELATED: Pizza Ranch to close for renovations along Harvey Street

Hudsonville also will seek a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grant to build a recreational trail underneath Chicago Drive.

Matt Vande Bunte writes about government and other issues on MLive. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Brin DeVries, a sixth-grader with cerebral palsy, confidently navigates her wheelchair out of class toward her locker, which she can open more easily after a redesign by high school students.

A team of eight seniors from Kent Career Technical Center's Engineering and Architectural Design class worked on the project for around five months.

Brin, 11, a student at Excel Charter Academy, never had the traditional combination lock because of her limited motor skills. She had been using a magnetic locker with a modified key, but had problems releasing the latch.

The lock required about three steps and the 10-second timer didn't allow her enough time to open it herself without multiple tries, according to the student team. After several prototypes, the students redesigned the lock to combine the three actions into just one motion to pop the lock utilizing a 3D Printer.

"It certainly gives me more independence,'' said Brin, who said the old lock was frustrating and she's thankful to the seniors who came up with the solution. "A simple design on a computer turned into something that could help me. It's pretty amazing!"

Dawn DeVries, Brin's mother, said anything that allows her daughter more independence also gives her more confidence.

"She is starting to think about her future and what she needs to be independent and not always have to ask for help."

Brin said she wants to be an engineer so she can help other students with disabilities.

Occupational therapist Patty Surman and recreational therapist Christa Swartz, noticed the locker issues early on and even tried to tweak the lock. After attending a Tech Center event, Surman asked instructor Larry Ridley for help.The students began working on the project shortly after the school year began.

"I am just extremely thrilled to be a part of a school that is so involved in making its students better, and at the same time trying to make an impact in the community and be a force for good around," said Trevor Corrigan, a senior at Northview High School, who will be majoring in engineering at the University of Michigan.

"We studied Brin and how she moves and how she wanted to naturally open that locker and what would be the best way to implement a design to adhere to that."

James Warren, a senior at Wyoming High School, said it was a lot better working on a class project knowing it would make a difference in someone's life.

"It turned from having an average class project to one where we were actually helping someone's life get easier," he said. "That's what drove me the most.''

Brin's project was presented to Gov. Rick Snyder when he visited the Tech Center in November.

Related: Gov. Rick Snyder launches statewide tour to promote skilled trades

The students, who attend various Kent County high schools, visited the school approximately five times, observing Brin and testing prototypes. They said they could have made the change more quickly, but are only in the class two hours a day.

They worked with the lock manufacturer, Hallowell, to get dimensions. Corrigan said they did a few things to redesign the lock, including eliminating a back piece and adding a critical insert that made it easier to insert the key into the magnet and lift up.

Surman said the project gives Brin the independence she needs to grow.

"With Brin being as intelligent as she is, she will be able to do whatever she wants from an academic standpoint, but to give her that other level, any little bit of increased independence opens up worlds and doors for her."

Ridley said his expectations for students in the two-year program are higher than what people typically think about for high schoolers.

"This isn't the old vocational school that everybody still tends to think that we are," he said. "KCTC is much more than that. This is what we can do."

The patent process is being reviewed for the design. The other seniors involved in the project beside Corrigan and Warren are: Michael Alberta (Byron Center High School), Corey Robinson and Richard Stewart (Caledonia High School), Ryan Bockheim (Kent City High School), and Richard Brady and Fahir Sulejmanovic (Wyoming High School).



Monica Scott is an education writer. Email her at mscott2@mlive.com and follow her on Twitter @MScottGR or Facebook
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Shaquille Bunting was bound over to Kent County Circuit Court Thursday on charges of open murder after a judge determined there is enough evidence to send the case against him to trial.

Bunting is accused of killing Terence Hollis, 32, on March 22, 2015, outside of a Chicken Coop restaurant.

Hollis died of a single gunshot wound to his torso.

During the trial, which drew emotional testimony from several witnesses, interior and exterior security footage of the shooting scene was shown.

Uniquia Bunting, the defendant's sister, and Janette Brown, Hollis's cousin, were both present during the incident and identified people in the video during their court testimonies.

Uniquia Bunting testified Thursday that Shaquille Bunting told her he fatally shot Hollis because the latter had hit her during the altercation.

Prosecutor Gerry Faber said the time stamp on the video is one hour behind the actual time.

Here are a few things to look out for when watching the interior footage, according to testimony:

 0:06: Jason Jordan, Uniquia Bunting's then-boyfriend, threw the first punch at an unknown male. Hollis can be seen in the bottom right of the screen standing nearby, wearing a light blue jacket.

 0:10: Hollis jumps into the fight and punches Jordan. Uniquia and Shaquille Bunting can be seen rushing into help Jordan in the fight. Uniquia Bunting is wearing a white hat and black jacket. Shaquille Bunting is wearing a jacket with an ornate design on the back.

 0:15: Brown can be seen coming in from the right trying to break the fight up. She is wearing a white shirt with a black vest and a black hat.
diamond.jpg

Slide across or tap on the image above to see the interchange before (left) and after (right) reconstruction. Graphic MLive, images courtesy MDOT.

CASCADE TOWNSHIP, MI - A stretch of I-96 at Cascade Road SE will close intermittently Friday night for roadwork.

Michigan Department of Transportation crews are building a diverging diamond intersection. The highway there will shut down for 10 minutes at a time from 11:30 p.m. Friday, March 18, to 3:30 a.m. Saturday, March 19, on eastbound lanes, and from 3:30-7:30 a.m. Saturday on westbound lanes, as workers set bridge beams.

Workers plan to stop traffic on the highway with police assistance, then let traffic proceed in between closures. Off-ramps will remain open.

Grand Rapids- 10 minute total closures TONIGHT (Fri) between 11:30pm & 7:30am on I-96 at Cascade Road; Bridge work https://t.co/FVGVg4HQ1N  MDOT - West Michigan (@MDOT_West) March 18, 2016

RELATED: Michigan's 'confusing' diverging diamond interchanges broken down by traffic flow

The $14 million intersection overhaul will split Cascade Road in two over the highway, giving it a diamond-like appearance. The number of left turns will be reduced to keep traffic moving more freely.

Matt Vande Bunte writes about government and other issues on MLive. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
MICHIGAN - The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is citing privacy concerns as the reason it's not disclosing the location of a death linked to an ongoing outbreak in Wisconsin.

The state's first case of Elizabethkingia anophelis that's a confirmed match to the outbreak across Lake Michigan contributed to the death of an "older adult from West Michigan with underlying health conditions," the state agency said on Thursday, March 17.

The agency will not say where the death occurred because of concerns about privacy and protected health information, a spokeswoman said. It's not known if the person died in their home, in a hospital or nursing home facility.

The state also would not narrow the location of the death, beyond saying West Michigan. Kent County Health Department officials said the death did not occur in its area.

This differs from how the state has reported previous deaths, including West Nile fatalities. In those cases, the ages and home counties of those who died were routinely made public.

In contrast, Wisconsin officials have released information on the 12 counties where its victims have died and the regions where they are tracking other cases.

Elizabethkingia are common bacteria that on rare occasions cause infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates there are a handful of cases annually in Michigan.

Health care providers are not required to report cases, under Michigan law. Since putting out a call for cases last month, the state Department of Health and Human Services says it has received eight reports in Michigan, going back to May 2014.

Only one isolated case matches the outbreak in Wisconsin, which has sickened 54 people in 12 counties and contributed to 17 deaths there.

Elizabethkingia rarely makes people sick, and in the current outbreak is affecting mostly people who are 65 and older and dealing with serious health issues, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Signs and symptoms that resulting from the bacteria can include fever, shortness of breath, chills or cellulitis.

The deaths in Wisconsin and in Michigan could be caused by the Elizabethkingia infection, a pre-existing health issue, or both, a CDC spokeswoman said.

Matt Vande Bunte writes about government and other issues on MLive. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- In emotional testimony at Grand Rapids District Court Thursday, the cousin of a man who was killed a year ago outside a Chicken Coop restaurant described how she watched him be fatally shot.

Terence Hollis, 32, was killed March 22, 2015, by a single gunshot wound to his torso. He was shot outside of a Chicken Coop restaurant, 1156 S. Division Ave., around 2:45 a.m. and died during surgery later that morning at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital.

On Thursday, Shaquille Bunting was bound over to Kent County Circuit Court by Judge Michael Distel on charges of open murder, felon in possession of a firearm and felony firearm. He is being charged as a second-time habitual offender. He is also accused of previously lying under oath about his whereabouts of that night.

Uniquia Bunting, the older sister of the defendant, who is also charged with perjury for lying to protect her brother, testified Thursday to avoid possible time behind bars. Her testimony was subpoenaed.

Uniquia Bunting testified that she, her brother and her boyfriend, Jason Jordan, began the night at Julian's II Bar and then went to the Chicken Coop restaurant to get food.

Prosecutor Gerry Faber played security footage of the interior and exterior of the Chicken Coop from the early morning of March 22, 2015, during the trial, asking Uniquia Bunting to identify herself, Shaquille Bunting and Jordan in the video.

Jordan has since died from an unrelated incident.

According to Uniquia Bunting's testimony and the video evidence, she and Shaquille Bunting had their backs to Jordan when an altercation broke out between him and an unidentified male for an unknown reason.

Uniquia and Shaquille Bunting immediately jumped to Jordan's assistance.

The restaurant, which was packed with people, erupted into a chaotic jumble of flying fists, eventually spilling outside of the restaurant, according to testimony.

Janette Brown, Hollis' cousin, also testified Thursday that she was at the Chicken Coop when the fighting broke out.

Her testimony came out broken by sobs.

Brown, who had just come from Julian's, said she arrived at the Chicken Coop before Hollis and was at the counter ordering when he walked in, before all the fighting began.

As she paid for their food, she heard a scuffle break out behind her. There was no rise of argument, she said, just sudden fighting.

After she turned around, Brown saw Hollis involved in the fight that had broken out. In the video, it is evident that the first punch Jordan threw was not at Hollis but the latter, who was standing nearby, became quickly involved in the altercation.

Brown began attempting to pull Hollis from the fight and the crowd shifted outside to the parking lot.

Uniquia Bunting said once the group went outside, Hollis allegedly punched her on the right side of her face.

This prompted Shaquille Bunting and Jordan to begin fighting with Hollis in the parking lot.

Susie Stewart, Hollis's girlfriend, testified that she was also at the Chicken Coop that night, but did not enter the restaurant. She waited in the car as Hollis and their friend Will Stewart, who she is not related to, went inside to get food.

Susie Stewart said Hollis and Will Stewart were inside for no more than five minutes when she realized a commotion had everyone running outside.

When she saw Hollis fighting, Susie Stewart went up to Hollis and then walked back to their vehicle with him. She said "a crowd" followed them back. At this point, a man nicknamed "Nasty" walked up to the couple with a gun in hand.

Susie Stewart said she then stood in front of Hollis, pleading with the man not to shoot him. Jordan and Shaquille Bunting then allegedly began hitting her to get her out of the way.

After she was out of the way, Susie Stewart said that the group of men "jumped on" Hollis.

It was directly after this that Susie Stewart heard the gunshot.

Uniquia Bunting said she saw that Shaquille Bunting had a gun in his jacket pocket and saw him remove it about 30 seconds before she heard a gunshot. But she said she did not see who fired a weapon.

Brown said she was standing close to the scene watching as two men held her cousin, who asked, "What we fighting for?"

She said that she then saw Shaquille Bunting approach Hollis from the side with a gun, and she began screaming not to shoot her cousin.

"By the time I got to (the word) 'cousin,' (Shaquille Bunting) shot (Hollis,)" Brown said.

The men holding Hollis dropped him, and the victim "balled up," as Brown described the scene.

Uniquia Bunting said she went running in the direction of her vehicle as her brother fled in the opposite direction. She did not see him again for the remainder of that night.

Brown chased Shaquille Bunting until he got into a vehicle, asking him why he shot her cousin.

Susie Stewart dragged Hollis into the vehicle they came in and sat in the backseat with him during the drive to the hospital, trying to hold his wound. She said Hollis was conscious in the vehicle until they reached the hospital.

Uniquia Bunting said later that day, after noon, Shaquille Bunting came to her house and confessed that he shot Hollis.

"I did it because he hit you," Shaquille Bunting allegedly told his sister.

The prosecution had two other witnesses testify Thursday that Shaquille Bunting had told them that he had shot Hollis for disrespecting Uniquia Bunting.

After Thursday's testimony, the judge determined that there was enough evidence to establish probable cause and move Shaquille Bunting's criminal case forward to circuit court.


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Congressional hearings on the Flint water crisis Thursday, March 17, included moments of drama and new acknowledgements by Gov. Rick Snyder.

Here are seven of the key highlights from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing:

1. Fresh calls for Snyder's resignation: There were new calls from Congress for the governor to step down for state failures that he has acknowledged in handling the water emergency.

"There you are dripping with guilt, but drawing your paycheck, hiring lawyers at the expense of the people, and doing your dead level best to spread accountability to others and not being accountable," Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa, said during the hearing. "It's not appropriate."

"People who put dollars over the fundamental safety of people do not belong in government and you need to resign too Gov. Snyder," Cartwright said.

2. Failure of the emergency manager system: Snyder conceded that it was a "fair conclusion" to say the state's emergency manager system failed Flint in handling its water crisis.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-New Jersey, questioned Snyder on how the emergency managers the governor appointed to run Flint handled the city's water crisis.

"Did that emergency management system fail under your leadership in this matter?" Coleman asked, eventually demanding a yes or no response from the governor.

"In this particular case, with respect to the water issue, that would be a fair conclusion," said Snyder, who appointed four different emergency managers to run the city since 2011.

3. Dumb and dangerous Lead and Copper Rule: Snyder vowed to provide a critical appraisal of the federal Lead and Copper rule, which sets standards aimed at keeping lead out of drinking water.

The governor called the current rule "dumb and dangerous," but his opportunity to address it in detail never materialized.

Snyder Director of Communications Ari Adler said this week that the regulation poorly protects the public health - "especially with the EPA more interested in burying red flags than raising them."

"(The governor) will not be shy about calling out the need for changes if the opportunity arises," Adler said in an email before the hearing.

4. EPA head should resign, Republicans say: House Republicans called for the resignation of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy for not acting sooner on the water crisis.

U.S. Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and John Mica, R-Fla., each called for EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to step down from her position Thursday.

McCarthy said her office was given incorrect information by state regulators and should not have been so trusting of state authorities.

5. Missed opportunities at the EPA: Although McCarthy would not agree that the agency had mistakenly handled the water crisis, she said the response could have been better.

"We missed the opportunity late summer to get EPA's concerns on the radar screen. That I regret," McCarthy said.

"Did the EPA do anything wrong?" committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, asked during the hearing.

"The EPA worked very hard," McCarthy responded.

6. Governor 'always going to be kicking' himself over water crisis: Snyder had apologized previously for the state's role in the water emergency, but took the self-criticism to a new level Thursday.

"I'm always going to kick myself that our people should've spoken up. I should've asked tougher questions. I should've done more," he said.

"We messed up in Michigan to begin with by doing two studies instead of corrosion controls ..." he said.

7. Neighborly questions: U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg did not press his home-state governor during questioning at the hearing.

"We appreciate you voluntarily releasing all of your emails so they could be part of the record," Walberg told Snyder. "We appreciate the fact that you're willing to answer tough questions that this committee will offer today and outline the steps you're taking to solve the crisis and help Flint recover."

State Rep. Gretchen Driskell, a Democrat from Saline who is running for Walberg's seat this year, said Walberg went too easy on Snyder and isn't doing enough to hold him accountable.

"This morning Congressman Walberg had the opportunity to ask Gov. Snyder important questions, but instead he thanked Snyder for voluntarily coming and asked two softball questions without follow up," Driskell said.

Ron Fonger is a reporter for MLive.com. Contact him at rfonger1@mlive.com.
LANSING, MI -- Should breweries and other alcohol suppliers be able to use social media to promote events like "tap takeovers" at bars in Michigan?

State lawmakers think so.

House Bill 5257 would add language to the Liquor Control Act specifying that certain "social media promotion" of alcohol is permitted under the state liquor regulations.

The bill was passed by the state House in a 103-6 vote March 16, and will be sent to the Michigan Senate for consideration.

Current regulations prevent liquor or beer manufacturers and wholesalers from "aiding or assisting" liquor license vendors, like bars and restaurants.

Michael Loepp, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, explained different tiers of liquor license-holders -- such as manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers -- are each expected to pay for their own advertising.

"Problems may exist within the advertising realm when licensees in differing tiers pay for advertising or benefit from advertising in other tiers," Loepp said.

A brewery can run an advertising campaign focused on its brands and prices, but cannot run ads that promote a retailer that sells their products.

Scott Graham, executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild, explained the restriction.

"If you have a brewery, you can't put an ad in the paper saying your spring beer is coming out and that it will be available at Kroger and Meijer," Graham said.

But how liquor regulations apply to social media promotion efforts are not clear, since the relatively-new technology is not addressed in current state law.

State Rep. Klint Kesto, R-Commerce Township, sponsored the legislation. Kesto gave the example of the "tap takeover," where several beers from a particular brewery are featured at a local bar.

He said the bill would allow the brewery to post on Facebook about the event without any fear they are breaking the law.

Currently, Graham said, a Facebook post from a brewery announcing the tap takeover at a local bar or a tweet mentioning a retailer could be interpreted as a violation of the liquor code.

"From our perspective, I don't think that was really the intent," he said.

Graham said the ambiguity of the issue has become an issue for Michigan's craft beer industry in recent years.

"It's something we think just needs to get addressed," Graham said. "This fixes what I think is kind of an unintended consequence."

A few of the guild's members have been investigated by the Liquor Control Commission over complaints tied to social media posts mentioning places their products were available, he said.

The posts were removed from social media as a result of warnings issued in those cases, Graham said.

The guild is generally in favor of the advertising restrictions in state law, he said.

Preventing big breweries from offering their retailers the chance to be mentioned in paid advertising tends to "level the playing field" for smaller brewers like the ones the guild represents, Graham said.

The bill will update a law written at a time when the issue could not have been conceived.

"There was no internet, let alone social media," Graham said.

The legislation answers that question. The bill would allow for "unpaid social media" advertisements for one of three reasons:

On-premises brand promotion

Beer, wine or spirits tastings

A product locator

Product locators are becoming increasingly commonplace. Kalamazoo-based Bell's Brewery, for example, offers a "Brand Finder" on its website.

Kesto's bill defines social media as "a service, platform or website where users communicate with one another and share media, such as pictures, videos, music, and blogs, with other users free of charge."

The changes would apply to out-of-state alcohol suppliers as well as those located inside Michigan.

Kesto said the bill would draw a line in the sand for what is and is not acceptable when it comes to social media promotion of alcohol.

Since the idea of social media is a relatively new one, he said, the line does not currently exist.

"With the advent of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, now you have this new age of social media to disseminate information, to promote," Kesto said.

The new provision would not apply to any paid promotion efforts that would otherwise be restricted under the law, Kesto said.

"We're creating a line," he said.

Graham said the change is important for Michigan's craft brewing industry, which has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years. For many of the state's smaller breweries, he said, promoting their products on social media is a big part of their marketing plan.

"It may seem like a minor issue," Graham said. "But for our members that are paying attention, this is a big deal."

Mark Tower covers government and politics for MLive. Contact him at 989-284-4807, by email at mtower@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
A small letter on Michigan driver's licenses -- M or F -- represents a barrier that is now easier for transgender people to clear.

The Secretary of State's change in policy this month allowing people to change the gender markers on their driver's license without first having surgery is a win for transgender people across Michigan, a supporter of the change says.

"My name is legally changed," Charin Davenport said. "I will now be able to afford to change my gender marker on my license. All I have to do is get passport and I'm good to go."

Davenport, an adjunct professor at Delta College and Saginaw Valley State University, was born as a male named Charles.

She said she always knew she was a woman. She began hormone therapy in 2013 as part of the transition.

She said her gender identity is important and she felt marginalized under the previous policy.

Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams confirmed the policy update and said it also allows court orders to be submitted to change gender on a drivers license. He said he could not comment on the pending litigation.

"This is an important step forward by the Secretary of State's office, and we hope it will result in many more transgender persons in Michigan being able to obtain accurate driver's licenses and state IDs," Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan said.

"That said, we still don't believe the new policy is as good as the policies practiced by dozens of other states, and we are continuing to advocate for improvements."

Kaplan said the former policy prevented transgender people from having the correct gender on their state IDs and driver's licenses and required "gender confirmation surgery -- an invasive medical procedure that not all transgender people need, want or can afford to pay for," the ACLU said.

Jay Kaplan

The policy "created significant problems for Michigan's transgender community," the ACLU said, and led to the organization filing a lawsuit.

Love v. Johnson, filed in federal court in May 2015 by the ACLU, sought to overturn the secretary of state's ID policy as unconstitutional, dangerous, and a discriminatory refusal to respect gender identity, the ACLU said.

The Secretary of State changed its policy March 10, 2016, court records state.

Under the new policy, a passport denoting gender is enough proof to change the gender on a driver's license. Davenport said a note from a doctor stating a patient has made significant progress in his or her transition is required to change the gender denoted on a passport.

Recently, the Secretary of State altered its policy to allow applicants to present U.S. passports and passport cards in order to change the gender on their state IDs, Kaplan said.

The change allows people to put their true identities on their IDs, Davenport said, is a step toward progress.

"Every transgender person in Michigan is talking about this and trying to figure out how can I do this?" she said. "That's really cool."

Brad Devereaux is a reporter for MLive.com. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
BLACKMAN TWP., -- A 26-year-old woman police say stole from Walmart, pulled up her clothing and assaulted loss prevention staff was banned from again entering the store during her arraignment Monday in Jackson County District Court.

Catherine Huggett, of Jackson, was arraigned on one count each of unarmed robbery, indecent exposure, malicious destruction of personal property less than $200 and two counts of assault before Jackson County District Court Judge Darryl Mazur on March 14.

Hours before her arraignment, at roughly 2:26 a.m., officers with the Blackman-Leoni Township Public Safety Department responded to a retail fraud in progress at Walmart, 1700 block W. Michigan Ave., in Blackman Township, public safety Deputy Director Scott Grajewski has said.

According to Grajewski, a woman, later identified as Huggett, had pushed a shopping cart full of items into the store's foyer - past the doorway's theft-detecting sensors - and abandoned the cart to retrieve more items from the aisles.

Walmart's loss prevention staff approached her, Grajewski said, and being accused of theft, Huggett allegedly pulled "up her clothing to tell (the staff) she had nothing on her person."

According to Grajewski, Huggett pulled her top up and her pants down and after loss prevention staff blocked the entry way, she allegedly "struck a member of loss prevention in the face," Grajewski said.

In addition, Huggett is accused of biting the staff member on his arm.

The man suffered visible injuries though did not require medical treatment, Grajewski said.

Huggett was ultimately detained and arrested at the store.

On March 14, Mazur set bond at $2,500 and banned Huggett from again entering Walmart property or contacting the victims in the case, according to court records.

A preliminary examination is scheduled for March 31.

Assault while stealing is a charging element of unarmed robbery.

Ryan Shek is a reporter for the Jackson Citizen Patriot and MLive.com. Contact him at rshek@mlive.com.
The Michigan State Police Jackson Post reported the following activity on Thursday, March 17.

Jackson County

Troopers conducted a traffic stop in Rives Township. Upon further investigation it was found the suspect, identified as a 26-year-old man from Pleasant Lake, was in violation of probation and also had a felony warrant. He was transported and lodged in Jackson County Sheriff's Office.

Troopers conducted an investigation where the offender had repeatedly failed to comply with the Michigan's Sex Offender Registry in Blackman Township. The suspect, identified as a 30-year-old man from Jackson, was arrested and lodged at the Jackson County Jail.

Jackson

Troopers stopped a driver for improper use of a license plate. A 42-year-old man from Jackson was found to be driving on a suspended driver's license. The suspect was cited and released.

Hillsdale County

Troopers stopped a vehicle for failing to stop while leaving a drive and improper registration plate in Wheatland Township. The driver was cited and released.

Additional Activity

Troopers transported a fugitive from Ingham County Jail to the Jackson County Jail.

Troopers assisted a Jackson County Sheriff's Deputy with a warrant pick up. A 20-year-old woman from Hillsdale was transported and lodged at Hillsdale County Jail.
EAST LANSING, MI - Two Uber drivers accused of inappropriately touching female passengers during rides across East Lansing have been arraigned on criminal sexual conduct charges.

On Friday, March 11, Hassan Ibrahim turned himself in on a one-count warrant for fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and was arraigned before East Lansing 54B District Court Judge Richard Ball.

In addition, Salim Salem was arraigned on two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct before Ingham County 55

th

District Court Magistrate Mark Blumer Tuesday, March 15.

Related: Uber bars two drivers charged with inappropriately touching female passengers

According to East Lansing Police Department Lt. Scott Wriggelsworth, the men, who work as Uber drivers, are accused of inappropriately touching female passengers in separate incidents Feb. 14 and Jan. 16, respectively.

Wriggelsworth said the alleged assaults, or attempted assaults, took place during taxi service rides in East Lansing, while Uber has since been notified of the men's arrests.

On Friday, March 11, Ibrahim's bond was placed at $5,000, while Magistrate Blumer later set Salem's bond at $5,000 under the condition he not work as an Uber or taxi driver in the future.

Fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct is a high-court misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

Uber terminated the men's employment after learning of the allegations.

No other details regarding the alleged assaults were released.

Ryan Shek is a reporter for the Jackson Citizen Patriot and MLive.com. Contact him at rshek@mlive.com.
KALAMAZOO, MI - Police have released more than 2,000 photos of guns and other evidence seized after a mass shooting that left six people dead and two others seriously injured.

The photos taken by Kalamazoo Public Safety Crime Lab personnel show what Kalamazoo County sheriff's deputies and Public Safety officers found at shooting scenes in Richland Township and in Kalamazoo.

They also include photos taken at suspect Jason Brian Dalton's house on Douglas Avenue in Cooper Township, including numerous firearms, ammunition and materials used for reloading ammunition.

Dalton, 45, is charged with six counts of murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder and eight counts of felony firearm use in connection with a Feb. 20 shooting rampage.

Police and prosecutors allege Dalton, who was working as an Uber driver at the time, shot Tiana Carruthers, 25, several times outside The Meadows townhomes in Richland Township just after 5:40 p.m. She was seriously hurt but is recovering.

At 10:08 p.m., Dalton is accused of shooting and killing Tyler Smith, 17, and Tyler's father, Rich, 53, as they were looking at a new truck in the parking lot of Seelye Auto Group in Kalamazoo.

Just before 10:25 p.m., Dalton is accused of opening fire again and killing four women as they sat in vehicles at the Cracker Barrel restaurant on South Ninth Street in Texas Township. Abigail Kopf, 14, was critically injured but has recovered and is being treated at a rehabilitation facility in Grand Rapids.

A judge on March 3 ordered Dalton to undergo an examination to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial. A report on Dalton's competency is due back by May 2.

Rex Hall Jr. is a reporter for MLive.com. You can reach him at rhall2@mlive.com. Follow him on Twitter.
MUSKEGON, MI - Among other things, it came down to a lost shoe.

Citing DNA obtained from a Nike Air shoe as one factor in a strong circumstantial case, a Muskegon County judge found Elamin Muhammad guilty as charged of armed robbery and felony firearm.

Muskegon County 14th Circuit Chief Judge William C. Marietti announced his verdict from the bench Friday, March 18. Marietti reached his decision after a bench trial for Muhammad, 39, of Caledonia.

The judge concluded that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Muhammad was the masked, gloved, hooded man who at 6:12 a.m. July 14, 2014, walked into the Shell gas station at Sherman Boulevard and Henry Street in Norton Shores, brandished a gun and stole cash and cigarettes - before fleeing gunfire from the store's clerk.

After summarizing the evidence, Marietti said, "As I often tell a jury, we're talking about what's reasonable doubt, not a possible doubt. I don't have reasonable doubt."

RELATED: Lost shoe + DNA ruling = legal history. Now, a verdict

An important part of the case against Muhammad was an untied left shoe that flew off the robber's foot as he ran from the gunfire.

The robbery and mad dash for the door, along with the clerk firing at the fleeing robber, and the shoe flying, was all caught on a security video. So was part of a car used in the getaway, though not its license plate or a view of the waiting driver.

Until relatively recently, sweat DNA that investigators obtained from the toe of the shoe's insole would have been useless because crime laboratories showed it was a mix of two or more people. Using traditional analysis methods, mixed DNA results were considered too weak to make a reliable match with any one person.

But a new probability-based approach called "probabilistic genotyping" has started to change that. It's a way of statistically analyzing results already obtained from a lab, not a lab technique in itself. The method, known as Markov Chain-Monte Carlo analysis, has long been common in other fields such as financial planning.

Proponents of the method say it makes usable many DNA sample results previously rejected as indecipherable.

In Muhammad's case, prosecutors used a software called STRmix, one of two companies doing probabilistic genotyping. According to testimony by an expert who helped developed STRMix, Muhammad was the "major donor" of the sweat in the lost shoe, with the odds being at most one in 100 billion that it could have been anyone else's DNA. There are about 7 billion people alive on earth.

Friday's conviction was the first in the United States to be based in part on the STRmix software after the defense contested its admissibility.

Muhammad's attorney, Scott E. Pederson, challenged Senior Assistant Prosecutor Robert F. Hedges' plan to have the STRmix expert, John Buckleton of New Zealand, testify at trial.

After a half-day evidentiary hearing in December 2015, and after reviewing piles of reports from both sides,

: He decided STRmix expert testimony would be admissible at trial, though that didn't mean it was conclusive proof of guilt.

Marietti's was the first court ruling in the nation allowing STRmix into a criminal trial after a defense challenge. As such, it's already begun to set an informal precedent: Less than two weeks ago, a New York state judge cited Marietti's opinion in making a similar ruling.

Because he's not an appellate judge, Marietti's ruling is not binding on other courts outside Muskegon County, but his reasoning in the opinion can be used as a framework for judges with similar cases.

If Muhammad appeals his conviction based on the DNA admissibility, a higher court may decide the issue. Such a ruling would be binding in Michigan.

Marietti based his conviction on more than just the DNA testimony.

In support of his guilty verdict, the judge cited some of the major points made by prosecutor Hedges at the trial:

Text messages a few hours before the robbery between Muhammad and a second suspect - uncharged in this case because he was convicted of another holdup of a Grand Rapids-area gas station six days earlier, an easier conviction - making what the judge agreed were barely veiled references to a holdup plan.

A jacket seized from Muhammad's home that matched the one seen on the video.

A police encounter with Muhammmad and the other Shell robbery suspect about 90 minutes earlier near Nunica. The two were in a car that exactly matched the one on the Shell video, stopped not far from another 24-hour gas station, when a police officer spoke with them.

A call from that other suspect's cell phone within an hour of the Shell robbery, using a cell tower a block from the gas station.

Simulations on the gas-station security video that Norton Shores police made with an officer the same height as Muhammad - 6 feet tall - matching the size of the robber seen on the video. The suspected getaway driver is only 5 feet 6 inches tall.

The DNA evidence from the lost shoe.

Pederson, the defense attorney, left the courtroom after the verdict and could not be reached for comment on whether Muhammad will appeal his conviction. However, an appeal is expected.

More and more law-enforcement agencies have recently begun using STRmix to analyze DNA samples in which two or more persons' DNA are mixed. They include the FBI and, very recently, the Michigan State Police crime lab.

"This is exploding all over the country," prosecutor Hedges said of STRmix.

"I think it's going to be very valuable for both sides, defense as well as prosecutors. It's a good tool for anybody that's innocent, too," Hedges said. "DNA that was indecipherable before can now be used."

John S. Hausman is a reporter for MLive. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter.
MUSKEGON, MI - Craft beer fans shouldn't be surprised if they see a can adorned by smiling oatmeal cream pie on shelves next week.

The "traditional-but-goofy" can is filled with Oatmeal Creme Pie, or O.C. P., the first beer from Muskegon's Pigeon Hill Brewing Company to be served in a can.

Michael Brower, one of the brewery's co-founders, said the beer could be available as soon as next Tuesday, March 22. It will be on shelves locally in Muskegon and Grand Rapids and as far away as Lansing, St. Joseph and Manistee, and that's just the beginning.

Eventually, depending on production and distribution, he hopes that cans will be available throughout the state as far away as Detroit and Traverse City.

"O.C.P is our top seller in a lot of the markets," Brower said. "Walter Blonde Ale does really well here in Muskegon and we certainly we want to see that in cans, but we're trying to capture the outside of Muskegon market and bring them in here. We want them visiting Muskegon."

Pigeon Hill is taking it slow with the canning process which took place for the first time on Tuesday. Because the brewery doesn't yet have its own canning line, it worked with an outside company, Michigan Mobile Canning, to package the first batch.

For now, the plan is to can beer a couple times a month. So far, 611 cases have been prepared for distribution. Pigeon Hill is working with Tyler Sales locally, Alliance Beverage for greater West Michigan and Imperial Beverage for the rest of the state.

The can itself is a mobile billboard for Muskegon. Phrases like "Muskegon's own" and "brewed in beautiful Muskegon" accompany the smiling pastry. The can is an original design by Brower with some help from RCP. He said its traditional look fits the branding of the company.

"The trend recently has been far out, crazy colorful artwork," he said. "Which, don't get me wrong, I love, but to me traditional stands out even more these days because of that. We strive for that classic look but we also want to be a little bit goofy."

O.C.P. is the only Pigeon Hill beer that will be canned for the time being, but Brower hopes all the core brands will be in cans eventually. Walter Blonde Ale and Shifting Sands IPA are the two most likely to be canned next, he said.

Fans of the beer will have their first chance to get a can at 4 p.m. today, March 18 as part of the brewery's second anniversary bash, but they are expected to go fast. Live music and special beers like Your Mom on French Toast, Feisty Latina Mexican Stout and Sour Blonde Ale will be available throughout the celebration on Friday and Saturday.

Pigeon Hill will also offer tours of its production facility in downtown Muskegon throughout the weekend on a first-come, first-served basis.

We're just trying to get people acquainted with this side of things because now it's a production facility," Brower said.

As for the specific locations where the beer will be available, that's mostly up to the distributors.

"Ask your favorite beer store," he said.

Brandon Champion is a journalist for MLive.com. Email him at bchampio@mlive.com and follow him Facebook and Twitter.
MUSKEGON, MI - Easter egg hunt season is upon us.

There is no shortage of options in the Muskegon-area. Here is a look at some of them.

NOTE: We strive to include all events, but inevitably, something could be left out. If there is something we missed, please feel free to add the information in the comments below.

The Lakes Mall in Fruitport Township will host the Easter Bunny from March 12 to March 26. Children of all ages are invited to visit the bunny Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

On March 19 (at the Easter/Bunny Photo Set) the Lakes Mall will be handing out free goodie bags to shoppers. Goodie bags will contain coupons, special offers, stickers, bounce backs, swag items, and product information. They will be handed out to the first 200 shoppers at the Bunny Set (no purchase necessary).

Walker Memorial Library, 1522 Ruddiman Drive in North Muskegon, is hosting its annual Easter Egg Drop at 1 p.m. on March 19. The Easter Bunny, with the assistance of the North Muskegon Fire Department and Northside Lions, will drop approximately 5,000 candy-filled eggs for children ages 12 and younger. Age groups are 0-4, 8-10 and 10 and up and the younger children will start first.

There will also be activities, prizes, snacks and games in the Community Center. In case of stormy weather, the event will be moved to March 26 at 11 a.m. For more information, call 231-744-6080.

First Presbyterian Church, 2577 Wickham Drive, in Muskegon is hosting an Easter egg hunt for children 10 and under from 2-4 p.m. on March 19. Guests can also decorate an Easter egg cookie and make a bag to collect their eggs. For more information, call 231-730-0887.

Hackley Public Library, 316 W. Webster Ave., in Muskegon is hosting an Easter egg painting event from 2-4 p.m. on March 26. Participants need to bring their own hard-boiled eggs but painting and decorating supplies are available. The event is free and open to the public.

Pigeon Hill Brewing Company, 500 W. Western Ave., Muskegon will host its third annual Easter egg hunt from 11:30 a.m. to noon on March 26. The brewery is partnering up with TopShelf to turn the upper floor of the Noble Building into an Easter egg hunting ground.



Free pink lemonade will be available for kids during the hunt and once all the eggs are found, pints (for the big kids) will be available. Coloring supplies will be available for the kids.

Village Green, 321 S. Hancock St., in Pentwater is hosting its annual Easter on the Green event from noon-1 p.m. on March 26. Families are invited to meet the Easter Bunny, participate in an Easter egg hunt and Easter bonnet parade and contest and play musical chairs. Face painting and games will also be available.

Ludington Area Jaycees will host their annual Easter Egg Hunt at Peter Copeyon Park on South Washington Avenue in Ludington at 1 p.m. on March 26. Kids age 13 and under will hunt in three age divisions: 4 and under, 5-9 years old, and 10-13 years old. More than 4,000 eggs with one "golden ticket" egg in each division good for an Easter basket.

Our Savior Lutheran Church, 765 US 10, in Scottville will host an Easter Party at 1 p.m. on March 26. The event includes an egg hunt, photo booth and lunch.

VFW Gold Bar Post 5096, 2022 State Street in Custer will host an Easter egg hunt from 2-4 p.m. on March 26. Children ages 1-12 are invited to participate.

Oceana County Fairgrounds, 1025 S. State St. Hart will host an Easter egg hunt at 2 p.m. on March 26. Hosted by the Silver Lake Area Sand Dunes Chamber of Commerce the event features activities, prizes and more.

Central Park in Spring Lake will host an Easter egg hunt at 10 a.m. on March 26.

Central Park in downtown Grand Haven is hosting an Easter egg hunt at 11 a.m. on March 26.

Brandon Champion is a journalist for MLive.com. Email him at bchampio@mlive.com and follow him Facebook and Twitter.
MIDLAND, MI -- The attorney for Michael T. McIntyre, the man accused of murder in a 1991 Midland County cold case, has requested a competency hearing for his client.

McIntyre is accused in the Aug. 7, 1991, fatal beating of Diane Ross, the mother of his girlfriend at the time, in Midland County's Lee Township.

A probable cause status conference took place in Judge Stephen Carras' chambers Friday, March 18, and an order for competency was signed, according to court staff. McIntyre suffered a stroke in January.

Ross, 43, died from "massive blunt force trauma injuries" she suffered at the hands of a masked assailant early Aug. 7, 1991, inside her home on North 11 Mile in Lee Township, Midland County Sheriff Scott Stephenson said. McIntyre, one of several initial suspects in the homicide, now is charged with first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder, charges that carry mandatory penalties of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Midland County sheriff's detectives in 2012 took up the investigation of the homicide and collaborated with the Michigan State Police, the FBI and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's cold case team. Midland County Prosecutor J. Dee Brooks issued charges against McIntyre, 51, who most recently was living in Oakland County.

"It does provide some measure of satisfaction after all these years that we are able to bring justice to Diane Ross and to her family and to hold who we believe to be the appropriate party responsible for their actions," Brooks said earlier this month.

Michael Fountain, Ross' grandson and Timmons' son, was 5 years old and witnessed the homicide, Midland County Sheriff Scott Stephenson said. The sheriff said Fountain ran to a relative's home to get help for his grandmother, but she never regained consciousness and died.

McIntyre's next court date, a status conference, is set for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, May 25, but that could change if the competency hearing report comes back sooner, court staff said.

Heather Jordan is a reporter for MLive. She can be reached at 989-450-2652 or hjordan@mlive.com. For more news, follow her on Twitter.
Liz Kobylak .jpg

Liz Kobylak

(Courtesy)

KOCHVILLE, MI -- Learn about hearing devices at the next meeting of the Mid-Michigan Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America, 7 p.m. Monday, March 28, in Room 129 of Curtiss Hall on the campus of Saginaw Valley State University, 7400 Bay Road.

Guest speaker Liz Kobylak is a trained hearing-loss support specialist, volunteer hearing technology resource specialist, and president of the Michigan State Association of the HLAA. She is to demonstrate hearing assistive technology devices.

The meeting is open to people with hearing loss or deafness, their family and hearing-loss professionals.

For more information, visit www.hearingloss-mi.org.
Tuscola car

Police are searching for a dark blue colored four-door Ford passenger vehicle.

(Bob Johnson | MLive.com)

KINGSTON, MI -- At approximately 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 16, Tuscola County Sheriff deputies responded to a business alarm at Kingston Iron and Metal, located at 4549 Sanilac Road, Kingston.

Deputies said an unknown person broke out the front window of the business causing the alarm to activate.

The person then fled in a dark blue, four-door Ford passenger vehicle.

Officers are attempting to identify the vehicle/owner and subject/subjects involved.

Police encourage anyone with information to contact Detective Sgt. Robert Baxter by email at rbaxter@tuscolacounty.org or by calling 989-673-8161 ext 2234.

Those who wish to remain anonymous can use the crime tip reporting site located on the tuscolacounty.org webpage.

Bob Johnson is a reporter for MLive/The Saginaw News. Contact him at 989-395-3295, by email at bob_johnson@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
SAGINAW, MI -- A Saginaw man likely is headed to prison for a May shots-fired incident on the city's northeast side.

Douglas W. Agee Jr.

Douglas W. Agee Jr. appeared before Saginaw County Circuit Judge Darnell Jackson on Tuesday, March 15, and pleaded no contest to two felonies.

Agee, 21, pleaded to felonious assault, or assault with a dangerous weapon, and resisting and obstructing a police officer for a May 17 incident near Casimir and Norman.

In exchange for the plea, prosecutors will drop a charge of assault with intent to murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison with the possibility of parole, and five firearm offenses.

After a Cobbs hearing, during which a judge considers such factors as the facts of a case and the defendant's criminal history, Jackson indicated the minimum sentence he would hand down would not exceed two years.

The judge then will set the maximum; felonious assault carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison, but Agee's third-time habitual offender doubles that to eight years.

Prosecutors said witness issues led to the offering of the plea agreement. Agee accepted the deal on the day he was scheduled to go to trial before Jackson.

Prosecutors also had witness issues at Agee's preliminary hearing, as authorities believe the victim in the case, Romeo Mathis, moved out of town.

Saginaw Police Officer Nathan Voelker testified at that hearing that he spoke with Mathis about a minute after the incident. Voelker responded to the area after Mathis' girlfriend called 911 after 11 a.m. reporting Agee had just shot at Mathis "in broad daylight." Mathis' girlfriend said Agee was "trying to kill my boyfriend, but he missed him."

Voelker testified he was about three blocks from where the incident occurred. As Voelker drove in the area, Mathis flagged him down within 30 seconds to a minute after the 911 call and said, "He tried to kill me," but did not say who "he" was, Voelker testified.

Voelker said Mathis told him Agee shot at him from the driveway of a home on Geneva Court, which is off Casimir.

Mathis told Voelker that Agee was sitting on top of a gray Pontiac G6 with two other men in the near vicinity when Agee pointed a handgun at him and fired twice as Mathis ran away, Voelker testified. Agee then ran inside the residence on Geneva Court, Voelker said Mathis told him.

The officer said Mathis told him he and Agee had been exchanging text messages that included Agee threatening to kill him. Voelker testified Mathis told him he was mad at Agee because Agee stole children's clothing from him, while Agee later told the officer, as he did at his first arraignment, that Mathis was trying to get Agee in trouble because Agee had done the same days earlier regarding a domestic violence incident between Mathis and Agee's cousin.

Artheriah D. Adams

After obtaining the brief statement from Mathis, Voelker and other officers went to the residence on Geneva that Mathis pointed to. Voelker and Sgt. Jeff Madaj went to the front door and spoke with Agee's child's mother, Arteriah D. Adams, who would not allow the officers inside and said she had not seen Agee in days and did not hear any gunshots, Madaj testified.

Madaj said he did not believe Adams about whether she heard gunshots because the windows in the house were open and that she said she had been in the living room. Madaj testified a corner of the living room was about one foot from where Officer Jeremy Holden found multiple spent shell casings.

Based on Mathis' statement, Holden finding the shell casings, and neighbors' statements about hearing the gunshots, the officers determined they had enough probable cause to obtain a search warrant, Voelker said. The officers then entered the home, Voelker said.

Madaj said he and Voelker were in the basement of the home when Madaj saw brown skin from underneath a pile of clothes near the washer and dryer. The officers yelled that they knew the individual was under the clothes and ordered him to show himself, they testified. Agee emerged and the officers arrested him without incident, they said. He was wearing dark-colored shorts and was not wearing a shirt, just as Mathis had described him, Voelker said.

As officers conducted a search warrant at the home, Adams was outside speaking with people who had gathered outside. She spoke with Voelker multiple times and at one point admitted to hearing the gunshots, Voelker said.

Prosecutors charged Adams with acting as an accessory after the fact, which carries a five-year maximum penalty. Adams, who also was set for trial Tuesday, pleaded guilty to an added count of resisting and obstructing a police officer, which carries a two-year maximum penalty.

Prosecutors will recommend that Jackson sentence Adams under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, which would seal Adams' record.

Jackson is scheduled to sentence Agee, who remains jailed, on April 14, and Adams, who remains free, on April 21.

-- Andy Hoag covers courts for MLive/The Saginaw News. Email him at ahoag@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter @awhoag
Buena Vista High School and Webber middle and elementary

Andrew Whitaker | MLive.com Buena Vista High School at 3945 East Holland, Saginaw, MI, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015.

(Andrew Whitaker)

SAGINAW, MI -- Saginaw Board of Education members have rejected a counter-offer of $1.8 million from Pansophic Learning for the purchase of the former Buena Vista High School.

The offer was reviewed by the board during its action meeting on Wednesday, March 16.

The school board approved a recommendation to accept a $5.025 million offer by Pansophic in February 2015 to purchase the building. The deal fell through when Pansophic, which is listed as an international educational company that runs charter schools, backed out of the deal.

Pansophic this year showed interest in the building again, offering a little more than $1 million. School board members rejected the offer and countered with $4.8 million.

The offer was rejected by Pansophic who in turn offered $1.8 million. The district voted to reject the offer 6-1.

Bob Johnson is a reporter for MLive/The Saginaw News. Contact him at 989-395-3295, by email at bob_johnson@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Whiston Photo.jpg

Brian Whiston

(MLive )

SAGINAW, MI -- Four months ago, Mary Kerwin of the Michigan Association of School Boards began facilitating workshops with Saginaw school board members.

The workshops were intended to help the troubled board develop goals, practice good governance and create a partnership between the MASB and the school board.

On Wednesday, March 16, though, there was tension in the air as the school board heard from the state's superintendent about his view of the relationship between the school district and the state.

State Superintendent Brian Whiston spoke by telephone with the Saginaw school board, urging them to adhere to a partnership with the Michigan Association of School Boards. He hinted there were consequences to not taking action.

Whiston said there are currently two models for running a school board.

"There's the role that I'm trying to create, which is a partnership role, which is what we did with you in Saginaw," Whiston said.

The other model is to appoint a state chief CEO to run the district and have authority over the board and its superintendent, Whiston said.

He cautioned the Saginaw district that one task the MASB urged the school board to complete was updating board policies to bring them in compliance with current law and investing in a tool that allows transparency online.

The recommendation was to contract for the service at a cost of about $20,000.

The Saginaw school board voted down the move twice: once in the February action meeting and then again in a special meeting a few days later.

Whiston admonished board members on Wednesday in the wake of those votes.

"At some point, I've got to make the determination that this partnership model is working, or not, and share that with the governor," Whiston said.

Trustee Herbert Herd, who voted against the recommendations twice last month, said he doesn't feel like there is much of a partnership when one party is issuing directives.

"Do we go along without doing our own research or do we just go along with what they tell us to do?" Herd asked.

Vice President Mattie Thompson said she only voted against the recommendations because the contract she had seen was expired.

Board Treasurer Ruth Ann Knapp encouraged board members to consider the recommendations.

"It appears from what you have said that we have been given a directive," Knapp told Whiston, adding that Buena Vista Township School District was also given a directive that they did not follow and are now dissolved.

President Alexis Thomas said that she has always been in support of recommendations from the MASB.

"Because they are recommendations that will help strengthen our governance role," Thomas said. "We are not being asked to do anything that we should not have already done in the first place."

Whiston also reminded the board what their job was.

"The role of the board is to adopt policy, operate through that policy, hire a superintendent, set goals for the district in line with the superintendent to raise team achievement and step back and let the superintendent run the district," Whiston said.

Saginaw school board members began workshops facilitated by MASB officials in November. The workshops were recommended by the Michigan Department of Education.

Whiston said his model involves having the MASB work with the Saginaw school board, and Michigan Association of School Administrators, Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators and Michigan Department of Education to work with the superintendent.

Whiston said he hopes that a partnership model in Saginaw can demonstrate that it is the right direction for the state.

If it doesn't work, Whitson said, "I have no choice but to go to the governor and say that my partnership model didn't work, therefore he needs to look at other options."

The partnership model that involved MASB-run workshops with Saginaw school board members was supposed to last up to six months and currently they are in month four.

"We are having this conversation to see if things are going to continue this way, or if we see improvements, or if I need to go to the governor and say I tried and it's not working," Whiston said. "Or do we believe we can come up with a workable agreement moving forward to get some changes we need to see."

Bob Johnson is a reporter for MLive/The Saginaw News. Contact him at 989-395-3295, by email at bob_johnson@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Transparency is a crucial component of leadership in any line of work, but it's particularly critical in government.



In running the state of Michigan like a business, it might be easy to overlook the importance of transparency to the public, but that would clearly be a mistake. The free flow of information from a government to its people is a cornerstone of democracy.



Government operating under cover of darkness is bad for business -- bureaucratic or otherwise. The practice prevents citizens from learning how their government functions and breeds mistrust, mistakes and opportunity for misconduct.



Michigan's Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1976 to provide a mechanism for anyone to request the release of government-related information. The law, a landmark win for democracy, solidified the public's right of access to all kinds of files.



Sadly, inadequacies in the law have allowed two major branches of our government to go unchecked for far too long, and have contributed to Michigan ranking dead last for transparency in a scorecard from the Center for Public Integrity. Among other weaknesses, the law notoriously carries exemptions for the governor's office and the Legislature.

Most recently, the crisis in Flint illustrates the need for Michigan to abolish these FOIA exemptions, and we've called for that repeatedly.

Gov. Rick Snyder's office recently voluntarily released another set of emails related to the crisis, but a good number of them contained black lines and redacted pages, beyond what would be allowed if the governor were subject to FOIA. Further aggravating the situation, staff members attempted to skirt the law by preemptively writing in their emails that the content was not subject to FOIA.



Michigan has to do better.



In search of answers for how responsive Michigan government is to the public, we conducted an audit of how Michigan departments adhere to the Freedom of Information Act, and found many inconsistencies in their responses and how FOIA was applied. We asked for each state department head's travel expenses paid by the state for the year 2015.



We did this as part of Sunshine Week, an annual national initiative that "seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger."



In conducting this audit, we found most departments followed the letter of the law, but a few didn't respond within the specified timeline.

Overall, we had no serious grievances with the way each department responded to our request, with one notable exception.



Gov. Rick Snyder's office cited the governor's office exemption to FOIA in its response to MLive.com, and didn't provide all the information requested.



As shown in the case of the governor's Flint water emails, the FOIA exemption for the governor's office allows the state to pick and choose what information it will release. It gives the governor's office and state Legislature the ability to withhold information that other public offices must provide under the law.



It is long past time for Michigan to abolish these needless exemptions and cut down on the secrecy.



FOIA is a vital tool for journalists seeking to shed light on government operations, especially when bureaucrats are trying to keep the information in the dark. However, FOIA doesn't just benefit reporters - it's for anyone looking to see how their government functions (or fails to function).



The governor and Legislature need to act soon in favor of helping citizens become better informed. Reform Michigan's Freedom of Information Act, and let the sun shine in.

This is the opinion of the editorial board of MLive Media Group, the parent company of MLive.com. The board is made up of the company's executive leadership and the news leaders who oversee the 10 local markets that make up MLive Media Group.
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(MLive.com file photo)

Michigan's Freedom of Information Act is a crucial tool for journalists seeking documents -- but it's not just for the news media. Michigan's FOIA provides a mechanism for any citizen in search of information on how their government is operating.



This week we celebrate Sunshine Week, dedicated to the public's right to know what its government is doing, and why.



In search of answers for how responsive Michigan government is to the public, we conducted an audit of how Michigan departments adhere to the state's Freedom of Information Act, and found many inconsistencies in their responses and how FOIA was applied.

We sent Freedom of Information Act requests to each Michigan department, asking for the department director's travel expenses paid by the state for the year 2015. We also made the same request for Gov. Rick Snyder's expenses, even though the law carries a glaring exemption for the governor's office.

In conducting this audit, we discovered there is no clearinghouse for information requests in Michigan. Each department has its own system within the guidelines of the law, and it may be difficult to find if you don't know where to look.



Overall, we had no serious grievances with the way each department responded to our request, with one exception: Snyder's office cited the governor's office exemption to FOIA in its response. MLive Media Group has called for the state to eliminate this needless exemption, and we repeat this call today.



Instead of providing what we requested -- "copies of receipts, reimbursements and/or any other records of travel expenses" for Snyder -- his office gave us a blanket figure with no explanation.



"As you know, the Governor's office is exempt from FOIA. However, we are providing this information pursuant to your request," his spokesman wrote in an email. "Travel expenses paid by the state of Michigan for Gov. Rick Snyder during the calendar year 2015 totaled $53,498. (rounded up)."



Here are 6 other key findings:



1. Only a few departments list their FOIA coordinator on the website, rather than a generic email address. Those are: Corrections, Education and Transportation. Having a name helps a requester to know who to turn to with questions.



2. Most departments followed the letter of the law, but two -- the Department of Civil Rights and the Department of Health and Human Services -- didn't respond within the timeframe specified by law after requests made to their generic FOIA email addresses. After follow-up emails to people in the department, the requests were fulfilled.



3. Every department, except the governor's office because of its FOIA exemption, has a link to the department's FOIA guidelines at the bottom of its website. If you know where to look, this is helpful. If you don't, good luck.



4. Many departments gave us the information for free, while four departments charged us for the time it took to search for and copy the information. Those departments were: Attorney General, Environmental Quality, Insurance and Financial Services and State Police. The charges ranged from about $35 to $70. Of those four, the Department of Insurance and Financial Services gave us the information first, while the others said they would process the request after a deposit on the total. Those three requests are still processing.



5. Public bodies are allowed to request an extension under the law within five business days of receiving the request. Seven departments requested an extension. Those were: Attorney General, Environmental Quality, Insurance and Financial Services, Military and Veterans Affairs, Natural Resources, State Police and Transportation. The rest responded within five business days, with the exception of two departments mentioned above -- Civil Rights, and Health and Human Services -- and the governor's office.



6. Every department responded electronically except the Michigan State Police, which corresponded via postal service.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jimmy Howard made 27 saves and the Detroit Red Wings got goals from Luke Glendening, Henrik Zetterberg and Darren Helm Thursday in a 3-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena.

The Red Wings bucked a recent trend of starting slowly by outshooting Columbus 9-5 in the first period, when Glendening's goal put them ahead 1-0 after the opening 20 minutes, the first time this month they've led heading to the second period.

The victory also snapped a two-game losing streak and moved Detroit (35-25-11) one point ahead of Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

You can watch highlights below.

-- Follow MLive Sports on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

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-- Follow Ansar Khan and Brendan Savage on Twitter
Reports from parliament yesterday morning revealed that President-elect U Htin Kyaws government hopes to slash the number of ministries in a shake-up that would create two mega-economic ministries and do away with the controversial Ministry of Mines.





The proposal, aimed primarily at cutting costs to reduce the budget deficit, was submitted yesterday morning to a session of the Union parliament and is to be debated today.

On the economic front, it suggests assimilating Planning and Finance into a single entity, while the Ministry of Transportation and Communication would combine three existing ministries.

Permanent secretary for the Ministry of Finance U Maung Maung Win said yesterday that he is waiting until next week to receive more information about the restructuring and the name of the new minister.

The functions of both ministries are very big, so obviously the combined office would be huge, with many departments and a large number of staff, he said.

I think for now all departments will carry out procedures as before.

There are 11 departments and state-owned financial institutions with a total of over 20,000 staff under the Ministry of Finance, while the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development (MNPED) has six departments.





Ministry spokespeople said these numbers will change this coming April, as the departments are likely to be reorganised.

Either way, we had already planned to extend our capacity and restructure the ministry, U Maung Maung Win said.

If the planning and finance ministries do merge, it will not be for the first time.

In March 1972 the two were joined to form the Ministry of Planning and Finance, before being separated again in 1993 by the State Law and Order Restoration Council, more commonly known by its acronym SLORC.

U Maung Maung Soe, a member of the NLDs economic committee, said the MNPED should not be a stand-

alone ministry, as it mostly focuses on collecting data. It also includes the Directorate of Information and Company Administration.

Another NLD official said the current finance minister, U Win Shein, may be reappointed to the same position, though others dismissed this as a rumour.

U Soe Thein, former deputy director general at the Ministry of Finance, said there were 17 or 18 ministries in total when he started work in 1970. Since the 1990s the number has ballooned to more than 30, he said.

The ministries were inflated during these years, as the former government wanted to give power to their people [senior officials with military backgrounds], he said.

Therefore, I welcome this reduction and the mergers. It is also positive for the budget allocation, even if each individual ministry will become bigger, he said, adding that the role of the MNPED will probably shrink.

Another major change would see the ministry primarily responsible for mobile communications policy combined with two others in charge of more traditional infrastructure  planes and trains.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Rail Transportation are likely to become the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

At the Ministry of Transportation yesterday details about the planned merger were thin on the ground.

We dont know exactly about the detailed plan for the combination of the three ministries, said official U Win Khant. I think they want to [increase] efficiency and facilitation for the transportation sector.

The merger would be a return to a pairing first made in 1972 when the Ministry of Waterways and Civil Aviation and the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications were combined, according to a history on the Ministry of Rail Transportations website.

The combination didnt represent a natural fit, said one industry observer who preferred not to be named, adding that the tie-up could result in benefits.

The reason the MCIT has worked well is that [its had] capable ministers and deputy ministers, one or two excellent officials, good focused World Bank support  and minimal competition from other donors. If the new [ministry] has a combination of these factors, it should be good, too, the observer said.

If [the merger] leads to bringing in international-style tendering standards and planning for big transport infrastructure projects, [it] will be a good thing.

Meanwhile, another industry observer said the merger makes sense as it will allow [for the] focus on more efficient land use and territory planning. The three industries share a same goal: to develop infrastructure that will better connect the territories together, either by road, rail, inland water or high-speed internet broadband connections, the observer said.

Moreover, it will allow the development of better inter-modal transport systems that are essential for efficient nationwide logistics; and it might also help in terms of projects financing by combining the high- margin telecom industry with the lower-margin transport or railways industries.

In an unexpected move, the incoming government also announced a Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation which would appear to incorporate the existing Ministry of Mines.

This is a very interesting move. It appears to be sending a signal that natural resources need to be exploited and regulated in a much more safe and sustainable way than previously, said Vicky Bowman, director at the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business.

The Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry (MOECAF), as its name suggests, has traditionally worked on environmental and conservation issues, said U Maung Maung Win, director of the MOECAFs Yangon Region Forestry Department, while the Ministry of Mining has been geared more towards economic development.

But managing natural resources and the environment applied above and below ground, he said, and merging ministries and coordinating their actions could be in Myanmars interests.

From my point of view, this is being done in the interests of the country, he said. In some cases we need to coordinate  if thats best for people and the country.

If the two ministries are merged, experts on mining and environmental conservation could debate the same project under one roof, he added.

If a [mining] project is not good for people and the environment, we can cancel it at once.

U Win Htein, director general of the Department of Mines under the mining ministry, also believes the merger could lead to faster approval for projects.

We [already] have to negotiate with MOECAF to be allowed to use land [for mining], he said. If we are under one ministry, then one minister has to decide and the process will move more quickly.

Administrative challenges could arise from the merger, but it would simply take time for the new ministry to run normally, he added.

It is unclear whether departments in the Ministry of Mining will also be merged, he said, adding that he expects more clarity from April 1. The Ministry of Mines lists seven departments on its website, and the MOECAF six.

Other economic ministries to be merged under yesterdays proposal include the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation with the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Rural Development and the Ministry of Energy, which will incorporate the Ministry of Electric Power.

The ministries of Commerce and Cooperatives are also likely to be combined.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun and Zar Zar Soe
Investment and advisory firm Andaman Capital Partners is working with the Sagaing Region government to find commercial opportunities for solar power, with a view to securing a 450-acre site and generating up to 80 megawatts of electricity.





If the project is approved, it would become the third major foreign investment into solar energy in Myanmar.

Andaman Capital director Kevin Murphy did not disclose how much the company plans to invest, but said on average each megawatt of solar power requires between US$1.5 million and $2 million in investment, which means that an 80MW project would cost between $120 million and $160 million to build.

The regional government has been very supportive and shown initiative in working to create renewable energy development opportunities, he said yesterday.

This is a great first step. The next phase is to coordinate closely with the Union Ministry of Electric Power to confirm that an international standard project can be developed in close coordination with the national energy requirements.

In August 2014, US-based private equity fund ACO Investment Group signed with the ministry to develop two 150MW solar plants near Mandalay at a cost of $480 million. Under the agreement the plants in Mying-

yan and Meiktila were scheduled to come online in 2016.

Thailands Green Earth Power Company signed an agreement with the government several months later in October 2014, to spend $350 million on a 220MW solar power station, on 850 acres near to Minbu in Magwe Region. The project is expected to take three years to complete.





Unlike coal or gas, the output for solar power is variable  meaning a major challenge for all three companies will be ensuring its efficient acceptance by the national grid in a cost-effective way.

On the other hand an obvious benefit of solar and wind farms  beside the environmental factor  is that facilities can be built more quickly than other energy sources such as hydropower.

Renewable energy in Myanmar is in its infancy, though solar power has been introduced on a small scale to many rural communities with dozens of companies, mostly from China, importing solar panels.

The governments energy master plan published earlier this year suggests Myanmars entire energy sector will require between $30 billion and $40 billion in investment over the next 15 to 20 years.

Domestic energy consumption is forecast to almost double to 21.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2030 from 12.2mtoe in 2012, according to the report, which was written with guidance from the National Energy Management Committee.

To meet demand the government aims to develop a mix of energy sources, targeting 33 percent biomass, 22pc oil, 20pc coal, 13pc gas, 11pc hydro and 1pc renewable energy by 2030.

By this time, according to projections made in the plan, Myanmar will have a population of 73.7 million and gross domestic product of $187.9 billion.
The agriculture ministry has advised farmers in Mandalay to plant summer paddy only in areas that are guaranteed a water supply and to cooperate in preparation for the weather patterns generated by the 2015-16 El Nino.





Farmers in Mandalay Region have been advised to plant summer paddy only in areas with a reliable supply of water, according to the regional agriculture department.

We have arranged for summer paddy only to be planted where water can be guaranteed from dams and lakes, because we guess the El Nino will bring unusual weather this year, said department director U Myint Oo.

Farmers have been asked to plant strains of short-term paddy that can be harvested in 90 days, such as shwe thwel yin and pearl thwel, instead of planting their usual seed paddy.

We have arranged to plant short-term paddies. When farmers sow them they will do it collectively instead of sowing in different places. If they coordinate they will have enough water, said U Myint Oo.

El Nino is characterised by a warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, an effect that occurs about once every four to seven years and causes adverse weather patterns globally.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on March 9 that the 2015-16 El Nino has passed its peak.

It is expected to weaken in the coming months and fade away during the second quarter of 2016, the OCHA said, though will continue to influence temperature and precipitation patterns causing weather and climate extreme events in different parts of the world, affecting health, water supply and food security, for as long as two years.





Hot and dry conditions are likely, leading to water shortages and health-related problems  particularly in Mandalay, Magwe and Sagaing regions which are known as Myanmars dry zone and receive little rain even in normal conditions.

To lower the risk of water evaporating from the soil, farmers have been told to use more natural fertiliser than usual, said U Myint Oo. When you use natural fertiliser, it compacts the soil, he said.

In areas where water is scarce, farmers have been advised to plant summer sesame and green bean, he added, which require less water.

Last year, farmers in Mandalay Region grew around 99,000 acres of summer paddy, 80,000 acres of summer sesame and 800 acres of green bean. This year, the ministry has advised farmers to grow 78,787 acres of summer paddy, 60,408 acres of summer sesame and 16,100 acres of green bean.

We have calculated how much water will be available and have arranged to plant crops according to where the water sources are, said U Myint Oo.

The Mandalay Region government formed a supervisory group for water supplies in January, and Chief Minister U Ye Myint has said local authorities have a K300 million emergency fund to be used in the case of natural disaster.

Farmer U Soe Hlaing from Ngwe Taung village in Patheingyi township said he had not made special arrangements in anticipation of the effects of El Nino. But this year I will reduce the number of acres that I plant in, he said.

I have arranged things so that my losses are recoverable if the weather gets worse.

If the area is hit hard by high temperatures and drought, the main challenge facing farmers will be sourcing enough water, he said.

Translation by San Lay
In a major blow to Bagans limbo hotels, the city has decided that within 10 years all hotels will have to move to a special zone.





The decision will particularly hit the owners of 42 hotels, inns and guesthouses, some of them still under construction, that have been anxiously awaiting a decision on their status.

All Bagan hotels will have to relocate to a specially designated hotel zone 4, located beside the Bagan-Kyaukpadaung road, after 10 years, said Sai Kyaw Ohn, deputy minister of hotels and tourism and a member of the Heritage Management Committee.

Thats enough time for them to recover their investment, though some may lose out. But we cant allow hotels in the Bagan heritage zone, he said, adding that the decision had been accepted by the current government.

The committee is chaired by Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Ko Ko. Its March 4 decision confirmed the ban on the construction of the 42 hotels provisionally handed down two years ago.

We are planning to implement another hotel zone for Bagan further out from the city, but we will not designate it yet so as to avoid an impact on land prices, said Sai Kyaw Ohn.

Despite a 1998 law restricting construction, many hotels, motels and guesthouses sprang up in Bagan before 2012 with the permission of the Department of Archaeology and National Museum. In 2014, the department sought UNESCO designation of Bagan as a World Heritage Site, and reinstated the ban on properties deemed too close to the ancient pagodas.





They banned hotel construction in 2014 to get on the UNESCO list, but as late as 2013 they were still allowing building, with some restrictions of height and distance. If we had known they would impose the ban, we would never have applied to build here, said hotelier U Kyaw Tint, owner of one of the 42 inns. Now theyre acting as if we broke the law, even though we acted openly, and with official permission.

Another hotel owner also bemoaned the retroactive application of the law. We hoped at least we would be allowed to recover our investment, he said.

He added that seven hotels had been granted permission to build by Culture Minister U Aye Myint Kyu.

Nyaung-U district administrator U Tin Htoo Maung told The Myanmar Times that in 2013 the Department of Archaeology permitted the construction of hotels within certain limitations, but the following year did an about face.

We cant say that all these hotels were built without permission. The source of the problem seems to be the archaeology department, he said. The law should be respected, but there is room for a decision that would take into account the needs of tourism.

An archaeology department official contacted by The Myanmar Times said they did not plan to offer a respite to the 42 limbo hotels, and thought the incoming government would support their position.

We did withdraw permission in the 2014 release, but construction had already been banned in the zone because of the original 1998 law. We have no plan to compensate hoteliers for their loss, he said.

However, it seems nothing will happen suddenly, and the situation remains complex.

Though premises that lack a licence will be removed, the department will then inspect the remaining hotels on a case-by-case basis to find out why they were granted permission to operate.

Bagan Hoteliers Association chair U Zaw Weik said it was hard to assess the impact of the heritage committees decision because the details had not been given to the hotels concerned.

Its not confirmed yet. They cant take sudden action without inconveniencing tourists and alienating public opinion, he said.

However, one Bagan hotelier expressed support for zoning hotels to protect the citys ancient heritage, and its booming tourist trade, especially if it helps secure the UNESCO listing.

The issue is not just hoteliers income, its also the conservation of national heritage. We have to think about the long term, he said. This move may disadvantage hoteliers, but it will benefit the country.

Travel expert Daw Sabei Aung said Bagan residents should be consulted. Referring to the confusion of the conflicting official directives, she added, How do we know this wont happen again?
It's official  the El Nino weather effect in the Pacific Ocean could be one of the strongest on record, comparable in power to those of 1997-98, meteorologists say. Though ocean surface temperatures have fallen, and the El Nino will probably start weakening next month, its effects will linger for months to come, they warn.





In Myanmar, the impact will likely include higher than normal temperatures, droughts and flooding, and strong cyclones that could start as soon as next month.

Last month the World Meteorological Organisation said the powerful 2015-16 El Nino had already passed its peak, but remained strong and would continue to influence global climate.

As typically happens, the El Nino reached its peak during November and December, and has since declined by about half a degree.

We have just witnessed one of the most powerful ever El Nino events, which caused extreme weather in countries on all continents and helped fuel record global heat in 2015, said WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas. In meteorological terms, this El Nino is now in decline. But we cannot lower our guard as it is still quite strong and in humanitarian and economic terms, its impacts will continue for many months to come.

The Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology warned that high temperatures would afflict many areas of the country from March through May. Director U Kyaw Lwin Oo said the formation of cumulonimbus cloud because of high temperatures could lead to extreme conditions.

Torrential rain, thunderstorms and strong winds can occur in isolated areas because of cumulonimbus cloud formation. Temperatures have been rising in central Myanmar since March 6-7 and Chauk, Magwe Region, was the hottest place in the country on March 9, at 41.6C, he said. On March 15, the temperature at Chauk rose to 42.7C.





Strong cyclones could occur in the pre-monsoon period, April and May, U Kyaw Lwin Oo added.

A less severe El Nino in 2009-10 brought record high temperatures in 20 weather stations across the country, along with severe heat, water shortages and heat-stroke cases. The mercury reached a peak in Myinmu, Sagaing, at 47.2C in 2010. In Shan State, Inle Lake lost more than 13 square miles of its 40-sq-mi area due to evaporation.

The 1997-98 counterpart broke 104-year-old rainfall records in the US and caused air temperature jumps 15 degrees above average in some places.

That doesnt necessarily mean the effects of the current El Nino will be the same. By redistributing warm ocean water and changing air pressure, an El Nino shifts wind and storm patterns. Countries relying on season-dependent industries like fishing and agriculture are particularly vulnerable.

The DMH has already advised the government on special measures to be taken in respect of water conservation, health, agriculture, fisheries, transportation, tourism and energy.

The department said temperatures would be higher than average over the next three months throughout the whole country, especially in Rakhine, Mon and Kayin states, and Magwe, Bago, Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Tanintharyi regions.

Kayin and Mon states and Bago, Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Tanintharyi regions also have a high probability of receiving less rain than normal. Nay Pyi Taw, Shan State (south and east), Kayah and Rakhine states, and Mandalay and Magwe regions also face a strong likelihood of less rain.

Ayeyarwady has already been feeling the pinch, requiring rations of bottled water to be shipped in to some villages.

Central Myanmar and the delta will mainly suffer drought, said U Kyaw Lwin Oo.

However, Kachin and Chin states and upper Sagaing Region are forecast to receive more than their average rainfall over the next three months.
Who"s afraid of El Nino? Not Magwe Region, officials insist. In arguably Myanmars hottest region, where temperatures are known to soar above 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), local authorities say they have taken measures down to the district, township and even village level to meet the threat posed by the powerful weather phenomenon, which meteorologists say could bring both drought and flooding. The question is whether anyone will follow them.





April and May will be the crucial time, bringing unusually high temperatures, according to forecasts, and Magwe Region will feel it as much as any other place in the country.

Magwe township administrator U Saw Tun Oo says officials have been preparing since March 4 to ensure that its 68,000 households and 280,000 people are ready for anything from forest fires to heatstroke.

He said LED displays were being set up at four locations to provide temperature readings, and leaflets had been distributed throughout the township explaining the risks to residents, down to the village level, via local administration offices, schools, clinics and the police.

The pamphlets contain health information and numbers to call if there is a lack of drinking water. They also provide the symptoms and first aid for heatstroke, and tips on avoiding fire hazards.

Some may have difficulty following the advice, however.

If we stop work because of high temperatures, then we dont eat, said casual labourer U Thaung Hlaing, who lives in Chanmyae Tharyar quarter.

All his family are day workers, busy on construction sites or the docks from 7am till nightfall. Obeying directives from the Ministry of Health is a luxury they cannot afford, he said. We have our livelihood to think of, he said.





Construction worker U Htin Linn said, Were used to the heat.

Nor can some families comply with advice from the township General Administration Department to avoid bathing in the Ayeyarwady River from 10am to 5pm, they say.

For now, the temperatures are merely hot and not dangerous. As of March 15, the highest temperature recorded in Magwe Region is 41.6 Celsius (107 Fahrenheit). So far, the ministry says, nobody has checked into hospital suffering from heat exhaustion or sunstroke.

But things will only get hotter over the next two months.

During the last El Nino phenomenon, in 2010, 15 people were taken to hospital and 11 died of heat-related ailments, say the authorities.

In villages throughout the region, heat protection camps are being set up, and monasteries are preparing to take in old people and children to shelter within their walls.

Even those who follow the government-issued precautions could face challenges staying healthy.

The authorities say that 142 villages in Magwe Region are likely to suffer water shortages. In Magwe township, the township administration office is making arrangements to deliver 33,000 gallons a day to six affected villages.

Rural residents say that providing water for cattle is just as important.

Even if the township delivers water, we have to make separate arrangements for the cattle. Theyre like family, and their health is essential for us, said farmer U Hla Moe of Aung Myay Kone village.

To ensure their cattle have enough water, some shift their homes to the banks of Ayeyarwady River during the hottest months.

Translation by San Lay and Khine Thazin Han
Politicians and activists of minority groups have broadly welcomed the president-elects proposal to establish an ethnic affairs ministry which they said must play a key role in negotiating peace and the division of powers under a new federal system.





But as U Aye Maung, chair of the Arakan National Party, and others pointed out to The Myanmar Times, formation of the new ministry was a legal requirement under the 2015 Ethnic Nationalities Protection law.

U Thein Seins government didnt have enough time to set up that ministry. The ministry has not been formed because the [National League for Democracy] became the government. It was necessitated by law, he said. Its broad remit would extend from handling the peace process to developing ethnic literature, he added.

Legal requirement or not, U Htun Htun Hein, spokesperson for the NLD ethnic affairs committee, said the ministry was needed to discuss federalism and deal with ethnic armed groups in the peace process.

Our NLD party holds strongly to the goal of national reconciliation and serving the people according to their wishes. That means the ministry must focus on the ceasefire and peace process, Daw Khin San Hlaing, a lower house NLD MP, added.

Fighting in Shan and Rakhine states has increased since the signing last October of the nationwide ceasefire agreement that only a minority of conflict parties accepted.

The NLD says it wants to bring other armed groups into the ceasefire agreement which lays out a road-map for negotiations toward a new democratic federal Union. Nonetheless ethnic minorities fear that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi holds views on the need for a strong centralised state that may not differ much from those of the military establishment.





U Khaing Thu Kha, spokesperson of the Arakan Army, which the Tatmadaw has pledged to eliminate, said the new minister would have to deal urgently with the lack of trust between ethnic minorities and the military, as well as the Bamar majority.

Tar Gyoke Ja, vice chair of the Taang National Liberation Army which is battling the Tatmadaw in northern Shan State, welcomed the proposal. He listed the priorities as the peace process, development of ethnic languages and resource sharing. But without a successful peace process nothing could be done, he stressed.

Daw Khon Ja, coordinator of the Kachin Peace Network, said the minister should address the needs of Myanmars 135 recognised ethnic minorities, a classification that has been contested as inaccurate and political. She backs U Khun Tun Oo, head of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy and a former political prisoner, as minister.

Naing Soe Myint, a senior official of the Mon National Party, said, Our country has been in a very long civil war with ethnic groups based on inequalities and underdevelopment. I hope the ministry can handle ethnic problems and manage to develop ethnic areas.

U Zen Za Hmong, secretary of the Zomi Congress for Democracy, said he did not know the new ministrys responsibilities, noting that the by-laws of the Ethnic Nationalities Protection Law had not been written. It is too early to comment, he added.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been named chair of a parliamentary team, the National League for Democracy announced yesterday, fuelling expectations that the democracy icon does not intend to take a formal position in the new government.





The NLD leader posted a statement on her Facebook page that listed her as chair of the Hluttaw Development Coordination Team, which met yesterday with representatives of international organisations and foreign embassies in parliament.

The NLD statement immediately prompted a flurry of posts on social media over whether the position indicated Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had decided not to become a member of the executive branch. The hluttaw coordination team, which MPs specified did not have the same status as a committee, comprises five MPs, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and three senior parliamentary officials.

The statement said the team was formed by the lower house in accordance with parliamentary law and by-law.

Parliamentary officials and MPs confirmed that membership of the hluttaw team excluded the possibility of also serving in government. However they noted it was still possible that the NLD leader could decide to leave the team and become a minister.

Government ministers are to take office on April 1 under U Htin Kyaw who was confirmed by parliament as president-elect this week, serving as proxy for the NLD leader because of the constitutional provision that bars her from the presidency. She has vowed to rule above the president and some analysts suggested she would assume the role as foreign minister, the only other post that would allow her access to the shadowy National Defence and Security Council.

One senior NLD official said yesterday that he believed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would still appoint herself foreign minister so that she could be directly involved in NDSC meetings where the military holds a majority of the 11 seats. Exactly what the council is responsible for remains a mystery, although the constitution grants the body the power to declare a state of emergency and grant amnesties.

U Ye Myo Hein, executive director of Tagaung Institute said he believes Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will retain her position as party chief and parliamentarian, controlling the shape of the administration through the legislative arm.





If she takes a position in the executive, then she will have to cut ties with her party and parliament, in which her party holds a majority. Remaining as a parliamentarian, she can influence all three spheres working with the government, her party and the parliament, he said.

She will effectively formulate negotiations with her confidants and allow them to do the work inside the NDSC while she acts as a party and parliamentarian head, he added.

U Phyo Zayar Thaw, MP of Zabuthiri township who is also a member of the team, described it as an ad hoc group with the purpose of capacity building for MPs and parliamentary staff.

A similar body existed in the previous parliament called the Joint Coordination Committee on Hluttaw Development, chaired by U Hla Myint Oo of the Union Solidarity and Development Party.

Last September, he said capacity development programs had begun in 2014, coordinated with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. As a result parliament was able to sign collaborative projects with Germany and the Inter-Parliamentary Union as well as the UNDP.
The post-election suspense and secrecy over the incoming administration will continue for some time yet as the chief minister positions will not be announced until the last week of March, the National League for Democracy announced.





Under the 2008 constitution, the chief ministers are chosen by the president from among elected or appointed MPs, regardless of which party holds a majority in the state. The nominee is then confirmed by the state and region parliaments, which have very little scope to reject the presidents selection.

Despite pressure from the military and from ethnic minority parties in key areas like Rakhine, Shan and Kachin, the NLD has pledged to assign its own party representatives as chief minister in all 14 states and regions. The party did not win a majority in Shan and Rakhine states where it has deflected pressure to engage in power-sharing talks.

U Linn Htut, a senior NLD official who represents Lashio in the Shan State Hluttaw, was previously tipped as being in line for the chief spot. But party official who asked not to be named said the consensus was leaning instead toward a member of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy party.

In some cases, particularly Shan, Kayin and Kayah states, the names on the list could change, he said.

NLD spokesperson U Htun Htun Hein refused to be drawn on the appointment for Shan State, saying it was a decision for the president.

Political parties and armed groups in Shan State hope the new chief minister will have a firm grasp of the situation there and will tackle the problems of the multi-ethnic conflict without bias.

Sai Nyunt Lwin, general secretary of the SNLD, warned against nominating a non-Shan to the post. A chief minister who is unfamiliar with Shan politics will find it hard going, no matter how much they know about Myanmar politics, he said.





He further clarified that should U Lin Htut win the appointment, he would likely encounter problems as he is not ethnically Shan and is from Yangon.

Our Shan State was ruled by Shan leaders for so many years, except during the time of the regime, so the chief minister should be of Shan origin, he said.

The SNLD won the second-highest number of seats in the Shan State Hluttaw after the Union Solidarity and Development Party. Both the Speaker and deputy speaker in the state hluttaw are USDP nominees.

U Lin Htutt, who is married to a Shan, said he had lived in Lashio for 30 years and was thoroughly versed in the states affairs.

If the party selects me, I will work very hard at the job, he said.

The United States-based Shan Community and Culture Group has written to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi asking her to appoint an SNLD representative as chief minister, saying only a Shan could properly grasp the unique cultural, social, political and military problems of the state.

Tar Gyoke Ja, vice chair of the Taang National Liberation Army, said it was natural for Shan people to prefer one of their own as chief minister. But it would be fairer to appoint someone who recognises the need for fairness and equality with other ethnic groups in building a peaceful federal Shan State, he said, adding that he would prefer an NLD member rather than SNLD leader U Khun Tun Oo, or even a member of his own community.

Political analyst U Yan Myo Thein said the NLD should favour a respected SNLD state representative with proven influence in the community, or a member of a different ethnic group.

I think if the NLD chooses the SNLD leader as chief minister, that would help promote national reconciliation and improve relationships between the two parties, he said.

The Tai Nation community in Bangkok released a statement requesting the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to appoint an SNLD representative.

The statement said that an SNLD representative would be best in the role of chief minister of Shan State because of their understanding of the customs of the Shan people and the situation on the ground.

U Nyan Lynn, secretary of the USDP in Taunggyi, said the incoming chief minister would face challenges in border security, trade, armed conflict and many more fields.

He or she will need a very deep understanding of these issues, he said.

Members of the USDP have previously pressed for someone with military experience to take the role. It was widely speculated that in power-sharing talks with the NLD leader, the Tatmadaw wanted chief minister spots in Yangon, Kachin, Shan and Rakhine.

Saw Khon Kyaw Win, a CEC member of the Pa-O National Organisation, said his party would support and cooperate with any incumbent.

We want a chief minister who governs a diversity of ethnic people with equality and justice, he said.

In Rakhine, the Arakan National Party, which is just one spot shy of the majority in the state parliament, has insisted that it should have the right to form the state government, including the chief minister post. The ANP leadership has said that if it is not given the chief minister position it will respond by refusing any role in government, and will instead act as an opposition party. The announcement has sparked an in-party feud that has the political party controlling the largest share of the tinder-box state poised on the brink of a split.

In July 2015, the NLD had voted to change the constitution so that the chief ministers would be selected directly by the states and regions, but the amendment was vetoed by the military.

The announcement that the party would unilaterally appoint the chief ministers caused dissent even within party ranks, with some NLD members saying the move contradicted national reconciliation.
For nearly four years the Myanmar Peace Center has been at the heart of President U Thein Seins efforts to end decades of war with the countrys ethnic armed groups. In two weeks the new NLD-led government will take over the peace process, with many asking what will happen to the MPC  and its assets donated by the international community.





According to sources close to the MPC, including donors, uncertainty over the organisations future has been fuelled by a widely held perception that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi saw the body as superfluous to her requirements, too tainted by its close association with the military-backed government and the nationwide ceasefire it eventually signed with just a minority of armed ethnic groups.

Sensing an insecure future some senior MPC figures started looking for well-funded alternatives in what critics have derisively called the peace industrial complex. This included a proposal by two senior MPC officials to set up an independent think tank using the assets of the MPC  buildings, vehicles, computers  that would be transferred by the outgoing government.

According to a government insider who asked not to be named, the proposal divided opinion within the MPC, with some seeing the move as tarnishing its legacy. Senior adviser U Hla Maung Shwe was said to be opposed but the plan got traction within the Presidents Office. Accounts of a possible transfer of assets reached international donors who were understandably not pleased that millions of dollars of funding were to vanish just as the National League for Democracy was about to take office.

Yesterday, the MPC, which acts as a secretariat reporting to U Aung Min, a minister and the chief governments chief negotiator with ethnic groups, released a statement to clarify its position. It noted that it was established by a presidential decree in October 2012 to facilitate the peace process and had received support from international donors. These include the UN, the European Union, Norway and Japan among others.

The assets procured with donor funding are regarded as state-owned property. A final decision as to what happens to the MPC and the associated assets will be taken by the new government. The MPC is in close contact with decision-makers from the NLD in order to make sure that the handover is as smooth as possible, the statement said.

U Han Thar Myint, a central executive committee member of the NLD who has been involved in the peace process, said he had no knowledge about any possible transfer of MPC assets during the last two weeks of the current governments term.

He also confirmed that the NLD had not decided what to do with the MPC, which has a staff of over 100.





We have not decided anything yet. But we do accept some initiatives started by the MPC. We recognise the importance of such an organisation for the peace process, he said.

In response to reports that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi intended to appoint her personal physician, Dr Tin Myo Win, as chief government negotiator, U Han Thar Myint said the party had not yet discussed the matter.

The MPC has held just one meeting with the NLD over its role and future, according to one source involved. Another MPC source said more than one meeting had been held.

Pado Saw Kwe Htoo Win, general secretary of the Karen National Union, said people involved in the peace process had met Dr Tin Myo Win once, but he was personally confident that he would be named chief negotiator.

If an erudite figure like him becomes the new governments chief negotiator, I think the peace process will be better, he said.

Pado Saw Kwe Htoo Win, whose ethnic armed group signed the nationwide ceasefire pact, said an institution like the MPC was necessary for the next government.

The main ethnic armed groups that refused to sign the nationwide deal are eager to open negotiations with the new government, but are not keen for the MPC to be involved.
Living or working in unhealthy conditions is leading thousands of people in Myanmar to an early grave, according to a new report by the World Health Organization.





The report found that 109,235 deaths over one year, or one out of every four deaths, could be attributed to environmental risks. With such a high burden of environment-related deaths, Myanmar ranked in the top 20 effected countries.

Air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, ultraviolet radiation and climate change have become leading environment-based contributors to deadly diseases and injuries.

WHO Myanmar representative Dr Jorge Luna specifically blamed indoor and outdoor air pollution  including exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke  as major factors causing non-communicable disease such as stroke, heart disease, cancers and chronic respiratory disease.

And these amount to nearly two-thirds of the total deaths caused by unhealthy environments, Dr Luna told The Myanmar Times.

But the report stressed that premature death and disease can be prevented through healthier environments  to a significant degree.

It detailed cost-effective measures that individuals and governments can take to decrease the death rate.





For instance, using clean technologies and fuels for domestic cooking, heating and lighting would reduce acute respiratory infections, chronic respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and burns, the report said.

Tobacco smoke-free legislation could limit exposure to second-hand smoke, and also reduce cardiovascular diseases and respiratory infections.

The report called on countries such as Myanmar to increase access to low-carbon energy technologies.

Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public health and environment, said measures to curtail the environmental disease burden have an added financial benefit.

[Such investments can] lead to immediate savings in healthcare costs, she said.

WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan said it was important that both individuals and governments begin implementing such measures immediately.

A healthy environment underpins a healthy population, Dr Chan said. If countries do not take actions to make environments where people live and work healthy, millions will continue to become ill and die too young.
In presenting her annual report on human rights in Myanmar this week, the UNs special rapporteur Yanghee Lee called on the incoming NLD government to undertake a list of key actions in its first 100 days.





Of her eight recommendations for immediate government response, one specifically mentions women: ensuring womens greater participation in the peace process, particularly leadership, with a minimum 30 percent quota, and the integration of womens issues and a gender perspective in political dialogue.

This is vital. Under the outgoing military-backed government, women activists repeatedly called for greater involvement in the peace process. Their voices, as this column has highlighted, were widely ignored in the lead-up to the signing of the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement in October 2015.

Two days before the NCA was signed the Womens League of Burma made a last-ditch call for the deal to be halted, warning that it would not lead to peace, but to escalation of conflict.

As is now tragically evident, their prediction was accurate.

This month the WLB released a new statement pointing to the recent fighting in northern Shan State in the wake of the NCA between the previously co-operative Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), which signed the NCA, and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which was not allowed to. The new conflict has displaced over 5000 civilians and created new ethnic divides in communities.

The WLB called on the next government and donors, to start afresh with the peace process.





The statement added, The non-inclusive nature of the NCA had doomed it to failure from the outset. Yet, with the support of the international community, Nay Pyi Taw has been allowed to continue with the charade of its peace process, which has served no ones interests except its own.

Those are powerful words, but ones which are hard to question in the face of what is happening in Shan State.

The future of the peace process, and the Myanmar Peace Center which oversaw the NCA, remains unclear. The incoming government is yet to make an official announcement on whether the MPC will continue in its present form, or even at all.

However as Ms Lee recognises in her call for the immediate inclusion of women in the peace process at leadership levels, it is untenable for any organisation to claim to be leading a nationwide process when it effectively ignores 50pc of the nation on gender grounds alone  even before its marginalisation and exclusion of certain ethnic groups.

Leaving a peace deal in the hands of those who are principally responsible for the fighting, and ignoring those who have principally been the victims of that fighting, has not worked.

Ms Lee is absolutely right in calling for officially established womens inclusion in the peace process as an urgent measure. The NLD has said achieving national reconciliation is a key goal. To achieve this it must follow the UN special rapporteurs advice on womens participation.

Ms Lee also specifically mentions women in two further recommendations in her recent report: calling for the enactment of a prevention of violence against women law; and also calling for military perpetrators of such crimes to be tried in a civilian court.

These are not listed under her recommendation for immediate action in the governments first 100 days. Instead she asks for concrete steps [to] be taken to achieve those by March 2017.

While the issue of military impunity is a hugely important issue, it is unlikely to be resolved very quickly, particularly by an incoming government acutely aware of the limits of how far it can push the Tatmadaw.

In the section where she calls for a law to prevent violence against women to be enacted, Ms Lee also recommends the development of a program to support victims  including access to justice  and improvements to data gathering and analysis in order to better understand the scope and scale of the problem. These are also likely to be ongoing processes.

However it is disappointing she did not call on more urgent action to enact a law on violence against women.

Work first began on the current 19-chapter draft National Law on Protection and Prevention of Violence against Women (PoVAW), around three years ago. It has crawled through parliament at an incredibly slow pace, while the highly contentious protection of race and religion laws  which discriminate against women in the name of protecting them  were rushed through by outgoing president U Thein Sein.

Daw Suus government under president U Htin Kyaw has massive challenges ahead of it. However ensuring women are protected from violence under the law must be a key priority.

Such an important law must be carefully scrutinised to ensure it is as effective as possible, but women in Myanmar shouldnt have to wait another year or more for this to be achieved. Every effort must be made for a PoVAW law to be enacted as soon as possible  and time must be made in parliament and behind the scenes for that to happen.

Achieving national reconciliation is a priority for all, but the rights of women to live free from violence should not be sacrificed to meet that goal.
I am trying to write some articles based on my notes with companies I met at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I am always impressed by reporters that can type as fast as others speak. I have this problem where I tend to think more than listen and that makes it hard for me to take complete notes.

Instead, I write the key concepts to the points that are being made and refer to them in general but not in direct quotes. For backup then I go to the Web to remind me of the product features, the key markets and other aspects of the value proposition the company wants to express.

Normally that works.

However, the Web is now getting to a new stage of design where instead of navigating information from the company, the webpage is a giant tweet of marketing message.

What seems to be lost is that often this messaging is a hindrance -- not a help -- in making the connection, sale or point.

One company has this giant message: We offer a diverse range of flexible models and solutions.

Here is probably a good rule of thumb. If the sentence is so vague it could be used equally by a military recruiter and an escort service, it probably is not helping your reader make a decision as to what to do next.

Worse yet, this page is from a company with a name that is equally vague (but not mentioned to protect them from further embarrassment).

Now to be clear, this is just an example, but I see this all over the Web, often with background video of people doing activities (not necessarily related to the website).

I recognize that with crowd journalism and so many other social solutions, the need to make your presence known causes people to broadcast trivial things like your dinner plate. And I recognize you often get positive feedback for drivel.

Once, years ago, I wrote about cleaning up a public toilet and I had a week of interaction with appreciators and hecklers.

I also recognize that dealing with smart phones and small screens forces an economy of words. The answer is to know and show the power of story and to guide the user experience, not put up a billboard on superhighway.

I try not to waste the readers time. I try to make a point, provide information or offer perspective. I would hope that your website does similar. As for this article, I think it may already be closer to the complaint than the solution, so I will stop.
Embattled star actress Ibinabo Fiberesima, who was convicted by the Court of Appeal in Lagos on March 11, was on Thursday unable to secure bail from the Court due to incompetent application.

The three man-panel, presided over by Justice UI Ndukwe-Anyanwu, said that the appellant failed to attach copies of the judgment that was delivered by the court which affirmed the five years jail sentence imposed on her.

The other Justices on the panel are Justice Samuel Oseji and Justice Tijani Abubakar.

When the matter came up Thursday, Ibinabos lawyer, Nnaemeka Amaechina informed the court of an application dated March 14 stating that he had also served the application on the Lagos State government (respondent).

However, the application could not be heard as the court observed that the appellant failed to attach copies of the judgment of the court as exhibit thereby rendering the whole application incompetent.

Justice UI Ndukwe-Anyanwu, said the only option left was to strike out the application or adjourn it till further date for hearing.

Consequently, Amaechina sought for an adjournment to enable him do the needful. The court subsequently adjourned the matter till April 7 for hearing.

Meanwhile, Ibinabo has asked the Supreme Court to set aside the judgment of the lower court. In her Notice of Appeal, the appellant stated that the Court of Appeal erred in law when it affirmed the alteration by the High Court of Lagos state by setting aside the option of N100, 000 fine and substituting it with a term of five years imprisonment.
Veteran Ghanaian actress Grace Omaboe, popularly known as Maame Dokono, has threatened to sue bloggers who published reports alleging that she is sick and needs support and prayers of Ghanaians.

Earlier this week, the actress was called in to comment on a discussion on acting on Daybreak Hitz (Showbiz Review) on Hitz FM. Before she started her contribution, she prompted the presenter KMJ and Ghanaians to forgive her bad voice because she was not feeling well.

Hours after the interview, some bloggers published stories about Maame Dokono saying she was sick and needed prayers from all fans and well-wishers to overcome the illness.

Reacting to the reports, Maame Dokono mentioned that she is so very well and threatened to sue any media outlets that published that story.

I am not sick and people are reporting that I am begging for money. I have six children, family and friends outside the country, if I need money they will provide, furious Maame Dokono said on Daybreak Hitz Friday.

In the false of reports that went viral, Maame Dokono was likened to late veterans Araba Stamp and Bob Okala, which she found very derogatory.

She said, how can you compare me to Bob Okala and Araba Stamp who died begging for money?

She further threw jabs at the bloggers saying they dont know journalism. If I get hold of those bloggers I will drag them to court. I live good and if anything bothers me I fly to my children.

She also disclosed that right now the chief of my village has [assigned] a whole delegation to take care of me because I am appealing to Ghanaians for money. Why do some journalists want to disgrace me? she quizzed

Maame Dokono shot into the limelight for her acting prowess in Obra, being a talk show host and telling stories in By the Fireside with children.
Actress Emelia Brobbey was hosted by Deloris Frimpong Manso on her Delay Show on Viasat 1 to talk about her acting career, marriage, divorce and the way forward.

In the cause of the interview, the Frema actress touched on some the reasons why her first marriage failed. She made reference to friends playing a role in that.

I would say that, if I had not allowed friends into my marriage, things might be different. The thing is, it is not every womans dream to allow friends come into her marriage or relationship but before you realize, they are there.

My first marriage has thought me to keep friends away. It is not only in marriage but in relationships too. When you have a no friends zone in a relationship or marriage, it lasts longer than doing the otherwise, she said.

You can have them around that once in a while, you meet and talk but it should not be a daily routine, she added.

She went to advise ladies to desist from telling their friends everything that goes on in their marriage or relationship thus material things they get from their partners.

Emelias first audition was at the kumasi cultural centre and it was led by Mr Samuel Nyamekye C.E.O of Miracle Films which landed her first role in a movie titled Tribal war in 2002.

She has appeared on numerous television shows and red carpet events both in Ghana and Abroad.
Algiers (AFP) - Suspected jihadists launched a rocket attack Friday on an Algerian gas plant jointly run by foreign companies, three years after a deadly hostage crisis at another facility in the Sahara desert.

There were no reports of casualties in Friday's assault on a plant operated by Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Algerian company Sonatrach.

It was the most serious such incident since Al-Qaeda-linked militants stormed a complex in Algeria's remote east in 2013 and began a four-day siege that left dozens dead.

"This morning, at approximately 06:00 local time, the In Salah gas asset in Krechba was hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance," Norwegian oil and gas firm Statoil said in a statement.

BP said no employees were hurt at the plant 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) south of Algiers.

"There are no reports of any injuries to personnel at the site and the Central Processing Facility (CPF) has been shut down as a safety precaution," it said.

A plant employee who did not wish to be named told AFP that the site is surrounded by a security fence and soldiers are permanently on guard.

"The rockets seem to have been fired from very far away," he said.

Military personnel mobilised soon after the rocket fire to prevent the attackers gaining access to the facility, the employee added.

Algeria's official news agency APS confirmed the attack.

"Two terrorists fired homemade rockets on the gas plant in Krechba," it said, adding that there were no casualties or material damage.

A manhunt was launched to find the attackers, it said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility but militants linked to both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group operate in the country.

- Anti-militant operations -

In 2013 a four-day siege and two rescue attempts by the Algerian army at a gas facility at In Amenas resulted in the deaths of nearly 40 foreign workers and 29 attackers.

The assault -- which also targeted a site run by Sonatrach, BP and Statoil -- was claimed by Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants led by the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

The attack prompted a widespread security review in the North African country, heavily reliant on income from gas exports.

The head of Algeria's army last week called for increased vigilance following what he termed an "unprecedented deterioration" in security.

Algeria has been on guard against jihadist attacks such as those experienced by its neighbours Libya and Tunisia, with local press reporting the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers along its vast desert borders.

On Monday, a security source said a militant leader who had joined the Islamic State group was killed during an army operation west of Algiers.

A brutal civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists killed 200,000 people.

Despite adopting a peace and reconciliation charter in 2005 aimed at turning the page on the conflict, armed groups remain active in the centre and east of Algeria.

A total of "157 terrorists, including 10 commanders" were killed or arrested in military operations last year, according to the defence ministry.

Algeria, a member of the OPEC oil cartel, is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas, with revenue from fossil fuels accounting for 95 percent of its exports.

It has an estimated 16 billion cubic metres of conventional gas and 20 million cubic metres of non-conventional gas, according to Sonatrach figures.
Brazzaville (AFP) - Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso will seek re-election Sunday after 32 years at the helm of an oil-rich but impoverished nation which is clamouring for jobs and decent living standards.

One of Africa's five longest-serving leaders, the 72-year-old former paratrooper colonel is running for a new term after an October vote modified the constitution, removing a 70-year age limit and two-term barrier to enable him to extend his rule.

The changes were approved in a referendum by 94.3 percent, which the opposition dubbed it "a constitutional coup" and protests erupted in the run-up to the vote that left several people dead.

But in down at heel Makelekele and Bacongo, southern parts of the capital where opposition support is strong, residents say Sassou Nguesso has failed to make good on his last election pledges and question why this round of promises would play out any differently.

"There's no work, it sucks," said a 31-year-old with a degree in public administration who gave his name as Eric.

Chatting with friends at a roadside cafe, or "nganda", in an area where the muddied streets are potholed and the sewerage is overflowing, he said he worked occasionally in restaurants but had "no stable job".

"My parents are elderly and retired," he said. "I have a wife but have to wait to have children."

- 'Fears of instability' -

While the Republic of Congo saw "robust growth" of five percent over five years through to 2014 with oil and timber providing its main revenues, the country remains in dire straits.

"(Congo) continues to suffer from high rates of poverty and inequality, large infrastructure gaps, and important development challenges," a report by the International Monetary Fund released in July 2015 report said.

Unemployment hit 34 percent in 2013 (the last data available) and stood at 60 percent for 15 to 24 year-olds.

The IMF fears "domestic instability" without progress in the battle to eliminate poverty.

"We're really disappointed about what's happening in Congo," said 20-year-old student Yette. "Most young people have diplomas but no work."

Sassou Nguesso admits there is a problem.

His new election platform underlines government efforts in education while noting that "60 percent of graduates without work" qualified at the country's sole university.

- 'We need change' -

In the run-up to the 2009 election he had promised "A path towards the future" that would bring the country "modernisation" and "industrialisation".

In his latest election pledge, Sassou Nguesso says he needs more time.

"Seven years were insufficient to fully make these solutions operational... which is why we need to continue the country's modernisation and industrialisation," reads the new platform, which proposes "an accelerated march towards development".

But while a pro-Sassou banner hung at a traffic roundabout proclaims "Yes, the country can be industrialised in five years", some voters are sceptical.

"(Sassou Nguesso) did nothing in 32 years, so why would he get anything done in five," said a man in his 50s.

"There's no hope for many young people. All they've got is drink, cigarettes and hemp," added Eric.

In Bacongo and Makelekele, few are ready to give their names as they complain about the lack of electricity, the "dirty water", the taps that run dry, and the lack of cash.

Eudes Makoundou, a 43-year-old graduate who turned carpenter to make ends meet, is one of a few to agree to be named publicly.

"What we need from the next president is a better quality of life for the Congolese, in terms of education, employment," he said. "Really, what we want is change!"
18.03.2016 LISTEN

The US has called on North Korea to immediately release an American student sentenced to 15 years hard labour for crimes against the state.

Otto Warmbier, 21, was arrested for trying to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel while on a visit in January.

A White House spokesman accused North Koreans of using US citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda.

North Korean state media said Warmbier was convicted under an article of the criminal code relating to subversion.

The verdict was handed down by the Supreme Court.

We strongly encourage the North Korean government to pardon him and grant him special amnesty and immediate release, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

North Korea sometimes uses the detention of foreigners as a means of exerting pressure on its adversaries.

The BBCs Stephen Evans in South Korea says the 15-year sentence is high compared to those given to foreigners in the past.

This could be due to the elevated tensions at the moment between North Korea and the US, he says. Worst mistake of my life

Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was arrested on 2 January at the airport as he tried to leave North Korea. He was accused of committing hostile acts.

.

He later appeared on state TV apparently confessing and saying a church group had asked him to bring back a trophy from his trip.

At the time, state news agency KCNA said had gone to North Korea to destroy the countrys unity and that he had been manipulated by the US government.

At the end of February, at a tearful press conference in Pyongyang, Warmbier said he had committed the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel.

The aim of my task was to harm the motivation and work ethic of the Korean people. This was a very foolish aim, he was quoted as saying.

He said it was the worst mistake of his life.

North Korea detainees often recant their confessions once out of the country.

US tourism to North Korea is legal but the US State Department strongly advises against it.

The sentencing comes a day after veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson met North Korean officials at the UN in New York to try to push for Warmbiers release.

Mr Richardson has previously been involved in negotiations to secure the release of Americans from North Korea detention.

North Korea has ramped up its hostile rhetoric in recent weeks, after the UN imposed some of its toughest ever sanctions.

-bbc


The World Health Organization joins the government of Sierra Leone in marking the end of the recent flare-up of Ebola virus disease in the country. As of today, 17 March, 42 days have passed, two incubation cycles of the virus, since the last person confirmed to have Ebola virus disease in the country tested negative for a 2nd time.

This latest flare-up of Ebola brings to 3,590 the number of lives lost in Sierra Leone to an epidemic that devastated families and communities across the country and disrupted every aspect of life. Today marks another milestone in the country's effort to defeat Ebola. WHO commends Sierra Leone's government, partners and people on the effective and swift response to this latest outbreak. From nurses, vaccinators and social mobilizers to contact tracers, counsellors and community leaders, Sierra Leoneans in affected districts mobilized quickly and their involvement and dedication was instrumental and impactful. The rapid containment of the flare-up was also a real-time demonstration of the increased capacity at the national, district and community level to respond to Ebola outbreaks and other health emergencies and mitigate their impact. Investments made in rapid response teams, surveillance, lab diagnostics, risk communication, infection prevention and control measures and other programmes were put to the test and clearly paid off. However, WHO continues to stress that Sierra Leone, as well as Liberia and Guinea, are still at risk of Ebola flare-ups, largely due to virus persistence in some survivors, and must remain on high alert and ready to respond. Strong surveillance and emergency response capacity need to be maintained, along with rigorous hygiene practices at home and in health facilities and active community participation. Care, screening and counselling also need to be provided for survivors as part of improved health services for all. WHO will continue to work with the Government of Sierra Leone and partners to build a more resilient health system that can prevent, detect and respond to future outbreaks and to revive and strengthen essential health services across the country.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) presented results from its 2015 Population Based Survey during a data dissemination event in Accra, Ghana, on March 17, 2016. The survey, which is a follow-up to a survey conducted in 2012, tracks poverty and nutrition data for more than 7,000 households in 59 districts of northern Ghana. It was conducted in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service, the University Of Cape Coast, and the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University in the United States.

The results are being used to monitor the impact of the U.S. government's Feed the Future Initiative in Ghana. Feed the Future works around the world to abolish extreme poverty, undernutrition and hunger. In Ghana, it works to increase agricultural productivity, boost the harvests and incomes of smallholder farmers, improve nutrition, bolster agricultural research and development, and increase resilience in the north.

Using the 2012 data as a baseline, the survey's results show that there has been significant progress in reducing poverty and undernutrition in northern Ghana. There has been an 18 percent decrease in poverty, a nearly 20 percent decrease in households experiencing moderate or severe hunger, and a 23 percent decrease in the prevalence of stunted children in targeted districts. However, the survey also illuminated ongoing issues, such as a widening disparity in wealth between male- and female-headed households and urban and rural households. USAID will be working with its partners to address these issues.

This data has potential to improve policymaking and program design, and to enable us and other stakeholders to more effectively reach the people who are most vulnerable, said Kevin Sharp, Director of the Office of Economic Growth at USAID Ghana. It will allow us to fast track the pace of development in northern Ghana.

Events will be held next week in Tamale, Sunyani, Bolgatanga and Wa to disseminate the 2015 survey results. Under USAID's open data policy, the data from the survey will be made publicly available and structured in a way that will enable the data to be fully discoverable and usable by all development professionals working in northern Ghana.
An Accra Circuit Court, presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, has remanded one Anthony Bansah, a mechanic with Rong Chen Company, manufacturers of T and J plastic panels, for robbing and causing harm to his supervisor.

Anthony Bansah was said to have attacked Bai Xiaoyong in protest for a pay increase, which the complainant had refused to do. Prosecuting, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Kweku Bempah told the court that the accused allegedly robbed the complainant of his iPhone 6 plus, valued at GH3,000, after he had caused harm to him.

When he appeared before the court, he pledged not guilty to the offence against him. He was, however, charged with robbery, contrary to section 149 of the criminal offences act (1960), and remanded into prison custody.

The case was adjourned to March 31, 2016.

Facts

The facts of the case, as presented to the court by DSP Kweku Bempah, revealed that the complainant in this case is Bai Xiaoyong, a Supervisor at the Rong Chen Company Limited, manufactures of T and J plastic panels, whilst the accused person, Anthony Bansah, aged 19 years, is a mechanic with the same company.

According to him, on March 8 this year, at about 7:00 p.m., the accused person and his colleagues reported for work as usual. At about 2:00 a.m. that dawn, the accused person secretly sneaked out of the factory.

He explained that the accused went to the back of the factory and used a long metal bar to create an opening in the wall into the engine room. He then passed through the opening into the engine room.

The accused changed into all black attire and switched off the plant that controls the supply of water to all the manufacturing machines in the factory.

DSP Bempah further explained that the complainant, with his iPhone 6 plus mobile phone, rushed into the dark engine room to restore the machine. According to him, immediately the complainant entered, the accused person held him by the neck from behind. The accused used a fully charged taser shocker against the neck of the complainant to overpower him. He also bit the left ear, resulting in a cut.

In the process of inflicting pains on the complainant, DSP Bempah said the accused forcibly collected the iPhone 6 plus from him and escaped through the opening he created in the wall and hid it under a container placed in the yard. He added that the accused quickly changed his dress from black into green singlet and jeans shorts, entered through the main gate to the bathroom, where he remained for thirty minutes before showing up.

A distress call was made to the police that robbers had entered the factory. The police responded, and during interrogation of all the workers, it came up that the accused was the only one whose whereabouts was not known to his colleagues at the time of the attack. The accused was, therefore, arrested for interrogation. An examination of his body revealed bruises and blood stains.

Upon further interrogation as to how he sustained those wounds, the accused broke down and confessed to the crime, with the excuse that it was in protest for pay increase, which the Chinese had refused to do. He led police to retrieve the phone which had been hidden under the container, the black dress and the metal bar.

By Ethel Mensah

([email protected])
Water is the source by which Africa's development can be driven, says the African Union Commission Chairperson, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, in her remarks at the closing session of Ministers of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene meeting that held on 15 and16 March 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Commenting on the African Union's theme of Human Rights with a particular focus on the Rights of Women, Dr. Dlamini Zuma appealed to the conference delegates to focus on women and children in all their strategies since in the African context, they have the primary responsibility of providing water, health and food. After all, women constitute 70% of the agricultural work force, emphasized Dr. Dlamini Zuma.

The AU Commission Chairperson also called for the inclusion of women and girls in all development projects, not just as passive beneficiaries but as legitimate participants, she underlined.

The AUC Chairperson also applauded the multi-sector nature of the forum and cautioned that although monitoring, evaluation and reporting are very critical, the systems should not be so cumbersome that they compromise delivery, adding that, after all, we must not forget that all we do should be directed towards improving the quality of life for our people, particularly women and children.

The closing session, which was attended by African and world Ministers and officials responsible for water and sanitation as well as the civil society, was also addressed by the UNICEF Executive Director, Mr. Anthony Lake, who called on the participants to turn up the volume in implementing and providing momentum for the Vision 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063. Mr. Lake also committed UNICEF to accelerating its efforts in providing every child with equal chances.

Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who also addressed the closing session, called for ownership and joint resourcing of all programmes developed to address Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, all of which will require community involvement and contribution.

The outcomes of the two-day forum will inform continental and global meetings of the Ministers of Finance in line with the objectives of the global Sanitation and Water Alliance (SWA), which convened the meeting.
Minister Wallace Cosgrow headed the Seychelles' delegation at the SADC Council of Ministers' meeting that was held in Gaborone, Botswana from the 14th to 15th March 2016.

In her opening statement at the Council of Ministers' meeting, the Executive Secretary of SADC, Dr. Stergomena Tax highlighted some of the key achievements and progress made in the implementation of the SADC 2015/2016 plan and budget, as well as the decisions taken at its last meeting in August 2015 which included the on-going costed action plan of the Industrialization Strategy and Road map, the continued implementation of the Regional Agricultural and Food Security framework, the development of the Blue Economy Strategy and the Women Empowerment Programme, amongst others. The Executive Secretary also commended the Seychelles Government for the organization of a credible and peaceful Presidential Elections held in December 2016.

The work of the Council consisted of reviewing various ongoing SADC programmes and projects and to evaluate their financial implications on the members, as well as approve the budget for SADC activities for the period 2016/2017.

One of the key decisions' approved by the Council concerns the timelines for the finalization of the indicative investment costs to implement the revised Regional Indicative Strategy Development Plan (RISDP) 2015-2020, which will be submitted to the next SADC Council that will take place in August 2016.

The principle objective of the RISDP is to deepen integration in the region with a view to accelerate poverty eradication and the attainment of other economic and non-economic goals. Seychelles reaffirmed its support for the initiatives proposed under the revised RISDP, especially the initiatives that support social economic sectors such as Natural Resources, Health and Education.

Amongst the different interventions made by the Seychelles delegation during the various meetings, the delegation reiterated and emphasized the need to ensure that industrial development and investment in regional infrastructure projects are being done in a coherent manner to ensure proper integration of Seychelles with the wider Eastern and Southern African region.

Additionally, Seychelles delegation strongly supported the proposal to implement the SADC Law Enforcement and Anti-poaching strategy and to establish a SADC Wildlife Crime Prevention and Coordination Unit. The unit will assist member states to undertake a combine approach in dealing with poaching and illicit activities that counteract efforts in the protection and preservation of the environment and natural resources of the Southern African region.

Minister Wallace Cosgrow was accompanied at the SADC Council and preceding meetings by Mrs Marise Berlouis, Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Investment, Entrepreneurship Development and Business Innovation, Ambassador Claude Morel, High Commissioner in South Africa and Permanent Representative to SADC, Mr Kenneth Racombo and Ms. Sandra Isnard from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Transport, Ms. Cillia Mangroo from the Ministry of Finance, Trade and the Blue Economy and Ms. Susan Morel, from the Ministry Of Labour and Human Resources Development.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

A Romanian MP will serve two years behind bars for bribing his electorate with fried chicken.

Enlisting the help of supporters Florin Popescu distributed 60 tonnes of chicken to voters in an attempt to win another term as a council leader in local elections dating back to 2012 before he entered parliament.

A Bucharest court placed the condition of no parole on Popescu's sentence while also rejecting an appeal by the disgraced politician during the culmination of a case that won him the mocking nickname the Chicken Baron.

Anti-corruption investigators had found that Popescu had abused his high position in local politics to secure a supply of fried chicken worth around 85,000 from a producer.

On April 5, 2012 several people sent by Florin Popescu loaded the fried chicken into vans and took it to various locations where it was distributed, investigators said. All the packages of chicken were distributed for election purposes.

.

Romanian MP Florin Popescu

The case had come to light after the chicken producer reported Popescu to the authorities.

The politician resigned his seat earlier this month in order, he said, to protect the honour and reputation of parliament. Politics is a sweet rose but it can sometimes have a bitter taste, he continued, adding that all men were both good and bad.

Regarded as one of Europe's most corrupt countries Romania has stepped up efforts to crack down on the scourge of corruption in recent years, imprisoning a number of leading businessmen and politicians including a former prime minister and an ex-economy minister.

The country came 58th in Transparency International's Global Corruption Perception Index 2015 the third lowest position for an EU state with only Italy and Bulgaria beneath it.

Despite the number of high-profile cases and an apparent willingness in the authorities to root up corruption many Romanians complain that it remains endemic in the country end.

-Telegraph


18.03.2016 LISTEN

Madam Otiko Afisa Djabah, National Women's Organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), in collaboration with the Managing Director of Oman FM, Stella Agyapong, have donated assorted food items, toiletries and clothing for both sexes to the women's wing of the party in Accra.

The items were eight bags of perfumed rice, 32 cans tinned tomatoes, one box of Mackerel and six boxes of cooking oil. The rest were 10 boxes of soap, 10 boxes of hand sanitiser, two bags of men's clothing, 12 bags of ladies clothes, and two bales of mosquito net.

The donation forms part of a town hall meeting by the NPP women wings to commemorate this year's International Women Day celebration, and to discuss the state of women in Ghana and how to improve on their status.

According to the Women Organiser, the donation is to put a smile on the face of the vulnerable in the society. Among the women wings were the disabled, widows, Kayayeis (female head porters), human right activists and many others.

Issues raised during the meeting were how to put an end to all forms of discrimination against all women and girls in society, and also eliminate all forms of violence against girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking, sexual and other types of exploitation.

Again, they also touched on how to put an end to harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriages, and female genital mutilation. Madam Otiko, in an interview with this paper, revealed that the celebration is the time to reflect on progress made, call for a change, and celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of the country.

She lamented over how women die due to lack of access to free maternal healthcare, saying Most Ghanaian women who are to work and move the country forward, are rather dying in labour, because they do not have access to free maternal healthcare delivery, and malfunctioning of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which should be the fundamental right of every woman in Ghana.

For all the women who are dying in labour, we must ensure that we bring back the free maternal healthcare and the NHIS in full force, adding, that is not about numbers, but rather access to quality healthcare delivery, so that the women and her children will have safe healthcare delivery to be productive to Mother Ghana, and increase growth, she noted

She called on Ghanaian women to rise up for change, adding that the state of Ghanaian women is not the best, though we have come far, is not enough. She, however, congratulated former first lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, Yaa Asantewaa, Hawa Yakubu, Theresa Tagoe, Susana Alhassan, and all women across the divide, for the great works they did in raising the pride in women.

Madam Afisa Djabah lamented over how some women misuse their positions when they find themselves in a better position: If God gives you the opportunity of leadership as a woman, you must understand that you are not there for yourself, but rather there for those marginalised women who cannot come and talk themselves, but you talking for them, and you must be above reproach 

She reiterated: Women must be above reproach, be trail blazers, and thus work hard; a woman in leadership must work hard ten times as hard as the man, because our world accepts men in leadership not women, so for us to succeed and bring other women along, we must be more disciplined.

We must raise the flag, and must determine the difference between Ghana becoming a middle income state and being HIPC middle income state, because that is our position currently. We must fight our own fight for Mother Ghana, she advised.

By Ethel Mensah

([email protected])
Mr. George K. Eshun, a former headmaster of McKeon Senior High School in Kumasi has called for the stepping up of moral education in our schools.

He noted that morality in society has in general fallen and suggested that the introduction of moral education in the school curriculum would go a long way to instill discipline and righteousness in the youth.

He said an upright youth is a guarantee for virtuous adult population and a nation. Mr. Eshun, who is also an elder of Holy Ghost Power Sanctuary in Kumasi, called on pastors and Christians in general to pray for the nation to avoid calamities befalling it.

He said Ghana as a divine country was facing hardships because the leaders are exploiting all the resources the country is endowed with. He said it is time Ghanaians frowned on the Create, Loot and Share attitude of the leaders, in order to showcase Ghana as a showpiece of Africa, as envisaged by the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

The retired headmaster said Ghana is a God given nation and that its people are part of the Israel family who have the favour of God, for which reason the nation must be run in a godly manner to attain universal righteousness. Elder Eshun has therefore recommended that the Church and Ministers of the Gospel must propagate salvation instead of preaching prosperity. According to him, the 80 percent of the messages were prosperity

From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi
18.03.2016 LISTEN

The Coalition of Pan Africanists (CPA) has expressed disquiet over what it describes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) selective retributive justice and discrimination against Africans.

The perversions of justice, political profiling and racism, which have become the hallmark of the ICC, have exposed the double standards of the court, Ayuure Kapini, a member of the CPA said. Ever since the ICC was established fourteen years ago, under the Rome Statute, African leaders have come under intense politico-judicial witch hunting, from the ICC, he added.

Mr. Kapini was speaking Wednesday in Accra at a news conference organized by CPA, ahead of today's international conference on the International Criminal Court and Africa a Discussion on Legitimacy, Impunity, Selectivity, Fairness and Accountability. The conference will be held at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).

The ICC, according to Mr. Kapini, instead of adhering to its core mandate, which is to protect the susceptible citizens of the world, had chosen a path which robs Africans of their freedoms and rights. He accused the ICC of invading and hijacking the internal workings of judicial authorities in some African countries.

He said complementarity principle, which is a provision in the Rome Statute clearly barred the ICC from breaching the legal jurisdictions of member states and that it could only take up a prosecutorial responsibility if the courts in those states are technically challenged or averted palpable criminal offence from prosecution.

The ICC located in The Hague, is the court of last resort for prosecution of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its founding treaty, the Rome Statute, entered into force July 1, 2002.

As of June 2015, it had 123 states parties and had opened investigations in eight countries and had issued three verdicts.

Unfortunately,  the ICC has over the years been arm twisting weak African states, he told journalists. He said ICC's actions and inactions in those years ran counter to the established rules of engagement as stipulated in the Rome Statute and domestic laws of African state parties. The evidence of ICC's bias was abundant, he added, highlighting a few.

You are all aware of illegal invasion of Iraq by the Western powers and subsequent outcome, which till date has plunged the once rich country in a cycle of violence, anarchy and poverty. The office of the ICC Prosecutor reported in February 2006 that it had received 240 communications in connection with the invasion.

Many of these complaints concerned the British participation in the invasion and the open killing of innocent Iraqi women and Children by the American and British invaders and their unholy allies. The obnoxious Abu Graib abuses carried out by American troops are known to the ICC but it never raised any alarm or showed concern, stated Mr. Kapini.

Citing Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, he labeled the ICC as a neocolonial tool established only for African countries, only for poor countries stating it was laden with unfairness. Notwithstanding, the CPA's reservations towards the ICC, Mr. Kapini said the group he belongs to does not condone war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by any African leader.

He said We believe such leaders should be brought to book, but should be done by the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.

By Mohammed Awal ([email protected])
The Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, H.E. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, strongly condemns the suicide attack, on Wednesday 16 March 2016, at a mosque in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. The attack, that was reportedly carried out by two female suicide bombers, resulted in the death of 22 worshippers and left 18 others wounded.

While commiserating with the Government and people of Nigeria for the loss of life due to the attack, the Chairperson of the Commission applauds the Nigerian Government for its commitment to combat terrorism, not only in Nigeria, but in the wider Lake Chad Basin and Sahel regions.

However, The Chairperson of the Commission notes with dismay that the terrorist attacks that Africa continues to experience are a stark reminder of the continued threat of terrorism on the continent, and stresses the need for enhanced efforts by AU Member States, and also the wider international community, to combat this scourge, in line with African and international counterterrorism instruments. She reiterates the AU's continued commitment, through the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) established by the Member States of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and Benin, to neutralize and eliminate the Boko Haram terrorist group.
Mayors and their representatives from around South Africa are demonstrating their commitment to accelerating the HIV and TB responses in their respective municipalities.

Half of the world's population will be living in cites by 2030. That means we have to act now if we want to break the trajectory of the AIDS and TB epidemics in cities by 2030, said James Nxumalo, Mayor of eThekwini Municipality.

Almost half of all new HIV infections in South Africa, half of all people living with HIV, and more than three quarters of people living with HIV in need of HIV treatment live in just 19 municipalities in South Africa. If these municipalities implement the Fast-Track approach to achieve the 90-90-90 targets for HIV and TB, it is feasible that South Africa could achieve ending AIDS and TB as public health threats by 2030.

We fought apartheid and we need that same vigour to address the HIV and TB epidemics in South Africa, said Thabo Manyoni, Mayor of Manguang and Chairperson of the South African Local Government Association.

Mayors and their representatives from key municipalities gathered in Durban today to sign the Paris Declaration, a pledge of their commitment t to implement multi-sectoral municipal plans to reach the 90-90-90 Fast-Track targets for HIV and TB.

I urge Mayors and Counsellors to reach out to their communities. Speak to them; encourage them. We must embrace all stakeholders in our communities. To do that we need a far-reaching multi-sectoral HIV and TB response, said Dr Gwen Ramagkopa, Chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council's Board of Trustees.

Madam Tobeka Zuma, First Lady of South Africa and UNAIDS Special Advocate for the Health of Women, Youth and Children reminded political leadership not to forget about young women and girls in South Africa, who represent a disproportionate burden of new HIV infections every year.

I call on each and every one of us to put women and girls of the centre of the development agenda, including health. We need to focus our energy and resources to invest in strategies that will help reduce new HIV infections among young women and girls, said Mrs Zuma.

The Paris Declaration was first signed in Paris, France, on World AIDS Day 2014, where UNAIDS, in partnership with IAPAC, UN-Habitat and Mairie de Paris, brought together 29 city representatives from all over the world to launch the Fast-Track Cities initiative. Since then, the declaration has had over 200 signatories.

To quote Aaron Motsoaledi, the Minister of Health in South Africa, 'I challenge Mayors to become health leaders and innovators', said Erasmus Morah, UNAIDS Country Director.
On 21 March 2016, judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will deliver a verdict in the case of Jean- Pierre Bemba, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2002 and 2003. For the first time at the ICC, the judges will decide if the accused is criminally responsible as a military commander for crimes committed by troops under his control.

The verdict in the Bemba trial is a historical moment for victims of heinous atrocities committed in the Central African Republic who have braved 14 years longing for justice," said our organisations. In total, 5,229 victims were granted the status of participating victims in the trial, the highest number of victims of any trial being conducted at the ICC.

Array

For further information, read the note on Bemba in front of the ICC : 15 years of FIDH action, from the field investigation to the Prosecutor's conclusion", March 2016.

Array
JOHANNESBURGThe United Nations Secretary-Generals High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines hosted its final Global Dialogue in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 17March 2016. Campaigners from the Treatment Action Campaign held a large rally outside the conference demanding reform of patent laws. Inside the meeting, hundreds of people from around the world joined online and in-person  from industry, government, civil society groups, multilateral organizations and academia  to discuss new ideas and solutions to increase access to medicines, vaccines and diagnostics and promote innovation in health technologies.

Recognizing the global nature of the challenge, experts from Asia and the Pacific were video conferenced into the meeting from Bangkok to join the solutions-focused meeting which saw lively debate on a range of topics including human rights, patent pools, intellectual property rights, public-private partnerships, and alternative sources for R&D financing. Patient groups were a critical part of the meeting, offering very personal perspectives on the challenges facing the panel.

I am one of the South African ladies who struggled to get Herceptin for my breast cancer, said Tobeka Daki, a patient and health activist. As a result, four months ago, I was diagnosed with bone cancer of the spine, and I am here today asking the panel to please help South Africans get this drug, because chemotherapy alone cannot cure this type of breast cancer.

The Panel was convened in November 2015 by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to address the policy incoherence between intellectual property laws and access to medicines. Following a call for new ideas and potential solutions, the Panel received 178 contributions from industry, government, civil society groups, multilateral organizations and academia. In the last two weeks, the Panel held two global dialogues - in London and Johannesburg - to allow participants to discuss the tensions between intellectual property laws and access to medicines and propose solutions.

High prices mean that too many dont have access to the medicines they need. This means we need another way to pay for R&D, and heres where the important concept of delinkage is so central, said Suerie Moon, co-director at the Project on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.Delinkage implies that we need to pay for R&D with public money. We need to demand a fair public return on public investment. This means no monopolies on medicines that are financed with public money. In order to realize this, we need to find a way to work together as a global community so that all governments will contribute fairly to developing R&D costs.

The Treatment Action Campaign released a statement and a  Johannesburg Declaration  after the meeting. The statement outlined their expectations for the panel: The UN High-Level Panel offers a unique opportunity to reassess the way society ensures that new medicines are developed and made available to all people who need them. A variety of alternatives and/or changes to the current patent-based innovation system have been proposed. We consider many of these proposals to be feasible and implementable should they be backed up with sufficient political will and commitment.

Both dialogues saw constructive debates between stakeholders. Trade and industry representatives are part of the High-Level Panel and have been active in the Panels various discussions in London and Johannesburg.

I think the work of the panel is very timely. We need to review the balance between innovation and access. We need to make sure that companies like mine are able to invest in R&D for treatment for tomorrow so that patients who need them get access to those products, said Jon Pender, Vice President of Government Affairs at GlaxoSmithKline. Weve heard a lot about the issues of R&D and patents, but actually for the vast majority of essential medicines that patients need, there is no intellectual property on them at all, there's no copyright, there are no patents.

Following the two dialogues, the Panel will meet again at the end of the month to discuss the input theyve received so far and start to develop recommendations for the United Nations Secretary-General. A report, which will include the recommendations from the Panel, will be released in June 2016. As the meeting wrapped up, the co-chair of the High-Level Panel gave key takeaways.

It is clear that we face a global problem, not just a problem of developing countries, said Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and co-chair of the panel. We have heard from stakeholders about the good practices and experiences that we can build on. But, we cannot forget some of the limitations of these models and the need for new approaches. You can guarantee that we will use all these interventions as food for thought and action.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

On Wednesday, Floyd Mayweather attended a rally for Donald Trump in Youngstown, Ohio wearing a type of headscarf usually worn by Muslim women. Mayweather canvassed the crowd, fists out, daring anyone to take him on.

I'm just a little Muslim lady. Anybody wanna try to punch a Muslim? asked Mayweather. When no response came, he tried again. I said, ANYBODY WANNA TRY TO PUNCH A MUSLIM?! COME ON, TAKE A SHOT! MONEY'S READY!

Mayweather then wandered through the crowd at the Winner Aviation building, looking people in the eye and asking softly, You got a problem with a tiny, little Muslim lady? A Trump supporter wearing a cowboy hat and wraparound sunglasses approached Mayweather, then abruptly turned around after a five second stare down.

Mayweather made his way to the exit forty-five minutes later as the crowd stared at him silently. He then ripped off his head scarf and yelled, I thought so!! as he stormed out the door with his twelve-person entourage.

-http://thekicker.com/


18.03.2016 LISTEN

In the upcoming months Accra and the rest of Ghana will be inundated with political advertisements promising the usual bouquet; free education, jobs, hospitals, roads and an end to the legendary Dumsor phenomenon. Politicians will travel the length and breadth of the country attending funerals, durbars and market days. These are the precursors to a Ghanaian election, and who ever does these best, coupled with a hit campaign song might next occupy The Flagstaff house. However I would ask Ghanaians to consider one more issue as the country heads to the polls later this year; security.

Burkina Faso rang in the New Year with a tragic and horrendous terror attack on the Splendid Hotel on January 16. Burkina Faso shares a border of about 600km with Ghana. March 13, 2016, terror attack on beach resort in Ivory Coast claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Ivory Coast shares a border of about 700km with Ghana. These are not claims to cause fear and panic but cold, hard facts. Whoever wins this years election will have to be a true commander in chief in a way that many past leaders have not had to and Ghanaians will do well to make the politicians remember that.

Ghana has taken steps to secure the country including parliament acting to arm to immigration service. However, more needs to be done. The Bureau of National Investigations, the Ghana Armed Forces, The Ghana Police Service and the military all require more investment. The nature of warfare has changed and Ghana must be ready to tackle flash urban warfare.

Unfortunately, as we have learnt from the Nigerian experience, corruption affects any attempt to fight terror. With a current Transparency International Index ranking of 56, the country must put in more work to ensure there are no holes in its war chest. Corruption in the military, intelligence services and government machinery will only make a bad situation worse. Winning any war on terror will a high level of anti-corruption patriotism.

These are times when ECOWAS must be empowered and solid structures put in place to ensure a cohesive and well concerted effort to fight terrorism. No one country can go it alone and information shared, is lives saved. By all means, have the meeting and conferences but the citizenry must ensure that when our roads are blocked creating massive vehicular traffic jams, it translates into positive, workable and measurable efforts to secure our countries.

No National Health Insurance Scheme or School feeding program can be run in an environment where terror rules the day. Ghana can also certainly bid adieu to any dreams of increased foreign direct investment if it doesnt take concrete and measurable steps to ensure that it does not fall victim to acts of terrorism. An old proverb of the Ga ethnic group says when you see your neighbours beard on fire, you fetch water next to yours. So when the vans come round with the t-shirts and campaign messages, please ask, And terrorism?
17.03.2016 LISTEN

Accra, March 17, GNA - Appolonia City of Light, a mixed-use urban developing area near Accra, has commissioned its first power substation, which will serve the first 4,000 residents at the project.

The privately funded substation, which is specially designed to withstand heavy rains and flooding, is one of the first of its kind in north of Accra.

The substation's 20/26MW power transformer was manufactured in India by Crompton Greaves Limited and designed in collaboration with the Electricity Company of Ghana, a unique demonstration of a private sector-led expenditure in close co-operation with a Ghanaian public utility.

Mr Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, praised the innovation of Appolonia and its lead investor Rendeavour in finding solutions to the electricity needs of the project.

'Such a project certainly requires efficient supply of power. Rendeavor had the foresight to secure its own substation to fast track power access and that is a mark of a good and a visionary developer that realizes the value it is seeking from its project,' he said.

'I take this opportunity to encourage all land developers to emulate Rendeavor and Appolonia's example to ensure ease of power access to their projects as well as for the benefit of the communities in which they are operating,' he added.

Mr Akandoh emphasised the importance of the private sector to national development and urged investors to explore ways of ensuring that they met their core business mandate.

Mr Frank Mosier, Rendeavour Board Director and lead U.S. investor in Appolonia, highlighted the co-operation between all stakeholders: 'What we see today is testament to partnership. This important investment has only been possible through close co-ordination between the Ghanaian government, our partners in the community and the private sector.'

'We look forward to continued relationships with all Appolonia stakeholders related to Appolonia and welcome further involvement from the private sector in achieving further development at the site,' Mr Mosier added.

Mr Anthony Okyere, the Chief Executive Officer of Appolonia, noted that the station would deliver power to more than 15,000 people and 4,000 homes within five years, and nearly 90,000 people in total, over 15 years.

He said aside residents; the substation would also serve commercial areas at Appolonia, such as retail, schools and health facilities.

"After working with the Electricity Company of Ghana and Crompton Greaves Limited, we are proud that the first of the three power substations has been acquired, installed and readied to supply electricity to Appolonia. Concluding this important step is proof of our commitment to this project,' he added.

Appolonia City of Light, a partnership between Rendeavour, the leading urban land developer and local communities, is a fully master planned, mixed-use and mixed-income urban development in the Greater Accra Metropolitan area.

The project will be developed for residential properties, retail and other commercial centres, as well as schools, healthcare and other social infrastructure.

All local and national regulatory approvals have been met and a full land title certificate has been granted.

In April 2015, sales of the 'Buy and Build' residential development, Nova Ridge, were launched, with The Oxford housing development offering ready built homes coming online in April 2016.

Appolonia offers Ghanaians an opportunity to live in a master-planned environment with close access to Accra.

GNA
Accra, March 17, GNA - Kosmos Energy Ghana has launched a new corporate social investment programme to help boost agriculture and enhance the interest of the youth in the agribusiness sector.

Dubbed Kosmos Innovation Centre (KIC), the programme would use innovation and apply commercial solutions to Ghana's existing social and economic challenges by using a market based approach that facilitates private sector enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Speaking at the launch, Mr Joe Mensah, Vice President and Country Manager, Kosmos Energy, said the initiative was a different approach to corporate social responsibility.

Under the theme: "Investing in Ghana's future, one entrepreneur at a time" Mr Mensah said the initiative would through a coordinated programme affect each sector of the country's economy.

He said KIC would in the process play a role to help solve some of Ghana's most pressing developmental challenges.

Mr Mensah said the KIC would move into full operation to tackle its first development challenge in agriculture.

'The programme would encourage budding entrepreneurs to use information and communications technology to transform the agricultural sector.

'It will involve designing activities that target the entire value chain, from stimulating new ideas to funding expansion of existing commercial enterprises, and at every stage it will generate enthusiastic participation through communication and knowledge sharing,' he said.

Mr Mensah said KIC's vision would be to bring about social change by stimulating young people's interest in agriculture which is often regarded as a dull and unrewarding activity.

He said small agribusinesses would receive investment to execute business models that serve small-holder farmers.

'By fostering innovation, we will bring about market system change. Ultimately, we expect our intervention to lead to the establishment of agri-tech exchanges and other forums that would help bring new thinking and expertise to the sector,' Mr. Mensah said.

Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, Minister of Agriculture, who launched the KIC, said the initiative would help accelerate the country's quest to improve growth in the agricultural sector.

He said there was the need for the youth to consider agriculture as a serious business and take keen interest in it, adding that government had in place policies to attract the youth into the agricultural sector.

'Government supports this kind of programme which we believe will bring a positive turnaround for entrepreneurs and also have a socio-economic impact on the people and the economy,' he said.

Alhaji Limuna encouraged other corporate institutions to emulate the example of Kosmos and come out with initiatives that would benefit the agricultural sector.

GNA
Ho (V/R), March 17, GNA - The bold interventions launched by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has improved nutrition among children and pregnant women and triggered decline in stunted growth in the Volta Region, health officials reported on Wednesday.

The aid, in the form of cash and direct technical support, helped regional health officers to train hundreds of counsellors and initiated locally tailored activities to reach out to pregnant women and children in communities and educate them on good nutritional practices and hygiene.

'I must say that since UNICEF came to our aid in 2013, we have been able to reduce stunting among children under five years from 27 per cent in 2008 to 19 per cent in 2015,' the Volta Regional Nutrition Officer, Mr Nutifafa Glover said at a presentation on nutrition programming in the capital, Ho.

'The underweight rate of children under five have also come down to 9.8 per cent in 2015 from 12.1 per cent, as you can also see from the chart, the nutritional level of pregnant women have improved significantly'.

Mr Glover said the Region had trained 519 health staff with 409 being females, while 110 were males.

He explained that 81 of the personnel were trained on the job, thus enabling the Health Directorate to implement several interventions to encourage good nutritional practices in homes and schools.

He said UNICEF was the major source of funding for nutrition activities in the Region, investing a total of GH 550,931.84 since 2013.

UNICEF works closely with its partner organisations to deliver equitable and sustainable services for improved living, survival, development and protection of children.

The organisation introduced a number of programmes under its Water, Sanitation and Hygiene; and Nutrition sections in 2013, which the health workers there said had made positive impact on the lives of pregnant women and children in communities.

The Country Representative of UNICEF, Ms Susan Namondo Ngongi, led a team on Wednesday as part of a field visit to the Region to interact with government officials and beneficiaries of the programme, after a group from the child rights body had reported on the progress of work made.

Ms Ngongi, during the day, met the Regional Minister, Mrs Helen Ntoso, and the Regional Health Director, Dr Joseph Teye-Nuertey, who briefed the UNICEF officials on how success chalked.

Mrs Ntoso appealed to UNICEF to consider an intervention that would help the Region deliver regular health services to about 30 per cent of its population living on the islands.

'We have a lot of communities that are deprived, most of our people are farmers and fisher folks on islands, they have no electricity, and their only means of transport is the boat, and we get many casualties when there is accident,' she said.

However, she said, the Region was making a number of efforts to acquire a boat for the delivery of health services to the communities cut off from the Region who equally needed proper services.

She said a request had been made to the National Disaster Management Organisation for the acquisition of a boat to ease transportation problems facing the communities and also to enable frequent visits by health officials.

GNA
18.03.2016 LISTEN

It is a question that every true apostle wants to ask the children of the Kingdom. If you do not obey Gods will for your life, then why would you expect God to even talk to you when you persist in disobedience? God is righteous and does not allow fools to use and abuse Him or His name in unrighteousness. This article will deal with unrighteousness among Christians and the matter of how to address questions in the Evhe language.

Seven question indicators in Evhe or Nyabiabiawo am adr l Eegb m/Nyabiabia adrawo l Eegb m

Here are seven question indicators of the Evhe language with their English counterparts. Consider carefully as you pose each one to the living God each day. And ask yourself if you really know the answers to your questions for certain. Here we go.

nuka meaning what amka meaning who aleke meaning how ekai or wokawoe meaning when nukata meaning why afika or gan meaning where nenie or nn meaning how much

These question indicators are intended to precede the questions we pose to anyone. Why do we even ask questions at all? It is because often, we want answers to our problems and solutions that will show favour in our situations.

A question that I would like to pose to you today is whether people understand that Yahweh is the maker of everything? Well, He is. Why? It is because He is, based on His evidence of creation having been created for humanity to enjoy their lives while on earth.

Today, there are so many people who are not enjoying life despite the fact of Yahwehs righteous creation that was supposed to do good for man. This situation creates the impression that God is not righteous in that people suffer. This should not be the case. Suffering in life is supposed to breed intellectual development that leads to the overcoming of trials given by God. It is only lazy Christians who do not allow their intellects to develop when they are faced with challenges in life. In addition, lazy Christians mostly refuse to adopt righteous principles as a means to overcoming trials.

Questioning God in Unrighteousness: A National Pastime of the Heathen

People who love God naturally pose questions to Him every day. These are not heathen questions.

At the same time, there is a person who genuinely does not obey God righteously and yet constantly looks for reasons to consider Him unrighteous because He does not do their will by doing unrighteousness to benefit their cause. This is why I have said that most Christians today are heathen. Many DO NOT even consider that the Fathers Word says Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD [Yahweh], and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Yeshayahu/Isaiah 55:7-9). Clearly, God thinks differently than man; He is not heathen and therefore believes very much in His own words.

Gods Commands are part of His covenant

His covenant or agreement with His people of righteousness has been written as a legal contract in blood. That blood is the blood of Yeshua that was spilt as a result of the sins of a generation of false believers in Yahweh. Like todays Christians, Yahwehs nation of old, Yisrael, did not even consider that Yeshua was a righteous man, at first. It took many peoples testimony to convince the nation of who Yeshua claimed to be. If they had just believed in the scriptures, they would have been able to righteously discern the truth of who he is more easily.

When we do not obey Gods commands, it leads to a situation where, as human beings, we lose our ability to discern what is right and wrong. In addition, disobedience to Gods commands leads to the posing of heathen questions to the God of Abrakham, Yitsak and Yakob. These questions stem from unbelief in the consequences of sin in the lives of people who do this. Now let us turn our attention to Evhe. Here are some questions in the Evhe language.

Nuka dz? | What happened? Amka yo? | Who is it? (NOTE: yo is a particle from the Tu/Tongu dialect meaning it is.) Aleke mil egbl ge? | How shall we say it? Wokawoe nel yiyi ge ha? | When are you going to go? Nukata via l avi fam? | Why is the child crying? Afika Kanaa l? | Where is Canada? Nenie ny x  asi la? | What is the price of the house?

I hope this article has explained why so many believers in the gospel are simply deceiving NOBODY except themselves when they point the finger at God for the very things they have been doing to harm themselves by practicing sin and unrighteousness.

Conclusion: Righteousness Exalts a Nation

In our modern standard, it remains to be seen whether there will be a need for righteousness to reign in every area of endeavour. In this case, I am also considering that there is a need for more books and funding of Evhe language materials that promote truth.
Top local mobile value added service (VAS) providers who constitute the Wireless Applications Services Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG) have suspended all services on Airtel citing unfair revenue share.

Director of Regulatory and Corporate Affairs for WASPAG, Conrad Nyuur told Adom News that, Airtel, like all other telcos, have over the years been imposing unfair revenue share arrangements on VAS players, but adds "Airtel went too far".

WASPAG represents over 20 top VAS providers in the country, and they include MobileContent, SMSGH, TXTGhana, Rancard and many others.

Conrad Nyuur explained that Airtel is one of the telcos that keep 70% of revenue generated by services of VAS providers and give 30% to the VAS providers to share with content owners and app developers.

"That revenue share arrangement is bad enough but just this year Airtel wrote to us and said they will now keep 80% and give us 20% but we resisted and they reviewed it to 75% to 25% but we still insist it is unfair," he said.

Nyuur said they therefore gave Airtel one month notice to reverse the decision and that one month ended on March 16, 2016 but they have still not heard anything from Airtel so they have suspended all their services on Airtel until they reserve the decision.

By this action, all premium-rated and subscribed services such as all SMS-based services, caller ring back tone (CRBT), MMS or WAP content services and even some voice services have all been cancelled on Airtel.

This means Airtel customers who subscribe to those services, some of which are essential, would no longer enjoy the services until Airtel reaches a compromise with their local VAS partners.

Nyuur noted that this is not the first time VAS players have had to boycott Airtel, saying that in the first instance, Airtel and Tigo failed to pay that exact amount due VAS players as reflected in mutually reconciled financial statement.

"They insisted on paying what they unilaterally collated and we lost money because we had then paid our content providers based on what the reconciled statement said," he lamented.

He said initially the local VAS players had a 50-50 revenue share arrangement with Airtel but they kept scrapping off part of the share of VAS players every year claiming it is based on orders from their headquarters in India.

"To add insult to injury", Nyuur said, Airtel even imposed their Indian-based sister company called ComViva on the local VAS players to play middle man for CRBT services.

"ComViva is nothing but a content provider like us but Airtel forced us to give our content to them in India and then they place it on the Airtel network in Ghana and that has reduced our share of the revenue from CRBT to 11% and not 30% as agreed," he said.

He said WASPAG is particularly surprised at Airtel because in India, where it is headquartered, it gives VAS players up to 70% of the VAS revenue, but it has decided to shortchange VAS players in Ghana.

"The protest to Airtel's imposition of unfair revenue share arrangement was necessary because we have endured that unfair cycle for years, where one telco scoops some of our revenue off and once they succeed the other telcos follow and we keep losing," he noted.

Nyuur said WASPAG is very worried that so far, the telecoms industry regulator, National Communications Authority (NCA) is not providing any real protection for VAS players after licensing special number resources to them at a fee.

He said the last time VAS players took an issue regarding Airtel to NCA, the regulator said it could not interfere in commercial arrangements between two private entities, "but when we suspended our services the NCA said we should restore the services to customers while we negotiate with Airtel.

"We feel that was double standards on the part of the NCA because our commercial arrangement with telcos is always about the customer so why would NCA stay off the arrangement which has ramifications for the customer," he asked.

Meanwhile, since the WASPAG members suspended their services, Airtel is said to have started feeling the pinch so its officials have called WASPAG for a meeting later today to discuss the way forward, after ignoring the VAS providers all this while.

Airtel officials reached on the matter confirmed they are aware of the issue but declined comment until after negotiating with the VAS players.

But until then, all VAS services provided by WASPAG members to Airtel customers remain suspended.
Niamey (AFP) - Two separate Islamist attacks killed three policemen and a soldier in Niger, an official said, just days before the impoverished west African nation votes in the second round of presidential elections.

Gunmen believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror group's African affiliate, shot dead three policemen in a market in Dolbel near the border with Burkina Faso, the interior minister Hassimi Massaoudou told AFP.

"The attackers were repelled, and we are currently sweeping the area. We don't know the toll on the attackers side, they took their wounded and dead," the minister said.

Near the border with Nigeria, four suicide bombers attacked a military convoy, killing the local military commander and injuring two others, the minister said.

A fifth suicide bomber, a young girl, was prevented from detonating her vest.

Massaoudou said Boko Haram militants were behind the attack.

There were no civilian casualties.

Niger goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round of presidential elections expected to hand another term to incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou.

The opposition has said they will not recognise the results of the vote and have repeatedly complained that their candidate Hama Amadou, who is currently receiving medical treatment in Paris and was in jail in Niger before that, has been treated unfairly.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Zika virus a global health emergency as from February 1, noting that the "main worry" is the virus' potential link to microcephaly and subsequent brain damage. According to WHO, the Zika virus may have infected as many as 4 million people in the Americas, and public health officials in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador are reportedly all researching the effects of Zika infection in pregnant women.- Mercola (2015). The virus (ZIKA) was first isolated in 1947 from a monkey in the Zika forest, Uganda, then in mosquitoes (Aedes africanus) in the same forest in 1948, and in a human in Nigeria in 1952. There are two ZIKV lineages: the African lineage and the Asian lineage which has recently emerged in the Pacific and the Americas- Faye (2014). However, in this discussion we elaborate the shrunken heads in the boondocks as an indicator for Zika awareness but not the circumstantial evidence for viral prevalence.

To start with, Zika virus disease is a mosquito-borne disease caused by Zika virus (ZIKV) which causes in general a mild febrile illness with maculo-papular rash. Aedes mosquitoes are considered as main vectors. Before 2007, viral circulation and a few outbreaks were documented in tropical Africa and in some areas in Southeast Asia. Since 2007, several islands of the Pacific region have experienced outbreaks. In 2015, ZIKV disease outbreaks were reported in South America for the first time. ZIKV disease is now considered as an emerging infectious disease  Mercola (2015).

A significant increase of patients with GuillainBarre syndrome (GBS) was reported during the 2014 outbreak in French Polynesia. A similar increase along with an unusual increase of congenital microcephaly was observed in some regions in north eastern Brazil in 2015. Causal relationships are currently under investigation - Hayes (2009).

When Zika-affected some areas in Brazil, a rise in microcephaly was seen and the Brazilian government asked health officials to report any case in which a child was born with a head circumference smaller than 33 centimeters. False positives were expected, and when they realized that most of these babies were in fact healthy and normal, the threshold was lowered to 32 centimeters in December. The limit was further lowered to 31.9 centimeters for boys and 31.5 centimeters for girls.

As reported by The New York Times, "Of the cases examined so far, 404 have been confirmed as having microcephaly and Only 17 of them tested positive for the Zika virus... Another 709 babies have been ruled out as having microcephaly ... underscoring the risks of false positives making the epidemic appear larger than it actually is. The remaining 3,670 cases are still being investigated." Hence,theres actually very little scientific evidence tying the Zika virus to this particular condition.

If we are to take the U.S. as our example, approximately 25,000 infants are diagnosed with microcephaly each year. Brazil has about 70 percent of the population the U.S. has, and now reports just over 400 cases, 17 of which tested positive for the Zika virus. Colombia reports that 3,177 pregnant women have tested positive for Zika virus, yet no cases of microcephaly have occurred.

According to ATCC, a "global biological materials resource...organization whose mission focuses on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, development, and distribution of standard reference microorganisms," the Zika virus7  which they sell for about $500  causes paralysis and death.

In humans, Zika infection typically causes only mild flu-like symptoms, if any, and there does not appear to be any prior evidence suggesting it might cause birth defects.

That certainly doesn't exclude the possibility, of course, but there are many other factors and co-factors that offer a far more likely and rational explanation for the rise in microcephaly in this area of Brazil, besides Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

For starters, the "outbreak" is occurring in a largely poverty-stricken agricultural area of Brazil that uses large amounts of banned pesticides.

Between these factors and the lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency, you already have the basic framework for an increase in poor health outcomes among newborn infants in that area.

Environmental pollution and toxic pesticide exposure have been positively linked to a wide array of adverse health effects, including birth defects. When you add all these co-factors together, an increase in microcephaly doesn't seem like such a far-fetched outcome.

Vitamin A and zinc deficiency is considered endemic in Brazil, and both of these nutritional deficiencies are known to depress immune function. More importantly, vitamin A deficiency has been linked to an increased risk of microcephaly specifically, and zinc is known to play an important role in the structure and function of the brain.

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists malnutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals as two of the three known risk factors. The third is certain infections during pregnancy, including rubella, cytomegalovirus, toxoplasmosis, and others.

Researchers have also noted that microcephaly follows "an apparent autosomal recessive pattern," and may be the result of a recessed gene.

The pesticide Atrazine also appears to be a viable culprit. According to research published in 2011, small head circumference was listed as a side effect of prenatal Atrazine exposure. Atrazine is used to prevent pre- and post-emergence weeds and is the second most commonly used herbicide after Roundup. As noted by Sott.net:

"The most obvious cause of birth defects in this area is direct contact and absorption of pesticides. A study of pesticide use on tomatoes in the Northern State of Pernambuco, Brazil, indicates high exposure to pesticide workers and poor application methods which threaten the ecology of the area.

Women washed the pesticide application equipment, generally in the work environment, without protective clothing or without observing the recommended three-fold washing process ... Of the women workers, 32% reported being pregnant more than five times ... Almost three-quarters of the women (71%) reported miscarriages, and 11% reported having mentally and/or physically impaired offspring."

A report by an Argentine physician's organization called "Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns" also challenges the theory that Zika virus is responsible for the microcephaly cases in Brazil. They note that for the past 18 months, a chemical larvicide that causes malformations in mosquitoes (pyroproxyfen) has been applied to the drinking water in the affected area of Brazil.

Pyroproxyfen is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, long-term strategic partners of Monsanto, and has been used in a state-controlled program to eradicate mosquitoes.

This chemical inhibits growth in mosquito larvae, thereby producing malformations that disable and/or kill the mosquitoes. According to "Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns," it's also an endocrine disruptor and teratogenic, meaning it causes birth defects. The organization also points out that Zika virus has never been associated with birth defects previously, even in areas where 75 percent of the population has been infected. According to the report:

"Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyroproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage."

The list of pesticides that have the potential to disrupt fetal development is long. Yet another suspect is Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid. In October 2012around the same time that these women would have been getting pregnant--Brazil lifted its ban on aerial spraying of neonicotinoids. In 2001, it was reported that Imidacloprid fed to pregnant rats and rabbits in "maternally toxic" doses caused skeletal malformation in a small percentage of fetuses.

In December 2013, the U.K. Daily Mail also reported that neonicotinoids were suspected of causing developmental problems in babies and children. Another 2013 study showed adverse events with embryo development and neonicotinoids. Perhaps it's not any single one of these pesticides that is to blame. Perhaps the rise in microcephaly cases is the result of exposure to a terrible mixture of toxic pesticides before or during pregnancy?

Also, in October 2014 the Brazilian government mandated that all pregnant women must receive the pertussis-containing Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) vaccine, effective as of 2015. The fact that birth defects began rising toward the end of 2015 seems more suspicious in light of this mandate than the possibility that Zika infection is solely responsible  especially when you consider that pertussis vaccine has previously been linked to brain inflammation and brain damage in infants, and the safety of administering Tdap to pregnant women has never been proven.

In the summer of 2015, Dr. Kathryn Edwards, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program, received a $307,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the immune responses of pregnant women receiving Tdap, the vaccine in question. Her conclusions remain to be seen.

But a number of previous studies have demonstrated that stimulating the immune system of a pregnant woman is a very bad idea. So why mandate Tdap vaccine but not vitamin A and zinc supplementation for pregnant women? Studies showing adverse health effects from maternal immune activation include but are not limited to the following samples:

Interestingly enough, the Gates Foundation has also financed the development of genetically-engineered (GE) mosquitoes,designed by a biotech company called Oxitec to combat dengue fever and Zika  a project some suspect may have somehow backfired, resulting in a Zika outbreak instead.

Considering the fact that the transgenic mosquitoes are designed to kill the offspring before they reach breeding maturity  they're carrying a "suicide" or "self-destruct gene" if you will  you may wonder how such mosquitoes could possibly promote the spread of Zika. Well, they can't. Not intentionally, anyway, which is what some people have suggested.

There are some potential problems though. This genetic "kill switch" starts to fail in the presence of the antibiotic tetracycline. Brazil is the third largest consumer of antibiotics for food and animal production and, according to a 2009 analysis, an estimated 75 percent of the tetracyclines administered to farm animals end up being excreted in waste.

The use of manure and sewage sludge as fertilizers is a major route of spread of antibiotics in the environment. (Little is known about the environmental impact of tetracycline, but Brazilian researchers have found alarming situations where the presence of these drugs in drinking water has resulted in bacterial resistance.)

According to Oxitec documents, in the presence of tetracyclines the survival rate of the GE mosquitoes' offspring may be as high as 15 percent. However, aside from not decimating the mosquito population as efficiently as intended, there's really NO evidence to suggest that these GE mosquitoes are somehow intentional carriers of the Zika virus.

That said, while the GE mosquitoes are supposed to be all male, which don't bite, if females either happen to slip through the process, or for some reason survive, there may be a risk that they could transfer their modified DNA to the host. What the ramifications of this might be is unclear.

It's astounding though how short-sighted many are, but that's what happens when you incite panic  people don't stop to think. In this case, recommendations to use toxic foggers and sprays is bound to do FAR more harm than good, if for no other reason than the fact that they're ineffective against Aedes aegypti, the species of mosquito in question.

These tiny black and white striped mosquitoes do not fly far  their range being a mere 300 to 600 feet. Since it's so difficult to catch them airborne, insecticidal sprays and foggers are mostly useless for controlling them. Also, they feed during the daytime, not at night, which is typically when the fog-trucks will roll through the neighborhood. As noted by Medicinenet.com:

"To feed, they have to stick close to their intended targets, a.k.a. us. They live under decks, patio furniture, and in homes that don't have cool air  they don't much like air conditioning. They especially love the drip trays that collect extra water under potted plants ... They 'can breed in incredibly small amounts of water,' says Joe Conlon, spokesman for the American Mosquito Control Association.

'When I was in Suriname, South America, several years ago, I saw them breeding very happily in discarded soda bottle caps,' he says. In New Jersey, researchers at Rutgers University found them breeding in water that had pooled in discarded snack-size potato chip bags.

'These mosquitoes are in people's backyards,' says Dina Fonseca, Ph.D., an entomologist and associate professor at Rutgers. They live in containers, she says, and are 'urban, domestic mosquitoes.'"

In summary, shrunken head syndrome or Microcephaly is rare, and it has many other causes, including infection of the fetus with rubella (German measles), cytomegalovirus or toxoplasmosis; poisoning of the fetus by alcohol, mercury or radiation; or severe maternal malnutrition and diabetes. It is also caused by several gene mutations, including Down syndrome. There is no vaccine or prophylaxis against the Zika virus. Efforts to make a vaccine have just begun, and creating and testing a vaccine normally takes years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. It is our sincere hope, that this disease will be soon contained to avoid unnecessary health and economical burden of its prognosis. A numerous vaccine on our list of prevention is also not healthy as vaccines are also a culprit to other health problems.

By Jones H Munangandu

Motivational Speaker and Health Practictioner

Skype; jones.muna

Mobile; +260966565670- whatsapp; 0979362526
18.03.2016 LISTEN

There is no doubt whatsoever that we have ingenuity, brains and prowess all over Africa. It is in the history, anthropology and science of man. The greatest enemies we face now are unexpired suicide bombers that take us two steps backwards for one step of progress. Adored rats invite bush rats to clog smooth machinery of progress. A colleague bitter observation at international conference still haunts: if Africans do not get their house in order, who will do it for them?

Asking for divine intervention is a signs of defeat. Some Africans gave up trying to rescue Africa; others have been defeated as innocent victims perished. But we know its those that get up on their feet after each defeat that overcomes. Since Independence, each African country had blue prints of rosy roads ahead, only to be betrayed. From steel to petrol industries, Africa built with European, American and Asian expertise inefficiently. If overwhelmed chose a battle at a time.

Haba, before each of these industries becomes effective and productive they were outdated. No matter how you take the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu revelation, that right now, it is cheaper to import some PMS than refine locally or that it is reality as Nigeria struggles to be self-sufficient in about eighteen months. An ugly truth of what has been going on for about 50 yrs. Man proposes monkey wrench thrower disposes petroleum independence .

This is not in defense of Ibe Kachikwu, a mere messenger of reality: take it any way you want. At the same time, dejected, abused and frustrated folks wonder what else is cheaper to import: cars, garri, rice, vegetable, tomato, water, nylon, pencils, cement, gin or the air we breathe in. After Obasanjo planned mini independent power stations all over the Country to be supplied by gas plant, implementation failed because gas supply was not ready. Generator importers were!

The amount of brains, manpower and skills needed to police intentionally built-in inadequacy into the system from the initial phase of planning and acquisition is not as great as at the end when cancer in the system has spread beyond maintenance. Even if Ike Kachikwu is a scientist in petroleum science, he cannot rectify a system that was scantily implemented at the source. Since foreigners know that a small initial kickbacks to wrench throwers, can stall our machinery.

Maintenance of our refineries, turnaround time and petrol production is limited to a couple of octane range around 87. No provision or adaptation for higher 91, 95 range after kickbacks. We must import 90s PMS for new cars. Our sweet crude with low sulfur content already overtaken by modern refineries that can take sulfur out cheaper while our inefficient stagnant refineries become old jalopies that need repairs just as discarded Toronto subway trains we negotiated.

Any plans for electric cars? Indignation of people in reaction to imported goods and services as solution is in a way an indication that finally we are waking up to the injurious effect of imports depressing the local economy by pricing homemade products out of market. In the case of the imported petroleum products, it is also a major drain on foreign reserve. Acceptance of cheaper imports than local goods killed our textile industries as it may kill our food and vegetable farms.

Why is it that most of the industries in Africa are either established with old technologies that result in short lifespan trouble-free productions or second hand machineries that break down too often to be reliable? Some of us still remember the imported used Scandinavian buses that broke down on Lagos streets. The greed and colo-mentalities behind ready-mades goods satisfy instant gratification, instead of practice made perfect  goods from our manufacturing plants.

We read about those looking for forex to buy machineries and create employment. They were discouraged and asked to import. By importing, you crease the hands of Central Bank officers and bank branch that would take cuts. You save time or the hassle of opening new plant, hiring employees and managing them before making a profit. Many people do not want to go through jobs creation problem when you can make fifty percent profit by round tripping with the banks.

Ajaokuta Steel is still in limbo. Yet, it has produced many kickback billionaires abroad from one generation of glorified monkey wrench throwers to another. We struggled with telephone for so many years while M. K. O Abiola and the military destroyed few usable roads planting cables. Then came Bola Ige lambasting inefficiency in NEPA while deriding phone users as the privilege of the rich though market ladies in Benin Republic (a stone throw away) enjoyed cell phones.

Bola Ige gave a timetable like Fashola when NEPA would start supplying power to businesses and homes. He did not even say goodbye before he was demoted and they later snuffed life out of the Mr. Too-Know. Anyone that remembers Audu Ogbeh, the young Minister under Shagari that cut off power to NPN (his party) headquarters for none payment, knew he went back to his village poor and back as a lecturer. Even OBJ went broke after he left as military President.

When OBJ and Ogbeh came back into the government, they swore: never again! They became filthy rich. For each of those mentioned in this article, there are other Nigerians and Africans more dedicated, honest with a burning desire to serve and see Africans and Nigerians progress. Nigerians are well aware that if angels were sent to change and clean up corruption, the angels would become corrupt ending up on the other side of heaven: hell! We reward kakistocracy!

There is another factor that government business is nobodys business while private enterprises are more efficient because they are driven by profit. This sounds right but nobody must excuse inefficiency anywhere. Even in the capitalist countries where basic infrastructure and health care are run by governments, corruption is high crime. In African countries, corruption becomes synonymous with obsession to gain adoration, throwing monkey wrench into running machine.

It is like schoolboys that altered their school fee bills in order to defraud their fathers, sharing their fathers sweat in the cocoa field fifty-fifty with the bursar. That is what those that would defraud their father do to their country. In those days, fathers disown those children. The same politicians colluding with foreigners, foreign portfolio investors, grabbing our foreign reserves, land and cornering our diamond, gold and oil resources should face deterrents as in China?

You do not have to be fatalists to save staved, neglected generation of Africans begging, dying to run away from home, retire outside, prostitutes worldwide or be armed robbers at home.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

Several conferences have been organized to tell Ghanaians how incompetent the current government is; with the grade point for such conclusions being the performance of the Ghanaian economy with special attention on how much we have borrowed since NDC took over the affairs of the economy. In fact, so much is said about the debt stock of our economy that, I will not be surprised if my seven year old daughter mentions the total figure to the decimals when queried. But why do we make so much noise about Ghanas debt? Is it actually that bad to borrow? Are we doing something wrong by borrowing at all? In other words, if Ghana is borrowing so what?

I know you might deem this insane, but the truth is, if we are honest and can leave our political brains behind when doing analysis, we will celebrate Mahama rather than vilify him for taking the risk of borrowing. In the fight for Ghanas development, he is the bravest warrior we have ever had  no wonder he is the descendant of Jakpa. At Ghanas current position, borrowing is a necessary evil.

We either borrow to meet the needs of the growing population that comes with higher demands for infrastructure, or fold our arms and welcome the ugly siblings of dumsor in the not so distant future. A selfish politician would have chosen power over doing the right thing; but as someone who sees the betterment of Ghana above all, Mahama took the risk to borrow  handing over the missiles to his opponents to fire at him. To understand why Ghana needs to borrow even more, let us personalize the countrys situation a bit. All apologies to the economists; permit me to use micro analysis to clarify an important macro issue.

Imagine yourself as a young entrepreneur who started selling provisions on a table in front of your house. Let us assume that market is very good for you and your products outgrew the little table you inherited from your father. You need to move into a store to cope with the growth. But there is a problem; you just do not have enough money to build or rent one. So you walked into the little bank behind your house for a loan and built yourself a store. Assume that the market is still good and now you even need to expand to other areas in your community and beyond. Because of your reputation in paying your debts, the bank agreed to give you more money to catch up with the demands. Tell me, with this class 1 analysis; is there anything wrong with you borrowing? There will be something wrong only and only if you are taking the loans for smartphones or tablets. The problem is not about borrowing; it is about what you are using the money for. This is exactly what Mahama is doing for Ghana. At a point in time, your store will become a supermarket; you will own franchises and will have enough free cash to add more stores without the need for loans. Indeed, you might graduate from a borrower to a lender. Just look at China.

With the bravery of the NDC government, Ghana will reach what I will call the optimal level of infrastructural development, when we will not need huge investment in capital projects apart from maintenance, and can therefore channel revenue to other important social programs. What Mahama is doing was what previous governments failed to do and plunged the country to the ugly face of dumsor. If he listens to NPP and their debt is bad campaign, we will experience chronic shortages in educational, health and other very important facilities in the fast approaching future. Ghanas population is not static, and as it grows, we need to expand facilities to take care of the numbers that are popping up. Mahama is an exceptional president who knows exactly what he is doing; you just need to know the difference between Economics and vice presidential economics to understand him. No great nation of our time got where it is today without huge borrowing. Just so you know, the total debt of US stood at $18.152 trillion as at August 2015; only God knows the number of zeros in there.

NPP can make noise about borrowing because they executed zero projects on their own for the 8 years they were in power. The major achievement of the Kufour-led elephant pulling government was the introduction of an award scheme for the party members  perhaps for winning elections because there was no achievement to show off. Yes, I mean NPP achieved 0% of the promises in their manifesto. I know you will mention the toilets, the schools, the Kufour buses and Health Insurance Scheme  but none of them was done out of the benevolence of NPP for the people of Ghana. They executed those projects because they were all MUST DO projects.

The conditions for HIPC required Ghana to achieve some assigned metrics on health, education, human rights and poverty reduction before it could reach the completion point; read pages 8/-9/ of the completion point document at www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2004/cr04209.pdf. NPP constructed schools, imported buses and built toilets among others to meet HIPC requirements but never as part of their plans for Ghana. This explains why all schools, toilets and health centers that were constructed by them had to wear the HIPC batakare. In effect, the equation becomes 8year of NPP  HIPC projects = Zero achievement. If they were to undertake half of the infrastructural development NDC is executing now, they would have borrowed more than 3 times what they left behind; for the cost to buy chains for themselves would have been incorporated into each loan.

As a matter of fact, Ghana is facing the challenges we are facing today because of the steps NPP on their way to HIPC. IMF together with the elephant clan used unrealistic assumptions in designing the HIPC completion point for Ghana. NPP told the IMF stories without consideration for what will happen if the world economy goes into a recession like it did in 2009 through recent years. They projected exports without consideration for issues that will hinder productivity; at the end of the day, they walked away with debt relief and plunged the nation into troubles. HIPC never helped any country and it shall never help any. The truth is, NPP lied about Ghanas revenue generation ability without consideration for threats that are beyond the reach of the country. It is a fact that most countries that went HIPC ended up borrowing more than they were doing before HIPC.

Refer to www.imf.org/external/np/hipc/2001/gha/ghapd.pdf for further details on the assumptions NPP used to reach the HIPC completion point.

A paper published by the IMF itself agreed that the projections they used for countries that went under the knife of HIPC were unreasonable. Most of these countries received an average export growth projection of 6% per the HIPC module. If we should even hold any unforeseen global happenings constant, this growth rate is insane; factor in global economic turmoil, and it becomes impossible. Surprisingly, this was what NPP went for. Indeed the IMF admitted in the same paper that if they had used realistic numbers, HIPC beneficiaries would have borrowed more than their pre-HIPC levels. If NPP knows this, if Dr. Bawumia knows this, why is he killing us with his debt theory? You can read the paper for yourself at (https://www.imf.org/external/np/hipc/2001/lt/042001.pdf).

NPP by all standards is the most dishonest political party to ever emerge in Ghana; unfortunately my big brother is leading the dishonesty crusade. At the time of finishing up this article, I read an article about him explaining why, even though Ghanas debt stands at $24billion in the books, he still thinks it is worth $37billion. I cant really tell what he is doing; maybe he is teaching time value of money. There is no need for NDC to shy away from owning even 200% of the current debt stock; unlike NPP, there is a lot to show for such borrowings.

One area that the baby elephants might wag their hairless tales about is the construction of the stadia (Accra, Kumasi and Tamale stadiums). Unfortunately that was equally not done because NPP loves Ghana so much. It was required to meet the standards for hosting the cup of nations. But for that necessity, the big animal would have handed over without any project to boast of. It is therefore surprising that instead of them to bury their heads in shame, they are shouting for everyone to hear them out. A party that sold public properties, used diesel generators and energy saving bulbs to solve dumsor; and then spent millions buying chains to award its members is not qualified to question the competence of the one that fixed dumsor with long term projects and flooded the country with important infrastructure.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need to wake up before the big animal lead us to the thick forest again. The NDC prior to the 8 years of NPP was the best Ghana ever had- see pages 5/-13/ of the HIPC decision point document at www.imf.org/external/np/hipc/2002/gha/ghadp.pdf, just as the post NPP NDC is doing an excellent job to develop the nation- read the green book. By this, I hereby declare NPP unqualified and ill-prepared to run the affairs of Ghana.

I want to conclude this article by emphasizing that Ghana is not a leadership laboratory where new leaders are experimented. We cannot risk the peace, the gargantuan development, and the international reputation of our great nation by playing a game of trial and error. Even in their united self, they achieved nothing; we cannot therefore trust them to do much when the party is in factional warfare. God forbid that they do what they have been doing at their headquarters to the office of the president, should we mistakenly give them the chance.

Perhaps in future, there will be a unifier and serious candidate to ride the elephant in the war for Ghanas development; for now there is none. There is only a man who believes he is entitled to the position of a president and must reach it no matter the cost; and such a man is not a presidential material. May the elephant remain in the forest! God Bless our motherland Ghana.

Abubakari Sadiq Iddrisu

Assurance/Audit Staff, Ernst and Young LLP, NY.

Certified Public Accountant, NY, USA.

Member, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

MBA Public Accounting, Iona College, NY.

B.A Economics, Lehman College, NY.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

Donald Trump, on Super Tuesday, proved he has superpowers. But Superhero or Supervillain? Unless Marco Rubio rises to the occasion and endorses Ted Cruz for president, accepting a vice presidential role for himself, Donald Trump almost assuredly will be the GOP nominee. Meanwhile, the party and conservative elites are reacting in interesting ways to these interesting times.

There are three fascinating dramas simultaneously emerging. First, the Story of Trump. Second, Rubios Choice. Third, the narratives that the party (and interlocked conservative movement) thought leaders are devising. Follow along.

First, the Story of Trump. Donald Trump unequivocally demonstrated that he has superpowers. While superpowers are something we all crave in a president theres a profound  ambiguity.

Donald Trump: Superhero? Or Supervillain?

A plurality of voters see him as a Superhero. That perspective rather brilliantly was summed up by one of the commenters to a recent column of mine , Atom Bruce McKellar:

If youre an illegal immigrant, Trump is a villain. If youre heavily invested in China, Trump is a villain. If youre heavily invested in Mexico, Trump is a villain. If youre an Islamic supremacist, Trump is a villain. If youre a left-fascist with politically correct fantasy based narrative of the world, Trump is a villain. If youre heavily invested in trying to buy influence with GOP candidates (or Democratic ones), Trump is a villain.

But to everyday, regular Americans , Donald Trump is King Kong stomping every dinosaur in sight as he takes back Skull Island for them.

Alternatively, not a few see Trump as a Supervillain. Lets be clear on what that means. The best definition of villain Ive encountered is by Louis Capizzi in Is Donald Trump a Villain? at The Odyssey Online :

I use the word villain in the most apolitical way possible.

When I say villain, Im talking full on Emperor Palpatine / Marvel movie HYDRA agent / James Bond Mastermind / Lex Luthor type figure: the sort of guy that rises to power because he loves power and wont stop short of world domination. He already has the money and the influence, but in fiction, money and influence never suffice. Villains always have the desire to come out from the shadows and take the true power for themselves.

As for Super villain? The most definitive explanation comes from Megamind, in the eponymous movie , during his climactic fight with aspiring villain Tighten .

[Suddenly, a giant hologram of Megamind's head appears in the sky]

Giant Megamind head: You dare challenge Megamind?!

Tighten: This town isnt big enough for two super-villains!

Giant Megamind head: Oh, youre a villain, all right! Just not a SUPER one!

Tighten: Oh, yeah? Whats the difference?

[Megamind's giant hologram head opens its mouth and from the inside appears Megamind]

Megamind: PRESENTATION!

Nobody, but nobody, in this election cycle has PRESENTATION down like Donald Trump. Super!

Donald Trump recently said, on Fox Newss Hannity , I mean, everythings negotiable. This perfect ambiguity is entirely consistent with how Donald Trump has lived his entire recorded life. That causes observers to see him, depending on their point of view, as Superhero  or Supervillain.

This situation is more than mildly reminiscent of an observation in Obamas prologue in his 2006 autobiography The Audacity of Hope: I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Hey. Worked for Obama.

The only way, mathematically speaking, to deny Trump the nomination would be for Cruz and Rubio (and, preferably, Kasich) to unite behind one candidate. Could it happen?

The admirable Marco Rubio, now the designee of National Review s book smart but not politically street smart Deroy Murdock, is sitting on a powder keg.

Rubio was polling, on average , almost 20 points behind Trump in his home state of Florida. Cruz won his home state of Texas by nearly as much . Rubio, to date, has won one midsize state, Minnesota, thus far having won one early contest to Trumps 10 and Cruzs 4. Rubio has 106 delegates to Trumps 316 and Cruzs 226. Rubio consistently polls well behind Trump and close behind Cruz. As for close, as the old saying goes: Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Moreover, Rubio is not running for re-election to the US Senate. Rubio has no political base to which to repair should the powder keg explode under him. It did.

Cruz maintains his Senate seat, and his great popularity (and thus near certain re-election), in Texas. It would have been unseemly and odd to ask Cruz to endorse Rubio. Cruz leads Rubio in every metric and has secure ground, rather than high explosives, beneath his feet even in the event of defeat. Nobody is going to make the #2 a pariah for not dropping out in favor of the #3.

Rubio, alone, bears the risk of becoming cast as the scapegrace. If Rubio declines to endorse Cruz he runs a great risk of being perceived, by the Powers That Be, as the spoiler who delivered the nomination to Trump. If that very real risk manifests Rubio is likely to be banished to the political wilderness. Perhaps forever. High risk.

Alternatively, this estimable young rising star could gain enormous political cred by endorsing Sen. Cruz. His doing so would be, and be seen as, an act of party statesmanship, endearing him to the party regulars and donors. Taking this course would endow him with political assets.

The calculus for a Rubio endorsement of Cruz for the good of the Republic and of the Republican party, is very clear. Former Cruz arch-critic Sen. Lindsey Graham gets it . Others, too, see the handwriting on the wall. Will the right party elders make the case to Sen. Rubio in a way that he can and will appreciate?

Meanwhile, during the run up to and after Super Tuesday the GOP thought leaders are polarizing into two very different narratives. Respected thought leaders such as William Kristol, Erick Erickson, and Richard Viguerie, among others, see Trump as a Supervillain. Thus they are taking the #NeverTrump stand. (In passing let it be noted that a few conservative pragmatists such as Hugh Hewitt avoid the poles with an equatorial position that we would be better off with Trump than Clinton.)

Another element of thought leadership is advancing a the realignment is here and Trump is its instrument narrative. Perhaps the most compelling case for this was made by Ben Domenech at The Federalist in Thunderdome: Gone Savage For Trump :

On Face the Nation this Sunday, I attempted to explain the 2016 cycle in 40 seconds. Pull back from the close ups on Donald J. Trumps tweets, and the political realignment we are experiencing becomes obvious and impossible to ignore. The post-Cold War left-right politics of the nation have been breaking down in slow motion for two decades. They are now being replaced by a different type of inside-outside politics.

The Trump phenomenon is neither a disease nor a symptom  he is instead the beta-test of a cure that the American people are trying out. It wont work. But this is where our politics are going: working and middle class Americans are reasserting themselves against a political and cultural establishment that has become completely discredited over time and due to their own actions.

This is not a temporary adjustment. It is a new reality, as Angelo Codevilla writes today. America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons that occupies the commanding heights of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, and of large corporations, and that wields political power through the Democratic Party. Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the Republican Partys elites into its satellites.

This classs fatal feature is its belief that ordinary Americans are a lesser intellectual and social breed. Its increasing self-absorption, its growing contempt for whoever wont bow to it, its dependence for votes on sectors of society whose grievances it stokes, have led it to break the most basic rule of republican life: deeming its opposition illegitimate.

Democrats and Republicans who still think that this is a phase  a fever they just need to wait out before a return to normalcy  are utterly delusional.

This is where politics stands today.

Donald Trump has superpowers.

The evidence on the nature of Trumps character is ambiguous. Superhero? Or Supervillain? Donald Trump alone knows  or might not  the real answer. Nominating him for, and electing him, president would be a high stakes riverboat gamble. Thought leaders mostly are polarizing between narratives of #NeverTrump and Trump as instrumentality of an inevitable realignment.

The only chance of producing an alternative nominee is for Marco Rubio to endorse Ted Cruz. Then, preferably, in the wake of that, so would John Kasich and (if has not already done so) Ben Carson. That would be a game changer. But time is short.

Donald Trump by turns, in his inimitably ambiguous, perhaps ambivalent, or perhaps merely utterly pragmatic way, is by turns glowingly admiring and savagely indicting of China. Thus there is a delicious irony that Trump uniquely proves the instrumentality of that ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

We live in interesting times.

A version of this column originated at Forbes.com
18.03.2016 LISTEN

"...According to Ghana's GRIDCO, the annual cost of fuel alone for thermal power plants in Ghana is about $1,140 billion. In 5.5 years...fuel alone would require $6,270 billion... Now, only 1,500 megawatt (MW) or 51 per cent of the countrys 2,936 MW installed capacity of power is currently available...due to governments inability to purchase light cycle crude oil to power the thermal plants...So... how is it that Nkrumah's Ghana...cannot prioritize $345 million (5.5% of fuel expenditure during 5.5 years) for a 325MW Solar Power facility...with a useful life no less than 25 years that would pay off in 12.5 years and in addition, add almost 25% to current available power....all fuel-free? The facility could help stabilize industrial/commercial/emergency power requirements...and add to the socio-economic-gain baskets, if we still care...", (Prof Lungu, 26 Oct 15-rev).

Mr. Patrick Asare responded to our critique of his love affair for "Obroni WaWu Coal" with an article still on Graphic.Com as of this writing. In that article, Mr. Asare tells the world we got it all wrong. He says he and his employer have no conflict of interest because they do not sell coal in America. For Mr. Asare's own sake, we will leave his employer out of this matter. Fact is, "where we come from", you do not conflate your personal business activities with your employer's. That is, unless it is official business, or those activities reflect very well on your employer's business, their bottom-line, or public goodwill.

The fact that Ghana has a persistent energy problem, or that when you went to Ghana recently you experienced power outage while residing in your "brothers house" does not mean that Ghana ought to throw caution to the wind and spend enormous amount of money ("loan money", we must emphasize), on economically, environmentally, socially, wasteful coal power plants and facilities. This is especially the case when Ghana could use practically the same amount of resources to produce more sustainable power (solar energy, as we've long argued with real data and sources, more than once on this and other pages).

Just Google "Prof Lungu"+Solar+Energy+GhanaHero!

To the point, because we've published so much material on this topic on GhanaHero and elsewhere, we are not going to address several of Mr. Asare's idiosyncratic complaints about our critique of his paper.

Not this time, anyway!

In the 2015 "State of the Nation" speech, President Mahama provided pointers to the energy plan ahead for Ghana. Given what we know and what we have already argued, the 750MW Sunon Asogli Coal-Fired plants manufactured and funded by the Chinese is still not a brilliant investment in the mix of the 3,665 MW projected for Ghana in the medium-term.

They will be sub-par power and energy facilities, like Bui Hydro Power!

In the main, even a 500MW Solar Power facility would have been a better bargain for Ghana in the medium-to long-term.

The savings and payback are a no-brainer, with respect to SOLAR! (Read more of our papers all over the internet).

Another case!

Directly north of Ghana, along Latitude 0 degrees (Greenwich Meridian), exactly in Africa, Morocco, just last month, on 6 February to be exact, switched on a 160MW Solar Power Plant. It is the first phase of a 2GW Solar Power Project that, when completed, will be the world's largest concentrated solar power plant in all of Africa and the Middle East.

As reported in Sustainnovate.AE by H. Lindon :

"...Construction on the first phase of the enormous grid-connected project began about 4 years ago. The next two phases of the project -- each scheduled to total 350 MW -- are expected to be completed and connected to the grid by 2018. The following phases are expected to be connected by the year 2020...Altogether, costs on the project are expected to total $9 billion by the time of completion, according to the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy..."

If Morocco can have 2GW of Solar Power that can power more than a million modern homes for $9 billion within 10 years, how come Ghana can't have 500MW within 6 years to power Ghanaian industry, profitably?

So, if we are serious, let's hear all the numbers, VRA!

If we are serious, let's hear all the numbers, Prez Mahama!

If we are serious, let's hear all the numbers, Mr. Patrick Asare!

After all, you've implied more than once that you have all the numbers to justify assigning your love affair with "Obroni Wawu Coal", directly to Ghana's bottomline!

Tell us, Mr. Asare!

In 10-15 years, how does costs in plant, fuel, operations, maintenance, security, and other risks for South African coal at/by Sunon Asogli compare to a 750MW Solar Power Plant and facilities that utilize free sunlight as "fuel"?

Then, let's have the Mahama-Terkper economists tell us which one of the alternatives have more potential to provide more employment for Ghanaians, beyond the electricity they will each produce.

Mr. Patrick Asare, should please try harder!

In sum, this is our response this time to Mr. Asare's "latter day", reactionary papers. Bizarrely, the first paper by Mr. Asare that we read about 8 week ago even argued that Ghana's goal of 10% renewable energy was overly ambitious, unwise, and unnecessary.

To cut to the chase, we won't further indulge Mr. Asare, not in this paper, anyway.

Instead, we will reproduce Prof Lungu's "Message in a Bottle in the Indian Ocean for Mr. John D. Mahama!-v2", published on these pages, and on www.GhanaHero 28 Oct 16, just in case Mr. Asare and other like-minded people, missed it last October.

read it, think about it objectively, then come back again, if you may.......

So it goes!

We understand that on Monday, 26 October (2015), Mr. John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana, left Accra for New Delhi, India, to attend the 3rd India-Africa Summit, hosted by the Government of India. Our last essay in this series discussed the major strides India is making in the area of Solar Power. In addition, we mentioned we would follow it up with a discussion of some aspects of Ghana's policy on Solar Power.

Again, our reference point is the speech in 1964 during which Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of blessed memory asked Ghanaians to begin prioritizing solar energy research.

It is still serious business for us!

Unlike Ghana, India is not wasting time arranging shiny imported chairs or pushing pedestrian arguments about "clean coal", as Dr. Kwabena Donkor, Power Minister would want us to know.

No, unlike Ghana, India is moving strongly on the solar energy front!

While Mr. Mahama's Ghana was wasting time re-arranging walls and shiny chairs imported from China to create cubicles for a new Ministry of Power, Prime Minister Modi's India created a Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to focus Indian national policy, politics, and community, on the lofty goal to install 100 Gigawatt (100,000 MW) of solar power capacity in India by 2022.

But, within practically the same period, Ghana, already at a power deficit more that 545MW, plans to install just about 125MW of solar power by 2020. (Currently, according to the new Ministry of Power, Ghana now has just about 7.2MW of solar power capacity, and a few solar lamps for some isolated communities).

In other words, sustainable solutions for Dum-Sor in Ghana is not an option, nor a pressing alternative, as far as the government of Mr. Mahama is concerned.

And so, we foresee India swiftly creating new-economy-jobs for its citizens and beginning to arrest some of the effects of climate change through that aggressive renewable energy policy, and in the process, showing Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana what prioritizing for industrial development means today, 51 years after Kwame Nkrumah's gave the speech on Solar Power.

As we reported the last time, according to GRIDCO, the annual cost of fuel alone for thermal power plants in Ghana is about $1,140 billion. In 5.5 years, assuming prices remain stable, fuel alone would require $6,270 billion. Just 4 months ago, PEACEFM Online reported that only:

"...1,500 megawatt (MW) or 51 per cent of the countrys 2,936 MW installed capacity of power is currently available.... The reason is mainly due to governments inability to purchase light cycle crude oil to power the thermal plants..."

So, the question is, how is it that Nkrumah's Ghana, after so much borrowing, cannot prioritize $345 million (5.5% of fuel expenditure in 5.5 years) for a 325MW Solar Power facility? This would be a facility with a useful life no less than 25 years that could pay off in no more than 12.5 years and add almost 25% to current available power (or nearly as much to current deficit of 1,436MW), all fuel free. The facility could help stabilize industrial/commercial/emergency power requirements, if we are interested, and add to the socio-economic-gain baskets, if we still care.

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE FOR MR. JOHN D. MAHAMA:

For the wise and the prudent, your revised Laughing-Out-Loud (LOL), Six Pointers for Ghana:

1. Currently, $1 million ought to buy 1 MW of Solar Power, at an appropriate scale, and still remain scalable.

2. Currently, the Solar Power knowledge-base is not in any ECOWAS country. Rather it is in China, Italy, India, Germany, Spain, France, USA.

3. Currently, solar project ought to be feasible in Ghana under a tariff of USD$0.14 per kWh, even less as we head into 2020 due to declining cost of solar power components, including batteries for reserve power systems. Therefore, during 2015 and beyond, any Solar Power project in Ghana that requires a tariff of US$0.13 per kWh or more must be seriously reviewed and rejected, unless there are other non-economic reasons justifying the higher cost.

4. Currently, the goal of 10% "contribution of renewable energy (excluding hydro 100 MW or larger) in the electricity generation mix by 2020" identified in the Scaling-Up Renewable Energy Program (SREP) report is not sufficiently focused, or nearly aggressive enough, given the requirements and issues with crude oil and water for thermal plants and hydro dams, respectively.

5. Programmatically, project(s) to add 325 MW Solar Power capacity to the Ghana electrical system should take no longer that 2 years given Dum-Sor and its effects on Ghanaian national life, if treated as the emergency it is, regardless of the political calendar.

6. The sun, still is an untapped resource in Ghana since that day in 1964. Ghana still has remarkably good insolation, practically country-wide, "...about 4.4 to 5.6 kilowatts per square meter a day with a sunshine duration between 1,800 and 3,000 hours a year..."

Message in a bottle in the Indian Ocean!

Hoping you make a safe landing at the Osu Castle, by the Sea, in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, West Africa, Africa.

So it goes, Ghana!

SOURCES:

1. Patrick Asare:

----------Lungu got it completely wrong; I gain nothing from coal power plant in Ghana, 8 Mar 16

----------Ghanas plan to build a coal power plant merits applause, not condemnation, 2 Feb 16

----------Ghanas 10 percent by 2020 renewable energy target: why it is a bad idea, 26 Aug 15.

(www.graphic.com.gh/features).

2. Prof Lungu. Listen, Patrick Asare: Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana Has No Need For "Obroni Wawu" Coal!, 16 Feb 16. ( http://www.modernghana.com/news/675168/listen-patrick-asare-kwame-nkrumahs-ghana-has-no-need-for.html ).

3. Ghana Ministry of Power. SREP Investment Plan for Ghana. April 29, 2015.

4. H. Lindon. First Phase (160 MW) Of Huge Noor Solar Thermal Project In Morocco Connected To Grid, 6 Feb. 16 (http://sustainnovate.ae/en/industry-news/detail/first-phase-160-mw-of-huge-noor-solar-thermal-project-in-morocco-connected-).

5. Prof Lungu. Message in a Bottle in the Indian Ocean for Mr. John D. Mahama! , 28 Oct 15,

(http://www.ghanahero.com/Visions/Nkrumah_Legacy_Project/Prof_Lungu/Message_in_Bottle_Indian_Ocean_Mr_Mahama.pdf).

6. Special Report Africa: Ghana, PV Magazine, 20 November, 2012, (http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/special-report-africa--ghana_100013506/#axzz3pjdDg2o8).

7. Power Deficit Huge, PeaceFMOnline. (http://news.peacefmonline.com/pages/news/201506/244759.php).

www.GhanaHero.com. Visit for more information.

(Read Mo! Listen Mo! See Mo! Reflect Mo!).

Prof Lungu is Ghana-Centered/Ghana-Proud.

Prof Lungu is based in Washington DC, USA.

Subj: Solar 'n Gas in a Bottle for Prez Mahama & Patrick Asare - Try Harder!

Brought to you this "Green" St Patrick's Day, courtesy www.GhanaHero.com/17 Mar 16 (also 28 Oct 15).
Palmer Buckle

18.03.2016 LISTEN

I dont know how these Ghanaian and African Roman Catholic clerics are able to square up their grossly contradictory teachings with their consciences, that is assuming that they really are endowed with the fundamental civilized human faculty of a conscience (See Homosexuals Are Children of God  Palmer Buckle Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/29/16). Nevertheless, we need to also honestly acknowledge the fact that the likes of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, the Most Reverend Charles Palmer-Buckle, have come a long way and progressively so. Not quite long ago, for instance, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle was smack amidst the chorus of those stentorian and self-righteous so-called men and women of the cloth intemperately denouncing LGBT people as subhuman elements who had absolutely no inheritance, whatsoever, in the celestial Kingdom of God.

Now, refreshingly, the Archbishop of Accra has not only charitably and humbly extended Gods heritage to the members of the gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual community  not that he has any divine mandate to doing so  Bishop Palmer-Buckle is also saying that LGBT people have an inalienable right to dignity and social security and justice that ought to be respected by all.

But, of course, like his bosses at the Vatican and his continental African clerical colleagues, the Prelate of Accra still has a long way to go. He has a long way to go because Archbishop Palmer-Buckle has yet to assume the same pontifical tone he has maintained when it comes to discussing the subject of homosexual existence and culture. For instance, he has yet to fully or comprehensively address the prevalence of homosexuality among members of the Catholic priesthood and sisterhood.

He has also yet to address why as a bona fide African with self-confessed veneration for African cultures, he still believes that clerical celibacy is a liturgical praxis worthy of universal emulation, when all the practical indicators point to the inescapable fact of the prevalence of pedophilia and adultery, as well as fornication, among the members of the Catholic priesthood. Indeed, there is more than ample and readily accessible documentary evidence that year in and year out, the Vatican and many Catholic dioceses around the globe settle criminal cases involving the sexual molestation and exploitation of the Churchs laity by members of the clergy. For the most part, the Church has stepped in to jealously protect its own, by ensuring that most of these offending priests would not face the full heft and brunt of the all-too-unsavory worldly judicial system, thus seriously leaving open to question and doubt as to whether judicial impartiality exists in the Christian paradise or heaven.

In other words, the Catholic Church, in particular, and all Christian and non-Christian religious establishments, in general, have more soul-searching to do than self-righteously presuming to police the conduct of the laity. The Catholic Church leaders need to explain to the rest of us Africans why they find celibacy, a clearly negative principle of traditional African fatherhood to be a cultural and spiritual ideal that is worthy of emulation.

I have also observed time and again  and must quickly add that this is not a personal viewpoint, or perspective, but one that is staunchly backed by scientific research and practical experience  that all humans are inextricably implicated in the sacred act of sexuality. And so maybe the magisterial likes of Bishop Palmer-Buckle would do well to enlighten the rest of us on how celibate priests like himself, and even the Holy Father at the Vatican, express their sexuality. And also whether such non-conjugal expression of their sexuality is in consonance or synchrony with divine precepts and edicts bordering on the same.

Ultimately, the eternal argument here is for the Church to make itself relevant and productive on the question of human sexuality and, in particular, a smugly non-compliant clergys right to dictate policy in this aspect of human existence and conduct for the rest of humankind.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is more than convinced that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government has a hand in the acquittal of businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome of any criminal offence in the GH51.2 million judgement debt scandal.

Woyome, a known member and financier of the NDC, was paid a whopping GH51.2 million as judgement debt by then Attorney General and Minister of Justice Betty Mould-Iddrisu under a very bizarre circumstance.

Then Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, was reluctant in paying the dodgy money until Betty claimed that Woyome was dragging the government to court.

Her then deputy, Ebo Barton-Odro, now deputy speaker of Parliament, supported the payment saying that Ghana government had no case, making Woyome to walk away with the GH51.2 million in 2010.

Even though the Supreme Court described the deal as a 'create, loot and share' and ordered Woyome to refund the money to the state when former Attorney General Martin Amidu filed a civil case in court, an Appeals Court hearing the criminal aspect of the case last week acquitted and discharged the man for lack of evidence.

It is this that the NPP believes was a deliberate ploy by government to let the man walk a free man after collecting the money for no work done.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Communications Director of the NPP, Nana Akomea, said: The attitude of the NDC government, either in attempts in prosecutions or retrieval, has been so lackadaisical as to give further credence to the plot of create, loot and share.

That, he said, was evident in the fact that the case was dismissed by both the High Court and the Appeals Court on the ground that the government could not show a convincing case.

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Indeed, the High Court berated the government for its lackadaisical attitude during the trial and for repeatedly wasting the time of the court. Indeed, the trial judge fined the Attorney General GH500.00 for this attitude, he recalled.

The judge was curious that the people who supervised the payment were not in court to testify.

Nana Akomea wondered how the NDC government could have secured a conviction against Woyome, having been in court with criminal charges against him from the year 2010. According to him, It was so obvious that there were high-ranking public officials in collusion with Mr Woyome.

Interestingly, he said, none of those pubic officials, including one high-ranking public servant who had had huge monies paid into his wife's bank account by Woyome, was sent to court for prosecution.

Nana Akomea could not fathom why almost two years after Martin Amidu secured a judgment for the retrieval of the money from Woyome, the state had still not been able to retrieve the money, insisting that to date, not a pesewa has been retrieved.

In view of that, the NPP Communications Director believes President Mahama has not shown the needed guts adequate to fight corruption, for which reason he said There is a clear vacuum in the national leadership in the fight against corruption.

For him, This is precisely why his presidency has seen the rise of civil society activism, protest and engagement in the fight against corruption. This country is bleeding from the wounds of corruption.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu


File Photo

18.03.2016 LISTEN

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other Islamic terrorist groups operating in West Africa has no immediate plans to attack Ghana according to world intelligence community report in the possession on TodayGhanaNews.com.

According to the report, the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militants recently attacked hotels in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, killing hundreds of innocents people because of those countries military contributions toward the fights of the against Al-Qaeda group in northern Mali and Niger.

The report says, Ghana has played a neutral position towards all the Islamic states what sponsors terrorism both in Africa and Middle East.

Ghana have a very close diplomatic relation with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and United Arab Emirate the worlds leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. And at the same time, the West African country maintains a very close relation with Islamic Republic Iran the only country that partnered with Russia and Lebanese resistance force Hezbollah, to defeat the terrorist in Middle East. The report says.

This contradicts the Government of Ghanas fears that the country is a potential target for attack. The National Security on Wednesday 16th march 2016, issued a terror alert warning Ghanaians to be wary of a "credible" threat of attacks in Ghana.

The alert follows similar attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast which have led to scores of people dying and properties being destroyed

In Africa, the reports says when Islamic militants raised their ugly heads in Bamako Mali, Ghanas president John Dramani Mahama played a neutral role as the then ECOWAS chairman to bring all the warring faction to a negotiation table without committing Ghanaian soldiers to fight the terrorist group.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militants usually attacks at a luxury hotels owned by French interest and targets westerners. Moreover most of the luxurious hotels in Accra are owned by Golden Tulip hotel (Libya), Movenpic Hotel (Saudi Arabia) and Labadi Beach Hotel (UK) and others operated by indigenous Ghanaians.

The report also states that most of the hotels in Accra are sited near security installations. Golden Tulip ( is in the same vicinity of 37 military zone, police church and workshop, and the regional BNI head-office) Labadi beach hotel and La-Palm Royal hotel ( Teshie Military school and shorting range) Movenpic Hotel ( is a stone throw away from the police headquarters and the regional police head office). So visibly it will very difficult for militants to target these hotels unless they are mainly local recruits.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

Hohoe, the capital of Hohoe Municipal was thrown into a state of ecstasy when Patriotic Ambassadors for Peace (PAP) joined 1000s of NPP supporters in the Volta Region to welcome Alhaji Dr. Bawumia and Sammy Awuku into the Municipality.

With PAP's determination to ensure that Nana Akufo-Addo is elected the next president of Ghana and majority of NPP Parliamentary Candidates win their seats, 22 PAPers from different parts of the country arrived in Hohoe last Wednesday to add political colour and value to Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's Volta Regional tour. This was at the invitation of Mr. Marlon Anipa, the NPP Parliamentary Candidate for Hohoe Constituency. Although the invitation came late, the time factor did not deter PAP to make its presence felt in Volta Region.

Led by the Group's National Coordinator, Katakyie Kwame Opoku Agyemang, PAPers in their colourful T-shirts arrived at St. Francis College of Education at exactly 2pm. The atmosphere in Hohoe and its environs was already charged because of the earlier address by the "Economic Prophet", Dr. Bawumia at the Hohoe Zongo as well as the morning float of NPP supporters.

Without wasting much time, PAPers began to talk to some students on the need to vote for the NPP this election year. Interestingly, most of the students had already decided to vote for the NPP because the NDC had taken them for granted for far too long. Generally, the people of Hohoe were not happy about the poor road network in the township and lack of job opportunities.

After Mr. Amewu's (NPP Volta Regional Chairman) address at 4:30pm, the Parliamentary Candidate, Marlon Anipa rekindled the spirit of change with a superb delivery. He charged the students to be ambassadors of change and vote massively for him and Nana Akufo-Addo in November.

The 'Boys Abr3' guy, Sammy Awuku before introducing Dr. Bawumia, advised the Youth to secure their future by voting for the NPP in November. He mentioned many youth policies and programmes during the NPP regime that bettered the lot of the Ghanaian youth and argued that, the next NPP government under Nana Addo will not depart from that route. The NPP National Youth Organiser expressing shock at the enthusiastic crowd because of the heavy attendance remarked; "The change had already started right here at St. Francis College of Education today, and with Nana Addo holding the Holy Bible and Dr. Bawumia, the Holy Quran, Isha Allah, victory would be ours.

At 4:45pm, the "Economic Messiah" was introduced and this got everyone unto his feet. Dr. Bawumia once again exposed the ignorance of president Mahana and his incompetent team on the state of the National Debt using facts and figures. To him as a lecturer, the NPP's vice presidential candidate did not understand why the current government should scrap teacher trainee and nurses trainee allowances. He queried; "How do you change lives and transform the economy when agriculture and industrial growth rates are all negatives; when potential major stakeholders in health and education are being denied their basic allowances"?

Dr. Bawumia who spoke for an hour reminded the students that even without oil revenue, the NPP under Kufuor paid teacher and nurses' trainee allowances. He assured them that the next NPP government would restore those allowances within the first year of its administration. This good news brought the entire students to the podium to thank Dr. Bawumia. They danced with him and promised never would they fall prey to NDC's deceits and lies.

Before the closing prayer, Dr. Bawumia and his team took time to shake the hands of all the students of the Hohoe Midwifery School. In short, the programme was very successful because, the attendance was massive, the messages were spot on, and the feedback was very encouraging. Other groups that graced the occasion were TESCON - St. Francis and St. Theresa Colleges of Education, Hohoe NPP Nasara, and the general public.

It must be pointed out that due to the last minute problem that nearly denied the Hohoe NPP to host the programme at the College, there was not enough time for many people to address the gathering. However, for PAP, we managed to get PAP-Volta Region formed and it is expected that, its political impact would be felt in the region sooner than later.

God bless Ghana! God bless Kufuor!!! God bless Nana Akufo-Addo!!!

Katakyie Kwame Opoku Agyemang,

Asante Bekwai-Asakyiri

(0202471070 //0547851100 // 0264931361)
Nestled in Ogun state , Ijebu-Ode is a warm, animate and touristic town that boast of a fingerlicking gourmet, overwhelming hospitality and a magnetic festival that attracts all and sundry from different parts of the world.

The town is the second largest city after Abeokuta in Ogun state and the thriving traditional institution led by Oba Sikiru Adetona further attests to the rich heritage of Ijebu-Ode. These makes Ijebu-Ode one of the most sort after destinations in Nigeria. Jovago.com, Africas No. 1 hotel booking tells you a tale of the people, their festival as well as how to navigate this receptive town.

Top 3 tourist attractions

Ojude-Oba Festival

Arguably one of the most anticipated festivals in Nigeria. Ojude-Oba festival is a widely and lavishly celebrated festival in Ijebu-ode. It is a day set aside to pay homage to the King and commemorate the values, culture and tradition of Ijebus. Hotels are fully booked, homes are filled with visitors and tourists come from far and wide to experience the festival. Key highlights of the festival include horse displays by the various horse-riding families, dancing competitions among the various regbe regbes i.e age grades, resplendent attires and deftly plaited hairdo of women. The festival is held opposite the Obas palace. It is a festival to quench your desire for fun

Awujales Palace.

Led by His Eminence Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, the Awujales palace over the years is a historical monument that houses valuables of past Awujales of Ijebuland as well as provide relevant information about the history of Ijebu-Ode. The palace is a compendium of the peoples culture, craft and art.

Sungbos Eredo

Sungbos Eredo is the wall that was dedicated to Bilikisu Sungbo for her commendable contributions to the development of Ijebu-Ode. The sungbo Eredo is also believed to be the final resting place of the Queen of Sheba. The site was added to the tentative list of World Heritage Sites on 1st November 1995.

Unwinding

Ikokore is a meal readily available in Ijebu-Ode. They own this delicious cuisine. It is a must eat for visitors to the state. It is prepared with Water yam sprinkled with fresh fish, prawn, crab, pepper. Yummy! If you cannot get someone to prepare it for you, you can walk into these restaurants to order for ikokore or any one of your favourite food-Tasty Food consult, Ademola Food Canteen, lollyboi kitchen. Goodnews delicious restaurant and Odunsi Eatery.

Shopping

Ife-oluwa variety store, Deo Gratias Superstore, Mariam Variety store, and Olori Mini Mart are amongst the small scale that you can do your shopping. It is a developing town, do not bother to search for giant shopping like you have in Lagos.

Hotel

As a town where a popular festival is held, there are various stars of hotels that correspond with your taste. Visit Jovago.com to select any one of the 38 available hotels. These hotels are inexpensive.

Fun fact

Indigenes of Ijebu-Ode are known to be party freaks. They love to rock the dance floor with glossy attire and flamboyant hairdos. It should come as a surprise that they host one of the biggest festivals in Nigeria.

Ogunfowoke Adeniyi

Travel/Technology Writer
The Case of Western Region

18.03.2016 LISTEN

Leadership at various levels in the management of human lives in any institution, families, communities, nations and what have you is very crucial to the attainment of set goals and objectives. Nations have developed and progressed under the right leadership who dreamed beyond their generations to create a modern world for generations that never met them. I keep on saying that many of the younger generations of the U.S.A do not know which came first, the underground sub-way train system or the roads and the buildings above the sub-ways. Those who thought about the sub-ways, planned them and executed them did that for the future, perhaps not for their time.

I also know that nowhere in the civilized world is the most endowed part denied basic infrastructure that improve and enhance the lives of the people who through no fault of theirs had been put there by nature. It does not also mean that once natural resources have been located in a particular area, it should benefit only those people within the catchment area. Since time immemorial, the people of the Western Region have been coaxed into believing that merely being rich in natural resources is just enough for the people to be content with themselves. So the cliche 'the best comes from the West' has been bandied about by politicians and technocrats to make us swollen headed, when in reality the worst in terms of the distribution of the national cake, has been the lot of the people of the region.

I have over time decided not to talk too much about the region because in my view, we seem to relish in the unfortunate mistreatment this nation has heaped on us since time immemorial because there seems to be as many people, as I am, being passionate about the state of the region. The plight of this rich region is attributable to the leadership we have had over time; in this case both traditional and political leadership have failed this beautiful region of ours. This region has one of the worst stretches of poor roads and other basic facilities that span across the country, needless to recap them but I am of the firm belief that as long as a boil remains at any part of the body, the palm will not cease to rub that place. I don't have to repeat myself needlessly.

The essence of this piece is about the utmost contempt with which this region is treated on a daily basis by those who control and manage the resources which is extracted from the Western Region with some negative consequences on the people and their communities and the noisy silence of those who represent the region.

The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) prides itself in the construction of regional hospitals all over the place with so many beds and so forth and so forth. Of course the (P)NDC has ruled this country for close to 27 years, 19 of which was uninterrupted. Therefore if they have done that it should not be news at all since that is what is expected of a government that has managed and controlled the nation's resources for such a long period in the nation's life. Remember, we just celebrated the 59th anniversary of this country and if a particular political tradition with the same crop of people has controlled our resources for close to 27 years, then the principle of 'to whom much is given, much is expected' applies. In the same vein, the principle of 'from whom much is taken, much is expected in return' should apply.

In all these ear-drum breaking cacophony of having built regional hospitals throughout the country, the Western Region is not mentioned. Fortunately for me, I hardly get sick so hospitals are not areas I visit regularly. In my almost 30 years life stay in the Sekondi-Takoradi vicinity, I have been the guest of the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital once, and that was in 1968 when I collapsed after a high-jump within the vicinity of the Railway quarters opposite the Zenith area of Takoradi where I lived. I was in the Primary School and was admitted to the Hospital for two weeks. Since then I have only been visiting the facility for routine laboratory tests to know how my body system is functioning, in many instances, on my own volition and on a few occasions on the advice of Medical officers.

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Just about a month ago, I went to the Effia-Nkwanta Regional medical facility to do some tests, while waiting for the result, I decided to take a stroll on the 'campus' of the hospital. I did not see much improvement from what existed when I was first accommodated there almost 48 years back. The old colonial building I saw in those days is still the dominant infrastructure there. However, the services rendered to me at the time were not the same; they have declined in my estimation. I remember those days when in-patients were asked to choose from a selected menu for lunch and dinner for the next day. The breakfast was almost always the same for most of us.

The next time I made a very serious visit to the facility was in 1985, when my father-law was operated upon for hernia. After the surgery at the theatre, we had to carry the patient up to the third floor for him to take his bed. This activity was done unprofessionally by relations like me. My in-law did not survive, and I believe that his physical 'management' immediately after the surgery by unprofessional hands might have contributed to his death. We had to carry him because the lifts to the floors were dysfunctional.

Dear reader, as of today, the lift is still dysfunctional at Effia-Nkwanta and patients have to be carried from theatres to their beds on the top floor. Why have I raised this issue this time? Just this week, there has been a report that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has given a whooping US$4.5million to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) to help establish a Sickle Cell Unit in the Regional Hospital. As of today, the major source of monies to the GNPC comes from oil production from the Cape-Three Points Basin of the Western Region. The lifts in our Regional Hospital are down and the GNPC does not care.

They can decide not to care because that is how all other state institutions have treated this rich region since time immemorial. Until the Kufuor administration, there was a Cocoa Clinic in Accra when the Region which produces the largest quantum of cocoa did not have a good medical facility. Kufuor built a Cocoa Hospital in Debiso in the Sefwi area of the region. My problem is with the traditional and political leaders who represent the region at various levels of this nation.

Western Region has all the critical arms of national security stationed here, to wit, the Airforce, Navy and the Infantry, aside the Police Service which is found everywhere. Mining activities by way of gold, manganese, bauxite and now oil are done simultaneously in the Western Region. So if there is any region that requires an equivalent of the 37 Military Hospital, it should be the Western Region. It is being built in Kumasi, I don't have a problem because if that is to serve the Northern sector of the nation. But what about a well- equipped regional hospital for the Western Region where all the risky economic activities in the risky extractive industry take place?

We have prominent Chiefs who do not care about the plight of the Region, our elected Parliamentarians can afford medical treatments in South Africa and other expensive health facilities in and outside of Ghana. I know of two Members of Parliament in the Western Region whose wayward daughters got pregnant outside marriage and were flown to the UK to deliver their babies. They did not have to be carried to top floors after delivery. Why would they care if Effia-Nkwanta has no functioning lifts? And policy and decision makers would not care? Cry my beloved region. Three tots, Daavi.

[email protected]


Asane Akara in police custody

18.03.2016 LISTEN

The Kaneshie Divisional police have nabbed a 26-year-old ex-convict who is believed to be behind the stealing of motorbikes parked by customers who shop at the Kaneshie market and its environs.

Asane Akara, who served several years at the Nsawam Medium Prisons for stealing, was re-arrested on March 14, 2016 after one of the receivers of the stolen items had been arrested.

He is now in the custody of the police assisting in investigations.

Briefing DAILY GUIDE, Assistant Commissioner Of Police (ACP) Ernest Owusu, Kaneshie Divisional Police Commander, said of late his outfit had been receiving complaints by customers of motorbikes theft in the area.

The complainant in the current case told the police that on March 1, 2016, while it was raining, he parked his motorbike on the parking lot of Melcom Plus to purchase some items.

On his return, the complainant said he realized that the motorbike, which he had locked, had been taken away.

The complainant immediately lodged a complainant to the police for investigations.

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A few days later, the complainant said he visited the Agbogbloshie market in Accra and spotted his motorbike parked at a vulcanizing shop.

The police officer claimed that the complainant said when he asked who the owner was, the vulcanizer in-charge of the shop claimed ownership and so the police were immediately informed.

When he (vulcanizer) was arrested, he told the police that he bought it from a man called Atampuri at a cost of GH1,400.

Atampuri was subsequently arrested and he also led the police to apprehend Asane Akara.

Police investigations later revealed that after stealing the motorbike, Akara sold it to Atampuri for GH600 and he in turn sold it to the vulcaniser for GH1,400.

Upon interrogation, Akara confessed committing the offence and would be processed for court again.

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey

( [email protected] )


18.03.2016 LISTEN

For the second day yesterday journalists turned up at an Accra circuit court expecting that pugilist Braimah Kamoko, aka Bukom Banku, would be brought to face the law after allegedly beating three ladies at Bukom.

The Greater Accra Regional Police Command did their professional work of investigating and preparing the defaulter for court: that has not happened because someone at the top of the political establishment working through the police headquarters has stalled it.

Bukom Banku can continue boasting that he is well connected to the political establishment and so nothing can befall him, regardless of how much he breaches the law.

If such a person, so unrefined, is offered a carte blanche, he would sustain his tomfoolery in the community he lives, assaulting whoever turns down his love overtures. After all, he has the government behind him. That is exactly what he says all over the place.

Now we are beginning to understand why Bukom Banku breaches the law with such impunity. Even on television he did not hide his preference for assaulting women, including his three wives. As a misogynist, it would not be long before he commits a more heinous crime and there also he would be protected by those at the helm. This certainly is not how to run a country. Indeed, a country which is run along such lines only gropes in the darkness and expects growth to take place?

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If the application of the law becomes selective at the hands of a crop of Ghanaians who see nothing wrong with such a shortcoming, all of us must be worried about the direction of the country.

Why should others be dragged to the courts when they are charged with assault? Others on the other hand are released as soon as they are taken into custody, the charge sheets shredded upon orders from above.

See the difference between us and those on the other side of the hemisphere? Important dignitaries mount rostrums and sermonise on national issues, especially on the need to allow the law to rule. Unfortunately, they turn round and encourage lawlessness.

Persons who encourage the law to be turned upside down are unfortunately heading critical state institutions. How do we expect to witness growth in various spheres of our lives?

As for Eunice and the other victims of Bukom Banku, they are now in a better position to appreciate the level of selective policing and justice in the country and how this is one of the ingredients militating against the development of the country, 59 years after independence.

The present crop of Ghanaians at the helm is incapable of managing the affairs of this great country. So sad to be a citizen of this country in which the police are unable to do their work without the long hands of interference of politicians using the police headquarters.
Some of the snakes that were killed at Kwaso

18.03.2016 LISTEN



KWASO AND the nearby communities of Essienimpong and Piase in the Ejisu/Juaben municipality of the Ashanti Region virtually became a ghost town as fear-stricken residents fled the area on Wednesday evening to avert being bitten by strange snakes that invaded those areas.

Different species of the dangerous reptiles, including mambas, black cobras, vipers and pythons, reportedly invaded Kwaso and the other communities after a heavy downpour.

The snakes were spotted in houses, drinking spots and even in churches, forcing the people to flee the communities.

Strangely, even though hundreds of snakes were reportedly seen in the area, there was not a single reported case of a snake bite in those communities  a bizarre development which heightened people's suspicion that perhaps superstition had something to do with the emergence of the serpents.

From Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, courageous people at Kwaso, especially the youth, were able to kill more than 350 snakes but new ones suddenly surfaced.

Sources said 60 snakes were killed in a single household and seven were also killed in a church auditorium. The few residents who are left in the town are said to be holding pieces of stick to protect themselves from any possible snake attacks.

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Three days ago, we killed about 54 and killed eight yesterday. Although the lights were off last night, we managed to kill one that entered a room, a resident disclosed, adding that the people found it hard to sleep.

Assemblyman of Kwaso Denteso Electoral Area, Patrick Frimpong, said he and other opinion leaders in the community were shocked to the marrow because of the invasion of the area by the strange reptiles. This is the first time such a thing is happening here, Mr Frimpong asserted.

He disclosed that most of the people in the community had bolted and that Zoomlion Ghana Ltd was being contacted to spray the entire area so as to deal with the serpents.

Norman Kyei, a unit committee member, said nobody slept in the town on Wednesday because the snakes were flooding the town in their numbers.

According to him, nobody knew what had caused the strange reptiles to flood the area. He said that some of the people were highly superstitious about the incident whilst others were saying that perhaps the prolonged dry weather had forced them to come out.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi


The displayed banner

18.03.2016 LISTEN

Residents of the Suhum constituency in the Eastern Region Thursday morning woke up only to be greeted with huge banners displayed on top of some buildings.

They have the images of both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Fredrick Opare Ansah, and President John Mahama as well as the logos of the NPP and the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The banners DAILY GUIDE spotted were endorsing the candidature of Mr Opare Ansah and the flagbearership of President John Dramani Mahama on the ticket of the NDC.

The banners bear the inscriptions, '2016  NDC Skirt and Blouse Vote' and 'Mahama wo krom, Opare Ansah wo krom. One of them was hanging on the overpass on the Accra to Kumasi Highway. By implication therefore, the constituents were being asked to vote for the NPP parliamentary candidate and vote for President Mahama during this year's elections.

Police Intervention

When the Suhum Municipal Police Commander, Supt. Yahaya Muchiraru, he wind that the banners were causing political tension in the constituency, he quickly sent his men to remove them.

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When contacted by DAILY GUIDE, he said his outfit ordered for the removal of the banners, because they might cause mayhem in the constituency.

He added that his outfit had launched investigations into the matter to track down the ghost hands.

DAILY GUIDE investigations gathered that some supporters of the former Suhum Municipal Chief Executive, Samuel Kwabi, were behind the agenda to declare their support and vote for the NPP's Fredrick Opare Ansah in the November polls instead of the NDC's Margret Ansei.

The former MCE, whose ambition was to be a Member of Parliament for Suhum, last year lost the NDC primary to the new MCE, Margaret Ansei aka Magoo.

A close source to Samuel Kwabi told DAILY GUIDE that We are NDC members but we don't support Margret Ansei because we don't think she can win the seat for us. That's why we have held a series of meetings with the agenda to lobby more supporters to vote for the Suhum MP.

NDC

When Margaret Ansei was contacted by DAILY GUIDE, she said the people of Suhum need serious-minded politicians for development and that the 'skirt-and-blouse' banners did not deter her in anyway.

FROM Daniel Bampoe, Suhum


18.03.2016 LISTEN

President Mahama and his team seated in the gallery of the Scottish Parliament yesterday

President John Mahama's visit to Scotland has been overshadowed by a charge from his hosts that his government operates an anti-gay policy much to the disadvantage of the Ghanaian local community of lesbians, gay, bisexual and trans-genders (LGBTs.)

The demand by his hosts to therefore give an account of his government's position on gay rights, a task which appears to have taken him off-guard, has visited a challenge on his otherwise friendly tour of the historical segment of the United Kingdom during which he is scheduled to be conferred with an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Aberdeen.

Opposition legislators have already turned their backs on him in protest against what they consider President Mahama's poor human rights records in his treatment of members of the gay community, even as he was invited to address Parliament by his guests. Opposition parties called off a meeting scheduled with the Ghanaian leader in registering their protest.

The snub left the president and his entourage wearing long faces in apparent disbelief as they sat in the gallery of the Scottish parliament.

The request comes at the heels of an impression by the Scots that Ghana's anti-gay policy has not inured to the advantage of gays and lesbians.

President Mahama was therefore torn between being forthright about the official position of government on gays in the country and treading on diplomacy.

It was a murky subject Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) thought undermined the safety of the homosexual community and the opposition members of the MSPs.

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Even before he touched down on Scottish soil, President Mahama's official position on gay rights was known by his hosts who doubtlessly prepared to quiz him on the sensitive subject his compatriots at home are seeking to appreciate how he wriggles himself out of the seeming conundrum.

Joining hands with the parliamentarians were human rights campaigners who asked that their guest be quizzed over his government's maltreatment of lesbian and gay citizens.

A muted reception he received earlier from the Holyrood Chamber was steeped in this negative impression.

It all started when the Parliament's Presiding Officer, Tricia Marwick, announced a hand of friendship to the visiting president to which members of the Scottish Greens, including their known Gay co-convenor, Patrick Harvie, demanded caution in a correspondence in reaction.

They had stated, We believe that the Scottish parliament should be a place where everyone can feel safe. Yet the invitation to President John Dramani Mahama to address MSPs can only undermine this, given his full support for the horrific discriminatory laws towards the LGBT community in his country.

The Scots are conscious of the fact that Ghana is one of 75 countries where it is illegal to be gay  a breach which carries a sentence of up to three years.

Amnesty International Programme Director in Scotland, Naomi McAuliffe, did not help the cause of President Mahama when she said that she received regular reports that LGBT people faced police harassment, while repressive attitudes towards LGBT Ghanaians meant they were vulnerable to discrimination and physical attacks. She added that such persons were subjected to torture and ill-treatment at the hands of security personnel.

While showing understanding for the opposition leaders and MSPs' decision not to meet President Mahama because of human rights failings, she added that the visit offered an opportunity to raise concerns about the ill-treatment against LGBT and the use of torture.
The 2012 vice presidential candidate of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Eva Naa Merley Lokko, has discounted suggestions by a section of the public that her bid to contest the Klottey Korle parliamentary seat is a clear demotion.

According to the former Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Klottey Korle will be an easy seat to grab for the PPP following the internal wrangling within the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the constituency.

Politics is about development. There is no superiority in politics. My party feels per its new strategy, I could help promote the agenda best in parliament hence Klottey Korle. It might look as a demotion when you do not understand politics. There is too much acrimony in the constituency thereby cannot be termed as a hot seat. It is rather a cold seat, Ms Lokko said.

The incumbent MP, Nii Armah Ashittey has filed a suit challenging the legitimacy of Dr. Zanetor Rawlings to contest for a parliamentary seat under the 1992 constitution while Philip Addison won the NPP primaries after a rerun following a legal contest with Valentino Nii Noi Nortey.

Speaking to Kasapa FMs Maame Broni, Lokko noted the needs of the constituents have been neglected due to the supremacy war in both NPP and NDC. This, according to her, influenced her decision to represent the people in parliament.

She downplayed rumours of her failure to make an impact as a running mate in the 2012 elections, claiming her input has made PPP the second biggest opposition in Ghana after recording a 64,362 votes representing 0.59% - the third highest in the 2012 general elections.

I am not scared of anyone. They are also human. We all have our backgrounds and experience bringing to bear. I am going there full of hope and trust. How can I be scared when the competition is yet to start? The constituents will have to decide whom they deem fit for the job. I am not in the contest to talk but to work, she said of her fellow contestants.
Ghanaians on social media are livid. They are condemning the unruly behaviour of a section of the Scottish Parliament towards President John Dramani Mahama. Some of the MPs did not even clap when he was introduced. Others boycotted the ad hoc committee our President addressed later. The media virtually harassed him, embarrassingly. In a video circulating on Facebook, a Presidential Staffer had to stop one of such journalists.

Some of the reports and behaviour of the MPs are informed by ignorance. We may have our human rights challenges but it is disrespectful for someone to want to force their opinions on us.

But as we fume, hiss and curse the Scottish MPs, we should also look at the other side of the whole show. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be humiliated. I find it unacceptable that our President would watch proceedings from gallery of the Scottish parliament. If the leader of Scotland (with a population of 5.3million people) visits Ghana (with a population of 27 million people) he will be given VIP treatment in our parliament. He will not watch proceedings from the gallery. He may address the entire parliament and not such a committee as President Mahama did. He will have audience with the Ghanaian President and a kilometre of motorcade will lead him to wherever he goes. Traffic laws will be broken for him.

Our image as a nation is dented when our President is treated like an ordinary person in the parliament of such a small country. Was that visit to the parliament necessary? Who invited the President to the Scottish Parliament and arranged the visit? Did that person or group of persons not gauge the hostile mood? Would Obama watch proceedings from the gallery of that Parliament even if his visit is unofficial? President Mahama and his handlers should not just accept any demeaning invitation to places just to create public relations hype back home.

The Facebook page of the Presidency of Ghana announcing the Presidents visit to Scotland

Ghanas biggest newspaper, the Daily Graphic reported the President as addressing Scottish Parliament. Check page 16 of the newspaper.

In 2013, the President of Malawi, Joyce Banda, paid an official state visit to the Scottish parliament. She was accorded the needed dignity and she even addressed the entire parliament. Our President and his team could have turned down the invitation to the Scottish Parliament if he was not going to be treated with the courtesy he deserves. If it is a dignifying visit such as the one accorded Joyce Banda, he can honour it.

Malawi president, Joyce Banda, on official state visit to the Scottish Parliament in 2013

President Mahama in Scottish Parliament in 2016

As we are angry at how our most important personality was treated outside, we should also learn from what has happened. The Gurune (Frafras) say if you drag your fat goat to Bolga market and price it cheaply, the buyers will act on the price tag of your goat and not its size.

The writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is a senior broadcast journalist with Joy 99.7FM
The Young People Initiative-Ghana (YPI-Ghana), an NGO with its headquatres in Accra has made a pledge to support Akyem Bomso R/C Primary School with its first ever toilet facility.

This was made known when the YPI team paid a visit to the school to interact with the staff and pupils.

Addressing the school, Miss Akosua Ntiriwaa Anti the president of the foundation said, she believes in quality education and would serve to make a difference in the society so far as education is concern. She continued that the foundation is supporting the First Toilet Facility Project (FTF project) due to their humanitarian works.

On her part, Miss Gertrude Adu-Gyamfi, the Public Relation Officer of the foundation also appeal to other organisations and well meaning Ghanaians to support the project. She said their doors are always open to donors who would like to support the project by sending their donations or call on 0543507000.

The headmistress of the school Mrs. Christiana Obeng on behalf of the staff and pupils thanked the YPI-Ghana for coming to their aid.

It was reported that Akyem Bomso R/C Primary School needs help to revamp the dwindling population which is due to lack of facilities more especially toilet facility which always sent pupils to attend natures call in their various homes without returning to the school.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

Rockson Dogbegah (2nd right) with Daniel Werner-Meier standing in front of MPH 122-2 Stabilizer/Recycler machine

Rockson Dogbegah, Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), has called for a well regulated construction industry to avert the collapse of buildings.

According to him, many unprofessional undertake contracts in the country because of the lack of regulation in the industry.

Mr Dogbegah, who was speaking to the media at the launch of BOMAG MPH 122-2 Recycler/Stabilizer Machine in Accra, said the construction industry needs to be sanitized.

Buildings are collapsing, road works are failing after three months; this is because there is nobody paying attention to the activities of the sector.

Anybody can just get up with support from government and becomes a contractor and begins to take contracts. This is not good for the development of the industry, he said.

Mr Dogbegah said more needs to be done to sanitize and grow the construction industry, stating that unqualified constructors in the industry must be put together, trained, resourced to be able to undertake their functions, otherwise we would have a failing industry.

Construction Development Authority

He also called for the establishment of a Construction Development Authority to oversee the activities of contractors in the country.

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Mr Dogbegah said the Authority should be tasked to regulate the construction industry, among others, and called for support from all stakeholders to ensure the growth of the sector.

Demands Payment

He urged government to pay contractors on time so they could also pay their creditors promptly.

Contractors in Ghana now have a problem of acceptance by the banks, suppliers because of our high default rate. The reason is that clients are not paying on time and the biggest defaulter is government, he said.

He said government must make provision to support the growth and development of the construction sector of Ghana.

The Stabilizer/Recycler Machine

Daniel Werner-Meier, Area Sales Manager Africa, BOMAG-FAYAT Group, said the MPH 122-2 Stabilizer/Recycler machine can be used as a recycler or soil stabilizer.

According to him, as a recycler, worn and damaged asphalt surfaces and base layers can be pulverized, crushed and mixed with new binders, adding that as a soil stabilizer, the unit is used for a mixing lime, fly ash or cement with existing materials to improve soils and strengthen sub-surfaces in preparation for backfill and base layers.

By Cephas Larbi

[email protected]


18.03.2016 LISTEN

Members of Parliament (MP) from both sides of the House have unanimously criticized the Ministry of Trade and Industrys administrative directive for cashew farmers not to export their produce between March 31 and May 31, this year.

According to the MPs, the directive would negatively affect the welfare of farmers and players in the cashew industry.

NDC Member of Parliament for Banda and Second Deputy Chief Whip, Ahmed Ibrahim, said Parliament ought to intervene quickly to reverse the directive and ensure that cashew farmers have the freewill to sell their products in a free and competitive market.

The Trade Ministry had issued the administrative fiat without any legislative instrument, asking farmers to desist from selling their crops from March 31 to May 31.

It said the State would confiscate the produce of any farmer who disobeyed the directive.

The matter also generated controversy on the floor, as the Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul, chastised NDCs Deputy Chief Whip for embarrassing his own party in public.

He said the NDC MP for Banda could have used other alternative channels to get the Executive to address the problem without coming to Parliament.

However, the Deputy Minority Leader conceded the illegal directive would make cashew farmers suffer.

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He said the decision of the government to issue the directive to protect 14 processing companies in the country would rather impoverish the farmers and reduce production volumes.

Majority Leader, Albert Bagbin, in his contribution, said there was nothing wrong with a member of the Majority taking on his own government on over an unpopular decision.

He said in other jurisdictions it was common to see MPs criticising their own governments over some unpopular and far-reaching policies.

He called on leadership of the House to ensure that the Minister rescinds his decision else MPs would resort to Article 82, which gives the power to parliamentarians to compel the President to revoke the appointment of any Minister of State.

NPP MP for Sekondi, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, also condemned the issuance of the directive.

NDC MP for Tain, Kwasi Agyemang Gyan-Tutu, on his part, called for the establishment of a Cashew Marketing Board to regulate the cashew industry and ensure stable prices for the crop.

NPP MP for Dormaa Central, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, asked his colleagues to give the Trade Minister up to today to reverse his decision.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr


Ibrahim, Nyaho Tamakloe and Egbert Faibille in a hearty chat after leaving court

18.03.2016 LISTEN

IBRAHIM MAHAMA, brother of President Mahama, has described as wicked an alleged defamatory statement made about him and the president by Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka 'Wontumi,' the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Wontumi said dangerous and wicked lies about me and President Mahama when he told a huge crowd at Obuasi that we had stolen state money which we had used to buy a plane for luxurious trips to South Africa whilst the masses suffered, he stated.

Addressing a packed High Court 7 in Kumasi presided over by Charles Adjei Wilson on Wednesday, Ibrahim stated that he was a prominent businessman who owned four big companies which offered employment to 4,500 people in the country.

Ibrahim, who was for the first time giving evidence in court in a case he sued Wontumi for GH5 million for peddling falsehood to defame him in public, insisted that he was a decent person who had acquired his wealth through hard work and genuine means.

According to him, all that Wontumi said about him during a rally at Obuasi on March 30, 2014 were lies, adding that his lawyers initially wrote to Wontumi to retract the story for peace to prevail but Wontumi refused.

He said his hard work had helped him to establish large companies such as Engineers and Planners, MBG Ghana, Engineers and Planners Construction Ltd and Asutware Farms, adding that his wealth was not acquired illegally.

Gov't Official

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Ibrahim, who was led by his lawyer, Charles Zwennes, stated that he was not part of President Mahama's government therefore Wontumi's wild allegation that he and the president were frequently increasing fuel prices to enrich themselves was false.

I am not part of the committee that set oil prices in the country. In fact, I don't work in my brother's government therefore it is not true that we have been increasing fuel prices to enrich ourselves as Wontumi stated on the recorded tape, Ibrahim pointed out.

Private Jet

Ibrahim stated again that it was not true that his brother Mahama owned a private plane which they used for luxurious trips to South Africa, explaining that I also don't own a private plane. The plane that I use was purchased by my company, Engineers and Planners, for work purposes and not for luxurious trips as he claimed.

He said he didn't know Wontumi personally prior to the defamatory case involving them, noting that he had only heard about Wontumi in the media, adding that he was surprised when Wontumi suddenly decided to defame him without provocation.

Drama

Even though proceedings generally went on smoothly, there was however a bit of drama as Charles Zwennes and Egbert Faibille, counsel for Ibrahim and Wontumi respectively, occasionally clashed over how the proceedings were going but both lawyers quickly reached a compromise for the case to proceed.

The case has been adjourned to April 7 and 8 this year, when Ibrahim Mahama is expected to continue with his evidence to the court. Ibrahim was once again accompanied to court by his uncle, Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe but Wontumi was absent in court.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera Englishs current affairs show, UpFront, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, Saudi Arabias ambassador to the United Nations, for the first time confirmed recent press reports that two Houthi representatives attended secret peace talks in the Kingdom earlier this month.

There was a delegation from the Houthis in the kingdom, Al-Mouallimi told UpFront host Mehdi Hasan, referring to the Yemeni group. It resulted also in a reduction of tensions on the borders and in an exchange of prisoners."

His comments came as a spokesperson for the Saudi-led military coalition announced that major combat operations were coming to an end.

We will continue to open our arms and our hearts to the possibility of dialogue with everybody, added Al-Mouallimi.

However, the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, also reiterated to UpFront that if the Yemeni government ask us to continue the military campaign, of course we will.

Ambassador Al-Mouallimis wide ranging interview with UpFronts Mehdi Hasan covered the conflict in Yemen, Saudi support for Syrian rebel groups, the rise of ISIL and human rights in the Kingdom.

This UpFront interview with Abdallah Al-Mouallimi airs on Friday, 25 March 2016 at 19:30 GMT / 21:30 CAT, after which it will be available to watch and embed from YouTube. For more information visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/ or follow @ajupfront on Twitter.
18.03.2016 LISTEN

I have plans of establishing an integrative medical university in Ghana in the future to train expert in the field of alternative medicine. I just completed my PhD in alternative medicine(IBAM, India). My research focused on The impact of alternative medicine in Ghanaian men of African descent diagnosed with prostate cancer and the used of the herbal plant croton membranaceus.

I know in Ghana and Africa getting good and experienced lecturers for alternative medicine courses is not easy. So having someone who has done more research than most working in the field and who is known, might therefore be a thrill for students and an image-boosting experience of colleges. I am today making the offer of being of assistance to the many struggling educational institutions of alternative medicine.

I suggest to

do a general lecture on the clinical evidence of the major types of alternative medicine (acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal medicine, homeopathy) or

Give a more specific lecture with in-depth analyses of any given alternative therapy.

Focused on evidence based treatment in prostate cancer, cancers and integrative medicine.

I imagine that most of the institutions in question might be a bit anxious about such an idea, but there is no need to worry: I guarantee that everything I say will be strictly and transparently evidence-based. I will disclose my sources and am willing to make my presentation available to students so that they can read up the finer details about the evidence later at home. In other words, I will do my very best to only transmit the truth about the subject at hand.

Nobody wants to hire a lecturer without having at least a rough outline of what he will be talking about  fair enough! Here I present a short summary of the lecture as I envisage it:

I will start by providing a background about myself, my qualifications and my experience in researching and lecturing on the matter at hand.

This will be followed by a background on the therapies in question, their history, current use etc.

Next I would elaborate on the main assumptions of the therapies in question and on their biological plausibility.

This will be followed by a review of the claims made for the therapies in question.

The main section of my lecture would be to review the clinical evidence regarding the efficacy of therapies in question. In doing this, I will not cherry-pick my evidence but rely, whenever possible, on authoritative systematic reviews, preferably those from the Cochrane Collaboration.

This, of course, needs to be supplemented by a review of safety issues.

If wanted, I could also say a few words about the importance of the placebo effect.

I also suggest to discuss some of the most pertinent ethical issues.

Finally, I would hope to arrive at a few clear conclusions.

I can assure you, this is a generous offer that you ought to consider seriously  unless, of course, you do not want your students to learn the truth!

Raphael Nyarkotey Obu:ND,MSc, PhD. (AM)
Over 70 school children and members of the public joined the United Nations to commemorate the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The event held in the UN Information Centre (UNIC) Library was aimed at providing awareness to South Africans about remember the horrors of the slave trade and celebrate the rich history of the African continent and its diverse cultures.

For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children, mostly from Africa, were the victims of the tragic trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history. Commemorated annually by the UN on March 25, the occasion offers the opportunity to honour and remember those who suffered and died at the hands of the brutal slavery system. The International Day also aims at raising awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice today. The event in Pretoria, which was held a week before due to March 25 being a public holiday, was marked by poems, music and key messages about how slavery impacted on the African way of life. Invited guests viewed a documentary titled The Middle Passage by renowned Hollywood director Steven Spielberg. Based on the history of the slave trade, the documentary highlights the atrocities committed during the slave trade and how the modern world needs to be more proactive in preventing such horrors from repeating. Musical group Mosaic entertained guests with tunes that were riveting and infused afrobeats with classical sounds that showcased the richness of the African spirit. Director of the UNIC, Maureen Nkandu said This is a history we dare not forget, for it still has a bearing on how the African or the black person is perceived and treated today. Slave trade brought on an erosion of our culture, traditions, self-esteem, human dignity and psyche. Zolani Mkiva, African Delphic Council gave the keynote address. Mr Mkiva spoke about the power of the mind and how it was destroyed during the slave trade. There are still remnants of slavery in our society. It is in our mind, and it is time we decolonise our minds, he said. He reiterated the power of education in order to free the African heart and mind from the shackles that slavery instilled. "First world countries were built by the hands of Africans. If we use the power that education provides, Africans on the continent and in the diaspora will be on the right course to being free. he said.
POINT OF ORDER

18.03.2016 LISTEN

BY

KWAME GYASI

E-mail: [email protected]





Projects are in various stages of completion

John Dramani Mahama NDC administration singsong

The GII press statement on the TI 2015 CPI issued on January 27, 2016 is reproduced below:

Transparency International, the leading civil society organization fighting corruption worldwide, released its 21st Annual Corruption Perceptions Index this morning Wednesday, 27 January 2016 globally. This year's index ranks 168 countries/territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. The index draws on 12 surveys covering expert assessments and views of business people. Ghana's assessment was based on eight assessments  the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Bertelsmann Foundation, ADB, World Justice Project, PRS International Country Risk Guide, the Economist Intelligence Unit and IHS Global Insight. The Corruption Perceptions Index is the leading global indicator of public sector corruption, offering a yearly snapshot of the relative degree of corruption by ranking countries from all over the globe.

The CPI 2015 showed that when people work together, they can succeed in the battle against corruption. According to the report released this morning, corruption is still rife globally but more countries have improved their scores than declined. However, overall, two-thirds of the 168 countries on the 2015 index scored below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean). The good news is that, in countries like Guatemala, Sri Lanka and our own country  Ghana  citizen activists in groups and on their own worked hard to drive out the corrupt, sending a strong message that should encourage others to take decisive action in 2016. Investigative journalists, like Anas Aremeyaw Anas and Manasseh Awuni have also exposed corruption and other crimes and human rights abuses in Ghana.

These sentiments were expressed by Jose Ugaz, Chair of Transparency International, when he stated that Corruption can be beaten if we work together. To stamp out the abuse of power, bribery and shed light on secret deals, citizens must together tell their governments they have had enough. He added that The 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index clearly shows that corruption remains blight around the world. But 2015 was also a year when people again took to the streets to protest corruption. People across the globe sent a strong signal to those in power: it is time to tackle grand corruption. .





Ghana's Performance  The CPI 2015 made use of eight data sources out of the 12 data sources to compute the index for Ghana. These sources that have assessed Ghana with regards to corruption, are the World Bank (CPIA)  47, the African Development Bank (55), the Bertelsmith Foundation (45), the World Economic Forum (33), the World Justice Project (37), the Economic intelligence Unit (54), the PRS International Country Risk Guide (50) and the HIS Global Insight (52). The Ghana score is, therefore, an average of the scores from these data sources. The institutions are independent institutions with a high level of credibility and their assessments are considered credible.

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The CPI 2015 scored Ghana 47 out of clean score of 100 and ranked the country 56 out of 168 countries. Thus, Ghana slided back by one percentage point from the 48 points scored in 2014 but better than its performance in 2012 when it scored 45 and 2013 when it scored 46 points. Ghana performed below six African countries (Botswana  63, Cape Verde  55, Seychelles  55, Rwanda  54, Mauritius and Namibia 53). However, as in previous years, Ghana's score and ranking show that the country has performed much better than several other African countries, including South Africa, Senegal and Tunisia. Thus, although scoring lower than six African countries, Ghana has scored higher than all the rest of the African countries included in the CPI 2015.

This does not mean that corruption is not a serious problem in Ghana because, like two thirds of the rest of the 168 countries/territories ranked by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, Ghana scored below the 50 pass mark. Although the government of Ghana has also started pursuing the corrupt in the country, this still remains selective and needs to be improved. The pursuance of the officials of the National Service Secretariat, the National Health Insurance Scheme, the Smartys and the GYEEDA needs to be commended but there is a lot more to be done. The AMERI case needs to be investigated. The African Automobile cars are left to rot at the Institute of Local Government Studies even after the Judgment Debt Commission has concluded its work. Some of the people indicted by the Commission's report are still holding public positions. Public officers who won their parliamentary primaries are still holding onto their public positions. This shows that we have still not put in enough effort and commitment in tackling corruption.



The African Picture  In Africa, Botswana came up first with a score of 63, ranking 28 globally, followed by Cape Verde and Seychelles scored 55 and ranked 40 while Rwanda scored 54 and ranked 44 globally. Both Namibia and Mauritius scored 53 and ranked 45. Clearly, all the six countries that performed better than Ghana passed the 50% pass mark. Although always the best performer in Africa although Botswana seems to be sliding backwards as in 2014, the country scored 63 as against 64 and 65 in 2013 and 2012, respectively.

However, many African countries still remain at the bottom of the CPI 2015. Somalia (8) remained at the very bottom with North Korea. Sudan (12), South Sudan (15), Angola (15) and Libya (16) performed slightly better, beating only Afghanistan (11) outside the continent. Other African countries, such as Guinea-Bissau (17), Eritrea (18), Zimbabwe (21) and Burundi (21) are also at the bottom although slightly better.

Global Performance  Globally, Denmark has continued its lead in the CPI 2015, scoring 91, having scored 92 both in 2014 and 2013 and 90 in 2012 but ranking first in all these years. Denmark was followed by Finland with a score of 90 and ranking 2, Sweden and New Zealand followed with scores of 89 (3) and 88 (4), respectively. The Netherlands and Norway both scored 87, ranking 5 with Switzerland following with a score of 86 and ranking 7. Finland has urged up a bit to a score of 90 from its score of 89 both in 2014 and 2013. New Zealand has slided backwards in the CPI 2015 from its impressive scores of 91 in both 2014 and 2013. Singapore dropped out of the best seven, scoring 85 out of 100 and ranking 8.

From other previous years, it is clear that the top performers have remained almost the same over the years and are largely clean of corruption, near perfect but short of a clean score of 100. These countries are characterized by a high level of transparency and accountability, which are essential to help curb corruption. These countries are helped by strong access to information systems and rules governing the behaviour of those in public positions and they should be good examples for Ghana. However, the fact remains that no country has scored 100 or even 95 for a very long time, an indication that corruption is a global canker and that no country is free from it. This calls for a global approach to the fight against corruption and a call for support to the less performing countries by the leading countries. The fight against corruption requires all hands on deck and that is why Transparency International's chair, Jose Ugaz, has emphasized the importance of the various roles that civil society organisations can play in exposing, detecting and sanctioning corrupt behaviours.

Governments need to ensure real and systemic reform  starting with freeing judiciaries from political influence and creating better regional cooperation between law enforcement to stop the corrupt from hiding in different jurisdictions. Citizens, meanwhile, should continue their calls for change. In 2015 we saw ever more people connect the poor services they receive with the illicit enrichment of a few corrupt individuals. These people need to keep up their pressure on leaders, and demand the accountable, well-functioning institutions they deserve.

Ghana Integrity Initiative wishes to call on all Ghanaians, no matter their partisan affiliation to resist, condemn and report all forms of corruption and abuse of power in our society! But GII calls on government to promptly investigate any credible allegations of corruption it receives. The reports of Commissions of Enquiry must also be implemented.

For the full ranking and regional tables, go to: www.transparency.org/cpi
The Writer

18.03.2016 LISTEN

The understanding of terrorism today may elude those who still perceive it as in the past. The complexity it has assumed is not only in style but in it's lethality as well given into account the arguably religious dimension it has taken.

Though proponent of terrorism argue that there is no much difference between old and new terrorism , I have come to accept some portion of both sides of the argument .

In today's episode, I'm not in the business of looking at the difference between old and new terrorism but rather to draw some aspects to solidify my proposal of CLIG.

COMMUNITY LEVEL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING ( CLIG ) is a concept I'm proposing to serve as a frontier in addressing this menace.

So the question is what is CLIG and how can it help. Today's terrorism or new terrorism runs a horizontal style of leadership. Cellular leadership that provides numerous leaders in cells.

This means that their activities are society specific.

Folks guess what. These cells are embedded in society. The analysis then can be made that once our intelligence operations are also decentralised or fashioned to take a cellular/horizontal form, then we can pick intelligence from terrorist activities.

But we have a challenge which we have to tinker with.

1. Community policing MUST be effective in Ghana so intelligence gathering at community level is viable.

2. Intelligence gathering must be daily.

3. We must choose the option of covertly doing this or be open about it whiles understanding the implications.

4. Resources must be available and citizens must have a firm appreciation of how terrorism festers.

5. Unemployed youth may have to be quickly recruited as counter terrorism officials so they are integrated within society.

This will prevent terror organizations from engaging their services.

Once we are able to fully have a hold on society or bond with society, infiltrating communities with jihadism or any terrorism doctrine will be difficult.

This could serve as one in many steps to tackles this menace head on.

Owusu Sekyere Jnr. K

Security Analyst.
You could tell when the Jewish boys came into town because they always looked scared.

I choked on my tea as these words were uttered by my Moroccan host father. I couldnt understand how as a child he could have thrown stones at the Moroccan Jewish boys as they came into town. He laughed as he told me the story as if it was a favorite childhood memory of his while I stared dumbfounded at the well educated businessman who I had come to know as a teacher and father. He was quick to mention that it was a different world when he was a child and that things have changed with time. However, it struck a chord within me about the deep rooted prejudice between the two cultures and religions.

I had studied the conflict between the Muslims and Jews in school but I didnt realize how much it impacted the people across nations. When you think of the conflict between Israel and Palestine you dont think about the ripple of discord that goes across the entire world.

Morocco is a gateway between Europe and Africa and as a result, different ideas, cultures, and languages have influenced the country greatly. The discord that echoes throughout North Africa as a result of extremist groups and governments has so far passed by Morocco, where it remains relatively peaceful.

Historically, there was a Jewish population in Morocco but it has dwindled over the years. As a result, ancient Jewish cemeteries are spread out across the country. Recently, initiatives have been started to recall and advance the unity of the Jewish and Muslim Moroccans.

For example, the Marrakech Jewish community has started to work with local Muslim communities to plant trees in the unused arable land connected to these cemeteries. It is as if the past and present are combining to create a better future for Moroccan farming families. An unlikely and unusual project is uniting two religions that are in other places supposed to be at war. Instead of destruction, they are creating life and prosperity.

Right outside of the small village of Akrich, lies the burial site of the 700 year old Hebrew Saint Raphael Hacohen. His burial site is surrounded by graves of other members of the Moroccan Jewish community and around these graves new life grows. Raphael Hacohen became a saint as a result of his healing miracles and his grave continues to be a place of healing to this day.

This sacred site brings Jewish pilgrims from around the world to Akrich and it fosters the growth of good relations through the High Atlas Foundations interfaith community tree project. The High Atlas Foundation (HAF) is a non-profit organization based in Marrakech whose main focus is to create sustainable prosperity throughout Morocco. HAF has projects in tree nurseries, community planning workshops, clean water initiatives, school infrastructure, and youth and womens empowerment.

It is unusual to hear of projects that are attempting to bridge this tumultuous gap through tree planting, let alone planting trees beside Jewish cemeteries. However, the High Atlas Foundation saw the importance of bringing these two communities together. It is a rare situation where a nonprofit is led by an American Jew, Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir, who speaks fluent Moroccan Arabic and is committed to the betterment of Morocco and its peoples no matter their religion.

I was raised a Catholic, but while working with the High Atlas Foundation, Ive been able to have interfaith discussions with both Muslims and Jews inside and outside of work. The opportunity to bridge these gaps myself and then to see this replicated on a larger and more global scale is impressive and revolutionary. This initiative is addressing real religious tensions in a country that has long tradition and history of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants and solidarity. Even as the population of Jews decreases in Morocco, there will always be a mark left by a people who lived here for 1,000 years through their texts and their left behind loved ones.

As the tree saplings grow, so does the trust and respect between the rural Muslims and the urbanized Jews. Morocco is attempting to overcome a deep rooted prejudice that has, and still does, impact people all over the world. Instead of rocks being thrown at each other, trees can be planted together to improve the environment and heal old wounds. Morocco is an example for other areas of the world where Muslims and Jews have lived side by side but in situations can become disparate and where hope, in more forms than one, awaits to be planted.

Emma Tobin is a photojournalism and social media intern at the High Atlas Foundation. Ms. Tobin is currently on her gap year where she has been able to explore both Southeast Asia and North Africa. She will begin her college career at Seton Hall University next fall where she hopes to pursue her passions in diplomacy, Arabic, and womens studies.
The People of Japan contributed USD 2.3 million to a project deploying Quick Response Teams in South Sudan, with the specific task of conducting humanitarian mine action activities. Over the past four years, Japan's contribution to mine action operations in South Sudan amounted to USD 12.5 million, enabling the clearance of 3,972,675 sqm of land, including boreholes and food drop sites, and allowing for the delivery of risk education to 54,358 civilians, most of them children.

After decades of civil war and a six-year Comprehensive Peace Agreement period, South Sudan became the world's newest country on 9 July 2011. Following two years of independence and relative peace, heavy fighting erupted in the capital Juba on 15 December 2013, marking the beginning of a new multi-dimensional conflict across the country. Nearly eight million people in South Sudan now live in counties where their very safety is threatened by the presence of landmines and Explosive Remnants of War (ERW). Apart from the physical threat they pose, explosive hazards preclude the delivery of vital humanitarian aid, prevent socio-economic development and inhibit freedom of movement.

Continued funding from the People of Japan will support Quick Response Teams in conducting surveys and clearance of explosive hazards and providing risk education to enable people to stay safe and report explosive risks in their vicinity. In South Sudan, where 110,180,994 sqm of land is known to be contaminated and hundreds of new hazards discovered every month, mine action is a critical enabler of humanitarian aid and a key driver of socio-economic development. The teams will work with critical partners, including the Japanese Engineering Contingent, who require survey and clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance prior to undertaking their important construction and rehabilitation work.

Last year, I visited a village to see the clearance operation funded by the Government of Japan, and I was very impressed with the dedication of the South Sudanese people working with UNMAS there under the scorching sun every day for the benefit of local community, Mr. Kiya Masahiko, the Ambassador of Japan to South Sudan, said. Japan is committed to supporting Mine Action activities which are essential for peacebuilding and development in post-conflict countries. We hope that the support from the Japanese people will contribute to creating a safer environment, free from explosive threats for the people in South Sudan.

For his part, Mr. Tim Lardner, UNMAS South Sudan Programme Manager, stressed the importance of Japan's support. We appreciate the continuous and generous support from the people of Japan to our activities in South Sudan. Japan is an important partner to UNMAS programmes in many countries, not just South Sudan, he stated. Last year for example, the people of Japan's USD 15,088,127 donations to UNMAS benefited five of its mine action programmes, namely those in Afghanistan, DRC, Palestine, Somalia, as well as South Sudan.

The critical financial support from the people of Japan will enable us to protect civilians and facilitate the conditions for the delivery of humanitarian assistance throughout the country, Mr. Tim Lardner continued. Japan recently announced their donation of USD 30.9 million through international organizations in South Sudan, including UNMAS, and we admire their commitment to supporting South Sudan. Japan and UNMAS will continue working to deliver an explosive-free safe environment to the people in South Sudan.
African Union Commission (AUC) announces the arrival of an observation mission for parliamentary elections for the 20th March 2016 in the Republic of Cape Verde. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC), HE Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has decided to dispatch this Mission, to monitor and report on the electoral process in accordance with the African Charter on Democracy, elections and governance.

The mission is led by HE Sylvie Kayitesi Zainabo, former President of African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR). She is a Rwandan national; the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) is made up of a team of 20 observers. This team is comprises Pan-African Parliamentarians, officials of election management bodies, members of civil society and human rights.

The observers come from 12 countries, namely: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Seychelles, Swaziland, Togo and Tunisia.

The Mission will monitor the progress of the electoral process in line with relevant provisions of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance adopted in 2007 and entered into force in 2012, which aims to improve the electoral processes in Africa, strengthen electoral institutions and the conduct of fair, free and transparent elections ; the Declaration of the OAU / AU Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa 2002; AU Guidelines for observation missions and monitoring the elections of 2002 and other relevant international instruments governing the conduct of democratic elections in Africa, including the African Mechanism of Peer Review. The observation will also rely on the existing legal framework for the organization of the parliamentary elections in Cape Verde Republic.

In order to achieve its goal of having an independent, honest, professional and impartial observation based on transparency, integrity, fairness and regularity of the elections, the Mission will meet with various political authorities in the countries such as institutions in charge of elections, political parties in contention, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Constitutional

courts in the Cape Verde Republic.

The Mission will deploy observer teams on the 19th of March 2016 in the five (5) islands namely: Fogo, Santiago, Santo Antao, Sao Nicolau and Sao Vicente.

At the end of the elections, the Mission will present its preliminary report and recommendations of the elections at a press conference to be held on March 22nd 2016 by 10 am at the Hotel Santiago in Praia. At the end of the electoral process, the AUEOM will issue a final report containing a detailed analysis of the conduct of the electoral process in Cape Verde Republic.

The mission arrived in the Republic of Cape Verde on March 16th and will remain there until 24th of March 2016. The Mission's Secretariat is located at the Santiago Hotel.

The African Union Electoral Observation Mission thanked the authorities of Cape Verde Republic for all the steps they had taken in order to facilitate its work on the ground.
A cross section of participants at the conference

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THE PROSECUTOR of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda has denied allegations that the Hague-based Court is biased towards Africans in its prosecutions.

According to her, the ICC has been operating independently and has remained impartial to any region or group in the execution of its core mandates.

She explained that the allegations being leveled against the ICC are as a result of lack of understanding about the workings of the Court.

Ms. Bensouda was responding to questions at the opening ceremony of a two-day ICC and Africa Conference on Thursday in Accra.

The conference held at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), sort to facilitate the establishment of a critical network of scholars and academics, legal practitioners, consultants, civil society and governments.

Some participants, mostly African scholars had raised concerns at the conference that the ICC continued to deliberately target Africans in its operations.

But Ms. Bensouda sharply denied those allegations, maintaining that the ICC has remained impartial in prosecuting perpetrators of mass atrocities and war crimes.

Collaboration

The Gambian-born Prosecutor observed the need for Africans to form a solid collaboration with the ICC in order to bring an end to impunity on the continent.

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She stressed that Africa and indeed the world owe it to the younger generation to support the ICC to enable it carry out its functions in order to continually fight impunity from mass atrocities.

She cautioned that any attempt that seeks to subvert or weaken the rule of law in Africa must be frown upon, lamenting that Africa continues to suffer from too many wars and other crimes against humanity.

Ms. Bensouda assured that the ICC will not allow violations or violators to go unpunished.

She explained that criminal justice at the internal and international level can play an important role in the promotion of economic development, thus the need to respect international criminal jurisprudence.

'Selective Prosecution Unacceptable'

Ghana's Deputy Minister of Justice, Dominic Ahi urged that the relationship between the ICC and Africa must be mutually benefitting.

He was of the view that Africa had been targeted by the ICC over the years, warning that selective prosecution is unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the Dean, Faculty of Law at GIMPA, Kofi Abotsi appealed to Africans to rise above the pettiness of criticisms.

BY Melvin Tarlue


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The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has warned the public against patronising expired canned fish branded as 'John West Tuna Chunks' on the market.

Albert Ankomah, a senior regulatory officer of the Western regional office of FDA, told the Ghana News Agency that the authority received a consumer complaint on Monday, March 14 about the sale of the product at the Takoradi Market Circle by some hawkers.

He said an investigation was made and the FDA discovered that the product expired on December last year, but the distributor had used black pen to alter the date to December 2016.

Mr Ankomah said the products were seized, while investigations are currently underway to track the agents and distributors of the expired products.

The hawkers were selling three of the expired canned fish for GH5, but our checks of the wholesale price of the product showed that one canned fish of that same brand costs GH 11.60, he said.

Mr Ankomah said there was the need for the public to alert the FDA when they spot anyone selling the expired products on the market since such products posed a threat to public health.

He said people found dealing in expired products would be arrested and prosecuted for dealing in high risk products and fined with GH1,500 penalty units while administrative charges amounts to GH 50,000.

GNA


Eric Boakye's dead body being retrieved from the well

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The entire Asokore community in the Eastern regional capital, Koforidua was thrown into a state of shock, as a 22-year-old man, Eric Boakye suspected to be involved in money rituals was found dead in a well after several hours of search.

The body has been deposited at the Koforidua Central Hospital pending autopsy.

Earlier Eric Boakye was said to have disappeared from his room.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that Eric Boakye had two kids. For three years he worked in Accra as a washing bay attendant but last year December he returned to his family house at Asokore in Koforidua.

Sources said Eric Boakye then took his one-and-half-year-old boy to a popular fetish priest at a shrine near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region and used him for money rituals.

A family member, who confirmed the incident to DAILY GUIDE on Wednesday morning said, I went to Eric Boakye's room to wake him up to clean his body for him to eat, but he wasnt in his room and his door was locked. We only found his clothes on the mattress. We searched the whole community but couldnt find him.



DAILY GUIDE learnt that the financially frustrated man had told his family in Asokore that he was taking his son to a family member at Kumasi to spend the Christmas vacation there but never returned with the kid to Asokore to continue schooling.

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Eric Boakye, as gathered, was instructed by the fetish priest to hit his son with his two hands so that he would become deaf.

According to reports, the fetish priest claimed Boakye's son would then begin decaying on a daily basis, which would generate money for Boakye.

Eric Boakye, after performing the other necessary rites at the shrine, did what the fetish priest instructed him to do but the son didnt turn into a deaf person.

Rather, the boy started barking like a dog, collapsed and died on the spot.

Boakye, according to a family source, then buried his son in the bush without telling anybody.

DAILY GUIDE learnt that last month February Eric Boakye started growing boils on all parts of his body and the family questioned him about it but he failed to answer.

Members of the family then went to a different fetish priest for consultation and were told that Eric had taken his son to a fetish priest for money rituals but didnt succeed which resulted in the death of his son.

From Daniel Bampoe, Asokore  Koforidua
His Excellency Dr. Martial De-Paul Ikounga, Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology of the African Union received Professor Yves Fluckiger, Rector of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), who was at the head of a delegation representing different scientific disciplines of the University. The two sides discussed various areas of academic cooperation between the African Union Commission and UNIGE, with particular emphasis on the Pan African University (PAU). Commissioner Ikounga welcomed the ongoing effort by the University of Geneva to develop scientific research with African universities and between them, in the context of triangular cooperation.

The AUC and UNIGE are finalizing negotiations on a draft Memorandum of Understanding, which provides the framework and the principles of collaboration between the two parties, with the goal of developing a joint program on the sharing of experience and good practice in advanced research, broad focus areas outlined in the African Union's Agenda 2063, and related fields of scholarship. The MOU will serve as the basis to pursue the mutual objectives of the two parties and provide suitable working mechanisms for the realization of these objectives.

UNIGE is one of Europe's leading universities offering a range of programs and fostering multi-disciplinary activities. It has built a reputation for excellence in teaching and research, and is embarking on a strategy to deepen cooperation and partnership with African countries and institutions of higher learning. Under this framework, UNIGE has introduced a Master of Arts program in African Studies, which is broadly underpinned by courses in Africa's history, political economy and environment.

With coordination by the Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology, the African Union Commission will explore possibilities of building linkages and fostering productive collaboration between its thematic institutions and programs and the University of Geneva. The Pan African University, which is an AU multi-locational university with thematic hubs across Africa's five geographic regions, will play a central role in this partnership. PAU offers scholarships to African students for postgraduate training in core sciences, technology, innovation, research, social sciences, governance and humanities, with mandatory courses on the History of Africa, Gender, and Human Rights. These and other existing AUC capacity building programs are expected to provide a solid foundation for fruitful collaboration between the Commission and the University of Geneva.
Ghana , the rich land of culture and heritage is blessed with many natural resources, unique tourist sites, amazing history and tradition. However, many Ghanaians and foreign travellers are used to just a few popular tourist attractions. Many visitors or tourists come to Ghana with particular tourist destinations in mind.

Fortunately, there are several other amazing tourist sites in Ghana that holiday makers, travellers and tourists can visit and enjoy. Although they are not so popular to many, they possess great sentimental and historic value and a visit to these places will leave you in awe as to why they are not being developed and publicised.

On a cool monday morning, a day after Ghanas 59th independence anniversary, a group of adventurous tourists from different backgrounds and different age groups embarked on a journey. The journey which was organized by CitiFM and sponsored by Jovago ,Sasso, Top oil, Ghana commercial bank ltd and Colgate was dubbed the Heritage Caravan Tour. The Caravan which toured 8 regions in 7 days was an eye-opener for many who saw Ghana in a very different way.

Day1

Adaklu Mountains - Ho (Volta region)

This great mountain in the volta region of Ghana is backed by great history and members on board the caravan had the chance of listening to the great stories and take pictures while enjoying the ambience. The time of day wasnt very convenient for climbing hence most of the time was spent at the base of the mountain listening to the history of the Adaklu people and the myth surrounding the mountain. As legend may have it,the people of Adaklu came to settle at the base of a mountain for a long time and were afraid to go up the mountain because it was occupied by a very fierce monster. A brave hunter among them one day decided to fight the monster and after several hours of fighting,he killed the monster.He then relocated to the top of the mountain for several years before he finally came down to settle with the indegens. Indeed a very fascinating story. The Caravan then moved to New Abiriem where the tourists lodged for the night at the Obaas Golden Plaza Hotel.

Day 2

Manhyia Palace - Kumasi (Ashanti Region)

The second day started with much bliss and momentum as participants sang songs on the caravan from New Abiriem to Kumasi. It was a long and rough journey as the roads were very bad for most parts. Eventually after about 3 hours, the caravan arrived in Kumasi where the tourists made a first stop at the Rattray Park, a fun and recreational centre in Kumasi where they met the Mayor of Kumasi briefly; before they had a tour of the ultramodern facility. There is no visit to Kumasi without a taste of fufu, hence the caravan moved to the township to have heavy lunch of fufu and soup while a few others had banku. It was now time for the main deal. The caravan moved to the Manhyia Palace, home of the Asantehene. Here they were given a tour of the Manhyia Palace Museum. With the guide showing a video of the history of the Ashanti Kingdom , past kings, culture, heritage and tradition. The tour then ended with tourists being taken into the museum to see first hand the different monuments and items belonging to past kings and warriors of the Ashanti Kingdom. The team then retired to bed after a night of Karaoke.

Day 3

Dakpemas Palace - Tamale (Northern Region)

After Ashanti history and culture, it was time to visit the Northern Region. Pride of Northern Ghana. Most of the road was tarred, thus the journey to Tamale was long but smooth Although the caravan arrived very late in Tamale, there was just enough time to have a very delicious meal of Tuo Zaafi. A very beautiful cultural display had been prepared for the tourists at the Dakpemas Palace. After paying regards to the Chief, the tourists were treated to a wonderful display of the Damba Dance and other local traditional dance routines. It was enjoyable and very eye-catching. A colourful display of drumming, dancing and singing. The people of Tamale are indeed very entertaining. The caravan then retired to bed. The next morning, before the trip to the brong Ahafo Region, the caravan made a stop at the Tamale Cultural Centre where tourists took time to buy a few cultural items on display. These included the traditional smock (fugu), straw hats, anklets, bangles, leather bags and wallets among others. In all, it was a great experience for everyone on the Caravan at Tamale.

The journey has been good so far, watch out for the concluding part of the heritage caravan diaries.
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Accra, Mar. 17, GNA - ECOWAS in collaboration with Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) has opened three-week training programme under the West Africa Disaster Preparedness Initiative (WADPI) for 120 participants from Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The WADPI training programme which is part of efforts to combat disaster outbreaks in the sub-region, started from July 13 to November 30 2015; the two stated countries were excluded then, due to the ravaging Ebola pandemic.

Since its launch, the programme has already trained over 1,200 ECOWAS States citizens from 12 countries including Cameroun; and more than 30 staff from the ECOWAS Commission in disaster management and rapid response.

It is being held under the auspices of the ECOWAS, in collaboration with the KAIPTC, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), the Centre for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine, the United States Air Forces Africa, and sponsored by the US Africa Command (USAFRICOM), and Operation United Assistance Transition Disaster Preparedness Project.

The main objective of the three-week training for West Africa region and select Central African countries is to utilize lessons learned from the recent Ebola epidemic, strengthen national capacities among 17 West/Central African Partner Nations (PNs) and to implement an all-hazards approach to disaster preparedness and response management to ensure continued regional collaboration, communication and coordination between member States in disaster preparedness and response.

Air Commodore JSK Dzamefe, the Deputy Commandant, KAIPTC in his opening remarks, said the main objective of the WADPI for West Africa region is to utilize lessons learned from the recent Ebola epidemic, towards strengthening national capacities among West African Partner Nations (PNs).

He said it was also aimed at implementing an all-hazards approach to disaster preparedness and response management to ensure continued regional collaboration, communication and coordination between member States in disaster preparedness and response.

He said KAIPTC had over the years established itself as a Centre of Excellence for research into various areas of training for Disaster Management, Integrated Peace Support Operations and Post-conflict Reconstruction.

'The Centre, therefore, strives to train people to engage in these areas towards the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts, and how to help rebuild war torn and disaster affected states. We do this through close collaboration with our regional and global partners,' he said.

Mr Kone Tanou, ECOWAS Ambassador to the United Nations, in a speech read on his behalf, said the impact of the Ebola Virus Disease on the sub-region shows that there is the need for effective collaboration among member states in combating disaster outbreaks.

Brigadier General Francis Vib-Sanziri, NADMO Coordinator, called for capacity building of national disaster agencies in the sub-region to make them more proactive in fighting disaster outbreaks. GNA
Accra, Mar. 17, GNA - Mr Ibrahim Ahmed, Second Deputy Majority Chief Whip, has urged Parliament to prevail upon the Minister of Trade and Industry to suspend with immediate effect a directive to halt the export of cashew from Ghana.

Dr Ekow Spio Garbrah, the sector Minister, had directed that 'henceforth all traders and processors are to note that they are allowed to purchase raw cashew nuts during the main harvesting season from January - June but export of raw cashew is not permitted after May 31, 2016.'

However, Mr Ahmed, who is also the MP for Banda in the Brong Ahafo Region, said the directive is illegal and has the tendency to collapse the cashew industry.

In a statement on the floor of Parliament, Mr Ahmed recounted the ordeal of cashew farmers in the Region and called on colleague lawmakers to help save the cashew industry from collapse.

'The cashew holds much promise and potential. Cashew productivity and rural employment can offer increasing income to the poor and provide food security and income diversification to the vulnerable communities like Sampa, Band, Hani, Debibi, Wenchi, Kintampo, Techiman, Bole-Bamboi,' Mr Ahmed said.

However, the sector had suffered a major price reduction from GHC 4.50 per kilo within one week, ostensibly as a result of a directive of the Honourable Minister of Trade and Industry.

The MP said the directive among others said any raw cashew nuts that are brought to the ports or borders of Ghana for export between March 31 and May 31 2016 shall be confiscated to the state.

Mr Ahmed, who was crowned best farmer in the Banda District Assembly last year, said the directive prohibiting cashew farmers from importing raw cashew has affected and is killing the industry, describing the directive as very weak and illegal.

'Under what law is the Ministry going to confiscate raw cashew nuts without due process?' the MP queried.

The irritated MP said, 'The cashew industry is a private sector with a liberalized environment. This has attracted most of the youth into the cashew production due to high prices as a result of competition between local processing companies and other foreign counterparts.

'If we want to protect the few processing companies in the country, it must not be at the expense of the poor farmers who constitute the majority."

The Second Majority Chief Whip said the directive has brought hardship to the poor farmers in several ways, stating that despite the directive coming from his own government, he would speak out in the interest of his constituents as it is a national issue rather than a party one.

Mr Ahmed said there was the need for policy makers to study other alternative policies of the cashew industry to help the situation, and prayed the House to call the Minister of Trade and Industry to suspend his directive as a matter of urgency.

Mr Dominic Nitiwul, Deputy Minority Leader, in response said the Deputy Majority Chief Whip could have handled the issue with the Minister personally and that it is unnecessary to have brought it to the floor of Parliament.

Mr Kwesi Agyeman Gyan-Tutu, MP for Tain, also in the Brong Ahafo Region, suggested that the Ministry of Trade work with the local farmers to form a cashew marketing board.

Paapa Owusu Ankomah, MP for Sekondi, said the Ministry's directive contradicts the Importers and Exporters Act, section 13 and article 11 (7) of the 1992 constitution.

GNA
Accra, March 17, GNA - The National Democratic Party (NDP) has bemoaned the current state of the nation with regards to the economy, the right of citizens to work, good health care and right to education.

A statement issued to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, Leader of the NDP, said the State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) delivered by President John Dramani Mahama, had exposed the 'sorrows of the nation' and called for Ghana to rise for change in the upcoming elections.

She noted that, while the SONA was expected to provide answers to Ghanaians, the address rather showed that the health of the economy was not guaranteed in light of the precarious household incomes, coupled with unemployment and collapsing businesses.

On the right to work, the statement noted: 'by the emergence of desperate groupings for employment such as Association of Unemployed Graduates, this has become a luxury to say the least.'

Mrs Agyeman-Rawlings also lamented government's lack of commitment to good health care, saying that, the inefficiencies of the National Health Insurance Scheme were due to lack of funding and not increased subscriptions.

'Good health care has not been accorded the due priority and that right has been odiously undermined. Lives continue to be snuffed out at a genocidal proportion due to the heinous deprivation of the people and the inability to afford due health care in emergencies, particularly for the most vulnerable in society,' she stated.

She further stated that the nation was still grappling with the constitutional imperative of free compulsory basic education, with many children roaming in deprived communities, adding that lack of transparency in infrastructural project costs and other areas were alarming.

She also criticised President Mahama's declaration to intensify decentralisation within institutions, saying 'in fact decentralisation presents itself in the constitution as the trunk governance to achieve participatory democracy and will not be open to the NDC government to want to operationalise it with its tendencies to run an obscure administration'.

GNA
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Accra, March 18, GNA - The University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom would, on Friday, hold a special convocation to confer on President John Dramani Mahama an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) (Honoris Causa).

The convocation, which would take place at the University's Kings College, would form part of the President's working visit to Scotland.

President Mahama, who left Accra yesterday for Glasgow, would meet with the First Minister of Scotland and visit the Scottish Parliament to observe the First Minister's Question Time and address a meeting of Parliamentarians.

He was accompanied by the First Lady, Lordina Mahama, the Foreign Minister, Hanna S. Tetteh (MP), the Communications Minister, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah and the Education Minister Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyeman.

He would also meet with leaders of Scotland's political parties.

President Mahama would be the second Ghanaian leader, after Former President Jerry John Rawlings, to visit Scotland.

The visit provides an opportunity for the two countries to strengthen political and economic relations.

As part of his schedule, President Mahama would meet with the Ghanaian Community and address a Business Forum.

With the Vice President on an official visit to India, the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, is acting as President, in accordance with Article 60 (11) of the 1992 Constitution.

GNA
Kumasi, March 18, GNA - The Deputy Ashanti Regional Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mr. Samuel Sarpong, has called for the security agencies to get tough with any political party hired thugs, out there to disrupt and create confusion on the day of elections.

The expectation was that they would act fearlessly and robustly to deal with people, who attempted to either snatch ballot boxes or attack poll officials.

Mr. Sarpong said that was important to make sure that everybody played by the rules of fair conduct to protect the integrity of the elections.

The Deputy Regional EC Director was contributing to discussions at the second media convention on the November polls held in Kumasi by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and sponsored the United States (US) Embassy in Accra.

'Towards free, fair and undisputed 2016 elections' was the theme of the one-day event, which brought together journalists to share experiences in election coverage and draw relevant lessons.

Mr. Sarpong spoke of the need for all Ghanaians to get right with the electoral laws - reject multiple registration, vote buying, fraud, coercion and intimidation.

He said that was vital to enable every qualified voter to freely exercise their constitutional right of choosing their leaders without fear.

He underlined the Commission's determination to continue to engage with the political parties at all levels to remove needless suspicion, boost confidence in the electoral body and make the outcome of the elections acceptable to all the parties.

Mr. Affail Monney, the GJA President, asked that the EC speeded up the election result relay process through a more agile information and communication technology (ICT) system without compromising on efficiency and credibility.

That he said, was necessary to 'reduce the potential of people using social media to play mischief with election results'.

GNA
Kamgbunli (W/R), March 18, GNA - Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ellembelle, said government would assist the Uthman Bin Affan Islamic School (UBAISH) to be one of the well-endowed and leading Islamic schools in the country.

He said the school, which started as a private entity but became a public school through his efforts and that of government in 2012, was counted as one of the best in the district and the Western Region.

Mr Buah, also the Minister for Petroleum, said this during the Founder's Day and fund raising ceremony of UBAISH at Kamgbunli in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region.

He paid glowing tribute to the founding fathers of the school, especially Sheik Dr Mozu, for mooting the idea of its establishment in 2008 and commended the school authorities for having achieved a lot within a short time with more than 96 per cent of candidates passing the WASSCE yearly.

Mr Buah attributed this feat to the collaboration between the District Assembly, the District Directorate of Education and the Office of the MP, adding that they continued to put education in the district on a high pedestal and promised the school an additional bus to augment its shuttle services.

The MP said he was in constant touch with Tullow Oil to initiate a water project for the Kamgbunli Community as he continued to tar the principal streets in the town.

He advised them to avoid inflammatory speeches and guttural language which had the potential to fuel conflict especially as the nation went to the polls in November.

Sheik Ismail Saeed, the Ashanti Regional Imam of Ahlusunn , said education was an essential component of Islam which God bequeathed to the Prophet Mohammed, and entreated Muslims to pursue higher education and use the knowledge acquired for the betterment of society.

He, however, regretted that education had been relegated to the background which had resulted in certain anti-social vices and insurrections such as Boko Haram.

Sheik Saeed reminded the Muslim community that Islam stood for unity and peace and urged Muslims to restore it to its former glory.

Alhaji Zakaria Osman, the Headmaster of the school, said the school started with 62 students in 2008 but now had 375 students.

He lauded the Government for incorporating the school into the public entity category and also lauded the efforts of the Kamgbunli Community for their spirit of communalism in establishing the school.

Alhaji Osman said the school placed second to the Nkroful Agricultural Senior High in the 2013/2014 WASSCE and second in the Osagyefo Cup Competition.

He, however, said the district placed 24th in the BECE nation-wide and called for all hands on deck to help better the results.

He said the school was in dire need of a girls' dormitory, a befitting science laboratory, a duty post, school bus and more classroom blocks to accommodate the yearly intake of students. GNA
Accra, March 18, GNA - The Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA) has urged the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) to ensure that its services are accessible to all Ghanaian youth in both urban and rural areas of the country.

Mrs Theodora Williams Anti, the FOSDA Programme Officer, said whilst commending the Agency for the swift implementation of its mandate, it was not oblivious of the past experience of earlier organisations with similar mandates.

FOSDA is a civil society organisation with the mission to promote peace and human security by working to realise the lasting potential of communities and individuals through the systematic and effective sharing of information, knowledge and skills.

Mrs Anti said the rate of youth unemployment in the country was alarming as it threatened national security and general safety of citizens.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Thursday, Mrs Anti insisted that the failure of organisations such as the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) to address the youth unemployment situation had contributed to such high unemployment rates that posed a threat to national security, especially in this election year.

'The bulk of the jobless youth in the country are the first resort for bad politicians and terrorists. Many young people resort to armed robbery, contract killings, internet fraud, drug abuse, and other forms of crime for survival,' she said.

According to Mrs Anti, YEA and other similar youth and social programmes must work effectively ahead of the 2016 elections to reduce tension and ensure peaceful elections.

'YEA must ensure that its recruitment processes are all inclusive, gender sensitive and disability friendly devoid of politicisation.

'Rural, urban, male, female and young people living with disability must be consciously targeted in all recruitments irrespective of their political affiliations,' she said.

She urged the youth to not only patronise the services of YEA and other similar organisations but also contribute to their success by showing interest in their activities.

The YEA was established under the Youth Employment Act 2015 (Act 887) to empower young people to contribute meaningfully to the socio-economic and sustainable development of the nation.

According to the World Bank, youth unemployment refers to the share of the labour force ages 15-24 without work but available for and seeking employment.

The World Bank's World Development Indicators (2014) showed that in Ghana the number of the youth in the total population had increased from 1.1 million in 1960 to 2.3 million in 1984, and to 3.5 million in 2000.

The World Bank statistics also indicate that about 65 per cent of the unemployed in Ghana can be found in the age group of 15-24 years.

GNA
Half Assini (W/R), March 18, GNA - Half Assini magistrate court in the Western Region has referred defilement and incent charges against Clear Agent at the Elubo border, Anthony Tamakloe to a Sekondi Circuit court for trial.

According to the Court all the three charges against the accused are criminal cases that are above the powers of the Court.

The court therefore discharged Tamakole but was re-arrested by the Police to enable them arraign him to the Sekondi Circuit Court 'A'.

He was charged on three counts of defilement, incest and torturing his biological daughter.

Prosecution, Police Sergeant Isaac Ebo Otoo, told the court presided over by Mr Abdul Majid Illiasu that complainant in the case is a head

Pastor of Assemblies of God Church at Elubo.

He said the accused has four children including the victim with a woman whom he had divorced since January 2013.

He said the children including the victim, age 14 and her immediate male siblings were staying with him at Elubo.

The Prosecutor said on their arrival at Elubo the accused enquired from the victim whose name is being withheld for security reasons if she is a virgin.

He said the victim answered negatively and maintained she was a virgin.

The prosecution said the accused to believe the girl made her strip herself naked and lied on his bed while he inserted his finger in her vagina to ascertain if indeed her virginity has not been broken.

Sergeant Otoo said in the process the accused was not able to withstand her daughter's nudity inserted his penis in her vagina and subsequently had sexual intercourse with her till he satisfied himself.

He said this made the girl bled profusely from her private part, adding that he warned his daughter not to tell anyone what had transpired between them and afterwards made her his sexual partner.

The Prosecutor said the former wife visited them one day at Elubo and the victim told her the ordeal.

He said when the mother confronted the father over it, he denied the act vehemently.

The prosecution said the revelation never deterred accused who continued to have sex with victim after the mother's departure.

He said the father even threatened to kill her if she dare reveal the secret to anyone as she did to the mother on her visit.

According to the Sergeant Otoo the accused subjected victim to torture an time she resisted his demand to have sex with her.

The prosecution said sometimes the accused person uses sedative hypnotic drugs to victim and her sibling at night to sleep deeply to enable him execute his nefarious act without any interference.

He indicated that on Sunday January 3 2016 accused as usual flirted victim who experienced abnormal pains as a result and unable to attend church.

The following Sunday when she attended Church narrated her ordeal to a Policeman who is a member of the church.

The Prosecutor said the Policeman informed the head Pastor of the Church who met victim over the issue and later reported the matter to Police.

Tamakloe and was arrested and case referred to Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of Ghana Police Service, Half-Assini. GNA
Nsawkaw (B/A), March 18, GNA - People with Disabilities (PWDs) in the Tain District of the Brong-Ahafo Region are to benefit from a three year capacity building support project.

Mr. Yaw Ofori Debrah, Chairman of the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, announced at a meeting with stakeholders to launch the project.

The project, 'Joint Disability Movement Project Phase 3' is being funded by the Danish government and implemented by the Ghana Federation of the Disabled.

The three year project, would build the capacity of people with disabilities in advocacy and resource mobilization skills.

Additionally, it seeks to create self-awareness among people with disabilities, while radio and other mediums of communication would also be used to educate the general public to appreciate the capabilities of PWDs.

Mr. Debrah said as part of the project, sensitisation on the Disability Act, 2006 Act 715, would be done for members to know their rights and responsibilities as stipulated in the Act.

He added that it would be equipping the members of the Federation with the required knowledge to engage the District Assemblies and other private sector players to help their cause.

Mr. Debrah said through the resource mobilization skills, the Federation members in the beneficiary districts would be able to identify potential resource sources and take the needed steps to mobilize same.

He encouraged PWDs not to allow their situations to make them a burden on the society and therefore urged them to take advantage of the fund, to start viable economic ventures to improve their living conditions.

GNA
Sunyani, Mar 18, GNA - A Techiman-based Businessman has petitioned the office of Attorney General and Minister of Justice to intervene and facilitate the speedy prosecution of a criminal case pending before the Wenchi High Court, which he alleges has been suspended by the Court.

Mr Kwadwo Adjei, the petitioner in a signed petition copied to the Ghana News Agency said the case involved the prosecution of Jacob Agongo and Alhassan Issaku, both motorbike dealers in Techiman, who are accused to have fraudulently breached trust, contrary to section 23 (1) and 138 of the Criminal Offences Act 1960, Act 29.

The petition said it suspected foul play in the entire prosecution process and appealed to the Sector Minister, Mrs. Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong to intervene.

Copies were also sent to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Bureau of National Investigation (BNI), Director of CID, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the Ghana Bar Association (GBA).

'I am not happy and I feel I have been denied justice when Justice S K Sarpong Appiah, the presiding judge has for unexplained reasons suspended the prosecution of the case.' the petition added.

The petition said through a personal intelligence gathering by the petitioner, the two suspects were planning to abscond outside the country to escape justice.

The case was last heard on March 11, this year, and the Prosecutor Mr. Theophilus Appoh, a Senior State Attorney informed the court that he had received an order from the Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine to suspend prosecution, the petition said.

According to the petition, this runs contrary to the Attorney-General's (AG's) Department direction last year ordering the Brong- Ahafo Regional Police Command to facilitate the speedy prosecution of two suspects.

It also instructed the police command at Wenchi, where the two were first arrested to forward their caution statements to the A-G' Department.

The directive was contained in a letter of advice signed by Lawyer Appoh, at the Brong Ahafo Regional Office of the A-G's Department in Sunyani and copied the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

This was in response to a case docket the police command at Wenchi forwarded to the A-G's office for advice.

A brief background to the case as contained in AG's letter stated that the Manager of the STE Evame Sarl Group, a Togo-based company that deals in motorbikes, started importing motorbikes into the country in 2008 and engaged the suspects to sell them on behalf of the company on commission basis.

It said in 2012, the complainant had information that the suspects were preparing to make off with the company's money, so he came to Techiman and lodged a complaint at the Wenchi Police Station and the suspects were arrested.

"Upon their arrest, the suspects claimed that the complainant owed them a commission due them since 2008," it stated, adding the Police conducted an audit and took separate inventory of the stock at the stores of the suspects, and 441 motorbikes were seized from them.

The letter indicated that in August 2015, the company, through the Power of Attorney, empowered Kwadwo Adjei, (the petitioner), another motorbike dealer in Techiman, to take over and sell the 441 bikes.

It said Agongo admitted that he had sold out the motorbikes and deposited the amount in the company's bank accounts.

According to the letter, the conduct of the suspects breached the Criminal Offence Act, and therefore asked the Police to immediately prosecute them to serve as deterrent to others.

GNA
Ho, March 18, GNA - Messrs Rolider Limited, a civil engineering and construction company, has officially handed over Ho-Fume phase II road to the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), pending a one-year defect liability period.

This follows the completion of work on the 10-kilometre stretch valued at about GHC45 million.

Work on the stretch began in 2010, but it exceeded its two-year scheduled completion date due to change in the design and the interruptions in payments.

The road has opened up the Vane Traditional Area and provided a shorter alternative route from Ho to Hohoe.

Mr Charles Kwaku Baah, the Engineer's Representative of the GHA, said all safety measures such as guard rails, speed rumps, 'New Jersey Barriers' and 'traffic calming measures' had been provided.

Mr Francis Ganyaglo, the Deputy Volta Regional Minister, who witnessed the handing over ceremony, described the road as a 'master piece'.

'This is Rolider handiwork,' he said. 'It is quality and we the people of the Volta Region are grateful to the Government and Rolider for this road,' he said.

The Ho-Fume road project - phases one and two - is 17 kilometres, starting from the OLA Senior High School, in Ho, to Fume in the Ho West District.

The first phase of seven kilometres was completed and handed over six years ago.

GNA
Niamey (AFP) - Niger's presidential run-off is far from being a level playing field with President Mahamadou Issoufou's re-election a shoo-in after his challenger Hama Amadou was imprisoned in November and then hastily flown for unspecified medical treatment to Paris just days before the second round vote.

Here are profiles of the two rival veteran politicians nicknamed "The Lion" and "The Phoenix" respectively:

- Issoufou, 'The Lion' -

The 64-year-old president, who is seeking a second term, is nicknamed the "Lion" for his political prowess and capacity to pounce at the right time. But this time round his legitimacy is under question with the opposition boycotting the vote.

Issoufou has repeatedly pledged to bring prosperity to the desolate but uranium-rich country and prevent further attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters based in its vast remote northern deserts.

The twin vows have resonance in the west African nation, where he has been a key political player since the start of multi-party politics in 1990.

"He's a great tactician and has a sharp mind," said an expert on Niger politics.

A mining engineer who worked for French nuclear giant Areva which mines uranium in northern Niger, Issoufou has contested every presidential election since 1993 but was beaten in 1999 and 2004 by his charismatic rival Mamadou Tandja.

His ascent to power began in 1993 when he was named prime minister under Mahamane Ousmane, Niger's first democratically elected president.

He held the post for a year and also served as parliament speaker from 1995 to 1996.

The next years saw him in opposition and spearheading a campaign against Tandja's attempts to extend his tenure beyond its constitutional limit -- a bid that finally led to a February 2010 coup.

Issoufou's patient wait for the top job finally paid off in 2011 when he won a presidential election organised by the military junta that had toppled Tandja.

His winning pitch was a pledge to restore stability to a country wracked by coups since 1974 and to secure it from jihadist groups active in restive west Africa.

His critics, however, accuse him of bending over backwards to pander to former colonial ruler France, and spending far too much on defence at the cost of welfare schemes in one of the world's poorest countries.

- Amadou, 'The Phoenix' -

Currently holed up at the well-known American Hospital in a western Paris suburb after being evacuated from prison in Niger for urgent but unexplained medical reasons, the 66-year-old Amadou ran an unequal campaign from behind bars where he has been languishing since November.

His ability to rise from the ashes had led to the veteran politician being showered with monikers such as "The Phoenix" along with "Niger's Mandela" for his long stints in prison like South Africa's anti-apartheid icon.

The rallying cry of his supporters has been "from prison to presidency", and they often make cross marks on their face or arms to replicate the tribal scars on his cheeks, which have also sparked another nickname "Hama+".

"Hama+" is also a play on the French word "plus" or "more" and used by his backers in this uranium-rich but deeply poor nation on the fringes of the Sahara.

"Hama plus means more work, more money and more of everything for the people of Niger," was the rallying cry during the campaign for the first round of the election on February 21.

Amadou cut his political teeth during the iron-fisted rule of president Seini Kountche (1974-1987) and after the advent of multi-party politics in the 1990s became prime minister in 1995.

He was one of the key figures in the regime of former president Mamadou Tandja, in power from 1999 to 2010, serving as prime minister before being jailed for allegedly stealing public funds.

Although some had written him off, Amadou's popularity soared after Tandja was toppled following an abortive attempt to prolong his rule, leading to his "Phoenix" nickname.

He joined the opposition and became a leading figure but was jailed in November on baby trafficking charges that he says are trumped up.

Calm, discreet and plain speaking, Amadou is also a "great opportunist and a man of courage," according to an African diplomat.

But whether he will be able to resurrect politically yet again remains to be seen.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants the divided Security Council to clarify its stance on the UN dispute with Morocco over Western Sahara, his spokesman said Friday.

The 15-member council discussed the escalating row during a closed-door meeting on Thursday after Rabat ordered drastic cuts to the staff of the UN mission in Western Sahara.

But the council did not urge Morocco to reverse its decision and did not express support for Ban in the dispute sparked by his description of Moroccan rule in Western Sahara as an "occupation."

"It would have been better if we had received clearer words from the president of the Security Council," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

Ban will raise the thorny issue during a lunch meeting on Monday with Security Council ambassadors, his spokesman said, adding that it would be "at the top of the agenda" of the talks.

Morocco has ordered 84 staffers from MINURSO to leave in the coming days, a move the United Nations says will paralyze the mission that was set up in 1991 after a ceasefire was reached in the disputed territory.

During a recent trip to North Africa, Ban angered Rabat when he used the word "occupation" to describe the status of Western Sahara.

Dujarric said the word was not used with a "legal definition" in mind, but that Ban sought to express that he was "moved" by his visit of refugees at the Tindouf camp in Algeria.

The dispute escalated following protests in Rabat at the weekend that the UN chief said were staged by the government and directed against him, with demonstrators carrying banners denouncing Ban's "lack of neutrality."

In response, Morocco decided to cut $3 million in funding for the UN mission and expel the MINURSO staff.

Dujarric said an initial three-day deadline for the staff to leave had been extended and that discussions were continuing on the decision.

"We very much hope that we can salvage this mission," he said.

The United Nations has been trying to broker a Western Sahara settlement since the 1991 ceasefire ended a war that broke out when Morocco deployed its military in the former Spanish territory in 1975.

Morocco considers the territory as part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged.
The sad news of the death of DCOP Angwubutoge Awuni broke on Monday morning.

The Eastern Regional Police Commander died at the Police Hospital in Accra early Monday, after a short illness.

The late DCOP Awuni

Members of the police hierarchy mourned the sudden demise of the outspoken man. The general public especially journalists and politicians who had met him, also mourned him.

Another sad news that broke on Monday was the killing of about 16 people in a gun attack by militants at a beach resort in the Southern part of Ivory Coast.

A man killed at the Ivorian beach

Away from the killing and deaths, President John Dramani Mahama granted an interview to TV3 in Accra on the same day which triggered some exciting discussions.

He touched on several issues including the economy , energy, corruption and the unfortunate errors in Ghanas 59th Independence Anniversary brochure . He also commented on the death of comedian Bob Okala who died Sunday dawn.

President John Mamaha and President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya seated at the Black Stars Square

President Mahama also challenged the 2016 flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo for a debate.

Some Ghanaians started raising security concerns after the attack at the Ivorian beach.

Then on Tuesday, was the news of the default judgement by the Ho High Court which among other things ordered the Global Evangelical Church to return chapels to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Some members of the E.P Church after they won the case

The Global Evangelical Church took possession of these churches and some other properties when it broke away from the E.P. Church some 26 years ago.

Also on Tuesday, the Auditor-General, Richard Quartey expressed anger over the non-implementation of its reports submitted to the Public Accounts Committee for action.

Wednesday was a comedy of political challenge as Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo accepted President John Dramani Mahamahs call for debate on Twitter on condition that the debate would solve problems facing Ghana .

Few hours after, Akufo-Addo's remarks, the 2016 Presidential hopeful of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) challenged President John Dramani Mahama to debate him instead of Akufo-Addo.

PPP 2016 flagbearer, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom

Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom questioned the Presidents pick , wondering whether he dared Akufo-Addo because he (Akufo Addo) comes out as an easy match for him.

On Thursday, snakes invaded some three communities in the Ashanti Region. Residents in Essienimpong, Kwaaso, and Piase towns near Ejisu in the Ashanti Region killed close to 300 snakes within three days.

Some dead snakes at the town of Essienimpong

Back to the presidency, President John Dramani Mahama as part of a working visit to Scotland also addressed some members of the Scottish Parliament , on this day.

President John Dramani Mahama, First Lady Lordina Mahama and some Ministers of State at the Scottish Parliament

His visit to the country drew gay rights criticisms from some opposition members of the Scotish Parliament.

There was another bad news to report. Six people died and several others were severely injured in a car crash on the Kasoa-Winneba road.

State of the two vehicles after the crash

The unfortunate incident happened at Gomoa-Buduatta junction in the Central Region at about 10:45pm on Thursday, while it was raining heavily.

To end an eventful week, one person was severely injured as a result of an explosion that occurred at the power room of the Cedi House in Accra at about 6:30 am.

Cedi House

Also on Friday, about 19 Judicial Service workers found to have been complicit in the judicial corruption scandal were sacked.

President John Dramani Mahama dedicated his honourary Doctor of Law award from the University of Aberdeen to Ghanaians.

President John Dramani Mahama and First Lady Lordina Mahama

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com| Akosua Asiedua Akuffo| [email protected]
Algiers (AFP) - Rockets on Friday struck an Algerian gas plant run by foreign energy giants in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda, three years after a deadly hostage crisis at another facility in the country.

There were no casualties reported in the attack on the plant operated by Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Algerian company Sonatrach.

It was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on its Telegram channel in a message saying that it comes within its "war on the interest of the Crusaders in every place," according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Friday's attack was the most serious since other Al-Qaeda-linked militants stormed a complex in Algeria's remote east in 2013 and began a four-day siege that left dozens dead.

The defence ministry said two homemade rockets crashed near a guard post of a Sonatrach facility in Krechba, 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) south of Algiers, without causing casualties or damage.

"The rapid reaction of the army detachment tasked with protecting the site foiled this attempted terrorist attack," it said in an online statement, without elaborating.

Statoil said the gas asset was hit by "explosive munitions fired from a distance" in the early morning attack.

A processing facility was shut down "as a safety precaution", BP said.

A plant employee who did not wish to be named told AFP that the site is surrounded by a security fence and soldiers are permanently on guard.

"The rockets seem to have been fired from very far away," he said.

Military personnel mobilised soon after the rocket fire to prevent the attackers gaining access to the facility, the employee added.

Algeria's official news agency APS said "two terrorists fired homemade rockets on the gas plant in Krechba," using Algeria's official term for Islamist militants.

A manhunt was launched to find the attackers, it said.

- Anti-militant operations -

In 2013, a four-day siege and two rescue attempts by the Algerian army at a gas facility in In Amenas resulted in the deaths of nearly 40 foreign workers and 29 attackers.

The assault -- which also targeted a site run by Sonatrach, BP and Statoil -- was claimed by Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants led by the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former AQIM chief.

The attack prompted a widespread security review in the North African country, heavily reliant on income from gas exports.

The head of Algeria's army last week called for increased vigilance following what he termed an "unprecedented deterioration" in security.

Algeria has been on guard against jihadist attacks such as those experienced by its neighbours Libya and Tunisia, with local press reporting the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers along its vast desert borders.

On Monday, a security source said a militant leader who had joined IS was killed during an army operation west of Algiers.

A brutal civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists killed 200,000 people.

Despite adopting a peace and reconciliation charter in 2005 aimed at turning the page on the conflict, armed groups remain active in the centre and east of Algeria.

A total of "157 terrorists, including 10 commanders" were killed or arrested in military operations last year, according to the defence ministry.

Algeria, a member of the OPEC oil cartel, is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas, with revenue from fossil fuels accounting for 95 percent of its exports.

It has an estimated 16 billion cubic metres of conventional gas and 20 million cubic metres of non-conventional gas, according to Sonatrach figures.
A government delegation led by the Defence Minister, Dr. Benjamin Kunbour, on Thursday, March 17 met with Ivorian President, Alassane Ouattara, to commiserate with him on the terror attack on that country.

The delegation included Mr. Prosper Bani, Minister of Interior, Ambassador Alhaji Baba Kamara, Presidential Advisor on Security, Ambassador Lt. Gen. Peter Augustine Blay (Rtd) Ghanas Ambassador to Cote dIvoire and Air Marshal Michael Sampson-Oje, Ghanas Chief of Defence Staff.

The delegation was in Abidjan to extend condolences of the government and the people of Ghana to the President and people of Cote dIvoire following the terrorist attack on Grand-Bassam on Sunday 13th March 2016 which claimed some 16 lives.

Dr. Kunbour told President Ouattara that President John Dramani Mahama had sent the delegation to show solidarity to them in the wake of the attacks.

We are also here to extend the condolences of the President and the people of Ghana to Cote dIvoire and the bereaved families. You know, if Cote dIvoire does not sleep, Ghana can never sleep because we are one and the same people, he added

The Minister of Defence also indicated that what happened to Cote dIvoire is a wake-up call for countries in the West African sub-region to increase their collaborative efforts to counter the terrorist threat in the region.

The delegation also travelled to Grand-Bassam and was received by officials of the town who took them on a guided tour of the beach and the Etoile du Sud Hotel which bore the brunt of Sundays barbaric attack.

Dr Kunbour later laid a wreath on behalf of Government and the People of Ghana in memory of the victims.
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Why dry fruits could be the perfect gift this Diwali | Dry fruit demand up 10%
It came on February 23 this year, when BHP Billiton [ASX: BHP] announced it was cutting its dividend payout by 75%. It was the first cut since 1988.

Oh dear. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the December quarter was not kind to the junior miners of Australia.

Eight were delisted, one was suspended, and three entered voluntary administration. Even more are in cash preservation mode, and not even exploring.

Half of those remaining only have enough cash left to fund one, maybe two, more quarters on their current balances.

If investors, or their bankers, dont pay up, its good night nurse for all of them. It could get bloody.

But hold that thought! Todays Money Morning explores whether this could finally mark the bottom for commodities in 2016

Watch how this massive project develops

Dont laugh just yet.

I know youve probably heard the bottom called for commodities more times than you care to remember since their last peak in 2011. Investors who dabbled in the miners have mostly been butchered ever since.

But consider the wider environment. Shareholders are reluctant to fund capital spending on new projects with low prices and the return on investment unappetising.

But as the juniors get wiped out, it kills off new projects. Heres the rub. The old mines go on producing, but are always depleting.

Thats the kind of thing that can give commodity prices a kick higher as supply drops. Its been a long five years in commodities. And you dont bring on a new project in a few months. They take years.

Heres what we do know. Were going to know pretty quick how keen the market is for a major capital raising in this space.

Over in the UK, a company called Sirius Minerals wants to raise US$3.5 billion dollars to fund a vast polyhalite mine beneath the North York Moors national park.

According to the Telegraph in the UK, polyhalite is a combination of potash and chemicals such as potassium and sulphur. You probably guessed where this is going already: fertiliser.

Sirius just released its feasibility study. The project is enormous. Its the largest in the UK since the 1970s. They would need to build a tunnel 36 kilometres long underground. It could be mined for at least 50 years, possibly 100.

The project would be built in two phases over five years. The company says annual profits of between $1bn and $3bn are on the cards once the project is up and running completely.

Heres the catch. Sirius Minerals only has 25 million pounds in the bank. Just to complete the first phase of the construction it needs to find US$1.63 billion through debt and equity.

Its not easy to raise that kind of cash for mining plays these days. Thats especially with potash prices trading at around eight year low.

Investors will be sceptical naturally enough that the company can hit its budget. Theres always the risk of costs blowouts in any project, but especially on such a large one.

You only have to look at the Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia to see that.

It was original slated to cost US$37 billion and ship its first gas in 2014. It ended up costing $54 billion, and is only shipping its first gas this week.

But its not all bad in the mining industry right now. Certainly lithium and gold stock have done just fine recently.

And last month I saw a small signpost that maybe the worst is over the for the commodity rout

Analysis from 1923 that may prove true today

It came on February 23 this year, when BHP Billiton [ASX: BHP] announced it was cutting its dividend payout by 75%. It was the first cut since 1988.

Now thats interesting, isnt it? The outlook for BHP doesnt look good. A US$5.6 billion dollar loss, dividends cut, low prices.

Not so fast. Take this from the book Truth of the Stock Tape written by man called WD Gann in 1923. Hes talking about a stock called United Retail

Insiders knew along time before the dividend was cut that it was going to be cut, and they were buying the stock. Now, all you had to do was to wait and see if they would give it support around the previous low level

In many instances when dividends are cut it is the time to buy as the worst is known and has been discounted. As a rule when dividends are increased and extra dividends paid, the insiders are distributing the stock and they bring out good news in order to entice the public into buying

Lets take a look at the BHP chart

Source: STEX

Click to enlarge

Source: STEX

And BHP looks to be behaving just as Gann says in the above quote.

The dividend is passed but the company fails to break the previous low before the dividend is cut. It makes a higher low. Thats actually bullish as far as the chart is concerned.

Certainly, the bad news is priced in now. Old WD knew a thing or two about markets.

Dont let the mainstream headlines deceive you. To stay ahead of the market, go here.

Regards,

Callum
Newcrest Mining Limited [ASX:NCM] ended higher for the week after good news dominated the market for the last two days.

What happened to the NCM share price?

Newcrest Mining Limited [ASX:NCM] ended higher for the week after good news dominated the market for the last two days. It is not surprising to see gold producers such as Newcrest scoring well in the last two months. I will explain below.

Why did NCM shares do this?

Newcrest has rallied due to the gold effect. If you havent noticed, gold and gold producers have had a terrific run in the last two months due to the rising volatility in other markets. During this time, investors have run to safety  gold. When gold price and gold ETFs rise in value, you can expect gold producer stocks to do the same.

I advised my clients to take some profits two weeks ago from a gold stock that I recommended. In hindsight, that was done prematurely. However, I still believe the rise of gold is due to investors running to safety. The fundamental value of gold is determined by the commodity basket over the long run. That is still unstable.

It is possible that the sharp rebound in energy prices has given gold support as well. We also need to notice that investors have been pulling money out of gold due to the lower volatility in the last few weeks. All these make it difficult to predict the next move of gold.

If gold is overpriced, it can either revert back to a lower level if commodity prices stagnate, or it can stagnate while commodity prices continue to reflate. I am not entirely sure which it is. But I know a continued reflation in commodity prices will (if not already) at some point start to support gold pricing again.

What now for NCM?

NCM has been on my trading portfolio in the last few weeks. I am holding NCM purely as a momentum stock. Fundamentally, I am more cautious than I am bullish on gold. I think investors need to distinguish between using gold as a diversification tool (long term) versus using gold as a trading tool (short term).

If you have no faith in the current global monetary scheme and you want to diversify away some of the risk in your portfolio, you should hold a small percentage of your wealth in gold. If you are trading gold for gains, then you are really looking at golds long term commodity characteristics as well as its short term status as a safe haven.

Ken Wangdong+

Emerging Market Analyst, New Frontier Investor
Tap Oil has hedged 700,000 barrels of forecast Manora oil production to meet the BNP Paribas and Siam Commercial Bank debt facility requirements.

What happened to the Tap Oils share price?

At the time of writing, shares in Tap Oil [ASX:TAP] were up 8.76%, to 7.6 cents on Friday.

Why did Tap Oil shares do this?

Tap Oil has hedged 700,000 barrels of forecast Manora oil production to meet the BNP Paribas and Siam Commercial Bank debt facility requirements. According to the company, Manora production from April 2016 to February 2017 at an average swap price of US$42.15/bbl, representing approximately 47.5% of forecast volumes over the 11 month period.

Tap operates with a leveraged balance sheet. In addition to the hedging agreement, its seeking to raise AU$7.75 million in a rights issue to meet these conditions. This should help stabilise the balance sheet in the short term.

What now for Tap Oil?

Taps undergoing a significant corporate and balance sheet restructuring. That said, this doesnt mean the companys out of the woods yet. Its still exposed to any oil price volatility this year. Fortunately, Manora is a lower cost oil producing asset. With this in mind, given the poor demand and supply environment, which Ive frequently discussed in Money Morning, crude should make a new low before 2017. If this happens, Taps share price may fall to lower lows in the months ahead.

Jason Stevenson,

Resources Analyst, Money Morning & Resource Speculator
New born babies always look so innocent, but roll forward a few years to when that little bundle of joy becomes a toddler and youre up against the tantrums of the terrible twos. Now try to picture what your little darling will be like when they hit 18; most parents hope they will have raised a prudent, responsible young adult.

Now, take that 18-year-old and hand them the 20,000 you have saved for them since the day they were born. How mature are they really? Can you predict how they would spend that cash? And, more importantly, will you approve?

If you are anything like me, there is nothing quite like cold, hard cash to focus your mind and quash unrealistic expectations.

This was the dilemma my husband and I faced when setting up our daughters Junior ISA. While building a meaningful investment pot is a laudable aim, as parents we must resign ourselves to the fact that Audrey, now aged two, could become considerably richer in 16 years.

Money put aside to pay for university fees or a deposit to secure a mortgage could potentially be squandered on foreign holidays and fast cars.

DIY Investing for Junior

Once we had squared the reality, we considered the tax-free investment opportunity too good to miss. After looking into our options we chose Hargreaves Lansdowns Vantage Junior Isa as we wanted to make our own investing decisions.

We picked two funds; Artemis Global Income and Old Mutual UK Smaller Companies due to their exposure to long-term growth assets and proven track record over a market cycle. We liked the fact that the Artemis fund paid an income which we could chose to automatically accumulate, buying more units and harnessing the power of compound interest.

What the Experts Say

Morningstar analysts rate both of these funds highly, with manager Jacob de Tusch Lec at Artemis earning a Bronze Rating and Daniel Nickols at Old Mutual a coveted Gold Rating.

The fact that Junior ISA investments can not be cashed in until the unit holder reaches 18 means a longer-term strategy can be adopted, and we have committed to avoid tinkering with Audreys portfolio in response to market volatility.

Is Handing Teenagers Cash a Bad Idea?

Concerns have been raised regarding the structure of Junior ISAs  trusting that a teenager will make prudent long-term decisions with a sizable pot of cash is a gamble.

For Martin Bamford, a father of three and managing director at advisers Informed Choice, when it comes to Junior ISAs, the risks of unrestricted access at 18 outweighs the benefits of the tax-free status of these accounts.

What worries lots of parents is the access to cash when their children celebrate their 18th birthday, he said. Few parents would want to facilitate the purchase of a fast car or motorbike for their kids at 18 years old, yet by saving into a Junior ISA you are giving them a signed, blank cheque to spend the cash as they wish.

A better approach, he said, is to consider is using some of your own unused ISA allowance and allocating this money to your children, said Bamford.

If you have fully used your ISA allowance, then there is little harm in investing the money in an unwrapped account and suffering a little tax on the gains or income in return for control over the pot of money in the future, he said.

As his eldest child qualified for a Child Trust Fund, the parents accepted the government contribution and her grandparents make a modest monthly deposit.

Her mother and I also contribute monthly to an unwrapped investment account, invested in a global equity tracker fund, which is earmarked for her university fees, he said.

She is nine years old now and we are yet to pay any taxes on this investment.

For the two youngest, a trust fund has been created from an inheritance, which is on track to pay for their higher education.

But for those considering keeping their childrens money within their own ISA, it is not as clear cut as it may seem. Should a parent die before the money is gifted, for instance, it may not be directed to whom they had in mind, especially if their wills are not up to date. In addition, as the money would remain in their estate, it could be liable for inheritance tax.

Whats more, for those who opt to ring fence the money within their cash ISA, it is vital to do the sums carefully as the rates on accounts have been dropping for quite some time and are simply not as competitive as Junior ISAs. The best Regular Saver ISA, for instance, is currently paying 2% with Buckinghamshire Building Society.

Figures from SavingsChampion.co.uk show that based on a monthly deposit of 100 over 18 years, if this rate were to remain the same, the return would be 25,973. While the best Junior ISA currently on offer is Coventry Building Societys Junior Cash ISA, pays 3.25% and would return 29,246 on the same savings  a difference of 3,273.

Education is Key

For wealth manager Philippa Gee, a Junior ISA is a great way for parents to save for their children.

It instils in your child that saving is a good idea, being tax efficient is equally sound and that using an ISA isnt a scary and technical investment to set up  meaning that your daughter will be more likely to hold and invest in an ISA later on.

Ms Gee, who uses stocks and shares Junior ISAs as savings vehicles for her two children, said that money education if more than half the battle when it comes to these accounts and avoiding problems after their 18th birthday.

Its important that kids understand that the money is there for a purpose and that ideally they should continue the savings habit, no matter how much it is each month, she said.

You can include your child, as time goes by, on the reason why you chose the funds you have selected and look at what funds she would choose.

Patrick Connolly, a certified financial planner at advisers Chase de Vere, agrees but pointed out that when it comes to saving for your children, the right decision will be determined by what you are trying to achieve, over how long and with what level of risk

Factors such as the future access the child will have to their money, tax considerations and investment strategy are all important parts of the decision making process, he said.

I have a 13-year-old son and am putting monthly premiums into the Jump Junior ISA, which is invested in the Witan Investment Trust (WTAN). This is a diversified global equity trust which Im not expecting to have to change, he said.
In cooperation with the central bank and other regulatory authorities, the China Banking Regulatory Commission would now prevent developers, professional networks, and other non-bank organizations from providing down payments for loans, government sources said.



The new mortgage rules have invited greater scrutiny of shadow lending, from which plenty of real estate brokers and other industry players have made bank as the phenomenon took root in Chinese markets a few quarters ago. Banks would now be required to thoroughly check mortgage applications and scrap loan-funded requests.



These regulatory changes are expected to cool down the continuous price increases in Chinas major cities, where first-home buyers are required to pay a 20 per cent deposit. Pundits have attributed the precipitous rise to online mortgage loans, which accounted for as much as 1 trillion yuan in home sales according to local media reports.



Those borrowers tend to be the most aggressive bidders pushing prices up, Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. analyst Alan Jin said, alluding to property investors rather than owner-occupiers.



When there are fewer of them in the market, demand will be lower and prices will be more stable. And thats the goal for the government, Jin added, as quoted by Bloomberg Business.



Officials said that the rules are meant to prevent a repeat of last years stock market chaos, which could potentially inflict irreversible damage on the economy should it happen to the housing sector.



The stock market can move both ways, but the property market is absolutely the countrys bottom line. The government will never allow the real estate market to go bust, Yingcan chief executive officer Xu Hongwei stated.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently precluded the possibility of new stimulus funds, as the administration is expected to post a $30-billion deficit in its first budget next week.



Trudeau reiterated the governments previous declaration of not launching any extra initiatives to kindle the economy.



I dont think we need massive stimulus. What we need are smart investments that are going to help the economy and the families who need it in the short term while creating a path toward greater growth and greater prosperity in the longer term, Trudeau said in early March, as quoted by the Financial Post.



Speaking on condition of anonymity, two federal officials said that the budgetset to be released on March 22 by Finance Minister Bill Morneauwould basically echo the Liberal partys promises during and since last falls election.



Among these projects is the Canada Child Benefit, a program that would directly funnel more funds and assistance for children in low-income households. Other priorities include infrastructure and investments.



This years deficit would represent approximately 1.5 per cent of the GDP. The shortfall is three times larger than Trudeaus campaign promise of $10 billion.
In defiance of dismal predictions for the past eight years, Canadas real estate sector has enjoyed continuous growth with no signs of stopping anytime soon, according to a BMO economist.



Douglas Porters report, Canada's Non-Goldilocks Housing Market and the 33 Bears, pointed at the steady increase of average real estate value, with February seeing an all-time high of more than $500,000 after reaching over 60 per cent growth compared with 2008 figures.



Porter noted that doomsayers have been misrepresenting the state of the industry for years now.



Hey, forecasting is hard. But let's not give a pass to some of these scaremongers who have been dead wrong, Porter told HuffPost Business Canada on Wednesday (March 16).



Other BMO economists warned that there are still risks, especially since the likelihood of a price correction has increased in oil-producing regions like Regina and Calgary.



In both cities, strong population flows and double-digit price gains fueled a significant jump in new housing starts. But with unemployment on the rise and population growth set to cool, that new supply is coming onto an already-stagnant market, Robert Kavcic said back in January.
Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at...

Teens face high stakes in the Oval Office A press room befitting Americas commander in chief was set up inside the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Journalists and others gathered inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all...

Tigers soon to prowl in new enclosure The brand-new Bengal tiger exhibit at Americas Teaching Zoo at Moorpark College is nearly complete, and some other animals hangouts are getting a makeover, too. Mara Rodriguez, zoo development coordinator,...
A California woman is headed to prison for 14 years for her part in a wide-ranging mortgage scam that fraudulently secured more than $30 million in loans.



Vera Kuzmenko, 46, was sentenced for multiple counts of wire fraud, witness tampering and money laundering, according to a report by the Sacramento Bee. Kuzmenko and co-conspirator Rachel Siders were convicted in December of participating in a scheme that ended up costing financial institutions more than $16 million.



Between 2006 and 2008, Kuzmenko and Siders secured more than $30 million in loans on more than 30 homes purchased through straw buyers, the Bee reported. Kuzmenko, who was a licensed real estate agent, created fraudulent loan applications that included phony information on the straw buyers income, assets and intent to occupy the homes. The phony paperwork also hid millions of dollars in payments that went to Kuzmenko, Siders and other co-conspirators, according to the Bee. In addition to preparing the applications, Kuzmenko also served as a straw buyer herself.



Authorities also said that after Kuzmenko learned she was under investigation by the FBI, she told witnesses to lie to investigators and blame the fraud on a dead woman, the Bee reported.

Four other co-conspirators have already been sentenced in the case, receiving prison terms between eight and 19 years. Siders is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
The House Financial Services Committee intends to put forward a pro-growth, pro-consumer alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act  which, according to the committee chairman, amounts to regulatory waterboarding.



During a committee meeting this week, Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) blasted the Dodd-Frank Act and said the committee was working on an alternative that would be friendlier to businesses and consumer.



Dodd-Frank should be called the Obama Financial Control Law, because thats what it is, Hensarling said. It stands as a monument to the arrogance and hubris of man in that its answer to incomprehensible complexity and government control is yet more incomprehensible complexity and government control.



Hensarling even compared the laws effect on business to torture.



Washingtons regulatory waterboarding is drowning community banks and small businesses and sinking the hopes and dreams of millions of low- and middle-income Americans, he said. I need not tell you we are losing, on average, one community financial institution every day in America. And they are not perishing of natural causes. The sheer weight, cost, complexity and uncertainty of federal regulation is killing them off  and for the sake of hard-working Americans, its just got to stop.



The Finance Committees alternative, Hensarling said, would enact tougher penalties for defrauding consumers and end bailouts.



Our approach will demand accountability from both financial institutions and financial regulators. We will toughen penalties for those who engage in wrongdoing and defrauding consumers, he said. Our approach will help build the healthy and secure financial system Americans deserve. One that protects consumers by letting you serve their needs in competitive, transparent and innovative markets, vigorously policed for force and fraud. One that ends taxpayer-funded bailouts and instead unleashes Americas entrepreneurial potential.



The current regulatory system, Hensarling said, is an unaccountable, arrogant bureaucracy that is dragging us towards the failed economy of a European-style social democracy.



The Republican alternative, Hensarling said, would provide vast regulatory relief to financial institutions that met high, but simple capital requirements.



As we move forward, its important to remember that this is not going to be a debate between regulation and de-regulation, he said. No, this is going to be a debate over the future of our economy and the hopes and dreams of millions.



What do you think? Does Dodd-Frank need to be left alone, overhauled, or just scrapped and replaced? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
What do Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump have in common? Well, according to one CEO, theyre both a threat to the U.S. economy.



U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas Donohue told Bloomberg Television today that lawmakers who support trade restrictions or stronger oversight of financial companies are ignoring whats best for the economy in favor of short-term political gain. In particular, Donohue singled out Warren (D-Mass.), a vocal supporter of regulation, and Trump, who has floated the idea of a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.



Donohue said politicians who follow Warrens route of demanding tighter regulations could damage the economy.



They look at the polls, they figure out it plays well, they listen to Elizabeth Warren, who is, all of a sudden, the pope in terms of whats acceptable in this religion, he told Bloomberg. And were making a fundamental mistake.



He also criticized Trumps position on trade, saying increased tariffs would only lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers and pressure on manufacturers trying to sell their wares in global markets.



Were going to become a less significant economic force, and when we become a less significant economic force, were going to be a less significant force in geopolitics, Donohue said. We dont want that.



Donohue told Bloomberg that while Warrens and Trumps tough positions on regulation and trade may be a good political line, government leaders have a responsibility to talk about the issues as they really understand them and not be swayed by polls.



It is incumbent on people that take major positions in our government to familiarize themselves with the facts and get off the rhetoric, he said.


BENBROOK, Texas (AP)  An award-winning concert pianist arrived at his estranged wife's home to pick up their two daughters and found the girls slain in their beds, police said Friday. Authorities say their mother, who had suffered knife wounds, faces a mental health exam.

Vadym Kholodenko stopped Thursday morning at the home where he formerly lived to pick up Nika, 5, and 1-year-old Michela, Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said. The Ukrainian-born musician found his wife, Sofya Tsygankova, in an "extreme state of distress" and discovered the dead girls. The pianist then called 911, police said.

Kholodenko, a previous winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, is not a suspect and is cooperating with police, Babcock said. Police said no suspects were being sought in the deaths of the girls or the stabbing of Tsygankova, who was recovering Friday at a Fort Worth hospital.

Tsygankova was being held on a mental health evaluation, Babcock said. Asked if she was a suspect in the girls' deaths, he declined to say.

"We are still looking at all avenues," he said, but added that authorities don't believe there's any immediate risk to others in the area.

Autopsy results were pending on the children, who had no visible trauma, police said. Tsygankova's wounds were from a knife, said Babcock. He declined to say whether a knife was recovered at the home.

Hospital officials declined on Friday to release a condition on Tsygankova, who was born in Russia.

The couple had married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November, according to Tarrant County court records. Police had responded twice in 2014 to disturbance calls at the suburban Fort Worth residence, said Babcock.

Kholodenko had won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, named for the internationally known classical pianist, in 2013. It is held every four years in Fort Worth. Cliburn died in 2013. Kholodenko had been scheduled to perform this weekend with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Another soloist, Alessio Bax, was replacing him, the orchestra said.

___

Online:

http://vadymkholodenko.com/
Large chunks of the Permian Basins petroleum industry continue to fall away amid oil prices that are at 12-year lows.

The Texas Permian Basin Petroleum Index has lost well over a third, falling 39 percent from its November 2014 peak. The January index is 36.1 percent below January 2015 levels.

Given the influence the petroleum economy has on the regions overall economy, well keep a close eye on the petroleum index, said Karr Ingham, the Amarillo economist who prepares the index.

The index, which measures the West Texas portion of the Permian Basin, found that the industry has shed about 5,100 jobs since January 2015, a decline of 14.5 percent.

Ingham cautioned the labor situation could get worse before it gets better.

Im concerned activity levels, as represented by the rig count and number of drilling permits, is not enough to support current levels of employment, he said. He pointed out that the last time oil field activity was this low, the state had 100,000 fewer oil industry jobs than it has now.

Until activity levels pick up and prices pick up, employment may be trying to find its way back to that level, Ingham warned.

The monthly average rig count for Railroad Commission districts 7C, 8 and 8A fell to 171 in January, 57.6 percent below the 403 averaged in January 2015. Ingham noted that the weekly rig count has continued to worsen, falling to 143 in early March, down 70 percent from its peak and the lowest since early 2006.

He added that the plunge in drilling permits issued by the Railroad Commission does not bode well for future activity. The commission issued 255 permits in January, down 50.7 percent from the 517 issued in January 2015 and the lowest monthly total since December 2002.

Crude prices averaged $28.44 a barrel in January, down 36 percent from the $44.46 averaged in January 2015 and the lowest average since November 2003. Natural gas prices averaging $2.22 per Mcf in January, down 24.5 percent from the January 2015 average of $2.94 per Mcf.

January crude volumes, which had been growing by double digits year-over-year, were only 4 percent above January 2015 levels. Natural gas production volumes soared 14.4 percent above January 2015 levels.

Producers reported completing 442 oil wells in January, 53.3 percent below the 946 wells completed a year earlier. Producers completed 21 natural gas wells, 31.3 percent higher than the 16 completed in January 2015.

Crude prices have rebounded above $30 in recent weeks. And that is certainly reason for cautious optimism, said Ingham. But he pointed out that production rates have not yet fallen significantly and, more importantly, storage levels continue to grow. Until production rates and storage rates fall, he expects the industry to continue to contract. He said he anticipates the rate of production declines will accelerate this year.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but its not visible yet, he said.
A booming oil patch that was creating tens of thousands of jobs a year in recent years caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Labor.

That surge in new jobs prompted the DOLs Wage and Hour Division to launch a compliance initiative targeting the industry in the Southwest and Northeast.

Since 2012, more than 1,100 investigations of industry employers have recovered more than $40 million for more than 29,000 workers nationally.

One of the largest recoveries of overtime wages in recent years came this past September when Halliburton agreed to pay $18.293 million to 1,016 employees nationwide for violating the Fair Labor Standards Acts overtime provisions.

This past week the division added four companies and an additional $1.6 million in back wages for over 2,500 employees to that list. Among those was Viking Onshore Drilling LLC of Odessa, which will pay $167,646 in back wages to 411 employees. According to the division, VIking failed to include bonus payments in workers regular rates when determining overtime pay. Investigators found violations in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

The other three companies are Jet Specialties Inc. of Boerne, which has locations in Midland and Odessa, Franks International LLC and Stream-Flo USA LLC, both of Houston. Stream-Flo has a Midland location.

We continue to find unacceptably high numbers of violations in the oil and gas industry, said Betty Campbell, regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest, in announcing the investigation. We must ensure that employers pay workers the hard-earned wages they have rightfully earned. Employers who violate the law in their pay practices harm workers, their families and law-abiding industry employers. These cases demonstrate our commitments to ensuring workers are paid a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Franks International, which has a Permian Basin office at 10306 Highway 191, paid $555,351 in back wages to 1,760 employees. The company was found to have not paid proper overtime after not including bonus payments in workers regular rates of pay when computing overtime.

When the classification issue was identified, Franks International voluntarily corrected the potential misclassification of employee overtime compensation as defined in the Fair Labor Standards Acts overtime provisions, said Karen Allen, the companys director of communications and external affairs, by email.

The company paid appropriate payroll adjustments to all current and former employees impacted by the potential misclassification on March 4, 2015, and forwarded the balance of payments owed to the Department of Labor for all former employees whom we were unable to locate.

Franks is committed to continually investing in our people and the communities where we live and work. We conduct our business observing all applicable laws and applying the highest ethical standards, she continued.

Campbell told the Reporter-Telegram by email that the oil and gas industry is emblematic of the modern, fissured workplace where contracting and subcontracting have obscured the traditional relationship between employer and employee.

The more layers between the primary corporation and its many subcontractors, the more likely there will be wage and other labor violations as businesses seek to lower labor costs and maximize profit margins, she wrote.

This competitive fissured environment has led to longer shifts and a pressure to produce quickly. Not surprisingly, some of the most frequent violations found by Wage and Hour in the oil and gas industry center on the failure to pay overtime correctly. Examples of these common violations include failing to include bonuses in the regular rate of pay when calculating overtime and paying workers a day rate with no regard to the overtime premium they are due after 40 hours weekly, she added.

To improve compliance within the oil and gas industry, the division has launched an ongoing education and enforcement initiative. The division offers training and education to promote compliance and awareness of Fair Labor Standards Act requirements, working with industry leaders, employers and trade associations. Workers and community groups have been included in the initiative, being informed of their rights as workers and the divisions services in reviewing and investigating worker complaints regarding violations.

The path to maintain compliance is truly a journey, one that requires employers to take an active role in continuously assessing where they stand and making adjustments where needed. Violations happen for a number of reasons but largely they happen when there is a lack of knowledge about how the law applies. This is why Wage and Hour provides outreach and education to employers and employees in the industry. Our outreach efforts are coordinated by our local district offices to fit the needs of each community it serves, Campbell said by email.

Common violations include considering salaried employees exempt from overtime requirements, and then failing to pay an overtime premium regardless of how many hours they work; failing to include bonus payments workers have received as part of their regular rates of pay when calculating how much overtime is due.

Jet Specialties was found to commit these violations and is paying $866,871 to 321 affected employees. Stream-Flo USA was found to have paid nonexempt workers flat salaries without regard to how many hours they worked and will pay $475,414 to 29 affected workers.
The price of oil pushed its way into $40 territory Thursday, ending a months-long streak that has seen prices dip to 12-year lows.

West Texas Intermediate contracts for April settled at $40.20 a barrel, up $1.74 or 4.52 percent.

The prices in the $40 range could see a spur in rig activity, according to Pioneer Natural Resources Chairman and CEO Scott Sheffield, who spoke with the Reporter-Telegram on Thursday afternoon.

I think as (the price) moves up into the $40s toward $50, youll start to see people add back rigs, Sheffield said.

The Permian Basin rig count for March 11 was 152, much lower than a year ago, when the count was 311, according to Baker Hughes. District 8 finished last week with 104 rigs. Midland continued to lead the nation with 29 rigs.

Last week, only four counties in the Permian had double-digit rig counts: Loving (20), Midland, Reeves (20) and Upton (14).

Texas had 211 rigs last week.

Baker Hughes will release rig count data for this week at about noon today.

Thursdays close marked the first time since Dec. 3, 2015, that oil settled above $40. The low for the year is $26.21 a barrel, set Feb. 11.

The futures price has been in the $30 range 40 of 52 trading days this year. When looking at day-to-day settlements, the price has seen gains 24 days and losses 28.

Posted prices also reached year-highs Thursday.

The Plains All American posted price for WTI fetched $36.75 a barrel, up $2 or 5.76 percent. The West Texas sour posted price was $32.15 a barrel, up $2 or 6.63 percent and marking just the fifth time the price has been in the $30 range this year. WTI has been there 18 times.

All prices tracked by the Reporter-Telegram are positive for the year. WTI futures are up $1.20 or 4.62 percent, while WTI posted is up $1.50 or 4.51 percent. West Texas sour posted is up 0.47 percent after topping the previous year-high by 15 cents.

In other futures trading, May contracts were up $1.66 to $41.66 a barrel, while June rose $1.59 to $42.39. The nearest month in the $50 range is November 2021, which was unchanged at $50.02.

The final settlement date for April contracts is March 21. May becomes the new near-month contract the next day.

Like Trevor on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at @HowdyHawes.
As crude oil prices began to crumble and oil and gas operators canceled projects, oil and gas service companies were the leading edge of the downturn, squeezed by falling demand for their services and clients insistence that they cut their rates.

As the price decline continued, a number of service companies have considered bankruptcy or restructuring.

In what could be considered a case study of a true distressed private equity deal, Clearlake Capital Group of Santa Monica, California, has led the successful recapitalization of Globe Energy Services LLC in partnership with Globe management and other existing stakeholders. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Clearlake has been investing in energy and energy services for the past decade, Jose E. Feliciano, founder and managing partner, told the Reporter-Telegram by email. Based on our experience and analysis of this current downturn, we formulated a thesis to focus on best in class providers with strong customer relationships that could take advantage of this environment to grow market share, serve as a consolidation platform and benefit from an eventual recovery.

After looking at many other companies in the sector, our team identified Globe as a unique opportunity to invest in a company providing premium services with an impressive safety record and customer list, particularly in the Permian Basin, Felciano said. We believe that with Clearlakes sponsorship and financial support, Troy and the Globe team will be well positioned to take the company to the next level, and continue expanding their services and geographic coverage. Clearlake also remains very interested in other potential acquisitions or strategic merger opportunities in the sector.

Snyder-based Globe Energy Services LLC was founded in 2004 as an oilfield services company. Troy Botts Jr., founder, president and chief executive officer, was not available to comment.

In a statement announcing the recapitalization, Botts said, We are pleased to partner with the experienced Clearlake team as we look to position Globe to capture share in the midst of a challenging market. This partnership provides Globe with a strengthened financial position that will enable us to reinvest in the business and execute through current industry headwinds. More than ever, we remain committed to our core philosophy of prioritizing our customers, employees and safety culture.

Through various divisions and operating subsidiaries, Globe offers fluid services, completion systems, artificial lift, well-servicing, fishing and rental, production chemicals, water infrastructure solutions and other environmental services. The company is active in the Permian Basin, as well as elsewhere in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Clearlake Capital Group L.P. is a private investment firm with a focus in technology, communications and business services; industrials, energy and power; and consumer products and services. Clearlake currently has more than $3.5 billion of assets under management.
Donors and parents were among those at Thursdays groundbreaking for the expansion at Hillcrest School. The turning of dirt was on an apropos day. Thursday was St. Patricks day, and green hard hats, green shovels and school colors matched the spirit of the holiday.

In addressing the dozens in attendance, Hillcrest Executive Director Betty Starnes said the expansion is a dream (that) is actually going to happen and that the school is important because it takes away the fear of failure for students and will equip them to achieve their life goals. Mayor Jerry Morales also spoke at the event, saying, If were going to turn dirt, lets do it for education.

Director of Development Kendra Cowden said she expects the expansion will enable the school to raise its student population from the current 81 to about 120.

About Hillcrest

Hillcrest School opened its doors in 1993 to provide specialized education to 18 students with learning differences. Nearly 25 years later, the school at 2800 N. A St. has outgrown its facility with enrollment is approaching 100 students, most of whom have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia.

About the project

About $2.2 million of the projects $3.2 million already has been raised. The 15,000-square-foot addition will be adjacent to Hillcrests existing building and includes six classrooms, a gymnasium and a weight room. The goal is for the expansion to be completed by the first day of school for the 2016-17 year.

About the donors

The projects major donors are the Beal Foundation, Concho Resources Inc., The Henry Foundation, the Permian Basin Area Foundation, Pioneer Natural Resources, Salehi Family foundation, Scharbauer Foundation and Kimberly and Scott Sheffield.

A generous donor will contribute $125,000 when the school successfully raises the remaining $829,000, according to a previous Reporter-Telegram article.
The Midland Ministerial Alliance will usher in Holy Week on Palm Sunday with the inaugural Unity March, a gathering to pray for persecuted Christians, as well as their persecutors, from around the world.

There are many examples of Christians being persecuted, said the Rev. Larry Long, pastor of Fellowship Community Church and MMA president. We think its important to keep people aware and in the loop. Well be praying for everyone involved, and our goal is that well provide information to the people there, so they can go on and give back to fight these problems.

The march will begin in the parking lot of Grande Communications Stadium. Participants will march around the stadium before making their way inside.

2015 was the worst year for Christians in modern history, according to the 2016 World Watch List released by Open Doors USA, a group advocating for Christians. The group said that more than 7,100 Christians were killed in 2015 for faith-related reasons, which is more than double the 3,000 deaths reported in 2014.

We in America are living relatively peaceful, happy lives, Long said. But The Bible says when one suffers, we all suffer. Part of our goal is to make people realize this, and get them to be more aware of ways they can help.

The subject is also one touched on by President Barack Obama, who -- during Christmas season 2015 -- called on Americans to stop and think about people under religious persecution who have to hide their faith.

We join the people around the world in praying for Gods protection for persecuted Christians and those of other faiths, he said.

However, Long has seen an eroding of previously held Christian values  even in America . He said that while the changes here are hardly comparable to the suffering of Christians in other parts of the world such as China, North Korea and the Middle East, people need to be aware of whats happening in the United States as well.

All persecution begins subtly, but thats everywhere, Long said.

The MMA formerly had events in November but attendance began to wane. Long hopes Sundays Unity March sparks an interest.

I dont know that well do a march again, but right now this is what were doing, Long said. If we had a big enough group -- hopefully if we have a lot of people marching maybe we could get some important people to notice.

Long said the local community is a good place to start a movement regarding the plight of Christians worldwide.

We can all learn more about it, but I would say Midland is more aware of it because of the people who live in the community, Long said. Midland is the ideal community for something like this, because its full of excellent churches and excellent pastors. We have so many excellent people to work with.
The First Church of Christ, Scientist will host a national speaker this weekend for two free lectures. John Adams will discuss the power of prayer to explore how healing can be experienced through scientific prayer and how to use a prayer-based healing system.

Adams first appearance will be 2 p.m. today at Midland County Public Library Centennial branch. His lecture is titled Defeating Violence with Prayer.
Below is a list of services and events for the remainder of Holy Week and for Easter Sunday. Visit mrt.com for an updated list through Sunday.

Good Friday

Service at 6:30 p.m. at Fannin Terrace Baptist Church, 2800 Mogford St. fanninbaptist.org.

Service at 6:30 p.m. March 25 at First Presbyterian Church, 800 W. Texas Ave. fpcmid.org.

Stations of the Cross, noon. Liturgy 7 p.m. March 25. St. Anns, 1906 W. Texas Ave. st-anns.us.

Service and choir presentation of "The Seven Last Words of Christ" by Joseph Haydn at 7 p.m. at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, 3011 W Kansas Ave. stlukesumcmidland.org.

The Digital Age Good Friday concert, 7 p.m. March 25 at First Methodist Midland, 300 N. Main St. firstmethodistmidland.com.

Holy Saturday

Easter Egg Hunt with games and door prizes. 10 a.m. at Alamo Heights Baptist Church, 1305 N. Midland Drive. ahbcmidland.com.

Easter Eggstravaganza with egg hunts, food, jumpers, activities for the whole family. The event is hosted by First Christian Church. 1 p.m. March 26 at Hill Park, 1301 W. Cuthbert Ave. fccmidland.org.

Services at 5 and 6:30 p.m. at Mid Cities Church, 8700 TX-191. midcities.org.

Easter Sunday

Services at 8:15, 10 (with butterfly release), and 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 800 W. Texas Ave. fpcmid.org.

Worship services at 8:30 and 10:50 a.m. Easter celebration for children during Sunday school at 9:45 a.m. St. Luke's United Methodist Church, 3011 W Kansas Ave. stlukesumcmidland.org.

Masses at 8:30, 10:45 a.m., 1 (Spanish) and 5 p.m. St. Anns, 1906 W. Texas Ave. st-anns.us.

Service at 8:30 a.m. (traditional) and 11 a.m. (contemporary) at Fannin Terrace Baptist Church, 2800 Mogford St. fanninbaptist.org.

Services at 9 and 11 a.m. March 27 at First Christian Church, 1301 W. Louisiana Ave. fccmidland.org.

Services at 9, 10:20 and 11:55 a.m. Spanish services at 10:20 and 11:55 a.m. at Mid-Cities Church, 8700 TX-191. midcities.org.

Elevate Church will host a special Easter Service celebration with an inspirational message, music, children's activities and drawings for prizes. 10 a.m. at the Horseshoe Arena at 2514 Arena Trail. elevatemidland.com.

Service at 10:45 a.m. followed by an Easter luncheon in the Fellowship Hall. Main meat courses provided but side dishes are requested. Alamo Heights Baptist Church, 1305 N. Midland Drive. ahbcmidland.com.

Intergenerational Service and annual Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt with the Lone Star Brass ensemble at 11 a.m. March 27 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Midland, 3301 Neely Ave. uumidland.org.

Service at 11 a.m.with attention to the blooming of the cross at First Presbyterian Church, 800 W. Texas Ave. fpcmid.org.

Easter Outreach is a hot dog and hamburger social with games and bounce houses for children. Open to the public. Noon-3 p.m. Cuthbert Avenue Baptist Church, 3308 Cuthbert Ave.
Engineer, television presenter and science educator Bill Nye gave a presentation at the Davidson Distinguished Lecture Series at Midland College on Thursday. Perhaps best known for his hit 90s kids science show Bill Nye, the Science Guy, Nye tackled a number of topics important to Midlanders.

The following are takeaways from the nearly two-hour event.

The crowd and Nyes presence

The Al G. Langford Chaparral Center was packed. Few seats were available at the event, which was open to the public. With so many people in attendance, its not unrealistic to think that there would be a little bit of noise, but, with the exception of a brief interruption of a crying baby, the silence was only broken by applause and a few light cheers at expected times.

Nye has a certain presence about him that few people have. When he talks, people listen. Hes excellent at keeping his commentary fun, which kept his audience attentive.

Climate change

Its commendable that Nye, who is a vocal advocate of reversing human-made climate change, brought his message to the center of fossil fuel production. His discussion about climate change  which began about 40 minutes into his presentation  was charming, funny and drew support from the audience.

He noted that in 1997, carbon dioxide was 0.03 percent of the atmospheres makeup, compared to 95.32 percent on Mars. By 2015, the hottest year on record, carbon dioxide was 0.04 percent. While unimaginably small, the effects of the increase are not imaginary. He discussed measures put in place in Miami Beach, Florida, to cope with the rise in sea level, such as adding wire length to wall sockets so that they can be risen in a decade to accommodate the lifting of the floors.

He said generating electricity with wind and solar power can help the cause greatly. We can get it done if we put our minds to it, he said.

Science education

Nye said the regression of science education in America is a huge concern. Nye wants a more science-literate population.

This doesnt mean that everybody has to be an engineer, he said; however, the more scientifically literate people are, the better for the world.

Space travel

Nye commended Midland for leading the way in advancing space exploration.

Midlands role in space exploration is important, he said.

The combination of XCORs Lynx rocket and Midland International receiving a spaceport designation will realize a dream that the aerospace industry has always wanted: having a space-bound vehicle take off and land on a runway.

Midland is part of the future of space exploration. Congratulations, and thank you, he said.

Religion

When Nye was asked by a Midland College student if science and religion can coexist, he agreed they could. He said its not clear that values come from religion and that scientific studies show that its the other way around.

Nye doesnt believe in creationism and cant fathom how people can believe the world is only 6,000 years old, noting that the Permian means 300 million years old. People can have their own beliefs, but when they interfere with the facts of science, thats when issues arise, he said.

The bow tie

In answering a question from a Midland College student, Nye said he started wearing bow ties when he was a kid in school. It was a matter of function, not fashion, as he noted that at the school he attended, everyone had to wear ties. The bow tie was a better because it didnt get in the way. However, he embraced being a fashion icon of science and encouraged a high school girl who asked him to prom Thursday night to find a boy who wears one to take her.

Celebrity factoids

Nye filmed a comedy sketch with Arnold Schwarzenegger in which Nye was a climate-change denier who was working with a psychologist, played by the action-film star and former governor. Nye said that when the cameras and lighting were changing positions, Schwarzenegger would play speed chess without a clock.

Nye is president of the Planetary Society and interacts with famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who sits on the non-governmental agencys board. Nye said Tyson is really into wine.

Like Trevor on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at @HowdyHawes.
It is no secret that there is an issue with gender in the music industry. Women are underrepresented at all levels of music from the upper levels of the business to the biggest bands around the world. This is especially apparent in electronic music where lineups, especially major festival lineups can feel like the male section of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. New York City booking and event collective Discwoman, founded by Frankie Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olsen and Christine Tran, is looking to change that by throwing parties with all women, trans woman and genderqueer talent DJs in the electronic space.

They each bring their own experience in the electronic space with backgrounds in booking, the business side of things and producing / DJing. The idea for Discwoman started with a two-day festival in September 2014 at the Bossa Nova Civic Club and has since spawned a movement that has taken them to over 15 cities and multiple countries. They have worked with over 150 different DJs ranging from more established names like Tokimonsta and The Black Madonna to local acts who might be playing their first gig.

We had the chance to catch up with them before a Discwoman showcase earlier this month to discuss their mission, the progress they have seen and what the future holds for their brand, which includes potential trips to many other countries like Thailand, Japan and Chile. Watch their recent documentary done by Smirnoff Sound Collective here and the sets from the night here.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SoundCloud has cleared its final major hurdle. The embattled streaming and discovery service has been in long and tenuous negotiations with the three major labels, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony for years, signing with Warner in 2014, Universal in January and now according to a new report, they just inked a deal with the last holdout, Sony Music. With all three majors in the bag, SoundCloud is now set to start rolling out its subscription tier that it desperately wants to start generating some real revenue.

First reported by Music Business Worldwide, the deal will allow Sony to buy into the Berlin-based company's next round of funding, something which really benefits SoundCloud who needs funding. Sony will also receive stock option in SoundCloud as well, giving them a pretty hefty stake in the company, though the exact numbers were not revealed.

There had been whispers that the sides were coming close to a deal that seemed inevitable at this point after Universal, the largest music label, officially signed their deal with SoundCloud in January.

They were able to put some serious animosity behind them with some public comments made on both sides and Sony pulling down content from some of its biggest artists from the service last May.

With this signed, SoundCloud now counts the three majors and Merlin, an association representing 20,000 independent labels worldwide among its partners. It also has a deal with publishing collective NMPA.

The subscription service for SoundCloud is expected at some point this year, but it isn't clear exactly when they will unveil the details for the program. The service lost $44.19 million in 2014 in their drive for growth. It has rolled out ads to try and generate some revenue, but this has offset the losses from marketing, labor, licensing etc.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has a storied past, and ahead of the 2016 induction ceremony, the iconic hall of fame and museum is looking back to look forward. On Friday (March 18), HBO and the Rock Hall released the first teaser for this year's events, and it honors the legendary acts who have come before Deep Purple, Chicago, N.W.A., Cheap Trick and Steve Miller.

The short 40-second teaser trailer for this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies features the legendary acceptance speech from Stevie Wonder. "We are the voices, the people, of many different colors and cultures being inducted into this, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This is our commitment to forever give as much as we can," Wonder narrates.

Meanwhile, footage of past induction ceremonies starring the likes of The Rolling Stones, Green Day, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Elton John and more tear across the screen, invoking the very true spirit of rock 'n' roll itself.

This year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class, which was announced in December 2015, includes classic rock juggernauts such as Deep Purple, Chicago, Cheap Trick and Steve Miller, who are finally getting their dues. Legendary rap troupe N.W.A. will also be admitted into the hall, following a landmark year which included the release of their biopic Straight Outta Compton. Rock producer Bert Burns will also be inducted.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony is set to take place on April 8 and will be telecast Saturday, April 30 on HBO.

Special guests at this year's induction ceremony include Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas, The Black Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Rock and Lars Ulrich of Metallica.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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Sonora, CA  The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors is backing a state bill calling for extending funds for broadband expansion.

Assembly Bill 1758 would reform and enhance the broadband expansion services provided by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). County officials note that Central Sierra Connect, a multi-County broadband consortium, coordinates the broadband work locally. At this weeks meeting, Deputy County Administrator Daniel Richardson to supervisors that the bill will provide continued critical funding, explaining, They set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to advance broadband throughout the state of California. The CASF would expire in 2020 leaving much of the broadband work unfinished. So, this bill would allow the work to continue and expand.

Richardson added that letters of support are needed for a March 28 legislative hearing. The board voted unanimously to send a letter to state lawmakers 4 to 0, with District 1 Supervisor Sherri Brennen absent.

Click here to view the letter.
San Andreas, CA  Californias Secretary of State is criticizing the controversial comments made by Calaveras County Planning Commissioner Kelly Wooster.

We reported that the Supervisors met in closed session yesterday to discuss the status of Commissioner Wooster. Earlier this month at a planning commission meeting he attempted to make a joke about people from Mexico being included as invasive species when talking about an element of the General Plan update.

During yesterdays closed session, the Supervisors drafted a proclamation to allow Wooster to continue in his current role, citing his later apology and spotless prior history as a Planning Commissioner. However, the proclamation effectively denounces the controversial statement, and promises sensitivity training for elected and appointed officials.

Secretary of State Padilla, Californias top elections official, released the following statement this morning:

Calaveras County Planning Commissioner Kelly Woosters comments were shameful and revealed a prejudiced mentality that is untenable for someone serving the public.

His comments are in direct conflict with the diverse history of both California and Calaveras County. Last year my office honored 165 years of California statehood by displaying the original California constitution. This is our states founding documentand it was written in both English and Spanish.

During the era in which our original constitution was being drafted, people from around the world poured into California in search of gold and a better life. This is the true heritage of the Golden Statepeople from many different backgrounds brought together by the richness of the land and a quest to live the California Dream.

The people Ive met on trips to Calaveras County are honest, hardworking and fair. They reflect Calaveras Countys rich history. Clearly Mr. Wooster does not.
Sonora, CA  As promised, Kohls officials have revealed the 18 stores that will close across the country  nine are in California.

As reported in February, the Wisconsin based retailer announced the impending closures, due to underperformance, but declined to name which stores. At that time, a manager from the East Sonora store, which has around 75 employees, acknowledged to Clarke Broadcasting that they had not received any word on whether the facility was on the chopping block. Employees at the Mother Lode store likely breathed a sigh of relief as corporate officials released the list yesterday, with the Junction Shopping center location off Mono Way absent from the list.

Kohls has provided this list of stores to close as of June 19, 2016:

 Arcadia, CA

 Cypress, CA

 Ladera Ranch, CA

 Mira Mesa, CA

 Rancho Cordova, CA

 Santa Ana, CA

 San Jose East, CA

 Upland South, CA

 Hialeah, FL

 Tallahassee, FL

 Holcomb Bridge, GA

 Lithonia, GA
A Seminole County woman pleaded guilty Friday to premeditated first-degree murder in the shooting death of her daughter two years ago.



Sujatha Guduru was sentenced to life in prison for killing her daughter, 17-year old Chetana Guduru, at the familys Oviedo home Jan. 27, 2014.



In August, she rejected a plea deal her attorney negotiated with the state in which had she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. She would have served a maximum of 30 years. In court, she rejected it and asked the judge for a harsher sentence of life in prison.

Prosecutors then took the plea deal off the table.



Her attorney, Brian Bieber, says Guduru is consumed with guilt over shooting her daughter.

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For the eighth and final time, I will be filling out the FAFSA. For the parents of students in college, the FAFSA is the dreaded "F" word that causes most people filling out the application to mumble a few choice words as you complete the process.

FAFSA stands for free application for federal student aid. This form is used to determine the amount of money a family is expected to contribute to the price of attending a postsecondary institution. The results of the FAFSA are used in determining student grants, work-study and student loan amounts.

Most universities require a current FAFSA to be on file before letting your student enroll in classes. For some, the FAFSA is beneficial in allowing students to obtain grant money and work-study programs to help offset the cost of higher education. For others, it offers the opportunity to secure government-funded student loans.

Whether it's your first time to fill out the application, or your eighth time, now is the time to reapply. By reapplying each year you are in college, you assure that your loans, grants and work-study stay in good standing. Here are a few tips that will help you fill out the FAFSA like a pro.

Your college funding does not automatically renew. Looking back at the massive stack of loan documents and financial aid information, it would be easy to think your college funding is handled. But remember, that stack represents financial aid for this academic year only. You will use 2015 tax information to renew your FAFSA and secure funding for the 2016-2017 school year.

Mark your calendar for important deadlines. For the upcoming school year, the FAFSA becomes available Jan. 1. Filling it out as soon as possible is beneficial for a few reasons. You get it out of the way, you know your funding is secure, and you'll be sure to meet your schools deadline, and you can apply for grants sooner.

Plan ahead! Here's a tip on how to knock the FAFSA out quickly and with a low amount of stress. Gather all needed documents before you start. By doing this you'll avoid scrambling and feel more confident in the process.

Complete all required fields. Leaving important sections blank can be costly. Leaving fields blank could cause your form to get kicked back for closer review, and that could cost you grant money. Filling out your forms online helps reduce the risk by forcing you to enter the required fields.

Even if you do not need financial aid, apply anyway. It is always better to be prepared, especially with financial aid. Even if your forecast says you have enough funding for the next year, go ahead and renew. By making a little safety net, you will be ready for financial changes that come your way, and you are not required to accept financial aid if it's not needed.

Join me on Facebook, search Coupon Clippin' Cutie and add yourself to our group. Discover that financial flub-ups can lead to disaster when completing the free application for federal student aid.

Sandra Dulakis is a nurse, mother and founder of Coupon Clippin Cuties.
Belinda Heck will be celebrating her 58th birthday Monday, and sister Tammy Black is hoping that it will be her most memorable ever.

It likely also will be Belindas last.

Shes on hospice now with terminal bladder cancer, and just about to the end of her journey, Tammy said Friday. Shes growing very weak. Im just trying to do something special now while shes still around.

Tammy adds that her sister Belinda is really special.

As her sister explains, Belinda was born with a developmental disability and has the mental capacity of about a 10-year-old child.

One of the things shes always looked forward to is getting something in the mail, Tammy explains. Because of her mental disability, she doesnt do Facebook, computers or have email - shes really old school. But she has always looked forward to getting cards and letters in the mail. Every day she asks if anything has come.

To make this birthday extra special for Belinda, Tammy has been spreading the word through her own Facebook account asking that cards and letters be sent to her very special sister. They should be mailed to Belinda Heck c/o T. Black, Box 250, Hart, TX 79043.

It doesnt need to be a fancy card, Tammy said. Plain paper or even notebook paper will work. You dont even have to sign your name or include a return address. Just say its from a secret admirer, and tell her happy birthday. I just hope this last birthday will be her very best.

While cards and letters mailed today might not arrive on Monday, Tammy said her sister would love to get them nonetheless.

Belinda is an Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, but she is currently staying with Belindas twin sister in Amarillo. That sister is a trained physicians assistant and better suited to care for Belinda. Tammy, a longtime Hart resident, visits with her sisters on a daily basis.

She loves to get her cards out and looks at them all the time, Tammy says of Belinda. The response (to the request for cards and letters) has been amazing - theres so many good people out there. Belinda received about 50 the first day, and about 30 the next day. Several churches have gotten involved and are planning to bring several boxes of cards.

Tammy owned and operated RAH RAH Manufacturing in Hart for about 14 years, before selling it two years ago. The enterprise made and sewed cheerleading outfits for all ages.
March 18, 1946: A P-40, gift of the War Assets Corp., has been received by Petersburg ISD. The plane will be used in the instruction of aeronautics and shop work and is located on the school grounds. Equipped with a 1,150 horsepower Allison engine, it was used in combat in North America, according to Superintendent Sidney Reeves. Although airworthy, the P-40 wont be flown.

--Iva Margaret Gaines, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Q.C. Gaines, and Charles R. Kay, son of Mr. and Mrs. O.V. Kay, were married Tuesday, March 12, in the home of Rev. Hope Owen. Kay is on 30-day leave from the Merchant Marines. Mrs. Kay is employed in the office of city secretary and tax collector.

--Lt. Dorris O. Hollingsworth, 34, Navy dentist and resident of Plainview, has returned to civilian status after two years of active duty in the dental corps. He will resume his dental practice here soon.

March 18, 1956: Kay Robinson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Robinson of Plainview, has pledged Kappa Alpha Theta social sorority at Lubbock Tech. She is a junior home economics education major.

--W.L. Smith left this morning via plane for a few days in Oklahoma City on business.

--Wreckage of a crashed Air Force L20 was sighted Friday morning on the rim of the Caprock, 7 miles east and 7 miles north of Silverton. When rescue parties reached the scene they found all five members of the crew dead. The plane was en route from Fort Sill to Clovis Air Base and last sighted over Childress on Wednesday.

March 18, 1966: The Know Your Carrier column featured 17-year-old Tommy Hall, son of Mr. and Mrs. T.G. Hall, 1208 Borger. A junior at PHS, Hall has been a Herald carrier for the past 3 1/2 years. He is in the PHS Band, attends First Baptist Church and enjoys slot car racing.

--Dedication ceremonies were held Tuesday on the Hale County Courthouse grounds for a Texas Historical Marker honoring pioneer rancher Col. C.C. Slaughter. Helping unveil the marker were Coleman Jones who worked on Slaughters ranch, Mrs. A.B. Cox and Jeff Williams who surveyed some of the Slaughter ranch holdings during his 50 years as county surveyor.

--New officers of the Plainview Junior Auxiliary are Debra Weaver, secretary; Glenda Morphis, chaplain; Shirley Wylie, sergeant-at-arms; Kathy Wylie, assistant sergeant-at-arms; Linda Derrick, vice chairman; Cathy Stoerner, Plainview unit and District Junior chairman; and Cynthia Stoerner, Plainview Junior treasurer.

March 18, 1986: Gary Gould, Plainview Police Departments crime prevention officer, is organizing the Citizens Mobile Crime Watch. Its a group of CB radio-equipped citizens who will help extend the eyes and ears of local law enforcement. Cleo Rupert is president.

--Eric Jernigan is visiting his parents, Bill and Evelyn Jernigan. He is an aviation maintenance student at Texas State Technical Institute in Waco.

--The death of Estacado Junior High teacher Marilyn Sandidge, 47, has been ruled accidental by Abernathy Justice of the Peace Shirley Gross. Her body was found by school principal Wendell Dunlap inside her car parked in her closed garage after she failed to show up for classes Monday. The garage door failed to open after she started her car due to a faulty automatic garage door opener, and she was overcome by noxious fumes.

Compiled by Doug McDonough
Here are 11 things to do this weekend, including the Meriden St. Patricks Day Parade and a corned beef dinner in the city.



St. Patricks Day Parade



When: 2 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Starts at the corner of East Main Street and Parker Avenue in Meriden.



Description: Meriden AOH is hosting its 43rd annual St. Patricks Day Parade.



Palm Sunday Brunch



When: 8 a.m., Sunday.



Where: Platt High School, 220 Coe Ave., Meriden.



Description: Meriden Lions Club is hosting its annual brunch from 8 a.m. to noon in Platt High Schools cafeteria.



Boscovs Easter EGGstravaganza



When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Boscovs, 480 Lewis Ave., Meriden.



Description: Boscovs and March of Dimes are hosting a day of Easter-related activities Saturday including Easter coloring sheets, pictures with the Easter Bunny, temporary tattoos and more. For children 12 and under.



Vive La France



When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Paul Mellon Arts Center, 133 Christian St., Wallingford.



Description: The Wallingford Symphony Orchestra is presenting Vive La France. For more information visit www.wallingfordsymphony.org.



Free music series



When: 7 p.m., Friday.



Where: Wallingford Public Library, 200 N. Main St., Wallingford.



Description: Folk and blues artist Joe Flood will perform as part of the Coffee House Music Series. For more information visit www.wallingfordlibrary.org.



Corned beef dinner



When: 5-6:30 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Meriden Grange 29, 540 Broad St., Meriden.



Description: Corned beef and cabbage will be served at the grange and it is open to the public. For more information visit www.meridengrange.org.



Chicago tribute concert and dinner



When: 6:30 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Aqua Turf Club, 556 Mulberry St., Plantsville.



Description: Chicago tribute band Connecticut Transit Authority will rock out to some of the bands most iconic hits at the Aqua Turf. Springfield MA and 7 Bridges Road will join them for the show. The show features a buffet at 6:30 p.m. and music at 8 p.m. For information visit www.aquaturfclub.com or call the promoter, Anthony Manzi at 413-219-9759.



Mary Poppins



When: 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday.



Where: Cheshire High School, 525 S. Main St., Cheshire.



Description: The Cheshire High School drama club is putting on Mary Poppins at Thorp Auditorium.



Pop Series: A Debbie Gravitte Cabaret



When: 2:30 p.m., Saturday.



Where: Hamden Middle School, 2623 Dixwell Ave., Hamden.



Description: Debbie Gravitte will perform songs from Broadway shows along with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. For more information visit www.newhavensymphony.org.



Frog Fridays



When: 4-5:30 p.m., Friday.



Where: Highlawn Forest, 16 Meriden Road, Middlefield.



Description: Connecticut Forest and Park Association will host Frog Fridays with Lucy Meigs. Meigs will lead tours to see vernal pools and creatures found in them. For more information visit www.ctwoodlands.org.



St. Patricks Day Feast



When: 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.



Where: Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society, 227 S. Main St., West Hartford.



Description: Enjoy Guinness steak pie, Irish soda bread, live music, and tavern games. For more information visit www.noahwebsterhouse.org.






BRIDGEPORT (AP)  A Connecticut woman has pleaded guilty to charges she drove drunk and hit a state worker on Route 15 last year.



The Connecticut Post reports (http://bit.ly/1Xzml3q ) 25-year-old Denisse Garcia entered the plea Thursday in Bridgeport to first-degree assault and driving under the influence. Prosecutors say the Trumbull woman is facing five years in prison when shes sentenced May 18.



Police say state Department of Transportation worker Kevin Holloran was called to Route 15 in Stratford in April for a fatal crash.



The 55-year-old was struck by Garcias car as he was setting up traffic cones and flares around the crash scene. Police say he suffered permanent brain damage and four broken ribs.



Police say Garcias blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.







Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com






The presence of Latino journalists has surged in mainstream American media in recent years with frontrunners like San Antonio-native John Quinones and Elizabeth Vargas leading the way.

RELATED: 21 rising stars in their 20s from San Antonio

With backgrounds grown in a vast map of Latino countries  from Mexico to Venezuela  these journalists are offering their distinct cultures to the rest of the world through their television broadcasts and articles.

RELATED: San Antonio TV ex Marycarmen Lopez nabs meaty role in Oprah series

Some are able to report on topics like foreign affairs, with an understanding that is deeply rooted through humble beginnings in their native lands. While others are able to connect with the millennial generation of Latinos, who are looking to balance their cultural values with their American ones.

Click through the gallery above to for the 16 names in journalism you may have already heard and those you should keep an eye out for.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
By Helena Oliviero

2016 Cox Newspapers

ATLANTA -- Last year, Carol Moroz enjoyed her stay at the Ellis Hotel in Atlanta. The Syracuse, New York, resident loved the historic boutique style of the hotel, the red velvet couch in the lobby, the friendly staff.

But the way the hotel accommodated her dog, a 14-pound Maltipoo named Macy, stood out above everything else.

It felt like home, said Moroz. The staff loved Macy, and they made her feel so welcome.

Hotels are becoming increasingly pet-friendly. In some cases, hotels are rolling out the red carpet for four-legged, furry friends.

From ordering chef-created meals (for dogs and cats) delivered to a guest rooms door to rooms being outfitted with dog beds, water bowls, chew toys to pets being greeted in the lobby with homemade pet treats, hotels are adding many features to cater to guests with pets. The website www.bringfido.com lists pet-friendly hotels and restaurants around the globe.

The Ellis Hotel has recently upgraded its pet-friendly floor with amenities that include new organic farm-to-table cuisine from the Ellis Terrace Bistro -- designed to not only appeal to people, but dogs and cats, too. The hotel also gives Fluffy and Fido Ellis red bandannas upon arrival.

Hotel Indigo, boutique hotel properties with four in metro Atlanta and 38 total across the country, has long been dog-friendly, and in the spring of 2005, Hotel Indigo Atlanta Midtown started hosting weekly Canine Cocktails, complete with water bowls for dogs and special dog menus available.

Canine Cocktails, a time when local residents and their dogs can mix and mingle over cocktails on the patio, has since spread to several other Hotel Indigo properties.

Jim Sprouse, executive director of the Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association, said increasingly, when he steps inside a hotel, he spots the welcome mat for dogs with water bowls and doggie treats in the lobby. He believes the trend reflects an increase in pet ownership and a shift in the relationship in which pets are like family.

It is very different than the way I grew up when dogs were outside, he said. They are now part of the family and have their own bed, if not sharing their owners bed. And they travel with (their owners).

Sixty-five percent of U.S. households, or about 79.7 million families, own a pet, according to the 2015-2016 National Pet Owners Survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association (APPA). This is up from 56 percent of U.S. households in 1988, the first year the survey was conducted.

Catering to pets is a way to stay competitive, and appeal to a broad group of people, Sprouse said. It can also lead to loyal guests, too. Guests are given a list of dog-friendly walks and restaurants.

Even at pet-friendly accommodations, hotel policies vary greatly in terms of allowed weight and number of pets, pet amenities, and extra fees, even among hotels in the same price range. At the Ellis Hotel, the pet weight limit is 30 pounds, and there is an $80 cleaning fee. Meanwhile at Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta, a five-star hotel in Atlanta, there is no weight restriction and no pet fee.

Some hotels even have their own permanent pet residents for guests to interact with. At the Hotel Indigo Atlanta Midtown, for example, there is a resident dog named Indie, a Jack Russell terrier. Guests can take Indie for a walk or even have him join them at one of the Canine Cocktail events.

Helena Oliviero writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Email: holiviero (at)ajc.com.

Story Filed By Cox Newspapers

For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service
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For $135 you can spend the night with Frank Lloyd Wright. Where? At the Inn at Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, just 15 miles south of the Kansas state line. This 19-story, 210-foot-high tower is the only Wright-designed skyscraper ever built.

A National Historic Landmark, Price Tower offers an unforgettable lodging experience. Guests are surrounded by architectural history and oddities; Wrights signature Cherokee red accents, triangular light fixtures, sharp odd angles, embossed copper and cantilevered overhangs that seem magically suspended.

Many of the unique details of this geometric masterpiece were custom made, including the funky triangular-shaped air conditioning vents.

Architects, engineers and students come from all over the world to tour and study this engineering marvel in the middle of the prairie. The towers interior decor and guest rooms, redesigned by New York architect Wendy Evans Joseph, have a serene, Zen-like ambiance. Joseph created a contemporary version of Wrights vision. She says that she is flirting with Wright.

More Information If you go Price Tower:www.pricetower.org, 877-424-2424 Room rates run $135-$245 Bartlesville CVB:visitbartlesville.com, 800-364-8708 Tour Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. and 1 and 2 p.m.; Saturday, 11 am. and 1, 2 and 4 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Historic Tower Tour Admission:Adult $15, senior (65+) $12, children (18 and younger) $10 Bartlesville Must Sees: Phillips Petroleum Co. Museum, Woolaroc, Frank Phillips Home What's nearby: Only a 10-minute drive away, the fun and funky itty-bitty town of Dewey is a throwback in time. Visit Linger Longer Antiques & Old Fashioned Soda Fountain, the kitschy Tom Mix Museum, Prairie Song Pioneer Village and the historic Dewey Hotel Museum. Pawhuska - Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Getting there: Fly Southwest to Tulsa and Bartlesville is about a 30-minute drive away. See More Collapse

The buildings interior is as fabulous as its exterior. Shades of celadon and mint green with accents of deep coral and red are the main colors throughout the guestrooms decor.

Complementary colored carpets and pillows were custom made to accent the wood and copper furniture Joseph designed. Following in Wrights footsteps, she stayed true to his aesthetic integrity and preference for wood and natural materials.

Originally built in 1956 as a multi-use space housing retail, office and residential, Price Tower was way ahead of its time. Wright developed this concept of an income-producing urban complex in the 1920s. Now, more than 60 years after it was built, the rest of the world is finally catching up to his vision.

Inspired by nature, and known for using local natural materials, Wright was obsessed with geometry and designed even the most minute details of the building. Everything from exterior copper tiles to textiles and furniture to dishes bear Wrights signature look. Speaking of signature, Price Tower is a signed building. The architect carved his initials into a 4-by-4-inch red tile plaque on the front of the building  an early version of todays designer logos.

Wright first designed a version of the Price Tower in the 1920s for St. Marks in the Bowery in New York City. The project, a cluster of four apartment buildings, was shelved when the Great Depression hit. Years later, oil pipeline magnate H.C. Price decided to build corporate headquarters in Bartlesville, a major center for the oil industry. Prices sons, design enthusiasts, encouraged their father to hire Wright as the architect for this monumental project. Wright adapted his St. Marks concept for the Price Tower.

Wright nicknamed his first and only skyscraper The Tree that Escaped the Crowded Forest. The infamous architect thought it was best to build up rather than out so that one could live and work in a skyscraper and have everything needed in the same building. Rather than having businesses, stores and offices along one street, Wright is said to have favored a vertical street where they are stacked into a tall building.

The vertical reinforced concrete structure has four elevators as the tree trunk, with all of the weight centered in the core of the building. The trees branches are the 19 floors of the building that extend from its core.

The Copper Bar & Restaurant, an intimate space on the 15th floor, features a full lunch and dinner menu and sweeping views of the prairie landscape. Terraces accented with copper louvers keep the heat out and provide a cozy setting for outdoor dining.

Day trippers and architectural aficionados will be impressed with the one-hour tour given by well-versed docents (including former architects). The comprehensive tour includes visiting the museum space, 17th, 18th and 19th floors housing the cooperate apartment, conference room and Harold Price Sr.s office.

Another bonus while staying at the inn is the outstanding Price Tower Arts Center, a two-story exhibition and museum space. The impressive permanent collection features Wrights original aluminum office chairs, desks, textiles, carpet and copper-wrapped outdoor furniture. Wrights classic pieces are so timeless they could easily be featured in contemporary architecture magazines. This furniture is so stunning in its understated simplicity, that Wrights designs from 1956 could be adapted to todays hipster market. They are classic with a contemporary twist.

If you hop a flight to Tulsa and head over to Bartlesville to spend the night with Frank soon, you can celebrate Price Towers 60th anniversary. Add this unique destination to your summer travel plans, and youll be Wright-on.

Michelle Newman is a freelance writer, designer and frequent traveler living in San Antonio. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter: @travelyenta.
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Federal agents are on the hunt for a man known as the "Bad Hair Bandit" they believe is behind a string of bank robberies in Dallas.

RELATED: Police: Whataburger security guard in North Texas fatally shot 19-year-old man who tried to rob him

Investigators with the Dallas FBI Violent Crimes Task Force gave the suspect  believed to be in his late 40s to early 50s  the moniker because he's believed to wear a grey or black wig to conceal his identity, the FBI said in a release Thursday.

The bandit is allegedly responsible for five robberies or attempted robberies at Dallas banks between January 27 and March 15, during which he handed over a note to bank tellers demanding money and threatening to have a weapon.

It's not clear how much money the robber has obtained during the robberies, according to the FBI.

RELATED: Police: South Texas woman rammed her car into Mercedes-Benz containing her husband, 2 kids

In addition to his wig, the suspect wears a beige or tan sweater and jeans.

The suspect is believed to drive a white four-door sedan, possible a Nissan Altima.

RELATED: Fugitive Gulf cartel boss nicknamed 'Ewok' arrested in Mexico after years of trafficking in Texas

Those who may have information about the alleged robber are encouraged to call the FBI's Dallas field office at 972-559-5000 or North Texas Crime Stoppers at 1-877-373-8477.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
A Salvadoran man wanted for triple homicide in his own country was deported Thursday, immigration officials announced.

Border Patrol agents caught Jose Carlos Granado Melgar, 29, near Weslaco in December. A member of the MS-13 gang, Granado is wanted in his home country of El Salvador on allegations that in 2013 he took part in a home invasion that left three dead and one injured, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Uber is making San Diego the first city to have a cross-border ride service. The company announced on Wednesday that it would provide one-way trips into Tijuana for people holding a passport. The service is being branded UberPassport and while itll be easier for people looking to visit Tijuana on the fly it comes with a catch.

TAKE A LOOK BACK: Mexico taxi drivers threaten to hunt down Uber cars
The quintessential ministers wife, Annedelle Fincher Brantley was happiest while serving the church.

With her positive outlook and deep faith, Brantley had that kind of a personality that was open and comforting, her daughter Laura Ames said. She had such a sweet soul that people flocked to her.

Brantley met her future husband, a young airman training at Lackland AFB, after moving to San Antonio in 1949 to work as youth director at Travis Park United Methodist Church. He was a member of her youth group.

She told my dad, I cant date you while youre one of my students, her daughter Mary Boudreaux said. He tried for a long time  and she finally went out with him.

Marrying in 1955, the couple moved to Dallas so that her husband could attend seminary at Southern Methodist University.

I knew she would make a perfect ministers wife, her husband Tony Brantley said.

More Information Annedelle Fincher Brantley Born: June 24, 1927, Poteau, Oklahoma Died: March 14, 2016, San Antonio Preceded by: Laura Margret and Guy Fincher. Survived by: Husband Tony Brantley; daughters Laura Ames and son-in-law Carl, Mary Boudreaux, Bonnie Smith and son-in-law Joe; son Guy Brantley and daughter-in-law Sarah; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Services: Funeral at 11 a.m. Saturday at Coker United Methodist Church, 231 E. North Loop Road. See More Collapse

Brantley died March 14 at 88.

Raised an only child in the small Oklahoma town of Poteau during the 1930s and 40s, Brantley loved the fellowship of her church.

She had a lot of extended family members, cousins she ran around with, Boudreaux said. There was always a group of people they went to church with, and had Sunday picnics in the park.

Going to college at what is now Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Brantley received her bachelors degree in home economics, leaving for San Antonio shortly afterward.

Arriving at Sunset Station by train, Brantley knew only one person in the city, the person who hired her.

She was very unconventional for that time, Boudreaux said.

Moving back to San Antonio after her husbands graduation SMU, Brantley later returned to college to get her certification in elementary education, teaching at Meadow Village and Carlos Coon elementary schools in the Northside Independent School District, and at schools in San Angelo and Weslaco, where the family moved as her husband was assigned to various churches.

She loved to read to her kids, her son Guy Brantley said. Every year, one of her favorite things was reading them Charlottes Web.

At home, Brantley had endless patience with her four children.

She was always so supportive  even if she didnt agree with you, Boudreaux said. I think I saw my mother mad maybe twice.

Brantley also passed her deep faith on to her children.

She taught us more than anything, that Gods the number one thing in your life, Boudreaux said.
One wouldnt call them bedfellows, strange or otherwise, but President Barack Obama and Donald Trump are both inadvertently helping the Islamic State through rhetoric that is either too cautious or too rash.

It shouldnt be difficult to discern which is which.

Obama, through his studious avoidance of explicitly calling terrorists or the Islamic State either Islamic or Muslim, is silly, perhaps cowardly and likely unproductive. And Trump, with his other-izing approach to problem solving  targeting adherents of Islam for special scrutiny  contributes to recruitment and radicalization by marginalizing Muslims.

This composite appraisal comes from two authorities on Islam-inspired terrorism  Boston University professor Jessica Stern, author of ISIS: The State of Terror, and Abdullah Antepli, an imam and senior fellow at Duke Universitys Office of Civic Engagement.

The two were among speakers at a recent Faith Angle Forum, sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which twice annually convenes journalists and scholars to delve into issues related to religion, culture and current events.

Antepli was also critical of moderate Muslims who feel the need to defend Islam even in the wake of terrorist attacks. A jovial fellow whose students have nicknamed him the Turkish Delight Imam, Antepli said hell scream and pull my hair out if he hears one more time that Islam is a religion of peace.

It is and it isnt, depending on which text one uses for ones purposes. Just as the abolitionists used scripture to end slavery, the Islamic State uses the Quran to resurrect slavery.

Every religion, especially those that are centuries old, is many things. Understanding requires familiarity with what Antepli identified as the main categories of all religions: history, people and, last, theology.

In other words, religion is only part of the terrorist equation, but denying it altogether is a mistake, both agree. On this score, Obamas critics may be correct, though others would argue that naming Islam risks alienating moderate Muslims.

Antepli countered that moderate Muslims are just as repelled by the Islamic State  and are just as often its victims  as the rest of the world.

The question that puzzles the civilized world is why the Islamic State is so successful in recruiting. We know that the Islamic State has a sophisticated propaganda machine and a viral social media presence. But most wont know how poorly we perform comparatively. Every day, the Islamic State tweets tens of thousands of times, compared with the U.S. State Department, which sends about a dozen.

Stern emphasized that the radical jihadist ideology is undergirded with a narrative of humiliation, reinforced with branding and perverse promises  sex slaves, drugs, power  all of which can be justified with Quranic text. The promises would be especially irresistible to a certain kind of person: The typical jihadist is a male aged 14-35 who has a mental health history and feels alienated.

Some percentage of recruits are surely psychopaths attracted to the brutality the Islamic State justifies with text. And some are true believers. But many of the remainders are simply ripe for the picking. We do ourselves no favors when we play into the Islamic States hand by reinforcing their propaganda that America hates Muslims.

Nor is it useful to fight ideology with violence, which only nurtures brutality in the jihadi mind. And certainly not by creating divisions between them and us, a propagandist tool for recruitment and radicalization.

My favorite approach relates to a method Antepli uses in his work to deradicalize young Muslims. He told of a young man who was considering joining the Islamic State. Antepli said though it was the lads decision, he should thoroughly understand all the parts of Islam before making a decision.

The young man agreed to listen. By the time Antepli had finished his recitation of the nuances, history and reality of the Islamic State, the erstwhile sympathizer said, I dont want anything to do with that. Its boring!

Indeed, evil isnt only banal; its a big bore.

kathleenparker@washpost.com
Its becoming ever clearer that Abengoa needs to be either a minority player or totally cut out of the Vista Ridge project.

Abengoas precarious financial situation has the potential to undermine a water project that is crucial to this communitys future. Case in point: Abengoa Vista Ridges surprising $120 million bridge loan. Surprising, we say, because officials at San Antonio Water System and others tied to the project were caught off guard by this loan from a group of international banks.

The loan was supposed to be for pipe, but its unclear just how the funds have been used.

We dont know, SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente told us. But we were told that some of it was to pay ongoing expenses and some of it was to build the project. I dont know if they got that far, because right around that time there was a big dispute over material, pipe material, so they put a hold on that.

In a statement, Abengoa officials said SAWS put a hold on the pipe, but Abengoa did not explain how the loan has been used.

To be clear, this loan does not directly affect San Antonio ratepayers. The public is not responsible for paying it back, and the maximum price of water for the project has been set in the Vista Ridge contract.

But the public concern is that Abengoas significant financial problems are undermining the Vista Ridge pipeline, a 142-mile project that will deliver up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year to San Antonio from Burleson County.

In theory, Abengoa Vista Ridge should be separate from its troubled parent company. But this bridge loan, and the vagueness that surrounds it, says otherwise. Abengoa Vista Ridge did not disclose the loan to SAWS officials, saying there was no obligation to do so. Instead, (SAWS Chief Financial Officer) Doug Evanson heard it from the industry folks, Puente told us.

More broadly, several people closely tied to the project have said there have been major communication issues with Abengoa.

This is not what you want from the entity tasked with building a $3.4 billion pipeline. Thats why the recent push for an outside investor to take an 80 percent equity stake in the project is welcome news. Our preference would be a full buyout. The less involved Abengoa is, the better.

The bridge loan also casts a shadow over the recent application to the Texas Water Development Board to finance the pipeline. The Central Texas Regional Water Supply Corp., a nonprofit created by Abengoa, applied for the low-interest financing. This could significantly benefit ratepayers if SAWS were to take over the pipeline after it is built. Going forward, its clear that the nonprofits board needs to be controlled by the new equity holder, likely Garney Construction.

We still believe in the Vista Ridge project for San Antonio. Thats exactly why Abengoa has to either go or be a silent, minority partner.
Posted on 03/18/2016, 11:00 am, by mySteinbach

On March 15, 2016, Steinbach RCMP responded to a report of a minivan that had been stolen from a residence on Harmony Lane in Steinbach, Manitoba.

Police say that the minivan was stolen sometime between February 14 and February 15, 2016. The vehicle is described as a blue 2008 Honda Odyssey EX, bearing Manitoba licence plate GNV 495.

If you have any information in regards to this incident you are asked to contact the Steinbach RCMP Detachment at 204-326-4452 or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477. You can also submit a tip online at www.manitobacrimestoppers.com or text TIPMAN plus your message to CRIMES(274637).
Convenience leaders from around the world came together in South Africa to explore the market and discuss industry challenges and opportunities at the NACS Global Forum.

By Nat Keller

JOHANNESBURG and CAPE TOWN, South Africa  With a population of 53 million, 11 official languages and more than 1,500 miles of coastline, South Africa is one of the most diverse and vibrant countries in the world. As attendees of the 2016 NACS Global Forum quickly discovered, that diversity and vibrancy also aptly describes the countrys convenience and fuel retailing industry as well.

From March 610, convenience and fuel retailers from around the world and NACS Global Supplier Council members participated in a thought-provoking and energizing NACS Global Forum in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Featuring local store tours, interactive discussions, inspiring presentations and plenty of networking, attendees had an action-packed agenda to engage, learn and explore a new and emerging convenience market.

The program began with an assortment of store tours in Johannesburg, South Africas biggest city, which included visits to Fresh Stop, Engen, Food Lovers, Woolworths and Checkers. Consistency and fresh food were themes throughout.

Attendees also enjoyed an inspiring presentation from Bonang Mohale, chairman of Shell South Africa, who provided insight into global societal and political issues, while also touching on South Africas current state. Mohale noted the resiliency of the South African people, announcing, This, too, shall pass, referring to the current economic and political struggles the country faces.

Dave Hogg, director at FreshStop, shared a case study of his rapidly growing company. With 220 FreshStop stores spanning South Africa, the company has fostered strong partnerships and is focused on consistency, fresh food and customer service. The company plans to continue its growth trajectory by expanding deeper into Africa in coming years.

In Cape Town, the Global Forum program continued with J.P. Landman, a political and trend analyst from South Africa. Landman delivered a lively overview of the South African political, societal and economic market. The South African market is unique, yet the challenges faced by retailers are typical of those in every market around the world, he observed.

With a focus on foodservice, Darren Tristano, president of Technomic Inc., cited examples of leading convenience retailers and encouraged attendees to tell your food story and create an emotional connection with your customer through foodservice. Tristano noted there has been increased consumer demand for better quality foods, specialized foods and healthier foodsall areas in which retailers can capitalize.

Adam Brumberg, deputy director of the Cornell Food and Brands Lab at Cornell University, discussed how retailers can better position themselves by understanding the psychology behind consumer food purchasing decisions and using innovative, low-cost techniques. "If folks walk into your store and dont see healthy items, they wont buy them, Brumberg stated as he encouraged retailers to make healthy items noticeably available.

Your job is to change peoples perception of what a convenience store is, Brumberg said. Roller dogs taste better in a ballpark because of perceptionand you can change that perception of what is available through your display, said Brumberg.

Prahar Shah, head of business development at DoorDash, a last-mile food delivery service company, described the evolution of his company and discussed different types of business models for last mile delivery, including how his company has begun testing partnerships with 7-Eleven, CVS and Walgreens. Attendees then participated in an interactive table discussion of the last mile and the convenience industry, expressing both concern and optimism for last-mile delivery and agreeing that the industry cannot afford to be absent on this emerging business topic.

The Global Forum program continued with in-depth case studies from several companies:

Patricia Mahlangu , retail convenience manager with Engen Petroleum Limited, discussed the continuous journey of her company, and how it partners with leading brands that can provide services that their company may not have.

, retail convenience manager with Engen Petroleum Limited, discussed the continuous journey of her company, and how it partners with leading brands that can provide services that their company may not have. Mohamed Carrim , general manager, retail and property for Sasol South Africa, showed how a large energy company can be entrepreneurial by exploring new and different retail options.

, general manager, retail and property for Sasol South Africa, showed how a large energy company can be entrepreneurial by exploring new and different retail options. Andreas Nagel, global convenience retail business and alliance development with Shell International Petroleum Company Limited, shared how Shell chooses partner brands based on shopper missions.

Attendees also heard more on alternative franchise models from Jeronimo Jose Merlo Dos Santos, retail and marketing director of Ipiranga Productos de Petroleo S/A; Markus Laenzlingler, CEO of Migrolino AG; and Magnar Mokkelgard, vice president of Reitan Convenience AS. The panelists provided insights into their own franchise models, while fielding questions from the audience. Several themes emanated throughout the discussion, including the importance of finding the right franchisee, creating incentives for franchisees and lowering the franchise cost of entry.

On the final day of the Global Forum, attendees gained insights on an American convenience retailer, RaceTrac Petroleum Inc., presented by Robby Posener, vice president of marketing, merchandise, design & construction; and J. Gilmore, vice president of Raceway. The duo began with an overview of their company and the differences between the two brands: Raceway and RaceTrac. With Raceway, the operator is controlling the store experience, whereas with RaceTrac theres a level of consistency across all stores, said Gilmore.

While in Cape Town, attendees visited local stores: a BP/Pick n Pay, Engen/Woolworth, SPAR and Food Lovers market.

The program wrapped up with a lengthy discussion on regulations and their influence on the convenience and fuel industry worldwide. Three supplier companies discuss global regulations on sugar, alcohol and tobacco:

David Coleman , vice president of public affairs Europe with Mars Inc., noted that its not a global war on sugar, but rather a global war on obesity, and sugar is the current battlefront.

, vice president of public affairs Europe with Mars Inc., noted that its not a global war on sugar, but rather a global war on obesity, and sugar is the current battlefront. Emilio Carbone , global director, in-home consumption at Anheuser-Busch InBev, discussed the trends around alcohol regulations resulting from drunk driving and pointed to current regulations that ban alcohol advertising in several countries.

, global director, in-home consumption at Anheuser-Busch InBev, discussed the trends around alcohol regulations resulting from drunk driving and pointed to current regulations that ban alcohol advertising in several countries. Neetesh Ramjee, director corporate affairs for South Africa at Philip Morris International, noted that tobacco regulations are moving faster and showing a lot of creep, especially with display bans.

The 2017 NACS Global Forum will take place in Tokyo, Japan. For more on the NACS Global Forum and other NACS global events, visit nacsonline.com/global.

Nat Keller is the NACS director of marketing. He can be reached at (703) 518-4237 or nkeller@nacsonline.com.
Lenovo Yoga 710 14 is an option to consider if you desire a more premium-looking alternative to the Yoga 510 14. It is the bigger brother of the Yoga 710 11, but the difference between the two isnt merely in terms of size. The 14-incher offers better features and more robust performance.

Where to Buy Lenovo Laptops Jumia.com.ng50,500.00 View Offers

Konga.com50,500.00 View Offers

Design and Display

The design of the Lenovo Yoga 710 14 is similar to that of its smaller sibling. It is constructed with aluminium to lessen concerns over drops when moving about with it. And talking about mobility, the Yoga 710 14 gets the mark, coming in at only 0.58 inches and 3.52 pounds in thickness and weight respectively. It has a 360-degree hinge that lets you move from laptop to tablet mode seamlessly.

As you would have figured out, the Lenovo Yoga 710 14 packs in a 14-inch display which based on In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology. The ultra wide-angle viewing potential of the edgeless touchscreen is enhanced by a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

Power and Performance

Unlike the Yoga 710 11, this 14-inch hybrid is less concerned about power efficiency; it is more interested in delivering robust performance. It comes equipped with up to 6th-generation Intel Core i series processor, supported by up to 8 GB of RAM. The Lenovo Yoga 710 14 gives you the option of adding an NVIDIA 940MX discrete graphics card to enable enjoyable gaming in your leisure time.

It will run on the latest Windows 10 OS, but it appears earlier versions may be provided on some units. The hybrid lasts up to eight hours of use on a single charge, according to its maker.

Other Features

For speedy performance and fast boot times, the Lenovo Yoga 710 14 is equipped with a solid state drive (having up to 256GB capacity). It has an antenna built into its hinge for stronger and more stable wireless connections.

This 14-incher offers better port options than its brother, coming with two USB 3.0 ports (one reversible Type-C standard), a DisplayPort, a combination audio jack, and an SD card reader. It offers a pair of Dolby Audio-backed JBL speakers and a 1MP webcam.

Pricing and Availability

Lenovo Yoga 710 14 is not yet available in Nigeria. When available, you can buy it at leading online stores in the country. Lenovo Yoga 710 14 Price in Nigeria is expected to range from N150,000 to N250,000 depending on your location in Nigeria.
Vivo Xplay 5 is a smartphone designed for those users who love what the awesome Xplay 5 Elite brings to the table but wish to save some money. It offers the same impressive specs as its higher-end brother, but ditches the Snapdragon 820 chipset and slices a little off the whopping 6GB RAM.

Where to Buy Mobile Phones Jumia.com.ngfrom 14,995.00 Buy Now

Konga.comfrom 13,700.00 Buy Now

Design and Display

This beauty shows off a solid and durable construction. The body of the Vivo Xplay 5 is made entirely of metal fitting of a high-end device. The face is protected by tough, scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 4.

Users are in for awesome gaming and movie watching time when you consider the 5.43-inch Super AMOLED Quad HD display the phone is fitted with. The stunning display has dual curved edges.

Camera

The Vivo Xplay 5 is regally decked out in the camera department as well. It comes with a robust 16-megapixel rear camera made by Sony. The shooter features fast phase detection autofocus and dual-tone LED flash.

As if the primary camera is not impressive enough, the phones Chinese maker also provided a robust 8-megapixel sensor on the front for spectacular selfies.

Hardware and Software

For the innards, the Xplay 5 packs an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 chipset which has four cores running at 1.8 GHz and another four cores at 1.4 GHz.

This is one impressive CPU that should get things moving along with minimal glitches. While the phone loses the jaw-dropping 6GB RAM of its Elite version, the 4 GB of RAM provided is scarcely surpassed by any other device.

Internal storage is 128 GB, but that is all you have to make do with as you will not be able to extend this using a microSD card. The Vivo Xplay 5 boots Android 5.1 Lollipop software plastered with Vivos latest Funtouch launcher offering split-screen support.

Other Features

The device comes with a 3,600mAh juicer that should get it running for hours on end. It features an ultra-fast fingerprint sensor which Vivo says unlock the phone in just 0.2 seconds.

The Vivo Xplay 5 packs Hi-Fi 3.0 audio amplifiers and what its Chinese manufacturer describes as WiFi+. As would be expected, the dual-SIM smartphone works on 4G LTE networks.

Pricing and availability

Vivo Xplay 5 is not yet available in Nigeria. When available, you can buy it at leading online stores in the country. Vivo Xplay 5 Price in Nigeria is expected to range from N130,000 to N180,000 depending on your location in Nigeria.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

TPP/TTiP/TISA

[TPP] at risk as the US political pendulum swings towards trade isolationism [Business Day]. [T]he sometimes pro-trade Democratic candidate front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is rushing to burnish her protectionist credentials. Nonsense. Clinton is lying. As I showed Wednesday, her surrogates are still swanning about, making pro-TPP noises. If she were serious about not passing TPP, shed slap them down. She hasnt.

Has The Election Finally Killed TPP And Corporate Free Trade? [Dave Johnson, CAF]. Not at all, and not merely by Betteridges Law: See above.

 The European Commission will be obliged to consult with US authorities before adopting new legislative proposals following passage of a controversial series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret [Belfast Telegraph]. A leaked document obtained by campaign group the Independent and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) from the ongoing EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations reveals the unelected Commission will have authority to decide in which areas there should be cooperation with the US  leaving EU member states and the European Parliament further sidelined.

Even if trade talks for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are accelerating, reaching a deal by the end of the year is unlikely, Joseph Quinlan, Senior Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University said in an interview with EurActiv [Euractiv]. I think TTIP is a deal for between now and 2020, he stressed, saying the US presidential elections has hit the pause button for TTIP. Good. Now lets hit Eject.

2016

Policy

Will Clinton or Trump be the more effective evil? Discuss. * * * Postal Banking Didnt Work in 1910  and It Wont Now [American Banker]. Clintons Bold Vision, Hidden in Plain Sight? [Jacob S. Hacker* And Paul Pierson, New York Times]. And here it is! (Im so excited.) Moreover, unlike Mr. Sanders, she sees [governments] role as primarily focused on correcting the shortcomings of weakly regulated markets rather than redistributing income and wealth. In other words, shes a neoliberal (see here). * I remember Hacker very well; he was the author of a book on the public option, which career progressives used to run a bait and switch operation against single payer.

The Scorps

One more look at Were Changes to Sanders Article Stealth Editing? [Margaret Sullivan, New York Times]. Hoisted from the comments section: That is, the Times is no longer a newspaper of record. If there is a record, it will be found in contemporaneous fair-use quotation, as for example in this blog. Further, theres no point in sharing material from the Times on social media. Finally, the Sanders campaign actually redistributed a link to the Times story, and then the Times Editors changed it to trash him. I wont use the word ratfucking, but feel free to think it. To my mind, the Orwellian rewriting of the story under the same URL is even bigger than Stealth editing. If you dont feel this issue is closed, you can contact the Margaret Sullivan, the Times Public editor, here. If, like many others in the comments section, youre cancelling your subscription, do feel free to let her know.

Money

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been bashing Johnson Controls Inc. in speeches and television ads for moving its corporate headquarters to Ireland as part of a planned merger with Tyco International. Meanwhile, her husband Bill Clinton said the firm is one of my favorite companies and praised the work it had done in the clean energy sector during an event in North Carolina this week [Biz Journals]. Maybe if they write Hillary Clinton a check theyll be one of her favorite companies too?

The Voters

The Democratic Party is acting like the political parties we have traditionally known in American politics: It is backing familiar politicians with deep institutional ties and, amidst divided government, nominating compromise figures with the potential for bipartisan appeal [Ezra Klein, Vox]. Well, no, they dont have the potential for bipartisan appeal if or when the Republicans are crazypants fascists, and the weasel word potential doesnt help the thesis. In fact, the Democratic Party is repeating the same strategic blunder  if blunder it was  that Obama committed in 2008. Eight years later. Since the 18th century revolutions have been fueled by the abuse and corruption rampant in monarchies and family dynasties. When democracy took place, the people were heard and be represented. The Bush and Clinton families have since circumvented what democracy, in theory, is supposed to accomplish: Although they were elected, their rise to power was ensured by the influence of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Each presidency built the foundation for another Bush and another Clinton to reach the White House [New York Observer]. Oh, and Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush also shared many of the same wealthy donorsmore than 60 of whom contributed to both campaigns. So, the hug. As an angry base rejects establishment candidates in favor of you-know-who, a significant part of the partys elite blames not itself, but the moral and character failings of the voters [Paul Krugman, New York Times]. Exactly as the Democratic establishment does with Sanders voters (assuming it wants their votes, which it doesnt). But never mind that.

Trump Panic

5,000 people aim to crush Donald Trump with march on Trump Tower in NYC [Daily Dot]. Im picturing a debacle where the Black Bloc crashes the party, the media blames the Democrats for the ensuing melee, and the moderate Republicans rush straight back to Trumps arms (after Clinton throws the Sanders supporters under the bus, so she loses both ways). A pair of super PACs loyal to Mrs. Clinton have already accumulated a vast trove of research on Mr. Trumps business dealings. Using financial experts, Correct the Record and American Bridge have dug into his business career and pored over his personal-disclosure forms looking for material to exploit in a general election. [Wall Street Journal, Hillary Clintons Allies Launch Plan to Undercut Donald Trump Now]. The groups havent released any of this research as the GOP primaries have unfolded. They didnt want to assist Mr. Trumps GOP rivals, whom they believed would give Mrs. Clinton a tougher challenge in November, according to a person familiar with their work. Now, they will look for an opportune time to try to put Mr. Trump on the defensive. Read the whole article. What nobody realized, I think, was that the sheepdogging wil be institutional, not personal.

The Trail

Debriefing Mike Murphy is a must-read if you want to understand our political class [The Weekly Standard (of all places)]. Murphy ran Bushs SuperPac, right to rise. This paragraph caught my eye: [Murphy] says a lot of the anger is springing from peoples fears and hard realities  the middle class not getting a raise in a decade. Generally pessimistic older white voters see the demographic shifts and dont like it. The media are incessantly sticking red-hot thermometers in lukewarm water and saying, Wow, that waters pretty hot!  He then adds, in what you dont expect the capo of a $118 million super-PAC who spends his days begging hedge-fund managers for dough to say: There is the Wall Street stuff  rich guys who win either way. When things go south, they get bailed out. When things go right, they get billions. Theres legit anger at that. And there should be. Income inequality stuff is real. The weird thing, Murphy says, is even the rich guys he speaks to know it. One of them, a Right to Rise donor, gave Murphy a hop from New York back to L.A. on his brand new Gulfstream. Murphy calls it a G-a-lot, as in, it was bigger than a G-V. Upon deplaning, the hedge-fund zillionaire pulls me aside, and says, I paid $55 million for this, and the government gave me most of it in tax breaks. I dont know if people ask for things from Jeb. But heres what I want: Tell him to get rid of that shit. Because even the guys in that world feel crappy about it. It was an interesting moment. I stand between you and the pitchforks. This was Obamas finest hour.

Stats Watch

Consumer Sentiment, March 2016: Consumer sentiment remains solid but has definitely fallen back, to 90.0 for the March flash for the least optimistic readings since October [Econoday]. Weakness is centered in expectations, down 1.9 points to 80.0 which is the lowest reading since September for this component. Declines in expectations point to weakening confidence in the jobs and income outlook.

Atlanta Fed Business Inflation Expectations, March 2016: Business inflation expectations remain flat, unchanged in March [Econoday]. Unlike this report, inflation expectations on the consumer side, posted this morning with the consumer sentiment index, are showing some life.

Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey, March 2016 (yesterday): A nice positive print that hopefully signals a turn around, but I need to see at least one more before taking it seriously, as volatility is common with this series [Mosler Economics].

Shipping: Rail Returns To Its Slide Into The Abyss [Econintersect]. Oopsie.

Honey for the Bears: This article [Wall Street Journal, Global Currencies Soar, Defying Central Bankers] reminded me of these couple of lines from a Yeats poem (on Saint Patricks Day) which I posted regularly at the height of the crisis in 2008 and 2009 [Across the Curve].

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

A ceremony of innocence wouldnt be my first metaphor of choice for the financial markets, but I get the point.

Honey for the Bears:

The mystery of Americas missing capital investment https://t.co/7xb3GW6vVX pic.twitter.com/2yheXJE1ym  Bloomberg Business (@business) March 18, 2016

Gentlemen Prefer Bonds: Treasuries headed for the biggest weekly advance since January after the Federal Reserve lowered its forecast for interest-rate increases this year, citing the potential impact from weaker global growth on the U.S. economy [Bloomberg].

The Fed: Former Chicago Fed Employee Guilty of Theft of Secret Documents [New York Times]. And theres never one roach in the kitchen.

Dows Freakish Bounce Makes Investors Whole, Cant Erase Doubts [Bloomberg]. Makes investors whole.

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 79, Extreme Greed (previous close: 78, Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 75 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 18 at 12:43pm. Not quite a scorcher, but improving

Water

Vietnams Mekong Delta hit by worst drought in years [Asian Correspondent].

 Worst Mediterranean drought in 900 years has human fingerprints all over it [Guardian].

Flint Whistleblower: Health Impact of DC Water 20-30 Times Worse than Flint [Inside Sources]. Yikes! First, I thought of the poor. Then, of the political class.

Imperial Collapse Watch

At this point, abandoning the F-35 is politically impossible. Producing the jet reportedly involves 1,300 suppliers supporting 133,000 jobs in 45 states. The Marine Corps declared its first squadron of F-35s war-ready in July 2015. The Air Force expects to make its own declaration of combat-readiness by December this year, with the Navy following two years later [The Daily Beast]. Again, our military lacks operational competence (at anything other than creating self-licking ice cream cones).

Insider Threat program, based largely on Mannings WikiLeaks disclosures, targets government employees for continuous evaulation using a variety of subjective labels [Ed Pilkington, Guardian]. If youre disgruntled, you could be an insider threat. So be sure to maintain an actively gruntled state at all times!

Class Warfare

Story of cities #4: Beijing and the earliest planning document in history [Guardian]. Awesome article. Beijing was conceived as a diagram of an organised, harmonious society, designed to bind the citizens together in bricks and mortar under the supreme rule of the emperor. It was to be an expression of absolute power like no other city in the world.

Last month, Y-Combinator, Silicon Valleys blue-chip startup fund, announced a request for proposal to study a universal basic income. Sam Altman, the President of Y-Combinator, wrote in a separate essay that in the future, we will have a smaller and smaller number of people creating more and more of the wealth. And we need a new solution for the people not creating most of the wealth  many of the minimum wage jobs are going to get innovated away anyway' [Medium]. The people without jobs will be an idle class  and the obvious conclusion, to Altman, is that the government will just have to give these people money. (Emphasis ours.) This is what you should think of whenever you hear the words innovation, disruption, startup Any of that.

The three highest valued U.S. companies with immigrant founders include car-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc., data-software company Palantir Technologies Inc. and rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Inc. [Wall Street Journal, Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups] And see above.

Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat [Bloomberg]. Boston Dynamics put out the famous videos of humanoid and dog-like robots. Reaction from Alphabets PR Department: Theres excitement from the tech press, but were also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans jobs, wrote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for Google X. Were not going to comment on this video because theres really not a lot we can add, and we dont want to answer most of the Qs it triggers , she wrote. No. I wouldnt think so.

Gentrification: The moving truck showed up a few nights before Christmas. We were coming home from dinner when Anita saw me. Across the fence, she wept while recalling her wedding in the backyard, her moms glorious rose bushes, and how her dad used to drink coffee in his shedhis sanctuaryall year long. And then she mentioned, for the first time, that my landa lot that used to belong to Anna and her husbandhad once been a bountiful urban farm. The farm had been a food source for families that had fallen on hard times, which were many during Kirkwoods postJim Crow nadir [Atlanta Magazine].

Britain Obtains European Arrest Warrants for 5 Bankers in Euribor Case [New York Times]. It cant happen here.

News of the Wired

Memorable events in decade of Twitter [Agence France Presse]. Good list, but nothing about hash tags or #BlackLivesMatter? Sad!

MIT scientists find evidence that Alzheimers lost memories may one day be recoverable [WaPo]. Only mice. Nevertheless

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (tractorparts):

Moss and tractor parts: certainly a unique combination. (I love moss; I wish I knew how to transplant it.)

* * *

If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. Water Cooler would not exist without your support.
Back in 2012, Fairfax journalist Tim Hunter (Chalkie) caught a whiff of something unsavoury about New Zealand Foreign Trusts:

There are several key features of a foreign trust, one of them being that it pays no tax on overseas income. On its own thats a useful attribute, but when combined with another it becomes turbocharged, because foreign trusts dont have to tell anyone what they own, how much money they make, or who benefits from anything they pay out. There are exceptions to this veil of secrecy, but well come back to that. And before aspiring Kiwi tax dodgers start reaching for their accountants phone number Chalkie should point out that foreign trusts cant be used by anyone living in New Zealand. However, it may already be apparent that if, say, you had a lot of money and if, say, you wanted to hide it from certain tax authorities, a New Zealand foreign trust could be just the ticket.

This turns out to be an unintended consequence of an attempt to stop New Zealanders avoiding tax by hiding their assets and income in overseas trusts. Taxing trusts according to the domicile of the settlor, rather than the trustee, was the chosen solution. This was neat and radical, but it created a gigantic loophole:

Originally, foreigners settling a New Zealand foreign trust could do so in perfect secrecy, because a trust is technically just a private arrangement. Not only was there no register of trusts, there was no requirement to tell the government or the IRD about it as long as it had no New Zealand income. An overseas taxman was therefore stuffed if he wanted to probe a citizens New Zealand trust interests. Even if he asked our IRD for information, IRD simply didnt have it and had no power to get it.

After a while, the Aussies noticed:

The Australian Taxation Office found this particularly annoying because it suspected lots of Aussies were using NZ trusts to avoid tax. That changed when new disclosure rules came into force in 2006, but only a bit. Thereafter, trusts had to tell the IRD the name of the trust, the name of the trustee, and whether the settlor was Australian. Trustees also had to keep financial details such as the trusts income and distributions, as well as the name of the settlor and the beneficiaries, and hand over the information to IRD on demand.

This reform was not a stroke of genius. The New Zealand authorities of the day contrived to look both craven and truculent at the same time. They folded to the Aussies, but were happy for the rest of the world to continue to take a hike:

The Australian ones had it tough, because the IRD now routinely passes their details on to the ATO [Australian Taxation Office]. But the rest are relatively undisturbed because the IRD wont ask for financial details unless they are first sought by an overseas taxman, and the overseas taxman has to ask for information about a trust by name, which means they first have to know it exists. Awkward. One tax consultant assessed the situation thus: As the names of the settlors and beneficiaries are not disclosed, there is no risk of disclosure to other governments under current legislation.

Quite a lot of shadowy people like this set-up very much indeed. According to New Zealands Inland Revenue Department, roughly 7,500 foreign trusts had been registered with the IRD between 2006 and 2012, and were still extant in 2012. Just 126 of them had declared Australian settlors. Some of the trusts were said to hold billions of dollars. By early 2016, at those registration rates, the total number of trusts would be around 11,000. Back to Chalkie:

Of course, New Zealand could help by giving other authorities the same privileges as Australia, but for some reason we choose not to. Chalkie cant help wondering why New Zealand maintains a regime so obviously advantageous to tax dodgers and criminals. Were not only not part of the solution, were a big part of the problem.

One answer to Chalkies question is this: there is now quite a collection of well-connected smart lawyers servicing this clientele. Its a business worth around NZD 20Mn per annum, according to NZs International Funds Services Development Group; or even NZD 50Mn, according to the NZ Herald, in their November 2012 expose. It can afford a little bit of expenditure on lobbying.

One of these smart lawyers, a fellow called Geoffrey Cone, of Cone Marshall, shows up in the NZ Herald the week after the expose, to tell the world theres nothing to see here after all. Handing a platform to a lawyer specialising in offshore trust work hasnt always gone well for the NZ Herald, but the Herald only found out about the risks much later.

Heres how Cone characterizes the daft 2006 non-reform reform that threw a crumb in the direction of the Australians and waved a middle finger at the rest of the world:

New rules in this area were introduced by Michael Cullen in 2006 after extensive consultation. Under this rigorous regime, a New Zealand resident trustee of a foreign trust is required by the IRD to submit a Foreign Trust Disclosure form (IR607) and to keep financial and other records for New Zealand tax purposes. These include the trust deed, details of settlements and distributions (including the recipients name and address), details of the trusts assets and liabilities, and money that the trustee receives and spends.  In most countries a person settling a trust must report the settlement of funds to their own revenue authorities, central banks and other authorities. This, coupled with the information settlors must report in their own countries, will give revenue authorities enough information to request details of a particular trust or transaction.

Heres a funny thing: that doesnt seem to coincide with the actual experience of actual overseas revenue authorities. By 2014, Cones claim that all is well looks threadbare:

The Inland Revenue Department is taking aim at the use of New Zealand trusts by foreigners to shield their income and assets from tax in their own countries following pressure from its overseas counterparts, the Business Herald understands.  IRD says it intends reporting to Revenue Minister Todd McClay on that issue before the end of the year and will release consultation documents in mid-2015.

Back to Cone:

The majority of New Zealand service providers are lawyers and accountants and many are also qualified members of the international Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). They usually work with counterparts who have the same responsibilities and skills in the countries where the clients live. Respected New Zealand trust lawyers and accountants operating foreign trusts on behalf of international clients help enhance New Zealands reputation in the OECD and amongst international taxation experts. We dont compete with tax havens, but instead with jurisdictions such as Singapore, Britain and the US, all of which have a transparent tax system and apply similar taxation principles in relation to their foreign trusts.

Undermining this message, just a little, the next STEP Latam conference will be taking place in tax haven and perennial opacity bad boy Panama, in September 2016. A representative of Cone Marshall is on the attendee list.

Undermining the message a little more, here are the 181 Panamanian bearer share companies for which Cone and Marshall have been acting as nominee directors.

Undermining the message even more, heres a diagram from Transparency International (Slovakia) in which New Zealand companies created by Cone show up, concealing the involvement of one Juraj Siroky in a tottering Slovakian company called Vahostav.

Heres more from The Slovak Spectator on Juraj Siroky. He has an interesting past:

WHEN Juraj Siroky left the Czechoslovak embassy in Washington two decades ago, following his posting as secret agent and second secretary, he didnt forget about his colleagues in the communist intelligence service. After the 1989 revolution he continued to do business with them, first within an infamous asset-stripping operation known as the Harvard funds, and later within Slovak chemicals groups Chemolak and Plastika. Today, Sirokys spy circle has contacts with people at the top of the Economy Ministry under the Fico government, including minister Lubomir Jahnatek from the ruling Smer party. Companies under Sirokys wing last year won two tenders from the ministry together worth Sk120 million (4 million). Under the Fico government, Sirokys firms have won several multi-million-euro contracts to build highways and renovate Bratislava Castle. He got his start in business in the Czech Republic as the partner of Viktor Kozeny, dubbed the Pirate of Prague, who is currently on trial in the Czech Republic for looting billions of Czech crowns from the Harvard investment funds in the mid-1990sKozeny is currently in the Bahamas, beyond the reach of the Czech courts. Siroky did not respond to questions about his past from The Slovak Spectator. Economy Ministry officials denied that the businessman, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures behind the Smer party, had any influence over public contracts.

One cant help noticing a couple of other things in passing.

First, one of the NZ companies, Torrelaguna Limited, which has a trio of Costa Rican stooge directors, still hasnt got around to appointing the mandatory NZ resident director, a legal requirement that came into force in May 2015. The additional 180 day grace period that gave companies ample time to appoint an NZ resident expired months ago. This company should be struck off. It might be worth a look at the other 1,000 companies in Cone Marshalls NZ portfolio to see how many more there are like that.

Second, Torrelagunas shareholders are five Costa Ricans, each owning 20% of the company. Transparency Internationals research suggests that this isnt a particularly accurate depiction of Torrelagunas ownership and control but how on earth can one check, in general? Getting Ultimate Beneficial Ownership disclosure right is going to be hard, in New Zealand and elsewhere.

Heres how its going with Juraj Sirokys Vahostav, just now:

An investigator of the National [Criminal] Agency (NAKA) filed charges against three persons from the management of the construction company Vahostav-SK on March 14. They are suspected of committing a crime of giving preference to a creditor. By their doing they might have caused damages of almost 7 million, the SITA newswire reported.

New Zealand is helping out:

Last December Denisa Baloghova, spokesperson of the Police Presidium informed that the investigator had interrogated more than 20 witnesses and carried out several other proceedings to find out the facts of the case. At that time she said that the police also asked several countries for legal assistance, including asking colleagues from Costa Rica, New Zealand, or Cyprus 

All of this non-foreign-trust-related Vahostav and Cone control-hiding skulduggery does make one curious about exactly why it was that Mr Cone was so keen to rubbish the idea that New Zealand foreign trusts were of any concern to transparency advocates. Might he be active in the formation of control-hiding New Zealand offshore trusts, perchance?

Whatever: we think that Mr Cone was mistaken in his assessment that theres nothing to see. Right now theres a government corruption scandal underway in Malta, and overseas press coverage is pointing the finger at Panama and at NZ foreign trusts

Mind you, perhaps the current NZ Government simply dont mind what kind of attention they get from their big Antipodean neighbour, and from the worlds press in general. Heres some more, from Europe:

Alternatively, NZG may well be wishing theyd not just ignored early warnings of the scandal to come, back in 2012. The chickens, in the form of 11,000 NZ foreign trusts, are simply going to keep coming home to roost now. There is going to be a large and noisy mess.
By Peter Van Buren, who blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. He writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hoopers War. Originally published at TomDispatch

The nuances of foreign policy do not feature heavily in the ongoing presidential campaign. Every candidate intends to destroy the Islamic State; each has concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea, and China; every one of them will defend Israel; and no one wants to talk much about anything else  except, in the case of the Republicans, who rattle their sabers against Iran.

In that light, heres a little trip down memory lane: in October 2012, I considered five critical foreign policy questions  they form the section headings below  that were not being discussed by then-candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Romney today is a sideshow act for the current Republican circus, and Obama has started packing up his tent at the White House and producing his own foreign policy obituary.

And sadly, those five questions of 2012 remain as pertinent and unraised today as they were four years ago. Unlike then, however, answers may be at hand, and believe me, thats not good news. Now, lets consider them four years later, one by one.

Is there an endgame for the global war on terror?

That was the first question I asked back in 2012. In the ensuing years, no such endgame has either been proposed or found, and these days no ones even talking about looking for one. Instead, a state of perpetual conflict in the Greater Middle East and Africa has become so much the norm that most of us dont even notice.

In 2012, I wrote, The current president, elected on the promise of change, altered very little when it came to George W. Bushs Global War on Terror (other than dropping the name). That jewel-in-the-crown of Bush-era offshore imprisonment, Guantanamo, still houses over 160 prisoners held without trial. While the U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq the war in Afghanistan stumbles on. Drone strikes and other forms of conflict continue in the same places Bush tormented: Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan (and its clear that northern Mali is heading our way).

Well, candidates of 2016? Guantanamo remains open for business, with 91 men still left. Five others were expeditiously traded away by executive decision to retrieve runaway American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan, but somehow President Obama feels he cant release most of the others without lots of approvals by well, someone. The Republicans running for president are howling to expand Gitmo, and the two Democratic candidates are in favor of whatever sort of not-a-plan plan Obama has been pushing around his plate for eight years.

Iraq took a bad bounce when the same president who withdrew U.S. troops in 2011 let loose the planes and drones and started putting those boots back on that same old ground in 2014. It didnt take long for the U.S. to morph that conflict from a rescue mission to a training mission to bombing to Special Operations forces in ongoing contact with the enemy, and not just in Iraq, but Syria, too. No candidate has said that s/he will pull out.

As for the war in Afghanistan, it now features an indefinite, generational American troop commitment. Think of that country as the third rail of campaign 2016  no candidate dares touch it for fear of instant electrocution, though (since the American public seems to have forgotten the place) by whom exactly is unclear. Theres still plenty of fighting going on in Yemen  albeit now mostly via Americas well-armed proxies the Saudis  and Africa is more militarized than ever.

As for the most common American someone in what used to be called the third world is likely to encounter, its no longer a diplomat, a missionary, a tourist, or even a soldier  its a drone. The United States claims the right to fly into any nations airspace and kill anyone it wishes. Add it all together and when it comes to that war on terror across significant parts of the globe, the once-reluctant heir to the Bush legacy leaves behind a twenty-first century mechanism for perpetual war and eternal assassination missions. And no candidate in either party is willing to even suggest that such a situation needs to end.

In 2012, I also wrote, Washington seems able to come up with nothing more than a whack-a-mole strategy for ridding itself of the scourge of terror, an endless succession of killings of al-Qaeda Number 3 guys. Counterterrorism tsar John Brennan, Obamas drone-meister, has put it this way: Were not going to rest until al-Qaeda the organization is destroyed and is eliminated from areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Africa, and other areas.

Four years later, whack-a-mole seems to still be as polite a way as possible of categorizing Americas strategy. In 2013, the top whacker John Brennan got an upgrade to director of the CIA, but strangely  despite so many drones sent off, Special Operations teams sent in, and bombers let loose  the moles keep burrowing and hes gotten none of the rest he was seeking in 2012. Al-Qaeda is still around, but more significantly, the Islamic State (IS) has replaced that outfit as the signature terrorist organization for the 2016 election.

And speaking of IS, the 2011 war in Libya, midwifed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, led to the elimination of autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, which in turn led to chaos, which in turn led to the spread of IS there big time, which appears on its way to leading to a new American war in Libya seeking the kind of stability that, for all his terrors, Qaddafi had indeed brought to that country during his 34 years in power and the U.S. military will never find.

So an end to the Global War on Terror? Nope.

Do todays foreign policy challenges mean that its time to retire the Constitution?

In 2012 I wrote, Starting on September 12, 2001, challenges, threats, and risks abroad have been used to justify abandoning core beliefs enshrined in the Bill of Rights. That bill, we are told, cant accommodate terror threats to the Homeland.

At the time, however, our concerns about unconstitutionality were mostly based on limited information from early whistleblowers like Tom Drake and Bill Binney, and what some then called conspiracy theories. That was before National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden confirmed our worst nightmares in June 2013 by leaking a trove of NSA documents about the overwhelming American surveillance state. Snowden summed it up this way: You see programs and policies that were publicly justified on the basis of preventing terrorism  which we all want  in fact being used for very different purposes.

Now, heres the strange thing: since Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 presidential race, no candidate seems to find it worth his or her while to discuss protecting the Bill of Rights or the Constitution from the national security state. (Only the Second Amendment, it turns out, is still sacred.) And speaking of rights, things had already grown so extreme by 2013 that Attorney General Eric Holder felt forced to publicly insist that the government did not plan to torture or kill Edward Snowden, should he end up in its hands. Given the tone of this election, someone may want to update that promise.

In 2012, of course, the Obama administration had only managed to put two whistleblowers in jail for violating the Espionage Act. Since then, such prosecutions have grown almost commonplace, with five more convictions (including that of Chelsea Manning) and with whatever penalties short of torture and murder are planned for Edward Snowden still pending. No one then mentioned the use of the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act, but that wasnt surprising. Its moment was still coming.

Four years later, still not a peep out of any candidate about the uses of that act, once aimed at spying for foreign powers in wartime, or a serious discussion of government surveillance and the loss of privacy in American life. (And we just learned that the Pentagons spy drones have been released over the homeland, too, but dont expect to hear anything about that or its implications either.) Of course, Snowden has come up in the debates of both parties. He has been labeled a traitor as part of the blood sport that the Republican debates have devolved into, and denounced as a thief by Hillary Clinton, while Bernie Sanders gave him credit for educating the American people but still thought he deserved prison time.

If the question in 2012 was: Candidates, have we walked away from the Constitution? If so, shouldnt we publish some sort of notice or bulletin? In 2016, the answer seems to be: Yes, weve walked away, and accept that or else you traitor!

What do we want from the Middle East?

In 2012, considering the wreckage of the post-9/11 policies of two administrations in the Middle East, I wondered what the goal of Americas presence there could possibly be. Washington had just ended its war in Iraq, walked away from the chaos in Libya, and yet continued to launch a seemingly never-ending series of drone strikes in the region. Is it all about oil? I asked. Israel? Old-fashioned hegemony and containment? History suggests that we should make up our mind on what Americas goals in the Middle East might actually be. No cheating now  having no policy is a policy of its own.

Four years later, Washington is desperately trying to destroy an Islamic State caliphate that wasnt even on its radar in 2012. Of course, that brings up the question of whether IS can be militarily destroyed at all, as we watch its spread to places as far-flung as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya. And then theres the question no one would have thought to ask back then: If we destroy that movement in Iraq and Syria, will another even more brutish group simply take its place, as the Islamic State did with al-Qaeda in Iraq? No candidate this time around even seems to grasp that these groups arent just problems in themselves, but symptoms of a broader Sunni-Shiite problem.

In the meantime, the one broad policy consensus to emerge is that we shouldnt hesitate to unleash our air power and Special Operations forces and, with the help of local proxies, wreck as much stuff as possible. America has welcomed all comers to take their best shots in Syria and Iraq in the name of fighting the Islamic State. The ongoing effort to bomb it away has resulted in the destruction of cities that were still in decent shape in 2012, like Ramadi, Kobane, Homs, and evidently at some future moment Iraqs second largest city, Mosul, in order to save them. Four American presidents have made war in the region without success, and whoever follows Obama into the Oval Office will be number five. No questions asked.

What is your plan to right-size our military and what about downsizing the global mission?

Plan? Right-size? Heres the reality four years after I asked that question: Absolutely no candidate, including the most progressive one, is talking about cutting or in any way seriously curtailing the U.S. military.

Not surprisingly, in response to the ongoing question of the year, So how will you pay for that? (in other words, any project being discussed from massive border security and mass deportations to free public college tuition), no candidate has said: Lets spend less than 54% of our discretionary budget on defense.

Call me sentimental, but as I wrote in 2012, Id still like to know from the candidates, What will you do to right-size the military and downsize its global mission? Secondly, did this countrys founders really intend for the president to have unchecked personal war-making powers?

Such questions would at least provide a little comic relief, as all the candidates except Bernie Sanders lock horns to see who will be the one to increase the defense budget the most.

Since no one outside our borders buys American exceptionalism anymore, whats next? What is Americas point these days?

In 2012, I laid out the reality of twenty-first-century America this way: We keep the old myth alive that America is a special, good place, the most exceptional of places in fact, but in our foreign policy were more like some mean old man, reduced to feeling good about himself by yelling at the kids to get off the lawn (or simply taking potshots at them). Now, who we are and what we are abroad seems so much grimmer America the Exceptional, has, it seems, run its course. Saber rattling feels angry, unproductive, and without any doubt unbelievably expensive.

Yet in 2016 most of the candidates are still barking about America the Exceptional despite another four years of rust on the chrome. Donald Trump may be the exceptional exception in that he appears to think Americas exceptional greatness is still to come, though quite soon under his guidance.

The question for the candidates in 2012 was and in 2016 remains Who exactly are we in the world and who do you want us to be? Are you ready to promote a policy of fighting to be planetary top dog  and we all know where that leads  or can we find a place in the global community? Without resorting to the usual shining city on a hill metaphors, can you tell us your vision for America in the world?

The answer is a resounding no.

See You Again in 2020

The candidates have made it clear that the struggle against terror is a forever war, the U.S. military can never be big enough, bombing and missiling the Greater Middle East is now the American Way of Life, and the Constitution is indeed a pain and should get the hell out of the way.

Above all, no politician dares or cares to tell us anything but what they think we want to hear: America is exceptional, military power can solve problems, the U.S. military isnt big enough, and it is necessary to give up our freedoms to protect our freedoms. Are we, in the perhaps slightly exaggerated words of one foreign commentator, now just a nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conducting military operations against primitive countries?

Bookmark this page. Ill be back before the 2020 elections to see how were doing.
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Matthew Pacetti, a senior technician with Overhead Door Company of Naples, has earned the Master Automated Access Systems Technician designation by the Institute of Door Dealer Education and Accreditation.

Events

The Florida Public Relations Association Southwest Florida Chapter will host the 2016 Local Image Awards Ceremony at 6 p.m. April 19 at Six Bends Harley-Davidson in Fort Myers. Information: 239-677-7600; mj@jacksonpr.com

Appointments

Ryan Benson, principal with A. Vernon Allen Builder, has been appointed to the board of directors for the Boys & Girls Club of Collier County.

The Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce named Breanne Winter as membership development representative and Charles Stanisce as member services representative.

Honors

Capital Wealth Planning has been recognized with Top Guns status by Informa Investment Solutions' PSN manager database for its Global Balanced Universe for the CWP Covered Call Strategy.

Deals

Hertz Global Holdings has reached an agreement to substantially reduce its equity position in CAR Inc., China's largest rental car company, while at the same time extending its existing commercial agreement between the two companies to 2023. Hertz has been a commercial partner with CAR since 2013, and the extension enables the company to participate in the anticipated growth of China's car rental market.

To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com.
Jason Toledo uses Patrick Riley as a punching bag with elbow strikes in the "overwhelming violence" exercise. A dozen students participated in a Krav Maga self defense class Wednesday evening at Training Grounds Martial Arts Academy in Bonita Springs. Lance Shearer/Special to the Banner

SHARE Students take turns attacking and defending. A dozen students participated in a Krav Maga self defense class Wednesday evening at Training Grounds Martial Arts Academy in Bonita Springs. Lance Shearer/Special to the Banner Owner and instructor Joshua Frye demonstrates action against an armed assailant. A dozen students participated in a Krav Maga self defense class Wednesday evening at Training Grounds Martial Arts Academy in Bonita Springs. Lance Shearer/Special to the Banner

By Patrick Riley of the Naples Daily News

I think about it a lot. Maybe more than I should.

How would I react if the fidgety guy in 25B all of a sudden got up, pulled out a knife and tried to hijack our plane? What would I do if  after grabbing cash from the ATM  I found myself surrounded by a trio pointing a gun to my head and demanding my fatter-than-usual wallet? How would I  someone who has never been in a real fight  fare in a bareknuckle bar brawl?

Sure, I'd like to think I'd be brave and courageous. I'd like to think I would put up a fight and hold my own. I'd like to think I'd be able to get a couple of swings in, heck, maybe even come out on top.

But who knows?

I could just as much go into complete shock (probably a normal and common reaction). I could just as well freeze and surrender. I could just as much be overwhelmed by the situation and submit to my attacker(s).

That's the thing about hypotheticals: You don't know how you'll react until the abstract becomes concrete.

Joshua Frye knows that.

But the math-teacher-by-day, martial-arts-master-by-night also knows that training and preparation can be the difference between landing in the ICU (or worse) and getting out of a dicey situation with only some bumps and bruises.

Frye, 38, runs Training Grounds Martial Arts Academy in Estero where he offers an array of martial arts courses, including an Israeli Self-Defense class that combines Frye's 31 years of fighting experience with elements of Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed for the Israeli Defense Forces.

On a recent March evening, I stepped into Frye's gym eager to join his self-defense class and learn a thing or two about what to do when the unthinkable becomes reality.

As Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name" blasts from the speakers, Frye tells our group of about a dozen participants to hop on the mat.

"Let's have some fun," says Frye. "This is reality-based self-defense so everything we do has a purpose and most of it is all gross motor movements."

The goal is simple, Frye explains: "Worst case scenario, how to (expletive) somebody up."

(Sidenote: The cursing, Frye tells us, is on purpose: "Those words, those things can decompose people. If you're never used to that kind of verbiage, people tend to decompose and that could be a stresser. And we want our guys to be desensitized to that.")

We partner up and each pair grabs a "tombstone pad," which  although it sounds terrifying  is simply a handheld pad, shaped like a pyramid with its top cut off.

First, we want to work on our "combatives," Frye explains. And there is no holding back.

"This is the type of punching that we want to overwhelm them with more violence," he says. "This is about overwhelming them and not stopping.

"It doesn't have to be pretty, it's not set up. All I want you to do is hit the pad aggressively and the partners are going to keep circling. Partners, keep your chins down, just in case they slide off the mat."

And just like that, it's "wartime."

My partner, Jason Toledo, a brawny aspiring law enforcement officer who has been attending the class for about a year, is starting us off, relentlessly striking the tombstone pad as I try to keep my balance and absorb the flurry of punches.

Immediately, I feel adrenaline pumping through my veins as Toledo sinks one hook after another into the pad, bending it backward as if he was punching through a pillow.

My breathing starts to quicken. Every fiber in my body tenses up. Sweat starts to pour from my every pore. My surroundings start to blur. Heavy metal drones somewhere in the distance. Here and there I hear encouraging commands from Frye.

Then finally, he yells: "Time! Ten sit-ups! Go!"

Toledo drops down as I try my best to catch my breath. My heart is beating through my chest. I didn't expect that kind of baptism by fire. My arms are already tired just from holding the pad.

But now it's my turn.

First, I feel self-conscious and even awkward punching the lifeless pad. But it's not long before I start working myself into a rhythm.

Right. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right.

My brain motors down as my arms rev up. My thoughts go quiet as my fists grow louder. Like possessed, I continue to work the pad.

Then, after 30 seconds that feel like 30 minutes pass: "Time!"

Already huffing and puffing, I drop to the mat to crank out the sit-ups.

Now, Round 2: Hammer fist punching.

"Guys, those are $110 pads you have there," Frye says. "Beat the hell out of them, alright. 3-2-1. Wartime. Let's go!"

A hailstorm of forearms and knuckles comes down on the sorry pad, courtesy of Toledo. This time  knowing what to expect  I have a better time withstanding the frenzied aggression. Still, it's exhausting.

And so once again, after Frye yells time and Toledo drops down to knock out 10 push-ups, I'm gasping for air.

"So Patrick, you see that feeling you have right now?" Frye asks me. "That's the adrenaline going."

It's how I would be feeling during the first seconds of a real-life altercation, Frye explains.

"So I try to repeat that every time we're in class so you get comfortable with that," he says.

Adrenaline still racing through my veins, I return the favor, giving the pad my best shot(s) before we move on to Round 3: elbow striking.

"These are really effective across the face. They're really effective across the collarbone. They're really effective across the jaw," Frye explains.

Toledo and I again take turns hammering the poor pad before finishing Round 3 off with two controlled falls to the mat.

I'm completely drained.

But there is no time to rest. Round 4 awaits: the clinch.

In this attack, we grab our partner's neck with both hands, pull his head down beside ours and start kneeing the pad.

"If you've ever been hit by a really good knee in the gut, the liver, your arteries here, it makes you get wobbly," Frye explains.

Toledo starts us off again: Clinch, deliver three knees, push away. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then, after 10 "bicycles," it's my turn. Summoning my last bit of energy and strength left, I follow his lead.

Clinch. Knee. Push. Clinch. Knee. Push. Clinch. Knee. Push.

After a quick water break, we move on to "street scenarios."

"There's no plan to violence," Frye explains. "There's no script. They're not going to follow your plan. You need to have awareness of common street attacks."

Our first scenario: An attacker has us by the throat and pushed up against a wall.

To escape our adversary's squeeze we use what's called the "monkey grip" and simultaneously move our chest forward like Superman. But first we have to "short-circuit" our foe's brain, Frye explains.

"In Israeli Martial Arts a short-circuit is a hit to the groin," he adds.

What follows is a well-placed elbow between the ear and neck, which shocks the attacker by interrupting the blood flow. Then the goal is to slam your foe into the wall as hard as you can, Frye explains. (The wall we're using is cushioned, by the way.)

"From here I don't want to turn my back," Frye says. "I want to go ahead and hit him in the leg. I want to hit him in the body. I'm going to use my hammer fist, my elbow strikes, my knee strikes. And push and get distance and run."

We take turns practicing the combination before moving on to the next scenario. This time we're being choked out in the open with no wall to our backs.

The solution: Step back, drop the hips, raise the arm and break the attacker's grip.

After a few practice turns, Frye calls us back to continue to build onto the scenario.

Once you break free, it's an elbow between the attacker's ear and neck and then an over  or underhook. Then, Frye explains, you can use your knees to hit your foe or even step on his foot to push him back and break his ankle.

To the tune of Limp Bizkit we put the move to the test (sans ankle breaking, of course).

Then it's on to the grand finale: How to deal with an up-close firearm threat.

"My whole objective is to first comply right away," Frye explains. "The reason why I'm attacking or grabbing a firearm is because I can't get distance, I know that if I leave or if I just comply my life might be over. There's a certain sixth sense you have."

In that case, Frye says, here's what you do: First, comply. No eye contact. Hands up in front of your face.

"I want his level of stress to go down," Frye says.

Then, in one fluid motion, the objective is to move your head out of the line of fire while simultaneously stepping forward, grabbing the gun underneath the trigger guard (hopefully jamming it in the process) and pulling it over your shoulder. Next, you move your other hand over his arm, squeezing and grabbing your own forearm.

"When I grab this, his natural response is to pull back," Frye says.

Then, you twist the gun toward him until he has to let go, and start hitting him in the face with it.

"I clear backwards," Frye says, as he hops back now holding the black rubber gun replica. "Now jam one occurred. I'm going to re-slap the magazine, I'm going to rap the firearm toward my target and look both ways and make sure there's no friends."

For the last time tonight, Toledo and I take turns practicing the move before Frye signals the end of the class and thanks us for our participation.

"Tonight we reviewed working with combatives, because gross motor movements are going to save you in a real altercation," Frye tells us. "I also applaud you because you're taking the time to learn real self-defense because most people don't. And I believe that everybody should take a real self-defense class. Why? Because knowledge empowers you. Gives you more confidence. It makes you less likely to become victim."

That was part of the draw for Toledo, who has been coming to Frye's class for more than a year.

"I wanted to change my life," says Toledo, 24. "I've had scenarios where just I felt uncomfortable in a situation and I always wanted to feel prepared and feel more confident about the situation."

Plus, the class acts as a stress reliever for him between working and studying criminal justice at Florida Gulf Coast University.

"It's a lifestyle," he tells me. "That's the whole mentality."

IF YOU GO

Israeli Self-Defense classes

When: 7 to 8 p.m., Monday and Wednesday

Where: Training Grounds Martial Arts Academy in Estero, 20451 U.S. 41 S., Unit 8, Estero, FL 33928

Cost: First three classes for $19.99; 12-month membership for $125

Information: Visit traininggroundsma.com or call 239-405-7410
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Help sought for an American tradition

As a community we are moving forward with plans for the 2016 Independence Day Celebration on Marco Island. The purpose of this letter is to ask for your help in sustaining the level and quality of this year's fireworks display, which is such an important part of our American cultural tradition.

This year, the total cost is $52,000 for our fireworks display. What complicates this event for Marco Island is the requirement of a large commercial barge (which is approximately 30 percent of the total cost). The Marco Island City Council has voted to contribute $26,000. Donations/contributions from businesses and individuals will make up the remainder of the funds needed.

The fireworks display attracts many visitors to Marco Island who consequently contribute to the Island's summer economy  just when we need it most.

I hope you will donate what you can to Marco Island's long-standing fireworks display this year. For your contribution, you will be recognized, by name, through our annual "Thank You" spot in the local newspapers and on the Chamber of Commerce website.

Please make your contribution payable to the Marco Island Fireworks Fund and mail to:

Marco Island Area Chamber of Commerce

Fireworks Fund

1102 North Collier Blvd.

Marco Island, FL 34145

If you prefer, you are welcome to bring your contribution to our offices in person. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call on us. Your support for this important community celebration is greatly appreciated!

Sandi Riedemann

Executive Director, Marco Island Area Chamber of Commerce

Health insurance

There are two measures of the efficacy of a country's health care system  life expectancy and infant mortality rate.

According to the CIA, the U.S. ranks 28th and 39th, respectively. This pitiful showing results from being the only industrialized nation without the right to universal health care.

A majority of Republicans view health care as a privilege, not a right, and are the only group, not just in the U.S., but in the world, with this viewpoint.

The Affordable Care Act is an attempt to broaden health care coverage and improve our rankings. While flawed, it does recognize that it cannot work without participation by the young and the healthy. The act has been trashed by all of the Republican presidential hopefuls.

Their solution is to break down the artificial "lines" which limit the insurance companies from selling their products in all states.

Their solution will not work because the health insurance industry has been exempted from antitrust regulations since 1941. They can, and do, allocate markets and fix prices. They have already divided up the states to maximize their profitability and have no intention of changing even if asked nicely by a Republican president.

Richard Coddington

Naples and Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Who needs a clean, safer world?

Abolish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is the rallying cry of some politicians running for president. Why not?

As a former partner in a small chemical company, safe disposal of toxic chemical waste was a financial burden to us. Gone were the days we could dump our waste down the sewer drain without concern of polluting the water/land environment.

So what if it was the source of cancer or some other disease in humans or animals? Come on!

The EPA regulations affected our bottom line.

Without those regulations, I may have been able to purchase a Mercedes instead of a Ford. It wouldn't mean that I would have hired another chemist, just more in my pocket.

Consider the money larger companies have to absorb to keep the kids and grandkids and the world environment safe. What a waste of cash!

Let us join those smart politicians and support their efforts to eliminate the EPA.

Who needs a clean, safer world?

Henry S. Kolesinski

Naples
Taylor Firth portrays Anna from "Frozen" in Disney On Ice.

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By Dave Osborn of the Naples Daily News

Taylor Firth skated competitively for years, and now those who evaluate her performances are much younger and often wear costumes.

The Grand Island, New York, native portrays Anna from the popular animated film "Frozen" in "Disney On Ice" at Germain Arena in Estero through Sunday.

"I'm bringing to life a character so many people love and enjoy," said Firth, 25, in a recent telephone interview. She noted that, as a kid, the first "Disney On Ice" she attended was the original "Toy Story" version.

Firth has had time to perfect her role before arriving in Southwest Florida; Firth said she has performed as Anna in 800 shows, since September 2014.

Firth joined Disney's shows at age 19, skating in roles including Jessie in the ice production of "Toy Story 3" and Merida, the main character in the 2012 Disney/Pixar animated movie "Brave."

Before becoming an ice princess, she was an ice figure skating star. Firth began at age 7 and skated for about a dozen years, in U.S. national and other competitions.

The difference between figure skating and ice shows is there's less pressure performing with Disney.

"With competitive figure skating, it's one shot and you're done," she said.

In 2010, she starred in the remake of the 1978 film "Ice Castles."

Firth said preparing for Disney ice shows still requires a lot of planning and practicing. It took six weeks to "build" the current "Disney On Ice" show and skaters rehearse an hour a week, excluding their own practice time.

Internationally recognized world-class skaters perform with "Disney On Ice," Firth said.

"We're always pushing each other to get better, technically and performance wise," she said.

"While we've done this so many times, the audience is seeing the show for the first time."

Firth said she had to adjust to a different form of skating when she began with Disney. A total 40 skaters are in the "Frozen" cast, she said.

"As a single skater, I was used to being the only one on the ice when I was performing," she said. "There's now close to 10 to 15 people on the ice."

Not to mention a big fountain on the ice, Firth added.

"It's a challenge but it's fun at the same time. It's not just skating, it's performing. I love what I do."

The "Frozen" show lasts two hours and include an intermission, she said. It begins with Mickey and Minnie Mouse discussing ways to show love, with the audience seeing examples of other films including "The Lion King" and "Finding Nemo."

The U.S. leg of the tour ends in Cincinnati in mid-May, then the "Frozen" show moves to Japan, Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

"There are days when it's kind of tiring. We average close to 50 shows a month," Firth said.

"But at the end, I love what I do. When I get tired, I see little kids dressed up as the same character that I am. And that puts everything in perspective."

IF YOU GO

DISNEY ON ICE 'FROZEN'

When: 7 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. and 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Germain Arena, 11000 Everblades Parkway, Estero

Cost: $30-$150

Information: germainarena.com or 239-948-7825
SHARE David Daniels Jr. Phillip Bouie

By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

Naples Police say two men broke into a home March 9 along the 1400 block of 28th Avenue North and stole firearms.

David Daniels Jr., 24, of Naples was arrested by Collier deputies March 11. Phillip Bouie, 27, of Lehigh Acres was arrested by Lee deputies Friday.

Both men face charges of armed burglary of an unoccupied dwelling and grand theft of a firearm.

According to a press release, surveillance footage from the home showed two men driving a blue Nissan Sentra during the crime.

Investigators were able to identify the vehicle and track it to its owner in Lehigh Acres.

Lee deputies executed a search warrant at a home in Lehigh Acres where they recovered some of the stolen firearms.
In this file photo, tidal flow passes through Clam Pass on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014, in Naples. (David Albers/Staff)

By Ryan Mills of the Naples Daily News

With a long-awaited federal permit in hand, Collier County commissioners on Tuesday are set to consider an expedited dredging of Clam Pass barely a month before the May 1 start of sea turtle nesting season.

To get started quickly, the Pelican Bay Services Division, which manages Clam Bay and Clam Pass, is asking commissioners to declare that emergency conditions exist at the pass, division director Neil Dorrill said.

That declaration will allow for a compressed bidding window, which kicked off March 4.

State law requires a 30-day window for projects over $500,000, unless an emergency exists. If commissioners make the emergency declaration, bidding would close Wednesday.

The cost of the project is estimated at just over $450,000, according to county records.

"Interest seems high. Obviously, we have no idea how many bids we'll actually receive," said Dorrill, noting that four contractors attended a pre-bid conference. "We have a very narrow window here to allow the necessary work to be done, and we're trying to take advantage of that."

The pass, which was partially dredged in 2013, has not closed, but is constricted. About 19,000 cubic yards of sand have accumulated there over the last few years.

Tidal flow in and out of Clam Pass is critical for maintaining the saltwater-freshwater balance and the health of the shallow, mangrove-lined estuary that fronts the Pelican Bay and Seagate neighborhoods. Heavy winter rains along the coast  278 percent higher than normal from Nov. 2 to Feb. 19, according to county reports  have impaired tidal circulation.

"There's another kind of small (mangrove) die-off, stress areas in the upper reaches of the pass that, in my opinion, is the result of insufficient flows out of that northern system," said Tim Hall, the consultant who helped secure the federal permit.

The pass is also used for boaters to access the Gulf of Mexico.

The county has been seeking a federal permit to dredge the pass for more than a year. In February, Commissioner Georgia Hiller met in Washington, D.C. ,with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers leader in hopes of speeding things along.

The county received its 10-year permit on March 11.

Dorrill said he is confident the dredging can be completed before turtle nesting season begins, as engineers have estimated the project will take about three weeks. His team had been working on the project plans and specifications before receiving the permit. They've also left open the option of asking for separate pricing to work around the clock or in extended shifts to meet their deadline.

There would be additional constraints and monitoring required if the project were to extend into turtle nesting system.

Hall said he doesn't expect any significant push-back from commissioners.

"I would hope not. I think everybody understands that the dredging is needed," he said. "I would hope they would let it go through without any further issues."

The Pelican Bay Services Division Board is holding a special session at 4 p.m. on Monday to discuss the Clam Pass construction. The meeting will be at the Community Center at Pelican Bay, 8960 Hammock Oak Drive in North Naples.
Science Director Kathy Worley, from left, intern Ian Easterling, biologist Ian Bartoszek, and volunteer Cailin Prokop-Ervin stand over five of the largest Burmese pythons at a laboratory on the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's campus Thursday, March 17, 2016 in Naples. The snakes were captured as part of a three month long active search to seek out and humanly euthanize the invasive species to be used for research and further understanding. (Luke Franke/Staff)

SHARE Conservancy of Southwest Florida biologist Ian Bartoszek stands over five of the largest Burmese pythons his team has captured during a three-month period to give his research team a better understanding of the invasive species on the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's campus Thursday, March 17, 2016 in Naples. (Luke Franke/Staff) Conservancy of Southwest Florida wildlife biologist Ian Bartoszek pulls a snake out of an armadillo burrow on private land in rural Collier County in March 8, 2016. The female python was among some 40 of the invasive snakes the Conservancy captured during this breeding season. The joint project of the Conservancy, Denison University in Ohio, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Southwest Florida Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area uses radio-tagged pythons to lead researchers to breeding aggregations. (Photo courtesy of Conservancy of SWF) Five of the largest Burmese pythons, all over 15 feet in length, stretch across a laboratory on the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's campus Thursday, March 17, 2016 in Naples. The longest of which stretched to 16 feet in length. The snakes were captured as part of a three month long active search to seek out and humanly euthanize the invasive species to be used for research and further understanding. (Luke Franke/Staff) Conservancy of Southwest Florida volunteer Ian Easterling, left, and Dr. Paul Andreadis, an affiliated scholar from Denison University, show how to identify a python as male or female based on the length of the snakes' spurs toward the end of their body at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's campus Thursday, March 17, 2016 in Naples. The snakes were captured as part of a three month long active search to seek out and humanly euthanize the invasive species to be used for research and further understanding. (Luke Franke/Staff) Related Photos Big Pythons!

By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

As the python trackers traipsed through the brush, the radio receiver's beeps got louder. They were getting closer, but to what, they couldn't tell.

The signal came from a radio-tagged python. Trackers hoped the so-called "snitch snake" would lead them to a breeding aggregation of the invasive species that is overrunning the Everglades, including Southwest Florida. The idea was to capture the non-tagged snakes and get them out of the ecosystem.

"We got through the scrub oak trees, and, 'Bam!'" said Conservancy of Southwest Florida wildlife biologist Ian Bartoszek.

There it was, lying in an S-shape in tall grass in a remote corner of Collier County, a big python, so big they thought it was a female, which grow larger than males. A closer look showed it was a male. But not just any male  the biggest male python any of them had ever seen, and maybe the biggest male python recorded in South Florida: 16-feet long and 140 pounds.

Of the five largest male pythons captured in and around Everglades National Park since 2003, the largest weighed 97 pounds, park spokeswoman Linda Friar said. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that the biggest male python in the FWC's records measures 12-feet-9-inches.

The trackers nicknamed the giant constrictor Colossus, one of 43 pythons the team captured this breeding season from mid-December to mid-March. It was the most successful capture season since the radio-tracking project began in 2013, Bartoszek said. In all, the team pulled 2,000 pounds of python out of the woods of rural Collier County, roughly east of Collier Boulevard and along U.S. 41 East.

On Thursday, the magnitude of Southwest Florida's python problem laid on a Conservancy lab table. A piece of plywood extended the table to fit Colossus and four similarly sized females caught this season. They had been euthanized for animal autopsies to determine, among other things, what they have been eating and how many eggs the team had kept from hatching. Each female could carry 50 eggs, they said.

While it's hard to quantify how big of a dent the team is putting in the Southwest Florida python population, capture team member Paul Andreadis said it has to be helping.

"I feel like we shouldn't throw up our hands and say, 'Oh well, the genie's out of the bottle,'" said Andreadis, an affiliated scholar at Denison University in Ohio.

The goal of the radio-tagging experiment  a joint project of the Conservancy, Denison, the U.S. Geological Survey, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, and the Southwest Florida Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area  is to hone the capture process so other private and public land managers can turn back their own python invasions.

The problem with pythons is that they are apex predators that scientists say are destroying populations of native animals like raccoons, rabbits, wading birds, and even deer.

Radio-tagged pythons are teaching scientists more about where pythons live in Southwest Florida, where the terrain is different from python territory in swampier parts of Everglades National Park. For example, adult pythons seem to spend more time in upland habitats in drier, cooler months and more time in swamps in the rainy summer months. Trackers have found pythons in burrows of gopher tortoises and armadillos, indicating that they might be good places to look for breeders.

"We're starting to crack the code," Bartoszek said. "This year, we were ready to rumble with these animals."

But nobody was expecting to find what the team walked up on two weeks ago in Rookery Bay reserve.

Like pythons, the bags used to carry them out of the wild are different sizes. Smaller pythons can fit in a bag about the size of a pillowcase. Larger ones need to go into a backpack. For the biggest ones, the team uses a bag duck hunters use to pack up their decoys.

Colossus needed the decoy bag, but at first, the team just stuck the python's head into the pillowcase-sized bag, tying the bag around its neck. Conservancy tracker Cailin Prokop-Ervin held it down while the others went looking for the radio-tagged python and, hopefully, more snakes. When Colossus tried to wriggle backward out of the bag, she grabbed his tail, too. When that didn't work, she laid on top of it until the rest of the team came back.

Rookery Bay managers drove a pickup to within a couple hundred yards of the capture team. They put Colossus in the decoy bag, and preserve worker Greg Curry strapped it across his back. Bartoszek and Conservancy tracker Ian Easterling walked behind him, holding up the corners of the bag.

On Thursday, with the big python stretched out on the lab table, Bartoszek said it looked bigger than he remembered.

"It kind of makes you wonder, in the next 10 years, what will we be dealing with?" he said. "Place your bets."
By Maryann Batlle of the Naples Daily News

The Estero Council of Community Leaders will continue its legal fight against Lee County and the developer of a proposed gated community known as Corkscrew Farms, the group's lawyer said Thursday.

Lee Circuit Court Judge Alane Laboda dismissed the complaint filed by the ECCL and the Responsible Growth Management Coalition. The ECCL and RGMC lawsuit challenges how Lee County came to grant Cameratta Companies permission to build as many as 1,325 homes on a property within a groundwater resource area known as the DRGR. Cameratta Companies, added itself to the lawsuit as a defendant.

In her order, Laboda said the ECCL and RGMC failed to establish they have any "legally recognized rights" to sue. She gave them 20 days to return with an amended complaint or her order would stand.

Ralf Brookes, their lawyer, said the ECCL and RGMC will file the updated complaint within that window of time rather than appeal Laboda's order or end the lawsuit.

The disputed project is often referred to as "Corkscrew Farms." Cameratta Companies, based in Fort Myers, has since named it The Place at Corkscrew.

The project's land sits on Corkscrew Road, about six miles east of the Interstate 75 interchange and well outside of the village of Estero boundaries,

The ECCL and RGMC argue the impacts of a gated community on that property would go against Lee County's stated goals for the DRGR and would harm wildlife in the largely rural area.

Lee County policy created the DRGR area in the early 1990s and have restricted development there because the land was deemed crucial for Lee's drinking water supply.

Cameratta has promised the county on-site perks, such as 700 acres of preservation land and a few acres for a new fire district station.

Laboda said in her order the ECCL and RGMC failed to prove they have legal standing to sue, such as ownership of an adjacent property. Brookes said this case is "unusual" because the Cameratta Companies property on east Corkscrew Road is so secluded. He will ask Laboda to consider a broader interpretation that is allowed under state law, Brookes said.

"There really aren't any neighboring property owners," Brookes said. "There are Florida Panthers."
Michael D Roe, left, and Jacob Bruce Bickel, right.

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By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

Two Naples men were arrested this week on charges of sharing images and videos of child pornography with each other. Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced their arrest in a press release Thursday.



Michael Donald Roe, 18, was arrested by FDLE agents for 20 counts of possession of child pornography and booked in the Collier County Jail. He is being held on a $200,000 bond.



The other man, 22-year-old Jacob Bruce Bickel, is a registered sex offender who was being held in Sarasota County Jail on an unrelated investigation at the time of this arrest.



Bickel was charged with six counts of transmission of child pornography, 37 counts of possession of child pornography, five counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child, two counts of certain uses of a computer device prohibited, three counts of transmission of materials harmful to minors and one count of failure to comply with sexual offender registration requirements. He is being held without bond.



Reports show Bickel had addresses in Naples and Sarasota but also visited his parents in Naples where he used their computers to download and view child pornography.



Reports show Bickel began swapping files with Roe who was later contacted by FDLE agents in November. Roe told agents he and Bickel talked about kids they spoke to through the messaging app Kik. Both Roe and Bickel would convince the boys they spoke with to take photos of themselves nude and performing sexual acts, which they would then save and share with each other.



Many of the images agents later found depicted children under the age of 12 and as young as 9.
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By Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP)  Nine days after being shot during a traffic stop, a Florida detective has been released from the hospital.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said Friday on its Twitter account that the undercover narcotics detective had been released. He was shot March 9 in the head, upper body and hand by 19-year-old Kevin Rojas. Rojas had threatened earlier that day to harm his girlfriend and commit suicide.

The detective was not identified.

The detective had his teen son in the car and was going drop him at school when he pulled Rojas' white Cadillac over for driving recklessly.

Rojas was later shot by two officers after he fled the scene.

He survived and was hospitalized and will be charged with attempted murder and other charges.
Where to give, get supplies, help in Collier County after Hurricane Ian
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Gov. Rick Scott chose a skill saw for this year's budget cuts instead of the chain saw he used a year ago, but Southwest Florida is still losing some important digits nonetheless.

Scott's office this week shared a list of vetoes he plans to exercise when he receives the Legislature's budget. The governor plans to veto $256.1 million, mostly for localized line items across the state in the $82.3 billion budget for 2016-17.

A year ago, Scott's vetoes smacked of political payback to leadership in the Senate, which split from the governor and House in their respective approaches to providing medical aid to lower-income folks. Scott's vetoes of $461 million in last year's $78 billion budget included initiatives important to the Senate's top leaders, President Andy Gardiner and Pro Tempore Garrett Richter, R-Naples.

This year, however, there was no health-care meltdown and a kinder, gentler end to the session. Gardiner this week called Scott's veto list "very fair" and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said the governor acted in a "prudent and fair manner."

Even so, one Scott veto hurts health care in Southwest Florida. Some other lost digits can't be pinned on Scott, however, because the initiatives weren't even included in the budget headed to his desk.

Healthcare Network

For the second year in a row, a veto hits Healthcare Network of Southwest Florida, founded in 1977 in Immokalee to serve farm workers and the rural poor. The nonprofit has grown to about 20 locations; dozens of services for nearly 42,000 patients of all ages, mostly children; and 350 employees.

Despite a line item veto a year ago, the agency moved forward with a collaborative venture in East Naples with Senior Friendship Center on a new clinic.

Late last year, CEO Mike Ellis asked local lawmakers for $5 million toward a proposed $15 million medical center to offer family, specialty and dental services in Golden Gate. The need is substantial, so Scott's veto list regrettably eliminates $3 million for Healthcare Network. An agency spokeswoman said Thursday it would have been for the Golden Gate clinic.

Scott's veto list includes other health clinic programs in Florida, too. At least the budget included $10 million to assist charitable health clinics statewide.

Identity theft

Another unfortunate loss was an innovative program Hodges University had proposed to battle escalating identity theft.

Hodges, with campuses in North Naples and Fort Myers, intended to ask the Legislature a year ago for $250,000 to create an Identity Fraud Institute but to its credit moved forward on its own. This year, Hodges sought $600,000 for certificate and degree programs to train professionals in risk management, technology and identity protection strategies to benefit both individuals and companies.

The money wasn't included in the final legislative budget, program director Carrie Kerskie said Thursday, adding institute staff will meet next week to regroup.

FGCU

On the plus side, Scott's veto list for higher education projects spares $3.9 million for an FGCU Integrated Watershed and Coastal Studies initiative.

Based on memos from Scott's office and Florida Gulf Coast University staff, it appears FGCU also will receive $1 million to start worthwhile programs aligned with regional workforce needs. Any dollars help, but FGCU sought $3.75 million for academic programs in construction management; supply chain coordination and business/health care data analysis  such graduates are in demand in the region.

The Legislature also didn't include $600,000 to help make sure newer students start on the right paths, a great idea so that fewer change plans in junior and senior years.

Survivors

Collier County's business accelerator fell to a Scott veto a year ago but thankfully $2 million that could create innovative food industry jobs in the Immokalee area isn't on the list this time.

Another important survivor to the region's economy is $8 million for research into citrus greening, a devastating tree disease. We're hopeful the recently expanded successful research center in Immokalee will see its share of that money.
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Ralph R. Miano, Naples

Flee before arrest

How can anyone ignore the statistics in this article: 42 of the 45 fugitives from serious crimes were Hispanics, many of them here illegally.

This is consistent with the data regularly reported in the Daily News. These criminals caused immeasurable grief to the families of those who were killed or injured.

The performance of the police upon capture and release of these perpetrators is totally unacceptable. I also want to point out the goofy comment by Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Lt. Greg Bueno: "I would hope, ethically, that person would answer to those charges."

He hopes perpetrators who committed the crimes turn themselves in.

This is the same Lt. Bueno who was quoted in a Daily News article regarding traffic fatalities in Florida, "Fatal wrecks on the rise" in January in which he copped out by arguing the difficulty to substantiate the charges as well as his final pearl of wisdom  it ultimately comes down to the drivers.

The Florida DOT fatalities in 2015 exceeded the DOT target by 40 percent.

The Florida FHP, DOT and local police organizations are doing a poor overall job in not only reducing the number of fatal and debilitating traffic accidents, especially related to drunken driving, but also the process of incarcerating the perps when they are captured at the scene of the crime.

I laud the Daily News in publishing two comprehensive articles on traffic fatalities within three months. I trust that the state and local police organizations apply the same diligence to this problem as the Daily News reported on it.
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Al Hannigan, Naples

Regulation

Republicans say they are against government regulation because it is bad for business and the economy, even though there is no evidence that lack of regulation is good for the economy.

The real reason they oppose regulation is that it relieves them of any responsibility for the health and welfare of the consumer and public, and it increases profits for the people who support them financially.

No wonder they say they are against it, since it benefits them personally. The sad fact is that through relentless spending of money for propaganda (read Jane Mayer's book Dark Money) to get the public to buy their self-serving ideas they have convinced many people that government regulation is a bad thing.

Yes, it is bad for them, but not the public. In fact, government oversight is, by far, a good thing for public health and safety when done without the interference of highly paid lobbyists.

Here is one good example of the harm caused by the absence of regulation.

You could die from an infectious disease because you have ingested antibiotics in your food. Those antibiotics will cause you to no longer be able to benefit from an antibiotic you receive from your doctor. The antibiotics are in your food because farm animals are fed antibiotics to get them to grow larger than otherwise. (Scientific American, March 2016).

This could happen to you because there is insufficient regulation of the sale of antibiotics to the food industry. Why so many Republicans are unwilling to act to protect the health and safety of Americans is an interesting question for another time.
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Joanne Irwin, Naples

Unleashed and revealed

Sen. Marco Rubio has repeatedly stated that the responsibility for the divisiveness and violence we're witnessing in American politics rests with President Obama.

Right and wrong.

It began with his election  right  but what came to fruition was the reality that bigotry still exists in this country. Bigotry was unveiled and released. A black man was elected president and far too many in this country still have trouble with the color of someone's skin.

So is our president to blame for the violence we're now witnessing? Wrong! The onus falls on the likes of Donald Trump, who is openly fomenting violence and rhetoric, the likes of which we haven't seen in American politics in a long time.

Shame, shame, Mr. Trump. Go back to New York and Trump Towers where you belong. You have no right to lead anything. Your true colors have been revealed, and they're dark and ugly.

Borderline personalities and narcissism are dangerous ingredients from which to run a country. If Trump is elected, that's exactly who we'll have at the helm. Is that what we want for our great democracy?
ech4Good SWFL will hold its monthly meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5 at Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church, 1225 Piper Blvd., Naples, for staff and volunteers at non-profit organizations. The topic will be using digital media as a storytelling tool, to raise brand awareness, engage current and potential supporters, and highlight the mission and work of a non-profit organization. Meeting admission and membership are free, and a light dinner is provided by Nicos Catering for RSVPs received by April 5 to organizers@tech4goodswfl.org. Walk-ins to attend the meeting only are welcome. Learn more at http://tech4goodswfl.org.
In 1997, Fiddlers Creek responded to Collier County Schools Building Bridges program by forming a partnership with nearby Manatee Elementary School in which residents of the master-planned community collected toys to help students in need have a brighter Christmas. Today, that partnership has flourished; while the communitys support still includes the toy drive, Fiddlers Creek residents organize an annual school supply effort, collect funds through an annual Turkey Trot to help teachers purchase classroom supplies, and volunteer in classrooms as mentors and aides to work directly with kids in the Title I school.



Title I schools are those with a large enrollment or a high percentage of children from low-income families.



Last week, residents efforts were celebrated at Fiddlers Creek by Collier County Commissioner Donna Fiala, Collier County Public Schools Superintendent Kamela Patton, Manatee Elementary Principal Wendy Borowski, and school board members Kathy Curatalo and Roy Terry, who were among the luncheons 40 guests.



Aubrey Ferrao, CEO of Fiddlers Creek, thanked his residents for their commitment and generosity and challenged communities throughout Collier County to adopt Title I schools. Education is one of the most powerful, transformational advantages any child can have, said Ferrao. By helping our Title I kids be successful, we are strengthening the fabric of our communities, while helping to brighten the future for these students, their families  and for us all. I join with our education leaders in encouraging other communities and residents to adopt a Title I school, and to help nurture the students with your time, treasure and talents.



Our residents have made such a positive impact on the lives of Manatee Elementary students and their families because they feel its important to give back, said Ron Albeit, general manager of Fiddlers Creek. We know there are other schools that would benefit from a similar partnership with a master-planned community.



Last summer Fiddlers Creek residents donated 59 backpacks, 10 uniforms, 39 pairs of shoes, 139 composition books, and enough school essentials to check off the back-to-school supply lists for dozens of Manatee Elementary students.



Fiddlers Creek has supported us for a long time, and the residents have seen the different needs we have had over the years, said Borowski. We can assure our children not to worry, that we will have what they need and that is because of what Fiddlers Creek does for us.



For membership details and more information about Fiddlers Creek, call 239-732-9300, stop by the Fiddlers Creek Information Center at 8152 Fiddlers Creek Parkway, or visit www.fiddlerscreek.com.
When two of my German teenage granddaaughters spent sometime in Clonmel last summer, they told me that the very first place they wanted to see was the 'deserted village'. I knew that this deserted village had no connection with Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' in the midlands. It was not really a village at all, but scattered clusters of ruined houses in the beautiful valley of Glenary in the Comerage foothills.

When two of my German teenage granddaaughters spent sometime in Clonmel last summer, they told me that the very first place they wanted to see was the 'deserted village'. I knew that this deserted village had no connection with Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' in the midlands. It was not really a village at all, but scattered clusters of ruined houses in the beautiful valley of Glenary in the Comerage foothills.

They had spent much time in the hills when they were small children, picking blackberries, playing hide-and-seek, sliding over damp rocks into streams; shrieking with excitement, laughing with joy and pleasure.

So, one very sunny, very warm day in late August, we walked to Glenary. We did not go directly over the hills at Scrouthea, but via Kilmacomma, and the old wandering track which had once been the main access to the village.

We took this route because it is now only accessible in a very dry summer.

In other seasons of the year (and even in a rainy summer) it is deeply rutted, flooded, overgrown, with patches of the most viscous mud, from which it becomes difficult to extract any walking boot.

There were five of us, two grandparents, a daughter, the two granddaughters, all walking single-file through the narrow boreen, holding to one side the long brambles, to allow each other to pass.

Pennyworth filled the chinks in the old loose stone walls; masses of foxgloves grew on the clay-banks.

I did what I normally do - I gave a running commentary on the history and geography of the terrain. Even long suffering daughter now knows that making visual eye-contact to tell me to 'shut up' no longer works.

I told them where, well over a century ago, the Baggs family lived on the turn of the boreen. No evidence of their home now remains, except a modern gate which replaced the old wooden-gate entrance to their farmyard.

We took a left turn, by-passing the track to the stream, where stepping stones lead to another track and Hogan's house on the north-facing side of the valley, now Coillte woodland.

There were no bumps in the landscape which could be identifiedl as once the homes of the O'Gormans and the Houlihans. Time and luxuriant summer growth had blotted them out. But a little further on, having crossed a dry gully, which becomes a raging streamlet in winter, we came to our first identifiable clochan, the ruins of a housing cluster where once the Lyons, the Maguires, the Hallihans and the Currans lived.

The clochan was a feature of the Comeraghs, groupings of houses which shared a common entrace or a farmyard. These were a feature of the Highlands of Scotland, obliterated when the lairds, in converting their lands into sheep-walks, evicted their tenants in the infamous 'Clearances' of the 18th century. And thus began the significant and influential Scottish communities in Canada.

Granddaughters, thoughtful and silent, stepped over mounds of loose stones to look at old fireplaces, now filled with ash sapplings, and stood in the gaping doorway of what was once Elly Gorman's barn, for a photograph.

From here on the boreen narrows and containing walls have collapsed, but we did make our way to the still identifiable (and only just) clochan, the group of houses which belonged to the Burkes, the Mulcahys and the Healys.

Tom Burke was the last inhabitant of the valley. He was a gentleman, well known to us hill-walkers, who would call whenever we passed by. His house was picture-postcard; thatched roof, white walls, red door, surrounded by tall hollyhocks. With his dog, Jess, for company, he lived there until the early 1960s and was only a few days in hospital when he died.

The community of which he was a member numbered 56 im the census of 1901, most of whom spoke only Irish. The Burkes and the Ireland family, living higher up the hillside, spoke English.

The valley children went to Russellstown school. The Ireland children, climbed the hill, walked over the Old Bridge and attended the Model School in Western Road. Jessie Ireland, the last of the family, was postmistress in Kilmeaden where she died about ten years ago.

We had to take a detour through the small sloping fields to reach the last house, Walshes, where Sycamores now grow through what was once a roof.

So how, Oma, granddaughters asked (when I had stopped my spiel) "do you know all of this?" Well, I researched old estate records, I told them, but most of what I know is what Ben Guiry told me. He put names on the dots on my map. He knows more about this valley (and other Comeragh valleys) than anybody else alive. He knows the habitations, the land divisions, the traditions, the customs; he even knows the ghosts, I said.

"The ghosts", said granddaughters with a shiver. So I told them about the most feared ghost, the very big white dog that comes silently out of the mists and has always been a messenger of death and tragedy.

It will be just my luck, I thought, if some white mongrel, escaping from its owner, will jump over a ditch and spoil my scary atmospheric apple-cart. But none did.

We were all strangely quiet (even me) as we retraced our steps over the old tracks. Warmed by the sun, and wrapped in the tranquility, the peace, the beauty, the sadness and the sweetness of this unique place, we reached Kilmacomma again in complete silence.

And something tells me that the memory of Glenary will find a place in the recesses of granddaughters' memories, to be recalled again when they are much older. Just as it has stayed in the forefront of my memory, to be recalled durng these bleak winter days.
Plans for the celebration of St. Patricks Day in Clonmel have been thrown into disarray with the news that the St. Patricks Well Committee wont be involved in the organisation of this years parade.

Plans for the celebration of St. Patricks Day in Clonmel have been thrown into disarray with the news that the St. Patricks Well Committee wont be involved in the organisation of this years parade.

Efforts to rescue the parade have been launched, with District Mayor Martin Lonergan inviting all interested groups and individuals to a public meeting in the Town Hall at 8pm on Monday night, January 19.

Meanwhile Sinead Carr, Manager of Clonmel Borough District said she would be amazed if there werent groups or people interested in organising a parade. Theres still time, she said.

The St. Patricks Well Committee (Cumann Tobar Naomh Padraig) announced on Sunday night that it had decided not to participate in the parade, which it had organised since 2002. The committee stated that the failure of Tipperary County Council to issue written confirmation on the extent of the funding and insurance cover for the parade was behind its decision, which it had taken with regret.

The failure to confirm funding and insurance meant that no organisation of events or commitments to fund these could be proceeded with. Other St Patricks eve and day events, which the St Patricks Well Committee undertake, will take place as usual, a statement from the group added.

Secretary PJ Long said the committee wasnt prepared to organise a parade that would be a pale shadow of what it had been in previous years. St. Patricks Day is only ten weeks away and theres nothing in place, he said.

He claimed that representatives of Clonmels twin town towns, traditional visitors on St. Patricks Day, hadnt been contacted. Other aspects of the day, such as the organisation of the Eileen Anderson Unsung Hero Award and notification of road closures, hadnt been put in place either.

Waterford street theatre group Spraoi were the main attraction in last years parade but they havent been contacted yet and its not known if theyre even available at this stage.

Mr. Long said that the committee had always worked well with Clonmel Borough Council, which was abolished last year. The committee received 8,000 from the Borough Council for the parade, a grant that was subsidised by the committee. The indications were that a similar level of funding would be available again this year but Mr. Long said that no definite figure would be known until the County Councils budget was formally passed. He said the committee had no problem if another group wanted to take over the organisation of the event.

Borough District Manager Sinead Carr said that the committee, which was a voluntary group, had given a huge commitment over the years and working in partnership with the former Borough Council had done a very good job in organising the parade, one that was very much appreciated.

However she said she was disappointed with the committees reasons for pulling out and had hoped that the partnership and trust built up over the years would have stood for something. She said a verbal undertaking had been given that the level of funding for the parade would be broadly the same - subject to agreement by the council members - but said a commitment in writing couldnt be given because that would be disrespectful to the process of the County Councils budget and the members.

The political landscape in the county has changed and the budget process has also changed, said Ms Carr. She admitted that the budget process, which had yet to be completed, was very different and slightly more drawn out than before. She hoped that the St. Patricks Well committee would continue to work with the Council.

Ms Carr said a St. Patricks Day parade was criticial to the county town and the council was much committed to delivering a parade in Clonmel.

Similar sentiments have been expressed by District Mayor Martin Lonergan, who said he was fully supportive of the long-standing tradition of a St.Patricks Day Parade in Clonmel. He invited all civic, business and community groups to participate in the co-ordination of this years event and attend the open public meeting on January 19.

Cllr. Lonergan expressed his regret that the St. Patricks Well Committee had withdrawn from their role in the organisation of the parade. He thanked the committee for their dedicated and unwavering commitment to organising the event for many years and looked forward to a supporting role that they could play in the future.
If you know a millennial homebuyer, theres a good chance they live in Boston or Pittsburgh.

There are more millennial homebuyers in those cities than in the rest of the country's 50 largest cities, according to a study released Thursday by LendingTree. The study analyzed mortgage requests for consumers under the age of 35 during the past 12 months, comparing them to the total mortgage-seeking population.

In Boston, millennials made up 52.5% of all mortgage requests. Pittsburgh followed at 48.96%, while Washington, D.C., was close behind at 48.17%.

LendingTree found that on average 41.36% of all mortgage requests through its platform came from millennials, with the average age in that group being 29. Other cities with above-average levels of millennial homebuyers include Des Moines, Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio.

"The under-35 crowd had been, for some years, hesitant to enter the housing market, but we're seeing that start to shift," LendingTree Chief Executive Doug Lebda said in a news release. "The data all points to the fact that millennials are increasingly eager to own rather than rent, and even the incredibly high real estate prices in some markets don't necessarily deter them."

The average mortgage loan made to a millennial applicant was $220,949 and their down payments averaged $32,759.

But higher costs dont necessarily deter millennial homebuyers, LendingTree reported. San Francisco, which has the highest mortgage loans and average down payments in the country at $505,160 and $162,474, respectively, also had 42.32% of its home loan requests come from millennials.
CALIFORNIA

SAN MATEO

Redwood Mortgage has hired Steve Belleville as director of sales and marketing.

In this position he will be responsible for loan sales, business development and marketing for Redwood Mortgage.

Belleville brings to the company more than 30 years of operational, business development and fund management experience in the financial services and technology sectors.

ILLINOIS

CHICAGO

Aries Capital has promoted Rushi Shah to executive vice president on the firm's originations and business development team.

Based in Chicago, Shah is also president of LendingCap Commercial, Aries Capital's online nonrecourse loan platform.

Prior to his tenure at Aries, he held positions at Northern Trust in Chicago within the bank's private equity fund, structured finance and hedge fund groups.

NEW YORK

ALBANY

Ernst Publishing Co. has promoted Lisa Donahue to director of strategic accounts, title and settlement agent market.

In her new role, she will build relationships with users of the company's Settlement Agent Gateway platform.

Donahue joined the company in 2013, and was formerly a vice president in the sales department with GAC, a firm that was ultimately purchased by iSGN.

SOUTH CAROLINA

GREENVILLE

United Community Bank has hired Todd Coleman to the United Community Mortgage Services team as a senior loan officer and assistant vice president.

Coleman will serve the entire United footprint and will utilize his experience with doctor mortgage programs, purchase, refinance and construction lending.

He has more than 20 years of banking experience and joins United Community Bank from SunTrust Mortgage.

TEXAS

SUGAR LAND

Valuation Partners said that Denise Neely has joined the company as Southwest region vice president.

Neely has more than 25 years of experience in sales and operations in the real estate and mortgage services industry.

Most recently she served as assistant vice president of internal sales and relationship management at Landsafe Inc., where she worked as a liaison between Landsafe's product fulfillment team and Bank of America's branch leadership.

VIRGINIA

TYSONS CORNER

First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. has appointed correspondent lending sales veteran Tom Davis to be its National TPO Sales Director.

Davis brings 15 years of mortgage industry experience to First Guaranty.

Prior to joining FGMC, he was division vice president of correspondent sales with Finance of America Mortgage and correspondent rural housing account executive for Chase.

Are you a mortgage professional who recently changed jobs? Let us know! Send your announcement and photo (if available) to Glenn McCullom at glenn.mccullom@sourcemedia.com.
A month shy of its 10th birthday, Darien Rowayton Bank in Darien, Conn., is ready to take its next big step  and once again demonstrate a creativity that more timid, growth-starved banks could learn from.

The $588 million-asset company already operates a nationwide line of business refinancing student loans. Now it is aiming at mortgages. "We've got some pretty interesting ideas about where we're going to take the business," President Robert Kettenmann said in an interview.

Earlier this month Darien Rowayton, which markets itself as DRB, tabbed Santa Clara, Calif.-based Tavant Technologies to build it a paperless, online mortgage origination platform.

By broadening its product set, DRB is venturing down a path already traveled by the marketplace lender Social Finance, which offers mortgages and personal loans in addition to its flagship business consolidating student debt. SoFi, which turns five years old this summer, announced in December that it had surpassed $6 billion in total funded loans.

DRB obviously is hoping for a similar level of success. To that end the mortgage site it has in mind is one that can compete with online lenders like Quicken or money center giants like Wells Fargo, featuring a mobile-friendly, virtually paperless process that combines ease of use with quick turnaround times.

"We're building a brand new mortgage platform to take an experience that's cumbersome and confusing for many borrowers  qualifying for a mortgage and getting to closing  and making it user-friendly and transparent," Kettenmann said.

Though the process is online, it will offer users ready access to personal support via phone or online chats, he added.

The company does not rule out marketing mortgages to the general public  eventually. For now, though, it is setting its sights on its expanding pool of student loan customers.

"We're starting day one with 12,000 qualified customers," Kettenmann said in a recent interview. "That ought to keep us busy for a while. The way we view it, we set out to solve one problem. A group of customers have benefitted tremendously by having their loans consolidated. Home mortgages are the next big step."

A big move to be sure, but at the same time a natural one according to Stephen Dash, founder and chief executive of Credible, a multilender marketplace that focuses on providing student loan options to borrowers.

Credible's market research indicates student-loan borrowers are interested in additional financial services, particularly loans, Dash said in an interview.

"Building an enduring relationship with a customer should be one thing every bank CEO is thinking about, and these customers are really attractive," Dash said. "They're college-educated and likely to be profitable going forward."

Deepening customer relationships is central to DRB's strategy, according to Gary Lieberman, chairman and majority shareholder of Alcar LLC, DRB's holding company. "While DRB started with a national student lending platform, we view mortgages as the next step in our vision of building out a complete set of financial solutions for our customers throughout their lives," Lieberman said in a recent press release.

There is no guarantee of success. Mortgage production and fees have had their ups and downs since the crisis, and even DRB's student lending business  the cornerstone of its cross-selling plans  faces potential pitfalls.

Along with Citizens Financial Group in Providence, R.I., DRB is one of a handful of banks that refinance student debt on a large scale. That number did include $349 million-asset Cordia Bancorp in Midlothian, Va., but Cordia announced earlier this month it had sold its student lending arm, CordiaGrad, to the company's CEO, Jack Zoeller.

Zoeller said Cordia's decision to spin off CordiaGrad was due in large part to concerns about loan concentration. Indeed, in the months leading up to the sale, it tapped the brakes on its student lending. The total number of student loans on its books fell 17% last year, to $53.8 million. Student loans made up 22% of Cordia's total loans at Dec. 31 compared with 30% a year earlier.

Concentration is a concern for DRB as well, Kettenmann said, noting that "there's a limit to how many [student loans] we can hold onto at one time." The company declined to say how many student loans it originates. Its call report said that at Dec. 31 it had $253.7 million in loans to individuals, a category which includes student loans.

DRB manages the issue by selling loans. DRB announced its fifth securitization of $188 million of refinanced student loans on Feb. 29. Two months earlier, the bank sold a traunch of loans totaling $333 million. To date, DRB has securitized about $1.4 billion of "high-quality" loans. "We feel we can keep up that pace," Kettenmann added.

DRB first opened its doors April 24, 2006, as a traditional community bank. Like scores of community banks, it struggled during the financial meltdown, losing nearly $17 million through 2011. The company got a second lease on life in 2010, when a group led by Lieberman recapitalized it with $10.5 million.
Are total community infections next?

(NaturalNews) The following study was accepted in August of 2014 and first published online as an open-access article in the September 2014 edition of the journal. Industrial hog operation workers in North Carolina were shown to carry multi-drug-resistantfor up to 14 days (96 hours away from work), asprovided 327 samples from nasal swabs, and the "staph" infection was carried persistently via nasal carriage, including bothand methicillin-resistantPublic health officials are scrambling to contain the spread of these pathogens. This bacterium can contaminate food and give rise to respiratory disease. Better known as MRSA, methicillin-resistantwreaks havoc on entire hospital systems, sometimes resulting in deaths. Why run a test on the hog farmers? That's where previous research has found the. What's for lunch -- ham and bacon? Maybe some pulled pork? Do any of your relatives or roommates work at a hog plant, also known as CAFOs -- concentrated animal feeding operations? Do you?Most recent data reveal over 75,000 SERIOUS INFECTIONS from MRSA and nearly 10,000 deaths, and this is according to the CDC. Researchers are now concerned about "Mersa" strains that are resistant to antibiotics tetracycline, ampicillin and ciprofloxacin. This just about taps out "modern medicine's" arsenal for dealing with staph infections. We have finally reached the era where CAFO farmers have injected so many antibiotics into animals to stave off infection that bacteria are becoming immune to them all. You are what you eat, and people eating suchand those working in the factories are subject to infection, more so than ever imagined. Workers are infecting their families and housemates. Pathogens are running amuck, and Western Medicine has NO answer. Eastern Medicine and herbal, natural remedies have viable answers though, as covered later.Meanwhile, among the 22 workers tested in the new study, 10 carried bacteria in their noses for up to four days and another six were intermittent carriers. Among the 22 workers tested in the new study, 10 workers carried antibiotic-resistant strains of the livestock's bacteria in their noses for up to four days. Another six workers were intermittent carriers of the bacteria.Remember, these results are talking about strains that are resistant to antibiotics. This is the first study in the US that has foundin farm workers. Before this, scientists thought the bacteria cleared from the workers' noses inside of 24 hours. They were very wrong. European studies found the same results from hand-to-nose contact or via bioaerosols.What are public health officials doing about this right now? Are all of the industrial pig operations going to be more rigorously inspected now? Arebeing implemented, or restrictions on antibiotic use and ABUSE at hog farms and hog plants? What about the chicken, cow and turkey farms? What about farm-raised fish? There are many pertinent questions afoot. They all need to be addressed.Want to build natural immunity to infection and staph? Check out the power of oil of oregano, garlic, cinnamon, medicinal mushrooms like chaga and, of course, watch videos presented by the Health Ranger So whether you're working at the hog farm or eating hog sandwiches, including pulled pork, always look for organic food raised in humane, pesticide-free "zones" of land. Because an early death is much more "expensive" than non-toxic food.
A brainwashing pyramid scheme

Cancer patients are being cured without undergoing the system's standard of chemotherapy, radiation and mastectomy

(NaturalNews) The pretty pink ribbons are coming undone as more people start to see through the "breast cancer awareness" racket and waste. Yes, the Susan G. Komen Foundation has brought awareness to breast cancer, but they have not shined a light on the real-life solutions that exist for cancer patients. In fact, the organization often steers breast cancer patients away from the very therapies that work, stereotyping anything outside their sponsoredas a "complimentary therapy" scam. Interestingly, cancer patients are being cured using "complimentary therapies," despite the medical system's attempt to silence and suppress them. Cancer patients are actually leaving the US medical system altogether, turning down chemotherapy, mastectomy and radiation, and finding answers not sponsored by the pink-washing Susan Komen Foundation.The foundation is directing patients toward immune system suppression, drug-chemical treatment and the maiming of body parts, while shunning several therapies that assist the body's natural ability to heal.Their site says, "No complementary therapy can cure cancer. If a complementary therapy makes this type of claim, it is a sign that it is a scam" and may "interfere with the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation therapy."Most people involved in the pink campaign are kind and generous but aren't truly aware of how much waste and propaganda is involved in the breast cancer awareness racket. After reviewing what the foundation supports and how they are funded, it appears as if the entire pink-washing movement is just a front for the cancer industry in the US, which makes people think that cures are nonexistent but just around the corner,The foundation is driven by catchy marketing and feeds itself energy by promoting itself and its color branding. Meanwhile, this machine encourages patients to succumb to chemical treatments that destroy their own cellular energy production.The whole foundation appears to be about giving and saving lives,Much of the money donated to the Foundation either goes toward marketing, to pharmaceutical research or to pad the pockets of its executives. At its core, the Foundation is really just a pyramid scheme, funneling the generous donations of kind people to a tier of executives.According to Charity Navigator, the Foundation spent $18,394,170 in 2013 on administration expenses alone, allotting $560,896 to Founder and CEO Nancy Brinker and $606,461 to President Elizabeth Thompson.Patients and generous donors are being misled in the mind.While the US is painted pink, from coast to coast, cancer is being cured clinically in Mexico. One place that specializes in assisting the body's natural ability to heal is The Northern Baja Healing Center. Dr. Patrick Vickers, who studied the Gerson therapy directly under Charlotte Gerson in the '90s, applies principles that empower cancer patients' immune systems, maximizing energy production at the cellular level. The passionate Dr. Vickers has studied the handwritten files of Dr. Gerson, dating from 1910 to 1959 and now implements the detoxification and energy-maximizing protocols, expanding the work of one of the greatest medical geniuses in history.Dr. Vickers understands what acidity really represents in the body -- the buildup of hydrogen which ultimately repels the oxygen needed to convert sugar into energy in the mitochondria. He understands the problems with under-utilization of oxygen in the Krebs cycle and can recognize anaerobic glycolysis -- where the final breakdown of sugar ends up as lactic acid.To stop feeding the cancer, Dr. Patrick Vickers gives his patients the necessary nutrients from a clean, strict whole-foods protocol which helps their cells' mitochondria utilize sugars and oxygen for optimal energy production. Patients receive up to 5,000 calories per day through clean fruits and vegetables. He uses stomach, pancreatic and intestinal enzymes to boost patients' metabolism for the efficient breakdown of food into energy. He uses organic coffee enemas and a Hippocrates soup to detoxify the liver. He uses a potassium compound powder in patients to eliminate the sodium and water pent up in the cells which restricts efficient mitochondrial function. He also uses vitamin C IVs, Coley's therapy, dendritic cell therapy and more. This is only the beginning: learn more here. Dr. Vickers reports that 70 to 80 percent of patients who end up at his doorstep have "run the entire gamut" of conventional treatments. "If the Gerson therapy was the portal of entry therapy for every single person diagnosed with cancer, right from the beginning, the cancer cure rates would go through the roof," says Dr. Vickers. Click here for a full list of diseases successfully treated using the Gerson therapy.
Bernie Sanders vs. Big Pharma

Sanders' history concerning alternative health and medicine
The ongoing coverup

(NaturalNews) Five years after the earthquake-triggered events that led to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, significant levels of radiation remain in the area  particularly in the forests near the disaster site.The Japanese government has been attempting to clean up the radiation in the villages near the plant so that they can be repopulated, but so far, the surrounding countryside has been left alone, based on the advice of the Atomic Energy Commission.The cleanup efforts have greatly reduced the amount of radiation in the villages, but according to a new report published by Greenpeace that was based in part on several peer-reviewed studies, the forests near the plant have become " radiation reservoirs ," where radiation-induced mutations are now appearing in several plant and animal species.The "complex and extensive" environmental consequences are in the early stages, and will likely continue for hundreds of years, due to the long half-life of the radioactive elements released during the disaster.From the Greenpeace report:"Clearly, some early impacts are already being seen: internal tissue contamination in forest plants and trees resulting in caesium translocation in bark, sapwood, and heartwood; high concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar  pollen; apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels; heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations; DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas; high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems  coastal estuaries."The Fukushima disaster was the worst such event since the nuclear accident that occurred at Chernobyl in 1986. But unlike Chernobyl, where the affected area was completely abandoned, the Japanese government is planning to lift evacuation orders by March 2017 for many of the villages near the Daiichi plant.According to the Greenpeace report, this could lead to disastrous long-term health consequences for those who choose to return to their homes.Japanese government authorities, along with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and TEPCO (the company responsible for the Fukushima nuclear plant), have consistently attempted to downplay the seriousness of the disaster and its long-term human health and environmental implications.For example, a 2015 report by the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency stated that:"No observations of direct radiation induced effects in plants and animals have been reported, although limited observational studies were conducted in the period immediately after the accident. There are limitations in the available methodologies for assessing radiological consequences, but, based on previous experience and the levels of radionuclides present in the environment, it is unlikely that there would be any major radiological consequences for biota populations or ecosystems as a consequence of the accident."It's difficult to imagine that the IAEA was unaware of the peer-reviewed studies that the Greenpeace report was based on, and so it would appear that the authorities involved are willing to risk the health of thousands of people in their efforts to cover up the true extent of the dangerous radioactive contamination in the area near the plant.In fact, according to the Greenpeace report:"The current approach of Japanese authorities to forest decontamination is the removal of leaf litter, soil, and understory plants in 20 meter strips along the roads and around homes that are surrounded by forests . In terms of decontaminating the large areas of Fukushima this approach is futile. Over seventy percent of Fukushima prefecture is forested, which is not possible to decontaminate."Furthermore, the melted fuel rods beneath the three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have still not been contained, and no one is sure when the problem will be solved  or if a workable solution even exists.As the Greenpeace report concludes:"[T]he people of Fukushima, who have lost so much to TEPCO's nuclear disaster, deserve to have accurate and complete information so that they may face the decisions ahead with clarity and knowledge."Unfortunately, that information is not being provided by those who are responsible for the disaster and its ongoing cleanup.
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Website glitch obscures vote tallies

Rand Paul votes down DARK Act

Alexander (R-TN), Yea Flake (R-AZ), Yea Nelson (D-FL), Nay Ayotte (R-NH), Yea Franken (D-MN), Nay Paul (R-KY), Nay Baldwin (D-WI), Nay Gardner (R-CO), Yea Perdue (R-GA), Yea Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Gillibrand (D-NY), Nay Peters (D-MI), Nay Bennet (D-CO), Nay Graham (R-SC), Yea Portman (R-OH), Yea Blumenthal (D-CT), Nay Grassley (R-IA), Yea Reed (D-RI), Nay Blunt (R-MO), Yea Hatch (R-UT), Yea Reid (D-NV), Nay Booker (D-NJ), Nay Heinrich (D-NM), Nay Risch (R-ID), Yea Boozman (R-AR), Yea Heitkamp (D-ND), Yea Roberts (R-KS), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Heller (R-NV), Nay Rounds (R-SD), Yea Brown (D-OH), Nay Hirono (D-HI), Nay Rubio (R-FL), Not Voting Burr (R-NC), Yea Hoeven (R-ND), Yea Sanders (I-VT), Not Voting Cantwell (D-WA), Nay Inhofe (R-OK), Yea Sasse (R-NE), Yea Capito (R-WV), Yea Isakson (R-GA), Yea Schatz (D-HI), Nay Cardin (D-MD), Nay Johnson (R-WI), Yea Schumer (D-NY), Nay Carper (D-DE), Yea Kaine (D-VA), Nay Scott (R-SC), Yea Casey (D-PA), Nay King (I-ME), Nay Sessions (R-AL), Yea Cassidy (R-LA), Yea Kirk (R-IL), Yea Shaheen (D-NH), Nay Coats (R-IN), Yea Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay Shelby (R-AL), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Lankford (R-OK), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Nay Collins (R-ME), Nay Leahy (D-VT), Nay Sullivan (R-AK), Nay Coons (D-DE), Nay Lee (R-UT), Nay Tester (D-MT), Nay Corker (R-TN), Yea Manchin (D-WV), Nay Thune (R-SD), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Markey (D-MA), Nay Tillis (R-NC), Yea Cotton (R-AR), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea Toomey (R-PA), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea McCaskill (D-MO), Nay Udall (D-NM), Nay Cruz (R-TX), Not Voting McConnell (R-KY), Nay Vitter (R-LA), Yea Daines (R-MT), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Nay Warner (D-VA), Nay Donnelly (D-IN), Yea Merkley (D-OR), Nay Warren (D-MA), Nay Durbin (D-IL), Nay Mikulski (D-MD), Nay Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay Enzi (R-WY), Yea Moran (R-KS), Yea Wicker (R-MS), Yea Ernst (R-IA), Yea Murkowski (R-AK), Nay Wyden (D-OR), Nay Feinstein (D-CA), Nay Murphy (D-CT), Nay Fischer (R-NE), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay

(NaturalNews) The agrichemical industry and Big Food took a major hit yesterday after the Senate blocked a bill aimed at preempting states' rights from enacting GMO-labeling laws; it also would have reversed any labeling laws currently in place, such as the one Vermont passed in 2014, which is scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2016.S. 2609, coined the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act by its opponents, was narrowly defeated yesterday after it failed to receive the necessary votes. At least 60 "yes" votes were required for it to pass; however, it fell short, receiving only 49 yes's and 48 no's.The right to know whether or not our food contains ingredients that are genetically altered is so pertinent to public health that we felt it absolutely crucial to let all of you know which of your senators votedandthe bill, which is widely considered an outright attack on consumer rights.The task of pulling the Senate's roll call vote tallies should have been an easy one. But it appears that government incompetence has once against muddied the waters. According to Senate.gov, roll call vote tallies are posted online within one hour of the vote.However, at the time of this writing, if you go to click on March 16 (the date of the DARK Act vote), and click on the tally (48-49), you get what appears to be the correct vote results for S.2609, except that it's mislabeled as the "Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015." Next to "Measure Title," it reads: "A bill to reauthorize and amend the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes."This obviously has nothing to do with GMO labeling , so we phoned the Senate about the error. But they weren't much help, instead reassuring me that they would "escalate" the matter. Despite the confusion, it appears the vote tallies are in fact correct for the DARK Act; ironically, the measure just seems to be labeled inaccurately.We believe the vote tallies are correct because they match up with Food and Water Watch's list of senators they say followed through and voted against the DARK Act after being pressured by activists. Based on that information, we are providing you with what we believe are the correct results for how your senators voted.Though Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) came out against GMO-labeling last fall, he voted against the DARK Act on Wednesday. Here are how the rest of the senators voted:
Ingredient Marketplace partnered with the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) to conduct its inaugural Mind of the Consumer study, which will explore consumer expectations and perceptions in key ingredient categories and related to top health issues. Beyond consumers, the study will also explore the perceptions of ingredient suppliers in order to determine what suppliers are doing and whether that aligns with consumer needs. The results will be revealed at Ingredient Marketplace in Orlando, April 27-29.

In this episode, Jon Benninger, vice president of Informas Global Health and Nutrition Network, and Rachel Adams, managing editor, discuss:

The Mind of the Consumerwhat it is and why its impactful for your business;

Opportunities to utilize the results of the study at the show; and

Mind of the Consumer as the theme of this years Ingredient Marketplace.

Links and Resources:

Got feedback? Email Benninger at [email protected] or Adams at [email protected], or tweet to @NatProdINSIDER using the hashtag #INSIDERpodcast.
At a board meeting Wednesday night, district leaders at the San Mateo County Community College District updated administrative procedures that now state "when employees dine with business partners, vendors, donors or potential donors, the district will reimburse for alcohol."

The revision allows 19 senior administrators, including the chancellor, presidents, vice chancellors and vice presidents to use their district-issued credit cards, also called procurement cards, to buy booze during business events.

The changes come three months after an NBC Bay Area investigation revealed chancellor Ron Galatolo spent hundreds of dollars on alcohol, some of which did not show up on expense forms turned over by the district.

The district's procurement card policy clearly states alcohol is a prohibited purchase, along with firearms, jewelry, and personal purchases.

But the Investigative Unit reviewed three years of Galatolos expenses and found he regularly purchased alcohol with taxpayer money. He charged $978.27 for a dinner for 14 people at the Mon Ami Gabi in Las Vegas in 2013, where the receipt listed eight glasses of wine and eight martinis.

Galatolos other purchases included mojitos from a poolside bar in Las Vegas for which there was no listed business purpose, a $100 Rubicon Cask bottle of wine in San Diego, and beer during a work day lunch with Trustee Karen Schwarz and her husband.

Under the new rules, district officials could not use their cards to pay for meals or drinks with district employees or trustees.

However, there is no cap limiting how much money can be spent, just that employees must use prudence and must not purchase an unreasonable amount of alcohol. The district also clarified meals that are lavish or extravagant are not allowed but deluxe restaurants, hotels, nightclubs or resorts are allowed if theyre reasonable based on the facts and circumstances.

Its a departure from state and federal guidelines which uniformly prohibit the purchase of alcohol on government issued cards, regardless of the event or purpose.

Board of Trustees president Dave Mandelkern said he agrees with the changes, and trusts the administrators to use good judgment and distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate uses of district funds.

He said he was unaware of the policies governing alcohol purchases at other Bay Area community college districts.

Representatives from the districts of DeAnza Foothill, Peralta, and Evergreen all told NBC Bay Area their policies expressly prohibit using public money for alcohol, and there are no exceptions to the rules.

New trustee and SMCCCD graduate Maurice Goodman said, I dont think its appropriate to spend public dollars on alcohol. I wouldnt do that and I dont think its OK. But he added, If you have to wine and dine or schmooze, if thats a component of making things happen, make sure you use your best judgment.

There was no vote on the new rules, which take effect immediately.

A total of 276 employees have procurement cards, according to vice chancellor Kathy Blackwood.

Only the senior administrators are allowed to use their cards to purchase alcohol.

Chancellor Galatolo did not return a request for comment.

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Dr. Lucy Jones, known to many Southern Californians as the voice of calm after the earthquake, announced Friday that she is retiring from her position with the U.S. Geological Survey.



Jones, aka the Earthquake Lady, said in a tweet that she will keep her appointment as a seismologist with Caltech. A leading expert on earthquakes who often provided the public with information after the shaking, Jones has been a seismologist with the USGS since 1983.

"I'm really grateful to have had the chance to do what I've done," Jones said.

Jones has served as Science Advisor for Risk Reduction in the Natural Hazards Mission of the US Geological Survey. She led an initiative with the city of Los Angeles in 2014 to develop solutions to the area's seismic vulnerabilities.

"When the big one hits, people will be living because of the work that she has done," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told the Times.

The author of more than 100 research papers earned a degree in Chinese language and literature from Brown University in 1976 and Ph. D. in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.

She became a familiar face in the wake of Southern California earthquakes, providing interviews to explain the seismic event and what residents should do to prepare for the next one. A lasting image of Jones and her dedication to her role was caught on camera near quarter-century ago when she held her 1-year-old on live television during a post-quake interview.

"My husband was had actually been home with the kids, I was responding to the 4.6," Jones said. "The magnitude-6.1 happened, he brought in the kids. He handed me the baby in the middle of the interview, and we just did it because who has a baby sitter on call at 10 o'clock at night?"

Jones has hosted Reddit events about earthquakes and even dropped knowlege during the premiere of "San Andreas," providing a real-time fact check of the movie starring Duane "The Rock" Johnson. Jones, who has nearly 16,000 followers, tweeted candid reactions and separated fact and fiction about the blockbuster depicts the San Andreas fault ripping open during a greater-than-9 magnitude earthquake.

"Lucy brings magnetism to what is normally a dull subject: preparedness," Paul Schulz, CEO of the American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles, told Smithsonian Magazine in a February 2012 article.

Jones told the Los Angeles Times that she will help develop science-based policies on climate change, tsunamis and other natural disasters. After her last day at the USGS on March 30, she can start raising money to create a center that bridges science and public policy, according to The Times. She can also partner with cities on disaster issues the way she worked on earthquakes with Los Angeles.
An Uber driver accused of raping a 21-year-old woman last year after picking her up from a bar in Orange County appeared in court Thursday, and prosecutors said there may be more victims.

Omar Mahmoud Mousa, 52, of Anaheim, was arrested last week and charged with one felony count of forcible rape, one felony count of forcible oral copulation, and one felony count of sexual penetration by foreign object and force, according to the Orange County District Attorneys office. If convicted, Mousa faces a maximum sentence of 24 years in state prison.

Prosecutors said on the evening of Oct. 24, 2015, Mousa picked up a 21-year-old woman and her female friend at a motel in Anaheim and drove them to a bar in Fullerton, through Uber.

Mousa then allegedly gave the women his business card and asked them to call him directly instead of using the Uber driving service, a break with the service's protocol.

After picking up both women from the bar in Fullerton early the next morning, Mousa walked the women into their motel room in Anaheim where the victims friend immediately passed out on the bed, prosecutors said.

While the victim was intoxicated, Mousa placed her on the same bed, and forcibly raped her, according to the OCDA. After the woman managed to push him away, Mousa left the motel room and drove away.

The woman reported the crime later that day to the Anaheim Police Department.

Mousa told police he was helping the women up the stairs to their room because they were drunk and one of the women passed out.

The incident comes amid growing concern over the safety of Uber and other app-based ride-hailing services.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Councilmembers Paul Krekorian and Herb Wesson submitted a joint letter asking the California Public Utilities Commission to allow the city to implement a pilot program that would require fingerprinting for charter and company drivers, including limos, shuttle services, Uber and Lyft.

Charges against Mousa were filed in January. He was arrested last week at LAX after returning to the country. Mousa is being held on $100,000 bail. He did not enter a plea during his Thursday court appearance.

Uber issued this written statement: "Uber has a zero-tolerance policy for violent behavior, and our thoughts are with the victim of this atrocious crime. We immediately blocked this individual's access to the Uber platform upon learning of this incident and actively assisted law enforcement in their investigation."

The Orange County District Attorney's Office is seeking the public's help identifying potential additional victims in the case.

Anyone with additional information or who believes they have been a victim is asked to call Supervising District Attorney Investigator Mark Gutierrez at (714) 347-8794.
Cruising down Interstate 280, you can understand why its known as the worlds most beautiful freeway.

The green pasture side and trees in the background  its iconic, said Bryan Porcher, who drives on the corridor three days per week.

But now, there is a bit of scare on the Peninsula, as drivers wonder if San Mateo County is really considering putting up electronic billboards on the pristine stretch of freeway.

I-280 is a State Scenic Highway, a designation that limits development and advertising.

I think theyre very distracting to drivers and we really need to be paying attention to the highways, said Lennie Roberts, with the Committee for Green Foothills.

The legislative advocate says she was shocked, frankly when she found out about the billboard proposal buried in a report from the County Manager to the Board of Supervisors, and she immediately wrote a letter.

San Mateo County says ad revenue could bring in millions of dollars, but chief communications officer Michelle Durand says its impossible to put billboards on I-280. County leaders are looking at many potential sites in a feasibility study.

The County of San Mateo is not considering putting billboards on 280. All thats being done right now is info gathering on the possibility of having billboards in an area on 101 in Daly City, Durand said.

In a statement, the County Managers Office wrote: The County of San Mateo is considering a feasibility study of potential sites for electronic billboards. We are only looking at areas where billboards currently exist near Highway 101. Interstate 280 is designated as a scenic corridor which makes it impossible to place billboards there. Even so, Interstate 280 is one of the most beautiful transportation corridors and we would never do anything to change that. The Board of Supervisors must still approve the contract for such a study and, if one or more sites are deemed feasible, make all decisions regarding any potential project.

Supervisor Carole Groom told NBC Bay Area she is interesting in exploring signs on Hwy 101  only.

Still, its little comfort to Roberts, who says, I always wait until I see something in writing.

Some drivers we spoke to at the Crystal Springs Safety rest stop preferred not to give their names. They say, Its just another highway.

Others say itll ruin the scenic drive.

I think itd be terrible. You might as well go to Las Vegas. I dont approve of that at all, said Brook Nielsen, who uses 280 to drive from Santa Cruz to Petaluma monthly.

And some are conflicted.

Im torn because that might compromise my serene drive. However, if it was useful content that might be served directly towards me in terms of digital signage, over old school advertising, I would be open to seeing what that looks like, Porcher said.

The feasibility study is expected to take about six months to complete. The proposal is expected to go to the Board of Supervisors in late April at the earliest.
A 30-year-old man was shot early this morning on Mission Street after he got into an argument with people inside a car.

At 2:18 a.m. the man was standing in the 2000 block of Mission Street, near 16th Street, when a four-door sedan with tinted windows parked in front of him, according to police.

The vehicle had five occupants, four men and one woman, all described as in their 20s.

The man somehow got into an argument with the occupants. One of the occupants then brandished a handgun and shot at the victim.

The vehicle sped off and was last seen heading south on Mission Street, police said.

The victim suffered a gunshot wound to the hip. He was taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening, according to police.


A new app is allowing elected officials to destroy conversations about public business on their smartphones.

Questions are now being asked of San Francisco's supervisors who may use the new app called Telegram.

On Thursday, NBC Bay Area reached to a member of Supervisor Jane Kim's staff and asked if they had used the Telegram app. The staff member did not provide an answer.

The app allows senders and recipients to not only delete conversations, but make them irretrievable.

Other supervisors were also unavailable and did not return calls on Thursday. Only Aaron Peskin responded and said he signed up for Telegram last month and had used it once for city business.

When asked if those messages regarding city business still existed, Peskin said: "Yes, those records still exist to whomever wants them."

San Francisco's 180-page Good Environment Guide and California Law specify that records of public business be kept. But there is no mention of discussion using an app. The matter is now on the radar of the city's Ethics Commission.

"Right now, if a politician holds a meeting with Telegram and deletes that, is that a violation of the state Public Records Act? I don't know," said Leeann Pelham, San Francisco Ethics Commission executive director. "We have to look into that and make sure everyone knows what the rules are."

The city attorney believes the law includes electronic messages and a violation could undo public policies made with them.

"Let's say a conversation between public officials that should be public is concealed, a court could invalidate that action -- start over," said Matt Dorsey, San Francisco city attorney spokesman.
More than 50 San Jose State University students rallied today against the sentencing of three former students who assaulted their roommate in 2013 and claimed the college hasn't addressed racism on campus.

A diverse group of students from various campus organizations chanted "Black Lives Matter" while they stood outside Tower Hall as the bell struck noon today.

On Monday, Logan Beaschler, 20, of Bakersfield, Joseph "Brett" Bomgardner, 21, of Clovis, and Colin Wyatt Warren, 20, of Woodacre, were sentenced on a misdemeanor battery charge against their black roommate Donald "DJ" Williams Jr. at their dormitory between August and October of 2013.

The defendants, who are all white, were also charged with a misdemeanor commission of a hate crime by use of force. Bomgardner was found not guilty of the hate crime allegation and a mistrial was declared for the other two defendants, but prosecutors decided they would not be retried on the charge.

All three men were sentenced to two years probation, 30 days in jails that may be served under a weekend work program, 50 hours of community service with a nonprofit, a cultural competency course on the African-American community or civil rights movement and $634 in restitution.

Black Unity Group member Donntay Moore-Thomas questioned why the defendants were ordered to take a class on the African-American community or civil rights movement even though they weren't convicted of a hate crime.Moore-Thomas said she couldn't understand Williams' experience at the start of his freshmen year when the defendants placed his neck around a bike lock, hung swastikas and a Confederate flag around the dorm and called him "three-fifths."

"We all know what the confederate flag signifies. Hate." Moore-Thomas said.

The "three-fifths" nickname was a reference to the way slaves were counted in the U.S. Census during the 18th and 19th centuries."It was not a prank, it was disrespectful and deliberate," she

said.

Aaron Miller, another member of the Black Unity Group, said the campus community has been traumatized by racial events on campus and needed to publicly express their disappointment at today's rally.

"We don't want our campus to be hospitable for hate crimes to continue to happen," Miller said.

The school's Black Student Union met with campus fraternities and sororities on Wednesday night when they compiled a statement in reaction to the judge's ruling, Miller said.

"This verdict and sentencing has reopened the wounds that we as a community have been working towards healing in the time since it occurred," the statement said.

"We are deeply frustrated with the lack of hate crime charges and the ridiculously minimal sentencing of just a mere 30 days of punishment which only adds insult to injury to us as a community, but most over, to the victim, Donald Williams Jr.," according to the statement.

The students, many wearing black clothing, shared their disapproval of the verdict, experiences of racism at the school and urged one another to take action towards justice.

Freshman La'Shay Hankerson shared her experience of being called a "slave" and "creature" on the social media website Yik Yak, a live feed of discussions that has grown popular on college campuses.

Hankerson said she complained to multiple resident advisers about jokes someone was making about her, but didn't believe her concerns were taken seriously.

Williams showed up as the rally was coming to a close and thanked the students for their support.

"I wouldn't be able to stay here on campus and continue my education if it wasn't for all of you," Williams said.

"While we respect the independence and discretion of jurors and the courts in reaching these determinations, the offenders' conduct was unacceptable and incompatible with our values," university interim president Sue Martin wrote in a message to the campus today.

Beaschler, Bomgardner and Warren are no longer enrolled at SJSU, Martin said.

The trio has been banned from attending any school in the University of California or California State University systems.

To address the needs of the diverse campus, the school is finishing up its search for a chief diversity officer and will be conducting open forums with its four finalists starting on Friday, Martin said.

An eight-member search committee, which includes two students, was formed to select the chief diversity officer, but more students need to be represented in the group, said Black Unity Group member Brianna Leon.

Despite the addition of diversity programs to student orientation and training Martin addressed in her message, hate is still happening in the classrooms and dorms, Leon said.

The Black Unity Group is calling on the university to establish a zero tolerance policy for racial harassment, a letter from the university president on making improvements to the school's racial climate their first priority and providing "specialized resources" to help students of color feel

welcomed to the campus.
In a development eagerly watched by Bay Area philanthropic groups, Thursday the board of directors of the 94-year-old United Way of Silicon Valley approved the first steps of a merger with the United Way of the Bay Area  a move that would create a single charitable organization covering eight Bay Area counties.

Directors of the two organizations said the merger, which isnt expected to be completed until early July, would expand the force of the charity group which helps fund agencies on the front-lines of providing care for struggling families.

"It means that as a combined organization we can provide better and deeper engagement in the community and service to the community,"said Anne Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of the United Way of the Bay Area, who will lead the newly combined group.

Joe Rosato Jr. / NBC Bay Area

Wilson said the United Way would retain an office in San Jose and expand some of its programs to the Silicon Valley such as its SparkPoint center which provides financial training as well as groceries for college students. She said the merger will harness the power of the larger organization toward meeting extreme needs among Silicon Valleys forgotten poor.

"Our region is known for being a hub of innovation, an engine of wealth,"Wilson said before the merger vote. "But in fact one in four families struggle to make ends meet."

Some local agencies receiving support from the United Way of Silicon Valley expressed concern they might lose funding as the local organization which was founded in 1922 is absorbed into the regional one. United Way leaders admitted that was a possibility as it tallies donations in its upcoming budget cycle to determine future funding. At the same time, leaders promised local needs wouldnt get lost in the shuffle.

Joe Rosato Jr. / NBC Bay Area

"We know that fundraising has gotten more difficult over the years,"said Sandra Miley, CEO of the United Way of Silicon Valley. "But by coming together we have the capacity to go after new dollars  and that will inform our future investments in the agencies that we serve."

Wilson said the United Way of the Bay Area, headquartered in San Francisco, currently spends about $50 million a year funding local agencies across seven counties as well as its own programs. She said since Santa Clara is the Bay Areas most populated county, it made sense for the organizations to come together under a single Bay Area-wide umbrella.

"The issue of poverty is a regional matter,"Wilson said. "It is not solved one county at a time."


Mitt Romney, the Republican party's nominee in the 2012 presidential election, said Friday he will vote for Sen. Ted Cruz in next week's Utah nominating caucus.

"The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention. At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible," Romney wrote in a Facebook post.

The announcement comes as the Republican party continues to probe alternatives to Donald Trump as the businessman's lead in the party primary grows.

Romney depicted the state of Republican politics as a battle between "Trumpism" and Republican values.

"Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. I am repulsed by each and every one of these," Romney wrote.

Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, continued to say that, while he likes the other candidate in the race, Gov. John Kasich, he believes that voting for Kasich would only contribute to Trump's victory.

Trump respond to Romney's Facebook comments on Twitter, referring to Romney as a failure in a string of tweets.

"Mitt Romney is a mixed up man who doesn't have a clue. No wonder he lost!," Trump tweeted soon after remarking that Cruz shouldn't be allowed to win in Utah because "Mormons don't like LIARS!"

Earlier this month Romney delivered a scathing attack on Trump in a speech at the University of Utah, calling Trump "a phony" who is "playing the American public for suckers."



A number of Republican officials have shown their support for Cruz in recent days while falling short of endorsing the senator, who is currently in second place in the race for the GOP nomination. On Thursday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would help Cruz's fundraising efforts but stopped short of offering his endorsement to his senate colleague.

Utah is among four states voting Tuesday. Nationally, Trump leads his rivals, having won 678 delegates so far, according to a count by The Associated Press. Cruz is in second place with 423 delegates, and Kasich is in third with 143.

One minute before Romney's post was set live, Trump took a shot at the Republican establishment, which Romney is associated with: "With millions of dollars of negative and phony ads against me by the establishment, my numbers continue to go up. Can anyone explain this?"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
During an appearance on WLS-AM 890 Friday, Sen. Mark Kirk broke with Republicans and asked for a vote on President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

He said Republican lawmakers should "man up and cast a vote."

"We should go through the process the Constitution has already laid out," Kirk said. "The president has already laid out a nominee who is from Chicagoland and for me, I'm open to see him, to talk to him, and ask him his views on the Constitution."

Obama nominated Illinois native Garland in a White House Rose Garden ceremony Wednesday. Garland currently serves as the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is considered a centrist.

"Many of us believe that the Republicans should, in fact, do the job that they were elected to do and at least offer a vote up on Garland," Kirk added.

During Obama's nomination Wednesday, he urged Republican leaders to move forward with the process to confirm Garland to the Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers are pushing to block Obama's Supreme Court nomination until a new president is elected next year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Garland Wednesday to inform him that the Senate would not move forward with the confirmation process.

Kirk also released an online ad Friday slamming Rep. Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic nominee for his U.S. Senate seat, over false claims of being bipartisan.

The ad loops a clip of Duckworth saying You know, I already have been very bipartisan in my work in the House of Representatives.

The ad is interspersed with critiques of Duckworths Congressional career.

Tammy Duckworth voted with her party 94 percent of the time, the ad says. The statistic is attributed to Cq.com

The ad also claims Duckworth was one of the least effective members of Congress, according to Inside Gov.

Aside from this, the ad aims to tie Duckworth to imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Tammy Duckworth endorsed Blagojevich  while he was under investigation," the ad says, citing the Chicago Daily Herald.

Kirks campaign manager, Kevin Artl, expounded on the allegations in a press release supplied to Ward Room.

"Now more than ever, Illinois voters want a Senator willing to rise above the rancor and partisanship in Washington, Artl said. Unfortunately, Rep. Duckworth refuses to challenge her own party -- even when they are wrong -- like when she endorsed Rod Blagojevich while he was under federal investigation.

Duckworths team responded in a statement, faulting Kirk for potentially supporting Donald Trumps presidential campaign and for not pushing McConnell to move forward with Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

One week ago, Mark Kirk said he certainly would support Donald Trump if hes the Republican nominee  an outcome that is becoming increasingly likely, Duckworth campaign spokesman Matt McGrath told Ward Room. Kirk is also refusing to call on Mitch McConnell to hold hearings and have an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland, an Illinois native with impeccable credentials. In other words, Kirks video is as hypocritical as it is amateurish.

Incumbent Kirk defeated Oswego businessman James Marter to win the Republican nomination.

Duckworth beat out Urban League CEO and President Andrea Zopp as well as state Sen. Napoleon Harris to win the Democratic nomination for Kirks U.S. Senate seat.

Kirk and Duckworth will face-off in the Nov. 8 general election.
A 16-year-old boy was killed and 15 other people have been wounded in shootings on St. Patricks Day throughout Chicago.

The fatal shooting Thursday evening also left two men injured in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side.

At 7:12 p.m., the three were standing on the sidewalk in the 800 block of North St. Louis Avenue when a light-colored vehicle pulled up and a male got out and opened fire, according to Chicago Police.

A 16-year-old boy was shot in the chest and taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:51 p.m., authorities said. The Cook County medical examiners office did not release the boys name, pending notification of his family.

An 18-year-old man was shot in the chest and neck and was also taken to Stroger, where he was listed in critical condition, police said. A 19-year-old man suffered a graze wound and was listed in good condition at Norwegian American Hospital, police said.

The most recent nonfatal shooting happened just before midnight Thursday night on the Near West Side.

A 48-year-old was in the 2200 block of West Adams when another male tried to rob him, police said. The attempted robber shot him in the torso several times before running off.

The man took himself to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.

A boy, whose age was not known, was sitting on the front steps of a residence at 10:25 p.m. in the 2900 block of North Sawyer when someone in a passing gray car fired shots, police said. He was hit in the left foot and taken to Norwegian Hospital, where his condition was stabilized.

A 20-year-old man was shot less than half an hour earlier the Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side.

He got into an argument with a person just after 10 p.m. in the 6600 block of South Greenwood when that person pulled out a gun and shot him in the right shoulder, police said. He took himself to University of Chicago Medical Center and was transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized.

A police source said the shooting was narcotics-related.

A 25-year-old man was shot earlier in the evening in the South Side Englewood neighborhood.

He was found in a vehicle in the 1200 block of West 57th Street about 7 p.m. with a gunshot wound to the lower leg, police said. He was taken to in good condition to Stroger Hospital.

A police source said the man is a documented gang member.

About the same time, a 25-year-old man was shot in the leg while he was in a vehicle in the 6000 block of South Justine, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.

A person walked into a hospital Thursday evening after he was shot that morning in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side.

The male, whose age was not known, told investigators he was shot about 8 a.m. in the 5500 block of South May, police said. He took himself to Holy Cross Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg later that evening, where his condition was stabilized.

At least seven other people were wounded in shootings on the South Side Thursday.

On Wednesday, seven people were wounded in shootings across the city. On Tuesday, four people were killed and eight others were wounded in city shootings.
At least seven Chicago students were hospitalized Friday after they ingested an unknown pill allegedly given to them by a fellow student, officials said.



The students from Seward Communications Arts Academy Elementary School, at 4600 S. Hermitage Ave., complained of feeling sick after ingesting an unknown substance in pill form just before noon Friday, according to authorities.

Fire officials said eight students were hospitalized, but police later said seven students were hospitalized.

Two students were taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, two were taken to University of Illinois-Chicago Medical Center, two to Holy Cross hospital and one to Comer Childrens Hospital in Chicago. All were listed in stable condition, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what exactly the students ingested, but authorities said an investigation is ongoing. Fire officials said the students claimed the substance was given to them by a fellow student.

[Chicago Public Schools] is taking this situation very seriously and our priority is to provide our students with a safe, healthy learning environment," the district said in a statement. "School administrators immediately contacted emergency personnel and families of the affected students, and the incident is being thoroughly investigated.

Check back for details on this developing story.


More than three months after the ouster of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy in the wake of what many viewed as the Citys miserable handling of the LaQuan McDonald matter, the Chicago Police Board today submitted three names to the Mayor for consideration as Chicagos next top cop.

This is really a historic moment, said Police Board President Lori Lightfoot. Things have to change from the inside out.

A total of 38 individuals applied for the job. But only three were chosen: Dr. Cedric Alexander, the current Director of Public Safety in Dekalb County, Georgia; Anne Kirkpatrick, the former Chief of Police in Spokane, Washington; and Eugene Williams, the Chief of Support Services in Chicago, and the only current Chicago officer who made the cut.

We came away with a very clear impression that these have been people who stepped up, faced the challenges, and did the right thing, Lightfoot said.

Lightfoot said applicants were told the city was at a critical juncture in its history when it came to policing, and that whoever was chosen, they should have three priorities: fighting crime and the plague of gangs and violence; rebuilding relationships and restoring trust with the morale-battered rank-and-file.

That has to happen whether its an insider, or an outsider, Lightfoot said. We have to have a leader who understands that engaging and embracing the community in an incredibly respectful way, has to be every bit as important as fighting crime in those neighborhoods.

In their applications, all agreed that community engagement is key to good policing.

People are more likely to obey the law when they believe that those who are enforcing it have the legitimate authority to tell them what to do, Alexander said. My believe is that the only accountability is perfect accountabilitywithout any winks or nods.

Alexander said he was against an overtly-military presence.

When police act like the Redcoats at the Boston Massacre, he said, citizens have both the right and the responsibility to hold them accountable.

For her part, Kirkpatrick wrote of the need to eliminate bias from policing.

Unless there is strong leadership that will not turn a blind eye and will actually start cutting that cancer out of the department, she said, then it will never go away.

In that regard, perhaps Williams had to aim for the most delicate balance: convincing the Police Board that he brought a wealth of experience, without being too entrenched in the system they sought to change.

I believe that the Chicago Police Department and law enforcement in general have been steeped in a warrior mentality (kicking butts and taking names) for much too long, he wrote. This phenomenon has created a dangerous culture in law enforcement.

Williams said he believed technology such as dash and body cameras would improve police accountability, but he spoke of the need to discipline officers who try to evade those systems.

There have been countless intentional violations of procedure, in addition to numerous acts of criminal damage of equipment to circumvent the dashcam audio and video, he said. for this lack of integrity we have never seriously disciplined any member.

Williams says recent efforts to hold officers accountable for non-working video and audio systems, has resulted in a 70% increase in uploads in just two weeks.

After learning of the three candidates, Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said his union would express no preferences. But he said he hoped whoever the new superintendent turns out to be, they will have the backs of thousands of hard working officers in Chicago.

I dont think the Chicago Police Department is in complete disarray, he said. People say we have to change or reinvent the Chicago Police Department culture. Why?

Angelo noted that Chicago officers have taken 86,000 guns off the street in the last eight years, and in that same period arrested some 37,000 offenders with guns in their possession. During that same eight year period, he noted, 13,000 Chicago officers were victims of battery.

Lightfoot noted those gun seizures as she emphasized that crime-fighting is still job one. But she emphasized repeatedly, that Chicagos next superintendent will have to double down on efforts to rebuild relationships with citizens.

People feel they are not respected, they feel they are not treated as human beings, she said, that their rights are not being respected.

Mayor Emanuel can choose his next superintendent from these candidates, or could ask for another list. At an unrelated appearance Thursday, he suggested he is anxious to move quickly.

Ill be eager to meet with all three individually, he said. As you know, patience is one of my strong suits.
The top suspect in last year's deadly Paris attacks, captured in Belgium after four months on the run, will now face police questioning and a fast-track effort to extradite him to France.

Salah Abdeslam, a French national, is subject to a European arrest warrant issued by France. He was seized Friday in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek and hospitalized after being shot in the leg.

His capture brought relief to people who have seen his "wanted" poster all over two countries for months. But French President Francois Hollande warned that more arrests will come as authorities try to dismantle a network involved in the attacks that is much larger than originally suspected. Hollande is holding an emergency defense meeting in Paris on Saturday.

Families of victims and survivors want Abdeslam to face justice in France for the Nov. 13 attacks on a rock concert, stadium and cafes, which killed 130 victims and several attackers. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Once doctors consider Abdeslam fit to face questioning, he will be interrogated by Belgian investigators, possibly in the presence of French investigators. He may be assisted by his Belgian lawyer, identified by Belgian daily Le Soir as Sven Mary.

French anti-terrorist judges could file an extradition request as early as this weekend with Belgian prosecutors.

French and Belgian anti-terrorism prosecutors plan a teleconference call Saturday during which matters including Abdeslam's extradition will be discussed, Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office spokesman Thierry Werts said.

A 2002 agreement among European Union member states speeds up the extradition process, making it a purely judicial process and removing any political aspect. For especially grave crimes, such as terrorist acts, the procedure goes even faster.

Hollande, speaking Friday next to Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel, said in Brussels he was sure "the French judicial authorities will send an extradition request very soon" and that "the Belgian authorities will answer it as favorably as possible, as soon as possible."

The shared French language between France and Belgium will help make the process even smoother. Abdeslam could appeal the extradition, but under the European principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions, that would only give him a short respite.

Samia Maktouf, a French lawyer for several survivors and relatives of Paris attack victims, is urging immediate extradition. "Apart from his (medical) condition, I don't see what might delay his extradition," she told The Associated Press.

Survivors and victims' families "relief is mingled with bitterness" because some suspects are still on the run and belong to an organized and sprawling network that has yet to be stopped, Maktouf said. "Our young people found death for no reason. Today, their families have empty chairs next to them, they have a phone that doesn't ring any longer," she said.

Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks. Investigators believe Abdeslam drove a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings, rented rooms and shopped for detonators. Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of the attacks, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up.

After the bloodbath, Salah Abdeslam evaded a dragnet to return to Brussels. He was believed to have slipped through police fingers multiple times despite an international manhunt. At one point, Belgian authorities locked down their capital for several days but failed to find him.

Abdeslam and four other suspects were detained in Friday's raid, including three members of a family that sheltered him. Abdeslam was not armed but did not immediately obey orders when confronted by police, Belgian prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said.

It was possible he had spent days, weeks or months in the apartment, according to Van der Sypt.

Two other people believed linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Abdeslam's role in the attacks has never been clearly spelled out. The car he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he may have had were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission.
The high cost of living in San Francisco isnt lost on anyone, especially millennials, who are struggling to make ends meet every day.

Amid claims young adults are living on rice and water and can't afford rent, some are striking up questionable escort-like relationships, hoping "sugar daddies" will help pay their bills.

In an article titled "Daddy Dating at SF State," San Francisco State Universitys student newspaper, the Xpress, reported that at least 194 students are currently sugar babies on the dating site SeekingArrangement.com. The data comes directly from the site, which describes itself as a place "where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships."

One self-identified "sugar baby" told the Xpress, "I needed money." The student described going on a date with a "sugar daddy" at an Italian restaurant.

"He called me a car, and as I was leaving, he gave me $600. He was like, 'I know you need to get your nails done as well as pay your rent.' That was my allowance," the student told the Xpress.

SF State isnt the only Bay Area school with sugar babies  UC Berkeley made the list of 2016's fastest growing "sugar baby schools," with 67 new sign ups last year, as did its sister school, UC Davis, according to SeekingArrangement. New York University tops the list.

Living expenses for the 2015-16 academic year at SF State are around $18,172, not including tuition, according to the university. Data from The Institute of College Access and Success shows the average 2014 SF State graduate left school $22,741 in debt.

"There are a lot of students who cant afford the outrageous cost of living in San Francisco who find relationships that help them pay for tuition and living expenses  sometimes it also helps with networking and finding a job after graduating," said SeekingArrangement.com spokesperson Brook Urick.

A report from SeekingArrangement.com shows that nearly two million students seek financial aid from sugar daddies. New estimates show the average debt of college students rose to $30,867 this year.

"Some see this as a controversial solution. However, SeekingArrangement.com has helped facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements that have helped students graduate debt-free, the sites CEO and founder, Brandon Wade, an MIT graduate, said in a statement earlier this year. Thats more than anyone can say of a particular president or Congress.

The site's "Sugar Baby University" page touts how SeekingArrangement has helped students "discover the new way to avoid student loan debt" by connecting them with wealthy benefactors.

"Attending college means you have a choice.Take out loans and eat ramen, or get a sugar daddy and live the life you've always wanted," a promo video for the site says.

In an interview with the Xpress, Urick emphasized the difference between prostitutes and sugar babies, saying "escorts or prostitutes are paid for sex," while sugar babies receive "gifts" of money or goods.

Ads for SeekingArangement.com and interviews in the Xpress article allude to the lavish treatment of sugar babies, referencing gifts of jewelry, fancy hotels, Michelin Star restaurants and expensive wines.

"Whats going on here is a lot different. Sometimes there isnt sex. Sometimes there isnt money," Urick told the paper. "Here, its a relationship and its a gift. The idea is that these people are generous, theyre willing to spoil. They might not have time for traditional relationships, but theyre willing to provide something else."

Urick said SeekingArrangement.com, which launched in 2006, decided to track the number of students registering in 2010.

"We saw a lot of students joining that year," she said.

There are currently 1.134 million student sugar babies in the U.S., most of them between 21 and 27 years old, according to Urick. She said 82 percent are undergrads, while 18 percent are graduate students.

On an average, sugar babies receive an allowance of $3,000 per month, which they spend on tuition (36 percent), rent (23 percent), books (20 percent), transportation (9 percent) and clothing (5 percent), according to Urick.

San Francisco is among the top 10 cities in which to find a sugar daddy, according to SeekingArrangement.com. One in 70 adult men in the city is registered on the site as a "daddy."

The typical "daddy" is 45 years old, with a net worth of $5.2 million, working in technology, business, finance or law. There's a 34 percent chance he's married, according to a report by SeekingArrangement.com.

"We invite (daddies) to be open and honest about the fact that theyre married," Urick told the Xpress. "I would like to hope that a lot of these relationships are sort of a dont-ask-dont-tell thing. I feel like thats what a lot of long-term marriages turn into, where its OK to stray extramaritally as long as youre safe."

Students can also come to the site looking for sugar "mommies."

Those who register with .edu email addresses receive free premium memberships, according to the site, which uses email addresses to track student signups. Students can then create their profiles, add photos and list their expectations, Urick said.

"Its just like any other dating site  everyone finds a relationship on their own terms," she said.

Deborah Cohlar, SF State's chair of women and gender studies, was candid about students seeking out sugar dating websites as an alternative method to fund college.

"[San Francisco] is an extraordinarily expensive place to live," she told the Xpress. "So we have all kinds of working students on campus."

"In a time of rising costs of living, we know students all over the country are forced to work multiple jobs or be entrepreneurial in order to make ends meet," said Luoluo Hong, Title IX coordinator and vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at SF State. "Our hope is that students are safe and free of coercion in these situations, and we will look at this issue more closely, in dialogue with our students, from the perspective of Title IX."

Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.

Bay Area college students become sugar babies to pay for tuition: Report https://t.co/RL4chINttu pic.twitter.com/yxJSBySUnv  NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) March 17, 2016

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The jail inmate accused of beating former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle, who is imprisoned after he admitted to sex crimes against minors, couldnt help himself and doesnt like child molesters," the inmates family said Thursday.

The alleged attack, first reported by TMZ, took place on Jan. 29 at Englewood Prison in Colorado, where 60-year-old Steven Nigg is accused of knocking Fogle to the ground and hitting him in the face multiple times in the prison recreation yard, according to a document provided by Niggs family.

He stopped and let him have a couple, James Nigg, Steven Niggs brother, told NBC Chicago. He said, I couldnt help it Jim. He couldnt help it.

The document, an incident report purportedly from the prison, details the assault at the low-security federal prison, where Fogle is serving a more than 15-year sentence.

According to the report, Fogle suffered a bloody nose, scratches to his neck and redness and swelling to his face. Nigg also suffered a cut to his hand and an abrasion to his left knee during the assault.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said it could not comment and information on the attack was not being released "in order to ensure safety and security in our institutions and in accordance with legal requirements." A search of the prison database shows Nigg and Fogle are both inmates at the Englewood facility.

Fogles attorney, Ronald Elberger, has not responded to NBC Chicagos numerous requests for comment on the alleged attack.

James Nigg told NBC Chicago his brother doesnt like child molesters," a sentiment he has shared in numerous letters to the family before the alleged attack.

Basically, he said you know, I hope it makes the family happy, Nigg said. Im sure theres a dad or mom or a brother or an uncle that would have liked to have done what he did.

James Nigg said his brother has been in the hole since the attack.

He doesnt regret it at all, thats why they wont let him back in the yard, he said. He would do it again.

Fogle pleaded guilty in November to one count each of distributing and receiving child porn and traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a child. He was sentenced to 188 months in prison.

Last month, he asked a federal appeals court to shorten his sentence, arguing a district court judge in Indianapolis abused her authority when she handed down a sentence three years longer than the maximum term prosecutors pursued.

Fogle admitted that he paid for sex at New York City hotels with girls who were 16 or 17 years old and that he had received some child pornography produced by the one-time head of his anti-obesity charity, Russell Taylor. Fogle also paid a total of $1.4 million to his 14 victims, with each getting $100,000.

Taylor was sentenced in December to 27 years in prison after pleading guilty to 12 counts of child exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography.
The shootout on Tuesday that seriously injured a Fort Worth police officer was captured by the officers body camera, police said.

Police have not released the video because it is considered evidence in the investigation.

It shows the father, a fugitive on the run from Parker County, fired at the officer, said police Cpl. Tracey Knight.

Officer Matt Pearce was seriously wounded in the shootout in a wooded area of West Fort Worth, which killed the father, Ed McIver. His son, Ed McIver. Jr., fled and was captured a few hours later.

According to police, the video recorded Pearce shouting into his radio, Shots fired.

His camera revealed he also said Officer down, but that part was not actually broadcast.

When backup officers arrived, they didnt realize an officer had been shot. They saw someones boots sticking out of the woods and shouted, Show me your hands, believing it was McIver Jr.

Pearce shouted back: Blue, blue, to let them know he was an officer.

Pearce, who also is a paramedic, was able to help officers treat his injuries.

"He himself, I can share with you, being an EMT, was able to provide some information about what we should be doing before he was extracated, so there's a lot to be proud of here," said Chief Joel Fitzgerald.

Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald said Officer Matt Pearce is a fighter and will continue to fight. Pearce was shot in the line of duty on Tuesday.

The investigation into the shooting revealed a sergeant fired a shot that hit the father from 275 feet away, said police spokeswoman Cpl. Tracey Knight. That was not captured on the video, she said.

The officer was in a heavily wooded area and a medical helicopter wasn't able to land nearby.

A 4-wheel-drive police SUV got stuck in thick mud twice and other officers pushed it out -- all in the middle of the manhunt for the second gunman, police said.

Fitzgerald said Pearce was fighting, continuing to fight but remained in critical condition.

His wife Laura, a nurse, was by his side.

Fitzgerald said Pearce remains sedated but that doctors were considering whether to wake him soon.

I really feel hes the right guy in this battle, Fitzgerald said. Hes everything we thought he was.


The wife of an internationally renowned pianist will undergo a mental health evaluation after her two children were found dead and she suffered stab wounds in the family's North Texas home Thursday. The husband of Sofya Tsygankova is not a suspect, Benbrook police said Friday. [[372477922,R]]



Benbrook Police Cmdr. David Babcock said during a news conference Friday that Ukranian-born musician Vadym Kholodenko arrived as scheduled at 9:20 a.m. Thursday to pick up his children at his estranged wife's home on the 6600 block of Waterwood Trail.



"Once he arrived there, he found the mother in an extreme state of distress," said Babcock. "And he discovered the children in their state."

Babcock said Kholodenko called 911 at 9:27 a.m. to report what happened, telling authorities his daughters were dead in their beds.



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The girls, identified by the Tarrant County medical examiner as 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko, showed no signs of visible trauma. An initial autopsy came back as "inconclusive," according to Babcock. Additional testing could take up to several weeks to complete.



When asked Friday if Tsygankova was a suspect in the deaths of her children, Babcock declined to say.



"We are still looking at all avenues," he said, but added that authorities don't believe there's any immediate risk to others in the area.



Tsygankova is recovering at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth and will be held for a mental health evaluation once she is released, Babcock said. Tsygankova suffered several stab wounds from a knife, but he did not say if the wounds were self-inflicted or if she had been attacked.



In a statement released Friday evening, Kholodenko said:

"Being in a great grief I would like to address this message to everyone who thinks about my family. The loss of my children will be with me forever. But I would like to say that I feel the support of the Fort Worth community and all people who are sending me messages all over the world. My special gratefulness is for the Castro family who supported my family and who gave special care to my daughters. I would like to ask everyone who is going to the concerts this weekend at Bass Hall to think of the music. Wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil."



Court records obtained by NBC 5 show Kholodenko filed for divorce from Tsygankova in November.



Kholodenko's attorney, David Kulesz, wrote that the pair married in 2010 and stopped living together as a couple last August.



[[372577741,C]]



Benbrook police had been called to the home several times in recent years, though Babcock refused to elaborate on the nature of those calls. He did not say if there had been any arrests or action taken.



Kulesz released the following statement Friday morning on his client's behalf: "Mr. Kholodenko is experiencing great grief at this time and has no further comment. Thank you for respecting his privacy."



Kholodenko in 2013 became the first winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth.



"The Cliburn family is mourning the loss of the precious Kholodenko girls. We are heartbroken and offer our prayers to Vadym and all affected by this overwhelming tragedy," a spokesperson for The Cliburn said in a statement Friday morning.



[[372579101,C]]



In 2014 Kholodenko and his family moved to Fort Worth and he began touring and playing with major orchestras. He was scheduled to perform three shows with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra this weekend but has been replaced by another performer.



The Fort Worth Symphony family is profoundly saddened by the tragic event suffered by our dear friend and artistic partner, Vadym Kholodenko, said Amy Adkins, FWSO President and CEO. Our Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, musicians, staff and board send deepest condolences and prayers to Vadym and his family as they grieve the unimaginable loss of these beloved children.



NBC 5 's Scott Gordon, Chris Van Horne and Caroline Connolly contributed to this report.
Two children were killed and their mother stabbed Thursday in a bizarre crime involving the family of an internationally known pianist in North Texas, Benbrook police said. [[372477922,R]]

The children's father is pianist Vadym Kholodenko. Police said Friday morning he is not a suspect in the case and his estranged wife will be held for a mental health evaluation once she recovers from her wounds.

Someone who went to the house to check on the family on the 6600 block of Waterwood Trail called 911 at about 9:30 a.m., according to Benbrook Police Cmdr. David Babcock.

Officers found the mother  identified by neighbors as 31-year-old Sofya Tsygankova  stabbed but still alive. Her two daughters, identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner as 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko, were both dead.

According to the medical examiner, the children were found in bed. Unlike their mother, police said, they had no visible injuries.

"The manner of death has not been determined at this time, but they were not stabbed," Babcock said. "Until we speak to the mother, it's too early in this investigation to establish any suspects or motives at this point," Babcock said.

Benbrook Police Cmdr. spokesperson David Babcock updated the media regarding the murders of two children found inside a Benbrook home.

Tsygankova was rushed to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where she underwent surgery. Her condition is not known.

Court records obtained by NBC 5 show Kholodenko filed for divorce from Tsygankova in November. Kholodenko's attorney wrote that the couple married in 2010 and stopped living together as a couple last August. Tsygankova filed a counter-suit, records show, asking for attorney fees.

Neighbors said they didn't know anything about the divorce but added that Tsygankova seemed like a good mother who loved her children and frequently jumped with them on a trampoline in their back yard.

"She played outside with them," said Messer. "If they were on the trampoline, she was on the trampoline."

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

Inside the family's garage Thursday, a suitcase on the floor and a balloon that said "I love you," provided few clues about what happened inside the house.

In 2013, Kholodenko became the first winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, which was held following the death of acclaimed American pianist Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr., according to Kholodenko's biography.

Kholodenko was scheduled to perform three shows with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

A statement issued late Thursday by the symphony said, "We are currently formulating our plan for this weekend's concerts in light of the developing situation and plan to release a statement in the morning."

David Kulesz, the attorney representing Kolodenko in his divorce, released the following statement Friday morning on his client's behalf: "Mr. Kholodenko is experiencing great grief at this time and has no further comment. Thank you for respecting his privacy."

Babcock said a suspect has not been determined, and there were no signs of forced entry at the home.

"It's very disturbing," said Terri Messer, who lives on the other side of the family's rented duplex. "I wouldn't have expected anything like this."
Some Republican leaders kept straining Thursday to come up with a way to stop Donald Trump's likely ascent to the GOP presidential nomination while others seem headed for grudging acceptance.

With at least this week's additional states in his win column, Trump is now the only candidate with a path to clinching the Republican nomination before the party's convention in July. But he still must do better in upcoming contests to get the necessary 1,237 delegates, leaving some opponents with a sliver of hope he can be stopped.

"I still think it's a very realistic chance that nobody's going to have a majority of the delegates," said Henry Barbour, a senior Republican National Committee member who worked on Marco Rubio's delegate strategy until the Florida senator exited the race Tuesday.

There were incremental steps by some Republicans to rally around Ted Cruz, the only candidate in the race with even a long-shot chance of overtaking Trump in the delegate count.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been sharply critical of Cruz in the past, said he would help the Texas senator raise money. Graham said that while Ohio Gov. John Kasich is his preferred candidate, he didn't believe Kasich ha s a path to stopping Trump, saying that "is most important to me."

A group of conservatives huddled in Washington Thursday morning to discuss ways to block the businessman. Organizer Erick Erickson said in a statement that the group was calling for a "unity ticket that unites the Republican Party" and was also open to unspecified "other avenues" for stopping Trump from becoming the nominee.

While the statement did not mention specific candidates, one participant said the majority of people in the meeting wanted to name Cruz as a suggested nominee but were worried about doing so because of the effect if might have on Kasich. The person insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private meeting publicly.

The three best-financed efforts to stop Trump  American Future Fund, Our Principles and Club for Growth have no Trump attack ads planned for Arizona  a crucial winner-take-all contest in six days  or in any states beyond. Club for Growth did buy about $200,000 in ads in Utah, which also votes next week.

Former House Speaker John Boehner floated his successor, Paul Ryan, as the nominee in the event of a convention fight. But Ryan quickly took himself out of the mix, saying through a spokeswoman that he would "not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year."

Meanwhile, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton set her sights on a November showdown with Trump. Her victories in four primary contests Tuesday was a harsh blow to rival Bernie Sanders, giving Clinton what her campaign manager described as an "insurmountable lead" in the delegate count.

"We are confident that for the first time in our nation's history, the Democratic Party will nominate a woman as their presidential nominee," Robby Mook wrote in a memo to supporters.

Clinton has at least 1,599 delegates to Sanders' 844. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.

Trump urged Republicans to view the party's nominating contest with the same sense of clarity. He said some of the same Republican senators who publicly criticize him have called privately to say they want to "become involved" in his campaign eventually.

Trump also effectively killed the GOP debate scheduled for Monday in Utah, saying "we've had enough debates." After Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he wouldn't debate without Trump on stage, host Fox News scrapped the event.

Trump has won 47 percent of the Republican delegates awarded so far, according to the Associated Press delegate count. He needs to win 54 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination by the time the primary season ends on June 7.

Just a handful of states will vote between now and mid-April, a reprieve for opponents.

"We've got four weeks to identify what the most effective path is," said Tim Miller, a former Jeb Bush aide who now works for an anti-Trump super PAC.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who is supporting Kasich, said there were "calls going back and forth between the Kasich-Rubio campaign" about the possibility of a joint ticket, though he said those conversations were preliminary.

Any scenarios that end with blocking Trump could leave the party in chaos. But some Republicans suggested that given the party's current state, the chaos couldn't get much worse.

"The divisions are already there," said John Jordan, a California-based donor who was leading a pro-Rubio super PAC. "There's already open warfare on TV. A couple thousand people in a food fight in Cleveland pales in comparison."

Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher, Julie Bykowicz, Lisa Lerer and Nancy Benac contributed to this report.
When Marty McFly zoomed out of 1985, only to immediately crash Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean into the Peabody family's barn, film audiences could guess, within in a few minutes, that our hero really had landed back in the 1950s.

The clothing, the buildings, the vintage vibe soon let the Biff out of the bag: Marty was actually in 1955.

But what year would the puffy-vested protagonist have thought he was in if the DeLorean had arrived at the Petersen Automotive Museum circa 2016?

The sci-fi, neon-o-swirl look of the freshly re-imagined structure has an air of 2107 to it, give or take, or at least somewhere deep within the next century. The Petersen is, then, a perfect time-twisting place for the original "Back to the Future" DeLorean DMC-12 to go on display, which it will in April.

Set your digital time-read-out for Friday, April 22, fans, for that's the opening day of the new display. (Perhaps you've already visited the not-yet-open display, numerous times, being an auto-loving, future-visiting time traveler.)

If you're wondering if the DeLorean has stopped by the vehicle-filled institution before  there've been a lot of movie cars there over the decades, yes indeedy  wonder no longer: This is its Petersen debut. And if you're wondering if it hails from Universal Studios Hollywood, know you are as right about that assumption as Marty's band was too loud for the talent show judges' personal tastes.

Which is to say that you're very, very right.

"The unveiling will kick off a monthlong celebration of the iconic car and film trilogy, including panel discussions, a DeLorean cruise-in, and an '80s-themed "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance; all events sponsored by Belkin and Mattel," reveals the Petersen.

Hidden LA posted the flux-capacitor-riffic news, and Time Machine Restoration, a car-pro collective that knows the BTTF DeLorean specs inside and out, gave a resounding cheer.

A pre-treat to the big unveiling: "Back to the Future" writer Bob Gale and John Murdy, USH's Creative Director (and the vivacious visionary behind Halloween Horror Nights), will talk all things DeLorean at a special gathering on April 20.

So, where can you see the icon in all of its souped-up glory? It'll eventually make a forever home in the Cars of Film and Television area of the museum  that's in the Hollywood Gallery  but weekend #1 is all about the first floor of the Petersen, so look for it there if you're one of the first people to catch it.

It's pretty hard to catch, of course, being a time-traveling device. But you just might.

And we weren't joshing around before, with our initial query: Upon seeing the current Petersen Automotive Museum, what year would 1985 Marty have thought he'd arrived in? The May Company Building, which is across the street from the auto institution, still has its 1939-cool gold tube, and Johnie's Coffee Shop is pure midcentury, still.

Which leads us to believe that the DeLorean's new home at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue puts it in the most time-nutty, calendar-quirky intersection in all of Southern California. Nicely done, Universal Studios Hollywood and Petersen Automotive Museum and all of the people who brought this new display to plutonium-powered life.
A woman who was convicted of vandalizing a Buddhist temple last year was arrested Friday on suspicion of stealing three statues from a place of worship in Santa Ana, police said.

On Feb. 26, surveillance video captured a woman removing two statues, valued at $1,000 a piece, from a shrine adjacent to the Chua Truc Lam Yen Tu Buddhist Temple located in the 1900 block of West 2nd Street, the Santa Ana Police Department said on Thursday.

The suspect, later identified by police as Trang Thu Pham, 46, returned to the temple on March 6 and stole a third statue, police said.

After viewing surveillance video, an unidentified person recognized the woman as Plam, who was arrested in January 2015 and convicted of vandalizing a place of worship, according to police.

Pham was sentenced to 268 days in jail for the 2015 incident and was placed on 5 years' formal probation. Pham never reported to the probation department and she currently has a no bail warrant for a probation violation.

Pham was taken into custody Friday, Santa Ana police confirmed.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Alfredo Castro at 714-245-8345 or Orange County Crime Stoppers 1-855-TIPS-OCCS.
Why drink coffee alone when you can enjoy it in the company of a cat?

Chicagos first "cat cafe" is coming to West Rogers Park as part of Tree House Humane Societys new shelter set to open this year. The Chicago City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance allowing the opening of animal shelter cafes.

"Cat Cafes are wildly popular throughout Asia, Europe and the United States," Alderman Debra Silverstein, who introduced the ordinance, said in a statement. "The 50th Ward will soon be home to the City of Chicagos first Cat Cafe and, thanks to this new ordinance, will set a trend that will spread throughout the city and the rest of the Midwest."

Tree House Humane Societys Cat Cafe plans to open at 7225 N. Western Ave. as part of its new adoption center and veterinary clinic. The location features full-length glass windows in the serving areas and an adjacent sitting room where visitors can have direct interaction with adoptable, rescued cats while enjoying coffee, tea and other beverages.

"We are extremely grateful to Alderman Silverstein and the City Council for making this dream a reality," said David de Funiak, executive director of Tree House Humane Society, in a statement. "The Tree House Cat Cafe will provide a unique opportunity for individuals to interact with our rescued, adoptable cats, ultimately helping more animals find their forever home and enabling us to rescue even more."

The new facility started construction last June as an adoption center and will now include a cafe. Tree Houses goal is to open sometime mid-year. Funds from the cafe will benefit the shelter, with proceeds directly supporting the rescue and rehabilitation of the cats.

The Animal Shelter Cafe Permit is available for licensed humane societies only, and the ordinance aims to facilitate as a tool to boost adoptions. The cafes can only sell non-alcoholic beverages and must maintain sanitation requirements.
The Miami Marlins scored three runs in the top of the ninth inning before falling 6-5 to the Atlanta Braves on Friday.

The loss was Miami's fifth in a row and came quickly after an exciting moment for the team. Isaac Galloway who is in camp trying to secure a bench job launched a three-run home run in the ninth to erase a three-run deficit. Galloway has been a long-time member of the organization and it was a fun moment for him and his teammates.

The moment was fleeting however as the team gave a run back quickly and the Braves walked off with the victory. While the final scores of spring games are meaningless, a winning attitude is not and Miami has been unable to celebrate wins much thus far. Closing out games has been difficult for the team even with an increased use of regular big-league tested players.

Before Galloway's short-lived heroics, Miami saw another ball leave the yard early on. Playing in the shadows of Walt Disney World, Marcell Ozuna launched a majestic home run. It was the second home run of the spring for Ozuna who has looked in-shape and game-ready all spring long.

J.T. Realmuto and Adeiny Hechavarria also made the trip to Lake Buena Vista and each doubled. Miami has seen far better offensive results as of late, and is now looking for the same from its pitching staff.

Chris Narveson is hoping to land a bullpen job and he did little to make that happen in this one. The veteran allowed four runs in 3.1 innings and has a 5.79 E.R.A on the spring. With several arms trying to secure very few spots, Narveson is likely simply running out of time to win a role at this juncture.

The news wasn't much better for Brad Hand who is out of options and could end up waived by the team. Hand did not allow a run in two innings, but he walked two more hitters. The lefty has struggled with control during his career and that has continued this spring. Miami could decide to go in another direction before April rolls around.

The Marlins will host the Detroit Tigers on Saturday at Roger Dean Stadium.
Its hard to formulate a philosophy for life at age 16, but if someone that young can have words to live by, Rachel Wheeler has a suggestion.

You dont have to be an adult to change the world, says Rachel, a sophomore at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek.

Starting when she was just nine years old, Rachel began to raise money to help the earthquake-devastated areas of Haiti.

I just wanted to help and I wanted to do as much as I can, Rachel said.

So with help from her parents and friends, Rachel started her fundraising efforts. Fast-forward seven years, and she has raised roughly $500,000 for Food for the Poor, an international relief agency based a few blocks from her school.

Food for the Poor has used the money to build 75 concrete block homes and a school in the Leogane area of Haiti, one of the neediest places on earth. Dozens of families suddenly have shelter, clean running water, and a school for 350 kids.

I do feel a sense of accomplishment because I know that Ive helped people, Rachel said, speaking to us in an interview in her schools library.

You wont hear Rachel boasting about her accomplishments. People at the school say shes too humble for that.

But what she does do is she leads by example in a quiet way, said North Broward Preps headmaster, Elis Ecoff. And shes able to give other students advice on how to follow your passions and to not wait until youre an adult to be able to make a difference.

Theres no question Rachels fundraising has made a profound difference in Haiti.

The areas she has helped have truly felt hopeless and forgotten, Said Angel Aloma, executive director of Food for the Poor. these are people who had experienced little hope, all of a sudden now, they have a start in life, because a home, then a school, and what happens is once they have a home its much more likely theyll get a job, all because of a girl who started at nine years of age with this dream and is making that dream a reality.

Food for the Poor builds its homes in clusters to form a community. The one in Leogane is called Rachels Village, and when she visits, Rachel is treated like a hero.

When I did go they all were, like everybody was yelling my name, they were carrying me into the village and everyone I saw was saying thank you, thank you, Rachel said. I know that Im doing a good thing and I know that its helping people and when you really see it from them, it actually like, hits you.

Unlike most privileged teenagers in this country, Rachel Wheeler never takes her blessings for granted. Its a lesson forged from seeing third-world poverty up close, and it fuels her drive to do more, to help more.

I think Ive succeeded but I want to do more, I dont want to stop here, Rachel declares.

Shes bent on saving the world. Pretty heavy stuff for a kid whos still learning algebra.

You can donate to the effort by going to www.foodforthepoor.org/Rachel.
The Obama administration is openly stepping up efforts to find and deport immigrants who were part of the 2014 surge of illegal crossings by unaccompanied children and families.

The politically fraught endeavor is a follow-through on a nearly 2-year-old warning that those immigrants who don't win permission to stay in the United States would be sent packing. It comes at a time when Republican presidential candidates are pushing for tougher immigration action.

Homeland Security officials have kept a wary eye on the border since more than 68,000 unaccompanied children and roughly as many people traveling as families were caught crossing the border illegally in 2014. The effort to step up enforcement against families and young immigrants started in the midst of a new flood of such immigrants.

Previous efforts to curb illegal crossings seemed to work initially, as the number of children and families crossing illegally dropped about 40 percent between 2014 and 2015. But that number started to rise again late last summer. At the same time, the immigration court system faced a backlog of more than 474,000 cases of unaccompanied child immigrants.

Now the Obama administration is touting its efforts to find and deport families as well as those unaccompanied children who are now adults who have been ordered home. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has highlighted his department's deportation efforts.

One of those unaccompanied children-turned-adults targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is 19-year-old Wildin David Guillen Acosta. He said he came to the United States from Honduras by bus, car and on foot after a gang member threatened to kill him.

"I wouldn't go out at night. He'd call me and say, 'I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you,' " Acosta said in Spanish. "I told my mother and she told me to come to the United States."

Acosta, speaking from an immigration jail in rural Georgia, said he was afraid to go home.

"I'm scared. I don't want to go back. There's a lot of violence, a lot of death," Acosta said. "They'll kill you for a telephone. How is this possible?"

His mother, Dilsia Acosta, said her son came to the U.S. in June 2014 at the peak of a wave of immigrant children. His father, Hector Guillen, came to the United States illegally in 2005 and his mother followed in 2013. Wildin Acosta was arrested in January after a judge ruled that he should be deported.

Wildin Acosta, who had been going to school and working since arriving in North Carolina, said now he hopes to win asylum. But the odds are against him because he has a pending deportation order.

Immigration advocates have rallied around Wildin Acosta and others and are pressing the administration to reverse course.

But U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement isn't backing down.

Since October, more than 800 immigrants who arrived as unaccompanied children have been sent home, according to ICE statistics. Other formerly unaccompanied child immigrants with pending deportation orders have been detained in preparation for deportation.

ICE's head of enforcement operations, Tom Homan, told Congress in February that his agents are aggressively pursuing unaccompanied former-child immigrants and families.

"We have sent out thousands of leads on (unaccompanied children) who have final orders issued by the immigration courts, some in absentia, some in person, and we are out looking for those leads," Homan told lawmakers. "I have 129 (fugitive operations) teams out there every day."

About 10,000 unaccompanied children have been ordered out of the country since July 2014, but roughly 87 percent of those orders were issued in absentia, according to Justice Department figures.

In early January, DHS started targeting families who had lost their bid to stay in the United States, and ICE announced the arrests of 121 people  more than half of whom have been sent home so far.

Johnson said the arrests should come as no surprise since he announced in late 2014 that new border crossers were an enforcement priority.

"We do not have, and cannot have, an open border so we have to have enforcement at the border," Johnson told The Associated Press. "Are enforcement actions against families pleasant? No, of course not. In a very personal way, I recognize that."

Nonetheless, he added, "We have to enforce the law."

The arrests have angered immigration advocates and Democrats who argue it is dangerous to send families and young immigrants back to dangerous and impoverished Central American countries.

And the efforts come at a complicated time for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are both vying for the Hispanic vote.

Clinton and Sanders have both denounced the January arrests of families and promised to be more lenient in enforcing immigration laws than President Barack Obama.

Kevin Appleby, director of international migration policy for the Center for Migration Studies, said the administration is "caught in a difficult spot."

"Before they start deporting unaccompanied children wholesale they have to fix ... the legal system so these children have a fair opportunity" to fight to stay in the country, Appleby said.

Johnson said it's a matter of adhering to the agency's priorities.

"We can't have a policy that if you come here and you do not qualify for asylum or other relief, and you've been ordered removed by an immigration court" you can stay anyway, Johnson said.
City workers in Paterson have been captured on video working at the mayor's private home, sparking questions about who is paying for that work in the cash-strapped city.



On one occasion, two men identified as city employees are shown on video on a Saturday carrying a large beer cooler into Mayor Jose Torress home. One of the men seen carrying the cooler into Torress house was on the clock while he was doing that job, city records show.



On other occasions, men identified as Paterson workers are seen helping the mayor move boxes, carrying tools into his house, washing his scooter and removing what appears to be construction debris.



The workers at times can be seen in uniform or using city vehicles. Two workers tell the I-Team that the mayor also asked them to perform construction work on nights and weekends at a planned business on East 15th Street for a relative of the mayor.



In other cases, workers were paid overtime on the same days they were filmed doing tasks at the mayors house. But I-Team is still waiting for records detailing the exact hours they worked for the city those same days.



Former federal prosecutor Robert Ray reviewed the videos for the I-Team and offered this opinion: "That highest ranking official in that city has the ability to call on favors and to get people in government to do things that they wouldnt otherwise do, Ray said. Thats a misuse of power. Its not only a question of use of government resources and taxpayer money. But its an abuse of power.



New Jersey local government ethics rules state: No local government officer or employee shall use or attempt to use his official position to secure unwarranted privileges or advantages for himself or others."



Torres declined the I-Teams request for an interview, writing in an email: Please be advised that at no time has any city employee, on city time, or overtime, or paid with taxpayer dollars, ever performed work for me at my home, or anywhere else.



In a Paterson Press newspaper report about the I-Teams story, Torres told the newspaper that in one case, one or two city employees worked at his property to build four bookshelves in his daughters bedroom in the past year.



He said the job was done on the employees own time, and he paid for the supplies and gave the employees $50 for the work.



Several of the employees seen on the tapes spoke with the I-Team. They said they did the work as personal favors for Torres on their own time. In a few cases, the city workers said Torres paid them out of his own pocket for the private jobs they did for him.

The videos were taken by private investigator Harry Melber, who was hired by a developer who was in a permit dispute with the city. For about a year on and off beginning in November 2014, Melber followed Torres and filmed the mayor both at the mayors home and the 15th Street strip mall.



One of the city workers described the 15th Street business construction as a big job that included electrical and carpentry work. The worker said he was not paid and treated the job as a social occasion with the mayor and fellow public works employees. He said the mayor would sometimes bring the workers free beer.



Another worker tells the I-Team Torres paid him with his own money.



The mayors brother, Samuel Torres, owns a liquor store right near the 15th Street construction site. Samuel Torres told the I-Team the location was intended to be a beer warehouse for his own son. Samuel Torres said his brother the mayor was not involved in the project. But two workers said the mayor personally called them to do the work on nights and weekends.



Surveillance video also shows Torres on several occasions at the warehouse site.



On several occasions, city trucks are on tape coming and going from East 15th Street site.



Other instances where employees were shown on Melbers surveillance video include:



 One worker, Jorge Makdissi, seen at the mayors house five times in as many months. On two of those days, records show the city was billed for extra hours. The I-Team is still waiting for records showing exactly what hours he worked. By phone, Makdissi told the I-Team work listed on his time sheets is only for city business. He said the mayor paid him out of his pocket for personal work.



 On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend last year, two men identified as city workers are shown carrying a cooler of beer into the mayors house. One of the men, Tim Hanlon, told the I-Team he did several hours of work that day to prepare for a party the mayor was having that weekend. Records show Hanlon clocked in at 5:55 that morning and clocked out at 2 in the afternoon. But t 11:31, video shows him lugging this beer cooler into the mayors house. Hanlon said his best recollection is he was off the clock that morning and did not bill taxpayers. He said its possible a supervisor billed time on his behalf, or that maybe he did city work at another time that day.



 On April 18, city workers are shown picking up what appears to be construction debris and other trash from the mayors home. Past and current city officials tell the I-Team ordinary citizens dont get that kind of service; they would have to pay a private company for such a job.



 On two days in April, a city mechanic is seen washing Torress scooter and working on his car. He says he did the work on his own time and the mayor covered expenses and paid him out of pocket for the work. He said mayor is an old friend, and he was his mechanic before he became the mayor.



 On August 1, four city workers are seen helping the Mayor for several hours moving boxes at the mayors home and at a storage facility. One worker said the Mayor asked workers to help him with a move for his daughter. Records show one of the workers  Jeffrey Williams  worked 25 hours straight before going to the mayors house to volunteer to help with the move. Williams said he was doing the mayor a favor.



Questions about the employees seen at the mayors home come amid a budget crisis in Paterson. At recent city council meetings, angry residents have complained about rising taxes and failing city services.

The city council finally passed a budget this week after an earlier budget rejection forced employees to stay home for a day without pay, and closed Patersons libraries, senior services and after-school recreation programs.



Paterson city council members have already called for county and state prosecutors to investigate whether the mayor has used city workers improperly.
GO IN-DEPTH NOW: Read, watch and experience more stories around our special presentation GENERATION ADDICTED HERE.

Amid the most widespread and deadly drug epidemic ever to sweep the United States, the long-fought War on Drugs is transforming into a war on addiction -- and NBC10 has spent the last five months on the front lines getting in-depth look at this crisis affecting every community across the Delaware Valley.



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Monday night at 7 p.m. we aired Generation Addicted, a raw and emotional look at the young lives and families being torn apart by the heroin and opioid epidemic. The half-hour exclusive special report, supported by Mirmont Treatment Center, is the culmination of five months of reporting by Vince Lattanzio, Denise Nakano and Morgan Zalot. It is complemented by an extensive multimedia presentation that will appear on NBC10.com. Robust social content will also be presented on NBC10's social platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social content includes a personal facebook LIVE with Vince Lattanzio that following the first airing of Generation Addicted on Monday evening. You can rewatch the entire special above as well.

Join the conversation on Generation Addicted LIVE with Vince Lattanzio now Posted by NBC10 Philadelphia on Monday, March 21, 2016

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Generation Addicted transports viewers into the tragic world of heroin and opiate addiction, placing them side-by-side with young people battling addiction, parents fighting to save their kids, police and policymakers searching for solutions, and doctors racing to save lives.

The reason were doing [this story] is to fulfill a commitment and viewer responsibility to raise awareness about an epidemic that is impacting individuals and families across the tri-state, NBC10 President and General Manager Ric Harris said. Its important to us to help our viewers understand the impact of this epidemic and what they can do to help themselves and their neighbors.

As the heroin epidemic strikes nationally, some law enforcement agencies are adopting The Angel Program, which allows drug users to come to police and ask for help. NBC10s Vince Lattanzio has more.

The in-depth, multi-platform exclusive is the second of its kind launched by NBC10, after Faces of Homeless Youth last year provided a look at homelessness among teenagers and young adults in Philadelphia. Faces of Homeless Youth inspired tens of thousands of dollars in donations and hours of volunteer work at Covenant House Pennsylvania, a crisis shelter for young adults, and played a role in U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) calling on Congress to approve $42.5 million in new funding for youth homelessness.

NBC10 Digital exclusives like Generation Addicted align with the stations larger mission to serve the community by keeping viewers informed about issues that influence their lives.



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Its a great example of our commitment to telling stories across multiple platforms in order to reach and engage the people most affected, Harris said.

In Generation Addicted, viewers meet Michael Miller, a 22-year-old who graduated from Philadelphias prestigious Central High School with honors and began pursuing a degree in engineering at Drexel University, only to find himself hooked on pain pills -- and later, heroin -- his life and dreams derailed. Theyll hear the heartbreaking story of Patty DiRenzo, who fought tirelessly to save her son, Sal, from the grips of heroin, but lost him in the end. There are also stories of hope: of Carol Rostucher, who has made it her lifes mission to help addicted people since her son beat his own addiction, and of scores of law-enforcement officers who are shifting their strategy around addiction from handcuffs to humanity by offering people help instead of punishment.



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Those are just a few of nearly 80 people in 18 cities large and small across 4 states and the District of Columbia, with whom NBC10s team spent months with to tell the story of addiction in the most meaningful way possible.



Along with the special report, NBC10 will provide viewers a platform to chime in and share their own stories of their struggles with and triumphs over addiction via the NBC10 app and on social media using the hashtag #AddictionIs.



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Immediately following the special, people joined Vince Lattanzio on NBC10's Facebook page to continue the conversation and chat LIVE.
UPDATE: Police found the girl and her father safe.

Philadelphia Police are asking for the public's help in locating a 3-year-old girl and her 17-year-old father.

Police said the 17-year-old grabbed his 3-year-old daughter from the front of her home along the 200 block of West Lindley Avenue in Philadelphia on Wednesday around 4 p.m. and took off running.

The teen does not have custody of his daughter and is a known drug user, said police.

The teen's mother, who has legal custody of both the 17-year-old and his daughter, has been unable to reach her son.

Anyone with information on the whereabout of Martinez or his daughter are asked to call Northeast Detectives at 215-686-3353.
Philadelphia Police shot a man after they say he pointed a gun at officers during a foot chase in North Philly Thursday night.

Two plainclothes officers in an unmarked car were on patrol in the area of N 15th and Clearfield streets when they saw a man they believed was wanted in a shooting and had three warrants, said police. The suspect took off when officers approached him and the chase ended when police said he pointed a gun at them.

"Officers ordered him to drop the gun, he refused," said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small. "One officer discharged his weapon." [[372528501, C]]

The man was shot in the legs and torso by one of the 39th District officers and taken to Temple University Hospital in stable condition.

Authorities didn't immediately identify the man who was shot or the officers involved in the incident.
Uber unveiled a new feature of its popular ride service in San Diego Thursday: the company will offer one-way rides across the U.S.-Mexico border, from San Diego to Tijuana.

The service is called UberPASSPORT and promises to make that trip to Mexico hassle-free.

The company says it chose to launch the service in San Diego due to the citys proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border and the frequent use of the border crossing.

The service officially launches on Friday, March 18.

While the Passport service is not round-trip and doesn't offer direct rides from Tijuana back into San Diego, those visiting Tijuana can use Uber to get a ride to the international border, where they can walk across the pedestrian lane and back into the United States.

Ubers Head of Global Operations, San Diego native Ryan Graves, talked about the product launch Thursday in San Diego at a waterfront press conference. He was joined by Christopher Ballard, general manager for Uber Southern California, as well as San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and representatives from the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

"This is the first time an Uber trip will cross an international border," Graves said. "That's an amazing thing to experience."

"At Uber we celebrate cities," Graves added. "Today, we have the opportunity to bring two amazing cities together in San Diego and Tijuana together, even closer."

UberPassport is a new way to facilitate cross-border opportunities by providing reliable and accessible transportation from San Diego to Tijuana, Ballard said. Heading to Baja has never been more attainable.

Ballard noted that since Uber launched in San Diego four years ago, there are now 450,000 riders using the service across San Diego County, and 12,000 driver partners locally.

The company says Passport works via the Uber app. Customers can open the Uber app, select Passport within the vehicle menu and tap to request the ride. Riders must bring all required documentation to cross the border, including a U.S. passport.

UberPASSPORT vehicles seat up to four passengers. The company says the base fare is $4, plus $0.30 per minute and $2.35 per mile. There is an additional $20 border crossing fee for passengers.

That means a trip from North Park to central Tijuana runs about $90, while a trip from downtown San Diego to the TIJ Airport runs about $100. A ride from Pacific Beach to Rosarito would ring in at around $160.

To avoid a language barrier, riders can request to be paired up with an English-speaking driver within Tijuana via the companys UberENGLISH feature.

Passport service is one-way only, so the return trip from Tijuana to San Diego is not included. Asked why the service doesn't return to San Diego, an Uber representative noted that this is a pilot launch and that the company hopes to develop the product further to perhaps include a round-trip option in the future.

Instead, to return to the U.S., riders can request an Uber to the international border via the companys local service in Tijuana. Riders can request a ride from their location in Tijuana, and then enter TJ Border Pickup as the drop-off destination in their request.

The Uber will drop the rider off at the San Ysidro International Border Crossing. From there, travelers can use the pedestrian lane to cross back into the U.S. on foot. Once on the U.S. side, riders can request an Uber in San Diego to travel to their final destination, the company says.

There are obvious logistical challenges in crossing to San Diego from Mexico that don't present themselves when going southbound, according to spokeswoman Tatiana Winograd.

Uber said Passport riders should remember that certain items cant be brought into Mexico, including alcohol, drugs, firearms, fireworks, fish and wildlife, prepared food products, meat, fruits and vegetables, gold and plants. There are also some restrictions on the value of purchased goods that passengers are allowed to bring into Mexico, as seen in this Customs Declarations form.



The company plans to make further announcements on its Passport service on social media via its Twitter accounts @uber_SD and @uber_tijuana.

Faulconer said San Diego is excited to be the first-ever cross-border Uber city.



I think the launch of this new option is going to pay tremendous dividends to San Diegans and for our families and for our economy," he said. "This highlights the best of what San Diego has to offer by using one the worlds most innovative apps to bridge countries, businesses and families in a way that has never been done before."

Graves says Uber operates in nearly 400 cities and 70 countries worldwide.
California wasn't expected to be a "battleground state" in this year's Presidential primary campaign.



But now it's expected to get plenty of attention on the Republican side.

"You know, you've got a huge, very diverse state with eleven media markets, and it's very expensive, says Republican political strategist Jason Roe, who served as a national spokesman for the now-suspended GOP campaign of Floridas U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

I don't think that you're going to see a lot of advertising, Roe told NBC 7 in an interview Thursday. You'll see some stumping throughout the state of the two to three remaining candidates, to try to get some news media for it."



Could Donald Trump wrap up the GOP nomination by winning a big share of California's delegates?



Political observers won't say that's beyond his reach, although the numbers say he needs to win nearly 60 percent of the remaining Republican delegates.



Californias June 7 primary is part of a six-state Super Tuesday which includes New Jersey, with only one more primary the following week left in the campaign.

"Look, it might stretch out, there might be a contested election, says Scott Lewis, editor of NBC 7s media partner Voice of San Diego. But we have -- what, 10 weeks until then? I think it's pretty likely that Trump consolidates his support and makes it impossible to head toward a brokered election."

On the Democratic side, "conventional wisdom" is predicting a Hillary Clinton win in California.

Her February primary victory here in 2012 kept her campaign alive for three months, before then-Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won the nomination.


Mourners will gather next week to say goodbye to a Prince George's County police officer who died after a gunman launched an attack on the police station.

The funeral for Officer Jacai Colson will be held at 11 a.m. March 25 at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. A viewing will precede the service.

A viewing is also scheduled for March 24 from 2 p.m. until 9 p.m. at Borgwardt Funeral Home in Beltsville, Maryland.

Colson's interment will be at noon March 28 at Lawn Croft Cemetery in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania.

The viewing, memorial service and funeral were originally going to be private per the family's request. However, it was announced the viewing on Thursday and funeral on Friday will now be open to the public.

Police say Michael DeAndre Ford, 22, opened fire outside the station Sunday afternoon. Colson, 28, was "deliberately" shot by a fellow officer during crossfire, Prince George's County Police Chief Hank Stawinski said. He had been wearing plainclothes and no body armor.

Ford's brothers, Elijah Ford, 18, and Malik Ford, 21, were with Michael at the time of the shooting. Court document say at least one of the brothers recorded the attack.

Police believe Michael intended to die at the hand of an officer. Two minutes before his brothers drove him to the District III station, he recorded his will on a cellphone, police said.

Colson, who would have turned 29 March 17, was killed as he tried to take down the gunman, Stawinski said

Colson, a four-year veteran of the police department, grew up in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, and is survived by his parents and younger brother, police said. He graduated from Chichester High School in 2005 and Randolph-Macon College in 2009.
A Maryland man died Wednesday after he was found with gunshot wounds Wednesday night in a vehicle parked near I-295 in Northeast D.C.

Darnell Lee Richardson, 29, was pronounced dead after D.C. police found him about 8:50 p.m. near I-295 and Benning Road NE, officials said.

The Cheverly, Maryland, resident was found lifeless in the driver's seat of a vehicle and taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Police later determined Richardson was shot on the 3400 block of Benning Road NE, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement.

Richardson's death is being investigated as a homicide.

Anyone with information that leads to an arrest and conviction is asked to call police at 202-727-9099. Information can be sent anonymously by sending a text message to 50411. A reward of as much as $25,000 is offered.
A Fairfax businesswoman will spend four and a half years in prison for three fraud schemes, including the theft of more than $600,000 from the campaign of Virginia's Senate minority leader.

Lynn Miller, also known as Linda Wallis, was sentenced Friday and ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution.

Miller pleaded guilty in October 2015 to her role in three fraud schemes that totaled over $1.4 million in losses. Prosecutors say the first scheme involved Miller and a co-conspirator creating two fraudulent companies; the two acquired more than $360,000 using fraudulent wire transfers and checks.

Prosecutors say Miller, a former treasurer for Virginia Senate Democratic Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax), then issued 73 fraudulent checks from Saslaw's campaign account without the senator's knowledge. The money, prosecutors say, was redirected into accounts she controlled.

Prosecutors also said Miller created an organization called the Community College Consortium on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities in 2010, which collected money from community colleges and from a Bulgarian businessman.

Miller used some of the money the organization collected to pay her mortgage and personal and food expenses, prosecutors said.

The federal prosecutors did not specify what work the organization conducted, but said it "purported" to be a non-profit. The I-Team's review with state officials in Virginia found no formal filings by the Community College Consortium on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities to be a non-profit.
North Korea defied U.N. resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials said, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile flew 800 kilometers (500 miles) before crashing off the North's east coast.

South Korean military officials said it wasn't known what type of missile was fired, but a South Korean defense official, requesting anonymity citing department rules, said it is the first medium-range missile launched by the North since April 2014 when it fired two.

A senior U.S. defense official said the Pentagon can confirm the missile launch, saying it appears to be a Rodong missile fired from a road-mobile launcher. The official said the test violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from engaging in any ballistic and nuclear activities.

Friday's launch came amid a heightened international standoff over the North's weapons programs in the wake of its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch. The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. military threats.

On Tuesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had ordered tests soon of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. Kim issued that order while overseeing a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.

This led South Korean analysts to suspect that the North would likely fire a missile soon to test the re-entry technology. Some analysts also predicted the North might fire a missile carrying an empty warhead, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if those warhead's parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures upon re-entry into the atmosphere and if they could detonate at the right time.

Outside experts said it is the last major technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. South Korean defense officials said North Korea hadn't yet to acquire the re-entry technology so that it doesn't yet have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.

It was not clear if Friday's launch was meant to test a re-entry vehicle or other weapons technologies or was just intended as a show of force against Washington and Seoul.

North Korea is thought to have a small arsenal of atomic bombs, but South Korean officials and many outside experts say they are not small enough to place on missiles that can strike faraway targets.

Analyst Lee Choon Geun at South Korea's state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute said the North can probably place nuclear warheads on its shorter-range Scuds and medium-range Rodong missiles, which would put South Korea and Japan under its striking range. Other analysts question that.

The North began to develop ballistic missiles in the 1970s by reverse-engineering Soviet-made Scuds it acquired from Egypt. After several failures it put its first satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket launched in December 2012. Its second successful satellite launch occurred this February. The U.N., the U.S. and others say the launches were a banned test of missile technology. Ballistic missiles and rockets used for satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

Experts say a militarized version of the rocket the North used to put its second satellite into orbit in February would potentially have the range to reach the U.S. mainland. However, there are questions as none of North Korea's possible candidates for an intercontinental ballistic missile have been tested "end-to-end," from launch through re-entry and warhead delivery, to show they actually work.

The Korean Peninsula officially remains in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.S. deploys about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.

Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
Marcia Clark was originally not excited for "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story."

Can you blame her? The prosecutor for the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial told Ellen DeGeneres her first thoughts on the miniseries were, "No! Oh please don't do this, oh please," she said on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Thursday.

"I just didn't want to relive the nightmare of it," she said. "It was a horrible experience."

Clark said she kept hoping something would go wrong with development. "There's a chance, it's Hollywood, things get canceled a lot," she said. And it's true, this miniseries was originally in development at Fox before going to FX with Ryan Murphy on board as an executive producer. Once Murphy got involved, Clark said she knew it was going to happen and be quality. Then Sarah Paulson was announced as playing her.

"I thought, 'Oh my god, it's such an honor.' She's such a phenomenal, brilliant talent," Clark said and conceded the show is pretty on point with what actually happened.

DeGeneres then surprised the attorney with tweets from fans decrying the way Clark was treated back in the 1990s during the trial. "Wow, I didn't know that," Clark said after hearing the tweets of support.

As for the whole relationship with Christopher Darden, well, she's still playing a bit coy. "It didn't seem that way to me," Clark said when DeGeneres said it appeared Darden had fallen in love with her. "We were really partners, we were trench mates. He wasn't my second chair. A lot of times when you prosecute you have a senior prosecutor and a junior prosecutor. It wasn't like that. We were co-counsel and he was my partner and it was really  I can't tell you how important it was to have him there," she said.

But what about making out? Click play on the video above to find out, and also hear about her last interaction with O.J. Simpson in Las Vegas after the 1995 murder trial.

"The Ellen DeGeneres Show" airs weekdays, check your local listings for times. "The People v. O.J. Simpson" airs Tuesdays, 10 p.m. on FX.

PHOTOS: "The People v. O.J. Simpson's" incredible transformations

MORE: Marcia Clark Reveals the Truth About Makeover Depicted in "The People v. O.J. Simpson"
Another disturbance will cross New England today - similar to yesterday, scattered showers will develop from midday onward until sunset, but unlike yesterday, widespread wind gusts over 45 mph with numerous hailstones are not in the forecast...though a few lightning strikes can't be ruled out.

With today's disturbance, a cold front crosses the region, meaning high temperatures in the 50s today will drop into the 20s overnight tonight with a clearing sky as dry, Canadian air moves in, ensuring sunshine but highs only around 40 Saturday.

Chilly air will remain in place Sunday as a storm approaches from the south, and after thickening clouds Sunday morning, snow will develop.

Though exact start time and amounts could vary based upon storm track, our latest thinking is a start time during the morning in Southern Connecticut, midday Central Massachusetts, and afternoon for Eastern Massachusetts...likely waiting until evening in Northern New England.

[CLICK HERE FOR INTERACTIVE MAPS AND RADAR]

Though a rain/snow combination may start the event, a change to all snow is likely for most spots, with the best chance of renewed or continued mixing in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Times of heavy snow Sunday night will continue into Monday morning with a freshening northeast, then north wind - combined with expected plowable snow amounts of at least 3" to 6" for many with a possible stripe of higher amounts, power outages seem probable.

[CLICK HERE FOR SCHOOL CLOSINGS]

The storm exits by midday Monday, and after some midweek clouds and a few showers, we're likely to rebound back around or even over 60 degrees by late next week, with next weekend looking much different in the exclusive 10-day forecast.
Since his arrest more than a year and a half ago, Nathanial Kibby has never said anything to reporters, and Thursday was no different. Escorted by sheriff's deputies, Kibby ignored questions and silently walked passed news cameras.

Kibby is accused of kidnapping and raping a girl from North Conway, New Hampshire, in 2013. In Strafford County Superior Court, details emerged about a forgery indictment. The state says Kibby used counterfeit money to pay a prostitute for sex during the time of the other alleged crimes.

"No we can't comment, it's an ongoing case," said Associate New Hampshire Attorney General Jane Young.

Defense attorney John Bresaw argued that Kibby deserves a totally separate trial on the forgery charge, saying it has nothing to do with the rape case and could sway the jury.

"The accusations that the state has made relates to allegations that Mr. Kibby provided money to someone in exchange for sex," Bresaw said. "I don't think that anyone can deny the prejudice that comes with that."

We're also getting a rare look inside Kibby's home where he allegedly held the teenager captive for nine months.

We obtained three photos part of a motion filed by the state asking the court for permission to go back inside the house to do forensics on a bed frame. Prosecutors say Kibby purchased tiedowns on Amazon.com. They're trying to prove that he used them to secure the child to the bed while he sexually assaulted her.

That motion was not discussed in open court, but could have been addressed at a sealed hearing earlier Thursday morning.

Jury selection is set for June.
'How could this happen in a primary school?'

A FORMER headteacher convicted of sexually abusing two girl pupils has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Forty-seven-year-old Christopher Field, who lived at Green Lane, Chieveley, was sentenced this morning (Friday) by judge Zoe Smith sitting at Oxford Crown Court

Jurors convicted him of assault by groping a primary school pupil under her uniform and downloading 13 child porn videos on to his computer.

They had heard how Field groomed one of his victims by calling her special and the prettiest girl in the school, showering her with gifts, before sexually assaulting her in his office.

She responded by wearing crop tops, thinking that Field was her boyfriend.

On Thursday, March 10, Field was convicted of two counts of assault by touching a girl under 13, relating to two victims.

He was also convicted by a majority verdict of one count of making indecent images of a child.

The jury at Oxford Crown Court was unable to reach a verdict on one count of sexual assault and one count of causing or inciting a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided it was not in the public interest to proceed with a new trial on the remaining charges.

Field had denied perpetrating a series of sex offences on the two girls in his care while headteacher at Woodcote Primary School, Oxfordshire.

He previously worked at Goring Primary School and Kennet Valley Primary School in Calcot, although there is no suggestion of any impropriety there.

The allegations came to light in 2014, when one of Fields victims, by then a teenager, broke down in front of her parents.

She later told police that going to secondary school and learning more about sex had made her realise what had happened was wrong.

During the police investigation, the court was told, officers discovered a previous allegation made against Field, when another schoolgirl claimed he had rubbed her thighs in the dining hall.

Rebecca Austin, prosecuting, told the jury: The question you will ask is: how on earth this could happen in a primary school?

After the verdicts, Det Con Sarah Berry, of Thames Valley Police Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: This was a difficult case where two young girls, who did not understand what was happening at the time, were groomed and abused.

They have shown great courage in coming forward. Both have been consistent and shown great determination in giving their evidence at court.

I am sad for them that Field did not admit his guilt and thereby could have spared them the pain of reliving the ordeal in court.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 79F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low around 60F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.
Reporter

Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
Columnist

Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich).
NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia.

methylphenidate hydrochloride Consumer Medicine Information

What is in this leaflet This leaflet answers some common questions about Ritalin LA (long-acting) capsules. It does not contain all the available information. It does not take the place of talking to your doctor or pharmacist. The information in this leaflet was last updated on the date listed on the final page. More recent information on the medicine may be available. You should ensure that you speak to your pharmacist or doctor to obtain the most up to date information on the medicine. You can also download the most up to date leaflet from www.novartis.com.au. Those updates may contain important information about the medicine and its use of which you should be aware. All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you or your child taking this medicine against the benefits they expect it will provide. If you have any concerns about this medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again.

What Ritalin LA is used for Ritalin LA contain the active ingredient methylphenidate hydrochloride. Methylphenidate hydrochloride is a central nervous system stimulant. Ritalin LA (long-acting) capsules are used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Ritalin LA is a stimulant that increases attention and decreases impulsiveness and hyperactivity in patients with ADHD. Ritalin LA is thought to work by regulating specific chemicals in the brain that affect behaviour. It helps to focus attention, shut out distraction and allows impulsive people to think before they act. If successful, it will enhance an inattentive person's natural ability. Ritalin LA should be given as part of a total treatment program for ADHD that may include other measures (psychological, educational and social). It is not intended for use in patients who have symptoms due to environmental factors and/or other primary psychiatric disorders, including psychosis. Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why this medicine has been prescribed for you or your child. Your doctor may have prescribed it for another purpose. Ritalin LA, like all medicines containing central nervous system stimulants, will be given to you only under close medical supervision and after diagnosis. This medicine is only available with a doctor's prescription and your doctor has special permission to prescribe it. There is not enough information to recommend Ritalin LA use in children under 6 years old.

Before you take Ritalin LA

When you must not take it Do not take Ritalin LA if you are allergic (hypersensitive) to methylphenidate (the active ingredient) or to any of the other ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet. Some of the symptoms of an allergic reaction may include shortness of breath, wheezing or difficulty breathing; swelling of the face, lips, tongue or other parts of the body; rash, itching or hives on the skin. Do not take Ritalin LA if you have any of the following medical conditions: periods of severe anxiety, tension or agitation Tourette's syndrome (a condition with uncontrolled speech and body movements or tics) or you have a family history of this disorder tics (muscle twitching which is usually in the face or shoulders) or if your brothers or sisters have tics increased pressure in the eye (glaucoma) an overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism) or other thyroid problems heart problems such as heart attack, irregular heartbeat, chest pain (angina), heart failure, heart disease or if you were born with a heart problem very high blood pressure (hypertension) or narrowing of the blood vessels (arterial occlusive disease, which can cause pain in the arms and legs) severe depression or other mental illness a tumour of the adrenal gland, which sits near the kidney (pheochromocytoma) If you are not sure whether any of the above medical conditions apply to you, check with your doctor. Do not take Ritalin LA if you are taking a medicine called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) or have been taking it within the past 14 days. Taking Ritalin LA together with MAOI medicines may cause a serious reaction with a sudden increase in body temperature, extremely high blood pressure and severe convulsions. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you are not sure if you have been taking one of these medicines. Do not take this medicine after the expiry date printed on the pack or if the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering. In that case, return it to your pharmacist.

Before you start to take it Tell your doctor if you are allergic to any other medicines, foods, dyes or preservatives. Your doctor will want to know if you are prone to allergies. Tell your doctor if you have any of the following medical conditions or behaviours: any heart defects (e.g. structural cardiac abnormality) a family history of sudden death and /or irregular heart beat hardening of the arteries any other current or previous heart problems any disorders of the blood vessels in the brain, e.g. weakening of the blood vessel (aneurysm), stroke, or inflammation of blood vessels (vasculitis) severe depression, bipolar disorder or other mental illness epilepsy (seizures, convulsions, or fits) high blood pressure history of alcohol or drug abuse or dependence acute mental disorders that cause abnormal thinking and perceptions (psychosis) or feeling unusually excited, over-active and un-inhibited (acute mania) - your doctor will have told you if you have this psychotic symptoms such as seeing or feeling things that are not really there (hallucinations) aggressive behaviour suicidal thoughts or behaviour fingers and toes feeling numb, tingling and changing colour (from white to blue, then red) when cold ('Raynaud's phenomenon'). Your doctor may want to take special precautions if you have any of the above conditions. Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. Ask your doctor about the risks and benefits of taking Ritalin LA in this case. Ritalin LA is not to be used during pregnancy unless specifically prescribed by your doctor. This medicine may affect your developing baby if you take it while you are pregnant. Do not breast-feed during treatment with Ritalin LA. The active ingredient in Ritalin LA can pass into the breast milk.

Taking other medicines Tell your doctor if you are taking any other medicines, including medicines that you buy without a prescription from a pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Some medicines and Ritalin LA may interfere with each other. It may be necessary to change the dose or in some cases to stop one of the medicines. Some of these medicines include: medicines that increase blood pressure alpha 2 agonists like clonidine (used to treat high blood pressure) medicines used to treat depression, such as tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors) some anticonvulsants (medicines used to treat epilepsy or fits) oral anticoagulants or warfarin (medicines used to prevent blood clots) phenylbutazone (used to treat pain or fever) guanethidine anaesthetics medicines that influence the level of dopamine in the body (dopaminergic medicines used to treat Parkinson's disease or psychosis) medicines that raise the level of serotonin in the body (serotonergic medicines, for example those used to treat depression like sertraline and venlafaxine). You or your child may need to take different amounts of your medicines or you or your child may need to take different medicines. Your doctor and pharmacist have more information. If you have not told your doctor about any of these things, tell him/her before you or your child start taking this medicine.

How to take Ritalin LA Your doctor will decide on the most suitable dosage according to the individual patient's medical need and response. Follow all directions given to you by your doctor and pharmacist carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet. If you do not understand the instructions on the label, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help.

How much to take Ritalin LA is available in long-acting capsules containing 10 mg, 20 mg, 30 mg, 40 mg or 60 mg of methylphenidate hydrochloride as the active ingredient. Your doctor will usually start with a low dose and, if necessary, increase it gradually at weekly intervals up to 20 mg to 40 mg each day. Do not exceed the maximum recommended dose. In children, the maximum recommended daily dose is 60 mg. In adults, the maximum recommended daily dose is 80 mg.

How to take it You can take Ritalin LA with or without food. Swallow the capsules whole as a single dose in the morning with a full glass of water. Do not crush or chew the capsules. If you have trouble swallowing the capsules, you can carefully open them and sprinkle the contents (little beads) over a small amount of soft food (e.g. applesauce). The soft food should not be warm as this could affect the special properties of the beads. Immediately eat all of the soft food and Ritalin LA mixture. Do not store any of the soft food that has been mixed with Ritalin LA for future use. If the capsules upset your stomach, you can take them with food, but always take them in the same way (e.g. always with food or always without food). That way the effect will always be the same.

How long to take it Continue taking Ritalin LA for as long as your doctor tells you. This medicine helps to control your symptoms but does not cure your condition. Your doctor will check your progress to make sure the medicine is working and will discuss with you how long your treatment should continue. Treatment for ADHD varies in length from patient to patient. During treatment for ADHD, your doctor may stop Ritalin LA every so often (e.g. over weekends or school holidays) to see whether it is still needed. Breaks from treatment also help to prevent a slow-down in growth that sometimes happens when children take this medicine for a long time.

If you forget to take it If you forget to take a dose of Ritalin LA capsules and you remember before mid-day, take the dose as soon as you remember. Then go back to your usual schedule on the following day. If you do not remember before mid-day, miss your dose of Ritalin LA for that day and wait until the following morning to take your next dose. Do not take a double dose to make up for the one that you missed. Your chance of an unwanted side effect may be increased if you do. If you have trouble remembering when to take your medicine, ask your pharmacist for some hints.

If you take too much (overdose) Immediately telephone your doctor or the 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 Ritalin LA. Do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning. Keep the telephone numbers for these places handy. Some of the symptoms of an overdose may include vomiting, agitation, headache, tremors, muscle twitching, irregular heart beat, flushing, fever, sweating, dilated pupils, breathing problems, confusion, seizures and muscle spasms accompanied by fever and red-brown urine.

While you are taking Ritalin LA

Things you must do Take Ritalin LA exactly as your doctor has prescribed. Like all stimulants, this medicine may become habit-forming and can be abused by some people. If you take it correctly as instructed by your doctor, abuse or dependence should not be a problem, either now or later in life. Be sure to keep all of your doctor's appointments so that your or your child's progress can be checked. Your doctor will want to check your or your child's blood pressure, height, weight and do blood tests from time to time to prevent unwanted side effects from happening. If your child is not growing or gaining height or weight as expected, treatment with Ritalin LA may need to be interrupted. If you become pregnant while taking Ritalin LA, tell your doctor. Your doctor can discuss with you the risks and benefits of taking it while you are pregnant. If you are about to be started on any new medicine, remind your doctor and pharmacist that you are taking Ritalin LA. Tell any doctor, dentist or pharmacist who treats you that you are taking Ritalin LA.

Things you must not do Do not drink alcohol whilst you are taking Ritalin LA. Remember that some foods and medicines contain alcohol. Drinking alcohol is not recommended because it can worsen some of the unwanted effects of this medicine, such as dizziness and drowsiness. Do not stop your treatment without first checking with your doctor. If you suddenly stop taking this medicine, your condition may reappear or you may get unwanted effects such as depression. To prevent this, your doctor may want to gradually reduce the amount of medicine you take each day before stopping it completely. You will need medical supervision after having interrupted the treatment. Do not change the dose without talking to the doctor. If you have the impression that the effect of Ritalin LA is too strong or too weak, talk to the doctor. Do not take this medicine to treat any other complaints unless your doctor tells you to. Do not give it to anyone else, even if their condition seems similar to yours.

Things to be careful of Be careful driving, operating machinery or doing jobs that require you to be alert while you are taking Ritalin LA until you know how it affects you. This medicine may cause hallucinations, dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision or other central nervous system side effects which can affect concentration in some people. If you have any of these symptoms, do not drive, use machines or do anything else that needs quick reactions or could be dangerous. Ritalin LA may give a false positive result when testing for drug use. This includes testing used in sport. Some children taking Ritalin LA for a long time may have slower than normal growth, but they usually catch up once the treatment is stopped. In some patients Ritalin LA may cause stomach upset, loss of appetite and difficulty sleeping, especially at the start of treatment. Your doctor can usually help to reduce these symptoms by lowering the dose of Ritalin LA or changing the times when the tablets are taken. Tell your doctor if you are going to have an operation. There is a chance of a sudden rise in blood pressure during the operation if an anaesthetic is used. Your doctor will advise if you/your child should take Ritalin LA on the day of the operation. If you experience abnormally sustained or frequent and painful erections of the penis on Ritalin LA treatment or after treatment discontinuation, you may need urgent medical treatment. This can occur in any age group. If this occurs, tell your doctor immediately. If taking Ritalin LA with medicines that raise the level of serotonin in the body (serotonergic medicines, e.g. sertraline and venlafaxine used to treat depression) and you experience a combination of the following symptoms: restlessness, tremor, sudden muscle contractions, abnormal high temperature, nausea and vomiting, stop treatment with Ritalin LA and these medicines and tell your doctor immediately.

Side effects Tell your doctor or pharmacist as soon as possible if you do not feel well while you are taking Ritalin LA. 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. Do not be alarmed by these lists of possible side effects. You may not experience any of them. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to answer any questions you may have. Tell your doctor if you notice any of the following and they worry you: excessive emotional distress or excitement nervousness feeling anxious, agitated feeling jittery feeling depressed feeling aggressive unusually active, depressed mood uncontrolled speech and body movements (Tourette's syndrome) troubled sleep or restlessness, difficulty falling asleep, sleep disturbance, sleepiness nausea (feeling sick) dry mouth vomiting, stomach pain, upset stomach, indigestion, toothache loss of appetite, decreased weight excessive sweating loss of weight and slower growth in children sore throat and runny nose headache cough dizziness blurred vision or problems focussing your eyes muscle cramps fever hair loss abnormal heart rhythm palpitations involuntary shaking of the body (sign of tremor) skin rash, itchy rash and hives joint pain excessive teeth grinding spasm of the jaw muscles that makes it difficult to open the mouth stuttering bedwetting in children during the night Tell your doctor immediately or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital if you notice any of the following: swelling of the face, lips or tongue (severe allergic reaction) sudden high fever, severe convulsions severe headache or confusion, weakness or paralysis of limbs or face, difficulty speaking fast heartbeat, chest pain uncontrollable twitching, jerking bruising muscle twitching or tics a sore throat and fever or chills uncontrollable writing movements of the limb, face and/or trunk seeing or feeling things that are not really there (hallucination) fits (seizures, convulsions, epilepsy) skin blisters or itching red blotches on the skin prolonged erection, causing discomfort of the penis (sign of priapism). thoughts or attempts of killing yourself (suicidal ideation or attempt (including completed suicide)). fingers and toes feeling numb, feeling cold, tingling and changing colour (from white to blue, then red) when cold (Raynauds phenomenon, peripheral coldness) The above side effects may be serious. You may need urgent medical attention. Additional side effects that occurred with other medicines containing the same drug substance of Ritalin: swelling of the ears (a symptom of allergic reaction) feeling irritated, mood changes, abnormal behaviour or thinking, anger, excessive awareness of surroundings, feeling over-active and uninhibited (mania), feeling disorientated, changes in sex drive, lack of feeling or emotion, doing things over and over again, being obsessed with one thing, confusion, addiction temporary muscle weakness, loss of skin sensation or other functions of the body due to a temporary lack of blood supply to the brain (reversible ischemic neurological deficit), migraine double vision, dilated pupils, trouble seeing stopped heartbeat, heart attack sore throat, shortness of breath diarrhoea, constipation swelling of face and throat, redness of the skin, large red blotches on the skin appearing within a few hours of taking the medicine muscle pain, muscle twitching; blood in the urine swelling of the breasts in men chest pain, tiredness, sudden death abnormal sounds from heart. Tell your doctor if any of these side effects occur or if you notice anything else that is making you feel unwell. Some people may have other side effects not yet known or mentioned in this leaflet.

After taking Ritalin LA

Storage Keep your medicine in the original container until it is time to take a dose. Store it in a cool dry place. Do not store Ritalin LA or any other medicine in the bathroom or near a sink. Do not leave it in the car or on window sills. Keep this medicine 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 tells you to stop taking this medicine or the expiry date has passed, ask your pharmacist what to do with any medicine you have left over.

Product description

What it looks like Ritalin LA 10 mg capsules are white to off-white beads in a light brown and white capsule with imprint NVR and R10 in tan-coloured ink; bottles of 30 capsules. Ritalin LA 20 mg capsules are white to off-white beads in a white capsule with imprint NVR and R20 in tan-coloured ink; bottles of 30 capsules. Ritalin LA 30 mg capsules are white to off-white beads in a yellow capsule with imprint NVR and R30 in tan-coloured ink; bottles of 30 capsules. Ritalin LA 40 mg capsules are white to off-white beads in a light brown capsule with imprint NVR and R40 in tan-coloured ink; bottles of 30 capsules. Ritalin LA 60 mg capsules are white to off-white beads in a light brown opaque cap and yellow opaque body hard gelatin capsule, with imprint NVR on cap and R60 on body in tan-coloured ink; bottles of 30 capsules.

Ingredients Ritalin LA capsules contain 10 mg, 20 mg, 30 mg, 40 mg or 60 mg of methylphenidate hydrochloride as the active ingredient. They also contain: sugar spheres (sucrose and maize starch) ammonio methacrylate copolymer methacrylic acid copolymer purified talc (E553b) triethyl citrate (E1505) macrogol 6000 gelatin titanium dioxide (E171) iron oxide yellow CI77492 (E172) (30 mg,40 mg and 60 mg capsules only) iron oxide black CI77499 (E172) (40 mg and 60 mg capsules only) iron oxide red CI77491 (E172) (40 mg and 60 mg capsules only) TekPrint SW-8010 Ritalin LA capsules do not contain gluten.
Zika fever is an emerging infectious disease of arboviral origin transmitted by mosquitoes of Aedes genus. It presents as an influenza-like disease with a cutaneous rash, but certain complications can ensue. Accumulating evidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome following Zika virus infection does not come as a surprise, as this syndrome is a well-known (although rare) complication of other infections.

Image Credit: BertrandBlay / Shutterstock.com

Definition of Guillain-Barre syndrome

Guillain-Barre syndrome represents an acute autoimmune polyradiculoneuropathy with a wide spectrum of severity. A history of gastrointestinal or respiratory infection three weeks or less before the onset is noted in approximately two-thirds of patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome.

A possible explanation for this association is molecular mimicry  i.e. the immune response directed towards an infectious agent is also directed to the peripheral nerve antigens (such as gangliosides). Less frequently the syndrome can be triggered by immunization, trauma, surgery or bone marrow transplantation.

The most common pathogen in the non-pregnant population associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome is Campylobacter jejuni, followed by cytomegalovirus. Other more commonly encountered infectious agents are Epstein-Barr virus, human immunodeficiency virus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae.

The incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome in pregnancy is estimated to be between 0.75 and 2 in 100,000 (similar to the general population). The condition is more frequently observed in the second and third trimesters, as well as in the first month of the postpartum period.

This syndrome is characterized by progressive weakness that usually affects both proximal and distal limb muscles, with the predilection for respiratory and truncal musculature. Reflexes are most often absent early in the course, and facial neuropathy is observed in 70% of patients. Sensory symptoms are also present, including severe pain in certain subsets of patients.

Zika-related Guillain-Barre syndrome

Underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of Guillain-Barre syndrome linked to Zika virus are unknown, although immunological reactions described with other pathogens could have the same putative role. Furthermore, there is no valid explanation for the emergence of this complication that was previously not related to Zika virus; one theory is that the virus genetically evolved to a more pathogenic genotype.

The link between Zika virus and Guillain-Barre syndrome is further supported by cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome documented after dengue virus infections, which is another flavivirus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. Moreover, the simultaneous outbreaks of type 1 and 3 dengue fever could also act as a predisposing factor during Zika fever.

Guillain-Barre Syndrome and Zika: Is There a Connection? Play

Zika-related Guillain-Barre syndrome was initially described in 2014 during an outbreak in French Polynesia. From 8,262 suspected cases of Zika virus infections, 38 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome followed an illness that was suggestive of Zika. Such clustering of Guillain-Barre syndrome cases was quite unusual when compared to a yearly average of approximately 5 cases in French Polynesia.

After the epidemic was confirmed in north-east Brazil in May 2015, unexpected increases of the syndrome were reported in different countries of South and Central America. Guillain-Barre syndrome frequency above the baseline was noted in Brazil, Colombia, French Polynesia, Suriname and Venezuela, which further supports the possible role of Zika virus as a trigger.

Guillain-Barre syndrome related to the latest Zika virus epidemic disproportionally affected young (between 20 and 40 years of age) and relatively healthy individuals, with particularly severe clinical presentation that often left residual neurological problems even six months later.

In all cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, multidisciplinary measures are warranted in order to prevent potentially fatal complications. Almost a quarter of patients who are unable to walk will need mechanical ventilation, with close monitoring of the vital capacity and respiratory rate. Despite a generally favorable prognosis, there is a 5% mortality rate and 20% disability rate.

References

Further Reading
Zika virus is a single-stranded RNA arbovirus of the Flaviviridae family that is related to other mosquito-borne viruses such as yellow fever, dengue and West Nile. It is considered an emerging pathogen transmitted by mosquitos of the Aedes genus, though other non-vector modes of transmission have also been suggested.

Pr. James Logan (London School of Hygiene & Trop Med): Zika workshop Play

Discovery of Zika virus

Zika virus was initially isolated in 1947 from a captive rhesus monkey in Zika forest near Entebbe (Uganda) while performing routine surveillance for jungle yellow fever. One year later the virus was also found in the mosquito species Aedes africanus which was caught on a tree platform in the same forest.

In 1952 the first human cases were noted by detecting neutralizing antibodies to Zika virus in sera of individuals from Uganda, but also from the United Republic of Tanzania. Two years later the virus was also successfully isolated from a young girl in Eastern Nigeria.

Still, the first proof that the Zika virus actually causes human disease (by virus isolation and reisolation) came in 1964, when a researcher in Uganda fell ill during his experiment with Zika strains from mosquitoes. He developed a mild pink rash that lasted five days and concluded that the illness was mild in nature.

From 1969 to 1983 the geographical distribution of the Zika virus expanded to equatorial Asia  including Pakistan, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. For example, in 1983 13% of human volunteers based in Lombok, Indonesia, had neutralizing antibodies to the Zika virus.

Epidemic potential

Until 2007 there were only 14 human cases of Zika virus disease documented, without any outbreaks. That changed in April and May of 2007 when Zika virus spread from Africa and Asia to cause an outbreak on Yap Island, Federated States of Micronesia. Approximately three-quarters of island residents were infected with Zika virus, without any deaths, hospitalizations or neurologic complications.

Between 2013 and 2014 the virus caused outbreaks in four other groups of Pacific islands: New Caledonia, the Cook Islands, Easter Island and French Polynesia. In one of these outbreaks, Zika virus was also found in the semen of one patient from French Polynesia, giving further support for potential sexual transmission.

Image: Countries with confirmed Zika virus cases. Data from WHO February 2016.

2015 Zika outbreak in South America

At the beginning of March 2015, Brazil notified the World Health Organization about an illness characterized by a skin rash that was appearing in northeastern states. From February to the end of April 2015, approximately 7000 such cases were identified in these states that tested negative for measles, rubella, chikungunya, parvovirus B19 and enterovirus.

In May 2015, after Brazils National Reference Laboratory confirmed by PCR that the Zika virus was circulating in the country, the World Health Organization issued an official epidemiological alert. By the end of October 2015, Brazil reported an unusual upsurge in the number of microcephaly cases among newborns since August.

In January 2016 first diagnoses of intrauterine Zika virus transmission were reported in two pregnant women in Brazil that had fetuses diagnosed with microcephaly (including severe brain abnormalities confirmed by ultrasound). In addition, the Zika virus was also detected in amniotic fluid.

Pan American Health Organization received reports of locally transmitted cases from Puerto Rico and 19 territories in the Americas. In February 2016 a case of sexual transmission of Zika virus was reported in the United State. Monitoring of the further spread of this virus to other countries in the region is ongoing.
Researchers in Europe have reviewed cancer rates among people in parts of the world where natural background radiation is higher than average and found that incidence is not as high as one might guess. The findings, published in the International Journal of Low Radiation suggests that science ought to take a second look at studies that correlate low levels of radiation exposure with detrimental health effects.

Ludwik Dobrzynski of the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) in Otwock-Swierk, Poland and colleagues in Poland and Germany, explain that natural background ionizing radiation is ubiquitous. We are all constantly exposed to radioactivity literally from the rocks beneath our feet, the air we breathe and the cosmic rays that have many different sources in space and bathe our planet. Moreover, life on earth evolved in this background radiation and has many mechanisms to repair the damage caused by exposure and protect us from its otherwise harmful effects.

While exposure to high levels of radiation is well documented as causing health problems from lethal radiation sickness to cancer, the low levels of background radiation to which we are constantly exposed have never been shown unequivocally to cause any illness, cancer other otherwise, despite tabloid scaremongering. Indeed, there are numerous studies from around the world that suggest that background radiation has to some degree a protective effect against the other causes of cancer. The team's review of these and other studies in contrast to the received wisdom suggests that cancer rates are commonly lower in regions where exposure to slightly higher doses of background radiation than to those areas with average low dose natural exposure.

"The level of natural background radiation on Earth varies considerably by even two orders of magnitude from place to place with the world average annual effective dose being about 2.5 milliSieverts," the team explains. In Ramsar, Iran, it is several hundred milliSieverts per year. The team's review of the available research using Bayesian statistics to analyze the data suggests that, "Risks of cancer mortality from low-doses and low dose-rates, appear not to exist or to be much lower than the effects normally assumed, when assessed alone by epidemiological methods."
Imagine telling a patient suffering from age-related (type-II) osteoporosis that a single injection of stem cells could restore their normal bone structure. This week, with a publication in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, a group of researchers from the University of Toronto and The Ottawa Hospital suggest that this scenario may not be too far away.

Osteoporosis affects over 200M people worldwide and, unlike post-menopausal (type-I) osteoporosis, both women and men are equally susceptible to developing the age-related (type-II) form of this chronic disease. With age-related osteoporosis, the inner structure of the bone diminishes, leaving the bone thinner, less dense, and losing its function. The disease is responsible for an estimated 8.9 M fractures per year worldwide. Fractures of the hip--one of the most common breaks for those suffering from type-II osteoporosis--lead to a significant lack of mobility and, for some, can be deadly.

But how can an injection of stem cells reverse the ravages of age in the bones?

Professor William Stanford, senior author of the study, had in previous research demonstrated a causal effect between mice that developed age-related osteoporosis and low or defective mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in these animals.

"We reasoned that if defective MSCs are responsible for osteoporosis, transplantation of healthy MSCs should be able to prevent or treat osteoporosis," said Stanford, who is a Senior Scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor at the University of Ottawa.

To test that theory, the researchers injected osteoporotic mice with MSCs from healthy mice. Stem cells are "progenitor" cells, capable of dividing and changing into all the different cell types in the body. Able to become bone cells, MSCs have a second unique feature, ideal for the development of human therapies: these stem cells can be transplanted from one person to another without the need for matching (needed for blood transfusions, for instance) and without being rejected.

After six months post-injection, a quarter of the life span of these animals, the osteoporotic bone had astonishingly given way to healthy, functional bone.

"We had hoped for a general increase in bone health," said John E. Davies, Professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) at the University of Toronto, and a co-author of the study. "But the huge surprise was to find that the exquisite inner "coral-like" architecture of the bone structure of the injected animals--which is severely compromised in osteoporosis--was restored to normal."

The study could soon give rise to a whole new paradigm for treating or even indefinitely postponing the onset of osteoporosis. Currently there is only one commercially available therapy for type-II osteoporosis, a drug that maintains its effectiveness for just two years.

And, while there are no human stem cell trials looking at a systemic treatment for osteoporosis, the long-range results of the study point to the possibility that as little as one dose of stem cells might offer long-term relief.

"It's very exciting," said Dr. Jeff Kiernan, first author of the study. A graduate from IBBME who is beginning a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Ottawa Hospital with the Centre for Transfusion Research, Kiernan pursued the research for his doctoral degree.

"We're currently conducting ancillary trials with a research group in the U.S., where elderly patients have been injected with MSCs to study various outcomes. We'll be able to look at those blood samples for biological markers of bone growth and bone reabsorption," he added.

If improvements to bone health are observed in these ancillary trials, according to Stanford, larger dedicated trials could follow within the next 5 years.

Stem cells were first discovered in the early 1960s by University of Toronto Professors James E. Till and Earnest McCulloch. UofT continues to be a world leader in stem cell research.
Clinigen Group is a global specialty pharmaceuticals and services company headquartered in Burton on Trent in the UK. Started in 2010 by CEO Peter George merging the companies Keats Healthcare, Clinigen and Clinigen Healthcare, the organisation now provides services in over 130 countries. As well as the UK, the company has offices in the US, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Singapore.

Clinigens mission

The companys mission is to enable patients across the world, with unmet medical needs, to receive medicines critical to their care without delays and to improve their quality of life. Clinigens mission is to deliver the right drug to the right patient at the right time to improve the quality of peoples lives around the world.

To enable this, Clinigen Group carefully navigates the ethical and regulatory landscape of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, working within the set requirements for each country that it operates in.

The company provides medicines both licensed and unlicensed for the treatment of patients through a variety of different routes including commercial supply, clinical trials, managed access programs and unlicensed supply.

Responding to challenges

There are specific challenges that Clinigen is responding to through its services and products. Significantly, around 80% of patients in the world have minimal or no access to medicines to treat their diseases. In Africa, Asia and South America especially, access to treatments can be very limited.

Clinigen manages its business units by developing relationships with each of the key groups essential to successful delivery of the products to the patients such as customers and stakeholders including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organisations, healthcare providers and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs).

Clinigen restructure

Through a process of growth and acquisition after it bought Idis, another organisation involved in patient access to medicines in April 2015, the company has now restructured into four business units which are complementary to each other - Clinigen Clinical Trial Services, Idis Managed Access, Idis Global Access and Clinigen Speciality Pharmaceuticals to provide its global network for improving the health of patients.

Clinigen has also recently acquired Link Healthcare/Equity pharmaceuticals that are based in Australia, South Africa and Japan. The acquisition is hoped to considerably strengthen the Groups global leadership position in the AAA region with three key hubs in Singapore, South Africa and Australia and in Links local operations in Hong Kong, Japan and New Zealand.

Links well-established pharmaceutical and medical technology customer bases, along with access to key opinion leaders in this region, will provide the Group with excellent local knowledge and expertise.

Clinigen Clinical Trial Services (CTS)

Clinigen CTS combines expertise in sourcing and managing the flow of commercial medicines from pharmaceutical companies for use in clinical trials.

The company employs expertise and knowledge of the regulatory processes in different nations, customs operations as well as experience working in supply chain to deliver the compounds to their final destination.

Idis Managed Access

Working on behalf of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including orphan and niche drug companies, Clinigen helps to provide physicians with early stage medicines for their patients that are not otherwise available in their country. This may be due to them not being eligible to part of the clinical trial but may still benefit from access to these medicines or the drug not having yet launched.

Idis Managed Access aims to carry out the service by operating ethically. Providing medicines through this route is known by different names in different nations such as expanded access, compassionate use, named patient and early access.

In 2015, the company was working with 19 out of 25 of the top pharmaceutical and biotech companies, particularly in the areas of high unmet medical needs. Unlicensed medicines were delivered to 95 countries throughout the year. The company was also actively managing 99 products.

Idis Global Access

This business unit provides pharmacists with on demand unlicensed access to medicines that are unavailable or in short supply. The organisation previously just operated in the UK and Europe but has expanded to include other global markets.

Understanding the local or regional environment that the pharmacists work in is key for Idis Global Access. The services available through this route also complement the services available through Idis Managed Access by providing unavailable medicines at a different point in the process.

Clinigen Specialty Pharmaceuticals

Clinigen is also able to market and distribute speciality niche hospital only pharmaceuticals which are no longer marketed by the original makers of the medicine. Clinigen SP acquires the rights to these medicines and revitalises them whilst maintaining the patients access to these essential medicines.

The medicines are usually for rare or critical diseases. It gains the rights to the drug for supply to specific markets using its unique global capability to supply these through both licensed and unlicensed routes.

Clinigens unique revitalisation model is key opinion leader and hospital driven and utilises its regulatory and logistical expertise to provide our partners with a single responsible owner with a global solution for divestment.

Clinigen SP currently has five products that are used in niche oncology and infectious disease areas that are provided through this route.

About The Clinigen Group plc

The Clinigen Group is a specialty global pharmaceutical company headquartered in the UK, with offices in the US and Japan. The Group is dedicated to delivering 'the right drug, to the right patient at the right time'. In April 2015, Clinigen acquired Idis, the market leader in the global supply of unlicensed medicines.

The Group now operates as four synergistic businesses; Clinigen Specialty Pharmaceuticals, Clinigen Clinical Trials Supply, Idis Managed Access Programs (this now includes the previously branded Clinigen Global Access Programs business) and Idis General Access.

The Managed Access Programs business develops and implements exclusive access programs for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and has provided physicians with an ethical solution to access unlicensed medicines for thousands of patients with an unmet medical need.

Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.
Virginia prisoners have the opportunity to earn college credit for five career and technical education courses now offered through the state Department of Corrections.

The classes have met the approval of the American Council on Educations College Credit Recommendation Service, or ACE CREDIT. The program helps students gain access to academic credit for formal training taken outside traditional degree programs.

Our teachers and principals in the prison system have worked very hard to make this happen, Harold Clarke, director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, said in a statement Thursday announcing the new program. Many of Virginias offenders are learning to make better choices through education.

Students completing a course recommended by ACE CREDIT can submit an ACE transcript to higher education institutions for evaluation as potential transfer credit in a degree program.

However, the decision on whether to accept the credit remains with each college or university.

The Virginia prison courses eligible for ACE credit are Introduction to Business, Business and Software Applications, Commercial Arts & Design, Computer-Aided Drafting, and Digital Print Production.

Corrections spokeswoman Lisa E. Kinney said all are existing classes that have been offered for the past two years and are taught by teachers working in the prison system.

The classes were assessed by ACE and now have the potential to earn college credit for prisoners completing the coursework.

Kinney said that according to ACE, Virginias correctional department is the only system in the nation holding ACE CREDIT recommendations for its courses.

The classes are offered at no cost to prisoners, she said.

The program will incur only a minimal additional cost for a payment to maintain the ACE recommendation and to cover the cost of transcripts, Kinney said.

Colleges and universities will determine whether the coursework matches their requirements just as happens when someone goes from a community college to a four-year college and seeks credit for the community college classes, she said.
Madamas River exploration

Madamas comes from the French word madam, and its name justified by the exquisite and romantic atmosphere. The river sources originate from undisturbed tributaries that flow from the northern side of El Cerro Del Aripo via Brasso Seco and El Chiquero Forest. A favourite destination at the beginning of its course is Macajuel Pond where there is a confluence of the Brasso Seco and El Chiquero River. Further, upstream there is a picturesque 30-foot waterfall known as Madamas Falls.

The Madamas exploration is filled with intense adventure and stunning beauty. Its ambience feels like a place of paradise. There are countless pools to swim  some as long as a kilometre  giant boulders to climb, waterfalls to jump off and spectacular gorges to pass through. The mouth, located at Madamas Bay on the North Coast, is like a scenic lagoon since the river loses its turbulence on reaching the coast. It is a must for every traveller to take a dip in the revitalising crystal clear water of the river. The uninhabited beach is a favourite nesting ground for the leatherback turtles.

Despite its magnificence, the expedition of the Madamas River is challenging and should only be attempted by experienced explorers who can swim. To complete the entire course can take as long as ten to 12 hours. The journey down the river involves being in the water for six to eight hours.

Further, it will take an additional four hours to reach the campsite at Paria Bay.

On March 19 and 20 Fitness Walkers will explore the Madamas River.

The expedition consists of four legs and includes overnighting at Paria Bay.

Rated: 8  very challenging Assembly: 4.30 am at the Brasso Seco Visitors Centre Leg 1: Depart 5.30 am from Brasso Seco Village to Macajuel Pond (two hours) Leg 2: Exploration down the Madamas River to the bay (six to eight hours) Leg 3: Hiking from Madamas Bay to overnight at Paria Bay (three to four hours) Leg 4: Return from Paria Bay to Brasso Seco Village (three hours) Pre-registration required.

Suggested items needed for the river expedition a lifejacket, flashlight, waterproof bag and refreshments.

Note: Personal camp essentials will be transported by boat to Paria, which should include: a small tent and a small bag with a change of clothes.

Cost includes boat and vehicle transportation to Paria and Blanchisseuse, along with dinner and breakfast. Please bring your eating and drinking utensils. To register contact islandhikers.com
FCB insists: We did not leak Ministers info

In response to questions at a news conference held at the banks head office, 9 Queens Park East, Port-of- Spain, Darbasie said, There is no evidence to suggest that the leak of information came from First Citizens, however we do have strong policies and procedures which reinforce for all of our employees the importance of customer confidentiality. She recalled that the bank had issued a statement immediately after the issue became public and said that statement was intended to re-emphasise the banks commitment to client confidentiality is embedded in our Code of Conduct and Ethics. That Code of Conduct and Ethics is sent out to each employee at the start of each year and every employee is required to sign to attest that they have read (it) and that they will comply with that code of conduct. She added that breach of the code of client confidentiality was a dismissable offence.

Just last Friday, Attorney General Faris Al Rawi held a news conference at a committee room of the Parliament during the tea break to say that both he and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley were satisfied that there had not been any wrongdoing on the part of the Minister in the transaction.

Al Rawi told journalists Robinson-Regis had provided documentary evidence, including statements from Republic Bank and First Citizens to the Prime Minister and himself and that information clearly showed that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

He added that Robinson- Regis would pass on the documents to the Integrity Commission because it is important as a person in public life to put to an end to the kind of mischief that has unfolded from the type of reporting. Al Rawi said the documents provided by Robinson-Regis showed that on January 8, she withdrew money from Republic Bank and then deposited that cash at First Citizens. A newspaper report earlier this month claimed the minister deposited $150,000 at the Arima branch of First Citizens and that she was later asked by the banks investigative unit to clarify the source of the money. Robinson-Regis later explained that the sum was $93,000 and not $150,000 as reported by the newspaper.

She said the funds came from her salary which had been deposited at Republic Bank from September to January.

Following the disclosure of the transaction, Robinson-Regis accused First Citizens of a breach of confidentiality and declared that she would close all her accounts with the bank as a result.

Darbasie said, We take every single customer query or complaint seriously and we have a thorough investigation process regardless of who the customer is for every complaint and query that comes into the institution and we did the exact same process as we would do for any customer based on the complaint that was alleged. She said the bank carried out an investigation and we are going through the process as we would for any customer complaint that we received. Asked whether the investigation had been completed, Darbasie said she did not want to speak about the internal processes of the bank and there were many other avenues for the information to have leaked.

There is no evidence, as of now, to suggest that it came from First Citizens. First Citizens called the news conference to highlight its achievements for the Financial Year 2015 which Darbasie described as a year of institutional strengthening in which a number of key positions had been filled with experienced professionals, enhancing the banks senior management team. Darbasie said the professionals hired had between them more than 100 years of financial and banking experience.

Bank Chairman, Anthony Smart has declared that the First Citizens Group recorded profit before tax of $790.8 million, a growth of 2.4 percent, when compared to 2014 and that profit after tax amounted to $630.4 million, representing an increase of $3.8 million or 0.6 percent, as compared to 2014.

Darbasie had earlier indicated that she would soon complete her first year at the bank. Asked what she was most proud of having achieved in that year, she responded, strengthening of my management team, the consistent performance weve shown in an adverse economic environment and really the team that weve built to move this institution forward. I think this is a great institution that is poised to do great things. She was also asked about the continued depreciation of the TT dollar, which was being quoted yesterday at TT$6.6251 to US$1 by First Citizens and how the bank was prioritising demand from the private sector. She said the bank made its decisions based on its knowledge of the business and needs of its customers and how urgently they needed the foreign exchange.

She said decisions were based on which clients had been waiting the longest and which ones had commitments which were due immediately.

She said priority was given to trade related demands, particularly demand related to the importation of food and items that would have the wider impact on the population, people who have loan payments to make. She added that trade related items included payment for the importation of medicines and pharmaceuticals.

She said, No bank is in a situation of buying and stockpiling the US dollars, we are in the business of buying and selling as much as we can because the more we buy and sell the better it is for the institution and the better it is for our customers.
Improved civil aviation communication between Piarco and Dakar

The direct satellite link is important because of the responsibilities which both agencies for managing flights across the Atlantic Ocean, the African continent, the island of Madagascar and the Indian Ocean.

In 1950, TT was assigned the responsibility for over 750 thousand square nautical miles of upper airspace, known as the Piarco Flight Information Region (Piarco FIR), which stretches halfway across the Atlantic Ocean and shares a common boundary with the Dakar FIR.

Similarly, ASE CNA (the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar) was given the responsibility to manage six FIRs in Africa and Madagascar, including the Dakar FIR, covering a total of 6.2 nautical miles of airspace in 18 countries.

On Wednesday, officials from ASE CNA, TTCAA and this countrys Transport Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, attended the formal commissioning of the Piarco node of the African and Indian Ocean Satellite Network (AFISNET) Very Small Aperture Terminal (VAST) A node is a ground relay station for satellite signals. The AFISNET is a dedicated satellite link which provides direct voice and data communication between the Piarco Area Control Centre (Piarco ACC) and the Dakar ACC for the provision of Air Traffic Services.

Chief among its uses is the ability of air traffic controllers to more efficiently co-ordinate when flights leave the Piarco Flight Information Regions (FIRs) for the Dakar FIRs and vice versa.

Speaking at the ceremony, which was held at TTCAAs Civil Aviation Training Centre, Caroni North Bank Road, Piarco, Hinds said it was a very historic day for civil aviation in TT because of the commissioning the first direct satellite link between TT, and the continent of Africa and the island of Madagascar located in the Indian Ocean off the south-east coast of Africa.

ASE CNA operates a satellite network known as the African and Indian Ocean Satellite Network (AFISNET), with links called nodes located in several African countries and in Madagascar. Today (Wednesday), TT joins this satellite network with the commissioning of another node...As such, this satellite link significantly enhances voice and data communications between the Air Traffic Controllers at the Dakar and Piarco FIRs, Hinds noted.

Asked how much the node cost, the minister told Newsday it was funded by ASE CNA, by persons out of the Dakar ASE CNA.

When Hinds said he was not in a position to say the exact cost, Director General of ASE CNA, Amadou Ousmane Guittye, turned to reporters and said, roughly TT $5 million. Newsday also spoke to TTCAA Director General, Ramesh Lutchmedial, about the importance of the Piarco node.

He explained that prior to its installation, air traffic controllers at Piarco had to use either a landline or high frequency (HF) radio communication via an air link to talk to colleagues at ASE CNA.

Sometimes there were challenges (but) now with this direct link, were able to press a button and the guy at the other end of the line in Dakar answers the phone and well talk to him.
'He Had the Chance to Go in

and Save the Children'
(Newser)  It certainly seems like doctors who take money from pharmaceutical companies would prescribe more brand-name drugs, but there's never been proof of that. That is until an extensive analysis by ProPublica, which found that the more pharmaceutical money a doctor accepts, the more brand-name medicines they prescribe to patients. That's despite generic drugs usually working as well as their more expensive brand-name counterparts and garnering similar levels of customer satisfaction. It again confirms the prevailing wisdom  that there is a relationship between payments and brand-name prescribing, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School tells ProPublica. "Hopefully were getting past the point where people will say, Oh, theres no evidence that these relationships change physicians prescribing practices.'"

ProPublica looked at records of payments from pharmaceutical companies and compared them to Medicare's records of doctor prescriptions for 2014. They found something as innocuous as a pharmaceutical company picking up the check for a meal changed doctors' prescription habits. The analysis showed doctors who took payments were two to three times more likely to prescribe brand-name drugs at "exceptionally high rates." And the problem is widespread. Of doctors who wrote at least 1,000 prescriptions in 2014, nine in 10 cardiologists took payments, as did seven in 10 internists and family practitioners. One doctor says it's gotten to the point where doctors actually have to work to not take payments from pharmaceutical companies. Read the full story here. (Read more pharmaceutical industry stories.)
(Newser)  A Buddhist monk accused of embezzling more than $200,000 from his Louisiana temple to feed a casino gambling habit has pleaded guilty to fraud, the AP reports. The Advocate reports that 38-year-old Khang Nguyen Le will be sentenced June 27 after his guilty plea Thursday to one count of wire fraud. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Le served as presiding monk at the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Southeast Louisiana Inc. in Lafayette from 2010 through October 2014. His indictment last year said he withdrew money from temple accounts and used it for gambling at casinos. In a court filing, a federal agent said Le told investigators that he spent up to $10,000 playing blackjack during frequent trips to a Lake Charles casino. (Read more weird crimes stories.)
(Newser)  North Korea ignored UN resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials say, days after leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the US mainland, the AP reports. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile fired from a site north of Pyongyang flew about 500 miles before crashing off the North's east coast. It was the first medium-range missile launched by the North since it fired two in April 2014, says a South Korean defense official. Earlier this week, North Korea's state media said Kim had ordered tests soon of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads.

A military expert at the South's Konyang University says it's likely that Friday's launch was a test of a re-entry vehicle mounted on Pyongyang's purported Rodong missile. The North Korean missile fired may not be a Rodong but a long-range missile whose launch angle was altered so that it didn't fly its full range, says a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He says the missile may have carried an empty warhead, which contains trigger devices but lacks plutonium or uranium, to see if it can survive the fiery re-entry and detonate at the right time. Japan denounced the launch and lodged a formal diplomatic protest, warning that it will take "all necessary measures" to defend itself, reports Reuters. (Pyongyang claims it could wipe out Manhattan.)
(Newser)  President Obama has privately told Democratic donors that while Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would both be great presidents, it's time to unite behind one candidate and that candidate should be Clinton, sources tell the New York Times and Politico. Insiders say that when Obama spoke to Democratic National Committee donors in private last weekdays before Clinton scored several more primary winshe didn't explicitly endorse either candidate, but he praised Clinton as a tough and experienced candidate who would carry on the work of his administration. He dismissed concerns about her "authenticity," saying George W. Bush was once praised for seeming authentic, the sources say.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest didn't deny Obama's remarks when he was asked about them on Thursday. "President Obama made the case that would be familiar to all of you, which is that as Democrats through this competitive primary process, we need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic president will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee," he said. Sanders, who is behind Clinton in pledged delegates 1,139 to 825, has vowed to stay in the race. Dropping out when big states like California and New York haven't voted yet would be "outrageously undemocratic," he told the Washington Post on Thursday. (Sanders has decided against a recount in Missouri.)
(Newser)  The accused ISIS defector from Virginia says he made a "bad decision" and now regrets his actions. In an interview with K24 TV, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, says he left the US in December, visited London and Amsterdam, then arrived in Turkey, where he met a woman from Mosul, Iraq, who said she could take him there, per ABC News. "So I decided to go with her," he says. "I was not thinking straight." They took a bus to the Turkish border, then a taxi into Syria. On Jan. 16, another bus brought Khweis to Mosul. There, "our daily life was prayer, eating, and learning about the religion for eight hours," he says, per NBC News, which describes the interview as "heavily edited" and notes he made no mention of "combat activities." "I didn't agree with their ideology and that's when I wanted to escape."

Kurdish forces say Khweis was among a group of fighters they exchanged fire with on Sunday and was captured on Monday near Sinjar "for attempting to enter the Kurdistan region," per CNN. Khweis says he was trying to contact Kurdish forces. "I wanted to go back to America," he says, adding he didn't view ISIS fighters as "good Muslims. ... The people who control Mosul don't represent a religion." The US Justice Department is planning to press charges, reports CBS News. A University of Texas School of Law professor suspects Khweis will likely be a "huge priority for intelligence collection," per the Daily Beast. Khweis' mother says she last saw her son a couple of months ago and had no idea he was in Iraq. Khweis' father, a Palestinian immigrant, turned a water hose on reporters outside his Virginia home on Monday, while a brother yelled, "You're wrong, you're wrong." (Read more Islamic State stories.)
(Newser)  Denmark's Dennis Fabricius Holm got off work early on March 11 and decided to go for a stroll with his metal detector near the town of Aunslev. "Suddenly I hit upon something," he tells national broadcaster DR, per the Local. "Ever since I turned over the clump of earth and saw the cross, I've been unable to think of anything else." Holm had indeed made "an absolutely sensational discovery," says archaeologist Malene Beck of the Ostfyns Museum. The 1.5-inch-tall pendant, complete with gold threads and filigree pellets, features the image of an open-armed man and is almost identical to a silver crucifix found in Sweden, visible here. A release speculates it was worn by a Viking woman. The Independent calls it "one of the most well preserved Christian artifacts found in Denmark," but its date, AD900 to AD950, is what most intrigues experts.

Christian missionaries were known to be in Denmark in the eighth century, but the oldest known depiction of Jesus on a cross in Denmarkon what is known as the Jelling Stonesdidn't appear until AD965. It was believed to signify the start of the conversion of the Danes, most of whom were Christian by 1050. But since the pendant predates the Jelling Stones by at least 15 years, it "can therefore help to advance the time when one considers that the Danes really were Christians," Beck says. "The person who wore it would undoubtedly have adhered to the Christian faith." She adds the find is so significant that the history books will need to be rewritten. "I have not yet grasped that find's influence on Denmark's history," Holm tells TV2. "It is hard to comprehend." (Last year, a man with a metal detector uncovered Nazi-era treasure.)
(Newser)  It's a good thing Scott Kelly nabbed two records during his year in space because one will soon be broken. NASA astronaut Jeff Williamswho is rocketing into space on Friday with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochkawill become America's most experienced space traveler during a nearly six-month expedition on the International Space Station, reports Florida Today. At the end of Expedition 48, the 58-year-old will have spent 534 days in space over four trips to the ISS14 days more than Kelly, who will retain his record for the longest single mission by an American at 340 days. "It's been a great privilege that I don't take for granted," says Williams, a grandfather who in 2010 became the first astronaut to interact live with NASA's social media fans from space, per ABC News.

The Soyuz spacecraft departs from Kazakhstan at 5:26pm EDT and will dock at ISS six hours later. The three new arrivals will join America's Tim Kopra, British astronaut Tim Peake, and Russia's Yuri Malenchenko. Like Kelly, Williams will be a "guinea pig" for tests on space's effect on the human body. The 58-year-old Wisconsin native and retired Army colonel will also perform two spacewalks. He'll install a docking ring to be used by future Boeing and SpaceX crew capsules and activate an inflatable module, "a demonstration of expandable habitat technology that will be attached to the station for two years," per a press release. "Nothing becomes routine, nothing becomes boring up there," says Williams. Since his career has largely synced with the construction of the ISS (he first visited in 2000), he intends to use social media to share some of its history, per the Planetary Society. (Read more space stories.)
(Newser)  Can't get that last bit of lip balm out of the tube? Scrape it out with your finger. That's basically what a federal appeals court told a California woman Thursday when it dismissed her class-action lawsuit alleging Fresh Inc. conned consumers into thinking there was more of its Sugar Lip Treatment in the tube than they could actually access, Courthouse News Service reports. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected Angela Ebner's claim that the company tried to mislead consumers about the quantity of its pricey lip balm, which sells for roughly $24 a tube, per the AP. Ebner had insisted that the way the company packaged and dispensed the lip treatment was in violation of her state's consumer protection laws, Reuters notes.

To be more specific, Ebner said that the lip balm tube employs a twist-up mechanism that allows only 75% of the product to dispense beyond the tube opening. But the court noted that no state or federal laws were breached because the package labels accurately indicate just how much balm is in each tube. The court opinion stated, probably not to Ebner's liking, that "the reasonable consumer understands the general mechanics of these dispenser tubes" and that "it is up to the consumer to decide whether it is worth the effort to extract any remaining product with a finger or a small tool." (Why a "lip balm to the stars" was hit with a suit.)
(Newser)  A small village in northern Romania is reveling in the virtual attention caused by a spelling mistake by Snoop Dogg. Posting a selfie on Instagram, the rapper who has been on tour in Bogota, Colombia, told his fans he was in Bogata, in Transylvania. (It seems he accidentally checked in to Bogata instead of Bogota.) Romanians soon spotted the mistake and began posting about it. A tourist website, visitbogata.com, also popped up, describing the village of 2,000 as the "best place for chillin' in Romania."

There's no hotel in the village, so visitors are advised to bring a sleeping bag. If they get hungry they can feast on a twist of the famous Hungarian goulash. "It was a mistake but it's a good advert for us," Bogata Mayor Laszlo Barta tells the AP. "Snoop Dogg checked into Bogata ... by mistakebut you don't have to," the new tourism website reads, before offering directions to the village (it's 5.5 hours from Bucharest) and suggestions for nearby attractions to check out while there. But "let's be serious," Balkan Insight quotes a local villager as telling a local news outlet. "If he [Snoop Dogg] came here, many people would get scared. They might think he belongs to ISIS. For us, the world starts here and ends just few kilometers away." (Read more Snoop Dogg stories.)
(Newser)  Police in Benbrook, Texas, responded to a 911 call on Thursday and found a tragic scene: the two young daughters of a celebrated concert pianist dead in their beds, and his estranged wife stabbed. The specifics of what may have happened became only slightly less opaque during a Friday press conference in which the Benbrook PD said Vadym Kholodenko placed the 911 call at 9:27am, just minutes after he arrived to pick up the children. "He found the mother in an extreme state of distress and discovered the children," says Commander David Babcock, per CBS Fort Worth. Police are waiting on autopsy results, but they say Nika, 5, and Michela, 1, were not stabbed and showed no visible injuries. Kholodenko is not a suspect; his wife and the girls' mother, 31-year-old Sofia Tsygankova, is "being held on a mental health evaluation" in a Fort Worth hospital.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports by way of court records that the Ukrainian pianistwinner of the gold medal at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, according to a biofiled for divorce from Tsygankova in November, two months after the pair had apparently stopped living together as a couple. The divorce is still pending. Kholodenko had been scheduled to play three shows with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra this weekend but will be replaced, reports NBC DFW. It adds that Benbrook police have responded to calls at the house in the past, though Babcock didn't offer any specifics. Though it's unclear whether Tsygankova's wounds were self-inflicted or the result of an attack, Babcock said there is no active search for a suspect. Kholodenko said in a statement released by his lawyer that he "is experiencing great grief at this time and has no further comment. Thank you for respecting his privacy." (Read more Texas stories.)
(Newser)  In what may be the most Canadian of crimes this week, a 31-year-old man allegedly hijacked a Toronto Transit Commission bus and forced the driver at knifepoint to take him to  a Tim Hortons coffee shop, the CBC reports. A local police constable says the man got onto the bus around 12:20am Friday and brandished a large knife in front of the driver, leading all the other passengers to run off the bus, the Toronto Sun reports. The suspect then allegedly directed the driver to blow through red lights and whisk him to his desired coffee-and-doughnut destination, a national mainstay. The police were alerted and arrested Daniel Ferreira inside the eatery, where a source tells the Sun he was sitting and sipping his coffee.

"Officers directed customers out of [the] store and the man was ordered to get down on the ground," the constable says. No one was hurt in the attack. "The TTC is grateful our employee was not injured and thanks police for their quick action," a TTC spokesperson tells the Metro, adding that the driver "was shaken" by the "very brazen crime." Ferreira, who's expected back in court Friday, is facing a laundry list of charges, including assault with a weapon, mischief endangering life, forcible confinement, uttering threats, and taking a motor vehicle without consent. (A woman turned the tables on two women making fun of her at a Tim Hortons.)
(Newser)  The migrant crisis in Europe will enter a new chapter Sunday after the EU and Turkish government agreed Friday to return all migrants and refugees attempting to enter Europe to Turkey, the Washington Post reports. It adds that the deal essentially "turns Turkey into the region's refugee camp." In return, Turkey will get $6.6 billion, quicker hearings on possible EU membership, and the possibility of visa-free travel throughout the EU. According to the Wall Street Journal, EU countries will take one legally processed Syrian refugeeup to 72,000from Turkey for every refugee returned attempting to enter Greece. EU leaders say they want to stop the "human suffering" of migrants who are paying smugglers to get them from Turkey to Greece by sea. More than 350 migrants and refugees have died making the trip this year.

Critics of the deal, including many human rights groups, say it will only increase the suffering of migrants, as well as possibly violating both EU and international laws. Turkey doesn't hold to the Geneva Convention when it comes to refugees. Turkey itself is a human-rights-abusing country, the director of Human Rights Watch in Germany tells the Post. "Parts of Turkey are now like a war zone. How does this make Turkey an appropriate country to manage refugees? In order for the deal to be lawful, Greece will have to offer individual hearings for any migrants who continue to make it that far, which will require a lot of manpower, Reuters reports. Approximately 1 million migrants and refugees came to Europe through Turkey and Greece in 2015. (Read more migrants stories.)
Not only does actor Song Joong-ki have acting down, he seems to have mastered the art of modesty, too.

Rather than basking in his renewed stardom, Song on Wednesday attributed his popularity to the novelty of the soldier-doctor couple in the TV series "Descendants of the Sun."

"I think people like the idea of a doctor dating a soldier because it's different," he told reporters at Hyundai Motorstudio in southern Seoul. "Doctors have appeared in many dramas, but a soldier is a relatively uncommon occupation on TV. I think people appreciate that."

Song went as far as to praise the screenplay of "Descendants of the Sun" as "the best he's ever seen."

"I've been wondering a lot lately whether I did the script justice," he said. "Despite having had plenty of time to prepare since the series is entirely pre-produced, I've been seeing a lot of room for improvement in my acting."

Song plays Army Capt. Yoo Si-jin who falls in love with doctor Kang Mo-yeon (Song Hye-kyo) in the KBS 2TV series, which has caused a huge sensation in both South Korea and China where the show is broadcast simultaneously.

Reflecting the show's popularity in China, media reports claimed a Chinese college student had been diagnosed with glaucoma from watching too many Korean dramas.

There have even been reports that Chinese authorities have warned people over "health concerns" stemming from watching too much of the series.

But Song says he's having a hard time believing these news reports.

"I can only guess (at my popularity in China) from media reports and messages from my friends in China," he said. "I don't think greater popularity abroad would make much of a difference in my life. Currently, I'm focusing my efforts on preparing for my next work."

When asked about the scene in which he sneaks a kiss with Kang, Song says it was a result of "hard effort."

"I was worried about whether it would seem genuine, whether viewers would find it believable, and how intense the kiss should be," he said. "Thankfully, the response has been positive, which is a relief for me."

As with any TV series, "Descendants of the Sun" has had its fair share of criticism, with the show being accused of lacking a plot and condoning militarism. But Song advises viewers to hold their thoughts until the end.

"The script isn't just about love between a doctor and a soldier. It's also about love for mankind," he said. "It's why I chose to be on the show.... Criticisms are welcome, but I hope you watch it till the end."

New episodes of "Descendants of the Sun" air every Wednesday and Thursday at 10 p.m.
It is the end of a recent ebola flare-up in Sierra Leone, where thousands have been afflicted, says the World Health Organization on Thursday.

It's "important to remember" that this is actually the second time that human-to-human transmission in Sierra Leone has been stopped, noted Lee Norman, MD, of the University of Kansas Hospital, an expert in responses to health crises.

The two incubation periods of 42 days had gone by since the patients had shown to be negative for the virus. Yet, a few hours following the WHO declaration, Guinea said that two citizens had tested positive for the illness.

About 3,590 people were killed in Sierra Leone. The illness had struck it, apart from its neighboring nations, Guinea and Liberia, where thousands had died.

For months, ebola was spreading, and there are fears of many more cases in the future too. The survivors are thought to be carrying the virus in some bodily fluids for many months after the illness. They can pass it on through sexual intercourse.

Male survivors can possibly be carrying it in the testes. In a small study reported last month, it was found that about 73% of male survivors still harbour detectable Ebola RNA in their semen even 49 days after they were afflicted with the disease.

With more than half the survivors being male, more such transmissions are possible. But on the positive side, every passing day makes the transmission unlikely.

"We don't know what the rate of decay is," said an expert, "but it presumably falls off with time."

While the governments in affected areas have succeeded in their struggle to contain it, nations "must remain on high alert and ready to respond" said WHO.

On January 14, the WHO said that West Africa is Ebola-free. "Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement," said Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general.
Mice with early-stage Alzheimer's disease show that some memories are still stored in their brains, yet scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology find that they cannot be accessed due to their conditions.

With the help of optogenetics, a method to activate brain cells with light, scientists found that some missing memories may exist. However, they have not been unlocked.

Earlier, MIT experts located cells that stored particular memories, and manipulated cells, called engrams, so that they could implant false memories, activate current ones or change emotions tied to memories.

Some mice with retrograde amnesia could not remember quickly, but their brains still formed new memories. It is not clear whether such patients really lose their memories or not.

While optogenetics is seen to be too "invasive," techniques such as deep brain stimulation tend to affect too many areas of the brain simultaneously.

"The important point is, this a proof of concept," said Dr. Susumu Tonegawa, director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, said in a press release. "That is, even if a memory seems to be gone, it is still there. It's a matter of how to retrieve it."

For the study, published in the journal Nature, three groups of mice were studied. Two were engineered to develop Alzheimer's disease, while the third was a healthy group of mice.

All three groups of mice were lowered into a chamber, where their feet were "shocked". An hour later all mice got afraid to be lowered into the same chamber. The following day, the Alzheimer's mice forgot their fear, but the healthy mice remained fearful.

Scientists also checked whether memories had got stored in the brain for a longer time, even though they remembered them in shorter time-frames. They tagged engram cells linked with the chamber experience to get activated by light. They then put the mice into a new chamber and activated the engram cells. It hence caused the rodents to be afraid of "feet shock."

Also assessing whether optogenetics could make them remember things on their own, scientists gave them three hours of the technique to activate their brain cells and then put them in the original chamber a week later. The mice got shocked in the chamber, remembering what had caused their fears.

"The big message is that there is a way to strengthen these memory cells," Dheeraj Roy, a doctoral student at MIT and lead author of the study, told the Boston Herald. "If we had a way of restoring the memory of patients, we think this could have a huge impact on society."
Seoul:

In what can be seen as one of the biggest defies by any nation in 21st century, North Korea test fired what appeared to be two medium-range ballistic missiles today, just days after leader Kim Jong-Un promised a series of nuclear warhead tests and missile launches.

Military tensions have been soaring on the divided Korean peninsula since the North Korea carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

US defence officials said they had tracked two launches both believed to be medium-range Rodong missiles fired from road-mobile launch vehicles.

The Rodong is a scaled-up Scud variant with a maximum range of around 1,300 kilometres.

South Korean military officials said the first missile was launched from Sukchon in the countrys southwest at 5:55 am (local time) and flew 800 kilometres before splashing down into the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

The second, fired about 20 minutes later, disappeared off radar early into its flight, the officials said.

Todays launches came a day after US President Barack Obama signed an order implementing tough sanctions adopted earlier this month against North Korea by the UN Security Council.

For the past two weeks, Pyongyang has maintained a daily barrage of nuclear strike threats against both Seoul and Washington, ostensibly over ongoing, large-scale South Korea-US military drills that the North sees as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

To register its anger at the joint exercises, the North fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea on March 10.

A few days later, Kim announced that a nuclear warhead explosion test and firings of several kinds of ballistic missiles would be carried out in a short time.

Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.

A Rodong test is more provocative, given its greater range, which makes it capable of hitting most of Japan.

The last Rodong test was in March 2014, when two of the missiles were fired into the East Sea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he had ordered his government to investigate todays launch, and confirm the safety of shipping in the splashdown zone.

The US State Department issued a statement calling on Pyongyang to refrain from any actions that could further raise tensions.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

Hillary Clinton has taken big strides toward securing the Democratic nomination by winning all five primaries in a multi-state vote for US presidential poll after her rival Senator Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in keenly-contested Missouri.

Sanders, who was trailing by just 1500 votes in the Missouri primary elections on Tuesday, said he would not request for recounting of votes and has conceded defeat to Clinton.

I prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money, Sanders said through spokesman Michael Briggs yesterday.

The 68-year-old former Secretary of State has swept the Super Tuesday 2.0 by bagging Florida and North Carolina while also posting crucial victories over Sanders in the industrial Midwest by taking Ohio and Illinois.

Results of the Republican presidential primary in Missouri is yet to be officially declared as it is too close to call. Front-runner Donald Trump is leading his rival Senator Ted Cruz by 1700 votes. So far, Cruz has not conceded defeat.

Since the margin of victory in each case is less than one percentage point, CNN and other US networks said they will not project a winner in either contest.

Missouri saw more than 1.5 million ballots, or 39 per cent of registered voters, cast on Tuesday. That was the highest amount recorded for a Presidential primary in Missouri history. The previous record of 1.4 million, or 36 per cent, was set during the 2008 primary.

Missouri went to polls along with the key states of Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New York:

An American man was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison after trying to make recruitments in to the Islamic State Iraq and Syria(ISIS).

Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, from Rochester in upstate New York, pleaded guilty in December to attempting to provide material support to the extremists and was described by prosecutors as one of the first IS recruiters captured in the United States.

Prosecutors yesterday said Elfgeeh spread IS propaganda on social media, sought funds for extremists and attempted to recruit and send two individualsboth of whom were cooperating with the FBIto Syria to fight with IS.

He was sentenced on the same day that US Secretary of State John Kerry said the IS groups slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites amounts to genocide.

While we are confident that keeping Mr Elfgeeh in prison for the next two decades will keep us safer, there continues to exist a pervasive, persistent and ever-changing terrorism threat, said Adam Cohen, FBI chief in Buffalo, New York.

This threat remains among the highest priorities for the FBI and the intelligence community.

Prosecutors said he sent IS propaganda videos to one would-be fighter, arranged for an English-speaking contact in Iraq to communicate with that person via Facebook and paid USD40 to help the individual obtain a passport.

Elfgeeh also bought the pair of FBI informants a laptop and a camera to take to Syria, offered them tips on how to travel without being detected and arranged for a contact overseas to coordinate the logistics of the trip.

Prosecutors say Elfgeeh sent USD600 to a third person in Yemen also destined to help them travel to Syria to join the IS group.

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New Delhi:

BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi, who is accused of brutally beating up a prized Uttarakhand Police horse Shaktiman and breaking its leg, was arrested on Friday morning. The arrest was made a day after Shaktiman underwent an operation to replace the damaged limb with a temporary prosthetic one.

Meanwhile, the horse had his injured hind leg amputated in an emergency life-saving surgery today even as a party worker was arrested.

The surgery was conducted at a veterinary hospital here by a team of doctors led by surgeon Feroze Khambatta, hours after Army doctors from Pune opined that one of the hind legs of the horse that was fractured will have to be amputated as the animal might lose its life by tomorrow due to spread of gangrene from the wound.

However, Joshi has maintained that hed had not inflicted injury on the horse, adding it went out of control during the protests and one of its hind legs got stuck in a hole dug up to put up the barricades, causing it injuries.

On the video being circulated on the social media showing him attacking the horse with stick, Joshi said he was only trying to scare away the animal which had gone berserk, leaving a BJP worker badly injured.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Congress ruled Uttarakhand Government may soon face a test at Assembly as 13 ruling MLAs have reportedly met a senior Bhartiya Janata Party leader in Delh.

The attempt can be seen as a potential threat to the Harish Rawat Government.

Congress state party vice president Jot Singh Bisht said that it has been a habit of BJP to indulge in such petty politics. It has always been trying to negotiate with some of the Congress MLAs.

Since the BJP led central government have come to power, there has been a cut in fund supply to UKs Harish Rawat Government, they are deliberately trying to make the government function haywire Congress state vice president Jot Singh Bisht told News Nation.

News agency ANI quoted top BJP leaders from the state as claiming that at least 12-13 Congress MLAs, who are fed up with the government's policies, are in talks with them to shift political loyalties.



BJP leader and former chief minister of Uttarakhand Bhagat Singh Koshyari said, ''You will know by this evening what is happening. We are the people's voice.''

However, Harish Rawat said that the government is safe and there is no threat to it. He also said that the Government has got support and blessings of common people.

The common poeple of the state and this country are very wise, we have got support from them, and nothing can happen to the government said Harish Rawat.

However, speculation are rife that the senior state leaders Harak Singh Rawat and Vijay Bahuguna are not happy with the functioning of the Harish Rawat led state government.

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Brasilia:

Brazils former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sworn in today as chief of staff to his embattled successor Dilma Rousseff amid angry protests from opponents who accuse him of trying to dodge corruption charges.

Lula took office in a tumultuous scene at the presidential

palace, where a protester shouted Shame! and the ex-presidents supporters chanted slogans accusing their opponents of seeking a coup.

The putschists shouting wont make me veer from my path

or bring us to our knees, said Rousseff as she sealed her risky bet to team up again with her old mentor.

Lula, the once wildly popular president who led Brazil

from 2003 to 2011, is facing corruption charges and a request for his arrest in connection with an explosive scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras.

He now escapes possible arrest thanks to his new ministerial immunity. Under Brazilian law, cabinet ministers can only be tried before the Supreme Court.

The Sao Paulo stock market, meanwhile, shot up five per cent at the opening on optimism that the controversial appointment marks the beginning of the end for the leftist government, which is presiding over the worst recession in 25 years.

The market is celebrating the end of this government, said economic analyst Andre Leite of TAG Investimentos.

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Brussels:

Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, one of the most wanted men in Europe, was captured in Brussels today during a raid by armed police, French police sources said.



It was not immediately clear if Abdeslam, 26, believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead, was injured in the raid.



One man was injured and another arrested unharmed in the raid in the gritty Molenbeek neighbourhood of the Belgian capital, French police sources said, without identifying which was Abdeslam.



The arrest came hours after prosecutors revealed that Abdeslams fingerprints were found in an apartment in another part of Brussels earlier this week following a raid in which a suspected IS militant was killed.



Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel held a crisis meeting after the arrest with French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for a European Union summit.



Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one.



Franco-Moroccan Abdeslam fled to Brussels after the attacks and is believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks.



He slipped past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the probe said in December.



His brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the massacre, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.



Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.



The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.



Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.



Earlier this week, Belgian and French police raided an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels, shooting dead a 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium.



Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.



He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.



Prosecutors then announced today that Abedslams fingerprints had been found in the Forest apartment.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

President Barack Obama will name a woman to head a major US combatant command for the first time, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said today.



He said Air Force General Lori Robinson will be appointed as the next head of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which is responsible for the defense of the US homeland with an area of operations that extends from Alaska to portions of the Caribbean.



Robinson has very deep operational experience as well as very good managerial experience, Carter said at a conference in Washington.



Her appointment to one of the militarys most senior jobs is subject to Senate confirmation.



The position also oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which provides aviation security for the United States and Canada.



Women play an increasingly important role in the US military, making up around 15 per cent of personnel.



The Pentagon last year opened all combat positions to women, including elite special operations units.



Carterwho has long said the military must look for ways to attract and retain top talentrecently announced a package of family-friendly initiatives for personnel.



They include maternity leave of 12 weeks for all services and a requirement that military installations employing more than 50 women have rooms for mothers to breastfeed their babies.



In January, another woman, General Diana Holland, became the first female commandant of West Points Corps of Cadets.



Robinson is currently the commander of US air forces in the Pacific.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Lindsay Perry / Lindsay Perry

A proposed new regulation requiring licensure for tax preparers would not impact AARP volunteers who fan out statewide each winter and spring to provide free assistance, according to the State Board of Accountancy.

The Connecticut secretary of the state last week proposed legislation that would require tax preparers lacking a certified public accountant license or other designations to get a state license to file returns for a fee, with Connecticut currently among 46 states nationally with no such rule on the books.
The Connecticut Department of Health (DPH) confirmed Friday the first case of Zika virus in the state.

The patient is in his or her 60s and had recently traveled to a Zika-affected region outside the state. They reportedly experienced an onset of illness, described as skin rash, conjunctivitis, fatigue, chills, headache, and muscle aches, upon their return to Connecticut.

The patient is currently being seen by a doctor and recovering.

Governor Malloy ordered the DPH to begin testing for Zika virus in January at the DPH Laboratory, which was approved for testing on Feb. 29.

"We encourage those concerned about symptoms to consult their doctor, particularly if they have traveled to an affected area and particularly if they are pregnant," Gov. Malloy said in a release. "We have been actively taking steps for months to prepare for a positive case, including expedited testing and a coordinated response across agencies. While the risk of transmission is low, we are nevertheless no doubt continuing that preparation to the extent that we can."

In Connecticut, 67 of 198 samples have been tested for Zika virus. Friday's result is the first positive test in the state. To date, 258 cases of Zika have been reported in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Eighteen cases were of pregnant women and six were reportedly transmitted sexually.

DPH Commissioner Raul Pino urged residents to be aware of the areas they travel to and remain vigilant.

"As we have previously said, a confirmed case was never a question of 'if', but 'when'. Because of the preparatory steps we've taken previously, we are able to test more quickly and in-state," Pino said. "With hundreds of positive cases nationwide, across 34 states, I encourage residents to be vigilant. We at the state level are monitoring this case  and preparing for any future cases  with the utmost diligence."

The Zika Virus is spread through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. This species of mosquito isn't present in Connecticut and related mosquitoes are not likely to spread the disease within the state.

Zika virus symptoms are usually mild and last several days to a week, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. There is currently no vaccine to prevent or medicine for treatment of Zika virus and cases of death are rare.

Anyone who believes they have contracted the virus or experiences symptoms after traveling to a Zika-affected region should contact their physician.

For more information on Zika, visit the CDPH's website.
OTTAWA, March 18, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Marie-Claude Landry, Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issues the following statement:

"The deaths of migrants in detention in Canada shines a light on thousands of undocumented people arbitrarily detained by Canada Border Services Agency because they requested asylum in Canada.

"The Canadian Human Rights Commission acknowledges that some of the migrants are detained because of criminal activity, and that security considerations are essential. However, in a free and democratic society, the human rights of every person on Canadian soil must be respected. In 2015, the United Nations reported that 90% of detained migrants are being held for reasons that have nothing to do with security. Another study by the University of Toronto found that nearly one-third of all migrants detained across Canada are in facilities designed for the criminal population.

"Asking Canada for refugee status is not a crime, yet these migrants and their families, including women and children, are being treated like criminals and held in detention centres for extended periods, without the ability to assert their human rights. Many have mental health issues.

"This type of arbitrary detention should be brought to an end, or be used only as a last resort. The Commission echoes the concerns of several rights and refugee groups who have called for independent investigation of these recent deaths and supports the creation of an oversight body."

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SOURCE Canadian Human Rights Commission

For further information: Media Contacts: Media Relations - Canadian Human Rights Commission , 613-943-9118, www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca
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Depression is more than simply feeling unhappy or fed up for a few days. Most people go through periods of feeling down, but when you're depressed you feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days. Some people think depression is trivial and not a genuine health condition. They're wrong  it is a real illness with real symptoms. Depression is not a sign of weakness or something you can "snap out of" by "pulling yourself together". The good news is that with the right treatment and support, most people with depression can make a full recovery.

How to tell if you have depression Depression affects people in different ways and can cause a wide variety of symptoms. They range from lasting feelings of unhappiness and hopelessness, to losing interest in the things you used to enjoy and feeling very tearful. Many people with depression also have symptoms of anxiety. There can be physical symptoms too, such as feeling constantly tired, sleeping badly, having no appetite or sex drive, and various aches and pains. The symptoms of depression range from mild to severe. At its mildest, you may simply feel persistently low in spirit, while severe depression can make you feel suicidal, that life is no longer worth living. Most people experience feelings of stress, anxiety or low mood during difficult times. A low mood may improve after a short period of time, rather than being a sign of depression.

When to see a doctor It's important to seek help from a GP if you think you may be depressed. Many people wait a long time before seeking help for depression, but it's best not to delay. The sooner you see a doctor, the sooner you can be on the way to recovery.

What causes depression? Sometimes there's a trigger for depression. Life-changing events, such as bereavement, losing your job or giving birth, can bring it on. People with a family history of depression are more likely to experience it themselves. But you can also become depressed for no obvious reason. Read more about the causes of depression

Treating depression Treatment for depression can involve a combination of lifestyle changes, talking therapies and medicine. Your recommended treatment will be based on whether you have mild, moderate or severe depression. If you have mild depression, your doctor may suggest waiting to see whether it improves on its own, while monitoring your progress. This is known as "watchful waiting". They may also suggest lifestyle measures such as exercise and self-help groups. Talking therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), are often used for mild depression that is not improving, or moderate depression. Antidepressants are also sometimes prescribed. For moderate to severe depression, a combination of talking therapy and antidepressants is often recommended. If you have severe depression, you may be referred to a specialist mental health team for intensive specialist talking treatments and prescribed medicine.

Living with depression Many people with depression benefit by making lifestyle changes, such as getting more exercise, cutting down on alcohol, giving up smoking and eating healthily. Reading a self-help book or joining a support group are also worthwhile. They can help you gain a better understanding about what causes you to feel depressed. Sharing your experiences with others in a similar situation can also be very supportive.

Information: Social care and support guide If you: need help with day-to-day living because of illness or disability

care for someone regularly because they're ill, elderly or disabled  including family members Our guide to care and support explains your options and where you can get support.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, says the army has commenced investigations into the alleged extrajudicial killings of u...

Buratai said this on Thursday in Enugu.About 10 members of the Indigenous People of Biafra were reportedly killed when troops opened fire on them during the agitation for the release of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, in February.There were also reports that about 30 other members of the group sustained serious injuries during the incident.The Amnesty International had condemned the development, accusing the army of excessive use of force against the pro-Biafran activists.Fielding questions from journalists on Thursday after addressing officers and men of the 82 Division, in Enugu, Buratai said the army was investigating the alleged extrajudicial killings.We are already investigating it. When such incidents involve the loss of lives, we usually conduct an investigation  that is our procedure, the army chief said.Buratai, however, said he believed soldiers could not have opened fire on the activists without provocation.He said, We have our rules of engagement, the troops cannot just open fire.Earlier, while addressing officers and men of the military formation, Buratai said the armys rules of engagement permitted the use of force, where other measures failed to address a security challenge.Instructing soldiers on the need to be professional in the discharge of their duties, Buratai said, We have to ensure that we work within the framework of our rules of engagement.You know that the rules of engagement provide for the protection of human rights, especially the protection of innocent citizens.But in situations that entail the use of fire, the protection of human rights does not apply.So, when you apply the rules of engagement and it is necessary to open fire, human rights will not apply.The COAS stressed that both the 1999 Constitution and the Armed Forces Act provided for the use of force when necessary.Buratai also told the soldiers to be decisive, in order to prevent the breakdown of law and order.You must apply the rules of engagement and also be decisive  you have to be professional in the discharge of your responsibilities, he said.The army chief stressed the need for loyalty and patriotism among soldiers.You must make the President proud because he is behind us, he added.In the same vein, he urged the soldiers to protect and assist the families of their colleagues who were on military campaigns.
The Supreme Court, Friday, gave the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the nod to prosecute the former Governor of Abia Stat...

The Supreme Court, Friday, gave the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the nod to prosecute the former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu on a 107-count corruption charge. The charge borders on the alleged complicity of the erstwhile governor in money laundering and illegal diversion of public funds to the tune of N5.6billion.Kalu was alleged to have perpetuated the fraud while he piloted the affairs of Abia State between 1999 and 2007.Though the anti-graft agency docked him before the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court on July 27, 2007, however, for the past eight years, the defendant, through various interlocutory applications, frustrated moves by the prosecution to open its case against him.The defendant firstly challenged the competence of the charge against him, as well as the jurisdiction of the High Court to hear and determine the case.Meanwhile, following refusal by the trial court to quash the charge, Kalu, took the case before the Court of Appeal in Abuja.The appellate court, in a unanimous judgment, upheld the competence of the charge, adding that the high court was constitutionally empowered to exercise jurisdiction on the trial.Dissatisfied with the verdict, Kalu approached the Supreme Court, begging it to set-aside the concurrent findings of the two lower courts.The former governor, through his lawyer Chief Awa Kalu, SAN, pleaded a five-man panel of Justices of the apex court, headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, to quash the criminal charge against him.He contended that the EFCC failed to establish a prima-facie nexus linking him to the ingredients of the offence contained in the charge.It was his contention that the proof of evidence the anti-graft agency adduced against him did not nail him to the commission of any crime.Nevertheless, the apex court, in a unanimous judgment on Friday, dismissed the appeal, even as it ordered the appellant to go and face his trial before the high court.
An economic retreat convened by the present administration to offer solutions to the current economic challenges facing Nigeria will hol...

An economic retreat convened by the present administration to offer solutions to the current economic challenges facing Nigeria will hold on Monday and Tuesday next week.The retreat, being put together by the National Economic Council, which has the 36 state governors as members and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo as chairman, will hold in the Presidential Villa, Abuja.According to a statement on Thursday by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, President Muhammadu Buhari will deliver the keynote address during the retreats opening session on Monday.Akande said Osinbajo, being the chairman of NEC, which is an advisory body to the President, would preside over the retreat with governors from the 36 states of the federation attending.Others expected at the meeting, according to the statement, are the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele; and the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, among other top government functionaries.The statement reads, The objective of the NEC retreat is to provide a forum for in-depth discussions by NEC members of the policy actions that the states and the Federal Government can consider in order to stimulate local production, cut costs and enhance public revenues among other measures to stimulate the economy.Contrary to suggestions, the retreat is not an emergency national economic conference.The idea was mooted at the last regular NEC meeting in January, where members requested an intensive session to review economic trends and evolve strategies to cope.The retreat, which was earlier fixed for March 10 and 11, was later put off to allow for more preparations on the part of the organisers.Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, had called on the President to summon an emergency economic meeting to chart a course to save the country from further drift.Soyinka, who made the call when he visited the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in Abuja, had said experts and consumers should be invited to the meeting.The President should call an emergency economic conference, with experts to be invited; consumers, producers, labour unions, university experts, professors, etc. I think we really need an emergency economic conference, a rescue operation, bringing as many heads as possible together to plot the way forward, Soyinka had said.Meanwhile, Buhari said the current economic crisis, plaguing the nation, was a blessing in disguise.Buhari said this at the opening ceremony of the International Islamic Conference on Peace and Nation Building in Abuja on Thursday.The President said through the hardship, Nigerians would be able to come up with ideas that would in turn lead to development.He said, The global economic challenges the world is grappling with today might well turn out to be a blessing for us in Nigeria, because it will stimulate the latent economic opportunities that we have left untapped for decades.Poverty breeds disaffection, which in turn leads to crime and lawlessness, including confrontation against the state. To checkmate this, we must work hard to lift our economy, engage our youths and rebuild infrastructure.Buhari lamented the level of official corruption in the nation, adding that it led to many years of hardship for Nigerians. He, however, promised to do everything possible to curb the menace.While declaring the conference open, the President commended the Jamaatu Izalatil Bida Wa Iqamatis Sunna and the Muslim World League for the event at a time when the nation was grappling with insecurity.Buhari, who described Boko Haram as a mindless terrorist organisation, said the Federal Government was winning the fight against insurgency.He said once the war was over, the government would commission a sociological study to determine the origin, the remote and immediate causes of the movement, its sponsors, its international connections if any, to ensure that measures were taken to prevent a resurgence.The President added, The tragic paradox of the global insurgency situation is that most of the atrocities committed by various insurgents all over the world today are being carried out mainly by people who pretend to be Muslims, yet most of the victims and casualties are equally Muslims.No religion approves of such heinous crimes against humanity; definitely not Islam or Christianity, the two to which most Nigerians belong.Religious leaders must intensify their efforts to send out the real teachings of their religion in order to counter the diabolical ideology that motivates the insurgent elements.
Ekiti-Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has described the denial of the Department of State Services (DSS) that it was not aware of...

Ekiti-Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has described the denial of the Department of State Services (DSS) that it was not aware of any court ruling, ordering the release of the detained Ekiti State House of Assembly member, Hon Afolabi Akanni, as ridiculous, height of executive rascality and open display of contempt for the rule of law.Fayose said it was the highest point of wickedness and barbarism in a democratic setting, for a Nigerian to be arrested by DSS and kept behind bars for 15 days without coming out openly to state his offence. He called the attention of Nigerians to the alarm raised on Thursday that Akanni had died in detention, saying he did this because the DSS had kept the whole Ekiti in abeyance about the health status of the lawmaker.Governor Fayose, who spoke through his Special Assistant on Public Communications, Lere Olayinka, said the fact that Akanni told journalists that he slumped twice in detention on Wednesday gave credence to the alarm raised about his purported death.He said the DSS should tell Nigerians when Hon. Akanni committed those offences amounting to breach of security? Did Hon. Akanni plot coup or is he leading insurgents to warrant his detention without trial? We wish to reiterate that government addressed the press yesterday based on the information available to it and since the DSS was not talking to anyone concerning the status of Hon Akanni, the government had no option than to bring the disturbing information to the public domain. From the picture of Hon Akanni that we saw on television and published in the newspapers, it is without doubt that he is terribly sick and in need of urgent medical attention , and disturbing state of health could have been informed by his critical state of health.Fayose told the DSS to release Akanni or charged him to court , having complied with the order of substituted service granted by Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court on March 16, which ordered that the production warrant issued on DSS be published in a national newspapers. The governor stated that since Nigeria is operating a constitutional democracy that it must release the detainee with immediate effect or charge him to court.While we are not questioning the rights of the DSS to handle matters relating to breach of security, we however, wish to ask how and when in particular did Akanni committed those offences amounting to breach of security? Did he plot a coup or led insurgents to warrant his detention without trial?If truly the DSS has evidence against him, he should be prosecuted , this is what they do in a civilized clime, he said. On the position allegedly canvassed by DSS that it has not been served the production warrant issued by federal high court in Ado Ekiti, compelling the agency to produce the suspect in court on March 16, Fayose said: The court bailiff, one Araromi Ademola was at the DSS office on March 14, but they refused to accept it.The DSS officers according to Araromi said they were acting on order from above. On March 16, the court ordered that they should be served through newspaper publication, we published on pages 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41 of the Tribune edition of March 17. Can the DSS claims that it didnt see the publication?. He appealed to well-meaning Nigerians to call the DSS to order and stop harassing officials of state government.
The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Ali Modu Sheriff, on Thursday revealed that Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose a...

The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Ali Modu Sheriff, on Thursday revealed that Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose and other Nigerians worked for his emergence.Sheriff spoke at the Ekiti PDPs secretariat in company with Fayose where he met leaders and members of the party in the state.He said, I never planned to be the PDP Chairman but God used people like Fayose and other Nigerians to make me the chairman (of the party).I was sleeping in my room when Fayose called me from Port Harcourt and said I was going to be the new National Chairman. For me, it was a miracle.God chose Fayose for Ekiti people because of his popularity in the state. He was taken to the prison and eight years after, he came back. People wont be happy with the governor if he has not been fair to them.Fayose said he supported Sheriff to become the PDP chairman because he had the capacity to rebuild the party.He said, We know you have the capacity to restore the PDP and make it survive.You have the means and experience and we promise that we will always stand by you.
Former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Kalu Friday welcomed the verdict of the Supreme Court directing his trial by the Economic and Fin...

Former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Kalu Friday welcomed the verdict of the Supreme Court directing his trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged N2.4billion fraud when he ran the affairs of the state between 1999 and 2007.The apex court had dismissed his appeal for lacking in merit.Kalu who in the appeal, had sought to quash the charge of money laundering brought against him by EFCC, said moment after the Supreme Courts ruling Friday that this is another opportunity to prove my innocence.I have all the records and facts of the case. I am willing to submit myself for the rule of law to take its course. That has always been my passion advocacy right from the lower courts where the case enamnated, he said from London.He added: this clarification has become imperative lest oppositional forces mischievously misinterpret the ruling and mislead the public by injecting their jaundiced opinions into the routine directive as had always been with similar cases where the apex court intervened.He assured the EFCC of his continued support and profound cooperation in any further investigation into this allegation, and also claimed it is part of the price I have to pay for opposing the third-term agenda fiasco of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.A similar appeal by Kalus associate, Udeh Jones Udehogo was similarly dismissed Friday by the Supreme Court for the same reason.Justice Suleiman Galadima, who wrote the lead judgments in both appeals, upheld the concurrent decisions of the Federal High Court, Abuja and Appeal Court, Abuja in refusing the appeals.The five-man panel of the apex court, in its unanimous judgments, directed the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to assign the cases to new judges for hearing.On Kalus case, Justice Galadima, whose judgment was read by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, said: The appellant had approached the Federal High Court, Abuja to quash the charges made against him by the EFCC.The Court dismissed the case. He went to the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division. He lost and approached this court.Having considered all issues raised and arguments by parties, I come to the conclusion that I cannot, but help in dismissing this appeal for lacking in merit. It is dismissed.I affirm the decision of the court bellow, which rightly affirmed the decision of the Federal High Court, that it was not bound by the ex-parte order of the Abia State High Court as to vitiate the charges preferred against the appellant.The learned Chief Judge of the Federal High Court should assign the case to another judge for expeditious trial, Justice Galadima said.Other members of the panel: Justice Mahmud Mohammed (the Chief Justice of Nigeria), Bode Rhodes-Vivour, Sylvester Nwgwuta and Datijo Mohammed agreed with the lead judgments in both appeals.In its decision on April 27, 2012 the Court of Appeal, Abuja division dismissed the appeal by Kalu against the ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja dismissing his motion seeking to quash the charge against him and his company, Slok Nigeria Limited.Justice Ejembi Eko, who read the judgment on behalf of Justices Kayode Bada and Regina Nwodo resolved all issues in the appeal against Kalu and his company and dismissed the appeal for lacking in merit.Justice Eko noted that the proof of evidence attached to the 97 count charge preferred against the appellants by the EFCC disclosed a prima facie case against the former governor and others.Justice Eko said the facts raised in the proof of evidence established a prima facie case against the appellants. He further said that as far as there is a link which prima facie is all about, the appellants had an obligation to stand trial to defend themselves.He further ruled that the ex-parte order of May 31, 2007 by Abia State High Court, asking the Federal High Court to stay all proceedings against Orji was a racquet suit aimed at frustrating his arrest and subsequent prosecution.That order was an order at large, personal rather than definite. It was an order made as an ex-parte and not at the course of trial.He described the ex-parte motion as an abuse of court process.Justice Eko said the claim of breach of personal freedom raised by Orji was sentimental in nature, adding that the claim bordered on the realm of conspiracy theory and is politically motivated.He said right to personal liberty is not absolute.On whether EFCC had the competence to charge the appellants, Justice Eko held that both the EFCC Establishment Act and the Money laundering and Prohibition Act, (MPLA, 2003, 2004) had given the commission power to prosecute offenders.EFCC derives its competence to prosecute from section 6 and 7 of its Establishing Act. Equally, the definition of economic crime is quite wide, he said.The appellate court further held that the proof of evidence attached to the 97-count charge preferred against the appellants by the EFCC disclosed a prima facie case against the former governor and others.Justice Eko also denounced the ex-parte order of May 31, 2007 by the Abia State High Court.That order was an order at large, personal rather than definite. It was an order made as an ex-parte and not at the course of trial.The EFCC had on July 27, 2007 arraigned Kalu before the High Court in Abuja on charges of money laundering, official corruption and criminal diversion of public funds totaling over N5 billion.On September 3, 2007 Kalu filed a motion before the court seeking an order to strike out all EFCC charges against him and to vacate the terms and conditions of the bail earlier granted by the court. The court dismissed the motion, a decision Kalu appealed to the Court of Appeal.
Chief Ayiri Emami, chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, recently disclosed that his benefactor and former Delta state governor...

Chief Ayiri Emami, chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, recently disclosed that his benefactor and former Delta state governor, Chief James Ibori who is serving a jail term in the United Kingdom, would return home to Nigeria, not later than July.There have been speculations as to when Ibori would return, but I can confidently tell you that by June or at most July, he would return home to Nigeria and we all need him, especially in Delta to sanitise things again.If he were here, a lot of things would not have happened. Ibori was one of those who predicted that Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, would not win the 2015 Presidential election. It was fear of the unknown that made his brother, former Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan to remain in PDP. I listened to Ibori, I had to leaveChief Emami, who was a confidant of Chief Ibori, also said in Warri that he plans to embark on a campaign to mobilise stakeholders and resources to bring lasting solution to the menace of vandalisation of oil facilities which he said was causing huge damage to the nations economy.
According to a post on the Governor's Page quoted below: Good Friday and Easter Monday are established public holidays, they are mand...

Good Friday and Easter Monday are established public holidays, they are mandatory and are declared by the Federal Government.

Pupils and students in Kaduna State will go on Easter Holiday and Good Friday and Easter Monday. It is falsehood and baseless blackmail to suggest that schools must end the second term before Easter.

The school term is not a religious issue. The tendency to place a religious hue on everything is irresponsible. Pupils in Kaduna State will have their Easter break on the prescribed public holidays and return to school to conclude the second term. The curriculum is based on a 12-week term. The schools resumed for second term on 18 January and will complete the 12 weeks in April. Kaduna State will not curtail its school term to 10 weeks. Education cannot be abridged to appease prejudice.

According to a post on the Governor's Page quoted below:
The Lagos State Government on Friday said that arrangements had been concluded to transform the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBSs) Bus Termina...

The Lagos State Government on Friday said that arrangements had been concluded to transform the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBSs) Bus Terminal to attract more tourists to the edifice.The Commissioner for Transportation, Dr Dayo Mobereola, disclosed this at a stateholders meeting organised by his Ministry in Lagos on Friday.Mobereola said that redevelopment was part of Gov. Akinwunmi Ambodes efforts to further enhance the states mega-city project.He said: The reason for this redevelopment is to actualise the vision of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, in his strive to make the state a real mega-city.To affirm this, there are some infrastructure that are to be in place.TBS stands for Lagos State. It is a rallying point for us, so we want to beautify it more and make it a tourist centre.It is very important and imperative to make the terminal a world-class edifice, so that when anyone comes to this place, they will bow and respect the state, Mobereola said.The commissioner said that the purpose of the meeting was to seek the opinion of stakeholders and to carry them along.We need your contributions to make it better. We are just going to make the place an ultra-modern terminal for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses, taxi operators and passengers.What we want to do is to protect all during the rainy and hot seasons. Everyone will have its own section: Danfo drivers, BRT and taxi operators, so that passengers are not confused where to go.What we are doing is for the benefits of all. When it is completed, it will be enforced, he said.The Special Adviser to the Governor on Transportation, Mr Anofiu Elegushi, added that the purpose of the project was not to displace the operators.We are ready to receive your inputs, comments and advice. Our intention is to re-arrange. It is not an intention to take over your operations, but we need your support to move the state forward, he said.In his presentation on the project design, Mr Bolaji Bada, the Director Transportation Engineering in the ministry, said that the project would have a hightech fibre to provide shade.Bada said, The weight of the material is approximately one per cent of glass, which make it light enough to withstand any weather condition. It is dust and repellant-free and can serve for 40 years.This technology has the ability to transmit light when illuminated from above at night, so it will be spectacular, of high architecture and colourful, with a lot of land spacing for a standard terminus.In his reaction, Alhaji Tajudeen Agbede, the Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), who lauded the project, urged that the government should be cautious of disrupting peoples sources of income.I want to appeal that you do not displace the operators and traders when the project is eventually completed because they are of immense benefit to both passengers and their families, Agbede said.Mr Hammed Okunuga, the Chairman, Road Transport Employers Association (RTEAN) in Lagos Island, said we appreciate this as we have been looking forward to it, but let it not be that you want to take over what we feed our families with.A private Park-and-Ride operator at TBS, identified as Alfa Abolore, urged the government not to displace entreprenuers who have been making a living in the area.In his response, Mobereola, said, no stakeholder should be fearful. We will not take your source of income. We must do it together.We may have to relocate people that might be affected because by the time we are done with TBS, you will tell us to go and repair Obalende. Obalende is not up to standard.We need your support because of the inconvenience it will bring during execution.He added that the facility would include enhanced security and maintenance features such as Closed Circuit Television and a world-class toilet facility.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that stateholders at the meeting included members and executives of the NURTW and the RTEAN, traders, politicians and residents, among others.
Barcelona winger, Neymar, has been found guilty of evading tax by an administrative court of the Federal Revenue in Rio de Janeiro.





As if that isn't enough, Neymar is also facing allegations of corruption and fraud in Spain in relation to his transfer from Santos to Barcelona in 2013.

Barcelona winger, Neymar, has been found guilty of evading tax by an administrative court of the Federal Revenue in Rio de Janeiro.The report states that the Barcelona forward is now compelled to pay a total of $188.8 million reales (45m) in back taxes, interest and penalties.The Brazil international has the opportunity to appeal the decision.The decision was taken after Neymar failed to pay at least $63.6m reales through his management companies between 2012 and 2014. The Brazilian is also alleged to owe $125.2m reales in fines and interest.
People supporting an ongoing pro-Biafran separatist movement in south-eastern Nigeria have claimed soft drink company Coca-Cola is suppor...

People supporting an ongoing pro-Biafran separatist movement in south-eastern Nigeria have claimed soft drink company Coca-Cola is supporting their cause after pictures purportedly showing some Coca-Cola cans with the words "Nnamdi Kanu" and "Biafrans" emerged.Pro-Biafrans are calling for the independence of the Biafran territories forcibly annexed to Nigeria during British colonisation, which ended in 1960. They hold regular marches across the country's south-east demanding independence and the release of their leader Nnamdi Kanu, Radio Biafra director and head of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob). He is standing trial on six counts of treasonable felony charges.Some Biafran media outlets claimed that several shops across Nigeria are now selling "specially customised" Coca-Cola drinks. "Many noted this as unprecedented as some also declared their interest of getting at least a few. Biafrans are exploring every available avenue to promulgate the gospel of the restoration of Biafra," said the Biafran Times. Coca Cola has not responded to a request for comment.Kanu's arrest in Lagos in October 2015, shed light on the independent movement and alleged abuses by the Nigerian government against pro-Biafran supporters. Kanu was arrested on conspiracy and terrorism charges, which were later dropped. A day after the Abuja High Court ruled he should be released, officials pressed new treasonable felony charges against him, while President Muhammadu Buhari said Kanu would not be granted bail due to the "atrocities" allegedly committed.Amnesty International confirmed to IBTimes UK that Nigerian security forces have used excessive force against pro-Biafran protesters. However, in subsequent interviews with IBTimes UK, the army and police have denied allegations of violence.The Nigerian government has always maintained that Nigeria's unity was a priority for the country and that although peaceful pro-Biafran protests were welcome, demanding the breakaway of the Biafran territories was against the constitution. A Biafran Republic was established in 1967 and re-annexed to Nigeria in 1970, following a civil war that claimed between one and three million lives.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday wrote a touching credit to Late James Ocholi, Nigeria's Minister of state for labour and produ...

Read tribute titled "James Ocholi taught us the meaning of loyalty" :How do I begin to pay this tribute to a man who was the epitome of civility, the archetype of intellectualism, and the paragon of loyalty? How do I begin to mourn James Ocholi, whom you can describe as one of my right hand men in the quest to reposition our country, and fashion a land of peace and prosperity, where no man is oppressed?A lot has been written about Ocholi since the tragic event of March 6, 2016, which took the life of our Minister of State, Labour and Employment, his wife, Blessing, and his son, Joshua. And a lot more will be written, for Ocholi was no mean man. He was a man among men, an Iroko in a forest of trees. How are the mighty fallen!Among many other positive and pleasant things, I will always remember Ocholi for his loyalty to our beloved country Nigeria, loyalty to our party, the All Progressives Congress, and loyalty to our administration, in which he had served for just about 4 months, before death took him.In 2011, Ocholi ran to be governor of Kogi State on the platform of our then party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). I believed so much in him, and in his ability to add value to the governance of his state, that I followed him round the state on campaign. We visited all the local governments, visited the paramount rulers, and urged the people to vote in a worthy man as governor. But politics is a peculiar game in Nigeria.The best often does not win.Ocholi did not win. But he bore it gracefully.In 2015, he threw his hat into the ring again. He sought to be governor on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he had helped midwife. He still did not win at the party primaries, an eventuality he bore gracefully again.When the APC was being negotiated into existence among the Legacy Parties, Ocholi did a yeoman's job, contributing his quota to the legal processes. This he did under a junior lawyer, who was not a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) like him then. But what mattered to Ocholi was the birth of a strong, solid party, which could wrest power at the centre, and bring change to our country. Hierarchy is important in the legal profession, just as it is in the military. But Ocholi subordinated pride and ego, served under his subordinate, and APC was born.Dream became reality.Steadily but sure-footedly, he was part of the Change Cabinet, resolved to bring our country from out of the woods, and pedestal Nigeria among the greats in the comity of nations. Then the unthinkable happened. The Grim Reaper harvested Ocholi. What a pity! Sad and tragic.But we have this consolation: the departed has taught us fidelity, commitment and loyalty to party, to government, and to God.He will be sorely missed.MUHAMMADU BUHARI
The House of Representatives on Thursday began an investigation into the alleged secret recruitment of 909 employees by the Central Ba...

Senetor Ben Bruce said on Twitter

The House of Representatives on Thursday began an investigation into the alleged secret recruitment of 909 employees by the Central Bank of Nigeria.The controversial recruitment was reportedly carried out by the apex bank on the directive of the Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, with a reasonable number of the beneficiaries being children and relatives of highly-placed persons in the country.At a session presided over by the Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, in Abuja, the House asked its Committees on Federal Character, Banking/Currency to complete the investigation within three weeks.An All Progressives Congress lawmaker from Kano State, Mr. Aliyu Madaki, had drawn the attention of the House to the recruitment under matters of urgent public importance.Madaki noted that there were no prior notifications on the recruitment through advertisements to give all Nigerians the opportunity to apply.He recalled that in 2015, there were speculations that the apex bank conducted a secret recruitment, but that the bank quickly denied it.Madaki added that the latest development only confirmed that the bank carried out the earlier recruitment.He stated, The recruitment by the CBN is in breach of the Federal Character Principle as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended).The recruitment breached section 14(1); 14(3); and Section 17(1) of the constitution.There was no fairness, no justice in this exercise conducted by the CBN.Lawmakers did not debate the motion before passing it in a unanimous voice vote.Dogara had overruled any debate on the issue on the grounds that it could pre-judge the outcome of the investigation.This is an investigation; let us not allow any debate so that we wont pre-empt the outcome, he added.Meanwhile, the majority of the lawmakers on Thursday endorsed the second reading of a bill for an Act seeking to repeal the Peoples Bank of Nigeria Act, 2004.Members said the bank had become moribund and its functions taken over by the Nigerian Agricultural Bank.The bill was sponsored by an APC member from Yobe State and Chairman, House Committee on Sports, Mr. Goni Bukar-Lawan.However, there was some drama as the bill generated arguments among members.While some lawmakers felt that the bank could still be resuscitated, others held the view that it had since lost its relevance since it had been merged with the Nigerian Agricultural Bank.But, the majority won the day as Dogara ruled in support of the second reading of the proposed piece of legislation.
Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja was allegedly Olisah Metuh's classmateat the Nigerian Law School and that, they h...

The revelations were made on Thursday during Metuh's trial. Justice Abang noted that Metuh has written, through his lawyer, Emeka Etiaba (SAN), to the courts Chief Judge, Justice Ibrahim Auta, raising sundry accusations against him (Justice Abang) and seeking the transfer of the case to another judge.Justice Abang said, ''On the 16th of March 2016, at about 4pm, the honourable Chief Judge of this court forwarded a copy of the letter written by Emeka Etiaba (SAN), for the defence, praying the honourable Chief Judge to transfer this case to another judge, eight witnesses having been called, the no-case application of the defendant having been dismissed for lacking in merit.I want to say that I have a circular issued by my employer, the National Judicial Council (NJC) to the effect that where there is a petition in a matter, seeking the transfer of the case to another judge, the judge handling the case shall continue to preside over the matter until a decision is taken by the authority to which the petition was addressed.On the account of this circular, I shall continue to preside over this matter until the honourable Chief Judge takes a decision on Mr. Etiabas petition''.
The Code of Conduct Bureau has said there is evidence that the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, while governor of Kwara State betwee...

The bureau alleged that Saraki used the bank loans running into billions of naira to acquire landed assets in Lagos, Abuja and London.The Bureau said it gathered the information from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission which conducted investigations into various petitions written against the Senate President between 2010 and 2012.The CCBs position is contained in a counter-affidavit deposed to by one of its operatives, Peter Danladi, in opposition to a fresh motion filed by Saraki to challenge the validity of the 13 counts of false assets declaration instituted against him before the tribunal.Danladi stated, That I was informed by Mr. Yahaya Bello, an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in our office on March 14, 2016 at about 11am and I verily believe him that:The EFCC received various petitions against the defendant/applicant between 2010 and 2012 alleging acts of corruption, theft, money laundering etc.The EFCC conducted its investigation of the various petitions and made findings which showed that the defendant/applicant abused his office while he was Governor of Kwara State and was involved in various acts of corruption as the governor of the state.The defendant/applicant borrowed huge sums of money running into billions from commercial banks, particularly Guarantee Trust Bank and used the proceeds of the loan to acquire several landed properties in Lagos, Abuja and London while he was Governor of Kwara State.As against the defendant using his own legitimate income to defray the loan, he took public funds running into billions from Kwara State Government and lodged same in several tranches and in cash into his GTB account in GRA, Ilorin, Kwara State.The defendant/applicants account officer in GTB confirmed that the defendant/applicant gave him several cash in government house to lodge into the account and in some occasions, the defendant sent his aides from government house to give him the cash for lodgment into his account.When EFCC submitted its report to its legal department and the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Federal Ministry of Justice formed the opinion that the offences revealed from the investigation, particularly as they relate to the properties acquired by the defendant/applicant while he was Governor of Kwara State and various monies sent into his various accounts outside Nigeria can be better investigated and prosecuted through the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal.The Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation then sent the findings and the evidence gathered during investigation by the EFCC as a complaint to the Code of Conduct Bureau for investigation and that the operative of EFCC would collaborate with the officers of the bureau for effective investigations.
The remains of James Ocholi, the former Minister of State for Labour and Employment, was on Friday laid to rest amidst weeping, wailin...

The remains of James Ocholi, the former Minister of State for Labour and Employment, was on Friday laid to rest amidst weeping, wailing and eulogies from family members, friends, colleagues and associates. Ocholi was buried alongside his wife, Blessing and son, Joshua in their family home in Abocho, Biraidu District, Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi.The three family members died in an auto crash on March 6, on the Kaduna-Abuja highway. Speaking at the funeral service, the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) described the three deceased family members as saints called home by the creator. He urged Nigerians to imbibe the scriptural injunction that in all circumstances, thanks should be given to God. Osinbajo said that late Ocholi, Blessing and Joshua played their parts in the vineyard of the Lord in diverse manners but all towards the common goal of advancing the kingdom of God. He stressed the need to be grateful to God for giving them the grace. He said that though some of the apostles died tragic and painful death, still the scripture says precious in the sight of God is the death of a saint because their death is victory for heaven.Three saints went home on the 6th of March,  he said. In his speech, titled, The Veil is Lifted, Gov. Yahaya Bello of Kogi, described life as reality show from which none gets out alive. He said that mankind had accepted the fact that everyone must die but lamented the horrible circumstances of the Ocholis death. My dear people, without doubt, this is one harvest of deaths too many for Kogi state. After barely any respite from a similar sorrow in the recent past, Kogi mourns again, he said in reference to the demise of Prince Abubakar Audu on Nov. 22, 2015.Bello recalled that the late Ocholi cooperated with him when he was elected governor, adding that they shared a common vision of greatness and unity for the state. Bishop John Ibenu of Chapel of Freedom International, Lokoja, who represented Archbishop Sam Amaga of Foundation Faith Church, led other officiating ministers in the funeral service, He urged Christians to be prepared for the imminent end.In his homily titled, The Invitation You Could not Resist, Ibenu urged the people to make their ways right with God before the invitation which could neither be deferred nor resisted.Some members of the Federal Executive Council, lawyers including senior advocates, judges, friends and family members were some important personalities that attended the burial of the Ocholis.
The Pentagon has restricted United States (U.S.) service members travel to five West African countries, citing recent militant attacks...

The Pentagon has restricted United States (U.S.) service members travel to five West African countries, citing recent militant attacks in the region.A spokesman for U.S. Africa Command, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, said the order limits unofficial travel by U.S. military personnel to Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Ghana.It is just increased vigilance given the recent events that have happened in that area of the world, Falvo said.The warning followed gunmens killing of 19 people at a beach-side resort in Ivory Coast on Sunday.The attack was claimed by al Qaedas North African branch, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
UPDATE: Charges against family members have been dropped.

DUMONT -- A Dumont family who alleged borough police used excessive force against them in their own driveway settled a lawsuit for $140,000.

The news was first reported by NJ Civil Settlements, which provides a partial list of settlements paid by New Jersey government agencies and their insurers to those who have sued them.

While one of the two adult brothers later pleaded guilty to a disorderly persons offense, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office dropped a slew of other charges agains the the men and their parents.

The June 23, 2012 incident began when Chonan Persad, then 28, and Rovie Persad, then 27, arrived home after a night out with friends.

Two Dumont police officers who had been following the Persads ordered Rovie Persad to exit the car and conducted a field sobriety test. Persad said he passed the tests several times and began walking toward the house after he became "tired of the harassment," according to court papers.

At that point, one of the officers ran toward Rovie Persad, placing him in a headlock and applying a chokehold, the suit alleges. As Chonan Persad exited the vehicle to take photographs, the officer allegedly assaulting his brother tripped on an object in the driveway and fell, according to the suit.

The second cop then accused Chonan Persad of assaulting his partner and placed the older brother under arrest. Soon a sergeant arrived and also began assaulting the brothers, the lawsuit says.

When the mother, Anjanie Persad, opened the front door to the house, she alleges she was pepper-sprayed after refusing one of the officers' orders to close to the door and stay inside.

At some point, police also maced Rovie Persad, the plaintiffs say.

Five days after the altercation police filed obstruction of justice charges against all four family members.

In agreeing to the payout, Dumont police admitted no wrongdoing.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- A 28-year-old Mount Ephraim man was sentenced to eight years in state prison Friday after a jury convicted him of multiple child pornography offenses, authorities said.

Gerald Laphan, 28 of Mount Ephraim

The New Jersey Attorney General's Office said Gerald D. Laphan was found guilty of second-degree distribution of child pornography, second-degree offering of child pornography and fourth-degree possession of child pornography on Feb. 10 following a trial in Camden County Superior Court.

Laphan was charged on March 7, 2012 after a Gloucester County's Prosecutor's Office detective looking into peer-to-peer file sharing networks was able to download multiple videos of child pornography, including one of a man raping a pre-pubescent girl, from a user.

Investigators from the New Jersey State Police and members of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force traced the videos to Laphan's IP address and executed a search warrant at his home, where they found two laptops containing 265 videos and images of child pornography.

"We will do everything within our power to make sure that the depraved individuals who choose to share these horrific videos and images are removed from society and put into prison where they belong," said Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, in a written statement. "I commend the outstanding investigative work of detectives in the Digital Technology Investigations Unit, who are at times tasked with handling these dark and disturbing cases."

Michelle Caffrey may be reached at mcaffrey@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
NEWARK -- In her lawsuit over a fatal carjacking at The Mall at Short Hills, a widow is calling on a Superior Court judge to force the mall's owners to comply with a previous court order and turn over documents related to the case.

Until Michigan-based Taubman Centers, Inc. fulfills those obligations, Jamie Schare Friedland is asking Judge James S. Rothschild, Jr. to fine the company $100 per day, court documents state.

"At this point, they're in contempt of court," Friedland's attorney, Bruce Nagel, said on Thursday. "They're violating a court order."

In a motion filed with Rothschild, Nagel is claiming Taubman Centers has not complied with the judge's Feb. 10 order and is asking Rothschild to require the company to comply immediately. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Friday.

Christopher E. McIntyre, an attorney for Taubman Centers, on Thursday declined to comment on the motion.

Dustin Friedland and his wife, Jamie Schare Friedland. She is pursuing a lawsuit over the Dec. 15, 2013 fatal shooting of her husband at The Mall at Short Hills. (Facebook)

Taubman Centers is among the defendants being sued by Friedland over the Dec. 15, 2013 fatal shooting of her husband, Hoboken attorney Dustin Friedland, at the upscale mall in Millburn. The other defendants in the lawsuit include California-based Universal Protection Service, which has provided security services at the mall.

Nagel has alleged the security company and Taubman Centers provided inadequate security at the mall and could have prevented Dustin Friedland's killing.

Stanley Fishman, an attorney for Taubman Centers, said at a July 31 hearing that the killing was a "random act of violence," and that the shopping center could not have prevented it.

Four criminal defendants - Karif Ford, Basim Henry, Hanif Thompson, and Kevin Roberts - have been charged with murder, carjacking and related offenses in Friedland's killing.

As part of his Feb. 10 court order, Rothschild directed Taubman Centers to turn over "any and all documents relating to carjackings, car theft, or attempted carjacking or car theft, at any mall that is owned, operated, controlled, possessed, maintained, or occupied by Taubman in the country for 5 years prior to the incident."

Through those documents, Nagel said he is looking for information on Taubman Centers' national policies to protect mall shoppers against carjackings and car thefts.

Given the large number of car thefts and carjackings around the country in recent years, Nagel said "we are questioning them as to their local and national policies regarding the prevention of a known risk, a known crime wave."

The court order also requires Taubman Centers to provide legible copies of the security budgets for The Mall at Short Hills for the years 2011 through 2013, court documents state.

Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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This famous Newark statue will be rededicated on a grassy area at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The statue is called the "First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark." It is one of four statues in Newark created by Gutzon Borglum, a noted American sculptor and artist known for his work at Mount Rushmore. The statue has been on a city owned lot at Newark's division of traffic and signals since 2002.

(Aris Economopoulos)

Newark has a famous statue that's been missing from the city's public art landscape for more than a decade.

It's 9 feet tall and weighs about 13,000 plus pounds. You may remember reading about its sad condition two years ago in this column.

The "First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark" was flat on its back underneath a badly worn tarp. It looked like a piece of junk on a city-owned lot at Newark's division of traffic signals.

No one could tell that it was one of four important statues in Newark created by Gutzon Borglum, a famous sculptor and artist best known for his work at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

MORE: Recent Barry Carter columns

The marble base was detached and the pallet underneath the statue was sitting in water between a dumpster and old traffic signals.

We'll get to how it got that way, but the good news is that the statute will be upright this summer on the same grounds from which it was removed 19 years ago.

"It was something that had to be done, and the timing is right,'' said Liz Del Tufo, president of the Newark Preservation and Landmark Committee.

A famous Newark statue will be rededicated on the grassy area beyond this archway at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The statue is called the "First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark."

As the city prepares for its 350th anniversary, Del Tufo said it makes historical sense to rededicate the statue at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

She said it was first dedicated in 1916 for the city's 250th anniversary and located in same place where NJPAC stands now. Facing the Passaic River, the statue was erected in Landing Place Park on Saybrook Place near McCarter Highway.

The statue's journey home began after the committee read my story about the pathetic state of the artwork. Del Tufo and Richard Grossklaus, a member of the Newark Landmark and Historic Commission, began a letter-writing campaign seeking funds to restore the statue and find a home for it.

Luckily for Del Tufo, the Newark Celebration 350 Committee had formed to commemorate the city's founding. After Del Tufo made her pitch, Chairman Junius Williams said the committee agreed to raise $20,000 for the restoration through a campaign to fund legacy projects that will live beyond the city's 350th anniversary.

On May 3, Williams said, the Newark committee will participate in a nationwide "Give Local America'' drive to fund work on the statue, as well as three other projects. Contributions can be made through the website www.newark350give.org

"We're pretty confident that we'll raise all of the money, or most of the money, to restore and resurrect this important landmark for the city of Newark,'' Williams said.

MORE CARTER: East Orange principal chooses students over retirement

The statue is still on the property of the city's division of traffic and signals, but, Del Tufo said, it's better secured than it was two years go.

Once it is moved -- and she hopes that's soon -- Del Tufo said the homecoming ceremony will take place on a grassy area at NJPAC.

"We're happy to have it back where it belongs with a good view of the river,'' said John Schreiber, president and chief executive officer of NJPAC.

Everyone is excited about it, from Newark City Council President Mildred Crump to John Abeigon, president of the Newark Teachers Union.

Abeigon used to see the statue all the time in Lombardy Park while driving along McCarter Highway. That's where it was taken sometime before or after NJPAC opened in 1997.

The statue stayed there until about 2002 and was moved again when New Jersey Transit began construction of its light rail system. How it wound up at the division of traffic and signals is where memories get sketchy.

No one can say for sure who moved it to the division's lot, but that's where it has been ever since. At some point, the statue fell over and separated from its base, possibly from the weight pressing on the wooden pallet.

On the front of the statue's marble fountain, there are images representing the city's founders and two Puritans peering over a well or a spring. The backside lists the names of city founders.

The statue is listed on state and national historical registers as are the other three Borglum statues that are located in Newark and are not nearly has hard to find as "First Landing Party."

The "Indian and the Puritan'' is at Washington Park, "Wars of America" is the centerpiece of Military Park, and the "Seated Lincoln'' is in front of the Essex County Court House.

Tom Ankner, a reference librarian at the Newark Public Library, said relocating the monument in the area of NJPAC is appropriate because it's close to where the founding Puritans came ashore from the Passaic River.

"We don't really know exactly where they came ashore, but it was always thought that it was somewhere near where the FBI building and New Jersey Performing Arts Center is now,'' said Ankner, who works in the library's Charles Cummings New Jersey Information Center.

"I think it's a fantastic and wonderful way to commemorate the 350th anniversary.''

Welcome back "First Landing Party." You've been gone too long. Newark's public art scene is that much better having you on the map again.

Barry Carter: (973) 836-4925 or bcarter@starledger.com or nj.com/carter or follow him on Twitter @BarryCarterSL
NEWARK -- Parents, who were taking advantage of voluntary, free blood tests at a city school with lead-contaminated water, expressed anger and concern about the water contamination and a few said they'd consider suing if their children were found to have high levels of lead in their blood.

"If you have the opportunity to change the color paint in the school, you should be able to change the plumbing. There's a lot of stuff being redone in (her school)," said Nicole Holland, 38, a lifelong Newark resident with two children in lead-affected schools.

Holland's older daughter already got lead poisoning at the age of 3 from paint in an apartment building that Holland received through a Section 8 housing voucher, she said, and she is already suing about that.

Holland was in front of the Early Childhood School Central at Samuel L. Berliner School on Montgomery Street where the city started offering blood tests for 3 and 4-year-olds on Thursday morning.

About 67 students' parents signed them up to be tested at ESC's Central location, according to F. Nana Ofosu-Amaah, the Executive Director of the Office of the Early Childhood Center. About 43 were actually tested, she said.

The free test was offered to all 210 students in the school, and on Friday, the tests will be offered to the 131 students at the ECS-West location, Ofosu-Amaah said.

Holland said the idea of her daughter having received even more lead exposure at school, was too much, and she would seek compensation for her children if there were negative results.

"She's been sleeping a lot, complaining about her head hurting," she said. "I'm very concerned that she was exposed again to this situation."

City Health Director Hanaa Hamdi told officials testing will start with some 2,000 toddlers, but about 17,000 students are eligible for the testing in all.

Thirty schools were found to have elevated lead levels in their water, Newark school officials and the state Department of Environmental Protection announced March 9. The staff and students are now drinking bottled water, officials said.

The city's water itself is clean, but was contaminated by old, lead pipes, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka emphasized in his State of the City speech on Tuesday, calling on the state to update old water infrastructure throughout the state.

City officials announced that lead levels have been elevated in some Newark schools since at least 2012.

The Newark teachers union also made allegations last week that the district was aware of the lead levels for more than 10 years. On Wednesday, the district said it is working on obtaining testing results since 2004.

Several parents expressed anxiety about these revelations.

Kimberly Clark, another deeply concerned parent who was planning to test her child, told NJ Advance Media on Thursday that officials should have given the children bottled water "since the beginning."

Clark already gets her 5-year-old daughter tested for lead at their pediatrician annually as a precaution, she said, because "you know, sometimes, they go to school, and they put (possibly lead-painted) toys in their mouths."

Charles Mitchell and his fiancee, Latoya Morris, were also at the site to get their child tested. Mitchell said he was going to pretend to get tested first, so their frightened 4-year-old son, Dezmere, could see it's not too scary.

"I'm just glad they can get tested," he said, but he added that "(school officials) just said that the filters haven't been changed in so many years. Nobody said that it could have been prevented."

"It's ridiculous. God knows how long it would have been like this," Morris said, noting that her 4-year-old son had been in the school system for two years. "They probably knew this water was like this, I believe, and they should have said something about this... I'm just nervous."

If her child receives bad results from the lead test, she said, she may sue.

The test requires the drawing of blood from the children's arms, so many parents noted that their children were not happy about it. But not all of the parents were angry at the district; some said that the mayor and district officials had handled the situation well.

Bianca Ramos, 24, who got her 3-year-old daughter tested in the morning, said that it was "just for peace of mind," but she believed there had been "a quick response." Officials had given parents a lot of information in paperwork, she said.

She said she was told to expect to get the results in about two days.

LeVar Harper, 36, said he isn't getting his 15-year-old daughter tested because she drinks bottled water. He said that officials at her school were doing a good job, and he praised the mayor for acting "swiftly."

"Ever since she's been going to school, she's always brought bottled water," said LeVar Harper, 36. "Bottled water is the way to go. It's safer."

However, he believed that parents whose children did drink from the water fountains should get their children tested.

Parents spoke angrily at Wednesday night's school board meeting in Newark, asking for more information about the lead issue, according to ABC7.

The district superintendent explained that any water tested with over 15 parts per billion (ppb) of lead is a red flag, and most schools had results of about 100 ppb, with one at 558 ppb, the station reported.



In contrast, in Flint, Michigan, the highest level Virginia Tech researchers found anywhere was 13,000 ppb (the 90th percentile was 25 ppb), according to their study website.

Laura Herzog may be reached at lherzog@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LauraHerzogL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City man is facing more than a decade in prison after pleading guilty this morning to the 2014 fatal shooting of a 23-year-old on Grant Avenue.

Tyrell Thrower, 30, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter for gunning down Marcus Brown on June 22, 2014 and now faces 12 years in prison with no parole until serving 85 percent of the term and then five years of parole upon release.

Sentencing is scheduled for June. 17.

Thrower admitted that he fired at Brown eight times, but when asked if he hit him with all eight shots, Thrower replied: "I'm not sure if I hit him eight times."

With his hands cuffed, Thrower wore green jail garb during today's hearing before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable. Because he is already on parole, the guilty plea will also trigger a parole violation.

Thrower has three previous convictions, according to online court records: a guilty plea to a drug charge in June 2004, a guilty plea to another drug charge in 2006 and a guilty plea to a May 2007 assault of a corrections officer in August 2008.
KEARNY -- A two-alarm fire at 150 Washington Ave. displaced three residents earlier today, Deputy Chief Bruce Kauffmann said.

No residents or firefighters were injured, he said.

Kerri Iadevaia, who lives on the second-floor apartment with her 14-year-old son Dale, told Jersey Journal Photo Editor Reena Rose Sibayan at the scene that her son - who was home sick from school - called her while she was walking the dog to tell her the house was on fire.

She rushed home to find flames coming out of her apartment and her son already outside after calling 9-1-1.

The fire started around noon and was under control at approximately 1:01 p.m., according to Kauffmann.

The source of the fire is still under investigation, but the rear bathroom on the second floor was the most heavily damaged, Kauffmann said.

Iadevaia, her son and the first-floor occupant have all relocated with family and friends, Kauffmann said.

"There's been an outpouring of support from my neighbors," Iadevaia said at the scene. "One is looking for a place for my family, another is getting me a car since I left my keys in the house, and someone has even started a GoFundMe page."

There was also some damage to the house next door, including broken windows and charring on the side of the house, but none of the residents were displaced, Kauffmann said.
A North Bergen man was sentenced today to five years in prison today for leaving the scene of a fatal Bayonne crash and lying to police afterward -- a sentence the victim's family is calling "unfair ... to society."

Eliades Roque, 30, pleaded guilty in December to leaving the scene of a Jan. 2, 2015, crash that killed Dimitrios Frangakis, 43, of Bayonne, which carried a sentence of five to 10 years in prison. The other charges -- hindering apprehension, tampering with physical evidence and filing a false police report -- were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

In court today, the victim's brother, Harry Frangakis, said "I'm not happy," when asked if five years was long enough. Roque must serve 85 percent, or slightly more than four years, in prison.

Frangakis said his brother's wife and 13-year-old daughter went home to the wife's native country of Poland after the fatal crash, while his brother's remains were sent to his native country of Greece. Their mother cries over the grave each day, Frangakis said.

"Nothing will bring my brother back, but to give such a lenient sentence is not only unfair to my family, but to society also," Frangakis said in a letter read to the court by Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Michael D'Andrea. "He leaves a daughter with no father, a wife with no husband and provider, a mother with no son."

A tearful Roque addressed Hudson County Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable at the hearing, saying "I would like to say that I'm very sorry for that night. I'm very sorry that somebody lost their life. I'm sorry that I left the scene of the accident."

Frangakis was thrown from his motorcycle in the crash at 11:35 p.m. that night and his body was found some 45 feet away, at the intersection of Route 440 and Goldsborough Drive. He was pronounced dead an hour later at the hospital.

Roque fled from the crash and the next day he went to the North Bergen Police Department to report that his car had been stolen. While being interviewed by police, Roque confessed to the the fatal accident.

Roque's attorney, Steven Menaker, asked that he be sentenced in the range of three to five years but Venable sentenced Roque to the minimum under the plea deal. She said we will never know if he fled because of fear or because he was driving under the influence.

"Nonetheless, he left the scene of an accident, which was a fatal accident, and then coming the next day and giving the false report," the judge said. "So that takes away, in this court's mind, the issue of fright, because that was the day before and he continued to try to cover it up."

D'Andrea told the judge he believes Roque fled "not because he was afraid. He fled because he was intoxicated and knew that's the charge he would face. That's why he covered up his crime. ... He knew he was guilty."
Racist City Employees Are on Notice, and 9 Other Greater Cincinnati News Stories You May Have Missed This Week

Catch up on local government, politics, sports, celeb sightings and Halloween fun.
Apple (News - Alert) has reportedly tapped Google to provide it with hosting for its iCloud services in what CRN and Fast Company say is a $400-600 engagement. This is big news not only because it involves two of the largest and most important companies in tech today, but also due to the fact that Apple is an existing user of Amazon Web Services (News - Alert), which pioneered and is the leader in the cloud computing arena.

Neither Apple nor Google would comment on the reports, but an Amazon spokesperson suggested to CRN that they hadnt lost Apples business, the Fast Company article says. "Its kind of a puzzler to us because vendors who understand doing business with enterprises respect [non-disclosure agreements] with their customers and dont imply competitive defection where it doesnt exist, the spokesperson said.

Reports also indicate Apple was never exclusive with AWS anyway, and also leverages Microsoft (News - Alert) for some of this kind of thing. And Apples potential business for hosting providers would seem to be increasing as the company continues to expand its data center holdings. Ireland, Phoenix and Reno are among the places in which Apple is building data centers as part of its Project Huckleberry effort.

While AWS has built a big business around cloud computing and Google is making strides in this arena, several of the big telcos that made significant investments in this area and now dialing their efforts back and moving to sell off those assets.

Carriers such as AT&T (News - Alert) and Verizon are moving away from the public cloud business due to their inability to gain market share against established competitors such as Amazon Web Services, says Technology Business Research senior analyst Chris Antlitz.

In December it was revealed that IBM would take over some AT&T data center assets. Around the same time there were reports that CenturyLink no longer wants to own data centers, despite having invested $2.5 billion in Savvis just a few years ago. And in January Verizon put its data center assets (including 48 locations) on the block in what it hopes will yield $2.5 billion.

AT&T, Verizon (News - Alert), and other CSPs say they will instead focus on delivering network connectivity and value-added services related to the offerings of leading cloud service providers.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 79F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight

Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. Low 67F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 82F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley said Wednesday he is seeking response by the U.S. Justice Department on what he called a new and disturbing trend against the elderly  the exploitation of nursing home residents on social media.

In several cases around the country, nursing home workers have been caught taking photos and videos of residents in vulnerable positions and posting them on social media outlets such as Snapchat, Grassley said during his weekly chat with Iowa reporters. The mocking posts are meant for the workers amusement, but the posts are degrading and horrifying. The residents are frail and incapable of fighting back against the abusive treatment.

Since much of nursing home care is paid through Medicaid, a federal-state program, and since nursing home inspection is a similar makeup, these facilities must adhere to state and federal health and safety standards, Grassley said. He has asked the U.S. attorney generals office on what the Justice Department is doing to stop this exploitation.

The Justice Department is the nations top law enforcement agency, he said, and its involvement in fighting this newly emerging crime is critical to prevention, prosecution and holding perpetrators accountable.

Grassley has also asked the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for an updated account of its work on elder abuse, including social media exploitation, in an effort to stop this abuse of our seniors.
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.
Greater Sudbury is looking for middle ground when it comes to developing a bylaw to regulate ride-sharing companies such as Uber.

Greater Sudbury is looking for middle ground when it comes to developing a bylaw to regulate ride-sharing companies such as Uber.



In a report going to city council Tuesday, staff is looking for approval to develop a vehicles-for-hire bylaw based on consultations held earlier this year with the taxi industry, representatives from Uber and the public.



The recommendation in this report responds to the motion by council to consider regulations that find a middle ground which allows Uber to serve as broker for its drivers and allows the conventional taxi industry to function more like Uber, the report says.



This includes restricting ride share drivers to app-based activity while allowing conventional taxis the flexibility to use traditional dispatch, hail and taxi stand methods in addition to an app similar to the ride share sector.



Taxi companies in Canada have been struggling with ways to respond to Uber, which provides much cheaper rides for customers than traditional cabs. That's largely because they are not bound by the licensing and fee regulations taxi companies must follow in order to operate in Canadian cities.



Unlike traditional cabs, customers use a smartphone app to arrange rides, and fares are variable depending on demand.



To request a ride, the passenger enters their destination into the app, and is provided an estimate of the fare and information about available drivers in their area, the report says.



When the ride is accepted, the passenger is provided an estimated time of arrival and can monitor the vehicles approach on screen.



There is no exchange of cash as financial transactions are done electronically, including payment by the passenger and payment to the driver.



The bylaw being proposed for Sudbury would allow taxi companies to use similar technologies to connect with customers, and would impose fare and other standards on Uber. It would mirror efforts by other cities in Canada to regulate the rideshare industry.

Here's a sample of what other cities are doing:



Both traditional taxi industry and ridesharing/auxiliary ride services must be licensed, usually via a brokerage;

Drivers must be licensed by the municipality and require a police (usually vulnerable sector) check and drivers abstract check;

Vehicles must pass annual safety inspection and carry appropriate insurance;

Only traditional taxi industry may use dispatch, street hail and taxi stands;

Both traditional and ridesharing industries may use smartphone-based apps;

Various identification methodologies for rideshares are emerging, some require plate, some require approved decal, some do not require specific identification;

Common drop rate or minimum rate to enter all vehicles;

Allow market to set ride rates for smartphone-based rides but maintain tariff for dispatched, street hails and taxi stand rides. In some instances tariff rate is used to establish a maximum ride cost.

In consulting with taxi companies and drivers in Sudbury, 91 per cent said they wanted Uber banned in the city. Failing that, they want driver screening, licensing, fares and insurance to be regulated in the same manner for both systems, the report says.Further, the majority of industry respondents are opposed to decreases in current taxi fares and, by a slim majority, favour the introduction of apps to pick up fares within the traditional taxi industry.One common theme from the taxi industry is that, unlike Uber, many taxi drivers work full time and depend on their income, as opposed to many rideshare drivers who work to earn extra income.The vast area of Sudbury and sparsely populated areas make it often a very difficult taxi situation as it presently exists, one survey respondent told the city. Uber will cripple the ability of existing drivers to support their families . . . many drivers have long served the city dutifully and should receive respect from council/local government.If councillors approves the request, city staff are aiming to have the proposed bylaw ready by summer.
Nickel Belt MP Marc Serre announced funding Friday for two landfill improvement projects for Killarney and French River.

Nickel Belt MP Marc Serre announced funding Friday for two landfill improvement projects for Killarney and French River.The communities, both located south of Greater Sudbury, are benefiting from joint funding from the federal government and through the province's Small Communities Fund.Canada and Ontario will each provide up to $276,512 to the Killarney landfill leachate collection and treatment system and up to $250,328 to the Noelville landfill improvement project, Serre announced in a news release.The Killarney landfill project will see the installation of systems to collect and treat environmentally harmful liquids and the expansion of the landfill site. Upgrades will include a new collection piping system and treatment lagoon within the wetland. Once complete, the projects will help mitigate adverse environmental impacts due to waste disposal in the area.Improvements to the Noelville landfill will include the installation of a litter fence and automated gate systems. Topsoil will cover filled areas and a row of trees will be planted to help contain waste within the site. A storm water management pond will also be built to help reduce the risk of flooding.Our government will deliver real change to communities across Canada. We made a strong commitment to provide provinces, territories and municipalities with the support they need to maintain, restore and build public infrastructure, Serre is quoted as saying in the release.Going forward, our government will support public infrastructure that contributes to the quality of life of all Canadians.This is vital work in these communities, Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault said in the release. Our provincial government is committed to supporting residents across the north with improvements to infrastructure.As a frequent visitor to both Killarney and the French River every year, Im pleased to see important upgrades taking place.The projects are two of 13 announced Friday in Thunder Bay by Patricia A. Hajdu, Minister of Status of Women, on behalf of Amarjeet Sohi, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities.Killarney Mayor Ginny Rook said the funding will make her community stronger.These funds will allow us to improve waste management and diversion in our municipality, Rook said in the news release. It is important to our ratepayers and the thousands of visitors that visit our municipality to protect our natural environment and water quality.This funding will improve the efficiency of our landfill and ensure its longevity, added Claude Bouffard, Mayor of French River. We are very pleased to receive support from the federal and provincial government and are now able to move this project to phase 2 and 3.Through the Small Communities Fund, the governments of Canada and Ontario are providing funding for priority public infrastructure projects that deliver on local needs in communities across the province that have fewer than 100,000 residents.To learn more the Small Communities Fund, click here
Maureen Lacroix receives honourary doctorate from U of S

Laurentian Hospital's first ever female board chair, Maureen Lacroix, was presented with an honourary doctorate of Sacred Letters from the University of Sudbury March 17.

Maureen Lacroix was presented with an honourary doctorate in Sacred Letters from the University of Sudbury on March 17. Photo by Matt Durnan

Laurentian Hospital's first ever female board chair, Maureen Lacroix, was presented with an honourary doctorate of Sacred Letters from the University of Sudbury March 17.



Lacroix is a registered nurse who has dedicated many years to improving health care in the community of Sudbury and northerastern Ontario, by developing key programs in integrated housing, comprehensive cancer care, research, and physician education.



This was a great surprise to me, Lacroix said. Our family goes back quite a long way with the University of Sudbury.



My husband (Andre Lacroix) was a graduate of Sacred Heart College, which was sort of the first post-secondary institution that there was in the north, and the University of Sudbury evolved out of Sacre Heart College.



Lacroix's family connections run deep with the university, whether through her husband, or attending mass at Canisius Hall.



My children used to love coming to mass here because they could sneak into the back room, said Lacroix, who graduated from Laurentian with a degree in philosophy and religious studies.



We've had children who were christened here and we've had families that we've met and become friends with here.



If there's a kernel of knowledge in all of this it's that (University of Sudbury) gave me the courage and insights to go out into the community and do things and it's been wonderful for me.



As a community activist, Lacroix paved the way for the Genevra House for battered women and the Northern Regional Recovery Home for women with addictions.



She also served as chair of the board at the Sudbury Theatre Centre, where she presided over the construction of the current building.



Lacroix was not only Laurentian Hospital's first ever female board chair, but she was also the first woman to chair the University of Sudbury's Board of Regents from 1984 to 1996, and the first woman to chair the Laurentian University Board of Governors (1999  2003).



This honour is really important, it's a real honour for our family and certainly for me, said Lacroix. It's unexpected but I'm very pleased.
This article originally appeared in The Hill on March 17, 2016.

By Jilliana Enteen

Government officials recently announced that Thailand is facing its worst water shortage in two decades. There are droughts in 14 of the 77 provinces.

The beautiful Southeast Asian country with world-renown tropical beaches is facing increasingly severe repercussions from climate change, and thats not the only cause for concern.

A military coup in 2014, the result of unresolvable debates within the Thai government, left the military running Thailand. They have brought a more oppressive tone to the country, with military courts routinely

than did civilian courts. Facebook postings and online comments that are critical of the countrys rulers often

, even when the writers were joking. A Thai factory worker faces up to 37 years in prison for

of the king's dog, for instance.

The military reign was prolonged last fall after the rejection of a controversial draft of a new constitution. Another drafting process is underway now. Once its ratified, the goal will be to hold a democratic election.

Compounding this political uncertainty and growing repression is the fact that Thailand's influential King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the longest ruling royalty of any nation in history, is ailing. He has not been seen in months. King Bumibol is credited for leading a life dedicated to the Thai people, being among the poor rather sequestered in a castle. He started over 4,000 development projects and provided universal education for all Thai citizens.

While King Bhumibol Adulyadei has an untarnished reputation of service, his children, including the Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn and Princess Chulabhorn Waliailak do not have untarnished reputations.

For all of these reasons, Thailand is at a critical juncture and needs the help of the United States.

However, in response to the military coup and the resulting oppressions in the country, the United States has had sanctions against Thailand since 2014. The sanctions include suspending more than $4.7 million of security-related assistance and cancelling training programs with the military and police.

The American government has said it will lift the sanctions after democracy is restored. But the government is sending mixed signals. Last month, the United States sent 3,600 troops to Thailand for a military show, the Cobra Gold. This military show supports the Thai generals who currently rule the country.

To help Thailand in its time of need, the United States should end the mixed signals and fully lift sanctions. This would be a sign of trust to help them through this tumultuous time. It would be a way to reach out and affirm our countrys longstanding relationship with Thailand. It is not a lot to ask for a long-time ally.

The United States has had allegiances with Thailand since the 1833 "Amnity and Commerce Treaty," which solidified positive approaches to political and trade agreements. The allegiance was further strengthened with the 1954 Manila security pact, which stipulated that the signatories uphold equal rights and self-determination among their citizens and that no aggression would be launched between the parties of this treaty.

Thailand was an important ally during the United States conflicts with Korea and Vietnam. In fact, during the Vietnam conflict and since, United States troops have enjoyed going to Thailand for rest and relaxation (R&R). Thai people have welcomed the raucous troops with friendliness and patience, understanding their need for fun ("sanuk"a very important concept in Thai).

Today, the United States continues to designate Thailand a "major non-NATO ally. Thailand has been a popular tourist destination, with-close to 70 million Americans visiting Thailand in 2013, before the coup. Increasingly, as my research documents, Thailand has also become a major industry for medical tourism for Americans, including for gender reassignment surgery (SRS or GRS), as it boasts excellent surgeons that cater to western clients at a fraction of the cost of medical treatments in the United States.

Not only is it right to help Thailand because of these connections, but helping Thailand now is also an investment for a safer future. The country used to be a democratic stronghold in the region but they are becoming more and more repressive; they are increasingly being compared to Burma despite their longstanding history of peace, stability, and economic growth. Currently, rules against speaking against the king have spread to the military, and Thai citizens have good reason to watch what they say. The recognition of our historical and continued alliance can help them continue to stay democratic.

Some may wonder, how can the United States lift the sanctions without making it seem like theyre condoning the current military rule? A clear endorsement of the United States belief that Thailand is headed towards democracy trumps the idea that lifting sanctions condemnations of military rule. The United States did not impose sanctions during the 2006 military coup that ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, so another period of overlooking temporary military rule for democratic reform is in order.

Even though the United States does not need Thailand as much as before, Thailand still needs us. Being a good ally means helping when we dont always need help back.

- Jilliana Enteen is assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She is a member of the Op-Ed Projects Public Voices Fellowship at NU.
The scandal over sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy is still raging in the courts, yet the American bishops have made a wrongheaded decision to cut back their auditing of local dioceses' compliance with the church's new child protection measures. The bishops concluded that 90 percent of dioceses had been examined, found in compliance and can "self-report" next year. The auditors will focus on dioceses that are not carrying out the safeguards fully. This easing of scrutiny hardly jibes with pledges of ongoing accountability.

In the face of the dark universe of abuse by priests -- more than 700 dismissed in three years for sexually abusing thousands of children -- it was commendable that the bishops' conference enacted some firm remedies, including a one-strike-and-you're-defrocked policy toward abusers. But the laity is still waiting for an accounting of bishops' culpability in protecting predatory priests and paying hush money to contain complaints.

That the crisis is far from over is clear in California, where Bishop Tod Brown of the Orange County diocese recently agreed to a record $100 million damage settlement with 87 victims. Bishop Brown's welcome decision to release internal church documents as part of the agreement contrasts with the struggle in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where Cardinal Roger Mahony continues legalistic stonewalling of 500 abuse claims. His refusal to turn over priests' personnel files to prosecutors was criticized by the laity panel the bishops appointed to monitor their actions.

The panel warned last March that "there must be consequences" for bishops who led the years of cover-up. But the bishops still shy from investigating each other, says the panel's recently departed chairman, Robert Bennett. He said the church needs "what amount to SWAT teams to go out and rein in recalcitrant bishops and make them do what is good for the whole church."
Their predecessors were Charles Ransom Miller (1883-1922), Rollo Ogden (1922-1937), John H. Finley (1937-1938), Charles Merz (1938-1961), John B. Oakes (1961-1976), Max Frankel (1977-1986), Jack Rosenthal (1986-1993), Howell Raines (1993-2001) and Gail Collins (2001-2006).

Image Andrew Rosenthal. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Mr. Rosenthal was born in India, where his father, A. M. Rosenthal, was stationed as a Times correspondent. His father was then in the early stages of a career that would lead to the executive editorship in 1977, and so the younger Mr. Rosenthal was steeped in Times history and tradition.

But he couldnt have been much less bound to them.

Among many innovations and departures during his years as editorial page editor, Mr. Rosenthal counted the first front-page editorial of modern times: The Gun Epidemic, published on the web as End the Gun Epidemic in America.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. Americas elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing.

The editorial board under Mr. Rosenthal also attracted widespread attention for championing the legalization of marijuana, in Repeal Prohibition, Again:

The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.

By highlighting the racially disproportionate outcome of prohibitory enforcement, Mr. Rosenthals editorial board crafted an argument aligned with its strong dedication to civil rights for all Americans, which was also reflected in The Timess support for marriage equality and gender equality.

Though critics would argue otherwise, Mr. Rosenthals editorial page was not captive to the Democratic Party or its elected officials. The White House came in for scalding censure in President Obamas Dragnet:

The Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights. Those reassurances have never been persuasive  whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agencys phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism  especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

The Timess innate suspicion of governments tendency to abuse power is, perhaps, one of the longest-running and most consistent of themes on its editorial page.
He would say that our understanding of something depends on a community, Warren Goldfarb, a friend of Professor Putnams and a former chairman of the Harvard philosophy department, said in an interview on Monday. There are times it can be said you use and understand a term even when it has no distinction for you. I understand the word larch or elm; I couldnt tell the trees apart, but you couldnt say I didnt understand them.

In a 1975 paper called The Meaning of Meaning, Professor Putnam further illustrated his argument with a famous thought experiment called Twin Earth. He imagined a planet alongside our own that was a facsimile in almost every way, including holding a replica of each person. The only difference on Twin Earth was its water. Though it looks like H2O, tastes like H2O, fills the lakes, rivers and oceans and performs the same functions as H2O, Twin Earths water had a different chemical makeup, abbreviated as XYZ.

Therefore, if an earthling named, say, Oscar, were to travel to Twin Earth and visit his doppelganger, Twin Oscar, when they referred to water, they would actually be talking about two different things, even though they appeared to be the same. Because Oscar and Twin Oscar are identical in every way, including their thoughts at a given time, Professor Putnam argued, meaning cannot simply be a function of what is formulated in someones head.

Another notable thought experiment devised by Professor Putnam, known as brain in a vat, was in the field of epistemology. The experiment was intended to disprove a fundamental contention of metaphysical realism  that objects and relationships in the world exist independently of how we perceive them; in other words, that the world we see and hear is not the one that actually is, and that therefore, our brains are perception machines untethered to reality.

If that were the case, Professor Putnam argued, then a human brain would be no different from a brain in a vat placed there by a mad scientist. Human brains, however, employ words based on the things they refer to, which requires some kind of contact with those things. So the brain in a vat  call him Oscar  could not formulate the sentence I am a brain in a vat, because Oscar has no experience of a real brain or a real vat. Rather, he would actually be saying something like Im the image of a brain in the image of a vat.

Professor Putnams death provoked striking encomiums among his colleagues. The philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum wrote in The Huffington Post that Professor Putnam was one of the greatest philosophers this nation has ever produced and compared him to Aristotle in the range of his creative and foundational contributions.
AUSTIN, Tex.  An unruly life force battling the inevitability of decline and death. Thats the core of Iggy Pops new album, Post Pop Depression (Rekords Rekords/Loma Vista), which he has hinted may be his last. Hes not going quietly.

On Wednesday night he hurtled onstage with legs pumping, arms flailing and hair aswirl. Two songs later he tossed away his jacket and he remained bare-chested through the rest of his two-hour set at the Moody Theater here. After he belted out the credo of Funtime  I just do what I want to do  he stage-dived into the audience. At 68, he was not holding back.

It was a flagship show at the 30th South by Southwest Music showcase and convention, as the musician begins a nationwide theater tour. Post Pop Depression is a collaboration with Josh Homme, the songwriter, guitarist and producer who leads Queens of the Stone Age. Self-financed, recorded in secret and made with hands-on musicianship, Post Pop Depression suits the lingering indie spirit of SXSW (although it is distributed by a major label).
Whats Streaming

DAREDEVIL on Netflix. The Marvel Comics universes ever-expanding presence on the small screen gets a little bigger with the second season of this series, whose 13 episodes are available online. Charlie Cox is back as Matt Murdock, better known as Daredevil, a blind lawyer who moonlights as a crime-fighter in Hells Kitchen. But Marvel fans may recognize new additions to the mayhem: Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Daredevils ex-girlfriend, Elektra (Elodie Yung). (Image: Mr. Cox)

PEE-WEES BIG HOLIDAY (2016) on Netflix. Thirty years have passed since Paul Reubenss beloved character, Pee-wee Herman, set out on a journey across the country to find his lost bicycle with help from the fugitive Mickey, the ghostly truck driver Large Marge and other memorable characters. Now, after meeting a mysterious stranger, Pee-wee is inspired to take a first vacation in what turns out to be an adventure-filled story of friendship and destiny. In this film, Neil Genzlinger wrote in The New York Times, Pee-wee is less frenetic and more reactive than in the past. Perhaps he knows that a lot of people watching this sweet, silly film will be in a mellower place than they were when Pee-wees Playhouse was on television more than a quarter-century ago. (Image: Mr. Reubens)
These reports, in addition to a series of F.D.A. warning letters and recalls, have raised questions among doctors and public health experts about why the device remains on the market. Neither the F.D.A. nor Alere have yet said publicly that the device appears to malfunction.

It very well may be an unsafe device, said Dr. Robert G. Hauser, a retired cardiologist and an advocate for improved safety of medical devices. I think the F.D.A. has to look at this device very seriously, and ask whether its a safe device and should be used by patients for this purpose.

The device is almost certainly going to be a topic of debate on Friday, when the F.D.A. is holding a workshop about the accuracy of it and similar devices. Although the agency has not singled out the INRatio device by name, the Alere product is the only device that has come under recent scrutiny for its accuracy, and the workshop was announced after concerns were raised.

Jackie Lustig, a spokeswoman for Alere, declined to answer any questions about the INRatio.

A spokesman for the F.D.A. said Alere had informed the agency that it was working on an improvement to the device. We cannot share more details, the spokesman, Eric Pahon, said.

The INRatio and other similar devices measure the bloods clotting ability and have been welcomed by many doctors and their patients who take the drug warfarin, a blood-thinning drug that requires careful monitoring. Instead of sending blood samples to an outside laboratory, doctors can learn with the prick of a finger if warfarin is working properly.
TORONTO  After failing to obtain approval for its Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, TransCanada said on Thursday that it would buy the Columbia Pipeline Group for $10.2 billion.

The all-cash deal will make the Canadian company a major force in the distribution of natural gas produced in the northeastern United States through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Russ Girling, the chief executive and president of TransCanada, said in a brief conference call that the deal was a rare, attractive opportunity that will create one of North Americas largest natural gas businesses.

Gas recovered in the Northeast through fracking has been taking some markets for Canadian natural gas that TransCanada delivers to North American customers.
Spotify will pay more than $20 million to music publishers to settle a long-running and complex dispute over licensing, according to an agreement announced on Thursday between the streaming service and the National Music Publishers Association, a trade group.

Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed. But according to several people involved with the settlement on both sides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential financial terms, Spotify will pay publishers between $16 million and $25 million in royalties that are already owed but unpaid  the exact amount, these people said, is still undetermined  as well as a $5 million penalty. In exchange, the publishers will refrain from filing copyright infringement claims against Spotify.

The settlement concerns mechanical licensing rights, which refer to a copyright holders control over the ability to reproduce a musical work. The rule goes back to the days of player-piano rolls, but in the digital era mechanical rights have joined the tangle of licensing deals that streaming services need to operate legally.

Over the last year, it emerged that Spotify  which has long trumpeted itself to the music industry as a law-abiding partner  had failed to properly obtain the mechanical licenses for large numbers of songs.
For many watch brands, the most pressing technological issue has nothing to do with the introduction of app-laden smart timepieces or the difficulties of creating a complex new movement.

Instead, much like their counterparts in the fashion world, they are focused on how to satisfy the increasing number of customers who are accustomed to instant availability, thanks, in part, to the immediacy promoted by social media and the Internet. Many manufacturers use a decades-old system that includes a long lag time between the announcement of a new watch and the time it actually reaches the market.

This disconnect has been felt throughout the fashion industry during the most recent show season, producing a hodgepodge of solutions and test efforts ranging from capsule collections for immediate sale to an announcement by the British fashion giant Burberry that beginning with its next collection, the clothes on the runway will be the clothes you can buy that very day.

Traditionally, the top Swiss brands have introduced most new watches to the news media and retailers at the industrys two major fairs: Baselworld, which is being held this week, and the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, in January.
Beaming and blunt in equal measure, Everything Is Copy, Jacob Bernsteins gossipy tribute to his mother, the writer and director Nora Ephron, is bursting with so many fond and famous faces that you can imagine its subject swooning with delight  and then criticizing their makeup.

She was very funny and very mean, says Barbara Walters, as a portrait builds of a fiercely ambitious, highly opinionated and instinctively empathic hustler who found her voice when her essays for Esquire magazine in the 1970s intersected with an invigorated womens movement. To read her was to discover a scathingly witty and bossy best friend, one whose willingness to air her failings and insecurities encouraged us to laugh at our own.

That engagingly confessional humor, showcased here in clips from Ephrons many television appearances, injected her romantic comedies with blasts of uniquely authentic insight. Yet Mr. Bernstein (a reporter for The New York Times) isnt only concerned about the warm-and-fuzzies. Theres tartness here, too, as the movies guests  including Ephrons three sisters, two ex-husbands and a chorus of Hollywood luminaries and New York literati  honor her sometimes lacerating candor with a dollop of their own.

In particular, a tantalizing segment with the directors father, the journalist Carl Bernstein, casts a slightly different light on the painful divorce that Ephron seemingly laid bare in her novel-turned-movie, Heartburn (1986). Digging into the psychological space between her wildly public life and intensely private death, Everything Is Copy is a pickle slathered in whipped cream. Just like its subject.
Chronicling a season at a small family-owned brewery, Erik Shirais The Birth of Sake is an engrossing introduction to the traditional cultivation of the rice-based alcohol that is part of Japans cultural heritage. But the films true focus is an endangered way of life.

The Yoshida Brewery, in Ishikawa Prefecture, has been making sake for more than 140 years, using artisanal means  that is, touch, taste, sight and smell, instead of just machines  to steam, sift and ferment the rice into a premium sake brand, Tedorigawa. About a dozen employees leave their families from October to April for the plant, where they live together while following the directions of Teruyuki Yamamoto, the 68-year-old toji, or head brewmaster. They eat, sleep, sometimes even bathe together, rising at 4:30 a.m. for a workday that often runs past 8 p.m.

Yachan Yoshida, 28, is being groomed by his father, the companys president, to be the sixth generation of his family to lead the brewery. Eager for the challenge  The brewery will always be where I feel most at peace, he says  he knows its survival is not assured. Young workers willing to put up with a life this demanding and immersive are hard to come by; as important, the sake market in Japan is shrinking, and the mass brands that do well often lack the nuance and subtle textures of the artisanal brews.
When the story broke in 1984 that a student at Choate Rosemary Hall had been accused of smuggling cocaine to sell to classmates at their elite Connecticut boarding school, it was shocking enough to make the national news.

The Preppie Connection, inspired by those events, changes the names and details but borrows its title from a 60 Minutes report on the incident. In the film, a day student, Toby, a relative innocent, makes buying trips to Colombia to please the privileged young hedonists who surround him.

In adapting this story, the writers Joseph Castelo and Ashley Rudden dont elevate it above its origins. Without insight or dimension, developments that were shiny or novel when the forces that helped the rich get richer were just gathering momentum no longer dazzle 30 years later in a society that has become accustomed to a Wall Street-take-all economy.
A man who was selling MetroCard swipes at a subway station in Harlem was fatally stabbed by the father of a woman he had punched in the face, the police said on Thursday.

The police identified the victim as Herbert Burgess, 53, of the Bronx. Officials said they were still searching for his assailant, whom they identified as Julio Velazquez, 48, and for the murder weapon.

Mr. Burgess was standing at the turnstiles of the 116th Street station on Malcolm X Boulevard before 9 p.m. on Wednesday when a 20-year-old woman approached him to buy a swipe, the police said. An argument ensued, ending when the seller punched the woman in the face. The police did not release the womans name.

According to the police, the woman went upstairs to the street, where she called her father. Mr. Velazquez arrived, chased Mr. Burgess and stabbed him in the torso, the police said.
Patrick J. Foye, the last executive director the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects to have, is not leaving at the end of the month after all.

Mr. Foye announced his resignation in November, effective March 31. But with two weeks left in his tenure, he has been persuaded to remain in the executive position until a search for a new chief executive is completed, the authority said on Thursday.

Mr. Foye will continue to oversee plans for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, an overhaul of La Guardia Airport and a replacement for the bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan, among other projects.

The authoritys board of commissioners hired an executive-search firm last year to begin looking for a chief executive. Mr. Foye was considered as a candidate for the position. But after the first round of the search, the commissioners decided they were not satisfied with the choices presented and extended the hunt.
A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Thursday morning after taking a loaded gun to his high school in Queens, the police said, the second incident this week in which a student took a loaded gun to school.

The student, a 10th grader whom the police did not identify, took a .38-caliber revolver to York Early College Academy in Jamaica, Queens. According to the police, a female student overheard him threatening another student with the gun and notified the school staff. Administrators called the police, who arrived around 9 a.m. and arrested him. He was in police custody and charges were pending as of Thursday afternoon.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Toya Holness, said, This is deeply alarming and we are working closely with N.Y.P.D. to ensure that all students and staff are safe.

York Early College Academy is a sixth- through 12th-grade school where students can attend classes for college credit in their junior and senior year. It had a four-year graduation rate of 93 percent last year.
Just before noon on Thursday, James Browar pushed out of a Starbucks on Eighth Avenue near Times Square, laden with news that was simultaneously getting worse and more urgent by the minute.

No bathroom, announced Mr. Browar, 20, who came from New Jersey for the St. Patricks Day Parade.

What? asked Lydia Piazza, who also made the trip.

I asked if it was for paying customers, Mr. Browar said. They said theres no bathroom whatsoever.

He told a stranger, I must have walked three-quarters of a mile.

That doesnt seem very far. New York City, after all, is one of the most public-bathroom-resistant places in the world, and few days in the year would make even the most hospitable restaurant less likely to throw open its restrooms than St. Patricks. But forget that. The natives have mapped out the facilities, like rock climbers knowing where to drive their anchors. There were, however, nearly 57 million tourists throughout 2014, many of them not used to our ways.
Long ago and far away, in the days when white men in power ties and women in funny hats gathered in air-conditioned caverns to hammer out the Republican Party platform, it was a predictable affair. The G.O.P. was for less taxes and less government, free trade and free people, a scolding of victims and grievance-mongers, and a vision of social norms circa 1952.

As time went on, they let the cranks and the racists in, the fact-deniers and the extreme gun nuts, the xenophobes and the nature-haters, because the big tent could take in all that extra gas without overheating. They would tolerate those people, who you picture looking like that dude who sucker-punched a protester at a Trump rally, because they needed them.

Now imagine the Republican Party gathering for its convention in Cleveland and hammering out a vanity platform in Donald Trumps image. Its all walls and no bridges. Free trade is gone. Taxes? Who knows. There will be a call for more government, through a bloated military, and untouched benefits for seniors who must be pandered to. Most significantly, its a party of grudges and grievances, of anger and fear by that formerly detested class  victims.

Itll be a personality cult, without a hint of optimism, and certainly no overarching governing philosophy. If youre young, nonwhite, science-based and civil, there will be nothing in it for you. And it will be rejected in every precinct of the United States where hope still beats hate, which is a majority, albeit a shrinking one.
Since the Holocaust, the United States has designated wide-scale killing as genocide only four times: Cambodia in 1989, Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994 and Sudan in 2004. To those it has now added the Islamic States rampage in Iraq and Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Thursday.

Using an Arabic term for the group, Mr. Kerry said that Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims.

The term genocide, first specified in the 1948 United Nations Convention, refers to acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The evidence against the Islamic State is indisputable.
One tragedy in Polands gathering constitutional crisis is that it reveals the degree to which the right-wing leaders there dont get the basics of democracy. In openly defying a ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Polish high court, the ruling Law and Justice Party effectively set itself above the law in its march to authoritarian rule, ignoring all appeals, warnings and formal opinions from the United States, the European Union, international human rights organizations and its own opposition.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the partys leader and the power behind the governments nationalist, conservative agenda, actually compared the foreign appeals to Soviet intervention of the Communist era. This crisis is evidence of Mr. Kaczynskis illiberal view of democracy  shared with his friend, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary  as license for a majority to ride roughshod over any institutional checks and balances, whether internal or inherent in E.U. membership.

The current conflict began in October when the previous government, about to lose to Law and Justice in national elections, named five judges to the 15-judge Constitutional Tribunal, though there were only three immediate openings. The incoming government refused to seat them and named five new judges of its own. The court ruled that three of the judges proposed by the previous government were properly appointed, but Law and Justice paid no heed. Instead, the new Parliament passed a law that would weaken the court, requiring, for example, a two-thirds majority for a decision to be binding. Last Wednesday, the Constitutional Tribunal struck down the legislation as unconstitutional. But the government effectively dismissed the ruling.

On Friday, a special panel of the Council of Europe  the Continents rights organization  issued a report saying that the Polish governments efforts to change the high court would endanger not only the rule of law but also the functioning of the democratic system. But the Warsaw government remained defiant, saying only that it would send the opinion to the legislature for study.
I WAS not there, but I can imagine President Obama in the Oval Office posing this question about Judge Merrick B. Garland: Given this mans lengthy history on the bench and his impeccable reputation, what can be said against him serving on the Supreme Court?

The answer from his advisers might have been: Nothing, sir. But the Republicans dont want to give up their decades-long control of this court, and they would rather ignore the Constitution and freeze the government than allow that to happen.

When President Obama picked Judge Garland to fill Justice Antonin Scalias seat, he was choosing an extraordinarily well-qualified jurist. Judge Garland has served on the bench for 19 years, the last three as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. No Supreme Court justices, even the greats, matched his record of federal judicial service at the time of their confirmation. His excellence as a jurist is surpassed only by the respect and affection people in both parties feel toward him.

By sending the Senate a nominee of this quality and stature, President Obama has increased the political price Republicans will pay if they ignore their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent. That was the presidents objective from the start: Find a nominee beyond reproach who would, under normal circumstances, be confirmed without controversy. Force the Republicans to either back down or defend the indefensible.
Local prosecutors have historically paid no price for taking up residence in the pocket of the police department. That changed on Tuesday, when Democratic primary voters in the counties that include Cleveland and Chicago turned veteran prosecutors out of office for mishandling cases against police officers who shot and killed black citizens.

The defeats of Anita Alvarez, the states attorney of Cook County, Ill., and Tim McGinty, county prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, show that many voters are no longer willing to tolerate cover-ups and foot-dragging in cases of killings by the police and other abuses. Still, it will take more than changing the name on the prosecutors stationery to reform the way such cases are handled.

That prosecutors and police officers work closely together every day creates a conflict of interest. It makes it difficult for many prosecutors to vigorously pursue cases of police wrongdoing. The best solution would be to bring in special prosecutors to handle all cases where civilians died at the hands of the police. Until that happens, voters need to oust prosecutors who fail to do their jobs.

Ms. Alvarez became the object of civic rage when she waited 13 months to charge the police officer who executed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on a busy Chicago street  despite a police dash-cam video that contradicted the Police Departments statement that the young man had been menacing officers with a knife.
So what does climate change mean, exactly?

The question is not an existential one for the Department of Defense; it is a matter of careful and literal consideration.

The department recently decided that the standard Websters definition of climate change didnt quite meet its needs. So it added its own version to its homegrown dictionary, the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.

Heres how it now defines climate change:

Variations in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer that encompass increases and decreases in temperature, shifts in precipitation, and changing risk of certain types of severe weather events.

The dictionary, which is used in part to standardize military communication, is updated monthly, and the new entry on climate change was made public in late February.
For his bookshop and website One Grand Books, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books theyd take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. The next in the series is the writer Sloane Crosley, whose new novel, The Clasp, is out now. She shares her list exclusively with T. (One Grand also currently has an installation at the Blue Bottle Cafe at the Platform in Culver City, Los Angeles.)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

I dont remember the first time I read Goodbye to All That, but I do know that a little part of me thinks of it whenever I turn on the air conditioner. Didion is a big-picture writer and a vital writer (On Self-Respect is required reading for any woman, Sentimental Journeys for any person). Shes a national treasure, but for me its the image of her taking a messy bite of a peach on the sidewalk that feels like the Didion I know.

Youve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe, Ron Hansen

This anthology is like one of those fateful 20-something nights where you met a boyfriend, a best friend and got a lead on a job. It introduced me to Jim Shepard and Donald Barthelme. I often think of Amy Tans introduction of Molly Giless story, Pie Dance. Tan writes that upon hearing Giles read the story, she felt she didnt yet have what it took to be a writer but she also knew  as deeply as you can know something about yourself  that it would be worth a lifetime to try. Thats one of the most genuine things Ive ever heard a writer say about another writer.
San Francisco area commuters faced overcrowded trains and delays for the second time in two weeks on Thursday because of mysterious electrical problems. Bay Area Rapid Transit officials said 50 of their train cars were damaged by unexplained power surges on Wednesday. Another 80 BART cars were taken out by voltage spikes at the beginning of the month, but in a different area of the system. A spokeswoman said BART engineers had not been able to determine the cause and outside experts were being flown in to evaluate.
WASHINGTON  Time and again, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan acknowledged in a tense congressional hearing Thursday that he had been aware of complaints about the drinking water in Flint, including from news reports his aides had emailed him. Yet he had accepted assurances, he said, that the problems were not severe.

Democrats listening to his testimony were dubious. Governor Snyder, plausible deniability only works when its plausible, said Representative Matt Cartwright, Democrat of Pennsylvania. You were not in a medically induced coma for a year.

The rebuke was one of the more caustic in an extraordinary turn on Capitol Hill: A sitting Republican governor appearing before a Republican-led congressional panel, answering wave after wave of questions about his administrations role in the Flint water crisis  the most glaring failure of government since Hurricane Katrina, as Representative Brendan Boyle, another Pennsylvania Democrat, described it.

Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also came under fire, pressured by Republicans to accept responsibility for the lead contamination of Flints water supply and sometimes shouted down as she deflected blame onto the State of Michigan.
Cliven Bundy lost a renewed bid Thursday for release from jail ahead of trial on federal conspiracy and assault charges stemming from an armed standoff against government agents two years ago. Magistrate Judge Carl Hoffman pointed to the violence alleged in an indictment accusing Mr. Bundy of inciting the impasse to stop a roundup of cattle from public land near his ranch in April 2014, and to his history of ignoring federal court orders. You say youll continue to do whatever it takes,  Judge Hoffman said in a Las Vegas courtroom where some Bundy backers wore T-shirts bearing the slogan. The judge said he did not believe Mr. Bundy would comply with court orders.
WASHINGTON  Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will announce on Friday a corporate executive to lead his moonshot cancer initiative, selecting an expert who began work in 2003 to lower barriers between science and cures.

Greg Simon, 64, who will be named executive director, took a job he may get to keep for only the last 10 months of the Obama administration. Mr. Simon, who is battling cancer himself, said he understood the urgency of the task.

There are so many things in the cure process that take too long, he said.

In June 2014, Mr. Simon received a diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow disease, and six months ago completed his first round of chemotherapy. He is now healthy, but while fighting the illness one of his close friends died, leaving two young children.

The vice president has a chance to change the culture of science, Mr. Simon said. And if we can create new approaches that are a step away from the road scientists have long been traveling, in a year or two it will be a different road.
WASHINGTON  He was once described, for better or worse, as the Republican Barack Obama  a fresh-faced first-term senator who just might walk away with his partys presidential nomination. Instead, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida returned to his day job on Thursday.

Two days after a disappointing second-place finish in his home state prompted him to bow out of the presidential race, Mr. Rubio was back at the Capitol, falling once more into the routine of roll call votes and conference lunches.

He questioned State Department officials about arms-control issues during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. He voted for a resolution holding the website BackPage.com in contempt for being complicit in sex trafficking. He attended a weekly Republican luncheon. And now that his run for president is over, he made it clear that he had no interest in several rumored backup plans.

Im not going to be vice president, he said. Im not interested in being governor of Florida. Im going to finish up my term in the Senate over the next 10 months. Were going to work really hard here, and we have some things we want to achieve, and then Ill be a private citizen in January.
Heading into Tuesdays Arizona primary, Senator Ted Cruzs presidential campaign has released a new ad, titled Grant, about a 21-year-old Mesa, Ariz., man who was killed last year, apparently by an illegal immigrant.

On Screen

Over sedate piano chords, family snapshots show Grant Ronnebeck as a smiling young boy, then a smiling young man, as his father, Steve Ronnebeck, tells his story: My son Grant was killed working an overnight shift at his job by an illegal immigrant.

A mug shot of Grants accused killer is shown, alongside a photo of a crime scene and an excerpt from an article in The Arizona Republic reporting that the suspect had already been facing federal deportation proceedings after a separate criminal conviction, but was out on an immigration bond.

Mr. Ronnebeck, addressing the camera, calls his sons death completely preventable.

Then, in an abrupt transition, he says, I trust Ted Cruz. He believes in the Constitution. He believes in the rule of law. Still photos of Mr. Cruz fill the screen, one of him speaking in front of a giant American flag, another standing pensively in profile. Its time we put somebody in office who puts the American people first, Mr. Ronnebeck says.
WASHINGTON  The Defense Department has disciplined at least a dozen military personnel for their roles in an airstrike in October on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan that killed 42 people, senior military officials said, but they are not expected to face criminal charges.

The personnel, including officers and enlisted members, were given administrative punishments, the officials said. The Associated Press first reported the disciplinary actions Wednesday.

Among those disciplined are soldiers who were on the ground, personnel at the operations center that oversaw the strike, and airmen. Others involved may also be disciplined, the officials said.

Administrative punishments typically include letters of reprimand, which can significantly hurt the ability of a member of the military to get promoted.
Escalating an angry dispute with the leader of the United Nations, Morocco gave the organization a 72-hour deadline on Thursday to evacuate 84 members of its mission in the disputed Western Sahara territory.

The Moroccan order threatened to paralyze the work of the mission, which has played a peacekeeping role for 25 years.

The United Nations Security Council held urgent private consultations on Thursday afternoon over the Moroccan order, which came a day after Morocco announced a big cut in civilian support for the mission; withdrawal of its $3 million in financial support; and other unspecified steps.

The president of the Security Council for March, Ambassador Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins of Angola, emerged later to tell reporters that members were continuing to talk and that they wanted to ensure the missions stability. He offered no specifics but said, every problem has a solution.
UNITED NATIONS  At least four senior United Nations officials warned of the risks of sending soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo on a peacekeeping mission to the neighboring Central African Republic when the idea arose in 2014. The soldiers had a history of using rape on the battlefield, the officials said. Within months of the soldiers arrival, allegations of sexual abuse began piling up against several of them.

At least one United Nations official urged that the 800-member battalion be sent home swiftly. But even after a decision was made early this year to do so, the troops were kept on for another six weeks.

By then, unspeakable tales of sexual exploitation had emerged, including the rape of minors. Officials in Kinshasa, Congos capital, did not move swiftly to hold the perpetrators to account. So the Democratic Republic of Congo joined an ignoble list of armies known for harming civilians while serving under the United Nations blue flag.

A lot of us thought we should have sent them home and not taken them in the first place, Anthony Banbury, who until this week served as No. 2 in the United Nations agency in charge of peacekeeping logistics, said of the Congolese contingent. But having taken them, we should have had an eagle eye on them.
The former military ruler Pervez Musharraf left Pakistan on Friday for medical treatment in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, after the government lifted a travel ban imposed on him as he awaited a trial on treason and other charges, said his spokesman, Mohammad Amjad. The departure of Mr. Musharraf, who has faced a battery of court cases since returning home from self-imposed exile in 2013, will remove a source of friction between the army and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Mr. Musharraf, 72, ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008, when he stepped down in the face of widespread opposition to his rule.
Azerbaijans government pardoned 148 prisoners, including journalists, human rights activists and political opponents on Thursday, state media said, in what appeared to have been a move to deflect Western criticism of the countrys human rights record. The freed prisoners had denied the charges against them, calling them politically motivated and fabricated. The European Unions foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, welcomed the amnesty and said that she hoped it would lead to the releases of several other imprisoned human rights activists.
WASHINGTON  Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday that Iran may have violated international law when it seized 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf in January.

Irans actions were outrageous, unprofessional and inconsistent with international law, Mr. Carter said in a testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The sailors were detained after veering off course into Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, the home of an Iranian Navy base, and were freed after about 14 hours. Video footage released by the Iranian government showed the sailors kneeling at gunpoint with their hands clasped behind their heads.

At the time, the Obama administration emphasized the sailors quick release, calling it a result of the diplomatic channels opened by the nuclear deal struck last year with Iran.
In their fifth raid in a week focusing on South Asian antiquities they say were looted, investigators have seized three items from a leader in the field, the Nancy Wiener Gallery of Manhattan.

The seized items were valued at nearly $1 million, according to agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations and officials of the Manhattan district attorneys office, who are jointly conducting an investigation into the trafficking of illicit artifacts.

The raids, which federal officials said have netted some $4 million in antiquities, have been staged during Asia Week New York, an annual celebration of Asian art that is typically a time for high sales in that market.

The items from the Wiener gallery, which were seized on Thursday, included a 10th-century bronze Buddha from Thailand or Cambodia valued at $850,000. Also seized were a red sandstone relief of a couple from Indias second-century Kushan period, valued at $100,000, and an eighth-century Indian or Pakistani limestone carving of the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati, valued at $25,000 to $35,000.
Steven Holl, the architect behind Princeton Universitys coming Lewis Center for the Performing Arts, has another opportunity to make his mark on the New Jersey college town.

The universitys neighbor, the Institute for Advanced Study, has selected Mr. Holls firm to design its new Rubenstein Commons, named after the Carlyle Group co-founder and philanthropist David Rubenstein.

Additions to the Institutes small, lush campus are rare, so it aims for long-term architectural significance with each new building, said Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute. (That tradition began in the 1960s with the Historical Studies-Social Science Library, designed by Wallace K. Harrison at the invitation of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Institutes director at the time.)

In choosing among the proposals, Mr. Dijkgraaf said, the Institute thought the commons should be like a family member with its own characteristics in relation to the rest of campus and the Institutes neo-Georgian flagship building, Fuld Hall. He added that the commons should be in conversation with landscape and nature.
Each gleefully took sides. Each sought to kill off suffocating traditions. Each confronted a conservative establishment and created new ensembles in response. Each advocated repertoire that was formerly marginal and later became central. Each yoked the once-growing power of the recording industry to his own purposes: Mr. Boulez taping the complete works of Webern, and Mr. Harnoncourt the operas of Monteverdi. Each projected an uncompromising attitude, even if Mr. Boulez compromised as a music director in London and New York, and Mr. Harnoncourt in his work with traditional symphony orchestras. Each was a radical and ended up an honorary member of the august Vienna Philharmonic.

Their developments can be linked to the irrevocable caesura of war. Europe had been destroyed, and had to be rebuilt completely  the cultural dimension, Mr. Aimard said. One needed avant-gardists; one needed people who would be revolutionary and redefine this world.

Mr. Boulez recalled in 1996: When you are in a situation after the Second World War, you become very committed to serving the new cause. For him, that meant conducting Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok and Stravinsky with vitality and accuracy, so that they could be properly reckoned with by audiences and new composers alike  even as he demanded that the composers break away from those earlier models.

Image The conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, here at the Salzburg Festival in 2012, was an influential early-music specialist. Credit... Barbara Gindl/European Pressphoto Agency

While Mr. Harnoncourt blasted atonal and serialist composers (like Mr. Boulez) for music that satisfied neither the musician nor the public, he, like Mr. Boulez, saw a vacuum that needed to be filled. In his 1954 credo, The Interpretation of Historical Music, Mr. Harnoncourt wrote that after Bruckner, Tchaikovsky and Strauss, musical life came to a standstill, and argued that an effort to do justice to old music as such and to render it in accordance with the period during which it was composed was a symptom of the loss of a truly living contemporary music. In the absence of such music, spirited period performance, he believed, could be a replacement.
Although theyre not related, the musical-comedy team Savannah & Chase, a.k.a. Savannah Brown and Chase ODonnell, might be described as the Smothers Sisters. Too Blondes, their goofy, effervescent show at the Metropolitan Room on Wednesday evening, began with the kind of comedic confusion that used to be a running joke in Tom and Dick Smothers television variety show.

Wide-eyed and with an expression of manic mischief, Ms. Brown arrived onstage dressed like a flapper, in the belief that their shows theme was Life in the 20s. Ms. ODonnell insisted that it was Life in our 20s. The misunderstanding persisted for the rest of the evening, as the competing concepts amusingly bumped against each other. Their upbeat camaraderie had the tone of an episode of the popular Comedy Central series Broad City.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide says a $13.2 billion takeover offer led by a Chinese insurer is superior to the one that was all but sealed by Marriott International  a deal that would have created the worlds largest hotel company.

Starwood revealed on Friday that the consortium led by the Anbang Insurance Group had presented the board an all-cash bid worth $78 a share, in contrast to Marriotts cash-and-stock proposal, worth about $68 a share based on Thursdays closing price. Starwood, which operates hotel brands such as the W and Sheraton, said the new offer could require the company to terminate its agreement with Marriott.

But Marriott is not ready to walk away quite yet. The lodging company, with more than 4,400 properties, is reviewing the Anbang consortiums proposal and is carefully considering its alternatives, Marriott said in a statement.

Marriott continues to believe that a combination of Marriott and Starwood is the best course for both companies and offers the best value to Starwood shareholders, Marriott said in the statement.
Linguists cant precisely pinpoint when button-down was redefined from cutting-edge collegiate to uniformly conformist, but the marketing expertise of the Gantmacher brothers of Brooklyn probably had something to do with it.

Beginning in the late 1940s, Martin and Elliot Gantmacher popularized the button-down shirt as a de rigueur garment for Ivy League and Madison Avenue men. They were so taken with their success, in fact, that not long after their company was rebranded Gant in 1949, the brothers adopted the label as their surname.

Elliot Gant, the last of the founders, died on March 12 in Boston. He was 89.

The Gants did not invent the button-down; the venerable Brooks Brothers haberdashery had borrowed the style from British polo players decades earlier, and it had been romanticized here and there in popular culture.

In John OHaras 1935 novel Appointment in Samarra, Caroline English dreamily recalls Ross Campbell as one of those Harvard men, tall and slim and swell, who seem to have put on a clean shirt just a minute ago  soft white shirt with button-down collar  and not to have had a new suit in at least two years. He was not rich; he had money. 
SoundClouds tug of war with the music industry may finally be over.

On Friday, the streaming music service announced that it had signed a licensing deal with Sony, after more than a year of talks and plenty of public posturing. The deal is the last that SoundCloud needs to legitimize itself with the major powers of the music industry, after similar arrangements with Warner Music, Universal and Merlin, a collective of independents.

With these deals in place, SoundCloud  which offers more than 100 million songs free  is clear to offer its long-promised version for paid subscribers, and said in a statement that this version would be released later this year. Record companies favor paid platforms over free ones, which are typically supported by advertising, because they pay higher royalty rates.

This agreement creates a business framework for the use of Sony Music songs on the SoundCloud platform that meets the needs of our artists and labels and supports the growth of SoundCloud through its new premium on-demand music tier, Dennis Kooker, Sonys president of global digital business and United States sales, said in a statement.

The deal will cover the licensing of Sonys music around the world. It could mean that a free version of SoundCloud would have just a sampling of Sonys music, while a majority of its music would be available on a paid version of the service.
At the heart of the strife is a 2013 episode in which copies of newly created assessment tests were published on the website gobookee.org, which was known to sometimes scrape information from other sites and post it online. According to emails and documents from 2013 that have been circulating through Montclair in recent weeks, Penny MacCormack, the schools superintendent at the time, and the school board believed someone intentionally leaked the tests.

Dr. MacCormack and the boards counsel hired Kroll Associates, an international security firm, to, among other things, secretly mirror staff computers late at night to uncover the supposed culprit.

The tests, which were never administered, were a key component of Dr. MacCormacks reform plan, said Shelly Lombard, a former Board of Education member. They were created by teachers in summer 2013, Ms. Lombard said, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, to assess and collect data on students quarterly progress.

Ms. Lombard said Dr. MacCormack hoped to get a better understanding of the achievement gap in the Montclair School District, where white students, who made up about 60 percent of the school population, had long outperformed black students, about 30 percent of the population. That meant collecting data more frequently through testing, Ms. Lombard said.

After the tests appeared online, the board moved aggressively to determine if someone had leaked them. In addition to having Kroll Associates examine computers used by employees, lawyers for the Board of Education gave the firm a list of 27 people who it believed might have been involved. The investigators were to look for any emails sent from those peoples addresses to a school employee who worked in the district office.
Watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Radio City all those years ago came at a difficult moment in his life, Mr. Garofalo said. It was shortly after his parents had divorced. His mother was raising Tony, an only child, on her own. They were able to attend the premiere because an uncle of Mr. Garofalos worked for Universal Pictures, which distributed the movie.

Though his mother eventually remarried, for a while, it was just the two of us  all we had was each other  and I told my mother Im going to build that car, he recalled. This was my promise to her and one I repeated over the years. She said, Of course you are, but take care of your life first.

He did, marrying and having two children. He became a detective, logging hundreds of arrests, and then a decorated sergeant.

His Beatles band also thrived. The group has played at Yankee Stadium and at Citi Field, and in 2005 played at the old Shea Stadium to mark the 40th anniversary of the Beatles 1965 concert there. For the past 16 years, the band has played weekly at B.B. Kings Blues Club and Grill in Times Square.

Image Mr. Garofalo visited Dick Van Dyke, the star of the film, last year in Los Angeles. Credit... Deborah Sable

Mr. Garofalo said that when he was finally getting ready to retire from the Police Department in 2005, his mother died of cancer. She never got to see our dream come true.

He began designing the car in 2010 as a tribute to her.

Once I started, I couldnt stop, he said. It was a passion I couldnt explain.
The leader of the New York City Housing Authority said on Friday that her staff had turned more than 400 million records over to federal prosecutors who are reviewing tenant health and safety conditions as they try to determine whether the agency filed false claims for federal funds to address any problems.

Shola Olatoye, the Housing Authority chairwoman and chief executive, said that the federal Justice Department had been looking at every facet of our operations, and that since the inquiry began late last year the agency had provided a wide range of documents, including repair orders and training manuals.

Speaking after addressing a breakfast at New York Law School, Ms. Olatoye called the inquiry very expansive.

Were taking this very seriously, and we continue to cooperate, she said.

The inquiry became public this week when the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, obtained a court order compelling the citys Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to produce information about cases of elevated blood lead levels among public housing residents and complaints of unsafe, unsanitary and unhealthful conditions in housing projects.
To the Editor:

Re Obama Tells Donors Its Time to Back Clinton (news article, March 18):

As a New York Democrat, Im extremely disappointed that before much of the country has had the chance to vote in a primary, President Obama is suggesting that Democrats unite behind one candidate. Before anybody had a chance to vote in any primaries, three of the five Democratic candidates dropped out.

Now theres only a choice between two, and Mr. Obama is suggesting that choice be removed? Does my vote not count to the president?

SHAUN BREIDBART

Pelham, N.Y.

To the Editor:

I have been reading columnists of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times as they all  in lock step  excoriate Donald Trump and, by implication, those who support him.

Out here in the hinterland, we evangelicals see things a little differently. We see folks like you as the Establishment. And while it is clear that you do not understand us, we do understand you. You think anyone who would vote for Mr. Trump isnt very smart.
There is truth to these words. Yet, coming from an American president, they are unusual. Reference to American-backed coups serving strongmen in far-flung lands is not the usual Oval Office fare of America-as-beacon.

In electing Obama, a chastened United States chose a left-leaning intellectual. It chose a man sobered by history, childhood years in Indonesia and African-American suffering, disinclined by temperament and experience to beat the drum of American patriotism. This was a radical departure. The chest-thumping American irredentism symbolized by Donald Trump is in part a reaction to Obamas 21st-century realism. Trump is theater to Obamas theory, saber rattling to sobriety, America-first to America-in-the-world.

After two unsuccessful post 9/11 wars, Obamas restraint was needed. But did he take it too far in Syria, where close to half-a-million people are now dead and nearly 5 million have fled  horrific unmentioned numbers? Above all, did his decision in August 2013 not to uphold with force his red line on the Syrian regimes use of chemical weapons sound the death knell of American credibility, consolidate President Bashar al-Assad and empower President Putin?

Im very proud of this moment, Obama insists.

Proud? It is possible to believe that the situation in Syria would be worse if Obama had followed through with punitive strikes. It is possible to believe that ISIS would have emerged, seized vast territory, beheaded Americans, rattled Paris and struck through sympathizers in San Bernardino anyway. It is possible to believe that Putin would have annexed Crimea anyway. It is possible to believe that Putin would have started a war in eastern Ukraine anyway. It is possible to believe that Assad would be stronger as a result of Russias military intervention anyway. It is possible to believe that Saudi Obama-is-a-Shiite-in-the-pocket-of-Iran derangement syndrome and Saudi war in Yemen would have occurred anyway. It is possible to believe that more than a million Syrian refugees would have shaken Europe anyway.

It is possible to believe the moon is a balloon.

But the weight of evidence is that Obamas Syrian wobble was a terrible error. The president is portrayed mocking the foreign policy establishments fetish of credibility. But its American military credibility that, over decades, stopped Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap. It is American credibility that has underwritten the less violent, more tolerant world to which Obama alludes. His dismissal of credibility is ahistorical and dangerous. Secretary of State John Kerry was right when he said that actors around the word were watching to see if Syria can get away with it, because then maybe they too can put the world at greater risk.
To the Editor:

Re ISIS System of Rape Relies on Birth Control (State of Terror series, front page, March 13):

If only sexual enslavement were unique to one group. Many countries have a huge underground tourist trade in child prostitution. And who is their clientele? Often its well-heeled Westerners who probably look much like you or me and practice the same religion we do. It could be a neighbor who commits acts equally cruel out of the public eye.

We should be outraged at what ISIS does, but we should not indulge in self-righteousness or superiority. This behavior is not unique to Islam. It lives in every human society, whether openly or secretly, and we need to work on it here, too.

NAOMI B. HERZFELD

Riverside, R.I.

To the Editor:

While this whole story is horrific, I found the part about the mother of the terrorist fighter who took the poor girl to the hospital to check for pregnancy and then handed the victim off to her son to be the worst and most tragic. If even the fighters own mothers condone this type of behavior (and aid and abet it), what hope is there that things can change?

NAI MEI YAO

Morristown, N.J.

To the Editor:

Men and women are equally complicit in these crimes. I founded and directed a womens center in a very conservative city in Pakistan. Our most vicious enemies were other women. Some of our most dedicated supporters were men. Many husbands were eager for their wives to learn valuable skills. But those mens own mothers often refused to allow daughters-in-law to participate in our program.
MONTCLAIR, N.J.  This is not, for the record, the same old Krapp. The chalk-faced, squealing, macabre dandy who has materialized at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University bears scant resemblance to the classically grizzled figure weve come to associate with the title character of Krapps Last Tape, Samuel Becketts 1958 assessment of a life from the vantage point of its weary end.

How best to describe this upstart avatar of Becketts bleakly comic worldview? Dr. Seusss curmudgeonly Grinch, impersonating a Kabuki warlord, comes to mind. But then so does an angry Marcel Marceau, with perhaps a touch of Divine, the cross-dressing John Waters superstar.

Oh, heck. Suffice it to say that in this offering from the Peak Performances program, Krapp is portrayed by that exacting master of the avant-garde masque, Robert Wilson. If you know the work of Mr. Wilson  who several years ago transformed Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe into cryptic, interchangeable vaudeville clowns in The Old Woman  you should get the picture.

And if you think such an image doesnt tally with your idea of a Beckett hero, well, its healthy to have your preconceptions of art shaken up every now and then. The seeming mismatch of Mr. Krapp (surely we can allow the old souse the dignity of the rare honorific) and Mr. Wilson offers intriguing glimpses into the characters of both.
Prosecutors have dropped assault charges against a college student with bipolar disorder who was shot in a Houston hospital room during a confrontation with two police officers moonlighting as security guards.

The two felony assault charges against the student, Alan Pean, 27, were dismissed on March 11 after a grand jury decided not to indict him, according to the Harris County district attorneys office.

Mr. Pean was in the midst of a psychotic episode last August when he was admitted to St. Joseph Medical Center for minor injuries after an automobile accident in the hospital parking lot. A nurse later summoned security because he emerged naked into the hallway from his room and later refused to fasten his hospital gown. In an encounter with the patient, the officers stunned him with a Taser and shot him in the chest, the bullet nearly missing his heart. He survived after spending four days in intensive care.

The shooting was featured in a New York Times article last month about how hospitals are increasingly relying on armed guards, provoking debate among health care officials about whether the practice improves safety or risks harm to patients and staff.
Then, in 2010, Ms. Brewer signed the show me your papers law, which gave the police broad powers to question anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. It fueled national protests and boycotts, but also helped her win a second term, creating two images of Arizona: to some, a synonym for intolerance; to others, an example of how fed-up citizens and elected officials could fight back against illegal immigration.

Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Phoenix, said in an interview, Our immigration laws have been a very effective tool to mobilize the right, and its once again going to reward a politician whos going to be preying on peoples anxieties, be it Cruz or Trump.

Today, the state has fewer undocumented immigrants than it did in 2009, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center. And based on census numbers, scholars at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University projected that four in five of the states Latino residents will be a United States citizen by 2030.

Apprehensions by the Border Patrol have been on the decline, falling by 25 percent in the last fiscal year alone, in part because Mexicos improved economy has given fewer of its citizens reason to risk the perilous crossing.

Still, profound challenges remain, fueled by geography  the border between Arizona and Mexico runs for about 370 miles  and opportunity. This month, Border Patrol agents arrested a convicted sex offender who had previously been deported as well as a man wanted for murder in Maricopa County as they tried to enter the country illegally.
A young gay man said he was struggling to recover from severe burns after a man poured scalding water on him and his boyfriend while they were asleep in an Atlanta-area apartment last month.

The pain doesnt let you sleep, the burned man, Marquez Tolbert, told a local television station, WSB-TV. Its just, like, its excruciating, 24 hours a day, and it doesnt go anywhere. It doesnt dial down, anything. Its just there.

Mr. Tolbert, 21, said he and his boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, 23, were in bed together in the apartment of Mr. Goodens mother in College Park, Ga., on Feb. 12 when her visiting boyfriend, Martin Blackwell, walked in and poured the scalding water on them.

I woke up to it, Mr. Tolbert said. Once the water hit, I smacked the wall and then shot out of bed.
WASHINGTON  After a judge ordered a Guantanamo Bay prisoner freed because the evidence that he was a Qaeda member was too thin, the government appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But as the detainees lawyers prepared to argue the case in January 2011, they had reason to hope that they might prevail again.

For one thing, the government had dropped several of its arguments for why their client was probably a wartime enemy, further weakening its case that he was not the innocent he claimed to be. For another, the three-judge panel included one of the appeals courts few Democratic appointees, Merrick B. Garland, who is now a Supreme Court nominee.

But just 22 seconds after one of the detainees lawyers began arguing that only tattered remnants remained of the governments case against his client, Judge Garland interrupted him. Just because they had really strong arguments that they are not now using doesnt mean the ones that are left are not pretty strong, he declared.

Judge Garlands panel went on to rule that the governments evidence was good enough to keep holding the man after all. The judges vote was part of a pattern: As one wartime detention case after another has pitted state security powers against individual rights, he has often  though not always  deferred to the government.
WASHINGTON  The White House will nominate Gen. Lori J. Robinson of the Air Force to lead all military forces in North America, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, General Robinson will become the first woman to head one of the United States combatant commands.

We have coming along now a lot of female officers who are exceptionally strong, Mr. Carter said in an interview with Politico. Lori certainly fits into that category.

The Defense Department has six combatant commanders who oversee military operations in different regions of the world.

General Robinson would lead the United States Northern Command, which is based in Colorado Springs and was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to coordinate the militarys response to domestic threats. The highest-profile command in recent years has been the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
WASHINGTON  President Obama nominated Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court to help enhance the reputation of an institution whose public approval has dropped substantially in this era of heightened political polarization, he said in an interview with National Public Radio.

Judge Garland would help to burnish the sense that the Supreme Court is above politics and not just an extension of politics, and would set a good tone for restoring  or at least increasing  the American peoples confidence in our justice system, Mr. Obama said in an interview with NPRs Nina Totenberg.

The interview signaled the start of what is expected to be an aggressive campaign by the White House and outside groups to promote Judge Garland as a peerless jurist who deserves a hearing and a vote on his nomination by the Senate.
WASHINGTON  The fight over the vacancy on the Supreme Court shifted from close combat in the halls of Congress to a nationwide battle on Friday as senators returned to their home states for a two-week recess and Republican and Democratic leaders began aggressively making their cases in television and radio interviews, op-ed columns and public appearances.

With little hope of a confirmation hearing before the November elections, the debate over the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is entering a critical phase  away from the corridors of power in Washington.

One clear sign that the issue was resonating in campaigns came Friday when Senator Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, who faces a difficult re-election campaign, categorically broke with the Republican leadership. Mr. Kirk said in a radio interview that his party should man up and vote on Mr. Obamas choice, Judge Merrick B. Garland of the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia.

President Obama led the push for the Democrats in an interview on National Public Radio in which he urged Republicans to give fair consideration to his nominee. Mr. Obama described him as one of the best judges of his generation.
For generations, schools as different as the liberal Harvard Divinity School and the conservative Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have had in common a residential model: Students live on or near campus, study together and worship together. Most institutions are trying to keep some physical presence, often by working in consortiums with nearby schools from other faith traditions. Such collaborations save money, provide students a wider variety of classes and allow them to gain experience in interfaith dialogue.

For example, Hebrew College, a Jewish graduate school and rabbinical seminary in Newton, Mass., sits adjacent to Andover Newton Theological School, which is Protestant, and is a member of the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of 10 schools. The member schools, which represent traditions from Jewish to Catholic, from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic, share teaching, libraries and other resources. There are similar consortiums in Chicago and in Berkeley, Calif.

But Andover Newton, whose antecedent, Andover Theological Seminary, was founded in 1807 as the countrys first graduate school of any kind, is selling its campus this year, the result of declining enrollments. It may merge with another seminary.

Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, the president of Hebrew College, said that the interfaith relations offered by a consortium were integral to his schools mission.

When I came to Hebrew College, I felt so strongly about the desire to be part of an interreligious theological consortium that I requested we become members of Boston Theological Institute, Rabbi Lehmann said. They ultimately invited us to join but had to change their mission statement because it had been specifically Christian-focused.

Next fall, Christian Theological Seminary, in Indianapolis, which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination, is starting an option for its masters of divinity program that will be in-person but not fixed in one place. While half the classes will be on campus, students will also meet for weeklong intensive classes in different cities, wherever the professor lives or decides to teach the class.

One course will happen in L.A. because we have a few professors there, said Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor who is helping to design the program. Four months later, that same cohort will be in New York, then Indianapolis, or Dallas, because thats where a church or professor is located. The classes will be held in local schools or churches that offer or rent space.
ALGIERS  Unknown attackers fired rockets on Friday at a gas facility in the Sahara in Algeria, the energy companies Statoil and BP said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The gas facility, Krechba, which is jointly operated by Statoil of Norway and BP of Britain, is overseen by the Algerian state-run gas company Sonatrach.

Statoil said the Krechba facility had been hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance. The company said it had been in touch with its three employees there, who were safe and had not been hurt.

BP said in a statement that there had been no reports of injuries to its employees and that the facility had been shut down as a safety precaution. It did not say how many people worked there.
Leaders of an indigenous community in rural Canada have appealed to national authorities for help after a wave of suicides and attempted suicides set off a public health crisis in their remote town and revived a painful conversation about the relationship between the government and its native communities.

Six people have killed themselves in the past three months, and more than 140 more have attempted suicide or expressed a desire to kill themselves in the Cree Indian community of Cross Lake, with a population of about 6,000.

The area has been racked by an unemployment rate of nearly 85 percent, deep poverty and a profound sense of alienation from the wealthy, majority-white cities of southern Canada, officials said.

The suicides began on Dec. 12, when a homeless woman in her early 20s hanged herself in a relatives home, said Donnie McKay, a local councilor. The death began a disturbing trend in Cross Lake, the hub of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation in the vast coniferous wilderness of Manitoba.
IN THE MOUNTAINS OF COLOMBIA  The rebel camp is a Communist time capsule. An old guerrilla fighter sings songs about Che Guevara on his guitar as a crowd leans in to listen, armed with rifles and grenades.

Salaries do not exist here, or even marriage. The fighters believe in free love, saying they are wed only to the revolution. They say life is still possible with Karl Marx in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other.

We have prepared for peace, but we are also ready for war, said Samuel, a 31-year-old fighter who, like many of the rebels, has never set foot in any of Colombias cities.

I was invited by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, to witness this sprawling jungle hide-out for about 150 fighters during what were supposed to be its last days.
HONG KONG  China announced on Thursday that it had resumed diplomatic relations with Gambia, an African nation that had maintained ties with Taiwan for nearly two decades.

As Taiwan prepares to transition from a president who has deepened links with China to one who is far more cautious about cross-strait ties, the move signals a possible resumption of the contest between China and Taiwan to woo countries around the world.

China considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, and it has sought to limit the self-ruled islands international relationships and recognition. Since 1949, when Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war, the two sides have competed over diplomatic allies, which since the 1970s have largely flowed to Beijing.

Gambia, the smallest nation in continental Africa, has shifted between the two. After independence from Britain in 1965, it recognized Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China. Then, after Beijing took over Chinas seat in the United Nations in 1971, Gambia shifted its recognition to the Peoples Republic of China.
BEIJING  When a sharp-tongued real estate tycoon publicly derided President Xi Jinpings demand for unstinting loyalty to the Communist Party from the Chinese news media, the partys response was predictably swift and harsh.

His microblogs, which had tens of millions of followers, were erased overnight. Party websites unleashed an onslaught, calling the tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, a capitalist traitor in language reminiscent of the Mao-era purges. The authorities vowed further punishment.

What happened next, however, was a startling departure from the standard script.

Journalists, scholars and party insiders came forward to defend Mr. Ren. A professor at the partys top academy spoke up. A prominent magazine rebuked censors. A letter supporting him signed by a staff member at the state news agency spread online. A party newspaper warned about the risks of crushing all dissent.

The unexpected backlash sent a shiver through the political landscape here, exposing deepening unease about the adulatory promotion of Mr. Xi and his demands for unquestioning public obedience.
HONG KONG  A morning run can be the perfect way to overcome jet lag, but usually not when its through the choking haze of auto exhaust and industrial discharge.

In a Friday morning post, Facebooks co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his arrival in Beijing with a blithe message about what must have been a dizzying jog through the center of Chinas capital, which has been suffering from a weeklong bout of hazardous air pollution.

Its great to be back in Beijing! I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, most likely using a virtual private network to get around the Chinese government Internet filters, which block his site.

In a photo accompanying the post, made about 10:30 a.m., Mr. Zuckerberg smiles alongside several running companions in front of the famous portrait of Mao Zedong that overlooks Tiananmen Square.
BRUSSELS  The European Union has reached an agreement with Turkey that it hopes will ease the migrant crisis that has roiled the Continent for the past year.

Under the deal struck Friday, asylum seekers who take clandestine routes to Greece from Turkey are to be sent back, a significant step in the blocs effort to deal with the migrant exodus. The leaders of the 28 nations in the bloc and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey approved the accord over strenuous objections from humanitarian groups, who warned that the deal violated international law on the treatment of refugees.

The plan, which will take effect on Sunday, faces many challenges. There are many alternative routes into Europe, and it is unclear how effective the Turkish and Greek authorities will be at rounding up migrants who use boats to cross the Aegean and sending them back to Turkey. Turkey is also in the midst of its own security crisis, raising questions about the countrys ability to implement the deal and cope with the huge numbers of migrants on its soil.

The deal is the latest effort by the European Union to come up with a joint solution to the mass migration that has been straining its resources and roiling its politics. The idea is that it will deter migrants from trying to make dangerous journeys into Europe and encourage a legal path to Europe by offering to resettle at least some Syrians among the nearly three million migrants already in Turkey.
Finally, four fountains becoming a Capitol reality

Mom always said that nothing good happens fast. If she was right, this new project at the Nebraska State Capitol is going to be a doozy since it is nearly 100 years in the making.

Construction is well underway on the four courtyard fountains, which had been included in original plans for the building but were scrapped by financial concerns when the third Capitol building was constructed. It has taken nearly a decade for some former senators and other Capitol enthusiasts to see a dream come true.

Capitol Administrator Bob Ripley, who says the fountains will be done in time for the 2017 Sesquicentennial activities, likens the task to building a ship in a bottle. The fountains are being built in courtyards that are completely surrounded by building. Dirt has to be removed through the hallways of the building. Construction materials, including yard upon yard of concrete, steel and stone, have to be brought through the building.

Yes, it would have been much easier to build the fountains during construction of the original building. But, money was tight and folks were obviously in a hurry to build the third Capitol and do it right. The first lasted only a few years and had to be torn down because of inferior building materials. The second developed a huge crack in one wall, apparently because of shoddy building practices, and had to be torn down after the current Capitol was built around it.

The history of the three Capitols in Lincoln began at statehood in 1867 with a two-story building with a central cupola, made of native limestone. The second Capitol was started in 1881 and finished in 1888.

In 1915, plans began for the third  and current -- Capitol on the same site. The second one was left in place and the new one built around it. Then the old was torn down and the center of the current Capitol stands in its place.

Architect Bertram Goodhues design called for placement of a fountain in each of the four courtyards within the building, but the project  as well as a set of murals in the tower -- was abandoned during the Great Depression. Talk of the fountains surfaced again after the murals were finally installed in 1996. That left the fountains as the last original design to be completed.

Former Omaha Senators John Nelson and Scott Price were among those who pushed to make the fountain project happen. Nelson called the Capitol a state treasure that belongs to the people. He said we owe it to the people to assure it's complete." The project became the first major one for the Nebraska Association of Former State Legislators, a group formed in 1976 that had previously only held reunion banquets. Many other former senators, including association director Vicki McDonald, stepped forward to get the project on track.

The project comes with a price. Lincolns Kingery Construction Company won the bid for $2.79 million. A budget bill passed in 2014 authorized the Capitol Commission to use $2.5 million from the state's rainy day fund to install the fountains, to make improvements to support the operation and maintenance of the fountains, and do associated courtyard landscape restoration.

That money was hard fought. The Legislature had to override a veto from then-Gov. Dave Heineman who used the all-too familiar line that he wanted to use every dollar available for property tax cuts. After all, a guys got to get re-elected. The Governor said the courtyards were rarely used. But, another

$500,000 was added to the fund in 2015 with a transfer of money already appropriated to the Capitol Commission but unused. Heineman suggested that private donors finance the fountains.

But, the group persisted. Former Lincoln Senator DiAnna Schimek said its very important that the people of Nebraska have ownership of the building. They made great sacrifices for the original construction and completing the building as it was designed will be a tribute to those efforts.

Goodhues fountains were inspired by the cooling fountains he saw on a trip through Persia. They included dish-like, cast bronze bubblers and designs representative of the many people groups who have inhabited the state. Ripley said Goodhues plans also called for colorful, flowering hedges. A return of that landscaping will make the courtyards more attractive and enticing to users.

Hats off to all who are making the completion of the original State Capitol design a reality. Even if it took 100 years.
KIEV, Ukraine  WHEN she moved into her office as deputy speaker of Parliament a little over a year ago, Oksana I. Syroyid hung a large oil painting called The Edge of the Sky Is Glowing. It shows a man turning his back on the viewer while flames burn on the horizon.

This, she said, is every oligarch and every Russian agent who is still in Ukraine.

With her own fast burn of ambition, ferocity and style, Ms. Syroyid of the center-right Self-Reliance party, a former law professor, has shot to the top of Ukrainian politics. A political insurgent, she has made a signature issue of derailing a peace agreement with Russia and, in the process, may have eclipsed the former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, as the most powerful female politician in Ukraine.

A 39-year-old native of the Lviv region in the countrys nationalist west, Ms. Syroyid talks boldly about Ukraine acting in its own interests, not those of outside powers. We need to stop thinking of how to counter Putin, or how to please all our partners, she said in a recent interview.

The question many here ask is whether Ms. Syroyid, a relative newcomer, can somehow master the byzantine structure of Ukrainian politics and emerge as the one to lead the country out of the morass of corruption and government dysfunction that threatens its future. Or, is she just another in a line of ambitious upstarts causing Western governments their latest headache in Ukraine and, possibly, taking the country down with her?
GENEVA  The top United Nations human rights official condemned the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen on Friday, citing repeated attacks on civilian targets in airstrikes, including an attack on a crowded village market this week that killed 106 people.

United Nations officials who went to the site of the attack on Tuesday in Hajjah Province found that airstrikes there had killed 106 people, including 24 children, making them the deadliest episode in the coalitions yearlong intervention.

The Saudis are backing the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi against rebels, known as the Houthis, who are aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis have been pressuring the United States for support in the conflict, saying that their archrival, Iran, is backing the Houthis.

United Nations officials recorded the names of 96 people who died in the strikes, and they found 10 more bodies that were burned beyond recognition. An additional 40 people were wounded, but that may be a low estimate, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein.
Wed never had any customers go out of business, he said. The insurance isnt cheap. You have to stop and weigh the benefits of it.

James Daly, president and chief executive for United States operations at Euler Hermes, said that rates varied, but someone insuring $1 million in receivables through the companys Simplicity plan could expect to pay an annual premium of around $7,000.

Its designed to cover you for the bumps in the road, Mr. Daly said. Its not designed to create total coverage. We know if you have one loss on $1 million in sales, it could be enough to put you out of business.

Michael Chen, president of Myco Furniture in Houston, said he had been using factors  groups that buy a companys receivables at a reduced rate  but switched to credit insurance through Euler Hermes as a way to cut costs and be more selective in what the company insured.

His company, which manufactures furniture in Asia and sells it in the United States, was able to insure about $5 million in receivables out of annual revenue of $15 million to $25 million. Mr. Chen said the cost for what it insured was half of a percent, down from the 2 percent on all of its receivables that factors charged.

Its more peace of mind, Mr. Chen said. That way, we dont get burned on a large account. If were insuring $300,000 a month and one of those accounts files for bankruptcy or just doesnt pay, were not out that money.

Parker Freedman, president of ARI Global, an insurance broker, says that credit insurance is the last thing on most business owners minds, and that few think of it until they or someone they know encounter a loss.
Eventually, Ms. Taaffe and Ms. Moon, 65, both of whom retired from the university short of their full retirement benefits, decided to challenge their treatment as unlawful age discrimination.

In legal papers filed recently by Ohio States lawyer, Catherine L. Strauss, of Ice Miller, a Columbus firm, the university argued that its employees are not covered by federal discrimination law.

Chris Davey, a spokesman for the university, said he could not discuss pending litigation. Mr. Eckhart was not made available for comment.

Such complaints are far from unusual as many older workers are encountering harsh treatment in the workplace. Employers often seek to save money by paring workers who have higher salaries and richer benefits. A 2013 survey by AARP, Staying Ahead of the Curve, questioned 1,500 older workers; 92 percent responded that they viewed bias against older workers as very or somewhat commonplace.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which was meant to be a bulwark against such discrimination, has too many loopholes to be able to curb such bias, said Patricia G. Barnes, a lawyer and the author of Overcoming Age Discrimination in Employment. She added that its effectiveness had been undercut by a handful of Supreme Court rulings.

There is also a general hostility in society and in the courts to such claims, she said.

Age bias cases are typically contentious, in part because they often involve people who know one another and have worked closely together for years. They are difficult to prove because there is rarely a smoking gun that definitively shows that an adverse personnel step is taken only to jettison or demote an older worker.
Elizabeth is hard-core, but I find her so enjoyable, especially as a woman, she said. The scripts I read, even for big-budget movies, generally have two lines where youre a little fiery or youre not a pushover. But mostly youre pretty and really understanding. She laughed. This is so far from that. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q. So, they didnt incorporate your pregnancy into the story line. Howd you work around it?

A. There was a lot of winter-coat wearing. We justified it, like, My mind is full of so many things, and Im so worried that I just keep my coat on, even in the bedroom. I held a lot of giant salad bowls.

Where is Elizabeths mind this season?

This season feels a lot more about the emotional cost of it all instead of fancy spy tricks and stunts. Philips struggle with wanting to protect Martha really pushes Elizabeths jealousy. And I love watching Elizabeth in that predicament, because it catches her off-guard and only makes her more human and relatable.

Do you get to act out what you might not normally do?

Shes my fantasy person. I wish I could walk through the day as Elizabeth. Id be so mean and honest and direct with everybody. Shes unapologetically for her cause and for her family, and I love that shes sexy, too.
A MAN LIES DREAMING

By Lavie Tidhar

307 pp. Melville House. $25.95.

How does one write the Holocaust? That question, buried in the brief but intriguing Historical Note appended to Lavie Tidhars scabrous pulp-noir, A Man Lies Dreaming, remains a relevant and vexed one decades after Theodor Adorno opined that writing a poem after the Holocaust was barbaric. It is relevant because the literature of the Holocaust continues to be written anew, as the first generation of survivors bent on documenting the obscene reality of the ghettos and concentration camps (Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski) has yielded to a second  and now third  generation more at ease with imaginative retellings, be they fictional accounts of the events (Jerzy Kosinski, Imre Kertesz, Leslie Epstein) or alternate histories (Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon, Howard Jacobson). It is vexed because the Holocaust still carries an undeniable emotional charge and an inexorable moral weight more than 70 years after it occurred.

And so one may find oneself asking when reading this self-consciously daring but ultimately schlocky sendup, as I did, What did the Holocaust do to deserve this? Other questions I have: When is a genre-bending meta-novel no longer a clever postmodern conceit but merely a pretext for puerile shenanigans? When is laughing in the dark no longer an inspired response to trauma but simply an evasion of unbearable pain? This is not to say that there is no room for humor when it comes to genocide, or what has sometimes been referred to as the Shoah business  witness Art Spiegelmans splenetic Maus, the dark comedy of Leslie Epsteins King of the Jews and the grim wit of Martin Amiss The Zone of Interest  but that the satire or parody had better be first-rate.

Tidhars novel juggles many literary devices, including ostentatious stylistic borrowings from the hard-boiled oeuvre of Raymond Chandler and the use of a novel within a novel, as well as diary notations, endnotes and appropriations from Primo Levi and the writer known as Ka-Tzetnik. Its main plot concerns a down-and-out gumshoe whose nom de guerre is Wolf, on the prowl in dingiest 1939 London some years after the so-called Fall, when National Socialism lost its brief sway over Germany to the Communists in the 1933 elections. Oswald Mosleys Blackshirts are on the rise, beating up Jews and other undesirable types; a serial killer is loose among the whores who gather in Berwick Street; and a gang of Jewish terrorists who call themselves the P.L.O. are demanding a homeland for the Jews. I dont know whether the true identity of Tidhars protagonist is supposed to come as a slow-dawning revelation  it isnt until Page 274 that he expressly names himself: Im Hitler! Im Hitler! Im Hitler!  but for anyone who knows anything about the dictators life, the mystery, even without the infamous abridged mustache (He could no longer abide the mustache), is short-lived. Coy hints appear already in the opening pages, with an allusion to a woman in Wolfs past named Geli (Hitlers real-life niece, to whom he was suspiciously close and who may have killed herself or may have been murdered by Hitler) and a mention of Wolfs father, Alois, which happens to be the name of Hitlers father.

Wolf, who seems to have no aptitude for detective work, is hired by Isabella Rubinstein, a beautiful Jewess (She was a tall drink of pale milk), to find her sister, who has gone missing somewhere between being smuggled out of Germany and landing in London. He is a rabid anti-Semite, needless to say  The Jews are nothing but money-grubbers, living on the profits of war, he thinks when Isabella offers him a roll of 10-shilling notes, but he can use the cash. As Wolf descends into the seedier depths of London in search of Isabellas sister, displaced Nazis of every guise turn up, reminding the private eye of his former power and how far he and his comrades have fallen from their glory days. These range from Rudolf Hess (once deputy Fuhrer to Hitler), who wears riding boots and a paunch, to Josef Kramer (called the Beast of Belsen by Bergen-Belsen inmates), who has a boxers round face and a scar on his left cheek. Along the way we meet up with Ilse Koch, who was the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald and known for her sadistic behavior  here she appears as a dominatrix, equipped with a whip and a smile like a deformed butterfly  and there are references to various others of the dastardly cast of characters, like gimp-leg Goebbels, fat ruthless Goring and ratlike Julius Streicher.
CARRY ME

By Peter Behrens

443 pp. Pantheon Books. $26.95.

The narrator in Peter Behrenss 2011 novel The OBriens speaks of a restless instinct in the family, an appetite for geography and change. The German couple at the center of his new novel, Carry Me, share a similar, near-mystical pull toward the American landscape they read about in their youth. In my most daring fantasies, Billy writes decades later of the woman he loved, she and I were riding across boundless open country together, Texas or New Mexico, under wide blue sky. This yearning sounds through the novels pages like a refrain, and it will deliver Billy Lange and Karin Weinbrenner, though not wholly intact, from the terror of Kristallnacht to the untamed promise of the American West.

Of Irish-German extract, Billys an outsider wherever he finds himself. He knows suspicion and discrimination as a boy in Ireland and England, where his German father was interned during World War I. Now in Frankfurt in 1938, Billy works for the export sales department at the chemical firm IG Farben. He is an observant and deferential narrator for the most part, and in love with Karin, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish industrialist for whom his father has worked for decades. Karins distant and oblique presence haunts him; she is perhaps lesbian and, Behrens hints, quite possibly in love with a popular female scriptwriter in Berlin.

When Billy gets Karin pregnant, the prospect of bringing one more German and some sort of Jew into the world weighs on them. We were jumpy from doubts, fears, dreams of America, the prospect of ourselves as parents. Structured around the autumn of 1938 as they organize passage to America, the narrative wanders back in time to excavate lengthy tracts of family history that hobble the novels pacing a bit. (Archival documents loaded between sections, said to be housed in Special Collections, McGill Library, McGill University, seem especially adrift, uncommented on as they are by a narrator who is in a position these many years later to offer analysis and context.) But the weeks leading into Kristallnacht tighten the focus, and its here that Billy becomes a fully engaged protagonist. Karins father, trapped in a coma after being set upon by a gang of thugs, is the last obstacle between the lovers and their dream of the American West. Only a terrible act of mercy will guarantee their freedom.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE

A Fiery Heart

By Claire Harman

Illustrated. 462 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30.

No sooner has Jane Eyre discovered that her dear master is a married man than she gives him up. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. She will not be Mr. Rochesters mistress; she nearly becomes a missionary. But the works of the Lord are great: The wife dies. Jane nurses Mr. Rochester back to health. More important, she saves his soul. All his life, he had been an irreligious dog, but Janes example has swelled his heart with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth. And so the novel ends with an acknowledgment that the couples happiness falls short of the bliss they will know in heaven. The last sentence of Jane Eyre isnt Reader, I married him (I always forget this) but Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus.

What fault could the sternest Victorian moralists have found with any of that? But to the novels first critics, Jane was too independent and assertive, the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit. Her longing for Rochester was coarse (that is, sexual), and as the reviewer for The Christian Remembrancer averred, the book burns with moral Jacobinism. Jane is always murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, and so  since God decides who is born a weaver and who a viscount  the novel was thought to be criticizing Gods appointment, a kind of blasphemy. Never mind that Queen Victoria stayed up late reading it to Prince Albert. Jane Eyre was an immoral, even a dangerous book, and whoever was behind the authorial pseudonym Currer Bell was in possession of a sordid mind.

Eight years after the novels publication, Charlotte Bronte was dead, and the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell turned biographer in order to rescue her friends reputation. The Life of Charlotte Bronte, published in 1857, is a portrait of a paragon of Victorian womanhood: humble, passionless, pious, the dutiful daughter of a difficult father. Even as Bronte wrote her big books (about which Gaskell says little), she was still too dainty a housekeeper not to notice when an old, blind servant wasnt perfectly peeling the potatoes. She thought nothing of breaking off in the full flow of interest and inspiration in her writing in order to steal into the kitchen, carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes, and noiselessly carry them back to their place  so as not to hurt the servants feelings. For Gaskell, this little proceeding proves how orderly and fully she accomplished her duties, much the most significant thing that could be said about her. As for Brontes morbid imaginings, Gaskell begs us to consider them with tender humility because she had lived in the wilds of Yorkshire and known mostly suffering.

This new biography by Claire Harman (whose previous subjects include Sylvia Townsend Warner, Fanny Burney and Robert Louis Stevenson), timed to mark the bicentenary of Brontes birth, is necessarily indebted to Gaskell, who had collected hundreds of Brontes letters and traveled to Belgium for interviews  and, of course, because she had actually known her subject. Harman has made much use of more recent biographies, particularly Lyndall Gordons and Juliet Barkers, but it is Gaskells Bronte who seems most vital to her, whom she never stops comparing with her own.
Miss Marples St. Mary Mead and Jessica Fletchers Cabot Cove are cautionary examples of quaint little villages that will eventually run out of murderers and victims. Promise Falls, one of the upstate New York hamlets where Linwood Barclay sets many of his books, is already dangerously close to losing its tax base. FAR FROM TRUE (New American Library, $27) continues to thin out the populace, but in a strikingly original way. A local landmark, the Constellation Drive-In Theater, is folding forever, and on its last, nostalgic night of business the four-story movie screen suddenly collapses, crushing two cars in the front row.

There are other dreadful things in store, but life seems to come cheap hereabouts. In the event of a similar shrinkage in the talent pool, what would Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher have done? Miss Marple was forever visiting friends, and Mrs. Fletcher had more nieces, nephews and cousins than a Turkish begum, bringing along enough guests to provide Cabot Cove with a plentiful supply of visitors to bump off. But Barclay prefers to recycle his characters. That nice private eye, Cal Weaver, is back, as is Detective Barry Duckworth. David Harwood is another familiar face; but ever since The Promise Falls Standard closed, this former newspaperman has been doing publicity work for that jackass Randall Finley, the disgraced ex-mayor whos trying to make a comeback.

The story gets murky when Barclay fills in character back stories already familiar from previous books. This means youre going to hear about Harwoods aunts suicide and her daughter Marlas crazy fixation on having a child. Brace yourself, too, for a repeat of the sad story of how Weavers wife and son were murdered. And then there are the stranger mysteries  like the 23 dead squirrels strung up on a fence and the three mannequins hanging from Car 23 on a decommissioned Ferris wheel. (I take notes on unfinished plot threads, but you shouldnt have to.) Its not that Barclay fails to advance his open-ended narrative; another local woman has been murdered, and the victims of that freakish accident turn out to have been leading nasty secret lives. Its just that every little forward move necessitates a long look back.

*

A sleuth with a heart instead of an attitude, thats what the Danish writing team of Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis gave us in their three previous mysteries featuring Nina Borg, the compassionate Red Cross nurse who doubled as a guardian angel. Their socially conscious crime novels not only take up the causes of abused children and trafficked women, but also shame the entrepreneurs bankrolling these illicit trades.
Detention Center

The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility Thursday was 72, with 40 from Platte County and 32 from out of county.

Police

March 3

4:38 p.m.  At 2365 39th Ave., Jessica Minnick, 33, 454 13th Ave., was cited for leaving the scene of an accident.

March 6

3 a.m.  At the intersection of 23rd Avenue and Third Street, an unknown vehicle struck a city road sign and left the scene.

March 10

12:10 p.m.  In the 2100 block of 23rd Avenue, a vehicle driven by Pamela Van Buskirk, 16, 2453 18th Ave., struck a vehicle driven by an unknown driver. The unknown driver then left the scene.

6:54 p.m.  At the intersection of Third Avenue and 23rd Street, Edward Dupree, 29, 2806 25th St., No. 2, was cited for no valid registration and no proof of insurance.

March 11

7:13 p.m.  In the 2700 block of 10th Street, Guadalupe Barajas-Contreras, 37, 872 29th Ave., was cited for no operators license.

7:53 p.m.  In the 1600 block of 18th Avenue, Cathrina Sorrells, 35, 2565 47th Ave., No. 7, was cited for no valid registration and no current address on her operators license.

11:26 p.m.  In the 2200 block of 28th Avenue, Miranda Yosvany, 18, 3015 21st St., was cited for excessive torque.

March 12

11:58 a.m.  At the intersection of 33rd Avenue and 23rd Street, Gary Bowman, 60, Smithville, Missouri, was cited for a traffic signal violation.

3:33 p.m.  In the 3000 block of 23rd Street, Rodolfo Trujillo, 71, 4180 E. 28th St., was cited for no valid registration.

March 14

11:35 a.m.  In a parking lot at 4500 38th Street, a vehicle driven by Dorothy Zwick, 76, 4005 38th St., No. 302, struck a parked vehicle owned by Sharlene Rezac, 4503 31st St.

Noon  In the 4300 block of 15th Street, a vehicle driven by Nallely Sanchez, 18, 4314 15th St., struck a parked vehicle owned by Jill Widhalm, 52, 4307 15th St.

7:53 p.m.  At the intersection of East 23rd Street and East Sixth Avenue, Marshall Gronenthal, 38, Huphrey, was cited for no motorcycle operators license and no valid registration.

11:59 p.m.  At 517 E. 23rd St., Jennifer Sandrstrom, 48, Rochester, Minnesota, was cited for shoplifting, disturbing the peace, two counts, assault on a police officer, resisting arrest and third-degree domestic assault.

March 15

2:27 a.m.  At 1476 22nd Ave., No. 2, Tyler Behnken, 30, 1476 22nd Ave., No. 2, was cited for third-degree domestic assault.

Sheriff

March 16

4:53 a.m.  Traffic violation on East Eighth Street near the Archer Daniels Midland plant, Claudia Gomez of Columbus cited for speeding.

10:50 p.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of South 70th Avenue and U.S. Highway 30, John Faltynski of Arlington, Texas, was cited for speeding.

Fire

March 16

10:07 a.m.  In the 1400 block of 28th Avenue, medical.

2:13 p.m.  In the 1400 block of 28th Avenue, medical.

3:53 p.m.  Accident at the intersection of 25th Street and 33rd Avenue, one patient transported.

3:55 p.m.  In the 4000 block of East 27th Street, medical.

6:21 p.m.  In the 2800 block of 40th Avenue, medical.

9:32 p.m.  In the 1200 block of 27th Avenue, medical.

March 17

1:45 a.m.  In the 4100 block of Godeken Street, medical.

2:18 a.m.  In the 3000 block of 39th Avenue, medical.
UNTIL WE ARE FREE

My Fight for Human Rights in Iran

By Shirin Ebadi

286 pp. Random House. $27.

The nuclear deal with Iran has been reached, and sanctions have been lifted. In Irans recent parliamentary election, reformists took more seats. To the outside world, it may appear as though the country could be on the verge of taking a new turn. But this is still a place where those who say the wrong thing risk being thrown into solitary confinement, where women are not allowed to work or hold a passport without permission from their husbands, and where the charge of insulting sanctities by writing poetry could be punished by a public lashing.

Through a powerful and deeply disturbing account of her own work as a human rights lawyer and activist, Shirin Ebadis latest memoir, Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran, offers little optimism that more personal freedoms and rights for Iranians will come anytime soon. Rather, her chilling description of how the country treats its own citizens  including her, its Nobel Peace Prize laureate  builds on the fear expressed by many Iranians at this moment: that precisely because of the nuclear deal, the religious leadership may feel a need to crack down even harder on its own people to reassert power and demonstrate its autonomy.

A former judge (and Irans first female judge), Ebadi was deemed too fickle and indecisive and unfit to issue legal rulings after the 1979 revolution because she was a woman. But unlike the Iranians who emigrated in the decades that followed, Ebadi found it necessary to stay behind, and navigate the duplicity and compromises required for survival in Iran to this day.

Armed with her training in both Sharia and civil law, and taking on the cases of persecuted reporters, dissidents and minorities, she enters a trench war within Irans deteriorating and corrupt legal system. At times, she can only offer words and tea to her clients and their families, like the parents of a blogger whose mysterious death was ruled a suicide, or the wife of a journalist who slowly starves himself to death in prison. But as she speaks publicly about such cases, she also becomes a credible whistle-blower; her words advocate for freedom of expression, both to Iranians and to the outside world.
As the people I worked with went to Microsoft, they then told the company about me, and suddenly I was interviewing at Microsoft when I was 16. They asked programming questions, but they also asked interview questions like How do you know the light goes off in the refrigerator when you close the door?

I had a baby sister, so I said, I would put my baby sister in the refrigerator and then pull her out and check the dilation of her eyes. They said, Thats morbid, but its pretty clever, and they hired me.

I spent about six years at Microsoft. I was able to work it out with my high school where classes would end at noon for me and then Id go to Microsoft and try to stay within the labor laws for hours worked. During the summers, I would transition to intern and take advantage of those programs.

I did manage to spend some time with Bill Gates. Every summer he would have a barbecue for the interns. After being there for so many summers, I figured out the pattern. He would come out of his house and go right to the dinner line. So I would wait by the door, and when he came out, Id get in the dinner line with him. That way, Id get to sit next to him, too.

Tell me about the culture of your company now.

I have this overall philosophy that a company is like a human body, which builds up toxins over time. Every company has problems and issues that build up, and you need to find outlets for those things.
File this column under: Why It Pays to Read the Footnotes.

On Tuesday, Longbow Research, an independent institutional research and brokerage firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and Independence, Ohio, published a report recommending that its clients buy shares in Tempur Sealy International, the mattress maker.

Thats not unusual. Wall Street research analysts put out buy recommendations every day. Probably too often, in fact.

But Longbows report was atypical in one way: Mark Rupe, the analyst who wrote it, recently left Tempur Sealy as head of its investor relations unit. Investors didnt learn that, though, unless they read a disclosure on the penultimate page of the 17-page report, which said that Mr. Rupe or a member of his family owned stock and options in Tempur Sealy.

The amount of the holding wasnt disclosed, but it appears to have resulted from Mr. Rupes employment at the bedding maker. The report also noted that Mr. Rupe stood to receive additional incentive compensation from Tempur Sealy over the next two years if the company met certain performance hurdles.
I sat entranced by a beautiful procession of princesses, castle guards, and whimsical woodland creatures, Colleen Hill wrote in her recently released book, Fairy Tale Fashion. Ms. Hill, the associate curator of accessories at the Museum at FIT, was describing her thoughts looking online at Dolce & Gabbanas fall 2014 collection.

Losing all objectivity as a curator, I envisioned myself in a red fur hood, or wearing one of the design duos flowing, chiffon gowns patterned with small golden keys, she wrote. It struck me that it was time to propose an exhibition about fairy tales.

The result, also named Fairy Tale Fashion, is showing at the Museum at FIT through April 16. Ms. Hill, 33, is the youngest person in the museums history to curate a special exhibit.

Spanning the 17th to 20th centuries, from Charles Perraults version of Cinderella and Serge Diaghilevs ballet of The Sleeping Beauty to Max Factors 1954 Riding Hood Red lipstick (it promised to bring the wolves out), her book is an elaborate 275-page catalog. It focuses on 13 classics, including the lesser-known The Fairies and Furry Pelts. Sure, the The Snow Queen is included, but so is The Swan Maidens and both Alices Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (neither typically thought of as a fairy tale).
It was one of those hot winter days on Cape Verde, and I had been working outside since the early-morning hours. By the time noon came around, my scalp was so hot that I could have fried an egg on it. I was hoping to finish a construction job quickly, but I decided it was time for a break.

Nothing was happening anyway  the fact that all the people stop what they are doing in the middle of the day makes solid sense. Its not because these people dont like to work, as foreign employers like to say. It is simply impossible to do so when the sun stares you down. She wins.

Heat aside, I was short of nails. To finish my project, a septic tank, I needed to make molds for concrete to be poured into. Something that I imagined to be an easy task, finding nails, had turned into quite the challenge.

I am originally from Sao Vicente, Cape Verde, and my family immigrated to Portugal when I was 11. For a long time I have returned to the islands at least once a year, usually for a few months over the winter. Cape Verde used to be poor, really poor, and only over the last 10 years or so have things started to change. Now there is big-time tourism on the islands, which brings money (for some) and jobs. I dont say it brings prosperity, because it doesnt, really. It allows people to get by, to survive, but lifes not easy for them. Most of the people on this island, Boa Vista, live in the barracas, a slumlike area close to the main town. They go to work in fancy uniforms and come home to shacks with no running water or reliable electricity.
RE: BORDER PATROL

Mark Binelli wrote about Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a Mexican teenager shot 10 times from behind by a United States Border Patrol agent standing on American soil.

Jose Antonios killing was certainly beyond the pale. An unarmed Mexican 16-year-old was killed by an American law-enforcement agent. He was defenseless. As heinous as the actions of his killer were, though, the greater injury has been inflicted by the agencies of the United States government that have until recently protected him and excused his actions.

I cannot imagine that the United States Border Patrol would agree that confusing jurisdictions and arcane legal arguments should protect members of drug cartels who hide in Mexico and shoot our officers from across the border. I cannot imagine that the citizens of any American border town would tolerate Mexican police officers firing across the border and killing its citizens. Yet our failure to act immediately against agents like Lonnie Ray Swartz, who was accused of killing Jose Antonio, condones similar behavior.

Unjustified police shootings, clandestine C.I.A. torture and Border Patrol atrocities are creating 320 million victims each time they occur. Each and every American dies a little with each act.
Peacekeeping forces often lumber along for years without clear goals or exit plans, crowding out governments, diverting attention from deeper socioeconomic problems and costing billions of dollars. My first peacekeeping mission was in Cambodia in 1992. We left after less than two years. Now its a rare exception when a mission lasts fewer than 10.

Look at Haiti: There has been no armed conflict for more than a decade, and yet a United Nations force of more than 4,500 remains. Meanwhile, we are failing at what should be our most important task: assisting in the creation of stable, democratic institutions. Elections have been postponed amid allegations of fraud, and the interim prime minister has said that the country is facing serious social and economic difficulties. The military deployment makes no contribution at all to solving these problems.

Our most grievous blunder is in Mali. In early 2013, the United Nations decided to send 10,000 soldiers and police officers to Mali in response to a terrorist takeover of parts of the north. Inexplicably, we sent a force that was unprepared for counterterrorism and explicitly told not to engage in it. More than 80 percent of the forces resources are spent on logistics and self-protection. Already 56 people in the United Nations contingent have been killed, and more are certain to die. The United Nations in Mali is day by day marching deeper into its first quagmire.

BUT the thing that has upset me most is what the United Nations has done in the Central African Republic.When we took over peacekeeping responsibilities from the African Union there in 2014, we had the choice of which troops to accept. Without appropriate debate, and for cynical political reasons, a decision was made to include soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and from the Republic of Congo, despite reports of serious human rights violations by these soldiers. Since then, troops from these countries have engaged in a persistent pattern of rape and abuse of the people  often young girls  the United Nations was sent there to protect.

Last year, peacekeepers from the Republic of Congo arrested a group of civilians, with no legal basis whatsoever, and beat them so badly that one died in custody and the other shortly after in a hospital. In response there was hardly a murmur, and certainly no outrage, from the responsible officials in New York.

As the abuse cases piled up, impassioned pleas were made to send the troops home. These were ignored, and more cases of child rape came to light. Last month, we finally kicked out the Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers, but the ones from the Republic of Congo remain.

In 1988, my first job with the United Nations was as a human rights officer in Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, investigating rapes and murders of the poor and helpless. Never could I have imagined that I would one day have to deal with members of my own organization committing the same crimes or, worse, senior officials tolerating them for reasons of cynical expediency.
The brothers split the rent, but otherwise operate on what they call the college barter system. If one pays for dry cleaning, the other owes him beer. They do not worry about being too close for comfort.

Its a big enough building that everyone has their own privacy when they want it, John said. And if we need space from each other, one of us will go upstairs and hang out with Amanda.

The LaMelas are one anothers backup. Take the night Amanda went to sleep early and was awakened by what she described as an intense creditor knock on the door. She texted her roommate, who was out and who promptly texted her brother John.

He had not been at home, either, but he was nearby. He runs over and sweat is dripping from his face, Amanda said, only to discover that the insistent visitor was Nick, who had deviated from their usual secret sibling knock.

So I know if anything did go down, theyd be here in 30 seconds, Amanda said.

The LaMelas have a weekly pasta night tradition at Osteria Morini in SoHo, where pasta dishes can be had for $10 on Mondays from 9 p.m. to closing. I knew theyd love the idea, Amanda said. And I dont think anyone else would want to meet me at 9 p.m. Ive got these two guys who have the same ideas of carbohydrates that I do. Theyre not the enemy.
Ive been doing intake for over 10 years and its just changed radically, said Jo Wunderlich, a volunteer who talks to as many as 70 women a week who call seeking financial help. What were seeing is very often women are farther along in their pregnancy, it costs more money, we run out of money and fewer women can get funding. Its a crazy Catch-22.

Ms. Miller said that particularly near the Mexican border, the clinic closings had prompted more women to try to induce abortions with herbs or the drug misoprostol, which they obtain at flea markets or across the border.

Stephanie, a 20-year-old student, said she had recently driven through the night to Albuquerque for an abortion 16 weeks into her pregnancy after she could not come up with the money in time to have the procedure done at a clinic in El Paso, where she lives. Because of the earlier Texas law that requires all abortions after 16 weeks to be done in surgical centers, her options were limited to the closest such center, 550 miles away in San Antonio, or a regular abortion clinic in New Mexico.

After pawning her camera and receiving some money from groups that help women pay for abortions, she was able to arrange the appointment in Albuquerque. She sneaked out of her parents house at 3 a.m., met a friend with a car, and arrived at the clinic by 7. I was really tired, she said, but I knew thats what I had to do. I had to be tough and try not to fall asleep.

Dr. Linda Prine, who provides abortions at a Whole Womans Health clinic in Las Cruces, N.M., said more than half of her patients on any given day came from Texas. Sometimes she finds them sleeping in their cars in our parking lot before we open up in the morning.

At the Whole Womans Health clinic in Fort Worth, which looks like a small house, several women waiting for abortions said they did not like the idea of having to get the procedure at a hospital-like surgical center.

Being that the situation is already overwhelming, I wouldnt want to go to a big place, said one woman, 19, who has a year-old daughter and asked to be identified only by her middle name, Renea. She said she had learned she was pregnant when she went to the emergency room after a fight with her boyfriend. The environment they set here, it gives you more of a welcoming, Its O.K. kind of feeling.
The invitation sounded sincere. But we had to remember this was FARC, an organization, like Al Qaeda, listed by the United States as a group that sponsors terror. FARC made a name for itself by kidnapping civilians for decades and holding them captive, for years.

FARC, of course, had its own concerns about our scheduled meeting.

It was scheduled to take place just a couple of months after the Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman Loera, or El Chapo, met his downfall after he agreed to an interview with Sean Penn. The Colombian government had agreed to talks with FARC  but not to a cease-fire  and it was, of course, possible the rebels would be attacked during our visit.

Hence Federicos instructions: Read and erase the names of the two towns we would pass through on the journey. The second town would be our meeting point. It was so remote that it was not on any of our maps. Our instructions were to head there and wait.

For whom?

For them, said Federico. Theyll know when were there.

From what we could tell, FARC, which rules much of the countryside, was in control of the second town.

Our plane, a three-seat Cessna, revved up on the tarmac before dawn. Colombias population is scattered across cities and a countryside with few working roads. Many villages are reachable only by river. Tiny planes can be a godsend in a country that can feel like an archipelago on land.

We took off just as the sun was rising over the Andes Mountains. The city spread below like a vast carpet that abruptly stopped at the edge of giant green forests.

Traces of state control disappeared as we crossed city limits. Ahead was a jigsaw puzzle of competing powers  guerrillas, paramilitary groups, drug traffickers and the military. Each struggles against the others, each group has its own (often competing) goals.
Alarmed scientists first discovered the beetles last year along a front stretching more than 200 miles, from central Long Island to Cape Cod and Marthas Vineyard, a region long thought to be far too frigid for these tiny beetles, barely different in size and color from a chocolate sprinkle.

When I heard they caught a live beetle in Massachusetts, Dr. Rutledge said, that really freaked me out.

Now that the beetles are in New England, they are probably there to stay, state and environmental officials said. And if there is a severe outbreak, the region could lose much of its pitch pine forests. Many of the forests are already unhealthy, a result of overcrowding, making them especially susceptible to the pine beetles attacks  boring through bark, laying eggs and spreading a crippling fungus  and many state forestry divisions do not have the resources to combat them.

Scientists are concerned that the beetles could destroy the remaining tracts of the pitch pine forest, an ecosystem that once carpeted the Eastern Seaboard but now exists mostly in pockets  the Cape Cod National Seashore, the Albany Pine Bush Preserve and smaller forests  and is home to more than a dozen endangered species, such as the tiger beetle and several types of butterflies.

I dont think people have a strong understanding of how at risk these forests are, said Kevin J. Dodds, a scientist who runs the southern pine beetle response in the Northeast for the United States Forest Service.
As soon as Iran agreed to the nuclear deal last summer with the United States and five other countries, Iranians burst into conversation about what difference, if any, the accord would make to their day-to-day lives. In taxis, offices and homes, everyone was talking about it, some expressing optimism, others skepticism.

Inspired by August Sanders series of portraits of his fellow Germans in the early 20th century, I set out to capture a cross section of people in Tehran and Mashhad in their professional or private spaces. I asked everyone I photographed what the deal and the lifting of a decade of economic sanctions meant for them; their answers became an integral part of my project.

I used my iPhone camera instead of a regular lens because it seemed to make people feel more comfortable and answer more candidly. In each case, I imposed a piece of glass between myself and the subject, or used another reflective surface to cast the setting onto the subject. My intention was to represent the effects of the environment on a persons life.

Before this project, I had assumed that all Iranians would welcome the deal. But I came to realize that peoples work, beliefs and economic class deeply affected their response. Some have more reason to hope than others. As a butcher in Tehran told me, I think only rich people will see some changes in their life. Just look at the increase in the price of beef.

But from my point of view, this deal will give us a safer world.
Since it formed in Los Angeles in 1997, Irish punk band Flogging Molly has tried to perform near its hometown for St. Patricks Day.

For a few years, a hectic touring schedule made that an impossibility, but the band made a point of returning to L.A. last year to celebrate the holiday with a sold-out show dubbed The Devils Dance Floor at the Hollywood Palladium. This year, the fired-up septet took it one step further and hosted a full-fledged St. Paddys Day party with thousands of its most loyal devotees, as it revived its Devils Dance Floor at Irvine Meadows Amphitehatre on Thursday night.

Though the lawn was closed off, a majority of the seats were filled with screaming, singing, dancing and rowdy fans, which is something that didnt go unnoticed by the band as King mentioned that coming back to California for St. Patricks Day was one of the best things we did. The group went on a little later than scheduled, probably because it had just finished filming a couple of songs for Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Hollywood before being helicoptered into Irvine. The group also had to jet straight away from the venue after its encore to hop on a plane to Miami since its annual St. Patricks Day weekend Salty Dog Cruise was scheduled to set sail the following morning.

Patrons, most dressed in green, got their drink on early and Flogging Molly was all too happy to join them, snagging freshly poured pints of Guinness from its very own, fully functioning pub on stage where a select group of fans and friends were also allowed to grab a drink as the band performed to the roaring audience. If you cant get to the bar, you might as well bring the bar wit cha, King said to the crowd before raising his glass and taking a nice big gulp of beer.

The band came out strong with (No More) Paddys Lament and headed right into the rousing Another Bag of Bricks, diving right in afterward with the fan favorite, Drunken Lullabies, on which Bob Schmidt tppl the lead and made playing the banjo just look cool. Flogging Molly released a brand new song earlier this month and The Hand of John L. Sullivan made its mighty live debut in Irvine.

Before getting into Whistles the Wind, King commented about how incredible it was to see a packed amphitheater on St. Paddys Day and added As well as dancing and singing, theres always a bit of crying to do, he said about the special occasion as the more traditional Irish tune began. Not a tear was shed, nor a moment lost as the on stage pub bartender, Kevin, brought King another beer. You can tell an Irishman poured that, he said with a laugh.

Im a very lucky man, he continued before getting into The Kilburn High Road and introducing his wife and Flogging Molly multi-instrumentalist Bridget Regan to the crowd. Im playing in a band with me mates, playing to all of you and Im married to the most beautiful woman in the world.

In a sweet moment before Saints & Sinners, King raised a glass to his mother, who passed away late last year. Shed (bleepin) be here, he said. Before she died  she whispered in our ears Do me a big favor and enjoy life because I (bleepin) did.

Mid-set they slowed things down a bit and played some acoustic rare acoustic tracks including Wanderlust, So Sail On and The Spoken Wheel. Things picked right back up with Black Friday Rule, Revolution and another newer song, The Guns of Jericho, which it debuted at the St. Paddys gig last year in Hollywood.

It just got more crazy from there with Devils Dance Floor and Salty Dog back to back. King mentioned that he head heard that this show would be the last rock show at the Irvine venue, however, it was actually the first show of the very last season for the iconic location, which will be torn down to make room for more apartment buildings in October. You cant do away with this, he said. Unfortunately, its too late.

As it neared the end of the run with Float, King said hed like to say thank you on behalf of the Irish people to Americans for showing us, once and for all, how to celebrate St. Patricks Day. It breezed through Seven Deadly Sins and the boot-stompin Whats Left of the Flag before taking a quick break and returning for the encore with Tobacco Island and capping off the evening with the somber-sweet, If I Ever Leave This World Alive.

Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello was a good choice to serve as support for this event. The energetic brood of misfit players got the audience stirring with its eclectic instrumentation, wildly entertaining stage presence and songs like Immigrant Punk, I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again, Start Wearing Purple and Undestructable.

Southern California-based ska and reggae act Hepcat kicked off the show and got the early crowd swaying along to the music. The band was short a guitarist, so in a pinch it called up Aggrolites frontman Jesse Wagner, who lives just five minutes from the venue, to fill in on guitar.

Contact the writer: 714-796-3570 or kfadroski@ocregister.com
TEMPE, Ariz.  While the Angels certainly didnt improve the top of their roster to the level most fans had hoped, they unquestionably improved the bottom.

One of the clubs issues last season was a lack of depth.

Now, thanks to additions such as Cliff Pennington, Craig Gentry and Geovany Soto, the Angels are hoping that a stronger bench can make a difference.

On the whole, you have 13 players, nine in the lineup and four on the bench, Manager Mike Scioscia said. We are going to have a more versatile, deeper look than we did last year.

David Freese was out with a broken finger for about five weeks from late July to the end of August. Angels third baseman, mostly Conor Gillaspie, combined to hit .195 with a .261 on-base percentage while he was out.

Johnny Giavotella missed about a month from late August to late September. While he was out, the second basemen, mostly Taylor Featherston, combined to hit .169 with a .196 on-base percentage.

Which is why one of the first moves of the offseason for new general manager Billy Eppler was to sign Pennington to a two-year, $3.75-million deal.

Pennington said he had talked to eight or 10 teams, but Eppler sold him on the Angels.

As a player, you want to be wanted, Pennington said. That was part of the draw to come here. Billy is a good salesman.

Pennington is to be the Angels best utility infielder since Maicer Izturis left following the 2012 season. In between, they used players such as Andrew Romine, John McDonald and Featherston in that role. They were all solid defensively, but none could really hit enough to capably fill in for weeks at a time.

Pennington, 31, is a career .245 hitter with a .313 on-base percentage. He had been the Oakland As everyday shortstop for three and a half years, from 2009-12, before drifting into a utility role.

He was then traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks, and then to the Toronto Blue Jays last year.

Now, hes comfortable in his role playing shortstop, second and third.

Everyone wants to be an everyday player, Pennington said, but sometimes you have to find different ways to make an impact.

Gentry and Soto, the other two veterans who are essentially assured spots on the Angels four-man bench, also bring experience to their jobs.

Gentry, 32, is a career .265 hitter with a .338 on-base percentage. As recently as 2014, he hit .254 in 258 plate appearances with Oakland.

Soto, 33, has a .246 average and .331 on-base percentage in his 11-year career.

Realistically, none of the three has the offensive upside to play every day, but all three are strong defensively and can hit enough to hold down a spot for a few weeks.

And all three figure to get some significant playing time. Pennington is likely to be used regularly as a defensive replacement, and probably will start occasionally in Giavotellas place.

Gentry is expected to start in left field against left-handed pitchers, and probably to go in late for defense when Daniel Nava starts.

Soto will probably play at least one-third of the time, sharing the job with Carlos Perez.

The guys that youre projecting on our bench are going to be more than bench players, Scioscia said.

The fourth bench spot is up for grabs, with Ji-Man Choi seeming like the most likely candidate now. Choi, a left-handed hitter, would likely be the top pinch-hitter and a defensive replacement at first when C.J. Cron starts.

Outfielders Todd Cunningham, Rafael Ortega and Nick Buss and infielder Jefry Marte seem to be other candidates with a shot at the final bench spot.

A strong bench makes you better, no doubt, Scioscia said. And the value of the bench is going to increase if your starting lineup has guys that are only going to play five or six days a week.

Contact the writer: jlfletcher@ocregister.com
Ashby Jones has been writing historical novels for 50 years. At age 74, after receiving a lifetime total of at least 200 rejections, he finally found a taker  British publisher Top Hat.

His recently released book, The Angels Lamp, dramatizes the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin  an Irish rebellion against British rule that led to the establishment of todays Republic of Ireland.

The book revolves around fictional character Johnny Flynn, born in Ireland but raised in England. He becomes a staff sergeant in charge of the rebellions soon-to-be-executed leaders, and falls in love with one of the mens daughters.

Throughout his efforts as a writer, Jones has kept his day job. The financial adviser and father of four lives in Tustin with his wife Laura, a retired high school French teacher.

The Angels Lamp can be purchased on amazon.com. Jones already is at work on its sequel.

Q. What inspired you to write about the Easter Rising?

A. Good question. Im not even Irish. My wife and I visited Dublin in 1998, and we were impressed that the city is still steeped in reminders of the rebellion. We stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel. Some of its floors were beat up and windows broken. When we asked what had happened, we learned that the damage occurred during the Easter Rising and was preserved for posterity.

We took a tour through Kilmainham Gaol, where leaders of the rebellion were imprisoned. Right outside Patrick Pearses cell, I felt a chilling draft  as though his molecules were still there. And yes, I know that sounds weird.

From that moment on, Ive been  I wouldnt quite say obsessed  interested in the Easter Rising. OK, obsessed.

Q. So you came home and started writing a book?

A. I worked on it for about three years and then put it aside. I thought, I dont know this neighborhood  I gotta return to the South. My other books are Southern Gothic literature. Then a friend persuaded me to finish Angels Lamp. After I read 32 books about this time in history, I started working on it again.

Q. Why Southern Gothic? Are you from the South?

A. I grew up in Danville, Virginia. I barely got through high school  and did so without reading a single book. I naively applied at Harvard Medical School. I got a letter back saying, uh, you have to go to undergraduate first.

Q. So you werent a very focused student?

A. My mother committed suicide when I was 10 and my father drank himself to death when I was 12. So I was rebellious. But I somehow got into Hampden-Sydney College, a mens school. I ended up loving college so much that I later got an MBA and a PhD.

Q. It seems a lot of authors had difficult childhoods.

A. True, many creative people have experienced the ups and downs of life. Writing is about empathy about connecting to love, loss, forgiveness. It gives us hope to read about the different paths to happiness. My book is an amalgamation of the good and the bad  things that are a part of all of us. It seems to resonate. Im invited to book clubs to discuss Angels Lamp. People start talking openly about children, marriage, divorce, jobs, job loss. Humans go through a lot.

Q. How do you go about the writing process? Do you put yourself on a schedule?

A. I drive to work at Morgan Stanley before the stock market opens at 6, and Im done by about 1 in the afternoon. I come home and go for a run  I get a lot of ideas when Im jogging. Then I write for about two hours in the late afternoon. And then I have two glasses of wine and talk to my wife.

Q. How did it it feel to finally land a publisher for one of your books?

A. Ironically, my daughter Phoebe and I were touring Ireland when I got word. Its the dream of my life come true to have someone read my book and say, We want this. As a no-name writer, you have every obstacle in the world  first, in getting published, and then, in getting publicity. The New York Times will never review my book. But to write for 50 years and never get published, and then suddenly it happens  Im over the moon.

Q. Had you come to expect rejection letters?

A. Not really. Every single time I send out a query, it evolves into hope again. Rejections arent as piercing as when I first started out, but theyre never fun. I just got a rejection the other day for The Angels Lamp. I wrote back and said, too late, its already published. That felt good.

Contact the writer: sgoulding@ocregister.com
GENEVA  The top U.N. human rights official condemned the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen on Friday, citing repeated attacks on civilian targets in airstrikes, including an attack on a crowded village market this week that killed 106 people.

U.N. officials who went to the site of the attack Tuesday in Hajjah province found that airstrikes there had killed 106 people, including 24 children, making them the deadliest episode in the coalitions yearlong intervention.

The Saudis are backing the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi against rebels, known as the Houthis, who are aligned with the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis have been pressuring the United States for support in the conflict, saying their archrival, Iran, is backing the Houthis.

U.N. officials recorded the names of 96 people who died in the strikes, and they found 10 more bodies that were burned beyond recognition. An additional 40 people were wounded, but that may be a low estimate, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein.

The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly denied striking civilian targets during operations against Houthi rebels and affiliated forces. But U.N. officials said they had found no evidence of any military targets near the scene of the airstrikes, and al-Hussein said that may amount to a violation of international law.

Indiscriminate attacks by Houthi forces and their allies have also caused civilian casualties and could also qualify as international crimes, he said.

The coalition airstrikes came three weeks after its aircraft bombed another market, this time in a district of Sanaa, the capital, killing at least 39 civilians. The latest attack pushed the number of civilian casualties to close to 9,000, the United Nations said, with 3,218 killed and 5,778 injured.

It would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, al-Hussein said, in a sharp rebuttal of the coalitions denials.

He was alluding not only to Houthis and the militias fighting with them but also to groups backing al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

The coalition has hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities, al-Hussein said, and it continues to do so with unacceptable regularity.

At best, the coalitions distinction between civilian and military targets was woefully inadequate, al-Hussein added, and at worst we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by the coalition.

Moreover, despite their repeated promises to investigate these incidents, we have yet to see progress in any such investigations, he said.
Southern California Gas Co. has acknowledged that errors tied to the rollout of new digital meters installed at Orange County homes contributed to a rash of higher bills and customer complaints in recent months.

The utility company said changes to meter-reading schedules during the shift to advanced meters caused some of the billing anomalies that have surfaced since late January.

As they have in the past, gas company officials attribute complaints about suddenly higher bills primarily to a cold snap and increased use of fuel for heating that bumped customers into more costly pricing tiers.

However, this weeks response to Register questions about continuing consumer protests was the first time the switch to new meters was included as a factor in the problems.

Still, critics argue that the issue goes beyond weather and meter-reading changes  citing unusual February bills and puzzling explanations by company representatives. The general confusion has left some customers distrustful of the advanced-meter accuracy.

One measure of customer distress has been the number of written complaints received by the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the gas company. Those jumped tenfold to 500 in January and February from the same period last year.

The new meters being installed across the county upload data directly to the gas company and are gradually eliminating human meter readers. Roughly 220,000 Orange County customers  out of 930,000  still have older meters, according to the gas company. About 9 percent of the newly installed meters in the region are not fully operational.

This week, SoCalGas spokesman Javier Mendoza noted the company recently made changes in the routes used by meter readers assigned to the older equipment. He said some customers received bills covering more than 35 days, with some extending up to 49 days  far more than the typical 29-to-32-day billing cycle.

The bigger bills resulting from the changes were compounded by a colder-than-usual winter, Mendoza said.

The gas company sent customers letters promising to adjust bills to reconcile any differences caused by the change. The onus, however, is on the customer to investigate any issues.

Mendoza stressed only a small portion of bills were affected: 140,000 of 6 million.

We apologize for the inconvenience of making this change, Mendoza said in a prepared statement to the Register. SoCalGas recognizes that in any mass deployment of technology there may be some speed bumps.

Mindy Spratt, spokeswoman for watchdog The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, said SoCalGas failed to provide clear and accurate bills to customers as required. Spratts group has criticized the deployment of the high-tech meters, saying they are costing consumers more  typically about $24 a year. Over TURNs objections, the state utilities commission approved the new meters in 2010 on a 3-2 vote.

Were always concerned when utilities are sending out inaccurate billing  (and) when utilities are wasting customer money on meters that they dont want and dont need, said Spratt.

In response to Register inquiries, the CPUC sent a copy of a Feb. 12 letter from commission president Michael Picker to Assembly member Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, who had asked about constituent billing complaints.

While cold weather and resulting increased natural gas usage account for most increased bills, Picker wrote. Some individual customers could have other anomalies that require specific research into that individual bill.

The Office of Ratepayer Advocates, the unit within the CPUC that is supposed to represent customers, said it is reviewing the gas company billing issues.

HUMAN ERROR

Customers say SoCalGas explanations, while a start, do not fully explain the shocking billings  or restore trust in an institution that few tend to question.

Monica Herron, who agreed to have her bill analyzed by SoCalGas at the Registers request, said she is more confused than before.

The company said it undercharged Herron and her husband for January  attributing the mistake to a meter readers blunder. However, the company said an advanced meter, which was installed a few weeks ago, compensated for the human error in February readings.

We will add 67 therms to the January bill, making the total January usage 80 therms, the gas company said. We will subtract 67 therms from the February bill, making the total February usage 32 therms.

Both ways, therm consumption for the two months totals 112, which Herron calls arbitrary.

There is no way to confirm that claim, she adds. We just have to take their word for it.

She also doubts she and her husband, who rarely use their heater, burned 80 therms in January  four times their January 2015 usage.

A bad reading by meter personnel also was blamed in another case reviewed by the gas company in response to a complaint received by the Register.

Due to human error, the company found Huntington Beach resident Steve Farnsworths January bill was too low. But then Februarys $210 bill was a bit too high.

Taken together, Farnsworths total for the two months was reduced $4, he said.

Farnsworth disagrees with the analysis. He and his wife, who live alone, keep their thermostat in the low 60s and say they havent changed their gas-use habits recently. Before Februarys tab, the previous high for any month was $70, in 2010, he said.

Im going to pay closer attention to my bill, he said. Ive lost faith in the reading of the meters.

Mendoza, of SoCalGas, said the flawed bills arent indicative of a larger problem.

CALL FOR PROBE

The billing issue stretches beyond county lines.

Last month, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a request for a CPUC investigation of similar customer complaints.

We have calls and emails coming in from all over California  not just our own constituents, said councilman Mitch Englander, who authored the request.

Englander represents the upscale San Fernando Valley community of Porter Ranch, where a massive gas well leak was discovered in October. SoCalGas is footing the tab for the temporary relocation of thousands of families.

Even Porter Ranch residents who were forced to vacate their homes received bills three to four times higher than normal for January, Englander said. How could that be? They werent even in their houses.

Englander said that advanced meters recently were deployed in the area.

Its suspicious, he said. Who calibrated them? We need straight answers.

Because of an editing error, the headline on an early version of this story incorrectly said SoCalGas blamed billing errors on new gas meters. The company acknowledged billing problems related to the deployment of the new meters, but not to errors with the accuracy of the meters themselves.

Contact the writer: lleung@ocregister.com
SANTA ANA  Prosecutors on Thursday urged a judge not to remove them from an assault trial after an altercation in a courthouse hallway, saying an Orange County District Attorneys Office investigator only struck a defense attorney in self-defense.

The fight last week between attorney James Crawford and D.A. Investigator Dillon Alley has temporarily halted the trial of 29-year-old Adrian Arroyo on the verge of jury selection.

In a motion filed on Thursday, Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Lockhart blamed Crawford for the altercation, refuting the attorneys claims that he was attacked and didnt fight back.

Crawford was no victim, Lockhart wrote. Investigator Alley responded in self-defense to Crawfords hitting him in the face.

Both men were involved in the Arroyo trial  Crawford as an attorney for a potential witness and Alley as an investigator assisting Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Kirk. Tensions boiled over during a routine pre-trial hearing on March 9, resulting in the physical altercation at the courthouse.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick H. Donahue, who is presiding over the Arroyo trial, has set a hearing for Friday to review a defense request to either remove the DAs Office from the Arroyo case or dismiss charges against Arroyo. His attorneys contend that three potential witnesses in the trial saw the courthouse fracas first-hand.

Both sides agree that Crawford and Alley exchanged heated words and expletives prior to th altercation. Otherwise, the versions of the incident described by prosecutors and the defense diverge significantly.

In a motion filed Tuesday, Senior Deputy Alternate Defender Randy Ladisky contended that Alley was walking two feet in front of Crawford when the investigator suddenly swung his arms around, struck Crawford in the face, knocked the attorney onto a bench, pinned him down and pummeled him.

The DAs Office paints Crawford as the aggressor, alleging that the attorney first struck Alley in the face with his hand, sparking a fist fight. Crawford ended up on the floor with his back up against the edge of a bench, Lockhart said in the motion, as the lawyer continued hitting Alley in the torso and Alley struck Crawford in the face.

The prosecutor denied claims by Arroyos attorneys that three witnesses in the case were seriously rattled by observing the courthouse incident. Lockhart contended the three witnesses are no strangers to violence, having also witnessed a bloody fight at a Lake Forest nightclub in 2014 that led to Arroyo facing assault with a deadly weapon charges.

This isnt about PTSD, Lockhart wrote. Its about helping (a) friend get his case dismissed by feigning a sudden aversion to seeing a fight.

Judge Donahue has ordered the potential witnesses and Alley to attend Fridays hearing.

Crawford has claimed the confrontation at the courthouse was the result of intensifying hostility between some defense attorneys and prosecutors over the use of jailhouse informants. Crawford recently won a retrial in a double-murder case after alleging prosecutors misused jailhouse snitches, one of a half-dozen cases that have unraveled in the past year.

Detectives with the Orange County Sheriffs Department, which is responsible for court security, have turned the results of their investigation into the courthouse altercation over to the California Attorney Generals Office, which will decide if charges are warranted, authorities said.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Re: Potent problem: Fentanyl, a deadly drug used to spike heroin and cocaine, returns to O.C. [Front page, March 16]: Jenna Chandlers article underscores the need to crack down on fentanyl drug trafficking.

As her article vividly demonstrates, fentanyl abuse has become a public health problem nationwide. Tragically, it has hit close to home, where four people died of fentanyl overdoses in Orange County last year, including a 19-year-old from South Orange County.

Unlike other drugs, fentanyl is extremely dangerous to anyone who may come into contact with it, including law enforcement officers who may not be immediately aware of its presence.

That is why we introduced Senate Bill 1323 last month that would add fentanyl to the list of drugs such as heroin and cocaine that are subject to criminal penalty enhancements by weight. Our bill specifically targets traffickers, not users, so we are hopeful it will earn strong bipartisan support in the Legislature.

While our bill will not single-handedly end illicit fentanyl use, it would assist the Orange County Sheriffs office and other law enforcement agencies in their effort to protect the public. The Register article emphasizes the need for the Legislature to approve SB1323 this year.

Pat Bates

Laguna Niguel

State senator, 36th District

Bob Huff

San Dimas

State senator, 29th District

An infinite water supply

How many of us pay $3 per month or more at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Imagine if that $3 per month went to providing Orange County with an infinite water supply. Thats the initial cost impact of the proposed seawater desalination project.

No matter how much water I cut, Im constantly being told to cut more. Yet when a new supply becomes available, the politicians get weak in the knees over $3 per month. As much as I pay in taxes, it would be nice to know that my $3 per month would go to something specific. And an infinite water supply would be a good bang for that buck.

Phil Ackerman

Rancho Santa Margarita

Help economy back home

Barack Obama tells us that the 11 million plus illegal immigrants in this country help our economy. If that is so, why dont they just stay and help their home countrys economy instead?

Michael R. Sumners

Santa Ana
As he settled into his seat, preparing for an hourslong flight, Stuart McClure made a seemingly insignificant decision that likely saved his life and those of his mother and little brother.

A flight attendant offered the threesome an upgrade to first class on their flight to New Zealand. Normally McClure wouldnt pass up the offer, but it required he sit separately from his family and, besides, they already had tucked away their luggage before takeoff in Hawaii. So McClure declined.

Minutes into the flight, while United Airlines Flight 811 soared 22,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, the door to the planes cargo hold burst open, pealing off a portion of the Boeing 747-122. In a moment, first-class passengers, seats and luggage were sucked out of the plane into the aircrafts engines and the water below. In all, nine people died. The lives of the surviving 346 passengers, including that of McClure, then 19, would be forever changed.

Now 47, McClure is a founder and chief executive of Cylance, a rapidly growing cybersecurity firm in Irvine that uses algorithmic science and artificial intelligence to detect malevolent hackers before they can damage a company or government agency.

That fateful flight 27 years ago, he said, planted a seed at a formative age. Since then, his lifes work has been focused on rooting out security threats before they lead to catastrophic consequences.

Whatever I can do to prevent this kind of torture on people, I would love to be a part of, McClure said. Whether it be in the physical world, the cyberworld, whatever it is.

Since its 2012 debut, the company has received $77 million in venture capital, expanded its offices to London and Australia and made plans to expand into Sweden, Japan, Singapore, Latin America and the Middle East.

In 2014, Cylance launched its flagship product, CylanceProtect, a hacking-prevention tool that analyzes the makeup of a computer file. It can determine with 99 percent accuracy whether something is malignant, according to the company.

Your traditional anti-virus solution is looking for little pieces of a file that are common between malicious files, said Cylance security researcher Brian Wallace. What we do is instead of looking for very specific things in the file, we look at the overall makeup of the file and look at it through a process thats very similar to how the human brain works to determine whether its malicious or not.

Internet-based security threats have become routine, as financial criminals, hacktivists such as Anonymous, industrial spies and others steal intellectual property in the online space.

Its so embedded into the Internet now that people interact with it on a daily basis without ever realizing it, said Jon Miller, the companys vice president of strategy. Some of them are larger scale, some are small, some very malicious, some are a little malicious.

Demand for Cylances services is skyrocketing. In the companys short history its gained more than 600 customers, including universities, law firms, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Clients include Toyota, GameStop, Apria Healthcare, AlliedBarton Security Services and Panasonic.

Each week, the company of 300 employees adds up to 15 hires.

Were growing pretty crazy right now, McClure said. Well probably see a contraction here soon just to kind of slow down, because were growing way fast, to the point where its almost mind-boggling.

Cylance has focused its efforts on machine learning, or artificial intelligence, to take human mistakes out of the equation and better scale its services.

Years ago it was impossible to do something like this, Miller said. To actually build these models takes thousands of computers and many, many hours of everything running together to actually do all the math to make this go.

The companys Irvine headquarters embodies what you would expect of a firm focused on tech and security. Free food and video games are in the employee lounge, and the open floor plan has views of Irvines tallest buildings. But accessing the offices requires a badge. Biometric finger scanners at the doors serve as an additional layer of security.

This company grew out of McClures early proclivity for tinkering with computers. While an undergrad in 1988, he hacked his first computer, figuring out his friends encrypted password (It was apple1).

Thats where I really fell in love with programming and computers  and security, too, McClure said.

In 1999, McClure founded cybersecurity firm Foundstone, which was based in Mission Viejo. Five years later the company was sold to McAfee for $86 million. McClure also wrote a book on cybersecurity, titled Hacking Exposed. His co-author, George Kurtz, would go on to found another Orange County cybersecurity juggernaut, CrowdStrike, also based in Irvine.

McClure credited several things with stirring his zeal for cybersecurity.

I think that combined with the fact that my dad was a law enforcement officer for many years.  I think just all that combined gave me this almost stupid passion for helping people, protecting them, in my capacity, McClure said. I didnt go into the Navy like my brother and my dad, I didnt go into law enforcement like my dad, but I guess this is my way of doing it.

Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com, 714-796-2286
SEOUL, South Korea  North Korea on Friday fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered tests likely aimed at developing technology it needs to acquire to build a missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile flew 800 kilometers (500 miles) before crashing off the Norths east coast on Friday.

South Korean military officials said it wasnt immediately known what type of missile was fired. But a South Korean defense official, requesting anonymity citing department rules, said it is the first medium-range missile launched by the North since April 2014 when it fired two.

South Koreas Yonhap news agency said it was believed to be a medium-range Rodong missile.

Fridays launch came amid a heightened international standoff over the Norths weapons programs in the wake of its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and test-fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in response to tough U.N. sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch. The North says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. military threats.

On Tuesday, North Koreas state media said Kim had ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. Kim issued that order while overseeing a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target.

This led South Korean analysts to suspect that the North would likely fire a missile soon to test the re-entry technology.

Some analysts had also predicted the North might fire a missile carrying an empty warhead, which contain trigger devices but lack plutonium or uranium, to see if those warheads parts can survive the high pressure and temperatures upon re-entry into the atmosphere and if they were able to detonate at right time.

Outside experts said it is the last major technology that North Korea must master to achieve its goal of developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

South Korean defense officials said North Korea hadnt yet to acquire the re-entry technology so that it doesnt yet have a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.
TOKYO  North Korea has released video footage of what appears to be Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student being held in Pyongyang, removing a propaganda sign from a hotel wall.

The short, grainy clip, published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, shows a tall man going up to a red propaganda sign on the wall in a corridor and pulling it down, placing it on the floor.

The sign is only partially visible, but the words that can be seen read: Arm ourselves with strong socialism. The North Korean regime, which maintains control through a personality cult, has signs extolling the Kim family and their ideology all over the country, from train stations to mountainsides.

The timestamp on the video is 1:57 a.m. on New Years Day, consistent with the reports of when Warmbier took the sign from a staff-only floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel. He was detained on Jan. 2 at Pyongyang airport as he prepared to leave the country after a five-day tour.

But the persons face is not clear and the video does not show what happened after he put the sign of the floor. Also, somewhat unusually, the corridor is well-lit. A reporter who has visited a staff-only floor of the Yanggakdo hotel during the daytime found it completely dark, as is often the case in North Korea, where electricity is in short supply.

During a one-hour trial in the Supreme Court Wednesday, North Korea convicted Warmbier, a 21-year-old from Cincinnati, of hostile acts against the state and sentenced him to 15 years in prison with hard labor.

After the trial, KCNA reported that Warmbier had been accused of violating Article 60 of North Koreas criminal code, a state subversion charge, and an inquiry was conducted.

In the course of the inquiry, the accused confessed to the serious offense against 1 / 8North Korea 3 / 8 he had committed, pursuant to the U.S. governments hostile policy toward it, in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist, KCNA said.

Two weeks before, Warmbier was brought out to address diplomats and mainly North Korean reporters at a news conference in Pyongyang, during which he confessed to a very severe and pre-planned crime.

In the wee hours of Jan. 1, he tried to steal a propaganda sign from a staff-only floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel, one of the main places where foreign tourists stay in Pyongyang. He reportedly pulled the banner from the wall but realized it was too big to carry off, so he abandoned it there.

The aim of my task was to harm the motivation and work ethic of the Korean people. This was a very foolish aim, Warmbier said during the Feb. 29 press conference, reading from handwritten notes. He described a bizarre plot in which he was directed to steal the sign by a church member, a Virginia student group, and the United States government.

Previous Americans detained in North Korea also have been brought by authorities before the media to confess their crimes, with the detainees told what to say and the reporters told what to ask.

The White House and U.S. State Department have urged the North Korean government to pardon and release Warmbier, saying his 15-year sentence was unduly harsh and amounts to using the 21-year-old as a political pawn.

Warmbiers parents, Fred and Cindy, have said in a statement that they hoped their sons sincere apology for anything that he may have done wrong would move the government to release him. They have not respond to requests for comment after Wednesdays sentencing.

Warmbier is being held at a particularly sensitive time, when annual military drills between the United States and South Korea are coinciding with international sanctions against North Koreas regime to punish it for its recent nuclear test and missile launches.
The University of California system, as a result of the contentious and very public debate last year between Gov. Jerry Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano over higher education funding and student tuition rates, agreed in May to hold in-state tuition rates steady until the 2017-18 academic year. UC in return got nearly $1 billion in additional annual revenue and one-time funding  including $436 million over three years to pay down its substantial unfunded pension liability  and changes to the UC retirement system.

Ms. Napolitano unveiled the proposed pension changes last week. Under the proposal, UC employees hired after June 30 will have a choice of two retirement plans. They may select a hybrid pension plan, which provides a traditional, defined-benefit pension that would be capped at the limit for all other state employees (currently $117,020) plus a supplemental 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan up to the annual payout limit set by the Internal Revenue Service (currently $265,000).

The other option would be a straight 401(k)-style plan, up to the IRS payout limit, which would have a one-year vesting period instead of the five-year hybrid vesting period, allowing the UC system to offer an attractive retirement benefit to employees who work at UC for only a few years and value a portable retirement benefit they can take with them, and/or who prefer to personally manage their retirement savings, Ms. Napolitano noted in a letter to employees.

The UC Regents will vote on the proposal this month.

The state did not make any contributions to the UC pension plan for 20 years, from 1990-2009, causing it to fall from 137 percent funded to 86 percent funded. It has since deteriorated to 83 percent funded, and has a $9.8 billion unfunded liability.

The state should not have abrogated its obligation to contribute to the UC pension plan, and this kind of pension reform should have been done long ago, but we are happy to see the state finally moving in the right direction on public pensions. Switching some or all of an employees pension to a defined-contribution plan shifts risk from taxpayers to employees and allows them to control their retirement funds. It is good enough for the private sector, so it should be good enough for all state employees.
The fortunes of embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff are so precarious that, in an effort to boost her popularity, she has named former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as her chief of staff. Notably, Silva also is facing possible corruption charges in an ongoing investigation. In addition to supporting a teetering Rousseff, Silva will enjoy a broad  but not complete  immunity from prosecution for his alleged crimes.

Meanwhile, anti-Rousseff protesters on Sunday led the largest demonstrations in Brazilian history, voicing their anger and frustration at a government they claim is not fit-for-purpose. Protests were held across the length and breadth of the country, with almost half a million people demonstrating in Sao Paulo alone. The total nationwide was estimated at 3.5 million.

The economic indicators make for painful, dispiriting reading. Brazils economy shrank almost 4 percent last year, to mark the countrys worst recession in a century. Animosity towards Rousseff personally and her left-wing Workers Party was evident at the many demonstrations Sunday.

Many observers publicly doubt that Rousseff will serve out her full term.

When Silva left office at the end of 2010, his popularity was in the stratosphere, with approval ratings in excess of 80 percent. Unfortunately, allegations that he has accepted bribes are tarnishing his reputation. This month he was questioned by police  and his home and office were raided  as part of the ongoing lava jato  or carwash  investigation into corruption at the state-owned oil conglomerate, Petrobras.

Since Rousseff governs as part of a coalition of several political parties, many of which have been dragged into the Petrobras investigations, she has had difficulty getting much needed reforms passed. She has also had to face the indignity of impeachment proceedings which were filed against her by the speaker of the Brazilian congress.

These allegation stem from claims that she manipulated official government finance numbers in the run up to her re-election campaign in 2014. Awkwardly, the speaker himself is under investigation for corruption, so it is unclear whether the impeachment proceedings will actually gain much traction. In addition, a case is pending that would strip her of her 2014 election victory over claims that she used illegally obtained Petrobas money to fund her campaign.

Unfortunately, the opposition parties do not appear to have popular support much deeper than Rousseffs Workers Party or the other left-wing parties that are currently supporting here wobbly coalition. One government official who does enjoy significant support is Sergio Moro, the judge overseeing the lava jato corruption inquiry. Although several politicians close to Rousseff have been convicted as part of the investigation, so far she has remained outside the scope of Moros tribunal.

Moros most recent high-profile conviction was of Marcelo Odebrecht, head of the Odebrecht Group, one of the biggest construction businesses in Latin America, employing almost 200,000 workers. Odebrecht was sentenced earlier this month to 19 years in jail for his role in paying kickbacks to senior executives at Petrobras. Moro labelled Odebrecht as the mastermind behind an elaborate scheme that funneled money through Petrobras and into the hands of willing politicians.

Moro is now setting his sights on Silva, forcing him to seek the relative safety of a senior Cabinet position in Brasilia, rather than take his chances defending charges of money laundering. Although now beyond the reach of crusading Moro, Silva could still face charges in front of the countrys Supreme Court.

For supporters of Rousseff, the lava jato proceedings are nothing more than a judicial coup that is attempting to strip the rightful president of the country of her office, and re-run the 2014 election in order to achieve a different result.

When the Workers Party first came to power in 2002, its stated goal was to move Brazil away from the rampant corruption that has been a feature of government and state-owned business for decades. However, many of the partys longtime supporters now feel betrayed by Rousseff and are turning their backs on her and her party.

The investigation into Silva has further weakened Rousseffs hold on power and it is not immediately clear that bringing the formerly popular former president into her government will do much to slow or stop her decline in popularity among the electorate.

With the Summer Olympics less than five months off and Brazils economy unmistakably in stark decline, it will be difficult for Rousseff and her party to show the millions visiting the country and the billions watching the festivities from the comfort of their homes around the world an optimistic view of Brazil.

The men and women and children who took to streets are demanding a better future for their beleaguered country. Brazils leaders must respond to these legitimate concerns swiftly and in earnest.

Orange County writer and attorney Timothy Spangler hosts The Bigger Picture with Timothy Spangler, Sundays, 10 p.m.-midnight on KRLA 870 AM. Twitter: @timothyspangler
TALLAHASSEE  They are too wounded to know what to do next.

While Gov. Rick Scott has thrown his support behind Donald Trump and called on Florida Republicans to unite behind the brash real estate tycoon, Marco Rubio loyalists just arent there yet.

It is very difficult for me to see Rubio move on, said state Rep. Julio Gonzalez, R-Venice, a member of Rubios Florida leadership team. I feel Marco had the best qualities of any of the other 17 candidates that had put themselves out there. All of the rest of the candidates are seriously flawed.

Hes hardly alone. More than a half-dozen members of Rubios leadership team in Florida said over the past 48 hours that they are not ready to unite behind Trump, with many leaving open the possibility of never getting behind him and holding out a glimmer of hope that a contested Republican National Convention could revive Rubios chances.

For those running for re-election and facing Republican primaries in the fall, supporting Trump or not has consequences that could affect their own races.

Rather than committing, many are just staying out of the discussion altogether.

Instead of endorsing any of the three remaining candidates, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, Rubios co-chairman for Florida, said hes simply taking a break for a while and focusing on his own campaign for re-election in a newly redrawn congressional district where he has a Republican primary opponent. Charlotte County Republican John Sawyer III has filed to challenge Rooney in a district that includes Central Florida citrus areas from Polk County south to Lake Okeechobee.

State Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, an early Rubio supporter, said as of Wednesday he had no plans to endorse another presidential candidate.

For the moment, Im staying on the sidelines.  Im focused on my campaign and my race in 2016, said Diaz de la Portilla, whos seeking re-election in whats expected to be a very competitive general election campaign against State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami.

I supported Marco, because I know him; I thought he was the best guy. You can only imagine if Marco would have continued in the process and been elected what it would have meant to our area, such as money for infrastructure and local projects and a national spotlight on Miami-Dade, Diaz de la Portilla said.

Although Scott has urged the GOP to rally around Trump, Diaz de la Portilla said he thinks its best to let the process play out.

On Wednesday, the day after Trump easily carried Florida, Scott said through a Facebook post: I believe it is now time for Republicans to accept and respect the will of the voters and coalesce behind Donald Trump.

Despite that plea from his boss, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a Miami Republican, isnt joining the Trump bandwagon. Lopez-Cantera, a member of Rubios Florida team, said through a spokeswoman that he is focused on his own campaign for U.S. Senate and not the presidential contest.

Sarasota state Rep. Ray Pilon, another member of Rubios leadership team, said some of the cautiousness about endorsing revolves around the potential of a contested convention in which Rubio or other candidates could become viable again. He said he simply needs more time to know if a contested convention is likely and what it would mean for Rubio.

Im going to wait to see how this is all going to play out, said Pilon, who is one of four Republicans in a primary battle for a state Senate seat in Sarasota and Charlotte counties.

Pilon said his hope is that if Trump secures the nomination, it will force him to become less volatile to have any chance of beating Hillary Clinton, who has a commanding lead in the delegate race on the Democratic side.

If he does tone it down, Pilon said, there is no doubt hed back Trump over Clinton.

Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reporters Kristen M. Clark and Michael Auslen contributed to this report.
SANTA ANA  A woman suspected of stealing statues from a Buddhist temple was arrested Friday, police said.

Trang Thu Pham, 46, was taken into custody in the 900 block of South Harbor Boulevard about 11 a.m. Friday after someone spotted her, said Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.

She was booked into the Santa Ana Jail on suspicion of two counts of grand theft and a no bail warrant for a probation violation.

On Feb. 26, the Chua Truc Lam Yen Tu Buddhist Temple at 1924 W. 2nd St. had two of its Buddhist statues stolen. Surveillance video showed a woman removing two statues, each about 2 feet tall, from a shrine in front of the temple, Bertagna said.

The same woman returned to the temple on March 6 and stole a third statue, he added. Each statue is valued at $1,000.

After viewing surveillance video, an individual recognized the woman as Pham, who was arrested in 2015 for repeatedly vandalizing a large statue of Buddha at the Huong Tich Buddhist Temple in Santa Ana, Bertagna said.

Pham reportedly admitted to detectives that she had vandalized the statue, but said she didnt have any issues with Buddhism. Instead, police indicated that the vandalism was driven by a personal issue.

Pham was convicted of vandalizing a place of worship, sentenced to 268 days in jail and placed on 5 years formal probation, Bertagna said. However, Pham never reported to the Orange County Probation Department, he added.
Tribunes planned purchase of the owner of The Orange County Register and The Press-Enterprise hangs on how antitrust regulators deal with consolidation in the struggling newspaper industry.

A day after Tribune  which publishes the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune  won an auction to buy assets of Freedom Communications out of bankruptcy for $56 million, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit aimed at blocking the purchase. Regulators contend the deal would give Tribune a monopoly over news in the region.

If this acquisition is allowed to proceed, newspaper competition will be eliminated and readers and advertisers in Orange and Riverside counties will suffer, Bill Baer, assistant attorney general of the antitrust division, said Thursday.

Freedoms bankruptcy attorney received a warning letter from Baer on Monday saying his department would take action if Tribune was chosen as the winning bidder. The Justice Department also notified Tribune attorneys by phone on Wednesday of its plans to fight the action, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Tribune still plunged ahead with an aggressive bid, battling competing offers from Digital First Media and a team of investors led by Freedom CEO Rich Mirman during a contentious auction that lasted late into the night.

Tribune will fight, with spokeswoman Dana Meyer telling the Los Angeles Times that regulators are living in a time capsule, with a framework that predates the arrival of iPhones, Google, Facebook, and modern media outlets that are killing the traditional newspaper industry.

Monopoly concerns about a Tribune bid had circulated for months. The Justice Department noted in its complaint that Tribune hired antitrust attorneys and economists in January. Still, the complaint states, the company didnt approach federal officials to discuss the issue or give them a chance to investigate ahead of time.

Any time pressures Tribune faces as a result of the United States intervention at this point are of its own making, the complaint states.

Some media and law experts expressed surprise at the Justice Departments late and stern action, which calls for a restraining order to block a deal thats otherwise set to be reviewed Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana.

Newspapers no longer have any kind of monopoly on information in their markets, said Gabriel Kahn, a USC journalism professor who studies the industry.

Stiff competition for advertisers and readers from online outlets is whats put newspapers in the position to need deeper pockets like the ones Tribune Publishing are offering to Freedoms papers, Kahn said.

Tribunes purchase of Freedom presents obvious advantages in lowering operational costs and boosting advertising power, Kahn said.

For Tribune, it would give them the missing piece of the puzzle, Kahn said.

In the lawsuit, the Justice Department states that the Los Angeles Times and Register together account for 98 percent of newspaper sales in Orange County. Also, the companies newspapers combined, including the Tribune-owned San Diego Union-Tribune, account for 81 percent of English-language newspaper sales in Riverside County.

Tribunes acquisition of its most significant competitor would give it a monopoly over newspaper sales in each county and allow it to increase subscription prices, raise advertising rates and invest less to maintain the quality of its newspapers, the department said.

But looking only at papers printed in Southern California offers a very limited definition of the news market, said San Diego attorney Bill Markham, who has done antitrust litigation for 20 years. Theres a good chance that most people get their news online today, he said.

Its an unfortunate use of the scarce resources of the DOJ, Markham said of the lawsuit. There are better antitrust fish to fry than newspapers that are grasping to stay alive.

The action indicates there are limits on how far the Justice Department will let newspapers go to save themselves, said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University who once served on the advisory board for Digital First Media.

Newspaper companies have pushed for limited immunity from antitrust laws for decades.

With declining circulation threatening to close papers and reduce competition, President Richard Nixon granted a partial exemption to antitrust laws with the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. The act allows competing papers to share resources such as printing and distribution through joint operating agreements  a move thats kept many papers afloat to this day. Freedom, for example, prints six daily newspapers published by Digital First Media.

Despite so many newspapers now sharing ownership and resources, the Justice Department has resisted requests to otherwise ease up on antitrust enforcement.

In fact, in this period of transition, vigilant antitrust enforcement is imperative to ensure that anticompetitive conduct does not tip the market in a particular direction, Christine Varney, then-assistant attorney general of the antitrust division, told the Newspaper Association of America in 2011.

The Justice Department has intervened in other newspaper mergers and buyouts  including one that involved Digital First Medias predecessor, MediaNews Group.

In 2007, the Justice Department sued MediaNews Group and the Daily Gazette Company after the two consolidated ownership and made plans to kill one of two daily papers in Charleston, W.V.

The parties settled in 2010, with the Justice Department forcing the companies to keep publishing both papers to maintain competition for readers and advertisers. But the day that settlement agreement expired in 2015, the companies combined the two papers into the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Markham suggests one fix for the Southern California monopoly concerns: Tribune, the Justice Department and Freedom could negotiate an agreement known as a conduct remedy. Markham said such agreements allow potentially troublesome mergers to proceed, but with firewalls in place to allow independent management and encourage ongoing competition.

In this case, Markham said, that might mean Tribune would own the Register and Press-Enterprise, but wouldnt have control over day-to-day operations. That would leave the papers free to pool assets while setting their own advertising and circulation rates and preserving their editorial voices. Such an agreement was used to alleviate antitrust concerns when Comcast Corp. and NBC Universal Media wanted to combine video assets in 2009.

In Thursdays lawsuit, the Justice Department did not express any antitrust concerns about Digital Firsts attempted purchase of Freedom.

In the Inland Empire, Digital First publishes the San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts, which often go head-to-head with Freedoms larger Press-Enterprise in Riverside.

Freedom has operated during the bankruptcy due largely to loans from one of its creditors. Those loans were to be paid off March 31, when the sale was scheduled to close before the Justice Department intervened.

Antitrust suits often mean lengthy periods of discovery and hearings. Tom Campbell, an antitrust expert at Chapman University School of Law, said he expects the case might change the entire picture.

I think the bankruptcy judge has to drop Tribunes offer, Campbell says.

An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported the Digital First newspapers that Freedom prints.

Contact the writer: bstaggs@ocregister.com or jlansner@ocregister.com
White men narrowly backed Hillary Clinton in her 2008 race for president, but they are resisting her candidacy this time around in major battleground states, rattling some Democrats about her general-election strategy.

While Clinton swept the five major primaries Tuesday, she lost white men in all of them, and by double-digit margins in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, exit polls showed  a sharp turnabout from 2008, when she won double-digit victories among white male voters in all three states.

She also performed poorly Tuesday with independents, who have never been among her core supporters. But white men were, at least when Clinton was running against a black opponent: She explicitly appealed to them in 2008, extolling the Second Amendment, mocking Barack Obamas comment that working-class voters cling to guns or religion and even needling him at one point over his difficulties with working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.

She could not sound more different today, aggressively campaigning to toughen gun-control laws and especially courting black and Hispanic voters.

Her standing among white men does not threaten her clinching the Democratic nomination this year, or preclude her from winning in November, unless it craters. Obama lost the white vote to Clinton, after all, but still won the presidency.

But what is striking is the change in attitudes about Clinton among those voters, and her struggle to win them over again. In dozens of interviews in diners, offices and neighborhoods across the country, many white male Democrats expressed an array of misgivings, with some former supporters turning away from her now.

Many said they did not trust her to overhaul the economy because of her wealth and her ties to Wall Street. Some said her use of private email as secretary of state indicated she had something to hide. A few said they did not think a woman should be commander in chief. But most said they simply did not think Clinton cared about people like them.

Shes talking to minorities now, not really to white people, and thats a mistake, Dennis Bertko, 66, a construction project manager in Youngstown, Ohio, said as he sipped a draft beer at the Golden Dawn Restaurant in a downtrodden part of town. She could have a broader message. We would have listened.

Instead, shes talking a lot about continuing Obamas policies, he said. I just dont necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas of Obama.

Bertko said that he rarely crossed party lines but that he voted for Donald Trump, who is making a strong pitch to disaffected white men by assailing free-trade agreements that Clinton once supported.

I know a lot of guys who are open to Trump, he said.

Clintons advisers expressed confidence, saying her economic policies and national security experience would appeal strongly to white men in a general election. They said she regularly won among those older than 45 and argued that Sen. Bernie Sanders appeal among younger white men reflected his popularity with young people generally.

Joel Benenson, Clintons strategist and pollster, predicted she would win at least 35 percent of white men nationally  the share that Obama took in 2012  and even more in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. But he insisted that focusing on white men overlooked the breadth of her support.

Winning is never about slicing and dicing the electorate, he said. What you have to do is create a diverse coalition of voters that enables you to win, and win repeatedly. Thats what Hillary Clinton has done, and thats what Bernie Sanders has failed to do.

But Clinton is clearly focusing more so far on nonwhites, who provide outsize shares of the delegates needed to win the nomination. Her political message, events and surrogate speakers have been geared largely to blacks and Hispanics, from denouncing gun violence and police abuses to promising improvements in immigration and education.

Eight years ago, Clinton appealed to whites to counter Obamas popularity among minority voters. She ran as a moderate and a national security hawk, and fondly recalled how her father taught her to shoot. Some political analysts said she also benefited among white men because many were not comfortable voting for a black man.

Clintons political challenges now center on the controversies stemming from her time as secretary of state and doubts about her willingness to take on Wall Street.

There are all these questions about her past, and she doesnt give straight responses about them, said Forrest Giffin, 23, a Democrat in Sumter, South Carolina, who cited Clintons refusal to release transcripts of her paid speeches to banks.

Giffin, a mall supervisor and assistant manager at a gas station, added, I really wonder if she wants people like me in the Democratic Party.
The Cat Boat is one of Amsterdams most peculiar attractions. Its essentially a sanctuary for cats, but what makes it special is that the rescued cats all live aboard a quaint little houseboat that bobs along the Herengracht canal. Although it wasnt intended to be a tourist attraction, Cat Boat regularly receives about 4,500 visitors a year, most of whom are tourists missing their own cats while on vacation!

The origins of the Cat Boat can be traced back to 1966, when a kind woman named Henriette van Weelde took pity on a stray feline and her kittens and allowed them into her own home. Henriette soon became well known in the neighborhood for her kindness; people would regularly drop off rescued cats at her doorstep and she wouldnt hesitate to take them all in.

This went on for about two years, after which Henriette simply didnt have enough room to house more cats. So she came up with a solution  she put them all on an unused houseboat on the nearby Herengracht canal. The feline sanctuary was something of a pirate ship for about two decades, operating without the knowledge of the authorities. But in 1987, it finally got a permit and was officially christened de Poezenboot (the Cat Boat).

Photo: aarticles

The rescue boat served as a safe haven for cats in Amsterdam for decades, with Henriette caring them until her death in 2005. It is now run with the help of a small staff and a few local volunteers. On any given day, you can find around 50 cats lying around the worlds only floating cat hospital, of which at least 14 are permanent residents. The others can be adopted.

Photo: taver

Most of our permanent residents started out as feral cats who by now can never be fully socialised, explained Judith Gobets, a staff member on Cat Boat. They will never be normal cats and will always distrust people. Some you can pet, but dont try to pick them up. To help visitors identify the cats they need to stay away from, they have drawings of the dangerous ones posted all over the boat. Of course they are not really dangerous, Judith adds. You just have to leave them alone. People always like to cuddle a cat, but often thats not what the cat wants.

Photo: de Poozenboot/Twitter

Each new cat is quarantined in cages for a small period of time, during which they are neutered and implanted with traceable microchips. This is an attempt to minimize the feral cat population, and prevent any adopted cats from running away or being abandoned.

Photo: aarticles

Later, the adoptable cats are allowed to roam freely on the boat  theyre perfectly friendly and adorable, but it isnt very easy to actually take one of them home. We are very picky about adoptions, Judith said. I really have to have the feeling that the match is perfect. Otherwise the chance is too big that the re-homing will fail. Potential new owners and the staff have to sleep on it for a night before we finally say yes.

Photo: dtsomp

We are very strict with the placement of cats, added volunteer Sandra, speaking to Vice Magazine. We dont want them to return to us, so we ask potential new owners a lot of questions about the home situation and their experience with cats. If someone things a cat is only fun and nice to cuddle and play with, we tell them it takes a lot more to take care of a cat.

Photo: de Poozenboot/Twitter

While theyre waiting to be adopted, the cats do have plenty of options to keep themselves amused. Like the families of ducks, swans and gulls that paddle by on the canal. Some of our cats like to peer through the fence at the ducks, dreaming of ways to pounce, Judith revealed. Cats of course, like to hunt.

Photo: de Poozenboot/Twitter

The ducks and swans like the cat food and swim next to the boat begging for some food, Sarah said. You would not see cats and ducks this close to each other normally. [They are] separated by a fence, of course.

Photo: de Poozenboot/Twitter

A boat full of cats must have a CAT-ptain, of course, and according to Sarah, that title belongs to a male cat named Koeienkat (cowcat). He is a dominant male and needs to be fed first or separately, otherwise others wouldnt get any food! He mostly sits next to the door where the visitors come in and looks like he would like to be petted. But thats only appearance, he will scratch when they try to do that. He is well known and loved in spite of  or maybe because of  his character.

Visiting the Cat Boat is free, but most tourists do make generous donations when they come to know that it does not receive government support. Cat lovers from across the world also make online donations to help support the boats permanent residents. About 10 years ago we did apply for funding, but they turned us down, Judith said. From that moment on weve gone our own way. We are supported entirely by donations. And we do like the feeling of being independent. No strings attached.

Sources: de Poetzenboot, VICE, Catster, Travelocafe
Meet Yi Jiefeng, a Shanghai woman who has helped plant millions of saplings in Inner Mongolia, over the past 12 years. Her goal is to reforest the arid Alashan Desert while keeping alive the memory of her son who passed away 16 years ago.

In the year 2000, Yis only son, Yang Ruizhe, was killed in a road accident in Japan, and the tragic incident left her a shattered woman. But she eventually found a way to deal with the grief by devoting her own life to fulfilling her sons dream. Ruizhe had told her about his plans to plant trees in northern Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous region in order to stop the advancing desert, so Yi decided to fulfill his dream herself. He was fond of nature since he was a little boy, she said. He was concerned about natural things such as wind, rain, plants, and animals.

Photo: Homeland Green

So Yi and her husband used Ruizhes insurance money  30 million Yen (nearly $270,000)  to set up a nonprofit called Green Life in 2003. They didnt have much knowledge of agriculture or forestry back then, and their first planting season was unsuccessful. With less than 200 mm rainfall that year, the saplings were blown away by strong winds and shifting sands.

The couple did not lose heart though. They consulted local forestry experts and managed to get several saplings to take root the next season. It seemed that my sons spirits bestowed good fortune on us  it rained heavily when we finished, Yi said. Ever since, we would go and plant trees every year, and it rained every time. This made the survival rate stay above 85 percent even till now.

Photo: Homeland Green

While Green Life started off with the intention of planting trees, it soon grew into a much larger project that raises awareness about the land degradation that is converting Chinas grasslands into barren stretches of wasteland. In the beginning, I did this charity as a mother who wanted to realize her sons dream, Yi told CNN.

But later I realised that China has a really serious desertification problem. If the situation keeps getting worse, how can 1.3 billion Chinese people possibly survive? So we felt a sense of social responsibility.

Photo: Homeland Green

When the initial funds ran out, the biggest challenge that Yi and her husband faced was that of raising more money. They ended up investing their life savings in the project, and even sold their two houses to keep it going. Because we have limited funds, we can only afford a small operation team while there is a lot to do, Yi explained. Im 66 years old now. But I have only an average of three or four hours of sleep every day. Sometimes I dont even have this amount of sleep. Its all for saving money for the project.

But the number of volunteers and donors have considerably increased since the year 2008. Many of them are parents who lost their own children, hoping to find some solace through Yis work. One mother lost her teenage daughter to cancer, while anothers son committed suicide. And Yi is happy that shes able to unite all these grieving mothers for a great cause.

It is easy to break a chopstick, but they become unbreakable when we put all of them together, she said. Everyone on the planet has his or her own weaknesses, but with one complementing the other, we will eventually get a big force. Environmental problems especially need this kind of power from people with benevolence.
Robert L. Dilenschneider

It is somewhat astonishing that on Capitol Hill, legislators still go to their offices, at least Tuesday through Thursday, staff reports to work, hearings are being held and lobbying continues unabated. Surprising, because the legislative process is almost completely stalled in a way we havent seen for some time.

When President Obama nominated centrist, non-controversial D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy on the nine-member Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), immediately said there was no point in holding hearings or taking a vote until the next president is elected. With another year to go in office, Obama retorted that he has fulfilled his constitutional duty and now it is up to the Senate to vote Garland up or down.

It was news when six Republicans said they would at least meet with Garland. But McConnell will not back down on refusing to hold a vote before the November election, although if Hillary Clinton is elected in November, he might hold a vote on Garland before the end of the year to stave off a potentially more liberal nominee. And some Republicans might balk at the idea of Trump choosing a justice. But the issue, as McConnell said clearly, is not Garland, widely respected by both Republicans and Democrats and a previous consensus nominee.

The issue is that McConnell has persuaded enough Republicans to back him up to prevent Obama from nominating a Supreme Court justice and having him confirmed, although Obama won reelection with a five-million-vote surplus. McConnells argument, ironically once made by Joe Biden in 1992, is that during an election cycle, no major decisions should be made until the votes are cast. The obvious counter argument is that the president does not stop being president during the year-long election process. The White House complained that it is appalling that the Senate is using the excuse of politics not to do its job. Six justices have been confirmed to the Supreme Court in the final year of a presidency during the last century. The real issue is, of course, the possibility that Obamas choice could shift the balance of the nations highest court from conservative to liberal as the vacancy was caused by the unexpected death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama insists his choice, Garland, is not a known liberal; left-leaning groups, in fact, are upset that Garland does not have a clear record on major social issues such as abortion, campaign financing, labor dues, environmental regulations, etc. But there would be far less of a brouhaha if Obama were filling a vacancy left by a liberal justice.

The bitterness, confusion and anger of the presidential race have infused Washington and call to mind the Joe McCarthy era, where legislators literally hated each other. Establishment Republicans are openly kicking themselves for not taking the now-likely Trump nomination more seriously when a Stop Trump movement might have had some success. While there is a lot of talk about an open GOP convention in Cleveland in July because Trump may not have all 1,237 delegates needed for victory on the first ballot, that is not very probable. As Trump noted, if he has a majority of delegates and is denied the nomination, his supporters would riot. The mathematics of a possible Kasich nomination on a second ballot are formidably against him. Less so for Cruz, but also unlikely. There is also desperate talk of a third-party candidacy; that is not going to happen.

Of course, journalists are salivating at the possibility of another 1976, the convention when Ronald Reagan mounted a strong challenge to Gerald Ford but lost. The press has a love-hate relationship with Trump; on one hand, he is good copy; on the other hand, he mocks and disdains the press and invites his supporters to jeer at reporters and make it more difficult for them to do their job. He has required volunteers to sign non-disclosure agreements, usually reserved only for paid employees privy to proprietary information. And he pens reporters up so they cant talk to his supporters during his rallies.

Having all but dispatched Bernie Sanders to the status of an also-ran on Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is turning her attention to how to deflate the Trump balloon, if that is possible. Her advisers are divided on how tough they want her to be. While they want her to take Trump on, they also are wary of criticism that she sometimes sounds strident and a little desperate when she goes on the attack. She will not make Marco Rubios mistake of getting down in the mud with Trump, but there is worry among supporters about how she will handle his personal attacks.

Trumps supporters are unusually passionate in their defense of him; hers, not so much. He is winning white males without a college education, the less affluent, the angry and those who are fed up with the status quo in Washington. She is winning with college educated females, minorities and unions. Her major aim is to hit Trump over and over on the issues, which they disagree on down the line. Almost the only thing they agree on is that the United States badly needs to rebuild its infrastructure.

Trumps aim is to move to the center, not difficult especially with so many supporters so un-appalled by his past outlandish statements such as banning Muslims and making Mexico pay for a wall across the southern U.S. border. His frequent use of misogynistic language would have been grounds for the firing of any CEO who doesnt own the company, but has not dissuaded ardent supporters although it may be pushing more women into Clintons camp.

But Trump also will try to court establishment Republicans, a much more difficult task. They will be forced to choose between trying to win the White House with Trump and losing the White House to Hillary Clinton. A true rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma. But, interestingly enough, while one-fourth of Republicans say they dont want to vote for Donald Trump, one-fourth of Democrats say they dont want to vote for Hillary Clinton.

As they say, we live in interesting times.



* * *

Robert L. Dilenschneider is chairman and founder of the Dilenschneider Group, Inc.
Max Martens

Imagine stepping into a time machine and speaking with our 1976 selves, and the disbelief that would greet our tales of a future where unlikely upstarts, as opposed to reliable titans, are winning over consumers, where raw, unfiltered personality surpasses carefully groomed branding, and where big names have to rewrite their playbooks in attempts to stave off encroachment by rebels who resonate better with the masses. Sound like politics? Im talking about food.

Although the tides have been turning in the consumables world for a few years already, food marketers in 2016 find themselves in a similar situation as campaign managers struggling to figure out how to position their candidates for an electorate with dramatically different perspectives than generations prior. Instead of pulling a lever in a curtained booth, our constituents are voting with their wallets at grocery stores and restaurants. The scramble to connect with authenticity is just as real in either case.

Weve all heard for some time now that Big Food is faltering, losing consumer trust and not adjusting fast enough to the new realities of shoppers expectations. First, of course, that relates to foodstuffs themselves  the actual Product in the five Ps of the classic marketing mix. Do consumers today want convenient but nutritionally suspect packaged foods from the center of the store? Is there a place for artificial colors and preservatives anymore? Manufacturers seeing worrisome figures in their IRI reports have been tinkering with the formulas of classic products in hopes that a few changes to the ingredient list will keep their boxed and jarred category captains from becoming obsolete. And the virtual explosion of kale on restaurant menus is a sign that chains are trying desperately to appear relevant as out-of-home dining patterns are being shaken up like never before.

But then there are the other critical Ps: positioning and promotion. Thats where we as communication professionals are challenged to take the foods our clients or employers give us to work with  no matter whats on the ingredient list  and figure out how to make them relatable to audiences. As with politics, there are plenty of missteps and surprising breakthroughs from which to learn.

Ive been reminded of this over the last few weeks, as various food e-newsletters to which I subscribe were full of ads for KFCs new Nashville Hot Chicken. Curious, I clicked through to see how this industrialized version of a regional specialty was being touted. Authentically Nashville! Also authentically hot. Also authentically chicken. While I assume the copy was intentionally trying to be humorous, it was also a bit ironic. Just like people who tell you they are cool really arent, products that have to tell you they are authentic surely arent. Some of the press coverage of KFCs launch corroborates that.

In a Time magazine article about this spicy poultry trend, The Hot Chicken Cookbook author Timothy Davis was quoted as saying, Hot chicken is taking off, and while Im proud of the food going elsewhere, I want the story of it [to] go with it. How true that is, for cayenne-encrusted chicken and for a host of other foods. If the dish becomes so far removed from its source and its simplicity, it has lost most of what made it a phenomenon in the first place. (I wont even begin to imagine what Col. Harland Sanders would think of his company, in which the K once proudly stood for Kentucky, basing its new fortunes on a recipe from Tennessee.)

By contrast, two better examples of connecting with consumers via eyebrow-raising poultry reinventions come from the opposite end of the dining spectrum. A-list white tablecloth chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Thomas Keller in recent years have won new audiences for their personal versions of inexpensive, simple-but-sensational fried and roasted chicken (at Ludo Truck and Ad Hoc, respectively). Experiments with down-scaling by fine dining chefs are becoming more commonplace, partially a legacy of the recession and partially because diners habits are changing. In the cases of Keller and Lefebvre, their experiments succeeded wildly because they came with a believable story of earnestness. They werent trying to wink at trendy consumers and say, Im so famous that I can make something simple into something gourmet. Rather, they tapped their roots, created approachable dishes and rang the cash register with a much larger public fan base  a successful marriage of product and positioning.

Going back to a political metaphor, just as when Ted Cruz used New York values as an impugnment against Donald Trump, foods origin stories can connote a lot about how trustworthy and relatable they are. A recent victim of this hubris in the food world is the Chipotle restaurant chain. For years they cast aspersions at their quick-service competitors for using ingredients that were from big agriculture and therefore, perhaps less wholesome. Chipotle built itself a tall pedestal from which to proclaim its support of sustainable sourcing practices  until those practices proved flawed and rampant media coverage of food-borne illness brought the brand back down to reality.

Knowing when to play the local vs. locale card is important. At PadillaCRT, we represent a variety of food and beverage marketing boards, and sometimes the sense of place that we aim to convey is the sense of consistency on the grocers shelf. Locally grown may not be an asset when the nearby growing season for a particular fruit or vegetable is limited. For consumers and restaurateurs to have a reliable year-round supply of a particular product, sometimes it must be shipped in from elsewhere, and thats not necessarily an undesirable thing from a quality control standpoint (see also: Chipotle).

Locale is also the stronger of the messages when its an inherent part of the products mystique. For example, if youve never tasted a wine from the Rioja region of Spain, part of what youre initially buying is its connection to a vibrant culture and cuisine, without yet sipping to discover such nuances as acidity and tannins. In these cases, locally produced is obviously not the message that resonates best with consumers.

The net is, we food communicators are keeping on our toes more than ever to ensure what we say about our products is on the currently acceptable scale of the mass vs. the personal. We cant rest on old notions that certain products or brands inevitably mean a certain thing to consumers, lest we find ourselves in a Clinton/Sanders-esque challenge to be the most authentic food candidate.



* * *

Max Martens is Vice President at PadillaCRT.
As a community Clonaslee must surely rank as one of the most generous in the country as every year they all pull together for a major fund raising effort. This year the third annual Vintage Run takes place next weekend and all proceeds will be divided between Castlecuffe National School and the Niall Mellon Trust.

As a community Clonaslee must surely rank as one of the most generous in the country as every year they all pull together for a major fund raising effort. This year the third annual Vintage Run takes place next weekend and all proceeds will be divided between Castlecuffe National School and the Niall Mellon Trust.

Vintage enthusiasts from all over the midlands will gather at the Swan Bar in Clonaslee at 8.30am on Sunday May 6 where breakfast will be served before heading off on a scenic drive through the Slieve Blooms at 10.30am. The convoy will drive six miles to the Festival of the Mountain field in Rosenallis and then they will take an equally scenic short cut (which in typical mountain fashion is two miles shorter!) back to Clonaslee for a whole host of activities.

All sorts of vintage vehicles (pre 1980) are expected to participate including tractors, cars, lorries and motor bikes. There will be prizes for the various heats and also the Best Presented Vehicle will be awarded the Tommy OBrien Cup which went to Alan Mitchell last year for his pristine tractor.

Once back in Clonaslee on Sunday there will be all sorts of activity in the Square with an Auction, an Amateur Tug of War, a BBQ and other activities certain to be enjoyed by young and old alike - and everyeone aged in between too.

Master of Ceremonies for the day will be the very popular Rock on Paddy while Paddy Buckley, The Kinsellas and Friends will entertain from 6pm guaranteeing a fun filled day for everyone.

Funds raised will help offset the cost of the new car park, playground and playing pitch at Castlecuffe National School and the Niall Mellon Trust who have benefitted from the Vintage Run in the past. Last year cheques were also presented to the Offaly and Laois branches of the Irish Wheelchair Association.

Over 100 vehicles took part last year and the success of the event would not have been possible without the support of the local Gardai and the hard working organising committee:

Paddy Dillon

Paddy Fay

Michael Doolan

Sean Wisely

Jim Delaney

Ray Delaney

Brendan Kelly

Paddy Keating

Thomas Horan

John Joe Heaney

Sean Bracken

Elaine Delaney

Tom Doolan.

The organising committee extended sincere thanks to everyone in the local community for their ongoing support for the event, all the sponsors, Swans Bar for their hospitality and refreshments and to all the participants who come from as far away as Galway, Tipperary as well as throughout Laois and Offaly.

Duck Race

On the day there will also be a Duck Race, the entire proceeds of which will go to Castlecuffe National School. The Duck Race will commence at 3pm at the bridge in Clonaslee (on the Brittas Road). Ducks cost 5 each with heat winners receiving 20 and 10 - the number of heats will be dictated by the overall number of entries while the overall winner will get 100 for first place and 50 for second duck home.

The Niall Mellon Trust

The Niall Mellon Township Trust is a house building charity. They build houses throughout the year in the townships of South Africa. The Trust also runs a skills development programme, training people from those townships in a wide range of construction disciplines. They also run a short-term volunteer overseas programme bringing volunteers to build houses in the townships. There is no building experience required.

The Niall Mellon Township Trust was established by Niall Mellon in 2002 with the aim of providing quality social housing for the impoverished communities in the townships of South Africa. The Trust operates a year-round house building programme and are the largest charity provider of quality social housing in South Africa, having built 15,000 homes to-date. Headquartered in Ireland, the charity has offices in South Africa and the US.

The Tommy OBrien Cup

Last year the Maher family donated the Tommy OBrien Cup to the Clonaslee Vintage committee in memory of Tommy who worked with them for many years and was a huge vintage enthusiast. The Cup will be awarded each year to the person with the best turned out tractor. Last years winner was a very deserving Alan Mitchell. The Maher family said the Cup was a gesture on their part to honour Tommy who was a valued employee and family friend.
croghan Hill is the subject of a glossy new publication which was launched at a very special ceremony in Croghan last Friday evening. The book evolved from a study which commenced in 2010 by Masters degree students from UCD working in conjunction with renowned local author and environmentalist Dr John Feehan.

croghan Hill is the subject of a glossy new publication which was launched at a very special ceremony in Croghan last Friday evening. The book evolved from a study which commenced in 2010 by Masters degree students from UCD working in conjunction with renowned local author and environmentalist Dr John Feehan.

The book launch last Friday night was hosted by Croghan Development Association who also assisted in the production of the book which provides an extremely detailed history of the area from its volcanic history to the impact modern man has had on the famous Croghan Hill.

Among the attendance on Friday night were local curate Fr Greg Corcoran, County Manager Pat Gallagher, Amanda Pedlow Offaly Heritage Officer, Offaly County Councillors, Dr John Feehan and the people of Croghan.

Roisin Swords of Croghan Development Association acted as Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening. She outlined the background to the book that started its incubation period in 2010/11 under the direction of Dr John Feehan and his Master Degree students at the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin when they commenced a new study on the landscape of Croghan with the interaction of human activity on the area since time began.

The study, by an international postgraduate group at UCD, would involve 20 students of different nationalities who would bring a whole new vision and appreciation of Croghan as they researched their specific areas of study.

The group consisted of 12 Irish, 3 from Malawi, 3 Nigerians and 1 each from Greece and England. They carried out some of their field work while staying in the Croghan area and during this time made many friends here, pointed out Roisin.

When this work was finished, which again formed part of their Master Degree Thesis it was agreed by Croghan Development Association that they should talk with Dr Feehan and Amanda Pedlow, Offaly Heritage Officer seeking advice, guidance and support with regards to developing this research work. Dr Feehan agreed that a publication on Croghan was very important because of its interesting landscape. It was agreed thatsuch a publication was very important so that people could understand in greater detail how the area had developed over many thousands of years.

It was equally felt that this new publication would offer a greater appreciation of the importance of the Croghan landscape in the context of its relationship to the heritage of Offaly and the greater midlands. Finally it was felt that the book would form part of a new educational source for all people who are interested in learning more about the area and who might like to further add to the body of knowledge now written so interestingly by Dr Feehan.

Fr Corcoran pointed out that forty two years ago he was born in the shadow of Croghan Hill and that it was one of those places about which there was always a great mystique. He recalled the tradition that every St Patricks Day they would always come to Croghan Hill to visit and burn the furze.

The book is a monument to the work of John Feehan, Oliver and the different local people, said Fr Corcoran. He said he believed the book is an absolute treasure and while it was very much appreciated on the night, it would only be in years to come that it would be fully appreciated by people far and wide throughout the world.

A full report on the book and the launch will appear in next weeks Offaly Express.
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Work to shore up the damaged walls of the fire-ravaged Ms Pub building could begin as soon as Friday.

Once the building is determined to be structurally sound, the now-closed section of 11th Street in front of Ms could reopen.

Nicholas Bonham-Carter, a partner in the Mercer Management property firm that owns the Ms building in Omahas Old Market, told The World-Herald that the project could take several weeks to several months. Construction will start as soon as the necessary equipment is available, he said  as soon as today or Monday.

Tenants of the building  including the Nouvelle Eve boutique  removed what they could late this week from their damaged spaces to prepare for the construction.

Omaha City Planning Superintendent Jay Davis said the east, south and north walls of the Ms building will be braced. Then debris can be cleaned out of the building.

Once that happens, reconstruction can begin. Davis estimates that to be about a month off.

No other long-term road closures are expected in the area, he said.

Susie Keuck, owner of Nouvelle Eve, said she hired a contractor to clean out the store Wednesday to prepare for the coming construction  emptying the showroom, basement and the second-floor office.

Nouvelle Eve, which has been on 11th and Howard Streets for more than 40 years, was inundated with water, smoke, and shattered glass and other debris during the Jan. 9 explosion and fire.

Picking up after the disaster was an emotional roller coaster, said Keuck, as she came across pictures, art and mementos of people who worked or shopped there. Its like your grandma dies and you have to clean out the house.

Keuck, who had been the stores general manager since 2006, purchased it from founder Kat Moser in 2012. Keuck said shes seeking a temporary location for Nouvelle Eve, hoping to negotiate a short-term or month-to-month lease with a landlord.

On a brighter note, Keuck said, Mercer Management has hinted that the Nouvelle Eve space might be ready sooner rather than later  even before the entire building reopens.

Theyre saying two to five years to reopen the whole building, but I think they might try to get Nouvelle Eve open in two years, she said.

We want 1102 Howard back for sure, she said of the stores longtime location.

Le Wonderment, at 421 S. 11th St., also has been closed since the fire. But now, after weeks of scrubbing and reordering inventory damaged in the disaster, owner Peggy Pawloski and store manager Catherine Saarela-Irvin say theyre aiming to reopen the toy and gift store April 1.

Smoke and debris poured through the stores front window, which shattered from the natural gas explosion across the street in Ms Pub.

Meanwhile, spring weather and the reopening of the 11th and Howard Streets intersection has allowed some Old Market merchants, including Souq Ltd., a womens apparel and gift shop, and Scooters, at 1123 Howard St., to bounce back from a slow period immediately after the fire.

Mary Jo Maley, an employee at Souq Ltd. in the Old Market Passageway, said store traffic has returned to pre-fire levels.

Things are getting back to where they should be, Maley said.

Scooters Coffeehouse barista Tyesha Smith agreed.

Its been really busy and everybodys coming back.

On the other hand, several nearby restaurants and merchants say its been a tough sell since the explosion and fire rocked the neighborhood, closed streets, shut stores and appeared to deter some shoppers from visiting the Old Market.

Omaha Prime steakhouse, 415 S. 11th St., said that although the sidewalk has reopened in front of the restaurants entrance, the street is still blocked off, impeding hotel shuttles from dropping off diners at the door.

Thats really hurting us majorly, owner Mo Tajvar said. He has hung some decorative lights near the sidewalk to draw attention.

Loyal customers have carried the business through the hard times, Tajvar said.

If they used to come once a month, now they come twice a month.

The intersections opening and First National Banks call to action a few weeks ago  the bank encouraged people to support the Old Market  has made a difference.

That got a lot of peoples attention from west Omaha, Tajvar said.

Hes also encouraged to see work beginning on the scorched building across the street.

At least thats a step in the right direction.

Yi-Fang Popp, owner of Yis Handcraft Jewelry in the Old Market Passageway, 1028 Howard St., said that sales of her wares  handmade jewelry that blends Asian and Western styles  have just picked up after a two-month lull.

January and February have always been slow months, she said. But the fire did make it really quiet for a while. My sales were much lower than last year. Popp launched her store four years ago.

I think theres more traffic now, she said of this past week. I think business is finally taking off.

Six weeks ago, the All About Me womens boutique at 419 S. 11th St. reopened after owner Cindy Hoover spent a month replacing smoke-damaged merchandise. Since then, business has been slow, said manager Lisa Melton.

Weve had a few really good days here and there since reopening, but were not meeting our sales goals, she said. Compared to last year, its not the same.

Like some other merchants, Melton said shes crossing her fingers and hoping that warmer weather will draw more shoppers to the Old Market.

Just come on, spring! she said.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1142, janice.podsada@owh.com

Read more
A member of Russias parliament is drafting a law to ban statements harming the honor and dignity of the Russian president. Those convicted would face three to six years in jail. Lawmaker Roman Khudyakov told the Russian newspaper Izvestia he was outraged by online videos that mocked President Vladimir Putin, something comics have done for decades on U.S. late-night TV. Well take our right of free speech over a politicians dignity every time.
The troubling military developments in North Korea and Iran show the need for our country to strengthen its missile defenses.

North Korea is refining its nuclear weapons program and successfully test-firing long-range rockets. Its a sobering possibility that one day those missiles could be nuclear-tipped.

As for Iran, while it may have scaled back its nuclear program for the moment, the Revolutionary Guard has thumbed its nose at the United Nations Security Council by testing ballistic missiles in violation of a U.N. resolution. Its an open question whether the Iranian regime can be compelled over the long term to refrain from arming its missiles with nuclear warheads.

The U.S. government recognized the possibility of long-term security threats such as these in 1999, when then-President Bill Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act. The law calls for a system to protect against a limited ballistic missile assault.

In 2004, the Pentagon began carrying out that vision by installing a rudimentary system of interceptor missiles at sites in California and Alaska. The system  aimed at destroying hostile missiles in mid-course as they take a direct route across the Arctic Circle toward the United States  was admittedly in prototype mode and has had only a modest success rate during tests.

Its crucial to improve that system in the wake of North Korean and Iranian actions. Fortunately, the U.S. military is making progress.

The U.S. early warning system will receive a major boost when new long-range radars are installed in Alaska around 2020. This advanced technology will have several advantages, including being able to distinguish hostile missiles from decoys and debris.

The military is increasing the number of ground-based interceptors at the California and Alaska sites. And by the start of the 2020s, the Pentagon is aiming to have a redesigned missile interceptor in place, offering greater reliability.

Meanwhile, the United States and allies in Europe and Asia are working to put forward-based ballistic missile defenses in place using land- and sea-based facilities. The systems components: Aegis naval vessels armed with interceptor missiles. Mobile land-based systems such as Patriot and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). And portable radars and additional sensors.

If North Korea or Iran ever develops a large inventory of nuclear missiles, the defensive challenge for the United States would become far more difficult, military leaders say. The Pentagon is pursuing research and testing of various technologies in hopes of countering this potential threat.

Adm. William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command, described the need in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: Were going to need more capability to engage the threat through its flight, keep them on the ground, kill them on the [launch] rails, kill them in boost phase and then get more warheads in space in mid-course.

Missile defense, buttressed by diplomatic action, is a practical need in the face of provocative actions by North Korea and Iran. Our military deserves support as it works to provide us with needed protection against this threat.
THURSDAY, March 17, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Sit-stand desks are fixtures in many offices today. But new research finds little proof of health benefits associated with their use.

Experts warn that long periods of sitting can increase the risk of heart disease and obesity. Adjustable desks that let you stand or sit while working are among the approaches being tried to reduce time spent seated on the job.

"It is important that workers who sit at a desk all day take an interest in maintaining and improving their well-being both at work and at home," said study co-author Jos Verbeek, from the Cochrane Work Review Group in Kuopio, Finland.

"However, at present, there is not enough high-quality evidence available to determine whether spending more time standing at work can repair the harms of a sedentary lifestyle," he added.

The report was published March 17 in the Cochrane Library.

"Standing instead of sitting hardly increases energy expenditure, so we should not expect a sit-stand desk to help in losing weight. It's important that workers and employers are aware of this, so that they can make more informed decisions," Verbeek added in a journal news release.

The findings stem from a review of 20 studies that assessed sit-stand desks and other methods of improving health behaviors at work, such as taking walking breaks. Nearly 2,200 people were involved in all.

Six studies focused on popular sit-stand desks. People who used these desks sat between 30 minutes and two hours less during the work day than those who used conventional desks, the researchers found. Sit-stand desks also reduced total sitting time at and away from work, and the length of sitting sessions that lasted 30 minutes or more.

Additionally, increased standing did not lead to varicose veins, musculoskeletal pain or a lower productivity, the researchers said.

Based on these results, it's too soon to recommend buying a sit-stand desk, the researchers concluded.

"We think that people who are considering investing in sit-stand desks and the other interventions covered in this review should be aware of the limitations of the current evidence base in demonstrating health benefits," lead author Nipun Shrestha, of the Health Research and Social Development Forum in Thapathali, Nepal, said in the news release. "There is also low-quality evidence of modest benefits for other types of interventions."

For instance, taking a walk during work breaks was not found to lower the amount of time spent sitting at work.

Many of the studies reviewed were small and poorly designed, said the authors, noting more research is needed to draw firm conclusions.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute offers a guide to physical activity.
Golden intelligence rule: When your cover is blown, you are on your own

Maulana Masood Azhar detained: Good news, but also read in between the lines

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Pakistan has conveyed to India that all action relating to the Pathankot attack is being taken. One of the better news that Pakistan has provided India that it appears to be serious about acting against Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar.

The wording has changed this time. After the Pathankot attack, Pakistan had said that it had detained Azhar. However Pakistan also added the word "Protective" against detention which left many of us confused.

Pathankot probe- NIA team likely to visit Islamabad soon

However, this time around Pakistan has conveyed to India that he has been detained.

Currently Pakistan can only detain Azhar. The decision to put him to trial can be taken only once the investigations are complete. The Pakistan team of investigators who are probing the Pathankot attack is examining the evidence shared by India.

India has stated that Azhar had masterminded the attack. The man from Bhawalpur, Pakistan had ordered the attack, India has also said. However Pakistan has not confirmed any direct role by Azhar and says that the investigations are on.

The detention of Azhar is good news says an NIA officer. It will help the probe a great deal as he will not be out in the open to influence the probe, the officer also added.

However beware of the trick

In the case of a detention, it could be done without charges. Moreover detentions are done for a variety of reasons ranging from preventive to protective.

A technicality that Pakistan rides on The news relating to Maulana Masood's arrest is very similar what we got to witness with Hafiz Saeed after the Mumbai 26/11 attack.

Following an attack of such a magnitude, there is pressure on Pakistan from various quarters to take action against the masterminds of the attack.

If one were to see the manner in which Pakistan acts in such situations, it becomes clear that they take the likes of Saeed or Azhar into protective custody. Pakistan's minister Rana Sanaulla even confirmed that Azhar had been taken into protective custody.

Protective custody could mean anything. It could either be to protect him from a drone hit or an attempt to prevent him from planning another attack. Indian officials say that this is always a technicality that Pakistan relies on from time to time.

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 9:52 [IST]
Why Taj Mahal will not be illuminated with tricolor lights this Independence Day

Taj Mahal has Fewer Foreign Tourists

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

India witnesses 11.3% growth in foreign tourist arrivals in February 2016 over the same period in 2015. Bangladesh accounted for the highest share of foreign tourists visiting India followed by tourists from the US and the UK in February 2016.

During the month of February 2016 India earned foreign exchange worth Rs. 13, 627 just through tourism.

Fewer Foreign Tourists Visiting Taj Mahal:

While India has witnessed an increase in the number of foreign tourists, it has been observed that fewer foreign tourists have been visiting Taj Mahal during the year 2012 to 2014.

The number of foreign tourists who visited Taj Mahal in 2012 was 7,43,256, during 2013 it was 6,95,702 and in 2014 it decreased further to 6,48,511.

Reasons for decrease in foreign tourists:

No market study has been done to pinpoint the reasons for fall in footfalls of foreign tourists to Taj Mahal. However, some of the factors determining international tourist arrivals in any tourist destination including Taj Mahal (Agra) are: the prevailing travel trends, economies of the tourism source markets, connectivity, availability of reasonably priced hotel accommodation, good tourism infrastructure etc.

Remedial measures taken by Ministry of Tourism to ensure the safety and security of foreign tourists:

The remedial measures taken by Ministry of Tourism to ensure the safety and security of tourists are important to attract more foreign tourists as rise in crime against foreign tourists is a major reason for drop in foreign visitors. The remedial measeres from Ministry of Tourism for protecting and helping foreign tourists are as under:

The Ministry of Tourism has launched the 24X7 Toll Free Multi-Lingual Tourist Helpline in 12 International Languages including Hindi and English on 8th of February 2016. This service is available on the toll free number 1800111363 or on a short code 1363 and operational 24X 7 (all days) in a year offering a "multi-lingual helpdesk" in the designated languages to provide support service in terms of providing information relating to Travel and Tourism in India to the domestic and International tourists and to assist the callers with advice on action to be taken during times of distress while travelling in India and if need be alert the concerned authorities. The calls made by tourists (both international and domestic) while in India will be free of charge. Adoption of code of conduct for Safe and Honourable Tourism, which contains a set of guidelines to encourage tourism activities to be undertaken with respect to basic rights like dignity, safety and freedom from exploitation of both tourists and local residents, in particular women and children. All the Chief Ministers of the State Governments and Administrators of Union Territory Administrations have been asked to take immediate effective steps for ensuring a conducive and friendly environment for all tourists and also request them to publicise the steps being taken or proposed to be taken to increase the sense of security amongst the present and prospective visitors and also to counter the negative publicity, if any. The National Tourism Ministers' Conference was convened on 18th July, 2013 and 21st August 2014 in New Delhi which resolved that the Departments of Tourism of all States and UTs will work for ensuring the safety and security of tourists, especially women. The State Governments and UT Administrations of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha have deployed Tourist Police, in one form or the other. Grant of Central Financial Assistance to the State Governments of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh for setting up of Tourist Facilitation and Security Organisation (TFSO) on a pilot basis. In the wake of some unfortunate incidents happening involving foreign tourists, Ministry of Tourism posts an advisory on its website www.incredibleindia.org. The Ministry of Tourism has issued the Guidelines on Safety and Security of Tourists for State Governments/Union Territories and Tips for Travellers in September 2014. These guidelines were sent to the State Governments and Union Territories and other relevant authorities to stress the importance of safety and risk management, assist in identifying best practices and encourage closer cooperation for ensuring a pleasant experience to the tourists. The Guidelines are indicative references that may be useful to the States in sharing or adopting the best practices and design their domestic measures to better protect tourists. In addition to these guidelines "Tips to Travellers" are also offered to make the visit of tourists to Incredible India, a memorable experience.

One can only hope that post so many remedial measures more foreign tourists will visit Taj Mahal which is the best piece of Mughal Architecture again.

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 11:52 [IST]
World Sufi Forum welcomes Narendra Modi with Bharat Mata Ki Jai shouts

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the World Sufi Forum in New Delhi yesterday. The Forum was convened by the All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board to discuss the role of Sufiism in countering rising global terror.

The Forum debated long-term alternatives to counter rising issues of radicalisation and use of terror in the name of religion. The Forum emphasised and reasserted India's position as one of the global centres for moderate ideology in Islam.

It is a four day event and it will be attended by several delegates, including foreign delegates from 20 countries. Spiritual leaders, scholars, academicians and theologists from Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, UK, US, Canada and Pakistan among other countries are to be present for the event.

Prime Minister welcomed with 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai':

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived to address World Sufi Forum he was welcomed with shouts of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. The shouts were heard repeatedly as he talked to the elite crowd gathered.

Some quotable quotes from PM Modi's speech are:

"At a time when the dark shadow of violence is becoming longer, you are the noor."

"When young laughter is silenced by guns on the streets, you are the voice that heals."

"For the Sufis, service to God meant service to humanity."

"Sufism is a celebration of diversity and pluralism."

"Sufism is the voice of peace, co-existence, compassion and equality."

"Sufism blossomed in India's openness and pluralism."

"Sufism helped shape a distinct Islamic heritage of India."

"Sufism's contribution to poetry in India is huge."

"All our people, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, micro-minority of Parsis, believers, non-believers, are integral part of India."

"Terrorism and extremism have become the most destructive force of our times."

"The fight against terrorism is a struggle between the values of humanism and the forces of inhumanity."

Prime Minister on separating Religion and Terrorism:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his speech categorically said that, "The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion. It cannot be."

He also added that, "It is also a battle that must be won through the strength of our values and the real message of religions. As I have said before, we must reject any link between terrorism and religion. Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious."

PM Modi further created word picture of sorrow that terrorism spreads when he said that, "Each day brings us terrible news and horrifying images; of schools turned into graveyards of innocence; of prayer gatherings turned into funeral processions, of call to prayer or Azaan drowned by the sound of explosion; of blood on the beach, massacres in malls and smouldering cars on streets; of thriving cities ruined and priceless heritage destroyed; and, of parents bearing coffins, entire communities dislocated, millions displaced, and refugees caught between fire and stormy seas."

How Prime Minister praised India:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised India by calling it land that is a timeless fountain of peace, and an ancient source of traditions and faiths, which has received and nurtured religions from the world.

He further added in praise of India that, "Welcome to a people with an abiding belief in Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the World is one family."

Sufi greats PM Narendra Modi quoted:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted Persian Sufi poet Saadi; Sufi saints Mehboob-e-Ilahi and Hazrat Bakhtiyar Kaki; Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya; Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti; Bulleh Shah; Baba Farid; Amir Khusrau; Maulana Hussain Madani; and Jalaluddin Rumi among others.

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 16:49 [IST]
Cisco Chairman John Chambers meets PM Narendra Modi

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 18: John Chambers, Chairman of US tech giant Cisco, today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the firm's role in various government initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India and cyber security issues.

"During the meeting, he explained to Prime Minister the elements of Cisco's Country Digitisation Acceleration Programme, and how it is aligned to the PM's vision and initiatives including Digital India, Skill India, Make in India, Start Up India, Smart Cities and Cyber Security initiatives," an official statement said.

Appreciating the initiatives taken by Cisco, Modi emphasised benefits of technology in areas like long distance education and in eliminating leakages in subsidy.

He also discussed possibilities of cooperation in the area of cyber security, the statement said. The USD 143-billion firm has over 10,000 people in India.

It is also setting up a manufacturing base in Pune to locally make products to "support the Digital India vision" and aims to eventually make it an export hub.

Cisco invests about USD 1.7 billion every year in India. During December quarter, Cisco saw its global revenues grow by 2 per cent to USD 11.8 billion (excluding SP Video CPE Business for all periods), helped by growth in markets like India (23 per cent).

Its India business has continued to grow at a steady pace over the last seven quarters. Yesterday, Cisco signed an agreement with Andhra Pradesh government to be a part of India's first state-wide broadband project, 'AP Fiber-Net' here.

Under the project, 15 Mbps broadband connection will be provided at Rs 149 per month to households and 100 Mbps connection for offices at Rs 999 per month.

Electrical poles will be used to lay overhead fiber net cable instead of underground cable to save on the cost.

Cisco is also setting up an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam to foster regional innovation and will enable partners and startups to build solutions around IoE and engage in rapid prototyping.

In addition, Cisco will also invest in an advanced Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in the Institute of Digital Technology (IDT), Tirupati to focus on cyber security, smart city and manufacturing solutions.

The centre will help train graduate engineers in advanced digital technologies and solutions and equip them with skill sets required for the digital era. Besides, the company will also sponsor and collaborate with Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on a 12-month research program to identify and explore the possibility of developing and customising digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh.

PTI
Cow bandh evokes mixed response; 110 detained in Saurashtra

India

oi-PTI

Rajkot, Mar 18: Nearly 110 cow protection activists were rounded up from various parts of Saurashtra region amid a Gujarat bandh call given by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti' in support of their demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata".

The bandh got a mixed response in Rajkot district and some parts of Saurashtra. However, the shutdown did not have much pull outside Saurashtra region.

In Rajkot city, most of the shops located in the main market in Dharmendra Road area were closed in the morning hours, while shops and offices remained unaffected. The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti exempted educational institutes and health care services from the bandh.

Nearly 15 persons protesting at Trikaun baugh area were detained by the police in Rajkot.

"We detained 15 persons who were protesting at Trikaun Baugh area. There was a report of road blockade. Barring this, the bandh was observed in a peaceful manner," Pradhyuman Nagar Police Inspector Manish Nakum said.

The Rajkot City Police had made adequate security measures by deploying 800 policemen and four companies of State Reserve Police (SRP). Some 60 cow protection activists were taken into custody in Morbi town of Rajkot district town, 'A' division Police Inspector N K Vyas said.

"Nearly 35 persons were rounded up in Manavadar town of Porbandar district as they blocked the road and disrupted traffic," Manavadar PSI S V Gojiya said.

As many as eight cow right activists had yesterday consumed pesticide at District Collector's office premises here after which they were all rushed to the civil hospital. One of them, identified as Hindabhai Vambadiya, died at the civil hospital.

Two of the seven-- Dinesh Loriya (42) and Raghuvirsinh Jadeja (27)-- are in a critical condition. The Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti had called for the bandh while Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) had extended their support to it.

The activists also submitted a memorandum to the city mamlatdar Pragyesh Jani demanding that cow should be announced as "Rashtra Mata" and protection for cow protectors. The activist also demanded compensation for the family members of Hindabhai as he had sacrificed his life for cow protection.

PTI
Thailand is Asias first country to legalise cannabis, but you cant get high

Drug markers body says govt's ban 'arbitrary and unfair'

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, March 18: Terming the decision to ban 344 fixed dose combination medicines as "arbitrary and unfair", pharma industry has said it feels let down by the government. "The industry feels let down. We feel we were not given a fair chance.

The government's order to ban 344 FDCs enblock is arbitrary and unfair," Indian drug manufacturers' association (IDMA) President S V Veerramani said.

The products worth Rs 5,000 crore have been banned for manufacture, distribution and sale with immediate effect causing hardship to manufacturers and patients, he added.

In a gazette notification on March 10, the government had banned 344 FDCs including ban on manufacture, sale and distribution of fixed does combination of chlopheniramine maleate plus codiene syrup which is used in the cough syrups.

When being asked what in his opinion is the way forward, Veeramani said: "We are meeting the government and will ask them to reconsider the ban. It will impact the Make in India campaign." This is also not in the public interest as the patients will be denied useful FDCs, he added.

"The amount of time, money and environmental impact in destroying these procedures will be huge," Federation of Pharma Entrepreneurs (FOPE) Chairman R C Juneja said. There was no proper discussion with the industry before the ban, he added. Several companies have approached Delhi High Court, which has granted interim stay on the government decision.

PTI
Bihar: Girls protest after being asked to remove Hijab during exam

Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000

Gifts worth Rs 30 lakh for Lawmakers for attending Budget session in Bihar

India

oi-Shalini

Patna, March 18: Bihar MLAs on Friday, March 18 were given gifts to attend the Budget Session in the State Assembly at Patna. Terming this a 'traditional practice' legislators were gifted with bags, microwaves oven, phones by the state's Educational Department worth Rs 30 lakh.

An RJD leader told OneIndia that " after the budget was presented, the MLAs were given gifts every day during the session by different departments", while adding that just on the other day they were presented with Mobile phones and suitcases.

According to media reports, the microwave which has been gifted cost Rs 11, 125 each to the state Education Department.

Ashok Chowdhary, State education minister said, "it's just matter of few lakhs."

Chowdhary further said, "These gifts will help MLAs in their areas to heat up the food for eating."

Tejaswi Yadav, Deputy CM of Bihar said, "It's a common tradition" and urged the media persons not to sensationalise the matter.

Ramjanam Sharma, a BJP MLA, criticised this so called 'traditional act' of the ruling government and said "there is a major crisis of water in the state and ruling government leaders are wasting public money rather than utilising it for the welfare of people."

OneIndia News
Singapore Tourism Board in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) organised a Smart Cities and Urban Solutions Summit in the capital city.

Attended by key corporate opinion leaders and entrepreneurs, The Singapore Dialogue focused on learning from best urban planning practices pioneered by the city state. The panel comprising Mr. Anandan Karunakaran, SVP - Surbana Jurong Planning Group; Stanley Samuel, Founder & CEO - ECOSOFTT and Mukundan Venkatachari, Hyflux; discussed key learnings from smart cities like Singapore against the current Indian context. Furthermore, urban solutions such as waste water management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, as well as good governance were hot topics amongst the attendees.

Anandan Karunakan, Senior Vice President of Surbana Jurong Pvt. Ltd., who addressed the audience on Singapores transformation, rapid and efficient urbanization shared his thoughts about how Singapores model of efficiency has inspired several other countries. He said, "Given the challenges of limited size and resources, Singapore's success stories of integrated and innovative urban solutions are very encouraging. The key pillars that define Singapore's urban planning system are: quality and affordable housing for Singaporeans, the amount of green space which makes it one of the most liveable cities in the world and added to this is an integrated and efficient transport system.

Another key success is Singapores sustainable water solutions. Mukundan Venkatachari, Managing Director at Hyflux Engineering (India) Pvt Ltd, who highlighted the ways which Singapore has managed to overcome its lack of natural water resources, said, Singapore treasures four key sources of water, which are - local catchment areas where Rain Water Harvesting has been implemented that ensures water is distributed to 17 man-made water reservoirs; imported water from Malaysia; waste water management is efficiently operated with the presence of 3 waste water plants and underground pipelines in Singapore; and the fourth source is Desalination that accounts for25% of national water requirement.

Stanley Samuel, CEO, ECOSOFT, who also spoke about the importance of water and waste management in urban areas, highlighted how the company has drawn from the Singapores best practices and applied them in the Indian context. He elaborated, "In Singapore, every drop of water is respectfully captured, harvested, used and reused multiple times. If and when discharged, it's done in a very environment friendly way. Likewise, we consult with corporates, schools, farmers, communities and industries to reduce water wastage by 50% and discharge waste water in environment friendly ways. We also conduct programmes to educate them about utilising existing water resources.

Ms Yuemin Li-Misra, Area Director of India and Bangladesh for Singapore Tourism Board, said, The positive turnout for the Smart Cities and Urban Solutions Summit brings to light how important sustainable urban solutions have become in our fast shrinking world. Being a country with no natural resources, Singapore has, and continues to tackle these issues through consistent development, innovation and integration in the field of science and technology. To share what we have learnt and exchange best practices, Singapore will be hosting world class events on Urban Solutions such as the World Cities Summit, Singapore International Water Week, CleanEnviro Summit Singapore and Singapore International Energy Week, hence reinforcing its commitment towards making lives cleaner, greener and smarter.



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Iron Fist: Its raining rockets and missiles in Pokhran

India

oi-Oneindia

By OneIndia Defence Bureau

New Delhi, March 18: The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Friday exhibited its day and night operational capabilities during the Fire Power Demonstration (FPD), Iron Fist. The simulated demonstration involving around 22 types of IAF platforms is currently underway as the preliminary report goes live on OneIndia.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have enjoyed every bit of the show, with the Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha explaining the finer details of the FPD earlier.

With President Pranab Mukherjee, as the Supreme Commander of Indian armed forces giving the symbolic nod to begin the proceedings, a MiG variant performed a sound-barrier-breaking maneuver, at speeds of 1300 km.

IAF showcased its Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) capabilities with the Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) system making a smooth fly-past. Built on a modified Embraer EMB-145I aircraft, the AEW&C system is currently undergoing flight trials. It is a project under Centre for Airborne Systems (CABS), a DRDO lab based out of Bengaluru.

Exactly at 5:34 pm (IST), India's Light Combat Aircraft Tejas dropped a Laser-Guided Bomb shattering a target marked No 3, exhibiting its ground attack capabilities. Switching over its role into a perfect air defence platform, Tejas soon fired an R-73 air-to-air missile, targeting flares dropped by a MiG variant.

Interestingly, moments after Tejas finished its mission, social media was active with question as to whether the R-73 did actually disseminate the target.

Another desi platform, the Light Combat Helicopter too fired rockets one after the other, cleaning up the simulated ground targets.

Earlier speaking on the occasion, the CAS Arup Raha said that the Indian Army, the Indian Navy and the IAF are prepared fully to undertake joint operations in any level.

"Be it tactical, operations or strategic in nature. We are fully geared," Raha said.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 19:18 [IST]
JNU row: Umar Khalid, Bhattacharya get 6 months bail

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 18: The Patiala House court has granted conditional bail for six months to Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya who were accused of sedition in connection with the JNU row. The court which had reserved its verdict after hearing at length both the prosecution and the defence pronounced the order today.

The bail was granted subject to certain conditions. The court granted the bail for a period of six months and asked the accused to furnish surety and a bail bond. The duo have also been told to cooperate with the investigations.

Khalid and Bhattacharya were arrested in connection with the JNU row. Both were accused of sedition after an event in which they participated to celebrate the martyrdom of Afzal Guru witnessed anti national sloganeering. The duo were accused of indulging in anti national sloganeering.

During the course of the hearing the defence counsel argued that the videos being relied upon by the police were doctored and hence cannot be used as evidence. Further it was stated that citizens who criticise the government cannot be charged under sedition.

The Delhi police however opposed the bail stating that if they were let out investigations would be hampered. The probe is at a crucial stage and hence they could not be granted bail, the Delhi police also argued.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 16:23 [IST]
MP police arrests two for posting morphed pic of Mohan Bhagwat on social media

India

oi-Mukul

MP, Mar 18: Two youths have been arrested by Madhya Pradesh police allegedly for sharing a morphed image of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Youths identified as as Shaqir (22) and Wasim (20) were arrested after RSS and BJP workers registered complaint regarding the same. BJP workers alleged that duo had hurt sentiments of Hindus by their obnoxious act.

Speaking about the incident Antar Singh Kanesh who is additional SP of Bhikangaon town said that two men were arrested on March 16 for uploading the morphed picture of Bhagwat in a local social networking group.

Controversy took ugly turn after photo went viral on the social media. Antar Singh Kanesh further said that a case under Sections 67 of the IT Act and 505 (2) of IPC was registerd following after the strong objection of Hindu activists.

However, the accused claimed that they had received the photo from some other group and they just forwarded it further. Both Shaqir and Wasim were arrested and later sent to judicial custody till March 30.

Last year, the Supreme Court had termed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act 'unconstitutional'. In a landmark judgement upholding freedom of expression, the Supreme Court struck down a provision in the cyber law which provides power to arrest a person for posting allegedly "offensive" content on websites.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from agency)
Organisers of weddings, functions to pay fine for failing to clean plastic waste

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 18: Organisers of weddings, political rallies, religious gatherings and other such events will be responsible for removing plastic litter at the venue and any violations will invite penalties, the government announced today.

The new Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, notified by the Environment Ministry also brings rural areas under its ambit and stipulates that only authorised shops and street vendors may provide plastic bags to customers after displaying "prominently" that they would be charged for the same.

The new rules have also increased the minimum thickness of plastic carry bags from the earlier 40 to 50 micron. Environment Ministry officials said that from now on, plastic bags whose thickness is below 50 micron have been banned.

"15,000 tonnes of plastic waste are generated everyday of which 9,000 tonnes are collected. The rest 6,000 tonnes remains uncollected. In a year, 2 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated.

"Therefore, the Centre is notifying the new plastic waste management rules today. This is part of revamping all the waste management rules, including solid waste, e-waste, biomedical waste, construction and demolition and hazardous waste management," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters here.

He said that earlier these rules were applicable at the town level but have been now extended to all villages and gram panchayats. He said the rules are being notified after a process that lasted ten months and involved consultations and deliberations.

"Waste generators, including institutional generators, event organisers shall not litter the plastic waste but segregate it and hand it over to the authorised agency. (They should) pay user fee as prescribed by urban local bodies and spot fine in case of violation," the new rules said.

The new rules said that the manufacture and use of non- recyclable multi-layered plastic will also be phased out within a span of two years.

PTI
The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married

Pathankot probe- NIA team likely to visit Islamabad soon

India

oi-Vicky

A team of the National Investigating Agency is likely to visit Islamabad in connection with the probe into Pathankot attack.

Yesterday Pakistan had intimated India that its team of investigators would be in India for 4 days starting March 27th, to probe the Pathankot attack.

An officer with the NIA informed OneIndia that the visit is likely. However, the dates have not been fixed as yet.

The Pakistan team would first visit India and probe into the matter. After the information is shared by Pakistan, then the NIA team is scheduled to visit Islamabad.

Also Read: Pak Pathankot JIT to arrive in India on March 27: Swaraj

The visit by the NIA would help strengthen the probe. The details that the Pakistan investigators would provide will be corroborated with the information that we have collected, the NIA official also informed.

The NIA is also contemplating visiting Bhawalpur, the headquarters of the Jaish-e-Mohammad which carried out the attack on Pathankot.

Also Read: Pathankot mystery- Two terrorists will remain unidentified, Pakistan help will be sought

The Pakistan team which will visit India on March 27th will be accompanied by officials of the NIA. The team is also likely to schedule a visit to Bamiyal village, through which the terrorists are said to have infiltrated before carrying out the attack.

A visit to the airbase is also on the cards. The Minister of state for home affairs had indicated yesterday that the Pakistan team would be allowed to visit any site if it is necessary for the investigations.
Kerala temples as iconic as beaches but who will tell the tourism industry

PFI, SDPI Kerala camps: Will this accused spill the beans?

India

oi-Vicky

Thiruvananthapuram, March 18: The National Investigation Agency has commenced a full fledged probe into the activities of one K V Abdul Jalil who is alleged to have entered into a criminal conspiracy to train cadres of Popular Front of India (PFI) and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).

This case relates to one registered in Kerala popularly known as the Narath Training Camp case.

Jalil who is aged 40 is a resident of Kizhakekkedathu Vadakkepurayil, Thadathil House, Pandyamthadam, Narath, Kannur, Kerala. He was arrested by the NIA on March 17. He was shown as an absconding accused in the case.

The NIA says that Jalil was an office bearer of the Thanil foundation trust. This trust had provided its building to the cadres of the PFI and the SDPI at Narath in Kannur district.

According to the case by the NIA, the Narath training camp took place on April 23 2013. It was further alleged that the training camp which comprised over 21 members of both the PFI and the SDPI.

The cadres had gathered there and were imparted training in the use of explosives and weapons. Officials say that the camp was aimed at making the cadres battle ready and ensure that they undertook acts of terror in various parts of Kerala and also the other southern states.

In this case, the NIA special court had convicted 21 persons. Jalil's questioning would be crucial for the NIA which is further building on the case. He was part of the conspiracy as he had willingly provided the building knowing fully well what it was being used for.

He is very much part of the criminal conspiracy, the NIA says.

Jalil's questioning would be based on the relationship he shared with the cadres of the PFI and the SDPI. The NIA wants to know if he had provided the building in exchange for money or because he shared their ideology.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 9:16 [IST]
108-foot statue of Kempegowda to be unveiled by PM in Karnataka: Basavaraj Bommai

India making every effort to deal with global economic challenges: PM Modi at 'Rozgar mela'

Deepotsav 2022: In PM Modi's presence, 18 lakh diyas to create new world record in Ayodhya | Top points

PM to inaugurate Krishi Unnati Mela tomorrow

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 18: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will tomorrow inaugurate three-day 'Krishi Unnati Mela' providing information on new farm schemes and technologies that will help farmers double their incomes within the next few years.

The mela, or fair, is being held at the Pusa campus in the national capital.

Modi will give away 'Krishi Karman Awards' to states and progressive farmers who have made outstanding contribution in the field of agriculture.

He will also visit the theme pavilion and address farmers. "To reach out to farmers at the block level across the country, the whole event would be telecast live at block panchayat level for the first time," Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh told reporters.

The national fair, from March 19-21, will have separate workshops on key schemes like Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana, e-agriculture marketing, integrated farming system, Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sichai Yojan, soil health and livestock issues.

There will be live demonstration of agriculture and horticultural crops, animal husbandry, innovative technologies and farm mechanisation in big plots.

Both public and private companies will display their farm inputs and technologies in over 500 stalls. Krishi Karman Awards would be given away to eight states -- Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Meghalaya, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal -- for 2014-15.

The commendation awards would be given to three states -- Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa.

PTI
Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai

Rise above caste and religion: Jung to students

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, March 18: Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung on Friday, Mrach 18 asked students to rise above caste and religion and start thinking as an Indian to uplift the poor in the country.

Addressing the 11th convocation ceremony of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Jung said "if you can bring a smile on the face of the poorest man on the street that you see, your life is worth living."

Jung, who is chancellor of the university, also exhorted the girl students saying they were "second to none" and advised them to be never "awed" in the male presence and stand up to their rights.

A total of 73 gold medals were presented to the toppers of different courses run by the university during the convocation.

Degrees were conferred on 20,631 students of bachelors and masters courses. Besides, 59 PhD degrees were awarded in the ceremony held at West Campus of the university.

In the convocation address, chief guest ex-UGC chairman Prof Hari Gautam said that a university must produce not only great academicians, teachers and researchers but also employable graduates. "Our aim should be more focused on how to create capable and employable rather than millions of incapable graduates.

Transformation that society is going through warrants a rejuvenation in the way we teach and what we teach. Restructuring of our educational institutions is call of the day."

PTI
Some forces, groups are instruments of state policy: PM Modi

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 17: Asserting that there are terror groups that are instruments of state's policy and design, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said terrorism uses diverse motivations and causes that cannot be justified.

Addressing the first World Sufi Forum, Modi in an oblique reference to Pakistan said while some are trained in organised camps, there are others who "find their inspiration" in cyber space.

"There are forces and groups that are instruments of state policy and design. There are others recruited to the cause in misguided belief.

[None of the 99 names of Allah stands for violence: PM Modi]

"There are some who are trained in organised camps. There are those who find their inspiration in the borderless world of cyber space. Terrorism uses diverse motivations and causes, none of which can be justified," he said at the Forum convened by the All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board to discuss the role of Sufism in countering rising global terror.

Asserting that terrorists "distort" a religion, he said they kill and destroy more in their own land and people than they do elsewhere while making the entire world "insecure and violent".

"Terrorists distort a religion whose cause they profess to support. They kill and destroy more in their own land and among their own people than they do elsewhere. And, they are putting entire regions to peril and making the world more insecure and violent," he said.

Noting that terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion, the Prime Minister said it is a battle that must be won through the strength of values and "real" message of religions.

"The fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion. It cannot be. It is a struggle between the values of humanism and the forces of inhumanity.

"It is not a conflict to be fought only through military, intelligence or diplomatic means. It is also a battle that must be won through the strength of our values and the real message of religions," he said.

PTI
Nitish Kumar has been affected by his age: Prashant Kishor

Could not care less: Nitish on Amit Shahs jibe

Prashant Kishor claims Nitish Kumar in touch with BJP says don't be surprised if he joins hands with it again

UP polls 2017: Nitish Kumar to visit Varanasi, to address rally on April 10

India

oi-Preeti

Varanasi, March 18: After securing a landslide victory in its home state Bihar, Nitish Kumar is all set to sound the poll bugle for Uttar Pradesh assembly elections 2017.

According to media reports, Nitish is scheduled to hold a rally in Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of PM Narendra Modi, on April 10.

However, Nitish Kumar's JD(U) will keep a distance from the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.

Along-with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, his grand alliance partner in Bihar, RJD, national president Chaudhary Ajit Singh would also share the dais with him.

It must be noted that last year, taking a cue from the massive victory of the Grand Alliance against BJP in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had said that such a tie-up was possible in Uttar Pradesh. [Grand Alliance possible for UP polls, says Akhilesh Yadav]

Later, Samajwadi Party had stormed out of the Grand Alliance, as it was offered only five seats to contest, which it found inadequate.

OneIndia News
Why are so many teenagers in India joining the ISIS?

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 18: The arrest of a 19 year old from West Bengal in connection with an ISIS related case is a worrisome signal. The accused, Ashik Ahmed, is 19 years old, a mechanical engineering student who was good at studies.

NIA arrested 24 people for alleged links with ISIS

This arrest only goes on to show how the teenagers have become vulnerable to the ideology of the ISIS.

There were two other incidents involving teenagers in the recent past. While one girl from Delhi was picked up for counselling another from Pune too was questioned by the NIA.

The question that arises is why are so many teenagers from India falling trap to the ISIS. In all these three cases, there was one common platform for recruitment.

It was the internet where there are several videos of the ISIS that are hosted. Each one of them was attracted towards the ISIS through these videos and this only goes on to show the power of the internet.

NIA officials tell OneIndia that the basic scene of the crime is the internet. Most of them blindly believe what is being propagated on the internet and they have started to believe that the ISIS is the only saviour of Islam

One video and then a meeting:

The case of Ahmed is quite telling. A son of a farmer who struggled to send him to college, this resident of Hoogly was even brilliant at his studies. Pursuing his Mechanical Engineering diploma, Ahmed never came across as someone who could fall trap or be radicalised with so much ease.

A couple of months back, after college when he was surfing the internet, he came across a video. In that video there was a talk being given by one Mohammad Nafees who spoke about the plight of the Muslims in West Bengal. He even went on to name one MLA who had allegedly murdered a rival of his who incidentally was a Muslim.

The video impressed Ahmed who got in touch with Nafees. They both decided to meet in Kolkata and discuss. During the discussion, Nafees told him that the ISIS operates under the name Janood-al-Khalifa in India.

What India needs is global help in war against ISIS

He also said that if he was interested, he would make him the head in West Bengal. Both of them discussed at length the future course of action and Ahmed was also told that they had a network in other places in the country as well.

Ahmed was made the chief and according to the NIA there were around 5 others under him. The NIA in its remand application before the court which granted 5 days custody of Ahmed says that he attempted to recruit and radicalise youth in West Bengal.

NIA officials say that his name had cropped up following the arrest of Nafees. Both had gone about Kolkata and even identified some targets.

However the NIA adds that their primary agenda was to recruit youth. They had also proposed to identify youth in remote areas of West Bengal and rope them in. The NIA says that the probe is at a probe is at a very preliminary stage and more details are likely to emerge as the investigation progresses.

Tough task on hand:

For the Intelligence Bureau which monitors the online activities of the ISIS online, the job is extremely tough. We make several requests everyday for videos and propaganda material to be taken down.

However the moment one is taken down, three others appear, the IB official said.

We have noticed that a considerable amount of teenagers are getting attracted to the ISIS.

The problem is that they are vulnerable and hot blooded and hence they get sucked in easily. We have identified several such teenagers who we have found online. In many cases, we intimate the police who in turn will have to counsel these persons depending on the gravity of the problem, the official also added.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 18, 2016, 15:00 [IST]
American IS fighter: I made a bad decision

International

oi-PTI

Irbil (Iraq), March 18: The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraq's north earlier this week said he made "a bad decision" joining IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to a media station.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters.

Khweis said in the interview aired late last night that he met an Iraqi woman with ties to IS in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul.

There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee. "I didn't agree with their ideology," he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. "I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul." Khweis said a friend helped him escape Mosul to nearby Tal Afar.

From there he said he walked toward Kurdish troops. "I wanted to go to the Kurdish side," he said, "because I know they are good with the Americans." The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from IS militants late last year. In the past year IS fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation. Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling IS have told The Associated Press that they are seeing an increase in the number of IS members surrendering following recent territorial losses.

As the militants lose territory, US officials predict there will be more desertions. "I wasn't thinking straight," Khweis said. "My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad," he said, adding that he doesn't believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam.

The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other extremist groups. An earlier estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a think tank at King's College London, said IS fighters include 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans.

PTI
Shubham couldn't have enmity with anyone, says father on son's stabbing in Australia

Australia sentences three over female genital mutilation

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Canberra, March 18: An Australian court on Friday sentenced three people to a maximum 15 months in prison in the country's first criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation.

Former midwife Kubra Magennis, 72, and the mother of the victims, whose name was not revealed, were convicted in November of mutilating two sisters in separate procedures during religious ceremonies at homes in Wollongong and Sydney's north-west between 2009 and 2012, ABC reported.

The girls were about seven at the time.

A third offender, senior community leader Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, was found guilty of acting as an accessory after the fact by directing community members to lie to police about the practice.

He was also sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.

The procedure, known as "khatna", involves nicking or cutting a girl's clitoris in the presence of several female elders and is considered a rite of passage by some members of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.

Supreme Court Judge Justice Peter Johnson said these kinds of cases were "difficult to prosecute" because of their "unusual and novel circumstances".

He said the mother of the two girls requested that the former nurse and midwife carry out the procedure.

All three offenders will be assessed for their suitability for home detention.

IANS
Even if not contesting 2020 polls, Hillary Clinton will not be entirely out of scene

Hillary Clinton says Julian Assange must 'answer for what he has done'

Clinton sweeps Super Tuesday 2.0 as Sanders concedes Missouri

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Mar 18: Hillary Clinton has taken big strides toward securing the Democratic nomination by winning all five primaries in a multi-state vote for US presidential poll after her rival Senator Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in keenly-contested Missouri.

Sanders, who was trailing by just 1500 votes in the Missouri primary elections on Tuesday, said he would not request for recounting of votes and has conceded defeat to Clinton.

"I prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money," Sanders said through spokesman Michael Briggs yesterday. The 68-year-old former Secretary of State has swept the 'Super Tuesday 2.0' by bagging Florida and North Carolina while also posting crucial victories over Sanders in the industrial Midwest by taking Ohio and Illinois.

Results of the Republican presidential primary in Missouri is yet to be officially declared as it is too close to call. Front-runner Donald Trump is leading his rival Senator Ted Cruz by 1700 votes. So far, Cruz has not conceded defeat.

Since the margin of victory in each case is less than one percentage point, CNN and other US networks said they will not project a winner in either contest. Missouri saw more than 1.5 million ballots, or 39 per cent of registered voters, cast on Tuesday. That was the highest amount recorded for a Presidential primary in Missouri history.

The previous record of 1.4 million, or 36 per cent, was set during the 2008 primary. Missouri went to polls along with the key states of Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.

PTI
What does the US actually want in Syria?

Cuba will not discuss political reforms with Obama: minister

International

oi-PTI

Havana, Mar 18: Political and economic reforms in communist Cuba will be a no-go area during talks between Cuban leader Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama, the foreign minister has said in Havana.

"In our relations with the United States, the carrying out of internal changes in Cuba are absolutely off the negotiating table," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said yesterday in televised remarks three days before Obama arrives.

Obama will be the first serving US president to visit Cuba since 1928, capping his historic policy of ending a bitter standoff that has endured since the 1959 ousting by Fidel Castro of the US-backed government of Fulgencio Batista.

US-Cuba relationship timeline: All you need to know about it

Although both sides are embracing Obama's visit as an opportunity to bury the hatchet, Rodriguez made clear that Cuba will not listen to Washington's often repeated demands for more democracy and a freer economy.

"No one can pretend that Cuba should renounce a single principle in order to advance the normalization of relations between both countries," the minister said.

Rodriguez said there remain "major differences" between Cuba and the United States in areas of "political systems, democracy, human rights, the application and interpretation of international law."

AFP
Even if not contesting 2020 polls, Hillary Clinton will not be entirely out of scene

Hillary Clinton says Julian Assange must 'answer for what he has done'

Hillary Clinton gets Barack Obama's backing?

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, March 18: As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump surged forward in the US presidential race, President Barack Obama reportedly threw his weight behind the former, while the Republican establishment intensified efforts to dump the brash billionaire.

In unusually candid remarks, Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors last Friday that time is coming to unite behind his 2008 rival, the New York Times reported.

Clinton sweeps Super Tuesday 2.0 as Sanders concedes Missouri

The President, according to the Times, told the group in Austin Texas that Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders was nearing the point at which his campaign would end, and that the party must soon come together to back her.

"Obama acknowledged that Clinton was perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate, and that some Democrats did not view her as authentic," it said.

"But he played down the importance of authenticity, noting that President George W. Bush - whose record he ran aggressively against in 2008 - was once praised for his authenticity," the Times said.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest denied Thursday that Obama had endorsed Clinton, but acknowledged that he had made a case for party unity.

The Democrats, Obama told them "need to be mindful of the fact that our success in November in electing a Democratic President will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic Party to come together behind our nominee."

"And the President did not indicate or specify a preference in the race," Earnest insisted noting that Obama had praised both Clinton and Sanders.

White House candidates talk like school kids; Donald Trump worst offender: Study

"But once this (primary) process comes to a conclusion, everybody in the Democratic Party will understand the stakes of the debate, and given those stakes, will need to unify behind the Democratic Party nominee to ensure that he or she can win in November," he said.

The Washington Post said Obama and his top aides have been strategising for weeks about how they can reprise his successful 2008 and 2012 approaches to help elect a Democrat to replace him.

Thus out of concern that a Republican president in 2017 would weaken or reverse some of his landmark policies, Obama "is poised to be the most active sitting president on the campaign trail in decades," it said.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, prominent conservatives called for a unity ticket and a convention fight to stop in "a sign of the growing desperation in the party establishment to find an alternative to the billionaire businessman," CNN reported.

Conservatives gathered in Washington Thursday to discuss ways to thwart Trump's march to the nomination. One proposal included a unity ticket involving Trump's closest rival Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, CNN said citing a source familiar with the conversation.

But the group decided not to commit to that pairing "because of the egos involved," it said. It also left the door open to potentially supporting a third party race if Republicans are unable to stop Trump.

IANS
Holidays for Pak minorities a 'moderate ideological' move

International

oi-PTI

Islamabad, Mar 18: Pakistan government's decision to declare Diwali, Holi and Easter as holidays for Hindus and Christians appears to be an attempt to steer the country towards a "more moderate ideological direction", a leading daily said today.

Lauding the decision, an editorial in 'The Nation' titled "standing by our minorities" said it was a "very small" measure which should only serve as a start for the government to "reverse the economic imbalance created due to marginalisation faced ever since the partition."

"Christian and Hindu minorities in Pakistan should be congratulated for finally being handed closed holidays for Diwali, Holi and Easter," the editorial said.

"While this measure is a very small one, it goes a long way in telling the minorities that the state will no longer exclude them as it once did," it said. The write-up said that apart from deserved holidays, greater access to "healthcare and education, more jobs and a more tolerant society is what the minorities really need".

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has been making headlines lately over what seems to be a conviction to steer the country towards "a more moderate ideological direction," it said.

"Whether this new-found inclination towards making moderate policies is a genuine attempt to counter extremism and enable the protection of minorities as a consequence or a means to satisfy western countries remains to be seen," it added.

Noting that the persecution of minorities begins when they are treated as second-class citizens and denied basic rights such as the freedom to practice their religion, it said that denying religious holidays to them further affirms that Pakistan is actively participating in their subjugation.

"Historically, the subcontinent was once the melting pot for all cultures and faiths, and it is time Pakistan started to emulate that as well," it said.

Pakistan's parliament adopted a resolution to declare Holi, Diwali and Easter festivals as public holidays for minorities on Tuesday. Hindu lawmaker Ramesh Kumar Vankwani of PML-N had moved the resolution that said the "government should take steps to declare Holi, Diwali and Easter as closed holidays for minorities".

PTI
Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter

Jewish leader accused Trump, says 'encouraging hatred'

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, March 18: Rabbis and Jewish religious leaders are planning to boycott US presidential hopeful Donald Trump's speech to a pro-Israel conference here, accusing him of encouraging hatred,a media reported on Friday, March 18.

Trump is scheduled to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on March 22. Rabbis David Paskin and Jesse Olitzky are at the forefront of a campaign called "Come Together Against Hate".

Paskin has organised a group of more than 300 rabbis, cantors and Jewish voters and professionals who plan to signal their distaste for Trump.

AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying group focused on energizing Americans around strengthening the US-Israel relationship and encouraging members of Congress to support its agenda.

The annual conference is a key stop for politicians seeking an audience with the influential group and is the largest pro-Israel policy gathering of the year.

Other groups have also spoken out against Trump's attendance at AIPAC though they have not officially announced plans to protest.

The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), representing the largest Jewish denomination in America, has slammed Trump.

"At every turn, Trump has chosen to take the low road, sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic," said the URJ.

The American Jewish Committee also condemned the "presidential campaign violence" but it did not specifically name Trump.

Citing in part Trump's statements on immigrants, women and refugees, another Israel advocacy group, J Street, said Thursday that "these factors in our view render Trump unfit to be president of the US".

Trump has been criticised throughout his campaign for comments he has made, including calling for a temporary ban on all foreign Muslims entering the US and blocking Syrian refugees.

IANS
Musharraf leaves Pakistan after travel ban lifted

International

oi-PTI

Islamabad, Mar 18: Pakistan's ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf left the country early today for medical treatment in Dubai, a day after the government allowed him to go abroad.

"I am a commando and I love my homeland. I will come back in a few weeks or months," Musharraf was quoted as saying by the Dawn. Musharraf boarded an Emirates flight bound for Dubai that departed from Karachi airport at 3.55 am (0425 IST), a media report said.

"He was the last person to be embarked on the plane and then the gate was closed. The retired general appeared relaxed," the report said. Musharraf, 72, has been facing treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government.

The order was declared as illegal by the Sindh High Court in the same year. The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the decision of the Sindh high court, rejecting the appeal of the government. But it did not stop the federal government from putting new bars on Musharraf's foreign tours.

Interior minister Nisar Ali Khan yesterday told a press briefing that after consultation the government decided to let Musharraf leave the country for treatment.

He said Musharraf's lawyers had formally asked the government to allow him to undertake foreign travels. "The government has decided to allow Musharraf to travel abroad for treatment. He has also committed he will face all cases against him in court," Khan said.

He was referring to several cases faced by Musharraf including the high treason charged in a special court for suspending the constitution in 2007, which has been declared under Article 6 as being punishable by death. He was indicted in April, 2014 but since then no progress has been made in the case for various reasons.

Musharraf's All Pakistan Muslim League said yesterday that Musharraf was having problem in the backbone and he needed to go to the UAE to see a doctor. It is believed that the decision to let Musharraf go out of the country will help heal a rift between the powerful army and the government, as the former was unhappy over treason trial of the former chief of army staff.

Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Facing impeachment following elections in 2008, Musharraf was forced to resign as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.

PTI
N Korea fires ballistic missile into sea, ignoring UN ban

International

oi-PTI

Seoul, Mar 18: North Korea ignored UN resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea today, Seoul and Washington officials said, days after its leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long- range nuclear missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile fired from a site north of Pyongyang flew about 800 kilometres before crashing off the North's east coast.

It was the first medium-range missile launched by the North since it fired two in April 2014, said a South Korean defence official, requesting anonymity citing department rules.

A senior US defence official said the missile appeared to be a Rodong type fired from a road-mobile launcher.

The test violated multiple UN Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from engaging in any ballistic and nuclear activities, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

The launch came as North Korea condemned ongoing annual South Korean-US military drills that it sees as an invasion rehearsal.

The two sets of drills are the largest ever, in response to the North's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

One of the drills, computer-simulated war games, was to end later today while the other, field training, is to continue late April.

In recent weeks, North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and fired short- range missiles and artillery into the sea in an apparent anger over the drills and tough UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear test and rocket launch.

South Korea's military said its surveillance equipment detected the trajectory of a suspected second missile fired from the same site.

A Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said the object later disappeared from South Korean radar at an altitude of 17 kilometres and that it was trying to find out if a missile had been fired or something else was captured by the radar.

No fresh sanctions on the North were expected for today's launch. The UN Security Council slapped the country with sanctions each time when it conducted nuclear tests and long- range rocket launches, but it usually responded to short- and medium-range ballistic launches with statements criticising them.

AP
North Korea conducts new ballistic missiles test

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Seoul, March 18 North Korea on Friday launched a new ballistic missile which flew some 800 km before falling into the sea, followed by another missile which may have exploded mid-air, South Korean military officials said.

The North Korean People's Army fired the missile into the East Sea at 5.55 a.m. from Sukchun, north of Pyongyang, according to Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The South Korean defence ministry spokesman told EFE news that it appeared to be a Rodong (single stage, mobile liquid propellant medium range ballistic missile) with a range of 1,300 km.

He also revealed that roughly 22 minutes after the first launch, what appeared to be the second missile was fired from the same area but disappeared from the radar at an altitude of 17 km. It is believed to have exploded in the air, the spokesman added.

The launch occurred amid high tension on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang conducted the fourth underground nuclear test on January 6 and launched a satellite aboard a rocket on February 7, actions which prompted sanctions from the UN Security Council.

On March 10, the North Korean military launched two short-range missiles which flew some 500 km. One week prior to the incident, the country catapulted six short-range missiles which flew between 100-150 km each.

IANS
No need for massive new strikes on Ukraine: Vladimir Putin

'If NATO clashes with Russian army, it will lead to global catastrophe,' says Putin

Putin has no immediate plans to visit Pakistan: Russian envoy

International

oi-PTI

Islamabad, Mar 18: Vladimir Putin has no immediate plan to visit Pakistan as there were not enough "substance" for a trip, the first by a Russian President, the country's envoy here has said.

"The problem is that usually the purpose of the visit is not participation in ceremonies. The visit should have some substance," Russian Ambassador Alexey Dedov said at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), a leading think-tank, where he was delivering a lecture on Pak-Russia relations yesterday.

"As soon as the substance is ready, we can discuss the visit," Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying. Dedov defined the substance as "signing of documents" for cooperation, "preparation of plans" for expanding ties and "declarations".

No Russian or even Soviet president has ever visited Pakistan. Putin had planned a visit to Islamabad in October 2012 for attending a quadrilateral summit between Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, but cancelled it at the eleventh hour.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was then hastily dispatched to Islamabad to explain the cancellation.

Lately, there were renewed talk of Putin visiting Islamabad after Russia agreed to invest in the USD 2 billion North-South gas pipeline project for carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Karachi to Lahore.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had invited Putin to inaugurate the pipeline. The ambassador rued the "unrealised potential" of the ties, but noted that Pakistan was "seen (in Russia) as an important and reliable partner with whom relations could be developed".

He cited the geostrategic position of Pakistan and challenges and interests shared by the two countries as the motivation for Moscow to work for better and stronger bilateral relations. Reports say Russia and Pakistan are also close to resolving a long-standing economic dispute that led to freezing of Russian assets worth USD 120 million in Pakistan.

A draft agreement has been initialled and a final accord is likely soon. In a landmark defence deal, Russia last year agreed to sell Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan.

PTI
What does the US actually want in Syria?

US welcomes Saudi comment on Yemen combat nearing 'end'

International

oi-PTI

Sanaa, Mar 18: A Saudi announcement that major combat is nearing an end in Yemen was welcomed by Washington, as the death toll from alliance air strikes on a market rose to 119.

The United Nations childrens' agency gave the new toll, nearly three times that previously reported, for the Saudi-led strikes on the market this week in northern Yemen's rebel-held Hajja province.

It is one of the deadliest incidents since coalition forces intervened on March 26 last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Medics and tribal sources had previously reported 41 people killed in the strikes, and a health official in Hajja said the dead were civilians.

But a tribal chief close to the rebels on Wednesday told AFP that 33 of those killed were fighters of the Iran-backed Huthis. Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, the coalition spokesman, said the strikes targeted "a militia gathering" in a place for buying and selling qat, a mild narcotic that is chewed throughout Yemen.

In an interview on Wednesday, he told AFP that "we are in the end of the major combat phase," to be followed by the creation of a stable security situation, then reconstruction.

The White House welcomed the statement yesterday. "We have expressed our concerns about the loss of innocent life in Yemen, the violence there that is plaguing that country has caught to many innocent civilians in the crossfire," spokesman Josh Earnest said.

"We would welcome and do welcome the statement from coalition spokesperson Saudi General Ahmed al-Assiri who indicated today that major operations in Yemen are coming to an end and that the coalition will work on 'long-term plans' to bring stability to the country."

Supported by air strikes and some coalition ground troops, anti-rebel forces have retaken territory, including much of the south.

But they have failed to dislodge the Zaidi Shiite rebels from Sanaa or to completely remove them from the country's third city Taez where intense battles continue.

Rights groups have raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the coalition as well as by the Huthis, who are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Among those killed in Mastaba district on Tuesday were 22 children, while another 47 people were wounded, UNICEF said. "We strongly deplore the deadliest attack in Al-Khamees market in Mastaba district of Hajja governorate," it said in a statement.

AFP
Islamic State bomber detained in Russia for attempting attack in India was recruited through Telegram

Why India should get access to Islamic State bomber detained in Russia

Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence

White House says ready to help ICC genocide probe in Syria,Iraq

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Mar 18: The White House has said it was ready to support an investigation by the International Criminal Court into alleged genocide carried out by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

"The United States will cooperate with independent efforts to investigate genocide," spokesman Josh Earnest said yesterday, adding that the administration is willing to support the ICC in gathering evidence.

The United States declared earlier Thursday that the Islamic State group's slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shiites in Iraq and Syria amounts to a genocide and vowed to halt it.

"The ICC is typically the organization that would take a look at this, and given the judgment that Secretary (of State John) Kerry has made, the United States would be supportive of that effort, both rhetorically, but also in a tangible way as well," said Earnest.

47 Malaysians involved with ISIS in Syria, Iraq

"The United States will support efforts to collect documents, preserve and analyze evidence of atrocities and the United States will do all we can to ensure perpetrators of these atrocities are held to account and brought to justice."

The United States is not party to the ICC, but President Barack Obama's administration has introduced a policy of working with the court. (AFP) ASV
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XIN Gaming Releases Four New Games

Published March 18, 2016 by Florin P

Four new XIN Gaming video slots have gone live, with great promise of many new slots slated for release later this year.

XIN Gaming is a premium supplier of online casino games and systems with a global reach. They are a leading supplier for Asian markets and have the ability of targeting the tastes of customers in those markets, with original game designs. In the wake of the successful releases of 2015, the software developer has announced the expansion of its online portfolio, with brand-new games

20 New Titles by the End of 2016

HighRoller, Sky Guardians, Video Poker Bonus Deuces Wild and Video Poker Deuce Wild have already hit the stores. They appeal to a broad audience, being much appreciated by slot machines aficionados and video poker fans. The good news is that they represent just the tip of the iceberg and the company plans to launch as many as 20 new games in 2016.

Most of these titles will be slot machines, including classic three reel games and their modern five reel counterparts. The release of four high-quality new games is supposed to meet the high expectations of players who have already tasted the quality of XIN Gaming products. They also act as a teaser for the remainder of 2016, a year that promises to be packed with red-hot releases.

Big Payouts, Great Graphics and Playability

XIN Gaming stays true to its name as a leading supplier for Asian markets, creating games that will appeal to local fans. HighRoller is one of their most successful released so far and is already immensely popular in Japan, thanks to the collaboration with local celebrities. Sky Guardians has emerged as an instant classic with plenty of free spins and a classic Good vs Evil theme.

Video Poker Bonus Deuces Wild and Video Poker Deuce Wild on the other hand are preferred by those who enjoy playing multiple hands simultaneously. Players can kick their gambling routine into overdrive by activating the multi-hand format in an attempt of winning more money faster.
Heartland of Owerri Technical Adviser, Turkish Mehmet Tayfun and head coach of the once dreaded Naze Millionaires, Ramson Madu, on Monday March 11, 2019, returned to their duty posts after a two-month suspension following lack of cordial working relationship between the duo, completesports.com reports.

The hierarchy of the club had asked the two gaffers to step aside until they resolve their differences which was understood to be negatively affecteing the clubs NPFL campaign despite a bright start to the season.

But after garnering just two points from a possible nine in their last three games in which they drew 1-1 in back-to-back home games and a 3-0 away slump at El-Kanemi Warriors, officials traced the problem to the door step of the two coaches who they accused of working at cross purposes.

As a result, management asked them to step aside until they reconcile amongst themselves, an official explained without wanting to be named.

Also Read: Ogbeide: Too Many Mistakes Cost Lobi Stars Match Against Sundowns

They were told to report back to the management after deciding to let bypast to be bypast.

And I think that has been done because they have resumed training at the clubs base in Okigwe.

On his part, Tayfun confirmed to completesports.com that there was an issue with his subordinate and assured it has been resolved.

Yeah, there was an issue. It has been sorted, Tayfun said when we contacted him on his mobile phone.

How Natural Herbal Remedy Killed Stubborn Staphylococcus, Ecoli And Aureus And Other Infections
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdulrahman Ajiya, as the winner of the Abaji Area Council chairmanship race.

The INEC Returning Officer, Simon Malaka, who announced the result, said Mr Ajiya, the incumbent chairman, scored the highest votes of 13,442 to defeat his closest rival, Muhammad Ashafa of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 10,473 votes.

Abdulraman Ajiya of the APC having satisfied the requirements of the law and having the highest number of votes is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected, Mr Malaka said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the election was conducted peacefully and the result was announced in the presence of party agents and security personnel. (NAN)
Several months after the governors of Ekiti and Osun states, Kayode Fayemi and Gboyega Oyetola respectively, were sworn in as governors, their state executive councils are yet to be constituted.

PREMIUM TIMES findings showed that the new governments could not embark on the appointment of new commissioners due to outstanding financial responsibilities they inherited and the inadequacy of financial inflows.

In Ekiti, Mr Fayemi, who was sworn in for his second term in office on October 16, 2018, is currently running his government with only two commissioners manning the Finance and Economic Development and the Ministry of Justice.

These ministries, in the wisdom of the government of Ekiti, are very crucial for the running of the states economy and the protection of citizens pending when the government is able to appoint commissioners.

Mr Fayemi has not hidden his inability to hire new commissioners, saying he lacked the financial solvency to procure the services of commissioners and other political appointees whose coming involves a huge financial implication.

The governor had chosen to rely solely on the services of Permanent Secretaries who are career civil servants to man the ministries and help implement government policies pending the coming in of new commissioners.

The Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Olayinka Oyebode, informed PREMIUM TIMES that the government of Ekiti State would only appoint new commissioners after clearing all the financial backlogs bordering on workers emoluments, pensions and gratuities.

Speaking on the delay in the appointment of commissioners, Mr Oyebode said there was a need to get the state running, while the issue of appointments was pending due to financial challenges.

When you bring in commissioners, they come in with other financial responsibilities, said Mr Oyebode.

The government is trying to use the little money it has now to settle certain things and that is why the issue of commissionership is being delayed.

When you bring in commissioners, there is a minimum number you must bring in and there is a minimum emolument that must be provided. They will also have personal assistants, accommodation and official vehicles and things like that.

We felt that could still be held down and settle some basic things first and foremost. We are trying to address certain gaps.

Previous commissioners and appointees were not being paid their severance package. Those who served 2010 to 2014, none of them were paid their severance package.

That was part of the financial challenge. Some also served in previous administration, the governor is just trying to offset that now. Somebody who served as commissioner and special adviser is entitled to his severance allowance. The government has sorted that now.

Also the issue of pensions. There was a backlog of unpaid pensions and salaries. We are trying to make sure that we dont owe pensions, we dont owe salaries. That has also created some financial responsibilities.

He said workers were owed six months salaries when Mr Fayemi came into office, and that one month of the arrears had been paid, leaving an outstanding of five months.

He, however, added that the governor was not owing salaries since he came into office as salaries are being paid as and when due.

The gratuities of retirees run into several millions and we have to deal with that too. So, the government has increased the monthly allocation for gratuities from N10 million to N100 million, said Mr Oyebode.

These are some of the commitments the governor felt he needed to attend to before attending to the appointment of commissioners which brings another financial burden.

I can assure you that in a couple of months and or weeks, the commissioners will be appointed, especially now that the basic things are being handled.

He added that other financial hindrances delaying the appointment of commissioners include the wrongful dismissal of some permanent secretaries that the court had ordered to be paid their entitlements as well as the free education of the government.

In Osun State, the situation is not different, as the governor is yet to appoint any commissioner since it assumed office in November last year.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the state government is grappling with the arduous task of paying salaries, and had yet to begin the payment of several months of salary arrears to the different categories of workers incurred under the last administration.

The previous governor, Rauf Aregbesola, also citing financial constraints, did not appoint commissioners for more than a year after he was sworn in for his second term in office.

There are fears that the new government might be walking the same line, as he has already appointed supervisors over the ministries instead of commissioners.

Seven supervisors have been appointed to do the work of commissioners over the ministries of works, finance, agriculture, home affairs, education and Information.

However, the governors Chief Press Secretary, Niyi Adesina, has rather blamed the schedule of elections and electioneering activities for the delay in the appointment of commissioners.

There has not been any delay in the real sense of the word because the governor came in in November, we had elections, he explained.

We had the presidential elections, then the house of assembly elections, these are crucial elections. We had all hands on deck toward the election.

If you make appointments before elections you could ruffle some feathers. So the governor had to get all hands to finish the elections and after elections we can begin to make appointments.

Before then, anyway, he had appointed seven people as supervisors over some key ministries. Like finance, works, home affairs, education, and agric.

They were appointed as supervisors for key ministries in an ad hoc basis. As soon as the elections were over last week, he appointed the Chief of Staff and the Secretary to the State Government.

Any moment from now the names of the commissioners would be sent to the house of assembly. There has not been really any delay. The governor doesnt want to create bad blood among party members.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has vehemently rejected what it termed as the arm-twisting of the judiciary and the court by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to unconstitutionally halt the conclusion of collation of already declared results in the Bauchi State governorship election.

The party made this known in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, and made available to PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr Ologbondiyan described the order as akin to the infamous order that derailed the 1993 democratic process.

A Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission not to go ahead with its plan to collate and announce the result of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area which would have given the PDP an almost unassailable lead in the Bauchi governorship election.

The judge, Inyang Ekwo, made the order based on an ex-parte application filed by the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the incumbent governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar.

The restraining order is to last till the determination of the suit brought before the court by the two plaintiffs.

But the PDP while rejecting it described it as part of the plot by the APC and certain compromised elements in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to escalate crisis and derail our electoral process.

The power to collate, suspend collation and or to reverse such decision based on obvious circumstances as the case in Bauchi is clearly within the domain of INEC, he said.

He said until collation is completed and results declared no one can question the constitutional powers of INEC in that regard.

The PDP cautions that if this desperate underhand measure by the APC to halt electoral processes is not checked, our hard earned democracy will fail us and our nation thrown into anarchy.

Our party should not be constrained into a situation in which we will have no option than to allow our members to seek similar exparte orders to halt statutory processes including the swearing-in of APC candidates at various levels, particularly President Muhammadu Buhari.

It is clear that collation of result is part of the electoral process and that INEC cannot act on a purported exparte order to jettison its independence and halt the collation of results, which is a key component of its statutory electoral duty.

He added that Section 87 (10) of the Electoral Act is unambiguous in its prescription that nothing in this section shall empower the courts to stop the holding of primaries or general election or the processes thereof under this Act pending the determination of a suit.

The PDP further charges INEC to be properly guided by the law in this regard.

The PDP urges the institution of Judiciary not to allow the APC to entangle the court in its shenanigans to destroy our hard-earned democracy.

He said Nigerians in Bauchi state have elected the PDP and nothing can change the reality.

The APC and Bauchi governor had prayed for an order of interim injunction restraining INEC from resuming, concluding or announcing the result of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi State in respect of the governorship election.

The election was initially declared inconclusive by INEC due to incidents in Tafawa Balewa local government.

INEC later announced it would go ahead with collation and complete the results sourced from backup result sheets, a move Mr Abubakar, who scored the second highest votes in results so far collated, rejected.

The governor wants supplementary polls to be conducted. On Monday, he met with President Muhammad Buhari and vowed to challenge INECs actions in court.
The media office of former Governor Bola Tinubu on Tuesday sent the statement below to PREMIUM TIMES in reaction to speculations that he travelled to Kano to dabble in the forthcoming supplementary election in the state.

READ FULL STATEMENT BELOW.

Asiwaju Tinubu Is Not in Kano, Not Dabbling in Kano Elections

All Progressives Congress National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has put a lie to the rumour going round that he is at present in Kano and meddling in the Kano elections.

Asiwaju is not in Kano and has not been in Kano at any point during the conduct of these elections. The picture that these liars are circulating of Asiwaju and Governor Ganduje is one that was taken last year when the governor visited Lagos, his Media Adviser, Tunde Rahman, said in a statement last night.

He said those peddling the rumour know the picture is not true, but they still use it because their relationship to the truth is an adversarial one.

According to him, Asiwaju has nothing but utmost admiration and respect to the people of Kano and Kano brand of progressives politics provided the impetus for the formation of the APC.

The statement reads: Weak and mean politicians turn to rumor and fear mongering because their true appeal to the people is limited and uncertain. These desperate operatives stir resentment of others as a way to get the support of the people. Politicians of this ilk are afraid to stand before the people on their own two feet. They use lies and deception as their crutch. Such is the case with the false stories of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu being in Kano, casting him as some type of one-man political invasion intending to unduly influence the governorship election.

For the record, Asiwaju is not in Kano and has not been in Kano at any point during the conduct of these elections. The picture that these liars are circulating of Asiwaju and Governor Ganduje is one that was taken last year when the governor visited Lagos. The fear-mongers know the picture is old and was taken in Lagos. They still use it because their relationship to the truth is an adversarial one. Scratch a liar and you will find a hypocrite as well. These people encouraged and cheered when former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and outgoing Senate President Bukola Saraki led a posse of Peoples Democratic Party figures into Lagos, boasting they were going to capture Lagos during the governorship elections.

These people did not call Atiku and others to order for interfering in Lagos. Instead, they urged Atiku and others to undertake this misadventure. The All Progressives Congress did not cry and lament that Atiku came to Lagos to swing an election that did not concern him. Instead, we rose to the occasion and relied on our organic and positive relationship to the people. With regard to the impact these PDP operatives had in the Lagos election, let it be said that they came, they saw, they lost and they left with nothing in hand but another defeat.

Regarding the people of Kano, Asiwaju has nothing but the utmost respect and admiration. Kano has historically stood as a bastion of progressive politics. Its brand of politics helped inspire the establishment of the APC. Kano has an enlightened electorate that will vote as they believe. Asiwaju hopes that they will disregard the lies and rumors about him and remain faithful to their progressive tradition.

If the people do so, then they would have voted in their best interests and that is for the APC, the party of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Let us all join in making an important observation. It is curious that these fear-mongers devote so much attention trying to disparage one man who is not even a candidate, holds no public office and who has not even set foot on Kanos soil during this election. These politicians are so shameless that they must demonize Asiwaju Tinubu to attract support. Theirs is but a blatant attempt to stoke regional and ethnic resentment and division to accomplish their selfish aims. Such tactics are harmful to the democracy Nigeria seeks to enshrine and goes against the progressive tradition that describes Kanos politics and that has made Kano a beacon of hope and advancement in our nation.

It is expected that a party leader of Asiwaju Tinubus standing will encourage his partys candidates. PDPs attempt to make something nefarious of this normal pattern is disingenuous. If they truly believed what they were saying they would discourage PDP members from other states from visiting Kano or offering any form of support. Of course, they do no such thing. But what is proper for the PDP to do, they say it is a dangerous affront for the APCs Tinubu to do. We believe their attack against Tinubu is not so much that they fear what he might do but that they fear they lack the support of the people. Thus, they try to portray Tinubu as an interloper as the best way to gain support.

Asiwaju will not play this game with them. He believes in a free and fair electoral process, a project to which he has devoted the majority of his adult life to achieve. Let this election be decided on the relative merits of the competing candidates. Do not cast Asiwaju Tinubu as some villain in a plot you have contrived in a feeble attempt to cloak your political weaknesses and uncertainties.

Asiwaju is a committed democrat and advocate of free and fair electoral processes. He will neither support nor work to promote anything that will undermine or weaken the electoral system. He has been at the forefront of the struggle for electoral reforms, justice and equality over the years. He will never do anything that will detract from these fine ideals for which he has strenuously worked. Any reports to the contrary are just the lies and mongering of those whose love and support for democracy are much less than his.

Tinubu Media Office,

Tunde Rahman

March 19.
A fifth prosecution witness, Musiliu Obanikoro, in the ongoing fraud trial against former governor Ayodele Fayose, on Tuesday said that he was informed two years ago that his late Special Assistant (SA), Justin Erukaa, died in an accident.

Mr Obanikoro gave the evidence in continuation of his cross-examination by a second defence counsel, Mr Olalekan Ojo (SAN), at the Federal High Court in Lagos.

Mr Fayose, the immediate-past governor of Ekiti State, was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on October 22, 2018, alongside a company, Spotless Investment Ltd, on an 11-count charge.

He had pleaded not guilty to the charge and was granted bail in the sum of N50 million, with one surety in like sum.

EFCC had opened the case for prosecution on November 19, 2018 and had called four witnesses.

On January 21, 2018, the prosecution called its fifth witness, Mr Obanikoro, a former minister of state for defence.

At the last adjourned date on February 5, Mr Obanikoro was still under cross-examination by the second defence counsel, (Ojo), who had sought to tender the extra judicial statement of Justin Erukaa, made to EFCC in the course of their investigation.

In reaction, the prosecutor, Rotimi Jacobs, had objected to the admissibility of the said statement, on the grounds that counsel was seeking to tender the document from the Bar, with which he wants to contradict a witness from the Bar.

Mr Jacobs cited the provisions of Section 232 and 233 of the Evidence Act, arguing that the approach was wrong.

Justice Mojisola Olatoregun had consequently ordered counsel to address the court on the admissibility of such extra judicial statement made by a person interrogated during the course of investigation and who is not standing trial.

Parties had addressed the court on February 7, after which the judge reserved ruling.

In a ruling delivered on Monday, the court had admitted the extra judicial statement of the late Erukaa and marked same as Exhibit J.

At the resumed trial on Tuesday, Mr Ojo (SAN) continued his cross-examination with Obanikoro, who has been in the witness box since January.

Ojo asked him: Do you remember your statement on Exhibit G2 made on Oct. 8, 2018?

Obanikoro replied: I will have to see that to acknowledge.

After being showed the exhibit, Mr Ojo asked: In exhibit G2, you specifically stated that you were not privy to any discussion between the first defendant and the former NSA.

Mr Obainokoro replied: That is correct.

Mr Ojo: I suggest that because you were not privy to any such conversation, you cant on your oath tell the court any date or time of such alleged conversation.

The witness replied: Correct.

Mr Ojo: In the same Exhibit G2, you categorically said that Justin Erukaa died after he had made Exhibit J. The witness replied: Thats correct.

This Justin Erukaa who was one of your Special Assistants, can you tell the court how you got to know about his death, after making Exhibit J.

Mr Obanikoro: He left Lagos a day before Sallah about two years ago, and the police called one of my SAs that the owner of the phone just had an accident and died on the spot; and he immediately called me and informed me.

Mr Ojo: Do you remember on February 4, you told the court that you could not recall whether or not Justin Erukaa made any statement to the operatives of the EFCC?

Witness: Yes, I said so.

The defence counsel then urged that Exhibit J be showed to the witness and then he asked him, What is Exhibit J and Obanikoro replied: It is a statement.

Defence counsel: Whose name appears as the maker or author of Exhibit J?

Witness replied: Justin Erukaa.

Defence counsel: Did you attend the burial of Justin Erukaa?

Witness: I was there with my family.

Finally, Mr Ojo asked the witness if any document was provided to the EFCC operatives in the course of interrogation to back any of his statements before the court concerning the second defendant?

The witness replied: No.

With this last question, Mr Ojo informed the court that he had finished his cross-examination of Obanikoro.

Mr Obanikoro, consequently, stepped down from the witness box.

The prosecution called its sixth witness, Olugboyega Falae, a staffer of Ecobank, who said he had worked in Skye bank, (now Polaris Bank), as Head of its Estate Support Department.

On what he knows about the property identified as No. 44, Plot 1241, Osun Crescent, Maitama, Abuja, the witness told the court that one of the responsibilities of his unit, was to dispose non-core assets of the bank, that are in excess of the requirements.

He said that the property was one of such assets, which was sold at the time, after acquiring requisite approvals.

Mr Falae said that in the case of the said property, one Mrs Titiloye approached the bank with a N300 million offer for the property, adding that there were discussions and exchange of letters between them, before the property was eventually sold for N200 million.

After the witness finished his evidence before the court, he was cross-examined by the defence counsel, but there was no re-examination from the prosecution.

The court has adjourned until Wednesday (tommorow), for continuation of trial.

According to the charge, on June 17, 2014, Mr Fayose and one Abiodun Agbele were said to have taken possession of the sum of N1.2 billion, for purposes of funding his gubernatorial election campaign in Ekiti State, which sum they reasonably ought to have known, formed part of crime proceeds.

Mr Fayose was alleged to have received a cash payment of the sum of five million dollars, (about N1.8 billion) from the then Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, without going through any financial institution and which sum exceeded the amount allowed by law.

He was also alleged to have retained the sum of N300 million in his Zenith Bank account and took control of the aggregate sums of about N622 million, which sum he ought to have known, formed part of crime proceeds.

Mr Fayose was alleged to have procured De Privateer Ltd and Still Earth Ltd, to retain in their Zenith and FCMB accounts, the aggregate sums of N851 million which they reasonably ought to have known, formed part of crime proceeds.

Besides, the defendant was alleged to have used the aggregate sums of about N1.6 billion to acquire properties in Lagos and Abuja, which sums he reasonably ought to have known, formed part of crime proceeds.

The accused was also alleged to have used the sum of N200 million, to acquire a property in Abuja, in the name of his elder sister, Moji Oladeji, which sum he ought to know, also forms crime proceeds.

The offences contravene the provisions of Sections 15(1), 15 (2), 15 (3), 16(2)(b), 16 (d), and 18 (c) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, 2011.
Popular Super Eagles striker, Jude Ighalo took to social media to celebrate his pretty wife, Sonia, as she turns plus one. He showered her with love alongside their children with a song. HBD!
Man Pet Lion Licking His Head As Got Fans Talking

A pet lion was seen licking its owners head which has go a lot of reactions from fans. Gistvic Reports.

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A post shared by Tunde Ednut (@tundeednut) on Mar 20, 2019 at 12:14am PDT









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Dr.is a Nigerian -born National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) aerospace engineer and the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in the field.

According to her profile on the organizations website, Okolo works as a special emphasis programs manager at Ames Research Center and is a research engineer in the Discovery and Systems Health Technology (DaSH) Area. Her role includes researching control systems applications, systems health monitoring and creating solutions for issues related to the designing of aircraft and spacecraft.

She earned her B.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 and 2015. Okolo completed her dissertation research with a focus on aircraft fuel-saving methods. Her research was funded by several organizations including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), American Institute for Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) and Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC).

After completing her graduate studies, she worked a summer researcher at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the Control Design and Analysis Branch at the Air Force Research Laboratory. While there, Okolo piloted one of the worlds fastest crewed aircraft.

Per the Philadelphia Tribune, Okolo is the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in aerospace engineering at just 26 years old. Along with accomplishing the prestigious honor, she was the winner of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA) Global Competitiveness Conference award for being the most promising engineer in the United States government.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Gombe State Council, has applauded the National Assemblys speedy passage of the bill proposing N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.

The Senate had on Tuesday approved N30,000 as the new national minimum wage, after its ad-hoc committee on new minimum wage submitted its report.

Haruna Kamara, the states NLC Chairman, gave the commendation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gombe on Wednesday.

He said that the gesture by the lawmakers was a testimony to their high level of patriotism and commitment to the well-being of workers.

He added that such patriotism and commitment could lead to the desired improvement in the living standard of workers.

I want to most sincerely thank and commend the National Assembly for the honour done to Nigerian workers which will bring the desired change in terms of improving the living condition of workers generally.

We are highly elated with the high level of humility and patriotism exhibited by the National Assembly.

By their act, the deal has been done and sealed for transmission to the president for assent.

We must also give credit to labour leaders and Mr Ayuba Wabba, for putting the mechanism in place for the change that the Nigerian worker will be grateful happened at a time like this, he said.

The Gombe NLC chairman debunked speculations that the speedy passage of the bill had anything to do with the just concluded elections.

The lawmakers have realised that workers are the engine room for development.

The approval of the new wage for workers by the lawmakers shows that they see workers as the most effective tool for change and as major players in driving the economic development of the country, he said.

Mr Kamara who expressed confidence in President Muhammadu Buharis disposition to sign the bill into law soon, said: I believe that President Buhari is committed to improving the welfare of workers and pensioners nationwide.

Mr President has shown on several occasions his commitment to workers well-being.

So I believe he will demonstrate that same commitment and high-level patriotism by signing the bill into law.

On whether governors will pay the new wage, Mr Kamara said: When Mr President assents to the bill, the governors will have no choice but to pay. We will ensure that the N30,000 is implemented nation-wide.

NAN reports that Mr Buhari had on November 27, 2017 inaugurated the National Minimum Wage Committee headed by Amal Pepple, with a mandate to recommend a new minimum wage for workers.

On November 6, 2018, the panel submitted its report to President Buhari and in it, recommended N30,000 as the new minimum wage for workers in the country. (NAN)
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) computer server shows that Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won the February 23 election with about 1.6 million votes to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari, the opposition candidate claims.

This is contained in the petition filed on Monday by the PDP and Mr Abubakar, to challenge the victory of Mr Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC).

The petition, which sought to rely on 50 sets of documents, was filed before the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja against INEC, Mr Buhari and the APC respectively.

On February 27, INEC declared that Mr Buhari won the election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat Mr Atiku, whom it said polled 11,262,978 votes.

But the petitioners stated in their 139-page petition that from the data in the 1st respondents (INECs) serverthe true, actual and correct results from state to state computation showed that Mr Abubakar polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Mr Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.

According to it, the results were the total votes scored by the candidates in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, as there was no report on server about the results from Rivers State as of February 25.

By this, Mr Abubakar claims to have defeated Mr Buhari with 1,615,302 votes.

One of the five grounds of the petition also tends to resuscitate the allegation that Mr Buhari was not qualified to run for the office of the president on the grounds that he did not possess the constitutional minimum qualification of a school certificate.

The five grounds of the petition read, The 2nd respondent (Buhari) was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast at the election.

The election of the 2nd respondent is invalid by reason of corrupt practices.

The election of the 2nd Respondent is invalid by reason of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended).

The 2nd respondent was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the said election.

The 2nd respondent submitted to the 1st Respondent an affidavit containing false information of a fundamental nature in aid of his qualification for the said election.

Arguing that Mr Buhari was not qualified to run for the office of the president, the petitioners argued in part, The petitioners state that the 2nd respondent (Buhari) does not possess the educational qualification to contest the election to the office of the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The petitioners state that by Section 31 (1) of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended), every political party shall not later than 60 days before the date appointed for a general election submit to the Commission in the prescribed form the list of the candidates the party proposes to sponsor at the elections.

Further, by Section 31(2) of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended), the list or information submitted by each candidate shall be accompanied by an affidavit sworn to by the candidate at the Federal High Court, High Court of a State or Federal Capital Territory indicating that he has fulfilled all the constitutional requirements for election into that office.

The 2nd respondent filled and submitted Form CF001 to the 1st Respondent, which was declared before the Commissioner for Oaths at the Registry of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on the 8th day of October 2018. The said Form CF001 is accompanied by an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT indicating that the 1st Respondent received same.

The petitioners aver that the said Form CF001 filled by the 2nd Respondent and submitted to the 1st Respondent for the Office of President was also accompanied by the Curriculum Vitae of the 2nd Respondent as well as GENERAL FORM OF AFFIDAVIT duly sworn to by the 2nd respondent at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, along with copies of his Membership Card of the 3rd Respondent and Voter Card.

The information submitted to the 1st respondent (INEC) by the 2nd respondent (Buhari) is false and of a fundamental nature in aid of his education qualification, notwithstanding that he had declared in the said sworn affidavit as follows: I hereby declare that all the answers, facts and particulars I have given in this Form, are true and correct and I have to the best of my knowledge, fulfilled all the requirements for qualifications for the office I am seeking to be elected.

They stated that the educational institutions Buhari claimed to have attended and the certificates presented by him namely, Elementary School Daura and Mai Aduaa between 1948 and 1952, Middle School Katsina between 1953 and 1956 and Katsina Provincial College (now Government College, Katsina) between 1956 to 1961 and mentioned by the 2nd respondent in his curriculum vitae attached to Form CF 001, were not in existence as of those mentioned dates.

They added, The 2nd respondent in Form CF 001 filled and submitted by him to the 1st Respondent at Paragraph C, Column 2, Page 3, under SECONDARY, wrote WASC, thereby falsely claiming that qualification whereas there was no qualification known as WASC as of 1961.

The petitioners contend that the 2nd Respondent was, at the material time, not qualified to contest election for the exalted office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The petitioners further aver that all votes purportedly cast for the 2nd and 3rd Respondents on 23rd February 2019 during the Presidential Election and as subsequently declared by the 1st Respondent on February 27, are wasted votes in that the 2nd Respondent was not qualified to contest the said election in the first place or at all.

The petitioners named 21 Senior Advocates of Nigeria and 18 other lawyers to appear for them during the petition.

The legal team is led by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Livy Uzoukwu.

They sought among their five main prayers, that the tribunal should determine that Mr Buhari was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast in the said election and therefore his declaration and return by INEC as the President of Nigeria is unlawful, undue, null, void and of no effect.

They also prayed that Mr Abubakar having been duly and validly elected ought to be returned as President of Nigeria, having polled the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election to the office of the President of Nigeria held on February 23 and having satisfied the constitutional requirements for the said election.

They sought an order directing the 1st respondent (INEC) to issue a Certificate of Return to the 1st petitioner (Atiku) as the duly elected President of Nigeria.

They also asked the tribunal to rule that Mr Buhari was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the said election, and that he submitted to the Commission affidavit containing false information of a fundamental nature in aid of his qualification for the said election.

However, they sought as their alternative prayer, that the election to the office of the president of Nigeria held on February 23, be nullified and a fresh election ordered.

The petitioners are relying on 50 sets of documents which they, in the petition, gave INEC the notice to produce the original copies of those in its custody.

Some of the documents are, INEC Nomination Form CF001 of the 2nd respondent (Buhari); all INEC result sheets;(Form EC8 Series), EC8A, EC8B, EC8C, EC8D and EC8E  Certificate of Return; PDP Party Membership Cards; INEC Voter Cards; all witnesses party membership cards; and all Witnesses Voter Cards.

The PDP and Mr Atiku in the petition also sought to rely on, the circulars/corrigenda/manuals issued by INEC for the conduct of the Presidential Election held on 23/2/2019; Polling Unit materials checklist; summary of total registered voters on units basis; summary of PVCs collected on units basis; Voter Registers and letters of complaints about irregularities and malpractices during the election addressed to the INEC/Police/other relevant agencies/institutions.

They also sought to rely on security reports relating to the election video/audio recordings/DVD/CD relating to the Election; Election Observers or Observers Reports; Newspaper/Television/ Radio reports and news; appointment letters and tags of PDP agents; expert reports and analysis; and photographs and GSM and other phone outputs.
Super Falcons forward Francisca Ordega has joined the womens team of Chinese Super League side, Shanghai Shenhua, and she remains thankful to God for the steady progress in her career so far, Completesports.com reports.

Ordega, however, did not disclose the duration of the deal in her post.

Officially Shanghai Shenhua football club player now. Glory Glory to God Im grateful Lord, Ordega wrote via her Instagram Page @ordegafrancisca17.

From Bayelsa Queens to Rivers angels, From Rivers angels to Russia, from Russia to Sweden.

Sweden to America, from America to Australia, from Australia Back to America, from America to Spain.

Spain back to America and now in China and still counting. What else can I say? If not to say thank you, God??? Im so thankful. I cant say Im lucky is a privilege and the grace of God..????????.

The 25-year-old has won the African Womens Championship three times.

Ordega started her career with Nigerias womens U-17 team, the Flamingoes and featured at the 2010 FIFA U-17 Womens World Cup and with the under 20 at 2012 FIFA U-20 Womens World Cup.

By Johnny Edward

How Natural Herbal Remedy Killed Stubborn Staphylococcus, Ecoli And Aureus And Other Infections
In his continuing effort to pit races and classes against each other, Democratic presidential candidate and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has said that if you are white, you dont know what its like to be poor.

He should drive some of the roads Ive driven in West Virginia, among other places. Some of the homes of the white poor look like throwbacks from an earlier time.

Sanders attempted to clarify his comment (a political synonym for walking it back when it didnt play well) during a town hall meeting Monday night in Detroit. Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked him about his remark and Sanders replied, I know about white poverty. There is no candidate in this race who has talked more about poverty than I have.

Therein lies the problem. The left talks a lot about poverty, but when it comes to programs and ideas to help people climb out of poverty their only solution is to spend more money. If money alone were enough to extricate people from poverty and help them sustain themselves with a job and a strong family, then the more than $1 trillion spent on anti-poverty programs since the Great Society was launched by President Johnson in 1964 would have reduced the number of poor people in America. And yet, the poverty rate changes very little. A rational person might conclude that spending more money on programs that have failed to achieve their stated goals is not the right answer.

In April and May of 1964, President Johnson and the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, toured the Appalachian states. After their visit he vowed to wipe out poverty. He didnt and his successors havent either.

What do I, a now prosperous white guy, know about poverty?

In 1965, I was a private first class in the U.S. Army, working at Armed Forces Radio in New York City for the astronomical wage of $99 a month. All of us enlisted men had second jobs to make ends meet. Mine was as an engineer at WOR-TV. I had no car, the subway was 10 cents (soon to jump to 15 cents, producing cries from the left that it would harm the poor). I had no savings and as one payday approached I had only a dime in my pocket for a one-way trip to work. Had the paycheck not arrived, I had no idea how to get home to our little apartment in Elmhurst, Queens. Hitchhiking in New York City was not an option.

What I did have was incentive. I did not accept my poverty status as the final verdict on a young life. To paraphrase the song, if I couldnt make it in America, I couldnt make it anywhere. And so I kept at it until my Army discharge and then I moved back to Washington where I finished college, worked at a civilian media job and persisted until breaks came.

While poverty does not have simple solutions, there are solutions. They begin with relaying stories to the poor about people who used to be in their situation but liberated themselves from a life of want and need by making the right life choices. Inspiration and hope do not come from government. They come from within. They also come from churches, more of which can and should adopt a poor family and help them move out of poverty.

You gotta have hope, mustnt sit around and mope, says the song from the musical Damn Yankees. Where does anyone hear that in our blame, envy and entitlement political discourse?

Where have you gone Horatio Alger? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
The Lagos State Task Force has arrested eight suspected cultists and miscreants who allegedly attacked one of its officers with cutlasses and broken bottles.

Olayinka Egbeyemi, the task force chairman, said in a statement Wednesday that the incident happened in the Mile 12 area of the state.

During the attack an officer of the agency (Sergeant Damilola Adeojo) was seriously injured with cutlasses and broken bottles and he was presently receiving treatment and under going series of test on his head at LASUTH, Mr Egbeyemi said.

Mr Egbeyemi said the attack led to an enforcement operation which was executed on March 20, around Mile 12, to get rid of cultists and miscreants disturbing innocent members of the public as well as public officers.

He added that there are series of Save our Soul at Mile 12 petitions submitted to his office by residents of Mile 12 and its environs and this also necessitated the enforcement operation which resulted in the arrest of the seven miscreants.

Enough of these killings by cultists and miscreants across the State particularly around Mile 12, Bariga, Somolu and Lagos Island, Mr Egbeyemi said.

During interrogation, one of the arrested suspects, Ojo Opeyemi, said they were given cultlasses and broken bottles by their group leaders at Akani-modo to attack task force officers, according to the statement.

Mr Egbeyemi said the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Zubairu Muazu, has directed that all those arrested be charge to court for prosecution.

He added that the government would not tolerate miscreants and cultists disturbing innocent residents at any parts of the state.
The first half of February saw a continuation of Januarys downtrends in equities, energy, and high yield, says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.

At mid-month, energy prices began to rise, the Bank of China intervened in currency markets to defend the Yuan, and positive economic news in the US breathed new life into risk assets and equity markets snapped back.

Overall, 12 of Barclays 18 hedge fund indices had losses in February. The Pacific Rim Equities Index was down 2.99%, Healthcare and Biotechnology lost 2.61%, Distressed Securities were down 2.17%, and European Equities gave up 1.32%.

A little less than half, approximately 42 percent, of the funds tracked by BarclayHedge were able to navigate successfully through Februarys turbulent markets, says Waksman.

On the positive side, the Equity Short Bias Index gained 4.71% in February, Technology was up 0.87%, Merger Arbitrage gained 0.63%, the Event Driven Index was up 0.40%, and Global Macro added 0.50%.

After two months in 2016, all but two hedge fund indices have lost ground. The Healthcare and Biotechnology Index has dropped 11.52%, Pacific Rim Equities Index is down 5.56%, Equity Long Bias has lost 5.47%, Distressed Securities are down 5.30%, and the Emerging Markets Index has lost 4.70%.

The Barclay Fund of Funds Index was down 1.24% in February, and has lost 3.66% year to date.
Opalesque Industry Update - Toscafund Asset Management LLP and ML Capital have announced the restructuring and rebranding of the Pegasus UCITS Fund, the inaugural fund of the MontLake UCITS Platform. Launched in September 2010, the fund is now re-launching as the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund (the "Fund"). MontLake is a leading independent platform for UCITS funds that provides investors with access to a range of liquid, transparent and regulated investment products domiciled in Ireland. The Fund will invest primarily in UK listed "micro cap" companies (defined as companies with a market capitalisation of up to 250m) and will seek to exploit inefficiencies in this sector of the market. This is a large universe of companies, many of which receive little coverage and are poorly understood in the market. Toscafund has a proven track record over the long term in UK mid-cap and small-cap investing, and the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund is a natural extension of this same fundamental, value-orientated strategy, applied to the opportunity-rich UK micro cap sector. The Fund will be led and managed by Matthew Siebert and supported by analysts Daniel Cane and Jamie Taylor. They work with and are supported by the team of investment professionals within Toscafund, many with over 20 years of investment experience. The Fund will capitalise on Toscafund's mid cap expertise, employing the same core skill sets and doing deep dive research into companies, markets, sectors and peers, and benefitting from the existing relationships with analysts, brokers and companies. Clareville Capital was the original sub-investment manager to the Pegasus UCITS Fund, but it has been managed by Toscafund since August 2015 when they replaced Clareville as the sub-investment manager. Since then, the Fund's directors have been considering how to position the investment strategy so as to best reflect Toscafund's investment approach and specialist expertise to maximise the benefit to investors. The Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund's capacity will be set at 50m, and Toscafund partners intend to invest a minimum of 10% in the Fund. The revised investment policy will also allow for investment of up to 20% of the NAV in companies that have a larger capitalisation, of up to 1bn. The Fund will have a diversified portfolio of 30 to 40 holdings, with risk limits governing position sizing. Speaking today, Cyril Delamare, CEO of ML Capital, commented: "Pegasus was the first fund to launch on the MontLake Platform, and it is exciting for us to see it develop as the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund. Toscafund are a best in class manager and are committed to growing the fund to its full potential - we look forward to its progress in the year ahead." Martin Hughes, Founder and CEO of Toscafund said: "I look forward to investing in the Tosca Micro Cap UCITS Fund as the fund managers will uncover hidden gems, companies with high growth prospects that are neglected by mainstream funds as the valuations are deemed too small. This will be a very profitable strategy and an area where you find the acorns that then turn into oak trees."
These confrontations have become routine, with the real estate mogul usually egging on his supporters to "rough up" interlopers. He's cheered on supporters who've shoved, kicked, and punched protesters -- even people who've simply stood silently at Trump's rallies.

What was newsworthy was that Trump himself canceled the event. He normally revels in the clashes between protesters and supporters that erupt at his rallies.

True to form, Trump blamed everybody but himself for this debacle. He eventually decided that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was somehow at fault -- and even threatened to send protesters of his own to disrupt rallies for Sanders.

As you probably heard, Donald Trump canceled a rally in Chicago after scuffles broke out between Trump supporters and opponents around the arena where the candidate was supposed to speak.

Throughout it, he's had the gall to claim that he deserves credit for keeping the events as calm as possible.

Despite the incendiary tone of his rhetoric -- that all Muslims are our enemies, that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, and that practically anybody who disagrees with him is an ISIS supporter or a "socialist" -- Trump refuses to take responsibility for the violence he incites among his followers.

Indeed, he told NBC's Chuck Todd that he wasn't condoning violence, not even when he told a crowd shouting down a protester, "I'd like to punch him in the face." Darker still was Trump's reminiscing, "I love the old days -- you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks."

Similarly, Trump said at an earlier rally that if supporters saw anybody with a tomato, "Knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell [out of them]. I promise you I will pay for the legal fees."

Combined with his offer to pay the legal fees of a supporter who assaulted a peaceful Black Lives Matter activist, that's a blank check for violence.

The American body politic certainly has seen demagogues in the past. Former Alabama governor George Wallace, who ran for president in 1968, 1972, and 1976, comes to mind immediately. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who ran for multiple state and federal offices in the 1980s and '90s (and has since thrown his support to Trump), similarly attracted fringe elements to his rallies.

But violence at American political rallies has never been acceptable, especially violence encouraged by the candidate. That's why comparisons of Trump with other American demagogues aren't an easy fit.

Trump's events are more akin to the old fascist rallies of figures like Benito Mussolini. The Italian leader and his "brown shirt" goons routinely beat protesters at rallies around Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. They targeted communists and anarchists at first, but graduated to socialists and then to all small-d democrats as they solidified their iron grip on power.

Trump's tactics aren't unlike those of the fascists who came before him. It goes something like this:

First, they isolate and attack marginalized people with little political power, like Muslims and undocumented workers. Later, they graduate to "socialists" and other opponents of dangerous right-wing populism. Finally, they play the victim and deny adamantly that they've done anything wrong.
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Reprinted from Consortium News

With high symbolism Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting Crimea "to check on the construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which will link the Crimean peninsula and continental Russia," the Kremlin announced on Thursday.

As the Russians like to say, "It is no accident" that he chose today -- marking the second anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea three weeks after the U.S.-sponsored coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, and just days after a referendum in which Crimean voters approved leaving Ukraine and re-joining Russia by a 96 percent majority.

The 12-mile bridge is a concrete metaphor, so to speak, for the re-joining of Crimea and Russia. When completed (the target is December 2018), it will be the longest bridge in Russia.



Yet, the Obama administration continues to decry the political reunion between Crimea and Russia, a relationship that dates back to the Eighteenth Century. Instead, the West has accused Russia of violating its pledge in the 1994 Budapest agreement -- signed by Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain and the U.S. -- "to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine," in exchange for Ukraine surrendering its Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

Did Moscow violate the Budapest agreement when it annexed Crimea? A fair reading of the text yields a Yes to that question. Of course, there were extenuating circumstances, including alarm among Crimeans over what the unconstitutional ouster of Ukraine's president might mean for them, as well as Moscow's not unfounded nightmare of NATO taking over Russia's major, and only warm-water, naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea.

But what is seldom pointed out is that the other parties, including the United States, seem to have been guilty, too, in promoting a coup d'etat removing the democratically elected president and essentially disenfranchising millions of ethnic Russian Ukrainians who had voted for President Viktor Yanukovych. In such a context, it takes a markedly one-dimensional view to place blame solely on Russia for violating the Budapest agreement.

Did the Western-orchestrated coup in Kiev violate the undertaking "to respect the independence and sovereignty" of Ukraine? How about the pledge in the Budapest agreement "to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty." Political and economic interference were rife in the months before the February 2014 coup. [See Consortiumnews.com's " Who Violated Ukraine's Sovereignty? "]

Did Ukrainian President Yanukovych expect to be overthrown if he opted for Moscow's economic offer, and not Europe's? Hard to tell. But if the putsch came as a total surprise, he sorely underestimated what $5 billion in "democracy promotion" by Washington can buy.

After Yanukovych turned down the European Community's blandishments, seeing deep disadvantages for Ukraine, American neoconservatives like National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland pulled out all the stops to enable Ukraine to fulfill what Nuland called its "European aspirations."

"The revolution will not be televised," or so the saying goes. But the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch in Kiev was YouTube-ized two-and-a-half weeks in advance. Recall Nuland's amateurish, boorish -- not to mention irresponsible -- use of an open telephone line to plot regime change in Ukraine with fellow neocon, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, during an intercepted conversation posted on YouTube on Feb. 4.

Nuland tells Pyatt, "Yats is the guy. He's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy you know. ... He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk (aka "Yats") was quickly named prime minister of the coup regime, which was immediately given diplomatic recognition by Washington. Since then, he has made a royal mess of things. Ukraine is an economic basket case, and "Yats" barely survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence and is widely believed to be on his way out.

Did Moscow's strong reaction to the coup, to the danger of NATO setting up shop next door in Ukraine come as a surprise to Nuland and other advisers? If so, she ought to get new advisers, and quickly. That Russia would not let Crimea become a NATO base should have been a no-brainer.

Nuland may have seen the coup as creating a win-win situation. If Putin acted decisively, it would be all the easier to demonize him, denounce "Russian aggression," and put a halt to the kind of rapprochement between President Barack Obama and Putin that thwarted neocon plans for shock and awe against Syria in late summer 2013. However, if Putin acquiesced to the Ukrainian coup and accepted the dangers it posed to Russia, eventual membership for Ukraine in NATO might become more than a pipedream.
By Robert Weiner, Lile Fu and Ben Lasky

The U.S.-China climate-change agreement experienced a long, tough process until the two countries led the 195 nations who agreed on December 12, 2015, in Paris. World leaders convened despite the Paris terror attacks the week before and made a point of solidarity to show terror will not stop positive world action. But the treaty was far more than that--it was years in the making, and few thought the US and China -- the world's two biggest polluters -- would agree. It is an amazing model for meaning action on many controversial world issues. How did it happen?

By itself, the bilateral U.S. China Joint Presidential statement on Climate change on September 25, 2015, a precursor to the world agreement, was praised by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "The joint China-U.S. announcement signals the shared vision and seriousness with which the world's two largest economies are moving to a low-carbon future." Ki-Moon told Xinhua News Agency, one of the official news agencies in China.

In the last two Democratic debates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has talked about her role in coming to this agreement. "I worked with President Obama during the four years I was secretary of state to begin to put pressure on China and India and other countries to join with us to have a global agreement which we finally got in Paris," Clinton said on March 6. At the Florida debate on March 9, Clinton said, "We also do have to combat climate change, and no state has more at stake in that than Florida. And the best way to do that is not only enforcing the laws we have, but also the clean power plan that President Obama has put forth that I support, and the Paris agreement that I think was a huge step forward in the world."

In fact, China and the United States used to oppose climate-change agreements. However, the opposition from the U.S. ended when Barack Obama was elected. In October during the first democratic debate, Hillary Clinton recalled that she and President Obama were eager to talk with the Chinese at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, "Because there will be no effective efforts against climate unless China and India join the rest of the world."

However, the two countries failed to sit down together and hammer out a compromise on climate change. Instead, Brazil, South Africa, India and China built up a formation of the BASIC, which represented developing countries' attitude towards developed countries' omission on carbon emissions' standard.

In 2011, at United Nations Climate Change conference in Duban, China and the U.S. both agreed that it was necessary to reduce carbon emissions, which was a breakthrough in the treaty negotiations. Although, according to The Guardian, this deal only included the principles on which future negotiations would be based on, rather than reaching a consensus on how far and how fast countries should be cutting their carbon dioxide.

On April 13, 2013, current Secretary of State John Kerry began his first visit to China, and one of his achievements of this visit was the launch of the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group, which was "intended to spur large-scale, cooperative efforts to address the climate challenge, including deepening and expanding work already underway," according to U.S. Department of State's website.

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For the fatherland we go with Chavez

(Image by Photo by Glen T. Martin) Details DMCA







The Bolivarian Revolution is alive and well in Venezuela. Having just returned from nine days in the epicenter of the Bolivarian Revolution, I would like to describe some of what I learned in meetings with government and judicial officials and with a number of leaders of the thriving Venezuela cooperative movement. The phrase "Bolivarian Revolution" means a living affirmation of democracy, socialism, patriotism, independence, and anti-imperialism.

These concepts integrate together in the excitement of a revolutionary vision of solidarity and hope. The extraordinary constitution for Venezuela, introduced in 1999 when Hugo Chavez was first elected President, is called "Bolivarian," and the government since that time calls itself "Goberieno Bolivariano de Venezuela." The constitution affirms a "legal order" based on the "superior values" of "life, liberty, justice, equality, solidarity, democracy, social responsibility"human rights, ethics, and political pluralism" (Article 2).

The democratic socialist government under President Chavez (and continuing under President Maduro since Chavez's passing in 2013) affirms at least four programs that have many wealthy Venezuelans and North American neo-liberal capitalists seeing red: (1) food programs for all who need: no hungry, (2) housing programs for all who need: no homeless, (3) free education for all who need: no illiteracy, (4) free healthcare for all who need: no unnecessary illness and death. Unlike Cuba (which I have visited 6 times), where the government itself enforces these things to the exclusion of political pluralism, Venezuela has set itself the noble and monumental task of achieving a truly democratic socialism that embraces political pluralism.

Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), whose name has become a symbol of the struggle for independence from imperialism in Latin America, was a great anti-colonial military leader and visionary who was inspired by the democratic revolutions in France and the United States. He led forces that defeated the Spanish dominators, and he played a key role in establishing Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela as sovereign states. Everywhere in Venezuela today he is linked with Hugo Chavez as the two central visionaries behind the Bolivarian Revolution. On the wall of one government building in Caracas is a quote from Bolivar's 1829 letters: "Los Estados Unidos parecen destinados por la Providencia para plagar al America de miserias a nombre de la libertad" (the United States seems destined by providence to plague America with misery in the name of freedom).

A prophetic statement indeed. As historian Greg Grandin chronicles in Empire's Workshop, since the Monroe doctrine of 1823 the U.S. has consciously dominated and exploited Latin America with a range of vicious neo-colonial forms of imperialism. As the US based movement called School of Americas Watch points out, in the past several decades one key element of this has been the training of Latin American military forces in the "counter-insurgency warfare" techniques of torture, assassinations, and forced disappearances. During the 1970s and 80s, the US helped coordinate the infamous "Operation Condor" in which right wing governments around Latin America systematically implemented these brutal terrorist methods against left-wing activists and spokespersons.

These facts underline the Bolivarian revolutionary theme of patriotism, independence, and anti-imperialism. In Caracas we visited a former military prison now preserved as a museum. The two gentlemen who gave us a private tour had both been incarcerated there for many years. The museum includes lists of the disappeared and assassinated under previous US supported right wing Venezuelan governments, and it helps us understand the ringing affirmation in the Venezuelan Constitution in which all public authorities, including the military, "even during a state of emergency" are "prohibited from effecting, permitting or tolerating the forced disappearance of persons" and are required "not to obey" any order to carry out such an act (Article 45).

The museum also powerfully links together the struggle for Latin American liberation in country after country. It honors Che Guevara from Argentina, Camilo Cienfuegos from Cuba, Salvador Allende from Chile, Augusto Sandino from Nicaragua, Farabundo Mart- from El Salvador, Jacobo Arbenz from Guatemala, Emiliano Zapata from Mexico and many others. And it links the struggle against imperialism to the resistance in Iraq with photographs of the US forms of torture in the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad and elsewhere.

In December 2014, President Obama issued an "emergency" Executive Order that identified Venezuela as a "threat" to human rights and to the United States, citing the actions of some of Venezuela's leaders. The dripping irony here that strikes the Venezuelans, as it does all politically aware persons, is apparently lost on the one-dimensional imperial robots and pundits of US exceptionalism--as the US executes by assassination teams or remote-control drones people suspected of resisting its imperial juggernauts in countries across the world. Realizing the possible significance of Obama's declaration (the "threat to human rights" has been used as a cover to destroy the independent governments of Libya and many other countries), President Maduro called this "the most aggressive, unjust and poisonous step that the U.S. has ever taken against Venezuela."

The patriotism and anti-imperialism of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela is a tool, perhaps a necessary one at this point in history, in the struggle against imperialism. But I made the point to the people I spoke with that the emphasis on patriotic loyalty to national sovereignty is a losing proposition in the long run. The imperial forces love the fact that the world is divided into some 193, mostly militarized, independent sovereign territories. They invade Vietnam and who dares to stop them? They overthrow the democratically elected governments of Guatemala (1953) and Chile (1973), and who comes to the aid of these victimized countries? They destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya with relative impunity.

Despite its stirring patriotism and wonderful commitment to justice and socialism, Venezuela taken as a "threat" is in grave danger. The government has collected evidence that the US has been funneling money to dissident groups within Venezuela to attack government buildings, threaten people's security, disrupt transportation, and destabilize the country. The only real solution for all "sovereign nations" is to join together under an Earth Federation with the authority and strength to put an end to planetary imperialism by the global centers of capitalist wealth and planetary exploitation.

If only 10 or 15 nations in the "global periphery" were to join together under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth, open to all who wish to be part of the "Earth Federation," the world would reach a fundamental turning point toward universal democracy, justice, equality, and freedom. Victimized nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia would be begging to join the emerging Earth Federation as a way out of the trap of poverty and domination.

Patriotism and the rhetoric of sovereignty may help peripheral nations struggle resolutely against the imperial drive for "full spectrum dominance" over every corner of the planet in the service of this global system of domination and exploitation, but the dominators use precisely this fragmented system to divide and conquer, destabilizing and re-colonizing one country after another with relative impunity. It often begins with a declaration such as "Venezuela is a threat." The way out of this world system that we inherit from early-modern fragmented thinking is to make the paradigm-shift to holism.

Holism is the new paradigm discovered by all the sciences during the 20th century: human beings are one, civilization is one, the ecological interdependence of all life on Earth is one. Why are we not then politically and economically one? I elucidate this concept in some detail in my newest book One World Renaissance: Holistic Planetary Transformation through a Global Social Contract. Why do we continue with this absurd fragmentation of human civilization within absolute militarized territorial boundaries?

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Fidelis Cybersecurity to Demonstrate End-to-End Attack Lifecycle Defense Capabilities and Solutions at GISEC 2016

www.fidelissecurity.com

Dubai, United Arab Emirates  March 17, 2016  Fidelis Cybersecurity, the leading provider of products and services for detecting and stopping advanced cyberattacks, today announced their participation in the Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (GISEC), to be held at the Dubai World Trade Center, March 29-31.Attendees are invited to Hall 7, Stand B-144 to learn how advanced products and incident response services from Fidelis Cybersecurity reduce the time to detect and resolve incidents, prevent data theft and stop attackers at every stage in the attack lifecycle.In addition to exhibiting at GISEC, Jim Jaeger, a former director of intelligence with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Atlantic Command, will host a session on forensic analysis of cyberattacks. He will share insights into how enterprises can identify the root cause of cyberattacks and put in place solutions and processes to counteract threats and mitigate future attacks. The session will be held on Wednesday, March 30 from 3:10pm  3:40 pm in Sheikh Rashid Hall.Cybercriminals are targeting the Middle East, and the mass adoption of e-services, from banking and insurance to government, adds another layer of complexity and introduces potential security issues. Organizations must be able to quickly operationalize intelligence across their infrastructure so they can identify and remove attackers no matter where they hide on the network and endpoints, says Fidelis Cybersecurity Chief Cyber Strategist, Jim Jaeger.Fidelis Network analyses network traffic at multi-gigabit speeds in real-time. It detects the tools and tactics of advanced attackers  including advanced malware, exploits, command and control activity, and data theft techniques  that can often get past traditional network security systems, such as firewalls and intrusion prevention systems. Fidelis Endpoint allows an organization to initiate an investigation and respond to a threat, no matter where it is in the corporate environment  network, endpoint or mobile device  across all ports and protocols, without depending on third-party proxies.About Fidelis CybersecurityFidelis Cybersecurity is creating a world where attackers have no place left to hide. We reduce the time it takes to detect attacks and resolve security incidents. Our Fidelis Network and Fidelis Endpoint products look deep inside your traffic and content where attackers hide their exploits. Then, we pursue them out to your endpoints where your critical data lives. With Fidelis youll know when youre being attacked, you can retrace attackers footprints and prevent data theft at every stage of the attack lifecycle. To learn more about Fidelis Cybersecurity products and incident response services, please visitand follow us on Twitter @FidelisCyber.Media ContactMaggie FonsecaFidelis CybersecurityMaggie.fonseca@fidelissecurity.com+44 (0) 7753 831 703Vernon SaldanhaProcre8vernon@procre8.biz+971 52 288 0850Villa 41, 81D Street, Uptown Mirdif, Dubai
Wind Power Market (Austria, South Africa, Spain) 2015 Market Size, Analysis, Share, Trend, Power Plants, Turbine Market Share, Forecast 2025

wind power

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Wind Power Market (Austria, South Africa, Spain) 2015 Market Size, Analysis, Share, Trend, Power Plants, Turbine Market Share, Forecast 2025Wind Power in Austria Market Outlook 2025........."Wind Power in Austria, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Austria.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Austria (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Austria wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.Get Sample Copy of Report:ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global wind power (Onshore and Offshore) market, Austria power market, Austria renewable power market and Austria wind power market. The Scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2001-2014 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2025.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.Wind Power in South Africa Market Outlook 2025.......Wind Power in South Africa Market Outlook 2025 - Capacity, Generation,Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummary"Wind Power in South Africa, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in South Africa.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in South Africa (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in South Africa wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.Get Sample Copy of Report:Scope- The report analyses global renewable power market, global wind power (Onshore and Offshore) market, South Africa power market, South Africa renewable power market and South Africa wind power market. The Scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2001-2014 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2025.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global wind power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2014 and key owners information of various regions.Wind Power in Spain Market Outlook 2025.........Wind Power in Spain Market Outlook 2025 - Capacity, Generation, Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummary"Wind Power in Spain, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Spain.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Spain (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Spain wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.Get Sample Copy of Report:Scope- The report analyses global renewable power market, global wind power (Onshore and Offshore) market, Spain power market, Spain renewable power market and Spain wind power market. The Scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2001-2014 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2025.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.Energy Market Study is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United States
Wind Power Market(Austria,Brazil,Korea,Turkey) 2015 Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Price, Outlook 2025

wind power

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Wind Power Market(Austria,Brazil,Korea,Turkey) 2015 Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Price, Outlook 2025Austria Wind Power Market 2015 :--Wind Power in Austria, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015  Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Austria.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Austria (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Austria wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.Request For Sample Report Here:Brazil Wind Power Market 2015 :--"Wind Power in Brazil, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Brazil.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Brazil (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Brazil wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.Request For Sample Report Here:Republic of Korea Wind Power Market 2015 :--Wind Power in Republic of Korea, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Republic of Korea.The report provides in-depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Republic of Korea (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Republic of Korea wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.Request For Sample Report Here:Turkey Wind Power Market 2015 :--"Wind Power in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Turkey.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Turkey (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Turkey wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.Request For Sample Report Here:Energy Market Study is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United States
Latest report on Nanosatellite Market Demand, Size, Share, Growth, Analysis and Forecast 2015  2019

http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/nanosatellite-market-2015-global-industry-size-trends-growth.html

http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/report/55329/inquiry-for-buying

Global Nanosatellite Industry 2015 Market Research Report was a professional and depth research report on Global Nanosatellite industry that you would know the world's major regional market conditions of Nanosatellite industry, the main region including North American, Europe and Asia etc, and the main country including United States ,Germany ,Japan and China etc.The research report on Global Nanosatellite Industry 2015 presents an analytical study of the global Nanosatellite market, including a detailed analysis of the present and historical performances of the Nanosatellite market in globally. The competitive landscape of the Nanosatellite industry is also evaluated in this research study.Access full report with TOC atThe report classifies the Nanosatellite market in the globe into various segments on the basis of several industry verticals. It also categorizes the market based on the geographical distribution of the Nanosatellite market. Each market segment is then analyzed considering its contribution in terms of volume produced (in kilo tons) and the revenue it generates (in US$).Various aspects of the Nanosatellite industry such as the value chain and major policies that influence the market are explained at length and the growth drivers, restraints, and future prospects of the market are extensively evaluated in this report.Further, the report talks about the products available in the market along with their pricing structure, production volume, the dynamics of demand and supply, and their contribution in terms of revenue in the global market for Nanosatellite , covering the statistical data pertaining to import and export in the market.Inquiry for buying reportThe report makes use of several analytical tools such as investment feasibility, investment return, and market attractiveness analysis to provide a complete picture of the development of the global Nanosatellite market, determining significant market strategies likely to pay off in the long run.Lastly, the report profiles the major players operating in the Nanosatellite market in the world in order to analyze the competitive hierarchy of the market.Chem Gadgets is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651
India Hydropower Market 2016 Outlook to 2025 Capacity, Generation, Cost of Energy

Hydropower in India

http://goo.gl/UGFLfe

"Hydropower in India, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the hydropower market in India.Get Sample report:The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global hydropower market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in India (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in India hydropower market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to hydropower is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global hydropower market, India power market, India renewable power market and India hydropower market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2001-2014 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2025.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2014 and key owners information of various regions.- Power market scenario in India and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2025.- An overview on India renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2001-2025), generation trends(2001-2025) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2014.- Detailed overview of India hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming hydro projects.- Deal analysis of India hydropower market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and hydropower in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Reasons to buy- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in India hydropower market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for hydropower market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.Tech Report Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United States
Latest report on Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) Market Trends, Growth, Analysis and Forecast 2015  2019

http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/electronics-control-unit-management-ecuecm-market-2015-global.html

http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/report/55303/request-sample

Global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) Industry 2015 Market Research Report was a professional and depth research report on Global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry that you would know the world's major regional market conditions of Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry, the main region including North American, Europe and Asia etc, and the main country including United States ,Germany ,Japan and China etc.Global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) Industry 2015 is an analytical research report that delves into the dynamics of the global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry.It presents an executive-level blueprint of the market with key focus on its operations in globe. In a lucid chapter-wise format, the report presents the historical statistics of the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market in addition to studying the competitive landscape. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive overview of the market for industry participants. Key findings of this report will help companies operating in the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market to identify the opportunities that they can capitalize on to propel growth.Get full report with TOC @The study analyzes the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry in detail. To begin with, it enumerates the primary market operations, evaluating the nature and specific characteristics of products and services it provides. In the following chapters, the study classifies the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market in terms of its varied product types, applications, network of supply chain, and geography. Based on the market segmentation, the report analyzes the competitive landscape of the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market and lays down the development status of key regions in globally.The study progresses with a detailed, incisive analysis of the strategies and trends common in the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market, and how the same is likely to impact the future course of action of players in the market and the growth trajectory of the market. Region-wise market share for the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry is analyzed for the purpose of which the prominent players are profiled and their respective market share is calculated. Growth drivers, restraints, and opportunities are studied in detail with the help of industry-leading tools, based on which the report presents insightful growth forecasts for the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market. Key findings of the study will help stakeholders gauge the growth prospects and understand the investment feasibility.For sample report click onThe Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market research study has been composed using key inputs from industry experts. Furthermore, the extensive primary and secondary research data with which the report has been composed helps deliver the key statistical forecasts, in terms of both revenue and volume. In addition to this, the trends and revenue analysis of the global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market has been mentioned in this report. This will give a clear perspective to the readers how the Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) market will fare in globe.This report also presents product specification, manufacturing process, and product cost structure etc.Production is separated by regions, technology and applications. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, equipment, downstream client survey, marketing channels, industry development trend and proposals. In the end, the report includes Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, investment return analysis, and development trend analysis. In conclusion, it is a deep research report on Global Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry. Here, we express our thanks for the support and assistance from Electronics Control Unit Management (ECU/ECM) industry chain related technical experts and marketing engineers during Research Teams survey and interviewsChem Gadgets is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714
Jewers Doors Speeds Response for Wrexhams New Emergency Centre

Wrexham Ambulance and Fire Services Resource Centre

www.jewersdoors.co.uk

Jewers Doors put the finishing touches to the new 15 million Ambulance and Fire Services Resource Centre (AFSRC) at Wrexham with the installation of 14 pairs of Swift fast-acting, bi-fold doors.The new AFSR Centre accommodates eight fire appliance vehicles and six ambulances and replaces an obsolete fire station and two ambulance stations which are now co-located onto one modern, fast-response site.Jewers Doors were commissioned to install doors where safety, reliability and speed of operation, were the prime factors. Each door comprises four panels, with two leaves folding to each side of the exit. Fire and ambulance vehicles need to exit rapidly when under blue light emergency response conditions, and Swift doors take less than seven seconds to fully open automatically. In the event of power failure, each door can be instantly and effortlessly opened manually via low-level disengage handles to prevent delays.A four metre vertical roller door not only typically takes twice as long to open, but drivers find it more difficult to judge when there is sufficient height clearance. In the urgency of responding to an emergency call, there is a risk of tall vehicles such as fire engines hitting the bottom of the door while its still opening, which not only requires a costly repair to the door, but more expensively to the vehicles ladders and roof lights. As Swift doors open to the side, there is full height access at all times and drivers have full line of sight of the doors as they open, thus ensuring a safe exit.Leading edges of the doors are fitted with full height pressure sensitive edges, so if doors were to meet resistance during closing, they would immediately stop and reverse, however, photocell beams inside and out create a safe area around the door to greatly reduce the risk of an impact ever occurring.Gareth Davies, project manager for BAM Construction Ltd said, Jewers have been supplying Swift doors for North Wales Fire since 2008. The doors installed at Wrexham underline their reputation and do justice to this new state-of-the-art emergency centre.Swift door panels are manufactured as a single piece construction, fully insulated with CFC-free foam materials to optimise thermal efficiency and reduce noise pollution by 25dB, and fitted with multi-wall rubber seals to all edges to reduce water, air and dust ingress as well as heat loss.endsEditor NotesHi- res images available on requestFor more information visitMore about Jewers DoorsEstablished in 1983 and still a family run business, Jewers Doors is a world-leading supplier of industrial doors operating from a state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Bedfordshire. With over 50 highly skilled and experienced staff, the core of the business is design, manufacture, installation and repair of industrial door solutions across all industrial sectors. The Phoenix range of doors are designed for medium to large industrial applications, while the Esavian range is recognised as one of the worlds leading range of aircraft hanger doors. Incorporating the very latest concepts and technologies, Jewers Doors have been installed not only in the UK, but also throughout the world including Europe, Middle and Far East and New Zealand.Jewers Doors LtdStratton Business ParkBiggleswadeBedfordshireUnited KingdomSG18 8QB
Medical Tourism Market to Reach US$32.5 bn in 2019, Availability of Cost-effective Treatments in Emerging Nations Encourages Medical Tourism

http://bit.ly/1Vj70VV

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

A market study on the global tourism market, recently published by Transparency Market Research (TMR) estimates this market to rise at an exceptional CAGR of 17.90% over the period from 2013 to 2019 and reach a value US$32.5 bn by the end of the forecast period.The research report, titled Medical Tourism Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019, states that the worldwide medical tourism market attained a value of US$10.5 bn in 2012.Medical tourism is defined as traveling from one location to another with a purpose to gain medical assistance. Generally, people from developing nations travel to developed countries for medical treatments that are unavailable in their own countries due to poor medical and healthcare infrastructure. However, in recent years, people residing in developed economies have also begun travelling to lesser developed countries in order to gain cost-efficient medical assistance.Get Industry Research Sample:According to this study, the falling cost of medical procedures in the Philippines, India, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, Turkey, Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Costa Rica, and Dubai is encouraging people to travel to these countries for their treatment and, in turn, is propelling the global medical tourism market significantly.In addition, the widening range of medical treatments available in these nations, coupled with technical advancements in the field of medical and healthcare, is likely to boost this market greatly during the forecast period, states the market report.In this study, the global medical tourism market is analyzed on the basis of its regional spread. India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Taiwan, and South Korea are the major medical tourism markets across the world.Thailand has emerged as the most popular destination for cosmetic surgeries among the medical tourists from Western Europe. In 2012, this country had welcomed around 2.5 million foreign patients, accounting for approximately 45% of the overall number of foreign medical tourists arrived in Asia. However, Malaysia is likely to dominate the global medical tourism market in the coming years.Almost 0.7 million patients were treated in this nation in 2012. Analysts expect around 2 mn patients to gain medical assistance in Malaysia by the end of the forecast period, notes the research report.The report further states that India and Singapore are the most preferred destinations in case of complex medical procedures. India has attracted a large number of patients due to its increasing popularity in the field of cardiac treatments. Costa Rica, Dubai, Poland, and the Philippines have been identified as the prospective countries for medical tourism in this market study.Samitivej Sukhumvit, Raffles Medical Group, Fortis Healthcare Ltd., Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., Bangkok Hospital Medical Center, Asian Heart Institute, Bumrungrad International Hospital, KPJ Healthcare Berhad, Min-Sheng General Hospital, and Prince Court Medical Center are some of the major organizations operating in the global medical tourism market.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Mr.Sudip S90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Grand Tyre & Service Center Offers the Best Tyres in Dandenong at an Unbeatable Price this Season

Dandenong, Victoria Mar16: Grand Tyre & Service Center has come up with a huge collection of high quality tyres of all top brands for cars and heavy vehicles at an affordable rate. They are one of the pioneers in tyre sales and car services in Dandenong.With the improving numbers of travel lovers in the country, the sale of four wheelers are subsequently increasing. With the changing lifestyle, now people love to travel with comfort, and privacy. And, the comfort to travel depends upon the vehicle you choose, but your choice does not end here. Does your vehicle have the best of tyres to carry you for miles?Grand Tyre & Service Center has been offering high quality tyres of all the leading brands at an affordable price. They are located at the Hammond road and have served long unending list of satisfied customers with the best of tyres for their cars.With a motive to offer the best quality tyres to customers, Grand Tyre & Service Center have come up with a new collection of tyres in all top brands at the most competitive price in the market. They manage a collection of 30,000 tyres at their store at any given moment. They make sure that their customers enjoy the drive to the fullest without any hassle created by weak or low quality tyres.Along with the tyre sales, Grand Tyre & Service Center have also proved themselves efficient enough in providing world class car services. They house the most qualified and experienced technician to offer the best of car services in town. They are also known for wheel alignment and tyre repair services in Dandenong.So, whether your car needs new tyres or its time for a service now. Visit Grand Tyre & Service Center to get top brands tyres at affordable price and high quality car services.Grand Tyre & Service Center is a Tyre shop located at Dandenong, Victoria, Australia. They sell brand new Tyres, Car Service and Wheel Alignment. Grand Tyre & Service Center plays by its own rules and recommends only the tyres, which guarantee both unquestionable quality and affordable price for our customers. They are not a franchise and operate as a single branch. They house a huge collection of more than 30,000 tyres in stock, at any given moment.If you are looking for more information about Grand Tyre & their services, you can visit their website, contact them via email at info@grandtyre.com.au or call them at (03) 97117774.Name: Mansour SharifiDesignation: CEOAddress  25 Hammond rdCity  DandenongState  VictoriaCountry  AustraliaPhone: (03) 97117774Email: info@grandtyre.com.au
New Report Shares Details About the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment Market 2016 Size, Price, Analysis to 2020

http://www.9dimengroup.com/market-analysis/global-outdoor-wi-fi-equipment-market-2016-industry.html

http://www.9dimengroup.com/report/57867/request-sample

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9Dimen Group has recently announced the addition of a market study Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment Market 2016 Industry Growth, Size, Trends, Share, Opportunities and Forecast to 2020, is a comparative analysis of the global market.Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment Industry is an accurate and quality research study on the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market. This report is based on the briefings and interviews conducted with product manufacturers and their consumers, with demand-side research. This research is based on the interviews with end-users and their service providers. The blend of checks and balances combined with involving the players in the industry offers a clear and accurate picture of the entire Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market.Browse Full Report with TOC @:Furthermore, the research data in the report after working closely with the investment bankers and financial analyst presents a clear idea of the investment scenario in the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market. The report assess the market outlook for public companies, evaluates business cases of several private companies, and discusses investment trends in the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market.The report on the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market covers the present and future trends of consumer preferences that will shape the industry. The report assess the buying trends along with the purchase process, technology preference, expenditures, and manufacturers and service provider preferences of end-users in the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market.The report dwells deeper by providing the region-wise consumer preferences and their impact on the market revenue and growth. The report also presents the current regulatory scenario of individual regional sectors in the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market. Furthermore, the current regulatory scenario along with the upcoming regulations that will come in effect in the coming few years have also been mentioned in this report.Download Sample Report of @:Several key players operating in the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market have been profiled in this report. The key players business overview, product offering, revenue share, business strategies, and latest innovations have been included in this report. The in-depth competitive framework of the Global Outdoor Wi-Fi Equipment market will help clients to formulate the better strategies for a desired business outcome.9Dimen Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@9dimengroup.comWeb:Blog:
Tjaark Philipp Meyer is new member of the Perfion Product Information Management team in Germany

www.perfion.com

www.perfion.com

Tjaark Philipp Meyer has joined the growing Perfion team as an International Solution Consultant for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.Back in 2003, Tjaark Phillip Meyer started working with Product Information Management solutions and he has been busy doing this ever since. He has held positions as project manager and consultant for PIM, MAM, and print media. As such, he has had the opportunity to dive deep beneath the hood of four different systems already.THE PIM INDUSTRY IS FULL OF CREATIVE MINDSBecause Perfion.COM is a standard software solution, Tjaark Philipp Meyer has been able to get going very quickly:"I love the PIM industry. In no other IT industry one has to work with so many creative minds. To develop solutions together with customers is tremendous fun! In addition, this software has exceeded my expectations.It is said that whenever you have a team of more than one person, you need standards and I know of no system as suited as Perfion. Many systems claim to be standard, but Perfion truly is. Updates do not require consulting services and the entire administration can be done by the customer himself. Yet, Perfion manages to offer everyone the data model they need, no matter which industry they're in.I must say that I am very happy to be a Perfioneer!"Tjaark Philipp Meyer, International Solution Consultant, Perfion GmbHABOUT PERFIONPerfion is the worlds only 100% standard Product Information Management (PIM) solution for companies with a large number of product variants and parts and/or need for multi-channel, multi-language communication.With Perfion you get a single source of truth for product information which gives you full control of all product data from day one wherever it is applied (e.g. webshops, websites, supplier portals, smart phone apps, printed catalogues, fact sheets, social media, direct mails, newsletters).Perfion is the easiest and fastest PIM solution to implement. It is open to integrate with your existing IT-platform and handles continuous changes in requirements without extra cost.Perfion integrates easily with existing ERP systems and 100% into Microsoft Dynamics NAV, AX, GP and SL as well as SAP, Oracle, Infor, Movex plus Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint, EPiServer Commerce, Sana Commerce, Dynamicweb, Magento and OXID eSales.Perfion has a documented ROI of less than a year.Bernd Beiser, GeschaftsfuhrerPerfion GmbHClaude-Dornier-Strasse 61D-73760 OstfildernDeutschlandTel: +49 711 460 5044-0info@perfion.com
Securing A Car Accident Injury Claim With Onemillion Law

http://www.onemillionlaw.com/law-library/personal-injury/car-accidents/

http://www.onemillionlaw.com/

https://www.prlog.org/12542816-securing-car-accident-injury-claim-with-onemillion-law.html

Car accidents can turn out to be really ugly. If someone is in the receiving end, it is quite natural that he/she would ask for compensation from the person who is responsible for the accident. For all accident related compensations and legal procedures, OneMillion Law is the best company that clients can seek help from.OneMillion Law is one company that truly believes in giving the client back what they deserve. When it comes to car accident lawyers New York, there is no other company that can provide a detailed and comprehensive defense for car accident claims. These claims take months to get processed and if not defended by an experienced lawyer may not be settled at all.But, when a lawyer from this company takes up a case, the client can be rest assured that they are bound to get the compensation for the accident. At OneMillion Law, each and every employee understands how costly car accident injuries can be and that is why the lawyers have developed unique legal solutions that will help fight the case better. For more information visit nowOne of the main reasons why OneMillion Law has flourished over the years is because their services are affordable and would be with the client till the very end. When a client hires a lawyer from this company, he/she will not only get his case defended successfully, but will also get valuable advice for the laws that are related to accident injury claims. Another reason why OneMillion Law is considered the best in the business is because they are prompt and are quick to respond. They understand the emergency of the situation and never keep a client waiting. Even for cases that are complicated than others, the lawyers would make sure that the decision is not pending for months. Almost every case gets settled at OneMillion Law and clients are guaranteed that they would not fail to win a case.For car accident claims, it is always wise to get an opinion from a reputed and experienced lawyer. At OneMillion, the respective lawyer will help recover the traffic accident cost in quick time. They are specialists in arranging legal advice and would provide all the help that is needed to get the case settled.Company info: OneMillion Law is the go-to company when it comes to car accident lawyer NJ. They have been in this business for a long time and the lawyers keep themselves updated with all the latest law changes and bylaws. Clients can be sure that when this company takes up a case, they would be on the winning side. Read more atPR Source:OneMillion Law has developed effective legal solutions that help clients to meet their needs; we have numerous practice areas and follow right philosophy so that law can work effectively for the clients. We assist our clients in making legal representations effective and more affordable. Government frames the laws so that interests of individuals are protected and they are empowered, but they usually remain devoid of the benefits, because of complex procedures. One Million Law understands exactly what you need and has brought together some of the best minds involved in legal field, it will help you in availing the due rights. We are of the opinion that each one of you must be aware of family laws, immigration laws, incorporating a business, getting trademarks, patents and copyrights and take care of other vital legal issues.250 Park Ave, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10177Telephone: +1-212-572-4832Email: info@onemillionlaw.com
uberall.com now manages Google My Business Profiles in real-time and wins Deutsche Telekom account

www.uberall.com

Berlin, March 18, 2016  With their new API for Google My Business, Google sets a clear signal to take a closer look at the needs of local businesses and their representatives.As one of the first partners, uberall.com has now access to Google's new API. It enables the Online Presence Management company to update Google Profiles of local businesses in real-time with the most up-to-date information  without the API, this is a costly process as edits have to be made step-by-step via a browser."We've been managing profiles on Google's platforms on behalf of our partners for 3 years now. And we're excited to now be able to lift this service to a completely new level!", says Florian Hubner, founder of uberall.com. "The close exchange with Google's team in Mountain View, California, has lead to us having access to the API already. We were able to give early feedback and the very friendly dialogue helps to continuously improve the functionality of the API."In parallel to rolling out the integration of Google's new technology, uberall.com announced that they were able to win Germany's largest telco, Deutsche Telekom, as a new customer. The Berlin-based startup now manages all online profiles for Deutsche Telekom including search engines, online directories, social media platforms, and satellite navigation systems."We carefully evaluated all options in the market and decided to work with uberall.com", states Tilman Schlieper, responsible project manager for digital presence of the Telekom Shops for Telekom Deutschland GmbH. "It is important for us to work with a reliable partner that offers the latest Online Presence Management solution, which allows Deutsche Telekom to be amongst the first enterprises to update Google My Business in real-time. Additionally, uberall.com supports our profile management efforts, e.g., by updating old incorporations, finding duplicate profiles, and detecting inappropriate user generated content."About uberall.comuberall.com is the leading Online Presence Management provider in Europe. The Berlin based technology company connects online customers with local businesses. uberall.com offers a unique platform, which enables companies of all sizes to manage their online presence (contact info, opening hours, images & videos, products & events, status updates etc) across all major online directories, apps, maps, navigation systems, and review sites. Beyond helping local businesses being found online, uberall.com monitors all relevant social platforms for customer interaction and allows local business to better engage with their audiences. uberall.coms clients range from international corporations with thousands of branches to channel partners serving tens of thousands of owneroperated local businesses from all industries. For more information visit uberall.com.About Deutsche TelekomDeutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies, with around 151 million mobile customers, 30 million fixed-network lines and over 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2014). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in more than 50 countries and has approximately 228,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 62.7 billion in the 2014 financial year  more than 60 percent of it outside Germany.uberall GmbHKarina Muller+49 (0)30 346 4679 62Oranienburger Str. 66, 10117 Berlin, Germanykarina@uberall.com
Recent Research: Global Processors for Wearables Market 2016 Size, Share, Demand, Strategy, Pipeline to 2020

http://www.9dimengroup.com/market-analysis/global-processors-for-wearables-market-2016-industry-growth.html

http://www.9dimengroup.com/report/57725/request-sample

http://www.9dimengroup.com/

9Dimen Group has recently announced the addition of a market study Global Processors for Wearables Market 2016 Industry Growth, Size, Trends, Share, Opportunities and Forecast to 2020, is a comparative analysis of the global market.2016 Global Processors for Wearables Industry Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Processors for Wearables industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).Browse Complete Report with TOC @:The report firstly introduced the Processors for Wearables basics: definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain overview; industry policies and plans; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with:1.) basic information;2.) the Asia Processors for Wearables industry;3.) the North American Processors for Wearables industry;4.) the European Processors for Wearables industry;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.Request for Sample Report of @:Table of ContentPart I Processors for Wearables Industry OverviewChapter One Processors for Wearables Industry Overview1.1 Processors for Wearables Definition1.2 Processors for Wearables Classification Analysis1.2.1 Processors for Wearables Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Processors for Wearables Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Processors for Wearables Application Analysis1.3.1 Processors for Wearables Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Processors for Wearables Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Processors for Wearables Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Processors for Wearables Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Processors for Wearables Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Processors for Wearables Product Market Development Overview9Dimen Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@9dimengroup.comWeb:
Polymerase Chain Reaction - Comparative Analysis and End User Preference Study

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/polymerase-chain-reaction-249309546.html

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=249309546

The overall market for PCR technology market is expected to grow rapidly owing to the expansion of its application areas and increased accuracy and precision. Furthermore, specific technology segments of the PCR market, such as dPCR (real-time PCR) and qPCR (digital PCR), are witnessing higher market growth owing to their benefits such as real-time process monitoring, low reagent consumption, automation of workflow, and greater reproducibility and precision. The real-time PCR segment commanded the largest share of the global PCR market in 2014, due to several factors including technological advancements, increasing use of qPCR in research and medical diagnostics, growing use of robotics for lab automation, and expansion of installation base.The report "Polymerase Chain Reaction Usage Pattern and Replacement Trends, End User Analysis, Pricing Analysis, Comparative Analysis, Competitive Landscape Comparative Analysis and End User Preference Study", analyzes and studies the PCR technology in terms of pricing, replacement trends, competitors portfolio analysis, and selection criteria for adopting PCR instruments from an end-user perspective.Browse 14 figures spread through 65 Slides and in-depth table of contents (TOCs) of this report @The growing geriatric population, coupled with an increasing prevalence e of chronic diseases, and technological advancements in the field of life science are the key factors driving the growth of qPCR and dPCR market. The rising incidence of infectious diseases and genetic disorders and increased public-private investments, funds, and grants for PCR-based research are further assisting the market growth.However, the high cost of dPCR instruments and technological limitations associated with qPCR and dPCR are the key factors limiting the growth of this market. In addition, the implementation of the Minimum Information for the Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines is a key challenge faced by industry players in this market.The study provides granular information regarding pricing of PCR instruments with breakdown into various cost components. These cost components include machine cost, accessories cost, training cost, services and software cost, and maintenance cost, among others. The report also provides insights on replacement trends and end-user preferences for PCR systems.The report also contains detailed analysis of end users of PCR instruments and their preferences. The PCR instruments end-user market can be divided into four distinct segments, reference laboratories, research laboratories/academic institutes/hospitals, medium-sized laboratories, and others (clinical research organizations and forensic laboratories). Reference laboratories commanded the largest share of PCR instrument market owing to increased test volume of infectious diseases and various types of cancers.For 'Queries' related to this research material, visit 'Inquiry Before Buy' @The research findings cited in the report encapsulates the important selection criteria for PCR machines from an end-user point of view. It analyses each end-user segment and importance given to the particular criteria while selecting a PCR machine. Some of the important criteria for selection of PCR systems include consistent quality of data, sensitivity, services and support, high-throughput ability, multiplexing capacity, ease of use, and price and brand of instrument.About Research Publisher: MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is worlds 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. MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarkets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India1-888-600-6441
Global Insulation Market Set for Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 65 Billion By 2020

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http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/insulation-market-z49284

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Do inquiry of Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Insulation (Plastic Foam, Mineral Wool, Fiberglass and Others) Market for Residential Buildings, Non-Residential Construction, Industrial, HVAC & OEM and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020. According to the report, the global insulation market was valued at approximately USD 40.0 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach approximately USD 65.0 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of around 8.0% between 2015 and 2020.Insulation is a method that restricts the transfer of heat or/and electricity. Insulators have opposite effect on the flow of electrons. The R-factor determines the quality of insulator, higher the R-value the more effective insulator power. Good insulators such as wood, plastic, rubber and glass are widely used in different insulation process. Insulators find widespread application in variety of piping and tank. Design considerations for insulation often include insulating value, fire safety, resistance to corrosion, and other factors.The insulation market is segmented on the basis of key products including plastic foam, mineral wool, fiberglass and others. Fiberglass was largest product segment accounted for over 40% overall market share in 2014. Fiberglass is commonly used in various applications owing to its excellent properties and low cost. Plastic foam is another key product segment of insulation and is expected to witness significant growth in the near future. Plastic foams are mainly consumed in acoustic and thermal insulation in commercial, residential and industrial application sectors.Get Sample Research Report:Insulators are widely adopted in residential buildings, non-residential construction, industrial, HVAC & OEM and others. Insulation market was dominated by residential buildings segment with over 50% share of the total revenue generated in 2014. The growth of this segment mainly attributed to increasing urbanization coupled with high disposable income. Non-residential construction and industrial, HVAC & OEM are other key application segments.Asia pacific was largest regional market for insulation and is accounted for over 40% share of the total revenue generated in 2014. Insulation market in Asia Pacific region is expected to exhibit strong growth owing to rising government support and rapid growth in infrastructure. In terms of revenue, North America was the second largest market for insulation.Some of the key players operating in this market include Duro-Last Roofing, Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, Owens Corning, Johns Manville, CertainTeed Corporation, Rockwool International A/S, Knauf Gips KG, Atlas Roofing Corporation and Huntsman Corporation.This report segments the global insulation market as follows:Global Insulation Market: Product Segment AnalysisPlastic FoamMineral WoolFiberglassOthersGlobal Insulation Market: Product Segment AnalysisResidential BuildingNon-residential ConstructionIndustrial, HVAC & OEMOthersGlobal Insulation Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaBrowse Full Report Here :Zion Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each Zion Research syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
Global Plant Growth Regulator Market Set for Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 6.4 Billion By 2020

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http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/plant-growth-regulators-market-z49232

http://www.marketresearchstore.com

Do Inquiry About Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Plant Growth Regulators (Auxins, Cytokinins and Others) Market: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020 According to the report, the global plant growth regulators market was valued at approximately USD 3.5 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach approximately USD 6.4 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of around 8.2% between 2015 and 2020.Plant growth regulators, often called as plant exogenous hormone which regulates growth of plants and improve responses to stimuli. The plant regulators are natural or synthetic substances used as promoters and inhibitors. . Ethylene is one of the plant growth regulators used for improving flower production. Plant growth regulators are not harmful human health. Plant hormones used to enhance the natural plant growth processes and are important measures to ensure agricultural production.Get Sample Research Report:Key product segment of plant growth regulator market includes auxins, cytokinins and others (Mepiquate chloride and Gibberellins). Cytokinin was dominant product segment of plant growth regulator market. It accounted for over 40% of total market share in 2014. This segment is expected to witness fastest growth on account of increasing demand for cytokinin in herbal plants production. Auxin is another leading key product segment and it is mainly consumed in cotton production. Rising cotton production due to textile industry is anticipated to propel the demand of auxins in the years to come. Other plant growth regulators include mepiquat chloride and gibberellins. Gibberellin is expected to exhibit significant growth owing to strong demand of gibberellins for protein synthesis in plant body.In 2014, Europe was the key regional market in global plant growth regulators market with over 30% market share. It was majorly due to rising organic farming in this region. Asia Pacific is another key region for plant growth regulators market and projected to witness significant growth over the forecast period. The growth in this region is mainly attributed to increasing cotton production in China and India. North America is expected to exhibit significant growth owing to strong demand for herbal medicines.Some of the key players in the global plant growth regulators market include Syngenta AG, BASF, Bayer CropScience, Tata Chemicals Limited, DuPont, NuFarm Limited, Redox Industries Ltd, Sichuan Guoguang Agrochemical Co. Ltd, Crop Care Limited and Valent BioSciences CorporationThis report segments the global plant growth regulators market as follows:Global Plant Growth Regulators Market: Product Segment AnalysisAuxinsCytokininsOthers (Mepiquate Chloride and Gibberellins)Global Plant Growth Regulators Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaBrowse Full Report Here:Zion Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each Zion Research syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
Global Industrial Fasteners Market Set for Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 105 Billion by 2020

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http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/industrial-fasteners-market-z48042

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Do Inquiry Of Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Industrial Fasteners (Externally Threaded, Aerospace Grade, Standard and Others) Market for Automotive OEM, Machinery OEM, MRO and Construction, Other OEM Applications - Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020. According to the report, global industrial fasteners market was valued at around USD 76.50 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 105.0 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of around 5.4% between 2015 and 2020.Fasteners are mechanical devices used to connect two or more components, devices or surfaces together. Nails, screws, nut, bolts, clips, rivets, pins and washers are the commonly used fasteners. Fasteners are also used to close a container such as a bag, a box, or an envelope. Stainless steel, carbon steel, and alloy steel are the major steel fasteners used in industries. Military, oilfield, turbine and power generation, chemical refining, marine, replacement parts are the different industries in which fasteners are used extensively.Rapidly expanding construction industry is driving demand for industrial fasteners. Industrial fasteners are used in various industries such as oilfield, turbine and power generation, chemical refining, marine and replacement parts. Improvisation and restructuring activities in matured markets of Europe and North America is anticipated to augment demand for industrial fasteners. Due to rising disposable income of consumers in emerging economies demand of fasteners from automotive OEM increases. However, high anti-dumping duties are expected to be major restraining factor for the industrial fasteners market growth.Get Sample Research Report:On the basis of product type industrial fasteners market can be segmented as externally threaded, aerospace grade, standard and others. These products segments of fasteners are used in a variety of applications such as construction, automotives, durable goods, industrial and domestic machines and other OEM segments. The externally threaded fastener segment dominated the global industrial fasteners market in 2014 and accounted for around 45% market share. Aerospace grade and standard fasteners segments are also expected to exhibit significant growth during the forecast period.Key application areas for industrial fasteners include automotive OEM, machinery OEM, MRO & construction and other OEM applications. Fasteners used in other OEM application were the largest application segment for industrial fasteners market in 2014, which accounted for about 30% share of overall market. Electrical and electronics, aerospace & defense are the main sectors involved in OEM applications. Automotive OEM and construction is expected to be the major application over the forecast period due to growing population in emerging countries.Industrial fasteners market was dominated by Asia Pacific with around 32% shares of total market in 2014 due to rapid industrialization in the region. Asia Pacific is followed by Europe. Middle East and Africa is expected to be one of the most lucrative regional markets in coming years due to the increasing construction activities.Key players operating in this market includes Standard Fasteners Ltd., Acument Global Technologies, Kova Fasteners Pvt. Ltd., Precision Castparts Corp., Nifco, LISI Group, ITW, Alcoa, Stanley Black & Decker, Hilti, ATF Inc. and MW Industries Inc.The report segments the global industrial fasteners market into:Global Industrial Fasteners Market: Product Segment AnalysisExternally ThreadedAerospace GradeStandardOthersGlobal Industrial Fasteners Market: Application Segment AnalysisAutomotive OEMMachinery OEMMRO and ConstructionOther OEMGlobal Industrial Fasteners Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyFranceUKAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaBrowse Full Report Here :Zion Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each Zion Research syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
Global Isosorbide Market Set for Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 400.0 Million by 2020

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http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/isosorbide-market-z48041

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Do Inquiry Of Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Isosorbide Market for PEIT, Polycarbonate, Polyurethane, Polyesters Polyisosorbide Succinate, Isosorbide Diesters and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2014  2020. According to the report, global isosorbide was valued at around USD 250.0 million in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 400.0 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of around 9% between 2015 and 2020. In terms of volume, the global isosorbide market stood at 31.5 kilo tons in 2014.A white heterocyclic compound which is mainly obtained from glucose is known as isosorbide. It is widely used in different medical applications. In medical applications, it is used in preparation of diuretic drug. It is also employed in the treatment of diseases such as glaucoma and hydrocephalus. It finds application in formation of polymers such as polycarbonates, polyesters, liquid crystal displays, pharmacy, farm chemicals, fodder and amongst others.The major driving factor for this market is rapidly increasing utilization of isosorbide in polymers and elastomers as farm fodder additives. Growing bio-based plastics manufacturing capacity especially in Asian countries is also expected to have positive impact on growth of isosorbide market. However, the food and fuel dispute for raw materials such as maize and wheat are predicted to hamper the growth of this industry. Furthermore, huge unexploited market for healthcare and medical industry is expected to put forward growth opportunities to the isosorbide manufacturers.Get Sample Research Report:PEIT (Polyethylene Isosorbide Terephthate) applications segment was the largest segment of global isosorbide industry and accounted for around 35% share of the entire market in 2014. PEIT with being the biggest application sector is also expected to be the fastest growing segment for isosorbide market. It is expected to grow at strong CAGR of around 20% from 2015 to 2020. Polycarbonate, isosorbide diesters and polyurethane application segments are expected to exhibit moderate growth over the forecast period. This is attributed to consistent efforts in research and development activities for isosorbide applications.In terms of volume, global isosorbide market was dominated by Asia Pacific with largest share in 2014. Demand for isosorbide in this region is primarily driven by strong demand from China owing to low labor and raw material cost. Europe follows Asia Pacific with share around 30% of the total demand of isosorbide in the same year. In addition, North America is also expected to have significant growth during the estimated years between 2015 and 2020.The key players for isosorbide market includes ADM, Roquette, Jinan Hongbaifeng Industry, and Cargill, Jinan Yu Teng Pharmaceutical, SK Chemicals, Ecogreen Oleochemicals, Fultaste, and Trade Co., Ltd. among others.The report segments the global isosorbide market as:Isosorbide Market: Application Segment AnalysisPEITPolycarbonatePolyurethanePolyesters Polyisosorbide SuccinateIsosorbide DiestersOthersIsosorbide Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyUKFranceAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaBrowse Full Report Here:Zion Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each Zion Research syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
O&M and Lifecycle Management Strategies for CCGT Power Plants Conference 2016

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Now firmly established and into its 6th year, the O&M and Lifecycle Management Strategies for CCGT Power Plants conference is designed to maximize opportunities for interaction, discussion, and peer to peer benchmarking.The agenda will deliver real-life operationally focused case studies and expert presentations, all aimed at equipping you with practical lessons learned and advice that you can take back to your operational environment.Join the conference in Birmingham in May 2016 to hear a range of user case studies covering a wide selection of operational, technical and strategic themes, ranging from fleet management, to O&M strategies, plant reliability and efficiency, gas turbine life extension and maintenance approaches, contracting approaches, spare parts management, outage management and performance, and more.Key conference topics will include:- Effective CCGT fleet O&M- O&M contracting  OEM LTSA, vs 3rd party, vs self-performance of maintenance- Meeting increased flexibility requirements through fast start ups and turn down rates- CCGT upgrade  project scope, execution and outcome- Improving plant efficiency and profitability through effective planning and maintenance- Capital spare parts tracking and management- Plant mothballing and preservation- European Energy Market - Capacity Mechanism- Gas turbine maintenance approaches and best practice- Gas turbine control system performance and upgrade- Insurance industry guidance and considerations- Implementing appropriate training and staff competency management- Monitoring and maintenance of boiler and heat recovery steam generator (HRSG)With a core focus on how users can deliver efficient plant operations and reliability, this strategic event is Europes leading operationally focussed CCGT O&M conference.Visit the event web site for details:T.A. Cook was founded in 1994 and has experienced steady growth since then. We have an international team of over 60 consultants and conference organisers across our offices in Berlin, Birmingham, Calgary, Hong Kong, Houston, Paris, Raleigh and Rio de Janeiro.Our clients are global, capital intensive companies, world wide infrastructure service providers and leading medium-sized companies from the process and utility industries. T.A. Cook Consultants has the strategic and functional expertise to get things done better and faster than your organization can achieve on its own.Best practice implementation is the guiding rule and ensures accelerated performance, sustainable increases in productivity and increased bottom line results.T.A. Cook Consultants Limited4th Floor, McLaren Building46 The Priory QueenswayBirmingham, B4 7LR
A former official of The Dow Chemical Co. has stepped down as director of Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Royal Bank of Canada after being charged with possession of cocaine, according to media reports.

Bloomberg is reporting Joao Pedro Reinhard, 70, was charged on Feb. 23 in Mississauga, west of

Toronto, with unlawful importing and possession of cocaine under Canadas Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Midland residents may remember Reinhard as one of two former Dow executives fired in April 2007 for participating in unauthorized talks concerning a potential leveraged buyout of Dow.

Reinhard had been a senior adviser and member of Dows board of directors when he admitted to participating in discussions that were not authorized by nor disclosed to Dows board. The potential deal involved JP Morgan Chase as an investment bank with funding from Oman or private equity firms.

According to a court filing by Dow, Reinhard envisioned himself as the chairman of the potential new company, potentially earnings tens of millions of dollars through the deal.

Reinhard later went on to serve as director of Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Royal Bank of Canada. He stepped down from those roles two weeks after being charged with possession of cocaine.

According to the Bloomberg article, Toronto-based Royal Bank said Reinhard did not give a reason for his resignation and refused to comment further. Colgate-Palmolive confirmed his resignation, but did not give any additional details.

Reinhard is also a former director of Coca-Cola Co.

Bloomberg reported calls and a fax sent to Reinhards home in Key Biscayne, Fla., were not returned.

To read the full article from Bloomberg, go to http://bloom.bg/1LsV9Cz.
The Mid-Michigan Childrens Museum will host its 4th annual Indoor Candy-Free Egg Hunt from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

With support from numerous dentists and orthodontists, including Tooth Sleuth event sponsors Jessica R. Bentoski, DDS, MS - Saginaw Pediatric Dentistry, Galsterer Endodontics and Resler Orthodontics, children will enjoy a fun, healthy egg hunt along with a day of engaging gallery-play.
Educating the next generation of workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is vital across the nation and in the Great Lakes Bay Region, as demand for employees in these areas is increasing.

Desiring to help fill that demand, Engineering For Kids/Great Lakes Bay Region has opened a new learning center at 324 S. Saginaw Road, on the corner of Saginaw and Rodd Street.

In a globally competitive economy, employers of all shapes and sizes are increasingly seeking workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and math. There is a mismatch between projected future jobs requiring STEM skills and the projected supply of qualified workers to fill them. Engineering For Kids seeks to be a major part of the solution to this problem by fostering these skills in young children, co-owner Diego Santos said.

A year ago, EFK began offering STEM education for children ages 4 to 14 in a fun and challenging way through classes, camps, clubs and parties.

Research indicates that in order to capture a childs interest in STEM careers, they need sufficient exposure by third to fifth grade. We are providing fun, hands-on experience with STEM to allow young children to feel comfortable and confident with engineering principles, said Brenda Ault, EFK co-owner and operations director, who comes to EFK with 25 years of teaching experience.

To celebrate the opening of the EFK Learning Center, an open house is planned Saturday from 3 to 8 p.m. Those interested can visit the center to participate in STEM activities and learn more about different fields of engineering as well as LEGO Robotics and Electronic Game Design.

It will be a blast for the whole family. Bring your children, and we will be proud to inspire them to build on their natural curiosity by teaching engineering concepts through hands-on learning. Engineering is, after all, one of the fastest growing industries in the world, states the EFK website.

Everyone attending Saturdays event will receive a voucher for 15 percent off any upcoming program at the Learning Center. Those programs encompass evening classes, Saturday morning classes, Friday night Kids Night Out, summer camps and spring break camps along with school holidays.

There will also be drawings for prizes, Santos said. We will draw names at the end of the event for a Free Birthday Party package plus other prizes.

Besides offering classes at the Learning Center, participants may take advantage of the off-campus classes at four Midland elementary schools, the Greater Midland Community Center, and locations in Auburn, Bay City and Saginaw.

The Engineering For Kids vision is: For Every Child, Engineering Education, Santos said. We work with area agencies and groups requesting our classes and camps to help facilitate funding via grants. Area businesses and individuals can donate to the Engineering For Kids Foundation (efkfoundation.org) for as little as $25 to support STEM education in our region. It would also be desirable to develop a partnership with local companies to support our vision.

During spring break (March 28 to April 1), EFK will offer classes such as Jr. Robotics: Simple Machines and Jr. Scratch: MakeyMakey for ages 4 to 7. During the same dates, those ages 8 to 11 may take advantage of classes like Electronic Game Design: Platform Games and MinecraftEDU: Medieval Redstone.

Santos and his wife, Izabel Assis, are engineers and relocated to Midland from Brazil after Assis started working at The Dow Chemical Co. in 2011.

I began looking for a new business to start that would utilize my background in electrical engineering and business acumen upon completion of my MBA at Northwood University, Santos said. Engineering For Kids was listed as one of the fastest-growing franchises due to the nations interest and needs for STEM education. My wife and I were captivated, as engineers and parents of two young sons, of its model of exposure to engineering concepts for young children. In addition, my decision was further empowered based on STEM initiatives in the Great Lakes Bay Region.

For more information or to register for classes, call (989) 486-3255; email greatlakesbr@engineeringforkids.com or visit engineeringforkids.com/location/glbr.
The City of Midlands persistence deserves praise.

The city is preparing another application for a $300,000 grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Trust Fund to make improvements to the upper part of Emerson Park. Its the citys third time seeking the money, which would help meet a city goal to redevelop and increase public access to Midlands waterfront.

The proposed project would add accessible paths, a fish dock, a boardwalk and a boating dock, all with access to Main Street and the Pere Marquette Rail-Trail. A highlight of the proposed project is the renovation of an old water intake facility that could be used as a river outlook platform.

Karen Murphy, Midlands director of public services, described the proposed project as a fantastic opportunity for the community.

In addition to state funding, local support for the project has been strong, with The Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network, Friends of the Pere Marquette Rail Trail and the Midland Area Community Foundation having pledged additional funds. The citys parks and recreation department has earmarked $25,000 for the work as well. The estimated cost of the project is $670,000, Murphy said, with construction to be done in phases as additional funding is secured.

The views from the platform would showcase the Tittabawassee River.

Thats really the catalyst for the renovation, thats where the idea sparked from, Murphy said. If you were to stand at this overlook, you could see both sides of the river and itd be a terrific view.

Referencing the two earlier applications, Murphy said the project has met most of the criteria for the grant but not all because of the economic base of Midland.

The city should be commended for trying again. Lets hope the third times the charm.
Subject-matter exchange enhances partnerships, interoperability in Pacific

For the first time, subject-matter experts from nine nations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region came to Andersen Air Force Base for a four-day program designed to enhance and integrate logistical capabilities.



Pacific Agility 16-1, a U.S. Pacific Command multilateral subject-matter expert exchange led by Pacific Air Forces, intends to promote regional stability and build partnerships among nations in the Pacific Theater.



What makes this engagement special is that it has not been done before, said Senior Master Sgt. Derek Groeling, PACAF Headquarters command armament superintendent. In the past there have been various other exchanges with the Civil Engineer Squadron and Security Forces Squadron, but the Pacific Agility exchange is the first multilateral exchange with the focus on maintenance and logistics.



The engagement focused on the importance of contributing to regional security and stability, enhancing logistical interoperability information and developing interpersonal relationships among partner nations.



"The objective here is to increase interoperability among partner nations in the Pacific," said Squadron Leader Darryn Welham, Royal New Zealand Air Force Officer Commanding Fleet Planning Unit. It's important and also a great opportunity to meet key figures from other nations. When theres a requirement to respond in someones area, we would already have that understanding on what resources to bring to the table.



With the Pacific being the largest area of responsibility covering 36 nations, continual growth of partnerships and mutual understanding and trust are vital especially in the event when partner nations are called upon for assistance.



Pacific Agility helps to build regional stability because when theres an understanding among partners on what they can provide to each other, its a lot easier to ask for assistance, Groeling said. This engagement builds and modernizes partnerships because its focused on the capabilities and technology that we have today. Through discussion, this will strengthen our capabilities and the knowledge gained will be useful for future events.



Throughout the week, the partners conducted briefings and visited facilities on Andersen AFB to expand their knowledge on cargo pallet build-ups, humanitarian assistance/disaster response capabilities, air transport ability, munitions storage and supply chain management.



"A lot of the focus here is on HA/DR capabilities," Groeling said. We discussed cargo pallet build-ups which is an important part of transporting materials to different locations. When everyone knows what the partner nations have to bring to those types of disaster or humanitarian issues, the overall mission and process becomes smoother especially having that previous knowledge about one another.



Pacific Agility participants were able to share their knowledge and skill sets in the logistics and maintenance fields with other nations, allowing the attendees to comprehend each others practices and bring back the positive experience gained back to their home unit.



With this being my first time participating in a subject-matter expert exchange, it was definitely a good experience so far. Something I appreciated was learning more about load movements and load planning, Welham said. Its great to be able meet with U.S. Air Force members and other partner nations to get a much better understanding of capabilities for when we operate in the future.



There is a shared goal among the partners to continue with these engagements to allow for the growth of alliances, multi-dimensional skills and to improve stability in the Pacific region.
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On an average day across the base, pipes are fixed, equipment is analyzed and wrenches are turned countless times. All these things are made possible by a group of Airmen working behind the scenes to make sure other base personnel can accurately perform their jobs.





Members of the 374th Maintenance Squadron Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory Flight provide calibration support for more than 4,000 pieces of equipment valued at $6.7 million, across 76 work centers.



The PMEL mission is to provide test, measurement and diagnostic equipment calibration services to support their customers' mission in a timely manner guaranteeing TMDE reliability, accuracy, and traceability to the Department of Defense and/or nationally recognized standards.



"We provide calibration before base personnel can use equipment to complete their mission," said Tech Sgt. Joshua Morris, 374 MXS PMEL NCO in charge. "If people don't bring in their equipment, then they can't know for sure that the equipment they are using is doing what it's supposed to do."



The process of calibrating and repairing test equipment starts with the PMEL Automated Management System. The production control section utilizes PAMS to track the daily schedule of each piece of equipment.



"It's important for us to have accurate readings for all of the equipment used across the base to ensure we can complete our mission with tools that have precise measurements," said Senior Airman Michael Johnson 374 MXS PMEL technician.



After equipment arrives at the shop, technicians review the equipment to ensure they are identified correctly and then perform an initial safety inspection.



Next, they retrieve the appropriate technical order and start the calibration procedure. The procedure provides Airmen with specific steps to calibrate a piece of equipment to ensure it's accurate, reliable, safe and traceable to standards maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.



Quality assurance evaluators then have a responsibility to sample outgoing equipment. A total of three percent of all equipment certified by PMEL receives an end-of-line inspection.



Once the equipment is successfully repaired or calibrated, it is returned to the scheduling section to await customer pick-up before being returned to the flightline or another organization.



"Our shop directly supports nearly every maintenance action relating to the C-130s here," Johnson said. "We make sure that every tool needed to make a quantitative measurement to ensure safety and reliability of the equipment provides accurate data."



The PMEL flight ensures that every aircraft has the required tools to make a quantitative measurement and to safely perform inspections and repairs. Calibrating tools for safe and accurate maintenance helps Yokota support the Air Force's mission to fly, fight and win.
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Commemorates USS Nevada 100th Anniversary By Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Pavlovich Navy Public Affairs Support Element Detachment Hawaii

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam (JBPHH) held a flag raising ceremony at the USS Nevada Memorial commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ships commissioning Mar. 11.



During the ceremony the USS Nevada (BB-36) Battleship flag was raised over the memorial while simultaneously a similar flag raising ceremony was being held in Nevada state capitol Carson City.



That was a good ship, said Jim Taylor, Navy Region Hawaii Pearl Harbor survivor liaison, who delivered the opening remarks. They had a tremendous crew. They got that ship underway on a Sunday morning with half the crew ashore.



The commemoration ceremony for the Nevada, commissioned on March 11, 1916, was organized by Navy Region Hawaii public affairs office and John Galloway, head of the Battleship Nevada Remembrance Project.



The organization was created to honor a ship that is relatively unknown in history, said John Galloway. This ceremony means everything to me.



Getting the ship underway, while taking fire and putting out fire was an incredible event, said Taylor. I hope the people here watching the ceremony go home and Google the Nevada or get a book about it. It was an amazing ship. If this ceremony encourages just one person to seek out more information about this ship I would be very happy.



During the attack on Pearl Harbor the Nevada got underway with only a portion of its crew onboard. After the ship was hit by Japanese torpedoes and fearing the ship might sink and block the channel, its crew beached the battleship at Hospital Point on JBPHH.



This was a rewarding experience, said Culinary Specialist 2nd Class David Johnson, a member of the color guard for the ceremony. It's mind boggling to think about what the crew of the Nevada went through. Its very easy to sympathize with what happened especially if you went through a similar experience such as a fire.


In America, 40 to 50 percent of marriages end up in divorce, only proving once again that it takes a lot of effort to make a marriage work. It is a complete package of the right mixture of a couple things, from the affection down to the responsibility to balance the factors.

A new research suggests that the couple's standards contribute to the level of satisfaction they have in their marriage, however, it's not always in a good way. According to the study, high standards only improve satisfaction if the marriage is strong to start with. However, for relationships that aren't strong enough, those marriages with passive-aggression or with severe differences, these standards would only make things worse, Medical Daily reports.

Dr. James McNulty, the study's author and a professor of Psychology at Florida State University explained that there are some people who require so much from their marriages mainly because they want their partners to fulfill the needs that they are not able to achieve because they lack the capacity, time, effort, and skills. "Other people demand too little from their marriages. Their marriage is a potential source of personal fulfillment that they are not exploiting. Ultimately, spouses appear to be best off to the extent that they ask of their marriages as much as, but not more than, their marriages are able to give them."

According to tlc.com, researchers used surveys and recorded discussions to study 135 couples from Tennessee and observe their verbal communication and how they interact with each other. McNulty also said that although high standards can tear relationships that are already on-edge apart, it's still OK to ask more from your partner and your relationship if you think that your relationship has a strong foundation.

"Other people demand too little from their marriages. Their marriage is a potential source of personal fulfillment that they are not exploiting," says McNulty. He also emphasized that indirect hostility will destroy a relationship. "Prior work by our lab and others indicates that direct hostility, such as blaming the partner for a problem and demanding that the partner change, can have important benefits to some couples, specifically those who need to change," he explained.

During their first assessment, most couples were saying how everything was going well when it came to satisfaction in the marriage and their standards. However, there are those who didn't start their marriage with high set of standards and have low satisfaction. Researchers noticed that the spouses' standards were connected with the changes in satisfaction relied heavily on their tendency to engage in indirect hostility as time passed.
Doctor's handwriting will not be an issue to most of the patients in New York State. Beginning on March 27, the state will require doctors to electronically send their prescription directly to the pharmacies instead of writing it out on paper.

The new law was designed to cut down prescription-drug abuse, fraud and reduce errors due to misreading the doctor's handwriting. New York State will be the first state require electronic prescription and penalize the doctors who will not comply. Although Minnesota requires electronic prescriptions, it does not penalize doctors who are still using pen and paper, as reported by New York Magazine.

The new law is the second major component of I-Stop, a state law that was signed in 2012, which is designed to cut the prescription-opium abuse. The law will not allow the doctors to prescribe a controlled medication without initially checking the online registry.

The registry has the records of all the controlled medications that have recently prescribed to a patient. With this, the doctor can see the patient's medication history and spot if there is a potential drug abuse. However, a report says that the system is not foolproof and the patients can just misspell their name to mislead it.

Aside from the doctors, patients will also face a culture change in the state as they can no longer shop around for the best price for their medications. The transition was set to take place in 2015. However, the state lawmakers delayed it due to security issues, which are obviously, not resolved yet, according to New York Times.

"There should really be no reason that a doctor shouldn't have had ample time to get it up and running," said Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

However, many institutions are still waiting until the law is fully mandated. Only around 60 percent of the state's estimated 100,000 prescribers were able to send electronic prescriptions and around 50 percent were set up for controlled substance prescription which needs an extra security step.


Cuba's status as one of the nations without a domestic record of Zika virus has ended. This is after Cuban officials reported on Tuesday night the first case of the virus transmission in the country.

A 21-year-old woman from Havana, who did not travel outside Cuba, was diagnosed with the virus after suffering fatigue, headache and other symptoms. She stayed in the hospital after her blood test result showed positive on Zika virus, NBC News reported.

The cases of the disease that was reported in Cuba were from people who had traveled to places where Zika outbreaks are reported, particularly in Venezuela. It appeared that the patients have contracted the virus there.

Cuba has deployed more than 9,000 soldiers, police and university students to eliminate mosquitoes through fumigation and getting rid of stagnant water where the mosquitoes breed. President Raul Castro has called for more trash collection and fumigation to fight Zika.

However, Central Havana, where the first Zika patient lives, and other neighborhoods are still filled with piles of uncollected trash, abandoned building and pools of stagnant water.

Zika outbreak was first declared as an international health emergency on Feb. 1 by the World Health Organization, where it stated that Zika infection is linked to pregnancy and microcephaly, a birth defect that causes brain to stop developing and undersized heads of the babies, according to Reuters.

It remains unknown whether Zika virus actually causes the birth defect. However, Brazil stated that it has confirmed more than 740 cases of microcephaly and considered most of them are caused by Zika infection in the mothers. Meanwhile, the country is investigating an additional of more than 4,200 suspected microcephaly cases.

There are more cases of sexual transmission in France and the United States and there is a case in Brazil that is believed to be transmitted through blood transfusion. These cases raise questions about other ways that Zika may spread.


New York City's Department of Health now allows restaurants with al fresco dining to welcome your four-legged friends to eat with you. Licensed and vaccinated dogs are now permitted to join their masters in participating diners.

CBS News reports that Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, the proponent of the bill, was pleased that the City's Health Department has approved the new rules she proposed in support of dogs' presence in restaurants. Under the new rules, the dogs are allowed to stay in outdoor dining areas as long as they have permits and they are vaccinated.

According to the City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett, the new rules will be implemented within 30 days, just perfect for outdoor dining season, CBS News noted. Previously, the dogs are only allowed outside of the railing patio and waiting staff needs to check the dog's license and vaccination records, Fox5 adds. Now, participating restaurants are only required to pose a warning sign that says their pooches need to be licensed and vaccinated against rabies.

One of the dog-friendly restaurants is The Barking Don on 94th Street. Since the early 1990s, pooches were allowed to enjoy the patio area along with their owners. The restaurant even offers treats and even features animal artworks. Most amazing however is the dog bar. The waiting staff said that dogs and their owners are one of their greatest patrons.

In Australia, there's also a pub that allows their four-legged best friends the same treatment, Mashable adds. 'Dogustation' at the Carrington Hotel in the suburb of Surry Hills is open to all canine-lovers all throughout this March. The restaurant initially thought of this as a Valentine's gig but due to its success, they have extended the treat until the end of the month.

For A$15, your pooches can enjoy a three-course meal consist of beef tartare, steak and vegetables and a biscuit for dessert. Five bucks will go to Animal Welfare League (AWL). For more information about the organization, check out the video below.
Divorce does not only affect the couple involved or their kids but it can also have consequences on the pets the family have at home. It is believed that dogs and cats may also be greatly affected when a relationship ends.

In an interview with ABC, animal behaviorist Kate Mornement highlighted that pets are also torn during breakups and divorce.

"I do see quite a few cases of pets with behaviour problems following separation or divorce... most commonly separation anxiety in dogs," she explained. "Any big disruption to their normal routine or breaking of attachment bonds affects them a lot."

She also noted that pets usually gets troubled when there are constant fights inside the house. "When couples do separate it's often a positive if there's been any sort of verbal or physical abuse pets witness, like kids, that can cause some stress and anxiety," Mornement said.

In addition, ABC also noted that there are also times when dogs end up in the wrong homes after the separation. "Pets are shuttled between houses with kids rather than allowed to settle in one residence or can be left with the person not necessarily best suited to care for the animal," said Flinders University PhD student Zoei Sutton.

Family Law Network Australia discussed that some couples even use their pets as "pawns" in their relationship struggles. It noted that one may threaten the other that they cannot see or spend time with their pets. This often adds to the anxiety and stress of the animals.

The same report added that there are also times when pets are abused by their owners because of the pressure brought by the separation. It was suggested that pets should be taken by the women in the relationship so they can be well taken cared of.

According to ABC, sometimes pet really do not understand what is going on inside their homes and it makes them confused. "The dogs don't know what the hell is going on. No one can talk to them and tell them what's happening," said Robyne Glegg of English Pointer Rescue Australia, a group which re-homes pets involved in a divorce or separation.
Australian police dug a backyard in Woodridge, Queensland, in search for the remains of a toddler who has not been seen about 10 years already. The police have not revealed specific details of the investigation but reports claimed that the child was only listed as missing last January.

Courier Mail said the police took samples from the backyard of a property along Wagawn Street and these will be submitted for forensic examination. "State Crime Command Homicide Squad is conducting inquiries into the disappearance of a 22-month-old boy who has not been accounted for since 2007," a spokesperson for the New South Wales (NSW) police said.

It was added in the same report that a family lived in the residence sometime in 2007 before they moved to NSW where the missing child was reported. Neighbor and community resident Terri James said she could remember the children of that family always playing outside.

"They were nice people," she noted. "They were always polite, they were just like normal kids."

Citing a Sydney Morning Herald report, Stuff said the toddler was not seen by his relatives starting 2007. It noted that the young kid was sharing a home with an extended family but relatives claimed that he has been missing since that time.

Residents in the community where the child is believed to have been buried were shocked of the said incident claiming that their neighborhood has always been quiet.

"It was a real shock to see all of the police here, I was wondering what had happened," said Helen Macfarlane in the Courier Mail report. "You wouldn't expect to hear of a toddler being buried in a backyard here, there's so many kids about.

She shared that there is nobody occupying the house anymore. "The last person there was an old man but he died. There have been two or three people in the house since 2007," she added.
Senators will decide whether they should pass the GMO Food Labeling Bill, a bill that will oblige food companies to label food products containing genetically engineered ingredients. This would create a voluntary national standard for food products with genetically modified ingredients.

According to The New York Times, the GMO Food Labeling Bill would avoid states from fixed labels just before Vermont was settled to become the first in the state to compel such requirements. It lacks support from the Democrats, who do not want to see the law only as an option for manufacturers.

According to Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana and an organic farmer said, "Voluntary standards are no standards at all,' "We need to defeat this bill." "This is bad, bad, bad policy," he added.

Some Democrats and lawmakers are concerned that if the GMO Food Labeling Bill would be passed, it may cause food prices to increase. Most of the biotech and large food companies would spend almost hundreds of million dollars to fight this GMO Food Labeling Bill, and also those favoring labeling have logged almost hundreds of hours for almost a month just to have an appointment with the senators and aides.

The Agricultural Department will recognize state voluntary marketing standards for food products containing bioengineered material and encourage contribution with incentives.

According to Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican of Kansas and chair of the committee said, "We have a responsibility to ensure that the national market can work for everyone. We must not demonize food with unnecessary labels."

Some companies are worrying that the label might reduce sales for food items that contain bioengineered ingredients. Grocery manufacturer's Associate estimate more than 70 percent of food items with corn, sugar beets, and soy are the most commonly used crops to be genetically-modified, according to Fortune.

Concerns for those who support the GMO Food Labeling Bill would cause delay for food producers and constantly increases food prices due to the load of label changing. However, a concession by Republicans, the law would also contain language or labeling that allows for mandatory labeling of GMO if the intended plan proves unproductive in a few years' time.


A new study finds that pregnant women infected with Zika virus have one percent chance of giving birth with microcephaly. This further supports claim that Zika virus causes microcephaly to new born babies.

The link between Zika and microcephaly has not been entirely established although there has been a surge of microcephaly cases around areas where Zika virus are present. Now there seems to have a strong statistical to support the claim according to Medical News Daily.

The study published Tuesday in the journal The Lancet used a mathematical and statistical model to determine the risk of microcephaly with Zika virus infection in French Polynesia during the outbreak between October 2013 to April 2014. At this time, more than half of the population were infected with Zika virus where eight cases of microcephaly were diagnosed.

The research led by Dr. Simon Cauchemez, from the Institute Pasteur in Paris, based their findings on the total number of microcephaly cases against the weekly number of consultations for possible Zika infections and the total number of birth during the outbreak. They found that women are at the greatest risk of microcephaly during their first trimester.

The researchers calculated that 1 in 100 women infected with Zika virus is at risk of giving birth to children with microcephaly. The study provides a strong statistical support for microcephaly and Zika link.

However, Latin Times noted of Dr. Laura's Rodrigues response to the study. "If 1 percent is right, then that would be great news," according to the professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "But it just seems a bit implausible right now."

However, she admits that the microcephaly risk at the greatest during the first trimester as this is the brain development stage. She said that further research is still needed to better understand the link between Zika and microcephaly.

She announced that data will soon be available from Pernambuco, Colombia, Rio de Janeiro and other places too. To know more about microcephaly, check out the video below:
Weekends would be the best time to bond with your partner and your children, but looking for activities that everyone would love could be difficult. It's a good thing that there is a variety of good films that you could watch with your loved ones, and no, they don't necessarily have to be all about Disney.

Some family-friendly movies could be enjoyable even for the parents, and you should check them out of movie night. Here are some suggestions:

Goonies

Run Time: 114 minutes

it's just a Goonies kind of day #GooniesNeverSayDie pic.twitter.com/ekAkYaLEJK  Cara Martin (@caraleemartin) March 8, 2016

The action-fantasy film of adventurous kids has treasure maps, death-defying scens, and impaled skelletons, so what's not to love? We love that Goonies "never say die!" and their bond is as tight as a bond could be. It could get a little scary, but it's pretty safe for kids 10 years and up.

Spirited Away

Run Time: 124 minutes

Who remembers Spirited Away? It made me scared of pigs for YEARS because I thought my parents would turn into them pic.twitter.com/AYjl51Sl9Z  Sasha Alsberg (@sashaalsberg) March 11, 2016

The captivating animation and complex surrealism of "Spirited Away" makes it a great film for kids who like fantasy, because it is full of mythology, danger, imagination, and imagery. The best part is that parents may even love this more than the kids. Yes, it is that good.

Little Mahattan

Run Time: 84 minutes

Little Manhattan (2005) she got on my nerves but I love this movie pic.twitter.com/CwRGrKoDb5  steph (@overexposedliam) March 8, 2016

Before Josh Hutcherson was Peeta Mellark in "The Hunger Games", he was a middle schooler in New York who experienced having a crush for the first time. The kids don't actually overdo it, Gabe's (Hutcherson) inner dialogues are funny, and kids and adults can relate to it.

The Muppet Movie

Run Time: 95 minutes

Doc Hopper says some frog legs might help you spring forward. THE MUPPET MOVIE - today at 4:00 and 7:00 pic.twitter.com/Nt20iVXo3W  Liberty Hall (@libertyhall) March 13, 2016



No, we're not talking about the recent remakes here (although you can also go with them). "The Muppet Movie" is a great way to introduce your kids to pop-cultural education. It also features Kermit the Frog singing "The Rainbow Connection!"

Toy Story

Run Time: 81 minutes

Admit it, when you watched "Toy Story" for the first time, you tried to catch your toys in action, too. this first feature from Pixar lets the children's imaginations run wild. The fast-paced, jam-packed film is great for repeat viewing, and admit it -- it will give you a bit of nostalgia too.

Are there other family-friendly movies that you can suggest watching with your kids this weekend? Share in the comments below!
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne recently announced that a tax will be imposed on sugary beverages in the United Kingdom. Government officials and citizens received the news with mixed reactions.

We all know one of the biggest contributors to childhood obesity is sugary drinks. I am not prepared to look back at my time here in this parliament, doing this job and say to my childrens generation, Im sorry. We knew there was a problem with sugary drinks. We knew it caused disease but we ducked the difficult decisions, George Osborne said in an ABC report.

Many questioned why the government opted to introduce such a tax, where only a few countries are affected. Others believe that the government was forced to impose such a levy after celebrity chef Jamie Olivers massive campaign, which garnered over 150,000 signatures.

Jamie Oliver celebrated online when the tax was announced. Jamie Oliver proceeded to urge other countries like Australia, Germany and Canada to follow suit. Its about time your governments got on this. Australia, pull your finger out, Jamie Oliver stated.

Based on various studies, children are more sedentary than before. There is a growing number of children who enter primary school in an obese state. Family members also consumed too much sugar and saturated fat, while their consumption of fish, fiber, fruits and vegetables diminished. The evidence showed that taxing sugary drinks will affect peoples consumption and hopefully curb the occurrence of obesity and other related diseases.

BBC reported that according to the analysis, the sales of drinks with the highest sugar content will decrease by 5 percent although there will be an increase in lower-sugar beverages by 2 percent. The government is also set to feature its child obesity campaign in summer 2016. Osborne said that the tax will have two bands  beverages with over five grams and eight grams per 100 milliliters, respectively.

ABC cited that Jamie Oliver also encouraged Australia to follow the example of the United Kingdom and impose a sugar tax on soft drinks. The levy will be introduced in the next two years, charging manufacturers if their drinks contain over five grams of sugar per 100 milliliters.
A Cameroonian hospital is currently being probed for allegedly not accommodating a pregnant woman who was about to give birth to twins. The facility's negligence was supposedly the reason why the mother and her babies died.

At a media conference earlier this week, Cameroonian health minister Andre Mama Fouda told CRTV that the hospital in Douala City did not neglect the woman. However, authorities are still unsure about what caused her death.

According to Fouda's press statement via CNN, Monique Koumate was consulted by a doctor at public health facility last Friday. The next morning, she was taken by family members to the Nylon District Hospital since they all agreed to have the fetuses "removed." Accommodating health personnel told the group that the hospital does not perform such procedure.

Koumate's family then took her to the Douala La Quintinie Hospital. Two hospital employees directed them to the maternity office, but they noticed that Koumate was no longer breathing. The family was asked to take her body to the mortuary, but they stormed back to the maternity asking personnel to deliver the twins.

Details of the incident started to get inconsistent from that point on. However, a woman, who was allegedly Koumate's relative, was captured on video trying to operate on the corpse in a desperate attempt to save the babies.

She had done so out in the open and in front of the mortuary. This led oblivious onlookers to believe the hospital did not accommodate the pregnant woman and allowed her to die outside the facility.

News of what happened quickly spread across the community. People flocked outside La Quintinie on Sunday to badger the hospital for an explanation. Meanwhile, Koumate's story has gone viral all over the world, leading the international health community to question the country's healthcare system.

The official United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund website indicated that Cameroon has one of the most alarming mortality rates in the world. Approximately 670 out of every 100,000 women die during childbirth in the West African country.
Kate Middleton and Prince William have been plagued with several issues since they confirmed that they are a couple. Now, rumor mills are spreading that the Royal couple's relationship is currently on the rocks as Prince William attended the St. Patrick's Day parade without Kate Middleton.

Prince William attended St. Patrick's Day parade without Kate Middleton

Attendees of the annual St. Patrick's Day parade were shocked to see Prince William alone during the event. The absence of Kate Middleton has caused a stir among fans, leaving them to wonder that the relationship of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is currently on the rocks.

One of the highlights of the celebration of St. Patrick's Day is Kate Middleton presenting the shamrocks, as per Celeb Dirty Laundry. As a matter of fact, since 2012, the wife of Prince William used to be the one passing out sprigs of clover to the members of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards.

Fans were really frustrated for not seeing Kate Middleton at this year's St. Patrick's Day parade as she is known to be very devoted the said event despite several hindrances. In fact, the wife of Prince William was able to attend the celebration in 2013 while she was five months pregnant with Prince George and in 2015 when Kate Middleton was eight months pregnant with Princess Charlotte.

Kate Middleton and Prince William arguing over the Duchess' lavish lifestyle

Recent reports are pointing towards Kate Middleton and Prince William constantly fighting over the extravagant lifestyle of the mother of Prince George and Princess Charlotte. Rumors have it that Prince William has been suffering the consequences of Kate Middleton's wasteful way of living.

Critics also slammed the Kate Middleton and Prince William for having a luxurious ski trip last week amidst the payment cut issues surrounding the Kensington Palace. Parent Herald previously reported that Kate Middleton and Prince William asked their employees to accept payment cuts that could put their workers' income below poverty level.

Kate Middleton is known for being simple and thrifty. However, recent news suggest that the Duchess of Cambridge's preferences has already changed and it is causing troubles in her relationship with Prince William, sparking reports about the impending divorce of the Royal couple.

Do you think Kate Middleton and Prince William are heading to a divorce? Does Kate Middleton absence confirms her troubled relationship with Prince William? Share to us your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Most travelers think of rest areas as places to pee and grab some greasy food. Ryann Ford sees them as art.

OK, were not talking about your typical modern-day rest area.

Upon driving to Austin (from California), and while shooting various photography jobs all over Texas, I started noticing these cute little roadside tables along the different highways, Ford, a photographer, told Paste Travel. The first one she noticed was one Route 66.

The old mid-century architecture and quirky themes (she once saw a rest-area in the form of a teepee) won her heart.

She began Google Earth-ing rest areas to see what they looked like in other areas of the country. I came across a news article detailing the closure of many of them due to budget cuts, and they werent just being closed, but demolished, Ford said. She had considered doing a photo project on them before, but this was the deciding factor.

The next thing she knew she was embarking on a road trip across the country in search of dilapidated rest-areas to create a book documenting a golden age for motorists.

Ford spoke to us about her journey and shared a few photos. The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside will be released by powerHouse books in June 2016.

***

Paste Travel: Tell us about the beginnings of this project.

Ryann Ford: While doing my research, I read about a rest area just north of Ft. Worth that was a breeding ground for crime. Evidently a lot of prostitution and drug deals went on there, and it was scheduled for demolition. They showed a photo of itit had a roofline mimicking the shape of longhorn horns, and on its sidewalls was the Texas flag. It had so much personality and charm; I just couldnt believe they were tearing it down. The next weekend I drove it up there to shoot it. A few weeks later I had to drive up there again for work and it was gone.

After that, I got serious about the project and set out to start documenting as many as I could. I think what really drew me to this project was a mix of thingsdefinitely the architecture, but I also just love roadside culture and Americana. Ive always been big into road trips, especially through the southwest, and I think its so fun to be driving along and see how each rest area is different. After learning the history, and visiting so many of them, I have become even more attached to them.

PT: Which was your favorite rest stop and why?

RF: This sounds cheesy, but almost all of them are special in some way. Its amazing that something as mundane as highway rest stops could have so much character. So much thought went into the design of these things, from the architecture, down to the small details such as barbecue grills in the shape of Texas, or birdhouses with the state flag painted on the side.

I do have my favorites, though. White Sands, New Mexico, was probably the most amazing. The picnic tables there are iconic, straight out of the 1960s, and the landscape is like no place else on earth. It was a hot summer day at sunset when we were shooting, and a thunderstorm had just rolled through, so hardly anyone was around. You couldnt take a bad picture at that place.

PT: What were you most surprised to find on your trip?

RF: While doing some research on the history of rest areas, I had read about how when they were designed, no two were designed the same. With the introduction of the Interstate Highway System in 1956, this new system standardized highway design coast-to-coast, making all roads across the country perfectly uniform, right down to the thickness of the asphalt and the width of the double yellow line.

The one design element that stayed with the jurisdiction of the states was their rest area design. It was a states chance to make an impression on travelers. Rest areas were designed to be unique and provide a window into local regions as motorists passed thru them. Developers designed shelters inspired by regional icons such as teepees, wagon wheels and windmills, and designed buildings that reflected the architectural heritage of the areas indigenous people.

Upon hitting the road and having this knowledge, it was really fun to in fact see how each one really was different from the previous. It was fun to feel that anticipation and mystery of what the next one down the road would look like. As we traveled we used paper maps and looked for the picnic table icon on the map and drove to those locations. Often times though, we would stumble upon a stop that wasnt on the map, and that was fun.

PT: If you could do something like this in any other country, where would it be, what would you be searching for, and why?

RF: I have heard that there are similar, and incredible rest stops across Australia. I would love to do a part 2 of the project documenting the remote rest stops across the Australian Outback. I am obsessed with the desert; this would be my next dream project.

Photos by Ryann Ford, from The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside, published by powerHouse Books

Maggie Parker is Paste Magazines assistant travel editor.

1 of 9 Bonneville Salt Flats, Wendover, Utah:

"This was another favorite to shoot. Since beginning the project years ago, this had been at the top of my list to visit. Once I found out that the book was a go, I made a special trip to Utah just to shoot this stop. The salt flats were magical. This has got to be one of the most incredible places in the country."

2 of 9 Flower Mound, Texas  I-35:

"This was the rest stop that inspired the project. As I researched rest stops to see what was beyond the Austin area, I was excited to find a photo of this rest stop, and then shocked to read it would soon be demolished. The next weekend I drove four hours north to shoot it, and sure enough, it was demolished a few weeks later."

3 of 9 Near Justiceburg, Texas  U.S. 84:

"I was driving to Colorado from Texas and stopped at sunrise to get this photo. It was the middle of winter and below freezing. There wasn't a soul around."

4 of 9 Near Lajitas, Texas  FM-170:

"This is one of the most remote rest areas in the country. These teepees are hidden just outside Big Bend National Park, right on the Rio Grande, which divides the United States and Mexico. As we were shooting, a pack of Javelinas ran by."

5 of 9 Monument Valley, Arizona:

"This is one of the last picnic tables in Monument Valley. There were many more, but the rest were demolished so that a hotel overlooking the valley could be built. This table is located in a pull-off, offering a great view of "The Mittens" rock formations in the background."

6 of 9 Near Thackerville, Oklahoma  I-35: "This stop was closed and fenced off, but we found a farm road just past the rest area that took us around back. It looked like it had been closed for years; some of the giant oaks had fallen on a few of the teepees, and it was winter, so the trees were bare."

7 of 9 Walker Lake, Nevada  U.S. 95:

"Shortly after arriving here, we started noticing an unusual amount of very large spiders. Actually, they were everywhere. It was so strange and creepy that we Googled it, and sure enough, news articles detailed the freakish 'spider infestation.'"

8 of 9 White Sands National Monument, New Mexico:

"This is by far my favorite location. It's hard to take a bad picture here, and the 1960s-themed picnic tables are just as striking as the backdrop."
The new feature film Backgammon has at least one thing in common with its namesake board game: After watching it for just a few minutes, youre bound to get bored. Directed and co-written by newcomer Francisco Orvananos, Backgammon is billed as part psychological sexual thriller and part classic mystery. While a couple of the characters do have psychological issues, this meandering, pretentious art film is devoid of any thrillssexual or otherwise.

The premise is simple: Privileged college student Andrew (Christian Alexander) invites his friend Lucian (Noah Silver) and Lucians girlfriend Elizabeth (Olivia Crocicchia) to his familys mansion on the Maine coast for a weekend. The idyllic getaway is ruined when Andrews flighty sister Miranda (Brittany Allen) and her maddening boyfriend Gerald (Alex Beh) show up unannounced. But, while Andrew and Elizabeth tire of Mirandas and Geralds antics and bickering quickly, Lucians intrigued by the couple. Hes mesmerized by Miranda, especially drawn to the painting studio where Geralds nudes of Miranda hang about the room.

Just a few minutes into the film, we learn that Andrews left a note saying hes headed back to Yale, and Elizabeth, thinking Lucians cheated on her, has left in angeror so thats what Miranda tells Lucian. Geralds gone, too. Theyve broken up after a doozy of a fight last night, she says, and hes disappeared.

At this point, you might think that Orvananos is setting the plot in motion for a serial killer on the loose. If only wed be that lucky. Backgammon flashes back to earlier moments in the weekend to show the drinking, the arguments that ensue among the guests and just how irritating Gerald really is. The film then segues into a two-hander between Silver and Allen, who flirt with each other (although the pairings devoid of chemistry) while searching rooms and spaces for Gerald, who may not have left after all. Orvananos hints at the possibility of violence or a deeper mystery, but the promise is just a facade. No one should be surprised by the twist at the end of the film.

Based on R.B. Russells novella, Bloody Baudelaire, the scripts dialogue is painfully stilted, with Orvananos, Russell and co-writer Todd Niemi striving for the sophistication found in, say, Whit Stillmans Metropolitan. They fail badly. The emotionally fragile Miranda speaks in a formal, blue-blooded accent, making lines like A quiet feeling of liberation has come over me sound so much worse. Meanwhile, her brother, whos only onscreen for a few minutes before leaving the mansion, speaks the college vernacular: I cant stand that guy [Gerald]...all he fucking does is quote French poetry.

The acting is nearly as difficult to watch, with the actors either over-emoting (Allen), over-brooding (Silver) or over-playing the crazy drunk (Beh). Gerald, the Baudelaire-quoting artist, is especially over-the-top. In a dramatic poker game scene, Gerald plays Lucian for the entire collection of his nude Miranda paintings. Beh drinks and smokes with conviction throughout the scene, but he sounds ridiculous. The same scene pays homage to the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton arguments in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as Gerald and Miranda drink, fight and throw bottles at each other. Its nearly comical, but we cant place blame entirely on the actors; Orvananos surely led them toward this ham-handed and pretentious direction.

Cinematography by Simon Coull is one of Backgammons few assets. The film looks beautiful, with well-framed establishing shots taking advantage of the Maine coast as well as the houses well-appointed interiors. But the film could have used another editing pass, lingering far too long on close-ups of the actors acting as hard as they canmeanwhile a completely needless backgammon game is played between Lucian and Miranda toward the end of the film. Backgammons last scene includes an aerial shot that circles the estate, feeling entirely out of place. Its totally unnecessaryan over-indulgencebut its also the perfect metaphor for this film.

Director: Francisco Orvananos

Writers: Francisco Orvananos, R.B. Russell and Todd Niemi,

Starring: Brittany Allen, Noah Silver, Alex Beh, Olivia Crocicchia, Christian Alexander

Release Date: March 18, 2016

Christine N. Ziemba is a Los Angeles-based freelance pop culture writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi, a Osama bin Laden disciple enjoying the freedom granted to him by a very generous and secular Indian constitution, is in news again and once again not for the right reasons.

The ISIS sympathizer, who was chased out of Bihar after the voters in the state gave him a big middle finger in the last Assembly polls where all of his six candidates in the Seemanchal region lost big to their nearest rivals, had recently said that he was not obligated by the Constitution to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai" (Long Live Mother India).

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab?" Owaisi had said at a rally in Latur district in Maharashtra on February 13 while reacting to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestions to proudly say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' in order to infuse patriotism amomg Indians.

"I would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if one puts a knife on my throat," the fake Indian who has ideologically aligned with Pakistan, Taliban, and ISIS in the past to prove his 'real patriotism' had said.

Not surprisingly, reaction by other Muslims in India, let alone hard core Hindus, had been harsh against Owaisi who had been quietly planning a Pakistan-style coup in India for quite some time.

Shabana Azmi, noted actress and equally noted social activist, asked Owaisi: "I would like to ask Owaisi sahab, would he be ok saying 'Bharat Ammi ki Jai' instead of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' if he has issues with the word 'mata'?"

Can't help but agree with Shabana (wonderful actress, by the way) - except I would not have added 'saheb' after Owaisi's name! The man does not deserve our respect.

Azmi's husband and writer, poet Javed Akhtar went a step further challenging Owaisi to contest election against him 'any time any place'.

"Your incendiary speech has only created disturbance in the country. I am ready to contest elections against Owaisi from anywhere except Hyderabad, where 50% of the population is Hindu and the rest 50% Muslim," Akhtar said.

Mohammed Asim, Senior News Editor, NDTV, wrote: "Please spare the Muslims your indulgence. Your expressions such as 'mere gale pe chhoori rakh do to bhi nahin bolunga Bharat Mata Ki Jai' are not just in bad taste, but also have unnecessary confrontationist tone in them."

Sadly, only in India these traitors are allowed to live, thrive, and flourish and no one can do anything to them because... we are after all 'secular' and 'secularism' clearly prevents the government to deal with the enemy of the nation!
Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) President Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Patna High Court Acting Chief Justice Iqbal Ahmed Ansari were among many who were present at the release of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former film star Shatrughan Sinha's autobiography 'Anything But Khamosh' at a function at Hotel Maurya in Patna on Friday.

Popular television star Shekhar Suman, Bollywood actress of yesteryears Poonam Dhillon, Shatrughan Sinha's son Luv and his wife were also among those who were present on the occasion.

The book was earlier launched in New Delhi by senior BJP leader and Sinha's mentor Lal Krishna Advani and by superstar Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai.

The book offers a detailed picture of Sinha's life  his college days at Patna Science College, his days at Poona Film Institute, and his break in the Hindi movie world that led to his superstar status while also causing some rift with Bachchan who was creating ripples of his own when Sinha was at his peak.

Nitish Kumar, who like Yadav, has a friendly relationship with the actor despite being in the opposite political camp, praised Sinha on his life journey and the way he conducted himself through all these years.

"If you ever want to join a different political party, the door of Janata Dal  U is always open for you," the Chief Minister said.

Yadav, who has also expressed his desire in the past to have Sinha in his party, also jokingly said to the actor to break the 'khamoshi' (silence) after all and leave the BJP that, he said, had treated him anything but fairly.
Patna: Christmas came nine months earlier for Bihar legislators who are being showered with gifts by the state government that, besides not paying the teachers their salary for months, continually blames the central government for conspiring against Bihar when it comes to funding various development projects.

With each government department giving a gift to the legislators, a brainchild of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to keep the morale high of the MLAs, MLCs, and ministers, on Friday it was the turn of the Education Department that handed out expensive microwave ovens, cell phones, and name brand luggage to the legislators who, according to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, are a poor lot with barely any money to support the family.

"There is no need to politicize this as it is an old custom when departments whose budgets have been approved by the cabinet hand out gifts to the legislators and ministers," Yadav said.

Education Minister and Congress leader Ashok Kumar Chowdhary also justified the gifts saying it cost his department 'no more than Rs. 25-30 lakh' that is miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

"Microwave has many usages. Our MLAs need to travel to their constituencies to inspect mid-day meals being served at schools. So when they go, they can utilize the new suitcases and carry their microwave oven with them to test the food," the Education Minister surmised.

This comes a day after the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) gifted expensive laptops worth several lakh rupees to ward councilors so they could 'monitor and keep up with the pace of development' in the state capital.
"We're not used to seeing growth in our check business," said Deluxe's Tracey Engelhardt, who reports a 6% to 7% increase in revenue for check orders from businesses and consumers in each of the last three quarters, driven by various factors originating from the pandemic.
10th Annual Persian Arts Festival in New York

03/18/16

Source: Persian Arts Festival



Friday, March 18th, 8:30PM - 1AM

at National Sawdust, 80 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249

The Persian Arts Festival celebrates 10 years of showcasing the work of hundreds of Iranian American artists from around the world at the prestigious new Brooklyn venue, National Sawdust. The 10th Annual Persian Arts Festival will feature multiple art forms including short films by Iranian Americans, performances by established Persian poets, hosted and curated by Zahra Saed and Sara Goudarzi, the NYC premier of vocalist and daft player, Aida Shahghasemi, who fuses her exquisite Persian classical vocal training with indie-rock tendencies, and Mitra Sumara, a big-band of NYC-based musicians dedicated to Pop/funk music from Pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Space is limited, so we ask that you purchase tickets in advance: http://nationalsawdust.org/event/persian-arts-festival-10th-anniversary-celebration/

THE VENUE

It is an honor to bring the Persian Arts Festival to NYC's iconic National Sawdust, an unparalleled, artist-led venue, hailed by the New York Times as a game-changer in the way new music is presented. www.nationalsawdust.org



Visit Persian Arts Festival's to see the FESTIVAL LINEUP


Baha'i Couples Welcoming Spring in Prison

03/18/16

By Kian Sabeti (source:ZAMAEH_URL; translation by Iran Press Watch)

In the final days of the current year, in which Iranian families are preparing to welcome the New Year*, a Bahai couple, Payman Kooshakbaghi and Azita Rafizadeh were arrested and sent to prison to start their long sentences. There are four Bahai couples among political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. This report is an attempt to introduce them and to bring to light how they are welcoming the New Year far from each other and from their children.





Payman Kooshakbaghi and Azita Rafizadeh



On Sunday the 28th of February, Payman Kooshakbaghi, a Bahai citizen, in the company of his son Basheer, went to Evin Prison to visit his wife. Before reaching the visiting room, he was arrested by three plain clothes officers and transferred to prison to start a five year sentence.

On the issue of his arrest, one of Mr. Kooshakbaghis relatives told Radio Zamaneh, Payman was arrested without prior notice or summons. They did not even allow him to properly bid farewell to his wife. Officers separated him from his son, and without proper attire they took him to an unknown location. Previously, on numerous occasions after the imprisonment of his wife Azita, in November 2015, Payman contacted the Deputy Prosecutor and the Head of the Office of Enforcement, requesting to be notified prior to his arrest. This request was due to the psychological condition as well as the young age of his son, and because he had no one to look after him during his sentence. If notified earlier, that would have enabled him to prepare his son for the absent of both parents. The Deputy Prosecutor assured him that at this moment they had nothing to do with him, but on Sunday unexpectedly in presence of his son and before entering the visiting room he was arrested.

Payman Kooshakbaghi, and his wife Azita Rafizadeh were arrested in June 2011 because they were working with and cooperating with the Bahai Institute of Higher Education (BIHE). The couple, who studied in the same university after graduation in Computer Engineering, began to teach Bahai students who had been denied an education online.

Azita Rafizadeh went to India to continue her education; after she was successfully awarded Masters Degree in Computer Science, she returned to Iran. In connection with the trial of these two Bahais, a reliable source told Radio Zamaneh Payman and Azita were summoned to the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, and were asked to sign a document stating that they would not work with BIHE any more. After doing so their case would be considered closed. On denying the request, Azita in June 2014 and Payman in May 2015, in the 28th branch of the Revolutionary Court under the presiding Judge Moghiseh, they were sentenced to four years and five years of imprisonment respectively.

They were accused of membership in the misguided and illegal Bahai group with the (supposed) aim of rising against the security of the country, and of being active in a Bahai educational institution. After receiving her second summons, Azita, on 24 October 2015, presented herself to Evin prison to begin her four year sentence.





Adel Naiemi and Elham Farahani



Another Bahai couple who are in prison in Iran are Adel Naiemi and Elham Farahani. Naiemi was sentenced to 11 years, and his wife to four years of imprisonment. These two Bahais are in Rajai Shahr Prison and the womens section of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Evin Prison respectively.

Adel has endured more than three years and his wife more than two years of their sentences, while their son Shamim is enduring a sentence of three years with his father in the same prison.

Iman Rashidi, Shabnam Mottahed, Fariborz Baghi and Nategheh Naiemi are other Bahai couples who are behind bars in Yazd prison.





Iman Rashidi and Shabnam Mottahed



The imprisonment of these two couples is connected with the previous trial and sentencing of 20 Bahai citizens in the city of Yazd. On 31 July 2012, twenty Bahais were arrested collectively in the cities of Yazd, Kerman and Arak. After three weeks they were released on bail. In September 2013, the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced these Bahai citizens to from one to four years of prison on charges of being members of secret (Bahai) institutions and of rising against national security.

From the month of February 2015, these convicted Bahais  including this couple  were summoned one by one to assume their sentences.

Iman Rashidi and his wife Shabnam Mottahed were summoned to Yazd prison on the 19th of March 2015 to undertake their sentences.

The beginning of their sentences coincided with busy days of preparation for the Persian New Year, and thus has not been covered by any news media.

These two Bahais have been in Yazd prison for more than eleven months. Iman has been sentenced to three and half years and Shabnam to two years of imprisonment. This young couple do not have any children.

Fariborz Baghi is another Bahai who was convicted by the Revolutionary Court of Yazd. He started his sentence on the 7th of March 2015. Fariborz was sentenced to two years imprisonment; his wife Nategheh Naiemi received a one year suspended sentence.

Fariborz, in a published open letter addressing the judges of the Revolutionary Court, indicated that his sentence and that of his wife were unjust; demanded that the Court annul its decision: ... when the Islamic Revolution succeeded in 1357, I was a 14 year old youth; being an excellent student I decided to continue my studies to become a medical doctor. To follow my dream I participated in and became successful in passing the entrance exam of the high school attached to Shiraz University. I supposed I would continue my studies after high school in the same university without needing to attempt the National University Entrance exam, but after the revolution, the wave of opposition and discrimination against Bahais prevented me from receiving a high school certificate. I lost my hope of studying at any university. My fathers possessions were confiscated; my brother-in-law was arrested and sentenced to death. These happened along with all the other horrifying incidents with which my family was struggling for years. The authorities came after me and my family. During those years an excellent opportunity presented itself for me to study in Canada, but due to my adherence to my religions doctrine and because of my love for Iran and Iranians I decided not to pursue the path of moving to another country. I accepted the insults, deprivation and belittling rather than have material comfort. Finally I started a business of my own.

This imprisoned Bahai, in response to one of the accusations levelled against him  organising secret (Bahai) institutions and rising against national security  in the same letter indicated: the assertion of secret institutions brings to mind a very dangerous and negative connotation which is worrisome. When looking carefully at the nature and the mode of operation of these institutions from a religious angle, these institutions activities are related to helping the needy, settling family misunderstanding, preventing divorce, financial affairs and even Bahai childrens education ... bearing this in mind, even if it is organised and conducted in secret, it cannot be a threat to the countrys security.

At the end of his letter, Fariborz Baghi addressed the judges of his case, saying: Respected judges, now I am a fifty year old man with many unfulfilled dreams which are still fresh in my mind, but to betray my country or even to act against it has never crossed my mind for a single moment.

The publication of this letter online and in social media did not show any effect on his sentence  rather, it aggravated the conditions of Fariborz Baghis sentence. While he was still in prison the same Revolutionary Court added two more years to his sentence, accusing him of agitating public opinion.

Fariborzs wife, Nategheh Naiemi, after being summoned on 6th of October 2015 along with another Bahai, Azam Mottahari, they presented themselves to Yazd prison to complete their sentences.

This couple have a son and a daughter. Leva, their daughter was married without her father being able to attend her wedding, as the Yazd prison authority refused to release him for few hours to attend his daughters wedding.

____

* The Persian New Year is held on the vernal equinox.
On eve of Iranian New Year, concern about fate of imprisoned journalists

03/18/16

Source: Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its concern about the conditions in which journalists are being detained in Iran, especially Afarine Chitsaz of the daily newspaper Iran, a young woman arrested at the same time as three other journalists on 2 November.



cartoon by Mana Neyestani, Iran Wire





She was able to make a short phone call after her arrest but the authorities have provided no official information about her detention.

According to the information obtained by RSF, she is now being held in isolation in Section 2A of Tehrans Evin prison. The Revolutionary Guards control this section and subject detainees to a great deal of pressure, often with the aim of extracting confessions to be used at their trials.

Iran is the worlds biggest prison for women journalists, with four others currently held. The other four - Rihaneh Tabatabai, Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, Narges Mohammadi and Atena Ferghdani- are serving jail terms ranging from one to twelve years and some some are in poor health.

There is also concern about the state of health of Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist who is being tried along with Ehssan Mazndarani and Saman Safarzai by a Tehran revolutionary court on charges of activities threatening national security and anti-government propaganda. After going on hunger strike and suffering a heart attack, Saharkhiz has been in a Tehran hospital since 10 March.

On the eve of the Iranian New Year on 20 March, many journalists and citizen- journalists are separated from their families, said Reza Moini, the head of RSFs Iran/Afghanistan desk. The Iranian authorities - including President Hassan Rouhani, whose silence facilitates this persecution - could display clemency towards these detainees, who have been arrested arbitrarily and convicted unjustly. We call for their immediate and unconditional release.

RSF has meanwhile learned that Saraj Mirdamadi, a journalist who worked for various media outlets including Hayat-e-No (a daily closed in January 2003) and Zamaneh (a radio station based in the Netherlands), was released conditionally on 13 March. He was freed under article 58 of the Islamic criminal code (as amended in 2013), under which detainees who have served a third of their sentence can be released for good behaviour. Arrested on 10 May 2014, he was convicted on 21 July 2015 on charges of meeting and plotting against the Islamic Republic and anti-government publicity.

With a total of 36 journalists and citizen-journalists currently detained, Iran is still one of the worlds five biggest prisons for media personnel and is ranked 173rd out of 180 countriesin the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
Norooz, the Persian New Year at the spring vernal equinox

03/18/16

Davood N. Rahni, New York



Norooz: 00:30:12 A.M. Sunday March 20, 2016 in New York





The flower buds of yellow, violet, red and white crocuses of saffron bulbs, intermingled with the blossoming daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and the Persian violets, herald the arrival of Norooz. The Persian New Year, signaling the rebirth, rejuvenation and reconciliations, rightly occurring on the spring vernal equinox. Spring in Iran and its wider region is the harbinger of jubilation with the flowing pristine streams percolating down the snowcapped mountains, the greening of the prairies and pastures, the flowering of fruit trees, and the germinating of staple crops. Hence, it is surmised that the Norooz celebration must have been observed at one level or the other since the inception of agriculture on Iranian Plateau stretching between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, the Caucuses, and Central Asia since at least 10,000 years ago when agriculture and domesticating animals commenced. This is reflected in the mythological story of King Jamshid the first Norooz celebrant, in (Paradisso) Ferdowsis Shahnameh, the Epic 30,000 Poem Book of the Persian Kings. Paradise, he has eternally been since.

Norooz aka Nowruz or NowRooz in Persian literally means the first day [of the New Year]. It is the most prominent seasonal celebration of the solar calendars. It was conceived by the agricultural people north of the Tropic of Cancer who have revered the sun (Sol Invictus), fire and light ever since. This contrasts with lunar calendars as followed by the southern and western neighbors of Iran. In addition to Iran, Norooz as a national holiday transcending class, color, creed, ethnicity, race, religion, or national origin, is currently commemorated by well over a dozen countries of nearly five hundred million inhabitants in central, south and west Asia, northwestern China, Asia Minor, and the Caucuses.









In fact, the commoners and serfs in Europe and later by the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock also observed a New Year beginning in spring though the mid-18th century. Have you ever wondered why the 9th (for September) through the 12th (for December) months of the current Gregorian calendar, Latin derived September through December, are actually the 7th through the 10th months of the year? Wouldnt that make January and February the 11th and 12th, thus March the first month according to Julian Calendar, an era in the 1st through the 4th centuries CE when Europe was still under Persian Mithraism influence!

Norooz according to Zoroastrian Mazdayasni calendar is at 3755. Norooz commences with the festival of Chaharshanbe Suriat the last Tuesday night of the year. At this Zoroastrian fire ritual, everyone jumps over fire, singing a Middle Persian poem that translates as:

O sacred Fire, take away my yellow sicknessand give me in return your healthy red color!

The most symbolic manifestation showcased at Norooz is the sofreh haft-seen. Onto a table covered with an antique hand-woven silk cloth are laid seven plant-derived items whose Persian names begin with the letter S: sabzeh- wheat and lentil germinations symbolizing rebirth; senjed- the dried fruit of the oleaster tree symbolizing love; seer-garlic symbolizing medicine; seeb-apples symbolizing beauty and earth; somaqh-sumac berries symbolizing sunrise; samanu- cooked germinated wheat for affluence, and serkeh-vinegar symbolizing ripeness, longevity, and perseverance. A round ticking clock, signifying the passage of time, a fishbowl with two gold fish (added later due to influences from China) signifying companionship and life, decorated eggs for fertility, and a saucer of coins from the five continents to reflect prosperity are also on display. The haft-seen table is completed with daffodils, tulips and hyacinths, a triple green, white, and red flickering candelabra and an ancient book of poems, Ferdowsis Shahnameh the Persian epic book of the Kings, Rumis Mathnawi, DivanHafez, or the Omar Khayyams Quatrains, illustrated by the poem The Nightingale Bemoans...This year is the year of monkey, thus depicted by the three monkeys on the right corner of the haft-seen picture above with gestures, see no evil, hear no evil and thus say no evil. In the U.S. alone Presidents release annual Norooz best wishes message and in recent years an all-day extravagant Norooz celebration that concludes with Persian music and dance and exquisite Persian food, has been hosted at the White House. The UN has for some time declared the International Day of Norooz.









Everyone reaffirms their commitment to one or more of the following virtues, namely, to volunteerism, altruism, philanthropy, benevolence and above all to advancing humanism as the pinnacles of life. The belief in the golden rule of treating others as you would expect to be treated, on the tripartite pedestal of good thoughts, good words and good deeds conjures up in mind with the acclaimed Persian poem by the 13th century Saadi:

All humans are members of one frame,

Since all at first, from the same essence, came.

When by hard fortune one limb is oppressed,

The other members lose their desired rest.

If thou feelst not for others misery,

A human is no name for thee.











A Norooz holiday is concluded at the Sizdah Bedar Picnic, which falls on the 13th day or close to April fools Day. Every family spends the full day outdoor in parks, crop fields, or the orchards, when they play, sing, dance, eat and drink. The singles tie knots with grass blades to wish for a life companion, the elders nostalgically compare this Norooz with those elapsed while remembering the deceased with melancholy, and the children in particular, look forward restlessly to many more Norooz celebrations to follow.









Photos Farhang Foundation.

An earlier excerpt of this essay was published in National Geog. Magazine, under D. Rahni Copyright  2016


Saudi Arabia to Face Cash Crunch in Future: US Analyst

03/18/16

Source: Tasnim News Agency, Tehran

An American political science professor said Saudi Arabia, not in the too distant future, will face a massive cash deficit. Saudi Arabia is running large budget deficits of 15 to 20 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and is drawing down on its currency reserves. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) estimates that the Saudis will run of cash reserves in five years, and then will go deeply into debt, James D. Savage told the Tasnim News Agency.





Professor James D. Savage



Savage is a political science professor at the University of Virginia and teaches public policy in the Department of Politics and at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He is an expert in government budget and fiscal policies and budget theory. He completed his undergraduate degrees in political science and psychology at the University of California, Riverside, his graduate degrees in political science, public policy, and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

Following is the full text of the interview.

Q: How long can Saudi Arabia withstand the consequences of falling oil prices?

A: Saudi Arabia is running large budget deficits of 15 to 20 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and is drawing down on its currency reserves. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) estimates that the Saudis will run of cash reserves in five years, and then will go deeply into debt.

Q: According to IMF, Irans gross domestic product (GDP) stood at $397 billion in 2015. Meanwhile, latest reports suggest that it will grow five percent in 2016-2017, thanks to a solid foundation built to cope with exclusion from the global financial system. Given these facts, why is not Iran a member of the G20 yet?



A: The membership of the G20 has remained the same since 1999. There are no formal requirements to be invited to be a member. Iran has probably not been invited because it was under Western sanctions. Six states can be invited to attend G20 meetings as guests. The more Iran is accepted by the West, the more likely it may be invited as a guest.

Q: Do you believe that full suspension of anti-Tehran sanctions would help promote Irans economic growth?

A: The suspension of sanctions should significantly assist Irans economic growth. It is important that Iran regain its place in the world economy. The World Bank estimates that foreign direct investment in Iran should be more than $3 billion a year. More important, $58 billion in Iranian assets held by foreign governments and banks will now be released. Iran could use this opportunity to build and diversify its economy.

Q: What might the future hold in terms of economy and prosperity for Iran now that anti-Tehran sanctions are lifted off?

A: Now that the sanctions have been eased, the world looks at Iran as a new market for its products. There is a huge demand for these products, and these imports will improve the quality of life for the Iranian people. In return, can Iran export more than just oil?
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When T-Mobile CEO John Legere said he wanted any capable video provider to join the Binge On program, he really meant it. T-Mobile recently added several new content providers to Binge On, the program where videos from certain streaming providers dont count against your data cap. One hush-hush new addition alongside YouTube and Google Play Movies was MiKandi, an online X-rated app store and streaming service.

Starting now, T-Mobile customers who also subscribe to MiKandi Theater can get DVD-quality porn streamed over T-Mobiles network for free, as Engadget first reported. MiKandi Theater is a $20 per month porn video service geared towards mobile devices.

Mikandi is celebrating T-Mobiles decision as a victory for free speech. When mainstream tech companies announce new platforms it tends to be another way to censor your online experience, MiKandi CEO Jesse Adams said in a company blog post. T-Mobile is treating adults like adults and we hope that other tech companies follow in their footsteps.

Dont count on itthough T-Mobile should definitely be applauded for its even-handed treatment of Mikandi.

The story behind the story: Most people are well aware that pornographic content is widely available online. Yet its rare to see such mainstream support for a pornographic service like this. Not surprisingly, T-Mobile didnt exactly shout the addition of MiKandi from the rooftops. The  un-carrier mentioned MiKandi anonymously stating that BingeOn was adding Google Play Movies, KlowdTV, Red Bull TV, YouTube and more.

For MiKandi subscribers on T-Mobile, the Binge On treatment is good news since you no longer have to worry about data caps when getting your, um, binge, on.
Microsoft said Friday that it tweaked its support options for customers who want to run the latest Intel Skylake processors on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Microsoft will extend its specialized support options for a year and offer more updates to those customers when its specialized support period expires.

Now, the support period for Windows 7/8.1 on Skylake will end a year later than its previous target, on July 17, 2018. After that, Microsoft said all critical security updates will be targeted for Skylake systems until extended support ends, a softening of the most critical language Microsoft used previously.

Theres still a difference in the way that older Broadwell-based systems will be supported, though: Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will continue to be supported for security, reliability, and compatibility on prior generations of processors and chipsets under the standard support lifecycle for Windows. (Emphasis ours.)

A convoluted history

These are likely welcome changes to what Microsoft set up in January, when the company outlined a plan to provide specialized support for business customers who wanted to buy a PC powered by Intels latest Skylake processor, but who also wished to stick with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Microsoft agreed to support dozens of specific PCs, including gaming PCs from companies like Dell. After July 2017, though, that support would endsave for only the most critical updatesand customers were expected to move to Windows 10.

The idea, from Microsofts perspective, was that the growing gap between the aging Windows 7 OS and the latest Skylake hardware offered many opportunities for bugs and other failures, and they would only increase over time. Pushing customers to Windows 10 at the end of that transitional period would help mitigate this.

Why this matters: Its unclear what the consensus is among enterprise customers on Microsofts Skylake policy, but its fair to say that at least a few probably felt like they needed more time. Microsofts in a bit of a PR pinch here: By encouraging customers to move to Windows 10, it frees up developer resources it can use to improve its current, revenue-generating operating system. But since the approved list of PCs includes consumer systems, PC gamers get a seat at the table, tooand theyve complained loudly. My colleague, Gordon Mah Ung, sums it up this way: This is Microsoft negotiating in public, trying to build some goodwill before its Build developer conference kicks off in a few weeks.

Keeping the customer happy

Jeremy Korst, the general manager of Windows marketing, said the company has received feedback on how it had handled the previous rolloutnegative feedback, presumably. A key part of this update was our commitment to continuing to lead with a customer-first approach, he wrote in a blog post Friday.

Consumers, though, quickly picked up on the differences: Why did support for Skylake systems end in 2017, especially when extended support for Windows 7 on Broadwell systems ended in 2020? And what did this most critical language actually mean for the updates those Skylake systems received? Older versions of Windows Server also runs on Skylake, but without the tangle of support options.

All these questions undoubtedly influenced Microsofts revised stance. This guidance is designed to help our customers purchase modern hardware with confidence, while continuing to manage their migrations to Windows 10, Korst wrote.

Updated at 2:15 PM with additional details.
Bring your own device can easily turn into bring your own disaster for corporate networks, if attackers use a compromised device as a bridgehead into a secure environment.

Thats one of the reasons Deutsche Telekom is partnering with two security companies to offer services to smaller companies that dont have the resources to install and operate their own MDM (mobile device management) or endpoint security systems.

Internet Protect Pro and Mobile Protect Pro are rebranded versions of services from Zscaler and Zimperium, respectively. The CEOs of the two companies joined Deutsche Telekom executives on stage at the Cebit tradeshow in Hanover, Germany, on Thursday to announce the deals.

The services will initially be rolled out in Germany, and later to customers in other countries where Deutsche Telekom operates networks. These include Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

Deutsche Telekom plans to charge a few euros per device per month for Mobile Protect Pro, a combination of a mobile app and central dashboard that Zimperium sells as zIPS.

The app is available for both Android and iOS, and will run on unrooted devices.

It provides what the companies describe as a continuous ECG for smartphones, looking out for known security problems and also for abnormal behavior on the device or on the network, which may be a sign of an as-yet-unknown attack. If it determines that the device is compromised, it can issue a warning and lock it out of the corporate network until it has been inspected and cleaned.

The scanning for abnormal behavior is done without examining or transmitting users personal data. If something is spotted, the app reports it to Deutsche Telekoms security team for follow-up.

Deutsche Telekom will begin trials of Mobile Protect Pro next month, offering commercial service from the third quarter.

Internet Protect Pro is a cloud-based firewall based on software from Zscaler. For its German customers, Deutsche Telekom will run it in its own data centers in Biere, Germany, ensuring that their data doesnt leave the country.

The service can protect networks at company headquarters and branch offices, said Ferri Abolhassan, director of Telekom Security, a new division Deutsche Telekom is setting up to manage all its security offerings.

In a demo on stage at Cebit, he showed how the service can prevent ransomware attacks by identifying files containing malware and preventing their execution.

Deutsche Telekom will begin trials of both services in the second quarter, offering commercial service from the third quarter.
Lenovo has restructured its operations as part of a management shakeup, and some interesting names have been promoted.

Former Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci, who is Lenovos Group president and chief operating officer, is now in charge of Lenovos PC and Smart Devices Group, previously known as the PC Group. Lanci joined Lenovo in 2012 after he was fired from Acer in late 2011 over disagreements about product strategy with the companys board. Acer then sued Lanci for allegedly violating a non-compete clause.

Lanci led Acer through profitable times during a boom in netbook sales. But Acers fortunes fell when netbook shipments nosedived after the introduction of the Apple iPad in 2010, and the company has since struggled. Now Lanci will lead the development of Lenovos venerable PCs, including ThinkPad, and tablets. Hell also be in charge of developing smart devices for the Internet of Things.

Lenovos Mobile Business Group will remain intact, but has new leaders in Xudong Chen and Aymar de Lencquesaing, who will serve as presidents. Rick Osterloh, formerly president of Motorola, which was acquired by Lenovo in 2014, has resigned from the company. Chen previously led Lenovos mobile efforts in China and de Lencquesaing led Lenovos North American operations.

Also switching roles is Peter Hortensius, who is now CTO of the Data Center Group, which was previously known as the Enterprise Business Group. Hortensius was previously a company-wide CTO, and he guided the company out of a scandal after Superfish adware was found in Lenovo laptops. Hes been the force behind bringing new technologies to PCs and mobile devices but now will apply those skills to advance enterprise hardware like servers.

The Data Center Group will continue to be led by Gerry Smith, president of the unit.

Lenovo also formed a new group called the Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, which will focus on supplementing its mobile devices with cloud and other services. The company already offers cloud services through its earlier Stoneware acquisition, and bundles apps like ReachIt so users can access cloud files with mobile devices and PCs.

The changes will take effect on April 1.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP)  Unknown attackers fired rockets at a gas facility in the Sahara Desert in Algeria on Friday, energy groups Statoil and BP said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

A local official in Algeria said the assailants fired homemade rocket launchers around 6 a.m. at the Krechba gas facility, jointly operated with Norway-based Statoil and Britain-based BP and overseen by Algerian state-run gas company Sonatrach.

Army reinforcements have been sent to the area from other regions, according to that official and another, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the operation.

Stavanger, Noway-based Statoil said the Krechba facility was hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance. The company said it has been in touch with its three employees there, who were safe and not hurt.

British energy group BP said in a statement that there were no reports of injuries to its employees and the facility was shut down as a safety precaution. It did not say how many people were working there.

Shots were fired from outside into the facility, head of Statoil media relations Baard Glad Pedersen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. He said he didnt know who was behind the attack.

Krechba is part of the In Salah gas fields, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Algiers in the Sahara Desert, in the Hassi Messaoud region, the prime gas producing region in Algeria, over 700 kilometers (439 miles) from the Libyan border.

In January 2013, a band of al-Qaida-affiliated militants attacked the Ain Amenas complex in Algeria, near Libyas border. After a four-day standoff, the Algerian army moved in. At least 37 hostages, mostly foreign workers, died in the battle. The attackers were thought to have crossed into Algeria from neighboring Libya.

Like in Krechba, the Ain Amenas facility is jointly run by BP, Sonatrach and Statoil.

Al-Qaidas North Africa branch, based in Algeria, claimed responsibility for an attack Sunday on a beach resort in Ivory Coast, in West Africa, that killed at least 18 people.

The group tweeted Monday that the attack was a warning to the West that it will destroy security for its citizens if they are not left safe in their lands in the Sahel, the region below the Sahara. French-led forces pushed the group from strongholds in northern Mali in 2013.
This weekend, tens of thousands of party goers will frolic in a light and sound spectacular.

Fans will flock to the Beyond Wonderland electronic music festival Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, in Devore.

Authorities, meanwhile, are on heightened alert as they aim to prevent illegal drug use and other problems at the event at the San Bernardino County-owned San Manuel Amphitheater.

Such festivals have come under scrutiny after several deaths from suspected drug overdoses.

At last Marchs event, John Hoang Dinh Vo, a 22-year-old San Diego resident, suffered an apparent seizure and went into cardiac arrest, San Bernardino County coroners officials said. Vo died at a hospital after overdosing on the illegal drug Ecstasy, authorities said.

In September 2013, Arrel Christopher Cochon, a 22-year-old Los Angeles resident, died after attending an electronic music festival at the amphitheater. He had a seizure after taking drugs at the event, officials said. At least three others have died after going to such festivals in recent years.

Los Angeles County supervisors are moving forward with an ordinance that allows officials to consider case-by-base approval of mass gathering events expected to draw 10,000 people or more on county property or in unincorporated areas. The move comes after the deaths of two young women at the August HARD Summer festival at the Fairplex in Pomona.

The promoter of Beyond Wonderland encourages festival goers to be responsible and offers water stations, medical aid and other services at the events.

BOOSTING SECURITY

San Bernardino County officials are taking steps to improve health and safety at such festivals.

Insomniac, Beyond Wonderlands promoter, works closely with the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department to keep out illegal drugs, Capt. Steve Dorsey said.

The department will have more than 100 deputies and a handful of drug-sniffing dogs at amphitheater entrances as well as the campground next to the festival grounds. Private security and undercover officers also will be present.

Officers are monitoring social media and the Internet, where people in prior years have posted instructions for getting in without being searched, Dorsey said. A security guard who was taking cash to let people in was arrested at an electronic music event at the venue last year, he added.

Were being aggressive on all fronts, he said.

A sheriffs helicopter with a paramedic will be on stand by, and medical professionals will be available for people needing attention, he said.

ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY

Insomniac spokeswoman Desiree Naranjo didnt respond to emails this week, but the company has said in past interviews that fan safety is a top priority.

Insomniac has a zero-tolerance drug policy, its website says. The website lists health and safety tips for festival guests, including staying hydrated, wearing comfortable clothes and using the buddy system.

Insomniac is paying for all security and medical care at the event, Dorsey said.

San Bernardino Countys contract with Live Nation, which leases the amphitheater, allows four electronic dance events a year. The agreement, approved in 2013, gives the county the ability to pull the plug at any time.

Supervisor Janice Rutherford, who voted against the contract, has said the events cause traffic jams and prompt noise complaints from neighbors.

Rutherford has always been concerned about raves going late at night and how that affects the residents as well as the propensity for drug use and issues related to that at these types of events, said Scott Vanhorne, her communications director.

Supervisor Curt Hagman, who was elected in 2014, said hes open to ideas to make the events safer.

Anytime you get 40,000 to 50,000 kids together, no matter now good your precautions are, youre going to have some issues, Hagman said.

JUST HAVE FUN

This years event, expected to draw a combined crowd of 70,000 people for the two days, is set to feature almost 50 dance music performers on four stages. Thousands of campers plan to stay overnight in tents and RVs starting Thursday, March 17.

A county analysis showed the number of arrests and medical issues isnt higher at electronic music festivals than at concerts and other events at the amphitheater, county spokesman David Wert said.

People must decide to behave responsibly, Hagman said.

I think theres only so much we can do to protect people from themselves, he said.

Rialto resident Mark Sanchez, who is going to his fourth Beyond Wonderland event, said the festivals get a bad rap.

Were not teaching people drug education, said Sanchez, 24, a San Bernardino Valley College student. We have people who dont know what theyre taking and dont know how to control themselves. They go way too hard.

Banning such festivals would drive them back underground, where they were held in the past without any safety measures, he said.

It will only make it worse if they shut them down, Sanchez said.

Raylena Aguilar, a 22-year-old Riverside resident, plans to attend both days of Beyond Wonderland. Its her third time going to dance music festivals in Devore.

She appreciates the tight security and thorough searches at the front gates. Illegal drug use isnt a concern, she said.

I dont feel like Im in danger, said Aguilar, who attends Riverside City College. I just go to have fun and to dance. Its just good people, good vibes and good music.

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SAN BERNARDINO: Beyond Wonderland death ruled an Ecstasy overdose
Adrenaline junkies, thrill-seekers, and those looking to support a good cause can rappel themselves down the 16-story Mount Rubidoux Manor, the tallest building in Riverside.

Habitat for Humanitys Riverside chapter is holding the Over the Edge challenge, which aims to raise $100,000 to fund veteran services.

Ninety-two slots to rappel down Rubidoux Manor are open to anyone who raises a minimum of $1,000. So far, one person already has reached $1,000.

The event features a separate Toss the Boss component, in which a company that raises $2,500 can nominate their boss to be sent over the building.

There are fundraisers that have dinners, luncheons, 5Ks, etc., said Matt Friedlander, director of resource development at Habitat for Humanity, but the opportunity to do something you only see on TV or in the military and to rappel down the second-tallest building in the county, you dont get that opportunity every day.

High-profile people slated to go over the edge include Riverside Mayor Rusty Bailey, Riverside Councilman Paul Davis and Habitat for Humanity Riverside chapter Executive Director Kathy Michalak.

This is definitely a unique fundraiser, and I am adventurous and enjoy challenges like this, said Bailey, who rappelled out of helicopters in the Army.

Michalak adds: I wouldnt have expected to see them go over. Its an interesting blend of younger folks and folks who have been in the community for a long time.

Participants will rappel down the manor May 20 and 21.

The challenge is put on by Over the Edge, a Canadian company that organizes rappelling challenges throughout the United States.

Michalak said that Over the Edge contacted Habitat for Humanity in an attempt to branch westward.

We thought this could be pretty cool. Its never been done out here, Michalak said. It could possibly help us reach out to a different group of people and get them involved in fundraising.

All the proceeds will benefit Habitats three-year plan to provide veterans homes and services. The group is in the process of building 38 in Riverside and Jurupa Valley. Habitat will also help vets transition back into civilian life, using art therapy to cope with trauma, career counseling, providing college pathways for children of veterans, financial literacy and computer programs.

The Over the Edge event is overseen by a team of professionals, certified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians. The experts provide security rigging, helmets and a brief demonstration of how to rappel.

Two experts at the top and bottom of the building guide the participant, the edger. The edger controls his or her speed and pace. The professionals are in control of the ropes at all times.

Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com
We didnt let the name Hellhole Canyon scare us off.

And good thing: Right now, the 6-mile hike in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is alive with striking desert blooms, a lush palm oasis and hidden waterfalls.

Sure, the start of our route into the sun-beaten canyon was hot. But on a recent afternoon in early March, my flower-seeking friend and I werent the only ones enjoying what seemed to be a profusion of floralicious beauties in what we quickly redubbed the Kingdom of the Bees and Butterfly Alley.

Flowering indigo, beavertail cactus and desert dandelions buzzed with insects along the seemingly misnamed trail. Camera-toting hikers, including the California Native Plant Societys Bay Area members, wandered among towering ocotillo, yellow brittlebush and red chuparosa.

Its like a tapestry of red and yellow, said my hiking companion, Riverside resident Judy Cunningham.

We came across hikers who said there was no waterfall. That was easy to believe in what appeared to be a vast, waterless landscape. We kept hiking, determined to find waterfalls in a desert.

Farther in, canyon wrens laughed as we scrambled over boulders and criss-crossed a creek meandering through a lush, shady palm oasis until we at last found secluded Maidenhair Falls, a slender cascade dropping 18 to 20 feet into a small pool beneath a wall of ferns.

Hiking there during wildflower season has been on my bucket list for years. Living in Northern California until recently, I dreamed of setting foot in the desert with the exotic name.

One of Californias southernmost state parks  stretching nearly to the Mexican border  Anza-Borrego always seemed a bit too far from Sacramento. But now that Im an Inland Southern California resident, the park is just two and a half hours away  perfect for a weekend adventure.

Especially now, when the chollas shiny white spines glow in the sun, phantasmic cacti flowers are popping out and coyote posses sing on starry nights.

Another hike on our second day took us into even-lovelier Borrego Palm Canyon.

We walked beneath the towering brown, cream and gray San Ysidro mountains into a narrowing canyon, home to the parks namesake desert bighorn sheep, or borrego. Other hikers saw the cliff dwellers butt heads that morning, but the beasts eluded us.

A large chuckwalla lizard disappeared beneath a fallen palm tree trunk as we passed by after our first creek crossing. We continued up the trail, traversing a cooling creek that wound through the oasis until our payoff destination: A small waterfall cascading between granite boulders beneath Jurassic green fan palms.

We hiked back with Yorba Linda resident Betty Elsing. Now in her 80s, shes explored that canyon trail about 20 times.

I never get tired of this hike, she said.

Graphic

SOURCES: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, visitor center Supervisor Sally Theriault, desertusa.com; hikespeak.com.

HIKING TIPS

 Check weather forecasts for temperatures and rain/flash flood warnings, especially before traveling in slot canyons. Summertime highs can reach 125 degrees.

 Bring and drink water throughout your hike. Use sunscreen, a hat and sturdy hiking shoes or boots. Wear or bring clothing to protect you from the sun.

 Hike early or late, choose hikes with some shade, or visit in winter for cooler temperatures.

 Dont touch or brush up against cacti, especially cholla and beavertail prickly pear, which have painful, hard-to-remove barbed spines.

 Carry food and a first-aid kit, with tweezers for cactus spine removal.

 Travel safe. Maps are essential. Cell phones and GPS may not be reliable in the park. Tell someone where youre going.

 Make sure your vehicle is well-maintained and stay with it. Raise the hood if it breaks down to make finding you easier.

 Beware rattlesnakes, mountain lions and other wild animals.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com
Tuesdays five presidential primaries gave strong boosts to the candidacies of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, while affirming voters anti-establishment sentiment. Also, for the first time in decades, Californias June 7 primary is emerging as possibly the key contest, especially for Republicans.

Usually races are decided by the time of our late primary. But this time, according to a New York Times analysis of delegate counts, If Mr. Trump loses California, he could narrowly miss the delegate cutoff for a majority at the GOP convention in July.

However the primary goes, this race could be a boost for the state GOP after years of declining registrations. Well soon know if the Secretary of States office sees a surge of reregistrations.

Sen. Marco Rubio, the last strong GOP establishment candidate, quit the race after losing his home state of Florida on Tuesday to Mr. Trump, 46-27. Mr. Trump also easily won North Carolina and Illinois. The Missouri Secretary of States office said Wednesday afternoon that Mr. Trump won that states primary by less than 1,800 votes, giving Sen. Ted Cruz the option of requesting a recount.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich won his home state over Mr. Trump, 47-36. Yet Mr. Kasich finished third or fourth in the other primaries, indicating problems outside the Buckeye State.

Except for Ohio and Florida, the second-place finisher was Sen. Cruz, also an anti-establishment candidate. That reflected CNN exit polls, which showed bipartisan concern about both the economy and access to jobs. Republicans continued the trend of saying they felt betrayed by their party.

For Democrats, Mrs. Clinton won all five contests over Sen. Bernie Sanders, but by less than 2,000 votes in Missouri, and less than 34,000 votes in Illinois, where more than 2 million Democratic votes were cast. As in Michigan, which Sen. Sanders won, she continues to struggle with Rust Belt voters.

Although the fire feeding Feel the Bern continues to wane, Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to press on. And brace yourself for more Trump stadium rallies, including possibly violent protests. This time, California could be the decider.
A Loma Linda University professor was arrested Thursday, March 17, on suspicion of sexual battery after a student of his claimed he inappropriately touched her, authorities said.

Mahmood Ghamsary, 63, was arrested and booked into the Central Detention Center with bail set at $25,000, online jail records show.

A San Bernardino County sheriffs news release said the woman and her boyfriend contacted sheriffs officials after she went to meet with Ghamsary on Wednesday.

She told sheriffs officials that during the meeting, Ghamsary had hugged her, reached up under clothing and touched parts of her body without her consent, the release says.

Loma Linda University Public Affairs Director Larry Becker said Ghamsary was placed on administrative leave after university officials learned of the alleged misconduct and that he will remain on leave pending the results of an investigation.

Ghamsary has been employed with Loma Linda University since January of 2000, he said.

On Thursday March 17, 2016, Loma Linda University was informed that a faculty member had been arrested by the San Bernardino County Sherriffs Department in connection with an allegation of sexual batteryAlthough Loma Linda University has received no complaint connected with this incident, it is fully cooperating with law enforcement in their investigation, Becker said in an emailed statement.

Ghamsary is scheduled to be arraigned in San Bernardino Superior Court Monday, March 21, according to the release.

Sheriffs officials are still investigating the incident and are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Ken Marshall at 909-387-3545. Anonymous tips can also be left at the We-tip Hotline at 1-800-782-7463 or on We-Tip website at www.wetip.com.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693 or agroves@pressenterprise.com
Jim Venable, a former Riverside County Supervisor, Hemet City Councilman and pioneer in both off-road and truck racing, died of cancer Thursday, March 17. He was 79.

Venable was operating his familys flying service when he was elected to fill an opening on the Hemet City Council in 1993. He was re-elected a year later.

He was always just a get-it-done kind of person, said former Hemet City Councilwoman Lori VanArsdale, who served with Venable.

Venable served as county supervisor from 1996 to 2004. He was defeated by Jeff Stone in 2004 after the Third District was redrawn, adding the growing Southwest Riverside County to what had been a San Jacinto Valley-centered district.

Rick Hoffman worked for Venable both at Hemet Valley Flying Service in the 1960s and 1970s, then again as his chief of staff after Venable was elected supervisor.

Hoffman said under Venables sometimes blustery exterior was a smart businessman.

He was the best I ever saw in taking an enemy and making him into a friend, Hoffman said. Whether personal or in business, he really had a knack for it.  He was kind of a tough guy, but he really cared a lot about people around him.

Hoffman said Venable was a risk-taker in business who won more than he lost.

In a statement, Riverside County spokesman Ray Smith said members of the county family were deeply saddened by Venables passing.

It was hard to know Jim and not like him, Smith said. More than that, he was a supervisor during a time of great change in Riverside County, and he played important roles in issues such as adoption of the far-reaching multiple-species habitat plan and development of vital transportation corridors.

Venables family helped pioneer aerial agricultural spraying and fire fighting. Before politics, he operated Hemet Valley Flying Service, an aviation company co-founded by his father Lloyd in 1946.

Venable was born in Hemet. As a child, he appeared as a rock indian in the play Ramona. He became a pilot on his 16th birthday. In 1960, he took over his fathers business, which was among the first to experiment with aerial firefighting.

He started off-road racing a Volkswagen in the 1970s. As a mechanic and driver, he formed a racing team that competed on national racing circuits. He eventually helped to create what is now known as NASCARs Camping World Truck Series.

During his time as a supervisor, Venable gained support for his approachable style and community-building efforts, but also received praise and criticism for his role in managing unprecedented growth in the county.

In 1998, a federal judge dismissed civil fraud and conspiracy charges against Venable in a case that accused some private firefighting companies of illegally acquiring dozens of surplus U.S. military planes. Venable maintained that his company never was involved in any illegal business.

Venable is survived by his wife, Mary. The couple had eight children.

Information on services has not been released.
Colleagues are mourning Jim Venable, the former Riverside County Supervisor who died Thursday, March 17.

State Sen. Jeff Stone, who defeated Venable in a 2004 election to take his seat on the board, released a statement saying: Before my election to the Board of Supervisors, I did not really know Jim. After the election we became good friends. I could always count on Jim  and often did  for advice, especially when it came to issues involving the communities of his beloved San Jacinto Valley.

His service to all the people of Riverside County was invaluable during a time of unprecedented growth and his many positive contributions helped improve the quality of life for the people who call it home.

In a seperate statement, John Benoit, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said: Jim Venable was a sincere, dedicated public servant who was committed to giving back to his community. He served Riverside County with distinction and will be remembered fondly by many.

My own memories of the late supervisor include a meeting we had at the French Valley airport, where I flew in to meet with him as a newly elected member of the Assembly. He was thrilled to learn that I was a fellow pilot and was able to fly to his office, which was conveniently located at the airport.

We had a warm meeting, and I remember being struck by how genuine and unassuming he was. A Hemet native, Jim never forgot his deep roots in Riverside County. He was a plainspoken guy with love of off-road racing, flying and outdoor adventure.

Venable, who also was a former Hemet City Councilman, died of cancer. He was 79.

In memory of Venable, the American flag, the state flag and the POW/MIA flag will be flown at half-staff at all county-owned and leased facilities until March 25.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9086 or cshultz@pressenterprise.com
While you were sleeping, the Senate was up all night debating Senate reform and things started to get weird.

Kicking off the madness was Labor threateningly joking that senators should bring their pillows and mattresses  kicking off the #SenateSleepover hashtag  and then and Independent senator Nick Xenephon took it all too literally.

Did did you buy those special, mate? Because it looks like you bought those special.

This debate  which, a quick reminder, is about how you allocate your preferences in the voting ballot, and has given us the truly bizarre experience of watching the Greens team up with the Coalition against Labor  has been going for a marathon 34 hours.

Labors tried a few times to nix this madness and go to bloody sleep, but the government has ruled that parliament will stay until the bill is dealt with, and so the madness rages on.



If you still want to be here on Easter Friday, on Good Friday, thats fine, said Cabinet minister Mathias Cormann, who clearly missed his calling as a high school teacher who has a misbehaving bunch of shits for a class.

Given that theyve been up for a good, idk, a long fkn time at this point, senators are slowly but surely starting to lose it.

my workplace rn pic.twitter.com/FVD7ToXTNw  Scott Ludlam (@SenatorLudlam) March 17, 2016

Labor Senator Doug Cameron made a fart joke:

Not sure what my favourite #Senatesleepover moment is Senator Cameron quoting Monty Python I fart in your general direction is up there.  Kerrie Yaxley (@KerrieYaxley) March 17, 2016

And heres the vine of that moment:

Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield got weird on Photoshop:

Democracy is not a game for you or backroom dealers to play Senator Conroy #SenateSleepover pic.twitter.com/6jyY5zBeZ7  Mitch Fifield (@SenatorFifield) March 17, 2016

Labor Senator Glenn Sterle compared senate reform to his colonoscopy:

Please enjoy this video of Labor Senator @GlennSterle at 5am linking his colonoscopy to the #SenateReform debate. pic.twitter.com/klJPdwOOXA  Alice Workman (@workmanalice) March 17, 2016

Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham is going to stink the place up, but at least hell look good doing it:

not game to shower yet in case the bells ring, but time to iron a shirt & be ready for the end of #SenateSleepover! pic.twitter.com/EIbZYg6Cre  Simon Birmingham (@Birmo) March 17, 2016

And things are only going to get weirder.

BREAKING: 12 hours in and we are voting on an actual amendment! 1st of 38. #SenateSleepover  Greens (@Greens) March 17, 2016

Update: There are 62 amendments, not 38  sorry folks. So to clarify, were 2 amendments down out of 62. Buckle up. #SenateSleepover  Greens (@Greens) March 17, 2016

Debate on Senate voting reform has now been going for more than 34 hours. In 40 minutes will be 9th longest debate since 1990.  Mathias Cormann (@MathiasCormann) March 17, 2016

Its going to be a long weekend for everyone* involved.

*dis you:

Photo: Katherine Murphy / Twitter.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture oversees restaurant inspections in the state. Inspection reports are "snapshots" of the day and time the inspections took place. In many cases, violations are corrected on site prior to the inspector leaving.

The following restaurants and other establishments in Lebanon County that handle food were inspected during the week of Feb. 21-27 and were recorded as of March 10.

READ MORE: Reports from Lebanon County for the week of Feb. 12-20.

READ MORE: Past reports from around the midstate.

Lebanon County

Establishments with violations.

Feb. 24

BB'S GROCERY OUTLET

430 N. MARKET ST., MYERSTOWN

Regular inspection.

Severely dented and distressed canned items are on display and intended for use or sale in the food facility as a result of salvage items not removed as per the guidelines.

MOOSE'S L Z

211 FISHER AVE., JONESTOWN

Regular inspection.

Employee in food-prep operation not wearing effective hair restraint; personal drink items stored over guest-food items in reach-in cooler at cook line.

PHILLY PRETZEL FACTORY

2213 W. CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON

Regular inspection.

Black, mildew-like accumulation on the fan guards in the walk-in cooler.

SUNSET GROCERY

1650 N. SEVENTH ST., SUITE 5, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

Commercially processed refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature-control-for-safety food (non-exempt cheese and deli meat), held more than 24 hours, is not being marked with the date it was opened; deli -- in the third-compartment ware-washing sink, the concentration for quaternary ammonium sanitizing solution was at 300 ppm, rather than 200 ppm, as required by the manufacturer; gaps at the bottom of both delivery dock doors and do not protect against the entry of insects/rodents.

Feb. 23

FUNCK'S MINI MART

1805 N. STATE ROUTE 934, ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Deeply scored cutting boards on the bain-marie units.

FUNCK'S RESTAURANT

1805 N. STATE ROUTE 934, ANNVILLE

Regular inspection. (Out of compliance)

Commercially processed refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature-control-for-safety food (non-exempt cheese and deli meat) in the walk-in cooler and refrigerators, held more than 24 hours, is not being marked with the date it was opened; multiple designated person(s) in charge are not following duties required in the Food Code as evidence by this out-of-compliance inspection; loose/torn door gaskets were on the Trauslen refrigerator/freezer -- repeat violation; corroded shelves inside upright Trauslen refrigerator/freezer -- repeat violation; rust on ice deflector plate, inside the ice machine; multiple food-contact surfaces (walk-in cooler shelves, inside microwaves, milkshake machine) had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; non-food contact surfaces (floors/areas underneath cooking equipment, walls at the three-compartment and mechanical dishwasher) not cleaned at a frequency to preclude accumulation of dirt and soil; dust accumulation on the walk-in cooler fan guards and surrounding areas; hand-wash sinks located in both restrooms do not have water at a temperature of at least 100 F.

HARPER'S TAVERN

10486 JONESTOWN ROAD, ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Hot-water-mechanical ware-washing machine -- an irreversible-registering temperature indicator is not provided for measuring the utensil-surface temperature.

MJ'S COFFEE HOUSE

36 E. MAIN ST., ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Food facility has an employee who held a Certified Food Manager certificate; however, the certificate has expired and is no longer valid -- repeat violation.

SHIRK AUCTION GALLERY

659 N. STATE ROUTE 934, ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Soup was being offered for sale that had been prepared in a private home, which is not licensed to prepare time/temperature-control food; sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration are not available.

Feb. 22

ZEPWORKS

601 W. MAIN ST., PALMYRA

Regular inspection.

Food Employee Certification is displayed, but the individual is no longer employed by the food establishment; dust accumulation on ceiling tile above ventless grill station.

Establishments with no violations.

Feb. 24

DUTCH COUNTRY HARDWARE

711 E. LINCOLN AVE., MYERSTOWN

Opening inspection.

No violations.

EBENEZER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

1600 COLONIAL CIRCLE, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

No violations.

SMITH'S CANDIES

114 W. LINCOLN AVE., MYERSTOWN

Regular inspection.

No violations.

UNION CANAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

400 NARROWS DRIVE, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

No violations.

Feb. 23

JERSEY JOE'S BOARDWALK CAFE

2651 STATE ROUTE 72, JONESTOWN

Regular inspection.

No violations.
Restaurant Inspections.jpg

(PennLive)

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture oversees restaurant inspections in the state. Inspection reports are "snapshots" of the day and time the inspections took place. In many cases, violations are corrected on site prior to the inspector leaving.

The following restaurants and other establishments in Lancaster County that handle food were inspected during the week of Feb. 21-27 and were recorded as of March 9.

READ MORE: Reports from Lancaster County for the week of Feb. 14-20.

READ MORE: Past reports from around the midstate.

Lancaster County

Establishments with violations.

Feb. 26

DOLLAR GENERAL #13688

560 S. SEVENTH ST., AKRON

Regular inspection.

Light is visible on bottom of storage-room door -- seal to prevent vector entrance.

DOLLAR TREE #2388

369 N. READING ROAD, EPHRATA

Regular inspection.

Light visible under storage room door -- seal to prevent vector entrance; dirt and debris was on left side of storage-room floor.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES CATHOLIC CHURCH

150 WATER ST., NEW HOLLAND

Regular inspection.

Ice machine is not cleaned at a frequency to prevent the presence of mold.

POP'S CARAMEL CORN

955 S. STATE ST., EPHRATA

Regular inspection.

Portions of cement floor contain cracks and crevices and is no longer a smooth, easily cleanable surface; tub of lemons and a bag of ice were in the hand-wash sinks, indicating uses other than handwashing.

V & Y MINI MARKET II

705 High ST., Lancaster

Regular inspection. (Out of compliance)

Grocery food was beyond the manufacturer's expiration date (removed from shelves); floor in the food-prep area, is not durable, smooth, non-porous, non-absorbent.

Feb. 25

CHINA ONE

105 DOE RUN ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Severely dented, distressed canned items were in rear storage area and intended for use or sale in the food facility; raw chicken was stored above other raw meats and produce in the walk-in cooler; ice machine was not cleaned at a frequency to prevent the presence of mold.

DOLLAR GENERAL #2182

347 S. MAIN ST., MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Some litter on floor in rear store room.

FUNCK'S RESTAURANT & BAR

365 W. MAIN ST., LEOLA

Opening inspection.

Mechanical ware-washing equipment does not have a manufacturer data plate with operation specifications; gauges on low-temperature dishwashers at bar only obtained a temperature of 110 F, after more than three attempts and not 120 F as required; there is no plate covering the bottom of kitchen steam table.

GINZA RESTAURANT

565 GREENFIELD ROAD, LANCASTER

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

Food employee was wiping nose with apron (employee was prompted to change apron and wash hands); same employee was coming out of the restroom with apron on (employee was prompted to change apron and wash hands).

GRAZIANO-PIZZERIA GRILL

107 DOE RUN ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Some litter and debris under and around shelves in rear storage area; accumulation of dust on return-air vents of fume hood.

HOGGIES

696 BRIDGE VALLEY ROAD, PEQUEA

Regular inspection.

Temperature-measuring device for ensuring proper temperature of equipment is not available or readily accessible in two reach-in refrigerators; food slicer had dried-food residue accumulation (cleaned); reach-in refrigerators have dried-food residue on non-food contact surfaces; food facility has an employee who held a Certified Food Manager certificate; however, the certificate has expired and is no longer valid.

LONG MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

2660 LITITZ PIKE, LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

Several small, ant-like insects on the counter top; aerosol can of a burn-relief-type ointment stored next to food and above the dish drainer; food processor and two can openers had old-food residue; an ant trap canister was stored on the counter near food equipment.

MCDONALD'S RESTAURANT #33998

2000 STRICKLER ROAD, MANHEIM

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

Food employees in prep area were not wearing proper hair restraints, such as nets or hats that completely restrain pony-tails; shelving used as drying rack not cleaned at a frequency to preclude accumulation of dirt and soil; old-food residue, dishes and utensils in two of the hand-wash sinks in the rear area, indicate uses other than hand washing; hand-wash sink in the front service area was blocked by a mop pail and not accessible at all times for employee use; assorted plastic bins, trays, racks and utensils, food-contact surface, were on the drying rack with food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; cleaned containers are stacked (wet nesting) not allowing for proper drying; no signs or poster posted at all the hand-wash sinks to remind food employees to wash their hands.

Feb. 24

BLACK KNIGHTS TAVERN & GRILL

335 MAIN ST., LANDISVILLE

Regular inspection.

The bottom shelf of the pantry refrigerator is rusting and has exposed insulation; food debris and old equipment parts were on top of the mechanical dishwasher; chlorine chemical sanitizer residual detected in the final sanitizer rinse cycle of the low temperature sanitizing dishwasher was 0 ppm, and not 50-100 ppm as required (repair will be done today); pink residue on the inside of the soda gun nozzle at the bar; old-food residue on the can opener; old-food residue and grease under the flat grill; heavy accumulation of static dust on the fan guards of the beer cooler; old-food splatter in the interior of the microwave; cement floor in the beer cooler is cracked and broken and no longer smooth and easily cleanable.

CHRIS'S NEW YORK PIZZA II

128 N. READING ROAD, EPHRATA

Regular inspection.

Deli meat in walk-in cooler held for more than 24 hours was not being date-marked with a seven-day discard date; time in lieu of temperature being used in the food facility to control ready-to-eat TCS foods without written procedures or documentation to verify disposition of food; deeply scored BM cutting board not resurfaced or discarded as required; some pizza paddles have cracked, jagged edges (repair or discard).

OREGON DAIRY COUNTRY REST

2900 OREGON PIKE, LITITZ

Regular inspection.

In restaurant and ice cream shop refrigerators, single-use plastic containers are being re-used; there is a dark residue on front counter bain-marie gaskets; built-in counter scored cutting board in close proximity to hand-wash sink at sandwich station indicates that food prep is being conducted (a partition needs to be installed on side of sink to prevent contamination of food and food-contact surfaces); in deli dept. and main kitchen, some stored knives had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch (correcte)d; a section of dumpster lid is stuck on a post preventing it from closing; accumulation of food remnants at floor/wall junction in bakery.

PARMA PIZZA AND GRILL

301 MAIN ST., LANDISVILLE

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

Hand-wash sink in the front service area is leaking and inoperable (the sink will be replaced). The facility has another hand-wash sink, employees will use that hand-wash sink until the one in the front is operable; loose and missing tiles were under the shelf in the front service area; coving in the women's restroom is pulling away from the wall; coving is missing in the back food-prep area (scheduled to be repaired).

ROBERT FULTON FIRE COMPANY

2271 ROBERT FULTON HIGHWAY, P.O. BOX 8, PEACH BOTTOM

Regular inspection.

Food facility does not have available chlorine sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration of low-temperature dish machine; Lights are not shielded or shatterproof in the overflow food-prep area.

SPEEDWAY #06783

5387 LINCOLN HIGHWAY, GAP

Change-of-owner inspection.

Boxes of snack-food type items stored in the same storage area as ice melt (items removed).

STRASBURG FIRE COMPANY #1

203 W. FRANKLIN ST., STRASBURG

Regular inspection.

Chlorine chemical sanitizer residual detected in the final sanitizer rinse cycle of the low-temperature-sanitizing dishwasher was 0 ppm, and not 50-100 ppm as required; underside of large table-top mixer has dried-food residue on safety guard.

Feb. 23

BIRD-IN-HAND BAKERY AT ROOT'S MKT.

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Food employees were not wearing proper hair restraints, such as nets or hats.

BUFFALO VALLEY SPICE/AREA #5

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Food employee was changing tasks that may have contaminated hands without a proper hand-wash in-between; plumbing system not maintained in good repair -- sink drain was leaking.

CHARLIE'S FUEL & DELI, LLC

1634 W. MAIN ST., EPHRATA

Regular inspection. (Out of compliance)

Commercially processed refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature-control-for-safety foods, located in the small refrigerator, and held more than 24 hours, are not being marked with the date opened or discard-date; strong odor of cigarette smoke noted in downstairs room where soda and soft drinks are stored; hot dogs/sausages were held at 124 F-130 F, on roller rather than 135 F or above as required - discarded.

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN

1533 COLUMBIA AVE., LANCASTER

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

Food facility does not have the original certificate for the certified food employee posted in public view.

MOM'S STORE

200 CINDER ROAD, NEW PROVIDENCE

Regular inspection.

Facility selling "Ada's Herb Mix" for soups and salads and is not licensed with the department and not an approved food source - items removed from sale; packaged bulk food items not labeled with full ingredient label to include sub-ingredients - repeat; current water test for coliform, nitrates and nitrites not on file - repeat; new food facility in operation more than 90 days and has not employed a certified food employee as required - repeat.

NEW HOLLAND MEATS

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Change-of-owner inspection.

Lights are not properly shielded; no end caps provided for all the protective tubes.

PEQUEA VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL

4033 NEWPORT ROAD, KINZERS

Regular inspection.

Pump was leaking water on mechanical dish machine.

PIP'S PLACE

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Chlorine concentration in the sanitizing solution of the three-bay ware-wash sink was 200 ppm, rather than 50-100 ppm as required.

SHARP SHOPPER

1041 SHARP AVE., EPHRATA

Regular inspection. (Out of compliance)

In deli room, employees were not knowledgeable about how to conduct manual ware-washing -- middle sink was filled with detergent/hot water and employee described washing and sanitizing only, furthermore, employees were not knowledgeable about using test strips; food employee attempted to clean hands with sanitizer rather than handwashing after touching ear; in deli meat room, a couple of knives contained food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; in bulk packaging room, employees state that scoops are being sanitized weekly, not daily as required.

SPRING MEADOW FARM AT ROOT'S MKT.

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

More than 15 varieties of products labeled as jam and more than 30 varieties of product labeled as jelly prepared and sold without having performed the appropriate supporting tests to justify those identities and ensure shelf stability.

STOLTZFUS DIPS AND PIGS

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

Food facility does not have available sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration.

STOP & RUN

1000 MANOR ST., LANCASTER

Follow-up inspection. (Out of compliance) (Original report)

The person in charge does not have adequate knowledge of food safety; does not demonstrate adequate knowledge of the PA Food Code as evidenced by incorrect responses to food safety questions; the tray for catching grease drippings and food residue was observed to have not been cleaned; hand-wash sink is slow to drain; observed flavoring for e-cigarettes stored on top of food equipment and next to single-service (to-go boats); observed frying oil stabilizer and fryer cleaner stored above marinade powder for chicken; personal care items being stored on a shelf above food items in the back food prep area.

The employee who holds the FEC observed in the food prep with soiled outer garments that may contaminate food and/or food equipment; foot utensils in the front food prep area observed stored in a container of water which is not maintained at 135degF; cutting board was observed stored behind the faucets of the three-compartment sink subject to splash from washing utensils; observed wet wiping cloths in the back food prep area, not being stored in sanitizer solution; chicken wings and thighs held at 99 and 111degF, on the hot holding table, rather than 135degF or above as required.

Observed old food residue on metal spatulas, metal food containers and spoons in the food prep area; heavy accumulation of black, static dust observed on the fan guards of the walk-in cooler.; heavy accumulation of grease observed on the floor under the fryer area; accumulation of grease inside the microwave and on the plate of the microwave observed; single service (to-go plastic containers) stored with the food contact surface exposed; single-service, single-use articles (to-go boxes, and cups) stored under the table at the front food service area directly on the floor, and not 6 inches above the floor as required.

Restroom is not provided with a covered waste receptacle for sanitary napkins; sliding door of the dumpster was observed open at the time of the inspection; paper towel dispenser empty at the hand-wash sink in the back food prep area and in the employee restroom; trash, leaves, and debris in outside dumpster area; old unused equipment stored in the outer dumpster area, should be removed from food facility; trash overflowing in employee restroom.

FEB. 22

BURGER KING #814

915 E. MAIN ST., MOUNT JOY

Complaint

Front door has a gap and does not protect against the entry of insects, rodents, and other animals

MARTIN'S TRAILSIDE EXPRESS

168 TODDY DR., EAST EARL

Regular

Hot dogs heated to only 150 degrees fahrenheit before being placed in the steam table and not to 135 degrees as required; assorted sandwiches, cheese and dairy items were held at 58 to 60 degrees fahrenheit rather than 41 degrees or below as required; thermometers for ensuring proper food temperatures are not calibrated and/or functioning properly.

SPEEDWAY #06722

5 HARTMAN BRIDGE RD., LANCASTER

Change of owner

Food facility does not maintain food employee certification records as required; the facility does not have the original certificate for the certified food employee posted in public view; facility not washing fruit before placing on display for sale and doesn't have signage to inform consumer that fruit must be washed before consumption; ingredient list not available for consumer review at the self serve doughnut case; static dust accumulation observed on walk-in cooler fan covers and on air vent above coffee station; floor tiles cracked and missing in front of walk-in cooler door; light is not shielded or shatter proof in the walk-in cooler.

SPEEDWAY #06780

2281 BEAVER VALLEY PIKE, NEW PROVIDENCE

Regular

The food facility does not maintain Food Employee Certification records as required; the food facility does not have the original certificate for the certified food employee posted in public view; food employees observed in not wearing proper hair restraints, such as nets or hats; self serve doughnut case does not have ingredient list or placards with ingredients, available as required; self serve soda unit nozzles have black residue accumulation present (cleaned at time of inspection); two gallons of damaged ice tea containers were in the handwash sink in the warewash area (removed.)

THYME AND SEASONS

62 PITNEY RD., LANCASTER

Regular

Food facility does not have available quat sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration.

TWO COUSINS PIZZA

37 W. MAIN ST., MOUNT JOY

Regular

Observed cigarettes, lighter and a cigarette on an ashtray in the storage room on a shelf with stored food items; food employees involved in pizza prep and at the flat grill, not wearing beard covers; observed in-use knives stored between table edges or between tables, an area not easily cleanable and sanitized; ragged edges on the pizza peels observed. New peels are on the premises; old dried lettuce observed on the slicer in the food prep area; Dumpster lid observed open at the time of this inspection; observed personal items, purse and jacket stored on top of food equipment; paper towel dispenser empty at the hand-wash sink in the back food prep area.

WEAVER'S STORE 7 CAFE

1011 DRY TAVERN ROAD, DENVER

Regular

Food facility does not have available sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration.

Establishments with no violations.

Feb. 27

OMPH CHURCH

320 CHURCH ST., EPHRATA

Regular inspection.

No violations.

Feb. 26

CHAMELEON CLUB

223 N. WATER ST., LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

DOLLAR GENERAL STORE #13335

1835 N. READING ROAD, STEVENS

Regular inspection.

No violations.

KOG HILL WINERY

105 TWIN COUNTY ROAD, MORGANTOWN

Regular inspection.

No violations.

MUSSER SPECIALTY FOODS

1583 MAIN ST., GOODVILLE

Regular inspection.

No violations.

STOCKYARD INN

1147 LITITZ PIKE, LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

THE CORNER CAFE

955 N. STATE ST., EPHRATA

Follow-up inspection. (Original report, Feb. 12, 2016)

No violations.

Feb. 25

BIRD IN HAND FIRE CO.

313 ENTERPRISE ROAD, P.O. BOX 250, BIRD IN HAND

Regular inspection.

No violations.

HEMPFIELD SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

200 STANLEY AVE., LANDISVILLE

Regular inspection.

No violations.

JETHRO'S

659 FIRST ST., LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

THE LOFT

201 W. ORANGE ST., LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

THE LUCKY DOG

1942 COLUMBIA AVE., LANCASTER

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

No violations.

TURKEY HILL #252

735 S. BROAD ST., LITITZ

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

Feb. 24

CENTRAL MANOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

3717 BLUE ROCK ROAD, WASHINGTON BORO

Regular inspection.

No violations.

DONEGAL HIGH SCHOOL

1025 KOSER ROAD, MOUNT JOY

Regular inspection.

No violations.

FRIENDLY'S #1236

5360 LINCOLN HIGHWAY E., GAP

Complaint inspection.

No violations.

HERITAGE HOTEL

500 CENTERVILLE ROAD, LANCASTER

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

No violations.

ISAAC'S DELI #02

120 N. READING ROAD, EPHRATA

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

No violations.

LETORT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

561 LETORT ROAD, WASHINGTON BORO

Regular inspection.

No violations.

MOUNTVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

120 COLLEGE AVE., MOUNTVILLE

Regular inspection.

No violations.

PIZZAIOLA

344 W. MAIN ST., LEOLA

Complaint inspection.

No violations.

Feb. 23

BANZHOF'S CAFE

917 S. DUKE ST., LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

DONEGAL JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

915 ANDERSON FERRY ROAD, MOUNT JOY

Regular inspection.

No violations.

DUTCH-MAID PASTRIES

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, BUILDING 3, MANHEIM

Change-of-owner inspection.

No violations.

LANDISVILLE INTERMEDIATE CENTER

330 MUMMA DRIVE, LANDISVILLE

Regular inspection.

No violations.

LINDA'S CANDIES

705 GRAYSTONE ROAD, MANHEIM

Regular inspection.

No violations.

PEQUEA VALLEY INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL

166 S. NEW HOLLAND ROAD, KINZERS

Regular inspection.

No violations.

TACO BELL #024410

2600 N. WILLOW STREET PIKE, WILLOW STREET

Regular inspection.

No violations.

WILBUR CHOCOLATE CANDY STORE & MUSEUM

48 N. BROAD ST., LITITZ

Follow-up inspection. (Original report)

No violations.

Feb. 22

CANTEEN VENDING MACHINES

50 N. DUKE ST., LANCASTER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

CHIQUES ROCK BREWING

117 W. MARKET ST., MARIETTA

Regular inspection.

No violations.

CONESTOGA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

100 HILL ST., CONESTOGA

Regular inspection.

No violations.

MARTIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

266 MARTIC HEIGHTS DRIVE, HOLTWOOD

Regular inspection.

No violations.

PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

137 TRUCE ROAD, NEW PROVIDENCE

Regular inspection.

No violations.

SNACKWORLD USA

115 WEST MAPLE GROVE ROAD, DENVER

Regular inspection.

No violations.

WENDY'S #6193

3995 COLUMBIA AVE., COLUMBIA

Complaint inspection.

No violations.
Restaurant Inspections.jpg

(PennLive)

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture oversees restaurant inspections in the state. Inspection reports are "snapshots" of the day and time the inspections took place. In many cases, violations are corrected on site prior to the inspector leaving.

The following restaurants and other establishments in Dauphin County that handle food were inspected during the week of Feb. 21-27 and were recorded as of March 10.

READ MORE: Reports from Dauphin County for the week of Feb. 14-20.

READ MORE: Past reports from around the midstate.

Dauphin County

Establishments with violations.

Feb. 26

CENTRAL DAUPHIN HIGH SCHOOL

437 PIKETOWN ROAD, HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

No sign or poster posted at the hand-wash sink in the ware-washing area to remind food employees to wash their hands; large trash can was blocking the hand-wash sink in the ware-washing area.

ITALIAN DELIGHT

4151 LINGLESTOWN ROAD, HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Food employee was preparing tomatoes, a ready-to-eat food, with bare hands; accumulation of static dust on the ceiling vents above the ware-washing area and above the pizza ovens; food employees were preparing food without a hair restraint; time in lieu of temperature used in the food facility to control pizza without written procedures or documentation to verify disposition of food.

KABOB HOUSE

1233 N THIRD ST., HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Food was held at 42F in the cold-hold area, rather than 41F or below as required (owner adjusted on site); updated paper-towel dispenser and soap dispenser for hand-washing sink.

LINGLESTOWN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

1200 N. MOUNTAIN ROAD, HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Accumulation of residue on the deli-slicer blade; observed a half-pint of fat-free milk with a sell-by date of Jan. 25, 2016.

Feb. 25

HARDEE'S OF HARRISBURG #1

2203 PAXTON ST., HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Ice accumulation in the walk-in freezer; accumulation of brown residue on the ice-machine deflector plate on the right fountain-soda machine in the self-service area; splashes of food were on the underside of the microwaves in the food-preparation area; static dust and grease accumulation in the hood ventilation filters above the fryers.

LONDONDERRY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

260 SCHOOLHOUSE ROAD, MIDDLETOWN

Regular inspection.

Heavy static dust accumulations are present at mechanical dishwasher exhaust plumes and stacks.

ONE STOP

901 N. THIRD ST., HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Eggs stored above food items in cold case; women's toilet room is not provided with a covered waste receptacle for sanitary napkins; hand-wash sinks for hand washing only; mops are not being hung to air dry.

SUBWAY

900 N. THIRD ST., HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

Utility sink does not have an adequate air gap of at least one inch, between the water supply and flood rim of the sink.

Feb. 24

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL

210 W. CHOCOLATE AVE., Hershey

Regular inspection.

Caulk at back-splash for three-bay sink has damage and residue accumulations; food employee was storing clean food equipment while wet and not allowing time for draining and/or air-drying; several trash bags of refuse were stored outside the food facility and not in the closed waste handling units.

SENSENIG ROYCE

2491 SAND BEACH ROAD, GRANTVILLE

Complaint inspection. (Out of compliance)

Food employee was washing hands without soap; food facility is preparing beef sticks, sweet bologna, sausage, jerky, ham hock, puddin, bacon, and pork roll using reduced oxygen, which is displayed for retail sale in the store area, without the required written procedures and HACCP plan; a hand-washing sink in the food-preparation area was blocked with a bucket at time of inspection; employee open beverage cans were on the top shelf inside a meat walk-in cooler; cartons of eggs were without any labeling; packaged meats, cheeses, refrigerated pies, baked goods, were without full labels including the name of the product, name and location of manufacturer, net weight, ingredients, sub-ingredients and allergens; dry noodles from Hoover Lane Farms had no ingredients or address; raw meat does not have a "Safe Handling" label present; food facility does not have available sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration; unisex toilet room is not provided with a covered waste receptacle for sanitary napkins; no sign or poster posted at the hand-wash sink in the food-preparation areas to remind food employees to wash their hands; soap was not available at the hand-wash sink in the food-preparation areas and near the cold-holding units in the retail area; toilet room does not have a self-closing door; personal cooking/food space is not segregated from the food-preparation area of the business.

Feb. 23

CAMPUS BITES

505 N. LAWRENCE ST., MIDDLETOWN

Gaps along the side and bottom of the mobile unit door near the driver's seat, do not prevent entry of insects and rodents.

JUICE AND GRIND CAFE

5450 DERRY ST., HARRISBURG

Opening inspection.

An ice drain line was draining directly into the hand-wash sink in the food-preparation area; tuna, blue cheese, and sliced tomatoes were held at 62F, in the bain-marie unit, rather than 41F or below as required.

LOWER DAUPHIN HIGH SCHOOL

201 S. HANOVER ST., HUMMELSTOWN

Regular inspection.

Food facility hot-water heater is not producing enough hot water to supply ware-wash sink by office and employee restroom sinks at the time of this inspection.

MACRI'S

100 BROWN ST., MIDDLETOWN

Regular inspection.

An employee's open beverage container was on the kitchen food-preparation table; boxes of single-use items stored directly on the floor in the storage area; toilet-room door was propped open, and not kept closed as required.

Feb. 22

HALIFAX AREA MIDDLE SCHOOL/HIGH SCHOOL

3940 PETERS MOUNTAIN ROAD, HALIFAX

Regular inspection.

Working buckets of sanitizer solution stored directly next to food-preparation areas in the kitchen area; old-sticker residue on plastic and metal food equipment in the kitchen area.

SORRENTOS PIZZERIA

209 MAPLE ST., HALIFAX

Regular inspection.

Accumulation of static dust on the metal shelving units in the kitchen area.

WORD OF LIFE CHAPEL

27 FELLOWSHIP DRIVE, HALIFAX

Regular inspection.

Refrigeration unit in the kitchen area is maintaining a temperature of approximately 43F, rather than 41F or lower, as required; no sign or poster posted at the hand-wash sink in the kitchen area to remind food employees to wash their hands.

Establishments with no violations.

Feb. 23

FINK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

150 RACE ST., MIDDLETOWN

Regular inspection.

No violations.

Feb. 22

BRICKERS PIZZA & RESTAURANT

253 W. CHOCOLATE AVE., HERSHEY

No violations.

SUBWAY

2967 N. SEVENTH ST., HARRISBURG

Regular inspection.

No violations.
With Mallya distracted by debts from a collapsed airline venture, this could be a timely grab by Heineken in a market that is growing much faster than the global average. (Photo: Facebook)

Mumbai: Heineken is likely to ask Vijay Mallya, who owes creditor banks more than $1 billion, to step down from the board of United Breweries, India's largest brewer, three people with direct knowledge of the plan told Reuters.

They said such a move would likely be a prelude to the Dutch drinks firm raising its stake in the maker of Kingfisher beer to above 50 percent, betting on a small but fast-growing beer market.

Heineken acquired a 37.5 percent stake in United Breweries in 2008 through its takeover of Scottish & Newcastle and has since increased its holding to 42.4 percent. With Mallya distracted by debts from a collapsed airline venture, this could be a timely grab by Heineken in a market that is growing much faster than the global average.

Two-thirds of Indians don't drink alcohol, often for religious or cultural reasons, but rapid urbanisation and a rising middle class are changing consumer habits. India accounts for 13 percent of world beer consumption, and annual volume growth is expected to outpace the global average, and major markets like China, through 2019, according to ratings agency Moody's.

The sources said Heineken was considering asking Mallya to step down from the United Breweries board he chairs. Alternatively, it could call a shareholder meeting to vote on his ouster from a company his father built into a family empire.The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A Heineken spokesman declined to comment on any move to tighten control over the Indian joint venture, but said India remains an "exciting opportunity" for growth given its demographics and strong economic fundamentals.

Mallya and a spokesman for UB Group did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

King of good times

Banks, regulators and investigators in India have turned up the heat on Mallya, who inherited United Breweries at the age of 28 and led it on an ambitious expansion.

Creaking under mountains of bad debt banks themselves are under pressure from the government to chase up high profile cases like Mallya, whose Kingfisher Airlines collapsed in 2013 leaving unpaid wages and angry creditors.

Mallya has already been forced to give up control over United Spirits, part of his UB Group, to Diageo, which now owns about 55 percent of the company. He stepped down from the board last month, receiving a $75 million pay off. On Thursday, creditors auctioning off Kingfisher Airlines' Mumbai headquarters did not receive a single bid, according to a banker with direct knowledge of the process.

Mallya left India early this month - as banks sought a court order to confiscate his passport - and has not disclosed his whereabouts, but he has used his Twitter account to say he is not an "absconder" and would comply with Indian law.

The collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and the vast unpaid bank dues are a high-profile illustration of India's ineffective bankruptcy and debt recovery processes, and highlight the often close ties between politics and business.

A member of India's upper house of parliament, Mallya is known as the "King of Good Times" for his party lifestyle. He is often described as India's answer to British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

Mallya borrowed heavily to expand his airline's network, but a series of missteps, including the ill-conceived acquisition of a rival, saw the carrier grounded, some former senior staff said. They said Mallya micro-managed operations - from the selection of routes to the design of baggage tags - with no previous experience in the aviation industry.

"Unlike what he did in his liquor business, which is run by people who have the expertise, he got personally involved in the airline business .... a very, very wrong decision," said Sanjay Bahadur, who worked at the airline as a corporate affairs executive dealing with the government and regulators.

Mallya has blamed the airline's collapse on macro-economic factors and previous government policies.
Celebrating St. Patrick's Day is Kathy Hannon's way of remembering her father.



"My dad died nine years ago, but I used to do bar crawls with him in a limousine," she said. "It's a family tradition."

These days, St. Patrick's Day is a holiday that Hannon shares with her fiance James Brickus. They both took half the day off from work to knock back a few drinks Thursday afternoon in downtown Harrisburg. The local couple had already been to three other bars by the time they started on Irish Car Bombs at the Bourbon Street Saloon at 37 N. Second St.

There were dozens of people there with them, most drinking holiday-themed green beer. It didn't matter if they were Irish or not because, in the U.S., everyone celebrates each other's holidays, Brickus said.

"I'm Afro American and I celebrate every holiday," he said. "I'm Irish today."



Heather Haggard had also taken the day off so she could drink with her friends, which is something she tries to do every year. She dressed for the occasion in a green Viking cap, beads and a shirt that read "Kiss Me, I'm Irish."

And she is Irish. Haggard traces her lineage to her grandfather, who came to the U.S. and changed his family name from O'Farrell to simply Farrell. St. Patrick's Day may be about celebrating that heritage, but Haggard said it's a holiday that now brings people of all backgrounds together.

"I think that anything that draws people out is a great thing," she said. "Every time I go out for St. Patrick's Day, everyone's in such a good mood and having fun."

Visit this story for more information about which bars will have St. Patrick's Day celebrations.
UPDATE

WILLIAMSPORT -- The prosecution wants one trial for the two men accused of breaking into a Montoursville area home in January, robbing a couple and setting their house on fire.

The Lycoming County district attorney's office Thursday filed a joinder notice signifying its intent to try Michael James Houseweart and Brian Matthew Vroman together as co-conspirators.

Each is charged with 43 counts related to the armed home invasion at the home of Gary and Linda Inch early on Jan. 27.

The couple's daughter, Michelle Lynn Inch, 32, has not been seen since the day before the break-in when Houseweart and she told others in Canton they were going target shooting.

Houseweart and Vroman, both 27 of Canton, are in the county prison without bail on charges that include attempted homicide, robbery and arson.

The joinder does not affect the related case in which Houseweart, who is Inch's boyfriend, is charged with forgery, theft, access device fraud and receiving stolen property. That case will be tried separately.

He is accused of stealing and forging several checks belonging to his girlfriend's parents.

Arrest affidavits state Houseweart has admitted stealing the checks and that Vroman and he broke into the Inch home. Houseweart lived there for a time after Christmas.

Before she disappeared Michelle Inch had accompanied her parents to the state police barracks in Montoursville to report the stolen checks and fraudulent activity in their bank accounts.

State police suspect Michelle Inch was the victim of foul play because of a blood splatter found on the outside of her car. Investigators said Friday they still are awaiting lab results to confirm their suspicion the blood is hers.

Houseweart and Vroman are alleged to have driven her car the night of the home invasion. The vehicle was found abandoned in a rural area near Canton on Jan. 28.

Investigators in search warrant affidavits allege financial gain was a partial motive for the home invasion. Gary and Linda Inch had received an inheritance of more than $35,000 and had given their daughter $1,000 of it, they said.
MERCERSBURG -- When Reese Burdette's entire bedroom was glowing with fire, the then-seven-year-old had to make a leap of faith. With the bedroom carpet glowing like embers and even her bed on fire, Reese needed to leap into her grandmother's arms in order to live.

"I said, 'jump to me,'" recalls Patricia Stiles of the 2014 Memorial Day weekend that Reese stayed over at their Virginia residence and an electric fan sparked the bedroom fire.

"I told Reese, 'if you don't jump, we're not going to make it out of here, and I'm not leaving you behind," Stiles added.

Watch: An entire town turns out for Reese's homecoming.
Raising questions

From the days of former President Woodrow Wilson to President Barack Obama, the oil and gas industry has received a tax break.

Is it fair?

Is it different from any other industry?

The answers - and the story - begin on the next slide.

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Woodrow Wilson

More than a hundred years had passed since a president walked into the halls of Congress and directly addressed lawmakers.

But Democrat Woodrow Wilson was worried about the growing number of lobbyists meddling in what became a signature piece of legislation during his presidency, the Federal Revenue Act of 1913.

How to handle tariffs, the taxes on imports and exports, became a question the academic was determined to answer.

And he didnt want lobbyists influencing his decision. More importantly, he didnt want lawmakers to be influenced.

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Special session

In April 1913, he called for a special session of Congress, telling the House and Senate that the country had created a set of privileges and advantages that made it easy to monopolize.

We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege or any kind of artificial advantage, Wilson said.

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Calls out lobbyists

A month later, he used the bully pulpit to persuade the American people, exposing and identifying lobbying efforts.

Great bodies of astute men seek to create an artificial opinion and to overcome the interest of the public for their private profit, Wilson said. Only public opinion can check and destroy it.

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Signed into law

It worked. Outraged constituents wrote to their congressmen and demanded reform, and the lobbying stopped.

The Revenue Act of 1913 was signed into law five months later on Oct. 3, 1913.

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Revenue Act of 1913

Even if the lobbyists got quiet, their causes were supported.

Lodged in the Revenue Act of 1913 were federal tax incentives for oil and natural gas development, from exploration to production.

A statute passed three years later ensured drillers could expense intangible drilling costs, such as those incurred when a company decides to develop a new well.

The deduction was justified because lawmakers said it would attract investments in U.S. production.

The provision exists today.

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Intangible drilling costs

According to current law, small producers are allowed to deduct 100 percent of their intangible drilling costs, while big producers can expense 70 percent of their intangible drilling costs.

Big producers can expense the remaining 30 percent during a five-year period.

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The 1920s

Tax incentives increased during the 1920s.

Congress in 1926 passed the oil depletion allowance, which allowed producers to deduct more than a quarter of their gross revenues.

Former Sen. Tom Connally, the Texas Democrat who was at President Franklin D. Roosevelts side when he declared war on Germany, was a member of the House when the allowance was passed.

Before he left office in 1953, he said Congress could have made the allowance 5 or 10 percent.

But we grabbed 27.5 percent because we were not only hogs, but the odd figure made it appear as though it was scientifically arrived at, Connally said, according to numerous history books.

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The 1930s

After raising the federal income tax on high earners in 1935, Roosevelt urged Congress to close tax loopholes.

A Treasury study of income tax returns revealed efforts at avoidance of tax liability, so widespread and so amazing, both in their boldness and their ingenuity, that further action without delay seems imperative, he said.

Nothing changed.

By 1937, the oil depletion allowance was a $75 million revenue loss for the government, according to the Treasury Department.

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The 1940s

The oil and gas industry  and its influence  grew in the 1940s, as new discoveries were made.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking and unconventional drilling in Pennsylvania, Stanolind first tested in 1947 at the Hugoton Gas Field in southwestern Kansas.

The process was successful and exclusively licensed to Haliburton, which in 1949 performed the first two commercial fracks in Oklahoma and Texas.

More than a million wells have been fracked since then, including about 10,000 in Pennsylvania throughout the last decade.

Each of those wells could be expensed, according to federal tax code.

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The 1950s

President Harry Truman in January 1950 asked Congress for a $1 billion tax hike, calling on lawmakers to close loopholes and end the oil depletion allowance.

We should eliminate tax loopholes which enable some few to escape their share of the cost of government at the expense of the rest of the American people, the Democrat said.

Trumans bid was unsuccessful, and his successor wasnt interested in closing the loopholes.

President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, wasnt afraid of taxing the super rich, but he wouldnt get rid of the oil depletion allowance.

I am not prepared to say it is evil because, while we do find, I assume, that a number of rich men take advantage of it unfairly, there must certainly be an incentive in this country if we are going to continue the exploration for gas and oil that is so important to our economy, he said in 1957.

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The 1960s - Nixon

Eisenhowers vice president, Richard Nixon, was on a stage at the start of the decade, explaining why voters should choose him as the countrys next president.

His support of the oil depletion allowance was one of the reasons.

"I favor the present depletion allowance. I favor it not because I want to make a lot of oil men rich, but because I want to make America rich," Nixon said during a presidential debate on Oct. 13, 1960.

The vice president  who a decade later would be known as the president who resigned amid the Watergate scandal  said cutting the allowance would cut oil exploration.

The thing to do is not to discourage individual enterprise, not to discourage people to go out and discover more oil and minerals, but to encourage them, Nixon said. I want us to have more oil exploration and not less.

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The 1960s - Kennedy

His challenger John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, said the oil allowance was just one of many deductions that should be reviewed.

I believe all of those should be gone over in detail to make sure that no one is getting a tax break, to make sure that no one is getting away from paying the taxes he ought to pay, he said.

If Kennedy found any inequities, he would vote to close the loophole.

As senator, he voted to maintain the 27.5 percent deduction for small producers and reduce it for large producers.

Once Kennedy was elected president, he tried to repeal the oil depletion allowance.

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The 1960s - Johnson and Nixon

His successor, President Lyndon Johnson, supported the oil industry and wouldnt repeal the tax.

But Nixon, who was president after Johnson, had that discussion.

As part of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, Congress trimmed the depletion allowance from 27.5 to 23 percent despite protests from the industry.

Nixon said the change was in the national interest.

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The 1970s

The 1970s were marked by a crisis that uncloaked the countrys need for energy independence.

Angry with Americas involvement in the Yom Kippur War, OPEC cut off oil exports to the U.S. from October 1973 to March 1974.

It triggered President Gerald Ford in 1974 to create the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was designed to develop fossil fuels and new forms of energy.

The U.S. spent more than $1 billion on research during the next five years.

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Pa. congressman leads fight

In 1975, a U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania led the charge to eliminate the oil depletion allowance.

Rep. Bill Green, a Democrat who also served as Philadelphia mayor in the early 1980s, was one of the architects of an amendment to a tax bill that ended up repealing the allowance for large companies.

But it didnt come without objections from lobbyists.

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Almost a veto

Federal documents show Ford met with leaders of the American Petroleum Institute in early March 1975.

The lawyer for the institutes president continued to request meetings. In one note to the White House, he said, Ikard would like to set up a strategy and alternative solutions meeting with you at your earliest convenience. API will, of course, gear up in support of any mutually agreeable effort on this subject.

Ford talked about vetoing Greens bill, but he ultimately signed it into law in 1975.

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Energy crisis

During the next two years, as a second energy crisis reaffirmed the need for the countrys energy independence, the Department of Energy invested about $140 million in fracking research.

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The 1980s - Carter

Amid continuing turmoil and long lines at gas stations, President Jimmy Carter lost his footing with the American people.

His challenger, a former Republican governor from California, painted him as an ineffectual leader.

Before the Democrat lost to former President Ronald Reagan, he signed a reform package that put a $230 billion tax oil companies.

Included in the package were tax credits that incentivized shale development.

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The 1980s - Reagan

During his first term, Reagan closed tax loopholes, but oil and gas remained untouched. The president couldnt get Congress on board with ending the depletion allowance during the oil bust.

As oil prices continued to slide, Congress repealed Carters $230 billion tax on oil companies.

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The 1990s - George H.W. Bush

Tax breaks continued during the next decade, as President George H.W. Bush signed tax credits into law.

Bush, who had long ties to the oil and gas industry, in 1990 signed a bill that established credits for unconventional oil production, updating wells to increase production and it widened the depletion allowance.

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The 1990s - Clinton

One of the first benefits for clean energy came was passed with the Energy Policy Act in 1992, which created tax credits and deductions for renewable energy, alternative fuels and tax deductions for electric cars.

In the second half of the decade, President Bill Clinton signed the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, which allowed oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without paying billions in royalties.

Clinton also expanded well credits to small and mid-size producers.

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The 2000s - George W. Bush

Tax breaks to oil and gas companies were further extended through the American Jobs Creation Act in 2004, which encouraged producers to avoid shipping jobs overseas.

A year later, President George W. Bush signed an energy bill that loosened the depletion allowance to cover more drillers and allowed companies to write off drilling exploration costs during a two-year period.

In 2006, Rep. John Larson, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, introduced a bill designed to end the industrys biggest tax breaks. It died in committee.

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The 2000s - Obama

A year later, then-Sen. Barack Obama introduced legislation to repeal the depletion allowance and Deep Water Royalty Relief Act. It also died in committee.

Even though he supported fracking as part of his mission to wean off of coal and reduce climate change, there were more tax credits issued for renewable energy than oil and gas during his first term.

Obamas stimulus package distributed nearly $100 billion to renewables and energy-efficient projects.

The money modernized the electric grid, doubled energy production from wind and solar, supported high-speed rail plans, added job training, cleaned 700 square miles of old nuclear-testing sites and more.

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2012 - Senate bill dies

The previous five years offered a number of fits and starts to end tax breaks and subsidies to the oil and gas industry, but the efforts ultimately fell flat.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez introduced a bill in 2012 to repeal $2 billion worth of tax breaks for Big Oil. The bill was supported by Obama, but it died in the Senate.

After the vote, former Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid called out Republicans for favoring industry.

Instead of defending oil companies, Republicans should be defending the American taxpayer, the Nevada Democrat said.

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2013 - Continued debate

A year later Congress was faced with mounting debt, budget negotiations and the so-called fiscal cliff.

To help reduce the deficit, Democrats suggested ending tax holidays to oil and gas companies, but those plans failed quickly in the Republican-controlled House.

In just about every budget introduced during Obamas presidency, he has included billions for renewables and clean energy, while cutting fossil fuel subsidies.

And the response from the Republican Congress has pretty much been the same every time, calling instead for spending cuts to welfare and other social programs.

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Summary of the Proposed Path Act

Path Act

A few months ago, on Dec. 18, Obama signed into law a bipartisan tax plan that gives credits and subsidies to just about every business and taxpayer in the country.

The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, also known as the Path Act, permanently extends the Child Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. Combined, its about a $120 billion loss for government coffers.

The act also includes manufacturing deductions for oil refineries, resulting in a $2 billion loss, and about $30 billion worth of bonus depreciation extensions and $113 billion in research and experimentation credits.

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Tax breaks

While many industries have received tax breaks through the years, the federal government has saved oil and gas more than $500 billion during the last century, according to Taxpayers for Commonsense, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C.

And the oil depletion allowance, first introduced in the 1920s and debated for decades, is still in effect.
HARRISBURG - When the sun sets, the safest bet is to get inside in this section of the city some have dubbed "Space Mountain."

This part of Allison Hill, which spans several blocks near 15th and Market streets, got its name because it's overrun by drugs.

Last summer, the neighborhood epidemic was synthetic marijuana, sometimes called "Space," due to the zombie-like trance it puts users in. Hence the nickname, "Space Mountain."

Drugs still are rampant here. Empty blunt boxes and beer bottles are strewn about streets lined by vacant trash-covered lots and stretches of boarded-up homes.

Still, as alarming as the drug problem is, gun violence has proved to be a more dangerous epidemic in this neighborhood and others throughout the city as of late. The streets have morphed into virtual shooting galleries this past week.

And in a city that regularly sees its share of gun violence, the shootings have shaken even the strongest of neighbors here.

"I get everything done that I need to get done before it gets dark," Eric Sims, 47, said Thursday afternoon as he stood a block from the site of the city's latest shootings, at 16th and Market streets. "I've called it the badlands."

Alarming rate

The flurry of gunfire started when 20-year-old Tyjerell Curry was shot and killed on Mercer Street about 10 p.m. on March 10. Curry's death marked Harrisburg's fourth homicide of 2016.

Six others have been shot and injured in Harrisburg since Curry was killed. And police have responded to numerous other shots-fired reports throughout Allison Hill and in uptown Harrisburg.

Mayor Eric Papenfuse said in a written news release that the shootings aren't random. And despite police receiving little-to-no cooperation from shooting victims, Chief Thomas Carter said he hopes to announce arrests in the near future. Carter said he is in the midst of forming a task force to combat the wave of violence.

The two most recent victims were a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man who were shot at 16th and Market streets when an unidentified assailant opened fire on several people about 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

Sims, a Philadelphia native and former longtime Marine, doesn't scare easily.

Gunshots ring out in the neighborhood on any given night. But when people get hit, injured or die, the gravity of the situation sinks in, he said.

Sims lives with his 6-year-old daughter a few blocks away from where the teenagers were shot Tuesday.

His daughter doesn't leave his sight when she plays outside. When his two older children come to visit from Philadelphia, they sleep on the floor on air mattresses, because he worries bullets could pierce the windows above them at night.

A professional Christian comedian, Sims has considered moving out of the city to escape the violence. But he isn't willing to give up on Harrisburg. He believes God directed him here, so deserting the city isn't an option, he said.

"It's difficult when you see a community killing itself from within," Sims said. "Drugs play a part, the lack of education and employment play a part. Law enforcement plays a part."

"But everybody has a purpose," he continued. "Don't ever give up on what's right."

Lack of resources

A lack of resources fuels gun violence in Harrisburg, one longtime 15th Street resident believes.

The man wouldn't disclose his name out of fear for his safety. Yet, he said, he feels safe in the neighborhood... during the day.

"When it gets dark outside, I go in," he said. His uncle, another longtime resident, won't even walk the sidewalks during the day.

The man points his finger at city youth for much of the violence. They resort to gunplay because there aren't enough jobs, community groups or other activities to keep them occupied, he said.

When the weather warms up, the violence escalates, because there are more people outside, he said.

"These temporary service jobs, no one wants to work for $7.25 an hour," he said. "There's no playgrounds. Fathers are in jail, and communities are supposed to be policed by their own community."

Harrisburg police can't identify with neighborhood residents, he believes. So too often, police are overly suspicious of the wrong people, he said.

Sims agreed.

Police tend to think the majority of those walking around this Allison Hill neighborhood are criminals, he said.

Sims doesn't blame officers for shootings. That is a product of a broken home, he said. But police harassment exists and it doesn't help the situation, he said.

"Harassment will keep an individual negative," Sims said. "Whatever you do in that home is going to reflect to what happens on the street."

Lack of respect

Johnny Glasgow also said the root of the gun violence is the lack of parenting.

While there aren't enough jobs and other opportunities for youth in Harrisburg, it doesn't give anyone an excuse to shoot someone or show a general lack of disrespect for neighbors, said Glasgow, who lives uptown but also owns a house on nearby Regina Street.

People shoot others because they weren't raised right, he said.

"Two people didn't raise me. The neighborhood raised me. We were made to respect," Glasgow said. "This generation, now, don't have no respect."

Glasgow also believes the police need to show their faces in the neighborhood more often to help curb the violence. Regular foot patrols were common years ago, he said.

Now, "You don't see a police officer around here until something has happened," he said.

Conditioned response

Perhaps the most tragic part is that too many neighbors have become numb to the problems on Harrisburg's streets, Sims said.

Neighbors have become conditioned to accepting the sounds of gunshots ringing out, he said. No one, no matter what their socioeconomic status might be, should have to live in fear of being shot on a daily basis, Sims said.

To reverse the trend, "You have to say, 'I'm tired of it.' The community has to bond together," he said.

On Thursday afternoon, adults held babies and young kids rode scooters and bikes down the sidewalks, just like they would in any other midstate neighborhood on a warm mid-March day.

But when a car door slams down the street, they tend to look over their shoulder, just in case.

This atmosphere is especially unfair to children, said Christina Kanowicz, 22, who lives with her 5-year-old son, her brother Justin and other family members on Regina Street.

Kanowicz said she hasn't left Harrisburg, where she has lived most of her life, because there's more housing options available to her here.

Her cousin was shot years ago in the city, and she knows her neighborhood is dangerous. Hopefully, when she and her family soon move to another section of the city, it will be safer, she said.

"It could be something petty going on up the street, and a stray bullet could come flying down," Kanowicz said as she listened to an argument echo from the next block. "It's sad. I have fear for kids playing outside here."
WILLIAM SPORT -- An inmate from Philadelphia who has repeatedly written letters threatening public officials has been sentenced to an additional 70 months in prison.

U.S. Middle District Chief Judge Christopher C. Conner Friday also ordered Shaun Chapman, 30, to undergo a mental health evaluation.

In July Chapman admitted he wrote a letter that contained threats against now retired Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod in Harrisburg and probation officer Cheryl Kennedy in Williamsport.

Zubrod prosecuted Chapman when his supervised release was revoked in 2014.

The letter, sent from the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary, stated in part "you shall feel my wrath" and "I will get my revenge on the world."

It also mentioned a bomb on a bus in a tool box that contained nails and gun powder and stated he would kill "you and your entire life line even if I have to die too."

Although acknowledging Chapman has mental health issues, Conner found his conduct reflected knowledge and understanding of the consequences of his actions.

Chapman claimed he did not intend to carry out the threats but the judge, noting past threatening letters, found him to have disrespect for the law and safety of others.

A telephone threat to a woman in 2005 landed him in the Camp Hill state prison from where he wrote a letter threatening President Bush.

His 30-month sentence for that letter also took into account threats he was accused of making in Dauphin County to federal officials before he decided to plead guilty.

Chapman was indicted again in 2008 on charges he made threats to officials while in the federal courthouse in Harrisburg and from the Perry County Prison.

He pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to a consecutive four years followed by three years of supervised release. In June 2014 he was sentenced to 11 months in prison for violating terms of his supervised release.

Chapman was about to be released from prison when he was charged with threatening Zubrod and Kennedy.
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The office of Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, left, has been ordered to comply with several right-to-know requests filed by the attorney for former long-time city mayor Stephen R. Reed, pictured right. The requests come as Reed prepares to defend himself against nearly 500 criminal charges filed by the state Attorney General's office in July.

(File. )

A senior judge from Cumberland County has upheld a state Open Records ruling ordering Mayor Eric Papenfuse's City Hall to comply with a series of information requests filed by former Mayor Stephen Reed.

Reed, who is fighting criminal charges alleging that he broke laws in funding his quest to cast Harrisburg as a city of museums, is seeking three lengthy sets of documents dating to his tenure in office, including:

Documents pertaining to financing, reimbursements and leave time granted for the acquisition of artifacts for Reed's hoped-for chain of museums.

Reports, bond documents, meeting minutes and other correspondence pertaining to efforts to repair and upgrade

Papenfuse's 2007 bid as a Harrisburg Authority member

Reed served as Harrisburg's mayor from 1981 through 2009. He has steadfastly denied any criminal acts.

Reed's attorney, Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., requested the paperwork from the city in late July, after current Attorney General Kathleen Kane filed nearly 500 criminal counts against Reed following a lengthy grand jury probe.

Papenfuse, who was elected mayor of Harrisburg in 2013, flatly denied Hockeimer's requests, asserting that releasing the information now would violate grand jury secrecy.

In his ruling, Senior Judge Kevin Hess upheld the Office of Open Records finding that the records requested are distinct from items like grand jury testimony, because they were created before and existed independently of the Harrisburg grand jury probe.

Therefore, the city cannot unilaterally and retroactively claim that veil of secrecy applies to all of these records.

Hess also asserted the city's blanket denials of Reed's requests undermine its arguments that the records sought fall under other exemptions in the state's Right-To-Know law.

From the record that he's seen, Hess stated, the Papenfuse Administration has "avoided its duty to make a good faith attempt to respond" to the Reed team's request.

Hess's order, in essence, sends the case back to City Hall and requires that to happen.

The Papenfuse administration was not immediately ready to comment on Hess's order Friday morning, or its next step in the case. The city could appeal the ruling to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.

Reed's criminal case is still pending in Dauphin County court.
LOWER PAXTON TOWNSHIP -- Spying the cadets in their grey and black through a doorway inside Bishop McDevitt High School, Christina Murphy trots across the auditorium with her young granddaughter Tenley at her side.

The 48 cadets, all lined up, fidget in place as they await their formal entree into the Pennsylvania State Police. Some fix their stiff uniform hats so the chinstrap falls just north of their chins. Others adjust the creases in their carefully ironed pants. One of the two female cadets in the class waves to Tenley before the line moves forward and whisks her away.

Christina and Tenley both arch forward on the balls of their feet to catch a glimpse of Corey Murphy, tall and stocky, as he makes his way around the auditorium and up to the stage. This is the second time Christina has been here -- her first son, Greg, is also a state trooper -- but it's still exciting.

"I'm very proud to see everything he's accomplished," Christina says later. The 54-year-old traveled all the way from Erie to witness this rite of passage.

The 144th cadet class graduation plays out like virtually every other, with carefully articulated speeches about duty and honor to a constant flutter of camera flashes. Later, embraces will be shared and tears will be shed.

Through it all, there's nary a mention of the others -- the cadets who didn't make it to this massive high school auditorium, to stride confidently under the lights and accept their place within the annals of this 110-year-old agency.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Colonel Tyree C. Blocker swearing in the cadets. The Pennsylvania State Police graduated their 144th Cadet class in the auditorium of Bishop McDevitt High School on Friday, March 18, 2016. Daniel Zampogna, PennLive

Thirty-six cadets were dismissed or voluntarily left amid an investigation into cheating allegations at the Hershey academy. At least another 14 have been held back from graduation while dual investigations play out within and outside the State Police. The rest of the original 116 left for a variety of personal reasons. Each class will see some natural attrition over the course of the rigorous six months of training.

Commissioner Tyree Blocker comes closest to referencing the others: He tells the 48 to remain focused on public service and the people they're honor bound to protect. "Leave the cynics and naysayers behind," he adds.

"These cadets will face great pressures in their chosen profession," Blocker says to the rows of incoming troopers on stage. "These pressures will either cause you to become bitter or to become better. The major factor between bitter and better is attitude."

Although the dozen or so news reporters are there to learn nuggets of new information about the cheating investigation, it makes sense that the cadets and administration brass steer clear of that third rail. This is a joyous day for the families of the graduating cadets.

But one of the departed cadets can't help but feel conflicted about the day.

"I don't know what I feel," says the cadet, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. "Just numb."

On this day, which the cadet looked forward to for years, the cadet stayed home. Since leaving the academy, the cadet says he's dedicated a lot of time to figuring out what to do next. That's difficult to do when a career in law enforcement was that next thing for so long.

"At the end of it all, I don't think I've done anything wrong," the cadet says. "But this thing. I've worked so hard for is just gone and it ain't coming back."

Newly graduated PSP Troopers celebrate with friends and family. The Pennsylvania State Police graduated their 144th Cadet class in the auditorium of Bishop McDevitt High School on Friday, March 18, 2016. Daniel Zampogna, PennLive

Like a number of cadets, the cadet has alleged that the culture of the academy that he and 115 others entered in September was permissive of shared answers. Instructors gave the answers to tests that had been recycled for years, the cadet says, and instructors encouraged senior classes to pass on their knowledge and assistance to their juniors.

Many of them face an uncertain future -- and virtually no chance to work in law enforcement -- due to the highly publicized allegations and a six-month-long hole in their resumes. This cadet, like a number of others, is happy to see the men and women of the 144th class graduate but is disappointed to be left behind.

"I should be there," the cadet says. "Instead, I'm sitting here with my mom asking if I'm OK."

In the meantime, the 48 cadets marches into the auditorium to the wail of bagpipes and marches out as troopers to the wail of bagpipes.

Blocker encourages the new recruits to remember the long legacy -- and the many predecessors who gave up their lives for the job -- as they move forward to assignments at troops across the state.

"Our cadets now stand at the doorway to their future," he says. "What you make of your career is in your hands."

After being reunited with his family off-stage, Corey Murphy -- who left a job as a probation officer to join the State Police -- proves to be a man of few words.

"You put in a lot of hard work," he says. "Obviously, six months, and it just paid off."

Christina, his mother, says she tries not to think about the dangers of the calling her sons have chosen.

"Yes, we worry every day when they put the uniform on," she says.

And she also tried not to think about the troubles at the academy.

"These are things people have to go through and deal with," she says, matter-of-factly. "But we're proud this group of cadets made it through it all."

Newly graduated PSP Troopers celebrate with friends and family. The Pennsylvania State Police graduated their 144th Cadet class in the auditorium of Bishop McDevitt High School on Friday, March 18, 2016. Daniel Zampogna, PennLive

A short distance away, Donna Hughes beams as a television crew interviews her son, Robert, under a bright camera light.

"I'm so proud of R.C.," she says. "This is what he wanted for a long time. Ever since he was in high school. He said, 'Mom, I want to be a police officer,' and I told him, 'Go for it' . . . to see him walk across the stage like that brings memories back to when he walked across the stage senior year heading to college."

Donna, 56, traveled from Warren, Ohio, to see her son walk across the stage. His father, she says, worked for a juvenile justice center and young R.C. ended up following him into law enforcement.

For her, she says, there was never any doubt that he'd make it here today.

"R.C., he's a spiritual guy," she says. "And he knows answered prayers come if you believe, and he knows how to keep his nose clean and he knows how to mind his own business. When I heard about all this, I knew he had no part in it."

Back up on stage after the ceremony, Blocker finds himself back in the spotlight.

Earlier this week, the newly confirmed commissioner called on the Inspector General's Office to conduct its own investigation. That probe, he says, will focus on the academy.

Blocker declines to comment about any potential changes that have stemmed from the incident or what may happen to the 144th cadets who didn't graduate Friday. But he does say he does not believe there are any systemic problems at the academy.

"We do a disservice [to the cadets] when we try to insist that this is something scandalous," he says.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Colonel Tyree C. Blocker speaking to the press after the graduation at Bishop McDevitt High School on Friday, March 18, 2016. Daniel Zampogna, PennLive

Wallace McKelvey may be reached at wmckelvey@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter @wjmckelvey. Find PennLive on Facebook.
A Pittsburgh man died Thursday night in a crash along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Cumberland County, state police said.

The accident occurred just after 9 p.m. along the eastbound lanes of the turnpike near mile marker 222 in North Middleton Township, just west of the Carlisle Interchange in Middlesex Township, police said.

Investigators said Daniel A. Pressley, 29, died after he drove his 2001 Mitsubishi Mirage into the back of a tow camper.

Police said Pressley "failed to see the slow moving (camper) with its four-way flashers on" in a construction zone along the turnpike where the speed limit was 55 mph.

Pressley was estimated to have been traveling above the speed limit, while the tow camper, being driven by a 59-year-old woman from Littleton, Colorado, was traveling at about 45 mph, police said.

Police said Pressley "slammed into the rear of the camper trailer" and that he became lodged under it.

Investigators said Pressley, who was wearing a seatbelt, died upon impact.

The driver of the camper suffered only minor injures, police said.
Dr. Donald Stone.jpg

Dr. Donald J. Stone of Bloomsburg leaves the office Lycoming County District Judge Jon E. Kemp near Muncy after being arraigned Wednesday on charges that allege he raped a Muncy state prison inmate three times.

(John Beauge, for PennLive)

MUNCY -- State police have withdrawn charges against a doctor who was accused of raping a female inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy.

They did so Friday, just prior to the scheduled preliminary hearing for Dr. Donald J. Stone, 63, of Bloomsburg.

After long discussions with family members, a victim advocate and authorities, the victim chose not to testify, Lycoming County District Attorney Eric R. Linhardt said.

"Unfortunately, fear of facing the justice system can be emotionally daunting, particularly for victims of sexual assault," he said. "For some it is simply too much to bear."

The victim would have had to testify before a large crowd, Trooper Tyson Havens, the prosecuting officer, said.

She plans to obtain a protection from abuse order from Stone in her home county and he has agreed not to contest it, Linhardt said.

By withdrawing the charges, the inmate reserves the ability to refile if she believes she's emotionally capable of testifying, he said.

Besides rape, Stone was charged with three counts each of aggravated indecent assault, institutional sexual assault and indecent assault along with one count of official oppression.

He has denied the allegation he inappropriately touched the inmate on several occasions and had intercourse with her on May 22, June 1 and one other time.

Three registered nurses told Havens they observed Stone spending an unusual amount of time in the cell with the woman and sitting on the bed very close to the inmate, the arrest affidavit stated.

Stone is awaiting trial in a separate case on charges of institutional sexual assault, indecent assault, official oppression and harassment.

He is accused of inappropriately touching a different inmate in the infirmary on May 29 after she returned from same day surgery at a hospital.

He denied touching the inmate but told an investigator he adjusted her gown because her arm was in a sling.

Stone, whose license to practice medicine has been suspended pending the outcome of the criminal cases, is free on $50,000 bail.

Stone, who worked for a company under contract with the Department of Corrections, has been banned from the prison since he was escorted off the grounds June 3.
The shoot was brought to a halt for over four hours and executive producer Zafar Mehdi was put behind bars for two hours.

Mumbai: The makers of 'Sarbjit' have faced yet another roadblock after a long wait at the Wagah border. The team members were shooting for a sequence at Bhendi Bazaar when the shoot was brought to an abrupt halt.

The sequence which is set in Pakistan has Darshan Kumar's character giving a speech with the message of peace and prosperity. The rally sparks off protest from some members of the gathering carrying placards with anti-India slogans in Urdu. However, this didn't go down well with the group of locals as they raised objections claiming that it has hurt their National sentiments.

Read: A long wait for Sarbjit crew at the Wagah Border

The locals went ahead to file a complaint against the makers, following which the executive producer, Zafar Mehdi, was put behind bars for over two hours.

The shoot was halted for over fours hours till the team requested the police officials to release Zafar Mehdi as they had valid permission to shoot for the film.

The film 'Sarbjit' is based on the life of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian farmer who was convicted of terrorism and spying in Pakistan.

Randeep Hooda will play the role of Sarabjit Singh. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will essay the role of Sarabjits sister Dalbir Kaur. Kaur was the face of the family's fight to free Sarabjit who died in a Pakistani jail after being attacked in April, 2013.

Richa Chadha plays the role of Sarabjits wife in the film. The film will be narrated through the perspective of Sarabjit Singhs sister Dalbir Kaur, played by Aishwarya.
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The Pennsylvania General Assembly is considering two bills that would require first-time DUI offenders with high blood alcohol levels to install a ignition interlock system in their vehicles.

(Shutterstock)

Elaine and Paul Miller's son was killed when a drunk driver slammed into him while he was directing traffic for the Logan Volunteer Fire Company in 2013. He was 45 years old.

Chris Demko's daughter was killed in 2014 when a driver drunk and high on heroine slammed into her car. She had recently graduated from high school and was 18 years old.

Paul Hannagan lost two children while driving back from a bagpipe concert in 2015. The drunk driver was traveling 100 mph when it slammed into Hannagan's vehicle carrying six people. His children were 19 and 16 years old.

And while all the drivers are in prison, the Pa. Parents Against Impaired Driving are working to stop more Pennsylvania families from going through the same heartbreak.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is considering two bills -- one in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate -- that would require first-time DUI offenders with high blood alcohol levels to install a ignition interlock system in their vehicles.

Offenders would be able to continue driving without lengthy license suspensions, which is how the current law works. The hope is that having a monitoring device would keep people from illegally driving while their license was suspended.

"We owe it to our children to pass this," Demko said. "We don't want anyone to ever have to go through this. There is nothing worse in life than losing a children."

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. John Rafferty, R-Montgomery County, will be voted on in the House Transportation Committee on March 21. If passed by the committee, the bill will go before the House for its consideration.

Rafferty, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, has introduced the bill in previous sessions but they have not made it to the governor's desk.

MADD graphic shows the difference between having an ignition interlock system installed in a vehicle versus a license suspension after a DUI.

The parents of children killed by DUIs called the legislation "common sense."

"This is a bill that apparently has no opposition, but apparently hasn't passed," Hannagan said.

An ignition interlock system requires drivers to breath into a device hooked up to the vehicles ignition. If the driver's blood alcohol level is above 0.08, the vehicle will not start. The system will also randomly require the driver for a breathalyzer reading to ensure they are not driving drunk.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving estimates that since 2003, interlock systems have prevented more than 78,000 vehicle starts for Pennsylvanians who were attempting to drive drunk.

The Millers said they hoped the bill could serve as a "stepping stone" to more legislation relating to DUI offenders. Other bills that could get support in the legislature include stiffening penalties for habitual DUI offenders and clearing up the disparity for DUI sentences.

"We are asking House and Senate leadership to focus on DUI reform," Demko said.

This story has been updated to correct a typo. The system would not start the vehicle if it detects a driver's blood alcohol level to be above 0.08.
Harrisburg is truly under siege.

In just a few days, Pennsylvania's capital city turned into a version of the Wild West. Shootings in broad daylight truly highlight the savage criminal behavior that is starting to blossom in the city.

These shootings are shattering neighborhoods' and traumatizing the residents who live there.

These neighborhoods are "bad" neighborhoods and without changes, these generalizations will hold forever true.

This will cause continued challenges for the residents of these neighborhoods and the people of Harrisburg.

Without convictions the shootings will not stop. And a conviction is nearly impossible without witness testimony.

To get those testimonies, of course, the neighborhood must feel safe enough to attend court without retaliation.

Trust me, a victim or witness would not risk their lives or their families lives by testifying.

The pain that they felt during the act of the crime probably does not overcome the imagined violence they are likely to experience if they become victims of retaliation.

While the races of the victims weren't identified, based on the sections of the city where the shootings occurred one can reasonably infer the victims were African-Americans.

Black neighborhoods in cities are consistently plagued by crime. Violence has become an unfortunate reality and marker of identification in relation to black neighborhoods.

To bring it close to home, I was a teenager, attending the top public high school in Pittsburgh, when I was first confronted with a gun.

I lived in a black neighborhood. This incident was unfortunately "normal." At the time, however, I did not call the authorities.

I was afraid. I imagined hooded raiders storming into my family's home and shooting me for following the law. I resolved the issue by moving on with my life.

Looking back, of course, I was wrong. I should have called the authorities, but I feared for my life, and I was a victim of another teenager's wrath and I could not justify sending a child through the juvenile detention system.

Of course, the shootings in Harrisburg are all steeped in systemic oppression. Individuals from marginalized groups cannot find economic opportunities, so by being locked out of these economic opportunities they resort to other ways of making money.

Either they choose the high road, work hard become gainfully employed or become entrepreneurs, or they succumb to their surroundings and the systemic oppression that has been prepared for them generations ago and take what they can get, or if they don't like that, they'll resort to crime.

Economic opportunity is one piece in a huge jigsaw puzzle of bringing peace to Harrisburg. Economic opportunities, like jobs, will not solve all violence, but it is a start.

Unfortunately, in the string of violence that has recently occurred in Harrisburg, the perpetrators, I would assume are not economically stable. If they were, they would be at their jobs working, or in school, or doing something constructive with their time that did not result in criminal behavior.

There is a great deal of personal responsibility, but when discussing systems and culture their needs to be a collective input to make changes.

However, to get economic stability there is a whole line of check lists, including a person must feel safe in their neighborhood and schools must be top-notch.

Although education is not a make or break situation for a person's success, it does influence how a person's life will turn out.

For example, there are many bright individuals from impoverished neighborhoods who are still searching for economic stability--I being one of them.

The shootings of course are cogs in a system. The shooters were never taught another way, and if they were, they succumbed to the mass media image portrayals of people who looked like them.

To make Harrisburg safe, we must change the culture -- otherwise, it will eat us alive.

Jamar Thrasher, of Harrisburg, is an occasional PennLive Opinion contributor.
Bob Gentzel worked at The Patriot-News for 13 years, starting out as a police reporter and then moving on to cover municipal beats on the West Shore and eventually taking on the assignment of being bureau chief of the paper's now-defunct Carlisle office.

(PennLive archives)

Robert Gentzel, a former Patriot-News reporter and longtime voice for state officials, died on Wednesday following a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 69.

Friends and colleagues respected him for his wit, professionalism, and journalistic talents and devotion to his wife Jane and family.

Gentzel worked at the newspaper for 13 years, starting out as a police reporter and then moving on to cover municipal beats on the West Shore and eventually taking on the assignment of being bureau chief of the paper's now-defunct Carlisle office.

Then he went on to work for the next 30 years for state government, holding communications and policy roles in the offices of Attorney General, Auditor General, and Treasurer before finishing his public service career as director of policy and communications at the State Employees' Retirement System.

LeRoy Zimmerman, who served as the state's first elected attorney general from 1981 to 1989, recalled how grateful he was when Gentzel accepted the call to serve as his spokesman in the newly formed office. He called him a "great find," knowing that Gentzel was held in high regard by his colleagues in the media.

"I knew that if he was the person who interacted with the media on my behalf and the Office of Attorney General, I knew that would be a positive experience for the Office of Attorney General," Zimmerman said.

He also credits Gentzel as playing an important part in the launch of that new office and in working through many issues that arose for which there was no precedent.

"When the hard balls came at us, they were hard ball. There were no soft balls. I couldn't say go to the book Gentzel and look how they did it before," Zimmerman said. "I had an admiration and respect for him and for his wife Jane and we grew to be good friends."

It was Gentzel's humor that was one of the first things that came to mind for several of his former colleagues.

Jim Koval, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, worked with Gentzel in the attorney general's office in the 1980s and remained close friends since.

"He was one of the quickest wits I've ever known, and one of the best writers," Koval said.

To illustrate that, Koval shared an email that he received from Gentzel in November when headlines about Attorney General Kathleen Kane dominated the news. Gentzel wrote, "I think about you every time I see a Kane story - so, almost daily."

Gentzel stayed on working in the Attorney General's press office when Zimmerman's successor Ernie Preate took office in 1989. Preate developed a deep admiration for Gentzel as a friend and adviser as well.

"He was so competent. His advice was invaluable. He was such a professional. And he was deeply respected by Republicans and Democrats and all the members of the media," Preate said. "There was no finer gentleman than Bob Gentzel."

While serving as Preate's press secretary, Gentzel found himself dealing with the media barrage that came when suspicions arose about and investigations followed into Preate soliciting contributions from illegal video poker operators and failing to report the money on campaign-finance reports.

Former Patriot-News reporter Pete Shelly, who now is a partner in a Harrisburg public affairs and communications firm, was covering that story. He recalled sparring with Gentzel on countless occasion over several years as that investigation unfolded, which ultimately led to Preate pleading guilty to mail fraud and resigning from office.

"Doing what I do now, Bob really was a very effective, strong advocate, extremely loyal under some extremely trying circumstances that dragged on for a long time," Shelly said. "He was tireless and a very aggressive guy. I would want him on my team."

Longtime Philadelphia Daily News columnist John Baer met Gentzel when they worked together at the Patriot and they developed a lifelong friendship.

"All who knew him valued his intelligence and razor-sharp wit," Baer said. "And in addition to being a consummate professional in every job he held, he was a loving husband, father and grandfather, the kind of person all of us should hope to have in our circle."

Even after his retirement in 2011, Gentzel maintained his high level of interest in state political affairs, occasionally sending emails to reporters offering some historical perspective or commentary on the day's events. He also occasionally acted as editor for friends and former colleagues writing books and publications.

One of them was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Capitol reporter Brad Bumsted.

Knowing of his battle with cancer, Bumsted said, "I was somewhat cautious in asking Bob to read a chapter in my upcoming book, a sequel on continued Pennsylvania corruption. But he had offered to do so when I last spoke with him at a Christmas party and he looked good. I asked earlier this year and he said he was up to it. He did it in a day. Those were good content edits that offered his wisdom and insight."

Prior to submitting it to the publisher, Bumsted asked him if he would give the entire book a read. "He said yes, and did it in a week. He was a great editor and amazingly fast."

Bumsted was familiar with Gentzel's writing skills and considered the press releases he issued while in the attorney general's office to be so complete and detailed, they left little room for questions.

"He ran the best press office on the Hill," Bumsted said. "That's why I asked him to read for me. I am very grateful."

Along with his work, Zimmerman and media colleagues respected Gentzel for how he balanced his time between his work and family. Gentzel had two sons, one of whom preceded him in death.

"He was a devoted family member who combined his busy schedule with his obligation to his family," Zimmerman said. "We lost a wonderful human being, a great man, a wonderful family man, and a real important member of our community. My prayer is may he rest in peace."
FILE - This Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008 file picture shows the Krechba gas plant on the In Salah gas field in Algeria's Sahara Desert, some 1,200 kilometers (720 miles) south of the capital, Algiers, Algeria. An Algerian local official said unidentified assailants fired homemade rocket launchers around 6 am at the Krechba gas facility, jointly operated with foreign companies and overseen by Algerian state-run gas company Sonatrach. (AP Photo/Alfred de Montesquiou, File)
FILE - A Tuesday, July 17, 2012 file photo, shows Starwood Hotels W Hollywood hotel logo in Los Angeles. Starwood is calling off a $12.2 billion buyout agreement with Marriott in favor of an offer from a group of investors led by the Chinese insurance company Anbang. The decision came after Anbang upped its offer for Starwood by nearly $370 million Friday, March 18, 2016 bringing the total deal to more than $14 billion. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2015 file photo, former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle arrives at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis. Fogle is being sued by a girl who's one of the victims in the sex crimes case that sent him to prison for more than 15 years. The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, March 15, 2016, names Fogle and the former head of his anti-obesity charity, Russell Taylor. It also names Taylor's wife. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
Deepika and Vin are seen sharing some intimate moments and their chemistry is quite crackling to say the least.

Deepika Padukone who had been shooting for 'xXx: The Return of Xander Cage', for the past month, returned home early this morning. It will only be home for a short while before she heads out to Sri Lanka for her friend's wedding.

We got our hands on few on-location pictures from Deepika's Hollywood debut film 'xXx: The Return of Xander Cage'. In it, Deepika and Vin are seen sharing some intimate moments. Needless to say, the chemistry between the two stars is quite crackling to say the least.

Vin Diesel in a serious conversation with Nicky Jam just before a shot.

Recently, we had learnt that Deepika sent out an SOS call to her hair stylist as she was unhappy with her 'simple' look.

Apart from making headlines for her steamy shots form the xXx sets, Deepika was also in the news when a foreign news site failed to recognise her when out on a dinner date with Novak Djokovic.
Children play on a pile of gravel at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Friday, March 18, 2016. More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe's prosperous heartland while Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organized shelters. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
The Hrithik Roshan-Kangana Ranaut's legal battle is getting murkier day by day as several shocking facts are coming to light. Hrithik had sent Kangana a legal notice after she referred to him as her 'silly ex' in public. Kangana retaliated by filing a 21-page reply, charging Hrithik with intimidation and threat.

Read: It was a breach of ethics to reveal the contents of legal notice, says Hrithik Roshan

Now, Kangana's lawyer, Rizwan Siddiquee claims that the statements made by Hrithik against the actress are nothing but efforts to 'gain public sympathy'. He further said that Hrithik cannot wash his hands off the matter now after 'criminally' threatening the 28-year-old actress. He said in a statement:

Read: Hrithik popped the question to Kangana in Paris way back in 2014

"Mr. Hrithik's statements made to the media are nothing but efforts to gain public sympathy. He cannot wash his hands off the matter now after having criminally threatened my client and having intimidated her, without any provocation. He also cannot deny the fact that my client never named him anywhere and it was he himself who claimed to be 'silly ex' in his notice. Besides his own acts of stating in the media that he would rather 'date a Pope' gave enough fodder to the media to start speculating. How can he blame my client for all his own acts of commissions and omissions.

Further, he should have refrained from making absolutely false statements in his notice. He specifically claimed that he does not know my client socially at all. If that were the truth, then how was he attending my client's private birthday party with his entire family and my client was attending his party besides his sister's and his father's birthday party as well. There is enough proof on public platform, which sufficiently proves that Mr. Hrithik Roshan is lying.

Pursuant to my counter-notice there are now new claims that my client was not co-operating with the police to help with investigation of Mr. Hrithik's complaint. These claims are as false as his other claims. The fact is that my client was never dealing with any imposter and given the background of the matter, it is very lame on Mr. Hrithik's part to even suggest that. Besides my client was never ever asked for any co-operation in the said matter by any person for obvious reasons. The fact that Mr. Hrithik waited for seven month to lodge a complaint says it all. Now pursuant to receipt of my notice the complaint is once again being looked into by Mr. Hrithik Roshan, only as a face saving strategy.

It is also worthy to note that Mr. Hrithik Roshan specifically claims to have received 50 unsolicited emails per day from my client for about 601 days (as calculated from 24th May 2014 upto 16th February 2016). Accordingly he should have received more than 30,000 (thirty thousand) emails from my client as against his own alleged claim of receiving only 1,439 emails from my client during the said period. This shows that there is non application of mind even while making allegations. At least make efforts to do the calculations. Besides if Mr. Hrithik Roshan was really receiving unsolicited emails from my client then why did he not prudently block my client and went on receiving my client's emails for such a long time. The answer is obvious.

His own actions speak a lot and I need not say more on behalf of my client Ms. Kangana Ranaut. Most importantly I would like to point out that at least Mr. Hrithik Roshan should have bothered to ensure that he has a good reason to send a Legal Notice to my client. However as expected the notice is absolutely baseless, unsubstantiated, unwarranted and uncalled for. There is not even a case of defamation made out against my client and he is issuing a notice for defamation without application of mind.

He needs to immediately realise that my client Ms. Kangana Ranaut does not need Mr. Hrithik Roshan's name to garner publicity or attention, as she is a renowned public figure herself.

I sincerely hope that the matter ends here and better sense prevails."
Election Q&A: Meet the candidates for Emmet County Commission

The first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth districts are all contested races on Nov. 8.


Venezuela's electricity deficit

CARACAS

Petroleumworld.com 03 16 2016

Venezuela is shutting down for a week as the government struggles with a deepening electricity crisis.

President Nicolas Maduro gave everyone an extra three days off work next week, extending the two-day Easter holiday, according to a statement in the Official Gazette published late Tuesday. Maduro had originally said over the weekend that the extended holiday would only apply to state employees.

QUICKTAKE Venezuela's Revolution

The government has rationed electricity and water supplies across the country for months and urged citizens to avoid waste as Venezuela endures a prolonged drought that has slashed output at hydroelectric dams. The ruling socialists have blamed the shortage on the El Nino weather phenomena and sabotage by their political foes, while critics cite a lack of maintenance and poor planning.

We're hoping, God willing, rains will come, Maduro said in a national address Saturday. Look, the saving is more than 40 percent when these measures are taken. We're reaching a difficult place that we're trying to manage.

Calling an extended holiday isn't a new innovation in Venezuela's fight against power outages. In 2010, then President Hugo Chavez issued a similar decree adding three days to the Easter Week holiday.

Strained Grid

Venezuela has long suffered rolling blackouts that cripple public services and leave citizens in the dark for days at a time. The extended break seeks to further ease demand on Venezuela's strained power grid and follows a forced reduction of hours at shopping malls and public institutions.

During the Holy Week, Venezuelans traditionally abandon the cities, opting for a holiday on the shores of the Caribbean or in the Andean countryside. According to the decree, essential services would continue as normal and banks and tax collection agencies could adjust their hours accordingly.

Last week, the energy minister warned that water levels at the Guri Dam, one of the country's principal sources of power, had reached critical levels. On Wednesday, however, he insisted Venezuela's grid was not on the verge of collapse, but implored the private sector to heed the president's call.

They can indirectly abide by the decree, it's a matter of cooperating, Electricity Minister Luis Motta Dominguez said in a interview broadcast on the Venevision network.








BROUSSARD, La.  Seamus Powers St. Patricks Day at the Chitimacha Louisiana Open assumed a celebratory vibe before he even teed off on his first hole.

The 10th-tee starter made sure of that:

This man decided to spend his St. Patricks Day with us. On the tee from Waterford, Ireland, please welcome Seamus Power.

The 29-year-old smiled and acknowledged the introduction, then managed a solid tee shot and went on to make birdie.

CHITIMACHA LOUISIANA OPEN: Leaderboard | Daily Wrap-up | Tee times | Highlights | Ancer, Millard on the upswing

It was good to have something that relaxes you, said Power of the introduction. That guy really gets into it, so it was good. It was a nice start.

Power was off and running at that point, and he never looked back, posting a bogey-free, 7-under 64 for low round of the afternoon wave at Le Triomphe G&CC. The East Tennessee State alum enters Friday just one stroke back of co-leaders J.J. Spaun and Ryan Armour, as he aims for his first career Web.com Tour title.

If he can pull it off, hell think back to Thursday, where Irelands national holiday propelled him into early contention.
Shah Rukh Khan, who is in Abu Dhabi to attend an award show, dropped by a hospital in the city to pay the patients a surprise visit. SRK visited the NMC Royal Hospital on Thursday, and was given a private tour of the hospital premises.

SRK along with a team of doctors and managers took their rounds in the corridors of the hospital, which is believed to be largest in UAE. According to reports, Shah Rukh was briefed about the hospital, which would provide their services to the newly developed suburban communities of Abu Dhabi.

A tiny fan gives SRK a balloon flower at the hospital.

The actor was greeted by a number of his fans at the hospital. Living up to his King of Hearts tag, SRK even interacted with a few patients, posed for pictures and even signed autographs.

Shah Rukh Khan takes a tour around the hospital's corridors.

SRK signs autographs and greets doctors at the hospital.

On hearing about SRKs arrival at the hospital, a number of fans gathered outside and waited patiently for their favourite star to come out. A video that made its way online shows the fans cheering for Shah Rukh as he made his way to his silver Rolls Royce, with the help of his body guards.

Posted by Manish Poojary on Thursday, March 17, 2016

Shah Rukh will be seen next in the thriller Fan, that is set for a worldwide release next month. He is also currently shooting for his next political drama Raees with Pakistani actress Mahira Khan.

SRK is presented with flowers and gifts at the NMC Royal Hospital.

Shah Rukh Khan meets his fans outside the NMC Royal Hospital.
Rating:

Cast: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, Iain Glen, Phoebe Fox, Monica Dolan, Meganne Young

Director: Gavin Hood



The modern warfare is extreme, cruel and clean. Its barbaric, sometimes even more than the old barbarians, but the killer does not get the blood on his hands. The whole idea behind invention of gunpowder and bullets was to be able to kill someone without getting oneself dirty in the process. Gavin Hoods Eye in The Sky is a good film, when it comes to form or structure, but it is a very scary and dreadful film when we understand the context and the gravity of the images. Eye In The Sky is a movie about a drone mission aimed at capturing terrorists.

The drone visuals reveal the suspects entering in a house, further a ground agent uses an electronic beetle to get visuals from inside the house. Inside the house the terrorists are preparing for a suicide-bombing mission, and strapping themselves with explosives in their vests. These visuals immediately transform the capture mission into a kill mission. The pilots get instructions to drop the hellfire missile.

Before pressing the trigger, the pilots look at the ground and see a young girl in the kill zone, taking a moment and asking for a revaluation on the impact. There are four locations in the movie, the tactical control room headed by the Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), the command control room, where Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) is with the minister and his advisers to take the commands. The drone cockpit, manned by pilots, which is somewhere in a desert, and the kill zone which is a target somewhere in Africa. The film is mostly about the decision to strike or not, since the target is far removed and there might be civilian casualties.

The X-Men Wolverines director has played efficiently with the subject. He retains the intensity and keeps you on your toes; does not wait for you to settle and immediately takes you in the war room. While modern war rooms are separated by hundreds of miles from each other and thousands of miles from the target, everything happens right in the moment.

Warfronts are now simple screens with visuals of the targets. An armed drone hovering several thousand meters above the target is providing the real-time feed. There is no recoil after pulling the trigger, no deafening noise, just a flickering dot or cross hair that seems to blow up on its own.

While the technology and systems look very good, the men look just average. Gone are the days when you needed muscle power, Eye In The Sky does not show a single character with muscular features, this itself indicates the shift in how wars are being fought and the warfront being reduced to a screen. The cast tries very hard to show how difficult a decision it is, but somehow the movie reeks of the imminent attack, and that everyone is pushing gradually towards that decision.

Alan Rickman as Gen. Benson is effective. He seems to maintain the grip on his character much better than the others. When the mission is over, he steps out from the war room where a sergeant hands him a doll  which Rickman had ordered to give to his own daughter. In a crafty performance, Rickman is able to deliver a ruthless military chief who executes and also a father who loves his daughter.

Eye in The Sky is well crafted and is in line with those films that make the rest of the world think that the US is very careful about their drone programme. It is a more stylised version of Why We Fight, justifying the American involvement in the wars.

So, in effect, the movie could have just been one of the several drone strike videos on YouTube. But credit should be given to the near perfect visuals, the accuracy in representing the drone field views.

The writer is founder, Lightcube Film Society
Rating:

Voices of: Rob Schneider, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Colm Meaney, Loretta Devine, Gabriel Iglesias, Michael McElhatton, Bill Nighy, Mary Kay

Director: Trevor Wall

Norm is a polar bear in the Arctic Ocean with an ability to speak to humans. The only other person with this ability is his grandfather who has gone missing. A clumsy, inept and belittled bear, Norm is picked on by his friends for not fitting the mould, and for his ability to interact with the many human tourists who visit the Arctic. One day, Norm catches reports of planned habitation of human beings in the Arctic, led by an evil real estate tycoon, Greene (Ken Jeong) who has also imprisoned his grandfather. Norm heads to New York, where he befriends humans, mother-and-daughter Vera and Olympia (Heather Graham and Mary Kay) to take out Greene and save the Arctic from human habitation and global warming.

Norm of the North is a testament to how cheap CGI animation has become and the ability to get good quality animation at a low budget. This film is made at a budget of $18 million but somehow looks better than anyone could reasonably expect. It falls well short of the high standards of the Pixar-Disney team who are in another league entirely, but it doesnt look significantly weak compared to the middle-of-the-road CGI animation, films such as Madagascar, Despicable Me or Minions.

In terms of visual quality there is no real wow moment, although one avalanche sequence at the start attempts to be one. The most visually striking moments are the underwater sequences, which are prettier and more pleasing to the eye. The CGI New York is very bland and artificial and the fake New York montage tropes is a cliche too many for my taste.

The other major mistake is in the design of the characters. Norm is supposed to be a polar bear, but this has to be told to us because Norm has the skull of Scooby Doo while this is an anthropomorphic principle in animation to make real animals have human-like qualities, but here its gone beyond the acceptable limits. Presumably, the animators did not have money to properly animate the furs on the face of a bear, so they compromised by giving all the bears the heads of dog instead.

Giving them a hairless head certainly keeps things simpler, likewise the codes of male and female attributes leads to such absurdities as female polar bears having feline appearance, with Norms love interest bearing the head of a lioness. Norm, for instance, moves on hind legs in the same fashion as Baloo in Disneys The Jungle Book. Baloo, who to Disneys credit, looks like a bear, worked in the 60s but having the same style in modern animation seems like a weakness, especially since Disneys Brave gave us a really cool bear.

The humans are also cartoony, appearing as caricatures of urbane types. The most dubious design is that of the villain, Greene, given a hook-nosed, slick-backed and sleazy look, a little too close to nasty anti-semitic stereotypes. The chief redeeming facet is the Lemmings, the critters who serve as Norms assistants, sidekick.

Essentially, they are the main heroes of the film, since most of the plot involves Norm relying on these Lemmings to do the heros job for them. The Lemmings too are derivative: Scrat in Ice Age, the Penguins of Madagascar and the Minions but they are a trope that has not become entirely played out in animation though their time is coming.

Norm of the North is a rather banal story, borrowing from The Lion King, Madagascar and other recent animated movies. The voice acting, with Rob Schneider playing the lead, Heather Graham as the human love interest, is not spirited or memorable enough to save the film, nor is the humour (a lot of it toilet humour and also the reference-pop culture style of Dreamworks) successful. This is a movie that barely scrapes by and while it achieves some base level competence against all odds, it doesnt have the key ingredients of good writing and good character design to make the film really work.

The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
GUNTUR: Telugu cine hero Mahesh Babu will visit his birthplace Burripalem very soon for developing it. Maheshs wife Namrata and elder sister Padmavati visited Burripalem in Tenali mandal of Guntur district on Thursday.

Ms Namrata said that Mahesh Babu wanted to visit Burripalem to interact with the locals but due to the busy shooting schedule he did not come. She said that soon she will once again visit Burripalem with Mahesh.

She said that adoption of the village was not limited to road construction or others but the aim of is total development and turning the village into modern and smart town.

She praised Swachch Bharat, the brain child of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and smart village, the dream of development of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. She said both concepts are yielding good results and asked the villagers to shun liquor consumption, gutkha and other bad habits.

Ms Namrata appealed to the public to shun open defecation and asserted on the need for 100 per cent toilets construction in Burripalem. She said that illiteracy is the main barrier for development and announced that they are planning to start an adult education centre to turn Burripalem into a complete literate village.

Mentioning about the importance of environment protection, she said that they will promote tree plantation and would turn Burripalem into a clean and green village. Ms Namrata said that Mahesh very much likes Burripalem. So, he asked her to know the difficulties of the public and appealed to the villagers to extend their cooperation for Smart Burripalem.

The Anganwadi workers and Dwcra group women took the issue of absence of permanent buildings and the locals mentioned about the difficulties due to poor drainage, absence of protected drinking water, APSRTC bus service, damaged roads, improvement of basic amenities and modernisation of government school buildings.

They recalled that the grandmother of Mahesh had earlier worked for the development of ZP high school, developed local temple and provided bank facility to the village and sought development of Burripalem. Ms Namarata and Ms Padamavati received memorandums from the locals and assured about development of Burripalem in all aspects.
Codeine and Nimesulide combinations were the main exceptions to the ban that doctors felt should have been made. (File photo)

New Delhi: Nearly 40 per cent of doctors disagreed with the government's move to ban 344 fixed dose combination drugs, a survey said. eMediNexus, a healthcare advocacy platform, surveyed a total of 4,892 doctors to understand their sentiments as they are "directly affected" by the Health Ministry's ban.

The ministry on March 14 banned altogether 344 fixed dose combinations, including cough syrups compositions, saying they involve "risk" to humans and safer alternatives were available. Around 80 per cent of the doctors were found to prescribe drugs from the list of 344 drugs before the ban, the survey said.

Codeine and Nimesulide combinations were the main exceptions to the ban that doctors felt should have been made, amongst a vast list of other combinations, it said. Doctors and pharmaceutical manufacturers are the main stakeholders directly impacted by drug bans, but doctors themselves are responsible for the dispensing of medicines to the population, the survey said.

"As a healthcare advocacy platform, it was important to conduct this survey to understand the sentiments of doctors who are directly affected by the ban. The results were that 60 per cent of the doctors supported the ban while 40 per cent found it an unnecessary move," Amit Sharma and Nilesh Aggarwal, co-Founders eMediNexus, said in a joint statement.

The 344 banned drugs include the fixed dose combination of Chlopheniramine Maleate and Codeine syrup sold under the popular cough syrup brand Corex.

Following the government ban, pharmaceutical major Pfizer has discontinued manufacture and sale of Corex with immediate effect.

Fixed dose combination drugs are combinations of two or more active drugs in a single dose form.
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Washington D.C.: Calcium not only helps your bones stay strong, but it also controls how long we sleep, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC) and the University of Tokyo in Japan have unveiled a new theory for how sleep works. The work shows how slow-wave sleep depends on the activity of calcium inside neurons.

"Although sleep is a fundamental physiologic function, its mechanism is still a mystery," according to group director and corresponding author Hiroki Ueda.

The team used a variety of scientific techniques, including computational modeling and studying knockout mice, to search for the fundamental mechanism underlying sleep.

Co-first author Fumiya Tatsuki said that their model made four predictions, which provided them with four starting points to search for critical genes involved in sleep. Each prediction was tested and proven correct in experiments with knockout mice or by pharmacological inhibition and they were ultimately able to identify seven genes that work in the same calcium-related pathway to control sleep duration.

Ueda noted that these findings should contribute to the understanding and treatment of sleep disorders and neurological diseases that have been associated with them. In addition to becoming new molecular targets for sleep drugs, the genes they have identified could also become targets for drugs that treat certain psychiatric disorders that occur with sleep dysfunction. The study is published in the journal Neuron.
Some of the symptoms of a beauty parlour stroke are loss of a use of a limb, incoherent speech and dizziness.

Are you planning to pamper yourself at a beauty salon this weekend? After reading this you will surely give it a second thought.

Elizabeth Smith, 48, filed a lawsuit against a beauty salon after suffering from Beauty parlor stroke syndrome'. Smith's regular trip to a beauty salon turned into her biggest nightmare after this incident.

Elizabeth Smith, mother of two. (Photo: Screen grab)

She visited a hair salon in December 2013 and spent about 10 minutes getting her hair shampooed, 10news.com reports. A week later, she experienced weakness in her legs and arms, which was followed by a huge stroke.

The doctors said that it was the position of her head in the washbowl that led to this mishap. According to medical science, this rare condition usually takes place when our neck is overextended, it leads to vertebrae damage, causing blood clot, which leads to stroke.

CT scan of Smith revealed that one of her neck arteries was damaged. (Photo: Screen grab)

"I vomited, my head became hot and I couldn't stand. I had weakness in my arms and legs. They didn't think I was going to live, Smith told 10news.

According to a report by CBS, if Smith suffers another stroke, she could die.

She told CBS LA, "Initially I couldn't walk at all, it hit both sides of my body but more my left. I couldn't move my left arm at all. I was in shock, how could that happen to me?"

After two years she has finally returned back to work, but she can still feel the dizziness and loss of vision at times.

(Photo: Screen grab)

She has filed a lawsuit against Blowbunny: Blow Dry & Hair Extension Bar in San Diego and it states that during the hair wash, the chair and the washbowl was not adjusted according to Smiths small frame, which caused her neck to become overextended.

Smith hopes sharing about this incident will cause increased awareness among stylists and will bring a culture change in salons.

What is Beauty parlor stroke syndrome?

This syndrome is caused when there is a clot or tear in our arteries that are connected to the brain.

"When you hyperextend your neck, there can be a little bit of compression on the artery from simply just changing the position or the bones slide a little bit one over the other. That can cause a tear in the blood vessel, resulting in a blood clot, which can travel to your brain and cause a stroke," Peter Gloviczki, a vascular surgeon from Minnesota, told Self magazine.

Some of the symptoms of a beauty parlour stroke are partial paralysis, incoherent speech, dizziness or loss of control of your facial muscles, according to Steven R. Zeiler, M.D., and Ph.D., head of stroke research at John Hopkins, reports Buzzfeed.

How worried you should be?

Such incidents take place rarely but one should be aware of it. There is also a risk to suffer from 'Beauty parlour stroke syndrome' in activities where your neck is hyper extended.

You cant stop yourself from going to a parlour, but you can surely take precautions for your own good. Some simple safety measures like using an adjustable chair with adequate neck support can go a long way in preventing any serious injuries.

According to 10news, doctors recommend using towels to prop your head up so that your neck is tilted no more than 20 degrees.
Officer Ken Johnson (Photo: Farmers Branch PD)

An off-duty Farmers Branch, TX, police officer who shot and killed a 16-year-old over the weekend was not following policy when he chased the teen in his personal vehicle, the towns police chief said Tuesday.

Nor should Officer Ken Johnson have brought the chase to a halt by ramming the car of Jose Raul Cruz. Thats just something we dont do, Chief Sid Fuller said.

The chief added, however, that as long as the shooting remains under investigation, he would not discuss it in detail. He declined, for example, to say whether Cruz or a second person shot by Johnson, a passenger in Cruzs car, was armed. Nor did he offer any information about what authorities have described as an altercation leading up to the shooting.

Police said the trouble began when Johnson, at home Sunday evening at his Addison apartment complex, saw the two teens breaking into a vehicle. When he confronted them, they fled in Cruzs Dodge Challenger. Johnson pursued them in his SUV, said Addison Police Chief Paul Spencer, who joined Fuller at the news conference.

The teens car spun out of control about a half-mile from the apartment complex, at Marsh Lane and Spring Valley Road in Addison, Spencer said. That was where the altercation ensued and the officer opened fire, Spencer said.

Cruz was killed at the scene. Edgar Rodriguez, a classmate of Cruzs, was shot in the head. He underwent surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital and is expected to survive, the Dallas Morning News reports.
A man on death row for killing two undercover New York City police officers cannot be executed because he meets the legal standard to be considered intellectually disabled, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

In his 76-page decision, U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis vacated Ronell Wilson's death sentence and imposed a new punishment of life in prison.

"In reaching this decision, the court in no way minimizes or excuses the cruelty and depravity of Wilson's action," Garaufis wrote. "Having presided over this tragic case for more than a decade, the court quite frankly finds it impossible to muster any sense of sympathy for this defendant."

Wilson, 33, was a young gang member on Staten Island in 2003 when he murdered undercover detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews in an illegal gun sting gone awry. The officers were shot point-blank in the backs of their heads.

A jury sentenced Wilson to die by lethal injection, making him the first federal defendant to receive a death sentence in New York City since the 1950s. An appeals court threw out the sentence in 2010 because of an error in jury instructions, but a second jury re-sentenced him to death in 2013. Wilson has been on death row at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, the Associated Press reports.


Trooper First Class J.J. Cornelius is expected to make a full recovery from his injuries. (Photo: West Virginia State Police)

West Virginia State Police say a trooper had to stab a man who tried to choke and drown the officer in a Randolph County creek.

Troopers said the incident started Wednesday afternoon when Trooper First Class J.J. Cornelius of the Elkins detachment was attempting to serve an arrest warrant for Nathaniel Wegman, 27, at Pond Creek, commonly known as Mill Creek.

Wegman, who was wanted on a burglary charge in Indiana, fled on foot. Cornelius was able to catch up with him in a stream, also known as Mill Creek. Wegman resisted arrested and assaulted Cornelius, causing him to fall and hit his head on the creek bottom, the release said.

Wegman then tried to choke and drown Cornelius, State Police said. The trooper couldn't reach his gun because he was pinned to the ground, but was able to get to his knife, which was used to stop the assault, the release said.

Wegman is now in custody in the hospital recovering from stab wounds, WCHS TV reports.
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By Emily Flitter

NEW YORK (Reuters)  Some rabbis and Jewish students are planning protests against Donald Trumps speech on Monday at a conference of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC over what they say are his belittling comments about Muslims and other groups.

About 18,000 people are expected to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committees three-day annual conference in Washington. It is not clear how many will either boycott or walk out of the Republican presidential front-runners address.

He has taken every opportunity to vilify women, Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants and the disabled, said Jeffrey Salkin, a rabbi in Hollywood, Florida, who asked rabbis across the country to join him in a boycott. He said 40 had agreed and signed a protest letter he hoped to distribute at the conference.

Another group of rabbis and students called Come Together Against Hate is planning to walk out of the room after Trump takes the stage. Jesse Olitzky, one of its organizers, said he did not know how many people would participate. The groups Facebook page had 300 members.

Some of the students received an email earlier this week from AIPAC warning that if they disrupted the speech, they would have their conference access revoked. An AIPAC official said on Thursday the message went out in error and was not authorized.

I know nothing about that, Trump said in a Reuters interview on Thursday when asked if he had heard about the planned protests and whether he intended to respond.

When he announced his candidacy last summer, Trump said some people crossing the U.S. border from Mexico were criminals and rapists, and promised to build a wall along the border.

In December, he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, on national security grounds. Last week, he told CNN: Islam hates us. The Anti-Defamation League and an organization of Reform rabbis condemned his comments.

AIPAC, which is non-partisan, routinely hosts presidential hopefuls at its conference. Trumps remaining Republican rivals, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich, will address the group as well.

The job of AIPAC is not to decide whose policies we like or look into the souls of people, said Seth Siegel, an AIPAC veteran who said he was not speaking on behalf of the organization.

Its the organizations job to try to educate elected officials about how to deepen the U.S.-Israel relationship for the benefit of both parties, he said. Having Trump speak at the policy conference is unambiguously part of that mission.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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The political revolution of Bernie Sanders continues to grow as his campaign has moved west thanks to supporters who raised $4 million in three days.

According to the Sanders campaign:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders drew more than 3,200 supporters to a rally at a high school gym here as he carried his campaign for the White House on Friday to rallies in Idaho, Utah and Arizona. The enthusiasm Sanders saw at Skyline High School in this Rocky Mountain city was matched by backers all over the United States who have donated more than $4 million online since Tuesday. . In the past three days alone the campaign received more than 150,000 contributions. Nearly 20 percent of the people who donated since Tuesday were first-time contributors. Donors, who on average gave $27, said they support Sanders because he cares about working families, not the top 1 percent. . Supporters also expressed appreciation for Sanders commitment to fighting Americas corrupt political system and for continuing to reject super PAC money despite heavy outside spending by Wall Street-funded super PACs in support of his rival for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC backing Hillary Clinton, spent more than $5 million in February and March alone.

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign has always been about more than winning a presidential nomination. Sen. Sanders is trying to fundamentally change American politics through a grassroots political revolution. Sanders is bringing together millions of Americans who have been betrayed by a political process that has become overrun with special interest and dark money.

Success or failure should not be measured only by Democratic primary election results. Bernie Sanders has already changed the conversation in American politics. The Sanders campaign has not given up winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, but there is more at stake than a presidential nomination.

Bernie Sanders is leading a political revolution that wont end in Philadelphia in July because Bernie Sanders has united millions around a common goal of taking government back from the billionaires and corporations and returning it to working Americans all across our great nation.
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By Alastair Macdonald and Julia Fioretti

BRUSSELS (Reuters)  The most-wanted fugitive from Novembers Paris attacks was wounded in a shootout in Brussels on Friday and still holed up at the scene, Belgian newspaper DH reported.

Other media said a person had been wounded and possibly killed in the Brussels district of Molenbeek while television footage showed masked, black-clad security forces guarding a street in the capital.

A police spokeswoman said an operation was ongoing and could not give further details.

Belgian police had found finger prints belonging to Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman from Brussels suspected of taking part in the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, during an earlier operation, prosecutors said.

The Belgian federal prosecutors office also said an Algerian killed during that earlier operation at the apartment in Brussels on Tuesday was probably one of the people French and Belgian investigators were seeking in relation to the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

It later said in a separate statement that Mohamed Belkaid was probably the man who went under the name of Samir Bouzid and was killed on Tuesday.

Public broadcaster RTBF said it had information that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up in Paris, was more than likely one of two men who police have said evaded capture at the scene before a sniper shot dead 35-year-old Belkaid as he aimed a Kalashnikov.

Other Belgian media were more cautious, however, saying only there was evidence Abdeslam had been there.

A man named Samir Bouzid has been sought since December when police issued CCTV pictures of him wiring cash from Brussels two days after the Paris attacks to a woman who was then killed in a shootout with police in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.

She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and is suspected of being a prime organizer of the attacks in which 130 people were killed. Both died in the apartment in St. Denis on Nov. 18.

Frances BFM television said the fingerprints were found on a glass in the apartment, where four police officers, including a Frenchwoman, were wounded when a hail of automatic gunfire hit them through the front door as they arrived for what officials said they had expected to be a relatively routine search.

Belgian officials said earlier in the week that police had not expected to find armed suspects at the apartment and that the presence of French officers was not an indication the raid was of special importance to the investigation.

Abdeslams elder brother was among the suicide bombers who killed themselves in Paris during a shooting rampage in which 130 people died. The younger Abdeslam was driven back to Brussels from Paris hours later.

Belgian authorities are holding 10 people suspected of involvement with him, but there has been no report of the fugitive himself being sighted. There has long been speculation in Belgium that he could have fled to Syria.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the November bombing and shooting rampage in Paris was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought in Syria for Islamic State.

The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks for fear of a major incident there. Brussels has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular sight.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

UPDATE via PoliticusUSA: Numerous media reports are confirming that the suspect has been captured alive and is in custody.
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AIPAC is under fire over its decision to invite Republican front-runner Donald Trump to its annual policy conference in Washington, DC.

While it isnt unusual for AICPAC to invite presidential candidates to its conferences, Trump is far from a typical candidate. Aside from inciting violence at his rallies, Trump panders to the underbelly of American society with speeches that say, I feel your hate.

Trump used his speech at AIPAC as an excuse to back out of Fox News debate scheduled for March 21 So the fact that Jews or organizing a boycott of that speech is awkward. It is not, however, without cause.

The Anti-Defamation League has long been a critic of Trumps candidacy, most recently for his refusal to denounce David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.

It is imperative for elected leaders and political candidates like Mr. Trump and others in the public eye to disavow haters such as Duke and the other white supremacists who have endorsed his candidacy. By not disavowing their racism and hatred, Trump gives them and their views a degree of legitimacy. Even if it is unintentional on his part, he allows them to feel that they are reaching mainstream America with their message of intolerance.

The Washington Post reports that 40 Rabbis organized a boycott of Trumps speech because they are worried he and his ideas will gain legitimacy with the tacit approval of AIPAC.

The Union for Reform Judaism reacted in a statement.

Mr. Trumps extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric reminds us that our own ancestors access to American shores of freedom and promise were once blocked, with deadly consequences. When he speaks hatefully of Mexicans or Muslims, for example, we recall a time when anti-Semitism put Jews at deathly danger, even in the United States. We cannot remain silent, for we have been commanded to remember the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Rob Eshman, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal, said of AIPACs invitation to Trump:

By giving Trump a platform without taking a stand on outright hate speech, AIPAC is helping to fuel this discord. Thats the core moral mistake AIPAC is making.

Eshman went on to say that Trumps anti-Muslim rhetoric should be a red flag for conference organizers since roughly 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Muslim.

A Group called Jews against Trump launched an online petition, opposing Trumps appearance at the Conference. The petition says, in part:

Trump is a divisive political figure who traffics in hate and who harbors vile racist and anti-Semitic supporters. He has called for the mass-expulsion of immigrants, denying asylum to refugees, and enacting violence against his political opponents. A person so diametrically opposed to Jewish values has no place on a stage championing Jewish causes.

Jewish concerns about Trumps candidacy are not limited to his hateful rhetoric. Jews are concerned about the anti-Semitism common among Trump surrogates and supporters.

Aside from David Dukes endorsement, several known Anti-Semites robo-called for Trump on super-Tuesday.

Trump supporters shouting go back to Auschwitz! during a shouting match at Trumps Cleveland rally are impossible to ignore.

And Rev. Mark Burns suggestion that Democratic Candidate Bernie Sanders said of Democratic he gotta get saved, he gotta meet Jesus, isnt fooling anyone. After all, he isnt the first Trump surrogate to suggest that Jews can be perfected if theyd just find Jesus. Ann Coulter said it first.

Trump (and his supporters) can point to the fact that his daughter, Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism all he wants. It doesnt remove the anti-Semitic rhetoric of his surrogates and the rampant anti-Semitism among his supporters. Most importantly, it doesnt remove the reality that Trumps hate speech draws too parallels with one of the darkest periods of world history.
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It is most unlikely there are very many Americans who have not heard the term piss off the Pope. It generally means that there are some transgressions so offensive that they would piss off (enrage) even the most good-natured person. Apparently, even a Vatican Archbishop serving as the official Vatican Ambassador to the United States can transgress to the point that he pissed off the Pope. In fact, the Holy Father is so vexed with the Archbishop for putting him in a publicly embarrassing situation that he is replacing (read fired) the uber-conservative Archbishop. He still has miles to go, but there is more to like about this new and improved Pope all the time; even for an avowed secular humanist.

The offensive Italian Archbishop, Carlo Maria Vigano, will vacate the position of what Catholics call apostolic nuncio to the United States; the American equivalent of an ambassador from the Vatican. His replacement is a French clergyman, Christophe Pierre, who is serving as the apostolic nuncio to Mexico and is said to be an immigration advocate, and not an ultra-conservative social warrior like Vigano. It was Viganos conservative views on marriage equality in the United States that incited him to ambush the Pope with Kim Davis; the evangelical bigot the evangelical right reveres as a minor demigod.

As a loving and extreme socially conservative representative of Christ, Vigano was vocally and vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage during his five-year tenure as the Vaticans nuncio to the United States. Apparently, Vigano looked at the evangelical rights influence and power over the government and believed he was as influential and above his position as the morality overlords in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB); Pope Francis disabused Vigano of that belief.

What really pissed off the Pope was learning that Vigano sent the anonymous invitation to Kentucky County Clerk and evangelical bigot Kim Davis asking her to visit the Pontiff prior to his leaving Washington D.C. to return to the Vatican. The Pope probably does not condone or even like the idea of marriage equality, but he apparently hates being ambushed into meeting with the American face of evangelical bigotry, Kim Davis. Apparently Archbishop Vigano believed, like Kim Davis, anti-LGBT organization Liberty Counsel, and religious right fanatics everywhere that publicizing a private meeting between the Holy Father and Kim Davis was a coup for Americas evangelical bigotry and religious fanaticism.

According to Vatican sources, it was that conspiratorial ambush-by-bigot that was the transgression so offensive that it pissed off the Pope enough to fire Vigano. According to a close friend of the Pontiff, Francis claimed he was blindsided by the meeting and it prompted the Vatican to quickly distance itself from Vigano. Many insiders believed Pope Francis would quietly replace the archbishop as his statutory retirement age was approaching, but he did piss off the Pope and it was a transgression too offensive to address quietly.
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A new report confirms that five television networks cut a deal with Donald Trump that has effectively turned their coverage over to the Republican frontrunner and turned the networks into Trump propaganda arms.

According to a report by Buzzfeed, five television networks allowed Trump to take control of their coverage of his campaign:

Two network sources also confirmed the unprecedented control the television networks have surrendered to Trump in a series of private negotiations, allowing him to dictate specific details about placement of cameras at his event, to ensure coverage consists primarily of a single shot of his face.

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Under the Trump campaigns conditions, camera crews would not be able to leave the press pen during Trumps rallies to capture video of audience reactions, known in the industry as cutaway shots or cuts. Networks would also not be able to use a separate riser set up to get cutaway shots. The terms, which limit the access journalists have to supporters and protesters while Trump is speaking, are unprecedented, and are more restrictive than those put on the networks by the White House or Hillary Clintons campaign, which has had Secret Service protection for its duration.

Facing the risk of losing their credentialed access to Trumps events, the networks capitulated. They did, however, get one concession: When Trump finishes speaking, one person with a camera is allowed to exit the press pen to capture him shaking hands on the rope line while he exits. That footage is then shared among the networks.

Instead of standing up to Donald Trump, executives from ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, and Fox News have basically turned their coverage over to the Republican frontrunner. This means that all three cable networks (MSNBC is owned by NBC), and all three traditional broadcast networks are not practicing journalism. The networks have allowed Donald Trump to turn their coverage into propaganda for his presidential campaign.

The reason the footage of violence at his rallies comes from people in attendance more often than members of the media is because the media has agreed to stay in one fenced off area and not shoot anything but Trumps face. As the Buzzfeed article pointed out, the network cameras have intentionally allowed themselves not to be positioned to capture the crowd.

The obvious advantages for Trump are that there are no shots of any violence broadcast live on television, and there is also no network live footage to dispute his lies about crowd size. The media has been trending in the direction of willing Republican accomplices since they refused to push back on George W. Bushs lies before the Iraq war.

Driven by ratings and a mandate from corporate ownership to turn a profit, news executives have sold out duty to inform the public in exchange for more access to Donald Trump. The media playing field is not fair. The Democratic nominee that might face Donald Trump in the general election is not going to be on equal footing.

The next time one of Donald Trumps incoherent speeches is plastered wall to wall on every news network, remind yourself that this is happening because the networks sold you out. The best way to break the networks Trump addiction is to vote with your remote.

When Donald Trumps face shows up on your screen, change the channel. If enough Americans turn off Trump, the networks will be forced to end their biased coverage.
In foreign countries mobile towers are erected outside the city and boosters are erected at various points to transmit signals. (Photo: Pixabay)

The Supreme Court on Friday decided to examine whether mobile phone towers emitting electro magnetic waves cause very high radiation and it is hazardous to human beings and animals.

A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices Ms. R. Banumathi and Uday Lalit asked the petitioners to submit scientific reports, if any, to show that mobile towers cause radiation, and it is harmful.



The Bench was hearing a batch of appeals from various High Courts relating to erection of mobile towers in towns and cities. The Rajasthan High Court held that such mobile towers are harmful and ordered all base towers for fourth generation (4G) telecom services to be removed.

The High Court held that radiations emitted from mobile phones and mobile base towers are "hazardous to children and patients". The court also asked all mobile companies with towers in Rajasthan to relocate these from a periphery of 500 meters from prisons and those falling within a 100-meter distance of ancient and archaeological heritage monuments.

The court emphasised that electromagnetic radiations emitted from cellphones as well as mobile towers have both thermal and non-thermal effects, that is, these waves cook human tissues just like a microwave oven would if a body is exposed to these radiation for long. However, Himachal and Delhi High Courts have dismissed petitions challenging erection of mobile towers and the apex court is dealing with all appeals.

During the hearing on Friday, senior counsel for the PIL petitioners argued that mobile towers are harmful and the ban on erection of such towers should continue. Counsel Prashant Bhushan submitted that he would produce a number of scientific reports to prove the harmful effects of mobile towers. However, senior counsel L. Nageswara Rao, appearing for service providers rejected the claim and said there is no conclusive proof that there is radiation from mobile towers and these towers have harmful effects on human beings.

The CJI asked the counsel as to what is the position in foreign countries and said in London there are no mobile towers. Unless you are able to show the harmful effects of radiation from mobile towers on scientific basis we can't pass any order.

Counsel replied that in foreign countries mobile towers are erected outside the city and boosters are erected at various points to transmit signals. This system is not being followed in India as service providers will have to incur huge costs for erection of boosters.

The CJI observed that one retired judge who died of cancer had written a book in which he says he was afflicted with cancer as he was using mobile phones for longer hours and even holding conferences on mobile phones. The CJI said though it is not sure whether the cancer was as a result of mobile phones or not.

The Bench asked counsel to file additional affidavits in support of the claim that mobile towers cause radiation along with scientific reports if any to this effect and posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.
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In the words of Donald Trump supporter David Duke, the same guy who said comparing Trump to Hitler could only serve to rehabilitate the reputation of Hitler, the nomination of Merrick Garland Basically gives Jews total veto over The Supreme Court. Who knew that Garland represented all Jews, and apparently, only Jews?

According to Trumps very vocal antisemitic supporters, those self-proclaimed champions of those poor victimized white European Americans, Garland is a Jewish supremacist. Isnt it funny how being Jewish makes you a supremacist when being a Christian does not? After all, according to this logic, isnt Trump then a Christian supremacist? And how is that a good thing?

Here is what Duke had to say in his radio program Thursday (transcript courtesy of Media Matters for America):

Look at the Jewish control of this country. You already have three open Jewish members of the Supreme Court. Thirty-three percent. Theyre only two percent of the population. You can count on those Jews to do whatever the Jewish agenda is, whatever the Jewish establishment wants. In fact, they probably already have at least three-and-a-half members because Sotomayor apparently, according to a lot of sources, has a lot of what they call Sephardic Jewish ancestry, Spanish Jewish ancestry. Thats a big problem among some Latino groups. And so thats maybe three-and-a-half Jews.



And now Obama, who is totally under the power of the Jewish control, hes been, in fact theres a reason why the Chicago Tribune calls him the first Jewish president. And why the New Yorker magazine had him as the first Jewish president, alright? Hes appointed a Jewish supremacist to be the guy on the Supreme Court, which basically gives Jews total veto over the Supreme Court. As Ive said before, there was no more powerful part of the federal government in this country than the Supreme Court.



[]



So the Supreme Court, which is unelected, which is basically elected by political cronies, which is a Jewish-controlled establishment today, and money, and media, whoever gets the praise of the media, whoever gets the money, the media, is basically something thats really in the power  and you dont have to have an absolute majority as we can see in elections. You can have a plurality. Theyve got a plurality in the United States Supreme Court.

Funny how the United States Constitution does not stipulate that the Supreme Court be a demographic representation of the countrys ethnic or religious composition. Funny how, with so many African-Americans, we cant have a black president. Whats really amazing, however, is that now, after years of being told Obama is anti-Jewish, being told that hes actually under the control of some nefarious Jewish cabal.

Stranger yet is Dukes claim that Garlands nomination should bother Latinos, because People For the American Way board member Dolores Huerta applauds the choice of Garland, saying that she is proud that Obama nominated someone as qualified and committed to the Constitution as Merrick Garland at a time when Latinos have a huge amount at stake at the Supreme Court.

Huerta recognizes that what is important is Garlands commitment to the Constitution, not his ethnicity or his religion. It is a shame David Duke and other white supremacist followers of Trump cannot get past the 1930s in their own misshapen worldview.

Conservatives spin lies so fast that its difficult to keep up. George W. Bush must be proud. His is the administration that invented revolving reality after all. Whats true today is not true tomorrow. Trump has already demonstrated his own firm commitment to changing reality from day to day.

Speaking of which, remember when Donald Trump bragged about what a great friend he is to Israel? How is it you can be a friend to Israel and revel in the support of antisemites? It is a question Israelis might want to ask themselves, not that they can anymore control Americas electoral process than its foreign policy. Best to be prepared for the worst, however.

It has been claimed that Garland is anti-gun. Even more bizarrely, anti-pollution, as if thats a bad thing. His biggest problem of course is being nominated by the first president in U.S. history to have his second term limited to three instead of four years. He is a victim, ultimately, of the GOPs rejection of the United States Constitution.

This is in stark contrast to what, as Marge Baker, Executive Vice President at People For the American Way describes as, Garlands own deep commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law.

What is remarkable are all the excuses being thrown about to justify the refusal to consider him for the Supreme Court. Being a Jew is certainly the most appalling. And it is amazing how meaningless Judeo-Christian is when it is not used in defense of supposed moral values like traditional marriage.

We see how valued the Judeo part of that ideological construct is when it turns out somebody is actually Jewish.

It is true that Donald Trump does not select his supporters. But he has the opportunity to reject their rhetoric, something he has declined to do, even going so far as to credential a white supremacist journalist at one of his rallies. The simple fact is that by not rejecting this rhetoric, Trump is giving it his tacit approval. Anyone who is not one of Fox News white Christian Republicans should be very afraid of Donald Trump and what he represents.
New Delhi: Signalling a tough line on the issue of chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' despite controversies, Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah said 99 per cent people agree to hailing 'Mother India' with the slogan and the party would "convince" the rest.

Speaking at a media conclave in New Delhi, Shah justified the government's action on the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, insisting that some people deciding to hold a programme to commemorate Afzal Guru's death anniversary in itself is "anti-national".

In his interaction, which lasted over an hour, the BJP president expressed confidence that BJP will form a government in Assam but reacted cautiously about its prospects in other states, saying the party will work to increase its influence and play a role in government formation in these states.

Responding to questions on the controversy surrounding 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' chants, Shah said that the particular slogan was used widely even before RSS and the BJP came into picture.

"99 percent of the people agree with the slogan. This debate is irrelevant. Those who do not want to chant this should be asked what is their problem with this slogan. We will convince the one per cent people, who do not want to chant it," Shah said.

When asked whether AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who said he would not raise the chant hailing 'Mother India' "even if a knife is put to my throat", is a traitor, he said, "No one becomes a traitor due to just one thing" and added "we will have to consider all other things and then come to a conclusion".

Read: Those not saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' should leave India: BJP

The BJP chief also said there is no need to say Bharat Maata Ki Jai under pressure from RSS or BJP. "The slogan has been in existence and has been chanted much before RSS, and much before BJP came to power," Shah said.

Read: Wont chant hail Mother India, not in Constitution: Owaisi tells RSS

Asked about controversial comments made by party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya that those who do not chant the slogan should be sent to Pakistan, the BJP chief said one should rather listen to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and he himself said.

To queries on the JNU row, he said the very fact that an event was organized on February 9 to commemorate Afzal Guru's hanging is anti-national.

"There is no confusion in BJP about this. If some people decide to hold a programme to commemorate Afzal Guru's death anniversary, this itself is anti-national," he said.

Read: Razakars also objected to chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai': Venkaiah Naidu

Shah said he does not consider Rahul Gandhi's visit to JNU during the students' protests as wrong, but voiced reservations against the Congress vice president delivering a speech there accusing the Modi government of trying to suppress their freedom of expression.

"I am against this statement of Rahul Gandhi that some people want to suppress your freedom of expression," he said.

Shah went on to say that the Congress was in alliance in Kerala with Muslim League, which was responsible for India's partition.

Read: Row over 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' reflects challenging times: Smriti Irani

At this Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was seated among the audience rose and defended the alliance, saying the Muslim League in Kerala was different and was founded after the partition. Tharoor said its policies were not communal.

When told about the allegations that his government was crushing freedom of expression, Shah shot back asking "give me one example."

Taking a dig at Congress for its criticism of BJP over alleged intolerance, he said the UPA government had acted against internet giant Google for allegedly showing a cartoon against Congress president Sonia Gandhi "while I keep all cartoons against me on my website".

Asked whether his relationship with the Gandhi family is not good, Mr Shah said, "It is true that the relationship is not good. As far as I am concerned, the relationship is not good. I do not know about them." Mr Shah said BJP was on course to achieve its target of a "Congress-free India" and cited the election results in some states as example.

Asked about BJP's prospects in five states, Shah reacted cautiously. "The Party will work to increase its influence and to play a role in government formation in these states." About Assam, he, however, expressed confidence that the BJP will form the government.

On Aligarh Muslim University's minority status issue, he said that AMU is "not a minority" institution. He said the BJP demands that it should implement reservation for SC/ST and OBCs in admission there.
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Patna: A case of sedition was slapped against MIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi in Bihars Gopalganj Chief Judicial Magistrates court on Thursday for hurting sentiments of people by refusing to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

The case was filed by Qurban Ansari after his 90 year mother Rashidan Khatoon lost consciousness when she heard Mr. Owaisis statement on TV.

In his complaint he has said that Owaisis statement was inflammatory enough to hurt feelings and sentiments of my mother who loves her country very much. The CJM court which accepted the case has reserved the date for hearing.
The Guam Department of Education may be a little closer with acquiring solar power for four leased schools if the Consolidated Commission on Utilities approves a newly developed contract between the department and its landlord, the Guam Education Financing Foundation.

GDOE is pursuing solar energy in accordance with Public Law 32-095. The leased schools are Okkodo High School, Adacao Elementary School, Liguan Elementary School and Astumbo Middle School.

The attorney general has instructed GDOE to submit any power purchase agreements (PPA) to GPA for review.

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The department submitted a PPA to the utility last year but GPA General Manager John Benavente decided in November 2015 that the provisions of this contract did not meet specifications outlined in the law.

Guam law states that GDOE cannot pay a solar power provider more than 80 percent of GPAs most recent billing for the school or campus. The PPA set the first years billing price at 23 cents a kilowatt hour but by using the utilitys September 2015 billing, Benavente calculated 80 percent of that billing periods price to be around 19 cents per kilowatt hour.

Using the number of kilowatt hours in September (about 600,000), Benavente estimated that the 23 cent provision in the agreement was more than $34,000 above the legal limit.

Moreover, Benavente had issues with the PPAs escalation rate. The law allows for power purchase agreements to include an escalator rate but Benavente stated that the 2 percent escalator in the contract was not in line with common market rates.

Negotiated contract

GDOE came back to the utility with a renegotiated contract on Feb. 16 containing a base year price of around 19 cents a kilowatt hour and an escalator rate of about 1.5 percent annually. Upon reviewing GDOEs billing, Benavente found that the base price did comply with the laws requirements.

In a meeting on Wednesday, he recommended that the CCU approve the new contract with a rate no more than 19.6 cents for the first year.

However, Benavente did not seem convinced that the contract was negotiated to the best prices.

Whether thats the best contract, Im not sure. But it complies with the law, Benavente said.

Back in November 2015, Benavente said a more common escalator rate hovered around 0.5 percent.

Were not the one thats negotiating, he said Wednesday. We just pointed it out to them.

GDOE Superintendent Jon Fernandez has stated previously that the department looked at exit strategies within its agreement with GEFF in case solar somehow creates a loss for the department.

GPA would also like a system impact study to be conducted before the solar panels are installed.

The utility has expressed concern before with the strain solar power places on the power grid through frequency changes. It suggested that whatever mitigation measures are recommended as a result of the study be put in place at the expense of GEFF.
The company responsible for providing up to 10 megawatts of wind power has personally requested the Consolidated Commission on Utilities to extend a contract that expired earlier this month.

Enrique Cruz, president of Pacific Green Resources LLC, appeared before the commission on Wednesday to explain why his company has not yet begun construction on the wind turbines and asked that an extension be granted.

We are at your mercy right now, Cruz said. "Whatever you need, other additional information, we will provide you."

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Pacific Green signed a power purchase agreement with the Guam Power Authority in March 2013. The contract expired at the beginning of March this year.

The company was initially tasked with producing about 5 MW of solar power along with about 10 MW of wind power but the contracts were signed separately in the event that another company would acquire a project from Pacific Green.

In mid-2013, Quantum Guam Power Holdings LLC acquired the solar contract from the company. Cruz said other investors were interested in acquiring the wind project, but those proposals fell through and his company was left responsible for moving forward with the wind contract.

Prior to inquiries from investors, Cruz said Pacific Green had always intended to complete the project on their own. But it has been three years since the company was contracted by GPA, and so far no construction has occurred at the site in Dandan where the wind turbines are meant to be stationed.

Gathering data

Cruz said Pacific Green spent two years of this time gathering data to determine how theyll be able to generate the power they promised, a necessary step to acquire funding for the project. Another year was spent surveying and acquiring the necessary permits. However, the company did manage to secure several million dollars to back the project.

Initially, the company wanted to build 34 units similar to the wind turbine built in the Cotal region of Yona. But this turbine was built using a $2.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Interior's Office of Insular Affairs. Using this as an example, Pacific Green said moving ahead with the initial plan would have cost about $70 million to build a 10 megawatt wind farm.

This was because the cost for parts and equipment remains relatively expensive. The company has since decided to build three larger turbines to the tune of about $40 million.

CCU Chairman Joey Duenas said the matter is under review by GPA management and the commission cannot issue a decision until a recommendation is issued. This likely wont occur until April.

Meanwhile, Pacific Green continues to move forward with its plans to build the wind farm.

If we delay and wait until they tell us then thats two months late again, Cruz said. Were progressing with the mindset that theyll approve.

If the CCU ultimately decides to deny the request, then Cruz said the money his company had already spent was money spent on a learning experience.

Pacific Green is asking for an additional year to complete the project.
Yes, at the GEC voting center at the Westin.

Yes, at one of the satellite voting centers open on Saturdays.

No; I'm voting on Nov. 8.

No; I'm not voting in the general election.

Vote

View Results
New Delhi: Amidst concerns being aired over the quality of political discourse during polls, the Election Commission will on Saturday urge political parties to maintain "high standards" and not to cross the 'lakshman rekha'.

At a meeting tomorrow that will feature the six national and 49 state parties, the poll watchdog will also discuss the proposal for hiking the security deposit of poll candidates, which is at present Rs 25,000 for Lok Sabha and Rs 5,000 for Assembly polls. The amount is almost half for SC candidates.

The poll panel will also demonstrate 'totaliser', a new machine to enhance secrecy of votes during counting which prevents disclosure of voting pattern. EC has approached the Law Ministry with a proposal for the introduction of these machines.

The poll panel is of the view that the use of 'Totaliser' will bring a further level of secrecy in voting and the mixing of votes at the time of counting will be achieved, which will prevent the disclosure of pattern of voting at a particular polling station.

At the closed-door meeting, the Commission will also discuss the issue of 'indirect campaigning' in areas which go for polls in a multi-phased election.

There have been instances when election rallies that are being held in areas where campaigning is on are beamed live to areas where voting s underway. With no technology for jamming the signals, the Commission will seek the opinion of the political parties on the contentious issue.

EC also wants to introduce the concept of candidates who have served with the government needing to furnish a 'no dues' certificate.
Joe Asch gazes into a crystal ball and, assuming that whats present is prologue, imagines the news that might well come from Dartmouth in the year 2025. Here are some of the items:

* President Hanlon proudly announced that starting next year each and every undergraduate student would have a dedicated Assistant Provost. We are proud that we lead the nation in student support, he said. Whatever issues face our students can be dealt with by direct professional help. The College now has 6,482 non-faculty staffers on the payroll, up from 3,503 in 2015.

* Dartmouth was shut down for this terms third Day of Study after yet another nanoaggression took place. A female student of color reported to the Colleges 842-person Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) that a male undergraduate had tilted his head and squinted at her in a way that made her feel that he was thinking racist thoughts. This unacceptable behavior must end, said President Hanlon. All students have been offered counseling should they feel aggrieved by the deeply troubling event.

* In a drop that had some wags calling it 25 in 25, the Colleges U.S. News ranking slipped two places to #25. Rankings mean little, The D quoted Phil Hanlon as saying. I am confident that Dartmouth has the finest undergraduate program in northern New England, and it is only going to get better. However many commentators expressed the belief that in 2019, the institutions 250th birthday, when the number of graduate students exceeded the number of undergrads in Hanover, our reputation took a hit.

* Psi U fraternity was derecognized last week after an empty bottle of Smirnoff was found in its trash. Although the bottle had been used for many years as a candleholder, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Inge-Lise Ameer said that she felt that Dartmouths no-tolerance policy regarding hard alcohol was paying dividends. Weve been able to use it to get rid of the frats. You cant beat that, she was quoted as saying to her personal staff during their weekly meeting in Spaulding Auditorium. Psi U was the Colleges last remaining Greek House, save for Alpha Phi Alpha.

* In a protest that Dean Ameer called yet another wonderful, beautiful thing, over two hundred BLM activists burned down Sanborn Library for the second time in as many years. Fortunately only nine students, all of the Colleges current English majors, were injured in the fire. Among the BLM groups 6,666 demands was the insistence that as of next year all members of the faculty be of color in order to redress millennia of racism in American life. The Trustees met in emergency session and agreed to add another $400 million to the diversity and inclusiveness budget.

Read them all. And weep.
AFP has published the photo featuring the poster of Presidents Obama and Castro in central Havana yesterday, characterizing the photo as a revolutionary change to the portraits of Che Guevara and other communist leader plastered around Cuba. The accompanying AFP story carries the headline Move over Che: Obamas the new poster in town.

Someone observed this week (I think, and Im sorry I dont recall who) that the United States has improved relations with two countries under the administration of Barack Obama: Iran and Cuba. In the case of Iran, Obamas slobbering devotion is strictly a one-sided love affair. In Cuba, however, Obama may have a groovy thing going with the Castro brothers.

According to AFP, the poster is not the handiwork of the Castro regime. I doubt that it could stay up for 30 seconds in central Havana without official approval. Nevertheless, AFP reports that the poster is the creation of a restaurant owner harboring pro-American sympathies:

Welcome to Cuba, the poster says under the Stars and Stripes and the Cuban flag. Miguel Angel Morales, owner of La Moneda Cubana restaurant, said putting up the poster was a big step in a country where the United States has been long been the enemy and where political imagery is tightly controlled. As far as I know theres never been a portrait of a North American president before, Morales, 41, told AFP. In our restaurant weve had the US flag up inside for five years, but this is also the first time weve shown it outside, he added. Morales said he hoped the authorities would not tell him to remove the picture. Well see what happens, he said. The more publicity the better for me, because it will be harder for them to do anything against us.

For Americans, the Move Over Che sentiment has a different meaning than the one AFP intends to evoke. It provides a handy precis of the Obama era and Obamas proclivity toward one-man rule. Here again this morning I draw on the wisdom of Junie B. Jones: Boom! Do the math.
A group of rabbis is planning to boycott Donald Trumps speech to AIPAC next week. The proposed boycott has nothing to do with Trumps statement that, as president, he would be neutral as between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. One suspects that many of the irate rabbis have no objection to this approach, which (giving him the benefit of the doubt) has animated President Obamas Middle East policy. Rather, the boycott is based on Trumps illiberalism.

The rabbis move is hardly surprising. As Norman Podhoretz persuasively argued in Why are Jews Liberal?, for many non-Orthodox Jews, liberalism has replaced traditional Judaism as the true Jewish religion.

What does traditional Judaism teach us about boycotting unpleasant speech? Jeff Dunetz argues that it teaches us to listen to it.

The rabbis who intend to boycott Trumps speech think they have heard enough. According to the Washington Post, they object to his praise of authoritarian figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and his harsh rhetoric on illegal Mexican migrants, which they claim is reminiscent of the anti-immigrant sentiment that greeted European Jews in generations past.

I object to these positions as well. But do they warrant an extraordinary call for a boycott against the likely Republican nominee? Not unless you have an ulterior, partisan motive, it seems to me.

Trumps views on authoritarianism are a legitimate concern, and liberals arent the only people expressing them. However, President Obamas flirtation with authoritarian figures, coupled with his disregard for the constitutional limits on his power, should be more concerning.

The Obama administration has empowered some of the worst authoritarians in the world, including the mullahs in Iran who are rabidly anti-Semitic and who aim to destroy Israel. To my knowledge, rabbis have never boycotted Obama.

As for immigration, there is no relationship between Trumps misguided proposals to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily ban Muslim entry on the one hand, and the treatment of European Jewish immigrants 100 years ago on the other. Trump proposes to deport only those who are here illegally. (By right, they should be deported, though considerations of humanitarianism and practicality militate against mass deportation.) And the Jews who entered the U.S. did not belong to a religion many of whose members are waging a holy war against our country.

The boycotting rabbis have strong policy disagreements with Trump. But policy disagreements dont justify a refusal to listen.

Thats why the rabbis couch their disgust with Trump in terms that invoke the Jewish experience with authoritarianism abroad and discrimination in the U.S. As noted above, however, this attempt requires distortion.

By engaging in distortion, the rabbis demonstrate that they are driven by a political, rather than a religious agenda. But what else can we expect from them? As Dunetz points out, and as non-liberal Jews know oh-so well, Reform and Conservative Judaism are dominated by leftism.

Indeed, some of us have at times felt like boycotting our religious services rather than enduring liberal rants posing as religious sermons. The impulse isnt admirable, and neither is the proposed AIPAC boycott of Donald Trump.
The national audience for Mr. Finkielkrauts themes, returned to obsessively and buttressed by a seamless web of references, is now larger than ever in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2015.

Before and after the attacks, those themes have not varied: Much of Islam is radically incompatible with French culture and society; Muslim immigrants represent a threat; French schools are crumbling under a mistaken multicultural outreach; the inherited corpus of French culture is in danger; and anti-Semitism is on the rise again, this time by way of Islam.

Many of the 2015 attackers were French. Hatred of France is present in France, Mr. Finkielkraut said in a recent interview. What the attacks proved is that we have a redoubtable and determined enemy.
PR-Inside.com: 2016-03-18 11:23:01

CeBIT2016: Inspur Shows Core Equipment and Releases Marketing Strategies in Germany

Inspur Group Co ., Ltd.

Ann Liu

Marketing Director

Marketing Department Overseas Business,

Mob: +8613581863707

Tel: +86(010)57452207

Mail: annliu@inspur.com

Web: www.inspur.com

On March 14-18, 2016, the yearly CeBIT was held in Hannover, Germany. Inspur, as the world leading cloud-computing and big-data service provider, joined this event. During the event, a high-level meeting was held between Inspur and SAP for deeper cooperation in the future. Inspur released the marketing strategies in Germany for the first time and showed high-performance core products and solutions, including whole cabinet server SmartRack, TS860, K1and HPC.

Arrangement in German Market for Cloud Altas

Inspur is a leading global cloud computing integrated solution supplier. In the future, Inspur is to direct at the European market, mainly Germany, and to focus on four modules, including IDC, the Internet, HPC and the telecom. Inspur is planning to cooperate with the excellent local enterprises to share technological solutions and connect Made in China 2025 with German Industry 4.0 through informatizaiton. Inspur is to arrange in German market in the following three ways:

A. Localized layout for local customer: Inspur is going to build branches in Germany and the UK and provide comprehensive products and services with product, solution, logistics, service and finance for German and European customers as a whole. Inspur is to offer lower-cost and more efficient IT infrastructure with its overall strengths both in software and hardware as well as its rich experience.

B. Widespread commercial cooperation for win-win situation: Inspur is the leading cloud-computing total solution provider. Based on the deepening cooperation with SAP, Inspur is to co-establish R&D laboratories with more German partners, provide comprehensive technological supports and services from training and communication to expert cultivation, always putting customers value as the priority.

C. Advanced product solution for technological sharing advantages: as the most successful supercomputer provider in China, Inspur is willing to cooperate with German research institutions, enterprises and universities to form technological sharing advantages and co-develop this vast practical market.

The Inspur Group announced that it would be joining hands with the famous American company Cisco to invest 100 million dollars to establish a joint venture company in China. Inspur has become one of Ciscos top three global strategic cooperation partner. After signing official cooperation agreement with the famous enterprise, SAP, Inspur released its strategies in Germany this time which is a firm step into German market. It foresees Inspurs expansion in German market which will bring dynamism into German cloud computing market.

Further Cooperation with SAP

During the exhibition, the head of SAP German paid a visit to its booth and discussed further cooperation with David Chen, President of Overseas Sales and Marketing for Inspur Group and John Zhang, the CEO of Inspur Germany.

Inspur has always been a very important strategic partner in the market. I hope to have further cooperation concerning cloud service, based on the advantages of cloud computing and big data on both sides, the head of Inspur said. It is known that intelligent manufacturing and enterprise cloud are some of which they would cooperate in the future. Inspur and SAP is to build up Joint Product R&D and Innovation Center to fulfill the needs of optimization of solutions and identification of database engineers. Currently, Inspurs famous products, Tiansuo K1 System and Sybase ASE have finished system compatibility and performance optimization.

Focusing on Cloud Trend and Share Cloud Technology

The core team of Inspur introduced the value, concepts of this brand and the overall strength of cloud computing. As a large-scale IT enterprise group with a history of 70 years, Inspur is now an industry-leading cloud computing total solution provider. Inspur is a key member of Open Stack, SPEC, TPC and other international standardization organizations. Inspur obtained Special Contribution Award presented by SPEC in 2016.

Vice director Giorgio Nebuloni explained the development of cloud marketing technology and frontier marketing trends at the booth. In this CeBIT, Inspurs core technological products drew the attention of participants. Inspur Tiansuo K1 System is the first minicomputer of China which turns China into the 3rd country other than the US and Japan to grasp the core technology. Inspur has become one of the top five manufacturer of UNIX operating system server. According to the data of IDC non-x86 in the third quarter of 2015, Inspur Tiansuo K1 has taken 14% market share in the high-level Unix market ($250,000 unit price), ranking no. 2. Currently, K1 has been widely applied to key areas, such as overseas finances, electronic power, transportation and acknowledged by customers and partners.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201603180052
Across the Nasarawa-Benue borderline, Agatu was still hundreds of miles away but passengers on the motorway were already getting an eyeful of savagery. In a village farm with fresh ridges heralding a new planting season, a young Fulani herder was perched on a cashew tree, his cattle trampling below him.

Armed with a machete, he was hacking away at the lush branches, felling them to the ground for the animals to feed. The farm owners stood outside their huts and like the passing motorists could only watch helplessly as the cash crop was stripped bare and their yam seedlings destroyed.

The routes to Makurdi and on to Otukpo and Apa were characterized by the same landscape and scenario. Along both sides of the road were hundreds of farmlands with ridges and all dotted with cashew trees, mangoes and oranges; and all tempting sights to nomadic herdsmen and their livestock.

Provocative as the first cross-border scene was, the young Fulani herder on the cashew tree was simply conducting his business in a peaceful manner, going by the benchmark of good relationship between farmers and armed herders in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria.

Weeks ago, the Agatu region of Benue State became a red spot on the world map when Fulani cattle rearers in combat gears, armed with the trademark AK-47 rifles, invaded several villages and farm settlements in broad daylight, gunning down children, women, men and the elderly alike. About 300 villagers were reportedly massacred in the first killing spree with heavy casualties recorded in communities like Aila, Okokolo, Akwu, Adagbo, Odugbehon and Odejo.

With soldiers from 82 Division Enugu stationed in Aila and Obagaji, the headquarters of Agatu Local Government Area, the alternative access road from Apa was a connection of snaky farm roads that crisscrossed several abandoned villages. PREMIUM TIMES travelled those routes on the back of a motorbike, transported by one of the brave young men who have now taken to sneaking into abandoned villages in search of unburnt food barns, especially bags of locally produced rice to salvage and take back to their displaced families in Apa and elsewhere.

From Aila to Obagaji, Akwu to Odejo, the invaders burned down houses, churches and police posts. Here and there corpses were seen lying in the most grotesque positions. The totally dried corpses in various stages of decomposition were pointers that the killings must have been done at different times. The gory sights equally suggested that the marauders kept coming back for returnees, undeterred by the presence of soldiers.

Adejo, the motorbike transporter who invariably doubled as a tour guide pointed out what used to be the family home of one Deborah Onuminya in Aila. The four-bedroom bungalow was badly burnt. So also was a kitchen and pen house behind it. A charred television antennae was still hanging on, a reminder of the status symbol of its owner in a farming community that grew yam, cassava, rice, beans, guinea corn, pepper and tomatoes. Skeletons of iron beds, a television set, a refrigerator, crates of soft drinks, burnt mattresses and beddings, childrens books and shoes and a toy tricycle could be found in various parts of the building. In one of the rooms, apparently used as a store, were bags of charred grains, baking pans and a bag of either burnt flour or garri.

Two days earlier, PREMIUM TIMES had met Deborah Onuminya at a displaced peoples camp in Otukpo. The 36-year-old mother of three had said she had no clue whether her husband was dead or alive. Mrs. Onuminya and her family had only four years ago relocated from the city to her home village, Aila. While her husband was already a successful farmer, the housewife was just getting established in catering business.

I can farm but I decided to do something different like making buns, puff-puff and chin-chin. As a matter of fact, on that fateful day that Fulani attacked us, I had just returned from the city where I had gone to buy baking materials for my small business, she had said.

Recounting the hour the attackers descended on her village, Mrs. Onuminya had told PREMIUM TIMES:

The Fulanis came in about 1.00 p.m. I had just returned from the market and was sleeping on a mat under a tree outside my house when pandemonium broke out. Some youths were screaming and alerting everyone that armed Fulani men had invaded us. I grabbed my children and fled without a blouse on. People were running in different directions amidst sounds of gun fire. Some people did not know where their children were as they ran. Most of our men were in the farm that hour when the Fulani struck, so we had nobody to defend us as children, women and the elderly were shot dead or butchered with knives. Most of the people killed were the children and elderly who could not run fast enough, and others who ran back into the house to take cash or carry one belonging or the other.

Between the kitchen and the pen house in Mrs Onuminyas burnt home was the charred remains of a human body. The youthful escort on motorbike told PREMIUM TIMES he could not identify the victim just as he could not tell if it was the body of a man or a woman. If that was the body of Deborahs missing husband, then he had probably ran home in a fatal attempt to rescue his family.

Another Aila housewife, Amina Peter, told PREMIUM TIMES how she lost three male family members to rampaging Fulani herdsmen about a month before the mass massacre that drove every survivor into exile. Mrs. Peter gave the names of her murdered family members as Choche Abu, Enechie Obochi and Godwin Gordugbor. According to her, the three men were loggers and were working inside the forest with a power saw when the noise of their engines apparently attracted some Fulani herdsmen. The three men were shot at close range, she said.

Piecing together the bloody history of Agatus relationship with herdsmen, 41-year old former police officer, Shaibu Ahmadu, told PREMIUM TIMES in the Otukpo IDP camp that the latest mass killing was the climax of an expansionist agenda that began years ago in Nassarawa State by the Fulanis. Earlier, communities like Tom-Anyiin, Tom-Ataan, Mbaya and Tombu in Buruku Local Government Area of the state have fallen to the Fulanis.

I never knew a day like this will come when Aila my village will be burnt to the ground. Until now, we were shielded because of our location by other villages like Adana, Abugbe, Ocholonya, Ogboju and Odogheho; those were neighbouring communities that had in the past come under Fulani attacks.

This time the invaders came by boat from Nasarawa State. They crossed the River Benue by boat to our place. Before it was the river that was protecting us but not anymore as the Fulanis invaded in their hundreds by boats, Mr. Ahmadu lamented.

The former police officer added that Aila had always been coveted by the Fulanis.because of its extremely fertile farmlands. To get to this prized target, the herders chose first to target and conquer Okokolo community.

Explaining the strategy, Mr. Ahmadu said:

Okokolo was a kind of fortress populated by a brave and headstrong clan; that was where the Fulanis had met the fiercest resistance to their incursion. So they must have told themselves that if they can attack and run over Okokolo, everyone else will get the message. To achieve this, they attacked Okokolo not once, not twice but three times. They came today, tomorrow and the next.

It was a war. And once they burnt down Okokolo, they marched on Akwu, Adagbo and finally Aila. It was impossible to repel them; we were just ordinary farmers with hoes and cutlasses while the Fulanis were armed with AK-47, the ex-cop explained, with eyes misty.

A history of bloodbath

Agatu is not the first homeland in Benue State to receive what is now referred to as baptism of fire from herdsmen. Between 2011 and 2014, suspected herdsmen attacked dozens of communities in the four local government areas of Guma, Gwer-East, Buruku and Gwer-West, some more than once.

The hometown of the late Tor Tiv IV, Alfred Akawe Torkula, in Guma was razed. Similarly, houses, food barns and farmlands were burnt and scores killed in communities like Tse-Aderogo, Tse-Akenyi, Umenger, Angyom, Aondona, Anyiase, Adaka, Gbajimba, Tyoughtee, Gbaange, Chembe, Abeda, Mbachoon, Tongov and Mbapuu.

Barely five days to the end of Governor Gabriel Suswan administration in May 2015, over 100 farmers and family members were massacred in villages and refugees camps located at Ukura, Per, Gafa and Tse-Gusa in Logo Local Government Area of the state.

The unlucky communities were only playing hosts to refugees from previous attacks by the suspected herdsmen.

In July 2015, suspected herdsmen attacked Adeke, a community on the outskirt of the state capital, Makurdi. Last December, six persons were killed at Idele village in Oju local government area. A reprisal attack by youths in the community saw three Fulani herdsmen killed and beheaded. The Oju killings were followed by an attack this January at Ucha Nyiev village, near the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi.

Residents of the beleaguered State were yet to get over the aftershock of Ucha Nyiev when the suspected herders struck again, this time in Ega Adapati, an island in Agatu local government. It was gathered that before this last attack on the wider Agatu, local intelligence units had raised the alarm that the herdsmen were mobilizing weapons and men at Loco, a border community in Nasarawa State.



Territorial conquest

A disturbing pattern may have appeared with the large-scale invasion of Agatu. Whilst in the past the herdsmen would attack, kill and disappear, this time with Agatu they appeared to have come with an occupation agenda.

Adejo, the motorbike transporter who also interacts with a new anti-Fulani local militia called the Agatu Warriors, told PREMIUM TIMES that most of the sacked villages had been taken over by the Fulanis who he said were pouring in from Nasarawa with their cattle. The development, he said, was responsible for the inability of the fleeing natives to return to give mass burial to corpses littering the villages and farmlands.

They are coming in large numbers with their cows. The military is not stopping them. If we can go beyond here (Aila) to Abugbe, Ocholonya or Adana, you will see Fulani in combat jackets with sophisticated guns grazing their cows, Adejo said.

When asked if he knew who was arming the herdsmen and supplying them combat gears, Adejo said he had no idea. He however added that most of the nomadic herdsmen were not owners of the cattle they lead.

They are not the owners; most of them are merely working for some rich men who own the cattle. It is a billion naira business, yet these big men have refused to build ranches and use irrigation to grow grasses to feed their livestock; instead they have unleashed millions of their cows and herdsmen on the farmlands of poor and defenseless people of Benue, Adejo argued.

At the refugee camps in Otukpo, Ojantele, Ataganyi and Ugbokpo, virtually all the survivors of the Agatu massacre have continued to repeat one story: the use of a helicopter in the coordinated attack. Though that claim has roundly been dismissed in official quarters as a figment of the imagination, the survivors both young and old and from different villages have continued to hold on to their story, insisting a helicopter supported the Fulani attack, dropping off arms and food to the invaders.

Adejo said: Even if I forget other things that happened as I was running, I can never forget the sight and sound of a helicopter. A helicopter is something you can see wherever you are. At first when I saw it, I thought it was the military coming to repel the Fulanis. What I cannot say is whether the helicopter was dropping arms or not.

The inability of the Nigerian soldiers deployed in Agatu to arrest even one attacker has again fueled suspicions of complicity by security agents.

Ex-cop, Shaibu Ahmadu, recalled that in March 2014 when the then Benue governor, Gabriel Suswan, was on an assessment tour of Guma following yet another Fulani hostility, he came under gunfire as he approached Tse-Akenyi. Minutes before the governor was attacked, a detachment of military personnel in his convoy suddenly turned back and abandoned him in the middle of the road. That claim could not be independently verified by PREMIUM TIMES.

Similarly, following the current Agatu killings, the council chairman, Godwin Iorsue, had decided to go on an assessment tour of the area when he was ambushed and attacked by elements occupying the territory. Mr. Iorsue, who was accompanied by the Divisional Police Officer of Buruku, said the armed herdsmen numbered about 30 while he had only four policemen in his team.

The former policeman, Mr. Ahmadu, said he had no explanation for the seeming lack of determination by the military to tame rampaging herdsmen.

The Niger Delta militants did not kill their fellow Nigerians before the Federal government declared war on them; the Biafra agitators were not even shooting catapult at anyone when government went after them. So why is it difficult for the same Federal Government to declare war on Fulani herdsmen who for years now have been on rampage, from one community to other and from one state to another, Mr. Ahmadu asked.

Mrs. Onuminya said the uncertainty about her husband was killing her. She recalled with regret that when the Fulani first began to come to her village to graze, she would sometimes give them food and water. She too could not understand that the invaders were bringing in their cattle in trailers and soldiers were not stopping them.

The government is saying it is wrong of me to say my home is my home; government is saying it is wrong of me to say my farmland is my farmland; they are saying we should not have economic rights and that for us to be counted as good citizens, we should allow the Fulanis to graze their cattle anywhere they like, destroying our crops, our harvest and entire economic investments.

But we have been doing that for years, allowing the destruction without complain; but even that is no longer enough. Now they want all of us dead and government is looking, the housewife said.

Crocodile tears?

The Fulani populations across Nigeria believe the Agatus were the aggressors and are only shedding crocodile tears.

Saleh Bayeri, the interim national secretary of Gan Allah Fulani association, an umbrella body of Fulani associations in Nigeria, told PREMIUM TIMES the Agatu people started the crisis in 2013 when they killed a prominent Fulani leader in the area.

He said about 20 Agatu and Tiv militia on April 20, 2013 invaded the compound of one Sehu Abdullahi where they killed him and carted away over 200 cows.

Mr. Bayeri said the Police in the area arrested four of the attackers carrying some of the meat on their motorcycle and they were taken to Naka police station.

He also said 16 of the attackers abandoned their motorcycles and ran away and the police took the motorcycles to the station.

According to him, the police confirmed to the Fulani leaders that they knew the where 150 of the cows were taken to.

And the divisional police officer promised to recover and return the cows, but up till today, nothing has happened, Mr. Bayeri said.

The Fulani leader however, added that the major reason the crisis between the Agatu people and Fulani escalated arose three days after the murder of Mr. Abdullahi and stealing of his cows.

A prominent Fulani leader, Ardo Madaki, was invited to the palace of the district head of the area on the grounds that a solution is being sought to the problem, he said.

However, the Agatu militia beheaded the Ardo right in front of the district head. This action reverberated across all Fulani people in the whole of West Africa and the clamour for revenge began to grow strong. He (Mr. Madaki) came from a very well respected clan and the Agatu sent the Fulani a chilling message with his murder, he said.

Till date, no action was taken, even by the village police station on this murder, he said.

He also said the Fulani has records of how the Agatu killed over 300 of their people, adding, but because we dont have people in government or the media, no one said anything when genocide was being carried out against our people.

He called on government to set up an independent judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the killings.

We have a full inventory of all the Fulani people killed by Agatu and we will produce the evidence as long as the inquiry commission is not under the National Assembly.

We have no confidence on the National Assembly because of the overriding influence of the former Senate President, David Mark, who knew how the Fulani were being massacred and did nothing but use his influence to cover it up.

The Sultan of Sokoto was in Benue state three times trying to find a solution to the problem, but David Mark never came once or even send a representative.

Is it now that he knows the meaning of genocide? Where was he when over 300 Fulani were killed in his area? he asked.

A week ago, gunmen said to be Fulani herdsmen attacked Mr. Mark. The gunmen had shot at his convoy on Friday during a visit to assess the amount of damage on the Agatu following the crisis.

Mr. Mark, who was accompanied by ex-minister of Interior, Abba Moro; a lawmaker representing the Ohimini/Otukpo constituency, Ezekiel Adaji; security aides, journalists and supporters, was shot at by attackers, believed to be herdsmen.

According to reports, Mark restrained his security detail from firing back to avert a bloody exchange.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday secured the conviction of one Emmanuel Akabueze (also known as Temple Nneameka Obiora), who was prosecuted on a three-count charge of criminal conspiracy, obtaining money by false pretence and forgery before Justice Fatu Riman of the Federal High Court, sitting in Kano, Kano State.

Mr. Akabueze, while parading as Nneameka Obiora, an accountant in Mother Cat, in connivance with one Tony Momoh, who introduced himself as an old acquaintance working with PHCN to the complainant, sometime in April, 2012, told him (complainant) of his desire to contract the purchase and supply of a Solar Model ISA for one of his foreign business partners.

Along the line, the convict and his accomplice collected the sum of N410,000.00 (four hundred and ten thousand naira) from the victim to perfect the deal, and thereafter went underground.

Efforts by the victim to either have them deliver on their promise or recover his money were unsuccessful.

After diligent prosecution, Justice Riman found Akabueze guilty and sentenced him to three years imprisonment on each count. The sentence is to run concurrently.

The judge also ordered the convict to pay back the money to the victim as restitution, a statement by EFCC spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, said.
Indonesia has waived visa requirements for nationals from an extra 79 countries, thereby expanding its list of visa free nations to 169.

A statement from the Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Friday in Jakarta that the waiver was in continuation of government efforts to boost foreign visitor numbers.

It said the government has set a target to attract 20 million foreign tourists annually by 2019, as an effort to boost growth in the economy.

Last year alone, 9.73 million tourists visited the Indonesia, it said.

Another statement from the Cabinet Secretary said President Joko Widodo has signed a decree, granting visa-free entry to tourists who wish to travel in the country for 30 days.

It said the presidential decree came into effect once it is ratified, adding that the Legal and Human Rights Ministry authorised it on March 10.

The statement said that Australia is included in the list of countries after the country was mooted three times last year.

Australia requires foreigners to have visa to enter into the country.

In 2015, the Indonesian government expanded the list to 90 from 15 visa-free countries. (Xinhua/NAN)
It was also decided during the meeting that the professors will bring this to the notice of the Vice Chancellor with a request to restore normalcy on campus. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Vouching for academic credentials of the students named in the probe report of the controversial Afzal Guru event on February 9, a group of JNU faculty members has noted that the sequence of events "does not constitute a major act of indiscipline".

In a meeting of Chairpersons of all Centres of School of Social Sciences, attended by 17 faculty members yesterday to discuss the findings of the report, it was noted that several students who have been named in the probe report were from the same centre.

"Despite the procedural lapses in inquiry process, it appears from available sections of the inquiry report whatever transpired does not constitute a major act of indiscipline," the minutes of the meeting said.

"It was also reported that the teachers who have known these students for long and have interacted with them in classrooms and supervisors were of the view that their conduct and performance hitherto have been exemplary," it added.

It was also decided during the meeting that the professors will bring this to the notice of the Vice Chancellor with a request to restore normalcy on campus and ensure that the named students can return to normal academic activity.

After a high-level committee of the university found them "guilty" of "violating university norms and discipline rules", show-cause notices were issued to 21 students on March 14 asking them to explain why disciplinary action should not be initiated against them.

They have been given time till today evening to reply to the notices following which a final decision regarding the "quantum of punishment" will be taken by the administration.

The students have called for a protest demo at the administration block against the findings of the report and the functioning of the committee.
The Ekiti State Government has described the claim by the Department of State Security Services (SSS) that it detained a member of the state House of Assembly, Afolabi Akanni, for committing security breach and that it was not aware of a court order on his release as ridiculous, and open display of contempt for the rule of law.

Addressing journalists on Friday, the Special Assistant to the Governor on Public Communications and new Media, Lere Olayinka said the SSS should tell Nigerians when Hon. Akanni committed those offences amounting to breach of security? Did Hon. Akanni plot coup or is he leading insurgents to warrant his detention without trial?

Mr. Olayinka, who was flanked by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Idowu Adelusi, said as a result of SSS refusal to be served with the Court Order on March 11, the order was published in a national daily Thursday as directed by the court.

The government, which explained why it raised the alarm over Mr. Akannis possible death yesterday, said; We wish to reiterate that the state government addressed the press yesterday, based on the information available to it and since the DSS was not talking to anyone concerning the status of Hon Afolabi Akanni and others in its custody, the government had no option than to bring the disturbing information to the public domain and also call for calm among residents of the State.

It said; From the pictures of Hon. Akanni that we saw on television and published in the newspapers, it is without doubt that he is terribly sick and in need of urgent medical attention, and the disturbing information about his death could have been informed by his critical state of health. Hon. Akanni even told journalists that he slumped twice yesterday and that he was refused access to medication.

Evidently and as even reported in the newspapers today, the Hon. Akanni paraded before the press by the DSS yesterday was very sick.

The press reported that he could not stand on his feet and we wish to ask the DSS whether it actually wants him (Akanni) to die!

If truly the DSS has facts and evidences that Hon. Akanni committed offence of security breach, why not charge him to court and prosecute him with the facts and evidences before the service? Or is the DSS waiting for Hon. Akanni to supply evidences with which he will be prosecuted?

If the DSS is claiming that Hon. Akanni is being held for committing serious security breach, why was the State Commissioner for Finance, Chief Toyin Ojo invited by the DSS? What is the correlation between Ecological Fund, claim of Federal Government refund to Ekiti State on construction of federal roads and State Security?

For clarity, Chief Toyin Ojo was asked by the DSS investigators how much was refunded to Ekiti State by the federal government on federal roads constructed/rehabilitated by the State government and how ecological fund released to the State was spent. He was also asked how Governor Ayodele Fayose election was funded. How are these issues related to the security of Nigeria? What is the business of the DSS with the finances of Ekiti State?

Also, former Special Assistant to the governor on Internally General Revenue, Ropo Ogunjobi is being kept in the DSS custody since March 4.

Did he also commit serious security breach or he is just being held to extract information as to the finances of Ekiti State in furtherance to the mandate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) gladiators in the State, who are working on what they called the 2006 Template?

Did Secretary to the State Government, Dr (Mrs) Dupe Alade, Chief of Staff; Chief Dipo Anisulowo, Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice; Owoseni Ajayi, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs; Kola Kolade, Commissioner for Works; Kayode Osho, Special Adviser on Political Matters; Alhaji Demola Bello and other officials of the State government already listed for arrest and

indefinite detention also commit serious security breach?
On behalf of the entire PDP women, I join members of the civil society to express profound disappointment and displeasure over the dismissal of the Nigerian Gender and Equal Opportunities bill by the Nigerian Senate, on Tuesday March, 2016.

This regressive action ironically occurred at a critical time when the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) conference is currently holding in New York, USA.

The implication of throwing out the Gender and Equal Opportunities bill is that the incidences of rape, domestic violence, maternal mortality, poverty e.t.c, which have been ravaging our country will continue unchallenged. The dismissal of that bill essentially undermines the contributions Nigerian women are making towards our national development.

That bill is not just about women. It is centred around the survival of the family system in Nigeria. If that bill were passed, the greatest beneficiaries would have been the menfolk, who are undoubtedly the heads of families. Nigerian women have partnered with them in building stable homes and the society at large. Nigerian women have proved capacity to lead and capacity to follow in national development.

Nigerian women are very conscious of positive Nigerian cultures and tradition but however, they propose to eliminate those factors that retard our socio economic development to comparable international standards. I watched the debate and I pay tribute to some of the male senators who made very positive contributions in support of the bill for which the female senators fought hard but lost the battle.

Women constitute more than 50% of the population of the country; unfortunately, they are only a minute minority in both the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly. It is therefore no surprise that that bill was thrown out. That bill was about humanity and not about women.

I therefore plead with the Senate to revisit this bill, especially in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially as the Senate President has already promised to reconsider it.

Signed:

Kema Chikwe

PDP National Woman Leader
A group, the Nigerian Christian Elders Forum, has strongly condemned the recent inclusion of Nigeria in the Saudi Arabia-led coalition against terrorism.

The decision to join the group was announced by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Addressing Journalists in Abuja, Friday, the NCEF chairman, Solomon Asemota, said the action was a clear negation of the rights of Nigerians as well as a lack of regard for the views of non-Muslim Nigerians who took part in bringing the new administration to power.

Including Nigeria in the Saudi Arabia Military coalition of Muslims/Arab nations would appear that the foreign policy thrust of the current administration is to make Nigeria a satellite state of Saudi Arabia, the group said.

Any nation in which Islamists believe that they are sufficiently strong to exercise influence rarely experiences peace.

Mr. President should kindly remember that over 50 per cent non-Muslims of Nigeria did not vote for the nation to become Sharia compliant, the group said.

The NCEF said the inclusion of Nigeria in the Organisation of Islamic Conference, OIC, in 1975, as well as its recent inclusion in the Saudi-led coalition was an attempt by Muslim leaders to dominate the country, with the teachings of Islam.

While Islam is a religion; Islamism, otherwise called political Islam, is a set of ideologies that hold that Islam is not a religion, but a political system meant to dominate the environment in which it is practised, it stated.

The group said some policies and decisions of the Buhari government has given Nigerians cause for concern.

N900 billion was released as bailout to states without appropriation. International commitments are being made without resource to the National Assembly, it pointed out.

The group also noted the, Attempt to fund deficit in the 2016 budget through issuance of Sukkuk loan which is a Sharia compliant loan.

The NCEF aslo said the decision by the Kaduna State government to enact a religious bill was a shocking.

We wish to express tremendous shock at the proposed Kaduna state bill. The proposed bill contravenes section 38 (1) of the 1999 constitution, the group stated.

The NCEF expressed dismay at what it described as the Federal Governments inaction to the carnage and destruction perpetrated by the Fulani Herdsmen.

According to media reports over 300 Nigerians were allegedly massacred by the Fulani Herdsmen. Till today, there has been no prosecution of any of them, it stated.

The NCEF also decried the decision of government to establish grazing reserves across the nation, saying the proposal is a deceptive attempt to appropriate the land of indigenous ethnic groups for Fulani Herdsmen to spread terror across the nation.

The group called on the government to convene a Council of State meeting to enable past presidents of Nigeria assess the developments in the country, and make suggestions that will lead to the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

According to the group, the commission which should follow an enactment of law, should among other things, study the problem of terror in Nigeria and ensure the prosecution of culprits.

The NCEF called on ethnic groups to introduce community policing to protect its indigenes, while urging the government to re-introduce the study of history in secondary schools.
The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on Friday launched a fresh bid to block his trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.

Mr. Saraki appeared with 80 lawyers at the tribunal, where he is facing charges of alleged false asset declaration.

Mr. Sarakis team of lawyers, led by a former Attorney General of the Federation, Kanu Agabi, urged the tribunal to strike out the charge against their client on the grounds that the details of the charge as presented at the tribunal were invalid.

The tribunal had on March 11 adjourned its sitting after Mr. Agabi demanded a ruling on an earlier application contesting the tribunals jurisdiction.

Prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, told the court he was not aware of the application made by Mr. Agabi.

At resumed hearing Friday, Mr. Jacobs said he was served with an application by the defence to strike out the case completely.

Mr. Jacobs cited sections of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act to buttress his point that the application was not ripe for hearing.

He argued that the details of the new application were the same as those of the previous application determined at the Supreme Court, in which the court ordered that the CCT had Jurisdiction on the matter.

According to Mr. Jacobs, the new application amounted to a duplication of applications before the court.

He added that such an act was in clear negation of the proceedings of court, as enshrined by law.

But in his reply, Mr. Agabi cited section 3 (D) of the court schedule, stressing that Mr. Saraki should have been invited by the Code of Conduct Bureau before charges were filed against him.

He said the charge as presented should have emanated from the Bureau, after Mr. Saraki had been given an opportunity to either affirm or deny the said allegations.

Mr. Agabi noted that the statement of Mr. Saraki affirming or denying the allegations against him should have formed the basis of his trial and the absence of such a statement implies that his client had not been given a fair trial.

The case was adjourned till March 24 for determination of the latest application.

The judge, Danladi Umar, ruled that the tribunal would finalise its ruling on the application and deliver its judgement on March 24.
The remains of James Ocholi, the Minister of state for Labour and Employment, who died in a car accident, were on Friday, laid to rest amidst weeping, wailing and eulogies from family members, friends, colleagues and associates.

Mr. Ocholi was buried alongside his wife, Blessing, and son, Joshua, in their family home in Abocho, Biraidu District, Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State.

The three family members died in an auto crash on March 6, on the Kaduna-Abuja highway.

Speaking at the funeral service, the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, described the three deceased family members as saints called home by the creator.

He urged Nigerians to imbibe the scriptural injunction that in all circumstances, thanks should be given to God.

Mr. Osinbajo said Mr. Ocholi, Blessing and Joshua played their parts in the vineyard of the Lord in diverse manners but all towards the common goal of advancing the kingdom of God.

He stressed the need to be grateful to God for giving them the grace.

He said although some apostles died a tragic and painful death, still the scripture says precious in the sight of God is the death of a saint because their death is victory for heaven.

Three saints went home on the 6th of March, he said.

In his speech titled The Veil is Lifted, Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, described life as reality show from which none gets out alive.

He said mankind had accepted the fact that everyone must die but lamented the horrible circumstances of the Ocholis death.

My dear people, without doubt, this is one harvest of deaths too many for Kogi State.

After barely any respite from a similar sorrow in the recent past, Kogi mourns again, he said in reference to the demise of Abubakar Audu on November 22, 2015.

Mr. Bello recalled that the late Mr. Ocholi cooperated with him when he was elected governor, adding that they shared a common vision of greatness and unity for the state.

Bishop John Ibenu of Chapel of Freedom International, Lokoja, who represented Archbishop Sam Amaga of Foundation Faith Church, led other officiating ministers in the funeral service.

He urged Christians to be prepared for the imminent end.

In his homily titled The Invitation You Could not Resist, Mr. Ibenu urged the people to make their ways right with God before the invitation, which could neither be deferred nor resisted.

Some members of the Federal Executive Council, lawyers, judges, friends and family members attended the burial.

(NAN)
The Ekiti State Government on Thursday alleged that the State Security Services was planning to arrest all the members of the state executive council and members of the House of Assembly, creating panic and fear among officials.

The secretary to the Ekiti State Government, Modupe Alade, who spoke to journalists in Akure, said as a result of the intimidation, executive council members and aides to the governor and lawmakers were currently being harassed by phone calls from the SSS in an attempt to intimidate them and disrupt their normal activities.

She however noted that state had prepared itself to resist the attack from the federal government.

Mrs. Alade alleged that the federal government was intimidating the Ayodele Fayose-led government by using the SSS to arrest the all the lawmakers and commissioners in the state.

The lawmakers earlier picked up by the security apparatus include Afolabi Akanni, Musa Arogundade, Badejo Anifowose and Sina Animasaun.

On Thursday, the SSS presented Mr. Akanni to journalists several days after his arrest, in an attempt to dispel a claim by the government that the lawmaker had died in custody.

Mrs. Alade said as a result of the arrests, other aides of Governor Fayose and lawmakers were living in fear, noting that her choice of Akure to address the press was to avoid SSS arrest and harassment.

The secretary said she had been receiving telephone calls through a number +447442364448 from a man who called himself Paul Okafor who claimed to from the SSS, and from other anonymous callers, telling her to report herself at the SSS office in her own interest.

Mrs. Alade said she considered the invitation through the telephone as not serious because it was not formal, but stressed that it was a ploy to disrupt the Fayose administration by the federal government.

It is hoped that democracy and the rule of law will be allowed to thrive in Ekiti State and Nigeria as a whole. All attempts to truncate democracy in Ekiti State will be resisted by all means, she said.

It is quite unfortunate that the federal government has kept mute over this illegality. People now discuss in hush tones that DSS officials are in the state to arrest and bundle more legislators and some executive members, the SSG inclusive.

Mrs. Alade called on well-meaning Nigerians to intervene in the matter. She insisted that all the people of Ekiti were solidly behind Governor Fayose whom she said was the target of the alleged intimidation by the security operatives.

I have no skeleton in my cupboard, but for them to be embarrassing me with phone calls, I will not accept that, said Mrs. Alade.

We know all these are being done to Governor Fayose and those who are close to him because of his critical stance on the federal government and we are yet to see a Constitution in Nigeria that makes speaking ones mind on national issues a crime.

She however added she would honour any invitation of the SSS if it was done formally.
A meeting with Hungarian President Janos Ader and participation in observances marking the Day of Polish-Hungarian Friendship are planned as part of Polish President Andrzej Duda's visit to Hungary. The president arrived in Budapest on Thursday evening. The official part of the visit will begin on Friday morning.

"This is a continuation of the president's visits preceding the forthcoming NATO summit in Warsaw and in the ABC countries (Adriatic, Baltic, Black Sea - PAP)," presidential minister Krzysztof Szczerski said.

"The president visited the Czech Republic on Tuesday. A visit to Slovakia is planned in the first half of the year," Krzysztof Szczerski said, adding that this would be the fourth country of the Visegrad Group visited by the Polish head of state.

According to minister Szczerski, talks in Budapest will focus on the construction of infrastructural links in Central Europe which are necessary to build a community of interests. "Energy, transport and environment projects are worth discussing," he stressed.

The minister added that other topics of President Duda's talks will include migration and eastern policy as well as the reform of the EU. Krzysztof Szczerski stressed that Poland and Hungary had different opinions regarding economic ties with Russia but on the other hand, Hungary was a member of the coalition of the NATO eastern flank countries which signed a joint declaration in November.

The Polish president and his wife Agata will be officially welcomed in Budapest on Friday morning. Later the two heads of state will chair plenary talks which will be followed by a press conference.

On Friday afternoon President Duda will meet with Polish businessmen. Later on Friday the Polish and Hungarian presidential couples will attend the opening of an exhibition "On a common road. Budapest and Krakow in the Middle Ages". Planned is also a meeting with Poles living in Hungary.

On Saturday morning, President Duda will meet with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban. Later in the day, the Polish and Hungarian couples will attend the inauguration of observances marking the Polish-Hungarian Friendship Day. (PAP)
Cisco Delivers on Vision of Andhra Pradesh as a Digital State

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Visakhapatnam,  Cisco today announced a series of strategic initiatives to help accelerate the digital transformation of Andhra Pradesh. Digital disruption is a reality and is transforming every country, state and city.

A digitized state aims to drive GDP growth, create jobs and foster innovation, enhance research and education, stimulate entrepreneurship, accelerate business innovation, develop economic cluster initiatives, and support infrastructure. Towards that end, Cisco and the government of Andhra Pradesh have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which includes skills development for the new digital economy through expansion of the Networking Academy program, investing in innovative startups in the state, establishing an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam and Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in Tirupati focused on manufacturing and cyber security solutions, sponsoring a research program at University of Andhra to develop and customize digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh, and expansion of the Golden Mile project with Cisco.



The MoU between Cisco and the Government of Andhra Pradesh was signed today as part of the inauguration of Indias first statewide broadband project  AP Fiber-Net  in Visakhapatnam, in the presence of the Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Sri Chandra Babu Naidu, and other government dignitaries John Chambers, Executive Chairman, Cisco; Irving Tan, President, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan; and Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC.



Boost Research and Innovation in Andhra Pradesh



Cisco will set up an Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in Visakhapatnam to foster regional innovation and will enable partners and startups to build solutions around IoE and engage in rapid prototyping. This will also act as a platform to bring startups, accelerators, developers, researchers, ecosystem partners and the venture community together to showcase possibilities of the Internet of Everything.

In addition to this, Cisco will also invest in an advanced Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in the Institute of Digital Technology (IDT), Tirupati, focused on cyber security, smart city and manufacturing solutions. The centre will help train graduate engineers in advanced digital technologies and solutions and equip them with skill sets required for the digital era.



As part of the initiative to boost research, Cisco will sponsor and collaborate with Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on a 12-month research program to identify and explore the possibility of developing and customizing digital technologies and solutions for rural Andhra Pradesh.



Expansion of Cisco Networking Academy program to support Skill India



As India plays a pivotal role in Ciscos overall growth, innovation and talent strategy, the company announced plans for the expansion of Cisco Networking Academy in 70 colleges to train approximately 10,000 new students in the state of Andhra Pradesh over next three years. As part of Ciscos commitment to accelerating Digital Andhra Pradesh, the company will work with the state to integrate NetAcad courses as part of the technical education curriculum. This will help India increase its pool of highly skilled technology professionals.



The Cisco Networking Academy in India is one of the largest programs for Cisco worldwide. Across 180 academies nationwide, more than 100,000 Indian students have been trained since its inception. The skills-development program is a cloud-delivered, scalable, high-quality program that helps students learn how to design, build, secure and maintain computer networks and prepare for jobs in the digital economy.





Partnership with GoAP for the Expansion of Golden Mile Project



As part of the Golden Mile project, Cisco has started deploying key technologies in the 5 km area including Smart Wi-Fi, Smart Safety & Security, Smart Lighting, Smart Parking, Smart Transports, Smart Bus Stops, Smart Kiosks, Remote Expert for Government Services (REGS) and Smart Education in the city of Vijaywada. As part of the expansion of the project, Cisco announced that it will develop new applications specifically for Indian Smart Cities and collaborate with the state for its upcoming Smart Cities in AP.







Cisco Delivers on AP Fiber Net



As part of its commitment to help the state realize its vision of Digital Andhra Pradesh, and lead as a role model for digital transformation for other states to follow, Cisco has collaborated with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to design and implement AP Fiber Net, the first statewide broadband project in India. AP Fibre Net is a huge step toward realising the governments vision to provide broadband on fiber to every house in the state. This transformational project is aimed at providing on-demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 to 20 Mbps for all households and 1 to 10 Gbps for all institutions by 2018 and is expected to significantly boost the economy. The network will cover 2,500 locations and is 22,500 km long, reaching 2 million households. Cisco has designed and implemented the network infrastructure for AP Fiber Net using statewide high-speed, aerial-optical fiber leveraging existing electricity distribution assets. Cisco has helped establish a scalable Infrastructure-Platform as a Service Model providing wholesale bandwidth and made provision to provide affordable On-Demand bandwidth for households and the private sector.





SUPPORTING QUOTES



Chandra Babu Naidu, Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, said Digital transformation has emerged as the most transformative means to ignite sustainable growth and improve society. My vision for the state is to digitally empower every citizen, enhance quality of life of citizens, accelerate economic competitiveness, boost local innovation and become a knowledge and technology hub of the country. Digital Andhra Pradesh is a step towards realising that vision. We envision Andhra Pradesh as a role model for digital transformation for other states to follow. We are happy to partner with Cisco for this transformative project and we believe Ciscos global experience and expertise in digitization will benefit Andhra Pradesh immensely and catapult the state to the forefront of the digital revolution



John Chambers, Executive Chairman, Cisco, said, Digitization opens up unprecedented opportunities for every country, state and city. I greatly admire Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu for his strong vision to digitize Andhra Pradesh, and Cisco is honored to be a partner for their digital transformation. Andhra Pradesh is a blueprint for a digital state for other states to follow. Our investment is a commitment to help the state develop an ecosystem of talent, entrepreneurship and innovation to drive growth, generate jobs, diversify the economy and support sustainable growth.



Irving Tan, President, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan, said, Government leaders today increasingly recognize the importance of digitisation as the foundation for GDP growth, job creation and the development of a knowledgeable workforce. The state of Andhra Pradesh is leading the digital transformation in India. We are excited to collaborate with the government to build an infrastructure that gives the citizens of Andhra Pradesh access to employment & inclusion, innovation opportunities, educational outcomes, healthcare delivery and smart city services.



Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC, said, The governments vision of digital Andhra Pradesh is truly transformative and will create huge opportunities for the state, its citizens, and the nation. The digital transformation of Andhra Pradesh will help increase the states global competitiveness by creating a highly skilled workforce ready for the jobs of the future, building an environment that stimulates exceptional companies, and enabling outstanding public services for citizens. We are thrilled to work with the government to help make Andhra Pradesh the role model for digital states in India.







































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Udaipur, As part of Himalayas efforts to deepen engagement between doctors and mothers, the companys baby care division held an interactive session for mothers inUdaipur.Talking about the initiative, Mr. Chakravarthi, General Manager  Himalaya Baby Care said, The initiative My Baby & Me is a platform for mothers to engage in discussions with doctors and other mums, and to address their own health issues as well as concerns about their babys health.Parents often have a lot of queries pertaining to childs health, sleep patterns, baby massage and generally struggle to find credible answer which are evidence based.The program has been very well received by doctors and mothers, and we are excited to bring it to Udaipurwhere the acceptance and understanding of Ayurveda is high.Chakravarthi further added that it is equally important for parents to consult their doctors when it comes to choosing personal care products for their babies.During the event, over fifty participating mothers were addressed by Dr. Devendra Sarin renowned Consultant Pediatrician and Child Specialist, Parenting is an overwhelming experience, but the real test for mothers begins after the baby is born! Regular health checkups and immunization is the best way to protect your child. It is also important for mothers to acknowledge childs overall development and health concerns such as feeding, stages of motor development, diapering, rash and allergies. Today, Ayurveda has bestowed several safe and effective health solutions for both mother and her baby which people are still unware off opined Dr. SarinHe further elaborated on the importance of baby massage for healthy growth of the child. Regular oil massage fortifies and regulates the respiratory, digestive and circulatory system of the baby and protects the skin against dryness. Massage plays an important role in the growth and development of babys bones.Himalayas My Baby & Me program has travelled to Ahmedabad, Agra, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Bhopal,Guwahati, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Madurai, Surat, Vadodara, Mangalore, Mysore, Varanasi and Vijayawada.About Himalaya Baby Care:At Himalaya, our understanding of herbs that work best for childrens internal health has helped us develop a range of baby care products for topical wellness. Our strong team of research scientists has carefully selected time-tested herbs, keeping in mind the delicate skin of a baby. The products, clinically tested to ensure safety and efficacy, are endorsed by doctors. The range is divided into Pre-Bath, Bath and Post-Bath, with a range of products across each category.
Hardik and five others have been accused of inciting violence to mount pressure on the government for accepting the demand of reservations for the Patel community. (Photo: PTI)

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Friday issued a notice to the state Government on the bail petition of the Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, arrested in a sedition case.

Justice A J Desai asked the Government to file its reply and kept the next hearing on April 7. Before issuing the notice, the court inquired about the status of the petition filed by Hardik in the Supreme Court seeking to quash the case against him. Hardik's lawyer Zubin Bharda said the next hearing in apex court was scheduled in the first week of April.

On March 11, Hardik approached the High Court after the sessions court rejected his bail application, filed after the city police's crime branch submitted a charge sheet in the case in January.

The petition contends that sedition is a colonial law enacted by the British to suppress the voice of freedom fighters and it had been invoked wrongfully against the Patel leader who was only fighting for his community.

It also says that the police have failed to link Hardik's intercepted telephonic conversations with his associates with the violence during the agitation in August last year. Sessions court rejected his bail plea observing that he might repeat the offence.

Hardik and five others have been accused of inciting violence to mount pressure on the government for accepting the demand of reservations for the Patel community.

Hardik is at present lodged at Lajpore jail in Surat district, where another sedition case has been filed against him.
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.

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Judge said that the order would not preclude the House from taking any appropriate action pursuant to the pending privilege proceedings.

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday paved the way for YSR Congress MLA Ms R.K. Roja to attend the ongoing Budget Session of AP Legislative Assembly by granting an interim suspension of a motion moved by the House suspending the MLA from attending Sessions for a year.

The AP Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution to suspend Ms Roja from Nagari Assembly segment in AP on December 18, 2015, during the discussion on call money issue, on the ground of obstructing the proceedings of the House and also allegedly making derogatory remarks against Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

Ms Roja had initially challenged her suspension before the High Court followed by the Supreme Court, which had reverted the matter back to the High Court.

Justice A. Ramalingeswara Rao, who concluded the hearing on Wed-nesday, granted an interim order in favour of the petitioner by observing that since this court came to the prima facie conclusion that motion carried out was contrary to Rule 340 of the Rules of the House, this Court has to consider the balance of convenience in the instant case.

The judge added, The petitioner is an elected member of the Assembly and in the normal course she is entitled to participate in the proceedings. If the suspension is continued during the pendency of the petition, the right of participation would be affected and cannot be restored in the event of her success in the case. Hence, there shall be an interim suspension of the motion, pending disposal of the petition.

While granting the interim order, the judge made it clear that the order was not an endorsement of the conduct of the petitioner on December 18, 2015 in the House or against the authority of the Speaker to take action against the erring member, but only a prima facie expression of the legality of the motion passed on the day.

He added that the order would not preclude the House from taking any appropriate action pursuant to the pending privilege proceedings.

While adjourning the case for four weeks, the judge noted that the issu-es with regard to the ap-plication of principles of natural justice in a case like this, whether the Ho-use possessed the power to suspend a member etc. had to be considered in detail in the petition.
PEORIA, Illinois, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT/Euronext: CATR) informs its stockholders that today Caterpillar Inc. furnished a Form 8-K to the SEC with respect to monthly retail statistics. The Form can be found on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov).

Caterpillar files electronically with the SEC required reports on Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, Form 10-K and Form 11-K; proxy materials; ownership reports for insiders as required by Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and registration statements on Forms S-3 and S-8, as necessary; and other forms or reports, as required. All of the forms and reports filed electronically with the SEC are available on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov).

Caterpillar also maintains an Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com) and copies of its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to these reports filed or furnished with the SEC are available free of charge through Caterpillar's Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com/secfilings) as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant document has been filed with the SEC.

CONTACT: Rachel Potts, Corporate Public Affairs, +1-309-675-6892

This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.

SOURCE Caterpillar Inc.
Mumbai: Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the terrorist outfit operating from Pakistan and suspected to be behind the Pathankot attack, has brazenly gone ahead and resumed publication of its online journal al-Qalam. This move has come just eight weeks after Pakistani cyber regulators cracked down on the JeMs internet operations in connection with the attack.

According to a report in The Indian Express, Indian intelligence officials said that the resumption of Jaishs online publication, includes a column by its commander Maulana Masood Azhar, held by Pakistan, which is the latest evidence that the organisations operations are continuing normally.

The release of the latest issue of the journal has come after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that a Pakistani team, formed to probe the Pathankot airbase attack, will arrive in India on March 27 and begin their work the next day.

Swarajs announcement came after she met Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistan Prime Ministers Foreign Affairs Advisor, on the sidelines of the SAARC foreign ministers meeting in Pokhara, Nepal.

According to reports, the journal leads with a column by Saadi  a pen-name used by Azhar, who Pakistan foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, claimed was in protective custody.

Azhar is believed to be living in an ISI-run safe house in Islamabad, though no charges have been filed against him.

The latest issue of the journal, for most parts, speaks off religion, good conduct and deeds and warnings to fellow Muslims against adopting a western lifestyle.

The journal however did not adopt the critical tone against India that was characteristic of the issues leading up to the Pathankot attacks.
LAS VEGAS, March 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CityCenter Holdings, LLC ("CityCenter"), a venture between MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) and Infinity World Development Corp, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with a venture led by Invesco Real Estate (NYSE: IVZ) and Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG) to acquire The Shops at Crystals for a purchase price of approximately $1.1 billion.

Located at the entryway of CityCenter and in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, the stunning retail asset boasts over 324,000 square feet of luxury shopping space. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

"This transaction demonstrates the strength in Las Vegas as a premier destination for visitors around the world. A staple of CityCenter and ideally located on the Las Vegas Strip, The Shops at Crystals provides the preeminent luxury retail experience," said Jim Murren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MGM Resorts International. "We believe that Invesco Real Estate and Simon Property Group are the ideal stewards to maintain the high quality of the asset and usher in a new era of success."

Added David Simon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Simon Property Group, "The acquisition of The Shops at Crystals provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to obtain a high-quality asset in a growing marketplace. We look forward to perpetuating and building upon the successful foundation that CityCenter has created to further distinguish The Shops at Crystals as a leading retail destination."

The Shops at Crystals is anchored by 10 luxury flagship stores, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Prada, Fendi and Tiffany & Co., as well as 30 unique-to-market luxury retailers including Celine, Saint Laurent and Richard Mille.

Since opening in late 2009, The Shops at Crystals has been recognized for its architectural sophistication, with its exterior designed by Daniel Libeskind and its interior designed by David Rockwell. The asset features a dedicated tram station, connecting to the Bellagio Resort & Casino and Monte Carlo Resort & Casino and is in close proximity to several luxury resorts totalling approximately 16,000 rooms. It is also the most pedestrian accessible and centrally located retail property on the Las Vegas Strip.

CityCenter was represented by Jones Lang LaSalle ("JLL"), who brokered the sale.

"Las Vegas has experienced significant economic growth over the past few years, with a record number of visitors in 2015 and an increasing international clientele," said Michael Zietsman, Director at JLL. "Visitors now spend more than half their travel budget on non-gaming expenditures. A sale like this has never made more sense."

About CityCenter

CityCenter, which is 50% owned by a wholly owned subsidiary of MGM Resorts International and 50% owned by Infinity World Development Corp (a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai World), is an urban mixed-use development on the Las Vegas Strip that includes ARIA Resort & Casino, a 4,004-room casino resort; Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, a 392-room non-gaming boutique hotel with 225 luxury condominium residences; Crystals, a retail and entertainment district consisting of approximately 355,000 square feet of leasable retail space; Vdara Hotel and Spa, a 1,495-room luxury hotel-condominium; and the Veer Towers, which contain 669 luxury condominium residences. CityCenter opened in December 2009.

About Invesco

Invesco Real Estate is a global leader in the real estate investment management business with over $64.0 billion under management, 434 employees and 21 regional offices across Asia, Europe and the US. It was established in 1983 and has been actively investing in core, value-add and opportunistic real estate strategies since 1992. Invesco Real Estate is an investment center of Invesco Advisers, Inc., which is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Invesco Ltd., one of the largest investment management firms in the world with $775.6 billion in assets under management and on-the-ground presence in 25 cities worldwide. Information as of December 31, 2015.

About Simon

Simon is a global leader in retail real estate ownership, management and development and a S&P100 company (Simon Property Group, NYSE: SPG). Our industry-leading retail properties and investments across North America, Europe and Asia provide shopping experiences for millions of consumers every day and generate billions in annual retail sales. For more information, visit simon.com.

Statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements involving risks and/or uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and not on historical facts. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations to close the transaction. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward-looking statements include effects of economic conditions and market conditions in the markets in which the companies and competition with other destination travel locations throughout the United States and the world, the design, timing and costs of expansion projects, risks relating to international operations, permits, licenses, financings, approvals and other contingencies in connection with growth in new or existing jurisdictions.

SOURCE MGM Resorts International; Simon Property Group
CLEVELAND, Feb. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global demand for major household appliances is forecast to increase at a 3.0 percent yearly rate through 2019 to 445 million units. The number of appliances in use will climb to 4.9 billion units. The average number of appliances in each household will increase, supported by rising personal income levels in developing areas. In addition, new household formation activity will provide new sales opportunities for appliance suppliers as the world's population continues to grow. Refrigerators and large cooking appliances are typically the first appliances purchased once personal income levels reach a sufficient level, followed by washing machines. "Because of the relatively large numbers of these products already in use," notes analyst Kyle Peters, "market advances through 2019 will not be as strong as those expected for freezers, dishwashers, and clothes dryers." These and other trends are presented in World Major Household Appliances, a new study from Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm.

To learn more, visit the report page:

http://www.freedoniagroup.com/DocumentDetails.aspx?ReferrerId=RF-PRNEWS&StudyID=3366

In general, developing countries will post the fastest increases in major household appliance demand through 2019. The installed base in developing nations is low, as below average income levels have prohibited widespread purchases of large durable goods such as major appliances. However, rising income levels will lead to the creation or expansion of the middle class population in a number of countries, boosting first-time appliance purchases. In addition, major appliance producers offer basic, lower-value appliances in these nations to help boost sales. Demand gains in developed countries will be more modest, with the majority of sales stemming from replacement purchases. Additionally, population and household growth will be slower in the developed world, limiting new housing-related sales opportunities.

China will remain the leading purchaser and producer of major household appliances in 2019. The country is home to the world's largest population and housing industry, resulting in a substantial domestic market for major appliances. In addition, China has a large low-cost labor pool that many multinational appliance firms have utilized in their production operations. However, India and Indonesia will record the fastest increases in demand of the major national markets, fueled by rapid economic growth.

About The Freedonia Group  The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is a leading international industrial research company publishing more than 100 studies annually. Since 1985 we have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Each study includes product and market analyses and forecasts, in-depth discussions of important industry trends, market share information and profiles of the leading industry players. Reports can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com and are also available on www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com.

Follow us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/freedonia-group/

Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FreedoniaGroup

Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/freedoniagroup

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.684.9600

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160216/333635LOGO

SOURCE The Freedonia Group

Related Links

http://www.freedoniagroup.com


Security forces are trying to smoke out and neutralise the remaining terrorists. (Photo: Twitter)

Srinagar: Two suspected foreign militants were on Friday killed in a brief gunbattle in Waderbala village of Handwara area in Jammu and Kashmirs frontier district of Kupwara.

Officials said that acting on specific information about the presence of militants in Waderbala, members of the State polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) along with Armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles laid siege to the village.

During the ensuing search operation, the militants hiding in the village opened fire on the security forces. The fire was retaliated and an encounter ensued in which two foreign terrorists were killed, a statement issued by the police here said.

A police official said the identity of the slain militants is being ascertained 'but they seem to be foreigners, may be Pakistani nationals'.

Two AK 47 rifles along with 6 magazines and 46 rounds, four UBGLs and two radio sets, two maps, two pouches and a diary were found on the slain men.
During 2015, Europe witnessed the largest movement of refugees since World War II. Since then, the situation has perpetually escalated, with the number of people fleeing war in the Middle East and arriving in Europe continuing to increase dramatically.

In January and February of 2015, 11,834 refugees arrived in Europe by sea.

In January and February of 2016, more than 131,000 refugees have arrived by sea and 418 deaths have occurred in that same short time period.

Despite unilateral action being taken by various countries in Europe, the migrant route has not changed a lot. Migrants arrive by boat from Turkey to a Greek island and then travel to Athens. From there they make their way to the northern border of Greece where they cross into Macedonia. At one point, thousands of refugees and migrants were passing through Macedonias two refugee transit centers on a daily basis en route to other European Union (EU) countries. Unfortunately, because of a domino effect happening in central Europe, the action of one country at their border affects all other countries along the route.

Macedonia has now had to greatly reduce the number of refugees allowed into the country. This in turn has caused a traffic jam at the border between Greece and Macedonia (a non-EU country). There are now more than 7,000 refugees stranded in a camp at the Greek border in Idomeni that is equipped for 1,500 people. Some of the refugees have been at the camp for more than a week. Crowded conditions at the camps are causing frustrations and unrest.

The Greek military have established three other camps near Idomeni. Each camp is equipped to manage 2,000 people. All three camps are already full.

At Macedonias northern border with Serbia there is now a camp at Tabanovce with 1,400 refugees waiting to cross into Serbia. Approximately 300 people are being held at the camp because they cannot obtain entry for travel into the EU countries.

Project HOPE has been actively responding to the refugee humanitarian crisis since September of 2015 with the goal of improving health care for the refugees. In close collaboration with the Macedonian Ministry of Health (MOH) and devoted donors and partners, HOPE has delivered five shipments of medical aid, including vaccines, medicines and supplies to be used to support the refugees passing through Macedonia.

Teams of Project HOPE volunteer doctors and nurses have also been deployed to the two border transit centers in Macedonia to provide medical treatment for those in need. Currently, two teams of doctors and nurses are working 12-hour shifts at each of the border transit centers.

From the beginning of 2016, the HOPE volunteers and medical staff supporting the refugees traveling through the country have treated more than 1,000 patients, mostly children with illnesses such as fevers, and head lice, and adults struggling from illnesses such as bronchitis and diabetes. A new volunteer team, consisting of a doctor, nurse and a logistician which began helping at the northern border on March 15, reported treating more than 50 patients on the very first day.

The Macedonian hospitals in the nearest towns next to the refugee transit centers were already struggling with a shortage of medical personnel before the refugee crisis began. The increased need for medical personnel to help manage the medical needs at the refugee transit centers is adding additional stress on the Macedonian health system. Project HOPE is working to secure a third team of local Macedonian volunteers to provide additional support.

One of the challenges the volunteers face is the transport of the patients that need to be hospitalized, because many of the refugees are refusing to leave the transit centers for fear of being separated from their families.

We are here to help in any way we can and happy to provide care to these people suffering from severe diseases and illnesses, Project HOPE volunteer, Dr. Angel Trposka told me.

The Macedonian MOH is truly grateful to Project HOPE for the support provided by the donations of supplies and the volunteer medical assistance that is helping to reduce the huge burden the refugee crisis is having on an already stressed health system.

Project HOPE will continue monitoring this grave humanitarian crisis and providing needed medicines, medical supplies and volunteer support, thanks to your help.
Shimla, March 14 : Two of the remaining trekkers who went missing along with eight others in the state's Manali area were airlifted on Monday from the snowing peak, ending the 78 hours rescue operation.

The condition of all the rescued trekkers, mostly from Punjab, is stable and they are undergoing treatment in the government hospital in Manali. Six were airlifted on Sunday evening.

Seven students of the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology in Punjab's Sangrur city along with their trekking instructor lost their way due to inclement weather while trekking to the Chanderkhani peak in Kullu district.

"This morning the remaining two were airlifted from the Chanderkhani peak despite bad weather," area Subdivisional Magistrate Jyoti Rana told IANS over phone.

Rana said the rescued students were given first aid, after which they were taken to Kullu. "They are all fine," she added.

The two rescued students are Hitender Sharma and Anil Kumar, who were spotted on Sunday near a cave-like structure where all eight had earlier taken shelter. Both were safe, she said.

Three teams of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were pressed for search and rescue on March 11 after teams from a local mountaineering institute, the police and villagers failed to find them due to inclement weather.

A helicopter was pressed into service on Saturday, but it too failed to make much headway due to the bad weather.
Shillong, March 14 : Liquor, petroleum and limestone will be more expensive in Meghalaya as the government on Monday levied fresh taxes on them to meet shrinking resources after the National Green Tribunal banned coal mining in the north-eastern state.

Presenting a Rs.1.090-crore deficit budget for 2016-17 in the state assembly, Chief Minister Mukul Sangma proposed a 10 percent hike in Value Added Tax (VAT) on liquor from 20 percent to 30 percent besides raising the levy on import pass fee and transport fee on alcohol, beer and wine.

Sangma, who also holds the finance portfolio, raised VAT on petrol by 22 percent and also withdraw 56 paise per litre rebate on petrol.

He also raised the rate of cess on limestone from Rs.40 to Rs.60 per tonne.

To generate an additional revenue of Rs.18 crore during the current financial year, Sangma informed the assembly that the government had increased tax rates under Meghalaya VAT on cigarettes, high speed diesel and other internal combustion oil excluding petrol.

The state's total estimated receipts stand at Rs.9.013 crore and total expenditure is projected at Rs.10.103 crore, thus leaving a deficit of Rs.1.090 crore, which is around 3.6 percent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP).

Sangma accorded highest importance to community and rural development allocating Rs.811.85 crore and earmarked a plan outlay of Rs.677 crore for the education department.

An amount of Rs.471.80 crore was allocated for infrastructure like roads and bridges, Rs.470 crore for health and family welfare, and Rs.279.15 crore for agriculture and horticulture.

Proposing a plan outlay of Rs.158.70 crore to the power department, Sangma said an amount of Rs.100.14 crore has been sanctioned initially to electrify 463 villages and 16,997 Below Poverty Line households through the grid in order to achieve 100 percent village and rural household electrification.

He also informed the assembly that an amount of Rs.9.91 crore has been earmarked to electrify 77 villages and 1,541 rural households through the stand-alone solar PV systems under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, besides sanctioning of Rs.8.28 crore for the electrification of 29 villages through stand-alone solar PV systems.

Pledging a plan outlay Rs.811.85 crore to community and rural development, he also announced creation of four new civil sub-divisions at Mawshynrut in West Khasi Hills district, Pynursla in East Khasi Hills district, Chokpot in South Garo Hills district and Raksamgre in West Garo Hills district.

Sangma also announced the creation of four new community and rural developments blocks at Mawlai in East Khasi Hills, Bhoirymbong in Ri Bhoi district, Dendema in West Garo Hills and Rerapara in South West Garo Hills, besides establishing two new administrative units at Ranikor in South West Khasi Hills and Rongjeng in East Garo Hills.

Reiterating his government's commitment to ensure safety and security of the people, the chief minister said his government will continue to provide all necessary support to police to achieve self-reliance in tackling insurgency and any other law and order situations.

The special force 10 Commandos, who have completed their training, would be inducted for counter-insurgency operations, and 15 new police stations will be established in 2016-17 to strengthen the internal security apparatus.
Manali, March 14 : When seven students of an engineering college opted for the hills of Himachal Pradesh for an excursion, little did they realise they were seconds away from a disaster.

After they were marooned more than 78 hours in the icy heights of Kullu district without food and mountaineering apparatus, they were finally evacuated along with a guide from the snow-bound Chanderkhani peak, located at an altitude of 12,000 ft despite hostile weather on Monday.

Their search-and-rescue operation launched on March 11 ended with the airlifting of the remaining two of them by Swiss mountaineering experts of private company Himalayan Heli Adventures Private Ltd., hired by the district administration.

The local administration, which involved over 100 trekkers comprising police, residents and Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel in the operation, said checking perilous excursions in the mountains by the amateurs is turning out to be an uphill task for it.

"It's something difficult to check the tourists venturing into the isolated, inaccessible pockets of Kullu. Now, we are seriously working to evolve some mechanism to check and, in fact, regulate the trekkers opting for high mountains," Kullu additional district magistrate Vinay Thakur told IANS.

He said despite the meteorological department's advisory, the seven students, unfamiliar with the local topography, opted for trekking to a high mountain.

For the engineering students of the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology in Punjab's Longowal town the ordeal began almost when they decided to scale the Chanderkhani peak after paying obeisance at Bijleshwar Mahadev temple, locally known as Bijli Mahadev, located on the hilltop overlooking Kullu town.

"When we were on the way to the Chanderkhani peak, the weather turned hostile and there was heavy snowfall," said Hitendra Sharma, who was rescued on Monday.

He said mobile phones' batteries exhausted. "Only one emergency call could be made for some seconds from one of the mobiles. We were literally hanging between life and death."

He said an alarming message on Whatsapp was also sent.

A frightened Anil Kumar said when the heavy snowfall started, they took shelter in a cave.

"For three days we survived on water. We were not hopeful of getting any immediate help. On the second day, when we saw a chopper circling over the mountain, a ray of hope came that we will survive in this freezing temperature. We all raised an alarm and the rescuers noticed us," he said.

"On a number of occasions, I thought I would be dead," he added.

Additional district magistrate Thakur said that a rescuer, who reached the spot by rappelling down a rope from the chopper, physically lifted six students on Sunday evening.

Two of the stranded amateur trekkers who could not be airlifted due to bad weather (on Sunday), were provided food and basic amenities and were evacuated on Monday.

"The weather was hostile in the early morning. At around 7 in the morning there was dispersion of dense clouds. In less than half an hour, both the stranded students were airlifted," subdivisional magistrate Jyoti Rana told IANS.

"There was some miracle that the clouds started dispersing and we got opportunity to reach out to the survivors," she said.

The chopper could not land at that place as the area was on a slope, she added.

The condition of all the rescued trekkers, mostly from Punjab, is stable and they are undergoing treatment in the government hospital in Kullu.

Three teams of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were pressed into search and rescue operation on March 11 after teams from a local mountaineering institute, the police and villagers failed to find them due in the inclement weather.

The picturesque Kullu Valley in the Himalayas, also known as the valley of gods, attracts thousands of backpackers even from abroad.

Police say some never return home -- they simply vanish without a trace. So what happened to these people? It is possible they either die in accidents or get killed, say police.

The hills around Kullu are magnificent, but they are also rugged, cold and inhospitable and not a place for an inexperienced or ill-equipped trekker. Some are killed due to high-altitude sickness or slip off the icy tracks or are marooned by blizzards and die a cold death.

The second possibility is that the missing were robbed and killed by local people and their bodies are buried in forests or thrown in streams. Lonely hikers carrying expensive watches, cameras and other accessories become easy prey to jobless local youth.

According to the state tourism department, around 50,000 backpackers pour into the valley every summer. Of them, 10,000-15,000 are from Israel.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 16 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday accused the BJP of shielding those "who raised anti-national slogans" on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus here.

"BJP is most anti-national of all. Why is it shielding those who raised anti-national slogans?" Kejriwal asked in a tweet.

The Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been at loggerheads over several issues, including the JNU row. The AAP has demanded the arrest of the outsiders who raised the anti-national slogans in the varsity campus on February 9.

Following the incident, JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was slapped with sedition charge and was arrested. He was given an interim bail of six months by a Delhi court on March 2.

Two other students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, who too were booked under the sedition charge, are still in police custody.
The Haryana Government has stepped up security in many towns as the deadline issued by the Jat community to accept their demand for quotas ends on Thursday night. (Photo: PTI)

Rohtak: Prohibitory orders were clamped and mobile internet services suspended at many places in Haryana on Friday as the state braced for possible renewal of the Jat quota agitation that had led to widespread violence claiming the lives of 30 people last month.

Mobile internet services for 2G, 3G and 4G have been suspended for the time being in many sensitive districts, including Rohtak and Jhajjar, which were the epicentre of the recent Jat stir, officials said.

Prohibitory orders banning assembly of five or more persons have also been issued by some district authorities, including Sonipat, as a precautionary measure to maintain peace.

"There were some messages which were being circulated on WhatsApp about fake untoward incidents. Some messages were also forwarded on the mobile number of Rohtak's Superintendent of Police yesterday. We also rounded up few persons in this regard," Rohtak's Deputy Commissioner, Atul Kumar told PTI over phone.

Asked how long the internet services will remain suspended, he said, "We will not prolong it. These are just precautionary measures."

Jhajjar's SP Jashan Deep Singh also said they had taken a similar step as such messages were being circulated. "In order to prevent any wider circulation, we have taken the step to suspend the services for the time being," he said.

Meanwhile, Haryana government was holding talks with Jat leaders here this afternoon on their quota demand. All India Jat Aarakshan Sanghursh Samiti President

Yashpal Malik said in view of their meeting with Haryana Chief Secretary and Director General of Police (DGP) the agitation will not be resumed. "After meeting the top officials next course of action will be taken," he said.

Various Jat organisations had given a deadline of 72 hours on Monday threatening to resume their quota agitation if their demands were not met by the Manohar Lal Khattar government. The deadline ended yesterday following which the state government invited Jat leaders for talks.

Jats are demanding 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational institutions, besides withdrawal of FIRs registered against the protesters, compensation to those killed during the stir and action against BJP MP from Kurukshetra Raj Kumar Saini for his "anti-Jat" reservation stand.
Mumbai, March 17 : The Shiv Sena on Thursday attacked MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi for his refusal to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and said he should be "legally beheaded".

Taking umbrage at Owaisi's utterances in Latur last week that he would not say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' even if he was threatened with a knife, the Sena said: "Why should anybody do this? He should be legally beheaded."

In a vitriolic editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamana, the Sena also criticized Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for allowing Owaisi to move around freely and sneak out of Maharashtra despite making such statements.

"Legislators sitting on strike in Sindhudurg are beaten up by the police, but in the same state a person (Owaisi) making such seditious statement escapes scot free," the party said.

"The deplorable status of Muslims in India is primarily because of such thinking of persons like Owaisi. 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is an inspiration to the people of this country," the Sena said.

"Owaisi has insulted our Mother India. All the Muslims in the country should chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' to express their opposition to Owaisi's ill-conceived views. Those who refuse, their citizenship and voting rights must be cancelled," the party said.
Seoul, March 18 : North Korea on Friday launched a new ballistic missile which flew some 800 km before falling into the sea, followed by another missile which may have exploded mid-air, South Korean military officials said.

The North Korean People's Army fired the missile into the East Sea at 5.55 a.m. from Sukchun, north of Pyongyang, according to Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The South Korean defence ministry spokesman told EFE news that it appeared to be a Rodong (single stage, mobile liquid propellant medium range ballistic missile) with a range of 1,300 km.

He also revealed that roughly 22 minutes after the first launch, what appeared to be the second missile was fired from the same area but disappeared from the radar at an altitude of 17 km. It is believed to have exploded in the air, the spokesman added.

The launch occurred amid high tension on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang conducted the fourth underground nuclear test on January 6 and launched a satellite aboard a rocket on February 7, actions which prompted sanctions from the UN Security Council.

On March 10, the North Korean military launched two short-range missiles which flew some 500 km. One week prior to the incident, the country catapulted six short-range missiles which flew between 100-150 km each.
New Delhi : Title: Hitler's First Victims - And One Man's Race for Justice; Author: Timothy W. Ryback; Publisher: Vintage/Random House Penguin; Pages: 288; Price: Rs.499 Four men, deemed the regime's adversaries and held in a preventive detention camp, are killed "while trying to escape" and soon there are more such deaths. A prosecutor discovers all are deliberate murders but is not allowed to pursue the case. A Graham Greene or John Le Carre story? It really happened and was a pointer to the Nazis' genocidal aims - though one man did his best to stop it then.

Joseph Hartinger, a deputy prosecutor in Munich in the early 1930s, is not a familiar name and doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry in English, though his story is a cautionary one of how regimes and ideologies can turn viciously murderous against anyone deemed undesirable according to their concepts but even one conscientious man can make a difference - eventually.

It is his - and some unfortunate men - whose unsettling but gripping story that author and academician Ryback brings out in his latest book, which is not only a salutary lesson about where political extremism can lead to but also with a strong resonance to contemporary conditions .

Hartinger was tasked to investigate, as per law, the killing of four prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp (a fairly innocuous term then) outside the city - the first set up by the Adolf Hitler regime, two months after coming to power in January 1933, to accommodate the "criminal sub-stratum" - which, in their view, included Jews, communists, and political opponents. All were held without being charged, thus forestalling any legal challenge to their incarceration.

Security was soon transferred from the regular police to the Schutz Staffeln (SS), and brutality then began in earnest - relentless beating of inmates and finally murder of four of them in April itself. The killing made headlines including in the international press but almost all believed the official version and the victims' categorisation as communist agitators obscured the fact that all happened to be Jews.

The investigators determined it was murder but when Hartinger decided to press charges, he was forestalled by his superior.

As more killings - of Jews, communists, former policemen who had infiltrated the Nazi movement and even those against some regime figure bore a grudge - continued to occur regularly and were termed suicides or escape attempts, Hartinger and an equally courageous pathologist (Dr. Moritz Flamm), continued to turn up to probe and assiduously built a tight case against the camp guards, officials and the commandant.

This not only entailed a grave risk not only professional, but personal too. At one visit, a camp guard cautioned Hartinger: "We will shoot you" and he responded: "Then you'll have to shoot me. I'm coming in."

But when the time came to commit the case for trial, a superior tipped higher-ups and proceedings were stalled and soon quashed. While his efforts led to some changes and a brief period of peace, things not only returned to the way they were but soon worsened - as history tells us.

And Hartinger's work did eventually accomplish something - at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.

Ryback's story is dark but meticulous, and not confined to the prosecutor's investigation but the stories of each victim and his official murderer, but also the political background and happenings and citing a compelling study into political violence in post-World War I Germany which has several lessons for all.

In the landmark "Four Years of Political Violence" (1922), which sought to find reason for the terrors and atrocities in a country of "poets and thinkers", Professor Emil Gumbel concluded that you couldn't rely on a constitution or open elections or a free press as a gauge or guarantee for a stable and functioning democracy but also depended on "implementation of regulations, the adherence to laws, the actions of the police, the spirit of the administration and most of all, the attitude of the state".

This is a lesson that stands the test of time - and we especially need to observe.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
Canberra, March 18 : An Australian court on Friday sentenced three people to a maximum 15 months in prison in the country's first criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation.

Former midwife Kubra Magennis, 72, and the mother of the victims, whose name was not revealed, were convicted in November of mutilating two sisters in separate procedures during religious ceremonies at homes in Wollongong and Sydney's north-west between 2009 and 2012, ABC reported.

The girls were about seven at the time.

A third offender, senior community leader Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, was found guilty of acting as an accessory after the fact by directing community members to lie to police about the practice.

He was also sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.

The procedure, known as "khatna", involves nicking or cutting a girl's clitoris in the presence of several female elders and is considered a rite of passage by some members of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.

Supreme Court Judge Justice Peter Johnson said these kinds of cases were "difficult to prosecute" because of their "unusual and novel circumstances".

He said the mother of the two girls requested that the former nurse and midwife carry out the procedure.

All three offenders will be assessed for their suitability for home detention.
Srinagar, March 18 : Two foreign guerrillas were killed on Friday in a gunfight with the security forces in north Kashmir's Kupwara district.

A senior police officer told IANS here on Friday: "Two foreign terrorists were killed in an encounter with the police and other security forces in Waderbala area of Handwara tehsil."

"Acting on specific information about the presence of terrorists, Handwara police, assisted by 21 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), started cordon and search operation in Waderbala area under the jurisdiction of Police Station Handwara," he said.

During the searches, the terrorists fired upon the joint party of police and security forces, he said.

The firing was retaliated and, in the ensuing encounter, two foreign terrorists were killed, the police officer said.

"Two AK-47 rifles, six AK magazines, four Under-Barrel Grenade Launchers (UBGL), 46 AK rounds and two wireless sets were recovered from the encounter site."
London, March 18 : If your 10-year-old is becoming aggressive day-by-day, blame the hormone cortisol for the increased aggression in the young boy, says a new study.

Findings by Spanish researchers confirm that children, especially boys, who experienced the greatest increase in levels of aggression by ten years of age were those whose cortisol levels had also increased during eight-to-ten years of age.

The research team studied the relationship between hormones and aggressive behaviour in girls and boys between the ages of eight and ten.

They measured the levels of three steroid hormones -- testosterone, estradiol and cortisol -- and analysed the effects of hormones on behaviour in the age group.

Researchers analysed 90 children -- 49 boys and 41 girls -- from four primary schools.

The results demonstrated that there was indeed a change in the levels of aggressive behaviour.

"This only occurred in boys: at ten years of age they were more aggressive than at eight years of age. The girls, nevertheless, did not experience any changes to their levels of aggression during these two years," said Eider Pascual-Sagastizabal from the University of the Basque Country in Northern Spain.

The researchers found that the boys whose levels of aggression had increased most by the age of ten were those whose levels of cortisol had also increased over the two years.

On the contrary, the boys whose levels of aggression had decreased most between eight and ten years of age were the ones whose levels of estradiol had increased most between the two ages.

"A greater increase in cortisol is linked to a greater increase in levels of aggressive behaviour, while a greater increase in estradiol corresponds to a decrease in levels of aggressive behaviour", adds Pascual-Sagastizabal.
Hyderabad, March 18 : Honeywell Aerospace has been selected by Jet Airways to provide maintenance services for Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) on board its fleet of 10 Boeing 777 airplanes.

The five-year agreement will help Jet Airways better predict and manage maintenance cycles, allowing the India-based airline to reduce unscheduled downtime and improve reliability of its fleets.

The announcement was made on Friday at India Aviation 2016, country's largest civil aviation show currently underway year.

This latest APU maintenance service agreement for the GTCP331-500 model is designed to keep servicing costs under control while maintaining equipment at the latest modification standard, helping the airline reduce variable costs and improve flight performance, said a statement by Honeywell.

The agreement is an extension of Jet Airways' comprehensive APU maintenance programs already in place for its B737NG and A330 aircraft.

"Our APU maintenance program coupled with Predictive Trend Monitoring Diagnostic service provides Jet Airways the tools to simplify budget planning and mitigate unexpected costs that may arise due to unscheduled removals, as well as speed up turnaround for its B777 fleet," said Arijit Ghosh, president, Honeywell Aerospace India.

"Having a comprehensive maintenance service plan across our fleets enables us to focus on our operations and continue to enhance customer experience," said K.M. Unni, chief of operations, Jet Airways.

Honeywell's APU provides compressed air to the main engines of an airplane as they start. It also runs air conditioning and electrical power to the plane while it is on the ground and serves as primary or backup electrical power for environmental, cockpit and hydraulic systems during flight.

With more than five decades of experience in the development of APUs, Honeywell will provide Jet Airways with access to a growing global network of experienced and Honeywell-approved field technicians.
Mumbai, March 18 : Super busy Ranveer Singh is having to pack in his brand commitments, preparation for "Befikre" and a performance at an awards gala all in a day!

Given the success of "Bajirao Mastani", Ranveer has soared to new heights, and his incredible popularity with Indian youth has ensured he becomes a favourite of a string of brands in the country. With his kitty of endorsements packed, and a performance slated at the glitzy Times of India Film Awards in Dubai on Friday, 24 hours don't quite cover the demands on his time.

But Ranveer is working at a breakneck speed to complete all his work commitments, even as he is caught in the midst of preps for Aditya Chopra's "Befikre".

A source from the set of an ad, said: "We are actually stunned by just how much Ranveer can do. For this new ad that he has signed up, he shot for 16 hours straight without a break. With TOIFA rehearsals and the film's prep keeping him busy, he wanted to ensure that the ad looked and felt great. So he stretched himself for 16 whole hours."

At TOIFA, the ever-energetic actor will be paying a tribute to megastar Amitabh Bachchan by dancing on his career-defining songs.

-*-Grand-daughter's Twitter account fake: Big B

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has warned his Twitter followers that his grand-daughter Navya Naveli Nanda's account on the micro-blogging website is "fake".

"Alarm: My grand-daughter Navya Nanda is not on Twitter. That account is fake! I responded to it by mistake. Be warned," Amitabh tweeted on Friday.

Navya Naveli is the daughter of Amitabh's daughter Shweta Nanda, who also has a son named Agastya.

-*-Priyanka's 'The Jungle Book' diaries Actress Priyanka Chopra, who is among the Indian stars who will lend voice to characters of Hollywood film "The Jungle Book" for its Hindi dubbed version, says the fictional tale was one of the favourite parts of her childhood.

"The Jungle Book was one of the favourite parts of my childhood and now I get to be in it as the voice of Kaa! Wooopiee," Priyanka posted on Twitter.

Priyanka launched the Hindi version of character Kaa in "The Jungle Book", with a special video clip. Her playful and sultry voice will match Scarlett Johansson's sensual rendition of Kaa in the English movie, which is releasing in India on April 8.

Disney India has roped in Irrfan Khan, Nana Patekar, Shefali Shah and Om Puri too to voice characters for the Hindi version of the film, which features Indian-American actor Neel Sethi as Mowgli.
New Delhi, March 18 : The government will facilitate the growth of community radio in the country to effectively convey its messages to the poor and rural areas, Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.

"The government will facilitate the medium through (suitable) policies, which will spur the growth of community radio stations in the future," Jaitley said at a seminar here.

"Radio as a medium of communication has made a comeback with the growth in FM transmission. Community radio has provided value addition to the narrative by addressing the information needs regionally," he said.

He said the medium was addressing diverse social issues and situations at the regional level.

The minister said the scope for expansion in the sector was vast in view of the communication needs at the regional level.

Jaitley lauded the efforts of radio stations on sustained campaigns on critical issues related to health and education.

Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said community radio could play an important role in dissemination of information about government schemes and policies to the common people in local languages, which was not possible through conventional mediums of mass communication as television.

"Community radio could help in disseminating benefits of various government initiatives such as Mudra Yojana, Fasal Bima Yojana and soil health cards to the people," Rathore said.

Jaitley and Rathore felicitated the winners of the fifth national community radio awards.

The award for the most creative/innovative programme content was presented to 'Radio Benziger' from Kerala for their programme 'Sukrutham'.

Awards were also given for programmes with best theme, community engagement and promoting local culture.
New Delhi, March 18 : Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the government was "prepared" for the upcoming visit of a special investigation team from Pakistan to probe the Pathankot terror attack but the modalities were yet to be worked upon.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function here, Singh skirted a direct reply on whether the visiting Joint Investigation Team would be given access to the strategic India Air Force (IAF) base, saying: "We are prepared."

Terrorists, believed to be from Pakistan, attacked the IAF base in Punjab's Pathankot town on January 2, leaving seven security personnel dead. Security forces eliminated the six terrorists.

The home minister on Friday indicated that detailed modalities would be worked out by the officials from the home ministry and external affairs ministry after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj returns from Nepal where she is attending a Saarc ministerial meeting.

After a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Swaraj had said in Pokhara (Nepal) on Thursday that the Joint Investigation Team from Pakistan would arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward the probe into the Pathankot attack.
Chandigarh: The quota agitation by Jats in Haryana was put off till April 3, Friday, with the community leaders agreeing to give the state government time to get a reservation bill passed during the ongoing Assembly session that ends on March 31.

An announcement in this regard was made by All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti President Yashpal Malik after the Jat leaders held talks with Haryana Chief Secretary and DGP here.

Also read: No rapes in Murthal during Jat quota protests, Haryana tells Centre

"We have given time to Haryana government to bring and pass the Jat reservation Bill by March 31 (when the ongoing Budget session ends)," Malik said.

"If the government does not pass the reservation Bill by March 31, then we shall chalk out our next course of action in our meeting on April 3 to be held in Delhi," he added.

Also read: Jat quota row: Mobile internet services restored in Haryana

Replying to questions, Malik said "there will be no agitation till April 3."

He appealed to other leaders of Jat community also not to hold any agitation or protest in the state till April 3.

Haryana government had already assured the Jat leaders that it will bring the bill to provide for reservation to Jats and four other communities in the state during the current session of the Assembly.

Also read: Jats threaten to resume quota stir, Haryana seeks paramilitary forces

Malik expressed satisfaction over the discussion held with the officials of Haryana government to chalk out a "workable solution".

"We are fully satisfied with the talks at today's meetingand would appeal to the people not to resort to any protest," Malik said.

Also read: Jat stir: Haryana govt assures compensation to people affected by protest

"During the meeting, we were assured on behalf of Haryana CM that Bill will be passed in the ongoing budget session in the state," the Jat leader said.

However, he said the leaders were not shown any draft of the Bill which they want to check.

Also read: Bill on Jat quota will be passed in ongoing session: Haryana

He also said that the Jats want reservation in BC (Backward Class) category and that the community is getting ready for agitation for quota in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir.

On the issue of withdrawal of the cases, Malik said they were assured that if any false cases was registered against Jats, they would be withdrawn.

"We were also assured that we can file complaint against any officer for his role during Jat agitation to SSP or DC," he said.

"The main talking point in this meeting was reservation and under which category we want it... Other than this, we had 4 to 5 very important demands, like all arrests taking place in Jhajjar, Sonipat and whole of Haryana should be stopped, proper investigation should be held and local people should be part of it."

When the last agitation got over, the government had promised to pay Rs 10 lakh for family and kin of the dead.

"We asked the government to do what they promised. We want unity and brotherhood among the youth of the state, khaps, and all 36 castes and groups and want to maintain peace and calm in the state," Malik said.

Chief Secretary D S Dhesi, while giving details of the meeting, said Jat leaders have assured the government that till the state assembly is in session they will not resort to any type of agitation or protest.

He said the Committee headed by him to review Jat reservation has already submitted its report to the state government.

"The matter is under the consideration of the state government after which the Council of Ministers will decide on the format of the Jat reservation bill," he said.

"We assured them that every suggestion of theirs will be considered and the final decision (on the Jat reservation bill) lies on the Council of Ministers and the state assembly," the Chief Secretary said.

He said they sought the views of the Jat delegation that will be considered while finalizing the bill.

If need be another round of discussions can be held with the Jat leaders before the finalization of the bill, he said.

Dhesi said the delegation was told that their suggestion for inclusion of Jat reservation in Schedule 9 if the total reservation exceeds the 50 per cent limit would also be considered.

Malik had suggested that if the reservation exceeds more than the 50 per cent the Schedule 9 route can be adopted for which the Centre would have to make necessary amendments in the Parliament.

Malik said they gave a seven-point memorandum to the Chief Secretary D S Dhesi and Director General of Police (DGP) Yashpal Malik.

"The government has assured to consult us again during the drafting of the bill and before its presentation in the state assembly for its passage," he said.

Six of the seven points included quota for Jats, action against officers who did excesses on protestors; Jats quota be in the same list in the state and at the Centre; no arrest of any protestor without any proof against him and no harassment to any Jat; adequate compensation to the victims; review of false cases and their cancellation.

He said that the seventh point - formation of a committee at the Centre - had already been accepted with the formation of the committee headed by Union Minister M Venkaih Naidu.

Malik said the officials assured them of review of all cases registered against Jats and cencellation of false cases.

He said the government asked them to give complaints against officers, who indulged in excesses to the Parkash Singh-led SIT or to local district civil and police officials.

He said that Jats already enjoyed reservation in eight states which he did not detail. "Our next target will be to get reservation for Jats in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir," he added.

He said that a private member had submitted a bill for providing reservation to the Jats at the Centre. The central government should adopt this bill for passage in the Parliament, Malik said.

The Backward Class quota is bifurcated in two categories BC-A and BC-B having 16 and 11 per cent reservation respectively.

Malik said that the state could either give Jats reservation in BC-B category or include it in the Schedule 9 which would have to be passed by the Centre.

The community had earlier demanded 10 per cent reservation for Jats.

To a question at media interaction, the DGP said the 29 companies of Central Para Military Forces which had come here from outside would stay for some more time. "They will remain in Haryana," he said.

Singhal said he had assured the Jats, who expressed apprehension of arrest of innocent Jats, that no innocent would be arrested or harassed.

"If any false case has been filed, an inquiry will be held and steps initiated for the cancellation of the case in the court," he assured the Jat leaders.

He said they suggested to the Jat leaders that they could form a committee of 21 members in each of the district which could receive complaints of false cases against members of the Jat community.

"The details should be given to the local Deputy Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) after which we will act and satisfy the Jat leaders," the DGP said.

The DGP said they told the delegation that those who indulged in arson and violence did not belong to one community. "We sought their support in identifying such elements to which they agreed," Singhal said.

On their complaint of wrong arrests, the DGP said, "We assured them that if any person has been wrongly arrested, we will probe and get the person discharged if he was innocent."

Regarding complaint of the Jat leaders about excesses committed by police and civil officers, Singhal said, "We asked Jats to cooperate with the Parkash Singh Committee (in giving information about excesses by officers). If not to the Committee they can give the details to us."

The DGP said "we assured the delegation that no innocent would be harassed or arrested. Action will be taken only against those who indulged in arson and violence besides conspiracy to which they agreed."
Tokyo, March 18 : Barcelona-born artist Antoni Muntadas takes a peek into the intense and conflict-ridden relations between Japan, South Korea and China with Asian Protocols, his exhibition that opens on Saturday in Tokyo aiming to spark a debate on self-censorship.

"It interests me that relations among the three countries is based on a series of similarities and differences, but also a string of conflicts, which I wanted to explore," Muntadas told Efe on Friday, while finishing off preparations for the exhibition, to be on view till April 17 at 3,331 art centre of Tokyo.

Approaching the reality of Japan, South Korea and China "as an outsider", the winner of the 2009 Velazquez Prize for Plastic Arts, aims to point out what unites and separates them, from a conceptual and multidisciplinary perspective, which includes video-art, photography, text, and objects such as books or print media clippings.

"Blackboard Dialog," one of the installations, examines 40 concepts, including family, gender, marriage, fashion and the army from the point of view of the Japanese, the Chinese and the South Koreans.

In an enormous hall, lined with blackboards and written-on with chalk, the visitor can read about the meaning of, for example, human rights in these countries, similar in that "the discourses of hatred have become a serious problem for society, especially those disseminated through the internet."

The difference, however, lies in who the victims of these hate discourses are -- for the Japanese, it is the South Korean residents in Japan, for South Koreans, it is women, and for the Chinese, it is sexual minorities.

"An exhibition is always a device in the anthropological sense in that it has to be activated, it is not born solely to be seen and celebrated," said Muntadas, who wants his exhibition to trigger a debate between the three communities, who share historically tense relations.

The New York-based artist will also exhibit several textbooks from the three countries, currently being taught in schools, differing in their treatment of conflicts related to Japanese imperialism or the disputed archipelagos between Japan and China or those between Japan and South Korea.

Muntadas has also included a photographic journey through Chinese localities in Japan and South Korea, Korean strongholds in Tokyo and Seoul, and those of the Japanese living in Beijing and Seoul.

"I am not trying to impose or explain anything, but just trying to launch a series of questions to initiate a debate in countries where there is a certain censorship or self-censorship concerning these subjects," explained the Catalan artist, who believes his mission as an artist is that of a catalyst.

The exhibition is part of a project that has already toured Seoul in 2014 and is expected to show in Beijing in 2018.
New Delhi, March 18 : The Indian telecom regulator said on Friday it will comply with the apex court's order asking it to consider technical reasons of call drops and if the proposed penalty can be amended.

"Whatever has been ordered by the Supreme Court shall be complied with," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman R.S. Sharma said in an interview with CNBC TV18.

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the TRAI whether it would relook its decision imposing penalty on the telecom service providers for call drops in the wake of its own technical paper endorsing the position taken by them.

"Because the matter is sub-judice - pending before the apex court of the country, it will not be appropriate for me to make any kind of observation. The only observation which I can make is that the orders of the Supreme Court shall be carried out in letter and spirit. That's what I can say," said Sharma.

Asking the TRAI whether it still maintained position on penalty for the call drops or would consider re-examining it in the light of its own technical paper of November 2015, a bench of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman told it to file an affidavit stating its position before next date of hearing (March 30).

"Factually, it appears that nobody had seen technical papers on the day of the framing of the regulation (imposing penalty for call drops). Please take into account the technical paper and tell us whether you consider amending the regulations or you still want to stand by it. Whatever you have to say, tell us with reasons," it said.

Sharma reiterated TRAI will conduct another round of drive tests in April to see if there is any improvement in the call drop menace.
New Delhi, March 18 : Efforts to form a government in Jammu and Kahsmir have hit a dead end as the BJP has refused to accept the demands of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), PDP sources said.

A senior PDP leader close to party chief Mehbooba Mufti told IANS that the negotiations between the two parties had "hit a dead end" and the PDP was unlikely to form a government again with the BJP.

Another PDP leader who spoke to IANS said he was not authorised to speak on the subject.

The PDP comments came as Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Ram Madhav announced that it was not possible to form a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir on PDP's conditions.

"It's not possible to form a government on (PDP) conditions," Madhav told the media. "We are not ready to accept any new demand."

He spoke a day after Mehbooba Mufti met BJP president Amit Shah.

Jammu and Kashmir has been without an elected government after Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died on January 7 and the state came under Governor's Rule.

The PDP and BJP formed a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir in March 2015 after assembly elections threw up a fractured mandate.
New Delhi, March 18 : The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the central government on a plea seeking establishment of the hospitals in every state and union territory for exclusive treatment and care of AIDS patients.

A bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan issued notice on a PIL by senior counsel Parmanand Katara who had also sought establishment of AIDS testing and treatment clinic in every district in the country.

The notice has also been issued to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which as the advocate said, could provide resources and expertise in setting up such hospitals.

Seeking setting up of at least one hospital in every state and union territory at par with the All India Institute of Medical Science for the exclusive treatment of HIV positive and AIDS patients, Katara has also sought establishment of AIDS testing and treatment clinics in every district level jail as well as central jails.

Addressing the court on his PIL, he sought to justify his plea, telling the court that due to ignorance and stigma attached to them, AIDS patients suffer a lot of discrimination in their treatment and care.

He told the court that even doctors treat them as untouchables and don't give them treatment.
Dharamsala, March 18 : New Zealand won their second consecutive match of the World Twenty20 after beating Australia by eight runs in a group phase clash here on Friday.

New Zealand sored 142/8 after winning the toss and taking first strike and then restricted their opponents to 134/9 at the HPCA Stadium. The Kiwis beat hosts India in their opening game by 47 runs.

Fast bowler Mitchell McClenaghan was the star of their neat bowling performance, taking 3/17 and derailed Australia's innings.

New Zealand picked up wickets regularly to restrict Australia from gaining enough momentum.

They needed 19 runs from the last over, bowled by Corey Anderson and then 12 from the last three balls but came up short.

Earlier, Australia recovered from a Martin Guptill (39) blitz to restrict New Zealand to 142/8.

Guptill belted 39 runs as the Kiwis powered to 58 in six overs.

But a collapse, losing three wickets for 15 runs, jolted their charge.

Guptill, skipper Kane Williamson (24) and Corey Anderson (3) all were caught in the deep while attempting big shots.

Glenn Maxwell (2/18) claimed two wickets in the slump. All-rounder James Faulkner also contributed with identical bowling figures.

The wickets kept tumbling, including two run-outs in the final over, as New Zealand's run-rate continued to drop.

Colin Munro steadied in his own style, switch-hitting throughout a knock of 23.

But Munro also handed over his wicket meekly.

Veteran batsman Ross Taylor managed only 11.

Brief scores: New Zealand 142/8 (Martin Guptill 39, Glenn Maxwell 2/18);

Australia 134/9 (Usman Khawaja 38, Mitchell McClenaghan 3/17)
New Delhi, March 18 : Kashmir is an integral part of India and so Indians can discuss the issues pertaining to Kashmiris at any forum, JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar said on Friday.

Speaking at the India Today conclave, Kanhaiya Kumar said: "There is no doubt that Kashmir is an integral part of India. And since Kashmiris are Indians, we can always discuss their issues."

Kanhaiya Kumar, who was charged with sedition, denied supporting Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru, who was hanged for his role in the terror attack on the Indian parliament, but said he opposed capital punishment.

"Our protest (on February 9) was against capital punishment, not in support of Afzal," he said, adding that even if an ABVP activist was given capital punishment, he would oppose it.

"The JNU culture promotes debate and discussion. It is not our culture to stop people from speaking or putting forth their point of view, even if we do not agree with it," he added.

Asked why he did not stop people from raising anti-India slogans at the JNU campus on February 9, he said neither he or nor his All India Students Federation (AISF) supported anti-India slogans or Kashmir's secession.
New Delhi, March 18 : Mauritius Health Minister Anil Kumar Singh Gayan on Friday called on his Indian counterpart J.P. Nadda here and discussed various bilateral issues of health cooperation.

During the meeting, Mauritius requested for India's help in recruitment of doctors, upgradation of Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, mutual recognition of medical degrees, assistance in upgrading medical education facilities, scholarships and setting up a state of the art cancer unit.

India has assured of all possible help, according to an official release.

During the meeting a decision was taken for constitution of a Joint Working Group under the MoU on health cooperation, the release said.
New Delhi, March 18 : The CBI has started tracking the money trail of all the transactions and loans taken by business tycoon Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) totalling Rs. 7,000 crore since 2004.

"Our prime focus is to find out the money trail of loans flowing in from all the 17 banks to the accounts of Mallya, his other associates, his defunct airline (Kingfisher Airlines) and others." a CBI source told IANS.

The source said only by trailing the money will they be able to find its use or misuse.

"We have to reach the final destination of the money to find out if the borrowings were used by Mallya for other purposes, the source said.

Officials looking to trace the money had found that over five lakh transactions had been made in several accounts.

Over 60 per cent of the five lakh such transactions -- around three lakh -- had been diverted to accounts in four countries, the source said.

The CBI is in touch with different agencies through various channels to find out the assets that Mallya may own in the four countries. It is also seeking further details of the transactions abroad.

The CBI has expanded the ambit of the probe to 16 more public sector banks from which Mallya and KFA had borrowed money since 2004.

So far, the CBI has been investigating defaults worth Rs. 900 crore on loans taken from IDBI during October-November 2009.

None of the 17 banks has, however, filed a complaint with the CBI as yet. The agency had registered a case in July 2015 under provisions related to criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and some sections of Prevention of Corruption Act.

The agency had filed the case against Mallya, KFA, the firm's then chief financial officer A Raghunathan and unknown IDBI Bank officials.

The CBI source said that IDBI had been informed about the wrongdoings twice -- first in 2012 and then in 2014.

"In early 2016, we also informed the United Bank of India that loans may have been misused. But neither of the banks approached us with any complaint," the source said.

CBI's expanded its probe a week after Mallya left the country on March 2.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)
Dehradun, March 18 : Uttarakhand BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi, accused of hitting and severely injuring a police horse which necessitated the amputation of one of its legs, was arrested on Friday, police said.

The horse Shaktimaan is alive but his injured hind leg has been amputated, police added.

Joshi, who represents Mussoorie, was arrested outside a Patel Nagar hotel following an FIR against him. Senior police officials told IANS that the legislator, who has professed innocence, was being questioned in the case.

Dehradun district police chief Sadanand Date said Joshi was responsible for the injury to the hind legs of the horse belonging to the mounted police.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the principal opposition in the state, has hit back by describing the police action as "illegal".

Joshi allegedly attacked Shaktimaan during a protest against the Harish Rawat government in Dehradun on Monday.

Meanwhile, BJP workers are staging protests in different parts of the state against the arrest of Joshi.

Opposition leader Ajay Bhatt called on Governor K.K.Paul and Director General of Police B.S. Siddhu to describe the action of arresting a legislator like that as wrong.

Joshi was arrested in the morning from a hotel and a police team took him to Sahaspur. After his medical examination, he was presented in a court and later sent to 14-day judicial custody.

Bhatt told reporters that if they didn't get justice from the Governor, the party would approach the court.

He also asked the state assembly's speaker to call Joshi to the legislative assembly. After the assembly's procedure, police can arrest Joshi. He said the Congress government in the state is acting in a dictatorial manner and the legislator was picked up by police as if he was some terrorist.

Chief Minister Harish Rawat told reporters that his government is not linked to the arrest of Joshi. The law is taking its own course. The government will not intervene in the matter.

Joshi's daughter Neha Joshi on Friday accused media channels of "sensationalising" the alleged attack, saying her father is not the culprit.

Stating that "it's a witchhunt led by some sections of the media and the Congress" she said, the family is "confident that the truth will prevail".

Stating that the media chose to ignore the apologies of her father, on the behalf of the party, for the attack on the horse, she said his innocence has been proven with multiple videos circulating and showing that her father was only trying to scare the horse by hitting the ground with a stick.

The decision to amputate Shaktimaan's leg was taken by a team of visiting doctors from the US and Mumbai on Thursday evening. After a 39-minute operation, about one feet of Shaktiman's leg was removed to save his life.

Special Superintendent of Police Sadanand said that Shaktimaan kept on falling while getting up on Wednesday. It ruined the operation performed on him earlier. The visiting doctors felt there was little chance of his leg getting readjusted, leading to the decision to amputate it.
New Delhi, March 18 : Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said the world no longer ridicules India about its "Hindu rate of growth", and now continuing with its reform path, the country is likely "to write a new chapter in history".

"Right till about 40 years after independence, India was growing at about paltry 2-2.5 percent. The world was ridiculing us and the Indian economy, and its growth was referred to globally as the Hindu rate of growth. So, anybody who grew slowly and was satisfied with that growth level was sarcastically referred to as Hindu rate of growth," Jaitley said at an event in here.

It was only after economic liberalisation in 1991 that India's growth picked up momentum, even crossing the 10 percent mark in some years during the first decade of this century.

"1991 was a defining moment for India. It was India's misfortune that what happened in 1991 should have started 20 years before. Had it started 20 years earlier, the 1970-80s would not have been the wasted decades as far as the Indian economy is concerned," he said.

"If we continue to follow the reforms path, we will probably be able to write a new chapter in that history," he added.
The MLAs, ruling as well opposition, are being given luxury suitcases and other expensive gift items provided to them by departments listed for special debate and whose budget is listed for approval on that particular day in the House. (Photo: PTI)

Patna: It is raining gifts for MLAs in Bihar during the ongoing Budget session of the state Assembly and Friday was no exception--an expensive microwave oven was waiting to be picked up.

Besides the ovens given to the legislators costing the state exchequer an estimated Rs 25 to 30 lakh, suitcases and mobile phones were other gifts doled out to them by various departments of Bihar's Mahagatbandhan government headed by Nitish Kumar during the first budget session after it assumed office in November last year.

The distribution of gifts took place despite deepening financial crisis and agitation by teachers for their salary.

And curiously, the justification by the state ministers for giving the lavish gifts ranged from an old custom to using the ovens to heat the food served in midday meal scheme in the constituencies of the MLAs. Bihar has 243 legislators.

The MLAs, ruling as well opposition, are being given luxury suitcases and other expensive gift items provided to them by departments listed for special debate and whose budget is listed for approval on that particular day in the House. Earlier the government had given all members costly Mobile phones. Today, it was the turn of the state Education department to provide microwave ovens to the Legislators.

Earlier the government had given all members costly Mobile phones.

Everyday, loads of gifts could be seen neatly stacked up near the main entrance of the Assembly not far away from Chief Minister's chamber which the MLAs pick up after signing in front of their name in the list while going for lunch after the morning session.

When Education Minister Ashok Choudhary was asked by reporters about the reasons for giving expensive gifts like microwave oven today he came out with his own explanation.

"The microwave oven has been given as it could be used by MLAs to heat the food served in midday meal scheme in their areas and test at home for its quality," Choudhary, who is also state Congress President, told reporters.

Asked whether showering MLAs with microwave ovens was justified when the state government was not able to pay salaries to teachers due to lack of funds, he said, "it costs not more than Rs 25-30 lakh and hence relating it with other issues is not justified. Please don't hype it up like this."

Deputy Chief Minister and RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav said giving gift is an old custom.

He said the MLAs are economically not that well off and hence providing microwave oven would help them.

But the political class was also quick in slamming the government for squandering exchequer money.

The BJP leaders after the days sitting slammed the move saying that While the Teachers of the state are not being paid salaries and the government is distributing expensive microwave ovens and suitcases to legislators.

Referring to long pending dues of teachers the BJP leaders attacked the grand secular alliance government saying, The issue if ignored further will prove disastrous, the government must not waste money on gifts and instead must address to the problems of teachers who have been demanding salaries.

Besides distributing expensive microwave ovens and suitcases the grand secular alliance government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had distributed expensive mobile phones to all 243 legislators including BJP in November last year after it resumed office. According to sources the estimated cost of gifts distributed among legislators is between Rs. 25 to Rs. 30 Lakhs.
New Delhi, March 18 : Bollywood actor Anupam Kher on Friday took a dig at JNU students Anirban Bhattacharya and Umar Khalid, who were granted six-month interim bail by a Delhi court in a sedition case.

"Only those can be considered as heroes who talk in favour of the country. How can those who talk against the country be hailed as heroes? Look how they (Khalid and Bhattacharya) are being greeted. They haven't won some Olympic medal... They have been granted bail today (Friday)," Kher said while addressing a gathering of students on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus.

"We have laid the foundation of this nation. The national flag is in our hearts. Saying 'Bharat mata ki jai' is not a matter of debate," he said to his audience comprising mostly Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad-affiliated students at the JNU's administration block.

Meanwhile, about 20-25 people protested against Kher's visit to the JNU in connection with the premiere of his movie and raised slogans like 'Anupam Kher go back' and 'Modi ke talve chatna band karo'.

The protesters also held placards saying 'dissent is not sedition' and 'don't need nationalism certificate from you'.

"I will always keep the Hindustani in me alive... No power can stop this feeling," Kher said.

Kher also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "After a long time, the nation has got a good prime minister. I was stunned by his speech at the Sufi festival," the Bollywood actor said.

Director Vivek Agnihotri and Ashok Pandit of the Central Board of Film Certification also attended the event.
New Delhi, March 18 : Expressing solidarity with university professor S.A.R. Geelani, Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) on Friday demanded his release after dropping the sedition charge against him.

"The Supreme Court had clearly laid down the parameters of applicability of the sedition law, and held time and again that peaceful discussions and expression of views cannot attract the charge of sedition," DUTA said in a resolution passed by its executive on Friday.

"The DUTA Executive reiterates that the charge of sedition against Zakir Husain College (Evening) associate professor S.A.R. Geelani be dropped. He should be released and allowed to rejoin duty," the resolution said.

Geelani was arrested on February 16 on a sedition charge for organising a meeting at the Press Club of India here on February 10 to mark the death anniversary of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

The resolution also expressed dismay over the cases of sedition lodged against students, teachers, activists and political leaders, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and CPI-Marxist general secretary Sitaram Yechury and professor Anand Sharma.

"The DUTA Executive expresses grave concern over the misuse of the colonial sedition law to suppress dissent and settle political scores, and appeals for repealing of this colonial law that has no place in a modern democracy."

The DUTA warned the government that such incidents would harm the academic environment leading to a collapse of the teaching-learning process in universities.

"The DUTA Executive appeals the teachers to stand united against all attempts to divide us, and to strengthen our united movement in defence of autonomy of universities, and democratic spaces for free debate and discussion to promote independent and creative thinking," the resolution said.
New Delhi, March 18 : Gujarat Minority Finance and Development Board chairman M.K. Chishti on Friday said it is the Sufis and Sufism that have suffered the most because of terrorism.

"We, the Sufis, have suffered the most due to terrorism. Our mazars, our khanqahs, the places that we hold close to our hearts and venerate, have been bombed. Our people have been killed," Chishti told IANS here.

Chishti, president of the Gujarat BJP minority cell, said that Sufis have traditionally remained away from politics but the need of the hour is to get Sufis on a political platform.

An executive member of the All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) - which is organising an international Sufi conference here - was crucial in introducing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the conference.

"I apprised the prime minister of this conference and he was very supportive. He has always been supportive of the Sufi school of thought. In fact, it was during the discussion with him that the idea to go international came up," he said.

How much the message of peace would melt the hearts of those spewing venom against Muslims? Chishti said that Muslims need not have any fear or insecurity in their minds.

"There is hatred in some hearts but there is harmony too. And our prime minister is very supportive of the thinking that promotes communal harmony and brotherhood," he said.

The four-day Sufi conference has seen participation from more than a dozen countries, including the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Bangladesh, apart from India.
Tripoli, March 18 : The Islamic State has threatened Libya's premier-designate Fayez al-Sarraj after he announced that the UN-backed national unity government will move to Tripoli from Tunis "within the next few days".

"Our war against it (Libya's newly appointed national unity government) is the same war as that against the previous governments," a masked IS militant stated in a video posted to Internet.

"This apostate government won't live in security but will provide us the opportunity to burn the ground beneath the feet of the apostates and their masters," the militant added.

He also warned of a "new Iraq" should world powers intervene military in Libya, where the IS has exploited the turmoil and expanded since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Also on Friday, the 'Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room' armed group announced a "long-term" war against the UN-backed unity government, the al-Wasat reported.

The militia, founded by the Tripoli parliament's Islamist-leaning speaker Nouri Abusahmain, vowed to "crush" supporters of the Sarraj's government, calling them a "mass of spies".

Since 2014, Libya has had two rival parliaments and governments, an Islamist-leaning one based in Tripoli and the internationally recognised one based in the eastern city of Tobruk, each backed by various militias.

The internationally-recognised eastern parliament has repeatedly failed to vote to approve the unity government, but a majority of its members signed a statement of support last month.
Rome, March 18 : Pope Francis is launching his own account on the Instagram photo-sharing social network site, under the name 'Franciscus', Vatican Radio reported on Friday.

The opening of the Pope's Instagram account on Saturday will increase his strong presence on social media platforms, Vatican Radio said.

Francis already has a Twitter account with the hashtag @ Pontifex that has over 26 million followers and the number is "constantly increasing", said Vatican Radio.

Founded in 2010, Instagram has around 400 million users worldwide and shares photos and videos with a community of followers.
Bengaluru, March 18 : Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday allocated Rs.6,044 crore for Bengaluru infrastructure development in the budget for 2016-17.

"In the outlay of Rs.14,853 crore to the state urban development department, Rs.6,044 crore will be for infrastructure projects in Bengaluru," he said.

Admitting that Bengluru was the nation's growth engine and the nation's start-up capital, the chief minister said his government had decided to add sheen to 'Brand Bengaluru' by achieving effective convergence of the grants given to the city through different institutions.

"We are conscious that Bruhath Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) needs additional resources. We have provided Rs.5,606 crore to the civic corporation since 2013-14 and an additional Rs.1,976 crore was granted as special investment plan in this fiscal (2015-16)," he said.

The civic body will take up various infrastructure works across the city at a cost of Rs.5,000 crore under the chief minister's special package.

"The civic body will develop 1,500 km of roads to provide alternative routes, develop IT-BT hubs in the eastern and northern suburbs, provide multi-level car parking in select locations, build grade separators in busy junctions, develop lakes and construct storm water drains," Siddaramaiah said.

The state government will provide Rs.4,223 crore outlay to the BBMP for various civic works in the ensuing fiscal.
New Delhi, March 18 : The two-day BJP national executive beginning on Saturday will discuss the current political scenario, including the debate on "nationalism", while special focus is expected for the party's preparations in four major states going to the polls in April-May.

The meeting, the first since Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah assumed office for a full three-year term earlier this year, will begin with his speech and will culminate with an address by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Of the poll-bound states, BJP has high stakes in Assam where it is making a serious bid to come to power. It is also seeking to improve its performance in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The party is expected to comment in its political resolution on AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi's refusal to say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai".

"The political resolution will include the recent incidents of JNU and the issue of Owaisi's refusal to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' among others," a BJP leader told IANS.

BJP and some opposition parties including Congress have sparred over the central government's actions concerning the Jawaharlal University and Hyderabad University.

BJP had attacked Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over his visit to JNU following arrest of its student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition over alleged anti-India slogans raised at an event to mark the hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Gandhi had hit back, saying he does not need lessons in nationalism from BJP.

The national executive will have a special session to discuss party's preparations in Uttar Pradesh, which will go to the polls in 2017.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to speak on the budget and highlight its key features for dissemination among people. The party will also adopt an economic resolution.

"The budget presented is pro-poor and pro-village. So all the members would be asked to take this budget to common people," a party leader said.
Brussels, March 18 : The November 13, 2015 Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been shot and arrested in a police raid in the Molenbeek area of Brussels, media reported on Friday.

"We got him," the Belgian justice minister told reporters, confirming reports in the Belgian press that Abdeslam had been caught alive, the Guardian reported.

French president FranAois Hollande earlier said an operation was under way in Brussels linked to the Paris attacks. Gunshots and explosions were heard in the Molenbeek area.

The police operation in Molenbeck was launched just as Belgian prosecutors confirmed that Abdeslam's fingerprints had been found at a flat that was raided in the Forest area of Brussels on Tuesday. Two suspects fled that raid.

Prior to the Molenbeek raid, Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it had not been established how old the fingerprints were, or how long Abdeslam spent in the apartment.

Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national who grew up in Brussels, fled Paris for Belgium by car hours after the November 13 attacks which killed 130 people. He is believed to have played a key role in organising the attacks.

Police believe he played a key role in the logistics of the Paris attacks and escorted the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France as part of the coordinated attacks.

Abdeslam reportedly stayed holed up in an apartment in the Schaerbeek district in north Brussels for three weeks after the Paris attacks.

In January, Belgian authorities said they had found two apartments and a house used by Abdeslam and other suspects in the run-up to the attacks.

A fingerprint belonging to Abdeslam was found in one apartment along with traces of explosives, possible suicide belts and a drawing of a person wearing a large belt.
New Delhi, March 18 : Actor Sanjay Dutt, who was released from the Yerwada prison in Pune last month, says that he has no regrets but he doesn't want to be known as either "Munnabhai" or "Khalnayak", but as Sanjay Dutt only.

"I have no regrets. I have taken it (prison sentence) in a positive way. Sanjay has grown up, become a little bit clever. I just want to be Sanjay. I don't want to be Munnabhai or Khalnayak. I think people love Sanjay Dutt," Sanjay said at the India Today Conclave 2016 here on Friday.

He also said that now he aims to do some "great cinema".

"I am going to do some great cinema. I want to do good movies. I don't want to do films because I am compelled to do them. I want to make a difference... Just try to change the genre in the industry," he said.

About his future projects, he said: "I maybe doing a film with Siddharth Anand. Another one with Vidhu Vinod Chopra and then (the third part of) 'Munnabhai', which comes out in 2017."

Asked about the biopic on his life, Sanjay quipped that two hours are not enough to document it.

Sanjay, who was absolved of involvement in the 1993 Mumbai blasts but convicted for illegal possession of arms, said that he has "learnt" from that incident.

"I don't have any regrets, but I learnt from it. I learnt the law of the land. I learnt not to be brash, I learnt not to think from the heart but from the mind," he said.

The actor also said that he never let his father, the late actor Sunil Dutt, down.

"I never let him down. He knew whatever I may have done, the act of terrorism was never there. Before he died, he told me that he was always proud of me. I will never forget that. That was the day he hugged me," he added.

The actor, who served a few years in prison, now wants to work for jail reform.

"I want to do a lot for jail reform, for the drugs and for the youth. The sipahi runs the jail. There were couple of sipahis in my jail. I used to sit with them. Used to help them," he added.
New Delhi, March 18 : The Congress, noting that the government had introduced Aadhaar bill as money bill to "bypass" Rajya Sabha, on Friday said this was a "dangerous trend."

"I think this is a very dangerous trend. The government has taken this to bypass the Rajya Sabha. This is an assault on the upper house of parliament. The Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are two equal wheels of the same chariot of Indian democracy," said party leader Jairam Ramesh, noting several senior ministers in the government were from the Rajya Sabha.

He said Congress had "adequate grounds" to believe that Aadhaar bill was not a money bill.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, was passed by parliament in the budget session after amendments suggested by Rajya Sabha were rejected by the Lok Sabha.

Party leader Anand Sharma, who also interacted with the media, accused the the government of lack of coordination ahead of the visit of a joint investigation team from Pakistan to probe the terror attack in Pathankot.
From now onwards, any fund flow from Ford Foundation to any person, NGO or organisation in India need not be referred for clearance to the Home Ministry. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Home Ministry has taken off Ford Foundation from its watch list under which any flow of funds from the US-based international donor agency to any Indian NGO or person had to be vetted by it before being disbursed to the recipient.

The Home Ministry has decided to remove Ford Foundation from the prior reference category with immediate effect, a Home Ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

From now onwards, any fund flow from Ford Foundation to any person, NGO or organisation in India need not be referred for clearance to the Home Ministry.

The Home Ministry has asked the Reserve Bank India to inform all banks about the decision.

The decision of the Home Ministry came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US.

In April 2015, the Home Ministry had put the Ford Foundation on its watch-list for funding activist Teesta Setalvad's NGOs, saying they allegedly didn't use the funds provided by the foundation for the stated purpose "in violation" of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Setalvad had denied the charge but the Home Ministry asked the CBI to probe further. Ford Foundation also took up the matter with the Home Ministry.

The Ministry asked the Foundation to get itself registered under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) that governs foreign exchange transactions in the country.

As per law, all liaison offices of international donor agencies need to register under FEMA. Since the foundation had not done so, ever since it started working in India since 1952, it was asked to apply for registration.

In an earlier statement, the Foundation had said it had submitted an application for registration under applicable Indian law on the direction of the government.
New Delhi, March 19 : Renowned lawyer and activist Amal Clooney on Friday asserted that minority voice should always be protected in a society advocating a free speech.

"The minority voice is the one you should always protect a society that advocates a free speech. Countries must allow criticism of its rulers, governments and religion," Clooney said addressing a session at India Today Conclave.

"Locking up a dissenter will not stifle dissent. In fact it will fester it further. For India. using sedition law against students would be a step in the wrong direction," she added.

Clooney added that sedition is an anachronistic crime but it is unfortunate if a country starts using it more actively.

"I hope we could have a healthy debate on the freedom of speech in India since it is well placed for such discussion," Clooney said insisting free speech is not only a human right but also an essence of being human.

Clooney is a British-Lebanese lawyer, who has fought the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his fight against extradition. She has also represented the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy who was jailed during the Arab Spring for expressing dissent against the then Egyptian government. She is married to popular Hollywood actor George Clooney.
Shillong, March 19 : Lafarge Umiam Mining Private Limited (LUMPL), a subsidiary of French firm Lafarge, has deposited nearly Rs. 130 crore with the Meghalaya government for developmental work in the mining village areas, the state assembly was told on Friday.

Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, told the house during the question hour, said the French firm has deposited Rs.120,68,08,200 with the government through the Special Purpose Vehicle society for taking up development activities in villages within 50 km radius of the mining area.

However, Leader of Opposition Donkupar Roy said that few villages locating close to the project area of Lafarge were not included for taking up development activities but instead villages which are located far away from the project area were included.

"The government should use the Google map to identify the villages falling within the project area of Lafarge by following the definition given in the ruling of the supreme court," said the veteran United Democratic Party legislator.

However, Sangma said that the Special Purpose Vehicle society has worked out the areas that should be included for taking up development activities without deviating from the ruling of the Supreme Court.

"If some villages were not included, the Special Purpose Vehicle society would look into it," he assured.

The LUMPL has been depositing crores of money towards the Special Purpose Vehicle to carry out socio-economic development like health, education, economy, irrigation and agriculture within the 50 km radius of the project area at Nongtrai-Shella in East Khasi Hills district as per the court directive.
Noida, March 19 : Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission chairperson Sima Samar on Friday said Pakistan must know that the problem caused by it in Afghanistan will also reach them.

"I believe that our neighbour (Pakistan) should realise that problems that it is causing in Afghanistan is not going to stay within our boundaries. It would reach them," Samar, who was here to participate in an international conference on child and youth, told IANS.

"As soon as they realise this and take action against enemies of human rights, the world will have a positive change," she said.

"When you (Pakistan) are training bad people against a country, you will be trapped," she added.

Hopeful of a peaceful region and reminiscing the Afghanistan "that once was", she said that only with regional cooperation and peace, could social and economic stability reach Afghanistan within next 20 years.

"If everything goes well, including the social, economical and political situation in the region, we may achieve prosperous Afghanistan sooner than 20 years," she said.

Holding poverty, inequality and disorientation against the people as a major cause of terrorism, Samar said terrorists are also people like us, subjected to circumstances.

"Those who are killing themselves and involve in terrorist activities are also people like us. But what put them in that situation has reasons and conditions. I think poverty, inequality and lack of job opportunities for youth is major reason of terrorism. Where would they go? Either they are used by group of people to brainwash and make them supporter of the government or by the extremists," she said.

Advocating an over overall policy revision for south Asian countries, in terms of quality education and social services, Samar also cited the discrimination against the girl child in the region.

"If I had a choice, maybe I would have not born a girl," she said while recalling Farkhunda, a 27-year-old Afghan woman who was lynched by a mob on March 19 last year in Kabul over rumours of blasphemy.

"There are programmes for education and awareness but due to insecurity, majority of budget goes to military and its training. But my argument is that army and police should be there t protect people's right and if not then why should we have them?"
New Delhi, March 19 : The government has sought a report from the Indian embassy in Beijing regarding an Indian national who was detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

"I have asked for a report from our embassy in China," External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted on Friday.

She was responding to a tweet which said that an Indian businessman who was working in Shenzhen with a resident permit and a business licence was taken by police on Tuesday.

"Wife has been released after questioning but my friend is detained with a notice of 30 days," the tweet said.

The tweet also said that the businessman's wife was alone in Shenzhen and the Chinese authorities were not allowing her to contact him.
Rents in England and Wales increased by 0.1% between January and February, the first monthly rent since autumn 2015, according to the latest index.

This took the average rent to 791 a month and could be the first of several rises as the private rented sector braces for anti-landlord policies such as tax changes.

The data from the buy to let index from Your Move and Reeds Rains also shows that year on year rents are up 3.3%, or an extra 25 a month for the average tenant.

Average rents are now rising on a monthly basis for the first time since September 2015, up 0.1% between January and February.

Rents across England & Wales now stand at 791 per month as of February, 3.3% higher compared to this point last year  or an extra 25 per month for the average tenant.

On a regional basis rent rises were led by the Midlands. In the East Midlands tenants have seen the fastest annual rent rises, up 7% over the last 12 months. This is followed by the West Midlands with 6.3% and the East of England with rents 6.2% higher than in February 2015.

These three regions all stand ahead of London on this basis, with rents in the capital 4.8% higher than 12 months ago. As recently as November, London consistently led the field in terms of annual rent rises.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum rents are lower than a year ago in three out of 10 regions. These exceptions are led by the North East where the average rent is now 2.5% lower than in February 2015, followed by Wales with rents down 1.5%, and the South East with a marginal 0.1% annual drop.

Five out of 10 regions have now seen rents rising month on month. On this basis the East of England leads with rents in February 1.1% higher than in January 2016. The South East and the East Midlands are joint second on this measure with rents up 0.6% between January and February. By contrast, rents in Wales and the North East are now 0.9% lower and 0.7% lower than in January, respectively.

On the back of the latest monthly increases, monthly rents in the West Midlands have set a new an all-time record high, at 596, alongside a new all-time record for Yorkshire and Humber rents at 559. The East Midlands, while home to the fastest annual rent rises in the twelve months to February, has seen rents remain just 1 short of the all-time record high set at 610 in November 2015.

Adrian Gill, director of lettings agents Your Move and Reeds Rains, pointed out that rents are rising at a time when demand is growing. Rent rises could now accelerate further. If government attacks on landlords bite, having worsened again in this weeks Budget, the flow of investment from landlords could wilt, he said.

Landlords are increasingly deliberate in their actions and savvy in their business decisions. But all landlords investing steadily in new property to let are the heroes of the buy to let industry, not the villains. Thanks to the business acumen and persistence of landlords, Britains private rented sector has become home to millions of households and the only real backstop against the weakness of other tenures, he explained.

All landlords, regardless of the number of properties they own, want to provide a quality service as part of earning a reliable return on their investment. For those with the right advice, this is part of operating a successful business model. Avoiding void periods and ensuring a good relationship with reliable tenants is essential. So it is hard to understand the logic behind restricting the flow of new investment, and the competition between existing landlords, Gill commented.

Additional taxes on the purchase of new buy to let properties will not support the stated aims of these policies, namely to improve home ownership. By attacking buy to let, the government will only serve to push up market rents more quickly, stymieing the efforts of many tenants to raise a deposit to buy a home while also boosting returns for existing landlords with the best advice to navigate new complications, he added.

The report also reveals that rental yields are proving resistant to rising purchase prices. The gross yield on a typical rental property in England and Wales, before taking into account factors such as void periods, is steady at 4.8% in February, the same as in January 2016. On an annual basis, this is fractionally lower than the 5% gross yield seen a year ago in February 2015.

Taking into account both rental income and capital growth, the average landlord in England and Wales has seen total returns of 12.7% over the 12 months to February. This is up from 11.7% in the 12 months to January and now also represents a 17 month record, since total returns previously reached 12.7% in the year to September 2014.

In absolute terms this means that the average landlord in England and Wales has seen a return of 23,227 over the last 12 months, before any deductions such as property maintenance and mortgage payments. Of this, the average capital gain contributed 14,767 while rental income made up 8,460 over the 12 months to February.

Rising property prices and rising rents are two sides of the same coin. There is not enough supply of housing across the UK to match soaring demand. This is powering a sellers purchase market and a landlords rental market. Housing costs are rising, and housing wealth is rising, two very different perspectives on the same issue, Gill explained.

Faced with this dilemma, investment in property is a rational response, and has been proving extremely lucrative for landlords and some home-owners alike. Building more new homes would be an even better response, and where possible is even more profitable. But it is government inaction preventing more homes being built to fill the gap just as it is a government decision to attack those willing to navigate the risk and complexity of property investment, he said.

Until this country builds new homes at the rate needed to match our rising population, property investment and buy to let activity will continue to be especially profitable. Even if that ever happens, it could take decades of sufficient home building to make up for the decades of undersupply, he pointed out.

The only caveat is that property investment decisions are becoming more complicated thanks to the plethora of additional regulations and tax changes. These decisions will be harder to make, and the buy to let industry will demand a more professional approach to the business of being a landlord. But for those who already own properties, or have the capital to invest, there are opportunities to be found, Gill added.

Paying the rent on time became marginally more difficult for tenants in the private rented sector in February, the index shows. On average late rent now stands at 8.8% of all rent due, compared to 8.2% in January 2016.

Tenant finances have also worsened compared to the same point a year ago. The latest arrears rate of 8.8% compares with 7.6% rent arrears previously in February 2015. On a longer term basis levels of late rent remain more encouraging. This February compares to the all-time high of 14.6% of all rent payable in arrears seen in February 2010.

For half a decade we have tracked a reliable long term improvement in total levels of late rent. That is levelling off now. It may be that we have reached a point where a residual possibility of communication, organisation and practical issues mean some late rent is inevitable, Gill said.

Despite this possibility, a real optimist would hope that late rent could continue to improve towards zero. In fact our latest figures on the most serious rental arrears are more encouraging, which would support the idea that we arent anywhere near more fundamental limits to the improvement, he added.

Better communication between landlords and tenants, and quality property management will be key in helping the market push this risk even lower. The only cloud on that horizon is that more serious affordability issues are marginally more likely after the latest restrictions on buy to let investment. I am an optimist but the entire buy to let industry is becoming more complicated, and will require more nuanced and bespoke answers for landlords in different situations, he concluded.
Later, when Prime Minister Modi was about to begin his speech, the slogan was chanted again, reportedly by the same men. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who on Thursday delivered the inaugural lecture at the World Sufi Forum, was greeted with chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogans as soon as he climbed the stage by people sitting in the audience.

Later, when Prime Minister Modi was about to begin his speech, the slogan was chanted again, reportedly by the same men.

The greeting to the Prime Minister comes in the backdrop of a bitter row over the slogan, triggered by Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat's comment that the young generation should be taught to praise Mother India.

In protest, All India Muslim Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi said he cannot be forced to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan to prove his patriotism.
Jane Butler, who founded the company in 2004, has moved into the position of Chairman of the Board for Vendome Group, and will continue to focus on growth strategies for the company. These changes became effective on January 1, 2016.

"Mark Fried is uniquely positioned to lead Vendome Group at this time based on his past experience as Vendomes Presidentcreating and spearheading the strategic initiatives across and within the companys multiple business lines, states Butler.

Im confident in the company's direction because of the vision, strategy, and culture that Jane Butler built as CEO," states Mark Fried. We have a uniquely talented staff, and I look forward to continuing the development of our event-based business supported by integrated solutions for our vendors in digital, custom, and print deliverables.

Mr. Fried is a graduate of New York Universitys Stern School of Business, where he earned his Masters in Business Administration. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Michigan.

About Vendome Group

Vendome Group produces high-quality publications and premier events for professionals in healthcare and real estate. From award-winning magazines and newsletters to renowned conferences, Vendome improves the productivity and efficiency of community members by supplying them with the tools they need to effectivelyand profitablybring their services and products to market. Backed by a team of editorial, marketing, and sales experts, Vendome serves the needs of customers through a variety of solutions including face-to-face engagement, online, print, and more. For more information, visit: http://www.vendomegrp.com
The benefits of recruiting and developing young people are countless

Alex M Adamson LLP, Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers has achieved the prestigious Investors in Young People Silver Accreditation, the only people management standard that focuses on an employers recruitment and retention of young people. This represents a true commitment to the training and development of young people and demonstrates Alex M Adamson LLP as an employer of choice for young people and testament to their effective practices around Youth Employment.

IIYP, Scotlands only people management award focusing on employers recruitment and retention of young people, originated through a key recommendation from the Commission for Developing Scotlands Young Workforce, led by Sir Ian Wood. The accreditation was launched in July 2014, and offered to all businesses across Scotland, the award recognises and supports organisations in the employment of young people. In July 2015 the second generation framework was launched offering additional stretch to organisations who go above the standard.

Having now achieved the silver accreditation, Alex M Adamson LLP is now eligible to use and display the Investors in Young People silver logo and plaque, and enjoy its benefits.

Commenting on the award on behalf of the younger team at AMA, Alistair Turnbull, Assistant Collections Manager, said, As a team, we are really proud to have been accredited with such a prestigious award recognizing the contribution that our young people are making to the success of the company. The company is focused on making continuous improvements and striving to become better which goes hand in hand with the mind-set of many of the young people employed here. The number of young people employed here has significantly increased over the last year and this award is a testament not only to the hard work, but the training and development that has taken place.

Kevin Mackay, General Manager added In an increasingly competitive environment, they are committed to ensuring we remain at the forefront of our profession by driving improvement in all areas of the business and passing on those benefits to our clients. The young people in our organisation contribute significantly to driving that improvement bringing a new enthusiasm and willingness to change to the organisation.

Peter Russian, Chief Executive of Investors in People Scotland, said This is a fantastic achievement for Alex M Adamson LLP, and I and the whole IIYP team would like to wholeheartedly congratulate them. The 2nd generation framework not only recognises and supports organisations in the employment of young people, but now offers accredited organisations the additional stretch of achieving silver accreditation.

The benefits of recruiting and developing young people are countless. These include the creation of a talent pool for the future, new and increased skills in areas such as IT and social media, fresh eyes and mind-sets into business operations along with enthusiasm and unique talents.

Alex M Adamson LLP has been in business since 1960. Throughout that time, it has operated from a head office in Falkirk but now also has offices in Kirkcaldy, Livingston, Greenock, Stirling and Edinburgh. Alex M Adamson LLP are messengers-at-arms and sheriff officers who provide the full range of citation and diligence services to court users in Scotland and beyond. In addition, they provide revenue collection services to a number of local authority clients throughout Scotland, commercial and consumer debt recovery services, plus ancillary investigation services. Now trading for 56 years, the company employs 46 people throughout their branch network.
Lowenstein & Weatherwax LLP announced today that former Irell & Manella LLP partner Jonathan H. Steinberg has joined the firm where he will be of counsel. Mr. Steinberg practiced at Irell & Manella LLP for over 30 years, where his nationally recognized practice focused on intellectual property, constitutional law, political law, and business litigation.

Chambers and Partners USA Guide to Leading Lawyers has lauded Mr. Steinbergs work, noting his amazing ability to immediately get to the heart of an issue, his world class judgment and his powerful courtroom style. The Legal 500 described him as a key attorney for hi-tech patent litigation and The Best Lawyers in America has consistently recognized him as a leading lawyer.

Having worked with Jonathan for years and experienced his creativity and judgment firsthand, we are honored to have him join us at L&W, said partner Nathan Lowenstein. Jonathans success is notable not just in intellectual property law, but in election law and other challenging areas of practice, added partner Kenneth Weatherwax. Few lawyers earn the kind of accolades Jonathan has in such diverse areas.

Mr. Steinbergs legal career was launched early when, as a second year associate, he argued successfully in the California Supreme Court behalf of 28 Members of Congress in a precedent-setting Congressional redistricting case (Legislature of the State of California, et al. v. George Deukmejian, et al., 34 Cal. 3d 658 (1983)). At that time, The National Law Journal termed him a big gun. Over the ensuing decades, Mr. Steinberg went on to successfully represent Members of Congress, the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and the Senate of the State of California before three judge district court panels and on appeal to the United States Supreme Court, resulting in two additional Supreme Court affirmances. Former Los Angeles County Supervisor and City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky commented: His representation was nothing short of brilliant, and his stewardship in navigating the City Council and Board of Supervisors through the thicket of election law was extraordinary skillful.

In intellectual property matters, Mr. Steinberg defeated several patent infringement claims asserted against Paramount and Lucas Digital and Industrial Light & Magic over the special effects used in Forrest Gump (Bloomstein v. Paramount Pictures Corp., 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20839 (N.D. Cal. 1998) affd, 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 21391 (Fed. Cir. 1999)), Star Wars Episode 1 and Episode 2 (Bloomstein v. Lucasfilm Ltd. et al., 3:02-cv-02649 (N.D. Cal. 2002)). He successfully represented Intel in a variety of matters, including a concerted trademark challenge to Intels MMX Technology. In securities law, he served as counsel for the firm of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed in its defense against claims growing out of the demise of ZZZZ Best (In Re ZZZZ Best Securities Litigation, 864 F.Supp. 960 (N.D. Cal. 1994)). Mr. Steinberg has represented a broad range of technology leaders including Western Digital, Novellus, Industrial Light and Magic, St. Jude Medical, Tessera and many others.

Mr. Steinberg has also been active as a lawyer-scholar. He is the co-author of a leading law review article on partisan gerrymandering, which was cited and quoted by four different justices in the United States Supreme Courts most recent decision on the subject (Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 US 267, 289 (2004), citing Daniel H. Lowenstein & Jonathan Steinberg, The Quest for Legislative Districting in the Public Interest: Elusive or Illusory? 33 UCLA L. REV. 1 (1985)). Stanford political science professor Bruce Cain commented: Steinberg uniquely brings the perspectives of a pioneering practitioner and scholar to the complicated and often messy business of political law and redistricting.

In intellectual property, Mr. Steinberg was a member of the founding board of the USC Intellectual Property Institute, has been an invited speaker at the national ABA Section of Intellectual Property and in Practicing Law Institute programs, and has authored articles and lectures on emerging issues in technology law.

Mr. Steinberg is also a classical musician, albeit one whose musical skills are dwarfed by his enthusiasm. For over a decade, he has served as the chairman of the board of iPalpiti Artists International, which sponsors classical music festivals that feature emerging classical artists from around the globe.

Ive worked with Ken and Nathan for many years, and know them both to be terrifically talented and singularly committed to the needs of their clients. The boutique practice they are building will afford me and prospective clients opportunities that would be hard to replicate in a Big Law context, said Mr. Steinberg. I hope to live up to the standard set by my remarkable mentors at Irell & Manella, for whom support and guidance of the next generation of lawyers was an essential element of the practice of law.

Lowenstein & Weatherwax LLP is an intellectual property boutique located in Century City, California. In its first four years, L&W has handled over 50 IPRs/CBMs before the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, has litigated three U.S. Supreme Court patent matters, including one argued before the Court, and has litigated numerous patent litigations in federal District Courts.
We want to continue to urge college students to consider the sacrifices our military has made for our country and think about ways we can give back....

VeteranAid.org is pleased to announce its first scholarship program for advancement in higher education. The Veterans Benefits Scholarship will award three $2,000 scholarships to college students enrolled in an associate's degree, bachelor's degree or graduate level program at an accredited 2-year college or 4-year university during the 2016-2017 academic year. These students will be awarded based on their innovative ideas to improve the world of military veterans benefits.

VeteranAid.org offers detailed information on a veterans pension benefit called Aid and Attendance (A&A) that helps senior veterans pay for costs of care. If veterans or their spouses require assisted living care in a community or at home, VeteranAid.org gives them the information they need to apply for the A&A benefit themselves. This Aid and Attendance benefit can provide up to $2,120 per month to veteran applicants.

In order to create more awareness of the benefits available to military veterans and open up the floor for more ideas of how our military should be helped in their times of need, VeteranAid.org created the Veterans Benefits Scholarship. The Aid and Attendance benefit that VeteranAid.org prides itself on being the leading source of information on has helped thousands of veterans and families get help with their costs of care, but there is always room for improvements in these types of benefits.

We want to continue to urge college students to consider the sacrifices our military has made for our country and think about ways we can give back to and improve the ways we currently help the military men and women who have served the United States.

Veterans and military are urged to apply for the scholarships, although it is open to all current college students.

VeteranAid.org is requesting the widest possible distribution of the scholarship opportunity and urges readers to get the scholarship into the hands of as many veterans and students as possible.

The scholarships will be awarded to students who can best answer the following essay prompt:

Give an example of one veterans benefit and explain how it helps senior veterans. Then propose your own benefit to help senior veterans.

The deadline to enter is December 31, 2016. Essay topic and details can be found at http://www.veteranaid.org/apply.php at the bottom of the page.

About VeteranAid.org

VeteranAid.org is the leading resource for the veterans Aid and Attendance pension benefit to help seniors pay for care. VeteranAid.org is a partner site of SeniorAdvisor.com which helps seniors find the care that is best and most affordable to them, based on the help of their Aid and Attendance benefit. For more information, please call (866) 610-3391.
With a 100-year legacy of deploying the latest safety measures and technologies into the built environment, the International Code Council (ICC) is hosting and participating in several events surrounding 2016 World Water Day to raise awareness about the importance of water conservation and efficiency.

Scientists are now reporting that two-thirds of the worlds population faces severe water shortages, explained Code Council Chief Executive Officer Dominic Sims, CBO. Recent events in the U.S. such as the Flint, Mich., water contamination and drought in western states are shining the spotlight on a growing global issue.

For decades, ICCs codes and standards have addressed water-related issues, Sims continued, and we remain committed to working with our member jurisdictions and industry partners to bring water efficient products to market, labeling new homes and structures as more water efficient, and spreading the word about the need for smart water use.

The Code Council is supporting the White House Water Summit on March 22 to raise awareness of water issues and potential solutions in the U.S., and to catalyze ideas and actions to help build a sustainable and secure water future through innovative science and technology. The summit will be livestreamed on http://www.whitehouse.gov/live. For more information on this event, please contact env_energy(at)ostp(dot)eop(dot)gov.

On the evening of March 22, the Code Council and Plumbing Manufacturers International (PMI) will host a reception at ICCs office in Washington, D.C., for representatives from industry, federal agencies and other private sector organizations to commemorate World Water Day.

Prior to the White House Water Summit, on March 21, ICCs Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting will be held at the National Institute of Building Sciences in Washington, D.C. With a diverse membership representing designers, planners, manufacturers, contractors and others in the industry, the IAC promotes public health, safety and welfare in the built environment by serving as a national forum for the building community to interface with the Code Council.

In response to a call from industry and in a deal nearly two years in the making, ICC and American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers last year signed a final agreement that outlined each organizations role in the future development and maintenance of the International Green Construction Code. On March 23, the Water Efficiency Working Group of the Standing Standards Project Committee (SSPC) 189.1 will be meeting at the American Gas Association in Washington, D.C., to discuss matters of water efficiency and conservation. Included will be Claudia Copeland, a Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy for the Congressional Research Service, who will be the guest speaker and discuss congressional interest in water conservation issues.

Although 70 percent of our planet is covered with water, less than one percent is drinkable, said ICC Board of Directors President Alex Olszowy, III, with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government in Lexington, Ky. All of us are connected through the use of water, and the Code Council and other industry organizations are doing our part to ensure the building safety industry is contributing to resolving this growing crisis.
ThingTech Connected Asset Intelligence

ThingTech (http://www.thingtech.com) - an Atlanta, GA company announced today that it has been awarded the contract to implement their real time fleet, asset, and equipment tracking and monitoring solutions. Fulton County awarded the project to ThingTech after a rigorous and highly competitive request for proposal process.

The County required an intuitive and flexible automated asset location and telematics solutions for their fleet, heavy equipment, and non-powered assets. The County has varying fleet types, heavy equipment, and mobile assets that need to be tracked and managed in real time including: passenger trucks, heavy duty trucks, passenger cars, passenger SUVs, and various heavy equipment, trailers, power generators and mobile assets. The ThingTech tracIT product  powered by the ThingX Connect Platform - will provide real time location-based data, speed, idling, unsafe driving events, diagnostic trouble codes (DTC) and integration to the Countys ESRI GIS mapping service.

In addition, data analytics and asset business intelligence tools and reports are critical aspects of the project. Based on the volume and variety of assets county-wide, ThingTechs predictive analytics and rules based alert engine allow for significant opportunity to optimize asset utilization, allocation, maintenance, and fleet right-sizing through data driven metrics. Power Take Offs, or PTO support, is a major component of the project. Vehicle and asset sensors will be installed for real time sensor data capture, utilization analysis and workflow automation. All data is based on real time location, events, alerts, and exception notifications. ESRI GIS integration will also be accomplished via real time RESTful framework via our ThingX Connect API Server.

We are very excited about the opportunity to partner with Fulton County Government on this exciting project. Real time asset tracking, monitoring, and utilization data will provide tremendous value to Fulton County and will improve operations, field data collection, asset utilization, and accountability. Our ThingX Connect platform allows our customers to connect to multiple devices, sensors, and machines using multiple communication protocols. Big Data and predictive analytics provides tremendous insight into operations and allow our customers to make data driven decisions and optimize their assets in real time. says Tim Quinn, CEO of ThingTech.

Project is currently underway and estimated completion date for initial phase is May, 2016.

About ThingTech (http://www.thingtech.com)

ThingTech is located in Atlanta, GA with offices in Atlanta Tech Village. Our bright and energetic staff of software developers, consultants, and customer success staff strive to build usable, practical, and innovative solutions to improve businesses in the public and private sector who own, operate, manage, and maintain fleets, heavy equipment, assets, and a mobile workforce. ThingTech solutions combine Enterprise Asset Management, Field Service, Smarter Cities and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions into a single, cloud-based, connected platform for enterprise asset intelligence. Our customers rely on our solutions to track and optimize the performance of their mission critical assets and workforce to increase business performance and improve their customers experience.
Pittcon 2016, the 67th Conference and Exposition for Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, ended on March 10, in Atlanta, Georgia with an economic impact to the city estimated at $25.8 million. This global event brought together nearly 13,000 conferees and exhibitor personnel. Those who attended Pittcon for the first-time accounted for 37% of the conferee number. For the fourth year, the co-location of Food Labs Conference, organized by Innovative Publishing and Food Safety Tech, was held in conjunction with Pittcon.

Global Attendance Remains Strong

Pittcon has always had a strong global presence, and 2016 was no exception with 24% of attendees being from outside the United States. The top countries by attendance (excluding the U.S.) were Japan, China, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Attendees include lab managers, scientists, chemists, researchers and professors, from industrial, academic, and government labs. They represent an equally broad number of scientific disciplines including life science, food science, drug discovery, environmental, forensics, nanotechnology, water/wastewater, energy/fuel, agriculture and bioterrorism.

Exposition

The dynamic exposition floor (409,740 total sq. feet) consisted of 847 exhibitors from 37 countries occupying 1,539 booths displaying the latest innovations in instrumentation and technology used in laboratory science. This year, we welcomed 119 first-time exhibitors. There were two specialized areas on the floor the New Exhibitors and Laboratory Information Management (LIMS).

New this year were the Live Demos where leading exhibitors presented pre-scheduled interactive presentations of a product, technique or service in two designated areas on the show floor.

Key decision makers attending the conference account for 74% of the attendees who rely on the exposition to identify or finalize the purchase of laboratory products for their organizations.

The 2016 sponsors included: Platinum Sponsor Waters Corp., Gold Sponsors Shimadzu and Millipore Sigma and Silver Sponsor Chemplex.

Robust Technical Program Offers Multiple Educational Opportunities

Pittcon offered more than 2,000 technical sessions presented in 64 symposia, 14 awards, 86 oral sessions, 24 contributed sessions, 5 workshops and 53 poster sessions. Approximately 40% of the presentations focused on life science topics.

The Wallace H. Coulter Lecture, How Optical Single-Molecule Detection in Solids Led to Super-Resolution Nanoscopy in Cells and Beyond was presented by 2014 Nobel Laureate Professor W.E Moerner, the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry at Stanford University. The session was attended by a capacity audience followed by a complimentary mixer and poster session.

The 31 Conferee Networking sessions provided a unique opportunity for conferees from around the world to meet in an informal setting to discuss topics of mutual interest. The facilitator-assisted sessions discuss techniques, solutions to challenges and innovative concepts.

The Short Course program offered an opportunity for skill-building training and continuing education for laboratory professionals at an affordable price. Participants have stated that these courses are another factor in selecting Pittcon as the one conference they attend every year. This year, 105 short courses were offered covering a wide variety of topics including, but not limited to, analytical methods in environmental, food and life sciences; nanotechnology; water/wastewater; petroleum and pharmaceuticals. Lab management courses are also a significant part of the program and provide critical insight into the interpretation of the requirements of regulatory aspects, global guidelines, and laboratory standards.

The diverse selections, beginning and advanced levels, were attended by approximately 1,163 participants.

The 2016 Short Course Chairman Amit Ghosh remarked, The strength of our Short Course program is in its diversityIt offers a wide variety of topics from specialized techniques and applications to current industry trends and the challenges in laboratory management. Different levels also make it possible for beginners in the field, as well as, seasoned professionals to enhance their skills and reach career goals.

Employment Bureau

Pittcon provides a free onsite employment service for candidates to review active job openings and for employers to review candidates credentials and resumes. This year, there were 105 employers, 286 positions, 398 candidates and 407 interviews.

Science Week

Each year through Science Week, Pittcon offers outreach and support programs for science education in the city that hosts its annual convention. Six hands-on workshops designed for upper elementary school students and middle school students led students through the exciting process of experimentation and discovery. Teacher workshops supported by school equipment grants were available for elementary, middle and high school teachers in the Atlanta area.

In addition to offering the workshops, Pittcon presented approximately $40,000 in science equipment grants to schools with educators participating in the teacher workshops. The grants enable the schools to purchase equipment demonstrated in the workshops so teachers can implement the science experiments in their own classrooms, or they can use the grants to purchase other science-related equipment of their choice from select companies.

About Pittcon

Pittcon is a registered trademark of The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a Pennsylvania non-profit organization. Co-sponsored by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh, Pittcon is the premier annual conference and exposition on laboratory science. Proceeds from Pittcon fund science education and outreach at all levels, kindergarten through adult. Pittcon donates more than a million dollars a year to provide financial and administrative support for various science outreach activities including science equipment grants, research grants, scholarships and internships for students, awards to teachers and professors, and grants to public science centers, libraries and museums. Visit http://www.pittcon.org for more information.
Our latest project, The Town of Whitehall DE, exemplifies the new urbanism trend, delivering the complete lifestyle experience of a walkable town. said Matt Thompson, president of Thompson Communities.

Thompson Communities has won Best Of Customer Service on Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The 40-year old, second generation community building company 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. Customer Service honors are based on several factors, including the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in 2015. 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.

Thompson Communities is committed to outstanding customer service. Since 1977, Thompson Communities has received over 100 national, regional, and local awards for excellence in building. said Matt Thompson, president of Thompson Communities. Our latest project, The Town of Whitehall DE, exemplifies the new urbanism trend, delivering a complete lifestyle experience of a walkable town. said Thompson.

Anyone building, remodeling or decorating looks to Houzz for the most talented and service-oriented professionals said Liza Hausman, vice president of Industry Marketing for Houzz. Were so pleased to recognize Thompson Communities, voted one of our Best Of Houzz professionals by our enormous community of homeowners and design enthusiasts actively remodeling and decorating their homes.

Thompson Communities' services include custom homes, home renovations, remodeling, solar paneling, and stucco repairs in Pennsylvania, Delaware and the New Jersey beach area.

In addition to the Best Of Houzz 2016, Thompson is an award-winning builder named Best In American Living, Philadelphia Magazines Design Home, and America's Best Builders.

About Houzz

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.

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Felix Chen, Managing Director Adding Felix Chen to Society takes our Big Data capabilities to a whole new level. - Chad Richeson, Co-Founder & CEO

Society Consulting, one of the largest and fastest-growing analytics consultancies in the nation, announced today it has appointed Felix Chen as Managing Director of its national Big Data practice in addition to its Silicon Valley and Southern California digital analytics practices. Based at the companys Seattle headquarters, Chen will lead a team of over 40 data scientists, data engineers, and digital analysts to deliver innovative big data, data science, and digital analytics solutions for Societys growing client base.

Chen most recently led Disneys Big Data team delivering advanced digital technology solutions for ESPN, ABC, Disney Interactive, Walt Disney Studios, and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Prior to his tenure at Disney, Chen played leadership roles at T-Mobile, Wal-mart, and Coinstar. Chen is regarded as an expert at leading data science and data engineering initiatives in large-scale customer data environments. Chen is a graduate of MIT.

"Adding Felix to the team takes our Big Data capabilities to a whole new level," said Chad Richeson, Co-Founder & CEO, Society Consulting. "We were already an industry leader in large-scale data solutions, and we will build on that advantage under Felixs leadership."

The addition of Chen to Societys leadership team reinforces the company's mission of helping its clients Compete on Customer Experience, combining analytics, big data infrastructure, and customer-facing technologies into compelling digital customer experiences, and helping forward-thinking companies unleash the power of big data.

"I am excited to join Society as the company expands to serve a market it helped pioneer," said Chen. "It's a great time to be in the Big Data space helping companies keep astride with the latest in open source technologies and delivering algorithms without the need for full time staff data scientists. We're looking forward to adding these rich features into Society's Amper product. The time is especially right as companies rapidly migrate to and augment their infrastructure with the cloud.

About Society Cconsulting

Society Consulting is a Seattle-based analytics consultancy that serves blue chip clients including Microsoft, AT&T, Sephora, Salesforce, T-Mobile, Fox, and Verizon. Society offers Analytics, Big Data, and Customer Experience services to help its clients create innovative data-driven customer experiences. Society was recently ranked as the #21 fastest-growing consultancy in the nation by Consulting Magazine. For further information please contact chad(at)societyconsulting(dot)com.
Supreme Court modified its earlier order which said that that the government advertisements can feature pictures of the Prime Minister, President and Chief Justice of India only.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said that apart from the President, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of India, the photographs of Governors, Chief Ministers and Cabinet Ministers could also be published in public advertisements.

In its earlier judgement, the apex court had said that government advertisements could only feature pictures of the Prime Minister, the President and the Chief Justice of India.

Read: Supreme Court bans leaders photos in ads, except President, PM, CJI

Last week, Tamil Nadu had joined force with the Centre to challenge the Supreme Court's logic that featuring photographs of politicians, except the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India, in government advertisements would lead to formation of "personality cults".

"We review our judgement by which we have allowed the publication of pictures of the President of India and Prime Minister in the government advertisements. Now we allow the publication of pictures of Union Ministers of concerned departments, Chief Ministers, Governors and State Ministers of the concerned departments. Rest of the conditions and exceptions will remain as it is," a bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and P C Ghose said.

The apex court had on March 9 reserved its verdict on the review pleas in which it was submitted that besides the Prime Minister, pictures of central ministers, chief ministers and others state ministers be allowed to be carried in public advertisements.

Earlier, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, had strongly favoured review of the verdict on various grounds including that if Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in the advertisements then the same right should be available to his cabinet colleagues as the PM is the 'first among the equals'.

The AG had also said that the Chief Ministers and their cabinet colleagues too should be allowed to feature in advertisements.

Besides Centre, states of Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Chattisgarh had also sought review of the May 13, 2015 verdict of the apex court.

The Centre, while seeking review, had earlier said that Article 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Indian Constitution empowers the state and the citizens to 'give and receive' information and it cannot be curtailed and regulated by the courts.

The Attorney General had said if only Prime Minister's photograph is allowed in government advertisements then it can be said that it would promote 'personality cult' which has been described as 'an anti-thesis of democracy' by this court only.

Other ministers and the Chief Ministers are also answerable to public and they cannot remain 'faceless', he had said, adding that the apex court verdict has dealt with print advertisements only in the time where electronic and social media are also there.

The Centre had on October 27 last year joined hands with several state governments in seeking review of the Supreme Court's landmark judgement on the issue.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing NGO Common Cause which had filed the original PIL on review petitions filed by the states, had told the bench that certain state governments were violating the apex court's orders.

On May 13, 2015 the apex court had passed a slew of directions including the order asking Centre to constitute a three-member committee 'consisting of persons with unimpeachable neutrality and impartiality' to regulate the issue of public advertisements.
After being unconscious for 10 weeks, he worked for years to relearn everything he once knew. Meade woke up to the realization that he would only overcome his limitations by making his own recovery a reality.

James P. Meade was a young man who, like millions of other men, went to fight his generations war in Vietnam. He left an able-bodied Vietnam combat helicopter pilot and returned disabled.

In his new book, Making Your Own Reality: A Survival Story Meade shares the story of how he became brain damaged at age 19 as a result of a helicopter crash. After being unconscious for 10 weeks, he worked for years to relearn everything he once knew. Meade woke up to the realization that he would only overcome his limitations by making his own recovery a reality.

Now a motivational speaker and the CEO of the Dr. James Meade, Jr. Foundation, Meade has written Making Your Own Reality to share his belief that everyone has the ability to make his/her dreams a reality.

I attempt to stress with all my clients that if you dont make yourself better, it is not going to happen, Meade said. No therapist or doctor or anyone is going to do it for you.

Making Your Own Reality emphasizes that nothing worthwhile is impossible if individuals are willing to work and sometimes be comfortable asking for help.

After accepting that his disability was his new normal, Meade knew he had to work harder than the able-bodied individual to regain his skill. He stresses to individuals with disabilities that attempting to do things exactly like able-bodied people do is a dead-end street.

Trying to accomplish many efforts the way you once did and failing over and over again fits the label of being disabled, Meade said. Learning to accomplish the same goal in a way that is more doable for you comes across as being creative and smart.

Making Your Own Reality offers readers an empowering guide to making their own dreams come true. Readers will be reminded that they are in control of their own lives and only they can make their goals become a reality.

Making Your Own Reality: A Survival Story

By James P. Meade, Jr. Ph.D.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9336

Available in softcover, hardcover, e-book

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Westbow

About the author

James P. Meade, Jr. is the CEO of the Dr. James Meade Jr. Foundation benefiting brain injury organizations. He is a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, and Military Order of the Purple Heart. Meade is currently retired and residing in Portland, Ore.

# # #

**For Immediate Release**

For review copies or interview requests, contact:

Muriel Cross

317.602.7137

mcross(at)bohlsengroup(dot)com
Its like a film festival for educators - Tonya Lewis Lee

The program will convene teachers, media specialists, school leaders, after-school program leaders, and others committed to using transmedia storytelling  telling a single story across multiple media platforms  to help young people engage with challenging cultural and social justice issues.

Its like a film festival for educators, said Tonya Lewis Lee, who has joined the program faculty along with Nikki Silver, her Chief Co-Creator at ToniK Productions. The two will discuss their process and objectives in adapting The Watsons Go To Birmingham for television, along with their brand new project  a film adaptation of Walter Dean Meyers novel, Monster. Faculty will also explore transmedia opportunities for Fun Home and Hamilton, both currently very popular on Broadway.

The explosion of books across genres being adapted for the screen (e.g., biography, dystopia, historical fiction) has created exciting new opportunities to employ transmedia storytelling in support of student learning and development. Harvard Graduate School of Education Faculty Co-Chair Robert Selman explains that the program is designed to explore intertextuality, a term that points to the way different sectors, genres, and media can all come together to promote and enrich storytelling...and build knowledge and sophistication.

Activities will include plenary sessions, film screenings, and protocols for dialogic instruction  informal conversation between students and teachers to stimulate thinking and advance understanding. Participants will examine issues and stories that are relevant to todays students in a variety of workshops and explore ways different content platforms can tell the same (or similar) stories.

Faculty co-chairs:

Joe Blatt, senior lecturer on education and faculty director, Technology, Innovation, and Education Program, HGSE Robert Selman, Roy Edward Larsen professor of education and human development, HGSE, and professor of

psychology, Harvard Medical School.

Randy Testa, former vice president of education and professional development, Walden Media Tracy Elizabeth, doctoral candidate in Human Development and Education at HGSE.

BMCE is one of 50+ programs for K-12 teachers and school leaders offered annually, online and on campus, at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Additional program information and application details are available at: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/programs
PR News will hold its annual PR Measurement Conference on April 21, 2016 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where attendees will learn the newest best practices in measuring social media engagement and tying PR to the bottom line. Attendees will pick up high-level measurement strategies from senior leaders at Southwest Airlines, Aflac, Bloomberg BNA, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Johns Hopkins University.

View the complete agenda online: http://www.prmeasurementconf.com/agenda.

Speakers will address the gamut of issues surrounding measurement programs, from selecting the right KPIs to measuring the impact of social media to tying media coverage to real business goals.

PR News has also developed an intensive half-day workshop on social media strategies and tactics for PR and marketing professionals, which will take place the day before the conference on April 20, also at the National Press Club. Workshop attendees will learn the ins and outs of the big three social platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and what it takes to succeed in this multimedia digital space.

More information on the workshop here: http://www.prmeasurementconf.com/social-media-workshop-agenda.

Thanks to conference sponsors BurrellesLuce, Business Wire and TrendKite. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Contact Account Executive Lindsay Silverberg at lsilverberg(at)accessintel(dot)com.

Register now at http://www.prmeasurementconf.com for these events in Washington, D.C. Rates increase after April 1 and government and nonprofit rates are available for the PR Measurement Conference. For registration questions, reach out to Jessica Placencia at Jessica(at)accessintel(dot)com.
HighWire Press, Inc., the leading publishing technology platform provider for renowned scholarly publishers and societies, announced today it will open a new office in Belfast, Northern Ireland, adding 74 full time employees over a three-year period. The announcement was made at a meeting with Northern Ireland's First Minister, Arlene Foster, and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, held at Stanford University.

The Belfast office will include global leadership for technology and customer support teams to rapidly expand platform development capabilities, and work more directly with European publishers and societies. This investment reflects HighWire's long-term commitment to advance the goals of its publishing partners who serve the global research and scholarly communities across diverse disciplines.

"Belfast's abundant developer community is highly motivated and a great fit with our organizational culture. We are pleased with the strong talent pool that is now available to us," said Dan Filby, CEO of HighWire Press. The HighWire Open Platform leverages flexible Drupal open source technology to rapidly enable platform customization and meet growing publisher and industry demand for faster integrations.

Sharon Cooper, Chief Digital Officer, BMJ and HighWire Advisory Board Member, commented, "BMJ has always been a leader in digital innovation for content delivery and HighWire has been a strategic partner since 1997. Fostering close working relationships with our partners is key to our success and so we are excited about HighWire's expansion to Belfast to ensure that we can continue to play a leading role in that digital innovation space working with HighWire's Belfast and Silicon Valley team members to scale solutions that meet reader and researcher needs."

"We are pleased to announce that Rob Smyth, HighWire's Director of Engineering Quality Assurance, will lead a team of technology professionals to provide innovative solutions that meet demands in today's more open, integrated publishing landscape," continued Filby.

"I look forward to connecting the creative, dynamic developer community in Belfast with our world-leading publishing partners to meet strategic goals and advance the architecture of research communication," said Rob Smyth.

"Ten employees have been hired, and plans are underway to recruit 50 full time developers, support, and professional services staff by the end of 2016," Smyth added. "We will work quickly to build new, collaborative teams, extending HighWire's workday across time zones to deliver innovation for our clients' global readership."

Founded at Stanford University, HighWire Press has a strong tradition of working with top research institutions. "We are delighted by how quickly we have been able to collaborate with faculty and program leaders at local colleges and universities, including Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, on programs to attract innovative developers," said Filby. "We look forward to extending our collaboration with librarians, researchers, and students in the community."

ENDS

Note to the Editor:

The announcement was made at a meeting with Northern Ireland's First Minister, Arlene Foster, and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, on a trade mission to the US. The meeting was held at Stanford University.

Photos available via Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/niexecutive/sets/72157665865432286/

About HighWire

HighWire Press, Inc. provides publishers and professional organizations with technology solutions to disseminate world-leading scholarly, scientific, technical and medical research. The HighWire Open Platform offers innovative open source technology, digital content development, hosting services, support, and BenchPress, a peer-review manuscript submission system. With offices in the US and the UK, HighWire Press serves global scholarly publishers.

http://www.highwire.org | Twitter: @highwirepress

Media Contact

Amy Mosher, Vice President, Human Resources

amosher(at)highwire.org | +1 650-725-9279 (PDT)
Sean Thompson joins Blackbird Technologies as Senior Litigation Counsel.

Blackbird Technologies (http://www.blackbird-tech.com) is pleased to announce that Sean Thompson has joined the company as Senior Litigation Counsel.

We are thrilled that Sean has joined our team. His deep knowledge and experience in litigation, particularly large-scale, complex patent litigation, will greatly add to our growing team of top notch litigation talent and enable us to significantly expand our ability to take on larger cases, said Wendy Verlander, President and CEO of Blackbird Technologies.

Chris Freeman, VP and Head of Litigation at Blackbird Technologies, added: Blackbird has built an exceptional team of patent litigation talent and expertise. With Sean on board, the skill level we can bring to bear is really unmatched for a company of our size and efficiency.

Mr. Thompson is an experienced intellectual property litigator, who has represented clients in complex patent disputes involving a variety of technologies, including semiconductors, voice-over-IP telephone services, and pharmaceutical products. He recently left WilmerHale, where he handled all phases of litigation in state and federal courts, the International Trade Commission, and international arbitral tribunals. In addition, Mr. Thompson has experience with proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, including inter partes reviews. Before joining WilmerHale, Mr. Thompson was a litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where he worked on a wide variety of litigation matters.

Mr. Thompson received a joint JD/LL.M., cum laude, from Cornell Law School, where he also served as Note Editor on the Cornell Law Review. He received a Bachelors degree, magna cum laude, from Boston College and a Masters degree, with distinction, from the London School of Economics and Political Science. At Boston College, he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Im very excited to join Blackbird Technologies. The talent that has been assembled at Blackbird is tremendous, and I look forward to working with the team to help inventors and small businesses protect their intellectual property and realize value from their hard work, said Mr. Thompson.

About Blackbird Technologies

Blackbird Technologies provides a unique opportunity for individual inventors and small companies to realize the value of their patents. By using in-house expertise, rather than expensive law firms, Blackbird Technologies is able to litigate at reduced costs and achieve results that equal or exceed what a law firm would recover. This company creates efficiencies that make it possible for individual inventors and small companies to see the end game  realizing the true value of their patents.
AllSeateds Partnership with CORT Event Furnishings Goes Live.

CORT Trade Show & Event Furnishings, the nations leading furniture, lighting and accessories rental company, announces that its partnership with AllSeated is live. CORT clients and AllSeated users can now view and easily plug CORT Event Furnishings into their floor plans.

AllSeated is a free collaboration network for planning events. The easy-to-use tools offer event designers, planners, hosts, caterers, venues and brides the ability to create floorplans, manage guest lists, seating charts and timelines all in one place. Creating an AllSeated account is not only free but also quick and easy to do by visiting http://www.allseated.com to sign up.

Were very excited about partnering with CORT to help event managers make their workflow easier and more efficient, said AllSeateds Co-founder Sandy Hammer. This partnership will help us further our mission of moving the events industry into the more collaborative, digital age.

AllSeated users have access to the full library of CORT furnishings and accessories including sofas, bar stools and chairs. This tool empowers designers with complete event creativity when it comes to designing floor plans and layouts. When viewed in 3D, users can see their floor plans and CORT furnishings truly come to life.

Our partnership with AllSeated enhances the experience of our customers by simplifying the way they plan corporate events, fundraisers, weddings and more, said Kevin Dana, executive director of marketing and product development at CORT Trade Show & Event Furnishings.

To learn more about CORTs exhibit and event rental collections or top trends for 2016, visit http://www.cortevents.com.

About CORT Trade Show & Event Furnishings

CORT Trade Show & Event Furnishings is the leading nationwide provider of rental furnishings for the exhibit and events industry. From high-profile special events to corporate meetings to weddings, CORT provides the rental furnishings that make exhibitions and events possible. CORT also provides rental furniture to the majority of trade shows and conferences in the nation, including shows and events in Canada. For more information, visit http://www.CORTevents.com.

About CORT

CORT, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, is the nations leading provider of transition services, helping millions of individuals and more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies as they live, work and celebrate. With more than 100 offices, showrooms and clearance centers across the United States, operations in the United Kingdom and partners in more than 70 countries, no other furniture rental company can match CORTs breadth of services and companywide commitment to providing excellent customer service. For more information, please visit http://www.cort.com.

About AllSeated

AllSeated is the fastest growing network for the events industry, powered by free, state of the art, cloud-based event planning tools. It brings together hosts, venues, planners and vendors to collaborate seamlessly on every aspect of event creation including seating charts, guest lists, scaled floor plans, 3D table layouts, event timelines and more. Among AllSeated's tens of thousands of users are The Mandarin Oriental, Marriott, The Plaza, United Nations, LinkedIn, Davids Bridal, celebrity event planners Harriette Rose Katz and Arthur Backal, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. AllSeated came out of beta in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco. The company is backed by Magma Ventures. More information can be found on http://www.allseated.com.

Media Contact

Alex Huffman

Largemouth Communications (for CORT)

alex(at)largemouthpr(dot)com

919-459-6455
Voted "Best Spa in the World" by Virtuoso

The internationally recognized spa at Grand Velas Riviera Maya now offers guests the Uumbal Shawl Massage, a full-body treatment with creative choreography dating back to prehistoric times. Using lemons to apply pressure and authentic Mexican shawls for stretching, the signature treatment aligns body posture and cleans energy channels from head to toe. The treatment is the latest addition to the Spas Flavors and Traditions of Mexico Path, which also features the Bacal Massage, using one of the Mayans most sacred plants - corn, a Mayan Jade Facial, and the Coffee & Cocoa Experience, an exfoliation and massage with both native Mexican products. The 80-minute Uumbal Shawl Massage treatment costs $236 USD. For reservations or additional information, please call 1-888-407-4869 or visit http://www.rivieramaya.grandvelas.com.

Voted "Best Spa in the World" by Virtuoso in 2010, The Spa at Grand Velas Riviera Maya is 90,000 square feet, inclusive of separate hydrotherapy facilities for men and women. Included with any treatment 50 minutes or more, the Hydrothermal Journey at the Leading Spa is composed of seven different water experiences, including a sauna, color therapy steam, clay room, ice room, experiences showers, polar pool and experience pool with various water elements. The Spas at Velas Resorts have won numerous industry awards, including Most Excellent Spa Hotel by Conde Nast Johansens, Virtuoso's Best Spa in the World, Trip Advisor Traveler's Choice Award for Best Spa Hotel, a SpaFinder Readers' Choice, and Travel + Leisure's Best Spas, among others. For more details and spa specials, visit http://www.luxuryspamexico.com.

About Grand Velas Riviera Maya:

Set on 206 acres of pristine jungle and mangroves and with the finest white sand beach in the Riviera Maya, the AAA Five Diamond Grand Velas Riviera Maya is an ultra-luxury all-inclusive resort. Guests can choose among three separate ambiances in this Leading Hotel of the World, including adults only oceanfront, family friendly ocean view and a Zen-like tropical setting, embraced by the flora and fauna of the Yucatan Peninsula's jungle. All 539 designer-like suites are exceptionally spacious, more than 1,100 square feet each, all with balconies, and some with private plunge pools. All feature fully stocked mini bars, plasma TVs, Wi-Fi, L'Occitane amenities, artisanal tequila, and Nespresso coffee machines. Bathrooms deserve special mention with walk in glass shower, deep soaking Jacuzzi tubs and marble interior. Eight restaurants, including five gourmet offerings, present a tour through Mexico, Europe and Asia. Cocina de Autor, at the hands of world celebrity chefs Bruno Oteiza, Mikel Alonso and Xavier Perez Stone, holds the AAA Five Diamond Award, the first all-inclusive restaurant in the world to win this prestigious distinction. Grand Velas Spa, a Leading Spa of the World, is the region's largest spa sanctuary at more than 90,000 square feet, known for its authentic Mexican treatments, offerings from around world and signature seven-step water journey. Other features include 24-hour Personal Concierge; 24/7 in-suite service; three swimming pools; two fitness centers; water sports; innovative Kids Clubs and Teen's Club; Karaoke Bar; Koi Bar; Piano Bar, and business center. The resort offers more than 91,000 square feet of meeting space and outdoor areas for events inclusive of a 31,000-square-foot Convention Center, able to accommodate up to 2,700 guests. The resort has won numerous awards from Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, USA Today and several other magazines and major companies worldwide. This year, the resort entered TripAdvisor's Hall of Fame for obtaining the Certificate of Excellence for five consecutive years in addition to the Signature Spa being awarded "Best Luxury Resort Spa-The Americas" at the World Luxury Spa Awards 2014. Grand Velas Riviera Maya was built and is operated by Eduardo Vela Ruiz, majority owner, founder and President of Velas Resorts, with his brother Juan Vela, Vice President of Velas Resorts.
Scotts addition to our team comes at a time of great opportunity for health plans and the commercial risk-adjustment markets.

EMSI Health, a national provider of health assessment, risk adjustment, Five Star Quality Rating, chart retrieval and HCC coding services, announces the addition of Scott Weiner to its management team as senior vice president, Analytics and Strategy. Weiner will be focused on expanding the companys HEDIS, Medicare Stars, Medicaid Risk Adjustment and data analytics offerings to better meet the needs of health plans.

Scotts addition to our team comes at a time of great opportunity for health plans and the commercial risk-adjustment markets, commented Doug Merriman, executive vice president of Operations for EMSI Health. His extensive background in risk adjustment will benefit our current clients greatly and he will play a key role in our plan to grow EMSI Healths presence in the Medicare Advantage and commercial risk adjustment markets at a rapid pace.

In addition to expanding service capabilities, Weiner will work closely with clients in a consultative role to help them address Affordable Care Act and Medicare Advantage challenges. He has direct experience in guiding health plans in resolving data submission issues and adapting to changes to the HCC model, including the impact of the partial vs. full dual payments and the increased reliance on Encounter Data Submissions as the basis for payments.

I am excited to join an organization that pioneered the development and implementation of data analytics and warehousing solutions specifically for health plans and is a leader in the risk-adjustment space, commented Weiner. EMSI Health provides great tools to the market, including their StratusIQ client portal and Healthy House Calls in-home assessments, which now allows plan members to schedule health assessments at their convenience. One of my goals in joining the team is to expand this type of service-delivery innovation to other areas of the organization and to build on EMSI Healths strong reputation as a true partner to health plans and other healthcare organizations.

Weiner has extensive executive-level and health-plan consulting experience, having held managed care, risk adjustment and data analytics positions for more than 20 years. Immediately prior to joining EMSI Health, he served as president/founder of Quadralytics, a company focused on providing healthcare consulting, analytics and software. He is an established expert witness and speaker on Medicare risk adjustment, Medicare Stars and finance analysis.

Weiner holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Seattle University and a bachelors degree in accounting from Central Washington University. He will be based in EMSIs headquarters in Irving, Texas and can be reached at sweiner(at)emsinet(dot)com.

About EMSI Health

EMSI Health serves a broad base of industries providing information solutions to help our clients be fiscally healthy. With a 40-year history cultivating deep knowledge and industry expertise, we improve health status, support risk adjustment efforts, keep workplaces safe, and support healthcare clinical research.

EMSI Health is a business unit of Examination Management Services, Inc. (EMSI). EMSI is a medical information services provider serving health plans, life and property/casualty insurers, wellness companies, research firms and employers. We utilize proprietary networks of professionals with technology-enhanced processes to collect and deliver powerful information to our clients for improved outcomes and business success. Learn more about EMSI at http://www.emsinet.com/EMSI-Health.
We are pleased to offer this free CPAP and Mobility Tune-up Clinic to the residents of Sheboygan.

Home Care Medical, Inc., one of Wisconsins largest and most respected providers of home medical equipment, rehab technology, and respiratory care, is pleased to host a CPAP and Mobility Tune-up Clinic on Friday, March 25, 2016, at Home Care Medicals Sheboygan Retail Store, 2922 South Business Drive in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

CPAP and Mobility Tune-up Clinic Information:



Friday, March 25, 2016

9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Home Care Medicals Sheboygan Retail Store, 2922 South Business Drive, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Call 920.458.5768 for more information

Free event  open to the public

Walk-ins welcome  no appointment is needed

During the event, attendees will be able to take advantage of the CPAP Tune-up, which includes meeting with an experienced Respiratory Clinician, having their CPAP machines pressure checked, and seeing the latest in CPAP technology like the Transcend Auto Mini CPAP and SoClean CPAP sanitizer. The Mobility Tune-up includes meeting with a certified Service/Repair Technician who will provide a 3-point check-up on brakes, wheels, and frames/upholstery for all scooters, power chairs, wheelchairs and walkers. Attendees can also register to win door prizes and take advantage of a special one day only 20% off of savings (see store for complete details).

We are pleased to offer this free CPAP and Mobility Tune-up Clinic to the residents of Sheboygan, explains Bethany Ziebell, Assistant Manager, Sheboygan Retail Store." In addition to our CPAP and Mobility Tune-up, attendees can test drive our products, including the new Golden Technologies DayDreamer Lift Chair...with an articulating headrest. Its perfect for CPAP users and those who sleep in their chairs!

About Home Care Medical, Inc.

Serving Southeastern Wisconsin since 1974, Home Care Medical, Inc. provides home infusion, enteral nutrition and hospice care; rehab technology; respiratory care; home medical equipment and supplies; and bracing and compression garments. Home Care Medical, Inc. is the WAMES (Wisconsin Association of Medical Equipment Services) HME Provider of the Year award recipient in 2014, 2013 and 2012. Accredited by the Joint Commission and an active member of WAMES, the MedGroup and AAHomecare, Home Care Medicals mission is to enhance the lives of those we serve.

Home Care Medical, Inc. Locations:

Corporate Headquarters, 5665 South Westridge Drive, New Berlin, Wisconsin

Milwaukee Retail Store, 4818 South 76th Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Sheboygan Retail Store, 2922 South Business Drive, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

West Bend Retail Store, 1709 South 18th Avenue, West Bend, Wisconsin

For more information, please visit:

Website: http://www.homecaremedical.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/homecaremedical

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/HCM_Wisconsin
SEO expert Beth Brennan I am passionate at helping businesses succeed and get new customers, Brennan says.

The Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce Women in Business is hosting a luncheon on how to rank higher in Google search results for keywords important to every business or organization. Guest speaker Beth Brennan, a local expert in online marketing, will discuss The 5 Keys to Ranking in Google Search Results. She and her team at Access Publishing help over 100 local businesses with web design and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. What is SEO? Its the key to ranking on Google for searches important to your business.

The Women in Business luncheon is Friday, March 18, at the Paso Robles Inn Ballroom, 1103 Spring St in Paso Robles. Doors open at 11 a.m., lunch is served at 11:30 a.m., program starts at noon.

A few facts



97% of consumers search for local businesses online

75% of users never scroll past the first page

80% of users ignore paid ads and look for organic

In todays world, customers are using smart phones like the yellow pages to find local businesses. Come and learn how to rank on the first page of search results:

Research  Learn how to rank on Google and how potential customers are searching

Optimize  Learn proven techniques to apply to websites and pages

Communicate  Learn how to show Google a business is a local leader

I am passionate at helping businesses succeed and get new customers, Brennan says. Most business owners dont like to deal with marketing, I like to make it easy for them.

Brennan began her career in marketing and advertising 15 years ago. In 2006, she and her husband, Scott Brennan, launched Access Publishing to offer local business marketing solutions. In addition to web design and SEO, the company produces the Paso Robles Daily News and the San Luis Obispo County Visitors Guide magazine. She serves on the board of the Paso Robles Childrens Museum. She was Atascadero Rotarian of the year in 2015. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz.

For more information call, Beth Brennan at Access Publishing, 806 9th St #2D, Paso Robles, CA 93446, (805) 226-9890.
The event comprises six packages depicting six themes in which more than 180 fighters, transport aircraft and helicopters are participating. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Indian Air Force will demonstrate its combat and firepower, including Akash Missile, for the first time, in the desert of Pokhran on Friday.

The entire event, which would be attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will showcase more than 22 types of platforms and weapons systems.

Frontline fighter aircraft including Sukhoi 30, Mirage 2000, Jaguar, MiG-29, attack helicopters, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) and high tech AWACS would display their potential during the show.

Light Combat Aircraft 'Tejas' and LCH, would also be a part of air display.

Transport aircraft like the An-32, Embraer, IL-76, IL-78 and C-130J would participate in all their glory while medium lift helicopters (Mi-17, Mi-17 1V, Mi-17V5) and attack helicopters(Mi-25, Mi-35) would also showcase their capabilities.

"The primary objective of this exercise is to demonstrate IAF's capability to safeguard our national interests," an IAF statement said.

During the exercise, IAF would also project its transformational state-of-the-art combat potential for meeting challenges be it from the air, land or sea.

The event comprises six packages depicting six themes in which more than 180 fighters, transport aircraft and helicopters are participating.

First on the show, would be a flypast showing IAF's journey over eight decades, with the aircraft of yester years like Tiger Moth flying along with the latest acquisitions of IAF. The flypast by a mixed formation comprising MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and the mighty Su-30, would represent the transformation of IAF over the decades.

Next package would comprise net-enabling operations of aircraft. This would be followed by a synchronised weapon delivery demonstration comprising precision based bombing at simulated targets by Mirage-2000, Su-30, MiG-27 and Jaguar.

IAF would showcase its multi-layered air defence operations. It will comprise fly-past by flight refuelling aircraft, IL-78 FRA along with two Su-30 aircraft which will demonstrate the ability to extend on-station endurance and strategic reach of fighter aircraft. This phase would also include surface to air guided weapons like IGLA shoulder-fired missile system and the OSA-AK missiles striking down airborne targets.

Capability demonstration of the indigenously developed 'Tejas' aircraft to deliver laser guided bomb and fire a air-to-air missile and the capability of the indigenous Light Combat Helicopter to carry out rocket firing would be carried out for the first time.
inQuba is a leading customer experience management and customer engagement Saas provider Todays consumers are empowered and informed, and growth is dependent on listening to, learning from, and engaging with those customers

inQuba, a global innovator in managed Customer Experience (CX) orchestration, announced global expansion plans which include an accelerated presence in the U.S., funded by a new equity injection from investment firm Convergence Partners. inQubas strategy will build on its success in helping multinational firms create and execute informed growth strategies based on a richer understanding of the customer.

The six-year-old company has seen 100 percent retention in its client base that consists of some of the worlds most prominent brands in the area of financial services, insurance, and telecom. Todays consumers are empowered and informed, and growth is dependent on listening to, learning from, and engaging with those customers, said Michael Renzon, CEO of inQuba. Our proven software-as-a-service CX orchestration toolset has consistently helped our clients capture this trend, and with this new investment from Convergence Partners, we will be able to guide clients throughout the United States and beyond in forging closer relationships with their customers and achieving their most ambitious growth targets.

inQuba enables its clients to create superior customer experience through its proprietary, cutting edge software platform. inQuba is unique in that it offers a turnkey solution for discovering new insights about customers through application modules for Voice of Customer (VOC), Social, Engagement and Campaigning on a single integrated software platform. The event-driven platform proactively drives and improves the customer experience, and provides insights into current and future customer behavior across all key customer interactions. The platform collects and analyzes structured and unstructured data in real time, identifies trends and opportunities for improvement to proactively drive the Customer Experience.

Leading the growth strategy in the U.S. is Paul Cole-President inQuba North America, previously Senior VP CapGemini, and an industry veteran in building and scaling businesses (strategy, applications, outsourcing) that focus on the customer domain. Drawing on a long and successful career in which he held high-level management positions at Ernst & Young, Mercer, Infosys, and CapGemini, Cole is a recognized solutions innovator and thought leader, co-author of the seminal Customer Experience book, Customer Connections: New Strategies for Growth. Cole continues to share his insights in the area of CX, with regular contributions on CX issues for Marketing News.

inQuba North America leverages our six years of client success in providing the tools, technology, and insight that has consistently been a major factor in our clients growth and retention strategies, said Cole. Our purpose-built CX orchestration platform, created by our global team of data scientists and engineers, has proven its value time and again. Our use of offshore resources, combined with our innovative, cloud-based solution puts inQuba in a great position to take on legacy vendors with more costly and less effective software, as we continue to offer our clients the best price-value equation in the industry.

The investment from Convergence Partners will form the foundation of that growth and expansion. This is an exciting investment opportunity for us, said Idan Segal from Convergence Partners. We appreciate inQubas innovation and dedication to the CX space, and inQuba aligns with many of the key themes that Convergence Partners targets, including Software-as-Service (SaaS) businesses, tailored technology solutions for specific industry verticals and globally exportable IP. We are looking forward to actively contributing to this growth phase of the company.

inQuba will be staging conversations with clients and interested parties at the Next Gen CX Conference, March 21-23, in Carlsbad, California. inQuba will also sponsor the CXPA Insight Exchange, May 3 and 4 in Atlanta.

About inQuba

inQuba is a customer experience management and customer engagement Saas provider. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Michael Renzon and Trent Rossini, both with a successful history of creating, managing and exiting leading technology businesses. inQuba has established itself across four continents. Its client base consists of multinational corporations from the financial services, insurance, retail, travel and telecommunications sectors, including Goodyear, Virgin Mobile, Suncorp, Telkom, South Africa and Vitality Life, among others.

For more information on inQuba, please visit http://www.inquba.com/ or call: (888) 3in-Quba. You can contact Paul Cole directly at 617 584-3678 or at Paul.Cole@inquba.com.

About Convergence Partners

Founded in 2006, Convergence Partners is an investment management firm focused on the telecommunications, media and technology sectors. Convergence Partners has a proven track record of developing new investment opportunities, as well as adding value to investments across the life cycle of ICT assets. Across both its portfolios, Convergence Partners currently manages close to US$300 million of capital. Its founders are seasoned private equity players and technology, experienced in sourcing, developing and managing investments that deliver enhanced financial returns while underpinning continental development. Find out more at: http://www.convergencepartners.com.
On Saturday, March 19, Peanut Proud will host the 8th annual Peanut Proud Festival, a daylong event held in Blakely, GA featuring a 5K race, live music, as well as local food and art vendors. This lively event, which is expected to attract up to 10,000 people, pays respect to local peanut farmers and helps support Peanut Prouds ongoing activities. The festival will also help celebrate the remaining days of National Peanut Month that is held every March.

Peanut Proud is a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization of the U.S. peanut industry that is dedicated to donating peanut butter to organizations and individuals in need, both domestically and internationally. Peanut butter is the number one most requested item by food banks due to its nutritious, inexpensive and shelf-stable nature. As March is also National Nutrition Month, it is a particularly appropriate time to recognize peanut butters inherently healthy profile.

Peanut Proud recently collaborated with The Georgia Peanut Commission to donate 10,080 jars of peanut butter to the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB) in celebration of Georgia PB&J Day on March 16. ACFB provides food and grocery products to more than 600 nonprofit partner agencies with hunger relief programs throughout the Atlanta area and north Georgia. It is estimated that over 80,000 people are served each week by programs supported by ACFB.

Earlier this month, Peanut Proud donated six pallets, or 8,640 jars, of peanut butter to the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, a partner state association of Feeding America. These donations were made in partnership with the Virginia Peanut Board and Virginia Peanut Growers Association. Peanut butter is desperately needed by our food banks, said Dell Cotton, Executive Secretary of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association. The nutritional benefits of our industrys most popular product make it a necessity for the people who are served by food banks. I hope others will follow our lead and contribute much needed food items, including peanut butter, to their local food relief organization.

For more information on the Peanut Proud Festival, please visit http://www.peanutproudfestival.com. If you are unable to attend this event but wish to support Peanut Prouds work, donations can be made online at http://www.peanutproud.com.

Peanut Butter for the Hungry (PB4H) is an initiative of the U.S. peanut industry that helps hungry and malnourished children and their families worldwide. PB4H is administered by the American Peanut Council and supports the manufacture and use of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), a simple but effective mixture of peanut paste, powdered milk, vitamins and minerals, in addition to the donation of shelf stable peanut butter to food banks throughout the United States. Peanuts are naturally cholesterol-free and are a good source of protein, vitamin E, niacin, folate, phosphorus and magnesium.

Visit http://www.pb4h.org to learn more about Peanut Butter for the Hungry.

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Ashford Castle Well roll out the green carpet with a warm welcome, whether youre looking to connect with your family heritage or simply experience our gregarious hospitality.

Go green and save green on a personalized journey to Ireland and Scotland with Brendan Vacations. The Celtic experts are celebrating St. Patricks Day by sharing their pot of gold with an exclusive four-day only $500 air credit per couple*.

Ireland boasts an ancient culture of warm, friendly people waiting to share their scenic homelands. Live like royalty and stay at the luxurious 800-year-old medieval Ashford Castle, the former home of the Guinness Beer family and recently restored by Brendan sister company Red Carnation Hotels. Get awestruck by the Neolithic tombs at Newgrange that are 500 years older than the Egyptian Pyramids and Englands Stonehenge.

Our tight-knit group of friends and connections will unlock iconic landmarks and rich traditions as only our local experts can, said Catherine Reilly, Managing Director of Brendan Vacations based in Dublin, Ireland. Well roll out the green carpet with a warm welcome, whether youre looking to connect with your family heritage or simply experience our gregarious hospitality.

The local Brendan team is dedicated to taking travelers personally however they prefer to travel. Four different trip styles have been carefully crafted to meet individual interests and support preferences: Perfectly-planned Guided Vacations with a Travel Director providing concierge-style service the entire trip, customizable Private Chauffeur, Locally Hosted Rail or Self-Drive.

Top Trips:

Iconic Ireland and Ashford Castle  10-day Guided Vacation with 100% guest review rating

Enchanting Emerald Isle  8-day Guided Vacation with 100% guest review rating

Irish Cities, Landscapes & Castles  7- day customizable Private Chauffeur

Dublin, Cork, Killarney & Limerick  8-day customizable Locally Hosted Rail Vacation

Irelands Hidden Gems - 8-day customizable Self-Drive

To book a Brendan vacation, please call the Brendan Experts at 800-687-1002 or contact a travel professional. View details of the St. Patricks Day Sale here.

About Brendan Vacations

Brendan Vacations is the premier Ireland and Scotland destination expert, backed by over 45 years of planning authentic Celtic travel experiences from its office in the heart of Dublin. Offering a comprehensive range of travel styles, from Guided Vacations to customizable Private Chauffeur, Locally Hosted and Self-Drive offerings, each trip introduces Brendan guests to the local people passionate about sharing their stories and their homelands. For more, visit: BrendanVacations.com, facebook.com/BrendanVacations, twitter.com/TravelBrendan, instagram.com/BrendanVacations.

About The TreadRight Foundation

Brendan Vacations is a proud supporter of the TreadRight Foundation. Created as a joint initiative between TTCs family of brands, the TreadRight Foundation is a not-for-profit working to ensure the environment and communities we visit remain vibrant for generations to come. To date, TreadRight has helped support more than 35 sustainable tourism projects worldwide. The foundations guiding principle is to encourage sustainable tourism development through conservation, leadership and support for communities.

TreadRights past project partners include World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and The National Trust in the UK. Current initiatives include sponsoring the National Geographic Societys inaugural World Legacy Awards, helping to combat wildlife crime with WildAid, and empowering individuals with the Alliance for Artisan Enterprise.

To learn more about our past and current work at TreadRight, please visit us at treadright.org.

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Terms and conditions: *Save $500 per couple on air-inclusive 2016 Brendan Ireland and Scotland guided vacations booked between 03/17/16 and 03/20/16 for travel 3/17/16 through 10/31/16 with flights (booked through Brendan). Standard deposit due date restrictions apply; final payment due by 4/28/16. Valid on any class of service. Credit is valid on air-inclusive Brendan Private Chauffeur, Locally Hosted Rail and Self-Drive bookings of $1,000 or more per person, land only. Credit is not combinable with any other airfare or BOGO promotions or Last Minute Deals, but is combinable with brochure discounts (except Early Payment Discounts). Subject to availability and may be withdrawn at any time without notice. Other conditions may apply. Promotion code: 16SP250. ). Other conditions apply to all offers. Guest satisfaction ratings from independent review website, Feefo, as of 03/01/16. CST#2084503-20
Bob Higley

Top media professionals from around the globe will share their industry knowledge and current trends during the Global Media Summit (GMS) slated for April 28-30, 2016, at the DoubleTree By Hilton Hotel Near the Galleria, 4099 Valley View Lane in Dallas, Texas. The Global Media Summit is the result of Christian media organizations combining their efforts to create a forum to discuss media topics from a global perspective. The theme of the summit is Commissioned for Media.

Participants can drill down in four different tracks of Digital Media, Film, Writing, and Broadcast or sample seminars across the board, said Suellen Roberts, President of Christian Women in Media Association, which is coordinating GMS. Well-established, successful media leaders have coordinated each track.

Bob Higley, CEO of Parables TV and Upliftv, coordinated the Broadcast seminar track. Whether you are in front of a camera or a microphone or behind the scenes, this track will both inspire and challenge you to excellence in broadcasting, said Bob Higley. Professionals from television, both broadcast and on-line, will help you navigate and improve your on-air presence. Panel experts will also share up-to-date techniques, tools of technology, and provide tips on how to both serve and grow an audience.

The Broadcast track topics include:

-Television, is it fading or here to stay?

-What's Trending in TV Programming?

-Taking the leap to National TV

-Where should your budget go: Distribution or Content?

Writers track head moderator Lisa Burkhardt-Worley coordinated the seminars for writers. Attendees who follow this track can learn how to write, publish, and market a book. Experts on this track will not only share how to hone and develop writing skills, but also deliver insight into how to get your book noticed and publicized, said Lisa Burkhardt-Worley, the author of several books including

the four-time award winning If I Only HadWrapping Yourself in Gods Truth During Storms of Insecurity. While a lot of people are self-publishing these days, our panelists will also explain how to write and market a book so that traditional publishers will take notice.

The Writers track topics include:

-What's Hot and What's Not

-A Speaker's Dilemma: Publish or Perish?

-The Cover Story: How a Cover and Title Steer Your Book's Success

-The Land of Brand: Discover the Most Effective Ways to Market Your Book, Ministry or Business.

PGA member & independent filmmaker Rick Garside has been creating award-winning films for many years, and has spent a lot of his career in the faith-based arena. He is heading up the film track and those seminars will focus on the essentials of writing, producing and distributing projects.

The film track seminars include:

-The Myth of the Distribution Knight in Shining Armor-Taking control of your films future

-Ive Ready to Make My Movie, Now What? How to avoid potential disaster

-How Digital FX Has Transformed the Way Films are Made-Plan, budget, and pre-production

-How World View Affects Your Writing, Your Films, Your Life

FrontGate Media Chief Engagement Officer Scott A. Shuford, is leading the digital media track. FrontGate Media is the largest Internet & event media network and marketing service reaching the faith and family audience. Scott firms has been recognized in the Internet Advertising Competition and the WebAwards. Track participants will learn tips and trends from top digital specialists in Social Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Strategy, and Direct Response.

The digital track seminars include:

-Public Relations: Its Who You Want In Your Corner

-Social Marketing: Harness the Hype - The Things That Work

-Advertising: Paid Placements Give You Control

-LIVE THROWDOWN: Media & Marketing Go The Mat  Real Talk about Real Projects In the Real World.

Professionals who work in media for their career or ministry are welcome to attend the Global Media Summit; this includes print, broadcast, film, social media, performing artists, and authors.

Registrants will save $50 by registering before April 1, 2016.

The First 100 People to Register by April 1 Will Receive A Complimentary

60 page CMA MEDIA DIRECTORY a Priceless Value for Networking!

Those who stay at the conference hotel, The Double Tree Hotel by Hilton near the Galleria, will receive a full breakfast buffet every morning with their room reservation.

For registration details on the Global Media Summit visit http://www.gmssummit.com

About Global Media Summit

The Global Media Summit 2016 (GMS) provides a platform for media professionals to be empowered to move forward in the secular and Christian media arenas. Christian Women in Media Association President Suellen Roberts, Christian Media Association Co-director Tim Shields, and Christians in Communications President David Adcock plan to provide a premiere experience for all attendees. Two and a half days are set aside for spiritual renewal, professional equipping and connecting with leaders in the industry.

GMS provides the opportunity for men and women to be inspired by talented musical artists and keynote speakers who are globally recognized for biblically based teaching. The outstanding seminar faculty will equip each attendee to go to the next level. The Global Media Summit 2016 will present on the main stage an international program, which will garner talent from around the world and present to the attendees a vision of what God is doing globally in media. The media seminars will provide equipping from successful leaders in the industry here in America. Through this summit life-long relationships will be formed to unify Christians who are empowered to be a positive influence in our culture through media domestically and internationally.
Jay Garrett I look forward to sharing more pipe bursting tips at the 2017 event

TRIC Tools, Inc. was a Featured Exhibitor at the 2nd Annual (WWETT) Water and Wastewater, Equipment, Treatment and Transport Show in Indianapolis, Indiana. Representing TRIC at the event were Sales Director Gregg Abbott, Sales Engineer Brennan Lunzer, and Operations Director Michael Lien. Education Day and Exhibitor setup started on February 17th and the show ran through February 20th, 2016. TRIC showcased its X30 Lateral and M50 Municipal Pipe Bursting equipment and provided "Live" pipe bursting demonstrations. On 2/19, Utah Pipeburstings Jay Garrett started the day off with Advanced Pipe Bursting forum with active involvement with the attendees. "I look forward to sharing more pipe bursting tips at the 2017 event  stay tuned," said Jay. Utah Pipebursting (http://www.utahpipebursting.com) uses TRICs C25 and M50 models for pipe bursting projects.

During this year's event, TRICs personnel joined the Lateral Pipe Bursting meeting on Thursday, February 18th. Lateral Pipe Bursting Chairman John Galligan of Pipeshark, Inc. hosted the meetings. During the meeting, participants were asked to share their comments on the Pipe Bursting Specifications. Following a peer review, a final draft of the specifications will be released later this year and will be available at the International Pipe Bursting Associations website (http://www.ipbaonline.org). Other meeting attendees were: Utah Pipeburstings Jay Garrett, Pipespys Heiko Dzieron, H&Rs Horatio Franco, Clog Squads Mike Phillips and Ken Beyer, Austin Taylor and Nasscos Ted DeBoda and Jane Bayer and Underground Connections, Inc.s Tom Carlisle. Representing TT Technologies were Eddie Ward, Mike Schultz, Scott Redman and Sarah Mahlik. John Hraboski attended representing Hammerhead Trenchlesss. To learn how the International Pipe Bursting Association can support your project please visit the website http://www.ipbaonline.org.

WWETT had a number of post tradeshow events enjoyed by attendees. Wednesday and Thursday, WWETT hosted two nights of kickoff parties on the Indianapolis Colts playing field in Lucas Oil Stadium. Industry trade vendors and the Cole Pub hosted the kickoff parties. Jack Doheny also hosted a Thursday party at the JW Marriott. The Flying Toasters entertained Jack Dohenys guests for the second consecutive year. The following night played for at Cole Publishings annual WWETT appreciation night. The biggest news of all for show participants was that after 36 years of hosting the Pumper-Cleaner and now the WWETT Show, Cole Publishing decided to sell the WWETT show to Informa Exhibits. Informa is a European Trade Show Company that also handles the World of Concrete show in Las Vegas. Cole Publishing and its magazine publications will continue to participate in the WWETT Show.

TRIC invented and patented the first practical Lateral Pipe Bursting system while simultaneously gaining national approval of HDPE pipe for its use, thus opening the market for trenchless home sewer replacement in America.

For more information about Trenchless Pipe Bursting equipment or the trenchless industry in general - please call 888-883-8742 or visit TRIC's website at: http://www.trictrenchless.com to see how they can answer any of these questions for you. Get your Trenchless Sewer and Water Replacement service off on the right foot, one lateral at a time.
Gregory Hold, CEO of Hold Brothers attends the International Traders Expo New York We were surprised to be the only prop trading firm at the expo, but it was good to be back and to see some old friends of Hold Brothers - Gregory Hold, CEO of Hold Brothers

The International Traders Expo New York was held from February 21st - 23rd at the Marriott Marquis in New York. It brought the country's top trading pros together with one goal in mind - to see the newest developments in the trading industry, including software and trading techniques.

Hold Brothers* attended the three day event and engaged in conversations about all the latest tools, technologies, and cutting-edge investment opportunities. The event, which also provided in-depth educational classes and interaction with successful professional traders, was a huge success!

Speakers included Liz Dierking and Jenny Andrews (co-hosts of the LIZ and JNY Show), Harry Boxer (author of The Technical Trader), publisher Jake Bernstein, Ralph Acampor (Director of Technical Studies for New York Institute of Finance), Barbara James (Investor's Business Daily Instructor), Currency Pro Service editor Jim Martens, and many more.

Hold Brothers CEO, Gregory Hold, was glad to be at the Traders Expo to showcase the companys capabilities in software, market access, self clearing, news service, and international outsourcing operations. We were surprised to be the only prop trading firm at the expo, but it was good to be back and to see some old friends of Hold Brothers.

About Hold Brothers

Hold Brothers is a leader in providing equities traders with the tools and information they need to execute trades quickly, effectively and efficiently, in any market environment. Since 1994, Hold Brothers has been committed to developing flexible and cutting-edge technology designed to meet the changing demands of the global trading industry. For more information, please visit: http://www.hold.com.

*Hold Brothers is the marketing name for Hold Brothers Capital, LLC, (a registered broker-dealer and a CBOE member) and its affiliates. All securities activities and transactions are handled through Hold Brothers Capital LLC.
I cant tell you how many parents have come to us and said Camp Conquest changed their childs life, and this charity drive will ensure that the program continues helping children

Standifer Insurance Group, an Alabama-based insurance firm with offices serving Birmingham and other communities throughout the region, is announcing a continued joint charity effort with the Burn Center at Childrens of Alabama to raise funds earmarked for the Camp Conquest program.

Camp Conquest is a special 5 day, 4 night excursion created exclusively for pediatric burn survivors. By joining together in activities, crafts, and non-competitive adventures, children are encouraged to work together and build lasting friendships with peers and adults alike. This year marks the 17th anniversary of the Camp Conquest program.

I cant tell you how many parents have come to us and said Camp Conquest changed their childs life, and this charity drive will ensure that the program continues helping children, states Jessup Standifer, founder and director of Standifer Insurance Group.

To help publicize the charity event, Standifer and his professional team are reaching out to families throughout Alabama via social media and email. As well, the Standifer Insurance Group will be producing a full page feature article of the charity drive in this months edition of Our Hometown, an Internet magazine published by the firm: http://www.standiferinsurancegroup.com/Our-Hometown-Magazine_41.

Working with the Burn Center at Childrens of Alabama on the Camp Conquest charity drive is only one of many charitable projects undertaken by the Standifer Insurance Group in the last year. As part of an ongoing community involvement program, the Standifer team will be finding another new Alabama charity to support every 60 days.

Standifer Insurance Group invites all readers to take part in the Camp Conquest charity effort by contributing directly to the cause from this page: http://www.standiferinsurancegroup.com/Creating-Cherished-Memories-For-Burn-Victims-With-Camp-Conquest_22_community_cause. Readers who want to review a full list of charitable causes supported by the Standifer Group can do so here: http://www.standiferinsurancegroup.com/community-cause.

About Standifer Insurance Group

As a Personal Finance Representative in Alabama, agency owner Jessup Standifer knows many local families. His knowledge and understanding of the people in his community helps provide customers with an outstanding level of service. Jessup and his team look forward to helping families protect the things that are important - family, home, car and more. They can also help clients prepare a strategy to achieve their financial goals. To contact an expert at the Standifer Insurance Group, call (205) 664-3200 or (866) 664-3200.
Tanya Merentis from BlissfulBeauTee in New York I learned how to prevent clients from getting orange and give them an even tan. I was also trained on the types of solution and machine that is good for you. I would never have known this if it wasn't for this course Past News Releases RSS Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy...

New Spray Tanning Business Launches...

Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy...

Tanya Merentis is now ready to embark on a new career path after serving the NYC Police Department as a Detective for twenty-two long years. After retiring from her job, Tanya has always wanted to be in the beauty industry. Prior to the launch of her spray tanning business, Tanya has completed her hands-on airbrush tanning certification program at the Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy in their Connecticut location. This Southern-California based training school is known to offer an entrepreneurial airbrush tanning training program which includes online training combined with hands-on spray tanning training, so students can learn how to use an HVLP spray gun. Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy is owned and managed by distinguished spray tanning expert Simone Emmons. Simone owns her own airbrush tanning business in Los Angeles, California and students are invited to visit and learn from her own airbrush tanning business.

When asked about the reason behind opting for airbrush tanning as her new career path, Tanya said, I want a different career path. Something I enjoy and love doing and in the beauty industry. I wanted to do this many years ago, but was unable to pursue due to such a time consuming career and motherhood. I tried before. Hopefully, I can succeed this time.

Tanyas present business goal is to follow her dreams and make people happy. At present, her business BlissfulBeauTee is serving clients in Upper Westchester (NY), Putnam County (NY), Lower Dutchess County (NY), and Danbury (CT). She can be reached for spray tanning service inquiries at 1-347-231-4783 or at https://www.instagram.com/BlissfulBeauTee

Tanya Merentis strongly feels that the training received at the Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy will help immensely in her new career. Highlighting the most important benefits of this training session, she says, I learned how to prevent clients from getting orange and give them an even tan. I was also trained on the types of solution and machine that is good for you. I would never have known this if it wasn't for this course.

The harmful health impacts of traditional tanning are now known to all. As a result, the popularity of airbrush tanning is rising steadily all over the world. This tanning technique is completely sunless, and therefore, doesnt expose the skin to the suns UV radiation. Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy has been one of the pioneers in the country in this emerging field. Most of their students have now built a steady career as an independent airbrush tanning specialist. The academy has opened their new branch in Connecticut to be able to accept new students from the East Coast and other nearby states. Weekly airbrush tanning classes are provided by their trainer Tammy in Branford, Connecticut. Students are invited to train at Tammy's own airbrush tanning business.

About Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy:

Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy is located in Los Angeles, California and offers an extensive Spray Tanning Certification program to individuals who want to start their own full or part-time airbrush tanning business. Founder and trainer, Simone Emmons is a professional spray tanning expert and teacher and has trained over 300 entrepreneurs from 27 states (and counting) including international students from Trinidad, South Korea, Kuwait and Canada. Simones airbrush tanning business has won the Best of Los Angeles Award 2015 for airbrush tanning in Los Angeles. The spray tanning training provided by the Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy is private and hands-on and prepares the student to start in business immediately. Prior to the hands-on training, over four hours of videos lessons are provided to students covering everything from safety and technique to marketing and Search engine optimization. Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy does not sell any of their own products and provides training and education on all equipment and spray tanning solutions in the sunless industry. The academy provides hands-on training classes in Los Angeles and Connecticut area as well as online airbrush tanning certification classes.

Visit HollywoodAirbrushTanningAcademy.com to sign up for the next spray tanning class or call Hollywood Airbrush Tanning Academy at (818) 674-9621 for more information.
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.
Patiala Mayor Amarinder Singh Bajaj operates a JCB machine brought by youth activists of the Shiromani Akali Dal to fill up the Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal, near Banu-Chandigarh road on Wednesday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Punjab Assembly on Friday unanimously passed a resolution on the disputed issue of Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, stating that it would not be allowed to be constructed at any cost.

"The House has passed a resolution this morning in which all the political parties of the state have unanimously resolved that circumstances being what they are, the SYL Canal cannot be built. They cannot allow it to be built in defiance of the rights of the state over its river waters," Harcharan Singh Bains, Advisor to Punjab Chief Minister, said.

"The case before the Supreme Court (challenging government of India's power to distribute water between the states) must be decided before SYL canal can even be talked about," he added.

In a setback to Punjab, the apex court had yesterday directed maintenance of status quo on land meant for canal after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

The apex court in its interim order also appointed Union Home Secretary and Punjab's Chief Secretary and Director-General of Police (DGP) as the 'joint receiver' of land and other property meant for the canal till the next date of hearing on March 31, 2016.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had yesterday said that the state has no water to share, adding that the water crisis has occurred because the Riparian Act was not followed in the case of Punjab.

Badal's comment came a day after the Government of Haryana returned a cheque for Rs.191.75 crores to the Punjab Government following its refusal to accept poll-bound Punjab's push to pass a bill to return the land acquired for the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal.

In an attempt to prevent its neighbouring states from getting share from Punjab's river waters, the state assembly unanimously passed a bill against the construction of SYL canal, providing transfer of proprietary rights back to the land owners free of cost.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday appealed the corporate world to assist the families of martyrs of police and paramilitary forces, especially in educating their children.

"I appeal to the corporate world to join hands in assisting the families of police, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and defence personnel who laid down their lives for the nation," he said.

The Union Minister distributed about 300 scholarship cheques to the school going children of CAPFs personnel who sacrificed their lives on duty.

The scholarships were sponsored by S D Shibulal, co-founder and former CEO of Infosys under the banner of Sarojini Damodaran Foundation, which identified students in need of financial assistance during schooling.

"No help could be better than that of education or 'Vidyadan' as it is 'Mahadan' and it will help these children perform better in their lives," said an emotional Singh.

He noted it was not an obligation but everyone's duty to assist the families of the jawans who left no stone unturned for the security of the country.

As part of the programme, the Home Ministry had identified 295 children (229 children of martyrs of CRPF personnel, 33 of BSF, 11 of CISF, 3 of ITBP, 5 of SSB and 14 of Assam Rifles) from different CAPF' families and decided on the scholarships in consultation with the Foundation.

An amount of Rs 6,000 per annum will be given for students from 1st to 4th standards, Rs 9,000 per annum for 5th to 7th standard and Rs 12,000 per annum for 8th to 12th standard.

The Foundation has agreed to continue the scholarships in subsequent years and will be extended to needy children for their higher studies in due course.
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Paul Beattys satirical novel on race, The Sellout (FSG), was awarded the prize for fiction at the National Book Critics Circle awards ceremony held at the New School in New York City on Thursday night. Sam Quinones bracing examination of addiction, Dreamland: The True Story of Americas Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury), was awarded the prize for nonfiction.

Negroland (Pantheon), Margo Jeffersons memoir of growing up in an elite African American family won the autobiography award, and the biography prize went to Charlotte Gordon for Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley (Random House).

Maggie Nelsons The Argonauts (Graywolf), a personal story of queer family-life with meditations on gender politics, won the prize for criticism, and Ross Gays Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude was awarded the NBCC award for poetry.

The John Leonard Prize, which honors an outstanding first book in any genre, went to Kristin Valdez Quade for her short story collection, Night at the Fiestas (W.W. Norton). Carlos Lozada, associate editor and nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, was awarded the 2015 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The citation comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

And the winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is poet, novelist, critic, farmer and environmentalist, Wendell Berry. The 81 year-old Berry is the author of more than 50 books including his most recent essay collection, 2015's Our Only World.
The first project in the pipeline from the just-announced Michael Mann Books is a new novel by Don Winslow. The Cartel author will co-write the novel, with Mann, about the American mobsters Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana.

Deadline announced earlier this week that Mann, who is known for making such films as Heat and The Insider, will be getting into the book business with a planned line of titles that will bear his name. The line is currently being shopped, by Los-Angeles based agency the Story Factory, to publishing houses, where it's presumed it will be packaged and sold as an imprint. New works generated through the line will be done so with an eye towards Hollywood, as it's intended that they will serve as a template for future projects directed, and/or produced, by Mann.

In a release, the Story Factory, which also represents Winslow, said a possible film based on the forthcoming novel will also be based on a "preexisting screenplay" Mann wrote about the Chicago mafia duo. (The other author of the screenplay is the Story Factory founder, and screenwriter, Shane Salerno.)

According to the Story Factory, Accardo, who mentored Giancana, was a notable figure in one of Chicago's most powerful organized crime families for nearly 80 years. Giancana, the agency said, elevated the Chicago crime family's work "onto the New Frontier with bold moves that converged national commerce and industry with politics, Vegas, the music industry, Hollywood, and co-ventures with the CIA." Giancana was murdered in 1975.

Mann has already acquired the rights to various material from the Accardo family. Despite the fact that the Winslow-Mann novel has not yet been sold--the Story Factory said "discussions" with potential publishers will "begin shortly"--a publication date has been set. The Story Factory said it wants to see the book published in 2017.

As for the Mann book line, it does not yet have a home either. Set up as an incubator for stories that Mann can shape--from book conception through to film/TV development--it's thought that news about which publisher will house the line will be revealed shortly.

The Michael Mann Books imprint is represented the by Story Factory's Salerno (who drew headlines last year for the deal he landed for thriller author Steve Hamilton), while Mann himself is also represented by CAA and attorney Harold Brown.

NOTE: This story has been edited to clarify the status of Michael Mann's planned publishing venture.
While strides have been made in the 11 years Sunshine Week has been observed, challenges to open government continue unabated. Sadly, theyre often mounted by those in power who purport to promote sunshine.

Illinois bills to weaken state open meetings and freedom of information acts are annual and unrelenting.

Technology has made obstruction easier. Take, for example, efforts to end the requirement that government bodies publish notices in local newspapers. Proponents argue governments can publish such notices on their own websites. Besides setting the fox to guard the hen house, that assumes government websites are designed to be easily accessed and easily navigated. Thats not always true; especially for small governments which dont even have websites. Then there Chicago officials efforts to keep secret police videos which led to a federal investigation of police use of force against blacks.

Government cannot be its own watchdog.

Consider an Associated Press test of the openness of government email records in all 50 states. Given how much of the publics business is done electronically, the Sunshine Week project was both welcome and timely.

The results, unfortunately, were predictably disappointing for Illinois, the last state in the nation to approve an open records law. For example, state legislative leaders from both parties consider members exempt from such open records requirements. Thats despite the intent expressed by the 1983 FOIA law sponsor Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie: The General Assembly is not exempt, nor is any agency of state government.

Those standing in the way of the publics right to know also include city council, village, county and school board members who refuse to release information or insist on closed meetings on matters which demand sunshine.

Not only are reporters closed out by such tactics. The public is denied access to information that belongs to them. Illinois public access counselor, created to mediate sunshine law disputes, routinely reports that private citizens, not journalists, seek its help most frequently. We suspect more Quad-Citians would do so if they knew they could. Numerous sites exist to help with the rather simple process of filing FOIA requests, for example. Here are two to get you started.

In honor of this sunny week, why not take a few minutes to become familiar with these valuable tools in the fight to protect our right to open government at the local and state level? But dont stop there.

You can impact openness at the federal level by encouraging Congress to back a bill designed to strengthen the federal FOIA law by making it easier for the public to obtain records. What better way to celebrate sunshine this week, then by acting to protect it? As this weeks slogan reminds us, Open government is good government.
BJP workers burn an effigy of AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi in front of UP Vidhan Bhawan against his controversial remark, in Lucknow. (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: Observing that AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi refused to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' to cater to vote bank politics, a senior RSS functionary on Friday said the slogan was patriotic and appealed to various sections.

"The slogan 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' is a matter concerning patriotism. It shows patriotism. It is irresponsible for MP Asaduddin Owaisi to say that he would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife is put to his throat.

"It is not proper to make such a comment for someone who is an MP. Such comments are made for vote bank politics," RSS Telangana 'Prant Karyvah' (state general secretary), Ekka Chandrasekhar told reporters here.

Owaisi had stirred a hornet's nest by rejecting RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's suggestion that the young generation be taught patriotic slogans like 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' stating that he won't chant the slogan even if a knife is put to his throat.

"Soldiers in war and personalities, including anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare, have raised the slogan of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'," Chandrasekhar said, adding that patriotism of RSS should not be seen as narrow-minded.

Replying to a query, the RSS leader said Owaisi could be frequently making such statements against RSS as he may not like the organisation denouncing vote-bank politics.

"RSS does not support anti-national acts in the name of freedom of expression. Actions like saying, in the name of freedom of speech and expression that the country be divided, Kashmir be given independence, commenting against soldiers and hurting others sentiments are anti-national," Chandrasekhar said.

Observing that the education system should be "value-based", he said the RSS does not interfere in academic syllabus.

Chandrasekhar asked how can Yoga which is highly beneficial be called as "saffronisation".

He said various resolutions were passed at the recently held national meeting of RSS in Rajasthan.

The resolutions seeking that governments and NGOs work for providing easy access to health services, spreading of education in rural and tribal habitations, eradication of untouchability and differences among castes and leading a harmonious life in society without any scope for exploitation were passed, he said.

Owaisi's statement has set off a chain of events amid charged debate over nationalism that included suspension of an AIMIM MLA by Maharashtra Assembly after he refused to chant the slogan. Political parties across the spectrum, including the BJP, Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena have condemned Owaisi's stance. Madhya Pradesh Assembly has also unanimously adopted a censure motion, moved by a Congress member and backed by the ruling BJP, against Owaisi.
In recent years, there's been a mini trend of faith-based films concerned with proving the existence of heaven. Based on true stories, films such as "Heaven is For Real" and "90 Minutes in Heaven" take up this task.

Ostensibly following on their heels is the Jennifer Garner-starring "Miracles From Heaven," based on an amazing -- and weird -- true story. But while the film is centered around Christian-based faith, it argues for the powers of miracles that are of the more terrestrial and quotidian.

Garner is Christy Beam, mother to Anna (Kylie Rogers), who suffers from a debilitating, incurable intestinal disorder. After months in the hospital, one day Anna is playing with her sister, climbing a tree, when she falls, headfirst, 30 feet inside the dead tree trunk. She is stuck for hours. When firefighters pull her out, not only is she unharmed, but she's miraculously cured.

That premise is the one presented in all of the film's marketing. But "Miracles From Heaven" manages to be more than that.

Directed by Patricia Riggen, who also directed last year's "The 33," the story of the Chilean miner rescue, she brings to life the despair felt by the family during Anna's illness. Much of the film is centered around Christy's tireless search for a cure for Anna, who suffers greatly.

Losing her faith, questioning why such a small kid is in such pain, Christy has a hard time recognizing the small miracles that occur every day during their ordeal -- the small kindnesses of a receptionist who helps her, or a friendly waitress, Angela (Queen Latifah), who offers friendship when Christy and Anna need it most.

Even the love shown by their specialist, Dr. Nurco (Eugenio Derbez), is in itself a small miracle. We come to realize that the larger, more amazing miracles are made up of all these small tokens of love and selflessness.

Riggen effectively creates a sense of how intimidating hospitals and medical procedures are for a young kid, shooting many things from Anna's perspective. The emphasis on Anna and Christy's experience of these trials is a smart choice, as both Garner and Rogers are strong, charismatic performers.

Garner is compelling as the dedicated mom questioning everything she believes while fighting for her daughter's life, and young Rogers gives an impressive performance as Anna struggling to maintain her sunny outlook while coping with pain and suffering.

In terms of religion, Riggen, and writer Randy Brown, who adapted Christy Beam's book, emphasize the power of community offered by the Beams' church, which is of the contemporary, fun, spiritual-rock-band variety. Their church community is always there for them -- but there are ups and downs to this tight-knit group, especially when some question Anna's ordeal.

While the film runs a bit too long, and the heartstring tugging becomes overwrought, overall, this family melodrama about a devastating illness and the freak accident that cured it is surprisingly effective, even for those of little faith.

There are those who can choose to see it as unassailable evidence that heaven exists, but the film reaches beyond that audience and provides confirmation of the more human miracles that exist in everyday life, if you choose to see them.
The plan by state Sen. Melinda Bush of Grayslake is to allow motorists to pay a surcharge for stickers to indicate their support for the insect's viability.

The monarch population in Illinois has decreased 90 percent in the past two decades because of changes in habitat.

Bush says monarchs need milkweed plants to lay eggs and feed. Interstate highway medians could be developed with the plant so the butterfly could visit the milkweeds with little outside distraction.

The plate would be the first to comply with a new specialty plate law that provides stickers to put on otherwise standardized plates for easy tracking by law enforcement.

___

The bill is SB2882.

Online: http://www.ilga.gov
Press release submitted by RaeAnn Tucker-Marshall

"HEALTH DEPARTMENT STAFF NOTE AMERICAN DIABETES ALERT DAY, MARCH 22ND & URGES RESIDENTS TO TAKE THE TEST!"

The Henry and Stark County Health Departments' staff announces that Tuesday, March 22nd has been proclaimed American Diabetes Alert Day. This one-day call-to-action is held on the fourth Tuesday of March for people to find out if they are at risk for diabetes.

RaeAnn Tucker, Director of Health Promotion with the Henry and Stark County Health Department notes, This year the Health Departments, in cooperation with the American Diabetes Association, are asking the American public to take the Diabetes Risk Test to find out if they are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes By understanding your risk, you can take the necessary steps to help prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. On March 22, you are encouraged to take a simple (and anonymous) one-minute test to find out if you are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. We hope you will share the test with everyone you care about, including family members, friends, and colleagues. We encourage the public to take the risk test by driving them to diabetes.org/takeaminute and share the test with friends and loved ones.

Diabetes is a serious disease that strikes nearly 30 million children and adults in the United States, and more than a quarter of themeight milliondo not even know they have it. An additional 86 million have prediabetes, which puts them at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, diagnosis often comes 7 to 10 years after the onset of the disease, after disabling and even deadly complications have had time to develop. Therefore, early diagnosis is critical to successful treatment and delaying or preventing some of these complications such as heart disease, blindness, kidney disease, stroke, amputation and death.

Everyone should be aware of the risk factors for type 2 diabetes. People who are overweight, underactive (living a sedentary lifestyle) and over the age of 45 should consider themselves at risk for the disease. African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people who have a family history of the disease also are at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes.

The Health Department and the Diabetes Association has made a strong commitment to the prevention of type 2 diabetes by increasing awareness of prediabetes and actively engaging individuals in preventative behaviors like weight loss, physical activity and healthy eating. Alert Day is an opportunity during which we can raise awareness and prompt action among the general public  particularly those at risk.

Tucker adds, "The good news is that studies have shown that type 2 diabetes can often be prevented or delayed by losing just 7 percent of body weight (such as 15 pounds if you weigh 200) through regular physical activity (30 minutes a day, five days a week) and healthy eating. By understanding your risk, you can take the necessary steps to help prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes."

Most people with diabetes do not notice any symptoms. However if you should have any of these symptoms, call your health care provider right away. * Very thirsty * Frequent urination * Losing weight without trying.

The staff of the Henry and Stark County Health Departments urge area residents to learn more and get involved. If you or the people you care about are at high risk for diabetes, you should learn more and get involved. * Ask you health care provider about your risk for diabetes during your next visit. * Call 1-800-342-2383 for free information about diabetes. * Share this information with family, friends and neighbors.

And for diagnosed diabetics, the Department reminds area residents they offer the Hemoglobin A1C Blood Test (for Diagnosed Diabetics with a Doctor's Order) at an everyday low cost of $36. Testing is available through their clinic offices in Kewanee (309) 852-5272 and Colona (309) 792-4011.

For more information on the services available through the Health Department call (309) 852-0197 or visit our website at www.henrystarkheatlh.org or find us on Facebook at Henry and Stark County Health Departments.
In this sodden, muddy field on the edge of northern Greece, 39-year-old Syrian Layla Ali Kamal Adeen fears her dreams and hopes  of a better life for her family, of a future for her four young children  have come to an end. Curled up in a tiny tent, the relentless rain hammering down on its roof and muddy water lapping at the entrance, she has reached rock bottom. Sometimes, she wonders if she would be better off dead.

"My husband says 'No, Leyla, don't say that. God will find a solution.'"

But God seems far away from these fields of desperation, through which so many have passed in recent months on their way to Europe's prosperous heartland, fleeing war, persecution and poverty. They, like her husband and children, made it through, but Adeen was unlucky. She and tens of thousands of others now find themselves trapped in Greece, after Europe essentially shut its doors.

Six months ago her family, Syrian Kurds, fled the brutal Syrian civil war and their home in Qamishli, where her husband was a dentist.

"What home? It's all gone. It's all flattened to the level of the street," she says. "There was blood in the streets. We sleep and we hear the explosions. That's why we left."

They went to Turkey, but Adeen was afraid of the sea, terrified of the night-time journey she and her family would have to take from the Turkish coast to the nearby Greek islands. Many have died on the short but perilous trip across the Aegean, often undertaken in unseaworthy boats provided by smugglers.

"My husband said: 'Come, Leyla, let's go. ... We have nothing left here. But I was afraid. Always afraid."

They went to Turkey, but Adeen says she fell ill before they were to board the boat. And she just couldn't face the journey.

"He took the boat to cross but I was afraid," she said. "I wept and was angry. ... He said: 'Come, you are crazy, it's for the future of our children,' and he left."

That was five months ago, the last time she saw her children. As time went by, their absence bolstered her courage.

"I couldn't bear it any more. I took the boat and I came," she said. "For my children, my heart made me cross the sea."

She travelled with others in her extended family, including her brother Abdel Haqim Adeen, who sold a field he owned to finance their journey and pay the smugglers. They made it across Greece and as far as the Macedonian border before authorities suddenly closed it.

Now Adeen and her relatives pass the days in a field near the small village of Idomeni, where the refugee camp reached capacity long ago, crammed with thousands of people stuck just like them. They pitched their small tents near each other to create a small family compound. Days of relentless rain turned their little courtyard into a morass of squelching mud, and they struggle to warm themselves by a small campfire.

In Berlin, some 1,800 kilometers (1,110 miles) away, Adeen's husband, Nahrouz Ramadan, can only wait at the shelter and try to console his young children, Mustafa, Nerjis, Nazdar and Masaoud, all under the age of 9.

"The children miss their mother a lot," he said. "They sleep very badly and cry all the time; they want their mother back. I've tried to calm them down and play with them. I send them to school and look after them. But they long for their mother."

Adeen mailed Ramadan her passport from the Macedonian border in case anything happens to either of them, and he looks at it all the time with the children, who like to kiss it. He tries to talk with his wife every day by phone, but it's expensive using prepaid phone cards at 10 euros apiece.

"The cards last for five or six minutes, then the conversation's over," he said.

Adeen is pinning her hopes on family reunification, a process where refugees who reached European countries as asylum seekers can apply for permission for their relatives to join them.

But even applying for asylum, let alone family reunification, is a bureaucratic quagmire which can take months or even years.

Last month, the German Parliament approved a package of measures meant to speed up handling migrants and cut the number of newcomers  including a switch that means some Syrians may have to wait longer to bring relatives to Germany. Refugees who didn't face "immediate personal persecution" won't be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years. That would apply to people who receive "subsidiary protection"  a status that falls short of formal asylum.

Ramadan has his hands full with the children and hasn't yet managed to complete the paperwork for the asylum process.

"They say reunification will happen but it could take a year or two years," says Adeen. "I can't wait a year, two years. I would die."

She worries that the children are hungry, cold and sick. Most of all she worries about Mustafa, the youngest, who is still in diapers and has a rash that has spread to his cheeks.

"My children, even in Germany, are sick and crying," she says, flipping through photographs of the children and her husband in their new lives in Berlin. When they talk on the phone they cry and tell her they miss her, she says, breaking down in tears herself.

"I love my children. This is my greatest punishment. It's beyond my control. My breath is my children," Adeen says, burying her face in her hands as tears roll down her cheeks.

"Every day I am dying 10, 20, 30 times."
Sen. John Cornyn recalls visiting a Texas prison where some inmates taking shop classes could not read tape measures. Cornyn knows prisons are trying to teach literacy and vocations, trying to cope with the mental illnesses and trying to take prophylactic measures to prevent drug-related recidivism by persons imprisoned for drug offenses.

"The criminal justice system," he says, "has become by default a social services provider."

It is not equipped to perform so many functions. Cornyn is part of a bipartisan group negotiating sentencing reform, one of many needed repairs of the criminal justice system. What justice requires, frugality encourages: Too many people are in prison for too long, and too often, at a financial cost disproportionate to the enhancement of public safety. Texas has used alternatives to imprisonment to save $3 billion while crime rates have declined.

UCLA's Mark Kleiman says "the deterrent impact of a punishment depends only weakly on its severity, but strongly on its swiftness and certainty." What Cornyn and others are negotiating are selective reductions in the severity of some mandatory minimum sentences -- each reduction reviewed by a court -- for nonviolent offenses. This would enable government to devote increased resources to coping with violent and repeat offenders.

Curb unlimited appetite

Speaking of repeat offenders: Much crime is committed by individuals who have weak impulse control, and Congress manufactures offenses for the same reason. It should stop promiscuously multiplying federal crimes. Unlimited government develops an unlimited appetite for intervening in society's dynamics.

The regulatory state has a rage to regulate, sometimes by creating new crimes. The Heritage Foundation's Paul Larkin notes that more than 40 percent of federal criminal laws enacted since the Civil War have come since 1970, and between 2000-2007 Congress legislated more than 450 new crimes -- more than one a week. Has there really been a sudden multiplication of behaviors meriting society's severe disapproval? Larkin notes that "if criminal charges approximate parking tickets in their ubiquity, we have deprived the criminal law of the moral force necessary for it to persuade people to respect and obey its commands."

The federal prison population, which devours 25 percent of the Justice Department's budget, has increased more than 300 percent in less than 30 years. Only 7 percent are convicted of violent crimes. Granted, a person in prison poses no threat to the community. The problem is that almost everyone who goes to prison is going to return to the community, and most will not have been improved by incarceration.

It is axiomatic that social science cannot tell us what to do but can measure the results of what we are doing. What we are not doing well is the supervision of persons released from incarceration. Kleiman calls it the "crime-incarceration-crime cycle." He says "more people are sent to prison each year for violating probation or parole conditions than as a result of conviction for new crimes."

Rethink old theories

Old theories about the causes of crime need to be rethought. During the Great Depression, unemployment soared to 25 percent yet in many cities crime fell. Demographic factors? Crime rates often vary with the size of society's cohort of young males: Crime declined considerably during World War II not just, or even primarily, because unemployment was negligible but because so many young males were in military discipline.

In 2010, one year after the Great Recession's jobs destruction doubled the unemployment rate, the property crime rate fell and violent crime reached a 40-year low. Current high incarceration rates had something to do with that. But how much?

The late James Q. Wilson, the most accomplished social scientist since World War II, accepted the estimate that increased incarceration explains "one-quarter or more of the crime decline." Wilson also suggested an environmental factor: "For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent."

Since the 1970s, lead has been removed from gasoline and paint for new homes, and "the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991." Wilson cited a study that ascribed more than half the 1990s' decline in crime to the reduction of gasoline lead.

Clearly, sentencing reform is just one piece of a complex policy puzzle.
Meng Brings NASA Astronaut To Queens On October 17, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) brought NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim to Queens where he met and spoke with students at Francis...

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Hyderabad: Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly K. Jana Reddy on Thursday took serious exception to the TRS government blocking the website for GOs (government orders) abruptly, saying that it amounted to violation of the Right to Information Act.

He said all GOs were put on public domain for over a decade by earlier governments to ensure transparency in governance, but the TRS government has blocked the website without citing any reasons, making it difficult for public representatives and common people to access government information.

Mr Reddy said the TRS government would require over Rs 5 lakh-crore to fulfill poll promises and going by its poor performance in the past two years, it was a foregone conclusion that it cannot fulfill them as it cant earn that much revenue or get such huge loans.

On one hand, you talk about transparency and good governance, and on the other, you close the GOs website unilaterally and block government information for common people and public representatives. If you think that by blocking the website, you can hide the information from the public forever, you are wrong. It may take a few days or weeks or months, but the information would come out in open some day, Mr Reddy said.

He demanded the website be restored immediately. People and public representatives are forced to run around government offices seeking information on GOs. They are forced to apply for RTI even to obtain basic information. Why they should be made to suffer like this, he asked.

Continuing his speech on the Budget debate, Mr Reddy wondered how the TRS government can implement its schemes and fulfil poll promises relying on loans.

You are implementing Water Grid (Mission Bhagiratha) and 2BHK housing schemes relying on loans. Water Grid requires over Rs 40,000 crore. You have also promised to build 2 lakh 2BHK houses this year itself, for which nearly Rs 15,000 crore is required. As per your intensive household survey, there are nearly 15 lakh homeless in the state for whom you promised to build 2BHK houses for which over Rs 1 lakh-crore is required. Who will give such huge loans as there would be no returns on them? How can you repay those loans when your finances are not in a position to pay even the interest on those loans, the Leader of the Opposition asked.
The business was created in 2010 when Glencore's predecessor, Xstrata, purchased its own locomotive and wagon fleets to serve its coalmines in the Hunter Valley following dissatisfaction with the performance of the incumbent rail freight operators in the region.

Glencore currently has 30 GE C44aci locomotives and approximately 900 wagons in its fleet, with crewing and management of day-to-day operations sub-contacted to Genesee & Wyoming subsidiary Freightliner Australia.

The report suggests that Glencore will guarantee a minimum annual haul of 40 million tonnes of coal, although its current exports from the Hunter Valley through the Port of Newcastle are thought to be in the region of 51 million tonnes.

With many synergies with their own Hunter Valley businesses, Australian rail freight operators Aurizon and Pacific National would be likely front runners to pick up the assets, although analysts suggest Glencore's asking price may be on the high side.

However, it has also been reported that the group of pension funds which are expected to assume ownership of Pacific National later this year, following the recent agreement to purchase parent company Asciano, have already indicated their interest in the sale.

Due diligence by interested parties is likely to commence within the next few weeks with a sale expected to be completed by September this year.
Canadian National (CN) has joined the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA) to promote farm safety as CASA's newest safety investor in the annual Canadian Agricultural Safety Week (CASW), March 13-19, 2016.

CN and Canadian farmers share a common commitment to safety, said Sam Berrada, CN Vice-President Safety and Sustainability. Maintaining a constant focus on working safely is absolutely essential when working with heavy machinery, which is part of daily life on both farm and railway. CN is proud to join the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association in its work to keep farm families safe, by encouraging farmers and their families to Be an AgSafe Family.

We welcome CN as a Safety Investor, and appreciate its support as we teach the love of agriculture to our children in a safe and healthy way, said Marcel Hacault, Executive Director of CASA. This year we are providing tools and safety advice on agsafetyweek.ca that can help make farms a safe place for children to grow up.

CASW is an annual public awareness campaign focusing on the importance of farm safety. Organizers provide farm families with the information they need to help keep kids safe on the farm while preserving the farming lifestyle. The campaign lasts for a week, but keeping kids safe is important all year long.

CN, which this week became a CASA member, will also join other agri-industry stakeholders as a Safety Investor in the 2017 and 2018 CASW campaigns. This CASW sponsorship will complement CNs existing Rural Safety Fund program  a joint partnership of CN and 4-H Canada that funds 4-H youth-led rural community safety initiatives across Canada.

CNs rail network crosses thousands of farms from one end of Canada to the other, and farm families are routinely working in close proximity to rail operations, said Berrada. These programs allow CN to further highlight the importance of being safe around railways.

This year, CASW organizers have published free resources that can help farm families keep kids safe. The tools include information about building a safe play area, determining safe agricultural tasks for children and a farm safety contract for kids and parents. As a part of CASW, a social media contest asks farm families how they are an #AgSafeFamily. By using the hashtag #AgSafeFamily and sharing their story of how they keep family members safe on the farm on social media, participants can win great prizes. For more information about the CASW resources and #AgSafeFamily contest, visit the campaign website at agsafetyweek.ca. Canadian Agricultural Safety Week takes place every year during the third week of March. For more information about CASW, media kits or Ontario launch activities, please visit agsafetyweek.ca.
After suffering through two decades of internal armed conflict in northern Uganda, grassroots organizations find themselves wrestling with an ordinary, and necessary, woe of civil societytaxes. Specifically, they are trying to get citizens to pay them while teaching them how to get the local government to spend tax money on services that are needed.

In 1999, a group of women activists in Kitgumone of the conflict-affected districts in northern Ugandafounded the Kitgum Women's Peace Initiative (KIWEPI), a women's peace-oriented community-based organization. KIWEPI provides psychosocial services and vocational training for women who were abducted during the armed conflict but who now live in and around Kitgum district. Advocates say they hope to give these and other local women the opportunity to be financially independent, to slowly reintegrate into their former communities, and to help rebuild the country.

To do so, the women's initiative has found it must work with the business community, local leaders, and religious figures to create awareness about the importance of paying taxes and holding local governments accountable.

Less than 2 percent of residents in Kitgum municipality paid income tax in 2013, staffers with the women's initiative told me when I visited in January. Gladys Canogura, KIWEPI's founder and executive director, said Ugandans historically looked askance at paying taxes because they didn't see how the collected revenues were used to improve public services.

KIWEPI encourages Ugandans, especially women, not only to pay taxes but to follow up to try to ensure that revenues generated are allocated to gender-specific needs in the community. Local women leaders now consult with Kitgum officials and the municipal finance department, Canogura said, to ensure that government spending is gender sensitive and responsive to different populations' unique circumstances, including caring for former female abductees and their children. Historically, the problems facing women have not received the attention they deserved. While the problem has not been solved, progress is being made.

KIWEPI's work with government officials has led more women to take local leadership roles and participate in decisionmaking that affects everyone in the community, Canogura said. The work also has encouraged men to learn about and engage with issues affecting women, families, and neighborhoods.

Sustainable peace in the region can only be achieved when both men and women are engaged, the community participates in governance, and the voices of the most marginalized are represented, Canogura said.

Northern Uganda still has much to recover from the protracted internal conflict that lasted for almost two decades. The conflict that raged between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that became active in northern Uganda in the mid-1980s, and the Ugandan People's Defense Forces devastated communities in the region. The LRA, headed by the infamous Joseph Kony, committed horrific human rights abuses including killing and mutilating civilians, sexual violence against women and girls, and abducting young boys, many of them enslaved as child soldiers. In 2003, Jan Egeland, then United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, called the combat in northern Uganda the biggest forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world.

The conflict, which lasted from 1986 to 2006, broke down social infrastructures, shattered communities, and displaced more than 1.9 million people. The Ugandan government and the LRA agreed to a permanent ceasefire in 2006. Although their signed accord allowed more than 1 million people to return home, the rehabilitation and reintegration of this traumatized population has posed major challenges for local communities and the Ugandan government.

In the post-conflict regions of northern Ugandaincluding in the districts of Gulu, Kitgum, and Liraa major issue has been the dearth of available health care, legal services, psychological support, and counseling. Studies have shown that many in post-conflict settings suffer from physical and psychological war-related trauma. Further, former combatants and women who were abducted by soldiers and bore children conceived during rape by LRA fighters confront severe stigma upon their return.

The long period of brutality was especially devastating for women and children survivors of sexual violence, who continue to grapple with the aftermath of the horrors they survived, Canogura said. She called their struggles the ongoing silent war, noting that survivors are still coping with physical and mental health problems while seeking to integrate into their families and communities. Many community leaders are well aware of the hurdles faced because they, too, are onetime abductees and survivors. They know what services are needed and play a critical role in ensuring that the government allocates sums to support the afflicted, she said.

In 2015, the number of residents who paid taxes in Kitgum district was about 5 percent, more than double what it was in 2013. The women's initiative and other organizers and activists seeking to change attitudes and educate Ugandans about the benefits of paying taxes have found encouragement in these numbers.

One target on KIWEPI's agenda: Birthing centers that lack basic amenities such as electricity and enough rooms to separate women who have died during childbirth from those undergoing labor. So that women in labor don't have to endure such trauma, Canogura's organization is pushing the local government to expand hospital space and upgrade maternal health services. It is one more example of how community leaders continue to demand government accountability by pushing for improvements in public services that constituents direly need.

Mahlet Woldetsadik is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a Ph.D. candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. This blog post was written for the Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
New guidelines recommending depression screening during primary-care visits for pregnant women and new mothers, appropriately implemented, should benefit not only mothers but their children as well. The guidelines were issued last month by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Untreated depression can harm a mother's well-being and impair her ability to function as a parent. Children of depressed parents are more likely to experience social and emotional problems, delays in cognitive and social development, and long-term behavioral problems. In turn, a child's developmental delays can heighten family stress, increasing the risk of depression for the mother and father and perpetuating a cycle that may affect both parents and child.

Behavioral-health professionals, primary-care doctors and community agencies that serve adults with depression often do not consider the impact of parental depression on young children or focus on the adult's role as a parent. For this reason, the new guidelines are significant in recognizing the link between parental depression and child development.

Screening is only a first step in getting mothers and families into needed treatment, however. For screening to be effective, it is important for providers to:

Develop screening measures for depression and protocols appropriate for the primary-care setting and the staff conducting the screening.

Turn a protocol into routine practice for referring patients who have been identified as needing treatment.

Provide training and ongoing support for staff on how to screen and refer patients to services and supports.

Looking beyond primary care to screening outside the health-care system could help even more mothers and children get treatment. Pediatric offices, preschools, early-intervention programs and early-childhood education programs such as Head Start could provide an entry point for working with families at risk for or suffering from parental depression.

Coordinating across systems is key. The Helping Families Raise Healthy Children program  implemented from 2009 to 2013 under the auspices of the Allegheny County Maternal and Child Health Care Collaborative, part of a broad-based coalition across Pennsylvania  attempted to do this by improving the ability of existing county early-intervention and behavioral-health systems to identify families facing the dual challenges of early childhood developmental delays and parental depression. The program then tried to get them into treatment.

My RAND colleagues and I evaluated this program and found that it succeeded on several fronts. It improved care for families at risk for parental depression and early-childhood developmental delays; achieved high rates of screening, referral and engagement in services through collaboration among providers and early-intervention and behavioral-health agencies; and helped build capacity for sustaining these improvements through cross-system training and support for the initiative.

Screening for depression is a critical first step, but more is needed. A well-integrated referral process needs to be in place so that those identified as needing treatment have a clearly identified pathway to obtain the care they need. Efforts like Helping Families Raise Healthy Children hold promise for ameliorating depression among mothers and developmental problems for their young children  the ultimate aim of the new guidelines.

Dana Schultz is a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on March 18, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Russia's drawdown in Syria comes in the wake of frustrations with the regime of President Bashar Assad, whose forces Russian airpower aided, and with Moscow's interest in being part of a wider political solution. A negotiated deal will need active support from Russia, the West and regional states, and thus must reflect their interests.

The crisis in Syria, a longtime Moscow client, has brought Russia more risk than opportunity. Since the overwhelming majority of the over 10 million Muslims in Russia are Sunni, the Kremlin runs risks siding with the Shiite-aligned Assad regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah Shiite allies in the fight against Sunni insurgents. Moscow saw its intervention as necessary to rescue Assad's reeling forces and as a way to demonstrate Russian military power.

Then the Kremlin had to rebuke Assad. As the partial ceasefire was getting underway in mid-February, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations was asked about Assad's statement that Syria would continue the fight to defeat all rebels. The ambassador said it did "not chime with the diplomatic efforts that Russia is undertaking."

Russia's frustrations are not unexpected. Former presidents Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq showed how weak and unpredictable leaders undermine outsiders' ability to help end conflicts and stabilize societies. Moscow may also see a parallel to Afghanistan in the 1980s, when it struggled to prop up an illegitimate regime resisting a determined insurgency.

In announcing the drawdown, President Vladimir Putin claimed that the task of Russian forces had on the whole, been fulfilled. This is less than true. Last September at the United Nations General Assembly, he called the Islamic State group more than dangerous, but Russia has done little to counter it. The Islamic State group, which controls a wide swath in Syria, has been a destination for several thousand radical jihadists from Russia. Some will return home battle-hardened and spoiling to avenge what they consider to be mistreatment of Muslims in such areas as the North Caucasus.

As well, the al-Nusra Front  like the Islamic State group, not a party to the ceasefire  controls critical territory in Syria, including in eastern Aleppo. Although Russian strikes damaged several insurgent groups, including some backed by the West, the insurgents retain military capability, and some are supported from neighboring countries. Finally, large-scale civilian casualties caused by unguided bombs have damaged Russia's international prestige.

These problems along with economic weakness at home, isolation from the West and confrontation with Ukraine and Turkey have taken a toll on Russia. It is in strategic decline, and a drawdown in Syria might help abate it.

While Russian military intervention may have prevented the immediate collapse of the Assad regime, Moscow's strategic interest is not Assad but retention of a strong and friendly government in populated western Syria. If Russia were able to insert a more effective strongman, it might be tempted. Moscow doubts that the Western goal of a democratic transition is achievable anytime soon.

Recognizing that the Syrian conflict is too daunting for any one outside power to solve and too important for regional powers to ignore, the Kremlin has pressed Assad to pursue a political settlement. He has resisted. By making known that the drawdown would begin a day after the announcement, Putin showed his displeasure.

Russia may be willing to work more intensively in the International Syria Support Group to pressure Syria and its Iranian ally to abide by the cease-fire and seek a political solution. Moscow might hope to build on cooperative habits from the negotiations with the six world powers and Iran that led to the nuclear deal. In the Syria talks, the Kremlin will count on the West and regional powers to bring added leverage, so that Moscow is not too exposed. It was uneasy about pressuring Tehran in the nuclear talks format and will be uncomfortable squeezing Damascus in front of others.

Absent a peace accord, Russia may fear it could again be dragged into Syria if its only Arab ally gets in trouble. To hedge against this risk and further its great power ambition, Russia will have an interest in maintaining military basing infrastructure in Syria. This would also help it project modernized naval and air power in the Mediterranean region.

In seeking a negotiated peace in Syria, the West ought to be ready to accommodate Russia's minimum strategic interests there if Russia ceases attacking Western-backed moderate insurgents and presses the Assad regime to negotiate a political solution and not violate cease-fire arrangements. Effective and enduring political settlements result from quid pro quos, not irrational pursuit of one-sided advantage. Recognizing that contending parties have legitimate interests in the complex Syria conflict could help bring an end to a destructive war in a volatile but vital region.

Colin P. Clarke is an associate political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at RAND and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia.

This commentary originally appeared on U.S. News & World Report on March 17, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Gandhinagar: Congress on Friday sought to corner BJP on the suicide by a cow -protection activist seeking 'Rashtra Mata' (mother of nation) status to the animal, saying the party would support the government if it goes ahead with such move.

However, the BJP remained more or less elusive while refusing to give any commitment to the demand raised by 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti'.

Samiti activist Hindabhai Vambadiya (35) allegedly consumed pesticide outside Rajkot Collector office yesterday and died later in civil hospital.

He was part of the group of eight men who attempted suicide outside the collectorate seeking 'Rashtra Mata' status to cow and beef ban across country.

The issue reverberated in the Legislative Assembly on Friday.

Senior Congressman and the Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela said that his party supports the demand for declaring cow as "Rashtra Mata (mother of nation)".

"BJP should do introspection as to why someone gave his life. Cow is our mother and the BJP government must declare it as our national mother. If government agrees to do that, the Congress will support that move," Vaghela told reporters.

During the Assembly proceedings earlier in the day, Vaghela asked Speaker Ganpat Vasava to allow discussion in zero hour on the issue after question hour ended.

Vaghela told the Speaker that it was a matter of serious concern that someone has ended his life demanding the 'Rashtra Mata' status for cow.

Vaghela said the BJP is more touchy about the cow "as the saffron party uses cow as a mean to secure votes".

However, Vasava rejected his demand, saying there is no tradition of zero-hour in Gujarat Assembly, following which Vaghela and the Congress MLAs staged a symbolic walkout.

After they returned, Health Minister Nitin Patel launched an attack on the Congress, saying the party has no right to speak about cow "as their leaders once supported those who eat beef".

"A Congress MLA in Kerala even hosted a beef party in the past," he alleged.

Senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil hit back at BJP, claiming that people believed in the BJP's pre-poll claims that BJP will declare cow as national animal after coming to power at the Centre.

"BJP claims to be a party of 'Gau-Bhakts (cow worshippers). You only promised to do everything possible to protect cows ahead of polls. You only promised to declare it as Rashtra Mata. Since BJP has not done that, a person ended his life after consuming poison in Rajkot" alleged Gohil.

Responding to Gohil, Law Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja said that BJP is a party with a strong conviction and all the party workers believe in protecting cows at any cost.

The Samiti has called for Gujarat bandh today on the issue.
The rise of the Islamic State and its spread across Africa and the Middle East may seem like a novel phenomenon, but it is hardly a first. In 1881, when an Islamic cleric in what was then called the Sudan, declared himself to be the Mahdithe successor to the Prophet Muhammad and leader of a universal jihad that commanded the loyalty of all humankindthe alternative to obedience was death. The Mahdist State ended at the start of the twentieth century, its global ambitions never realized.

Today's Islamic State is less than two years old. Its black flag has been raised in a dozen countries outside of Syria and Iraq. As the self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi demands the obedience of all Muslims worldwide. The Islamic State claims affiliates in Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Tunisia, the North Caucasus, and elsewhere. And terrorist attacks have been carried out in the Islamic State's name in the West, including in the United States. But how real are these claims and how serious is the threat that the Islamic State's brand of jihad will spread on a global scale?

The Islamic State calls its claimed territories wilayah or provinces, which it annexes, thereby nullifying any existing national boundaries. The wilayah in Syria and Iraq have actual governing authorities. Those beyond are aspirational. In some graphics, the emergence of one affiliate puts the entire country under the Islamic State, but this is misleading. These are outposts of like-minded fanaticsadvance parties in a few places, not armies of occupation.

Public pledges of loyalty to the Islamic State by far-flung groups bring benefits to both parties. They affirm the authority of al-Baghdadi, increase his apparent strength, create a bandwagon effect that attracts more support, and provide groundwork for future expansion. By attaching themselves to the Islamic State, local groups heighten their profile over local competitors, become part of a global network, attract recruits, and look for technical and material assistance. Joining the Islamic State also brings risks. It may associate local groups with distant atrocities that repel some local support and could put the group into the crosshairs of more powerful adversaries. The potential loss of autonomy is a distant danger.

But it's not easy to translate these expressions of solidarity into operational cooperation, which requires coordination and central decisionmaking. Military alliances work well so long as members don't actually have to follow orders.

It's not easy to translate expressions of solidarity into operational cooperation.

Maintaining unity will require the Islamic State to tolerate local autonomy. It is hard to imagine Boko Haram's fighters in Nigeria, whose leader has pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, taking orders from Islamic State brass in Syria. If Islamic State emissaries push too hard, they could easily arouse local resentment, especially if it cannot provide significant material assistance to its affiliates.

Fanatics are not easily disciplined. The Islamic State is not immune to the schisms that plague all revolutionary groups. There have been periodic reports of attempted coups and executions of dissidents and deserters. Some of the stories leaking out of Syria may be black propaganda, but probably not all.

It is conceivable, though unlikely, that, in time, the Islamic State could create a truly integrated international force, colonize its affiliates with loyal veterans, assert more control over affiliate leadership, and exploit their resources to support global operations.

In its heyday, al Qaeda envisioned re-creating the Muslim caliphate stretching from India to Spain. Since then, al Qaeda has been driven out of Sudan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Its central command is now holed up probably somewhere in Pakistan while its affiliates survive in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.

Continued bombing and gradual advances by Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian forces are reducing the Islamic State. Its military defeat seems possible (although perhaps distant)its ideological defeat will be a more difficult task. Diehard believers will shave their beards and continue the armed struggle underground. Others will seek new fronts. Right now, Libya offers the best opportunity although some Islamic State combatants have established a front in Afghanistan. Thousands of Chechens serving in the Islamic State's ranks want to renew the fighting in Russia's Caucasus.

Thus far, the Islamic State's terrorist campaign outside of Syria and Iraq has been decentralized, probably more symbolic than operational. It depends on local initiative. A global network would theoretically give the Islamic State's operational planners access to significant resources if its leaders decided to launch an international campaign. There is the danger that they may yet do so.

The doctrinal differences among the jihadists are trivial. But their loyalties can shift faster than sand dunes. Circumstances will determine jihad's future force structure. It is not inconceivable that the Islamic State could absorb what remains of al Qaeda. Conversely, the survivors of a defeated Islamic State could rejoin al Qaeda. Or the jihadist universe could morph into an altogether different configuration.

The armed jihad inspired by al Qaeda's ideology began 20 years ago, and some of its veterans date their enlistment back to the wars in the Balkans or even earlier to the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion. That the struggle against it will go on for many years is a given.

Brian Michael Jenkins is a senior adviser to the president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and author of numerous books, reports, and articles on terrorism-related topics, including Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?

This commentary originally appeared on The Cipher Brief on March 18, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
ADSL connections are slowly fading away while fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) grows unstoppably in Spain, reaching 3.3 million connected homes and opening new opportunities for convergence.





During January, over 153,000 subscribers joined the fibre community in Spain, which has 3.3 million active lines, double that of January 2014, according to the latest report from Spain's telecom authority, the Comision Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC).Nearly every telecom operator is investing strongly in fibre networks, with over six in ten Spanish homes having access to a fibre-based connection  17 million to FTTH and ten million to hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC).Telefonica owns over 2.3 million (70%) of the active lines, followed by Orange and Vodafone, which were the only two operators to add subscribers during January. The three players gather over 95% of the broadband connections in the country (including both ADSL and fibre).Through the expansive FTTH network, operators are finding way to converge their services and deliver triple-, quad- or even quint-play offers. Indeed, the Spanish pay-TV industry is concentrating nearly all its growth on IPTV services , which rocketed over 150% between Q2 2014 to Q2 2015, according to the latest official TV figures.
The Nigerian Government has established a Ministerial Task Force on Digitisation to fast track the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting in 2017.



The task force includes the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), signal distributors and set-top box manufacturers, according to the News Agency of Nigeria. In addition, Digital Shift Over Team, Nigeria Customs Service, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) are involved in the project.Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the transition to digital terrestrial television (DTT) would enable the broadcast of 40 free-to-air channels with enhanced quality. Digitisation would also create economic potential within Nigeria, he added.The minister urged stakeholders to work toward meeting the digitisation target of 2017 in order for Nigeria to comply with the agreement signed by members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
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Government bill on protection of military judges reaches Russian parliament

MOSCOW, March 18 (RAPSI)  Russian government has submitted a bill to the lower house of parliament that would authorize military police to ensure security of military judges and members of their families, according to the State Duma database.

Currently, measures to ensure the safety of military courts judges, judges of judicial panels for military personnel, members of their families as well as measures to ensure the safekeeping of their property are carried out by internal affairs agencies and commanders of military units.

Under the bill, Russias Military Police officers will discharge these duties on equal terms with the aforementioned bodies.

Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov has been appointed as an official representative to the bill during its consideration in the State Duma.
Sputnik, March 18, 2016

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On Thursday, Department of Defense spokesman Christopher Sherwood told Sputnik that US service members associated with an attack on a Doctors Without Borders medical facility in Kunduz were suspended and referred for administrative action.

"For good reason the victims family members will see this as both an injustice and an insult: the US military investigated itself and decided no crimes had been committed," Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher Patricia Gossman stated in a post on Thursday.

Gossman added that the US military justice systems poor record of prosecuting alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq illustrates the necessity for a criminal inquiry "outside the military chain of command."

On October 3, 2015, a US AC-130 gunship aircraft shot 30mm cannon shells for 30 minutes into a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, killing more than 40 medical staff and patients, including children.

In late November 2015, US forces Commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Campbell told reporters the Kunduz bombing was an avoidable mistake caused by human error.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi at Parliament during the budget session in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisis remarks that he would not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' even if a knife is put to his throat, created an uproar across the country and he was heavily criticised by several political leaders.

Read: Wont chant hail Mother India, not in Constitution: Owaisi tells RSS

Reacting to the same, Veteran actress Shabana Azmi said at the India Today Conclave 2016, I would like to ask Owaisi sahab, would he be ok saying 'Bharat Ammi Ki Jai' instead of Bharat Mata, if he has got a problem with 'Mata' and not 'Bharat'."

Read: Javed Akhtar mocks Owaisi, chants Bharat Mata ki Jai in Rajya Sabha

Azmi was accompanied by her lyricist-writer husband Javed Akhtar.

When asked if he would contest election against Owaisi, Akhtar said, If I contest elections against him in a place with Hindus and Muslims in a 50-50 proportion, I know I will get votes from everybody."

Taking objection to Owaisis remark, Akhtar had earlier said, The Constitution even does not ask him to wear sherwani (dress) and topi (cap). I dont care to know whether saying Bharat mata ki jai is my duty or not, it is my right.

Read: Maharashtra Assembly suspends AIMIM MLA for not saying 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'

Owaisi's statement has set off a chain of events amid charged debate over nationalism that included suspension of an AIMIM MLA by Maharashtra Assembly after he refused to chant the slogan.

Political parties across the spectrum, including the BJP, Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena have condemned Owaisi's stance. Madhya Pradesh Assembly has also unanimously adopted a censure motion, moved by a Congress member and backed by the ruling BJP, against Owaisi.

Read: Chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' should be the only definition of nationalism: Anupam
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YSRC's move comes against the backdrop of the ongoing political fight between the ruling and the opposition parties in the AP Assembly. (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: The opposition YSR Congress on Friday issued separate notices for moving privilege motions against Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and three ministers for making "unparliamentary" comments against the Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy in the assembly.

The three Andhra Pradesh ministers against whom notices were moved are Devineni Umamaheswara Rao (Water Resources), K Atchannaidu (Youth Affairs) and Kamineni Srinivas (Health).

"We would like to raise a privilege motion under Rule 168 against Leader of the House (Naidu) for making unconcerned, unwarranted and unparliamentary remarks against Leader of Opposition on March 9, 2016 during the Chief Minister's reply to the motion of thanks to the Governor's address."

"He (Naidu) also used unparliamentary language on March 14 during the discussion on no-confidence motion against the government," the YSRC MLAs said in the notice issued to the Andhra Pradesh Legislature Secretary.

In the notice against K Atchannaidu, the YSRC MLAs said the Youth Affairs Minister used unparliamentary language on March 14.

The Health Minister made unparliamentary remarks on March 9 while the Water Resources Minister made the comments on the 14th, the YSRC said in the notices.

The YSRC's move comes against the backdrop of the ongoing political fight between the ruling and the opposition parties in the AP Assembly over the year-long suspension of MLA R K Roja from the House and the privilege proceedings currently underway against four other MLAs of the Jagan-led party.

The Privileges Committee of the Assembly is scheduled to meet at 3 pm tomorrow to discuss the motions against the YSRC MLAs based on the enquiry report submitted by a committee headed by Deputy Speaker Mandali Buddha Prasad.
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HOME > The Bachelor > The Bachelor 20 Ben Higgins: I lost 15 pounds from 'The Bachelor' anguish, but I think I knew Lauren Bushnell was the one when I first saw her

By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/18/2016



has revealed he lost 15 pounds throughout his journey on because of all the stress and lack of sleep, but it was all worth it in the end to have found



ADVERTISEMENT "Heading into my last date with Lauren, I was a mess. I hadn't been sleeping. I couldn't eat. I'm not sure if you guys could tell, but I lost over 15 pounds during this journey. My mind couldn't stop and I simply didn't know what I was going to do. Lauren could feel that the second she saw me," Higgins



Higgins was "so appreciative" that night of Bushnell's desire to just be there for him, hold him and tell him everything was going to be alright.



"That night she just let me know that she was ready. She wanted to make sure I had zero doubts and that I knew that she was ready to marry me. For a guy who thought he couldn't be truly loved and to have a woman as amazing as Lauren sitting across from you saying that, I can't even put into words what that meant to me," Higgins explained.



"As the night ended the finality of it all really hit me. That this could possibly be the last time I ever saw Lauren. The last time I kissed her or said goodnight to her. That scared me to death. I think now I know why that was so scary to me but in that moment all it did was add to the anguish I was feeling every minute of every day as my final decision grew nearer."



Higgins then made a surprising confession in his blog.



"In all honesty, I think I knew the moment I saw Lauren that it was her. Our spark and our chemistry was just unlike anything I had ever felt in my whole life. When I met Lauren, I finally understood what all those songs and movies about true love were talking about. There is no other feeling like that," Higgins wrote.



"But I didn't want to get carried away in that or to mistake chemistry for love. I owed it to myself and to all of the women that had been there to see it all through, to explore every possibility and every feeling before I made a decision that would be for the rest of my life."



Higgins also had to explore his relationship with Bushnell more to make sure the feeling he had for her "was real" and "could last forever."



"It's easy to get caught up in the moment and I needed to make sure that that is not what this was," he said, adding that he realized he couldn't live without Bushnell while holding the Neil Lane engagement ring he had picked out. "I knew this was it. Lauren was my person and the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with."



When Higgins finally arrived at that decision, he felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his chest.



"I was relieved. I was happy. I actually started imagining sliding the ring on her finger and the look on her face when she saw it. I imagined seeing that ring on her finger 30 years from now as we held hands and watched our kids graduate high school or college. I felt peace and pure joy. I couldn't wait to tell her. To hold her in my arms and say that this is forever," Higgins explained.



Higgins "tried to play it cool" when Bushnell finally approached him in her blue gown at the Final Rose Ceremony in Jamaica.

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"But it was almost impossible. I wanted her to be surprised and excited. And I wanted us both to be able to say what we came there to say. But I think I left out over half of what I had planned on telling her. I just couldn't wait. But I loved that about that moment. It was so perfectly imperfect because I couldn't contain myself... I wanted to spend the rest of my forever with her. And I hoped that she did too," he said.



"Again, words will pale in comparison to what that moment felt like. After all the anguish and heartbreak; all the sleepless nights and tears; after the weeks and weeks of praying and soul searching and worrying that this might not work out after all; and that my fear of being unlovable might be a real thing; all of that disappeared in that moment."



All of those fears and worries apparently disappeared when he saw Bushnell that final day of filming.



"[The anxiety] was replaced by more joy than I thought a man could ever feel. I had found her. And she loved me back. It was perfect in every way... She is everything I have ever dreamed of in a partner and I can't wait for a lifetime with her by my side. She's my person," Higgins insisted.

About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON GOOGLE NEWS Ben Higgins has revealed he lost 15 pounds throughout his journey on because of all the stress and lack of sleep, but it was all worth it in the end to have found Lauren Bushnell "Heading into my last date with Lauren, I was a mess. I hadn't been sleeping. I couldn't eat. I'm not sure if you guys could tell, but I lost over 15 pounds during this journey. My mind couldn't stop and I simply didn't know what I was going to do. Lauren could feel that the second she saw me," Higgins wrote in his People blog of his final one-on-one date with the blonde flight attendant."Higgins was "so appreciative" that night of Bushnell's desire to just be there for him, hold him and tell him everything was going to be alright."That night she just let me know that she was ready. She wanted to make sure I had zero doubts and that I knew that she was ready to marry me. For a guy who thought he couldn't be truly loved and to have a woman as amazing as Lauren sitting across from you saying that, I can't even put into words what that meant to me," Higgins explained."As the night ended the finality of it all really hit me. That this could possibly be the last time I ever saw Lauren. The last time I kissed her or said goodnight to her. That scared me to death. I think now I know why that was so scary to me but in that moment all it did was add to the anguish I was feeling every minute of every day as my final decision grew nearer."Higgins then made a surprising confession in his blog."In all honesty, I think I knew the moment I saw Lauren that it was her. Our spark and our chemistry was just unlike anything I had ever felt in my whole life. When I met Lauren, I finally understood what all those songs and movies about true love were talking about. There is no other feeling like that," Higgins wrote."But I didn't want to get carried away in that or to mistake chemistry for love. I owed it to myself and to all of the women that had been there to see it all through, to explore every possibility and every feeling before I made a decision that would be for the rest of my life."Higgins also had to explore his relationship with Bushnell more to make sure the feeling he had for her "was real" and "could last forever.""It's easy to get caught up in the moment and I needed to make sure that that is not what this was," he said, adding that he realized he couldn't live without Bushnell while holding the Neil Lane engagement ring he had picked out. "I knew this was it. Lauren was my person and the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with."When Higgins finally arrived at that decision, he felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his chest."I was relieved. I was happy. I actually started imagining sliding the ring on her finger and the look on her face when she saw it. I imagined seeing that ring on her finger 30 years from now as we held hands and watched our kids graduate high school or college. I felt peace and pure joy. I couldn't wait to tell her. To hold her in my arms and say that this is forever," Higgins explained.Higgins "tried to play it cool" when Bushnell finally approached him in her blue gown at the Final Rose Ceremony in Jamaica."But it was almost impossible. I wanted her to be surprised and excited. And I wanted us both to be able to say what we came there to say. But I think I left out over half of what I had planned on telling her. I just couldn't wait. But I loved that about that moment. It was so perfectly imperfect because I couldn't contain myself... I wanted to spend the rest of my forever with her. And I hoped that she did too," he said."Again, words will pale in comparison to what that moment felt like. After all the anguish and heartbreak; all the sleepless nights and tears; after the weeks and weeks of praying and soul searching and worrying that this might not work out after all; and that my fear of being unlovable might be a real thing; all of that disappeared in that moment."All of those fears and worries apparently disappeared when he saw Bushnell that final day of filming."[The anxiety] was replaced by more joy than I thought a man could ever feel. I had found her. And she loved me back. It was perfect in every way... She is everything I have ever dreamed of in a partner and I can't wait for a lifetime with her by my side. She's my person," Higgins insisted. THE BACHELOR 20 THE BACHELOR SPOILERS MORE THE BACHELOR 20 NEWS << PRIOR STORY

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Page generated Sat Oct 22, 2022 14:43 pm in 0.75842308998108 seconds




Kim Kardashian is changing up her look again -- this time to an ombre hairstyle.

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The 35-year-old "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" star showed off her new look on social media after receiving a "midnight haircut" from celebrity hairstylist Cesar Ramirez on Tuesday night.

Kardashian shared several photos of her transformation on Snapchat and followed up by wishing her followers "good morning." The reality star went platinum blonde last month for husband Kanye West's Yeezy fashion show in New York.

"I feel really blessed because I genuinely love the process of getting my hair and makeup done," Kardashian told Into the Gloss in 2015.

"I'm always researching different products, and I always try so many different things."

"For my hair, I don't wash it every day," she revealed. "We start out with a blowout on day one, then we go into a messier vibe the next day, and then we flat iron it and do a really sleek look on day three ... Day four could be a slicked-back ponytail."

West's show marked Kardashian's first public appearance since welcoming son Saint West in December. The reality star came under heavy fire for posting a nude post-baby selfie this month and later defended the photo on her website.

"I'm empowered by my body," she wrote. "It's 2016. The body-shaming and slut-shaming -- it's like, enough is enough. I will not live my life dictated by the issues you have with my sexuality."

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Kardashian, who is also mom to 2-year-old daughter North West, lost 30 pounds of baby weight in the first six weeks after Saint's birth.

Khloe Kardashian said her sister still isn't at her goal weight on Wednesday's episode of "Kocktails with Khloe."
HOME > The Bachelor > The Bachelor 20 'The Bachelor' star Ben Higgins: Joelle "JoJo" Fletcher and I would've been happy together forever if I had not met Lauren Bushnell

By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/17/2016



star



ADVERTISEMENT During Higgins' final one-on-one date with Fletcher in Jamaica, the bachelorette was desperate for answers before throwing herself into the Final Rose Ceremony without confidence.



"[JoJo] was instantly worried that something she had cared so much about might be taken away without her having any say. And if you guys didn't know already, JoJo is a worrier. Everything I said or in every kiss I could see her searching my face for some sort of sign or reassurance that it was all going to be okay. But I couldn't give her that," Higgins



"That night on the floor in the bathroom of her suite might have been the most I have ever cried in my life. I wanted so badly to make her feel better and to stop her tears and just enjoy the rest of the night but I couldn't. And when she asked me if I loved [



Higgins had promised Fletcher he would always be honest with her, so as hard as it was for the Bachelor to come clean about his feelings for both women, he did.



"I had to. I could see that it crushed her. And that, in turn, crushed me. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. The woman who had stood by my side every step of the way. But I couldn't keep my promise to her and always tell her the truth without hurting her in this moment," Higgins said.



"Part of me hoped that I would be able to erase all that pain in a day when I was on one knee, but at that point, hard as it may be to believe, I still didn't know what I was going to do."



Even when Higgins sat down with Neil Lane to pick out an engagement ring, he was still "torn" and didn't know whether Fletcher or Bushnell was going to be his fiancee. It wasn't until Lane probed him with questions about his future wife that Higgins realized one woman had stolen his heart.



"There was one girl and one relationship that kept popping up in my mind first. I couldn't ignore that. In that moment, I knew," Higgins noted.



So when it came time for the Final Rose Ceremony, Higgins was overjoyed to pop the question to Bushnell. But his happy ending meant devastating Fletcher beforehand, and he knew she didn't deserve it.



"I'll spare you all my feelings standing across from JoJo as she arrived and I told her that I was going to choose Lauren because words aren't enough to give you even a tiny taste of what that was like. It was excruciating. Multiply what you think that word means by a billion and you might get close to what that was like for both of us," Higgins confessed.



"I knew what I was doing. And I knew how badly that would hurt JoJo after what she had told me about her past and how far we had come together. Had I known back when this all started what I felt in that moment, I would've spared her all of that. But I didn't. I needed every bit of this journey, the good and the bad, to know."



Higgins wished he didn't need to drag Fletcher all the way to the end, but it was necessary. The 25-year-old real estate developed from Dallas, TX, was rejected that day in Jamaica as she stood anxiously awaiting a proposal from the man she loved in a beautiful blush gown.

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"It killed me because even in that moment I loved her. I saw a wonderful future with her. And in any other world than one where I'd met



"But there was no way she could really know that. And nothing I could say to make her feel better at all. I simply had to say goodbye and it was the hardest thing I have done or probably ever will do in my life. It took me a lot longer than you think to come down from that. On TV you see one happen right after the other, but I needed some time. Time to recover."



Higgins then focused his attention on his bride-to-be. Meeting Bushnell was apparently everything he had "prayed for" and "dreamed about," even years prior to appearing on .



"As hard as it was to put JoJo behind me, I needed to in that moment..." Higgins explained.



"It has been the single most tumultuous, emotional, gut-wrenching, wild, yet amazing ride of my life. And as I look back at it now, and you all know how it ended, I don't think I could ever go through it again. But I'm also so happy that I did. Because I stand here now the happiest man in the world because I have found my person. And I can't wait to start my life with her."



About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON GOOGLE NEWS star Ben Higgins says dumping Joelle "JoJo" Fletcher was probably the most painful moment of his life.During Higgins' final one-on-one date with Fletcher in Jamaica, the bachelorette was desperate for answers before throwing herself into the Final Rose Ceremony without confidence."[JoJo] was instantly worried that something she had cared so much about might be taken away without her having any say. And if you guys didn't know already, JoJo is a worrier. Everything I said or in every kiss I could see her searching my face for some sort of sign or reassurance that it was all going to be okay. But I couldn't give her that," Higgins wrote in his People blog following the finale Monday night."That night on the floor in the bathroom of her suite might have been the most I have ever cried in my life. I wanted so badly to make her feel better and to stop her tears and just enjoy the rest of the night but I couldn't. And when she asked me if I loved [ Lauren Bushnell ] too, I couldn't lie to her."Higgins had promised Fletcher he would always be honest with her, so as hard as it was for the Bachelor to come clean about his feelings for both women, he did."I had to. I could see that it crushed her. And that, in turn, crushed me. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. The woman who had stood by my side every step of the way. But I couldn't keep my promise to her and always tell her the truth without hurting her in this moment," Higgins said."Part of me hoped that I would be able to erase all that pain in a day when I was on one knee, but at that point, hard as it may be to believe, I still didn't know what I was going to do."Even when Higgins sat down with Neil Lane to pick out an engagement ring, he was still "torn" and didn't know whether Fletcher or Bushnell was going to be his fiancee. It wasn't until Lane probed him with questions about his future wife that Higgins realized one woman had stolen his heart."There was one girl and one relationship that kept popping up in my mind first. I couldn't ignore that. In that moment, I knew," Higgins noted.So when it came time for the Final Rose Ceremony, Higgins was overjoyed to pop the question to Bushnell. But his happy ending meant devastating Fletcher beforehand, and he knew she didn't deserve it."I'll spare you all my feelings standing across from JoJo as she arrived and I told her that I was going to choose Lauren because words aren't enough to give you even a tiny taste of what that was like. It was excruciating. Multiply what you think that word means by a billion and you might get close to what that was like for both of us," Higgins confessed."I knew what I was doing. And I knew how badly that would hurt JoJo after what she had told me about her past and how far we had come together. Had I known back when this all started what I felt in that moment, I would've spared her all of that. But I didn't. I needed every bit of this journey, the good and the bad, to know."Higgins wished he didn't need to drag Fletcher all the way to the end, but it was necessary. The 25-year-old real estate developed from Dallas, TX, was rejected that day in Jamaica as she stood anxiously awaiting a proposal from the man she loved in a beautiful blush gown."It killed me because even in that moment I loved her. I saw a wonderful future with her. And in any other world than one where I'd met Lauren Bushnell on the same day in the same place, JoJo and I would've been happy together forever," Higgins admitted in his blog."But there was no way she could really know that. And nothing I could say to make her feel better at all. I simply had to say goodbye and it was the hardest thing I have done or probably ever will do in my life. It took me a lot longer than you think to come down from that. On TV you see one happen right after the other, but I needed some time. Time to recover."Higgins then focused his attention on his bride-to-be. Meeting Bushnell was apparently everything he had "prayed for" and "dreamed about," even years prior to appearing on ."As hard as it was to put JoJo behind me, I needed to in that moment..." Higgins explained."It has been the single most tumultuous, emotional, gut-wrenching, wild, yet amazing ride of my life. And as I look back at it now, and you all know how it ended, I don't think I could ever go through it again. But I'm also so happy that I did. Because I stand here now the happiest man in the world because I have found my person. And I can't wait to start my life with her." THE BACHELOR 20 THE BACHELOR SPOILERS MORE THE BACHELOR 20 NEWS << PRIOR STORY

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Page generated Sat Oct 22, 2022 14:44 pm in 0.79428887367249 seconds




New Delhi: In major relief to JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, a Delhi court on Friday granted interim bail to them for six months. The two, with JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, were in the middle of a raging controversy over alleged anti-national slogans on the JNU campus on February 9.

News of the bail order was greeted on the JNU campus with thunderous applause by hundreds of students. Welcoming it, Kanhaiya Kumar vowed to wage a battle to scrap the sedition law. On the other hand, actor Anupam Kher, who was at JNU for the screening of his film, said, People who are out on bail cannot be welcomed on the campus.

At the Patiala House courts, additional sessions judge Reetesh Singh said the "role attributed to Kanhaiya Kumar doesnt appear to be different from the allegations against Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. The judge granted them relief on furnishing of a personal bond for Rs 25,000 with one surety of like amount, which they complied with, and they were ordered to be released till September 19. The court also directed the duo not to leave Delhi.
We think its very important to educate the community and give them some really great films to see what the Jewish experience and Jewish culture is really like.
With a goal to raise at least $10,000 in mind for the ALS Association, the Georgia Alpha chapter of Phi Delta Theta at the University of Georgia will be hosting Phi Delta Thetas Masters Week, a week dedicated to philanthropy April 3 to 7.
Hyderabad: TRS MLA V. Srinivas Goud on Friday disclosed that TRS chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao had in 2009 threatened to commit suicide by jumping from the NIMS Hospital building if anyone tried to exert pressure on him to call off his indefinite fast demanding statehood for Telangana.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly on Friday, Mr Goud said that he, along with four other employee leaders, tried in vain to convince Mr Rao to call off his strike after doctors said that he would die any moment if he continued with his fast.

Sharing the details of the 11-day indefinite fast of Mr Rao in December 2009, which forced the then UPA government to make an announcement on initiating the process of formation of Telangana state, Mr Goud said, His fast had already entered the sixth day and his condition was critical, when we met him in the hospital. Doctors told us that he would die any moment if he continued his fast. We requested KCR to call off his fast and told him that the employees and public were behind him to take part in his struggle for Telagnana. But he refused to do so and threatened to jump out from the window of his room if anyone pressurised him...

Mr Goud said that thanks to Mr Rao, today Telangana was in a position to present a Rs 1 lakh-crore Budget. Governments in undivided AP imposed a ban on the word Telangana in this House. They used to refer to Telangana as a backward region, he said.
As the campaign period for the University of Georgia Student Government Association 2016 Student Body Elections began March 14 at midnight, three executive office tickets were announced, vying for the chance to represent the voice of the Bulldogs.
<p>The Americana Lodge has a long history of building, health and safety violations, many of which have generated complaints from their guests over the years, Redding officials say.</p>

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By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight

The appointment of a receiver to take possession of the Americana Lodge appears imminent after the downtown Redding motel lost an appeal Thursday to extend a deadline to bring it up to code and fix health and safety violations, City Attorney Barry DeWalt said.

"Absent some other legal proceeding filed by defendants, we are at liberty to have the receiver assume its powers," DeWalt said in an email. "The timing of when that will occur is currently in discussion."

The troubled motel has been locked in a legal battle with the city for nearly a year after code enforcement, police and fire officials made a sweep of the property on Pine Street in May and reported finding numerous building code and health and safety violations.

A repair and abatement order was issued in July, followed by a nuisance and abatement complaint filed in court in October. The complaint asked a judge to appoint a receiver, who would take control of the property and operate the motel.

DeWalt said the assigned receiver is Richardson Griswold out of San Diego. Griswold would be working for the court, not the city, and still would be obligated to make all the necessary repairs.

"The time frame for that occurring is subject to the discretion of the receiver," DeWalt said. "Of course, we would press hard for completion of all repairs as soon as possible."

The Americana had until March 8 to apply for all permits needed to complete the necessary work. The motel was given seven more days to meet the deadline before its attorney asked for a two-week extension, DeWalt said.

Meanwhile, the contractor who's been working to bring the motel up to code is frustrated about what he believes are unrealistic expectations set by the city.

Marvis Husa, of Husa & Sons Inc. in Anderson, said he's completed nearly all of the 500 items on the abatement order. But he believes the city has ignored his work and keeps adding items that require permits, which take time to get.

"My frustration is I don't see anybody acknowledging that I was even there," Husa said. "I don't understand. There must be some alternative plan. People are saying, 'I want this now.' Now they want more stuff. I don't know where it will end."

Husa, who worked as a carpenter building the Americana more than 50 years ago, estimates the extra work the city wants done will cost more than $500,000. Add that to what's already been fixed and the price tag exceeds the value of the property, Husa said.

William Munoz, the Sacramento attorney co-representing the Americana Lodge, said it's been a challenge meeting the "ridiculous demands" of the city.

"We are trying to work with the city to get whatever repairs done," Munoz said. "We are running into red tape with the city, and they keep adding more things that they want done, certain things need permits, which delay everything. ... We are trying to meet those deadlines and trying to meet those deadlines we agreed to do. But it has become virtually impossible because we have been set up for failure."

Because it's a legal matter, the city's building department has referred questions to DeWalt.

DeWalt disagrees with Husa and Munoz and says the city has worked with the motel.

"We have issued several permits," said DeWalt, who did not know specifically how many repairs have been completed and how many violations corrected.

Based on the demands and the fact he believes the city will never be satisfied, Husa has told the motel's owner to let the city take possession.

DeWalt said that's not the city's intent.

"That is not the point of this at all," DeWalt said.

Munoz said the Americana Lodge still has legal options that he declined to discuss at this time.

"It's just unfortunate. We are trying to work with the city; we have been from day one," Munoz said.
This photo provided by Joan Marcus shows, from left, Lupita Nyong'o, Saycon Sengbloh, and Pascale Armand in a scene from Danai Gurira's "Eclipsed" directed by Liesl Tommy. (Joan Marcus via AP)

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By MARK KENNEDY, AP Drama Writer

NEW YORK (AP)  Lupita Nyong'o is a red carpet darling, effortlessly stunning in a Calvin Klein gown or in advertisements as the face of Lancome. So it may come as something of a shock to see her make her Broadway debut in a cheap cloth skirt and filthy "Rugrats" T-shirt.

Nyong'o loses herself utterly in the searing and stunning play "Eclipsed," which opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre, also marking the important Broadway bows for playwright Danai Gurira and director Liesl Tommy.

Oscar-winner Nyong'o ("12 Years A Slave") plays a 15-year-old known only as The Girl who finds herself enslaved in a rebel compound during a bloody civil war in Africa. The five-member cast  all women  is a true ensemble and must not be missed.

The play is set during the end of Liberia's 14-year civil war, which ended in 2003. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor and rebel groups opposed to him including LURD  Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy  were accused of atrocities, including murder, mutilation, rape and using child soldiers.

"Eclipsed" takes place in a bullet-ridden hut on a LURD rebel base headed by a commanding officer, the unseen leader called "CO." He has captured two "wives"  Saycon Sengbloh plays Wife No. 1, clinging to the status it offers, and Pascale Armand plays pregnant Wife No. 3 as a girlish woman insecure of her looks. Wife No. 2 (Zainab Jah) has left to join the soldiers.

Although there are no men in "Eclipsed," their presence is everywhere  from the military fatigues the women wash and dry to their stomach-churning stories of rape and the moments when the "wives" stand cowering until one is chosen for sex and goes to her fate offstage. The future of women is shown blocked in this play  hence the title. It is clear who is doing the blocking.

Time and identity is fuzzy here. Trauma means few of the women know their name or where they come from. The Girl is a newcomer when we meet her and wants to reclaim their identities. "I just tink we should know who we are, whot year we got, where we come from," she says.

It is a play that explores the battle for The Girl's soul  and, in a sense, of the country itself. The choices are stasis and subjugation in the kitchen, joining the savage male world as a soldier, or embracing the lofty hope of peace, as embodied by a visiting activist, played by Akosua Busia, whose role is not as complex as the others and so sounds somewhat dissonant.

"You happy with Liberia as it going? You tink dis a nice place?" she asks. "You tink it normal a boy carrying a gun killing and raping?"

Gurira, who plays the katana-wielding walker assassin Michonne on AMC's "The Walking Dead," draws very human portraits of these women, and the audience will be stunned to find itself laughing as they joke in such hell.

In one running theme, a biography of Bill Clinton makes its way to the wives, who haltingly read it aloud as if it were a romantic thriller. (They quickly identify Monica Lewinsky as "Wife No. 2.") The political squabbles over Clinton's affair seem somehow ridiculous when compared to the depravity visiting these women.

Nyong'o goes from childish to fiendish as she tries to find out what she is in this world. Jah is truly frightening as a gun-toting soldier in knock-off Chanel tops who proclaims her freedom from a life of rape. But she is part of the merciless machine of war  and weirdly hypersexualized, to boot.

Armand is a revelation as the gossipy, vain wife who aspires to look like Janet Jackson and is highly attuned to her position. And there is a resignation to Sengbloh's portrayal of Wife No. 1 that is heartbreaking until her newfound sense of identity at the end reveals the hopeful woman inside the broken exterior.

The play ends on a somewhat hopeful note, one that is beautifully realized. Gurira's work has been unfairly eclipsed by Lynn Nottage's "Ruined," which shares some themes and came out at the same time, but this production proves it is an extraordinary work that shines and shines.

___

Online: http://eclipsedbroadway.com
In 1869, a correspondent of the Shasta Courier newspaper, along with a few traveling friends  all unnamed  set out on a horse-and-buggy ride from Shasta to Fort Crook to give readers a description of the country, the people, the available accommodations and the route of travel they took.

They began their journey on June 26, 1869, from Shasta and drove for four hours over a "fine road" to the "flourishing" village of Millville. They found new houses, a schoolhouse and a church under construction. The correspondent noted the schoolhouse was one of the best ventilated schools in all of the North State and that the Masons had laid the cornerstone in the church.

After leaving Millville, the correspondent and his friends traveled to Oak Run, where they passed by the farms of the Hunts, Penlands and Wilkinsons who were all busy harvesting their hay. Farther on they came to the homes of the Phillips and Halcumbs, where one could stay and get a good meal, a nice bed and someone who would properly care for a traveler's tired animals.

The correspondent and his contingent of friends then traveled five miles over a mountain to North Cow Creek. Ten miles farther, the travelers came to Montgomery Creek. From there, they began to ascend a mountain that wasn't too difficult because of its gradual ascent of eight miles.

The next stream they approached was Hatchet Creek. Eight miles farther along through fine timber, they arrived in Burney Valley, a very rich valley described as six miles long by two miles in width and producing grains and vegetables in great abundance.

Two miles farther, the group reached Cayton's farm. Cayton was described as a man renowned for his hospitality and his well-improved farm. Cayton's farm was described as fresh and green.

A few miles south of Cayton's, the group came to Burney Mountain, a peak that could be seen from almost any part of the upper Sacramento Valley and with a north side that was covered with perpetual snow. Ten miles farther, over a fine road as "one could desire," they arrived at the sink of Burney Creek  a large stream that suddenly disappears and is lost from sight for about a mile while it passes through a subterranean passage and then reappears at the great leap  the Burney Creek Falls, the grandest scene of their journey.

Above the falls is a canyon about 40 feet deep through which the stream passes. When they stepped up to the edge of the canyon and looked down almost two hundred feet, they were so overcome with amazement that they decided to walk down to see the view from below. To get to the bottom, they had to leap from rock to rock and hang onto flowering bushes that grew from the crevices.

When they arrived at the bottom, they looked up and saw two large columns of crystal clear water "pouring down a perpendicular wall 140 feet and partially veiled by a profusion of wild flowers and hanging vines." He proclaimed the sight as a "scene which will remain graven in his memory while life endures." So enthralled with the grand sight that he wrote he felt as though he ought to bow in adoration.

Their climb to the bottom of the falls had caused their clothes to become fully saturated with water. Reluctantly, they began their climb out of the canyon, finding it an almost impossible task. When they arrived at the top  wet, cold, and unhurt  they climbed into the buggy and continued along for two more miles and crossed the Pit River on a ferry. From there, the soaking-wet and weary travelers rode along a meandering road until they arrived at their destination, Fort Crook.

Dottie Smith is the author of "The Dictionary of Early Shasta County History", the book from which most of this information was extracted. She is the former curator of the Shasta College Museum and instructor of Shasta County History at Shasta College. Check out her website at www.shastacountyhistory.com. Contact her at historydottie@gmail.com.
The newest cruise ship of the Meyer shipyard, Ovation of the Seas, is prepared for its transfer to the NorthSea on the Ems river in Papenburg, Germany, Friday March 11, 2016. The 348 meter long passenger ship is heading to the Dutch Eemshaven first and will later continue to the Bremerhaven , Germany to be prepared for the delivery to US shipping line 'Royal Caribbean International'. (Ingo Wagner/dpa via AP)

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By The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) a Disney Cruise Line announced Thursday that it is building two new ships.

The new vessels are scheduled to be completed in 2021 and 2023. They will be built at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Germany.

The new ships will each have about 1,250 staterooms, and will be slightly larger than Disney's newest ships, Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy. The company has two other ships as well, Disney Magic, and its first ship, Disney Wonder, which launched in 1998.

Design plans, ship names and itineraries for the new vessels are still in development. The announcement was made Thursday by Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger in Chicago at the annual meeting of company shareholders. The new vessels will be Disney's first ships since Disney Fantasy launched in 2012.

Disney ships are loaded with company branding, including activities, shows, decor and venues all themed on Disney characters and story lines. But they're also known for innovation, like virtual portholes in windowless staterooms that provide real-time views of the sea using video technology. That concept has since been copied elsewhere in the cruise industry. And while families are the cruise line's natural fan base, the ships also attract cruisers traveling without children.

In the most recent batch of annual awards from CruiseCritic.com, Disney Cruise Line won 11 first-place awards, including, for Disney Dream, wins in the categories of best overall large ship, best for families, best cabins and best public rooms.

"Disney is consistently rated one of the top cruise lines on Cruise Critic by our members, and it's a line known for moving the needle with new and state-of-the-art features, so we expect the same high quality touches and focus on innovation will be incorporated on the new ships as well," said Colleen McDaniel, managing editor of CruiseCritic.com.
High School juniors Brian Keyes and Isabel Suarez, both 16, pose for a photograph in front of Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, Thursday, March 3, 2016, after recently taking the new SAT exam. The new exam focuses less on arcane vocabulary words and more on real-world learning and analysis by students. Students no longer will be penalized for guessing. And the essay has been made optional. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP)  Not so tricky. More straightforward. Guessing allowed. The newly redesigned SAT college entrance exam that debuts nationally Saturday is getting good reviews from some of the students who took it early this week.

The new exam focuses less on arcane vocabulary words and more on real-world learning and analysis by students. Students no longer will be penalized for guessing. And the essay has been made optional.

The College Board says more than 463,000 test-takers signed up to take the new SAT in March, up slightly from a year ago.

Because the exam is new, the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT, has restricted the exam on Saturday to those applying to college or for scholarships, financial aid or other programs requiring a college test score. People who don't fall into these categories have been rescheduled to take the May test, which will be released at a point afterward. The College Board said it took the action because of concerns about possible theft.

Things to know about the new SAT exam:

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THE NEW STUFF

The new SAT continues to test reading, writing and math, with an emphasis on analysis. Gone: some of those obscure vocabulary words like "lachrymose" that left kids memorizing flash cards for endless hours. Test-takers will instead see more widely known words used in the classroom. Students will have to demonstrate their ability to determine meaning in different contexts.

Go ahead, take a guess. Test-takers no longer will be penalized for wrong answers.

In math, students will see more algebra and problem solving, instead of testing a wide range of math concepts. But use of calculators is limited to certain questions.

Overall, there are fewer questions  154 on the new test plus one for the essay, compared to 171 on the old version.

Students will have a choice about whether to write the essay.

A perfect score goes back to 1,600 with a separate score for the essay.

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SOME EARLY REVIEWS

Brian Keyes, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School in the nation's capital, says he really didn't mind the new SAT.

"There aren't as many questions where it's trying to trick you ... It was much more straightforward," he said

For math, he said, "the new version was a lot more like basic concepts, so it wouldn't be very obscure formulas that you have to remember. If you had the basics of algebra down, even if the problem was difficult, you could work your way through it."

Said classmate Isabel Suarez: "I liked it better than the old one. I thought that it was way more applicable to what we've been learning in school. The English was a lot easier for me than it was with the old one."

Isabel, a junior, said the math was a little harder. "It was more algebra based, but I think I was able to perform a lot better on it than the old one because it was stuff that I actually learned in school."

In fact, Suarez, who likes to write, said she enjoyed the reading section. "My AP English class definitely really prepared me for it. I honestly enjoyed the grammar part because I like to pick out problems in writing. It was pretty fun actually."

The exam was administered Wednesday at Wilson and other District of Columbia high schools and at schools in more than a dozen states as part of SAT School Day.

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WHAT'S BEHIND THE REDESIGN?

This was the first revision in the SAT since 2005. The head of the College Board says students taking the new SAT will find more familiar reading passages, vocabulary words and math.

"The sum of the redesign of the test is to make it much more like the work that kids are already doing in high school," said David Coleman, president and chief executive officer of the board. It was retooled, he said, "so that all kids could feel that they had a shot."

With fewer questions on the new test, Coleman said, there's more time for each of the reading and math questions.

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TIPS FROM TEST PREP EXPERTS

Some advice from Lee Weiss, Kaplan Test Prep's vice president of college admissions programs, on taking the new SATs:

"If you've been preparing and putting in your study time, then you should go in confident. If you haven't, you can take this test again or you can take the ACT, too. It's not the end of the world if you don't perform well," he said.

Don't skip the essay. Weiss said Kaplan's research of college admissions officers shows that many of the top most-competitive programs for college do look at the essay and it's an important part of their admissions process. "Make sure you are writing a good, structured essay that answers the prompt," said Weiss. "Make sure that you are varying your word choice and your sentence structure."

On reading, Ned Johnson, president of PrepMatters, said students should be literal, not literary. He said students could help themselves by coming up with their own answers before looking at the options provided.

Johnson says the new test has math problems that are much wordier than before. "Read slowly," he said. "If you read and analyze the problems piece by piece, you can avoid feeling overwhelmed and 'translate' all those words into math, you know how to do."

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FREE PRACTICE TESTS

The College Board has teamed up with online educator Khan Academy to offer SAT practice with the new exam  for free  to all students through diagnostic quizzes and interactive practice tests. The tests are available at https://www.khanacademy.org/sat.
Kyla Melcher of Red Bluff holds a huge Sacramento River striper caught just before these last heavy rains while out with sacramentofishing.com guide Mike Rasmussen. April is shaping up to be very good this year for a big striper run with all of the high water.





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Sacramento River

River conditions were very high the past week due to heavy rains. Sacramento River levels were dropping, but were still high and muddy. The sturgeon and striper fishing season has been going well and will get back underway soon as river flows drop into safe, fishable levels. Releases from Keswick Dam are going to increase Friday to 20,000 cfs, making for high river conditions for a while longer.

Upriver near Redding river flows were still muddy, making for just fair trout fishing. The higher releases from Keswick could slow trout fishing. Farther down river, sturgeon and striper fishing will begin again mostly for bait fishermen from anchor below Butte City. Sturgeon fishing will be great for the remainder of March. The spring striper run should be in full swing in April and May with all of this high water. All white sturgeon retained must measure between 40 to 60 inches to the fork length. All under- and over-sized sturgeon must be released unharmed back into the river. All white sturgeon 68 inches or greater cannot be removed from the water at all. Fishing for white sturgeon is only open from the Butte City bridge down river and only single barbless hooks are allowed.

Feather River

Fishing levels are good now from the mouth of the Yuba River down river past the Nicolas Street Bridge. River flows here are very good and fishable for both stripers and white sturgeon. Most stripers are school size with bait fishing from anchor being a good bet in the colored water.

This week's Sacramento and Feather River fishing report is courtesy of Dave Jacobs Professional Guide Service. For more local river fishing information, contact guide Jacobs to book your next fishing trip at 530-646-9110 or visit his website at www.sacramentofishing.com.
Shasta County sheriffas deputy Don Moody of Palo Cedro checks out the north side of No Name Island on Lake Shasta on Friday, where he thought college students would be at the lake. The tradition of college students partying on the lake over Memorial Day weekend keeps the Sheriffas Office busy.

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By Dylan Darling

Boating safety experts say taking the following steps can help avoid tragedy on the water:

 Wear a life jacket (children younger than 12 are required to wear one).

 Learn to swim.

 Avoid riding on the bow of a boat.

 Don't jump off a boat if the motor is running.

 Avoid alcohol - nearly half of all boating-related deaths in the state involve booze.

 Know the weather forecast before you go out.

 Tell someone where you're going before hitting the water.

 Watch your speed. Don't exceed 5 mph within 100 feet of a swimmer, or 200 feet of a swimming beach, a swimming float, a diving platform, a lifeline or a dock.

 Keep an eye out for hazards in the water.

 Take a boating safety course. For more information, go to www.dbw.ca.gov/boaterinfo/boatsafecourse.aspx.

It's the definition of a big party - 200 houseboats, 5,000 college kids and too many keg stands to count.

Shasta County sheriff's boating safety deputies are getting ready for Lake Shasta's biggest weekend of the year, Memorial Day weekend, when college students from around California and Oregon make a pilgrimage to the north state to celebrate on houseboats.

With the big party can come many problems, big and small.

"We get a lot of people who fall off boats," said Sgt. Tom Campbell of the Shasta County sheriff's boating safety office.

For the long weekend, Campbell said all 18 of the boating safety deputies will be on duty. Fire boats and the Coast Guard Auxiliary also will be on the water, and paramedics will be standing by.

The weekend wasn't always for the college kids, though, said Larry McCracken, co-owner of Antlers Resort and Marina. Five or six years ago, he said, there'd be other customers along with the college crowd.

"It used to be the big family weekend, but it's changed," he said.

That said, a weekend at Shasta on houseboats has lost its luster for one university where it used to be an annual rite for those in the Greek fraternity-sorority system. Students from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., used to beat the rush to the lake by having their own big bash on Mother's Day.

"It's not really something that happens anymore," said Trevor Giroux, president of the interfraternity council at OSU.

Campbell said deputies expected to see 20 to 30 houseboats with college students on them on Mother's Day weekend, but there were only about a half-dozen.

Giroux said he was with the biggest group from Corvallis to make the trip to Shasta and it was with a church group of 150, none of whom was drinking. The group, which was a mix of families, college students and people studying ministry, had eight houseboats.

"It's nothing like it used to be," he said.

The decline in OSU students' interest in Shasta is a result of the death of one of their students at the lake over Mother's Day weekend in 2005. After a five-day search for her, sheriff's detectives found Gina Maria Zalunardo, 22, hanged from a manzanita tree on Slaughterhouse Island with the sleeve from a black fleece. Her death was ruled a suicide.

Later that year, a University of Oregon student - Joel Nathan Meyer, 21 - died after he fell from a houseboat moored to Slaughterhouse Island.

The island, about 3.5 miles from the Pit River bridge, is where most of the houseboats carrying college kids cluster on party weekends, said Mike Anderson, a sheriff's boating safety deputy. On Memorial Day weekend, he said they'll be more than 200 houseboats side by side at the island.

"It's one big party - 5,000 kids," he said.

Although there was an effort in 2006 to have a concert at OSU on Mother's Day weekend, the event fell through, Giroux said. The students have started staying home that weekend, he said.

He said he wasn't sure of how many might have switched their house-boating plans to Memorial Day weekend, which is still popular for other college students because of the three-day break.

Those students come from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Humboldt State, Stanford and the University of California at Davis, said Andrew Bianchi, a student senator at UC Davis.

He said the students often go on their own in small groups.

Bianchi said he doesn't go to Lake Shasta himself, but many of the members of his fraternity do. He said a member of his fraternity drowned at the lake in the 1990s, and each year its members do a memorial service.

To help alleviate some of the problems that can happen on the lake, Bianchi said a campus group, Men Acting Against Rape, is planning to hand out granola, condoms and sunscreen from a houseboat during the weekend.

The group also will be handing out pamphlets with safe-partying tips, he said, which it hopes will prevent serious injuries.

"You just want to be careful, especially if it's your first time going," he said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or at ddarling@redding.com.
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By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

It has been 43 years since the last American combat troops left Vietnam in March 1973.

But many Vietnam War veterans who came home did not receive a very warm welcome.

Two events designed to help erase that bitter memory and to pay tribute to those who served in Vietnam are planned for Saturday in Shasta County.

The Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 357 is sponsoring its seventh annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day program at the Redding Veterans Memorial Hall, 1605 Yuba St.

That celebration is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and includes a variety of activities, including a free lunch prepared by the Sons of Italy, as well as guest speakers, information tables offering help to support veterans, a reading of names of those Shasta County residents killed in Vietnam and a musical tribute by Shasta Meadows Elementary School students.

In addition, a 10:30 a.m. ceremony is being held in the chapel at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo to honor those 46 Shasta County residents who were killed in the Vietnam War.

That ceremony will also see the Redding-based Missing in America Project inter the remains of nearly two dozen North State veterans, some of whom served in Vietnam, during a service with full military honors.

Founded in 2007, the Missing in America Project locates, identifies and then inters the unclaimed remains of veterans with dignity and respect.
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A former correctional officer at the California Correctional Center in Susanville pleaded guilty today in U.S District Court in Sacramento to smuggling cellphones into the prison for an inmate in exchange for nearly $10,000, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

Jordan Alexander Kinglee, 23, of Susanville, is facing 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced on June 9.

According to court documents, Kinglee, who was arrested in May, smuggled the cellphones into the prison for an inmate identified as Bryant Payton.

Those documents also state that a friend of the inmate, identified as Latasha Johnson and who was not in custody, paid Kinglee more than $8,000 in cash and wire payments to smuggle in the cellphones.

According to the criminal complaint, three confidential sources reported in 2014 that Kinglee smuggled cellphones into the prison and sold them for approximately $10,000.

Upon questioning in January of 2015, Kinglee admitted that he had brought in about 20 cellphones into the prison and provided them Payton in exchange for about $10,000.

He said Johnson deposited the money into an account he had established via wire transfer payments.

During an interview with Payton, the criminal complaint says, he told investigators he purchased about four cellphones indirectly from Kinglee after instructing Johnson to wire the money to the correctional officer.

Payton said he paid about $8,800 for the phones, according to court documents.

As a correctional officer, Kinglee was prohibited under California law from providing cellphones to prisoners, receiving any compensation from prisoners or their representatives, and from any barter or dealings with any prisoner, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

The case was investigated by the FBI, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Office of Internal Affairs Northern Region, and the Susanville Police Department.


Aspirants, who were to appear for physical tests for soldiers' training, gather outside Trimulgherry grounds in Secunderabad. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: Seven youths were injured in a stampede at an Army recruitment camp on Friday at the Trimulgherry Dokka stadium in Secunderabad.

The mishap occurred as thousands rushed into the ground when Army officials opened the gate. The youths were injured as they fell on the ground and others ran over them. Army officials said that around 8,000 hopefuls had come to compete for 34 sepoy posts.

Thousands were waiting at the gate. As Army officials opened the gate they rushed in. Some people fell down and others ran over them. It took some time for the Army and the police to control the crowd, said N. Ratan, a candidate.

"Once the crowd was controlled I saw a half conscious youngster. He was bleeding from the forehead and was taken to hospital. Four others suffered injuries. But they could walk. Two more people were also seen with minor injuries, said another eyewitness, K. Umamaheswar.

Police said the victims were given first aid at Gandhi Hospital. They are Naresh from Bollaram, N. Venkataiah from Mahbubnagar, Sukumar from UP, M. Vasantha Rao from AP, Avinash from Adilabad, Krishna from Jeedimetla and Venugopal from Hyderabad.
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Tullis gets contract to repair Highway 3

Tullis Inc., a Redding paving contractor, has been awarded an emergency contract to fix the collapsed portion of Highway 3 in Trinity County, the California Department of Transportation announced Thursday.

Work will begin as soon as Friday, Caltrans said.

The contract is for up to $10 million based on estimates of how much such a project should cost. But any costs incurred over that amount will be paid as well, since the road needs to be fixed no matter what, said Don Anderson, deputy district director for Caltrans District 2.

An alternate route is being developed, and it may open as early as midweek next week. The route will be under constant traffic control, Caltrans said, and priority will be given to residents and emergency and service vehicles.

The Monday night collapse of a portion of Highway 3 in Trinity County was likely caused by soaking rains, so the repair for the missing chunk of roadway will probably include a better drainage system, Caltrans said.

Redding announces principal planner

Redding has hired Bakersfield's principal planner to lead the city's planning division.

Paul Hellmam will replace Kent Manuel, the city's planning manager, who retires next month after a career of more than 30 years with the city. Hellman's start date is April 4.

City Manager Kurt Starman made the announcement Thursday. In a statement released by the city, he said Hellman has been the principal planner in Bakersfield since 2006 and brings more than 20 years of experience.

Previously, Hellman worked in planning offices in Chula Vista and San Diego.

Larry Vaupel, development services director, noted Hellman's focus on customer service.

"Paul knows the important role staff plays in facilitating development by shepherding proposals through the approval process efficiently and effectively," Vaupel said. "He understands that the city's general plan is often implemented by partnering with the private sector to build the community's vision together."

Manuel's last day on the job is April 15.

Hellman holds a bachelor's degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Online salary and benefits data from Transparent California indicates the Bakersfield position had a total compensation of $143,020 in 2014.

Business group faces deadline

Friday is the deadline Redding officials have set for the leadership who headed the former Downtown Redding Business Association to turn in receipts for a financial audit.

The audit was ordered by the City Council nearly a year ago, but it has not been completed because financial information is missing, city officials have said. In question is how exactly about $31,000 was spent.

City Attorney Barry DeWalt said corporate officers for the DRBA say they are working on getting the information to the city. If the deadline is not met, the city on Monday would file its lawsuit against the group over breach of contract.

The DRBA administered the funds that were collected from about 300 businesses in the Downtown Redding Business Improvement District, which the council disestablished last year.

Three programs will relocate

Three programs from the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency will move to the downtown Redding Promenade starting Monday.

The Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) and Nurse-Family Partnership programs will occupy suites 242 and 300 at 1670 Market St.

"This will give us much more space to be able to provide service," said Lisa Webster, program manager at WIC.

The health and human services agency said the WIC and SNAP-Ed programs, which are currently at 1220 Sacramento St., will be closed until the move to the new location is complete.

Nurse-Family Partnership previously shared a space with the CalWORKs Employment Services Program at 1400 California St. Moving the three programs together in the same building will allow for easier client referrals between the programs, as they all serve similar clients, officials said.

The building also includes two large meeting rooms and a classroom that will be used for nutrition classes and SNAP-Ed food demonstrations.

"It's exciting to finally be co-located, since we work so closely together," said Denise Hobbs, public health nurse at Nurse-Family Partnership.

An open house is planned for April.

Driver flees after hitting power pole

A driver ran away after crashing a vehicle into a power pole Thursday afternoon.

The wreck was reported just before 4:30 p.m. at the intersection of Churn Creek and Rancho roads.

Firefighters said live power lines were knocked down. They said the driver appeared to have ran away, and may be shirtless or wearing a red shirt with a black backpack and khaki pants. They believed he suffered "significant" injuries.

Traffic was tied up while authorities investigated.

Guard admits taking bribes

A former correctional officer at the California Correctional Center in Susanville pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to smuggling cellphones into the prison for an inmate in exchange for nearly $10,000, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Jordan Alexander Kinglee, 23, of Susanville is facing 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced June 9.

According to court documents, Kinglee, who was arrested in May, smuggled the cellphones into the prison for an inmate identified as Bryant Payton.

Those documents also state that a friend of the inmate, identified as Latasha Johnson and who was not in custody, paid Kinglee more than $8,000 in cash and wire payments to smuggle in the cellphones.

Upon questioning in January 2015, Kinglee admitted that he had brought in about 20 cellphones into the prison and provided them to Payton in exchange for about $10,000.

He said Johnson deposited the money into an account he had established via wire transfer payments.

Police seek man in robbery try

Red Bluff police are looking for the man they say tried to rob a gas station at gunpoint Thursday morning.

Sgt. Scott Curtis said the crime happened around 6:45 a.m. at the Shell gas station on Main Street.

A clerk said the suspect came in and demanded money while holding a handgun. When she told the suspect she couldn't access any money, the clerk said the man asked again but eventually left, Curtis said.

The suspect is described as a light-skinned black man between 25 and 30 years old, about 6 feet tall and 160 pounds. He was wearing a white, hooded sweatshirt, a bandanna with a floral print over his face and black pants, Curtis said.

He was last seen running behind the business, Curtis said, and surveillance footage indicates he left going north through the parking lot and then got into a red or orange newer, Suburban-type SUV. The vehicle was last seen going north on South Main Street, Curtis said.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the police at 530-527-3131.

Police: Woman found with meth

Redding police arrested a 20-year-old woman Wednesday for allegedly possessing methamphetamine, her second arrest for the crime in a one-month span.

Cpl. Chris Jacoby said officers conducted a probation check on Richard Garrity, 45, at the Ponderosa Inn on Feb. 18. Garrity allegedly blocked officers from coming in while his girlfriend, 20-year-old Tearney Lemon, tried to destroy some methamphetamine, Jacoby said.

Both were detained, and officers seized 2 ounces of the drug, Jacoby said.

Lemon posted bond, though, and officers learned she was still selling methamphetamine when she got out, Jacoby said.

Wednesday around 9 p.m. officers stopped her after seeing Lemon leave the Ponderosa Inn on her motorcycle. The officers found 1 ounce of meth on Lemon this time, Jacoby said, and she was again arrested on suspicion of possessing the drug for sale, as well as transporting methamphetamine. In addition, her bail was increased because of the new felony committed while out, Jacoby said.

Her February arrest included a charge of maintaining a residence where narcotics are used or sold, while Garrity's arrest was based on that charge, violating his probation and possessing methamphetamine.
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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

At 15 years old, Ethan Cruse says he doesn't see much bullying of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths at University Preparatory School in Redding.

But he said he has seen plenty of it elsewhere among youths, and even at U-Prep students will still unknowingly use epithets.

To fight those anti-gay and anti-transgender attitudes and behaviors, Cruse and other members of the Redding Library's Teen Advisory Board collaborated to set up a movie and book night, a day of activism and a community forum at the library in mid-April.

They've also partnered with the NorCal Outreach Project to establish an ongoing, LGBT-youth support group, a kind of gay-straight alliance for the North State, said Carrie Jo Diamond, who chairs the project, a Redding-based organization that provides support for LGBT individuals.

As of Thursday evening, an online fundraiser for the support group had raised $433 out of the $2,500 goal, according to the youcaring page.

"We're trying to use (Aprils events) as a jumping-off point to start with a supportive environment and be around like-minded people," she said.

The event for all teenagers and their family members includes a screening of the movie "Geography Club," which is about high school students who secretly set up a gay-straight alliance, discussions about the book "Some Assembly Required..." and refreshments, said Amanda Allpress, teen services librarian who advises the board.

"The point of that is to start this out a little lighter with something fun so that local youth can meet other local youth they may not have otherwise met  a meet-and-greet social event," Allpress said.

The library obtained 50 copies of the book, of which about 38 have been given away, she said.

All teens are welcome to participate in the Day of Silence at the library. They'll make and hand out "acceptance bracelets," she said. Then, on Monday, the teens will put on a forum open to the community in which both teens and adults will speak, Allpress said.

All three events are funded by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, she said.

Diamond acknowledged that controversy often surrounds LGBT topics, but noted the teens chose the project and then reached out to her organization to create a safe and supportive group for their LGBT peers.

Cruse said the teen board selected the project because of the bullying they see and to educate the community.

"We just want people to be more informed ... to understand the truth about it," Cruse said.

That bullying comes in various forms, said Cruse, who attends U-Prep. He's heard fellow teens use "gay" and other epithets negatively  but not maliciously  at his school and others. They don't realize how painful those terms can be for members of the LGBT community, he said.

He's also heard and seen youths at other schools actively target individuals with hate speech.

Ive heard the phrase used, Go kill yourself (a slur for gay men), he said, noting that LGBT youth have much higher rates of suicide than straight teens around the country because of bullying. "It really, really damages people's mental state," he said.

Library events planned

Three events are planned at the Redding Library:

Movie night and book discussion

Who: Teens and their parents/family are welcome

What: Screening of Geography Club and small group discussion of the book Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen

When: 4:30-7:30 p.m. April 13

Day of Silence

Who: Teenagers

What: Making acceptance bracelets and distributing them along with anti-bullying literature

When: 4 p.m. April 15

Community forum

Who: Open to the public

What: A forum featuring both teenage and adult speakers along with small group discussions about LGBTQ youths need for support and resources.

When: 5 p.m. on April 18

For more information on the events, call 245-7253 or e-mail annat@shastalibraries.org

To donate to the LGBT-youth support group, visit http://bit.ly/1Xz3bum or call 949-6267 for more information.
"The CTA makes an effort to update its stations, tracks and equipment," said 24-year-old Josh Walfish, who lived in the D.C. area for 16 years and in Evanston for four years. "It can be inconvenient at times, but they're always making an effort to be proactive. D.C.'s Metro is more reactive. Our system [in Washington] has been broken for a long time, so I feel like they really needed to take a day to inspect everything."
'A second defeat in a Hindu heartland state will be disastrous for the BJP's morale and political fortune.'

'There is no alternative for the BJP but to play the patriotic card with gusto,' says Amulya Ganguli.

As has been demonstrated by the decision to put on trousers in the 91st year of its existence, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is brimming over with confidence.

The first sign of this self-assurance is declaring a new test for patriotism, the organisation's pet theme. The decree is a peremptory order to everyone to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' if s/he is to show that her/his heart is in the right place -- and not in Pakistan.

Interestingly, the RSS has shied away from the slogan which was its battle cry during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement -- Jai Shri Ram. Perhaps it thought that the invocation of the Hindu god might run afoul of the judiciary although poet Allama Iqbal called him the 'spiritual leader of India (whose) lamp gave the light of wisdom.'

Nagpur's patriarchs could have tried some other slogans -- and may do so still in case its pitch for Bharat Mata fails to pass muster. Among such catchphrases is 'Garv Se Kaho Hum Hindu Hai' (declare with pride I am a Hindu), which was also one of the chants which reverberated around the riot-torn land in the 1990s.

Considering that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat argues that all Indians are Hindus in a cultural sense notwithstanding their different methods of worship, there is no reason why 'Garv Se Kaho' cannot be included in the repertoire of key words which a true patriot will have no objection in uttering.

It is understandable that to Anupam Kher the chanting of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is the only definition of nationalism. It will not be surprising if he isn't soon upgraded from Padma Bhushan to Padma Vibhushan.

What is surprising is that Javed Akhtar should be so vocal in favour of the slogan considering that he was once credited by grapevine with coining the 'maut ki saudagar', phrase which was used by Sonia Gandhi in the 2002 election campaign in the state although to no effect.

Now that the RSS has made it mandatory for every Indian to vociferously revere the country as the mother, there will be questions about implementation. As the suspension of a Maharashtra legislator for not following the diktat shows, that is one form of punishment.

But what of ordinary citizens? How will their patriotism be assessed? And who will do so?

Will the task be left to the police after calling Bhim Sain Bassi back from retirement to deal with the issue with the same zeal with which he booked Kanhaiya Kumar and other Jawaharlal Nehru University 'anti-nationals' for sedition?

Or will the job be entrusted to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad?

It goes without saying that the enforcement of this new directive from the RSS will not be easy if only because the judiciary may be as doubtful about the latest slogan as the old one about Lord Ram.

What is clear, however, that along with the consumption of beef, the Sangh Parivar has found a new way to make its presence felt. It is noteworthy that on the day the Maharashtra legislator was suspended, four Kashmiri students were arrested following rumours that they had cooked beef in their hostel in Rajasthan's Chittorgarh district.

The lines have now been drawn in the sand. The Hindutva version of Indian democracy lays down that it will not be enough only to stand during the national anthem or the singing of Vande Mataram, but unless one also chants 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and gives it in writing that he will not eat beef, ministers in the Narendra Modi government will ask the person to leave for Pakistan, as some of them have already advised beef-eaters.

The BJP's deep love for the country is probably not the only reason why these initiatives are being taken at the behest of the RSS. The party and its mentor may have also realised that the electoral tide is not running in its favour. The high water mark of 2014 has receded.

If the results of some of the local body elections in Uttar Pradesh are taken into account, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party are well ahead of the BJP. For the BJP, UP provides a must win situation since a second defeat in a Hindu heartland state will be disastrous for its morale and political fortune.

There is no alternative for the BJP, therefore, but to play the patriotic card with gusto. The need is all the greater because the sedition plank is a dicey one since it is difficult to wrap a colonial era law in the cloak of nationalism.

Hence, the master stroke of an invocation to Mother India.

Amulya Ganguli is a Delhi-based commentator on current affairs.
Signalling a tough line on the issue of chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai despite controversies, Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Thursday said 99 per cent people were agreeable to hailing Mother India with the slogan and the party would convince the rest.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi, Shah justified the governments action on the JawharlalNehruUniversity row, insisting that some people deciding to hold a programme to commemorate Afzal Gurus death anniversary in itself is anti-national.

In his over-an-hour-long interaction, the BJP president expressed confidence of that his party will form a government in Assam but reacted cautiously about its prospects in other states, saying the party will work to increase its influence and play a role in government formation in these states.

Responding to a number of questions on the controversy surrounding the issue of chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai, Shah said that the particular slogan was in vogue even before the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and the BJP came into picture.

"99 per cent of people agree with the slogan. This debate is irrelevant. Those who do not want to chant this should be asked what is their problem with this slogan. We will convince the one per cent people, who do not want to chant it, Shah said but declined to answer how will the BJP go about it.

You leave it to us, how will we do it, he said.

When asked whether All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who said he would not raise the chant hailing Mother India even if a knife is put to my throat, is a traitor, he said, No one becomes a traitor due to just one thing adding, We will have to consider all other things and then come to a conclusion.

The BJP chief also said there is no need to say Bharat Maata Ki Jai under pressure from the RSS or the BJP.

This slogan is being chanted much before the RSS and the BJP came to power, Shah said.

Asked about controversial comments made by party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya that those who do not chant the slogan should be sent to Pakistan, the BJP chief said one should rather listen to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and he himself said.

When asked about raising of anti-national slogans in places like Jammu and Kashmir, where the BJP had allied with Peoples Democratic Party, he referred to the arrest of separatist leader Masarat Alam and said he would have never been arrested had the BJP not been in power.

Alam was sent to jail even when the PDP was in power in Jammu and Kashmir, Shah said when asked about PDP's alleged soft corner for Afzal Guru.

When asked about a Supreme Court observation that merely raising anti-India slogan is not treason, he shot back, saying that the same court had once said that calling Congress activists goondas was also treason.

Congress was in alliance in Kerala with Muslim League, which was responsible for Indias partition, Shah said.

At this Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was seated among the audience rose and defended the alliance, saying the Muslim League in Kerala was different and was founded after the partition. Tharoor said its policies were not communal.

When told about the allegations that his government was crushing freedom of expression, Shah shot back asking give me one example.

Rejecting the charge, Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was called Hitler, Ravan, and a mass murderer but the BJP did nothing against those who called him names. We will tolerate criticism against people and government but not the country, he said.
Allegations against ex-Delhi university lecturer SAR Gilani, arrested under sedition charges in connection with the Press Club event in New Delhi, are "grievous" and whatever he has purportedly said is against the country, the police told a Delhi court on Friday.

The public prosecutor, representing the Delhi police, told Additional Sessions Judge Deepak Garg that he was not in a position to argue the matter as he has not received the copy of Gilani's bail plea yet.

"I am not in a position to argue today. There are grievous allegations (against Gilani) and (whatever he has purportedly stated) are against the country," the prosecutor told the judge.

As the hearing commenced, the prosecutor told the court that Gilani's bail petition was not supplied to him but the entire case emanates from the video footage of the event organised at the Press Club in New Delhi.

To this, the judge told the investigating officer, "What are you doing? These are small things and I need not remind you about this."

Advocate Satish Tamta, who appeared for Gilani, said that even on Thursday, arguments on bail plea were deferred for Friday.

The judge, however, said, "let it (bail plea) be taken up on Saturday morning as the first matter."

During the brief hearing, the prosecutor asked the investigating officer to bring video footage of the event and a laptop in the court.

Earlier on February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Gilani, who was arrested on February 16, after the police had alleged that "hatred" was being generated against the government.

The police had told the court that an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs.

It had also said that the hall in the Press Club was booked by Gilani, who is presently in judicial custody, through his associate Ali Javed by using his credit card and another man Mudassar was also involved.

At the Press Club event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Afzal Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons.

The police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident.

Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned DU professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event, for two days.

Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by the Delhi high court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005.
Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Ganesh Joshi, who has been accused of assaulting police horse 'Shaktiman', was on Friday sent to judicial custody for 14 days.

Joshi was arrested on Friday morning by the Uttarakhand Police and produced before the ACJM court in Dhakrani at around 12:15 pm.

IG Garhwal range Sanjay Gunjyal said the MLA from Mussoorie was arrested from outside a hotel in Patel Nagar area on the basis of an FIR lodged against him and his associates at Nehru Colony police station in connection with the assault on the police horse on March 14.

The official said Joshi was being interrogated. He, however, refused to disclose where the MLA has been taken.

Reacting sharply to the development, BJP lodged a protest with Governor K K Paul and alleged it was "abduction" of its MLA.

"The manner in which Joshi was picked up from outside a hotel suggests he was abducted. Those who picked him up were in plain clothes and it is not clear whether they were police personnel or goondas," Leader of Opposition in Uttarakhand Assembly Ajay Bhatt said.

Bhatt said he had called on Governor K K Paul to register his protest against the manner in which the party legislator was picked up.

The action against Joshi comes a day after the arrest of another party worker Pramod Bora from Haldwani in Nainital district on Thursday.

Dehradun SSP Sadanand Date said Bora along with Joshi was responsible for precipitating the fall of the horse during the protest March on March 14 which caused grievous injuries to one of its hind legs.

Meanwhile, the injured horse whose fractured hind leg had to be amputated late last night by a team of doctors at the police lines can now stand with the help of an artificial leg.

However, doctors attending on Shaktiman said it will have to be seen whether the prop is strong enough to support the horse which weighs four quintals.

Surgeon from Mumbai Feroze Khambatta, who led a team of doctors that operated on the horse, said he had performed eight similar operations in Nepal and Bhutan but on horses which weighed only two quintals.

As Shaktiman weighs four quintals it is not clear for how long he can stand and move with an artificial leg.

He is constantly under the watch of doctors and over two dozen police personnel at the police lines.

Shaktiman is a well trained horse and part of Uttarakhand Mounted Police for years. Chief Minister Harish Rawat also expressed concern over the horse's condition.

The BJP has been demanding withdrawal of cases lodged against its workers including Joshi, asserting that they were being framed at the behest of the state government to cow down the opposition.

Image: Shaktiman, the horse, standing up after a prosthetic limb is fixed.
In a Facebook post, Minister of State Kiren Rijiju has said that the Narendra Modi's rule was predicted by French seer Nostradamus in 1555.

"French prophet Nostradamus wrote that from 2014 to 2026, a man will lead india, whom initially, people will hate but after that people will love him so much that he will be engaged in changing the countrys plight and direction," said the Arunachal Pradesh MP.

With the post Rijiju also attached the photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel with PM Modi during her visit to Delhi in October and said, "This was predicted in the year 1555. A middle aged superpower administrator will bring golden age not only in India but on the entire world. Under his leadership India will not only just become the Global Master, but many countries will also come into the shelter of India.

To validate his argument, Rijiju projected calculations which show that the numbers 2,8,3 in the ruling BJP's total number of seats (283) in the current Lok Sabha add up to 13 as do those in the NDA's total seats (337), the UPA's (58) and the others (148).

However, Rijiju did not explain the link between the numbers and the "Prediction of Nostradamus '450 years ago of Modi Era."

Here is Rijiju's Facebook post. (external link)

Image: German Chancellor Angela Merkel with PM Modi. Photograph: Kiren Rijiju/Facebook
New Delhi: Rejecting Telangana states claim that it was entitled to the entire assets and deposits of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh State Council for Higher Education (APSCHE), the Supreme Court on Friday ordered that the assets be divided between the two states in the ratio of 58:42 on the basis of their population.

Giving this ruling, a bench of Justices V. Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra said if the two states did not agree for this arrangement, the Centre would constitute a committee to arrive at an agreement within two months.

Read: Telangana to seek review of verdict

The bench said in the case, Telangana had claimed the entire funds and assets of the APSC. This could surely not have been the intention of the legislature while enacting the Reorganisation Act, 2014, just because the institutions are in Hyderabad, which falls in Telangana state.

It said: We are wholly unable to agree with the contention advanced on behalf of the state of Telangana. If this contention is accepted, it would render Section 47 of the State Reorganisation Act, which provides for the apportionment of assets and liabilities among the successor states, useless and nugatory. The action of the banks of freezing the bank accounts of APSC is wholly untenable in law, which must be set aside.
Jawaharlal Nehru University students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, facing sedition charge for allegedly raising anti-India slogans at the university campus last month, were on Friday granted interim bail for six months by a Delhi court on ground of parity with Kanhaiya Kumar.

The court observed that the "role attributed" to JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar does not appear to be different from the allegations levelled against these two accused.

Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh granted the relief to the duo on furnishing of a personal bond in the sum of Rs 25,000 with one surety of the like amount which was complied with by them and they were ordered to be released till September 19.

Sangeeta Das Gupta and Rajat Dutta, two teachers at JNU's Centre for Historical Studies, stood sureties for Anirban and Umar respectively.

While dealing with the bail applications, the court said "although the allegations levelled against Umar and Anirban are per se serious in nature but as claimed by the police themselves, the video footage of the incident has been sent to the forensic sciences laboratory. Its analysis and final report will certainly take time."

"When all the aforesaid circumstances are weighed together and keeping in view that no previous criminal record of any nature whatsoever has been alleged and the fact that nothing has been brought on record which could indicate that they are likely to abscond from the jurisdiction of the court, then besides the ground of parity vis-a-vis release of Kanhaiya Kumar on bail, I deem it appropriate to release both the accused on interim bail for a period of six months...," the judge said.

The court also directed Umar and Anirban not to leave Delhi without its permission during the period of interim bail and to make themselves available before the investigating officer as and when required for the purpose of the probe.

In its 12-page order, the court said, "At the outset, it is to be kept in mind that co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar has been granted bail by the High Court".

The court noted that keeping in view the allegations against the accused, the "question arises as to whether the present accused can claim any parity with co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar who has been granted bail."

Referring to the status report filed by Delhi Police before the high court while opposing Kanhaiya's bail plea, the judge said it was "apparent that the case set up by the police qua co-accused Kanhaiya Kumar was also of organising as well as participating in the said event".

"The allegations qua the present accused (Umar and Anirban) are similar to the allegations made with respect to Kanhaiya in the status report submitted before the high court during consideration of his bail application," the court said.

On the submission advanced by the police that there were statements of witnesses to the alleged incident, the court said, "having gone through the statements of Sourabh Kumar Sharma, Sandeep Kumar and Akhilesh Pathak, it does not appear that the role attributed to Kanhaiya Kumar in the statements of these witnesses is any different to the allegations made against the present accused/applicants."

It said that both Umar and Anirban are "highly educated persons" having graduated from premier colleges of Delhi University, completing their MA and MPhil from JNU and they are currently pursuing PhD from the university.

"They have been residing in JNU for the past 5-6 years. Their credentials and family backgrounds as stated in their bail applications have not been contested by the state. No submission has been made to the effect that both the applicants have been involved previously in any criminal case. No record has been placed by the state regarding any such past conduct of both these persons," it noted.

Discussing the severity of punishment in event of conviction under section 124A (sedition) of the IPC, under which both the accused have been arrested along with other provisions of the IPC, the court said it prescribes three kinds of punishment which may extend upto life term.

"It is clear that the law itself provides for a wide spectrum of nature and quantum of punishment which can be imposed upon an accused in case of conviction for the said offence. However, I do not wish to delve further in this regard at this stage of the matter," it said.
Police at the scene of a security operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek on Friday. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters.

Salah Abdeslam, top suspect of last years Paris attacks and one of the most wanted men in Europe, was arrested in Brussels on Friday night during a raid by armed security forces, French police said.

Earlier, was reported that Abdeslam was injured in the raid conducted in the suburb of Molenbeek near the Belgian capital. However, French police said that two people have been arrested, one injured and another unharmed. It did not clarify which one was Abdeslam.

Abdeslam, 26, believed to have played a key role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 people dead.

The arrest came hours after prosecutors revealed that Abdeslams fingerprints were found in an apartment in another part of Brussels earlier this week following a raid in which a suspected IS militant was killed.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel held a crisis meeting after the arrest with French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for a European Union summit.

Franco-Moroccan Abdeslam fled to Brussels after the attacks and is believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks.

He slipped past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the probe said in December.

His brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the massacre, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was buried quietly in the same cemetery in the northwest of the city last week.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.
Here's your weekly digest of photographs that prove that it's a odd, crazy world out there!

A man joins in the celebrations during a St Patricks Day party and concert in Trafalgar square in central London. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Players take part in an exhibition match during the annual charity Kings Cup Elephant Polo Tournament at a riverside resort in Bangkok. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters

Participants take part in the Manly Inflatable Boat Race in Manly, Australia. The annual event requires racers to compete in an inflatable raft to raise money for cancer charities. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

A man takes photos during the Hot Air Balloon festival in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Photograph: Olivia Harris/Reuters

An artist works on a 3D art installation depicting the destruction in Syria, created with Amnesty International and Oxfam to protest against government violence in Syria, in the Manhattan borough of New York. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Palestinian Mohammad Baraka, 20, nicknamed by people as Gaza Samson, pulls a water tanker by a rope attached to his teeth as he exercises in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Mohammad Baraka who prefers to be known as The Incredible, perhaps because he lacks the original Samsons long hair, has been putting on displays in his hometown of Deir al-Balah for the past two years, earning a reputation as the strongest man in the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Visitors listen to communication android Chihira Kanae, centre, at an information counter at the International Tourism Trade Fair in Berlin. Chihira Kanae, which was created by Toshiba, has her own information counter where she welcomes visitors through two way communication, provides information on the trade fair and answers any questions visitors may have in English, German, Japanese and Chinese. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

An Ibizan Hound looks at a baby during the final day of the Crufts Dog Show in Birmingham, Britain. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters

A girl watches the total solar eclipse in Palembang city on March 9 in Palembang, South Sumatra province, Indonesia. Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

Obama Stress Heads are on display at the Weekly Standard booth during CPAC 2016 in National Harbor, Maryland. The American Conservative Union hosted its annual Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss conservative issues. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Hours after his release from Tihar jail in a sedition case, JawaharlalNehruUniversity student Umar Khalid on Friday said he has no regrets of being jailed and was rather proud of being booked under the said charges.

We have no regrets of being jailed in this particular case. We are in fact proud of the fact that we have been booked under sedition, a law under which activists like Arundhati Roy and Binayak Sen were booked, Umar said.

Our names have been added to the list of those who have been jailed for raising their voices, he told a gathering at the varsity.

In a 35-minute speech, Umar said, I am not ashamed that I was in jail. Criminals are those who are in power, those in jail are the ones who raise their voice.

I also dont think that freedom of expression is in danger. It only belongs to those in power. People like (Pravin) Togadia and Yogi Adityanath have all the freedom of expression, he said.

Umar claimed that he was being labelled a terrorist because of Islam, which, he said, he did not practise.

I never followed Islam but I was called Islamist terrorist. It was not just my trial but entire Muslim communitys trial. But I want to ask what if I was practicing Muslim? What if I came from Azamgarh and wore a skull cap? That will be enough to give me a terrorist certificate, he said.

Khalid, who was welcomed at the gathering by JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and his 6-year-old sister Sara, said, Those who are raising concerns about wastage of taxpayers money, we want to tell them we are not going to go back to studies now that we are back from jail. By jailing us you have given bigger responsibilities on our shoulders and we will fulfil that by fighting.

Umar, and Anirban Bhattacharya, arrested last month on charges of sedition for their involvement in a controversial event organised to protest hanging of Afzal Guru, were on Friday granted interim bail for six months by a Delhi court on ground of parity with Kanhaiya.

Kanhaiya, who was also arrested on charges of sedition in connection with the February 9 event at the JNU, was granted bail earlier this month.

I was linked with Jaish-e-Mohammad, I was accused of eloping to Kashmir or Pakistan while I was sitting at the university administration block, I was declared a traitor to the nation by virtue of birth, he said.

We are still in a better position as we were not killed in an encounter or tortured in custody and our houses were not burnt. Usually thats the fate of those who raise their voices, Umar said.

We do condemn bharat ki barbadi (India will be destroyed) slogans but our slogan is Sangh ki barbadi tak jung rahegi (fight till Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is destroyed). There cant be peace without justice and where there is the RSS cant be justice, he said.

Amid shouting of aazaadi slogans, Anirban recalled his experiences in jail and how authorities were more appalled at him being an anti-national.

They said Khalid sahab we understand, but you being a Bhattacharya how can you be anti-national? I had no answers and I am still clueless about what transpired in the last one month, he said.

I did not feel bad about being in jail but the day Kanhaiya came back to campus I missed being here, he said.

Image: JNU student Umar Khalid addressing other students at the university in New Delhi after being released on Friday. Photograph: Vijay Verma/ PTI Photo
The Congress on Friday sought to corner the Bharatiya Janata Party on the suicide by a cow protection activist seeking 'rashtra mata' (mother of nation) status to the animal, saying the party will support the government if it goes ahead with such move.

However, the BJP remained more or less elusive while refusing to give any commitment to the demand raised by the 'Gau Raksha Ekta Samiti'.

Samiti activist Hindabhai Vambadiya, 35, allegedly consumed pesticide outside Rajkot Collector office on Thursday and died later in civil hospital.

He was part of the group of eight men who attempted suicide outside the collectorate seeking 'Rashtra Mata' status to cow and beef ban across country. The issue reverberated in the Legislative Assembly on Friday.

Senior Congressman and the Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela said that his party supports the demand for declaring cow as "rashtra mata".

"The BJP should do introspection as to why someone gave his life. Cow is our mother and the BJP government must declare it as our national mother. If government agrees to do that, the Congress will support that move," Vaghela told media persons.

During the Assembly proceedings earlier in the day, Vaghela asked Speaker Ganpat Vasava to allow discussion in zero hour on the issue after question hour ended.

Vaghela told the Speaker that it was a matter of serious concern that someone has ended his life demanding the 'rashtra mata' status for cow.

Vaghela said the BJP is more touchy about the cow "as the saffron party uses cow as a mean to secure votes". However, Vasava rejected his demand, saying there is no tradition of zero-hour in Gujarat assembly, following which Vaghela and the Congress MLAs staged a symbolic walkout. After they returned, Health Minister Nitin Patel launched an attack on the Congress, saying the party has no right to speak about cow "as their leaders once supported those who eat beef".

"A Congress member of Legislative Assembly in Kerala even hosted a beef party in the past," he alleged. Senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil hit back at the BJP, claiming that people believed in the BJP's pre-poll claims that BJP will declare cow as national animal after coming to power at the Centre.

"BJP claims to be a party of 'gau-bhakts (cow worshippers). You only promised to do everything possible to protect cows ahead of polls. You only promised to declare it as Rashtra Mata. Since the BJP has not done that, a person ended his life after consuming poison in Rajkot" alleged Gohil.

Responding to Gohil, Law Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja said that the BJP is a party with a strong conviction and all the party workers believe in protecting cows at any cost. The Samiti has called for Gujarat bandh on Friday on the issue.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi , BJP President Amit Shah, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and others at BJP's election committee meeting in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The BJP National Executive will meet here for two days starting tomorrow ahead of assembly polls in five states and amid rising temperatures over issues like nationalism and quota agitations in some states ruled by the party.

Top party brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and senior leaders and ministers, will participate in the deliberations in which political and economic resolutions will be adopted, sources said.

The "pro-poor and pro-village" budget will be at the centre of the economic resolution, they said.

Shah will deliver the inaugural speech while Modi will deliver the valedictory address.

Sources added that the "disinformation" campaign by Congress to "defame" the government, the Ishrat Jahan and JNU rows besides the budget features will be the key issues on the agenda.

"The opposition, especially Congress, has been exposed in the last 20 months over a host of issues, be it returning of awards by a section of intelligentsia or JNU row where it chose to side with anti-national forces. These will come up for discussion," a party leader said.

Elections to five state assemblies in April-May will be part of the deliberations during which Uttar Pradesh, which will go to the polls early next year and where BJP's stakes are high, may also figure.

The need to inform the masses about the "pro-poor and pro-village" aspects of the budget will be stressed upon at the meeting, party sources said, adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be the main speaker on the issue.

The party's office-bearers will first meet and the much-larger Executive will go into a huddle in the afternoon. The event will provide the party yet another opportunity to project its hardline nationalist credentials in the wake of the JNU row.

All top party leaders, including Shah, had hit out at Congress, particularly its vice president Rahul Gandhi, over the issue at a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha convention recently.

"We believe that the issue has highlighted Congress' increasing ideological hollowness and that it can take up any cause in its desperation to target the government," sources said.

The recent revelations in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case will also provide ammunition to the party to attack Congress.
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Future of Liberia and UN presence in the country discussed at Security Council

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 17 March 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Future of Liberia and UN presence in the country discussed at Security Council, 17 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ebfc5740d.html [accessed 22 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.

17 March 2016 - One year since Liberian authorities launched a "historic undertaking" to assume full responsibility of the country's security by the end of next June, top United Nations officials today discussed what measures are needed to support the implantation of the plan.

Since the civil war ended in 2003, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has been supporting the West African nation to rebuild its institutions so it can maintain stability without its presence.

'Significant milestone for Liberia'

"The expected completion of the security transition on 30 June will be one of the most significant milestones for Liberia and the international community since the end of the country's civil war and the signing of the peace agreement in 2003," said Farid Zarif, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of UNMIL.

"It will also mark the beginning of a new phase in the United Nations' engagement in Liberia," Mr. Zarif continued. "However, Liberia and the international community must not lose sight of the still arduous path to a genuinely sustainable peace in Liberia and the region, which will require longer-term engagement and support of the international community."

He noted that by the June deadline, UNMIL will have consolidated its 13 county field offices into five regional ones. As part of this process, the Mission has also proposed a reduction of more than 30 per cent of its civilian staffing over the next two years.

"The closure of the field offices has been accompanied by a pro-active public information campaign, including the holding of 'town hall' meetings between senior Government officials and local communities," Mr. Zarif indicated, noting that he has personally attended most of them to explain the objectives of the security transition, to remind the communities of their role in maintaining peace and security, and to assure them of the UN's continued support.

"While we will continue to convey these messages, there is an increasing sense of unease and apprehension among Liberians across the board about UNMIL's draw down and the prospect of its departure," he stressed.

Meanwhile, in a joint letter with President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d'Ivoire, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently urged the UN Secretary-General to request that the Security Council maintain a 'Quick Reaction Force' in both countries until after the elections in Liberia next year.

Women are 'source of inspiration'

Also speaking at the Council meeting was the Executive Director UN Women, the Organization's entity tasked with promoting gender rights. She visited Liberia three weeks ago and found that women there "are truly a source of inspiration."

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Liberia. UN Photo/Manuel Elias

"Liberian women have earned global fame for helping to bring an end to the civil war, convincing rebels to lay down arms, and consolidating peace in a country that has avoided a relapse to conflict since it ended thirteen years ago," Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the 15-member body.

"Now they are also known for the extraordinary role they played in halting, reversing, and eliminating the Ebola epidemic. I bring up the inspiring example of Liberian women when I speak to women from Syria, Colombia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, or the Democratic Republic of Congo in my travels to conflict-affected countries," she said.

However, she said Liberian women have yet to benefit fully from the dividends of peace: "The absence of war does not mean the presence of 'complete peace.' We have to ask ourselves: what does peace mean for women when they experience the high daily levels of sexual and gender based violence that they continue to experience today - with limited or no access to justice?" she asked.

Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka also highlighted that although Liberia elected Africa's first woman president, the country is ranked 149th in female representation in parliament, with even lower rates of women's leadership in local districts, towns, clans, or chiefdoms.

"Today, this Council is mainly deliberating the continuation of the mission drawdown plans and the future of the UN presence in Liberia," she said. "There cannot be a vacuum when the mission leaves. We have to demonstrate to Liberians that the end of the peacekeeping mission does not mean that the international community will turn away," she stressed.

The Executive Director added that "there is no better way of showing this resolve than by investing in those who have been most affected by the war, most affected by the [Ebola] epidemic, and most affected by post-conflict insecurity and impunity: women and girls."

Peacebuilding Process

To this point, Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog, who is currently Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission Liberia panel, which visited the capital, Monrovia, at the end of January, said women and girls should be at the forefront of the peacebuilding process.

"We make the case for including women and youth of Liberia in all peacebuilding efforts as we move forward, operationalizing Security Council resolution 2250," he stated, highlighting the need to engage youth "as they constitute the country's greatest assets" to consolidate peace.

In his briefing, Mr. Skoog also outlined the Commission's priorities regarding security sector reform, the rule of law, the reconciliation process between Liberians, and efforts needed to ensure successful elections in 2017.
Tunisia: Severe restrictions on liberty and movement latest symptoms of repressive emergency law

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Tunisia: Severe restrictions on liberty and movement latest symptoms of repressive emergency law, 17 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ebfe524.html [accessed 22 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.

As Tunisia prepares to extend a nationwide state of emergency on 22 March, Amnesty International has highlighted the government's disproportionate and repressive use of emergency laws to trample on human rights.

On 7 March armed men attacked military bases and a police station in the southern town of Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya. The attack and ensuing clashes killed around 68 people, including at least seven civilians and 12 security officers. This is the latest in a spate of deadly attacks in Tunisia over the past few months, which has prompted authorities to place scores of people under assigned residence orders, restricting their movements to specific areas, as part of measures that are, in some cases, excessive and discriminatory.

"There is no doubt that Tunisia is facing a serious threat from armed groups and the authorities have a clear duty to protect the population, investigate attacks, and bring perpetrators to justice. However, security and emergency measures must be necessary and proportionate and must never arbitrarily restrict human rights. Any renewal of the state of emergency should comply with international law," said Magdalena Mughrabi, interim Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

According to the Ministry of Interior, since November 2015, at least 138 people have been placed under assigned residence orders, which permit people only to move within a designated area, and require them to report to a police station several times a day, or prohibit them from travelling outside a specific municipality. In some cases, assigned residence orders have been used to completely ban people from leaving their house, amounting to house arrest.

These emergency measures have had a significant impact on the rights of the people targeted with some losing their jobs, and others being separated from their families.

"The Tunisian authorities have restricted the liberty of scores of people without charge or trial since November, as part of a pattern of arbitrary, repressive and often discriminatory measures taken in in the name of national security," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

The Ministry of Interior claimed that all those subjected to assigned residence or house arrest were either fighters who had returned from conflict areas or belonged to the armed group Ansar al Shari'a which Tunisia has banned as a "terrorist" organization.

However, the experiences of 11 men currently under house arrest and in assigned residence, interviewed by Amnesty International, indicate that some have never travelled abroad or to conflict zones and some believe they have been targeted for their religious belief or for their civil society activities. Others said they were being punished again for having been arrested previously under laws that had been used by former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's repressive rule to silence opposition. By 2011, around 3,000 people, including many political opponents, were tried on terrorism charges based, in many cases, on confessions extracted under torture.

None of the men Amnesty International spoke to had received notice of their house arrest in writing, making it very difficult for them to challenge the decision - one man was told that the Ministry of Interior had given explicit orders not to give written decisions.

"The vague grounds for house arrest and assigned residence orders and the lack of an effective means to challenge them are deeply troubling in themselves. These shortcomings also mean that the measures are open to abuse. We believe that the Tunisian authorities are using this measure in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner and are targeting some individuals on the basis of their perceived religious or political beliefs, practices and activism," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

Hisham, 36, a resident of Tunis, told Amnesty International that he was informed on 28 November 2015 that he was being placed under house arrest for having travelled to Turkey in December 2013. After losing his job Hisham had tried to travel illegally to Europe via Turkey, but was returned to Tunisia 20 days later after being rescued from a sinking boat by the Greek and Turkish coastguard. He was arrested and interrogated on his return and accused of returning from a "terrorist zone" but the accusations were later dropped by the investigating judge.

Hisham, whose wife has been banned from visiting him since he was placed under house arrest at his family's home in November, said he was not allowed to see her even after she had a miscarriage. The police officers who informed him of his house arrest also threatened to shoot him if they saw him outside the house.

In another case, Wajih Mrassi, 34, an engineer living in Sousse said he was targeted because of a previous arrest under the Ben Ali regime, when officers had had noticed him in the street because of his beard and charged him with 'calling for terrorism' after finding religious books at his home. He was informed that he was being placed under assigned residence at the end of November and that he was not allowed to leave the municipality he lives in, including for work.

Nizar al Riashi, 37, currently unemployed, is under assigned residence since November and required to report to his local police station in Tunis twice a day and has been unable to join his wife in Germany as a result of the decision imposed on him. Unable to travel, he is also unable to work to support himself. Nizar was previously imprisoned under former President Ben Ali after attending the wedding of a man who security officers later claimed was a "terrorist" suspect.

None of the men Amnesty International spoke to who were prohibited from working or unable to do so as a result of the restrictions on their liberty and movement, had received compensation as required by Tunisian law. This has left them dependent on family members or loans. Many were told that their house arrest or assigned residence will last for as long as the state of emergency is in place.

Background

A series of deadly attacks over the past year, carried out by militants apparently affiliated to armed Islamist groups, prompted the Tunisian authorities to impose emergency measures, under which they have conducted thousands of arrests and raids in which they used, at times, excessive force including during house searches without judicial warrants. Individuals, including activists who have organized and taken part in protests, have also been detained and prosecuted for "breaking the curfew".

Tunisia has been in a state of emergency for much of the past five years, since the uprising in 2011 that ousted Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Most recently emergency measures were imposed after a suicide attack killed 12 presidential guards and injured 20 others in central Tunis on 24 November 2015. They have been renewed repeatedly since then.

The state of emergency grants the Ministry of Interior broad powers including the right to restrict freedom of movement, ban strikes and demonstrations and place anyone believed to be engaging in activities that endanger security and public order under house arrest or other restrictions, including assigned residence, without a court order. It also allows measures to control and censor media outlets. A justified written decision can be challenged before an administrative court.

In addition to the 1978 presidential decree which regulates the state of emergency and grants the Ministry of Interior sweeping powers, the Tunisian Constitution also allows the President to take exceptional measures in case of imminent danger threatening national integrity, security or independence. However, under international law such measures must be imposed for the shortest possible time to ensure regular functioning of public authority, and must not infringe upon key rights which cannot be restricted under any circumstances, or arbitrarily restrict rights that temporarily may be limited in genuine emergencies.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Azerbaijan: Release of 10 prisoners of conscience is a glimmer of hope for those still behind bars

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Azerbaijan: Release of 10 prisoners of conscience is a glimmer of hope for those still behind bars, 17 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ebfed24.html [accessed 22 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.

Azerbaijan's embattled civil society received a rare glimmer of hope today as President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree ordering the release of 148 prisoners, including 10 prisoners of conscience, said Amnesty International. The move came just hours after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Azerbaijan's detention of one of those released - human rights defender Rasul Jafarov - violated international law.

"The release of 10 prisoners of conscience is always good news, but celebrations should be muted by the fact that at least eight still remain behind bars. While this is a welcome development, praise for the Azerbaijani authorities should be reserved for when all those unjustly imprisoned are released and the squeeze on civil society ends," said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.

"More disappointingly still, eight other journalists, activists and human rights defenders remain behind bars, convicted on trumped-up charges. President Aliyev must show he is truly committed to addressing Azerbaijan's appalling human rights record by immediately and unconditionally releasing them."

Amnesty International has documented Azerbaijan's increasingly harsh restrictions on civil society and political activists over the past year. Critics of the government have faced harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and, in many cases, long prison sentences.

The prisoners released today are Rashadat Akundov, Rashad Hasanov, Omar Mammadov and Mammad Azizov, members of the pro-democracy youth movement NIDA; human rights activists Rasul Jafarov, Hilal Mammadov and Anar Mammadli; and opposition activists Yadigar Sadigov, Siraj Karimov and Tofig Yagublu. Human rights defender Taleh Khasmmadov and journalist Rauf Mirgadirov have also been released after being imprisoned on politically motivated charges.

European Court ruling on detention of Rasul Jafarov

The decision to release the prisoners came shortly after the European Court ruled that the detention of human rights defender Rasul Jafarov violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. Rasul Jafarov, the President of the NGO Human Rights Club, is a prominent figure in Azerbaijan's civil society and drew global attention to human rights abuses in the country when he coordinated the "Sing for Rights" campaign during the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in the capital Baku. In April 2015, after two extensions of his pre-trial detention, he was sentenced on a range of politically motivated charges including tax evasion, abuse of power, illegal business activities, and embezzlement, and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. The European Court said today that it was clear that the actual purpose of the measures against him was to silence and punish him for his activities as a human rights defender.

"Rasul Jafarov's case is typical of the deeply deficient judicial system in Azerbaijan, where charges are literally made up in order to exact revenge on anybody who dares to speak out against the repressive regime. Today's verdict at the European Court sends a strong message to the Azerbaijani authorities that their ruthless crackdown on dissent is indefensible," said Denis Krivosheev.

Still behind bars

Prisoners of conscience who remain behind bars in Azerbaijan include the journalist Khadija Ismayilova, whose shocking treatment by the authorities was documented by Amnesty International last year in a report called Guilty of Defending Rights. Khadija Ismayilova has won awards for her investigative work exposing corruption and human rights violations in Azerbaijan, and is currently imprisoned on charges which are typically reserved for the government's critics: embezzlement, illegal enterprise, tax avoidance and abuse of authority. In 2012, she was sent copies of photographs of her having sex, apparently taken after unknown individuals had secretly placed cameras in her apartment, together with a note threatening to "shame" her if she did not abandon her work. Renowned human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev is also still in prison, where his health is rapidly deteriorating as a result of a lack of adequate medical care.

Prominent opposition activist Ilgar Mammadov remains behind bars despite the ruling by the European Court that he had been arrested for criticizing the government, as well as the repeated calls for his release by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Bloggers Rashad Ramanazov and Elvin Karamov, political activist Faraj Karimov, and NIDA members Abdul Abilov and Ilkin Rustamzadeh also remain in prison. "The fact that many of the remaining prisoners of conscience were locked up on similar charges to those released today only serves to illustrate the arbitrary nature of justice in Azerbaijan," said Denis Krivosheev.

"The Azerbaijani authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all remaining prisoners of conscience, and take concrete steps to ensure that human rights are respected in the country in line with international law."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Ukraine: Fear, Repression in Crimea

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 18 March 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Ukraine: Fear, Repression in Crimea, 18 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec058e4.html [accessed 22 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.

Russian authorities have created a pervasive climate of fear and repression in Crimea in the two years since it has occupied the peninsula, Human Rights Watch said today. It is crucial for key international actors to keep Crimea's drastically deteriorating human rights situation high on their agendas.

"Crimea's isolation has made it very difficult to conduct comprehensive human rights monitoring there," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "But serious human rights abuses in Crimea should not slip to the bottom of the international agenda."

Since Russian forces began occupying Crimea in early 2014, the space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically. In two years, authorities have failed to conduct meaningful investigations into actions of armed paramilitary groups, implicated in torture, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, attacks and beatings of Crimean Tatar and pro-Ukraine activists and journalists.

Authorities have required Crimean residents either to become Russian citizens or, if they refuse, to be deemed foreigners in Crimea. Two years on, it is evident that residents who chose not to accept Russian citizenship face discrimination in getting jobs and social services.

Under the pretext of combating extremism or terrorism, the authorities have harassed, intimidated, and taken arbitrary legal action against Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority who openly opposed Russia's occupation.

"For the last two years, many Crimean Tatars have consistently, openly, and peacefully opposed Russian actions in Crimea," Williamson said. "Russia has been making Crimean Tatars pay a high price for nothing more than their principled stance."

Local authorities declared two Crimean Tatar leaders personae non gratae and prohibited them from entering Crimea; searched, threatened, or shut down Crimean Tatar media outlets and banned peaceful gatherings to commemorate historic events, such as the anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars.

The authorities also have harassed and intimidated Crimean Tatar activists; conducted intrusive and sometimes unwarranted searches at mosques, Islamic schools, and dozens of homes of Crimean Tatars under the pretext of searching for drugs, weapons, and prohibited literature; and initiated administrative and criminal proceedings against dozens of Crimean Tatars on trumped up charges, which included "rioting" and "terrorism." Crimean Tatars who consciously chose not to obtain Russian citizenship are regularly questioned, and police sometimes arbitrarily search their homes.

Crimea's prosecutor petitioned a court to recognize the actions of Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars' elected representative body, as extremist. In February 2016, court proceedings began to determine whether to shut it down.

Russian authorities have also prosecuted people in Russia who spoke their minds on Crimea online. In June 2015, Russian authorities blocked the website of a Moscow-based consumer group that had called Crimea an "occupied territory." The group, Public Control, became the target of a criminal investigation after the prosecutor general alleged that it sought to undermine Russia's territorial integrity, in violation of anti-extremism legislation.

In August, a Russian military court sentenced a Ukrainian filmmaker from Crimea, Oleg Sentsov, to 20 years in jail for supposedly running a "terrorist organization." The case against Sentsov lacked foundation and was politically motivated.

Russia's move to gain control of Ukraine's Crimea region began in late February 2014, when armed personnel increasingly identified as members of the Russian Federation's armed forces began asserting their authority in Crimea.

Russian armed personnel and pro-Russian militias in Crimea prevented Ukrainian armed forces from leaving their bases, took control over strategic facilities and took over Crimea's administrative borders with the rest of Ukraine. On March 16, 2014, Crimea's local authorities held a referendum on whether Crimea should secede from Ukraine to join the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian government opposed the referendum, saying it was illegal.

After local authorities announced on March 17 that 97 percent of the population had voted to join Russia, Putin signed a decree recognizing Crimea as an independent state. On March 18, Putin and Crimea's leadership signed agreements making Crimea and the city of Sevastopol part of the Russian Federation. Putin asked Russia's parliament to adopt a law accepting the new regions as parts of the Russian Federation under the pretext that Crimean residents have requested Russia's support in protecting them against Ukrainian authorities and nationalists.

Under international law, the Russian Federation is an occupying power in Crimea as it exercises effective control in Crimea without the consent of the government of Ukraine, and there has been no legally recognized transfer of sovereignty to Russia. The referendum, held without the authorization of the Ukrainian government or any broad-based endorsement by the international community, and Russia's unilateral actions afterward cannot be considered to meet the criteria under international law for a transfer of sovereignty that would end the state of belligerent occupation.

"Russia bears direct responsibility for the surge in rights abuses in Crimea," Williamson said. "Russia's international partners should sustain constant pressure on Russia to stop human rights abuses on the peninsula."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Russia's Conflict Against Ukraine and the West: The Religious Dimension

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Oleksandr Gavrylyuk Publication Date 17 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 53 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russia's Conflict Against Ukraine and the West: The Religious Dimension, 17 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 53, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec093b4.html [accessed 22 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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

The conflict Russia is waging against Ukraine has, from the very beginning, had many different dimensions. Currently, it is increasingly assuming the narrative and form of an existential conflict between two antagonistic civilizations with competing ideologies, cultures and religions. The February 12 meeting in Havana, between the Roman Pontiff, Pope Francis, and Russian Patriarch Kirill, is a case in point. The mutually exclusive Ukrainian versus Russian interpretations of that meeting certainly illustrate the way religious rhetoric is being used by the Kremlin against the Ukrainian nation and state-and the West as a whole.

Commentary in Russia and Ukraine on the February meeting between the two religious leaders continued right through until March. Russian media were pointedly enthusiastic, declaring a "breakthrough" in the history of inter-confessional relations (1tv.ru, TASS, February 14). While Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) officials made no secret of their deep satisfaction with the results of the "historic summit" (Patriarchia.ru, February 24).

Furthermore, when speaking about the meeting, Archimandrite Melchisedech, the press secretary of the Synodal Department for Monasteries and Monasticism and a superior at two Moscow parish churches, was apparently trying to convince his parishioners that the Pontiff had allegedly repented the sins of the Catholic Church and was eager to convert to Orthodoxy. "Rumor has it that the Pope is sorry that Catholics failed to preserve the purity of Orthodoxy, and he is about to return to the fold of the Holy Orthodox Church," Melchisedech claimed (Ostro.org, February 24). According to him, the Pope was penitent for blessing euthanasia, gay parades and same-sex marriages.

Meanwhile, both Ukrainian clergy and the general public expressed disappointed or even shock by the wording of the joint declaration released following Francis and Kirill's talks (Patriarchia.ru, February 13)-specifically paragraphs 25, 26 and 27 concerning the situation in Ukraine. According to the official statement of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, paragraph 25 of the joint declaration does not take into consideration the opinion of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church; paragraph 26 totally ignores the Russian armed, political, economic and informational aggression against Ukraine as the key reason of the war in Donbas; and paragraph 27 neglects the violation of religious canons by the Moscow Patriarchate in the 17th century as the background for the split in the Orthodox Church. In the opinion of the Kyiv Patriarchate, those paragraphs are written "in the worst traditions of Soviet diplomacy, with numerous ambiguities, biased views and unfounded assertions." Alluding to the 1938 Munich accords that splintered Czechoslovakia, the Kyiv Patriarchate declared that it wholly rejects any decisions regarding Ukraine or its religious and public life made in the absence of Ukrainian representatives or while ignoring their opinion (Cerkva.info, February 15).

Lubomyr Husar, the Major Archeparch Emeritus of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, believes that the wording of the joint declaration is a demonstration of the dramatic psychological effect Moscow has had on the Vatican and the West in general. According to him, Russia has built an extremely effective propaganda machine and, for decades, has used it to shape the opinion of Western publics to be more accepting of Russian narratives. "I am very sorry that the Pope has fallen a victim to it. I am not aware of all details, but as far as I heard there were people, who had in some way outplayed the Pope," Husar claimed. "The Pope has been eager to establish peaceful contacts with Russia and the Patriarch, but I guess he had been misinformed," the Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergyman said (Apostrophe.com.ua, March 7).

Ukrainian commentators also questioned the ROC's relative global importance versus the Russian narrative claiming the Russian Church to be a comparable peer of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, Yakov Krotov, a Moscow-based priest of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, described the summit as a meeting between an elephant and a mouse. "There are one billion [Catholic] believers on one side and 100 million at most but, in reality, barely 10 million [Russian Orthodox] on the other side," he wrote (Facebook.com/james.krotov, February 12).

It is, indeed, extremely difficult to properly quantify the Russian Orthodox Church's believers, since the size and rank of the Russian Church in the Orthodox World is based mainly on the number of parishes under its jurisdiction. As the world's largest Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate boasts more than 30,000 parishes. However, only about half of them are based in the Russian Federation itself. For comparison, there are a total of 18,204 Orthodox parishes in Ukraine (as of January 1, 2015), including 12,241 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (a self-governing Church of the ROC in Ukraine), 4,738 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, and 1,225 of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Risu.org.ua, May 30, 2015).

However, particularly since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine, increasingly more Ukrainians have been affiliating themselves with the Kyiv Patriarchate. According to some polls, they now outnumber the local Moscow Patriarchate's faithful, reaching a quarter of the nation's total population, or more than 10 million people. As a result, many parishes in Ukraine have changed their jurisdiction from the Moscow to Kyiv Patriarchate (Ridna.ua, December 12, 2015).

The Russian Church has been doing everything in its power to prevent the possible unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches of Moscow and Kyiv Patriarchates, seeing it as the main threat to its hegemony over Eastern Orthodoxy. Likewise, the ROC has actively tried to keep the two Orthodox Churches in Ukraine not under its control from coming together. The merger of the Kyiv Patriarchate with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which has been attempted at least five times since Ukraine's independence in 1991, failed each time. Last year, the two sides were closer than ever to achieving integration. But through its back-channel overtures to the Autocephalous Church's leaders, the Moscow Patriarchate was again able to block the process (Expres.ua, July 22, 2015).

Nevertheless, Yakov Krotov argues that the Moscow Patriarchate-like the Russian state itself-is entirely dependent on Russian hydrocarbon sales. But as those revenues continue to dwindle due to chronically low oil prices, the Russian Orthodox Church and its reach in Ukraine is bound to continue to weaken as well (Facebook.com/james.krotov, February 12).

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Belarus: Economic Woes and the Fate of Gloomy Predictions

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Grigory Ioffe Publication Date 16 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 52 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Belarus: Economic Woes and the Fate of Gloomy Predictions, 16 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 52, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0ab94.html [accessed 22 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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

In January 2016, Belarus's gross domestic product (GDP) was 4.3 percent lower than in January 2015 (Infofocus, February 2016). Since refined oil accounts for one-third of Belarusian exports, the steep decline in oil prices is the major factor explaining this shrinking GDP. It works directly, through lowered prices of refined oil products, and indirectly, through curtailing the buying power of the Russian market, where Belarus routinely disposes of most of its manufacturing exports.

The ongoing economic decline has intensified the domestic debate about Belarus's economic policy (see EDM, February 3). In the past, suggestions of structural reforms emanated mainly from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But today, identical suggestions come from the government and from President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's advisor Kirill Rudyi (Naviny.by, March 2), who openly opposes the principles of current economic policy (i.e., limited privatization, selected price controls, subsidizing state-run enterprises and utilities, etc.) and yet retains his position. Lukashenka's statement that "the suggestions of the government regarding blanket privatization cannot be accepted" (Tut.by, February 22) is an indication of the sheer intensity of the debate among the ruling elite.

Perhaps one should not overdramatize the significance of those debates. On the one hand, as Oscar Wilde used to say, "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it," which is what Russians did in the early 1990s with the large-scale privatization program that led to discontent and a renewed faith in state paternalism. In Belarus, however, similar developments were thwarted by Lukashenka's electoral triumph in 1994. So today, the pent-up desire to follow neoliberal prescriptions in Belarus resembles a longing for a forbidden fruit (Tut.by, February 29). On the other hand, Belarus has arguably led the world in being the most frequent target of accusations of impending catastrophe to its economy. But so far, the country has been kept afloat thanks to foreign loans and by selling potash-the only natural resource whose production-and-processing cycle has remained entirely in the hands of the Belarusian state.

On March 10, in Washington, the very same "catastrophic" language was once again uttered, this time by Andrei Sannikov (Naviny.by, March 12), a 2010 presidential hopeful with no political prospects left back home. According to a December 2015 national survey by IISEPS, the most reputable Belarusian pollster funded by the West, the domestic opposition enjoys the trust of 12.6 percent of Belarusians (Infofocus, February 2016). Even so, the opposition is now inundated by internecine struggles for visibility and leadership. The major fight is between Nikolai Statkevich, a 2010 presidential hopeful jailed from December 19, 2010, to August 22, 2016, and Anatoly Lebedko, who has headed the United Civic Party for about as long as Lukashenka has been president of Belarus (Svaboda.org, March 2). Both leaders are trying their best to ride the wave of discontent expressed by petty entrepreneurs and shuttle traders who have been demonstrating in downtown Minsk for several weeks. These groups are protesting the so-called Decree No. 222, signed by Lukashenka in 2014, according to which every industrial item (like clothes and footwear) sold at flea-market-like outlets must be accompanied by a certificate identifying the origin of this product and its technical characteristics. Such certificates are supposed to be obtained from wholesale distributors in, say, Russia and elsewhere; but meeting this demand under current conditions boosts transaction costs for the merchants, without actually ensuring improved quality. So far, the rallies of the entrepreneurs mustered several dozen people and were not dispersed by police. In some cases, the police drew up reports for misdemeanor offenses (as the rallies have been conducted without permits), but nobody has been arrested, to date. With the passage of time, more and more political activists and fewer entrepreneurs have been participating (Tut.by, March 5); opposition leaders are helping with loudspeakers and oratory skills. However, the problem, as the veteran opposition columnist Alexander Klaskovsky puts it, is that "there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians," underscoring a striking deficit of people willing to do tedious groundwork-seemingly the eternal problem of the Belarusian opposition (Naviny.by, March 3).

In the meantime, some silver linings can be observed, despite the generally dismal economic front. For one thing, the authorities are sustaining their efforts to propel ties with the West to a new level, taking advantage of the lifting of Belarusian sanctions by the European Union. And testifying to the quality of Belarusian high-tech firms, Facebook recently acquired Masquerade Technologies, a young start-up whose Snapchat-like silly selfie-altering tool picked up 15 million users in just three months. On March 9, the Minsk-based Masquerade announced the sale, saying on its website that the company was excited to bring its virtual effects software to Facebook's 1.6 billion users. But Masquerade will independently operate its MSQRD app, which connects with several social media apps (Tut.by, March 9). This is the fifth acquisition of a Belarusian high-tech firm by a notable foreign giant, the previous acquisitions being those of Viaden Media by Playtech; Viber by Rakuten; Maps.me by Mail.ru; and Apalon by InterActiveCorp (Tut.by, March 10).

Several major developments also reflect a growing international involvement by Minsk. Thus, the head of the EU delegation to Belarus, Andrea Victorin, announced that the European Union would increase its economic modernization aid to Minsk (Tut.by, March 9). Moreover, an international conference on capital punishment took place in Minsk and its major participant, Stavros Lambrinidis, the EU's Special Representative for Human Rights, was received by President Lukashenka (Naviny.by, March 9). In addition, Hans-Gert Poettering, the head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, visited Minsk and discussed the possibility of reopening its Minsk office with Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei (Tut.by, March 9). Also, the Israeli government reversed its earlier decision to close its embassy in Minsk (Tut.by, March 10). Perhaps most importantly, the negotiations between Minsk and the IMF about a new loan program will be resumed in April (Tut.by, March 3).

By all accounts, then, life goes on in Belarus. And perhaps, the catastrophic scenarios regularly being applied to this Eastern European country might finally be put to rest, as they temporarily were on so many occasions since the mid-1990s.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
BJP in an attempt to woo voters will count on Modi government achievements for the forthcoming state assembly elections.

Chennai: BJP on Friday said it will use Modi government's achievements in the economic sector as an "additional weapon" to fight the coming assembly polls in five states.

BJP National Secretary H Raja said during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls "the only weapon we had in our side to face the polls was the expectations from (Narendra) Modi by people."

"In the last 21 months, the benefits of Modi government's achievements, especially in the area of financial inclusion (by way of) schemes like Jan Dhan, Atal Pension yojana and Mudra Bank, have reached every individual and every household."

"This is an additional weapon. We will use this as an election weapon," He said while apprising the reporters of the party's strategies to face the polls in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry.

Raja slammed the CPI(M) for its alleged role in the recent attacks on workers of BJP, RSS and Youth Congress in Kerala and ruled out the possibility of joining any front that had the left party as a constituent since it was a "declared position" not to align with it.
Abkhazia's Attempts to Bring Expatriates Home Hit Major Obstacles

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 16 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 52 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Abkhazia's Attempts to Bring Expatriates Home Hit Major Obstacles, 16 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 52, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0bae4.html [accessed 22 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.

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The government of the Georgian breakaway territory of Abkhazia plans to ramp up its attempts to bring the large Abkhaz diaspora back to the republic. Currently, an estimated 3,500 Abkhaz repatriates are permanently residing in the republic and up to 8,000 have received Abkhazian passports. However, the Abkhazian government believes that the pool of possible repatriates is far larger and includes hundreds of thousands of ethnic Abkhaz who reside primarily in Turkey. According to the chairman of the Abkhazian government's committee for repatriation, Vadim Kharazia, the republican authorities are working on a plan to increase their outreach efforts to the Abkhaz diasporas worldwide and are helping returning Abkhaz co-ethnics with housing and employment. Kharazia told the Russian government-sponsored news agency Sputnik that from February 19 through 21, he visited Turkey, where he met with Abkhaz activists who agreed to coordinate their efforts with the self-declared country's government. The budget for the repatriation comes from a special 2 percent tax on the salaries of all Abkhazian citizens. In 2016, the budget for repatriation is expected to reach a record $2 million (Sputnik-abkhazia.ru, February 29).

Ethnic Abkhaz are culturally close to the Circassians, but they historically lived in the southern Caucasus, unlike the Circassians, who resided primarily in the North Caucasus. When Russia conquered the Caucasus in the 19th century, the tsarist government deported ethnic Abkhaz from Abkhazia along with the Circassians. Thus, there is a large Abkhaz diaspora in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East. At the same time, ethnic Abkhaz are a relatively small group in Abkhazia itself. When the last Soviet census was conducted in 1989, ethnic Abkhaz made up less than one-fifth of the population of the republic-about 93,000 out of 525,000 people. Ethnic Georgians made up about 46 percent of Abkhazia's total population and were the largest ethnic group in the republic. Ethnic Armenians and ethnic Russians made up another 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively, of the total population of Abkhazia. Since then the demographic situation in Abkhazia has dramatically changed. During the Abkhaz-Georgian war of 1992-1993, Abkhaz irregulars, with Russia's tacit and explicit support, expelled the majority of ethnic Georgians from their territory. According to the 2011 census, the population of the republic was only 241,000, less than half what it was in 1989. About half of the total current population, 122,000 people, are ethnic Abkhaz (Pop-stat.mashke.org, accessed March 16).

The precarious demographic status of the Abkhaz, on the one hand, pushes them to limit immigration from Russia while, on the other hand, forcing them to seek a demographic boost, using their extensive diaspora. Abkhazia is heavily dependent on Russia for both its security and economic well-being, yet repeated attempts by Russian officials to make it easier for Russian citizens to acquire real estate in Abkhazia have failed so far, although illicit trade is going on despite government regulation (Sputnik-abkhazia.ru, August 8, 2015).

The Abkhazian government's attempts to boost the population of ethnic Abkhaz through repatriation have so far yielded relatively modest results. Given the rocky relations between Abkhazia's backer, Russia, and Turkey, where the bulk of the Abkhaz diaspora resides, it is hard to see how the repatriation program will work in the near term. The Abkhazian government supported Russian economic sanctions against Turkey, following the downing of the Russian warplane on the border between Turkey and Syria (Abkhazinform.com, January 12). The government in Sukhumi supported these sanctions even though the impoverished republic quite substantially depends on Turkish investments and imported goods. It appears that Moscow can easily force Abkhazia to act counter to its interests-despite the fact that, formally, Abkhazia acts as if it is an independent country, recognized first and foremost by Russia itself.

Even before the Russian-Turkish dispute, the Abkhaz were quite wary of inviting their ethnic kin back to their homeland. One of these reasons is religion. The majority of the Abkhaz who reside in Abkhazia are Christian Orthodox while the repatriates are mostly Muslim. This creates substantial tensions in the republic, where there is not a single functioning mosque even though about 16 percent of the population of Abkhazia is Muslim. The other obstacle that prevents the mass return of ethnic Abkhaz to the territory is its weak economy and the bleak prospects for its residents. An estimated 1,700 ethnic Abkhaz lived in Syria prior to the start of the war there (Onkavkaz.com, March 5). About 540 of them have been repatriated to Abkhazia since the war in Syria began, but about 150 of them later left Abkhazia. Some of the Syrian Abkhaz left for Europe, others for the Russian North Caucasus, while some even returned to Syria (Sputnik-abkhazia.ru, February 29).

The experience of Abkhaz repatriation also has lessons for the Circassians. Despite all the obstacles the Abkhaz face in repatriating their ethnic kin from the Middle East, they still have more freedom to do so than the Circassians. Although it is hard to call Abkhazia a sovereign nation, given how much the separatist republic depends on Russia, it is still able to provide much better for its repatriates than the Circassians who reside in the North Caucasus. This contrast is likely to affect the thinking of the Circassians about their own program of repatriation, especially if the Abkhazian government eventually succeeds in attracting a larger pool of repatriates.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Turkmenistan Tightens Its Regime Ahead of Difficult Times

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Kim Publication Date 15 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 51 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Turkmenistan Tightens Its Regime Ahead of Difficult Times, 15 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 51, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0c284.html [accessed 22 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.

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President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has repeatedly reshuffled his government over the last several weeks. At a meeting of the State Security Council, in early March, he relieved from their positions the head of the security services, Lieutenant General Guychgeldy Hodzhaberdyev, and the long-serving commander of the state border service, Colonel Dovrangeldi Bayramov (Turkmenistan.ru, March 2). These reshuffles just moved several figures of the security services around, but a preceding inspection by the general attorney of the state agencies led to a dismissal of several second-tier officials (a head of the certification committee, the head of statistics and the head of the hydrometeorology committee). President Berdimuhamedov also decided to merge the state drugs control committee (a committee for securing a healthy society) with the Ministry of Interior. While saying he was generally satisfied with the work of Turkmenistan's security agencies, the president pointedly reprimanded the head of the taxation service and the deputy minister of interior for their inefficient control over the registration of residents of Ashgabat (Chronika Turkmenistana, February 29-March 6).

Although there are concerns about the level of security on the border with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan's security services seem to exhibit more anxiety about the domestic order inside the republic. The security apparatus continues to monitor and react to any public fluctuations, particularly as the economy experiences a slowdown (Uznews.com, March 2). With a drastic reduction in state revenues from the sale of gas, Turkmenistan is tightening the budget and cutting down on generous subsidies (see EDM, September 30, 2015). At the same time, the authorities' grip on society remains severe. Turkmenistan is planning to host the Asian Winter Olympic Games in 2017, and the government announced strict measures to ensure the capital of the country is free of illegal residents, mainly from rural areas. Following the presidential decree, signed in February 2016, on the registration of internal labor migrants who come to work in Ashgabat, the security services have begun inspecting private apartments, deporting hundreds of illegal residents from the capital, as well as freezing construction sites and some foreign companies' activities that employ many of these rural migrants (Chrono-tm.org, February 22).

The ongoing constitutional reform in Turkmenistan (which started back in 2014) also does not imply any coming liberalization. This past February, the state media reported that the president had approved a new draft constitution for "public discussion." Although a published draft envisages a multiparty system, political diversity, the establishment of a human rights institute and the development of civil society (particularly, youth rights), its main proposal is to abolish the previous upper age limit of 70 years for presidential candidates and allow President Berdimuhamedov to remain in office for life (Central Asia News, February 16; Deutsche Welle, March 3). There are already no limitations on how many times the same person may be elected head of state, and the presidential term is now proposed to be extended from five to seven years (Iphronline.org, March 2016).

A recent Chatham House report (Chathamhouse.org, March 2016) concludes that Turkmenistan is less likely to embrace meaningful political, economic and social reforms as long as the authorities are able to meet societal aspirations and control dissent by the centralization of power and control of revenues from hydrocarbons exports. Pervasive security services and patronage networks, as well as domestic and foreign policy-making in Turkmenistan are primarily aimed at regime self-preservation, the report argues. Little or no possibility exists for large-scale popular unrest, as middle class and intellectual elites remain scarce due to the country's overall poor quality of education and low levels of urbanization (Gundogar, March 9).

Although the regime looks strong and confident, with presidential rule being enforced and extended and the security apparatus strictly controlled from above, Turkmenistan's actual domestic stability remains an open question, mainly because of continuing economic challenges. The hydrocarbon sector in Turkmenistan accounts for about 35 percent of the country's GDP, 90 percent of exports, and 80 percent of fiscal revenues. And as the 2015 World Bank report states, a decline in demand for Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon exports is a key risk to this Central Asian republic's growth projections (Worldbank.org, April 2015).

Turkmenistan is short of export options and cash. This year, Russia's Gazprom decreased gas purchases from Turkmenistan from 20 to 4 billion cubic meters. And in mid-March, Gazprom declared it would again suspend its purchases of natural gas from Turkmenistan until a bilateral pricing dispute is settled (Interfax, March 14). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who visited Ashgabat earlier this year, attempted to address the gas issue. But gas sales remain an unresolved topic, and they could be taken up again in Berdimuhamedov's conversations with President Vladimir Putin when he visits Turkmenistan later this year (Rg.ru, January 28, 2016). Meanwhile, according to experts, Turkmenistan's revenues from gas deliveries to China are used to repay multibillion-dollar debts to Beijing. Even exports to Iran are paid by goods and services, according to an article in Gundogar (Gundogar, February 8, 2016). Turkmenistan has recently completed the East-West gas pipeline, which initially was designed to increase gas deliveries to Russia. The pipeline will mainly be supplied from the Galkynysh Gas Field, the world's second-largest gas deposit. This mega-field can also be used to supply gas to Azerbaijan and further to Europe through the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, if this project ever become a reality. Finally, Galkynysh gas may also fill the planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project. But these infrastructure projects, even if they ultimately turn out to be successful, will take a long time to implement and even longer before they become profitable.

With its "neutral" foreign policy and increasing energy competition with Russia and Iran, Turkmenistan's main cushions against hard times are its "pervasive" security agencies and $22 billion in accumulated reserves (Photius.com, accessed March 15). As most international observers conclude, there is a reluctance (and probably a low capacity) to look for more sustainable decisions or to implement market-oriented reforms in this isolated country.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Putin the 'Peacemaker' Ends Operations in Syria

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Roger McDermott Publication Date 15 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 51 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Putin the 'Peacemaker' Ends Operations in Syria, 15 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 51, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0d484.html [accessed 22 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.

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On March 14, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly announced his order to commence withdrawing the main element of Russia's military deployment in Syria. Justifying the decision, Putin said that most of the objectives in the air operations in Syria were achieved and on this basis he chose to bring the operation to an end. However, Putin also told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that Russia's logistics base in Tartus and its Hmeymim airbase will operate "as usual," adding, "They should be protected from land, sea and air." The residual Russian military presence, evidently including air defense assets, will be tasked with monitoring the ceasefire (Kommersant, March 14, 15).

Putin ordered the process to commence on March 15. He explained that Moscow had deployed a "small" but "efficient" military grouping that, together with its partners, including the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, had created the conditions to start a "peace process." Shoigu reported on the achievements of the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil-VKS) during their Syria campaign, which began on September 30, 2015. Shoigu stated that the VKS had killed more than 2,000 militants recruited from Russia, including 17 warlords. The VKS flew more than 9,000 sorties using precision weapons, with targets including energy infrastructure, weapons and supply routes. Russian bombers assisted in reclaiming 400 settlements and 10,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory. Furthermore, Russian aircraft destroyed 209 Syrian oil facilities and over 2,000 means of delivery of petroleum products. Shoigu said the Russian military is currently monitoring ceasefire observance using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and satellite reconnaissance. He passed over the VKS's role in smashing the anti-Assad opposition (TASS, March 14).

Timed to coincide with the resumption of talks in Geneva, and consistent with a recent switch to a "peace offensive," Putin's speech boldly proclaimed that Russia's Armed Forces had contributed positively to the conflict in Syria and would retain a long-term footprint in the country. Indeed, military and defense commentary in the media had focused on the complex cessation of hostilities, Moscow's role in this, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid through Hmeymim. Moreover, Kommersant, which carried Putin's announcement, followed it up with positive assessments of the high level of professionalism of the VKS forces in the Syria operation. Such comments quickly made favorable comparisons between the VKS's performance and that of US or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aircraft involved in bombing missions in Syria. It also highlighted intelligence cooperation between Moscow and Damascus (Kommersant, March 14; Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, Lenta.ru, March 11).

Russian media coverage of Moscow's involvement in Syria had changed its emphasis away from the military dimension to the diplomatic efforts to end the civil war. However, despite the apparent pseudo ceasefire, which seemed uncertain, attention was given to VKS's close air support (CAS) in the "battle of Palmyra." These reports stressed that the VKS, using mainly helicopter assets, was playing a critical role in providing CAS for Syrian Arab Army (SAA) special forces in their operations in Palmyra. Video footage showed VKS Mi-24s in action against strategic targets above that city, while the SAA conducted artillery bombardments lasting several hours-all conducted under the existing ceasefire. Reportedly, these operations involved Hezbollah and Iranian special forces (Rusvesna.su, March 11; Ekspert, March 10).

While such operations were pursued in the aftermath of the ceasefire, the Russian defense ministry began reporting ceasefire violations as though its forces were somehow abstract from the entire situation. The VKS CAS for the SAA and friendly militias continued with the operations in Palmyra even while Putin was making his announcement about the partial withdrawal (Interfax, March 14; Vesti, March 10; Vedomosti, March 8). What was immediately clear, however, is that Russia's military presence in Syria will also persist in the future, most likely maintaining a relatively small footprint. In addition to its airbase in Latakia and naval depot in Tartus-the latter transitioning to a formalized naval logistics base-Moscow will also keep its "naval grouping" operating in the Mediterranean Sea. The Russian Navy recently staged simultaneous naval exercises in the Caspian Sea and Mediterranean Sea to test a range of capabilities; the Caspian Flotilla training exercise involved 1,000 servicemen and 30 vessels, preparing for launch, using air defense systems and responding to emergency situations. According to the press service of the Northern Fleet, the antisubmarine ship Vice Admiral Kulakov trained in the Mediterranean Sea, rehearsing antisubmarine operations. An official statement said that the ship will "monitor the airborne, surface and subsurface situation on the Mediterranean Sea," and train for rescue operations (Interfax, March 11).

The Russian media frequently refers to a "group of 15 ships" deployed to the Mediterranean Sea in support of Moscow's operations in Syria. Some analysts have sought to itemize this deployment, understand its purpose and characterize the overall mission, while noting the strange mixture of naval assets. The bulk of the group, which is somewhat smaller and has functioned in the vicinity since late 2012, is supplied by the Black Sea Fleet (BSF), augmented by assets drawn from other fleets and auxiliary vessels. It seems the naval grouping largely consists of patrol, antisubmarine and amphibious landing ships (empty) in a triangle between Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete and off the Turkish coast. Its core mission was to facilitate supplies to Syria for the VKS operation. This group includes: Vice Admiral Kulakov (Northern Fleet) off the coast of Syria, the Varyag missile cruiser (Pacific Fleet; overhauled in the spring of 2015, replacing the Moskva in the Mediterranean Sea as the group's flagship), Zeleny Dol Buyan-M class missile corvette (entered service in December 2015, and joined the grouping in February), as well as the Ladnyyi patrol vessel (BSF) near Cyprus. Moreover, at least the following BSF landing ships are also located off the Turkish coast: Azov (refitted engine in January), Yamal, Nikolai Phylchenkov, Saratov (one of the oldest in the Navy) and Novocherkask (entered service in 2007) (Shilipov.com, March 6; Sergiscorp, Livejournal, March 2).

Russia's smaller military footprint in Syria will endure long past the grueling peace process. Putin's decision to deploy and later end the deployment, however, is seen in Moscow as a political-military success. It lays to rest the ghost of Afghanistan and increases the future likelihood that Russian forces will again deploy out-of-area in Russia's national interest. Putin has shown that he not only understands when to use military force, but also when to bring this to an end, which puts his use of hard power closer to the classical thinking of Carl von Clausewitz than any model of "hybrid warfare" would imply.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Russian Nationalist Discourse Reemerges Ahead of Elections

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author George Voloshin Publication Date 14 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russian Nationalist Discourse Reemerges Ahead of Elections, 14 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0db64.html [accessed 22 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.

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Kazakhstan is taking final steps in preparation for the upcoming early parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 20. According to the Central Election Commission, as of March 4, the government has accommodated applications from 308 international observers and 116 media representatives. This year's elections are widely expected to be the most predictable in Kazakhstan's history, and the ruling NurOtan party is poised to win in a landslide. It has so far fielded the longest list of candidates, containing 234 names, for just 98 parliamentary seats up for grabs. The list includes several high-ranking government officials, such as Deputy Prime Minister Dariga Nazarbayeva (the president's elder daughter), Nurlan Nigmatulin (Nazarbayev's chief of staff), as well as famous athletes, actors and musicians (Astanatv.kz, March 4; Newskaz.ru, February 25).

Five other political parties have also presented their rolls of candidates, with the majority of them mostly sharing common views with NurOtan and the Nazarbayev administration on major policy issues. While the coming elections are unlikely to prove any more competitive than in previous years, one element has been conspicuously missing from the campaign. None of the parties up for election express a nationalist agenda; and none of them want Kazakhstan to sever ties with Russia or the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which Kazakhstan cofounded in May 2014. Only the Ayul (in Kazakh, "village") National Democratic Party of Patriots' program comes closest, featuring unambiguous references to the promotion of the Kazakh language and cultural heritage, in addition to an emphasis on patriotic education (Kapital.kz, February 12; Tengrinews.kz, January 27).

On February 18, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had vigorously defended Kazakhstan's EEU membership at the NurOtan party congress in late January, said on national television that those Kazakhstani officials who refused to accept citizens' written requests in Russian should be sacked. Kazakh is the country's official language, but Russian is still used more widely in the media, education and daily life, especially in large urban centers. Clearly, the Kazakhstani authorities are keen to maintain good neighborly relations with Russia, despite the economic woes that the EEU is currently living through because of a sharp drop in the price of oil since mid-2014. The Kremlin remains formally committed to "productive cooperation" with Kazakhstan, Russia's foremost trade partner in Central Asia. Yet, there are worrying signs that the interethnic peace that the Nazarbayev government is seeking to foster domestically, may be at risk (Inform.kz, February 18; Vlast.kz, January 6; Total.kz, November 21, 2015).

On March 3, the Coordinating Council of Russian, Cossack and Slavic Organizations held an assembly in Almaty, where 30 public associations were represented by their envoys from 11 oblasts (out of 14), as well as the cities of Astana and Almaty. They adopted a petition to the president of Kazakhstan, asking for constitutional reforms that would give the country's Russian-speaking minority better representation in public life. Two of the petition's five key points are political. First, the assembly participants ask Nazarbayev to set up binding ethnic quotas in public bodies so that not all positions are occupied by ethnic Kazakhs. Second, they request an increase to the quota of seats in the national legislature chosen by the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan (a presidentially appointed inter-ethnic issues advisory body) from 9 to 30, with 5 of these seats to go to the Coordinating Council. The petition has been widely condemned in social media as a means to divide society at a time when war continues to ravage eastern Ukraine and Russia remains under Western sanctions for the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its ongoing support for armed separatism in Donbas (365info.kz, March 5).

In 2014, Kazakhstani Cossacks repeatedly distanced themselves from Russia's interventionism abroad. In March that year, just as Moscow was preparing to take over the Crimean peninsula, the Kazakhstani Union of Cossack Public Associations, another powerful organization, refuted claims by some media outlets that it could be sending volunteers to eastern Ukraine in order to fight the regular Ukrainian armed forces there (see EDM, August 11, 2014). It is unlikely that the abovementioned petition from earlier this month will gain any traction whatsoever. Some local observers even allege that it might have originated within the presidential administration as a ploy aimed at ensuring the public's consolidation around NurOtan and its leader, the president of Kazakhstan (Respublika-kz.info, March 3), on the eve of elections. It is worth noting, however, that since 2015, the Kazakhstani government has been quietly cracking down on domestic pro-Russian nationalist elements.

In December 2015, the Zhambyl Regional Court, in southern Kazakhstan, sentenced businessman and blogger Yermek Taychibekov to four years in prison for "inciting social discord." Taychibekov had used his Facebook account to publicly call for Kazakhstan's incorporation into Russia and the forced conversion of the Kazakhs to the Orthodox faith, in addition to his earlier statements about the nonexistence of Ukrainian statehood and the justness of the war in Donbas. Then, on January 30, a prominent Kazakhstani businessman, Tokhtar Tuleshov, was arrested in the southern city of Shymkent on arms smuggling, fraud and drug trafficking charges. Interestingly, the police reportedly seized "extremist literature" allegedly found at his home. Tuleshov has close ties to Russia and has been a member of the Russian Union of Journalists since 2012 (Forbes.kz, January 30; Grani.ru, December 13, 2015).

Maintaining domestic peace and stability in Kazakhstan is an utmost priority for Central Asia's largest economy. Indeed, President Nazarbayev has based his rule almost entirely on the idea of peaceful coexistence at home and close neighborly cooperation abroad. Although it has a considerable Russian-speaking minority, Kazakhstan has been careful to not stoke passions about language policy and other sensitive issues. Last April, an expert roundtable in Astana presented statistics claiming that the share of Kazakhs in the country's population, which is currently close to 70 percent, will exceed 90 percent by 2030 or even sooner, given the low rate of birth and a high level of emigration among Russians (Kursiv.kz, April 16, 2015). Thus, as the proportion of ethnic-Russians and Russian-speakers in Kazakhstani society continues to shrink, the government will increasingly need to contend with this community's feelings of vulnerability and reactionism, which could be more easily exploited by outside powers.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Suspected Chechen Servicemen Attack Journalists and Rights Activists in Ingushetia

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 14 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Suspected Chechen Servicemen Attack Journalists and Rights Activists in Ingushetia, 14 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0e454.html [accessed 22 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.

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On March 9, unidentified assailants attacked a group of journalists and rights activists in Ingushetia. An estimated 15-20 armed men stopped the minivan with 8 rights activists and journalists in the border area between Ingushetia and Chechnya. The armed men forced the passengers of the minivan out, took away their cell phones, beat them up, and set their car on fire. Two of the journalists were from Sweden and Norway, which turned the incident into an international scandal (Interfax, March 9).

According to the sources in the police, the assailants apparently knew that the group of journalists and rights activists were on their way to Chechnya, including members of the well-known rights group, the Committee Against Torture, headed by Igor Kalyapin. The attack appeared to be specifically designed to prevent the group from entering Chechnya (Interfax, March 10).

Investigators are still looking for the perpetrators of the attack, but Kadyrov's men are widely suspected to have been involved. According to Aleksandrina Yelagina of the New Times magazine, who was among those beaten up, the assailants said they should not go to Chechnya and that the journalists and rights activists were protecting terrorists. Kalyapin's organization came under attack in Chechnya. In 2015, the Moscow activists who investigated serious rights violations such as kidnappings and torture had to move their offices from Chechnya to Ingushetia (Meduza.io, March 10).

The day of the attack, March 9, another group separately attacked the rights activists' office in the Ingush city of Karabulak. "The attack on the Chechen border on March 9 took place due to Mr. Kadyrov's opinion that Chechnya is his domain and all that is happening there should take place only after asking his permission or on his direct orders," Kalyapin said. "Civilian control, investigative journalism, and human rights activities cannot exist in Chechnya. When he was informed that the journalists joined the Committee against Torture, it probably caused the outbreak of aggression. The Chechen authorities have been struggling to expel our organization from the republic for the past two years, but we persisted in spite of all the attacks, violence, intimidation, and defamation against us on an almost daily basis" (Snob.ru, March 11). Chechnya's outspoken human rights ombudsman, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, told Dozhd TV that Kalyapin himself most likely organized the attack (Dozhd, March 10).

What makes the latest attack unusual is not only how brazen it was, but also Vladimir Putin's reaction to it. Unexpectedly, Putin asked the Ministry of Interior to investigate the incident and "provide a legal assessment" of it (Interfax, March 10). Ramzan Kadyrov has been under immense pressure in the past several months. The prominent Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed near the Kremlin, in Moscow, in February 2015, and investigators soon afterward detained several suspected Chechens. Although no proof of Kadyrov's direct involvement in Nemtsov's murder has been provided, some critics of the Kremlin are convinced Kadyrov was behind the assassination. The pressure on Kadyrov has mounted and his term as Chechnya's governor is expiring. Hence, some Russian analysts say Putin is likely to replace Kadyrov with a more docile figure (Nv.ua, March 3).

The Kremlin's reaction to the latest attack on rights activists and journalists connected to Chechnya seems to confirm that changes might be coming in the republic. Putin's silence on Kadyrov's reappointment is also quite telling, as it indicates that the Kremlin is still undecided about what to do with Kadyrov. Although some analysts say that dismissing Kadyrov will destabilize the republic, others argue that his importance is exaggerated. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, responded to the question about the possible destabilization of Chechnya after Kadyrov's dismissal: "Is the situation [in Chechnya] any different from other regions? They have the same branches of power as elsewhere in the Russian Federation. Let us not forget that the region [Chechnya] belongs to the Russian Federation, where all Russian laws work" (Interfax, February 29).

Peskov certainly exaggerated when he said that all Russian laws work in Chechnya the same way as elsewhere in the Russian Federation. However, the Kremlin seems to be signaling to Kadyrov that he should scale down his notoriety in the news. Several sources told the RBC news agency that Putin intended to allow Kadyrov to run for governor again after he appoints him as interim governor (Rbc.ru, March 2), which is a legal nonsense because Chechnya is supposed to elect its governor in direct governor elections. In reality, however, Putin manages the region, personally dealing with the complexities of the situation on the ground. Given that he is facing many challenges abroad, Putin is likely to choose the easiest way to proceed in Chechnya-to reappoint the existing governor. However, regular leaks from the Nemtsov murder investigation and other scandals indicate that many Russians, including the Russian opposition, are united in their dislike for Ramzan Kadyrov. The only ally Kadyrov still seems to have is Vladimir Putin, and even he could sacrifice Kadyrov for political reasons, if necessary.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Ukraine, Turkey May Forge Anti-Russian Alliance in Black Sea

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Oleg Varfolomeyev Publication Date 14 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Ukraine, Turkey May Forge Anti-Russian Alliance in Black Sea, 14 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 50, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56ec0eb04.html [accessed 22 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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Russia, a common enemy since recently, has prompted Turkey and Ukraine, the big neighbors across the Black Sea, to step up political, economic and military ties. Bilateral contacts have been particularly intensive this year. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu flew to Kyiv in February, followed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's visit to Turkey in March. Both announced ambitious plans (Hurriyet Daily News, March 9). However, it is hard to predict for the moment how far-reaching this cooperation will be, given the wealth and influence gaps between the two countries and the difficult recent history of Turkish-Ukrainian relations.

Turkey has not been an easy partner for Ukraine. Several consecutive governments in Kyiv, including the incumbent cabinet of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, complained that Turkey's refusal to allow tankers to pass through the Turkish straits prevented them from developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project on the Black Sea to diminish Ukraine's dependence on Russian energy (Theinsider.ua, June 3, 2014). Bilateral free trade talks were put on hold in 2013, as no agreement was reached on trade in agricultural and consumer goods (Zerkalo Nedeli, March 11). Last but not least, although Turkey condemned the annexation of Crimea by Russia two years ago, it did not join the Western sanctions against Russia.

The downing of a Russian bomber by a Turkish jet last November, after which Moscow severed ties with Ankara, prompted a rapprochement between Ukraine and Turkey. The two countries' leaders see each other as natural allies against a common enemy. Poroshenko and Davutoglu discussed common threats in Davos last January (President.gov.ua, January 20). On February 15, Davutoglu and Yatsenyuk announced in Kyiv that the free trade talks would be resumed, and that Turkey would lend Ukraine $50 million at a low interest (112.ua, February 15). The two countries' navies conducted maneuvers in the Black Sea in early March, with an eye to a potential threat from Russia (Uc.od.ua, March 6).

Poroshenko paid a visit to Ankara, on March 9-10, to forge closer defense and economic links. He was accompanied by Chief of the General Staff Viktor Muzhenko, who met with his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar (Hurriyet Daily News, March 9). Poroshenko and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired a session of the Ukraine-Turkey high-level strategic council, which was summed up in a declaration condemning the Russian "aggression against Ukraine." Cooperation between the two countries' defense ministries will be enhanced, and mechanisms of regional security in the Black Sea will be strengthened, according to the declaration. Moreover, the declaration called for joint steps to "de-occupy Crimea" (President.gov.ua, March 9). As practical assistance, Turkey gave Ukraine five mobile military hospitals (5 Kanal TV, March 10).

Erdogan, speaking at a press conference with Poroshenko, questioned the Russian interventions in Syria and Ukraine. He said Russia trampled on international law in Crimea and noted the plight of Crimean Tatars, a Turkic nation with strong links to Turkey, whose leaders have been persecuted by the occupation authorities after the annexation (Aa.com.tr, March 9). Poroshenko was accompanied on his visit by Refat Cubarov and Mustafa Cemilev, the two Crimean Tatar leaders who have been expelled by the Russian authorities from Crimea.

Poroshenko and Erdogan also set ambitious goals in trade. They expressed the hope that a free trade agreement between Turkey and Ukraine will be signed this year, along with double taxation and bilateral investment protection agreements. Poroshenko invited Turkey to participate in Ukraine's privatization and to use Ukraine's underground natural gas storage facilities. Erdogan said that trade turnover between Ukraine and Turkey should be increased to $20 billion by 2020 (President.gov.ua, Aa.com.tr, March 9). This is an ambitious goal, given that Ukraine's merchandise exports to Turkey fell by 22 percent, to $2.8 billion last year, and imports from Turkey plunged 35 percent, to less than $0.9 billion, according to the Ukrainian Statistics Committee. Nevertheless, Turkey was the third export market for Ukraine after the European Union and Russia last year.

Russia has played down the importance of the agreements between Turkey and Ukraine. Kremlin mouthpiece Izvestia cited several Moscow experts as saying that there would be no Ukraine-Turkey alliance, because on the one hand the two countries are too different, and on the other hand both have strong economic links with Russia. The newspaper cited a source from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying that Ukraine was "again being fooled" (Izvestia, March 11). The official news agency RIA Novosti quoted Moscow-appointed Crimean "deputy prime minister" Ruslan Balbek as claiming that Ukraine and Turkey, both "unreliable partners," would not dare to challenge the Russian army, "one of the strongest in the world." He also recalled that Turkey had intended to invest in Crimea prior to the incident with the Russian bomber (RIA Novosti, March 10).

The influential Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli is also skeptical about Ukrainian-Turkish cooperation. An alliance between the two countries would not be long-lasting, according to the newspaper. Ankara, despite strong anti-Russian rhetoric, would be only too happy to normalize relations with Moscow as soon as possible, and it views cooperation with Ukraine only through the prism of relations with Russia and the West, argued the newspaper (Zerkalo Nedeli, March 11). The skepticism over Ukrainian-Turkish relations will be dispelled only if specific achievements follow the ambitious declarations.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
The mega international cultural event organised by Sri Sri Ravishankar from March 11 to 13 was by all accounts a grand success. But on the morning of March 11, there was a serious threat to the event from the National Green Tribunal (NGT), concerned about the adverse impact on the Yamuna and its flood plain from the show. The NGT granted grudging permission to the show subject to the condition that a sum of Rs 5 crore be deposited by 5 pm on March 11. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar publicly declared that he would prefer a jail term to payment of fine.

The next day the NGT acceded to Art of Livings request to pay only a part of the fine, followed by the balance after a couple of weeks. Permission was granted. Former Union minister Jairam Ramesh suspects that a certain telephone call did the trick. What if AoL had not paid the fine and the NGT proceeded to ban the event? Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have found it embarrassing to participate in a function banned by a tribunal  the question of legality of the NGTs order was not relevant at that point of time. The President of India excused himself from participating in the event  he had consented to be the chief guest at the valedictory function  probably for no other reason than to avoid the potential controversy.

The fact is that the NGT could not have physically stopped the show since it has no control over the police or military, unlike the Supreme Court. For the Supreme Court, the Constitution of India provides that all authorities, civil and judicial, in the territory of India shall act in aid of the Supreme Court (Article 144).

Not the NGT. Yet, no matter whether its order is obeyed or not, the NGT passes orders and captures considerable amount of media attention almost on a daily basis. The NGT is very active and, like the proverbial cowboy, it rushes with guns blazing to neutralise some complaint or the other in any part of the country even on the basis of press reports. Its been reported, for example, that shopkeepers in New Delhis Lajpat Nagar have complained against footpath vendors to the NGT and the tribunal has entertained it. One wonders whether the press report is correct because one can see no greenery in the shops or footpath.

The NGT, established by the NGT Act, 2010, consists of a full-time chairman, not less than 10 but maximum of 20 judicial members and an equal number of expert members. For a person to be appointed as the chairperson or judicial member of the NGT, the prescribed qualification is that s/he is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court or chief justice or a judge of a high court. The chairperson is appointed by the Central government in consultation with the Chief Justice of India and is to hold office for a term of five years or until s/he attains the age of 70 years.

What are NGTs powers and jurisdiction? It is a fundamental principle of law that a tribunal is a forum of limited powers. It has no discretionary or inherent powers that a court has. A court of law can exercise powers that are not specifically conferred on it; it can exercise incidental powers to do complete justice to the cause.

The Green Tribunal Act provides that the tribunal shall have jurisdiction over all civil cases where a substantial question relating to environment (including enforcement of any legal right relating to environment) is involved and that such question arises out of the implementation of the enactments specified in Schedule I. Schedule I lists seven laws, including the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, Forest (Conservation) Act, dealing with environment.

The power of the NGT appears to be essentially an appellate power over the commissions or even omissions of the authorities mentioned in those laws. In other words, at the first sign of grievance about environmental destruction a person has to go to the named officials and only against their orders can the matter ultimately reach the NGT.

The Supreme Court and the high courts by virtue of constitutional provisions can entertain original petitions, such as PILs, and exercise their powers even suo moto. However, where a magistrate is authorised by law to deal with a case, the Supreme Court would not in the first instance entertain the case.

In the case of the cultural event organised by AoL, the Union ministry for environment categorically stated that no permission was sought from them nor any given because for the erection of a temporary structure, the ministrys clearance is not required. The land in question is virtually barren, apart from being submerged for about three months every year and marshy for few months after that.

How then did the NGT come into the picture? The NGT in its enthusiasm to save the countrys environment from degradation entertains complaints on a regular basis under the firm belief that anything that is green or related to environment is within its exclusive domain. But the fact is the high courts of Madras and Bombay have recently administered a lesson or two to the NGT about its role vis-a-vis that of constitutional courts like the high courts.

The Bombay high court in one case stayed the notice issued against two state officials to appear before the NGT and in another case set aside the NGTs order which directed that all orders by the high courts that were inconsistent with its directions would cease to be operative after 15 days.

Rule of law expects that everyone involved from all wings of the government acts in accordance with law. Unless the rules are obeyed, no game can be played. A policeman is given the lathi or a weapon to use them judiciously  not on a whim. Unknown perils even from a judicial organ can make life uneasy. People do not deserve such interference for whatever seemingly worthy cause. On the analogy of the AoL incident, every function, say a big wedding, may have to seek NGTs green signal. Is that so? One wishes the AoL approaches the Supreme Court against whatever proceedings have taken place and once and for all the question of powers of the NGT is settled.
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY

A production of the comedy "The Foreigner" will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Abilene Community Theatre, 809 Barrow St. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students, seniors and military. For tickets, call 325-673-6271.

SATURDAY

The Family Fun Saturday art program will be presented from 1-4 p.m. at the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, 102 Cedar St. Free admission.

A free showing of a G-rated animated movie will begin at 3 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Popcorn and lemonade will be provided while supplies last.

A reception for the art exhibit "Edge" will take place from 6-8 p.m. at Studio 13, 909 N. 13th St. The exhibit will run through March 31.

The Alzheimer's Association  North Central Texas Chapter will conduct its 10th annual "Steppin' Out for Memories" dinner and auction at 6:30 p.m. at the Taylor County Expo Center. The theme is "Route 66." Jody Nix will perform. Tickets are $75. For tickets, or for more information, call 325-672-2907.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

The Texas Gun & Knife show will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Abilene Civic Center, 1100 N. Sixth St. Admission is $5. For more information, go to www.texasgunandknifeshows.com.

SUNDAY

Military Appreciation Day will take place from noon to 5 p.m. at Buffalo Gap Historic Village, 133 N. William St., in Buffalo Gap. Admission is free for active and retired military and their families.
Incident reports released Thursday by the Abilene Police Department:

Assault, 500 block of Frontage Road, Wednesday

Police said someone struck a man with a pool stick in the abdomen at a local bar.

Theft, 5400 block of Capitol Avenue, Tuesday

Police said someone got an out-of-town business to wire more than $38,000 to a personal account after sending a falsified email.

Burglary, 2700 block of Old Anson Road, Tuesday

Police said someone stole $1,000 in electronics from the victim's room.

Theft, 300 block of Walnut Street, Tuesday

Police said someone stole $800 in property from a woman's business.

Theft, 2100 block of Pine Street, Tuesday

Police said a quick change artist stole $600 from a supermarket.

Theft truck, 2400 block of Independence Boulevard, Tuesday

Police said someone stole a vehicle.

Theft, 2600 block of Roundtree Drive, Tuesday

Police said someone stole a firearm from inside a vehicle.

Burglary, 1300 block of Sycamore Street, Tuesday

Police said someone stole more than $1,400 in property after breaking into a house.

Burglary, 400 block of Hardison Lane, Tuesday

Police said someone stole about $3,050 in property from a residence.
Creative writers at Abilene High School have received statewide recognition.

The 2015 edition of Gallimaufry, the school's literary and art journal, has been selected as one of the top five literary magazines in Texas by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Though the magazine didn't earn the top honor, the student collection of prose, poetry and art was one of two from traditional public schools included in the top five.

"We're hoping to get there this year," said Seth Pace, an English teacher at AHS and adviser for Gallimaufry. "We're looking for some good quality stuff to get us into the top three."

Where that quality comes from, though, will be a little different this year. Because Cooper High School has dropped its creative writing class  and will not produce its own literary magazine this year  Pace has decided that his students should open submissions for Gallimaufry to students at all AISD high schools, including Cooper, the Academy of Technology, Engineering, Math and Science and Holland Medical Early College High School.

The deadline is next week.

Students can submit works either anonymously or with their names, though editors of the magazine never know who wrote what piece until after a decision is made on whether to include the work in the journal. The process, called blind submission, protects students from potential bias.

A panel, made up of students, selects the pieces it believes to be the best. Pace has final say, he said, to ensure the magazine is of suitable taste.

"We're doing really well so far," Pace said. "I'm really proud."

Many of Pace's young creative writers also are working their way toward college credit through a dual-credit opportunity with Angelo State University.

Juniors, including Miller Devanney, and seniors spend their time in class creating their own worlds and studying the many different genres of fiction and poetry.

The students recently visited Angelo State for a writer's conference. They got to tour the college and meet a number of more advanced writers.

LeAnne Spykes, the only sophomore in Pace's class, also gets to tell her stories, though she's not yet eligible for college credit. Still, she said she likes studying short stories.

"I would like to be a creative writing teacher," Spykes said. "This class really does help. We read stories, and it's nice to hear how (Pace) explains them."

Twitter: @TimothyChippARN
All indications are that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to take the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Air Force base in his stride, and pursue his agenda on the India-Pakistan relationship, although he is yet to share its contours with the country.

In the fitness of things, he should do so at the first opportunity in the Budget Session of Parliament since he has agreed to visit Pakistan for the Saarc summit in early November. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj accepted the invitation on his behalf in Pokhra, Nepal, when she met PM Nawaz Sharifs foreign policy adviser, Sartaj Aziz, during the Saarc ministerial meeting on Thursday.

Mr Modi and Mr Sharif are also expected to have a separate conversation when the two meet for the nuclear security summit in the US this month. Apart from extending the invitation to the Indian PM for the Saarc summit, Mr Azizs purpose in his talks with Ms Swaraj would have been to gauge if the Indian PM was on track for a meeting with Mr Sharif during the nuclear security talks.

Pakistan is very keen on resuming talks, for which Mr Modi laid the groundwork by visiting Lahore in a surprise move on Christmas day last year, in spite of the Pathankot attack by Pakistani terrorists. Ms Swaraj would have effortlessly re-assured Mr Aziz on this, seeing her leaders mood. Consistent with this, India conveyed to Pakistan in Pokhra that the visit of Pakistans joint investigation team to Pathankot was on, and the Pakistani investigators would arrive on March 27.

Three months have elapsed since the Pathankot attack, and it is far from clear if any forensic evidence of the terrorist assault would survive. Therefore, it seems that permission to the JIT to visit India  in the face of defence minister Manohar Parrikars objections  is part of building good optics. Without this it would be hard to sell normalising of India-Pakistan relations to the Indian public.

Not much movement has taken place in Pakistan to apprehend the Pathankot attackers, who are cadre of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the two principal anti-India terrorist outfits raised by the ISI.

For a time the Jaish online journal had stopped publication after the Pathankot attack, but now it has re-started. Meanwhile, the official effort to raise the level of optics continues on both sides. The news of Pakistan giving India intelligence on 10 terrorists having entered this country seems part of the same design. The meeting of foreign secretaries of the two countries, scuppered on account of Pathankot, could be back on track.
The text message on Misty Picou's phone was short and far from clear.

"The boat sank and the Mexican navy rescued us," the cryptic message read.

That's it. No further explanation. Basically, that's all there was to the story, except for the nightmarish details that occurred between "the boat sank" and "the Mexican navy rescued us."

Picou lives in Arizona and the text message was from her sister Jennifer Grubbs, who lives in Abilene.

Obviously, Grubbs wasn't home when she texted her sister about a sinking boat and the Mexican navy. As soon as Picou got the message, she called their mother, Carolyn Cleveland, who also lives in Abilene.

Cleveland chose to focus on the word "rescued."

"I just thanked the Lord she was safe," Cleveland said. "That was my first reaction."

Since then, Grubbs has safely returned to Abilene, where she lives with her 19-year-old son, Brayden Grubbs, and works at Eagle Aviation.

The adventure started when Grubbs got a message from longtime friend Michael Brown, who lives on a ranch in New Mexico. Despite being landlocked, Brown loves the boating life and kept a 44-foot sailboat moored at Galveston.

Recently, he had sailed the boat by himself from Galveston to Progreso, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula. He wanted to move it again, from Progreso to Isla Mujeres, which would take about a day and a half. But this time, he wanted assistance and sent a message to Grubbs.

"Do you want to come help me?" he asked.

Never one to pass up an adventure, Grubbs agreed. She flew to Progreso, where she met Brown and four more of his friends. They boarded the boat and set sail March 6. In retrospect, the name of the sailboat seems a little ironic  Fearless.

As the crew of six left the port at Progreso, they saw nothing but blue skies ahead.

"Everything was great," Grubbs said. "The weather was nice, not a cloud in the sky."

But before long, the wind started picking up and the waves grew higher and more menacing. Then, one by one, things started going wrong. The bilge pumps weren't working properly; the bowsprit, or spar, that extends from the front of the boat pulled loose; and the electrical system was on the fritz.

The boat started taking on water and Brown, the captain, determined that a metal piece attached to the rudder had broken loose and punched a hole in the boat.

A former Marine, Brown remained calm, but he did deliver an understated message of concern to his friends: "We have a problem."

As the boat took on more and more water, the crew began bailing water with a 5-gallon bucket. Fifteen minutes into that process, Brown realized it wasn't going to work and ordered the crew to abandon ship. Four obeyed and got into the single four-person rubber lifeboat.

Two remained on board for a short time, but then realized the ship was sinking. They dived into the water and swam to the lifeboat, where the four on board pulled them in.

The small dingy was hopelessly overloaded, Grubbs said, and everyone started ditching items they had brought. Grubbs clung to her phone, not wanting to lose pictures and video she had shot of the sailboat right before leaving it.

As she used her phone to take pictures, she had one thought, "This is such an awesome adventure."

The seriousness of the situation became crystal clear, though, as the group watched as the sailboat started to go down bow first and then capsize.

The ordeal started about 4:30 p.m. on the fourth day of a voyage that was supposed to take no more than a day and a half. The increasing winds and high seas slowed the group's progress. No one was especially concerned until the boat started taking on water at an alarming rate due to the hole in the hull.

"It was quick," Grubbs said.

Brown had managed to send out an SOS before abandoning ship. Thinking rescue would come at any minute, the crew remained fairly calm in the lifeboat, despite being far enough from shore not to be able to see any landmarks.

"Nothing but water," Grubbs said.

Still, they had plenty of drinking water and food, as well as cold-weather clothing that Brown had thought to bring along. The whole thing still seemed like an adventure, Grubbs said, but as the minutes, then the hours, began to pass and the day turned to night, the situation grew a little more stressful.

Finally, at 12:44 a.m., eight hours after the ordeal began, the crew spotted a ship in the distance. They began signaling with flashlights and flares, not realizing they were too far from the massive naval vessel to be seen.

Eventually, the rescue ship from the Mexican navy approached, but the adventure still wasn't over. A rope ladder attached to the ship was tossed down the side, but the ship's hull was so tall that Grubbs had to wait for a wave to lift the lifeboat close enough for her to grab hold.

Once the six were safely on board the Mexican ship, they were treated like royalty. They went through a standard intake interview; took hot showers; received dry, warm clothing; and dined with the captain. Exhausted, they were shown to their guest bunks and they slept.

The ship didn't dock until 11:30 a.m. the next day. The passengers were taken to a hospital, where they were checked out. Grubbs still laughs when she thinks about a question a nurse asked when she saw that Grubbs' blood pressure was high.

"Have you been unusually stressed?" the nurse asked innocently.

From the hospital, the Americans were processed through immigration and finally, at 5:30 p.m. the day after the ordeal began, they were ready to come home.

Despite watching the sailboat sink and spending an uncertain night in a small boat on the open sea, Grubbs said she has no doubt she will jump at the next adventure that comes her way.

"Oh, heck yeah," she said, without hesitation. "I think I need to give it a couple of weeks."

Her mother is sure too, based on Grubb's history of loving adventure. Cleveland has asked God to watch over her daughter more than once.

"I have prayed that all her life," Cleveland said.

Even in high school, Grubbs was struck with wanderlust. A 1993 graduate of Cooper High School, Grubbs spent a year in Holland as an exchange student when she was 16.

As much as she loves new experiences, even she can't envision a future trip as adventurous as the one aboard the Fearless.

"I don't know how I'm ever going to top that," she said.
If proverbs are shorthand for real life, then this year's parliamentary sessions were the proverbial pot of congee that is fouled by a single rat dropping.



The congee, of course, refers to the annual meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) [held from March 3-15].



And the rat dropping is the list of 21 banned topics issued by the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party's central propaganda department to journalists covering the parliamentary meetings.



They weren't allowed to write about smog, although it's clearly the talk of the whole country.



Neither were they allowed to write about the economy, other than to say nice things about it. Doubts and other news was a no-go area.



Even tighter strictures were laid on the reporting of religion. For example, they couldn't criticize or question the removal of crosses from thousands of churches across a single province, which I imagine is supposed to be a commendable feat.



Party controls the media



I wonder who exactly came up with these 21 banned items. Nobody has admitted doing so. Perhaps they want us to be uncertain.



But if, as we all know, the media belongs to the party, then such directives are unlikely to come from outside it.



So the meaning of the rat dropping is that any news or opinions that the party doesn't want to hear are forbidden.



And the effects of this directive don't end with the media. They will have inevitably had an impact on delegates to the NPC and the CPPCC, and on those who run it and report to it.



If the powers that be have already dictated what shall not be said, then why would the NPC and the CPPCC bring trouble down on their own heads by debating those things in a logical and persuasive manner?



It would be surprising if this sudden directive didn't also silence any voices outside the NPC and the CPPCC.



Thousands of deaf ears



And so, a petition from 144 citizens calling on the NPC to open a public inquiry into the detention of large numbers of human rights lawyers since July 9, 2015 fell on several thousand deaf ears.



And when 12 countries on the United Nations Human Rights Councilincluding Australia, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Statesissued a statement highly critical of China's human rights record, with particular concern over the detention of rights activists, civil society leader, and lawyers, they met with indifference from several thousand delegates.



And when the governor of a province vowed to the NPC that no workers would be owed wages on his watch, and tens of thousands of miners with nothing to live on took to the streets of a certain city in his province to denounce him as a liar, we heard nothing from the worthies of the NPC and the CPPCC.



So much money, time and, energy is spent on these parliamentary sessions. They could easily be a success. But all it takes is for a single rat to use the congee pot as a toilet; all it takes is one piece of shit"banning different points of view"and the whole thing is spoiled.



It's a stark and sad contrast to the theoretical retreats run by [then premier] Hu Yaobang in 1979, where no topics were off-limits for discussion.



They told people not to hold back, and things worked out pretty well, until [then supreme leader] Deng Xiaoping got a rush of blood to the head and imposed the four principles of socialism and four no-go areas on us.



That single rat dropping from Deng ruined the whole pot of congee.



Translated by Luisetta Mudie.



Bao Tong, former political aide to the late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang, is currently under house arrest at his home in Beijing.
Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (R) confers with Hor Namhong, who resigned his post as foreign minister this week, during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting, Feb. 28, 2009.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided to revamp his cabinet as three long-serving ministers agreed to give up their posts in a move that appears to be an attempt to shore up the strongmans image before the 2018 election.

The plan is that on April 4, there will be a vote to reshuffle the composition of the government in order to ensure the work will be more effective, Hun Sen told students at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh.

In here, there were no bad ministers. Its just that some ministers were appointed but acted slowly in their own positions, he said. It doesnt mean that all these ministers are to be removed, but it is required so that the work will be done in a more effective manner.

The changes come as Hun Sen gears up for what looks like tough races for the Cambodian Peoples Party in 2017 commune elections and a 2018 general election.

Hun Sen and his CPP have ruled the country for 31 years, but corruption, deforestation, land grabs and other social issues have become campaign issues. Hun Sen and the CPP want to prove they can institute reforms before the elections.

Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the rival Cambodia National Rescue Party, cast doubt on the moves.

I can say, just wait and see. At least it is one step and that is better than nothing at all, he said. Its better than the fact that there is no change at all.

According to a list of proposed changes submitted to parliament, Hun Sen accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, who held the post for 18 years, a government spokesman told RFAs Khmer Service. Telecommunications Minister Prak Sokhon will succeed him, the spokesman said.

Hor Namhong resigns

While Hor Namhong, 80, loses his foreign affairs portfolio, he retains the deputy prime minister title, government spokesman Phay Siphan explained.

Hor Namhong chaired the controversial 2012 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting, in which he was accused of bowing to pressure from China to scuttle a joint ASEAN communique for the first time in its 45-year history.

Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon and Im Chhun Lim, the land management minister, are also resigning.

Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol will become transport minister, replacing Tram Iv Tek, who takes the telecommunications portfolio. Finance Minister Aun Porn Moniroth will be named a senior minister in addition to his current post.

Changes are also afoot at the ministries of land management, agriculture, rural and religious affairs.

Im Chhun Lim, the land management minister, is being replaced by Chea Sophara, who in turn will be replaced by rural affairs minister by Ouk Rabun, the outgoing agriculture minister.

Veng Sakhon, the secretary of state at the Water Resources Ministry, will take over for Rabun at the Agriculture Ministry.

Cults and Religion Minister Min Khin will switch positions with Him Chhem, a senior minister in charge of special missions.

Im Suosdey, who headed the National Election Committee until it was overhauled last year, has been appointed as a secretary of state at the Interior Ministry.

Reported for RFAs Khmer Service by Sereyvuth Uong and Vuthy Tha. Translated by Pagnawath Khun. Written in English by Brooks Boleik.
North Korean hostesses wait for customers at the entrance to a North Korean restaurant in the border city of Dandong, northeastern China's Liaoning province,in a file photo.

Some North Korean restaurants in China are trying to boost their numbers of diners amid increasing financial difficulties resulting from strained relations between the two allies following the Norths recent nuclear test and missile launches, North Korean sources in China said.

The North Korean restaurants, faced with financial difficulties caused by the decrease in the number of clients, are desperately trying to find ways to attract more people and asking patrons to come again and bring others with them, the sources told RFA's Korean Service.

In February, North Korea defied international warnings and launched a long-range rocket just a month after testing a nuclear device, resulting in condemnation from the international community and harsh new sanctions by the United Nations Security Council. The sanctions prompted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to order his military to be in preemptive attack mode, ready to use its nuclear weapons at any time.

Ethnic Koreans in Yanbian enjoy going to North Korean restaurants on special occasions like birthdays because their palates are similar to those of North Koreans, said a source, referring to the autonomous prefecture in northeastern China's Jilin Province just north of the border with North Korea.

The food there is not that great, but the restaurant-goers especially enjoy the singing and dancing of young North Korean waitresses, the source said. But because of the tense political situation after North Koreas nuclear test and missile launch, the restaurants are mostly vacant.

Many North Korean restaurants in Yanbian have downsized or relocated during winter, and locals believe most of the establishments in China might eventually close because they are not making money, he said.

Ethnic Koreans also visit North Korean restaurants out of curiosity about the Norths people who are isolated from the rest of the world, but they do not patronize the establishments often because of the lack of quality and quantity of food for the high-priced meals, he said.

But some North Korean restaurants that have spruced up their in-house shows and scaled down the size of their restaurants in light of dwindling finances, appear to be thriving, he said.

Such eateries have made an extra effort to attract more customers by poaching young North Korean women who work at other North Korean restaurants.

Food for hard currency

The North Korean restaurants that operate abroad serve as a source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped North Korean government to which they reportedly must remit tens to hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars annually.

One popular chain of restaurants aptly named Pyongyang after the North Korean capital operates restaurants mainly in China near the North Korean border, but has been expanding since early this century to other Asian countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mongolia and Bangladesh.

The restaurant chain is owned and operated by Korea Pyongyang Haedanghwa Food Stuff Company Ltd., a North Korean government entity and employs staff from North Korea who are closely monitored by security agents of the regime.

Pyongyangs famous Okryugwan, or Okryu Restaurant, also has outlets throughout China and other Asian countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and Russia.

The restaurants serve Korean food, including kimchi, a fermented vegetable side dish, Pyongyang-style cold noodles known as raengmyeon in North Korea, dog meat soup, and kalbi, grilled dishes made with marinated beef short ribs, as young North Korean women in traditional choson dresses play instruments and sing karaoke.

North Korean waitresses perform in front of a large menu at a North Korean restaurant in the border town of Dandong, northeastern China's Liaoning province, Feb. 11, 2013. AFP Send in the ladies

A North Korean defector who had recently visited a North Korean restaurant in China told RFA that quite a few customers were dining there, although he had expected it to be empty.

He also said he was not afraid to eat in the North Korean restaurant because there were no security guards manning the entrance, which made him feel welcome.

The defector ordered Pyongyang-style cold noodle soup out of nostalgia for the food from my childhood, he said, but lamented that few diners in the place actually watched the performance.

As more customers came in, [restaurant staff] made phone calls to other North Korean restaurants to request that more ladies be sent for the new customers, the source said.

North Korean restaurants that have opened in countries further afield have failed to thrive.

The Pyongyang restaurant chain made a brief and unsuccessful foray into Western Europe in 2012 by opening a branch in Amsterdam, which later closed because of a spat between the Dutch co-owners and their North Korean staff who claimed they were were being exploited and improperly compensated, according to media reports.

The restaurant reopened at the end of 2013 under the name Haedanghwa Korean Restaurant, but closed the following year.

Reports surfaced in January 2015 that the Pyongyang chain was considering opening a restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, but North Korea denied it.



Written by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Hee Jung Yang. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
China is pushing the Myanmar government to restart the controversial U.S. $3.6-billion Myitsone Dam project, which was temporarily halted in 2011 by outgoing President Thein Sein amid fervent opposition mainly because of the environmental destruction it was predicted to cause.

Myanmars incoming government under the National League for Democracy (NLD) will now have to decide whether to let China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), one of Chinas largest state-owned electricity producers, continue building the 6,000-megawatt dam along the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmars Kachin State.

Chinas Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference on Thursday that the dam is an important cooperation project and that its contract terms are still in force, Reuters reported.

I think that the existing government has no time to get this project restarted, he was quoted as saying. I believe that once the new government is in office, the Chinese government will continue to discuss with them how to restart this project.

Although a 23-member delegation from Myanmars outgoing Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government is about to meet with foreign affairs representatives from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, it is unlikely they will discuss the Myitsone Dam project.

Our USDP chairman, President Thein Sein, suspended the Myitsone Dam project during his presidential term as people wished, said Tint Zaw, a member of the USDPs Central Executive Committee. The USDP has no policy on nor has it held discussions about the Myitsone Dam.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday congratulated Htin Kyaw, an NLD member and aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, who will succeed Thein Sein as Myanmars president at the end of the month, according to a statement issued by Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

People dont want the dam

Activists and politicians in Myanmar said the Myitsone Dam project poses a major challenge to the NLD government.

The Myitsone Dam project is the biggest challenge for the new government, said Ko Jimmy, who was a leader of the pro-democracy 88 Generation Students group, which has called on Chinese officials to consider local peoples interests when making their huge investments in Myanmar.

People dont want that dam because it is on the Irrawaddy River [which] belongs to the people who live along it, he said. If the new government lets Chinese companies start it again, there will be problems.

Aung Moe Zaw, chairman of the Democratic Party for a New Society, a political party affiliated with the countrys broader democracy movement, believes the Myanmar people will reject the dam project, creating obstacles for the new governments relations with China in other business deals.

There will be some difficulties for the new government in doing something about this project, he said. The new government has to deal with its relationship with China and other projects with Chinese companies. But on the other hand, it has to think about the peoples rejection [of the project].

Tu Jar, chairman of the Kachin State Democracy Party, said the new government should adhere to the wishes of the people when it comes to the dam because Myanmar is a democracy where peoples voices matter.

The new government has to decide on this project based on the wishes of the people because it was elected by the people, he said. I have heard that the Chinese government has already built a good relationship with the NLD government, so I dont think the two countries ties will be harmed even if the Myitsone Dam project starts again.

Heavy-handed tactics

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose NLD party won national elections last November, assured Chinese leaders at the time that she sought continued friendly relations between the two countries and welcomed Chinese investment in Myanmar, as long as investors won the trust of the Myanmar people. She has been one of the Myitsone Dam projects most vocal opponents.

Chinese-backed companies are the largest foreign investors in Myanmar, but their heavy-handed tactics when it comes to exploiting Myanmars natural resources have sparked vehement public opposition.

Myanmar citizens not only oppose the Myitsone Dam project because of its environmental impact, but also because of its huge flooding area, dislocation of people living nearby, proximity to a geographical fault line, and unequal share of electricity output for Myanmar. Under the investment deal, about 90 percent of the electricity produced by the dam would go to southern Chinas Yunnan province.

In June 2014, CPI cut off food assistance to at least two families who were among hundreds displaced by the project after they backed a 100-strong march from the commercial capital Yangon to the dam site, protesting against the resumption of work on the dam.

CPI also provided new homes for villagers who were displaced by the project, but La Yan, leader of Tanphaye village, whose residents were forcibly moved, said about 60 families had returned.

We dont know whether new government will stop us or not, he said. Some villagers have returned and are living in their [old] houses, and some of them have been taken away by authorities because they were living in their houses.

The residents had found it difficult to remain in the new dwellings that CPI built for them elsewhere, because they leaked when it rained, he said.

About 3,000 people from four villages were moved to Aung Myin Thar village because of the dam project, but they dont have farms there, he said.

We cant do anything in Aung Myin Thar, he said. Our houses and farms are in our villages. Our villages are the best place for us. Even people from Aung Myin Thar village have to work in Tanphaye village so they can farm for their survival.

Groups of local residents in the Irrawaddy Delta and Thanlyin River (also known as Salween River) regions protested on MondayInternational Rivers Dayfor officials to suspend the Myitsone and other dam construction projects, according to a report by Eleven Myanmar media group. Some also collected signatures on petitions against the Myitsone project.

Reported by Thinn Thiri, Tin Aung Khine and Wai Mar Tun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.


Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama gestures as he is greeted by well-wishers at Kangra Airport in Dharamsala, India, March 13, 2016.

In an effort to keep alive their struggle for greater freedom under Chinese rule, tens of thousands of Tibetan expatriates will vote for new exile leadership on Sunday in Dharamsala, India.

While the election is the second direct election of a leader in exile, it has growing importance the Dalai Lama announcement in 2011 that he was handing over his political authority to a democratically-elected government.

The 80-year-old monk and Nobel Laureate has stepped back from the limelight amid questions about his health and uncertainty over his successor. Tibetan Buddhism holds that the soul of a senior lama is reincarnated in the body of a child after he dies.



While the Dali Lama will remain as the Tibetan spiritual leader, Sundays vote will select a political leader known as a "Sikyong, who will be solely responsible for political and diplomatic decisions for the government-in-exile known as the Central Tibetan Administration.

Exiled Tibetans see the CTA as their legitimate government, despite the Chinese governments attempt to marginalize it. Its based in Dharamsala, where a community of Tibetans lives with the Dalai Lama.

On Thursday, Beijing said it has never recognized the Dalai Lama-backed Tibetan government-in-exile and asked countries around the world not to provide any "stage" to independence activists from Tibet, according to Mumbais dnaindia.com

"You must be quite clear about the position of Chinese government, that we have never recognized this so-called government-in-exile," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, according to the report.

Lobsang Sangay, the leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile, who is seeking re-election, told Reuters that CTA is in it for the long haul.

"China will see that CTA is going to stay here for a long time and the Tibetan freedom struggle will be here for a long time," he said.

While China controls Tibet, the CTA is important as a main avenue for the movement for greater autonomy for Tibet and the survival of Tibetans ancient culture.

The Sikyong will have his hands full rallying global support for Tibet's freedom struggle, strengthening ties with the host government India, and discouraging self-immolation by refugees protesting Beijing's ironclad control of Tibet. More than 140 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in grisly, usually fatal protests against Beijing rule.



According to Reuters, Sangay and his opponent, exile parliament speaker Penpa Tsering, both favor the "middle way" propagated by the Dalai Lama for more than 50 years that advocates nonviolence while seeking autonomy for Tibet, while stopping short of demanding full independence for their Himalayan homeland.
The husband of internationally renowned concert pianist Natalia Strelchenko has been convicted of murdering his wife.

A jury on March 18 found Norwegian double bass player John Martin guilty of murdering Russia-born Strelchenko at the couple's home in Manchester on their second wedding anniversary in August 2015.

Martin will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on March 21.

A witness said she saw Martin push 38-year-old Strelchenko down the stairs, repeatedly punch his wife and say "I want to kill her." Strelchenko died in hospital.

Martin claimed he had no recollection of the killing after taking a mix of alcohol and diazepam, which he had mistaken for his antidepressant medication.

Strelchenko, who used the stage name Strelle, studied at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and made her debut with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
A Finnish court has handed down a 16-month suspended sentence to an Iraqi man in a war crime case.

The court in Tampere found on March 18 Jebbar Salman Ammar guilty of desecrating the corpse of a deceased enemy fighter in Iraq in June 2014.

The 29-year-old had posted three pictures of himself and a decapitated head of a man on his open Facebook page.

Prosecutors had sought a two-year prison sentence.

Ammar had arrived to Finland about six months ago and was detained in November.

A trial in another Finnish court opens next week against an Iraqi man suspected of war crimes.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Britain's Prince Charles has called for reconciliation in the conflict-ravaged Balkans, urging the region's nations to work for peace and not become prisoners of their history.

While peace and stability have returned to the Balkans since the 1990s' ethnic wars, Charles said more needs to be done to preserve the momentum of peace, in a speech to the Serbian parliament in Belgrade on March 17 as he visited the region.

"Every society and country is molded by its past, but there can be few places on Earth where one feels the weight of history more than in the Balkans," he said. "No one should forget or ignore that history but, even more importantly, it is important not to become prisoners of it."

Charles recalled how in 1979, his own great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was killed in a "horrific" bomb attack by the Irish Republican Army, bringing home the agony of civil war to his own family.

"I feel, therefore, that I have at least some understanding, through my own experience, of the heart-rending anguish that so many families in this region, of whatever nationality, race or religion, have experienced through the loss of loved ones," he said.

"After many years of reflection and, indeed, despair at the pointless cruelty and destruction we witness around the world, my own conclusion is this: that only reconciliation offers the assurance that our children and grandchildren will not suffer the same agonies as our generation," he said.

Charles pointed to the 1998 agreement that brought peace and prosperity to Northern Ireland after decades of violence.

"It is my profound hope that the countries of the Western Balkans will be similarly changed by your quest for enduring peace," he said.

More than 100,000 people were killed and 1 million were displaced during the war that erupted after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Although Balkan countries have improved relations as they sought to join the European Union in recent years, tensions continue to simmer under the surface.

Charles said that "reconciliation requires the commitment of everyone, from the leaders of states and faiths to the ordinary people in their towns and villages... The importance of maintaining this momentum cannot be overstated."

Charles and his wife, Camilla, visited Croatia earlier in the week and will travel to Montenegro and Kosovo after their stay in Belgrade.

While their visit comes amid a monumental migrant crisis affecting the region, the royal couple did not visit any refugee centers.

Camilla met with a group caring for wartime rape victims in eastern Croatia, while Charles held meetings with religious leaders in both Croatia and Serbia.

In Kosovo, they will take part in a memorial ceremony for those missing since the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

With reporting by AP and AFP
KYIV -- Ukrainian officials said vile Russian missile strikes on civilian energy sites have caused power outages nationwide, leaving more than a million households without electricity, while Russian authorities ordered residents to leave Kherson "immediately" ahead of an expected effort by Kyivs forces to retake the crucial southern city.

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.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram on October 22 that Russia carried out a "massive attack" on Ukraine overnight and that "the aggressor continues to terrorize our country."



"At night, the enemy launched a massive attack: 36 rockets, most of which were shot down...These are vile strikes on critical objects. Typical tactics of terrorists," he wrote. "The world can and must stop this terror."



Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelenskiys office, said Ukrainian air defense forces had shot down 18 of the missiles.



Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a number of missiles had been shot down on the approach to the capital.



"Several rockets flying toward Kyiv were shot down in the region by air defense forces. Thanks to our defenders!" Klitschko said.



There was no immediate word on deaths related to the missile attacks, but officials said several people had been injured.



It was not possible to verify the reports on either side.



In the face of continued Russian strikes, Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba again urged Ukraine's Western allies to speed up the delivery of modern air defense systems.



"We intercepted some, others hit the targets. Air defense saves lives. In [Western] capitals, there should not be a single minute of delay in the decision regarding air defense systems for Ukraine," Kuleba said.



Local officials said power stations were hit in the regions of Odesa, Kirovohrad, and Lutsk, while other regions reported problems with electricity.



"Another rocket attack from terrorists who are fighting against civilian infrastructure and people," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on the Telegram app.



Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting that from October 10 to October 20, Russian strikes damaged more than 400 facilities in 16 regions of Ukraine, including dozens of energy facilities.



"The Russian Army has identified our energy sector as one of the key targets for its attacks," Shmyhal said on October 21.



"Russian propagandists and officials speak openly about the purpose of all these attacks: Ukraine, according to them, should be left without water, without light, without heat," he said.



Meanwhile, Russian-appointed authorities in the occupied and illegally seized southern Kherson region on October 22 ordered the estimated 60,000 residents of the region's eponymous main city to leave "immediately" in the face of Kyiv's advancing counteroffensive.



"Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank of the Dnieper River," the region's Russia-backed authorities said on social media.

Russina-installed officials are moving people out of the strategic city in what they are calling an evacuation but which Ukrainian officials label as deportations.



The order came in spite of a claim by Russia's Defense Ministry on October 22 that its forces had prevented an attempt by Ukraine to break through its line of control in Kherson.



"All attacks were repulsed, the enemy was pushed back to their initial positions," the Defense Ministry said, adding that Ukraine's offensive was launched toward the settlements of Piatykhatky, Suhanove, Sablukivka and Bezvodne, on the west side of the Dnieper River.



The ministry's statement said Russian forces had also repelled attacks in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.



Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000, is one of the first urban areas occupied by Russia at the start of the invasion.



Zelenskiys office said 88 settlements in the southern Kherson region and 551 settlements in the northeastern Kharkiv region have been de-occupied, while the Ukrainian forces' counteroffensive in the Kherson region moves ahead.



Ukraine is trying to drive Russian forces in Kherson back east across the Dnieper. Russian soldiers on the western bank, where the city of Kherson is located, are reportedly close to being cut off from supply lines and reinforcements.



Natalya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraines southern operational command, said the Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskiy Bridge over the Dnieper in the city of Kherson during an overnight curfew Russia-installed officials put in place to avoid civilian casualties.



We do not attack civilians and settlements," Humenyuk told Ukrainian television.



Ukrainian strikes made the Antonivskiy Bridge inoperable, prompting Russian authorities to set up ferry crossings and pontoon bridges to relocate civilians and transport supplies.



Russia has sent in thousands of recently mobilized troops to reinforce the defense of Kherson, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on October 21.



Zelenskiy again on October 21 urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a dam at the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant on the Dnieper River as this could flood settlements toward Kherson.



Zelenskiy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, and were planning to blow it up.



"Now everyone in the world must act powerfully and quickly to prevent a new Russian terrorist attack. Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster," he said in his nightly address.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and the BBC
Last week, Bengaluru played host to a policy colloquium on national security, threats, challenges and strategies. As is the norm at such gatherings, the usual suspects on the strategic circuit were all in attendance. The session on intelligence reforms saw veterans who had spent a lifetime practising the black arts of intelligence gathering and analysis sharing their experiences. They were of the unanimous view that there needs to be a proper statutory enactment that provides a legal architecture to our intelligence agencies  the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and others. They were also in favour of parliamentary as well as financial oversight despite the Supreme Court refusing to entertain a petition recently praying for the latter.

My invitation to this select group has its genesis in a private members bill that I had moved in the previous Lok Sabha entitled the Intelligence Services (Powers and Regulation) Bill, 2011. The bill lapsed in October 2012. These veterans told me that this is an idea whose time has come and must be pushed vigorously.

Coupled with their concerns about the internal dynamics of these organisations is the disturbing spectre of the recent hyperactivity of the government in conjunction with sections of the media to try and discredit a court monitored investigation into the fake encounter in June 2004 that resulted in the death of Ishrat Jahan and her compatriots. It raises the apparition of command intelligence as opposed to information whose integrity should be unimpeachable.

Recently there have been inspired stories in the media about three of the 10 mysterious terrorists whose infiltration into India was the subject of an ostensible tip off by Pakistani national security adviser Nasser Khan Janjua having been neutralised. Who killed them, where and how nobody knows. There is no forum where an independent examination can be undertaken about the veracity of such claims.

The proposed bill was divided into eight parts dealing first and foremost with the task of putting the R&AW, IB, NTRO respectively on a proper legal footing and defining the scope, and mandate of their remit. The next part of the bill dealt with authorisation processes, including warrants, procedure for both physical surveillance and electronic interception of communication, including an estoppel on taking action on any intelligence that is obtained without specific authorisation.

For the first time, it talked about a legal authorisation for the R&AW and NTRO to undertake activities outside India. An Indian authorisation would not make an individual immune from breaking law in a foreign country. It nonetheless would still make an arguable case for deportation or exfiltration if he becomes an undeclared though prospectively acknowledged intelligence asset. Moreover, if he were to come in harms way for discharging his duty at least his next of kin would have access to some compensation for their would be a paper trail that the person in question was an intelligence asset.

The bill also provided for the constitution of a national intelligence and security oversight committee. This was perhaps the most contentious part of the entire scheme of the bill. In detailed consultations with retired senior officials repeated apprehensions were expressed that the members of the oversight committee would not be able to restrain themselves from examining the conduct of intelligence operations.

A special provision was specifically engrafted prohibiting the oversight of current or past intelligence operations. Even the membership of the committee was pegged at the highest level with the chairperson of the council of states, Lok Sabha Speaker, Prime Minister of India, the Leaders of the Opposition in both the Houses and one member each from both the Houses to be nominated by the respective presiding offices.

The bill also talked about an intelligence ombudsman and a national intelligence tribunal. The former is necessary because in the recent past a number of officers have knocked the doors of various constitutional courts to get their grievances addressed. In the process, a lot of linen gets washed in public. Particularly poignant is the case of Nisha Priya Bhatia  a R&AW officer who was compulsorily retired in 2009 and has been knocking the doors of the courts ever since then.

There are many such cases that require sensitive handling as the people who work in these organisations do so in an atmosphere of great stress, secrecy and our privy to matters that should not find their way into the public domain in circumstances that are less than dignified and honourable.

An ombudsman who has been the head of the IB, R&AW, or the NTRO and is well versed in the culture and working imperatives of these organisations would provide a much needed ventilation mechanism for a quiet and efficient redressal of grievances.

Similarly, a specialised national intelligence tribunal headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and consisting of a retired high court judge and the head of the IB and R&AW alternatively is required to go into complaints by any individual who has reasons to believe that any intelligence organisation has done something wrongfully to him or his property. The bill laid down a detailed procedure for doing so.

The issue of legality or the lack of it is not confined to the intelligence services alone. The Gauhati high court on November 6, 2013, declared that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as illegal. Though the Supreme Court subsequently stayed the judgment but the issue of its legal status hangs by but a mere thread. Similarly, under what law does the Bureau of Immigration, a subsidiary of the IB that stamps your passports when you go in and out of the country, operate? Though the website of the Bureau of Immigration lists a host of laws it administers but the moot question remains when the IB has no legal basis how can its subsidiary, without a legal underpinning, administer a statutory remit?

By no means, is the lapsed bill perfect. However, it is a developed template which has gone through a detailed consultation process with not only former officers of these organisations, but with a host of lawyers, civil liberty activists, journalists and parliamentarians who take an interest in strategic affairs and issues pertaining to national security. Will someone pick up the ball and run with it? Or is it too much of a hot potato for any establishment to handle?
For many in Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula's takeover by Russia two years ago was a cause for joy and great expectations.

In the run-up to the March 16, 2014, referendum in Crimea -- which has not been recognized as legitimate by the international community -- Moscow and pro-Russian figures on the peninsula promised locals a glittering and prosperous future that would contrast sharply with the fates of Ukrainians under the control of what the Kremlin branded the "fascist junta" in Kyiv.

Two years after the annexation, however, many of Russia's promises remain unfulfilled. Although many Crimeans feel that the annexation saved the peninsula from the kind of violence that has wracked parts of eastern Ukraine  which is what they were told by Moscow -- many continue to wait for the living-standard improvements they were led to expect.

Among the most prominent promises was the pledge of a genuinely multiethnic and multiconfessional region with three official languages -- Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself made this explicit pledge in his speech to the Russian parliament on March 18, 2014:

"We treat all nationalities living in Crimea with respect," Putin said. "It is their common home, their little motherland. Thus it would be right -- and I know that people in Crimea support this idea -- to introduce three official languages in Crimea: Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar."

This promise is also enshrined in Article 10 of the Crimean constitution adopted in December 2014 by the Russian authorities that control the peninsula.

Reality Bites

The reality over the last two years, however, has been quite different.

"In commerce, in everyday life, in education, there is no equality of languages in Crimea," says local activist Veldar Shukurdzhiyev of the Ukrainian Cultural Center. "It exists only formally, on paper."

Even before annexation, there was only one Ukrainian language upper school in the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Immediately after annexation, its leadership was replaced and its lessons switched entirely to Russian. In ordinary schools, Ukrainian language lessons have been reduced to a bare minimum.

The Crimean Tatar ruling body, the Mejlis, reports that Crimean Tatar teachers have been deprived of their pedagogical qualifications and forced to give Crimean Tatar language classes after school hours.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) wrote in a report last summer: "Instruction in Ukrainian and the study of Ukrainian is being restricted in Crimea because of pressure on school administrations, teachers, parents, and children with the goal ending the teaching of Ukrainian. This could in the future lead to the limitation of Ukrainian culture and language on the peninsula. Teaching in Crimean Tatar and the study of Crimean Tatar is encountering restrictions and problems because of the annexation and is in need of support and regeneration."

The story with the Russian-installed administration's economic promises has been mixed. Officials pledged to reduce the retirement age and increase pensions and salaries for state-sector workers and this has been largely accomplished. Immediately after annexation, pensions and state-sector salaries were raised 25 percent per month until they reached Russian standards.

"But immediately prices began to increase and sanctions were imposed, both international and Ukrainian," says local economic reporter Andriy Yanitskiy. "In 2015, Russia reindexed its pensions and its salaries and things turned out to be not as attractive as had been promised."

The United States, the European Union, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia over the annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Yanitskiy notes that some key social groups -- military and security forces, pensioners, administrative officials, and top managers -- have benefited enormously because they constitute "the foundation of the Russian regime in Crimea." He estimates that the city administration in the port city of Sevastopol has swollen to more than 2,000 employees and "they all have good salaries."

"But, at the same time, Crimea prices today are higher than prices in Kyiv," he concludes. "You need to take into account the purchasing power of those salaries -- how many groceries they can buy and what quality goods are available."

Moreover, the pay raises have largely reached only top administrators of state institutions like schools and hospitals.

"Average teachers and doctors don't get such impressive salaries," Yanitskiy says. "On top of this, there have been problems with service personnel in schools and hospitals getting their salaries at all."

'Russia's Great Pyriamid'

According to the Russian government, average wages in Crimea are lower than those of almost any region of Russia.

Russian officials also promised that annexation would be a boon to Crimea's tourism industry and that commercial flights would be started from Sevastopol's Belbek airport in the summer of 2014. The plan to begin such flights has now been postponed until late spring of this year.

And Russian officials have said the level of service at Crimean resorts is below national standards.

Government activity in the tourism sector has been largely limited to the redistribution and privatization of resorts, including resorts that were the private property of Ukrainian citizens.

Pro-Russian authorities also promised in 2014 to end Crimea's reliance on the rest of Ukraine for the lion's share of its water. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced a plan to build a desalination plant, new reservoirs, and a water pipeline from Russia's Kuban region.

No progress has been made on any of these initiatives and Crimea's water has been supplied by pumping out deep aquifers, a strategy that environmentalists warn will result in disaster.

Sevastopol's pro-Russian administration head Aleksei Chaly pledged to build in his city a technology center comparable to Silicon Valley. Putin himself endorsed the 2 billion ruble plan, but no work on the project has begun.

As for the ongoing construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait to link Crimea with Russia, Yanitskiy is somewhat more optimistic.

"I can believe they will actually finish the Kerch bridge because it is an ideological project, sort of Russia's Great Pyramid," he says. "But, by the way, Russia has been building a bridge across the Amur River to link China and Russia since 1995. But with Kerch, there is no choice -- without it, maintaining Crimea is very expensive."

Robert Coalson contributed to this report
The Russian media predictably went into overdrive with the chest-thumping this week as the country's forces returned home from Syria.

On his flagship Vesti Nedeli program, the Kremlin's chief propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov went so far as to call the Russian intervention a "victory of good over evil" that returned Russia to the ranks of great powers.

There's also been a deluge of hand wringing from Western pundits about how Vladimir Putin has outfoxed us again and how Russia is always one step ahead of the West.

But the more I think about it, the more I think we need a reality check regarding Putin's allegedly great victory in Syria.

Yes, Russia was able to prop up the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Yes they were able to prevent the West from establishing no-fly zones and safe havens.

Yes, Moscow has managed to soften to a degree its international isolation.

And yes, they have managed to exacerbate the worst refugee crisis Europe has seen since World War II.

But contrary to the hyperbole on Russian television, 167 days of bombing in Syria have not made Russia a superpower again.

And contrary to the wishful thinking of pro-Kremlin pundits, it has not upended the rules based post-Cold War security architecture.

Putin wants to return to a world where great powers dominate and Moscow and the West divide the world into spheres of influence.

But that world is gone, and a five-and-a-half-month military campaign is not going to bring it back.

All Russia has accomplished in Syria is to prove that it can be an effective global spoiler.

But we knew that already.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
Two daughters of Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko have been found dead in Texas, while his estranged wife sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Police in Benbrook, a Fort Worth suburb, says Kholodenko discovered Nika, 5, and Michela, 1, in their bedrooms early on March 17.

Their mother, 31-year-old Sofya Tsygankova, is to be held for mental evaluation once she recovers from her physical injuries.

Kholodenko, 29, had an appointment to pick up the children from his estranged wife's home.

"Once he arrived there, he found the mother in an extreme state of distress and discovered the children in their state," Babcock said. "He has been cooperative in this investigation. He is not considered a suspect at this time."

Police previously said there were no signs of forced entry into the home and that the children have not been stabbed.

In 2013, Kholodenko won the gold medal in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Kholodenko and Tsygankova married in 2010, but filed for divorce in November.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
European Union leaders and Turkey are meeting in Brussels in the hopes of clinching a deal to end the migrant crisis.

After daylong talks that ended early on March 18 in Brussels, EU leaders agreed to offer Turkey financial and political concessions if it stops migrants from reaching Greece.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he was hopeful it would be possible to find common ground with the EU.

"EU and Turkey we have the same goal, the same objective, to help Syrian refugees especially and also to have a new future in our continent in a bright manner," Davutoglu said as he arrived for the summit in Brussels on March 18.

But Davutoglu warned EU leaders Ankara's offer to curb the refugee flow to Europe was strictly a humanitarian rather than a "bargaining" issue.

"For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining but an issue of values, humanitarian values as well as European values," Davutoglu said.

EU leaders gave chief negotiator EU President Donald Tusk a mandate to conclude an accord with Turkey to take back all migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to Greece.

In return, the EU would take in Syrian refugees directly from Turkey, provide up to 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in aid to support housing refugees there, and speed up Ankara's EU membership negotiations and visa-free travel plans.

Under the deal, officials said the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don't qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every migrant returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, up to a total of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.

WATCH: The Turkish coast guard stop a group of Syrians from reaching Greece by boat on March 18.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who first devised the plan with Davutoglu at a summit 10 days ago, said finalizing the deal would not be easy but all European leaders want an agreement to slow or stop the arrival of thousands of migrants a day on Greek islands.

Since January 2015, a million migrants and refugees have entered the EU by boat from Turkey to Greece, and more than 132,000 have arrived this year alone.

Much of the debate within the EU, Merkel said, has focused on addressing criticisms by human rights groups about returning migrants to Turkey, a country with a patchy and worsening rights record.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said before the late-night agreement that the plan was "very much on the edge of international law" because of a lack of guarantees for the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers left in Turkey.

Drafts of the plan show that the EU is demanding that Turkey adopt legislation to protect asylum seekers in line with the Geneva Convention, though Ankara has limited its formal commitments to that treaty in the past.

With the offer in hand, Tusk planned to lead a negotiating team meeting with Davutoglu on the morning of March 18.

Securing Turkey's agreement is far from certain. Davutoglu warned on his way to Brussels that that he would not accept a deal to "turn Turkey into an open prison for migrants."

The whole deal also risks being derailed by disputes over Turkey's negotiations to join the EU, particularly a long-running conflict between Cyprus and Turkey, which does not recognize the Greek Cypriot government.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said it could use its veto to block an accord if Ankara did not give Cyprus the same rights as other EU states to access Turkish ports and airports.

Because of these lingering, complicated disputes, the EU is offering only to "prepare for a decision" on opening new accession chapters for Turkey "as soon as possible," a vague offer that may offend Turkey, officials said.

EU officials argue that the alternative to holding people back in Turkey is to see a further build-up of migrants stranded in increasingly dire conditions in Greece. Already an estimated 40,000 people are marooned on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia after Balkan countries slammed their borders shut to migrants last week.

While the plan seeks to preserve the rights of asylum-seekers to legal protections, EU officials stress that the overall goal is to quickly deter most people from even trying to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece, putting an end to the steady stream of migrants seen in the last year.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
Is the cup half full, or is it half empty?

So far, the European Union and Turkey have agreed on several key steps toward a landmark deal to end Europe's migrant crisis. They agree that the EU can send back irregular migrants if it accepts one Syrian from Turkish refugee camps for each Syrian returned. And they agree on discussing more money for Ankara, faster talks on joining the EU, and visa-free travel for Turkish citizens.

But here are four things they have not yet agreed upon, any one of which could derail the delicate negotiations as EU leaders and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglu meet in Brussels on March 18.

The Cyprus Question

Turkey has sought to join the EU for decades, seeing it as an engine for economic growth. But Ankara's progress has been slow thanks in large part to its tensions with EU-member Cyprus.

Those tensions date back to 1974 when Turkish troops occupied part of the island amid violence between its Greek and Turkish-speaking communities. The resulting partition left an internationally recognized Cypriot rump state in the south and a breakaway northern entity recognized only by Turkey.

Since joining the EU in 2004, Cyprus has vetoed talks between Brussels and Ankara about several key issues that are part of Turkey's EU bid. Nicosia cites Ankara's refusal to recognize it as the island's sole legitimate government and to give it the same access to Turkish ports and airports that other EU states enjoy.

European Council President Donald Tusk has acknowledged Cyprus's power to now veto any migrant deal. He said on March 17 that "the agreement must be acceptable to all 28 member states, no matter big or small" -- a clear reference to the Mediterranean island.

What Turkey is willing to offer to persuade Nicosia to not exercise its veto power is now a central question in the talks over the migrant crisis.

So far, Turkey has taken a hard line. A senior Turkish official told media in Brussels on March 17 that "countries like Cyprus should not be allowed to block progress."

Human Rights Concerns

If the Cyprus question has long bedeviled EU-Turkish relations, so have human rights concerns. They too pose problems for a migrant deal.

Under the European Convention on Human Rights, refugees who are refused asylum in Europe can only be returned to a country that is safe and which can guarantee their basic rights of access to health care, education, and work.

Some UN officials have questioned whether Turkey is a "safe third country" for refused asylum seekers. One reason is that Turkey does not offer Syrians asylum but only a lesser form of international protections.

At the same time, human rights activists say that Turkey does not provide work, education, and health care for all the refugees who are there.

For just such reasons, the EU's plan to return irregular migrants to Turkey has been met with concern by some member states.

Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite said this week that the package was "very much on the edge of international law."German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Turkey has to meet international standards of protection for all migrants for the deal to work.

Visa-Free Access

Yet another reason the EU has been slow to negotiate membership for Turkey is concern it could lead to Turkish workers flooding westward.

That issue is back as Turkey now demands that its 70 million citizens receive the right to travel -- though not work -- in the visa-free in the Schengen zone by the end of June.

As part of any deal, EU officials insist that Turkey must assure its citizens have biometric passports. They also have linked visa-free travel to Ankara agreeing to 72 conditions, including changing its own visa policies to make it harder for migrants to enter Turkey from other countries.

But even that may not be enough to reassure some EU states, such as France, which have balked at the visa-free travel idea partly out of fear of a backlash from anti-immigrant parties at home.

One-In, One-Out, But How Many?

A key principle in the migrant crisis negotiations is the idea that, for each Syrian who travels irregularly to Greece and is returned, the EU will accept another Syrian directly from refugee camps in Turkey.

But what remains to be worked out in this "one-in, one-out" formula, is how many legal Syrian asylum seekers the EU would ultimately accept.

The latest EU draft for a deal between the European Union and Turkey speaks of accepting 72,000 Syrians from Turkish refugee camps. But whether Turkey will consider that sufficient when it is struggling to host 2.7 million registered refugees from Syria, plus an unknown number of unregistered refugees, is unknown.

Key to answering the question will be how Ankara views the EU's plans to speed up the disbursement of 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) already promised to help take care of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

The EU draft says that, if this money is spent "appropriately," the EU stands ready to provide up to 3 billion more euros for Syrian refugees. But whether Turkey will accept such a conditional promise to provide more aid is uncertain.


WASHINGTON  Georgias new foreign minister says the ex-Soviet nations territorial integrity and Western aspirations are not up for discussion in its dealings with Russia, which has propped up the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and recognized their independence.

Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze told RFE/RL in a March 18 interview that Georgias push for greater integration with the European Union, membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and restoring its international recognized borders are red lines as it moves to mend tattered ties with Moscow.

"This [bilateral] dialogue [with Russia] is oriented to find ways to have relations in those areas which are not out of the red lines. And the red line is Georgias foreign-policy aspirations, its European integration, its integration into North Atlantic structures  (and) first of all, its territorial integrity," said Janelidze, who became Tbilisis top diplomat in January.

Janelidze spoke on the tail end of his visit to Washington, where he met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky), and other officials.

"We are grateful for the position of the United States for supporting our territorial integrity and sovereignty, Janelidze told RFE/RL. It was once again explicitly said during these meetings [with U.S. officials this week] and mentioned also by [Kerry]."

Tbilisi ended diplomatic relations with Moscow after it recognized the independence Abkhazia and South Ossetia following Russias short war with Georgia in 2008.

The two sides in recent years have held bilateral talks aimed at improving their strained relations led by the Georgian prime minister's special representative for relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin.

Karasin this week sparked outrage in Georgia after the latest round of these talks, held in Prague, by criticizing what he called provocative anti-Russian rhetoric being deployed both in Tbilisi, and in international forums.

Russia has long bristled at Georgias push for closer economic and political ties with the EU and fiercely opposed Tbilisis bid for NATO membership.

Georgia was designated by NATO as an "aspirant country" in 2011, three years after the alliance pledged to eventually grant the country membership.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last month that Georgia is moving closer to the military alliance by making reforms and major contributions to "our shared security," adding that NATO is committed to helping Georgia on its membership path.

But officials in Tbilisi have expressed impatience with NATO over what they see as lip service when it comes to Georgias potential inclusion in the alliance.

Georgian Defense Minister Tina Khidasheli told RFE/RL in August that any tentativeness by NATO to fulfill its membership promises risks encouraging Russia to continue pursuing aggressive policies.

Janelidze struck a more diplomatic tone when asked about Georgias expectation for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in July.

"For this Warsaw summit, we look forward for this confirmation of this progress on our membership aspiration path, and also we are talking about the next steps for enhancing our practical cooperation for defense-capability building," he said.
As Georgia reels from a sex-tape scandal involving top female public figures, a journalist threatened with exposure has fought back by publicly reaffirming her right to continue enjoying her sex life.

Inga Grigolia came under target in a video uploaded on March 14 that showed prominent politicians from both the opposition and the ruling Georgian Dream coalition engaged in sex acts.

While the high-profile TV host was not in the video, it contained a threat that compromising footage of Grigolia, two coalition members, and an opposition politician would be released unless they resigned by the end of March and left the country.

While the other victims remained in the shadows, the 45-year-old journalist, well-known in Georgia for her firebrand manner, refused to be cowed.

"I am Inga Grigolia, a woman, daughter, mother, and friend," she declared on her TV program within hours of being blackmailed. "I have a wonderful boyfriend, I have sex, and I plan to continue to live the way I live."

Compromising Tactic

In the days leading up to the threat, a separate video had emerged that purportedly depicted a prominent, married female politician in an adulterous encounter.

"This psychological terror is the worst way to destroy someone without bullets," Grigolia told RFE/RL. "The country is in panic, we are on standby waiting for these videos to be published. And no one knows when the next batch of videos will be released."

The leaked videos, and threats of more to come, have sparked an outcry in Georgia, where illicit footage featuring influential politicians and journalists regularly surfaces despite official pledges to stop it.

The use of sex espionage is a well-honed tactic dating back to the Soviet era, with covert footage having been used against a number of political figures in recent years in Russia and Azerbaijan.

In Georgia, the government of former President Mikheil Saakashvili stands accused of building up a massive collection of compromising videos featuring members of the opposition, 181 hours of which were publicly destroyed by the current government when it took power.

A mass protest is planned on March 19 in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to demand an end to illicit recordings and smear campaigns.

The latest scandal, which affects mostly female politicians, has also prompted a rare public debate about sex in the largely conservative Caucasus country.

Activists calling for tougher action against privacy breaches recently rallied outside government headquarters in Tbilisi with placards saying "Sex is not a crime!"

The Georgian president, Giorgi Margvelashvili, has himself weighed in, voicing solidarity with the victims and telling reporters that he "had, has, and will have a rich sex life."

Attack On Women

Some critics argue that Margvelashvili's comments detract from the real issue -- the government's failure to bring such shameful tactics to an end. But his comments have been widely praised in Georgia as both a brave show of support for the victims and an attempt to minimize the videos' damage.

Baia Pataraia, a lawyer who runs the Georgian women's rights organization Union Sapari, is among those praising the president, as well as Grigolia, for standing up against the sex tapes.

Like many other women's rights advocates, Pataraia views the footage release and threats as a brazen attack on women who have defied Georgia's macho culture and successfully pursued a career in a male-dominated profession.

"This is an open war against female politicians in Georgia," she charges.

Despite overwhelming public sympathy for those targeted in the videos, Pataraia believes the tapes will have a "very serious impact" on the female politicians, some of whom are running in the upcoming parliamentary elections slated for October.

Sex scandals are potentially much more damaging for women than for men in Georgia, where male public figures face little public backlash, if any, for their sexual relations.

"It's a post-Soviet, very patriarchal country where moralistic attitudes prevail, especially with regard to women's sexual freedom," says Pataraia. "The difference between men and women with regard to sexual freedom is huge in Georgia."

Damage Is Done

Asked by RFE/RL to comment on the recent leaks, several Tbilisi residents firmly sided with the victims and called on authorities to harshly punish those responsible for shooting and distributing the videos.

"The punishment they can incur under the law is not great enough to atone for the moral damage they have caused these politicians and their families," said Tamar, a middle-aged woman.

"These people must be tracked down and punished to the full extent of the law, so that no one is tempted to commit such offenses," said Lasha, 23.

Despite their unanimous outrage, however, about half of the interviewed Tbilisi residents admitted that the videos have tainted their perception of those affected by the scandal.

"Everyone's opinion about these politicians will change, even if people are denying it," said Georgii, 21.

So far, authorities have provided no indication as to who might be responsible for leaking the videos.

The United National Movement (UNM) that ruled Georgia under Saakashvili pins the blame squarely on government supporters, in particular former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the influential billionaire and founder of Georgian Dream.

Georgian Dream officials have rejected the accusations, claiming the videos were recorded during the UNM's time in power.

Despite Margvelashvili's pledge to track down and punish the "dark forces" who orchestrated the scandal, Georgians appear to have little public faith in the investigation so far.

"We still don't know who is playing these dirty tricks," laments Grigolia.

And despite anxiously bracing for the next video release, Grigolia is determined to battle back.

"I will openly fight for myself and for all those who are being threatened," she says. "I have no intention of living under threat all my life. If I submit to blackmail, these psychological terrorists will have reached their goal."

With reporting by Sergo Bregvadze of RFE/RL's Ekho Kavkazia
Thousands of supporters of powerful Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have defied a government ban and launched a sit-in outside Baghdad's Green Zone.

Many of the demonstrators carried Iraqi flags as they set up tents on March 18 to begin what they said was an open-ended protest.

The Iraqi cabinet banned the demonstration, noting the potential for terrorist activity in a nation occupied in part by the Islamic State group and plagued by such attacks.

Sadr, a Shi'ite Muslim leader, said the sit-in was needed to pressure Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to replace cabinet ministers with technocrats to counter the culture of political patronage that has fed corruption.

Sadr asked his followers to refrain from violence and said the protests would be peaceful.

Abadi on March 11 asked political blocs in parliament and "influential social figures" to nominate technocrats, but he remains under pressure from entrenched political factions not to erode their influence.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
San Francisco: As Twitter marks its 10th birthday Monday, it is somewhat of an awkward child -- having become a powerful communication tool but still struggling to win users and reach profitability. Since making a star-quality entrance a decade ago, Twitter has become a must-have tool for journalists, activists and celebrities but has struggled to show it can expand beyond its devoted "twitterati" to become a mainstream hit.

While Internet lovers might have trouble envisioning life without Twitter, the San Francisco-based company has seen its stock tank, a chief executive leave, and its staff cut. Twitter's woes include a slump in its stock price to all-time lows this year -- down nearly half from its 2013 stock market debut -- and ongoing losses, even as its revenue grows. Twitter's base of monthly active users remained stuck at 320 million at the end of 2015. While that is a big accomplishment, Twitter has failed to keep pace with fast-growing rivals and to expand beyond its base.

The troubles have forced Twitter to bring back co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive, but that has not stemmed rumors about a possible buyout or merger. "It's not dead yet," independent analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group said of Twitter. "Watching all the metrics, you see they are not getting a lot worse but they don't seem to be getting better either."

Some analysts believe Twitter's true value is being demonstrated in the US presidential race, especially by the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump. "Eight weeks ago I would have said the days of Twitter are over; I don't say that anymore," Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told AFP.

Twitter has 'legs'

The analyst said Trump has shown how potent Twitter can be for those who embrace it. "I think that probably the worst for Twitter is over," Chowdhry said. "This platform has legs." Chowdhry said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also used Twitter effectively to win his campaign and Tesla founder Elon Musk has been shaking up the auto sector with the help of the messaging platform.

Twitter and other social media have been important tools in movements such as the Arab Spring, and in protests in Turkey, where the government has sought to ban it. An advantage of Twitter is that it lets users "amplify" messages with tweets that echo on the Internet, and assess public sentiment in real-time by getting quick feedback.

Trump has boosted the number of his followers to nearly seven million, and has managed to beat rivals with a campaign largely based around Twitter. "I am pretty sure most of his followers are not on Twitter, but they know what he is saying on Twitter," analyst Omar Akhtar of the technology research firm Altimeter Group, said of Trump.

"The Twitter effect cannot be ignored. Twitter has a life beyond its platform, the trouble is it doesn't know how to monetize that part." The research firm eMarketer lowered its revenue estimates for Twitter this month, saying its "monetization" efforts -- the selling of advertising or "promoted tweets" for those who use the platform without logging in -- are falling short.

"Events like the US election and Summer Olympics this year may prove pivotal to the success of this strategy," said eMarketer's Martin Utreras.

Change brings risk

Twitter bears the weight of being measured against Internet titans such as Facebook, which is only a few years older but has eclipsed the billion-user mark. Flight VC partner Lou Kerner, whose investor group watches emerging companies, said Twitter has done "an amazing job" creating a new communication medium but appears to have leveled off instead of becoming ubiquitous.

"Like any other company, Twitter is judged on growth," Kerner said. "They have stagnated." Even more troubling, Kerner noted, is that engagement at Twitter has been ebbing in an indication that "people have tired of it." While Facebook has evolved with new features, Twitter has changed little since it began, according to Kerner.

"In order to reignite engagement, they would have to make profound changes to what they do," he said. "The problem is, you can't make a make a massive change without a massive risk." Some say Twitter has become a victim of its own success -- it has become so cluttered with information that it becomes hard to navigate. "Twitter is still incredibly relevant when it comes to major cultural events, major news events, the kinds of things people are discussing around the world," said Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer.

"But anyone who follows just a couple of hundred people can easily be overwhelmed by the amount of information. It becomes work rather than fun." Dorsey currently is managing two firms, Twitter and mobile payments startup Square -- both multibillion dollar companies struggling to achieve profitability.

Dorsey said Twitter priorities for this year include making it more intuitive to use; live-streaming video, and making it safer for people to freely express themselves on the platform. Twitter recently revamped its timeline, allowing the "best" tweets to rise to the top, despite warnings of a revolt from members loyal to the real-time flow of the messaging platform.

"If you look at the 10 years as a whole, you will see that Twitter really has revolutionized the way we communicate," Akhtar said. "To me, it is a utility like electricity or the phone -- it is really part of everyday life."

Over its 10-year history, Twitter has marked numerous world events and created its own unique moments. Here are a few key milestones in Twitter history:

March 2006: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first tweet, an automated message saying "just setting up my twttr." That same day, he sent the first live tweet, "inviting coworkers."

April 2008: US university student James Buck (@jamesbuck) got off a one-word tweet "Arrested" after being taken into custody by Egyptian authorities at an anti-government protest in that country. In what is seen as an early demonstration of the power of Twitter to rally people to a cause, the resulting outcry prompted authorities to quickly restore his liberty. He proclaimed his release in a tweet reading "Free."

January 2009: "There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy." Latvian-American Janis Kums (@jkrums) delivers news of a US Airways jet that crash-landed on the Hudson River in New York, breaking the story ahead of mainstream media outlets.

May 2009: The first tweet from space from astronaut Mike Massimino (@astro_mike): "From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

2011: The #ArabSpring hashtag takes hold on Twitter, underscoring the importance of the messaging platform in pro-democracy uprisings starting in Tunisia.

May 2011: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." IT consultant Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) unknowingly tweets about US Navy Seals raiding a nearby home in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was hiding. Bin Laden was killed during the operation.

November 2012: President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) tweets "Four more years" to proclaim his re-election victory along with a picture of him and his wife, Michelle, hugging. The post was the most shared tweet at that time.

December 2012: Pope Benedict XVI launched the first papal Twitter account (@pontifex), which was continued by his successor, Pope Francis. The first message was "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

March 2014: A picture tweeted live from the Oscars ceremony by Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) with Jennifer Lawrence, Brad Pitt and taken by Bradley Cooper is retweeted more than three million times, a record: "If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars"

June 2014: The Central Intelligence Agency (@cia) shows a sense of humor: "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet."

June 2015: Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) makes her new transgender identity public: "I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me." The message is retweeted more than 250,000 times.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
For months the national support organization for Vladimir Putin has been releasing cartoons showing the Russian president executing allegedly corrupt officials in elaborate fashion.

Now Putin himself has invoked imagery of capital punishment, threatening "to hang" the person responsible for reconstruction of a highway in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula forcibly seized by Russia in 2014, if the individual "fails to do the job."

Speaking on Tuzla Island on March 18, Putin expressed surprise that local authorities are choosing contractors for the highway project connecting Crimeas capital, Simferopol, with the Kerch Strait.

The general state plan to develop Crimea, after all, is being overseen by the Economic Development Ministry, while the project is under the supervision of the Transportation Ministry.

"We need a concrete person, whom it would be possible to hang if he fails to do the job," Putin was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying.

Putin was visiting Crimea on March 18 to mark the second anniversary of the peninsula's annexation, which triggered Western sanctions targeting Moscow and preceded a bloody war between Russia-backed separatists and Kyivs forces in eastern Ukraine.



The reconstruction and widening of the Simferopol-Kerch highway is part of a plan to build a bridge across the strait to connect Russia with Crimea.



Kremlin critics say that much of the billions of dollars being poured into the peninsula is being looted, and senior officials in Crimeas Moscow-backed government have been targeted in official corruption probes.



Road construction has long been plagued by graft and mismanagement in Russia, and Crimea appears to be facing similar obstacles.



As The New York Times reported, Kremlin auditors said in June 2015 that two-thirds of the funds that Russia had earmarked for road construction in the previous year was unaccounted for.



In June of last year, Igor Astakhov, deputy head of Roavtodor, Russias federal roads service, also deployed an execution-related metaphor to express his dismay with the fact that only 110 kilometers of a planned 198 kilometers of road had been repaired.

"Its tough for me to imagine a situation in which road builders on federal thoroughfares or in Russian regions only completed 60 percent of a project: Heads would fly immediately." he told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Russia currently has a moratorium on the death penalty.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told Putin on March 18 that the Kerch-Simferopol project had been hit with delays due to a dishonest project designer, TASS reported.



Moscow-installed Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov, meanwhile, told the Russian president that the contractor had not been paid but is seeking 280 million rubles ($4.1 million) in compensation via the courts.



Aksyonov gave reassurances that, going forward, the project would be led by a new contractor well known in the country and built by one of the leaders in this industry, TASS reported.



Putin could likely help out in bringing in the new help. His friend and former judo sparring partner, after all, is construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, whose companies secured $7.4 billion in contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian resort town of Sochi.





With reporting by Merkhat Sharipzhanov
Russian police have detained an activist at an improvised memorial near the Kremlin where Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was gunned down last year.

OVD-Info online news portal reports that Andrei Darklait was watching over the site overnight when police detained him. No more details were available.

Activists have organized a night watch at Nemtsov's memorial because it has been vandalized at least four times since January.

Nemtsov was fatally shot on a bridge near the Kremlin on February 27, 2015.

Several men from the North Caucasus region have been arrested and charged with Nemtsov's killing.

Nemtsov's relatives and lawyers have expressed skepticism about the probe, insisting the killing must have been ordered by high-ranking Russian officials.

With reporting by OVD-Info
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Russian authorities have created a pervasive climate of fear and repression in Crimea in the two years since it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine.

In a report released on March 18, the New York-based rights group said that since Russian's annexation in March 2014 the "space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically."

HRW also said Russian-backed authorities have "harassed, intimidated, and taken arbitrary legal action against Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority who openly opposed Russia's occupation."

In a statement on March 18, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini, reiterated that the 28-member bloc did not recognize Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Mogherini also reaffirmed the EU's "deep concern at the military build-up and the deterioration of the human rights situation in the Crimean Peninsula, including the denial of freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of religion and belief, and the persecution of persons belonging to minorities, in particular the Crimean Tatars."

The EU statement also called for the release of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was arrested in Crimea in May 2014 and was jailed in August last year for 20 years on terrorism charges that he and international rights groups call politically motivated.

The bloc also urged the release of Oleksandr Kolchenko, an activist sentenced to 10 years in prison by Russian-backed authorities in Crimea.
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel has called on the European Union to create conditions by this summer to lift sanctions imposed against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

"That must be our common goal," said Gabriel, whose Social Democrats (SDP) share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union.

"[We should] aim for such a deal with the Russian Federation with all our strength," he said, during a meeting of the German-Russian forum in Berlin on March 17.

The West has imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Germany and France have said lifting sanctions depends on Russia complying with the terms of the Minsk peace process, which has stalled.

The EU has extended asset freezes and travel bans on Russians and Russian companies but there is less agreement on whether to extend more far-reaching sanctions on Russia's banking, defense, and energy sectors from July.

Based on reporting by Reuters and RT
Russia says its jets are flying in support of the Syrian military's offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (IS) militants.

Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian Military General Staff said on March 18 that Russias aircraft based in Syria were conducting up to 25 bombing raids daily to back up the large-scale operation.

Activists who monitor the Syrian conflict said troops were slowly advancing toward Palmyra amid intense air strikes in the city and its suburbs.

Rudskoi told reporters in Moscow that the Syrian army is close to taking control of Palmyra.

He said Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces had seized key hilltop points near Palmyra and cut supply routes leading to the IS-held city.

Earlier in the week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to partially withdraw from Syria.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine two years ago as a long-awaited moment of historic justice, while Western governments assailed Moscow over the annexation and Human Rights Watch described a pervasive climate of fear and repression on the peninsula.



On national television, Putin thanked Crimeans for what he termed their act of free will in backing the annexation in a referendum in March 2014, which was widely seen as illegitimate by the international community and followed a military takeover of the Black Sea peninsula.



As Putin marked the anniversary with a trip to an island off Crimea, where he inspected building work on a massive bridge to Russia, the European Union decried Russias military buildup on the territory and called on more nations to impose sanctions on Moscow -- as the EU, the United States, and other Western countries have done.

A prominent Crimean Tatar leader likened Putin to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who deported the Crimean Tatar community en masse during World War II, and said he was visiting the scene of the crime.

EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini expressed "deep concern" at the "deterioration of the human rights situation" in Crimea, where activists say the Muslim Tatar minority and others who opposed Russia's takeover have faced discrimination, harassment, and violence.

"The European Union remains committed to fully implementing its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures," the European Council, which represents EU governments, said in a statement. "The EU calls again on UN member states to consider similar nonrecognition measures."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned what it called a "pervasive climate of fear and repression" that has gripped the peninsula, drawing attention to "enforced disappearances, attacks and beatings of Crimean Tatar and pro-Ukraine activists and journalists."

In Moscow and other cities, the state organized numerous celebrations to mark the annexation of what Putin has called "sacred" Russian land -- part of a Kremlin narrative aimed at pushing aside protests from Kyiv and the West and instill pride in Russians.

WATCH: Crimean Tatar Leader: Putin Will Help 'Wake Up Russia Sooner'

State television showed thousands of Russians waving flags and singing along at a celebratory concert called Were Together near the Kremlin to mark the annexation, which was widely supported in Russia but ruined ties with Ukraine and set off the most severe tension between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.



The crowd stretched hundreds of meters back along the bridge where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a strident critic of Putins interference in Ukraine, was shot dead in February 2015.



Putin congratulated Russians on the annexation in a short clip broadcast on state-run Channel One that was also shown at the concert and met with cheers.



"Without any exaggeration whatsoever, millions of people had waited for and thought about this historic justice. It happened thanks to the free will of Crimean and Sevastopol residents in a referendum two years ago. Now that we are together, we can do even more," said Putin.



But Russia has not delivered on many of the promises it made to Crimeans two years ago.

The State Duma, Russia's lower parliament house, said it would work a half-day to allow lawmakers to attend the pop concert by the Kremlin. Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDPR party has called for March 18 -- the day a treaty was signed in 2014 that in the Kremlin's eyes made Crimea part of Russia -- to be made an official national holiday.

Putin -- who at first denied sending troops to Crimea but later emphasized that he personally oversaw the operation to annex the peninsula -- traveled to Tuzla Island, which lies in the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia. He visited the site of part of a bridge Russia is building to Crimea, whose only existing connections to the mainland are with southern Ukraine.

According to the state-run news agency TASS, the bridge is slated to cost 212 billion rubles ($3.1 billion) -- about six times what Putin said on May 17 was the amount Russia had spent on its military operation in Syria since launching air strikes in September.

Putin has rejected international criticism of the annexation and has said the transition to Russian rule was smooth.

But HRW said that the "space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically" since the takeover.

Crimea's isolation has made it very difficult to conduct comprehensive human rights monitoring there," Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director for HRW, said in a statement. "But serious human rights abuses in Crimea should not slip to the bottom of the international agenda."

Crimean Tatars made up about 12 percent of the peninsula's population before the Russian takeover and largely opposed it, many of them boycotting the March 16, 2014, referendum in which Crimean residents were asked whether they wanted to join Russia.

Several Crimean Tatars have been abducted or disappeared, and the Mejlis -- the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body -- has had its property in Crimea confiscated and may soon be "banned" by the Russian authorities who control the peninsula.

Speaking to RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service on March 18, Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov said that Putin's adventurous attack on Ukraine, his military campaign in Syria, and the harsh limitation of human rights in Russia will catch up with him sooner or later.



"In the last two years, [Putin] always makes decisions which turn out really catastrophically for Russia itself," he said. "I just think Putin will help us wake up Russian society sooner."



Russia moved to seize Crimea shortly after Ukraines president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, was pushed from power by protesters angry over his decision to abandon plans for a landmark pact with the EU and forge closer ties with Moscow. Russia subsequently backed separatists who seized parts of eastern Ukraine, leading to a war that has killed more than 9,100 people.



Speaking to students in Prague on March 17, Chubarov compared Putin to Stalin -- under whom the Crimean Tatar population was deported en masse to Central Asia during World War II, with many of them dying on the way or after arrival.



A criminal is always drawn to the scene of a crime, he said of Putins visit. The world already knew one paranoiac of the 20th century, and we all know how that ended.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly criticized U.S. "punishments" handed to officers involved in a deadly bombing raid on an Afghan hospital last year.

The U.S. military has disciplined at least 10 soldiers for mistakes that led to the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in the northern province of Kunduz that killed 42 people.

But the punishments did not involve jail or criminal charges.

In a statement released on March 18, the New York-based rights group said the failure to criminally investigate the officers was an "injustice and insult" to the victims.

"The failure to criminally investigate senior officials liable for the attack is not only an affront to the lives lost at the MSF hospital, but a blow against the rule of law in Afghanistan and elsewhere," the statement said.

The disciplinary actions followed a military investigation of the devastating October 3, 2015, bombardment that largely destroyed the hospital in Kunduz and killed many of the doctors and patients there.

"I can tell you that those individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties and were referred for administrative action," Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told AFP.

Some of the soldiers and officers received letters of reprimand that were tough enough to end their chances for further promotion, while others were suspended from duties.

Ryder said officers could be removed from command for their involvement.

The incident provoked an international outcry and prompted the French doctors' group to permanently close the hospital, which had provided vital services to the region not available elsewhere.

The doctors group called the attack "relentless and brutal" and demanded an international investigation. It was carried out by one of the most lethal weapons in the U.S. arsenal, a U.S. Air Force special operations AC-130 gunship.

U.S. President Barack Obama apologized for the unintended killings, which occurred as U.S. military advisers were helping Afghan forces retake Kunduz after its takeover by the Taliban the previous month.

Some Afghan officials claimed the hospital had been overrun by the Taliban, but no evidence of that ever surfaced.

The U.S. military told AP that the gunship was dispatched to hit a Taliban command center in a different building not far from the hospital. When its targeting sensors malfunctioned, soldiers relied on a physical description of the building that led them to fire at the hospital.

U.S. officials acknowledged to AP that they missed opportunities to avoid the error, as they got repeated calls from the hospital staff pleading with them to stop the attack, which they said lasted a half-hour.

The U.S. military investigation has been completed but never released. The Pentagon is due to publish a version of its report on the attack next week.

At a November news conference, Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, a spokesman for the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the actions taken by the U.S. aircrew were "not appropriate" to the threat they faced, suggesting that a number of them could be found at fault and disciplined.

With reporting by AP and AFP
Trudeau, who is in New York as part of a United Nations visit, was in a smoked meat restaurant when he was cornered by the two desperate Americans. (Photo: Facebook screen grab)

New York: If the prospect of Donald Trump being the next American President isnt funny enough, heres something else to tickle your funny bone, in a recent incident, two Americans went down on their knees and begged the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to run for President.

Trudeau, who is in New York as part of a United Nations visit, was in a smoked meat restaurant when he was cornered by the two desperate Americans.

The Canadian Prime Minister tried to explain the two men that even if he wanted to, he couldnt run for president because he wasnt born in America. But the two men wouldnt take no for an answer, thats when they resorted to going down on their knees and begging him further.

Explaining Trudeau their plight, the men said, All our guys are so bad. Theyre either boring or weird, you have to settle for them, please!

Trudeau humoured the two young men and tried to explain that he already had a pretty important job. But his fans wouldnt relent.
Paedophilia-related crimes carry sentences of up to 20 years in Kazakhstan. (Representational Image, Photo: Pixabay

Astana, Kazakhstan: Kazakhstan will now allow chemical castration of convicted paedophiles if there was a court order.

As the amendment to the criminal code was passed by the ex-Soviet Kazakhstans parliament on Thursday, senator Byrganym Aitimova said that castration would be temporary, consisting of a one-time injection based on the necessity of preventing the man from (committing) sexual violence.

Any such decision would be provided by a court in consultation with a medical authority, according to the amendment.

The bill has been sent to the office of President Nursultan Nazarbayev for approval.

Paedophilia-related crimes carry sentences of up to 20 years in Kazakhstan.

Chemical castration is practised in many countries although nations that force sex offenders to accept the medication are in the minority.

Unlike surgical castration, chemical castration does not prevent a person from experiencing sexual urges indefinitely, although sceptics argue it does not necessarily prevent future attacks. Some rights groups oppose the practice.

Last year Kazakhstans state prosecutor said there had been a spike in child rapes with figures doubling to almost 1,000 cases annually between 2010 and 2014.

The authoritarian Central Asian countrys bicameral parliament largely serves to rubber- stamp policies made by the government.
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Belkaid was killed by a police sniper while trying to shoot at police during a chaotic gun battle on Tuesday in the quiet Forest district in southern Brussels. (Photo: AP, representational image)

Brussels: An Algerian killed during an anti-terror raid in Brussels is on a list of Islamic State fighters leaked last week, Belgian public television VRT reported Friday.

The 35-year-old Algerian identified as Mohamed Belkaid, who was living illegally in Belgium, had volunteered to commit a suicide bomb attack, according to the Dutch speaking TV channel.

Contacted by AFP, Belgium's federal prosecutor declined to comment on the report.

The Sky News channel last week claimed to have gotten hold of documents containing the names of 22,000 members of the IS group.

According to the VRT report, Belkaid fought in Syria from April 19, 2014 alongside the IS jihadists. He went by the nom de guerre Abou Abdel Aziz al-Jazayri (the Algerian).

After his return from Syria, he is believed to have passed through Sweden, the TV channel added.

Belkaid was killed by a police sniper while trying to shoot at police during a chaotic gun battle on Tuesday in the quiet Forest district in southern Brussels.

Next to his body were found an IS flag, a Kalashnikov and a book on Salafism, an extreme form of Islam, investigators said.

Two suspects were still at large after the bloodshed, which erupted as Belgian and French police searched a property in connection with the November 13 Paris attacks, claimed by IS, in which 130 people died.

Belkaid had been unknown to Belgian authorities except for a case of minor theft in 2014, authorities said.
Roanoke County school officials are asking for at least a 2 percent raise for all employees in the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget, with potentially larger increases for employees whose salaries arent at market value.

Members of the school board got the first look at Superintendent Greg Killoughs proposed budget on Thursday, after several months of budget work sessions that have focused on different aspects of the budget.

The proposed $143.2 million operating budget is larger than this years by about 4.7 percent. The district anticipates about $4.7 million in additional state revenue next year and about $1 million more from Roanoke County.

The 2 percent raise for employees will be offset partially with state money set aside for teachers by the General Assembly-approved budget. The state funding for positions deemed essential under its Standards of Quality funding formula will go into effect mid-year.

Killough and staff are proposing potential salary increases beyond the 2 percent cost of living adjustment. Hes asked the school board to approve an additional $4.6 million for market adjustments.

Evergreen Solutions, a consulting firm hired by the district, told the board last week that most of its salaries are not competitive against others in the market, including other area school districts. Many of the salary scales became compressed during the Great Recession, where for three years the board did not offer a raise, officials have said.

Evergreen recommended slight adjustments for administrator positions and larger adjustments for instructional and support staff positions.

There is a massive need and you have seen the lives that are impacted by this, Killough told the board.

In addition, the district also is proposing adding 17.5 teachers, including a teacher to lead a new EMT program approved by the board earlier this year. The district also has proposed hiring an additional 21 bus aides to assist special education students.

One more work session is scheduled for the board to discuss the budget. They will meet next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in advance of their regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, when the budget must be approved.

The adopted budget then will go before the board of supervisors.
Obituaries 10-21-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John E. Hynes...

Obituaries 10-7-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John F. Keane...
Markus Reichel, a former employee of the German intelligence agency BND, arrives for his trial at a court in Munich on Thursday. (Photo: AFP)

Berlin: A Munich court has handed down an eight-year prison sentence to a German former intelligence agent who spied for both the CIA and the Russian secret service because he wanted to experience something exciting.

Markus Reichel had admitted to handing over scores of documents and internal information to the CIA, including names and addresses of agents for the Federal Intelligence Service or BND, in exchange for 95,000 euros ($107,000).

Some 200 of those documents sent to the CIA were deemed very sensitive, and even included papers detailing the BNDs counter-espionage strategies.

The 32-year-old also delivered three classified documents to the Russian secret service.

Reichels case had emerged during a furore over revelations of widespread US spying in documents released by former CIA intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, which had also plunged its partner service the BND into an unprecedented crisis.

Partially disabled after a botched childhood vaccination, Reichel, who speaks haltingly, had admitted that he had spied for foreign services out of dissatisfaction with his job at the BND.

No one trusted me with anything at the BND. At the CIA it was different, he told the court at the opening of his trial in November.

Not only did the CIA offer adventure, the Americans also gave him what he craved  recognition.

I would be lying if I said that I didnt like that, he told the court. I wanted something new, to experience something exciting.

After finishing his studies at a training centre for the disabled in 2004, Reichel had struggled to find a job until late 2007, when the BND offered him a position in its personnel division.

As a member of staff in the lowest salary band, he drew a monthly net pay of 1,200 euros.

The CIA did not pay him significantly more  he received between 10,000 and 20,000 euros a year in cash at a secret meeting point in Austria, but it gave him a thrill, he said.

Using the undercover name Uwe, Reichel first sent documents to a US agent codenamed Alex by post before later transmitting them by email and later directly entering them into hidden software on a computer provided by the CIA.
THREE men have been charged following an armed raid on a bank in January.

The men were due to appear at Rotherham Magistrates Court this morning charged with offences relating to a robbery at the Yorkshire Bank on Broad Street, Parkgate on January 29.

Paul Smith (54), of The Coppice, Kimberworth Park, and Jason Hepponstall (27), from Kimberworth Park, were both charged with robbery last night.

Smith was remanded and Hepponstall bailed until court today.

Smith has also been charged withan additional offence of robbery as well as attempted robbery, firearms and driving offences.

Michael Lydon (52), from Cleethorpes, was charged on March 2 with two counts of robbery, attempted robbery, firearms and driving offences.

He appeared at Rotherham Magistrates Court earlier this month and has been remanded into custody until March 31 when he will appear at Sheffield Crown Court.
Public prosecutors had asked for Maestre to be sentenced to a year in jail, the maximum penalty allowed under Spanish law for the crime. (Photo: Twitter)

Madrid: A Spanish court on Friday slapped a spokeswoman for Madrid's city council with a fine of 4,320 euros ($4,868) for taking her top off in a chapel during a protest in 2011 when she was still a university student.

The court found Rita Maestre, 27, a Podemos councillor and former student of the far-left party's leader Pablo Iglesias, guilty of "infringing on freedom of conscience and religious convictions" for bursting into the chapel with some 50 others at Madrid's Complutense University.

The protesters said they were demonstrating against what they consider to be the Roman Catholic Church's "antidemocratic and chauvinistic" positions.

The protest had sparked an outcry, leading to discontent from right-wing politicians and the Church, and it turned Maestre into a favourite target of Spanish conservatives.

A left-wing coalition including Podemos has governed Madrid city hall since June 2015, after over two decades of rule by the conservative Popular Party, which is in power at the national level.

Public prosecutors had asked for Maestre to be sentenced to a year in jail, the maximum penalty allowed under Spanish law for the crime.

Maestre insisted during her court appearance last month that it was a peaceful, legitimate demonstration. "If it offended someone, I have no problems in apologising," she said, adding she had already said sorry to the archbishop of Madrid.

Iglesias, who was politics professor at the university at the time, defended Maestre on Friday saying she "defended secularism and women's rights".
A NEW investigation into suspected child sexual exploitation within one of Rotherhams minority groups is underway.

South Yorkshire Police began intelligence gathering in October around possible CSE involving the Roma community.

This was stepped-up in January as agencies began working together on the new investigation - codenamed Operation Scoprio.

The information has been revealed by Rotherham Borough Council Commissioner Malcolm Newsam in the Commissioners' 12 month progress review which was published this week.

Commissioner Newsam said: In January 2016 a further multi-agency enquiry into suspected child sexual exploitation within a minority group commenced and this may become a significant challenge later in the year.

Preliminary enquiries have so far identified a number of children from a minority group believed to be at risk of sexual exploitation and drugs misuse.

This operation is still at the earliest stages but could have major resourcing implications as it gains momentum and it is important that the council and South Yorkshire Police continue to demonstrate the excellent practice that has led to the successful outcomes to date.

A joint statement by Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police said: South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Councils Childrens Services are conducting a joint investigation after identifying a number of girls in the Roma community who are believed to be at risk of sexual exploitation and drug misuse in Rotherham.

The children are receiving specialist support from a range of agencies, who are working closely with affected communities.

Anyone with concerns about child sexual exploitation should contact the police on 101 or the new national helpline Say Something on 116 000.

The Rotherham Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, MASH, can also be contacted on 01709 336 080. Always call 999 in an emergency.
Portuguese company Portdiamonds / Numerplatina Ida has announced its first-ever export of rough diamonds with Kimberley Process certificates to Dubai in a press release sent to Rough&Polished on Thursday. The Lisbon-based rough diamond trading company, which has been operating for more than four years, exported the KP-approved diamonds to AIC Diamonds which is a member of the Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre, and will be exporting rough diamonds on a regular basis.

Portdiamonds / Numerplatina Ida CEO Vitor Rita said the diamonds exported to Dubai are from Sierra Leone, and the company will be receiving 500 carats of gem-quality rough stones every month for sale to clients in all the main diamond trading centers. The firm will carry out its next export of a parcel of diamonds next week.







From left: Philip Hayward, CEO of AIC Diamonds DMCC; Vitor Rita, CEO, Portdiamonds / Numerplatina Ida; Samuel David of Portdiamonds / Numerplatina Ida; Maria da Luz of the Diamond Office Lisbon; Antonio Almeida, Director of the Diamond Office Lisbon; Vitor Gomes, handling expert for diamonds from Jose Inacio Despachante Official.

According to Vitor Rita, Lisbon was the first diamond trading capital more than 500 years ago when diamonds were brought for sale throughout Europe. "We Portuguese are proud of our diamond history and heritage and have kept it alive in our hearts, and now we are going to be back again as an important and growing diamond center," he said.

"We are delighted to send the first-ever parcel of Kimberley Process approved diamonds from Lisbon to Dubai. We believe this will be the first of many diamonds to be exported by Portdiamonds / Numerplatina Ida. We are an experienced diamond trading company with first-hand sources at many African diamond mines which gives us a great advantage in being able to provide clients with a consistent and reliable supply of a wide range of rough stones. We look forward to expanding our client base and the volume of high-quality diamonds we export," Vitor Rita added.

Alex Shishlo, Editor in Chief of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished


Gem Diamonds chief executive Clifford Elphick has expressed concern over the breakage of diamonds during the crushing process and called for the development of new methods to avoid breakages.

He told a diamonds conference held in Gaborone, Botswana that current mining methods were not that different from the rudimentary methods used during the Stone Age.

Mineral recovery hasnt really changed, in my opinion, from what the caveman did when he first discovered iron, said Elphick who leads a company currently mining in Botswana and Lesotho.

we are still blasting, etcetera, so we go and crush, crush and there you have your mineral.

This is a problematic way of extracting diamonds especially high value diamondswe have a real need to need to solve this problem

He said Type IIa diamonds common at the companys 70 percent-owned Letseng mine in Lesotho were very susceptible to damages.

Despite its recovery of a number of large diamonds, Letseng officials as demonstrated by Elphick during the conference, were concerned that major stones were not surviving the crushing process.

Gem Diamonds had employed X-ray transmissive (XRT) technology at Letseng before the crushing process to identify large rough type II crystals.

Mines were increasingly focusing on recovering high-value stones, which are on high demand.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau from Gaborone, Botswana, Rough&Polished




Debswana, a joint venture between De Beers and Botswana, said that its Letlhakane Mine is now nearing the end of run of mine (ROM) supply.

The mine, which is situated 50 km from the companys Orapa Mine produced 547 447 carats in 2014.

Fluor South Africa senior process engineer Werner Krugel told a diamonds conference in Gaborone, Botswana that they were, however, working on a Letlhakane Mine tailings resource treatment project, which is expected to extend mine life by 24 years.

Letlhakane Mine Tailings Resource Project was initiated in October 2011 to explore the extension of the mine life by treating the existing tailings resource.

The project was projected to treat 3.6 million tonnes per year and producing 800 000 carats per annum.

Recent media reports indicated that stockpiles of ore would be available for treatment post conventional pit mining and the plant faces closure by 2017.

The mine which was first discovered during the sampling and evaluation process at Orapa, became Debswana's second mine when it opened in 1975.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau from Gaborone, Botswana, Rough&Polished




(TASS) - Dividends to be paid by ALROSA, the worlds largest diamond miner, in 2015 may reach 50% of the companys net profit under IFRS, which is RUB 32.2 billion. This was announced by Andrey Zharkov, ALROSAs President during a conference call on Thursday.

In line with the approved dividend policy, we pay 35% of net profit under IFRS. But I think that this year we can expect that dividends may reach 50% of net profit earned in 2015, Zharkov said.

The companys dividend payments amounted to RUB 10.8 billion a year in 2013 and 2014.

In 2015, ALROSA gained RUB 32.2 billion in net profit compared to a net loss of RUB 16.8 billion in 2014. Thus, the company can allocate about RUB 16.1 billion for dividends in 2015, which is more than in 2014 by 49%.

ALROSA mulls to drive its sales in 2016 to a little bit more than $ 3.5 billion, and its production may be reduced - the final decision on this matter will be made later.

We maintain a cautious view of this year. We predict that our sales may be just a bit over $ 3.5 billion. Our task, as we see it, is to avoid accumulating stocks during this year. Although the first two months of 2016 were stronger, this was primarily due to the marketing policy pursued by the company, which we carried out in relation to customers and the market in the 2nd half of 2016, Zharkov said.

ALROSAs output in 2016 could reach 34-39 million carats against 38.3 million carats in 2015, he added. According to Zharkov, the company is considering two options as far as the level of production in 2016 is concerned and its decrease may be possible. The decision will be taken later, he said.

The company can afford to reduce production, as its stocks increased in 2015 due to poor market conditions and the decline in diamond prices.

ALROSAs stocks by the end of 2015 is estimated at 22 million carats of diamonds worth $ 2.5 billion, Zharkov disclosed. By the end of 2015, our reserves were estimated at just a bit over 22 million carats. In terms of money, they are valued at more than $ 2.5 billion. Today fluctuations, of course, occur, as we have seen quite a good start to the year and this gives quite a positive impact on stocks at the moment, the president of ALROSA said.

"We have more than $ 600 million in our accounts. Therefore, we are quite comfortably viewing our ability to settle the companys debt this year, Zharkov said.

ALROSA's net debt as of the end of 2015 increased by 15% to RUB 202.656 billion. The company's total debt amounted to $ 3.04 billion, of which $ 350 million (bank loans) are to be repaid in 2016.

In 2017, we will have to repay a loan totaling $ 1.09 billion. We're going to solve this problem quite simply in the second half of this year - we want to refinance some part of the debt to a later maturity date in 2019. We plan to transfer to 2019 about $ 500-600 million of redemptions targeted for 2017. Thus, we will have a very comfortable debt curve in the foreseeable future, Igor Kulichik, CFO of ALROSA said in the course of the conference call.

In 2016, ALROSA plans to keep its capital expenditures within the range of RUB 34 billion - at the level of 2015. This includes about RUB 6 billion earmarked to be invested into the Verkhne-Munskoye diamond field in Yakutia in 2016, where the start of production is scheduled for 2018, the president of the company noted.

As Andrey Zharkov pointed out, ALROSA was not considering specific targets within M & A transactions.

Despite the fact that we are really maintaining continuous negotiations with various market players about a possible sale of our gas assets, I would not say that there are specific targets that we are currently considering in terms of M & A transactions or in the context of increasing our interest in some specific projects. I cannot say now that we have a plan for M & A-transactions, he said.

The funds that we can get from the sale of non-core assets will be first of all allocated to the repayment of our debt and in the interest of our shareholders, Zharkov added.

ALROSA is the world's largest diamond producer by carat. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of diamonds with operations in Yakutia and in the Arkhangelsk Region. In 2015, the company produced 38.3 million carats of diamonds.

The largest shareholders of ALROSA are the Russian Federation - 44%, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) - 25%, and Yakutias uluses (municipalities) - 8%, while the companys free float is 23%.

In early February this year, Alexey Ulyukayev, the head of Russias Ministry of Economic Development mentioned ALROSA among the state-owned companies that could be privatized in the first place. The Federal Property Management Agency also believes that the company is ready for privatization. According to Ulyukayev, ALROSA may float 10,9-18,9% of its shares, but the decision will be taken after the work with consultants is done.

ALROSA expects the government and the President of the Russian Federation to take a decision with regard to floating its 10.9% stake, Zharkov said. Part of the federal package is indeed being considered for privatization, i.e. for sale by way of public offering of about 10.9% of shares from the state-owned stake in the company. The decision is currently under consideration by the government and the president. We are waiting for their decision, Zharkov said.




London: A 26-year-old stepmother has been arrested and was due for arraignment after her four-year-old step son died under unclear circumstances it was reported.

According to the Independent, Ohio police arrived at the home of Anna Ritchie on Wednesday morning after she reported that her stepson Austin Cooper was not breathing. Medics tended to the kid but could not revive him.

Ritchie told police that she had put Austins legs in boiling water as a punishment the evening before, CBS News reports. She added that she put the child to bed and did not believe he was seriously injured.Investigations to establish the precise cause of the childs death and an autopsy is due to be performed by Warren County Coroner. Ritchie is being held at Warren County Jail.
Canada-based energy infrastructure company TransCanada Corp. (TRP, TRP.TO) said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Columbia Pipeline Group Inc. (CPGX) for about $13 billion in an all-cash deal, including the assumption of about $2.8 billion of debt.

The deal will combine TransCanada's North American energy infrastructure network with Columbia Pipeline's strategically located interstate pipeline, midstream and storage assets. TransCanada is the company that had proposed the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline project, but the project was rejected by President Barack Obama.

Under the terms of the all-cash deal, unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, Columbia shareholders will receive $25.50 per common share, an 11 per cent premium based on Columbia Pipeline's closing stock price on the NYSE of $23.00 as of March 16, 2016.

Houston, Texas-based Columbia Pipeline operates an approximate 24,000-kilometer, or 15,000-mile network of interstate natural gas pipelines extending from New York to the Gulf of Mexico, with a significant presence in the Appalachia production basin.

Columbia Pipeline's assets include Columbia Gas Transmission, which operates approximately 18,000 km of pipelines and 286 billion cubic feet of storage capacity in the Marcellus and Utica shale production areas, and Columbia Gulf Transmission, an approximate 5,400-km pipeline system that extends from Appalachia to the Gulf Coast.

The transaction, expected to close in the second half of 2016, requires the affirmative vote of holders of a majority of CPG's outstanding shares.

TransCanada expects the acquisition, net of associated financing and portfolio management, to be accretive to earnings per share in the first full year of ownership.

Following completion of the transaction, TransCanada will own the general partner of Columbia Pipeline Partners LP (CPPL), all of CPPL's incentive distribution rights and all of CPPL's subordinated units, which represent a 46.5 percent limited partnership interest in CPPL. Upon closing of the transaction, CPPL will remain a publicly traded partnership.

TransCanada noted that its C$13.5 billion portfolio of near-term investment opportunities together with Columbia Pipeline's C$9.6 billion of commercially secured projects, and approximately $250 million of targeted annual cost, revenue and financing benefits, are expected to deliver significant shareholder value over the coming years.

TRP closed Thursday's trading at $38.08, up $1.38 or 3.76 percent on a volume of 936,754 shares.

CPGX closed the regular trading session at $23.51, up $0.51 or 2.22 percent on a volume of 3.20 million shares. In after-hours, the stock further gained $1.24 or 5.27 percent to $24.75.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
The mid-week rally in gold prices ran out of steam Friday morning, as traders booked profits ahead of data on the US consumer.

Gold for April was down 12.90 an ounce at $1252.10, unable to break new highs for the year.

The University of Michigan is scheduled to release its preliminary consumer sentiment index for March at 10 am ET. Economists expect the index to rise to 92.2 from 91.7 for February.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Two new cases of Ebola have been detected in Guinea, and WHO has warned that the African country is still at risk of Ebola flare-ups.

WHO dispatched a team of specialists to the southern prefecture of Nzerekore after new cases were confirmed in a rural village.

Guinean officials in the region alerted WHO and partners on 16 March to three unexplained deaths in recent weeks in the village of Koropara and said other members of the same family are currently showing symptoms characteristic of Ebola.

Guinea's Ministry of Health, WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and UNICEF sent in investigators on 17 March. Samples were taken from 4 individuals. A mother and her 5-year-old son, relatives of the deceased, confirmed positive for Ebola virus disease in lab tests. The 2 have been taken to a treatment facility.

The new infections in Guinea were confirmed the same day that WHO declared the end of the latest Ebola flare-up in neighboring Sierra Leone. WHO said recurrences of the disease should be anticipated and that the 3 Ebola-affected countries must maintain strong capacity to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks.

"WHO continues to stress that Sierra Leone, as well as Liberia and Guinea, are still at risk of Ebola flare-ups, largely due to virus persistence in some survivors, and must remain on high alert and ready to respond," WHO said in a statement.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
CityCenter Holdings, LLC, a venture between MGM Resorts International (MGM) and Infinity World Development Corp, said it has agreed to sell The Shops at Crystals in Las Vegas to a venture led by Invesco Real Estate (IVZ) and Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG) for about $1.1 billion.

Located at the entryway of CityCenter and in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, the retail asset boasts over 324,000 square feet of luxury shopping space. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016.

The Shops at Crystals is anchored by 10 luxury flagship stores, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Prada, Fendi and Tiffany & Co., as well as 30 unique-to-market luxury retailers including Celine, Saint Laurent and Richard Mille.

Opened in late 2009, The Shops at Crystals features a dedicated tram station, connecting to the Bellagio Resort & Casino and Monte Carlo Resort & Casino and is in close proximity to several luxury resorts totalling approximately 16,000 rooms.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
With Senate Republicans refusing to consider his nominee for the Supreme Court, President Barack Obama has warned of the further politicization of the judiciary branch.

In an interview with NPR released Friday, Obama said the Republican plan to not vote or even hold hearings on his nominee has the potential to change the process so presidents can only get judges confirmed when their own party controls the Senate.

"At that point, the judiciary becomes a pure extension of ," Obama said. "And that damages people's faith in the judiciary."

He added, "Everybody understands that there's some politics involved in appointing judges, but we also expect that the judicial system can rise above the political process."

The interview comes after Obama announced his nomination of federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Garland, a former federal prosecutor, currently serves as the chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

While Garland is widely viewed as a moderate, Republicans have argued that the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia should not be filled until the next president takes office.

Obama has claimed leaving the seat vacant for over a year would be unprecedented and described Garland as an impeccably qualified candidate.

The president has received some criticism from his own supporters for not nominating a more liberal judge but told NPR he selected Garland in part for his ability to build consensus.

"Judge Garland, if you look at his work on the D.C. Circuit, has been able to bring together conservatives, liberals and move them to find common ground," Obama said.

He added, "And I think that's a valuable quality that has been reinforced by the statements that were made by Republicans."

Reports have suggested Republicans would confirm Garland in a lame-duck session if another Democrat is elected president, although Obama said he has not had conversations like that.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
The EU and Turkey have agreed on a deal thatll see migrants turned back from Greek islands  which could start as soon as this Sunday. (Representational image)

Brussels: The EU and Turkey have agreed on a deal thatll see migrants turned back from Greek islands  which could start as soon as this Sunday.

In a meeting high on handshakes, the 28 EU leaders and Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu sealed the deal that will allow thousands sent back to Turkey, while Ankara will see fast-track procedures to get billions in aid to deal with refugees on their territory, unprecedented visa concessions for Turks to come to Europe and a re-energising of their EU membership bid.

Davutoglu strode into the final joint session with the poise of a winner. He had previously stated that Turkey was not trying to use the crisis to get concessions from the EU.

Apart from easing visa restrictions, the EU will also offer Turkey  home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees  up to $6.6 billion in aid, and and faster EU membership talks.
Brussels: Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was wounded and captured in a dramatic raid by armed police in the Belgian capital on Friday.

Abdeslam, 26, and four other suspects were arrested in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where the Franco-Moroccan allegedly helped plan the November 13 attacks in which 130 people died and 350 were injured.

Read: Next step for top Paris attacks suspect: extradition effort

Abdeslam was lightly wounded in the leg during the raid, prosecutors said.

"The battle against terrorism does not end tonight, even though this is a victory," French President Francois Hollande told a news conference in Brussels with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

Read: Francois Hollande expects Salah Abdeslam extradition 'as quickly as possible'

"I think of the victims of November 13, because Salah Abdeslam was directly linked to the preparation, the organisation and unfortunately the perpetration of these attacks."

Hollande, whose embattled presidency will be defined by his response to the worst terror attacks on French soil, said Paris would request Abdeslam's extradition from Belgium "as rapidly as possible".

"Our fight is not over, and tomorrow morning, in the light of the information that has been given to me, I will chair a meeting of the defence council," Hollande said.

Read: Obama congratulates Belgium, France over Paris suspect arrest

Michel, who rushed out of an EU summit for a crisis meeting with Hollande, said Abdeslam's capture was "extremely important in the battle for democracy against this abominable form of extremism."

Also arrested was a man known by the fake name Amine Choukri, who also used a false Syrian name Monir Ahmed Alaaj.

Abdeslam and Choukri were fingerprinted by police in Germany on October 5, a month before the terror assault.

Choukri could also be a Soufiane Kayal who was pulled over by police on the Austrian border with Hungary in September, again with Abdeslam.

The only man known for sure to be still be on the run is Mohamed Abrini, who was filmed with Abdeslam two days before the attacks at a petrol station on a motorway close to Paris.

Last survivor

Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out attacks on the Bataclan rock venue, restaurants, bars and the Stade de France stadium.

He apparently fled by car to his hometown Brussels the day after the rampage, having refused to blow himself up, and is believed to have spent much if not all of the subsequent four months in the city.

Prosecutors said Special Forces raided a house in Molenbeek on Friday because of evidence found in an operation in Brussels on Tuesday, in which a Paris-linked suspect died in a gun battle with police and two other people escaped.

Belgian policemen stand guard the road during a police action in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district in Brussels. (Photo: AFP)

One of Abdeslam's fingerprints was found at the scene of Tuesday's raid, sparking the huge manhunt that led to his capture.

A witness told AFP the operation began at around 1530 GMT when dozens of police cars swooped into the rundown Molenbeek neighbourhood.

"I heard about three or four shots fired, but they were muffled, as if taking place indoors," said Karim, an Oxfam charity employee who lives in the largely Muslim Molenbeek.

Footage in Belgian media appeared to show a white-hooded Abdeslam being dragged to a waiting police car by armed special forces officers.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one, and has been criticised for alleged blunders that let the perpetrators slip under the radar.

"Either Salah Abdeslam is very clever, or the Belgian services are stupid, which is more likely," said French minister Alain Marsaud, a member of an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into possible security failings over the November attacks.

Paris network 'much wider'

With Belgium having arrested a series of people over links with Abdeslam, Hollande said many more were involved in the Paris attacks than originally believed.

Investigators believe Abdeslam hired one of the cars used in the attacks and then used it to drive suicide bombers to the Stade de France with the task then of blowing himself up.

But he apparently backed out, and an explosives-filled suicide vest was later found in Paris in an area that mobile phone signals indicated he had been in.

Police believe he fled across the border the next morning. Several people have been arrested on suspicion of helping him and his fingerprints were found in December at different Brussels apartments.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and attacker Bilal Hadfi, both dead, also had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

Abdeslam and his brother, who blew himself up during the Paris assault, had run a bar in the area until it was shut down by the authorities a few weeks before the attacks.

Belgian authorities have meanwhile identified the man killed in the raid on Tuesday linked to Abdeslam as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, 35, who was living illegally in Belgium.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors also said he was wanted in connection with the November attacks.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
Kweis said he traveled from the United States to London in December 2015 and continued to Amsterdam and then Turkey. (Representational Image)

Baghdad: A 26-year-old American man who was captured by Kurdish forces in Iraq earlier this week, said he had traveled from Turkey to join Islamic State (ISIS) before deciding to escape, according to an interview with Kurdish television on Thursday.

Two Kurdish militia officers said on Monday an American, bearded and dressed in black had surrendered after being surrounded near the village of Golat, in northern Iraq. The man's Virginia drivers license identified him as Kweis Mohammed Jamal. In the video Kweis, looking healthy but subdued, recounted his journey from the United States to Mosul and then into the hands of the Kurdish Peshmerga.

Kweis said he traveled from the United States to London in December 2015 and continued to Amsterdam and then Turkey. In Turkey he met a woman from Mosul who said she could help him get to the Iraqi city, which has been under the militant group's control since 2014. "We got to know each other. She knew someone who could take us from Turkey to Syria and from Syria to Mosul," he said.

After a series of car rides Kweis and the woman separated and Kweis continued with some Islamic State fighters who took him to Mosul. There he stayed in a house holding about 70 people, including foreign recruits, all of whom had to hand over their passports to the Islamic State.

The group included Russians, Uzbekis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Moroccans. Kweis said he was the only American. "Our daily life was praying, eating and learning about the religion for about eight hours," he said. "I found it very, very hard to live there."

After a month, he decided to leave. "I didn't really support their ideology. And that's the point when I decided I needed to escape," said Kweis.

He found someone to take him as far as the Turkish border, where he could make contact with the Kurds. "I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul," he said. "I wasn't thinking straight and on the way there I regretted it."

More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report. At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted.
50% of Indian mobile users wish to upgrade to new device in 5G era

About 50 per cent of smartphone users in India plan to buy a new device within the first year as 5G ...
The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in the clashes near Palmyra. (Photo: AFP)

Beirut: The Islamic State jihadist group has claimed the killing of five Russian troops in fighting near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

The soldiers of the caliphate, by the grace of God, have killed five Russian soldiers and six members of the Syrian army, IS said in a statement.

The group also claimed the killing of several members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group in the clashes near Palmyra.

A website linked to IS, Aamaq, carried a similar claim, adding that one of the Russians killed was a military advisor.

The fierce battles around Palmyra city in the east of Homs province left five Russian soldiers dead on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as several others from the Hezbollah militia and Afghan Shiite militias, Aamaq claimed.

Four of the Russian soldiers were killed in Qasr al-Halabat west of Palmyra during an attempt to storm the area that IS forces foiled, while the advisor whose corpse was shown in a video distributed by the agency died (Thursday) in the Dawa area, it added.

Aamaq was referring to a video showing the bloodied corpse of a man in military gear that it claimed was the advisor.

The footage also shows equipment presumably captured after the clashes, including a customised AK-74M rifle, a helmet and a compass.

A packet of bandages was filmed with instructions written in Russian.

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Syria known as the Pearl of the Desert, last May, sending shock waves across the world.

Nearly 1,800 civilians killed

Speaking to AFP, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said at least one Russian soldier was killed in recent days around Palmyra.

President Vladimir Putin, Assads main backer, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of Russias armed forces from Syria.

The Russian air force has however continued to strike jihadist targets since the surprise announcement, particularly around Palmyra.

At a press briefing Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm either the presence of Russian advisors around Palmyra or the IS claim of the soldiers killing.

The advance (on Palmyra) is carried out by contingents of the Syrian army, Peskov said.

On Thursday, however, Putin had warned that Russia would remain engaged in Syrias war.

Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged, he said, adding that fierce fighting was raging near Palmyra.

Putin also named four Russians, including a military advisor, killed in action in Syria since Moscow launched its military intervention on September 30.

Previously, the defence ministrys official toll had been three, excluding a soldier who reportedly committed suicide.

A total of 1,799 Syrian civilians including 431 children have been killed in Russian air strikes, according to an updated toll by the Observatory.

Another 1,276 IS members have also died, as have 1,567 rebels and fighters from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, it added.

The Observatory accused Russia, a permanent UN Security Council member, of being a key accomplice in the killing of Syrian civilians, on a daily, continuous basis, using the fight against IS as an excuse.

Moscow has denied claims of hitting civilian and non-jihadist rebel targets.
In a statement, US Army Col. Michael Lawhorn said Friday the helicopter made a 'hard landing' in Helmand, but gave no details on timing or location. (Photo: Google Maps)

Kabul, Afghanistan: The US military says one of its helicopters crashed in southern Afghanistan, adding that the cause was unknown and there were no casualties.

In a statement, US Army Col. Michael Lawhorn said Friday the helicopter made a "hard landing" in Helmand, but gave no details on timing or location.

He says all personnel have been recovered and an investigation is underway.

The Taliban claimed they shot down the chopper.

Helmand, a Taliban stronghold, has been the focus of intense military activity in recent months as the insurgents fight for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes.

The US-NATO mission has 12,900 troops in Afghanistan mandated to train and assist their Afghan counterparts.

The US. also has 3,000 troops engaged in counter-terrorism operations against the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.
Coke, three reasons to support USA's adoption of the unilateral Import Certificate policy:

(1) We must significantly reduce our annual trade deficits and their drastic effect upon our numbers of jobs, which in turn reduces our median wage. That economic detriment is primarily borne by employees and their dependents. There are enterprises in the USA that also are more dependent upon USA's wage levels.

(2) International agreements often leave us subject to international courts. Sovereign nations should not compromise their sovereign right to determine who or what enters their nation. But the unilateral Import Certificate policy does grant equal consideration among all foreign nations traders and products.

(3) Currently our trade negotiation positions are greatly influenced by USA's governments' individual federal agencies and larger domestic and multi-national lobbyists; but they affect our entire nation. The Import Certificate policy is less vulnerable (than is our current policies) to mischievous intervention by domestic or foreign entities.



I consider the concept of most favored nation to be of some merit; but it doesn't reduce the need for the Import Certificate policy.



I do not find fault with a bilateral agreement foe each participant to treat all other participating nations traders and their products with no less consideration as the participants treat their "most favored (foreign) nation rather than in any inferior manner.

Nations that break such an agreement or refuse to enter such an agreement would be doing so to their own peril.



Respectfully, Supposn
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama levied sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday in response to the reclusive country's recent "illicit" nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The sanctions blocks certain transactions on property belonging to the North Korean government and to the Workers' Party of Korea. They follow the U.N. Security Council's unanimous adoption this month of some of the toughest sanctions in decades against North Korea for defying the world by pushing ahead with its nuclear program. Obama enacted separate U.S. sanctions last month.

An executive order signed by Obama and effective Wednesday merges both sets of sanctions, enabling the U.S. government to implement them.

"These actions are consistent with our longstanding commitment to apply sustained pressure on the North Korean regime," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a written statement announcing Obama's action. "The U.S. and the global community will not tolerate North Korea's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile activities, and we will continue to impose costs on North Korea until it comes into compliance with its international obligations."

In a vote that reflected growing anger over North Korea's repeated violations of a ban on all nuclear-related activity, the U.N. Security Council on March 2 unanimously approved the toughest set of sanctions against the country in two decades. The punishment includes mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang; and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

Legislation that Obama signed into law on Feb. 18 was designed to deny North Korea the money it needs to develop miniaturized warheads and the long-range missiles required to deliver them. It also authorizes $50 million over the next five years to transmit radio broadcasts into North Korea, purchase communications equipment and support humanitarian assistance programs.

North Korea opened the year with claims of having tested its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6. It followed up by launching a satellite on a rocket on Feb. 7.

The White House announcement came the same day that the country's highest court sentenced American tourist Otto Warmbier  the latest U.S. citizen to be detained by North Korea  to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion. The sentence came weeks after the 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate was presented to the news media and tearfully confessed to trying to steal a propaganda banner.

Earnest said the stiff sentence made it "increasingly clear that the North Korean government seeks to use these U.S. citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda." He urged North Korea to pardon Warmbier and release him on humanitarian grounds.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Authorities banned hundreds of thousands of cars from the roads Wednesday and offered free subway and bus rides to coax people from their vehicles as Mexico City's first air pollution alert in 11 years stretched into a third day.

Officials advised people to limit outdoor activity due to high ozone levels that were nearly double acceptable limits in the sprawling capital, which lies in a high-altitude valley ringed by smog-trapping volcanic mountains.

Amid a muddy brown haze, some residents covered their mouths with scarves or paper masks as they moved through the streets. Some schools kept kids indoors during recess.

Environment Secretary Alejandro Pacchiano said if conditions didn't improve, further measures might be considered, such as suspending industrial activity at factories. By late Wednesday afternoon, pollution continued above acceptable limits.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told Televisa news that about 1.1 million cars in the Valley of Mexico, including nearly 450,000 in the capital, were ordered off the streets under the restrictions. However, he later said only about 800,000 had stayed off the road. He didn't explain the discrepancy, but suggested some motorists drove despite the ban.

According to the National Statistics Institute about 4.7 million vehicles were registered in the capital in 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Mexico City used to regularly reach high smog levels, but air quality has improved significantly since the 1990s.

Among other measures, rules were put in place that aimed to limit the circulation of older, more polluting vehicles, and obliged car owners to get regular smog checks.

But a court relaxed those restrictions last year in a ruling that authorities and environmentalists blame for a rise in traffic. Pacchiano said that decision put an extra 1.4 million cars a day on the streets.

Mancera has complained that cities bordering the capital do not regularly restrict vehicle use even though they contribute greatly to regional pollution. More than 20 million people are estimated to live in greater Mexico City, but only about 9 million in the capital proper.

Ozone is a component of smog that can cause respiratory problems. Mexico City's last alert for ozone was in 2002, and the last pollution alert for air particles was in 2005.

The current ozone alert was declared Monday night.
Ugly fighting scenes involving college students broke out at Savalalo late yesterday afternoon.

It happened when a brawl involving students from Avele College, St. Josephs College and Don Bosco broke out at the bus terminal, sending innocent members of the public into a panic.

Elderly mothers and fathers, children had to run for cover as rocks were flying back and forth. Glass bottles were smashed all over the place.

The Police arrived quickly and many students were hurled into Police vehicles and into custody.

Yesterdays fight was the latest in a string of brawls at public places involving students.

It was not possible to obtain a comment from any of the schools last night.

But the fight left members of the public alarmed and in shock.

Stones were thrown everywhere, said one taxi driver.

A number of students were injured as a result and many of them can thank the Police for arriving quickly.

We were here waiting for our bus to go home but we got hit by surprise, said a female student from Avele.

We were defenceless, we came with our teachers but they didnt care, they just attacked us.

She said there were rocks, glass bottles and sticks thrown at them.

We didn't know what to do. We were scared.

She said students from Don Bosco in particular were not there to pick a fight with just the boys they were after any student from Avele including girls.

As of last night, Avele had announced that the school will be closed today.
A former Police officer who has threatened to sue the Ministry and the Police Commissioner has been accused of acting in an unprofessional manner.

The allegation against David Tomasi comes from businessman and legendary rugby personality, Tuigamala Vaaiga Tuigamala.

My concern is the general public has been misinformed by this young police officers reporting of what took place, Tuigamala said. This story that he tried to paint is untrue. I wanted to set the record straight.

On Monday, Mr. Tomasi told the Samoa Observer that among the reasons for his sacking was an incident where he issued a ticket to the daughter in law of a prominent member of the community.

I warned his daughter in law three times for talking on the phone while driving but when she came around on that day, she was still on the phone and so I gave her a ticket, he said.

Although the story did not mention any names, Tuigamala said his daughters were the ones implicated by Mr. Tomasi.

I can say thats actually not true, Tuigamala said. Im not defending anyone here but Im just speaking up about what actually happened and what took place.

This information can be confirmed at the Police office if you want to.

According to Tuigamala, three people were in the car when Mr. Tomasi stopped the vehicle.

First of all, his comments about warning my daughter-in-law three times, that wasnt true and it wasnt just my daughter-in-law that was in the car, it was my daughter, my daughter-in-law and my grand daughter that were in a rental car.

Why I made the complaint the next day at the Police station was because I thought my daughters were threatened by him when he entered the vehicle after stopping my daughter-in-law for using the phone.

Tuigamala did not hide the fact that his daughter in law was using the phone but he said Mr. Tomasi had no right to enter their vehicle.

He (Dave Tomasi) then enters the car at his own will which was a surprise to my daughters.

Then they were told that they have two options, they either pay the $200tala fine or be locked up and so my daughters were afraid and they decided to go to the Police Station for their own safety.

But that wasn't all.

Tuigamala said after Mr. Tomasi hopped in the car and demanded the license, something else happened.

The young police officer recognises the last name and asks if they are related to me which my daughter told him that I am her father and his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter.

[And] then from there it escalated to well okay I can let you off then he asked my daughter-in-law to come back to the same spot that they were pulled off and drops him off there.

When he lodged a complaint with the Police, Tuigamala said Mr. Tomasi approached him at his Vaimea office to apologise. He also apologised to his son, Bubba Tuigamala.

Later, however, Tuigamala said Mr. Tomasi asked him to write a letter to support him at his Tribunal.

I didnt and I also ended up being summon at his Tribunal.

Tuigamala said its important that people know what really happened.

I am only standing up for my rights as a father to my daughters, he said.

When I read the article, I felt appalled. I wanted to get the facts straight.

I went down to the station and asked the Superintendent who handled my case if this was the right procedure and the Superintendent said no.

There is no reason for him to hop in the vehicle at his digression without asking my daughters whether it was right because from my perspective why couldnt he just give the ticket and tell them to go pay the fine.

So this story that he tried to paint is untrue. I wanted to set the record straight and from a fathers perspective I was more concern about the safety of my daughters that were in the car.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi was not giving away anything last night about who might be his Deputy Prime Minister.

The spirit still hasnt whispered anything to me yet, Tuilaepa told the Samoa Observer.

It will probably be tomorrow morning (early today) because everything I do is dependent on God and his Spirit.

The Prime Minister refused to confirm or deny reports that he is to name the Deputy leader of the Human Rights Protection Party (H.R.P.P), Fiame Naomi Mataafa, his Deputy.

Nor would he discuss the possibility of Faumuina Tiatia Liuga being appointed or Fonotoe Pierre Lauofo continuing in the role.

I dont know, he insisted.

The Prime Minister said all would be revealed at Tuanaimato this morning  including his Cabinet Ministers  during Parliaments first session.

One of Parliaments first tasks is to swear in the new Speaker of Parliament, Leaupepe Toleafoa Faafisi and his Deputy, Nafoitoa Talaimanu Keti. All Members of Parliament are also to be sworn in this morning.

The Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi, will deliver Parliaments opening address.

According to Tuilaepa, the 13 Cabinet Ministers will be announced first before their Associates.

Speaking of Associate Ministers, the Prime Minister said the H.R.P.P caucus has resolved that there will only be one Associate Minister per Minister, as opposed to the old practice where all members of the party was an Associate Minister of some sort.

Tuilaepa said the practice was appropriate in the past where the H.R.P.P did not have such a high number of members.

But with 47 members, he said its impossible to keep them all as Associate Ministers.

We have agreed that each Minister should have one Associate to help out but the rest, which is 19 plus two Opposition and one Independent (22) they can oppose the government.

That is foresight, he said. It is to maintain the independence of our Parliament.

He added that Cabinet Ministers and their Associates should be a mix of experience members and new blood with new ideas.

The idea is to have meaningful discussions every time a topic is debatedthat is why I keep saying not to worry because we did not select ourselves, it was the countrys decision for our party M.Ps to have the majority (of seats).

With five Ministers having lost their seats after the general election, Tuilaepa had seven returned Ministers including the Caretaker Speaker, Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao and himself.

However, there are still 12 experienced M.Ps that survived from the election and newcomers who have a mixture of long time serving public servants and business people.
Barely after the new Members of Parliament have paused to catch their breath after that wonderful swearing in ceremony at Faleata yesterday, some college students have already thrown them one of the first tasks this term.

Were talking about the need to deal with the escalating violence among students on the streets of Apia.

We agree that the issue is not new. Its been around for years.

But there is a real sense of urgency thats needed now to address this longstanding problem before someone is killed. Seriously.

Folks, we believe it is only a matter of time before innocent lives are taken causing unimaginable pain, if nothing is done to address it.

Indeed, Thursdays all out brawl was a warning.

The fight apparently involved students from Avele College, St. Josephs College and Don Bosco. It broke out at the bus terminal, sending innocent members of the public into a panic.

Elderly mothers and fathers, children had to run for cover as rocks were flying back and forth. Glass bottles were smashed all over the place as scenes resembling the madness we associate with war and civil unrest elsewhere unfolded in Apia.

We were here waiting for our bus to go home but we got hit by surprise, said a female student from Avele. We were defenceless, we came with our teachers but they didnt care, they just attacked us.

She said there were rocks, glass bottles and sticks thrown at them.

We didnt know what to do. We were scared, she said, adding that students from Don Bosco in particular were not there to pick a fight with just the boys they were after any student from Avele including girls.

On a video thats making the rounds on social media, an elderly mother could be clearly heard saying in Samoan; e makua leaga gei kamaiki.

The tone of her voice was telling. She was tired, she had had enough.

We are too. When will this end?

Yesterday, Avele College was closed.

Sports competitions scheduled for other schools  who had nothing to do with the fighting  were cancelled as well. It seems like every one  including innocent students  are paying the price for the behaviour or the misbehaviour of a few.

Prior to Thursdays fight, three other students were in Police custody for another inter-school brawl.

Police media officer, Maotaoalii Kaioneta Kitiona, said the Police have simply had enough.

We thought that giving them chances will teach them a lesson but that hasnt happened, he said. These students are not learning so we believe that the only way some of them will learn is if we take them up to Tafaigata and keep them in custody.

We dont envy the Police. While they have their faults now and then  like all of us  some times they have to make some tough decisions. Some people will question the decision to lock up the students.

But would you do if you were in their shoes?

When it comes to interschool violence in Samoa, everyone has had enough. Were tired of talking, we are sick of resolutions and reconciliation meetings that dont amount to anything. Something has to give.

According to the Polices Media Officer, one of the biggest problems is old students who have nothing to do. Maotaoalii said these students  who have fallen through the cracks in the system - incite the fights and they are using mobile phones to promote their violent rhetoric.

And here therein lies the biggest problem for Samoa.

We have far too many unemployed young people roaming the streets doing nothing but thinking of trouble. Its wonderful that a certain percentage of students gain opportunities to pursue tertiary education and eventually find jobs.

But not all of them do. The majority of students end up dropping out after college and these are the students we have been worried about for so long now. Unless they find a purpose in life, they will enter a world of petty crime just to get by.

As if it was a warning of things to come, the brawl and stone throwing at the Savalalo bus terminal happened a few blocks away from where most of these Members of Parliament have been camping and have enjoyed their political merry making. Its a sign. A worrying one too.

Are they listening?

Are they paying attention to what is happening?

The honeymoon is over. Its time to get to work.
Those countries could change the law, in the US it would require changing the constitution, and that takes a bit more work.

It's like abortion in that respect, no political party is willing to suffer the backlash of such an attempt.

The GOP will pander to racists and xenophobes, but they won't risk the backlash of actually doing anything about it, just like they will pander to anti-abortion people, but will not take actions that would risk backlash.
PR - The Samoa Red Cross Society raised $15,537.39 from a Public Appeal to Help Victims of Tropical Cyclone Winston, in Fiji.

The Samoa Red Cross Society wishes to acknowledge with sincere appreciation, members of our business community, public servants, schools and the general public who generously contributed monetary donations to help our Fijian brothers and sisters who have been seriously affected by the impacts of TC Winston, in February 2016.

$10,000 (FJD) was transmitted (TT) direct to the Fiji Red Cross, who are active on the ground in their response work to provide humanitarian assistance for victims of TC Winston, in Fiji.

Samoa Red Cross Society, was called to HELP Victims of TC Winston in Fiji, through its expertise in Water and Sanitation.

Isara Iose Isara of the Samoa Red Cross Society was deployed in the weekend, to respond to an urgent call from the Fiji Red Cross, for assistance in the area of Water and Sanitation.

An initial four-member regional disaster response team (RDRT) from Asia and Pacific National Societies, has been deployed over the weekend to provide operational support to the Fiji Red Cross operations in Fiji.

Isara, is the interim disaster manager for the Samoa Red Cross Society, and a multidisciplinary disaster management trained member of our staff and volunteers, on standby in response to disaster events occurring within country, regionally and internationally, according with skills and expertise in disaster management they possess.
Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, couldn't stop smiling yesterday.

He had many reasons to when the XVI Parliamentary sitting opened at Tuanaimato.

When the formalities and oaths were done for the members, Tuilaepa had the chance to address the country and he highlighted four key milestones achieved yesterday.

They are:

 With Fiame Naomi Mataafa becoming the first woman Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday is the first time in the history of Samoa where five women have been in Parliament.

 It is the first time in history that Samoa has had 50 Members of Parliament, with the addition of the fifth woman member as required by the Constitutional amendment made last year

 It is the first time that a political party, the Human Rights Protection Party (H.R.P.P) has occupied 94 per cent of seats in the House. This is an extraordinary number.

 It is the first time that all Members of Parliament are matai titleholders since the government has eliminated the Individual Voters seats which allowed non-matai title holders to enter Parliament

Tuilaepa said these are achievements to be proud of, adding that now Parliament has become a true Samoan entity.

It's now a meeting of matai from all over the country, he said.
Twisted Sister said: We agree to disagree. Cruz popped out on Canadian soil which makes him a natural born Canadian citizen and is eligible to be Prime Minister of Canada but not President of the United States. John McCain popped out in the Canal Zone that was a Territory of the US at the time so he is eligible.



edit: Amendments can be overturned several ways but the Articles cannot unless the US Constitution is re-written which would result in Civil War 2. Click to expand...

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States....

And 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.

A quick and short definition of what natural born meant to the founders.Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution gives the Congress the power to establish naturalization:The Congress passedon March 26, 1790:
By

Santa Paula News

College & Career Fair Held at Santa Paula High School

The annual College and Career Fair was held inside McMahan Gym at Santa Paula High School on Thursday, February 18. Students had the opportunity to speak with recruiters from local community colleges, universities, trade schools, fire, police, and military. The high school students were able to ask questions about different careers and the types of academic majors offered and/or required to fulfill those careers. Students such as Jose Magana, a high school junior at Santa Paula High School, attended the Fair to see what was offered. Although he is planning to attend the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a career interest in the medical field, Magana tried his hands at flying an airplane in a flight simulator as School Superintendent Alfonso Gamino looks on. It was pretty cool to see a variety of employment opportunities, he said.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

There are plenty of careers in agriculture and high school students learned all about many of them at the 3rd Annual Agriculture Career Fai

The fair was held March 3 at the Museum of Ventura Countys Agriculture Museum where the students were surrounded not only by exhibits highlighting the countys rich ag heritage but also by the same companies that make the county ground zero for growers and support industries.

Ventura Countys agriculture industry was valued at more than $2 billion last year.

We need people to feed the world, Ventura Community College President Dr. Greg Gillespie told the crowd.

He noted his own background in crop sciences and research and said he is excited about schools developing agriculture-related curriculum.

Gillespie said Ventura County is the perfect resource for the next generation who will be charged to keep the industry vital.

Weve been around a long time and fortunately well be around even longer, said Associates Insectary Bio Division Manager Bill Grant.

The Santa Paula based company has served its grower-members in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties with beneficial organisms and integrated pest management since 1928.

And business said Grant is exploding with those seeking to use beneficial pests to control the bad bugs and other environmentally friendly methods.

SEEAg, Bennetts Honey Farm, The Berry Man, Ventura County Agricultural Commissioners Office and others were answering the questions of students from Santa Paula, Fillmore, Ventura and Camarillo and Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County, areas active in ag and agriculture education.

Mike Binsley has worked for Crop Production Services for decades and the Oxnard branch manager noted the company offers products and services to grow the best crops possible.

The company prides itself on matching people, science and technology to grower needs to maximize their products.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

According to the letter from Mayor Martin Hernandez accompanying the proposed stretch of State Route 33 that will be dedicated to Deputy Peter Aguirre, the pride of his hometown, Aguirre was a Santa Paula native son who was passionate about his work despite the dangers that came with the job. Peter was a selfless public servant that worked tirelessly to keep his community safe.

Despite his short time as a law enforcement officer, Peters fellow officers were impressed by his hard work and reliability. Peters bravery for the sake of our community is truly remarkable. He put his life on the line to protect the safety of our families and our community.

The City Council approved the support for the highway memorial at the Monday meeting where a member of Aguirres family spoke and a city staffer spoke of his own relationship with the deputy killed in the line of duty.

SPPD Commander Ish Cordero told the council at the March 7 meeting that Assemblyman Das Williams had requested a letter of support for Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 142 that, if approved, would designate a specified portion of the 33 as Ventura County Deputy Sheriff Peter Aguirre, Jr. Memorial Highway.

The California Peace Officers Memorial Fund is raising funds to cover the cost of the commemorative highway signs.

On July 17, 1996, when Aguirre, who had thought of entering the priesthood before he wore a badge, was just 26 years old, he responded to a domestic violence call at a home in Meiners Oaks where he was ambushed and shot. Surviving him was his wife Dina and daughter Gabriella who was only 3 years old when her father was killed.

Thank you for your strong support of this resolution, said Cordero who noted Aguirre was from A prominent, well-known family in the community probably here since the early 1900s. In 1996 Peters life was cut short

Cordero said family members including Aguirres mother Marie were present at the meeting.

Theres not much more to say than thank you, Marie Aguirre told the council. This July it will be 20 years since he has been gone. Peters law enforcement family has not forgotten him and every time he is honored we are honored.
Clara007 said:



Top Republicans are now talking openly about a contested convention....but how to stop Trump. "Remember that Americans dont directly elect the president. The Electoral College does: Slates of electors pledged to support presidential and vice presidential candidates are voted upon in each state every four years. Each state, and the District of Columbia, is apportioned at least three of the 538 electors, allocated by the total number of U.S. Senators and Representatives each state has."



And remember it may not be too late for Trump to run as an Independent.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...al-college-still-can-its-in-the-constitution/

Answer: The Electoral CollegeTop Republicans are now talking openly about a contested convention....but how to stop Trump. "Remember that Americans dont directly elect the president. The Electoral College does: Slates of electors pledged to support presidential and vice presidential candidates are voted upon in each state every four years. Each state, and the District of Columbia, is apportioned at least three of the 538 electors, allocated by the total number of U.S. Senators and Representatives each state has."And remember it may not be too late for Trump to run as an Independent. Click to expand...

I hadn't thought about the electoral college. But that would still leave the GOP in a catch 22. I think the backlash would be even worse than if they just dump him now.The only way it would work is if, assuming the GOP won the election, every single delegate agreed to back another republican candidate. Which would anger both parties and almost every voter in the nation, no matter who they voted for. I'm thinking violence in the streets and tens of thousands, possible hundreds of thousands of pissed off and heavily armed of people storming DC. Could trigger and all out revolt.The other option is they flip just enough votes and put the democrat in office. The delegates that flipped would probably need witness protection. There'd still be a significant chance of violence.In either case it would certainly kill the GOP. I wouldn't place bets on any incumbent congressman or senator surviving the 2018 mid term elections.
Kowloon, Hong Kong -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2016 -- Amazing Wedding a renowned professional company has ensured that couples who want to have a stunning Overseas Wedding can get one of a kind experience without a lot of hassle.



Destination weddings have become incredibly popular today and it's not difficult to understand why. It's probably the most important day in people's lives and they want it to be exactly according to the vision they have had for it. It would mean a beach wedding in Bali for some while for others it could a serene, culture filled experience in European cities like Prague.



Unfortunately planning an Overseas Wedding can be a task for the couples, especially when they have a lot on their plates. That's where the services of Amazing Wedding come into the picture, ensuring that they can have the experience they have always desired without going through any major hassle for it. The professional company takes over the entire responsibility for the wedding, making sure it's an extravaganza that will be etched in people's minds.



However having worked with hundreds of clients so far, Amazing Wedding also understands that all couples have their own specific requirements. That's why it takes their ideas on board and tries to bring their vision for the wedding day to reality. Those who might want to opt for a Villa Wedding with their friends and family can have all the arrangements made for them, and others who want a quiet ceremony will have exactly what they want as well.



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Grand Rapids, MI -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2016 -- viastore Systems, a Hytrol integration partner, will be exhibiting at MODEX 2016 April 4-7. The MODEX Supply Chain Conference brings together leading experts from the industry to give the latest information on manufacturing and supply chain trends, technologies, and innovations. The conference also includes valuable opportunities to network with industry leaders.



John Clark, Director at viastore Systems, noted, "viastore Systems is a proud integration partner for Hytrol Conveyor. Our strong relationship will be on display at MODEX April 4-7. Hytrol brings nearly 70 years of technological excellence and innovation to our customers in food logistics, cold supply chain, automotive, and more."



David Peacock, President of Hytrol comments, "We are in an incredibly exciting time for the industry, for Hytrol and for our integration partners. MODEX provides an opportunity to showcase the technologies and partnerships that make Hytrol a leading provider in the material handling industry. The interaction between Hytrol, our integration partners like viastore and their customers enables us to tailor innovative solutions and then couple them with our best-in-industry lead times. This collaboration with our integration partners like viastore has proven successful and resulted in our having high expectations for a very successful show."



viastore Systems will present a special session at MODEX 2016. The session titled, "An Incremental Approach to Automation and ROI" will be held on April 5 from 12:45-1:30 in Theater H of the Georgia World Congress Center. Myles Harmon will define the different levels and types of automation; he will address how manufacturers can get ROI on automation investment. viastore systems will be exhibiting April 4-7 at booth #1439.



About viastore Systems, Inc.

For over 40 years, viastore Systems, Inc. (http://bit.ly/1PxYifB) has been a leading international provider of automated material handling solutions including AS/RS (automated storage and retrieval systems), conveyor and shuttle systems, warehouse management systems software, material flow and process controls, and integrated SAP logistics solutions. The company employs over 470 people worldwide and has annual sales of over $140 Million.



viastore's focus is on consulting and planning, together with the implementation and constant improvement of intralogistics solutions with locations in Germany, USA, France, Spain, Czech Republic, Russia, China, Croatia, Turkey, Poland, Israel, Ukraine, Sweden, and Brazil. viastore, with North American headquarters in Grand Rapids, MI, is an integrated and certified partner for all major ERP system database and operating system suppliers such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. viastore earned a return spot on Food Logistics' 2015 FL100+ list of software and technology providers whose products and solutions are key to the global food supply chain. viastore is a proud member of MHI.



Follow viastore Systems on Twitter @viastoresystems.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2016 -- Q BioMed Inc., a biotechnology acceleration company is pleased to congratulate Mannin Research on its selection to the C2MP program and the exceptional mentors and advisors now included in the long list of industry experts available to assist in advancing these important technologies.



The C2MP program is a tailor-made mentoring program focused on life science innovators. In partnership with the Chicago Innovation Mentors (CIM@MATTER) organization, the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service will catalyze and accelerate technology commercialization opportunities in the Chicago area by matching experienced and supportive mentoring teams with early stage innovators. Mannin Research was selected to take part in the program so as to accelerate the development and commercialization of Mannin's lead indication, MAN-01 for Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma. CIM@MATTER was established in 2010 based on the VMS program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.



CIM@MATTER has seven member institutions, and nearly 200 mentors as part of its innovation network. The C2MP program has provided Mannin with a mentor and a group of advisors from a team of life science and business professionals within the CIM@MATTER team and dedicated support from the Trade Commissioner Service of Canada.



Mannin's lead mentor, David Kempner, has more than 20 years of experience consulting on the business aspects of biotechnology preceded by eight years of experience in a broad spectrum of biological and biochemical research projects. David is the founder and Managing Director of Integrated Market and Technology Assessments Inc., a management consulting firm providing technical market research and corporate/business development services to pharmaceutical, diagnostic and biotechnology companies in the U.S. He was also the co-founder and Executive VP Corporate development of NovaDx, a venture diagnostic firm founded to identify novel diagnostic markers and develop through proof of concept.



Michael Rosen is Managing Director of Rosen Biosciences Strategies, a life science economic development consultancy focusing on enabling international life science companies to enter the U.S. market. Prior to this, he was Senior Vice President, New Business Development for the Science + Technology Group at Forest City Enterprises. He has spent 20 years in senior management positions with Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Searle/Monsanto, and spent 12 years as President/CEO of European and U.S. biotech and medical device companies in the areas of cancer, neuroscience, wound care and kidney disease. Mr. Rosen is a founder, former Vice-Chairman and current board member of the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization.



Gayle Kirkpatrick is an accomplished business development executive with 20+ years of experience in Fortune 100 healthcare corporations and major academic research institutions. She has led due diligence for numerous pipeline and company acquisitions, and has expertise in technology transfer, licensing, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and venture investment. She has held senior positions at Astellas and AbbVie/Abbott and has served on several boards including chair of the BioForward board (the Wisconsin state affiliate organization of BIO.



Catherine Sazdanoff is a global healthcare executive with experience in leadership roles across corporate development, business development, operations, legal and risk management. She has a JD from Northwestern University and has held senior positions at Abbot Laboratories, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Catherine is also a member of the board of Meridian Bioscience Inc. and an advisor to mProve Health, LLC.



Kris Rothleutner is an experienced pharmaceutical industry professional and successful entrepreneur. He is currently the Director of Life Cycle Management (Orphan Business Unit) at Horizon Pharma, and has held senior positions at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and has also worked with Abbot Laboratories.



Mannin's CEO, Dr. George N. Nikopoulos stated. "We are thrilled to be a part of the program. We see the value in the acceleration process as it relates to our development and commercialization milestones. We thank the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service in Chicago for their support and look forward to a successful program."



In October 2015 Q BioMed Inc entered into an agreement with Mannin Research to exclusively license, with an option to acquire, the platform technology assets of Mannin Research, the developer of a new class of vascular therapeutics. Mannin's primary focus is developing a first-in-class therapeutic eye-drop for glaucoma in adults and children, using a research platform designed to help develop new drugs for that indication and cystic kidney disease, among other diseases. Lead drug candidate MAN-01 is designed to treat abnormal vessels within the eye-thus treating glaucoma at its root causes.



We invite our shareholders and interested parties to subscribe to our email list and stay informed on our website at http://www.qbiomed.com and follow us on the social media feeds we use.



About Q BioMed Inc.

Q BioMed Inc. "Q" is a biomedical acceleration and development company. We are focused on acquiring companies and biomedical assets. Q is dedicated to providing these target companies and assets, strategic resources, developmental support, and expansion capital to ensure they meet their developmental potential enabling them to provide products to patients in need.



Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements include, but are not limited to, any statements relating to our growth strategy and product development programs and any other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition and stock price. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated are: risks related to our growth strategy; risks relating to the results of research and development activities; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; uncertainties relating to preclinical and clinical testing; our dependence on third-party suppliers; our ability to attract, integrate, and retain key personnel; the early stage of products under development; our need for substantial additional funds; government regulation; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in our SEC filings. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.
Hong Kong, China -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2016 -- Yongs Gift offers a unique selection of gift baskets for all occasions that include weddings, birthdays, thank-you gifts and so forth. This website can be used to send gifts to Hong Kong, Japan and China in a creative manner.



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[MANILA] The Asia-Pacific region faces losing important scientific resources following cutbacks to some of Australias most important climate research programmes.

Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) announced last month (04 February) it will cut about 350 staff jobs over two years. Half of the researchers employed in two climate modelling and monitoring programmes will lose their jobs in the move that seems to be a continuation of the Australian governments budget cutbacks on development, science and environment research.

Without continuing fundamental research in the Asia-Pacific region, our capability to adapt to the potentially serious consequences of human-induced changes will be substantially reduced. By Lisa Alexander, University of New South Wales

On 8 March, world-leading CSIRO scientists informed an Australian Senate inquiry that they are looking for jobs elsewhere.

In an email to staff, CSIRO chief executive and former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur Larry Marshall announced that the organisation will now focus on efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change rather than understanding its nature through fundamental science research.

That argument would be like removing the foundations of the house because you need to build a roof, says Lisa Alexander, an associate professor in the climate change research centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia and one of almost 3,000 people worldwide who signed a petition protesting the cuts.

Without continuing fundamental research in the Asia-Pacific region, our capability to adapt to the potentially serious consequences of human-induced changes will be substantially reduced, Alexander tells SciDev.Net.

Despite assurances by CSIRO officials, scientists around the world are concerned there will be a loss of Australian data, especially from Cape Grim in Tasmania, Australia which has been measuring airborne greenhouse gases since 1976, as well as a crucial ocean-monitoring programme called Argo, which is a global array of more than 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats. The cutbacks could significantly hinder global efforts to predict and prepare for severe weather changes, including typhoons and drought.

CSIRO has been at the forefront of modelling and monitoring efforts throughout the Asia-Pacific for decades, Adam Switzer, an assistant professor in environment at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who also signed the petition, tells SciDev.Net. The loss of much of this capability with the impending cuts is a real blow for climate research throughout the region.

CSIRO forecast the current El Nino, which enabled governments and industries throughout the Asia-Pacific to prepare for it. Climate scientists at CSIRO have also had a long history of leading, collaborating and mentoring scientists throughout the region, including those from the Pacific small island developing states.

The regional implications of this are fairly dire and I must admit Im somewhat surprised that the governments of Asia-Pacific havent been more vocal, notes Switzer.

A February report released by the nonprofit Climate Council of Australia states that CSIROs cuts will violate the terms of the recent Paris Agreement and jeopardise governments and businesses that rely on CSIRO data to make billion dollar decisions. CSIRO executives did not consult key organisations that depend on CSIRO climate modelling and measuring research until 24 hours before the cuts were made public.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
[MANILA] Scientists around the world have slammed Australias decision to slash its climate research programme  raising concerns about knock-on effects on developing countries.

Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is shifting its research focus to efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of global warming rather than understanding climate change through fundamental research, CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall announced last month.

The loss of much of this capability with the impending cuts is a real blow for climate research throughout the region. Adam Switzer, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,

In an email to CSIRO staff quoted by international news outlets, Marshall says that models have proved climate change, and we should now focus on solutions.

That argument would be like removing the foundations of the house because you need to build a roof, says Lisa Alexander, an associate professor in the climate change research centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and one of almost 3,000 people who signed an open letter to the Australian government protesting the cuts on 11 February.

CSIROs decision to slash climate research will severely curtail Australia's capacity to deliver on [key] promises of the Paris Agreement, the letter says. This includes governments commitment to assist developing countries by providing advice for adaptation [], a role that CSIRO and Australia have already begun in their investments in the Pacific Climate Change Science Program.

In practice, CSIRO will cut about 350 staff jobs over two years, Marshall wrote in a statement on 8 February. Some people will be redeployed or reskilled and some will be made redundant and those final figures are not yet determined, he added.

CSIRO says the cutbacks wont affect data collection from Cape Grim in Tasmania, Australia which has been measuring airborne greenhouse gases since 1976, as well as an ocean-monitoring programme called Argo.

The agencys contributions are crucial in global efforts to predict and prepare for severe weather changes, including typhoons and drought. For example, CSIRO provided forecasts for the current El Nino, which helped governments throughout the region to prepare for it.

CSIRO has been at the forefront of modelling and monitoring efforts throughout the Asia-Pacific for decades, says Adam Switzer, an assistant professor in environment at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who also signed the petition. The loss of much of this capability with the impending cuts is a real blow for climate research throughout the region.

The regional implications of this are fairly dire and I must admit Im somewhat surprised that the governments of Asia-Pacific havent been more vocal, notes Switzer.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.


Remember when we told you, a few weeks ago, that you hadnt heard the last of the battle in Oregon to raise the minimum wage, even after Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill doing exactly that?

Well, were not right all that often  but heres a case in which we were on the money, so to speak. And at least some of these recent developments lend credence to one of our basic arguments about this issue, that it was too complex to be handled properly in this years shorter legislative session.

Speaking Wednesday at a meeting of the Portland Business Alliance, House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick said theyre planning to push for changes in the states minimum wage law that the Legislature just passed  and that they expect to bring their proposals to the next years session.

If the new minimum wage law runs its course, the Portland area will have a minimum wage of $14.75 an hour in 2022; urban counties such as Linn will have a minimum wage of $13.50 and rural areas will have a minimum wage of $12.50. The runup to 2022 begins in July, when the wage increases to $9.75 an hour.

But wait a second: Kotek and Burdick, both Democrats from the Portland area, said they want to revisit the issue of a lower wage for younger workers  for example, high school students working at their first jobs to get some spending money and buttress their resumes. (Its unclear whether they also have in mind work-study students at Oregon public universities, but we bet officials at Oregon State University and other schools are interested in finding out.)

According to a story in the Oregonian about their remarks, Kotek and Burdick understand that threading the needle on the younger-worker issue could be tricky: Any policy change allowing students to make a lesser wage would have to not penalize older workers. The trick with a training wage is to make it so tightly written that employers cant use it to get around the minimum wage, Burdick said.

In the meantime, Kotek said shes working with Rep. Cliff Bentz, an Ontario Republican, to try to create a policy to protect businesses on the Oregon side of the border with Idaho. By the time 2022 rolls around, wages will be $5 higher there than on the Idaho side, with potentially ruinous effects on Oregon communities. Kotek said she doesnt know what that policy would look like, but its a good bet that it could involve yet another wage region to go along with the three already in place.

All this suggests that the wage increase was a complicated enough bit of business that it deserved more attention than it received during the short session. We know the Legislature acted in part to pre-empt ballot measures on the issue, but it would have been better to throw this to voters.

In the meantime, the fledgling opposition among local governments to the minimum wage increase may be picking up steam. Linn County commissioners have been leading the fight: Roger Nyquist, chairman of the Linn County Board of Commissioners, has argued that the increase is unconstitutional in that it represents an unfunded mandate from the state. Nyquist and others have talked about filing a lawsuit over the issue, and now other local governments (including Lane County) are considering joining the effort.

Browns signature on the bill ended the first act in Oregons wage debate. But the curtain is about to open for the next act. (mm)
The shipping markets across container, dry bulk and the offshore vessel segments are all awashed with too much capacity, a problem accumulated before the 2008 global financial crisis.

The way forward is a need for consolidation through M&A. But unfortunately it is now hard for companies to engage in M&A deals, said Joachim Skorge, regional head and managing director of DNB Markets  Investment Banking, Singapore.

Skorge added that with falling asset values of ships, low cashflow and tighter access to financing under current challenging climate, parties interested in getting together would not have the necessary resources to do so.

The trend is now clear  financial institutions are focusing only on the larger, more solid clients who are able to offer cross-sell ability. This creates a problem for medium to small companies that traditionally also have access to financing, he said.

Venkatraman Sheshashayee, ceo of private equity-owned Miclyn Express Offshore (MEO), noted that players in the offshore sector recognise the need for consolidation, but it is not happening.

Sheshashayee said that even if there is desire for companies to enter into M&A deals, neither parties would have the wherewithal as every single player has stretched the balance sheet and most companies are overleveraged.

During the boom years of the shipping market, shipowners had jumped on the newbuilding bandwagon and ordered too many ships, resulting in a prolonged period of excessive capacity.

Abhishek Pandey, head, Asean, South Asia, Africa & Middle East  shipping finance & structured finance at Standard Chartered Bank, recalled that too much liquidity had entered the market too cheaply, giving rise to an unconscionable spike in orderbook.
The price of steel has jumped by 20 percent since January and has been trading at around $330 per tonne in recent days, according to the Vietnam Steel Association.

Steel distributors are normally given a spot price for steel products every three to four days, but they now receive daily updates due to the volatility in the domestic market.

One of these distributors said: Steel prices can change a couple of times within one day. The new price list is often higher than the previous one.

Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) Chairman Ho Nghia Dung explained that the upward trend in the domestic steel price was in line with rising prices in the global steel market.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade decided on March 7 to apply temporary tariff increases on steel imports, with a 23.3 percent duty imposed on steel billet and 14.2 percent on steel bars. Local distributors tend to increase their inventory when domestic price increases are forecast, Dung added.

The VSA also attributed the price jump to a rising demand for construction steel. The groups statistics show that for the first two months of 2016, the volume of construction steel sold skyrocketed 56.5 percent year on year.

This is the construction season, so demand will certainly grow in the next two months, the VSA said.

The chairman of Pomina Steel Joint Stock Company, one of Vietnams top 10 steel producers, said that his company had made plans to produce 80,000 tonnes of steel each month. However, they turned out 100,000 tonnes but were still unable to meet demand. Two out of their three steel plants even exhausted their steel stockpiles.

A steel retailer in Ho Chi Minh City told VnExpress he made adjustments for his business when he saw the market for steel would remain robust.

From early of 2016, steel prices have bounced back. The ministry also imposed heavy duties on steel billet and steel bars. I think the price will keep going up, so I purchased in large quantities.

The VSA sent a letter to domestic steel producers on March 16 with their recommendation that steel billet and steel bars should be the focus of production in order to satisfy rising demand.
Red Flag 16-2: A joint training operation

A C-130 Hercules, assigned to the 700 Airlift Wing at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia, taxies on the flightline during Red Flag 16-2 March 3, 2016, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Red Flag was established in 1975 as one of the initiatives directed by General Robert J. Dixon, then commander of Tactical Air Command, to better prepare U.S. and allied forces for combat. During the two week exercise, units from around the world work on integration to better themselves for future operations. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Charles)
The moment artist Andrew Kong Knight could not take any more of what he feels is Donald Trumps BS, he headed to the hills of Hayward, looking for cattle and carrying a shovel and a bag.

When he found what he was looking for, at a ranch watering pond, he manned the shovel while his fiancee, Alani Taiara, bravely held the bag, and a viral media sensation was on its way. The finished product is an acrylic-on-wood painting of the yellow-haired Republican front-runner giving the Nazi salute. But that image is everywhere. What makes Knights work unique is the three-dimensional mouth that spews dried bull manure strung on a wire.

Knight turned the vomiting action into a series of still photographs pieced together like animation. He posted it to Facebook, and thousands of shares later, his point has been made.

As an educator, I was feeling embarrassed and shocked by Trumps comments during the debates, he says from his classroom at Hayward High School, where he is in his 20th year as an art teacher. The blatant sexist and racist remarks he was making I could not believe were coming from a candidate for highest office.

More for you Study on campaign speeches says Trump's grammar typical of children aged 10-11

A working artist and muralist who grew up in Hayward, Knight worked for three months on the piece, which he informally has titled Bulls...t Trump, and his reward is that national TV news outlets picked it up, shared it and tweeted it. The ABC News site alone brought in 960 comments, mostly negative, as is always the case with the Internet.

But Knight knows the silent majority is out there, and plans to market the Trump work as a poster, with the slogan Make America Hate Again. The poster should be available next week at his website, at www.andrewkongknight.com. Proceeds will go to causes that the candidate seems to stand against, like immigrant rights.

I dont want to stand by idly while someone represents our country in a negative way, says Knight, who has to step into the hallway because he is not allowed to say anything partisan in the classroom. If he becomes president, I just want to know in my heart that I did what I could to prevent that.

Ever since high school, at James Logan in Union City, Knight has done political art, owing to his mother, Clara Kong, an activist in the farmworkers struggle.

In 1994, he did a mixed-media work of a real American flag riddled with bullet holes, blood-colored paint dripping from the holes. That won an American Illustration Award and was later licensed as the album cover of New World Disorder, by the heavy metal band Biohazard.

The Trump piece will be bigger than that because of the Internet, he predicts. If he gets the nomination. I see it just growing and growing.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@samwhitingsf
MESA, Ariz.  This is the second time Patrick Schuster has pitched in a big-league camp, and comparatively speaking, this spring is a breeze.

In 2014, Schuster, 25, was with the Padres as a Rule-5 player after being selected the previous December by Houston, then traded to San Diego. The left-hander had a good spring, making it to the final round of cuts, but was waived, claimed by the Royals and then waived again three days later before going back to his old organization, Arizona.

It was a pretty cool spring, he said sardonically. It was crazy. I got put on two rosters and never stepped in their door.

Schuster describes this spring as mellow  and once again, he is pitching very well. In four appearances, he has yet to allow a hit. And though Oakland has a left-handed specialist, Marc Rzepczynski, the As are getting looks at Schuster early enough in games that its clear he might be an option for them at some point this season; he came into the game with one out in the fifth Thursday and retired both men he faced.

Manager Bob Melvin likes what he has seen, saying, Weve been getting him in these games and matching him up in middle innings and the last three times out, hes been great. Hes been throwing the ball over the plate. He has a little different arm angle to lefties, not quite sidearm but difficult to pick up.

Im definitely funky, Schuster said. Deceptive. Im not going to blow anything by you, but Im going to frustrate you, get you on the end of the bat or your hands, make you hammer the ball in the ground. Im going to fool you, make you think Im going to do one thing and do another.

Schuster was very sick early in camp but soldiered through it and didnt miss a workout, which showed Melvin something. If a guy wants to go out and pitch, it means hes got a little extra inside that will allow him to do some things at not the best time for him  and hes not afraid to do it, Melvin said.

Stephen Vogt caught Schuster for the first time Thursday and said, I love where hes at. Its exciting.

Starters issues: Chris Bassitts start in a minor-league game Wednesday was not a great outing, Melvin said.

Bassitt said he had a little fatigue, normal for mid-spring, and it was a slog. Really nothing positive to take out of it  just get through it, he said.

Rich Hill spent the off day Wednesday watching video of his excellent September starts with the Red Sox to try to figure out why his control is so off; he has walked 12 men in 72/3 innings. He has identified an issue with his release point: His hand placement is 2 to 3 inches lower than it was last year.

I was able to see some difference, Hill said. Were making progress.

Remembering TP: A private memorial was held Wednesday in Scottsdale for utility infielder Tony Phillips, a member of the As 1989 title team, who died Feb. 17. Many members of that team as well as current As employees attended, with Dave Stewart and Carney Lansford among the speakers.

Donations in memory of Phillips may be directed to Cortneys Place, a center for physically and mentally challenged adults in Scottsdale.

Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sslusser@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susanslusser

As 11, Mariners 11

Notable: The As led 9-3 going into the ninth and the Mariners scored eight runs off Eduard Santos and Ryan Brasier. ... Oakland tied it in the bottom of the inning on RBI singles by Chris Coghlan and Matt Chapman.  Starter Kendall Graveman went 4 1/3 innings and allowed three hits, three walks and three runs, on a two-run homer by Robinson Cano and a solo shot by Rob Brantley. ... John Axford and Ryan Madson threw scoreless innings. ... Danny Valencia hit his third homer, a two-run shot to center.  Josh Reddick had two hits, including an RBI double, and is 9-for-19 . .. Jed Lowrie had two doubles and is 9-for-21 .

Quotable: Two hits in one at-bat; Ive never seen that before. It almost seems like we should have taken the first one.

 Valencia, on Canos at-bat in the fourth when he singled on a pitch from Graveman after time had been called, and then homered.

Fridays game: As vs. Indians at Goodyear, 1:05 p.m.

 Susan Slusser
The Academy of Art University could face long odds in its efforts to legalize all 33 of its properties that violate city zoning laws, city officials said Thursday.

On Thursday, the majority of the city Planning Commission members, as well as City Planning Director John Rahaim, made it clear they would be unlikely to support legislation that allows all the properties to be considered in compliance. In particular, commissioners said they would have a problem backing the academys push to legalize the conversion of five residential hotels currently used as student housing.

The university owns 40 properties, mostly clustered in Nob Hill and South of Market, but also bleeding into North Beach, Fishermans Wharf, and the Bayview district. All but seven violate some city regulations, according to planners. These include residential and tourist hotels that have been improperly converted into student housing, as well as retail and industrial spaces that have been turned into academic buildings.

It is clear that we will not likely recommend the approval of all the projects that come to you, Rahaim told the commission.

The academy owns five residential hotels totaling 252 rooms, which have been improperly converted into student housing, according to planners. Residential hotel rooms, many of which are owned or operated by non-profits, generally serve as housing of last resort for the poor and former homeless.

Commissioner Cindy Wu said approving legislation that would allow the academy to continue to use residential hotel rooms as dorms would really be crossing the line. Commissioner Dennis Richards argued that there is a direct correlation between the loss of residential hotel rooms and the citys struggle to house the homeless. Its very, very high-impact situation, said Richards.

But while the academy faces resistance on some of its housing, elsewhere the school is making progress toward a resolution with the city, Rahaim said. The academy has made strides in correcting many building code violations, ranging from illegal signs to fire and life safety issues. It has also improved its shuttle system  which totals 42 vans and buses  although Commissioner Kathrin Moore said she still frequently sees nearly empty academy vehicles clogging the streets.

The city is waiting for the academy to complete an environmental impact report  a document that has been eight years in the making. Once the EIR is done, the City Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors can vote on legislation that would allow the academy to legalize the buildings. Academy officials have been in talks with City Attorney Dennis Herrera, planners and others.

I think we are closer than we have ever been to resolving what has been a sore situation for a long time, said Rahaim. I think we have the ability to resolve this this year.

The university employs 2,382 people and has 8,649 students attending class in San Francisco for its undergraduate and graduate programs. The school offers degrees in 37 disciplines, including fashion, animation, architecture, fine art, graphic design, photography, game development, advertising and photography. James Brosnahan, the universitys attorney, said the arts school contributes to a bohemian city that prides itself on its vibrant arts community.

The academy has worked very hard over the years to supply any information that the Planning Commission has requested, Brosnahan said Wednesday. We are hopeful that any remaining issues will be resolved shortly.

Meanwhile, fines are accruing for the university. At 460-466 Townsend St., which is zoned for industrial use but is being used for classrooms, the academy has accrued more than a half-million dollars in fines. In addition to the $500,000, the school owes about $100,000 from previous violations, city planners said.

Moore described the university as a spider web that keeps growing and growing.

All we are doing is mopping up after decades of bad behavior, said Moore.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
Capri Everitt, an 11 year-old singer from Canada, sang Vietnam's national anthem in Vietnamese to raise funds for needy and disadvantaged children on March 17 at SOS Childrens Village in Danang.

Capri spent two weeks learning the anthem with help from a local resident.

Capri sings Vienam's national anthem with 60 children from Danang- Photo VnExpress

She had to spend three hours per day learning the lyrics and melody.

Vietnam is the 31st destination among 80 countries that Capri and her family will visit to sing 80 different national anthems in a bid to raise $1 million for children everywhere who have been affected by war, poverty, climate change or other unfortunate circumstances, specifically through SOS Childrens Villages International.

She and her younger brother have taken a year out from school to complete the journey.

The journey began on November 12, 2015 at Unicefs Universal Childrens Day celebrations in Ottawa where Capri sang the Canadian national anthem and spoke as SOS Childrens Villages youngest Youth Ambassador.

Capri will be singing the national anthem in the national language of each country she visits. She will also invite as many of local children as possible to sing with them.

"I wanted to do something with my voice, do something to help others that don't have time to think about whether they have a talent," she told CBC News.

"Many kids don't know many popular pop stars, but we all know our national anthems, she explained.

Capri said that the journey is helping her to make new friends and enjoy experiences that she would never had the chance to in school.

Capri will also sing the Vietnamese national anthem at Chau A Park and Bien Dong Park in Dang Nang over the next few days.

Her next destination will be Thailand.
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Even the tech-savvy have their limits.

Some iPhone fans, typically considered a forward thinking lot, have refused to upgrade to the latest version  in part because they dont like its larger size, usually around 5 inches. Theyve stuck with their older, 4-inch screens, happily.

They are contrarians, pushing back against Apple and other manufacturers that have touted larger phones, as more people watch video on mobile devices.

I didnt feel like there was enough of a draw, said Lucy Bartlett, 29, who has stuck with her 4-inch iPhone. I have a lot of stuff in my bag anyway. I dont need a giant phone.

Apple appears to be listening. Analysts expect that on Monday, Apple will unveil an iPhone with a 4-inch screen, under the rumored name of iPhone SE. The last time Apple unveiled a phone of that size was September 2013, and Mondays announcement could get owners of older phones to finally upgrade.

Live coverage: from Apple's March 21st product announcement:

Apple wants to keep them as users and keep that market, said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. Even if (a smaller screen smartphone) is not what the trend is, its still a measurable part of their business.

Munster said he estimates that 4-inch phones made up about 20 percent of Apples iPhone sales in the past year. A newer phone could sell 50 million to 60 million units, bringing in $30 billion to $35 billion in revenue in the first 12 months, Munster said. He thinks the price for the SE could start at $450.

Apple declined to comment, saying it does not respond to rumor or speculation.

Although sales of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus got off to a strong start, including in China, Apples total phone sales are flat. In its last quarter, Apple sold nearly 74.8 million iPhones, little changed from a year earlier.

Adoption of the 6S has been slower compared with previous models, according to data from mobile marketing firm Fiksu. New features like live photos (which capture video before and after a picture is taken), and 3D Touch (which senses how much pressure a user applies to the screen) werent enough to get many people to upgrade, analysts said.

Fiksu analyzed the type of iPhone used to access roughly 4,000 apps. In the first 175 days after its release, the 6S represented 12.4 percent of active devices using apps. The iPhone 6, in its first 175 days on the market, did better, representing 20.8 percent of active devices.

As much as Apple will hype things up ... in the 6S, it wasnt so radically different that the people who got the 6 last year have been compelled to upgrade, said Jeremy Sacco, a director of content and communications at Fiksu.

Bartlett says she hasnt wanted to upgrade because her iPhone 5 still works. She can still text, listen to music and order groceries from Instacart on that phone, which she picked up more than three years ago. Sometimes shell get teased by her friends, who assume she missed their text messages because of her ancient phone.

I still feel like its quite a new, fancy phone, Bartlett said.

Among global iPhones, about 37 percent have 4-inch screens or smaller, according to mobile advertising technology company AppLovin. A newer phone of that size would allow Apple to compete with 4-inch Androids offered by companies like Samsung and Huawei, analysts said.

Apple wants to prevent people from switching to cheaper Android phones, said John Krystynak, founder and chief technology officer at AppLovin.

Chemical engineer Gregory Tiede, 58, said if Apple releases a 4-inch phone, he would consider buying one.

Tiede has used a 3.5-inch screen iPhone 4S as his personal phone since 2012, carrying it in a holster on his belt. He also has a 4-inch iPhone 5S issued by his company, and hes been open to the slightly larger screen. He doesnt think he could do the 4.7-inch iPhone 6S though.

Screen size always sounds good, but having a bigger anchor on your belt turned me off, Tiede said.

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee
Williams-Sonoma said late Wednesday that it will cut 5 percent of its corporate workforce, as the San Francisco retailer tries to revamp its supply chain and bolster flagging sales growth.

The layoffs follow disappointing earnings for the company, which reported its fourth-quarter results Wednesday. Sales at Williams-Sonoma stores open for at least a year rose 3.7 percent in 2015, a respectable number but far below the 7.1 percent jump generated in 2014.

Shares of Williams-Sonoma fell 6.2 percent Thursday to close at $55.74.

Autos

Google wants

act of Congress

Google wants Congress to create federal powers that would let the Mountain View company receive special, expedited permission to bring to market a self-driving car that has no steering wheel or pedals.

The proposal, laid out in a letter to top federal transportation officials, reveals Googles solution to a major regulatory roadblock: U.S. law does not permit the mainstream use of cars with the design Google has been advancing, which would not allow a person to drive.

The cars may sound futuristic, but Google has dropped increasingly strong hints that its self-driving technology  tested for several years on public roads in California and elsewhere  could be ready for early adopters sooner than the public expects. Its push to clear roadblocks in federal law reinforces that confidence.

The process Google advocates would be available to any company that wants to produce a car that can drive itself without human intervention. Traditional automakers are moving in that direction, but not as aggressively as Google.

In a letter last week to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, the head of Googles self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, sketched out the idea of a federal fast track for the technology.

Under Googles proposed framework, a company that could show its vehicles passed federal safety standards could receive permission from transportation regulators to sell them. The government could set conditions that limit use based on safety concerns, and would be obligated to review the application in a tight but realistic time frame.

Sex trafficking

Backpage.com

faces action

The Senate voted Thursday to hold Backpage.com in civil contempt for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena into how it screens ads for possible sex trafficking.

The vote was 96-0. It marks the first time in two decades the chamber has voted to hold someone in contempt.

Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sponsored the resolution after they said the company refused to comply with a subpoena last year. Holding the company in contempt would allow the Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee to go to court to try to force Backpage to turn over documents about its screening practices.

Backpage has refused to cooperate, said McCaskill, who returned to the Senate this week after three weeks of treatment for breast cancer. Today is the day we say enough.

Cybersecurity

Homeland

program begins

The Homeland Security Department on Thursday formally began sharing details of new digital threats with private business and other government agencies, a culmination of a longtime effort to improve cybersecurity.

This is the if you see something, say something of cybersecurity, said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at the agencys Virginia data-sharing hub, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

A 2015 federal law was intended to encourage corporations to share information about cyberthreats, making it harder for businesses to become targets of threats used elsewhere.

The program is voluntary, and the number of companies that will participate or how effective the program will be remains unclear.

Companies have long been reluctant to acknowledge security failures. As of Thursday, about six had signed up and others have expressed interest, said Andy Ozment, the assistant cybersecurity secretary at Homeland Security. The names of companies participating are closely held, and records about their involvement are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

This is a big deal, he said. Were not going to launch out the gates ... and have thousands of companies sharing all sorts of information. We want to make sure were providing value and growing.

Under the new law, the Homeland Security Department programmed its systems to remove proprietary, identifiable information that might be included that private companies might share.

As companies come on board, well learn more about whats useful and streamline other parts, said Suzanne Spaulding, a Homeland Security official.

Chronicle News Services
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San Francisco police are downplaying suggestions that the devil-worshiping loner known as the Night Stalker might have had a child sidekick when he raped and strangled a San Francisco girl more than 30 years ago.

A man who was linked by DNA evidence to a San Francisco basement where the 9-year-old girl was slain by Richard Ramirez at the outset of a serial-killing spree through California was probably nowhere near the city when the girl died, officials said.

Authorities revealed this week that this second person was a juvenile at the time of the killing in 1984  and that investigators had looked into his possible role. But they say he has not been connected to the killing.

The girl, Mei Linda Leung, was found hanging over a pipe below her Tenderloin apartment building at 765 OFarrell St. on April 10, 1984.

The girl had been with her 8-year-old brother when she lost a dollar bill and went looking for it, police said. The boy wandered away, then came back to the basement and found his sister dead. The case remained unsolved for years  even after the 1985 capture in Los Angeles of Ramirez, who died of cancer in 2013 while on Death Row.

Ramirez, who came to be known as the Night Stalker for a string of Southern California attacks in which he broke into homes and murdered people who had been sleeping, was ultimately convicted of 13 killings, but he is suspected of several other slayings and attacks.

One of those is the rape, stabbing and strangulation death of Mei. In 2009, DNA evidence collected from the basement where she was found was positively matched to Ramirez.

Ramirezs DNA was discovered on a handkerchief along with a secondary sample, as The Chronicle reported in 2009, leading some to believe the Night Stalker may have worked with an accomplice. Though the second sample was uploaded to an FBI DNA database, it went unidentified for years.

Then, in 2012, the database returned a potential hit, linking the secondary sample to a now-convicted felon, in a development that police did not confirm until this week.

There are some problems with the theory that Ramirez had help, though, officials said.

John Sanchez, crime lab manager for the San Francisco Police Department, said the genetic material from the second person was a much smaller sample than that of Ramirez and never should have been uploaded to the criminal database because incomplete profiles can result in false positives.

It shouldnt have gone in because it didnt meet the standards, he said. Any ID (made from the flawed sample) would require further investigation.

The ensuing investigation didnt lead police any closer to naming the man as a suspect, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman.

Investigators interviewed the man, who lived a good distance from San Francisco in April 1984, and there was no evidence he visited the city at or around the time Mei was killed, Andraychak said.

While the man went on to have a felony record, Andraychak said, his most serious offense was weapons possession, and his rap sheet is free of sex crimes.

We cant definitively say he wasnt there, Andraychak said. But we interviewed him and we dont have anything (other than the flawed sample) to connect him to the crime either.

Mei was slain more than two months before what had been Ramirezs first known murder, the killing on June 28, 1984, of 79-year-old Jennie Vincow in the Glassell Park area of Los Angeles.

The pace and brutality of his spree  some victims were mutilated, their eyes gouged out  terrorized the state before he was spotted, subdued and pummeled by bystanders in 1985.

Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale
NEW YORK  Dont call the Jewish Museum exhibition on Isaac Mizrahis work a retrospective. Those, the 54-year-old designer said, are for dead people.

This journey through several elegant rooms on Fifth Avenue is more like a mid-career survey.

I was very, very reticent and a little bit, kind of, shocked, he said of his first reaction to the idea of a show just for him. I hesitated, only because I feel as though it needed a lot of exploration and a lot of clarification.

But away he went, slogging through his archives with the help of guest curator Chee Pearlman and others from the museum. The process brought on a touch of melancholy, but it ultimately felt cathartic, particularly dozens of sketches for many of his sartorial looks and an entire wall showing off his alphabet, his language  color groupings of fabric swatches, threads and embellishments mounted lovingly on white board and meticulously preserved.

It was such a crazy thing to amass all of those swatches all these years, he said as he walked through the exhibition ahead of the Friday, March, 18, opening. And I think the sketches resonate because clothes are clothes. Sketches are wishes.

The Brooklyn native, the former yeshiva boy who was relentlessly bullied for being different, was barely 27 when he produced his first runway show in 1988 after his Parsons School of Design graduation and jobs in the studios of Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein and other established mentors.

Continuing to create

Years of runway shows and couture for the rich and famous followed, including custom work for two first ladies, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, along with Sarah Jessica Parker and Meryl Streep, to name a few. His brand, Isaac Mizrahi New York, faltered in 1998, but he continued to create, embracing at times the highs and lows in terms of pricing, often in the same outfit.

Mizrahi, with his signature head of dark, curly hair, created a line for Target and sells on QVC, but his creative output beyond clothes is represented at the Jewish Museum: as performer, writer, musician and director in dance, theater and opera. Among projects still to come is a memoir, but its slow-going.

When he was doing couture collections  and who knows, he said, maybe hell make another someday  his shows were liberating, rule-breaking manifestos, little crowd-pleasing stories based on gestures that would lead to clothes bursting with color or sparkling in sequins  always meticulously crafted.

Theatrical flourish

It was never about alienation, Mizrahi said. Always about pleasing women.

The designer worked before social media made oversharers of us all, yet he once gave models handheld cameras to shoot his audience during a live show filmed for the 1995 documentary Unzipped. It was an anatomy of a collection and included models changing onstage behind a transparent scrim. The same theatrical flourish is represented along the walls of the exhibit.

The film pushed Mizrahi further into the mainstream, where he continued to express just what an American designer could do absent any heavy European influence.

It was Mizrahi who once dyed standard poodles Easter egg pastels and trimmed them up like walking topiaries for the runway. He constructed a full, formal skirt out of those quilted pads that hang in freight elevators, made a standard camel-hair coat with a fur-trimmed hood as a jumpsuit instead and crafted a red Baby Bjorn carrier to match a satin, strapless gown of the same hue because the birth of a child should be integrated into a womans social life.

He called his clothes quite friendly. The last stop on his mid-career survey includes three roomy new coats, all in the same comfortable cut but made of different fabrics, including one in oil cloth and another covered in red and pink sequins.

Coming up with unique and new collections of pricey couture, on a season-to-season cycle every four months, is something Mizrahi left behind.

Stepping over those lines

Curator Pearlman, who happens to be a neighbor of Mizrahi in New York, is a longtime fan.

If I were going to speak about a legacy for Isaac, it would be about his fearlessness, and that little touch of irreverence and humor that he is just so unafraid to share, she said Monday in an interview as workers put the finishing touches on the show.

Mizrahi wasnt a rule follower in high fashion, she said. And he was never boring.

He did not give you the same thing every year. He was not afraid to give you exuberant and even clashing, crazy color. He loved stepping over those lines, Pearlman said. That is something that is rare and actually probably quite missed in American fashion now.
Mrs Thuy said to send many letters to the government asking for help : Duc Hung. VnExpress.

Three Vietnamese from a poor rural area in the northern central province of Ha Tinh left their homeland in 2011 to work for Taiwanese fishing ships in the hope of a better future, but disaster struck when they were abducted by Somali pirates.

Nguyen Van Ha, Nguyen Van Xuan and Phan Xuan Phuong paid VND12 million ($540) each to travel to Taiwan for work back in 2011. Most of that money was borrowed from relatives.

They have been held captive since 2012.

Ha's mother Nguyen Thi Thuy said that she received a phone call in April 2012 saying all 26 sailors on his boat, including three Vietnamese, had been captured by Somali pirates who were asking for $60,000 per person as a ransom.

Thuy asked Vinamotor (a Hanoi-based labour export firm) to seek support from local authorities, but the firm warned her it could risk the hostages' chances of survival.

My son has not called me for three years, Thuy told VnExpress in tears.

Last year, the firm informed her that the three men were alive. However, she has not received any information about her son since then, and doesn't know if he is alive today.

Five years ago, her daughter went to work in Angola where she was killed by robbers.

Nguyen Thi Quynh, Xuan's wife, has been struggling to pay the loan her husband borrowed four years ago to work aboard, while trying to raise their children and care for Xuans elderly parents.

She bursts into tears whenever we talk about her husband. The kids just keep asking why their dad has been away for so long. We try to comfort her and we also feel so sorry every time we see the children, said Tran Thi Linh, her neighbor.

The mother of the other detainee, Phuong, suffered a stroke on receiving news of her son's plight, and has been bed-ridden ever since.

Ha (1), Phuong (2), Xuan (6) with other detainees from different countries captured by Somali pirates four years ago. The pirates sent the picture along with their ransom demands.

Phuongs family has sent various letters to local authorities in Hanoi to seek help but have received no replies, his father, Phan Xuan Linh, told VnExpress over the phone.

Nguyen Thi Lan Huong, head of Vinamotors Sailors and Laborers Department, confirmed that the case of the missing three crew members has been reported to relevant government departments.

At present we do not have exact information on the sailors. We are hiring a Hong Kong-based law firm to negotiate with the pirates in a bid to rescue the crew members. This incident should be resolved at state level, she said.

The owners of the Taiwanese boat said they have paid a large amount of money to the pirates and negotiations to free the detainees are underway. Vinamotor added that the company will inform the families as soon as they have any news.
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In a striking reversal for big food manufacturers, which have spent millions fighting state efforts to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food, General Mills announced Friday that it would voluntarily add that information to its labels.

General Mills move is a reaction to a law due to go into effect July 1 in Vermont that will require mandatory labeling of foods with genetically modified organisms. On Wednesday, the Senate blocked efforts by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to preempt Vermonts law by making that labeling voluntary nationwide.

Jeff Harmening, executive vice president and chief operating officer for U.S. retail at General Mills, explained the Minneapolis companys move in a blog post.

As the discussions continue in Washington, one thing is very clear: Vermont state law requires us to start labeling certain grocery-store food packages that contain GMO ingredients or face significant fines, Harmening wrote. We cant label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers, and we simply will not do that. The result: Consumers all over the U.S. will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills products.

Harmening also noted that every major health and safety agency in the world agree(s) that GMOs are not a health or safety concern  though he acknowledged that some consumers want to know about their presence in food. He also called for a national standard for labeling, especially since other states, including Connecticut and Maine, have similar pending legislation.

About three-fourths of processed foods found in American grocery stores contains some kind of engineered ingredient, most often coming from corn or soy products or byproducts, which are common in the brands of breakfast cereals, snacks and baking mixes that General Mills carries.

The companys decision to label those ingredients follows Campbell Soup Co.s similar announcement in January, which was a first for major U.S. food manufacturers. Campbells proposed new labels contain a factbox that reads Partially produced with genetic engineering. For information about GMO ingredients visit WhatsinMyFood.com.

General Mills has a similar website, Ask.GeneralMills.com, where people can look up specific products like Betty Crocker pancake mix and learn that some ingredients (generally less than 75% of the product by weight) are from plants grown using (genetically engineered) seed. Or in the case of Chex Mix Dark Chocolate, the majority of the ingredients in the product were grown from plants using the engineered seed.

General Mills also has several organic brands that dont contain those ingredients, like the Berkeley company Annies Homegrown. Organic products cannot contain engineered ingredients under organic certification rules.

Labeling of genetically engineered ingredients is required in 64 countries, and in the United States, polls show that around 90 percent of consumers support it.

Its another big victory for consumers, said Gary Ruskin, founder of U.S. Right to Know in Oakland, who also led a 2012 California genetic engineering labeling initiative, Proposition 37, which the food industry  including Campbell and General Mills  spent $45 million to defeat. The food industry is breaking down under consumer pressure and the looming Vermont deadline. They lost big in the Senate. They see the writing on the wall.

Ruskin predicts that more food companies will follow General Mills lead and begin voluntary labeling.

Scott Faber is the senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group and executive director of the Just Label It campaign, which is supported by many large organic companies; in a statement, he applauded the companys big move.

Like General Mills, we hope Congress will craft a national GMO labeling solution and welcome the opportunity to work with industry to find a solution that works for consumers and works for the food industry, he said.

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan
GREENWICH  Funeral services will take place Monday for Georgia Perkins Ashforth, a patron of the arts who supported a wide variety of music, sculpture and performances in the community.

Ashforth died Saturday at the age of 83 from a combination of ailments, according to her family.

A lover of the arts from an early age, Ashforth sponsored a series of concerts at the Greenwich Public Library. She and her husband, the late Henry Ashforth, a real-estate developer, acquired and placed the big red sculpture  Borealis, by Mark DiSuvero  next to the Greenwich train station.

You can never see enough or hear enough, she said in a recent interview. And you have to do something bigger than yourself in the world.

According to a friend and colleague in the arts, Shelly Cryer, Georgie was a tireless advocate for the arts in our community. She was an extraordinarily inspiring partner in our music series. No one got more pleasure out of beautiful music  and the joy of sharing it with others  than Georgie.

At the Greenwich Public Library, which gained its start in 1895 from a donation from the Ashforth family, a statement of condolence was released by Barbara Ormerod-Glynn, library director, and Haley Rockwell Elmlinger, president of the Greenwich Library Board of Trustees

We will sorely miss Georgie, they said. She was an indomitable spirit with a zest for life and music.

Ashforth was born in Baltimore on April 9, 1932, the daughter of the late Thomas Pierce Perkins Jr. and Virginia Miller Perkins. She grew up in a home filled with music and learned to play the piano at an early age.

She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School and Vassar College in 1954. She married Henry Ashforth on Sept. 11, 1954. He died in 2001.

She is survived by her six children: Elizabeth Bacon, of Sutton, Mass.; Henry Ashforth III, of Ridgefield; Andrew Ashforth, of New Canaan; Katherine Ashforth Wiener, of Park City, Utah; Thomas Ashforth, of Greenwich and Margaret Ashforth, of Concord, Mass.; 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. She is also survived by her brother, Thomas Perkins III, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

A memorial service will take place at 11:30 a.m. Monday at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, 954 Lake Ave., Greenwich.

Family and friends are making contributions in her name to Greenwich Arts Council/Curiosity Concerts or Audubon Greenwich.

Robert.Marchant@scni.com
Hollywood provides few starring roles for women and almost none for women over 50, so when one comes along, theres a temptation to expect too much of it. Its as if the movie should do double duty both as a discrete entity and as a statement to the world. But thats unfair and too much for a little movie like Hello, My Name Is Doris to take.

For the record, when looked at as a statement about older women, Doris is a disaster, a collection of grotesque stereotypes. Doris is a bit of a loon, a hoarder, old before her time, whose sexual desire for a younger man is presented as either pathetic, disgusting or both. She has a cat  the only surprise is she doesnt have 10. When you see the sorry spectacle of Sally Field in this film and contrast it with the exuberance and vivacity of Field in interviews, you see the gap between perception and reality with regard to women in American cinema.

But hey, lets lighten up. Its a nice movie, pleasing and against the grain. And though in some ways the role encourages some of Fields worst tendencies (sentimentality, preciousness), it also brings out some of her best  such as her unexpected ferocity and precise subtlety. If I have an Oscar dream, its to someday see Field stand there and say, Now I know you really, really like me. Her performance in Hello, My Name Is Doris makes her a long-shot possibility.

Doris is a woman in her late 60s, whose mother has recently died. She lives in Staten Island, supposedly near the ferry (though the house they show is unlike the houses in that neighborhood). And she works in Manhattan, doing data entry in a little cubicle. One day, on a crammed elevator, she meets a handsome young man (Max Greenfield), and when he becomes her co-worker, she develops a romantic fixation on him.

Of course, its hopeless, but because the young man is a very nice guy, and because he knows no one in town, and because it doesnt once cross his mind that a woman almost 40 years his senior could be interested in him, they develop an odd but warm friendship. Actually, a minor quibble about this film is just how clueless this young man is. He should be able to tell. But his cluelessness allows the plot to unfold, so the only choice is to accept it.

A saving grace of Hello, My Name Is Doris is that the central character, though conforming to stereotype, is something more than that. Though Doris is in some ways an arrested child, Field works little miracles in various scenes, in which she shows depths of pain and weird pockets of life. She has a scene in a diner in which Doris recalls her engagement  her one brush with romantic happiness  some 45 years before. Very subtly, Field speaks the scene in almost an entirely different voice, as though the story were calling into being some buried self.

In another sequence, her brother and sister-in-law show up with a therapist, intent on clearing out the hoard of junk in Doris house. She cooperates for a few minutes, and then something flips her switch, and she explodes into a sorrow thats endless and a rage that would stop Medea in her tracks. If you see it, take a moment to appreciate what youre looking at. This is a great American actress who hasnt seen a lead role in 20 years.

Have I mentioned that the movie is a comedy? It is, and a quite funny one at times, with Field finding many comic moments and reactions. Director Michael Showalter finds a tone that is able to juggle a wide range of emotion, and he elicits some lovely supporting performances, particularly that of Tyne Daly as Doris lifelong friend.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MickLaSalle

Hello, My Name is Doris

Starring Sally Field, Max Greenfield and Tyne Daly. Directed by Michael Showalter. (R. 95 minutes.)

To see the trailer for Hello, My Name Is Doris, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=pluYEj6zmZQ
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa.  Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children surrendered Friday in Pennsylvania, where they were arraigned.

Robert DAversa, 69, Anthony Criscitelli, 62, and Giles Schinelli, 73, are free on bond until an April 14 preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges. Each is a felony carrying up to seven years in prison.

The friars served successively as ministers provincial who headed a Franciscan religious order in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the orders members, including Brother Stephen Baker, who authorities say molested scores of children, most of them at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where he was assigned from 1992 to 2000.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of the McCort victims that settled with church officials for millions of dollars, called on other states to charge Bakers former superiors, too.

In order to try to heal, dozens of Brother Stephen Baker clergy abuse victims want other states where Baker sexually abused children to follow the lead of Pennsylvania, Garabedian said.

Baker killed himself at the Franciscan monastery near Hollidaysburg by plunging two knives into his heart in January 2013. That occurred nine days after Youngstown, Ohio, church officials announced settlements involving 11 students who accused Baker of molesting them at schools there in the late 1980s.

My son is dead because of your poor decision-making! yelled Barbara Aponte, of Poland, Ohio, as the clerics entered the district court. Her son, Luke Bradesku, was abused by Baker and killed himself in 2003 at 26.

At the time they were charged, the friars were assigned to duties in Florida and Minnesota. Theyve since been removed by their order, the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regular, Province of the Immaculate Conception.

Schinellis attorney said his client will plead not guilty. The other friars lawyers didnt comment Friday.
LOS ANGELES  Authorities are investigating whether an electrician intentionally leaped to his death from the 53rd floor of Los Angeles tallest skyscraper onto an intersection humming with a normal weekdays bustle, the coroner said Friday.

The coroner is also investigating the possibility of Thursdays death being a workplace accident, because it happened at a construction site, said Ed Winter, assistant chief Los Angeles County coroner. But police and officials for Turner Construction, the main contractor on the unfinished 73-story Wilshire Grand Center, interviewed workers and said the fall appeared to be a suicide.

Winter said as far as he knew, there was no note.

The man was identified as Joseph Sabbatino, 36, of Palmdale, Winter said. An autopsy was pending.

He had taken off his hard hat and had not been wearing a safety harness because it wasnt required for the bottom floors he had been working on, said Lisa Gritzner, spokeswoman for Turner Construction.

We have confirmed with (Californias Division of Occupational Safety and Health and Los Angeles police) that the incident which occurred at the Wilshire Grand project site on March 17 was not work-related, a statement issued by Turner Construction read.

Work was shut down Friday and counselors were on hand for employees, the statement said.

Winter said the man, a new employee on his second day on the job, died instantly. The investigation will continue.

A car he struck appeared to be undamaged, but a rear side panel was splattered with blood, officials said.

James Armstrong III was walking to a nearby bank just after the fall when he saw police helping the driver.

She was hysterical, waving her hands in the air and holding her head, he said. But she did not seem to be hurt, Armstrong said.

The woman was taken to a hospital to be examined, fire officials said.

The 73-story skyscraper, the tallest on the West Coast, will be about 1,100 feet tall, or nearly a quarter-mile, when its completed. A ceremony was held earlier this month when the top beam was hoisted into place on the 73rd floor. The $1 billion office and hotel tower being developed by Korean Airlines Co. Ltd. is expected to open in early 2017.

The building is at the center of the fast-growing financial district of downtown.
COLUMBIA, S.C.  After weeks of blacks and whites squaring off at presidential rallies during this vitriolic campaign season, a bipartisan, multiracial group of civil rights leaders and members of Congress struck a conciliatory tone Friday, beginning a three-day history and racial understanding tour of South Carolina.

The event, which culminates Sunday with a prayer service at a Charleston church where nine black parishioners were slain, was planned months ago and happened to fall in the middle of a presidential race that has seen protesters and supporters face off, sometimes violently, at rallies for Republican Donald Trump. Last week, about 150 miles away from where the tour began, a white Trump supporter was captured on video punching a black protester who was being escorted from a North Carolina rally.

I think what we can take from it is that people are very frustrated, that theyre irritated, that they are engaging in a way that we havent seen in a very long time, said Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the first black U.S. senator from the Deep South since Reconstruction. The responsibility and the onus is on every single one of us, but especially those of us who have stepped forward as leaders to present a case of a peaceful, constructive way to protest those things that you disagree with and look for ways to move forward collectively.

Scott was among a group of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who started the tour at Zion Baptist Church, founded in 1865 and a training ground through the years for religious and political leaders. As black and white images from the civil rights era were projected on the wall, Democratic Reps. Jim Clyburn and John Lewis stepped to the church podium, telling personal stories from their time fighting for equality and noting the importance of South Carolinas place in the progress that has been made.

Over the next few days, the group will visit places that have played both painful and important roles in the states struggle for civil rights.

Organizers hope the Pilgrimage to South Carolina will be an exercise in forgiveness and strength in a state whose reaction to last summers violence in Charleston has been held out as a model of how to handle racially charged situations.

I dont think theres any room in our society, whether in a movement, in a political campaign, for violence, said Lewis, who recalled 1961, when he was beaten and left bloody at a bus station in Rock Hill, S.C., during civil rights protests.
All 87 candidates seeking election to the 14th National Assembly (NA), including 48 self-nominees, were approved at a meeting in Hanoi yesterday.

On March 17, the Hanoi Fatherland Front Committee held a second consultation round to decide a preliminary list of National Assembly candidates.

Committee Vice Chairman Dao Van Binh said the preliminary ballot was the result of a democratic process that allowed individuals to nominate themselves for a seat. He said the next step was to do a background check on the candidates.

Among the 39 candidates nominated by government agencies, there are many directors of state-owned companies and administrative agencies, as well as senior officials like Hanoi Communist Party Secretary Hoang Trung Hai, Peoples Council Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc and Deputy Director of Public Security Dao Thanh Hai.

Self-nominated candidates include persons known for their contributions to the country like journalist Tran Dang Tuan and Vietnam Intellectual Cooperation Center Director Nguyen Canh Binh, but there are also seven nominees with no specific occupation.

Hanoi Fatherland Front committee members vote to approve the preliminary ballot. Photo: Viet Linh.

Many committee members welcomed the increase in the number of self-nominated candidates, calling it a step forward for democracy. However, they also stressed the importance of background checks.

Hanoi Transport Association chairman Bui Danh Lien said that running for the National Assembly was a civil right and no one should be excluded from the list except if they had broken the law.

However, Lien also noted that self-nominated candidates had to be carefully vetted for any shortcomings not reflected in their application.

Hanoi Peace Committee Chairwoman Dao Thanh Huong said many such candidates were well qualified and devoted to their country. However, she added, some seem to be doing it just for fun.

Former Deputy Standing Chairman of the Hanoi Peoples Committee Dinh Hanh noted that some candidates did not possess the appropriate qualities and capabilities.

Our responsibility is to select candidates that meet the public and the countrys expectations, Hanh said.

According to Hanh, in previous elections, many candidates who appeared very promising on paper were disqualified after disquieting details emerged during background checks.

Vietnam Fatherland Front Vice Chairman Dao Van Binh said the proposal to reduce the number of centrally nominated candidates had not been accepted by the National Assembly Standing Committee. Photo: Vo Hai

Vice Chairman Binh also informed the committee that Hanois proposal to increase the ratio of independent candidates to centrally nominated ones had been rejected by the National Assembly Standing Committee. The break-down will remain 16 independent and 14 centrally nominated candidates.

On March 15, Hanoi reported to the National Election Council monitoring body that they received 47 applications from independent candidates out of 87 in total. The final number reflects a last minute addition before the second consultation round.
Hours after the owner of the Los Angeles Times successfully bid $56 million to buy the bankrupt Orange County Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust suit Thursday to block the sale, saying it would create a newspaper monopoly in Southern California, resulting in increased prices and harm to readers, advertisers and possibly employees.

If this acquisition is allowed to proceed, newspaper competition will be eliminated and readers and advertisers in Orange and Riverside counties will suffer, Bill Baer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Departments Antitrust Division, said in a statement accompanying the suit, which was filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

Tribune Publishing Co., the chain that owns the Times, the Chicago Tribune and 10 other daily newspapers, won a Bankruptcy Court auction early Thursday against two competitors to acquire Freedom Communications, which owns the Register and the Press-Enterprise. Freedom Communications had filed for bankruptcy protection in November after losing a reported $40 million under an expansion plan initiated by new owners in 2012. The expansion included the acquisition of the Press-Enterprise for $27.25 million in November 2013.

If the purchase goes through, the Justice Department said, Tribunes share of local newspaper circulation will increase from 41 percent to 98 percent in Orange County, and from 12 percent to 81 percent in Riverside County. Tribune Publishing also owns the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Tribunes dominant position in both Orange County and Riverside County would allow it to ... increase subscription prices and advertising rates, Justice Department lawyers said in the court filing. Consumers would be harmed by the lost competition between the newspapers.

If the sale takes place while the legal challenge is pending, the department said, Tribune Publishing would have access to competitively sensitive information from the Register and Press-Enterprise, such as prices paid by their top advertisers and information about prices subscribers pay. It could also start shuttering assets, such as firing employees or shutting down and selling facilities and equipment.

The Justice Department asked for a restraining order that would halt the sale  which is scheduled to go before a bankruptcy judge for approval on Monday  while courts decide whether the purchase would violate antitrust laws.

Tribune Publishing spokeswoman Dana Meyer derided the governments claims in a statement quoted by the Los Angeles Times.

The (Antitrust) Division is living in a time capsule, with a framework that predates the arrival of iPhones, Google, Facebook and modern media outlets that are killing the traditional newspaper industry, Meyer said. It wasnt competition from the L.A. Times that forced the Register into bankruptcy. It was the Internet and related technology.

But Robin Feldman, a law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco who teaches antitrust courses, said the Justice Departments role is to ensure that competition survives even when the industry is under siege.

A critical question in such cases, Feldman said, is whether the proposed owner was the only bidder. In this case, Tribune Publishing outbid another newspaper chain, Digital First Media, which owns some smaller newspapers in Southern California, and an investment group headed by Freedom Communications chief executive, Rich Mirman.

If its a matter of pure survival, its better to have one newspaper than none, Feldman said. Thats different than if theres a choice between one big consolidated press organization and two smaller ones.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
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Sun City, Ariz.

Fearful of a Donald Trump nomination to lead the GOP, conservative leaders huddled privately in Washington on Thursday in search of a plan to stop the billionaire businessman.

His Republican rivals braced for another Trump victory next week, this time in delegate-rich Arizona.

The GOP has an eager alternative in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, yet some party leaders are exploring "other avenues" instead of rallying behind the fiery conservative, an ominous sign that Republican leaders' deep dislike of Cruz complicates their overwhelming concern about Trump.

"The establishment is like a wounded animal, now cornered," said Mark Meckler, an early leader in the tea party movement. "They are terrified, irrational and flailing wildly."

Even after being denied victory in five contests Tuesday, Cruz insists he still has a path to the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim the Republican presidential nomination.

But in a strategy memo obtained by The Associated Press, his campaign essentially cedes Arizona's March 22 primary to Trump and acknowledges Cruz must win 79 percent of the remaining delegates before the GOP's July national convention.

"This is the moment for all those who believe in a strong America to come together and craft a new path forward," Cruz declared on Twitter while conservatives were meeting in downtown Washington to brainstorm ways to stop his party's front-runner.

Organizers of the meeting included conservative commentator Erick Erickson and Christian conservative leader Bob Fischer. The goal, as stated in the invitation, was "to strategize how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, and if he is the Republican nominee for president, to offer a true conservative candidate in the general election."

The group released a statement after roughly four hours behind closed doors calling for a "unity ticket that unites the Republican Party."

While many in the room supported Cruz, they declined to endorse the Texas senator or the only other remaining presidential contender, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and instead urged all former Republican presidential candidates to unite against Trump. They also embraced the possibility of a contested convention.

"Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump," they said, an apparent reference to a possible third-party candidacy that might stop Trump but would likely sacrifice the Republican Party's chances in the general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

On Capitol Hill, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said he'd help Cruz raise campaign cash in the hope of stopping Trump.

Graham, who dropped his own presidential bid last month, called Cruz "a reliable Republican." That was a sharp shift from Graham's recent statement comparing the choice between Trump and Cruz to "the difference between poisoned or shot  you're still dead."

Amid the Republican chaos, Democratic front-runner Clinton focused on fundraising as her campaign begins to look ahead to the general election. She claimed a fifth victory in Tuesday's primaries, as rival Bernie Sanders conceded defeat in Missouri.

Sanders continued to campaign aggressively ahead of contests Tuesday in Arizona and Utah.

Arizonans are far more likely to see commercials for Sanders than for any other candidate in either party, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows. Though trailing badly in delegates, he is spending about $1.8 million on Arizona ads, triple Clinton's media plan.

On the Republican side, so far only Cruz is advertising in the state, a relatively light $256,000, but he got a boost from an allied super PAC on Thursday that reserved $415,000 in Arizona and another $165,000 in Utah, according to CMAG.

With a big delegate lead over Kasich, Cruz remains the potential to reset the race as a two-person contest.
The first phase of the new port project at Cam Ranh in the central region of Vietnam has been completed and will be capable of receiving large military and civilian vessels.

Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang attended a ceremony at the port Tuesday, the government said in a statement.

The new port project is separate from the existing military facility, which is Vietnams most important naval base in the East Sea. Cam Ranh is also home to its submarine fleet and other key naval vessels.

Once completed, the VND2 trillion (nearly US$89 million) project is expected to become the biggest port facility in Vietnam, and able to handle 18 ships of up to 110,000 DWT at one time.

The port will be capable of receiving 185 vessels each year, and is designed to protect ships against level-eight winds and storms.

The new project is backed by a joint investment from two state-owned companies: Saigon Newport Corp, which has a 75 percent stake, and PetroVietnam which holds the remaining 25 percent.

Sang urged the investors to step up the implementation of the project according to approved plans, the government said, without saying when the project is expected to completed.

Cam Ranh Bay holds a strategic position in the East Sea due to its proximity to international navigation routes and the Spratly Islands where China is building bases on reclaimed islands.

The naval base had been used by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union for military purposes in the past.

China claims sovereignty over most of the East Sea, which is contested by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
SAN DIEGO  It sounds like a pitch for a far-fetched movie: Cast Away, but with a dog instead of Tom Hanks. Only this sea tale is true.

A California fishermans beloved German shepherd fell overboard and was presumed drowned. More than a month later, she was found.

The dog named Luna was spotted this week on San Clemente Island, a Navy-owned training base about 70 miles off San Diego.

The blue-eyed dog disappeared Feb. 10 as Nick Haworth, a commercial fisherman from San Diego, worked on a boat 2 miles from the island.

They were pulling in their traps, and one minute Luna was there, and the next minute she was gone, said Sandy DeMunnik, spokeswoman for Naval Base Coronado. They looked everywhere for her. They couldnt see her. The water was dark, and shes dark.

Haworth notified Navy personnel.

He insisted that he was 90 percent sure that she made it to shore because she was such a strong swimmer, DeMunnik said.

Haworth searched the waters for about two days, and Navy staff searched the island for about a week but found no sign of Luna.

She was presumed lost at sea. Until Tuesday, that is, when staff arriving for work at the islands Naval Auxiliary Landing Field spotted something unusual  a dog sitting by the side of the road. Domestic animals arent allowed on the island for environmental reasons.

It was Luna.

She was just sitting there wagging her tail, DeMunnik said. The staff called to Luna, and she came right over.

A biologist then examined the dog and found her a little thin but otherwise healthy.

It looks like she was surviving on rodents and dead fish that had washed up, DeMunnik said.

Officials called Haworth, who was out of state, working in the middle of a lake.

He was overwhelmed. He was so happy and grateful and thrilled, DeMunnik said.

Luna was flown to a Navy base on the mainland Wednesday and handed over to Haworths best friend, who will care for the dog until Haworth returns Thursday night.

Luna, meanwhile, has a souvenir of the experience. Her dog tag was lost, but the Navy gave her a new one, DeMunnik said.

Along with her name, it bears a key lesson in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course taught on the island to Navy and Marine personnel. The tag reads: Keep the Faith.
Farmers in Kien Giang province are suffering from extended saline intrusion. On March 15, China announced it would release twice as much water than in previous years to help countries located downstream deal with the drought. Tran Duc Cuong, deputy director of the Vietnam Mekong Commission, said the move will help with drought relief efforts, but will not be enough to solve saltwater intrusion as this depends on the tides. China is not a member of the Mekong River Commission, so Cuong said one of the two observation posts near Jinghong will monitor the water release. On March 14, Hanoi sent a formal request to Beijing asking for China's Jinghong hydropower station to release more water into the Mekong River to help relieve the delta's crippling drought. While most people and local authorities around the Mekong Delta have welcomed the news, domestic experts say that only three to four percent of the water will reach Vietnam. Dr. Tran Anh Tuan , deputy director of the Institute for Research and Climate Change, said that Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are experiencing severe droughts. When the water flows down from China through these countries, they will take advantage of it and Vietnam will be left with very little, Tuan said. On March 17, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeperson Le Hai Binh quoted a Singapore media report as saying that Thailand have been taking a large amount of water from the Mekong River to build reservoirs for agriculture. Vietnam has also expressed concern over a Thai project on the Huay Luang tributary off the Mekong River, and has asked Thai authorities for more information. The spokesman reiterated Vietnam's stance on the use of the Mekong River, saying countries have a responsibility to cooperate in the use of water resources and to ensure hydropower projects do not impact the environment downstream. El Nino has caused the total rainfall average in areas of the delta to fall by 20-30 percent. Water levels in sections of the river that flow through Vietnam have fallen by 50 percent, leading to extended saline intrusion in many parts of the Mekong Delta  the countrys main agricultural area. Life in provinces such as Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh and Soc Trang has been seriously affected by saltwater intrusion. Nearly 160,000 hectares of rice were lost last year, while 155,000 households suffered from water shortages and many schools, clinics, hotels and factories ran dry. Authorities have expressed confidence that Chinas agreement to release water will help alleviate the prolonged crisis.
Commander of the United States Pacific Fleet and Marine Corps in Pacific, Admiral Scott H. Swift and Lieutenant General John A. Toolan, are on a three-day visit to Vietnam from March 17  19 which involves meetings with a number of Navy senior officers as part of activities to strengthen the U.S  Vietnam naval relationships, according to U.S. Embassy in Hanoi.

On March 18 morning, Admiral Swift has met with General Do Ba Ty, Chief of Staff of the Vietnam People 's Army. Ty said that the Vietnam holds the comprehensive partnership with the US in high regards, especially in naval cooperation, according to VNA.

Joining with Admiral Swift was Lieutenant General John A. Toolan, Commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Pacific. Both commanders have also met with Rear Admiral Pham Hoai Nam, the Commander of the Vietnam People's Navy, along with other officials in Hanoi and Hai Phong.

Talking about the purpose of the trip, Admiral Swift said: "As the first joint visit to Vietnam by both U.S. Navy and Marine Corps commanders in the Pacific for many decades, this trip was an excellent opportunity to meet with our Vietnam Peoples Navy partners and explore ways to bring our naval forces together more often during ship visits and exchanges".

"Our naval forces share a commitment to a rules-based international order and to maritime security and stability in ways that benefit the rising prosperity of all regional countries, he added.

The visit was among the activities which aim to deepen the bilateral naval relationship of U.S. and Vietnam as part of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership and the Joint Vision Statement on Defense Relations signed by Secretary of Defense Carter and Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh on June 2015.

U.S. and Vietnamese naval forces interact regularly during staff talks, port visits and professional exchanges such as the Pacific Partnership mission and bilateral Naval Engagement Activity (NEA) held in Da Nang province each year.
Washington

Secretary of State John Kerry declared Thursday that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims who have fallen under its control in Syria and Iraq.

The militants, who have also targeted Kurds and other Sunni Muslims, have tried to slaughter whole communities, enslaved captive women and girls for sex, and sought to erase thousands of years of cultural heritage by destroying churches, monasteries and ancient monuments, Kerry said.

The Islamic State's "entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology," he said.

The statement by Kerry, made in response to a deadline set last year by Congress for the Obama administration to determine whether the targeting of minority religious and ethnic groups by the Islamic State could be defined as genocide, is unlikely to change U.S. policy. The United States is already leading a coalition that is fighting the militants, and U.S. aircraft have been bombing Islamic State leaders and fighters, its oil-smuggling operations and even warehouses where the group has stockpiled millions of dollars in cash.

Even if the practical effect of Kerry's declaration is negligible, it carries important symbolic weight, and the Obama administration has been under growing pressure from some Christian groups and Republican and Democratic lawmakers to label the actions of the Islamic State as genocidal. On Monday, in fact, the House of Representatives approved a unanimous resolution condemning the militants for trying to eradicate minority communities in the territories it has conquered.

Kerry echoed that sentiment in his remarks Thursday, saying there were "vast" amounts of information about what was happening, and that he had concluded genocide was being committed, and that crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing were also taking place.

"Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions  in what it says, what it believes, and what it does," Kerry told reporters in Washington, using the Arabic name by which many in the Middle East derisively refer to the Islamic State.

The Islamic State "castigates Yazidis as, quote, 'pagans' and 'devil-worshippers,' and we know that Daesh has threatened Christians by saying that it will, quote, 'conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,'" he said. "Shia Muslims, meanwhile, are referred to by Daesh as, quote, 'disbelievers and apostates,' and subjected to frequent and vicious attacks."

Over the past year, a growing number of groups and individuals have labeled the Islamic State's actions as genocide.

U.N. human rights investigators accused the militants of genocide and war crimes in May, citing evidence that the group's fighters had sought to wipe out the Yazidis, a largely Kurdish group that practices an ancient religious faith, in Iraq. Months later, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a report that it constituted genocide.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars also released a statement last fall signed by dozens of members that said it believed the Islamic State was committing genocide against a range of Christian sects, Yazidis, Kurds, Shiite Muslims and others. And the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, last week released a report that focused on the Islamic State's attempts to eradicate Christians in the parts of Syria and Iraq where it holds sway.

Experts on northern Iraq who have been tracking the atrocities committed by the terrorist group welcomed Kerry's declaration, even as they cautioned that the minorities named by the administration had not suffered equally. While Christians and Shiites have been targeted and killed, they did not suffer the unforgiving assault that the Islamic State waged against the Yazidi minority, whom the terrorist group declared to be in a category of its own as "mushrikin," or polytheists.

According to Islamic State clerics, Yazidis cannot be afforded any of the limited protections that monotheistic faiths including Christianity and Judaism were offered in the early days of Islam.
Vietnam has decided to push back plans to open its first nuclear power plant until 2028 in the latest delay to the countrys nuclear power ambitions, the government said in a statement on March 17.

The change to the countrys nuclear power development program is part of an adjustment to the National Power Development Plan for 2011-2020 with a vision to 2030, which was approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently.

The nuclear power sector will generate 4,600 MW of electricity in 2030, contributing 32.5 billion kWh or 5.7 percent of the countrys total electricity output.

Nuclear power plants will ensure power supplies for the country when there is a shortage of domestic primary energy sources, the government said.

Vietnam signed an agreement in October 2010 for Russias Atomstroyexport, the engineering arm of Rosatom, to build the Ninh Thuan Nuclear Power Plant, which will consist of two VVER-1000 or VVER-1200 reactors. Construction of the units had been scheduled to begin in 2014, with startup projected for 2020.

In November 2010, Vietnam signed a separate agreement with a Japanese consortium that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba and Hitachi for two 1000-MW Gen III units at the Ninh Thuan II project. These reactors were to go operational after 2020.

The PM said in January 2014 the construction of the first nuclear power project will be delayed to around 2020 to ensure safety standards.

The delay was mainly due to site investigation issues. After the Fukushima disaster, the Vietnamese government has asked relevant parties to assess seismic and geological risks at the site more carefully, Hoang Anh Tuan, director of the Department of Atomic Energy under the Ministry of Science and Technology, said in December last year.
A San Rafael gym owner spent years telling people he was a war hero, convincing donors he was awarded the Purple Heart as he persuaded them to give more than $20,000 to a veteran nonprofit and his own military recruit training program, authorities said.

But officials say he lied about receiving the nations oldest honor and bought Purple Heart ribbons to con donors into believing his story.

Gregory Bruce Allen, 68, was charged in the U.S. District Court of San Francisco Wednesday with fraudulent representations about receipt of military decoration or medals, a misdemeanor. He faces up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, officials said.

Acting United States Attorney Brian J. Stretch and FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson announced the charges Thursday following an FBI investigation.

Allen hosted annual fundraisers starting in 2010, dressing the part of a decorated war veteran as he raised money for the Helping Heroes from Home nonprofit, also known as Triple H, and his recruit training program. Allen said he was a lieutenant with the United States Marine Corps who served in the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, officials said.

Court documents state Allen wore a Marine Corps uniform emblazoned with a lieutenant insignia and ribbons at a fundraiser in October 2013. He told a donor who paid $40 to go to the event and later bought $600 worth of items in an auction at the benefit that he earned a Purple Heart, the declaration states.

But Allen never served in the Marine Corps, an official at the San Francisco recruiting station determined. Allens only service record came from eight months in the Navy in 1968 and 1969. His only award was a National Defense Service Medal, according to court records.

He was honorably discharged after refusing medical treatment for an unreported knee injury because a recent religious conversion prevented him from accepting aid, according to court documents.

Yet photographs taken at various veterans events in 2013 and 2014 show Allen wearing a Marine Corps uniform with ribbons for the Purple Heart. A former business partner of Allens said he asked for help purchasing military memorabilia, including medals and uniforms.

He used military catalogs like Sgt Grit to buy the decorations, according to court records. When his partner asked why he needed the items, Allen said he lost all his memorabilia, including a Purple Heart during a fire or flood at a storage facility.

Allens partner started as a personal trainer at Fitness Boutique, a gym at 33 Mary Street that Allen opened in 2003. He later changed the name to House of Steel.

When annual House of Steel fundraisers started in 2010, Allen was given thousands of dollars.

Another person who attended several fundraisers wrote $300 in checks in 2010 to Allen personally and $100 to Triple H based on his belief Allen was in the Marine Corps and received the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

In 2013, a friend of that person wrote two checks totaling $360 to Triple H.

An FBI statement said all of the checks were deposited into three accounts controlled by Allen. The majority went to an account held in the name of Triple H. Allen went on to use about $2,400 of the Triple H money to pay bills, withdrew around $2,200 in cash, and withdrew about $7,600 as checks made payable to himself or his gym. For all three accounts there were minimal debits made to charitable organizations.

Allen, a former president of the Marin County Chapter of the Miliary Officers Association of America, was originally granted membership into the club because of his claim he had been a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps. That association gave $800 in checks to House of Steel in 2014, according to court records.

About $23,000 in donated checks was deposited into three bank accounts controlled by Allen from June 10, 2013 to May 1, 2015, records show.

It was unclear Thursday if Allen was in custody.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
March 18, 2016 | 01:47 am PT

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen denied buying fake 'likes' for a Facebook page Thursday, as the country's rival politicians increasingly battle for social media acclaim.

A self-confessed digital dinosaur, 63-year-old Hun Sen has recently taken to the web with gusto, posting daily Facebook updates and debuting a tailored app featuring news about his everyday life.

The strongman's Facebook page, minted in September, has already garnered 3.2 million 'likes', becoming one of the country's fastest-growing and most popular pages.

But his political rival, self-exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy, has now accused the premier of hiring foreigners to create fake Facebook accounts to artificially boost his page's popularity.

The allegation came after the English daily Phnom Penh Post reported that nearly half of Hun Sen's thumbs of approval came from accounts based outside the country, mostly from India.

Rainsy's page has fewer overall 'likes' at nearly 2.3 million but more come from inside Cambodia, according to the report.

Hun Sen batted down the allegations Thursday while he was speaking at a university graduation ceremony in the capital Phnom Penh.

"I don't know where those 'likes' are from," he said, calling Rainsy a "loser who doesn't agree to lose".

"If I could buy India, I must be really strong. But I am just happy that I, Hun Sen, have been recognised by Indian people and people in other countries as the Prime Minister of Cambodia," he added.

Analysts say the premier's new but voluminous social media habits are an effort to woo young voters as he seeks to extend his more than 30-year grip on power ahead of local elections next year and a national poll in 2018.

"This is yet another sign Hun Sen is desperately trying to halt his waning popularity," Cambodian political analyst Ou Virak told AFP, adding that both Hun Sen and Rainsy have been spending money to advertise their pages.

Rainsy, who lives abroad to avoid arrest warrants he says are politically motivated, has long embraced social media to spread his message to young voters.

A 2013 election saw young Cambodians vote in droves for his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), wearied by the endemic corruption, rights abuses and political repression seen as the hallmarks of Hun Sen's rule.

The party says it was denied a majority in the election by vote rigging - AFP
Burmas Union Parliament has elected Htin Kyaw, of the National League for Democracy, as the countrys first truly civilian president in more than fifty years.

The presidential election is another important step forward in Burmas democratic transition, noted U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a message of congratulations.

Htin Kyaw is close advisor to National League for Democracy leader and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi. He has worked with her to support Burmas democracy movement since 1992.

We commend the people and institutions of Burma who continue to work together to ensure a peaceful transfer of power after the November 2015 elections, said Secretary Kerry.

Novembers elections were another step forward in Burmas historic democratic transition and the culmination of a reform process that started in 2011 with the relaxation of press and internet censorship laws; the release of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi; and efforts to improve the electoral process. The U.S. supported these reforms by easing sanctions previously levied due to human rights abuses by the countrys military junta. The U.S. also provided more than $18 million to assist the electoral process.

The National League for Democracy swept the November elections, winning 77 percent of seats in the Union Parliament and giving it the power to choose the president.

Reforms will, however, need to continue. The Burmese constitution reserves 25 percent of parliamentary seats and key cabinet posts for the military and allows them to name a vice president. State Department Spokesman John Kirby calls the allowance of unelected officials a structural and systemic flaw, noting that the people of Burma should be allowed to vote for their leaders of their own choice.

The United States remains committed to supporting the people of Burma in their ongoing pursuit of democracy, development, and national reconciliation, said Secretary Kerry. We continue to encourage political and civil leaders to work together in the spirit of national unity and reform.
Concerning the letter, Schooling the Bridgeport Board of Education, on the Connecticut Post website March 1, thank you for your review and perspective of the board meeting held on Feb. 22. To the signers, we are proud of the work you have done for the students of the Bridgeport Public Schools.

The letter referenced that our meeting lasted 4 1/2 hours, that there was discord, and that only one student-related item was addressed. It is important to understand that board members meet on the average of four to six times a month, excluding the two monthly regular board meetings. It is also important to understand that we are volunteers, receiving no remuneration, serving the public.

As for that particular meeting, we actually started at 5:30 p.m., therefore we actually met for 5 1/2 hours. We met in Executive Session to hear several grievances related to teachers and students, which we resolved to the satisfaction of the teachers union. We also approved several building improvements, which involved state capital funding, with deadlines.

The regular Board of Education meeting, which began at 6:30 p.m. had a very long agenda, as we had only one meeting in February, due to inclement weather. Even though we knew our agenda was already quite lengthy, the decision was made to include all of our regular agenda items, such as recognitions, student reports, and public comments.

Following lengthy committee reports, we had an update from our IT Director who spoke to necessary upgrades and purchases to assure the efficacy of technology in each of our schools. Our students and staff members depend on technology for Powerschool, a variety of academic computer programs, student projects and research, testing and general communication.

In addition, the Interim Superintendent and her high level administrative staff made a lengthy presentation regarding the Theories of Action, which was directly related to student achievement, providing federally and state mandated special ed. services, emotional and behavioral initiatives, etc.

We also discussed our budget. We were facing a $5.8 million deficit. As Board of Education members, we must ensure that the budget will balance as required by state statute. We also discussed planning for our 16-17 budget, as we were required to submit the final budget to the city no later than March 15.

With respect to Interim Superintendent Rabinowitzs contract, this board has a responsibility to ensure that we are not violating any federal, state or local laws. We must do our due diligence to ensure that the district is in compliance and not held liable and/or be sanctioned financially.

All of these agenda items have direct consequence to our students and our education community. It is unfair to characterize our meetings as a disservice and an insult to the students, teachers, and families of Bridgeport. We realize that some of the policy items and fiduciary responsibilities may not seem glamorous to the uninitiated, but that is the responsibility of the Board of Education.

To us, it is much more than time-wasting minutia. We are obligated to insure that the Bridgeport Public Schools are operated in compliance with the state statutes that govern local school boards. The letter writer stated that A dysfunctional Board of Education is a danger to the very community it serves. We would answer that a Board of Education that does not hold all of its education community to the highest of standards is more dangerous.

Under previous boards, we had meetings that concluded after 2 a.m. During such meetings, a previous board member disparaged other board members, members of the public, our students, educators and the Interim Superintendent. During prior board meetings a previous board member threatened several of his colleagues, directed racial slurs and derogatory language at both his fellow board members and our Interim Superintendent. Interestingly enough, no one felt compelled to pen a letter to the Connecticut Post regarding this consistently disrespectful and outrageous behavior.

During our Feb. 22 meeting, there was active discourse, discussion and debate about a variety of topics including process and procedure, as this board has policy and procedure that it operates by and must adhere to.

Every member of this board puts in countless hours of service to this district, and we will not agree on every agenda item. We will have extended, passionate discussions but this is democracy at work. The fact that we dont agree doesnt make us dysfunctional; what would make us dysfunctional is not fulfilling our responsibilities as dictated by state statute.

The Bridgeport Board of Education is not at odds with the teaching staff nor the administrative staff, rather in sync. We have supported the contract when there have been detractors, and we hold the work educators do in the highest esteem. Some of us have children and/or grandchildren who attend Bridgeport Public Schools. We have great expectations of educators, for which you are evaluated and remunerated, where we board members are volunteers working after our real job is over.

Therefore it is our position that if we are the dedicated volunteers serving our community, and we dont take issue with the length of our Board of Education meetings, neither should you.

Sauda Efia Baraka, Howard Gardner, Maria Pereira and Ben Walker are members of the Bridgeport Board of Education.
Washington, D.C., should host an Olympics for finger-pointing. There would be no shortage of accomplished practitioners.

Start with President Barack Obama, who in introducing Judge Merrick Garland as his choice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the big bench, asked the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up-or-down vote.

If you dont, he said, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senates constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair. It will mean everything is subject to the most partisan of politics  everything.

Youd never guess Obama not only voted against Chief Justice John Roberts but also supported a filibuster  that is, he opposed an up-or-down vote  to thwart the confirmation of Samuel Alito in 2005. Hillary Clinton also opposed Roberts and supported an Alito filibuster. Both Roberts and Alito won confirmation with Democratic support  which tells you they were qualified but not immune to the sort of partisan opposition that Obama now finds distasteful.

On the other side of the aisle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor to promise hed oppose an election-year confirmation in deference to the Biden rule. (In 1992, then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden said he would oppose an election-year GOP nominee.)

Judicial nominations are political by design, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett told me. Judges are picked by a politically elected president and confirmed by a politically elected Senate.

Because this is an election year, Obama chose a qualified and not extreme federal judge with probably a shorter life span than his other potential nominees. The conservative Barnett described Garland, a former classmate, as probably the most reasonable nominee a Democratic president could make. The New York Times places Garland to the left of all living justices, save Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, and also reports that a Garland confirmation could tip the ideological balance to create the most liberal Supreme Court in 50 years.

With the ideological bent of the court in the balance, and a presidential election months away, there simply is too much at stake. Nobody in Washington, D.C., no living soul, believes that the Democrats would not be doing the exact same thing the Republicans are doing for the same reason, if the tables were turned, quoth Barnett.

Having also opposed Roberts and supported an Alito filibuster, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., knows he isnt in a strong position to scold the GOP leadership. So the craven Schumer has come up with this line about how the Senate owes Garland and the American people hearings. Hearings for someone the Senate is bound to reject? Why not try waterboarding? I cannot think of a more textbook example of political circus.

There is a political risk to the GOP opposition. If a Democrat wins the White House in November, then she probably will nominate someone who is further to the left than Garland  not to mention younger. But if the Republican Senate wants to hand the Supreme Court to the Democrats, then why would Republican voters support them?

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist.

dsaunders@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @DebraJSaunders
Now that President Barack Obama has nominated Merrick B. Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican senators should hold a fair confirmation hearing. And he merits an up-or-down vote.

Garland, 63, has been a longtime member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Chicago native is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law, and notably served in the Justice Department overseeing the investigations and prosecutions in the Oklahoma City bombing and the Unabomber case.

He has been described as a moderate, has long been on Obamas short list for Supreme Court nominees, and in the past has been heralded as a brilliant legal mind by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who both sit on the Judiciary Committee, have heaped praise on Garland.

Hatch, who previously has said the Senate shouldnt hold any hearings for an Obama nominee, once called Garland a consensus nominee. One who would be very well supported by all sides.

This type of rhetoric only highlights the ludicrous stance Republican lawmakers have taken in the aftermath of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalias death. They have built a brick wall without thought, opposing confirmation hearings for any potential nominee, regardless of qualifications, due to this being an election year.

The mantra from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn and others has been to let the American people decide via the ongoing presidential election. This is problematic for a number of reasons. It places political calculation over individual qualification, to the detriment of the nation. But it also ignores the decision voters made in 2012 when they elected Obama to a second term. Didnt the people make a decision then? Do those votes not count simply because we are in an election year?

As a matter of principle, the U.S. Senate should hold a confirmation hearing for Garland followed by a vote, judging his nomination on his abilities, viewpoints and legal interpretations. Its a sad reflection of the moment that this is even a question. If after this process the majority of senators reject Garland as unqualified for the nations highest court, then so be it.
My car was towed from near the Amtrak station in Jack London Square last month. I parked in front of a small No Parking sign that I had not seen. I spent an hour looking for my car and calling an attendant who didnt answer the phone. When someone finally answered, she told me my car was towed. It cost me $350.

At least I could afford to pay to get my car back. California is filled with people who are one traffic ticket away from losing their means of independent transportation. They get a ticket for a busted tail light or a small-change moving violation. On paper, the fine is $100, but with surcharges, its more like $490. People who cannot pay often do not show up in court  which drives up the cost. According to the Judicial Council of California, about 612,000 Californians have suspended drivers licenses because they didnt pay fines. In 2013, more people  510,811  had their licenses suspended for not paying fines than the 150,366 who lost their licenses for drunken driving.

For a lot of people, the car is the only asset they own in this whole damn world, noted Mike Herald of the Western Center on Law and Poverty. When you take their car, youre taking the thing that helps them make money.

Governors amnesty program

Herald is an author of a report about how traffic courts drive inequality that helped prompt Gov. Jerry Brown to institute an 18-month amnesty program to deliver Californians from a hellhole of desperation. Under the program, Californians can get their outstanding fines reduced by 50 percent  or 80 percent, if they make less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level. The amnesty program does not apply to parking tickets, reckless driving or drunk driving.

This is one of those issues that unites activists on the left and the right. The Western Center on Law and Poverty sees how the system crushes the working poor. Conservatives also see excessive fines and penalties as backdoor tax increases that lawmakers employ because they dont need to sell them to voters. In December, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, joined U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the White House for an event that lauded the Brown amnesty program.

Weve turned too many of the police into tax collectors and wonder why they dont have strong relations with the community, Norquist said, according to NBC News. When people cant pay fines in California, it means they have to forfeit their licenses. Its deceptive advertising: a $100 fine fronts for an extra $390 in add-ons. The price tag can grow exponentially if unpaid and lead to losing ones license.

The penalty is harsh and crushing on the poor, but these fees also are undeserved for the middle class. If Sacramento wants to levy a $490 fine for moving violations, let lawmakers put honest numbers on their legislation  instead of pretending that the fine is $100. Alas, the Legislature has found that hidden fees are a handy way to finance the court system without voting to raise tax revenue. Its the easy road.

Another hidden fee

And while judges might claim that they never asked for this system, they have been able to use the threat of drivers license suspension as leverage to make Californians pony up.

The practice of throwing in extra sources of revenue is so ingrained in Sacramento that there is a $50 amnesty program fee. Thats right  if you want to pay off unpaid traffic fines that have ballooned because of hidden fees, first you have to pay another (albeit smaller) hidden fee.

Theyre a little tone deaf, Herald told me. Fellow activists explained that the $50 fee is a barrier, but to no avail.

If a private corporation advertised a $100 payment for something that really cost $500, California Attorney General Kamala Harris probably would go after the corporation for false advertising. If a credit card company boosted its fees the way the courts do, activists would call those practices usury. If the police yanked peoples drivers licenses because they didnt pay a $100 fine, the public would regard such a harsh penalty as excessive force. Yet Sacramento has codified a system that commits all three sins and its perfectly legal. Really, is there anything more brutal than government on autopilot?

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DebraJSaunders

A Man in Full

In this 1998 Tom Wolfe novel, laid-off worker Conrad Hensleys treatment at the hands of Oakland traffic enforcement sets off a chain of events that lands him in the Santa Rita Jail. Heres an excerpt:

Look, miss, said Conrad. He struggled to find the right words, the compelling logic. Im telling you, I didnt park in the red zone. Honest. And even if I did, would I put my front wheels up on the curb? Would that make any sense?

The (meter maid) delivered a contralto chuckle deep in her throat and said, They dont pay me to make sense outta what the drivers do in this town. Couldnt pay me enough to do that.

It took him 40 minutes to reach the window, where a gaunt woman, the very embodiment of Tried Patience, informed him that he owed an additional $30. He was stunned. Stunned! He didnt have an additional $30! ... That was in addition to the $30 for parking in a red zone, making a total of $60 in fines he would have to pay in order to get a slip releasing the car from the towing pound. At the point he would still have to pay a $77 towing charge, assuming he got there by 7 p.m.
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Most dances that attempt to emulate the style of famous painters end up looking like dreary tableaux vivants. The question why bother starts to form on the lips. But, against all odds, ODC/Dances founding Artistic Director Brenda Way takes a similar path and comes up a winner in the captivating Walk Back the Cat, the keystone work on the program that opened the companys annual Dance Downtown season (its 45th) Thursday, March 17, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.

The model is American painter Thomas Hart Benton, whose murals of urban life in the 1930s still fascinate, and you can understand why Way was attracted and challenged by him. The sheer energy in Bentons work is disconcerting, its ebullience is remarkable, and its angles of vision suggest a woozy hedonism. Way lets it all out in the opening tableau, a silhouette of the 11-member cast and trumpeter Tom Dambly wailing through Paul Dreshers appropriate (if overamplified) commissioned score. Dambly departs to join violinist Emily Packard in the pit. That brings on the dancers.

And what dancers! Since the last ODC season, there has been a substantial personnel turnover in the company. But you might not notice, so artfully has Way woven the four newcomers (Jeremy Bannon-Neches, Alec Guthrie, Allie Papazian and Tegan Schwab) into the texture of the work. The performers pose, with legs bent, spines twisted, butts exaggerated, backs arched, shoulders heaving and arms curved, Balances are tipsy, feet draw lazy lines on the floor, and you notice that Way has created a piece with virtually no straight lines.

In the first part of Walk Back the Cat, you sense a certain austerity. The barefoot dancers wear simple black; they dance in front of a variety of projections (including some choreographer rehearsal sketches). When the performers meet, they adhere to the same movement style. Lifts are awkward and disorienting, and the virtuosity takes your breath away.

Steffi Cheongs entry in 30s finery (and high heels) moves us from the abstract to the historical. When the company dons slinky outfits and Josie G. Sadan extends a leg under her glittering dress, you understand the meaning of swanky. Damblys return to the stage reinforces the historical element.

Walk Back the Cat is hugely enjoyable, not because its a nostalgic wallow, but because Way seems to say that style is not appliqued thrills; style is meaning itself. Credit RJ Muna and Ian Winters for the visuals and Gabriel Brandon-Hanson for the costumes.

Thursdays program opened with a superior piece doccasion. After a seven-year absence, the popular performer Brandon Private Freeman, who inspired some of Ways finer dances (not least Investigating Grace), has returned to ODC/Dance. Co-Artistic Director KT Nelson has welcomed her colleague with Going Solo, in which Freeman does a terrific job of defying the years.

The structurally solid choreographic plan builds on basic moves, which, like those shoulder shrugs, evolve into more complex phrases. Only Freeman retains enough boyish charm to attempt a climactic slide across the stage. The recorded score unites Max Richter and cellist Jean Jeanrenaud; Sara Horner and David Robertson created the appealing visuals,

In the middle comes a reprise of associate choreographer Kimi Okadas 2011 romp, I Look Vacantly at the Pacific  Though Regret, which has something to do with language lessons and intercultural misunderstandings. The best of this group work is a lip-synced monologue of cliche piled upon cliche. Its scarcely immortal, but hang on for Walk Back the Cat.

Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicles dance correspondent.

ODC/ Dance: Dances by Brenda Way, KT Nelson, Kimi Okada and Kate Weare. Through Sunday, March 27. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard St., S.F. (415) 978-2787. www.odcdance.org.

For an ODC/Dance season preview, go to bit.ly/1RpkJL0
Breitbart, a conservative opinion and news site, is disputing the reasons behind the cancellation of a planned appearance Wednesday by one of its star writers at the Chapel, a Mission District event space and restaurant.

Had enough of Obamas trampling of the Constitution and squelching of American freedoms? the original event listing read. Join like-minded conservatives and make new friends as we discuss and share ideas about liberty, politics, and culture.

The site, named for late founder Andrew Breitbart, has been in the news after allegations that Donald Trumps campaign manager assaulted one of its reporters at a Florida event last week. The reporter and at least three colleagues resigned after Breitbart executives didnt back her up.

The Breitbart writer who was scheduled to appear at the Chapel, Milo Yiannopoulos, has been a vocal supporter of the online Gamergate movement, whose adherents have been accused of bullying women and others who disagree with them.

Chapel owner Jack Knowles told The Chronicle that the venue had no idea about Breitbarts reputation, claiming hed been led to believe it was a group of Republicans.

Knowles said that the San Francisco venue is open to partisan gatherings, but that Breitbarts approach to discussing political issues and Yiannopoulos presence, coupled with the large number of people who had signed up to attend on Meetup.com, presented safety and capacity issues, particularly if it drew people seeking to protest Yiannopoulos. We were watching all the comments about coming into the belly of the beast.

Im not about a culture of hate, he added.

The Chapel owner also claimed that Andrew Greider, Breitbarts director of community events, had pursued the booking in a sneaky manner. Im in favor of free speech, he said, but this is not about free speech.

Breitbart strongly disputed Knowles version of events.

Breitbart editor at large Joel Pollak shared emails with The Chronicle that show Greider identified the event as being associated with Breitbart, describing his employer as a conservative news and opinion website.

This is NOT a political rally  the meet-up is a gathering of our readers to meet in a social setting and discuss issues that are important to them and hear from one of our experts, Greider wrote in an email Feb. 24. I just bring this up because I want to make sure that we are respectful of your venue and not disruptive to any other guests you might have.

Knowles said that his biggest issues were with the capacity concerns and Yiannopoulos presence at the event. Milo was really the biggest problem, he said.

Breitbart believes its event was mischaracterized and that the capacity issues were overblown.

The two sides also disagreed about security. Knowles said that after learning of the interest in the event, he told Breitbart it would have to pay if they want security.

Breitbart said that it makes sure there is security for all meetups, in accordance with the rules and regulations of the city that the event is held in, including the rules regarding if they are uniformed or armed, but ultimately, that didnt sit well with the Chapels events crew.

Breitbart said they always do their own security, and as a policy we do not allow people (to) do their own security, Knowles responded, adding that the venue trains its staff to protect guests as nonviolently as possible. When you have outside security, they tend to have a different philosophy.
Those who love to travel and explore the world know that there are some places that sound better in theory, but not in reality.

A recent Askreddit thread addressed this and posed this question to the Reddit community: "What is one location that really doesn't live up to its reputation?"
IRBIL, Iraq  The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraqs north earlier this week said he made a bad decision joining the Islamic State, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station that aired late Thursday.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Va., detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the Islamic State-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters.

Khweis said he met an Iraqi woman with ties to Islamic State in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul. There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee.

I didnt agree with their ideology, he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul.

Khweis said a friend helped him escape Mosul to nearby Tal Afar. From there he said he walked toward Kurdish troops. I wanted to go to the Kurdish side, he said, because I know they are good with the Americans.

The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from Islamic State militants late last year. In the past year Islamic State fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq. Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation.

Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State have said that they are seeing an increase in the number of Islamic State members surrendering following recent territorial losses. As the militants lose territory, U.S. officials predict there will be more desertions.

I wasnt thinking straight, Khweis said. My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad, he said, adding that he doesnt believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam.

The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al Qaeda or other extremist groups.
RIO DE JANEIRO  Uncertainty clouded Brazils already turbulent political scenario Thursday as a judge blocked the appointment of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as chief of staff to his successor just moments after his tumultuous swearing-in ceremony.

Critics of current President Dilma Rousseff accuse her of a transparent maneuver aimed at helping the once wildly popular da Silva slalom legal woes that saw him taken in for questioning in a sprawling corruption probe less than two weeks ago. Cabinet members cannot be investigated, charged or imprisoned unless authorized by the Supreme Court.
BRUSSELS  After months of acrimony, the European Union and Turkey reached a landmark deal on Friday to ease the refugee crisis and give Ankara concessions on better EU relations.

In a final meeting high on smiles, handshakes and backslapping, the 28 EU leaders and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sealed an agreement that will allow thousands of refugees to be sent back to Turkey as of Sunday, while Ankara will see fast-track procedures to get billions in aid to deal with Syrian refugees, unprecedented visa concessions for Turks to come to Europe and a re-energizing of its EU membership bid.

Davutoglu strode into the final joint session of a summit in Brussels with the poise of a winner, happily shaking hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and getting an encouraging pat on the back from French President Francois Hollande.

Today, we have finally reached an agreement, EU Council President Donald Tusk, who chaired the summit, told reporters. All irregular migrants coming from Turkey into Greek islands from this Sunday, March 20, will be returned to Turkey.

Davutoglu, whose country is home to almost 3 million Syria refugees, proclaimed the agreement a momentous occasion.

This is a historic day, he said. We today realized that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges, and the same future.

For the EU, the deal brought some closure to months of bitter infighting over how to deal with the refugee emergency by essentially outsourcing the problem to Turkey.

With more than 1 million refugees arriving in Europe over the past year, EU leaders were desperate to clinch a deal with Turkey and heal deep rifts within the bloc, while relieving the pressure on Greece, which has borne the brunt of arrivals.

The agreement would have clear commitments that the rights of legitimate refugees would be respected and treated according to international and EU law. Within a week, Turkish and EU officials would assess joint projects to help Syrian refugees in Turkey, after complaints that promised aid of $3.3 billion was too slow in coming.

Turkey has also been guaranteed that EU accession talks on budgetary issues could start before the summer.

The conditions in Greece and the Idomeni camp on the Greek-Macedonian border were called intolerable by the Greek government on Friday. Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis compared the crowded tent city to a Nazi concentration camp, blaming the suffering on some European countries closed border policies.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europes prosperous heartland.
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BRUSSELS  After an intense four-month manhunt, police on Friday captured the top fugitive in last years deadly Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighborhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and is suspected of driving a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings. Abdeslam was shot in the leg, officials said.

Thierry Werts, a spokesman for the Belgium federal prosecutors office, said four people had been detained along with Abdeslam, including three members of a family that sheltered him in the Molenbeeck neighborhood. Werts did not say how the three members of the family accused of sheltering Abdeslam knew him.

Frances BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured. Helmeted police with riot shields cordoned off the area, and two explosions were heard.

The Islamic extremist attackers killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on Nov. 13 in Paris, in the countrys deadliest attacks in decades.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called Fridays arrests a success in the fight against terrorism. He said he spoke to President Obama about the arrest, and the White House said U.S. officials have been in close touch with French and Belgian officials about the investigation into the Paris attacks.

French President Francois Hollande congratulated the Belgian government for an operation that lasted several weeks. He warned that the investigation is not over and said authorities would continue to pursue anyone involved in financing or organizing the attacks.

Two other people believed linked to the attacks were still being sought, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Fridays capture of Abdeslam came after Belgian authorities said they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighborhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam  Mohamed Belkaid  was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors said. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent days, weeks or months, in the apartment.
BEIRUT  Russian warplanes on Friday flew in support of Syrian government troops in an offensive to recapture the historic town of Palmyra from the hands of the Islamic State group, which has damaged many of the towns world-famous archaeological sites.

Activists who monitor the Syrian conflict reported intense air strikes in Palmyra and its suburbs. In Moscow, a Russian Defense Ministry official confirmed his countrys warplanes in Syria were flying in support of the Syrian offensive to try to retake Palmyra.

Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said Russian aircraft based in Syria were conducting 20 to 25 sorties a day in support of the Palmyra offensive, even though Russia this week drew down its military presence in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial pullout of Russian aircraft and forces this week, in support of the Geneva peace talks that are currently under way in Switzerland between representatives of the Syrian government and the Western-backed opposition.

Those U.N.-brokered talks, aimed at finding a way to resolve the five-year civil war, entered their fifth day on Friday.

If the Syrian army and its allies capture the historic town in the central province of Homs, it will be a major victory against Islamic State militants in Syria.

Warplanes conducted more than a dozen air strikes since Friday morning, according to two activist groups, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees.

The Observatory said troops were slowly advancing toward Palmyra, adding that both sides are bringing in reinforcements. It said there were casualties on both sides but did not give any figures.

Syrian troops and their allies have been on the offensive in the area since last week and on Tuesday captured Hill 900, which is the highest point near Palmyra and overlooks the town.

Palmyra, home to famed Roman ruins, has been under the firm control of Islamic State since the extremists captured it in May last year.

In October, the Associated Press obtained a video that showed the main structure of 2,000- year-old iconic Arch of Triumph in Palmyra has been destroyed. Activists have said that Islamic State extremists blew up the arch.

Islamic State also destroyed the Temple of Bel and the smaller Baalshamin temple last August. The Islamic State group considers such relics promote idolatry.

On Thursday, Putin said Moscow will keep enough forces in Syria to continue the fight against the Islamic State, the al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front and other extremist organizations.

The Russian campaign has helped turn the tide of war and allowed Syrian President Bashar Assads forces to make significant advances ahead of peace talks.
Questions Raised

Gov. Susana Martinez top political adviser may have escaped federal indictment, but

. Two former fundraisers, who cooperated with FBI agents investigation, claim theyve faced serious retaliation and harassment from some of the governors closest supporters. Joey Peters reports that Andrea Goff and Cecilia Martinez also want to know why the probe was dropped.

Montoya Faces Ethics Complaint

New Energy Economy, a renewable energy advocacy group, has filed a complaint against

for potential violations of the Governmental Conduct Act.

Montoya, who is running for re-election this year, has previously denied similar accusations.

PRC Won't Review PNM's Coal Loan

Meanwhile,

PNMs $125 million loan to a Colorado coal mining company. While the PRC looks the other way, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has signed

ordering Oregon's two largest utilities, Portland General Electric and Pacific Power, to stop paying for out-of-state coal power by 2030. It also says utilities must serve half their customers' demand with renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2040.

Taking Command

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that

a Santa Fe native, is headed back to New Mexico from Hawaii to take command of the White Sands Missile Range.

Crowded Field

More than

have applied to replace David Weaver, who is retiring as police chief in Taos.

Take Aways

Erlinda Ocampo Johnson has learned a lot defending corrupt government officials, including Dianna Duran.

.

Rhetoric Doesnt Match Reality

Before

winds down, Laura Paskus has published an essay about her professional challenges trying to get information from government agencies. Public information officers, she suggests, are not always responsible for the hushed responses. Instead, Paskus says

Speaking of open government issues, well be on "New Mexico in Focus" tonight at 7 pm talking about our own push for

Meow Wolf

If youre looking for something fun to do this weekend, you might want to check out the all-new immersive

. It opened yesterday, and

the center's blowling alley redo "dazzles with details."

Santa Fe Reporter
The Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society is appealing a High Court judgment which let the Department of Conservation proceed with a land swap, allowing 22 hectares of Ruahine Forest Park be flooded as part of the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme.

Last month, the High Court ruled against a bid by the environmental lobby to block the director-general of conservation's decision revoking the conservation status of the land that lay within the footprint of the proposed reservoir, allowing it to be flooded in exchange for a larger area of land with conservation value. Justice Matthew Palmer rejected the group's challenge, finding that the decision was within the broad purpose of the Conservation Act.

"Allowing this decision to stand could mean that any part of New Zealands specially protected conservation land can be traded away and the special values of the land removed to advance commercial interests," Forest & Bird lawyer Sally Gepp said in a statement. "It sets a precedent for up to 1 million hectares of specially protected conservation land throughout New Zealand, which includes forest parks, conservation parks, and ecological and wilderness areas.

The judge made the point that this case goes to the heart of the purpose of the Conservation Act, which is why it is such a significant case for Forest & Bird, and for New Zealand. We believe the High Court was wrong to hold that the decision was consistent with the Acts purpose."

Forest & Bird said it had lodged its appeal today.

The $275 million scheme, backed by the Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Co, would create a 93 million cubic metre reservoir to store water in the upper Makaroro river to improve river flows for agricultural use in the Tukituki River catchment. It's estimated it would provide irrigation for 25,000 hectares of farm land in central Hawke's Bay.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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BENGALURU: When it comes to smartphones, everyone have their own taste. Some prefer bigger screens, others smaller; some prefer performance over form factor, and then there are others giving equal value to both. Talking about the OS, while Windows, iPhone OS and Blackberry OS are OEM specific, the Google built Android OS is an easy choice for brands like Samsung, Sony, HTC, and Motorola. They have adopted the OS since long and are continually developing new phones with features that might attract future customers. With so many options and big names playing in the market, we often miss the phones that are actually good performers but are not able to build the hype- the underdogs of smartphone industry. Here we present 5 such phones that are worth considering while you make your plans to buy your next smartphone.

Google Nexus 5X

The killer compact, lightweight device runs on a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor and is available in 16GB and 32GB variant. It comes with 12.3MP rear camera having 1.55micron sensor and laser autofocus for fast capturing. The camera is capable of shooting 4K as well as 120fps videos. It has a 5.2-inch screen and a non-removable Li-Po 2700 mAh battery. It also has a fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone and compatible apps with just one touch. Google is offering a discount of INR 4,000 (applicable until March 27, 2016) and the phone is available at a price of INR 23,000 and INR 27,900 for 16GB and 32GB respectively at Google store. The phone is available in Carbon, Quartz, Ice colors.

Read Also: Top 10 Smart Devices Launched in India

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HONG KONG: Kitchenware company Masterful Ltd has decided to enter the growing Indian and South American markets and also board the e-commerce train, said a senior official.



"We are looking at entering the Indian and South American markets. Barring China and India, markets are stagnating in other countries," Noordin A. Ebrahim, director of Masterful Ltd, told IANS.



Ebrahim came to Hong Kong in 1950 from India at the age of 19 to join the family business.



"Our family has had a trading business in Hong Kong since 1842, importing yarn, cotton and exporting goods made here and Chinese pulses," Ebrahim said.



In 1988, he promoted Masterful to deal in houseware and kitchenware. Some years ago, the company started marketing the products under its own brand Master Chef.



The products of the company, which boasts a turnover of $55 million, have a small presence in India through imports from Dubai, Ebrahim said.



Masterful has started the process of getting into the e-commerce platform.



"We get our items from China and India to our design specifications and export to markets like Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other countries," he said.



"The Indian manufacturers have a good domestic market and hence they are not much bothered about the international market. The Indian companies are not keen on improving their product packaging to the international standards," Ebrahim said.



According to him, the safe route to Chinese markets for Indian companies would be to set up base in Hong Kong.



"In China, there are two kinds of manufacturers ... those who shifted base from here to China and the originally China-based manufacturers," Ebrahim said.



The Chinese-based manufacturers have improved their quality to much higher levels now as compared to earlier years but have yet to reach the quality standards of manufacturers who shifted base from Hong Kong, he added.



Ebrahim is of the view that China would not do anything to shake the confidence of the Hong Kong business community and would like to see that peace continued to prevail in the former British colony.

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BENGALURU: Where there is a will, there is a way. Few people we come across prove this old saying true and make us feel that these are not mere words but wisdom to live life. While most of us love to travel, how many of us are actually willing to get out of our comfort zone and walk an extra mile? Here we bring you names of 6 such women travelers who are perfect examples of passion meets travelling, source HolidayIQ.

1. Parvinder Chawla

Her physical disability never hindered her enthusiasm to travel. The Punjabis are already known for their charismatic lifestyle and a born Punjabi, Parvinder adds inspiration to it. She has worked for call centers and has been a yoga instructor too. She took her first solo trip to London 14 years ago inspired by her father who taught her to be self-dependent and confident. Parvinder believes the world is exactly how we see it. "Take your first step and the rest will come its way. I am a sum of my experiences and I truly believe that travel is destiny; not my wheelchair, she said in an interview with HolidayIQ.

2. Divya Nawale

While you might be planning and delaying your next trip to the holiday destination of your dreams, 29 year old Divya has already traveled all 7 continents. The travel bug first bit her on a trip to Antarctica when she was 22. Once she realized her love for nature, the world became her oyster. She loves to enjoy the distinctiveness of cities and places she visits. Some day you might hear she is on an expedition to the Sahara desert and the other day scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

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WASHINGTON: With India setting an ambitious target of generating 175 gigawatts (Gw) of clean energy by 2022, a top US official said that India has the potential to be "a change agent" for the rest of the world in the renewable sector though the transformation process is going to be tough.



"India could really be a change agent for the rest of the world in the renewable energy sector if they get it right. So we have a vested interest in helping them get that right," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Transformation Melanie Nakagawa said.



And as India embarks on the $1 trillion project to build its infrastructure from road to ports, she said it is a great opportunity for the world, "to showcase" India as a country that gets the sustainability future right. But at the same time, she acknowledged that it is going to be tough.



"I think that there's a story to be written there as they get closer to it but it's going to be tough.I mean it's going to take not just the political will, but it's going to take the reforms and the policies needed to actually see this possible future happen," she said.



Noting that Indian government needs $100 billion in investment including $70 billion of debt financing to meet their 175 gigawatt target by 2022, the US official said those numbers can't be met with public finance alone. And necessary reforms are needed to attract private investment.



"India's commitments on the 175 gigawatt renewable energy target by 2022, their commitments on solar, their commitments also in the finance infrastructure space, this all makes it a really impressive political will, signal and political will," Nakagawa said.



India has set itself an ambitious target of generating 175 gigawatt of power by 2022 from renewable sources that includes 100 Gw from solar, 60 Gw from wind, 10 Gw from biomass and 5 Gw from small hydroelectric project.



India and the US are working closely together in this field. The US-India Clean Energy Finance Task Force which was established in September 2015 has had three meetings so far.



This is a government-to-government task force focused on clean energy investment and finance.It's complimented by a private sector led task force called a Clean Energy Finance Forum, the which is led by Uday Kemkha and SunEdison.



The task force, she said, has proposed three recommendations for how the US can work with India on getting to scale clean energy projects.



The three proposals on the table include standardizing power purchase agreements; first loss facility and looking at the idea of warehousing and securitization for renewable energy projects.



"This is all about reducing project risk in the renewable energy space; different ways you can reduce project risk," the US official said.



The first loss facility helps get at reducing that risk, she observed. The idea of warehousing and securitisation of renewable energy project assets is sort of bundling smaller scale projects into a larger project.



"This is a government-to-government dialogue on a pretty technical issue, but one that is really fundamental to how you would actually see scalable investment happen in India in the renewable energy space. Because these are some of the most systemic and problematic barriers to the larger scale investments that are needed to hit the renewable energy targets," she said.



According to Nakagawa, the Task Force is discussing just the enabling environment from a finance perspective.



"What we're looking at is the specific window of project based investment for the renewable energy sector and what are the impediments to that," she said.

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Source: PTI
Scenes from The Burrito Shoppe and Salad Junkie in St. George. (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Ed Gomez and his restaurant staff say, "Lettuce Rock Your World" and fill your burrito bowls at the same time. The entrepreneur can do both handily with his new casual food duo hooked up in St. George --"The Salad Junkie" and, next door, "The Burrito Shoppe."

"We're offering a healthy alternative to people who come, and putting some of the ethnicity of my staff to work," said a perky Gomez, who nods to colleagues like Sarah Pimentel. She is a native of El Salvador who turns out flaky empanadas filled with carefully chopped egg, green olive, onion plus supple raisins and beef crumbles. That recipe merges input from Gomez's Mom who hails from Argentina.

Another staffer, Victor Perez, originally from Mexico, whips out a glass beverage dispenser filled with a ruby red liquid.

"This is Jamaica," he said proudly, pouring a bit into a paper cup. Made from hibiscus leaves with no sugar, Perez considers it a salubrious drink.

Staten Islanders should know Gomez and his family from the DaNoi group of restaurants. The linen-cloth, fine dining DaNoi concept started in Bayonne, N.J. -- "Da Noi" meaning "by us" -- then came to Travis and eventually spun off a "downtown" version in Fort Wadsworth. About three years ago, Gomez opened a Midtown Manhattan location.

But newer projects for the Gomez' have seen more informal supping with establishments like Bin 5, an eclectic bistro in Rosebank with a backyard patio, and 120 Bay Cafe, a resurrection of Cargo Cafe in St. George and hipster joint thusly.

"Those days of sitting down for dinner, they're not as relevant anymore. It's changing right before our eyes and we're here to embrace it," said Gomez.

Embracing the informal indeed, Gomez got the idea from the neighborhood of DaNoi's Midtown spot. That restaurant suffered a fire about a year ago and, in the aftermath, Gomez spent much time in the lunch-forward neighborhood.

"I saw how the lunch business was in the City -- and I thought it would do well here," he said, referring to this section of "The Rock" by the Ferry.

Gomez finds his grab-and-go affair at Salad Junkie and Burrito Shoppe are well received.

"People love it! It's quick, it's easy," he enthused as Zacharia Gray, donned in a black chef coat, tossed up a kale-based salad.

Pupils from Curtis and other schools in the area take advantage of the $5 student deals. Those who work in St. George could appreciate the local delivery service through the lunch hour. And, neighborhood residents might like the idea of the place being open until 10 p.m. daily.

"We put out extra tables at night," offered Gomez.

WHAT'S A MEAL LIKE?

To understand the two restaurant principles, a patron could start on one side of the paper menu with the salad bar format.

Ms. Pimentel will explain a "craft your own" salad has six components -- choose one green, four toppings and a dressing for $7.95. Additional toppings cost 50 cents each. And, she or Zacharia Gray will assemble that for you from a chilled, stainless steel garde manger station.

On the salad subject, guests also may choose from preset offerings under "The Good Stuff" heading like kale tossed with avocado, dried cranberries, orange wedges, radishes, cilantro, feta and sunflower seeds finished with honey-lemon dressing. Cheeses in combos built on romaine, arugula, kale and mesclun mix can include goat, gorgonzola, Ricotta Salata, Blue, Pepperjack as it is on a Buffalo Chicken salad and Mozzarella as it gets worked into the "Caprese Twist" paired with bacon, avocado and tomatoes.

Now, flip the menu to see The Burrito Shoppe's regimen.

Well, this is simple enough: Start with a burrito, hard taco trio or "burrito bowl" filled a choice of Spanish rice, black or pinto beans, meat, salsa, cheese or sour cream and shredded lettuce. Look a bit further down the menu for protein options -- grilled, marinated chicken ($7.95), grilled steak ($8.95), carnitas a.k.a. shredded pork ($7.95) and veggie ($7.95) which encompasses freshly made quacamole and choice of legume. Mild, medium-hot or hot salsas are included and there are extras like chips, guac and additional sour cream.

The Salad Junkie and The Burrito Shop share the same address, 100 Stuyvesant Pl., and phone number, 718-816-3000. Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily (except Sunday) and delivery is available in the area.

Pamela Silvestri writes about food for the Advance. Follow her off-the-cuff blog at @StatenEats on Instagram.
NWS HATCH 3

Screen shot of one of two hatching bald eagle eggs in Washington, D.C., treetop nest at 3:08 p.m. on Thursday, March 17, 2016. Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry (Courtesy of American Eagle Foundation live camera.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Mr. President and The First Lady -- the so-named pair of wild bald eagles that built a treetop nest on the grounds of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. -- are about to become parents for the second time, if all goes well with the two large white eggs the raptors have incubated for over a month.

The First Lady laid her first egg of 2016 on Feb. 10, and the second one on Feb. 14, according to the American Eagle Foundation (AEF).

Screen shot of two bald eagle eggs in Washington, D.C. treetop nest at 3:06 p.m. on March 17, 2016. Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry (Courtesy of American Eagle Foundation live camera.)

The nonprofit group said that the first of the two eggs -- hopefully yielding health baby eaglets -- could possibly hatch as early as Tuesday, March 15, but that birth did not happen.

The first crack in one of the eggs was observed on Wednesday, March 16, courtesy of two live 24/7 high-definition video cameras that zoom in on the treetop nest, courtesy of AEF, with design and installation by Alfred State College, SUNY College of Technology, and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and Environment.

This bald eagle pair -- Mr. President and the First Lady -- waiting for two eggs to hatch in a treetop nest in Washington, D.C., at 5:56 p.m., Thursday, March 17, 2016. (Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry screenshot: Courtesy of live video cameras, American Eagle Foundation)

The beautiful wild-eagle nest is approximately 5 feet wide and 6 feet deep, AEF reported. "It is within sight distance of the Anacostia River, and located in an area with limited human disturbance."

You can watch the real-time action here, and wait for an update about the anticipated births on SILive.com.

HATCHING: A SLOW PROCESS

The actual hatching of bald eagle eggs -- after 35 days of incubation -- is a slow process.

Here are a few fast facts, as posted on the learner.org website:

About four days before hatching, the chick develops an egg tooth at the top of its bill. From inside the egg, the chick pokes a hole in the membrane separating it from the air bubble at the top of the egg shell. Still inside the egg, the chick takes its first breath from the air bubble. This bit of air will provide energy to scratch a hole through the egg shell to the outside.

The hole poked through the membrane is called the internal pip. The hole pecked through the egg shell is called the external pip.

After breaking the membrane with its egg tooth, the chick can breathe the air that filters through the porous egg shell and vigorously starts the final process of hatching.

The chicks hatch from the eggs without any help from the parents.

The chick uses its egg tooth to scratch around the inside of the shell in a circular path. The scratches weaken the shell in a pattern all around the egg. This is called pipping, and it can take from one to two days. When pipping is completed, the chick gives a few expansive bursts. The shell opens up, and the chick is hatched.

During hatching, a chick must undergo several physiological adaptations. Before it hatches, a chick absorbs oxygen through the shell by way of the mat of membranes under the shell.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Ah, perhaps you are anticipating a happy St. Joseph's Day! If your name is "Joseph," "Josephine," Giuseppe, Beppe or some derivation thereof, then Saturday, March 19, is your special day!

It's a day to honor San Giuseppe, as Sicilians know him, with lots of food. But not just any food -- we're talking very specific foods tucked with symbolic meaning alongside little gestures to ensure good luck going forward. (I am tugging my ear as a hint of such traditions.)

But first, story time: St. Joseph is the Patron Saint of Workers. His reverence in Sicily comes from a time of drought on the Island back in the Middle Ages.

The peasants prayed to God through St. Joseph, asking for rain. They promised that if the drought ended, they would fete both the Almighty Father and St. Joseph in an annual feast. And, here we go again in 2016 with 13 things you should know for March 19.

FEED FAVA FEVER: Fava beans blessed by a priest make them lucky. Carry a dried one around, you'll be blessed with good fortune and never go broke.

BRING ON THE BREADCRUMBS: They resemble sawdust, no? Therefore, they're a nod to St. Joseph's profession as a carpenter. Some may say they look like crumbly dirt or sand, a reference to drought.

GET CHOKED UP: Another way to bring on the breadcrumbs: stuffed Artichokes. (Note: They come into peak season in March.) Clean them by snipping off the thorny thistle tips and scooping out the hairy part of the choke in the center. Steam them with chicken broth, maybe a little anchovy, lemon and white wine in the mix.

PASTA CON SARDE: Now that you're hungry, let's move onto the starch course. Hollow, strand pasta is the classic vehicle for serving Pasta Con Sarde, a must-have dish on March 19. Bucatini #6 and perciatelli (pronounced: Perch-Ah-Telly) are the likely suspects in the way of pasta shapes. If you don't want to make the traditional Pasta Con Sarde yourself, don't worry: Most any Italian restaurant will be serving it this weekend on Staten Island. Then, there's Cuoco brand "seasoning for Macaroni with Sardines" which can still please the Italian mother-in-law. (Note to self: Doctor up the canned brand with more currants, raisins and toasted Mediterranean pine nuts.)

GO FISH: Hey, St. Joseph's Day falls on a Saturday this year. But that doesn't mean that meat enters the picture. Just do what Sicilians would do: Rely on the ocean for a meal. (Enter: Pasta Con Sarde.)

BRIGHTEN UP WITH CITRUS: There's a lotta citrus going on in Sicily. Now, bring that citrus to the American table -- lemons, limes, oranges...maybe a blood orange -- for the pause that refreshes.

BREAK BREAD WITH GIUSEPPE: Most Italian bakeries such as Rossville's La Dolce -- 655 Rossville Ave., 718-356-9864 -- craft a bread loaf into a petite or large cross or, more commonly, a shepherd's staff on March 19. That's "San Giuseppe Bread."

BUILD AN ALTAR: On St. Joseph's Day, you're going to build an altar -- a three-tiered one decked out with seasonal veggies, favas, bread and whatever you have to offer. The number "three" marks the Divine Trinity. Do not forget to crown your creation with a statue of St. Joseph. (Fun fact: Bury this guy upside down in front of your house and, tradtion says you'll get divine intervention when looking for a buyer.)

CAN YOU SAY 'SFINCI'? Those words starting with "SF" can be so very tricky. Every Italian bakery in the borough and specialty delis such as Montalbano's Pork Store in Rosebank and Rossville will present the St. Joseph Day pastry or sfinci (pronounced: Su-feen-gee.) It is essentially a fried zeppole piped with rich custard or cannoli cream sprinkled generously with powdered sugar.

JUST SMILE! Know the classic greeting for the day: "May St. Joseph always smile upon you." (Insert smile here.)

WEAR RED: A red tie, boutonniere, (underwear?)...just wear red on St. Joseph's Day for good luck! Here was an uptick in last year's celebrations on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with Nicole Petallides of Fox Business News and Staten Island's Joseph Sangimino, center, with Frank Lipari. Pastries hail from Villabote Alba of Brooklyn.

TUG A JOE'S EAR: You know a Joe? Well, go tug his ear -- a little yank or two on one of the lobes. It's a sign of like, "Hey, Joe. Happy day, yo."

SAY A PRAYER: Of course, we must remember the Father of Jesus Christ and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In that spirit, Vittorio Asoli teaches a prayer to St. Joseph from his Dongan Hills restaurant, Trattoria Romana, in the video below.
Belgium Paris Attacks

Special operations police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large. He was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. (AP Photo/Geoffrey Van der Hasselt)

(Geoffrey Van der Hasselt)

BRUSSELS -- After an intense four-month manhunt across Europe and beyond, police on Friday captured the top fugitive in the Paris attacks in the same Brussels neighborhood where he grew up.

Salah Abdeslam was shot in the leg and detained by police during a raid in Molenbeek, said Ahmed El Khannouss, the neighborhood's deputy mayor.

Police are still searching for another suspect who is holed up in a house that is just a few dozen meters (yards) from two schools, he added.

Helmeted police with riot shields have cordoned off the area and two explosions were heard.

Brussels-born Abdeslam, 26, was among the attackers who killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on Nov. 13 in Paris.

In addition to Abdeslam, the whereabouts of two Paris attack suspects remains unknown, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.

Friday's caputure of Abdeslam comes after Belgian authorities say they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighborhood.

In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam -- Mohamed Belkaid -- was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors say. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months," in the apartment.

Abdeslam fled Paris after the Nov. 13 attacks. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area Thursday.

Salah Abdeslam, a childhood friend of suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation, and were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.

An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.

Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.

A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.

Four days after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, the same false ID card was used to transfer 750 euros ($847) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, Abaaoud's niece. Both Ait Boulahcen and Abaaoud died afterward in a police siege.

Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, has not been found since.

In January, Belgian authorities said one of his fingerprints was found alongside homemade suicide bomb belts at an apartment in another area of Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said it wasn't known whether he had been at the address in the Schaerbeek district before or after the Paris attacks, or how long he had spent there.
NYSI-20160318-111044-nws_daycare.jpg

Precious Beginnings Daycare at 464 Hoyt Ave. in West Brighton has been closed by the state for alleged violations connected to overcrowding and inadequate staffing.

((Staten Island Advance/JanSomma-Hammel))

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The operator of Precious Beginnings Daycare in West Brighton will appeal closure by the state based on what her attorney claims are "unfounded" allegations.

The facility at 464 Hoyt Ave., operated by Christine Lyons, was shuttered by the state Office of Children and Family Services on Wednesday, a day after both a state inspection and a visit by the NYPD.

The state found violations connected to staffing, the number of children cared for and health/safety hazards at the facility.

"My client will absolutely appeal the suspension and revocation, because the allegations are unfounded, they're baseless," Keith Casella, Lyon's attorney, said.

"Someone is making outrageous allegations against my client and the treatment of the children in her care and we're exploring our legal options in respect to that."

They attorney predicted that the facility will be allowed to reopen after a hearing to challenge the closure.

Casella acknowledged that the NYPD responded to the day care facility on Tuesday evening. Neighbors alerted the Advance about the police visit.

"Someone had called 911 regarding mistreatment of children and the police came, did an investigation and found no wrongdoing," Casella said.

The NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information had "no reports on record" for that police call.

The state Office of Children and Family Services issued the following statement:

"The New York State Office of Children and Family Services suspended and revoked Christine Lyons' group family day care license on March 16 for having unqualified staff and too many children in care.

"OCFS is monitoring the home for signs of illegal operation while the program is under suspension. By law, Ms. Lyons has 10 days to request a hearing to challenge the suspension and 30 days to challenge the revocation."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Global hair artist Farrukh Shamuratov took his first trip to Staten Island this week to teach local hair stylists his unique hair styles.

The Russian-born hair stylist creates distinctive hairdos -- some of which people say look like floral designs -- that have garnered celebrity attention from Paris to New York. Most recently, he was on the set of the Oscars, creating one-of-a-kind hairdos for the stars.

"I'm honored to have Farrukh here. He taught us his techniques and did some of our clients' hair this week," said Kim Barbagallo, owner of Fringe: The Art of Hair in Willowbrook.

Barbagallo was a hair model for Shamuratov for the first part of his workshop, which took place in Manhattan. Day two of the event was held at Fringe: The Art of Hair on Thursday.

"We had 12 hairstylists from across New York here learning new techniques and skills," said Shamuratov, who is based in Los Angeles.

See Shamuratov's hair styles on Instagram:

Romantic hairstyle from my seminar in Los Angeles! One the my favorite group! I miss you guys so bad! So different but so nice people![?] #farrukh #farrukhshamuratov #fshairdo A video posted by Farrukh Shamuratov (@fshairdo) on Mar 9, 2016 at 2:47pm PST

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Er, wheres the rice? Ana Vega

Jamon, sangria, paella and tapas  the symbols that represent Spanish cuisine abroad, at least at the amateur level. And thanks to Spanish chef Jose Andres efforts to educate audiences, some people also know how to identify and prepare fabada (a bean stew), arroz con leche (rice pudding) and bacalao al pil-pil (cod with olive oil, garlic and chili).

Meanwhile, the sudden ubiquity of chorizo across the globe has sent overseas chefs bonkers, coming up with things like chorizo meatballs, chicken and chorizo pate, chorizo pizza and even chorizo jam, complete with a label bearing the words Oink. Ole. And all of it marketed as Spanish.

Jamie Oliver has made Spanglish food a personal trademark and enthusiastically adds chorizo to pretty much everything

But thats okay, because Spaniards also do horrible things to foreign dishes, such as using cream in spaghetti carbonara. Its normal for home cooks to play fast and loose with international dishes. Sometimes you just cant find the correct recipe, or you might tailor a dish to fit your tastes or whatever you happen to have in the fridge at that particular moment.

But a professional chef is another story  especially the media-savvy ones. You might expect individuals with specialized training, experience, fame and travel time under their belts to know that real carbonara uses no cream and that paellas are made in paella dishes.

But no.

Spain is different and its cooking is whatever I want it to be, they seem to think. But its one thing to be creative and loosely base your dishes on some foreign idea or product (they call this fusion nowadays), and quite another to pretend you know exactly how to make A, then come up with Z.

Here we review some of the more appalling examples of how celebrity chefs from other countries have altered Spanish cuisine. At the same time, however, we should also remember the upside of all this: that our cooking is now renowned enough to be subjected to the same kind of torment as the cuisines of Italy, Mexico and countless other suffering nations.

Paella

Gordon Ramsay, a chef with a total of 14 Michelin stars and umpteen TV cooking shows, teaches an Englishwoman how to make a paella. Without even venturing into a detailed discussion of what, exactly, constitutes a paella  an issue that raises passions in Valencia  you should be warned that what follows does not even deserve to fall into the category of rice with stuff in it.

In best Kitchen Nightmares style, Ramsay awes the poor lady with his perfect I-know-what-Im-doing pose. Then he launches into making a paella with (what else?) chorizo, chicken, shrimp, squid and clams. He then jazzes it up with a generous squirt of sherry, as well as a few chili peppers  because its never too late to confuse Spain with Mexico.

Video: Gordon Ramsay whips up a paella.

But perhaps the worst part is the fact that he prepares this concoction in a frying pan, and it comes out so runny that he is forced to serve it with a ladle. Yum yum. But thats all right, because the unhappy womans family is delighted, and blown away by the exoticism of it all.

John Torode, an Australian-born celebrity chef, restaurateur and host of the UK version of Masterchef, also claims to know a lot about paella. Cooking to the sound of Spanish guitar chords, he makes his paella in a saute pan. Moved by the spirit of his inner Spaniard, he stir-fries onion, garlic, turmeric and paprika, then adds the rice, the broth and, instead of just leaving it be, stirs everything vigorously, lest the flavors should not gel completely together.

In all fairness, Torode should be credited for using beans in his paella, which might not have been of the bajoqueta or garrofo variety, but which will still earn him brownie points with Valencian viewers. But then he botches it by sauteeing cod to decorate the paella, which he also tops with shrimp, mussels and the classic  and utterly useless  lemon quarters.

Then, when the rice is done, he shakes it up passionately one more time, because he knows that a good paella needs to be mushy and that the rice grains should be crushed. This is what his unappetizing eyesore looked like at the end of it.

Video: John Torodes take on the classic rice dish.

Marco Pierre White also rises to the paella challenge. Ramsays mentor, the enfant terrible of British cuisine and once the youngest holder of three Michelin stars, White has a video of his paella creation. But we dare not put it up here, because he states that he had the best paella of his life in northern Spain, and Valencians are going to have a stroke when they hear that. Lets just reveal that he adds a more-than-generous helping of white wine to his rice, and enough paprika to stop a moving train.

Fideua

David Chang, lord and master of the Momofuku restaurants, made a fideua using instant noodles in season one of The Mind of a Chef (available on Netflix). Now I will make a very famous Spanish dish: noodles, he asserts before frying a cartload of chorizo with clams and mussels, then adding broken-up noodles and chicken broth. To top it all off, he sprinkles paprika generously, adds a couple of spoonfuls of alioli (an oil and garlic sauce), and voila.

The fact is, its a good idea to use instant ramen noodles in this way  but to call it a fideua goes beyond the limits of decency.

The poor guy did look a little alarmed even as he perpetrated the dish, so we can forgive him. That, and the fact that his show is worth it if only to hear him sing in the company of celebrity Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak in San Sebastian.

Spanish omelet

The tortilla de patatas, or Spanish omelet, is so simple  just oil, potatoes, whole eggs and, depending on preference, onion  that it has been subjected to all kinds of cruel treatment at the hands of cooks who believe that it needs something more. Either they add chorizo, vegetables and herbs without blushing, or they cook it in the microwave or oven rather than a frying pan, as well as committing a thousand other evil things besides.

Unquestionably, the most psychedelic version of tortilla was made by the very famous (in his country) Indian chef Sanjeev Kapoor. Using a minimal amount of oil, he stir-fries onion, chilies and green pepper with a few boiled potatoes.

Video: Taking on the Spanish omelet.

The saddest part of all is that he uses five egg whites and one single yolk for the tortilla. Not content with this, he then sticks it in the oven for no fewer than 20 minutes at 180C. Ouch.

Jamie Oliver has made Spanglish food something of a personal trademark. He enthusiastically adds chorizo to pretty much everything, and his odd Made in Spain combinations make for a good laugh for any Spaniard watching his program. Oliver cooks this way because he is a free spirit and because thats the way he feels like cooking  not because he lacks experience in Spain.

Yes, Jamie, it looks like a tortilla, but a Mexican, not a Spanish one. JAMIE OLIVER

Ole, paella, pata negra, Serrano ham! Its all so psychotropic that it is a pleasure to hear him speak Spanish. His highly personal tortilla de patatas is another one of Olivers specialties, like this open Spanish tortilla with potatoes, chouriso, onion, parsley and tomato.

Gazpacho

Jamie has also traveled through Andalusia where he had the nerve to make his own version of gazpacho. His ingredients were correct: tomato, cucumber, pepper, vinegar, olive oil and bread. But the end result was visibly questionable. His gazpacho had a sad hue as a result of the small amount of tomatoes he used, and bloodthirsty Spaniards tore him to pieces for it on YouTube.

Video: Jamie Oliver has a go at gazpacho.

Fortunately, Olivers FoodTube now has someone named Omar Allibhoy, a Spanish cook who knows both how to make a decent tortilla de patatas and how to explain it in English. At this rate, between him, Mario Batali, Claudia Roden and a few other evangelists, were soon not going to have any cause for complaint.

Good thing we also have some truly deplorable paellas in Spain to moan about.

English version by Susana Urra.
A swearing-in ceremony for new US citizens. AFP

From the very first day that he launched his presidential campaign in June of last year, Donald Trump portrayed himself as tough on immigration and most particularly on Latinos.

His insults triggered a reaction by the Latino community, including an economic boycott against the business magnate.

The question was whether these acts would translate into a reaction at the polls if Trump were to become the Republican presidential candidate.

With primaries halfway decided in both parties, and four months to go before the final nominees are proclaimed, there are already some indications of the way things will go.

While it will still be months before any conclusive data emerges, there is a visible Trump effect that is mobilizing unprecedented numbers of Latinos in a common quest to vote and stop Trump on his road to the Oval Office.

Thanks to Trump, the communitys courage is increasing, says activist Sulma Arias

Last Thursday, several organizations working under the umbrella group Center for Community Change Action introduced a multimillion-dollar initiative to get Latinos to vote between now and November.

The project, which is coordinated through a super political action committee (Super PAC), will have an initial budget of $15 million to register minorities, especially Latinos, on the electoral rolls. Investors include the billionaire George Soros.

Sulma Arias, one of the coordinators of the project, says Trump is the fuel that is going to fire up this machine.

Efforts will focus on three swing states with significant Latino communities  Florida, Nevada and Colorado.

The goal is to prove that as immigrants we are not going to tolerate the Republican Partys rhetoric, and we are going to prove that in these three states we have the power to vote against those values, says Arias in a telephone conversation from Washington.

A protest against Trump at a Kansas rally last Saturday. REUTERS

Thanks to Trump, the communitys courage is increasing, she adds. People are ready, but we need to channel that rage towards something positive. The message is that we need to go vote if we dont want Donald Trump as president.

It has become an accepted fact in US politics that Latinos have grown to be such a large group that, if they vote as one, they can decide an election. But that is not exactly the case. Latinos in general only mobilize at presidential elections, and it is hard to get them to do so at primaries or in more local elections. While voter turnout is in excess of 64% among whites and African-Americans, it is less than 50% among Latinos.

An estimated 27.3 million Latinos will have the right to vote at the next presidential election, four million more than in 2012. One of the reasons for the low turnout among Hispanic voters is that 44% of them are millennials, under-30s who tend to vote less than older people  one Latino turns 18 every 30 seconds. And the thing that worries Republicans the most is that the Trump effect may be reaching young Latinos as well.

An estimated 27.3 million Latinos will have the right to vote at the next election, four million more than in 2012

Last Wednesday morning, a group of students from the Alliance for Community Empowerment in Canoga Park, north of Los Angeles, took part in a discussion about Trump with EL PAIS.

Around 90% of the students were Latinos  some US citizens, some not. Stephanie Tomasino, 24, said Trump is ignorant and everyone who supports him is ignorant.

Alexis Romo, 18, said on the contrary that Trump is smart.

We criticize him, but what he does is working, because we let him do it. Its not enough to sit and talk, we need to start a movement,  he added.

At my house we talk about politics a lot, and Trump scares my family, said Danae Gallardo, 20, who has benefited from President Obamas DACA deportation protection program.

Nelida de la Rosa, 20, added that Trump was a hypocrite because his own family were immigrants.

All the students said they wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, or would if they could.

It seems that Donald Trump has managed to turn himself into a concern for young Latinos like perhaps no other presidential nominee ever before.

Growing numbers of youngsters are registering to vote and signing up as volunteer canvassers. This had never happened before Mi Familia Vota director Ben Monterroso

Marta Segura is running for the California State Assembly for District 64, which includes some of the most underprivileged neighborhoods in Los Angeles, such as Watts, Compton and Wilmington.

Two decades ago, African-Americans were the predominant group here, but now it is Latinos. Segura is busy canvassing for votes among her neighbors these days, and has found an unprecedented ally in Trump.

People are very worried about that, she told EL PAIS on Thursday following an event at the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. Theyre always making jokes about Trump. They have Trump pinatas at home.

During her door-to-door campaigning in South L.A., she has run into undocumented parents who are encouraging their children to go vote: People are mobilizing to ensure that Trump is stopped.

Jorge Nuno, an entrepreneur and social organizer in South L.A., has noticed a similar situation. This week he started a campaign to get people signed up on the electoral rolls. He says that people are nervous about the idea of Trump in the White House. People who had plans to buy a home are starting to hesitate, because Trump may be coming.

One of the organizations with the greatest experience and national presence when it comes to encouraging Latinos to vote is Mi Familia Vota. Director Ben Monterroso says that growing numbers of youngsters are registering to vote and signing up as volunteer canvassers. This had never happened before.

The sad thing is that it took a Trump to get us to mobilize Latino 24-year-old Ashley Leon

So far in this campaign, Monterroso has seen 30% increases in Latino voter registration compared with 2012. In Nevada, a key swing state that could go either way, and where Latinos represent a fifth of all voters, this increase has hit 60%. Monterroso has also seen immigrants who for years showed no interest in becoming US citizens, yet are now rushing to pledge allegiance to the Constitution in order to be able to vote in November. Anything to stop Trump.

Definitely, at the national level we [Latinos] had never been attacked this way, he adds. It is a matter of concern that there has been no defense of immigrants by the Republican Party.

Trump is not the Republican candidate yet. The more traditional sector of the Republican Party, the establishment, is promising to fight to the end to stop him. Its main fear is that Trump will trigger an unprecedented mobilization of minority voters and leave them out of the White House for four more years.

As 24-year-old Ashley Leon, of the Canoga Park center, put it: The sad thing is that it took a Trump to get us to mobilize.

English version by Susana Urra.
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Inigo Errejon (left) and Pablo Iglesias in Congress on Tuesday. ULY MARTIN

Silence can be more meaningful than words. Inigo Errejon, the number two official in Podemos, has been absent from the public arena this week as he mulls his response to party leader Pablo Iglesiass sudden dismissal of a top aide who was known for being ideologically closer to the former than the latter.

The Tuesday sacking came shortly after 10 regional officials in Madrid stepped down in protest over the leadership style of their superior, who is close to Iglesias.

Errejon feels that the time has come for Podemos to decide what it wants to be: a hegemonic party or a left-wing minority

The recent developments have underscored a rift within the anti-austerity party, where there are already two factions known informally as pablistas and errejonistas, after the two top leaders.

Errejon followers reportedly suggested some kind of quick response to organization secretary Sergio Pascuals dismissal on Tuesday. Ultimately, prudence prevailed and it was decided that the situation should not turn into a personal confrontation.

But internal critics of Iglesiass leadership say Pascuals dismissal was reminiscent of the old-school left, with its vertical and hierarchical structure. Both of Iglesiass two top aides, Rafael Mayoral and Irene Montero, cut their teeth in the Spanish Communist Party (PCE).

Sanchez asks Greek leader for help Alvaro Sanchez / Anabel Diez Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez addressed a meeting of European socialists and social-democrats on Thursday, and delivered the message that Spain, too, could get a progressive government  if only Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias would allow it. Sanchez specifically turned to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who is ideologically close to Iglesias, and told him that the latters attitude is preventing a government of change in Spain. Sanchez is seeking international allies to convince Pablo Iglesias to stop blocking his own appointment as the next prime minister of Spain. At a recent investiture vote, Sanchez failed to secure the post as he lacked sufficient congressional votes. An abstention by Podemos deputies would unblock his path to La Moncloa prime minister's residence.

The errejonistas want to ensure that Podemos does not turn into some sort of PCE 2.0, in the words of one deputy.

Iglesiass chief of staff, Irene Montero, said the leader was downcast and worried about the state of affairs.

Meanwhile, another battle is going on within Podemos. Errejonistas are in favor of reaching a deal with the Socialist Party and forming a government in the wake of the inconclusive December 20 election.

But it is unclear whether Iglesias wants to do the same or to just keep raising his demands so that Spain will be forced to hold a fresh election in late June.

Errejon feels that the time has come for Podemos to decide what it wants to be: a hegemonic party or a left-wing minority.

We believe that in order to avoid the risk of becoming a classic organization relegated to the left fringes of the political playing board, we need to understand that we cannot build a people project exclusively with those who have been hardest hit by the crisis, reads a paper published by the Podemos foundation, Instituto 25-M.

The debate over Podemoss future has begun, but the real battle will start on the first weekend in April, when Iglesias is due to convene a citizen council that will suggest a replacement for Sergio Pascual.

English version by Susana Urra.
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Madrid councilor wont resign after guilty verdict for offending Catholics Rita Maestre, of Podemos and Ahora Madrid, chanted slogans during a topless protest in 2011

Rita Maestre (right) arriving at the courthouse with her lawyer on Friday. KIKE PARA

A Madrid city councilor will not be resigning despite being found guilty of offending religious sentiment and being sentenced to pay 4,320 in damages for her actions at a Catholic chapel in 2011.

City Council spokeswoman Rita Maestre, of Podemos and the Ahora Madrid governing group, announced her decision after speaking with Mayor Manuela Carmena this afternoon.

I defend peaceful protest as a form of calling for changes in society, she said at a press conference on Friday afternoon, flanked by the mayor and other members of her party. I understand that this does not affect nor does it intervene with my work as spokesperson for Madrid City Hall, and as such I will not be changing my position.

Maestre called it a peaceful and legitimate protest and said she still defends this form of expressing her ideas

The Popular Party and Ciudadanos representatives in the city council had demanded her resignation, while the Socialists, whose votes allowed Ahora Madrid to take power, have yet to make a statement.

Maestre, who did not receive a one-year prison sentence as prosecutors had been hoping, had said ahead of the courts decision that she would step down if found guilty. The Ahora Madrid code of ethics states that any official involved in a criminal case must step down.

Another defendant, Hector Meleiro, who was 21 at the time of the events, was acquitted of the charges.

Maestre said through her lawyer that she will appeal the decision.

Take your rosaries out of our ovaries

Judge Esther Arranz Cuesta found that Maestre, in union and agreement with other unidentified women, and with the intention of offending the religious sentiment of those present and of the Catholic community, invaded the altar space inside the Catholic chapel on Complutense Universitys Somosaguas campus during a religious service.

Once inside, Maestre took off her shirt and stood in her bra, while other women disrobed from the waist up and two women kissed each other on the lips; after which they all left the chapel screaming Were going to burn down the Episcopal Conference, Fewer rosaries and more geisha balls!, Against the Vatican, clitoris power and Take your rosaries out of our ovaries, the sentence reveals.

The chapel at Complutense University's Somosaguas campus. Carlos Rosillo

At the trial, Maestre called it a peaceful and legitimate protest and said she still defends this form of expressing her ideas. There is no reason why a naked torso should be offensive, she said.

But the councilwoman has also apologized to Catholics for what happened that day. And the archbishop of Madrid, Carlos Osoro, issued a public message of forgiveness, saying that in 2011 Maestre was at an age (22) when one does things that should not be done that way.

The case has incensed some observers, who talk about the politicization of an event that took place five years ago, and who see in it an attack against Ahora Madrid.

But the conservative Thomas More Law Center  which filed a private accusation against Maestre  said in a release that this ruling will help raise awareness about the need to respect those who think or feel differently.

English version by Susana Urra.
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context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

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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(0x5612f022c090)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0362d18)', '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(0x5612f022c090)') 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(0x5612f0362d18)') 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(0x5612f00f2340)') 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(0x5612f0362d18)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0362d18)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50c4e0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f01fa968)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f01fa968)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe78780)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0315f08)', '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(0x5612efe78780)') 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(0x5612f0315f08)') 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(0x5612efe81480)') 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(0x5612f0315f08)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0315f08)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50cca0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0247040)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0247040)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe3d3f0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01fde28)', '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(0x5612efe3d3f0)') 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(0x5612f01fde28)') 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(0x5612efe3dd98)') 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(0x5612f01fde28)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01fde28)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee4ebd80)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f03a3c58)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f03a3c58)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
The previous offer, rejected by about 80 per cent of staff who voted, included average pay increases of 2 per cent a year for three years .

The union also wanted a pay increase of 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent a year plus recognition of the financial disadvantage caused by the delay in settlement calculated at 3 per cent for two years. The current agreement expired almost two years ago.

Included in its list of demands the CPSU has called for greater consultation, protection from the casualisation of the workforce, split shifts and the changes of rosters at short notice and the right to job swap during the redundancy process.

Customers are being advised to delay contacting DHS about non-urgent issues or to use self-service options.

"However, we may have reduced numbers of staff in service centres and on the phone and increased wait times on Monday."

CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood said "it's a bit rich for DHS bosses to say the strike would inconvenience families when they are trying to strip family-friendly working conditions from their own staff".

"We have working women in Centrelink and Medicare telling us they'd have to give up their jobs at DHS if this agreement went through, with proposals like workers being forced to work anywhere in a major city, different hours and days of work or even split shifts," she said.

"The reality is that these workers have been fighting for two years to get a fair deal where they can keep those important rights and that's why they're striking.

"Our union has put out a sensible, reasonable outcomes position with workers willing to agree sensible changes to agreements, including in DHS, but the Turnbull government is still refusing to move on key issues like stripping essential family-friendly rights and conditions out of agreements, preventing any improvements like domestic violence leave and no recognition of the impact of a two-year wage freeze."

There will also be all-day strikes on Monday by staff at the Australian Tax Office, Defence Department, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The inspector who issued a scathing report into ICAC's investigation into top silk Margaret Cunneen held a bias against Commissioner Megan Latham, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

A parliamentary committee is analysing David Levine's report on ICAC's controversial pursuit of the deputy Crown prosecutor, which he described as "unreasonable" and "unjust".

NSW ICAC Commissioner Megan Latham. Credit:Brook Mitchell

"There can now be no dispute that the commission was denied procedural fairness by the Inspector," Ms Latham told the inquiry on Friday.

"The inspector does not refute it. In fact he reinforced that denial in the course of his evidence (to the inquiry)."